Let good prevail (much revised)

SECOND THOUGHTS
Christmas approaches. Reminding me of Christmases that entailed disaster, even tragedy. Raw material for novels and short stories but I've bundled all that (The Overturned Van. Pulmonary Affliction. Mother's Death. Cold Duck Hangover.) together, secured with Sellotape (US: Scotch tape), for storage in the loft.

Met Professional Bleeder at Hereford bus station yesterday, took her home to change, and we set out with VR for the tiny Gloucestershire hamlet of Brand Green to spend the night with Occasional Speeder, her husband Darren and son Zach. A pre-Christmas blast.

Their hugely decorated tree touched the ceiling, a furnace of light and a temptation to the new kitten who would have stripped it bare within minutes had we let her. A firkin (= quarter of a barrel) of ale was available, the others drank champagne. I stretched out my tortured right leg and gave in to raucous gossip. At some indeterminate time a hot-as-Hades tagine was served.

It wasn't the whole family: grandson Ian was with his Dad, granddaughter Bella in her new Tavistock house with partner, Daniel. But it was enough. Under these circumstances, conversation is a majestic boulder released down a mountain slope of infinite length. It may reach a small plateau and slow down; but it never stops. Impatience writ large on the faces of those waiting to break in.

 Denied the tree the kitten gnawed the feet of those likely to say Ouch!

Now we are back home, wrapping table presents to the assertive trumpets in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Messiah is kept in reserve for Christmas Eve. It’s the family that counts, of course. The boulder endowed with energy, source of uncaring laughter and often of revelation.

Disc 1 of the oratorio is finished. Those toiling with Sellotape need the impetus of Disc 2.

Small aside re. Joe

Joe, formerly Plutarch,

tie askew, looking BS

straight in the eye

Four years ago my pal, Joe Hyam, died. He and I were both magazine editors in and around London and I'd known him since 1963; others will remember his blog, Now's the Time. His initial blogonym, Plutarch, was later dropped in favour of his real name.

But why Plutarch in the first place? I’m mildly ashamed I never asked. So, seeing a dilapidated paperback of Plutarch’s Lives on the charity books table at Tesco, I decided to check. Published nearly sixty years ago. the pages have lapsed into that familiar orangy-brown, some fragile as ash. I have many books in that state. It’s a way of re-visiting my youth.

Plutarch was born a Theban in AD mid-forties and lived until he was seventy-five. Studied philosophy in Athens, travelled, held various magistracies, and wrote only about “men of action”. This version (there are others) of  Lives covers movers and shakers in a crucial period in Greek history “from the legendary times of Theseus to the end of the Peloponnesian War.” All news to me. I was not classically educated, not educated at all, really.

Theseus (Founder of Athens) was certainly an action-man. Periphetes, aka Club Bearer, was an early casualty, encouraging Theseus to adopt the club himself. He may have clubbed “Phaea... a robber, a murderous and depraved woman... whom Theseus afterwards killed.”

But now it’s confession time. I’m still on Theseus with eight more lives to go. But I may have answered my own question. Joe liked Plutarch’s essentially in-yer-face attitude:

...geographers when they come to deal with those parts of the earth which they know nothing about, crowd them into the margins of their maps with... “beyond this lie sandy, waterless deserts full of wild beasts” or “trackless swamps...

Plutarch and Joe, neither a purveyor of traditional BS.

Something new

This was the style of sandal but mine were always brown, always on their last legs

My blogging (first in Works Well then in Tone Deaf) started on May 4, 2008: I've done 1463 posts in 3600 days, ignoring leap years and assuming all months have 30 days. One post every 2.46 days.

Sounds reasonable. But not when compared with my lifespan of 30,370 days. One post every 20.76 days.

These figures are of course a nonsense - blogging as such didn't start until 1997. But the figures represent a personal criterion. Surely 30,000-plus days of observation and experience should be enough to ensure I haven't repeated myself in those 1463 posts. Alas, the archives reveal sad truths. All those subjects I've mined and re-mined: gross failures at school, journalism, life in the USA, novel writing. I'm no more original than a clanging bell in an RC church, bidding the faithful to Mass over a century or more.

Question: Is it possible to fashion an entirely new post without cross-referencing any post that went before? Perhaps.

I'm standing in Sherborne Road which feeds the terrace in which I live. My socks are down at my ankles, they have holes at the heel. I wear sandals because they accommodate my growing feet better than shoes. My knitted shirt/pullover has holes at the elbow. I wipe my nose with a hankie that has never been washed and may never be washed. There's a hissing/whirring as an electric vehicle passes on the main road. A thousand miles south men are killing each other in Normandy but I'm unaware of this.

I'm looking for a friend but hear no high-pitched voices. I'm lonely and almost certainly hungry. Thinking about the teacher with dyed blonde hair who lives next door, I experience sensations I cannot give a name to.

I am now very close to my 300-word limit.

An odd half-life

Time trial: A pedal-bike race against the clock; racers set off at one-minute intervals and ride for 25, 50 or 100  miles: 12½, 25 or 50 miles in one direction, then the same distance back. In extreme cases they ride for 24 hours. See MikeM's account (Time Trial) about what it feels like.

When I left newspapers and joined Cycling and Mopeds (now Cycling Weekly) in London I reported time trials. Harder than it sounds. The concept of riders racing each other was notional; the winner might be the last chap to set off, or the first. Overtaking was rarely observed since in a 25-mile time trial it could occur a dozen miles away from where the reporter was standing. A strange fictional prose was employed to create an "of the moment" environment which didn't actually exist.

For the reporter the logistics was severe. Time trials took place on Sunday mornings on flattish lengths of public road, often distant from built-up areas; to avoid traffic they started at 6 am or even earlier. I had neither a car nor a motor-bike so, in order to get some sleep, I would go by train (with a pedal bike) the night before to a nearby B&B then cycle out to the start/finish on Sunday morning. I would construct the report from interviews with riders as they finished: gasping and knackered, having given their all.

I was courting at the time. Faced with covering a time trial I simply wrote off the weekend. It was an an odd half-life and after a year I'd had enough. I moved to a magazine about tape recording thinking that my social life would improve. Then that mag went bust.

Journalism was and is ever volatile.

Lost, and it'll stay lost

...You may see a stranger
Across a crowded room,
And somehow you know...
Etc, etc.

These groaningly familiar lines from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific speak of love-at-first-sight, plot fodder for Hollywood at its squashiest and for Mills & Boon. But not for me. Why?

In all my five novels Jack meets Jill or, rather, Jill meets Jack, but never in that traditional blinding flash.

One reason's obvious. Novels allow you elbow room so why swap growing realisation for Kapow! when you've chapters to fill? Perhaps too, because I've never been convinced... Perhaps... yes, how did things go when I first met VR (then VT) in 1959's endless hot summer in London?

A double date (blind for me): two journalists, two Charing Cross nurses, and an old, old van we'd borrowed. I remember asking VR/VT for her telephone number. Not having pencil and paper I used a penny to scratch the seven figures on the van's battered interior. But that was at the end of proceedings. What happened that evening? I'd no idea.

Timidly, shamefacedly, in 2017, I put that question to my spouse of 57 years. "We went to The Dove at Hammersmith," she said. Strange, a touristy pub on the riverside; a pub I later grew to hate after reading the landlord’s autobiography. "What did we talk about?" I asked; then, in an even more timid voice: "What were your impressions?" VR shrugged: "We drank a lot of beer."

And then, quite forcibly, I knew I'd reached an impasse. Even with long-married couples, especially with them, there are questions which cannot be asked. All I can say is we were married a year later. Thus, for me, the South Pacific assertion remains unanswered.

Sing a sad song, make it better

TECHNO-NOTE. People wishing to comment on Tone Deaf during the past 48 hours may have had their comments rejected. The reason: my mailbox at PlusNet, my ISP, had filled up, mainly alas with spam. It has now been cleared.

Brother Sir Hugh admits being sickened by the outcome of the referendum but says life must go on. In his case that means overcoming the defects in his hard-worked knees and continuing to explore the English countryside.

In my case, following our holiday, I resume singing lessons from which I've drawn so much exhilaration. But something's changed. I find myself repeatedly making basic errors which, quite simply, add up to hitting the wrong notes. V, also affected by the referendum, struggles to be encouraging and I sympathise with her - my performance doesn't deserve it. I try to sing confidently but it emerges as misshapen bombast.

That evening on TV news I learn of  a growing level of "hate crimes" against immigrants and I'm visited by a sense of history. Immigration was a fruitful area of exploitation by the Leave campaigners; now they've got what they imagine they want ordinary people, interviewed for the cameras, feel entitled to speak their minds. "All out" is the message.

One of the inarguable benefits of the EU is that it has promoted peace in Europe for seventy years. But for how much longer? The emerging resentment against "foreigners", some of whom are third-generation UK residents, is terrifying. It would only take one populist demagogue to harness this force and we could have something similar to Germany in the early thirties. How ironic given that present-day Germany has striven so hard and so selflessly - with France - to ensure this doesn't happen.

A rather more serious prospect than tumbling stock-market prices.

The quotation I've illustrated is, of course, from Schiller's Ode To Joy, adopted by Beethoven as the choral part of his Ninth Symphony.

It's also the EU's anthem.

Sounds from the abyss

I'm usually observant; it went with my trade. Following events was what I was paid to do but often unexpected detail enlivened straightforward reportage.

This time however I was wholly involved in understanding a new technical system on which I may, or may not, spend money. I may get to that in a later post. Yesterday, at the time, my concentration excluded all other matters.

Thus I was fresh to the news, half a day later, when the BBC News at Ten told me about Brussels. "But it was on the big TV screen just above your head," said VR. I nodded but I'd had other fish to fry. Less cataclysmic, of course, but we are what we are and we do what we do.

The information was immediate and overwhelming. In the midst of tragedy and incomprehension those suffering were turning their phones on dust, inchoate cries and poignantly deserted suitcases. One victim, moving towards the light, recorded the stumbling steps of the couple in front - silhouettes of people in need of reassurance.

This wasn't new news, of course. Think Charlie Hebdo, think Paris last November. Think further back.

I thought of politicians, those fallible individuals whom we vote for and who we expect to make decisions on our behalf. Politicians who had justifiably dragged their feet about involvement in Syria (Applause! Applause!) not caring to launch another Afghanistan (Oh no!).

When do we turn from diplomacy and start unsheathing the sword? Never, for war is hell, said William Tecumseh Sherman, and he knew. But when, privately, do we acknowledge diplomacy comes at a cost and we cannot guarantee the lives of normal people going about their normal existence? Deaths to pay for a public theory.

I’ll always be anti-war. Won’t I?

Porn - old and new

I don't watch much new telly these days but I except Wolf Hall, the BBC's plausible six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's meaty novels about Tudor schemer/fixer Thomas Cromwell  - not to be confused with Oliver of that ilk who later urged England to take stumbling steps towards parliamentary democracy, a process still woefully incomplete.

I worry that these reconstructions feed a taste for legitimised S-M porn with their detailed scenes of public executions, especially of women. No spoiler alert necessary for WH's final episode yesterday, given that it concerned Anne Boleyn's fall from grace, and for which something new in the beheading line was contrived.

Don't be put off by this but be warned: WH is a serious account of politics and the drama lies in networks of relationships which demand attention and a good memory. Meanwhile marvel at Mark Rylance's minimalist Cromwell (above), and the huge implications contingent upon the tightening of his lips. A role for which telly was invented.


A MORE modern form of porn lies in the never-ending trawl of kit to sustain enthusiasts in their leisure pursuits. Blonde Two and Sir Hugh, both extreme walkers, have a taste for this. (Too cruel, too condensed; see: Where-er you ski)

I used to walk (the synonym, hike, causes me to throw up) and my first and only rucksack was bought as ex-WW2 stock, said to be used by Army toughies called Commandos. Painful to the hips, very character-forming.

To get to "walking" places I rode a motor bike and needed gloves. The first pair, quickly discarded, were also ex-WW2 and made of crackly slick canvas for troops under gas attack. No porn in either of these items, I fear.

Shackled no more

Epiphanies are moments of revelation. Fifty-four years ago, almost to the day, one happened.

That year, 1959, I was liberated. I finally left the northern city of Bradford where my adolescence had dried like a peascod. London was my playground. My job consisted of filling two magazine pages a week, more or less any way I wanted. I had met the woman I would eventually marry. The weather was unseasonally warm.

The Christmas break beckoned. I walked along Tudor Street, close to Fleet Street, then the actual and symbolic heart of Britain's newspaper industry. My companion was JM, the handsome, confident, competent deputy-editor of the magazine I worked for. We had both had a couple of sherbets.

Walking towards us on the other side of the street were two attractive women, about our age, who had also been at the sherbet. Not helplessly so: just happy, chatting. A pleasing sight. I pointed them out to JM.

He nodded. Whereupon (this is an anecdote, so whereupon is permitted) he sauntered over and presented himself. I could hear what he said: he complimented them on their looks and admitted he was consumed with a desire to kiss both of them. This, like whereupon, was permitted. He sauntered back.

I was a mere observer yet my heart overflowed with joy. Welcome proof I was no longer resident in the blackened, mean-spirited, navel-contemplating, misogynistic city of my birth. An epiphany.

WIP Second Hand (50,650 words)
During her first month Francine had worn business suits which she hoped would imply she was serious. A contributing editor, specialising in biology, and who attended staff meetings in shorts and flip-flops was the first to break ranks when he asked her, mock-seriously, whether she was looking for promotion to a higher tier of management.

Apocalypse greets novelist's birth

Surely The Times ceased publishing classified ads on page one on May 3, 1966. In fact, this issue (here scrutinised by Mrs LdP) dates back a little earlier – August 26, 1935, day zero/one in the life of her hubbie. When the first line of the Personal column read: “J.T. Perfectly well; hope we shall soon dine out. – K.” Further down, a Sunbeam Landaulette (“careful chauffeur”) could be hired for 8d a mile.

Not a happy time. The Dean of Chichester’s sermon included: “It was the moment for the Churches to declare that a war undertaken without recourse to arbitration was a sin against the law of Christ”. This solemnity was placed adjacent to an advert recommending: “If you don’t feel like eating a heavy lunch or dinner, have some Sandwiches. They’re light yet they make a perfect meal because they’re made with BREAD.”

How about: “... the throat trouble from which Herr Hitler had been suffering for some time is now completely cured. It will be remembered that an increase in hoarseness following a cold was the reason given for the postponement of Sir John Simon’s visit to Berlin.”

Headline of no great surprise: 2½ inches of rain. Month’s average in a day. Low temperature in the south.

No musical concerts were reviewed, but never mind: “The London County Council… would not allow a performance… in which a dancer dressed as a moth flutters round a giant lighted candle until her wings catch fire… (she) is actually clothed in an asbestos tunic and helmet… but the Fire Brigade Committee decided that the dance is dangerous.”

More danger. Under a headline Sleepwalker Drowned: “Miss Sophie Louise Booth had walked unobserved from her house to the towing path of the river wearing only her nightdress under her dressing gown.”