Stony road

During my national service with the RAF, another draftee, a farmer in civilian life, told me I should be ashamed of being a journalist. That journalists didn't benefit society.

I explained I was out to enjoy myself and that was that. Twenty years later I met him again briefly, discovered he'd received his comeuppance and had turned to God. Urged me to do likewise. I didn’t crow.

I became a journalist because I wasn't qualified - academically or temperamentally - to do anything else. A flibbertigibbet life for a flibbertigibbet mind.

But it's a strange occupation. Asking questions day in day out. Asking questions on subjects that, until that moment, meant nothing to me: forklift trucks, herbaceous borders, building development, nutrition in jails, time-shared computers, a competition for tape-recording buffs.

Most of all delving into people's professional lives, how they've progressed. Occasionally asking questions people didn't want to answer. In some respects being un-English because even in retirement I continue to be astonished by the lack of curiosity most have about their neighbour's employment. For goodness sake, it may be their only expertise.

Journalism does have side-effects. When young I feared personal contact; nowadays the problem is one of restraint. Because I've dipped into this and that I give the spurious impression that I'm better educated than I am. Perhaps best of all I'm rarely bored although VR maintains that curiosity alone is no substitute for the social graces. I use words like "gerund" and "participle" because I've needed to know their application. Out of self-protection I avoid clichés. Under certain circumstances – although this is a dangerous claim – I can imitate the common touch.

A wasted life? Having fun’s no defence I suppose?

Out of my depth?

I've been otherwise engaged with the above for which - wonder of wonders! - the sun is presently shining. My first day's agenda:

Neapolitan journalist, under heavy police guard this last decade, reports on the capitalisation of narco-trafficking.

Two history specialists discuss how Germany continues to devise ways of acknowledging and adjusting to a post-Holocaust state of mind.

Research on working memory - the ability to hold in mind and mentally manipulate information over short periods of time.

Sam Mendes, director of movies American Beauty and Skyfall, and founder of the Donmar theatre in London, describes his methods.

Venkit Ramakrishnan explains the functions of ribosomes (protein builders and/or synthesizers of the cell) and how he won a Nobel prize for work on these key elements in living beings.

On the way back home with friends and relations I stopped for a pint and a half at The Pandi Inn in Dorstone. Full of virtue, aspirant culture and an over-stretched intellect.

Two more days to go.

Britain's answer to the Prague P

BBC TV carried a ninety-minute programme on Jonathan Miller, the man whose polymathism I most envy: doctor, biologist, comic actor ( Beyond The Fringe), TV documentarist (the human body, atheism), play director (a good chunk of the BBC’s Shakespeare series), opera director (about eighty works worldwide) and abstract metal-welding sculptor. Plus bits in between such as director of a dramatized version of St Matthew Passion (His own comment: “Not bad for a Jewish atheist.”).

He seemed to have directed the BBC programme too, certainly shaped it. And, we think, chose the music. At one point the LvB fourth piano concerto fluttered, at another the Schubert quintet. And then, like a personal benison for me (this version is sung surprisingly in Yorkshire - well I never said Tykes can't sing) this hymn:

Immortal, invisible,
God only wise,
In light inaccessible,
Hid from our eyes…

Unresting, unhasting
And silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting,
Thou rulest in might.

Perhaps it best describes the scope of his abilities. If so, so be it. But it’s a hymn I had temporarily forgotten and I’ve subsequently washed many a plate bellowing out its unrestrained sentiments (Thy justice like mountains, High soaring above.) in our wonderful kitchen acoustic. Thanks JM.

VERIFICATION I’ve noticed some belly-aching about Blogger’s renovated word verification system. Too difficult they say. My view is different. As long as I can handle it it’s proof I’m sentient. And I’m hanging on to that.