Brexit medicine

Delicious Dames: Smith, Plowright, Atkins, Dench

When British women enjoy sustained professional success and become elderly, if not aged, they may be accorded the title Dame. To me it sounds like a pantomime insult but never mind, it's the crazy way we do things here. More positively it forms the basis of a 90-minute movie, Nothing Like A Dame, which allows four inarguably great actresses (Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright – combined age 342 years) to reminisce - often scabrously - about their trade. As The Guardian notes, "the laughter and pure hysteria are infectious."

JD was once attended to by a paramedic after being "stung on the bum by a hornet". He wheedled: "What's our name?" and "Have we got a carer?" She burst out: "F--- ---! I've just done eight weeks in The Winter's Tale at the Garrick."

All agree none is "exactly an oil painting" (I'd dispute this but then I'm just a fella.) and several had related misgivings about playing Cleopatra. EA says she overheard someone say she lacked good looks but was, nevertheless, sexy. "I liked that," she adds, demurely.

One frightening figure in all their lives was (Lord – no Dame he!) Laurence Olivier, to whom JP was married. MS says he hit her hard on the face each night when she was playing Desdemona to his strangely blacked-up Othello.

Filming was done at JP's country house since she is somewhat frail and has lost her sight. Character is revealed. JD (whose roles include Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria) giggles helplessly while MS finishes off her one-liners with eloquently vulgar facials.

My patriotism, never strong, is presently being tested by Britain’s metamorphosis into a Banana Republic. These indomitable Dames, all self-evidently Brits, helped restore the balance for one night at least.

Unknowing youth

For me adolescence was torture. No other male I know suffered as much; many even enjoyed boasting about it. US rites-of-passage novels likened it to white-water rafting.
      
Adolescence is, I'm told, many things some quite technical. But whatever my serotonin levels, adolescence was sex. Especially the bad side of sex. Was there a good side? I whimpered, hopelessly.
      
Physical lust arrived surprisingly early, before I doffed short pants. But it was undifferentiated, like belly-ache from over-eating. As predictable as Meccano.
      
Eventually lust became something softer and wider. In literary terms Stanley Kowalski morphed into Pierre Bezukhov. I can date this transformation exactly even if I didn't recognise its significance until decades later. Only old age has brought understanding.
      
I was thirteen sitting in the school hall for an evening showing of a docu-feature movie, San Demetrio London. I remember I was uncharacteristically happy: my brothers and I would soon move to Heaton, another Bradford suburb, to live with my mother, now detached from my father.
      
On the row behind me were classmates who coincidentally lived in Heaton. Surprisingly, given the times, they had brought a guest, P., a schoolgirl of the same age. P. kicked my chair. I turned round and she giggled. When I turned away she kicked it again. Giggled in a nice way.
      
Living in Heaton I got to know P. distantly, imagined I was love with her. She was friendly but my timidity ensured nothing happened. The chair-kicking remained vivid but uninterpreted. Now I realise an attractive intelligent girl was prepared to take the initiative with pustule-studded, peeled-shrimp, unconfident me.
      
A perfect specific for adolescence, but alas beyond my comprehension.

Re-introducing Blessed Jane

Recently I’ve been off Jane Austen. Not her fault. She simply became inescapable on telly which is how most newer fans identify her. Far too many versions of P&P although the P&P sequel, Death Comes To Pemberley, was a moderately entertaining TV Christmas special.

An interactive Austen session at Hay put me back on track and I'm presently re-reading Mansfield Park. For those who only know P&P, MP will come as quite a shock; for one thing the heroines are polar opposites. Feistily forward Elizabeth Bennett has little in common with MP's timid, self-effacing Fannie Price.

Only a year separates the novels yet MP includes much more real-time narrative. Given a good idea (the multi-motivated visit to Sotherton, the unsanctioned amateur dramatics) Jane lets the dialogue - and the action - run, page after page. Thus there's less need for those visible contrivances whereby A is transported to B, or C "accidentally" meets D.

And then there's Mrs Norris, a Gorgon who is almost too realistic. Am I glad I was born into the twentieth century!

JOE'S NUDGE
No more shilly-shallying with dubious doggerel. For me this is good:

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.

Now over these small hills they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret

Reasons why. I love the compression and the palindromic echo of the first two lines. The choice of “turned on” in line four. The simile in line eight and the way “secret” is picked up again and somehow reversed. OK, it’s just descriptive, there’s no philosophy. But that’ll do, Pig.

Stephen Spender

A very rare event

BRIEF ACCORD

Many years before St Valentine’s Day 2014

Dedicated to all women: the interested, the empowered, the uninterested, the instructive, the one who married me, the dismissive, the one who bore me, the topers, the ones who became my offspring, the singers, the whingers, those met and unmet. E&OE

So young they were that day, alas,
Youth turns me off.
That need for love self-evident,
A sulk so meet for those slack mouths.

Their badged lapels a substitute
For grown-up talk.
Their icons passing for an argument,
The code quite clear. But do I care?

Then: Pow! There’s proof of politics,
Perhaps a plan.
For what seemed rude democracy
Unveils the wedge of leadership

Wearing a stripe of matelot,
A knitted cap,
She darts among us like a beak,
Seeking the worm of innocence.

The eye as claw, the glow, ah yes,
She’s drawn me in.
Others joke, suggest a beer for her -
All male of course - they miss the point.

She sits down near, her hand upraised,
To touch her badge.
Guessing perhaps I know the code,
Noting also my consciousness.

That glow, that ripe expectancy,
Is all I need,
Tell me, I say, all schoolboyish,
Convert me to your great belief. 

The problem with baddies

More sexism last night. Couldn't have been more sexistic. Mozart's Don Giovanni transmitted from the Royal (May my left hand strike my right.) Opera House, Covent Garden to wind-and-rain girt Hereford. We've seen half a dozen other versions; this was modified beneficially (cutting out the anticlimactic "survivors" scene) and malignantly (failing to match the words to the actions).

But this isn’t about opera technicalities. What should we make of the Don? He emerges from  Donna Anna's bedroom after she raises the alarm; in most versions he is coitus interruptus but fulfilled in this case. He stabs to death DA's dad, sneers at Donna Elvira whom he bedded after getting engaged to her for just that purpose. Tries to seduce peasant girl Zerlina on her wedding eve. Puts his servant Leporello at death's risk. But here's where it gets difficult.

He meets the ghost of DA's dad and invites him to supper. Dad turns up and returns the invitation - ie, for a final supper in Hell. The Don refuses to recant his life, accepts Hell, suffers.

There is a modern-day parallel. Most of the condemned Nazis died well on the gallows at Nuremberg. Yet none has a soft spot for them. With the Don we're equivocal. Some (All men?) have a sneaking admiration. Quite unjustified. This wasn't roguishness; the Don was a hoodlum. Go figure.

WIP Second Hand (57,251 words)
That last occasion in his bed with the black sheets. “Diabolical,” she had said, and he’d laughed uncertainly even though there’d been nothing uncertain about what followed. The sex had been simultaneously rewarding and disturbing. Prolonged and invasive.  To the point where his desire to please had obliterated her sense of self.
Note: If I've posted this extract before the reason's forgetfulness, not obsession.

Miles from the centre - any centre

Moments during a routine Saturday morning visit to Hereford (city) by bus.

• VR fingers an M&S pullover. RR: You've already bought two this morning. Three in one day's unheard of. VR: The diet. I've lost weight.

• A stall offers falafels without explanation. VR says it's unnecessary but I am ignorant. I wonder how many Herefordians know. VR says dismissively - and finally - they understand doner kebab. PS: Chickpeas with an unfortunate side-effect.

• In the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Hereford's second dullest shop after Dunelm (bed linen) they're playing Baby It's Cold Outside, possibly with Ray Charles. The duet allows singers with unique voices to improvise zestfully. Overlapping the "dialogue" adds to the effect. More than just good fun.

• VR needs a new watch strap, but only because the little straplets have gone. This happens regularly and she's irritated. The woman behind the counter is sympathetic and offers to open a shop that only sells straplets; "I'll make a bomb." The three of us laugh and VR's irritation dissipates.

• Outside the Shire Hall there's a statue of Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Two lines read: A wise and honest statesman. A profound scholar. I try to imagine a present-day politician to whom those lines might apply. An unresponding silence.

WIP Second Hand (35,299 words)

Francine rides in a Maserati Quattroporte. She says: “I don’t usually subscribe to the idea of cars being beautiful but this comes closest.”

Do you agree?

Epiphanies are good for you

Imagine you've come upon me mumbling to myself in a corner.

The word count for the fourth novel, Hand Signals reads 11,233. Steady progress but the title will not survive. I'm presently enjoying an epiphany, proof of why I find writing so absorbing and a compensation for the penalties of old age. A 198-word passage, totally unexpected in content, which informs the central character's situation. She is Francine and her name will, I think, stick.

Why am I so keen to write predominantly about women? For traditional political reasons? Yes, but there's more to it. Women seem born to suffer and then to re-emerge. A fancy, no doubt but then fiction is all fancy. Francine suffers unbearably in the first chapter. Physically and spiritually. Then begins the process of re-creation.

Flushed by the onset of the epiphany I turn on my favourite 2 min 46 sec of  YouTube, many times alluded to: Miah Persson and Anke Vondung, doing Soave sia il vento - beauty combined with intelligence and carefully restrained passion.

Back to the keyboard and the epiphany grows. Another favourite: Bach's Wachet auf, tiny choir and tiny orchestra. The sopranos, a rather cosy housewifely trio, leap out and stab me, St Teresa fashion.

Why women? Because, subconsciously, I believe women's approval to be a great luxury. Likely to be hard won. Approval here carries no hidden meaning, simply "favourable opinion or judgment".

It really isn't fair

HAY FESTIVAL NEWS 1
Women - doomed to discomfort for ever

Philosophy was big at this year's Hay Festival - in conflict with physics, describing consciousness, substituting for God. But the REALLY BIG question went unanswered at the public loos.

Feeling the need I called in at the Gents and was relieved within a minute. Communal troughs ensured the Gents could handle fifteen men at a time.

Things were different at the Ladies. Similar size cabins  accommodated six derrières and the queue numbered twenty.

I hate the world's casual discrimination against women. So how many ladies' loos would be necessary to ensure the same in-and-out comfort as men routinely expect. I did the arithmetic, checked it with a physicist of my acquaintance. Allowing 4 min. for women (vs. 1 min. for men), the answer is a whopping factor of ten. In other words, ten times as many Ladies as Gents.

Ladies! it's never going to happen. You will always queue and suffer.

HAY FESTIVAL NEWS 2
Bad news for the Right

Eric Hobsbawm, who died recently in his nineties, was an internationally respected British historian who often spoke at Hay. He was also an unreconstructed Marxist. That didn't matter when The Guardian sponsored Hay since the newspaper has always been soft on left-leaning causes. But now the sponsor is The Daily Telegraph, right-wing voice of the Home Counties. This year the EH memorial lecture rang with shouts of revolution. Time for Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells to open his bottle of green ink.

On the other hand, jowly Gavin Hewitt, now the BBC News' Europe editor - subject of one of my earlier sonnets on Works Well - proved to be brisk, full of facts on Euro-economic Disaster, and, on the whole, presentable. Hay is many mansions.

How can women fancy men? Pt 4

Why this four-part series?  I might say it proves I sympathise with women's plight. But I'd be a fool not to fear feminist "correction". Some grammatical or syntactical error, some maladroit choice of noun which would quickly prove I was deluded. Take to your bed, old man.

Claiming to understand women's plight - as I am - is even more dangerous except that I plead a special case.

In 2009 I started novel-writing and have since written three, getting on for half a million words. I found myself wanting to concentrate on women. I'm not sure why but I ended up with three women (Clare, Jana, Judith) in whom I invested some effort and, I suppose, much love.

All three live in the real world. Thus I found myself having to "hand over" or, at the very least, "lend" C, J and J to men. It is only now I realise I found it subconsciously difficult to do this. And this is evident in the plots.

Clare's is the most conventional story and ends in rapprochement. Despite her admirer's essential decency, I had to give Clare the moral high ground in that final chapter.

Jana's story is darker. Physically disadvantaged for the gender struggles she takes up with a man whose main defect is bound up with  his attraction. The hell with masculine power.

Successful and gorgeous Judith is brought low by a man and then, through indirect association, even (horrifyingly) lower. Two "non-biological" men assist in her rehabilitation but new spiritual backbone is provided by a woman.

You could say I lack the detachment to write novels. That I am in thrall to women. That my only achievements are several brief vacations on the other side of the gender fence. So be it.

How can women fancy men? Pt 3

Summarising: To maintain humanity women need to find men attractive A poor deal for women, as I shall explain. A system "with minor exceptions", I said previously, but Lucy adds "not so minor", citing lesbianism and celibacy. I agree about lesbianism and would go further; not just on behalf of women who have come out but for the larger total who have experimented. Proof that the Intelligent Designer (that ironic entity) had a bad day at the drawing board.

Celibacy is a more dubious option which needs more space than I have. It also needs dividing into voluntary and imposed states and may still be minor.

Men are a poor deal because:

● They rationalise then start wars.

● Having started/finished a war, they spend aeons celebrating the glories they experienced therein.

● Men become obsessed by sport which is bad enough. But some take up dangerous sports (motor racing, climbing) which overrule both connubial and familial responsibilities.

● When death overtakes a dangerous sport practitioner he is ennobled (by other men) instead of being escorted to a suicide's grave.

● Men's needs traduce the wonder of publishing. Women's porn may exist, but there is no doubt about men's porn.

● Not naturally ingenious, men rise to the heights in devising pay systems which discriminate against women.

● Men have an inexact idea about improving their attractions, often accidentally increasing their sexual appeal to other men.

● Men appear to fear ballet.

● Primitive ideas about physical dominance over women are not confined to primitive living conditions.

● Men assume parenthood reluctantly.

Astute readers (No gender, no pack-drill) will recognise some of the above are included via my personal experience.

Much of what I've said is obvious. Part Four, the final part, will explain why I said it.

How can women fancy men? Pt 2

It's my own fault, I've cried wolf too often, twice saying I was going to stop blogging yet reneging within twenty-four hours. I expected irritation, accusations of authorial naivete, or inanition from Part One. Instead I've accidentally misled readers into imagining I was trying to drum up interest (US: to shill, an under-used verb) in a forthcoming short story.

Pregnant with meaning though they may have seemed, the couple in Part One had only an exemplary function and will remain set in amber unless, of course, I go completely off the rails and this modest series takes a turn I cannot yet foresee.

Because of course the question contained in the title isn't a question. Women can fancy men because they do. They are coded to do so. And let me admit men are similarly coded but, in this series, I have no interest in that.

So let's repeat that stark statement: women can fancy men because, to tweak Martin Luther, Sie können nicht anders. With one or two minor exceptions.

Put concisely this law depresses me. The fact that women cannot choose meaningful relationships with Mount Aconcagua, Cuvier's gazelle, Hogarth's The Shrimp Girl, the Post Office Tower or a referendum in Switzerland, certainly diminishes the value - in broad terms - of the relationship they get stuck with. After all one woman here on Earth went even further. Choosing me out of several billion others she passed through an acutely embarrassing ceremony in order to make nearness to me a permanent state. I was surprised and overjoyed. It felt like a heck of a compliment, but suppose her choice had been infinite. See what I mean?

It is with a heavy heart that I now see this series will run to Part Four. At least.

How can women fancy men? Pt 1

They were out of earshot but we had our own conversational fish to fry and I only glanced their way occasionally.

She faced me three-quarters front, moving a lot on her chair, talking, gesturing, frequently bending - almost swooping -  across the table towards him. In her thirties, lushly featured and fully made-up, wearing a loose dark green blouse with loose sleeves. Her hair was dark brown or perhaps black and I imagine it had started out that evening as a neat soft cloud round her head. But animation and (pure imagination, this, but it fitted her character) a tendency to run her fingers through it at moments of emphasis had deranged it pleasingly.

From three-quarters rear he was everything she wasn't. He sat erect and immobile, his gaze permanently directed at her. Balding, he had had the remainder cut very short, but his was not one of those heads shaped for hairlessness: almost perfectly spherical. suggesting somehow a tennis ball. Jacketless, he wore a formal pale blue shirt (almost certainly with a tie) and the fabric looked over-starched. Possibly close to forty.

They were a couple, both demonstrably interested in each other. If she talked he certainly listened. I think they were having a good, albeit adult, time.

In my fiction I prefer female rather than male heroes. As happens these women are attracted to men. But how can that be? I look at men (including myself in the mirror) and I see only the physical imperfections, the self-interested sexual stratagems, wariness, insincere responses, a certain slowness. Men seem unattractive and if women pair up with them surely it's because there's no better alternative. Yes I am heterosexual but that isn't the full answer.

You're saying I'm a romantic simpleton but there's more groundlaying to come.

Towards a Feminist car

 

In case the irony in Feminists Have A Point went undetected may I say I try to support women’s viewpoints, albeit silently, thus without the grammar.

Many women’s choice of car is imposed. Thus their car is often:

(a) Small (Low purchase price (LPP), less power, easier parking, low consumption, ostensibly better ergonomics)

(b) Bottom of the range (Cheaper, less “complexity”)

(c) Manual (LPP, lower consumption).

(d) Petrol engine (LPP)

(e) Less visibly macho (Less vulnerable to male drivers)

(f) Oddly coloured (The only inexpensive option left).

But the opposites of these features have beneficial sides. Take Small: More powerful biggish cars are less demanding to drive (fewer gearchanges), quieter, more restful on long journeys, have more carrying capacity (eg, for baby impedimenta) and in the case of larger US cars with far greater steering assistance, easier to park. More power need not be feared; the driver is in control; the power need not be used; it doesn’t “sneak up”. Alas, small car ergonomics means fewer adjustments.

Less “complexity” Cheap cars often lack reversing sensors; vital in parking garages. Ignore arguments (always male) saying these “de-skill” driving; the aim is to travel not take a degree. Expensive cars usually have more copious lighting, remote radio control, better info systems – all recognisably helpful.

Automatic gearboxes no longer absorb fuel. My two-litre turbo-charged diesel car (ie, medium to biggish) has a six-speed autobox and has consumed fuel at 51 mpg since purchase. Autobox changes gear more efficiently than I can. Much, much more restful.

Petrol vs diesel. The latter lacks LPP but is cheaper to run. So, buy second-hand. Especially in France.

ESSENTIAL Ignore advice of male driving enthusiasts; they speak a different – often subjective – language. Given the choice I would have a chauffeur.

Feminists have a point

Lucy recently lost out to White Man Van on a greasy road in Brittany. It made me think. Women often come off worst where cars are involved.

FLAT TYRE No problem, there’s a spare. But first the used wheel, bolted on with a pneumatic torque wrench. Even so, a breakdown truck driver told me, women drivers will often have a go. Men call the AA and listen to Radio 1.

BOOT LIDS Many now have a dangling handle and not a moment too soon. Previously women got warm and angry jumping up for the rear number plate.

OIL FILLER ORIFICE “Oh that’s where it is, right at the back of the engine. I’m lucky I never liked this ball gown.”

DRIVER ERGONOMICS Everything’s adjustable. The steering column’s telescopic, seat and the squab are hinged, seat can be slid backwards and forwards and it can be raised and lowered. But only within average male variations. That’s why women’s cleavages bear the mark of the manufacturer’s logo found in the centre of the steering wheel.

PEDAL ACCESSIBILITY Fine for ladies – lady giraffes, that is.

CAR PARK TICKET SLOTS “Hang on to my butt while I reach out another metre.”

REVERSING VISIBILITY Simply lower the head-rest. Oh, it’s as low as it will go. Sorry.

RADIO CONTROLS “I can do without Bartok’s violin concerto or without steering for two or three seconds. Which will it be?”

TYRE HOSE Manicured this morning; will need another this afternoon.

VISOR VANITY MIRROR “Why does driving a Ford age me so?”

SPEEDO JUDGEMENTS 30 mph – woeful old grannie. 70 mph – flashy young tart.