A little fervent noise

I'm a creature of habit. I believe routine helps octogenarians maintain their tenuous hold on life even when black-shadowed Plague is not idly deciding who next to strike down. When he is abroad I want him (He's surely a he.) to think: "Nah, not that old geezer with the wavy white hair. He's too ordinary."

Thus I reserve my news gathering for the TV News at Ten, late evening. I am under-informed during the day.

So it was VR, facing our living-room windows, who announced a degree of action among our otherwise non-existent neighbours last night as it got dark. "They're getting ready for the hand-clapping," she said.

I was shot through with guilt. Hand-clapping on our own door-steps, as a tribute to our much endangered National Health Service and health carers, has become a nationwide tradition, 8 pm, Thursday. I'd missed it the previous week because of my news habits. I rushed out in my stocking feet.

Not much was happening. I shouted to L, emerging with her kids: "Looks as if we're going to be lonely." But I was wrong. Other front doors were opening, often poignantly disclosing a singleton widow or widower. R who is neither, who lives opposite and who has loaded us with kindnesses, played Land of Hope and Glory, someone else blew a whistle, the rest clapped.

The nearby houses are all detached which meant clappers were somewhat dispersed. But unity may arrive less obviously. Dupuytren’s Contracture has curled my little finger inwards and I’m a lousy clapper. But I adapted. Back indoors the TV revealed larger crowds, countrywide, making more noise. We were understated, very British, no adjacent TV cameras.

I’ll do it again next week. I urge participation, even if you’re alone. I promise: you won’t feel a fool.

Oh vengeful death

Rhodes, Miller, James. All three deaths were hard to take

but to learn that Miller, a great wit, had Alzheimers for some

time before dying seemed ironic in the nastiest possible way

Clive James, Jonathan Miller and Gary Rhodes, dead in one fell swoop. And I reflect on the nature of words. Fell can have a “literary” meaning - fierce or cruel; very destructive; deadly. For once I’ll allow the cliché.

Clive James had been dying for a decade. Living confirmation that doctors, faced with any patient, should routinely predict the sufferer hadn’t long to live. Confounding an expert medico quite outweighs a harsh prediction.

James was a great TV critic for The Observer who enlisted me by poking fun at the BBC’s all-purpose blabbermouth sports reporter, David Vine; someone who had ruined many a Ski Sunday. James crammed much good writing into ten years after discovering he had leukemia. Poetry, abstruse lit. crit., etc. Latterly a weekly column which borrowed from Mark Twain (“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”).

After appearing with Alan Bennet, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Beyond The Fringe, a university romp that ended up on Broadway, Miller directed operas worldwide. In a TV documentary about La Boheme, he predicted no one could watch the “your tiny hand is frozen” scene without seeping into tears; rehearsed the scene and lo, was among several with a streaming face. Was allowed a TV series to explain just what atheism is; a memorable personal declaration.

Forty years ago I watched TV cooking programmes, a tolerance that has since substantially withered. VR liked Gary Rhodes, a sort of cheeky chappie who affected extreme hairstyles and was good fun. I was mildly astonished when in “adding salt” he disbursed a whole handful. Yes, I know it’s bad for you. So’s breathing if you do it underwater. Rhodes died from banging his head in a fall; aged only 59. Quarter of a life left.

Untouched by Brexit

Yesterday, unexpectedly, I entered an outpost of paradise. I should have used my phone-camera but I was too absorbed with what I saw. I must now make do with words.

Ashleworth is a village for the well-off, beyond Gloucester. The streets curve tightly and beguilingly through the greenery and one is called Nup End. To the north are the distant Malvern Hills. Yesterday was a rich summer's day but one suspects it's always summer in Ashleworth. That the residents have paid for summer to happen.

Within spitting distance of the centre (though no one here was so crass as to spit) was a spacious and well-appointed cricket ground: the boundary marked out neatly with Woodpecker CC flags, the practice "nets" a permanent fixture, the electronic scoreboard remotely operated, the pavilion extended with a full-length skittle alley.

All the players were correctly togged in white, not a pair of jeans to be seen. Bat met ball with that unique heavy thwack and play progressed. Daughter Occasional Speeder, who chauffeured us here, brought us beer and cider from the bar. Son-in-law, Darren, a member of the Woodpeckers, wore his pads ready to play, but his heroics were not called upon; his team were cruising.

Cricket is more ritual than sport. Best defined by a friend of mine: "Not only is a tie the most likely outcome, it's the most desirable." Impossible to explain to anyone from the USA. As a contest at Ashleworth it was unnecessary, as a mobile element set in the tranquil countryside it was essential.

A sharp shower intervened but its brevity suggested it had been scripted. Proof that this was happening in England. I wondered if the spectators included a country parson but decided he would have been too stagy.

Paradises must always be rural.

Butterflits

Proposition: Kissing is an under-used resource in 20th/21st century fiction.

Does this matter? Given the space devoted to lamentable and literary accounts of bonking I think it does.

Consider this. A 25-year-old man invites a 36-year-old woman to dinner at a restaurant. Six months before, the woman's husband abruptly left her and the trauma endures. She accepts the dinner invitation reluctantly and now wishes she hadn't. About to sit at the table she drops her handbag out of which roll typical handbag contents plus prescription drugs which might be tranquillisers. A minute later, reaching to accept the menu, she almost knocks over a glass of water. Her eyes widen in mild terror. The man, whose expression seems to mirror hers, stands up, leans forward and gently kisses her forehead. Comfortingly.

It's that adverb I'm concerned with.

The raw material of novels includes adapted personal experience, a tiny bit of pure invention plus stuff we've simply observed. Often from other novels. Yes we plagiarise! Are you surprised?

Were I to develop the above scenario I'd have to invent it. Offhand there's no one I could plagiarise it from. Kisses are rarely mentioned. And then only as hasty preludes to the snapping of bra straps and the jamming of trouser zips. As to a "comforting" kiss I'd be entirely on my own.

Why are kisses given short shrift? Probably through lack of reflection. They are spectacular events, rich in sensation, eloquently symbolic, pregnant with portent. Truth to tell I fancy constructing a comforting kiss in words because there are those who would call it a contradiction. I'd like to prove them wrong. But I’d like a few examples which show me what to avoid.

Dorothy Parker: Lips that taste of tears, they say, are the best for kissing.

A dangerous thing

I ignored tuition at my grammar school. My pitiful handful of  O-levels were for subjects absorbed intuitively, perhaps by osmosis.

Post-school there were skills I avidly wanted to learn, even to the point of spending cash: ski-ing, French, and now singing. "Wanting" made all the difference of course and some competence was achieved in each. But what is learning (ie, the process, not the synonym for knowledge)?

Repetition, or learning by rote, is despised because it is said to bypass the tender twitching heart of the subject matter. Pretentious bollocks. Learning ski-ing, for instance, involves overcoming the body's instinctive reaction to menacing forces. Socratic dialogue just doesn't work. Rise, dust off the snow, repeat, this time obeying the instructor. The body doesn't know best.

Learning is the search for a pattern, a matrix which we may impose on our thinking processes and on our body for later access. Data, both intellectual and physical, are added piecemeal - as with a spreadsheet. The embryonic matrix causes the data to interact, expanding the matrix's scope. Thus we learn.

Singing involves both intellect and body but you'd expect me to say that.

Learning is hard work and easily resisted. But enthusiasm - preferably an unhealthy obsession - conquers all. Overweening pride in one's achievement, regarded as impolite or un-British, is another effective asset. The cliché says learning makes you humble. More bollocks.

Learning has no fixed end. Without application it may fade. It must also be renewed. Most attempts at learning fail, suggesting humankind is predominantly lazy. Faced with learning the unlearned resort to insult, thinly disguised envy. The unlearned deceive themselves: I could do that, they say, and “could” echoes in their hollow interior.

Now read the comment.

Cui bono?

Old age has encouraged me to tip more heavily.Why? Because I can afford it and those who serve me are struggling to work in an uncertain environment which seems ever more uncertain. Things were more stable when I worked.

This is not a policy shared by other Herefordians (often retired pensioners from wealthier parts of the UK, like me) who instinctively reach for their purse rather than their wallet at the end of a service. Even if I hadn't observed their furtive parsimony I would have noticed it in those I tip. My hairdresser charges a piddly £6.50 for my increasingly infrequent visits; I give her a tenner and tell her to keep the rest. "Are you sure?" she asks, clearly astonished.

Yesterday we ate Norwegian Red (a first for all of us) at a swanky new fish restaurant by the Severn where the service was efficient, friendly, even witty. The bill for three included a truly superb pinot grigio and was £103. I added £15 to the credit-card total, after first ensuring that the extra would go to those who'd earned it. "That's very generous," said our waitress.

There is no tradition at all for tipping in Edwards Plaice (qv), a fish-and-chip shop with three tables, where the portions are monstrous and the bills minimal. As we leave I hand over a very unexpected fiver; the staff behind the counter blow kisses and those queueing for takeaways look uneasy.

To tip is, by definition, patronising but I don't care. Money is money and how I appear doesn't matter. Besides which, the reactions seem unfeigned and that pleases me.

Note. US readers who must regularly stump up 20% for services will no doubt be unimpressed by this post. So be it.

Loved I not honour more (q.)

It's that time of year we greet each other. Given this longstanding tradition, greeting is a remarkably understated activity:

"To acknowledge the presence or arrival of (somebody) with gestures or words." So if I lurched away from you in horror at a cocktail party would I have greeted you? I think not.

Yet, Season's Greetings say the cards atheists send to Christians whom they like. Let's see if Roget can help.

"Give one's regards" I discard; it's the sort of piety banks use at the end of a letter foreclosing a mortgage. "Hail" sounds more positive, more promising. But, I fear, more antiquated. Englishmen may be "at home to someone" but Americans shouldn't laugh; the US equivalent is "have the latchstring out." Surely latchstrings are electronic now.

More specifically: accost (A bit near the bone, that one), address, salute, curtsy (But would I ever straighten up again?)

I rather like "glorify" but only God gets glorified. No, just a minute: "Describe or represent as admirable, especially unjustifiably. (As in: A football video glorifying violence.)" Strike out glorify.

Sod it, I'm going to go with "honour", flavoured with goodwill. And I'm aiming to be comprehensive. I wish to honour those who:

● Comment on Tone Deaf.
● Comment, but only rarely.
● Did comment but have now died.
● Did comment but have withdrawn for stated personal reasons.
● Did comment but have withdrawn without stated reason.
● Did comment but have withdrawn because they disapproved of the author’s insufferability and self-aggrandisement.
● Might have commented but after due deliberation decided the blog fell short of its aims.

A small world but one which has entertained me, disputed with me, informed me, challenged me, corrected me, shamed me and – very occasionally – garlanded my brow with laurels. Diesen Küss der ganzen Welt.

Heimat visit

Terrace houses for the rich, overlooking the Rhine

On my first visit to Germany (Hattingen-Ruhr) in 1953 the train journey lasted twenty-three hours, including an interminable overnight ferry-crossing from Sheerness to Vlissingen. Last Tuesday, thanks to motorways, a modern car and the heaven-sent Channel Tunnel we were in Düsseldorf - quite close to Hattingen-Ruhr - from Gloucester in eleven hours.

Eco needn't mean boxy; here's
BMW's i8 hybrid (£112k)

OS and VR staying warm 

Nominally to see the Christmas markets but actually to re-experience Germany and to chat to Germans. Driven by a desperate conviction that, post-Brexit, things will never be quite the same again.

Two steps behind, I "stalked" VR and daughter, Occasional Speeder, trying for shots that set them against festive backgrounds. Mostly I failed. Two evenings we staggered out of bierkeller restaurants (Zum Schlüssel and Brauerei Schumacher), our bellies distended with inordinate kilograms of meat. At Schumacher one’s empty beerglass is immediately replaced with a full one, over and over, without comment. On the last night we went Lebanese and the quantities were even greater.

Two things stood out. An organ recital in the Johanniskirche which has virtually perfect acoustics, possibly because of its short length/loftiness  ratio. Plus a magnificent, sharply defined organ (a Beckerath to the cognoscenti).

And then the city itself. Düsseldorf is a wealthy city enormously endowed with art galleries, symphony halls and museums (none of which we visited). But it isn’t in-yer-face wealth. Those with dough overlook a park separating them from the mighty Rhine, and live in terrace (US: row) houses! Literally wall-to-wall millionaires! Terraces, yes, but all with different frontages: stylish and beautiful (see the main pic). VR, normally a scourge of over-loaded moneybags, was charmed.

Some of the stuff is irresistible; especially the potato pancakes

RR goes to the races

I'm not into horses but my neighbour, Richy, is. He's associated with (take a deep breath) the Mid-Wales & Border Counties Racing Association Ltd and knocked on my door with free tickets for the nearby Allensmore Harness Races. He'd spotted my weakness as an ex-journalist - free anything and I'm there.

The brilliant sunny day put me in a bad mood. I was trying out my new smartphone as a camera; couldn't even see the world in general on the phone's screen, never mind the horses. Took lots of photos of nothing while daughter, Professional Bleeder (PB), photographed me doing just that. Then sent the pic to grandson Ian who cruelly asked: how long would it have taken grandaughter Ysabelle to say: "Put it away, Grandad, put it away."

Fortunately Ysabelle wasn't there but VR was. I expected her to remain in the car reading her Kindle. But no, she'd followed every race, knew who was fast and who was slow; only the handicapping system fazed her. Meanwhile, horses thundered past unphotographed, their drivers adopting a horrifyingly vulnerable legs-apart posture, uncomfortably seated in their vestigial chariots.

Finally the sun went in and I was able to make a fist of mastering the phone/camera and even to appreciate the spectacle. Races are commendably short, the programme was closely adhered to, and - unlike F1 - attempts at overtaking occurred regularly. Richy, as commentator, turned out to be one of the stars; speaking at 200 words a minute, he gave every competitor plenty of mentions and ensured duffers like me were properly informed. I even consumed an ice-cream cone on impulse. As did VR.

PB bought the ice-cream and took better photos so I used hers. Something of an unexpected rural idyll, a mile or so away from my doorstep.

Bolt-holes

Despite an intensely funny half-hour of Have I Got News For You, the UK’s long-running satirical telly programme, VR didn't want to talk about Trump or Brexit any more. Wanted to blot them both out.

In my mind's eye we're on the dangerous dirt road to Port Underwood, a tree-covered fiord on NZ's South Island, the most beautiful place in the Universe. Two days with the welcoming and sophisticated Rousches.

We're emerging from St David's Hall, Cardiff, having heard Herbert Blomstedt conduct the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in Brahms’ third symphony - as if the music had been composed there and then, for the first time, just for us.

Anniversary dinner at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and the sagacious sommelier is offering VR a loan of his spectacles to read the wine list.

A family inspects our house in Kingston-upon-Thames. It's a hot day, the French windows are open, the little fountain (based on a stone mill-wheel) tinkles in the garden, and our daughter, Occasional Speeder, lolls in an easy chair. The family's father says, "I'd like to live here." and we know we've made a sale.

We've driven VR's mum, Edna. who's notoriously anti-Wales, up through the Elan Valley past the reservoir and on towards Rhayader. Edna says, "I'm so sleepy but I have to stay awake. It's so lovely."

I've read Patrick O'Brian's twenty-novel Jack Aubrey-Stephen Maturin series three times, VR twice. One of us, it doesn't matter who, is saying, "Do you remember when Stephen..." We laugh in recognition.

VR’s been in the kitchen while I’ve manhandled English in my study. I come down and there’s Eggs Mornay for dinner. Unexpectedly.

February 2012. Or 2013. Or 2014. The cough’s gone.

Weihnachtsmarkt 3. Technoid

In Cologne we stayed in a penthouse - the top floor all to ourselves, reached by a multi-mirrored lift. The ultimate in style, luxury and a soupcon of techno-frustration.

A wall-mounted digital clock hinted at what was to come; showing time, date, temperature and humidity. A whirring noise in our bedroom, eightish in the morning, indicated dawn had arrived and that the blind was automatically rising a foot to prepare us for daylight.

Nothing so old-fashioned as a tap for the bath - more a stepped cascade mid-way along. Initiated by foot-operated levers and prevented from overflowing by photo-electric sensors. Jacuzzi water agitators of course and, when all had flowed away, a few minutes of sighing and hissing that was never explained - perhaps some kind of drying and/or cleaning function.

Even the curtain rail for the shower curtain was sexily circular: shrouding the user in a tube of white.

Occasional Speeder was entranced by the Krups coffee maker; feed it with a sealed pod of fresh grounds and it delivers deliciously rich expresso in less than a minute, start to finish. Both she and I have subsequently bought this device in the UK.

We ate out but had we self-catered we'd have had access to a range of expensive kitchen knives capable of dealing with anything from a roast quail to a half-carcase of beef and handily attached to the wall by a magnet.

The handbowl tap had no turners and worked by hand proximity plus a puzzling button; the plug was not amenable to reason.
 
Outside the apartment the Russians were handing out literature intended to discourage the Germans from having anything to with Brits. This too was not amenable to reason.

NOTE. I am toying with taking singing lessons. Is this foolish optimism at age eighty? I have yet to approach a teacher and must confess I'm apprehensive at how she (most are women in Herefordshire) might react.

Sublime mosquito

We don't make anger, shame or pity but we do make love. Love's an abstract noun, so how do we go about it?

Combining fleshy contact with fleshy movement to cause a sensation similar to scratching a mosquito bite. The rest, they say, is in the mind.

How do we render this fictionally? Most of us don't - out of sheer good taste. Those that feel they must will pause. In the UK there's a literary prize called the Bad Sex Award. It isn't something you'd want on your mantelpiece.

Some of us cheat. Diversion's good. Here's Jana in OoA:

THEY stood naked, etc, etc

(Eliazalde said) “Carino you are tired, I feel it here.”...he knelt beside her, working on the junction between her neck and shoulders, relaxing her spine.

“I may fall asleep,” she said, her voice muffled by the duvet.

“Then I will finish the tortilla. Read a little. Then wake you with Casals.”

Not sex but physiotherapy. And I'm still this side of the Bad Sex Award. Then there's Francine in Second Hand. Here the trick is displacement. Forget sweaty skin, let's substitute a sweaty (but remote) mind:

This is just sensation, she told herself. Like being tickled, the reverse of being hurt. This fits that and brings about the other.

But how about you? How do you comment? Most won't. Only the confident and courageous will.

ECSTATIC (Non-Sexual) NEWS Just got an appointment for my second cataract op: June 29, 8 am. My left eye, the bad one. I can eat and drink what I want because the anaesthetic’s local. But I must be escorted home, mustn’t drive. How about angel’s wings? I can’t wait.

Proof we're aliveand (mainly) happy

I thought I’d invented the word tactility but it already exists. Merriam-Webster gives two meanings: (1) capable of being touched/felt, (2) responsiveness to stimulation via the sense of touch. It's the latter I'm interested in.

VR recently asked me to taste a beef skirt casserole. It not only tasted fine but it met another of my criteria: it had that gluey consistency (often more apparent from a re-heat) that gains my final approval.

Grapes have tactility potential. Bite them slowly; dwell on the moment your teeth pop through the outer skin - the essence of a tactile experience.

Bread's freshness is identified by its smell and its unique resistance (or lack of it) to your incisors. But a slice of tomato turns the bread soggy ruining its initial appeal; for me salad must be confined to a sideplate.

Expanding my thesis: tactility is also sensed with the ears as well as the finger-tips. Edna, my mother-in-law, loved one-arm bandits. But she admitted that if the machine's crunching sensation - a sound and a vibration - were removed, she would give up the vice.

When wood-sawing is going well there's confirmation in the rasping sound and the consistent mini-shudder communicated from blade to handle.

Tactility can be proof of unpleasantness - eg, efficient tooth-drilling vs. the actions of a butcher dentist.

Then there is the ultimate tactile sensation which nature has embedded in us to ensure we keep on breeding. Stopping short of that consider the kiss: the feel of the lips, of course, combined with tiny movements of the jaw, the sounds and zephyrs of someone else breathing, and that (frequently divine) smell.

PS: Yes, I know, sound is a vibration. But the above is physiology not physics.

Posted in Hereford

SECULAR CHRISTMAS CARD
Hubris stands for extreme pride or self-confidence. Today I stood myself down and employed real writers. Robinson

******

● A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. Shakespeare

● Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. Twain

● Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness. (And, of course, ladies). WS

● All emotion is involuntary when genuine. MT

● And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. WS

● Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. MT

******

Post scriptum. Not a good year, 2014. But eased by cheerful, encouraging and articulate voices. Thanks to you all, it's a privilege to share the world with you.

Pic: Hogarth's The Shrimp Girl

Giggle and stay warm

Yesterday the central heating made an ominous noise. We switched it off, phoned emergency numbers, drew the curtains, closed the doors, and resorted to chat (assisted by a Wither Hills sauv. blanc and a pinot noir from South Africa).

What, I asked VR, were the funniest movies? Funny-talkies not funny-slapsticks. Forget Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy; the former sentimental, the latter repetitive.

Some Like It Hot, said VR. Of course. Equally, Kind Hearts And Coronets. But how about slightly less famous treasures? Me thinking of A New Leaf (above), where penniless Walter Matthau marries Elaine May and tries to kill her for her money. Where Walter diagnoses his Ferrari's engine problem: "Carbon on the valves."

VR was strong for Alastair Sim, even in movies which weren't meant to be comic. Green For Danger, a hospital whodunnit, sags badly when whimsical police detective Sim is off the screen.

I favour laconic James Garner. When I cited Support Your Local Sheriff, VR (who normally hates Westerns) immediately recalled Garner sticking his finger up the barrel of Walter Brennan's menacing Colt 45. And Brennan's sense of outrage.

The French laugh too. In Just Visiting (Les Visiteurs) a medieval knight is transported to the twentieth century. Coming upon a postman's tiny van with its radio playing, the knight slays it with his sword. You're made to realise this is a genuinely fearless act.

Left-wingers aren't supposed to like I'm All Right Jack where Peter Sellers mercilessly lampoons a trade union shop steward. But for me politics went out of the window when Terry Thomas, a personnel manager, is told to call on Sellers at home. "Him! Why the feller probably sleeps in his vest."

By then the Wither Hills was dead and we were halfway through the pinot.

Stuttgart - Die Leute (people)

Strength not vivacity was this waitress's forte.
Daughter OS's pink scarf knitted by VR

In foreign parts people outperform scenery, architecture and things.

● We entered a department store cafe, looking for a loo, chatting about this among ourselves. An elderly man, seated in the cafe, got up, took two steps and pointed: "The toilet is there," he said, inevitably in English.

● ... which led VR to reminisce about another visit to Stuttgart. "Where is the XX hotel," she asked. The questionee said, "I cannot say but I can walk you there." Which he did.

● Airport security involves intimate inspection these days - with finger-tips and with an electronic gizmo. When VR's inspection at Stuttgart was complete the official said, smiling, "Well done."

● I decided to be puckish with the receptionist at the Porsche Museum (of which more later).  I said,"Coming in here and looking at your cars is like looking at your advertisements. You should be paying us." She laughed pleasantly, said, "Indeed." then asked more questions which led to our not-so-expensive €6 ticket being reduced.

● Hot Glühwein (mulled wine) is the drink of preference at German Christmas markets. But those in the know ask for Glühwein mit Rhum. The rum is poured unmeasured, with a glad hand from the bottle. A fragment of German surfaced in my mind; I said, "Nicht genug." (Not enough.) The cheerful, well-anoraked pourer doubled the dose.

● More airport security. At Heathrow (London) I was asked to identify a strange object x-rayed in my shoulder-bag. It was my spring-loaded coin dispenser. At Stuttgart the same thing. I explained, adding "It impresses the French." The German security official said, "It is very practical."

Who's for new? Not I

Getting older means fewer opportunities to do something new - you've tried most things that tempt you. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I recently replaced the seat on the downstairs loo. I've done this before so it wasn't new. But a day later one of the plastic buffers between seat and porcelain detached itself and disappeared. Flushed into oblivion no doubt.

VR complained, Said she felt unsafe, sitting there, rocking.

I improvised with four door-stops. I re-shaped them then needed four washers. Found them - just four! The work took less than an hour. Lav-seat buffers are new to me and, briefly, I was able to give old age the finger.

But you see what I'm reduced to. Lav-seat buffers aren't viable cocktail party chat. Many cocktail drinkers wouldn't admit to sitting on a lav-seat even in their own home.

OK. Old age may deny us the new, but it may also encourage us - beneficially - to distrust it.

Here at Chez Robinson books flow, helping VR to meet her annual target of 230 titles. I read hardly any of them. Yet I still read.

Waiting on my Kindle is a new translation of Proust's A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu and an illustrated (!) version of Joyce's Ulysses. Aha, you say, many people have unread Proust and Joyce on their Kindle. But I've done the former three times and the latter (I think) four times. I look forward to doing both again.

So, you snarl, I’m just boasting. Maybe. My problem is I'm unconvinced anything new will stack up. I lack the energy to waste time on disappointment. Both these books are good - if difficult - reads with more to reveal. Watch as I adopt the foetal position.

To the land of make-belive

What will Father Christmas bring? A drive in the car, only to Dad's office but hey, it's a drive in the car. Oooh! - a bag of sherbet lemons. Yikes - a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Aunty's coming; she should be good for a florin.

Slowly the world of childish anticipation contracts behind us, giving way to more lasting pleasures:

They say that Ingmar Bergman's one of his best.

I say, darling, how about...? No? I quite understand.

Jack's brother's an accountant; he's agreed to do the tax return.

Enthusiasm disappears. Recently VR lifted the cushion of the easy chair and found something brown underneath. A grape that had tumbled there weeks ago and had turned into a sultana. That's enthusiasm.

But this year is different. We booked this year's French villa within a month of returning home from last year's. The anticipative madness has described an eleven-month-long crescendo initiated as usual by Occasional Speeder. Through dark winter afternoons we were bombarded by emails describing restaurants on an increasing radius from the nearby village. We have argued about different techniques for getting up early enough to lunch in Carcassonne. Strategies for bypassing Rouen (and its damaged bridge) on the southward journey have been analysed and discarded. OS has produced a schedule covering the whole holiday fortnight: Friday June 13, afternoon: Chill; Thursday June 12, if it's wet: Narbonne cathedral.

VR and I, veterans of a thousand French holidays, have stuffed our Kindles with indulgence. We have bought jars of Hollandaise sauce (for the asparagus) because France doesn't do made-up Hollandaise.

I'm even looking forward to the drive (shared these days with OS). I know it'll quickly become a drag but that doesn't matter. For the moment my enthusiasm is virginal, something to be cossetted.

Time travel by fire engine

The smallest unit in British local government is the parish council (nothing to do with churches). Once VR was the autocratic chairman of Belmont Rural PC, cutting bucolic blether down to ten seconds at most. I edited the PC's quarterly Belmont Voice.

Neither of us wishes to resurrect those bureaucratic futilities but odd memories float back.

At a PC Fun Day we had a bouncy castle, a soccer shoot-out and a local fire engine. That latter item sticks.

Half an hour before the opening, a five-year-old lad asked when the fire engine would arrive. I told him. Thirty minutes later - to the second - he noted the fire engine's continued  absence. Using adultspeak I held him off for ten minutes. Time slipped by, the lad asked again. And again. My excuses got longer ("Perhaps a house is burning down."). Eventually the vehicle arrived and a queue of five-year-olds formed.

Fire engines hypnotise young boys. A lesson too late for me interviewing graduates for journalistic jobs: "Have you got the persistence?" I might have asked, magically pre-imagining the above. The 2:2 sociology applicant would have looked blank - a characteristic of sociological study. OK, send in medieval history.

JOE’S NUDGE
Don’t know for sure but…

Leaves, summer’s coinage spent, golden are all together whirled,
sent spinning, dipping, skipping, shuffled by heavy-handed wind,
shifted sideways, sifted, lifted, and in swarms made to fly
spent sun-flies, gorgeous tatters, airdrift, pinions of trees.

Reasons why. Words carry meanings (ie, codes). But words are also sounds, independent of meaning; bring several word-sounds together (“spinning, dipping, slipping”) to create a new sound and – if you’re lucky – a new meaning. This poet understands: “spent sun-flies, gorgeous tatters”.

Possibly Manley Hopkins, but too modern. Actually R. E. Warner, b. 1905

Stendhal is raunchier

I am re-reading  Stendhal's The Red And The Black, but in English. Joe is re-reading it in French. Decisions were made independently. I'd forgotten what a comic (yet tragic) character Julien Sorel is, also French/English attitudes when writing about sex in the 19th century.

Stendhal (1783 - 1842) - pictured - was born earlier than Dickens (1812 - 1870) yet you wouldn't know it if you compared R&B (1830) with what I've always thought of as Dickens' greatest novel, Bleak House (1852). I'll spare your blushes on the matter of sexual detail but Stendhal leaves you in no doubt about what has happened during the first great seduction, even if he stops well short of the wearisomely sweaty passages in present-day bonkbusters. Dickens, if my imagination serves me, would have sidled into metaphor for the same scene.

I blame Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) who writes about characters "making love". It is clear the phrase has lost something (rather, gained something) over the years.

A TOUGH CALL VR has just finished listening to my 22-CD set of Jim Norton reading the complete Ulysses and has also downloaded the novel to her Kindle for another day. Amazon, eternally egregious, asks her to rate Ulysses as good or bad. Laughing, she asks me. Sternly I tell her she must make up her own mind.

WIP Second Hand (49,426 words – so clo-o-se to 50,000)
A man wearing a Liberty tie that counterpointed his dark, hip-conscious suit (said). “And now you all know how far Derbyshire is from London. Yes folks, Palatewise is out in the sticks… We’re undeniably provincial. But in our business, provincial is good, provincial-rural even better. Carbon monoxide levels here are fifty percent lower than in Whitehall, particulates even lower.