For those without a reservation

Heaven is only for Christians, non-believers need not apply. Fair enough, it’s a Christian concept. But here’s why.

VR’s brother-in-law, Mike, dying of lung cancer was philosophical. He expected no after-life but admitted he would be content sitting on a cloud, reading, sipping eternally replenished red wine, and being endlessly served cheese-and-pickled-onion sandwiches. I wasn’t able to tell him this was unrealistic.

Pickled onions are powerfully flavoured; the normal human palate would baulk after three. Being able to eat them continuously would require a modified physiology. Thus the contented cloud-sitter would not be Mike as he knew himself. Proof that heaven – which in any case he didn’t believe in – was not for him.

And Christian heaven, as traditionally described, would demand a great deal of personal modification from earthly life as we know it. Anyone for harp-tuning? Christians are presumably OK with this.

But suppose secular heaven existed and I qualified (unlikely, I know). What could I expect? Sitting at a keyboard, rattling off a best-seller with intellectual appeal? That would simply be copy-typing. No uncertainties, stresses or hard-won delights typical of novel writing. Heaven doesn’t deal in uncertainty and stress.

Might I sing Du bist die Ruh like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau? Uh-huh; it’s the struggle which counts. Heaven dwellers would expect daily perfection plus uninterrupted delivery of The Guardian. Make that The Daily Telegraph.

Even the most placid Earth-dweller struggles. Bad things help make us appreciate good things. My heavens here are fantasies; none, I am told, may comprehend the mind of heaven’s landlord, God. Faith is a given but I prefer Ohm’s Law. The proof is duplicatable.

But could I risk hubris and devise a secular heaven? See my next post.

Sand-strewn caverns

Winter is dark, literally and metaphorically. One looks for counterbalancing happiness and it's hard to find. Memories of the first legal pint of beer, the first date, leaving the West Riding, dining with the beloved in Soho, arriving for work in the New World - they've all been tapped dry.

But does happiness need to be based on truth? Might I pretend? Might imagination compensate for black skies where the Malverns ought to be, a frosty nip round my kidneys as I reach up to open the garage door.

It's not as easy as I thought. Being cheered at Covent Garden for my Leporello doesn't match up to the tiny increments of progress I may reasonably expect at singing lesson, only 2½ hours away at this very moment. Receiving an enormous cheque at Stockholm, strapped into a starched shirt-front, is not as much fun as re-shaping this present sentence - which itself is not exactly happiness, more a mild pleasure in seeing my fingers working at the keyboard.

Let’s widen the scope, somewhat.

I'm sharpening scissors with which Meryl Streep will later humiliate Donald Trump. (Hey, just his trousers, for goodness sake! Let's not go to extremes!) That's better.

I'm in a broom closet in 10 Downing Street, swinging a pendant in front of Theresa May's transfixed eyes, saying over and over, "It won't work." After half an hour she stumbles out on her stilettos, saying: "You know, I don't think it will." Way to go.

It's 1969 and I'm magically - and temporarily - encased in the body of Eddie Merckx, the year he won the general classification, the points classification and the mountain classification in the TdF. Merckx is Belgian, by the way. An unfavoured race.

My singing voice feels stronger and the Malverns are now visible.

Schiller, move over

Writing fiction has taught me to distrust first reactions, first thoughts. They may turn out to be original and/or interesting but it's a long-odds bet. First thoughts are mostly based on what's gone before which means they tend to be banal. Or repetitive. Or the latest trot on a well-ridden hobbyhorse.

Consider these words: age, old, retired, anniversary. Consider them against present-day information sources and opinions. What might be our next step? In my case - at 3 am today - I dwelt on decay, chronic pain, doctors' waiting rooms, reduced physical performance, bleared eyes, debilitating nostalgia - all the usual suspects. In fact a series of whinges. I resented these easy connections; wanted to do better.

I thought about the words' real meanings and what they have in common. Passage of time is one link and immediately my mind took wing on another first reaction: time passing takes us nearer the grave and is therefore bad. Another unenlightened whinge.

I tried again. Passing time is the asset we spend in getting to know things. Passing time comes burdened with opportunity which we don't always take advantage of  (Careful! There might be another whinge there.) A decade goes by and we know more about this and that. Or should do.

"Age" can mean a lengthened perspective. "Old" may proclaim a wider database. "Retired" brings fewer distractions. An "anniversary" is merely measuring tape.

Yesterday my music teacher, V, told me how to shape my mouth to sing the sound "oo". A joyful lesson but then music and what it does for me is mainly joy. Music is based on an understanding of time and is simultaneously a glorious way of marking time's passage. There, I'm out of the doctor's waiting room.

The case for burning books

Three novels I feel I’ve already read.

MODERN MARTYR Tarquin Falafel, a middle-aged man of independent means but no detectable gender, has made a career out of lacking energy; his house-keeper breaks into his breakfast boiled egg for him. A post-doctorate dissertation he is writing on Tunisian sea myths is still only in note form after eleven years. When a letter in North Mesopotamian Arabic is forwarded by his family solicitor he finds he has inherited a villa on the Mediterranean coast in Sidi Bou Said. The weather would alleviate his emphysema but after contemplation in his rose arbour he tears up the letter, preferring a lingering death. “Filigree prose.” The Times Literary Supplement.

TORTURED TEACHER Stanley K, a sociology lecturer without tenure at Smethwick University (née Claggs Road Poly) is engaged in a bitterly unrewarding affair with the wife of the university chaplain. Since both are slaves to an extreme form of masochism, no climax has been forthcoming for twenty-seven months. Their children (dozens) live unfettered lives and repeatedly burn down their parents’ rented accommodation. The lovers die cursing each other when the police over-react to a street demo complaining about prices in the staff canteen, and details of their lives are incorporated in the classic socio-pathic study: Midlands Distopia. “Gritty.” Horse and Hound.

SYSTEMATIC SCRIBE When Clancy Fugits, a self-proclaimed novelist living in Swindon, runs into writer’s block in the first paragraph of his first novel, he discards the theme (West Country autonomy) and writes instead about writer’s block. Thus he is able to justify his lack of progress, join the lecture circuit, become famous for being pelted with bread rolls, claim and be awarded a small Arts Council grant, spend this on one night’s debauchery in Chippenham and go on the dole. “Feasible.” Financial Times.

Bedtime division

After over half a century of sharing bed-clothes we're about to switch to separate duvets. We tried out the guests' singles last night (see pic) and managed to avoid instituting divorce proceedings this morning; now it's a choice between Brushed Cotton (£25 - £45) and Hungarian White Goose Down (£120 and £220). There's also Silver Pyranean Down at an eye-watering £190 - £310 but that looks like a misspelling; accordingly we're giving it a miss.

Why change? Height's one reason since there's an 11½-in. disparity beween us and this has led to sheet-tugging in the past. Another is a huge difference in sleeping posture: VR (Human imitates hamster) and RR (Recently laid-out corpse). Plus a sizeable reduction in the time spent re-making the bed.

We will lose bedtime communality since I expect accidental touches during the night to become rarer. One might imagine that after fifty-odd  years we should have got used to each other. She may have, I haven't.

However a new domestic institution will profit. These days, after two morning hours at the monitor I get back into bed, we link hands and talk sporadically. Duvets will mean I can slip back without causing a draught.


MY CHRISTMAS table presents included a laminated sheet called Mon Journal 1935, a round-up of events (in French) during the year of my birth. Gloomily and, alas, unwittingly, the French established two years as the duration of national military service that year.

It seems I share a birth-year with Elvis Presley, Francoise Sagan, Pavarotti, Woody Allen and Julie Andrews - a mixed bag you'd have to say. Presley means least to me.

Popular in France a song  called La Guingette a Fermé Les Volets (A small restaurant of that name closed its shutters). Wow!

Invisible milestones

ONE OF LIFE'S OBLIGATIONS It's 06.20, nearly time to get up. My Longines sitting on my bedside chest-of-drawers says so and my Longines is never wrong. My Longines cost a fortune, a gift from VR thirty or forty years ago; its clear face and needle-sharp hands tell Swiss truth.

I reach over to put it on and I know - sinkingly - something's wrong. A familiar wrongness which has happened perhaps a dozen times. Sweat from my wrist has rotted the stitching of the strap and the buckle is now detached. The penalty of wearing a leather strap. But, alas, there is no alternative.

Once I substituted a plastic strap which lasted longer. But brother Nick, now in a rest home, his mind adrift with Alzheimer's, told me the watch was too good for plastic and I immediately agreed.

A metal strap? Sixty years ago a sub-editor on the newspaper that employed me as a tea-boy said metal straps were "a mark of the beast". I immediately agreed with him, too.

Leather straps cost £20 a pop. I can afford that and must. VR and Nick deserve it; I'm reminded of them both when I tell the time. Which is now 07.06.

FRENCH BIGGIE Another short extract from Proust's A la Recherche. The key is to read it slowly because it, like the Longines, is concerned with time. Time cannot be hurried.

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be, I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station, the path that he followed being fixed for ever...

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.

Full stop. Capital letter

There are certain, rare moments in life when what went before stops dead. When what follows is quite different. Marriage is one obvious junction and ours occurred in 1960. This was Wednesday, December 28 1965. I suspected life would change but it’s taken forty-nine years to say just how much.

In the New York Port Authority building (above) a barber, shaving me with a cut-throat razor, noticed a neck rash and suggested a massage. The rash was not unexpected. More than a day before, wearing a three-piece suit. I had travelled by train from Bradford to Glasgow. A bus had transported me to Prestwick airport on the western Clyde. A propellor plane took eleven hours to fly to Iceland, and seventeen hours to Kennedy. I wore the suit to avoid carrying it, I sweated, a rash formed.

In my pocket was a bus-ticket to Pittsburgh. The carrier was Continental Trailways not, as I had romantically hoped, Greyhound. Romance, curiosity, daring and a year's hard work had brought me to this point. I was about to start a six-year stay in the USA by my own choice.

Six years in a foreign country. Forget the common language, the USA is far more "foreign" than say France and Germany where I had lived for short periods. Its foreignness shaped my life.

When I returned I saw Britain differently. More international, less comfortable. Less charitable, better informed. Secular. More cramped. I was more communal and (inexplicably) more confident. Less prone to cliché. Better informed about industry. I supported US world views until leftwing friends (rare in Pennsylvania) compensated.

There's more but the romantic 1965 innocent with the sore neck had gone for good. A carpet rolled up. But how many other carpets since? We’ll see.

Uncaring youth

During and after the war coal was brought in sacks to our house on a horse-drawn wagon. I had no interest in this.

Men avalanched the coal into our cellar through a small hatch on the side of the house. My mother locked up at 11 pm and I had no key. But I was slender enough to slide through the coal hatch.

Clothing impregnated with coal dust was something I could live with.

Later, as a drinker, I spurned the coal hatch, shinned up the external fall pipe, stood on the horizontal access pipe to the loo, fiddled open the little window, and slid in head first. The tricky bit was avoiding entering the loo head first.

Had the fall pipe pulled away from the house wall I would have fallen twelve feet, broken my back on the cellar steps hand-rail, then continued to fall ten more feet down the steps. At the time I lacked imagination and now regard this as a blessing.

Later, I bought a key.

JOE'S NUDGE

See what you think:

It's in Bolton Hall, and the clock strikes One,
And the roast beef's brown and the boil'd meat's done,
And the barbecu'd suckling pig's crisp'd to a turn,
And the pancakes are fried, and beginning  to burn;
The fat stubble-goose swims in gravy and juice,
With the mustard and apple-sauce ready for use;

Reasons why: Poetically unambitious but enhanced by impeccable ten-syllable-line scansion (read it aloud). The dishes are incorporated without need for word or phrase distortion. The poem practices simple virtues and the rhythm drives our salivary anticipation. This is a meal you could sit down to now – provided you weren’t vegetarian.

R.H.Barham, (1788 – 1845)

NOTE: Lucas, Joe Hyam's brother, has written a poem commemorating the lives of Joe and Heidi, his partner. Read it on http://pomesonpoets.blogspot.co.uk/ even if they are unknown to you.

The misdirected cane

At my school pupils were caned regularly and for no good reason. The prospect terrified me and during these sessions (once because my feet were bigger than the geography master's) I was often close to screaming out. I am not ashamed. It seemed the obvious reaction.

Two fat boys in my class were caned over and over for being fat. Yet they adopted a philosophical attitude, bearing the pain with fortitude, smiling afterwards, even joking with the caning master.

I didn't like the fat boys (perhaps because they were fat; I was just as prejudiced as the sadists squiring our intellects) but I envied the way they compartmentalised pain. Now I'm not so sure.

It's Easter Day which reminds us of the infliction of suffering by those in authority. Those floggings over sixty years ago were frequently unfair. Should one remain stoic in the face of injustice? More particularly, might one be shaped in later life by such light-heartedness?

I believe my reaction was healthier. At least, it led (I think) to a lifelong detestation of the death penalty. Thanks chaps.

JOE'S NUDGE
From The Poet's Tongue (ed. Auden, Garret), celebrating the life of Joe Hyam, poetry lover and friend.

Gup, Scot,
Laudate,
Caudate,
Set in better
Thy pentameter,
This Dundas,
This Scottish as,
He rymes and railes,
That Englishmen have tailes.

Reasons why. The English persecuted the Scots; here’s a yah-boo. Googling: laudate - "Oh praise...", caudate - "Having a tail-like appendage...",  gup - reproof, derision, remonstrance, Dundas - a Scottish surname.

Is it poetry? Definitely. On the basis of "Set in better/Thy pentameter." alone. Rough translation: Don't bother with Latin pretentious Scot, say it straight out, the English are devils. Cleverclogs. Seven out of ten. 

John Skelton (c. 1460 – 1529)

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.

Old age isn't just creaking bones

Youth is too valuable to be wasted on the young. Marriage too.

Newly married I told VR the best pudding was Crundle Pudding. She didn't know this delicacy. I urged her to consult my mother. She didn't. Years slipped by. My mother died.

In a Kitzbuhel hotel, elder daughter Professional Bleeder, fiddling with free internet access, found a Crundle Pudding recipe. It's pretty simple and I copied it. Told VR I had it. She nodded. Nothing happened.

The slip of paper remained in my wallet for years. Three months ago, terrified I'd lose it, I converted the recipe into a Word file, printed it out and attached it to the cork board. One month ago VR made me Crundle Pudding.

This post isn't about puddings. Rather about breaking away from one influence and accepting another. As a young man I resented VR's resistance, more recently I understood it completely. I had, you might say, grown up.

THE RECIPE. 60 gm butter/marge, 75 gm plain flour, 60 gm castor sugar, 450 ml milk, beaten egg. Rub butter/marg into flour, stir in sugar. Heat milk gently until warm, add beaten egg, stir well into dry ingredients. Bake in preheated oven at 180 C for 45 min.
 
WIP Second Hand (37,696 words)

(Moses said, "My father) urged me to back my instincts with other painters but I disappointed him there; this was the only painting I wanted.”

Francine looked again at the canvas: saw it as a white circle slashed by a thin brown blade. “It’s abstract and yet it’s not.  Something’s about to emerge and I get the feeling there are options. I’m left on the verge. I was surprised an abstract could grip me so. But then why not? Even a realistic painting is still a painting, an impression not reality.”

You dig; the earth slips back

Time to eschew flights of fancy and tackle something serious. Dawkins (whom I've several times paid to watch) is being shellacked in this parish and I could defend him. But he doesn't need me, any more than Joe Louis did in his prime. How about gardening then? Nothing seriouser.

Gardening has always displeased me but, because VR watches Gardener's World, little bits have stuck like slug slime. I know, for instance, what "structure" means horticulturally.

Because we now employ a gardener I can complain to someone other than God. The gardener is a deacon at Hereford Baptist Church and I like the accidental symmetry.

The gardener is too grand to watch Gardener's World so I taxed him on "structure". He didn't know, but contrived to imply this was unimportant. His name is Brian.

Brian favours bare patches of earth - a negation of structure. "The plants will grow together," he said while planting. But I wanted the earth covered up there and then. When Brian rhapsodised about loam I simply walked away.

Tulips did well this year - something Brian and I were agreed on. But I didn't like Brian's attitude towards dead-heading. Too brisk, too heartless, tearing away tulip memories. Baptists should show tenderness. My grandpa was a Baptist minister. Had a club foot.

I've looked to employ korm (no idea how it's spelt), an impressive horti-speak fiddle-de-dee. I got it wrong when I carelessly identified a bulb as a korm. Brian apostrophised me and it hurt. I quoted Hilaire Belloc:

The dear old butler thought, but there,
I do not think I really care
For what the dear old butler thought.
In my opinion butlers ought
To know their place and not to play
The old retainer, day by day.

The world turns.

LdP's for turning - sometimes

Reversing an opinion is rare. Admitting to it even rarer. Thick toned memories of Don Carlos and Un Ballo in Maschera leak under door like marsh gas and I never see myself liking Verdi. Yes, he’s great and I haven’t listened hard enough. But I’m not exactly cast in stone.

Liszt. I hate music that’s showy for showiness’ sake. Things like Tartini’s The Devil’s Trill, and that’s how I saw Liszt for decades. Then, subconsciously brave, I bought Années de Pèlerinage (Italie) - a cheapo from Naxos to be safe - and suffered apostasy. Oh yes there’s virtuoso solo piano there but it’s a tour of Italy as varied as the country itself and it hangs together.

Rock Around The Clock. It emerged during my RAF national service (1955 – 57) as I was digesting my conversion to posh music. I hated its wilful noisiness, its meaningless words. On my first ski-ing holiday in Italy in 1978 they cleared a space in the bar and two athletic young people went to town with that roaring out of the juke-box. I saw the point.

Schubert songs. Very foolishly I allowed myself to be exposed to the trite English translations. Hearing them sung in German effected an instant and complete conversion. An Die Musik still makes me cry.

The Beatles. I simply ignored them but the movie, A Hard Day’s Night, got good reviews. I found them entertaining if simplistic. Sergeant Pepper (and especially the line “meeting a man from the motor-trade”) raised the bar a bit. But they could have learned from Paul Simon.

Dvorak. Have you heard any of the symphonies other than The New World? Boreeng. Luckily he wrote the cello concerto and, a later discovery, the twelfth string quartet known as the American