Ping-pong for one

In our substitute German Christmas Market visit we switched from our home (see First steps?) to Occasional Speeder's. Watched grandson Zach do snowplough turns on Gloucester’s ski-slope in preparation for his school ski-ing trip to Canada next year. He is ape at all sport and made good progress.

We also visited Webb’s famously upmarket garden centre at Wymondham where I succumbed to my recurring ailment - legs simply not working, groans pitiful. OS guided me to a seat in the café and bought fizzy water to aid my pill-swallowing. When I opened the bottle super-active fizz spilled water all over my trousers. Surprisingly I didn't groan. Instead, played Solitaire on my smartphone until the hurt subsided.

An elderly couple joined me at the table and it was clear the man wanted to talk to his spouse. She neither wanted to talk, nor to respond. He launched a chain of non-sequiturs, possibly fragments left over from other aborted conversations. Stolidly she poured tea and sipped, staring into the middle distance.

Sitting allowed my mind to roam. I couldn’t make head nor tail of the man’s utterances other than they seemed domestic. But the gap between husband and wife spoke volumes. How long had her silence endured?

Lacking pain I was able to consider my own good luck. VR and I still talk to each other. Avidly. After more than half a century. Conversation dispenses with the need for lovey-dovey professions - the mere exchange of thoughts is sufficient proof of mutual interest. I was alone in the café while OS and VR shopped for table presents. But I had a conviction - possibly delusional - that if I thought hard enough I could communicate with VR. Wordlessly.

Abruptly the couple got up and left. In silence.

Zzzzz!

Facebook has interpreted these lines from Messiah for me:

Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.

Prejudiced, I’ve ignored Facebook. But I needed info from this service, so I signed up. What could go wrong?

Suddenly it was like a very bad novel: “Threatened, RR saw his whole life scroll before his eyes”. How could I have left such a huge cyberspace footprint?

● Why this huge cluster of Devonians? Ah, yes – because of her and him.
● Joe!
● An optimistic male face – the departed half of a known partnership.
● A vaguely familiar first name, but attached to a cocker spaniel. One of VR’s painting pals (the owner not the dog).

All wanting to be friends!

● But what about this sultry demimondaine from Las Vegas? A link left unguessed.
● Assorted and unknown Herefordians
● My brother.
● A married couple I regard as dodgy.
● Both my daughters.
● An NZ farmer and his wife. Lovely people.

For the first time I understood the absorption of smartphoners – in the supermarket, on buses, near an untouched pint of beer, perhaps on the toilet. Plugged into a huge family which was expanding continuously. Friends to thousands in a to-and-fro of persiflage.

I felt curious but resolute. Facebook discouraged deactivation but I ticked the box. Left this modern Tower of Babel buzzing.

Noisome natter

When did you last have a conversation? One that met the word's definition:

Informal verbal exchange of feelings, opinions, or ideas.

In my case it's been ages. Yet I list conversation on my blog profile as one of my enthusiasms. Have I been lying? I fear so.

The first stumbling block is "exchange". It implies open-mindedness, a willingness to listen (rare enough) and to take on board something someone else says (even rarer). When have I shown the necessary generosity of spirit to allow this to happen? I can't remember.

Then there's that trio of examples. When were feelings and ideas at the heart of what I said? Why am I gloomily convinced I mostly purveyed opinion.

The definition doesn't touch on motive and perhaps that's just as well. I doubt mine would withstand even glancing examination.

Am I overdoing the self-denigration? I think not, this is an important subject. We arrive first as a face, then as the sum of what we wear, then as a facial expression, then by what we say and how we say it. Afterwards that last bit tends to persist in our acquaintance's memory. This is often the only lesson politicians learn.

Can conversational bad habits be unlearned?  Reflective silence when in the company of others may help. As might less drink. A jaw brace?

Three minutes of fame

France Inter, a 24-hour news/discussion/feature radio channel, comforted me at the end of my working life. The magazine I edited was bought out and my 18-mile round-trip commute  became 90 miles. As entertainment and to improve my French my car radio was perpetually tuned to FI. Thus I heard (and understood) Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie le Pen in interviewee mode.

One movie at the Borderline Film Festival (still running) was La Maison de la Radio, a brilliantly edited, touching yet funny montage of a day in the life of France Inter. It is VR's favourite movie so far.

It reminded me of Joe and Lucy, both great radio listeners. It further proved how intellectually superior radio can be compared with telly. How radio can make assumptions about a listener's intelligence that telly would never dare to make. It also recalled a day when I occupied the other side of the fence.

The magazine I then edited had predicted the death of the English pudding in staff canteens. The BBC gave me a slot on the forebodingly-named John Dunne Show. What impressed me was JD's technique.  After rehearsing he said he would repeat the questions in a livelier, more vivid way and invite me to "step up". This he did, grinning, gurning, urging me facially, turning the exchanges into a sort of knowing conspiracy about the subject. To which I responded, growing in exhilaration.

La Maison de la Radio showed many examples of this. And I slipped back into two distinct pockets of time. Telly, alas, is never Proustian.

Talk or baulk

Yesterday was the art group's Christmas lunch.

I chauffeured VR to the Bridge Inn, Kentchurch, beautifully located amid whaleback hills so typical of the Welsh Marches. Despite my reputation for unsociability I stayed for lunch as in past years. These are VR's friends and I've got to know them a little.

I sat opposite J, one of the members, and D, like me, husband of another. I knew J had lived in South America but she'd also done aqua-lung diving round the world. D had competed in Britain's premier rifle-shooting competition at Bisley. Subjects which provided me with a conversational foothold during the potentially awkward first few minutes.

The chat went well, lasting out the meal. Leaving me to reflect on the occasions when chat stumbles. How conversation gets going; how it is maintained. Facial expressions are important. I rely on asking questions, a journalistic habit. A mulish, dead look says this isn’t going to work. Short, dismissive answers are another bad sign. Worst of all, when the person opposite looks away.

VR says the old standby is: What do you do? I’m not so sure. Some women marry early and are coy about admitting to mother or housewife. A surprisingly large proportion of  people have jobs they regard as dull and are unable to call on self-mockery or whimsy to get over this barrier. As an ex-journalist I’m lucky; professing this can trigger a stunned look, as if I’d been public hangman. Shyness is often hard to distinguish from surliness.

A good tactic for keeping momentum going is via quotation: “You said you are a teacher. What’s your opinion about Ofsted?” Not that teachers need much encouragement. Journalists neither.

Flattery, even when gross, works well. “I’ve always admired teachers. So much commitment.”

Après moi, le déluge.

Acceptance, gloom, anti-gloom

The mini-adventure didn't happen - medical matters intervened. Never mind; old age teaches us to be philosophical.

Less easy to be philosophical about Alzheimer-stricken brother Nick (the best dressed one in the centre). At his "home" I  presented him with a pot plant - a strange, unbrotherly thing to do. I emphasised how his yacht Takista had invigorated my latter years. Mentioned sailing north at night with the Cote d'Aquitaine to starboard. As I spoke I saw flashes of recognition, then shared his suffering as he tried  to dredge up responses from a mind shot to hell by disease. As if we were alone on an alien and uncongenial planet.

Sir Hugh and I drove away looking for lunch in the Yorkshire Dales. Came upon the village of Leyburn, where the centre was devoted to a heaving mass of shiny car roofs. Two hundred beetle carapaces? Drove on, depressed.

Back at Sir Hugh's house I drank gin, wine and Scotch knowing there'd be a price to pay. Somehow Proust cropped up in talk; Sir Hugh has read A La Recherche (he has the necessary doggedness) and told me he enjoyed it. This cheered me.

Spent the following afternoon with Ron and Frances at their house in the tiny Lakes village of Mungrisdale. Ron and I started out on the same Bradford newspapers at the same time. He went on to write about Everest attempts, yachting, rock climbing, sub-aqua stuff and choral singing, travelling the world betimes. Frances has an honours degree in music from the Open University. Time after time I was conversationally outgunned. Parked outside was Ron's 600 cc metallic red Honda but happily there was no spare crash helmet. Instead I played the first line of God Save The Queen on Frances's harpsichord.

Driving home today I managed to transfer from the M6 motorway to the M5 motoway without being mired in a traffic jam. Almost a miracle. 

Only 300 days (approx.) to go

E-MAIL NOSTALGIA
CAST (in order of appearance)
Daniel (Ysabelle's partner)
Occasional Speeder (RR's younger daughter)
Ysabelle/Bella (RR's granddaughter)

--------

Daniel (Famed for fearing "different" food): Remember when I had mussels? Good times.

Occasional Speeder: Yeah – I remember – the “Allo Allo” thing came on – and Bella was like that Peter Kay sketch about the wedding disco DJ: “What’s he saying – eh? Oh he said “mussels” I heard that.”

So off we went to the centre with BG (Big Grandad - ie, RR) and got mussels off a man with no teeth. Then LG (Little Grannie - ie, VR) got involved cleaning them– then I did the stuffing and Bella and LG were sorting stuff – then LG  cooked them but best of all – you tried them. And you ate quite a few. But I think you knocked wine on mine – but it was ok because there were many.

L’Equipe lay on the table, a lilo bobbed on the pool, and wine and cider were distributed. It was warm and lovely and we never wanted to come home.

Don’t miss it at all…

Daniel: Haha, I miss it. lots.

Ysabelle: Me too.

Occasional Speeder (in e-mail to RR): Today we are sad.

PROUST PICKINGS
Another short extract from Swann’s Way:

The hour when an invalid who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight shewing under the bedroom door. Oh joy of joys! It is morning…. (But) the ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight, someone has turned out the gas, the last servant has gone to bed…

Two Cockney sparr'ers

When Ivy died a couple of years ago I knew Dennis wouldn’t live long. They were our neighbours held together by hyphens, Dennis-and-Ivy, a human unit, sharing the same oral history, capable of making me laugh and laugh. Dennis died while we were on holiday and the funeral was on Monday.

John their son talked about the music, starting with Willie Nelson's elegiac Georgia On My Mind. "I didn't think much of country western," John admitted, but Dennis had persuaded him otherwise. With Peggy Lee's Things Are Swingin', also quiet, John had difficulty talking. He still held his handkerchief when I shook his hand. "Dennis’s Cockney mind was too quick for Herefordians," I said. John, who'd never met me, looked up through his tears. "It's funny, he always said they lacked a sense of humour." Maybe. My bet was Dennis's natural wit left them bobbing in his wake.

John's partner, Helen, read out a list: fine dad, played cricket, stubborn, a good union man. That last one made my gut stir. Dennis belonged to an era when unions meant something. I’d forgotten.

I recalled them coming over for Christmas drinks. Dennis was in minesweepers during the war; didn’t exaggerate or undersell what happened; didn’t need to. Funny nevertheless.

Ivy bowled (outdoors, on grass) with great skill, something Dennis took up when cricket and golf were beyond him. "Is he any good," I asked Ivy. She raised her hand and quacked her fingers like a duck's beak. He talked too much.

Never too much, Ivy. I've tried to recall Dennis’s stories but they were born out of character, place and a special form of language, enriched by a groany-wheezy East End accent. I’d risk betraying him. Never mind. He’s joined Ivy now but two bright lights have been  extinguished.

Competing with Gary

I have preached the doctrine of cutting out guff but my cry goes unheeded.

Consider this: we spend time reading; we waste time if the words we read are unnecessary. Cutting is the act of a friend.

Sorry about the dirge. I’ve been writing a piece for Joe’s funeral and time and words are becoming interchangeable. My first draft is a jewel. I time it: twelve minute plus. An alarm buzzes.

As well it might. Joe’s daughter, Pippa, says the whole service will last a mere twenty minutes. I cut my jewel by a third, down to eight minutes, which proves the original wasn’t a jewel. The result is better. Not good, just better.

The ghost of Joe sits by my elbow. Throughout our professional lives we’ve rendered prose shorter because in publishing there’s never enough space. Joe’s too gentlemanly to comment since I’m writing about him. But he nods his approval as half a sentence is sliced – the words are already implied and I recognise this on the third read-though. Gotcha!

What I’m writing is not an article; it’s intended to be read aloud. Not one of my strengths. I have a lightish whining voice that doesn’t match my bulk. Frequently my nose sounds blocked. I could write something felicitous and have it ruined by my West Riding origins. 

Joe’s reading Romain Gary’s Gros Calin and I can’t help feeling it’s his polite way of saying my stuff isn’t good enough. Never mind the subject, the writing is technically poor, it doesn’t glide. Start again?

I’m 78 going on a hundred. Once I was paid to write but would anyone pay me now? Forget that, it isn’t the money. Start again.

Joe: Goodbye exhilaration 2

My friend, Joe Hyam (previously Plutarch) died a couple of days ago. Inevitably my valedictory post was as much about me as it was about him; I needed to explain how he affected me for good. I fear I also figure in most of these vignettes but not, I hope, to his detriment.

● Our first encounter. He'd written a piece about a complex materials handling system; I was supposed to edit it but one sentence was beyond me. I asked him to explain. He read it aloud and the word "plenum" cropped up. He re-read it, relishing "plenum" each time. A wordsmith, you see.

● At a formal dinner-jacket affair I noticed he wore a made-up bow tie. I pointed out the snobby potential of the self-tied bow adding "but never tie it too well; people might think it's made-up". He took my advice and bought a self-tied bow. I was there to see its first outing. He struggled in front of the mirror, ending up with a sort of grannie knot. "Nobody," he said sighing, "will think this is made-up."

● We were accosted in central London by an urban hobbledehoy who asked if we were interested in poetry. Joe said yes, whereupon the hobbledehoy sold him a poem, perhaps for 50 p. Joe immediately read the poem and - in a not unkindly tone - pointed out some metrical solecism. This angered the hobbledehoy who handed back the 50 p and snatched the poem. Joe approved of this.

● Until I eventually grew up (ie, say age 45) I was prone to incapacitating attacks of embarrassment, especially in social encounters with women. Joe with his magnificently hoity-toity accent, public school education and Oxbridge was not only impervious but liked to prolong embarrassing situations in the spirit of curiosity.

The launch of the Lamb's Navy Rum calendar took place in a Soho cellar where I found myself terrified by an elegant, if louche, woman who wore brilliant green contact lenses which made her look like a werewolf. Joe immediately interrogated her about this startling effect and she revealed, quite unnecessarily, she was a lesbian. Noticing we seemed to be together she recommended homosexual experience as a way of "feeling freer". Joe roared with laughter while I looked around for a refill.

● During a shared villa holiday at Concarneau in Brittany the main toilet became blocked. Joe, whose confidence in his spoken French greatly outstripped his competence, announced he would ring the agence and complain. Joe's technique with French natives was to keep on talking to avoid having to understand any of their responses. Unfortunately the woman at the agence was called Lavalou and this undermined any of Joe's pretentions to seriousness.

● During that same holiday Joe read Le Grand Meaulnes in French (his grasp of written French was excellent). I repeatedly asked for progress reports but his responses were atypically vague. Such was his dominance over my bookish tastes that I have never dared tackle this masterpiece - in English or French. I have the feeling that I profited and that his vagueness was deliberate.

● Joe's language (other than about Jonathan Meades) was never extreme. I remember asking him about a restaurant meal and he described it as "indifferent". It was an object lesson about the usefulness and power of temperate words; that adjective is among my most treasured.

NOTE I see most of these memories are trivial. But I can't bring myself to celebrate Joe as a solemnity. He was kind and generous, true, but most of all he was fun. That must survive.

Joe: Goodbye exhilaration 1

Joe Hyam, still listed among Tone Deaf’s followers by his earlier  blogonym, Plutarch, died last night following heart surgery. I find myself needing a single detail that summarises our friendship dating back to 1963; one that Joe would have approved of. That would do him justice. I don’t have far to look.

His last email to me, only a few days ago, was a generous comment on a short story I’d written. Stated baldly that hardly seems enough but there is a sub-text. For well over a year Joe and I have been at daggers drawn over short stories, arguing the toss about their nature and the way they might be written. Some of this argument has spilled over into our blogs but given that both of us are proto-typical Englishmen – he a gentleman, me far less so – the passion has been under control. To the point where Joe, ravaged by illness, was able to take time off and make the gesture he did. Now, during this moment where a little evident passion is permissible, I offer him this heartfelt tribute: I hope to Hell that had the situation been reversed I’d have done the same for him. Suspecting, of course, that I wouldn’t; I lack his sense of grace.

And already a dialogue  – alas, finally reduced to a monologue – is rattling round in my mind. Above, I’ve used the present tense about Joe and he, more than anyone else, would have urged me to resolve this discrepancy. It isn’t that I’m unaware of the problem, I’m wilfully avoiding it. There’s enough awkwardness in managing the subject of this post; I’d just as soon not wrestle with the niceties of grammar as well. Turning “is” into “was” would introduce further imperfections into prose I am trying desperately to render as clearly as possible. Only that, no purple passages. Joe, I tell myself, would understand.

In 1963 I moved to a new job as sub-editor of two magazines dealing with logistics. One edited by Joe. Thus, part of my work was to ensure Joe’s written stuff had syntactical virtue. Word processors were aeons away and corrections to the typescript were by pen. Joe’s writing was terrible and he favoured black felt-tips. We clashed. I got angry; he endured my anger calmly. Within weeks we were talking about George Eliot.

When I returned from the USA he was by then in charge of both magazines and offered me a writing job. Twice our two families shared villa holidays in Brittany and both Joe and I developed what I can only describe as an infatuation with the French language. Eventually I became an editor and for a time geography reduced us mainly to the telephone but we still kept in touch. Joe had always lived in the south-east and when I moved to Hereford it seemed as if our friendship would shrink to the exchange of Christmas cards. In fact it became more intense and, for me, more fruitful.

Joe did a blog; fascinated, I did one too. Joe wrote poetry and I – lumbering in his wake – started writing verse. When I resumed novel writing he read and re-read my MS, made many important and informed suggestions virtually all of which I adopted. Soon it wasn’t enough merely to exchange emails we had to talk face to face; there was so much to say. We started having lunch together in London at an incredibly scruffy curry house. Joe regularly apologised about the long rail trip I had to make but a moment’s reflection would have told him I was making it because I wanted to. Needed to. Our conversations were dense, noisy, wide-ranging and – I think I can say – mutually profitable. And great fun.

All that is at an end. But it was a sort of Indian Summer which I had not expected and I have Joe to thank for that. I sometimes reflect on how others must have seen us as we gabbled like traders in the souk – Joe’s incredibly posh accent, mine an unpleasant melange of the West Riding, London and America. An odd couple, shabbily dressed, oblivious to our surroundings or so it seemed. Because Joe’s eye was always alert and what he saw cropped up time after time in his blog.

It’s perhaps significant that I don’t have a photo of Joe for this post. In my defence I have to say it wasn’t a relationship defined by photos. Just nattering. It taught me one thing – that conversation, at its best, beats booze, haute cuisine and pretty scenery. Those lunches and afternoons didn’t slide by, they passed in what seemed like a conflagration.

Cheers, Joe.
Friend and wordsmith extraordinaire.

Lost for words? He's no help

I knocked Primce Igor but it wasn't part of Borderlines; the transmission from New York just occurred at the same time and at the same venue. However the first truly duff Borderlines film screened yesterday. It failed strangely.

Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Spike Jomze (who did Being John Malkovich which I liked), falls in love with the operating system of his mobile phone/computer. If you share a universal love/hate relationship with Windows 7 you may find this preposterous. Don't worry.

The software isn't an operating system but an artificial intelligence program capable of adapting itself to the intellectual and emotional needs of the user and interfaced with the voice of Scarlett Johansson. At first the trickiness is beguiling but before halfway the story just bores. Imagine a love affair via telephone with a supreme blue-stocking from Oxbridge.

Phoenix, the dullest man in the universe, is dismayed when he discovers that Scarlett - whose audio favours he thought to be his alone - is sharing herself simultaneously with 6381 dimwits. That's what computers do, dummy!

It wasn't boredom that got me down but outrage. I didn't actually count but Phoenix's vocabulary must be limited to 700 words. "How're you doing?" he asks. When Scarlett returns the favour he replies, “I’m good.” Asked to elaborate he says, “Real good.” An exchange repeated a dozen times but it feels like a million. Asked again by the patient Scarlett he perhaps adds, “I dunno. Difficult to put it into words.” And on, and on. I started predicting and I was way ahead of him.

Never has language been so poverty-stricken, so bare, so repetitive, so dull. I came away ashamed of my mother tongue. Don’t see it (Or, rather, hear it.) Please!

Been to The Great Wen and back

Often I need confirmation I haven't died undramatically (Entering a department store lav, Buying printer consumables, Queueing for diesel, Waiting for a Rossini overture to end) and reappeared in a Hell resembling my event-free life. Puckish Jahweh telling me - but gradually -  he does actually exist. Not just puckish but Scottish: Ah weel, ye ken the noo.

The best confirmation occurs when I do something new, preferably technoid. Yesterday it happened. Destined for London and for you-know-where I found myself on the Newport-Paddington express, unshipping my HP tablet-ish computer, plugging it into the power socket, and  rewriting a short story that had set out to be enigmatic and had over-achieved. The two-hour journey, never a burden, slid by in an eyeblink and I have finally discovered the way to overcome the exigencies of mass transportation. Too late, alas, for those hideous 11-hour flights to NZ.

Joe né Plutarch stood up well to cross-examination on the nature of the short story (Sample: Might it be defined by its "completeness".) and then we were on to stuff that really mattered: Why are there so few synonyms for women's trousers? Are women able to rate their attractiveness to men other than empirically (ie, via the score-sheet). JnP was particularly good on this with a theory that depended on a special form of social and, I suppose, sexual unawareness. I should add these exchanges were entirely sympathetic, not in any sense laddish, and were aimed at helping me write more intelligently when I embark on Blest Redeemer's successor.
 
Assuming I bypass J's puckishness.

Carriage interior is Chinese or Canadian but you get the idea.

Uh uh, technology again

Thursday, April 26, 2012: The Blogger’s Retreat. The Aldwych, London. (Plutarch).

Theoretically this is a social event: we meet, drink champagne, eat curry washed down by Kingfisher beer, walk across Waterloo Bridge, drink more beer at the pub on Roupell Street.

And talk. I’d like to think the talk is wide-ranging but I’m not sure it is. Some reminiscence (we worked on the same magazine between 1963 and 1965 and between 1972 and 1975, on related magazines between 1975 and 1978), guidance with my novel writing, guidance on poetry, wine (probably), Plutarch’s hats, blogging. Often we invite acquiescent others to join in. We avoid the weather and the disintegrations of old age. The talk is virtually continuous and initially incoherent as we start and break off subjects until a true give-and-take line is established. On the fast train from South Wales to Paddington I sometimes make notes about points I want to raise for neither of us is inclined to waste time on silence.

That agenda worked when I did Works Well. Now I’ve switched to Tone Deaf music is also discussed since Plutarch reveals a much wider interest than I suspected and is willing to talk about music’s abstractions.

But music requires a change in what was previously a simple modus operandi. Music requires musical references. A mouth organ (played quietly) might help but is a poor way of rendering orchestral themes. Neither of us has a congenial voice. The logical solution is an MP3 player with two sets of earphones to overcome the hygiene problem of earwax. But now I foresee some problems. Silence will reign as the MP3 player is used. Passing the player backwards and forwards hints disagreeably at the shared hubble-bubble. We will be depending on batteries and I for one am a battery-phobe. Aid please.