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.

Mini-thrills

Not our Skoda (Czech plates are  a give-away) nor
 was the slush so deep. But you get some idea

We're invited to dinner at daughter Occasional Speeder's house deep in the Gloucestershire countryside. We stay the night and awake to a foot of snow on top of our Skoda Octavia. We're welcome to stay but I'm on a pill regime for my blasted sciatica (qv) and I've only brought the absolute minimum.

OS has a 4WD Dacia Duster which she loves. In it we may explore the options and we take the opposite direction because it is, on balance, flatter. OS knows the 3½-mile sub-route well, it's her way to work, but the country roads are narrow and winding, and there's an absolute bastard steep descent to a double-blind cross-roads.

But the news is good. The surface is slush, not deep snow, compacted snow or ice. The only real hazard is the possibility of a car coming in the opposite direction; moving over could involve deep snow. We're lucky and reach the main road without problems. On the return journey OS switches off the 4WD; driving requires more concentration but it's doable.

The Skoda is bigger, less nimble but it has a switchable auto/manual gearbox. I can lock into whatever gear I choose. Second's quite fast enough. I've learned a lot from travelling in the Dacia and VR, beside me, is able to suppress her worries. Way ahead I see a large Mercedes coming towards us; Bless me, he pulls to one side! So out of character.

We're on the main road and say goodbye to OS who's been shepherding us in the Dacia to the rear. One frightening discovery remains. Ridges of slush persist. A more typical Mercedes overtakes us and in cutting back plasters our windscreen. For two seconds we travel blind.

Moral: keep the wipers on

Mainly a treat

My take on Borderlines Film Festival. VR and grandson Ian would no doubt differ.

Excellent
Magic Flute (Sweden), Smiles of a Summer Night (Sweden). Two unbeatable Ingmar Bergman classics. Flute - an exemplary transformation of opera into film.

Happy End (Germany). Director Michael Haneke, in his pomp, satirises French middle classes against present-day immigrant background in Calais.

Third Murderer (Japan). Police procedural but much more. Why are Japanese movies so absorbing?

Death of Stalin (UK). Shameful bad taste; rollicking hilarity. Simon Russell Beale magisterial as Beria.

Three Billboards, etc (US). Frances McDormand worth three Oscars. Serious but witty; wonderful script.

Milou en Mai (France). Great French director, Louis Malle, turns family squabble into magnificent pastoral comedy.

Lady Bird (US). Wagging finger for all parents. Daughter and mother from hell, but a familiar suburban hell.

Very Good
Loveless (Russia). Another, darker, despairing tutorial for parents, with matching background.

Sweet Country (Australia). Antipodean western energetically examines colonial racism. Vividly realised characters

The Gulls (Russia). Culture clash in Buddhist (!) Russia. Poignant, noirish

Man called Ove (Sweden). Feelgood but funny; about old age. Monumental central character, Rolf Lassgard.

Good
Shape of Water (US). Marine version of beauty and the beast. Predictable events.

Loving Vincent (Poland). Slender story cartoon about Van Gogh; done in his painting style

Phantom Thread (UK). Haute couture detail good; characters frequently irritating.

Average
Mountain (US). Docu-spectacle for sports nuts.

Ghost Stories (UK). Horror tale, nominally about supernatural. Not my bag, I fear

Dark River (UK). Cold Comfort Farm updated; unbearably grim; set in Yorkshire.

Awful
The Party (UK). Hysterical, claustrophobic farce strains at the leash.

The Bookshop (UK). Dull, cliché-ridden, in peculiarly English way. Sentimentality that puts you off reading.

Good?/Obscure
Free and Easy (Russia).  Unexpected laughs in unremitting dystopia.

Persona (Sweden). Experimental Ingmar Bergman. Too gnomic for me.

The Grip

I'm now far too old for London but that doesn't stop me reflecting on its embrace. For over thirty years I lived in and around the capital, seeing it mostly as a privilege.

Of course it was love/hate but even the hatred had a sense of uniqueness.  Crowds forcing themselves into trains had an uncaring vigour, unduplicated elsewhere; a vigour that transfused me. The events I was unable to book (because smart-asses knew ways and means of getting in first) reminded me of London's elitism. And the nightmare of finding a flat was proof that others were maddened by the city's unholy appeal.

When I needed to resolve things between Clare and Hatch in Gorgon Times I had them walk from Blackfriars Bridge along the river to Chelsea; I saw them vividly every step they took. And to their left the heaving, black, amphibious monster that is the Thames. That gluey flow that bars the north from the south and forces you to look at it - whoever you are - and contemplate time's threat. The river has been there and seen everything.

Several years were spent in Clerkenwell where narrow winding streets evoked the clattering metal wheel-rims of horse-drawn vehicles, assuming you allowed yourself a little imagination. And how could you not? On the skyline the dome of St Pauls cathedral, and closer at hand, in Farringdon Road, a building emblazoned in red with THE DAILY WORKER, a daily newspaper for communists. God and Mammon in co-existence.

Walk west to the tourists - bemused by history adjacent to history. Up front the National Gallery, yes, but what about that building to the right? Big and important? A slight disappointment to discover it was the South African embassy.

London, full of disappointment yet full of power.

Progress

V sends me an email that her house is accessible but I leave too early to read it. The final approach is steep and snow-scattered, followed by a blind right-angle bend. Fine. And there she is, gum-booted, scraping a path through the snow. I wind down the car window to shout, "I would not have you do this." and she laughs. But the scene is incongruous, she's been put on earth to sing and to teach others, not to clear paths. Unless today's a day for metaphor.

Hard pain dictates I must - yet again - sit down in front of a lowered music stand. I note a new score of Silent Witness ("Did you not see my lady...?") on the piano. Is it for me? No, for a new student with a great, though untrained natural voice who wants to sing a Justin Bieber song to his bride at their wedding two years' hence. Music and what it may do! I shall never meet him but I feel I understand him. Just sing confidently, young chap, as if you mean it. Sing right through the errors.

Today's about breathing. The second half of Purcell's An Evening Hymn consists of one word, Hallelujah, sung fourteen times, extended in all sorts of ingenious ways. Listen to Emma Kirkby.

Now me:

Hal - le - lu - jah (Breathe!), Hal - le - lu - u - u - jah (Breathe!), Hal - al - al (Breathe!) - al - le-lu - u - ja. (Breathe!) Hal - al - al - al - al (Breathe!) - al - al - al le-lu - u - jah (Breathe!) ...

The bold-face is V breaking off from singing and shouting out my instruction. I progress.

I wish everyone sang.

Write of passage

For years my blog comments and profile have been decorated by a thumbnail of Blake's water-colour of Nebuchadnezzar. Proclaiming that I'm old and unbecoming, you see. Except the detail was so tiny I doubt anyone would have recognised the connection. Or cared.

I chose Old Neb because old age absolved me of any suggestion of boasting - a very English concept, that. Brits do boast but only sneakily: "Ah, you were educated at Harvard! I fear I'm nothing but an auto-didact." One reason why Brits are disliked the world over. Especially by Australians.

Occasionally - very occasionally - I'm visited by moments of clarity. I am old, it's true, but I'm other things too. Surely it was time to retire Old Neb. But God forbid I replace him with some image which suggested I'm handsome, clever, well-regarded, charitable, patient or kind-hearted because that would be un-English. Something neutral then.

The Underwood typewriter symbolically marks the moment when I ceased to be schoolboy (occasionally flogged for bad handwriting) and joined a trade where what I wrote had to be legible. I wish I'd had time to learn touch-typing but speedy writing was another necessity and I simply banged away with a varying number of fingers. Later I was to acquire my own portable (a Remington Rand) which lasted until the invention of the word processor, but I always had a soft-spot for the Underwood, one of several battered machines in the Telegraph & Argus reporters' room.

It had a unique springy action which was gentle on my fingers. Also an upper-frequency chatter, certainly soprano perhaps even treble.

It also whispered to me: "You've grown up."

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.