Knowing vs. guessing

I’m on tenterhooks. Pleasure lies only days ahead yet in these uncertain times (Heat. Covid. Politics. Warfare.) I can’t be sure it will be achieved. Such worries spoil my anticipation of pleasure which – when you think about it – is the best part. Few delights live up to their expectation if we are honest.

A rare exception for me – recently mentioned – was San Francisco. I paid a visit - half business, half holiday – in 1970 and it really did live up to its pre-publicity. Manoeuvring a Dodge Charger among the redwoods, free tastings at the wineries, abalone at Fisherman’s Wharf, the exhilaration of crossing the Golden Gate bridge. VR’s flight ticket paid for by my employer. A hotel on El Camino Real. Yeah.

But pause for a moment. Can thinking about the future actually outweigh the nature of the event itself? Can thought be more fun than reality? One thing’s for sure; anticipation often differs widely from what actually ensues. Especially if large sums of money are spent. Our potential for being disappointed is just as great as that for being enchanted. Sometimes we expect or, at least, hope for something that doesn’t exist. A meal that’s true magic. Music that reaches into our soul. A view out of this world - literally.

The first kiss I’d yearned for since short pants communicated only inertia. A best-seller read by millions was badly written. An admired politician bollixed his ultimate promotion.

But suppose joy was unexpected, arriving in a flash. Might there be the faintest tint of regret we were unable to enjoy it in advance? Stretching out the experience, in effect?

What we do know is we often have a talent for perversity. Ingratitude without  justification. Selfishness. Greed.

Not you? How about being a poor hand at introspection?

Golden (no, Cardboard) Era draws to a close

Why no celebrations? No bunting atop Maison Robinson? No popping of celebratory champagne corks? No triumphalist songs?

Boris Johnson, our mendacious prime minister, has been publicly rumbled. He sort of resigned outside Number Ten. Not from his prime-ministership, you understand – just the leadership of the Conservative Party. But the rest is mere formality, just a matter of time.

Isn’t it? 

What about that Baker’s Dozen of familiar – and loathsome – faces now jostling to sit where BJ sits. Things are going to change… aren’t they? Those baying voices, all – bar one- promising massive tax cuts. Conveniently forgetting that the £400bn cost of the pandemic will somehow have to be paid back. That the fraudulent Brexit agreement depends on an irreconcilable contradiction. That being tough with the UK’s major export market is causing that market to be equally tough in return. That the UK’s pathetic reliance on the “special relationship” with the USA appears to have vapourised.

Of course I’m glad to see the end of the buffoon, but the eight weeks before he actually starts making millions on the lecture circuit are going to seem like purgatory. Thereafter someone who supported him during three years of lying will start restoring order. Or try to. Tax cuts can either be financed by government borrowing or cutting public services. Hey, why not close down the NHS? A big saving there. But please make sure another pandemic isn’t just round the corner.

Cost of living crisis! The poor having to choose between eating and heating! But it’s not just the UK’s economy that’s in pieces. We seem to have disintegrated morally. I’m ashamed to admit my national origins.

We used to sneer at governments (typically South American) as Banana Republics. So what are we? A Fish And Chip Republic? With vinegar in short supply.

Carl takes charge, thank God

Enhanced patio with newly reburbished chiminea

R/h bed, front garden, trimmed for neatness

L/h bed, front garden, now tidied

Paved front garden, still work in progress

Carl is from South Africa. He is imbued with the work ethic. We’ve given him a free hand with our garden.

He doesn’t just do the work we ask of him, he points out tasks which were previously invisible to us but nevertheless necessary. And goes ahead and does them. He’s been toiling for three weeks now, mostly full days, and our garden is slowly becoming a garden and ceasing to be a collection of misplaced greenery.

Take the patio. Instead of bending the horticulture round an arbitrary arrangement of slabs he’s used an angle-grinder (which I willingly bought for him) to cut and shape the patio’s outer edge into a set of congenial curves. Noting that the adjacent chiminea (incinerator) was gently rusting away into oblivion, he’s given it a new shiny coat of black paint. And set the table and chairs at a pleasingly artistic angle.

The beds on the left and right of the back garden – previously simulacra of the Amazon rain forest – have been reduced into separate and identifiable clumps of flowers. The lower branches of the bushes and the upper branches of the bay tree trimmed.

The metal fencing of the front garden has been sanded down and repainted black The newly refurbished garden bench now supports small bowls of succulents and alpines. New terracotta pots have been acquired and planted with tallish flora to give the brick surface “vertical structure”.

There are plans to create a three-step-staircase (with handrail) down to the patio and a low fence at the upper level which may increase the patio’s coefficient of cosiness.

Much, much later an underground swimming pool beneath the patio. But there I jest.

All done with another’s labour which I watch but do not share. Oh, the indolent luxury.

Wanting to be two

Once I’d started taking singing lessons (January 2016) I had this urge to co-operate in duets, especially with a soprano. Why? Perhaps because a second voice might make the role of solo baritone less exposed, less lonely.

V tried me out with We’ll Gather Lilacs from Ivor Novello’s operetta Perchance to Dream. To say the least, operetta, ie, light opera (ugh!), has never been my thing but that wasn’t the problem. V’s powerful voice – even turned down to pianissimo  – pulled my fledgling voice off my singing line. So duets were shelved for a while.

A new dawn broke a year later when V tried the Pappageno/Pamina duet, Bei Männern from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. I did progress but it wasn’t a true test. As a listener I’d known this musical dialogue for ages through regularly hearing the opera. As a result I was less prone to being influenced by the second voice.

More recently still V offered me Purcell’s My Dearest, My Fairest. I really liked this poignant work and worked hard at getting it right. I definitely progressed but – again without explanation – V dropped it. I never question V’s decisions; she has, after all, created my singing voice. But I secretly yearned.

Three weeks ago, humbly, I begged her to resurrect My Dearest. She agreed. And that we should persist for as long it took. Again she agreed. And now I knew why she broke off the first sessions. Then I needed more tuition in musical technicalities, especially subtleties of pitch. Now I’m better equipped. It’s hard, bloody hard but there are moments when our voices fuse. And it’s bloody wonderful

Click HERE to find out what I’m aiming for.

Should I have been allowed to live?

Westland Lysander only has a walk-on role below

I am watching a YouTube video of someone flying a Westland Lysander, an odd WW2 high-level wings plane used for reconnaissance and for night-landing secret agents into France. No Spitfire glamour here, yet this plane is quite complex for its time, supporting very short take-off and landing distances, sometimes on mountain sides.

I have known the Lysander since age eight. Having read material supplied to my father, a member of the Royal Observer Corps during WW2, identifying planes passing near my home town, Bradford.

Some of the video corresponds with what I already know about the Lysander and this pleases me. In the 78 years between then and now my interest in this arcane subject has developed, if only in a minor way. More important, is the general fact of this continuing development.

Very important, in fact. Unsustained by any belief in a supernatural after-life I reflect instead on whether I’ve “improved” on what I was born with. Seeing it as a secular justification for being handed out a life (now nearing its end) in the first place. True I’ve nourished my knowledge of WW2 aviation but what about more serious, more demanding matters?

I’m better at expressing myself, even if – sure as eggs are eggs – what I am saying here will, almost certainly, be misunderstood. I note I didn’t respond well to the transition into parenthood, although this has improved somewhat over the last decade. Learning to sing has – amazingly! – taught me to analyse music. I became a better skier and a better crawl swimmer. I am, I think, less selfish though others would have to confirm this. My views, once grossly nationalistic, are now international. Born shy, I now revel in conversation.

Was it a life worth living? Hmm. 

Oh to be in Dublin

Bought new in the USA.
Dust-jacket many times repaired

James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, is nearing Bloomsday – June 16 – it’s hundredth celebration of the day it describes. Ulysses is famous, not least that it can be summarised numerically. Based on the select band who say they read “for pleasure” here are some figures:

Heard of it – 99%
Seen it on sale – 17%
Bought it new – 2%
Picked it up secondhand – 5%
Read the first page – 100% of those who own it
Read the second page – 4% (ditto above)
Read it all through – 0.05% (ditto above)
Read it a second time (or more) – 0.0002% (ditto).

Regular Tone Deaf readers (a rapidly diminishing breed, alas) will know I am not famed for my humility. With that kind of introduction you wouldn’t expect me to admit belonging to the First-Page Brigade. I have, in fact, read Ulysses twice – if not thrice, I sort of forget. Nor will the faithful be surprised when I say this post will exceed my self-imposed limit of 300 words. The subject is too important for less.

So what’s it about? Two men - Leo Bloom (a Jew who sells advertising space) and Stephen Dedalus (youngish, over-active intellectually, given to high-flying conversation) - pursue their lives in Dublin over the course of a day. Late at night they meet and find common cause.

Both have serious matters on their mind. During the day Bloom’s wife, Molly, will be unfaithful to him in bed with the exotically named Blazes Boylan. Stephen’s mother has recently died, he refusing to make the Catholic observances about death she begs of him prior to her death.

The novel ends with a forty-five page soliloquy – no punctuation other than half a dozen para breaks – in which Molly Bloom reflects on being a woman.

Ulysses is by far the most adult book I’ve read. To summarise it – other than numerically, tongue in cheek – is beyond me. Instead here are extracts which may give you the tiniest flavour of what you are missing. That said, I have never – would never – recommend reading it. The urge to do so must be internal, a willingness to wrestle with difficulties implicit.

STEPHEN. And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar; whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.

BLOOM. He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his finger pointing.

STEPHEN ….went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a faded1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in light loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing : heroes’ hearts.

He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.

- Two pence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.

- Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney.

BLOOM In liver gravy, Bloom mashed potatoes. Love and war someone is. Ben Dollard’s famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself across the bed, screaming.

MOLLY ….he hadn’t an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse himself anyhow begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off asking me questions is permitted to inquire the shape of my bedroom…

A wee bit of politics

ODE TO OUR PM

Blonde Boris was born into riches
And now misbehaves day and night
His hair sends a clue
He has little to do
And breaks rules as if ‘twas his right

In the course of a typical sentence
He’s likely to lie more than thrice
For truth is his flirt
He treats her like dirt
Or a casual throw of the dice

He’s not strong on detail, they say,
Big Things are his forte – why not?
The bigger the fib,
The fewer will jib
As a theory it’s worth hankie s—t.

On one thing he stays strangely mute
Yet trumpeted loud yesteryear:
Out’s better than in,
On that side is sin,
Who cares what our exporters fear

Yes, Brexit was ready to cook
A joint that was almost roast
We’d feast and grow fat.
Tell the Ee Yew: Take that!
But alas the meat’s now merely toast