Godfrey who will be 190,000 in the year 2014

My trusty steed Godfrey the golf has achieved 190,000 vehicular miles. He reached the landmark in a hectic and short lived trip back to N Ireland . He now requires tender and expensive motor vehicular care from my mother's mechanic du jour Keith.

Keith the mechanic has been a considerate and solicitous doctor to the patient. I am hopeful that Godfrey rallies from his lengthy list of ailments for my return on Wednesday. I listen to the pipe and flute bands explore the canon for the 12th of July and find myself contemplating heresy. I pray that Godfrey recovers, cross myself and dire un Je vous salue Marie ou deux.

Aller Godfrey aller.

 

 

Whimsy

My wife's car is nearing the end of its useful. It is 11 years old and the 100 mile daily round trip has taken its toll. I am going to see a couple of diesel Fords tomorrow to replace the noble steed . Our neighbour ( a car mechanic) is accompanying the shopper as he navigates the choppy seas of M25 car dealers.

My wife called her Ford Ka Geraldine. Owned from new it has given faithful service. The daily journey to Canterbury has added high miles and a rust habit has necessitated a change. I suspect Geraldine will be advertised as spares and repairs despite a years MOT and car tax. One wing has half left its moorings (it is poorly secured with two sided tape) and it has a snapped bonnet hinge weakened by iron oxide.

The grateful owners pay obeisance to noble service on the motorways of South East England. Je vous salue Geraldine

 

 

The Dartford Bridge

I am working in sunny Essex for most of June. Towns like Braintree and Chelmsford are pleasant and the people friendly. They do not deserve the stereotyped images of GTI drivers and platinum blondes in high heels.

I use the Dartford crossing each day. It is a tunnel one way and a bridge called the Queen Elizabeth II the other. The bridge was opened in 1991 and allowed both tunnels to be used for traffic in the Dartford to Thurrock direction.

It is a feat of engineering. It spans 450 metres and is 137 metres high. When crossing the Bridge I often keep an eye on the articulated trucks on each side. About ten years ago when working in Derry an unfortunate truck and it's driver was blown off the Foyle Bridge . The driver was killed. The investigation into the incident blamed a freak gust of wind. Both the Foyle and Queen Elizabeth Bridge now shut in high winds.

The Queen Elizabeth Bridge has infuriating tolls causing pointless tailbacks on the M25. They were introduced to pay for the bridge. The bridge has long since been paid for but the tolls remain. The operator is a quasi private license to print money.

The tolls are to be replaced with a system similar to the congestion charge in London. It will be collected remotely and you will have a time period to pay online. Many of course will forget and be heavily penalised.

The idea of a public utility will soon be a memory.

 

Thus do they all

We went to see Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte at the ENO in London. They send emails every so often with two for one ticket offers.

The production was a day glo Baz Luhrmann affair. The drama was set on a Coney Island fairground with the usual carnival tropes of fire eaters and bearded ladies. The three hours went by quickly , it looked good and the opera was entertaining.

The plot of Cosi Fan Tutte is straightforward . Two men are seen discussing the faithfulness of their fiancées. An ageing roué bets them he can prove all woman are fickle in one day. In a Shakespearen device he has the men pretend to leave for war. The men disguise themselves and attempt to woo their respective partners. At the end they succeed with a double wedding. When the fabrication is revealed there is recrimination but all is forgiven. Order is restored.

The soufflé light production is at variance with the darkness of jealousy and betrayal. To the writer the plot device seems pointless. If you are unsure of your partner both you and they have made a mistake. You need not resort to complicated ruses and deception. The relationship is void.

 

 

Jazz

A partner in the firm I am temping insisted I take his portable record player and a couple of jazz records for the night. The Overlook Hotel is gently swaying to Wes Montgomery with a topping of Theolonious Monk.

I like what I have heard of Wes and his Groove Yard. I may get the CD but it will not have the crackles, the hum of interference and the charm of vinyl.

There was a comedy programme on the BBC a few years back with a chin stroking jazz critic comatose on herb and groovy vibe. I will employ his catchphrase . Nice.

 

Whisky

A customer kindly bought me Scotch Whisky in thanks for some such .

When I first experimented with alcohol in my late teens most beers and spirits were detestable. My contemporaries and I settled on vodka as our tipple of choice. It had little taste which was easily masked with coke or blackcurrant . It was strong with a good punch per pence - you could obliterate your senses for five pounds. Other favoured abominations were Mailbu or Cointreau. You could contemplate your choices as a technicolor yawn engulfed the toilet bowl.

I forswore alcohol for most of my twenties and only dabbled again as a social drinker in my thirties. To my surprise I found my palate had changed. I enjoyed my first pint of Guinness with my uncle at the Irish version of the Grand National outside Dublin . I developed a taste for strange English ales like the Fursty Ferret. The greatest surprise was a liking for whisky.

When I first tried Irish whisky filched from my parents drinks cabinet nothing could disguise the odious taste and scent. I might as well have been drinking paraffin drowned in coke. Now I find myself savouring the different textures and aromas of a Scotch or Irish whisky like some wine bore. The only addition is a tablespoon of cold water . No ice. Tragic really.

As I contemplate tout le monde from my vantage at the Overlook Hotel I take solace in a dram or two.

 

 

Fall on Slough

A friend reminded me of Betjeman's poetic denunciation of the industralistion of sunny Slough.

I know little of Betjeman's work and life.According to Wikipedia he was born in London in 1906 into some privilege. He attended Oxford as a young man and left without a degree. He ended up working on the Architectural Review magazine.Like Princes Charles he was a conservative figure defending Victorian Architecture and taking a dim view of the carbuncles sprouting in pre war Slough. By chance I came upon his commerative statute while waiting at St Pancreas station. He was a staunch advocate of retaining the station when plans were mooted to demolish it.

Betjeman died in 1984 regretting his poetic vilification of poor Slough. His daughter apologised for the poem and said her father regretted have written it. The poem was used in the TV programme the Office. Final words shall go to Mr. Gervais character David Brent."You don't solve town planning problems by dropping bombs all over the place".

That said " Come, friendly bombs, ...."

 

The Overlook Hotel

I am working in sunny Slough for a couple of weeks. The practice office is located a few hundred yards from the setting for TV's The Office. It is a rather forlorn locale - Mr Gervais did not exaggerate in his drama.

The commute was unexpected and enervating. Tom Tom sat nav's exuberant prediction of a travel time of one hour became two and half hours thanks to the cyclical car park known as the M25. I was leaving for work at 6.15am and arriving tired and irritated for work.

I decided that a budget hotel was the answer. I booked into one of the pit stop hostelries on a motorway near Heathrow. Blandishments include 24 hour coffee shops and super Thursday curries . It bore a faint resemblance to the establishment frequented by Alan Partidge when dismissed by the BBC.

I have found the experience fascinating. The hotel itself is perfectly acceptable . The rooms are clean, functional and heated. The hotel could be anywhere . As you roam the endless corridors you could be a travellor in Dusseldorf or Des Moines .

The stay has been strangely liberating. The impersonal surrounds coupled with terrible phone reception allows for introspection and the opportunity to read. The caveat is the knowledge that my stay will end next week. The thought of an extended stay for months prompts thoughts of the Jack Nicholson character in the Shining. The character is a frustrated writer who takes a job looking after a deserted hotel for the winter. As the snow falls he gets lost in the haunted empty corridors of the Overlook Hotel. He hammers away on his typewriter at his roman a clef. When he wife finally gets the chance to read the Bildungsroman she finds he has simply typed " all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" again and again.

Jack does not end well.

 

The Double

While I waited in a queue to use the bathroom at Bruges rail station a man approached .He asked if I recognised him from our time studying together at the University of Antwerp. I didn't recognise him and had never attended the University of Antwerp. He continued to look at me intently as I told him he must be mistaken. For a moment he seemed unconvinced by my explanation. Then he smiled, said he had obviously confused me with someone else and bid me good day.

As the man walked away I had a moment of uncertainty. Had I attended Antwerp University unknown to myself? The moment passed as I watched the man disappear into the crowded station.

The idea of the double is a abused conceit.In Dostoyevsky's book through to the French film The Double Life of Veronique a character experiences an existential crisis when they meet their double. It is a cliche employed in everything from science fiction to student films.

For a moment in Bruges train station it was not a cliche.As my interlocutor quizzed me I had a fleeting sense that he was right and I was mistaken. In a parallel existence I wondered what we studied together and why we hadnt kept in touch. My double should look him up sometime.

 

A Grin Without a Cat

I went to see an exhibition of the work of the late (and great) Chris Marker. Marker was a visionary French film maker . He worked across many media including installation art, interactive media ( CD-roms and suchlike ) and cinema. He found fame with his science fiction film La Jetee which was eventually remade in Hollywood with Brad Pitt and a starry cast.

The exhibition was wonderful - I will return to the Whitechapel gallery before it finishes in June.It takes the viewer on a journey through Marker's obsessions - travel, film, revolution and war. His visual essays contemplate history, memory and political failure.

Marker was an enigma. He changed his name and declined to be photographed. He adopted the image of a cat as his avatar . He is also disproved a dictum of Orson Welles . Welles famously said that you needed a pen to be a scribe but an army to be a filmmaker. Marker created his films from the solitude of his studio in Paris and embraced the new media of the video camera and computer.

Although he was an outsider he was not a misanthrope. His vision was humane and quizzical . One of his pieces noted the young Fidel Castro was not a confident public speaker . He had a habit of aligning the microphones in front of him to claim his nerves as he spoke at public meetings . He tried the same trick when speaking in Moscow but was bemused to find the microphones were fixed and could not be moved. He still tried to move them anyway.

As I watched one of pieces I noticed a young student slumped in one of the bean bags provided for the exhibition audience. As he watched students from the 60s and 70s protest the Vietnam war on screen he absent mindedly played with his smart phone. A man from that 60's generation walked up to the young man twice and glared at him. The young man ignored him and continued to play angry birds or whatever on his phone. It struck me as something Mr Marker would have found fascinating. In this instance the cat would have allowed himself a grin.

 

Indie Cindy

I was looking at a newspaper web site and saw an article in their culture section. A rock band from university days had reformed. Not only had they reformed they had released an album after a hiatus of 20 years.

The Pixies were an art rock combo without compare. They produced four albums then split before fame . Their sound was borrowed by Nirvana who gained the renown and fortune that alluded them . Their exotically named lead singer Black Francis went solo and their pin up bass player Kim Deal had success with another combo called the Breeders.

The new album Indie Cindy was streamed on the web site. I listened and to my surprise it was good. It had some of the strange electric ferocity from 20 years ago together with the maturity of age. What was interesting was the comments accompanying the album stream. Many followers were disappointed that it did not sound exactly the same as 20 years ago.

In most forms of music artists usually produce their best work as they get older. The youthful work of Bach, Beethown or Miles Davis does not compare to their later work. In rock the reverse is assumed. The rebellion of youth gives way to the tedium of dad rock.

On the face of it the argument is trivial or an indictment of the musical form. An artist gains experience with age and reflects on the medium as he or she produces a body of work. That is the argument.That said I watch footage of the Rolling Stones and find it amusing that grandfathers preen themselves and sing of street fighting men. It's not funny enough to pay £100 or so to view the merriment live though.

 

Simeon Stylites

I spent a weekend in some luxury paid for by the kindness of others.

I have never been used to luxury. My background is farming folk from County Tyrone . The idea of expensive hotels and champagne would be science fiction to my grandparents. A friend's flight was once upgraded to first class. He told me that it is better never to fly in the gilded aviary of first class than have to return to the cramped cages of coach. I have never flown anything other than economy and regard business class and first class prices with amazement.

When I think of self abnegation I think of Saint Simeon Stylites. I was introduced to him in the Bunuel film Simon of the Desert. According to Wikipedia he was a Christian saint who lived between 388 and 459 AD near Aleppo in Syria . The son of a shepherd he developed a Christian zeal and entered a monastery before the age of 16. He spent the last 37 years of his life living on top of a pillar. He escaped the blandishments of the world from the vantage of a fifty foot high pedestal .

Simeon was famous in his time.He did not completely withdraw from the world and drew pilgrims to his vantage point. Visitors were able to ascend the pillar to speak to him. He wrote letters and instructed disciples. He demanded austerity from himself but his teachings were compassionate.Bunuel the atheist treated him with fondness even though he found him ridiculous.

There is a median between the love of the worldly and contemplation of what lies beyond. It's fitting that the only contemporary figure who has perched on top of a pillar has been the magician David Blaine.

 

In Bruges

We went to Bruges with my wife's parents and my sister in law and her husband .It was to celebrate my father in law's birthday.

My sister in law and her husband both work in finance . They arranged bookings and did not skimp. For this Irishman it is a faintly alarming to stay at a four star hotel. Luxurious but alarming nonetheless .

Our image of Bruges had been crystallised in the sweary form of the film In Bruges . If you have not seen it I can recommend . Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play disgraced hitman holed up in Bruges after a bungled assignment. Ralph Fiennes is their employer in town to clean up the mess. It was written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Mr McDonagh is a successful playwright and writes funny knife like dialogue . Colin Farrell has never been better as the neophyte hitman Ray. His detestation of his hiding place raised invective to an art form. The contra was in the form of the world weary Brendan Gleeson . His character Ken loved the history and culture of the Flemish City and the grandeur of the Church of Our Lady. I was inclined to the latter viewpoint.

By way of homage we had beers in the hotel were they filmed. We found the city laid back compared to the frenzy of London . The waitress at our hotel took last orders before closing time then forgot to serve drinks in her rush to go home. The chap piloting the tour boat cheerfully quoted from Ray's less than complimentary description of his home town.

Everybody enjoyed the trip. It is a relaxing place to visit and we would return. It would be a magical locale in autumn or winter. Enough eulogy. I will give the last words to Mr Farrell's character Ray as he hovers between life and death :

"But then, like a flash, it came to me. And I realized, f*** man, maybe that's what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in f*****' Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die. I really really hoped I wouldn't die."

 

Under my skin

I arranged to meet an old friend from university at the weekend. We are both cineastes so a film accompanied drinks and food.

My expectations for the film were low. Recent product from hoorah for Hollywood had been dispiriting . The independant sector was little better with a tattoo of violence or hard core to hide the emperor's new clothes.

Under the Skin was a labour of love for a chap who shot Radiohead promos and commercials for the black stuff. His previous features were interesting - a gangster film with a lobster tanned Ray Winstone and a film about reincarnation with Nicole Kidman . In the latter the character believes her dead husband is resurrected in a twelve year old boy. The scene were they bathe together is uncomfortable and has to be seen to be disbelieved.

Under the Skin is loosely based on a cult book . The narrative is an alien roaming Caledonia preying on lonely Scotsmen. ET takes the form of Scarlett Johansson. She prowls Glasgow streets in a transit picking up men with the promise of favours. Secret cameras follow the actor as she stops and chats up unsuspecting Glaswegians. She is disguised in a black wig and a fur coat. No-one recognises her .

The fate of the men is horrifying but this is not a horror film. It is an unsettling mixture of social realism and metaphysics and its execution is flawless. It is sui generis, very beautiful and deeply unsettling. Ms Johansson proves herself a courageous performer and a fine actor. The otherworldly is aided by the incongruous images of a celebrity walking Glasgow streets unrecognised. With little dialogue she realises the awful loneliness of living and breathing a finite life.

When I left the theatre I was at first underwhelmed. It seemed like a short film stretched to a feature. But I could not get the mood and the images out of my head. They burrowed to my subconscious and made the day seem utterly alien.

 

Ambition

I am enjoying a peripatetic work life . I spent two weeks with a city firm on a property purchase followed by a short stint in Tring providing holiday cover. In two weeks time I will be in John Betjeman's favourite locale Slough followed by a stint in Chelmsford.

I am sure the life of a footloose contractor may wear thin . For the moment it provides the writer with much needed variety after a desultory working experience. As a contractor you meet new faces and experience different environments. It is close to the life of a jobbing barrister traveling from one brief to another.

I have an agency touting my wares instead of a barrister's clerk . I have had a good experience with them to date. My agency jockeys have been friendly and efficient. One called during the week with an attractive offer.A city firm was looking for a property lawyer immediately with interviews next week. They were offering a lot of money . The relationship was to start with a short term contract. If it worked the contract would lead to a permanent role. I was given details. The details included buzz words like "boutique" and "high net worth".

To my surprise I had no interest. I thanked the agency and informed them I was not looking for a permanent role. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The more expensive the lunch the greater the demands. I will look for a permanent post again. But for the moment I am enjoying my life as a legal migrant.

 

Slieve Donard

My wife and I paid a fleeting visit to N Ireland for a wedding. A longstanding friend had taken the plunge. The service took place outside Newcastle in County Down with the reception in a hotel in the area.

It was a pleasure to meet friends and former work mates at the service. The only constant is change. They confirmed they were well and were embarking on new professional challenges in their working lives. My wife remarked on their kindness to blow-ins from South East London. I am biased but inclined to agree.

A wedding in N Ireland is always a gamble with the elements. The summer months don't guarantee clear skies. A spring or autumn wedding foreshortens the odds considerably. The gods did not oblige and wind and rain meant that festivities were confined to indoors. The locus was still impressive with waves crashing on the Newcastle seafront and the summit of Slieve Donard mountain enveloped by cloud.

I have climbed Slieve Donard and walked in the Mournes a number of times. I enjoy the elemental pleasures of hill walking in my home and miss it when I am away. When I return to London I sometimes speculate on what an alternate existence would be like in N Ireland.We cannot lead two lives but we can wonder at paths not taken.

 

Age

Having celebrated a birthday I am conscious of age and getting older.

Both my parents are fit and active. Both are over 70. My mother walks 2 miles or more every day and looks after her well being. When we moved to Kent from Central London I noticed the increased use of the motorised scooters and powered wheelchairs noted in the photo. Canterbury and the surrounding towns have an elderly population.

I have seen users who are not disabled. They use them as powered transport for short trips in lieu of walking. I am not an expert but I am not sure this is a good. Keeping fit and active for as long as possible is a good for both mental and physical well being.

As noted I am not an expert and know too little about care for the elderly. I have an opinion and to quote Clint Eastwood opinions are like rear ends. Everyone has one.

 

Ghost Stories

It was a birthday and my sister in law kindly treated my wife and I to the theatre. We sent to see The Weir at the Wyndham theatre in London.

I hadn't seen the play before. I had seen Shining City by the same scribe and admired it. The Weir has similar themes and has been very successful. This was a starry revival with Brian Cox and Ardal O'Hanlon.

The playwright has a talent and ear for drink fuelled pub chat and the way language can provide solace for disappointed lives. The five characters in the Weir spend a cold windy night in a rural Irish pub . The four men have a new audience - a Dublin woman who has moved to a house in the area. They proceed to scare her and themselves with ghost stories from the locale.

The characters (save the taciturn barman) are all haunted. The ghosts are the past and the fear is of a lonely future. The other spectre is the role of drink as comfort and anaesthetic . If the characters calmly offered each other heroin the play would seem outlandish and surreal. Instead the reality of borderline alcoholism is barely noted.

 

The Saatchi Gallery

I had some days off between work assignments so I went to the Saatchi Gallery.

I had never been before and avoided Mr Saatchi's exhibitions in the past . He exhibited a bête noire called Jeff Koons ( he of Bubbles the chimp sculptures ) and the YBAs ( an acronym for the young british artists of the 90s). The work of the YBAs was mostly docile conceptual art. It was well suited to the time, commercial and made Damien Hirst a multi millionaire. N Ireland farmers need not have sold their herd for a pittance to the meat producers.Instead they could have put them in a tank, pickled them and gave them a voguish cod philosophical title . They could then have retired to the Bahamas.

My prejudices were partly confounded by the gallery. It had a good exhibition space and some of the art was interesting and provocative. When you go to the Tate your response is conditioned by familiarity of a Turner or a Monet. I knew nothing about the artists at the Saatchi gallery. I had to rely on my own response to the work.

I noticed the sponsorship though . Corporate sponsors like BNP Baribas are hardly going to sponsor art that frightens the horses ( pickled or otherwise).

 

Portraits

I spent yesterday studying faces.That is a gnomic statement so I will elaborate.

I visited my brother in law and was introduced to his new born son. It is a terrifying sensation to hold a week old baby. They are so fragile and vulnerable . It was also a gratifying one - at the risk of the new age you sense the whole of life. I read that a new father was shown the placenta by a nurse. The nurse held the placenta to the light showing the network of veins. She called the network of veins the tree of life.

I have had difficulty in the past determining who babies look like. Others (usually womanfolk) are able to identify family features. I found this skill beyond me. On this occasion when I looked I was able to identify characteristics and likeness in the new born. I paid attention and did not fall back on the lazy response adopted in the past.

When I left the proud parents I went to the National Portrait gallery. I spent an hour looking at bewigged Tudors and Hanoverians. Some of the portraits were wonderful. There was a picture of the playwright Ben Jonsen that was photo realistic and brilliant.

There was an exhibit of portraits from the First World War. The pictures of various generals and politicians were of individuals . They were identified and posed with medals and the regalia of their status. The pictures of the soldiers from the trenches were different. The men were not identified and were treated less as individuals and more as archetypes .They were either emblems of adversity or used as propaganda.

My grandfather served in the First World War. For his troubles he received medals, a perforated ear drum and shell shock. The latter is another description of post traumatic stress disorder. He never spoke about his experience and it had a marked impact on his life back in N Ireland .

The current revision of history portrays the Great War as an heroic enterprise and not blimpish generals using men as cannon fodder . I studied the period at school and I have no idea why my grandfather, a farmer from County Tyrone , was fighting in a field in France. I am not sure the generals portrayed in the National gallery knew either.

 

Flight MH370

For someone who is a timid flyer I take an obsessive and unhelpful interest in matters aeronautical. I have been following the harrowing story of the missing airliner from Malaysia and can relate to the awful nausea of waiting for terrible news. I hope the plane is found soon so that the families at least know their fate .

My cousin is a air traffic controller and another cousin is married to a long haul pilot. They have chatted to each other on occasion as they ply their trade. When relaxing they have merry tales of keeping dots apart and air proximity hazards (or airprox for short). In the presence of such conversations I excuse myself concluding ignorance is bliss.

The statistics are much quoted and correct. Flying is the safest form of travel. If one commutes on the congested motorways of the South East of England you regularly witness carnage and loss. If you are being rational you would not set foot in a car again yet I never have misgivings about driving.

I do have misgivings when flying though . On reflection it must be the issue of control. When driving you have the illusion of control. When flying you have the certainty you are not.

 

 

The Godfather

I have been asked to be Godfather . My wife's brother had a second child and I was given the honour.

I have been both Baptised and confirmed so I should satisfy the requirements of the Anglican Church . My apathy towards organised religion is another matter but I will not trouble the church with my misgivings.

I have done a little research. The font of wisdom that is Wikepedia provides a description. For many church denominations a godparent is someone who "sponsors a child's baptism". The modern secular view of a godparent tends to be "an individual chosen by the parents to take an interest in the child's upbringing and personal development." The sponsorship is straightforward. I will endeavour to take an interest in the youngster's upbringing.

I will turn up for the Baptism this time. I am ashamed to admit I did not when asked previously. I am godfather to my brothers eldest. When I was asked I didn't realise it conflicted with a previously booked trip to Paris. Paris won . The flight was with Ryanair so a change in flight was unthinkable . They didn't fly to Paris either but that's a different story.

My brother forgave my nonattendance. In retrospect I should have gone to the Baptism and gave Mr O'Leary whatever he required to change the flight. Paris will always be Paris ( or Beauvais to be more precise).

 

Artificial Intelligence

I always liked the joke (I think it is Monty Python) were someone prays there's intelligent life somewhere in space beause there is no evidence of it on Earth. It's elitist , despairing and funny.

I don't know why but I thought of said joke when reading an article about a Ray Kurzweil. Mr Kurzweil is employed by Google as head of engineering. By 2029 he imagines a brave new world of conscious machines. They will be benign rather than the Arnold Schwarzenegger variety. Instead of toasters threatening nuclear warfare we will have helpful machines that are smarter than their creators. They will take over tricky day to day tasks like sentience and thought. Mr Kurzweil (who is in his sixties) is also holding out for a break through in medical science that will grant immortality .

The idea of the singularity proposed by Mr Kurzweil is an interesting one. It refers to the Turing test – the moment at which a computer will exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from a human. It will raise interesting questions about identity and metaphysics but I cannot help feeling it is utopian. The problems faced by most people will not be answered by smart machines. Freud's statement that psychoanalysis is successful when it turns misery into ordinary everyday unhappiness will still hold true.Ordinary everyday unhappiness will remain with Robbie the robot for company or without. The clever machines will mainly benefit the wealthy of course - that will always be a truism.

I am aware of the irony in typing this missive out on a computer. I am also aware of the greater irony on posting said missive on a service provided by Mr Kurzweil's employer. I hope ET appreciates the joke.

 

 

Operating System

On matters regarding puter and related phones and tablets I admit to conservatism. I don't like change - if the 1s and 0s work I don't see the need to update. From experience early adoption means heartache and frustration.

I had been happy with the old operating system for both phone and computer. They were out of date but they were stable and I knew their idiosycrancies. I read in today's papers the sorry news that a security flaw meant I had no longer had a choice - I would have to update. I would be saying goodbye to a familiar electronic face.I had seen the face of the new operating system and found it garish - it's day glo icons reminded me of the children's TV programme the Tellytubbies. With regret I hit install and downloaded a new world. It didn't look brave.

The new operating system has some benefits but nothing remarkable. I am learning a few tricks.There is one constant however - I have no use in the old or new version for the dulcet tones of the voice recognition software. In a film called Her a man falls in love with a new operating system voiced by the siren song of Scarlett Johansson. It's a neat conceit but I can't help feeling its one only a man could dream off. I haven't seen the film so I cannot comment on how the ideas are explored. I can however imagine many women rolling their eyes as they are widowed by a tablet computer or smart(ish) phone.

 

 

Byzantium

We watched Neil Jordan's little seen vampire flick on DVD. It is the tale of a mother and daughter revanant and their attempts to survive a hostile modern world. The story is set in a dilapidated seaside town and was filmed in Hastings in East Sussex. I have visited the aforesaid and it is an atmospheric locale.

The vampire pony has been flogged to its knees by the Twilight saga and various post modern iterations. Bram Stoker's Dracula has been largely forgotten along with the primal fears triggered by the original tale. Byzantium itself is beautiful looking, well performed but ultimately hollow. The fault may not lie with the creators . Mr. Jordan is a talented filmmaker and writer with a sophisticated sensibility . He has made modern fairy tales like The Company of Wolves and Mona Lisa . The problem may lie with the audience and changing viewing habits. The practice of going to the cinema for adult entertainment may be in terminal decline. Home cinema and the Internet could leave the multiplex the provenance of the 3D spectacle or the teenager with various men in tights flicks.

In the past Hollywood did accommodate diverse sensibilities. The American Paul Schrader wrote or directed award winning films like Raging Bull . He was not drawn to cinema by nostalgia - his parents were religious and forbade his going to the movies. He saw his first movie at 18.His latest film The Canyons may be a portent for the future. He had to finance the film by crowd sourcing though the Kick Starter web site. He ended with a budget that was a small percentage of his studio features, a limited cinema release and viewed mostly over the Internet. I have not seen the movie so I cannot comment on its qualities. I have read about it and seen the trailer. It begins with a montage of abandoned film theatres and a lament for the demise of the seventh art form.

Mr. Jordan's film never explains why it is called Byzantium but I forgive the conceit. Byzantium is a beautiful word.

 

Stormy Weather

We lost a day to the storms in Southern England. We drove to Ashford to look in a shop and never reached our destination. Flood waters blocked the road between Canterbury and Ashford.The route back was then closed off to deal with twigs on the motorway. The detour through Sittingbourne shaved three hours from our existence.

The extremes in weather we have experienced do not seem that inclement to this Irishman. We regularly encounter high winds and rain in N Ireland. The province does not come to a standstill and we seem to manage without fuss.To hear the lowing cattle of the media community you would be under the misapprehension England had been devastated by a tsunami . To this observer it has not.

Ice and snow has been forecast . The preparedness for same will be the usual standard . I anticipate hours spent in stationary traffic.

 

Philadelphia Here I Come!

I am re-reading some of Brian Friel's plays . Mr. Friel lays claim to being Ireland's greatest living dramatist . Apropo nothing he also hails from my home town . The mise en scene and characters in his plays are very familiar.

In his play Translations he deals with a well worn theme - the death of the Irish language. Friel has described it as "a play about language and only about language" . It is set in the fictional town of Ballybeg in County Donegal in 1833. The plot is straightforward. A local man returns home after six years away in Dublin. With him are English cartographers working on the Ordinance survey map of Ireland . Both Irish and English characters speak their respective languages and they cannot understand each other. This failure has ruinous consequences. Drama is as much about what is not said as what is expressed and understood.

When I was at University I was asked to contribute to the Irish language society . Though I donated I flippantly said there was no point as it was on its uppers. Language is a reflection of politics and power . We are exhorted to learn Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as these are the languages of the new economies. It's unthinkable now but in a couple of centuries someone may be asking for donations to keep the English language alive.

 

Herne Bay

I spent yesterday morning as a flaneur in Herne Bay. Herne Bay is a seaside town 7 miles or so from Canterbury. It was popular as a holiday destination until the 1960s but cheap foreign travel has taken its toll and it has declined in the intervening years.

I am fond of Herne Bay and its forlorn amigo Margate. They have a dilapidated grandeur. If I was an investor I would speculate in the Bay. It's near neighbour Whitstable has become prohibitively expensive with DFLs ( an acronym for down from London) driving property prices skyward. I never take my own advice so braver and richer souls may benefit from a Herne Bay resurgence.

My reason for my trip was a gaping hole on the M2 on my wife's route to work. The lengthy detour left her exhausted so I offered to drive to and from Canterbury. It has taken two days to fix a few hours work with a JCB. A mountain and a molehill.

In the afternoon I arranged to meet a former work colleague for coffee. He is now a legal consultant for a property developer .We had a good time catching up in a blustery Canterbury . He is a practising Christian and still retains hope that I will make the leap to one flock or other. I assured him again I will remain steadfast in my convictions . God needs a loyal opposition.

 

Julio Cortazer

In a break from The Brothers Karamasov I read a book of Cortazer's short stories.

Julio Cortazer was an Argentinian writer who died in exile in Paris. He was a fabulist like his countryman Jorge Luis Borges but more humane.

In his collection All Fires the Fire there is a story called The Island at Noon. An air steward becomes obsessed with a Greek island he sees every day at noon on his scheduled flight from Italy to Beirut. His obsession affects his job - the passengers are left to their own devices as he stares rapt at the beautiful beaches of the island below.

He saves money and makes the journey to the island. He meets locals and swims on the cove he saw from above. He has found his paradise and resolves not to go back to his previous life.The next day at noon he hears the sound of his plane. He hesitates then looks up to see...

In the New York Times Book Review Cortazer is described as "the apostle of the lives we have chosen not to live".

 

Aide Memoire

I gave the hard drive a spring clean.

It was a tedious process involving sifting my photo files . My finger hovered over the mouse for a moment before committing approx 4500 photo files to the ether. I noted 26 gigabytes of information disappeared from the trash can on both hard drive and its doppelgänger the back up drive.The cull erased one in four photo files.

Most of the deletions were straightforward - duplicates of other files or duds. Bad composition, exposure errors or out of focus; they served no purpose. Others photos were ok but were not good enough to merit retention. These moments in time were cast into oblivion.

It's a forlorn procedure deleting representations of a moment . When younger there is the thrill of the purge and the tabula rasa. There is time to fill up the hard drive (real or metaphorical). As you get older it can be a melancholy experience .

When we lived in Twickenham we used to walk past a gallery called the Orleans. I went one day and saw an exhibition of photos from the 19th century explorer Sir Richard Burton. Burton is famous as an explorer of the Great Lakes of Africa and translating One Thousand and One Nights. Burton and his wife are buried in a remarkable tomb in the shape of a Bedouin tent in St Mary Magdalen's Church in Mortlake southwest London. If you get the opportunity I recommend a visit - it is a striking (and macabre) monument of empire.

One photo in the exhibition at the Orleans gallery stopped this viewer in his tracks. It was a momento mori of Burton on his deathbed. These post mortem photos were popular in the Victorian era. The dead would be posed in a photo for the benefit of the bereaved .Thankfully the practice largely ceased in the early 20th century. The modern sensibility can do without post mortem photos as aide memoire.

 

The Brothers Karamasov

There are a few books on the unfortunately named bucket list. Dostoyevsky 's tome is one . Others include Anna Karenina and Captain Ahab and his whale. I tried Finnegans Wake years ago but gave up after 30 pages or so. Shem and Shaun and the book of dreams was hard work . Any book with a explanatory text as complicated as Anthony Burgess's guide has disappeared to the nether regions of the never read. I have read most of Jimmy Joyce's work and it is wonderful. The Wake is a bridge too far.

I am now reading Fyodor's opus. I read a few of his books years ago including Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment. Reading Karamasov years later I am struck how prolix the prose style . Granted it is in translation but I suspect the original Russian was little better. I remember reading Nabokov s dissection of Fyodor's prose years ago and feeling affronted. Crime and Punishment had made a striking impression on a young student and I was defensive of his work.

In retrospect Nabokov was correct. Dostoyevsky was a visionary but not a literary stylist. Reading from the perspective of today 19th century novels can seem discursive and long winded. We forget photography was in its infancy, cinema and TV had not been invented and travel was for privileged few . Novelists had to describe a scene in detail because many of the readership had no mental picture to draw upon .

Dostoyevsky themes have not aged and are universal. Revolution, anarchism and trying to lead a moral life in a world without religious belief.

No jokes though.

 

Zabriskie Point

I was fascinated by the area known as Zabriskie Point near Death Valley in California.I was attracted there by a similarly named film by the Italian film maker Michelangelo Antonioni. It was set in the hippie movement of the late 60's. Though beautiful it has dated badly and it's politics are fag packet Marxism.

Zabriskie point was named after a mining company owner - Borax was extracted in the area. Zabriskie point has a eerie erosional landscape . It used to be a lake bed long since dried up. The sediments from the lake bed gave the area the strange lunar landscape.

Death Valley and its surrounds have the reputation as a harsh inhospitable place . The Valley was given its current grim moniker by gold rush prospectors. Prior to the gold rush it was known as Tumpisa by the Timbisha Shoshine tribe. Tumpisa means rock paint and derives from the red clay found in the valley.

The Native American tribe have lived in the area over a millennia . Unlike the gold rush prospectors they have found the area manageable. They have flourished and hold the place sacred.My wife and I found similar. Despite the heat we found the place magical and oddly life affirming.

 

Running Man

There doesn't seem to be a connection tying these missives together. Jimmy Joyce would approve.

I have returned to running in earnest. My body revolted at first and the treadmill was penance for the sin of inactivity. My torso is gradually remembering the rhythm and my stamina and speed are improving . Very gradually. I would like to run a half marathon at some juncture but that is months away.

I am hesitant to return to road running in London and prefer the treadmill and the gym. I do not have the natural build of a distance runner and I don't want to risk joints and arthritic tweaks .The treadmill is kinder to limbs. I do miss running on the underpopulated roads of N Ireland though. The slow unfurling of an empty road was a pleasure.

I read that this years Badwater Ultramarathon has been relocated from its usual route through Death Valley in California. For the past 27 years participants have run 135 miles of asphalt, a 13,000-foot elevation gain and through late July temperatures of 120 degrees and above. This years race has been relocated due to a safety assessment. This is understandable given human nature - extreme sports are becoming more extreme . Some participants had wanted to run dressed as Darth Vader and other characters from the space opera.

I have driven through Death Valley in autumn. It is a wonderful place but intolerant of fools. You are advised to gas up ( American slang for a full tank of petrol ) and take a gallon of water for each person.I cannot imagine what is must be like to run an ultra marathon in summer. It seems an act of lunacy.

And yet I look at the photos of the roads that stretch to infinity and I half understand it.

 

 

 

Regicide

I read of a John Dixwell in a novel.

Mr. Dixwell was born in 1609 near Canterbury . He was MP for Dover and fought in the English Civil War on the side of the parliamentarians . He was one of the judges who condemned Charles I to death.

During the restoration the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion granting pardon to those who supported the Commonwealth and Protectorate. It excluded those who had played a role in the trial and execution of King Charles I . Dixwell was condemned to death.

Mr Dixwell decamped to the New World and ended up in New Haven Connecticut . Along with fellow regicides Edward Whalley and a William Goffe he ended his days hiding in a cave near New Haven.He died in 1689 dreaming of a new revolution in England.

In 1783 the New World obliged with the American War of Independence. The revolution in England was not forthcoming.

A parable of sorts.

 

Borderlands

I watched the last episode of the excellent Danish drama The Bridge on BBC. If you have not succumbed to its peculiar charm imagine a police procedural written by Ibsen. It's not Starsky and Hutch. Instead of Starsky you have an autistic female Swedish detective who wears leather trousers, drives an old bilious coloured Porsche and picks up men in bars. Her partner is a Danish policeman adept at impersonating a shambles.

The odd couple investigate crimes that takes place on the Oresund Bridge that links Sweden and Denmark.This second series involves eco terrorism and big business. The end was touching, unexpected and left room for a third series. It didn't outstay its welcome.

By chance I had also finished a crime novel called Borderlands. It was the first novel in a series of crime fiction set on the North West border between the six counties of N Ireland and Southern Ireland. The protagonist was a policeman in the Garda ( the Southern Irish police) called Inspector Devlin. He faced a similar problem to the detectives in The Bridge - bodies found on a jurisdictional border . He has to deal with suspects who flit North and South of the border.

I am not an aficionado but the appeal of crime fiction is the resolution. There is a crime, an investigation, a suspect apprehended and the mystery resolved. Courtesy of Hitchcock there is also a MacGuffin for suspense ( and padding).In the practice of criminal law matters may not be as clear. You may obtain an acquittal for an accused and still harbour doubts.

A dead body near a border need not be a crime. I cannot attribute the quote but I read that all borders are drawn in blood. Instead of a murder on the border between Denmark and Sweden or the North and South of ireland it may be an act of war between states.

The photo is of a memorial of the killing of three IRA volunteers by the SAS in N Ireland during the 1980s. To some it was an act of war. To others it was a crime and an act of murder.

Unlike fiction there is no resolution. The memorial is near Borderlands.

 

Windmills of your mind

I am a fan of wind farms. I like the whooping noise they make and I like their aesthetics. I came across a wind farm outside Palm Springs in California which seemed to stretch to the horizon. To the writer they are a renewable source of energy and sensible.

Many do not share my appreciation. When I was home in Ireland in 2012 we stayed in Glenties town in Donegal . We tried to stay at one of the town's hotels but it was fully booked - there was a public enquiry taking place on a proposed wind farm in the area. Local landowners claimed it would blight their farmland. Everyone employed lawyers and the hotel provided the locus for the debate.

My Aunt felt similarly about the locating of a wind farm on a hill called Bessie Bell overlooking my home town. She was aghast at the eyesores on a much loved old friend.The Daily Telegraph wheels out conservative nimbys who feel the same about these subsidised bird blenders besmirching the views of the Home Counties.They much prefer nuclear ( also subsidised) or fracking in areas well away from Chipping Norton et al.

I suspect if the alternatives were a nuclear reactor in your back garden, a wind turbine or no electricity at all (with attendant Mad Max style social dispensation) the bird blenders might be more popular.

I quote Dusty Springfield on the matter:

"Like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning

On an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind

Like the circles

That you find

In the windmills of your mind "

 

 

Winter

January and Febuary always surprise and always disappoint.

After the festive consumer hi jinks of Christmas and New Year they drag on interminably. Every year this is a surprise. I know a GP who cheerfully announced his elderly patients seemed to hang on for Christmas and New Year and succumb shortly after. Winter finds and claims them.

Thankfully this winter has been unusually mild with early flowering of snowdrops and hazel. We have a ladybird encamped in our bedroom .Despite the mild winter I will be glad when February ends . Billy Shakespeare always gives good copy. This is from his fifth sonnet:

" For never-resting time leads summer on,

To hideous winter and confounds him there;

Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where"

Roll on the vernal equinox.

 

 

 

The Angel of History

I have registered with a locum agency . My hiatus from work will end in February .

I am contemplating going to an exhibition at Tate Modern. It is pricey but it is Paul Klee and I admire his work . Klee was a German-Swiss painter who produced art in the years between the world wars of the 20th century.His work was expressionistic, sometimes childlike and funny. He said that drawing is taking a line for a walk.

A Klee painting from 1920 is called the Angel of History. It was acquired by the cultural critic Walter Benjamin. Benjamin was known for literary criticism and the book " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" .

Every historian and politician involved in education should look at the painting and read Benjamin's commentary.He said the following in his essay " On the Concept of History" :

"A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth hangs open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage hurling it before his feet.The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.

This storm is what we call progress."

The government minister Mr Gove seems to view British history as a narrative of a largely benign empire. Progress indeed.

Walter Benjamin took his own life in 1940 on the French-Spanish border trying to escape the Nazis.The photo is from the Jewish memorial in Berlin.

 

 

Pontiff

Pope Francis is an interesting figure.

I am not Catholic but some of his pronouncements on taking office have been admirable. He has criticised the brutality of modern commerce and eschewed the ornate trappings of office. His living arrangements are humble and he is driven around in a small Ford. You judge public figures by their critics . The American Christian right have expressed alarm at his liberalism on social issues and his sympathy for the poor and unemployed.

The Catholic Church has suffered a series of self inflicted catastrophes. From incessant meddling in private lives and a perceived failure to deal with child sex abuse it has been a disappointment to its followers. The new Pontiff seems to be practising what he preaches which in today's affairs is revolutionary.

It is surprising given his background. From accounts he was a conservative figure who underwent a Pauline conversion in his fifties. Given apostolic succession his road to Damascus is fitting.

It would be an irony if Pope Francis became a vanguard against the desiccation of modern economics..

 

The ongoing moment

As someone who practices photography I have watched the proliferation of digital images with interest.

Digital imagery has changed the practice of taking photos. With 36 frames of 35 mm film you took time considering an image. Film was deemed expensive and the exposures finite. With digital the initial outlay on the camera and memory card was the sole expense .

I bought my first digital camera ten years ago. My Fuji compact seemed extraordinary at the time.You could change ISO and save over 100 exposures on a card. You could shoot colour or black and white simultaneously and manipulate the images on a computer. It was a new world.

Shortly after I purchased a Canon DSLR which presented greater possibilities. I soon built up a hard drive of pixels from my travels and my attempts at fine art.Three years ago I traded in my Canon for a professional grade DSLR. With the lens it cost as much as a second hand car. The images it produced were technically brilliant - colour rendition, sharpness and resolution were a revelation. You could produce poster size prints with no loss of detail.

But the camera felt remote and technical . I was conscious I held a computer with a lens attached. At the same time I bought an old professional film camera on e bay - they were very cheap with the move from film to digital. Along with the digital SLR I continued to shoot B & W film.

There are technical boring reasons why B & W film is superior to digital cameras . Another unexpected reason is cost - shooting film can be cheaper than digital. This at first seems counter intuitive but the depreciation on professional digital cameras is vertiginous . Practitioners are endlessly seduced by the siren song of the camera manufacturers to upgrade . They lose money on every upgrade. When you upgrade a film camera you simply purchase a different film stock.

I have digressed. I was considering the proliferation of digital images on Facebook, Flickr et all. The critic John Berger said that photography took its power from capturing or crystallising a moment. When digital images become ubiquitous, almost continuous and random have they any meaning?.In part maybe that is the attraction of film - you have to consider an exposure before pressing the shutter. You cannot look at the picture then and there (a practice in digital imaging called chimping) and take another.

I am not a Luddite - modern digital cameras are amazing . For colour, sport and street photography they are superior to a film camera. But I cannot say I love them. I love Ilford Delta film.

 

The Scottish Borders

I had arranged to meet a friend and former work colleague after my flight from the bothy.

My friend's wife had secured a good job near Berwick upon Tweed. They had moved from Greater London to start a new life in the north. Though they living in Scotland his wife crossed the border every day to England in her short drive to work.

They had retained their house near Watford and were renting an old farmhouse near Berwick . My friend was originally from Sri Lanka . Though metropolitan he and his wife had fallen in love with country life. They feed the neighbours horses in the morning and took long country walks.They hoped to raise a family.

We talked about the past and discussed the vagaries of work in the law. He and his wife are practising Buddhists. I found his company calming and our discussion constructive. He is a good man and had brought his widowed mother from Sri Lanka to live with him. I admired his observance of duty.

I left my friend to attend to his work and went for a walk. The countryside was wonderful and the weather mild for winter. The plantation of Ulster drew souls from the surrounding area. My forebears may have walked similar paths.

I made my farewells on my return from my walk and set off on the A1. I passed Newcastle, the Angel of the North and other signposts on the way to the South. The North of England can be very beautiful . I vowed to return with my wife to visit the Lakes and Yorkshire.

I arrived back in London. Despite the misfire of the hiking I felt relaxed and invigorated.

 

A Wood in the Cairngorms

We purchased supplies in Aviemore.

I should have spoken to my companion then and voiced my concerns. My contribution to the fiasco was keeping quiet. I went to Tesco and bought a half bottle of whiskey. If I was to perish from exposure I would have an anaesthetic.

We drove ten miles outside Aviemore. I had made my telephone calls - there was no mobile phone reception in the hills and forests near the bothy. We parked the car and set off. My task on this occasion was to carry a saw for firewood.

Relations were strained . My companion had the right equipment and ruck sack for the hike. I didn't and fell behind. After a three and half mile hike we were deep in the woods. There was a river running to our right . My companion got tired of the hills and took a short cut down to the river. I followed keeping my eyes on my footing. When I finally reached the river I looked up and my companion was gone.

He could have taken three possible pathways . At first I was annoyed . I stayed where I was and waited 10 minutes or so for him to return. I thought I saw a figure in the distance but when I looked again it had disappeared.

My annoyance gave way to concern. I did not know where the bothy was and there was one hour of daylight left. I shouted out for him. He told me later that my shouts didn't carry and he was the figure in the distance. He had sat down for a cigarette.

I struck out for the car. Keeping the river to my left I was able to find my way back to the trail and walked back the way I came. I was angry but my companion could look out for himself. He knew the terrain. I made good time and was confident I would reach the car by dark. If my companion did not return to the car I would leave a note and walk back down the road. I had seen a sign for a youth hostel on our journey from Aviemore.

On my way back I saw something extraordinary. A stag reindeer came up from the river and stood blocking my path. It would have been 100 feet from where I stood. I stopped and stared at it. It stood looking at the writer. It was bigger than the deer in the picture.The stag had lost one antler and did not seem concerned by my presence.There was some fear - I had heard of a woman recently gored by a deer in Scotland. I stood waiting until it turned and retraced its steps back to the river

I reached the car. My phone reception had returned and I left a voicemail for my companion. As I set off for the youth hostel I heard him approaching. There was a frank angry exchange of words. When things had calmed we had the conversation we should have had ad initio. We had different expectations for the trip.

I would consider a bothy trip again but never in the winter. There is an elemental thrill unmatched by tourist fare. You have to be in the mood. On this occasion I did not want to play Grizzly Adams.

We returned to my car in Edinburgh. He kindly put me up for the night. In the morning I resumed my journey.