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.