The Alice Chord

2011-10-18T07:16:00.004Z

MAUREEN WALKER (1939-2009)

Today would have been my mother's 72nd birthday. The more I learn about people’s experiences in childhood, the more I realise how lucky I was to have been brought up by someone like Mo: someone who appreciated, and even revelled in, everything that struck her as beautiful – a roadside bank of wild flowers, a passage in a novel, an operatic aria… She impatiently shared her reaction to these events with a kind of unbounded enthusiasm which people either found incredibly engaging and occasionally mildly startling. I don’t think she ever lost this ability to respond to things with wonder, even when plagued by migraines and insomnia in her later years.

And this is what she tried to cultivate in me too, beginning with the fairy tales which were my Ur myths (I’m so happy I was reared on the Ladybird “well loved tales” from the Brothers Grimm et al rather than the New Testament) and lullabies, through which she awakened in me an untutored musical gift, especially a love of songs of all kinds. Throughout her life, she had a special affinity for the magical world of childhood, which inspired many of her poems and striking expressionist paintings.

Although she insisted that she believed in “the absurd universe”, she had an idealistic moral insight, which seemed to encapsulate the moment and occasionally penetrate far beyond the political chatter on the News. I remember in particular how she could never forgive Blair after he refused while on walkabout somewhere to visit a family of a dead serviceman. She was appalled by the millions of pounds poured into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I felt she was a good judge of what was truly important.

She encouraged all my projects as a boy and even into teenage years, when my taste for pop music and psychedelic culture were a thousand miles away from her world of Matisse, Schubert and Proust. She even inspired me to record my first “album” into a cassette recorder – a response to the story of the guard and the citadel in Kafka’s The Trial – when I only knew a couple of chords, couldn’t tune the guitar or sing a note in tune. Her efforts to bring out my creativity and her unstinting support for my efforts, probably not consciously noticed or valued by me at the time, meant that I never really doubted the worth of the hundreds of songs I wrote in my youth.

Sadly, Mo was more critical when it came to her own work, and decided to destroy many of her poems, complaining that they were inferior to the writers she admired, and some of her paintings are also missing. She left behind only the ones she thought would pass critical muster, as well as her Culture Vulture blog, where she began to share her passion for literature, and build up a small community of quite devoted fans.

Her tastes weren’t exclusively highbrow. She used to enjoy Strictly; she’d laugh out loud at Rory Bremner; and for several years was an avid fan of Eastenders, insisting that some of the dramatic situations were “as good as Shakespeare”.

She was driven only by passion, never duty, and would drop a project once her enthusiasm had dimmed. She spent several years intensively researching the history and significance of fairy tales, and another period reading deeply about Renaissance painters. Both projects ended overnight as soon as Mo felt she’d learned or experienced enough. Eastenders went the same way. Because I’d been entranced by her vivid paintings, I would often urge her to paint more, but she insisted it had become a chore. In the end, this may have been the case with her own life.

Death is always a tragedy. It’s still worth celebrating a life full of beauty, and in which love was well expressed. Mo was a mercurial, incredibly determined and wholly remarkable person. When her passion burned, it was bright like a star. Everyone who knew her well was touched by this, most of all me.

2010-05-02T04:52:00.008Z

HANG THEM ON THE GREEN by The Forgers

This is a pre-Election song for the worst Parliament in living memory. While it's not completely finished, but thought I'd post it while election fever is in the air. I'll re-release it for the next big wave of disillusionment. The video was a rushed job - the water near the end was supposed to be a symbol of stagnation.

The video is on YouTube here.

Now - to vote or not to vote? Like the sucker that I am, I always do.

2009-12-23T12:34:00.005Z

HOW THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT SCUPPERED YOUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE

Let this moment be inscribed in history.

by Mark Lynas, The Guardian, 23.12.09

"Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.

Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".

Shifting the blame

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks in every corner of the world.

Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China's negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India.

All this raises the question: what is China's game? Why did China, in the words of a UK-based analyst who also spent hours in heads of state meetings, "not only reject targets for itself, but also refuse to allow any other country to take on binding targets?" The analyst, who has attended climate conferences for more than 15 years, concludes that China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now "in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time".

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away."

full article here

2009-12-22T16:52:00.030Z

ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: AN ALTERNATIVE LIST

Let's be clear. This decade didn't produce anything like Dummy, Revolver, Suede, Grace, Led Zeppelin IV or Dark Side Of The Moon - but I had a little trawl and came up with:

White Stripes: De Stijl (2000)

Jack White is the rock musician of the decade, bringing some spontaneous fire to a tired genre.

Waterboys: A Rock in the Weary Land (2000)

This album is just one great, passionate song after another - Mike Scott's best since the mid-90s, and my personal favourite this decade. I find it hard to believe he's not more widely recognised.

George Harrison: Brainwashed (2002)

George's posthumous LP was of some sentimental value to me, but it was also a high quality career end. Stuck Inside A Cloud was on my mind for days.

The Coral: The Coral (2002)

Saw them live at Glastonbury, and enjoyed their penchant for '60s garage psych. Why can't more bands be this inventive?

Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand (2004)

Scotland's reply to the Strokes; it got the latest new wave revival going, and is endlessly catchy - and clever.

Robert Plant & the Strange Sensation (also the worst name for a band this decade): Mighty Rearranger (2005)

Before he got together with Alison Krauss, Percy produced this post-Zeppelin career high-point, incorporating some of his "world music" influences, and including the beautiful All The King's Horses. This coincided with a very happy, sunny spring for me.

Elbow: Leaders Of The Free World (2006)

Band of the decade? Their record company went bust and couldn't promote this excellent album. Enjoyed jamming the title track with friends. They always have a strong lyric, and the way they build up themes in the melody is a masterclass in songwriting.

King Creosote: Bombshell (2007)

Another inspired, under-rated songwriter who is original and thought-provoking. His brother is in The Aliens, the best psychedelic band in Scotland. Maybe the only one?

The Aliens: Astronomy For Dogs (2008)

See above. Fans of psychedelia: you are still being entertained.

Kings Of Leon: Only By The Night (2008)

This is just old school "classic rock". The singer's voice makes it very distinctive, and the arrangements are good.

I also wanted to put in more White Stripes, The Good The Bad & The Queen, Editors, Burial, LCD Soundsystem, Feist, The Shins and The Green Man by Roy Harper (brilliant at its best moments) - but there was no room. Sadly, nothing from 2009, not the greatest year for music - or is it just that I'm getting older? Apart from the album my friend made under the name Dick Brucinson & The Basics, far and away the best album of the year, the only things I remember were by Lily Allen, Doves and Them Crooked Vultures. Resolution: listen to the radio some more.

2009-08-30T08:08:00.009Z

THAT OTHER CRUNCH

Cormac McCarthy's The Road seems to haunt everyone who reads it, so bleak is the picture it paints of a world of depleted resources and a truly broken society. Here, George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth debate eco-collapse and whether industrial civilisation is worth saving. Timely, prophetic stuff - well worth a look.

In Monbiot's words "... the survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species’ remaining time on earth."

2009-08-28T10:48:00.005Z

CHANGEABLE

When I was a kid I used to play at being Doctor Who, and that entertained me even in the playground, or walking to school. In particular, his abilty to regenerate fascinated me. Being transplanted very suddenly, as I have been this month, sets off the same kind of dislocated feelings I imagine would happen were you to wake up in a new body. My whole adult life has been like this. When you measure it in eras, life seems long, even though you know it isn't really.

I’m here in Nottingham, to all intents and purposes alone, and surrounded by relics that are like the memorabilia of my past lives. Where did I find time to read all those books in my 20s, for example? I only have the sketchiest memories of them, and it took me a whole day to clean 12 years of dust from the spines. I’ve also unpacked my CD collection, the soundtrack of very different days. My old clothes don’t fit, for some reason – and here are a couple of cardigans (cardigans?) and jackets I can hardly remember wearing.

The place like a new planet. People seem very different from Hungary – mostly because I can understand what everyone is saying in public places. I have to mention this example, overheard at a bus stop – a son, in his late 40s, to his mother (thick midlands accent): “You’re the age Gran was when she pegged it and I’m the age you were when Gran pegged it!”

The climatic conditions are (what else?) changeable. I seem to remember the wind blowing the clouds across the sun in some other waning summer, and being caught in the rain. Have I been here before?

There are some continuities too: I still have an appetite for red wine, and now my console is reconnected, I’m in magical touch with everyone I knew from other time streams. This is a good thing when you’ve got that exiled feeling.

2009-05-08T05:55:00.006Z

MPs ARE TOO EXPENSIVE

There is no justification for these ludicrous expenses claims (see below) by people who have also regularly voted to hike their salaries well above the average rise, and who recently called for a 66% pay rise. They ought to be removed forthwith.

full report in The Guardian 08.05.09

• Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, who allegedly claimed money on three different properties in one year alone. She also spent £5,000 on furniture in the space of four months after she bought the third property.

• Jack Straw, the justice secretary, who claimed back the full cost of council tax, even though he received a 50% discount from his local authority. Straw repaid the money last summer after a high court ruling requiring the receipts to be published.

• Lord Mandelson, who claimed thousands of pounds to repair his constituency home in Hartlepool after announcing his resignation as an MP in 2004.

• David Miliband, who spent hundreds of pounds on gardening at his constituency home.

• Alistair Darling, who changed his official "second home" designation four times in four years.

• Geoff Hoon who switched his second home to allow him to improve his family home in Derbyshire at taxpayers' expense before buying a London home.

2009-04-11T09:20:00.001Z

“If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress.”

UN Environment Programme report, 2007

2009-01-01T13:06:00.015Z

A GENERATION AGO....

It's thirty years since Maggie Thatcher first came to power in the UK and in a future history the chapter about her era may well be subtitled (1979 - 2008). Whatever the main title (I'd go for Thatcherism And The Age Of Waste), its theme will be an ironic one - that her policies ultimately hastened the death, or at least the containment, of the very free markets she revered.

Free market capitalism is emphatically not the greatest system that we can devise for running the world. It distributes goods and services, true, but what a failure it's been in terms of maintaining social cohesion, and even economic stability. What a rejection of human expertise it now seems, after a century of progress in the understanding of how to (and how not to) manage a balance of growth, relative economic stability and social justice. (Remember the "social market"?) What an abdication of planetary responsibility it turns out to have been. And in its old age, what a festival of consumer overspend, fantasy and political corruption.

The party's over. Soon Thatcher's admirers won't have a leg to stand on, and the dear leader will be gone. Not the end of history, then.

2008-12-31T19:49:00.010Z

LESS MAD WORLD

The world is a less mad place to be now. Listening to Jarvis Cocker's guest editor slot on the Today programme this morning, it slowly dawned on me that we're both part of the new orthodoxy. I found myself agreeing with everything he said - many were things I have thought again and again over the past twenty years. The urgent need to push the environment to the top of the political agenda can now be delivered in a flat monotone rather than screamed in panic - because everyone apart from career contrarians (Jeremy Clarkson et al) believes it, at some level. It all seemed a bit dull, however, even though Jarvis was doing his best, just like the mournful progress of a hymn tune which makes its weary way to its final utterly predictable conclusion.

So we had to fight hard for the boring mainstream. And so it came to pass - the UK government and Barack Obama both committed to 80% reductions in carbon emissions by 2050, and I am going into 2009 with a spring in my step and feeling more at home in our strange civilisation. Not only this; the progress of history and ideas is at last resuming. (See September 18th, below) It's not a bad time for the new President to be taking office. The timing is uncannily perfect.

What I'd most like to do in 2009 is get reinspired.

2008-10-12T09:56:00.011Z

A GREEN NEW DEAL

"As long as the basic tenet of unlimited hoarding of wealth remains fundamental to our economy, economic disparity and environmental degradation will continue. We will continue to accept as fair and inevitable that economic growth creates concentration of wealth, on the one hand, and unemployment, displacement of people and poverty, on the other. Without a fundamental rethinking of the current economic dogma of private property rights above all other values, and that human progress is best measured in increased material consumption, we cannot create an environmentally sustainable and poverty-free society."
Roar Bjonnes, a Proutist thinker.

It is much easier to diagnose the problem than to propose solutions for it, especially solutions that don't contain the kind of dynamic which moves inevitably to some kind of old-style state-controlled economy. I think that, even in the context of a free market economy, certain restrictions would be practicable, and without removing incentives for motivated and successful people. For example:

1. The prohibition of dealing in certain kinds of "junk" stocks, however they are defined: hedge funds, short selling, etc
2. Fixing currency exchange rates, or otherwise prohibiting large-scale currency speculation.
3. An end to corporate lobbying to restore democratic control of parliaments, and the payment of MPs at a more moderate level to attract people who are genuinely interested in public service.
4. Increasing taxation on multinational corporations as part of a co-ordinated reining in of the supranational freedoms which they have accumulated and abused. The money would be used to fund green technologies and training for work in a more environmentally sustainable economy.
5. Repossessed property should be taken into the public domain to replenish the public housing stock, and rented in the first place to the defaulting occupant(s), at a subsidised rate. Over time, there should be a gradual restriction in the number of properties one individual/family is allowed to own.
6. A substantial increase in the minimum wage, which would be paid (including flexible increments) to people working for publicly-funded sustainable projects. This would be paid for by a drastic reduction in military expenditure, as well as far heavier taxation on higher earners.

2008-09-30T17:52:00.005Z

STRANGE PRIORITIES

A colleague of mine asked a good question today: Why is it that the UK government bought the debts of the Bradford & Bingley the other day (at a cost of £4000 per household, on average) - and yet sold the profitable part to a (privately owned) Spanish bank? Is this simply bad business sense or, more likely, knee-jerk neoliberal thinking by a government that has well and truly lost touch with its roots?

2008-09-25T05:17:00.007Z

AIN'T JUST THE ONE WAY

"Democratic capitalism is the best system ever devised." George W. Bush, in his closing remarks yesterday. Translation: "I'm shit scared." The best system for whom? And how many alternatives are currently being considered?

2008-09-18T18:20:00.017Z

GOOD NIGHT TO FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM!

"This is a failure of a system where we relied on the markets and excluded government. And the markets failed." Tony Benn

"The authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have demonstrated that they'll do all they can to protect and preserve institutions that directly touch the lives of millions of people." Robert Preston, BBC News

The events of this week are the final full-stop at the end of the long, rather tedious Thatcher-Blair era when free market dogma was seen to trump all other concerns and put an end to sensible political debates about how our economies should best be structured and run. Suddenly, it's all up for grabs again, and so much the better.

Trumpeted by Reagan and Thatcher and followed blindly ever since, the dogma that people's interests should be subordinated come what may to the whims of the free market rolled back some of the best achievements of the twentieth century. This flawed doctrine bequeathed us the evil inheritance of an ever widening gap between rich and poor, unviable economic prescriptions for developing nations, spiralling property prices, economies built on "industries" that produced nothing, increasing profits in the hands of Fat Cats and financiers, and ever more miserly wages for people who actually did the work and produced the goods. Even more seriously, it was this apparently unassailable idea which has brought the global environment to the brink of collapse. Finally, (finally!) the system has begun to implode.

This leaves an intellectual vacuum into which the new ecological thinking, hitherto dismissed as a heresy of the fringe, can begin to develop and mature in the arena of serious debate. Unfettered by a dogma which now looks as dated and irrelevant as the scholasticism of Medieval Christendom, people (and possibly even the less cautious politicians, when they eventually put down their hymn sheets and realise the world has moved on) will be able to debate green and sustainable solutions to the global problems of the new century without being shouted down. We can dare to imagine, for instance, repowering with wind and solar energy. We can now do better to provide a decent standard of living for everyone without relying on "trickle down". Once unthinkable, now that governments have shown they will actually intervene in the economic sphere, such completely affordable aspirations are now possible with a bit of political imagination and a whole lot of pressure from people on the streets.

We may be going through the birth pangs of a new era and it's been a long time - my whole adult life - coming. The battle of ideas is back on, and there's a whole world out there to be claimed. "For the many", Mr Blair, actually for the many. Good night free market fundamentalism. You won't be missed.

2008-08-02T06:07:00.008Z

IRREVERSIBLE

"Today is just another Friday in August. Drowsy and close. Office workers' minds are fixed on the weekend, clock-watching, waiting perhaps for a holiday if your finances have escaped the credit crunch and rising food and fuel prices. In the evening, trains will be littered with abandoned newspaper sports pages, all pretending interest in the football transfers. For once it seems justified to repeat TS Eliot's famous lines: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."
Andrew Sims, New Economic Foundation, writing in the Guardian

(Today I felt like a child who has woken up from a nightmare, except that it's a waking dream and it's continuing. There is almost no one who understands the situation; there's little comfort to be had; it's crouching in the shadows every minute; I'm powerless.)

100 months

from the same article: "But does it have to be this way? Must we curdle in our complacency and allow our cynicism about politicians to give them an easy ride as they fail to act in our, the national and the planet's best interest? There is now a different clock to watch than the one on the office wall. Contrary to being a counsel of despair, it tells us that everything we do from now matters. And, possibly more so than at any other time in recent history."

There's little comfort in that, because most of the people are like the politicians: no one seems to want to know.

get ready for 4 degrees

2008-03-01T14:07:00.011Z

JAMES LOVELOCK, PASCAL'S WAGER, RALPH NADER & THE ROBOTS

In The Revenge Of Gaia, the new book by the climate scientist James Lovelock, he "predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater." (from an article in today's Guardian.) Given that some kind of catastrophe is inevitable, Lovelock's solution is to "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years till it hits the fan." A lot of people I know have been saying this kind of thing for a while; often they're the same ones who refused to believe in the ecological crisis when it first burst, well, crept, into the newspapers in the late 1980s. Funny, that. Of course it's nice to live with the weight of the world lifted from your shoulders... but there's a more intelligent solution.

We've been here before, in the face of another great defining moment, the retreat of religion. At the time when there was still uncertainty about God's existence, French philosopher Pascal came up with his famous "wager', namely that in the face of this uncertainty, it was a better bet to believe in God because of the size of the prize i.e. eternal bliss. Presumably, the pleasure we might lose in terms of reining in the worst of our Earthly desires would be made up for in the sense of serenity we'd experience by doing the right thing? Anyway, this is how I understand it.

Something similar applies now. It is simply a better bet to act as if we can ameliorate the climate catastrophe. Until we're sure we can't. This time it's the size of the possible loss that counts.

On a related topic, given that we expect climate catastrophe, and that we have daily exposure to the latest evidence (if such were needed) that capitalism isn't working very well at the moment, why isn't there more of a fuss about veteran campaigner Ralph Nader's presidential bid?

Take a minute to look at what Nader stands for. Click the link, go on. He wants to cut the bloated military budget, adopt a carbon tax, lead an "aggressive" clampdown on corporate crime and - if this doesn't sell him, nothing will - impeach Bush & Cheney! None of the other candidates would dare to confront corporate power. But isn't this precisely what needs to be done in 2008? It's hard to believe that so many millions of voters can't see this. (Ignorant? Stupid? Androids? A combination of all of these?)

The mainstream politicians wallow in the public's ignorance/stupidity/roboticness, of course. Even though it's clear we are locked into a kind of danse macabre with global corporations, none of them have the imagination to disengage from this, or even talk about how this might be done. We can have "change", Mr Obama, but it needs to be radical and visionary.

I would like to see the current generation of politicians swept away - by the ballot box if possible, but by any means necessary - to be replaced by more courageous people, like Nader, who are not afraid to say what they believe, and whom we can therefore trust to respond effectively to the current crisis in capitalism, and to the threat of global catastrophe.

2007-12-31T12:08:00.000Z

"ENJOY YOURSELF. IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK"

Even though I'm not a polar bear, at the end of 2007, everything has come to seem increasingly temporary to me and I'm not sure quite how to lay plans. I'm trying to prepare myself psychologically. Above all, I'm trying to lighten up and just to get on with things. That explains the title, from a great old Specials song.

It's been a really bad year for polar bears.

"On Sunday 16 September 2007, the sea ice covering the Arctic ocean melted back to a record low point. It has always melted back in the summer, but in recent years it has retreated further and further, to new lows, strongly suggesting the influence of climate change. The 2007 retreat, however, shattered the previous record, set only two years earlier, by a quite colossal amount, an amount so enormous as to be scarcely credible. It exceeded the September 2005 low point by another 22 per cent – an area of 1.2 million square kilometres, or more than 385,000 square miles. This represents an extra area of ice five times the size of the United Kingdom. Gone in a single summer. If you consider that and you don't think the world is rapidly warming up, what do you need to convince you?" Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 28.12.07

The main event of the year was this, and the weak (but not wholly disappointing) response of the UN Climate conference in Bali. With a potential rise of 6.4 degrees in global temperatures by the end of the century, which would make life on the planet unviable, (source: IPCC Report) what should my response be?

And then there's the - potentially - even more urgent question. What happens if the oil runs out? Despite the awful problems with biofuels, I still want to know (very selfishly) whether they can lubricate mechanical parts, power planes, and be used in the manufacture of plastics. Politicians have largely avoided talking about the potential scarcity of oil from about 2015 onwards, probably because, compared with global warming, we aren't even close to consensus on this. But you have to think. (Don't you? Don't you?) Will we be catapulted within a couple of decades back to an almost pre-modern (static, localised) society? Will the internet and other media work in a society where oil is unavailable or twice as expensive? Will technology and transport be the exclusive preserve of the very rich? At the very least, a huge hike in oil prices must lead to an unprecedented economic recession. As for the other consequences, they're hard to see. I'm not an economist. But jobs, house prices, the whole social order are going to change. My sector, teaching EFL, will shrink drastically with any recession in international trade.

I may be crazy. I think this because almost no one else is talking about it! This is what it must feel like to be mad. But I can't pretend that prospects like these don't overshadow most of my hopes as I look to 2008 and beyond. Ultimately it feels like planning a last gasp holiday, or a final fling, just before the shit hits the fan. There will be last gasps and final flings in 2008.

To lighten up for a moment, here's my other review of 2007:

BEST MOMENT
I loved everything about Zurich, especially looking down my street to the mountains beyond. Also seeing the turquoise waters at Plitvice for the first time, on a photograph and then for real.

FILMS
Atonement (not seen until 20th Jan 2008)
The Lives Of Others
This is England
Notes On A Scandal
The Last King Of Scotland

BEST THING I SAW
rewatched Our Friends In The North

ALBUMS
King Creosote - Bombshell (for great songwriting)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (for the voices)
The Shins - Wincing The Night Away (the melodic hooks)
and the Radiohead album turned out to be great, after about the 5th hearing

GIGS
Madness at the Sziget!
Roger Waters in Budapest (for those timeless songs, and how he stitched them together into a whole)
Gogol Bordello at A38, Budapest (for the sheer energy)

BEST THINGS I HEARD ALL YEAR
Shearwater - Palo Santo
The Good The Bad & The Queen - Herculean
Simian Mobile Disco - Sleep Deprivation
And the best album, not from 2007 I don't think, was The Rough Guide To The Music of Hawaii.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS
DELTA
Led Zeppelin reunion (I wasn't there, I want them to tour)
Facebook (I am there, and wondering if the novelty will fade in 2008)

BOOKS
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Martin Amis - London Fields (both of these for the imaginative scope, the characters and the prose)
Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers & John Sloboda - Beyond Terror (for the facts. If there are such things, and it's a moot point, then here they are, and in a little over 100 pages.)

2007-12-14T08:55:00.000Z

2007 CHRISTMAS CAROL: A TALE OF EVERYDAY BETRAYAL

dedicated to the negotiating teams from USA, Canada and Japan who served us so memorably at Bali:

In ten days' time, they'll be knocking back the wine, having watched their children sing about the baby Jesus and how the new-born king came to save the world. They might get a little dewy-eyed then, and while they watch again the tale of Tiny Tim they'll probably "reconsecrate" their hard hearts to him. But we who watched it all on TV will never forget their moment now, how those gutless gentlemen couldn't muster their sentiments in the Earth's defence, even in the face of all that evidence. They probably thought they were pretty smart, obviously mindful of their great careers, even as the world was coming apart around their ears.

2007-11-24T09:22:00.001Z

IT'S DRIVING ME URBANE

When I was a student, we used to talk about what was going on in our souls. Now we make polite conversation. We used to "set the world to rights". Now anything of epic proportions is ventured tentatively, and to close friends only. To see if they're in the mood. We used to revel in exploring the mysteries of life and death and consciousness. We'd speculate wildly about radical schemes, and shout about love to the sky. Nothing was taboo. I know it was a bit strident sometimes, a bit direct and unhewn, but it was in some ways randomly philosophical. And I liked that. Now we're features journalists. Like Sunday magazine articles, each carefully hedged opinion is as unlikely to give offence as it is to raise a flicker of real excitement. I often find. I wonder what happened in the years in between. Did something change our minds?

2007-11-24T08:45:00.000Z

END OF THE WORLD - BUT NOT IN HUNGARY

Saturday December 8th is the International Day of Climate Change Protests. It is, arguably, the most important protest in human history in that the issues concerned urgently affect us all, although doubtless it will come and go, and be forgotten. The latest IPCC Report warns starkly of "abrupt and irreversible changes" if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions, and global leaders are meeting in Bali to cobble together whatever bland compromise they imagine their electorates can stomach.

We, the people, are gathering on the streets to urge them to go further, to let them know that we care about policy in this area, that we acknowledge the apocalyptic nature not only of the report, but of events occurring weekly in the News.

Although protests will take place in at least 83 countries, including Albania and Belarus, there is no action planned for Hungary. Presumably it will be isolated from the economic and social upheavals in the next decades by virtue of being well inland? I understand that people are dealing with seemingly more urgent and relevant problems here, but it is frustrating and bewildering that so few pay any interest at all in this era-defining issue that is ineluctably coming home to roost.

Global Climate Campaign

2007-11-03T05:33:00.000Z

MALAISE

I'm thrown from pillar to post
Don't know what I fear the most
My escape plans are littering the ground
Broken window where the world came in
Stomach-churning dose of vitamins
Will help me make the right constructive sounds

I feel I've lost control
Got a riot for a soul
And they're looking for somebody to kill
All their faces are mocking masks
As my decisions are disasters
And the procession is winding down the hill

There's nothing I've ever done
Made a difference to anyone
Of my deeds, there's little to record
Now the river has burst its banks
And all its filth has filled my tank
And its noise will drown my final words

2007-10-28T06:44:00.000Z

IN PRAISE OF KING CREOSOTE

As a songwriter, especially one going through a fallow period, you can tell immediately when someone else has just *got it*. The muse, the knack, the moment - whatever you want to call it. You don't get jealous or anything - you just listen and marvel. This year it's King Creosote. He's been producing material from his base in Fife for years now, but I don't know his back catalogue at all. The songs on his new album Bombshell are irresistably good, all of them. The lyrics are often from the heart and always to the point. They are original, often yearningly romantic, occasionally witty and with (refreshingly, in the days of Radiohead) no pretentiousness at all. The melodicism is effortless, so there's no need to surround it with sound effects. His voice, while often sailing off into falsetto, doesn't grate and is surprisingly rich. I like his musical principles too: "King Creosote maintains that the song is more important than the style, and that the performance outweighs recording quality. If a part can’t be recorded in one take, scrap it for something simpler." I reckon it might be the best album of 2007.

Some lyrics I liked from the last track:

"And your words chased round and round in my head last night
they chased their own tails
and your words jigged round my mind all night
to look at me now I'm quiet as sand
and the tide shrinks back into its womb
and I hope the empty shells and bones of your stories
will litter and clutter the shore
and I hope that when I find them
I'll remember how they danced
and the racket they made
when they were alive"

(c) King Creosote, 2007

King Creosote site
KC on Guardian Weekly podcast

2007-09-20T05:54:00.000Z

POSTSCRIPT: A QUESTION FOR SCHEDULERS

Since News editors feel they must feed viewers the daily gruel of "the" Business and "the" Sport - mostly any old thing they've dredged up, stories which are mind-altering in their elevation of the banal and irrelevant to headline material, perhaps they could find a slot for the Planet?

After all, if you think you can turn stock market movements into edge-of-the-seat stuff, why not try your hand at raising interest in the end of the world?

Here is today's News.

George Monbiot: the apocalypse, with sources

Climate Change Coming Home: The Guardian

To The End Of The Earth

2007-09-19T16:35:00.000Z

WAKE UP CALL

I can't compose today. I feel too upset and actually disturbed about the unfolding events in Ghana and the rest of Africa, which was the main item on the BBC World Service news on Saturday. It's heightened by the fact I used to live there. Global warming is coming home, to stay. My friends and I *all* knew this was going to happen as long ago as 1987. Some dolphin crisis (as I remember) brought the Environment to the attention of the wider public and the Greens got 15% in the next UK European election.

Books were published. Artists caught on: "India under water, Africa - walking, What a scene of confusion, and the seas rising" - Julian Cope, Give Me Back My Flag, 1992. Climate change was in the new National Curriculum in 1992. And the kids sent their paper leaves with their thoughts on to the Rio Earth Summit. Hopes were high.

I kept saying over and over that the impending crisis ought to be on all the front pages and in all TV News bulletins every day. Of course, the media let us down, and they are still doing so. What's on CNN today? Interest rates and, just like in 1995, O.J. fucking Simpson! They haven't even run the Africa story yet; probably because the journalists can't or won't get into the disaster zones to take pictures.

Most Ghanaians are deeply religious, open-hearted, resilient people. It's another "land of smiles". Against all the odds, they persevere in their steady faith and optimism. And they have an engaging sense of humour and of the absurd: they know the odds are stacked against them. And now the fields lie flooded, and hundreds of thousands are displaced, their rickety mud and straw huts washed away. The outlook is bleaker - food shortages because of the drowned crops; increased occurrence of malaria; cholera; even locusts, to make it truly Biblical. (To echo John Humphrys, where was God?)

BBC NEWS: Africans' responses

We all let them down. But most of all, the politicians, who should have known much better, let them down. For twenty years they have soldiered on in the vain pursuit of economic growth at all costs - full steam ahead. And if that were not enough, they planned wars to guarantee that precious oil supply, which unsettled the whole Middle East. Ignoring the Environment and huge disparities of wealth, they are directly to blame for the "Terror" we hear so much about now. How different things might have been if they had thought to invest heavily in renewable energy in the 90s, or bring in "carbon credits", which I first heard about around the same time. Apart from Prince Charles, Al Gore's was the only prominent voice I heard promoting green issues, but even he did little at Kyoto and was strangely silent about the Big E during his Presidential bid in 2000, splitting the Green vote, and consequently losing California. And we all know what happened next. Cheers for the great movie, Al - I've almost forgiven you.

In December, these politicians are assembling for yet another expenses-paid international talking shop. This time they had better act and bring in some of those mythical "tough targets". Because if we fail to keep the temperature increase below 2 degrees, all Hell will break loose. Not just for the poor Africans, either - the security implications will threaten everyone's comfortable lifestyle.

We have a global village, and the internet is amazing. People in huge numbers support Green issues. And - shock! - would vote for them. I have that much faith left in people. And there's no dearth of ideas. People in the public eye only need to speak up. Imagine if we had a Green alternative to vote for, for example. How hard would it be for Brown, Cameron or any of those Presidential hopefuls to cobble that together? And CNN - How hard would it be to follow the BBC World Service's lead and "front" (or just run) the story, the one which is the underlying and compelling narrative of our times?

2007-09-02T13:30:00.000Z

SOME TIME IN TIMISOARA

I arrived in Timisoara thinking it would be more or less a den of thieves, and worried about being conspicuously Western (even though my three years in Budapest ought to mean I've become "Central") and the rickety railway station, with a few down-on-their-luck-looking characters hanging about, confirmed my prejudice that I was now in the Wild East.

Admittedly, the train journey wasn't fun, as I had to fight a particularly grumpy Hungarian woman for the privilege to open the window, which she immediately closed, then, seeing I wasn't about to give way, proceeded to scowl and sigh about, casting exasperated glances to win support from our fellow compartmentees. They all looked sullen and ugly - probably I did too - and I'd been warned not too fall asleep in case I lost all my belongings. But doze off I - inevitably - did. Luckily, all my stuff was present and correct on waking. The countyside as you cross the border is particularly grim-looking; a chemical pipeling, miles long with the lagging peeling away goes right through people's gardens below head height. You notice that all the buildings are either depressing blocks with the paint peeling, or else industrial plants.

So much for (what I saw of) the countryside. Timosoara is different altogether. In the centre are impressive squares, the prettiest of which is cobbled and surrounded by the usual kind of Imperial buildings in the style of Christmas cards, with geometric arched facades painted in pastel colours, and high-angled rooftops. Many are in a state of advanced decrepitude, some still cratered by war, but the elegance stubbornly remains. Much of the square itself is now shaded by the parasols of terrace cafes. Here, the waitresses carefully squirt dilute blue detergent on to the paper tissue placed in each ash tray.

What surprised me the most was the amount of wealth here. Of course, leaving the centre, there are the usual Communist blocks which a few of the owners have beautified with flowers on the balconies. (Flowers are really popular here - a large section of the central market is given over to dozens of flower stalls.) Just beyond, it was easy to locate the enormous Julius Mall, which dwarfs the buildings around it. With four floors, it's the biggest I've seen, a mall-as-city on an American scale. And it's busy. People are drinking beer and coffee (at inflated prices) in the perimeter cafes, and the car park is full of cars. While I drank my beer, four wedding parties went in - is there a registry office in there, perhaps, or are they just topping up on flowers? The cutomers are mostly loaded with the expected plastic bags, and everyone is sporting sunglasses and clothes in the latest styles (long shorts, short tops, etc) - including the children. It doesn't look like a poor country from where I'm sitting.

A final mystery is the rich Roma families. No one quite knows how they get their money. I was told "don't ask", but I did, and the stories you get are uniformly nasty - it's begging, at best, or selling their children in the West. Well, I once saw a Roma woman in Budapest doing the hard-sell with pairs of socks in Budapest - this wouldn't be enough to fund the kind of palaces these families are building near my school. These are ostentatious, in the very grandest of styles - conical pinnacles of towers, balconies with pillars, often roughly finished. They're similar to the Western mock-gothic, except with a definite Oriental twist that makes me think of the Arabian Nights and the Golden Horde. (My architectural vocabulary isn't wide enough to do them justice; I'd call them "Sultanic".) Everyone says they're tasteless, but the cones and pinnacles aren't so different to my eyes from those of the magnificent Orthodox cathedral in the town centre.

Some of these buildings could fuel urban vampre fantasies. I bought a bottle of Transylvanian "V" wine. With a drop of blood dripping from the logo, it boasted the fact that it was made from the "grapes of immortality". In small print underneath, it turned out that V drinks are a company from that well-known haunt of the undead, Cardiff!

2007-07-26T18:26:00.000Z

TOUR DE FRANCE

What a bloody fuss about nothing! I heard someone say that doping should be made a criminal offence. Why? Let them all take as many drugs as they want if it makes them go faster, which is the whole point of the thing - or did I miss something? Far from being the end of the TdF, it could usher in a new era of performance-enhanced sport which might be slightly less tedious to watch on TV. Next item, please...

2007-07-21T08:06:00.001Z

FEEL THE HEAT

As I type, the fan is hissing away in the corner, making some currents in the air. Because they carry a little of the cool of morning, these are welcome relief from the heatwave. My shutters are closed to preserve what’s left. Outside, at 9am, it’s already 27 degrees and in the day temperatures have soared to 42 degrees in the shade. This means that most fans feel like hair-driers, and you start to go a little crazy. You’d give your entire salary for the week for a big, cool slice of watermelon; luckily, these are so plentiful that they’re almost giving them away. The other day, I went for an ice coffee but the outdoor café was deserted; it was too hot, even under the parasols. Nearby, people were standing fully clothed under some kind of sprinkler system.

All round the city, various stinks have been let loose: foul-sweet decay, a mild smell of sewage and something fungal. The sources of these are obscure, buried somewhere. If I arrive home without having done all the dishes and wiped all the surfaces spotless, there will be an army of ants massing on every wooden spoon and missed drop of fruit juice. It's the kind of weather to listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash. Or have a cold shower and then dry off in front of a fan.

2007-06-14T17:25:00.000Z

CIVILISATION & DEVELOPMENT

"Sometimes we wonder... when you look at the developed world, whether there is in fact an advancement in terms of civilisation or whether there has been a de-civilisation. Because civilisation has to do with the development of the human individual, the mind, the finer aspects of humanity, and I think those are lost."

Jigmi Thinley, Home & Cultural Affairs Minister, Bhutan on The Happiness Formula, BBC World

2007-05-31T20:50:00.000Z

FRANK HISTORY

Not so much lost in translation, as added to. Found in a historical brochure about Tihany, beautiful hilltop town overlooking Lake Balaton. "The name (Pale Hill)...goes back to the time when the soldiers of the fortress impaled the Turks who abducted Hungarian women and screwed the peasantry."

2007-05-31T19:02:00.000Z

40
Happy Birthday Sgt Pepper. I remember buying it at 12 years old, and listening to it in some altered states a few years later. Possibly it doesn't deserve all the admiration heaped on it originally, I don't know. (It's so familiar now, it's hard to be objective.) Who cares? I say forget the "cultural turning point" stuff. Get a good (CD) version. Put it on - headphones. Turn the volume up. Listen to the actual band, especially the bass lines (Getting Better, Lucy in The Sky...) It's good. Oh, and it was made on a 4-track tape recorder too...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1873290.ece

2007-05-12T12:21:00.000Z

VICIOUS

It is inevitable that anyone in the political arena meets their nemesis, falters and ultimately fails - in my lifetime, I remember the fall of Gorbachev and Thatcher in particular. I'm not going to add to the commentary on Blair's legacy now; I still think broadly what I said on this blog in June 2006, that his career is tragic in some ways. (Though, of course, he's made a lot of money etc. Not the point!)

What has shocked me is the comments of members of the public on sites like BBC News and The Times Online. They are not just uncharitable, but full of a visceral hatred for Blair. "May he rot in Hell" etc. Of course he has made mistakes, perhaps based on serious character flaws - but would it be possible to hold power for a decade and get everything right? I really don't understand why he evinces such unrestrained vituperation from people who once (surely) cheered him on. It's an eerie, actually frightening, manifestation of the fickle mob in Julius Caesar.

I have less of a problem with people who have disliked Blair all along!

On a lighter note: evinces violent, vicious, venomous, vituperative, vengeful, visceral hatred. And V for Vendetta.

2007-05-10T06:20:00.000Z

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

World expenditure on military research and development in 2005: $1,118 BILLION

Source: Beyond Terror (Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers & John Sloboda, 2007) I recommend this book for anyone interested in the roots of current world crises. It describes very elegantly (100 pages) how competition for resources and the terrorist threat are inextricably linked, as well as providing an alternative blueprint for future development. The money is clearly available for alternative technologies (see above!) All that is lacking is the political will. Where are the politicians who are prepared to stick their necks out, and face up to the real threats?

2007-05-09T15:15:00.000Z

EXULTESCENCE?

Tomorrow's my birthday, and I will be at the very extreme of being "thirty something". Life's good, but it's been missing certain things. In some cases, I have no idea whether these are good things or bad things to lack.

Broken River by Ruary Allan, Art Alchemist

1. I've never been engaged, married, or owned property.
2. I've never owned a car, or driven to work. In fact, I've never commuted to work in a commuter train either, in the sense of packing myself in, reading Metro and wishing it would all go away. I once did a reverse commute for a couple of years. When the weather's warm, I cycle to work now.
3. I've never been to Ikea, or bought furniture from Habitat. I once had a friend help me put up some shelves in the early 90s. It was good to see all my books (which are now lost to me - in eternal storage) but it didn't make me into a DIY enthusiast.
4. As an adult, I've never believed fully in any "ism"s. Buddhism has a strong appeal, but I'm not very good at it, and I stop short at myths of reincarnation, gods and demons.
5. I have never really had anyone to vote for in the sense that a radical green alternative has never been available. I remember shaking Blair's hand on that sunny morning in Downing Street (May 2 1997) but his record means that I will never again believe promises of change from young, gifted politicians.
6. Finally, although I appreciate clever art (most recently in some of the witty prose in Gormenghast) I'm still more into directness than sophistication, especially in real life.

Mandala by Olyfka Brabcova

I was sent this quotation today. It's Kenneth Graeme talking about children: "their simple acceptance of the mood of wonderment, their readiness to welcome a perfect miracle at any hour of the day or night, is a thing more precious than any of the laboured acquisition of adult mankind." Is this something you inevitably lose? It seems like a good way to live. Every time I leave my flat and the outside air hits my face, I exult in the sensation.

Weltschmerzen? Manchmal, aber:
"...it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday." Lester Burnham in American Beauty.

2007-05-06T11:16:00.000Z

SECOND-HAND BOOK SHOPPING

Every Saturday morning, almost without fail, I go to the market to buy food for the week. Yesterday when a friend texted me about meeting up instead, it felt great to break with routine and swap the usual vegetable run for a bit of book browsing and a pub lunch. It was the first time I'd been to Red Bus Books, Budapest's biggest second-hand shop for books in English. The place has the unmistakable smell you always get in second-hand bookshops, and a tangible sense of unhurriedness. As well as Gormenghast, the second of the Mervyn Peake trilogy, I picked up Bobby Kennedy's memoirs of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a 1969 edition of The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois, a seminal text of what was to become the civil rights movement, about the experience of Afro-Americans at the turn of the 20th Century. In a new bookshop I'd never have looked for these. It's this prospect of stumbling across something unexpectedly that is the point of second-hand shops, and also of routine-breaking.

2007-05-06T09:39:00.000Z

PRUNESQUALLOR

In Titus Groan, Dr Prunesquallor is a perceptive character, one with which the reader eventually identifies as he is the only one with a true sense of perspective on his world, something he is careful to mask with florid but empty pronouncements. In this scene, he encounters the scheming and Machiavellian Steerpike, a former kitchen servent who has recently absconded.

"Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you're wearing?"

"Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor."

"And what," said Prunesquallor, placing the tips of his fingers together, "are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter's kitchen. What are you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?"

"With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas, though at the moment plenty of problems, too."

"Is that so?" said the Doctor. "Is that so? How very unique! Have your brandy first and perhaps some of them will fade gently away upon the fumes of that very excellent narcotic. Ha, ha, ha! Fade gently and imperceptibly away..." And he fluttered his long fingers in the air.

...

"Steerpike," said the youth. "My name is Steerpike, sir."

"Steerpike of the Many Problems," said the Doctor. "What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It's as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral blood vessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckes of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! - Or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies - these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! but ask me to remember exactly what you said your problems were a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now, why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?"

"Because I never mentioned them," said Steerpike.

"That accounts for it," said Prunesquallor. "That, no doubt, accounts for it."

2007-05-06T09:19:00.000Z

DICKENS IN A CASTLE

I have just finished reading Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. It’s been a great read, and I wonder why it took me so many years to get round to it. I saw an excellent stage adaptation in the mid-90s and that was enough gothic fantasy at the time, but of course I reckoned without Peake’s beautiful, elaborate – occasionally overwrought – prose style, in which words like “adumbrate” and “umbrageous” sit comfortably, and which is perfectly suited to describing the world of Gormenghast.

Pre-dating the first of the Lord Of The Rings books by two years, Titus Groan introduces the reader to a world as perfectly realised as Tolkien’s, full of colour and populated by unforgettably spiky characters, but thankfully free of elves and magic. The castle itself looms over its world, its occupants with their internal monologues and power struggles being the focus of the action. It is a place bound by calcified ritual and forms the backdrop to all the important scenes. Peake himself seems to be held in its spell; when his narrative occasionally wanders away from Gormenghast, it becomes far less compelling and much more the stuff of a more ordinary fantasy.

The best part of the book is the animation of the characters. A vein of dark humour permeates the pages as the author hones their idiosyncracies, like one of his own “Bright Carvers” - every twitch, stride and thought process is catalogued in detail. Their names are equally evocative: Sepulchrave, Dr Prunesquallor, Fuchsia, Swelter, Flay. Imagine Dickens set in a castle.

Like Dickens, Peake experiments with a variety of prose and narrative style. For example, when he portrays the same event from the point of view of all the characters present, or the half page devoted to the description of a raindrop trickling down a leaf. There are so many passages I could quote. The teenager Fuchsia’s love for her attic space (with echoes of Yeats’s Long-Legged Fly, perhaps) is beautifully captured here.

“As Fuchsia climbed into the winding darkness her body was impregnated and made faint by a qualm as of green April. Her heart beat painfully.

There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inward as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.

The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast… The love of a painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes’ handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love.”

Gormenghast home page

2007-03-04T10:28:00.000Z

IS IT A TARDIS?

People sometimes point out that phone boxes are obsolete. So I thought I'd preserve this futuristic Swiss phone box here. Along with sleek shower-heads, windows that open two ways, self-cleaning garlic crushers, symmetrical door keys (so you can't insert them upside-down) and the omnipresent multi-blade penknives, it's a design classic. Oh, of course it's graffiti- and urine-free, and hasn't been smashed up. What do Swiss teenagers find to do in the evenings?

2007-03-04T09:45:00.000Z

HELLO SPRING

This was taken on 4 February. But now it's March and I'm more in the mood.

2007-02-18T16:31:00.000Z

THE BALLOON MAN

I was going to go to an art gallery today, but again the sun was far too bright, so I took a walk by the lake again. Of course, half the city had had the same idea. I get the sense that it's a weekly ritual. Anyway, it wasn't bad to be in the crowd. I heard a busker who was a bit different from normal. Dylan-ish, and peddling some light lyrics drawn from from the Perennial Philosophy that were perfect for this hazy cusp-of-Spring day: the simple things in life are what's going to get you through and they don't cost money; look forward to tomorrow and don't pore over a yesterday that's gone; happiness may be very close by. And as he went into the choruses, his two puppets (Jean-Paul & Mohammed) started clopping their wooden feet on a box-top in time. The light shone off the lake and I felt that, yes, everything was all right with life.

Between songs, Greg (his name was on his CDs) was exhorting people to smile: "never underestimate the power of a smile", "Every smile is beautiful. Some of the best smiles I've seen had no teeth at all." "Even if you've had trouble in your life, you can still smile." He was twisting up balloons for kids and he'd say "that's a great smile. That's worth a balloon. I know you're gonna get married with a smile like that!"

The marriage thing was just a joke, but of course set me off reflecting. It struck me how heavy my ponderous thoughts have become, and how melanchlolic my songwriting style is! (Five out of the two hundred-plus I've written are what you'd call happy. Hm, wonder why everyone always preferred the cover versions when I used to do gigs?) I'm good with friends and I seem to make friends for life - but still pretty hopeless at parties. I've always seen a new face as a potential challenge, and if someone (perhaps a girl) smiles at me, I think it's for the person behind me and miss the moment. I don't smile at women on the street or in bars in case they think I'm leering. (Why on earth should I feel guilty about just smiling?) Once, seeing me walking along the pavement to meet him, my best friend told me I looked as if I was about to murder someone. The funny thing is, despite feeling slightly lost (first and only time in Stoke Newington) I was feeling just fine. Maybe it was the Stoke Newington effect.

I don't know how it came to be this way! Hitting adulthood as the no-future ecological crisis exploded over me didn't help. But other students didn't seem to bother so much that their world was ending. This has a longer history; one primary teacher wrote in my report "Neil takes life far too seriously." I don't feel down. I'm pretty upbeat. But I'd give a lot to (re)discover levity, an easy smile and to write more happy songs! Greg remarked (lightly, with a smile) to the audience that sometimes to be able to do that is a lifetime's achievement.

2007-02-18T11:12:00.000Z

FASNACHT IN LUZERN

I took the train to Lucerne yesterday - it's only 50 minutes away. Yes, that's 50 minutes exactly - both ways. It really is true about everything here running like clockwork. Normally, I just treat bus timetables as some kind of approximation - but the other night, after an Irish folk session, we turned up for the last bus at midnight, and there it was. It even waited till 12.02, the exact scheduled departure time.

Anyway, Lucerne - surrounded by mountains, and on a beautiful wide lake. I can't get bored of this. I've seen lots of mountains in Scotland, but they're not jagged and snow-capped. So first off, I got myself a Glühwein and just gazed for a bit. It's another very charming picture postcard town with a Middle Ages feel: all twisty lanes and embellished facades. Just to top it off, yesterday was part of the Fasnacht festival, the local Mardi Gras, so the streets were full of marching bands, each composed of around twenty people wearing themed heads with a slightly different expression. There were horned devils, green men, and other assorted bogeys, even a procession of white-caped nightmare Elvises. All of these creatures were beating drums or playing the kind of horns where the tube curls round your body and culminates in a huge funnel (?) above your rubbery head. Next to the band trundled a small truck, from which they dispensed goodies like overly-sweet Punsch. The effect of this, and the strange organ music from the trucks - not in time with the drums, but didn't need to be - was disorientating, like being in a kind of dream - half-in half-out of the jollity and mocking masks rearing up at every turn.

2007-02-17T09:10:00.000Z

IMPRESSIONS FROM A HALF DAY OFF

On Friday, I had no input to do on the course so I found myself with a few hours free. I took the tram to town, thinking I'd go looking for some boots, but the sun was too bright in the sky and I ended up walking past the spires and clocks to the shore of the Zurich See...

It's the first real spring day and it feels as if the world has paused just here. People are basking on the benches and the wall at the water's edge.There are a lot of couples, but I'm not going to feel jealous - today, anyway. One teenage girl is bouncing a plastic bottle off her boyfriend's knees - she looks enraptured. There's an old couple, in their 70s, still arm in arm.

The water is very clean. A cormorant goes under, and I can watch its whole dive until it re-emerges half a minute later. It never seems to catch anything, though. There are hooting coots, a line of four swans, and lots of ducks, one with a big copper-coloured head and bright red beak. On the far shore, I can hear the engine of some kind of paddle-steamer hammering, slightly muffled. In the distance, behind a net curtain of mist, there are the mountains.

The sky is clear, with only a few wispy clouds and vapour trails. When I close my eyes, I feel the sun like an expert masseur relaxing all the muscles on my face. I must have been so tensed up before, and never knew. I have to take off my pullover because of the heat. I realise I've actually managed to turn off my thoughts for a few minutes, and just watch ducks.

2007-02-10T09:31:00.000Z

LOST IN TRANSLATION

This is not a fake. I am typing this verbatim from the side of a Chinese box of battery-operated vibrating condoms. You might wonder how I came into possession of these. Well, they're not mine and I reckon the best thing about them is the box. Here goes.

In sex life deficient fervor? Is because had not discovered! The reproduction healthy expert intimate bird newly promotes the appeal toy vibration life jacket, crisply crisply itches, direct excited G. The comprehensive promotion sex life quality, lets you feel the unprecedented pleasant sensation with to satisfy!

Operating instructions:
1. Takes out the product in the packing box.
2. The wrap enters the life jacket wrap to enter the vibrator first (also to be possible again to wrap directly enters vibrator use)
3. Will vibrate the link wrap to enter to the male genitals root (vibration salient point forward)
4. Presses down the switch, vibrates 15-30 minute (to be possible sustainably to open, to close)
5. This product may the men and women use in common or voluntarily the DIY use.

(Not sure I'd trust it somehow, even for DIY use.)

2007-02-10T09:09:00.000Z

ALLES IN ORDNUNG (Laundry room fun)

There's a washing machine in our small block, and you have to book time on it. That's the system in Switzerland, apparently. I signed up for a specfic time and, when I arrived, was mildly irritated to find that my name had been neatly crossed off - our neighbours wanted to reserve the thing for the entire weekend!

I'd seen their name there, but it hadn't seemed possible they wanted all days both days. Were they running an orphanage? Turns out they are both international tax and social security consultants for big business (I wonder what they actually *do*?) so work a 7-day week. Anyway, I negotiated my slot, and the guy was careful to point out that I also needed to reserve space to hang the clothes up to dry - and that I should inform my co-tutor not to hang his (black) socks on the same line as my neighbour's (white) laundry. Not because they'd be hard to distinguish from each other, obviously. Some control-freakery lurking?

POST-SCRIPT
Today, a week later, this same annoying neighbour has instructed me how to clean the powder drawer and dry the inside of the window to the machine. Oh, and the lint thing needs to be done, of course. I told him that, after nearly 40 years on the planet, it is the first time I have ever been told there's a need to clean the powder drawer, which gets a regular good soaking anyway! I told him - restraining myself - that it was "a little crazy".

2007-02-09T12:35:00.000Z

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ZURICH

I'd only been to Switzerland once before - memorable because of driving through the mountains from France in an intense lightning storm. This time, I'm here for work, so I haven't had a lot of time to admire the scenery. It helps that, on a sunny day like today, there's a great view down the street that the school is on. Framed by buildings, the road descends towards the spires at the bottom. Behind these, dwarfing them, not sky but a backdrop of slightly hazy deep blue mountains, still snow-capped even though we haven't had anything like a winter. It's all very postcard-photogenic, but I have forgotten my camera lead so I won't be posting any till later.

The buildings are unformly pretty - neat houses (Play School design) with bright coloured shutters. No high-rise buildings in our part of town, but a forest of spires, some thin like rapiers. Everything is extremely clean, and ordered. I haven't seen any homeless people on the streets - are there any? Cars actually stop for you as soon as you approach a zebra crossing. Of course, the trams run like clockwork. On my first day, taking a funicular (?) up into the hills, I travelled ticketless and inevitably ran into a whole team of inspectors. (I argued, as much for the opportunity to use my German as anything, and wrung a compromise from them.)

I can't get the idea of this perfectly ordered state like Castalia (The Glass Bead Game) out of my head.

2007-01-28T18:39:00.000Z

MORNING THOUGHT

I'm awake but only just
Thinking of the things I must
Accomplish in the day ahead
I'm so much better off in bed

2007-01-27T09:03:00.000Z

THE EMERGING DYSTOPIA

Yesterday after work I went out for a drink with Peter, an "old" socialist (as opposed to a New Labourite.) You wouldn't think there were any of these beasts still around - yet there he was, and with his utterly convincing Tony Benn impersonation, and references to class struggle and "Maggie" Thatcher, it was like going back in time. He joined Labour in 1981 and watched as Neil Kinnock betrayed the Left. Of course, he had absolutely no mercy for Tony Blair and the New Labour project. Here are some of the facts - I wish I had time to source them all properly.

1% of the UK population own... could you guess?... 89% of the wealth.

"Between 1996/97 and 2001/02, income inequality rose on a variety of measures, to reach its highest ever level (at least since comparable records began in 1961) ... Since then, income inequality has fallen, and it is now at a similar level to that in 1996/97: the net effect of eight years of Labour government has been to leave inequality effectively unchanged."
Institute of Fiscal Studies

Even though there is greater wealth among the middle strata of society, the bottom decile (10%) of the UK population are worse off in relative terms than they were under Mrs Thatcher. This is the "underclass", whose benefits have been cut under Labour and from whose ranks the bulk of the prison population (which is double what it was in the 1970s) is composed.

And then here's one statistic that has stuck in my memory: Labour, during its term in office, is estimated to have thrown away £70 billion of public money (who else's?) on consultancy fees.

In response to the idea that Labour have kept Blair because he was media-friendly after Labour's years in the wilderness, Peter pointed out that, far from being a populist, Blair has been engaged in forcing through several changes which have been unpopular in many cases - not just support of Bush in Iraq (and whole neo-con agenda) but privatisation of the London Underground, health service reforms, tuition fees, ID cards, and so on. As for people's expectations of Gordon Brown, he compared them with the, now laughable, expectations of Labour's second term - remember those?

He had three questions to which he wanted a deeper answer than the usual one (that Labour were just desperate to keep the media on-side):

How did a man like this, a conservative, get to lead the party in the first place?
Why was he permitted to remain?
Why is there no realistic left-wing alternative?

Perhaps those "deeper" answers have to do with Thatcherism: the deliberate fragmentation of the working class, particularly their group identity; increased prosperity coupled with political apathy; the interests of capital "manufacturing consent" through control of the media. There wasn't time to discuss these further.

As with the last time I heard a real Marxist speak (in Hyde Park) I left the conversation feeling badly informed (not having these kind of facts and figures at my fingertips) and also wishing that more people were interested in what was really happening in the world, rather than the many distractions of gadgets, sport, home redecoration and Big Brother. I am convinced that continued lack of engagement with politics - with no grassroots left-wing political party in the UK - can only lead to a future similar to the one portrayed in the film Children of Men last year i.e. a deeply divided, and more violent society, where an authoritarian regime protects the "haves" against the "have-nots". Or maybe we're already there.

2007-01-14T13:56:00.000Z

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

Some thoughts on happiness garnered from the last few minutes of a radio show on Christmas Day:

One speaker pointed out the fact that that happiness is a different thing from pleasure and that, realising this, we should be both more other-directed and focused on the achievement of our long-term goals; inactivity in the face of unhappiness was worst of all. "DO something, Mutley!"

Research apparently shows that happiness is largely a matter of temperament, and is generally affected only for a short time by events such as winning the lottery, or even being interned in a concentration camp, after which it eventually resumes its previous level! One speaker suggested that, if unhappy, we remember how earlier unhappiness faded over time, and things worked out - and have a drink!

I have been thinking this week how realists stand a better chance of being happy than idealists do. This is because, in the practical sphere at least, realists have adjusted their expectations in the light of experience to reflect an imperfect world, whereas idealists continue to strive for the unattainable, refusing to acknowledge, for example, the animalistic and tribal behaviours bred into us by millions of years of genetic selection. Realists are less often disappointed.

2007-01-14T11:43:00.000Z

THE PARTYGOERS

As Hunter dropped his last few Christmas cards into the station post box and reflected on the fact that all the loose ends of the year had been tied up, he savoured the prospect of the journey north. The feeling first stirred when he bought his ticket, usually around Hallowe’en – for he was a creature of habit. Now, waiting below the timetable at Kings Cross station, he read over the times and destinations with a feeling of immense pleasure. What freedom! He would spend seven hours on a train. Out of reach of mobile signals, owing nothing whatsoever to anyone, completely unavailable, with a weightless mind, he would abandon himself to the beguiling decades-old acid folk music he loved, and get intoxicated as fields and silhouetted rooftops raced by.

The rolling fog on the fields was as high as a person, or a house, and the patches of ice looked blue in the golden twilight. Hunter let his mind wander to Christmases past: the sweet smell of the gum and glitter he and his friends used to make pictures with as a child; the snow dripping from the red lettering of The Dandy; first kiss to Last Christmas; the costumed Holly King and Oak King battling it out on a snow-covered hilltop; choirs by candlelight… There was still a lot of magic around, even if it was all ultimately empty. He often felt as if he were the only one who felt it, marooned in the kind of innocent excitement and imagery that had been long ago dismissed by everyone else he knew as irrelevant to their responsible plods through adulthood.

“Hi, Hunter! Wow, haven’t seen you for ages. You’re looking well, mate. Help yourself to drinks – they’re in the kitchen.” Giles, tonight’s host, gesturing to the phalanx of bottles and cans in the kitchen, and moving off to join his colleagues in the front room.

Hunter looked around for somewhere to put down the plastic bag that contained his present. Now didn’t seem as if it was the right moment. He filled a glassful of wine, took a deep breath and walked towards the door, from which he could hear a riot of laughter. How to enter, how to begin, how to smile at people he hardly knew – basic stuff he felt he’d never properly mastered.

Entering the room, he was assailed by a little gale of laughter. He’d just missed the joke. He greeted everyone hastily, raising his glass with an awkward movement and a forced smile.

“How’s life?” this from Catherine Wood, a former classmate whom he’d hardly talked to at school, her pinched face apparently overjoyed.

Here we go, he thought. The casual humiliation of questions.

“Great, thanks. Yeah, things are going really well in London.”
“What is it you do now?”
“Well, actually…” Hunter coughed, “I’m not doing anything much! I’m trying to work on a bit of painting, so I work part-time for a lecturing agency.”
“Oh, yeah, well that’s the right idea, isn’t it? Everyone works far too hard these days anyway, don’t you think? Where are you living – have you got your own place, or?”
“It’s just too pricey down south, you know how it is. I’m sharing.”
“Oh, I see.” Catherine tried to think of a positive spin to put on it.
“It’s a bit like Men Behaving Badly, if you remember that.”
“Oh, yeah. I loved it as a student, y’know, communal living! Look, I’m just going to get another drink and I’ll be right back.”

Deserted. Hunter let his eyes pan round the room. Look nonchalant, look bored. How the Hell should he look now?

Several unmemorable conversations later, he found himself sitting with Cameron Harris, a film enthusiast and the elder brother of a friend who no longer cared to return to this part of the world.

“I really enjoyed that remake of Death In Venice,” said Hunter. “Atmospheric.”
“Well,” Cameron made a groaning sound, “It’s not my taste. I wouldn’t go to a film like that.”
“Did you think it would be a bit slow?” asked Hunter.
“I read the reviews, but I’ve never liked that director anyway. I can’t stand the way he uses those clichéd camera angles. And the acting’s not going to be worth watching with Jose whatsisname, is it? What I always want in a film is three things: a bit of challenge, like a really good twist or something; actors with presence; and something with real passion!”
“I think you’d find it was passionate, at least. No one could say…”
“What you mean by it and what I mean by it are different things. Films are my thing and I know what I’m talking about. You can say whatever you like about it, but a solitary writer on some kind of self-destructive whatever it is will never hold my attention.” Cameron said emphatically. “And the director’s a dumb twat, like I said.” He laughed.
“What did you like, this year?” Hunter ventured, wondering where along the line he had lost his sense of humour.
“Well, now, there were only three films worth the ticket price this year – in my opinion…”
“Look, I can’t do this any more. It’s too boring.”
“Pardon?” Cameron thought he’d misheard.
“You are an opinionated old bore, so I’m off.” Hunter said flatly.
“Fine.” Cameron walked away, seemingly unruffled.

Suddenly Hunter noticed how noisy it was. He ran the gauntlet of random fragments of conversation which emerged bleating and whinnying from the cigarette smoke. Someone laughed; it caught. He would have loved to be in that little crowd at that moment, but he felt himself impelled towards the door. He apologised as he made his way through the now crowded living room, and stumbled on someone’s coat.

“Sorry, sorry!”
“Hunter, you OK?” It was Giles, interrupting his stream of jovial remarks.
“Yeah, I, er, I have to go soon. There’s a present…”
“Thanks. You shouldn’t have! Look, why don’t you wait and get a taxi?”
“No, I’m just a bit sleepy, that’s all. Anyway, I put it by the coathangers.”
“OK. Look, we’ll have to go out for a drink while you’re still here – next week?”
“That’d be good. Let me know. Actually, no, sorry, I can’t be bothered. I just want to hibernate this year.”
Hunter smiled briefly, but was sorry to see his old schoolmate at a loss for words. He made a “can’t help it” gesture with his hands, looked at the floor and moved off quickly.

In the hallway, he brushed past Catherine.
“Are you off, then?’ she asked, smiling.
“Yeah, I’m feeling…”
“Sorry we didn’t get to talk more. Parties! You know how it is.”
Hunter shrugged and looked for his coat.
Catherine’s eyes followed his movements, and then looked sadly back at the living room. She fingered her glass nervously. “I would have liked to know more about your painting.”
He rounded on her. “Don’t. Patronise. Me.”
She gave a half-smile of disbelief. “Wha-at?”
“Catherine: You don’t care if I live or die.”

Outside in the street, Hunter made a quick recovery as he made contact with the cold air. He gazed at the Christmas lights – so imaginatively done this year, the Twelve Days of Christmas sparkling in blue and gold. He reflected that tonight was Yule, and the return of the light – now there was something worth celebrating. He would light a candle to that before he went to bed, just as he used to as a child. To keep the magic alive in his soul.

Beneath the coats in Giles’s flat, bathed in a puddle of Tennent’s Export at the bottom of a plastic bag, lay a forgotten painting of a brightly coloured landscape. Giles’s wife discovered it the next day, cleaned the sticky beer off the front, and put it in a drawer in case anyone came back for it.

2006-12-24T12:21:00.000Z

2006: MY LIFE ON HOLD

Here's a confession. I learned one new thing only this year - to make music on my computer. I still remember last January gazing at the time-lines and various buttons of the comparatively simple (as it turns out) software GarageBand and sighing about the learning curve that it was going to involve. With help from a couple of my friends, and a bit of encouragement about the initial results, I finally got to record an album of digital sound quality where pay-by-the-hour time was not a factor. (Never before.) There's nothing brilliant on there, but I'm not in my 20s anymore. It's a good enough album, and it's a start. Making it gave me hours of pleasure, and only a little frustration - it's much easier than old-style 8-track cassette recording. So now I have a technique, and I want to go looking for some inspiration, perhaps in some of the "nu folk" compilatons that have been released in the last year or so.

Suddenly, the kind of music I've always liked - and actually been making, since 1990 - more or less psychedelic acoustic stuff with a nod to folk tradition, has become, if not exacty mainstream, a genre that's written about in the music press. I think Devendra Banhart really got this thing going - it started happening in the States following his Golden Apples of The Sun compilation. Congratulations to people like King Creosote, Tunng, Espers and Joanna Newsom, as well as Rob da Bank and the Green Man festival (wish I could have been there) for carrying the torch! Maybe there will be enough fans of this kind of thing to come out and fund Roy Harper's pension?

With this, and Doctor Who being so popular in the UK now, I feel part of the cultural mainstream in a way I haven't for years. It's an eerie feeling. The last time was when I eagerly anticipated the third Oasis album and shook Tony Blair's hand in Downing Street (Spring '97) - neither of which I'm proud of now.

In 2006, apart from my album, I have achieved little else that's new. My life is on hold. The things I have most dearly longed for since I was a teenager, I have not got. I realise it's selfish to dwell on it. I don't.

I've managed to be unrelentingly upbeat ("unrelenting self-confidence and positivity" is a mantra I got from a friend in 2002) but sometimes it seems like putting a brave face on things. Against the backdrop of real, if not severe, disappointment, I've been getting on with it this year. Three things that have made me happy are positive feedback at work from our TEFL trainees (month after month, it's a shot in the arm); my unstintingly supportive boss; and Brindle, who keeps smiling through anything, and is determined that there's a spiritual meaning behind all of this!

I'm also happy to come home to "my" new flat in Budapest, where I can read, play, get online, and download at will. But it all seems a bit "adultescent", the Dylan period! I've often poured scorn on,

"...them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in."

feeling that I was something different - free, and for the most part happy. But I do wonder when I can comfortably begin to invest in the future in any way at all - I don't mean money and property, though that's part of it. In 2007, I would like to discover something of this, something long-term. If I don't succeed, I may turn the corner towards unhappiness and the beginnings of bitterness. There. I said it.

Best of 2006:

The best album was Broken Boy Soldiers by the Raconteurs. It's full of enthusiasm, and presses all the right retro buttons. I said that about the White Stripes before. Funny, that! "Good Ol'" MOJO picked it as album of the year too. I enjoyed every track but one, quite unusual in an album. I also enjoyed the incredibly hard-to-track down El Perro Del Mar debut (the tracks I've heard) for her lightness of touch and melodicism, and the unashamedly Hammond-driven grooves of Winner by Big Boss Man.
Some of the refreshed Beatles songs on Love were amazing - great to hear I Am The Walrus and Strawberry Fields in rounded digital brilliance. Love really worked - 9 out of 10. (My only reservation was the new ending of Strawberry Fields, which was a bit too much.) The best thing I heard all year was easily No Fit State by Hot Chip (actually from 2005) included on the Uncut compilation this month. It reminds me of the 1980s, not always a good thing, but is just such a effortlessly well crafted and well produced song, I never tire of it.

Films I liked were Knallhart (gritty realism), The Wind That Shakes The Barley (ditto), Children of Men (for the chillingly convincing vision of Britain in the future.) Best of all was Brokeback Mountain, for the reasons you've read elsewhere! And also because we've been ripping off the Texan drawl ever since in our office to mouth obscenities and let everyone know "Ah'm sick of beans" (sic?) The best TV I saw was Blackpool, a couple of years old now, probably? To me, it was just the kind of entertaining drama where you couldn't wait for the next episode. Nice to have that Dennis Potter-esque musical "commentary track" revived. The second Doctor Who series had its moments (notably, The Girl In The Fireplace) but wasn't a patch on the first.

The best books I read were (#2) Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works, where he deals neatly with Nature v Nurture and whether we should follow the ethical "dictats" of our genes - in the first two chapters! Then he goes on to discuss the mystery of consciousness... It's ambitious. Haven't finished it yet; the diagrams slow me down a lot. #1 was The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, which I read and speculated about for hours, while I was living in Minsk (June) and gazing over the forest of tower blocks in the morning sun.

Being in Minsk was the peak of the whole year for me because it underlined that you can have an unforgettable experience form something you think beforehand will be disappointing. The summer was breaking out day after day, and the reaction of the trainees to the experience of communicative teaching added some belief against the doubt about whether the job I do is worth anything at all. (When you've turned your back on the property option and have opted to earn less to gain more in other ways, you need this!) My big wish in 2007 is for something else like this, and to feel that my life has some real momentum behind it. I'm also ready to record some more, in a stranger folkier vein. So bring it on.

2006-12-21T13:58:00.000Z

THE QUALITY OF AMAZEMENT

I remember reading (in Sophie's World) the part where her philosopher friend reminds her not to lose the ability to be amazed by things. He mentions waking up to the fact that we are on a planet in the middle of "outer" space, and that we are sentient and so can reflect on it, except that people don't. Doctor Who echoes these sentiments when he tells Rose he can feel the Earth spin beneath him. The same idea is repeated in a different way in Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works when he writes about the "everyday miracles" performed by the human mind. He quotes Confucius: "A common man marvels at uncommon things: a wise man marvels at the commonplace." Now, is that enough intellectual backing? I get a lot of flak from people at work for using superlatives all the time; they think it's charmingly naive of me or something. It's not. I am in the world and this is my response: amazement.

Take this, as a random example of why. On Monday, I was travelling home for the midwinter festival (bring back the old festivals! by the way) and had time to think. I had just come through the futuristically refurbished Kings X, and I was sitting on a vehicle moving at great speed along a steel rail linking that surreal beast of a city which is London to my old home town. I was listening on these great Bose headphones I have to a digital reproduction of some Romanian gypsy musicians playing cymbalom, accordion and, over this, a seductively wailed melody line full of joy and real swagger. This was on CD not MP3 so it felt as if they were there in the same room. (Remember CDs?) I could stretch my legs out (on a cheap first class ticket) - it was bliss. And that was even before the wine hit. For the light effects, see below.

Be amazed again. It's worth it.

2006-12-21T13:10:00.000Z

MIDWINTER LIGHT - UNCAPTURED

On this season's much anticipated journey home, I had to take at least three photographs in my mind. This is because I forgot to bring my camera. In fact hardly any of my best photographs have made it on to a format which can be publicly viewed. Come to think of it, it's true of my best music, which is often lost in waking up, and the best thoughts I come across, which spring up in a conversation but are never recorded for later.

First picture. I woke up, hours ahead of everyone else, on Sunday morning at a friend's house in Kilburn. It was just beginning to get light. The window looks on to an area of greenery, but from my sofa-bed I can only see twigs, branches and part of a tree trunk, bare for December. The sun, starting to rise, makes the tree look pale blue with green shadows against the palely lit (cloudless) sky behind. Then, at once, the branches are touched with bright coppery light. It's all framed by the window and looks like a perfect cover for a wintry song collection. But not mine, this time.

Second picture (sequence of films). Seen from a train window. On Monday, the countryside north of London was shrouded in freezing fog. (Still is.) The lines of trees across the fields look like a two-dimensional scene made with (does it still exist?) tracing paper. Each strip of scenery is covered with a layer so that the trees receding into the distance are greying into white and out of view altogether while the ones close to the train are quite distinct. Suddenly as we career past Morpeth, the sun shows, ghostly behind the mist at first. It's teasing, peering, gone again - then suddenly, and this is just as my first glass of wine kicks in, the clouds are gone as we emerge from the fog, and the scene is suffused with golden light, the white layer of frost on the fields accentuating the blueness of the shadows. Later as the sun sinks, it is all Christmas card silhouettes. The smoke and other vapours have turned dark blue against the sky which is still alight, its orangeness reflected by the pools of water (or ice?) on the ground. Now the freezing dark mist is low on the fields and as high as a person, or perhaps a house.

Third picture. Walking along Aberdeen beach putting off a bit of time before the James Bond film. Airbrushed sky (bright orange again, through green, to dark blue.) I can see the impossibly thin neo-gothic spires of Marischal College, the tower blocks winking at Bridge of Don, and a couple of cranes which must be at the harbour. It is all - and I'm not kidding - a keener pleasure, a more sumptuous memorable thing, than the film itself. Or is it only me? We should rate sky scenes and window scenes higher than we do.

Happy Solstice to all light lovers. Tomorrow the sun returns to the cold fields.

2006-12-09T07:20:00.000Z

CHRISTMAS RUSH

Last weekend I went to Vienna on what's become a bit of an annual pilgrimage. I've always loved the pre-Christmas atmosphere anywhere - well, anywhere cold! It must be to do with childhood, an apprehension of magic that never quite materialises. Anyway, I went round the Christmas markets and took so many pictures of stalls that I could give you a virtual tour - but bought very little. There's something about a Christmas bauble that makes it look good in company, but throwaway on its own. Judging by the heaving crowd, it will have proved worth the stallholders' while taking all those hours to set up. In the - very - gentle haze brought on by some mulled wine, it was a perfect winter's day. The only disappointment was that there wasn't the least trace of frost in the air.

2006-10-24T06:26:00.000Z

MORE STREET TROUBLE IN BUDAPEST

I knew that something would erupt yesterday on the anniversary of the 1956 uprising in Hungary. The first signs of this were when I was recording some music in my flat and I could hear a lot of shouting - with additional reverb - coming through the headphones. I stuck the microphone out of the window to record some of what was going on. The crowd - or elements of it - were very angry, chanting "You fucked it up!" (presumably a comment on the governing party's handling of the post-1989 era). I could see people carrying, as well as lots of normal Hungarian flags, the version of the flag adopted by the wartime Nazi-supporting Arrow Cross.

Later, I assumed it had all blown over and thought nothing of it when my friend invited me out for a drink. Of course, the streets were still full with the commemorations. I heard the sound of an orchestra and saw people laying candles on the pavements as tributes to the dead. Some of the main junctions were impassable, so I had to make a big circle in order to meet my friend, trying to arrange everything on a jammed phone network. The first I knew of trouble was when he phoned to suggest a different bar after having run into the middle of a riot and having had a tear gas canister going off nearby him.

We met in a central bar which is usually packed but yesterday almost deserted. I was born in 1968 and, being a true child of the 60s, have been waiting all my life for some sort of Green revolution, so I felt guiltily like an armchair (non-)activist, not being in the thick of things, but reading about it on Reuters and BBC News instead, and sipping beer! But it's not my cause and I have no reason to object to the government here. We were told it would be safer not to leave the bar.

Of course, we did leave. It was like walking into a scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four. To begin with, there was the tear gas that made my friend's eyes stream. Drifting clouds of it were picked out by the orange/pink of the street-lighting. It smells acrid like the waterproofing spray for shoes. The exits from the area where I was and the route back to my flat were blocked by ranks of helmeted riot police. People were wandering about aimlessly, trying to get away from the rioters and avoid the police. You could hear loud bangs going off (rubber bullets, I later learned) and helicopters were circling overhead. Again I went a circuitous route, and ended up going right past the stand-off at Ferenciek Tere, where a few minutes later the barricades went up and all hell broke loose. I noticed that a lot of the paving stones had been ripped up, a sure sign that people had come equipped for trouble.

Got home, watched the rest on TV. Phoned my friend whose flat overlooks one of the flashpoints. It's his photo that's attached. As he described the battle below, the call was interrupted by the report of a gun going off, and he saw someone collapse. Amazing to think all these incredible scenes were just streets away.

This morning, looking from the tram at Nyugati (West) Station, the street seemed immaculate; no sign that there had been any trouble there at all. The atmosphere is still highly charged, but I have a sense that the organisers who wanted to unseat the government have lost their big opportunity and that things will settle down as everyone returns to work.

Pestiside's leading article on Monday's events
Riots in Hungary blog

2006-10-04T13:02:00.000Z

I was sent this poem by email. The warmth in the air is just starting to decay here in Budapest, so it's been on my mind.

THE SEVEN SORROWS TED HUGHES

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle’s palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it’s gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox’s sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox’s prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.

2006-09-26T18:17:00.000Z

STILL DELUSIONAL AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

“I am with you always, even till the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) Jesus's farewell to his disciples.

“Whatever you do, I'm always with you.” Tony Blair’s farewell speech. He can't have missed the reference. This is a better joke than the one about Cherie and the bloke next door.

You read it here first.

2006-09-20T06:52:00.000Z

ECONOMY OF STYLE

I was talking to my friend, a Graham Greene expert, who said that his style is noted for its economy. The following excerpt, from The End Of The Affair, is a wonderful example of this. It’s about the amateur rationalist philosopher Richard Bridges, who has a deformed face, and seen through the eyes of one of the major protagonists.

“I had an idea that he was a man who really loved the truth, but there was that word love again, and it was only too obvious into how many desires his love of truth could be split. A compensation for the injury of his birth, the desire for power, the wish to be admired all the more because the poor haunted face would never cause physical desire.”

The ironic comment on rationalism is insightful, and nothing new, but you have to admire that GG is able to sum up in one paragraph what it took Freud (on sublimation) and Nietzsche (on Will To Power) whole books to say!

2006-09-19T08:10:00.000Z

POLITICIAN COMES CLEAN, PROVOKES RIOT

I can’t pretend to know a lot about Hungarian politics. Even in my ignorance, however, I knew that both main parties lied about their future plans in order to win the General Election in April. And the government talked up the economic situation pre-election, while the opposition rubbished all their achievements. Big deal.

The irony is that there are riots now because Mr Gyurcsany, the PM, was inept enough actually to tell the truth about the political process! Which everyone knows anyway. I have a sneaking liking for the PM, just because he is such a maverick. Ever the politician most likely to slip on a banana skin, he actually loses patience with his party, upbraids them all for lying to the public, and publishes the whole transcript on his website. It's so blatantly the wrong thing to do, people here are hinting at some kind of conspiracy.

I'm all for less slick politicians and an end to tacit consent. If people were consistent, there’d be riots every day. Until the whole house comes crashing down.

2006-09-10T13:42:00.000Z

UPDATE ON MY LIFE IN BUDAPEST, AND THOUGHTS ON WHY GROWING UP IS HARD TO DO

Last year, a close friend visiting from the UK told me I’m living an “alternative lifestyle”. Anyway, I’ve just returned to it – for a third year, and in a new (rented) flat. I don’t know why I feel I have to justify this to myself, but I suppose living here could be considered an irresponsible choice, failing somehow to grow up and grasp the nettle.

The flat is all high ceilings, double doors, large mirrors: the feeling of 19C opulence for less than £200 a month! The previous tenant, a friend and colleague, also left her entire video and CD collection behind, for the moment at least. This weekend, I’ve been finishing off a song on my laptop, and Brindle & I have started a new instrumental piece. It’s the same feeling a child gets when playing – pure, unconstrained fun. We also took the tram to Margit Island, for a burst of colour and to take digital pictures of flower beds and each other.

This afternoon I wandered down a narrow, deserted street where the only sound was the dull beat of my trainers on a dappled pavement, and past an old church into Raday utca, where I’m writing this blog. It’s a tree-lined old world style street, with wrought iron copper-topped lampposts and a parade of cafes. It’s also a perfect early autumn day and the sun is angling in spaces between the high facades. This is pretty normal for Budapest, but basically picture postcard stuff.

Tomorrow, I am back to work. It’s the most fun job I’ve had, and in some ways the least demanding. Not that I don’t have to focus on the work during office hours, but for the first time in my life I don’t often have to take it home with me, and I am not burdened by piles of meaningless paperwork.

Well, I have the nagging feeling that I should be making pension contributions and that I should be a property owner. But I hope this blog goes some way towards explaining why I’m loath to give up life in this beautiful city for a £200,000 mortgage in Bedford or somewhere, and the stale pleasures of trailing round HMV on a Saturday, or doing up the kitchen before settling down for another instalment of Changing Rooms. There is a painless alternative. I’m living it.

2006-07-13T06:01:00.000Z

“AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED”

E.F. Schumacher’s ideas in Small is Beautiful have come as a revelation to me. I honestly believe that if the political will existed to apply these ideas, the problems associated with climate change, poverty and social breakdown would be ameliorated. It is not a case of not being able afford to do these things - "economically." We can't afford NOT to.

Schumacher exposes the craziness of narrowly-defined economic thinking, and criticises progress viewed merely as a “forward stampede”. I couldn’t help thinking of Tony Blair when he characterises people who hold this view, but it would be equally true of all politicians in the post-Thatcher mould. That's all of the major parties, isn't it? “You cannot stand still, they say; standing still means going down… we must take our fight forward and not be fainthearted… if there is trouble with the environment, we shall need more stringent laws against pollution, and faster economic growth to pay for anti-pollution measures… if there are problems about fossil fuels, we shall move from slow reactors to fast breeders.” etc.

By contrast, Schumacher’s humanistic economics wants to give the idea of growth “a qualitative dimension”. We need to take stock and see that we are destroying the very basis of our existence. Then, using the courage of our convictions, decide which things we want to help grow, and which we'd like to see less of.

BUDDHIST ECONOMICS

Here are his ideas on labour (from Wikipedia):

1. “From the point of view of the employer, it (labour) is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice.”
2. “From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil.”
3. The Buddhist view, “takes the function of work to be at least threefold”: “to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.”
4. “to organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence”.

TECHNOLOGY WITH A HUMAN FACE

“Modern technology has deprived man of the kind of work that he enjoys most, creative useful work with hands and brains, and given him plenty of work of a fragmented kind, most of which he does not enjoy at all.”

Schumacher suggested superimposing on large-area states a cantonal structure of modest size so that vast industrial concentration (with all this entails in imbalance, ineptitude, and diseconomies of scale) becomes not only unnecessary but also impractical and inefficient. Once the development district is 'appropriately' reduced, it becomes possible to fulfill a society's material requirements by means of less expensive and simpler equipment than computerized, labour-saving machinery. This is the famous “intermediate technology”.

The reduced efficiency of intermediate technology provides the same amount of goods, but at a higher cost in labour. However, since this can be achieved only by full rather than partial employment of the available labour force, it represents no additional cost at all, socially. It is, in fact, a benefit. (adapted from Wikipedia)

Well, does it sound hopelessly idealistic, or just idealistic? As for a concrete plan for how to get from here to Schumacher’s kind of social, agricultural and industrial organisation, I’m not sure. (I’ll have to answer Neb’s points on Pol Pot! To be continued...) Meanwhile, it would help if the Department For International Development started prioritising people rather than mere productivity.

Here are some short videos of the Schumacher approach in action. Small is Working

2006-07-12T07:52:00.000Z

SYD BARRETT (1946 – 2006)

Syd Barrett, of (The) Pink Floyd, died on July 7. As soon as the news was announced, tributes flooded into the BBC’s entertainment website. It’s fascinating that someone who probably recorded no more than ten outstanding songs, nearly all of which are featured on one album, should have such an enduring appeal. What is it about these songs that distinguishes them?

In the mid-1960s, the Beatles were the real innovators, leading the way into the territory of childhood as a storehouse for the imagery with which to communicate the psychedelic experience. Other musicians dutifully adopted this template, creating a very British style of psychedelic music utterly different from what American bands were doing at the time. For a short time, attachment to childhood was cool and the underground was awash with nursery-rhyme songs from the likes of Donovan, Kaleidoscope, The Idle Race and Tomorrow. Syd Barrett was – for the brief time when he sang for Pink Floyd – the unacknowledged master of the genre. He, more than anyone else, created the flawed, but often brilliant, psychedelic album The Piper At The Gates of Dawn.

Because he had never really severed connection with his childhood, Syd’s songs are both more playful and more genuinely affecting than anything that his contemporaries were able to produce - perhaps with the exception of Strawberry Fields Forever. The Pink Floyd, produced by Norman Smith, brought the songs to life with sparse experimental arrangements featuring moments of Syd’s jagged tinny guitar and liberal use of reverb. Bass lines meander, scamper around and often disappear altogether; the most startling effect is brought about, for example in the Scarecrow, by omitting the low frequency sounds and then introducing them unexpectedly. (This almost never happens in modern music, which uses bass more or less formulaically, dead-centre and constant, until the listener tunes it out.)

The album opens with Syd, like a child fascinated with a new book on astronomy, stringing together the names of astral bodies into a seamless incantation in Astronomy Domine; it is perhaps the first, and certainly the most evocative, piece of “space rock” ever produced. In Matilda Mother, there are obvious psychedelic parallels in his description of being read a fairy story: “You only have to read the lines of scribbly black and everything shines…” (Vocal harmonies suddenly drench the last word here, creating an unforgettably synaesthetic effect.) In the nonsense song Flaming, where he is “lying on an eiderdown” and “travelling by telephone” there is something euphoric in the way these vocal lines are delivered. It’s typical of his best vocals: artless, sometimes a bit flat, but sung with such teasing knowingness that the listener cannot help being transported to the enchanted space where the lyrics were captured.

One of his songs, Effervescing Elephant, was so obviously a children's song that I managed to get away with teaching it to my class of 8-year-olds to sing at assembly. One of the girls subsequently learned the words by heart and went around singing them to impress her classmates. I wonder if she ever found out its origin.

Syd’s obvious yearning for a more innocent time, amplified by copious LSD use, probably contributed towards his mental breakdown. Sadly, none of his later work after Piper At The Gates of Dawn come from the same land as these early songs. You can only hear the hollow voice of someone completely losing their bearings, as the other musicians struggle to keep to his erratic time signatures. The sound of this lonely encounter with madness is one reason why he has such a cult following, but it is in these few short pieces of English whimsy where his genius lies: See Emily Play, Astronomy Domine, Lucifer Sam, Matilda Mother, Flaming, Bike, the Scarecrow.

Pink Floyd, with a new guitarist who briefly tried to write and sing in Syd Barrett's style, went on to conquer the world as arguably the most artistic of all rock bands, but in a completely different vein, and without any of the lightness of touch that characterised their founder.

Obituary on Pink Floyd fan site

2006-07-08T16:50:00.000Z

TRUE GREEN

According to The Observer, Mr David Cameron is courting the "muesli vote" or something. Well, here's something which may surprise him: green voters can see through this kind of cynicism.

Here is another quotation from E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, which remains startlingly relevant more than thirty years since its publication around the time of the 1970s oil crisis. His critique of Keynesian economics is based on our treating irreplaceable natural capital as mere income; he argues that countries’ pursuit of growth has necessarily institutionalised greed and envy as a basic mechanisms, resulting in instability and conflict worldwide. All other values have been subordinated to the economic one. Drawing on ideas from Gandhi, he comments here on the dehumanisation of work.

“It is only necessary to assert that something would reduce the ‘standard of living’, and every debate is instantly closed. That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of ‘bread and circuses’ can compensate for the damage done – these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence – because to deny them would condemn the central preoccupation of society as a crime against humanity.”

Schumacher was a true visionary. It’s incredible to think that, had his ideas been taken seriously at the time, all the foolishness of “Thatcherism” – in whose shadow we still live – might have been avoided. That her successsor is attempting to mask hardline industrial capitalism with a few "green" gimmicks is shameful. It's time that the "muesli voters" took to the streets.

2006-06-30T13:27:00.000Z

ВПЕЧАТЛЕНИЕ О МИНСКЕ

At the end of 2005, when I opted to come here to Minsk to run a course, little did I know that similar assignments in Zurich, Paris, Palma and Palermo would end up being given to colleagues. I felt I’d drawn the short straw. As I was being driven into the city under an overcast sky, I saw nothing in the endless concrete blocks to change my mind. The Director of the school here told me that the architecture was “Stalin-style” and that people loved the city despite the lack of historic buildings – it was completely flattened at the end of WW2, which is known here as the Great Patriotic War, a period in which every fourth citizen died. I struggled for something cheerful to say about the look of the place, and failed.

I stepped out of the car into a clearing in the forest of tower blocks, like in a scene from Eraserhead. They have patchwork surfaces with damp stains. Between them is untended, overgrown grass and dandelions, criss-crossed by broken paths. My heart sank, and a rook squawked as if to mock my discomfort. I was determined not to show any sign of well-heeled squeamishness at the chipped walls, smelly lift and dark old-fashioned decoration of the flat I was ushered into. But all these things rolled together into one thought: Belarus is grim. Then it rained for three days straight.

This is the land the USSR never left – well, except for a 4-year sniff of freedom in the early ‘90s. Travelling round the city, I feel as if in I’m in a looking-glass alternative reality. This is the world I left a few days ago, but everything is a bit different. Women are sweeping the streets spotlessly clean. There’s a distinct lack of bars, and advertising. Billboards have patriotic propaganda posters. There is no graffiti, except “Eminem” scrawled tentatively in a lift. Service in state-run shops is reluctant at best. And every fourth man – surely it can’t be true – is a policeman. The cops, bastard-looking in those huge circular Soviet caps, are everywhere. They throw their weight around, for example by stopping their cars by jaywalkers and yelling four-(Cyrillic)-letter words at them through loudspeakers.

As a foreigner, you feel that people will suspect you of something, though they turn out to be – mostly – very friendly, apart from one instance where I got abuse from a drunk guy on a tram. (My Russian didn’t allow me to interpret his exact words, thankfully.)

I never mention politics, then discover to my surprise that people do it quite freely. Just like at home in “my” world, everyone hates the President. Here, it’s a crime. Yet people are not completely unhappy with the status quo – they certainly prefer this to being overrun by Russian gangsters. My friend asks me what is the difference, anyway, between Mr Lukashenko wielding his might in this restricted sphere, and Bush & Blair doing it globally. You can watch Euro News and access the internet freely (although there are rumours that the government has approached China about buying technology that would prevent this). In the parliament canteen, apparently, members sit round drinking gallons of vodka before going to provide their rubber stamps. And below the main building are nine subterranean levels…

If there was no sex in the USSR, it’s unstoppable in this remnant of the old Empire. Or maybe it was just me, in the heatwave that began a few days later, feeling all charged up with the sun high, high in June. I just couldn’t help noticing that this city is full of great looking women – everywhere. And I couldn’t help looking at them, squeezed together on the trams, hanging out by the fountains in the park during the long summer evenings, waiting in the marble halls of the metro, click-clacking up and down corridors in their thin high heels – which are de rigeur here. Typically, thery’re dyed blondes in tight white trousers that show everything, or tight denim skirts. I guess it’s enjoyable, and makes a clear break with the past, because the regime hasn’t banned this kind of self-expression. All these women are unavailable, though; it’s in the culture here to get married at 17 or 18, certainly before 25. I was told the women make themselves look stunning so that they can keep their men.

“Why do you eat so many vegetables?” asked one of the pretty adminsirators at the language school as she pored over my salad. “Because they’re good.” Probably getting rid of free radicals and all that. On second thoughts, these ones probably won’t! Since my arrival, I’ve learned that Belarus was the worst affected country following Chernobyl, 20 years ago. A whole area of the southern part is off-limits as far as agricultural produce is concerned, and there are villages where after forced evacuation, only the very old have returned to live out their last years. Tragically, young people who grew up in the affected area develop not-so-mysterious cancers; there are thousands of deaths every year, still. Vegetable stalls can be visited by radiation inspectors, and you normally take your Geiger counter with you if you go to pick mushrooms in the forest. I was told I should cut tomatoes and mushrooms in a special way to remove potentially radioactive bits, and not eat the insides of carrots.

Waking up on another sunny morning, I watched a woman cutting the edges of the green areas in front of my block – she is attentive and keeps at it. She doesn’t look ashamed or impatient. I get the feeling – just sentimental, perhaps - that this kind of work is still valued here, by everyone. Money has not (yet) become the sole arbiter of value, except among the young.

There’s no copyright law. So you can pick up MP3 disks with hundreds of songs for $3 each. One stall-owner found it hard to believe that it would be an offence in the West to sell them, and that the police have the power to get information from ISPs and arrest people for downloading music. “And it’s supposed to be a democracy!” he laughed.

There are more obvious good things about a planned society– everyone has a flat or, at least, each family has access to one or two, which doesn’t amount to the same thing. Maybe people don’t take the same pride in them, but this has its benefits: People do not find endless fascination in talking about property prices and doing up property. There are no makeover shows! There is no homelessness at all, although young couples very often have to live with their parents. Everyone, it seems, has a little dacha in the country that they go to every weekend – rather than going shopping – to dig the allotment and swim in a lake. Babushkas return to the city with bundles of spring onions and other produce to sell on the streets.

Last weekend, I went into the country with a few of my trainees. We visited a rural life museum, which was once a real village, with pre-industrial wooden houses and barns full of old butter churns, sleighs, and handlooms. I’m told things are still like this in some places. I would like to say that I plunged into the lake nearby, but it was actually much more tentative because of the muddy bottom and alien podded underwater reeds to negotiate. Lots of young people were out doing the same thing – and I noticed there were a lot of nice cars parked nearby, and some very expensive-looking dachas being built too. (Formerly, there had been a size-limit.) It won’t be too long before aspirations to conspicuous wealth get the upper hand here, as everywhere else. Meanwhile, it’s been a privilege to have a glimpse of a different way of life.

2006-04-22T21:03:00.000Z

EARTH DAY 2006: FUN, AND FUTURE POLITICS

Imagine your city without any cars just for a day, or even an afternoon. This is the idea behind Critical Mass, when thousands of cyclists take to the streets in a carnival atmosphere, and often with scant regard for the rules of the road. My earliest memory of this event was making wide arcs in the middle of Tottenham Court Road in London, reclaiming a street from its usual association with slavish Saturday shopping, for the delighted amazement of childhood. You could hear birds sing and a distant faint rushing sound was the only reminder of cars.

The Budapest Critical Mass is an annual event, which makes it more of a crowd-puller than its London equivalent. Imagine a procession of bikes, almost unbroken for a mile or so on the banks of the Danube on both sides and right across two of the bridges. Policemen bargain with the crowd to keep order and the good-natured participants agree to let a tram pass. Every so often the procession halts and cyclists hold their bikes aloft triumphantly, whooping with unrestrained glee. As we head through the tunnel beneath the castle, it’s almost deafening. It’s the sound of a spontaneous, albeit pre-arranged discovery of ‘people power’, a rare enough thing. People smile easily at each other; some have rigged-up sound systems; people of all ages take part. A toddler in a child’s seat gazes round himself mutely; a dreadlocked adolescent experiments with a series of wheelies. Somehow, everyone manages to respect everyone else’s space, gracefully coordinated like birds in flight.

Close to the end of the route, there’s a Brazilian style drum-out, a well-practised band whose thumping music matches exactly the enthusiasm of the crowd, which must be at least fifty thousand, if not twice that.

There’s no real agenda to Critical Mass. There’s probably a vague green leaning here, but nothing resembles a focussed political programme. And so much the better. The contrast between the joy of today’s crowd and the carefully staged pre-election political rallies of two weeks ago (on behalf of both major parties) is marked. Today was the free expression of the human spirit; the former events the result of manipulation. The electorate are far from apathetic - the politics of the future can emerge from such a self-aware, vibrant and non-institutional movement as Critical Mass.

2006-03-19T10:21:00.000Z

How is it possible that this beautiful poem was nowhere to be found online? Let's change that. (Potential update: "pressing button A" would now be scrolling and clicking.)

THE INVADING SPRING - Phoebe Hesketh

Man has fenced the wilderness back in the hills;
Tamed in the town he walks on concrete blocks;
And in the park his heart with pleasure fills -
But not at Wordsworth’s school-book daffodils.
No, his delight is catching up with clocks
And turning knobs and pressing button A -
The train is due; there’s half a minute to go
But the lift’s gone down and the escalator’s slow -
Praise God for the Underground this lark-song day!

Breathing, yet dead, his life is caged with steel -
Wire, wheel, and cable - automatic aids
To living - he exists but cannot feel
The slow barbaric beauty that invades
A world at Spring. He moves in crowds and queues
And reads the Morning Star and the Evening News
But cannot read the sky though April beats
A golden fanfare down the dusty streets
And breathes a green breath through the petrol fumes.

Yet a third-floor room is powerless to deny
The feel of leaves, the pollen-smell behind
New flowered cretonnes where a rebel wind
Is strong and blue with ranging through the sky.
And though the files of his mind are entered up
Like office ledgers, unknowing he holds the cup
Brimmed with the light of moons beyond his reach.
The street is thronged with more than he can know -
The Invisibles who know him; without speech
They call him; without form they come and go
And catch him by the sleeve until the slow
Unwilling flesh is beckoned from its task.
Released, he finds the vital stream that spills
A primrose light on sullen window-sills.

2006-03-19T09:40:00.000Z

THOUGHT FOR SPRING

"Through this estate runs a stream. It is not quiet water running peacefully to the big river, but a noisy cheerful stream. All this country around here is hilly, the stream has many a fall and at one place there are three falls of different depths. The higher one makes the noise, the loudest; the other two are on a minor key. All these three falls are spaced differently, and so there is a continuous movement of sound. You have to listen to hear the music. It’s an orchestra playing among the orchards, in the open skies, but the music is there. You have to search it out, you have to listen, you have to be with the flowing waters to hear its music. You must be the whole to hear it – the skies, the earth, the soaring trees, the green fields and the running waters, then only you hear it.

But all this is too much trouble; you buy a ticket and sit in a hall, surrounded by people, and the orchestra plays or someone sings. They do all the work for you; someone composes the song, the music, another plays or sings, and you pay to listen. Everything in life, except for a few things is second-, third-, or fourth-hand: the Gods, poems, politics, music. So our life is empty. Being empty we try to fill it – with music, with Gods, with forms of escape, and the very filling is the emptying. But beauty is not to be bought. So few want beauty and goodness, and man is satisfied with second-hand things. To throw it all off is the real and only revolution, and then only is there the creativeness of reality."

J Krishnamurti, Letters to a Young Friend

2006-03-04T21:48:00.000Z

BLAIR'S TRAGEDY

Why has Tony Blair acted as he has over Iraq? I have little concrete evidence for what I write here - it's what I can glean from the facts, as we now know them, and the character of Mr Blair, as far as we can discern any consistency in it.

You can only understand Blair's actions if you understand that people, all people, have "mixed motives". His priority was to do the best thing for Britain in the long term - it was probably a matter of personal vanity too since he knows that history will judge him in terms of the long-term consequences of his decisions; in the end, can we be sure? Don't we often present slightly selfish decisions to others, and even to ourselves, in a favourable light? It's the essence of 'spin', and that's been at the heart of this administration from the beginning. Let's hope God accepts the spun version!

What is clear, and public, is that he decided to adhere to the so-called 'special relationship', in doing so following a consistent strand in UK foreign policy. He thought that the best idea would be to be on the side of the most powerful player in the apparently dangerous new world situation and at the same time to use this, as he thought, perhaps naively, to exert leverage on Bush to reopen negotiations in the Middle East. This decision, in principle to support an invasion of Iraq, was taken days after 9/11, we now know. Blair almost certainly thought long and hard about it, consulted his conscience in the little time he had (hours? days?) then committed. He also seems to have made some effort to bargain at this point and at various other stages along the road to war, though it's clear he had very little influence over the US. After that initial commitment, there was no return - he has had to be disingenuous, and actually to lie, in order to make things happen the way the US wanted. This inconvenience occurred because the UK Parliament has to agree to a war, and we still have our own foreign policy. A more honourable man would have resigned.

A real opportunity for global dialogue post 9/11 was thrown away, there have been thousands of deaths, and the situation in Iraq is a disaster. It may have been better to follow the EU line, as many people advised at the time. All this is debatable, and beside the point here. The point is that anyone who thinks this sits easily with Blair's conscience misreads the man.

He will not be forgiven for not talking to war victims' families. Of course, he would have to tell them that he was prepared to throw away their loved ones' lives to help maintain an important alliance, and probably he should be prepared to do so. It's the least he owes them, though the scenes of confrontation would be simply heartbreaking for all concerned. As for what it has done in terms of tarnishing his political reputation, destroying his popularity, and ruining his ambitions for achieving a more just social settlement in Britain, this is Blair's personal tragedy, a fate which should not be enviable in anyone's eyes, despite his material comforts. These are things that probably keep him awake at night, things that cannot be shared with Michael Parkinson, or with anyone apart from his closest friends for years to come.

Trying to make good decisions as PM, let alone ones that you can also square with your conscience, can't be easy. Blair's belief about God's judging him is sincere, but someone should have told him a long time ago that politics and religion do not, cannot, mix. It should be obvious that someone of a genuinely religious persuasion (i.e. who wants to live according to Christian or any ethical precepts) ought not to be doing a job that requires many decisions to be taken according to utterly different principles. It is these, rather than his religious faith, that Blair has followed to the best of his judgement and history may yet absolve him, as it usually does with realpolitik, as we move into an era defined by political instability and an uncertain oil supply.

2006-03-04T16:53:00.004Z

GUITAR LOSS

I've been picking up my guitar a bit more lately, and half-heartedly playing some OK cover versions with friends, though what I/we should really be doing is writing writing writing new material. Anyway, in order to kick-start some inspiration, got a lesson from a colleague here who's a kind of latter-day Django Reinhardt, and a bit of a musicologist to boot. So far so good. I picked up my guitar today to restring it, with the idea of practising some of the new chord shapes and bang! The bridge just came off and was hanging there forlornly. I surprised myself that I didn't shout or swear but took the impact very calmly.

I'm very attached to this L'Arrivee guitar - it's the first thing I ever saved up for and I've been playing it for over 13 years. Wrote some good songs on it too, mostly a long time ago, it has to be said. But for it to be broken was a wrench! The 'damage' looks superficial, however - the bridge was just glued on to begin with, so all that's called for is a bit of superglue, right?

I rushed it down to the music shop as soon as I could but when I produced the instrument, the guy there informed me (with a lot of grimacing and sighing) that it should never have been strung with steel strings in the first place! He thinks it's designed to be a nylon-strung instrument, lacking some kind of metal bar reinforcing the neck. I just don't get it - if that's the case, why has it worked so well up till now? Why is it obviously a steel-string design? I've been frantically trying to picture how a metal bar would make any change to the pressure on the bridge (as opposed to the neck) anyway. The neck has shown no signs of strain. Anyway, it's an uneasy wait till Tuesday to see if I can get a second opinion. And the first time I've been without a guitar around the house for years. Maybe I should give it all up as a bad job - it's been fun, at times almost compulsive, but has brought me almost as much pain (in terms of non-recognition) as joy (in creation).

Afterthought: Supergrass just released another well-crafted album at the end of last year. As usual, it sank without trace. These guys, a kind of latter-day ELO, have good melodies and arrangements just pouring out of them. Is it time for an Arts Council subsidy?

2006-02-22T06:57:00.000Z

THE REAL HEART OF DARKNESS - 2

(Where are the Praetorian Guard when we need them?)

You should never blame people for their country's foreign policy, but I remember at University in the 1980s asking a American student indignantly why the hell the US had bombed Libya. His reply: "because we can", before launching into a lot of anti-Arab humour. He was one of those smart people who don't take anything seriously.

It's a truism that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm becoming persuaded by the idea that this is a kind of Law of (Human) Nature. It operates in every sphere: personal, financial, professional, political. Not that there aren't exceptions - we all know them. But, in general, the amount that people act on principle is in inverse proportion to the range of opportunities open to them. The morality we were raised on, itself a veiled system of social (in this case parental) control, loses its hold as we flex our muscles a bit. Of course this is Nietzsche's Will To Power.

Who are the passionate believers in social justice, out campaigning, going to political meetings in the rain, and handing out leaflets? Committed idealists are usually young, dispossessed, property-less. It's no accident that middle age is full of compromises - they go hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth. What was it hippies used to say - "Don't trust anyone over 30"? And whatever their replies, when powerful people are pressed by journalists about their motives, the real reason is almost always "because I can".

2006-02-18T18:54:00.000Z

SPRING, EPISODE 1: IN THE SKY

Today, I emerged from the stuffy interior of my thoughts into a bright morning. The pavements were no longer gleaming and their heaps of hardened snow had lost their rockiness, full of holes and the crystals merging and turning into big drops. The breeze was unmistakably mild. Rounding the corner to the riverside tram stop, I was surprised by warm sun on my face. An incomparable moment: nothing prepares us for the first touch of Spring, and none of the things we normally hanker after is half as good. On the tram, I looked out at the unfamiliar light reflected by the rooftops and steeples.

I’ve always thought of roofs, and specifically chimneypots, against a sunny sky, as one of the best images of freedom. You never look at them if you’ve got to be somewhere in a hurry. Like in a Magritte painting, the effect lies in the contrast between the perfectly mundane architecture and the blue infinity beyond.

2006-02-18T17:21:00.000Z

FOOL, n.

A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through loading up on heaps of junk from a series of adjacent retail outlets, and compulsive downloading. He is omnific, omniform, omniject, omnicidal and oblivious. He it was who invented clubs, hierarchies, contracts, the steam iron, pop-up advertising, the annual appraisal, the mullet, snakebite, and mobile phone jewellery. He created patriotism and taught the nations marching – then devised,“flagged up” and “actioned” political economy, management theory, fatwas, postmodernism, corporate training, consultancy (medical specialists excepted) and Las Vegas. He established totalitarianism and democracy, left-wing versus right-wing, the “third way”, and centre-partings. He is from everlasting to everlasting – such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the sitcom of being. His myopic gaze falters as the rolling credits of civilisation blur and fade to grey, and he steals a furtive peep at a random cleavage. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to compile a Top 100 goals of all time. (adapted)

POLITICS, n.

A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

From The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

2006-02-16T14:48:00.000Z

DOING THAT SCRAPYARD THING

Got the following email from a good friend of mine, who works for a big car magazine. Shows just how messed-up autophiles can be. (This description, with its overtones of, well, self-love, fits nicely.)

"...in return for my soul?

Usually I enjoy editing our letters page. This month, we have one guy who loves himself and his Porsche so much he thinks he can see the'hope, warmth and happiness' in people's eyes when they just look at his car.

We have another guy who tells his wife she should be thankful he spends so much time with his cars, because he could be in a hotel room with his niece instead.

And another guy who blames environmentalists for the decreasing number of lovely, wonderful scrapyards.

I'm doing my bit for the world... by changing 'niece' to mistress."

2006-02-12T11:15:00.000Z

HOW TO BECOME HIP WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

“Went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head … “

I first heard these lines about a year ago, sung in a high-pitched shaky voice to a spooky, almost monotone tune, and with a chorus of dust and scratches in the background. It was such an otherworldly sound, it stopped me in my tracks. My painstaking researches (click, click, click) revealed that they were from a WB Yeats poem set to music by Dave Van Ronk (early Dylan era New York folkie).

“And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out …”

I stumbled across the MP3 by accident, hunting down the Donovan version from Jon Savage’s Donovan recommendations in MOJO magazine. The details are important – it seemed to me that, musically speaking, this could be the least hip thing you could possibly be up to in early 2005. But I’ve always loved Donovan despite his “hippy-dippy” reputation, and this kind of pursuit is painless in the privacy of your own home, as opposed to over the counter at HMV, where it’s potentially hazardous.

“But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair…”

Around the same time last year, I discovered internet radio and Brindle sat me down to listen to Radio 1’s dance/ambient/acoustic/dub show, The Blue Room. It was the first time I’d heard Radio 1 since 1991 (when I decided it was just no good to wake up to someone, anyone shouting inanities at you, even if the music had been good, which it generally wasn’t). It goes out at 5.30am at the weekend and is aimed at people stumbling home from clubs, coming down from various psychedelics. The choice of music is inspired and unpredictable – I can deal with the odd bit of machine-grinding techno because I know there will be something great in a few minutes. I’ve been introduced to El Perro Del Mar, Hot Chip, TV On The Radio, The Ralfe Band, The New Young Pony Club, The American Analogue Set, and loads besides. (A couple of years ago I’d have been hard-pressed to name any but the best known bands.) Besides which, Rob da Bank is a really affable and non-shouty DJ. It’s just what music radio should be.

In yesterday’s show, he also included The Beatles, a reworking of a song from The Wicker Man, and… Wandering Aengus by Donovan.

“And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”

2006-02-05T15:02:00.000Z

SPOILING FOR A FIGHT

When I lived in Ghana and was the chairman of the campus debating society, I organized a debate on the motion, “religion is the opium of the people” and spoke in favour, with some relish. For various reasons, mostly frustration that the European Enlightenment had failed to make any inroads into their society, I wanted to give my students a nudge in the direction of atheism, or at least skepticism. My intensely devout Christian and Muslim students viewed me as an eccentric “free-thinker” and, thankfully, did not take offence. One of them even volunteered to second me! The debate passed off without incident. I was judged the winner (by a panel, not a show of hands); this was actually a foregone conclusion, as I was one of the masters.

It’s the same impulse to shove believers into modernity that causes Matthew Parris to write (in yesterday’s Times) in defence of publishing the cartoons of Mohammed:

‘But let us not duck what that “I do not believe” really means. It means I do not believe that there is one God, Allah, or that Muhammad is His Prophet. It means I do not believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, or that no man cometh to the Father except by Him. I do not believe that the Jews are God’s Chosen People, or subject to any duties different from the rest of us. It means I do not believe any living creature will be reincarnated in another life.

In my opinion these views are profoundly mistaken, and those who subscribe to them are under a serious misapprehension on a most important matter. Not only are their views not true for me: they are not true for them. They are not true for anyone. They are wrong.’

Let us assume for the sake of argument that matters of religion do in fact fall into the falsifiable-by-science category (see ‘Who Lives in a Postmodern World?’ below), and therefore can be demonstrably wrong. What grounds are there for showing a deluded believer the error of his ways? Might there be any factors that would hold us back from so doing?

As far as I can see, in the case of the cartoons, there were no good grounds to publish. They are NOT going to help shift the balance of power in oppressive societies. Besides which, they may well incite religious hatred; the one with Mohammed sporting a bomb doesn’t look too dissimilar to me from the anti-Jewish cartoons in 1930s Germany. While upholding the freedom of the press to publish, we should recognize that to do so was a pretty poor decision all-round.
It looks rather like a piece of playground provocation – picking a fight. And the result has been perfectly intelligent journalists and crowds of Muslims on the street just spoiling for one – in their own different ways. It’s so exciting, isn’t it, this impending “clash of civilizations”? It’s something to talk about and it’ll sell a lot of papers, to be sure. But where are the peacemakers now? In the face of the disintegrating order, where’s Piggy to wail impotently about people “acting like a crowd of kids?”

While recognizing that satire is a powerful weapon in deflating pomposity and chipping away at the armour of authoritarian regimes, we should use our freedom to criticise people judiciously. After all, I am free to tell my overweight friend that he’s eaten all the pies. Just as I am free to discuss how diverting pornography is with my feminist colleague. I am free to tell an advertising consultant I meet at some party that he’s in an evil trade, or a committed Robbie Williams fan that his idol is a media-manufactured talentless chimp. Many of my closest friends believe passionately in astrology and I am of course free to trash their beliefs mercilessly. You get the picture. The thing is, I choose when to say these things, and often hold my tongue. It’s not hard; it’s the usual process of seeking not to give offence. It’s valued only a little and so easily scorned, but behaving respectfully is not merely a social nicety; in Ghana, and in our modern multicultural European societies, it can prevent bloodshed.

I now regret having held that debate in Ghana, and sincerely hope that I was not the catalyst in bringing anyone to give up their opium habit. I now see clearly that it was a society in a different stage of development. Belief in Providence and in the afterlife gave people a practical reason to hope, to get up in the morning and plough their fields, to strive to better their lives, to smile. And generally people in Ghana, barring personal tragedies, were happy and fulfilled, with some belief that things were going to get better for them. How could skepticism possibly improve this? It was a clear case where happiness, albeit opiated, was better than “the truth”.

Simon Jenkins: These cartoons don't defend free speech; they threaten it

2006-01-29T08:50:00.000Z

Life hangs by a thread, but while it's still dangling there, and at the risk of sounding pious:

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

Principally, friends. With the powers available to us through language, we can express our reactions to the world in a way that others can understand and respond to. Over a period of years. To me, nothing compares with this hum of sympathetic communication between two spirits.

A (temporarily, but long-term) fully operational multi-sense mechanism, worth more than any amount of money. If we had to rent or buy this apparatus, it'd be priced at least as much as a house, and probably more.

Light, the sky, clouds, season change.

Piping hot water that gushes out of a showerhead, even though it’s the depth of winter. (What was life like before? What's it like now for street-sleepers? As well as sparing some change, you have to imaginatively enter into that bitterly cold world to appreciate just how great it is to wake up and have a hot shower.)

The availability of a huge variety of food from all round the world only a few minutes’ walk away from where you live. Including fresh fruit juice all year round: another reason to get out of bed.

Free downloads, blogs, and the whole circus of the internet at your fingertips.

Books, books, books to lose yourself in.

All the years left to experience these things.

This might just sound smug. Of course I realise the impossibly large numbers of people who do not have access to some, or all, of these things. If thinking about that prevents you from enjoying your own life, you have the privilege to go out and do something about it.

Life's beautiful. If Nietzsche's little eternal recurrence devil came to me, I'd say "Yes - every moment again!"

2006-01-28T18:55:00.000Z

MANNERS

The other day, I was standing waiting for my bus to depart in a morning daze. Two teenage boys were standing next to me, on their way to school. They must have been about 14 or 15. Their friend saw them from the street and also stepped on, said “servusz” (hi) while pulling off his mitten and offering his hand. The others did the same, and it was handshakes all round. I was taken aback at this show of calm, mature camaraderie. Was it some kind of ritual they’d evolved in their group? Surely, even in Hungary, teenage boys must jostle each other and say things like “How’s it going, dickhead?” In Scotland, we used to call each other names as a bonding device. The whole basis of my experience of friendship in adolescence was learning that a good slagging meant the other person really cared. Anyway, in terms of manners, this is evidence that Hungary hasn’t really caught up with the 21st Century world.

RESPECT

Laughably, Tony Blair seems to think he can legislate to bring back “respect” among the young. While transferring the burden of proof on to people suspected of committing petty crimes may well be a good idea, no amount of sticks, carrots or political speeches will make the slightest difference in promoting a real culture of respect for others while every micro-message pouring out of the entertainment media exhorts contempt for authority, pure individualism, success at any price – all the modern virtues.

There are two kinds of respect: the philosophical theory and the everyday practical kind demanded by your elders and betters, or some guy pointing a gun at you in a gang fight. “Respect”. Born of fear.

The first, respect for human beings merely by virtue of their being human was always more an aspiration than a reality, a supremely admirable enlightenment project that was dead in the water by the time Nietzsche had finished with it, though echoes of it are still heard from time to time in well-intentioned international proclamations from the Charter of Human Rights to the G8 summit. Meanwhile, corporations and the militaristic junta in command of US foreign policy continue to wreak havoc regardless, aided and abetted by guess who?

A government with any guts would commit to this philosophy of mutual respect. For example, by facing up collectively to the impending ecological disaster and helping to inculcate a new value system based on environmental responsibility. That would demonstrate, and probably command, respect. It’s not going to happen. Standing up for human rights against international capitalism and its enslavement of millions in the developing world. That might promote a culture of respect. It’s not going to happen. Standing up for the dispossessed against greedy landlords extorting people’s wages from them would show a commitment to a “respect agenda”! But, surprise surprise, that’s not on this agenda either.

It’s the other watered-down kind of “respect” that Blair & co are now promoting, something that shouldn't involve too many difficult decisions! It was shown by most schoolchildren to their parents, teachers and to policemen in the post-war years, and went into irreversible decline after the advent of the Rolling Stones. So the story goes. Now, I know nothing of the mysteries of parenting, but I do know something about teaching. If you want to get respect from a class of kids in September, you have to first make sure they’re a bit afraid of you, then you have to build up a relationship with them by showing an interest in them, and showing that you’re even-handed in the way that you distribute attention, rewards and punishments. Since the fear factor is no longer present in our schools, teachers are going to have to work all the harder to earn respect. And they do. (This will not have been helped by the inexplicable decision by some irresponsible official at OFSTED to write to schoolchildren at a failing school, over the heads of their teachers, telling them that the teachers “could do better”!)

Outside the school gates, it is futile to try and reinstate some version of old-fashioned values without the fear factor, and Blair knows it. Society has changed irrevocably and, it’s true, we don’t “know our place”. (Wouldn’t it be great for politicians if we did?) So it’s fitting that he has chosen as the principal weapon in this campaign the one thing that can really motivate people, the only thing that still counts: a fine! In doing so, he reveals the bankruptcy of ideas at the heart of government, and of a socio-economic system that’s on its last shaky legs. If financial incentives are the only social glue left, the minute there is less money sloshing round the economy (in the next oil crisis, say) there is going to be some very bad behaviour indeed.

Pictured: scene from the Paris riots, 2005

2006-01-26T22:29:00.000Z

ICE MENAGERIE

It's minus 15 now in Budapest, or thereabouts. I've been dogged by a cold which found it hard to develop fully in the stew of Vitamin pills and echinacea that's my January blood, and then exploded for a day. Every morning I get into my thermals to go to work. (And quick change out of them as soon as I arrive in the overheated interiors.) The sky is clear and there's always some trick of the morning light that makes the Parliament building pink or peach-coloured. No matter how much of a hurry I'm in, I try to walk the slightly longer but far more scenic river way and watch the cloudpour of vapour from all the heating systems. From the tram today, I caught a glimpse of the ice sculptures for a second time. They're giant versions of the kind of glass animals that might grace some old lady's mantelpiece. They remind me of the plastic ones I collected in a tub when I was a child. They're kitsch, I know - I can tell from a distance. The mammoth, the hummingbird, the gryphon are all a bit cute. But they're ice. And the coloured lights shining through them from behind, playing on the edges, make them look as if they've got Christmas tree lights inside. I make a mental note - which becomes a physical note - to return later.

When I do, after a good day when I could feel the cold retreat, the animals are surrounded by people and digital cameras. They're illuminated. The lights look as if they're coming from the inside. They pick out patches of haze and some thick veins in the crystalline structure of the ice. Small children wander round, dying to touch, but too well behaved. Would their hands stick to them, perhaps? Nightlit, the creatures are redeemed from their kitschiness - a parade of ambassadors from the ice kingdom - fantastic, rough-hewn, gleaming, perfect.

Ice Art: the artist's site

2006-01-21T10:44:00.000Z

WHO LIVES IN A POSTMODERN WORLD?

I'm writing this following the recent debate on Puskas's blog (see sidebar) on truth v happiness, and the nature of truth.

I've always been curious about postmodernism, and never quite grasped what it is, probably because there's nothing concrete to grasp. It mostly to do with fragmentation, perspectivism and flux: the intellectual result of millions of trans-cultural interactions on a global scale. The most lucid explanation of postmodernism I've read is towards the end of Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind. His style involves endless reformulation of the same idea, which, in the case of such an elusive phenomenon as this one, proves incredibly useful.

Here are some extracts:

"The mind is not the passive reflector of an external world and its intrinsic order, but is active and creative in the process of perception and cognition." "There is no empirical 'fact' that is not already theory-laden." These ideas seem to me to be uncontroversial.

What follows, however, is a real bombshell: "Reality is in some sense constructed by the mind, not simply perceived by it, and many such constructions are possible, none necessarily sovereign." "All human understanding is interpretation, and no interpretation is final." "Every object of knowledge is already part of a preinterpreted context, and beyond that are only other preinterpreted contexts. All human knowledge is mediated by signs and symbols of uncertain provenance, constituted by historically and culturally variable predispositions... Hence the nature of truth and reality, in science no less than in philosophy, religion, or art, is radically ambiguous." (italics mine) You get the idea. And through this chink in the city wall of Scientopolis marches the whole magical, mystical New Age carnival parade - beliefs become a kind of lifestyle choice, and no longer have to submit to the rigour of scientific testing. Why should they? They are all equally valid. There are no meta-narratives.

Is the (clearly stunning) success of science in predicting everyday occurrences the only philosophical reply to this radical perspectivism? This is a genuine question. Could the success of science be merely a huge coincidence, and end tomorrow?

2005-12-24T10:04:00.000Z

MOMENTS IN AMBER - 2005

Grayson Perry suggested in the Times that rather then getting pissed on Hogmanay, we should go over personal lists of the highlights of the previous year. So here's mine - early - so I can drink to my heart's content too.

This was the year where I, first and foremost, learned to be an EFL teacher trainer. I've certainly expended more energy on this than anything else, so I'd have to - reluctantly - say that it's been my greatest achievement. Reluctantly because it doesn't sound very exciting or exceptional. The main thing I do is watch the trainees' lessons, which range from the inspired to the completely inept, but mostly at the lower end of that continuum, and lead discussion on their performances in such a way that trainees (a)learn "experientially" from my prompts and (b) will not break down in tears. Watching bad lessons can be grindingly tedious, but I enjoy managing the interactions of the feedback process, which is a fast-moving problem-solving game when it's good. Emotionally, on the other hand, it is often less the roller-coaster ride of the cliche and more like being in the hands of a first-time driver who stalls and lurches forward at every turn because of his unfamiliarity with the controls. The thing is, I'm largely responsible for that, and if I get things wrong I have to try not to dwell on them in the early hours.

I'll also remember 2005 for free music downloads, thanks to Limewire and the guy behind Bit Torrent. For someone whose main activity in early adolescence (apart from vigorous masturbation, obviously) was taping stuff from the radio, it's a great thrill to have this repeated in mid-life; free music, that is. Having spent years amassing musicalised plastic in various forms and at great cost, I can now act immediately on every recommendation I get - at no cost. Yes, it's a time-waster but I don't care; it's hard to describe the quiet thrill of being able to give an informed opinion on more current bands than at any time since the '95-96 Britpop era. My tastes are still somewhat rooted in the - distant - past, though! It was great that Paul McCartney finally made a good album this year. Contenders for album of the year are Supergrass Road to Rouen, The Engineers self-titled debut, the Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros Takk. But the one that really got me, because of its energy and pretty innovative take on heavy blues was Robert Plant's Mighty Rearranger. My track of the year was the superbly constructed, beautifully sung King of the Mountain by Kate Bush. Loved the ska mid-section.

It's hard to say that having broadband radically decreased the time spent reading this year. I hope this is only temporary! Anyway, the book I enjoyed most was Richard Tarnas's Passion of the Western Mind, which I decided to re-read after a colleague reminded me how good it is. It's a one-volume history of (Western) ideas which is always engaging, even though you already know the plot.

Man of the year was Russell T Davies for braving what could have been a critical panning, and managing to resuscitate Doctor Who, my childhood hero, after 15 years in cryogenic suspension in a time-capsule somewhere. Now with added depth, the new series was a triumph: frightening when it needed to be with clever scripts, it reminded me how good TV drama can be. The best film I saw in the cinema this year was Hotel Rwanda. I'll never forget the eerie "cockroaches" broadcasts from the Hutu radio station, and the moment when the UN had to pull out. It made real what had been a very remote, poorly understood news item while it was happening. (I hadn't lived in Africa then.) I also loved The Quiet American, with Michael Caine.

My most memorable journey of the year was to Krakow during an early, and still near-freezing, Easter holiday. Seeing the beauty of the Medieval market square and eating like kings at the traditional "peasant fare" restaurant were highlights. Auschwitz was what will remain in my memory most - though this isn't the post to elaborate on my reaction to being there.

The best new person I met is Brindle Cat. There's something in the warmth of her smile and the brightness of her enthusiasm for life that is always new every time it comes out, like a sunny day. She's full of crazy ideas and off-beat writing. She's not weighed down by things. Her intense shyness has started to blossom into a quiet confidence, though she's only starting to know it. I want to talk to her more.

One morning in September, I went with her to the hairdresser and she explained in Hungarian that I wanted that kind of up-to-date 70s mullet everyone has. It didn't work. When it was finished, I felt as if I had a strange mammal crouching on my scalp and that, naturally, eveyone was looking at me trying to suppress giggles. Judit had disappeared into the back shop; I thought she'd left - with my coat, and money in it. So, after frantically apologising that I wasn't actually able to pay for the awful haircut, I ran home, praying I wouldn't meet anyone I knew on the way. Of course I did - a work colleague who involved me in conversation. Well, I guess I have a kind of sheltered existence: that was perhaps my worst moment of the year. The other was being set upon and mauled by a vicious neo-Nazi called Moody Lawless on a Nietzsche forum. I (naively?) expected to find philosophers there, but got mostly thugs, albeit articulate ones. A virtual attack leaves the same dull, sick feeling as real-life violence.

Finally, the three best moments of 2005. Ex-colleague and friend Martin heard our Floydian "epic" Kusum (finally completed in 2005), and not knowing who it was, went home and Googled our band Slow Design as he liked it so much. You never get that reaction from jaded record company people or from friends who know it's "just you" rather than some mystique-bound other who's made it. So thanks, Martin! You helped make my year.

Watching Roy Harper play three gigs in Clonalkilty, Cork was a highlight of the summer. There's a unique character to Roy's songwriting and performance. Despite his being, in his own words, "a greybeard", his singing somehow reconnects me to my inspiration for music and for life. I can't explain why, it just is.

Most of all, I'll remember cycling down the broad sweep of the Danube on a hot cloudless day in July from Zebegeny towards Budapest. The cycle path is nearly all downhill, and speeds you past views of round tree-covered hills and bright little towns with dovecotes on the roofs and onion-domed churches. Surrounded by pale blue flowers and the not-quite flooded river lapping the banks so close to the path that at times it felt like being in a mangrove swamp, tree trunks steeped in water. (On my Walkman, I was listening to Nick Cave from the 2004 double album singing something about a Nature Boy, and loud.) Life doesn't get any better.

Favourite purchase, then: my metallic-grey/blue bike!

Happy Christmas to my very few readers. Expect more intermittent bursts of text in 2006.

2005-12-08T17:54:00.000Z

BEATLE CRITICISM

From today's BBC website, a really perceptive comment. I had to reprint it here:

"Paul connected John with a long tradition of pop music - jazz, standards, showtunes, and more - which became a kind of shoreline; as long as John could see the shore, his experiments had a context and focus. You see this most perfectly expressed in the double-A side Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields. Paul's side is an elegant, stately, classic full of heart; John's is a cryptic, beguiling journey into an estranged world. But it's a measure of their influence on one another that you swap those labels around. Paul's lyrics have a niggling strangeness while John's tune has a persistent melodic charm that places the song in our heads. John absorbed immediate traditions and produced work in the direct shadow of that influence.This was often extraordinary - the Dylan influence that he allowed to show more and more in his voice and lyrics, the LSD imagery throughout his work in 1966 and 1967, the more direct engagement with politics and the counter-culture between 1968 and 1973. He became someone who reported on what he heard, with a deliberate avoidance of reflection, just a trust to his immense talents.

Paul always mediates, works contemporary influences into his innate sense of the whole tradition. Sometimes this can make Paul seem rather studied, pastiche-y (Honey Pie, Rocky Racoon) but sometimes John's experiments misfire by seeming to show contempt for his artform in the rush to commentary (Power To The People, most of Sometime In New York City). While the causes he often espoused were righteous ones and he supported several groups and figures at considerable risk to himself, he had a dilettante political commitment.

Once John severed the connection with Paul his work was initially exhilarating, ultimately wayward and unfocused. He drifted from the shore. Ironically but inevitably, Paul and John's solo work is at its best when each resembles to other most closely.
Paul's work is finest when it's most connected to a rock 'n' roll tradition, or when he allows surrealism into his songs, or a roughness creeps into the production. John's work is often at its most compelling when warm and melodic, and when he takes a step back from his sometimes vacuous political stances.

His legacy is in his person as much as his songs - in that his songs are so plainly personal." by Simon Fisher (c) BBC 2005

2005-12-07T23:59:00.000Z

JOHN ONO LENNON (1940-1980)

A lot has been said and written this week about John Lennon and his music. Some of it is overblown, of course; he has been marketed as a twentieth century icon, something he'd have found really irritating. Currently it's trendy to say that he was hugely over-rated and a mediocre talent. This is rubbish!

His music has staying power. It's not to do with talent on an instrument or as a vocalist, but with being truly seminal. Nearly forty years after his best work, his singing is still imitated in so much guitar-driven indie music - Liam Gallagher's nasal snarl is the most obvious example. Songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, I Am The Walrus, Strawberry Fields, A Day in the Life, Cold Turkey and even Revolution were all, when they first appeared, utterly non-derivative and memorable experiments in sound which redefined the boundaries of pop music. Whatever Lennon's flaws as a human being - he had the narcissism characteristic of a lot of artists - these still startling songs deserve their impact on the culture. The less well-known Revolution no. 9 remains probably, as pointed out by Ian Macdonald in the definitive Beatles book Revolution in the Head, the most widely distributed piece of avant garde art on the planet.

In other songs, he pioneered the genuinely, sometimes painfully, introspective lyric, subject matter hitherto reserved for poetry - and jazz, of course. While Dylan laid claim to the first surreal pop lyrics, you never got such a show of soul from him. Personal experience became one of the standard subjects a pop song, but it's easily forgotten that, before Lennon, pop music was nothing more than a distraction. Kurt Cobain in the 1990s acknowledged Lennon as his biggest influence.

Lennon's bold originality was rare at the time, and is even more so today.

2005-12-03T16:08:00.000Z

"PUBLIC SERVANTS"

From today's Times: "The leaders of the Labour and Conservative parliamentary parties have buried their political differences to join forces for the first time to demand a 22 per cent pay rise for MPs next year.

The chairmen of the Tory and Labour backbench committes held an unprecedented joint meeting to push for a £13,000 annual salary increase... The MPs, whose salary is £59,095, are also demanding, in addition to the inflation-busting pay increase, an improved petrol allowance."

Conservative MP Anthony Steen has said: "One of the reasons the Commons lacks quality MPs is because the pay is not enough to attract the best people." (italics mine)

No comment necessary! Except that I'd like to apologise to the pig pictured in case I have in any way besmirched his reputation.

2005-11-01T19:18:00.001Z

ALL SAINTS' DAY IN SOPRON

At noon, five bells ring out from different locations all over Sopron, (Ödenburg, formerly Scarbantia), a town on the Austrian border. After a particularly good night’s sleep, we had spent the morning beating the cobbled streets looking for breakfast, mulled wine & an internet café (not that we’re living out lives online, of course!)

The lozenge-shaped heart of the town is a disorientating labyrinth because you can only see a short distance in front of you; it’s the best preserved Medieval centre I’ve seen this year (Kosice, Eger, Krakow being the others). Rounding one corner, we chanced upon the postcard image of the Fire Tower, its pillared loggia and onion dome bathed in misty sunlight reminiscent of high summer, even though it was hat-and-scarf weather.

On the streets we passed elaborate lamp-posts whose blackened wrought iron was fashioned into flowers and leaves. The houses are never regular, perhaps because the gothic and baroque facades have been built over wattle and daub or stone walls. In one alleyway, brick arches propped up two converging buildings, which might otherwise have collapsed. We saw top floors jutting out over the street and a blind window with an intact stone cruciform frame and signs of much older buildings in the marzipan-toned walls. One boasted a somnolent-looking weather-beaten lion’s face and others had arrow-slit windows.

The best bit about roaming is that there are a lot of side alleys to dart down. This is because every second or third house has a large arch to admit coaches, and some have the lower barrel-vaulting of cloisters. The doors were often open; you could stray into courtyards where flowers cascaded over tiny balconies. Inside one of them, it looked like a witch’s cottage overlooking a walled garden. We also ventured into one with nothing but a solitary tree at its centre. My friend said she felt that it was the kind of place where someone’s life might have been irrevocably changed by a piece of music. When we left, a plaque told us that Liszt Ferenc had in fact given a recital there once.

In one of the baroque churches, almost completely deserted, a solitary organist was playing Barber's Adagio for Strings. The contrast couldn't have been greater between the unbearably delicate melody and the unwieldy baroque decoration dripping from the walls.

Behind the buildings, you could discover a whole geometry of little pathways, wooden bridges and ramps running parallel to the city walls built on Roman foundations. The chilly mist and the autumnal light merged magically. This was when the first bell of midday clanged its way into our thoughts, soon to be joined by a chorus of others.

2005-10-31T07:47:00.000Z

HALLOWE'EN PAST

Today is Hallowe’en, the ancient European festival of Samhain, “summer’s end”, which was the most magically potent time of year, and even, it has been suggested, New Year. This was the night when the autumn fires would burn to provide, according to the Celtic Spirit website, “an island of light within the oncoming tide of winter darkness, keeping away cold, discomfort, and evil spirits long before electricity illumined our nights”. People would take a part of the fire to re-light their own hearths; in some parts of Scotland this custom apparently continued up till the First World War, the time when so many folk traditions were extinguished.

These popular so-called “Celtic” sources (though this is something of a misnomer) often tell us that at Samhain the “veil between the worlds” was at its thinnest; I have always liked this image as it makes me think of a cacophonous crowd of mischievous sprites and daemons pushing this nebulous membrane so that the tiniest rent could quickly become a rift that would send them tumbling through into our suburban streets. Of course, in the old tradition, the veil was one between the living and the dead. It was above all a festival of the ancestors, and hence its modern incarnation as a night teeming with ghostly nasties. Finally, Samhain also marked the end of the harvest; all the remaining crops in the fields were thenceforth subject to the malign influence of faeries and, being thus accursed, must not be gathered.

In my own little Scottish village, we had traditions of our own. I used to go “guising” as a child, which was a real thrill, given that I did not normally go out at night for any reason. Dressed up fairly carelessly, usually as Tom Baker-era Doctor Who, although I may have had one or two other guises, I ventured forth clutching my nightlight-in-a-jar lantern, which inevitably went out with the first serious gust of wind. (I never actually had a turnip lantern until a friend of mine made one when I was in my thirties.) I remember other costumes being really inventive – in particular, my best friend Alan’s parents would go to great efforts, and one year he was “Mr Music”, clad head to toe in a paper suit and hat patterned with real musical scores. We all had a little routine to do to earn nuts, sweets and coins from the neighbours: this would consist of a song, a poem, jokes, etc. We went to some lengths to learn these by heart. One of my neighbours, an elderly woman with no children, was exceptionally generous. She always stockpiled a mound of goodies, including homemade toffee, and as her reputation spread, children came from far and wide to knock on her door. Eventually, she’d run out of stuff and have no option but to put the lights out and sit in silence to end the siege.

This all sounds so quaint now, like something from between the wars, even though it was in the 1970s! There was no “trick-or-treat”-ing then; this was a later American import. Above all, we all felt safe to roam the streets unaccompanied, which was the real treat. It’s not just ancient customs that have been consigned to the grave.

2005-10-30T21:54:00.000Z

LAST NIGHT AT TUZRAKTAR

It was cold, much colder than we had expected it to be when we arrived at Tuzraktar to see if the rumours were true that it was going to be burned down by the mafia. An abandoned commercial building inhabited by various artists and performers, it’d been our regular Sunday night hang-out ever since we heard about the leftfield films (Derek Jarman, David Cronenberg) they were showing. You didn't just get the films (watched from old armchairs and sofas), but peanuts and Coke too. All for free.

The metal mesh gates are flanked by two giant boilers, each bearing a paraffin torch. These are typical of the post-industrial medieval atmosphere which pervades the central open space. Eerie, hastily executed images in white decorate the concrete walls: grinning monkeys, clowns, a woman on her hands and knees, a series of stencilled goats. Random household objects dangle from the unglazed windows. At the far left, there’s a small tree growing out from the outside of the third floor.

Tonight parts of the walls are red-lit, and there are paper and cloth festival lanterns hanging in a row between the buildings. They are lurid: faces, flowers, storybook animals and abstract shapes. Behind the bar are some fluorescent cartoon aliens and mushrooms on an overhead canvas. And in the centre, three barrels of fire with people clustered round feeding them broken bits of furniture. Every so often, the embers take on a life of their own, splutter and tumble out, making us all jump back in alarm and delight. There's the acrid, always autumnal, smell of woodsmoke. A girl is roasting lard and onions on skewers over the fire to make bread and dripping. All of this is bathed by cut-out snowflake and flower images cast in magenta and orange by a revolving disco light.

Down in the cellar, a local band is rehearsing some kind of French cabaret songs: the four singers, swinging their arms in sync, carry it off well even though they outnumber the audience. Upstairs, if you can brave the night air through the gaping window-spaces, you can see a collection of unusual paintings. The images are modern: vibrantly experimental, yet not abstract in any sense. The artists’ sincerity is clear in every work.

I hope this place reopens in the Spring. This kind of unmediated freedom of expression can only exist in the gap between post-industrial abandonment and near-inevitable enguzzlement by property developers. Let’s hope we beat them to it again.

2005-10-30T09:36:00.000Z

SCRAMBLED - song lyrics

I'm losing the thread of thoughts in my head
Caught sight of oblivion - my old languages are dead
And I won't wait my turn while this city is burning
Caught sight of oblivion in the crap I'm supposed to learn.
The future is here but we're not in control
Better hold on to your soul.

I'm coming unstuck, I can't reconstruct
A thousand scrambled channels - my old languages are fucked
And that's just the start. What's happened to my heart?
A thousand scrambled channels and the feeling just won't start.
The future is here but we're not in control
Better hold on to your soul.

My brain is so tired, the neurons still firing
A thousand scrambled channels - my old language is retired
The network's still up but the files are corrupt
A thousand scrambled channels then the audience erupts
The future is here but we're not in control
Better hold tight on to your soul.

2005-10-29T06:53:00.000Z

TOO MUCH PROPERTY IS THEFT

Private landlords are getting fat from the misery of others who can't afford to buy a home, while draining away the little money their tenants have worked for. I suggest the law in the EU be changed to restrict each household to one mortgage. It is quite enough. (The definition of "household" would have to be carefully worked out to prevent fat cats buying property in other people's names.) Households with excessive properties would be required to put these on the market by the end of the financial year, and eventually this would be extended to include any household with more than one. I think this would bring about a generaly beneficial readjustment in the property market.

2005-10-27T15:38:00.000Z

WHILE ROME BURNS

OK, it's another testosterone-fuelled rant into the depths of virtual space.

It's the hottest October 27th on record in the UK, and, conveniently for the Six o'clock News, it's the same day Prince Charles is telling us to move global warming up the political agenda. At least someone in public life is aware enough of the issues, and able, because of not being beholden to any electorate, to speak out. It might even be a reason to hold on to the royals?

But what really matters as our civilisation teeters on the brink of collapse?

And now here's Gary with the sport. Who'll be the new (insert football team) manager/ centre-forward?
Now you can hear the new release from (insert talentless babe or heart-on-sleeve whining falsetto)
10 hot tips on how to improve your sex life
The Top Ten (insert - usually - inane junk) Ever Made
Vote for the top Dad - Ozzy Osbourne or Homer Simpson
Why x has split up with y
The Nikkei. The Hang Seng. The Dow Jones. The Footsie.
Is it better to have a big tum or a big bum?
Which overprivileged unthinking careerist nincompoop will lead the Tory Party??? Ha ha ha ha.
Neo-medieval feuds over different conceptions of a FICTIONAL Middle-Eastern God
and, can you believe it, the other day someone invested $150,000 in a virtual space station that's part of some online game!

(At least the naked power interests fighting the "war on terror" are doing something relevant in their attempt to do down the other part of humanity and gain strategic control of the reserves of the power source we seem to be addicted to.)

It could almost be funny and if I'd drunk a couple of pints, it probably would be. This is one of the reasons to drink, after all.

We tuck into junk food and are spammed by people's junk thoughts. All day long. Anything of any worth at all, like Prince Charles's comments, will be derided or, at best, ignored. Welcome to the end of the world. And heralded neither by a bang nor a whimper, but a fizz. It's the cacophony of a million distractions and digital cables carrying nasty, corporate-funded trivia to infect us all. The sound of the approaching hurricane is nearly drowned by it. (See below)

2005-10-22T19:27:00.001Z

BRING ON THE STORM - song lyrics.

Just my luck - caught out in the storm
Blow through me now, blow my house down.
Take my stuff, sweep it up
Into the winds and all the wildness.
Take my day, mess it up
Stop the play, close the circus;
I want to feel what it's like
Without a shield and in the open night

Bring it on, the noise and the light
Bring it on, the wind and the wildness
Bring it on, the noise and the light
Here's my life:
Blow it to pieces.

Take our town, break it down
I don't care now - don't really live there.
All the long muffled days
The land is cracked and ripe for rain.
Take the lights, switch them off
Close the bars, and the arcades;
Close the school, stop the clocks,
No more guile in the time we've still got.

Bring it on, the noise and the light
Bring it on, the wind and the wildness
Bring it on, the noise and the light
Here's my life:
Blow it to pieces.

2005-10-09T11:15:00.000Z

BAND OF GYPSIES

Giero, just off Liszt Ferenc Ter, is one of Budapest’s many cellar bars. It’s cramped and with a constant pall of smoke and you can’t hear anything except the music. On Friday, just as on every night, its barrel-shaped structure reverberated with the soaring and frenzied sound of the Roma (gypsy) house band, and we were seeing them for the first time.

There were five or six musicians of varying ages and we were told that they play in shifting combinations; it seems as if anyone from their number can just turn up and join in. So in this way it’s like a traditional Irish session, but the similarity ends there. For in this band were not one but three players of such virtuosity that it set them apart from any run of the mill folkies, and they might easily have been performing in far less humble surroundings.

Leading the band tonight was a guest fiddler, a stocky bespectacled gent in his fifties. He was a consummate showman and reminded me of a figure from Death in Venice (or Mario’s magician?) in the way that he peered over his glasses at each guest, cajoling them, drawing them out of themselves, and not letting go until he got complete involvement: smiles, nods, or raucous singing along. He strutted up and down between the tables, exuding a simmering sensuality, completely at odds with his age, but which he was obviously unwilling to contain. His scratchy notes sprang out, endlessly playful and unpredictable, teasing the main melody, keeping you hooked.

No doubt slightly annoyed to be under this man’s shadow was the usual lead fiddler, a wiry Casanova with sculpted cheekbones like someone from a 1940’s film. This man intently serenaded the women with poignant and lyrical phrases, all the time fixing them with a gaze that could have scorched their skins, as their men shifted uneasily in their chairs. With his instrument thrust under his chin, he adopted a variety of theatrical poses as part of his game. Every now and then he would stop and give a little bow.

Presiding over all this was the Buddha-like cimbalom player enthroned behind his instrument. (This looks something like a small wooden grand piano, and has several different sets of strings, which are hit with beaters.) His presence conferred an air of benevolence to the whole ensemble. He threw a series of amiable glances around the room, quite clearly delighted with his apparently haphazard genius. Moving his arms back and forwards piston-like, he beat out rhythmic patterns with superhuman speed and precision. The slightly out-of-tune cimbalom responded with streams of soft, slightly muffled notes like a silent movie score, or an old music box.

The searingly intense melodies themselves, built from exotic scales, rebounded from the walls and enveloped everyone. They spoke eloquently of another century and a different way of life which these people still live.

2005-09-10T07:54:00.000Z

LESS IS MORE

I've had my laptop computer for just over a year now, and as a reult have amassed a good collection of MP3 music files, something like 12 days' worth of music. It's common now to be walking around with double this quantity. This summer on a long train journey, I had fun skipping through tracks on my friend's iPod. While I enjoyed listening to parts of tracks by a whole lot of bands I'd never heard before, something remained dissatisfying - few of the tracks held my attention long enough for me to stick around for the few minutes until the end. There was no reason to, since there were so many thousands of others to skip to. I was mildly entertained for a while, then I got my book out instead.

Yesterday, I took my clunky old CD Walkman to work - it was given as a present to me about 10 years ago. And I was listening to clunky old While My Guitar Gently Weeps from The Beatles 1967-70. I was immediately arrested and transfixed by the agility and inventiveness of Paul McCartney's slightly abrasive sounding bass line in the right earphone, which sets off the main melody to perfection. The sound quality, while nothing like vinyl, or even a "real" CD player, is magnificent after a diet of thin compressed digi-gruel. The sounds are bright, vibrant, chunkily defined. I felt sad to remove the headphones as I arrived at work.

Don't believe the hype. The experience of losing yourself in music is about one thing only - sound quality. (And a few albums you love to listen to.)

2005-08-28T15:39:00.000Z

WATERMELONS: A PERFECT PLEASURE

I am not very well acquainted with melons, having been raised on a humdrum diet of apples, oranges and bananas. I remember having one or two at friends’ houses, but they never made much impression with their slimy texture and insipid sweetness. As an adult, I never bothered to buy any - until recently. Here in Budapest, heaps of watermelons are piled up outside small grocery shops like cartoon cannonballs. They’re cheaper than water, but incredibly heavy and need to be lugged home separately from any other shopping. There’s no room in the bag for anything else.

Here’s how to eat a watermelon. It’s best enjoyed chilled – this is important - after a tiring day at work, or for breakfast, or having returned from a drinking session, or in the middle of a hot afternoon. Stick a knife into its impressive bulk and cut right through the soft flesh. Then, when it is almost cloven in two, grab the halves and pull them apart with a satisfying crack. Admire the flesh, a perfluence of glowing deep pink incandescent with runny sweetness and glistening like the surface of an iceberg. It’s scattered with jet black seeds.

Repeat procedure until you have a large segment. Then cut round the edge of the pink area, prising the gorgeous fruit away from the skin. And cut into chunks. They’re almost opaque when held to the light. You can imagine the individual crystalline cells. The anticipation is a delight.

Now, plunge in and feel the juices break over your chin, running down and dripping on to the table/ your feet. Deliciously crunchy like a sorbet on first contact, the fruit then collapses on your tongue, bursting into a cool flood which gushes down your grateful throat. For a few minutes you dissolve in a frenzy. It gets a real mauling, and soon you are whimpering with pleasure, and replete with a distended belly.

2005-08-20T07:50:00.000Z

ETHICS AFTER NIETZSCHE: SOME THOUGHTS ON NATURE, CHARACTER, VIRTUE

This was originally posted on a Nietzsche discussion group.

How fixed are our natures? Is there such a thing as a universal “human nature”? Are our natures conditioned more by genetics or the environment? On the other hand, are they at all malleable? Can we work with them as at a potter’s mould? Can we "become what we are"? Does this art of overcoming become more difficult as we get older, as suggested below? When, if at all, do we lose the skill?

The ideas below are tentative, and derivative. I offer them for comment.

I am fairly convinced by the "hardwired" school of evolutionary psychology; we are born with certain capacities and limitations. This I call our individual nature. Then the individual's early upbringing and family environment triggers/activates certain capacities while others are left dormant, yet not atrophied. I call the resulting product (or rather, "climate" - see last post) our character. I suspect that we can change our characters very little after adolescence, and only by degrees, but there is probably individual variation in this.

As part of their characters, some individuals have a stronger tendency to suppress their basic drives, and conform. All men (& women?) have to do this to some extent - i.e. suppress the most violent drives - to exist within society. Whether we tend to resist or conform, it is all utterly deterministic. Different social circumstances vary the the opportunity for pre-existing elements of our characters to be expressed; this is why we appear to change as we move from place to place, geographically or in a hierarchy. The appearance is greater than the reality of the underlying change, although of course new behaviour can become habitual.

Often, and more often than not in the truly great and the criminally insane, the basic drives run contrary to external pressures; we call this Will. Our ethical systems - after Nietzsche, “fragments” would be a better word - were socially evolved systems of drive-suppression, conditioning by means of sticks and carrots. Incredibly useful to have in society, but the stronger-Willed sceptics, as well as the merely cynical, have always been able to reinterpret, reinvent or else junk them to suit themselves. The weaker-Willed castigate themselves for not following these dictates; as Nietzsche pointed out, guilt is indeed one of their strongest feelings, the characteristic manifestation of drives suppressed.

"One must follow the instincts, but persuade reason to aid them with good arguments." Beyond Good And Evil, 191

Within this post-Nietzschean world, it is still possible to construct a system of virtues, although the final ones individuals choose to aspire to, and teach their children, need not be Nietzschean ones! To be credible, they do need to be rooted in a good grasp of evolutionary psychology.

Compassion is arguably a virtue, though it was utterly contemptible to the Nietzsche we find in print. (Perhaps not in all cases. He was marvellously inconsistent. And where's the virtue in consistency?)

2005-07-18T10:47:00.000Z

HARDWIRED

“ Success (or failure) in matters of love, money, reputation or power is transient stuff; you soon settle back down (or up) to the level of happiness you were born with genetically.” In Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up

Wolfe predicts that a new Nietzsche will soon come to announce “the Soul (or Self) is dead.” The suspected killer is the neuroscientific world view, which aspires to explain away these entities, along with another old friend, free will. Scientists claim to have discovered that most of the behaviour that makes up our cherished view of ourselves is in fact genetically encoded, infamous examples being intelligence, homosexuality, having criminal tendencies, and how we respond to beauty.

This will bring about a sea change in our thinking, claims Wolfe, as we have long been used to ideas of social or psychological conditioning – from Marx and Freud, respectively. The result could be that many of our everyday notions become quaint artefacts. Personal responsibility is the most important of these, and along with that goes the ability to criticise meaningfully the actions of others.

I doubt the change in the intellectual climate will be so profound.

(1) There is as much evasion of responsibility in saying “I’m socially conditioned – don’t blame me” as in saying “I’m wired wrong – don’t blame me”.
(2) When we praise or blame, for moral wrongdoing (e.g. “Blair was wrong to go to war”) we are not thinking of some absolute freedom of choice at the moment of decision, as if the culprit had flicked the wrong switch. (This kind of existential pause before decisionmaking is, in any case, the exception rather than the rule.) Rather, we are thinking of someone’s whole character that formed the background to the choice made. Blaming someone is like blaming a faulty computer. It doesn’t matter exactly how the fault came about; the point is that it is there now, and worth complaining about, or taking action over.

As for the Soul (or self) being dead, this is old news to Buddhists, readers of Proust, and many philosophers. Don't be too hard on yourself, because you, as a discrete entity, literally don't exist. The notion of your slowly changing and evolving character is preserved, however - it is something akin to a climate. Get used to acting as a collection of events, and seeing statements about you and your personal beliefs in the same category as weather reports - reasonably reliable, but not facts. Your moods are like tropical storms. And if things aren't going your way, wait for a change in the weather.

2005-07-17T16:07:00.000Z

RAW FOOD SUBVERSIVE

"The ethical value of uncooked food is incomparable. Economically this food has possibilities which no cooked food can have." Gandhi.

Raw and "bio" food seems to be taking off here in Central Europe, but I suppose it never came down to earth, as it were, in a culture where "total wellness" has long been touted as a panacea to the great Hungarian cholesterol-gobbling masses. The more usual diet of sausages, fried dough and multifarious cheeses sadly leaves droves of people hobbling before their time.

Headed off to the country recently for a weekend of eating raw food, doing yoga and general abstinence. Our hosts were a rake-thin couple in their sixties, who had evidently been at it for years. They prepared exquisite dishes from various vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts - not just salads but tasty main courses, spreads for toast and even cream cakes (with nut cream.) I certainly felt rejuvenated after eating this stuff for two days, though this may have been as much to do with not having had a drink all weekend (something I don't do, unless ill) as anything else.

On the down side, there wasn't a lot of humour to be had during the weekend. All the participants were very earnest; good people, but of the po-faced fanatical type, and scarcely a giggle escaped their lips. I've noticed this is a marked tendency among the spiritual and people from a broadly Left tradition, and I'm not sure why. I think it's because "enlightenment" tends to dispel lightness, and humour to subvert.

Joan was utterly dominating, and presided thin-lipped over the proceedings. Before each meal, she declared, after waiting grimly for silence to descend, that she would talk about the food, and this she proceeded to do in hushed reverential tones. The first time, we wolfishly lunged at the great mounds of food, so her tremulous husband pre-empted us the second time: "in this house, it is customary to spend a few seconds in silence." We felt suitably admonished.

Among many edicts and prescriptions, Joan said you should eat nothing with a watermelon, and no more than eight dates at a time. Also, water should be drunk no less than half an hour before eating, NEVER with the meal or afterwards as it would wash away all the enzymes before they got to work. So when I went upstairs to get a little of my water (wisely packed) I felt a Class A twinge of guilt. I plucked up the courage to bring the plastic bottle into the yoga room later; it earned a withering glance from my teacher, the kind relapsing alcoholics get from their counsellors. When Judit, my girlfriend, brought some plates and leftover food to the kitchen, she was stopped from putting it in the bin with Joan's terse proclamation, "I have special rules for leftover food!" (It was to be further empulped for one of the next day's spread.)

All the discussion was about food, food, food. In a moment of snatched privacy, Judit said, "you'd have to be in your dotage to be so preoccupied with your digestive system." We had to escape for walks a couple of times - and we felt as if we were skipping off school! When her husband started going on about some disciple of Hungary's original raw food guru - possibly a former Nazi, I thought - who was alive at 96, I thought of my grandmother going strong at 91 on her own particular regime of sweets and cream cakes.

2005-07-16T08:09:00.000Z

THE HYPNOTISM OF WASPS

When I used to live in Ghana, I had a wasps' nest somewhere near my house, perhaps even under the rafters, and, since I had left my radio in bed under the mosquito net, my breakfast time entertainment was to study their behaviour. I observed a strange ritual that I can't explain.

The noise of the wasps all buzzing together would begin soon after I turned the light on, and sometimes they were up before me. Collectively, they generated a deep high-voltage hum like you would get from a faulty electrical appliance. They would always gather on the grille of the windows because the brightest light usually came from here. Like a schoolboy, I'd extinguish this light and switch on the external one, listening to the immediate pitch change when I did so. Of course, they'd gradually migrate to the other bulb, although it took some of them quite a long time to realise the light source had changed. Perhaps they were sleepy like me.

By now, the sun was starting to come up over the bush land beyond the campus. At one point, just at the moment you'd describe as daybreak, when the light was enough to give some colour to the sky, the wasps stopped dead. This wasn't sudden enough to make you sit up and notice; it happened over a minute or two. There they would sit, frozen in awe (as it seemed) or else complete confusion. All buzzing ceased. And the stillness continued for about twenty minutes, after which they began to fly off, individually and randomly. The first time I saw this conglomeration, I actually thought they had all died during the night. It was spectacular in its own way.

What was going on? Were they greeting the dawn, passing chemical messages to each other in mute communion, or simply trying to calculate the position of the real sun? In their eerie unison, I couldn't help but notice the similarity with the other call to prayer which was happening a little further away on campus, every day at the same time.

2005-07-05T17:20:00.000Z

LIVE 8: HOW WE ARE ALL BEING BETRAYED

Behind all the supposed well-wishing for Africa, Western companies are lining up to exploit the continent. The increases in aid will have strings attached. There will be no real movement on fair trade. An economic protectorate is being created, rather than giving Africans a say in their own future. Please copy and paste this link into your browser, and someone tell Bob Geldof.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1521411,00.html

2005-06-29T16:29:00.000Z

AGAINST CYNICAL HACKS - MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

A colleague at work told me that he had read a review of the Glastonbury festival that said no one really knew what Bob Geldof was on about when he tried to rally the crowd. He asked me why Geldof pops up once every twenty years to rant on about Africa. I also read a comment on the BBC site about his having an inflated ego, etc.

Stop!

Here is a man who has often campaigned on poverty-related issues. It doesn't often hit the big headlines because it doesn't involve Live 8 type events. (Incidentally, he had to be begged to do this one. Itisn't a publicity stunt.) He has, as far as I know, visited the continent on many occasions. What I know for certain is that he was a member of The Commission for Africa, a UK governmental body which was set up to look into all these issues and into what the developed (read "rich")world could do to help solve some of the continent's woes.

Commission for Africa site:
http://commissionforafrica.org/index.html

Geldof knows his stuff. As for his oratory skills, that's a matter of opinion. I like him because he talks straight. In the middle of millions of messages broadcast across the planet every day, he is saying the things that need, desperately, to be said. OK, words are just words, I know. But Geldof is doing more than any other human being on the planet to raise awareness this year. And awareness is where it's at. As far as I know, the hip Glasto crowd responded well. Some people cried. A lot of the audience will have been following the campaign from the beginning of the year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4620635.stm

As for the timing, this year is a once in a generation chance to make a huge impact on global poverty. The reason is to do with a unique coincidence of events. The UK government, which is more progressive on these issues than most governments, is hosting the G8 summit in Gleneagles. The summit has development on its agenda, and comes quickly on the heels of the tsunami disaster, which motivated millions to give an unprecedented amount of money. So, the argument goes, with this amount of popular awareness coinciding with this political event, the opportunities for change are immense. And won't come again soon.

The Make Poverty History campaign aims to:
- double aid
- cancel all debts
- bring about fairer trade rules

If trade rules can be altered (getting rid of subsidies to rich countries, letting developing countries have a degree of protection for their markets...) or, at the very least, aid was not conditional on these countries' having to implement unsuitable economic policies (privatising their essential services, etc), then we wouldn't have to have the level of poverty that we put up with.

Of course, Bush has already watered everything right down and the politicos are doing their usual fudging. So the show will go on as usual...

Except that this time, there's a crucial difference. Because of Live 8 (which will be a culmination of the growth in awareness of these issues since the original Live Aid) THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING. And if these bastards do not heed the million people on the streets, we can take one clear message away from it: democracy is a sick plant. People have been coming to realise this, but it will never have been hammered home so starkly.

1968 nothing. Welcome to 2005. Go to the Live 8 site and sign the petition.

2005-02-19T03:50:00.000Z

NO SATANIC POWER IS IN CHARGE

This is a rather catchy shop (actually just a roadside kiosk) name I remember from when I lived in Ghana in the late 1990s. I was recently sent a link to the site of Trevor, a Peace Corps volunteer who worked in the same town as I did, a dusty but wonderful backwater called Tumu in the Upper West region. Seeing the photos again nearly broke my heart as I miss those days so much. (Funny that, in my last months there, I was crossing the days off the calendar... See my entry on sleepwalking.)

Trevor also did a good job of collecting the shop names below, which are all genuine. I'm not sure whether the idea is to have God's blessing on the business, or whether these were just dreamt up in fits of fervour? I love the typically African juxtaposition of the spiritual and the absolutely mundane.

Bride of Christ Aluminium Works
In God We Trust Fast Food
My God Is Able Plumbing Works
God Did It All Fashion Centre
Anointed Fashion
In Step with the Spirit Enterprises
Anointed Hands Furniture Works
I Can Do All Through Christ Strengthened Me Fashions
Blood of Jesus Electricals
Lord Is My Shepherd Hotel
God Will Provide Supermarket
God's Time Barbering Shop
Jesus Is Evergreen Enterprises
God First Carwash
God Bless You Modern Fashions
Lord J Clinic

The photos are here:

Trevor’s Peace corps site

2005-02-16T18:02:00.002Z

INSPIRED?

I came across this thought-provoking idea on a website about plants, amongst other things. It's a proposal for a new religion.

http://deoxy.org/t_ppp.htm

"A non-theistic mythology that inspires awe in the mysterious, reveals cosmology through science, provides social cooperation in the form of compassion and a pedagogical foundation is indeed the natural course of our development. Obviously, the myth must be simple in its minimalist form, imaginative and yet profoundly sublime."

While I don't agree it's "the natural course...", I do think the writer has made the important points about the things a post-religious society lacks. What could such a new myth consist of? Could it ever be designed, or must it just grow? Or is the whole idea misplaced?

2005-02-08T17:25:00.000Z

HOW SLEEPWALKING CAME TO BE SO PAINFUL

The essentials were hatched by two of a little coven of devils working under a distant hill, moulding the fate of men from the base metal of their dark kingdom. Crouched in a hole, warming his claws against the licking flames, Verhanorath first had the idea:

“Let’s fill their idle hours with longing for the things that were and the things that can never be!”

“And let’s make sure their wisest books tell them in grave and inky words to live in the eternal moment…” added Septeroth, his green eyes glinting. “They’ll want to work on this, but we’ll make it tedious and time-consuming to master.”

“And useless,” chuckled the first, “for these fully lived days will be as spent matches to them. Not so the days they sleepwalk through: rainy October evenings, attentive lovers not appreciated, idle pavement strolls in early summer, hated lessons at school, bus journeys on streets so familiar that they've long ceased to make any impression… these are the ones that shall sting their drab hearts ever after! And they'll be counted in years."

He rubbed his talons – click click - in quiet mirth, but Septeroth looked uncertainly at the flame-lit walls and wondered if they dared let such a thing loose.