Hogmanay ... but not as we know it

Sixteen thousand, nine hundred and twelve kilometres

The distance between here & there ..

Today I start planning next May's big trip.  The parts between here and Lochboisdale on South Uist  are pretty straightforward and all can be completed by public transport.  But how do we get this C5/6 quadriplegic from the ferry terminal at the south of the Outer Hebrides to the 5,000 year old standing stones at Callanish on the island of Lewis?  

I don't know, to be honest.  But we'll see.

Reading The Beach Boy in this week's New Yorker

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID BRANDON GEETING FOR THE NEW YORKER
DESIGN BY TAMARA SHOPSIN

And today's short story brings me right up to date although there is a sense, perhaps, it exists as a remnant of a bygone or fading age; the era of the literary journal, the printed magazine, a periodical.  In this instance The New Yorker.

In his General Introduction to The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Philip Hensher writes of the part played by magazines and journals in promoting and sustaining short story writing before lamenting the decline of such periodical platforms.  There has ensued, he argues, both a loss of engagement with the form and a change of focus (from magazine to competition as the dominant but distorting platform) for those who write short stories.  Mr. Hensher writes,

"For the greater part of the short story's history in Britain, the main publishers of short fiction were the editors of magazines and journals ... Blackwood's, Chamber's Edinburgh Journal, Household Words, All the Year Round, Cassell's, The Fortnightly Review, The Strand, ..."

then continues,

"The possibilities for the writer of short stories have narrowed significantly in recent years. Where once there was any number of paying journals ... now the principal outlet for many writers of short stories is not publication but competitions."

before concluding this thread of his Introduction with the mildly depressing observation that,

"There are very few outlets still able to pay a writer for a short story in a way that could encourage a writer to persist, and with the sort of editorial investment that will enable a writer to develop. Most of them are in the United States. The New Yorker has, happily, been able to develop the short-story writing careers of two of the best short-story writers now at work, Tessa Hadley and Zadie Smith.  There is no British journal that would have published Hadley's stories, as the New Yorker has, twenty-one times, and paid properly for them."

These are reasonable observations, accurately describing a decline in printed publication that's clear and regrettable, I'm sure.  Oddly, however, it seem to me almost nothing is said by Mr. Hensher about the role now played by online platforms.  There is, I think, a sense in which his Introduction limits itself to a lament for the lost era of publishing newspapers, magazines, journals, etc in hard copy forms.  And that's fair enough - up to a point.  For those of us of a certain age that's how it has been for most of our lives and for centuries before us.  But ten years from now not even The New Yorker will survive in hard copy, printed format.  We'll still be reading short stories though, online in new-form periodicals and journals.  Who knows, there may even be a renaissance of the short story?

None of which is what I originally came here to write about today.  

Otessa Moshfegh. Photo by Krystal Griffiths

I came to note the engaging, intriguing short story I read in The New Yorker as it happens (which explains my ruminations above).  It's a story called The Beach Boy by Otessa Moshfegh (of whom I had never heard until I visited this week's New Yorker site - which only tells you something about my lack of knowledge).  There's a detached alienation to the narrative voice in the story; a sense of fin de siècle anomie (if that's not too daft a notion given the date).  In a Q&A article linked to the publication of the story Ms. Moshfegh talks of her interest in "repressed Western consciousness" around which her story circulates in a seductive way.  Like most of the contents of The New Yorker the story is well worth reading, and not simply as a contemporary contrast to something like Defoe's work (yesterday) from 300 years ago but as a good read in its own right.

Beginning with a ghost story

Today I opened the first of (probably too many) books I bought before Christmas to read during my three weeks off work.  When I originally read in The Guardian about The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, edited by Philip Hensher, I could hardly contain myself. (I'm not quite sure why that should be.)  

As one does in Australia, where books are unreasonably expensive due to restrictive wholesaler practices, I sped off to the Book Depository, placed my order for the two, lovely hardback volumes then waited - until today.  Keen for the books to arrive I suppressed my impatience by listening to Philip Hensher discuss the work with Claire Armitstead on the Guardian's Books podcast.  This much I learned from their conversation: whatever else I read in the anthology I am already in its editor's debt for pointing me in the direction of a 'lost' tale entitled The Forty Litre Monkey.  If that prospect doesn't entice you, nothing will. 

The first story in the anthology is Daniel Defoe's A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, the next Day after her Death: to one Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury. The 8th of September, 1705.  Snappy title.  Not surprisingly, given the British tradition, it's a ghost story.  According to wiki it's thought to be the first modern ghost story and I have no doubt Mr. Hensher sees it that way too.  The early date and theme make the story, published anonymously as a pamphlet in 1705, an ideal place to begin.

I've not read much by Daniel Defoe.  Any boy from my time and background would, of course, have read Robinson Crusoe.  Man Friday lives with us forever.  I'm pretty sure I first read the novel in an abridged, children's version presumably stripped of the worst excesses of its 18th Century racism.  I read the unabridged text years later but it's the children's version I recall best; not to forget the classic black and white TV series of the 1960s, which I remember mostly for its stirring signature tune.  In my defence I can only tell you I was seven years old when it was broadcast in 1964.  Many years later, as a student at Sydney University, I read Roxana, or to give this early, surprisingly proto-feminist yarn its full name, The Fortunate Mistress: Or, A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Afterwards Called the Countess de Wintselsheim, in Germany, Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II.  Another snappy title, although, to be fair to Defoe, such was the practice in the early days of the novel.

It's no great surprise then that I'd never read the story of Mrs. Veal's apparition.  But it's a good place to start a two-volume set of 90 short stories of British origin spread across nearly 300 years.  I'm looking forward to all that follows, not least the stories by writers I've never heard of before.  So far - day one - I've read Mr. Hensher's 'General Introduction' and Defoe's ghost story (which predates, to illustrate a point, M Night Shyamalan's movie The Sixth Sense by 296 years).  Already it's clear my purchase is money well spent.

Six Small Pots

It can be surprising what you come across when you're not looking for anything at all.  I found these potter wasp pots on a pile of wood outside the front door of Spike's parents' house in the Dooralong valley.  Magical constructions.

Guess where we'll be at Midnight?

May the force be with you ...

Modern Australian Politics 101

Bonkers

Another insightful article from Lenore Taylor in today's Guardian Australia online.  And yet more below the line commentary in response from yours truly, here:

I am not now, never have been nor ever could have become a supporter of Tony Abbott. Just need to make that clear cos it's reasonable to acknowledge the point of origin of one's critique. 

But truly ... 

One is left almost speechless by the self-serving, delusional hypocrisy and cant of the man. It beggars belief that he could be so out of touch with the real world, so stunningly incapable of even the mildest form of self-critical examination. And yet one wonders if he has inhabited a Tony Abbott bubble of sycophancy for so long, speaking only to trusted like-minded others who only knew how to or had the courage to say "yes Tony, whatever you think", that he may actually have persuaded himself he speaks truth?

• The leadership ballot was brought on because it was about to be revealed he was - in fact - a winner? Eh? 

• Everyone else is disloyal, careerist and backstabbing? But even he does not refute Scott Morrison's revelation that TA offered to dump Hockey to protect his Prime Ministerial skin. 

• And nothing has changed? How supremely ironic that Mr Abbott and the ALP front bench are now the only sentient beings on Earth who cling to the delusional hope that what the Tories did was simply change the sales team.

Mr Abbott can be allowed to believe or promulgate that last idea because

1. he lost and is clearly hurting, 
2. he is as bonkers as is the idea that nothing has changed and
3. his shock jock friends need some one who is no less disconnected from reality to interview for a while as they try to savage the new Prime Minister. But even the shock jocks will get bored with Tony Abbott's broken record because they were only interested in cosying up to power and poor old Tony now has none.

But the ALP needs to shake off its fondness for / reliance on their last hope - like TA - that nothing has changed. The whole game as changed. The future looks entirely different - which isn't to say that some policies won't be carried forward because they clearly will be. Others, however, will alter and the context, strategy and discourse around the central conservative agenda for Australia will be conducted in wholly different terms. Tony Abbott is irrelevant to a conversation about what the future may look like because he always has been irrelevant to any discourse about the shape of modernity. He only ever wanted to look back and return to the mythical past. That and his demonstrable incompetence are the reasons he was dumped.

Now, however, the ALP has a duty to engage with the legitimate, necessary debate about what a modern, social democratic Australia could look like and offer it to voters as a credible alternative vision to 21st Century conservatism. The longer the ALP stays in the same conversation and mind set as TA the farther behind they will fall and the more difficult it will become to persuade Australians that the modern Left has anything real and appealing to offer.

Wake up and smell Spike's tulips, Douglas

I have not been at my best since Tuesday evening.  Today, however, I crossed the threshold into a world in which spring announces its arrival.  And so I tweeted because I've become a man who tweets his news.  Who knows why?  

4 days confined to bed are OVER!!! #WakeUpAndSmellTheTulips Don't you just love being a Quad.? (That'll be a no) pic.twitter.com/Um1YaZj5ZY

— Dougie Herd (@dougie_herd) September 26, 2015

Red Star Causewayhead

What a pleasant surprise I received this morning on my Facebook page.  Tommy Geddes, friend from my days at Stirling University in the late 1970s, posted a photograph from almost 40 years ago of our six-a-side football team.  We entered an intramural football competition, played on Wednesday afternoons as I recall.  We were not very good; might even have been bad but we enjoyed ourselves.  That was the point.

I have no recollection of the photograph being taken.  I couldn't even begin to guess at who took it.  But I'm very happy Tommy found it and shared it.  Nor can I remember much about the football; none of us can.  But that's not important in any way.  We played to win at the time because what's the point of entering a competition if you don't try - at least try - to win.  We are petty sure we lost but we would have enjoyed ourselves enormously regardless.

What a team we were (from left to right, back row then front)

• Malcolm Jenkins, Students Association Permanent Secretary
• Neil Roden, Secretary of the local Communist Party Branch
• Me, Vice-President of the Students Association
• John Reid, former President of the Students Association, 
• Harry Adam, President of the Students Association
• Tommy Geddes, Immediate past President of the Students Asociation

And what a mixture of previous, at that time and future parts we played or would go on to play.  Among us there were or would be:

• 3 members of the Communist Party (at that time)
• 1 already former member of the Communist Party
• 1 former member of the Scottish National Party
• 4 current members of the Labour Party
• 1 who would become a Member of Parliament, British Cabinet member and now Member of the House of Lords
• 1 would be awarded an OBE for services to education
• 3 of us would serve on the Scottish Executive of the National Union of Students.
• 1 would become the National Secretary of the National Union of Students
• 2 served as members of the Steering Committee of NUSUK
• 1 became Chairman of Glasgow Celtic Football Club
• 1 supports Glasgow Rangers and Southampton Football Clubs
• 2 support Partick Thistle Football Club
• 1 supported Wrexham
• 1 supported Motherwell (maybe)

Of course, all of us had and have so very much more in our lives; relationships, loves, jobs, hopes and dreams (realised or not).  But we look happy in the photograph because we were.

Sometimes ... we know this to be true

Forgive me if I sound a little sceptical here.

I'm reading this article about a new phone designed by a Britishdesigner (chances are he owns an Apple Powerbook Pro) for a Swiss electronic products manufacturer. I'm in Australia so I'm reading the Guardian online article on my Chinese manufactured Anroid smart phone although it could just a easily have been using my Microsoft Surface tablet / laptop or my all-in-one desktop if I was at home. Later I shall tweet. I'll check my Facebook page and maybe see something there - on YouTube - that'll make me laugh. It could have a cat in it or be a Walking Dead meme.

That all seems pretty ordinary to me in the second decade of the 21st Century but as a 58 year old man I am nothing like as engaged with the smart technologies and their apps as the smart generations that are transforming the world.

But here's the thing - I have my relationships at home which function more or less as well or otherwise as they did or didn't 30 years ago. I have all sorts of social relations beyond the home and not online. I may even delude myself into thinking some of them have meaning (for me) and are purposeful: a work colleague's leaving do tomorrow, a friend's second child's Christening on Sunday, another friend and her 13 year old foster child coming to stay next week on holiday during which time the thirteen year old will go to the local glass artist studio with my glass artist partner to learn how to slump hot glass to make butterflies.

All of us connected as humans in a real world. Our smart technologies and platforms facilitate those connections. We all know where the off buttons are located if we really need to find them although, as sentient beings, we simply put down the phone, tablet or PC and pick up a book, get on the bicycle or bus, engage differently in whatever way we can or choose.

I just don't buy into all the cod sociological doom that comes with this guy's retro phone. I don't believe that smart phones, Facebook, Periscope or Apple are taking us to Hell in a handcart where anomie, alienation and the collapse of civilisation await.

It's a phone. Buy it or not because it's a product you want or don't want. Spare us the sociology lecture though. I have the suspicion it's much the same pitch as the papyrus salesman made to the world when the paper makers set up shop.

What a depressing end to a week of abject failure on the Australian Left

Malcolm Turnbull, happy, today.  Pic: Rob Griffith / AP

Lenore Taylor in the Guardian Australia online gives us another of her measured, perceptive readings of what's going on in Australian politics.  Meanwhile, the Australian Labor Party continues to run around like a headless chicken and / or sits immobile in the middle of the road like a stunned rabbit transfixed by the headlamps of a rapidly advancing 50 tonne truck and / or falls at the first hurdle (choose your preferred metaphor) while Malcolm Turnbull re-sets the Liberal Party's operating system and starts to map out what the Australian future looks like under a conservative government that isn't delusional, isn't backward-looking, isn't in thrall to that ridiculous fool Tony Abbott.

As is becoming usual these days for Mr Angry of Gilmore I made some comments 'under the line' which is a place ... like space ... where no one can hear you scream.  How depressed is the author of these words?

And so ... this 'modern' Conservatism follows the lead of its NZ and European counterparts to assert authority over Australian politics leaving many casualties in its wake.

Almost everyone heaves a sigh of relief that the short, embarrassing, ineffective and destructively delusional reign of Tony Abbott is over, dead, buried and cremated.

Joe Hockey leads the way to the exit door, which others will also take because they know they have been comprehensively defeated. By and large this group will accept whatever crumbs from the table they are offered to simply go away.

Andrews, Bernardi, Abetz and a few other troglodytes will bleat from the sidelines for a while until even they get bored with the sound of their own voices. Soon, not even Andrew Bolt will bother to interview them.

And the ALP - as evidenced again today by their inept, spectacular missing of the point, inability to see the bigger picture and tone deaf responses to what is clear for everyone else to see - already slips further behind, falls short and stumbles into a bleak, losing future. Their lack of understanding, analysis or credible alternative vision make this a very gloomy Sunday indeed for a left-leaning voter like me.

Bill and his team had two years to prepare for this moment. It's ghastly to realise just how bereft of ideas, how lacking in strategic nous they have shown themselves to be. Ghastly.

Don't panic, don't panic ... ok - let's panic

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ...

So Partick Thistle lost (again) this time away from home to the not so very mighty Ross County.  Even this early the writing is on the wall ... my Facebook wall as far as these words are concerned;

I can no longer hide the truth from the world.

With eight games played, no wins, only two goals scored and with an uncomfortable gap opening up between our bottom of the league position and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE LEAGUE my unofficial Partick Thistle existential threat warning has been raised from "bit of a worry" to "moderately anxious".

I love the smell of laksa in the morning

One of the facets of Sydney I miss by not living the at the moment is the range of food options available.  All over the city there are choices available from almost every part of the globe. And at lunch the range of food quality, decently priced, well cooked options is gobsmacking. You can eat crap if you must or dine like a King if you insist.  Or you can settle for a giant bowl of really good seafood laksa for $15 by a mob by the name of Sassy's by Chinta Ria in the food court on the fifth floor of the Pitt Street shopping mall. 

This experience is nothing like the chicken noodle soup ... was it by Knor? ... of my adolescence. Not even in the same universe.

Where would we be without a Sydney laksa?

Essay number 2 ...in

English lit essays seem to be a bit like those proverbial buses that you hear about.  You can wait years without seeing one then two come along at the same time.  This time it was a 'short' essay on Modernism and earlier today I submitted my 1,800 words on The Waste Land by T S Eliot.

Ever since I was introduced to Eliot's poetry I've found myself struggling with a bit of a conundrum.  Can you separate the writer from the work?  And if not, what then (if anything) might that tell you about yourself?

T S Eliot may be the greatest poet that ever put pen to paper.  Some of his poems are among the greatest ever written.  Think of Preludes, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, The 

Journey of the Magi, The Hollow Men, Four Quartets.  The list goes on.

Then, of course, there is The Waste Land  I think it truly is the greatest poem ever written in English; one of the most important texts of the 20th Century.  It is an endlessly fascinating, endlessly instructive piece of writing with a depth, complexity and subtlety that sometimes takes your novice breath away.

But what to do about the man?  A deeply conservative, somewhat misogynist, certainly anti-Semitic, high Anglican, Tory.  Those are not unfair accusations but statements of demonstrable fact.

So what does that mean for a trendy old Leftie like me?  I have no idea.

Read the poems,  Judge for yourself.

This much, however, I do know.  My essays are in.

On with the next lot of readings.

A tweet I received today with a rhetorical question

Why don't refugees go back to where they came from?

Australia can do more.

First essay in

Spike's Daffodils

Okay, it's not quite a host of golden daffodils but it's evidence enough of spring's arrival here in the nation's capital.  Me and the cat are enjoying a quiet, suburban morning together basking in the balmy heat of the sun in a cloudless sky - all nine degrees but it feels like a Scottish summer's day already.

I wrote about the daffodils - Wordsworth's rather than Spike's - as part of my essay submitted digitally last night. Digital submissions ... who knew?  Gone, it would seem, is the caffeine-fuelled, all-nighter of the 1970s, culminating in the dash across the campus to the English department, the frantic search for a pen that worked to complete the essay cover sheet before slipping it through the gaping mouth at the top of the submission box fixed to the external wall of the departmental office. Five minutes before the deadline expires, a great weight lifts from your shoulders and you think, time for a celebratory beer or three. I wonder who'll be in the bar, like me, bragging about how close we got to that box being shut.

That was then and this is now.  Last night? Check the bibliography, run Microsoft's spelling checker, upload the file ... hit send.

And how does one celebrate?

With a mug of tea and an episode of season four of The Walking Dead.  Avert your delicate gaze Douglas as you not-quite-watch our raggle-taggle band of survivalist heroes at the very limits of their existential tethers finding even more novel ways to stab, smash, crush, squash, slice, dice and decapitate an almost limitless supply of zombies.

That could almost be a metaphor for the intellectual processes of preparing 2,800 words on 18th Century Romantic poets and the gendered pursuit of the sublime.  Or not.  

It's done and in.  Just not like the old days.

Thank goodness.

Time for the first essay

And I'm back to the Romantics.

Wordsworth by William Shuter

                                         For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things

I have been enthralled by those lines and the idea behind them since the first time I read William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, which you can read here.  But my task in the first essay of my first semester at the Australian National University, following my return to undergraduate study, is to take the poems apart.

Four hundred words or so into my essay, here’s my argument against Coleridge and Wordsworth:

This essay discusses the treatment of gender in the poems.  In contrast to the poets’ claims to be addressing the natural or universal characteristics of the human condition this essay argues that the texts reveal a gendered view of ‘the vast empire of human society’ in which the circumstances, condition and perspective of the male – especially the creative imagination of the male poet – is privileged within the 'natural' world, the poetry that emerges from the male experience of that world and in relation to women who are assumed to be inferior to men.

Sorry guys, although I still love many of your works.

News from the colonies to the old country

So my name cropped up in a Facebook wander down memory lane by some old friends peppered across the UK now.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s we were part of the same student politics organisation.  There were ups and downs, as I recall those times, but it was fun to be involved.  They were exciting times in which we helped to move the world forward in some areas, were beaten back in others.

I felt no real need to enter into the nostalgia but then my name came up.  Someone then asked, "is Dougie Herd still alive?"  Time, I thought, to intervene.  So I added these words to the conversation:

Call this living comrades? Call this alive?

I'm in a Tory Hell with a Prime Minister that thinks the 16th Century was a bit advanced, that global warming is a left wing conspiracy, that Prince Phillip needed a Knighthood from the Australian people, that women have a place but only one of them is good enough for that place to be in his Cabinet, that it's ok for his sister to be gay but not ok for his sister to marry the woman she lives with ... and that football is played with a rugby ball and goals with no nets. 

I could go on but then I look at home and see George Osborne is considered by some to be an economic progressive and free-thinking, intellectual power house.

If that's all not bad enough .... and it is ... we have three types of spiders in our back garden that could kill you if you look at them, brown snakes that'll stop your heart beating if you even think to breathe in the same space as them and a giant chicken-like bird called a Cassowary that could rip your lungs out in five seconds. And that's before we even mention the sharks, sting rays and crocodiles.

All things considered though ... one mustn't grumble.

A luta continua!! A luta continua.

Are we doomed to repeat the past?

When I was a child growing up in Scotland my parents brought me up within the Presbyterian traditions of the Church of Scotland - the Kirk, which in many ways acted as the moral compass of our small, northern nation.  Although I never acquired the sense of Faith felt by my mother and father, and I am not a Christian, I have taken with me into adulthood and my life in the world fundamental tenets that have guided 'Believers' across centuries - millennia, I suppose.

Among those fundamentals are these two pillars of decency and civilised co-existence:

• First, there's the 'Golden Rule' also known as the 'ethic of reciprocity'. I know best the Christian version from the Sermon on the Mount and rendered in the King James Bible as ... "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12)  Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  It's a maxim one finds in every major religion and, I have no doubt, in any moral framework where religion isn't the driver.

• Second, there is this ... "Blessed are the peacemakers".  Same sermon but this time Matthew 5:9.  It speaks for itself, don't you think?

Those thoughts came to mind while I was reading an article in my beloved Guardian.  You can read it here:

Osborne announces £500m for Faslane and says Corbyn threatens UK security

Chancellor says cash will create thousands of jobs at home of Trident deterrent and criticises Labour leadership hopeful’s anti-nuclear stance

The replacement cost for the Trident nuclear missile system on the UK's four - allegedly independent - nuclear-armed submarines is estimated to be at least £100 Billion over the next 35 years.  One hundred billion pounds - at 2012 prices - to replace a weapon that has never been used, should never be used, and which, if used, would signal the end of all human life.

The Trident-class nuclear submarine Vanguard. 

The Trident submarine base is located in a sea loch on the River Clyde in Scotland about 30 miles from where I was born and raised.  As the crow flies ... or nuclear missile soars, come to think of it ... the submarine base is just over 63 miles from the isle of Iona where - in 563 AD - an Irish prince by the name of Columba arrived on a missionary expedition that led to the introduction of Christianity across Scotland. When I was maybe two or three years old my father carried me on his shoulders as our family made its way across the beach to what's known as the Iona Community - blessed peacemakers if ever there were such people - where he and other volunteers were working to renovate and refurbish the community's buildings.

Iona, Scotland

Today's story in the Guardian made me sad and angry.  Scotland needs investment in its people, infrastructure and future.  Half a billion pounds to bolster the nuclear offensive capability of NATO is, however, something no one needs.

As sometimes happens, maybe often, the news set me off on one of my below the line rants in the paper's comments section.  This is it:

It seems we still have to ask the question the proponents of Mutually Assured Destruction have never been able to answer ... In what conceivable circumstances would or could a British Prime Minister independently authorise the firing of nuclear armed missiles and at which - or any - known, likely or foreseeable 'first strike' enemy?

Given there are none - not one, not ever - Trident is not now and never has been the UK's nuclear deterrent. It deters nothing and no one and would never be used independently of an authorisation from the USA via its front organisation NATO. Trident is a tool of MAD in a box wholly owned and controlled by American foreign policy

And given the genocidal consequences of nuclear war, MAD and the impossibility of a 'first strike capability' resulting in anything other than those two outcomes what social, economic or moral purpose does Trident serve?

That's right ... none. Not one. Never.

Have we still not learned?  Make peace, not war.  Join CND.

Cold in any currency

Leaf mulch, plastic bottles and a good deal of hope

First day of winter and there was frost on the ground, snow on the southern uplands and, I read in today's newspaper, snow on the streets of Braidwood where Spike and I spent Saturday.  The weather forecast tells us the temperature will drop to minus three degrees overnight, which is cold in anybody's language.  

Spike has been out in the garden, cutting the bottoms off empty bottles of sparkling water to use as mini-greenhouses to protect the sweet pea seedlings planted not so long ago in preparation for the return of warm weather and all that comes with spring.  Here's hoping the plastic bottles are up to the week ahead.

Birthday brunch in Braidwood

Spike, ordering breakfast

We drove to Braidwood at Spike's request, as part of her extended birthday celebration. Several places on the must-visit list were either closed (the most popular breakfast place was having its floor sanded and varnished ... on a Saturday ... go figure) or not wheelchair accessible. But we found a delightful cafe set off the road behind a gallery. 

The name 'Dee-liscious' did not bode well but I was pleasantly, delightfully surprised. It's a warm, welcoming place with good food, friendly staff and a laid-back atmosphere. We found a table inside - away from the giant cat with a squashed, flat face, the countless dogs (all well-behaved) and six strutting chickens.  With a narrow range of veggie options to choose from we ordered freshly squeezed juices, coffee for Spike and Chai for me then ate like hobbits on smashed eggs, mushrooms and goats' milk curd on toast. Delicious. Truly. And well worth the drive.

It's in The Guardian so it must be true

Earlier today I read a short article by Natalie Haynes in The Guardian's Books section. The article is headed March of the megabooks: it's all Donna Tartt's fault and can be read here.

The gist of the short piece is that very long novels (900 to 1,000 and more pages) seem to be in vogue.  Ms Haynes writes that she has nothing against long novels per se but that some of the recent crop demonstrate the want of a good editor.  She adds that "a book can be any length, if the words earn their keep on the page" and suggest that we might be overlooking short novels, citing two examples of fine writing: The Testament by Colm Toibin and The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, which she describes as "the most beautiful book I read last year".

I've never heard of Jean Giono nor - obviously - have I read his short book. On the strength of Natalie Haynes glowing praise, however, I have just ordered a copy (in hardback with woodcut illustrations) from the Book Depository. We shall see soon if it lives up to the recommendation.

Preparing for spring

Spike's tools on a sunny day for planting garlic & tulip bulbs then hacking down a dead bush

Avengers: Age of Ultron - summed up in a selfie

#SummedUpInASelfie. Pic by Spike

The excellent BBC Radio Five's film review programme with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode invited followers of its Twitter feed @wittertainment to sum up Avengers: Age of Ultron in a selfie without words.  I asked Spike to take the photo here.  I know it's not a selfie and it may be a bit harsh but I was terrifically bored by episode two of the Avengers' tale.  And the selfie made me smile. Perhaps I am easily amused.

The Finkler Question

What is it makes a novel a Booker-prize winning novel?  I've just finished reading The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson and I'm not sure I could tell you why the folk who judged it to be a winner reached their conclusion.  (Later I shall read the other finalists from 2010 to see if there's any answer there.)

First impressions?

I had to start twice - at least.  It was not easy to get beyond the first few pages because the central character, Julian Treslove, struck me as an irritating, narcissistic pain in the arse; a misanthrope.  I asked myself, why would I want to spend more time with such a man?  I don't know that I answered my own question.  But does the immediacy of my reaction against the character indicate I was in the presence of great writing; a character so well constructed I took against him within three pages?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

I did stick with the novel in the end and I'm glad I did, although I'm pretty sure I didn't like it.  Do you have to like a book to read it through?  Clearly not.  Would I recommend the novel to anyone to read?  I'm not sure that I would.  In fact I'm pretty sure I would not although I admire Howard Jacobson very much - mostly as a result of watching his cultural criticism on television and reading his columns in The Independent.

On the plus side there is the forceful, energetic voice of the author which is never far from the surface of the page.  There are times when one can almost hear Howard Jacobson declaiming in the distinctive, insistent, impatient tone his public persona offers up in interviews, polemics, documentaries.  Coming from a man as witty, perceptive and intelligent as HJ that voice is no bad thing.  The novel is, as you might expect, remarkably clever, just like its author.  It is laugh out loud in places, which is a real achievement in any novel but that wit and humour and well-placed sense of comic timing about the absurd contradictions of the human condition is built upon a melancholic foundation of inevitable loss and ultimately death - loss of youth, loss of love, loss of faith, loss of identity, place, purpose and self.  It asks searching questions about the place of Jewish people in human history, the modern world and the unknown future offering no firm answers (at times it feels as if the author is arguing on the page with his own convictions and self-doubt).  The novel seems to veer towards the fatalistic inevitability of a recurring doom in history in which Jewish people and non-Jews misunderstand Judaism, Jewish people and the relationships with non-Jewish cultures that ensue.  The case against anti-Semitism is powerfully made. Its history, current (and resurgent) manifestations and consequences are worthy subjects for any writer to touch upon.

You can tell there's a 'but' on the way, can't you?

I felt throughout as if the author was shouting at me.  Proclaim it Howard long enough and loud enough and the mere reader will eventually understand. Nothing in this world was ever quiet, contemplative, self-reflective even when we were told that a moment was supposed to be one, two or all three of those.

And I found it difficult - ever - to suspend disbelief.  I was never persuaded that Julian Treslove and Samuel Finkler were real people in a successfully realised fictional world (the contrasting idea of  "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" from Marianne Moore came to mind).  The character of Libor seemed real to me - fondly drawn with fewer words than the archetypes / caricatures that were the two other principals.  All the women are problematic - barely realised at all and - sadly - deployed most of the time as devices to tell us something about one or more of the men rather than being fully formed fictional beings in their own rights.  Does Howard Jacobson have a female character problem?  Evidence for: it's a woman who mugs Julian; Julian's past partners are essentially breeders identified solely as the mothers of his two very thinly painted sons; all women in Sam's life are objectified as not much more than possible sexual partners, his own dead wife is an adulterous, disappointed and vindictive woman.  Evidence aganst: there's Hephzibah who arrives late in the piece but may be the most complete female character and Malkie, the dead wife of Libor, the most sympathetically portrayed but, you know, irrevocably dead.

The UK Daily Telegraph called it an "exuberant comedy of Jewishness".  The Guardian review proclaimed "there's so much that is first rate in the manner of Jacobson's delivery that I could write all day on his deployment of language without once mentioning what the book is about."  Elsewhere, The New York Times is less impressed and The New Yorker positively hostile.

Me?  I may be that worst of things.  Neither here nor there.  I've finished reading it and I'm moving on. I suspect never to return.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

Worked through the night.  I should have left that way of being back there in my student days when I was young, lacked wisdom and could rely on black coffee to see me through.

Now ... I am just a wrecked, old hulk waiting for dawn to come and birds to sing.  So what if my work is further forward?  A week from now no one will care. Not even me.

The artist formerly known as Cat Stevens.  He'll see me through.

The season of mist and mellow fruitfulness ... Keats tells us.

Choosing is a serious business: Pic by Spike

After a couple of cold, rainy days, just to make the point that summer is long gone, the sun has returned.  As soon as it did I was out there, in the garden, soaking-in the autumnal glow, basking in it like a retired lumberjack in my stylish -  euphemism for cheap - flannelet shirt. Spike captured the moment on camera - somewhat surreptitiously I may say - as I searched the Diggers Club catalogue (The Fruit Edition) which arrived in today's post, to identify the best buys of the season.  

As if I would know the first thing about about which plants to buy.  Not that I'd let a small matter such as absence of expertise stop me.  

My suggestions - which the resident gardener may accept or reject - were as follows:

• a Macadamia nut bush, which I concede is a bit speculative.  It may not like a frosty Canberra morning but if it survives there's the worry it could grow to 3 metres high by 3 metres wide.  I look forward to the day I suggest to Spike she harvests nuts from the top of that bush;
• a blueberry bush - superfood apparently - but not cheap so there's a bargain (if you discount all the hours of labour the gardener will need to put in);
• three types of raspberry - a favourite of the gardener - so I'm trying to curry favour there;
• a loganberry - because one can;
• a marionberry - because they look delicious in the photograph;
• broad bean seeds - because breadth is never a failing;
• spring onion seeds - because you never know when you'll need a spring onion; and 
• kohlrabi seeds - "a cool climate fast growing vegetable that tastes like cabbage but grows like turnip" apparently.  Now there's a root vegetable I never knew existed until today.

ceci n'est pas un navet ...

When the plants arrive - and throughout the growing season - I shall, no doubt, offer the layman's advice.  And the resident gardener,I suspect, may choose to ignore me.

Only in The Guardian

A headline in yesterday's Guardian caught my attention ... as it understandably might.

Uncovering the face value of beards

Written by Fanny Arlandis, the piece, which you can read here, began with this paragraph:

A beard has both social and political meanings. “A powerful distinguishing mark, the appearance of facial hair plays a key role in the process of asserting or stigmatising identity,” says ethnologist Christian Bromberger. “Being hairless and clean-shaven, or not, is far from neutral,” says Stéphane Héas, a sociologist at Rennes 2 University. “One’s appearance impacts directly on the way others judge us.”

I was tickled, read on then - a bit tongue in cheek - left the following comment below the line:

Scottish man with beard

Forty years of me having a beard may be explained by this ...

“The patriarchal, male-dominant nature of western society in the 19th and 20th century almost certainly explains the appeal of sophisticated beards and moustaches,” Héas says. “Policymakers made their presence felt through their discourse and facial hair.”

Or ...

I do not like shaving.

Answers on a postacard to ... any French deconstructionist you may still be able to find anywhere on the planet. No ... seriously ... I'm quite fond of Derrida, love Barthes; really. But guys. It's a beard.

After a good night's sleep I awoke (on what was still 6 April in the northern hemisphere) to discover over my breakfast reading of The Guardian that my smart-arse comment had provoked a response, seemingly less tongue in cheek than my own from a fellow Guardianista, one Andrew the Gaunt, who wrote as follows:

I think you missed the point. Sociology does not care about individual cases, but is concerned about trends. Why did men all shave during the 18e century, but not at all during the 19? Why was it reserved to marginalised groups in the 60s and now is popular amon the youngs? You can hardly argue that it's mere coincidence, suddenly people hate shaving, and yet all like it back in the same time.

Sociology tries to explain this, why do we behave the way we do and what led us into behaving that way...

I could not resist a further riposte, I'm afraid, which I posted today. 

I'm reasonably sure I didn't miss the point, Andrew. 

I am not as sure, however, that what may or may not be a sociological trend warrants this article in the Guardian at this time because there are already very strong indicators that the most recent trend for facial hair peaked some time ago and in our Capitalist, post-industrial societies the resurgence of the clean-shaven metrosexual, now setting up porridge cafes, social media consultancy services and home-delivered vegan frozen dinners, is already apparent. The beard thing is already a bit like Hush Puppy slip-on shoes. SO last cultural wave.

As for an old geezer like me ... I'm keeping the beard because someone has to hold on to pre-Capitalist fundamental principles. Don't shave. It only accelerates the commodification of one's double chin.

You see, I thought I was simply having a laugh.  Clearly I made a mistake.  

Are sociologists entirely bereft of humour?

The Young Victoria

We watched a movie I've wanted to watch for a few years but missed until this evening: The Young Victoria, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, starring Emily Blunt as the Queen and Rupert Friend as Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.  They were both excellent at the top of a pretty impressive cast all round (even allowing for the slightly paradoxical fact that the then 26 year Ms Blunt plays the 18 year old Princess Victoria of Kent who becomes Monarch alongside 36 year old Paul Bettany playing the 59 year old Lord Melbourne.  Go figure ... but I nitpick)

The impeccable Jim Broadbent

I'm no great fan of Royalty nor of chocolate box - not to say soap opera - reinventions of history ... and yet.  I quite enjoyed this superior farrago of an ahistorical fiction.  The palace gardens, interiors and facades looked sumptuous, elegant and imposing although not, I think, Buck House.  The frocks were lovely.  The gentlemen's suits looked appropriately rigid and the uniforms quite dashing.  And the acting was engaging which allowed the willing (and necessary) suspension of disbelief in a script that was entirely what you would expect from the man who has given us Gosford Park (which I liked very much despite its established-order predilections) as well as Downton Abbey (which I've never seen) and would go on to be 'elevated' (I believe they say) to the position of Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, a Tory Life Peer (quelle surprise).

One is required to take the ways the script is - at best - 'economical with the actualite' with a pinch or two of salt.  Did Victoria and Albert really discuss the game of thrones that was 19th Century Europe over a symbolically breathless game of chess (not unlike but more restrained than Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in the original of The Thomas Crown Affair)?  And we know, do we not, that Prince Alfred never took a bullet for his Royal Mrs at any time (let alone in the manner of Kevin Costner protecting Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard - a connection neatly made in the Guardian's deconstruction of the Fellowes' screenplay here)?

But what can I say about this film, of which one should not expect too much given Sarah, Duchess of York is credited as a producer?  (On the other hand, so too is Martin Scorsese, who has no need to prove his cinema street-cred to anyone; least of all me).  The truth is, I think, it's a well-constructed fairy tale in the revisionist, centrist, patriarchal mainstream manner.  Not history but ideal telly for a wet bank holiday evening. Despite myself - despite my prejudices perhaps - I enjoyed it.