The darkest hour is just before dawn ... in politics as much as anywhere else

Was this man's heart ever truly in it?

Mr. Bush goes home but the money lined up behind him stays in the game. Mr. Rubio floats higher. Mr. Cruz sinks a little and will be entirely sunk soon enough. Mr. Carson may hang around for a while, although not even he is sure why. Mr. Kasich will battle on in delusional self-belief until the money runs out.

And when it boils down to GOP make your mind up time it will choose Mr. Rubio over Mr. Trump because America is not insane.

Mr. Trump, however, does not know how to lose even though he has experienced it already in this nomination round. His megalomaniac tendency will refuse to accept the decision of the Party he claims he wants to lead. Mr. Trump will throw a very expensive, billionaire's hissy fit and seek to stand for the Presidency anyway because Mr. Trump truly does believe that if you have enough money you ought to be able to buy anything you want and can afford. Even a country.

Towards the end of March it should all be a lot uglier than it looks now.

Whatever the outcome of the GOP three-ring circus, please America, Vote Democrat.

To the Ring of Brodgar

Ring of Brodgar

We spent weeks in December/January trying to figure out how we could get me and my wheelchair from Glasgow to Stornoway in the Western Isles when we visit Scotland in June. I was beginning to give up hope but said to Spike this morning I would get back on to finding solutions this week coming. Spike said, 'ok but we could try Orkney too'. 

Skara Brae

This evening I started searching the web for information about Orkney. I wrote 4 e.mails to not very promising-looking hotels. Within an hour three indicated they have rooms with easy access showers. Checked train times between Glasgow and Aberdeen. Checked ferry times between Aberdeen and Kirkwall. Began to find evidence of wheelchair accessible buses and taxis on the main island. Less than three hours after starting our search it looks as if we have a week on the Orkney Islands more or less established. I'm a very happy man and these are just a couple of the Neolithic sites we shall now visit.

Why this man writes

Orhan Pamuk. Pic by Columbia University Press

An extract from the speech made by Orhan Pamuk when he accepted the Nobel Prize for literature on December 7th 2006.

As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

The whole speech is here: My Father's Suitcase

The last Billy

This must be the place ...

What could be more difficult than following the assembly instructions of an IKEA Billy bookcase? Tab A into Slot B - as the excellent movie review team at BBC Radio Five Lives 'Wittertainment' programme often reminds us for no particularly solid reason. (It is the best two hours of informed discussion and reviews you are ever likely to come across by the way. Download the podcast. It has spellbinding extra features).

Buying a Billy bookcase from IKEA in Canberra. 

That's what could be more difficult. Although I confess, for the sake of dramatic effect I have exaggerated the degree of construction difficulty. You don't even need to be able to read - look at the drawings, screw in the screws, locate all the noodly bits you've lost on the floor, insert the shelves, slide the completed bookcase into its place. Easy. Mind you, I'm paralysed from the chest down so Spike does assembly. I observe and resist the temptation to mansplain how simple it is or give advice.

But Jeez - buying the last unit we needed to complete our book nook? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

This is a sad, short tale of not very much human suffering. We were in the store last Friday. The App insisted there were 40cm-wide cases in the 'market hall'. Nope. A helpful IKEA person said they were likely to be on a pallet somewhere back of house. They would be on the shelves from 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning. We'd already lost four hours of our lives wandering the IKEA road to Hell - following their illuminated arrows pointing to corporate good intentions. So we left.

We returned on Tuesday because the App insisted there were 40cm-wide Billy bookcases on the shelves in the market hall. Another hour wandering the pilgrim's way to the slough of despond. Nope. Sold out over the weekend apparently. We ran screaming from the building... bearing an IVER unit we had not been looking to purchase for the kitchen . But you can't leave empty handed, can you?

We returned today because the App and a human being said, 'yep - on the shelves in the market hall'. I elected to stay in the car because - to be frank - dying of heat exhaustion in a sun-baked IKEA car park was preferable to another hike around IKEA's path to the underworld. Spike, fortunately, is more clever than I am. She took the short cut via the canteen with its infinite supply of Swedish meatballs before returning, some hours later ... OK forty minutes ... with the slim bookcase to complete our set.

I will bet you good money the Library at Alexandria took less time to construct than our suburban idyll. Next time, we'll just leave the damn books piled on the floor where they do no one harm.

Heroism in The Iliad

Ajax carries the body of Achilles

There's a reading group discussion underway on The Guardian web site looking at Homer's Iliad.  Today's topic is considering the heroism or otherwise of Achilles. One of the contributors noted that the literal translation is 'warrior' rather than 'hero' - a modern appellation, which the Greeks of classical times would not have understood as we do today. Here's my two-bob's worth of a response to 'emilyhauserauthor's post.

"the ancient Greek word ἥρως ('heros', usually translated as hero), actually means just a 'warrior'. It doesn't have any of the additional connotations we've come to expect of moral worth, valour, and so on. In a sense, then, expecting 'heroism' of Achilles - to expect him to conform to any of our ideas of what a 'hero' is - is an anachronism." 

This is a persuasive observation / reminder. The modern / romanticised notion of the hero (not just an effective warrior but just, righteous, dare one say almost invariably Christian in English Lit.) simply doesn't fit with either of Homer's works (Odysseus, it seems to me, similarly exhibits none of the attributes of the modern hero when he conspires with Telemachus to ambush the suitors). 

Achilles is a demi-god warrior par excellence who has - like all the invaders around him - been away from home and family for a decade. Three thousand years before the John Wayne caricature of 'the good soldier' fighting 'a just war' stepped on to our screens. What should we expect of such men at such a time in those circumstances? 

As I think someone else suggested too, anyone looking for an Homeric character coming closest to our modern idea of heroic (perhaps I mean courageous) should look to Priam - an old, broken man who at great personal risk sets out to recover his son's body so that the honour and respect due to the rites set out by Gods may be observed and Hector's eternal position secured. 

Is Hector a hero? Reluctant perhaps, possessed of questionable judgement and a problematic war time leader of a doomed nation. One may feel sorrow at his fate and admit his bravery in stepping out to meet Achilles but ... I'm not sure those are either modernity's heroism or the classical warrior.

First day back at school

Lectures began today with the first (of two this week) of my Film Studies course. Following the lecture we viewed two movies from 1919 / 1920 - Buster Keaton's The Scarecrow and Robert Weine's Das Cabinet des Dr. Cligari - German Expressionism at its most insistent. Both are excellent works in their different ways. The course certainly started well.

We viewed the restored version of Dr Caligari posted below. Clearly the soundtrack is a contemporary piece of music which, I guess, was commissioned especially for the restored film. It is, I think, perfectly matched; more an interpretation through music of the emotional core of the film than accompaniment. Together they work a treat.

The latest learning challenge ...

... and the last new start for the moment

We are travelling to Tokyo for four days at the end of May. We'll be celebrating Spike's birthday among other (hopefully) exciting moments. I would like to be able to say at least a few words to the locals. There are three months to go. The clock is ticking.