Why I hate Christmas

In just two weeks all of this will be over. The weather will get even colder but spring will be not too far away.
I am sure that in the dim and distant past, the christmas festival was a welcome treat,  eagerly anticipated, and in its execution, short and sweet, but like everything else, it has been thrashed into submission by economics.  It starts almost as soon as the summer ends, the Co-op had mince pies on sale in september, and the whole thing drags on and on, enabling fools and money to separate with greater frequency.
The shops are full of garbage, made in China by slave labour, and destined to last a very short time before filling our burgeoning landfill sites with layer upon layer of non biodegradeable detritus.
Of course the shopkeepers are desperate to palm all this stuff off, competing with internet shopping and the pound shops, struggling to survive in the cut throat world of commerce. Parents are battered daily with advertising and propaganda, pandering to what they think will make their children happy, and yet it never does, the more plastic crap that they are given, the less meaningful it all becomes.
This is a good time for the money lenders. Payday loans, and similar schemes allow those who have least, to go out and spend most, accumulating huge debts that will hang  around their necks for the rest of the year, whilst those providing the cash make huge profits.
It is a time of year when lies are propagated and even encouraged.  We tell children about a weird fat man in a red suit that flies magically around the world. We tell them that he only visits good children, and yet that lie is disproved by the evidence on Christmas morning. We tell them of flying reindeer, elves, angels, virgin birth, and a vengeful, vain and invisible god, and of course they absorb it all and many remain scarred for life, knowing that it is ok to lie.
It has become a season for excess. To party seems to be the be all and end all for many, and that is a license to behave as badly as you like. Personal freedoms ignore those of others and it has become the norm for some, to get as drunk as they can as often as they can. Post party streets are littered with the ridiculous trappings that seemed so cool at the start of the night, bottles and cans and pools of vomit are left for someone else to clear up, whilst accident and emergency departments are stretched to deal with the human debris.
Charity organisations do very well of course and some of them pass on the bulk of their funds to those needy individuals in the community; whilst others, The Salvation Army for example, dedicate a proportion of their funds to promoting their own religious dogma, including vigorous homophobic campaigns. I am sure that they also do a lot of good for those in need, but for me, their religious bias smacks a little of hypocrisy.
For weeks and weeks, the media hype the whole christmas thing, and then in two days, when everything comes to a halt, it is all over, the overindulgence wanes and the post christmas resolutions to diet and get fit begin again.
What is that all about?

A season for everything

Winter is here and lovely summer days seem a distant memory.  Fuel prices have rocketed since last year and we are all braced for the bills yet to come.
Winter when we were children had its attractions, and although the house had no central heating, just a coal fire, we didn't actually freeze. We had some very harsh winters and I remember them well, our world remained white and frozen for weeks on end and we just adapted to that. Few roads were cleared and as a result, what traffic there was simply moved more slowly.  We rarely missed school and for most people life simply went on. Market gardeners and farmers probably had the hardest time of it, but even they seemed to manage somehow.  I don't recall any old people dying from the cold, though of course a lot of the elderly may well have faded away in the winter months.   The main difference I suppose was that we wore lots and lots of clothes, even in the house, and rather than dispersing to different rooms, we's all sit around the single fire in the evenings and hustle into freezing bedrooms with hot water bottles.
The press has been sensationalising the prospect of a severe winter once again. They do it to sell papers of course but I hope that they are wrong. I know that I feel the cold these days and do not enjoy it much at all.
Then there is Christmas - my least favourite time of the year. It started a few weeks ago of course, with the local Co-op selling mince pies in festive boxes with sell by dates in late october and early november.  Call me a miserable old git but there was something nice about having a right time for things. Mince pies appeared in the week before christmas along with exotic fruits like tangerines and dates and figs; now we can get everything at any time of the year, and that makes nothing very special. We are drifting into blandness and no-one seems to be in control.

Back to school

Grandchildren grow up so fast. The time that we have with them is so precious and pretty soon they will be in the clutches of the school system and then changed forever.

The purpose of schools seems unclear to me now. I used to think that it was about opening the eyes and minds of young people, encouraging them to think and to be able to deal with problems, how to learn and how to find things out, but as time passes, it seems that is no longer the case.

Of course I can't speak from recent experience, but even when I was teaching, I was aware of a gradual change in emphasis in my own subject area and a general drift away from what seemed to be worthwhile and towards a fact based process that pushed all students through the same dull and meaningless loops in order to meet examination criteria that suited the political climate of the day. The whole curriculum is geared towards a ludicrous system of assessment and when the assessments don't work, the goalposts are changed again and again.

Exam results are published this week and as always the schools are in a lose lose situation. If the pass rates increase, then the exams are too easy and of course if they go down then the schools are failing; the press, like the government love to kick teachers around and then they seem surprised when there is a recruitment problem. 

Industry is calling for a vocational system to be introduced (again) and it does seem a sensible thing to do, and at the same time many able students are opting out of higher education and choosing apprenticeships (again).

One major issue is that a significant proportion of the population do not value education and see schools as free child minding, not caring too much about what happens during the day. Perhaps the whole system needs rethinking. Education should be freely accessible to all but should it be compulsory up until the age of 18?  Perhaps parents and students  should not expect automatic places in schools regardless of the child's behaviour. Maybe if school places had to be deserved, then they might be better valued.

My grandchildren will be encouraged to get as much out and put as much into their times in school, but once there they are in the hands of who knows who and subject to the influence of friends over whom we will have no choice.  I can only hope that things improve.

Epigenetics

The Royal family have again expanded. I am sure that the family is pleased with the new arrival and rightly so. Parents and grandparents will be proud and happy to have this new addition and no doubt there will be siblings to follow. Good luck to all of them.

It has been interesting to follow the reactions of the public this week and yet again the total gullibility of the populace has been demonstrated on a vast scale.  First there was the lead up to the "event" with people almost holding their breath whilst standing on the streets for days hoping that they might catch a glimpse of a royal minion carrying a piece of paper, and then the jubilation following the announcement.  I doubt if many people took a step back and thought about what they were doing, why should they? The programming has been going on for millennia  and is continued quite happily by the media of today.  People must behave like sheep and do what the powers that be wish them to do, otherwise we will have anarchy.  Royalty has always subjugated the population and have remained unchallenged today despite their lack of any real power, and supported by the church the masses have been herded through all the appropriate fences and kept in check.

Epigenetics is a fascinating new science, that studies the influence of environment and experience on genetic make up. It was once thought that our genes are inherited in a fixed form and that we were simply the slaves of our biology.  Now it appears that genes can be switched on and off by external and internal factors.  For example, we may carry genes that give a propensity for a particular disease or condition. These genes may be switched off but life events may be able to switch them on.
It is possible that centuries of forelock tugging and bowing and scraping, being threatened with hell and damnation and seeing others tortured and even executed for having minds of their own, has triggered a gene complex that ensures compliance in the bulk of people.

The new baby has been greeted as if he was the new Messiah; and there is a significant proportion of people that firmly believe that the Royals were appointed by some divinity; yet the only impact that this child will have on their lives other than media hype, will be further drain on the public purse.  The child will have no life of its own, however privileged it is. It will want for nothing and yet it will miss out on what it is like to be human and will simply observe the flock from afar, unable to run with it.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixmNZQH0NjU

Dulce et decorum est

I just got back from a holiday in the Somme valley.  It is a strange place to take a holiday as the area is largely agricultural, but an interest in the first world war drew me there.  The house that we rented was built before the terrible events of the early twentieth century, its walls thick and its heating inefficient and the inclement weather meant that it was warmer outside than in.  We took books of course and when not touring the battlefields and cemeteries, I read about the events and the horrific experiences of some of those who survived.

The carnage, we all know, was beyond belief, hundreds of thousands of young men from all nations were mown down in their prime and their lives torn away from them.  Even more German lives were lost than those of commonwealth and American soldiers and the landscape of the Somme will be a permanent reminder of the effectiveness of propaganda as well as man's fundamental indifference to his fellow man.

The fields are green and lush everywhere and smeared liberally with swathes of poppies that look like bright bloodstains.  There are more than a thousand military cemeteries in that area alone and white headstones stand out from the perfectly manicured lawns like young teeth. So many headstones bear the anonymity of an unidentified victim and other monuments list the thousands who were never accounted for.  Remains are still being discovered nearly a hundred years on and those remains are given due respect and interred along with the rest.

History tells us that these young men willingly volunteered and laid down their lives in a war to end wars. Did they have any choice?  The politicians decided the events of the war, they instructed the generals who in turn sent their men to their deaths.  Enlisting was not an option for many men, it was either that or being branded a coward or a traitor. The propaganda enticed women to treat non combatants as lower forms of life and those in uniform as heroes. It would have been so hard not to volunteer. 

I was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of dead and the destruction of so many towns and villages in a relatively small area of France. The progress made in 1916 was minimal and it would appear that the Somme's main objective was to take pressure off Ypres, and in that sense it was a success. 

We found one small German cemetery. That in itself was very moving, the youth of that country were also decimated and they too had no choice but to kill and be killed.  Jewish and non Jewish soldiers were interred alongside each other a poignant reminder that the only lessons learned from the so called Great War were more efficient ways to kill each other, and each war passes on that lesson and no other.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) 
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12) 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) 
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

What we did on our holidays

I remember starting the school year and at some point having to write about what we had done in the summer break. While my middle class associates could ramble on about their adventures in foreign climes or some of their more mundane but still alien weeks away in holiday camps or visits to distant relatives, I was stuck with having to describe how I had frittered away my time working in the orchards or on the farm, or just aimlessly wandering in the country lanes.  I don't think I felt any jealousy as I was unaware of what I was missing.  In those days, holidays were for the wealthy, package holidays were unheard of and flying was very expensive.

Holidays are strange phenomena and of course are a vital part of the economy of most countries. Some nations are totally dependent upon the tourist trade and would struggle to survive without all that foreign money that pours in.  Airlines are very dependent upon the holiday trade and the numbers of planes in the air is growing exponentially. One day the real damage done to the atmosphere will become clear.

I must admit that there was a time when I yearned for a holiday, and I am sure that anyone in a full time job will long to get away for a while just to break up the monotony and to take a rest.  I am on holiday all of the time and so the holiday as such has become less appealing.

Now foreign trips are within the grasp of most people in the west, and at this time of the year, millions put themselves deeper in debt for a couple of weeks in the sun, and for what?  Hours waiting in airports and then being shoehorned into cramped metal tubes. Thrust together in accommodation less comfortable than they have at home, eating unhealthy food, getting sunburned on crowded beaches filled with fellow Brits, then coming home to find the house burgled and the car battery flat.

There is a growing human tendency to want everything and want it now. This includes being somewhere where you are not. Bombarded by the media, subliminal messages tell us that we need to get away and so like sheep we go along with it, joining  the rest of the flock heading for temporary pastures new, and what do we do when we get there?  Much the same as we do at home. We take our laptops, our kindles or our paperbacks and we sit around reading or watching movies or browsing the web. We fill our digital cameras or phones with records of where we have been but not really experienced because we were so busy taking photographs that will sit in the camera, forgotten for weeks and then uploaded to the computer to join the thousands of images already there.

For kids going back to school, their task has been much simplified; "What we did on our holidays" has become, like much of what they do in school, a cut and paste, fully illustrated journal of events.

A good walk - spoiled

I played golf on sunday. There is nothing remarkable about that, after all I used to play every sunday morning in all weathers and would often play several times during the week too. When I left the Island just over a year ago, I ended my ages long membership of the golf club of course. I had already stopped playing competitive golf some time back when my hip seized up, and never really got back into the swing of it. (No pun intended)

My son was here at the weekend and he is rekindling his interest in golf and we do try to get out now and then even just down to the local par three course which serves to remind me of how difficult golf really is. Jamie had a terrible round and mine was only marginally better but it was nice to be out in the sunshine and all the way round we were serenaded by a cuckoo. I hadn't heard one for a number of years and it was a pleasant reminder that spring is here even if it has gone largely unnoticed.

It is a silly game of course. We go to great expense and use a great deal of energy to knock a little white ball into a hole. Admittedly the hole may be a long way fro where we begin but even so when it comes down to it, that is all that is involved. You might imagine that with practice it would bet easier and easier, until the task became simplicity itself. Those who play know different.  It is a game of variables and they seem to be countless. Apart from the weather and the state of the course, there are all the internal variables that make it so hard. Most of the game is in the mind and it only takes one bad shot at the start of a round to sow the seeds of self doubt and then self destruction. On the other hand, during a bad round it only takes one good shot to make you want to come back and try again and again and again.

These days I find nine holes is more than enough for me and a full eighteen holes on a proper course would be a struggle. Oh for the days when I could manage thirty six holes in a day. Anyway, sunday was pleasant even though the golf was less than inspiring.

It's in the paper

According to a newspaper, and therefore it must be true, there are seven million people in this country that have never been online. This is seen by some as extraordinary and yet I'll bet that there are more than that who have never been abroad or even to London.  I know that when I lived on the Isle of Wight, that there were people who had never been to the mainland and had no wish to do so.

For most of us the internet has become part of our everyday lives and we are in a sense addicted to it. Being online is being a part of a community and empowers us in so many ways. Oscar of course has no real concept of what it is all about and yet, he uses my iPad efficiently and has already grasped the fact that Youtube can feed his main addictions - diggers and dinosaurs.  This is relatively harmless I suppose but social media that will suck in youngsters from an early age, represents a real threat to society at large.

I like to think that I am reasonably intelligent and that I am endowed with common sense and a fairly large streak of cynicism, (Yes really!)  and I do use Facebook and have used other means of communication online.  Facebook is a way of keeping in touch with people that we rarely or never see, but the more I see of it, the less appealing it becomes.  I really am not interested in what people have for lunch and I do not particularly wish to look at a superabundance of really bad photographs. I am bored with sentimental images of domestic pets and other people's drinking exploits.  Advice as to how to live my life or how to feel good, accompanied by twee images,  invitations to share all sorts of garbage, and attempts to engender guilt are all part of the endless tsunami of garbage that is posted each and every day. Having said all that, I still look at it every day and participate in word games and even post rants from time to time.

It seems though that with younger users, social media is riddled with dangers. Children are easily influenced and peer pressure can incite youngsters to make errors of judgement that can have life changing consequences. We hear about online bullying of course, and of kids who post inappropriate images of themselves unaware of the use to which those images may be put.  We hear of children being groomed by paedophiles who cleverly hide their real identities while preying on the vulnerability of the young.  Many children are very cruel and can use these media to taunt and tease and even blackmail their peers, and I am sure that many lives have been ended as a result.

Online fraud is a growing industry and criminals (not just bankers) are finding more and more ways to access our money or to steal our identity.  It is becoming harder and harder to remain anonymous and sooner or later it will be impossible to live outside of the world wide web, as we rely less and less on hard cash and pay all of our bills online.

Everything that we write or say online is recorded somewhere and can be held against us at some time in the future.  I'd like to think that in this blog that I have freedom of speech, but I know that I don't. Many people are finding that expressions of opinion are no longer seen as innocent and careers are being wrecked because of a few ill advised words placed on Twitter.  I am careful in my writing, that I do not name names even though my readership is minimal; this is after all more of a diary than anything else. It is sad though that freedom of expression is becoming eroded at such an alarming rate.

Those seven million people are probably quite fortunate and also I imagine probably quite elderly. As the years go by, their numbers will decline and fall.

Well that passed the time.

It is mid May; I have just been mowing the grass and have come back inside frozen.  There is a bitter wind blowing and the sky is the colour of Welsh slate.  The garden is more or less under control for now, and is looking as neat as a saturday morning haircut. Everything is growing, especially the grass, and so it is a daily chore to maintain that pristine enough state.

For now though I am back at my desk and pondering over what to write about. I have decided that writing is not really my thing. I have attempted all sorts of things, short stories, essays, letters, blogs and even dreamt of writing a novel, but none of these ever really come to much. I lack the self discipline for a start and then there is the need for ideas.  Some people have fertile imaginations and can generate stories at the drop of a hat. Some of these become politicians whilst others do actually become writers and provide us all with entertainment.

Would be writers are advised to read a lot.  Not just to research but to broaden their experience of the written word and to experience the styles of different writers. It is also advised that one should maintain a notebook in which to record the little gems of ideas as and when they arise.  I do read every day, but mainly in bed. If I read during the day I have a tendency to drop off to sleep and so I tend to avoid that. I have tried keeping a notebook but it doesn't work for me; I either forget where it is or can't be bothered to look back over the pages and so it really is not at all useful for me. I just don't have the wherewithal.

A writer that I admire enormously is Terry Pratchett. He is about my age and has accomplished so much. He has written a plethora of novels which are read by millions of people all over the world. Although suffering from a form of Alzheimer's Disease, he is still working and at the same time campaigning for research into his condition.

Many of his books are set in a world of his own making; a sort of parallel one to our own, populated by  characters  inspired by people that we would all recognise in real life. Everything is Disc world is based on our own world; Pratchett simply turns things on their head and makes them funny whilst simultaneously making serious points.  His novels are unpretentious, absorbing and great fun.

There are so many good writers alive today and as time goes by, the mountain of books that are available to read gets higher and higher. I have not yet managed to read all the Mr Pratchett has written, and I know that there must be countless other writers whose work I would enjoy had I the time to find them and read them.

I guess that the successful writers have one thing at least in common, they are or were dedicated to their art and shared a willingness to sacrifice much in order to achieve their goals. I have always been a jack of all trades and never really mastered anything at all. I can turn my hand to a lot of things but I really don't do anything well.  My life I guess has been about compromise.

Well the sun has still not come out and the wind is still howling so my good intention of working in the garden will come to nothing. It will soon be time to pick up Oscar from School and then there will be tonight's meal to prepare and cook. There is housework to do and I suppose I could sort out the garage again.  I'd do some drawing or painting but  I am no good at it and that leaves me frustrated and angry, so maybe I'll just let the day pass as it always does.

Time passes

The fourth dimension is a concept that is hard to grasp.  The notion of "Before Time" is often bandied about but can we imagine a universe where time did not exist?  Without time of course, nothing can happen. Any event can only occur during the passage of a finite period of time and so our lives, and all of the changes and events that make them up are dependent upon the passage of time.

When we were children, time seemed to pass so very slowly. Every day was a long one, summers and winters lasted an eternity and the years crawled by. It took a great deal of time to grow up. It even seemed to slow down when anticipating birthdays or special treats.

As adults, time passes faster and faster, its relative speed being in direct proportion to deadlines and unwanted appointments.

Maybe time is actually speeding up. If it were, then we'd probably not be able to measure it, as events that we use to measure time would also adjust accordingly.  Maybe it is just our concept of time that changes as we get older and the past stretches out behind us and our mortality seems to be hurtling towards us .

Oscar loves to come to grandad's house for the occasional sleepover. It gives his parents a break and he knows that he will get lots of attention and that his obsessions with space rockets and diggers will be encouraged.  He stayed over the other night and enjoyed the Hipad, the puter and the bricks. He loves grandads big bath and the big bed that he gets to sleep in. He likes Grandad to read his bedtime story and he sleeps well. That  is he sleeps well until around 5.30 am.  At this unearthly time of day, he gets out of bed and needs help using the toilet. After which he likes to get into bed with grandma and grandad while he wakes up and grandad tries to get back to sleep.

I was lying quite still hoping  that he would doze off the other morning, when after a few moments of peace, a small voice said
"Grandad; in a minute we can go and dig in the garden."
I said "Yes Oscar, in a minute." and closed my eyes again. There was a silence that lasted all of 30 seconds, then
"Grandad; in a minute we can go and play with the bricks."
"Yes Oscar, in a minute. Why not try to sleep for a while. It isn't morning yet."
Thirty seconds later Oscar Sits up.
"Grandad; where is the Hipad?"
He knows very well where it is and I know that my night is done. So at quarter to six I am up with Oscar, looking at diggers and dinosaurs on the iPad, playing with bricks and generally avoiding going out in the garden where it is still cold, in order to dig.

Oscar's concept of time is so very different to mine and so I have to adapt to his, which can be quite hard, especially before six am.  His sleepovers are lovely but very testing, and a reminder perhaps of why childhood days seemed so long - it was because they start so bloody early.

Spring has sprung

It has been a while since my last confession. No I am not a convert to Catholisism, should that ever happen you will know that I have finally gone insane. Just imagine having to pop in to tell your priest every now and then, what naughty thoughts you might have had, or what dirty little deeds that you have done.  Most of us would need to pop in very frequently I am sure. It always seemed odd to me that as a Catholic you could commit sin after sin as long as you pop in and say sorry now and then. Anyhow, I am not really going to confess or even apologise for thing that I may have thought or done; it would make for very dull writing and even more dull reading.

So spring is here, the grass is growing and my densely unworkable wet clay soil has turned to unworkable concrete. The weeds are flourishing of course and each day the garden reminds me who is boss.  There was a time when I could work all day in the garden, but I know that those days are a long way behind me. Nowadays I have to work in spurts of varying lengths and my attempts to get on top of it sometimes feel almost futile.  The aim has become to reduce the work that will be needed in the future, and that means a lot of black plastic and slate and gravel to hold back the weeds  and eliminate at least some of the spade work.

The flower beds are covered in daffodils and wood anemones, with patches of creeping buttercup and bluebell leaves. Right now it looks fine but within a few weeks it will look what it really is - weed infested.

The garden is a stark reminder of entropy. Order is hard to maintain and has to be worked on. It needs a motive and it needs a concerted effort. Our bodies, our communities, our roads and buildings all require energy and materials in order to maintain them and once that energy is denied, there is inevitable return to chaos.  

We have a government that can see no further than its wallet. It is dismantling the vital machines that  maintain what we call society.  Everything seems to be falling apart, while a few concerned individuals struggle to maintain their own little worlds. Ministers believe in what they are doing and strive to maintain the huge division between haves and have nots, pulling up their ladders as they watch the masses upon which they depend, struggle  in the mayhem. They have nothing to confess either.

I am reminded of the words of T S Eliot.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Booze in the news

So,  according to surveys into people's drinking habits, we are only drinking half of the total alcohol sold in this country. This prompts the interpretation that we lie about how much we actually consume, most people feeling somewhat ashamed that they like a glass or three of their favourite tipple to take the edge off as it were.

I like to drink, wine mostly, but when I am out I prefer to drink ale.  Units mean very little to me and never enter my mind when drinking.  I rarely drink to excess, though for some, a bottle of red wine at a sitting would be seen as such.  There have been periods when I have been known to drink on a daily basis, but these days I try to confine it to weekends, a pint with a pub lunch on a friday and maybe a shared bottle of wine on friday and saturday nights and that is generally it.  I don't really have a social life as such and that makes it much easier to keep consumption under control. Going without alcohol during the week is not a problem and I know that I could easily do without it if I chose to.

If I go to the theatre of to a concert, I choose not to drink, mainly to avoid the inconvenience of having to go to the toilet during the performance.

It seems though that for many it is not that easy. On monday night I went to the O2 in London to see the Australian Pink Floyd. Actually I went to hear them as for me it is the music that matters. The show started more or less on time at seven thirty and they played the whole of Dark Side of the Moon. I sat at the end of a row, and forty minutes after the start, people were still coming in and struggling to find their seats. Most of them had glasses in their hands and clearly had been unable or unwilling to tear themselves away from the bar. One pair actually took their seats in our row five minutes before the interval.  Throughout the performance there was a steady flow of people going back and forwards to the bar and then of course inevitably, to the toilet.  It seemed that the acquisition of alcohol was the most important part of the evening for many, regardless of the inconvenience to the rest of us. For me the evening was spoiled by, not just a few, inconsiderate people.

Drink is so easily available and still relatively affordable, and although the pubs are complaining of a drop in trade, drinking heavily at home is becoming the norm. Maybe that is the cause of the disparity in the figures, we all know that drinking at home doesn't count.

Vinyl revival

I have down in the basement, a collection of several hundred vinyl albums. Many of these date back to the sixties and seventies and some are even older and were inherited from my father's collection. They range in genres from 40's jazz and swing, through 60s and 70s pop and of course centuries of orchestral music. Most are not in great condition, I never seemed to have the knack of keeping my discs in pristine condition, but I do still play some of them. I am listening to the second side of Abbey Road, the Beatles at their peak, and I am reminded of some of the advantages of the vinyl LP when compared to modern equivalents.

Playing a vinyl record was almost a ritual. First of all there was the sleeve. The designs on these twelve inch squares were there to tempt the potential buyers, and as such many of them were real works of art. On this one, we have the four  band members walking across a pedestrian crossing in Abbey Road. An iconic photograph that has been scrutinised for hidden meaning since it was released. McCartney's bare feet and that he was out of step with the others were taken a sign that he was dead; Lennon's white suit was also imagined to have significance. All nonsensical really but you cannot play the album without thinking of the history behind it.  The disc has to be removed from the outer sleeve and then the paper inner sleeve before being placed oh so carefully on the turntable, cleaned with care before lowering the tone arm and bringing the diamond tipped stylus into the grooved plastic.  There are clicks and pops that drive some people crazy but they are unique to each disc and in time they disappear into the background.   After  twenty minutes or so, the disc has to be turned over and when finished, returned lovingly to its protective sleeve.

I keep a small selection of disc handy and now and then I will take the trouble to play them, even though it is much easier to play a cd or an mp3 file on the computer.  These formats are far less personal and their crispy clean sounds are clinical and what we have come to expect.  It is easy to pick out single tracks and play them out of context, and many of us make compilations of songs that bear no relationship to each other.

I am at an age when nostalgia is a hobby I suppose.  I do embrace new technology though, I even have a smartphone that I don't use much, an iPad that I use a lot, three Apple Mac computers, a Brennan music system that can store 5000 cds and several systems for playing tapes, cds and of course vinyl discs.  Maybe it is nostalgia that brings me back time and time again to the latter or maybe it is my body forcing me into a little exercise.

Take to the streets but do it peacefully.

The default setting of human consciousness hovers around apathy. Mostly we are oblivious to the goings on of the world and tend to focus out attention only on the things that are of direct concern. Even then, by and large, we may moan and complain but do nothing. Large organisations, including governments know this and major decisions are taken every day, with opposition only from a small vocal minority, whose voices are rarely heard and almost never heeded.

We are living in a society that our ancestors would find ludicrous. Inequality has always been with us, but the degree of inequality has reached new levels that  we should find shameful. We have high levels of unemployment, much of the workforce working for a pittance and grateful to be in any sort of work. We have at the other end of the spectrum, celebrities and football players receiving huge incomes, and a financial sector that rewards its cronies whilst punishing the rest of us.

Many people can no longer afford to eat properly, let alone go to a football match or a cinema. It seems that prices for everything are rising unopposed.

Mahatma Ghandi was a pacifist and yet managed to bring about the downfall of the British Raj in his native India. His methods included peaceful protests and civil disobedience.  He began alone but soon gathered huge numbers of followers. Only then did his voice make an impact, and his non violence became difficult to oppose.

We live in a democracy, a far from perfect solution to government, but so much better than alternatives. In theory power lies with the electorate, but of course nothing is quite so simple. In reality most people believe that their vote is worthless; the same candidates often being returned to parliament over and over again, and so many choose not to vote. This feeling of powerlessness is at the root of the lethargy and apathy that has got us into this situation.

I remember in the 60s, a mass movement that boycotted produce from South Africa. How instrumental that turned out to be in the downfall of apartheid, I am not sure but at least people were flexing muscles.
Maybe it is time to boycott football matches, movie theatres and the like, and begin a revaluation of people's worth.

The best of times and the worst of times

Ok I know that I am getting old and that my views of popular culture are tarnished by the patina of time, but I listen to new music and sometimes despair.  Chanting obscenities or gibberish to a thumping beat may be what kids are presented with and perhaps it is the inevitable product of an evolutionary process that has produced a generation, of which many of whom seem to have lost a sense of direction.

The reason for the Oxford trip the other night was to attend a concert performed by  one of our best symphony orchestras. The program included works by Chopin, Glinka and Tchaikowski.  I haven't been to such a concert for some considerable time and it was a joy to experience wonderful music performed by real musicians, and what crossed my mind was that this is one of the pinnacles of man's achievements. Composers, rightly, are given most of the credit for the works that they write, and yet, without the dedicated professional musicians that interpret those writings, their efforts are nothing to most people, but scribblings on a page.  In order for great music to be delivered to us mere nobodies, there has to be a convergence of some of the finest minds with talents that are rare and precious. They, together, become one with the mind of the originator and bring to life, music that is priceless.

There have been many bands of musicians of many genres that have achieved wonderful things, producing music that has had the power to move and thrill audiences. Some bands evolved and grew to almost orchestral proportions, inspiring an anti - music trend called punk. Punk bands took music back from the dizzy heights and ran it screaming and kicking into the gutter. Punk, like the banal Rap of today was purely visceral, and lacked any intellectual thread. Punk was a protest against quality and against talent and so today we have a music industry that is on its knees, for probably the same sort of reason. Boy and girl bands abound and any of the scarce real musicians are forced along a pathway that renders their own work pretty much subsumed into the musak promoted by the get rich quick.

I was heartened by the fact that there were many young musicians in the orchestra and yet the program notes suggest that most of them come from eastern Europe.

Celebrity status

One thing that I loathe and detest more than anything else is reality TV, and the ongoing trend of bringing more and more of the so called real world into all of our lives through the TV screen.  The programs that I have been unfortunate enough to see, seem to focus on the poorer sections of society, placing people, albeit with their consent, under a microscope so that the rest of us can mock or even pity  them.

It seems from the little that I have seen, that the focus of much reality TV seems to be on the lack of education, that so many people seem proud of.  It appears that failing at school is always the fault of someone else.   I recently watched a programme that got together disparate people and got them to cook dinner for each other. These were professional people, and the only reason for watching was that a relative was involved.  It is an appalling program, clearly edited to show people up in the worst possible light, with a patronising over commentary.  Many people seek fame, maybe more so than fortune. To be on the TV allows one celebrity status, at least in their own mind, but why oh why do we have to be subjected to it more and more?

Too many people

Every now and then I leave the shelter and security of my little space and venture into the big bad world. Sometimes it is through necessity and rarely through choice. Visiting old friends is worth the effort and the weekend was fun, despite the tedious drive west.

On friday night we went to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford for a sublime concert by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. That however is not what I want to talk about.

The evening began with a drink in a pub very close to the venue. It was raining hard and the pub seemed inviting with plenty of time before the concert began.  It was a very small pub, dark and very full. There was only standing room near to the bar and even that was very limited.  The bar itself was rather like a corridor and for the first time that I can recall, I began to feel very claustrophobic. I was being jostled from all directions and it was impossible to move to a space. I hated the feeling and could not wait to get out.  No-one else seemed bothered and so I had no choice but to tolerate the situation. I do seem to be able to engage in a sort of self hypnosis that enables me to detach from unpleasant situations such as the dentist's chair, and that seemed to work. Once outside I was fine and we joined the queue to get into the concert hall.

The Sheldonian is a wonderful building, more or less circular and quite austere in terms of seating comfort. There are no numbered seats, in fact there are no proper seats at all; it has a series of large steps that serve as seats. We got in fairly early and chose seats at the front of the balcony with a good view over the orchestra. All was fine, if Spartan for a while but as the performance time grew closer, the place filled to capacity and then beyond. More and more people squeezed in and had to sit anywhere that they could. My space got smaller and smaller and soon I had people sitting on my feet and others with their knees in my back. My levels of anxiety were as high as I can remember them ever being, and had it been possible to escape easily I think I would have done, however the programme began and there was no choice other than to sit very still, in an uncomfortable posture and try to focus on the music.  By the time of the interval, those behind had clearly had enough and left, and so the second half of the concert was a very different experience and by the end I could relax. I was still more than glad to get out into the rain however and even the crowded pavements seemed to offer relief.

I seem to be losing my ability to be with other people. There was a time when crowds did not bother me, but now they do and I know that I will try very hard to avoid putting myself through that again. Having said that, next month we have tickets for the O2 and that will involve a much bigger crowd than were at the Sheldonian on friday. I look forward to that with some trepidation.

Here we go again

Another year and as yet nothing to write about. I suppose that in the scheme of things, that last year was an eventful one and i hope that 2013 will be somewhat less so.
Life in Kent seems to have settled into some sort of pattern and I am enjoying regular contact with the grandchildren. It is alarming that in a couple of months, Oscar will be going to school. It will only be on a part time basis, but even so it will be a major step for him and his parents.  He is growing up so very quickly and continues to make me laugh. Only the other day, we were walking in the woods and he stood to attention, saluted and said "Yes Sir Grandad". I suppose that he picked it up from Toy Story, which seems to be one of his obsessions, along with diggers, dinosaurs and space rockets.
Matilda is 6 weeks old and has little conversation, but very expressive eyes. She is an unknown quantity as yet but a very placid and co-operative young lady so far.
I'd like to make some resolutions for the new year but I won't, largely because I never really keep them and don't see the point.  There are many ways in which I could improve myself but that would require some sort of motivation, and that is sadly lacking.
Even vowing to write more regularly would be futile; I write only when the mood takes me, and even then it is getting harder and harder to find things to write about.  Oh I can rant about all sorts of things, but nobody is interested in my opinions, quite understandably, and no doubt there will be a rant from time to time.
I will wish anyone who reads this a happy new year, even if it is late in coming.