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Hear, Hear!

31 Jul

The call of agreement with a point well-made is common in debating chambers, pretentious though it may be. More annoying is the smarmy I hear what you are saying.. to indicate a more profound understanding. Annoying really when Yes would do. In both examples listening is actually more important than hearing.

Hearing, listening and understanding are my themes. Yesterday I welcomed a new neighbour. She introduced herself and three children. I heard names but forgot to listen and as the conversation progressed I realised that I had lost those names. Embarrassed, I asked Emma to reintroduce herself.

I don’t much like meeting new people. I know plenty already. When I am forced to engage with an unknown, I am so often faced with someone whose idea of listening is to latch on to the conversational theme and butt in as soon as possible with some long, dull story about him/herself (or interminable stories about children and grandchildren). These boring narcissists lurk everywhere; plenty of my friends have similar tendencies but I forgive old buddies as they have bought me beer. I flatter myself that I am quite interested in what other people have to say but the art of listening seems in a precarious state these days as self-obsession runs riot. Would that we could fit a vibrating boring-alert on dullards which would trigger silence or possibly the exciting enquiry: My round! What are we having?

I have always enjoyed the oral and aural quality of poems. Rhyme, assonance, the combination of sounds that poets use rather deliberately to hit or caress the ear and enlarge the experience of reading the poem. Meaning becomes three-dimensional. Sound, vision – indeed all the senses. I was musing on this when I read the first few poems from Both Brittle and Beautiful, a new volume of poetry by my very old chum, John Trotman. It’s a meaty, full-value book of 60 poems, public and personal, nostalgic and modern, thought-provoking and witty, traditional and experimental by turns. Now I‘ve plugged it, I’ll come to the point. The poetry is wonderfully aural. Read, hear, listen, picture, reflect. Poetry could do with Bang and Olufsen speakers.

These days I seem not to be able to hear much in public places, even though I have wax-free drums. Why is it that important announcements in railway stations and trains, airports and planes are rendered inaudible by a vast range of factors?

Bang and Olufsen have clearly not got the contracts for departure lounges the world over; nor for any onboard PA system. So the world’s most sophisticated travel-machines loaded with extraordinary technical kit, have the amps and speakers of the Dansette that used to crackle out my Beatles singles in the 1960s.

If you’re munching a breakfast croissant at Jamie’s Italian in Gatwick North, you must stop masticating when the jingle presaging an announcement alerts. Any head-noise will severely limit your chances of receiving vital flight info. Luckily Jamie has installed updating information screens all around his cool Italiana pad. He clearly knows that quality audio isn’t going to hit our travel hubs any time soon.

And then you’re heading for the gate. If it’s a budget job the gate-lounge is bound to be Dansette-audio. Who can tell if Speedy Boarders, the aged, disabled or family groups – or the rest of us -are being called? The announcer’s accent and machine-gun delivery speed distorts the already distorted. And of course there is the lemming-like need for all Brits to get up at once and queue.

Once on board and sucking boiled sweets like mad to ensure the airwaves remain open, the flight attendant in charge of the cabin crew seems to have been selected on the basis of the impenetrable accent richter scale. Speed seems to be of the essence too. It’s an unhappy marriage. At least we can look forward to the calming welcome of our captain. Then we realise that the Airbus 370’s speakers are more than a match for the cool tones of Captain Peter Thompson from West Sussex. No wonder he and his first officer barely attempt another announcement. It’s embarrassing. His own sound system at home is, of course, B and O – and speaking into the Airbus PA gives him tinnitus.

Back on land and a trip on British Rail (is it?) does little to ameliorate the aural discontent. Again the combination of speed and sound is a toxic one – on platform or onboard my Thameslink pod. At Wimbledon station competing announcements on platforms 7 and 9 send commuters into an ear-hugging fit of frenzy. Then there’s the added nuisance of the driver explaining the reason we have stopped for ten seconds. I hear snatches…Sorry…red li…soon....but we are on our way before clarity is established. I read another Trotman poem and look out of the window. I check my fellow passengers. Most are plugged into their Ipods.

Bet the speakers are good.

Memento of Sorrento – 1

22 Jan

There is a romance about Italy that neither Spain nor France manages. The Italians don’t do as they are told; they’re charmingly corrupt and inefficient but steeped in a love of music and art and food and wine. They seem to sense that civilisation began somewhere near Rome, way, way back when.

The Italians are not proud of Silvio Berlusconi or the trash which lines the streets of Naples or Mussolini or the Mafia…but they smile knowingly if others try to take the higher moral ground. Let him who is without sin…Having already enjoyed the fantasies of childhood holidays in Diano Marina, the misted hills of Tuscany, the brilliance of Venice, Padua, Verona, Pisa…the lakes – I continued my love affair in the Spring of 2014 with a trip to Sorrento.

What follows is a diarised account which, I hope, captures the whole experience of travel and not just the sexy Italians doing what they do best – crashing cars and ogling women.

************

Dragging ourselves out of bed at 3.30a.m. is one of the questionable pleasures of cheapskate package tours. Thomson’s slot on the runway at Gatwick was 6.15 so a quick slurp of tea and we were on the road with that slightly fluey feeling you get when your body is reacting to the Godforsaken hour. We saw no other cars along the A 217 until we neared the M25 at Reigate. Then the London orbital woke us up and we were at the Gatwick Summer Parking Check-in in a trice. A group of early risers huddled on to the Airport bus. They were panicking. Only 15 minutes till check-in closed. A mother was chatting about her daughter needing 3 As for Bristol University. She should get them easily. Easily?! I thought – bloody grade inflation. In my day you were a genius if you got 3 As. Now it’s the requirement for Media Studies.

The Thomson check-in was all efficiency and smiles. Then security. There was some guy complaining about his hand luggage being searched. I wanted to say that that’s what security is all about but my attention was grabbed by a tiny child setting the bleepers off for no apparent reason. His little shoes were taken off for further examination with parents looking bewildered. More weird was the ageing English couple who complained they didn’t know that they couldn’t take a litre of vodka and a similar quantity of whisky through security. Voices were raised as the toxic liquids were confiscated. The grey couple were offered the chance to retrace their steps and recall their luggage to house the contraband but, all things considered, they wisely decided to eat humble pie and enter the departure lounge quietly, without alcohol in their satchels.

An hour to go before the flight. We headed for Jamie Oliver’s kitchen where Jamie is everywhere – on posters and screens and packaging. The display counter was groaning with carbo-loaded goodies:pastries, breakfast croissants stuffed with hams and cheeses – never mind healthy eating for kids in school, this was Jamie-fare for adults and we were in cholesterol city. I loved it and went for a £4.99 vast, ham-stuffed croissant. Magic.

The screens alternated video streams of Jamie in Italy with flight updates and soon enough our gate – 47 – flashed up. The Thomson clan trooped off and, as usual, there weren’t quite enough seats at the waiting area to accommodate the plane’s complement. We were Ok, though,  and that was all that mattered. We had numbered seats so unless something very unusual occurred, our places inside the tin cabin were designated and secure. This didn’t stop half the passengers eschewing what seating there was and standing in a snaked line in front of an unmanned checking station. When the Thomson uniforms arrived a painted woman screeched something that was barely audible because of her high frequency and the ensuing vibration in the speakers which served Gate 47. The gist was that passengers should sit down until the boarding was called. Moreover when boarding started passengers would be boarded in ascending seat number order. She didn’t use the word ascending, of course, but you get the idea. No one moved. Again, you won’t be surprised. The triumph of hope over reality when the Brits are queueing is one of life’s comforting certainties. When boarding actually started several high-pitched seat-number reminders had been barked by understandable irritated Thomson staff (appropriately clad in blue and purple). I counted five couples or groups being sent to the back of the dinner queue for misbehaviour.

I’m not a good flyer so every bubble of turbulence sends butterflies racing round my intestines like Lewis Hamilton at Monaco. As we accelerate towards take-off I start counting, slowly – eyes closed. I don’t sit in window seats. By the time I reach 200 the captain has usually turned the seat-belt sign off which tells me that he doesn’t think we’ll crash for the time being. I open my eyes. On this occasion the suave Captain Harris warbled that we were going to rise to 38000 feet but at that height we would still be just sitting on the top of some cloud, so we ‘Might enjoy a bump or two’. I grimaced at his calm levity but couldn’t find much to smile about as we hopped across the Alps and my coffee slopped over my Kindle. Captain Harris’s landing left a lot to be desired. The disc brakes had to work overtime.  I remembered the emergency stop on my driving test and wondered idly whether the co-pilot had slapped his hand on the cockpit dashboard.

*************************

Safe and sound we arrived to a dull but warm Naples airport and were met by James who was gay in every way. He directed us to a bright blue coach which was to whisk us from the grotty environs of the airport to the romance that would be Sorrento – about an hour around the bay. Sam was to be the rep. on board and she was an eyebrow-pencilled Geordie out of the very heartiest hi-di-hi stable. Say hello to Gennaro, our driver, everybody! No seat belts. Something about this pleased me and made me admire the Italians for their clear disregard of some EU Brussels directive. We rumbled on around the Bay of Naples which was built up and ugly. Every now and then a church or a lemon grove would awaken a thought of what was enduring. The rain came on quite heavily.

***********************

As with most package deals punters are dropped off in hotel sequence and our Hotel Admiral was at the end of the line. So inaccessible by large transport was the Marina Grande in Sorrento, that we transferred to minibus and even this couldn’t take us to the front door. Our smart hotel was perched under cliffs at the furthest end of the improbably named marina, as it is by far the smaller of the two. The other – Marina Piccolo – is the large ferry harbour where jetfoils and other sizeable craft take cargo and humans to Capri, Sardinia and beyond, while ocean liners park offshore and cruise-trippers make their way in to Sorrento for the day.

Hotel Admiral lies right on the water. Directly across the bay Vesuvius rises clearly looming above the city of Naples. As we rumbled our luggage over the typical pockmarked black, large cobbles the last few steps to the door, the sun broke out.

 

Poems of my Life: My Grandmother

2 Jan

Grandmothers. We all have them. The pair allotted to me were rather distant. One didn’t intend to be, the other did. Nanna was my English granny, my mother’s mother; Farmor my Danish one. The former was a kindly but self-absorbed depressive lady; the latter a rather cold Cruella.

So many years on from their deaths, I find Elizabeth Jennings’s poem the first to come to mind when thinking of my grandmothers. It has nothing to do with them – and everything. Were I to write a granny-verse, I’d focus on my Nanna. She and my grandfather (Poppa) lived in a flat above a gentlemen’s outfitters. The sense-impressions of that poky pad teem. The mustiness of granny-smells: Gifty the mangy dog; old-lady perfume; cigarettes and pipes; over-steamed vegetables; seaweed by the front door; barometer to tap by the stairs; outside toilet an Bronco paper fro big jobs; damp blankets and counterpane, brylcream-stained antimacassars; ashtray stands with spin-away push buttons to make the stubs disappear; spare teeth in a glass by the bureau; complete Dickens and Encyclopedia Britannica hiding in a glass-front bookcase; ash hanging precipitously from Nanna’s lip (she would set herself alight more than once before her time was up)….I miss that stale, musty, can-only-be-Nanna smell. Despite not really being that close to her in her self-absorbtion, there are times when I catch a sense of her in a Victorian print, the scent as an elderly woman walks by, a look of despair. And in this poem.

MY GRANDMOTHER BY ELIZABETH JENNINGS

She kept an antique shop – or it kept her.
Among Apostle spoons and Bristol glass,
The faded silks, the heavy furniture,
She watched her own reflection in the brass
Salvers and silver bowls, as if to prove
Polish was all, there was no need of love.

And I remember how I once refused
To go out with her, since I was afraid.
It was perhaps a wish not to be used
Like antique objects. Though she never said
That she was hurt, I still could feel the guilt
Of that refusal, guessing how she felt.

Later, too frail to keep a shop, she put
All her best things in one narrow room.
The place smelt old, of things too long kept shut,
The smell of absences where shadows come
That can’t be polished. There was nothing then
To give her own reflection back again.

And when she died I felt no grief at all,
Only the guilt of what I once refused.
I walked into her room among the tall
Sideboards and cupboards – things she never used
But needed; and no finger marks were there,
Only the new dust falling through the air.

 

I’m resolute: no resolutions this year.

2 Jan

I mean what’s the point? Two days into the new year and resolve is crumbling. All over the civilized world, hapless souls in their millions have thought up life-changing new behaviours or privations to which they have committed. In the steeplechase of 2015 most will fall at the first fence but some will steer through the mess of fallen runners and riders and, as that luckiest of all steeplechasers, Foinavon did in the famous Grand National of 1967 , win against all the odds. At 100-1 and with his owner, Cyril Watkins, giving him no chance, the plucky steed navigated his way through the carnage of the 23rd fence and realised that 3/4 of the field were no longer in the race. Eleven only of 44 starters survived beyond that fence. The odds for new year resolutes are far, far longer. Just a few, a happy few, will be sitting smugly on NYE 2015 in the knowledge that they have scored some sort of victory. Pyrrhic? Probably. And who gives a toss?

I can hear do-gooders carping at my scepticism. They can trot out endless lists of genuinely life-enhancing changes that people can make. Cut out the bottle of vodka a day; phone granny once a week rather than once a month; actually give the Red Cross some money rather than using their Christmas card for free. The list is endless. Gym memberships soar in January, apparently; sales of chocolate, beer and cake plummet. Bicycles pour forth, de-rusted, from asbestos sheds; libraries experience a surge of borrowers; TV ratings fall. Simon Cowell and the Strictly crew aren’t stupid.They know that telly-sloth peaks before the old year is out so all reality and other banal TV fodder must, must, must be done and dusted before Big Ben chimes at midnight on the 31st.

I have friends who have serious faults which they should have addressed years ago. From tight-fistedness to cup-half-empty syndrome; from the unpunctual to the impolite; from sexist to other ‘ists’, I have a pretty full set of flawed acquaintances. The thing is, I like them like that. If any of them resolved not to be annoying for 2015, it wouldn’t be them would it?

Imagine my friend Geoff announcing, “I insist on buying the first beer every time I walk into a pub this year!” Or Gill proclaiming, “I know that I have been unreasonable about immigrants so I’m going to give my spare room, rent free, to a Polish builder.” It isn’t going to happen is it? Moreover Geoff and Gill wouldn’t be the same people if they made such seismic shifts. You might be thinking that my friends don’t sound very nice anyway. Well, as my Dad once told me, “You don’t pick your friends son; somehow they pick you.”

Resolutions should be made when the spirit is resolute, not when we are at our weakest, bloated with turkey sandwiches and midnight champers. The distractions of Ben Haenow, Ant and Dec, Sir Alan and Miranda are lost in the mists of Christmas past. We are prey to that dastardly of all illusions: hope. Now they say that it is better to travel in hope than to arrive. New Year resolutions work counter-intuitively, you arrive on 1st Jan before you’ve had time to travel in hope. Disaster.

 

(ps I hope my friends Geoff and Gill will forgive me)

What are you thinking about? Nothing?

30 Dec

Here is an extract from my much-awaited first novel. Edwin is brushing his teeth on the morning of his birthday and thinking about not revealing his thoughts.

As he pondered mid- brushing, he digressed into that minefield of what thoughts and actions we normal people would never admit to. For example, at 11 this morning when his mother, keen to kill him with conversation,  would ask what he had  done so far today, would he include: contemplating masturbation and not shaving; putting plastic into the green bin; collecting his prescription for statins; the fierce argument with his ex-wife whose birthday call was a poisoned dart masquerading as a friendly pat; putting washer fluid in the wiper system of his car; chatting to Phil next door about how mossy his lawn had become; getting an earful from a hoodie whose snorting gob on the pavement he had tutted at? All these things were to happen in the next two hours but pass unremarked upon.  Ed recalled the times without number that mothers and lovers had asked the unanswerable ‘What are you thinking?’ The word nothing is a shortening of ‘Everything and nothing’ which is a further reduction from ‘Everything that is on my mind at the moment which is of private concern to me and nothing to do with you or anyone else – or if it is, it would be hurtful to say.’ Nothing is a much better way of saying ‘Mind your own fucking business’.

Most of what we think we don’t reveal – and we don’t want to. Practically it would be impossible to convey the information of the teeming synapses of our thoughts anyway. Much of thought doesn’t fit language either so explaining ourselves is clunky, hard. Most thoughts come unbidden and are wildly irrelevant to what we are doing, saying and thinking at the time. Inappropriate even. You know what I mean. With our nearest and dearest, in our most intimate moments, embarrassingly odd thoughts gatecrash the party and create a zeitgeist that’s impossible to share.

So my character Edwin is not alone in his reflections on his inner and outer worlds. And it is true that the most common answer to the question , ‘What are you thinking?’ is ‘Nothing.’ We can’t be bothered to explain the idiocy of our thoughts. We might upset and embarrass ourselves and others. We might reveal ourselves in an unflattering light. The reasons are endless but, perhaps, the main one is that we don’t want anyone to have unlimited access to our private world. We don’t like the idea that someone else might understand us as well as we do ourselves. So we hide, conceal, don’t reveal.

When I was masterminding an internal ‘audit’ of a school’s pastoral system, a pupil questionnaire included the statement: There is an adult at school who knows and understands me well and I would trust. Then the tick boxes ranging from strong disagreement to strong agreement. When we analysed the responses we found that almost all responses waxed lyrical about the school’s care – save for this one. When we delved a little we realised that 14/15 year olds don’t necessarily think adults know and understand them well. We changed the question of course.

We adults are no different are we? We like to think of ourselves as unique. Well we are because we don’t change too much from cradle to grave. My dear mother, who died this year, was an expert in asking the what are you thinking question when we were growing up. She used it at times to provoke; at times to show care. Just a few months before she died I was driving her home after Sunday lunch and to fill our companionable silence, I asked the question: what are you thinking?

She looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Nothing.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Done enough thinking,’ she said and we continued on our silent journey.

I read the news today…oh boy

21 Nov

…..About a lucky man who made the grade

And though the news was rather sad:

The good and great of Rochester and Strood

Had caught the media-nation mood

And made their choice – a man called Reckless,

A turning coat, now purple, feckless.

From his Farage he has persuaded

That Brits of Kent shall be invaded,

Swamped, trampled by the  immigrant,

Such a silly, sad…compelling rant.

The aftermath..well let’s just guess…

Dreadful news for the NHS.

 

And on to the Shadow Attorney General

Whose cabinet days have proved ephemeral.

Her name suggests both sharp and sweet

But bloody stupid, too, to tweet.

 

And next the rapist wants to play,

He’s done his time is what some say

But moral hackles, rising high

Have writ quite large on Sheffield’s sky:

If  that bastard isn’t banned

We’ll rename Jessica Ennis’s stand.

 

No need to move from home work station

To find bad news from other nations

Lots to keep us weeping here

Ne’er mind Hammas, Putin, North Korea.

I read the news today oh boy,

Let’s hope the morrow brings more joy.

 

To drool or drule. Depends on how hip your dictionary is.

4 Nov

Within a heartbeat of publishing my last blogoffer, Week-End, a dear friend and pedant called to point out my curious spelling of Drule or, as he would have tapped, Drool. He further guffawed at my fulminating over apostrophes whilst committing certain typos as well as  the Drool/drule faux pas. My explanations, weak as they were, fell on the stoniest of ground. I turn off the spellcheck – it’s untrustworthy anyway. Crap excuse, he said. I tried convincing him that drule was a mere multiple typo. He clutched his sides in mirth. I slammed the phone down and reviewed the rogue blog.

There it was in all it’s awkward glory. If I’d used a fluorescent highlighter it couldn’t have stuck out more. Stubbled men drule looking like cats who will get the cream. What was I thinking? Hoisted with my own petard. Found out. I was desolate. But wait. The Urban Dictionary has come to my rescue before. Might it help recover some pedantry house-points? First things first. Update the entry with drool to keep the masses happy while plotting my escape from ignominy.

The UD came through. I knew it would. Just as scrabblers rely on the OED for xylem, yah and zooid to get them out of tight corners; I raise my hat to the Urban Dictionary to cover my extraordinarily unusual errors. I can’t let that man Humphreys or Lynne Truss or Simon Heffer or the rest gain any greater advantage than they have already in the clarity and correctness stakes.

The word DRULE ( no. 1 definition) means, as I knew it would, : Beyond cool, unnecessarily awesome. Girls rule; boys drule.

Or (no. 2 definition): Beyond rubbish. Just disgraceful. Pure shit.

Or (no. 3): Hip, stylish. Clothes designed on the west coast USA.

Wow! What a dictionary! Check back to my original sentence. Not only does no. 1 def. fit like a glove, but so too def.s 2 and 3. The UD also has helpful link-words/synonyms. This list includes: pecker, rule, awesome, hip, great, dk stains, pecker drule, spittled, pecker stains, stylish, urban, worse, worthless, west coast. It’s an extraordinary array which proves that whatever stupid, fantasy, figment of your imagination you come out with there is an authoritative organ that will support whatever spelling and definition you want. Wikipedia eat your heart out. I’m a he fan of the soon-to-be viral Urban Dictionary. Creationism watch out. I’m heading your way. I fancy scientology too and I might look up that funny bloke who used to be a sports presenter before he developed a hole in his trousers and his marbles fell out.

I’m looking forward to calling my mate the pedant back and putting him right in his place. David Icke, that’s his name.

Week – End

4 Nov

I did say, midweek, that I would return to the Odeon Epsom for more comment. You will recall Gone Girl – the movie, on which I briefly commented. Well the 25minutes of advertising preceding the blockbuster was wearily illuminating. Now I’m not on air-kissing terms with Germaine Greer but the shameless and shameful sexploitation is so much more apparent at big screen venues that on our little flatscreens at home. Loadsamoney spent on lavishly, digitally undressing gorgeous women who look as if they are about to orgasm over the leather seats of their new pink cars. Stubbled men (who invented this silly sandpaper? Do one thing or the other; shave or no shave) drool looking like cats who will get cream. Prudishly and rarely  I thought: what on earth are we doing to ourselves? I got over it pretty quickly, you’ll be glad to know.

Excitingly old buddies from university days came to stay for the weekend. The weather held for a grand Saturday walk along the Pilgrims/South Downs Way above Reigate. Clear and heart-swelling views over the town and, turning 180degrees, there way Wembley Stadium, the Eye and Shard and the rest. Gatton Park was a joy to wander round despite the National Trust’s unforgiveable misuse of apostrophes. Beers at that great pub on Walton Heath, The Sportsman and back to select a feast from The Haweli, Sutton’s finest Indian takeaway.

We moderated our Saturday alcohol intake as Friday’s arrival of old friends had seen quite an assault of various bottles. The evening had taken its usual majestic course:the easy slipping back into college banter; incredulous reflections on how irresponsible fun-junkies of the 1970s became tolerably regarded members of the professional classes; disregard of body clocks and vitriolic contempt of a range of modern mores from the ubiquity of Apple-tech, ‘like’, silly children’s names, political correctness, tattoos, shit politicians, X-Factor, Jamie Oliver…..you get the picture. And fucking apostrophes.

It was Halloween night. That’s another thing. What’s happened to that estimable member of Catesby’s team who planned to obliterate James 1st and the whole rag bag of Parliament on Nov 5th, 1605? In the deeply grey 1950s and early 60s, I slogged for weeks (well days) making gruesome, scarecrow facsimiles of the would-be multi-murderer, to wheel around on old pushchairs extorting money for my personal charity. We’d buy firecrackers from the local tobacconists (that’s another moniker lost to the idiocy of pc) to scare our primary school girlfriends. Our back garden for a few minutes would sparkle with Catherine Wheels and sparklers. My father would put a few impossibly large rockets tiltingly in precariously placed milk bottles. The blue touch paper rarely responded with brilliant ignition so he always risked life and limb returning for another Swan Vestas relight. The resulting take-off and orbit was as unpredictable as Richard Branson’s tourist space rocket, though mercifully not as calamitous. Stories abounded of those who had filled hospital casualty departments on Bonfire Nights. No Sorro ever suffered but there were close shaves aplenty. This mightily wholesome activity has been replaced by wizards and witches and the execrable fraud of trick or treating, not to mention the waste of millions of nutricious pumpkins. You can imagine the bile effused by me and my mates, frighteningly articulate at 2am.

The came a knocking on the door. God, not more T or T’ing at this time. No, there stood a solitary shivering lass, clad in strips of wispy green looking like a  Robin Hood groupie with face paint. She was in some distress – let’s call her Maisie – and a certain amount of drink and/or drug-fuelled confusion. She had escaped, so she said, from a place, up the road, where she was being held captive. Could she come in? Crying, frightened creature she was too. Quite clear in speech but weirdly wired and making little sense. Had she been harmed? This prompted a flood of tears. Was she with friends? More tears. Clutching a completely empty  handbag and shivering rather cold turkily poor Maisie cut a pathetic and sad figure. We erstwhile complaining men sprouted arm hair and bravado. We walked her to where she thought the ‘party’ had been – and where her money, clothes, friends and phone (ie her life) were last seen. An open ground floor window. No sound, no sign of life. We knocked loudly. Nothing. We returned. Phone police.

Within 5 minutes two highly attractive young constables, he a ringer for Jude Law; she Cameron Diaz. perhaps I have just watched The Holiday far too much in my downtime moments – it’s on ALL the time isn’t it? Sorry – digressing. Anyway these guys were brilliant and took Maisie’s plight very seriously.What were the possibilities? Endless unfortunately- rape, rohypnol, mugging, theft, drink and drugs….and, of course -and hopefully- a girl who had got pissed, become disorientated and wandered off in fright but come to no harm.

The PCs wandered down the road to investigate. I contacted mother – in Coventry. She and her partner leapt into a car as I was speaking. A 3 hour drive to Sutton police station or near-hospital, ETA 5.30am? Back came the bravos in blue. The party was going on in the garden shed. Maisie had been put to bed by her friends when she peaked early- she had been ‘out of it’. No one had checked her and they were not a little surprised to hear she had gone AWOL. The blue-brigade decided she had better stay with the authorities (good choice) and await the arrival of bleary mummy.

The delightful constables took the tearful Maisie off and we were left having to revise our opinions of earlier on the quality of young professionals today. Jude and Cameron were quite outstanding.

Oh I forgot to say what Maisie did for a living. She is a 26year old teacher. Well I never.

Midweek

31 Oct

 

Now here’s hoping that the technical difficulties which assailed The Week (Mark 1) will not scarily attack again, like the weirdo monsters (varmints) who inhabit the minds of children in Neil Gaiman’s eerily striking fantasy The Ocean at the End of the Lane. This is my antidote to Stephen Fry’s mostly unscary, autobiographical tome so I have fact and fiction on the go at the same time. I combined the two last week by reading the sometime harrowing but ultimately empowering and wonderful The Narrow Road To the Deep North, a marvellous Booker-winner this year. Richard Flanagan’s homage to his father who, as an Aussie prisoner of war in 1945 survived the brutality of the Japanese internment camps as the Emperor’s henchmen forced ever-weakening prisoners to build the Burma railway. It’s a love story too.  Butchery and beauty in equal measure.

I have already digressed. I left you on Tuesday mid-lunch south of Tunbridge Wells and full of lamb burger. Needless to say I needed soda water and Gavascon later in the day but watched  The Missing to assuage my indigestion – it’s that not really about Madeleine McCann eight-parter fronted by the suitably Irish angst and facial contortion of James Nesbitt. Mind you he does ‘desperate’ brilliantly. I’m hooked, even if AA Gill savages it at the weekend.

I must backtrack because on Monday evening the Sorro siblings, now with sister in tow and partners abounding met up for another little probate party. Our lovely mummy didn’t have much  (thank God she spent it) but Sis funded the meal from bootfair takings. I have yet to dispose of the porcelain and silver but we could be looking at The Ivy . Meantime we were in Il Capriccio in Ewell Village, a smart Italian job chosen for no other reason than the other smart Italian jobs in Ewell (three of them) were closed on a Monday. Now Ewell nestles stylishly and quietly under the powerful and embracing wing of the bustling eagle market town  that is Epsom, famed for salts and thoroughbreds. This is where I grew up. Get the connection? Anyway I started with French, moules mariniere; continued with Italian, veal (yes, sorry I like it) al limone; finished with a nice British slab of apple pie. Now that’s Europeanism.

Talking of The Missing, last night, Thursday, I caught Gone Girl the movie. The frighteningly successful book was well-written and wholly unconvincing tosh. The film is better but still tosh. Tension was just about maintained, despite loud popcorners behind – and I didn’t fall asleep. Usually a good sign. And Rosamund Pike is very good. Ben Affleck plays Ben Affleck. Quite a lot of sex and a bit of hilarious violence. The multi-screen Odeon experience is one on which I shall comment further to but, characteristically, I’m ahead of myself.

As I relaxed after James Nesbitt’s first hour of losing his son I heard a Talksport argument about the epidemic of pushing and shoving in soccer penalty areas. It’s Shawcrossgate. For the uninitiated Ryan Shawcross is a burly Stoke defender who many think should be in the England team because he commits GBH on attackers and gets away with it. Well until t’other day. Now he’s been stood down as enforcer by manager Mark Hughes, while things calm down. In the blink of an eye he’ll be back beating shit out of pansies like Terry and Ivanovic who, in a breathtaking example of pots and kettles ran to mummy ref. when they were mildly stroked by two smaller Man Utd defenders. The Talksport argument was wonderfully clichéd and circular. I’m not sure how many inarticulate ex-pros are paid a good wedge to comment on the idiocies of modern football but the supply of dimwits seems inexhaustible. Personally I like the rugby tackle in soccer. It beefs up what otherwise has become a tame game for tarts.

Wednesday and the Festival Hall. First an early evening catch-up meal and chat with Al and Danielle, old, dear colleagues. TAS – the Turkish chap at the end of The Cut (you know, just up from the Old Vic) does a mean shishk and buzzes with mezze life. Danielle, being a classicist pointed out that Kristin Scott-Thomas’s Electra belonged to Sophocles. Of course Euripedes had also written an Electra. Of course. We moseyed to the RFH for an evening of Rachmaninov. Lest you are worried about my gentle move to higher status culture, fear not. An attempt to mask the philistinism in my DNA perhaps but I do love sitting in the Art Deco splendour of the Festival Hall.

We met up with grand old buddies from my harder working days. Vivien, who had been a stylish Senior Mistress at our large coed grammar school. Those were the days when such posts were seen as important and necessary rather than sexist and tokenist. Ho hum. Smiles and laughter with her hubby, John, who uses the word wanker with such punishing timing and weight that it’s a joy to hear the word burst forth. I can’t match him on this but I do a mean bollocks when I’m roused.

Into the great  auditorium at level 6, row N – top of the house and a grand view of all. I know purists like to see the pianist’s fingers and the mole on the first violinists chin but I’m happy looking at this glossy Busby Berkeley of a place. The chrome-rimmed boxes stick out of the like open cash tills. I settle into my seat and await the young starlet Pavel Kolesnikov. We had done the jokes about his name before he wandered on with conductor Vassily Sinaisky. He looked like a mop-haired pre-pubescent, certainly a Kolesnikov minor. Russians are good at music aren’t they, I mused to myself and settled in for a captivating bit of Rachmaninov. Pavel’s fingers were a blur from my distance but they danced like Ariel at breakneck speed across the ivories (pre 1947 so OK to talk about). The second piano concerto. Most of my fellows had agreed – their favourite. I agreed because I wasn’t sure what to compare it with. My mind wandered an I caught sight of a woman being sick – pretty much in Pavel’s line of sight. He was underterred. She was under the weather. Stewards ushered her away and mopped up noiselessly. Rachmaniov’s 2nd unaffected. Roaring approval at its conclusion. Wow.

The interval gave way to his 3rd Symphony – plenty of light and shade and culminating in the sort of sound and fury I like. My eyes were trained on the guy playing the xylophone. Little to do but he’s got to be on the money every 10 minutes when the spotlight is on. Does he get the same cash at the end of the evening? The woodwind and brass sections would be seriously pissed off. The strings would be apoplectic.

We missed the train back by 39seconds, we calculated. I used the oaths previously italicised – and a few more. Luckily I had Stephen Fry in my pocket. The 30minute wait passed in a blink.

The Week – Oh Dear Mark 1 has already gone to press.

30 Oct

I’m hoping that The Week blog, just sent, will have been ignored (as it so often is, flounce flounce) by most of you. I was trying, ham-fistedly to draft it in a new and exciting way ( I can’t explain – too complicated) and I’m sure I didn’t press any key remotely in the vicinity of publish. But I may have done! Don’t read it. Read this instead. t won’t do you much more good but a few of the appalling errors may be excised.

Is the week only half over? Sunday seems a lifetime ago and when one is reading Stephen Fry’s latest autobiography – his third, we have many more to enjoy – one’s own life-freneticism pales. Not to mention the name dropping sycophancy and overuse of the indefinite person ‘one’; not as bad as the Thatchered royal pronoun, as in ‘We are a grandmother.’ Anyway it’s a wonderfully entertaining read called More Fool Me. There’s plenty of name-dropping and well-I-never stories from the 1980s and 90s of those of whom one has heard. He, Steve, has a beguiling and shallow honesty – his admission of fault, of criminality, of great problems with Bipolarism and general gay tartism and the rest barely conceals a completely admirable delight in all that he says and does; good or bad.

I started with the intention of writing a little about The Week – that news mag. which bite-sizes the week’s high and low national and international tittle-tattle in a jaunty, glossy way. Busy people who like to avert their eyes from the tablet and despair of the ubiquitous Metro and Evening Standard (more of these later) enjoy the tactile wholesomeness of this informative organ. My children swear by it and thus the yearly pater- presents are sorted out with quick subscription renewal. Cue delighted thank-you emails. I still have to buy Private Eyes and Vizes at Christmas, however.

Anyway to my digressed theme. This blog could become annoying as I switchback from one tale to another whilst trying to keep the thread of The Week going. I’ll get back to Monday in a minute so bear with me. I have just realised that I am adopting the potentially annoying Fry habit of chattily digressing and hoping that you, dear readers, will find this skittish tactic rather enchanting. Well the more I go on I sense returns diminishing.

So, quickly, let me bang on about the 64page Evening Standard that I quarter-read from Wimbledon to Waterloo yesterday, dumped and read another quarter from a fresh copy on my return a few hours later. Neither fraction was remotely memorable but the thousands of tons of wasted paper flying around London must surely be an eco-bubble waiting to burst somewhere? We used to worry about rainforests. Have they gone off the agenda or is the 64 page Evening Standard made from some magical process which enables the Capital’s sewage to be recycled into billions of miles of news-bilge to send the weary commuter to sleep? I confess to missing the gnarled, world-weary chappies who would bawl ‘Standard! Get yer Standaaard!’ These worthies have been replaced by mute zombies handing piles of the fodder to passers, uncaring of whether the punters grab or walk on by. At Wimbledon there are high-piled stacks along the platform bridge so no need even for zombies.

So back to Monday, when the week started. I know it’s technically Sunday but hey, I’m not being technical about this writing, which must  be annoyingly obvious. Anyway I  played golf on Epsom Downs with my brothers. Well, actually, I played with my younger brother and the elder spectated, nursing, as he was, a coccyx injury sustained in a shower-room accident. Suffice it to say that, once the fraternal laughter had subsided and we had established that , probably, this was not a mishap resulting from aquatic sex-games, we showed a fair amount of middle-aged concern for the old boy. He seemed happy munching his egg sandwiches as his younger siblings proved their ineptitude. However our crap golf was eclipsed by the warm sunshine and the truly fine views over London. From Wembley to the Eye;St. Paul’s and Shard to Canary Wharf – all lies before and beneath you as you look down from the Downs.Some holes you fire your balls towards the grand Grandstand of the Derby course; others you’re heading for Richmond Park or lining your put with Nelson’s Column as a sight-line. It’s common land so annoyingly squealing girls crossed our fairway and dog-owners knew their rights. These apart and the unusual fact that there are only two bunkers – both on the last – the round was a triumph and only £12.50 on a Monday. Try paying as little as that anywhere else inside the M25. And the bar had London Pride and Doombar, not to mention a Jimmy White snooker table in the ante-room. And we met one of my elder bro’s ex-teachers who said we’d all aged poorly. Thank God for honesty. He looked like shit.

On Tuesday I drove to a meeting of the W.O.G.S. – and before hackles rise – the Wealden Old Gits Society- who meet at a beery venue in Kent somewhere every couple of months to discuss matters of no importance whatsoever – and anyway no one would want to hear the views of any of the attending eminence grises. We were at The Vineyard in Lamberhurst, one of the multitude of Gastropubs which now adorn the Kentish social map. Strange how much candid, honest, politically incorrect , heartfelt opinion bounces around private conversations which doesn’t find the light of day, these days, for fear of offence. Philip Roth’s  compelling novel The Human Stain was largely about this. Actually, so too Stephen Fry’s autobios. I have an old friend – I shall name him – Martin Horwood, a grand man, much read and a lover of good conversation. His views can be every ‘ist’ under the sun and, occasionally only, politically correct – a phrase he loathes. If you say ‘I disagree with everything you said,’ his response would be winningly excited: ‘Oh Good, we can have an argument!’

I started with Peruvian Cured Salmon. Do they really box up aged salmon from South America and ship it over. Then a lamb burger. The best of both dishes was the chips. Harveys beer, however, always good. Ambience just as good – in other words lots of people so we didn’t feel as if we were in a nose-diving boozer whose business plan was buggered months, even years earlier. There are any number of chain or brewery-owned hostelries whose regular customers can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The owners screw the tenants whose hands are tied in what stock they buy in and from whom – the landlord of course. Not so at The Vineyard, a Free House and part of a small group owned by an enterprising Frenchman. Only one of our group called that a contradiction in terms, by the way.  The waitress or waitperson or barperson was frostily easyern euro. but this is not to damn all former iron curtain offspringers with that broad brush (how sensitive). The service was slow but no one really complains about much outside the M25. We’re glad to be here.

Time is moving on and I have only got to lunch on Tuesday. What a week so far. It will take three blogs – or more – to cover it. I have a night at the Festival Hall and problems with my car to recount. It’s still only Thursday.  Just wait for my autobiography.

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