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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.

 

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.

Strangers on a train from Staplehurst. Up to Town!

22 Sep

Staplehurst is a large and sprawling Kentish village with an enormous commuter car-park. It’s fifty minutes or so from the heart of the Kentish Weald to Charing Cross. The throng on the platform at rush-hour gives way to the blue rinse ‘Let’s go to the V & A’ set after 9. I board the sparsely-populated luxury of the 9.51.

When I was a smog-aware lad in the 1950s we called London,  ‘Town’ or ‘The (Big) Smoke’. The latter has been expunged from Southern vocabularies but I found myself using the former unconsciously when making arrangements with my daughter. London to her the centre of the universe, Staplehurst is part of a strange and shadowy hinterland.

Going up to Town still excites, despite a few years of commuting as a youngster and, more recently, watching humourless faces trudging to and fro Staplehurst. The size of the car park indicates the number of human ants scurrying daily to the mammon mound of the capital city.

As for me, I’m scribbling away in my notebook as countryside gives way to cityscape. Whatever is outside the carriage, occasionally diverting as it is, remains reliably neutral. My attention is taken by activity within.

A woman gets on at Paddock Wood, talking loudly on her phone. She’s late for a meeting and is trying to reorganise via, I’m guessing, a PA or secretary. She is flustered. Her child was feigning illness and refused school. The saga went on; she missed the 9.21. She hadn’t got home until 8.30 the previous night. Could her PA reschedule for midday? Her diary was full for the afternoon and she had promised a 6pm pick-up at the childminder’s. That meant catching the 4.40 – latest. Today (a Thursday) she was supposed to work from home anyway. More information rattled across the airwaves and our carriage. More business chat, some social – all of it wearying for her. All of it heard by the rest of us clutching our travelcards and pretending to read the Times.

A man opposite me has fallen asleep. 10.30am. He can’t have been up that long. Like babies we get drowsy with motion it seems. Now the ticket inspector or, more pompously, the train manager appears. ‘Tickets please!’ Ha! Another call from the inner ear of my 1950s nostalgia. This chap is recklessly upbeat. It’s have a nice day gone mad. The 50s certainly weren’t like this. He cheers his way along making a running commentary on his every interaction. “Travelcard, eh! Have a nice day out, madam;  lovely weather, mind you don’t forget your umbrella; sorry we’re a couple of minutes late everyone, thanks …and thank you..and …”

A smart-suited man can’t find his ticket. Cheery inspector waits politely. Then: “Tell you what sir, I’ll go away and check a few more and come back. That usually does the trick. You’ll find it in a pocket you didn’t know you had. It usually works. See you in a minute.”

It didn’t work. But a receipt was found. Back comes Mr Cheerful. Man in suit shows the receipt along with:”You didn’t believe I had bought a ticket did you?” Mr Cheerful’s rejoinder was a stunner.

“I’m a pragmatist sir. I don’t philosophise  about what might or might not have happened to your ticket but you have clear evidence that you bought a ‘weekly’ on Tuesday. That satisfies me – but wheter that receipt will satisfy my colleagues at the Charing Cross ticket barrier is another matter. You need a ticket to escape the station’s clutches.”

An entertaining riposte. Man-in-suit mumbles something inaudible in response to the elegant setting-out of the train manager’s position.

As I am enjoying this command performance we rumble into London Bridge. It is heavy with crane and concrete as it undergoes a huge facelift. The Shard, just a few yards from my window, rises up to heaven and is surrounded by a burgeoning glass city. At ground level high-vis jackets, cement mixers and building detritus litter the area inside and beyond the station. It is a relief when Southwark Cathedral and then Borough Market hove into view.

A stubbled 30-something who boarded the train at London Bridge is talking into thin air. Wires hang from his ears and he is unabashed as he looks around at his carriage companions chatting to someone in the ether. It’s a ‘Fuck this and fuck that and he’s a wanker..’ type of conversation. Funny and just a little disturbing. He catches my glance. I swiftly replace my rural, senior railcard demeanour of disapproval with a slick ‘shit happens’ sneer. I wish I hadn’t shaved. I’m in Town.

Books, books, books….

16 Jan

My 2013 reading. Mini reviews and ratings. Highly questionable, really.  For what it’s worth…Books 2013

Strangers in some pain (in Maidstone). 5.

6 Sep

Maidstone is the county town of Kent. It boasts some 100,000 souls. The unsightly, jammed roads feeding into it from the four points of the compass are warnings for those who enter: abandon some, if not quite all, of your hope. The tawdry and the chic nestle cheek-by-jowl; the former like seeding nettles overgrowing the latter. Moat Park, however, is a glory – so too the hidden quiet of the Medway towpath. The occasional grand mediaeval architecture rebukes the hideous one-way system. Benjamin Disraeli and Anne Widdecombe, perhaps surprisingly, thought well-enough of the place to represent the locals in Parliament.

My GP had sent me for an endoscopy – a questionable procedure involving a camera being shoved down your throat and pictures taken of your insides while the Nikon tube enjoys the ride through your body. My Renault Laguna approached the city from the south, negotiated the stop-go swirl of the one-way and headed for Maidstone Hospital along the Tonbridge Road. Papers informing me of the horrors of my impending appointment lay on the passenger seat along with the consent forms sealing my fate. It couldn’t be worse than the traffic, surely? The Maidstone NHS Trust had predicted ‘up to three hours’ for my little excursion to their medical nirvana. They didn’t reckon on car parking, for starters.

The hospital is on Hermitage Road – a highway clearly ill-equipped to deal with  the mass of sick humanity, their carers, their families and friends – and the frantic comings and goings to A and E (situated mid-hospital), of wailing ambulances. Early afternoon and car-park A was full like a Tesco Extra. I hovered, engine idling, waiting to ambush a departee. I was ambushed at my first park-slot-shimmy by a white-van man who was far too slick on his accelerator. An old hand, I thought. No matter, a slot two bays along appeared within seconds and I wasn’t going to be gazumped again. As I heaved myself out of my wagon I caught the eye of white-van man striding past. I was sure he fired a smirk in my direction.

Then into the Cathedral of Pain. A charming lady at the front desk directed me down this corridor or that and I strolled purposefully through the bustle. My parking delay had contrived to bring me to the Endoscopy and Urology reception desk, bang on time, rather than my usual, calm, ten minutes early. I had noted the light green fatigues that are now all the rage in the NHS. Doctors and others swagger down corridors looking as if they are about to paint the walls rather than save lives. Identity cards are clipped at rakish angles in unlikely places – usually about the hip. Whatever happened to lanyards (great word) around the neck. Oh yes, one or two admin people use those. I guess surgeons don’t want their plastic mugshots to get in the way of lifesaving surgery.

My receptionist was a smiling delight. She was a large handsome girl who had shoe-horned herself, unforgivably, into something designed for Audrey Hepburn. I was to wait on one on the red chairs, not the blue. I sat next to the water-cooler and surveyed the waiting room. About thirty people, I guessed, evenly gender-distributed,  waiting for ‘procedures’ of one sort or another. I estimated that around half could have done with losing more than a couple of stone. A calm, quiet concern hung in the air. It was a steamy-hot day. Not far away the rescue services were trying to sort out that huge pile up in Sheppey. Here, as there, no air-conditioning. The staff-nurses fluttered by. Eventually one alighted on me. Another charmer, a young Asian woman with nice manners and a winning smile. She checked the papers which the receptionist had checked. She checked that I had understood what I had already agreed to. She checked my blood pressure.’ And now sir, all we have to do is wait a little while.’

Well, the little while was a little hour but, I had been forewarned. Meanwhile I resumed my place by the water-cooler. No sooner was I back in position and opening my book than a man looking remarkably like Peter O’Toole boomed into the area. He had a rather cowed, bespectacled lackey in tow – clearly to chauffeur him away after his ‘procedure’. In a voice that the back row of the dress circle would have heard comfortably he announced himself to Audrey on reception and looked about the room as he addressed her. ‘We’re early, darling. We found a simply brilliant route through the ghastly traffic. I’m dying for water but I don’t suppose I’m allowed even a moistening of the lips, am I?’

Audrey charmed her way through his litany of camp pronouncements and, to my joy, I discovered dear Peter coming to join me just the other side of the water-cooler. I wanted to engage him in conversation but, knowing that the whole waiting room would hear his thespian boom, I shrank into my book. He dismissed his man to the café and shook a copy of the Times open. Within seconds he was making response-noises to items of news. A comment here: ‘…Well that’s just plain silly…’ ;a snort or harrumph there. An occasional giggle; a final ‘Oh, no!’ How wonderful to be unconcerned by those around; what fun I had in listening.

And then I was called. Clothes off, gown on and into the chamber. Three people: a smiling young trainee who cracked a joke I didn’t get as he sprayed a numbing anaesthetic on my tonsils; an older nurse, like an auntie who was going to hold my head as the camera entered my body; the taciturn doctor with an Eastern Euro name who was all efficiency and calm. The process of having the tube rammed down me along with concomitant retching, I need not describe. Ten minutes and a sore throat. That was all, really. I’d like to claim some greater hero-status but there are too many who have had the gastroscope to gainsay me. Mr Estonia showed me the pictures of my insides and explained the workings of my oesophagus. I was definitely impressed.

I took my prescription to the pharmacy and a Chinese-looking guy with perfect manners and English warned me of a twenty-minute wait. OK. I had only used up two of my three hours anyway. I sat and returned to my book – Life Class by Pat Barker. A nurse walked by and asked what I was reading – clearly a bookish girl. ‘Best to bring a book when you come to the NHS!’ she jauntily remarked. I protested that I always take reading material for any sit-and-wait experience…but my excusing the NHS got lost in her rushing to her next thing. I wondered if employees believe their own negative press.

A fat middle-aged woman appeared with a thin husband. Jack Spratt. She approached the same charming pharmacist. He apologised for the delay. ‘Twenty minutes!’ she screechingly repeated. ‘That’s not good enough.’ Before the young functionary could apologise more a nurse came in from A and E, by-passed the now-burgeoning queue and said firmly but calmly that she had to get supplies for an ambulance that had to go out on a call. She was allowed the jump the outpatient queue. Fair enough we all thought. But not Jack Spratt’s wife. ‘You’re joking,’ she whined – and then – ‘It wouldn’t happen at Pembury.’ The beleaguered nurse kept muttering apology and while I thought of a scything, bitter piece of sarcasm to wither the crone, I kept my rapier sheathed. More’s the pity.

Another charming chemist delivered my bag of sweeties and I walked with trepidation to the parking payment station. I passed Jack Spratt’s wife slurping tea in the café – having left hubby to wait at the pharmacy. A half-eaten piece of chocolate cake lay waiting for her final attack of the afternoon.

£3 for parking. A snip after two and a half hours. But wait. The queue to exit the place extended out of sight. No matter, my throat was easing. I was leaving a tad earlier than planned. I had been well-treated, with good manners – and entertained by the great British public.  My Renault Laguna headed south, hope intact, from the inferno.

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