Diary 2009
Brownies
You remember odd things for no reason. I suppose writing my father's page reminded me. We lived in the valley between the Aberdare mountains and Mount Kenya (which reminds me further: my mother, in all her teenage, American innocence, asked a couple called Aberdare if they were named after the mountains. "The mountains are named after us"). There was a school but only one and you had to board. I was taken there aged six, excited by the prospect. We saw the school-house, the dormitory, even the bed that would hold my tears. Everything was rosy. The time came to go. Goodbye, said my parents. You don't mean you're going to leave me here, I said. I had no idea that the two pillars of my life would abandon a six year old
But, they did, and my mother became Brown Owl. So, once a week, I was allowed to join the brownies and toast marshmallows on the fire. I am the only male brownie ever!
Later, when I went to prep school (Pembroke House), I saw a film about the French resistance. The hero was called Eric. I was much taken with Eric. In fact, I changed my name to Eric; I signed my letters home "Eric". To begin with, this change of name was completely ignored by my mother. After much insistence, I was rewarded with "Dear Anthony (Eric)" but never with "Dear Eric" or, unspeakable but still better than the alternative, "Dear Eric (Anthony)". Parents just don't get it, do they?
24th February 2009
Media rape
Passing the Royal Marsden Hospital, there they are: sinister, cold, with long lenses, all men. Possibly the 27 year old woman inside, in her last days of life, is feeding off them as much as they are feeding off her. Possibly there's a contract here. But there are many where there is no contract, at least not one that extends beyond the concert hall, the recording studio, the photo shoot, the first night. We, as a society, tolerate a situation where those that step into the limelight are not allowed to say no. Having become illuminated, it is not sufficient that they give pleasure, that they perform, entertain. They have to be invaded, probed, picked at. When I speak about this, invariably the response comes (and from well educated, civilised people too):"they crave the attention" or "they use the media, the media is entitled to use them". So where's the contract? For me, I buy a ticket, I watch for two or three hours; that's the contract. An actress appears at a razamataz first night, she performs, photographers photograph; that's the contract - both sides happy. I don't care how much someone uses the media; while they're doing so, there's equilibrium, fairness. But they need to able to say no, in the same way that a woman needs to be able to say no. She may be provocatively dressed, to draw attention, but she must have the right to say no. It is no defence to say she was asking for it. Rape is against the law (although barely given the dismal crime statistics). An actress, or anyone, must be able to say you may not photograph me on holiday; you may not photograph my children; or my husband; or when I'm shopping. When I'm on show, you may photograph; otherwise you may not. Why is this concept so difficult to understand?
3rd March 2009
Nicole Kidman
I'll assume this happened after midnight, so the date is correct. And it needs to be remembered for the night when I didn't have sex with Nicole Kidman. She was there and I was there and not a lot else was there and I kept thinking "I can't have sex with Nicole Kidman because I'm married to Mrs Marrian". So I didn't have sex. In all of creation, what are dreams for? Bummer... I told Mrs Marrian. She didn't say too much. Possibly, I didn't express it very well
12th March 2009
Pitman Painters
Saw this at the National last night. It was pretty good except it was at least an hour longer than it needed to be - a socialist shiboleth? It reminded me of a time in the 70s when I was part of a company that designed and made electronic clocks embedded in acrylic. The Daily Mirror expressed an interest in running a feature so I went to demonstrate the clock to the appropriate department. The only plug in the room was behind a desk. I got up to move the desk and was unceremoniously told to sit down while a phone call was made. Ten minutes later a member of the correct trade appeared and moved the desk the requisite number of inches so the plug could be inserted in the socket. Having not learned my lesson, but being keen, I leapt up in order to plug in the clock's PSU. I got the same slap on the wrist and we sat for another ten minutes before a member of the electricians' trade appeared and plugged the PSU in to the wall. Thinking that this nonsense was well behind me I moved to demonstrate how the controls on the clock worked. Boy, was that a mistake. We waited another ten minutes before whichever trade it was that had collared the task of "demonstrating electronic clocks with touch controls" appeared and we spent at least half an hour while he read through all the instructions and then demonstrated the clock. Yes, you've guessed it. We had to go through the whole process in reverse in order to retrieve the sample. You couldn't make it up
I digress; the last slide in the play portrayed the demise of Clause 4 in 1995, although the Labour Party really needn't have worried. The entire country was absolutely fed up with the Conservatives' internal bickering; we would have elected a two-headed monster just to get rid of them. So, what did we do? We elected a wide boy who came with a number of unelected buddies and whose legacy, ten years later, could accurately be described as hundreds of thousands of dead people
19th March 2009
National Health database
A lot of chat about this on the radio this morning, mostly from people not wanting to appear on it - invasion of privacy, government completely incapable of keeping personal data secure, blah, blah. Well, it is perfectly true that once the data is uploaded, that's it! No matter what they say, they won't erase it. They might make it invisible but the record will be kept and even a judicious del *.* will still leave traces all over the hard disks. If you're paranoid, don't go to the doctor. I, on the other hand, would like rather more of my medical history to be available than is currently the case. I have records at Chelsea and Westminster, at The Royal Free, at Charing Cross and at Hammersmith. As I get moved around, the doctors only have recourse to their own hospital's records. They don't see the whole picture, and they can't see the whole picture because the computers don't talk to each other! Hammersmith, at the moment, are making bad decisions because they don't have access to 15 years of data at Chelsea and Westminster. I've tried, myself, to get them the data. I've written to C&W, my doctor has written. I finally tackled the consultant in clinic at the hospital; he performed valiantly but the computer froze - easy to put the data in, less easy to get it out. So, if you are paranoid, I wouldn't worry; your data is there but entirely unreadable
20th March 2009
Disraeli Gears
Let us say that Clemmie is 18. She arrives with her mother, respectable despite having just turned me on (as we used to say) to The Killers. Clemmie eyes up the column of vinyl and says "Do you have Disraeli Gears?". As there is no chance of my not having Disraeli Gears, I own up and produce the album. She doesn't want to listen to it, she just wants to look at it. What Clemmie doesn't know about that album cover isn't worth knowing, even down to where the designer was living at the time. It's like one of those BBC art programmes where they zoom in to a square inch of a Rembrandt, talk about it for ages and then slowly zoom out, talking all the while until, before you know it, two hours have gone by. Clemmie and the Disraeli Gears album cover is like having your very own BBC art programme live in your sitting room. Her mother was barely a teenager when The Cream ruled so how does Clemmie know so much about this piece of design? I can see we are going to have to consult today's teenagers if we want to recover all those lost sixties memories! Perhaps it's history and part of the new curriculum
7th April 2009
Prostate
I must stop obsessing over my prostate. My father's Kenyan doctors removed his and it might have been better if they hadn't. It might also have been better if the surgeon had had the compassion to visit the Mzee on his death bed at the time he visited a neighbour 50 yards away but that's another story.
One dead father and one dead uncle, both of prostate cancer; it makes you cautious. But I am a serial coward; I would rather die of prostate cancer than visit my doctor, almost. Dr Sinclair was less than encouraging: you get to the stage where you can't even pee from here to here, indicating a distance the length of which I have not been able to achieve since I was a teenager, if then. While the mark of normality appeared to be the capacity for peeing over a Landrover (for those bush-wallahs in the vigour of their youth), I could only manage peeing over a bicycle providing it was at waist height. They then stick needles in to your prostate from three different angles, continued Dr Sinclair cheerfully, and they might well still miss the tumour. And if you have the gland removed, you end up ejaculating into your bladder. Too much information!
That was in 2000. I've really done my best to ignore such an intractable problem ever since but I'm now down to the spokes. What did Denny Crane call it? A spluttering capuccino machine. So, serial coward meets serial worrier and then you hear yourself, in a moment of complete insanity, requesting a PSA test. You can hear the words coming out of your mouth but you can't believe you're being quite so reckless. Of course, the results are fine and then you feel like a bit of a plonker, until you feel that tingle in your left arm...
8th April 2009
Knitting
Those grannies have a way with life: you knit or crochet and when you see a mistake in the finished garment, you comment sagely: "loving hands at home"!
17th April 2009
Envy
Alistair Darling's new 50% tax rate for those earning over £150,000 is very popular, somewhere between 57% and 68% (at time of writing) approve. I can't help feeling that this has its roots entirely in the dismal desire to punish people who do well. Even if it could be proved beyond question that the tax take would go down, the 50% rate would still be popular. You work all the hours that God sent you, and you struggle to make ends meet: you're OK. You work all the hours that God sent you, and you make a fortune, employing considerable numbers as you do: you're not OK; you're rich. The gap between rich and poor should not be narrowed from the top down but from the bottom up. Even so, if you offered the poor British the choice: a bit less poor with the rich staying where they are or the same level of poverty with the rich taken down a peg or two, I wonder what the result would be
27th April 2009
Bath time
What's it called when you go upstairs to run the bath and come back 15 minutes later to find it still empty because you forgot to put the plug in? Now, what's that called? I can't remember
11th May 2009
MPs' expenses
What a bunch of hypocrites we are. Why is anyone surprised that MPs milk the system? I'd be very surprised if they didn't milk it, right royally, and comprehensively too. Who tells the truth? There must be some people who do but do you ever feel an MP does?
Footballers don't: ball slides a little over the line; does the player stop and wait for the throw-in? No he doesn't; he keeps on in the hope the refereee won't notice. Or he falls over and writhes in "agony" (yeah, yeah). It's deceitful and dishonest
What about the faulty cash machine which doles out double money? Does the first person to discover the fault telephone the bank? No, he telephones his friends
Insurance companies now record and run your oral claims through lie detector machines. Why? Because so many of their claims are deliberately inflated
If the facts don't fit a journalist's view of something, she'll make them up. In addition to the made-up stuff, she will have absolutely no compunction in mis-representing what she is told. Possibly, her expenses will be similarly creative
As the song goes: We don't really care about the truth, We're too busy trying it on
17th May 2009
Krishnamurti
Heard Robert Vaughan being interviewed on Radio 2. He once tried to make sense of Jiddu Krishnamurti's philosophical teachings and described the essence as being "Live for today because tomorrow may turn out to be like yesterday"!
17th May 2009
Continental service
Flight CO111, yup that was the one: Heathrow to Newark Liberty. It was also the cabin crew from hell. I have this rather quaint idea that Americans are very good at service; that if an American company doesn't provide good service, then the punters just move away and feed at some other trough where the service is good. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was expecting to be pampered on board, spoken to sweetly, made to feel welcome
OK, we did arrive safely; full marks there. But I don't see too many adverts which say "We get you to the other side alive"; in the aviation business that seems to be a given. So, what's left? What's left is the in-flight experience as delivered by a highly trained and highly motivated cabin crew there to make your journey a pleasant one
Whatever medication this crew was supposed to be on, they'd clearly forgotten to take it. You know, the medication that converts the "what the hell are you doing on my airplane" to "good morning and welcome". Boy, were we in the way. If it had been possible for us to open the windows, I think legging it would have been preferable to lumping it
21st May 2009
Finger-prints
I gave my finger-prints to America. Mrs Marrian did too, but she has history; she's given them once before; I wonder whether they noticed. I didn't like giving my finger prints away. It's one of the reasons I've stayed away from America, since the Great Cretin became president.
They made a pair, didn't they, the Great Cretin and the Wide Boy? They killed a lot of people, most of them the wrong people; and all from the World Trade Centre trigger. A bunch of terrorists got lucky because America was asleep. The Great Cretin was so full of hubris at being issued the presidency by the supreme court that he neglected to remember that the Chief Terrorist had already tried to blow up the World Trade Centre. So, no one noticed when strange young men wanted to learn to fly large airplanes, but not to take off or land them; no one noticed when strange young men boarded airplanes armed with the weapons of hijackers. Plenty of people noticed the results; the whole world noticed. Possibly, what passed at the time as Homeland Security woke up to its negligence; I never heard much talk about it.
Like Rome before it, America needed to kill: for every dead American, one hundred non-Americans had to die; even that quota wasn't sufficient. It didn't seem to matter much who. Afghanistan took the brunt to begin with although Saudi Arabia would have been more logical since the great majority of the terrorists were Saudi. He'd loved to have killed some French but he stuck to calling them names instead. The Great Cretin's bloodlust being aroused, he took to finishing some unfinished family business with Iraq. That was clever; he took a country entirely free of al-Qaeda and filled it with them. And his little toothpaste buddy came along for the ride
Now we leave finger-prints behind, as testimony to America's negligence. I'm sure a lot of IT companies do very nicely out of our finger-prints; keeping them stored away nicely, sorting them, linking them to passport numbers and credit card numbers and addresses, identifying them. Given how easy it is to forge fingerprints, and given that the internet abounds with instructions on how to fool finger-print security systems, only Homeland Security will know how much point there is to all this, and they probably won't say
21st May 2009
Tiffany & Co
There had been talk of a Tiffany ring. This is the problem: girl meets boy; he is funny, quirky, makes things, flies airplanes and has bristles on his chin. They fall in love and she moves in. Time passes, the important moment arrives but the ring is not from Tiffany & Co. She moves out. In due course, she finds a man who buys her the right ring so she says yes. After a few years, she finds he's a pain in the arse and no amount of Tiffanny & Co, and related stuff, can compensate so she moves out. Sadly, by this time, the funny, quirky boy who makes things, flies airplanes and has bristles on his chin has turned into a man with a wife and three children. This story does not end happily
23rd May 2009
Feral
Vincent David Opus Astor came to visit. He has a lot to recommend him: he can't talk and he sleeps a lot. The best thing about him, though, is his mum. Minimalism: I know it's already in the family but, when applied to children rather than buildings, it can have its moments. "Mummy, can I go and look at the baby?" "Yes, you can but do not wake him up". Brat appears 30 seconds later with a waking baby in her arms. Sanctions? There is none. Bribes? Hmm, there are signs of that: "Have you got anything I can bribe her with?" Best is no bribes, babe; that is true minimalism
I reckon in the end the children thrive. Of course, they need aunts and uncles et al to put the boot in when they become too much of a pain and they tend to learn from that but at least they're not being "brought up"; feral in a good home is OK
30th May 2009
Mexican wave
What a pleasure it is to be treated by Jeremy Levy. I couldn't believe my good fortune today. As he arrived, I heard a Mexican wave of nurses saying "Jeremy's arrived", "Jeremy's arrived", "Jeremy's arrived"
The question is: will swine flu at Eton allow the school that Jeremy's children attend to beat them (Eton) in the regatta?
2nd June 2009
United States health system
You read many shocking things in the newspapers and this is the one that did more than just surprise me today (from The Guardian):
Medical bills cause more than 60% of US personal bankruptcies. More than 75% of these bankrupt families had health insurance but were still overwhelmed by medical debts.
"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is one serious illness away from bankruptcy", Dr David Himmelstein said. "Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year"
Report by Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University, due to be published in the American Journal of Medicine in August 2009
4th June 2009
Your security is crap
Doesn't the US Department of Homeland Security have anything better to do? See here for the sorry saga
9th June 2009
Heaven
The Committee for the Creation of Katie Heaven was born last night
18th June 2009
Prison
For the sake of round numbers, let's say that in Britain the prison population is around 80,000 with a total population of 60 million. The American population is 300 million so on a pro-rata basis you would expect the US prison population to be around 400,000. In fact, it's 2.3 million. Why is this? It's even more extraordinary when you consider that Britain locks up more people than either France, Germany or Italy
I always think of the river flowing into a lake metaphor. Given that the river will always flow, you want the water to be as pure as possible to avoid polluting the lake. If your criminal justice system is producing a steady, daily, stream of bad people likely to re-offend, you're actively reducing the quality of life for society as a whole. We need a great deal less revenge and a great deal more rehabilitation. I suspect that, as a nation, the US has not yet developed the maturity to understand this. Of course, the Brits aren't too hot on the rehab stuff either and we've been around for a while. All in all, the outlook is not promising...
3rd July 2009
Bull fighting
In the 4th July edition of Tthe Spectator, Charles Moore writes:
The comedian Ricky Gervais wants to ban bullfighting on the grounds that it is "cruel"
The inverted commas are Mr Moore's and I wonder why he uses them. It would require a complete redefinition of the word for it not to be possible to describe bullfighting as cruel. Whether, as a human being, from a particular culture, you are content for the practice to continue is another matter
11th June 2009
Festival de Musique des Montagnes du Monde
This is day two of the “Festival de Musique des Montagnes du Monde”. Sounds romantic? When you hold it in the hills above a Swiss mountain village, I think that qualifies. You even get pretty, blue wrist bands, to go with the pretty, brown Swiss girls, most of whom seem to be organising the event. Kazakhstan and Bolivia were yesterday; we are promised Ethiopia and Mongolia.
The Ethiopians are elegant, dignified men of a certain age doing their best with instruments that I’m surprised make any noise at all, such is their impoverishment. What they lack by way of hardware they make up for with character and vocal presentation: quiet and gentle, reverend, rhythmical, at times energetic and humorous. They are also reluctant to leave the stage at the end of their allotted time, with the organizer discreetly waving bits of paper at them. The performance is interesting, strangely meditative, but it doesn’t engage me
Dinner you don’t look too closely at; it suffers this year from being purely Swiss: chicken and rice or sausage and pasta. Last year was better because the cuisine came with the countries and there was choice, although I can see that Swiss cuisine could be considered marginally better than Ethiopian. The Italians play Ferruccio; spelling aside I know it’s called that because I ask them. I’ve waited a year to hear that song again: a beautiful Italian melody about a man who stabs his wife with a (how do you call it? Knife? Dagger! Oh, si si) dagger. They promise to put it on their next CD. They will dedicate it to Chelsea Man. This peripatetic band of musicians wander through the crowds serenading and reviving, some of the music so Irish that couples jig and jag in the evening sun.
Dotted about the site are metre high pine tree trunks; miniature, overweight totem poles. They have been sawn, almost to the base, into six sections. They are lit (somehow) at the top and then burn down gradually, fuelled by the air rising up the vertical channels, providing warmth in the chill mountain air
The Mongolians perform for the second half of the evening. The band is called Egschiglen, which apparently means harmony or beautiful melody. I have no conception or experience of Mongolian music and, boy, are we in for a revelation. This is absolutely amazing. The performers are beautifully dressed in traditional clothing, the stage a blaze of colour. The music is harmonious, vibrant, full of melody, surprising, awe inspiring and such a surprise that by the end of the concert not a single person remains sitting and the applause is thunderous
31st July 2009
Swiss National Day
This is the last night of the Festival de Musique des Montagnes du Monde. In fact, the festival is entirely subsumed under Anzère’s August 1st (Swiss National Day) festivities. It is used as a romantic-sounding lure ("Tous les artistes invités depuis jeudi sont réunis sur la place du village à l'occasion d'un grand bal. Des animations et feux d'artifice sont prévues tout au long de la soirée") to encourage attendance. So, the festival decamps from the hills and forlorn groups of musicians can be seen disconsolately observing the planned activities almost none of which has anything to do, or even sympathy, with their music making.
Tables and benches, of which there are too few, are colonised by old folks who have no difficulty despatching those younger than themselves to sit on the grass. Pinot Noir, raclette, saucisse, riz de volaille, and tarte grace any flat surface. The children run, chase, jump, climb, fall, dance, pose, act, throw firecrackers at each other, or at some of the young men, but never at the old folks, their mothers and fathers, while surely not oblivious, content to allow this freedom, knowing that any misdemeanour will be corrected by whoever happens to be nearby at the time. Two boys fall to the ground each time a firecracker goes off before leaping to their feet and sprinting in circles until the next bang allows them to resume their fleeting deathly pose. Teenagers gather in excited clumps, over-made-up and under-dressed, swirling from place to place like shoals of fish following the whims of the decision-makers, but not drunk and not obnoxious. Speeches are made by earnest dignitaries, the national anthem is sung, old friends met, new friends made, old bores tolerated.
This is a lesson for us; we might think of it as a master class in family life but it’s not, it’s just normal family life. We who have banished children from any part of community life, where any man is a paedophile before he is a man, where you need to register on a national list before you can discuss a book you’ve written with a class of children, where an organist has to stop giving choir practice because the church can’t afford the second adult now deemed necessary to chaperone him, where men won’t teach in primary schools because it’s simply not worth the risk of false accusation, where children are not allowed to do a thousand things they used to do for fear of injury; we who have allowed this poison to infect the most fundamentally joyous part of living can only watch open-mouthed when we witness a Swiss village behaving as they have for centuries
Rain is promised for tomorrow and by 21:00 we can feel the change. We scurry back to the apartment for warm clothes returning at 22:00 for the Italians whose profile has been elevated from melodic wanderers to on-stage stars. The trouble is the musicians’ stage, stuck like an appendage on to the edge of Swiss National Day, is just a patch of grass with a canvas covering. The amplification system is hopelessly inadequate for any but the first three or four rows of people, all of whom have to stand because there are no seats. We extract what we can, standing on a nearby bank, flanked by teenagers discussing the mysteries of their lives. At 22:50 the music stops and everyone moves away from the stage to watch the fireworks
We also watch them but we also watch the now deserted patch of ground that represents row A; having collared the Mongolians’ handler earlier in the evening we know that they are playing the final (unadvertised) set immediately after the fireworks. And when they start we are there, sitting cross legged, flashing the blue wrist bands, like the hippies we are. Also there is a very small 15 month old girl dressed in a pinny with matching beret. The Mongolians have no chance. This little thing wanders about the stage, bouncing up and down when the music requires it, swaying on occasion, falling down in a bump where the ground is uneven, making tentative efforts to catch the end of the bow playing the horse-head violin, rushing away in alarm when the big brass cymbal is banged. Her young and pretty mother makes only occasional forays on stage to retrieve the little one before releasing her to continue her show-stealing antics. What a weird gig this must be for the musicians. The official fireworks might be over but that doesn’t stop all and sundry continuing to release rockets, bangers and other noisy pyrotechnics. They can’t get an audience because the organizers have designed the stage so badly and a little person has completely stolen what audience they do have.
It is moments like this which lift life way out of the humdrum and make you feel you are truly blessed to be alive
On the way back to the apartment two nine year old boys have climbed to the top of the fountain, splashing each other, revelling in their adventure. They won't fall off and no official is going to interfere. The other revellers are a group of drunk teenage boys singing loudly, and tunelessly. Singing what? The national anthem! If I had gone up to them and told them to be quiet, they would have said "Oui, Monsieur" and gone meekly home to their mothers
1st August 2009
Il suo nome è... Amor!
When Calaf finishes singing Nessun Dorma, and the Verona audience claps and cheers for five minutes, you, Maestro Daniel Oren, are supposed to turn back the pages of your score and give it to us again! Of course, it is possible that you long ago gave up pandering to sentimental audiences but, with the moon almost full, the warm night air on our faces and Castello di Brolio in our bellies, could you not have relented, just this once?
On the way home, the call girls ply their trade: discreet but available, the pimps hiding in the shadows
4th August 2009
BIG birthday
At the Hotel Weisshorn (may it be preserved forever). Christophe is also there celebrating his birthday. Everyone makes a big fuss of him. I keep quiet. If you ever read this, Christophe, send me an email
24th August 2009
L'hotel
Good grief! What on earth possessed us to do this? We are leaving Switzerland for Paris to spend a night in the hotel where we spent our wedding night! We tell them this. They seem entirely disinterested. Perhaps it happens all the time. Perhaps we are just another cliché. Donc?
Mrs Marrian says: "If I'm paying that much money for a hotel, I want to spend as much time as possible in it". I reckon six hours to Paris. Big mistake: minimum eight, and that assumes you know where you're going, and that the roads to the service stations actually go into the service stations. It takes us three attempts to re-fuel. We are not French
Management of Parking at Rue Mazarine is savvy enough to advertise. So when the wretched satnav (apropos of absolutely nothing, check the luvnav cartoon here!) gets us into the same quarter, we see signs and though the mood be foul the car be parked and safe for the night
L'hotel is still the same quirky tower, with rooms off the circular chimney, the original lift which was futuristically designed to encourage walking, and the Oscar Wilde room. They gave us Oscar Wilde on our wedding night. Today they give us something bijou, quiet, overlooking the courtyard. The hotel seems grubby but I realise it's not. You just get that feeling from the oppressive leopard print carpet. It's also hot with no air conditioning but, as a sop, a 1950s fan that probably began its life in Mombasa and squeaks alarmingly. We turn off the fan, move the furniture in order to open the French windows and sleep
The bath is too small even for Mrs Marrian. We are re-creating newly-wedded bliss so, with the help of gravity, we arrange our limbs with mathematical precision and occupy the available space. I take the tap end. This probably tells you that I am taking no chances with Mrs Marrian's mood. I am 6'4"; she is a foot smaller; that makes a little under 12' of body in a four foot bath. Getting in was possible; getting out was ingenious
L'hotel now boasts a Michelin starred restaurant. We forgo the opulence of the main dining room and sit in the cool of the courtyard. Tonight is the first night after the August closure; the chef has on the menu what he found in the market. We choose the Menu Surprise with vin surprise too. Good choice! Mrs Marrian worries about mixing her wines. In my experience it's not her that needs to be worried; it's me! She behaves more badly than she did on her wedding night
26th August 2009
Louvre
From L'Hotel we cross the Pont des Arts on our way to the Louvre. Insistent, aggressive men use all but force to try to persuade us to "sign for peace in Darfur". These do not appear to be men of peace; the exercise is pointless and, almost certainly, will be mis-used
To get into the Louvre you are first tested by an onslaught of parasitic low-life whose only intention is to remove as much of your money as it can and give you as little as possible in return. By the time you reach I. M. Pei's glass and metal pyramid, you are beginning to remember why you don't make a habit of being a tourist. Inside, there are masses of people being noisy: mothers shouting at their children; guides shouting at their parties; customers shouting at waiters, or lack of them. You don't look at paintings with your ears; just as well with the tinnitus now humming in protest at the noise
We go to look at Italian paintings. Mrs Marrian gives me the perspective talk; then the cobalt blue talk; then several other talks but I'm not listening any longer. I'm wondering what I'm doing amongst all these people, looking at paintings that do not thrill me even a bit, knowing that I've got several hours of this ahead of me. Mrs Marrian seems engaged but I am not because, at that moment, I am a philistine. And, all of a sudden, and not expecting it, I see La Belle Ferronnière. WHAAM! (as Lichenstein would have said). WHO PAINTED THAT? Of course, it's Leonardo. There's a reason for these guys being famous: it's because they knew what they were doing. Next to it is La Vierge Aux Rochers. Mrs Marrian tells me of another one in the National Gallery in London; of how it hangs in a quiet corner where you can sit in peace to look at it and her eyes fill with tears. She is not a philistine
Later, she takes me willingly to the other side of the Louvre to look at Dutchmen and Le Herengracht à Amsterdam. I think she wants to go back there
27th August 2009
Death penalty
I wouldn't mind betting that the majority, probably a large majority, of those wishing to remove the UK from the European Union would like to see a restoration of the death penalty; happy bedfellows, particularly as no member of the EU has the death penalty on its statute books. Advocates of withdrawal postulate some vague hope that this makes economic and political sense; they talk of being Atlanticists and suchlike. Do they not see the looming vastness of India and China? Do they not see how those people work; no third generation living on benefits there, too idle, ill-educated, deprived and derelict to be able to move from existence to life? America is not going to save anyone. $800 billion of US Treasury Securities were owned by China in July 2009. Japan owned $724 billion. You only have to see the breathtaking events surfacing as a result of Obama’s efforts to provide Americans with something approaching universal healthcare, an absolute minimum one would have thought in a mature economy, to realise the levels of corruption now endemic in the country. Rolling Stone Magazine described Max Baucus as “one of the biggest whores for insurance-company money in the history of the United States”; and this man is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee!!
In much the same way that (sensible) politicians do not give the public a referendum on the death penalty (because they would approve it), so it is idiotic to give them one on EU membership (which is what a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would amount to). What you will get is a reflection of decades of silly stories in the tabloids about the evils of Europe vs the greatness of Britain. Most of the MPs who promote this nonsense use corruption in the EU as a selling point. Funny how they all went quiet on that front after the Daily Telegraph started printing some home truths. I do not believe for a minute that the man in the street (and I include myself) can come to a wise decision on the UK’s membership of Europe. That is what we have elected representatives for; and you will notice that government after government has taken the pragmatic, self-interested approach of staying within Europe and helping to develop and strengthen it. Why do you think that might be?
4th October 2009
Bad reporting
The Saturday Guardian's Bad Science column should be required reading. A common theme is the way in which journalists, either through corruption, incompetence, laziness, deliberate deceit or just plain idiocy, mis-represent the results of research papers, often telling their readers that the results are the complete opposite of those presented! Today's article is a case in point. Read it, and then read every other article Ben Goldacre has ever written, and weep for the tens of thousands misled, some to the point of physical harm, or worse, by journalists who are an utter disgrace to their trade
10th October 2009
Ice alert
Timed the mother perfectly: Blind Willie McTell, When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky, Series Of Dreams, full volume - Anzère!!
14th October 2009
115 years
Absolutely no encore - bitter sweet
19th October 2009
Bags
Left Reims with one green bag, one blue bag, one grey bag, one coldbag and one old bag, the "old bag" being offered by Mrs Marrian. This belies the fact that she is simply more gorgeous than ever
26th October 2009
Nurses
There's been lots of chat on Any Questions / Any Answers about the government decision to force all nurses to acquire a degree before they can practise. What's in a name (or what's in a word, but let's not go there just at the moment)? If they want to call the training a "degree", so be it. The gist, I suppose, is that they want nurses to be better trained. Excellent! Still, I wonder whether this new training, this enhanced, higher level training is going to make it more likely or less likely that a nurse will respond to the situation in which I found myself in May 2007. This is what I subsequently wrote to Heather Lawrence:
02/07/07
Ms Heather Lawrence
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
369 Fulham Road
LONDON
SW10 9NH
Dear Ms Lawrence
In May of this year I was admitted to Marie Celeste ward on the 4th floor at
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. During my walks along the 4th floor
corridors I became aware that some of the other wards were closed due to
contamination by diarrhoea inducing bugs. Later, after a kidney biopsy, I was
admitted to one of these wards,William Gilbert. On my second evening there
I noticed that one of the men’s toilets had some clear syrupy liquid covering
part of the floor. I mentioned it to the nursing staff because I was concerned
that one of the more elderly patients might slip on it. Later in the evening, at
around 22:00, I visited the same toilet again. The clear liquid remained and
now there was extensive excrement contamination both of the toilet seat and
the floor around the toilet. There were footmarks in the excrement on the
floor. I immediately told the nursing staff and suggested the toilet should be
cleaned as a matter of urgency. At 02:00 I visited the toilet again to discover it
in exactly the same condition and, again, I alerted the nursing staff.
It is depressing to have to tell you that it was not until 10:00 the next morning
that matters were put right. I do find this quite extraordinary. You have a
ward which just a few weeks earlier had been closed because of diarrhoea
related contamination and here the nursing staff are allowing excrement, in
which people are walking and, presumably, spreading around the rest of the
ward, to remain for at least 12 hours
Is it really the case that no systems are in place in the hospital to allow for
essential cleaning to take place during the night?
In the way that it was clearly beneath the nursing staff to deal with a problem that needed dealing with urgently in 2007, I fear that the new, improved, degree level nurse will have been taught all sorts of useful stuff but not how to keep a ward clean!
*************************************************
OK, let's go there, and this has only an oblique connection with nurses!
In 1999, younger daughter wrote in a school essay for GCSE:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other" (Romeo and Juliet Act 2, scene 2)
Her English teacher insisted that it should be "What's in a word?", despite the fact that all the internet references she (daughter) could find used name rather than word.
According to research I did at the time, it's not at all cut and dried and you need to consider the following:
- There are several versions of Shakespeare's plays; printed editions are drawn from many, sometimes differing, sources. Editors, over the years, have made changes to "correct" errors
- Modern texts use word viz: Folio Society 1950, based on the text of the 'New Temple Shakespeare' uses name, whereas Folio Society 1988, based on the Oxford Shakespeare, uses word.
- The Complete Oxford Shakespeare and New Penguin Shakespeare use word. The commentary in the Penguin edition says: word. The Q1 reading name was included in many of the older editions of Shakespeare, and so became usual in the proverbial saying. The first quarto is shorter than the second, which is generally held to be the more authoritative and is the play we know today. The first quarto use of name is a hang-over from many 19th Century texts. The plays were written to be performed rather than read, and the actors themselves could well have produced variations between performances.
- There are original versions showing both name and word. Shakespeare wrote his plays out several times and may have made alterations on-the-fly. One of the contributors to my research suggested that the differences between editions could be the subject of an essay at a higher exam level!
14th November 2009
Guardian letter
The Guardian printed a whole two sentences of my letter to them. This is actually what the letter said:
Do I detect a certain regret in your newspaper today that Tony Blair failed in his bid to become president of the European Council? Why? Is there a single person left in this country who does not share in the shame of the deceit over Iraq? Europe needs a president with qualities of wisdom, integrity, honesty and openness. Mr Blair’s ten years in office were characterised by very few of those qualities. It would not be hyperbolic to describe his legacy as hundreds of thousands of dead people
21st November 2009
Der Rosenkavalier at the ROH
Soile Isokoski appears in front of the curtain to take her applause and the Englishman next to me shouts out loudly "Bravo!". Huh? "Brava" is more what she would want to hear. And "Bravi" for the whole cast. But all we hear, over and over, is "Bravo".
"Very, very good, very, very good" was the creditable cry of one chap behind me
Does any of this matter? Probably not, unless you are the world's most annoying pedant
15th December 2009