Slightly amateurish and confused

Early afternoon I drove down onto the plain to the small market town that has a hollow centre - in the form of a big marketplace overlooked by a semi-cathedral (a great gothic church the size of a cathedral and supporting a complex hierarchy of clergy, but not actually the seat of a bishop).

The medieval guildhall on the south side of the marketplace reopened today after an extensive restoration. Lots of events associated with this reopening were to have been held, but because of the weather (terrific winds, short periods of sleet, bitter cold) they were either cancelled or driven indoors. Hastily reorganised, the guildhall reopening acquired a slightly amateurish and confused air.



Above: The horses were out in the cold, with nothing to do. “This is Harvey - he’s a half-Shire. He had mites in his leg and was going to be sent to the abattoir, but we said we’d have him, and so he’s retired now.”



Above: The medieval re-enactment (Wars of the Roses) didn’t have much to do except sit around showing off their armour.

At two o’clock I went into the semi-cathedral for the Liturgy of the Passion which lasted an hour. I have attended several services in this church, and each time I am surprised (re-surprised?) at how big the interior is. It has the feel of the grote kerks of the Netherlands (and Jonathan Meedes documentaries).

The rushing wind could be heard inside the church, loud and intrusive. Occasionally the sun would come out and flood the interior with yellow light for a few seconds before the grey resumed. A large number attended the service, but because we all sat apart and the building was so vast, it appeared as if only a sprinkling of people were there (only if you did a 360 degree sweep of the head could you get a sense of the size of the congregation).

The images in the church (including the holy painting given by the former Reader) had been covered with purple cloths. The choir came in, all male and in red. The three senior priests came in and prostrated themselves before the altar (literally laid down flat on the floor).

Readings, psalms, the hymn There is a green hill far away. The Passion of St John was read out, various clergy taking different parts. After Holy Communion a large wooden cross was brought in and people lined up to kiss it.

After the service I went home.

Yesterday in the Guardian Mark Lawson referred to Christianity in this country as “residual”. Is that how it looks from a metropolitan perspective? For me it couldn’t be more mainstream.

And if official Christianity were to fail, what would take its place? We know that humans are “worshipping animals” and so only a few would become “rational atheists” (and there are grounds for thinking atheism is just another religion). The majority would drift into superstition, other religions such as Islam or Mormonism, and a populist sort of paganism (images supplied by Buffy the vampire slayer etc).

In the crisis of faith that followed the First World War countries such as Germany and Russia succumbed to political religions such as national socialism and international socialism. “Modern science” is a growing religion, with its own doctrines of infallibility (heaven help you if you question the pharmaceutical orthodoxy). And from personal experience I can vouch for the eagerness with which Material Consumerism is waiting for its Constantine-moment of national adoption and consecration.

In his article yesterday Mark Lawson used the word “Christmassy” twice. He used it in a slighting way, which was curious as Mark Lawson does not usually sneer. He is someone who usually uses very precise language, so it was strange for him to use a word such as “Christmassy”.

More on Mark Lawson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lawson

I took my camera with me

Today is Maundy Thursday.

Andrew Neil announced the fact on his Daily Politics show.

Her Majesty the Queen gave out the Royal Maundy Money at Armagh cathedral.

The BBC news bulletins reported that sundry bishops and senior clergymen were going through shopping centres cleaning the shoes of passers-by, as an alternative to the more formal and ritualised washing-of-feet at the Maundy evening services.



Although I have nothing against the bishops and their mission to go out to the people, the thought occurred to me that this is the way customs and traditions disappear (“the world moves on” “we can't become fossilised” “you can’t have the Church of England set in aspic” etc etc).

Therefore when I went to the Maundy Eucharist this evening I took my camera with me and (with prior agreement) photographed the ritual washing-of-the-feet.



Above: the Maundy ritual washing-of-the-feet - only two people get their feet washed.

The church I went to was down on the plain, right by a river, one of the “Pretty Rural Villages” of Mosaic classification.

The evening was cold and wet. Inside the church I spoke briefly to one of the churchwardens, and then to the Vicar. I sat right at the front (the walls of this 12th century priory church splay outwards, so that you feel any moment the roof is going to come down).

The choir was surprisingly large, about thirty in all, half of them young women. The young Vicar had a rich voice, like Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood. In his sermon he talked about loving our neighbours, and told us: “It is more fun to love people you don’t like.”

After the sung Eucharist came the ceremony of stripping the altars (the choir singing psalms and anthems). The remains of consecrated bread and wine were removed to an altar in the Corpus Christi chapel (a sort of mysterious gothic cupboard in the south-east corner where the watch-until-daybreak is being held). The lights were turned out, except for tiny sidelights, leaving us sitting in the dark (until eventually, one by one, we got up and left).

Very bright moon on the drive back across the plain.

More on the Royal Maundy Money: http://www.24carat.co.uk/maundystory.html

More on Mosaic classification: http://www.prospectlocator.com/index.aspx?pageid=16

Yawning at one o’clock in the afternoon

At lunchtime I went into the Conference Room and watched Prime Minister’s Questions. It was very boring - especially the sycophantic planted questions (which are mostly along the lines of “Does the Prime Minister agree that all his policies are wonderful”). And I thought MPs were not supposed to read out long prepared questions?

After Prime Minister’s Questions there was about twenty minutes of Andrew Neil in the studio, and then just as I was getting up to go back to my desk the cameras returned to Westminster.

In the House of Commons Gordon Brown was at the despatch box announcing the new national security provisions. On the bench behind him, sharing the camera frame, was Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. Just as the Prime Minister was getting into his stride she gave a theatrical yawn.

Why was the Home Secretary yawning at one o’clock in the afternoon?

Was she exhausted? Was Gordon Brown deathly boring? Or was she trying to make the Prime Minister look silly?

There is absolutely no doubt...

I am still working flat out.

As every evening for the last two weeks I have taken a stack of work home with me and expect to finish about 1am tonight (with several breaks planned in - this being one of them).

A measure of my desperation is that I actually sent my incompetent assistant Pete to see a client on his own this afternoon - so far there doesn’t seem to have been any damage done.

At lunchtime I took a half-hour break to watch Andrew Neil on BBC2.

His guest today was senior television presenter Joan Bakewell. One of the items they talked about was the religious objections some doctors have to performing abortions. During this discussion Joan Bakewell airily said “as a secular country we expect…”

I have noticed in the last couple of years, particularly in regard to the Muslim “issue”, many commentators, politicians, journalists etc have been making similar remarks (“as a secular country” “as a secular nation” “we are a secular society” etc).

These statements trouble me because they are wrong. England is one of the few countries / nations / kingdoms in the world that has defined itself officially as a Christian country. There is absolutely no doubt about the official status of the Anglican church - the Church of England is the English state religion.

You might argue (and many people do) that this should be otherwise, but it is a simple and undeniable fact that the Church of England is the Established Church (and to change this you would have to comprehensively change the way society is structured - not an easy task).

Just a cursory look at the interdependence of Church and State tells you how complex the situation is. The Head of State is simultaneously the Head of the Church; the smallest unit of local government is the Anglican parish; the House of Commons cannot proceed each day until Anglican prayers have been said; Anglican bishops sit in the legislature; Anglican rituals are integrated into all national ceremonies, state schools are supposed to begin each day with an act of Christian observance etc. Leaving aside the issue of confessional belief, there is no doubt that the majority of the population in England would, if asked, opt for the category “cultural Anglican”.

So why are the “we are all secularists now” statements getting through unchallenged?

Has the media become lazy about checking facts? Have non-English people so permeated the political and media elites that there is now widespread ignorance about the religious status of the English nation? Is there a “hidden agenda” at work to talk down the Anglican church?

PS I liked the way Andrew Neil revealed Joan Bakewell’s hypocrisy over private education. When asked where she had educated her own children she told a half-truth by saying she had sent her daughters to a state school. When pressed by Andrew Neil she then admitted she had sent her son to a private school (you could see her hesitate, as if wondering whether she would get away with a lie, before deciding to tell the whole truth - I thought about Andrew Neil's mastery the rest of the afternoon).

The all-nighter

Above: in the long still moments of the night I stood in the office kitchen and looked at the jars of instant coffee. Like Winston Smith in 1984 I was able to match two pieces of information. Is Waitrose guilty of “passing off” its own-brand instant coffee as Mellow Birds coffee? (same shape jar, same colours, same use of the word mellow, more or less same image of a cup - all the money and effort Birds has put into brand development is being pilfered by Waitrose).

The big project we have all been working on reached one of its peaks on Tuesday when the “all-nighter” was held. This entailed staying on after work, and working through the night, as information came in, until the job was done and the conclusions could be presented to the client at 11 o’clock on Wednesday morning. Only the upstairs (PR) division was involved - with myself included in Val’s team as copywriter.

These all-nighters are held about once every six months. Participants in the all-nighter are carefully chosen, and are viewed by the rest of the agency in the same light as the Spartans who guarded Thermopylae (a mystique they are careful to cultivate). The “sacrifice” of a night of our lives is seen as an offering to placate our most powerful and lucrative client (or, “don’t forget who ultimately pays ALL our wages” as Terry likes to point out - frequently).

Having just been through my first all-nighter I can report that the night mostly consisted of boredom, with IT personnel occasionally rushing through the floor (do they need to rush so urgently, or is that all part of the show?). At about nine o’clock the first information started to arrive (in stat form) and I began to write it up in a coherent narrative (actually I had planned most of the conclusions in advance and used my creative skill to make the facts fit the story).

Between 11pm and 3am the trickle of information became a rush and everyone was busy (Rachel complaining she couldn’t see the big picture, Douglas trying to calm Rachel down, Val using her senior management skills in making everyone coffee).

At 3.30 the rush had become a trickle again, and I went down to the tiny first aid room (where there is an armchair) and sat in the dark with my eyes closed for half an hour.

By 5am it was all over.

At 9 o’clock everyone else came in to start a new day.

Terry (our MD) took us all to a “slap up” breakfast at a hotel. The stormy morning seemed unreasonably bright. After the breakfast Val and her team went back to the agency to present the night’s findings, while I went home to sleep.

Lords over life and death

Above: “Ming” Campbell was regularly lampooned by Bremner, Bird & Fortune - above is Rory Bremner portraying “Ming” as (simultaneously) Ginger Spice, Baby Spice and Scary Spice (I think the Spice Girls had just attempted a revival, attempted revivals being an on-going theme in Liberal-Democrat politics). After endless goading by members of his own party “Ming” walked out as Liberal-Democrat Leader in one of the most famous strops of modern times. The episode was so beyond parody that Bremner Bird & Fortune simply reproduced it, almost word for word - it was one of the funniest things they have ever done.

Sir Menzies “Ming” Campbell, erstwhile leader of the Liberal Democrat party, appeared on Andrew Marr’s Start The Week show this morning, promoting his memoirs (published this week). The discussion turned to “assisted dying” and with the typical arrogance of the political elite “Ming” dismissed lobbying of Members of Parliament as an unhelpful interference. Presumably in his view MPs should be lords over life and death untrammelled and unbothered by public opinion.

Still snowed under

I am still snowed under with work - I have done about eight hours today (can’t remember when I last had to work on a Sunday).

One of Terry’s cronies was in the office talking about the Lisbon Treaty (the government have reneged on their manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on whether “we” agree with it).

Possibly it might get chucked out in the House of Lords (provoking a constitutional crisis, although arguably ratifying the Treaty without a referendum is in itself a constitutional crisis).

Anyway, to let Terry’s pal talk for himself:

“People get worked up about how this Treaty is irrevocable, and once it’s done there’s no going back. But the truth is that the Queen in Parliament is supreme. Doesn’t matter how many Treaties are signed, we can reverse any part of them we don’t like with a simple Order in Council”.

“Well, wouldn’t that incite a European backlash and get us thrown out?”

“Not at all. What are they going to do - refuse to trade with us? Send the Gestapo to arrest us?”

“Well, wouldn’t it be dishonourable to break a treaty once it has been ratified?”

“Dishonourable for whom? Dishonourable for Gordon Brown I grant you. But not dishonourable for the rest of us, since we havn’t said yes or no yet.”

“Well, wouldn’t we just get thrown out of Europe?”

“Not at all I tell you. Look at the record - Europe always backs down when challenged by a big national government. If he gets in, Cameron could wade into Europe, get the concessions he wants, win a referendum and go on to win a subsequent election on the back of it.”

At that point they went off to have lunch (“We’ll meet Marcus in the Silver Cross and then go on to Albannach”) leaving me to “carry on”.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7277644.stm

You can tell I am busy

I am horribly busy at the moment. By “horribly” I mean I have taken on a project that MUST be finished by the 26th March, and yet even if I work all day and all night I can’t see that it will be ready. Plus I am having to ignore all the important “usual” stuff I need to do.

You can tell I am busy when I go to see one of my clients and walk back along The Strand without going into Stanley Gibbons for twenty minutes to look at the stamps (I only look - I have far too many interests at the moment without starting stamp-collecting).

More on Stanley Gibbons: http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp

There is no-one else like him

Over the last two Thursdays I have been watching the Jonathan Meades documentaries Magnetic North. But after only two episodes the series has come to a stop - leaving me feeling a bit lost this evening. Instead of finishing in Finland the series should have continued to look at the Scandinavian countries (Jonathan Meades in Stockholm would be worth seeing).

Jonathan Meades is an interesting character. He combines an high intellectual style with originality of content and amusing visual presentation. There is no-one else like him on British television.

As “there is nothing on” tonight I will probably work until about 10pm (I am overwhelmed with work at the moment and have to take projects home with me). Then I will watch Newsnight. Then I will watch This Week.

On the subject of This Week, for two weeks running Diane Abbott MP has praised (with a little laugh) Mao Tse-tung and Fidel Castro. Why is she speaking so favourably of political serial killers? Are we going to see David Irving appearing on This Week with his Top Five Political Mass Murderers?

If romanticism returns...

Another Wednesday and another lunchtime in the Conference Room watching Prime Minister’s Questions. “I don’t know why you bother” said Rachel, slurping her “lunch” of a vegetable smoothie (she claims solid food during the day makes her stomach bulge). I bother because I want to analyse style and image in modern politics, cross-referenced with wider cultural trends, and present to Terry (our MD) a novel strategic “idea” that will establish my reputation as a rising star in the agency (“some hope” I can hear several people saying).

Anyway, an outline of my jumbled thoughts:



When Gordon Brown leaves PMQs and is driven the short distance from Westminster back to Downing Street does he notice the statue of George Canning, on the corner of Whitehall? Canning was our shortest-serving Prime Minister, in office for only a few months. Canning’s statue should be a reminder to all Prime Ministers that they only have so much time to make their mark before, in one way or another, power is taken away from their hands.

Gordon Brown is a sincere, and so far as I can tell, good man (he supposedly shouts at colleagues, but perhaps they need shouting at). He is a serious thinker and writer. Above all, he is not Tony Blair (this asset cannot be over-estimated).

And yet, despite holding so many advantages, Gordon Brown is floundering. Nothing he does seems to capture the public imagination. Certainly nothing he does captures the public mood.

Which makes one ask: what is the public mood and how is it changing?



For the past two weeks The Jam Generation on Radio 4 has looked at the “new generation” of politicians - Nick Clegg, David Cameron and David Miliband. The programmes were interesting, but in linking the “80s generation” to The Jam (with their strand of sub-Clash agit-prop) I thought they were missing the point. The 1980s were, above all, the decade of suburban romance - not just “New Romantic” in the music sense (although that provided musical expression) but romantic in the serious (one could almost say German) sense of cultural romanticism.

In a romantic culture “feelings” become more important than “thoughts”.

Culturally are we in for another decade of romanticism (can we even see a presage of this in the contest of the “feeling” Obama against the “thinking” Hilary Clinton)?

Like Bhodi and Special Agent Utah standing on a wind-swept beach in the film Point Break (which was distributed in 1991, but is quintessentially an 80s film) one can sense the rising swell of “romance” that is going to rush towards the shore and drench everyone (possibly even wash people away). For if romanticism returns, everything (fashion, music, politics, architecture, advertising, “the way we live now” etc) will change. The rationality of today’s cultural leaders will have to give way to the emotion of new contenders (or alternatively the old leaders will have to learn more emotive ways of styling and expressing themselves).

And how should the PR trade in general, and the agency in particular, respond to this new cultural trend… (this is where I will have to work up some ideas).



Kim Blacha, who is an 80s enthusiast, lent me this book. I find it fascinating - in dozens of seemingly trivial anecdotes wider truths are revealed. Orwell wrote about the suburbs “sleeping the deep deep sleep of England” and how it is important to understand when suburban “culture” is going to assert itself.



Michael Bracewell’s The Conclave is the best novel about the 1980s I have read (I didn’t really understand the 80s until I read The Conclave, just as I never really understood the middle ages until I read Robert Fossier). The Conclave defines a certain kind of English life in the 1980s just as Bright Lights Big City defines the American 80s experience (and reflects the decade in the same way that The Great Gatsby delineated the 1920s). It is also wonderfully written (from a stylistic point of view) and deserves to be better known.

More on romanticism: http://www.philosopher.org.uk/rom.htm

What will happen next?

I don’t often talk about other blogs, mainly because it would be too easy - I want the content of this site to be as original as possible.

But to break my self-imposed rule, I am now going to mention a Chinese photoblog I have “discovered”.

I like photoblogs as they allow you to see directly into other societies. At one time I was trying to collect a photoblog from every country in the world, but I had to give this up because so many blogs stop after a few months. No doubt as soon as I mention that Ou Ning’s site is worth looking at it will disappear into the ether.

Anyway, the address is:

http://www.alternativearchive.com/ouning/

Recent photos include:

Three people sit at a table on a concrete balcony. In the background, across a wide river, is a city of pastel-grey towers. Their plates are empty, and they seem to be sitting very still in the cold air.

An audience (actually a sprinkling of people) pay attention to a trio of experts. How many times have I sat in just such an audience. The opalescent light seems about to break through the windows and flood the room.

A standing figure looks over the shoulder of someone in an architectural practice. A very dark grey colour (clothes, computers, shelving etc) alternates with the off-white of the walls, rolled drawings, papers. The faces shine with reflected light from the on-screen designs.

But my favourite (so far) is:

http://www.alternativearchive.com/ouning/uploads/200802/13_172709_.jpg

Who are these people sitting on orange chairs, in what appears to be a college of some kind? And why is the central figure so confident and happy? And what will happen next?

Become more than just a “consumer”

Yesterday (Sunday) I watched the Politics Show on BBC1. Nothing unusual in this, as I usually watch the programme in the hour before Sunday lunch (which is, in rotation, either roast chicken, roast beef, roast pork or roast lamb). What was unusual is that I can remember most of what was said - normally the Sunday bottle of wine (invariably either Sancerre or Gigondas, with an additional Sauternes on bank holidays) reduces everything to a comfortable haze that drifts into a post-pudding sleep.

Anyway, as I have given up alcohol for a few weeks I paid attention to the Politics Show.

One of the features was about the way High Streets are becoming “cloned”, with chain stores pushing out family-owned stores and supermarkets sucking up every available customer. Someone suggested the excellent idea of taxing supermarkets to repair the damage they have done to High Streets (why is the government so afraid of tackling Tesco and Asda?). A journalist from The Times (Satnam Sanghera) put forward a pathetic counter-argument that small shops rip people off and provide a poor service (this has not been my experience - it makes you wonder where Satnam Sanghera has been doing his shopping).

You might think you are trapped into using the big four supermarkets and that it’s not practical to use smaller shops. But if you just do a little of your weekly shop in a family-owned store you will soon see why these shops can become addictive. You will meet new people, see new things, and become more than just a “consumer”.

Here are some of my favourite family-owned shops:



This is, without any question of doubt, the best fish and chip shop in the world (and I have done very extensive research into this subject). It’s on a corner of the cobbled market square. There is always a long queue at night stretching out the door and back along the side lane.



Ron Short, Gents Hairdresser. He has put in his window the things that interest him as a person (the Royal Air Force and Tottenham Hotspur FC, along with a few hairdressing products he thinks you should know about). The display makes no sense from a marketing point of view - except that it is sincere and genuine and so represents the best possible marketing you can do.



Mellors are both farmers and butchers, so no faceless retail chain insisting on industrial economies of scale (took these photos on a Sunday, so everywhere was shut - which was also nice as 24-hour retailing is slowing destroying “the weekend”).



Perkins stationers. As well as fountain pens and inks, they have Ordnance Survey maps, newspapers, and a huge selection of confectionary. You can even buy a signed print of David Essex riding a motorbike.



I can never resist a bookshop, especially one where the stock reflects some of the owner’s interests (when I choose books I always think: what do I want to put in my mind next...).



You can tell this shop is run by an enthusiast. If he doesn’t have what you want you can be sure he will get it for you. And lots of expert advice thrown in free of charge.



This is where Satnam Sanghera may have a point. This cycle shop is possibly on the way out. But even though I don’t need anything I might go into shops like this just to see (there is always something interesting if you look hard enough and even the most humble people have a story to tell).



And in case you are thinking family-owned shops are only found in small country towns, here is an example from the heart of London, just round the corner from my office (and it has a variation on the usual “& Son”).

A quaint old ceremony

About a year ago I posted an item on the old county custom of marking the death of a virgin by hanging a paper crown up in the village church (http://afroml.blogspot.com/2007/04/clothed-in-white-samite.html). I thought at the time that none of these crowns had survived (there are some in Dorset, where the custom is apparently still carried out). Now I can report (report? reveal? bore everybody?) that I have found a local example.



The village is in the north of the county, away from the main road (you go through quite a maze of lanes to get to it). I was an hour early for an appointment at a nearby town, and so I was drifting around filling in town. I came round a bend and saw this church and something about the building made me want to see inside (the tower is a very rare Anglo-Saxon survival).

As usual the church was locked and there was no notice about where the key might be. I walked around the village but no-one was about (it was a sunny day but very cold). Eventually I saw an elderly woman parking her car and asked if she knew who might have the key. She directed me to a farmhouse on the edge of the village. At the farmhouse I was redirected to another house (“But I don’t know if you’ll find them in, they were going out today”). At this second house a very cheerful woman, just about to go out, came to the door and obligingly let me have the key, which was about a foot long (“But there’s not much of interest in the church”).



Not much of interest! As well as the Saxon tower there was a Norman zigzag arch over the west door, and when I stepped down into the building (the cold sunlight following me into the dark interior) I immediately saw this glass case containing one of the mythical (for I had begun to doubt their existence) Virgin’s Crowns.

You will probably need to click on the image to see all the details. It was much larger than I anticipated - about thirty inches in diameter. The crown was decorated with paper flowers.



A notice, hand-written in 1893, recorded that the crown belonged to Mary Hill, a fourteen-year-old girl, who was helping to ring the church bells in 1814 when her arm became entangled in the bell rope and she was carried up to the roof (a distance of about sixty feet), fell down and was killed when she hit the stone floor. At her funeral three maidens dressed in white carried three paper crowns in her honour, and these were later hung up in the church (only this one remains). The notice also records a local song composed in honour of a young woman who died on the day she got married (and presumably before the marriage was consummated).



As well as the original crown in the glass case a replica had been made and hung up in the chancel. Gilbert White records a similar custom taking place at Selbourne. These customs were designed to help people in the village to come to terms with grief and loss (which must be especially acute in the loss of a young child).



The entrance to the tower was half-open and so I could see into the space where the poor girl died. I could see the stone floor and the bell-ropes hanging down (although I don’t suppose that these ones date back to 1814). This was the moment when anthropological enquiry turned, with an unexpected sharp pang of empathy, to a real sense of sadness. We know nothing about Mary Hill except that she died a tragic death and was mourned by her family and neighbours in a quaint old ceremony. And yet out of all the hundreds of thousands of village girls who have lived and died in the county, her name has come down to us through the survival of her paper crown. When Larkin wrote “all that remains of us is love” possibly he had this sort of thing in mind.



There was something about the shape and design of Mary Hill’s paper crown that seemed familiar. And later I thought of this stone crown that marks the entrance to Crown Farm in the south of the county. Just coincidence?



And also thinking laterally, my mind went back to an open day last autumn at a small village in the central hills of the county. The entrance to the little church was decorated with sunflowers (which symbolise loyalty as they follow the path of the sun across the sky). A handful of elderly ladies (old maids?) made me very welcome.



Inside the church was this enigmatic recreation of a maiden’s crown of flowers (worn on the day she would get married). Notice also the veil which is formed out of lace showing butterflies caught in a web (a symbol used by Paul Scott in Jewel In The Crown). Mary Hill's white paper virgin’s crown was meant to symbolise the floral crown she would have worn on her wedding day.



In the video that accompanied the 1980s version of Spirit In The Sky were these two weird figures wearing floral crowns. Dressed in white and with long hair down to their knees they flounce around in a psychodelic 1980s interpretation of the 1960s. Who created this image and where did they get the idea from?



In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (beautifully recreated in Roman Polanski’s Tess) Tess Derbyfield goes to see her “cousin” Alec Stokes who puts a crown of flowers round her head. This is one of the most effective scenes in Polanski’s film. Unfortunately it has been ruined for me by Tim Brooke-Taylor’s recreation of it on I’m Sorry I Havn’t A Clue.



Etonians wear floral garlands during their Fourth Of June celebrations. The boys are wearing 19th century naval uniform. This picture appeared on the front page of The Guardian.

Folk song that might be associated with all this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqInvZ9hY9Y

Spirit In The Sky (1980s version) on MySpace: http://vidsearch.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=6678905

PS this is the 1000th post on this site.

Four o’clock arrived, and Adrian still hadn’t come back - the past week at work

Monday

Almost as soon as I got in the office this morning I was called into a Production Meeting. To say this was sprung on me is an understatement - I had no pre-notification that a meeting was being held. The request for my presence also puzzled me since I have never been involved in production meetings before.

Instead of holding the meeting in the conference room on our floor we went upstairs to the main agency boardroom. I was the last to arrive, thinking it would just be a small huddle of people (Alan, TonyW and one of two others). So I was surprised to see Ian (our boss) in the chair, with Alan (director), Tony W (production “manager”), Tony B and Paul from the Studio, plus representatives from the main suppliers we use, including Jason from Camel Print.

It soon became clear why the meeting was being held. Kate and myself had been by-passing Tony W and placing work directly with suppliers. The suppliers were now being told, officially, that all work had to be routed through Tony W and they must not accept orders from anyone else in the agency. It is possibly a mark of Ian’s weakness that he had to assemble this big meeting to say, obliquely, what he could have told us directly himself. And he had chosen a day when Kate was still on holiday (since she is quite capable of turning an argument round and getting what she wants). So Tony W has got what he wanted - complete control of production.

After the meeting I went to BQW, my main client, arriving a little late since the meeting had pushed my schedule back. I had some proofs with me. Mike M (in charge of the BQW move) began changing things on the proofs, then changing them back again, then scrubbing out what he had first written so that the proofs became a mess and I had an almost impossible job later working out what he really meant.

In the afternoon Kate came back from holiday. She was only dropping in to collect her car, but her car wasn’t available (Angela had given the keys to Adrian who works in our tiny TV department - possibly Angela had done this deliberately since she doesn’t get on with Kate). While we waited for Adrian to come back Kate and I went into the conference room to talk (not about anything special, we just talked generally).

Four o’clock arrived, and Adrian still hadn’t come back, and wasn’t answering his mobile. Kate went over to Angela and demanded to know where her car was. Obviously Angela couldn’t tell her, so Kate insisted that a car was hired for her to get home - and Angela meekly hired one.

Tuesday

Some anxiety about a company magazine that I am producing for one of my clients - it is behind schedule and held up in production. I went to remonstrate with Tony W and found him excessively solicitous and helpful (trying to be magnanimous in victory?). He even suggested placing the job with Camel Print and later called in Jason to brief him on the job, making him a coffee and asking how he was (Jason was so unused to this friendly version of Tony W that he went red).

In the afternoon freelance Joey came in to be briefed on a job (he is not a supplier covered by Tony W). All the time we were in the meeting he talked, his leg over the arm of his chair, his left hand emphasising points. He described how his car had broken down in the middle of nowhere, and his mobile had been flat, so he had to seek help from a pig farm. He also talked about how he had first got into design (“I was always drawing things as a kid, especially Star Wars”). He asked about designer Paul and PR Executive Rachel, a coupling I had not previously been aware of (“I see them around at various nightspots”). His mother rang him on his mobile while we were in the meeting and I could hear her talking to him as if he were still a child.

Wednesday

A meeting with STP, my most difficult client. They are incredibly unpleasant and sarcastic (“Yes, I remember you got that wrong before…”). Relations with them are not helped by the fact that everything the agency does for them goes wrong (not my fault, but being the Account Executive I am the one they blame).

Later I had a meeting with Paul (graphics designer in our studio) but he wasn’t really motivated to do any work. I was tempted to ask him about Rachel (works in the PR section upstairs) but thought better of it. He asked me what I thought everyone in the agency earns (money and its lack is one of Paul’s recurring themes).

Thursday

A really tiring day, almost completely spent in Watford on preparations for the BQW move. A presentation was held at a hotel for about thirty senior managers on how the move is going to happen (there have been loads of these meetings - they just say the same thing all the time). I was there to support Mike M when he explained how the move will be publicised (it will need three separate campaigns - to customers, to staff and to shareholders).

As well as Mike M, Terry T, and Beryl, the publicity team included an American from the BQW office in Trenton. The only contribution the American made was to suggest that an aerial photograph was taken of the new site (a task delegated to me to sort out). The presentation went on for hours, and afterwards there was a tour of the new site (I took the American in Kate’s car, which I had borrowed for the day - I took a wrong turning and got lost on the way there and began to panic inwardly until I came out on a road I recognised).

Friday

I have been trying to reserve Fridays for working on PR assignments for the upstairs department. This is not very popular with Ian, but so far he hasn’t stopped me. Eventually I want to move upstairs completely, as I think there will be more opportunities up there.

So most of today I spent upstairs writing press releases. These are not particularly demanding, as the agency doesn’t really rely on press releases to get publicity - the Account Executives usually liase directly with an editor, offering them exclusives. The press releases are mainly written for the client to see something is happening (they expect a press release as part of the process).

While I was upstairs Terry (the agency’s MD) was talking about Ed Balls, describing him as “One of the hard-faced men who have done well out of the war. The Iraq war that is. Along with James Purnell and the Milibands”.

You go in wanting to get one

Foyles in Charing Cross Road. Famously untidy (although they have got better recently). My sister had her first job here.

You go in wanting to get one book and come out with six: Microtrends by Mark Penn and E Kinney Zalesne, Left Field by Graeme Le Saux, Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, Guilty by Anna Kavan, The Dig by John Preston, Why Beauty is Truth by Ian Stewart.

There is more going on than meets the eye

Jungian synchronicity is a concept I keep returning to. Not that I understand it completely. I understand just enough to worry about the fact that I don’t understand it.

Because there are enough things happening in the world that suggest there is more going on than meets the eye.

An example:

Tennyson’s Locksley Hall is one of my favourite poems. I learned it by heart for my English Literature A-level (even then Tennyson was derided and unfashionable). I was attracted to the idea of being able to go back to the places of your past and find them still as they were (even now I dream of my grandparents’ home in Norfolk that I last saw when I was fourteen).

Therefore it was not unusual for lines from Locksley Hall to come “unbidden” into my mind when I am driving along a lane I have never been along before, on a moor, in a remote coastal district.

But what WAS unusual (and alarming) is for a house (a “Hall” in fact) to appear in front of me. And to be called Locksley Hall. And for me to feel I have seen it before.

Was the house named after the poem? Or did Tennyson base his poem on this actual house (he always said it was invented)? Was it just co-incidence that I should pass a real Locksley Hall at the time I am thinking of a fictional Locksley Hall?

Or did the house draw me to it? Or did my mind create the house out of nothing (and if so, was it real - and if it was not real how do I explain the photograph)? Or did the whole thing happen in one of the “parallel universes” we are asked to believe in? (and “believe” is the right word since it is apparent to me that science is more a religion than anything else).

The poem in full: http://www.bartleby.com/42/636.html
More on the poem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksley_Hall
More on synchronicity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
More on multiple parallel universes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/paralleluni.shtml

He warrants better reporting

On the Daily Politics programme yesterday Andrew Neil said that David Cameron was about to make a major speech. I looked for reports of the speech on news bulletins later in the day, but nothing (eventually I saw a small report on page 9 of today’s Guardian). If David Cameron is the British Obama (and there are serious grounds, in terms of image and expectation, for thinking he is) then surely he warrants better reporting than this?

At lunchtime I watched Prime Minister’s Questions (it’s part of the Andrew Neil show which starts at 11.30 on Wednesdays).

I was impressed this week by David Cameron, who raised the issue of MP’s expenses and allowances. This has been such a verboten subject in the House of Commons (in public) that I was amazed that he should get up and ask the Prime Minister face to face about it (effectively putting Gordon Brown on the spot - the Prime Minster’s response was lacklustre: “We voted to refer it to a committee”). The Labour backbenches jeered much more than they usually jeer, although I am not sure why (possibly they wanted the conspiracy of silence to continue).

Considering that Derek Conway was (at the time) a Tory MP and that the old Tory Sleaze accusations could have blown up again, David Cameron has handled the issue in an expert and competent way. Not only has he cut Derek Conway off completely, he has made the Conservatives synonymous with “best practice” on the issue of transparency and disclosure. And today he turned the issue onto the Labour government so that it looked as if they were the ones who were dragging their feet / refusing to show leadership.

Russell Brand

I am very pushed for time at the moment, so in lieu of a proper post here is a photograph (taken with my mobile from a television broadcast of his stand-up routine) of the odious Russell Brand.

Russell Brand is a media personality, television presenter and newspaper columnist. On a cultural level he is very influential, particularly with teenagers who are trying to delineate their difference by approving of things / ideas / people that would shock their families, teachers etc (a tough job since no-one is shocked by anything these days). In doing this he is following in the tradition of the Sex Pistols in the 1970s (first to use the f-word on television) or long-forgotten Sigue Sigue Sputnik in the 1980s or Marilyn Manson more recently.

Russell Brand never says anything interesting, but he has hundreds of opinions, all of them studiedly “outrageous”. Being “outrageous” is the main thing he does. He will carry on being “outrageous” until someone even more outrageous comes along at which point he will look tame.

In visual style he resembles a caricature by Aubrey Beardsley (one of the obscene ones). His act combines camp mannerisms with an aggressive and intimidating delivery (I think I dislike him because he comes across as shouting bully). He is most admired by the sort of characterless characters you find in the novels of Brett Easton Ellis.

Or perhaps I am just getting old and can’t judge these things anymore?

“The poor’s money”

On Andrew Marr’s Start The Week this morning (BBC Radio 4) Joseph Stiglitz talked about his new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (I ought to explain - I am allowed to listen to the radio at work). Three Trillion dollars is an unimaginable sum of money. Joseph Stiglitz said that the United Kingdom would have spent a similar sum of money in proportion to our size (via a vis the United States).

Just how much money has Tony Blair’s vanity-war cost us? (as I see it, Britain’s participation in the Iraq conflict was all about Tony Blair’s vanity and his attempt to portray himself as a global statesman).

Unless you are a Keynesian and believe in Keynesian big government expenditure (as Michael Portillo seemed to be endorsing on the Andrew Marr show, saying the Iraq expenditure would “just go through to society”) then the war will have to be paid for either through cuts in social expenditure, or higher taxation (in its widest sense), or greater inflation (and both America and Great Britain seems to have gone for a stealthy inflation option).



At the same time as rising inflation we have a credit “crunch” which in the United Kingdom has led to the nationalisation of a High Street bank (in itself not a disaster - the state used to run the TSB quite competently and denationalised it at a comfortable profit to the Exchequer).

The nationalisation of the Northern Rock Bank has been very controversial and damaged the government’s reputation for economic competence (on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics show today they reported a poll which said 50% thought the Northern Rock crisis hadn’t been handled well).



You might need to clique on the image to read it properly.

The above plaque (dated 1868) demonstrates the principle of sound economics. Money was collected and invested (in this case in India Stock) and the interest was paid out in a village “dole” to the needy (and when they talk about money they meant solid gold coins not printed banknotes!). Everyone knew “the poor’s money” was ring-fenced because it said so on this plaque carved in marble and alabaster and put up in public (so no thieving State could raid it and spend it on illegal wars, grandiose follies and excessive expenses for themselves).

To her credit Hilary Clinton proposes a similar scheme (on a larger scale) to provide a health service for America’s least well-off.



This may be an ignoble suggestion, but one way Gordon Brown could restore popularity for his government would be if he arrested Tony Blair and put him on trial. There would be huge popular enthusiasm for this, similar to the Hang the Kaiser campaign after the First World War. I accept that it may not be possible to actually hang Tony Blair, but they could rough him up a little.

I saw the above packet of Gloxinia Kaiser Wilhelm and I couldn’t resist buying it. It represents a piece of marketing history. Although the plant is very beautiful, and fairly easy to grow, the name “Kaiser Wilhelm” damned it in the eyes of gardeners throughout the world for several generations, and only now is it coming back into the shops (has the New Labour brand been equally damned through association with another war mongerer?).

More on Start The Week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek.shtml

“angels in the architecture”

A drive to the south of the county to look at an angel roof.



Please excuse the murky image - there wasn’t much light in the church. The tremendous hammerbeam roof (fifteenth century) carries a host of medieval angels - each one is life-size. You will need to click on the photo to get the full impact.

Looking up at the roof I thought of Paul Simon’s “angels in the architecture” and all the rest of the day You Can Call Me Al was going through my mind.



On the walls were guides to the angels of the roof, which were analysed by a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities in the 1940s. The Golden Legend, which circulated throughout the medieval period, gave a definitive classification of the Celestial Hierarchy. Basically there were (are?) nine orders of angels in the medieval vision of heaven, and these were organised into three sets of three.

The highest rank is made up of Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. They surround the throne of God and so are carved with their hands held high (in ecstatic adoration). Seraphim are shown with six wings, Cherubim with four wings, and Thrones hold crowns.

Next come Dominations, Virtues and Powers. Their job is to govern mankind as a whole. Dominations hold books (symbolising the knowledge of God), Virtues hold bottles (symbolising the vial of God’s Wrath which will be poured out on the world at the End of Days), and Powers hold harps.

Finally there are Principalities, Archangels and Angels who are directly concerned with particular places, communities and even individuals. These angels wear plate armour (ie St Michael) and Principalities are shown crowned and holding sceptres (except for Gabriel who holds a herald’s wand). Ordinary Angels wear scarves (a medieval sign of dignity), and as their duties include performing the everlasting song of praise they are shown carrying scrolls with the words of the Te Deum, as well as harps, pipes and handbells.



Also in the church was this 18th century gravestone to Arthur King (note the stars and stripes in the coat of arms). Dan Brown would probably make up a story about this being the real resting place of King Arthur. What Dan Brown doesn’t realise is that the truth is often far stranger than he can imagine.

More about Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al: http://www.lyricinterpretations.com/lookat.php/bands/paulsimon/3375c763c2a52ff