A few snapshots of the Christmas period

Over the weeks of my illness I look back to the last proper entry I made, and wonder whether so much time has elapsed that this blog is no longer viable. The readership may have wandered away, the momentum (never very strong) of regular entries may have lapsed, the sense of purpose I once had may be impossible to regain.

What concerns me most are the wads of notes I made during my illness that need typing up and posting with photographs. Many times I have considered junking them and starting again. Many times I have also considered giving up and closing this site down.

But, more for my own record than anything else, here are a few snapshots of the Christmas period:



(Above): artificial Christmas trees in the windows of Saatchi and Saatchi.

Metropolitan presentiment

The weather was unseasonably mild, almost warm, for December. At seven o’clock in the evening I walked along Charlotte Street past the artificial Christmas trees in the windows of Saatchi and Saatchi (was this some kind of 1970s revival, I wondered?). The north end of Charlotte Street seemed full of people just leaving the office for the day (emerging from corporate front doors and walking purposefully towards Goodge Street tube station). As I walked southwards the character changed, and the street became livelier. I passed several pubs and bars filled to bursting and generating noise. Eventually I arrived at Pied-a-terre.



(Above): Pied-a-terre in Charlotte Street.

Pied-a-terre is one of the best restaurants in Fitzrovia, and has one Michelin star. It is one of the smallest restaurants I have been to (roughly the size of a small shop). You go up a couple of steps, through a sort of reception area and then into the restaurant itself – tables covered in white linen, walls of black glass, ostentatious table lights that looked as if they were made entirely of crystal.



(Above): ostentatious table lights that looked as if they were made entirely of crystal.

Gary Spencer and Jason Kramer had already arrived and were at a table in the far corner. My seat was actually in the corner itself, so that I felt a bit squashed (literally squashed up against the wall). Gary and Jason had ordered some champagne (£78 a bottle).

All the tables in the restaurant were full, but we didn’t have to wait to get served. The staff (French, all dressed in black) were very efficient, but not intrusive. Although we were hemmed in by other tables it was quite private in our corner.

I had roast Mallard duck with choucroute and a ragout with mushrooms and quails eggs, followed by roast venison with a quince sauce, mashed potato, bacon, cabbage and walnuts, followed by a large muille fuille slice. In between courses we were brought little extras such as an apple sorbet, and various other savoury tasters (most of them I didn’t care for). Apart from the champagne we had Pouilly Fuisse with the main course, and coffee at the end.

It was a very good-natured meal even though we mostly talked about difficult subjects - economics, politics, business. Our views coincided so that there were none of the usual arguments when these emotive subjects are raised. At one stage we discussed possible business ventures. Jason suggested founding a restaurant in one of the villages just outside Cambridge. Called “Proust” the restaurant would be decorated in a belle epoch style and only serve the meals mentioned in A la recherche du temps perdu (as the book is packed with descriptions of elaborate meals, there would be plenty of options for the menu). Possible sources of funding were suggested.

We also discussed plans for a journey across Europe in 2008, taking in Paris, Munich, Zurich and Vienna.

Very late we finished our meal. After saying goodbye to Jason Kramer, Gary Spencer and I decided to walk back to the terminus instead of getting a taxi. The onset of the Christmas holiday was imminent, and I voiced my concerns about the arrival of Robert Leiper and the difficulty of keeping him entertained and occupied during Christmas week (he was coming over from New York and staying at my house over Christmas before going on to Paris and Berlin).

PS thanks to everyone who has commented and e-mailed and sorry about not responding - I havn't even had the energy to log on.

Apologies for not updating - there was the Christmas holiday and now I have a terrible 'flu sort of illness.

The Wall Of Heaven Where The Bad (But Not Very Bad) Are In Temporary Discomfort

Above: Tondal views The Wall Of Heaven Where The Bad (But Not Very Bad) Are In Temporary Discomfort

Freezing fog the last few days, which makes driving to work in the mornings very slow. One of the compensations of being late this morning was that I was able to listen to some of Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time on Radio 4 (it starts at 9 o’clock when I would normally be at my desk). It is one of the most erudite and intelligent programmes on broadcast media.

This morning the panel of experts looked at the idea of Hell in European culture, from the earliest Egyptian influences to the Greek shadowlands and into the medieval Christian imagination (at that point I arrived at the office and had to switch off). They talked of Dante’s Inferno (from the Divine Comedy) and how Dante was guided by the poet Virgil through the different levels of Hell. This reminded me of when I worked at the J.Paul Getty Museum in Malibu (I was a sort of intern in their Public Affairs office). One of the treasures of the Museum is an illuminated medieval manuscript called the Dream of Tondal.

In this 1470 French manuscript (based on a much older tradition that predates Dante) the young off-the-rails knight Tondal is guided through Hell by an angel, as a warning of what will happen to him if he doesn’t give up his selfish licentious lifestyle. The twenty illuminated images fascinated me and I used to look at them every day (because I was working there I had access to the curatorial departments and could see things close up, even handle them – wearing special gloves).

One image in particular so impressed me that I had a print made of the Museum slide (and have now scanned it in to post on this site – so this image is several generations removed from the vibrant original – copyright held by the J. Paul Getty Trust). It shows the naked knight Tondal being shown The Wall Of Heaven Where The Bad (But Not Very Bad) Are In Temporary Discomfort. Looking back I think I liked it because of its Monty-Python-And-The-Holy-Grail absurdity.

I have a recurring dream (about once a year) that I am in one of those niches on the outside wall of Heaven, detained as one of the Bad (But Not Very Bad). In the dream I am quite comfortable but have to be careful not to move since there is a terrifying drop below me. I suppose there could be worse fates.

He is just being cruel

The Guardian yesterday reported that Work and Pensions Minister John Hutton is proposing that long-term unemployed people should have their benefit stopped unless they get a job. John Hutton complains that immigrants have no problem getting jobs therefore the long-term unemployed should be able to do the same. He is reported as saying: “If workers from Poland can take advantage of these vacancies in our major cities, why can’t our own people do the same?”

This is an entirely bogus and disreputable comparison to make.

The immigrants who come here are almost always the best people overseas countries can offer – the most enterprising and ambitious. Highly motivated and determined to succeed. Prepared to do whatever it takes to establish themselves, even if it means taking dirty jobs and working long hours.

The indigenous long-term unemployed on the other hand are often late-middle-aged, depressed, de-motivated, usually poorly educated. They have been harassed and humiliated by Job Centre staff, who keep giving them ridiculous hoops to jump through. Often they are just tired of life and don’t see any point to modern consumerist society.

Increasingly we are living in a dog-eat-dog world, and to expect the demoralised long-term unemployed to compete with the enterprising post-war immigrants who have come here is like putting an elderly slow-moving spaniel in the same room as a starving rottweiler.

John Hutton is a cruel idiot to even suggest this proposal.

Except that he isn’t an idiot.

Which means he is just being cruel.

We need to accept that a proportion of the population (perhaps twenty per cent) isn’t going to be highly-motivated and eager to make a success of their lives. They could be anxious worriers, scared of making decisions, have poor social skills, slow learners, perhaps drink a little too much, perhaps just not see the point of “modern” society. They may be literally worthless as economic units, but as a tax-payer (and I pay a relatively high level of tax) I want these people looked after and treated with a reasonable level of respect.

The effect will be to make government services more remote and faceless

There is widespread anger at the government’s proposals to close thousands of post offices. Inevitably the majority of these will be in rural villages. The move is seen as yet another example of the cynical way in which the government is trying to strip resources (police services, Accident and Emergency services, postal services) from rural communities to concentrate them in inner city areas where the core of New Labour’s supporters reside.

The effect will be to make government services more remote and faceless, particularly for elderly people who are unable to travel into the towns.

Mrs Warner did the above floral tribute to the rural postal service using Mrs Welham’s old Royal Mail bike (it’s painted in Royal Mail scarlet and you can see the Royal Mail logo). The display is part of a drive to make the church flowers more relevant to issues in the news. It is unlikely that the government will take any notice of such mild protests (to paraphrase Stalin: How many armoured divisions does the Mothers’ Union have?).



Above: The red letter box was first introduced by Anthony Trollope and went through several design incarnations before becoming standard throughout the country. In tacky London souvenir shops the red letter box is seen as one of the iconic images of the city along with red telephone boxes (designed by Edwin Lutyens) and the clock tower (“Big Ben”) of the Houses of Parliament (designed by Sir Charles Barry). Obviously the models in the picture are of different scales.

Images of scythes

Today I have been thinking about how images of scythes are used in Western culture.

In the summer I had a day’s holiday and got up quite late (10 am). I went round the house opening the curtains, and from one upstairs window saw a small white van parked on our land near the house. I went out to see who it was, and found emerging from a deep ditch a council worker carrying a scythe on his shoulder. He looked like a character from a film by Serge Eisenstein (one of those montages from October where the land workers unite with the industrial workers to storm the Winter Palace). I asked him what he was doing and he said he was part of a council team keeping the drainage ditches clear. Apologies for the lopsided photo.




Above: Sickles and scythes hung up on the exterior wall of a stone barn. The hammer and sickle was adopted as the official emblem of the Soviet Union in 1922, and later became recognised as a communist symbol around the world. The hammer and sickle is meant to symbolise the unity of the peasants and workers (a statue of sickle-weilding workers from a collective farm adorned Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition.








Above: stone carving in a dark corner of a cathedral. Azreal, one of the four Archangels, is traditionally known as the angel of death (the grim reaper) and is supposed to be the angel of the Lord who took the firstborn children in the tenth plague of Egypt. Azreal works continually at a great book, listing all the living on the Earth (entering their names at birth and erasing them at death).

Feature in yesterday's Guardian

You may need to click on the image and then click again (when a square ikon appears in the lower right hand corner) to enlarge it so that you can read it. It's a feature in yesterday's Guardian. I'm posting it here as it is tidier than trying to keep the original cutting.

They have a micro-culture that goes back in an unbroken stream

Church bell, 16th century, at a village in the west of the county (under the internal cliff). The bell was taken down when the bell loft in the tower became unsafe (there are still five bells remaining in the belfry which are rung every Friday evening and Sunday morning). As well as calling the villagers to church services, in medieval times a single bell was rung to announce the angelus (three times a day) and the curfew.

Bells would also solemnly toll to announce the death of anyone in the village – “nine tailors” (tollers) for the death of a man, six for a woman. Dorothy L Sayers titled one of her most famous detective stories “The Nine Tailors”. The expression Nine Tailors also crops up in a limerick, recorded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. There was a widespread belief in the county that the sound of bells could cleanse the air of evil (associated with the miasmic theory of disease). Petitions were made in the 17th century for the church bells to be rung to allay popular concerns (fear of plague, fear of witches, fear of “foreigners” sighted in the district). Betjeman wrote: “The sound of English bells is the music of Heaven itself”.

There is a fraternity among the bell ringers of the county that goes beyond their normal village territories. As a distinct community they have a micro-culture that goes back in an unbroken stream several centuries. And yet so precarious has the rural way of life become that it could all vanish tomorrow (yes, I know I am exaggerating).



Above: The bell ropes, tied up high to prevent any miscreants (particularly children) ringing the bells without authority.



Above: The complicated “changes” are chalked up on a board for the bell-ringers to memorise.



Above: The bell-ringers form a tightly-knit community. They have their own rituals and hierarchies. Their achievements are recorded in plaques put up under the tower.

Act of votive placation

There is concern about the fate of the English cricket team facing the ruthlessly professional antipodeans (with the ironic implication that ruthless professionalism is not really “cricket”). There is anxiety that the Ashes might not be retained. Mrs Warner (who is doing the flowers for this Sunday) has included a cricket themed shrine as one of her famous window ledge displays (why has she done this? - is it an act of votive placation to the sporting muse?).

The church flower rota is an intensely political affair with factions, uneasy truces and unwritten rules-which-must-not-be-transgressed. The Rector refuses to get involved in it. You would have to be very brave (or extremely foolish) to criticise the flowers on your way out after Morning Service (previous complaints: the smell of tuberoses brings on someone’s hay fever, the big display on the chancel step obscures someone’s view from the north aisle, even one extremist who told the Rector that flowers in the church contravened the commandment about graven images).

Russian dissident murdered in London

Above: Russian doll in the window of a champagne shop in the West End.

It’s interesting to follow the story of the Russian dissident murdered in London through Polonium poisoning. It’s like a short story by Somerset Maugham (one of his 1928 Ashendon series or Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent). My brother collects videos of spy stories – as well as being inordinately interested in James Bond (we plan to go and see Casino Royale as soon as the cinemas become less crowded) he has an old video of John Le Carre’s Smiley’s People which he watches regularly, as well as (my favourite) The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Richard Burton in a very seedy black and white view of 1950s inner London where tinned peaches represented the height of sybaritic luxury).

Matryoshka dolls date from the 1890s and have become a cliché of the Russian image as seen from the West (one enigma contained within another).

The Russian agents must be feeling very confident for them to murder someone so openly in the centre of London (unless they had the collusion of the British Government, which would not surprise me given how morally bankrupt the current administration has become).

Post Office Tower... from Old Compton Street

View of the Post Office Tower (I think it has a different name now, like BT Tower) from Old Compton Street. Architects of the tower were Bedford and Yeats working for the Ministry of Works. It was opened in 1966 by the then Postmaster General Anthony Wedgwood Benn (now Tony Benn).

It used to have a rotating restaurant on the 34th Floor called (unsurprisingly) Top of the Tower. In the 1967 film Smashing Time (a satire on 1960s swinging London) the rotation mechanism spins out of control (it looks funnier than it sounds) and blacks out the whole of London. In 1971 the IRA tried to blow up the tower and it was closed to the public.

The lack of access adds a sense of mystery to the building.

Working dogs

Display of working dogs at a village on the heath. The dogs are Jack Russell terriers, for a long time not recognised as a breed by the Kennel Club. Fearless and fast, the dogs are ideal for rural areas (especially good at hunting rats). They are also good guard dogs as they will bark at any unfamiliar noise. We used to have a Jack Russell dog called Patch. When he died we got another Jack Russell called Charlie – except that Charlie has grown tall, and has such a mild temperament that he is obviously not a pure bred terrier but a gentle old-fashioned mongrel.

The vast majority of social problems can be traced back to family breakdown

There was an interesting discussion about poverty on the Today Programme this morning. Talking it over with friends at lunchtime (including a solicitor who defends a lot of petty criminals) the vast majority of social problems can be traced back to family breakdown. Noting down some of the suggestions:

1 Divorce is too easy and encourages people to walk away from their responsibilities – amend the law so that if you have children under 18 you cannot have a divorce.

2 Where a marriage doesn’t exist the law should automatically create a basic civil partnership the moment a child is born, even if both biological parents cannot immediately be identified.

3 Abandoning children before they are 18 (by mothers or fathers) should be socially unacceptable, regarded as a form of child abuse, and carry financial penalties (on top of maintenance payments).

4 Grandparents should have access rights – this would increase the amount of scrutiny and family control over a child’s upbringing.

5 Soap operas have acquired an unreasonable influence over social groups D and E, and they need to be more responsible about the messages they are giving out (lazy writers create attractive characters and then have them drift from one improbable relationship to another – critics need to be a lot harder on these writers).

6 Make the existing laws work.

On a subliminal level

The television advertisement for PC World currently running has to be one of the most wooden and clunky commercials ever aired. It comprises sequences of “customers” talking to “sales assistants” (all played by actors) with pedestrian dialogue that resembles a government information film. The ad ends with a gigantic masonic handshake filling the screen (are they unaware of the cultural implications of this image? Is no-one advising them?).

Previously PC World ran TV commercials that featured a lead “face” (an alpha male sales manager) stamping on the showroom floor, the force of his stamping supposedly forcing the floor lower. The message of the ad is that PC World is stamping down prices. Every time I saw the ad I was reminded of George Orwell writing in 1984: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”.

This image has entered western culture, and not just the obvious German goose-stepping example (transmogrified into marching hammers in the Pink Floyd animation accompanying Another Brick In The Wall). You can see the motif in rock music, vacuous Jessica Simpson videos, even a logo for Dover Council’s unit for suppressing anti-social behaviour (on a subliminal level I find the use of this logo by Dover Council disturbing and seemingly a vindication of Orwell’s vision. Anti-social elements could be non-conformists and dissidents just as much as delinquents and vandals. And in any case I would prefer a “hug a hoodie” policy to Orwellian-style stamping on people – but then I live in a rural area where crime is extremely low, and I might have a different view if I lived on a south London sink estate).

Bookshop in Great Russell Street

Antiquarian bookshop in Great Russell Street – there has been a bookshop in this builidng for over a hundred years. Formerly the home of book illustrator Randolph Caldecott. Good for rare editions of Dickens.

The film Marie-Antoinette

I went to see the film Marie-Antoinette at the weekend. Directed by Sofia Coppola, it starred Kirsten Dunst as the ill-fated young queen. Rather than being a sequential biography (which could have been a bit boring given the Thomas Paine “rights of man” moralising which usually accompanies any examination of this period), the film was comprised of a series of set-pieces that cleverly resembled the theatrical tableaus of the 18th century.

The symbolism of the film had several ironic layers of meaning so that you could read the story in different ways. For instance the Queen of France seemed to be constantly eating elaborate cakes. Versailles in the early morning light had a haunted quality that paralleled the later (20th century) sightings of a ghostly Marie-Antoinette returning to the scenes of her former excesses. The anachronistic soundtrack suggested that the entire movie was inspired by the career of the Princess of Wales in the late 1980s. It was a complex film that covered many issues and could be read through several interpretations. Not obviously commercial, but the sort of film that will acquire a considerable following through a “long tail”.

I went to see the film with Helen B and Kim Blacha. When we emerged from the cinema they seemed to be in a state of shock. “The clothes” they gasped to each other, “did you see the clothes!”

Feelings of nausea, horror and fascination

In the local newspaper was a report about the retirement of one of the paper’s senior reporters. In the article she thanked various people for their help over the years and recounted the various “top” stories she had been involved in over the years (as this is a very quiet part of the world none of them were particularly eye-catching – the local by-pass campaign, the occasional visit from minor royalty, late night fights among youths in the Market Square etc). However, one story did interest me.

Her first story as a trainee reporter was to follow up a report of a partially decomposed body uncovered on a local farm. She had gone out to the farm and arrived at the same time as the police, meeting the farmer who had uncovered the body when ploughing a field. The farmer was in a terrible state, distraught that such a tragic discovery should have been made on his land.

With feelings of nausea, horror and fascination, the trainee reporter accompanied the police as they walked though the muddy furrows to where the body was lying. The police prodded the body, and muttered to each other. The “body” turned out to be a gigantic mandrake root, rotten and stinking.

Mandrake roots are unusual in that they roughly approximate to the human form. Locally they can grow to a good size, although very seldom are they over five feet long. More on mandrakes at http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/specialcollections/images/ELIZ%20%20WEB/Gerarde,%20Mandrake.jpg

It was a local holocaust

Saturday (tomorrow) is Armistice Day and Sunday is Remembrance Day. In the Village Hall a scale model of the Cenotaph has been set up, with an exhibition of medals, photographs and letters. The plan on Sunday is for the service to begin at the War Memorial, then process to the church for the usual Morning Service, and then finish with coffee in the Village Hall.

There are three War Memorials in the village – a gothic pillar on the edge of the green, a marble monument to the fallen in the north aisle of the church, and a framed list (elaborate calligraphy including gold initial letters) of all who served. Looking at the list of casualties, there are about fifty names from the First World War (including many family groups), and five from the Second.

The many names from the 1914-18 conflict reflects the large numbers of manual labourers who for generations had worked on the surrounding farms (the young men finished the harvest before volunteering in early October 1914, many of them never returning). The First World War had a devastating effect on the village. It was a local holocaust.

Recently an American-style “Veterans Day” has been introduced on June 27th. This is supposed to be an additional opportunity to honour the armed forces. Cynics say that the government has introduced Veterans Day with the intention of dropping Remembrance Day at some point in the future (Remembrance Day has long been criticised as “anti-European” and not politically correct).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/remembrance/history/cenotaph.shtml

It was as if I had just seen the Pied Piper of Hamelin

My car was out of action and a work colleague had to drive me to the local train station so that I could get home by public transport. We left the office just as it was starting to get dark. We made good progress into the town centre and I was confident of catching the train.

However, within a quarter mile of the station we were stopped by police standing in the road. They made no attempt to search the car or ask us to get out or anything, they just walked up and down in the road, as if killing time. Traffic began to build up behind us.

The streets around us were completely deserted (it’s the sort of town were everywhere is closed by about five o’clock). It had been raining and the dying sun created a sheen on the wet road. Minutes passed and I began to wonder whether I would catch the train. Very faintly we heard the sound of flutes and drums. Gradually the noise became louder, then louder still. The police in front of us stood to attention – very slovenly.

From the pedestrianised street to our right came a pipe and drum band, comprised of youths in a sort of bottle green uniform and wearing berets. They were marching two abreast, and were followed by platoons of navy cadets, army cadets and then RAF cadets, all in uniform and carrying pennants. Immediately following were a group of elderly men in dark suits, and women in smart clothes. Then there was a small coterie of people in what looked like fancy dress – fur-trimmed robes, tricorn hats with ostrich feathers, golden chains of office. Because the cadet troops at the front were marching at quite a pace these dignitaries had to walk very fast to keep up – it looked as if they were power-walking. Following behind was a troop of Brownies, then Girl Guides, then Boy Scouts. At the end of the formal procession came a ragtag assortment of people in anoraks, laughing children, people wheeling bikes. I scrabbled in my folder and found my camera, just managing to take pictures of the dignitaries as they passed in front of the car. Apologies for the quality of these photos – they were walking very fast, and the light was fading.

“It’s the Mayor and Corporation” said my colleague. “I wonder where they’re off to. There’ll be a good dinner in it for them no doubt.”

After the procession had passed the police stood aside and waved us through. The scene had been very surreal. It was as if I had just seen the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Marks & Spencer announced a 35% increase in profits

Above: Directed by Paul Nelson, the M&S television commercials were beautifully shot in a variety of London locations. 1960s model Twiggy starred in the advertisements (obviously it's not Twiggy in the picture above - it's one of the other models in the ad). The soundtrack was by Bryan Ferry (who is also a “face” of M&S menswear).

Marks & Spencer announced a 35% increase in profits today, industry insiders crediting the rise to its autumn advertising campaign. M&S was notorious for decades as a major company that spurned all idea of media advertising. They thought that because they had developed a unique way of retailing they would always command customer loyalty.

This hubris nearly destroyed the company as imitators copied their sales formula and then added the power of media advertising to make their offering irresistible. On a personal level I suffered from the M&S blinkered approach as I used to work as a marketing manager for a company that supplied Marks & Spencer. Whenever I suggested an advertising campaign I was rebuffed (as if I was some poor simple fool) and told that Marks & Spencer was a sterling example that media advertising was just an expensive waste of money.