"I wish my Mum and Dad could have been here”

Saturday last week

Above: I went out onto the damp terrace and walked up and down in the fresh air.

I woke at 8 and sat on the edge of the bed watching BBC News 24 (the weather presenter in jeans and open-necked shirt, which seemed a bit too casual for the BBC). Then down to breakfast - fried breakfast including fried bread and black pudding, toast with jam and marmalade, several cups of tea (calling for a second pot). After breakfast I went out onto the damp terrace and walked up and down in the fresh air.

At 10 all of us (the client directors plus Val, Douglas and Terry) went to the cheaper hotel where the morning’s session was to be held. We filed into a subterranean windowless hall where most of the sales personnel were already gathered. I walked right to the front and sat in the first row, which was empty (I don’t know why I did this - perhaps I wanted to demonstrate my independence).

The session began with an introduction by the client MD praising the success of the conference so far. The next item on the agenda was the formal “induction” of the client’s new sales personnel. The MD went to stand at one side of the low stage while another client director stood at a lectern and began to read out names.



Above: A commercial photographer took a picture of each one.

“Tony Walmsley, Steve Dougherty, Adam Truscott…”

From a side door in the hall a succession of young men in suits came into the hall and walked up to the MD who shook hands with each of them and handed over rolled-up certificates. A commercial photographer took a picture of each one. The audience applauded and sometimes cheered.

“Chris Oliver, Rory Eames, Michael Saville…”

A burly sales trainee in a kilt, bushy long hair tied in a pony tail, strode up to the front to cheers and some laughter from the audience (“you always get a least one” I heard someone say).

“Paul Robinson, David Farmer, Claire Ashby…”

The sole woman in that year’s intake walked up to collect her certificate and then stood with the others at the front, pale and slight among the men.

About thirty or so newly-qualified sales personnel were awarded certificates. They stood at the front facing the audience and were collectively given a standing ovation. The MD praised them as the future of the company.

After the sales inductions we had a coffee break. Because I had gone to sit at the front on my own I walked out of the hall in a group of the new sales personnel and lined up for coffee with them. I asked one of them how he felt.

“I feel proud. I never had the grades to go to uni, so this was like my graduation. I wish my Mum and Dad could have been here.”

“Don’t worry, it’s a done deal” he told us

Above: the sun streamed through the casement window.

Friday last week

I woke at 6.30. Because I hadn’t closed the curtains the sun streamed through the casement window and onto the bed where I lay. I tried to close my eyes and go back to sleep, but I felt too anxious about the forthcoming presentation so that I had to get up (all this anxiety puzzled me - I do not normally get nervous).

At 7.30 I went downstairs, and was the second person at breakfast (the other chap was one of the client team - I nodded to him but sat at a separate table). An elderly waiter who resembled Mohammed Fayed bustled around getting me tea and taking my order. Almond croissants, yoghurt, orange juice, big fried breakfast, toast, tea.

I leafed through The Guardian and then the Daily Mirror. More people came into the dining room, and talked loudly to each other across the tables. Val and Douglas came down together (this was coincidence - Val is happily married) and joined my table.

Val explained that all of the client personnel staying at the hotel were of director level and were holding a series of Board meetings around the sales conference sessions. The rest of the client staff were staying at a cheaper hotel about ten minutes away and would be arriving for the start of the conference at 10 o’clock. Our slot was at 11, and would last an hour, plus we were involved in the question and answer session tomorrow.

Feeling jittery I finished breakfast and went outside to walk around. The hotel had a broad terrace that went around three sides of the building. From the terrace flights of steps led down to the lawns and the walled garden.



Above: the photogrpah I took of the west end of the hotel.

Descending the steps on the west side, I walked across a lawn that was full of moss and so waterlogged with the recent rain that my feet were splashing through grassy puddles. Blackbirds sang in the mature specimen trees beyond the lawn’s edge. When I reached the trees I turned and took a photograph of the hotel, and as I lowered my camera I saw some of the sales staff beginning to arrive - waves of men in dark suits, some with briefcases that swung as they walked.

I went to the exhibition room where Val (who had changed into a business suit) and Douglas were at our stand. In the small room the giant Nomadic structure looked a bit ridiculous. One other outside company was represented - an IT support agency, who had a simple table with their leaflets displayed (“we only prepared for a car boot sale” said one of their team sheepishly).

We stood around while the sales staff (both internal and external sales) came into the exhibition room, looked blankly at us, then went into the main hall. Val introduced me to Sam from the “ghost agency” we had used to construct the new client website (a “ghost agency” is when one agency sub-contracts work to another agency without telling the client). Sam was athletic-looking, aged about thirty, tousled hair and dressed in slob-chic - Diesel jeans, black shirt (three buttons open at the neck), expensive trainers, jacket that looked like it came from a navy-blue suit, surfer bracelet, striped designer lap-top carry-case worn as an accessory (ie there wasn’t a lap-top in it).

We could hear applause as the sales conference started in the hall next door. An exultant Terry came into the exhibition room ready to lead our presentation (“don’t worry, it’s a done deal” he told us, “we have effectively hi-jacked their entire lead-generation process”). I felt slightly sick with nervous tension.

Just after 11 we went into the main hall to give our presentation. Each of us had a section to deliver (my bit was on research). By agreement with the directors no questions were allowed so after everyone applauded we just trooped out again.

The rest of the day was an anti-climax. I stood around in the exhibition room feeling dehydrated and half-listening to the conference sessions. At one stage Rhona came out to talk, confiding the problems she has had with one of the other directors (“everything I put forward is blocked”).

At the lunch we sat at our own reserved table. Sam talked about his wheat allergy, referred to his former girlfriends by name as if we knew them, told us about the awards his agency has won. Later I heard him tell one of the conference attendees that he wasn’t part of our agency, and in a moment of spite I shopped him to Terry (who obviously had a go at him, as Sam became very subdued).

Halfway through the afternoon I “disappeared” for two hours (Val covered for me) and drove up to Port Sunlight to look around the town.

When the sales conference finished for the day we all went to the cheaper hotel, where most of the client’s sales staff were staying, for dinner. Melon pieces, vegetarian ravioli (“you made a good choice there, they can’t mess it about too much”), caramel pudding with custard. Afterwards we stayed on for some of the “DJ entertainment” - all the free drink you want, and a male / female ratio of about ten to one.

I was conscious of vistas opening up

Above: I arrived at the hotel at 7pm, just as the light was beginning to fade.

Last Thursday

I got up at 8, packed, then found myself with nothing to do. I waited around at home until the last minute (and well beyond the last minute) before setting off on the journey to the north west. Because I was taking my car I went straight to the conference without going into London.

Leaving at 2.30, it took me four and a half hours to get to the destination. I was in no hurry to get to the conference venue, and subconsciously I suppose I was hoping for a hold-up that would ensure I missed “the dinner”. As I drove I listened to the radio, the stations changing every fifty miles or so (Radio 4 until I got bored; local music stations covering pop, dance, a debased kind of hip hop; an asian talk station near Derby).

Rain fell, then sunshine, then rain again.

Finally I arrived at the hotel at about 7pm, the light fading.

The building was a substantial Edwardian mansion built in 1915 and converted into a country hotel about twenty years ago. The interiors were decorated in a lavish late-imperial style with panelled walls, plaster mouldings, heavy and immovable furniture. As I walked through the building I was conscious of vistas opening up - grand staircases, rooms leading into other rooms, conservatories leading out onto terraces.

The Reception desk was a small arrangement in one corner of the cavernous entrance hall. No-one else was in this huge room apart from myself and the Reception clerk (a young woman in a black uniform, pale gold hair, simple gold jewellery). As I checked in I could hear laughing in the distance, the collective guffaws of business people, that I assumed (correctly) signalled the pre-dinner drinks.

The dinner was due to start at 7.30. I went up to my room, which was a bit small, but comfortable. Only time to change my shirt and wash my face before I had to go downstairs again. I agonised over whether to wear a tie or not (in the end I did). As I descended the stairs the apprehensions I had been feeling all day became more intense. On a rational level there was no real reason for these feelings, but nevertheless I felt them.

Down the grand staircase, through the vast entrance hall, round into the enfilade of sitting rooms…

…all the time the sound of talking and laughing got louder…

…until I arrived in the bar where about twenty senior managers from the client company were gathered, with from the agency Terry (my MD) and Val (PR Account Director) and Douglas (PR Account Executive - aged about twenty-five, mixed race English-Chinese, “trains” at London Scottish Rugby Club).

I was welcomed by Terry who talked to me far more jovially than he ever does in the office. Terry introduced me to Rhona, the company’s director of marketing (aged late fifties, grey hair in a bob like a German helmet, black trousers and expensive red jacket). I had talked to her frequently on the telephone, on which occasions she had varied from off-hand to deliberately rude, but this was the first time we had met in person. She greeted me like an old friend, so that I wondered whether she was putting on an act, and if so for whose benefit. I was introduced to the rest of the group, instantly forgetting their names. I thought about getting a drink, but soon after my arrival we all went into dinner.

The dining room was laid out with five tables, five places at each. Because I went into the room with Rhona I ended up sitting next to her. All the time she talked about marketing, in a gossipy sort of way, as if she was confiding in me (as one of my fears about the conference had been that I would be frozen out and ignored, this garrulous reception was reassuring).

Mixed olive salad, Welsh lamb done as a roast, chocolate gateau with cream.

Afterwards we sat in the main drawing room, which was a long room lined with immense chintz sofas. I drank coffee while Rhona continued to drink red wine. At ten o’clock I began to think of getting away and back to my room.

I asked where the main conference room was, and Rhona said she would show me (her actual words to me were: “Let mother show you”). We went into a hall which was laid out with a top table and about a hundred chairs in theatre-style rows. Off this hall was a small room where Val and Douglas had set up the agency’s stand (a Nomadic contraption we use at exhibitions).

After a brief look around I told Rhona I was feeling very tired and needed to sleep. I went up to my room, glad to be on my own again. Rain was falling and I opened the window to look out at the ghostly topiary of the black wet garden below.

The Message on BBC Radio 4

Have just listened to The Message on BBC Radio 4. Very interesting discussion on the role of Jenny Abramsky in setting up the BBC’s digital services (and thus confronting the Murdoch empire, for which we should all be grateful). Jenny Abramsky is the BBC’s director of audio and music.

More about this week’s The Message: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/themessage.shtml

Apprehensive

No posts on this site until Sunday.

I have to go to a client’s conference in the north west. About a hundred and fifty people will be there. We (the agency team) will be presenting the findings of the “big project” I recently helped complete.

I’m feeling very apprehensive.

“It’s a chance for you to shine” said Rachel.

In other words, it’s a chance for me to fall flat on my face.

Billy Bragg

Have just finished reading Billy Bragg’s autobiography The Progressive Patriot.

It was a mixed sort of book - the personal anecdotes worked very well; the philosophical “programme” that had been grafted onto the book worked less well; the musings about history and archaeology were unremittingly bad (his theory about the origin of the place name Uphall was so tenuous as to be effectively fictional).

I chose the book for several reasons.

First, although he is older than me, he describes a post-1979 (arrival of Margaret Thatcher) upbringing in the East End - the sort of life that would have been mine, had my grandparents remained in Bethnal Green.

Second, he has become a minor media personality, his opinions voiced on the Today programme (among other channels) so helping to shape wider public opinion (the shaping of public opinion being of professional interest to me).

Third, when you attempt to “unpick” the packages that his opinions are delivered in, you can trace a sophisticated line that is more than just the usual subversion for subversion’s sake - Billy Bragg may have become richer and middle-class, but he hasn’t “sold out”.

Most interesting (and original) was the actual format of the autobiography - he uses national history to illustrate the development of his family and then uses family history to illustrate the development of himself. This was an inspired structure to follow, although some of the history was shaky (in discussing the Anglo-Saxons he obviously hadn’t read Stenton, and if he hasn’t read Stenton then nothing else can be relied upon). Leaving the issue of “facts” on one side, in its extrapolation of memories from the past the book has a Proustian quality - it is the everyday experience of Billy Bragg as a teenager that stays in the memory, not his subsequent career as a fringe celebrity (or anti-celebrity, depending on your point of view).



Above: BBC2 recently broadcast All White In Barking, which looked at the lives of a number of residents in the borough.

The success of the BNP in his home town of Barking has obviously had a big effect upon Billy Bragg, and large sections of the book are allocated to this topic, but he doesn’t really explain why the BNP has made so much progress. Economic factors do not really explain the situation, as lots of communities experience economic hardship without turning to extreme solutions. We urgently need to understand what is happening in Barking and whether it represents an isolated breakdown of society or the tipping-point of a wider development.



Above: John Harris’s article appeared in this Guardian supplement, illustrated (crudely and without irony) by a purnellesque montage that showed a cut-out David Cameron inserted into The Smiths.

John Harris quoted Billy Bragg in an extensive article recently about the interaction between popular music and populist politics. I thought the article was unfair to David Cameron and his choice of music unrelated to the political opinions of the musicians who created it. Enduring art is always unrelated to the political stance of the artist (art that is related to the political stance of the artist is called propaganda, and has no lasting value).

Anyway, in the article John Harris quotes Billy Bragg extensively, which really illustrates the Bragg enigma - why is someone of such marginal artistic achievement so influential? For John Harris to describe the Bragg song Between The Wars as “soaringly poetic” is unmerited (although the lyrics are intensely ironic, given the political situation we are currently in). And for John Harris to describe the same song as “a top 20 hit” is disingenuous (as Lisa Scott-Lee could tell you, if you’re not in the top ten you are nowhere).

More on Billy Bragg: http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/singles/between_wars/between1.html

More on Between The Wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HRSsLes8vE

More on Lisa Scott-Lee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Scott-Lee

Overheard on the train

“…I’m not sure I would like to eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. I’m not sure I would like my meal shouted and cursed over. Imagine all the spit and saliva that must go into the food - makes me feel sick just to think about it…”



Above: Rory Bremner satirising Gordon Ramsay in Bremner Bird & Fortune. Gordon Ramsay was also satirised on Armstrong & Miller (the trainee kitchen assistants beat him to death and serve him as a casserole). Gordon Ramsay is a bad-tempered media chef - possibly his rudest and most outrageous exploit was to turn out Joan Collins from one of his restaurants.

More on the Joan Collins incident: http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/ramsay%20apologises%20to%20collins

Another perspective on the Gordon Ramsay circus: http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2008/04/fox-and-the-the.html

The swan landscape

Usually it takes me about half an hour to drive to the mainline station in the morning (then about an hour and a half on the train, so it’s a long commute to work). Recently I have changed my route slightly - I’ve found that a longer way, along minor roads, gets me to the station more quickly. As the mornings became lighter I began to notice the birds and wildlife.

And one morning I saw a big family of wild swans in one of the fields (above). There was about fourteen of them. At first I thought they were geese, but I stopped the car and went back to check, and they were definitely swans.

Since then, I have seen them in the field on average about two or three mornings per week. The field is hard to get to, beyond a deep wide dyke, so they are very safe (possibly that is why they have chosen the field). Whenever I see them I feel exhilarated, hopeful, as if it’s not such a bad world after all.



After seeing the wild swans I started to notice lots of swan references in local place names. And it occurred to me that the swan landscape I was discovering might have some deeper historical associated. There is a local legend of a 19th century hunter who shot a swan which then turned into a “pale maiden” whom he married (only for her to turn back into a swan and fly off).

On the flatland right by the coast (marshes, no beach) is the Swan Lake Leisure Park (above). Not one of the county’s more picturesque resorts, but luckily it is so far out in the wilds that it doesn’t offend too many people. The fishing is supposed to be good.



Swandyke Road. Notice the rig in the field operated by the ubiquitous Polish field workers (and Latvians, and even Russians). They work in wretched conditions, and live packed into makeshift hostel rooms in the local town. How bad must conditions be in Poland for them to want to live like this? They are effectively indentured servants. Their lives are like those of the “Bantustan migrant workers” in apartheid South Africa.



The Swan - an old coaching inn located in a village on the plain. Notice the arch where the coaches would go through to the livery yard at the back. A very hospitable pub.

Occasionally you see pubs called The Swan With Two Necks. This is a corruption of “the swan with two nicks” - the two nicks being a mark that the swan belonged to the Vintners Company (all unmarked swans belong to the Crown). Swans were marked on the River Thames in a ceremony known as Swan Upping (still continued today, but the swans are ringed instead of being nicked).



Not only am I conscious of a physical swan landscape, but a metaphysical one also. This old guide records a visit made by my parents to Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset (we never throw anything away in our family). The 6d price means that the visit must have been made prior to decimalisation in 1972.



The swan badge is a well-known heraldic device that you see everywhere (for instance it is in the coat of arms of the county of Buckinghamshire). It dates from the medieval period and is supposed to identify descendants of the Swan Knight (see Sir Anthony Wagner’s 1959 essay The Swan Badge and the Swan Knight). In the 1960s a solid gold swan badge, enamelled in white, was dug up in the ruins of a medieval friary in the Bedfordshire town of Dunstable - you can see it in the British Museum.

I once met the (amateur) historian Vivienne Evans at a talk she gave in Dunstable about the swan jewel. The event was held in a private room at the Winston Churchill pub in the town. I remember she drank a HUGE glass of sweet sherry.

Dunstable also has a pub called the White Swan. Whenever I think of it I think of Steve Tupman, who drank there and used to call it “the dirty duck”. A Google search on Steve’s name reveals he died in an industrial accident in 2002. I knew him for about a year (I met him when he was Jane’s boyfriend - later he got engaged to Nicole). He was one of life’s risk-takers - you could never ignore him when he was around. May he rest in peace.



The legend of the Swan Knight can be found all over western Europe. It is probably best known today through the Wagnerian opera Lohengrin, which links the Swan Knight to the legend of the Holy Grail. King Ludwig II of Bavaria was obsessed with the legend of Lohengrin, and built the castle of Neuschwanstein as a physical manifestation of his fantasy (still I hear the German guide’s abrasive voice: “Neu meaning new, schwan meaning swan, stein meaning a stone-built fortress; neu-schwan-stein the new stone castle of the swan…”).



The expression “black swan” used to mean something that was impossible. This was until European explorers went to Australia and discovered that black swans existed - had always existed (I found this out in a recent In Our Time broadcast). Thomas Mann’s novel The Black Swan is about a middle aged German widow who is experiencing the menopause and longs to be young and attractive again. She falls in love with her children’s young tutor and dreams of having his child. She experiences bleeding which she is convinced is the resumption of her menstrual cycle, whereas it is in fact the haemorrhaging of the uterine tumour which kills her (I suppose Mann was saying be careful what you wish for).

More on the swan legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_of_the_Swan

More on swan upping: http://www.thedukeofyork.org/output/Page4952.asp

More on the swan jewel: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/t/the_dunstable_swan_jewel.aspx

Virtual tour of Abbotsbury Swannery: http://www.abbotsburytourism.co.uk/swannery/home.htm

More on Steve Tupman: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/4473941.stm

More on indentured labour: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

In many ways the party was an agency event

Friday evening and after work I went to Rachel’s party at her flat (rented with two friends) in Maida Vale.

The flat was on the first floor (which would be the second floor in America) of a commodious block of mansion flats (lots of these blocks all along the avenues - which being a true avenue was lined with trees. The flat consisted of a long wide corridor with a big living-room at the front, then a kitchen, then three bedrooms and a box room. Because I live so far from London I had accepted an offer to stay overnight, but began to regret this when I learned how many other people would be “staying over” (and who intended to keep the party going all night).

All the time I was in the flat Fashion TV played on the television, even during the party.

We arrived at the flat about 7. Rachel introduced me to her two flatmates, Rebecca and Juliette. Chris from the agency arrived, and we all had a pasta dinner sat round the table in the small kitchen (“I would love a proper dining room” said Rachel, “I can’t understand all these people who get rid of their dining rooms”).

The kitchen had a window that faced into a light well, with pigeons living on the window-sills in considerable numbers (deposits of guano were further evidence of the pigeon problem).

After the meal the plates were cleared away at great speed. The three women moved around the flat getting things ready for the party (only one of the rooms was to be off-limits). Having nothing to do I watched Fashion TV (endless parades of women walking towards the camera), talked to Chris and looked around the flat.

At work Rachel has a very tough image, so it was a surprise to see how girlie (and untidy) her bedroom was. I sat on the bed and looked through her back numbers of Vogue and Top Santé. She came into the room and in whispered tones told me how angry she was with her flatmate Rebecca (“she borrowed my best hat earlier today without asking and now it’s ruined - it’s really pissed me off” - she held out the hat to me and I looked at it politely, although there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with it).

Guests started to arrive about 9, and the flat quickly filled up. Two main groups were represented - people from the agency, and friends of the three flatmates. The agency people were all from the upstairs PR division, and in many ways the party was an agency event (various people on the PR side of the agency take turns to host these parties, which happen about every two months).

All the drink was paid for by our MD Terry (pinstripe suit, yellow silk tie, grey crinkled hair that glistened with some kind of oil). At one point I was delegated to help Chris and Douglas go to the off-licence at the end of the road and get some more booze. All the evening I was drinking gin, which didn’t seem to have any effect on me.

At one stage I was talking to “drunken Duncan” who was going on about Scottish devolution: “I’m Scots-Irish. Scotland is my country and I want a say in whether it stays part of the United Kingdom. Just because I live in England for economic reasons doesn’t mean I’ve given up my rights in Scotland. If all the Scots who live in England had a vote you wouldn’t hear any more about Scottish independence. It’s just the same with the six counties in Ireland. There are so many Irish living in England they have a right to keep some of the Irish territory in the United Kingdom…”

Later I was talking to Spencer, the chief copywriter, who I have never got on with: “Really talented people are always loners” he said to me conspiratorially (what did he mean by that?).

Later still I talked to Vince, who heads one of the account groups: “They should completely legalise all drugs, to get rid of the criminal supply element, but at the same time classify anyone caught taking drugs as mentally ill so they can be detained at secure hospitals and cleaned up.”

At 11 o’clock the agency people started to leave. At 12 o’clock Rachel, her flat-mates and their friends said they were going on to a club. I was reluctant to go with them, but also did not want to appear anti-social.

We walked about two miles to the club. Although it was very late, Rachel and her friends were fretting about getting there “too early”. The club was in what had once been a large plain brick pub.

Inside it was packed with teenagers (“I feel too old for all this” I said to Rachel). The main dancing area was downstairs. I made it clear that I was not going anywhere near the dance floor, but neither did I feel I wanted to join the moody onlookers who stood round the sides with their arms folded, nodding their heads to the beat (or do they nod their heads in-between the beat? - it’s important to get these details right).

Chris, Rebecca and myself went upstairs where there was a crowded bar. We stood around with our drinks for a while, and then sat down on a sofa on the landing at the top of the stairs (this sofa was covered in black sequins, which sparkled in the dark). I felt so tired my eyes were smarting. At various intervals the others came up from the dance floor and sprawled on the landing in front of us, looking like characters from the Alma-Tadema painting The Women of Amphissa. It was 3 o’clock before we left the club. Back at the flat I spent about four hours sleeping in an armchair.

Controversial territory

The design of the United Kingdom’s new coinage was unveiled today.

From a design point of view the new coins look bad. Basically a designer has been allowed to chop up the national “logos” and present the resulting mish-mash as a brave and original reinterpretation of the previous design. This chopping-up-of-logos (I feel it should have its own verb - logoicide?) happens so often in advertising that whenever I brief the creative department (“the studio”) on a client campaign I make a point of telling the creatives “don’t muck up the logos”, usually adding at the end of the briefing “if you muck up the logos I am taking the job away from you” (saying this slowly, so they know I am not joking).

I have learned (from bitter experience - and the inclusion of “bitter” in this phrase does not mean the cheap use of a cliché but actual experience that is bitterly painful) that you should never show the client a design where the company logo has been chopped up (or coloured green and lavender, or even simply reversed out of black) - the client will never ever forgive you or trust you again.

It is the one thing you must never do.

Even if the studio has stalled you for days and finally gives you the mock-ups just as you are walking out of the door on the way to see the client, if the logo has been “reinterpreted” you must cancel the meeting and make them do the design again.



The other controversial aspect of this news item is that Britannia has been removed from the everyday coinage (she is still on the silver bullion coin - above).

Why is the government going out of its way to annoy people over such an issue? Child poverty targets are failing, the bloody (and illegal in Iraq’s case) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are continuing, the greed and mendacity and nepotism of MPs remains unchecked, immigration policy has floundered, mortgages are drying up and taxes (including council taxes) are rising. With all these serious issues to deal with, why is the government offending ordinary people by unilaterally taking away a symbol they value?

I rang Rachel (one of the upstairs executives) earlier and during our talk asked her if she had seen the new coinage and she repeated her familiar verdict: “I’m with Catherine Tate’s Nan on this one - what a load of old…”



Above: the Britannia - very friendly corner pub (everyone talks to you) but so small you are half on the pavement, especially when the doors are open.

The government has strayed into this controversial territory before. Culture Minister Margaret Hodge attacked the “Proms” concerts for being jingoistic, then had to retract and jump through any number of hoops to prove she was not anti-Rule Britannia. Number Ten also felt it necessary to make retractions on her behalf.

More on the new coinage: http://www.royalmint.com/newdesigns/designsRevealed.aspx (“symptomatic of the fragmentation of the United Kingdom”).

More on Margaret Hodge: http://ministers.culture.gov.uk/margarethodgediary/

More on the verdict of Catherine Tate’s Nan (comes right at the end): http://video.aol.com/video-detail/catherine-tate-show-nan-on-the-new-paul-ogrady-show-sketch/4001138346

Is it really necessary for them to close...

Working at home today (actually an excuse to have a rest as I will be away tomorrow night).

Over the past six months I have been experiencing slight pains in my chest (nothing serious, although occasionally my heart is thumping madly). The doctor has prescribed Ramipril, and has recently upped the dosage. Although the NHS is “free at the point of delivery” this does not apply to working people, and I have to pay £6.95 every time I renew the prescription (although obviously I have already paid for the drug through my taxes).

Anyway, I rang up today to renew the prescription again. I remembered to wait until after 12 to ring the Surgery as they will not do prescription renewals in the mornings when they are “busy”. The number was engaged when I first rang, and engaged again when I rang some minutes later.

On the third attempt I got through. But instead of speaking to one of the surgery assistants I was put through to a recorded message saying: “The surgery is now closed. If you have an emergency you should ring ----- ------, if you cannot get through you should ring 999”. This recorded message was delivered in a couldn’t-care-less, go-away-and-stop-bothering-us, why-don’t-you-just-drop-dead tone of voice.

It seemed incredible that the Surgery should be closed on a weekday afternoon. I got into my car and drove to the local town to renew my prescription personally. I found the waiting room empty, but behind the glass Reception screens the assistants were all sitting around, apparently doing nothing, ignoring the ’phones.

I asked if I could renew my prescription and was told the Surgery was closed. I asked why the Surgery was closed and was told that the doctors take one afternoon off per month so they could “train together”. I asked why that meant I couldn’t renew my prescription and was told “we also do some training” (no training seemed to be happening that I could see - they were just sitting around).

I drove home again, without renewing my prescription, feeling so angry that my heart was pounding.

GP doctors get massive salaries now - on average between £100,000 and £120,000 per year (that’s $200,000 to $240,000). Is it really necessary for them to close Surgeries down completely while they have their monthly “awayday afternoons”? Instead of having the existing head-count of doctors on £100k per year, why don’t we halve the salary to £50k and have double the number of doctors for the same money? (that way they would have enough personnel to provide continuous cover, and they would still be getting pretty good money compared to the rest of us).

More on “away day culture”: teamawayday

Laughed at

Once again, at 12 noon today, Prime Minister’s Questions appeared on BBC2. Instead of the Prime Minister, Harriet Harman substituted, exchanging jokes with William Hague (who seemed to have filled the Opposition camera frame with women, so that a reasonably youthful and gender-inclusive image was created). In the introduction to PMQs, Daily Politics co-presenter Jenny Scott regretted that Liberal-Democrat Leader Nick “Cleggover” was not participating (a pun on “leg-over” which is a United Kingdom colloquial expression for sexual congress - a reference to Nick Clegg’s claim in GQ magazine to have had thirty sexual partners).



Nick Clegg was very foolish to have answered a variation of the Britney Spears “are you still a virgin” question, as he has opened up a narrative path for other journalists to follow. Does “under thirty” mean “29 sexual partners and counting”, in which case when will he reach number thirty? And who (one can imagine the Editor of The Sun asking) are these thirty or so women, and what are the thirty or so stories they have to tell?

British political sex “scandals” sell newspapers. And by boasting (for it obviously was a sort of boast) of thirty conquests Nick Clegg has just handed over to the media the potential for thirty episodes in a long-running saga that could possibly keep going through the summer season (“so assuming he started in 1983 when he was sixteen and stopped when he got married in 2000 he was changing sexual partners on average every seven months - that’s a lot of f--k buddies even for a politician…”). If he was a poor lover he will be laughed at; if he was a great lover he will be admired and laughed at; if it turns out to be mostly fantasy and fabrication (since his claim is well above the global average) he will be jeered and laughed at.



A quick look through the files upstairs reveals that David Miliband gave an interview to GQ magazine two years ago. It is a model of sober propriety, conducted by Darius Sanai (an alumnus of City University’s Journalism course). GQ magazine is part of Condé Nast which is run by Nicholas Coleridge (from the same family as the poet Samuel Coleridge) the ultra-civilised pro-Indian former employer of one of the Barnett sisters (and in a very oblique connection with the Nick Clegg interview, one of Nicholas Coleridge’s novels was nominated for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award - possibly this has set an unintended “culture” at the magazine group).

More on Harriet Harman: http://www.harrietharman.org/

More on William Hague: http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&personID=4680

More on Nick Clegg: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7324541.stm
and also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/01/nickclegg.pressandpublishing
and also
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article984233.ece

More on the average number of sexual partners: http://www.durex.com/cm/gss2004Content.asp?intQid=401

“Dumb insolence” (a disciplinary offence for other servants of the Crown)

All the news reports are full of a parliamentary study that finds migration has brought zero economic benefits to the United Kingdom. The government is not disputing the report in any significant way. Senior government figures are not giving interviews to discuss what is currently the top news item (“you can tell when a government is on the skids when their ministers stop appearing in public”).

The immigration minister Liam Byrne did, however, appear on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics at 12 today. He had nothing to say and responded to questions with a sickly sort of grin and a provocative display of “dumb insolence” (a disciplinary offence for other servants of the Crown). Andrew Neil did not spare him (“you seem determined not to answer a single question I ask you… these figures are nonsense… thank you minister, we’re done with you”).


You might need to click on the above image to read this letter to The Guardian.

Switching over to The Wright Stuff (starts at 12.30) a panel of Richard Bacon, Marcus Brigstocke, Mel Giedroyc and John Torode was again discussing immigration. After the intellectual rigour of Andrew Neil, this trashy discussion went nowhere. Marcus Brigstocke repeated the slur that Polish field-workers are hard-working and enthusiastic whereas indigenous teenagers are lazing around on benefits drinking beer from the bottle (the reality is that Polish migrants are motivated by desperation, not enthusiasm, and that the beer-drinking teenagers on benefits are also facing a desperate employment situation - one that has been created by government negligence).



Above: into the county (and other counties) over the last five years the government has imported wholesale an underclass of “peasants”. They are real peasants (as defined by the old Soviet formula), and back in Poland they would vote for the reactionary Polish Peasants Party. It is unbelievable that in the twenty-first century the wages and conditions of the rural poor should be set back by over a hundred years (and also unbelievable that the Labour government should be proud of this “productivity”, immigration minister Liam Byrne saying today “employers have made decisions about who best to employ”).



The simple laws of economics mean that either the labour market must be closed or the benefits system will collapse (or is this already too late - can the welfare state survive more than ten years, given the existing underclass that must eventually be absorbed into it?). If the labour market were to be closed, even temporarily, wages must rise to attract people off benefits and into work. Why does no-one in the government understand the concept of labour market equilibrium?

And as for Marcus Brigstocke, Johann Hari, David Aaronovitch and all the other “British people don’t want to work” commentators, is it not possible to import some Polish feature writers and employ them at the minimum wage competing against some of the home-grown professional chatterers? Then perhaps we would see Marcus Brigstocke “too lazy to get out of bed in the morning”. And Johann Hari and David Aaronovitch swigging beer from the bottle as they turn their backs on the “Job Centre” (an Orwellian contradiction in terms) and stagger off to claim their “Jobseekers” allowance.



One newspaper that did not give the report front page billing was The Independent. They gave the item a tiny little box on page 16. The editor in chief of The Independent is Simon Kelner.

Views of Simon Kelner: “he has always favoured a view of the world as he would like it to be, rather than as it factually is…” “in those days he probably had a chip on his shoulder as a result of going to a polytechnic…” “people think his turning The Independent into tabloid format was some stroke of rebranding genius, but actually it was an attempt to maximise advertising revenue by nearly doubling the number of so-called ‘full-pages’ which they continued to sell at the old broadsheet rate - what a con for the advertisers!”.

Twenty-three oak trees

This morning I drove to the south of the county, on the level plain that stretches out to the sea. I left home at eight and was there by nine. Large numbers of sheep in the fields eating cabbage stalks, big swathes of crop daffodils, hedgerows misted with the early green that defies the acuity of actual observation (an impression of green that disappears as soon as you try to look at it in any real detail).



Above: field of daffs in the morning sunshine.

The day was very mild and sunny. I turned off the main road and entered the village. Past a paddock where two fair-haired children were riding horses.



Above: looking towards the village green and the tower - the crocketed spire gives village youths an opportunity to climb right to the top in acts of teenage bravado.

I parked on one side of the village green and in two minutes completed my errand. Then, as I had come so far, I began to look around the village. Although the architecture of the domestic houses was very fine and unspoiled, the beauty of the place was completely eclipsed by the perfection of the fourteenth century church.

Going into the church I met a very friendly lady, aged about sixty, with largish glasses and grey hair permed in big curls. She was getting the church ready for the ten o’clock service (there had already been a BCP communion at eight). In between her bustling about (“the church is open during the week, so we have to put away all the brass”) she pointed out items of interest.



Above: a mystery of the church is this gravestone to Prudence Corby who died on the 36th of July 1793.



Above: there were three fonts in the church, one of which is supported by Adam and Eve, naked except for fig leaves, with the Tree of Knowledge between them (this font implies, with some justification, that the village is an “other Eden, demi-paradise”).



Above: some other ladies came in, and one of them showed me this memorial to two Regency lawyers, a father and son - the father married three times and the son married five times.



Above: trees seemed to be a theme of the day.

The bells began to ring, banging and clashing throughout the building. I decided to stay for the ten o’clock service and sat on the south side of the nave, five rows from the front, near this banner of the Tree of Life. However, I had inadvertently strayed into a “reserved” seat as three stalwarts of the church (I recognised the type - my grandmother used to be one) came and sat right next to me - very smartly dressed elderly ladies supported by a variety of sticks, inclined to be kind so long as you behaved yourself.

About a hundred people attended the service, but the church was so large it hardly seemed full (because the building was so high there was an immense space above us, which gave you the feeling you were in the open air). The heating was on, but didn’t reach where I was sitting and gradually my feet, then my hands, and then my face became very cold.

The processional hymn was the 1878 Breath on me breath of God. The long procession came in with a big brass cross at the front and choristers carrying heavy Victorian brass candlesticks, the flames wavering as they passed along the nave. When the choir had settled into the chancel the woman Vicar turned and addressed us - she was very well-spoken, with a brisk manner that reminded me of the actress Kristin Scott-Thomas.



Above: the east window with St Michael and Christ in Majesty and “all the glorious company of heaven”.

During the service there was a continuous sound of birdsong from outside the building. In the sermon the vicar talked about doubt, and to illustrate the theme the children’s group (about ten in number, aged from five to sevenish) performed a “trust walk” where they came along the nave in a long line, hand in hand and with their eyes closed except for the leader. When I went up to take communion, I was conscious of the stained glass Archangel Michael and Christ In Majesty looking down at me.



Above: the badge of the school was an oak tree.

After the service teas and coffees and plates of biscuits were on tables at the west end. The lady I had first met showed me various memorials to the village grammer school (now closed). The badge of the school was an oak tree, and she showed me the school war memorial that listed twenty-three “old boys” who had died in the First World War and were commemorated by twenty-three oak trees planted around the school playing field (now the village sports field).



Above: the school memorials in the north aisle included a stained glass illustration of the original school house.



Above: the old school house still stands on the other side of the village green (it’s now a private house) with other school buildings behind it (now housing the village hall, a playgroup etc).



Above: the school playing field was also in the window.



Above: the field is still used for village sports.

Leaving the church I went out into the sunshine and walked down a side road to the old school playing field. Twenty-three oak trees still ringed the pitch, although one of the lime trees had been cut down. As I took this photograph a middle-aged man came out of the pavilion and asked me what I was doing.

“Only there’s been lots of trouble over this tree coming down” he said, pointing to the felled trunk. “There’s been letters to the press and everything. It was split and had to come down - people don’t realise that trees won’t live forever.”

The expression originated in America

And still the "project" is not finished!

Terry, the agency MD, rang me at home this morning with some “extras” he wants to go into the report (it’s too late to put them into the presentation, which has already been rehearsed). Luckily I was able to do them by remote connection to my agency PC, without going into the office. And I suppose it is reassuring that the MD is so dependent upon me that he doesn’t trust anyone else to do the work.

“I want you to apply the SFW test at every stage” Terry told me superfluously (I had already been doing this, as he well knew).

“Apply the SFW test” is a favourite mantra of Terry’s. He regards the phrase as an essential part of the agency’s philosophy. The expression originated in America, and basically means that every time you make a claim for a product you look at it from the customer’s point of view and ask “so what?”

SFW was recently shouted across the floor of the House of Commons by government minister Ed Balls, in an attempt to destabilise David Cameron. To be fair to Ed Balls, he left off the “F” bit. Later, in a brazen denial, he said he had actually shouted “So weak”.

More on SFW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFW

More on the Ed Balls incident: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=532989&in_page_id=1770

For some reason I couldn’t sleep

At last I have finished the “project”. I knew when I entered the office yesterday that it had to be done that day. I worked fifteen hours without a break (occasionally I went for a walk round the floor) and it was finished at 12.30 in the morning.

The “project” contains over 5,400 pieces of information, all of which had to be researched, checked, and presented in an engaging style. If it is accepted (and it is bound to be accepted) it will “lock” a client into the agency for many years to come. Certainly I feel I now know the client’s business better than they know it themselves.

I left the agency, locking the back door after me. The security light in the back “mews” (actually a scruffy yard) failed to come on, so I had to feel my way in the pitch dark until I reached my car, afraid of dropping my laptop. Long drive along almost empty roads - I got home at 4am feeling exhausted, and immediately went to bed (although not quite immediately as the dog got up to welcome me, wagging his tail, and I had to take him downstairs and let him out into the garden for a few minutes).

I had promised myself that I would sleep all of today, as I have averaged only five hours a night for about the past three weeks. But for some reason I couldn’t sleep, and I got up at nine. Blustery wet day outside, as I had a cup of tea and read through the morning’s post.

Mid-morning I drove deep into the countryside, eventually arriving at The Three Tuns. A happy pub in summertime, today it was empty at 11 o’clock (“we’ll have people coming in at lunchtime” the barmaid told me). I sat on a worn Windsor chair at a window table (rain spattering on the glass), had a beer and a whisky chaser, and thought about an early lunch of homemade steak and kidney pie with fat chips.

But before I could order lunch my mobile ’phone rang and I was called into the office to make some final adjustments to the “project” before it was presented. Horrible drive to the station and horrible train journey up to London reading The Independent (very good review section which was in the form of a booklet - I kept it when I left the rest of the newspaper on the train). Into the office to make the adjustments, staying about an hour, before making the long weary journey back home again.

No great sense of achievement, just a tired emptiness.

“This is not just Easter food, this is M&S Easter food”

The project should have been finished today, but so many last minute additions have been arriving that I gained a postponement of 24 hours (two of which have been wasted as I feel asleep from exhaustion).

Anyway, as a postscript to Easter, here are some attributes that I thought I would record as they may not be around much longer (or their cultural significance will become so diluted they will lose all meaning):



Above: Hot Cross Buns. Formerly only available on Good Friday. Now every supermarket sells them every day of the year.



Above: Chocolate Easter eggs. As I have eleven nephews and nieces I tend to bulk-buy these, and there is always one left over that keep for myself. But Cadbury’s mini-eggs have been on sale year-round for some time now, and no longer feel “special” or associated with Easter.



Above: Simnel cake. Almost gone now, although there were recipes in both the Guardian and the Daily (Sunday?) Telegraph. In the past my sister (who died of cancer in 2006) would make the family Simnel cake, now I bought this one in Asda and it was a bit dry (I could have bought one in Shepherd’s the bakers, but they only make so many and when they are gone they are gone).



Above: Easter biscuits. Havn’t been able to find these for some years. To remind myself they actually once existed I looked them up in one of our old cookery books although I would not attempt to make them (were they last made by my mother or grandmother?).



Above: Then I happened to be in Marks & Spencer and saw these Easter biscuits (and purchased them). They are exactly the same as the ones in the old cookery book, which makes me wonder if, like the Coelacanth fish, they have always been available and I have been too blind to notice them. “This is not just Easter food, this is M&S Easter food” as the television commercial goes.

More on the Coelacanth fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth

One of the few “shared media experiences” that have survived

25th March - my “project” has to be ready tomorrow. Apart from a Leicester facility letting me down over 17 jpgs, it should all be ready on time. In any case, I have done all I can and am having an evening off.

I also caught a later train this morning, which meant that I could listen to the Today programme in the car on the drive to the station. In the 8.10 interview Justice Minister Jack Straw was asked questions by John Humphrys. This 8.10 interview slot is one of the few “shared media experiences” that have survived the media fragmentation of the last ten years.

It was a tetchy and bad-tempered interview - by which I mean Jack Straw was tetchy and bad-tempered while John Humphrys made him answer (or point-blank refuse to answer) questions on the Iraq war. This was all the more impressive as Jack Straw is a slippery interviewee. At one stage Jack Straw was reduced to childish rudeness (“I’ve said that more times than you have”).

On a purely practical level the government should give in to demands for an enquiry into the Iraq war, as otherwise it must be forced upon them. Too many people (too many ordinary non-political people) supported the 2003 call to war and have subsequently been made to feel foolish and betrayed. If left unassuaged, these people will take their revenge at the general election (a government must never make bozos of its own electorate).

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies… How much does continued democracy in this country owe to Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys? One of them should get the Order of Merit for services to the nation.

On the estuary beneath the sea wall

Snow had fallen in the night and covered the fields around the house. The heavy winds and bitter cold of recent days had gone. Although there was no sun the snow reflected the available light so that everywhere was bright and without shadows.

I had a choice this morning - choral excellence or visual display. I decided on visual display and drove down onto the plain to a church right on the estuary beneath the sea wall. The church is very ancient (a former Templar presbytery) but so over-restored it looks Victorian.

Possibly the “highest” church in the county, although physically below sea-level. The congregation is a mix of locals, Anglo-Catholics who drive miles to get there, and retired clergy who are connoisseurs of this particular form of worship. The atmosphere was of an Essene-like community, with an emphasis upon purity.

I parked my car and walked through the snow and into the churchyard. Two elderly ladies were walking arm-in-arm to keep from slipping. Three bells were ringing (by one person operating a pulley system under the tower).

Inside there was a good crowd (not surprisingly, as it was Easter Sunday). The interior was very decorative, with colourful shrines along the side aisles, candles, flowers. Big Victorian Rood gleaming dull gold, stained glass representation of Melchizedek in the east window.

I sat in the nave, half-way down on the south side. Around me were couples, family groups, various isolated ladies (“safe with the love I was born to know”). A continuous juddering noise as the heating system filled the building with warm air.

Loud organ music, crashing a bit in places, as the processional hymn was sung and the choir and clergy (in lavish embroidered copes) entered. They passed along the nave in an aromatic cloud (an Anglican aromatic cloud). The big silver processional cross seemed to float over the heads of the congregation as the procession reached the wide chancel (by Temple Moore 1935 - one of his finest).

Hymns from the English Hymnal. Sermon delivered from the bowl-like Jacobean pulpit by the bearded middle-aged Rector, who talked about hope. Various notices.

Sung Eucharist. At the Peace we did not offer each other the sign of peace. A Hail Mary was inserted into the service (literally pasted into the service book). As we went up to take Communion the youth group sang alleluias to a piano accompaniment. In front of me a young mother, in a coat with a striking pattern of large black and white houndstooth, struggled to carry one toddler while leading another by the hand. Afterwards we sang the Regina Caeli.

Going out, a weak sun was shining. The snow was already turning to slush. An elderly lady walking beside me said: “It’s too cold to wait around for my husband… I’ve been coming here for fifty years… are you coming into the hall for a cup of tea?”

If not now...

I listened to Any Questions on Radio 4 earlier today. Polly Toynbee was talking about the uprising in Tibet, saying that with the 2008 Olympics being held in China there may never be a better opportunity to pressurise the Chinese. Her argument echoed Primo Levi’s dilemma - If not now, when?

More on Primo Levi: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-When-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/014118390X