Adventures in engineering

More book reviews - decisions and secrets

2007-03-07T13:13:00.000Z

Blink - Malcom Gladwell
S is for Silence - Sue Grafton

The premise of Blink is that human beings are good at making instantaneous and generally quite accurate decisions based on very little information. In some cases, apparently, when we have more information, the accuracy of our decisions does not increase along with the rise in information available. Gladwell introduces a number of examples - marriage guidance counsellors who can tell from tiny snippets of film whether a couple's marriage will survive, tasters who can instantly tell whether re-used ingredients have been used, doctors who use a simple algorithm to determine whether a patient presenting symptoms of heart attack is at real risk - and writes very entertainingly.

However, he has a tendency to repetition, as though the book was based on a series of lectures, and some inclusions, while interesting, don't exactly agree with the conclusions he draws. The highly accurate "snap decision", however, seems to be only possible if the person presented with the data and is making the decision is an expert; but Gladwell maintains that even untrained people could make a good guess based on tiny snippets of information.

It's an interesting book (similar in style to the misnamed Freakonomics, which is more about statistics than economics), and would be good for discussions after reading it, but Gladwell doesn't seem to make any real point in his book.

The second book is completely different, being the latest in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" crime series (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc.). It's something of a departure for her, for although her heroine private eye, Kinsey Millhone, has investigated "cold" cases before (such as the excellent Q is for Quarry), the books have always been written in the first person and from Kinsey's own point of view. S is for Silence includes sections written from others' point of view, and in a past time which Kinsey could not possibly have known about. It's a device that works well in this book, fleshing out some of the incidents that give life to the characters seen only in their youth or from others' recollections.

Kinsey is one of the best-written private investigators around. She doesn't usually muscle in on police cases, and her jobs are realistic. She's an independent woman, ageing naturally through the series (she's thirty-seven in this book, set mostly in 1987), sometimes prickly, sometimes critical, but always humane and likeable.

I'd recommend almost any of Sue Grafton's books (though I haven't read the first few) - they are interesting, well-written, and not repetitious. It's not necessary to have read the others to enjoy the latest (though, like any series character, it's better if you've made the journey from A already), and it's refreshing to read a series which is not sadistic serial-killer fare (Reichs, Cornwell) and whose central character is a tough, practical and realistic woman.

Charles and Eddie

2007-03-04T17:57:00.001Z

I was browsing iTunes today (mainly to pick up the latest podcast of The Now Show which is back on Radio 4), and I tried to find Charles and Eddie's fantastic 1992 hit, "Would I Lie to You?" Nothing. About nine different versions of the Eurythmics' song of the same name, but not the one I was looking for. So here's a YouTube posting of their video - forget the images though, it's a very hokey video, and listen to the tune...

I was also looking for Fiona Apple's cover of the Beatles' "Across the universe", which was on the soundtrack to "Pleasantville", but that doesn't appear to be on iTunes, either, despite the presence of Apple's albums and several versions of the song by other people ...

Anton Bruckner Choir concert - tomorrow

2007-03-02T17:57:00.000Z

Tomorrow marks my first concert with Anton Bruckner Choir. So I won't feel able to review it, later. Still, we're singing a mixture of music old - Taverner's Western Wind Mass, and Leroy Kyrie; Robert White's Christe, qui lux es et dies - and more modern - Herbert Howells' Take him earth for cherishing, Let God arise, Here is the little door, Salve regina, Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (Collegium Regale), and Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks.

I feel it's a good juxtaposition of 16th and 20th century music, and the variety in Howells' works is interesting, from the aching longing of Like as the hart, the strident, Stanford-like Let God arise, to the moving and beautiful Take him, earth for cherishing, which was written for President Kennedy's memorial service, but was inspired by his son's early death.

Book review - The Shadow of the Sun

2007-03-02T17:51:00.000Z

This is a book about Africa, in all its variety and puzzling contradictions. For a European, Ryszard Kapuscinski manages to get into the African mindset very easily, and he writes with great compassion and understanding.

The book is a series of vignettes, stretching over time from the late 1950s, in African countries alive with hope at the beginning of independence, to the 1990s. Kapuscinski first went to Africa in 1957, and was eager to try getting a real sense of what it was to be African, and not merely experience the surface of the continent. He made the point, early on in his career as a journalist, that his country (Poland) was always oppressed, and that Poles knew something of the domination of other countries, but to Africans he was a white man, a symbol of colonialism, something superior. As the book progresses, in roughly chronological order, the sense of the white man as superior is something that gradually became lost (telling recounted in the chapter Madame Diuf is Coming Home).

Along the way are terrifying brushes with coups, disease, thirst and ambush, as well as evocative and beautiful descriptions of places that Kapuscinski clearly came to love. People come to life, also places, in prose wonderfully translated into English by Klara Glowczewska. His travels take place mostly in sub-Saharan Africa pre- and post-independence, and countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. He makes no overt political points, and is always admirably clear-sighted, both about Europeans who colonised and now visit Africa, and about Africans themselves. It's easy to see, from his writing, that there have been several repeating trends through many African countries, from starry-eyed independence to dictatorship and disillusionment, but he gently points out that this is partly the result of the European powers carving up many different tribes, nations and kingdoms into only a few countries, leading to racial or tribal tensions within a single country, as well as the mindset of Africans themselves.

I doubt whether anyone not an African can really understand what it means to be African, but Kapuscinski takes us very far down that road.

A feminist fairy tale?

2007-02-13T18:31:00.000Z

I was sent this post as an email recently:

This is the fairy tale that we should have been reading as little girls!

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat, contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

A frog hopped into the princess' lap and said: "Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young Prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can satisfy my needs, prepare and serve my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sautéed frog's legs seasoned in a white wine, onion and cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself:

I DON'T F***ING THINK SO!!!!!

It makes you laugh, for it subverts the traditional expections of the "fairy tale" quite nicely. There are some points, however, where it falls down.

Firstly, this is still a fairy tale reality where princes can be turned into frogs. Despite what David Blaine proclaims, in this real world, magic is all sleight of hand and misdirection. And princesses are not always beautiful, no matter what small girls think, wearing pretty dresses and lightweight crowns. Think Princess Anne, here, and you're getting my point (though that's not to say that Princess Anne is not an admirable person in many ways).

Secondly, no princess would have to prepare the prince's meals and clean his clothes: that's what servants are for, even now. And no fairy tale ever claimed that the princess would ever have to do that for him. The other bits, however... well, those were always skated over by saying that the couple fell in love.

Thirdly, and this is the point that started me thinking, if the prince has been changed into a frog by magic, isn't the princess in the end actually eating the prince? Which is pretty gross, if you think of it like that. Cannibalism is not necessary, even to make a point.

So, if you want a fairy tale re-told, you can't do better than read the stories and novels of Robin McKinley. McKinley is one of my favourite writers: she has written original fantasy ("The Blue Sword" and "The Hero and the Crown"), and one of the most fantastic vampire novels ever published, "Sunshine", as well as her fairy tale retellings. These include The Princess and the Frog (in which the princess and the frog save each other) and The Twelve Dancing Princesses as short stories; Beauty and the Beast, twice (as "Beauty" and "Rose Daughter"); Sleeping Beauty (as "Spindle's End"); and, most movingly and horrifyingly, in a re-telling of the usually-bowdlerised Donkeyskin, "Deerskin". Not all are in print in the UK, except her most recent books, but most seem to be available from Amazon.

Film review - Dreamgirls

2007-02-04T17:09:00.000Z

Dreamgirls comes with a clutch of Academy Award and other nominations: it's an adaptation of a Broadway musical telling the story of a sixties' girl group, called the Dreamettes, later The Dreams. Three Detroit friends and singers, Effie (Jennifer Hudson), Deena (Beyonce Knowles) and Larell (Anika Noni Rose) attend a talent show one evening for the chance of a week's residency at the theatre. Although their act goes down well with the crowd, they don't actually win. Instead, they, and Effie's brother C. C. (Keith Robinson), who writes their songs, are offered another chance by an agent, Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx) to sing back-up for a more established act, the womanising Jimmy "Thunder" Early (a stunningly be-quiffed Eddie Murphy). Reluctantly, the girls accept this gig, and the story of the Dreamettes begins.

The film charts their rise, as they break through restrictive playlisting practices with the help of Taylor and a lot of dodgily-gained money to gain the top of the pop charts. Along the way, Effie loses it, Deena gets the lead singer gig in place of Effie (leading to a climactic R&B number sung by Hudson which prompted a round of applause in the cinema last night!), a replacement, Michelle, is found (Sharon Leal), and the Dreamettes become Deena Jones and the Dreams as their appeal crosses over to both white and black audiences.

Although the disclaimer at the end of the film states that any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental, this is arrant rubbish. The Dreams are very clearly based on The Supremes, with Deena being a rather nicer Diana Ross, and Effie based on Florence Ballard, with Curtis a thinly disguised Berry Gordy.

As to the performances, well, Murphy and Hudson deserve their acting nominations. Hudson, in particular, given that it's her first film role, and that Effie is such an important character. Beyonce Knowles reputedly lobbied hard for the part of Deena, even performing in costume and with choreography at her audition, though in the film, Deena doesn't actually do very much. Whether this is because Hudson's personality as Effie is so dominant, or whether Deena was meant to be a less important character is unclear. Certainly, her big number at the end of the film, Listen, was written for the film, and didn't form part of the original stage production. Foxx convinces as the morally ambivalent Taylor, who is willing to do almost anything for his groups to succeed, and becomes a control freak. Murphy, too, turns in a well-tuned performance that runs from hyper antics on stage, to depression and drug abuse.

The singing is excellent, with all the main characters singing their own numbers. It's a little disconcerting to find that some of the explanatory songs, forming part of the narrative, following on (more-or-less) naturally from the dialogue, but in the main, this is done well, and is usually not too silly. Suspend your disbelief, really, and imagine you're going to a filmed musical (but better).

One thing, though – if you don't like R&B of any description, don't go. There is a lot of singing...

Belated post

2007-01-24T18:32:00.000Z

As you may have noticed, I've changed my profile to match my current location. Not that I'm actually in east London at this very moment: I'm still at the office, which is in Westminster. The commute isn't bad, though the trains are usually crowded, but the views from the office windows are miles better than from the old place.

I will try to update the blog more often, but time seems to be at a premium at present. More of my (probably not very original) thoughts about the big move later.

Actually, one thing that struck me particularly (though it may just be a reflection of how many more people I now see each day), is how many smokers there seem to be. Is it the stress of living in a big city? I worry about the erosion of civil liberties, but selfishly, I shall be quite glad when the smoking ban is brought in, and I won't smell of smoke after an evening out with colleagues.

Film review - Night at the Museum

2007-01-11T21:58:00.000Z

When I first saw the trailer for this film I wasn't very interested. Things come alive at night? How good was that going to be? Well, G and I went out on Sunday night to the cinema, and picked this film to watch. The showing was at nine-thirty, with an audience comprised almost completely of adults, yet (probably because of the PG certificate) most of the trailers were for kids' films (Charlotte's Web, Arthur and the Invisibles*).

Night at the Museum starts in familiar territory – divorced parents with young son who loves his father (naturally), but who is a little ashamed at his father's perpetual failed schemes and ventures. Mum has a new boyfriend who is a bond trader, and is becoming a role model to the young boy. Dad (Ben Stiller), realising this possible transfer of loyalties, decides to get a proper job, and is sent by an agent to the Museum of Natural History, where there is a vacancy. Apparently, the museum is low on funds, and wants to retire its three old night guards (Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs), replacing them with a single new one. Larry is taken on, and left with a torch and a stapled list of instructions, to do his job the following evening.

Of course, he discovers that the exhibits in the museum come alive at night. Animals wander around, the monkey steals his keys, the dinosaur wants to play fetch, the Western pioneers want to fight the Roman legionaries, Attila the Hun (who looks more like Genghis Khan) wants to kill him, and Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams) gives him manly advice. Given Larry's previous track record, at the end of the night he's convinced that he will never cope with this bedlam, and decides to quit. It is revealed that the reason for all these shenanigans is the presence in the museum of the tablet of Ahkmenra, which brings to life inanimate objects.

He's persuaded to stay, and spends the next day researching the exhibits with the help of books, the internet, and a guide at the museum, the unfeasibly attractive Rebecca (Carla Gugino), who is writing a dissertation on one of the people featured in the museum, Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck). Also revealed is the realisation that the three doddery old night guards may not be quite so kind and helpful as they first appear. How Larry sorts out the problem and manages to foil the schemes of the old guard take up the rest of the picture.

Night at the Museum is a funny film, with many laugh-out-loud moments, though it's father-has-to-face-up-to-his-responsibilities-and-learn-how-to-stick-at-things-to-keep-his-son's-respect aspect is somewhat hackneyed. Still, the CG animation is fantastic, the supporting cast (with the exception of Ricky Gervais as the museum director, who is miscast) are excellent (particularly the warring duo of pioneer Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Steve Coogan's general Octavius), Ben Stiller's tendency to over-play things is kept to a minimum, and it's not too sentimental.

4/5

* The trailer for this film, incidentally, was intriguing, with live-action and CGI animated sequences. It has an interesting cast (Madonna, David Bowie, Mia Farrow, Freddie Highmore), and was directed or produced by Luc Besson – which could be a good or a bad thing, given Besson's track record.

The cult of the tenor

2006-12-19T22:33:00.000Z

What is it about tenors? Perhaps it's because there aren't that many good ones around; scarcity adding value. Or is it that the sound of a good tenor can be one of the most thrilling? I admit to finding a good countertenor more thrilling, and a bass-baritone more exciting, but the world, it seems, does not agree with me. Almost all operatic heroes (or antiheroes) are tenors – Don Giovanni, Figaro and Baroque operas aside, perhaps – just as all operatic heroines are sopranos. It may be that there are too many opera companies with too many productions needing too many tenors for the world to supply. So the good ones tend to get too stretched, and begin performing roles for which they are not suited.

In Britain, for example, the most natural "voice" for a man is baritone, but I suspect that this is true for most nationalities. And perhaps this is why tenors are so feted: they have unnatural voices*. It's not a modern phenomenon, with its idolising of Pavarotti (a very fine singer but an indifferent musician), Carreras (once a good singer) and Domingo (a very good singer with intelligence and musicianship). Not to mention the pretenders, like Andrea Bocelli, and (gulp!) Russell Watson. Caruso was adored, though to modern ears his recordings, which were made when technology was primitive and he was not at the peak of his career, are somewhat ropey, and his acting mannered. Bryn Terfel, who has now reached the status of "national treasure" is about the only bass-baritone who has anywhere near the same following.

Opera, at least in this country, has never had a huge following, especially compared to the fanatical devotion it inspired in Italy. In the early nineteenth century Milan, for example, private meetings at home were banned, and so the Milanese met instead at La Scala, visiting a single production probably more than once a week. It wasn't just the elite who attended, either, and the audiences were knowledgeable, having no hesitation in complaining if the opera was not up to their standards. The booing off of Roberto Alagna, in the current production of Aida, is a modern manifestation of this. However, it does appear that the booing was not spontaneous and had been orchestrated. Still, by most accounts, Alagna did not sing the role well, and has been replaced in the current run. I haven't heard Alagna sing, but like many opera stars nowadays, he is probably over-singing, and damaging his voice as result. 'Lunchtime O'Boulez', for example (Private Eye's music commentator) remarks in the current issue:

"It was reported throughout the world as (literally) a hissy fit. But the truth is that many at La Scala were expecting him not to turn up in the first place. For years now Alagna has been pushing his voice into roles that don't suit it, with consequent damage."

Coincidentally, Alagna's wife, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, also pulled out of her engagement to sing in Don Carlos at Covent Garden. She is another example of a singer who is singing too much, though her pulling out of Don Carlos suggests that she has recognised this. So what makes singers travel the world for a single evening's recital, flying to Vienna one day and to New York the next? It can't be good for their voices or their stamina. In the days before air travel, opera stars did travel widely, but they took days to get to the next opera house, and they would sing there for several weeks. Alagna should have taken a leaf from Domingo's book – the veteran Spanish tenor still sings, but has retreated to minor roles or short engagements, and spends much of his time in directing opera, where his knowledge and experience must be inspiring. But is it the modern world's increasing lust after celebrity that makes people follow the famous singer, irrespective of his or her true talent?

*In fact, one could argue that all opera singers have unnatural voices – no normal person could fill an opera house with their voice, unaided, unamplified, and over an orchestra.

The art of fug

2006-12-18T20:45:00.000Z

After my post about fashion, S. pointed me towards the "Go Fug Yourself" website (see link opposite), which I've been consuming with avidity lately. It's one of the funniest blogs around. While the premise seems rather destructive, in that the site is dedicated to showing up the fashion or appearance disasters of the wealthy or well-known (but not in the best sense, famous), much of it is written in terms of affectionate despair (Lindsay Lohan), as "letters" to the star's public (Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears), or in plain, straightforward, "What were they thinking?" astonishment. The ladies who write the blog have their own particular fashion no-no's (leggings, wearing trousers with a dress, not showing your nice shoes), but they cast their net well. It's by no means unmitigated fugliness, however, as there are often posts about the nice things that some previously fugged star has since been wearing.

Some of the people featured may require some googling, but not knowing who, say, Bai Ling is doesn't really detract from the entertainment. Some of the fashion disasters featured are jaw-droppingly awful, and what I find amusing is that the same outfit may well have been used in a so-called fashion magazine to illustrate the person's known taste and fashion sense (Jennifer Lopez in a silver metallic minidress and beanie hat combination springs to mind).

This is a lesson not to use the heart in car buying

2006-12-14T21:12:00.000Z

Well, my car obviously knows* that I am planning to sell it, and is playing up while it can. It had its MoT test last week, failed on a couple of things, which were put right, and re-tested to the Ministry's satisfaction. I drove it back from the garage without any problems and hadn't used it again until yesterday evening. Our group at work had our Christmas meal last night at East in Peterborough, so I decided to drive.

The car started up fine (thanks to Bob for the tip about depressing the clutch when starting up, which is prolonging the battery life nicely), but while I was reversing out of the drive, I noticed the engine was running somewhat raggedly. Ah, I thought, it's low on fuel - I had better fill up on my way into town. So I did, but the engine still seemed to be playing up, and the car was jerking a little when travelling at any steady speed. So I left the car in a nearby car park, walked to the barge, and spent the next four hours or so very enjoyably: the food in East, which is mostly Thai, was very good, and we had crackers, so everyone was wearing paper crowns and groaning at the lack of humour in the mottoes.

I returned to the car not long after eleven, and the damned thing would not start. The battery was live and well, and the starter motor was sounding healthy: unfortunately, the engine just wasn't catching. I sighed in resignation and called the RAC. Every penny I spend on my subscription is worth it. They sent out a local contractor, who arrived only twenty minutes after I'd called for assistance, and then spent the next hour and a half trying to find out what the problem was. To cut a long story short, the car was towed home and me with it at half-past one, the problem still not fixed.

Anyway, the car is now at its spiritual home, the local MG garage, and hopefully they will find out what is wrong. I suppose it's too much to hope that it won't cost an arm and a leg to fix. I've already been there and done that with my old car.

So here's the moral of the story: Buy a reliable car. Don't let your heart rule your head when shopping for motor vehicles. I really should have spent the extra and bought a Honda instead.

* I know cars are not sentient, but sometimes it's as if they are, the wasters.

No, no and thrice no!

2006-12-12T21:49:00.000Z

I shall say this only once, so listen carefully. Look, Diana is dead! Dead, I tell you! For God's sake let's just move on, please. Prince William is quoted as having said: "This big concert full of energy, full of the sort of fun and happiness which I know she would have wanted." Of course William is going to use this sort of justification for a charity concert, but honestly: who knows what his mother would have wanted? She's dead.

Sorry if I come over as overly unfeeling, but really I object this reverence of Diana's memory. Plus ageing rockers are using it as an excuse to crawl out of semi-retirement to assault our aural senses. I know Elton John was a friend of their mother's, but the princes should know better.

I'm not going to even comment on the conclusion of the report into her death, except to say sarcastically, well, that was unexpected. But I feel sure the conspiracy theories are going to continue to run, at least as long as Richard Desmond owns the Daily Express, anyway.

Incidentally, the picture included in the BBC's article seems to indicate that William will go the way of the Windsors with regard to hair loss*

* Okay, I know that male pattern baldness is inherited through the maternal line. Still, Earl Spencer was certainly balding.

Film review - Hollywoodland

2006-12-08T22:44:00.000Z

The film posters hark back to the golden age of Hollywood, with glamorous-looking actors in monochrome, and convey the sense of some illicit love affair. There have been a couple of such historical pictures out lately, such as The Black Dahlia. Hollywoodland takes as its starting point the death by suicide of actor George Reeves, first inhabitant of the Superman suit on TV, and an investigation into that death by a private investigator. But it also manages to examine the whole studio system through focussing on Reeves and his relationship with the wife of a studio boss.

When we first encounter the detective Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), we see him living in a slightly down-at-heel apartment block. A customer (Larry Cedar), obsessed with the idea that his wife is having an affair, keeps paying Simo to spy on her, though the detective insists that the man is mistaken. Later, Simo's family - his estranged wife Laurie (Molly Parker) and son Evan - is introduced. The news of Reeves's suicide is first mentioned, and its shocking effect on Simo's son and other children to whom Superman was real. Simo is hired by Reeves's mother, who insists that there is something not right about her son's suicide: she is convinced that he was murdered. She's something of an unpleasant character, her prime motivation being her conviction that her son deserves a statue. Ever the publicist, Simo begins his quest in a blaze of flashbulb light, but finds himself becoming interested in the case for its own sake.

Scenes flash back to Reeves' (Ben Affleck) early career, and his first encounter with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane). He's a struggling actor, she's the wife of a studio head, Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins). They become lovers, and he her kept man. Simo's investigation is also entwined with his weird client's obsession, and scenes are woven with Reeves' life both during his Superman career (a funny but shocking scene where the actor entertains a crowd of children with Superman foiling some bad guys and is asked by a small boy carrying a loaded gun if he can shoot Superman stands out), and afterwards during his attempts to shake off the Superman tag and do real work.

The film doesn't attempt to solve the mystery, and really seems to be about Simo's realisation that he is not a good detective, and that his willingness to take money for jobs where there is nothing to investigate can hurt other people badly.

The actors are very good, particularly Affleck and Lane. The film also confirms my opinion that Ben Affleck is an excellent supporting actor, but is no good as a lead. I very much enjoyed Bob Hoskins' turn, very subtly and deftly played, and Robin Tunney as Reeve's new girlfriend. Anyone who finds Adrien Brody annoying should enjoy the several scenes in which his character gets severely beaten-up.

It's an interesting film, with solid period detail, excellent performances, and an interesting story. It makes a good companion piece to LA Confidential, in that Simo runs up against the same studio schemers and fixers as Exley and White do in the earlier film, but in Hollywoodland, the studios and actors are given a more prominent role. If there's a real weakness it's that the film really refuses to condemn the shady practices employed, and invites the viewers to draw their own conclusions.

It's just not cricket

2006-12-06T23:17:00.000Z

To be honest, I didn't have high hopes before this Ashes series, and now they seem to have totally crumbled. Into ashes, as it were. I was pleasantly surprised to hear about Collingwood's double century in the first innings, particularly as he first got into the side by being a so-called "bits and pieces all-rounder". I also like that he's a Durham player, like Harmison, and Durham are not known as the best county side ever. Still, I might have known that it was too good to be true.

Reading comments on the BBC's Test Match Special blog reveals a variety but also a consensus of opinion.

Giles should be dropped and replaced with Panesar. I'm a fan of Giles, but even I have to admit that since his return to the side he hasn't performed at all well. Panesar's fielding isn't great, but he's much more of an attacking bowler than Giles.

The captaincy should be passed to Strauss until Vaughan returns to the side. I heartily agree with this. Flintoff possesses the ability to inspire his colleagues with the will to win, but tactically, he seems to be very limited. Tony Greig commented recently, in response to criticism about Flintoff's triple role, that most cricket captains are batsmen and have little experience of the ball. What he fails to understand, however, is that, without any tactical thought, it doesn't matter whether you can bowl, bat and keep wicket: you'll still be a rubbish captain. Steve Waugh, for example, was not a bowler, yet no-one ever suggested that he was not a great captain. I like Richie Benaud's comment that "captaincy is 90% luck and 10% skill - but don't try it without that 10%."

Fletcher needs to seriously consider his options for the next Test. He needs to be tough, and make players carry the can for their failures, rather than saying lamely that no-one was to blame.

It's easy to say, from our vantage point, that the England team are a bunch of wusses who capitulated to Aussie pressure. The pressure was there, certainly. Self-belief was probably not exactly high after the first Test. The point remains however, that England should have won the match. Their bowlers need to start taking twenty wickets in the match (Hoggard excepted - he at least performed well), and the batsmen need to stop throwing their wickets away.

Still, having read all this over, I can't help thinking to myself: oh, it's only a game. So what? And yet... I hope that the team can pick themselves up and win the next match. But I expect they won't. If England are to avoid a whitewash, I can only see the Aussies losing - not England winning.

Confession

2006-12-05T13:22:00.000Z

It's been pointed out to me that, like certain politicians, I should have made a full and frank confession of a potential conflict of interest with respect to my recent review of the Tallis concert. Still, I think I wrote a fair review despite the fact that I happen to be engaged to the alto soloist!

So I apologise, and if anything like this happens again, I shall confess it humbly, penitently and with a contrite heart. Hopefully before I get taken to task by L, anyway!

Concert review - Anton Bruckner Choir - Monteverdi: Vespers

2006-12-05T13:11:00.000Z

The concert took place on Saturday evening at 7.30 pm (not 7pm as previously noted) in the church of St Clement Danes, London. The church is situated in the middle of the Strand, but the traffic noise wasn't too obtrusive. It's a Wren church, built in 1682, damaged during the Second World War, and later restored. It serves as the Central Church of the RAF, and there are many memorials, particularly in the crypt, to the RAF dead. The church has been beautifully restored - lots of dark wood and intricate carving, bright gilding, and accented with a bright turquoise blue colour. I guess that the stained glass windows would look beautiful during the day, though they weren't visible during the concert. There was a good acoustic, too: bright without being reverberent.

The concert consisted only of the Vespers by Monteverdi, one of the largest and grandest Renaissance works. It was published in Venice, although Monteverdi was working in Mantua at the time. It has been conjectured that he wrote it as a kind of audition piece for the basilica of St Mark's, and he was certainly made choirmaster there three years later. The Wikipedia link above gives much more information about the structure of the work which I'm
not going to repeat here.

The performers were:
Conductor: Christopher Dawe
Soloists: Lynton Atkinson (tenor), Andrew Tortise (tenor); Ruth Beckmann (soprano), Karen Gilbert (soprano); Frank Taylor (tenor); Richard Hubbard (baritone), Marcus Marr (baritone); Charisse Amand (mezzo-soprano), Claire Bennie (contralto).
Monteverdi Ensemble (on authentic instruments)
Anton Bruckner Choir

The Vespers began with Deus in adiutorium meum (O God make speed to save us), which is a simple unison choral part accompanying solo tenor. The choral parts I found a little dull, but then that was Monteverdi's fault, not the choir's. The next movement, Dixit Dominus, was much more exciting, chorally, with mixed choral parts, tenor and bass soloists, followed by a beautifully sung Nigra sum, by the two tenors.

Laudate pueri was another choral psalm, well sung by the choir and sympathetically accompanied by the ensemble. It was followed by the motet Pulchra es, sung by the two soprano soloists: this was beautiful, and the two voices were well matched and complementary. The seventh movement, Duo seraphim, was begun by the two tenor soloists, and then joined by the third, singing from the pulpit: three very different voices, the amateur matching the professionals. Audi coelum, the ninth movement placed the two tenors at different ends of the church, with Atkinson singing the responses from the back, which was a good effect, particularly as the hidden voice gave the impression of otherworldliness.

Sonata sopra Sancti Maria again suffered, like the first movement, from being sung in unison voice parts. However, the lines were well sung, and there was some interest in seeing the variation Monteverdi created in setting the same words, and in the instrumental parts. The next movement, Ave maris stella, was sung partly by the choir, and partly by women soloists from it, each taking a verse. All the soloists were good, so it seems invidious to pick out any one of them, but I particularly liked Claire Bennie's voice - a lovely rich contralto sound.

Lastly there was sung the Magnificat, the highlight and finale of the work. The two tenors almost seemed to be doing "Anything you can do, I can do better", from either end of the church, augmented later by the choir.

The only problem during the performance was the long hiatus enforced partway through the Magnificat, because the ring of bells attempting to play "Oranges and Lemons" with mighty thuds and whirrs of clockwork and hammers was rather distracting. Once they had finished, the singing resumed, not the worse for the interval. One of the sackbut players could have been better, but didn't spoil the overall performance.

It's the first time I'd listened to the Vespers, and have to conclude that it's a most magnificent piece, almost operatic in its variation and setting. The concert was excellent, and was much enjoyed by a large audience.

Fashion - I don't understand it

2006-11-28T13:26:00.000Z

I don't normally buy women's magazines, but recently (for different reasons) picked up copies of Harper's Bazaar and InStyle. Harper's Bazaar was for something to read on the train; InStyle was solely for the 20% off LK Bennett coupon inside (I reckoned it was worth paying £3.20 for the magazine to get £45 off the new coat I was going to buy anyway). Thanks are due to the shop assistant in LK Bennett at Canary Wharf, anyway, for the tip! I flicked through both magazines, as a matter of interest.

Both magazines were concentrated on fashion, for want of a better word, though InStyle was more concerned with showing how you too could achieve a similar look to, say, Paris Hilton or Cate Blanchett. At least they showed clothes on real people (inasmuch as Paris Hilton is a real person), rather than six-foot tall models. Both catered towards the higher end of the fashion market, though InStyle also gave a few nods towards the high street shops such as Top Shop and French Connection as well as towards the more designer labels.

I don't understand fashion. I can see the appeal in shoes, hats and bags, though my ceiling price for buying such items is fairly low (though rising, now that I have more money available to spend). I don't understand how leopard print in any fabric can be anything but tawdry, nor how anyone could think that Mischa Barton is some kind of style icon: she's a skinny, pretty actress who always seems to be photographed in baggy clothes that are too big for her. I don't understand why a Lorus 18 carat gold watch can cost less than a tenth of the price of a similar Christian Dior watch: Dior is known as a couturier, not a watchmaker, whereas Lorus make watches.

In fact, the best fashion advice I've read recently has been in Annalisa Barbieri's column in the New Statesman: which probably says more about me than about so-called fashion magazines.

Advance warning!

2006-11-23T18:22:00.000Z

Anton Bruckner Choir (click on the link to the right) will be performing Monteverdi's Vespers at a concert on Saturday 2nd December 2006 at 7:00 pm. The concert will be at St Clement Danes' church, Strand, WC2.

A review to come later!

Tallis Festival Concert 2006 review

2006-11-23T18:16:00.000Z

Again, somewhat late in coming, a review of Exmoor Singers' concert last Sunday.

Exmoor Singers do this every year, quite apart from their other concerts, gathering together friends, fellow singers and ex-Exmoor singers for their annual Tallis extravaganza. In other words, the usually small-scale choir expands considerably to about 120, and Thomas Tallis' sublime 40-part motet Spem in alium nunquam habui is sung. There are other pieces performed as well, because Spem, good as it is, only lasts for about 10 minutes in performance (the scores make good fans on hot days, though, being about the same size as a broadsheet newspaper). The concert took place in the church of St Alban the Martyr, off Holborn, in the City of London.

This year, the companion works were Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Vaughan Williams' Mass in G minor, and a new piece, specially commissioned for the event, by Jaakko Mantyjarvi, Tentatio. Tentatio was lightly accompanied by hand bells, and the Chichester Psalms by organ, harp and percussion. The other two pieces were unaccompanied.

Chichester Psalms was written in response to a commission from Walter Hussey, one of the great modern-day church patrons, whilst Dean of Chichester. The words are in Hebrew, rather than in English or Latin, which can pose some problems for English choirs unused to singing the language. However, that wasn't a huge problem on Sunday because of the organ accompaniment. I was sitting more-or-less in the middle of the church, which does have rather a resonant acoustic, good for singing a capella. The organ completely overwhelmed the choir and turned what they were singing into tuneful mush. In the first movement, where the organ was loudest, not a word could be distinguished. The second movement, very lightly accompanied, mainly with harp, was much better, giving the chance for the words to be heard (The Lord is my shepherd), and the alto soloist to shine.

The choir then disaggregated and reassembled in a different arrangement around the church to perform Tentatio. This was another 40-part motet, but instead of being arranged in 8 choirs of 5 voice (SATBB) parts as the Tallis, was in 4 choirs of 8 voices (SSAATTBB) and 1 choir of 8 baritones. The words were in Latin, and told the story of Jesus' temptation by the devil in the wilderness (from Matthew's gospel). The choir of eight baritones sang the devil's words. This was an excellent work, interesting, tuneful and dynamic, and well sung from all round the church (and even from above, in the organ loft). Big round of applause, for the choir and the composer, who was also singing in the concert.

After the interval, eight choirs assembled around the church for Spem in alium. This is something that gets performed every year, and it's probably quite difficult to conduct in the round. Mostly, this sounded excellent, quite sensitive a performance for such a large choir, though it was clear that James Jarvis, conducting, wasn't getting quite as immediate response from his singers as he would have liked. But then, once you lose your place in this piece, it's very difficult to find it again! The antiphonal effects came across well through the location of the choirs, too.

Lastly was Vaughan Williams' Mass in G minor. This was another work I didn't know, but enjoyed. The double choir effects were not quite as pronounced as they could have been, and there was a tendency to sing much too loudly, so that there was not such a contrast between the very quiet parts and the very loud parts. The solo quartet were excellent, particularly the soprano and bass, singing from the pulpit slightly above the rest of the choir.

I did like the fact that Exmoor used their own singers for the soloists, both in the Mass and the Chichester Psalms, showing that there is plenty of talent to be offered by the amateur singer, as opposed to the professional. And of course, it makes it all cheaper.

And that's the one sour note: very well, the concert was free, and we were asked for donations, but each of the singers had paid to be there, and it wasn't cheap either. So one did feel a little put off by the heartfelt plea for cash when most of us, knowing someone in the choir, knew how little this was costing Exmoor, and what a huge fundraiser it is for them.

Not the rock band

2006-11-16T12:54:00.000Z

I've been listening over the past couple of days to a complete and unabridged reading of J.R.R.Tolkien's The Silmarillion. It's read by Martin Shaw, whom you wouldn't necessarily think of as the first choice to read an epic, but he reads it very well, even pronouncing the names correctly.

I've read The Silmarillion several times, though I often skip the bits I'm not keen on - Turin's story, for example, because I dislike the character. It's interesting to see just how much of a different style Tolkien used when writing this book, compared to The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit. His idea was to create an English myth that owed nothing to any other culture. I'm not sure that he succeeded in creating an English myth, but that he created something that has the power and resonance of true myth is indisputable. To hear it read aloud, one can truly appreciate the form and style, and the ancient form of story-telling which Tolkien was trying to re-create.

Although Tolkien never saw The Silmarillion published in a completed form during his lifetime, in it are many tales that are referred to in The Lord of the Rings, and more fully explained. His account of the creation of the world, and the people to dwell in it, brought into being by a great music, is one of the most beautiful and poetic creation myths I've ever read. In some ways, Tolkien's imagining of the beginning of evil is similar to that of the Judaeo-Christian myth of Satan rebelling against God's rule, but far more subtle and less clear-cut. Everyone acts from mixed motives, not all of which are entirely noble, nor entirely evil. The tragedy which unfolds is brought about both through malice and eagerness, mistrust, pride and courage.

The person I feel most curiosity and interest about, but because of the book's huge scope of time and geography there is little space devoted to him, is Maedhros, eldest son of Feanor. I'm not sure why he should be so appealing: maybe because he was loyal to his friends and to his family, was brave, suffered torture and recovered; and yet was corrupted by the oath into seeking the Silmarils, and killing those who kept any from him. It's because of those redeeming qualities that I find his fate so moving; yet when Turin kills himself, one can only feel that it's something of a relief to everyone else.

I find the book far more epic and heroic than Lord of the Rings, and in The Silmarillion he allows more space to wise and powerful, or even just proud and strong-willed, women than in the later tale. Of these, Luthien is the best-drawn: though she is beautiful and is her father's delight, she doesn't fear darkness, and is brave, loyal and powerful. No shrinking heroine to be protected by the hero, she: Beren and she are partners, complementary in skills and talents, equally willing to face danger and to protect the other.

It's tragedy on a grand scale, descending from a high point of bliss and light to ruin and darkness, but looks forward to eventual hope.

A serious post, for once

2006-11-15T13:33:00.000Z

The case reported above has been rumbling on for a while now, that of reforming Pakistan's rape prosecution laws. The original bill has been amended after an outcry from religious groups protesting plans to make rape accusations tried under civil as well as Islamic law. At present, a woman in Pakistan has to present four male witnesses to prove her case; if her attacker is found not guilty she can instead be punished for having extra-marital sex. Rape is apparently a capital crime in Islam, and so the need to prove such an accusation is paramount, as for any capital crime. But having to bring four male, not even female, witnesses to one's violation? How many women can even find one man willing to testify? It's also interesting, though frightnening, to realise that the hudood ordinance (which requires the four witnesses), was only promulgated in 1979. The law is thus not even traditional - if that's any excuse for keeping such an unfair piece of legislation.

While deploring the appalling rate of rape and violence against women in Pakistan (and hoping that the new laws do get passed with minimal amendments), we can't feel superior in the west. Even here, in a so-called civilised country, where we pride ourselves on our human rights, the burden of proving rape still lies on the woman attacked, and successful prosecutions are rare. This is partly because of reluctance to report the crime, and partly because proving such accusations often come down to one person's word against another's, and which the jury believes. When, even now, large numbers of the population believe that a woman is "wholly responsible" for being raped if she is drunk or dresses provocatively, then the average jury won't give the woman the benefit of the doubt.

It makes one wonder, in these supposedly enlightened days, why many men still fear women and wish to subjugate them.

Something for the weekend?

2006-11-13T13:02:00.000Z

The weekend saw me in London again, full of plans for re-decorating the kitchen of G's house. As part of our plan (and to avoid spending too much time actually in the house), we went off to Olympus Tiles to select tiles for kitchen and bathroom. I know, we lead a really exciting life!

It wasn't very busy, so we were rather at the mercy of a knowledgeable salesman who would keep coming up and telling us about stuff when we were looking round. It was interesting to see how they had tiles there which, if you put them up in your bathroom, would recall Victorian public conveniences, or seventies' bathrooms, or even show that you had absolutely no taste whatsoever. Who on earth decided that moulded fruit standing out from a tile was a good look? Anyway, we found some tiles we liked and bought some samples to take home and try against the background of the two rooms.

On Sunday, having been chastised the day before by one of the neighbours, I decided to tackle the front garden, which until that point was a mass of weeds and some grass. It's odd that, now feeling a sense of ownership with the garden, which I never felt when I was a child with any garden that my parents cultivated, I set to work with a will that would have considerably surprised my mother, had she seen me. Most of the weeds were removed, and part of the garden dug up and forked, and discovered bulbs decently reinterred. It looked quite tidy by the time we had lunch and had to pack up for the day.

Finding ourselves again in South Kensington on Sunday evening, G and I decided to have dinner at a Moroccan resturant on Brompton Road we'd passed several weeks earlier. It's called Cous Cous, and isn't far from South Kensington tube station. Inside, the decor is fantastic - quite dark, with very little direct light - with red walls, lots of wood, tiled floor, rugs and pierced metal lampshades. There was a lovely smell as we walked in, too - though I'm not sure whether that was due to scented candles or the hookah a patron was smoking! We hadn't booked, but found a table quite easily at 7pm.

We chose things from the menu that sounded interesting, but the host, a very charming chap, was fully ready to explain our choices. We picked a flavoured orange juice to drink that was delicious, so full of other things that the orange wasn't dominant. G had a starter, a chicken pie. This sounds very dull, but it was lovely - moist chicken with sweet spices and nuts, in a round parcel of filo pastry. We both had tagine for main course - G's was of strips of lamb cooked with prunes, boiled eggs and nuts; mine was minced lamb meatballs and poached egg in a spicy tomato sauce - and a bowl of cous cous. The cous cous also was superbly cooked - light and fluffy and tasty, without any water. We both felt rather too full for dessert, but we each had some mint tea, and were suprised by the addition of a couple of pastries after we'd asked for the bill. The pastries were rather sweet, rather like baklava, though I quite liked the one stuffed with pistachio nuts.

It was one of the most delicious meals I've had for ages - partly due to the uniqueness of the cuisine, and partly due to the way in which it was cooked. The service was excellent, and even the permitted smoking didn't interfere too much with our enjoyment of the meal. Cous Cous is highly recommended.

Old fat furry catpuss

2006-11-11T21:28:00.000Z

The art of blogging, apparently, is to record one's day-to-day life on a regular basis. I generally find that events of interest pass by without me blogging about them. So this post is about something I actually did two weeks ago...

Songs from Bagpuss was a show staged at the smaller of the two venues at The Sage, Gateshead, a decagon-shaped room, with at least three tiers of seating. It was the first time I'd been to The Sage, though I'd seen it many times from the other side of the Tyne (being an actual Geordie, I don't normally go south of the river). It's an impressive space, on the inside as well as on the outside. The acoustic of the venue was great, and the audience, primarily though not exclusively parents with small children, very much enjoyed themselves. We were all asked to join in with singing, squeaking along the mice, and shouting out the relevant missing words in some of the songs. Most of us were also wearing paper mouse masks which were supplied at the door.

There were four singers and musicians, two men and two women; two of which had been involved with the music for the original Bagpuss programmes, fondly remembered by many thirty-somethings. These were Sandra Kerr, voice of Madeleine, the rag doll, and John Faulkner, voice of Gabriel, the toad. Kerr and Faulkner had actually written many of the songs themselves, and the other songs were traditional folk songs. It was amusing to see that the two newer performers were the ones who knew the words... Very impressed that the younger woman (apologies, can't remember her name) could play the violin while clog dancing.

Anyway, the songs were sung enthusiastically by the performers and the audience, all in the auditorium squeaking loudly along with, "Heave! Heave! Heave!" in response to Sandra Kerr's "Marvellous mechanical mouse organ!" We had a great time. If the show ever comes your way, I'd recommend you go and see it: even if you don't have kids.

Strange but good

2006-11-07T18:01:00.000Z

Although I nominally listen to BBC 6 Music in the mornings when I'm getting up and ready for work, I find myself often hearing things but never finding out who the songs are by. For example, I'd heard that thing by Lily Allen several times before I realised who was singing, and I'm sure I've listened to several up and coming new bands without actually being able to identify any of them. Mind you, I could argue that none of them have ever inspired me to find out the band or singer so that I can buy the stuff myself (apart from searching iTunes to find XTC's "Senses Working Overtime" which I heard on Phill Jupitus' show a couple of weeks ago). One exception, though, has been Amy Winehouse's "Rehab", which I did feel the need to buy.

This morning I heard what has to be one of the oddest cover versions ever considered: The Divine Comedy covering "No-one Knows" by Queens Of The Stone Age. I missed probably about half of the song: the bit I did hear was good, but... It's just the utter incongruity of it, rather like Nouvelle Vague's smooth versions of punk classics, that was so striking. Neil Hannon's take is not quite as sleazy as Josh Homme's, and the Divine Comedy's version features (namechecked) banjo and violin solos!

Having now checked The Divine Comedy's official website, I see that the cover version is listed on the Q&A page. However, it doesn't appear to be slated for an official release.

You can’t believe all you read, you know...

2006-11-06T13:26:00.000Z

Whilst one naturally takes into account that all print media appear to have their own slant on the news, politics, celebrities, fashion, and so on, it’s interesting to see how that bias can in turn influence one’s own opinions. It’s said that there are two ways to lie: suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Most magazine articles, unless the journalist in question hasn’t done his/her research, or is completely unscrupulous, steer clear of outright lies. Even when this is done, the moderately-informed reader can generally detect this.

Suppression of the truth, or the bits of the truth that don’t happen to fit, however, is another matter entirely. The facts are generally correct, but the reader is not presented with the full story, and so is unable to reason based on full disclosure.

This sudden realisation (perhaps rather late in coming) was sparked by reading an article about Hispanic immigration into America in this week’s New Statesman (an admittedly left-wing-biased publication). A short feature about Eva Longoria was also included with the longer article by Mario Vargas Llosa. Now, I don’t know much about Longoria, apart from the fact that she’s an actress, who plays an unfaithful wife in Desperate Housewives. Previous press articles have suggested that she’s rather a vain, self-obsessed woman, and have not hinted at the fact that she might have a brain or a social conscience. Yet the New Statesman’s feature suggested that she has both, and campaigns for the Democrats. Unlike many other high-profile Hollywood Democrats, however, she’s actively campaigned to raise the status and positive profile of Hispanic Americans, whether illegal or not. The feature makes the comment that a journalist from Maxim (a men’s magazine), was utterly taken aback when interviewing her, to find someone who tried to use the interview to highlight her concerns. A far cry, I daresay, from the article which finally appeared.

The presentation of celebrities in the press can be equally skewed through no fault of the journalist, however. Stars’ PR people can be oddly determined that journalists shall portray the accepted view of their star, and not allow any questions on subjects that may show another light. Nicole Richie, for example, is generally portrayed as an airhead blonde bimbo, though she is apparently quite intelligent and interested in more weighty matters than her PR allows, according to one journalist (the encounter, apparently, led to the hack in question giving up celebrity reporting). But what purpose does this serve? Why would it be in Ms Richie’s interest to appear less intelligent than she actually is? And why would her PR actively encourage this view of her client?

Admittedly, most people would like to portray the good bits of their personalities. So-called "celebrities" may well be as vain, shallow and meretricious as they appear to be, but if they are not allowed to express themselves completely, how can we discriminate? Let's have the whole truth and make up our own minds.

Good Night, And Good Luck

2006-11-03T17:48:00.000Z

I haven't posted for a while because the broadband at home is being temperamental, and I've been busy at work. So here, long overdue, are my thoughts on television.

Having seen "Good Night, And Good Luck" reduced lately, I eagerly bought the DVD of the film, which I watched yesterday evening. It’s a good film, though I hesitate to give it the full five stars because of a certain lack of tautness and some irrelevance in the plot (though perhaps comparing it with “All The President’s Men” is rather unjustified). The performances are very good, particularly David Strathairn as Edward Murrow, and a very sub-fusc George Clooney (who also co-wrote and directed) as Murrow’s producer, Fred Friendly. Frank Langella also impressed with his performance of CBS boss Paley.

The main scope of the film covers Murrow’s attempts on national television to point out the unconstitutional and illegal methods of Senator McCarthy in rooting out Communism. It’s stated clearly that the CBS crew were in no way Communists themselves, apart from Joe and Shirley Wershba (Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson), but what concerned them was the damning by association, of hearings held in camera at which accused were not allowed to meet their accusers, and where the whole due process of law was not followed. Clooney admits in the DVD featurette that of course the film could be used to point the finger at the current treatment of Guantanamo detainees, but it’s about more than that.

Murrow’s thesis, expressed at the beginning and end of the film, is that television must not insulate us from real life, by shrinking from telling the public the truth, and being afraid to editorialize. The film makes the point that expressing dissent is not the same as being disloyal. Murrow became disillusioned by the increasing “dumbing down” of television news, and the increasing preoccupation with flashy visual images that he thought distracted from the message. It’s worth pointing out, perhaps, that he began life as a radio journalist.

While, in Britain, the news and current affairs still appears to be taken more seriously than in the United States, we can’t become complacent. While ITV seems to be descending into the search for mass audience, even the BBC is not exempt (with some notable exceptions, such as Radio 4).

It seems somewhat salutary to reflect on the media circus surrounding Madonna’s decision to adopt a child from Malawi, having just watched “Good Night, And Good Luck”. At first glance the two are not related, but the overarching message of the film is that television has a duty, as in the BBC’s charter, “to inform, educate and entertain”, but in that order. Newsnight’s decision to have Kirsty Wark interview Madonna, for example, is coming perilously close to being entertainment. I haven’t seen the interview, and frankly am unconcerned whether Madonna chooses to adopt one, many or no children from anywhere. But Wark is reported to have conducted an interview which did not press the singer about any of her claims, as she would have done, had her interviewee been, say, Tessa Jowell. It seems that even hardened journalists are not immune to the cult of celebrity.

The BBC is funded by public charter, and should not, ever, have to chase ratings. The BBC should have a duty to make unpopular programmes for minority interests, should programme news and current affairs at prime time slots, should question and get answers, and should bring us opinion, editorial and truth. It should not have to worry about losing audience to commercial stations: it should concentrate on making quality programmes that will make us think and sharply question the world we live in, not insulate us from it. However, the current BBC management, not helped by the Government's ideas on the subject, seem bent on propelling the corporation in the opposite direction, and pursuing style over substance.

At least we have relatively independent broadcast media, not controlled by government or their cronies - compare that to Berlusconi's stranglehold on the Italian media, for example - and we should fight to keep it that way.

Night on the Island

2006-10-22T18:39:00.000+01:00

A story on the BBC news website today indicates that the Indian government plan to open up almost 50 new sites for tourism in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. Before the 2004 tsunami, tourism had been steadily growing in the islands, but was abruptly cut off in the months following the disaster, when hundreds of people lost their lives or were made homeless. In order to try to increase tourism, the government offered perks to people travelling to the islands for their holidays, and air fares were considerably reduced. However, it was a mostly domestic tourism last year, probably because of these incentives.

Now, it seems, the government wants to develop new sites in the islands, though states that these will be carefully chosen, and developed in accordance with ecological good practice and so on. How realistic this will be, of course, is a different matter. Can virgin sites ever be developed so carefully as to cause no impact on the surrounding area? According to the article, it's not as if any of the uninhabited islands will be undesignated, and used as private resorts.

I'll admit that I don't know much about the Andamans, apart from what I culled from M.M. Kaye's "Death in the Andamans". This is one of her six "whodunnits", set in various bits of long-vanished Empire: the book was originally published in 1960 as "Night on the Island". Kaye's foreword to the 1985 Viking edition stated that the idea for the story, however, was roughed out in 1938 when she herself had made a visit to the islands and stayed with a friend there, and it appears that the story is set in that period.

There's a great charm in Kaye's "contemporary" fiction as compared to her historical fiction such as "The Far Pavilions" or "Trade Wind". The settings are very well drawn and attractive, with the unspoilt appeal of past years and the fact that each of her heroines were travelling to unusual or untouristed places: the Andamans; Berlin in 1953; Cyprus in 1949; Kashmir in 1947; Kenya and Zanzibar in the early 1950s. Kashmir is probably no longer a desirable tourist destination, given the tensions there, and which Kaye mentions in her book were even then very much a problem in the last days of the Raj. Cyprus before partition is described beautifully, and the affection for the island which the author had is obvious. It's interesting to read "Death in Kenya" as a defence of the white settlers' point of view during the Mau Mau Uprising: nowadays, however, one would be hard put to defend the British Government's tactics.

"Death in Zanzibar" is spoiled for me despite its detailed, unusual and interesting setting by the character of its heroine, Dany Ashton, an astonishingly naive, selfish and brainless girl. Kaye doesn't make the same mistake in her other books, though: Sarah Parrish and 'Copper' Randal, for example, are intelligent and resourceful young women. "Death in the Andamans" is my favourite, partly because of the unusual setting, and partly because of the very appealing relationship between Copper and her friend Valerie. I'm unsure whether the books are still in print, but I'd recommend them all (with reservations as noted!)

Book review - Moon Tiger

2006-10-02T12:51:00.000+01:00

When I was a child, I read a few of Penelope Lively’s books for children: The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, The Voyage of QV66, A Stitch in Time, and others. I’d never read any of her adult novels or other works until G recommended them to me, so I picked up Moon Tiger last weekend, and finished reading it yesterday.

Moon Tiger won the Booker Prize in 1987, and I think it is the first and only Booker Prize-winning novel I’ve ever read. It is a beautifully-written book, spanning the life led by fictitious writer-historian Claudia Hampton, told in non-chronological flashbacks, woven together with her plans for new book, a history of the world. Most of the book is told from Claudia’s viewpoint, but certain episodes are seen by several people: her brother, Gordon; Gordon’s wife, Sylvia; Claudia’s lover, Jasper; their daughter, Lisa; and a Hungarian art student, Laszlo. Each point of view is distinct and consistent, but the variation is not distracting.

The main part of the book tells of Claudia’s time in Cairo, where she was a war correspondent. This is set at a time when the author was a child, and memories of Cairo and Egypt are clear and evocative. Claudia falls in love with a British tank commander, Tom Southern, and is later devastated by his death. Although this story line only begins about half-way through the book, one can clearly see that it has changed Claudia, though she might not consciously admit it. She’s an entertaining heroine: spiky, arrogant, argumentative, intelligent, opinionated, unconventional, unable to show much affection to her daughter; yet you warm to her, wishing that you had known her.

Yet the novel is more than just Claudia’s story, or of any of the other characters, of whose lives one gets only brief but tantalising glimpses. Lively talks about the English language, the conquest of Mexico, the history of Egypt, war, love, loss and the difficulties of really knowing any single person.

It isn’t a long book, brief by the standards of most novels now written, but almost every page is necessary. Not a word is wasted. Thoroughly recommended.

My horoscope

2006-09-29T18:04:00.000+01:00

Jupiter’s passed through Orion and coming to conjunction with Mars;
Saturn is wheeling through infinite space to its pre-ordained place in the stars;
And I gaze at the planets in wonder, at the trouble and time they expend
All to warn me to be careful in dealings involving a friend.

Donald Swann

Yet another song from At the drop of another hat, but it points my general disdain for astrology. I removed my date of birth from my Blogger profile because it used this information to display my “star sign”, which is all complete rubbish. How anyone can take horoscopes seriously is beyond me, almost on a par with those adherents to the Flat Earth theory I posted about last week.

Private Eye, in an issue a couple of weeks ago. mocked Jonathan Cainer’s “predictions” regarding the re-classification of Pluto, but the fact that he was so spectacularly wrong misses the point, really. As Swann points out, it is inconceivable that the apparent motions of the Sun, Moon and planets of the Solar System through purely nominal constellations, thousands and millions of parsecs away, can affect our life on Earth to such a degree as astrologers claim. Astrology is a pseudo-science, with nothing at all scientific about it. You only have to listen to astrologers speaking, or read their columns (and most newspapers* have their “Stars” columns) to realise how much of what they write is generalities that could be broadly applicable to almost anyone.

It always amazes me that otherwise normal people read horoscopes and believe them: though why those who claim not to believe still read such columns “just for fun” is also beyond me. You might as well read predictions based on the pattern your tea-leaves make in your cup (though this can be avoided by using a good tea-strainer and high quality tea), or by interpreting the entrails of a sacrificed chicken (and you could eat the chicken afterwards). All these so-called astrologers, or anybody who claims to be able to predict future events from anything, are like stage magicians, fooling the public by sleight of hand and misdirection.

* The Sunday Telegraph used to have (and hopefully still does have) a weekly spoof astrology column written by “Psychic Psmith”. It was very funny, and poked fun at the stupid things that generally get written by “serious” astrologers.

Flanders and bird flu

2006-09-27T12:19:00.000+01:00

Recently I’ve been listening a lot to Flanders and Swann’s songs from their records, At the drop of a hat, and At the drop of another hat. I thought I’d post this, A song for the weather, and leave the comparisons with the current climatic conditions to you...

January brings the snow:
Makes your feet and fingers glow.

February’s ice and sleet:
Freeze the toes right off your feet.

Welcome March with wintry wind:
Would thou wert not so unkind.

April brings the sweet spring showers:
On and on for hours and hours.

Farmers fear unkindly May:
Frost by night and hail by day.

June just rains and never stops:
Thirty days and spoils the crops.

In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No it’s not!

August cold and dank and wet:
Brings more rain than any yet.

Bleak September’s mist and mud:
Is enough to chill the blood.

Then October adds a gale:
Wind and slush and rain and hail.

Dark November brings the fog:
Should not do it to a dog.

Freezing wet December then:
Bloody January again!

words: Michael Flanders
music: Donald Swann

Concert review - Anton Bruckner Choir - Saturday 23rd September

2006-09-26T17:23:00.000+01:00

Clutching my bags of shopping, I made my way to St Luke's church on Sydney Street (not far off the King's Road) for Anton Bruckner Choir's autumn concert, conducted by Christopher Dawe. The almost last-minute change of venue was caused by the Temple church having not yet completed its planned building work. The programme consisted largely of French unaccompanied music, though there were a few things with organ accompaniment and one organ piece to give the singers a brief break:

Ubi caritas - Durufle
Salve regina - Poulenc
Exsultate Deo - Poulenc
Quatre petits prieres de St Francois d'Assise - Poulenc
Litanies a la Vierge Noire - Poulenc
Chorale in A minor (organ) - Franck
Mass in G - Poulenc
The Beatitudes - Part

Requiem - Faure

In discussion afterwards, it was generally agreed that the first half could have been shorter, though no-one could decide which piece should have been discarded! The choir struggled with tuning from time to time in the Poulenc pieces, which are very tricksy. However, the Gloria and Agnus Dei (with Ruth Beckmann as soloist), in the Mass, and the lovely Litanies a la Vierge Noire for women's voices and organ, were particularly well sung. The one break in the otherwise entirely French programme came with Arvo Part's setting of the Beatitudes. This piece starts off simply and even boringly, before slowly building to an astonishing and moving climax. The choir sang this superbly*, and I don't mind admitting that I had tears in my eyes at the end.

The first half was, as singers had warned me, the more interesting of the two parts of the concert: the Faure Requiem is a bit familiar and even hackneyed by now, though the choir sang it sensitively. The soprano soloist, Helen Cocks, was very good, but the bass could have done with more gravitas in the Libera me movement. The organ tended to overpower the choir at certain points, though otherwise Nicholas O'Neill played well.

The next concert is Monteverdi's Vespers, that monument of Renaissance music: I'm looking forward to it.

* I should say here that most of the singers I spoke to found the Part immensely boring to sing. W. suggested that he should write a spoof piece called The Platitudes by "Avro Prat". I wonder what that would sound like...

Unobtainable books

2006-09-25T17:33:00.000+01:00

I did a bit of shopping on the King's Road at the weekend. More about that at some other time, perhaps, since this post is to be about The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson, a copy of which I bought from Waterstone's on Saturday.

I haven't even finished it yet, but feel compelled to write about it. The book's set in a future, never precisely stated when, where enclaves have been set up all over the Earth by various religious, ethnic or commercial "phyles", and nano-technology can be used to create all manner of items, machines, computers inside paper, and diamond sheets cheaper than glass. One of the phyles are the Atlantans, or New Victorians, who have reverted to the solid values and morals of the 19th century Victorians as a model to live by. One of the more prominent of these, Lord Finkle-McGraw, disturbed by the very bland and conventional upbringing and views of his own children, has determined that his young grand-daughter will be educated somewhat less conventionally. For this purpose, he has hired an Engineer, John Hackworth, to create The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, an interactive book which Elizabeth can use and which will help her become more creative, eccentric and less staid.

In the process of creating the Primer, Hackworth decides to create an illegal copy to give to his own daughter, Fiona. However, he's mugged on his way home from having generated to illicit copy, and the Primer falls into the wrong hands. Or, let's say, the hands of a girl for whom it was not intended, an orphan, Nell, whose home life is far from the privileged one that Elizabeth (or even Fiona) will live. She bonds to the Primer, which teaches her how to read, how to stand up to bullies, and tells her stories - and otherwise acts almost as a surrogate parent (though not necessarily by showing her only the good things in life).

Various other persons and interests want to get hold of the Primer, or to make copies of it: this involves Hackworth in bribery and spying for both sides as atonement for his crime.

It's wonderfully imaginative stuff as usual from Stephenson, but it leaves me lamenting that the Young Ladies' Illustrated Primer is just a figment of his imagination. I so wish I had had a copy, growing up. Even now.

But no, it really is flat, I tell you!

2006-09-22T13:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I was sent a link to the Flat Earth Society. They have a discussion site with various forums populated by Flat Earthers and sceptics. Having read a couple of the threads, all I can say is Oh my god! (Okay so I don't believe in God, but that particular exclamation seems to fit)

There were just so many things wrong with the ideas proposed on the site and the spurious "science" cited to shore up the theory, that I kept wanting to sign in and write a reply refuting all their ideas! One doesn't know whether they're posting ironically, or to provoke a reaction (which they certainly get!) or whether they do actually believe. There are a few sane, rational people (who tend to have the better grammatical standards) who post replies exhorting the Flat-Earthers to actually look at all the evidence for a spherical (if not perfectly spherical) Earth.

While Terry Pratchett never really explains in his Discworld books how a flat disc supported on the backs of four great elephants standing on the shell of the great turtle A'Tuin can support life, it doesn't matter, because that's only fiction. No-one in this world should ever believe anything of the sort.

We wants... a training day!

2006-09-21T17:24:00.000+01:00

What with it being International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Tuesday (I know, some people have far too much time on their hands), I wanted to post up the original Pirate Sketch from the excellent Million Pound Radio Show. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be living anywhere in the internet, though mentioned in several places, and the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, issued a cassette containg four episodes from the series, but have not re-issued it on CD. Nor does it appear to be available in its cassette format any more.

Might have to try converting it to an mp3 file using my iMic...

Lysistrata in modern dress

2006-09-13T17:31:00.000+01:00

Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes, which details the Greek women's dedication to stopping a senseless war by going on a sex strike.

Colombian gangsters' wives and girlfriends are going to do the same. Except they have a rap, not Greek verse.

Life imitating art?

Not so much of a shopping trip, more a quest

2006-09-13T12:19:00.000+01:00

Women are all sorts of sizes and shapes. And most clothes shops are parts of national or international chains, and shapes and sizes vary even more from country to country. So I shouldn't be annoyed to find that one has to shop for clothes quite carefully. However, it would be so much more helpful if all the clothes manufacturers did actually use the same sizing system. I'm not particularly fat (nor at all skinny, either), and of average height (about 5 foot 6 in old money), yet can I find trousers to fit me? Can I heck. One problem, I suppose, is that I rarely wear high heels, so I tend to find all trousers rather long in the leg. The solution to this, taking the hems up, I would do for expensive clothes, because at least the effort involved in the sewing is balanced by the cost of the clothes - but I don't feel inclined to do this for cheaper trousers. This means that my favoured high street shops (H&M, Zara) have been dropped from my list of trouser emporia, and I'm reduced to going to Next. Next at least seem to make clothes for real women, as opposed to skinny 15-year-old girls or stick-thin celebrity-wannabes. A new shop has opened close to my office, so I went in last week to have a look at the selection on offer. I should add that I was looking for work clothes - so, smart casual black, brown or blue trousers.

The selection was actually quite wide, so when I'd discarded those that looked wrong, those that were made out of vile artificial fabric, and those that weren't my size (14 regular), I had seven pairs to try on. Taking my pile of trousers into the changing room wasn't a great feat, as there were hardly any staff around, and no-one on duty at the entrance to the cubicles. Of the seven pairs I tried on, two fit me, being not too snug on hips and thighs, and not too baggy on the waist. And even then I have to wear heels with them (luckily my 2-inch block heeled Joan Halpern boots are high enough).

I feel really sorry for the short women around: how do they manage?

Dearth of posts

2006-09-08T18:01:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted much lately because there's been stuff going on in my personal life (good stuff, actually) which I don't want to blog about, because that's private.

Anyway, as a result of the aforementioned good things, I shall be moving down to London in a couple of months, to join the crowded metropolis. I'm looking forward to the move: Peterborough's fine as a place to live, but I'm very conscious that it doesn't have much cultural activity. In London I shall be able to sing regularly, and go to concerts, and see plays that aren't pantomimes (if I want: I'm not really a big fan of theatre), and films at cinemas to which I don't have to get in my car and drive for fifteen minutes to patronise. Hurrah!

Welcome back

2006-09-08T17:23:00.000+01:00

Hurrah! The News Quiz returns to Radio 4 tonight (guess what I'll be listening to on the way down to London). I'm not sure why Simon Hoggart isn't in the chair, so we have Sandi Toksvig, a formerly regular panellist, instead. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though I think she's quite a funny woman.

I've enjoyed listening to the show ever since the days of the Private Eye versus Punch rivalry which led to the superb teaming of Richard Ingrams and Ian Hislop (and Alan Coren with anly old guest panellist). Ingrams was notorious for not ever having appeared to have read or listened to the news each week, and sometimes Hislop (despite his reputation on Have I Got News For You) was not much better. Alan Coren I could do without: never as funny as he thinks he is.

Much of the fun in the show comes from the interaction of the panellists with each other. It seems to work well when they just riff off each other's comments. Francis Wheen is usually witty, making comments about his odd resemblance to Ian Duncan Smith (now almost forgotten former Conservative Party leader); Armando Ianucci (however I spell that it looks wrong) takes absurdity to a new level. I liked Linda Smith's comparison of world-shattering events to mild domestic tragedies, like losing scissors.

There's just one problem - it's not available as a "futuristic" podcast (as The Now Show would have it). Is this the BBC just guaranteeing sales of News Quiz CDs before Christmas?

Update:
Sandi Toksvig did a fine job of being chairman - although her reading of the script was a little stilted, probably due to lack of practice, her off-the-cuff remarks were very funny. I'm looking forward to the next edition.

Meanwhile, in another part of London...

2006-09-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

How fantastic is this! Dangermouse is back.

Ah, who says the BBC isn't worth the licence fee?

Mappa mundi

2006-08-24T18:13:00.000+01:00

One of the things I particularly like about geology is the maps. I like maps in any case, figuring out what the symbols represent, and revelling in the details. There is also something very artistically right with the Ordnance Survey's 1:25,000 scale Explorer maps, even with their limited colour palette (not quite so fond of the 1:50,000 scale Landranger maps, though these have their place). Admiralty Charts are also interesting, but seen from the opposite point of view, in that OS maps are interested in the land, and include all sorts of landmarks, streets and onshore stuff; whereas Admiralty Charts pooh-pooh the land (except where there might be a couple of tall chimneys) as being fit only for land-lubbers, and lovingly detail every change in the sea bed, showing where lights, wrecks and pipelines run.

But geological maps are the best, because they're coloured. They make no concession to land use, or even the actual colour of most rocks (which, although varied, doesn't tend to be as bright as the maps show). For example, igneous rocks such as basalt are usually shown on maps as bright scarlets and fuschia-pinks. Igneous rocks are occasionally pink, but never quite so brightly, luminously, excitingly so. The idea when looking at a geological map is to imagine all the soil, vegetation, tarmac and concrete stripped off the bones of the land, so that you're looking directly at the bedrock from above.

So here's Tamburlaine's guide for interpreting geological maps:

Colours:
Igneous rocks - usually bright reds, pinks and lime green colours;
Metamorphic rocks - often purple or light pink;
Sedimentary rocks - mudstones tend to be dark colours, browns and greens; sandstones yellow or orange; limestones blue.
This is not always the case, particularly for non-UK maps, but it serves as a reasonable guide.

Lines:
Thick black lines - faults or thrusts
Thinner black lines - lines of folds, or geological boundaries

Shape of lines:
If fault and boundary lines are wiggly, running parallel to the topographic contours, then the fault or the geology is relatively flat-lying. If the lines are straight, cutting straight across, then the fault or boundary is vertical.

So there you go! Geological maps can show why the landscape is as it is, and why some slopes are steep, and why others aren't, and why rivers drain in the way they do.

Fie no, no, no!

2006-08-22T21:39:00.000+01:00

If you've heard the Divine Comedy's latest single, "To Die A Virgin", it's a splendid song of love and lust, as you would expect from Neil Hannon. Listening to it this morning on 6Music I was inevitably reminded of a madrigal by Michael East, called "Poor is the life", and which contains the refrain, "O, then, if this be so, shall I a virgin die? Fie no, no, no! Fie no, no, no!" I can't help thinking that Hannon has probably heard or seen this madrigal: if not, then it proves that there's nothing new under the sun - at least when it comes to writing songs, anyway.

Poor is the life

Poor is the life that misses
The lover's greatest treasure,
Innumerable kisses,
Which end in endless pleasure.
O, then, if this be so,
Shall I a virgin die?
Fie no, no, no! Fie no, no, no!

Michael East (c. 1580-c. 1648)

The dark is rising

2006-08-18T12:27:00.000+01:00

The ubiquity of computers is both a good and bad thing, as I dare say many commentators have already noticed and written about. What's particularly noticeable in my line of work is how their presence and constant use has changed the architecture of the buildings in which we work. All engineering firms have to issue drawings, whether these show details of drainage, steelwork, retaining walls or flood risk areas. In the past, these drawings were made by hand: now, they're (nearly) all prepared using CAD software or some other similar program.

So, in previous years, buildings with large windows and good lighting were important for the draughtsmen. Now, we shield the large windows with blinds so that we don't get glare reflecting from our computer screens. Our new building is being constructed with smaller and fewer windows. Architects may like to design glass-sided, transparent buildings, but the almost habitual use of computers for most office jobs means that these windows nearly always have blinds.

Book review

2006-08-11T17:45:00.000+01:00

I found this book in Donners' bookshop in Rotterdam, where they had a very fine selection of books in English. Of course I couldn't resist it. So I used some of my free time on the barge to read it, and very good it was, too.

Tamerlane, or Timur the Lame, was a Tatar from what is now Uzbekistan. He had ambition, drive, ruthlessness and was a brilliant general, a master of outmanoeuvring his opponents. The book tells his story: part history, part biography, part travelogue. Long forgotten or suppressed by the Soviets in his own country, Timur is being reclaimed by modern Uzbeks: newly-married couples pose in front of his statue in Samarkand, and even the president likes to state that his vapid slogans are things that Timur would have said. Calling him Tamerlane is something of an insult there, apparently.

Most people may have heard of the mediaeval "conqueror of the world" through Christopher Marlowe's play, Tamburlaine the Great, which tells a blood-thirstily exaggerated tale of his exploits. Though Marozzi's book seems to indicate that Marlowe probably didn't actually exaggerate that much! It's interesting to think that Timur conquered vast swathes of territory in Central Asia, as far east as Turkey and Egypt, as far south as Delhi, and was planning to invade China before his long life was ended: his interest in Europe was non-existent, for the continent was poor, and wealth and riches seemed to be one of his goals. This seems not to have been necessarily for personal gain, Marozzi explains, merely that he understood very well that the chances of getting good service from his soldiers were much higher if he offered them many opportunities for plunder. City after city was sacked (Georgia was particularly unlucky in this respect, being invaded several times) during his many campaigns and his own city of Samarkand consequently enriched.

Marozzi points out that although Timur styled himself "Sword of Islam", he actually was responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than he was of "infidels". Marozzi paints a portrait of a complete pragmatist, who used Islam when it was convenient, and ignored its tenets when it was not. He lived a long life, seeing his eldest (and favourite) son, and that son's son die before him: his empire fell apart after his death, divided amongst his sons and grandsons.

This is a fascinating book, shedding an illuminating light on a historical figure usually ignored in European histories. It's tempting to wonder what Europe would have been like had he decided it was worth his time and effort to invade.

Another book, but not worth your time, judging by the brief extract I perused in last week's Telegraph, is Marco Pierre White's White Slave. The book's been ghost-written, but not very well, it seems: the extract was full of cliches, and tedious details of his many sexual conquests. White is undoubtedly a very good chef, but his life story - or at least, in the way it's told here - isn't interesting. It certainly won't be on my "to-read" list.

Update:
There is a superb parody of this book by Craig Brown in the current issue of Private Eye. I see no reason to change my mind!

Strange fruit

2006-08-10T21:14:00.000+01:00

When at Wells, our choir stayed at Millfield School, which is situated in the fine town of Street, near Glastonbury. Millfield is one of our larger private schools, but not one of its oldest: most of the buildings on the main campus (we actually stayed at a boarding house five miles away, in Baltonsborough) seem to date from the sixties and seventies. It's a huge place, reputedly with 1400 students (which seems huge to me) and a sprawling campus bigger than many universities'. Most of the choir concurred in being glad that none of us had ever been sent there as children. Millfield prides itself on its sporting achievements, and certainly they have the facilities to match - Olympic size swimming pool, golf range, rugby pitches, basketball courts, riding stables... the list is endless.

What struck me in particular is the disturbing nature of the sculpture which was dotted around the place. It was mostly the hare-headed women that I found bizarre, but even some of the other scupture were a little hard to fathom...

This is a bit sexual for a school, surely?

Dogs and weird hare-headed women (I think). Or they could be kangaroos...

This is vaguely normal. I think rusty is popular (think Angel of the North, only not so monumental)...

Any art criticism received with interest!

Censoring the wrong thing

2006-08-10T17:57:00.000+01:00

I came across this snippet of "news" on the BBC's website today. So I think the Pussycat Dolls are awful, meretricious examples of the way that sex is supposed to sell anything these days. So I'm even a little pleased that they've been fined for indecency (or, to be fair, their promoter has). However, what they should have been fined for was their crimes against the English language. I know not their songs, so was rather taken aback by the examples quoted in the article, namely: "Don't Cha" and "Stickwitu".

I mean, really. The first sounds as though they are warning against the perils of doing the cha-cha (or, perhaps, brewing one's tea too strong); the second sounds like a brand of glue.

I blame Slade.

Sunny days in Wells

2006-08-09T21:48:00.000+01:00

This is my first post from home, so let's hope it works! I thought I'd try sticking up some of my photos of my singing week in Wells for your edification, so here goes...

This one is of the ceiling in the pre-choir, with wonderful vaulting.

This is a view of the cathedral taken from the nave, looking east towards the crossing. The strainer arches look modern, but aren't - the main cathedral dates from the 13th century, and the arches were built in the 14th century to prop up the central tower. You can still see the cracks in the masonry from the damage done due to the tower extension.

A view from the top of the tower, looking down onto the Bishop's Palace. That's croquet they're playing down there!

More to come later.

This could be Rotterdam...

2006-08-08T13:11:00.000+01:00

I spent quite some time in Rotterdam last month (before my week's holiday and my week offshore), due to various problems which will not be mentioned. I had some problems with my back left wisdom tooth, and was in a panic as to whether it would blow up on me during my incarceration on a barge 12 miles off the Norfolk coast (yes, there were many jokes about there being plenty of pliers on board...). So I ended up going to a dentist there.

I was given a lift into the centre of Rotterdam from the harbour (which is huge, absolutely enormous), and wandered around there in the hot weather until it was time for my appointment. The city centre is very like most other city centres - lots of shops, lots of people - but with not very many old buildings. One thing that struck me about Holland was how much water there is - mostly drainage canals or harbours - and I wondered if they had much of a midge/mosquito problem.

I found an old church open. Fairly modern (at least, early twentieth century) on the outside, with a fabulously baroque interior. The church belonged to the Old Catholics, a church peculiar to Holland, which dates from the days when the Pope refused to ratify the local choice for Bishop, and so they broke away from the main body of the Church. There are also ordinary "Roman" Catholics in Holland, which seems a bit odd. Anyway, the church used to be situated in the centre of the city, and was later moved to a new building in about 1910 with all its fittings and furniture. Luckily, too, for the old church was flattened during WW2.

There were some interesting shops and lots of open-air cafes, squares, and summer entertainment (chiefly drum bands and bongo players). I bought English books in a superb bookshop (reviews may follow - of the books, not the bookshop), and was continuously astonished by the quality of English spoken by most Dutch people.

My dental appointment did not take long. I had my tooth probed and X-rayed, cleaned with peroxide, and told there was nothing much wrong with it. Cue much relief. Must have been some over-vigorous brushing.

Wireless broadband

2006-08-08T13:06:00.000+01:00

The broadband thing isn't going quite as well as I'd hoped. When logging on to Blogger using Safari (Apple's own internet browser), I don't get the html editor option; uploading photos takes ages, too. Anyway, I have now received my wireless router, no thanks to Royal Mail, and so tonight will see my desperate efforts to construct a wireless network for me and my housemates to use. I will report back later on my progress.

Singing in the heat

2006-08-01T17:50:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted anything during July, as I've been away from the office for most of the month. I've been working offshore, but nowhere exotic (off the coast of Norfolk). The photo to the left is honestly of the North Sea, taken from the drilling barge. That's the Norfolk coastline in the background.

It's nice to be back again, sleeping in one's own bed and drinking one's own tea... Thanks to Dave for the enquiry as to my well-being! I am very well, thanks.

It's not all been 12-hour shifts and getting up at 4:30 am, though: I've spent the past week singing at Wells Cathedral with Lyra Davidica (click on the link to the right for the website, hopefully soon to be updated). We sang eight services: Evensong every evening except Wednesday, and Eucharist and Matins on Sunday. As we only get together once a year, it's a tribute to Christine that she manages to make us sound like a choir so quickly!

The music list (for anyone interested) was as follows:

Monday (Evensong):
Responses: Rose
Canticles: Murrill in E
Anthem: And I Saw A New Heaven - Bainton

Tuesday (Evensong):
Introit: View me, Lord - Moles
Responses: Byrd
Canticles: Purcell in G minor
Anthem: Salvator mundi - Tallis

Thursday (Evensong):
Responses: Rose
Canticles: Howells St Paul's
Anthem: O nata lux - Lauridsen

Friday (Evensong):
Responses: Byrd
Canticles: Gibbons Short service
Anthem: O clap your hands - Gibbons

Saturday (Evensong):
Responses: Rose
Canticles: Stanford in A
Anthem: Let all the world in every corner sing - Leighton

Sunday (Eucharist):
Mass: Missa O quam gloriosum est regnum - Victoria
Motet: Ave verum corpus - Byrd

Sunday (Matins):
Responses: Rose
Canticles: Britten in C
Anthem: Hear my prayer - Purcell

Sunday (Evensong):
Responses: Rose
Canticles: Noble in B minor
Anthem: All wisdom cometh from the Lord - Moore

As I was part of the group which chose the music (and had lobbied hard for the Leighton), it was our fault that perhaps we had too much new music to learn, though it mostly sounded very good, particularly the unaccompanied pieces. We all had a great time - the cathedral is lovely, and the staff, clergy and virgers alike, were very hospitable (which isn't always the case, unfortunately). I'll include some photos in a later post, as I took a lot of pictures with my new camera, most of which I was very pleased with.

Broadband connection soon to be live at home, so I can post there and not at work. Hoorah!

The spirit of something moving

2006-06-21T18:25:00.000+01:00

I've been downloading a fair bit of music lately from iTunes. With downloaded classical music, one does miss the sleeve notes generally provided even in cheap discs, but there is quite a variety of music available, and probably more elsewhere that I haven't got round to looking at yet.

One of the tracks I've recently bought is Elgar's "The Spirit of the Lord", an anthem from his oratorio, The Apostles, which is often sung as a stand-alone piece. It's about six and a half minutes long, for four-part choir and organ, and is one of the most beautiful anthems ever written (in my humble opinion). The opening minute or so consists of an organ introduction, reduced from the original orchestral score, and it is this which sets the tone for the whole work. According to Professor Lionel Pike, this introduction shows the spirit of God moving across the face of the waters. I'm not enough of a musician to understand how Elgar achieves this effect, but it is profoundly moving, and makes me shiver no matter how many times I listen to it.

So, given that I don't believe in God, how is this possible? It's interesting that one can be moved by music that evokes something which the composer felt strongly enough to convey - Elgar does something similar in The Dream of Gerontius, with the shattering chord that is Gerontius' one awed glance at the majesty of God, and his anguished "Take me away," having been overcome by the sight. I suppose it's the power to create such feeling which makes music, for me, the most profound and important of the arts.

Click to listen to The Spirit of the Lord (hope this works!)

Not looking at all like a team

2006-06-20T19:04:00.000+01:00

So England have lost another match. This is the cricket team, by the way, just in case you were wondering if I had any advance knowledge. It's good to see Steve Harmison again taking wickets and bowling economically, but he was badly supported by the other bowlers, who let Sri Lanka score far too fluently.

England are really not looking like a team at present. Duncan Fletcher appears to be at his wits' end to know how to fill the gaps created by injuries. This team is presently without Vaughan, Giles, Anderson, Hoggard, Jones and Flintoff, not to mention Joyce and Chapple. However, injuries don't excuse the performances. Strauss and Trescothick failed in the openers' job - to stay in - and it was left to Pietersen to try to make up the runs, which of course he couldn't manage. Like the earlier match at Lords', England bowled too many extras (Harmison was one of the guilty parties there), and the fielding could have been much better.

England certainly aren't looking like a team who could beat Australia or India at present. I only hope this changes soon.

Tamburlaine stays in

2006-06-15T17:34:00.000+01:00

I tend to buy DVDs (with a few exceptions) only when on a special offer, and I've been meaning to review the latest acquisitions for a while. So here are my thoughts on four.

Friday Night Lights
This is an American football movie, set in a small Texas town, and tells the true story (albeit with bits changed for dramatic licence) of the Permian High football team during a single season in the late 1980s. The hopes and dreams of the entire town rest on the shoulders of the players, boys of seventeen and eighteen whose only hopes of getting out of their town is to play well and get spotted. Players feel the pressure, and their coach (Billy Bob Thornton) is subtly and not so subtly threatened by townsfolk who take the word "fan" to new extremes.

This is an excellent film. It's underplayed by the actors (some of whom have a spooky likeness to their real-life counterparts), and the season's ups and downs, and its more ridiculous moments (such as the evening when a coin toss determines which of three teams will go into the play-offs for the state championship) are very sharply conveyed. You don't need to know anything about the game to enjoy this film - it's superb.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I put off buying and viewing this because I'm such a fan of the radio series - despite the plethora of other media, I consider it the best version Adams wrote. So I approached it with a degree of trepidation. And, well, it's a good film, with some stand-out bits, but still not as good as the radio version.

The cast was generally good: Sam Rockwell made a fantastically vain and self-obsessed Zaphod, and Stephen Fry was a perfect choice for the Book; Martin Freeman was occasionally excellent as Arthur, Bill Nighy wasn't quite world-weary enough for Slartibartfast, and Alan Rickman sounded more exasperated than depressed as Marvin. And why Arthur would have even thought Mos Def, as Ford Prefect, would be from Guildford, with an American accent, is beyond me!

The main problems with the film were that things were not quite the same as I'd imagined. Quirky, yes, and imaginative. But not quite as I had envisaged. So it won't be one I'll watch again.

My Summer of Love
The plot of this British film can be summed up fairly quickly: girls are bored, make friends, make love, fall out. It's something of an enigmatic film, with none of the characters' motives ever really being explained. Mona feels abandoned by her brother, Phil, (Paddy Considine, who never really convinces until the end of the film), who's found God. She meets Tamsin, who's rich and pampered and different, and the two find a friendship that deepens into something more. Mona is a very appealing character, and you warm to her: she's sincere, whereas I never felt that Tamsin, despite her protestations, was.

It's a beautifully photographed film, and the two young actresses are very good as Tamsin and Mona. The story is unusual, and affecting. Recommended.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
This is an interesting film. It was shot almost entirely on greenscreen, with the backgrounds being (lovingly) digitally rendered in full 1930s Art Deco smudginess. You need to disengage your sense of reality, because it's more like a 1930s comic in the vein of Dan Dare than anything else. Giant mechanised robots are attacking cities around the world and removing power supplies, oil refineries and metal stocks. Scientists are going missing. Intrepid reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) will do anything to follow the story; New York is saved from complete destruction by Sky Captain Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), whose array of robot-fighting gadgets are dreamed up by his sidekick Dex (an excellent Giovanni Ribisi).

The plot carries Polly and Joe across the world to the Himalayas in search of Dr Totenkopf (a name of ill-omen if ever there was one), to a rendez-vous with Joe's former fling, Commander Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie, who appeared to be having a good time producing a very spiffing English accent). There are holes galore in the plot, however, and there are moments when the actors have obviously no idea what they're meant to be looking at and reacting to. Law and Paltrow convince in their scrapping together more than you believe that they were ever involved. It's an interesting experiment in film-making, but ultimately the threat doesn't feel real or urgent enough, nor the acting solid enough to convince me that it really works better than a live background film.

Organ fanboys drool

2006-06-13T18:10:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted much lately: too busy at work, unfortunately. I hope Talk Talk get their act together soon, because broadband at home has been ordered, it's just taking its time...

I attended an organ recital at St Anne’s church in Limehouse on Saturday. Since I don’t care for football, it didn’t matter that the concert was at 2.30 pm, when most of east London was watching England’s match against Paraguay. The church is a beautiful Hawksmoor-designed creation originally built in the eighteenth century. It’s fallen a little on hard times, as have many of these churches in East London, but attempts are underway at present to restore its superb interior.

Like many eighteenth century churches, St Anne’s is roughly rectangular in shape, with an upper balcony around three sides. The organ is at the west end. There’s no altar, and no crucifix, but a beautiful and surprisingly realistic stained glass window showing the crucifixion at the east end takes its place. The plasterwork on the ceiling is fabulous – a riot of shape and form that appears to be in good condition, mostly. However, it’s clear from just a cursory glance that the church still needs more work, with paint peeling off walls, and plaster cracking.

The restoration of the organ, built in 1851, had recently been completed, and the recital was to celebrate its completion. It’s a three manual Gray and Davidson, completed for the Great Exhibition, restored by William Drake. I don’t know a lot about organs, beyond liking the music. I can’t talk discursively about stops and pedals and open diapasons (I leave that to more knowledgeable types). The restored organ looks very good, with not too much gilding and carving: in fact, the case looks very much as it might have done in 1851.

The inaugural recital was played by Thomas Trotter, organist to the City of Birmingham, and a noted player (I have a recording of his of the complete works of Jehan Alain, which is very good). It was a varied programme, designed to show off the strengths of the organ (as well as the organist’s technique) ranging from the superb to the downright vulgar. Works included a transcription of an organ concerto by Handel, four short 16th century pieces, a Mozart Fantasia (the two organ Fantasias he wrote are very difficult to play, as Mozart wrote them for a mechanical organ!), a sonata by Mendelssohn, Andante by Smart and the first movement from Widor’s famous Organ Symphony No. 5. All were beautifully played, fully realising the potential and range of the instrument, and were warmly received by the audience. Trotter was an engaging presence, too, speaking from the balcony above the audience about the various pieces and why he’d chosen to play them at St Anne’s.

An afternoon very well spent, I thought. Just the thing on a hot summer’s day.

Yet more theatrical news, darling...

2006-06-05T18:27:00.000+01:00

The two theatre companies which use the Emery Theatre, a small venue in Poplar (see previous post about The Mystery of Irma Vep), have just heard that their landlord has abruptly and with only about two weeks’ notice, cancelled their lease. As a result, the companies are now homeless, and all the accumulated equipment, scenery, props and costumes from twelve years’ worth of shows have to be removed from the theatre and stored elsewhere. It’s not clear why the landlord has made this decision – whether to run the theatre themselves, or to change its use to something completely different. For whatever reason, their tenants have not been treated with courtesy or consideration.

Keith and Lynn, who are in charge of staging plays at the Emery, and have invested much time, effort and money into making the place a pleasant one for both actors and audience, seem to think that the space will no longer be used for a theatre. Now their task is to find a new home for their companies and equipment, and a new venue for their plays. It would be a shame if this small but inventive crew were left abandoned and their shows left unperformed.

The Voysey Inheritance

2006-06-05T18:26:00.000+01:00

This National Theatre revival of the play by Harley Granville-Barker is playing at present at the Lyttleton. I went to see it on Saturday with S., at a matinee. I’d never been to a production at the National before, so the steeply raked seating in the Circle came as rather a surprise, but the view was very good.

The play opens in a solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn in the early years of the twentieth century. Edward Voysey (played by Dominic West), has just discovered that his father (played by Julian Glover) has for years been embezzling money from his clients and speculating. The principled (and rather priggish) Edward cannot believe how lightly his father appears to take this admission of wrong-doing, and must deliberate his whole future. Later on in the course of the play, Edward informs the rest of his (rather large) family of their father’s criminal activities, and is aghast at their acceptance of these, and by their insistence that to go on doing the same is the only thing to do. He decides what the right thing is to do, and manages to stick to doing it, honestly and without being tempted to follow his father’s path.

Despite the subject matter, the play is funny, being well-observed rather than witty. Edward’s elder brother, Booth, is one of the better comic characters, being “booming” and pompous, and their mother provides laughter by being unable to hear anyone speak. In fact, the whole play was very well-acted (though a few of the actors appeared to have problems with projection, seeming to shout rather than talk), and well-staged, with beautiful sets.

Perhaps it was a little pricey (over £30 for a ticket), but the matinee was sold out, testament to the good reviews this show has had. It’s certainly well-worth seeing.

Beauteous humanity

2006-06-01T13:27:00.000+01:00

Our office building has a small canteen supplied with a couple of tables and several chairs where one can eat one’s lunch. Normally I eat sandwiches at my desk, but lately I’ve been going for the hot meal option and eating downstairs. There is some reading matter available, supplied, I assume, by colleagues from their old stocks, and which consists predominantly of women-lit (as opposed to chick-lit) and three-month old copies of OK! magazine (about which more later).

However, recently I’ve been reading Island, by Aldous Huxley, a copy of which someone had kindly left behind, and finished it on Tuesday. It was very interesting to read so soon after finishing Collapse (see my previous post on the subject), as Huxley had identified many of the aspects of creating a sustainable society as Diamond does in his book. Huxley also adds in a lot of Buddhism in order to explain why the islanders have adopted their lifestyle and how they can all be so well-adjusted. The novel is told from the viewpoint of an Englishman, Will Farnaby, a reporter who is inadvertently and fortuitously shipwrecked on the relatively “closed” island paradise of Pala. At first, Will is cynical and self-serving, but gradually the outlook of the islanders comes to make much more sense to him and he is finally changed enough to take their part against the outside world.

It seems quite feasible to achieve in a relatively isolated and self-sufficient island, even if the positive social conditioning that the islanders give their children is reminiscent of the negative conditioning of the children of Brave New World (which I started reading last night). In Island, however, the malcontents are painted very unsympathetically – the Rani with her bogus spiritualism and stultifying mother-love; Colonel Dipa, who could be modelled on any one of the world’s dictators; and Murugan, the Raja to be, who is egocentric, childish (even more so than any of the real children) and easily manipulated.

Anyway, it’s recommended, and started me reading Brave New World, which I’ve had on my bookshelves for a couple of years and not before read.

On to the other reading material, then. Yesterday lunchtime, having finished Island, I sank so far as to actually pick up an issue of OK!. And glance at it with a kind of horrified fascination. Are people really interested in Jordan and Peter Andre renewing their wedding vows at Disneyworld (or wherever)? Because there were pages and pages of drivel and photographs. There were people featured that I had never heard of, and seem to have no discernible talent, and columnists who stated the bloomin’ obvious over and over again.

Perhaps OK! does provide some sort of service to those who don’t have much, and who aspire to something more, or who just like reading about the rich and occasionally well-dressed. Perhaps I’m a snob (this is possible: I rarely watch TV and my magazine subscriptions are for The Economist and Private Eye) in expecting OK! and its ilk to provide anything better. It is all so trivial and meretricious. Are we so concerned with consuming things, whether these are delusions of the importance of people who will never leave a lasting mark on the world, or that all you need to be happy is a bulging wallet and being trailed by the stalkerazzi? Will we all be sucked into mass conformation and become happy little consumers?

Or am I just taking Brave New World a little too seriously?

Tamburlaine goes to the movies

2006-05-30T18:18:00.000+01:00

I went to see X-Men: Final Stand on Sunday, along with a large number of other people (I haven’t had to queue to get into a cinema for ages). I have seen the two previous X-Men films, and this third instalment carried on the story arc of Jean Grey’s transformation into the Dark Phoenix hinted at in the end of X2. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, but there may be some lurking below.

The main basis of the story was that a commercial laboratory had created a “cure” for the mutant X-gene, and the plot was driven by the mutant and non-mutant communities’ reactions to the news. Some mutants wanted the cure, others did not, and non-mutants were beginning to think about using the “cure” as a weapon to prevent mutants from using their powers. Magneto (Ian McKellen in full pantomime villain mode) predictably felt that mutants should have nothing to feel ashamed of, and to be out and proud (as it were). Others, like the more pacific Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) recognised that many mutants would seize this opportunity. Added to this was the resurrection of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), her powers now far greater than any other mutant, and quite beyond her ability to control.

Several new characters were introduced, though some had so little screen-time I felt as though a larger story had been edited out. This was the case with several of the characters’ stories, both new and old. Cyclops (James Marsden) disappeared early on in proceedings, without much loss, and unfortunately Storm (Halle Berry) was given more of a leading role in the story: I couldn’t believe in her as a teacher, frankly.

The film could have benefited from a tighter story, and there were several plot holes which weren’t sufficiently explained (mainly those due to Jean’s powers). There were some touching or poignant moments, though the one which really stuck with me was Magneto’s rejection of Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) after she had been inadvertently “cured” of her mutant powers whilst saving his. Also, there were plenty of action sequences (the bit where Jean destroys her house is fantastic) to enjoy, and just enough Wolverine to keep us Hugh Jackman fans pleased, whilst the ending dropped more hints that could be picked up by a fourth film (stay until the end credits have finished, by the way, for full revelations).

The film did throw up a number of points afterwards, like:

Why are most mutants (with a few honourable exceptions) not very bright?
Why do mutants who experience skin colour changes go blue, rather than red or green?
What prompted Jean to emerge from Alkali Lake seemingly months after her “death”?
Why is Storm useless at fighting?
Given that it’s a mutation in the X-gene that causes the phenomenon, why do mutants’ powers vary so much from person to person?
Has it ever been stated what percentage of the population suffer random mutations which are completely incompatible with life? And if so, how lucky are the mutants in the film that they survived?
Why do most mutants’ powers completely contravene all existing physical laws?
And do we ever find out about mutants with more likely but somewhat dorky powers like being able to see infra-red wavelength light?

I'm sure there are many more, though.

"Honours" List

2006-05-28T18:05:00.000+01:00

The Honours system has been a bit of a joke for a while. Today there's news that Michael Winner (of all people) had declined an OBE because he claimed that the system had been devalued by honours presented to people who had merely contributed money to political parties. 'Twas ever thus, though, as reading a couple of Saki's short stories will show - and these were written prior to 1914. Or the I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again team's satirical comments about the Wilson Honours in their shows. However, it also seems that part of Mr Winner's argument for declining the OBE was his annoyance at not being offered a greater honour.

There does seem to be a difference in why honours are awarded: for genuinely good works for the local or national community; for sporting or similar achievement (such as were handed out to the Beatles, or last year to the England cricket team); or for those donating money to the current government. I agree that that any honours which make reference to the defunt British Empire should be discontinued, as were many honours which related to India when that country was part of the Empire. Something similar along the lines of reflecting the current Commonwealth would be a better idea. Perhaps those celebrating sporting or entertainment could be given separate orders, thus allowing the general public who are usually terrifically honoured by an MBE or OBE, to go on feeling honoured by the decoration, and not feel it devalued.

And as for the people who contribute cash or favours to the Government, well, the Order of the Brown Nose should be perfectly suitable...

Nice music, shame about the cause

2006-05-23T17:36:00.000+01:00

I went to a concert on Saturday evening at Highclere Castle, near Newbury. It was a rock concert, so a bit of a departure for me (I haven't been to a rock gig since university, and St Andrews wasn't really a noted gig venue, so you can imagine the quality of bands who usually played at the Students' Union). The big "but" is that it was a charity concert in aid of the Countryside Alliance.

I feel rather ambivalent about the Countryside Alliance, who seem to be set on preserving the traditions of hunting, shooting and fishing that to me, as an urban lass, seem unnecessarily cruel and reactionary. I agree that foxes and other vermin who prey on farm animals should be killed, but humanely. Of course, the vast majority of the audience which turned up on Saturday afternoon with their picnic hampers and collapsible chairs did not refute the stereotype: the place was a sea of Barbour coats in navy blue or dark green, hats and wellies. Admittedly, this was sensible attire, for it had been raining on Friday and for part of Saturday morning. G and I rather stood out in our Sprayway waterproof jackets in sea-green and lilac, and walking boots. We walked to Highclere from our B&B about four miles away, and it was rather funny to see all the 4x4s in the car park (walking actually turned out to be a wise decision, as it took us far less time to get out than the car drivers).

As for the concert itself, which did not receive much publicity, perhaps because the Hyde Park concert for the Prince's Trust also happened on the same evening, well, I enjoyed it. The support acts were pretty bland, which wasn't helped by the low amplification (and the poor diction of most of the performers). Bryan Ferry did a short set of about four songs, including Jealous Guy and Stick Together, before being replaced by the "Band du Lac". This was a kind of supergroup of ageing rockers led by Gary Brooker of Procul Harum, and included Paul Carrack and Mike Rutherford. Even Jeremy Clarkson turned up in the inevitable sheepskin jacket to show his support and crack a few jokes.

A couple of the backing singers strutted their stuff in two songs, one of which was a very slinky I Just Wanna Make Love To You. Guests who appeared and then went off again after their couple of numbers were Georgie Fame (who was excellent, with a lively Say Yeah Yeah amongst others), Andy Fairweather-Low (who?), Roger Waters and Nick Mason (who joined in with a lovely version of Wish You Were Here and a not so great one of Comfortably Numb), and the man almost everyone had come to see, Eric Clapton. There were a couple of blues numbers, including Cocaine, by J. J. Cale (as well as Clapton's own sickly Wonderful Tonight), and a Bob Marley song, Get Up, Stand Up, which seemed almost indecent in that setting: the struggles of the Countryside Alliance in keeping their way of life compared to the black civil rights struggle? Still, a cracking song. They finished up with Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, which was much better than Dylan's version (but then I think most versions are).

It didn't rain, though it was pretty chilly for most of the evening. Still, we got well warmed up walking back in the dark (which was very dark indeed, no moon to light the way).

Can we survive?

2006-05-18T17:40:00.000+01:00

Collapse, by Jared Diamond, is a very thought-provoking book, which I've recently finished reading. Diamond examines the various factors which he believes led to the downfall of various societies in the past: the Easter Islanders, Anasazi, Mayans and Greenland Norse, each of whom suffered from one or more of these contributing factors. Then he discusses various societies who recognised their problems and instituted changes to solve them. Diamond then shows how those same factors are causing current societies, such as Rwanda, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, China and Australia to face similar problems because of devastating their own environment. Most declines seem to have started from one simple problem: people clear the forests for agriculture: the soil loses nutrients: soil erosion begins or increases, and causes further problems in areas far from where the forests used to be. Once trees are gone from an area, it seems to be very difficult to re-introduce them again.

It's telling to realise that our own views and opinions, and the way we see ourselves and our society could contribute to these collapses. When reading the chapter about the contrasting countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, for example, it's hard not to be struck by such a comparison. Nor indeed when he writes about Australia, and how for years the Government pursued such policies as to actually weaken the country's environment, which was already in an fragile state.

The most heartening thing about the book is Diamond's conviction that we can learn from past mistakes; that our voices, the voices of consumers and voters, can make changes. Even by the simple choice of buying wood or wood products that are Forest Stewardship Council certified, we can ensure that trees are being cleared sustainably and replanted, so as to ensure that trees are a continuing resource for the future.

Diamond writes well and passionately, the examples he uses are convincing and interesting, and I see it as a wake-up call to all of us who think that the environment doesn't matter that much. However urbanised we are, all our lives depend on the biosphere functioning sufficiently well to provide us with the things we need to live.

Comic Gothic horror melodrama

2006-05-15T13:03:00.000+01:00

I saw a performance of The Mystery of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam on Saturday at the Emery Theatre. This was a fast-paced tale of mystery and the supernatural with a cast of werewolves, vampires and aristocrats. There were eight characters, all played by only two actors (though it took me some time to realise this!). The play obviously spoofed several genres, and was very entertaining, although I felt that the ending was a bit flat, in comparison to the antics that had gone on before.

The staging was ingenious, and much of the laughter came from the incongrousness and complete artificiality of the two dimensional props as well as the words themselves. The costume changes were extremely fast, particularly in the last act, where the characters were flying on- and off-stage in quick succession.

The Emery Theatre is a small venue, in east London (Poplar). I've been there twice now - the first time to see Educating Rita, a few months ago. Both plays have been small scale, with two actors and minimal sets, with the company carefully playing to the strengths of the small space and minimising the drawbacks. Anyway, it was a nice way to spend Saturday evening.

How Opal Mehta Got Caught...

2006-05-05T18:04:00.000+01:00

Further to my earlier post about possible plagiarism spotted in the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, And Got A Life, further developments have occurred. Following the discovery of similarities in her novel to both Megan McCafferty's novels as previously mentioned, eagle-eyed readers have now found similarities with Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries, a novel by Sophie Kinsella and Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Little, Brown, Kaavya Viswanathan's publishers, have now asked booksellers to withdraw the book, and have no plans for a revised edition.

The fact that New Jersey's The Record, where Ms Viswanathan wrote a dozen features while working as an intern for the paper, is now using a service to vet her articles - surely a case of bolting the stable door after the horse has long gone - is merely adding gilt to the gingerbread. I'm now feeling a little sorry for the girl. Thought not much.

I wonder how her fellow students - the university newspaper was the one who exposed her, after all - will react to this news.

The wonder, the wonder...

2006-05-05T17:32:00.000+01:00

Continuing my theme of posting about things I did at the weekend, today's will be a short paean of praise to the wonderful Foyles on Charing Cross Road. Any Londoners who read this blog might think, So what? Well, it's because before Monday I had never visited this temple to the bookseller's art. And it is a temple! Long gone are the days when the books were sorted by ISBN; today the books are grouped into sections and then filed alphabetically by author. I've been in large bookshops before - Hatchards and Waterstones on Piccadilly, for example - but never felt such a sense of excitement before. The design is functional, rather than comfortable, but I would far rather browse there than, say Borders.

In the section on engineering, for example, there were two bays of books on geotechnical engineering. Two whole bays! I spent over an hour browsing those shelves, and inwardly jumping up and down* to see the variety of texts. These ranged from the standard soil mechanics and foundation engineering texts to much more abstruse works from specialist publishers. I would have liked to have bought more than I actually did, but these books aren't cheap: I couldn't afford to browse there too often!

* I'm aware that this is making me sound a bit sad...

Sun and moon and Bach's Tomb

2006-05-04T17:40:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted lately because I've been too busy at work - which is where I have access to the Internet. So I apologise that I'm only now posting a review of a concert I attended on Saturday evening.

This was a concert given by a choir called Helios, directed by Mark Sproson, at St Giles Cripplegate. The starting point for the music sung was Sproson's fortieth birthday, and included music from each of the five decades in which he's lived. An elegant conceit, and one which yielded some interesting pieces: these included Howells' sublime Take him, earth, for cherishing, written in the 1960s; Beckmann's lovely setting of Larkin's poem, The North Ship, for choir and saxophone; Cage's Ear for EAR, with five singers scattered around the church; and the best-received piece (which, ironically, was the only one not sung), Reich's Clapping Music. Judith Bingham, who attended the concert and gave a talk before the music began (which I missed, because of arriving too late) was represented by two pieces, Bach's Tomb and Lacrymosa. Unfortunately, the latter was spoiled by having to be abandoned partway through due to the saxophonist having a problem with his lip (don't ask me!).

All the pieces were very well sung by a small, flexible choir - possibly the weakest number was Sproson's own Sinatra Suite (an arrangement of Come Fly With Me, They Can't Take That Away From Me and Mack the Knife). This is a perennial problem for good classical chamber choirs - they always seem to struggle with the "lighter" numbers.

Although I hadn't heard the pieces before (Take him, earth, for cherishing being the only exception), I liked most of them enough to want to seek out recordings (if there are any), particularly of the Beckmann and Bingham numbers. What I found most fascinating, however, was Reich's Clapping Music. It's a very simple concept, like most minimalistic music, though its effects are not. Two performers clap out a twelve-quaver rhythm. Then, while one keeps clapping the same rhythm continuously, the other keeps on starting the rhythm one quaver earlier on each repetition. The effect, as each performer goes out of phase, and the rhythms beat against each other like zapateado, is very exciting, both to watch the intense concentration on each performer's face, and to hear the effects in an acoustic like St Giles.

Food, glorious food

2006-04-28T17:44:00.000+01:00

While not such a gourmet as Gastronomy Domine (I'm seriously considering making her banoffee pie, which sounds gorgeous and easy), I do enjoy food . I treated myself to a chunk of fillet steak yesterday, and now wish I'd photographed the resulting concoction as it was truly delicious (though I say so myself). I made up a vinaigrette of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and whilegrain mustard for a salad of wild rocket leaves and baby tomatoes, then used up the rest of the vinaigrette on the steak, which was frying merrily in olive oil and pepper. The only problem with putting wholegrain mustard in anything that you then fry is that tiny, red hot mustard seeds leap out of the pan coated in hot fat and land on your hand (of course).

Still, I was very pleased with yesterday's dinner - the steak nice and raw inside, sizzling brown on the outside. It's at times like these that I don't miss being a vegetarian.

Coincidence or design

2006-04-25T12:12:00.000+01:00

A student, Kaavya Viswanathan, now in her second year at Harvard University, obtained a book deal worth $500,000 while in high school. Her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Got A Life, was published last month. Apparently it's sold quite well, though the one review on Amazon is not complimentary. The plot seems quite interesting from its blurb. However, as reported in the university's newspaper, The Crimson, it appears that Ms Viswanathan has lifted several passages from two previously published novels by Megan McCafferty, namely Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. The Crimson also reproduces several of the relevant passages, and the similarity is appalling.

I have two problems with this. Firstly, I've read the two books by McCafferty, and liked them. They're teen fiction, but well written, and very enjoyable. It's perhaps unsurprising that Ms Viswanathan would have read them, and been influenced by the style. If the plagiarism is unconscious, it doesn't say much about Ms Viswanathan's originality - which is odd, for someone of whom Little, Brown thought highly enough of that they gave her a publishing contract in high school.

And secondly, if the plagiarism is conscious, then there are possibly two ways to take this. That she was deliberately quoting from an author she admired - in which case a polite letter to Ms McCafferty or her publisher, indicating this, would have been in order. Or, that she was hoping that the similarities would pass unnoticed (though Ms McCafferty was alerted to the plagiarism by an email from a fan) - in which case, this does not say much for Ms Viswanathan's integrity.

It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.

Update: news from Rediff states that Ms Viswanathan has apologised to Ms McCafferty for the inadvertent plagiarism in her book. Plans are afoot to correct the similar passages for subsequent reprints.

Far from Ulster

2006-04-20T18:19:00.000+01:00

Seamus Heaney's new collection of poetry, District and Circle, is published this month (in hardback, alas), and is reviewed here.

I don't feel that I read enough poetry, though I do like Heaney's verse, particularly when he reads it himself. I once attended a reading he did at the Younger Hall in St Andrews when I was an undergraduate there. I'm not sure whether it was just because the town is so small and entertainment so limited that there was a massive audience: the hall was packed. It's when you hear or read the works of great poets (and I'm including Heaney in that list) that you realise what words can convey and how emotions can be raised, and simply how the sounds of words can be moving, even if you have no idea what the poem's about (this is one of the reasons I prefer the Authorized Version of the Bible to any more accurate translations).

Mark Radcliffe used to have poetry readings on his late-night radio show, a particular favourite of the show being John Hegley. This was all very well, and amusing, until one night a Hegley poem was followed by one of Ted Hughes'. The latter showed up the former to an astonishing extent: this, I thought, was real poetry, not just interesting rhymes and wry imagery. I'd never been a fan of Hughes' poetry befre then, having been made to read it at school and disliked its "doom and gloom" feel. Now, however, I'd rank Hughes as one of my favourite poets: the way he uses words is fantastic.

Perhaps I should make an effort to curtail my normal book-buying habits (crime, sci-fi and children's books) and read more poetry.

Driving home for Easter

2006-04-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

Noticing how much my fuel economy increased when I was forced to drive at sixty mph the other evening (torrential rain and spray on the M11), I decided not to exceed the national speed limit on the journey to my parents' house at the weekend. Despite the fact that I stuck to my resolution (mostly, except on a couple of overtaking moves on the A605), it didn't take any longer than normal. This journey is always three and a half hours, whether I go across country, or via the M25. And now it seems that I don't need to speed either - result! Which is good, because I must be the only person in the world who is concerned about the fuel economy and drives a sports car (well, it's an MG F). I do in fact get reasonable mileage out of a tank of petrol.

It's a while since I last drove home by that route, and I almost missed my turn-off in Northampton. One is lulled into a false sense of security by the signs proclaiming "A43 Oxford" that suddenly disappear. If I hadn't made the trip to Salisbury the weekend before I would have missed it again, because the turn-off is not signposted at all. Instead one has to make one's way towards Sixfields and keep going straight on for a few miles before the signs to Oxford reappear. It must be a cunning plan by the Northampton planners to siphon all the cars out of the town and send them onto the M1 instead. Ha! That'll teach them to try driving in our town, they cackle, evilly.

On my way back to Peterborough, I stopped off at a convenient point on my route home, Cherwell Valley services, just off the M40. I hate service stations and never stop on a journey if I can help it. Of course there are never signs by the road indicating how much the petrol costs, and it's nearly always ludicrously expensive. And you've wasted ten minutes getting off the main road and trailing round the services to the fuel pumps and only then do you see that the unleaded costs 97.9p per litre! I have never seen so many people at a service station before - it was packed! The lovely Marks and Spencer Simply Food outlet was a nice surprise, though it failed to completely redeem the awfulness of the services. Why can't they all be like Tebay services on the M6, which is completely unlike the normal motorway service station?

It does seem odd to me that for such a small island it takes such ages to get anywhere.

The times they are a changin'

2006-04-18T18:16:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the site change - I was bored of the old template (though as you'll probably notice it's just another Blogger template). Hope this works okay.

Coining it in

2006-04-18T12:46:00.000+01:00

The rising prices of metals such as copper and zinc could mean that our lowest denomination coins are worth more as metal than they are as coins. In the US the potential problems are more acute, because the one-cent coin is made predominantly from zinc - in the UK, our newest "coppers" are steel plated with copper. It also seems ironic that our "silver" coins contain 75% copper in an alloy with nickel.

I daresay the Mint will just re-strike all the coins affected and make them from some even cheaper metal. Alternatively, we could just round up prices in shops to the nearest 5 pence and thus eliminate all the 1p and 2p coins. The nation's wallets would certainly be lighter!

Things you never knew about iron

2006-04-15T11:49:00.000+01:00

Apparently, although spinach contains a lot of iron, this is not in a form that can be assimilated by the human body. Lettuce has more. The supposed iron-rich qualities of spinach which enabled Popeye to overcome Bluto's dastardly plans and save the day, are due to a printing error in a US Government publication about the nutrient value of foods. A woman needs 4 mg of iron more per day than a man (11 mg compared to 7). Iron-rich foods are liver, corned beef, iron-fortified breakfast cereals, red wine, baked beans, peanut butter, raisins, bread, eggs, curry powder and molasses. Normal brain function requires iron, and iron is bound in the body in a protein molecule called transferrin. Iron is also an essential nutrient in the oceans: where it is rich, plankton grow and thrive, and can thus support more complicated life-forms, such as fish.

There's more, but I won't transcribe in more detail, as all this fascinating information is from a fantastic book I picked up yesterday called "Nature's Building Blocks - An A - Z guide to the elements" by John Emsley. Everything you ever wanted to know about silicon, iodine, lithium and the rest, in terms of their environmental, cosmic, medical and other uses and history is here, and hosts of other facts that even chemists might not have previously been aware of. The book is decidedly written for a non-technical readership, and is very easy to use. Highly recommended.

Update: I wrote this post from home on my Mac, and couldn't get any font changes or links, for some reason. So here they are now for you to look at.

Twenty songs

2006-04-13T13:12:00.000+01:00

I haven't been tagged for this meme, but I've seen Patroclus' and Pashmina'sversions, so decided to have a go myself. Mine won't be as hip as Patroclus' and it includes much more classical music than any normal person would. So here goes...

1) A track from your early childhood

I was going to say Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard, by Paul Simon, which I remember from those dim and distant days when my mum listened to Radio 2, but I think more accurately it has to be Easter Parade or Hello, Dolly, which I remember my aunt singing to me when I was very young.

2) A track that you associate with your first love

Moondance by Van Morrison.

3) A track that reminds you of a holiday trip

A camping trip to Cornwall, travelling from Dorset in a Vauxhall Chevette, made memorable by a Beach Boys “Best Of” compilation. So, probably, Little Douce Coupe.

4) A track you like but wouldn't want to be associated with in public

Europe’s The Final Countdown. I remember my sister and I dancing round the kitchen to this. We weren't that young, either.

5) A track that accompanied you when you were lovesick

Probably Brumel’s Lamentations sung by the Tallis Scholars.

6) The track you have listened to most often

Since I downloaded many of my CDs onto my computer, it’s For Lo, I Raise Up, by Stanford (according to iTunes, anyway). But over a lifetime? Tricky. Probably Mars or Saturn from Holst’s The Planets, which was one of the first LPs I remember listening to (that and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture)

7) A track that is your favourite instrumental

Orchestral – Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. It’s a tough choice to make in the world of purely instrumental music, but I love this and could listen to it all day.
Rock – Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive. It’s completely bonkers.

8) A track that represents one of your favourite bands

In A Glasshouse by Radiohead. Just to be different, and because it has Humphrey Lyttleton and his band playing on it.

9) A track which best represents yourself

As I see me? Riff-raff by Giles Swayne, played by Kevin Bowyer. It’s not your traditional organ music.

10) A track which reminds you of a special person

Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd.

11) A track to which you can relax

Fishing Junks At Sunset, by Jean-Michel Jarre. I like all the Chinese instruments in it as well as Jarre’s great synths.

12) A track that stands for a really good time in your life

That time is now, so anything by Rufus Wainwright.

13) A track that is currently your favourite

Beautiful Child, by Rufus Wainwright. I love the lyrics (“when I am older than these small goddamned hills”) and the music is so uplifting, it makes me feel immediately happy.

14) A track that you'd dedicate to your best friend

For A it has to be anything Renaissance, so something by Tallis or Monteverdi. I’d go for something that I know, and pick Spem in alium, Tallis’ fabulous 40-part motet.

15) A track that you like especially for its lyrics

The Art Teacher by Rufus Wainwright. The story it tells, the wryness of it. You want to know more about the narrator of the story.

16) A track that no one likes but you

I can’t really think of anything I like that none of my friends don’t. Maw’s Violin Concerto, perhaps. Though that’s more because no-one I know has actually listened to it.

17) A track that you like that's neither English nor German

I don’t know many German songs, apart from lieder. Of other languages, I’d have to pick Latin, and go for the Sanctus from Durufle’s Requiem. It’s the stand-out movement from a beautiful setting of the Requiem mass, and not as well-known as it should be.

18) The track that best lets you release tension

This one is easy. Loud organ music, particularly loud French organ music. So Jesus accepte la soufrance from Messiaen’s La Nativite du Seigneur, preferably played by Jennifer Bate. It has enormous crashing chords and pedal notes that thunder through you. Fantastic!

19) A track you want to be played at your funeral

I’d like Howells’ Collegium Regale (King’s College) setting of the Nunc dimittis sung at my funeral. Because it’s appropriate for death, and the setting is beautiful. A good tenor to do the solo, though, is a must. If a choir isn’t available, then John Cale’s version of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.

20) A track that you'd nominate for "Best Track of All Time".

It’s simply impossible. I don’t know whether to go for Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro as the single track, or a whole symphony. Okay, a bit leftfield, but I always find it moving, Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis.

I daresay that if I tried this at some other point in my life, there might have been a lot more Radiohead on this list.

One is not amused

2006-04-11T12:19:00.000+01:00

Listening to BBC 6 Music this morning I caught the music news bulletin at 7.30am - one of the news items was that Prince Harry, being a fan of The Streets, has asked that he perform at the Queen's 80th birthday party.

There are several things wrong here.

I'd imagine that this ringing endorsement from a famous (and conspicuously rich and privileged) fan will do Mike Skinner's street cred no end of good, especially if he accepts the invitation. And can you imagine your own grandma, celebrating her eightieth birthday with family and friends, wanting to listen to a peculiarly English rap? Give her a break! It's not as if the Queen is reknowned as a fan of music anyway. I felt for her at the Golden Jubilee having to listen to a bunch of ageing rock stars at the concert.

They should all go to Newmarket, or Kempton Park, or Ascot for her birthday, and she might have a more enjoyable time.

Sweet singing in the quire

2006-04-10T17:34:00.000+01:00

On Friday I went to Salisbury Cathedral to sing evensong with a group organised by a friend. I've sung at Salisbury before, with Lyra Davidica, but I had forgotten what a beautiful acoustic the place has. Most of the settings Brian had chosen were unfamiliar to me, apart from the canticles*, which were Gibbons' Second Service, and included the "liturgical premiere" of Brian Moles' Drop, drop, slow tears (to be published by Boosey and Hawkes later this year). It is a lovely, unaccompanied piece, more accessible than some modern choral music.

We were a small and select bunch of singers - three sopranos, three altos, three tenors and two basses (though one of the basses is really a countertenor) - and although mistakes were made, partly due to sheer incompetence on our part and the limited rehearsal time, we made rather a nice sound.

Groups like ours often sing at cathedrals when their regular choirs are on holiday. I gather that the standard of visiting choirs is mixed, to put it kindly. Generally, most cathedral precentors (it's usually the precentor or the organist who organises visiting choirs) ask for a tape or CD of the visiting choir "in action" - I've heard about the visiting choirs who were nothing more than a holidaying family who thought it would be nice to sing services at a cathedral, and evidently having no idea of the cathedral choir tradition of the Anglican church. Admittedly, even cathedral choirs vary amazingly in quality - a lot depends on the director of music - Peterborough, for example, aren't brilliant.

Although a lapsed Catholic and agnostic, I really like singing Anglican church services, particularly the choir-heavy Evensong and Mattins services (Eucharist is too much like a Catholic mass for my taste!). There's also something about cathedrals and the sound of voices and organ inside their vast spaces that invokes a spiritual feeling that isn't necessarily related to God. And as such, I can enjoy the service without needing to believe that it's worship.

* Canticles, for anyone unfamiliar with Church of England services, are the words of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, which are set to music and sung at the evening service of Choral Evensong.

Show me anything but this

2006-04-06T17:23:00.000+01:00

This week there is news of the world's mountain glaciers receding. This article concentrates on the Alpine glaciers: according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, the glaciated area in the Alps has been decreasing by over 8% per decade since the 1970s - compared with less than 3% in the years before this. Climatologists and geologists have known for some time that we were emerging from the so-called "Little Ice Age", which brought harsh winters and cold temperatures to much of northern Europe, Britain included. But this evidence seems to suggest that the rate of warming has increased over the last thirty years.

Also this month, in Geoscientist (magazine of the Geological Society, of which I am a member), there is an article about the recession of the Kilimanjaro ice fields. The Furtwangler glacier, on the mountain's peak, has shrunk back as much as five metres since 2000. In Tanzania there are even greater implications: on water supply to the population living around the mountain, which could add to the already heavy drought burden faced by local people.

What, of course, isn't clear is what is causing the acceleration of ice wasting in glaciers and ice-fields. One can argue that global warming is caused by man's influence - the burning of too much fossil fuel, the releasing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through slash-and-burn agriculture, indutrial processes and our own activities. However, one also has to take into account the vast quantities of "greenhouse" gases and aerosols expelled into the atmosphere from only one volcanic eruption. It may be that the world's climate is a very delicate balancing act: natural sinks in the earth can cope with naturally derived carbon dioxide, but when our activities remove a large proportion of the carbon sinks (such as forests), without reducing and in fact increasing the amount of carbon dioxide being released, then that balance is upset, and global warming is the result.

Well, we've been living on Earth for such a short time, compared to the age of the planet, and compared to the time that life has been around, that whether we go or stay seems irrelevant. At least on a cosmic perspective. In some ways it's a shame that people don't live longer: if we could expect to live as long as Methuselah (over 900 years), perhaps we'd be more motivated to make changes which we would see, rather than our children, grandchildren or remoter descendants.*

Habitable planets are so rare we appear to be occupying the only one for light-years around. So it would be a shame if our activities caused the planet to be uninhabitable - either through creating another ice age, or a greenhouse effect similar to that of Venus. What can we do? Well, it would help to use less fuel - in any case, petrol and gas reserves are not likely to last for much longer, and will become more and more expensive as stocks get lower. But everyone has to recognise that there may be a problem before means of slowing down the rate of warming become impractical or impossible.

* This thought isn't original (sorry) - see Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

Take a glance at the fancy rats

2006-04-04T18:00:00.000+01:00

Today it's World Rat Day, apparently. According to these people, rats are better pets than, say, rabbits, because they are intelligent, like human company and are clean. This last may come as something of a shock to those who consider rats vermin, but then pet rats are very different to wild rats. The comments from rat owners are very positive about the creatures. For a positive view of rats as pets (in fiction), one can't do better than Joe's Ratty in The Big Six - though I daresay any animal welfare expert would deplore the conditions in which he's kept - Joe's pocket, for example!.

I've never owned a pet, and am not sure I'd want a rat - but the same goes for any rodent, really. I have a prejudice against albino animals (it's the pink eyes, I think), but I could judge a rat beauty pageant, I'm sure (no, I'm not joking - Cavyrescue have organised the Ratless Rat Show!) .

I'm no mug

2006-04-03T16:59:00.000+01:00

I went shopping in London on Saturday. On Oxford Street. More fool I, you'll say. I did end up spending more money than I had anticipated, but got some nice things as a result. I'll pass over the garments - well, because clothes are clothes, really, and I'm not going to post about boots or jackets here. What I will post about are Swallows and Amazons mugs.

I bought mine in Borders (according to S, no other bookstore chain in London sells them - which she should know, because she's a publisher's rep, and visits many, many bookshops in our fine capital city). Okay, so it was pricey, for a mug, at £8.95. But just look at it! The design comes from the original Jonathan Cape published editions, and includes pictures from the book itself (which is probably my favourite by Ransome). Art Meets Matter only do four designs, including the one I have - Pigeon Post (in yellow), Swallows and Amazons (in green) and We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea (in blue). Perhaps it's a good thing they don't do all twelve titles, or I'd be tempted to collect them all, and I really have enough mugs.

Home of the brave?

2006-03-31T17:39:00.000+01:00

It may be the land of the free, but it certainly isn't free to enter. Perhaps because of its perceived desirability to immigrants, who think the country will provide a better standard of living than anywhere else, the entry requirements to the USA are (dare I say it?) ludicrously onerous. I've heard stories of people being deported as soon as they arrived in the States because of previously overstaying their visa. Of course there was the story about Yusuf Islam and moderate Muslim clerics being refused entry - presumably on the grounds that they were Muslims. I'm sure that the difficulty of actually getting into America serves only to discommode the law-abiding majority of visitors, and does not dissuade those few who have more felonious or murderous intentions.

This post was sparked, however, by news that the venerable British orchestra, the Halle, had been forced to cancel a proposed tour of America because of excessive red tape. To obtain work permits for all 100 people would have cost the orchestra £45,000. And this is on top of the cost of touring itself. Then all these people would have had to travel to London from Manchester to fill out forms and submit photographs to the US embassy, presumably to prove they weren't potential terrorists.

Before the First World War, British people didn't even need a passport to travel abroad. Soon we will have to have identity cards (or, as Jack Dee called them, identity crisis cards), with details of our biometric data (which will soon be required for entry to the USA), all to prove that we are sane, law-abiding people with no interest in blowing up the United States. Or anywhere else, for that matter. All hail to the European Union, then: which doesn't seem quite so bad now, does it?

Give me sunshine

2006-03-30T18:38:00.000+01:00

When I walk to work in the mornings I generally pass the same people. Schoolchildren, their mums, occasional cyclists. With very few exceptions, it's like getting blood out of a stone to drag a smile from most passers-by. Unless I smile at them first they stare at me blankly or even avert their gaze. It's not so early in the morning that everyone would be asleep, and is isn't as if (surely) that I am intimidating - though one woman gave me a very strange look the other day, perhaps having heard me saying a cheerful, "Hello, cat," to one of the many felines I encounter during my walk. There's a nice old gent who wishes me Good morning when I see him, but he's about the only one.

Perhaps it's something in the Peterborough air, that makes everyone so gloomy.

To sleep, perchance to dream...

2006-03-29T17:11:00.001+01:00

I bought my futon in 1996, when I was living in a shared house in Guildford. The bed that was provided with the room was as soggy as a sponge, so a friend took me to IKEA (I think for the very first time!), where I bought a single futon plus wooden base. The mattress soon went thin, so I bought another and used both. Apart from a year or so in a flat in Preston, I've been sleeping on it ever since. I had found it pretty comfortable, but lately was very conscious of my hip-bone digging into the underlying base, so I gave in, and bought a new bed.

The new bed is a double, and takes up almost a quarter of the room (I still live in a shared house, by the way). Probably if I didn't have so many books it wouldn't be quite such a problem (and that's the subject for another post, I'm sure). Still, if I keep the room tidy, it should appear cosy rather than cramped.

I snuggle up beneath my new down duvet (I recommend goose down - it might be pricey, but it's so light and warm that I think it's worth the extra) and fall asleep in five minutes. Oh, the bed is so comfortable! I wonder how I managed to put up with my futon (now honourably retired) for so long.

Result!

2006-03-28T13:35:00.000+01:00

I had a post here about doing a personality test to find out which superhero I was. Spiderman, it turns out. But I fiddled with the html code to try and make it look better, and now the template's gone all rubbish. Boo, hiss.

Influential books

2006-03-27T17:31:00.000+01:00

Melvyn Bragg's latest book is not a novel, but an exploration of twelve books that changed the world. Brian Walden gave his own opinions in an article for the BBC news website, so I thought I'd list twelve books which influenced me.

The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien: I read The Hobbit first, like most children, and then read its more grown-up sequel when I was about ten. It's a book I come back to, year after year, and every time I read it I find new things to admire and cherish. It's certainly influenced my own writing, as it has influenced countless other writers published or unpublished.
Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson: I could have put in all three parts of Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy, but it's the first part that really opened my eyes to a period of history which I knew very little of. The author's vast canvas stretches from Massachusetts to the furthest corners of the Hapsburg Empire, and the cast of characters is correspondingly huge, whether real life (such as Newton, Wren and Leibniz) or imaginary. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, it proves that fiction can be almost more informative and certainly more interesting than real history!
The Greek Myths - Roger Lancelyn Green: I could have been poncey and put down Robert Graves' two-volume version (which I have actually read), but it's Lancelyn Green's versions of the Greek myths that I remember from my childhood reading. The stories aren't bowdlerised, and are very fresh and vivid. For me they were my first introduction to the fabulous world of myth.
Persuasion - Jane Austen: People rave about Pride and Prejudice, but for me Persuasion is the best of Austen's books. It's a very quiet story, with little of the sharp humour or ridicule present in some of her other works, though Anne's family is presented satirically. The writing sets it apart from every "romance" novel ever written since.
The Chronicles of Clovis - 'Saki': A series of brilliant, sharp and satiric short stories whilst, although set in a limited milieu of upper-class Edwardian privilege manage to be still relevant and witty. Human nature, after all, hasn't changed much.
Jonah and Co. - Dornford Yates: Something of a guilty choice. Yates' works are dated, occasionally xenophobic (particularly towards Germans) and often anti-Semitic. The lower classes firmly know their place, and Communist is a dirty word. Yet the author's love for a past England, with woods and fields, and quiet roads long before the advent of motorways and rush-hour, is convincing and often lyrical.
What A Carve-Up! - Jonathan Coe: Utterly riveting and terrifying. Polemic in the form of fiction, but weird and moving as well. The chapter on farming did more to convince me to buy free-range organic produce than anything else.
The Pattern of English Building - Alec Clifton-Taylor: A comprehensive survey of the building materials of England, and how they have influenced the character and look of the English countryside and towns. Fascinating and erudite, and not afraid of expressing his own opinions about modern architecture and building materials.
Chaos - James Gleick: Before reading this I'd been vaguely aware of Chaos theory, but not being a mathematician didn't know much about it. Gleick tells its story through the personalities of the people who became interested in it, and makes the whole story readable. Popular science at its best.
Pigeon Post - Arthur Ransome: This is still one of my favourite books, but its influence (compared to, say, Swallows and Amazons) was more that it was the first Ransome I bought for myself. It and its forbears and sequels influenced my childhood and imagination, and for that I am grateful.
An Incomplete Education - Judy Jones and William Wilson: Although biased towards an American readership, this is probably one of the best, wide-ranging and readable books about everything. Confused by the difference between imply and infer? Want to know about trends in philosophy? Want to understand what a quark is? Unsure what arias to sing in your shower? This book has it all.
The Bible - Authorized Version: While not a big reader of the Bible, one can hardly grow up a Christian without reference to it. I was used to the Catholic, post Vatican-II translation we had at Mass every Sunday, so when I first came across the Authorized Version it was a revelation. The language speaks to me in a way that modern translations do not - like poetry, you might not always understand what's going on, but it sounds gorgeous.

I don't suppose that Melvyn's list resembles this one in the slightest.

Dark and light in Africa

2006-03-23T17:56:00.000Z

At the risk of sounding simplistic, there were two contrasting stories about Africa which caught my eye in this week's Economist. One, the good news, was about the recent elections in Benin; the other, yet more problems besetting Zimbabwe.

Benin is a small, very poor country, formerly one of France's colonies, sandwiched between Togo and Nigeria. As such, it's a somewhat surprising example of democracy in West Africa. The president has reached the age limit set by the constitution and has said that he will retire. This contrasts wonderfully with most of Africa's so-called democratically elected presidents, who would rather extend the age limit than step down. The elections have been largely fair, and turnout for the first and second rounds was 70% and 67% respectively; which puts the UK to shame. I visited Benin two years ago - the port and city of Cotonou, on the Atlantic coast - for work: we were only there for a couple of days, but the restaurants were good and the people friendly. And the weather was better than in Abidjan!

Unfortunately, Zimbabwe seems to be going from crisis to crisis. The Economist reported this week that inflation is over 700%, foreign currency earnings are coming largely from mining, and imports (even of such necessities as sanitary towels) are severely disrupted. The government had attempted to regain its IMF borrowing rights again by paying back some $9million, but the IMF has still not lifted its currency embargo. Foreign currency earnings are thus coming almost exclusively from mining. Zimbabwe has very large platinum deposits (not on the scale of its neighbour, South Africa, but still large); platinum is rising in price; and there are several international companies who want to invest huge sums of money to extract the stuff. But the government plan to nationalise their mines, taking 51% of the profits from such operations, and yet unable to provide 51% of the investment needed. Mines have warned that this extension to the Mines and Mining Act could cause the collapse of the country's mining industry, and lead to yet more misery for a country whose economy is already on the brink of collapse. World leaders seem reluctant to interfere with Zimbabwe's government, and to be fair, it's unlikely that all of its problems can be laid at Mugabe's door, but you do wonder how on earth the Zimbabweans can keep going under such conditions. Its educated professionals are leaving, which of course accelerates the problems. Something needs to be sorted out, if only the will is there, from within the country.

So the Ashes weren't just a fluke

2006-03-22T17:49:00.000Z

Rather relieved and happy that the England team managed to outbowl India in the final day of the Test in Mumbai today. The team has been plagued with ill-luck since arriving in India - losing Vaughan and Giles almost immediately through injury, then Jones and Harmison; and Trescothick returning home for personal reasons. I wonder how long Flintoff can manage to be both batsman, bowler and captain, as well as having the hopes of the entire (cricket-loving*) country hanging on him. It's amazing he's managed to pull so many important performances during the last few matches. Good luck to him!

Apparently this is the first Test England have won in India for 21 years. I don't know whether this says something about the quality of the respective teams since 1985, given that India's record at home to all visiting teams is pretty good. Of course England and India don't play each other as often as England and Australia do, so a losing (or not-winning) streak can last longer because of fewer opportunities.

Although the bowlers performed well - nice to see James Anderson back in the side and taking wickets - it is little worrying that one of the spin replacements for Ashley Giles was the 37-year old Shaun Udal. I've got nothing against Udal at all, and his bowling today was very tidy, but surely there are some younger spinners out there who would take to Test cricket? Aren't there?

I check the New Zealand cricket results from time to time, partly to marvel at Stephen Fleming's ability to hit hundred after hundred, and partly to see what new injury has stopped Shane Bond fulfilling his awesome potential. If the man could stay fit he would be the best fast bowler in the world - he's very fast, accurate and his economy rate is astonishing. When he's actually on the field. Sadly (at least for him and for New Zealand cricket, anyway - I don't suppose the other teams are weeping at the loss) he doesn't seem able to keep fit for long, whether it's because of injuries or stomach bugs. Still, his absence doesn't seem to have hampered the Kiwis beating the West Indies. NZ are one of those teams who don't really have star performers (Fleming and Bond, perhaps, excepted), but their talents seem to combine synergistically, so the whole team performs better than the sum of its parts.

Ah, roll on summer, with Sri Lanka and Pakistan visiting...

* I recognise that the vast majority of Brits don't care two figs whether the cricket team win or lose, though some of them might have heard of Flintoff by now...

We're terribly House and Garden...

2006-03-20T12:22:00.000Z

Visiting the Ideal Home exhibition at Earl's Court this weekend was an odd experience. I remember being taken there when I was a child, but I didn't recall anything about the place or the event itself. The whole set-up makes you wonder how it's financed: entrance fee is a hefty £15 per adult, and you're charged £4.50 for a guide, of which the only useful pages are the maps at the end; one assumes that the exhibitors also pay some fee to have a stand, small or large; and the whole thing is sponsored by various companies. So one has to wonder - who makes any money? The exhibitors presumably make up their costs in increased orders or profile, and perhaps homeowners visiting can get some good offers.

Most of the stands had a mixture of presenters - young and old, male and female, presumably designed to appeal to the various people visiting. It was noticeable that (I'm generalising here, and there were exceptions) the pretty young women adorning their stands were able to answer the first, trivial questions: however, as soon as one asked a slightly more complicated question, one was handed over to the experienced, generally middle-aged male, colleague. The thing that astonished me about the totty was how they managed to stand around all day in high heels - and most of them seemed to be wearing four-inch spikes. My feet were aching after a day wandering around in comfy flats.

Admittedly, there were some interesting and useful products and services being sold, but also some really useless stuff - the kind of redundant kitchen gadgets such as rice cookers and auto-dicers that made one wonder why using an ordinary saucepan or knife is considered such a crime. The low point was the stand displaying the kind of glowing "moving picture" that I thought was the provenance of Chinese restaurants. They really were terrible: so tacky. I'm pleased to say that I managed to come away with nothing but a book of "vouchers" for my pains, and an increased respect for the people demonstrating all these things, who must wear out their voices and sense of humour answering the same old questions and trotting out the same patter.

The BBC bemoan the theme of the show as not being ambitious enough: certainly most of the show is just a big department store. I didn't get to see much, because of other preoccupations, but the big waterfall in the middle was quite spectacular!

What's cooking?

2006-03-15T12:40:00.000Z

After all the panic stories about Britain's children getting ever fatter, there's now even more worry - that children aren't being taught to cook at school. While this is all very dismaying for our nanny state, teachers are complaining that the low priority given to teaching cookery in schools is because of the government's insistence on giving greater priority to things like English or Maths. Apparently kids nowadays are more likely to draw pictures of how to ice a cake than to actually bake one. While I appreciate that for many children, the only experience of preparing or cooking food will come at school, it comes to the point that, yet again, schools are being asked to teach things that parents should.

I had two years of cookery lessons at my secondary school, and I can honestly say they were useless. I daresay my Home Ec teacher still remembers me with a shudder: and the Cornish pasty so large I could only fit it diagonally onto the baking tray, or the pastry I made at home not under my teacher's supervision. Cookery lessons at schools need to be practical: ingredients are expensive if the finished products don't turn out well, and I don't ever remember making something (apart from the gigantic pasty) that would have served as a full meal for a family of four. In fact, I learned more about cooking from my parents, and because they were willing to let me try things at home, than from school lessons. As for learning about nutrition - well, that's what biology lessons are for, surely?

Am I turning Conservative?

2006-03-14T12:22:00.000Z

It comes as something of shock to realise that I have views in common with Ann Widdecombe, of all people. On this week's Any Questions on Radio 4 (which I heard on Saturday), a question was asked about the woman who had recently lost her case in the European Court of Human Rights to have a baby from embryos created using her ex-fiance's sperm. Miss Widdecombe made the excellent point that "children are not a right, but a blessing", and I found myself thoroughly in agreement.

While sympathising with those women whose biological imperative makes the desire for children an overwhelming one, one wonders if IVF is really justifiable. When there are so many children living in foster care or local authority homes, spending vast amounts of money on conceiving one's own child seems downright selfish. If circumstances arise (such as in the case above) whereby a woman or her partner is rendered infertile, surely that is something that both parties have to come to terms with, rather than resorting to desperate measures. Adoption services are notoriously picky (which seems ironic when many natural parents are seemingly far less fitted to the task of bringing up children), but why not try to adopt a child? If the couple are too old, then really, should they be attempting to have a child at all?

No-one really wins (note - plot spoilers)

2006-03-13T12:24:00.000Z

I had wanted to see Good Night, And Good Luck, but that isn't showing in London (at least not at the Cineworld at Westferry) any longer, so I went to see Syriana yesterday. It's a long film, but I didn't really notice the time passing, so engrossing was the story. Anyone who has seen Traffic will recognise the multiple plot strands and locations interwoven throughout - which is hardly surprising, as it was written by the same person, Stephen Gaghan. There are four major plotlines: a Washington lawyer is commissioned to find out if any inducements were paid to obtain rights to a natural gas field in Azerbaijan; a CIA agent is sent to Beirut to have the elder son of an Emir assassinated; a Pakistani boy is made redundant from a Persian Gulf oil facility; and an energy analyst is hired by the same Emir's son after his own son dies in an accident.

The actors are uniformly excellent, but singling any of them out in such an ensemble piece seems wrong. No one character dominates the plot strands. The cinematography is excellent, particularly of the desert scenes, and the film is relatively easy to follow (though it is not clear how Bob Barnes [George Clooney] gets hold of the information which sends him back to the Middle East in an attempt to save the man he previously tried to have assassinated).

The obvious villain is American big business - oil, specifically - and how its influence distorts and manipulates foreign policy, both of America and its Middle Eastern allies. Whether people are caught up in this willingly, blindly, or unknowingly is up to the viewer, but one does get a sense that seemingly small decisions made by a handful of very wealthy and powerful men can have cataclysmic consequences. There are no real heroes, either. The most affecting storyline is that of Wasim, the Pakistani boy who, losing his job, and mistreated by the people of the country where he works for being unemployed, drifts slowly but inexorably towards the sort of behaviour which would be inevitably condemned as terrorism. The film shows that he is not really motivated by fanaticism, for he doubts his faith, but more sheer desperation at a situation he cannot control. In fact, one could argue that none of the characters is in control of their lives and circumstances, however much power or influence they appear to possess.

In all, a thought-provoking, interesting, affecting, intense and excellent film. Go and see it.

More book reviews

2006-01-30T17:29:00.000Z

Blenheim: the battle for Europe - Charles Spencer
I hadn't realised, when I first picked up this book, that the author was the Charles Spencer who is Earl Spencer and brother of Princess Diana. However, he has written a very entertaining and informative account of the events leading up to, and about the battle of Blenheim itself. Having become interested in this period of history (and the character of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough) through Neal Stephenson's monumental Baroque Trilogy (which is mostly fiction), I found the pace of the writing almost as entertaining as fiction: this is certainly not a stuffy, academic book, though Spencer quotes liberally from many sources. In Britain, Marlborough is almost a forgotten figure, as Spencer claims, but the I found the most fascinating character to be Marlborough's co-general, Prince Eugene of Savoy, whom I had not heard of before, and who seems, from this account, to have been just as instrumental in winning the battle. Spencer argues that the outcome of Blenheim, and the surrender of several crack French battalions, demoralised the French, and was the main turning point in saving Europe from the expansionist ambitions of Louis XIV.

The book puts the background to the wars, and the battle itself, into its historical context, explaining the variable loyalties and intrigues of the leaders of the states involved. Spencer also comments on the increasing professionalism of military life, and attributes this largely to Marlborough's reforms, partly in imitation of the French reforms, and partly to match the Dutch troops which William III had brought to England on his accession. There are interesting details about the appalling standards of medical care, the difficulties in feeding an army on the march, and the problems of politics at home and diplomacy abroad. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in history, not just military history.

Indiscretion - Jude Morgan
I found this book at Heathrow airport, and read it on the flight to Cairo. It's a Regency set novel, featuring as heroine, the wonderfully named Caroline Fortune, who is inevitably known as Miss Fortune. Her father, a former military man, and to whom she is attached, loses what little money remains to him, and Caroline takes a place as a companion to a wealthy widow, Mrs Catling. Life with this lady is not unpleasant, though Caroline has to endure Mrs Catling's bouts of ill-temper, and her cruel behaviour towards her nephew and niece, the Downeys, who have expectations of their aunt.

I won't talk too much of the plot, which takes sudden turns which would spoil your enjoyment of the book if I mentioned them. However, Caroline is a witty, wonderful character, who copes realistically with her problems, and her relationships with her aunt and uncle. The book is witty, well-written, and there is a beautiful sense of period infusing but not overpowering the story. There is some sense of inevitability in the plot, but everything is tied up in a very satisfying way at the end.

My Lord John - Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer's last, and unfinished novel, telling the story of John, Duke of Bedford, Henry IV's third son. At times, the book is confusing, with titles changing, and people being referred to by more than one sobriquet, but sheds a great deal of light on a forgotten character of English history. John's achievements probably rank alongside those of his brother, the more famous Henry V - however, Heyer never managed to write about Agincourt or the subsequent battles in France under John's generalship.

Although better known for her Regency novels, Heyer is equally at home in the Middle Ages, and her use of authentic, archaic words and phrases gives a great sense of the period. In the early part of the book, she manages to convey the uncertainty and fear which even great men would live with, given the rule of Richard II, who saw rivals and traitors everywhere, and whose rule, or lack of it, encouraged such jockeying for position. She also describes Henry IV's change in personality from when he was merely Henry of Bolingbroke, to when he had deposed his cousin and assumed the throne himself, and found that kingship was not as easy as he'd thought.

If you don't like unfinished works, this is not the book for you, as the recent re-issue stops midway through a sentence. If you can cope with that, however, read it in conjunction with Anya Seton's Katharine, set at a slightly earlier time, for a contrasting viewpoint of this period.

The world's favourite airline?

2006-01-11T17:53:00.000Z

Flying isn't my favourite way of spending time. I hate take-off and landing as the change in pressure badly affects my ears, particularly in the smaller aeroplanes. And would anyone choose to spend time in a cold, dry, noisy metal tube for pleasure? Even if they do show you Wedding Crashers or obscure Arabic-language films en route. I have been travelling frequently over the past couple of months with British Airways - due to my trips to Egypt (another one coming up next week). The flight is long enough for them to serve food and show films: I should also thank whoever plans the entertainment channels for introducing me to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

However, they herd you into the aircraft, and make you file past the First Class (except they don't call it that any more) seats which look so comfortable, being fully reclining and with loads of leg room, taunting you with what you aren't getting. And then you see the full horror of what you'll really be spending four hours sitting in: Economy Class (except that's now been rebranded - I'm a World Traveller, don't you know). This is sadism of no uncommon order. If they let you come in the back way there would be none of this seat envy, and I could endure the flight with more equanimity.

At least I'm not flying any further afield: four hours I can cope with, but any longer and I think I'd be succumbing to air rage.

Book review: Skinny Dip

2006-01-06T12:16:00.000Z

Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen

I read this yesterday evening (after finishing a 1969 Elizabeth Peters mystery) and stayed up till after 1am this morning to finish it. Not that I was really aware of the time, because it was a cracking read. The plot certainly isn't original, being a virtual re-hash of Hiaasen's last three books. You can tick off the standard elements: feisty, pretty, young-ish woman with scumbag husband, ex-husband, ex-boyfriend (delete as applicable); older retired cop (Hiaasen's alter ego, probably); humane and decent cop; rich guy with an interest in screwing the Everglades; bizarre supporting characters. Yes, they're all here. But somehow, such is the pace and verve of the writing, that you forget that you've met Joey and Mike before in different guises, and that the story is yet again about the environmental destruction of Florida. Not that I'd bemoan the fact that Hiaasen is evidently passionately concerned about his local environment and wants to draw attention to its destruction, and the vested interests in government which conspire to do nothing about it.

The opening scene, when Joey is thrown off a cruise ship by her horrible husband, Chaz, is superb - you start rooting for her immediately. But it's the more minor characters who are memorable (like Janet Evanovich's, who also writes comic crime novels, though hers are laregly set in New Jersey). Tool, the bear-like "bodyguard" who is convincingly described and whose change of heart is wonderful; Maureen, the eighty-something cancer patient who starts Tool's refomation; Medea, the hippie lover of Chaz who proves that she won't stand for any crap; Corbett Wheeler, Joey's sheep farmer brother; and the Captain, one-eyed mad hermit of the Everglades, who incidentally provides the creepy, Handful of Dust ending and Chaz's just deserts. There are some great comic scenes, particularly with Rolvaag's encounters with his mad, dog-loving neighbours (he owns two pythons of whom the residents of his building are terrified), and Chaz's attempts to get laid after Joey's "death".

One of the great things about Hiaasen's books, and Skinny Dip is no exception, is the satisfying way in which the rotten characters meet their come-uppance. He really makes the punishment fit the crime. Lives unravel, love is found, money changes hands, and the reader is entertained all the way. So why fix it if it ain't broken?

Pen love

2006-01-05T12:34:00.000Z

It was some time ago when I discovered the ultimate pen: the Pilot G-Tec-C4. It has a wonderfully fine line and is excellent for writing small text, though its only drawback is that the ink takes rather a long time to dry. I prefer the natty brown, which is distinctive amongst the office blacks and blues, and yet also photocopies well.

However, the other problem with the pens is that you can't buy them easily anywhere. Most high street shops which stock stationery don't stock these pens, and if they do, don't stock brown. The last lot I got were bought at Selfridges! So I decided this week, my last pen running out rapidly, to buy some new ones, and searched the web for suppliers. There seem to be hundreds of office supply firms trading on the Internet, and prices and availability varied amazingly. Eventually I ordered a variety pack (all ten colours available plus two free of your own choice - I chose brown) from the wonderfully-named Cult Pens based in Dartmouth (Devon). They arrived this morning, and I am now consumed by pen love. They will be guarded from possible depredation by my colleagues, and I will carefully choose which colour to use. I'm getting quite fond of the light blue already...

I'm such a sucker for stationery. I don't quite know what's so satisfying about clean white paper (not ruled, though I quite like squared paper) and pens and pencils, as I do most of my writing by computer nowadays.

2006-01-04T13:00:00.000Z

I've been watching a lot of old TV shows recently, courtesy of DVD box sets received as presents at Christmas and for my birthday (thanks to S and A!). The Muppet Show, despite featuring a lot of guest artistes that I've never heard of (Miss Juliet Prowse, anyone?), and being broadcast in the late 1970s, I had worried that I would not find it as enchanting as when I watched it during my childhood. Some shows prove to be boring when watched as an adult - Bagpuss springs to mind - but The Muppet Show isn't one of them. The jokes are still funny, and the puppets' expressions are expertly done. Waldorf and Statler (the elderly hecklers) probably get the best lines, but there are great musical and sight gags as well as the verbal ones. And the theme song is ludicrously catchy!

And the other TV series I've been re-watching is The Professionals. I never watched these when they were originally broadcast, being too young, and so came to them as an adult. It's difficult to justify liking it in these politically correct and post feminist days, but if you can watch them as a relic of the late 1970s, and not try to apply our own standards, they are quite fun. There's a lot of shooting, and fighting (and the occasional gratuitous shot of a barmaid's boobs), but there are other issues which are still relevant today - like how to counter terrorism - as well as those which are out of date - like the dealing with the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. The most startling episode to watch was one dealing with racism - which wasn't shown at the time of the original run because of its subject matter - and the attitudes on display from certain of the main characters is quite shocking. I'm unsure whether the show undermines its main point by its ending, or whether it points the irony. You do actually feel liking and sympathy for Bodie (Lewis Collins) and Doyle (Martin Shaw), despite the violence and womanising, because they can show surprising sympathy and humanity themselves.

Anyway, on with Arrested Development, series one...

Thoughts on Egypt

2005-12-12T13:22:00.000Z

I returned from a week in Egypt last Monday. I didn't see a great deal of the country, mainly because I was there for work, not holiday. So all I've seen in two trips there are Port Said (at the mouth of the Suez Canal), Cairo, and the road between the two.

First things first. Egypt north of Cairo is flat. And I mean flat. I live on the edge of the Fens, and believe me that I know flat when I see it. On most days there was a haze of (I'm told) Saharan dust in the atmosphere, but apparently one can see the world's curvature during clear weather. It was warm and very pleasant, not too hot even in the sun, because of a cooling sea breeze from the Mediterranean. Cairo is a big sprawling city, and I'm glad I never had to drive anywhere, because Egyptians drive like maniacs: lane markings on the roads are routinely ignored, double and triple parking is common, donkey carts and bikes can be seen travelling towards oncoming traffic in the "wrong" carriageway, and nobody takes any account of the right of way on roundabouts or traffic lights. I found that the best way to get through these hair-raising trips was to stick my nose in a book and not come out until arrived at my destination.

I had an interesting discussion about Islam with an Egyptian colleague in the very civilised (and one could argue, post-colonial remnant) surroundings of the Cairo Shooting Club. The tenets of Islam, from his point of view, sounded eminently reasonable. And if I believed in God, then I might also. The same with Christianity, I think - both Jesus and Mohammad were actually preaching very similar things - it's just the way that their recorded words have been interpreted that differ.

One of the things I had to ask about was the wearing of the headscarf by women in Egypt, as there were huge variations, even in a predominantly Muslim population, in women's dress. Some, generally the younger women, made a token nod to clothing laws by wearing a headscarf and long sleeves, but those long sleeves might be on tight T-shirts, and they were wearing figure-hugging jeans. And at the other end of the scale (a very small minority, I might add) there were the women rigged out in black from head to foot, draped in a robe which allowed nothing of their bodies to be seen, not even their hands or eyes. My Egyptian colleague suggested that this was because they wished to protect themselves from a terrible world, but I have to wonder how much of a protection this actually is. Statistics reported in the Economist last week (issue 26 Nov 2005) suggested that more women are killed every year as a result of violence from their families or due to childbirth than were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Horrifying numbers of girls in the world are still made to undergo genital mutilation, generally by their own families. In these circumstances, how much of a protection can the full body shroud actually be?

Before I finish this post, I should add that nearly all the Egyptians I met were uniformly courteous, friendly and generous. I had been a little apprehensive about how my instructions would be taken on site, but I didn't encounter any problems. Of course, I was there to work, not holiday, and the people I was meeting were generally colleagues or hotel staff, which means that they inevitably have a different attitude to one as a visitor than if one was a tourist. Advice offered: dress modestly, don't go out alone, and be prepared to tip a lot!

Anton Bruckner Choir concert

2005-11-22T18:20:00.000Z

I might be biased, in that I know a few of the singers in the Anton Bruckner Choir, but their concert on Saturday was excellent. The concert was held in St Giles Cripplegate, a stone-built church seemingly washed up within the concrete edifice that is the Barbican Centre. It's the first time I've visited the Barbican, and unfortunately I arrived after dark, so much of it remains a mystery to me. The fountains outside the Guildhall School of Music and Drama looked pretty, though. The more I wander through the City of London, the more I want to know what it might have looked like before WW2, before the rebuilding, when the old streets still existed. In fact, having read Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver recently, it would be fascinating to be able to go back in time just to see how different London was before the Great Fire.

The concert began with three unaccompanied motets by Bruckner: Locus iste; Os justi; and Christus factus est. These were beautifully and sensitively sung, particularly Locus iste, which because of its brevity and relative simplicity, can sometimes sound routine, the singers knowing it almost by heart. Certain moments in Christus factus est sent shivers down my spine. The singers then filed off-stage to reveal the orchestra, who played Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. I think this was the first time I'd heard it in concert (compared to in recording), and was impressed. Pictures of storms at sea, rain on crops and other tempestuous imagery came to me during the performance: it definitely felt unfinished, unresolved, and one wonders what Schubert might have made of the final movement had he been allowed time (or cash) to complete it.

The interval provided an opportunity to quench one's thirst and chat to friends, generally about things completely unconnected with music. There was quite a good audience, with most of the pews being filled.

The main work, Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, filled the rest of the concert. It sounded beautiful, the only flaws being that the choir was occasionally overwhelmed by the orchestra (the horns, in particular, were often a little too overpowering), and the cellos not always together. The second and fifth movements were very moving, the soprano soloist bringing both a sense of grief and comfort to her solos in the latter. The German texts were translated in the programme, and fully illustrated by Chris Dawe's notes, which indicated an eclectic choice on Brahms' part. It was interesting to see his choice of words, particularly when compared to the traditional Latin texts one usually hears.

All in all, rather a contrast to the "come and sing" Haydn's 'Nelson' Mass on Sunday evening (in which I sang). Obviously one wouldn't expect the same standards of musicianship from a bunch of singers who had come together on the night, but I did feel rather ashamed at the brevity of the concert - a mere fifty minutes. At least we didn't charge for tickets!

Ein deutsches requiem

2005-11-18T18:05:00.000Z

It's the end of a busy week where I've not posted to this blog. Not that anyone's desperately waiting for my words of wisdom, of course. I'm going down to London tonight. This is becoming a weekly trip, and generally means that my social life is looking up. Tomorrow night I'll be going to a performance of Brahms' Ein deutsches requiem at St Giles Cripplegate, which I'm looking forward to. I've not been to an Anton Bruckner Choir concert before, despite having heard of them for years (they've recently had their 10 year anniversary) and a couple of my friends singing with the choir. It will be interesting to hear the requiem, which is unlike most other requiem masses in that it's all in German, and isn't based on the Latin Mass. Brahms took Luther's ideas about creating a vernacular liturgy and created his German requiem, using texts in German from various books of the Bible and Apocrypha.

There are a lot of requiem masses around - Verdi's is probably the one that most people think of: it's operatic, tremendous, and popularised by von Karajan's recording. My favourite is actually Durufle's. It's quite short, and doesn't include a setting of Dies irae, which most composers go to town on, and is based largely on plainsong. It's very beautiful, and works well in both small and large choir formats, though I'd recommend Westminster Cathedral Choir's recording. My other favourite is Britten's War Requiem, which is completely different. Britten set both the full text of the Latin mass, and interspersed poems and fragments by Wilfred Owen, sung in English. The conceit, of having these extremely pacifist and humanist poems written during a bloody war sung against a mass celebrating the dead, works very well, and is extremely moving. Having this year visited Coventry Cathedral for the first time, I can only imagine the effect of its first performance in that building after all that had gone before.

I wonder if I'll find Brahms' interpretation of the requiem so thought-provoking?

Schools as prisons

2005-11-14T12:47:00.000Z

On my walk to work, I pass two schools, both of which are for under-11s (not sure if they're primary, infants or juniors). One of them has its playground adjacent to the footpath/cycleway. Up until a week or so ago, the playground used to be surrounded by a steel galvanised palisade fence. Okay, so probably it's to stop vandalism - the area isn't entirely free from grafitti, broken windows and the like - but a six-foot steel fence seems a bit over-the-top. No-one seems to have tried to damage the fence or spray paint all over it, though.

Now, however, there has been a second fence, a wooden one, erected within the boundary of the steel fence. Tell me what this is for? The school is looking increasingly like a prison (I'm reminded of dialogue in "Out of Sight" before the attempted jail break), and I wonder whether it's to keep the kids in, or others unspecified, out. I attended a junior school in Chelmsford for about a term which was partly surrounded by a brick wall at least twenty feet high (that's how high it felt when I was seven, anyway), but it was next door to Chelmsford Prison; my primary school had only a chainlink fence around it. I don't know why it's felt necessary to have two fences, but it seems that it can't be just to protect the school from vandals: that's what the palisade fence is for. So it's to stop people looking in, presumably.

While I strongly agree that we have to protect children against those who would harm them, there are surely better ways to do so than by turning their school into a prison yard. Okay, so I'm not a parent, or perhaps I would be singing a different tune, but it does seem ridiculous that children are becoming so coddled and over-protected from possible harm. As I see it, the best protection a child can have is by being with a bunch of other children, their friends, and not by being carefully driven around in lonely state by Mum or Dad.

The other school, by the way, has not proceeded to such extremes - they have a chainlink fence around their playground, and that seems enough.

Silence is golden?

2005-11-11T12:55:00.000Z

With the proliferation in late years of the minute's or even two minutes' silence to remember various tragedies, it occurs to me to wonder whether the silence on Remembrance Day is devalued as a result. As I sit in the office at eleven o'clock, the alarm sounds to mark the start of the silence, I turn off the CD playing in my computer and hope no-one calls. I don't stop working, though. One of my colleagues, V, who's Greek, asks what the poppy is for, and I try to explain. It makes me think about the vast number of people who have died in wars, and the utter senselessness of the world, where killing gets your point across so much more forcefully than talking.

I don't want to write about such concepts as war saving us from tyranny, as any analysis of the aftermath of WW2 will show how many people were then transported and exiled and later murdered without a finger being lifted to help. And injustice, oppression and outright genocide still go on today. I'm still torn, morally speaking, between the state's requirement to respect others' sovereignty, and yet a humane requirement to succour those in need of aid. P. J. O'Rourke can write amusingly about why war is good ("Give War A Chance"), but I'm not sure I agree with him. When war is waged on civilians, who merely want to get on with their lives and have done nothing to their neighbours except be born into a different ethnic group, that is unacceptable, and should not be tolerated.

I used to think of the poppy as being a symbol of our imperialist and warmongering past: now I'm not so sure. So I'm wearing mine in the hope of something better.

Being a pedestrian

2005-11-10T13:14:00.000Z

I walk to work, normally, as the office is only about a mile from home. Not so bad during the summer, as there are trees and flowers bordering the footpath, and if any mad cyclists are approaching, there's time to dodge out of the way. In winter, or more specifically, during Greenwich Mean Time, it's dark when I walk home. Most of the footpath is lit, though lately several of the lights have been out, leading to occasional dark spots. That's bearable (except when the aforementioned mad cyclists who ride the footpaths without lights zoom out of the darkness). However, there's one bit of the walk home which skirts the local playing field and abuts onto back gardens, and is not lit at all. I can barely see my feet. No chance to avoid the dog poo and fallen leaves and dark clad people walking their dogs. So instead, once the clocks go back, I have to walk on the pavement beside the main road, and prolong my journey. This irritates me - should it? At least I live in a place where there are footpaths.

And don't even get me started on one of the subways beneath the main road - all the lights are missing, due to the habit of the local youth (at least, I assume they're youthful) to setting fire to cars and motorbikes in the underpass. As a result, all the lights have exploded or melted, and the roof is black with smoke. That must be fun to watch. I expect that fixing the lights is not Peterborough City Council's highest priority.

Perhaps I should just give up and cycle everywhere (once I get my bike fixed).

Singing in the shrouds

2005-11-09T18:24:00.000Z

This actually happens to be the title of a good book by Ngaio Marsh, but I thought I'd use it to start off my posting on this blog.

After a long fallow period of not singing much due to various reasons, the past few weeks have been quite busy - a friend's wedding, evensong at Ely Cathedral, a performance of Tallis' Spem in alium (amongst other works) - and to come, Haydn's Nelson Mass. It does make me aware of how poor my sight-reading is, and how I should practise more. But Sunday's concert made me realise how much I enjoy choral singing. Even though all three works were in languages other than English (Latin and Russian), and though most of the time I was unaware of the real meaning of what I was singing, it is very moving to be part of such a group. The combination of words and music together are perfect, and bring something to each other that they do not have alone.

The pieces performed at the weekend were Tallis's 40-part motet Spem in alium nunquam habui (to give its full title), Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil, and Psalm 150 in Grandsire Triples by Finnish composer Jaako Mantyjaarvi. To be able to take part in the Tallis was a rare privilege - being in forty voice parts, it rarely gets performed.