roGER's RaNtS

Holidays End

2012-01-01T11:07:00.002Z

It's wonderful to have 10 and 1/2 days off (they chucked us out of the office at 2pm on Friday 23rd December). There was the option of working for the three days between Christmas and the New Year, but I didn't take it.

So M and myself have had a great time relaxing and doing very little except eat and watch telly and sleep.

I'm dreading going back to work on Tuesday and the only consolation is our tennis group starts again on Saturday January 7th.

2011 was a shocking year in terms of new events (it reminded me of 1982 in that respect) and there seems universal gloom about the economic prospects for 2012. I'm not so sure, not least because prediction is a really inaccurate business, the US economy is showing signs of revival at last, and the Olympic Games in London will give the South East economy a small boost and the entire country a psychological one.

Having said that prediction is a difficult business, here's the text of a message I wrote to David Young who asked me my opinion of the US Presidential race, specifically the Republican candidates:

At this stage, there have been several drop-outs already, and the players (runners?) left are:

Michelle Bachmann,
Newt Gingrich,
Jon Huntsman Jr.
Ron Paul,
Rick Perry,
Mitt Romney
Rick Santorum

The most recent poll I could find (today on the Gallup site) had the candidates in the following order:

Romney (26%)
Gingrich (24%)
Paul (11%)
Perry (7%)
Bachman (5%)
Santorum (5%)
Huntsman (2%)

I believe that while the poll numbers fluctuate quite a bit, we can safely exclude the candidates in single figures - they've lost too much ground, and lack charisma and/or credibility. A pity really, as I enjoyed the batshit insanity of Michelle Bachman very much. Definitely an 'only in America' type candidate.

Of the three remaining 'serious' players there seems to be a well coordinated attempt to discredit and attack Ron Paul. A great shame, as he seems to be the only candidate whose offering some fresh thinking and new approaches, particularly on things like the crazy war on drugs and the very costly and dubious foreign policy blunders that have marred the last decade. In other words, lets exclude Ron Paul.

As for the last two, it's much tougher to choose. I believe Newt Gingrich is carrying too much baggage from the past to secure the nomination, even though he's got a huge amount of political experience and 'will to win.' By a process of elimination, that leaves Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate, whom almost nobody really believes in. He will go on to lose a tight race against Barrack Obama next year. Obama goes on to have the traditionally ineffective and disappointing second term...

It'll be fun to see how right or wrong this prediction is.

World Tour Finals

2011-12-29T20:37:00.006Z

The loneliness of being Roger Federer (picture by roGER)

I've been meaning to post some pictures myself and Mandy took at the World Tour Finals at the Dome in November. We were very lucky with both the afternoon and evening sessions.

Roger Federer serves (pic by Mandy Parker)

In the afternoon we saw Roger Federer beat Mardy Fish in 3, and in the evening we saw Jo-Wilfred Tsonga beat Raffa Nadal also in 3. It's a wonderful event and we really enjoyed it from some very good albeit pricey seats.

Roger Federer splitsteps (pic by Mandy Parker)

Raffa Nadal serves (Pic by Mandy Parker)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

2011-12-21T10:33:00.001Z

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

by Robert Frost
New Hampshire 1923

Time Change

2011-11-02T20:18:00.004Z

Wow - my last post here was in high summer, and now just a few days ago the clocks went back to GMT and we're in the autumn with winter to look forward to.

Despite the summer never really happening (August was as usual grey and rather cold) it's been a wonderful year weather wise. There was a long sunny warm spring, a grey but dry summer, and then a wonderfully warm and sunny September and October. Being self employed, I managed to take advantage of the bright sunny days and play a lot of tennis and go on a walk or two. There was also the chance to go to the cinema, and in quick succession we enjoyed Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy and Steven Soderbergh's very intelligent and restrained look at a worldwide flu epidemic Contagion.

Now it's time to go back to work and for once I'm a permanent employee (for a year at least) covering for a lady whose taking maternity leave. It'll be nice to head back to central London and work with some new people.

The Olympic Games

2011-07-27T07:38:00.003+01:00

Exactly one year from today, the Olympic games begin in London.

I've mixed feelings about the event. Normally I couldn't care less about the Olympics, but commuting to London over three years and passing the construction site on the train twice a day meant the games were hard to ignore.

The site is impressive, although the main stadium seems rather bland from the outside. Not so for the aquatic centre which has a roof that resembles a manta ray or something fishy like that. Reports on the radio today mentioned that it had been a sod to build. That's not surprising with all those complex curves to achieve.

People, quite rightly, are concerned about the cost of the games which has risen and risen since they were first worked out, according to legend, by Tessa Jowell on the back of an envelope. But since the bid was won back in 2005 we've spent billions bailing out the banks and on bizarre wars so we might as well blow a bit more on an international party, which is basically all the Olympics is.

My main concern is the cringe factor of the opening ceremony. I remember the horror of the Euro 96 ceremony, which one commentator compared to the opening of a village fete circa 1956. As a country we don't do these things very well, especially when compared to the preceding games in China. Say what you like about communism but one thing it excels at is creepy mass parades featuring thousands of identically clad people marching and dancing in lock step like mechanical toys.

My main regret is that Britain didn't have the courage to challenge some of the existing Olympic orthodoxy. Since the infamous Berlin games of 1936 this has consisted of building an elaborate huge stadium, staging a stupidly complex and ornate opening ceremony and building a highly guarded Olympic village. It's just ridiculous for 17 short days of minority interest sport, which includes 'disciplines' like beach volleyball, rhythmic gymnastics, and my favourite synchronised swimming.

A braver approach would have been to scrap the opening ceremony with all it's associated Leni Riefenstahl bollocks and replace it with a parade of all the teams, perhaps around the streets of London. Accommodate the athletes in existing student halls of residence and scrap some of the more meaningless events. That would have opened the door to a more affordable Olympics which developing countries could have staged in the future.

Oh well, it'll be fun to revisit this post in a year's time and see whether my fears are realised...

The End of the Party

2011-07-18T10:29:00.004+01:00

Recently I've been reading Andrew Rawnsley's brick-like tome on the apogee and long decline of New Labour.

It covers the period from 2001 election all the way to the chaotic last week of Gordon Brown, when the coalition was still up in the air and some (although not Brown) thought he could cling to power and keep 'the project' going.

What a shocking era that was, that began with the last days of the 'no worries 90s' which persisted until September 2001 and then crazed paranoid years that followed. The entire dysfunctional international cast is here but the main focus is on the extraordinary symbiotic hate filled relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Largely concealed from us on a day to day basis, Rawnsley's whole story boils down to a series of bitter quarrels, sullen silences and patched up reconciliations between the two men.

The tragedy of this relationship was that they complimented each other so perfectly. Blair was a brilliant performer with natural political instincts. Brown was a more intellectual introverted man with a superb grasp of policy detail a horrible temper and the ability to get the boring nitty gritty done. When they worked together the results were unbeatable; the last time this happened was the third general election of 2005. Blair was unpopular with most and hated by many, yet by pulling together (and aided by a weak opposition) they managed to secure a record breaking third term with a respectable majority of 66.

But it's the rows and rages that shock; for long periods up to that election the country was being governed by a Prime Minister who wasn't even on speaking terms with his Chancellor! Each has his own power base, and Brown treated most of his fellow cabinet colleagues with contempt. In some ways it seems a miracle that anything got done at all.

Rawnsley is very good indeed at describing the daily events of government, every episode no matter how small is described in compelling detail, from "Cherrygate" to stuff that's long faded from the collective memory like the G7 summit in Edinburgh. But of course it's the big stuff that gets most of the pages. In particular I found the extended description of the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq really addictive. And there's a very satisfying few chapters afterwards that describe how it gradually dawned on Blair just what a terrible mistake it had been. His health began to suffer, he couldn't sleep at night and people around him were shocked to see how old and tired he became (on television acres of make-up and clever lighting concealed this).

What will history's verdict be on Blair? Disappointingly, Rawnsley the detail man doesn't give us his own opinion. My own is that Blair was a brilliant actor with a great feel for what moderate thoughtful Britons regarded as important in the late 1990s and early noughties. Sadly he lacked historical perspective and over estimated his ability to influence others, particularly the fuck-wit George W Bush whom he foolishly supported to an extent it was no longer possible for him to act independently in British interests. He seemed completely ignorant of the power and determination of the neo-cons that surrounded the President and essentially ran his foreign policy after 2001.

On the domestic front he was a brilliant tactician but his ability to follow through keep hammering away at details and badgering colleagues meant strategically he was weak. In any case a lack of historical knowledge and perspective meant he couldn't really think coherently in long term strategic terms. None the less (and I write as a one time fan turned into a Blair hater) when one reviews the other politicians of the era, was anyone better? The United Kingdom got the best leader it's political class produced and he did the best he could with what he had.

Nobody can ask more, but of course we did and still do.

Popular Culture is Strange

2011-07-14T18:54:00.002+01:00

Popular culture is always a bit strange, but just for the record we're living in an era when both marathon running and growing vegetables on allotments are really trendy.

Mad Mel Leaves The Spectator

2011-06-21T08:51:00.003+01:00

As always, you hear it here last.

I’ve just noticed that Mad Mel Philips’ blog has gone from The Spectator; she made the announcement on Thursday. The blog will continue, but independent of The Spectator and so far without comments.

It’s not entirely surprising. Seemingly without any form of editorial control or supervision, Mad Mel was free to make the most ludicrous, wounding and stupid blog posts, yet do so under the respectable and official umbrella of The Spectator itself.

This was bad enough when she posted claims that Saddam Husain really did have weapons of mass destruction, hidden in secret bunkers below the Euphrates and then secretly shipped to Syria. Or when she continued to claim that she was right about the MMR vaccine and that Dr Andrew Wakefield was the victim of the medical establishment. Such views were seen as endearingly bonkers.

Likewise her views on evolution, or suspicion that President Obama is a Muslim.

Things got serious when Mel started to use the blog to make specific allegations against individuals. Specifically, back in November she and the poor old Spectator were forced to apologise and pay up for falsely claiming that Mohamed Sawalha had called Jews in Britain evil/obnoxious.

To their credit, some of the other Spectator columnists/bloggers, notably Rod Liddle often found Mad Mel’s views amusing and/or insane. Who knows whether she was asked to leave, or left of her own accord?

Either way, I’m glad The Spectator is rid of her. I’m hardly a fan of the magazine, but always have time for right wingers such as Max Hastings, Mathew Parris, Michael Portillo, Rod Liddle and the like. I may well disagree with everything they say, but at least they are generally logical, lack Mel’s hysterical tone and exaggerations, and don’t go for the personal attack in same unerring way she does.

Likewise I’m glad her blog will continue. She performs a valuable function as the authentic voice and attitude of Zionist extremism, and she may be unique in being an authentic British neocon. By turns she’s ignorant, grossly offensive and bonkers - and that’s a great thing for Palestinian cause.

Full Circle

2011-05-02T08:17:00.002+01:00

A few minutes ago I woke and heard that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by American special forces in Pakistan.

There's a real sense the wheel has come full circle. Almost ten years ago, I was sitting in my flat in Lowell Massachusetts on a lovely sunny morning, looking forward to a day off and to a trip to Las Vegas scheduled for the end of the week. See my memories of that day three years after the event here.

Today is a lovely sunny morning in Britain, it's a holiday, and I'm looking forward to a trip to Las Vegas scheduled for the end of the week.

The death of any human being is a tragedy, no matter how evil or deserving they may be, but the death of Bin Laden evokes justice and satisfaction. But how I wish we could have got this news early on in 2002, rather than nearly a decade after the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

It's no secret that I love the United States, enjoy its culture and find it's people warm and friendly. I love it's vastness, and the way through film in particular it's a sort of a second home, even for people who've never been there. For those who have, I'm sure every visitor has experienced that sense of deja vue, particularly if you've been to one of the major cities associated with film such as Los Angles and places like New York and Washington. Driving around LA in particular, you get a constant sense of 'I've been here before' as a particular building or 'location' sparks off some recollection of a film scene that (often as not) you no longer remember.

In spite of my fondness of the USA and it's people, the elite of the country went collectively insane for a period of about three years after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. A naive and unintelligent President whose main area of expertise was baseball allowed himself to be heavily influenced by an evil group of men whose primary loyalty was to the State of Israel. They persuaded him that the root of all evil was in the Middle East, and that by invading and occupying various countries there, which had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks, democracy could be established, stability imposed, and a long term solution to terrorism established.

The country they chose for the first step of this process was Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, it posed a potentially serious threat to Israel, and had the advantage of being led by a particularly loathsome dictator. Of course we all know what followed. With no proper mandate or justification, the Americans cobbled together an alliance and invaded Iraq. A brilliant military campaign succeded in three weeks, but then an evil and stupid series of decisions led to a brutal war of occupation and the ruining of Bush's presidency. In Britain, Tony Blair, hitherto a popular and competent Prime Minister, made a fatal decision to support the invasion, and so destroyed his reputation along the way. He's now so unpopular that he can't hold book signings for fear of riots, and spends much of his time abroad.

Estimates are hotly disputed, but at least 100,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war, and several million others left the country as refugees. Personally I believe the death toll could be much higher than that, especially as procedures for recording the numbers of Iraqi dead were expressly discouraged by the occupying forces.

Elsewhere, places that should have been the focus of the American thrust such as Afghanistan and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were neglected. There was a close shave for Bin Laden in December 2001, and doubtless a few other times when through chance or judgement, Allied forces came close to capturing him. But in general as things went from bad to worse in Iraq, Afghanistan became a sideshow, allowing the fundamentalist and very extreme Taliban to reposition itself as a national resistance army.

George W Bush always maintained that his father lost the election of 1992 because he'd stood up to Israel and pissed off the powerful and extremely vindictive pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Whatever the truth of that he was determined not to make the same mistake. He became the most pro-Israel president in history, and Israel interpreted his support (or was it simply benign indifference?) as a green light to go on an eight year killing spree that included the Second Intifada, the Invasion of the Lebanon in 2006, and culminated in Operation Cast Lead which was halted just as Bush left office.

How different the last decade would have been had Osama Bin Laden been killed or captured before the Spring of 2003! At least some of the mass slaughters above wouldn't have happened, maybe none of them.

Bush himself gradually realised what the neocons were. Towards the end of his presidency, he mockingly started to call Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol The Bomber Boys. The realisation came too late.

Lets hope the death of Osama Bin Laden hasn't also come too late to change policy and influence events in a peaceful direction.

Slipping Away (3-6, 2-6)

2011-04-24T14:49:00.003+01:00

I love tennis, but it's that clichéd love hate thing and today was a perfect example.

We did our standard one hour of instruction, getting warmed up, rallies in the service boxes, rallies at the baseline, some basket drills and warming up our serve. That was the aperitif, nice enough, and I was having an OK sort of day, helped by the glorious weather. For once we had hazy sunshine, a light breeze and it was neither too hot or too cold. Perfect conditions for tennis.

Now comes the match.

The instructor divides us into teams, and I'm happy to be paired with the best player in our group - 20 years old, she's got a really nice serve and some deadly powerful ground strokes. With my strength at the net, we should be just fine.

We win the toss, and ask our opponents to serve with sun (slightly hazy though it may be) in their eyes. We win the first game. My turn to serve. I'm serving well, particularly on the deuce side, and go 40-0 up. Then my serve disappears and I serve three double faults in a row. There are a couple of deuces, and then I lose, 1-1. The first doubts start to cloud my mind.

Our opponents serve again, and we break them to win that one. My partner serves, she's got the sun at her back and a beautiful technically correct service action that the rest of us players can only dream about. She holds and we go 3-1 up. If we can just win this next game we'll be 4-1 up and barring a huge catastrophe, we'll win the set. It's a close game but our opponents win to stay in contact, 2-3.

My turn to serve. It's hopeless. My 1st serve has just gone. Double faults, weak second serves and some good returning pulls our opponents level at 3-3. My partner is cross, I'm furious, and we manage to lose the next game too. We're now on serve, trailing 3-4. My partner's serve deserts her too, and our opponents are really playing very well, especially the weaker one, who is playing as well as I've ever seen her. The thought crosses my mind that's it's not our day out here today...

It's 3-5, and our opponents are serving for the set. It's a close game but some outrageous shot making and some terrible errors on our part give them the first set 6-3. Oh dear.

We still have 20 minutes left, and propose a second set. Me to serve. I decide to take something off my serves, and try and get some consistency into my game. It doesn't work. We do all play tennis to a certain standard, low as it may be, and our opponents eat up my weak puffy serves with spoon. My partner is really down now.

Our opponents win their service game, but my partner holds, although we're having to produce our best tennis to get any kind of point at this stage, as our opponents are inspired. We're trailing 1-2, and soon it's 1-3 as they hold again. I consider faking an injury or smashing my racket or something - it's just horrible, playing as badly as I am now. I hate this bloody game. My turn to serve. I lose my serve, again. It's just gone. I can't place the ball at all, and even getting it over the net and into a service box is happening rarely. This is horrible. We're down 1-4.

They hold again, to basically seal the win with a 5-1 lead. Then my partner serves, and suddenly she's on, and I'm finally on and we have an easy hold for 2-5. Winning a game at this point seems unbelievable, given the way our opponents have been volleying and lobbing and net cording and generally playing with the tennis gods on their shoulders. Their best player is ready to serve it out.

The final game goes to four deuces, and I manage to save three match points with some inspired returning, as good as I'm capable of. We both know we've lost, and that knowledge enables us to play as well as we can, finally, and some of my bad mood disappears. The fourth match point is too much for us, and that's that for another week... I feel happy its over, sad we've lost, embarrassed at my miserable performance, and guilty at having let my partner down.

Tennis is hard.

Book Cull

2011-04-21T10:35:00.005+01:00

I've been trying to gradually get rid of my books (well most of them) for the past couple of years.

This will be a long process, as over the years my collection (calling it a library seems pretentious) numbers several hundred dusty tomes, most of which have been read at one time or another.

Every fortnight, I grab a pile of ten or so more at random and go through each one. The critical question is 'will I ever read this book again?' and if the answer is no, then the book goes in the culling pile. The next step is to go onto E-Bay and make sure I'm not chucking away some obscure collector's item. The answer so far is NEVER, although I was pleasantly surprised to make some money flogging Fiat X1/9 manuals a few years ago.

It's good to know that someone, somewhere still cares about that car, and doubtless struggles with the electrics by the wonderfully named, but low quality Magneti Marelli. Sadly that windfall has been the exception. The vast majority of my books are essentially worthless - dusty grotty paperbacks, unsigned, fourth or fifth editions and flogged by numerous semi-professional outfits for a penny, with any profit coming from the suspiciously high postage and packing.

Today's cull revealed a slim volume by Ian McEwen, whose Atonement was filmed a few years ago and shown on ITV a couple of weeks ago. This one is more obscure entitled A Move Abroad and it contains the screen play for a TV play called The Ploughman's Lunch which was a sideways look at Thatcherism and the Falklands War, and the lyrics for a oratorio called Or Shall We Die?

At some point roughly around 1983, radical feminism reached a high point in Britain, at least in academia, and I was caught right in the middle of it, doing a psychology degree in Manchester from 1983 to 1986. Shortly afterwards I moved abroad, and was surprised on my return to Britain ten years later by the backlash that produced new laddism and popularised feminists such as Camille Paglia.

Flipping through Or Shall We Die, it's impossible not to laugh at the earnest solemnity of a piece that combines extreme 80s feminism with that other obsession of the decade - nuclear war. Here are some choice excerpts:

WOMAN Shall there be womanly times, or shall we die?

CHORUS Our God is manly! In war he refuses us nothing!

WOMAN And even now, as I sit upon the grass, across the world, in buried places, sleepless men wait at consoles and watch the patient sweep of scanners for a sign of penetration, male virgins, deathmasks in the greenish light.

Heh heh heh!

Anyone who wants to satirise the 1980s can simply go to Or Shall We Die? and lift chunks of text straight out of it with no amendment or commentary necessary. The great irony was of course that McEwan was writing all this during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first and so far only female Prime Minister, and so far with no female successor even remotely plausible at the moment.

The other great irony was that radical feminism's greatest achievement may have been to get more women into the military of all developed nations. In the oratorio war is exclusively masculine, peace belongs to the character called WOMAN. Today, the crews of her majesty's ships, the pilots of her majesty's planes, and numerous other military jobs are filled by women, in a way that was hard to imagine back in early 1980s.

I suppose the last lesson is the commonplace observation that nothing dates as fast as high fashion, and that includes intellectual fashion as much as clothes or anything else.

Despite all this, I can't bring myself to put A Move Abroad in the culling pile just yet...

Free at Last!

2011-04-05T18:31:00.002+01:00

I was 46 on Tuesday, but was far too busy struggling to finish a contract to really enjoy myself.

Now that's all changed, as for the first time in three years and 7 months, I'm between contracts - what actors call 'resting' and what most people call unemployed.

It's a great relief - for at least 9 months now I've been feeling utterly burned out and increasingly resentful of the early morning starts and late evening finishes. National Express Rail have benefited too, to the tune of an incredible £18,000 in travel expenses during that time!

It looks like the next job will be closer to home, and in the meantime I'm going to enjoy my time sleeping with M, mucking about with Panne, and hopefully posting a few more thoughts and memories on this blog.

New Job

2011-02-23T10:01:00.003Z

Argh! Another missed month.

Facebook must have destroyed hundreds of thousands of blogs, and put many more like this one on life support.

Anyway, my big news is that after three and a half years of steady work in London, working on a very traditional engineering project, I've got myself a new job, this time working on high tech stuff in a village a few miles from Peterborough.

It's stressful and a long way from home, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it, and the thought of a nice holiday at the end of it al keeps me going.

Keeping going seems to be the theme for all of us right now, as it's February (always a tough month) and we're in the midst of a recession and a lot of instability in the Middle East.

Roll on Spring!

Cold and Classic YouTube

2010-12-06T20:27:00.002Z

It's been a tough couple of weeks in Britain with icy winds coming directly from the Arctic and lots of snow which has messed up everyone's travel plans.

After falling over on the ice last year and breaking a company laptop, I managed to negotiate 3 days working from home last week with my boss. It wasn't particularly great; I really needed to see some people to complete the work and the isolation is tough - my colleagues are a good bunch and it's always nice to see them.

On Friday evening I discovered a little gem on YouTube - the legendary five set encounter between Roger Federer (19) and Pete Sampras (29) at Wimbledon in 2001. The match itself is rather dull for long periods - Pete Sampras was a great tennis player, but his style of play - a kind of extreme Serve and Volley, only frequently without the volley, was boring and mechanical in the extreme.

But details of the match delight. There's the women line judges frumpy frocks that look like Laura Ashley by way of Saga Holidays. There's Roger Federer, slightly effeminate with a pony-tail and wearing a coral necklace that looks worth about £5, the same value as his cheap red Wilson racket bag.

Then there's Pete Sampras, 29 going on 40 with a bald patch that seems to be the only part of his body without hair.

There's the commentators surprisingly prescient comments about Federer's talent, and the way he's begun to mature and harness that talent.

And finally there's the sheer beauty of Roger Federer in action - deftly reading, deflecting and attacking Caveman's serves, whilst banging in plenty of aces himself. Federer is astonishingly cool and collected throughout - this was his first ever match on Centre Court and the first (and last, although nobody knew that) time he'd played Pete Sampras.

His victory came as an enormous relief, not just to his friends and supporters, but to the entire tennis establishment. With viewing figures plummeting, the sport couldn't have survived another ten years of Sampras style rat-bastard tedium.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGgmePjkRQ

Catching Up

2010-11-07T15:27:00.003Z

Oh dear - poor neglected blog.

Alas since August there's been little to blog about.

I'm a bit anxious about work - the 'headcount' as it's called right now (in ten years it'll be called something else) has been reduced and I might be next. Right now I'm working on two completely separate projects, one has quite a lot to do, and we keep discovering more. The other is nearly done, and in fact someone may decide it is done by next Friday.

Thankfully London keeps ticking over, as it always does despite the economy in the rest of the country. I'm sure I'll find *something* to do either in London itself or close by.

Speaking of London, D came down for his annual trip from Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. We went for a wonder through leaf strewn and dog infested Hampstead Heath. The destination was Kenwood House, a surprisingly small stately home but with a high quality collection of paintings to enjoy. I accompanied D back to Saint Pancras station and there was plenty of time to admire Paul Day's amazing 20 ton 30ft high statue of a couple embracing. Some colleagues worked on the massive Saint Pancras refurbishment project, and had urged me to go and see it, along with the completely cleaned huge transparent roof and other marvels. They weren't wrong - the station is a magnificent gateway to Europe, and a really bold and thoughtful upgrade to a magnificent Victorian building.

We even managed to get ourselves a decent lunch - a decent lunch at a railway station! That would have been inconceivable even 10 years ago.

So it's not all doom and gloom, and things often change for the better.

Post Holiday Blues

2010-08-11T21:09:00.004+01:00

It's been a strange few days returning back to work after a week off.

I picked up some kind of infection (probably from the kids!) and have been struggling with time and motivation since Monday.

Some random, but wholly predictable events led me to the Courtauld Gallery this afternoon, where like millions of others, there was a kind of identification with, yet great distance from Manet's barmaid at the Follies Berges.

The gallery is excellent - comparatively small in terms of space, yet the quality of the pictures is superb. Then it was back down the river to get some late lunch and head back to the office.

July Post

2010-07-31T21:59:00.003+01:00

Well, I just made it for this month's post.

Always a bitter sweet feeling - the last day of my favourite month of the year. As so often the sports thing ended in a series of what ifs and maybe next years.

The world cup for England ended in a rather horrifying 4-1 defeat and the usual hysterical over-reaction. Andy Murry got to the semi-finals of Wimbledon before losing to an inspired Rafa Nadal, who is looking more and more indestructible as he enters the peak years of his career. It'll be interesting to see how he gets on in the forthcoming U.S hard-court season, when traditionally he fades, not least because hard courts are so tough on the legs.

Meanwhile the coalition government have settled in, and so far I'm very pleasantly surprised, although the public spending cuts haven't bitten yet, and we're still bogged down in the quagmire of Afghanistan, with no prospect of victory in sight.

A huge cache of secret documents has confirmed what most people had already guessed - huge numbers of Afghan civilians being killed, the conflict has spilled over to the Pakistan border, and hope seems in short supply. Once again, I wish that the U.S had been lucky and managed to kill or capture Osama Bin Ladin years ago. Once that deed had been accomplished we all could have left within 6 months. As it was, the failure to get him led to a desultory and distracted military campaign whose goals seemed to change every six months. I do hope this time next year we're out of there, with or without American approval. I'm still a fan of Obama, but his most obvious mistake when elected was to decide to fight on in Afghanistan 'a war of choice' as he put it. I do hope he's realistic about what can and cannot be achieved there.

Apart from all that, it's been a very good summer indeed - lots of hot sunny days and very little rain. I took a few not-very-good pictures from the train last week, one of which is at the top of this post.

Alas the school holidays have started, which is the normal cue for a cold wet deluge.

England vs Algeria (Group Qualifier)

2010-06-18T23:11:00.004+01:00

Oh dear.

What a terrible birthday present for Fabio Capello.

This was one of the worst England performances I've seen for several years.

In football, a team game with 11 players, it's not unusual or unexpected if one or two people under perform. It's normal in fact. But tonight, only the goal keeper David (Calamity) James emerged with any credit. It really was as if the remaining 10 players were all having an off day. A really off day.

The explanation has to be psychological. The England team started badly and just never recovered. As the game wore on, they seemed to lose all confidence in themselves and their team-mates. A sort of vicious circle developed whereby error led to heightened anxiety which led to more errors which led to more anxiety and so on and so on. We're all to blame for that in one sense - there's tremendous expectation put upon the team at every international tournament, and as the decades slip by since that rather lucky victory in 1966, the expectation and frustration grows.

Fortunately tonight, England were composed of gifted professional footballers with a sort of base level of competence and they were playing against a team which sensed their opponents were in trouble, but couldn't capitalise on that. The base level competence was just, just enough to ensure a draw rather than a deserved defeat. Against slightly more competent opposition, this game might have been a massacre.

Or would it?

One of the strangest things about group psychology is that a set back (the opposition scores!) just might have ignited a real anger in the England team that might have added much needed concentration and another yard or two of pace. It's one of the many paradoxes of football - a team tends to play at a level similar to it's opposition. I've been watching England for over 30 years now, and can't remember a bad performance against a very good team like Germany or Brazil. Likewise tonight, Algeria certainly didn't play like a team that had scored one goal (a penalty) in it's last five matches. As England captain Steven Gerrard reminded us, "for them it was their world cup final."

The reverse is much more obviously true - a goal, any kind of goal, no matter how lucky or undeserved would have lifted a huge weight of worry off the England team and allowed them to 'settle' as footballers say. Suddenly the movement becomes fluid, the passing accurate, and more chances are created.

A last straw to clutch - I remember vividly the terrible starts to the 1986 and 1990 world cup campaigns. Facing almost certain elimination, there had to be radical changes to formation and personnel. The changes proved highly effective, and England went on to a quarter final and semi-final and were unlucky, genuinely unlucky to loose those games. Wednesday afternoon will be a harrowing one.

Urgh! As one of the commentators asked tonight, why is it always so difficult watching England?

England vs USA (Group qualifier)

2010-06-13T10:13:00.001+01:00

A compelling game of football.

England played pretty well, creating numerous chances and half chances. Alas it was one of those nights when the chances weren't taken and the final ball from the wingers was often poor. It was hard to see how the USA could have come back from a two goal deficit.

The USA played extremely well, refusing to be rattled by a quality early goal, and defending bravely with occasional attacks that looked promising. Men of the match - Tim Howard (outstanding) and the American defenders - lost count of how many times they made well timed challenges and brave blocks. They also swarmed all over Rooney, effectively neutralising him for the entire match.

England drew because of one horrible and very uncharacteristic mistake by a decent goalkeeper and a decent man. Roll on Friday.

Day Off

2010-06-09T04:18:00.003+01:00

Well, I *sort* of got the election right and since then thoughts have turned to the World Cup and upcoming grass court tennis season (blink and you've missed it).

Managed to score a ticket to Queens Club on Monday - a rather lovely old British institution - home of the LTA until recently and also Tim Henman's base. It supposedly has the finest grass courts in the world, and to my inexpert eyes centre court looked wonderful just before the start of play at 12:30pm.

Day one of the tournament featured several plucky Brits battling against players a hundred or more places above them on the ATP computer rankings. No luck for Jamie Baker, James Ward or Alex Bogdanovic, but we did get to see an authentic star in the shape of Richard Gasquet, whose wonderful strokes and sublime backhand were a pleasure to see.

Missed Post - and an Election

2010-05-05T19:42:00.004+01:00

Oh dear - for the first time since starting this blog years ago, I broke my rule of posting something at least once every month.

As David Young discussed on his blog, I too blame the ever growing popularity of Facebook - particularly for random self-indulgent blogs like this one that have no theme, no dedicated audience, and are really just vanity publishing albeit on-line. Facebook is great for random thoughts and instant feedback.

None the less this blog has given me a lot of pleasure, and it's fun to discover what seemed important two, three or even four years ago. Rather like a seldom kept diary, I'm loathe to throw it away or declare it officially closed.

***

So what is on my mind right now? Well like most thoughtful people, there is the little matter of the election tomorrow. Unlike the past two or three elections, the outcome is still in some doubt, although it seems pretty certain we'll have a new Prime Minister at the end of it, and most probably a new government.

Here's a prediction based on observations of every election since 1979.

The Conservatives will win tomorrow, and David Cameron will move into No 10 over the week-end.

This may surprise you, as the media is still excited with the prospects of a hung Parliament, and possibly Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats (are there any non democratic liberals?) making some kind of breakthrough.

The reason I don't think this will happen is because the British first past the post system is fiendishly difficult for a third party to crack open. I'm speaking from personal experience here, having been involved in the Liberal/Social Democratic alliance between David Steel and David Owen back in the 1980s. We got to within 2% of the Labour Party and were rewarded with... 17 seats. That's how close you can be with a first past the post system and still end up nowhere.

Despite this I'm still a fan of the first past the post system and of British politics. Why? Because coalition government frequently produces a terrible inertia, or worse (as in the case of Israel) various bigots and extremists end up holding the balance of power and are able to extract huge and loathsome concessions from a party with a far larger majority. It's difficult to imagine the reforms of Clement Attlee or Margaret Thatcher taking place in a coalition system. At least one of the coalition parties would have lost their nerve.

Secondly, the British system has Prime Minister's questions, which is a wonderful really tough I.Q and conviction test. It basically protects us from charismatic fuckwits like George W Bush, Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, "Ambassador" Alan Keyes and so on. They wouldn't last five minutes in Parliament, as George Galloway showed when he verbally destroyed a group of stunned U.S Senators a few years ago.

Interestingly, I believe Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would have faired very well under the British system, although there's no real way of testing that.

Anyway, lets have the election tomorrow and see what happens. I'll try and post something here on election night - which I intend to watch downstairs in a sleeping bag!

In Denial...

2010-03-29T14:56:00.003+01:00

I'm 45 today and in complete denial about it!

So weird - just cannot get my head around that fact, and of course that in another fast-forward 5 years (which will feel subjectively like about 18 months) I'll be 50. It is so strange!

On Saturday I had to go into London for something, but was done by 2pm so went over to Wimbledon to see the tennis museum. One of the features is a little trip to a viewing platform on Centre Court, my first visit to "the cathedral of tennis" since 1987. As everyone says, it's a shock to see how small and intimate it is, especially compared to it's hideous competitors like the infamous Ashe Heap in Flushing Meadows.

The museum is rather nice with that immaculate clean hyper-maintained look that pervades the whole grounds. While some of the high tech displays are a bit tacky, the alternative would be static displays of yellowing tennis clothes, posters and warped rackets - not really worth seeing for all but the most die hard fans.

Fight

2010-03-20T15:02:00.002Z

Last night at around half one, I was woken by loud angry shouting from outside.

Drunken yelling is nothing unusual outside the pub opposite, but this was LOUD and aggressive. I lay listening to it for a while, waking up before finally getting up and going to the window.

Just outside were two groups of four people, and one really LOUD drunk woman, rather overweight, accusing one or two other people of something which I couldn't really understand. She was very drunk and very aggressive, but the others were restraining her and the two groups seemed to be handling it as best they could.

But things got worse, and the LOUD woman eventually started hitting one of the men and one or two other men started fighting too.

At that point, perhaps too late, it seemed time to call the police. Downstairs I went to find my mobile. 999. A very calm (trained) voice asks me which emergency service do you require? Police. Another calm trained voice asks me what the trouble is. By this time I'm back upstairs and looking through the bedroom window again. But a police car is already there! I apologise, but the police operator still wants my name, and she also asks how many people are involved in the fight. Nobody's fighting now, but there are at least nine people out in the street, with just two police officers. She confirms this information and says goodbye.

A minute or two later, two more police cars quietly roll up and there are now four policemen and two policewomen on the scene. Suffolk police have their critics, but I'm not one of them. The temptation must be to make some arrests and start ordering people about. They don't do any of that - one pair talk to one group of drunks, one pair talk to the other group, and the final pair hang back. It's hard to know how much of this is experience and how much is training, but they handle the situation really well.

It would have probably ended there, but the stupid loud-mouthed woman is too drunk or dim or angry to understand what's going on, and after calming down for a minute or two she flares up again, running towards someone in the other group. She's given the police no choice and they arrest her, although even then she's walked to the police car by two officers, not handcuffed or anything. The car drives off with two officers and her in it.

And that's pretty much it - the police make sure the two groups of people go in different directions, and one of them speaks to Chris the landlord.

I like Britain a lot, but the drunken violent culture we have here, and have had here for centuries is not nice or pretty or useful. Considering how tonight's little episode had the potential to turn into a really nasty/dangerous incident, I thought the police handled it brilliantly. But then all over the country, every week-end, they get a lot of practice.

Open

2010-02-07T20:26:00.002Z

On Tuesday June 6th 1995, I left work at lunchtime and made my way across Paris to a not-very-good seat on Court Philippe Chatrier – the best tennis court in France.

Despite the prestige of the French Open grand slam event, and the brilliance of the players, it wasn’t a good day. The first match was a men’s quarter final between clay court specialist Thomas Muster, seeded 5 and the 2002 champion Albert Costa. Their contest went to four sets and I don’t remember a single point or moment from any of them.

Next up was the match I’d come to see; Yevgany Kefelnikov versus Andre Agassi.

In 1995 Andre Agassi was the most famous and exciting tennis player in the world, a fashion icon, media superstar, boyfriend of Brooke Shields, and with the best return of serve in the history of the game. Unlike the boring and one dimensional Pete Sampras (eliminated in the first round that year by an unseeded Austrian called Gilbert Schallier), Agassi excelled on all surfaces, and had a game defined by touch, skill, imagination and the most astonishing reflexes. He was also maddeningly inconsistent and often seemed distracted by the glamour and excitement of his much reported life off-court.

The match was a stinker – here’s how Andre describes it in his autobiography “Open” co-written by Pulitzer prize winner J.R Moehringer, and published a few months ago:

In the quarters I face Kafelnikov, the Russian who likened me to Jesus. I sneer at him across the net as the match begins: Jesus is about to whip you with a car antenna. I know I can beat Kafelnikov. He knows it too. It’s written all over his face. But early in the first set, I lunge for a ball and feel something snap. My hip flexor. I ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, pretend I don’t have a hip, but the hip sends lines of pain up and down my leg.

I can’t bend. I can’t move. I ask for the trainer, who gives me two aspirin and tells me there’s nothing he can do. His eyes are the size of poker chips when he tells me.

I lose the first set. Then the second. In the third I rally. I’m up 4-1, the crowd urging me onward. Allez, Agassi! But I grow less mobile with every minute. Kafelnikov, moving well, ties the set, and I feel my limbs go slack. It’s another Russian crucifixion. Au revoir, Grail. I walk off the court without collecting my rackets.

The real test wasn’t supposed to be Kafelnikov. It was supposed to be Muster, the hair-musser who’s been dominating on clay. So even if I’d gotten by Kafelnikov I don’t know how hobbled I would have been against Muster. But I promised Muster I’d never lose to him again, and I meant it, I liked my chances. I think no matter who was on the other side of that net, I could have done something great. As I leave Paris I don’t feel defeated; I feel cheated. This was it, I just know. My last chance. Never again will I be in Paris feeling so strong, so young. Never again will I inspire such fear in the locker room.

My golden opportunity to win all four slams is gone.

It’s gritty stuff, and actually that passage is one of the least memorable in the book. Open is quite simply the best sports autobiography I’ve ever read, and is so good it transcends the genre to become one of the best autobiographies ever written. It’s also horrifying and shocking.

The horror comes early in the form of Agassi’s dad, a former Olympic boxer, portrayed as a tennis obsessed disciplinarian who attempts to mould each of his four children into the best tennis player in the world. Andre is lucky enough to be the youngest:

He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes he made with my siblings. He ruined their games by hanging on too long, too tight, and in the process he ruined his relationship with them.

At 13, thousands of hours of constant practice and haranguing from Mr Agassi have turned Andre into an unbeatable junior, so he’s shipped off to Florida and imprisoned (there’s no other word for it) in a tennis academy run by a former paratrooper called Nick Bolliteri. Rebellious and miserable, Agassi is nearly thrown out of the institution, but his talent, and those thousands of hours of home practice mean he gets away with things and is indulged as the star pupil of the academy. Academy is a lose word here, the inmates are bussed out to a hopeless private school for four hours of hopeless teaching a day, then back to our full-time jobs, hitting balls until after dusk, at which time we collapse in heaps on our wooden bunks…

And so it goes on, a damaged childhood is followed by a bruised adolescence followed by the inevitable entry to ‘the circuit’ (aged 16) which of course is the endless travel practice play practice travel routine of the ATP Tour.

Agassi was known for his eccentric ways throughout his career, but reading Open, you soon come to be impressed with how normal he actually is considering the type of life he’s had. There’s some wry humour, and some nice surprises; Brooke Shields, his first wife, is far from the bimbo she seemed to me at the time; she has an English degree and a serious interest in art and literature. Pete Sampras, Agassi’s chief rival really is as one dimensional and boring as he appeared. Steffi Graff, Agassi’s second and so far final wife emerges from an almost equally damaged childhood so craves domestic bliss and normalcy, which she pursues with the steel eyed concentration that brought her 22 Grad Slam titles. Their marriage seems happy, and it’s easy to understand why, they are very different characters but have a lot in common.

It’s their second or third date:

“We talk for the first time about tennis. When I tell her that I hate it, she turns to me with a look that says, Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T15:41:00.004Z

Happy new year, everyone.

I went for a walk this morning up to Christchurch Park. As expected, not a soul was about and the tennis courts had a slightly eerie, surreal quality to them...

Roll on Summer, I've had enough!

Christmas Eve in the Late 1970s

2009-12-25T21:58:00.003Z

Last night (Christmas Eve) the BBC broadcast a version of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Like a lot of TV drama it was watchable without being memorable.

But the memories did come back of Christmas Eves in the 1970s, when accompanied by a set of grandparents, the family would all go out to dinner at friend’s pub/restaurant a few miles away called the Maesllwch Arms.

It was a pre-Christmas treat, as much for the adults who were spared preparing one formal meal, as for us children who seldom went out to a proper restaurant. I remember having a rather ghastly duck in orange source there one year, followed no doubt by delicious black forest gateau and then possibly cheese and biscuits. Yes it was all very sophisticated and wonderful for an 11 year old.

The food may have been unreliable at times but the venue was great; there was always a log fire which was not just pretty but functional in mid Wales in late December. Then there was a magnificent collection of brass ornaments on and around the fireplace, including real horse brasses (you can always tell the real ones because they are large and crudely made and chunky).

My favourite objects on the mantelpiece were (typically) a pair of heavy brass artillery shell tips with a scale engraved on the bottom of each cone in 1/10ths of a second. Presumably you swivelled the tip of the shell around to the correct setting for a certain range before loading it for proximity firing.

Of course every 1/10th of second counted that night; the long wait for Christmas itself, which began in earnest for us after Halloween, was nearly over. It was the best day of the year by far for us kids, and it’s the only thing about my childhood I genuinely miss – that visceral thrill of waking up on Christmas day and knowing there were presents, perhaps as many as 20 of them, waiting under the tree to be opened.

Maesllwch, pronounced my-slou-ch, is a little area about half a mile from Glasbury on the River Wye. It takes it name from the once impressive Maesllwch Castle, which is a lovely not-very-old castle with magnificent views across the valley and down to the Wye.

During our time in the area, lots of people became enchanted with the castle, but nobody could work out a way of making money from the place. I remember it being a luxury hotel, then a health-club, and finally some kind of spa and outdoor sports centre. It may even be abandoned now. The main trouble was the location – that part of mid Wales is really very remote, and a long way from any customers, let alone rich clients.

A local story that said Sir Arthur Conon Doyle once stayed at Maersllwch Castle, and used it’s scary remoteness and haunted gothic atmosphere as his inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles, although he transferred the location to Dartmore. Alas Wikipedia doesn’t support this story, so it must have been one of those Welsh stories told to the guilible English.

Never mind – it’s a nice story and it’s nice to remember those Christmas Eves.

My Life is Complete

2009-11-27T11:11:00.005Z

Last night I had one of those 'my life is complete' moments...

Since 2003 I've been trying to see Roger Federer play live in a competitive match. Well, last night I was lucky enough to see the great man play Juan Martin Del Potro at the Dome in London.

It was a vivid almost shocking experience, with passages of play that featured tennis of a standard that seemed unreal.

Right now, even 12 hours after it all finished, I can't get the images out of my head - just incredible what elite level tennis players can do. It rather resembles a magician doing some incredible tricks, but whereas with the magician you know that there are mirrors or wires and illusions, with elite level tennis players you know there is nothing but technique and talent.

Images and moments in the match kept replaying themselves in my head all of today - definitely one of those unforgettable experiences...

La Belle is Revealed!

2009-11-15T09:49:00.004Z

According to the Observer, the identity of Belle de Jour, the expensive London prostitute whose brilliant blog won the Guardian blog of the year award in 2004 has been revealed.

I'd often wondered if the blog was real; it was so well written, witty and yet somehow slightly unconvincing I suspected it might be a male professional writer behind it all. Then there were some very improbable clients, like the engineer who reads Literature. In over 20 years of working with a wide variety of engineers, I've yet to come across one whose reads anything other than Tolkien and sci-fi for fun. Then there was Belle herself, clearly a very intelligent highly educated woman, who seemed far too sensible to be earning a living in a dangerous and degrading profession that must be up there with bomb disposal and window cleaning in the dangerous accident stakes.

And yet... and yet... there was an undeniable female sensibility to the whole thing which a man would find very difficult to achieve on a sustained basis; Belle talks at length about beauty products, lingerie and shopping.

Anyway, it turns out Belle is in fact a woman, an experienced science blogger (!) and her real name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. She was indeed a high class hooker for about 14 months during the period Belle de Jour was the most compelling blog on the net.

The revelation provokes mixed feelings, but at least the blog is still out there for everyone to enjoy for years to come.

You can read the report here. The link to Belle de Jour is in the Celebrated Blogs section down there on the right.

A Brush with Greatness...

2009-11-08T11:53:00.003Z

I worked through the night on Friday and was heading home early on Saturday morning when I spotted this scene just outside Liverpool Street Station.

A unit medic - the guy in the high vis jacket - said the film is called "Hero" and that it's directed by Clint Eastwood - not sure if he's starring as well. Funny how the tube station they've created there is called Charing Cross, and wonderfully authentic it looks too - the colours, fonts etc are spot on.

As always, it's amazing how people are employed making a film - look at that crowd there - all are busy doing something, if only acting as extras. Us onlookers were kept well back by cheerful security guards and a token policeman.

Las Vegas Trip Journal

2009-10-11T21:09:00.012+01:00

I kept a journal of the recent holiday, and here it is with only the spelling corrected - there's a lot about the flight because I get so bored and ratty on long haul flights:

Thursday October 1st

06:18 Ipswich Station

Always wish I’d travelled lighter, although the bag isn’t that heavy. In a happy mood but had somehow expected to be euphoric; have looked forward to this day for about five months now. Just checked for ticket/passport/money. Everything else is a bonus. Hope the books are good – rather dreading the flight.

06:55 Train to Liverpool Street

Reading Nick Hornby’s The Complete Polysyllabic Spree a collection of reviews. Reminded of the huge chasms of bigotry in my psyche. For instance I can’t stand American comedy – Nick makes a reference to Sienfeld, a comedy with one tiny flaw; it isn’t remotely funny. Then there’s my complete hatred of musicals and opera. Big flaws.

08:13 Victoria Station

Just did the tube from Liverpool Street to Victoria. Felt happy seeing all the grim faced commuters and pretty girls. One young babe had holes in her leggings just behind each knee. Wondered if this was simple poverty or absent-mindedness or a calculated look? Whatever it made her the more lovely.

08:15 Gatwick Express

Leaves on time! Not worried about making the flight now.

10:15 Gatwick Airport

Las couple of hours have passed really quickly. A 30 minute really slick train ride to Gatwick passing through Purley where my best friend lives. Followed by an easy and impressively quick automated check-in for Virgin Atlantic at the South Terminal.

Things start to go pear shaped at the l-o-n-g security queue, although the chirpy good humour of the staff (too few of them) helps a bit. Got a surprise at the end – they get almost everyone to remove their shoes and run them through an X-ray machine. Perhaps in 20 years we’ll all be separated by gender and queue up naked.

Arrive at Gate 31 followed by the cabin crew who come up through the gate, immaculately uniformed and made up with not a loose hair amongst them. Funny how the men are all so obviously gay – there must be a straight cabin attendant somewhere. No sign of the pilots – they must be in the cockpit already.

11:30 In the plane on the ground at Gatwick

Really quite angry with security at the gate. Made me take off my shoes AGAIN damn it and made me late boarding by going through the entire contents of my wallet. Asks me how long I’m staying. Tells me he wants to see happy faces when I glare at him, and ‘I’m only doing my job.’ Yeah right.

FUCK BLAIR!

FUCK BUSH!

FUCK THE FUCKING NEO-CONS AND STUPID EVIL FOREIGN POLICY!

FUCK THIS INSANE SECURITY STATE THEY’VE CREATED!

BET THEY NEVER HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS CRAP EVERY TIME THEY TAKE A FLIGHT!

12:12 Still in the plane on the ground at Gatwick

We’re coming up to being an hour late for take-off now – I’m wondering if we’ve missed our slot due to security arrangements? My mood is not improving – the flight is long enough even if everything goes to plan.

12:16 Still in the plane on the ground at Gatwick

A passenger has just shouted "I'm bored! I'm bored! I'm bored!"

12:55 BST Over the Irish Sea

Plane took off at about 12:20. I’m OK now – feeling calm and happier. Am watching the navigation channel on the seat-back screen; we’re 261 miles from Gatwick at 32,000 feet – that’s about six miles up. Ground speed is 539mph so we must be butting into a headwind; the jet-stream most likely. A chilly -59F outside.

13:00 in the plane = 05:00 in Las Vegas. Flight time will be 10 hours and 13 minutes. Oh and I’ve just discovered we actually took off at 12:22. (4916 miles to go at 13:10).

13:15 in the plane

Just cleared the coast of Ireland. The three young blokes in the seats in front are going to ruin their hearing – I can disingush actual dialogue from the film they are watching over the ambient noise of the cabin and the roar of the engines!

15:22 in the plane

We’re over the Atlantic approximately 200 miles South of Greenland. Just had my first drink of the flight (Coke which was yummy). 3 hours and 2 minutes into the flight. Not feeling too bad at the mo, although the bloke sitting next to me is getting on my tits. He keeps making disparaging remarks about this plane compared to the ones of Singapore Airlines and keeps trying to tell me about New Zealand. I’m sure NZ is a lovely country but I’ll never go there because the flight is too long.

16:03 in the plane

We’re nearly past the Atlantic Ocean now and approaching the Canadian coast near Goose Bay. The boredom is beginning to really eat away at me now. I’ve done a more or less full day at work in terms of time and there is still a massive 3387 miles to go… We’ve travelled 1909 miles which is pretty much my limit on a plane. Going to start reading a guidebook soon.

16:55 in the plane

Near the coast of Canada. The crew are about to serve sandwiches and ice cream as a sort of tea, although I believe we’ll get dinner later on as well. Still 2971 miles from Las Vegas. I hate this. It’s been 4 hours and 36 minutes since we started and I’ve had enough.

17:17 in the plane

Just seen land for the first time since we left Ireland behind. There’s a dusting of snow on hundreds of miles of lakes and tundra. Horrible landscape.

17:37 in the plane

We’ve just climbed to 36,000 feet and are over the Northernmost part of Canada – the Hudson Straight is too our right. Feel better again – perhaps it’s the food, perhaps it’s the fact that I can see hundreds of miles of tundra below us, maybe it’s the anticipation that half the journey is done – should be downhill from now on.

17:39 in the plane

Have just passed the half-way mark – half way there! Also our ground speed is up to 530mph which is encouraging. Still South of Ungora Bay.

18:37 in the plane

Over James Bay heading towards Thunder Bay. In turbulence right now which has been quite strong and quite often this flight. Ground speed is up to 621 mph, altitude is at 36,000. Just over 2000 miles to go which on this crazy trip feels quite close. Well over half way there now! 3255 miles flown in 6 hours and 18 minutes. Due North of that place where the three Great Lakes converge.

19:43 in the plane

About to cross the border into United States airspace, with an incursion into Minnisota or North Dokota a few miles East of Winnipeg. 1342 miles to go but they will be tough ones. Getting really annoyed with the bloke next to me – he will not SHUT THE FUCK UP!

20:07 in the plane

Trying to decide where to have brekkie/late night/early morning meal. Peppermill might be good if I get the strip bus. Basic priority if to check in, pay the hotel bill immediately and get some sleep. Get some money from an ATM. Sleep! Think we’re over North Dakota now…

20:30 in the plane

The optimist in me says we’re under the two hour mark now. Hopefully Virgin will feed us some dinner before then which will use up some time and finally the engines will be throttled back and we’ll start our descent. We’re about to leave North Dakota and clip the state of errrrr Montana perhaps?

21:03 in the plane

Over the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming. Just nearly had a major loss of temper – the old man again. I’ve seldom had a more irritating companion for a flight ever. 4576 miles from Gatwick 644 miles to Las Vegas. Just got to keep it together for another hour or so. There’s never any problem once they cut the engines and we start to descend.

13:21 local time, still in the plane

I’m going to sign off and pack up now. We’re less than 480 miles away, the view of the desert is awesome, and we’ll be starting our descent soon. Can’t express how happy I’ll be to get off this plane!

Friday October 2nd

A room with a view

05:10 The Plaza Hotel and Casino, Downtown Las Vegas

Went to sleep at 6pm yesterday – it took ages to clear security at McCarron because the US now takes the finger prints of everyone who visits the country. Typically, there were no less than eight (yes eight) officers to do this for several plane loads of passengers. One of the many legacies of Good ole Dubya; the Department of Homeland Security. What a tub of filth.

Room 1945

Then there was a wait for the bus, followed by a rather long but interesting bus ride on the 108 which passes down Paradise Road to the East of the strip. Check in at the Plaza was friendly and efficient and they’ve given me a lovely room. Unbelievably cheap at $26 a night; just over £16.

Got up at around midnight, had a shave and a long hot shower and jumped into a 2-4 Hold-Em game at the Golden Nugget. Played from about 1 till 4:30AM, won $25 playing competent unflashy poker, trying to ease myself back into the swing of it. My companion at the table was a guy called Jim Eck and his wife, who live near Chicago. The Nugget are having a prize draw with three Harleys to give away on Saturday night. Jim and wife won’t be there then, so we made a pact that if one of his tickets won, we’d sell the motorcycle on E-Bay and split the profits 50/50.

14:29 Plaza.

Just back from another rather wonderful three hour sit at the Golden Nugget – had some incredible cards and won $148, which is a staggering win at 2-4 level. The only snag is sooner or later the dreaded ‘regression to the mean’ will kick in, and I’ll end up giving it all back – you simply can’t win that sort of money at 2-4 and expect to hold onto it!

Saturday 3rd October

Love to sit here outside the Plaza before bedtime drinking an ice cold Coke and people watching

01:51 – Plaza

Another fantastic session at the tables, this time playing 3-6 at the Mirage, my old battleground in Las Vegas. Still a rather well lit, clean and efficiently run poker room, despite being eclipsed by various other rooms these days. Up until the late 1990s, the Mirage held the biggest toughest poker games in the world on a regular basis. Not that I came anywhere near them, although even 6-12 could get interesting at times. This time I managed to win $108 in about 90 minutes. This is far too good to be true!

A suspiciously friendly girl called Nikki chatted to me at the bar of the Wynn afterwards. I suspect she was one of the many week-end warriors of Las Vegas, we parted with e-mails and phone numbers. I may buy her lunch at some point next week, she works down town and I can use the lunch to assess her a bit more. Normally women never chat me up, unless they want to charge for a fuck directly afterwards…

Felt wonderful today – haven’t been this happy in years.

06:45 Plaza

Just had a nice shock – woke up thinking it was Sunday when of course it’s still Saturday! Such are the effects of Las Vegas and jetlag.

Here’s a list of things to do today:

Attend the free motorcycle draw outside the Golden Nugget – you got a ticket for any poker hand better than a flush, and I have a total of 7, including those that came from Jim Eck and his wife. Obviously there are several thousand tickets in the drum, but the odds have got to be better than any state lottery or even a manufacturer’s give away. I reckon there’s something like a 1 in 500 chance of winning, maybe as low as 1 in 250.

Play a hand or two of Black Jack, using my free coupons that came in a coupon book that came with the room at the Plaza. The Fetish Pit at the Las Vegas Club next door which features “the hottest dealers in Las Vegas” sounds like a fun venue for this!

Play at the Plaza poker room, as I get $5 worth of free chips if I buy in for $20 or more. The usual buy in for me in a 2-4 game is $100, so this is free money in every sense of the word…

18:54 Plaza

First losing session of the holiday – lost $75.50 at the Plaza in a painful session where I didn’t get much to play and what I did got nailed. Biggest loss was losing a flush over a flush (always a risk at low limit) and getting trip Jacks flushed on the river (another typical low limit scenario). Slightly on tilt towards the end and not playing well so I left the table before things got worse after a 4 hour sit. One strange point – have yet to have been dealt pocket Aces on this holiday – hope they turn up soon.

20:50 Plaza

Lost another $51 playing Blackjack in the ‘Fetish Pit’ at the Las Vegas Club – all for a stinking $5 coupon! What an idiot I am! The pit is evil – pure evil. Do not play pit games! There – I won’t do it again.

Next up – the motorcycle draw, held outdoors on a stage just in front of the Nugget. Followed by some 4-8 at Binions, hopefully.

Sunday 3rd October

00:52 Plaza

Well, no motorcycle, although winning the damn thing would have been a bit of a nightmare! I was pleased to see at least three of the people who did get drawn to win the motorcycles were genuine biker types who would just love a big Harley (they drew five names, with the losing two people getting a load of free play coupons and free accommodation at the Nugget).

Afterwards I went into Binions to discover an impressively renovated poker room but none of the old dealers or floor managers there any more. Lost $30 playing 3-6 in a miserable session that featured rags after rags after rags. My highest pocket pair was 99, and I got sod all else to play. Gave up after a couple of hours. Hopefully today will be better, although I knew after such a great run of cards in the first few days it was bound to dry up sooner or later...

18:10 Plaza

Today started badly enough – I got up early to get the bus along Washington Avenue to attend a group tennis lesson at the Darling Tennis Centre. But the driver wasn’t sure where it was, so as soon as I saw some tennis courts I rang the bell and got off. Bad decision – it was a public park with some nice tennis courts. A friendly player tells me the DTC is five miles (!) further up Washington Avenue. Oh dear.

Wait wait wait for the next bus, and realisation dawns that it’s Sunday and the bus services aren’t going to be very frequent. Oh dear. Cross the road and feel rather vulnerable hanging around in a bad district – lots of poverty and depravation. Ended up waiting 90 minutes to take the bus back downtown. Grrrrr! Will give it another go tomorrow…

Regrouped, had some late breakfast/early lunch and tried the 2-4 game at the Nugget once again. Another good session, with a sold $69 win after 5 hours of play. Made some great laydowns and one or two successful bluffs, which is hard to do at low limits. Very pleased with the way I played this session!

Monday 4th October

01:50 Plaza

Just back from the Mirage where I played 3-6 with a few very good players at the table waiting for a 10-20 game to get off the ground. Won $17 and was glad to escape the session while ahead – there were lots of semi-bluff raises and re-raises coming from the good players, while the usual weak/tight and passive 3-6 players didn’t stand a chance.

Took a few pictures tonight on the bus up to the strip and on the long blissful walk back from the Mirage to the Sahara – my favourite walk in the world.

Couple of unemployed locals were chatting gloomily at the Sahara bus stop – a reminder that this recession has hit America hard.

10:30 Plaza

There’s always a childish delight in drawing the curtains to reveal another perfect sunny hot day! Wonder how long you’d have to live here before it because routine and the magic wore off? Several years if you like the heat and sun as much as me…

14:45 Plaza

Won again! Another $74 to the good playing 2-4 at the Nugget – I’m just destroying the game there – this is amazing!

23:55 Plaza

Had a really nice afternoon tracking down the Gamblers Bookshop, which has moved from it’s decades long location downtown and is now sited three or four miles away on Tropicana Avenue near the university. I got the 108 back up Paradise to the Trop crossroads and then walked the rest of the way past the university and got to the shop about 20 minutes before it closed. No worries – I know exactly what I want; Small Stakes Hold Em - Winning Big With Expert Play by Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth. Also buy Roy Cook’s second book. Get a free keyring for spending $50. Whopee do.

Still plenty of daylight left so pop into the Crown and Anchor pub next to the university to sit out in the garden and read the new books. A friendly group of students invites me over to their table – it’s lovely to chat with slim young articulate Americans – such a charming and friendly people and much maligned. Always a laugh to see how one culture attempts to recreate another – the pub is authentic in many respects, hopeless in others! I’d forgotten how popular darts is as a game on college campuses. I’m told lots of ex-pats do visit the pub, mainly for the football which is broadcast on large screens inside.

Later in the evening I played some 2-4 at the Plaza – didn’t really go well and I was lucky to escape with a $7 win. Always satisfying when you can come back from being behind.

Tuesday 5th October

18:55 Plaza

Just back from a rather unpleasant sit at the Nugget – managed to lose $83 in a stinking session that saw some nice hands cracked (Aces, finally, twice – both cracked on the river). The icing on the cake was a rather nasty oriental gentleman who took great delight in slow rolling my two pair to reveal trips… Not nice. May have another shot at the game tonight, or may try the 4-8 game at the Venetian.

Earlier this morning I finally made it to the Darling Tennis Centre and participated in a 90 minute group tennis lesson that was great fun. The instructor, a chap called Dorian was a really impressive player, one of the many who perfected their trade in the very competitive US college circuit, but who could quite make the transition to fully professional status (or maybe he had more sense?). Whatever, he’s got to be the best player I’ve ever hit with – just beautiful strokes! Really nice crew doing the lesson too – friendly and accommodating.

Wednesday 6th October

01:20 Plaza

Well the dreaded regression to the mean has definitely arrived! Lost $91 playing 4-8 at the Venetian in an eminently beatable game. Do wish I’d discovered the V early on in the week. It’s a beautiful big popular poker room with at least two 4-8 games going at any time.

Forgot to mention I met a nice girl called Jacqueline playing at the Nugget yesterday and it was she who suggested the Venetian. We have a tentative arrangement to meet up on Thursday evening.

Right! Bed now as I’d like to take another shot at the tennis class tomorrow…

23:06 Plaza

Got up too late for the tennis (fool!) but did manage to have a hit on the hotel court with a nice guy from Boston called Jeffery, a freelance sports journalist. We had a good chat about New England, and the differences between there and the South Western USA.

Just back from an epic 4-8 session at the Venetian – still can’t get the hang of that game! Had some bad luck and miserable cards and ended up giving up after 5 hours, $65 down. Don’t think it’s my play that’s causing this – I made some correct folds and played tight when needs be and loose in family pots with suited connectors. Just couldn’t hit a flop!

Do hope tomorrow’s session goes well – I’m due at the damn place!

Friday 9th October

07:36

Lost again in a hellish session at the Venetian which was very disappointing as at one stage I was up $50+. Should have quit there with a smile on my face but oh no, had to play some more and ended up losing again, this time $123 down. Really didn’t get too many cards and when I did I ran into a full house (ouch) or trips. Both killer hands – the trips in particular was well concealed. Think I’m playing ‘big hands’ like Aces and Kings too aggressively and not releasing them when it’s clear they are beaten…

Decided to play the final session of the holiday at the Nugget, which naturally was awful as well. Decided to play until I won a hand. Had to wait 1 hour and 55 minutes to do so; and ended up another $35 down. The frustrating thing is these games, particularly the one at the Venetian are very good and beatable – I’m just running bad at the moment. A real shame I can’t return tomorrow and see if things would be different!

Never mind I’ve had a great holiday – played some nice tennis yesterday in the group lesson, and had a nice meal with Jacqueline, who’s daughter dances in a show at the Riv, I think she said.

Can’t wait to return next year!

Listless

2009-09-12T21:13:00.002+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts recently; my life has been even more boring and eventless than usual.

It consists of work (lots of photocopying and filing, mainly) and travel to and from work, and washing clothes and eating and not much more. Hardly the stuff of blog posts.

None the less, nobody's life is completely empty, so here are a few things of note:

The body discovered in the flat just down the road was indeed murdered; a rather lost soul fond of a drink called Rosalyn Hunt, known as Rose. I didn't know her. A 41 year old man and his 'partner' aged 15 have since been arrested for murder.

I still do the occasional night-shift; last week's was a particularly tough one. I started at just after midnight and finished at around 9am. But there is a consolation of sorts seeing all the commuters stony faced and grim heading off to work, while you're smugly aware that a bacon sandwich and a lovely long sleep are your tasks for the day. There is a feeling of waste though - Thursday was a lovely day (so I'm told) but hard to appreciate when you're asleep until 6pm.

Two and bit weeks remain before a well deserved holiday, so at least there is some point to all this worky work crap.

Lets hope there's time to see some films and read a decent book or two before then.

Not Again!

2009-08-09T17:21:00.002+01:00

Back from a lovely holiday and I head down the road at lunchtime to buy some lunch.

Two police cars parked in Victoria Street - nothing unusual there. But then there is another estate car and a white van, both bearing police markings and the sign Scientific Unit on the side.

Then finally there are a couple of journalists taking pictures and asking people what's going on. I see three guys in white jumpsuits chatting by the side of the van.

"Hello. What's happened?" I ask.

"We're trying to find out," says one of them after a pause and a glance at his colleagues. "There's absolutely nothing to worry about," he reassures me, which of course has the opposite effect.

Later this afternoon this item appeared on the excellent Ipswich Star website:

A WOMAN has been found dead at a flat in Ipswich.

Police were called at around 11am this morning by a member of the public who was concerned for the safety of a woman in a flat in Victoria Street.

Officers gained entry to the property and found a woman dead.

The death is being treated as unexplained and further inquiries are being carried out.

The police have now gone, but a doctor's car is now parked outside the flat.

Sigh. I do hope this is an isolated incident with an innocent explanation and nothing bad has happened...

Tableau vivant

2009-07-05T21:20:00.003+01:00

We're so lucky to have had three classic Wimbledon men's finals in a row. At the end of each one, I've found myself feeling deeply sorry for the loser.

Others feel the same. This is the last line of the match report by the Guardian's live blogger Scott Murry who reported the entire match on line with wit and skill:

Tableau vivant: Roddick is sitting in his chair, motionless, dead behind the eyes, contemplating deeply existential issues.

A Rack of High Society

2009-07-04T10:53:00.004+01:00

Yeah!

Thanks to you, the blog has reached the dizzy heights of a rack of high society ($10,000 in black $100 chips), or ten grand, or whatever. Hits to this site, actually.

Alas in over a decade of serious poker, I never actually heard the term "high society" till I saw the dreadfully titled but otherwise rather good film Rounders back in 1990-something. But it's nice to imagine poker has such a term and to see that odometer down there on the bottom right of the blog at such a high number is awesome.

Thank you for reading!

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

2009-06-21T23:04:00.005+01:00

Saturday morning, and in search of a small (i.e lightweight) book to read on the train, I dug out my copy of Horace McCoy's classic, first published in 1936 in the midst of the great depression.

It's a curious minor work; part experimental fiction and part dime store trash. At 122 pages it's also short in way that most novels today (sadly) aren't.

It's a simple sad tale of two out of work actors, Michael who narrates the story, and Gloria a young woman he meets in Los Angles. Very short of money "the free food part of it sounds good"and tired of unemployment (in Gloria's case tired of life) they enter a dance marathon to be held "on the amusement pier at the beach in an enormous old building that had once been a public dance hall."

The rules are simple, couples enter the competition for free and dance until they drop. The last couple remaining gets to share $1000, which wasn't a huge amount of money even back then. To prevent the contest ending too early, there is a 10 minute rest break after every 1 hour and 50 minutes. It's the 10 minute breaks that ensure the contest lasts for weeks, and as the hours roll by, we learn how the serious competitors train themselves to sleep on their partner's shoulder, eat whilst on the toilet, and how zombie like swaying counts as "dancing." Gritty stuff eh? The whole set-up is horrible, accurate, and of course a wonderful analogy for the condition of the United States in the years after the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Adapted (considerably) by scriptwriters James Poe and Robert E Thompson, in 1969 it was turned into a brilliant film directed by 35 year old Sydney Pollack. Jane Fonda was nominated for the Oscar and should have won it for her portrayal of Gloria, a young woman suffering dreadful depression after an abusive childhood and equally abusive marriage.

The major difference between novel and film is the way the film introduces some vivid 'minor' characters such as Sailor and Alice, and has a major part for the M.C. "Rocky" brilliantly played by Gig Young who, along with Fonda, carries the film. The major omission compared to the book is the violence that frequently occurs both on the dancefloor and, surprisingly, in the audience itself - there is a vicious fight and a shooting that kills two people and results in the marathon dance contest being shut down by the authorities. In the film the contest is still going on when the end credits roll.

I rather enjoyed the way that nothing dates like slang and high fashion, so much so that without context some dialogue becomes impossible to understand in 2009. For instance:

"I don't think it's very nice of you to razz me," I said to Gloria. "I don't ever razz you."

Razz could mean hit or grope or irritate or criticise or even betray. In fact it means tease.

Some intelligent-foolish people truly believe that life was better in some ill defined period known as "the good old days."

Anyone who spends an hour or two reading "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" can only conclude the good old days were fucking horrible.

Great Week-End

2009-06-14T20:14:00.010+01:00

The runners wait for the start of the Edinburgh Marathon - in suitably historic Eastern Mediterranean weather.

A great week-end but not this week-end, or even last week-end spent in the exotic heart of Birmingham, but the week-end before that...

Went up to Edinburgh to see D, and several mates from work who were all competing in the Edinburgh marathon.

My 100% sunny record of trips to Edinburgh continues, this was really hot and sunny - suitable for a wide range of activities except for running 26 miles and 385 yards. Not that that got in the way of my intrepid colleagues. Going from memory Paddy finished in 4 hours 20, Katie about an hour later, and Phil an hour or so after that. You really needed to have been in Edinburgh three weeks ago to appreciate what an achievement finishing the marathon was; it really was hot!

Left to Right; Paddy, Katy and Phil.

While my colleagues ran the marathon, D and myself did our usual "Scotland in 48 Hours" trick at a frenetic pace. In no particular order:

Royal Research Ship Discovery which took Captain Scott to the Antarctic on his first successful expedition.

A castle the name of which I've forgotten.

Her Britannic Majesty's Ship Unicorn

Unicorn looked utter shite from the outside (a hulk basically) but inside it's a very well preserved early 19th century sailing frigate. I wish I'd taken a picture of the shockingly cramped mess deck below the gun deck - D and myself are hardly the tallest guys you'll meet but even we had to stoop the whole time were down there. Really makes you appreciate why they needed things like press gangs in order to crew these ships.

Another different castle that I've also forgotten the name of...

The remains of the Antonine Wall which is some distance North of Hadrian's Wall.

On Sunday we walked about a mile to see the best preserved bit of the Antonine Wall, a more Northern version of Hadrian's wall. The walk, more of a stroll really, left us breathless and a thirsty. At that time my friends from work were about 1/3rd of the way through their marathon.

A rather nice piece of engineering to replace several locks.

And there you have it - cram more into 48 blissful hours - I challange you!

Pledge of Allegance

2009-05-19T13:49:00.002+01:00

The excellent Johann Hari has come up with an alternative pledge of allegance to replace the dreadful durge we make immigrants recite at citizenship ceremonies across the land.

With a few trivial edits (e.g. remove references to the dreadful soaps East Enders and Coronation Street, add references to bacon sandwiches and HP sauce and the songs of Ray Davies) I'd be happy to recite it myself:

I pledge allegiance to the Queen Vic, not Queen Elizabeth. I pledge allegiance to Coronation Street, not Downing Street. I pledge allegiance to The Office, not the office of Prime Minister. I pledge allegiance to the Life of Brian, not the Life of Christ. I pledge allegiance to Marmite – and to people who can talk for hours about precisely why they hate Marmite.

I pledge allegiance to deep-fried Mars bars, cold doner kebabs, and girls who wear mini-skirts in sub-zero temperatures. I pledge allegiance to the NHS, the BBC, and M&S. I pledge allegiance to Shakespeare and to the belief that "there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio".

I pledge allegiance to Radio 4 documentaries about the history of drinking water, told in six parts. I pledge allegiance to George Orwell, George Formby, George Eliot, and George Michael. I pledge allegiance to the Notting Hill Carnival, the Edinburgh Festival, and the people who – for no reason at all – wander around Glastonbury dressed as giant pigeons.

I pledge allegiance to our national dish, chicken tikka masala. I pledge allegiance to the people who sell candy floss on muddy beaches on muggy days. I pledge allegiance to fog and hail and rain, and to people who wear three layers of clothing and shed them and put them back on several times a day, each time declaring with an optimistic smile, "The weather's lovely today".

I pledge allegiance to the Beatles and the conviction that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I pledge allegiance to queuing, and to the people who tut and cluck and scrunch their faces when anybody tries to push in. I pledge allegiance to William Wallace played by an Australian and Gandhi played by an Englishman.

I pledge allegiance to Fawlty Towers and faulty trains and that small, almost silent sigh that shudders across a carriage when the train stops for no reason in empty fields. I pledge allegiance to the wrong kind of snow.

I pledge allegiance to the fact that the London Olympics in 2012 will be messier and shabbier and far more prone to disruption by protesters than the Beijing Olympics.

I pledge allegiance to the boys who died in the mud at Normandy so I could be free. I pledge allegiance to the women who slept in the mud at Greenham Common so I would not burn. I pledge allegiance to Ateeque Sharifi, who came here as a refugee from Taliban Afghanistan, only to be blown up by Talibanists on the Circle Line. I pledge allegiance to everyone who drives an ambulance or teaches a child on this rainy island for paltry wages because they know it's the right thing to do.

I pledge allegiance to the people of Britain, not because they're the best in the world, but because they're mine."

Amen.

Can You Get Out, Please?

2009-05-17T21:50:00.002+01:00

A very spooky thing just happened;

I was alone in the sitting room tapping away on the laptop, when behind me the door (which was ajar) opened and I became aware that someone was in the room.

So I turn around and peer into the twilight, expecting to see my neighbour Kimberly, or perhaps my landlord Nick, or maybe Kimberly's young daughter Kaylie. The back door is open, and we all get on well enough for any of them to come in through the kitchen and ask me for whatever; batteries perhaps, or maybe a screwdriver, or a torch or something. I'm notorious for getting engrossed in a book or a task and being completely unaware of a polite knock or a cough or whatever sign that people give to interrupt you.

But there was nobody there.

Just the door, wide open. Maybe it's shock or fear, but the temperature seemed to drop several degrees, and the hairs on my forearms came up in goose pimples.

So I say out loud "Can you get out, please?" and after a second or two, the door shuts firmly.

Oh.

***

Explanations:

It's gusty outside, and the doors that are ajar have been banging and swaying all day. But not that door, and I've been sat here several hours.

Then there's my own psychological state; I've been very stressed at work recently, and today I've been too lazy to bother eating very much so maybe I'm a bit low on blood sugar and running on reserve. If a hallucination is going to happen; now is as good a time as any this week-end.

I don't believe in ghosts, although I do believe that many of us have a few ESP moments in a lifetime. Interestingly there is no scientific technique to investigate things that occur that infrequently; the standard (entirely plausible) explanation is coincidence. Inevitable if you roll those dice enough times and I've played enough poker to know that randomness can often appear very non-random.

So... a particularly strong gust of wind causes an air-pressure imbalance that opens the door, admits a blast of cold air from outside, and then passes, causing an opposite pressure imbalance that closes the door.

None the less, it's 'textbook' paranormal; especially that sense you get when someone enters a room, and the sudden temperature drop. And I don't recall feeling the slightest breeze throughout the whole episode.

So maybe, just maybe... I've 'seen' a ghost.

Smug in the Sunshine

2009-05-10T21:44:00.003+01:00

I got Panne out today and made some progress* on the never ending windscreen wiper problem.

Not that they were needed on such a gorgeous day. Despite the dust and cobwebs, Panne looks smug in the sunshine - perhaps from all the compliments she got from nice passers by.

* It seems burnt out wires aren't good at transmitting electricity

Mad Mel Again

2009-05-06T13:32:00.004+01:00

Mel Philips fascinates me, as she almost always holds views completely the opposite of my own.

But when she writes things like:

...the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered...

I'm never sure if she's lying for Israel, or quite completely insane?

You can read her latest blog entry here.

The Five O'Clock Hysterics

2009-05-01T16:02:00.003+01:00

I just typed "pint" instead of "point" and found it hysterically funny.

It was even funnier that my colleagues didn't find it funny.

It was even funnier realising that it wasn't very funny.

Time to go home - I can't read the screen because the laughter tears have blurred my vision.

Beautiful Evening

2009-04-08T21:52:00.002+01:00

Left work early and walked just over a mile downriver to the tennis courts at Shadwell Park.

Played a close match with a nice Belgian guy called Louis, and then ambled back to the office to change and go home.

Maybe it was the endorphins, but the walk by the river past all the converted warehouses and stairways and narrow cobbled streets seemed magical. It warm and sunny and bright and vivid in a way Britain seldom is and the redevelopment has created a really pleasant area I'd never visited before.

Magical...

Rite of Passage

2009-04-06T21:27:00.031+01:00

Original hardback - 1969 - artist unknown

Rite of Passage was the first science fiction book I ever read. It was borrowed from my grandfather, another ardent reader, whose house was full of trashy popular fiction; westerns, adventure stories, war porn, and occasionally science fiction.

1970 edition - artist Eddie Jones

The covers of these books were minor works of (commercial) art; lurid colours lots of violence and often a hint of sex. I found them fascinating but also off-putting. They gave out a very clear message; adults only, not designed for kids. You can see various examples from various times throughout this post (the book has remained in print almost continuously since it’s first edition in 1968).

1970s edition? Artist unknown (scene doesn't appear in the book either!)

I still don’t know what made me pick up Rite of Passage; I didn’t even understand the title, and the cover (which amongst this lot I’ve been unable to find) wasn’t particularly interesting or violent. It depicted a huge space craft the size of several sky scrapers, with lots of windows lit up like an office building.

1970s Edition? Artist unknown.

So at around 10 or 11 years old I picked up the book and started reading. I got very lucky.

Rite of Passage is a first person narrative which starts when the narrator is 10 years old! It’s well written in that deceptively simple style that is so difficult to achieve page after page and even a child like myself could understand it. But it had its challenges too.

1982 Edition - Artist Rowena Morrill

For a start the narrator is a girl called Mia, even if she is a bit of a tomboy who plays football (called soccer) and doesn’t seem to realise that a foul gives you a free kick, not a ‘fresh kick.’ They also play the game in a weird 2-3-5 formation, which by 1968 was well obsolete and I knew this, our school team played 4-4-2 as did every other team in the land since Sir Alf and the boys adopted it for that tournament in 1966. Never mind. She lives on a vast spaceship (clearly the subject of the cover painting) that once ferried humanity to the stars.

1990 Edition - Artist Debbie Hughes

I loved the details about living on a spaceship, and found the ship’s huge size (it’s big enough for hundreds of football pitches) and the whole premise of a sort ‘city in space’ rather inspiring. In fact Mia’s life is rather humdrum; she has friends, gets into the occasional fight, has lessons (interestingly in small groups gathered around a tutor) and gradually grows up. Her particular skill is using the ship's vast air-conditioning system as sort of private world/transport system to move around in. Like all quality heroines, she's naughty but nice.

Late 1970s/early 1980s edition? Artist unknown.

The details accumulate; the ship is one of several that once ferried people to other planets. The earth has been completely destroyed in a vast nuclear war caused by over-population (the equivalent of the global warming catastrophe of the late 1950s/early 1960s). There’s a vast technological and social difference between the people lucky enough to live on the ships and those who live on the 90 or so scattered planets that have been colonised. It’s intriguing stuff to imagine no matter if you’re 10 or 40.

1978 Edition - Artist unknown

Of course there has to be a problem or two in any little utopia, and for Mia and her friends it comes at 14, when she has to undergo a test called “trial.” This is a pretty brutal ‘rite of passage’ that involves setting kids down on one of the colonised planets and leaving them alone to fend for themselves for a month. Two thirds of the book basically describes Mia’s thoughts and feelings as she grows up, and the intensive and at times rather strange training she undergoes with a group of her peers to prepare her for her trial. I liked the technical aspects of this; how to shoot a blaster, which is a kind of pistol with a sighting device very similar to the lasers available for guns today. How to ride a horse (I too was enduring riding lessons at the time), how to construct a shelter, and various other useful/archaic skills.

2007 Edition - Artist unknown. This is the most 'accurate' cover painting with a scary looking Lossel watching Mia as she leaves the scoutship to begin her one month trial.

And then…. The letdown.

It’s a huge letdown.

Mia and her friends depart in a scoutship (which is basically a flying saucer) and dropped off one by one to find themselves in… the American Wild West circa 1870, basically.

2003 Edition - Artist unknown

Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.

Of course it’s not an exact copy of the wild west; there is the presence of the ‘Lossels’ who are humanoid creatures that seem to be sentient – the local people herd them and exploit them and treat them badly like dim slaves. But as for the rest… 19^th century costumes, 19^th century culture, 19^th century language, men on horseback, women at home (and probably barefoot in the kitchen), revolvers firing bullets etc etc etc.

1980 Edition - Artist unknown.

And that was basically that.

I was so disappointed at this cop-out that it would be nearly 25 years before some good friends persuaded me to read any science fiction again, and they were good enough to choose very carefully and well. Oh and there was the always excellent Iain Banks, who writes wonderful grandiose visions of utopia in his culture novels…

I re-read it and still much the same, although there is of course a bunch of stuff going on that escaped me the first time around. The ship’s society is a lot more sinister than I’d realised at the age of 10 or 11, and Mia’s dismissive (racist?) views of the colonists (she calls them ‘mud eaters’) radically changes after her trial experience.

But overall I’ll stay with my verdict all those years ago. Rite of Passage is a 2/3rds good book, spoiled by a failure of the imagination in the final 3^rd.

Good Bad Books*

2009-03-23T19:13:00.003Z

About five years ago I got very ill very suddenly and got rushed to hospital; it was all very dramatic and a terrible worry for family and friends.

After a day in intensive care and another couple of days in critical care, the hospital released me and that was that.

But then a really strange thing happened; I stopped reading books for pleasure and only really looked at the pictures in magazines. For a total reading addict#, (pretty much a book a week, every week, from about the age of 13) this was a terrible shock.

After six months of no reading, and a strange kind of life that revolved around the gym and sleeping a lot and struggling terribly at work, I thought I must have sustained brain damage (I called it drain bamage ho ho) whilst unconscious and before intubation. Oh dear…

But the medics checked their records carefully and denied this; instead they spoke of how the body had sustained a massive physical shock and that IC outpatients often report psychological or physical after effects that last for months, and sometimes years after their discharge. Oh better…

Perhaps this reassurance was all that was necessary; within a month or two more, and without really realising it, I began to read for pleasure again. Part of that process seemed to involve revisiting the books of my childhood and early adolescence. There was nothing planned about this, at least initially – it just happened. The healing process is interesting and poorly understood...

So the next few entries in the blog are going to be about the pop literature of the 1970s – for some reason at around the age of 9 or 10 I went straight from Enid Blyton (The Famous Five, The Five Find Outers, The Secret Seven, etc etc) to Alistair MacLean, Brian Callison, Douglas Reeman and the slightly more respectable C.S Forester and Nicholas Monsarrat. That lot were my favourites; I think I’ve read every Alister MacLean novel but for the last few, which were poor anyway.

Interestingly, all have little or no sexual content what-so-ever (pre-adolescents find sex boring and incomprehensible) and the choices reflect my obsession with ships and the sea, which has never entirely gone away.

There were three exceptions to all this sea battle stuff:

To Tame a Land by Louis L’Amour (1955)
Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin (1968)

And incredibly,

The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins (1976)

I re-read all of that exceptional group of three, along with a solitary Brian Callison, called A Ship is Dying (1976) – find out how they stack-up over 30 years since the last reading.

* The title of this entry is of course nicked from a famous George Orwell essay on the popular fiction of his day.

# Those that know, know; reading for pleasure is as addictive as heroin.

Thinking About Your Holidays...

2009-02-25T12:52:00.002Z

Waking up at 6 a.m. on a cool warm morning,
Opening the windows and breathing in petrol,
An amateur band rehearsing in a nearby yard,
Watching the tele and thinking about your holidays.

That's Entertainment by Paul Weller

This endless cold grey winter finally got to me yesterday and I blew a few hundred on a nice holiday.

Since then I've been day-dreaming about it constantly; this may be a bad sign, or just a reaction to months of gloom and cold...

Degenerate

2009-02-20T11:57:00.003Z

I'm currently 'at work' in the office...

My clothes were fresh-on approximately 29 hours ago.

Every now and again I fall asleep until a little jolt of vertigo wakes me up before my head hits the keyboard or (worst case scenario) the carpet.*

The cause? A good night's poker in a little tournament yesterday evening that went well into the small hours of the morning.

The result? 4th place out of 73 players, and nearly £300 better off than this time yesterday.

Wrinkles, stubble and tiredness be damned.

* A note for the C.B.I Thought Police. The use of the personal pronoun does not necessarily mean me, myself, the real I because fictional processes may have been at work. Furthermore, I am unaware of any such diminution of personal productivity caused by such a poker game, nor would I be disposed to discuss such a poker game, if in fact, such a poker game did in fact, exist.

Poor John Updike

2009-02-19T18:12:00.006Z

Poor John Updike.

I first read his one of his books in 1984 because I had too; the American Literature syllabus at Manchester demanded it.

Despite being forced to read it (a great way of putting anyone off even the greatest book ever written) Rabbit Run, published in 1960 isn’t a bad book at all. It’s perhaps the first of many Updike novels that shows his brilliant descriptive skills.

Encouraged, I read a few more Updikes and found them competant if a little samey, and in fact the more I read the more like one huge novel, or rather the same novel rewritten they came to seem.

And there are an awful lot of John Updike novels - like most writers who are shit, he wrote far too much and too often – publishing over 20 novels and 10 or something short story collections in a literary career that spanned five decades.

Of all those novels, no fewer than two are pretty good, and one or two more (no more than that - Updike is too bland) might be great.

Here’s my list:

Roger’s Version – about a religious fundies’ attempt to prove the existence of god by computer analysis.

Memoirs of the Ford Administration – A really clever little book which is actually about parallels between the mid 1970s crisis of confidence in the United States in the aftermath of Watergate and the era of President James Buchanan who was unable to avoid the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Rabbit is Rich – A very good sequel in which our hero, nicknamed Rabbit finds material success but emotional catastrophe in the early 1980s. The description and evocation of the time and place are just outstanding, and the hero hasn’t quite become a complete tosser yet.

The excellent (and equally talented) David Foster Wallace nailed the attitudes of my generation to the grand old man of American Lit in this brilliant essay.

I really doubt anyone will bother with John Updike novels in 20 years time; which is a pity, as there's seldom been anyone who could write better descriptive prose. It’s just a shame all he seemed to care about was dull middle aged men having dull sex outside dull marriage.

Whoopee.

Two Writers and a Brig

2009-02-03T12:56:00.002Z

Argh!

So much to write about and so little time.

I wanted to discuss the life and work of Sir John Mortimer Q.C and John Updike, both of whom died recently, and both of who’s work I’d read and more or less liked.

Maybe I will a bit later. Yesterday was wonderful as the snow shut everything down, but typically I had a heavy cold and couldn't enjoy it because I would have spent most of the day in bed in any case.

It’s little consolation that the office is like the quarterdeck of the Mary Celeste this morning.

Urgh I feel a lot better and there’s loads to do…

Mark Rothko

2009-01-19T20:18:00.005Z

Mural for End Wall (1959)

K and I went to catch the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern on Saturday before it closes at the end of the month.

I'd seen Rothkos before of course, but there's nothing like seeing a lot of an artist's work to get a feel for what their art is all about. This collection featured work from 1958 to 1969, mainly series of paintings done for specific locations or commissions.

I have no formal art history training, so have difficulty judging abstract art beyond impressions and feelings. Here's a jumble of them about Rothko:

They are generally very 'friendly' works, they don't appear threatening or aggressive in the way that a lot of contemporary Brit Art seems to be.

The size of the canvasses is huge. This sort of art needs well lit large public spaces (duh like art galleries duh) for display. Few private homes are large enough to actually contain a Rothko, unless you hung it on the stairs or something.

K is trained artist, and she drew my attention to the subtlety of the technique; a mixture of gloss and matt paint, lots of layers, feathered edges. Also the choice of colour is deliberate and precise.

As so often with big exhibitions of this type, the crowds got in the way of the experience. This especially applies to Mark Rothko; I love to plonk myself down on a bench opposite one of the giant canvasses and just let the colour wash over me. You couldn't really do that at the Tate Modern on a Saturday afternoon. Some fuckers even had their toddlers with them - why not take the sprogs to see "Battleship Potemkin" afterwards? Poor kids - bored to death with something totally unsuitable for them. Damn the cheap bastard parents who can't be bothered to pay for a babysitter.

Fave series of paintings were three or four out of the 'black' series of seven. These really were rather impressive technically, and looked years ahead of their time - painted in the mid 1960s, they would have looked perfect in a 1980s setting (see below).

Number 1 (1964)

You could just imagine that painting in Patrick Bateman's sitting room.

Thanks Mark!

No Country for Old Men

2009-01-12T13:37:00.004Z

The boys and girls at work have been highly recommending The Strangers as a good film to see, but some exhaustive searching this Saturday uncovered nothing but a single copy in Ipswich, priced at £15.

So instead I returned to Blockbusters and rented No Country for Old Men for £3.50 - a long time recommendation of D's.

What a brilliant film!

It perfectly captures the creepy spendour of Cormac McCarthy's border country of the Southern United States, and it features three intriguing and very real characters.

I suppose we've got two heroes and one super nasty villian, who, as the film progresses, may be the devil himself. The dialogue and acting are brilliant, the photography is beautiful and the whole thing moves along effortlessly...

There was so much to enjoy; from our cautious and rather resourceful hero, who is ultimately doomed, to a superfically competant and experienced sherrif who gradually realises he's outmatched and scared of the villian.

Favourite scene: The sheffif and his rather young and dim deputy have just ridden into the horror of a drug deal gone wrong; at least seven men lie shot dead on the dusty scrubby semi-desert, there's a dead dog, and four or five shot-up pick-up trucks, riddled with bullet holes...

Deputy: Hell of mess ain't it sherrif?

Sherrif: Well it'll do, leastways till the real mess gets here.

McCarthy's arcane dialogue manages to be witty and profound at the same time.

Shame on me for missing this one when it was in the cinema, and I wonder which director will pluck up the courage to film Blood Meridian, the most violent and nasty piece of Literature ever written?

The Bond Equipe GT

2008-12-30T17:40:00.004Z

The usual exquisite boredom of flight was mitigated by Classic Cars, a nice bit of car porn that included an article on the Bond Equipe.

It was the first sportscar I ever rode in and it was one of the early pretty ones, built between 1963 and 1967.

It belonged to my father’s senior partner in the practice; I have no idea why he bought it. Presumably it was a fun car to drive and a fun car to own; the early single headlight Equipe isn’t a bad looking car even today, especially from the front and ¾ sides.

My memories of it are hazy; it was in a sort of gunmetal grey that was extremely fashionable in the 1960s (see a certain spy’s Aston Martin). It also had a non-standard chrome mascot of a show jumper bolted on the centreline between the handsome cupped headlights – reminiscent of so many sports cars of the period from MGs to Ferraris. It may have had wire wheels or I may be imagining that; we are talking some of my earliest memories here; perhaps pre-1968.

I can only remember one or two rides in it; presumably when my father’s Mini Traveller was being serviced. After the Mini the interior seemed luxurious; I believe there was a rev counter, a wooden dashboard, bucket seats and a rather lovely wooden steering wheel. It also sounded rather gorgeous – manufacturers were unrestrained by noise requirements back then and could tune exhausts to make the most agricultural engines sound really rather potent and sporty.

There’s one specific moment I can remember clear as day (so it must have been very vivid). I remember asking Dad if we could overtake the car in front, and he said “Oh yes, easily.” Then he dropped the Equipe down a gear or two and we stormed past something like a Morris Minor on wave of torque and somewhat strained revs.

There’s a happy postscript to the story. As far as I know the Bond is still with the original family and was due for restoration a few years ago.

The Constant Gardener

2008-12-30T17:22:00.002Z

Having a few days off gave me the chance to crack a book or two; amongst several was John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener.

Le Carre is a really fine writer, and if he didn't limit himself to genre novels, typically espionage fiction, then I suspect he'd be regarded as one of the best British writers of the 20th century.

The Constant Gardner is largely set amongst the diplomatic community of Kenya, but the whole aid business gets a stern examination by the liberal yet very cynical Le Carre.

There was one passage that really impressed me. It goes a long way to explain the allure of aid work and why people do it. A British Indian lady who works at the embassy visits an aid centre called Loki:

Shrieks of delighted recognition pierced the evening air as aid workers from distant places rediscovered each other in different languages, embraced, touched faces and walked arm in arm. This should be my spiritual home, she thought wistfully. These are my rainbow people. Their classlessness, their racelessness, their zeal, their youth are mine. Sign up for Loki and tune in to saintliness! Bum around in aeroplanes, enjoy a romantic self-image and the adrenaline of danger! Get your sex out of a tap and nomadic life that keeps you clear of entanglements! No dreary office work and always a bit of grass to smoke along the way! Glory and boys when I come out of the field, money and more boys waiting for me on my R and R! Who needs more?

That's not bad for a white middle class writer approaching old age who (to my knowledge) has never worked for a second on humanitarian aid work. The observation and insight are impressive.

Happy Christmas

2008-12-23T16:04:00.002Z

I'm off to some sun and sand and reinforced concrete for the next few days.

In the meantime... Have a happy Christmas and thanks for reading the blog.

Ascent

2008-12-09T16:27:00.005Z

Jed Mecurio is one of those irritatingly talented people that could have had at least three rewarding careers.

A qualified doctor, he is also an RAF trained jet fighter pilot. But he's achieved fame and fortune in neither of those fields - instead he's a novelist and TV dramatist.

In 1992 he wrote and helped produce the best medical television drama ever; Cardiac Arrest. Some years later came the second best medical television drama ever; Bodies. If you've never seen either of these series, I suggest you buy the DVDs and then draw the curtains and forget about going out next week-end.

Both series were written with a high degree of expert knowledge, and it's this sense of technical accuracy that links them with the novel Ascent. It is a beautifully written, terse and yet harrowing story of a fighter pilot who becomes a cosmonaut just as the United States is finally drawing ahead in the race to put a man on the moon. The most unexpected effect of the book was the admiration I began to feel for the Soviet space program.

Built literally on the rubble of a smashed country (26,000,000+ dead in 1941-45), unable to draw upon great financial or technological strengths and handicapped by a cruel and stupid political system, the program relied on inspired engineering and tremendous courage.

Amazingly, for the over a decade the system worked; from Sputnik 1 (1957) to Soyuz (1966) the U.S.S.R was "the" space nation with a string of firsts and record breaking missions. Ascent celebrates and commemorates technology and people, both of which manage to transcend the vile system that nurtures them. There's also a great sense of reality, whether it's the feeling and effects on the body of pulling 6G in the cockpit of a MiG 15, or the sensation of sickness and disorientation while performing an EVA in the cold blackness of outer space.

Horror!

2008-11-23T15:29:00.002Z

Urgh!

Woke up yesterday to find my right eye half filled with blood!

Yuck and Fuck! What's going on here?

Nothing much, actually. It seems to be a sub-conjunctival hemorrhage, probably caused by me rubbing my eyes in the morning, or possibly high blood pressure from Friday evening's attempt to play tennis.

Looks horrible though and it'll be a few days before it disappears...

Dated

2008-11-17T14:22:00.003Z

I heard/saw a song this morning I really liked on the monitors in the foyer. It was well before eight and the space was deserted but for me a receptionist and a couple of other mad people dressed and at the office before sunrise.

A lovely intricate relaxed piece of chill music, it reminded me of the ambient stuff I used to listen too in the mid 1990s.

Excited at finding some new contemporary music to download, I scribbed down the artist's name William Orbit and the track title: Water from a Vine Leaf.

A few moments ago I researched this new song on-line only to find...

It was recorded 15 years ago (15!) with vocals by Beth Orton.

Sigh...

Maybe I'll find a contemporary song I like tomorrow.

More Thoughts on the Election

2008-11-05T10:04:00.001Z

As predicted here (sorry T), Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

It’s a wonderful and historic victory, although the whinging part of me (never entirely silent) wishes that the Democratic Party could have come up with an Obama in 2004. As it was, even the feeble John Kerry managed to get within a percentage point of unseating Dubya.

That 2004 election was far more important than 2008, as Dubya and neo-cons were still going strong in 2004 whereas now it’s clear they ran out energy and ideas at least a year ago. But from 2004 to roughly 2007 they managed to kill vast numbers of people, drown a few thousand more in New Orleans, and generally screw up the United States and the world in their own unique and vicious way.

It’s also worth acknowledging the campaign of John McCane; until the financial collapse a few weeks ago he was actually leading Obama, or at least running extremely close to him. This despite the huge disadvantage of being associated with the Republican administration and a President who is a serious contender as one of the worst in American history.

Is Obama lucky?

Thatcher and Regan were both lucky leaders, and the longer I live, the convinced I am that luck plays a huge role in the success or failure of any enterprise where there are large number of unknown and difficult to calculate factors. Famously, Napolean used to demand “is he a lucky general?”

I hope he is, because McCain was definitely on to something when he said we know nothing about Obama. There’s been a huge amount of vague soaring inspirational rhetoric, and sod all substance to his speeches. I’ve no idea whether he’s the next Franklin D Rosevelt or (god forbid) the next Jimmy Carter.

Alexander Cockburn, writing in The Nation gives a harsh warning about over expectations:

In these last days I’ve been scraping around, trying to muster a single positive reason to encourage a vote for Obama. Please note my accent on the positive, since the candidate himself has couched his appeal in this idiom. Why vote for Obama-Biden, as opposed to against the McCain-Palin ticket?

Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a “reform” candidate so firmly by the windpipe.

Is it possible to confront America’s problems without talking about the arms budget, now entirely out of control? The Pentagon is spending more than at any point since the end of World War II. In “real dollars” – admittedly an optimistic concept these days -- the $635 billion appropriated in fiscal 2007 is 5 percent above the previous all-time high, reached in 1952. Depending on how you count them, the Empire has somewhere between 700 and 1,000 overseas bases.

Obama wants to enlarge the armed services by 92,000. He pledges to escalate the US war in Afghanistan; to attack Pakistan’s sovereign territory if it obstructs any unilateral US mission to kill Osama bin Laden; and to wage a war against terror in a hundred countries, creating for this purpose a new international intelligence and law enforcement “infrastructure” to take down terrorist networks. A fresh start? Where does this differ from Bush’s commitment to Congress on September 20, 2001, to an ongoing “war on terror” against “every terrorist group of global reach” and “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism”?

If elected he will be prisoner of his promise that on his watch Afghanistan will not be lost, nor the white man’s burden shirked.

In the event of Obama’s victory, the most immediate consequence overseas will most likely be brusque imperial reassertion.

In February, seeking a liberal profile in the primaries, Obama stood against warrantless wiretapping. His support for liberty did not survive its second trimester; he aborted it with a vote for warrantless wiretapping. The man who voted to reaffirm the awful Patriot Act declared that ‘the ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counterterrorism tool.’

As a political organizer of his own advancement, Obama is a wonder. But I have yet to identify a single uplifting intention to which he has remained constant if it has presented the slightest risk to his advancement. Summoning all the optimism at my disposal, I suppose we could say he has not yet had occasion to offend two important constituencies and adjust his relatively decent stances on immigration and labor-law reform. Public funding of his campaign? A commitment made becomes a commitment betrayed, just as on warrantless eavesdropping. His campaign treasury is now a vast hogswallow that, if it had been amassed by a Republican, would be the topic of thunderous liberal complaint.

In substantive terms Obama’s run has been the negation of almost every decent progressive principle, a negation achieved with scarcely a bleat of protest from the progressives seeking to hold him to account. The Michael Moores stay silent. Abroad, Obama stands for imperial renaissance. He has groveled before the Israel lobby and pandered to the sourest reflexes of the cold war era. At home he has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists. He has been fearless in offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful.

The early months of 2009 will be really interesting to see just what he does, and who he appoints to do it.

Horay!

2008-11-05T04:22:00.003Z

I've been dozing and listening to the radio all night, but John McCain's concession speach from Phoenix has dragged me out of bed and in front of the telly.

McCain's speach is simple and dignified, with a grace and moderation that was conspicuously absent from his campaign. Perhaps he would have done better if he'd followed his natural instincts rather than the Bushies who tried to get him elected with smears and innuendo.

It's noticable how sections of the crowd booed at certain moments - none the less it was a great speach from the "Old John McCain" who somehow got lost over the past few weeks.

Obama will be up next from Chicago - I'm off to bed with a big smile on my face.

Beach Red

2008-10-29T20:58:00.005Z

Beach Red is an old art house war film, made in 1967 by Cornel Wilde; a very talented man who was an expert actor, Olympic standard fencer, and also found the time and funding to direct several unusual films.

I’ve only ever seen Beach Red once, nearly 30 years ago one late night on BBC2. The thing that struck me about it at the time was it’s inspired title sequence, which features a series of paintings by two artists who seem completely unknown; Michael W Green and Takashi Tanaka. Even better, the title theme fits neatly into the plot, as our hero is an artist who ends up wounded and sharing a cigarette with a Japanese soldier who also happens to paint.

The release of the new Bond film A Quantum of Solace (nobody has ever named books as well as Ian Fleming) got me thinking about title sequences, and what a great art form they are.

It’s a shame they seemed to have almost died out, with some notable exceptions like Spielberg’s excellent Catch Me if You Can (2002) or Catherine Bigelow's Blue Steel (1990) whose title sequence was the only redeeming feature of the entire film. It was a horrible wonderful fetishistic examination of the Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special, which also happens to be my favourite revolver – in eight blissful sessions you could fire 48 rounds with the thing and not only would it never jam – but your wrists didn’t hurt afterwards.

Anyway, thanks to the wonder of You Tube, you can view the Beach Red title sequence here.

Nobody has posted the Blue Steel title sequence yet – some films are best forgotten…

Happy Go Lucky

2008-10-19T21:48:00.003+01:00

Mike Leigh might be the best British film maker alive and working.

Over the past 20 years he's built up a strong body of work that describes and examines the lives of ordinary British people and British society. He seems to do two types of films; the dark and the comedic, although there's a lot of overlap between the two.

In Happy Go Lucky Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, a 30 year old London Primary school teacher who always sees the best of things and is one of those blessed souls who's always happy. Pollyannas bring out the worst in me and within a few minutes I was determined to hate Poppy, but its a tribute to the script and the acting that I couldn't. As the film goes on she becomes more and more real and rounded and switched on. It's really an extraordinary character study, a kind of mirror image to Naked - a much darker film about a much darker character.

Something I really noticed this time was the brilliance of Mike Leigh's visual sense. Seldom remarked on, he's got a real talent for seeing the beauty in the deformed urban landscapes of Britain. We're lucky to have him... despite his taste in incidental music.

The Girlfriend Experience

2008-10-13T15:21:00.003+01:00

It was a gorgeous week-end for October, and as usual I tried to pack too much into it and ended up ironing last night at 1:45AM.

But well before that K and myself went to see mutual friend Alecky Blythe's latest production at the Royal Court; The Girlfriend Experience.

Good to see a bit of well acted straight drama, with the twist that all dialogue is verbatum, and that the actors wear headphones throughout so that they can perfectly mimic the various pauses, breaths, swallows and other verbal tics of speech.

Alecky is working on a piece about the Ipswich murders next...

Parallel Earth

2008-09-30T10:05:00.001+01:00

Tom Tomorrow's website is here

David Foster Wallace

2008-09-25T19:24:00.003+01:00

David Foster Wallace, a rather wonderful American writer of my generation, killed himself last week.

I never met the man and wasn’t a huge fan of his work, probably because I started with one of his poorer works of fiction; Girl with Curious Hair.

But through the Internet, I was much bigger fan of his journalism, in particular his long thoughtful essays on tennis and the people who play it. It helped immeasurably that David Foster Wallace was a very talented junior tennis player occupying that space a level or two below the pros.

His essay on Roger Federer is finest piece of tennis writing ever and is really useful because if anyone asks me why I’m a bit insane about Fed, or more properly Fed’s work, then directing them to that essay gives precise and beautifully written reasons why; DFW even invented a term for memorised passages of Roger’s play; he called them “Federer moments.”

His essay on the journeyman (and later Maria Sharapova's coach) Michael Joyce, called The String Theory says a lot about the game and himself.

He also reinvented the footnote as a means of having a second more detailed and anoracky essay chugging along alongside the more approachable main one. For instance, the String Theory essay has this brilliant aside about the great Jimmy Connors:

I don't know whether you know this, but Connors had one of the most eccentric games in the history of tennis -- he was an aggressive 'power' player who rarely came to the net, had the serve of an ectomorphic girl, and hit everything totally spinless and flat (which is inadvisable on ground strokes because the absence of spin makes the ball so hard to control). His game was all the more strange because the racket he generated all his firepower from the baseline with was a Wilson T2000, a weird steel thing that's one of the shittiest tennis rackets ever made and is regarded by most serious players as useful only for home defence or prying large rocks out of your backyard or something. Connors was addicted to this racket and kept using it long after Wilson stopped even making it, and he forfeited millions in potential endorsement money by doing so. Connors was also eccentric (and kind of repulsive) in lots of other ways, too, none of which are germane to this article.

You can plough through a couple hundred pages of Joel Drucker's weirdly self obsessed memoir of Jimmy Connors and find nothing as informative or funny as that.

It’s very upsetting that David Foster Wallace is dead.

Heckuva job, Sarah!

2008-09-15T10:29:00.001+01:00

John Cole (whom I may have played poker with many many times about 10 years ago) just about sums up my unease about Sarah Palin and what she represents:

...[She] is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.

And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country. This from last night stood out for me:

Charles Gibson, the interviewer, asked her if she didn’t hesitate and question whether she was experienced enough.

“I didn’t hesitate, no,” she said.

He asked if that didn’t that take some hubris.

“I answered him yes,” Ms. Palin said, “because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”

The Lord of the Rings

2008-09-13T20:17:00.012+01:00

Tolkien is a Pre-Raphaelite; Cate Blanchette as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy

I don't get it.

Some of the people I most respect, admire and am proud to call my friends just adore Lord of the Rings.

It's sort of a quasi-religious text in some circles, particularly in software engineering where in a group of 10 programmers, at least seven will have read it. Of that seven one or two will be true experts, able to recall passages and scenes in almost photographic detail. It's sort of a common cultural language amongst men who often care little for culture.

Tolkien's influence is massive; single handedly and unwittingly he launched an entire genre - called 'Fantasy' in most bookshops - that features hundreds of writers assembling brick-like volumes about elves, wizards, dwarves, dragons, swords, orcs and associated bollox. I've read a few of these books, mainly shorter ones and all because friends and relatives have insisted I do. Back in the 80s I shared a house with someone who chain read Micheal Moorcock. Later my first brother in law (a software engineer - hah!) insisted I read some book or other by David Gemmel.

As for THE WORK itself, no way.

I read a few pages at school, and a few more at university - more than enough to realise it wasn't for me. Decades later, the films were released - big news in the software community. I didn't see them at the cinema, but a while back they were broadcast in order on consecutive nights or weeks and I sat through them all, sometimes while on the phone with the sound down.

Tonight, the first one which is called The Fellowship of the Ring is on again on ITV1.

Watching it again, its easy to be reminded that all three films are well made and visually stunning, at least in parts. Tolkien's World War 1 experience of mass slaughter in huge impersonal battles is brought to vivid errrr... can we call it life? Scenes (distressingly few scenes alas) that don't feature those irritatingly cute and bumbling and 'lovable' hobbits are generally excellent. Sir Ian McKellan is outstanding playing the kind of role Sir Alec Guiness made his own in the Star Wars films.

And yet... I still don't get it.

There's something very unimaginative about the pseudo medevial set-up, somewhat reminiscent of the whole Victorian Gothic thing. In fact, that might be a way to approach these interminable, technically excellent and ultimately kitsch films - a sort of animated pre-Raphaelite world. The set designers and costume people seem to agree; the achingly lovely Cate Blanchette is straight out of a Rosetti painting, as are the carefully chosen romantic landscapes and elaborate castles. But Pre Raphaelite art is ultimately just over the top pseudo-historic kitsch and often unitentionally hillarious with brave gallant androgynous knights and swooning ladies.

Last thought.

In the United States the works of Aryan Rant seem to occupy the same position and readership as Tolkien does here. I say disturbingly because whereas Tolkien's Edwardian romanticism is essentially harmless, Rant was a genuinely nasty pseudo-philosopher pushing a kind of free-market fascism with narcissistic psychopaths as the heroes.

But I'll write about her another day...

Four Years Old

2008-09-12T12:30:00.001+01:00

The blog is 4 today.

Thanks to everyone who reads it, and especially those who leave comments.

I'm still insanely busy, but my first free week-end in 4 weeks may provide some time for a bit of writing...

Thanks!

- roGER

Edinburgh

2008-09-01T12:25:00.002+01:00

I’ve been stupidly busy recently and have had no time to write blog entries. But while the memory is still fresh, here’s a quick summary of last week-end at the Edinburgh Fringe…

Drove up in the Micra, which is wonderfully economical on A roads – it cost just £40 to go 400 miles which is outstanding.

Once there, D and myself plunged straight into the fest itself, heading over to the Pleasance courtyard to see Steve Hall: Vice-Captain Loser. A good enjoyable stand-up act if not a great one. D and myself have a very good record at the Fringe, notorious for it’s ‘experimental’ acts and really bad student drama. There’s no way anyone could have resented Steve’s stand-up act – even miserable humourless me found it excellent.

Saturday we drove over to Glasgow, which I’ve never visited before. My impressions of Glasgow are heavily influenced by Train Spotting and the earlier little gem That Sinking Feeling, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise to discover the real Glasgow (or at least most of it) isn’t much like the films.

D was in charge of showing me around, so we had a typically eclectic day of Edwardian heavy engineering, a tall ship, and some rather nice art-work.

Back in Edinburgh, we went to a reading by Janice Galloway, an author D likes but I’ve never read. She certain read well enough from her latest book, but the perspective (from herself aged 7 or 8 or something) didn’t match the language. In the QA afterwards Janice was asked about this and replied her memory had been helped by a load of old photographs, many of which she’d held up close to her face to study every tiny detail.

She didn’t impress me with that remark – it reminded me of the smarmy and revolting Edmund Morris; the man hired to write Ronald Regan’s authorised biography. To nobody’s surprise but own, Morris found Regan so stupid, dull, untrustworthy and boring that he resorted to turning the biog into a false memoir of Dutch Reagan featuring himself as an invented friend. Much of the book’s incidental detail came from photographs provided by Nancy Reagan which Morris would examine in close up, millimetre by millimetre. Perhaps it’s just the association, but this technique seems to accompany desperation.

On Sunday D indulged my unhealthy obsession with Scottish tower houses, by taking me to see a splendid ruin and a brilliantly preserved original (see top of this post), which is now a hotel and where one day me and K will stay. We finished up the day with a reading and Q&A session from the rude, opinionated and brilliant Will Self. Self’s latest novel seems fairly ordinary (like Mailer and Vidal, I much prefer Self’s journalism and non-fiction to the novels). His Q&A session afterwards was brilliant and slightly scary. As D pointed out, he could comfortably do stand up as well as professionals like Steve Hall.

Rather than spend another night on the sofa, I decided to drive back home that night. It was a good decision – the A1 is rather empty in the small hours of the morning, a constant speed is good for fuel consumption, and I managed to do a load of washing on Sunday afternoon.

Brilliant week-end – every time I go to Edinburgh I wish I could stay longer.

I Wanted to Take Her to Rehab - She said "No No No"

2008-08-19T10:25:00.003+01:00

"S" gets in touch on Saturday complaining of boredom during her week-end release from rehab...

I try my best to entertain her but fail miserably, and by Sunday afternoon she's drunk and raving again.

It's quite a struggle to persuade her to go back.

So I drive her back to rehab, thankful that my addictions are to socially acceptable things like books and lost causes.

Back in the Green

2008-08-10T10:05:00.003+01:00

Back from holiday and as always it's the deep vivid green and the weirdly filtered light that makes the first impression.

Holiday

2008-07-22T09:13:00.001+01:00

I'm off for the next three weeks, so for those of you in Britain, plan your barbecues and picnics - the weather is likely to be gorgeous.

That Bridge Again

2008-07-14T10:43:00.002+01:00

After taking dozens of mediocre pictures at Wimbledon, I'm much happier with this image taken a couple of weeks ago on the walk to work.

The ship in question was *just* too high to slide under the closed bridge.

Best Final Ever

2008-07-07T00:28:00.005+01:00

Saint Roger the Saviour of Tennis, elegant even when going down in defeat

I've just watched the best (or maybe second best) Wimbledon men's final I've ever seen and I can't get over it and go to sleep yet.

The earliest Wimbledon final I can remember was Arthur Ashe vs Jimmy Conners in 1975, and I *think* I've seen them all since then, including the allegedly "best tennis match of all time" which was Borg vs McEnroe in 1980. The match became famous for it's 4th set tie-break.

Today's match, (Federer vs Nadal for those of you who live on the planet Tharg) also featured a 4th set tie break, whereby each player consecutively swopped Championship point (Nadal) or set point (Federer).

As a fan of Roger Federer, I'm gutted my man lost, but proud that he lost in such a manner - an incredible display of iron will and grace under pressure. The scoreline was:

6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (3-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7

Which is about as good as losing gets...

Lets hope Federer gets over this result, which he's already called the most painful of his career, and keeps playing the kind of sublime tennis which he's still capable of producing. Conditions were tough for him today - gusty wind works against players with exquisite feel and touch. Had we had a nice still day the result might (just might) have been different.

As we've come to expect, both Roger and Raffa conducted themselves brilliantly before, during, and after the match even though it was sad to see Roger so visibly upset.

I doubt I'll remember anything of 2008 in a few years time except the incredible 4+ hours of highest quality tennis that they played this afternoon.

Oh and Raffa is playing so well at the moment that next year he may just be the first man to achieve the grandslam since Rod Laver...

We're lucky to live through this era of amazing men's tennis.

Joan and Kirsty

2008-06-29T01:46:00.003+01:00

Was kept up much later than planned this evening because BBC 4 showed the entire set of Joan Armatrading performing at Glastonbury earlier this afternoon. K and myself had a brief chat a couple of weeks ago about Ms Armatrading and how she seemed to have disappeared. Speak of the devil and she shall reappear...

Watching her for the first time for about 20 years (!) I was reminded what a wonderful quirky songwriting talent she has. For a few years in the late 70s and early 80s she even sort of made it into the mainstream. There's a wonderful subtle quality to a lot of the melodies and her lyrics can be surprisingly sharp and poignant.

That got me thinking of Kirsty MacColl and, if she were still alive, how perfect she'd be for an occasional Glastonbury gig. Of course her music was very different to Joan's but they both seemed uncomfortable with the mainstream; scuttling for cover should any song make the top 30.

I miss them both; it's nice to see Joan back, if only for an afternoon.

Wimbledon

2008-06-25T22:16:00.006+01:00

Did the annual trip to Wimbledon yesterday in the company of my grand slam buddy SG, who was over from France.

In the past couple of decades we’ve done Roland Garros twice, the US Open once, and now Wimbledon. We talk vaguely about completing a personal grand slam and visiting the Australian Open at some point in future.

And so much for all that – what about the tennis?

We started on an outside court where Jarkko Nieminen (seeded 24) was playing unseeded American Wayne Odesnik. Nieminen is a Finn and had attracted his own slightly bonkers fan club along. We found their chanting a bit irritating; if I were him I’d have told the fans to shut up. I love the outside courts at Wimbledon. Particularly in the first few days of the tournament you can see some really wonderful players compete at a distance closer than the hotshots in your local park. It’s also odd to see tennis courts without any form of chain-link fences; at Wimbledon they are have an immaculate sparse kind of beauty. I once crept to the edge of one of the outside courts at the end of a long day and ran my palm over the grass. It felt as smooth and level as a good quality carpet.

We stuck around for the best part of an hour and then drifted over past court No 9 where a women's singles match was in progress (see picture) and took our not particularly wonderful seats in Court No 1. Despite being up near the roof the view was good. Tennis stadiums (with the exception of the awful “Ashe Heap” in Flushing Meadows) have an intimacy that for obvious reasons football and cricket grounds lack.

First up was the brilliant but inconsistent Richard Gasquet, who at the age of nine featured on the cover of the French tennis association’s magazine. See him play when he’s on form and you can see why.

SG, who plays tennis to much higher standard than me, was seriously impressed by his languid ground strokes. His opponent was the bizarrely named Mardy Fish, a cool young dude who looks as if he’s left his surf board in the changing rooms. The match set a pattern that became familiar for the rest of the afternoon. For four or six or even eight games, the unseeded Fish looked every inch the equal of seeded Gasquet. Then something happened and there’s a particularly outstanding shot followed by an unforced error or two and suddenly the break of serve is there and set is gone. Fish wasn’t humiliated or crushed or rolled over; it was more a case of a point here and a point there that were lost, followed by games followed by sets. Gasquet won 6-3, 6-4, 6-2. I later learned he reckoned it had been one of his best performances ever.

Next up was the icon of the WTA, the face and image of women’s tennis, Miss Maria Sharapova. A Russian with an especially creepy controlling and manipulative tennis dad called Yuri, she has the looks and height and figure of a catwalk model, something her many sponsors and the WTA exploit to the full. Interestingly, she’s far from popular with us tennis heads and two short sets in her company was more than enough for everyone on Court No 1.

So why is she so hard to like?

There’s the irritating shriek that accompanies every shot; this is probably gamesmanship as an important element of tennis is the sound the ball makes as it hits the opponents racquet. Flat hard shots make a loud POCK! slice shots make a kind of a zipping noise, and topspin is a mixture of both. Expert players use their ears as well as their eyes to anticipate the direction and speed of a shot. Maria’s theatrical shrieks drown out the sound of the shot and generally irritate.

Then there's her ugly habit of glaring at her opponent just before she serves; in fact the glare seems to be an intrinsic part of her serve action. It's a nasty unpleasant habit, unworthy in a player of Sharapova's status and ability.

Finally there’s her style of tennis, which is completely one dimensional and mindless. The tactic is to serve hard and fast, and hit shots hard and fast. And that’s it. No wonder opponents like Justine Henin were able to outplay and out think and out guess her.

Just to put the icing on the cake, Sharapova’s opponent was the unseeded Stephanie Foretz, once ranked 62 in the world and now down at 105. She was no match for Sharapova’s power and speed, at least not in this match, and was crushed 6-1, 6-4. Proponents for equal pay for women’s tennis (a battle the women have won) would have a hard time defending this ridiculous mismatch which seemed designed to highlight the lack of depth within the women's game now that Hingis has been forced into retirement and Henin and Clisters have both voluntarily hung up their racquets.

Back to the blokes, and had the ever charming and popular Andy Roddick was up next, playing a young Argentinian called Eduardo Schwank who was coming fresh from an impressive 3rd round at Roland Garros. He managed to give Roddick (whose serve was scary it's so fast and powerful) a good match, Roddick eventually winning 7-5,6-4,7-6. The match could easily have gone to four sets and both SG and myself feel we’ll be seeing more of Schwank soon – you heard it here first.

Women’s tennis was redeemed a little by the final match we saw on Court No 1, which featured the beautiful and charming Jelena Jankovic. She has a sense of humour and is almost unique among elite professional tennis players in that still seems to enjoy playing the game (separate from the joy of winning). Playing a decent opponent called Olga Savchuk, the match was a bit closer than the scoreline of 6-3, 6-2.

And that was that for another year. We dawdled back past the outside courts where a few matches continued in the dusk and made plans to visit again next year.

Wonderful game, wonderful institution, wonderful day. Lucky me!

A Mere Trifle

2008-06-18T17:10:00.004+01:00

When roGER was young, life was so shit that things like this were a treat.

Watched an interesting and witty program last night about Tudor cuisine.

The message seemed to be that British cusine, even for the richest members of society has always been warmed over shit with boiled cabbage.

But last week’s show, watched in the company of “K” was even better; our heros experienced 1970s cuisine.

It was quite a jolt to realise what a creature of that wretched decade I am. Among the 1970s foods that I still like very much (even though I’d be ashamed to order them in public now) are:

Prawn cocktail
Steak and chips
Black forest gateau

Talking after the program had ended, K added trifle to her list and then we both realised it had been at least 10 years since we last saw trifle or a sweet trolley.

Strange to suddenly notice how the culture changes in your own lifetime…

The Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Genie of the Lamp

2008-06-05T15:00:00.002+01:00

In December 2000, after winning her first election to become the junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton was strolling alone on a beach in the Caribbean, thinking about her aspirations to become President.

As she neared the end of the beach, far away from her hotel, she noticed light reflecting off something rolling around in the surf. She walked into the waves and picked up what appeared to be an old, rusted lamp, with an inscription of some kind.

As she tried to rub some of the rust off to get a better look at the inscription, the lamp suddenly spewed a great cloud of smoke that animated itself in the form of a great genie. The following conversation ensued:

Genie: Who is it that has freed me from my long confinement?

HRC: Um, that’s me, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Who are you?

Genie: I am the Genie of the Lamp! Hillary Rodham Clinton, for doing me this great service, I grant you 12 wishes. What do you wish?

HRC: 12 wishes?!!? Really? Wow, you know, I really really want to be President of the United States, but I think 2004 is too soon for me, so I will be running in 2008. And I’m sure that by then the Republicans will have so ruined the country that there is no way a Democrat can lose, so I only have to claim the Democratic nomination to take the Presidency. So, here is my first wish Genie, in late 2007, I want to have a multi-million dollar lead in fundraising over my closest rival.

Genie: It will be done.

HRC: Oh, and in case that’s not enough, I also want Bill and I to have made, say, over $100 million between now and then.

Genie: That also is not a problem.

HRC: Great, also, I want my name to be the most recognizable name in Democratic politics at that time!

Genie: Of course.

HRC: Super. I’m glad I met you Genie. Let’s see, I also want my biggest rival for the nomination to be…African-American!

Genie: It shall be.

HRC: Oh, and let’s not only have him be African-American, but have him be of mixed racial heritage, with a white mother and African-American father.

Genie: As you wish.

HRC: What else, what else, oh! I also want his last name, well, maybe that’s too much, his middle name to be the same as someone the United States has gone to war with twice.

Genie: Easily doable.

HRC: Well maybe the last name thing wouldn’t be too much, how about this, I want his last name to be almost the same as that of the first name of the biggest terrorist in the world!

Genie: A simple matter.

HRC: This is fun! Okay, um, I also want him to have written an autobiography in which he admits to doing cocaine.

Genie: You are truly devious Hillary Rodham Clinton, so it shall be.

HRC: And I want him to have gone to a church with a pastor who says crazy things on videotape like “God-damn America!” and have that tape played over and over and over on national television.

Genie: I believe that’s two wishes, Hillary Rodham Clinton, both granted.

HRC: He should also have an absentee father who was a Muslim! No offense Genie.

Genie: None taken, a Muslim he shall be.

HRC: I want to start off the primary campaign with a huge lead in the superdelegates!

Genie: Done.

HRC: And finally, I want to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2008!

Genie: I’m sorry Hillary Rodham Clinton, but that is your 13th wish, you only have 12.

HRC: Oh. Well, that’s okay Genie, I’m sure with all those other wishes I’ll win easily in a landslide.

***

I have no idea who wrote this brilliant little tale; it was found in the comments section of a blog just now, posted by "Urgh" with no contact details.

It's wonderful that Hillary isn't the Democratic candidate; not because she would have been a bad president - I think she'd have been excellent. No my problem with Hillary was just how much the right (and I don't mean just the extreme right) really HATE her in a deep visceral kind of way. Nominating Hillary would have meant millions of Republicans and centerists disgusted and angry after 8 years of George W Fuckwit, would have troubled themselves to drive to the polling booths and pull the lever for john McCain. Now such people will stay at home and (best case scenario) some of the centerists will be drawn to Obama and vote for him.

So... for the record I'm predicting Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States.

Oil supply

2008-06-03T11:40:00.001+01:00

Evil Books

2008-05-25T18:02:00.004+01:00

Years ago a friend spent three years at university doing “Holocaust Studies” and despite the obvious importance of the subject I’ve never quite understood her choice.

Why spend what should be a rather vivid and enjoyable time of your life wallowing in the details of the worst crime ever committed? My friend has never been able to convince me it was a good idea.

Now, after spending a bank holiday week-end reading two paperbacks on the Ipswich murders, I’m even less convinced. True, there’s something about murder and crime detection that fascinates lots of people (me included). But the sheer misery of even five pointless deaths makes you wonder what kind of weird primates humans are; or at least some of them.

Hunting Evil was the first of the books I cracked, not least because I’ve met both of the authors, albeit briefly. Paul Harrison is a journalist for Sky TV who covered the Ipswich murders story almost from the beginning. David Wilson is one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met; seriously handsome and charismatic, a professor of criminology, once Britain’s youngest ever prison governor, occasional Guardian columnist etc etc. He’s so blessed with talent that he began to remind me of Conrad’s Mr Kurtz; can anyone really be that good!?!

Published almost as soon as Steve Wright was driven from the court to begin his life sentence (shadowed by a Sky helicopter all the way) the book suffers from being a bit of a rush job and a very uneven collaboration. The problem is the two authors have such different styles and approaches to the case.

Paul Harrison is no doubt an excellent TV presenter but you can tell his background isn’t in print. Here are few random extracts from his chapters:

“…everyone in the room and across the country would be hanging on his every word.

Little did I know that, from that moment on, together we would be hunting evil.

But almost overnight her bright future would be transformed into a dull distant dream.

Yeah yeah yeah. Perhaps it’s unfair to treat a true crime story as literature but the frequency of the clichés and the clumsy way Harrison tries to produce suspense soon irritate. It doesn’t take many pages before you realise we’ve not got another In Cold Blood here or even the competence of a experienced true crime writer like Anne Rule.

Worse is the contrast with David Wilson’s chapters; calm, serious, rational and well written, they explore the case from a wider social perspective and with expert knowledge. The best thing about Wilson is he’s not a stuffy academic; instead he’s comfortable to draw from popular film and TV (The Silence of the Lambs, Cracker) to the FSS (Forensic Science Service of the Home Office) to the cases of Sir Edward Marshall Hall. His chapter on the ‘science’ of profiling alone is worth the price of book.

There are also useful photographs (although none showing the victims in situ, which would have been interesting in a harrowing way). There’s also a detailed timeline and a very good chapter (again by Wilson) on how most serial killers pray on the vulnerable in society; prostitutes, runaways, gay man, the elderly and children. It seems obvious when you see it, but I’d never really considered the phenomenon from that angle. It’s a pity that there isn’t an index.

Cold Blooded Evil (Are these publisher’s suggestions for titles? What's with the Evil thing?) is the second book, written by Neil Root. Mr. Root is a bit of a mystery; the book gives no details about him, nor (unusually) does that ever inquisitive mouse so perhaps he’s using a pseudonym.

Rather than comment on the style, I’ll simply quote the first three sentences of Chapter 1:

The Suffolk landscape in winter can be very beautiful, the falling leaves gently rustled by the wind a reminder of time passing and the inevitability of the life cycle. The bare branches of centuries-old trees stand in haunting silhouette against the white sky. This is the real English countryside, where the rustic majesty of the fields is richly veined by meandering brooks and streams.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What is it about these true crime guys that makes them attempt this stuff? It’s not even true – the land immediately around Ipswich is featureless and ugly and scrubby, especially in winter and especially when the water table is so high that the turf turns to mud the moment you step on it.

Despite the style, it’s not a worthless book, and in fact having a single author means you don’t get any of those disconcerting contrasts between chapters that mar the Wilson and Harrison work. It’s also clear that Neil Root is fond of Suffolk and Ipswich and knows them both well.

That can be an advantage when he talks about the red light area. I had no idea that it contained 40 brothels (40! it seems incredible) in the 19^th century when the port was booming (anorack Neil tells us it was once the largest wet dock in Europe). It’s a disadvantage when he talks about the victims; each one seems a wonderful girl who fell in with the wrong crowd and got addicted to drugs. It’s kind to avoid criticising the victims but not appropriate or helpful to paint them in such an idealised way in a factual account.

As the book goes on, Root’s writing style tightens and he does a good workmanlike job of telling the miserable tale of Steve Wright and his five victims. Without specialist knowledge he does a reasonable job describing serial killers, the science of DNA, and the speculation about Wright’s motivation and whether he’d killed before ('yes' is the consensus).

***

Both books struggle to describe the trial which managed to make the murder of five young women and the discovery of a skilled and a well camouflaged serial killer as cold and dull as the water in a Suffolk ditch. Without Steve Wright’s co-operation we’re unlikely to ever know why he did it, although both books do some informed speculation.

I’d have liked a bit more speculation, perhaps from off the record comments by the police. We still don’t know why Wright killed them, how he killed them, where he killed them, and where he disposed of Gemma and Tania. He may have even stored Tania’s body somewhere for days - perhaps weeks.

I have a friend in Copdock and driving there a few weeks ago noticed a bouquet of flowers placed carefully dead centre on the bridge railings. This is allegedly the spot where Wright pulled up (on possibly two separate occasions) lifted a corpse wrapped in a red blanket (never found) from the boot of his car, unwrapped it, then chucked the naked body into Belstead Brook.

It all sounds plausible, unless you stand on the bridge at night and look around you. The bridge is well lit by street lights and overlooked by several houses and other buildings. Even at 2 or 3 in the morning, devious clever Steve Wright was taking a huge risk, or the theory is bollocks. No wonder the prosecution mentioned a possible accomplice; I don’t doubt Wright was the killer, but some of the details of the prosecution case don’t convince.

Which is the basic reason why no book on the Ipswich murders will be satisfactory; Steve Wright is too opaque, too many questions won't be answered. At least all three authors had the courage to try.

DISCLOSURE: There’s a short extract from this blog, and a reference or two to me on page 236 of Hunting Evil.

Royal Festival Hall

2008-05-03T23:37:00.005+01:00

The Royal Festival Hall got a restoration fairly recently, and I've been meaning to blog about it for a while.

The brightest and the best decided to return it to its original state when it opened for the Festival of Britain on the 3rd of May 1951. Seen 57 years later, the building and it's 'city of the future' interior has a half-amusing/half impressive aspect. It certainly must have been futuristic in its day; when you glance at it from the outside you think 'mid sixties' certainly not 15 years older.

"S" and myself went for a drink and meal in the Hall on Wednesday. "S" was sure there was a bar with a view of the river and purple crushed velvet chairs. The staff assured us there wasn't, but showed us to a restaurant where you can have a drink at the bar. I took this bad photograph from our table, but at least it shows the wonderful view, and some of the nicely restored/replica 1950s details like the chairs and the lamps.

I wish I'd taken another picture of the waiters and waitresses outfits. We were both pretty sure that they were replicas too; patient leather and subtle earthy colours. A final nice touch; the drinks menu featured 1950s cocktails. The one 'S' chose seemed to have about 50% of your recommended daily fruit intake in a single glass. She assured me it was good and strong none the less.

Tower Bridge

2008-04-21T22:08:00.003+01:00

The couple who approached me this morning were clearly tourists, but fortunately they were French and I was able to direct them towards 'London Bridge.'

Of course they meant Tower Bridge the world famous landmark which may well be the most ludicrous structure on the planet. My walk to and from work takes me over it twice every day.

Before we moved the new office I'd probably walked over it twice in my life. So far familiarity has bred admiration; it really is the most insane bit of Victorian Gothic architecture ever - a suspension bridge disguised as a grand medieval gateway to London.

I love it's in yer face 'form doesn't follow function' design ethos; it makes even the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado seem an epitome of practical industrial design. From a distance, the bridge's medieval disguise just about works, but close up you're very aware of what a massive piece of mad engineering it really is. Is there any plant in the country capable of making pieces of cast iron this big?

Spring Saturday

2008-04-19T16:24:00.003+01:00

The theme for Spring this year is clear; make the best of the vile weather and try and have fun.

It was in that spirit that D, N, and myself went off for a lovely day by the seaside today and suicide gray skies and a freezing cold wind howling off the sea be damned. So we drove up to Aldeburgh and had a brisk walk along the shingle beach.

Halfway up the impressively solid looking lifeboat together with it's equally impressive launching tractor offered some welcome shelter against the wind and some scary high waves.

N pointed out that the tractor would serve as very useful transport should Britain succumb to plague of zombies. It was fun to imagine the fuckers howling as they hammered futilely on the armoured glass of the vehicle's windows, and the satisfying squelch they would make as you drove over them making full use of the caterpillar tracks and monster diesel.

We walked a bit further up the beach and then returned to dine on fish and chips. Then it was off to Sizewell B nuclear power station, only to find the visitor center closed indefinitely; probably as a result of British foreign policy in the Middle East.

So it was back to Ipswich a bit earlier than planned, and a nice thaw out in front of the gas fire.

Hillary

2008-03-31T10:25:00.004+01:00

You can see much more of Tom Tomorrow's work at his website here.

Argh!

2008-03-31T09:45:00.002+01:00

I'm just too busy at the moment...

My birthday passed by along with the rest of the week-end in a sort of rushed blur, with work at 7:00AM on Saturday, a long drive home, and then back to London yesterday after more work in the afternoon.

The week-end was not improved by the antics of an ex-heroin addict and an aggressive/selfish pacifist.

Hey - at least I managed to stay off-line for over 48 hours. And THANK YOU for the e-mails and calls and texts - I've been re-reading a few this morning.

Another First...

2008-03-24T18:18:00.003Z

H and myself decided to stick a collective two fingers (yeah, that's four fingers) at this rubbish Easter break and played our tennis match this morning, as re-scheduled for the third time.

As the snow fell, often quite heavily.

I took my right glove off to hold my racquet, and took my left glove off to toss the ball for the serve.

The conditions produced some strange optical illusions - the ball moves in one direction while the snowflakes swirl around in the same direction and suddenly the brain's trajectory/speed/anticipation computer crashes.

Well that's my excuse for losing 1-6, 0-6, but actually H is a much better player.

So anyway, that's another first nailed:

"Have you ever played tennis in a snowstorm?"

"Yeah."

Rachel Corrie 1979-2003

2008-03-16T20:22:00.003Z

A video still of Rachel being interviewed two days before she was murdered.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Rachel's murder by the Israeli Army.

There's a good article by Tom Wright and Therese Saliba in Counterpunch this week about the attempts by the Corrie family to discover who was responsible and why it was felt necessary to roll a bulldozer over a 23 year old woman dressed in an orange hi-vis vest and armed with a particularly lethal bull horn.

And then roll the bulldozer back over her, with the blade down...

Wisdom from Ms. Paglia

2008-03-12T15:48:00.002Z

D and myself occasionally enjoy the commentary and criticism of Camille Paglia – especially her celebrated feminist analysis on the Basic Instinct DVD.* **

In today’s Salon.com, Camille says:

Workaholism is an introspection-killing disease, the anxious disability of tunnel-vision middle managers.

Not really a condition I seem especially prone too, but then middle management has always been a step or two beyond me...

* Shit jobs sometimes have their minor compensations. One such featured a lady in another department called Catherine Tramell. Sadly she wore knickers, didn’t write novels, and didn’t drive a white Esprit.

** Director Paul Verhoeven also did Starship Troopers; the best comedy of the 1990s.

HM Prison London

2008-03-12T10:54:00.004Z

A brilliant picture by Paperlilies shows a poster against the introduction of ID cards. It says:

HMP London

Open Prison
ID Must be carried
At all times

Rather like the hovercraft, ID cards are a classic case of a solution looking for a problem. They wouldn’t have prevented the 7/7 bombings or the pathetically amateurish attacks that have followed.

I’ve also got vivid memories of Paris in the mid 90s, when a small terrorist campaign was waged by French citizens whose parents came from Algeria. France has had ID cards for decades and… it didn’t prevent that or previous campaigns either.

For the vast majority of people ID cards will just be another thing to pay for, have to renew, occasionally lose, and sometimes forget.

I can’t think of better way of adding stress to everyone’s life, or a more unpopular measure. Except perhaps, getting us all to swear allegiance to the Queen!

The longer the Brown regime goes on, the more it seems that the PM and his team have been in the elite leadership bubble for so long they’ve completely lost touch with reality. It happens to every government that's been in power for several years, and it's strange that what is so obvious to us outsiders is so hidden to those within.

So British!

2008-03-06T15:20:00.003Z

Comment overheard at work just now:

Right! I'm going have a nice cup of tea and calm down!

The fact that the lady who spoke is Polish makes it even better.

Julie Burchill

2008-02-23T21:23:00.005Z

If it's trash, how come it's so hard to write a book as good as this?

I've been infuriated and entertained by the writing of Julie Burchill for over 20 years now - brilliantly talented, and philosophically all over the place.

It's great pity her masterpiece Ambition (1990) the quintessential shopping and fucking novel is out of print. Long derided as being trash, it's a brilliant work that is pure fun yet captures the mood of the late 1980s as accurately as Jay McInerney. I read it in one sitting, passed it onto my flatmate, and found her in the kitchen a while later with one hand stirring the pot and the other holding the book open... It really was that addictive. The caption on the back gave details of the little back dress and the model: Teresa from Storm. Have a look for it in your local charity shop - it'll be the best 50p you've ever spent.

Perhaps on the back of Ambition's success (it was a bestseller in it's day) Julie wrote an introduction to the reissue of Jacqueline Susan's far inferior Valley of the Dolls (1966) so don't be surprised when Ambition is re-published in 2020 as a Penguin Modern Classic.

Julie's latest piece is the story of her attempts to be pampered and hopefully alleviate the symptoms of gout, a condition she cheerfully admits comes from years of hedonism. The article ends with a classic Burchill aphorism:

In the end, the pursuit of the self serves only to make one less of a real, individual, interesting person; the over-examined life is not worth living. It just feels longer.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - The Final Day

2008-02-22T12:32:00.004Z

Steve Wright's rented flat in London Road

Steve Wright has been sentenced to ‘a whole life order’ which means he’ll die in prison.

Since he was found guilty yesterday, there’s been a torrent of information that the media weren’t allowed to report while the trial was in progress. We’ve learned a bit more about the victims and lots more about Wright himself, a much more disturbed individual than he previously appeared with a long history of problem gambling, patchy employment, failed relationships and several suicide attempts.

His crimes have been horrible for all the friends and relatives who’ve lost loved ones – and of course for his own relatives too, some of whom sobbed their way through proceedings yesterday.

There are also mundane issues like what will become of the flat, where perhaps five young women were smothered? Presumably, the dark blue Mondeo that Wright took such pride in has been forensically examined to pieces. There's even a rumour that London Road will be renamed.

As predicted, the various pre-trial rumours have turned out to be bullshit, although my psychological profile of the killer doesn't seem a bad effort for an amateur. I took some pictures of Steve Wright's flat on Monday, and I'll add those to this entry later.

Blogging the trial has brought me into contact with a load of new people, and from the stats quite a few new readers. I’ve learned lots about DNA and micro-fibres and the differences between a real trial and the fictional ones on the telly. But it’s over and done with now, and I’m looking forward to going back to writing about anorak stuff like my old Porsche and rather dull holidays and films seen on a Sunday night.

I know far more about Gemma now she's dead than I ever did when she was alive, but for a while now I've been trying to remember the last time I saw her. It was a warm evening in the late summer of 2006. She was striding down Victoria Street heading towards London Road, wearing very high-heeled shoes that made a sort of ‘clopping’ noise on the pavement. Her strawberry blonde hair was brushed back over her shoulders and she was wearing her usual denim mini skirt and a little jacket.

Maybe it was the heroin, but she looked happy.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 26

2008-02-21T18:47:00.003Z

I got the news a few hours ago that earlier this afternoon Steve Wright was found guilty on all five counts of murder. The judge will sentence him tomorrow.

A few random thoughts on the case and some of the issues raised:

The Trial

Steve Wright can’t complain about the trail process itself. It was conducted with scrupulous care, and unlike say the USA, Wright had the services of a first class lawyer to defend him. The judge’s summing up, which can be a cause of occasional complaint in the British legal system, seemed to be fair and balanced. Above all else, Steve Wright seemed to convict himself; everyone I spoke too said his performance in the witness box was a catastrophe; he seemed grudging and belligerent, but not in an innocent way.

DNA

The science of DNA fingerprinting and fibre analysis is hugely important to modern criminal justice. It seems almost impossible to murder someone and not leave some trace of the victim either on your clothing or your car or home or whatever. In fact so important has DNA become that ‘traditional’ forms of evidence, such as eye witness accounts and checking alibis seem old fashioned and second rate.

But DNA on it’s own needs to be compared to someone else’s DNA. In a way the police were fortunate that Steve Wright had foolishly stolen a grand total of £80 back in 2005, and as a matter of routine a DNA profile was taken. Imagine how many prostitutes he might have murdered had his DNA not been on the national database? In a narrow way he was clever enough to kill five women unseen and unheard, and dispose of their bodies without being seen. He also managed to hide or destroy all their clothing, which must be quite a bundle.

Should everyone in the UK have their DNA stored on a national database? Our public culture is wonderfully honest* but such a law would be a huge threat to civil liberties. Given the recent scandals around ID cards (which wouldn’t have helped catch Steve Wright at all) it’s difficult to imagine any government seriously attempting DNA samples for all.

Vulnerable Victims

This is perhaps the only area where some good has out of this shitty little story.

The victims were all young, addicted to expensive drugs, and almost completely outside normal society.

The Suffolk Constabulary did a fine job catching Steve Wright, and having called upon them several times myself over the years, I know that they are professional, friendly and efficient. But they can only enforce the law and morals as they stand now, and the law in this case forced these very vulnerable young women into areas not covered by CCTV, and basically left them alone and unprotected against the likes of casual rapists, sadists, and of course with the benefit of hindsight, Steve Wright serial killer.

One of the surprises of the case was that in 25 days of evidence we never heard so much as a word about pimps. I’d always assumed street prostitutes were ‘owned’ by tough nasty bastards who took most of their money and supplied their drugs, but did provide some measure of protection to their revenue stream. Maybe Ipswich is just too small for that to occur here, or maybe the pimp thing is a bit of myth. We did hear of boyfriends, but they seemed to stay at home or be elsewhere while their girls were working the streets. So alone or in twos or threes, away from CCTV cameras, it’s hard to imagine a more vulnerable group than the prostitutes of Ipswich, desperate for a new fix, harassed by the police and completely unprotected against any kind of aggression, let alone murder.

But here’s the good news, in the months since Wright’s arrest, Ipswich council, the police, and a very good local charity called the Iceni Project have combined forces to try and solve the problem. For a start, the police have instigated a zero tolerance policy on kerb crawling, and CCTV cameras now cover pretty much the whole of the red light area. Secondly, and this is important bit, the girls themselves have all been offered drug rehabilitation and financial support if they agree to stop street walking. I believe in many cases, the Iceni Project has managed to find them accommodation away from Ipswich and has arranged counselling and vocational training too.

Whatever the exact details, the approach has been a wonderful success. From about 30 full time prostitutes and another 20-30 ‘part-timers’ there are now somewhere between one and three (it depends whom you ask) street prostitutes in Ipswich. Personally I’ve not seen one in the red light area for at least four months, probably more like six or seven.

Hopefully other provincial towns will try the same approach, rather than the criminalisation/ASBO approach that only succeeds in pleasing the Daily Mail.

The Reason Why?

The biggest question the trial failed to answer, indeed the prosecution didn’t even attempt to answer was... WHY? Why did Steve Wright suddenly decide to go on a killing spree? Why at the age of 49, and not say… 39, or even 19 for that matter. It was obviously a lot to do with sex, and probably a whole load of stuff around the thrill of the hunt, deceiving the victim, and cleverly evading detection (not just by the police but by his partner, poor Pam). The posing of the bodies struck me as very significant, and yet I haven’t a clue what this posing means. Steve didn’t like beating or marking his victims, and maybe the posing suggests a kind of reverence for them; he wanted them to be a ‘pretty picture’ when discovered.

Perhaps in years to come some skilled psychologist will be able to get some of this stuff out of him, and society can gain some insights into Steve’s sad damaged little mind.

There’s one final act to come; the sentencing which takes place tomorrow. I’ll write my final entry on this case then.

*Yes it fucking is. Having lived for 6 years in France and nearly 3 years in the USA, I can assure you levels of corruption in this country are unbelievably low in comparison. Even squeaky clean Switzerland (where I lived for nearly 2 years) was worse than the UK in this respect. Yes I am aware of various scandals, and believe me, most would be considered so trivial in other countries they wouldn’t merit any investigation at all. C’est la vie.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 25

2008-02-21T18:45:00.002Z

The judge finished summing up today and sent the jury out to consider their verdict.

There was nothing in the summing up that we haven't already covered here, at least slightly, and my impression of the whole summing up is that it has been comprehensive, fair and balanced.

Now it's up to the jury.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 24

2008-02-19T21:34:00.001Z

Judge Justice Gross continued his summing up, which lasted the entire day.

As we’ve learned to expect, it was a complete factual summing up of the case; reminding the jury of each expert witness and the evidence they presented.

There was nothing new, but there were some details that had escaped me before. For instance Anneli Alderton’s body was discovered posed in a ‘crucifix’ position (which I knew) but that her hair was also laid out straight, and that the left hand was posed palm up, the right palm down. It suggests the killer took quite a bit of care to achieve the look he desired.

Annette Nichols was found in a similar position with her hair almost “symmetrically straight up.”

These two bodies formed a contrast to Paula Clennell who appeared to be dumped face down without any posing, with her hair caught up in brambles. I wonder if the killer was disturbed, and didn’t get the chance to lay out Paula in the way he wanted.

The rest of the summing up concerned the exhaustive DNA evidence, the equally detailed fibre evidence, the pathologists report, and Steve Wright’s testimony.

Tomorrow the judge will finish summing up the case, and the jury will retire to consider it’s verdict. It’s possible (although in my opinion unlikely) that we may even have a verdict tomorrow, or more likely on Thursday or Friday.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 23

2008-02-18T17:45:00.002Z

Justice Gross, the judge, begins his summing up.

He made some good points, about how the jury mustn't let their emotions guide them, how they must not judge the lifestyles of the victims, and to judge the case on the evidence they have heard not on stuff they have read on the Internet (!).

I'd rather hoped that this experienced official might be able to guide the jury as to what evidence (there is so much of it in this trial!) is the most important.

Instead, the Justice Gross delivered a careful and very through review of all the evidence but gave little or no indication as to it's relative weight. He seems either reluctant to do this, or prefers that the jury should decide for themselves.

Perhaps the most memorable part of his summing up was a list of the nine key points of the prosecution case. They are:

That Wright picked up the victims in the order that they went missing and he seems to have been the last person to have see each of them alive.
Wright was able to pick them up and kill them because his partner works nights.
CCTV and vehicle number plate recognition evidence.
DNA links between three of the women and Wright.
Micro-fibres linking Wright to all five of the women.
Various mad coincidences that probably aren't coincidences at all.
The fact that the victims started being killed soon after Wright moved into his new flat in London Road, and have stopped dying since his arrest in middle of December.
Two of the victims shed blood, traces of this blood were found on Steve Wright's clothing.
Wright knew the places where the bodies were disposed.

It's a good summary, and presented in a simple list you can see the strength of the case.

Tomorrow, presumably the judge will sum up the defence case which challenges key points in that list.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 22

2008-02-17T21:44:00.002Z

Timothy Langdale Q.C started his closing statement for the defence late yesterday afternoon, spoke for just over an hour and then continued today (Friday).

He does a good job in pointing out the nagging little doubts and uncertainties that accompany any case built entirely on circumstantial evidence. For instance:

The way the prosecution admitted several times that Wright may not have acted alone.

The fact that several prostitutes had sex with Steve Wright during his alleged 'killing spree' and were completely unharmed and didn't feel in any danger at all.

The fact that the number of prostitutes in Ipswich is small, so the chance of having sex with one the victims is actually quite high.

The strange way that all the victims had used powerful drugs recently before they died, yet there isn't a scrap of evidence linking Steve Wright with any kind of illegal drugs at all - as a user or a supplier, or as an expert in their use.

The way that two of the victims were found naked in water, whilst the other three were found on dry land in a different area, and two had been 'posed.' Is this really the work of the same killer?

There's no evidence that Wright took walks in the countryside, in fact apart from driving past the locations, there no evidence Wright knew them at all.

Wright is supposed to be a careful cunning killer, yet he apparently wears a high vis jacket when disposing of the bodies - it's hard to think of a worse choice of clothing for secretive activities at night.

Similarly, Wright seems a pretty ordinary sort of guy, yet he's somehow managed to conceal or destroy the clothing of all his victims, despite the most intensive police search for them.

Various witness statements (including the two I heard 'live' on Wednesday) that have victims alive and well when they should be either dead or about to be killed.

The fact that the fibre evidence consisted of a tiny sub-set from hundreds of fibres which haven't been traced.

Finally there's the troubling presence of Tom Stephens, DNA clean but otherwise eccentric and disturbed, with no alibi for the days when the girls went missing...

***

Around noon on Monday, the judge will sum up the case and hopefully put some weight on the various types of evidence heard.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 21

2008-02-16T20:33:00.002Z

It's time for the closing arguments, and the defence has the advantage of going last. So it was over to Peter Wright to try and summarise the huge amount of the evidence the prosecution has gathered.

It's a tough job, and he does it well. He also reminds us of some facts that are so obvious it's possible to overlook them;

All the victims were young, slim, and had shoulder length hair. All were found relatively uninjured, and all had been striped naked. All had been asphyxiated. All had met Steve Wright the night they died.

Already we've got a lot of coincidence to set aside there.

What about Tom Stephens? Peter Wright is subtle enough to accept that Stephens' did make 'unusual and disturbing remarks' and that he has no alibi for the nights the girls disappeared. But he also points out that the DNA evidence shows a zero, and that in any case, the issue here isn't about Tom Stephens; it's about Steve Wright.

Peter Wright then goes on to list a whole series of 'coincidences' that link Wright to the murders.

For instance:

The fact that the victims only went missing when Steve Wright's partner was out at work. Nobody went missing when she was at home.

And at the end of each 'coincidence' he asks the jury:

"Singular misfortune or significant fact?

It's a simple rhetorical trick, but the cumulative power is impressive.

Peter Wright finishes a little before 4:00pm. Steve Wright might be finished too.

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Day 20

2008-02-15T15:18:00.006Z

Working nights has its advantages, and on Day 19 I tried to attend the trial as a member of the public.

Damn it, all the places had gone by the time I got down there, so I went to bed and tried again on Wednesday – Day 20. This time I got in.

If you were to wander from one side of town to the other, you'd find that Ipswich is a surprisingly large place, but an accident of geography means the Crown Court is right next door to the red light area. To get to it from my house meant walking down London Road, walking down Handford Road past the corner with Burlington Road where so many of the victims stood waiting for the next punter, and then down Portman Road – the outer edge of the red light area. Cross into Sir Alf Ramsey Way (another favourite spot for hookers), take a left past the old football training ground and you’re pretty much there.

At the famous Oz obscenity trial held at the Old Bailey in the early 70s, even a man as unrestrained as George Melly claimed he was “intimidated by the architecture.” I doubt Good Time George would have felt the same in Ipswich Crown Court. A structure of glass and milk-of-magnesia white walls, when I passed through security it seemed strange not be confronted by a corporate mission statement and a row of computer cubicles. I’ve spent almost my entire working life in such sterile environments; bland as a CEO’s quarterly speech. To be fair, this building isn’t too bad. There’s a feeling of light and space (the sunlight helps), and it’s all clean and well maintained. It’s also inadequate for a trial of this magnitude.

Because of the huge media interest, there’s no space for the public in Court No 1. Instead, the adjacent Court No 2 serves as a media centre and a tiny public gallery. I felt better about not getting in the previous day, as the total number of seats was… 17. There are two monitors that show the scene in Court No 1, and the sound is piped in too. At the very back of the room, where the public sit, the picture on the nearest monitor was small and indistinct. It took a bit of squinting at the picture to realize that what seemed to be low partitions in the courtroom were actually rows of box files on desks. The sound was good though, and gradually things began to make sense.

Some random observations:

Almost all the media people are good looking and are well and expensively dressed. You get the impression that you’re seeing an elite section of the 21st century aristocracy – or maybe a selection of the Nexus Six range. Many of them clearly know each other, and it was easy to spot key points in the evidence because they all subtlety react to it – bodies lean a fraction forward, fingers reach for laptops and pens. The impression is that this lot are cleverer than you and better looking than you and they earn more than you, and that both you and they know this.

The two QCs were much less adversarial than years of TV and film drama (and a lot of Rumpole) had led me to expect. In fact for the shot session I observed, they didn’t exchange a single cross word.

The defending barrister, Timothy Langdale, is more impressive live than on the page. He’s a got a very good voice; articulate as you’d expect, but also friendly and calm. In another life you could imagine him as a BBC continuity presenter, or perhaps a psychiatrist. This is a man you instinctively like, which must be a huge asset in his profession. I was less impressed by Peter Wright, but in fairness it was the defence’s day, and he didn’t do much this particular morning. The overall impression was of two professionals, utterly at ease, doing their jobs with no bad feeling between them.

It was the last day of the defence evidence, and I missed Steve Wright – I couldn’t even see the space where the accused sits. I assume he was in court, but I don’t know that for sure. This was one of the disadvantages of not being in the court room itself.

The defence called two women as witnesses. There was a nice contrast between the Suffolk accents of both women, and the received pronunciation of Timothy Langdale. He asked good questions, skillfully leading them along in their short testimony.

The first was Kerry Land, a night shift worker (hail comrade!) who works at the 24 hour petrol station just down the road on the edge of the red light area. She’d worked there for years, and knew lots of the prostitutes as customers. They’d come to the station in the small hours buying chocolate bars or whatever (Jeez - shades of my student days in Manchester). Some would hang around for chat. She was positive that she’d seen Tania Nicoll, alive and well and buying a chocolate bar after 11:30pm when according to the prosecution she should have been dead, or about to be killed. Kerry spoke clearly and calmly, and I found her evidence entirely convincing. What was less convincing was the date – she’s worked at that garage for 11 years, and her shift pattern hasn’t changed much – can we be sure she’s right about the date?

The final witness was Helen Brooks, who works in the post office and who starts her shift at 5 AM (Feck. The things we do for money). Timothy Langdale had a nice way to introduce her evidence. After she was sworn in and had given her full name, he asked her to look at a short clip of CCTV footage.

“Do you recognize that person?” he asked.
Helen smiled and said "Yes, it’s me."

A brilliant way of putting a witness at ease, and also proving that she was indeed cycling to work down Burlington Road at 3:42AM on October 31st. Rather like Kerry, Helen had got to know several prostitutes by sight as she went to work each day. She was positive that she’d seen Tania Nicoll alive and well and talking on a mobile phone. Again, according to the prosecution this would be a time when Tania was supposed to be dead, or about to be killed, having met Steve Wright several hours earlier.

Both witnesses were excellent; they didn’t seem nervous or unsure and I found them entirely plausible. The defence could do with more of them.

Timothy Langdale and his junior Mark Fenalls ended with a series of written statements being read out to the court. Once again, they mainly concerned the eccentric (disturbed?) Tom Stephens and his antics. There was evidence of the Stephens taxi service. Evidence of Stephens telling sex worker Nicola Brown to lie about the time he last saw her. Stephens visiting the police and telling them that if he was the killer he’d strangle the victims. Most damningly of all, on another occasion he told the police he might have a split personality and was worried that he was ‘doing things’ while not normal.

I was fascinated, but the final statement undermined everything: Tom Stephens had been thoroughly investigated, “DNAed,” his car and house had been subjected to forensics and he’d been interrogated. And at the end of all this… no charges had been brought. Nothing. Not even soliciting or kerb crawling. Not good for the defence. Not good at all.

After the defence had finished, the trial was adjourned. This was great, as I knew after being awake for nearly 24 hours I hadn’t the stamina for a full day of proceedings.

In the coffee bar afterwards, through the charming and beautiful playwright Alecky Blythe, I got a chance to meet someone whom I’m very grateful too – Josh Warwick of the Ipswich Evening Star. Josh is one of a team of four who’ve been reporting the trail live as it happens on the Ipswich Star website. i've been using this feed, along with a few random news items from other media for the blog coverage of the trial. Josh and co have done a great job, and I’m pleased I managed to thank him in person – at least he knows he’s been ripped off. THANK YOU.

I was also lucky enough to be introduced to a criminal psychologist Professor David Wilson who is writing a book about the Steve Wright case. Some of the stuff we discussed is restricted (while the trial is on) so I’ll tell you about him another time. Suffice to say I found him very impressive and will certainly read and review the book here when it’s published.

The trial is drawing to close and I’ll update you later today with the closing arguments. Then it’ll be time for the judge to sum up, and for the jury to decide…

The Ipswich Murders Trial - Days 18 and 19

2008-02-15T12:50:00.000Z

Apologies for the lack of reporting – I’ve been working in the small hours of the morning this week and haven’t really adjusted to it yet so I’m tired.

Prosecutor Peter Wright QC laid into Steve Wright’s story with gusto. I’m too tired to do more than report a few highlights here, as Wright’s story is so flimsy.

Anyone with a bit of common sense and familiar with the evidence could tear it apart. Wright does himself no favours with his grudging answers, that often consist terse phrases like “Apparently not,” and “It would appear so, yes.” He doesn’t seem to realise that he’s left the police interrogation rooms now and is on trial with a life in prison ahead of him if he doesn’t convince.

He doesn’t convince.

Perhaps the key admissions came on day 19 (Tuesday) when the trial resumed. Wright couldn’t explain how blood flecks from Paula Clennell came to be on the backseat of his Mondeo, and on his high-vis jacket. Paula’s face had a recent scratch on it.

The defence does it’s best.

The key individual is a man called Tom Stephens, who was well known to Ipswich prostitutes, and who knew all the victims. Amongst his more eccentric activities, he used to act as a sort of ‘friend’ as well as a client to many of them, and ferry them about in his car. He spent hours in the red light area and was always good for a cigarette, or a lift, or a loan. A tabloid even claimed he once held a party for several sex workers in his house in the village of Trimley Saint Martin (such an English name! – straight from the pages of John Wyndham or Daphne du Maurier). Trimley is close to where three of the victims were found.

For a time Stephens seems to have been the police prime suspect, and his behavior during the last couple of weeks of the trial was eccentric to the point of madness. He was giving interviews to journalists, leaving memorial flowers tied to lampposts, complaining of feeling suicidal, and visiting the police portacabin at the end of London Road to tell them his theories. Not surprisingly he under surveillance and was held by the police for two days. They also took his DNA, and gave his house the full forensic treatment.

The forensic treatment is key, as I suspect as recently as 15 years ago it might have been Tom Stephens in the dock, while Steve Wright managed to restrain himself and go back to piloting a fork lift truck. But today we have the hard science of DNA, and quite simply there was no evidence of him found on any of the victims.

If there is ever a film made of the Ipswich killings, the writer might portray Stevens as a figure of fun, a tragic/comedic clown, the character who’s stupid antics lighten up the flat winter landscape of Steve Wright and his victims. But Stevens is more sinister than that. The court heard statements from “Miss L” who met him through a lonely hearts column. When they had sex Tom suggested they use a “safe word” as he liked to pin her down with his hands on her neck. When she (surprisingly) decided Stephens wasn’t the man for her, she had to change her telephone number and he got a restraining order.