Hey Ho!

Last November I was offline, unable to post. No great problem really, except that I wanted to mark an anniversary on the 10th of the month.

The anniversary, it was, of the day I met the woman whom I called ‘M’, Mavis, a silly name I know, but the one I have selected for my muse, my memory, my dream and my love.

I have written so much about her privately, pages of notes and aborted poems, but have hesitated to make my thoughts public. But the beauty of a blog is that I can give myself the illusion of anonymity and know that only a few people close to me will know the state of my mind, of my heart.

‘My heart’. Those words arouse the cynic within me. I hear him laughing at me. ‘For Christ’s sake, haven’t you learned anything from life? Don’t you know that it never, ever, works? That you always get hurt? That you do a fair bit of hurting yourself?’

But for the first time in years I don’t care. For the first time in years I do care.

*

I met her in an office – let’s call it a bank – where I was transacting some financial matter. She was business-like, but friendly. I detected a sense of humour. I admired the way she dressed and the accent in her voice. I liked the curve at the corners of her mouth, the touch of exoticism in her face, her nose and her eyes. She was slim and her silvery-white hair was threaded through with individual strands of black.

She was beautiful. I realised only later that I had fallen in love.

The older, the wiser? Bollocks! ‘Altior, stultior’ is what I think the Romans said.

*

It took me three months to do anything about it. Three months are pretty precious at my time of life. What happened to that arrogant bastard who once brushed off rejection the way a salesman does, knowing one sale in fifty is a good ratio of success?

But at least I thought I had gauged her personality well enough to know that if I was going to be told to bugger off it would be done in a way considerate of my feelings.

So, in February, we met, and became friends.

Friends.

*

I’ve asked myself why I was so drawn to her. The world is full of attractive women, even Lincoln. What was it that made me want to go and buy flowers – flowers, for heaven’s sake!

She is everything I knew she would be. Hers is the kind of beauty that will never age. And her personality matches it. She is kind, gentle and good. She’s my complete opposite. She’s gregarious, organised, hard-working, positive. My God, she actually likes people! And, not surprisingly, everyone I’ve introduced her to likes her. ‘What a lovely woman,’ they say. With me, it’s ‘Well, he’s all right when you get to know him.’

That’s what they think.

Says it all, doesn’t it?

*

I was doing a crossword the other day. I was struggling until I came across one particular clue. I don’t recall what it was, but the answer came straight into my head and I wrote it in without checking. I didn’t need to check.

The answer was UNREQUITED.

D.O.A. (1950)

Directed by Rudolph Mate; starring Edmond O'Brien

As the credits roll, a man enters a police station and strides purposefully through long corridors until he comes to the door marked ‘Homicide’. He asks for the captain and says he’s there to report a murder.

‘Who was murdered?’

‘I was.’

And the flashback begins. This is film noir. It’s a good opening. Brisk, efficient and arresting. But it’s not maintained, more’s the pity.

Edmond O’Brien is the small-time accountant who fancies a week of fun and relaxation – let’s call it - in San Francisco. When we meet his girlfriend, it’s easy to see why. She’s not exactly a ‘femme fatale’, but she’d certainly be fatal to any man’s enjoyment of life. She whines, she clings and she has a nice line in guilt inducement.

Edmond finds the strength to get to San Francisco and is immediately surrounded by attractive women, each one signalled by an irritating wolf-whistle on the sound track. Having managed, with amazing ease, to pick up a woman in a bar, he has cold water poured over his libido by the arrival of flowers and a ‘missing you already’ note from the girlfriend.

It’s about now that he is poisoned. No, it’s not suicide. It’s a conspiracy. The next morning, feeling that his hangover is unusually bad, he consults a remarkably well-informed doctor, an expert in toxicology, who informs him that he has taken ‘luminous toxin’ and has a day or two to live.

Somewhat taken aback he rushes out and runs through the streets, an impressive sequence, all the better because the crowds on the pavement were probably not informed of what was going on.

A second opinion confirms the first and is reinforced when we actually see the poison glowing in the dark. That settles it. Doomed. There’s nothing left to do but find the man who administered it and solve the mystery.

That’s what the film basically is, a mystery, a standard murder mystery. It attempts to add darkness by the idea of the victim doing the investigation and perhaps a little philosophical weight by alluding to the absurdity of his fate. But this is all forgotten as the puzzle develops with a dizzying parade of look-alike women and villains. O’Brien’s angst is lost in all this. All we get by way of character development is his sudden realisation that he loves his girlfriend. He’s obviously not thinking straight, but then I suppose you can hardly blame him.

It’s a pity, because O’Brien is good. He’s in every scene and carries the whole film. The earliest film of his I recall is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when he was slim and good-looking and difficult to recognise as the same man hamming it up in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Wild Bunch – and let’s not forget The Girl Can’t Help It. Here he’s restrained and solid and makes me wonder if he wasn’t worthy of greater things than he achieved.

My overall judgment: good basic concept, let down by the script. Worth watching for efficiency of direction and photography. And O’Brien’s performance.

On the move

It's never great fun having to move home. Especially when you have about five minutes notice to do so.

Thank God there are a few people I haven't alienated who have floors and roofs.

How do I move all of those books and DVDs? What about all that food in the freezer? Where do I find a bottle opener?

Worst of all though was being without access to my computer for a month. No emails; no opportunity to sound off about the issues of the day while they're fresh in my mind; and nothing to do with my itching fingers first thing in the morning.

Anyway, after a few hiccups, I'm back on line. Admittedly I'm resting my keyboard on my knees while I sit on the bed, with my computer screen balanced precariously on a chair. But I'm ready to go.

So, what have I got to say? Those reviews of Brief Encounter, 3.10 to Yuma and Atonement? Maybe tomorrow, except I've got to be at City Hall then to ask about housing benefit. I can do a quick review of American Gangster though. It's a derivative combination of The Godfather, Serpico, Scarface and Public Enemy, with a pudgy Russell Crowe and Denzil Washington struggling desperately to shake off his nice guy personality. And failing. Avoid it.

Worst thing about the last month is that I missed 11 November, the anniversary of a very special day. And that will require some thought. Besides I don't the end of the story yet.

Rugby Balls

A word about the rugby. England lost. But they lost fairly and with a lot of honour.

It’s easy to quibble about the try that wasn’t, but what let us down was the tactics. Kick, kick, kick. ‘Run,’ I kept yelling. ‘Remember Fiji.’ When you kick you gain territory, but lose possession, and there was no way we were going to steal their line-out.

OK, I know these were the tactics that got us took us so unexpectedly to the final, but couldn’t we see that South Africa were beating us at our own game?

The man I feel most sorry for is Jason Robinson, a player I’ve always found at least as exciting as Jonny Wilkinson. In the past, when Robinson got the ball I always leapt up with expectation. He would look around, wiggle his bottom and dart upfield like a rabbit chased by a pack of poodles.

And yet in the last few games he’s been told to kick the bloody ball away. It made this brave man look craven. A sad end, limping off early to watch Tait provide glimpses of what might have been.

* * *

And what now for South Africa? It seems that their government has decided that that their rugby team should descend to the level of Azerbaijan. Incredibly, just as their team becomes the best in the world, they wish to throw away the concept of selection on merit – is there ever any other concept of selection? – and choose the team to ‘reflect the make-up of the nation’.

So, what’s that mean? Ten blacks and five whites? What about ‘coloureds’? Asians; Jews. What about the division of ‘blacks’ into Xhosa and Zulu, not to mention all the other groupings? In any case, rugby is a class thing, isn’t it? Maybe you should be denied selection if you’ve got a degree. And why exclude women, children, OAPs, disabled people. You won't win anything, but what could beat that lovely warm feeling of sanctimony.

What a load of balls!

* * *

Talking about balls, there’s been a lot more in the news this week.

For some reason thinking about rugby reminds me of fat people. I know it’s not the case anymore that the game is characterised by beer-bellied boozers, but I can’t help the way my mind works.

‘Obese’ is the word these days for what were once called ‘fat bastards’. ‘Obesity’ is not the result of greed and sloth and stupidity, but a condition, we were informed this week by the Chief Medical Officer himself, caused by ‘the failure of human biology to keep pace with changes in society’.

I remember one of the would-be strippers in The Full Monty, sitting in his garden shed, his belly strapped with cling-film and eating Mars Bars, all the while bemoaning his weight problem.

‘The wife’s got anti-ageing cream and anti-wrinkle cream,’ he says. ‘What I need is some anti-fat-bastard cream.’

No use. It’s evolution’s fault. Now that theory raises some interesting possibilities. We need to do some selective breeding, mating people who seem to cope better with today’s lifestyle and diet. As it’s a matter of urgency – Education Secretary Alan Johnson thinks the problem is on a par with global warming – I would like the powers that be to know that I myself have a high metabolic rate and am at the nation’s disposal.

Now I’m talking a load of balls!

* * *

What else is annoying me at the moment? All right, I’m a grumpy old man, but these things must be said.

There were those kids who stoned an old bloke to death, more or less, and were tried at the Old Bailey. My complaint is not that they only got a year in some sort of detention – although it’s a travesty – nor that their parents, assuming they’ve got any, weren’t in the dock with them. No, it’s that we’ve been subjected since to the bleating of bleeding hearts that have crawled out from under those rocks called university social studies departments to tell us that these little bastards are too young to be held accountable for their contemptible actions.

The same characters are fretting about the desire of prison officers to use batons on violent young offenders. Give them water cannon, if not machine guns, I say.

They make me so cross that I mixed my metaphors back there. And for that I can never forgive them.

Of course these ‘children’ – funny how they’re called children sometimes and ‘young adults’ at others – know the difference between ‘right and wrong’. If a gang of middle class liberals were to get drunk and throw stones at a ten-year-old caught reading The Daily Telegraph, the little offender would soon start bawling, ‘It ain’t fair, mistuh’. Ergo, they know what’s wrong. In that silly little scenario is the essence of social morality.

Even Jesus Christ would agree with that, not that he’s much of an authority. In fact he talked rather a lot of bollocks himself. I’ll come back to that another day.

* * *

What else? Is there no end to the insanity of Britain today?

Oh yes. Apparently there’s an epidemic of ‘middle-class drinking’. Now this is not ‘binge-drinking’. That is the privilege of children or young adults or whatever they’re called in this case. Middle class people, whoever they are, indulge in ‘hazardous drinking’. Forgive me, by the way, for using inverted commas so much, but how else do I convey my contempt for the silly journalistic phrases taken up and parroted from newspaper to TV and back again.

It seems that professional people are going home after a day’s work and drinking a bottle of wine. Every day. Shock horror! What is the point, I ask, of aspiring to a middle class income, if not to be able to afford a decent bottle of wine on a daily basis?

Dawn Primarola, a health minister with impeccable Stalinist credentials, has warned that ‘this must stop.’ God help us.

Personally, I wish I could afford it. But I’m not complaining. What with the reasonable rates at Wetherspoon’s pubs and ASDA I’m at this very moment finishing my week’s government-allocated quota of alcohol.

Not bad, considering I started yesterday morning.

What the hell. Do you live and put up with all this balls forever?

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Ten o'clock Sunday morning and I was halfway through watching Emmylou Harris singing songs to illustrate her 'Ten Commandments of Country Music' concert.

There were tears in my eyes. Of course there were, all you unbelievers will say. But you'd be wrong. This was country music as it should be, 'three chords and the truth'. It had all the elements - the plaintive maundering fiddle, the playful mandolin, the plangent steel guitar, the discreet harmonies dragging against the aching vocals of Emmylou, herself as wonderfully mature and beautiful as the music.

When you wake up with a hangover and still tense from the night before's rugby match, it's the only kind of music to listen to. Especially when you have that horrible feeling that you might have fallen in love.

Anniversary Blog

I'm the kind of man who tends to miss anniversaries. Well, they're all a bit silly really, aren't they?

So it's no surprise that I missed the anniversary of my own blog, where I first posted last year on the 12th October with some thoughts on the odd things which trigger memories. So why not do something similar today and begin with 'fairy clocks'?

I'm finding it, by the way, more difficult to post blogs regularly. When I started the idea was to ramble on about anything and everything, rather in the way I like to have long, discursive conversations in the pub. I seem to have become more self-conscious and desirous of producing something 'polished' whenever I write. Maybe, this is the time to make a new year's resolution and re-find the joy of talking nonsense.

So, fairy clocks. In other words, the dandelion in its seeding stage, those pretty balls of spores that children used to blow in order to tell the time, the number of puffs required to denude the stalk being the hour of the day. I wonder if they still do that.

I left the house to catch a bus the other day and was surprised to see the lawn carpeted with them. They seemed to have sprung up over night. It triggered memories of spending summer days wandering around fields and woods many years ago. In those days, during the summer holidays, children would leave the house after breakfast and return for tea, their parents quite unconcerned about danger, human, animal or physical.

We would swim unsupervised in the 'forty-foot' drain, make arrows from garden canes and nails, throw stones into wasps nests, light fires, practice riding bikes around corners without touching the handle-bars, and slash with sticks at vegetation.

By that time we'd gone beyond blowing the spores off fairy clocks. We preferred to do our part in the symbiotic relationship with them by kicking the hell out of them. No matter. The seed was spread far and wide, as the dandelions wanted. (Forgive the teleology). just as birds eat berries and pass the seeds through their gut, and bees spread pollen in return for nectar, we were doing our bit for dandelions in return for fun and fresh air.

The earlier game of blowing at them to tell the time had given us another benefit, namely a healthy lesson in scepticism. When three little boys get three different times from the exercise, they tend to doubt the foolish adults who had told them such nonsense.

Why do parents tell their children all these lies? Jack Frost painting the windows in winter; fairies (again) leaving coins under the pillow in exchange for teeth, or constructing perfect rings of mushrooms within which to cavort.

To be honest, those are all beautiful conceits, but why aren't children told that they are metaphors? Yes, I know that people say that 'children must be allowed their childhood', and the years of childhood are indeed the years of wonder. But isn't it just as wonderful to know the truth about these miracles of nature. I still don't know how the phenomenon of mushroom rings occurs.

The essential, defining characteristic of the human animal is his mind. But more than that, we have evolved in such a way that we have perhaps the longest period of immaturity in the animal kingdom, something like 16% of our lives. All that time to grow and learn, learn, learn.

And yet how often do you hear parents impatiently discouraging their children's questions or palming them off with cliches and ex cathedra judgments.

You can tell a lot about a person by discovering when he stopped believing in Father Christmas. It could be useful at a university selection board. Imagine:

Interviewer: When did you stop believing in Father Christmas?

Candidate: But I haven't. I still believe in Father Christmas.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, but a degree in maths, physics, biology or philosophy is out of the question in your case. I think you should read theology.

Yes, that's what I'm getting round to. Religion. Stuffing children's heads full of superstitious mythology is one of the worst kinds of child abuse. We rightly make a hell of a fuss about debauching their bodies, but let's show their minds a bit of respect too.

I'm not talking about children being told that Jesus is weeping because they've been caught stealing a Mars bar; or terrified by visions of hell because a mother thinks her son's socks are suspiciously stiff.

Nor am I condemning religion because some rogue priests allow the frustrations of their life-denying celibacy to spill over into confirmation candidates. Or because others use it as an excuse for murder or the persecution of teachers who give teddy bears a funny name and tell kids the story of the three little pigs

Funny where the thought process leads you.

The Election that Never Was

As soon as Gordon Brown became Prime Minister TV and newspapers began to talk about a snap election in the autumn. I thought it would be a strange kind of snap election that was predicted three or four months in advance, but such things are typical of the press.

And that early election was indeed almost called. But just as the press was congratulating itself on its prescience, the PM decided not to go ahead after all. The newspapers were furious. ‘Gordon Brown bottles it!’ was a typical headline.

I couldn’t help but think that if the election had gone ahead the tabloids would have been shouting about the government ‘cutting and running’. And the serious papers would have complained about an opportunistic manipulation of the parliamentary system. they would have been right there.

There were two reasons, I believe, for the media outrage. The first is that the government had exploited them, by briefing about the possibility of a poll in order to test the water and draw attention away from the Conservative Party conference. And second, because they had been deprived of some excitement. The press hates the boring routine of government administration. It wants conflict, drama. It wants change.

The PM doesn’t come out the past fortnight very well either. In political terms he’s shown himself as a ditherer. Having tried to use the press for his own purposes, he’s discovered that it can turn on you and give you a very nasty bite.

I imagine he looked ahead over the next couple of years and saw a slowing economy, mounting government debt, no likelihood of improvement in Iraq, not to mention the bubbling discontent about the European constitution. If there was a chance of going to the country and getting another safe five years of power, better to grab it.

If that were the decision he could trot out some cant about ‘seeking a renewed mandate’.

But when a fleeting opinion poll seems unfavourable he can wait for a better opportunity and use the fallback cliché about ‘getting on with the job of serving the British people’.

One of the constitutional issues raised by this episode is whether or not Gordon Brown has the right to be Prime Minister. As has been pointed out, he was not leader of the Labour Party when the general election was fought; and he didn’t even face a contest when he became leader of the party. Does he not, in fact, need a mandate of his own?

No, he does not. He is not a President. We elect Parliaments, not governments, and certainly not prime ministers. The media might like to reduce our system to a simple matter of two or three personalities, and the parties themselves are complicit in it for reasons of their own (party discipline for one). But under our system the Queen sends invites to form a government the person who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.

The Commons are elected by law every five years, although Parliament may be dissolved at any time, under the Royal Prerogative (ie the PM’s prerogative). Choosing the date of the election has always been at advantage to the governing party, but it is against the spirit of the constitution to rush to the country every time there is an encouraging opinion poll.

That’s why I wouldn’t have been happy with a general election this autumn. It’s not as if the government has lost its majority; or suffered a defeat on a motion of confidence; or as if a national emergency had overtaken us (like the miners’ strike of 1974); or a constitutional crisis (such as the Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s budget in, I think, 1906).

So Gordon Brown has done the right thing, but probably for the wrong reason.

Now the press can move on to the next non-event.

Death Proof (2007)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering was his half of the ‘Grindhouse’ collaboration with Roberto Rodriguez, revised and released separately. A homicidal stuntman uses his souped-up, ‘death proof’ car to stage murderous attacks on two groups of women, with a different outcome in each case.

Over the last few weeks I have wallowed in the glories of old cinema classics like Brief Encounter and The Roaring Twenties and seen what might come to be regarded as their equal, Atonement. I have enjoyed well-made movies like Fracture and The Prestige. I have been disappointed but nonetheless entertained by Die Hard 4.0 and 3.10 to Yuma.

And now I can add Death Proof to the list. A movie of the utmost banality. Not only is it rubbish, it is boring rubbish. And if Tarantino’s reply is that it’s a homage to the grindhouse movies of the past, complete with scratches, then it is self-indulgent boring rubbish, a film with its excuses built in.

All right, I’ll grant you a gruesome car crash, a vaguely erotic lap dance, an extended car chase and some impressive stunts. But the talk, the talk, the interminable talk!

Dialogue has always been one of Tarantino’s trademarks and he was rightly praised for it in his breakthrough films like Reservoir Dogs. It was witty, snappy and hilariously profane. It was also delivered by good, charismatic actors. It blended into the action, illuminated character and did nothing to hinder the narrative.

But in Death Proof it is idle, inane chatter between nonentities. A puffy Kurt Russell is no substitute for Travolta or Jackson or Keitel. And instead of Pam Grier or Uma Thurman we are presented with a gaggle of twittering starlets with cellulite.

Another of Tarantino’s traits has been his taste for playfulness with narrative. Flashbacks, putting the end at the beginning, or in the middle. Here he progresses in traditional fashion from A to B, then from A1 to C. If you don’t understand that, don’t worry. It’s not important. Nothing about this film is important.

We are treated to the usual QT camera angles, shots from inside a car engine, women's feet and other symptoms of adolescent film-making. There's the camera circling round the tableful of gabbling girls. Well, it worked in Reservoir Dogs, didn't it? And, ooh, what a long take. Seven minutes, I’m told. How easy to be a master director! Just strap on a steadicam and wander round a table after telling your actresses to chatter inanely. (Surely that stuff wasn't written).

Incidentally it proves why long takes should never be undertaken for their own sake. They work, in the sense that they match style and content, in, for example, Goodfellas and Atonement. Here it merely draws attention to itself and irritates. It’s like listening to the pub bore telling you how great a director Tarantino is.

QT isn't happy unless he's showing off his knowledge of forgotten films or pandering to the movie buffs in the audience. Did you know that Kurt Russell was in The Virginian a couple of times? There’s the rubber duck from Convoy on the bonnet (is that to remind us that even Peckinpah made bad films too?). Russell does a John Wayne impression – what an actor! I expect there were allusions to Japanese children’s TV, but they went over my head. And it was perhaps a mistake to keep mentioning Vanishing Point, with which Death Proof suffers badly in the comparison.

Has it any good points? There was one point when, following a sequence made for no apparent reason in black and white, we suddenly switch to colour, and glorious colour it is too. Yellow and orange leap out at you. A good moment.

And then there’s the stunt woman to whom he gives a speaking part, partly as a reward for her work on Kill Bill, partly because we can recognise that in the final car chase it is indeed her doing the heroics. She can’t act, but that is no problem in this movie. And there’s no doubt it’s an exciting sequence.

And there's the music, which helps pass to pass the time.

So how do I sum up: it’s a horror movie without being scary; it’s an action movie full of talk; it’s a black comedy which is not funny; and it’s a revenge story with little feeling of satisfaction, let alone catharsis.

Will Tarantino ever grow up? Will he ever put his undoubted talent with camera, actors and pen to produce anything other than self-regarding concept movies? Many of us thought Jackie Brown marked a new maturity but with Kill Bill and now this, I fear he will never emerge from the movie nursery.

Trials of a smoker

I have noticed that the smoking ban in ‘enclosed public spaces’ has unleashed a rather priggish attitude in many non-smokers.

On July 1st, the very first day of the ban, a middle-aged woman at the bar of my pub turned to a man waiting to be served and made the comment, ‘Isn’t it nice now there’s no smoking?’

‘**** off,’ was the reply.

Appropriate, I thought, if a little discourteous.

But it’s not only disgruntled smokers who can be rude. I myself was standing outside the pub a week later, enjoying a cigarette and watching the summery girls walk by, when a man passed me. A rather anonymous, unprepossessing character, whom I could imagine washing his car on a Sunday morning while listening to Richard Kledermans. As he walked past me he flapped his hand in front of his face to waft away imaginary smoke.

‘Yes, it is hot today,’ I remarked, but what I thought is unprintable, probably unspellable.

Sometimes I get very angry about this business. In fact, I often get angry about it. I hate to sound pompous, but it IS a denial of my personal freedom. More than that, it is a denial of choice and an interference in the working of the market economy.

When you get angry you sometimes cease to bother about consequences. The other evening I got up out of my seat in the pub to go outside for a smoke. As a tiny gesture of rebellion I lit up before leaving. I heard a muttered complaint from somewhere but ignored it, but determined to repeat the gesture later.

When I did, I heard the same shocked protest, and so I turned to enquire if my action was of any real consequence to this individual. Except I put my query more succinctly. I must admit I had a slight twinge when I realised that the protester appeared to what is known as ‘handy’. What the hell? He was obviously a man with great respect for the law.

What irritated me was that, although I was in the wrong, I doubt I’d have been rebuked so automatically if I had been dropping litter on the floor, swearing, telling racist jokes, making lewd remarks to the barmaids, slurring my speech or being sick on the carpet. No, I was smoking. And that gives a green light to every smug, self-righteous, sanctimonious prig to feel superior for once in their pitifully useless lives.

And now the bastards have got one of my friends - angrier, braver than I - barred.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The Simpsons may not make a great movie but it makes for great fun.

The TV show is such a phenomenon that while millions of fans were eagerly anticipating enjoying the movie, the critics were sharpening their quills and drooling at the thought of savaging it.

They’ve had to settle for damning it with faint praise. They say it’s just an extended episode of the series. Well, yes. That it’s flat and old-fashioned. Agreed. It’s no Pixar or Aardman animation. That the cultural references will date it. Possibly, although the fact that we all recognise the homage to 50-year-old Disney films rather belies that. That it retains the look of a TV show rather than a movie. To a certain extent.

What the hell. I loved it.

Even though I wanted more Mr Burns and less of the guest villain, more Principal Skinner and less Ned Flanders. And another thing. What happened to the pig?

My favourite visual gag, involves the church and Moe’s Bar next door. When the news is out that everyone is due to die in five minutes, the regulars in each place scurry to change places. (OK, you have to see it).

If you want to feel pleased with yourself, go and see Bergmann and Antonioni. If you want to please yourself, go and see The Simpsons Movie.

Hetty and Pixie

Leafing through an old issue of Computer Active, the only computer magazine that I have a hope of understanding, I came across an article recommending 50 useful websites. The article might still be there, although I can’t find it easily myself.

A lot of them I’d already found for myself. Cinema sites such as IMDb; a pub guide; cricket; Google Earth; Delia Smith on food; etc, etc.

* * *

But one site I would never have thought to seek out is Cat of the Day.

It’s twee, it’s cute, it’s what it says on the tin: a daily picture of someone’s moggy. But cats are not cute. They are the tiger in your living room.

Over the last twenty years two of the creatures have added my home to their territory.

HETTY was the first. Hetty, because we didn’t realise at first that he was a tom. We never had him neutered, or castrated as I prefer to call it. There were various reasons for this anti-social omission.

First, he was a fine cat and deserved to have his genes preserved. Second, the tabby cat in general is in danger, with people wanting to show off their wealth with pedigrees and other designer cats. In any case, it’s the female’s job to worry about contraception, isn’t it? (Only joking). Third, as a fellow male, I felt a kinship with him and couldn’t bear the thought of mutilating him in that horrendous way. I did consider a vasectomy for him, after he’d had a busy year or two impregnating the local queens, but that brought me up against the fourth reason: sheer bloody stinginess.

I did have to take him to the vet once. Playing cricket with one of my children in the back garden, I tossed the ball towards the bat, and as the child swung to hit it, Hetty appeared out of nowhere to try and catch the ball.

He was laid out cold and remained so for an hour or two.

The vet hummed and haahed, prescribed some tablets and suggested tests. By the time of the test results, three days later, by which time Hetty was bounding around like a kitten, the vet informed us there was nothing wrong and presented a large bill.

Hetty would be away for days on end, and we learned not to worry, but then came the time when we knew he would never return. Perhaps he had hopped onto a lorry that was often parked nearby and ended up in Grimsby. Perhaps that neighbour had carried out his threat to shoot him if he trespassed on his garden again. Perhaps he found a better place to stay.

For he never belonged to us. And that’s why I loved him.

* * *

PIXIE, who replaced Hetty, was a female. Like Hetty she was black and white, and beautiful. (The pictured cat is very like her).

I always assumed it was a sexual thing that Hetty took to my wife more than me, but with Pixie mine was her lap of preference. Every day, when I returned home from work, she would be waiting for me and as I pulled the car into the drive she would trot towards it in greeting. But when I got out of the car and walked towards her she would turn her back and ignore me. At all costs she must remain cool and keep her distance. Our relationship was strictly on her terms.

Two things I found she had difficulty in resisting. Being groomed with a comb. I envied the sensual pleasure she seemed to derive from the stroke of the comb under her chin. The other was marmite. I discovered that the greatest treat for her was licking a dollop of the spread from the tip of my finger. So rough was her tongue that my finger was left totally unsticky. A genuinely shared pleasure.

Desmond Morris once called a domestic cat ‘the tiger in your living room’, and he was quite right. The last time I saw a tiger, in a zoo, I was struck by the way it walked or rather slunk along, head down but wary, ears flicking, hind quarters low-slung and ready to pounce.

Pixie always hunted. I used to watch her in the back garden, sitting under a buddleia eyeing the butterflies and occasionally grabbing one out of the air. I’ve seen her stalking through flowers and emerging with something furry in her teeth, a tail dangling from her mouth. Once she took this victim and placed in what I would swear was the geometric centre of the lawn and lay it down. Then she moved several yards away and watched. The prey – vole, shrew – scuttled towards the safety of the bushes. But in vain, because Pixie would wait until it was inches from shelter before bounding over and catching it. The process began again. Eventually, either through boredom or as a reward for passing her own test, she ate it.

Let’s not apply anthropomorphic sentimentality to a wild animal. Let’s admire the perfection of its predatory instincts and skill.


PIXIE’S KITTENS were born in the middle of the night on my daughter’s bed. One fell to the floor and it was its scream for help – a scream so shrill and piercing that it was difficult to believe so tiny a creature could utter it – that woke me. I picked it up and placed it with the others, which were already suckling.

I believe I saved that little cat’s life. So much for not interfering with nature!

While the four kittens were chasing balls of rolled up newspaper, fighting with each other and flattening the flowerbeds, Pixie was driven to a hunting frenzy. At least once a day we would hear her summoning yowl at the kitchen window and she leapt in with some dead creature. There followed a scramble for the prize, and I noticed that the kitten I prided myself for saving usually missed out. He remained the runt, even in a small litter of four.

I’d found homes for them all, but heard that I should wait twelve weeks before parting them from their mother. I needn’t have been told, because Pixie knew. For at that time, to the day, she rejected them. She was lying on the floor, and when the kittens approached to nuzzle at her belly she snarled and spat and clawed them away. They sat back, expressions of shock on their faces – or was that me transferring my own reaction to them? But if cats can shrug their shoulders that’s what they did next.

A few days later they departed for their new homes.

Pixie is old now, bad-tempered and weak, but she still enjoys being groomed and still has her own personal jar of Marmite. She may have grown old but she retains the desire for certain pleasures. I know how she feels.

'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins

[1]

Just after finishing Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I happened to watch Elmer Gantry again.

It’s Burt Lancaster’s film, and he plays the role he was born for, but I’ll forbear lyricising about Burt and mention just one scene. This is where Arthur Kennedy, playing once again his cynical, sceptical but decent reporter character, has written an article condemning the hysteria and charlatanism endemic in ‘revivalism’.

In order to get the newspaper to print a retraction and make space available for a rebuttal, Elmer Gantry cross-examines the journalist about his religious beliefs. Kennedy’s character wheedles and prevaricates. He talks about the Bible being ‘beautiful poetry’; he admits how much he would like to believe. To confess to atheism, at that time, in America, was almost unthinkable.

And even today, we are browbeaten into showing respect for religion. On a radio show recently I heard Robert Winston, who professes Judaism, criticising Dawkins for his insulting use of the word ‘delusion’ in the title of this book. As I listened to him, I thought of the line, ‘Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.’

How could this intelligent man, I thought, not just believe, effectively, that there are fairies at the bottom of his garden, but expect other intelligent people to respect that belief? That delusion. That dangerous, dehumanising delusion.

Why is it that we are so careful in this country to understand and placate Muslims? Is it just that we afraid of being murdered? Maybe. But then why are we so concerned with a possibly diseased bullock, considered ‘sacred’ by a bunch of Hindus, who howl with outrage at the sacrilege committed by officials entering a ‘holy shrine’ to cart the damned thing off for slaughter. The man in charge actually took his boots off before entering. Can you believe it?

Can you believe that the case actually got to the Court of Appeal? I doubt if my cat would get the same consideration.

[2]

Dawkins gets the respect thing out of the way early and moves on to ask what people mean when they talk about belief in ‘God’. It’s what I always ask when someone asks me whether I believe in God. Which God? Allah, Jehovah, Pan, Thor? Aphrodite? Maybe I’d get down on my knees for her.

What sort of ‘god’? The clockmaker, the personal interventionist, the omnipresent immanence?

He checks off all the so-called proofs of some sort of god’s existence and easily shows how spurious they all are, before attempting to make some sort of case for the non-existence of God. Proving a negative is not easy at the best of times. So why bother trying, especially when not only is there no evidence for the positive, but we don’t know the nature of that ‘positive’, and it’s of no practical relevance to us anyway?

The answer to that is that the power of theism and its attendant religion is at best a dilution of our greatest talent, namely our reason; and at worst it is a seedbed for fanaticism, obscurantism and murder.

[3]

Dawkins seems to share this view, because not content with making an intellectual case for rejecting theism and embracing atheism, he goes onto the offensive. And he’s quite right to do so. Theists and religionists have had it their own way far too long, with their demands for respect, their indoctrination of children and their all-round bullying.

It’s timely too, when you can’t open a newspaper without seeing the stranglehold of militant Protestants on US politics, murderously militant Islam and the pernicious influence of Catholicism in the Third World.

Dawkins tries to explain the existence of religion in evolutionary terms, as a by-product of some useful mutation, primarily the tendency of children to believe their parents, to whom they are attached for a substantial part of their life. Add to that our inclination to form groups and avoid isolation, and the necessity for some emotional basis for pair-bonding, and it’s not fanciful to see by-products in nationalism, tribalism, religious affiliation (and fanatical support for football teams).

Religion gives us answers, something the human animal yearns for. And it gives us power. Every parent likes to invoke an authority figure to reinforce their own attempts at discipline. For example, ‘Wait till your father gets home,’ or ‘Don’t let that policeman see you.’ God is the best bogeyman you think of.

An issue Dawkins doesn’t address is whether humans have come to a point where evolution is not working any longer, because we are able to interfere with it. Our social morality forbids us, for example, to let the weak die; it also prevents males from distributing their seed as widely as they are programmed to do. At least it tries to.

Moreover, we shouldn’t forget that evolution is a hit-and-miss operation. For every useful mutation or trait-elimination there must be millions of useless or threatening ones. Such as religiosity.

[4]

While Dawkins’ polemic against religion is timely and necessary, he is less than politic in singling out certain moral issues with which to attack it. Abortion, for example. An attack on religion because it often forbids abortion is unlikely to be effective with people like myself who are uneasy about the wholesale termination of pregnancies. My concern has nothing to do with religion. I could argue that we are not giving evolution a chance, when healthy intelligent parents destroy their own genes.

Religion’s frequent prejudice against homosexuality is another of Dawkins’ bêtes noires. While tolerant myself I can easily understand a dislike of the practice in purely non-religious terms. After all, are not homosexuals, like nuns and monks, an evolutionary dead-end?

[5]

I have to say that I found a lot of Dawkins’ scientific explanations difficult to follow. But his final chapter, where he tries to describe the wonder of a mysterious world and the joy of forever discovering more about it without benefit of easy ‘revealed’ explanations, is inspirational.

His book is dedicated to Douglas Adams, with this quotation:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Recently Read Novels

I heard an interview with Gervaise Finn the other day. Finn is the former teacher and schools inspector who writes cosily humorous anecdotes about his work in the Yorkshire Dales. It’s like All Creatures Great and Small, with kids instead of cows.

In the interview, where Finn was discussing some of his favourite books, he made the point that he tended to read as a writer. He would be aware of the technical devices, the style adopted, the choice of words, the pacing, etc.

I’m no writer, but I find myself doing the same thing. It reminds me of how, many years ago, when reading for a literary degree, I would write ‘literary appreciations’ as an academic exercise, usually on a piece of verse – Subject, Theme, Content, Style was the usual framework. It was all a bit dry. I sometimes think that a poem demands an emotional response and, if you are able to do a good job of conveying that response in writing, there is little point in the poem in the first place.

That’s not entirely true, obviously. After all, a good artist needs a sound knowledge of anatomy. But it irritates me when all a critic can do is point out allusions, interesting rhyme schemes and the like. It’s rather like watching O, Brother, Where Art Thou? with someone who insists on telling you all the parallels with The Odyssey. (That someone, by the way, could easily be me, I have to confess).

I was moved to muse on these matters because I’ve just completed several very different books.

Augustus, by John Williams, a novel which I’ve mentioned before, is the story of the first Emperor of Rome told by means of letters, diary entries, military reports, official proclamations, etc. Thus it provides a multiplicity of points of view, similar to the letter-novels of the novel’s infancy. It does not attempt therefore to pronounce an overall objective judgment on the central character. Such a judgment would merely be that of the author in any case and the multi-viewpoint approach offers greater truth if less certainty.

The Killer Within Me by Jim Thompson is also written in the first person, that person being criminally insane. While Williams' style is impressionistic, Thompson’s, typically of that American genre of ‘roman noir’, is expressionistic. It’s direct, crude and slangy. Sentences are short and punctuation is peppered with dashes, ellipses, capitalisation. Lot’s of dialogue.

Raymond Chandler always praised Jim Thompson as the master. So did Stanley Kubrick, for whom he wrote the screenplays of The Killing and Paths of Glory. Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway was based on a Thompson novel.

It is the custom to say that a movie is not as good as the novel upon which it is based. Not always true, by any means. The Guns of Navarone, for example, which I have just re-read. I know the film well, having seen it at an impressionable age – I still write my ‘e’s’ in the pseudo-Greek way (rather like this: <- ) used in the credits. Alastair MacLean obviously strives to write well, trying hard to describe and depict the storms, the scenery and even a little psychology. But he’s constrained by his formula. Every member of the team is an expert, able to demonstrate superhuman skills and perform uncommon feats of endurance. MacLean’s attempts at ‘literature’, if anything slow the book down, unlike the film, which never lets up the pace in all its two-plus hours. The film also redrew the characters, partly to flesh them out and tailor them to the all-star cast. It also created extra dimensions to provide more internal tension. And a couple of women to add a little sexual interest. A book of MacLean’s that I plan to read is what I think was his first, HMS Ulysses, which some consider to be one of the best books on the naval theatre of World War II, along with The Cruel Sea and The Caine Mutiny.

In the meantime I’m reading The Good Shepherd by C S Forester, whose books I’ve loved since I discovered Hornblower in my teens. Forester also wrote The African Queen, The Gun (which became The Pride and the Passion – now that was one where the film didn’t do justice to the book - and Brown on Resolution, which became Single-handed or Sailor of the King or Born for Glory or Forever England, take your pick. Take your pick of endings too.

The Good Shepherd is the story of a day in the life of the commander of a convoy escort at the height of the War in the Atlantic. In minute, methodical detail we follow the cat-and-mouse struggle between a destroyer and a wolf-pack of U-boats.

A brave book in many ways, for many would find it boring, despite the tension, for it is repetitive and action is minimal. I’m finding it fascinating.

A range of authors, a range of styles. Good or bad I admire them all, because writing is difficult. I know, I try to do it everyday, and am conscious of my inability to measure up to my own expectations, let alone the quality I see in others.

I’ve tried to compose poems and songs; I’ve attempted humour, irony and polemic in essays and letters; I keep a diary, I write my blog and snatches of autobiography; I’ve turned my hand to fiction, short stories worthy of women’s magazines and some fit only for the top shelf. But.

But I miss out on the elegance and insight of John Williams, the unself-consciousness of Thompson, the plotting and personal experience of MacLean, the knowledge of Forester, the warmth of Finn – not to mention other favourite authors. Wilde’s wit, Alastair Cooke’s conversational and discursive style – the list is endless. And intimidating.

But, as Churchill would say – he’s another one – KBO.

Sorry to be so boring

IT IS PETTY and perverse of me, I admit, to look around my local pub and observe with complacent satisfaction the empty chairs, the bored staff, and the increasingly desperate special offers.

I read in the local press that pub trade has reduced by 10 per cent since the smoking ban and backstreet boozers with no opportunity to provide outside facilities are facing a harsh commercial winter.

I got up from my table the other day, where there was a smug conversation going on about the administrative cock-up that is ‘Smoke-on-Trent’ to order another drink. I noticed a sign on the bar offering a steak at half price. ‘Vegetables of your choice,’ it promised. ‘Just ask our friendly staff.’

‘Are you one of the friendly ones?’ I asked Molly, the barmaid. ‘I’m never quite sure?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it says here, ‘’Ask our friendly staff.’’ I don’t want to ask any one unfriendly by mistake.’

She expressed doubts about my grip on reality and advised me to absent myself forthwith. Except she didn’t bother with the circumlocution.

Now that’s the thing about the English language. It’s so gloriously imprecise in some ways. In other ways it’s quite the opposite, because it’s got twice the number of words as, say, German. It’s a great mongrel of a language – and my father always told me to avoid pedigree dogs – unlike French, which even has an Academy to maintain its incestuous decline.

But French can’t be accused of being imprecise. I wouldn’t have been able to make my joking remark about ‘friendly staff’ in that language. Because French allows you to put an adjective before or after a noun, depending on the sense. Take ‘green grass’, for example. If you want to distinguish the green grass from grass of another colour, you would place ‘verte’ after ‘l’herbe’. If on the other hand you were just using green as a standard description of grass – all grass is by default green – it would go in front. This was the purpose of ‘friendly staff’, I presume.

I LEFT MY PINT on the table and strolled along the outside of the pub, to smoke a cigarette. I paused to light it and realised I was by an open window. What, I thought, if my smoke were to waft inside the pub? Would that count as ‘smoking inside a confined public space’? This thought took me back to my Latin lessons. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

I had to ask myself if ‘confined space’ is in the ablative case or the accusative. If the former, ‘smoking in the pub’ would have the sense of ‘inside the pub’. If, on the other hand, ‘in’ is followed by the accusative case of the noun, it would mean ‘into the pub’. I would therefore be on the wrong side of the law (except in Stoke, that is).

Surprisingly, for such a language as English, flexible if you like, vague if you prefer, people will insist on being pedantic about it. Lynne Truss famously, and very profitably, wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a combination of diatribe against poor punctuation and manual of correct practice.

Interestingly, if the New York Times is typical, the Americans were not impressed. This article not only disagrees with her rules of punctuation, but criticises her prose style, her grammar and her syntax.

I REMEMBER the fuss when the Ministry of Transport had a campaign about the dangers of falling asleep at the wheel of the car. ‘Don’t Drive Tired’ was the slogan.

‘Tired’ is an adjective. A verb must be modified by an adverb, must it not? What kind of message does it send when a government department propagates bad English? Etc . . . etc..

The criticism was misplaced, of course. The slogan may not be very elegant, but it’s more elegant, and certainly more effective, than ‘Don’t Drive Tiredly’, or ‘Don’t Drive While Fatigued’.

If I wanted to get into syntactic analysis, I could prove that the adjective, ‘tired’, is qualifying the understood ‘you’, part of the understood phrase, ‘while you are’. And in any case, if Dylan Thomas could write ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, why can’t we say ‘Don’t drive tired’?

(Should that question mark come before the quotation mark, I wonder? After all, Sir Roger Casement was hanged on a comma.)

The imprecision of English leads to inadvertent humour – ‘I see chickens are going cheap in Asda;’ bawdy humour – ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to introduce me to your wife;’ and poetry – ‘Now does he feel his secret murders sticking to his hands.’ Is any other language so prone to punning?

A LITTLE LATER, once again outside indulging the pleasures of the flesh, I stopped to read the notice warning against smoking in the pub. What a contemptible little scrap of card, and what execrable English. What a perfect feast for lawyers, so perfect an example of imprecise English it is.

‘These are no smoking premises. It is an offence to smoke or knowingly to permit smoking in these premises.

‘If you observe someone smoking here, a complaint may be made to the manager.’

‘These are no smoking premises.’ That could mean that ‘these premises don’t smoke.’ And if you’re not going to say ‘NON- smoking premises’, shouldn’t you at least put the hyphen after ‘no’.

‘Knowingly to permit . . .’ Well, at least the writer didn’t split the infinitive. But does this mean that other customers are obliged by law to prevent smoking? Are citizen’s arrests permitted?

‘A complaint may be made.’ Does this mean that there is a possibility of complaint or that you have permission to complain? Or could it mean that a complaint may be made about you observing smoking?

You see what nicotine deprivation does to people.

And if you’ve reached the end of this blog, you’re a sadder man that I am.

Augustus (1972) by John Williams

My Google alert for ‘sonnet’ referred me to an article on John Williams, an American novelist of whom I had not previously heard.

He died in 1994, having completed a small body of work, novels that appear to be very different one from the other, at least superficially.

One of these was Augustus (1972), an epistolary-type novel about the first Roman emperor. The man is described by his contemporaries, friends, enemies and observers, in letters, diaries and official documents. It is technically accomplished, elegant in style and penetrating in its psychology, which cannot avoid being ‘modern’ and all the more interesting for that.

Augustus finally speaks for himself, as an old man, in a long last chapter, from which this excerpt particularly struck me today:

‘The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality.

The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.

But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.’

7-7-7

Today is the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the millennium. Cue troops of ‘numerologists’ spouting their nonsense in the media. It wouldn’t be that date, naturally, if we were still on the Julian calendar or if we were following Muslim or Jewish dates.

Nonetheless it sparks a little interest when an acquaintance of mine tells me that today is his 77th birthday.

Yesterday, Charles Kennedy, former leader of the Lib Dems, was warned by police for smoking on a train. The council’s non-smoking signs at the entrance to my block of flats have mysteriously fallen off.

I hear Heathrow airport has a baggage backlog. In order to clear it, according to the BBC, ‘volunteers have been drafted in.’ Interesting phrase.

I heard two women talking about the weather yesterday. After one had finished complaining about the rain, the other said, ‘Well, thank God, I’m getting away from it all next week. I’m going on holiday.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Wales.’

Die Hard 4.0

Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free or Die Hard)

2007. Directed by Len Wiseman. Starring Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long.

Has John Maclane given up smoking? His language certainly seems to have improved. All in the interests of gaining a more general censorship certificate.

I have no doubt that for a long time I shall be boring my numerically challenged readership to death with my complaints about the smoking ban. I believe the more positive term is ‘the creation of smoke-free areas’. As I say, the smoking ban.

Despite the weather and Wimbledon, it seems to be the only topic of conversation at bus queues and in the pub. Smokers moaning and ranting, non-smokers crowing, apart from the ones who try to be ‘reasonable’, no doubt realising there are more threats to their health than smoking.

I was reprimanded for smoking in the pub yesterday. I quite innocently lit up while reading the paper and it was when I was looking round for an ashtray that the manager pointed out my misdemeanour. My companions, of course, had said never a word, just looked on with amusement and waited to see what happened.

I went to see Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free or Die Hard) yesterday. It’s a good thing Bruce didn’t need his lighter to set off a petrol trail to take a plane out of the sky. In this film, instead, he takes out a helicopter and an F35 by much more elaborate means.

And that’s one of the differences between this latest episode and the early ones. The stunts are more spectacular and very obviously CGI’d and therefore less believable. Now, I’m not saying that Die Hard I and II were models of realism. But you could just about buy the heroic exploits and hair-raising escapes, especially since the whole thing was acted, edited and shot to keep you hooked.

The first two used the formula of a fixed, confined location, admittedly a big one. DH III and IV go on the road. In this one, we seem to go over the whole eastern seaboard, as if by teletransportation.

Maybe the thought is that the central character is what made the earlier film work so well. The tough, dogged, self-deprecating, inventive everyman with whom we can just about identify. Now he’s superman without the underpants. That’s why, I suppose, Bruce has to deliver a self-pitying speech about the downside of being a hero.

And we have to believe in DH IV that there are computer geeks out there whose skills are also superhuman. Is that reflecting the prevailing paranoia? Or am I just ignorant and complacent?

It seems very difficult to kill people in this movie, even the minor villains, who are incredibly skilled in kung fu and acrobatics. But when it comes to the deaths of innocent civilians, the film cheats a bit. Hundreds of cars are totalled, but we are spared the human tragedy. In DH II the plane crash engineered by the villain is preceded by scenes with the passengers which serve to humanise the tragedy.

As in DH III Maclane is provided with a partner, another departure from the original formula. Again, it weakens the central character. Part of his charm, if that’s the right word, is his technophobia and his down-to-earth physical approach to the overwhelming sophistication of his opponents. Here he needs the computer expertise of his nerdy companion. I know it’s necessary for the plot, but in that case it’s the wrong plot.

But it was a lot of fun.

Richard III

THE LAST TWO EVENINGS in the pub have been morgue-like. Not just because an oppressive atmosphere of gloom has replaced the pall of tobacco smoke, but because the place is bloody empty.

I take a perverse pleasure in that, although I am surprised that so many people have carried out their threat to buy in their beer and stay at home. The reason I don’t stay away myself is that I don’t want to deny myself the company of people I’ve come to know well and the opportunity to meet others.

We all have our own ways of not allowing the bastards to grind us down. I’ve found a decent place to sit next to the door onto the smoking patio. So it could be worse. What really gets my goat is overhearing these sanctimonious bastards saying how nice it is without the smoke, before ordering a veggie burger and a hot chocolate. I’ve found that you can irritate them by dangling an unlit cigarette from your mouth and occasionally flicking on your lighter. They then feel the need to keep an eye on you in case a complaint needs to be registered.

Of course it’s petty.

Perhaps all the absenteeism from pubs will lead to a revival of family life, albeit a smoky one. No doubt that will be the next target.

IT'S A LONG TIME since I heard the phrase ‘party piece’. I suppose it went out with family gatherings round the piano.

Once upon a time my own part piece was a recitation of Albert and the Lion, complete with accent that was somewhere between Lancashire and Yorkshire. I would have preferred to do Sam’s Medal, but performing that correctly requires half a dozen different articles of headgear, and I never quite bothered to acquire them.

I never quite had the courage to sing, but once I was persuaded to duet the song The Ballad of Bethnal Green.

NOWADAYS I would want to declaim a speech from Shakespeare. Maybe a sonnet, if I want to demonstrate that underneath I am a sensitive romantic, but preferably Richard III’s opening speech, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’ It’s difficult to avoid attempting a Laurence Olivier impersonation, but the great thing about learning a speech or a poem is that you get to know and understand it more and begin to endow it with you own interpretation, even relating it to your own personality and experience.

The speech had four sections, of which the fourth is simple exposition of the plot and sets the action in motion. I’m not bothering to learn that.

In the first section Richard muses on the peace which has descended on England following what appears to be his brother’s decisive victory in the Wars of the Roses.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
And all the clouds that lower’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Here Richard comes across as happily triumphant. Only in retrospect can we see the dissatisfaction and sarcasm in his words. Ian McKellern, in his film, handled it quite deftly by speaking these opening lines at a celebration banquet and then cutting to Richard in the gents muttering his real thoughts as he pisses.

In amplifying the changes that peace has brought, Richard’s hatred of the quiet life becomes increasingly obvious.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Interesting here that the alliteration and assonance is very helpful in memorising the text. Eg monuments, merry meetings, marches, measures; bosom, brows, bruised. There is also a marked contrast between the dramatic, vivid images of war and the vague, weak activities of peace.

Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

This is excellent stuff. You still might think Richard a stern, puritanical soldier, bored by peace and offended by the sexual hedonism of the new court.

But. Ah, the ‘But’. ‘But I. . .’ Gone is the ‘we’ of the preceding lines as we move into section two.

But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass.
I, that am rudely stamped and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph.
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature

(I can never say that line before thinking Olivier’s delivery – ‘chu, chu, chu’)

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
Why I, in this weak, piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.

You could feel sorry for him. He certainly feels sorry for himself and his bitterness is palpable. Then he moves to the third section.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a lover
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Now I shall check and see if I got it right. Excellent. I wonder where I can get an Equity card.

England's Smoking Ban

July 1st, 2007, a date that will live in infamy, the day when that coalition of puritans and pursed-lipped killjoys, of do-gooders, nannies and busybodies, control freaks, know-alls, health fascists and interfuckingfering bastards finally got their wish and banned smoking in ‘enclosed public places’. In other words my pub.

Who are these people, who talk of saving lives, but don’t know the first thing about living the short life we have? They’re not saving lives. At best they’re prolonging its misery until something other than cancer else gets us or rots our brains into not caring who or where we are.

Who are they? They’re teetotallers, vegetarians, feminists, calorie-counters, joggers, bureaucrats, censors. Eunuchs. How dare they tell me what to do, how to live? The same people who would have cockerels banned from the countryside and then pollute it with their four-by-fours; who fret about battery chickens and the fate of foxes, but are happy to pay for their daughter’s abortion; preen themselves over their catalytic converter and wonder why the police have nothing better to do than stop them speeding.

Listen to them with their hypocritical cant. How their heart bleeds for me and my health. How they lie awake at night crying over the poor barmaids breathing in all that smoke. Well, don’t weep for me, I do enough of that for myself; and if the barmaids don’t like it, let them work somewhere else. If other customers don’t like it, let them go and clutter up another bar with their requests for café latté and drinking chocolate.

Have we lost faith in the market? What’s wrong with a little smoking apartheid? Even God is supposed to have allowed us freedom of choice.

These people don’t like smokers because smokers don’t labour under the illusion that life is serious. Smokers are atheistic, amoral, adulterous, alcoholic, anarchistic – and, OK, on occasion absolute arseholes.

But they’re also gregarious, friendly, talkative, laid back and plain interesting. Non-smokers are attracted to them because they’re sick of the other nicotinophobes with their suburban gardens and their car-washing Sundays and their 2.4 children - who may be spoiled, fat and stupid, but at least they’re ‘not exposed to smoking’ – and their little wives with their little jobs and their sensible hairstyles and comfy flip-flops and their holiday videos and their sanctimonious pension schemes.

I know them. I’ve met hundreds of them. Frightened little people, envious pigmy-souled, joyless-hearted Lilliputians, striving to pin down free-spirited giants with a thousand restrictive threads.

Bitter? You bet I’m bitter. This is war, you petty-minded tyrants. And I’m going to enjoy it.

Now, where did I put my fags?

Detour (1946): Review

Directed by Edgar G Ulmer; written by Martin Goldsmith; starring Tom Neal (Roberts) and Ann Savage (Vera).

SPOILERS - it's difficult to write about films and books without revealing things you might prefer not to know.

Detour is a film to which many superlatives have attached themselves: 'greatest B-movie'; 'greatest film noir'; 'the cheapest really good film to come out of Hollywood'; 'the most despairing of all B-pictures'. Certainly this 'king of the cults' is no barrel of laughs.

It's got all the hallmarks of classic noir: flashback structure, voice-over narration, hard-boiled dialogue, moody, expressionist photography, femme fatale, victimised hero, a malevolent fate dragging all down to a tragic end.

The story

Roberts is a classically trained pianist eking out a living in a New York bar, where his girlfriend, Sue, also works as a singer. After she leaves to try her luck in Hollywood, Roberts follows, hitch-hiking across country. He is picked up by a flashily generous guy, Haskell, who eventually falls out of the parked car, hits his head on a rock and dies. Roberts, suddenly afraid that he might be suspected of murder, hides the body, and then steals the man's money, car and identity.

Before long he himself gives a ride to a woman, a charmless piece called Vera, who turns out to know the real Haskell, and promptly starts to blackmail Roberts. she goes on to hatch a plot whereby Roberts will use his impersonation to get hold of Haskell's late father's estate.

Another twist of fate leads to Vera's accidental death, again bearing the look of murder, and Roberts goes on the run. With anti-climactic inevitability he is picked up by the police as he walks along a dark road to nowhere in particular.

Comment

In Scarlet Street Edward G Robinson's decline is depicted in a linear progression. In Out of the Past Robert Mitchum's narration of the flashbacks leads us to the present where there is still at least the prospect of a happy resolution. In Detour, as in Double Indemnity, we begin with the hero at rock bottom, a bum, beaten and bitter.

The opening flashback scene shows Roberts and girlfriend performing in the club. She is aiming the words of her song at him, but the song is 'I can't believe that you're in love with me.' Maybe their loving smiles are just for the audience. For on their stroll home she matter-of-factly announces her departure for Hollywood. apart from a couple of shots of her at the end of a phone, we will not see her again.

Roberts hardly merits the term 'hero'. Even 'protagonist' seems too strong for this weak, sulky man. His piano-playing is excellent and you wonder why he doesn't try a little harder to make it, instead of cynically belting out Chopin to a boogie-woogie rhythm. He can't even accept a tip graciously.

His reaction to the sudden death of Haskell is an overwhelming, irrational attack of paranoia. It's here that it's important to remember that what we see is merely an illustration of what Roberts is telling us. Could it be that we are listening to his statement to the police?

Crime films of this period often use the convention of the voice-over and flashback. It gets the film off to a suitably mysterious beginning, allows for plenty of Chandleresque prose, and helps link audience and character. But it can be deceptive. Maybe, as here I suspect, we are being told, and watching, a pack of self-justifying lies.

Vera is probably the most unprepossessing dangerous females in movies. In a film noir you expect the heart of evil to be concealed in a sexy body and behind sultry eyes, and her lies to be articulated in a smokily honeyed voice. But this dame is sheer bitch, with eyes like Medusa's and a voice like a Banshee's. It takes a weird loser like Roberts to find a 'homely beauty' in her. And only a weakling with a masochistic streak would submit to her imprisonment of him. It's a grotesque parody of the marriage he claims to desire.

And then he kills her. Accidentally. Of course. It's fate, again, sticking its foot out to trip him up yet again. But this is no tragedy, as Roberts would have us believe. It is not the story of a great, even good, man brought down by 'one particular fault' and playful gods. It is the story of a weak man, who prefers sarcasm to struggle and who embraces misfortune as a method of excusing his failure.

Conclusion

I cannot help but think that much of the praise lavished on this move is inpired by admiration for a director who could produce something halfway decent inside a week with only a few thousand dollars to spend.

I'm all for not padding out films in order to stretch a thin story out to two hours, but the meagre running time of this one simply cuts the plot short. You realise with a shock that Vera's death is supposed to be the climax. 'Is that it?' you think. There's so much about her you want to know. Is she dying of consumption? Why is Roberts so passive? Is he a murderer? Why should I have to add my own value to a film to make it work.

But then I'm a sucker for old monochrome crime movies. I share that romantic admiration for the penniless director pursuing his own dark vision and struggling to create the proverbial silk purse. It's a movie for the cultist, and as a cultist, I shall continue to enjoy explaining that when you see cars driving on the wrong side of the road it's representative of the hero's inner confusion, face with a meaningless and dissembling universe. Obvious, really.