Einstein, Jesus, Irving and Beethoven

While writing my previous blog (“Inspired choices of music”), I had a feeling that I’d written something very similar before. I checked previous blogs – no nothing there. I searched all my documents saved on my laptop – including archives – and found an essay I had drafted in 1998 while living in the US. It was almost published in a prestigious magazine, nay TWO prestigious magazines, but the first rejected it after a monumental tussle between two editors, and I rejected the second when the editor said he liked the essay’s first half but not the second so could I re-write it. No one tells me what or how to write, so it remained unpublished and I forgot about it …

 … until I wrote ‘Inspired Choices’, the following bit in particular:

“You can analyse the pants off it in the most scholarly, imaginative way, but at the end of the day it boils down to your instinct. Your soul. A religious experience. A certain piece of music just does ‘it’. What’s ‘it’? Ask your soul,”…

Inspired choices of music

No I’m not thinking of Classic FM’s Top 100 or Desert Island Discs, but the most perfect, irreplaceable, hand-in-glove musical pieces ‘inserted’ in films, which re-imagine the former and elevate the latter. I’m not referring to music written specifically for a film, but classics lifted out of their original contexts and snuggled perfectly into an alien genre.

This occurred to me while attempting to play the piano the other day after six weeks in a sling. I shoulda stuck to “Chopsticks”, not tried something too ambitious, but Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is what caught my eye while rummaging through my music stool. I tried to play it and failed.

Marketeers vs. Musketeers

A headline in today’s Daily Mail Online reads, “Supermarkets are ALREADY selling festive products with shoppers urged to buy now and 'stock up' amid fears over Christmas food shortage due to gas crisis”. Another one reads, “Alok Sharma [Business Secretary] insists there is 'no immediate concern' … the supplies will be there for Christmas…”

I know what you’re thinking; you’d rather trust a supermarket than a politician, so there must be an imminent shortage and you must shop for Christmas without delay.

Nah. Let’s think this through, shall we?

Saluting those with disabilities

I haven’t blogged for the longest time, which helps to illustrate the main thrust of this post. (I’ve got so many pent-up blogging topics that posting might be a daily event for a while, so gird your loins.)

I’ve had a ‘disability’ for about five weeks now. My left arm is in a sling 24/7 after my shoulder operation mid-August and will stay there for another week, then two more weeks at least before I can drive then six or more months before everything can be considered to be back to normal.

Yes this is just a temporary disability, and it’s on the mild side. For those who face anything like this –or worse, permanently, physical, mental or emotional – I salute you. And to take part in the Paralympics or Invictus Games or whatever – superheroes every one of you.

BNG - WTF?

I had one of those What The F - - k (WTF) moments recently. In the midst of reading / writing / planning stuff about the (lack of) merits of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and what a con / disappointment / travesty / gamble / meaningless hogwash it is, I suddenly thought about Afghanistan and stopped typing as if the keyboard had vanished. Poof!

Latin, Gender ID and Cooking

What do these disparate topics have in common? Read on!

I recently got into (another) spat on LinkedIn about whether Latin should be a compulsory subject in state schools. Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, has just introduced such a policy, which drew howls of derision from the usual suspects: “Irrelevant.” “Useless” (the subject and Williamson). “Teach climate change instead.” “Teach values and ambitions.” Eh, what?

Nightmare in Buckinghamshire!

More often than not I struggle to find space in my diary for a meeting, a catch-up with a friend, or even to take Mum food shopping. Yet I am not in paid employment, have no kids, and have a cleaner (two, in fact) and a gardener. Plus, Hubby is reasonably house-trained. How do people manage without such cards stacked in their favour?

Yesterday was a prime example. Sunday was supposed to be a stress-free day, culminating in an 8pm skink with a couple of mates (that’s skyping plus drinking for those readers who missed an earlier blog). This digital exercise was nothing to do with Covid-quarantining and everything to do with us being geographically challenged when it came to meeting in Buckinghamshire. The timing worked perfectly for me, as Hubby and I would have comfortably finished dinner and I’d be half way down my second glass of red.

Putting the Jew into Jewelry

We bought my engagement ring and my wedding ring in Hatton Garden many years ago. Back then, every shop seemed to have an orthodox Jew behind the counter. I don’t think I really thought about that at the time, or subsequently, but last Friday the memories came flooding back.

The epitome of vulgarity

Watering my whatever-they-ares on the patio yesterday afternoon, I was repeatedly irritated by manhood-substitutes (aka helicopters) returning from Silverstone, where Lewis Hamilton had become the second English sportsman to disgrace his country in a short space of time.

The fourth plinth is the last straw

It’s just been announced that a sculpture depicting colonial defiance is one of the two winners that will next occupy Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth. 

According to the BBC News website, Samson Kambalu's Antelope restages a Baptist preacher, John Chilembwe, and a European missionary, John Chorley. Chilembwe is wearing a hat in defiance of the then-colonial rule that denied Africans the right to wear hats in front of white people. On the plinth, Chilembwe is larger than life, Chorley is much smaller next to him, “elevating the African’s story and revealing the hidden narratives of under-represented people in the British Empire”.

I for one am sitting on my hands and looking the other way. 

Things what I wish I'd wrote

The big news story yesterday was Health Secretary Matt Hancock being caught in a romantic, nay, seedy clinch with his special adviser. We can only imagine what she’s been advising him on. Actually. No. I’d rather not imagine anything. Only so much upset my NSAID-addled tummy can take.

Not unexpectedly, loads-a funnies immediately appeared on social media and in news reports. I suppose because if we didn’t laugh we’d cry, rage, spit, and assassinate the hypocrite who ordered the rest of us to keep apart and not to embrace or he’d slap us with a disproportionate fine. Dan Wootton for the Daily Mail put it best when he said:

 “At a time when you would hope his mind was on getting the UK out of a catastrophic pandemic and brutal lockdowns, Hancock was thinking of the latter half of his last name.” 

Hypocrisy, holiday blues and home truths

There are two accusations sometimes levelled against me, no matter how politely put or well-meaning, that trigger a toy-throwing episode. One is that I’m a hypocrite; the other is that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I do admit to lots of other character flaws, so please pick on one of those rather than those I don’t have simply because you haven’t fully understood my words / actions in various contexts. An obvious example of a flaw of mine, you might have guessed, is that I’m intolerant of criticism; more accurately, I’m intolerant of unfounded or unconstructive criticism, but I do tend to split hairs, which is another flaw.

Israel and Palestine – the skinny

I went to the Cambridge Footlights Review, in 1981 I think, which starred students who went by the names of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. Slattery performed the most wonderful sketch – all Star Wars episodes in 90 seconds. I laughed so much I felt nauseous! On a similar level of ridiculousness, I now try to summarise my take on the Israel-Palestine conflict in about 1300 words. 

What day is it?

It’s fashionable these days to have a special day / week / month for, well, anything really. My LinkedIn feed is filled every day, all day, with a different notification of a day / week / month celebrating every sort of person, cause, thing under the sun.

International Women’s Day (March 8th) takes the shine off Mother’s Day (March 14th this year), but I can’t be arsed with either as March 4th is my Aunt’s birthday and March 8th is my Mum’s. On top of this there’s LGBTQ+XYZ History Month in February and Black History Month in October. 

When are we going to have a Straight White Male Month please?

Racism is dead. Long live discrimination

The morning after my second Covid vaccine, I was feeling rather groggy. Not ill or flu-y but yawny and lacklustre. Not up to doing much else, I spent longer than normal eating my toast and Marmite (Help! Marmite is in short supply and I only have half-a-jar left) catching up with my LinkedIn feed, and marvelling at how many hits my blog has had this month. (It was the ‘Bodies Piling High’ post wot did it).

I was reading the kinds of articles I don’t normally bother with, such as the best UK beaches according to Which? as reported by Daily Mail Online. Bamburgh (Northumberland) was top – I wonder if the vote was taken in summer, or winter when Siberian gales blast over the North Sea. Near the bottom of the list was Weston-super-Mare (Somerset). I was disappointed with that placing because I have a soft spot for Weston. We went there a couple of times as kids, and it’s where my grandmother died suddenly in 1943 aged just 37 so of course I never knew her, but it’s still sad.

Let the bodies pile high - pure poetry

Bo Jo said, apparently, “Let the bodies pile high,” when initially refusing to lockdown the economy, again, in response to the second Covid spike.

All hell has broken loose. He’s been criticised, chastised and condemned: branded as cruel, callous and criminal. 

But not by me.

Two funerals and a wedding

When Princess Beatrice married her dashing Edoardo last summer, the contrast with the previous showy, lavish, crowd-filled, OTT affairs of sister Eugenie and, before that, cousin Harry was marked but necessary.

The country was in Covid-crisis. Minimal social gatherings were the law. The Royal Family were (are) not above the law. Bea and Ed accepted their selfless roles in wider society and didn’t pull rank. They did their duty by respecting the law and showing solidarity with those who have no rank to pull. To drive the message home, Bea symbolically wore a second-hand frock. (Yeah I know it was still one helluva frock.)  In other words, the British Royal Family showed leadership and grace.

Lived Experience or Lie

You know where this came from: ‘Lived Experience’ = ‘Your Truth’ in Oprah-speak, and that many – TOO many – people believe Ms Markle’s phantasmagorical claims. Those of us who raise an eyebrow and point to hard facts to counter her claims are denigrated. Lying, apparently, is acceptable if you believe or claim you believe what you saw / heard / interpreted / experienced was true, especially if you are anything other than white, middle-class and male.

Mixed messages don't excuse murder

About two weeks ago a young woman, Sarah Everard, was reportedly kidnapped while walking home in London by a serving police officer and then murdered.

Who am I talking about?

1. Paranoid. Delusional. Malicious. Meghan Markle? Nope. The European Union.

2. Hypocritical. Truculent. Traitorous. Duke of Sussex? Nah. Roy Greenslade.