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31/12/03
Here, I think, is an appropriate message for the new year, courtesy of George Eliot - 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.'
30/12/03
Here's a chilling thought:deep inside a walled mansion somewhere in southern England, right now, Cliff Richard is sitting at a piano, beginning work on his Christmas single for 2004.
29/12/03
Man is born free, only to be found endlessly pushing a trolley round Homebase and MFI.
28/12/03
A friend's mother tells me of her inventive efforts to make herself understood in a supermarket in Greece some years ago. She wanted a jar of peanut butter, but couldn't see any on the shelves, neither could she find the Greek word or words for it in her phrase book. Annoyingly, the staff just looked at her blankly when she kept repeating in a very loud and clear voice 'DO YOU SELL PEANUT BUTTER?' So, in desperation, she rushed around the shelves, and picked up a packet of frozen peas, a bag of nuts and a packet of butter. Returning to the counter, she placed them next to each other in a line. She then held them up one at a time and, pointing to each in turn, said 'PEA... NUT... BUTTER.' She rounded off the performance by miming the spreading of peanut butter on bread, then taking a bite and saying 'Mmmm!', nodding enthusiastically at the bemused staff. She still can't understand why this didn't work.
24/12/03
My partner tells me about a survey which reveals that the majority of men buy all their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Naturally by this time nearly everything remotely tasteful is already sold out, and consequently their loved ones usually receive disappointing and inappropriate gifts bought in a last minute panic. I am tempted to feel her bringing this up is actually a thinly veiled criticism of me, but decide I am being over sensitive. I trust she will enjoy the Cliff Richard Christmas Album and 100 Greatest Goals Ever! video that I got her this year.
23/12/03
I read recently that there are around 200 billion galaxies, each of them containing 200 billion stars, currently detectable by telescopes. Furthermore, it's estimated that these constitute a mere 4% of the cosmos. It puts things into perspective, and makes the worries and irritations of everyday life seem absurdly trivial. Till you walk into a shop and are deafened by Paul McCartney singing we're simply having a wonderful Christmas time at top volume. Then your new found philosophical perspective is instantly obliterated by the urge to exact instant and very painful revenge by pounding Macca's head against the wall until he blacks out.
17/12/03
I talk to a psychiatrist who works with elderly people suffering from memory problems. He tells me about a man living in an old people's home who kept asking when his wife would be back, when she was in fact dead. As he was clearly confused, the staff would simply reply 'soon', in an effort to protect his feelings. He would accept their answer happily enough, but then start asking where his wife was again a few hours later.
They began to feel very uncomfortable about this daily deception, and decided that they would tell him the truth. So the next time he asked them where his wife was, they took him aside and told him that she was dead. Having no memory of his wife dying, it was just like hearing the news of her death for the first time for him, and caused him enormous distress, which the staff in turn found very difficult to witness. But his memory problems were so severe that a few days later he had once again forgotten his wife was dead, and began asking where she was. Again, they told him the truth, forcing him to go through the same dreadful grief all over again, as if for the first time. But a couple of days or so later he had again forgotten that his wife was dead and asked... and so on. They eventually decided that it was not right to force this poor man to experience the agony of bereavement every few days, and went back to telling him that his wife would be back soon when he asked where she was, which he readily accepted. Which just goes to show how difficult it can be to strike the right balance between treating the elderly with the dignity they deserve, and lying in order to minimize their suffering. Not a choice I would like to have to make.
15/12/03
I talked to a sardonic council employee while waiting for Santa to arrive at the Beverley Christmas market yesterday. He informed me that the reindeer which pulled Santa's sleigh through the streets were hired from the Cairngorn Reindeer Park at a cost of £2,800 for the day. The council didn't bat an eyelid at this expense apparently, but they did get very nervous about health and safety, insisting on a comprehensive Risk Assessment on the reindeer before giving the event the go ahead.
The mayor, a pale, wizened stick of a man in his sixties, arrived in a red Rover. He stepped out in all his finery, accompanied by a couple of fawning flunkies. However the image was let down by the extremely cheap and nasty pair of shoes he wore, a detail made very noticeable by the enormous size of his feet. A man behind me said, 'Who does he think he is, Mick Jagger?', a reference to His Satanic Majesty wearing a pair of trainers to Buck House to receive his OBE.
More excellent news this morning, Saddam's capture has boosted shares - rejoice!
14/12/03
Saddam Hussein has been captured. We play Yorkshire Monopoly in the afternoon
8/12/03
They do things differently in Scandinavia. Apparently there was widespread sympathy and understanding from the public and media in Norway a while ago when the prime minister announced that he was depressed, that the job was causing him terrible stress and that he would be taking a couple of weeks off to recuperate. Can you imagine the reaction to such an admission of vulnerability by a politician in this country? Imagine Blair admitting he was suffering from a increasingly dangerous Messiah complex and was going to take a break in order to try and gain some perspective and much needed humility before he did any more damage. Wouldn't that be refreshing? Wouldn't we all feel we were living in a more grown up and humane country if people in the public eye felt they could be that honest? But it would also leave John Prescott in charge.
5/12/03
This morning on the radio they interviewed a minister from the Zimbabwean
government. They pressed him about the violent gangs that are used to
intimidate the opposition in that country. He chortled amiably and replied that
this high handed condemnation of violence was a bit rich coming from Britain,
didn't the British deputy Prime Minister beat someone up in the street during
the last election campaign?
3/12/03
It's Monday, I am having a frustrating day. I decide that what I need to help me calm down and gain a sense of perspective is to listen to something intellectually stimulating on Radio 4 as I drive to my next destination. What do I get - A History Of Wind, a programme on flatulence. There's an interview with Mark Ravenhill who, while doing some research on the eighteenth century for a play he was writing, discovered a Gentlemen's Farting Club. They would meet and drink large amounts of cabbage soup, then wait for about an hour.
Ravenhill has developed a theory about breaking wind. According to him, you only have to look at Chaucer and Rabelais to find out how at home people felt in their own bodies before the Reformation spoiled it all. Once the idea of the spirit being incorporated in the body took hold, he reckons, there was suddenly ample room for drawing very embarrassing contrasts between the higher notion of man as a supposedly spiritual being, and the cruder aspects of the human body, and we lost something valuable. And while academics will no doubt already be aware that the eighteenth century English novel was a golden period for flatulence, it was a new concept to me.
I find myself looking at George Bush in a new light ever since my partner said how much he reminds her of Ernie Wise. I think she's on to something there.
Well done Benjamin Zephaniah. Ignore the sniping, just listen to a recording of 'The Sea Around Us' by Dominic Behan (preferably the Dubliners version) if you feel the need for solidarity. Behan put the boot into the uncomfortable issue of poets and patronage some years ago - unfortunately the lines in question are about about Welsh poets, but they ring loud and true.
25/11/03
OK, let's hear it for Salieri - he was framed! Anyone who's seen Amadeus will find it difficult not to think of Salieri as a limited, pedestrian composer who was completely upstaged and humiliated by Mozart, and who became consumed by rage at the success of his rival. But James Fenton sheds (for me, at least) new light on the matter in a piece in The Guardian. Apparently, for the original production of the play at the National Theatre, the music department had to come up with something rather ordinary by Salieri that he could compare with a piece by Mozart and be mortified by the obvious, glaring gap in talent. They struggled to do so, because everything of Salieri's they tried out actually sounded pretty good to them - Ok, he was no Mozart, but he was, in fact, a very accomplished composer.
The suspicion here is that the play is peddling a particular view of genius - the oafish, irritating Mozart was merely a conduit for divine inspiration, and so there is no point in trying to put him into any kind of historical context. His contemporaries and rivals are portrayed as exceedingly minor talents. To allow that some of them might have been worthy of serious attention too would somehow detract from the myth. Now The Salieri Album has been released, in an attempt to rehabilitate his name. Apparently the notes contain a glowing tribute to him by Mozart's librettist, calling him a maestro and saying he was like a brother to him, contradicting the image we have gained from the film and play. Salieri is long dead and cannot sue, but I wonder how his descendants feel? As Fenton says "If I refer to some artist as a Salieri figure, it will be taken to mean someone envious, destructive and second rate." All because of that play, later turned into an Oscar laden film (an image reinforced by the wonderful performance of F. Murray Abraham as Salieri). So yo! let's hear it for Salieri! Finally released from the tyranny of one playwright's interpretation of his life.
24/11/03
Yesterday I was one of the writers invited to discuss literature and hold workshops at a Readers Day at Scarborough Central Library (the others were Andrew Taylor, the crime novelist, and Gilda O'Neill, who unfortunately had to cancel at the last moment because of illness). It was a really enjoyable event, and a big thanks to those who attended, and to Heather and Sarah, and James Nash, who hosted it so well. Approaching the library, while lost in thought about what I might say in the opening panel discussion about our favourite books and the role of reading in our lives, I am approached by a group of six or seven girls, aged about 12 or 13. 'Excuse me' says one, 'Can you go into Iceland and buy us some alcohol?' I politely decline and walk on. 'How about some fags then?' she shouts at my retreating back.
19/11/03
I read a profile of Rob Brydon, creator of Marion and Geoff in Planet. When Marion and Geoff was at the concept stage, the BBC asked them if they could make Keith Barret Scottish, instead of Welsh - being Scottish was in fashion at the time and, let's face it, being Welsh has never, and probably will never be in fashion (which used to annoy me, but now I prefer to see Wales's perpetual lack of cool as a badge of honour, so there, that'll show you). Brydon was remarkably sanguine about it, and came up with this gem:'I do think of Keith Barret as being quintessentially Welsh, though - he's a certain type of Welsh person. If Barret were Scottish, he'd say "You can take my land, but you'll never take my freedom." The Welsh Barret would say, '"Take my land - oh, and don't forget to take my freedom before you go."
17/11/03
Today I will be talking about sperm. I recently read a novel called A Father's Affair by Karel Van Loon. It has an intriguing plot - the main character, who is trying to have a child with his new partner, discovers that he is infertile. Who, then, is the real father of his 13 year old son, whose mother died years ago? Its one of those novels in which we are periodically treated to interesting scientific facts (the narrator is, conveniently, a translator of scientific articles). I discovered, for instance, that every ejaculation is alarmingly like a military operation. In an ejaculation containing 600 million spermatozoids, only 1 million of them are capable of fertilizing an egg cell. The other 599 million are killer spermatozoids and 'blockers'. The killer spermatozoids comb the surrounding area in search of enemies, i.e., a sperm cell belonging to another male. When they encounter one they release a toxic acid that destroys their rival. Meanwhile, the blocker sperm prevent the advance of any enemy cell in the direction of the the egg cell, keeping the coast clear for their plucky colleagues (I couldn't help wondering how, exactly, they prevent the advance of enemy sperm - by tackling them, like rugby players? Or perhaps they stand in front of them shouting 'You're going the wrong way, the wrong way! Turn around, the egg is in that direction.').
Research also shows the longer a man goes without having sex with his partner, the more sperm cells he will produce when he finally does. The reasoning is, the longer he has failed to satisfy her sexually, the greater the chance that she's been unfaithful to him, and therefore the larger the army he will need in order to defeat any enemy he may find waiting for him ("Get me back up - NOW! I'm not going in there without back up!"). According to a recent British survey, 4% of the population is the product of one of these spermatic wars - 1 out of 25 conceptions takes place while the woman contains at least 2 armies of rival spermatozoids. So there you have it, sperm are vicious, vindictive little so and so's.
13/11/03
I read an interesting account of the first recorded use of electricity, which apparently took place in 1746. The Abbe Nollet wired up a number of Carthusian monks in a circle. The contortions on the faces of the monks, all of whom had taken their vow of obedience, were judged sufficient proof that power could be transmitted. Not many people know that (copyright Michael Caine).
10/11/03
Last week The Firle Bonfire Society in East Sussex burned an effigy of an Irish Travellers' caravan, with a Traveller family painted in the window. Several members of the public have complained to the police, who are now investigating the incident. This kind of 'harmless fun', or 'hi jinks', or whatever they like to call it, has been going on for a long time on the south coast. Some years ago a couple of friends of mine went to Lewes in East Susex on bonfire night, having heard that they held spectacular bonfires there. They found the atmosphere reminded them of the deep south of America in the 60s. Outsiders were not welcome. When they went into a local pub all conversation suddenly stopped, they were treated to extremely hostile stares and very pointedly ignored when they tried to get a drink at the bar. An atmosphere of barely supressed hysteria prevailed in the packed, narrow streets, where they were treated to more hostile stares, insulting comments were made behind their backs and they were repeatedly jostled (and these were two white blokes, god forbid what kind of reception a couple of black men would have received). Bangers flew through the air like missiles, some deliberately aimed at their heads (Ian, being well over six foot tall, was an obvious target and, having refused to take no for an answer and persisted till he'd been served at the bar, was obviously a marked man). They tagged onto the procession walking to the playing fields on the edge of town, where the display was held. As they walked, the crowd began to chant 'Burn the Pope! Burn the Pope! Burn the Pope!' By now they felt safer hidden in the middle of the crowd, who had forgotten about their aggravating presence in their mounting excitement, rather than drawing attention to themselves by suddenly leaving.
There was an effigy of the Pope waiting at the playing fields, along with ones of Ayatollah Khomeni, Thatcher and Reagan. It was the Pope that really got them going though. He is a perrenial favourite, and they later found out that Ian Paisley had been an honoured guest in the past. There were cheers when the other figures were torched, but the chant of 'Burn the Pope! Burn the Pope!' never really ceased, gathering momentum till the whole crowd was baying at the top of their voices for his immolation. An enormous cheer went up when the Pope's effigy was finally lit, clearly the highlight of the evening. I offered my friends what I considered a substantial sum of money if they returned the following year wearing Celtic shirts, but they declined.
9/11/03
I ask a friend who's studying phonetics if she has any idea why Michael Howard pronounces 'people' as 'peepil.' Apparently its down to his inappropriate use of the 'dark L.' So, Ann Widdecombe was right, there is something of the night about him.
5/11/03
Kids in Leeds have discovered a cheap and exciting way to blow cars to pieces. You smash a side window, toss a lighted firework into the front and run. If you're lucky the sparks will ignite the petrol tank and the car will explode. A friend was telling me this happened to a colleague's car last week. He heard an enormous explosion outside and when he opened his front door, found dozens of jagged pieces of glass embedded in it. One half of his car was at one end of the road, another at the the other end. The Real IRA could learn a lot from a field trip to Leeds.
4/11/03
Yesterday I read that 1 in 8 Americans is now living below the poverty line. That's 34.6 million people, over 13 million of them children. Julian Borger in The Guardian reports that the USA has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialised countries. 3 million jobs have been lost since Bush came to power and millions of Americans rely on free food distributed by churches in order to survive. This morning I heard Gordon Brown on the radio warning that Europe has to wake up and adapt to the realities of globalisation, contrasting its backward attitude with the progressive outlook of Britain and America, where unemployment is lower and the economy continues to grow. Gordon Brown is not thick. But we all have our blind spots. Our most powerful politicians continue to drool over America like love struck teenagers with an unrequited passion for the biggest thug in school, unable to see how brutal he really is - 'I know he loses his temper sometimes and he's put several people in hospital just because he thought they were looking at him funny and he bullies smaller kids into giving him their pocket money, and he pushed dogshit through that old lady's letterbox, but ooh, he's got such a lovely smile.'
Overheard this exchange in a newsagents on Monday morning.
'Did you have a nice weekend, Cath?'
'Yes thanks, Geoff got me some new taps, the old ones were really scaly.'
30/10/03
I am walking down Chapeltown Road when, a couple of hundred yards in front of me, two men come running out of The Church Of God Of Prophecy. The one behind is very muscular looking, has a shaven head and wears one of those black puffy Nike jackets favoured by bouncers and bodyguards. He is slashing at the one in front with what looks like a machete. Several other people spill out onto the pavement behind them, yelling at the top of their voices. The two men are running into the road now, the man in the Nike jacket lands a couple of fierce blows on the back of the man in front, who staggers but somehow manages to keep going. Its not a machete, but a wooden stick, shaped like a hurley or hockey stick. The man being chased and beaten takes his life in his hands and runs straight in front of an oncoming car, which slams on the brakes, blocking the path of the man with the stick. In the few seconds breathing space he has gained, the other man manages to scramble into his own car, parked on the other side of the road, and drive away, shouts and insults ringing in his ears. Perhaps they were trying to chase the devil out of him?
22/10/03
Visiting someone in hospital is nearly always a sad occasion, but recent hours spent in a ward full of elderly men have, at least, provided some good overheard dialogue.
Middle aged son:'I think that bloke over there needs the toilet, shall I call the nurse?'
Elderly Dad:'No need, he's automated.'
Elderly Dad:'I woke up yesterday and there were three blokes standing around my bed wearing no trousers or underpants.'
Middle aged son:'What was all that about then?'
Elderly Dad:'I've no bloody idea.'
Elderly Dad:'Did you get your wotsit?'
Middle aged son:'You mean me business start up grant thingy - nah.'
E.D.:'Why not?'
Mas:'You needed to have a criminal record.'
E.D:'Typical.'
6/10/03
Saw a very moving documentary at the Leeds Film Festival called 'Pinochet's Children.' It focused on three people who were very young when Pinochet came to power in a bloody and savage coup in 1973. Two of them, who were in primary school at the time, had fathers working for Allende's goverment who were 'disappeared', and both had been haunted by the memory ever since. One often found himself hoping against hope that his father was still in hiding, waiting somewhere for him, until the late 90s, when his remains were eventually discovered. There was a photo of the other as a young girl at Santiago airport, utterly distraught as she left the country to go into exile in Mexico. She said people often think that there is a split between private life and public life, but some public events are so powerful that they enter your private life for ever, and her haunted look as she spoke gave added credence to this.
The third had been tortured by Pinochet's police, and had taken a conscious decision not to hate his torturers, because the memories of his torture were so powerful that they threatened to obliterate all his good memories. They really would have won, he reasoned, if feelings of hatred had become more powerful than those of love, so he had tried to love his torturers in order to protect his own humanity. He was fighting back tears as he said this, and it was very difficult to believe he had learnt to love them, even though his heroism and idealism were deeply impressive.
Ironically, it was big business, according to the man who'd been tortured, who got rid of Pinochet (an opinion I have heard before). Though not in the least worried by his numerous human rights abuses, and very grateful for his crushing of socialism, they recognised he was too old and inflexible to prepare Chile for the demands required by globilisation, and backing was quietly withdrawn when he held a plebiscite to decide if he should stay in power in 1990, which he lost. I wanted Thatcher to be forced to go and see it, and understand exactly what her dear, loyal friend, the cuddly old general, was capable of (as if she didn't know).
3/10/03
A neighbour is interested in returning to teaching, now that her children are getting older. Though she has a lot of experience, she has not taught for several years now, and when registering with an agency was told there was very little available at the moment, thanks to the schools budget crisis. 'Try again after half term' she was advised, 'There will have been a few breakdowns by then.'
2/10/03
A friend was at a council do recently, and overheard one councillor say he'd just been on a cruise and one night had shared a dinner table with some 'coloured people.' He bemoaned his luck at this misfortune, but conceded that they actually seemed quite nice. It's almost beyond belief that people still talk like this, a southern stereotype of how ignorant northerners carry on.
Another councillor story, from the 1980s, from a friend who's lived in Bradford for many years. When Thatcher was demolishing the country's infrastructure, there was a lot of left wing gesture politics, and at one point there was a debate about whether a peace pagoda should be built in one of Bradford's parks. This would announce in a very public way that Bradford was against the dangerous build up of nuclear weapons etc etc. One elderly councillor objected 'Its all very well putting all these peace pagodas in parks, but who's going to feed the buggers?'
1/10/03
I talk to someone who teaches in a secondary school. Exasperated, he recently asked one lad why he could never remember one single thing he'd told him from one week to the next. 'Alcohol' came the reply.
The Deal, Channel 4's drama about Blair and Brown was surprisingly entertaining. The guy playing Blair was, at times, unnervingly like Rik Mayall, all popping eyes, manic grin and irritating lisp (just like the real Blair, in fact) and I half expected him to say 'Hi - I'm the MP for Sedgfield, would you like to see my willy?', bare his teeth, snort hideously and wiggle his hips.
16/9/03
The current row about racism in the Met (does a year ever pass without some new report or allegation about deep rooted racism in the Metropolitan police?) reminds me of a story a friend told me some years ago, when I was living in London. He had just unlocked his bike and was wheeling it across the pavement in fashionable Sloane Square when he was stopped by a copper. The copper very politely asked him if he could prove he owned the bike. My friend produced the lock and key and demonstrated that they did, indeed, fit the bike. This satisfied the policeman. My friend very politely said that while he was delighted to see the police taking bike theft so seriously, having had several bikes stolen, he was, nevertheless, rather surprised to be asked to prove he was the owner of a bike he was casually wheeling across a crowded square in the middle of the day. At this point the copper leant closer, lowered his voice slightly and came over all matey, and slightly apologetic. 'Between you and me, we've been getting so much stick about only ever stopping blacks lately, we thought we'd better stop a few more white people.'
4/9/03
A French guy tells me he has lived in England for 20 years now, but would like to move back to France eventually and live in a village just like the one he grew up in. However he was horrified at the prices for such properties that he was quoted when he recently rang up an estate agent. 'Come on!' he started yelling down the phone, 'Don't give me that - I'm French, tell me the real price!' The English, of course, have pushed property prices in these idyllic spots through the roof, and I've long suspected that there is a two tier price system, one for the French, one for Les Anglais. We were thinking of going to France on holiday a couple of years ago, and sent off for some brochures. One very thick, extremely glossy publication informed us with considerable pride that every property inside was British owned, and so we could rest assured that would be dealing not with French people [god forbid!], but people like ourselves whom we could understand. I immediately binned it.
1/9/03
My five year old daughter tells me she wants to marry me. I explain that you can't marry your father. She says this is unfair. I assure her that even though we can't get married I would still continue to love her and would always be her father.
'No you won't.'
'Yes I will. I'll still be your father even when you grow up.'
'But you'll be really old then.'
'Yes, I will, but I'll still be your father.'
'No you won't, you'll just be a man.'
29/8/03
I was extremely disappointed to see Rangers scrape through to the European Cup, where they ended up in the same group as Man Utd. Though I am not a Man Utd fan, I sincerely hope they run up a cricket score against the blue half of the old firm. The United manager Alex Ferguson once played for Rangers, but found his career there going into a nosedive after marrying a Catholic. He is apparently still bitter at his treatment after all these years, so I live in hope that the notoriously intimidating manager will whip his players into a vengeful fury.
28/8/03
Just spent a couple of great days in Glasgow, one of my favourite cities. Shame about the sour note when checking out of our B and B. Having discovered that I was living in Leeds, the man dealing with me told me that his sister was now living there, and could see the Leeds United stadium from her window. However she couldn't bring herself to support them he said, with a significant look. I asked why this was. It seems she was horrified to see so many of the Leeds fans wearing Celtic shirts and Republic of Ireland scarves on their way to the ground. Also, Leeds recently had an Irish manager and several Irish players he continued, in the manner of someone making a watertight case for the prosecution. 'So she's a Rangers fan' I said. He admitted this was true. The fact that we had already established that I am part Irish earlier in the conversation didn't seem to cause him any embarassment. What, exactly, had he expected me to say - 'I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to your sister for having to see Fenian scum pass by her window on a regular basis, and I shall certainly be in contact with the Leeds constabularly about such offensive behaviour the moment I get back'?
9/8/03
I have spent the last few days writing an essay, 'The Irish They'd Rather We Forgot' which can be found in Articles and Essays. The diary will now take a break while we go away for a week.
4/8/03
I have just finished reading 'Ajax, the Dutch, the War' by Simon Kuper, an excellent but upsetting book. Like many people I had a vague notion that the Dutch had been plucky and heroic during the war, while being unable to provide specific details of their pluckiness and heroism. This turns out to be inaccurate. Kuper, born in South Africa to a Jewish family, grew up in Holland. He is understandably angry that he swallowed whole the notion that the Dutch had a good war, and sets out to demolish the myth. In fact, only Poland lost a larger proportion of it's Jewish population. While there is no strong history of anti-semitism in Holland in the way that there is in some eastern European countries, the Dutch largely chose to keep their heads down and do nothing. There is a horrifying quote from a Nazi official commending the exceptionally hard work of the Dutch police, without whom, he reckoned, they would have struggled to capture even 10% of the Jews that they did.
But hang on, what about Anne Frank? The Franks were an exception, not the rule, and in the end they were betrayed by a Dutch person and arrested by a German and three Dutch policemen, one of whom carried on working for the Amsterdam police force till 1980. Only one man in the Amsterdam police force refused to round up Jews. He was not punished for his refusal by the Germans, but was ostracized by his colleagues after the war. Kuper talks to a Holocaust survivor who, while queuing to get into the Anne Frank house, asked a Dutchman whether Anne Frank was the symbol of Dutch resistance or Dutch betrayal? After a long pause for thought, the man replied that he feared it was the latter [I couldn't help but be impressed by his honesty].
Yet somehow the Dutch have managed to convince others that they were courageous and noble during the war. This includes most Israelis, who regard them as the shining example of 'good' gentiles, and revere Ajax as a Jewish club [a few years ago the Israeli press labelled a UEFA cup game between Ajax and an Israeli team as a 'Jewish derby']. This is very unfair to people in other countries who took huge risks to save Jews, and whose efforts have been forgotten or ignored while the Dutch get all the plaudits. The Norwegians saved over half of their Jews, the Danes managed to smuggle to freedom all but a few hundred of the nearly 8,000 Jews living in Denmark in one brilliantly planned and executed operation in 1943 [what is really fascinating about the situation in Denmark is that even the SS units stationed there had become so influenced by the Danes' lack of anti semitism that they refused to carry out instructions to deport Jews to concentration camps, and special police units had to be sent from Germany to carry out the orders]. The unglamorous and much derided Belgians saved half it's Jews [Paul Spiegel, the current chairman of the German Jewish community, survived the war by being hidden in a Belgian farm - 'an Anne Frank story with no diary and no betrayal' as Kuper says]. Not one Bulgarian Jew died in the concentration camps - the Bulgarians absolutely refused to persecute Jews, despite being Germany's ally. And only when Germany occupied Italy and finally took matters into their own hands were Italian Jews finally deported to the camps.
Yet Holland gets all the praise - why? This is one of the few areas where Kuper's book seems a bit weak. Good PR, he claims, is the answer. This seems implausible at first, but then look at how many people still seem to believe that the USA is a bastion of democracy, whose way of life we should all aspire to, most notably most members of the current cabinet. Perhaps the answer is as simple as that, we naively choose to believe what they tell us about themselves. We all like the Dutch, they are very liberal, friendly and intelligent, and of course, nearly everyone has very fond memories of their holiday in Amsterdam. And then, for men especially, there's their wonderful contribution to world football, and the tragedy of their losing two world cup finals to far inferior and very unlikeable teams in 1974 and 1978, from which I'm still in recovery. Dutch people go out of their way to tell you how wonderful their society is and, flattered to find such intelligent and charming people bending over backwards to be so friendly in our own language, we tend to believe them.
Apparently within Holland itself, the truth about how the less than glorious way the Dutch behaved in the war has long been accepted. Kuper's book caused barely a ripple when published there. He was even accused by a Dutch friend of being hopelessly naive for getting so worked up about the issue - surely everyone knew this already? The Dutch themselves are honest about their failings, it's outside Holland that the myth lives on. The truth is, we need the Dutch to be exceptionally good, we need an example to aspire to. For some years now, having talked at length to people who have lived and worked in Holland, I already knew that the Dutch, just like everyone else in fact, were not what they seemed. But there is still so much about their society that is admirable, I preferred to play down the things that did not fit the rosy image. The truth, as usual, is complicated and unsettling.
3/8/03
Earlier this week the pavements were festooned with snails after a series of heavy showers, and my daughter got very worried about how many of them would get squashed [this is a very recent development, only a few weeks ago she was crying 'Ugh! I hate snails!' as she went out of her way to deliberately stomp on them]. A struggle ensued as she tried to stop and pick as many up from the pavement as she could and and put them out of harm's way, and I tried to get her to her childminder's house on time. Her concern reminded me of Nigel, one of the Buddhists I knew in Lancaster University in the 70s. One day we were discussing the theory of reincarnation in a lecture, and Nigel told the following story. He had left school, was working in a factory, and had just become interested in Buddhism. One day, after a downpour, he noticed how many snails were getting squashed. Horrified by the idea that these could be people reincarnated, he began rushing around, picking them up and carrying them to safety. He became so obsessed with saving them that he ended up late for work. For months afterwards, every time it rained he would do the same, till he was given a written warning about his timekeeping. Nigel asked the lecturer how, once we had learnt about reincarnation, we were supposed to cope with the awesome responsibility of destroying a reincarnated soul with a carelessly placed boot? The lecturer replied that that he had confused Buddhism with Jainism, whose followers believed that all life is sacred, and who sweep the ground in front of them gently with a brush, so that they will not crush an insect as they walk. Nigel's prime responsibility had been to his workmates rather than snails, to get in on time and so not make life more difficult for them, mindfulness of others being an essential part of Buddhism. Very sound advice, but the image of Nigel running around in the rain, gently carrying snails to a safe haven, stuck in my mind.
The Buddhists, to my surprise, were terrific footballers. Nigel was a fantastic libero, an excellent reader of the game, and an inspirational captain who made surging forward runs from the back. He may have worried himself sick about about crushing snails, but he was a fierce competitor on the football field [I, along with several other 'fellow travellers', played in a mainly Buddhist team in several tournaments]. He would fly into tackles with blokes twice his size, his face taut with determination. After years of playing with macho bores who would yell 'Cut out the bloody fancy stuff', 'Get stuck in - you're playing like a fucking poof' and 'Knobble that cunt!' it was fantastic to have a captain like Nigel. In the heat of a game he would suddenly cry 'Come on guys - let's start expressing ourselves, we've got more imagination than this', 'Watch that winger - Mindfulness!' and 'Let's play beautiful football!' Other teams were gobsmacked. Nothing in their previous experience had prepared them for this. There were two main responses, either it convinced them we were lunatics and made them very nervous, and we beat them convincingly, or it offended their idea of how you should behave on a football field, and they kicked shit out of us.
Years later, in the 90s, when I read that the brilliant Italian footballer Roberto Baggio was a Buddhist, my admiration for him reached new heights. He was an exceptional talent who almost single handedly dragged a dreadful, cynical Italian team to the world cup final in 1994. Fans adored him, but he had the misfortune to play for a series of managers who seemed to resent his brilliance, and who treated him appallingly. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he had come out as a Buddhist in an overwhelmingly Catholic and deeply conservative country that offended these older, narrow minded men. Or maybe it was the fact that no matter how badly he was treated on the pitch by opponents, or off it by these coaches, he never went in for the histrionics so typical of Italian footballers, and always reacted with tremendous calmness and dignity. The fact that they couldn't puncture this calm seemed to drive several of his coaches to desperately try and humiliate him in public. I liked to imagine that Nigel, wherever he was, was following Baggio's career with great interest, perched on the edge of his seat, crying 'Come on Roberto - start expressing yourself, you've got more imagination than any of these guys!'
31/7/03
My clear out is not going very well. I keep finding old notebooks with ideas for short stories and scraps of conversation that I can't bear to get rid of. This is from a notebook I kept when I went to Ireland several years ago.
I'm walking through the centre of Derry in the early evening, just after the shops have closed. I come across a crowd of wee lads, smoking in a doorway. One, about ten years old, leaves his mates and walks over to me with a cocky stare and lopsided grin.
'What d'you call a young Orangeman?'
'Dunno.'
'A pipsqueak.'
I laugh and he saunters back to his grinning mates, saying 'It's the way I tell 'em!'
Another entry reminds me that the best thing about driving in Ireland is being able to listen to the local radio station as you negotiate the potholes, bumps and bends that litter the country roads. Driving in Kerry, I heard this on a phone in.
DJ: 'And what will you be doing tonight, John?'
John: 'I'm going to have a quiet night in, Gerry. I'll probably just cook meself a spot of dinner and watch a video.'
DJ: 'Ah, don't be giving me that! They'll probably be picking you up off the floor of some bar around 11.30.'
On the same programme, following the local news, the DJ gave the weather forecast, then said 'And now - deaths', and proceeded to read out the names of some locals who had recently departed this Earth. And you wonder where they got the inspiration for Father Ted?
29/7/03
It starts to rain in the afternoon, and I put on Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, one of my favourite jazz albums. It's cool, melancholy sound perfectly suits the suddenly wintry sky. I am not one of those who likes to read about my favourite bands and musicians, as often you find out things about them that can put you off [I remember how upset I was to discover in the 70s that one of my all time heroes, Ray Davies, was an Arsenal fan. Arsenal! How could a sensitive soul like Ray, the champion of the underdog, the man who wrote some of the most beautiful songs of the sixties, support such an utterly negative, brutal and cynical team, the absolute epitome of the ugly winning at all costs philosophy that blighted British football at the time? Eventually I learnt to forgive him however, which I felt was very big of me].
But sometimes, discovering more about what went on behind the scenes can bring a whole new perspective to your listening. A couple of years ago I read 'Kind of Blue:The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece' by Ashley Kahn. One passage in particular really stuck in my mind. Miles Davis would ring up Bill Evans and say 'Bill, play something for me - just play the piano and leave the phone off the hook.' And Evans would put the phone down and play. It just goes to show how much Davis admired his playing - and rightly so, I find it impossible to imagine Kind of Blue without Evans' wonderful delicate touch, so ethereal and uplifting. Davis' request is strangely reminiscent of someone in the first throes of a love affair, so smitten that they just have to hear their lover's voice, even when they can't be together. I imagine Davis, behind that intense, arrogant front, wracked by anxieties about whether the new album would be as good as he hoped, and ringing Evans for some kind of reassurance. Then lying back, eyes closed, listening to the superb sound coming from his phone and knowing for certain that he was on the right track, that with Evans on board he would make an album that would establish his reputation for all time. Which is exactly what happened, of course.
And afterwards? Many people felt that Kind of Blue wouldn't have been half the album it was without Evans' ideas. Yet Davis never acknowledged Evans' huge creative input, claiming all the musical credit, and screwing Evans out of any composer's royalties. Davis went on to become a living legend, feted all over the world for the rest of his life. Evans, apparently a shy man, went on to have a much less successful career, and ended up a heroin addict. So now, when I listen to 'Kind Of Blue', as well as the joy of hearing a group of musicians at their absolute peak, working in what seems like glorious, intuitive harmony, I hear something else too. Lurking underneath that harmony is a sense of something lost, of friendship betrayed and credit denied. Far from the beginning of something momentous, which is what I felt when I first heard it many years ago, this intense mood was never to be repeated. This band's life was nearly already over. The ever restless Davis would soon go on to form a new band, and make a very different kind of record next time, refusing to ever stand still and rest on his laurels, always eager to go in new directions, take new risks. Kind of Blue was just a stepping stone to him and that, somehow, makes it seem even more special.
28/7/03
I am having a clear out, going through some old files, when I find a yellowing newspaper clipping, the date missing. The headline is 'The Shouting Place.' This is the name given to a spot on the Golan Heights where every weekend groups of Druze and other locals gather on opposite slopes of the valley, about 400 yards apart. This is where the main town on the Golan Heights used to be, a place called Qunteira, where 5,300 people lived in 1967. It was destroyed when Israel seized the Heights from Syria. As people fled in panic, and the border was redrawn, whole families were divided. Some of the people who gather there every weekend have not stood within touching distance of their loved ones since 1967. This is how they communicate now - by standing on opposite sides of the border and yelling at each other through megaphones. 'How are you? How is your health? Please - ask Majid's wife, did she have her child yet?'
I can't help feeling this would make a powerful film - a family dramatically divided by war, forced to live two separate and very different lives. The story switching from country to country, following their fortunes as they try and reassemble their lives. Punctuating the narrative are these absurd, comical, yet moving scenes at The Shouting Place. As time passes we watch first children, then grandchildren being proudly held up, the parents ageing, their faces showing the strain of exile and loss, the grandparents growing more infirm.
I would not wish to detract from the very real pain of this awful dilemma, created by the nightmarish political situation in the middle east. Yet it obviously struck me then, as now, as a parable for family life in general. The different members separated by an unbridgeable gulf, yet unable to give up trying to communicate, no matter how difficult and artificial the means. Returning to the same spot over and over, trying to somehow convey through polite questions and inconsequential chit chat just how much you care.
I also found a UB40, probably thirteen or fourteen years old, dating from when I last signed on, in east London. I remember sitting in the dole office, waiting to make my claim, and watching a hatchet faced white man leading someone off to a booth to conduct a Restart interview. Any pretence at privacy was soon revealed to be a complete sham as the interviewer's shrill voice carried right across the office as he conducted the interview. Though interrogation would be a more accurate description, as he repeatedly interrupted the interviewee's answers with sarcastic comments, insinuations and outright insults. Eventually the interviewer began shouting at the top of his voice, 'You're obviously working on the side, it's as plain as the nose on my face, I wasn't born yesterday, sunshine. And I'm warning you, if you try to deny it I'll report you to the fraud squad and you'll end up with a criminal record. Now are you going to sign off or not?'
At this point the interviewee sprang to his feet, rushed out of the booth and, spreading his arms wide, turned round and appealed to the whole office - 'Help me! I'm being interviewed by a Nazi!' Another, quite normal and pleasant looking member of staff, a large black guy, came over and led the interviewee away to a private room, speaking softly to him all the while in his soothing West Indian accent. The interviewer was on his feet now too, red in the face, scowling at their retreating backs, muttering to himself. Then my name was called and I went for my interview, which was fairly painless. I later found out that the hatchet faced white guy used to work as a traffic warden in central London.
26/7/03
A friend from London tells about me their last underground journey over the phone. He squeezed onto a packed, stifling tube yesterday evening, only to find that the doors wouldn't open when they stopped at the next station. Panic and consternation ensued as people realised they were trapped. The same thing happened again at the next station. A couple of very determined people managed to push and shove their way down the length of the crowded carriage, open the connecting doors and get off in the next carriage just in time. Everyone else was stuck where they were. When the doors failed to open at the next stop, people began cursing and banging on the windows. Then one passenger, unable to stand it any longer, pulled the emergency switch. After several minutes, the driver came through the connecting door, red faced and furious, demanding to know who pulled the emergency switch [rather than 'Is anyone hurt?', or 'What's the problem?']. The passenger in question owned up, then hastened to explain why he'd done it, fearing a punch in the gob. The driver clutched his head and groaned. He turned on his heels, pushed back through the crowd, then yelled at two people sitting at the end of the carriage to stand up. When they did so, he wrenched the seat off, then slammed it back down with great force, and the doors immediately shot open.
24/7/03
I meet someone in Leeds who spent three years in my home town of Newport, from 1970 - 73. He first impression wasn't very positive. Arriving for an interview at the art college, he was barely a minute out of the train station when he saw a man come flying through a pub doorway and crash landing in the gutter. He found a quieter looking pub, had a drink and asked if they had a bed for the night. He was shown the top floor, which consisted of dormitory style accommodation. Not having much money, he decided to take it. He placed his portfolio on one of the beds to claim it as his own, then went downstairs and continued drinking. During the course of the evening he met the others who were staying the night - lorry drivers and casual workers mostly. They were intrigued to learn that they would be sharing the room with an aspiring artist. After closing time they all staggered upstairs and, spotting the portfolio, expressed great interest in seeing it, confident that it would contain drawings of naked women, which indeed it did. The drawings in question were passed around the room, subjected to close inspection and various lewd suggestions late into the night.
He woke with a monstrous hangover in the morning, collected his drawings, scattered in various locations around the room, and rushed off to his interview at the art college. He arrived bleary eyed and dishevelled, having had nothing but a cup of tea. The interviewers couldn't help noticing that many of the pictures from his portfolio were crumpled and torn, footprinted and drooled over. Deciding that honesty was the best policy, he told them what had happened. The interviewers burst out laughing and offered him a place on the spot.
I must emphasise that the man in question, a charming, amusing and highly intelligent person, is an excellent artist, and would certainly have got in anyhow.
I read about an interesting scientific project in the newspaper. Apparently researchers found 476 items of manufactured rubbish per hour on an uninhabited Pictairn Island beach 5000 kilometres from anywhere in the Pacific. Sounds like an interesting job.
22/7/03
I run into a shoddy local supermarket to escape a sudden heavy downpour. Standing just inside the door, I eavesdrop on two female members of staff.
First assistant:'This new rule about carrier bags, have you ever heard anything so bloody stupid?'
Second assistant:'What's that then?'
First assistant: 'We're not supposed to give more than 2 carrier bags to each customer now, unless it's absolutely necessary. I was just talking to Val about it this morning when a customer overheard and started ranting and raving, demanding more and more flaming carrier bags. Very aggressive he was. You'd think we were trying to deprive him of his wosname, human rights.'
Second assistant:'They're like headless chickens at head office - a few months ago we got a memo saying that we weren't to put more than 12 items in one carrier bag. Only a man could come up with that.'
First assistant:'There's that new assistant manager, he's a bloody dead loss, watch this - 'Here, Frank, can you do a till check?'
'In a minute' Frank says in a surly, offhand way, then hurries past, trying to look important.
First assistant:'Oh he's useless, you can't get him to do anything. I bet he never lifts a finger at home.'
Second assistant:'He's cut himself shaving again.'
First assistant:'My feet are flaming killing me, roll on eight o clock.'
21/7/03
It was great to catch up with old friends in London, but on the train back I began wondering what had happened to some of the people I'd lost contact with. Like Eddie from Athlone. Athlone is right in the centre of the Republic and, having never been to that part of Ireland, only ever passing through it on the train, I once asked Eddie what it was like. He told me that when you came right down to it, basically Athlone was a small, boring town where nothing ever happened. To emphasise how boring it actually was, he told me the following story. One Christmas eve in the mid eighties, he went out in Athlone wearing one of those bow ties that you buy in joke shops with a concealed battery and tiny bulbs to make them light up. Eddie loved this kind of tat, he used to wear a pair of plastic Dracula fangs while cycling to work in London and whenever he stopped at a red light, would turn and flash a ghoulish smile at the car or bus pulled up alongside him. School kids always loved this, though he was once genuinely concerned that he might have given an old lady a heart attack. Anyhow, he went from bar to bar in his flashing bow tie on Christmas eve, attracting smiles and good natured jokes, and had a very pleasant evening. End of story, thought Eddie. About five or six years later he was back in Athlone for a holiday and went into a pub. A man standing at the bar immediately became very animated, stepping forward to enthusiastically shake his hand. 'You're the fella that wore that flashing bow tie a few years ago on Christmas Eve, aren't you? God, that was the best craic we've had in Athlone in ages - people have never stopped talking about it, are you going to do it again this Christmas?'
Lately, I've been listening a lot to 'High Part Of The Road' again, a wonderful album of traditional Irish music by Tommy Peoples and Paul Brady, on the excellent Shanachie label. What I love so much about it is it's simplicity - there are just two instruments, fiddle and guitar, and the jigs and reels are played in the 'old' style, with no flashy pyrotechnics, just a wonderful feel for the tradition, in contrast to the furiously fast style of playing that became more fashionable from the 70s onwards [though I always admired the sheer excitement generated by people like the late, lamented Bothy Band who, in concert especially, kicked up an unforgettable storm that defied you to stay in your seat]. It makes me nostalgic for a particular Irish experience I really miss- sitting in a pub, supping Guinness, and listening to a session, something that would be one of my Desert Island luxuries.
This is something that cannot be reproduced outside it's natural enviroment, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many plastic Oirish pubs continue to spring up, from Budapest to Reykjavik. Years ago, in one of the first trendy Irish theme pubs - Minogues, in Islington - they introduced 'authentic' traditional Irish sessions. One evening I sat opposite a crowd of young, expensively suited Hooray Henrys getting stuck into their pints of Guinness, and becoming gradually louder and more obnoxious as the night progressed. One of them, really getting into the swing of things as the fiddler launched into another jig, took the metal tray that had been used to transport the drinks from the bar and started banging it vigorously on top of his head and yelling 'YEEEEEE-HA!' at the top of his voice, to great approval from the others. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about now.
18/7/03
The book launch went brilliantly - everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, and I was humbled by the wonderful turn out at the end of a long, stressful, humid week in London. Many thanks to all who came, and to everyone at Secker & Warburg.
I'd forgotten just how hideous getting around central London can be - there were signs in every Underground station apologising for the uncomfortable travelling conditions caused by the overcrowding and humidity. In one of the carriages I also noticed a sign that read If you are using a personal stereo, please consider other passengers and keep the volume down. Underneath it, someone had added in felt pen and don't sit next to Charles Bronson.
Peter is now back from Japan, and informs me that the reputation that the Japanese have for being workaholics is unjustified, in the IT industry at least. It seems that, though they get in at a reasonable time in the morning, they generally don't start work till after lunch, instead spending the first few hours sending emails to friends. These are rarely more than a couple of sentences long, though, rather like a haiku, to hit exactly the right note apparently requires intense skill and concentration. The writer will spend perhaps 30 or 40 minutes writing a few words, deleting them, starting over again, till eventually, after many drafts, they achieve the final, polished version. Then, a further 10 minutes or so is spent staring at the finished product, digesting it fully, before finally sending it.
They only get down to real work in the afternoon, and finally leave the office between 9 and 9.30 at night, ensuring they don't get home till around 10. This late arrival home is for their neighbours' benefit, as a typical office worker will finish at 5 or 6, but a big company man will always be required to stay late to finish important business.
9/7/03
I am sent a copy of a good review I got in last week’s Big Issue In The North - I haven’t been in the city centre for weeks, so its some time since I bought a copy. Looking through it brought to mind the last time I was in London, when I came across a haggard but still handsome man standing at the bottom of some steps at the South Bank. He very hesitantly asked if I could help him out with a little money, as he needed to raise £18 for a bed for the night. He regretted that the only thing he could offer in return was to read me some Shakespeare. He was holding a well thumbed copy of The Merchant Of Venice, and his perfect diction and rather elegant gestures convinced me that he had once been a performer. I replied that I was already terribly late to meet someone, but that I would gladly give him some money anyway, and the next time we saw each other I would be very glad to listen to him recite. As I handed over some cash he said ‘The quality of mercy is not strain’d,’ so he managed to recite at least one line of Shakespeare. There was a touching dignity about him, as well as a slightly bewildered sadness, as if he was still struggling to come to terms with what had happened to him. I tried to sense some anger and fighting spirit too, but couldn’t, which made me worry that he didn’t have what it took to survive on the streets. It’s a trite expression I know, but my heart went out to him. I have often wondered how he is doing.
The diary will now take a break for a few days while I catch up with friends in London after my book launch, back next week.
8/7/03
My book launch is on Thursday in London, where we lived for 20 years before moving to Leeds, and where the majority of our friends still live. The first worry on these occasions is whether anyone will actually turn up. The second is whether, at some point in the evening as the drink begins to flow, you’ll make a complete arse of yourself. Though I’m quite capable of that without the help of alcohol. When I was working in Camden Town Library a couple of years ago, I became enraged at seeing the Reverend Blair’s hideous, grimacing face all over the front page of every newspaper one Saturday morning. I cannot remember what the story was, but just seeing his vile mug everywhere I looked first thing of a morning was enough to set me off. I took the library stamp and applied it repeatedly, and with considerable force to the first offending photo till his features were almost totally obscured. I eventually became aware of another member of staff watching me with some alarm, a woman I’d never met before, filling in that day because of a staffing crisis. ‘Do you know what he reminds me of with that creepy, false smile of his?’ I asked her. She shook her head. ‘You know when you’re trying to have a lie in on Sunday morning and there’s a knock on the door first thing, and you stumble down the stairs in your dressing gown and open the front door only to find a Jehova’s Witness grinning like a maniac on your doorstep? That’s what he reminds me of.’ ‘I’m a Jehova’s Witness’ she said. ‘Ha ha’ I replied, ‘Well, ha ha ha, fancy that. I’ll just carry on stamping the other papers now.’ It was about half nine, we were working together till 5. Conversation was pretty sparse after that.
6/7/03
I watch an excellent documentary on Channel 4, called ‘Travels Of A Gringo’, in which journalist Sean Langan explores the effects of globalisation in Latin America. It’s a terrific piece of campaigning journalism, and you’d have to be made of stone not to be roused to anger at the blatant injustice and exploitation taking place in that continent. However there are also some choice comic moments. At one point he’s standing outside the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, when an American official, who might as well have CIA branded across his forehead, comes out and tells him to turn off the camera. ‘But we’re just filming the exterior of the building’, protests Langan. ‘Its not allowed’ replies the official, ‘and’ he continues menacingly ‘I’ve already seen your car go past once.’ ‘I thought this was a free country?’ replies Langan. ‘For the moment’ snaps the meathead. Changing tack, Langan grins, comes over all matey and says ‘Is this where they organized the coup then?’ The meathead laughs nervously, and almost immediately a squad of Venezuelan military police arrive, and the interview is over.
4/7/03
Incredibly, Peter has fixed the website while the Japanese are all off at a meeting and he is left to his own devices for the afternoon. He is at a complete loss to understand how I buggered it up so comprehensively, and so am I. My ignorance of IT is shocking, there’s so much I don’t know. At times like these I feel like a man who buys a car, then just sits in it with the engine turned off, turning the steering wheel excitedly from side to side, going ‘Brmmm, Brmmm, Brmmm! Beep! Beep! Look at me, I’m driving!’ I immediately write Peter into my will.
My novel is published today. I celebrate by blowing up my website. Attempting to add some new pages I somehow manage to destroy every link, leaving just the homepage up and running. I email Peter in Japan, asking if he can help, knowing it’s a terrible thing to do. His wife, Lisbeth, emails back, telling me that he doesn’t have access to the internet at the moment [in Japan!]. On top of that, the airline took a day to find his luggage, forcing him to buy new clothes, and no one in the company speaks English, so he’s having a great time all round. However she will forward my message somehow, and is sure he will try to help. I now feel about six inches tall.
That afternoon I pick up my daughter from school. She’s in Reception, where the children obediently stand in a line while their teacher scans the little crowd of waiting adults, searching for the first child’s parent, close relative, or childminder. The teacher doesn’t let any child go until she recognizes the appropriate carer. I always find this a very moving moment, no matter how many times I witness it. A few weeks ago I saw a little girl on the verge of tears as she looked round anxiously for her mother or father, probably stuck in traffic, and racked with guilt and anxiety, while all her friends ran off to eager, waiting arms. The teacher laid a hand on her shoulder, whispered something into her ear, and the little girl nodded politely, but was obviously beyond comforting. How can you comfort someone who feels abandoned by the most important person in their life? It’s a weekly reminder that we should never ever forget how vulnerable and precious small children are, and what a hideous crime it is to neglect their welfare. And these are the lucky ones.
2/7/03
I have a loud and prolonged coughing fit in the supermarket. I am clearing my throat and slapping my chest when an old lady approaches. She catches my eye, smiles grimly and says ‘Not long now!’ She passes by, a satisfied grin on her face. You could see this strong streak of pessimism as reflecting Yorkshire’s long and tragic history. Or maybe she’s just identified me as a soft southerner.
Although it was busy in the supermarket today, we managed perfectly well without the help of a ‘Checkout Captain.’ I first came across one of these a few weeks ago in a rival supermarket chain. This woman wore a bright orange bib with her job title emblazoned across it in large black letters. She stood near the checkouts, pointing out to customers the ones that were least busy, then waving them towards it with the kind of dramatic hand and arm movements more usually associated with someone guiding a stricken Harrier Jump Jet onto an aircraft carrier in a force nine gale. Most people were so embarrassed to be singled out in this ridiculously over the top manner that they put their heads down and headed for another, busier check out, thereby increasing congestion. Probably some bright spark imported this concept from America, the home of so many ‘good ideas’ being foisted on us.
I read an interesting fact in the newspaper. The number of calories used in the ‘average sex act’ is 200 when accompanied, 60 when unaccompanied.
1/7/03
My friend Peter rang last night to say he wouldn’t be able to make my book launch, as he was being sent to Japan for the next couple of weeks by the company he works for. This is a sad blow, I have known Peter for over 20 years now, and will miss him on the night. I have to say that without his technical expertise, not to mention his enormous patience, this website would probably not exist [Probably! Who am I kidding?]. If anything on it has struck you as stylish and professional its down to him, while anything naff or clumsy has my signature on it. He now works in IT, but a few years ago he taught English in Budapest for a year. He loved it there, but sometimes found the Hungarians a little pessimistic. Once, in a conversation class, he asked the students to imagine they were working in a travel agents, and he pretended to be a customer phoning up to book a flight. The first student told him in excellent English that unfortunately she couldn’t book him a ticket as all flights had been suspended due to a strike by air traffic controllers. The second told him that they weren’t booking any more flights as the business was closing down that day and that they were all being made redundant. Looking for a more positive response, Peter turned to a relatively cheerful looking soul sitting right in front. ‘I’d like to book a flight to Paris please,’ said Peter, ‘Can you help me?’ ‘Yes, of course’ replied the student, I can do that – oh no, I’m sorry, the computer has just crashed, what terrible luck! Now you won’t be able to have a holiday this year.’
You could see this mentality as being a legacy of communist rule, when nothing ever worked [or, it has just struck me, an excellent wind up], though quite a number of Peter’s Hungarian friends preferred to go back further and see their pessimism as reflecting the country’s long and tragic history. I suppose it’s a kind of victory to perceive your character as being partly formed by centuries of slow decline rather than a few decades of a much more recent brutal dictatorship.
The Poles are usually seen as a gloomy lot too, though, of course, the reality is considerably more complex than that [as with the Hungarians, no doubt, but I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of a good anecdote]. The Poles have some terrific jokes about their tragic history, and this is my favourite. A Hungarian dies and goes to Heaven, where he is met at the pearly gates by St Peter. ‘Please’ begs the Hungarian, ‘Before I enter Heaven, tell me what fate has in store for my beloved country.’ St Peter tells him, and the Hungarian bursts into tears. Next, a Romanian dies and goes to Heaven, where he is met at the pearly gates by St Peter. ‘Please’ begs the Romanian, ‘Before I enter Heaven, tell me what fate has in store for my beloved country.’ St Peter tells him, and the Romanian bursts into tears. Finally, a Pole dies and ascends to Heaven, where he is met at the pearly gates by St Peter. ‘Please’ begs the Pole, ‘Before I enter Heaven, tell me what fate has in store for my beloved country.’ St Peter looks at the Pole for a long moment, then bursts into tears.
29/6/03
Brimham Rocks, a National Trust beauty spot, about ten miles outside Harrogate. A sunny Sunday afternoon, and the ice cream van is doing a roaring trade. The car park attendant, a formidable looking middle aged woman, walks over to where a BT van is parked. She says to the young male driver, ‘I’m going to give you a ticket if you don’t leave – you’ve spent long enough over that ice cream.’ The loudness of her voice and its accusing tone make heads turn. Sensing a public humiliation, the driver swiftly gulps down the last of his cornet, starts the engine and leaves.
28/6/03
I read an interview with Steven Sherrill, the author of The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break, the novel that got the largest review in last week’s Guardian, consigning the rest of us first time novelists into a cramped space on the right hand side of the page. He does not conform to the stereotype of the brash, priveleged, supremely confident American writer I had built up in my mind. He has been in and out of jail over the years, then worked as a cook at a restaurant uninvitingly called Slug’s Rib in Carolina, supplementing his income by fixing cars in his spare time. Just as his writing career took off, his personal life hit rock bottom, and he wipes away a tear as he mentions that his divorce has just come through, and tells the interviewer how much he is missing his daughter. It’s a moving moment, and I regret the resentment that I felt towards him last Saturday as the real person comes into focus - a sensitive, modest, emotional man. I would definitely buy Steven Sherrill a drink, and hope he gets to see his daughter soon.
27/6/03
I am sent a copy of the South Wales Argus, local paper of my home town, Newport, which has run a feature on my novel called 'Ray Brings Our City To Book.' They've stressed how much the fictional town of Crindau is based on Newport, and included a short extract describing the Transporter Bridge, the city's most famous landmark. It's a really nice piece, and I'm very grateful, they’ve really done me proud. Newport, a hard working, hard drinking Steel town when I was growing up, in more recent times has been ravaged by job losses and the inevitable social problems that accompany unemployment. This wasn't quite so bad when all the other places in the area were also struggling with similar difficulties, indeed, Newport could count itself lucky compared to the Valleys, which were utterly devastated by Thatcher's vindictive "policies." However, in the past few years it has suffered from being in Cardiff's shadow, just twelve miles down the M4, which has very successfully reinvented itself, thanks to massive investment [though you only have to read some of the recent novels set in Cardiff to appreciate the sense of anger and bitterness at the way in which some of the old communities have been swept aside to make way for the new, shiny face of the capital].
Newport, though, is an incredibly friendly place and, just like when I go back to Ireland, I often fall into conversation with other punters in pubs there, something that would have been totally unthinkable when I lived in London – talk to a complete stranger in a pub, are you mad? They’ll probably turn out to be a dangerous maniac. I also thanked god that my father lived in Newport when was seriously ill a couple of years ago. The ambulance came very quickly, he was rushed straight into the surgery that saved his life, and his after op care at The Royal Gwent was superb – the nursing staff were just brilliant, combining professionalism, compassion and the kind of earthy humour that quickly brought a smile back to his face. I fear he would have died on a trolley parked in a hospital corridor if he’d been living in London, where I was living at the time. It seems to me that one of the most important ways in which we measure how civilized we are is the quality of care we provide for the most vulnerable members of society, and Newport came through with flying colours when the chips were down.
Actually, the relationship between Cardiff and Newport reminds me of the relationship up here between Leeds and Bradford. In recent years, Leeds has been booming, being labelled the 24 hour city and, more comically, the Milan of the north [something to do with its trendy clothes shops, apparently]. Bradford, just down the road, is stuck in the doldrums by comparison, despite having so much going for it - surrounded by lovely countryside, a wide range of excellent Asian restaurants and shops [and the biggest Mela in Europe], the Museum of Film and Photography, and some splendid architecture. I can't help feeling if it was located down south, which is still so much wealthier than the north, its fortunes would have been transformed by now.
Mention of the Valleys reminds me of an old joke. Thatcher, down in Cardiff for a meeting, and wanting to see the famous Labour heartlands of the Valleys she’s heard so much about, slips away from her minders and drives up there on her own. However she’s not used to the narrow, winding roads, takes a corner too quickly, and plunges her car into a river. She winds down the window and starts yelling for help. Three young lads come to her rescue. It is only when they've pulled her out that they recognise who it is. 'You've saved my life' says the sodden, bedraggled Thatcher gratefully, 'Ask for anything and I'll grant your wish.' The first wants to be a pilot. She promises to send him on a top training course. The second longs to be a TV presenter, she promises she'll get HTV to hire him immediately. The third asks for a state funeral. 'But you're much too young to think of a funeral' says Thatcher. 'That's what you think Missus’ replies the young lad, ‘As soon as my dad finds out who I've helped to rescue from drowning, he'll ring my bloody neck.'
21/6/03
My novel is reviewed in The Guardian today. I read the review three times before finally relaxing and acknowledging that it is indeed a good one. After a few minutes of enormous relief that I haven't been slaughtered, I then begin to get annoyed. Why is it so small? For all I know, this could be the only review I'll get, amounting to about six inches of print for two years incredibly hard slog. It's one of four short reviews boxed into a narrow space on the right hand side of the First Novels page. A guy called Steven Sherrill has bagged the lengthy main review, pushing the rest of us into the also rans’ corner. And apart from that, it’s too early – the novel isn’t published for another week and a half, so that anyone who’s read the review and looks for it in a bookshop won’t find it. This is the warped writer’s mindset – never satisfied with what they’ve got, always thinking instead of what they might have got. I used to see this trait in friends of mine who were struggling actors, and found it very unattractive. Ohmigod, I’m turning into a luvvie, the next thing you know I’ll be calling people ‘my dear boy’, which is definitely not to be recommended in Yorkshire.
Later that morning I take my daughter to the park. Meet a girl of 7 or 8 called Beth, vigorously pushing her baby sister on a swing. The baby is, apparently, just nine months old, though she’s already the size of a large toddler. Beth finds it hard to believe my own daughter is 5.
‘She’s too small to be 5.’
‘She’s about the average size for her age.’
Beth looks doubtful, but lets the matter drop. Instead she points to her baby sister.
‘She’s called Flood – if it had been a boy they were going to call him Storm.’
She gives Flood another almighty shove. I suggest to Beth that she's pushing her too hard, after all, she's just a baby.
‘No, she loves it, don’t you Flood?’
Flood says nothing. She’s an extremely quiet baby, has yet to make a single sound, though she stares at me with startling hostility every time she whizzes past. Beth, clearly unimpressed by my daughter’s lacklustre performance on the swing, eagerly offers to push her for me. Daughter looks distinctly alarmed. I politely decline. Flood flies past at about 60mph. Beth says she often has to look after Flood while her mother is in work. On top of this, her older brother was horrible to her. I sympathise. 'He’s a Man Utd supporter’ she adds with some distaste, the ultimate character assassination in Leeds. I asked her if she got fed up of looking after her sister.
‘Yeah …no, it’s alright.’
Then
‘Do you know what my job is when I’m not looking after my sister?’
‘No.’
‘I’m an artist.’