Having upgraded my MP3 player and finding myself with twice as much space than before, I’ve recently spent way too much time loading up the more obscure albums and compilations that didn’t make the ‘first cut’ of my previous player, which still had a significant capacity. As time went on and my compulsive CD buying continued, I had to prune more and more songs from the Creative Zen so that I could fit in the new albums, and I ended up being much more satisfied with the outcome, as the continued random shuffle regularly touched upon more prized songs, rather than so many would-be B-sides and easily forgettable tunes that I’d not heard for years, often with good reason. A bright and booming random playlist frequently lifted my spirits, even more so than when I created my own playlist, which is odd as I have for so many decades made myself and friends mixed tapes, then mixed minidiscs then mixed CDs, where the order of the songs was crucial to the overall effect.
At the end of my time with my Zen, it contained about 30GB worth of favourite songs, as I had removed the less interesting ones and most of the dross. I marvelled at how, when I first bought it, I had thought to myself that 30GB was a huge amount of space so I loaded up any old CD, and the whole CD, rather than selecting only my favourite tracks. I would even add things like The Best of Gilbert and Sullivan, when I’m not even that big a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and umpteen classical compilations even if they contained 10 minute symphonies that I usually found too dull and syrupy and would have no interest in or patience for whilst out and about.
So you would think that I would heed my own warning, having lived through that and having to recover from my initial blind bloat of MP3s, and only load up a carefully chosen selection to my iPod—-YES, I caved in and (bitterly) got an iPod, which I will go into another time, but it offered more than twice as much space and the imperfect 60GB Creative Zen was no longer available. But no, I’ve found that I’ve just spent a week loading up a tonne of CDs that have held so little interest for me over the years that I had to look up my (admittedly anal) rating of and comments on each song when I first played it, which I scarily keep in indexed books. I’ve again recklessly added all sorts of obscure classical music collections including Flemish Romantic Horn Concertos and loads of free CDs with Classic FM magazine, I’ve added albums full of big bands and CDs of singer/actors like Doris Day and Danny Kaye, and have worryingly considered adding that Noel Coward CD I bought years ago after some nostalgia trip but never even unwrapped. (The latter thought was sparked by a review of the new West End stage version of Brief Encounter mentioning that they play A Room with a View at the end.)
There are artists I liked once in their day but haven’t recently, such as Lou Dalgliesh, and some whose albums were given to me by friends long ago but I just didn’t really ‘get’ them, like Eleanor Shanley, Robyn Hitchcock and Paul Kelly. I’ve added them in case I liked them more than I remembered, giving them a chance a resurgence, and maybe when I’m sitting on a train some time, one of their songs will come up and I’ll be bewitched by it. It’s like having my own radio station where all of the 10,000 songs that might be played have been pre-selected by me, but there is still plenty of room for discovery amongst them, as well as a smile raised when the most loved favourites rear their beloved heads. Or maybe I’ll want to delete the less loved ones, and then I’ll miss the fact that the Zen would let you do such pruning instantly whilst out and about, whereas the vastly less flexible iPod would make me remember which song I want to remove and do so when I’m next on the PC that contains my iTunes directory, and frankly, there’s little chance that I would even remember by then that I’d wanted to delete anything.
But those are rambling musings, and now for a rambling rant. Gracenote, the CD track identification service used by iTunes and other software to gather the information on the audio tracks…. I fully acknowledge that this is a blessing, as all we have to do is insert our CD—even some obscure collection of Lithuanian Disco classics played on the fipple flute that you bought in the Woolworth’s bargain bin in 1987, which you can’t imagine anyone else owns—and suddenly all the information you need comes up automatically. iTunes has accessed the Gracenote database, and in theory, everything you need to know is there—the name of each tune, the performer, the composer, and the album name. It is a blissful change from the days when I had to enter the title and artist on the minidisc by rotating a dial to painfully select each individual letter at an excruciatingly slow speed. Even when I invested in a package that would hook my minidisc and stereo up to my PC in the early days and enable me to type the titles in, that still was a lot more work than the simplicity offered by Gracenote. In theory, I shouldn’t have to do anything as some other owner of the CD in question has already gone to the trouble of typing in all the information and adding it to the database.
But why can’t they do it properly? Okay, I accept that I’m a terrible pedant. I get annoyed by typos—which we all make, it’s just a shame that they’re in the now official version that pops up for everyone—and the shortcuts. I don’t want it to say '10 Pole Tudor', making me go back to change everything to ‘Tenpole’-—and I usually try to race the downloader and get it fixed before each song is added to my collection. I don’t want every single track on one album to say ‘Beatles’ so I have to go back and add the ‘The’, or remove it from ‘The Counting Crows’. I can’t cope with someone having put the artist throughout a whole album in the form of ‘Hewerdine, Boo’ when all the other albums display the first name first. But mostly, classical music is a nightmare. I am so completely grateful to the poor souls who painstakingly entered every bit of the many, many details—the aria name, the key it is in, the catalogue number, in which act it appears in which opera, which tenor backed by which orchestra conducted by which conductor performed it, sometimes even including the acute é’s and so forth so everything looks perfect.
But most of the souls have even less patience than I and have, for some reason, entered the artist, that is the performer, as being ‘Beethoven' or ‘Puccini’, which is intensely irritating, particularly when they have also entered the composer’s name in the song title section (eg “Puccini: O Mio Babino Caro”) and in the composer’s section, so I cannot understand their thinking. I also hate the cop-outs who put ‘unclassifiable’ as the genre description of albums; I can understand having loyalty to an artist who might claim to be so, but what if you want to listen to a particular genre one day and that artist is hidden away as ‘unclassifiable’?
Some of it is personal preference, of course; I prefer to put ‘(Live)’ at the end of song titles so I can distinguish the live version from the studio recording, particularly when iTunes coughs up a list of duplicates. I also prefer to mention performers who make a significant contribution to a piece. For instance, it might be Colin Reid’s album and him playing guitar (wonderfully) on Never Going Back Again, but it would surely be silly not to mention Eddi Reader at all when she is providing lead vocals, as you might otherwise come to wonder who you are listening to (were it someone with a less distinctive voice), but the Gracenote contributors often omit the significant additional artists, even though there is also a section for ‘album artist’. I would prefer to put the song’s artist as ‘Colin Read & Eddi Reader’ if not Colin ‘featuring Eddi Reader.’
Clearly, my insane rant here is driven by the fact that I have spent too much time adding too many albums at once, necessitating quite a lot of amendments in my iTunes catalogue. Tackling a listing for a classical CD can be utterly exhausting. I’m sure normal people don’t bat an eyelid about this and are thinking I need to get a life, which is true, I know. But if anyone out there is the first to enter a CD’s details into the database, and that may well be true if you eagerly rip open your copy of Word magazine (or fellow pedants can point out my hypocrisy here as they’ve changed the name to The Word, but I can’t bring myself to adapt to that as it just makes me think of Terry Christian) and you load up that issue’s excellent free compilation CD, please have some respect for the anal among us who need the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, or at least the songs spelled correctly and the performers to be given due credit. Though no doubt by tomorrow, I’ll have recovered from this ordeal and remembered that it’s of serious little importance, and I’ll want to ask for your forgiveness for my scary whingeing….Perhaps listening to some music for a while will calm me down. I’ll go put on my favourite album of Mozart performing ABBA’s greatest hits.
Monday, 25 February 2008
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Diana Inquiry--Rewriting History & Subpoenaing Secrets
I am not following the Diana, Princess of Wales, inquest closely because I, unlike Mohammed Fayed, understand that even famous people can die in car crashes (see James Dean, Harry Chapin, Eddie Cochran, Albert Camus, Margaret Mitchell, Jayne Mansfield, Isadora Duncan, General George S Patton, Jackson Pollock, Bessie Smith,, Lisa Lopes, to name a few). Indeed, there is even a precedent for extremely famous princesses who are much admired icons to die in a car crash (see Princess Grace of Monaco aka Grace Kelly). I also understand that, when someone is not wearing a seatbelt AND they are in a speeding car AND the driver is known to drive recklessly AND he is drunk, the risk of death is, unfortunately, fairly high, even without your former father-in-law plotting your death, particularly when it was not he who chose to put you in that position.
However, disinterested as I am, two things occurred to me when reading the paper about the testimony of her butler, Paul Burrell. And these are not profound thoughts to offer great insight that will "solve the case." No, they are just observations and a hope that I never find myself in a similar situation as he is in now (not that that is a vote of sympathy; it is not.)
One thought is that an awful thing about this whole process is that a portrait could be painted of you after your death by people who may be mistaken or may just want to make pronouncements about you for various reasons—to make it look for their own benefit like they were closer to you than they really were, or to ‘set the record straight’, but rather than straight, set it however they choose. And whatever happens, you are not there to contradict them, to clarify the real situation or the reasons you really did things. Your whole history, your personality and true principles and thoughts could be rewritten by people who did not know you at all, merely hoped to or claim to have done or only saw one small part of you, perhaps from a distance. How horrid and unfair and, in some cases, irreversible.
For instance, Burrell can continue to tell the world that he had enormous influence over the princess, which I don’t fully buy but care too little about to tax my life with it. I can accept he might have suggested what dress she wear occasionally and that, as she suffered from depression at times, she might accept support from him of the "don’t worry, your Royal Highness, you look great and it will be all right" type of thing you would not normally accept from a servant. Maybe there was more; I clearly wouldn’t know nor do I intend to read his books to research the argument. But he can decide, in this case, to make it clear to the world, because he claims this closeness and inside knowledge, that she absolutely had no interest in Dodi Fayed other than to make her ex jealous, that she would never have been serious about him, not in such a short time and whilst on the rebound. I expect that’s true, but my point is that Burrell might not know for sure but decided to make that a formal proclamation as someone close to the driver’s seat (not Henri Paul’s seat, fortunately for Burrell), so it looks like fact. So can her other friends, all the people who dislike Mohamed Al Fayed and resent the fact that her life is being picked through like this at his insistence. (In much the same way, really, that Al Fayed has seized upon the fact that Dodi bought a ring right before the accident, but why is that a big deal? It doesn't mean she'd have accepted him; it seems likely she would have said "no".) In fact, someone who barely knew her could convince enough people that he or she did before dispensing fascinating "facts" about this stranger, or some close friend who fell out with her at the end could tell the court all about Diana's love for rolling on a bed of dill pickles smothered in Marmite and how she used to beat her pet goldfish when no one was around.
Burrell's comments about Dodi Al Fayed are, frankly, probably accurate, and certainly make more sense than anything Mohamed Al Fayed had come out with. Mohamed was probably just so thrilled when Diana started seeing Dodi, Dad Al Fayed finally saw his chance to be someone in England at last, to get the citizenship he had so craved, to be accepted in the slot in society that he’d thought buying Harrod’s would allow him to fill. Suddenly, this chance, this burgeoning potential hope, was dashed, on top of which he lost his son, and that never makes sense to a parent, so paranoia and bitterness can creep in. When you lose a loved one, you look for a reason for the tragic event but there generally isn’t a reason. We all die; when and how it happens doesn’t always make sense.
The other principal thought I had was how utterly horrible and seemingly wrong it is that your very private journals, something that in most cases you expected would always be guarded from human eyes other than your own at least until your death, and for that reason where you wrote your most private and often darkest thoughts, can be subpoenaed by a court and made public, even when you have committed no crime. I don’t just mean Diana’s but Burrell’s. The same with private letters to you from close friends (or employers you call close friends), which you should be entitled to save forever in the privacy of your home, but in this case, and if you hide either the letters or your journals, you are in contempt of court, or forced to be dishonest under oath by denying their existence or saying you are unsure where they are.
The alternative seems to be to burn them all upon that person’s death, as Diana’s mother apparently began doing in terms of Diana’s private papers, but that seems so very wrong and it is so final. But she must have been protecting her daughter from all this—or herself, who knows. Really, what right do we have to see the private papers and letters of this woman or, for that matter, her butler? I understand that we are trying to piece things together and these are parts of the puzzle. But I would be mortified if asked to disclose my personal papers or journals, and I barely have any and I certainly have much less to worry about. This struggle for some sort of justice seems in this way to go against the laws of natural justice.
Though maybe, in the current climate of blogging and Facebook where people put their thoughts (and foolishly, their personal contact details) out there for anyone to see, and sharing personal photos and videos online, and where we have too many reality shows where we watch caged humans every second of the day and night for several weeks, and we (well, not I) rush to buy the bazillion weekly magazines there are to show you photos of celebrities stepping out of cars and shops and bikinis (the latter no doubt through a mega-zoom lens unless it’s someone like Courtney Love), no one much minds about secrets anymore, and maybe privacy is passé. Hence the encouragement for the paparazzi, who chased the Princess into the tunnel for some dull shot through a speeding car's window of her beside her new boyfriend, no doubt with their faces covered, a photo that should have been worth very little.
I guess it’s not trendy to want to live quietly in the shadows of the corner of the room anymore. But I’ve never been trendy.
However, disinterested as I am, two things occurred to me when reading the paper about the testimony of her butler, Paul Burrell. And these are not profound thoughts to offer great insight that will "solve the case." No, they are just observations and a hope that I never find myself in a similar situation as he is in now (not that that is a vote of sympathy; it is not.)
One thought is that an awful thing about this whole process is that a portrait could be painted of you after your death by people who may be mistaken or may just want to make pronouncements about you for various reasons—to make it look for their own benefit like they were closer to you than they really were, or to ‘set the record straight’, but rather than straight, set it however they choose. And whatever happens, you are not there to contradict them, to clarify the real situation or the reasons you really did things. Your whole history, your personality and true principles and thoughts could be rewritten by people who did not know you at all, merely hoped to or claim to have done or only saw one small part of you, perhaps from a distance. How horrid and unfair and, in some cases, irreversible.
For instance, Burrell can continue to tell the world that he had enormous influence over the princess, which I don’t fully buy but care too little about to tax my life with it. I can accept he might have suggested what dress she wear occasionally and that, as she suffered from depression at times, she might accept support from him of the "don’t worry, your Royal Highness, you look great and it will be all right" type of thing you would not normally accept from a servant. Maybe there was more; I clearly wouldn’t know nor do I intend to read his books to research the argument. But he can decide, in this case, to make it clear to the world, because he claims this closeness and inside knowledge, that she absolutely had no interest in Dodi Fayed other than to make her ex jealous, that she would never have been serious about him, not in such a short time and whilst on the rebound. I expect that’s true, but my point is that Burrell might not know for sure but decided to make that a formal proclamation as someone close to the driver’s seat (not Henri Paul’s seat, fortunately for Burrell), so it looks like fact. So can her other friends, all the people who dislike Mohamed Al Fayed and resent the fact that her life is being picked through like this at his insistence. (In much the same way, really, that Al Fayed has seized upon the fact that Dodi bought a ring right before the accident, but why is that a big deal? It doesn't mean she'd have accepted him; it seems likely she would have said "no".) In fact, someone who barely knew her could convince enough people that he or she did before dispensing fascinating "facts" about this stranger, or some close friend who fell out with her at the end could tell the court all about Diana's love for rolling on a bed of dill pickles smothered in Marmite and how she used to beat her pet goldfish when no one was around.
Burrell's comments about Dodi Al Fayed are, frankly, probably accurate, and certainly make more sense than anything Mohamed Al Fayed had come out with. Mohamed was probably just so thrilled when Diana started seeing Dodi, Dad Al Fayed finally saw his chance to be someone in England at last, to get the citizenship he had so craved, to be accepted in the slot in society that he’d thought buying Harrod’s would allow him to fill. Suddenly, this chance, this burgeoning potential hope, was dashed, on top of which he lost his son, and that never makes sense to a parent, so paranoia and bitterness can creep in. When you lose a loved one, you look for a reason for the tragic event but there generally isn’t a reason. We all die; when and how it happens doesn’t always make sense.
The other principal thought I had was how utterly horrible and seemingly wrong it is that your very private journals, something that in most cases you expected would always be guarded from human eyes other than your own at least until your death, and for that reason where you wrote your most private and often darkest thoughts, can be subpoenaed by a court and made public, even when you have committed no crime. I don’t just mean Diana’s but Burrell’s. The same with private letters to you from close friends (or employers you call close friends), which you should be entitled to save forever in the privacy of your home, but in this case, and if you hide either the letters or your journals, you are in contempt of court, or forced to be dishonest under oath by denying their existence or saying you are unsure where they are.
The alternative seems to be to burn them all upon that person’s death, as Diana’s mother apparently began doing in terms of Diana’s private papers, but that seems so very wrong and it is so final. But she must have been protecting her daughter from all this—or herself, who knows. Really, what right do we have to see the private papers and letters of this woman or, for that matter, her butler? I understand that we are trying to piece things together and these are parts of the puzzle. But I would be mortified if asked to disclose my personal papers or journals, and I barely have any and I certainly have much less to worry about. This struggle for some sort of justice seems in this way to go against the laws of natural justice.
Though maybe, in the current climate of blogging and Facebook where people put their thoughts (and foolishly, their personal contact details) out there for anyone to see, and sharing personal photos and videos online, and where we have too many reality shows where we watch caged humans every second of the day and night for several weeks, and we (well, not I) rush to buy the bazillion weekly magazines there are to show you photos of celebrities stepping out of cars and shops and bikinis (the latter no doubt through a mega-zoom lens unless it’s someone like Courtney Love), no one much minds about secrets anymore, and maybe privacy is passé. Hence the encouragement for the paparazzi, who chased the Princess into the tunnel for some dull shot through a speeding car's window of her beside her new boyfriend, no doubt with their faces covered, a photo that should have been worth very little.
I guess it’s not trendy to want to live quietly in the shadows of the corner of the room anymore. But I’ve never been trendy.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Dazzle!
If you’re near the South Bank in London this week, or if you are looking for an unusual gift of jewellery, it would be worth popping into the Dazzle exhibition at the National Theatre, but you must hurry as it ends on Saturday, 12 January. I believe it will open in Glasgow in April.
I meant to go last year but missed it, but yesterday managed to get there at lunchtime and found my mother’s birthday present, an interesting bracelet made by Alena Asenbryl from Manchester, who uses textiles, plastics and mixed metals for her creations. According to the brochure, director Tim Burton has apparently commissioned her to do work for him—lucky Helena Bonham-Carter. Timely link, in a way, as his film Sweeney Todd opens at Leicester Square today.
The artistic creations—more than 3,000 works for sale by 76 designers--are worth viewing even if you have no intention of buying anything, and there is no entry fee. The exhibition is a rather small, quiet affair, but not the least bit intimidating. I pictured some large
trade fair set-up with the artists eyeballing you as you nervously glanced over or guiltily walked past their goods, but it consists of several glass cases on the first floor of the National Theatre in the Olivier Foyer in a peaceful, uncrowded atmosphere. As I went on a weekday afternoon, there were few others there but the woman minding ‘the shop’ was not intrusive and instead just very bubbly, enthusiastic and helpful when I did make my purchase. I had the bonus of listening to the actors and frequent laughter through the walls of the matinee of Much Ado About Nothing starring Simon Russell Beale (is this man never out of work?) and Zoe Wanamaker.
There were several items available for just under £30, quite a few temptations for around £50-60, and the most interesting necklaces cost over £100. The materials used vary, there are a few more precious gems but mostly they consist of metal, textiles, magnets and even fish skin. The
bracelet I chose had a matching necklace and earrings that were far beyond what I intended to spend, but also a bit too OTT artsy to picture on my mother’s head, so I felt less guilty breaking up the set. I had found several different things that I almost bought, although admittedly a few of the earrings I nearly chose had me worried that, although they were clearly impressive unique specimens of art by true talent, she might not realise when opening the box that they weren’t something I picked up from Accessorize, and I wanted to ensure she could tell it was special (but in most cases, that was obvious). I’ll send her the brochure as well, to help….
If you are not fond of necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, there are numerous impressive
cufflinks, including asymmetrical ones, as well as some little boxes, small wall hangings, mirrors, vases and embroidered images….all sorts of things to grab your interest. Everything is available to take away with you, which then kind of diminishes the exhibition for those who follow--it is good the National Gallery doesn't operate the same policy--but there is plenty to keep them enthralled.
This is no Victoria & Albert Museum day trip that will have you gasping at the wonder of it, but it’s worth stopping by to have a look or even consider a purchase, particularly if you have any gift to buy in the coming year….then you can stroll by the river afterwards, take in one of the many things to do on the South Bank, wander through the NT bookshop or nearby Foyle’s, or eat at nearby Wagamamas.
But go soon or you’ll miss the fine opportunity. It’s open Monday through Saturday, 9.30am to 11pm. Visit the website. (The photos on this page are of works by, from top to bottom, Alenda Asenbryl, Elizabeth Bone, Gail Klevan and Julie Allison.)
On the way back, I passed comedian Tony Hawks jogging down Cheapside with a blonde woman who reminded me of the actress in Elling, which I meant to report on some time ago, along with a million other topics in my head….and I hope to find more time soon!
I meant to go last year but missed it, but yesterday managed to get there at lunchtime and found my mother’s birthday present, an interesting bracelet made by Alena Asenbryl from Manchester, who uses textiles, plastics and mixed metals for her creations. According to the brochure, director Tim Burton has apparently commissioned her to do work for him—lucky Helena Bonham-Carter. Timely link, in a way, as his film Sweeney Todd opens at Leicester Square today.
The artistic creations—more than 3,000 works for sale by 76 designers--are worth viewing even if you have no intention of buying anything, and there is no entry fee. The exhibition is a rather small, quiet affair, but not the least bit intimidating. I pictured some large
trade fair set-up with the artists eyeballing you as you nervously glanced over or guiltily walked past their goods, but it consists of several glass cases on the first floor of the National Theatre in the Olivier Foyer in a peaceful, uncrowded atmosphere. As I went on a weekday afternoon, there were few others there but the woman minding ‘the shop’ was not intrusive and instead just very bubbly, enthusiastic and helpful when I did make my purchase. I had the bonus of listening to the actors and frequent laughter through the walls of the matinee of Much Ado About Nothing starring Simon Russell Beale (is this man never out of work?) and Zoe Wanamaker.There were several items available for just under £30, quite a few temptations for around £50-60, and the most interesting necklaces cost over £100. The materials used vary, there are a few more precious gems but mostly they consist of metal, textiles, magnets and even fish skin. The
bracelet I chose had a matching necklace and earrings that were far beyond what I intended to spend, but also a bit too OTT artsy to picture on my mother’s head, so I felt less guilty breaking up the set. I had found several different things that I almost bought, although admittedly a few of the earrings I nearly chose had me worried that, although they were clearly impressive unique specimens of art by true talent, she might not realise when opening the box that they weren’t something I picked up from Accessorize, and I wanted to ensure she could tell it was special (but in most cases, that was obvious). I’ll send her the brochure as well, to help….If you are not fond of necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, there are numerous impressive
cufflinks, including asymmetrical ones, as well as some little boxes, small wall hangings, mirrors, vases and embroidered images….all sorts of things to grab your interest. Everything is available to take away with you, which then kind of diminishes the exhibition for those who follow--it is good the National Gallery doesn't operate the same policy--but there is plenty to keep them enthralled.This is no Victoria & Albert Museum day trip that will have you gasping at the wonder of it, but it’s worth stopping by to have a look or even consider a purchase, particularly if you have any gift to buy in the coming year….then you can stroll by the river afterwards, take in one of the many things to do on the South Bank, wander through the NT bookshop or nearby Foyle’s, or eat at nearby Wagamamas.
But go soon or you’ll miss the fine opportunity. It’s open Monday through Saturday, 9.30am to 11pm. Visit the website. (The photos on this page are of works by, from top to bottom, Alenda Asenbryl, Elizabeth Bone, Gail Klevan and Julie Allison.)
On the way back, I passed comedian Tony Hawks jogging down Cheapside with a blonde woman who reminded me of the actress in Elling, which I meant to report on some time ago, along with a million other topics in my head….and I hope to find more time soon!
Monday, 24 December 2007
Fox Caught Cat Napping
As an animal lover, I was surprised and enormously cheered to find a lovely fox curled up asleep in the middle of my urban garden at lunchtime on Saturday…and unfortunately, this delight led to a bit of embarrassment on the train this morning. I didn’t accidentally take the fox to work with me—nothing like that.
On Saturday, I had just come back from the vets (got all my shots!) and felt somewhat shaken from the journey there at the hands of a truly psycho minicab driver, so it was a diverting
surprise to see my new furry friend honouring my neglected--nay ignored-- garden with its snoozy presence. Anyone who read my first posting about how a pigeon’s nest outside my window lifted my spirits for a month can imagine I might get positively feverish at the sight of a fox so near for so long. Usually, they are just fleeting glimpses of scarlet in the moonlight, dodging the bullying neighbourhood cats as they search for food often in atrocious conditions, nights I would have hoped they’d stay huddled safe in their den somewhere, but I suppose they must go out in horrid weather as they can’t ring Domino’s for delivery.
Here in broad daylight, in the middle of a small square shabby garden that was long ago concreted over and just barely decorated with errant vines straying from the neighbours’ garden with no respect for the boundary, and on the other side of the fence, with numerous noisy Christmas shoppers chatting and slamming car doors just a few feet away in the car park so near the main shopping centre in town….lay a snoozing fox, rather exposed.
It seemed so surprising that I started to worry that the fox must be injured and could crawl no further so stopped where it landed. Fortunately its chest was rising and falling with comforting regularity, and surely any broken limbs would not manage to curl into such a tight red ball. I also feared that it might be disturbed and run into the path of danger, and I hoped it would at least sleep ‘til dark, which would be in a few hours at 3.30pm.
So I kept an eye on him, took a few photos from a distance as I did not dare go down into the garden for fear of terrifying him. I eventually got out my old-fashioned camcorder and filmed him, and just as the sky grew a bit darker, he picked up his head, looked back (coincidentally in my direction) revealing his gorgeous fox face and wonderful ebony ears, had a bit of a chew on his probably mangy skin, and gave his ear a scratch with a back foot as a dog would. He was lovely, and he seemed to be well.
He then hit nature’s snooze button and curled up for another brief visit to noddytown, then after a bit lifted his head, stood and straightened out by lunging forward then backward, stretching his legs. He raised his head to assess the situation but didn’t look at all surprised about where he was so it must have been a conscious choice to nap there. After a bit, he moved to the edge of my garden to the path that led to the front, cautiously gazed down it and seemed to decide that direction was unsafe, thought he’d go through the small picket fence to my
neighbour’s garden and cutely tried to put his big furry head through the fence only to find—fortunately before it got stuck—that it was way too big to fit. So he looked up and leapt over the fence, ran through my neighbour’s garden and disappeared….though he would have had a lot of concrete and pavement to cross before he got anywhere remotely secluded.
Pleased to get some footage of such cuteness unravelling before my eyes, I transferred it to my computer that night and left it (and a few other clips) burning onto a DVD whilst I slept. In the morning, eager to see how it turned out, I grabbed the newly burned DVD to watch on my laptop on the train. Comfortably seated on a busy train carriage, having put my MP3 player headphones in my ears, I turned on the laptop and carefully checked that the sound was, as always, muted so the DVD would not be heard by everyone in the carriage. The DVD would contain no fox noises (which I’ve often thought to sound a bit like someone slowly strangling or crushing a screeching bird of prey—horrible in the night) as I had filmed through a closed window. What it did contain, I’m ashamed to admit, was a running commentary from yours truly that comes naturally when I see cute animals. It’s scary; I talk out loud and in a thoroughly shameful goopy voice.
So I watched the DVD on the crowded Christmas Eve train, and lots of people looked over at me and my laptop, which often happens; I think it’s rude and surprising that people are so unaccustomed to seeing someone use a laptop on the train that they stare. When the fox footage ended, the DVD moved straight to a slideshow I’d done of photos of my father throughout his life to Warren Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart. Such a fitting tune, but I did not expect to hear it absolutely blasting out of my laptop today on the train. It took me a moment to realise I was the one to blame for the powerful noise, as my ears were otherwise engaged listening to music, remember. I ripped out my headphones to confirm, with great alarm, that my laptop volume was not muted after all and in fact was horribly loud. The speaker volume was set to mute, yes, but apparently the DVD-playing software overrode that setting. I immediately shut down the software and opened the DVD-tray in a panic to stop the noise that everyone in the busy train carriage was hearing.
To my horror, it dawned on me that I’d just unwittingly treated said carriage full of people to about 15 minutes of the soundtrack of the fox footage. They would have heard a constant chorus of “Awwww, bless it! Look at the cuteness! Look at da fuzzy wuzzy ears! What adorableness! Please, please let it be okay! Awww, look at the fluffiness of da tail! It’s skitching its little ear, soooo sweeeet!” in an ultra-goopy voice of which I am not proud. I also seem to recall near the end as the fox made its getaway that I uttered an extremely rare-for-me expletive when I tried to film and photograph the fox at the same time and dropped one of the cameras. So that, after all the fuzzy goopy silly ‘adorableness’ constant narration, would have been blasted around my train carriage without my realising. For about 15 minutes. So maybe, just maybe, that was why everyone was staring at me! Including the many, many children on the train who must have been coming to London for some pantomime treats.
Oh dear. I just hope that those people are people who ride the train in only on Christmas Eve so I will never see them again. I’m sure that will be the case, if I wish really hard on the Christmas star I see tonight….
On Saturday, I had just come back from the vets (got all my shots!) and felt somewhat shaken from the journey there at the hands of a truly psycho minicab driver, so it was a diverting
surprise to see my new furry friend honouring my neglected--nay ignored-- garden with its snoozy presence. Anyone who read my first posting about how a pigeon’s nest outside my window lifted my spirits for a month can imagine I might get positively feverish at the sight of a fox so near for so long. Usually, they are just fleeting glimpses of scarlet in the moonlight, dodging the bullying neighbourhood cats as they search for food often in atrocious conditions, nights I would have hoped they’d stay huddled safe in their den somewhere, but I suppose they must go out in horrid weather as they can’t ring Domino’s for delivery.Here in broad daylight, in the middle of a small square shabby garden that was long ago concreted over and just barely decorated with errant vines straying from the neighbours’ garden with no respect for the boundary, and on the other side of the fence, with numerous noisy Christmas shoppers chatting and slamming car doors just a few feet away in the car park so near the main shopping centre in town….lay a snoozing fox, rather exposed.
It seemed so surprising that I started to worry that the fox must be injured and could crawl no further so stopped where it landed. Fortunately its chest was rising and falling with comforting regularity, and surely any broken limbs would not manage to curl into such a tight red ball. I also feared that it might be disturbed and run into the path of danger, and I hoped it would at least sleep ‘til dark, which would be in a few hours at 3.30pm.
So I kept an eye on him, took a few photos from a distance as I did not dare go down into the garden for fear of terrifying him. I eventually got out my old-fashioned camcorder and filmed him, and just as the sky grew a bit darker, he picked up his head, looked back (coincidentally in my direction) revealing his gorgeous fox face and wonderful ebony ears, had a bit of a chew on his probably mangy skin, and gave his ear a scratch with a back foot as a dog would. He was lovely, and he seemed to be well.
He then hit nature’s snooze button and curled up for another brief visit to noddytown, then after a bit lifted his head, stood and straightened out by lunging forward then backward, stretching his legs. He raised his head to assess the situation but didn’t look at all surprised about where he was so it must have been a conscious choice to nap there. After a bit, he moved to the edge of my garden to the path that led to the front, cautiously gazed down it and seemed to decide that direction was unsafe, thought he’d go through the small picket fence to my
neighbour’s garden and cutely tried to put his big furry head through the fence only to find—fortunately before it got stuck—that it was way too big to fit. So he looked up and leapt over the fence, ran through my neighbour’s garden and disappeared….though he would have had a lot of concrete and pavement to cross before he got anywhere remotely secluded.Pleased to get some footage of such cuteness unravelling before my eyes, I transferred it to my computer that night and left it (and a few other clips) burning onto a DVD whilst I slept. In the morning, eager to see how it turned out, I grabbed the newly burned DVD to watch on my laptop on the train. Comfortably seated on a busy train carriage, having put my MP3 player headphones in my ears, I turned on the laptop and carefully checked that the sound was, as always, muted so the DVD would not be heard by everyone in the carriage. The DVD would contain no fox noises (which I’ve often thought to sound a bit like someone slowly strangling or crushing a screeching bird of prey—horrible in the night) as I had filmed through a closed window. What it did contain, I’m ashamed to admit, was a running commentary from yours truly that comes naturally when I see cute animals. It’s scary; I talk out loud and in a thoroughly shameful goopy voice.
So I watched the DVD on the crowded Christmas Eve train, and lots of people looked over at me and my laptop, which often happens; I think it’s rude and surprising that people are so unaccustomed to seeing someone use a laptop on the train that they stare. When the fox footage ended, the DVD moved straight to a slideshow I’d done of photos of my father throughout his life to Warren Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart. Such a fitting tune, but I did not expect to hear it absolutely blasting out of my laptop today on the train. It took me a moment to realise I was the one to blame for the powerful noise, as my ears were otherwise engaged listening to music, remember. I ripped out my headphones to confirm, with great alarm, that my laptop volume was not muted after all and in fact was horribly loud. The speaker volume was set to mute, yes, but apparently the DVD-playing software overrode that setting. I immediately shut down the software and opened the DVD-tray in a panic to stop the noise that everyone in the busy train carriage was hearing.
To my horror, it dawned on me that I’d just unwittingly treated said carriage full of people to about 15 minutes of the soundtrack of the fox footage. They would have heard a constant chorus of “Awwww, bless it! Look at the cuteness! Look at da fuzzy wuzzy ears! What adorableness! Please, please let it be okay! Awww, look at the fluffiness of da tail! It’s skitching its little ear, soooo sweeeet!” in an ultra-goopy voice of which I am not proud. I also seem to recall near the end as the fox made its getaway that I uttered an extremely rare-for-me expletive when I tried to film and photograph the fox at the same time and dropped one of the cameras. So that, after all the fuzzy goopy silly ‘adorableness’ constant narration, would have been blasted around my train carriage without my realising. For about 15 minutes. So maybe, just maybe, that was why everyone was staring at me! Including the many, many children on the train who must have been coming to London for some pantomime treats.
Oh dear. I just hope that those people are people who ride the train in only on Christmas Eve so I will never see them again. I’m sure that will be the case, if I wish really hard on the Christmas star I see tonight….
Friday, 21 December 2007
I've Tried Ringing You....
Typically, my best intentions to say lots have been scuppered by work commitments, but I should improve soon. For now, I thought I'd pass on part of an e-mail that nearly amused me from good ol' Virgin Media, formerly ntl, now "the UK's first quadplay provider" of digital TV , broadband, phone and mobile services. You would think that would mean they knew a bit about communications.
My Virgin landline phone service has been out for over a week now(!), which has been fun in the run up to Christmas. I first reported the fault by e-mail because the fault is that my phone line doesn't work. I realise that's a complicated concept, the fact that I can't use the phone when the phone is dead. Virgin's eventual response started, "I'm just writing in reply to an email you've sent us regarding the loss of your telephone service. I've tried ringing you for a chat about this but can't seem to get hold of you."
Aren't they sweet, if not very quick to grasp these technical matters. The message ended by asking me to telephone a number to make an appointment for a technician.
Yes, I know I could borrow a neighbour's phone, but in London many of us wouldn't impose on people we generally only nod to when we pass in the street, and working in London means my close friends are spread around the home counties and not easily accessible, nor would I want to run up someone's bill ringing Virgin's call centre on the other side of the world. And my old-fashioned love of a peaceful life with no desire for people to be able to reach me anywhere at any time means I only have a pay-as-you-go mobile (usually switched off) that needs topping up and could never afford to spend an hour listening to a recorded message of someone saying how much she values my call and that they're very busy but please hold.
When I finally got to my office, I was able to make the appointment only after said call centre spent an age (once I reached a human) politely trying to suggest the fault was mine until I swore on my great-aunt's grave and promised to hand over my first born if I were wrong, which I wasn't. So now my week of feeling like I was in one of those old horror films where the phone line to the house is cut before the scary villian breaks in....is over. And I feel free and safe again.
Virgin's reaction, though friendly in their e-mail, opens a whole world of possibilities in customer service. Perhaps next we'll come across a motor insurer that refuses to honour your claim that your car was totalled when it flipped over a cliff and burst into flames....unless you drive it into their garage to be examined. Perhaps that's happened to you.....
My Virgin landline phone service has been out for over a week now(!), which has been fun in the run up to Christmas. I first reported the fault by e-mail because the fault is that my phone line doesn't work. I realise that's a complicated concept, the fact that I can't use the phone when the phone is dead. Virgin's eventual response started, "I'm just writing in reply to an email you've sent us regarding the loss of your telephone service. I've tried ringing you for a chat about this but can't seem to get hold of you."
Aren't they sweet, if not very quick to grasp these technical matters. The message ended by asking me to telephone a number to make an appointment for a technician.
Yes, I know I could borrow a neighbour's phone, but in London many of us wouldn't impose on people we generally only nod to when we pass in the street, and working in London means my close friends are spread around the home counties and not easily accessible, nor would I want to run up someone's bill ringing Virgin's call centre on the other side of the world. And my old-fashioned love of a peaceful life with no desire for people to be able to reach me anywhere at any time means I only have a pay-as-you-go mobile (usually switched off) that needs topping up and could never afford to spend an hour listening to a recorded message of someone saying how much she values my call and that they're very busy but please hold.
When I finally got to my office, I was able to make the appointment only after said call centre spent an age (once I reached a human) politely trying to suggest the fault was mine until I swore on my great-aunt's grave and promised to hand over my first born if I were wrong, which I wasn't. So now my week of feeling like I was in one of those old horror films where the phone line to the house is cut before the scary villian breaks in....is over. And I feel free and safe again.
Virgin's reaction, though friendly in their e-mail, opens a whole world of possibilities in customer service. Perhaps next we'll come across a motor insurer that refuses to honour your claim that your car was totalled when it flipped over a cliff and burst into flames....unless you drive it into their garage to be examined. Perhaps that's happened to you.....
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Another Day in the Life with Music on the Journey
Sorry for the lack of posts but I’m so often snowed under by work….I hope to post something shortly but in the interim, I shall do something boring, just let you know what my MP3 player played me (in random play mode) yesterday on the train. It was in an agreeable, peaceful mood, and led me to reminisce about my brief encounters with Pete Townshend and Bobby McFerrin (they weren't together).
1. Over My Head – Aztec Camera. I adore Roddy Frame’s work but this one’s a bit sickly; I’ve heard this track compared to Chet Baker-like jazz, and oddly the first time my Zen ever played a Chet Baker track, which it has held silently for over a year, is on the same day.
2. I Need Love – Luka Bloom. Christy Moore’s kid brother can do no wrong in my eyes, and though he’s an incredible songwriter, he does good covers, even getting away with this LL Cool J number. The day before yesterday, the Zen played the excellent and catchy Sam Phillips song of the same name.
3. One—Aimee Mann. Originally recorded for a Harry Nilsson tribute album (see below), it was reused on the Magnolia soundtrack album—a fine Paul Thomas Anderson film largely based around Mann’s music that everyone should see; it’s a great ensemble piece where even Tom Cruise doesn’t come out as ‘the star’, although it’s a bit long but worth it. Backing vocals on this track are provided by Squeeze’s Chris Difford and Neil Innes of the Rutles and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I believe Innes was the one I saw open for legendary comic Bob Newhart a few years ago when Innes was painfully out of step with the audience, which remained largely silent, and the whole night was awful as the dreadful barely existent sound system (a single amp on stage) meant most of us heard nothing and much of the audience spent Newhart's set searching for theatre staff to kill.
4. Celtic New Year – Van Morrison. Fairly recent recording with an early Van feel.
5. Silver Lining – Steve Poltz. I deleted this mid-way; it was too country for starters and must have been a result of my thinking, when I first bought the Zen, that 30GB was an endless amount of space so I could slap on any old whole album. I’m astonished to learn this was a single. Steve's other stuff is enjoyable, but I must confess to learning about him at a Jewel concert when taking a friend as a birthday gift; he opened the show with a delightfully zany set and loads of confident talent in comedy and on guitar, then joined her on stage as part of her band. He was her ex-boyfriend and co-writer of her hit You Were Meant for Me, which got into the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running single in the Billboard Top 100, and apparently it was he who first discovered her, asking the waitress to join him on stage, where she was spotted by talent hunters. He has a freaky MySpace site that, with typical wackiness, suggests that most of his songs are about wolves and that his genre is gospel/Chinese pop/death metal.
6. Bring Him Home/Vincent - Peter Corry/Brian Kennedy. From the George Best memorial service. Kennedy replaces the one mention of “Vincent” in Don MacLean’s lovely tribute to Vincent Van Gogh with “George”, and Corry gives a moving rendition of the gorgeous song from Les Miserables, which was recently so perfectly delivered by Alfie Boe at the Festival of Remembrance, as I mentioned in a previous post.
7. Don’t Worry, Be Happy – Bobby McFerrin. Cute, but I can’t really take his advice because he offers no solutions. If the verses were ‘here’s how to win the lottery’ or ‘give me your address, I will send you some of my vast wealth’, I would find it a lot easier not to worry and be happy. When you’re worried about not being able to pay your rent, I don’t see how it’s helpful to have someone warn you that frowning might bring everyone else down, as you really wouldn’t care. But it’s catchy. I once encountered McFerrin at the gourmet grocery/restaurant where I worked in North Carolina; he was a guest at the adjacent inn and had been in for breakfast, and I was working the till. He was so quiet, I took little notice until the couple behind him in the queue gushed after he’d left, as they had tickets to see him in concert that night. He’s very nice, very normal. Doesn’t walk around making sound effects, saves it for the show.
8. Words of Love – Mama Cass. Sublime. My father raised me as a big Mama Cass fan, and Dream a Little Dream of Me is one of my ‘default songs’, ie one I find myself singing around the house nearly all the time—along with Tim Finn’s Young Mountain. If I were to struggle to find a connection between some of the artists in this Zen-produced random playlist, I could point to the fact that it contains Aimee Mann’s cover of a Harry Nilsson song—one of a tribute album to which Ron Sexsmith also contributed--and that Mama Cass died (of heart failure—she didn’t choke on her own vomit as the story goes) in Harry Nilsson’s London flat when he was away, as did Keith Moon (not on the same night; a few years later of an overdose, when Nilsson was also away), and Nilsson then sold the flat to Moon’s bandmate (in The Who of course) Pete Townshend.
9. Baby This Night – Hawksley Workman. Quirky Workman, real name Ryan Corrigan, is a Juno award winner—the Canadian Grammies—for Best New Solo Artist. Known for great live shows with odd dances, but I've not yet had the privilege...
10. Under the Skin – Lindsay Buckingham. Title track from his first solo album in 15 years, largely acoustic with him playing almost all the instruments—as Joan Armatrading (see below) tends to do on her more recent albums.
On the train home after working late at the office:-
1. Come Rain or Come Shine – Peggy Lee. Nothing I can add to this splendour; it’s Peggy Lee.
2. Give Me My Rapture – Van Morrison. From Poetic Champions Compose….I can forgive the Zen playing Van more than once in a session as I have so very much Van on it.
3. Ferry Cross the Mersey – Gerry and the Pacemakers. I only recently learned that Frankie Goes to Hollywood recorded a cover of this, which I’ve lived happily without hearing, but I must have heard in 1989 the charity version recorded by Frankie’s Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney, the Christians and Gerry Marsden himself in aid of those affected by the Hillsborough disaster. I was in London most of that year, and I always remember my worried father ringing from the States to make sure I was safe when he’d heard the tragic news, and I cruelly acted like the thoughtless youngster I was by replying to his caring kindness with a sarky, “Why on earth would I be at a football match in Liverpool?!?’, which I so regretted saying.
4. Kare Kare – Crowded House. The Finns have been top favourites for decades, but I seem to be the only Finn fan who didn’t see as masterful this Youth-produced Together Alone album, which was recorded (after Tim Finn left following one album) at Karekare Beach as used in The Piano; I never took to it as much as their earlier albums, and though this near jam session is good, it feels a bit like Crowded House imitating Moody Blues. I can be that critical because they set the standard so high; even their lesser pieces are relatively outstanding.
5. Keep On Running – Spencer Davis Group. I must confess that my first real awareness of Stevie Winwood was the Higher Love video played endlessly on MTV. Thankfully I’ve gone backwards, and I love this and I’m a Man; they’re always strangely uplifting. I recently saw on TOTP2 an archive clip of Chicago of dreary If You Leave Me Now fame covering I’m a Man, but they were quite different from that Chicago; it was on their debut album in 1969 and they were called the Chicago Transit Authority then. Thinking of Jefferson Airplane (later Jefferson Starship and then just Starship), I wonder if transport was a popular theme in band names at the time; I’m sure more will occur to me later. Like, uh, Steve Winwood’s Traffic, for starters….
6. Angelou – Van Morrison. You see? Lots of Van to choose from. I’m always reminded when I hear Van sing this one that I’ve been pronouncing it wrong; he says it like some nativity scene proclamation: ‘Angel, Lo!’. I always thought of it as sounding more like Angela combined with toilet, more like: Ann-je-loo. Or if calling her name in Paris, as in the song, I might say Ahnzh-ih-loo. But maybe it’s the Belfast accent. I saw Holly Lerski’s excellent band called Angelou, which has been described as being the spiritual sister of Jeff Buckley, open at Ronnie Scotts once when Boo Hewerdine, whose label picked up Angelou’s first album, played—I think the time he performed with with Gary Clark of Danny Wilson, followed by Colin Vearncombe (ex-Black) and his tremendous voice. But I don’t recall how Angelou the band pronounced their name.
7. The Kids Are Alright – The Who. There used to be a guy in my junior high French class who wore a badge/button with Pete Townshend’s warped-looking 60s face on it every single day. It took me ages to understand this hero worship of such a weird looking guy. (Imagine if, as adults, we went around wearing badges every day of people we admired.) A few years later, I found myself staying in a large hotel in Florida where the Who were also staying, and I convinced the mater to park her car near where I was sure they’d exit the sprawling hotel en route to the concert so I could wait and watch discreetly. I seemed alone in my interest as everyone else at the hotel was there for a field hockey tournament. When they hadn’t appeared by the time I thought they were due to leave, I looked down and fumbled with the newspaper to find the concert listing to check the time, then looked up to find that I’d just missed seeing Roger Daltrey get into a white limo, which drove off. I was about to give up when I saw a single groupie set up camp nearby and I figured she knew something. Sure enough, I soon made my mother jump out of her skin when I surprised myself by shouting, ‘OHMIGOD THAT’S PETE TOWNSHEND!’ ‘Who’s Pete Townshend?’ she asked. ‘I thought you wanted to see The Who.’
This was long before the days of compact digital cameras and cameraphones, but I remembered as I jumped up that my mother, a realtor, kept a camera in her glovebox, which I grabbed as I ran out of the car the few yards to where Pete was reluctantly, grumpily pausing for a photo by the groupie. I muttered a sort of ‘me, too?’ request, and he nodded vaguely but made it clear he was leaving in one minute. I pressed the shutter button, nothing happened, and as I helplessly examined the camera in panicked agony, Townshend turned and got into his limo and left. I was initially miserable until I realised that I had accomplished my original mission of just getting to see The Who—or one of them—close up. My lasting memory was that this older Townshend looked nothing like that warped figure on John from French Class’s badge. He was actually a fairly attractive man in person with beautiful blue eyes that seemed too gentle for a rock star who smashed precious musical instruments that had done him no harm.
So back to the MP3 list….
8. Love Will Tear Us Apart ’95 – Joy Division. The 1995 Permanent remix with added guitar. I look forward to finding the time to see finally the highly praised Anton Corbijn film of Ian Curtis’ life, Control.
9. Look for the Silver Lining – Chet Baker. He always makes me think of watching Ewan McGregor from a front row seat in the stalls do an excellent job in his uncle (Local Hero etc actor) Denis Lawson’s revival of David Halliwell’s Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs, originally a 60s play and film with Beatles connections, which I seem to recall played a lot of Chet Baker to create the atmosphere, unless it was Dave Brubeck and I’m remembering wrong.
10. Idiot Boy – Ron Sexsmith. “God so loved the idiot boy / He gave him coffee grounds in a paper cup / And a reason everyday to keep getting up / In a world that drags you down”. Perhaps he’ll be next on the Starbucks label. Humble and very highly regarded by well-known fellow artists, but bizarrely underappreciated by the average record-buyer, this excellent Canadian singer/songwriter has, like Workman, won a Juno: Songwriter of the Year in 2005, having been nominated several times before and no doubt in future.
11. Everyday Boy – Joan Armatrading. Kinda interesting that the Zen chose two ‘adjective Boy’ songs. This one is also grand: “But you respect yourself / And you let it show / Some fade with guilt And the shame / The way you Tell your story / With no tears For yourself.” That's made me think of someone I've mentioned in posts here before but I've gone on about that enough.
Friday, 30 November 2007
Alan Johnston & Jon Snow at the RSA
I meant to post this Wednesday but work pressures intervened….
I found myself this lunchtime at the lovely RSA building just off the Strand, sitting in a muralled 250-year-old room with a small group of mostly older, eccentric academics facing a desk behind which Jon Snow, the hugely respectable Channel 4 newsreader, faced back, killing a few minutes until the subject of the “In Conversation with” event, former BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, managed to extricate himself from a taxi caught in traffic to reach us.
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) “works to remove the barriers to social progress” by driving “ideas, innovation and social change” through lectures and the like. When I entered its lovely house and said I’d come for the Alan Johnston lecture, I was bemused to be asked if I were one of the speakers. Not just because, statistically, I should think it safe to assume that most of the people coming for the event would not be one of the speakers, but also because it’s been a long while since I’ve been mistaken for either Jon Snow or Alan Johnston, particularly when wearing a skirt. I did wonder if I should offer to have a go, giving Alan a rest from repeating the story of his kidnap, but I know I would disappoint his audience.
Despite these shortcomings, I was shown to the Great Room, with its surrounding James Barry murals called The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture, where the small group gathering included many forthright grey-haired professor types, including a dignified bearded man in cycle gear with what looked like a miner’s lamp strapped to his forehead, who got up from his front row seat to help himself to a handful of the wrapped mints in a bowl on the desk reserved for Jon Snow and Alan Johnston. I guessed that must be a privilege reserved for RSA fellows.
When Jon Snow came in and sat beside the depleted mint bowl, Jonathan Carr-West of the RSA explained the plan to begin In Conversation with Alan Johnston without Alan Johnston, when I doubt we’d mind waiting. Apparently Snow had agreed at short notice to chair this event; I wondered who had dropped out, but he seemed ideally suited, particularly as an impressive past foreign correspondent himself and patron of Prisoners Abroad. Carr-West earned a chuckle and a surprised look from Snow when he suggested that Snow kill time by giving us an early peak at the evening news.
Snow explained that, when Alan joined us, it would be their first meeting, though he could confirm that Alan was as modest and straightforward as he appeared, and described him as a “high quality hack as we all aspire to be”. He noted that this conversation would be taking place the day after the Middle East peace talks in Annapolis which, he said, basically altogether excluded Gaza, where the situation would grow consistently worse every year of our lives. He said he hoped but doubted the talks would help, and it seemed odd that Bush, a man of many holidays, had suddenly taken an interest in the topic so late in his presidency, compared to Clinton who worked so hard to help.
He mentioned that Norman Kember was in the audience and hoped he and Alan would talk about their shared experiences. Snow did not explain but Kember, a retired professor of biophysics, was one of four peace activists kidnapped in Iraq in 2005 and held for three months before a British special forces-led initiative freed them—all but the American, who sadly had been executed. Controversy ensued as the military did not believe Kember explicitly thanked his rescuers and said they’d had to devote valuable resources to freeing him when he’d ignored advice not to go to Baghdad in the first place.
At this point, Alan Johnston rather humbly entered the room bedecked with blue--blazer, shirt and jeans—with nearly a twinkle in his eye, and took his seat beside Snow to great applause. He immediately launched into that enthusiastic and fluid style of speaking, apologising profusely for being (only slightly) tardy and out of breath as he’d had to abandon the taxi and run here from the Tube station, and he said this was the first time in about five years that he’d been late for anything. With that knowledge and the suggestion when I arrived that I was his doppelganger, I must be the Bizarro Alan.
Snow took over to let Alan get his breath back, saying that the last time he’d seen Alan was in a photo he was holding whilst standing with myriad colleagues in protest at Alan’s kidnap earlier this year. Alan described how, on a rare occasion when his moody guard let him see the television, he caught a glimpse of the coverage of those worldwide protests and had seen in the faces of many of those taking part a look that they thought Alan was gone for good, which had been harrowing.
He referred to the fact that, at the time of his kidnap, he had only days left before his contract in Gaza finished and he had already booked his flight, so one of the hardest days of his captivity was the day he knew he should be in a departure lounge catching that flight with an empty seat.
Alan confirmed Snow’s comment that he wasn’t a religious man, telling the Bishop’s son that he had never prayed before being kidnapped so he felt it would be wrong to do so during his captivity, although there was one night when he briefly considered that it might not do any harm, but he’d seen so much suffering amongst innocent people that he felt that if there were a God, He didn’t get that involved in our daily lives or that—in such situations--perhaps He would not need to be asked.
The first audience member to ask a question was a young woman Alan greeted with a smile of delighted recognition, as it transpired she’d once worked with him. She said, on the glorious day we woke to the news of his freedom, she just knew the first thing he’d do was cut his hair despite surely competing priorities, and indeed he appeared at the big press conference that followed with a shaven head (referring to it as helping to remove that “just kidnapped look”). She asked whether, in the immediate chaos that followed his release and being taken to meet the Hamas leader, he just longed for some time to himself. He replied that, as a journalist, he was aware of the circus that could be expected and knew his time would not be his own, although he might have preferred to do things other than, for instance, have breakfast with the Hamas cabinet. He found when he returned to Scotland that his parents’ house and lawn were full of “our colleagues”, and he’d had to stress to those journalists, “I’m the same, I’m the same, I’m the same!” As for the haircut, it was a priority although he was not a vain man, and someone had unkindly said he’d looked like Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons on his release.
Norman Kember spoke next, referring to his own police-issue haircut on his release, as the stylist had been a Superintendent, and he asked whether Alan had worried that his kidnappers might force him to convert to Islam, as had happened to the Fox reporters briefly held hostage in 2006. Alan first thanked Kember for the book he’d sent, which I initially pictured to be some inspirational poetry to help him recover from his ordeal, but then realised that Kember has recently published a book on his experience. Alan answered that he was aware that his kidnappers knew it would be humiliating to force him to convert to Islam, but for some reason, the most they did was make him watch an hour-long programme in English (upon learning that his Arabic was too weak to follow the previously proffered propaganda) about why he should convert.
A man near me asked a long question referring to Gaza politics and Hamas, which had been instrumental to his release but was considered by many to be a terrorist organisation, having carried out numerous suicide bombings and attacks against civilians. Alan acknowledged his gratitude for their part in securing his freedom, but said he completely understood why some people wouldn’t want them to be seated at a table of peace talks. However, he said, Hamas could not just be wished away, and it could be likened to someone deciding not to hold talks with the IRA (or presumably Sinn Fein). When Snow pressed him for opinions on the current situation there, Alan pointed out that he’d been out of the loop on Gaza for about nine months, which was interesting as I’d been wondering why, in a new London-based role and in this age of journalists interviewing other journalists, he had not been commenting in news reports about the Annapolis talks.
Jon Snow asked about the “psychiatric” effects of the kidnapping, and Alan said the Beeb had looked after him wonderfully, sending out a psychologist to assess him when he was released, and the two had spoken a few times since and both agreed after a recent health check that Alan’s fine right now. He explained the mental exercises he had applied to keep himself sane, such as visualising a list on the right side of the wall of the dark things that might take hold of him, and a list on the left of the wall of the good things for which he could be thankful, such as having a radio, and he tried to lean towards the left side. He said he had so much time to do nothing but think that he found himself remembering details such as the name of the guy at the back of his woodworking class in Port Elizabeth when he was 12 who was good at dovetail joints.
He'd tackled many great issues in his mind and at one point felt he had worked out a solution to the Darfur conflict in Sudan, but sadly didn’t recall it later. He said he wrote a lot of rubbish poetry and prose whilst there and entertained thoughts of writing the great British novel, but as he had no writing instruments, he struggled as he’d have to remember the first 18 lines of text whilst composing the 19th, so it became a depressing exercise in memory. Alan said that for now, he felt together and okay and didn’t have another appointment with the psychologist, which the crowd received with smiles and a sense of silent applause.
He said, as his mother had put it, it had been a “funny old year”, as he’d been banged up alone for the first half and was spending the second half as a “quasi-D-list celebrity” who was recognised in Tesco's, though he made it clear he was always grateful for everyone’s support.
Someone asked about his relationship with his captors whom they suggested Alan had referred to as world class lunatics, which made Alan duck and say not to tell them he’d said that. Alan spoke of seeing the loathing in the eyes of his main guard, who would fly into unprovoked rages, but because Alan had no control or influence on the situation, he would thank the guard for any kindness—be it delivering his meals or a rare gift of coffee—and try always to be pleasant. He mentioned that, on the 100th day of his captivity, he asked the guard what he thought Alan’s name might be and the guard didn’t know. He described the odd experience of trying to engage in conversation as the guard “rifled through his militiaware” in a wardrobe in the room where Alan was kept. Alan said he’d been asked before whether he thought the rare treats including a glimpse of television to see his parents’ appeal were an attempt to manipulate him, but he didn’t think those individuals were sophisticated enough to organise their thoughts that way. In answer to another question, Alan referred to former Beirut hostage John McCarthy having said that suffering in that way made you more empathetic.
When Snow asked whether the future would see Alan as the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent, Alan joked yes--or Paris—and stressed that the BBC had saved his bacon in Gaza so he wouldn’t jump ship to Sky or to Snow’s Channel 4. He agreed that he must be the BBC World Service’s best listener, as that had been his lifeline throughout his captivity and he’d even listened to their most obscure art programmes. He conceded that, having spent much of his life campaigning hard to get those positions in Afghanistan and Gaza, he now found that he really loved being in Britain and that, for the first time, he was not wishing to be somewhere like the Sudan. He added that there was only so much he could put his parents through and mentioned their concerns even when he left for a holiday in Spain. Now, he planned to work in London for a while and acknowledged that, after nine months of struggling on the Tube and dealing with traffic like today, he might change his mind, but at present, he was pleased to be in Britain, possibly because the kidnap had taken a lot out of him.
We were disappointed to be allotted only three more minutes in Alan’s company, and he hurriedly referred in answering another question to a message from former Beirut hostage Terry Waite that he’d heard when listening in captivity to the World Service, who said Alan’s mind and body would find ways of coping. Alan initially wasn’t confident but then thought of the parents he’d seen in hospitals dealing with their kids’ leukaemia, who surely would have thought months earlier that they’d never be able to cope in such a situation, but they just do, you have to get on with it, just keep on carrying on, and that was what he did. You find a way to cope, you find strength. When asked if he’d talked to himself in captivity, Alan said he’d tried to avoid doing anything that he might have judged to be a bit mad, and speaking aloud to himself fell into that category.
The lights dimmed as the event officially ended, but Alan remained at that desk as some of us filed up to have a word and ask him to sign our copies of Kidnapped and other Dispatches, his From Our Own Correspondent edited book published by Profile last week. An engrossing read in a nifty little book, everyone should get one; The Guardian recently printed an excerpt.
The person in front of me in the peaceful queue was someone that Alan had known but not met face-to-face before, and I felt guilty inadvertently making the chap feel he was holding us up, so I turned away to give them some privacy, only to find myself facing Norman Kember. I was naturally going to let him jump in and speak with Alan, but the man behind me started chatting to him so he was diverted when Alan became free. That man had just been telling his companion of the questions he’d wanted to ask but didn’t dare jump in as he wasn’t an RSA Fellow, an apparent protocol that never occurred to me. Indeed, most of the questioners had identified themselves as fellows, other than one who gave his name followed by “mere mortal” with such aplomb that no one seemed to bat an eyelid.
I asked Alan to sign my book, though the idea of snatching someone’s signature seems kind of silly when you think about it, and these days, I suppose I could scan it in and take out a mortgage in his name, particularly since the postman kindly brought me that unexpected package of CDRs with loads of families’ names and account details on them. However, it does make me look more warmly on the book and better remember the enjoyable experience. Alan was just as marvellous, gregarious and kind with everyone in the queue as he always seems to be. He spelled my unusual name right and made a charming comment when I placed the blame for its oddity on the fact that my parents had thought it up in the 60s (though to be fair to them, rather than wearing flowers and doing drugs, my parents were living in Okinawa where my father was based as a young Air Force officer fighting the Vietnam War. It’s shocking to think back and realise we in the States had conscription; imagine that with the equally unpopular military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, being told your civilian son/brother/husband had to go fight).
When I told Alan I hoped his life returned to something more peaceful as soon as he wanted it, he launched into his usual vibrant, welcome way of responding, clearly longing for things to quiet down but quickly adding cheerfully that, of course compared to the kidnap, this was no problem. He did say it was awful opening the papers and seeing himself so often, and always with the worst possible pictures, though I’ve yet to see a bad photo of him (and I disagreed with the Krusty the Clown allusion). He continued to speak kindly and enthusiastically to all those around him, his beautiful, sparkling personality having wowed us with his ability to bring humour to descriptions of even the darkest situations. Every answer he had given had us laughing despite the true horrors of his ordeal; he does seem to be so well-grounded and positive that the good humour is not just a front for a darker inability to cope. I hope that remains the case for him. A model of rectitude, if this lovely man ever gets bored of journalism, he should give classes on How To Be a Good Human. Though I’m sure he’d deny all knowledge…..
Having just caught my train upon reaching Charing Cross, I checked my compact to remove some street grit from my eye and noticed that the recent cold had left me with a bad case of nose leprosy. I realised with horror that everyone I’d seen all afternoon would have thought that not only was I a nose-picker, but a fairly unsuccessful one at that. Fortunately, I’m sure no one really looks at me; I’m a Londoner, after all. Then walking home from the station, I realised that I’d taken my camera with me but hadn’t thought or drummed up the courage to take a photo at the RSA; I go all shy and hate to be intrusive. Just then a fox rushed past me into a
front garden in broad daylight, so I took a photo of him, although he refused to pose and was half-hiding behind a car by the time I got everything sorted. At least it gave other pedestrians and the people in that house a chance to think I was mad (and no doubt to note the apparent evidence that I was rubbish at picking my nose). All in all, an unusually fine day.
I found myself this lunchtime at the lovely RSA building just off the Strand, sitting in a muralled 250-year-old room with a small group of mostly older, eccentric academics facing a desk behind which Jon Snow, the hugely respectable Channel 4 newsreader, faced back, killing a few minutes until the subject of the “In Conversation with” event, former BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, managed to extricate himself from a taxi caught in traffic to reach us.
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) “works to remove the barriers to social progress” by driving “ideas, innovation and social change” through lectures and the like. When I entered its lovely house and said I’d come for the Alan Johnston lecture, I was bemused to be asked if I were one of the speakers. Not just because, statistically, I should think it safe to assume that most of the people coming for the event would not be one of the speakers, but also because it’s been a long while since I’ve been mistaken for either Jon Snow or Alan Johnston, particularly when wearing a skirt. I did wonder if I should offer to have a go, giving Alan a rest from repeating the story of his kidnap, but I know I would disappoint his audience.
Despite these shortcomings, I was shown to the Great Room, with its surrounding James Barry murals called The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture, where the small group gathering included many forthright grey-haired professor types, including a dignified bearded man in cycle gear with what looked like a miner’s lamp strapped to his forehead, who got up from his front row seat to help himself to a handful of the wrapped mints in a bowl on the desk reserved for Jon Snow and Alan Johnston. I guessed that must be a privilege reserved for RSA fellows.
When Jon Snow came in and sat beside the depleted mint bowl, Jonathan Carr-West of the RSA explained the plan to begin In Conversation with Alan Johnston without Alan Johnston, when I doubt we’d mind waiting. Apparently Snow had agreed at short notice to chair this event; I wondered who had dropped out, but he seemed ideally suited, particularly as an impressive past foreign correspondent himself and patron of Prisoners Abroad. Carr-West earned a chuckle and a surprised look from Snow when he suggested that Snow kill time by giving us an early peak at the evening news.
Snow explained that, when Alan joined us, it would be their first meeting, though he could confirm that Alan was as modest and straightforward as he appeared, and described him as a “high quality hack as we all aspire to be”. He noted that this conversation would be taking place the day after the Middle East peace talks in Annapolis which, he said, basically altogether excluded Gaza, where the situation would grow consistently worse every year of our lives. He said he hoped but doubted the talks would help, and it seemed odd that Bush, a man of many holidays, had suddenly taken an interest in the topic so late in his presidency, compared to Clinton who worked so hard to help.
He mentioned that Norman Kember was in the audience and hoped he and Alan would talk about their shared experiences. Snow did not explain but Kember, a retired professor of biophysics, was one of four peace activists kidnapped in Iraq in 2005 and held for three months before a British special forces-led initiative freed them—all but the American, who sadly had been executed. Controversy ensued as the military did not believe Kember explicitly thanked his rescuers and said they’d had to devote valuable resources to freeing him when he’d ignored advice not to go to Baghdad in the first place.
At this point, Alan Johnston rather humbly entered the room bedecked with blue--blazer, shirt and jeans—with nearly a twinkle in his eye, and took his seat beside Snow to great applause. He immediately launched into that enthusiastic and fluid style of speaking, apologising profusely for being (only slightly) tardy and out of breath as he’d had to abandon the taxi and run here from the Tube station, and he said this was the first time in about five years that he’d been late for anything. With that knowledge and the suggestion when I arrived that I was his doppelganger, I must be the Bizarro Alan.
Snow took over to let Alan get his breath back, saying that the last time he’d seen Alan was in a photo he was holding whilst standing with myriad colleagues in protest at Alan’s kidnap earlier this year. Alan described how, on a rare occasion when his moody guard let him see the television, he caught a glimpse of the coverage of those worldwide protests and had seen in the faces of many of those taking part a look that they thought Alan was gone for good, which had been harrowing.
He referred to the fact that, at the time of his kidnap, he had only days left before his contract in Gaza finished and he had already booked his flight, so one of the hardest days of his captivity was the day he knew he should be in a departure lounge catching that flight with an empty seat.
Alan confirmed Snow’s comment that he wasn’t a religious man, telling the Bishop’s son that he had never prayed before being kidnapped so he felt it would be wrong to do so during his captivity, although there was one night when he briefly considered that it might not do any harm, but he’d seen so much suffering amongst innocent people that he felt that if there were a God, He didn’t get that involved in our daily lives or that—in such situations--perhaps He would not need to be asked.
The first audience member to ask a question was a young woman Alan greeted with a smile of delighted recognition, as it transpired she’d once worked with him. She said, on the glorious day we woke to the news of his freedom, she just knew the first thing he’d do was cut his hair despite surely competing priorities, and indeed he appeared at the big press conference that followed with a shaven head (referring to it as helping to remove that “just kidnapped look”). She asked whether, in the immediate chaos that followed his release and being taken to meet the Hamas leader, he just longed for some time to himself. He replied that, as a journalist, he was aware of the circus that could be expected and knew his time would not be his own, although he might have preferred to do things other than, for instance, have breakfast with the Hamas cabinet. He found when he returned to Scotland that his parents’ house and lawn were full of “our colleagues”, and he’d had to stress to those journalists, “I’m the same, I’m the same, I’m the same!” As for the haircut, it was a priority although he was not a vain man, and someone had unkindly said he’d looked like Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons on his release.
Norman Kember spoke next, referring to his own police-issue haircut on his release, as the stylist had been a Superintendent, and he asked whether Alan had worried that his kidnappers might force him to convert to Islam, as had happened to the Fox reporters briefly held hostage in 2006. Alan first thanked Kember for the book he’d sent, which I initially pictured to be some inspirational poetry to help him recover from his ordeal, but then realised that Kember has recently published a book on his experience. Alan answered that he was aware that his kidnappers knew it would be humiliating to force him to convert to Islam, but for some reason, the most they did was make him watch an hour-long programme in English (upon learning that his Arabic was too weak to follow the previously proffered propaganda) about why he should convert.
A man near me asked a long question referring to Gaza politics and Hamas, which had been instrumental to his release but was considered by many to be a terrorist organisation, having carried out numerous suicide bombings and attacks against civilians. Alan acknowledged his gratitude for their part in securing his freedom, but said he completely understood why some people wouldn’t want them to be seated at a table of peace talks. However, he said, Hamas could not just be wished away, and it could be likened to someone deciding not to hold talks with the IRA (or presumably Sinn Fein). When Snow pressed him for opinions on the current situation there, Alan pointed out that he’d been out of the loop on Gaza for about nine months, which was interesting as I’d been wondering why, in a new London-based role and in this age of journalists interviewing other journalists, he had not been commenting in news reports about the Annapolis talks.
Jon Snow asked about the “psychiatric” effects of the kidnapping, and Alan said the Beeb had looked after him wonderfully, sending out a psychologist to assess him when he was released, and the two had spoken a few times since and both agreed after a recent health check that Alan’s fine right now. He explained the mental exercises he had applied to keep himself sane, such as visualising a list on the right side of the wall of the dark things that might take hold of him, and a list on the left of the wall of the good things for which he could be thankful, such as having a radio, and he tried to lean towards the left side. He said he had so much time to do nothing but think that he found himself remembering details such as the name of the guy at the back of his woodworking class in Port Elizabeth when he was 12 who was good at dovetail joints.
He'd tackled many great issues in his mind and at one point felt he had worked out a solution to the Darfur conflict in Sudan, but sadly didn’t recall it later. He said he wrote a lot of rubbish poetry and prose whilst there and entertained thoughts of writing the great British novel, but as he had no writing instruments, he struggled as he’d have to remember the first 18 lines of text whilst composing the 19th, so it became a depressing exercise in memory. Alan said that for now, he felt together and okay and didn’t have another appointment with the psychologist, which the crowd received with smiles and a sense of silent applause.
He said, as his mother had put it, it had been a “funny old year”, as he’d been banged up alone for the first half and was spending the second half as a “quasi-D-list celebrity” who was recognised in Tesco's, though he made it clear he was always grateful for everyone’s support.
Someone asked about his relationship with his captors whom they suggested Alan had referred to as world class lunatics, which made Alan duck and say not to tell them he’d said that. Alan spoke of seeing the loathing in the eyes of his main guard, who would fly into unprovoked rages, but because Alan had no control or influence on the situation, he would thank the guard for any kindness—be it delivering his meals or a rare gift of coffee—and try always to be pleasant. He mentioned that, on the 100th day of his captivity, he asked the guard what he thought Alan’s name might be and the guard didn’t know. He described the odd experience of trying to engage in conversation as the guard “rifled through his militiaware” in a wardrobe in the room where Alan was kept. Alan said he’d been asked before whether he thought the rare treats including a glimpse of television to see his parents’ appeal were an attempt to manipulate him, but he didn’t think those individuals were sophisticated enough to organise their thoughts that way. In answer to another question, Alan referred to former Beirut hostage John McCarthy having said that suffering in that way made you more empathetic.
When Snow asked whether the future would see Alan as the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent, Alan joked yes--or Paris—and stressed that the BBC had saved his bacon in Gaza so he wouldn’t jump ship to Sky or to Snow’s Channel 4. He agreed that he must be the BBC World Service’s best listener, as that had been his lifeline throughout his captivity and he’d even listened to their most obscure art programmes. He conceded that, having spent much of his life campaigning hard to get those positions in Afghanistan and Gaza, he now found that he really loved being in Britain and that, for the first time, he was not wishing to be somewhere like the Sudan. He added that there was only so much he could put his parents through and mentioned their concerns even when he left for a holiday in Spain. Now, he planned to work in London for a while and acknowledged that, after nine months of struggling on the Tube and dealing with traffic like today, he might change his mind, but at present, he was pleased to be in Britain, possibly because the kidnap had taken a lot out of him.
We were disappointed to be allotted only three more minutes in Alan’s company, and he hurriedly referred in answering another question to a message from former Beirut hostage Terry Waite that he’d heard when listening in captivity to the World Service, who said Alan’s mind and body would find ways of coping. Alan initially wasn’t confident but then thought of the parents he’d seen in hospitals dealing with their kids’ leukaemia, who surely would have thought months earlier that they’d never be able to cope in such a situation, but they just do, you have to get on with it, just keep on carrying on, and that was what he did. You find a way to cope, you find strength. When asked if he’d talked to himself in captivity, Alan said he’d tried to avoid doing anything that he might have judged to be a bit mad, and speaking aloud to himself fell into that category.
The lights dimmed as the event officially ended, but Alan remained at that desk as some of us filed up to have a word and ask him to sign our copies of Kidnapped and other Dispatches, his From Our Own Correspondent edited book published by Profile last week. An engrossing read in a nifty little book, everyone should get one; The Guardian recently printed an excerpt.
The person in front of me in the peaceful queue was someone that Alan had known but not met face-to-face before, and I felt guilty inadvertently making the chap feel he was holding us up, so I turned away to give them some privacy, only to find myself facing Norman Kember. I was naturally going to let him jump in and speak with Alan, but the man behind me started chatting to him so he was diverted when Alan became free. That man had just been telling his companion of the questions he’d wanted to ask but didn’t dare jump in as he wasn’t an RSA Fellow, an apparent protocol that never occurred to me. Indeed, most of the questioners had identified themselves as fellows, other than one who gave his name followed by “mere mortal” with such aplomb that no one seemed to bat an eyelid.
I asked Alan to sign my book, though the idea of snatching someone’s signature seems kind of silly when you think about it, and these days, I suppose I could scan it in and take out a mortgage in his name, particularly since the postman kindly brought me that unexpected package of CDRs with loads of families’ names and account details on them. However, it does make me look more warmly on the book and better remember the enjoyable experience. Alan was just as marvellous, gregarious and kind with everyone in the queue as he always seems to be. He spelled my unusual name right and made a charming comment when I placed the blame for its oddity on the fact that my parents had thought it up in the 60s (though to be fair to them, rather than wearing flowers and doing drugs, my parents were living in Okinawa where my father was based as a young Air Force officer fighting the Vietnam War. It’s shocking to think back and realise we in the States had conscription; imagine that with the equally unpopular military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, being told your civilian son/brother/husband had to go fight).
When I told Alan I hoped his life returned to something more peaceful as soon as he wanted it, he launched into his usual vibrant, welcome way of responding, clearly longing for things to quiet down but quickly adding cheerfully that, of course compared to the kidnap, this was no problem. He did say it was awful opening the papers and seeing himself so often, and always with the worst possible pictures, though I’ve yet to see a bad photo of him (and I disagreed with the Krusty the Clown allusion). He continued to speak kindly and enthusiastically to all those around him, his beautiful, sparkling personality having wowed us with his ability to bring humour to descriptions of even the darkest situations. Every answer he had given had us laughing despite the true horrors of his ordeal; he does seem to be so well-grounded and positive that the good humour is not just a front for a darker inability to cope. I hope that remains the case for him. A model of rectitude, if this lovely man ever gets bored of journalism, he should give classes on How To Be a Good Human. Though I’m sure he’d deny all knowledge…..
Having just caught my train upon reaching Charing Cross, I checked my compact to remove some street grit from my eye and noticed that the recent cold had left me with a bad case of nose leprosy. I realised with horror that everyone I’d seen all afternoon would have thought that not only was I a nose-picker, but a fairly unsuccessful one at that. Fortunately, I’m sure no one really looks at me; I’m a Londoner, after all. Then walking home from the station, I realised that I’d taken my camera with me but hadn’t thought or drummed up the courage to take a photo at the RSA; I go all shy and hate to be intrusive. Just then a fox rushed past me into a
front garden in broad daylight, so I took a photo of him, although he refused to pose and was half-hiding behind a car by the time I got everything sorted. At least it gave other pedestrians and the people in that house a chance to think I was mad (and no doubt to note the apparent evidence that I was rubbish at picking my nose). All in all, an unusually fine day.
My Creative Zen Tries To Comfort Me
Despite spending decades carefully constructing mixed tapes, CDs and minidiscs in order to introduce friends to new music, I find that I happily passed control to my Creative Zen Vision M and have still been unable to take it off random play. The once or twice when I sorted a playlist so I could better get to know my new albums, which are otherwise completely lost amongst the nearly 7700 tracks, I’ve found myself feeling depressed and missing the delight of suddenly being presented with a nostalgic 80s memory or having my heart lifted at some ultra-boppy song I hadn’t thought of for ages. My Zen also usually seems adept at determining my mood, playing cheerful songs when I really need them or switching to gentle classical music when Southeastern are announcing their latest horror to us train passengers. (Does my Zen subscribe to Zen Buddhism?)
I shall expand on that theory when I have more time, but for now, I will just insert the random playlist it provided one stressful day when the expected length of my trip to work doubled. I tried to concentrate on the samples of fine music and remain calm, and I jotted down the tracks to keep myself focused on something other than wanting to kill the sadistic train managers. So for now, here’s a glimpse of a morning’s random choice by my Zen:-
Jackie Wilson Said – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (I prefer Van’s original but this is good fun)
Fantastic Day – Haircut 100 (you’ve lost all respect for me now, haven’t you?)
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A – Angela Malsbury & London Mozart players (played as danger of train being cancelled was announced)
Don’t Cry Baby – Madeleine Peyroux (like new Billie Holiday)
Little Cowboy – Harry Nilsson
Man That I’ve Become – Nick Lowe
You Made a Fool of Me – Tasmin Archer
Something Stupid – Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra
Honey Honey – Feist
People Gonna Talk – James Hunter (like new Sam Cooke)
Anytime - Neil Finn
Rebel Rebel – David Bowie
There Stands the Glass-Ted Baxter (everyone should hear his Biloxi)
Vehicles and Animals - Athlete
Bosom Buddies – Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur (from Mame)
Kids (Rise from the Ashes)-- Ed Harcourt
All I Want is Everything—Darden Smith & Boo Hewerdine
Happy Birthday – Altered Images
Help Yourself - Amy Winehouse
Speaking Confidentially – Cowboy Junkies
Pollution – Tom Lehrer
Different God – Brian Kennedy
Graceland (Live) – Boo Hewerdine (performing his hit with The Bible; did the Zen know he’d written the previous BK song?)
Surf (Live) – Roddy Frame (Everyone must get his Surf album)
In Your Sway – Tim Finn
It’s Been a Long, Long Time – Keely Smith (wife of King of the Swingers Louis Prima)
Carolina – Rico
Bare – Matt Nathanson
Mr Harris – Aimee Mann
Ramshackle Day Parade – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
You Dream Too Much – Richard Thompson
Best Friends – Ron Sexsmith.
I shall expand on that theory when I have more time, but for now, I will just insert the random playlist it provided one stressful day when the expected length of my trip to work doubled. I tried to concentrate on the samples of fine music and remain calm, and I jotted down the tracks to keep myself focused on something other than wanting to kill the sadistic train managers. So for now, here’s a glimpse of a morning’s random choice by my Zen:-
Jackie Wilson Said – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (I prefer Van’s original but this is good fun)
Fantastic Day – Haircut 100 (you’ve lost all respect for me now, haven’t you?)
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A – Angela Malsbury & London Mozart players (played as danger of train being cancelled was announced)
Don’t Cry Baby – Madeleine Peyroux (like new Billie Holiday)
Little Cowboy – Harry Nilsson
Man That I’ve Become – Nick Lowe
You Made a Fool of Me – Tasmin Archer
Something Stupid – Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra
Honey Honey – Feist
People Gonna Talk – James Hunter (like new Sam Cooke)
Anytime - Neil Finn
Rebel Rebel – David Bowie
There Stands the Glass-Ted Baxter (everyone should hear his Biloxi)
Vehicles and Animals - Athlete
Bosom Buddies – Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur (from Mame)
Kids (Rise from the Ashes)-- Ed Harcourt
All I Want is Everything—Darden Smith & Boo Hewerdine
Happy Birthday – Altered Images
Help Yourself - Amy Winehouse
Speaking Confidentially – Cowboy Junkies
Pollution – Tom Lehrer
Different God – Brian Kennedy
Graceland (Live) – Boo Hewerdine (performing his hit with The Bible; did the Zen know he’d written the previous BK song?)
Surf (Live) – Roddy Frame (Everyone must get his Surf album)
In Your Sway – Tim Finn
It’s Been a Long, Long Time – Keely Smith (wife of King of the Swingers Louis Prima)
Carolina – Rico
Bare – Matt Nathanson
Mr Harris – Aimee Mann
Ramshackle Day Parade – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
You Dream Too Much – Richard Thompson
Best Friends – Ron Sexsmith.
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