Wednesday, April 07, 2004

It's a Big Enough Umbrella ...

Listening to - Accelerator - Future Sound Of London

Still plodding on with the Philip Larkin biography. For a book of the life of a man for who not a lot happened, it is a compelling read. I thought at first that it was too detailed, going into so many tiny events of Larkin's life but that now seems to be its best point. I have so many books piled up waiting to be read; I should not have to buy any more for months. The Larkin is taking ages but is worth it.

My daughter has an obsession with Angela Lansbury. It started with the DVD of Bedknobs and Broomsticks which was a great film when I saw it first time around and is so much better on the special edition which puts back many minutes of lost film. Daughter refers to Ms Lansbury as Angela and was pleased to find her presenting he new copy of The Wizard of Oz. The obsession has gone as far as asking for when Murder She Wrote will be back on TV in the afternoons. It will have to be taped though I am not sure how suitable it is for a five-year-old. Actually, remembering the very few times I have seen it, I would question how appropriate it is for a forty-year-old. Daughter has a further obsession with the Sherman Brothers who did the music for BKABS, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I should really write about something important but more and more I am wondering what the point is. So much around us is ludicrous and pointless. What do the bombers want? Why are military bombings different to terrorist bombings? Why do we spend so much on things that give us tiny increases in comfort at the expense of so many other people? And above all this what possibly can we do about any of it? I know there are so many sub-questions to all this but these are always used as obfuscation, to justify the stupidity of the basic problems. And when I get fired up about these things I stand back and realise that I am becoming fired up by people who over-dramatise one side or the other. Witness the 'Low-key demolition' of Ian Huntley's house in Soham that was so Low-key that all the news programs had lingering shots of the excavator knocking the walls over. Maybe it gave closure but surely it being there one day and gone the next would be enough. Witness also the reports of the averted chemical bomb plot. Broadsheet stories downplay the use of the chemical and say that the chemical effects would largely be destroyed in t he explosion. The tabloid view is of a Flesh-eating chemical. Now I would not want to be on the business end of any explosion but do we not play into the hands of terrorists by reacting in such panic to any plot?

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