Heavy Brass

Today is international Herb Alpert Appreciation day. No one fights today - bring the troops home.

No really it is.

I have just spent half a day with some of the worst code ever written and it is not even mine. I would not have written code of such mind-numbing idiocy when my fingers first hit keyboard. Just to let you know the mood I am in and hence explain any uncharacteristic comments here.

What to comment on. Well there are a few people who don't know what day it is. Do the people who carry guns really ALL believe they are fighting for freedom? I know sometimes we sit back and 'accept' a certain level of freedom fighting but the decision over where the line is drawn is arbitrary and seems to depend on which school the protagonists went to. I feel that so many people with this idea of armed struggle just like the swagger and cool look that they think they get from the hardware. When I was a small boy, into guns and playing soldiers it was obvious to me that this was the case. I know that some people really do passionately believe that they will change the world with a kalashnikov or armalite (unconscious decision made to not give these two capital letters) but again it is a case of not looking at the long term consequences. Do the bombers all think that that the enemy will stop being horrible and say "well that showed us didn't it? We shall have a good think about this and maybe we will do what these people want." or do they say "The Bastards! Let's get them". You may argue that International strife and politics is not like a simple dispute between hard cases behind the bike sheds but I will counter with the complex reply that "YES IT IS".

Talking about behind the bike shed reminds me of something. Not that! At school during the Falkland's War, we all gathered er .. behind the bike sheds to listen to radio news reports and I recall the news of the sinking of various ships making us all stop and think hard about this. It made us realise that people were dying rather than just walking unhindered into Port Stanley. I can't say that it was the moment when I stopped thinking like a teenage hooligan and became a well-rounded adult but it may have been the point at which things turned round. At the time I would have said something like Adrian Mole i.e. "It was THE END OF CHILDHOOD" but I like to think that my childhood has not yet ended. The lacerates were running down my face. I actually thought that this article said 'lachrymates' which is closer to the real meaning but it was a synonym for 'tears' as in rips. Celebrate! The world is in safe hands and I am still writing sixth form poetry.

It is always a worry when writing diaries etc that something you write will sound like Adrian Mole. I have been writing diaries for years, most of which sounded like Adrian Mole and I am not going to worry any more. I am just going away to count some Newts now.

Black Dog Running

Soundtrack - Heaven or Las Vegas - Cocteau Twins.

Oceans of something in my head at the moment. Can't really work out what is going on here. The fact that I have logged on means that I felt like writing a few minutes ago but now nothing seems to be worth anything.

In an orange-lit attic room I can see some of the years gone by. The city falls away below the window, rolling over the seven hills that every city seems to be built on until it reaches the sea. It is twighlight in some winter month and the smoke hangs in the streets swallowing the sound - the roar of the traffic heading home like a dream of stability in this catalogue of chaos. It feels like drowning. It feels like I cannot make anyone aware of what I know to be true. I am a child grown up, with thoughts of ghosts and science fighting in my head. Science is winning but the ghosts will melt away and wait in the deep folds of my brain. One day they will come back and stab me - turn my mind back into the jelly that makes me sick and useless. The music melts into silence as the batteries of the radio fade. I have no more and no money to buy any. Tonight is going to be silent and I have read all the books I have. I stare out of the window at the trees on the distant hill. They mark the edge of this city and the start of the next one. Soon the land will be a city and nothing else. We will die as the smoke wins the battle with the Oxygen and we will say why did no one do anything about this.

A pencil rolls off the table to distract me from counting the people walking along the road below. I lean down and pick it up, placing it back on the single unused sheet of paper I have left. I blink as I turn back to the window. The glass is old and has irregularities where it was cut badly. Glass is liquid I once read. Or maybe it isn't. I take a whole minute to think of the possibilities that this gives me. A poem for a window crosses my mind, a burning passionate poem to a thin sheet of silicon. It fades into the distance as I see another person cross the street. They are dressed in a long winter coat. Joy Division fan I think but then I see the briefcase and adjust this to young professional with warm coat. My children all have blue eyes. The phrase pops in my head. And then I hear my father call my name as if something is wrong. The ghosts are back; the manic daemons who make me think of spirits and kill the science. Why did he call me? Is there really something wrong or is it just a chemical in something I ate causing me to hear things? Innovation is killed by this attitude. I have work to do but can build up no enthusiasm for any of it. The man with the long coat has gone; he disappeared at the same moment as a tall blonde woman appears from behind the same wall. She is in early middle age and walks as if she has books on her head. I wonder why she has no car and why she has no coat on but she turns up into the street, which comes up the hill to the hall of my house and knocks on the door of the first house. After a few seconds the door opens and a small child - I cannot tell if it is a boy or a girl - runs out and hugs the woman's legs. The woman chats to the unseen occupant of the house for a minute while the child jumps up and down holding her mother's hand. They turn and walk away with goodbyes I cannot hear. Road, River and Rail.

Milk and kisses. Warm rooms with open fires. All the clichés of a happy childhood hit me in the face as hard as any real punishment. We are emptied of any real life and dumped on a fire like something from the Inferno. Eternity in pain would seem more interesting than this. We have piles of magazines and books and yet we complain that we do not have enough things. The world hates us all so much that it makes tiny creatures to kill us and then not content with this, it makes us kill each other. I cannot tell you the conversations I heard from that window because I cannot write down what people say. They have copyright on their speech and to write it down would attract penalties beyond measure to humans. In the last house in the street below I can just hear the television or radio playing what must be local news. I cannot hear the words but the intonation is there. The stories are told in a way that is slightly less dramatic than their national superlatives. The "I am too good for this trash" implication is obvious. It is obvious here. This is trash by any name. Rubbish to fill up a boring lunchtime with a description of a boring evening - the verbal equivalent of Sickert's ennui only they have no window and I at least have a whole city to play God over. If only I was the controller of this city. I could turn people around, pick them up and dump them in houses where they didn't belong like the Brontës' toy soldiers. It would be an urban Gondal or Angria. I could make up stories and act them out. I have all the best ideas. I would have made that plane crash into the school and then rescued everyone in a second. How do you link a paragraph? I hate paragraphs. You just don't know where to split them. With poems it is easy to create the verses. The concepts sit around for a few seconds and then fade away so you can start the next verse/stanza whatever.

With paragraphs you have to read the whole previous one back and decide whether what you are writing now relates to what you were saying a few minutes ago. Technology and spirit dressed up in one messy package of disjointed writing, a self-referential woodshed with something nasty hiding in the dark. How toxic is this image for me. Are you toxic? Terminated and tortured by the lack of poetry and alliteration. Get the rhyme wrong and you have a black verse, blank verse. No comedy ever broke down like this.

Written with no spelling mistakes according to my checker of choice and only a few fragments (No Suggestions). Life is always better for a good wallow in the past.

Crying in Limbo

Soundtrack - The Mirror Pool - Lisa Gerrard

I want to sit against a wall somewhere, a wall in a small Northern priory with December fog outside and a quiet music practice going on somewhere in the distance. For all my lack of belief it is the spirituality of these things which keeps the irrationality of world in the background. I did the online test to find out which part of Dante's vision I would end up in (The link can be found behind the title of this section). My judgement is as below :-

Level 1 - Limbo

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

Sounds familiar and quite attractive. I don't know if I could take it for eternity though. Also I am not sure about being in company with Caesar. All rubbish of course.

Instan, del louan,
Les dindri londris del lan domna,
doue floria inselon,
dondrisila est spera di lon.
Achon, ghai d'aligheri et viola.

More later.

What is Your Favourite Metal?

I asked my daughter this question yesterday and she said 'magnets' which I thought was a fine answer. Of course normal metal doesn't actually do anything other than rest where gravity puts it. It erodes I suppose but you can't see that happening unless you happen to have the metabolism of a Solar System. I would choose Mercury for similar reasons.

Citizenship Test: -


Name Frankie Howerd's character in Carry on Doctor and the Tribe which Boudicca was queen of. And that is as ludicrous as any real test set up by the Government will be. I am an Internationalist - some of the time. I cannot help the animal prejudices which flow through me but I can recognise them.

Soundtrack - Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab

No time for any poetry.

Random Poem

The Garden called to me last night I thought,
A cry of sadness at the lack of water,
an urge to me to not regret that I had left it,
forever in the darkness and without light or noise.
I took it tea this morning, waded through the pond
and chatted briefly about the 'aphid problem',
(worse than '76 apparently). We parted, friends again
and promising to keep in touch at weekends.

Where did that come from? Some junk sitting around in here. I wanted to write a poem about the Ghost Ships but nothing came of that so you got this Pathetic Fallacy. Like the prejudices, I can at least recognise which poems are really bad. I was going to say all of them but there has been too much negativity over that last few days and it could almost be the start of depression. Reading of the final hours of Doctor Kelly and the speculation about his state of mind was a factor in this. You think, that had he been able to get over the black hours of despair, he would now be back at work and no one would remember his name. Of course, telling a person in such a state of mind that they simply need to cheer up is useless; it never works when I am depressed. Even if you could turn back time and not make the same mistakes again, the results of such a depression are deeply affecting and take ages to fade to a level where normal life' reasserts itself. For ages I have been trying to define a feeling I have about life. I suppose I was focused on it after September 11th which made it clear how close to disaster we all actually are. Some people I know live at such a speed that there is little difference between normal life and any disasters, which might overcome it. Personally I need time away from the routine. It seems that everything blurs together. Sometimes I find the thought of the drive home after work to be overwhelming, a chore which I could do without and then I extend that to the fact that the next day will be the drive back and all the routine events of the day. Then the future stretches out like a patchwork of the same things over and over. Then again, some things, which I think about repeatedly and often, have the opposite result. I love the come down after all the routines of the evening are done with, the short time reading before sleep, just doing something other than the normal repeating stuff. Reading is good because each book is different and during times of real upset, a familiar book from childhood can remind you of calming times. This has strayed from my feeling about life being a step away from disaster. In reality most of us lead quiet lives. If all the year were playing holidays etc.


Orwell kept Jura in his head from the start of the war and it seemed to have been his focus through the dark days not that the days here and now are as dark as that but you know what I mean.

Pox (sic or even sick) Britannica

I hope you read about the Ghost ships when I last posted a link to a story about them. Obviously I am not speechless like Frank but it is very difficult to voice by indignation and horror that this should be allowed. Yes you can call me a Nimby but the pollution trail will affect the whole Atlantic. If you see a Government Minister (who is not busy with other things) then protest loudly.

I just went to look for a reference to Frank (from the Vicar of Dibley BTW) being speechless and instead found this article regarding disabilities in sitcoms. While I can agree with some of the points made, it seems that to action all of the writer's complaints would remove most of the standard stories. It is very difficult to gauge where the use of a disabled character goes from being a comment on people's attitudes to being plain humour. It is even more difficult to decide whether the audience will perceive the tone of the piece correctly. Remove the obviously insulting passages of course but comedy is very often about characters being out of place and when does the general character of someone become something which renders them disabled or whatever the Politically correct term is these days. Anyway for what I am sure is a more measured view of disability go to the BBC - as always. Their site is called ouch! and is described as David Blunkett's favourite website.

Valuable Experiences

We have removed all evidence of the electronic age and returned to the guitar and the fiddle. All music is folk to some degree and we are setting out to prove this. I still can't work up any enthusiasm for work. I know there are many special books I should have read and which I know will bore me.

The BBC article relating to Doctor David Kelly's Baha'i faith had a link to the BBC's own profile of the religion which after my rant and admissions from this morning seemed to smooth over loads of the arguments which I have about religion in general - the main one being that how can ALL religions be correct? The basic tenet of Baha'i seems to be that all religions are one and just windows on the same single God. It also states that the only thing one can know about God is that he exists and that all else must be inferred from this. It also has wide acceptance of people. We are all different but equal. Let's have a little pragmatism in our religion.

What would you do if you went back to when you were ten and knew you had gone back and knew all you know now? This was prompted by the What If programme on BBC4 yesterday. I didn't actually watch it because I realised straight away that this week’s question - What if the contraceptive pill had never been invented - was flawed from the start. The idea was do discuss if the Sexual Revolution would still have happened but with chaos theory, just one child not being born could have changed the world completely. I should have watched it to see if this came up or if the discussion was purely social. Oh all this is just rubbish isn't it? Why do I bother writing all this? Pathetic!

I will look out of the window for a while. It is raining but the whole city still has that green cushiony feeling of summer. It is not quite the bright green of early spring but it makes me think of the tumbling trees on the hills in a windy summer. The sound of wind through trees is evocative of so many things. Weather is so important to our moods, almost as much as music or whom we love. So much I write seems jerky; it does not flow unless I make that poetic effort which turns all prose into unlined poetry.

The word processor just turned 'who we love' to 'whom we love' which sounds so pompous when in relation to the rest of the junk here but I suppose I will have to accept it. That sums up today - having to be told how to write by the computer. And with that, I think the Kenneth Williams moment is gone. If you want something to take away the pain then read this.

Unity for Unity's Sake

The New Archbishop of Cantebury had made a few statements regarding the unity (or rather disunity) of the Church of England. As a Secular Humanist (as defined here) I suppose I should not get worked up about this but I cannot help feeling that all this break up of the Church due to the wrong type of Bishops is like arguing over how many Angels can fit on the head of a pin. I obviously want my own moral stance on the world to propagate throughout all human activity but surely religion should stick to its views. Modern thinking evaluates human actions differently and various religions have different takes on how much of that modern thinking should be part of the prescriptions of each religion. The bottom line here is that I don't get on with most religious thinking but I think that those of us who do should take our religion straight. To me it is all really just boy's arguments. There is a feeling that the more 'Eastern Religions' have a pragmatic attitude and allow beliefs to match with the world as a whole rather than just the world of humans. Western religions (and I am really using that term just because it is an opposite) seem to be made up of decisions made by small numbers of people and then dictated to the rest of the people. I have not read Marx but is this what he meant by "Religion is the Opium of the People"? We have enough laws put out by Government to cover the safety and well-being of all of use without having to have a different set of moral codes sent by a very few un-elected 'ministers of religion'.

Having said all this, my general moral outlook owes most to the teachings of the various Religious influences on it over the years. My mother apparently made a conscious effort to bring my brother and I up without Religious influences which went as far as not letting us have fairy tale stories though my grandmother redressed the balance. Maybe my moral outlook is the result of general respect for elders and betters. Of course we know now that we really haven't got any betters. I just got myself into a real twist trying to write something about how it seems that most people are stupider than you think. When I see the weirdoes with their piercings and tattoos and brandings, I am struck by how conventionally they actually think. Revolution in the Head!

Moogy Wonderland

The squall of quitars gives way to the scratchy wordings of old synthesisers. The words pour out of us; bad poetry and images of all we could ever think about. Here is a Marxist guitar band who happen to use antique electronics. Here is a clearing in the music where the drums shine through. In the dark we see the music in the middle of our minds, physically colouring the space between our ears. It is just that; our minds are empty, there is space where our brains should be and we would die in this blank space, starved of anything but music. Jenny Ondioline is standing as an MP, with her curls and pretty face we will all vote for her, clear minded and happy that she will turn us around. Only Jenny Ondioline can save us from the suffocation we know now. Spin her words and she will spin back the poetry and paintings in her head. What cross will you mark when the time comes? We have fifteen minutes to mark her down or set her on the pedestal, which shows her policies to the entire world. The cowards shelter in their caves and plan like children for the end of anything they do not like, the ultimate in racism. Jenny knows that they are wrong and she is right. We will find them cowering and put our arms aside and put our arms around them as they cry and shudder in the expectation of the end which never comes. She will give them water and lead them to the blue, under satellites, which only yesterday would have betrayed them to the world. All words are poetry and words will calm the angry, justify the leaders and break the weak. They will deprive the Kings of Kingdoms and make money for the Doctors. Words will end the world.

In the dark, we will listen to the music of the just. We will sigh and turn gently in the comfort of our homes, happy that we and everyone are safe. I have a whole book in this head, a list of characters that must all be me in some small way. The guitar’s squall returns and hunger stalks the world again. The illness cured by pennies has never left this world. Each day my entertainment costs the earth and my use of ink could save the sight of children and save the lives of thousands. I drink ink like water. I use pens like outlaws use a staff. The world of fifteen minutes ends with blot and blood upon the pages. Declarations justified and altered over time are simple obfuscation. The world ends dry and burning, reclaimed by simpler creatures, our distant aunts and uncles united by a tiny chemical. We have our time and it has passed.

A Sudden Ending

Sea-Side Poem

At a grey side by the blank sea,
at seven, I sighed for all the hungry children
as they swept like earthen dreams
across the sand, consumptive and alive.

In my successive views of time gone by,
I saw them grow to be the scientists
and politicians, the lovers and the lost
amongst the proles of nineteen-eighty-four.

I have some hope, some little light of saviour
in the distance, life between the blackened end
of civilising cities. The enemies of green are dead
and danced upon by trees and other ghosts.

Behind the gorse, the lovers couple guiltily alone,
detach, unstick and drink their plastic water,
drop plates upon the grass, decadently rise
and brush their clothes of insects and of other dust.

High, bright windows shone at us when children;
told us of the happy life of music in those houses
where the girls stepped daintily and smiled at us,
a joke we thought uncivilised and cruel.

And the long hair shone in sunlight through the trees,
the brightest laugh called to us once again,
and we missed the kisses through the rain.
We sighed, delayed the poetry and learned of irony.

Melting in the manufactured summer, we read
and built our plastic models with the care of children,
painted them and re-enacted ancient wars.
VE Day was nineteen the year that I was born.

The war ended suddenly.

Fetch the howitzer! Some fool’s armed the robot with a pistol

Just read this article about the film Sylvia. It says far more about film making than it does about the film but it says enough about the film to tip me over into going to see it even if Frieda Hughes doesn't want me (or anyone else) to. I won't buy any popcorn (or peanuts). As usual when reading about Sylvia Plath, the music of Steve Reich is playing. Apologies for being boring but I was listening to Drumming on repeat when I read the final few chapters of Bitter Fame and so it always makes me think of the bitter winter of 1962/63 and that miserable flat.

Looking for the links above has revealed that Steve Reich has a new CD out. It is Three Tales but it is only available on Import so far. This is about The Hindenburg, Bikini and Dolly. I have to wait but cannot. My Wife will love it I am sure.

Some days you come in to work and feel inspired by what you have to do. Other days, like today, you feel that blogging would be much more productive. At least I have an hour before I have to get down to the real money earning work. I wonder what would happen if I just write poetry or blog all day. It would sound like continuous typing which is good I suppose. I would never do it really. The guilt would be too much.

We saw The Wonder Boys at the weekend. I say we. My wife got bored and went to bed but I stayed through the slow start and found it funny and intelligent. Vaguely like a John Irving Novel with extra self-reference. My eyes have glazed over and I am sitting here dissolving in Music for 18 Musicians again, seeing that empty flat and the piles of snow in my head. I wasn't born when this happened but I remember the piles of snow in the late sixties as we walked to nursery. It was the same time for all of us. I feel the cold and the fullness in my head. I am three and precocious, dressed in a black duffel coat and with red ears in the cold. The city roar sounds in the distance and I have no real worries beyond those which will last for a few minutes. However much you cry at three, nothing lasts long enough to be that sad. It is the sad, relentless breakdown of your carefree life into real-life problems, which makes all of us sad. I was left at nursery and threatened to run home. I never knew my mother worked but she was a Doctor and I think that maybe she did. I know that later she did some work but I never saw her go off with a black bag and cure people. I didn't care; she was not with me and that was why I was unhappy - but not for long enough. There is no reason to feel connected to Sylvia Plath but the weather links us all. It makes us think of things that happened when the sky was just so; when the wind blew from the same quarter and when the sun hit the side of the house just like now. I think I have absolute direction, like the Boy who spun. Wherever I am I know roughly which way North is. I am half pigeon. The tiny scraps of metal in my forehead tug at my brain and point me North. Maybe I have absolute Time. Who can say that now is now. Then exists just like now. We have no absolute time so we have no absolute place. I feel that we should be able to move time simply by us all thinking it. But if we all went back in time we would react to things as we do now and time would snap back. Time is definitely an illusion.

Landlocked Navy Dreams

After the plane crash, our teachers came round to check that we were OK. Mr Snowkey specifically said 'OK' because that was the way he always spoke. If he shouted at one of us he would always ask later whether we were OK. We all knew he did this because he had less confidence than we did. He shakily put his arm around one of the girls who pretended to be upset and then removed it in the confusion created in his head by his Liberal and Conservative parents. I was still wearing my really cool mirror shades and this seemed to throw Mr Snowkey a bit. Where another teacher would have told me to take them off he tried to tough it out and see through to my eyes but had to turn away. We loved him just the same because he let us drink beer - or more likely cider - at the school parties. At lunchtime we would sneak out to the pub across the street where the head girl lived. If she felt generous we would return with cold cider and swig it in the garden. If not we would make tea using an old sock and an antique teapot left by our temporary German Physics teacher when he went back to Hamburg.

All the best teachers are the ones of your own age though occasionally you must get a good one who is a bit like a favourite uncle and says 'mate' a lot. At our school this was Mr Jones (his real name possibly) who had been the source of several rumours about inappropriate behaviour with female pupils and still we liked him, especially the girls. Svengali or Slightly bedraggled uncle? I chose then but you can never see him so you will never know. Knoxxy Eugenia loved him and still does. He once caught a group of us with gunpowder we had made using the relevant ingredients found in the old science lab. Rather than turn us in to the head master, he helped us light it and though the bang was pitiful, we all remembered it as much louder, probably because it had been set off by a teacher.
I have no idea where he is now and no idea why he is here in this story apart from Knoxxy being besotted with him. At the age she was then, she was easily swayed in one direction or another and Mr Jones was a cinch.

I like this story. Knoxxy Eugenia is joining up everything though she is not in the plane crash stuff. I could just lie back with my eyes closed and try and find where she was when the plane crashed. She would obviously like to think that she was the cause and had brought the machine down just by thinking it but that is just her. I want to make up a poem just for her at that moment. I know she was outside, probably under a tree somewhere with a book. She will say that she read about a plane crashing just as we heard the first crumps of the engine failing but I know she was still reading The Kon Tiki Expedition. Just the thought of reading under a tree makes me so happy now. We did it all the time at school and never thought about how lucky we were. To be able to do that now would be so wonderful. Did Knoxxy Eugenia cause the plane crash. It really happened. I will find you the number. Find me a tree with a broadband connection.

Disabled by the light, we make our way to the shop. We have our own pathway and only we are allowed out. The younger children think it is unfair that they cannot use this path at break times and so did we. We do not realise the responsibilities that our guardians have towards us. We just think that they want to be horrible to us. They think of us dead in ditches while we just think of the sweet shop at the other end. It is a pleasant walk at any time of year but now, with the trees fully greened up, it is heaven. Even we realise this between our thoughts about girls and boys and confectionery. We think we are so cool and maybe, in this small county we are. We are to young to love anyone properly but we think we love each other. This is just the season making its way into our heads. The sun dapples the ground and tries to shake us awake but this is England before we worried about anything. The weather has no chance with us and we will live for years before the darkness of the rest of the world sneaks into our minds. In the future we will think back to these days just to help us get to sleep when all the illness and despair gets too much.

The music is just the sounds of the last great, undiscovered country, the birdsong and the wind in the trees. In the distance, there is the fingerprint of this part of the world, the gentle roar that we could record and analyse to determine its source better than any satellite navigation. There are farm machines in the distance and the occasional swoosh of a car on the main road. The weir on the river adds its own white noise. We top off the sound with giggles and happiness. We are the teachers' grand design for the world and will take all their prejudice and dislikes out to rule the world.