Seems I Wasn't the First to Notice.

I’ve noticed a number of times over recent decades that the British police are occasionally wont to forget that they are the servants of the people, not the brutal guard dogs of whichever government is ruling the Establishment in ways designed to further its ideological shibboleths. Their behaviour during the miners’ strikes in the Thatcherite 80s was a prime example, and we’ve seen some more of it recently.

So what do I now read in Gorky Park?

Our intrepid Chief Investigator Renko is reading a book entitled Political Oppression in the United States, 1929-1941. He comes across an account of the 1930 Union Square Rally in New York City – a mass protest against rampant unemployment – during which the NY Police Commissioner used every foul means possible to break up the rally and punish the ‘guilty.’ The final lines report the Commissioner’s bigoted justification for his actions, and finishes with an observation:

His statement typified the contradictory roles of police in a capitalist society: one role as keeper of the peace conflicting with its paramount role as headbreaking watchdog of the exploiter class.

Things don’t change much, do they?

Bureaucrats: Big, Bad, and Bullying.

The news item which most caught my attention today was the death through suicide of a primary school head teacher. Her school had been subjected to an Ofsted inspection and given a low grading. It appears that the inspection itself and the poor grade had driven her to such a depth of depression that she couldn’t bear to live any longer.

(And it’s worth mentioning that one of the criticisms levelled at the school concerned the case of a young boy who performed a dance in which he simulated flossing his teeth. The inspector said this indicated that the school was ‘encouraging the sexualisation of children.’ Children are encouraged to floss their teeth in furtherance of dental health. Please tell me, if you can, how this translates into the sexualisation of children.)

This all paints a tragic picture, but let’s look at the bigger one.

Ofsted is the government’s school inspectorate in the UK. It represents one phalanx of a burgeoning army of bureaucrats who are – along with the corporate world – growing into an ever greater controlling factor in British culture. And I don’t think I’m being overly fanciful in suggesting that politicians of all the major parties are conniving in this process. I’ve been saying it for some years now, and the tragic death of a committed educational professional has brought it to head.

The public needs to be aware of this, and they need to push strongly against it. If we don’t, it will only get worse until we’re struggling through life under the cosh of something approaching the SS, the Stasi, and the KGB.

And now I really am being fanciful. Am I? Maybe a little, but only a little.

Praising Mr Smith.

I’m currently reading Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith and being highly impressed by his skill as a writer. The novel has one foot placed in the populist detective drama genre, and the other planted firmly in the more rarefied field of genuine literary fiction.

It’s because around half the writing builds a most intriguing tale of triple murder and the subsequent investigation, but the other half is full of characterisation so expertly presented in all its various guises that the characters spring vividly to life. So when, for example, Chief Investigator Renko goes home for the night hoping to save his ailing marriage only to find that his wife has left him, the subsequent – and delightfully understated – phone call telling him that his suspect/informant Golodkin and junior investigator Pasha have been found dead from gunshot wounds, it’s a real shock. Of course it was a shock; I knew these people almost as well as I know my neighbours, and I felt for poor old Renko because the chap was having such a bad time already.

And that’s a skill I never had as a writer, but at least my first response was to appreciate and applaud Smith’s skill. My shame at being personally below par came later.

(My only difficulty with the text is the question of all the Russian names of people and places. If I try to fathom how to pronounce them from the – albeit non-Cyrillic – spelling, I’m be wasting time and possibly losing track of the plot. If I don’t, how will I recognise them when they crop up again? So far I'm choosing the lazy option. Why isn’t life ever easy?)

An Unusual Visitation.

I am conscious of the fact that I sometimes rely too heavily on the content of unusual dreams to provide blogging material, but I’m going to do so again because last night’s dream was unusually odd even by my standards.

I was sitting in the living room of a house in which I lived for nearly ten years before moving to Derbyshire in 2002. I was aware that my mother, who died three years after I moved to that house, also lived there but had gone to bed. She never lived there with me in life.

I looked out of the window to see my father (my natural father who separated from my mother when I was five) approaching the house dressed in a long white smock. He came in, sat on the sofa, and we talked, but I remember nothing of the conversation. My father died in 1991, a little over a year before I moved there.

At some point my mother came downstairs also dressed in a white smock, and engaged my father in conversation. Again, I remember nothing of what was said and eventually they went upstairs together and that was the end of the dream.

When I woke up after 8½ hours of unbroken sleep (which is, in itself, most uncharacteristic of me these days) I began to wonder what such a dream could mean. I don’t recall ever having dreamt about either parent before, so why now? I thought it likely that the white smocks – which I never saw either of them wear in life – represented the fact that they are both deceased. I further assumed that my mother was inside the house because she was alive when I moved there, but my father had to approach from the outside because he was dead by then. That much seemed rational.

But why were they there at all? Was my unconscious mind trying to tell me something (rather like the black dog which leapt out of the wall shortly before I received the cancer diagnosis)? Was the universe trying to tell me something? Were my parents trying to pass on some message from over there in the undiscovered country? Or was it all the product of a fertile imagination which likes to construct odd stories?

That’s the problem, isn’t it? We never know.

*  *  *

Incidentally, I encountered the angel in the shoe shop again today. I told her that she was now a celebrated person on account of having been the subject of a blog post. She seemed amused but unimpressed. And that’s life.

Trust and the American Way.

I was reading earlier about Trump inciting his supporters to engage in mass protests in the event of him being tried for the many aspects of skulduggery of which he is being accused. (I wonder whose side the National Guard will be on when the violence breaks out. Does the National Guard still exist? I’m curious.) Anyway, the point is that Trumpism is obviously a cult of sorts and Donald is their leader. And this brings up an interesting question.

It appears that cults are almost exclusively an American phenomenon, a fundamental feature of which is that followers implicitly believe everything the leader tells them. And isn’t the same true of Southern Baptists? Don’t their followers also implicitly believe everything the preacher tells them?

That being the case, it would appear that an aspect of American culture is that there are an awful lot of people over there prepared to unflinchingly engage with personalities in positions of power, and trust their pronouncements absolutely. This seems odd to us Europeans because most of us regard the implicit trusting of preachers and politicians as a sure sign of abject gullibility. We’re not very much inclined to tolerate cults, you see, and we know that lies, evasion, and obfuscation are routine elements of the politicians’ modus operandi. And as for preachers, well...

This is, to some extent, a generalisation and not intended to be a criticism of America per se. But it has me wondering whether I’m right, and I’ll be quite happy to be told that I’m wrong.

On Changeling and Springing.

Two weeks ago, when the basement in which I was languishing was becoming unusually cold, dark, and damp even by the standards of basements to which I’m normally accustomed, I started watching a film called Changeling.

I didn’t get very far. At the 23 minute point it was becoming blatantly obvious that the film was going to be about corrupt cops in the LAPD doing their level best to put a poor grieving mother through mental hell, at which point my brain rebelled and refused to have any further darkness heaped upon its already beleaguered self. So I turned it off.

But tonight, since the clouds were a little lighter and I had nothing better to do, I decided to gird up the old loins (and my God, don’t they know they’re old these days) and make a valiant attempt to watch the whole thing through. In a way I was glad I did because, for all the harrowing horror contained therein, it was a powerful and well made piece of cinema. Until the end, or more precisely the final three lines of script:

‘Now I have something I didn’t have before.’

‘What’s that, Mrs Collins?’

‘Hope.’

You’d have to know the context to understand why I think it was possibly the dumbest line of any I’ve ever heard in any film at any time in my life, but I can’t be bothered to explain. Suffice it say that films are a bit like musical compositions: get the beginning and end right and you can get away with the odd lapse in the middle. This one failed the test. What on earth was Clint Eastwood thinking that he should have allowed such a travesty? Or maybe he just wasn’t thinking.

*  *  *

But on a brighter note, today was The Day. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but I do feel that it bears reprising once a year. (It’s only once a year, Mr Scrooge. Humbug.)

There’s a day around this time every year which is quite magical. It’s the first day on which you can go out to do something in the garden without putting a coat on first. The air is mild and calm, the sun is shining its beneficence from a mixed sky of azure and light cloud, and the feeling of spring in the air puts a delightful spring in the step (although the latter is not quite true in my case because any spring I used to have in my step has now gone the way of the dodo.) But no matter; today was The Day and grateful I surely was.

On Cares, Click Bait, and Creepy Stuff.

So there I was, thinking that the storm clouds from which my mind has been trying to shelter over the past few weeks were beginning to lift, when I had a dream. Two people, a man and wife of unknown provenance, had chosen to come and lodge with me. This made me uneasy because not only were they invading my world – which, by default, and given my general dislike of close company, meant that they were polluting it – but they were also interfering with my routines and causing all manner of distressing inconvenience. Eventually I became very angry and told them to leave. And then I woke up.

I woke not to a sunny sky and the prospect of a pleasant day engaged in pleasurable activity, but to a sense that my days on earth were now drastically numbered and pleasant days had been consigned to the historical record. I had breakfast as usual anyway, just in case I made it to lunchtime.

And then this afternoon I did the first of the spring garden jobs – trimming the two evergreen bushes and the big sage plant at the bottom of the garden. The whole business took no more than an hour, but it took more out of me physically than can reasonably be attributed to advancing age. I’m not old enough yet to be brought so low by such a relatively innocuous task. There must be something else involved. I have several theories.

But let’s move on.

*  *  *

I’m becoming increasingly aware that the means of communication in the modern world are growing ever more tainted by the need to exaggerate in order to gain our attention. Headlines in the news are falling prey to greater and sillier sensationalism. Advertising, which has always employed overly inflated claims to ensnare the gullible, is soiling its own pitch with claims which even the gullible should be able to see through in an instant. And now I’m finding that YouTube channels which I’ve long since come to regard as reliable and relatively trustworthy are marketed with titles and thumbnail pictures which are some way removed from their actual content. Time after time I’m downloading videos and then switching them off prematurely because what I’m seeing isn’t what it said on the can.

This is becoming irritating, and I’m tempted to trace the phenomenon back to a time when young Americans introduced the world to the habit of referring to facts which were merely laudable as ‘awesome.’ But I might be wrong. I might be recklessly presuming a causal relationship based on the fact that America appears to judge worth more on size than quality. Shame on me. I know nothing.

(Did you know that there was a sitcom on British TV in the 1960s centred around a Jewish tailor in the East End of London? It was called Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width. I wonder where that came from. Curioser and curioser.)

*  *  *

And here’s an interesting fact. When I go into my bedroom at night it’s obviously dark, but there’s enough spill light coming from the open door to the landing to have a reasonable view of the contents. I’ve started to imagine that one night I will see something large and black sitting on the bed, something so far unidentifiable in the low light. I wonder whether I’d have the courage to switch the light on to see what it is. I think I should prefer not to find out.

*  *  *

Given the current lamentable state of my mind and body, writing this post took some effort. I’m awash with self-congratulation.

Looking Forward and Back.

As I trudged uncomfortably across the cold, grey little market town this morning, it occurred to me that I really should try to keep this blog going. After all, what else is there to enliven me now that the sparklers are all spent, aspiration has faded into the mist of distant memory, all sense of optimism is lying comatose, and the gradual but inexorable decline in physical capability is putting much of that which requires muscle power and lung capacity increasingly out of reach? But where do I start?

Well, over the past few weeks of blogging hiatus, several posts of customary type suggested themselves. But each one had its own little cocktail of angles, and they’ve become jumbled in a mind still only slightly raised from the desolate state in which it’s been languishing. Imagine taking, say, four boxes each containing a complete jigsaw puzzle. Open the boxes and pour all the pieces into a bag, shake them all up, and then try to make four accurate pictures from the melee. It’s a bit like that.

I thought of starting with the crisis in the NHS, and the tracing of the issue back to Mrs Thatcher’s infatuation with monetarism and free market economics. But it was too big, had too many angles, and was too painful for someone who’s spent his life taking the jewel in the crown of British culture for granted. Sad though it is to say, I couldn’t face the mental effort of organising it all. Better to start with something small and preferably humorous, but all suitable candidates were buried in plain graves and I hadn’t the means of disinterring them.

I decided instead to take a trip down memory lane and seek the start of the whole blogging business. I found the first proper post (the actual first post was a bio of sorts) made on January 15^th 2010 and thought I might as well post it again, since the people who were reading the blog then have long since given up on me and my ramblings and decamped to greener pastures. It was titled ‘Values’ and said:

Several days on from the appalling earthquake in Haiti, I read today that the international community has pledged £200 million in aid. Another news report I read recently said that British banks alone give £50 billion to their executives in bonuses. The Duke of York says we shouldn't be concerned about the size of bankers' bonuses because, in the world of international finance, it is a paltry sum. So what does that make the international aid effort?

It wouldn’t quite pass muster now and would require some editing, but it did set the tone for much of what was to follow. (And look what happened to the Duke of York a decade later.) I found it interesting that, for all the changes I’ve undergone over the past thirteen years, my distaste for the greed, crushing inequality, and gross dereliction of humanitarian values so apparent in the human condition lives on

That’s my only excuse for re-posting it and it will have to suffice.

(It just occurred to me that I could have re-told the story of what I was experiencing exactly twenty eight years ago to the very hour, but I think I’ve already told it at least three times on various Ides of March and a further reprise would have been unconscionable.) 

Writing and the State of Mind.

I saw a YouTube video recently in which it was said that INFJs – of which august club I appear to be a member – are often driven to write because their odd way of seeing the world attracts too much derision in routine conversation with the mass of normal people. Well, whether you give credence to the MBTI system or not, it maybe explains why writing has been so important to me over the last twenty years or so. But there’s a problem:

Over the past few weeks the old depressive tendency has dipped to a new low wherein the more apposite term might be ‘desolation.’ By that I mean the unpleasant sensation of feeling like an empty vessel which has nothing to offer to itself or life in general, and the fallout from this has been the seeming loss of connection with the blog.

I could, of course, have knuckled manfully down and written a few posts on various subjects which I would normally write about, but there would have been a vital ingredient missing. I’ve always strongly believed that in order to have any worth, a blog of this kind must be more than merely the relaying of facts; it needs to factor in other elements such as humour, irony, sarcasm, deep reflection, outrage, and even the occasional foray into the enigmatic and the absurd. I need to do that for my own sake, but such elements arrive instinctively off the top of my head, and the feeling of desolation raised a firm barrier against them. Somebody once told me that it wasn’t so much what I said that she found appealing, but the way in which I said it. Quite so, and that’s why the connection seemed to have been lost.

So will it come back? I don’t know yet, but I hope so. Times change and the mood of the moment is ever in a state of flux, so maybe or maybe not. And I do realise that while my writing might be of substantial importance to me, it matters not a jot to anybody else. Nevertheless, it seemed only fair and considerate to offer this little explanation to those few who have done me the honour of checking in now and then. I hope they understand that I do appreciate and value their interest. Here’s looking at you, kids. (See what I mean?)

The Stress Bag.

Another major source of anxiety was dropped into the bag of stresses today. It’s becoming very heavy.