A Tale of Two Mechanics.

Two acquaintances of mine are car mechanics, and they’re also friends with one another. Let’s call them Neil and Derek, two men of practical disposition doing the most practical of jobs.

A few years ago Neil’s father – also a car mechanic – died, and Neil believed that his father still existed in some little-altered form somewhere beyond an invisible curtain. Derek took the opposite view. As far as he was concerned, death is the absolute end, and those who believe in ‘life after death’ (as popular perception likes to term it) are fools deluding themselves because they are too weak to accept that we are not immortal. He was more comfortable with the notion that life begins at birth, ends with death, and there is nothing else, because such a view makes life less complicated.

So both men believed what they wanted to believe, one as a reaction to grief and the other as a way of avoiding complication. And they were both quite certain that they were right. And such is the nature of conflict.

Some people turn to religion and believe what the priests tell them, while others turn to that brand of science totally immersed in material perception and believe what their favoured scientists tell them. And still they’re all sure that they’re right. And so it goes on.

Why don’t they just adopt a position whereby they believe in nothing but embrace the possibility that nothing is impossible? Then they wouldn’t claim to know anything and a better level of tolerance would have to prevail.

Farewell, Mr Sakamoto.

I wonder how many YouTube hits this piece of music will receive on computers around the world tonight:

 

 

It’s the theme music from the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, about an episode in a Japanese POW camp during WWII, and is probably one of the most evocative of all pieces of film music. And the reason why it might get a few hits tonight is that the composer and performer, Ryuici Sakamoto, died five days ago aged 71. His death was announced today following his funeral.

What I didn’t know until I read the article was that Sakamoto also played the part of the camp commandant in the film – a man whose delicate and sensitive nature had to be locked behind a wall of cultural expectation and the pursuit of duty, and who was consequently tortured by the conflict thus engendered.

And that, for me, was the main point of the film. It had nothing to do with the politics behind the war, but about the clash of personal ideologies and conditioning contained within disparate cultures. The suffering experienced was not, therefore, wholly unilateral, but affected people on both sides in different ways. Sakamoto’s music and dramatic skill captured the pathos beautifully.

Berenice and the Power of Poe.

Instead of reading my daily chapter of Gorky Park tonight, I decided to read again one of my favourite stories of Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice. (I have two favourites, the other being The Fall of the House of Usher, and those familiar with Poe will know that there are similarities which might indicate something fundamental about my oddness.)

So why was I suddenly taken away from my current novel and directed towards a very short story by the master of the macabre? Was I in a macabre mood? No, it was because I seemed to recall having seen the name somewhere – I don’t even remember where – and I felt intrigued to wonder why it was a favourite. I tried to remember the plot, but was met only by vagueness and one word: teeth. I knew it had something to do with teeth.

And so I collected my anthology of Poe and found that the page marker was at the start of the story in question. This had to be significant, didn’t it? The good, wise old universe is telling me that I must read this story again. Well, in all honesty, probably not, but I read it anyway

Oh my giddy aunt, what a masterpiece of short story writing it is. Formal and highly complex in its syntax, it’s not an easy read. I persevered, took my time, concentrated hard to understand every word, and was rewarded with a most intelligent, observant, and lyrical exposition on the madness of extreme monomania, the tragedy of sickness so pernicious as to utterly destroy the essence of natural beauty, the horror of premature burial, and the iniquity of grave desecration further stained by involuntary torture.

So why was I unaccountably driven to read it by some agent of unknown provenance? You tell me, but not until you’ve read and understood every word of the genius contained therein.

On Spring and Dr. Spooner.

I don’t have much to say today because I’ve been busy with garden and household jobs. (Garden jobs leave me feeling wrecked these days because I’m wearing out faster than a second hand pair of jeans – and I should know because lots of my jeans were bought second hand.)

Still, it was good to see the first leaves open on the horse chestnut trees in Church Lane. They’re always the first of the standards to leaf up, usually beating the later oaks and ashes by six or seven weeks. And they’re such fine, big leaves too, so they attract your attention better than most.

But that’s about it for today, apart from it being a bad day on the technology front. So many things irritating me with glitches on all sides. I expect it’s all due to one of my ruling planets going backwards or something.

The only matter of any consequence today was the discovery of a new spoonerism. My current listening in the car consists of an album of 1930s popular music from the 1980s TV serial Pennies from Heaven, and the last song I heard was Roll Along Prairie Moon. It’s been stuck in my head all day and driving me nuts until I realised that the spoonerism of prairie moon is Mary Prune. I thought it quite wonderful because new spoonerisms are nearly as hard to find as gold dust in an old canal.

Four Weddings and a Reminder.

I should like to announce that tonight I did my duty to the British cinema by undertaking to watch the remainder of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. And having made such an undertaking, I felt further duty-bound to find something funny (because you’re supposed to find something funny in a comedy, be it romantic or any other sort.) And I did find something funny. In fact, I found two things funny.

The first was when the dippy girl – whose connection to the MC I never managed to work out – walked into church as a bridesmaid without having fastened her dress at the back, so her blue knickers were showing. I found that moderately funny because my sense of humour can be nothing if not childlike at times.

What I found funnier, however, was the scene in which the MC goes into a posh shop to buy a wedding present and asks the starchy assistant for suggestions at around £50. The assistant replies: ‘Our plastic carrier bags are £1.50 each. Maybe you could get thirty three of those.’ I found it so funny in fact that I made the effort work out that he would have had 50p change. The scriptwriter missed it.

All in all I’m ashamed to say that I quite enjoyed it.

During the credits at the end I even sang the harmony to accompany the play-out song: Love is All Around. Do you realise it’s twenty seven years since I sang that to somebody? And I still remember the lyrics. And it occurred to me that the greatest legacy my high school bestowed on me was the ability to harmonise tunes. I played the trombone in the school orchestra, you see, and a natural sense of harmony came with the job. I have to say that it’s rarely proved useful, but a gift is a gift when all’s said and done.

On a more serious note, the film did reflect back to me some of my own history, and reminded me – if I needed any reminding – how short of the mark I always was in the matter of romantic relationships.

Four Weddings and a Woe.

Back in the 1990s the British film industry made a trilogy of Brit Pack movies – Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. I didn’t see any of them at the time, but a few years ago I got hold of a copy of Love Actually and quite liked it, so when Notting Hill turned up in a charity shop I gave it a try. I lasted twenty minutes before my terminal boredom became almost literally terminal and I switched it off. Determined to see the exercise through, however, tonight I started watching the third offering, Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The first substantive scene showed a traditional church wedding, and you know what? I found the sight of a white-bedecked bride walking up the aisle on the arm of her father quite moving for some reason. I tried to work it out, but could only speculate that it might have had something to do with an event in May 2017 when one of the very few bright lights in my firmament went out, leaving the gloomy shadows in my world growing even more dominant and engendering an inexcusable sense of devastation.

Maybe that was it. I don’t know. But to continue…

Once the bride and groom were standing together and the ceremony began in earnest, the only thing which moved in me were the contents of my stomach reminding me – as though I needed any reminding – of the reason for my severe dislike of weddings. Normal service was thus restored.

When it got to the thirty minute mark and I still hadn’t found anything funny (it was, after all, billed as a ‘romantic comedy’ so I suppose I shouldn’t have expected to find anything funny, but ever the optimist you know…) I turned it off – for now. Maybe I’ll give it a second chance tomorrow or whenever my mood improves.

(My mood is somewhat subdued tonight courtesy of the corporate world in the guise of E.ON, my energy supplier. Not content with pestering me mercilessly with their attempt to bend me to their will, they even stoop to insulting my intelligence with claims which would only convince those boasting an IQ in single figures. Such is the way of things in a culture increasingly controlled by bureaucrats, the corporate world, and arguably the most inept government I think I’ve ever known.)

On Spring and Feather Fights.

Nature is being precocious this year. It’s been apparent for a while in the garden and hedgerows where leaf growth and flowering has been substantially earlier than usual, and now it’s the turn of the birds and their nest building. They’re 2-3 weeks ahead of the game, probably because of the relatively mild winter. Or maybe they take their cue from the leaves and flowers. I wouldn’t know.

I was in Uttoxeter a few days ago and saw a crow fly down to pick up a twig from the pavement. When it saw me approaching it flew to the top of a high fence and glared at me with aggressive intent. ‘This twig is mine,’ screeched the message in its beady eye. ‘If you come any closer I’ll bite your bum so hard you won’t sit down for a week.’ At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. ‘No worries,’ I replied with a smile. ‘I have no need of a twig at the moment. Of course, you could always just fly away since you can fly and I can’t.’ ‘Don’t try to be clever with me, you wingless freak’ replied the crow. ‘Think you’re so bloody clever, don’t you? Get off with you. Be gone.’ So get off was what I did.

Today there was more aggression in the air. I saw a blue tit approach the nest box behind my kitchen bearing a beakful of soft moss to line the base. And guess what was in the way: a male house sparrow perched disrespectfully on the little round entrance hole. Fisticuffs ensued as the two combatants fell to the ground on the embankment beneath the box. House sparrows are twice the size of blue tits, but it was only a matter of seconds before the bigger bird gave in and flew away. I imagine blue tits could even relieve crows of their twigs if they had any use for them.

So that’s nature in the spring for you, and it’s all very entertaining.

Worrying Trends.

I just read about the latest school shooting in Nashville, and assumed that it will lead to another demand from the more liberal sector of the American population for swingeing reforms in the matter of gun ownership. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a logical response. And yet I can’t help feeling that there’s something so rotten in the American consciousness that it can produce a seemingly endless conveyor belt of people prepared to do that kind of thing.

And then I thought a little further and realised that we have a similar problem in the UK, although on a rather smaller scale. We currently have what is growing into an apparent epidemic of teenagers killing each other with knives. I sense a connection of some kind, although what it is hasn’t yet come into sharp focus.

A Note on the Matter of Israel.

It’s long been a source of irritation to me that people so easily confuse the terms anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism is the practice of extending prejudice and discrimination towards Jewish people just because they’re Jews. Anti-Zionism is a little vaguer, but in present political circumstances may be said to relate to the Israeli state – for which read Israeli government – extending prejudice and discrimination (and concomitant abuse and injustice) towards their non-Jewish neighbours. The two concepts are not quite diametrically opposed, but they’re not far off. And yet people fail to see the difference.

And this issue is, of course, central to the problem of the Israeli government treating the Palestinians abysmally. Any arm of any of the more influential western governments which steps over the line in criticising Israeli policies is immediately met by howls of ‘this is anti-Semitic!’ and everybody backs off. And so the Israeli government can do whatever it wants because they know they’re effectively immune to criticism. As far as I’m aware, Israel is the only country in the world which enjoys that dubious privilege.

So let’s look at what’s happening in Israel at the moment. Mr Netanyahu and his monstrous regiment of right wing hardliners are proposing to change the judicial system so as to place the Israeli government effectively above the law. Israel pretends to be a democratic state, and being above the law is hardly what a democratic state is supposed to be and the people of Israel don’t like it. Their mass protests have been so massive as to paralyse the workings of the country to such an extent that even the ultra-intractable Mr Netanyahu has been forced to delay his plans. So what interests me is this:

If the Israeli protesters – who may be presumed to consist almost entirely of Jews – can be allowed to oppose the Israeli state in a just cause without being accused of anti-Semitism, why can’t the rest of us?

A Painful Echo.

Today is the 5^th anniversary of my operation to remove a cancerous kidney, and now I have a sharp muscular pain in my lower abdomen which I suspect might be connected. (It’s preventing me doing sit-ups and leg lifts which is a bit of a nuisance.) I remember reading once that traumatic experiences have a habit of echoing around the anniversary of the event, so I’m hoping that’s all it is.