Recounting a Train of Thought.

For some weeks now I’ve been searching the charity shops for a couple of heavy winter sweaters, preferably in pure wool because it’s warmer than cotton, nylon or acrylic. (And I dislike the feeling of nylon and acrylics anyway.) So far I’ve been unsuccessful, and it just occurred to me how useful it would be to have a wife who could knit. The problem is that I expect she’d want to hang around even when she’d finished the sweaters, so that’s no good.

In coming to this conclusion, I remembered that I once lived with a woman who liked to buy me sweaters for some reason. She bought me lots, two of which I’m still wearing. I think she might have inherited the sweater gene from her mother because, by an odd coincidence, her mother once knitted me a heavy winter sweater in pure wool – and I’m still wearing that one, too.

And that little recollection led me to remember the bizarre circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. It seems her dad had gone out to some function one night and come home late. Finding that his wife had already gone to bed, he joined her and went straight to sleep. He woke up in the morning to find her stiff and cold beside him, and the subsequent post mortem indicated that she’d died even before he got home. That meant he’d spent the night sleeping next to a corpse, which isn’t very nice, is it?

So then her dad, being unusually fit, strong and capable for his age, went out and found himself a girlfriend some twenty-odd years his junior. They went on holiday together, where he died of a heart attack in the hotel – and in circumstances which led to some degree of indignation on the part of his daughter.

Isn’t it interesting how one thing leads to another?

Turning Defence into Attack.

The young woman on the checkout was wearing a name badge which said ‘Rosie.’

‘Did you know there was a popular song once called Rosie?’ I said. ‘I think it might even have got to number 1.’

‘Really?’

‘Mmm. It was a long time ago.’

The rest was silence until the shopping was packed away and the credit card inserted. And then I went into paternalistic mode, which is a very unusual mode for me to adopt. She must have had an innocent air, which is a very unusual air for a young woman to project these days.

‘You missed your line,’ I continued.

‘What line?’

‘You should have said “So are you going to sing it for me, then?” It would have discomfited me and put me on the back foot.’

She seemed to think I was joking, which I wasn’t. I was offering a tactical hint for use in the sex war. It was unsolicited, of course, and maybe she didn’t need one.

On Missing the Style.

The many fiction editors I came across always referred to fiction as being either plot-driven or character-driven. I like to think there’s a third option: style-driven. I remember reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae many years ago and loving it.

Both the plot and the characters left me a bit cold, but I was constantly fascinated by Stevenson’s imaginative, expressive, slightly idiosyncratic prose style. I found myself frequently stopping and savouring certain phrases here and there, thinking ‘Anybody else would have said it this way, but he says it that way.’

There are, unfortunately, two problems with style-driven fiction:

1. It’s never popular, so authors go unpublished and die of pneumonia in garrets. (Unless, of course, they’re Tories with a private income, in which case they succumb to gout in capacious drawing rooms.)

2. Style is inevitably the first casualty of translation, and it bothers me that if I read something by one of the great, non-English speaking authors, I’m not really hearing his or her voice. I’m only getting the plot and characters.

Hoist by His Own Petard.

A British trade union leader said today that Britain is becoming ‘like Downton Abbey,’ claiming that we are returning to the days of privilege and class consciousness. The Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, replied not in a constructive way, but in the evasive manner to which politicians feel divinely entitled. He said:

‘We won’t be lectured by union leaders on six figure salaries.’

My take on this is that it was actually less evasive than Osborne intended, because if you read between the lines it betrays the very attitude to which the union leader was referring. What the reply actually says is:

‘It’s perfectly acceptable for bankers and corporate executives to be on seven figure salaries, but union leaders represent the working classes. They are, therefore, an inferior breed who should be paid less and know their place.’

Whether Britain is becoming like Downton Abbey, however, I wouldn’t know, since I wouldn’t dream of watching something like Downton Abbey.

Potter Pottyness.

I just read that a disillusioned ex-fan of Harry Potter has berated JK Rowling on Twitter over her ‘revelation’ that Dumbledore was gay. Rowling made this announcement at some New York convention, apparently, where it was greeted with rapturous applause. And she has now thrown a bit of sarcasm back at the disgruntled fan.

Much rolling of the eyes later, I have to say this:

Firstly, I’m suspicious of Rowling’s motive for making this claim in the first place, but let’s leave that to one aside for a second. The main point which needs to be made is that Dumbledore is nothing more than a character in a book. He lives entirely between the covers. Once the book is finished and published, there is nothing more to be known about him than is revealed between those covers. You can’t start adding further characteristics to him unless you write a sequel, which Rowling didn’t do. She should know that – and I expect she does – which is why I suspect her motives.

But of course, the faithful followers will do what faithful followers of highly popular series always do: clamour for some encouragement, however inane, to vindicate their delusional tendency to elevate characters to a status beyond mere fiction.

Harry Potter Lives!

Actually, he doesn’t. And neither does Dumbledore.

And so, if the faithful followers of Star Trek were called Trekkies, and the faithful followers of Twin Peaks were called Peakies, let’s call Rowling’s mob  - be they disgruntled, rapturous, or whatever – Potties.

Fraud, the Id, and Dolores.

Let’s suppose you’ve never really connected with people or the general conduct of life. Instead you’ve fallen back on playing roles and observing the process. Wouldn’t that make you the ultimate fraud? In my case there were a few notable exceptions which I’m listing for when I get to The Gates. There’s a whole matchbox full of them.

My biggest enemy was always the Id. The Id is an innocent looking creature who offers you irresistible trinkets in return for your soul. When you take one, however, he turns into an ugly, black, slimy thing which mocks you, and then you have to go get your tainted soul back. I wonder why he wasn’t in Harry Potter.

On which note, fans of the boy wizard might be mildly interested to know that the character I most easily recognised was Dolores Umbridge. That’s because I had an English teacher in high school who was just like her, only less diplomatic. She seemed to like me.

The Problem with Clubs.

There are two reasons why I don’t join clubs:

They’re too riddled with people who are either earnest or egotistical or both. One is stained with artifice, the other with notions of superiority.

The whole point of clubs is to connect with people who have interests in common, and that doesn’t work for me. To me, connection is about chemistry; shared interests are usually irrelevant.

Being Unstructured.

I never cease to be surprised by the number of people who go through life making plans, setting targets and establishing limits. I could never function that way. I always had to seize the moment as it passed by, largely because I was assailed by a sense of panic at the thought that I would never know where the moment might have led had I let it go. Some seized moments led somewhere interesting, some didn’t. The air has been empty of moments to seize for quite some time now, and I haven't a clue where one might be found.

The End of Harry.

Tonight I watched the final Harry Potter film. I think that means I finally get the badge.

So, the intrepid trio, having survived all manner of dark doings, devilish demons and the mixed intentions of some very illustrious actors in questionable make up, arrives back at a Hogwash Academy under siege.

‘Hooray!’ cry the faithful friends who have been waiting for the return of their Messiah as good disciples should. ‘Harry’s back! What can we do, Harry?’

‘I need to find something,’ says Harry.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Not much to go on, is there?’

(They might have said ‘Call yourself a Messiah?’ but they didn’t.)

On comes Voldermort’s Initial Assault on Castle Hogwash. Lots of impenetrable darkness, vague shapes running hither and thither, lights going flash and pings going… ping.

‘Who are these people?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where are these people?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Not much to go on, is there?’

Harry won, the dragon was good, the ending reprised the start of the whole series, but the final scene was unforgivably shallow and mawkish. ‘Call yourself a screenwriter?’

So should I wear the badge? I think Dobby answered that one last night.

On Darkness and Dobby.

Instead of writing meaningless blog posts tonight, I decided to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part1. It wasn’t easy. Much of the film was so dark that I spent large swathes of it looking at a black screen, wondering who the hell was talking and how I was supposed to know what was going on. And I wonder whether anybody who has seen the film could enlighten me with regard to a couple of mysteries concerning an elf called Dobby.

1. Why was Dobby standing up to his ankles (at least, I think they were his ankles; he had very strange legs) in the sea, dying? What was he dying of?

2. Considering the fact that our intrepid heroes have just been transported to a wild and windswept beach somewhere on the edge of the known universe, where did Harry find the spade to dig a hole in which to deposit the said dead Dobby?

3. Who the hell wrote Dobby anyway? He was awful. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had he simply been nauseatingly sycophantic, but he wasn’t even convincingly so. Wherever Harry found the spade, I’m glad he did.

Yes, I know Dobby just saved Harry’s life, but that didn’t make any sense either. I don’t think I’m quite up to Harry Potter films.