Memories of the 70s

I’ve never seen a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one

Thanks, Jacob!

Banbury Cross

 
We’re driving around
To the best shop in town
Beloved’s investing in room-filling sound
Cambridge Acoustics or Sonos or Bose
She shall have music wherever she goes

Saturday? Sneezles

Spot o' culture:

Thanks, Becky (you may need a Google plus account for the link)

The cats looked around
and made never a sound
in their jerseys so wittily fée 

But their venomous glare
sent the message in clear
"We'll catch you and kill you some day"

With apologies to A.A.Milne - "Sneezles".

We study the Masters in our youth. Half a century later, they guide our palsied fingers.

Waterman

This morning the papers are, conveniently, full of the actor Dennis Waterman.He has spent a lifetime playing soft centred bruisers. Now he has admitted to a weakness that fits his public persona so perfectly that the blogosphere has flocked to the obvious conclusion.

Bastard!

He lashed out at his wife.

And, 14 years later, (and this is what we find utterly inexcusable) had the effrontery to try and explain. Because, of course, "explanation" is just another word for "excuse".

"Twitter" is exactly the right name. Airspace where members of the flock can each chirrup their atom of identity to one another: "I'm here";"I'm with you"; "Me too". Each linking in their blog, each chipping in their boilerplate outrage at a miserable, commonplace tragedy in someone else's private life.

Although there have been surprisingly sensitive discussions in the comments to the (rather predictable) post in the feminist blog "the f word". And I'm coming round to the Daily Mail.

My take?

Marriage is hard. And two perfectly decent people who love each other can still develop an abusive relationship. Over the years, the conversations that you have again and again wear paths in your brain that bypass your rational defences and strike straight at your deepest, darkest triggers. Knowing that your reaction was unacceptable just makes it impossible for you to relate to it. If you're lucky, you learn when to drop whatever you're holding and leave the room. It seems that neither Lenska nor Waterman could do that every time.

The other sadness is that he and his ex wife are still trapped in a world of blame. The only way that they can live with themselves is by wrapping the other in a scab of blame and forgetting about them. But I suspect that each feels that they have been wronged in a way that can never really be put right. And they will carry this nagging pain to their graves. If they could acknowledge their own contributions (if only to themselves), it becomes a shared mistake which they went through together and survived. Part of what they are now: sadder, perhaps, but wiser.

But that's a lot to ask. Like I said, marriage is hard.

42

Some IMPERTINENT SCOUNDREL sent this to MY Beloved. When I catch the blighter, I'll horsewhip him on the steps of his club.

Some hold that Maths is dry as dust
And bar it from their home
Yet it encodes the Vernal lust
That drove me to this pome

For aching years my wayward heart
Has followed yours unbidden
But Google this and I'll impart
Our truth in plain sight hidden

sqrt(6-x^2), (sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

( Hat tip for the formula to Mike Smith, the Human Squid, who may be a dippy arts graduate, but whose inky tentacles are EVERYWHERE. I'll see you at the Diogenes Club, Mike!)

Remember, Remember

Remember, remember
The fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

What is going on here?

When the nation comes together for its great Winter festival of light in the night, are we really still remembering that our state lives under the Damoclean threat of Roman Catholic insurrection? Or celebrating the horrid just deserts meted out to a freedom fighter black villain? 400 years ago?

Or are we coming together in good fellowship to share hearty food and mulled wine and to gaze upwards in simple shared delight at the balletic confections of fire and motion?

Just asking.

A friendly introduction

Like many Britons (and all right thinking, properly educated, English speaking people), I am inordinately fond of the works of Rudyard Kipling. Especially "If", his inspirational exhortation to his doomed son.

This is something of a guilty pleasure for my generation. We were required to see him as an apologist for a frankly racialist mindset which underpinned the British Empire. He was the quintessential type of the hidebound establishment that we were supposed to be rebelling against. Here is a nice picture of Malcolm McDowell and friend picking off leaders of that establishment in the closing moments of the 1968 film of the same name.

Yet the poem holds up today. Written in a clean, natural rhythm, it simply lists the defining virtues for us all to aspire to. And they could have come straight off the blog of a life coach last night: grace under pressure; confidence; empathy; modesty; risk taking; accountability; persistence...

So all this sage advice was available a hundred years ago. (Each generation has to find out for itself, of course. Especially now, when the nuclear family restricts access to wise old uncles and aunts.) The message for today is clear: the Edwardians strove to meet the same ideals that we do. They may have fallen short in different ways, but the foundations for success have not moved an inch. Don't bother with blogs until you have digested the books.

So you chunter comfortably through the poem, checking off the virtues as so many slices of motherhood and apple pie. Then you double take as you realise what you've just read. Could he really have meant that?

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you

If all men count with you, but none too much

There's food for thought.

Nowadays we are to believe that, as far as relationships go, the deeper the better. We are to let down our defences, so our friends can hurt us. We are to welcome the inevitable pain as part of Life's Rich Tapestry.

I wonder.

Now, as then, one size does not fit all.