Ring the Bells

I've come across a couple of references to this





in the past few days. 

Oliver Burkeman's "Help!" (a fine antidote to self help books) quotes it in his chapter on the dangers of perfectionism.
And on Start the Week, Andrew Marr; picked up the reference in the title to a philosophy and music festival currently running in Hay-on-Wye.

I was thinking of dropping it into the Facebook group for Abenet and Toby(Sprog2)'s wedding. After all, the rather downbeat opening matches the mood when their beautiful venue burned to the ground.  A week before The Day.

And so they had to start again, forgetting that particular perfect offering. Of course, everyone rallied round and the cracks in the Perfect Plan really did let the light in to a perfect, luminous day.

But when you add up the parts of the song, the sum is desperate hope arising from despair. Which is absolutely not the right message here. We come back to an earlier sage, Chesterton: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."

Abi & Toby head off to their adventure

Pipers at the Gates of Dawn

Poor Twisted has been a little tired and depressed of late. Even the wit and wisdom of the web has not drawn him from his despond. But this, too, has passed. As he emerges from is almost subterranean gloom, what should he see but this?

This opening passage fitted Twisted's mood perfectly. Kenneth Grahame's evocation of the golden England of the Edwardian summer starts innocently enough with this homely anthropomorphism. Soon enough it takes a turn for the dark and then the downright mystical. 

I still remember the jolt I got reading it to my children when I got to the title of chapter 7. Not only was  Pink Floyd's early album self indulgent and almost unlistenable as they groped towards their later mastery, but they pinched the title (its only redeeming feature). Later released with the equally awful and beautifully named "A Saucerful of Secrets" as "A Nice Pair". Oh, the wit!

But I digress.

The point of this is that Kenneth Grahame was a very senior banker - secretary to the Bank of England. On the same day that Twisted saw Execupundit's piece, the papers were full of another banker: Fred "the Shred" Goodwin. An aggressive corporate raider who built up the Royal Bank of Scotland to a serious global player before It collapsed with the UK's largest ever corporate loss when the credit crisis hit.

One is tempted to compare and contrast the two bankers: one who produced a string of books culminating in one of the greats (though he never went to university) and one (the first of his family to go to university) who sacked thousands before crashing his bank, bringing misery to tens of millions.

But no-one is beyond redemption. Until his disgrace, Sir Fred chaired The Prince's Trust. This fine organisation works with the young who have not found their way: who got little from school, jobless and hopeless. Young volunteers from the police and fire service take small groups through a twelve week crash course to give them the skills and confidence they need to make their own way. 

As he chose to help many thousands of new dawns, I am inclined to give Sir Fred the benefit of the doubt.

Take flight, my beauty!

DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO HIS BOOK

PARAPHRASTIC METRICAL TRANSLATION.

Go forth my book into the open day;

Happy, if made so by its garish eye.

O'er earth's wide surface take thy vagrant way,

To imitate thy master's genius try.

The Graces three, the Muses nine salute,

Should those who love them try to con thy lore.

The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot,

With gentle courtesy humbly bow before.

Should nobles gallant, soldiers frank and brave

Seek thy acquaintance, hail their first advance:

From twitch of care thy pleasant vein may save,

May laughter cause or wisdom give perchance.

Neatly put, Robert!

(Ooh, I do like a nice paraphrastic metrical translation: it's the best sort, don't you think?) 

I fought the wife and…

Poor Twisted has been promoted to Horny Handed Son of Toil. His holiday last week coincided miraculously with a week of glorious weather. After a fallow year, the ancestral allotment was waiting for a keen volunteer to unleash its inner Eden. Time to break some sods in the hot sun.

And time for a semi relevant musical interlude.

I get assigned the digging, clearing and moving heavy weights: simple, healthful and manly work. But not intellectually stimulating. So I plug in my podcasts. And now the bean patch carries memories of a discussion of Medieval Universities with Melvyn Bragg (the BBC's weekly history and science magazine, In Our Time). All washed down with liberal light, fizzy draughts of CNET's Buzz Out Loud.

But the real discovery was in the rhubarb and strawberry patch, which will forever taste of Laurie Taylor's Thinking Aloud. A new addition to the podlist - why was I not told that so much Good Stuff would be broadcast under the banner of Sociology? So the rhubarb is delicately flavoured with an analysis of the uprising in Egypt (I hadn't realised the role played by Wael Ghonim), while the redcurrant netting carries a comparative study of successful and unsuccessful attempts by mafias to occupy new territories and the patch by the compost bin has a study of Facebook compared to village life in Trinidad.

Where "friend" has long been a verb. Though it carries a rather earthier and more authentic meaning than the anaemic imposture currently infecting the dubdubdub.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ta

Grrrr

I have now had two attempts at building a blog post using Inglorious Apps' very pretty Notes App for webOS. Both drafts are nowhere to be found.

Now I see where I went wrong. There is no autosave until you back swipe. It's the little things...

The Enemy

Today I began putting together some thoughts on The Problem with Communication in my workplace. Looking for a quote to grab the interest of my lucky audience, I Googled a dimly remembered "we have seen the enemy and he is us".

And discovered Pogo. While I head off to Wikipedia to try and catch up with American culture (I seem to be at least sixty years behind: Why Was I Not Told?), I'll leave this amuse bouche for anyone who shares my ignorance:

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Forward!"

That's fighting talk. (Just love those tiny trumpets.)

I am grateful to Marilyn White for her wonderful site, "I Go Pogo",where Google sent me for the quote. And, of course, to the witty, wise and courageous Walt Kelly, the Creator.

DON'T help!

Here's a nice thought from Michael Neill.

If you saw a young bird pushed from the nest, you might instinctively reach out and catch it while it's still falling. And you might think you've saved it from almost certain death.

Whereas in fact you'd be saving it from almost certain life.

He isn't quite so plonkingly neat about it.