The diary of a disenfranchised bookseller

Get outta here!

2007-03-21T22:01:00.001Z

Diary 2.

Soon come

2007-03-13T23:20:00.000Z

More Tootpaste For Dinner

2007-03-12T22:53:00.000Z

toothpastefordinner.com

Angry young man

2007-03-12T18:11:00.000Z

is what I'm feeling at the moment - the clips of NY bands on BBC4 last week inspired me to dig out tracks by all of the following:

Sonic Youth (a return to my teenage years)
The Velvet Underground (Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather, etc)
MC5 (has there ever been a greater opening to anything than Kick out the Jams?)

Plus, on another note, the new Air album has arrived - a return to form, or so they claim. I shall have to listen tonight and get back to you...

Not much to write about

2007-03-12T13:38:00.000Z

apart from expressing my admiration for Tim Robinson's Connemara - up for numerous Irish literary prizes, this book manages to combine history, geology, biology, folklore, literature in a beautifully evocative picture of this small part of the west of Ireland - the author has lived and worked mapping this part of the world for the last couple of decades, and the depth of understanding of the various processes (historical, meteorological, geological and so on) that go to shape this most peripheral part of Europe combined with his eye for small cultural details (he frequently deviates from the grand narrative to engage the reader in some village gossip, or in an old folk story) ensure that the area truly comes alive.

Added: Friday, 9 March, 2007, 18:28 GMT 18:28 UK

2007-03-10T10:35:00.000Z

"One best leader in the 21 st century to come. He took russia from dust to world only alternative power to save the world...russian and whole world will rally behind him...as the greatest leader to face unjust in the world created by christian and jewish and muslim fundemantals and uniplorasim.
He is the one can save world from religous fanatics...we know nobody perfect whatever that mean.

Turk, Samsun"

Taken from this BBC discussion thread about Putin's effect on Russia.

Noo Yoik

2007-03-09T21:06:00.000Z

week on BBC 4. Watching a collection of New York bands playing live on the BBC in the 70's now. Patti Smith, Talking Heads, The Ramones, all soon to be followed by Blondie. This is a less famous appearance by the delightful Miss Harry from 1980:

Bar Frankfurt Calypso

2007-03-09T20:36:00.000Z

was the name of the bar just round the corner from the hotel. The sign was black lettering on an orange background. In three different fonts. "Bar" was normal. In Arial, perhaps. "Frankfurt" followed the standard practice of using Gothic script for a German name. The "Calypso" element was rendered in a wonderful 1970's style - I have been searching for the font for about 45 minutes now, to no avail. It was bliss. And had evidently not been changed since the bar opened in the late 70's or early 80's. An aberration, I thought. Like a kebab house in the provinces. Everywhere, and especially bars, rebrands itself about four times a week in the UK, and in a major cosmopolitan European city, it must be at least twice a day, if not more frequent. Then there was another. Not the same style, but from the same period. And another. In fact, apart from international brands - Habitat, Starbucks, FNAC, etc, most of the businesses seemed to be small concerns with no desire or need to change their image. Even the Keisy supermarkets make very little effort:

Yet despite this anti-branding, there is a conciousness to the naming of businesses. German and Austrian names are prevalent - especially for bars and restaurants - Frankfurt, Duesseldorf and Innsbruck all appeared at least once, and not one of the bars seemed to have any particular Teutonic influence save the name. I imagine it is due to the fact that Germans were the first real mass tourists in Europe, and must have got to Barcelona in large numbers in the late 1960's.

Babe,

2007-03-06T09:04:00.000Z

I'm back again... As Take That sang in one of their unforgettable mid-90's classics. No blogging proper today - masses of work to do, and then exciting football of the highest order tonight. So in the meantime, an list of things to help me remember what to write about in the next few days:

1. Barcelona
2. Sevilla beating Barcelona
3. Bar signs
4. Cars with their roofs (or should that be rooves?) removed
5. British weather
6. Pork products
7. Irish placelore
8. Good urban design

Back Tuesday

2007-02-28T20:20:00.000Z

See you later.

Motherland

2007-02-25T13:26:00.000Z

The photographer Simon Roberts has a new book of this title coming out in March. I happened upon some of the pictures in a discarded copy of the Telegraph Magazine on the Tube home last night - some are entirely predictable, but the slideshow is enjoyable nonetheless.

How are you? My name is Ekaterina.

2007-02-25T12:28:00.000Z

"Hi!

How are you? My name is Ekaterina. I from Russia, city Cheboksary. To me 28 years. I shall tell to you about myself a little.

I corresponded with the man from the your country before. His name Mark. He is from your country. We had a long correspondence and Mark wanted, that I have arrived to him in the your country that I have seen what life there. We have together submitted the statement on reception of the visa in your country! Mark spoke, that will help my in our meeting. I thought, that have met on the Internet the love.

I and Mark made the big plans for the future, but in a flash all has changed. From the moment of submission of the statement for the application of the visa has passed 5 months. For these five months there was for what I least waited. Mark informed, that his former wife has returned to him and lives together with him. Soon they should get married. And now in Mark plans there is no me. I wrote to him some times after that, but Mark have wished me only good luck in the further searches worthy men and have told, that our ways miss. And in October to me there has come the invitation in embassy behind reception of the visa.

In the beginning I wanted to throw out the invitation in embassy. To me it was sad, because my dreams were failed, I have nobody to fly in the your country. But my uncle have dissuaded me from resolute actions and have told, that else there is a chance to find worthy the man and to use the visa to a meeting with him. I well know English and practically I have visa your country. My uncle speaks, that it really solves many problems.

Approximately in 7 days the visa will be ready, and I should go to Moscow behind reception of the visa. I write to you because in my heart there is an empty seat. I do not search rich or poor. I search careful and responsible man which wants to enjoy a life together. Is this person you? I think, that I ask not much. I have told to you a little about my life. I have told not all about myself, but it will be easier to me to write about myself if you will ask questions which interest you. I have told to you my history, and now I shall look forward to hearing from you with impatience. Write to me! I shall send you more photo in the following letter. I wait you answer. Ekaterina.

P.S. I shall answer with pleasure if you write to me."

Funny, in the previous 463 e-mails I received like this, her name was Natasha...

The 08.44 to London Paddington

2007-02-24T10:18:00.000Z

and the subsequent Bakerloo Line journey to Oxford Circus were punctuated by the following tunes this morning:

Dirty Old Town - The Ian Campbell Folk Group
Tighten Up - The Bamboos
Capuchin Swing - Jackie McLean
Whatyagonnado - Jeru The Damaja
Gypsy Queen - Gabor Szabo

Tourism

2007-02-21T20:43:00.000Z

Today I have mostly been visiting:
Waterloo Station
Tower Bridge
The Tower of London
The Number 15 bus
Notting Hill
Ping Pong on Westbourne Grove

Otis Redding

2007-02-15T22:45:00.000Z

In imperious form from the 1967 Stax European tour.

Geburtstag

2007-02-14T12:30:00.001Z

Arbeit. Bis spaeter...

Chrome Children Volume 2

2007-02-11T14:37:00.000Z

Free download over at Stones Throw - unusual and woozy hiphop and nu soul for your listening pleasure...

Coffee of the Month

2007-02-11T14:08:00.000Z

Guatemala Huehuetenago from Algerian Coffee Stores. Mmmmm.

Sounds From Luke's Hifi February 2007

2007-02-11T11:59:00.000Z

The CD is now done. All the regular suspects will receive a copy (despite their protests). If anyone else wants a copy, speak now or forever hold your silence... Here is the tracklist:

Carlos Alberto Goal From The 1970 World Cup Final - Brazilian TV Commentator
Procurando O Caminho - Coisa Nossa Featuring Salome De Bahia
Flautira - Ocho
Una Música Brutal - Gotan Project
Briu De La Craiova - Fulgerica & The Mahala Gipsies
Moldovan Song - Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Band
Od Yeshoma - Oi Va Voi
Heart Beat Sexual - Jimmy Edgar
Ol' Crew - Mr. Lif
Minister For Ganja - Rappa Robert & Jim Brown
Away With the Bad - Glen Brown
The Message [Twelve Inch Version] - King Sunny Ade & His African Beats
My Favourite Things - Mark Murphy
You Have Got To Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders
Aftershower Funk - Joe Bataan
Les Fleur - 4Hero featuring Carina Anderson
At The Dark End Of The Street - James Carr
Mbube - Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds
The Wild Rover - The Dubliners

I hate Almodovar.

2007-02-10T19:44:00.000Z

There, I've said it. I should duck for cover now, I suppose. Volver is absolutely dreadful as a film. A waste of nearly 2 hours of my life. Clearly his Catholic homosexual oedipal complex has a great appeal for a great many people - not least the thousands of people who go to see his films each year, then buy them on DVD. He is number 8 in the 50 men who really understand women - as Penélope Cruz states: 'Pedro loves women, he is very curious about the way we think, the way we feel. He finds us complicated and he likes that complication.'

No, he doesn't - his women may be complex, but the complexity is an almost cartoon style, in which the most feminine traits are amplified to hyperreal proportions - his characters are as paperthin and as far removed from real women as the heroines of comic books, or silent films, or Dostoevskii novels. He paints them with poster colours, even the promotional material for the films echoes this. All About My Mother, Talk To Her and Bad Education all suggested to me that he was maturing as a filmmaker - despite the occasional lapses (absent transexual fathers, for example), all of these displayed psychological subtlety, but his latest effort has far more in common with his earlier films.

It is a tragic indictment of the Spanish film industry that he is the foremost director - many of the directors are still using the Civil War as a backdrop (even Pan's Labyrinth), and therefore deal with this topic, no matter how tangentially. Where is the heir to Bunuel? Latin American cinema, despite a comparative lack of investment, produces far more interesting and engaging films. Most other European cinemas have overcome/are overcoming the effects of far more strict censorship and repression than Franco's regime imposed and in a shorter period.

Ealing, 08.34 today

2007-02-08T08:42:00.000Z

Soliloquy of the Solipsist

2007-02-06T21:57:00.000Z

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.

I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

Sylvia Plath, 1956

Eight degrees

2007-02-04T19:03:00.000Z

today and very foggy this morning. Managed to crawl out of my pit at a reasonable hour to head down to the local pitch and putt - packed with the great and good of Ealing (and an inordinately high proportion of Scousers) - who weren't watching their kids playing football or walking the dog or going to church or whatever else the West London middle classes do of a fresh Sunday morning. Anyway, after several months of not hitting a ball in anger, I think my efforts were not too appalling... My feet are still recovering from the ice cold dew that lay on most of the fairways. Aircooled running shoes are nice, but offer no protection against superchilled droplets of water.

My ITunes quest continues apace - trying to copy over 1,000 CDs takes a lot of time, but it does mean I am (re)discovering a mass of songs I had forgotten I owned. In fact, I am making a concious effort to copy the least heard parts of my collection first, so that by the time I get back to the most popular, I will have forgotten them (most probably due to the onset of Alzheimer's, as it may take a number of years).

My X-box is still very kaputt - as they say in Germany - and I am in denial at the moment about the fact that I will have to send it to Microsoft to get it fixed. This is on top of the fact that I will have to contact the letting agency to sort out the damp problem in my room - they will not be happy, as it seems to be a major structural issue with the building as a whole - missing tiles and mouldy exterior walls. At least I now know it's not my excessively hot showers. Or nocturnal perspiration.

Fruity

2007-01-31T00:04:00.000Z

So, I indulged and bought it. The keyboard looks like this:

The performance is mind-bending. It's true, once you've tried Mac, you never go back.

Dop

2007-01-28T20:02:00.000Z

Is this real? I'm not sure...

Copts and robbers

2007-01-28T19:24:00.000Z

In a startling piece of serendipity, The Art of Eternity began last week on that most wonderful of channels, BBC4 - this meant that I have seen on full colour many of the treasures of Eastern Christianity mentioned in Dalrymple's book (you must all read this immediately if you have not yet done so). This is not one of the pieces of art that has been shown, but it is part of the Egyptian-Netherlands Cooperation for Coptic Art Preservation (ENCCAP)- dedicated to saving the masses of old Christian artefacts in some of the oldest monasteries in the world - under threat from declining numbers of monks, the environment, Islamic fundamentalism and simple theft - as with all works of art, these change hands for a great deal of money, and most of the older monasteries in Dalrymple's journey have suffered repeated thefts, both in the distant past, and in the last couple of decades - the monks he visits on Mount Athos, for example, have had to deal with armed raiders attacking them by boat to seize manuscripts, icons and relics.

Wow, all of that work just to use a dreadful pun as a title.

Mortality

2007-01-25T22:00:00.000Z

So my bank think it is necessary for me to take out life insurance before my 30th birthday. They have never contacted me about this before. Do they know something I don't? Especially as is there is no lump sum at the end of the policy, and they frequently refer to the fact that my dependents will receive a payout if I should die within the first 15 years of the policy.

Is another 15 years really the best I can hope for? If so, that is two thirds of my life over with already. And it means that I was middle-aged at 22 - something that probably won't come as a surprise to most of you. And I certainly feel it. My back has been bad this week - it went whilst cleaning the kitchen floor. It is almost back to normal now - after 2 days and repeated hot baths it seems to have clicked back.

It caused enormous hilarity for the other residents of Ealing as I hobbled down to the Tube station on Wednesday morning - even the mentally ill Irish woman I pass at precisely 9.52 looked at me with pity, rather than screaming obscenities at me as usual - this was, of course, compounded by the 'snowstorm' that hit Britain and brought London to a halt once again. I no longer have either the energy or the inclination to rant once again about lack of preparation/Tubes/trains, etc. And it makes no difference - an inch (2.5cm for the European readers) of snow. I will point you back to my Grossman/TFL post, as this explains it all.

Ebay feedback from andy46477

2007-01-23T16:18:00.000Z

Here.

Remember the rules: no hesitation, repetition or deviation.

2007-01-20T15:35:00.000Z

A new CD in the offing to celebrate my impending transformation to an Apple user. No two tracks of the same genre. Post or e-mail to get a copy.

The 50 Greatest Cartoons

2007-01-19T20:34:00.000Z

or at least as many of them as could be found online. Cityrag tracked down most of the 50 greatest (Western) cartoons, as voted for by the industry in 1994, in December of last year. Some are well known. Some are very much of their time. Some are very questionable. Some are just well, odd...

Now, if I could just work out how to get them down on to my Ipod, tomorrows early journey to work wouldn't seem half as bad.

Vasilii Grossman versus TFL

2007-01-18T21:43:00.000Z

"...After Unecha, we travelled in a freight car. The weather was wonderful, but my travel companions said this was bad, and I realised this myself. There were black holes and craters from bombs everywhere along the railway. One could see trees broken by explosions. In the fields there were thousands of peasants, men and women, digging anti-tank ditches.

We watch the sky nervously and decided to jump off the train if the worst came to the worst. It was moving quite slowly. The moment we arrived in Novozybkov there was an air raid. A bomb fell in the station forecourt. This train wasn't going any further..."

Vasilii Grossman, A Writer At War

"Throughout the day, fallen trees and other debris have caused disruption to most open sections of the Tube network.

Speed restrictions have also been introduced on some open sections of the Tube network for safety reasons.

LU is working with infrastructure companies Tube Lines and Metronet to remove debris from tracks as quickly as possible but inevitably this will result in disruption to services."

TFL

Paranoia

2007-01-18T00:50:00.000Z

OK, so my X-box 360 has just given me a heart attack. DVD tray would not open. Repeatedly. For 45 minutes. Finally managed to open it manually. Then it wouldn't close properly. For an hour. Cue visions of my entire day off tomorrow being spent on the phone to a call centre. Turn to trusted British tradition of shaking faulty electrical items. Magically starts working.

I am sure the corporation that produce it have been spying on me and are punishing me for using Mozilla and being in the process of buying an infinitely more fruity laptop. Or maybe not.

Jammy

2007-01-16T21:05:00.000Z

No, not

But the Jamaican producer - 4 double CDs of his 1980's tracks have come my way... Mmmm Ipod on the Central Line tomorrow...

But in the meantime, a video of the man himself at work:

Richard Fairbrass

2007-01-15T22:19:00.000Z

It will be mine, oh yes...

1st January, 12am-2am

2007-01-14T10:57:00.000Z

Maybole Pipe Band & Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra: Auld Lang Syne
Kool & The Gang: Celebration
Earth Wind & Fire: Boogie Wonderland
Sister Sledge: Lost In Music (Special 1984 Nile Rodgers Remix)
Madonna: Holiday
The Bangles: Walk Like An Egyptian
The B-52's: Love Shack
Los Lobos: La Bamba
Van Morrison: Brown Eyed Girl
The Monkees: I'm a Believer
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)
Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta: You're The One That I Want
Four Seasons: December '63 (Oh What A Night)
The Jackson 5: I Want You Back
Chic: Le Freak
Bee Gees: Stayin' Alive
Michael Jackson: Billie Jean
Wham!: Freedom
Deee-Lite: Groove Is In The Heart
House Of Pain: Jump Around (Master Mix)
James Brown: Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine
Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds
ABBA: Dancing Queen
The Village People: Y.M.C.A.
Frank Sinatra: New York, New York
Carly Simon: Nobody Does It Better
Bob Marley & The Wailers: No Woman No Cry
The Beatles: Hey Jude
Louis Armstrong: What A Wonderful World
Nina Simone: My Sweet Lord/Today Is A Killer

Enjoying

2007-01-14T10:47:00.000Z

William Dalrymple - From the Holy Mountain
Brendan Behan - Confessions of an Irish Rebel
Sinead O'Connor - Throw Down Your Arms
Apple - Ipod
Fawlty Towers DVDs

31st December, 8pm-11.57pm

2007-01-09T00:19:00.000Z

Lee Perry & The Upsetters : Dub Revolution (Part 1)
Willie Williams : Armagideon Time
Sugar Minott : Oh Mr. D.C.
Dub Specialist : Bionic Dub
Sound Dimension : Granny Scratch Scratch
Jackie Mittoo : Deeper And Deeper
Barry White : Playing Your Game Baby
Herbie Mann : Hi-Jack
Labi Siffre : I Got The
Gary Bartz Ntu Troop : Celestial Blues
Herbie Hancock : Wiggle-Waggle
Googie Rene Combo : Firebird
Willis Jackson : Nuther'n Like Thuther'n
A Tribe Called Quest : Luck Of Lucien
De La Soul : Buddy (Native Tongue Version)
Maceo Parker : Soul Power '74
Parliament : I've Been Watching You (Move Your Sexy Body)
Funkadelic : One Nation Under A Groove
Maceo & The Macks : Cross The Track (We Better Go Back) (Extended Version)
The Pointer Sisters : Yes We Can Can
Archie Bell & The Drells : Tighten Up (Part One)
Joe Tex : Show Me
Ike & Tina Turner : River Deep - Mountain High
Linda Lyndell : What A Man
Gloria Jones : Tainted Love
Lyn Collins : Think (About It)
James Brown : Papa's Got A Brand New Bag Pt.1
James Brown : I Got You (I Feel Good)
Aretha Franklin : Respect
The Temptations : Get Ready
Diana Ross & The Supremes : You Can't Hurry Love
Stevie Wonder : "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (DJ Smash Essential Funk Mix)"
Gnarls Barkley : Crazy
Run-D.M.C. : It's Like That
Salt n Pepa : Push It
Cameo : Word Up
The Pointer Sisters : Jump (For My Love)
Cheryl Lynn : To Be Real
Oliver Cheatham : Get Down Saturday Night
Hot Chocolate : You Sexy Thing
Rose Royce : Car Wash
Sister Sledge : He's the Greatest Dancer
Odyssey : Going Back To My Roots
McFadden & Whitehead : Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now
Michael Jackson : Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
Madonna : Into The Groove
Wham! : I'm Your Man
Dexy's Midnight Runners : Come On Eileen
ABBA : Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight )
Madonna : Hung Up
Nelly Furtado Feat. Timbaland : Promiscuous
Justin Timberlake : SexyBack
Christina Aguilera : Ain't No Other Man
Scissor Sisters : I Don't Feel Like Dancin'

Should I end it?

2007-01-03T21:55:00.000Z

This blog, I mean. I am feeling dramatically uninspired at the moment. Exhaustion, translation, work, and an X-Box 360 have all contributed to this sorry excuse for apathy.

I would have to delete it all, of course, as I worry when I stumble upon un-updated blogs (two links there!), in the same way one wonders about people in the black and white photos for sale at Camden market - who are they, what happened to them, and why were these very personal tokens cast aside?

The boys in the NYPD choir...

2006-12-23T12:52:00.000Z

Enjoy...

Mel Torme

2006-12-08T01:15:00.000Z

A weekend in my hometown. Wonderful aerial pictures (the old ones, at least) over at Portsmouth College's "Portsmouth From The Air" galleries. I have to say tht I adore the saturation of colours on 1950's-1980's films, before cameras and film became electronic, digitised and manageable. The colours that frequent not only Soviet postcards of towns (I have a wonderful set from Kazan, as well as Petrozavodsk and Kizhi, and, I think, another from Moscow), but also British films, postcards and brochures from my childhood. It may be that many of the photos in these were taken in the 1970's, a period not renowned, in the UK at least, for a fear of garish colour(s), but, as you can see from the sample, this may have had something to do with colour processing as well as the decade-long temporary national colourblindness. I am 99% sure that the Solent has never looked quite so blue (except possibly millions of years ago when much of the South Cost was part of a tropical sea).

In fact, having perused the site further, this picture, from the early 60's actually has my family home in it - now, I have a romanticised view of childhood summer holidays that seemed to be six weeks of permanently sunny freedom, but even through my rose-tinted spectacles, my patch never looks like this. And an entire housing estate is missing in the bottom left-hand corner, as well as two sizeable naval estates to the top left and bottom right (both of these have now been handed over to housing associations as the naval influence in Portsmouth diminishes). Bizarre, like GoogleEarth with a time machine.

Building up

2006-12-03T13:29:00.000Z

very slowly to watching 'Satantango' by Bela Tarr (please excuse the lack of accents in both the titles and the director's name, but my knowledge of the Hungarian keyboard and/or the html codes for these characters is somewhat non-existent).

Almost eight hours of Tarkovskii/Antonioni- influenced Central European gloom. This is the most readily available (in the UK at least) of the 24 most important films listed in The Cinema of Central Europe. It is seemingly a film composed of very long, static shots, a film in which very little happens.

How does one cope with this? I saw the Star Wars trilogy in a single 8-hour sitting as a six-year old (with breaks between each film), but that was about the single most exciting thing to have happened in my life up to that point. Andrei Rublev was intolerable in Petrozavodsk, yet I have watched it several times since with no overwhelming urge to either kill myself or to dig my way out of the room with my bare hands.

I suppose that watching it at home frees me somewhat from the necessity to watch it all in one sitting. I can get a drink, I can go to the loo. But will this impact on my perception of the film as a whole. If one leaves a shot of a muddy road in the rain and returns some 15 minutes later to what you believe to be the same shot, will my understanding of the film be compromised? Or simply any feelings of empathy I may feel to wards the protagonists' predicament?

In certain ways, the same question(s) are raised when watching Sokurov, especially Days of Eclipse or his documentaries about Russians living on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union - his use of filters, long static shots and so on draw one into the tedium and apparent lengthening of even the shortest periods of time that the characters experience, as well as the oppressive nature their surroundings, be it the Central Asian desert, mountains, or even the confines of a submarine.

The goose is getting fat...

2006-11-29T12:26:00.000Z

...despite the fact this is the least Christmassy start to a festive period ever. It is sunny here in London - the leaves have fallen, but there has been a noticeable lack of both cold and rain (I have been thinking back, and the last snow of any note I can remember in these here parts was in January 1996 - I have vague recollections of wandering back from a pub in Hampstead to my halls of residence. God, I wonder what my drinking partners that night are doing now?).

The only discernable change has been in the erection of Xmas lights (the Regent Street one shave been sponsored by some dreadful Aardman film, and so have images of animated rats/mice plastered all over them) and a sudden quadrupling of the number of people using (in the loosest sense of the word - is it really so shocking to think that you would need your ticket when you reach the barriers!) Oxford Circus Tube between 10 and 11 in the morning. Although this may also be due to the fact that the Tube, especially in West London, has been generally appalling for the last two weeks. I have 3 Tubelines and 1 rail service to get home. On at least 3 occasions in the last 2 weeks, only the rail service has been running.

Even the singalong carol concert at the Albert Hall is being conducted by a certain Mr Cohen. Amazon are offering cheap everything for Xmas, so you can't even enjoy the threat of impending bankruptcy come Boxing Day. I mean, what is happening to our traditions? Christmas tree (German?), Father Xmas (Dutch/American?) - do we even actually have traditions, or would the British Xmas without foreign influence be as miserable as the Cratchitt's?

Reading List

2006-11-29T00:07:00.000Z

Gutkin, I. The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic 1890-1934

Lovecraft, H.P. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories

Hames, P. (ed.) The Cinema of Central Europe

Barrows, A. Access 2000 for Windows for Dummies

London Review of Books

Playlist

2006-11-26T16:45:00.000Z

The Clash - Magnificent Seven Album Version - for balancing the soundsystem for the works Xmas party.

Jamaica's Groove Band - Shaft - a reggae-discotastic cover of the classic Isaac Hayes' track.

The Casualeers - Dance Dance Dance - Northern Soul that makes you do exactly what it says on the tin.

Brenda & The Tabulations - A Little Bit Of Love - a late 70's underground disco classic.

Exuma - Obeah Man - warped minimalist voodoo soul.

Beatfanatic - Jogando Capoeira - searing Brazilian rhythms from Sweden!

Odyssey - Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love - blissful folk-soul.

Hello again

2006-11-23T23:24:00.000Z

I have had a cold again. Knocked out for a couple of days and I still don't feel human. I am, however, being drawn towards the conclusion that I must, one day, inevitably get an MP3 player. I have avoided for years. Being an consumate audio-snob (yet lacking the funds to really indulge in the more extravagant end of the market), I have soldiered on with my trusty Minidisc. Even with extended play, the compression does not become too intolerable. MP3s, however, as far as I have been able to tell suffer the worst excesses of distortion throughout the audio spectrum. Bass is heavy, but uncontrolled. The middle is wafer thin, and the high's are thin and harsh - all symptoms of the compression, no doubt. Yet now I feel the urge to just be able to transfer several hundred tracks over with no hassle. Without having to record to Minidisc (in the same way you had to with cassettes). A 4GB MP3 allegedly holds around 1,000 songs - enough for a couple of weeks commuting. So what to do, dear readers? I, like Natalie Imbruglia (only far less attractive or female) am torn...

Pain

2006-11-15T23:28:00.000Z

I ache. My right wrist is not functioning properly. My thigh has alternated between dull pain and a searing burning sensation all day. What is the cause of this dreadful affliction, I hear you ask... A deadly tropical disease? A genetic defect? No, someting far worse. Manual labour. Not even particularly challenging manual labour - no carrying of heavy objects. Simply painting. Walls and ceilings. With rollers and paintbrushes.

My brother is moving into a new flat that requires redecoration (and cleaning, but that is a separate issue - I am constantly amazed at the filth some people can bear to live in). So I helped for a couple of hours yesterday - painting things white, cutting in, etc... Covered in paint, which proves very difficult to removes when one is as hairy as I. And I repeatedly got paint in my eyes. Water-based, fortunately, as I would imagine that white spirit smarts a little when applied to the eye.

So, after a shower, there is still paint in/on my fingernails, and when I retired to bed last night it was with the weariness of someone removed from the comfort of a computer chair and thrust into the challenging world of movement during work. And fell asleep immediately.

This morning, however, I awoke with the symptoms outlined above. A long hot shower did nothing, and I was very concious of usual 15 minutes walk to the Tube a) taking longer and b) hurting much more than usual.

"The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite."
Karl Marx

Action Image Exchange

2006-11-14T01:22:00.001Z

Reeves & Mortimer circa 1990. Enjoy.

Ginger coos

2006-11-12T22:37:00.001Z

Find the fifty

2006-11-12T21:30:00.000Z

scary movies...

At work again

2006-11-12T14:15:00.000Z

Sundays at work are generally the best day. No phones ringing, far fewer customers than usual. A slightly unusual sense of calm across the shop as a whole. And, more importantly, it allows me the time and freedom to get around to the mindless maintainence tasks that are the bane of the network admin's life. Without having to wait for everyone to leave. The joy of running disk defragmenters. And network traffic tools. And anti-virus scans. Now, if every day could be like this...

Edward Said

2006-11-10T13:14:00.000Z

wrote a very interesting book called Orientalism. I was reminded of this today as a delightfully middle class woman sought to purchase some Serbian language learning materials to converse with her (soon to be) daughter-in-law's parents. She was to travel to Beograd and stay with them, and was concerned that they would not have a bath or shower, that the food would be terrible and that it would be cold. She also stated that she would buy them a washing machine as these kinds of goods are very hard to come by.

Now, the point of this interlude is to query if (and indeed, how), Western European (especially British) perceptions of the former Soviet Bloc have changed and continue to change following the fall of Communism and the expansion of the EU. I have posted before about the Russian middle classes that have appeared in the last 7-8 years, and I note that many of the Central European nations are now home to shopping centres on an almost American scale. Although the exterior of many building have not changed, the interiors would, I'm sure, shame many inhabitants and businesses of this fair isle. So, as I know at least some of my readers have a wealth of experience in said Mittel-Ost Europa, what do you think?

Kazan was certainly a culture shock to me some 10 years ago now, but Moscow, Piter and Petrozavodsk less so. (Although whether this was due to higher material standards, or due to lower expectations, I don't know). Central Europe is now very much part of Europe - the languages and cultures may change, but Pizza Hut is all pervading, as are Ipods, digital cameras, nice airports, tarmacced roads, washing machines, etc. The notion of the launderette still has to take off, I believe, and takeaways are, I would imagine, lagging slightly behind, but what can you do?

Humour?

2006-11-07T22:30:00.000Z

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

Conclusion: Eat and drink whatever you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

I don't know why I do what I do.

2006-11-06T13:25:00.000Z

If I did know, I probably wouldn't feel the need to do it. All I can say, and I say it with utmost certainty, is that I have felt this need since my earliest adolescence.

The rest of Paul Auster's acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters can be read here. There is hope, after all.

No comment

2006-11-05T23:59:00.001Z

Thanks to toothpastefordinner.com once again for the ideal illustration of my life at present.

The difference between false memories and true ones

2006-11-01T21:51:00.000Z

is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Salvador Dali

12.08 East of Bucharest raises a great many questions about the nature of memory and the different interpretations of a single event from the varying perspectives within and without it. In this case, the flight of the Ceaucescu's in December 1989, and the question(s) of the varying degrees of involvement of individuals in the events in a provincial Romanian town.

I found this particulary interesting, not least because (I thought) the images of the dead President and his wife are one of my clearest memories of the collapse of the Communist regimes, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The question, however, for me, at least, is how much of this I have (re)created after the event - in fact, I m no longer even sure that the footage of the two dead bodies actually appeared on British TV, and I can't find a copy on YouTube or anywhere else to check, and even if I did, I couldn't be sure that it wasn't simply fulfilling the expectations I have having read about the footage in a number of other sources.

This period, or rather the UK media's coverage of it, was one of the major influences that has fired (and, of course continues to fire) my passion for all parts of the former Soviet Bloc. So, dear readers, can any of you confirm, either way, whether or not the footage appeared on the Beeb?

Scrabble

2006-11-01T19:15:00.000Z

furniture:

Four good things today

2006-10-31T23:43:00.000Z

1. Starting work on the two Russian translations I have at 8.30 this morning.
2. Wong Kei for dinner.
3. 12.08 East of Bucharest.
4. Mike Leigh in the next urinal at the cinema.

Greta Garbo

2006-10-31T13:02:00.000Z

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Schopenhauer

Today's albums

2006-10-29T15:35:00.000Z

whilst cleaning the flat:

The Clash - London Calling 25th anniversary edition

Various - Dynamite Dancehall Style

Barrington Levy - Shaolin Temple

Koop - Koop Islands

Neu! - Neu!

The Raven

2006-10-28T15:38:00.000+01:00

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

You can read the rest and generally Poe yourself to death here.

Chocklik

2006-10-25T23:23:00.000+01:00

is making me feel better - shame they have not yet released one with NightNurse.

Is it normal?

2006-10-25T23:22:00.001+01:00

Find out here...

This week's CD

2006-10-25T21:47:00.000+01:00

Is not going well with the fuzzy headache I have as the latest strain of the flu struggles to overcome my immune system. New York in the late 1970's - mid 1980's was a real melting pot of musical styles and fashions. I'm sure all of us know the clumsy cross pollination between early rap, disco and punk/new wave in the ever blissful 'Rapture' by Blondie, whilst Talking Heads were again melding soul, jazz and funk with rock guitars.

Anyway, I digress, as these bands are merely the tip of the iceberg (and, of course, the most commercially successful). This compilation brings together some of the more underground sounds of NY in this period. Proto-electronica, jazz, dub, cavernous hiphop, very unusual lo-fi production techniques, mergers of music with performance art, and just about everything in between appear here. Arthur Russell, a classically-trained cellist, created expansive, almost ambient dance-inflected soundscapes, Sonic Youth went on to become one of the defining bands of the late 1980's, and Glenn Branca wrote symphonies for the electric guitar. Of course, alongside these more avant garde musicians, there are of course some delightful 3 minute punk-pop tracks - The Ramones, were, of course CBGBs stalwarts.

This is the third in the series (part one is excellent, part two still has to be delivered), and has once again deepened my knowledge of this period in NY's musical development, the repercussions of which can still be heard not only in the recent slew of pop-punk bands, but also in the electroclash fashion of a couple of years ago, and in some of the more expansive dance music and hiphop. And it has the second best version of 'Jailhouse Rock'. Ever.

The back streets of Ealing

2006-10-17T00:21:00.000+01:00

yielded the following on my walk home tonight:

1 drunken man kicking his way through the newly fallen leaves - I would imagine it was his first day at a new job. The hangover will hurt tomorrow.

2 engineers from Clancy Docwra trying to find the source of the large water-filled hole caused by a burst pipe (this would explain the water being cut off across Ealing yesterday).

A mist reminiscent of Gogol''s descriptions of Nevskii Prospekt.

Unseasonably warm weather - no coat yet and it's almost November!

No traffic at all.

A smell of cider vinegar beneath the apple tree just up the road from my flat as the windfall slowly decay.

Re-energised

2006-10-15T19:12:00.000+01:00

Seems that 17 hours of sleep has done wonders for me. I have managed to come home from work and don't feel the urge to pass out. Now, if I can just get 17 hours a night, I should be able to get some research done... Watching 'Kubanskie kazaki' tonight (again)...

The Excluded Ones

2006-10-15T13:58:00.000+01:00

10/11/2006
Disagreements

Already as soon as it hurt. It arrived almost always behind schedule, yes, but never one dared to ask to him from where. Not to find out something that it wanted to hide itself to itself but by gentleness, not to abruptly alter the so fine balance in which their lives were sustained. Who knows with whom it would walk now. Before they had been happy. It does not do so much. How to draw up with a piece of chalk the exact line that indicates the point of flexion of the things: everything slipped little by little towards the worse thing, without haste. A day, perhaps, began to find its less graceful jokes of the habitual thing, another one realized that was less intelligent of which always it had thought, another one discovered it balder. They wanted to be a modern pair and always they decided tacitly that to leave separately from time to time with its respective friends it would not be a problem. What friends, he asked himself, who had been acquiring to the force the habit to speak with the objects that populated their house. Before it read, but to read is bad because sometimes it makes think, so it finished always in front of waiting for it the television set, if it were possible submerged in some program aid of high tension: that managed to maintain it in a state of well-being near the idiotez, that is, to innocence, out of danger temporarily of the martyrdom of the doubts.

Translated by Mozilla from Los Excluidos

Евгений Рухин

2006-10-15T13:39:00.000+01:00

Без названия
Рухин, Евгений
1975
Коллаж

Thanks to Moskovskii Muzei Sovremennogo Iskusstva for the image.

I've started reading John McPhee's 'The Ransom Of Russian Art' - I had come across parts of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in the past, but this book details how Norton Dodge, an American professor of economics built this collection by meeting with these artists, buying their works and smuggling them out of the Soviet Union.

The figure of Rukhin looms large in the early parts of the book as he was a Petersburg-based geologist, polyglot and anti-establishment figure at the centre of much of the non-conformist art world during the 1970's. He was, of course, killed by a fire in his studio started in mysterious circumstances in 1975. There is a much more complete biography in Russian here, as well as an electronic gallery of his work.

The book also seeks to engage with the material conditions of these non-conformist artists, most of whom had little access to the basic materials required by artists, and so would paint using towels in place of canvas, and using paint designed for cars rather than the more traditional oils. They were also frequently compelled to work as labourers to avoid charges of parasitism. In the meantime, their wives, often artists themselves, would be working two or more jobs, as well as painting 'officially' to support their husbands.

Sharms

2006-10-14T19:09:00.000+01:00

In a Soviet-inspired advertising mood recently, so enjoy....

Moskau

2006-10-14T18:59:00.000+01:00

Dschingis Khan

God

2006-10-11T13:58:00.001+01:00

I want to go home. Work makes me want to puke.

IT

2006-10-04T21:33:00.000+01:00

Spent 5 hours today trying to fix issues caused by the stuff we were doing last night. Fortuntely the piece of string can be used as a noose. Aretha is currently seeking to soothe my soul. Feeling the urge to watch some Bergman or read some Camus.

A piece of string

2006-10-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

Still at work. Working on mail server. What we are doing may not work. Or it may. No idea when we will leave.

Joseph Merrick

2006-10-01T13:13:00.000+01:00

Crappy weather and spots, as well as a glut of new CDs and the rediscovery of some older tracks, have inspired me to produce a new set of CDs this afternoon. I will send them next week (along with any replacements for older CDs - sorry Pavlik). In the meantime, though, enjoy this:

Zaphod Beeblebrox

2006-10-01T13:02:00.000+01:00

One of the more concerning parts of this proto-flu I have been suffering from for the last few days is that I have suddenly broken out in a series (I would say rash, but that would be an awful pun), of very large, deep lying spots. Not you usual teenage style breakout. Not acne either. Just red lumps that sit there painfully. On my back. In my ear. But most worryingly of all, on the very tip of my nose. Like an extra head. Only more noticeable. Another 2 months and I could have had gainful employment in a department store with a pair of these:

Now the issue for me is, clearly these appear when I am run down, so does this mean I am to resemble an overly hormonal teenager (I already do, some of you may add) each and every time I get a cold over the winter. This could be a never ending cycle. I look after my skin these days (as a true metrosexual should), and I've been using Witchhazel to try and draw the crap out, but to no avail. I eat healthily. I even exercise. So what is one to do? Answers on a postcard please...

Chicken gulasz, autumn, snails and wigs

2006-09-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

OK, so the flu doing the rounds at work (people are dropping like flies - flies with the plague, but flies, nonetheless), and I have had a general feeling of crappiness the last couple of days. I tried to head it off by taking Nightnurse before I developed the full symptoms, but this seeems to have dragged it out rather, without the descent into aching joints, head, etc. I have bought myself chicken gulasz from North Ealing Supermarket, in the vain hope that mixing it with rice will invoke the spirit of a Jewish mother and cure me of this affliction - and, of, course, reminding me of this Sendak book from my childhood.

Autumn has also appeared in London with a vengeance. Darkness descends at 7ish, and the general drizzly gloom has now also arrived. Which makes me quite happy. I do enjoy seeing lights in this kind of weather, be they car headlights, the lights on the motorway, streetlights, or even Acton in the distance from the Central Line. The snails were out in force on my way back home tonight - usually I have to dodge slugs on the way back, especially if it has been raining, but tonight there were masses of snails. Every step was filled with fear as I ventured along Madeley Road, the next could be followed by a sickening crunch and an overwhelming sense of guilt. How do snails survive in the modern world? I read an article over the weekend questioning how humanity will evolve given the radical changes in our circumstances over the last 2000 years - but this has also had an impact on other species too...

This makes me laugh a lot....

Recent Things

2006-09-28T00:08:00.000+01:00

Stephen Fry on bipolar disorder
Soviet Music
Lee Perry in the studio
One Man Star Wars
Sabadaba

Another six days

2006-09-26T12:46:00.000+01:00

without a post. Some parts of the world manage to have a conflict within this timeframe. I can't even bear to post a couple of sentences. I guess spending a lot of my time at work staring at a screen of text doesn't particularly help in terms of encouraging me to write. In fact, I even struggle to watch TV of an evening (this used to be my refuge from reality in the evenings). Reading books is almost impossible apart from on the Tube. Even music has dropped off - I listen on the way to work, but not at home any more. Generally I have to go and lay in a darkened room, like a Jane Austen heroine who has had an attack of hysteria.

Records that changed your life

2006-09-20T18:37:00.000+01:00

There has been much discussion on the various DJ message boards around the net recently about the record(s) tht changed your life. That rendered you speechless and had a fundamental effect on you musical taste, so here are mine:

The Clash - Sandinista (I have been into this in a post before)

The Upsetters - Super Ape (Space age lo-fi dub)

James Carr - The Complete Goldwax Singles (Reignited my passion for deep soul - utterly peerless)

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow (Deranged acid-rock-funk)

Eddie Kendricks - Girl You Need A Change Of Mind (Disco is much much more than YMCA, Bee Gees and Abba)

Willis Jackson - Nuthern Like Thuthern (Oh my God! Jazz you can dance to!)

Moodyman - Black Mahogani (Oh my God! Dance music that sounds like jazz!)

Serbian news

2006-09-17T20:16:00.000+01:00

Kulcha

2006-09-17T19:57:00.000+01:00

Recent reading & listening:

Paul Kriwaczek - Yiddish Civilisation - absolutely enthralling and very well written history of the other Europeans from the destruction of the Temple to 2006.

John McGahern - The Collected Stories - Irish writer who is actually good.

Paul Auster - Collected Novels 1 & 2, Collected Prose - forced myself to get these after hearing so many good things over the years.

Herbie Hancock - Mwandishi - shockingly good deep, expansive, electronic jazz fusion post-Blue Note and pre-Headhunters. Nice.

Plus the usual Miles Davis and Charles Mingus.

Oblewanie domu

2006-09-17T12:21:00.000+01:00

in Peckham last night. More Poles (I think) than I've ever been exposed to at one time before. Certainly more Slavs than I've been in a room with since Petrozavodsk. And not a hint of gloom. Smiles all round. Not a single thought of suicide. They did claim, however, that the Poles experience extremes of happiness and misery - maybe the effects of joining the EU have dampened their fatalistic nature - although the Portuguese are, of course, still obsessed with 'fado'. I had always thought that the Polish nature was unrelenting gloom punctuated by short periods of slightly less unrelenting gloom and drunkeness.

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed in certain ways - after several tequilas I was expecting rousing choruses of Polish folk songs (if they can become rousing), deep philosophical pondering on the nature of the Slavic soul (this did start, but the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that it is merely a romanticisation of those aspects of the human that psyche that generally constitute 'being a bastard' in the UK).

More later when I have my lunchbreak - in the meantime, thanks to Maciej and Nadia for the party...

Attributed to Rabbi Harold Kushner

2006-09-16T12:30:00.001+01:00

"Rabbi, if I give up drinking, partying all night, chasing the opposite sex and over eating, and start coming to Synagogue regularly instead, will I live longer?"

"No. It will just feel longer."

Silentium

2006-09-13T14:46:00.001+01:00

Она еще не родилась,
Она и музыка и слово,
И потому всего живого
Ненарушаемая связь.

Спокойно дышат моря груди,
Но, как безумный, светел день,
И пены бледная сирень
В черно-лазоревом сосуде.

Да обретут мои уста
Первоначальную немоту,
Как кристаллическую ноту,
Что от рождения чиста!

Останься пеной, Афродита,
И слово в музыку вернись,
И сердце сердца устыдись,
С первоосновой жизни слито!

Osip Mandel'shtam, 1910

Translation for non-Russian speakers here.

A week away from blogging. I've had nothing to say, really.

Harlem 1958

2006-09-06T01:12:00.000+01:00

this is an incredible photo by Art Kane - you can get more information about those featured in it over at harlem.org.

This insomnia

2006-09-06T00:59:00.000+01:00

is becoming annoying. I have been asleep - I went to bed at 11.30. I am exhausted after doing the smallest amount of manual labour at work. Then a drunk passed by singing. And woke me up. And now I can't get back to sleep. My body is more than willing, but my mind just will not give up. I am concious of how slow my reactions are becoming - Playstation is simply impossible, and I can't focus enough to read properly, so I am reduced to surfing whilst listening to some dreadful show about comediennes. And I don't even have the Discovery Channel to expand my mind whilst in this state. I will probably be up for hours now, and in no state to go to work in the morning.

Monday night jazz

2006-09-04T23:03:00.000+01:00

while waiting for the bath to fill - Charles Mingus - Black Saint and the Sinner Lady:

Genius. And with liner notes by Mingus' psychotherapist. What more could you want...

POSK

2006-09-04T22:53:00.000+01:00

or the Polish Cultural and Social Association, despite its 1960's-style Communist-gloom architecture still seems to be the centre of the ever expanding British Polish community. I had a glorious meal in the cafe there earlier today - grilled sausage with mash, pickled red cabbage and cucumber and dill. Bliss. They even now have English-speaking staff (which I'm sure they didn't in my youth). All for a fiver - less than you would pay for some reheated muck in a pub these days. If you are a Londoner, go - it is five minutes from Ravenscourt Park Tube.

Engaged with today

2006-08-27T02:32:00.000+01:00

Miles Davis - Milestones
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else
Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
Takashi Miike - Audition - as shocking as the first time I saw it.
Benjamin Kunkel - Indecision - clever, but not particularly good. I shall return to work on my novel in which there is no particular reason for the protagonist's questionable mental state - why do these novels always have to have a trauma or Wendepunkt?

The Poincaré Conjecture

2006-08-27T01:23:00.000+01:00

seems to have been solved by Grisha Perelman, a Russian mathematician, who, as you can see from the report is somewhat of an outsider within (surely that should be without, as in the hymn we used to sing at junior school) mathematical circles, and has refused the Fields medal. He will also, no doubt, turn down the prize from the Clay Institute (those of you with better memories will remember that I posted about this conjecture as one of the Millenium Problems), and for this and the purity of his mathematical and inquisitive spirit I salute him. My mother would question as to why, if he can solve a problem like this, he can't do the basic maths to work out that a million dollars would be good for his bank account, but what can you do?

Carnival

2006-08-25T22:29:00.000+01:00

This weekend. I will be avoiding it like the plague. Too many police. Too much control. And the sound systems have to shut down at 7pm. I will be helping my brother string up disco lights for his pub tomorrow, but tonight I am relaxing with the latest Good Times compilation filling me with the carnival vibe. I shall leave you with the wonderfully distorted Channel One Sound System and 'Conspiracy':

Irie?

National Express

2006-08-24T14:40:00.000+01:00

I took the coach down to Portsmouth on Monday night after work - I think for the first time ever, although I may have travelled back via London from Manchester after visting the universities there as a 17 year old.

Anyway, after only using the train/car for the last 12 years, the journey opened my eyes - not only do you take a number of backstreets to get from Victoria to Putney, pass through Richmond, Kingston and Tolworth, but then also stop in Guildford (another place I used to frequent in my youth), then back on to the A3(M) - and usually direct into Portsmouth, but the coach turns off some 20 miles out of Portsmouth and uses the old London Road.

As we crawled down this road, I saw parts of Portsmouth I had either not visited or seen for years - as children, our summer holidays always began with a trip up this road on the way to Scotland or anywhere else. It was fascinating to see how little place like Cowplain, Purbrook and Widley had changed in the intervening 20 years. They seem to have been frozen in time as the traffic has deserted them entirely. They still have small parades of shops, newsagents, tea houses, and the assorted slightly bizarre specialist shopping experiences you tend to get away from the main shopping areas - caravan showrooms, old-style cake shops, etc... There must be masses of these places, with businesses slowly going bankrupt across the UK as larger roads are being built, shopping centres become ever larger, and supermarkets diversify their product ranges ever further. Whither the spirit of British capitalism? A nation of shopkeepers has become a nation of factory outlet visiting credit card users...

Back in Ealing

2006-08-23T23:16:00.000+01:00

Away for the last three days - I'll catch up on my day off tomorrow.

Happiness

2006-08-20T18:31:00.000+01:00

is not a cigar called Hamlet - it is browsing the London Transport Museum photo archive. Relive your youth. Look at your old Tube station. Be amazed at the art-deco glory of Boston Manor station. Or not.

Orthodoxy

2006-08-19T13:27:00.000+01:00

Now, as some of you may know, I have (more than) a passing interest in the history of the Orthodox Church - I think it sprang originally from my interest in Dostoevskii, Solov'ev, Rozanov, Leont'ev and any other non-rational Russian thinker of the 19th/early 20th century you care to name.

As those of you who have studied Russian thought know, the writing about it, especially by Russian scholars is overly tendentious, taking either a strongly Soviet line, or a strong emigre anti-Soviet line.

Unfortunately, the histories of the Russian church I have delved into have had this same tendency (one shared by a great many of the conservative thinkers in Russia at the moment, step forward Mr Solzhenitsyn) - that is an overt romanticization of the pre-Soviet past, of Russian history, of the Romanov family, of the Orthodox church and of Russia's role within the world. Nothing new, you may say - romanticization of the past seems to been a genetic defect amongst not only the Russians, but amongst most nations that have experienced trauma (of whatever form), and there are clear intellectual antecedents in Russian history, and in modern Russian culture for this romantic messianism.

Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Church is a magnificent introduction to the Orthodox church in general, and I wish there were an equivalent for the Russian Orthodox Church - in English, ideally - I have just picked up the 4 volume History of Russian Christianity by Shubin, but the fact that he has written, travelled and translated widely within this sphere slightly fills me with dread.

You've got to have a job...

2006-08-17T20:04:00.000+01:00

Gwen Guthrie in classic 1986 style, thanks again to thebestlegaladvice.com. One of my favourites to play out, this, especially when I'm in a rare groove kind of mood. Or there are lots of drunken women/homosexuals.

U can't touch this

2006-08-17T15:52:00.000+01:00

How to become a man of genius

2006-08-17T14:37:00.000+01:00

If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.

There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.

One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

Bertrand Russell

News you may have missed

2006-08-16T17:21:00.000+01:00

while that plane sits on the runway in Boston:

Redheads have more sex.

Human cultural difference caused by parasite.

Oh yeah, I have a verruca (sorry the Google image search for 'verruca' turns up some of the most revolting images I have ever seen) and some Bazuka, and I have gone over to the beta version of Blogger, so please tell me if you notice any difference.

No Room For Squares

2006-08-14T23:37:00.000+01:00

Mr. Mobley in imperious form - thank god for Blue Note - late night listening at its very best. Empyrean Isles to follow, I feel...

The 1980s

2006-08-14T22:17:00.000+01:00

were the era of Thatcher, the miners' strike, riots, the collapse of communism, the rise of hiphop as a cultural institution, and a lot of bad pop music. You can relive your youth through the glut of 80s videos over thebestlegaladvice.com.

Here is my particular favourite, Musical Youth, seemingly still performing, with Pass the Dutchie - all together now,

This generation
Rules the nation
With version

Music happen to be the food of love
Sounds to really make you rub and scrub

I say: Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

It was a cool and lovely breezy afternoon
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
You could feel it 'cause it was the month of June
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
So I left my gate and went out for a walk
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
As I pass the dreadlocks' camp I heard them say
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

So I stopped to find out what was going on.
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
'Cause the spirit of Jah, you know he leads you on
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
There was a ring of dreads and a session was there in swing
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)
You could feel the chill as I seen and heard them say
(How does it feel when you've got no food ?)

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

'Cause me say listen to the drummer, me say listen to the bass
Give me little music make me wind up me waist
Me say listen to the drummer, me say listen to the bass
Give me little music make me wind up me waist, I say

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

You play it on the radio, a so me say, we a go hear it on the stereo
A so me know you a go play it on the disco
A so me say we a go hear it on the stereo

Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side
It a gonna burn, give me music make me jump and prance
It a go done, give me the music make me rock in the dance

I say east, say west, say north and south (on the left hand side)
This is gonna make us jump and shout (on the left hand side)