Rob

Robbo breezed in - the weight of his stumpy little body bouncing on the balls of his feet - Charlie, his older brother, had taught him to bounce like a plastic gangster - it seemed to work - people respected the bounce - were in awe of the front - there didn't need to be anything behind it so long as nobody challenged it. And few people did. Not since grammar school where almost every other kid had exposed him.

His hands were plunged deep into the pockets of his cheap little windcheater. His keys were in one hand and his lighter in the other. He glimpsed Keith moving toward the toilets. Shit - he had meant to look up Rhode Island last night and instead had collapsed in the kitchen when he got home - he'd even left his Shredded Wheat. It was hard looking after yourself when you were living on you own. That cow - she'd run off leaving him alone - and she'd run off with a woman!

He'd known Keith for a few months now and he felt close to him - as close as he'd felt to Charlie before he went off to Canada - even  Charlie couldn't live with their father's demands. He'd even given Keith his redundancy money to keep the bar afloat. There had been that boy at school - they'd been very close - too close maybe - it worried him even to remember it - and his feelings for Keith were closer than that  - closer than he'd been to his wife even.

He was bouncing across the bar now - acting like he owned the place - going to join the boss - who knows, maybe he did right now - Keith had been a bit evasive about what he'd get for his contribution. And then he spotted mad Liz - oh no - please don't let her talk to me - he turned his head, checking out the bland artwork on the walls - anything rather than catch her glance. Bizzare flliers for the upcoming Mexican menu - commissioned from some cheapo art student. He stepped up his pace and was past her in a moment. Safe.

He pulled out the chair, winked at the waiter, and sat himself down at Keith's table just as Keith emerged from the toilet.

Keef

Keith surreptitiously glimpsed over at her table ... he didn't want her to see him looking ... he didn't need his ear bending tonight ... Robbo would be coming in soon and he wanted to spend some quality time with him ... Robbo was a local jack the lad ... a proper scouse scally ... Keith was fascinated by him ... that accent ... that empty swagger ... all that vapid posturing ... Keith knew in his heart it was empty but still it drew him in ... or was it those muscled shoulders and that squat little body ... the weather beaten face and the balding head ... no ... that was nowhere he wanted to go.

Liz gave him the creeps big time. She was ordering another drink ... not looking his way ... one more and she'd have to hit the tab again ... these sad old dames creeped him out ... if she told him about her abusive father and downtrodden mother once more he'd have to think seriously about hightailing it back to the US. This was what passed for a social worker in this country ... third world ... seriously fucked up. She aways ended up crying or ranting ... she seemed only to have two modes ... and he didn't like either of them but ... but she was a regular ... and he was the owner ... how was it the Brits called it ... noblesse oblige ... something like that ... what you have to do in his job.

Robbo was a diamond though ... last time he'd been close to bankruptcy he'd helped out ... shelled over his latest redundancy payment ... that had kept the wolves away for just long enough ... OK so he drank too much ... didn't all the regulars ... what else was there in their lives ... the place was a toilet ... what was he doing here ... he'd left before the guys got after him and he still didn't know what was waiting for him if he ever went back ... fingers crossed that wouldn't be necessary ... those people have long memories ... look at the trouble Polanski was still in ... and that at least was a girl ... and Polanski was pretty kosher everywhere else in the world.

He was watching the door in the mirror behind the bar and he saw Mad LIz looking his way ... please no ... don't let her ... the barman brought her drink and Keith took the opportunity to slip off to the head unnoticed.  He stood pissing ... wondered how much longer Robbo would be ... he was he thought like a young girl waiting for a date to turn up ... no, don't even think it ...  stay straight ... shaking off he reminded himself to check the cleaning roster ... he nodded the state of the bathroom through ... Malcolm - an hour and a half ago ... Wayne due in half an hour ... the waft of deodorant caught in his throat and as he opened the outer door the smell of burgers ... next week the mexican menu comes on line ... hope that picks business up a bit ... should get the later passing trade ... he hoped ... margins were still dangerously slim ... wafer thin ... thank God for the regulars ... he stepped out and saw Robbo swagger in ...

Mad old witch

Her head cast down she stares into the remains of another vodka tonic. Around her eyes the skin is palegrey and papery ... like paper that has been stored too long ... dead paper ... dry paper ... paper delicate and prone to tear. And wrinkled ... her sad long years and post-menopausal condition writ large ... etched even onto a skin never truly young. The hooded eyes themselves palegrey too. Palegrey and watery ... as though about to cry ... always, as though she is about to cry. She seldom cries though .. she is too distant from her emotions now to cry ... except from pure anger and frustrated desires. Alcohol, age, and anger have supplanted life itself in her daily being ... don't call it a life ... have drained the vitality from her ... she is dry outside and dead inside. Sad Liz they call her in this sad bar. Mad old witch, the local children call after her in the street.

Her hair is grey too ... greypale and lifeless ... a dulled pewter helmet ... cut short when he reached 40 all those years ago ... cut short as her mother's hair had been ... cut and not styled. There is something about her that reminds the casual onlooker of the institution ... and then they look away ... the living do not look comfortably or for long upon the dead ... and the spark is not in her ... just pain ... and self-loathing ... and undirected hatred. The slice of lemon that has sunk to the bottom of her glass looks back at her ... mocks her ... derides her ... or so she thinks.

Her mouth turns down at the corners ... habitually, inexorably down ...  her father always maintained that she had never smiled in her life ... not even as a baby gurgling in her cot had she ever smiled ... her eyes, he swore, might glint but that downturned thin lipped slit in the bottom half of her face had never smiled. Over the long sad years she had learned to turn the corners up under duress ... to mimic a smile ... to try to pass for normal ... but it would not convince. It was hard work and since her latest boyfriend had walked out she had not mustered that much effort.

Her father. Her boyfriend. The stories she had. The stories she could tell ... if only there were someone to listen. Someone who would even pretend ... it didn't have to be real ... pretence had always been enough ... it would be enough for now. For all time in fact. She pushed her fingertip, lightly yellowed and deeply ridged, through a pool of spillage on the tabletop and wondered. Another drink? Yes, but when? She knew to within a penny how much she had in her purse ... her mother's purse as was ... not just today ... not just now but at all times on all days ... another of her obsessions ... she had enough for three more drinks ... more if she forewent food ... the cod and chips on the way home to her empty house ... not her house really ... not yet but she would have it ... it would be hers ... he couldn't walk out like that and leave her dry ... drier. He would pay ... they all paid one way or another. She nodded to the passing waiter ... another drink appeared ... they knew her here ... how could they not ... despite the alarming turnover of staff ... young, pretty things ... mostly antipodeans ... she spent more time here than most of the staff ... all of the staff ... well, except for Keith.

HEAD INJURY?

I suspect that I may have taken a blow to the head. Some time in the past week or ten days. Perhaps when we were in Como? Or just after we got back.

We have had rain - quite a lot of it in fact. Yesterday and most of the night before, and the evening before that, it rained. The bottlebrush is set with more than 20 or 30 flowers in waiting - when the sun shines they will blossom into fiery brands. The first few olive trees have begun to bud into flower - the ones near the house are always first. And today I noticed that the plum or coramilo in the front garden is now coming into leaf - tiny buds are opening into showers of leaflets.  OK, so the grasses are overblown, the thistles are coming along strongly and the burr clover had started to crowd out the oxalis - everything has a downside.  But all in all the results are welcomed.

Closer to home - OK actually indoors -  my outputs have all been directing themselves to Tabblo and flickr. The blog lies somewhat neglected. Bulletin boards likewise. And this is why I suspect a blow to the head. Most of my creative output, as you all know too well, goes into words and this momentary aberraation that leans my mind to images is most uncomfortable but you and I shall just have to bear with it. It's just the way it's leaning right now.

If it wasn't a blow to the head maybe it's the effect of spring? We shall see.

SPRING THING

Although today has been overcast and cooler than its predecessors Spring has been the thing this last few days and Spring means activity around here. The farm comes out of a strange almost hibernation. The first olive blossom is in view - from the kitchen window, the wild almonds are pinking daily - thrusting themselves into view on our regular trips to shop for fresh food, pale blue and orange red vetches are pushing their way through the oxalis and the burgeoning burr clover attempts to take over every spot not already taken.

G has been busy with a selective weeding program, tidying and yet not manicuring the periphery of the house. Farmboy has been moving plants - the rosemary sits now beside the front gate for luck, and taking cuttings - mulberry this week, truncheon cuttings in hopeful pots and squirrelled away elsewhere. Eddie, under guidance from Shem, completed work only today on the small olive wood mallet that has been under way for months, fashioning the handle from a piece of old balustrade.

G has cleared the perimeter of the girls' run of oxalis - the silly things insist on eating the seductive yellow flowers that promptly poison them! Sheep in large flocks have become a daily staple now that the valley is in green.  The sounds of chainsaws pruning olives likewise.

We are all looking forward as the days lengthen and the light intensifies. Birdsong fills our ears day long - their nesting activities are properly underway - while the grooming table beckons for the terrible twins, their winter coats sprouting into an odd hairy broccoli look.

And it's Cruft's this weekend so we are tracking Terrier results as they are posted online today.

Tagged

A few days before we were due to go off to Como an old online friend of longstanding - one Nightshade    from the 'flue tagged me in his blog (despite the fact that he doesn't carry a link to mine). He wanted 5 reasons why I blog. Now we're back and I can respond. It may not be 5 reasons - who knows but here goes:

1 - I have so many opinions that I have to tell someone who won't obviously be bored by them - the web does that for me

2 - I have, since adolescence, wanted to be a writer - my blog allows that

3 - I never wanted to have to earn a living by writing - no chance of that with a blog

4 - I want to be able to address any subject at any time

5 - I demand total creative freedom vis a vis style - the oonline format forces me to innovate (I use it as a set of formal or poetic constraints)

6 - I love the feedback no matter how infrequently it might come my way

7 - I have a regular readership built up over the past few years

8 - I'm an egomaniac

Well -  I think that covers about as much as I'm prepared to let on.

Fear and loathing of flying

We have been 40 minutes in Italy. I have already seen more black faces than in the past 5 years in Crete. It is comforting in is way. I have missed that. I have not, you can imagine, missed the filth that goes with all cities. Cities are so dirty. I have not missed the dinning: the constant intrusive "ambient" noise of cities. Does the din ever quiet enough to hear birdsong?

I realised while sitting in Athens airport departure lounge as the expected departure time of our flight slid further - and yet further - away "due to the late arrival of the incoming service" that airports remind me of nothing so much as my old working life - tarnished reams indeed.

Air travel is an odd contradiction. Such a speedy form of travel and yet each journey is much longer, drags on so long, much longer than it should be. No destination airport is closer than a one hour trip to wherever you want to go. Unless. of course you inspect airports for a living. Your own local airport is never closer than an hour's trip from where you live. Unless you live in a departure lounge. So, before you begin your journey will take 2 hours. Plus flight time. Plus that dead time that every air journey gives you - or takes away from you - 2 hours for international travel - 1 for domestic - that hideous "check in" time while fascist animals treat you like a criminal - when they are not ignoring you altogether that is and leaving you to the ministrations of international capital courtesy of MacDonalds, Tie Rack, franchised perfumeries, and all their familiar and grisly cohorts. Baggage? You have baggage? OK give me another half hour - minimum. On the outward leg - at the beginning of your journey - add another twenty thirty minutes minimum loitering beside a grubby carousel at the other end. Unless your carrier loses your baggage of course! And then it is more - much much more.

The nightmare that is air travel is behind us. Delays - unscheduled and inbuilt - over. We are in Milan. We are 40 minutes into Milan. A wait for the shuttle bus was usefully spent getting nicotine levels up to normal. Functional once more, we ignored the siren calls of taxi drivers licensed and unlicensed - it is not hard to see how seductive a swift getaway from the ennui of air travel makes good business for these guys. Milan Centrale station is undergoing cleaning. It needs it. Beautiful mosaic floors - grubby walls - filthy skylights. A chance for another cigarette and then we're off on the fast and timely train to Como.

Still life with nicotine

It's half past five on a February afternoon. The light has begun to fade, It has been raining on and off all day. The temperature has hovered around 5ºC all day and is now falling. I am sitting beneath a balcony outside a cafe in Como. Beside me two elderly ladies in fur coats are deep in conversation around another table chainsmoking. Beyond them a solitary middle aged man sits sipping a cappuccino - fingerless gloves - he grasps a cigarette and draws heavily - his wife and young child sit inside the cafe in the warmth - the only customers inside the cavernous cafe. They have a young male employee who mans the till as their only company - the rest of the staff are out here with us - the smokers. They too are grabbing a quick smoke. The rains continues to fall. The temperature continues to fall. A mist rolls in from the lake. The smokers persist - taking their outlawed pleasure where they might while they can. Across the way in an open air annex to the Duomo the homeless crouch together for warmth - they are smoking too.

Thanks for crapping on my life

I'm not quite sure who this is addressed to but ... Thanks for ruining a great portion of my life outside of home. I've always valued quality over quantity and never more so than when it comes to life itself. People have long lectured me about losing 20 years of my life to cigarettes. I would reply that the 20 years that the cigarettes were getting were crap anyway: years of dependence, incontinence, illness and pain ~ great, take them ~ I'll take 60 enjoyable and self sufficient years and cash in the 20 crap ones for the sake of those cigarettes. The cigarette with my first coffee in the morning at that warm little cafe on the corner as I gaze out of the window as the day develops. The one over the rich port at the end of a fine meal in good company. The cigarette after sex, good, bad, or just plain indifferent. Some body of jerks has taken steps to take them all away from me - well two of them so far but I don't doubt that the mean spirited intolerance they have shown so far will not stay their hand from the last one in time.

A week's stay in Italy was less enjoyable, and less enjoyed, than it could have been because of those jerks. Standing outside cafes and restaurants in February: foregoing coffee after dinner so that I can get out and get my cigarette put a serious crimp in my fun; drinking coffee in the rain with gloves on likewise. And you know what? The anti smoking jerks, those self righteous naysayers, really couldn't give a tinker's cuss, a flying fuck, a twopenny damn. They don't care whether I ever enjoy breakfast, or dinner, or sex again because they'd rather hand me back those 20 discarded years (yeah sure, it's all motivated by a concern for my longevity). Those 20 shitty years that I don't want and that, thanks to our jerks, will be yet more miserable and unbearable than even I had anticipated. Thanks a bunch.

Fragments from a honeymoon in progress

Woke this morning back in my own bed ... birdsong outside the bathroom window ... how to portray our week ... impressions of the past week ... wrote only two full pieces while away ... another is brewing ... but first some fragments ... Milan central station and I've seen more black faces already than in the last 5 years in Crete ... people, many ethnic minorities are living at the margins ... city shit ... the train leaving MIlan passes a shanty settlement made of packing cases and polythene sheeting ... beaten looking men huddle beside fires in open drums ... Milan is dirty in an industrial way ... much of the everyday architecture is brutally ugly ... nowhere I would want to live ... mobile fucking phones ... the trains run on time just like in Il Duce's day ... and they are clean ... the sun comes out on the way into Como ... a clearly affluent town ... very pleased with itself ... well tended and scrubbed clean ... the people too ... less thigh ... less buttock ... less bosom too ... a surprising lack of obesity ... fat is not fashionable - clearly ... though the people are ... save for the men ... there is a virus running amok here that disables mens' aesthetic sense - ORANGE corduroy trousers? ... please ... ORANGE ... the lesser infected men affect banana yellow corduroys! .. what is it with corduroy? ... Italy has reignited my fashion fascism ... only Jim Morrison looked good in leather trousers - nobody looks good in orange corduroy trousers ... trust me on that ... seaplanes crossing the sky of the old town make a musical sound and cut the sky with an anachronistic design ... love that sound ... the lake is pretty impressive too ... I tend to go with Huysmans on nature and stuff ... the mediaeval city is where we are to stay ... fascinating and elegant ... the apartment is beautiful ... Italian style courtesy of an inhabitant of SF, Hawaii, and Como but ... but the black country is in her ... peering between closely packed houses in narrow streets - a funicular .. we shall be going up there to look back down on Como ... a hydrofoil rises and glides across the lake ... we have arrived safely ... now for some expeditions .. maybe ... we shall see ...

Absent Friends

There is an eery silence round here. Birds are chirping and a breeze is rustling though the olives but something is missing. A familiar sound is absent.

There is a visual absence too. Walking up and down the stairs that join the main house to cellar brings it home to you. A familiar visible element or two - gone. We do not see them and they do not see us.

But more importantly there is a spiritual, an existential, absence. Two spirits, bright and cheerful. Two spirits happy and friendly. Our two best friends are off on holiday. Who will come in to sit with us this evening? Who will sit beside us and lift our hearts with their unconditional love?

The girls are away at kennels. We miss them desperately but I doubt that they are missing us. They have new friends to get acquainted with. They have a new environment to familiarise themselves with. I am sure that they will enjoy their holiday. But without them this place just isn't the same.

First They Came for the smokers

First they came for the smokers
and I did not speak out
because I was not a smoker.
Then they came for the motorists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a motorist.
Then they came for the pensioners
and I did not speak out
because I was not a pensioner.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

February

It is February

mid February

and today I saw:

bees flocking around our koukia, and

a wild almond tree in Mathes dressed in a cluster of pink blossom

Dead lock locked

I love full mortise dead locks. With the lock itself safely tucked into the body of the door and the tongue locked firmly into the jamb, they are so secure. They are really difficult to tamper with. Aye, there's the rub. Really difficult to tamper with.

Last night we adjourned to the lounge for the latter part of the evening as usual. It was about 10:30. As we were going to be in for the rest of the night I turned off the outside light and double locked the door behind us The redoubtable mortise lock clicked into place. Something clicked in my mind. That didn't sound right. Along with the reassuring clunk there was another, alien, sound.

Just to make sure I put the key back in the lock and opened the door. Or rather that is what I tried to do ... but the lock was stuck firm. The key would not turn . The tongue would not withdraw. I checked that I was using the right key. I was. I tried again. No luck. No change. G came along to find out what I was doing wrong and had no better luck than had I.

This floor has no back door save a balcony two and a half metres above the garden at basement level and no internal staircase to the lower level. The now permanently locked door is the only usable entrance. Tomorrow.

We settled down with a DVD after lighting the stove. We drank our tea and relaxed as best we could knowing that we were firmly locked in.

This morning we left by the front window and roused Farmboy to deal with the problem. Six hours later the door was re-instated with a new mortise lock. I'm not exactly sure how he did it but I did see the following tools and supplies going upstairs and through the window: screwdrivers various; chisels various; mallet large; mallet small; tenon saw; angle grinder; files various; electric drill; drill bits, wood and steel, various; new mortise lock; new lock cylinder; door handles cast iron; sandpaper grades various. It is by no means an invisible repair but it works - for now.

Thanks Farmboy.

Ole

It's gone 3 in the morning. It must be - we're waiting for the other crew to come back from their first break. We're working a night shift. One week of nights in three. That's the deal. A shift made up of maybe 13 guys. Only guys, no females. 13 testosterone charged young guys. Maybe the shift leader, Pete, is past his early twenties but none other. We're talking teens and early twenties. No marrieds - well Pete perhaps. Yeah Pete definitely - a father figure for all the boys. Pete is running the other half of the crew - he's on break. Ian's running this half - Ian acts as though he's married and old but it's just an act. Ian's just boring. And acting old and responsible. One day he'll grow into the reality of his pretence. One day soon in fact but that's hindsight speaking.

The computer that we are all slaves to surrounds us. The arithmetic logic unit runs for probably 20 feet behind us. Parallel to it and maybe 12 feet away s the run of cabinets that house the processing unit and the core storage unit - the main primary memory of the machine. At the far end, furthest from me, and between them, closing off the third side of an odd rectangle is the double fronted drum unit. Secondary storage for the machine lives on a pair of massive magnetic drums, each with it's own cabinet. Each of these cabinets stands seven feet tall. Each cabinet was manufactured by Mulliner of Park Ward, the guys who then made Rolls Royce bodywork. Each in two shades of grey. Many tens of coats of paint layered onto each one. Cabinets whose doors close with a whisper on high class hinges that never squeak. A small grey haired man whose face has collapsed where his teeth have been removed or have been lost hangs on for dear life to a mechanised floor scrubber that is almost as tall as he is. This is Charley. HIs pal and oppo, Bill, is over by the two banks of one inch tape drives that rock in action beyond the ALU as records are retrieved to keep the company running. The tape units have clear perspex fronts and the huge reels of tape move rhythmically, mesmerically, on all ten drive units. Each drive is cleaned thoroughly as one tape is dismounted an another takes its place. This bank of tape drives is served by three operators. Three highly sexed young men who will run back and forth and clean and mount and dismount hundreds of 7 pound aluminium hubbed tapes onto and from these monsters in shifts all night until 8:30 tomorrow morning. Heavily built metal trolleys full of these tapes stand waiting.

In front of the parallel rows of cabinets sits the command console, L shaped. At the corner of the L is the teletype machine from which the beast is monitored and managed. The rest of the console is a massive array of lights that flicker on and off as the machine crunches through its work and beneath this impressive array of little lights is a set of hand key switches that are used to power this thing into life every day. An operator uses these switches repeatedly to enter a tiny machine code program into the main memory. Once complete the operator commands the machine to jump to the beginning of the program and begin executing it. The tiny program reads in the bootstrap code from a paper tape reader that nestles at the end of the long arm of the L. The program now in the memory of the beast is complex enough to read the rest of the operating system from the first of the tape units and prepare for itself for its daily load.Now though the beast is in full flow and at the teletype sits an operator monitoring and controlling it.

He is a short almost plump youth of maybe 20 years. His hair is thin and bouffanted - strawberry blonde verging on pale ginger. His name is Smallbone and he wears the regulation operator's jacket, much like the linen jackets that you might see old men wearing on the bowling green. This is a climate and dirt controlled environment. The whole vast space that the beast occupies is a clean room. Even the viewing bay beyond the control console is clean. Parties of visiting dignitaries and stock brokers are ushered into this cathedral of technology with the sole aim of impressing them. They have their own place - the viewing bay. But not now. Not in the middle of the night. For now only the lower order of the priesthood tend the machine and satisfy its needs. To the right of Smallbone are ranks of job trays piled high with work yet to be done. Wire mesh or grey plastic trays depending on whether they are production or development jobs.

Smallbone is a well known wag amongst the priesthood. In many ways more mature than his years and yet in other ways a man with a child's sense of fun. HIs place in the annals of the priesthood is assured already. There are several oft repeated amusing stories of his antics but the guarantee of his immortality lies in the story of "When Smallbone stuck his prick in Pound's ear". Another, an earlier, night shift. Perhaps a year or two ago, just after they started the third shift. Pound was on duty at the control teletype and Smallbone had come into work slightly inebriated and very tired. He had turned up an hour late. He had been out at club before work. He wanted Pound to give way and let him take a stint at the teletype to take the weight off. Pound ignored his every treaty, feigning deafness. Pound was in reality a little deaf and he played it up when it suited him. Smallbone stood beside Pound and announced in a shout that if Pound didn't give up the seat he would stick his prick in Pound's deaf ear. Pound continued with his deaf and dumb show and Smallbone made good on his threat.

This night though Smallbone is rightfully at the teletype and several long jobs are running. The panel of lights flickers, tapes turn on all ten decks. The beast is working hard and Smallbone is relaxing in the lull. He is mellow and smiling. With the pen in his hand he beats a rhythm on the control console desk and accompanies himself on voice. He repeats the opening bars over three times and then all hell breaks loose as he improvises in a strange and hypnotic way. Smallbone is playing jazz. Smallbone is playing Ole by John Coltrane - on pen and voice he is playing Coltrane. Above the drone of the beast; amid the bustle of a working shift, Smallbone has just introduced me to John Coltrane.

Thank you.

Reading

I could read when I started school. I think now that all of my siblings could. I have no idea how I learnt to read. Maybe it was a genetic thing. It certainly wasn't a nurture thing - ours was not an upbringing surrounded by books and reading. I cannot remember a time when I could not read.

Throughout my life there have been moments of literary epiphany. Moments when I discovered things not about words - words are meaningless sub-fragments in the same way as individual notes are in music - but about literature itself. About what language is capable of when written.

What images and music are to others is what literature is to me. It is my bedrock, my building block. I have no visual imagination (my surviving sister "suffers" the same "sensory deficit") - I think, dream, and imagine, in language. My life is language and language is my life.

My first? My first literary epiphany? I think I was eleven, maybe twelve, no older. I had read every book in my school libraries. I had been given a library card at 6 or 7. I had graduated from the junior to the adult library precociously. I recall it well.

I had read something - a book perhaps, an article maybe, could have been a review of a reprint -  it doesn't matter, it isn't relevant.  It stickes with me to this day, millions of destroyed brain cells later, hundreds, possibly thousands of books later: not the article but the book. Anyway, the piece talked about The Dead. The finest short story of all time it said. An Irishman, a rebel and an exile had written this story and it was included in a book called Dubliners - no article definite or otherwise.

I  rushed down to the library and took the book, almost pristine I remember now, (not much call for James Joyce in Dagenham), down from the wooden shelving. I sat at one of their desks in a silence that was near impossible to replicate anywhere else in my life - a refuge that would become ever more significant in my formative years and I read The Dead. And then I read Araby. And then I read The Sisters. I sat and read in total silence until the head librarian ushered me out at closing time and stamped the book for return in 2 weeks time.

I had always loved reading but my encounter with Dubliners taught me something that has stayed with me to this day. Language is abstract. Plot is not that important. Language can shine, and resonate. A tale is but a tale. Perfect language lives in the memory for the rest of your life. A perfect story is a linguistic achievement. The form backgrounds the content.

Most important of all - maybe - to me at least - language is itself paramount.  And language can be perfected. Joyce had done it. Had anyone else?  I had a quest that would last my living life.  To search and to find perfect literature.

Rationing

We are all aware that the munificence of the NHS system is not unlimited. Nor has it ever been. The system is and always has been rationed. Countless people wish that it weren't but those countless people are not prepared to pay all of their earnings into the system: and it could absorb the entire GDP of the UK and still not be able to guarantee an unrationed system.

How the rationing that is a fact of NHS day to day adminstration is exercised is a matter worthy of public debate but such debate cannot happen unless and until the need for rationing and an acceptance of that rationing is accepted by the NHS users: the electorate. In the meantime we will continue to have alarmist news items about post-code rationing and more importantly the adjudications of N.I.C.E who are seen as the main rationing body in the system.

My own preference would be to come up with some logical equation for each treatment-patient pair: one that balanced improvement in life quality (quality improvement years) , against cost per treatment, against likely positive outcome, against  x, y, and z - (I don't have or expect to have a definitive list).

Whenever this debate comes up I am reminded of a decision that a friend of my sister, a consultant surgeon, took some time ago. It was around the time of the first few heart transplants. He resigned as a consultant surgeon and has, as far as I know, never practiced medicine since. HIs problem, as he explained it, was that a heart transplant would cost perhaps £10,000 and involve x weeks in hospital, plus the cost of anti-rejection drugs for the rest of the patient's life whereas for that amount of money and other NHS resource investment he could perfom perhaps 20 or 30 hernia operations that would significantly improve the quality of life for all those patients for the rest of their natural lives. He could not countenance that trade off and left the profession.

The revelation today that an ex-MP is fighting to have prescribed to her drugs that might save her sight LINK while fertility treatment and trivial cosmetic surgery is widely funded by the NHS brought the argument into focus again (forgive the pun).

A public debate is overdue. An informed public debate. But in order for that to happen we have to confess to the need for rationing first and that doesn't seem to be a debate that anyone is keen to have - least of all big pharma.

The Polluter Pays - or rather, no he doesn't

I guess thttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhat senility must be setting in because this latest nonsense from the BBC (LINK) just doesn't jibe with my view of reality. As far as I am aware the mess that Lebanon is trying to clear up was caused by an illegal mass bombing and invasion of their country by Israel. And yet I read in this piece that the following roster of states has lined up to help pay for the clean up:

US: $1bn (inc new $770m)
France: $650m
EU: $520m
Saudi Arabia: $1.1bn
World Bank: $1bn
EIB: $1.25bn

No sign of Israel on that list. Didn't there used to be some new wave idea that "the polluter pays" should be the model for the 21st century? So where is the polluter here? Why are European taxpayers who probably opposed the aggressive Israeli action being told that they are cleaning up the mess? Maybe if these clowns had to pay to fix what they break they might think before they act - think once at least.

This little item prompted me to follow up what happened vis a vis the ecological rather than politico-economical pollution that was directly caused by the same action: the 95 mile oil slick released when Israel bombed Lebanon's infrastructure. Turns out I couldn't find a single piece about Israelis or Israeli money helping to clean up. I did find this LINK as the latest report though.


Like I said - it must be senility.

Unholy Trinities

I want the right to discriminate based on my beliefs - old style first - new style next

Suffer the little children and blackmail the government

This man -

believes that atheists are intolerant (LINK)

believes that the Act of Settlement discriminates unfairly against members of his cult

has very strange ideas about paedophilia (LINK)


This man works for an organisation -

that has a long and illustrious history of both oppressing peoples directly (LINK) or supporting the oppression of peoples - (LINK)

whose most famous member so far has been Adolf Hitler

whose current head of operations was a member of the HItler Youth (and before anyone claims he had no choice they should try asking Dietrich Bonhoeffer LINK)

that routinely and systematically discriminates against all womankind despite worshipping a woman albeit a "virgin mother"


This man wants for himself and his organsation a special exemption from British legislation to outlaw discrimination against homosexuals so that he and it can continue to discriminate without legal let or hindrance.

And Tony Bair, who appears, to this writer at least, to be a closet Catholic and his henchwoman Ruth Kelly LINK who is a member of the cult within a cult Opus Dei (LINK) and is currently Minister for Women and Equality, might just give him what he wants.

In the name of Turing what is going on?