Bog's Blob

'There's nothing better than a good book' 1

2011-09-29T18:30:00.000+02:00

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read.” (Groucho Marx)

This summer I read my first book - a very long novel - on a Kindle.
As a consequence I’m a convert! No more cutting down trees to feed my reading habit – I’m happy to read only e-ink from now on…
If I tell you that despite having one of the slowest, dullest beginnings you’ll find in fiction, and that it ends with an essay of interminable boredom, this is nonetheless (justly!) one of the most acclaimed of nineteenth century novels, can you guess what it is?
A further clue: it contains one of the most convincing death scenes to be found between the covers of a book, concerning a character who is killed off twice by his author.

Tea, coffee & condoms

2011-08-31T12:15:00.000+02:00

In one of my early attempts to write a novel - one that will forever remain in the bottom drawer - the central character, Jocelyn Hough, a rather ineffectual English EFL teacher who dreams of becoming a writer (Autobiographical? No way, man!) is obsessed with the idea that peoples, and their cultures, are defined by what they drink.
Here's Jocelyn explaining some of his beliefs about tea to a young American he has met on the train:

'It's funny, but from the moment tea was first imported to Europe you can see a distinct shift in European sensibility. Once tea appears there's some kind of new awareness of the individual. For example, the first mention of tea in Europe was in 1559 - the very year that Cellini started his autobiography. It's almost as if tea allowed us to look inside ourselves and for the first time accept what we found there.'
The American nodded with the attentive manner of a good listener, encouraging Jocelyn to go on.
'I know it sounds far-fetched, but there are plenty of other examples. For instance, the first boxes of tea reached Paris at the same time that Montaigne was writing his essays. Or look at London: the diffusion of tea there in the late 1650's occurred just as the English rejected Puritanism and were about to usher in the Restoration - what followed was an unprecedented period of social tolerance.'
'Whoa there! You don't mean to tell me that this guy, what did you say his name was - Montaigne? - actually wrote his stuff with a beaker of tea in his hand!'
'No, of course not! But that's not the point. I don't mean that tea caused any of these things to happen the way a cold beer causes condensation. I'm just pointing out some rather strange parallels: what Jung would call the 'synchronicity' of certain trends towards tolerant humanism and the use of tea.'

Not that I believed any of this, but the whole far-fetched conceit served as an excuse for a nice little joke: the never-finished and quite unpublishable magnum opus Jocelyn devotes his life to is entitled 'The Tea Drinker's Coffee Table Book'.
So to return to the theme some thirty years later, though now sounding like a veritable Grumpy Old Man, I've just been back to the UK for the summer and am depressed that in the Home Counties at least, it is no longer possible to order a cup of coffee in English any more. Just try - as I have been doing - going into your neighbourhood cafe, let alone a Costa or a Nero's, and asking for a small white coffee. "Is that a capper-cheeno or a lah-tay?" you’ll be asked . Admittedly, English coffee may not be very good – the British seem to prefer murky beverages made from freeze-dried acorns (judging by the taste) to the real thing, but please, why the linguistic travesty? However, I'll leave my diatribe against the italianisation of the English High Street for another day.
Besides, I'm a tea drinker. The which brings me to my real grouse: - tea socks.
Someone told me that the idea of collecting the sweepings off the tea-room floor and sealing them up in paper bags was a German invention, intended, no doubt, to undermine the moral fibre of the British Empire. The truth though, is even more sinister: the first patents for tea socks date back to 1903 in - you guessed it - our former colonies across The Pond. First appearing commercially around 1904, tea socks were successfully marketed by tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan of New York, who was soon shipping his invention around the world. No doubt this was a cold war continuation of the Boston Tea-Party. Though bless his little (cotton?) socks, Thomas Sullivan never expected anyone to dunk his contraption unopened into a tea pot - still less serve it up on a saucer next to a cup of lukewarm water, as the Italians are fond of doing - his was merely a convenient way of sending samples of tea through the post.
Are you really telling me you can taste the tea? That you cannot taste the paper? Buon gustaio, amico mio, you are not! Let's face it, drinking tea made with tea bags is like having sex wearing a condom.
Except that I can think of no convincing justifications for the former, and plenty for the latter.
Allow me to finish this little rant with a recipe, a family blend - not, alas, my own (neither the family, nor the blend) - that makes for a very good cup of tea:
Mix a good English Breakfast with Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong in proportions of 4 to 1 to 1.
And if you think tea leaves are too messy, why not acquire one of those cup-shaped filters (available, for example, from Whittard’s) that fit inside your mug or teapot: no mess, and all the taste!

How to be a Superhero

2011-07-31T12:33:00.003+02:00

Have you ever wanted to be a Superhero? Do you want to save the planet? Well, you can. Read on to learn how - it's much easier than you think.
Most of us - if only from time to time - dream of doing something that is going to benefit others, of becoming someone who is going to make a difference. We dream of becoming doctors or teachers, writers or artists, and of dedicating our lives to improving the lot of those less fortunate than ourselves. Some succeed, though for many the idealism drops away, either through our own inertia, or because of the constraints of real life; you didn't make the grades for medical school, and now you’re trapped in a job that doesn’t have a lot of point to it except that it’s making you a living, and heaven knows, we all need that...
But even so, you can still do a huge amount to benefit humanity. You, as one of the richest people on the planet, can make a huge amount of difference by giving some of your money to some of the poorest people in the developing world.
Me, rich? Are you kidding…
Besides, I pay my taxes. Isn’t it the job of governments to provide relief for the destitute? Who but they can co-ordinate international aid?
Yes, I say: if you are born in Europe, you are middle-class and are educated to university level – as 90% of those who are likely to be reading this will be – you are, by global standards, easily within the top 10% of the world’s richest people. If you are still a student, and those earnings are at present only potential, then you still have the chance to learn one of wealth creation’s great secrets: if you can learn to manage your money when you have very little of it, you’ll know how to handle money once more and more of it begins to turn up in your life.
And no, I say: you cannot expect government aid to help those most in need, for the simple reason that governments give aid where there’s most political incentive to do so. Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East (though worthy causes all) will receive far more aid from Western governments than sub-Saharan Africa for many decades to come.
So you still want to be a Superhero? It takes two things. One is the resolve to set aside some of your money each month. Try starting with 2%, with the aim of raising it to 5% in a year or two, and a goal of making it 10% once those Superman muscles have really been flexed… But start small, and start now. We are talking the price of a night on the town, here. Stay home one evening a month when you would otherwise go out for a pizza or a few beers, and that sacrifice, after a few months, might well raise enough to save, or significantly change, another person’s life.
And the second thing you need is information: how much do people in the West need to give to save the planet? Who should you give it to? Do charities really make a difference?
I’m happy to say that the answers to all such questions can be found in one place: Peter Singer’s book The Life You Can Save. Singer is a moral philosopher who has thought through the answers to the problem of ending world poverty – and concludes that it can only be done (but that it can be done) if you and I are willing to play a part. It is a book that works on many levels, both intellectual and emotional, philosophical and practical. Do, please, read it.
Giving What We Can is another inspiring and informative source. Members of this international society have pledged to give 10% of their income for life towards eliminating global poverty, and their website spells out exactly how to give most effectively.
And for Italian readers of this blog, I’d like to suggest a home-grown organization that is also well worth supporting: the Fondazione Ivo de Carneri, which does wonderful work in parasitology from its base in Pemba, Zanzibar.
On a final note, there is another route to becoming a Superhero. For one man’s attempt to do so by more traditional methods, look out for Peter Stebbings’ hilarious film, Defendor. It's a parody of the whole Superhero phenomenon, which succeeds in being both zany and moving. Do look out for it.

Going to Hell in a Handbasket.

2011-06-23T17:34:00.002+02:00

Elsewhere, I’ve mentioned the work of Bill Harris (see Six of the Best, July 2010), who brought us the Holosync meditation programme.
Over the last few months Bill Harris has posted a three-part blog with the title ‘Going to Hell in a Handbasket’, which I would like to share with anyone who stumbles over my own blog-site.
It contains some sobering - some would say, downright pessimistic - thoughts on the times we are living through, occasioned by his reading of Ian Morris’s book Why the West Rules–for Now. These form the bulk of Part One.
Apart from my gut feeling that here is someone discussing the big picture as it really is, Bill Harris finishes by advising us to become as well informed as we can be, and by providing an appendix to Part Three which contains his ‘Information Resources’: this is his personal reading list for keeping up to date in economics, psychology, science and world affairs. As such, it is fairly eclectic, but I am certainly going to check out some of his suggestions, and would invite you to peruse them too.
One final point, before I leave you with the links: note that you can listen to these blog pieces rather than/as well as reading them.
http://www.centerpointe.com/blog/2011/02/22/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-part-1/
http://www.centerpointe.com/blog/2011/02/28/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-part-2/
http://www.centerpointe.com/blog/2011/05/06/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-part-3/
Let me know if you find any of this useful.
May your days be pleasant, peaceful and productive!
Bob

Oh, and there's a Simpleology blogging course you might like to try...

2010-07-31T12:08:00.002+02:00

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Six of the best

2010-07-31T10:26:00.005+02:00

My friend Carla laughed at me when I mentioned Simpleology.

Not that there’s anything inherently funny about Simpleology, but because, as she said, I’m the only person she knows who is always doing some new course or other, and every time she meets me I’m full of my latest enthusiasm .

She’s right. Just as there are DIY maniacs, always putting up bookshelves and painting the walls, I’m a self-improvement maniac; actually there are quite a few of us out there, although our activities are quieter and less visible…

So here is it: my list of ‘six of the best’ self-help courses. For no good reason that comes to mind, I’ll present them in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backwards:

Simpleology

ACIM

Tom Butler-Bowden’s reading lists

Spring Forest Qigong

Holosync

The Artist’s Way

Simpleology.

… is a cute, free programme – or at least the entry-level 101 course is free – for taking yourself in hand. A series of twenty short talks on goal-setting lead you into the nicely designed ‘Daily Target Praxis’, a 15 minute daily time-management routine. Not only are you encouraged to dream your dream and list your goals, but you are also expected to analyse your habits to see which ones weaken or strengthen your progress. Of course, you may be thinking you’ve seen this all before, and sure, the ideas are hardly new, but the site is slick and fun to use, the presentation is a joy, and the reinforcement through checklists, quizzes and MP3 files ensure that this time round, these familar counsels of perfection soon become engrained habits. Further courses (102 and 103) deal with financial management and health and fitness. Me, I’ve already signed up for them… You can try Simpleology for yourself at www.simpleology.com

A Course in Miracles.

You can’t get far in the self-help world without reading, or overhearing, someone dropping a quotation that begins “As A Course in Miracles says...”. So ten years ago, when I came across a copy in a bookshop in Bath, I bought it. The owner (yes -it was one of those bookshops!) assured me that although he’d never been able to get into it himself, those that did claimed it was the ultimate guide to self-development. It’s been on my bookshelf ever since. I did try the daily lessons (the workbook is a year-long course; the text itself is impenetrable) but gave up after a month, put off by the pseudo-Christian terminology, and the over-elaborate mental exercises. Here’s an example of the latter, from Lesson 12: “These exercises are done with eyes open. Look around you, this time quite slowly. Try to pace yourself so that the slow shifting of your glance from one thing to another involves a fairly constant time interval. Do not allow the time of the shift to become markedly longer or shorter, but try, instead, to keep a measured, even tempo throughout. What you see does not matter... As you look about you, say to yourself: I think I see a fearful world, a dangerous world, a hostile world, a sad world, a wicked world, a crazy world, and so on, using whatever descriptive terms happen to occur to you...”.

However, last autumn I read a book that explained what it was all about – a way of getting past the ego – (the book was Take Me to the Truth by Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira) and it all began to make sense. Now I’m reading A Course in Miracles a second time, and I’m hooked: with its emphasis on dropping our grievances, joyous acceptance, and forgiveness, it really does lead you out of the trap of the small-minded way most of us have come to see the world. Oh, and there’s no need to buy it; this too is on the web: www.acim.org

Tom Butler-Bowdon’s '50 Classic ...' series.

I love these books! I started with '50 Psychology Classics', went on to '50 Spirituality Classics' and have now devoured the lot. By presenting elegant and intelligent summaries of fifty books in each area (his other titles are 'Self-Help', 'Prosperity' and 'Success'), Butler-Bowdon not only gives an overview of these fields, but provides a useful starting off-point for further exploration.

Strictly speaking, they are not a 'course' at all, but I've used several of them as the basis for my own reading programmes, and have been immeasurably enriched as a result. Actually, I listened to these titles rather than read them, and have found that they suit the audio-book format perfectly: the ten to fifteen minutes/three or four pages devoted to each book commentary chunk up beautifully for such tasks as washing the dishes or walking the dog. www.butler-bowdon.com

Spring Forest Qigong

I was introduced to Spring Forest Qigong through one of Bill Harris’s many recommendations (see below); indirectly, another of his suggestions led me to a major career change; but that’s a story for another day...

Qigong is an ancient Chinese healing technique, and to give a very rough idea of what it’s about, I’d describe it in action is as a cross between Tai Chi and yoga, and with much the same goals as Reiki (though with a far longer pedigree). Its purpose is to optimise physical and emotional health in yourself and in others.

I can’t tell you if it works for me yet, but that’s because I’ve only been doing it for a couple of months (even though I’ve known about it for years), and because – grazie al Dio! – I’ve always enjoyed abundant good health.

However, when I first received Bill Harris’s recommendation of Spring Forest Qigong, my intuitions told me to sit up and take note, so about a year later I signed up for the level 1 course.

I’m impressed by its teacher and master: Chunyi Lin. He is quiet, sincere and radiates a gentle benevolence. His motto is to have "a healer in every family and a world without pain." For now, I’m learning the basic exercises and waiting to see where Qigong takes me. If you want to check it out for yourself, take a look at: www.springforestqigong.com

Holosync

In essence, Holosync is an aid to meditation. Bill Harris, who designed and markets the course, claims that by using these audio tracks 'you can meditate like a zen monk, literally at the touch of a button'.

I discovered this course, serendipitously,at the beginning of 2007, and in retrospect this was one of the major turning points in my life.

Here's why:

It works! I have been convinced of the usefulness of regular mediation since my student days, but never made much headway. To start with, I never really had the self-discipline to do it for more than twenty minutes at a time, or for more than a few days at a time, or with enough concentration. In other words, although I was theoretically in favour of meditation, I found it difficult to do, and it wasn’t taking me anywhere. Then as soon as I started using Holosync, I started meditating for an hour a day, and it was pure bliss!

More important have been the changes that the regular use of Holosync have brought: sure it was pleasant, and I was getting off on it, but it wasn't until about six months in, when I found myself in a a stressful work situation, that I realised that I was coping untypically well, and I had no doubt at all that my new-found resiliance was due to Holosync. Now, three years later, and I’m happy most of the time; I’ve undone most of the knots that used to tie up so much of my emotional energy.

And finally, Bill Harris's support material - his writing, his blogs and recordings, the free gifts, and the introductions to so many other useful sources on the web - is astounding.

Holosync isn’t cheap, but it has been one of the best investments, both in time and money, that I’ve ever made. www.centerpointe.com

The Artist’s Way

Julia Cameron’s ‘The Artist’s Way’ is something of a classic: it’s a twelve week course in recovering your creativity. If you’ve ever had thwarted dreams of being a painter, a musician, a poet or a novelist, then ‘The Artist’s Way’ will take you gently in hand and encourage you to nurture those dreams. This is a book that I turn to time and again, because for all the skills and technical information that the incipient artist needs, it is the succour and support that motivates us over the long haul that really makes a difference – and you’ll find it here. But be warned: if you follow Cameron’s exercises and advice this book can change your life upside-down. It did mine. www.theartistsway.com

Oh, and why the title?

‘Six of the best’ was, when I was at prep school back in the 60s, still the pinnacle of pedagogical punishments. It referred to six strokes of the cane, and, along with my mate Simon Wilson, I had a certain enduring notoriety for holding the school record as the most frequently caned boy: 17 times in one term, mostly, for the not overly heinous offence of talking after lights out. Maybe all my efforts with self-improvement are motivated by a desire to be remembered somewhere, by somebody, for something other than my record for ‘six of the best’!

A complete stop and a halt

2010-02-16T22:00:00.002+01:00

It’s now eleven months since I last posted a blog, and time, I think, to explain why.
     I started this blog as an appendage to a website, the which was intended to promote the novel The Gift of Honey, which was accepted for publication as long ago as September 2006.
     Then came the annus horribilis: in the summer of 2009 not only did the publishers, bluechrome, disappear without a word and without trace, but my website did too! SiteGround.com, the website hosting service I was using, sent me a couple of emails asking me to make some technical changes to lighten my site, but these unfortunately were routed to a junk email folder; by the time I discovered them it was too late - they had blown my website out of the water! They not just closed down the site, they also cancelled my account, with no forewarning, which denied me any chance of recourse. Needless to say, I won’t be recommending SiteGround anymore.
     That’s it, whinge over! Worse things happen at sea, as they say down my way…
     I also became a bit blog-shy after a friend pointed out that unless you’ve got interesting things to say, the world does not need another blog! Who cares what some blogger had for breakfast, or who needs to hear another nutter sounding off in this virtual Speaker’s Corner?
     Point taken. But I’m writing this to explain why I stopped, not why I’m starting again…

Do me a favour!

2009-03-16T08:12:00.003+01:00

Despite an offer, made at the beginning of December , to publish my novel in February 2009, nothing at all happened at bluechrome, and they are now making noises about being able to bring it out over the summer, perhaps...
When they said the same thing about last summer, I believed them.
I’d like to believe them still.
So can I ask you people to do me a favour? As bluechrome seem to be extremely shy when it comes to communicating with their authors directly, would you drop them a line saying something like this:
‘I heard you have plans to publish a novel called The Gift of Honey. What’s happening? When will this title be available?’ Obviously, writing such a message doesn’t commit you to anything. The address to send it to is info@bluechrome.co.uk
And if they deign to reply, perhaps you would let me know…

Cornishmen do it drekkly

2008-09-24T23:03:00.005+02:00

... or so the bumper sticker has it.
Ask any Cornishman what 'drekkly' means and he'll probably ask you if you know the Spanish concept of 'mañana'. Then he’ll explain that drekkly is much like mañana, but without the hurry.
Well, I took my West Country novel to a West Country publisher and a compounded case of mañana seems to be the result. Repeated efforts to get a publishing date from bluechrome have resulted in the promise that they’ll be announcing one drekkly. When their drekkly is exactly, is anybody’s guess.
Bluechrome have had their fair share of woes over the summer; I wish them well. I have every faith that they’ll be bringing out The Gift of Honey in the fullness of time. They’ve even put a microscopic picture of the book’s cover on their website; seeing it reminded me of the scan I saw of my daughter some twenty years ago: it was hard to believe that that fuzzy grey image heralded the birth of such a beautiful baby a few months later.
Somewhere within the byzantine womb of the Bristol publishers (to mangle my geography as well as my metaphors) this wonderful novel is undergoing gestation. However, until I have a publication date from them, I’ve just got to be patient. And that means that you, dear, eager prospective reader, have also got to be patient.
I’ll keep you posted.

Not waving but Drowning

2008-02-11T18:17:00.007+01:00

What an exciting moment! At lunchtime my publisher sent me the cover of my first novel, The Gift of Honey, which is due out in July.

It wasn't at all what I imagined. However, after living with it for an afternoon, it is beginning to grow on me.

The novel is a tale of Cornish saints and Victorian parsons, smuggling and cholera epidemics. So in my mind's eye (which, admittedly, isn't a very good eye - I have a somewhat underdeveloped visual sense) I imagined the cover would be a lurid drawing, figuring - at the very least - a Celtic cross, a Cornish cove, a slate-roofed church and a lugger fluttering St Piran's flag.

But the publisher's cover is much more subtle than any of that. The sepia photograph conjures up the period in which The Gift of Honey is set (well, nearly: is that a dress really from c.1840?). More than that it hints at the central relationship in the novel: that between the protagonist, Parson Mudge, and his niece Isobel.

But better still, and far cleverer, is that this photograph made me think of the Stevie Smith poem, Not Waving but Drowning. And that's a poem that conjures up Mudge's predicament to a tee.

Clever people, over at bluechrome!

Oh, and one last thing: the bluechrome logo, those two little squiggles down in the bottom right-hand corner, which are supposed to look like sails (I think) - don't they look like a shark's fin poking out of the turbid Cornish waters? They do to me.

What's in a name?

2008-01-20T17:48:00.000+01:00

Finally it looks as though we're in business. After months of leaving me in the doldrums, my publisher has written to say he's gearing up to the July publishing. He's sent me reams of questionnaires to fill out; I've spent much of the weekend writing blurbs and autobiographical sketches and answering questions about my ideal reviewer.
And I've also insisted on publishing 'The Gift of Honey' under the name of R. Rushforth Morley.
Why? Rather a mouthful, isn't it? Rather old-fashioned?
Maybe. But Rushforth was my mother's maiden name, and I'm happy to keep it flying - if nothing else, as a nod to my favourite grandparent, who had the delightful Anglo-Saxon name Harold Rushforth, and began every day of his life with a bacon sandwich.
And there's a nod in another direction, too: I'd like to think it has the ring of a 'W. Somerset Maugham' about it: a writer I've always admired for his craftsmanship and well-plotted stories.
But the real reason for taking pains over the name on the cover of 'The Gift of Honey' is because my given name, Robert Morley, has always been in the public arena. Surely you remember the genial, adipose actor, playwright and wit? Although he passed away in 1992 his stature still casts a shadow (all through my childhood my name was greeted with a raised eyebrow and the comment "Well you've certainly lost some weight!" Not to mention the fifty years.).
And would you believe that my sister (well, half-sister really, but why be technical?) was named Elisabeth Taylor? Now, doesn't that raise another eyebrow? Whatever was my mother thinking of? Actually, it's Jayne Elisabeth Taylor - and you wouldn't be surprised to learn that she prefers 'Jayne' to 'Elisabeth'... (Hi there, Jayne! You reading this, sis?)
So I've struggled with this second-hand name business. I guess this is why it's taken me fifty years to get round to getting a novel published! I've tried the trendy Bob Morley (only Mother threatens to cut me off), anagrams (how does Terry Bremolo sound ?- or even Beryl Tremotor, which happens to have a Cornish ring about it, although I'm not sure I could face a sex change), and even dropping my surname: yet Robert Rushforth seems to leave off too much of my identity, as well as needlessly giving away the George Orwell advantage. Do you know that story? Eric Arthur Blair chose his nom de plume from a list of English rivers, and settled on one from the middle of the alphabet bercause he calculated that Avon or Blackwater would place him up on the top shelf out of reach , whereas Wye would require searching for his books on bended knee.
So that's it. R. Rushforth Morley. I hope that it's a name that'll soon be staring you straight in the eye, from the shelves of a bookshop somewhere near you.

You can't lick that!

2007-12-18T21:17:00.000+01:00

... as my grandad used to say.
Actually, you can, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.
What am I on about?
Stamps. Italian postage stamps. I've just sent the last of my Christmas cards and that's got me wondering, as I do every year (and quite a few times in between), why it is that the Italian post office still can't produce a stamp that will stick to the envelope. There are always at least two corners of an Italian stamp that curl up at the edges like a week-old sandwich, and no amount of spit or pressure seems to help hold them down. I always push my letters in the post box doubtful whether the envelope and its stamp will stick together for the length of the journey.
Not that I have anything but praise for Posta Italiana. It's an institution that has revolutionised itself over the last ten years. Gone are the dingy premises, the long queues and the rude, lugubrious service of yesteryear. Along with the shiny new blue and yellow logo, they have introduced a ticket queuing system, seats, bright stationery shops and even, miracle of miracles, friendly and helpful staff. Not to mention a revamped post office bank which puts most of the high street banks to shame.
And all of this while in Britain post offices have been closing down.
I was Peru a couple of summers ago and sent my usual flock of post cards back towards Europe. None of them arrived. Not one. But I remember the stamps - prettier even than the post cards themselves, each one with a picture of an exotic bird on in. And above all, after my Italian experiences, I was impressed at how well the stamps stuck to the cards. If the Peruvians can do it, why can't the Italians?

Bali: US vision versus EU caution

2007-12-15T10:22:00.000+01:00

So the cautious Europeans have got their concensus on carbon emission cuts after all.
I expect that there are some on the American right who rue the European refusal to let the Americans handle climate change their way.
After all, only a generation ago wasn't the biggest challenge to the global climate posed by the threat of a nuclear winter?
So why not think outside the box and go for a win/win solution here?
I'm surprised that none of the Neo-Con think tanks has suggested that as Mr Bush has the technology, as well as the military hardware, the most elegant way to offset global warming would be with a few localised spells of nuclear winter. In, let's say, Iran, North Korea, and (should Cuba be a bit too close for comfort) maybe Venezuela.
Not only would that avoid having to take any tiresome steps that may well lead to an economic slow-down, but it would keep the world free for global exploitation - whoops! er, I mean... 'democracy'.

Not on my wish list

2007-12-14T13:15:00.000+01:00

Last night I baked a couple of potatoes for supper. It's the one thing I wish I had a microwave for: pop'em in a paper bag and your spuds are ready in minutes. Done to perfection.
Otherwise, a microwave is not a gadget I've got a lot of time for, probably because I wouldn't know how to use it. I have a friend in Como (Hi, Fiorella!) who cooks all her vedgies in it, and out comes a cornucopia of aubergenes, courgettes, peppers, carrots and artichokes, all delicious. But no potatoes. So it was with some pride that I shared my tiny secret about spud-baking with her...
Actually, I've probably picked up my prejudice against microwaves from my Mum. Back when she first got hers in the mid-seventies, I can remember there was talk of revolutionising the bar she ran, with an unending suppy of easily produced bar snacks. Yet a few weeks later and the only thing that saved the microwave from relegation to the back of a cupboard was its handiness as an instrument for softening butter. Once spreadable butter was introduced, back in the early eighties, the microwave got a new lease of life as a plate-warmer, but in my mother's eyes, I suppose it never really escaped the taint of those stories about Soviet submariners cooking their intestines when they forgot to close the oven door, or the dangers a microwave poses to poodles...
Do you know that story? It's no doubt apocryphal, an urban legend, and goes something like this:
There was a lady in Florida who had the habit, on the rare chilly mornings that Florida is prone to, of switching on her oven, at the very minimum, before she took Fifi out for his morning stroll, then popping her pet in the oven on her return for a couple of minutes to warm him up. When this over-protective pet-owner acquired a microwave, she reckoned that a 20 second blast would be quite enough to achieve the same effect, without, however, realising that a microwave cooks in a very different way from a traditional oven, beginning on the inside and cooking outwards. Needless to say, the poodle came out with cooked kidneys and never went walkies again.
And of course, as this tale is a parable of American excess, it ends with the pet-owner suing the company who made the microwave and winning an absurdly extravagent sum in damages on the grounds that nowhere in the instructions did it say that it was unsuitable for pets.
Nor, no doubt, did it say how well it bakes potatoes. Remember, you first read that right here!

It's not bloody rocket science...

2007-12-09T15:13:00.001+01:00

My regular reader(s) - Hi Cristian! - may have noticed that after a gap of a couple of weeks I am now posting again to a brand new blog site.
That's because I couldn't figure out how the old one worked, and after keeping it up and running for a week or so, which required an act of commitment and concentration akin to balancing a broomstick on my nose, I managed to lock myself out.
Then, after asking all the nerds and techies I know how to interpret the arcane help files I was poring over in the wee smile hours of the morning, I gave up. They could make no more sense of instructions such as the following than I could:

If you have disabled the login block on your site you can log in to the site by going to http://www.example.com/?q=user (or you may also use http://www.example.com/user if you have clean urls enabled, the one with ?= will always work.)

I mean, do you know what '?q' is?
And whether words like 'example' and 'user' should be written as 'example' and 'user', or substituted with examples and user names of my own?
And do I have clean urls? Do you?

But by an act of serendipity I discovered http://www.blogger.com/ What elegant simplicity! I had the new blogsite up and running within five minutes, and duplicating the old one within an hour.

Which just goes to show that blogging, like anything else we mere mortals might wish to accomplish on a PC, just ain't rocket science. Nor need it be.

I can still remember when I was young... (OK, chaps, I'll spill the beans - I'm talking the mid-seventies here) and getting to university to meet this guy-with-a-tie in freshers' week (Hey, are you still out there, my friend...? Hi Julian!), who told me he was studying Computer Science, as they called IT back then.
'What's that?'
By which I meant, what's a computer? (Listen, I didn't read Sci Fi, right?)
'Well, it's a big room with lots of electronic equipment in it...' began the explanation.
And when I graduated I still didn't know what it was for.
However, I'd seen one - Julian had surreptitiously snuck my in there one winter evening - and the University of Kent was one of only a handful (three, I think) of universities in the country to have such a Room; and I knew that Computer Scientists spoke arcane languages, were mathmatical geniuses, drank lager instead of beer (with the addition of fruit cordials, to cap it all) and ate microwaved Christmas puddings all the the year round... (hey, are you still doing that, Julian?).
In other words you had to be somebody pretty damn special to get near a computer.
But for heavens sake, this is the third millenium, and my dear old mum uses a computer these days to microwave her own Christmas pudding, and no one needs Basic, Argol, or any of those other arcane codes...
Yet just too often you can come across those nerdie computer scientists of yesteryear hankering for the times when they alone knew all the secrets. That's why you may still find 'online communities' peddling rocket science. And if you do run into them - if you come across any instructions on the net, or attached to a piece of software, more complicated than Username, Password, Click - well, you know where the Delete key is, don't you?

Sant’ Ambroeus - j’accuse!

2007-12-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

I can’t let today pass without noting that Milan can claim as its patron saints two of the most unsavoury figures in the Roman church: St Ambrose (in Italian, Sant’Ambrogio, but known affectionately in Milanese as Sant’Ambroeus), whose festivity it is today, and St Carlo Borromeo, stalwart of the Counter Reformation, and still remembered in the hills around Lago Maggiore for his vicious persecution of local ‘witches’.
St Ambrose stands accused on three charges: he was Christianity's first fully-fledged anti-Semite; he was a champion of religious intolerance in a society that was multi-ethnic, pluri-religious and mainly tolerant; and he was the friend and educator of that other great kill-joy of the Western church, St Augustine of Hippo.
Here, in Henry Chadwick's words, is the evidence for At Ambrose’s anti-Semiticism:
"In 388 a synagogue at Callinicium on the Euphrates was burnt by Christian zealots, and (the emperor) Theodosius ordered the local bishop to make restitution in full from church funds. By a dramatic refusal to procede with the eucharistic liturgy until Theodosius yielded, Ambrose persuaded the emperor (against his better judgement) to revoke the restitution order... Ambrose insisted, unreasonably and to his lasting discredit, that it was sinful for a Christian emperor to help the Jews triumph over the church."
Chadwick cites two other examples of Ambrose's intolerance:
In 382 Cratian moved the Altar of Victory from the Senate House. His successor, the youthful new emperor Valentinian accepted the wealthy pagan aristocracy's plea to bring it back, claiming that the Altar was a symbol of Rome's greatness and arguing for a positive policy of toleration, since 'it is not possible by only one road to attain so great a mystery'. But oh no, Ambrose was having none of this and intervened to stay Valentinian's hand.
Next, in 385, Ambrose incited the populace of Milan to resist the demand of Valentinian's widow Justina that one of the Milanese churches be handed over to the use of the Arian Goths in the army, an act that in Ambrose's eyes would have meant the profanation of a consecrated building.
I, for one, will not be going to the O'bei O'bei – Milan’s traditional street market held on 7th December.

'The World's Contracted Thrush'

2007-11-22T17:50:00.000+01:00

I was round at my girlfriend's the other night, and this title jumped out at me from her bookshelves. The book's subtitle was 'Major Poets from Chaucer to Plath'.
Checking it out, it didn't take me long to realise that this was a school anthology, and, with the exception of the Australian A. D. Hope, the anthology was a predictable enough run-through of the standard luminaries of English poetry. (Georgina grew up in Melbourne – Hi, lover!)
Browsing through it set me thinking that there are two different approaches to putting together a poetry anthology, and that I have a decided preference for one over the other.
There are those that argue for a canon: they choose a number of poets and offer a representative selection of their work. ‘The New Poetry’ anthologies do this, both Alvarez’s original 1962 anthology, and Bloodaxe’s 1993 collection with the same title - all very worthy I am sure, but too prone to becoming a vehicle for their editor’s cleverness or pejudice. The book I was holding couldn’t even be accused of that, being no more than a schoolmaster’s dry-as-chalk-dust splutter from a very old and rusty cannon…
Whereas the other kind of anthology favours poems rather than poets, and they proffer delight rather than peddle reputations.
To this category belong ‘Emergency Kit’ and those wonderful selections by Heaney and Hughes, ‘The Rattle Bag’ and ‘The School Bag’, as well as that Victorian stalwart, Palgrave, which was my constant walking companion when I was younger. Neil Astley's much-lambasted, though to my mind, irreplaceable pair of anthologies, 'Staying Alive' and 'Being Alive' are also books I could – and have – survvived on as my sole reading-material for weeks on end (I’ll never forget reading ‘Staying Alive’ on a houseboat on the Nile, and out under the stars of the Sahara…)
As for 'The World's Contracted Thrush: major poets from Chaucer to Plath', I thought that was rather unkind to Sylvia - hey, can guys still get lynched for a quip like that? You can call me a saucy pedantic wretch, if you will… - but on closer inspection I realised I'd misread the title: it was 'The World's Contracted Thus'. But then again, the world would be a duller, saner place without a few misreadings…

Do you listen to your dreams?

2007-11-12T15:45:00.000+01:00

By which I don't mean your hopes and aspirations, but those nocturnal home-movies, the ones about fat cows and thin cows and ears of corn? How often has something you've dreamt really changed your life?
Or, to put it a little less drammatically, how often has a dream influenced your behaviour?
This is one of those questions I occasionally ask my students. Oh, the bane of 'conversation classes'! - teachers can end up asking the most inane questions at times, in the forlorn hope of provoking a response.The answer is, invariably, 'Never'.
My own answer would be twice, and the second time was in the last few days, and involved my publisher. (The first occasion led to a twelve-year relationship and the birth of my daughter, so perhaps that's a story I'll tell some other time...).
But before I tell you about this dream, I ought to backtrack a little bit, to give this story a context.
For the last ten months I have managed to meditate regularly for an hour a day. This has brought me many and considerable, if subtle, benefits; the merit must go to a wonderful programme called holosync : for years I have tried and failed to meditate regularly or have managed to for short periods but to little effect. Indeed, if the meditation is your kind of thing, I urge you to check holosync out (http://www.centerpointe.com/) and give it a try.
Anyway, last Sunday during my meditation hour, and for the first time, I found myself engulfed by feelings of frustration and anger, and what these feelings settled on was my publisher. It is now six months since I signed a contract with him to have my novel published, and in that time I have heard practically nothing from him - not even an acknowledgement when I sent off the completed draft at the end of May. Very occasionally since then, about once every two months, I get a brief email from him, apologising for the delay and saying something to the effect that now we are ready to roll. Then nothing for another two months.
Now I'm a sad little chappie (I guess that most writers are) and the prospect of having my first novel published is one that occupies a good deal of my thoughts. As I've mentioned elsewhere, agents and publishers can take forever to respond to wannabe writers, but once you've signed a contract you'd expect all that to change. But for some reason, it doesn't - or in my case, hasn't.So after meditating on all this for an hour, instead of the usual calm, I found myself feeling uncharacteristically cat-kickingly aggressive and resolved to write to said editor first thing in the morning, asking him when he intended to pull his finger out...
And I would have done so, too, except that during the night I had a dream. In this dream, my publisher and I were sitting side-by-side, working at adjacent computers. After half-an-hour's hard writing I decided - in my usual, lackadaisical fashion - that it was time for a break, closed up my files and asked the publisher if he wanted to join me for lunch. (By the way, so far I've only ever seen him in my dreams; in real life we've yet to meet. Hi, Anthony!). But he didn't reply. Instead, he stretched out a hand towards a tupperware box on his desk and took out a sandwich, which he munched on without taking his eyes of the screen. He's a busy man, my friend the publisher, a much busier man than I am. So rather than write him that letter, I resolved to leave him in peace, and trust that he'd get round to dealing with publishing my novel when his busy schedule allowed for it. After all, isn't it my job, as the writer, to get on with the next novel?
So that was it: the dream was telling me very clearly not to write the letter that my frustration of the night before had been calling for.
I didn't. Instead, I got on my bike and cycled off to a morning's teaching. (That's one of the beauties of living in a provincial backwater like Pavia: I can cycle to work).
And guess what? When I got home I found an email waiting for me. It was from my publisher: he's fixed the date - 'The Gift of Honey' will be coming out next July, and I can expect to have the editor's proofs within a couple of weeks.
Cheers, Anthony!

Only the Germans could come up with a game like chess boxing...

2007-11-09T15:51:00.000+01:00

I would have to admit to being the world's most biggest sports anti-enthusiast.
What could be more boring than watching grown men and women running, kicking, jumping or throwing stuff around - especially when they do it to the same rules, dressed up in ridiculous clothes, week after week, year in year out? (Listening to them talking about it, that's what: the other day I read someone saying how they loved to watch interviews with champions - it was T. Harv Eker in his excellent book 'Secrets of the Millionaire Mind' (and boy! do I need that book!) - but personally, I can think of nothing more inane than listening to footballers commenting on their game. How many ways can you say, 'We lost. We did our best, but they beat us'? Or, as the cycling champion from Bergamo is reputed to have said: 'I won, I came in first - and I hope to do better next time!'
So don't expect me to be writing much about sport.
However, what did grab my attention was to catch an item on BBC World (yeah, I know, I watch too much TV. What was it Groucho Marx said about TV being educational? 'Sure it's educational. Every time someone switches on the TV I go into the other room and pick up a book'), which was about the chess boxing championships currently taking place in Berlin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7084494.stm
Chess boxing? Alternate rounds of - that's right! - chess and boxing. The chess actaully takes place in the ring, with the pugillists dripping blood and sweat onto the board. Though how they can move those pieces around when they are wearing boxing gloves beats me.And trust our friends the Germans to come up with an idea like that!

Can’t turn the damn thing off!

2007-11-09T06:52:00.000+01:00

After setting up this blogsite earlier in the week - more by luck than judgement, I must confess - I decided to take it offline again, because I realised that a) I haven't the IT skills to make it behave the way I wanted it to, and b) putting out regular interesting positngs is a huge undertaking. Only guess what? I can't For some reason I can't get back into my website and turn the damned thing off!
So it looks like I'm stuck with it. Especially now that I've just had a mex from a friend of mine to say that another friend of mine has discovered this thing and is actually read it. (Hi, Weff!, Hi Christian!)
Guys, I'm supposed to be writing another novel. And running a long distance-relationship with a very lovely, very talented lady who lives in Athens. (No, I don't intend to discuss my love life here - though I may make the occasional allusion to it, OK?)
I've just spent four uninterupted days working on the novel, and guess what? I'll be glad to get back to work for a rest. Seven hours teaching tomorrow. Indeed, I'll be doing a re-run of my lesson on some of the differences between British and American English. With one small amendment (the which I owe to this amazingly knowledgable guy I met last Sunday - Hi Martin!). Along with the pairs of words I always chunter on about - tarts and hookers, bogs and johns - I'll be mentioning a new pair: full-stops and periods. Why? To highlight the misconception about those cousins of ours across the pond corrupting the language. Because as often as not, it's the British who innovate. In this case, 'period' was the ubiquitous English word for that dot that ends a sentence until the mid-nineteenth century. However, it was Victorian squeamishness over the other 'period', the menstrual one, that encouraged the English to find an alternative name for the punctuation mark and put a stop to the word's traditional use. A full stop.

There's a moral here somewhere..

2007-11-06T10:45:00.000+01:00

If you are a writer, take heed: when the poem is in the post, the manuscript is with the agent, or the book is with the publisher, how long are you going to have to wait for a reply? In my experience, you should take the worst nightmare scenario, double it, add several months and you might be nearing the half-way mark.
How tempting it is to give in to frustration, despondency, love affairs, cat-kicking...
Don't.
Your job is to write, so keep writing.
Let editors, agents and publishers worry about publication. For the writer, all that's a secondary process. Best regarded as an act of God.

Off we go...

2007-11-06T10:30:00.000+01:00

I promised myself I'd start a blog as soon as I had a publication date for my novel. Well, now I do, so off we go...
'The Gift of Honey' is scheduled for publication next July (that's 2008). It's been a long time coming. I first received an offer from 'bluechrome' in September 2006
Not that I want to just chunter on about my book. No, siree!
I envisage writing on a number of recurrent themes: food, travel (mostly Italy, where I've spent most of the last twenty years), writing, and any little titbits that come my way.