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A strange thing happened to me once. I was on vacation from university and all my friends seemed either to be away or busy so I took myself down to the pub, alone but with a book. I remember it was Daphne du Maurier’s I’ll Never Be Young Again which – at the grand old age of twenty – I believed to be true. So, with a nice pint before me, I was immersed in reading when someone sat down at my table and asked me for a light. I looked up and saw a man of about thirty, dressed in a bizarre fashion, holding his cigarette expectantly.
I’d never seen anyone like this character before – imagine Russell Brand crossed with Johnny Depp, but without the good looks. His hair was unruly yet it shone with a kind of dark burning and his clothes – although reasonably typical of the fashions of that time – seemed flamboyant and vaguely theatrical. I offered him a light, which he took, and he inhaled deeply for a moment before letting out a stream of blue smoke as if he’d been toking on a joint.
“You see,” he said, and then paused to take another drag, “you see, the way I look at it is this: If you want to get on in life, you can always skip lunch but you should never skip breakfast.”
“Wise words my friend,” I replied, before returning to my book. He sat in silence for a while, smoking.
“Would you like to know what happens at the end of that book?” he asked.
“No thank you. I’m enjoying it and I’d like to find out for myself.” I was a little irritated that my peace had been disturbed.
He leaned back in his chair in a way that suggested both confidence and nonchalance. “I’ve never read it,” he said, “but even so, I can tell you what happens at the end.” He grabbed the book from my hand and closed it, laying it face-down on the table. I noticed to my dismay that one corner began to soak up a small splash of spilt beer. The man then leaned towards me and stared at me with eyes that resembled a wolf’s, and for an instant I thought I caught a glimpse of the frozen forests of the North in those cold and distant eyes. He took my hand and studied my palm.
“Something in your life has forced you to transform your personality,” he said. “The way you behave now is not your true character. Why is that? What massive trauma can have caused you to flip your personality on its head so?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said. “I haven’t changed anything about myself.”
“No?” He smiled and I saw a gold tooth flash like the beam of a lighthouse. “Then maybe I am mistaken.”
I knew he was not. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it to him. Something had made me change my disposition, and the spirit I displayed to the outside world was already far, far removed from my true nature. I was astounded that he could have known this. He began to stroke the inside of my palm, not with tenderness or affection, but with a sort of puzzlement as if he were searching for something.
“I can tell you this,” he said finally. “You have a long and tiresome journey to make before you arrive at your chosen destination. But worry not my friend, for you will reach your desired goal eventually and when you do, you will devote all of your energy to it and you will find the peace and harmony you deserve. Your ending – when it comes – will be a happy one.”
He grinned widely, planted a kiss on my forehead, and said: “Unlike that book you’re reading.”And then he was gone.
What a strange week it’s been. For a start, I’ve driven out to the airport three times – firstly on Christmas Eve to deliver my daughter’s boyfriend for his return to Paris; then on Boxing Day to deliver my daughter for her return to Paris; then today to deliver my other daughter for her flight to Geneva because she’s off skiing.
In the middle of all that was Christmas Day which I spent helping out at a Community Centre where we prepared and served Christmas lunch to a crowd of disadvantaged people (mainly pensioners). That was a very jolly affair, but quite hard work. We also tore around the area delivering hot meals to several elderly people who couldn’t actually make it down to the centre. Everyone was very pleased to see us and it was very refreshing – and humbling – to be making such a difference to people’s Christmas when otherwise they wouldn’t have received any visitors at all. A far better way of spending the day than just sitting bloated and drunk in front of the Queen’s Speech, stuffing down a last mince pie and the first of many brandies.
But now this. We end the holiday with Benazir Bhutto being assassinated and as I write, already incarcerated inside the family mausoleum. What this means for Pakistan is anybody’s guess, but predictions of unwarranted bloodshed and chaos aren’t entirely unfounded. Pervez Musharraf will no doubt claim that she was a victim of religious fanaticism, but none of this can ever hope to be justified in the name of god. It’s an old fashioned power struggle at hand here, I’m afraid. It was perhaps short-sighted of her to believe that she could return to her country and survive. Her father and both of her brothers all met violent deaths, so it seemed inevitable that she would suffer the same fate. Perhaps she thought that her glamour and fame would make her unassailable, but even she must have known that facing such vehement prejudice and hatred would render her totally exposed. Perhaps she thought Musharraf would protect her - however, could she have been that naive?
Yesterday was undeniably a sad day for democracy, but moreover it was a chilling and gloomy day for the world. The fact that some extremists believe that they can shoot and bomb their way towards achieving the election result they desire places the remainder of the democratic world in a dangerous situation.
There’s no negotiating with such people; there’s certainly no case for appeasing them.; and no matter how much Bush & Co strut around puffing out their chests declaring a continuing “war on terror”, it’s also impossible to crush them. So what are the options? It’s too ghastly to contemplate. We will no doubt see civil war in Pakistan before long and whereas we may not care much about what people on the other side of the world do to themselves, we need to bear in mind that Pakistan is a nuclear power. Whoever eventually wrests that terrible power by any means other than a democratic route will inevitably place the whole world in peril. Ms Bhutto may not have been the most skilful of politicians, and there may well have been some dubious and shady shenanigans during her previous years in power, but she wasn’t a terrorist. Her greatest wish was for democracy in her country, and now that wish has been shattered by evil and mindless barbarians using the simple but horrific "authority" of guns and explosives. Take note of the picture above - such scenes deceive us into thinking that everything in the world is just lovely. I wish it were so.
Happy New Year everyone?
You will remember what I was saying the other day about not believing everything you read? Well, my daughter’s French boyfriend and I were discussing the issue of how many cheeses General de Gaulle said it would take to render a country ungovernable. We all know his famous quote “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” or so we think we know. French Boyfriend and I couldn’t remember exactly how many cheeses were mentioned in this speech – I thought it was 462; French Boyfriend thought it was 673. But no, according to Google it was 246 although even that is disputed.
Wikepedia tells us that it might be 246, 256, or 265. What’s more, different quotes are attributed to this momentous pronouncement; and even different dates. Some sources place it in 1951, some in 1962; some say it begins: “How can anyone govern….” whereas others say: “Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese” which I have to say sounds more plausible, even though the actual number of cheeses is at odds with most sources. Perhaps the problem is in the translation – maybe we should read the French version to find out. But my question is this: Why isn’t such an important speech accurately documented? Okay, so maybe a speech about cheeses isn’t quite as important as “Ich bin ein Berliner” – what a howler that was - or “I have a dream” (which might explain why Charles de Gaulle wasn’t shot), but surely we could expect some accuracy on this subject?
So, if we can’t believe Google or Wikipedia, what can we believe? Certainly not the internet which, in the same category as searching for de Gaulle’s quote, says that Britain has 700 varieties of cheese, which must be an absolutely blatant lie. I challenge you to name them. I only managed thirteen.
Another thing which annoys me (while we’re on the subject of Grumpy Old Men) is the ridiculous ritual of drinking Tequila. All that salt and lemon nonsense is so 1970s. Why can’t such things just be enjoyed for what they are? So I say: drink your Tequila naked; and eat your cheese with abandon.
Hurrah! It’s the Winter Solstice! This is always my favourite day of the year and to celebrate, I plan to light a small fire on my balcony and then dance around it wearing nothing more than a strategically-placed feather and a bone through my nose. Oh, Happy Day! The nights will now get shorter; the dawn’s rosy fingers will begin to tickle me awake earlier and earlier. Summer is on its way.
I went to the Nottingham Creative Network’s Christmas bash last night which was held in an extraordinarily stark room inside the university. The room was painted completely white and there were no works of art adorning the walls. In one corner stood an eight-foot high Christmas tree entirely bare of any decoration – no baubles, no tinsel, no twinkling lights, no chocolate money, even no fairy! Nothing but the natural greenness of the pine needles. Quite an original idea and very attractive it was too.
The party was fun. A couple of people made Pecha Kucha presentations – the first, a talented (but mad) Polish photographer who told us that her best birthday present ever was a saxophone that she couldn’t play; the second, a jolly (but very talented) painter who revealed an unlikely fascination for Kylie Minogue. Very entertaining. Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where you get to describe yourself and your life to an audience using PowerPoint slides. The trick is that you may only use twenty slides, and that each slide must only be displayed for a maximum of twenty seconds. Therefore, your life is illustrated to a fascinated gathering within a total of six minutes and forty seconds. Another rule of the format is that as the presenter, you are forbidden from taking yourself too seriously. Sounds exactly like my sort of thing and I shall definitely be having a go next time. It’s a marvellous way to show off and at the same time, poke fun at yourself (before someone else does). The snag for me is this: Has my life been interesting enough to fill out even a meagre six minutes and forty seconds?
Who cares? I shall at least have a photograph of me dancing around my balcony fire to show them all. That’ll make ‘em laugh.
There’s an argument currently raging about some women in Basra being killed by religious extremists for being “inappropriately dressed”. The supposed message here is that the city & region is already sliding into the grip of an Iraqi-style “Taliban” now that the vainglorious British have withdrawn. I suspect that this is partly a bit of fuzzy propaganda being put out to convince us that the British were a stabilising influence in the area, and that the Iraqis are all vicious loonies hell-bent on the suppression of women. Whilst it is true that many women have been unjustly killed in the area, there are probably many equally sinister reasons behind this, other than the seemingly convenient accusation of religious intolerance. Sorry to disappoint the Daily Mail readers amongst you, but the fact is that there are just some plain old-fashioned crimes against women being committed here.
If you look at the video of one of these incidents, you will see that some of the women appear to be appropriately dressed anyway, which suggests that – although horrible and inhuman as such acts are – there is something else going on here and that things are not as clear-cut as the press would have us believe. This is what I was talking about the other day – who can we believe when events such as this are reported? The British forces were never “in control” of the region anyway; they just sat inside their military camps and allowed the killing to continue outside. Whenever they did venture forth, which again was probably only for the British Government’s propaganda interests, the acute danger they were placed in was a hideous signal of the hatred the local people felt towards them. Was this a valid way to waste the precious lives of some very brave and beautiful young men and women?
No, by creating the impression that the British forces were stemming the tide of anarchy during their presence, certain areas of the press are hoodwinking us. This Government doesn’t give a damn about the suppression of women or about any other civil misdemeanour that may go on in Iraq; it cares only about excusing its horrendous actions in the country, and about masking its catastrophic waste of colossal sums of money and the even more pitiable squandering of dozens and dozens of young British lives.
Who to believe in this matter? Well, remember the David Kelly affair? I rest my case.
My weekend has been both pleasant and unpleasant. Whilst I’m often fond of thinking that I’m a good person, and I try to moderate my behaviour so that I can be one, I sometimes fail. On Friday night I did something so naughty that I can’t even report it on a family show like this, but needless to say I don’t feel very proud of myself. Why do I do these things?
Well, it’s partly because I’m still readjusting to my new life. It was exactly one year ago today that I moved out of the stable setting I’d been occupying for so many years, and into my new existence as a single man in this city apartment. It seems like only yesterday that this happened, and back then I couldn’t have predicted that I’d still be here twelve months later, nor that I’d be able to recount the plethora of bizarre antics that I’ve been involved in over the year. But enough is enough - twelve months is quite adequate as a readjustment period, and the excuses now have to end.
So, now I am embarking on a new life. A life of sobriety, propriety, decorum and restraint. I shall closely study my Buddhism books; I shall remember to smile nicely at everyone I meet; I shall be kind to animals, old ladies and children; and I shall finish my novel.
[Hang on, you’ll have to excuse me – I just have to open another bottle of wine; back in a moment]
Now, [slurp] where was I? Oh yes, this eBay business. I know the site has been going for years but I’ve never used it before, being a bit of a Luddite in such matters. Anyway, I decided to sell something recently so I duly set up my account and posted details of my item for sale. Things were going well - with a few reasonable bids - until it was time for the auction to close. Imagine my delight to receive an email from eBay saying “Congratulations! You have sold your item – please invoice the bidder.” The price I had been offered was twice what I was expecting, so I was very happy indeed. Then, minutes later, I received another email from eBay informing me that the bidder was a fraudster and that my item had been removed from the list while they were “now restoring the account to its owner”.
I was confused. So I wrote to eBay to complain and guess what? I received a very detailed, extremely courteous and informative personal response explaining exactly what had happened and how eBay had taken the necessary steps to protect me. I’m impressed – customer service like this is hard to come by indeed, so well done to all you hidden gnomes on eBay and keep up the good work. Whoever is in charge of its Customer Service Department should hot-foot it down to BT and show them how it’s done.
Oh no, don’t get me started on BT. This is supposed to be my new life, where everything is all sweetness and light….. I’ll keep you posted.
By the way – having finally got rid of the stray cat in my life, I now have Boo-Boo the Bear Cub to deal with. Will I ever learn?
There’s a new website that’s been set up which tries to pull together items from a range of verifiable bloggers across the world and create a sort of news feature from them. This kind of thing has been done before, but this is a new initiative in as much as the bloggers have all been sourced and vetted by qualified journalists before they are allowed to submit. The whole thing is backed and hosted by the mighty France24 TV station (the equivalent of BBC News24).
It’s quite serious stuff (the strapline is “Your Eyes On The Globe”) and aims to take contributions from ordinary people who live inside the areas from where the journalism itself can’t always be trusted. For example, there was an interesting piece yesterday from a girl in Cuba, and today from someone in Turkmenistan.
I can see the value in this – serious journalists are currently faced with a dichotomy: the internet has posed a risk to their profession in that more and more people are relying on ‘facts’ they can read there; but the vast majority of this information is often unverified and could just as well be propaganda from unknown sources. At the same time, the general public is losing trust in journalism itself which means that in reality, we have a problem in believing anything we read. This new website seems like a serious attempt to stem this tide – young journalists with integrity and also with international connections have trawled the world for the reliable voices of real people and brought them together under a trusted umbrella. Check it out – the website is http://observers.france24.com/en (this takes you to the English version – the journalists who put it together are all bi-lingual so there is a French version too).
In the meantime, here’s another strange thing: Rarely can the British public be relied on to vote on anything in the right way, but last Sunday’s vote for BBC Sports Personality of the Year seems to have worked for once. Joe Calzaghe won – deservedly, because he has taken on some of the world’s best and emerged better and stronger and still retained his integrity. I was surprised (but pleased) about this because I had fully expected the populist vote to follow the usual press hysteria and vote for Lewis Hamilton (don’t get me wrong, Lewis is a high achiever too, but I so hate foregone conclusions), just as they did a few years ago when they mindlessly voted for that Beckham fella in preference to Ellen McArthur who had shown far more grit and personality battling against the southern oceans than he ever does flouncing around on a football pitch.
Mind you, I can talk. On Sunday I voted for James Toseland, World Superbike Champion, simply because he was the prettiest boy amongst the list and he plays lovely piano too!
Now it is time for me to begin my annual rant about Christmas. I really hate this time of year but, as I’ve nothing original to say, I shouldn’t go on about it I suppose. I almost felt the need to lie down and meditate the other day, in the middle of Tesco (by the way, that’s another pet hate of mine – how many people say Tesco’s instead of Tesco? After all, people don’t say Adsa’s; they say Asda. Sainsbury’s is allowed, in case you are wondering, because it uses an apostrophe). But back to my near panic attack on Sunday.
Shelves stocked with neatly-packaged Stilton cheeses, speciality pork pies and those hideously expensive “festive” pre-cooked nibbles without which our Yuletide tables will be pathetically bare – it’s all vomit inducing stuff as far as I’m concerned. Kerry Katona has a lot to answer for, so she does, although I suppose it’s not all her fault really – the cheesy and charmless scripts given to her by the barrel-of-laughs writers at Iceland are supposed to make us think of her as the perfect mum and we're meant to want to be like her too. The only thing these advertisements do for me is to leave me cold (appropriately enough).
I know that the wheels of commerce have to turn, and I know that this once-a-year opportunity to exploit the public has to be exploited itself, but really – who apart from the shareholders of our mega-retailers actually enjoys this festival of blackmailed-induced indulgence? For blackmail it is – we are forced to believe that unless we deck out our homes in tinsel and gold; overload our groaning tables with crispy duck parcels, mini hot-dogs, and mini chocolate cups; and set the log fire a-blazing, then we are failures. As long as we can pile high our foil-wrapped parcels under the tree (sprayed, of course, with flame-retardant chemicals and tastefully prepared in this year’s fashion colour – last year, black was the new green I believe), then all will be well with the world.
And don't get me started on the annual Office Christmas Dinner with its badly-cooked food (selected from a disappointingly low-choice menu as long ago as October), its usual display of the inappropriate groping of young Chantelle from Despatch by some spotty youth from Sales, and it's opportunity to pretend that you always really liked "dragon-features Mary" from Accounts. Alice, pass the sick bag!
There. Rant over for another year. I thank you.
The day I saw Ingrid Bergman in Hunter’s “Waters of the Moon” turned out to be memorable indeed. Now I’m no Stage Door Johnny, but after the play I was wandering past the side door of the Theatre Royal when she appeared, fur-clad, about to alight into her limousine. She stopped when she saw me – I was dressed as one of the Three Musketeers at the time (don’t ask me which one) and thereby attracted her attention. Being Swedish by birth, she offered me a pickled herring. I of course refused this and informed her that being a vegan, anything other than a fried radish would be anathema to me. This appeared to disconcert the Hollywood beauty – but after a brief moment she threw back her still beautiful head and roared a guttural laugh that seemed to echo back to the pine forests of the frozen north.
In another moment, she was gone and I headed off in the opposite direction. I’d only been walking for about five minutes when I encountered a man dressed – incredulously – as Cardinal Richelieu. I presumed he was on his way home from a fancy dress party (whereas I often dressed like this when I’d run out of clean underwear). This was too good an opportunity to miss. Here was my arch-rival, the evil and cunning accomplice of the evil and cunning King Louis.
I challenged him to a duel and, drawing my sword, pranced around him swishing and stabbing at his flowing crimson robes. He was clearly very alarmed and began staggering away from me whilst at the same time (inexplicably) covering his ears. Perhaps he thought I would chop one of them off. Unfortunately, as he turned to escape, he tripped on a dodgy paving stone and landed arse over tit in a nearby flower bed. It was at this point that the police car drove by – well, it didn’t exactly drive by; it stopped. I was arrested on suspicion of affray, of perpetrating ABH, and of carrying an offensive weapon (the last bit wasn’t exactly fair, I told them, especially if they’d seen what I’d seen revealed underneath the cardinal’s skirts as he fell – now that was offensive). I spent the night in the cells before they decided not to press charges. But they did confiscate my (plastic) sword and break the feather in my hat. Outrageous.
I should have accepted the pickled herring.
The only thing standing in the way of me and success is a lack of energy. And I’m exhausted. I went to a nice party last night at Bluu, hosted jointly by Dance4 and CCAN (Centre for Contemporary Arts in Nottingham). There were all sorts of people there including the ubiquitous Michael Pinchbeck, renaissance man, who only last week was himself a human art installation (he sat for two hours on a bench in the foyer of Broadway with a plaque saying “Come sit with me for a while, and remember” – something worthy of a Turner Prize I should say). However, last night the pain in my ribs was growing; made worse earlier in the day I suppose by hauling a heavy briefcase to Birmingham and back. The pain was making me feel uncomfortable so after a few drinks, I left the party. I decided to risk everything by taking some rather dangerous painkillers – despite imbibing of the aforesaid alcohol – and went to bed early.
I don’t think I’ve ever slept for so long in one stretch. And yet, far from feeling refreshed, I feel sluggish and drained this morning. I had difficulty waking up in the first place, and lifting my wretched body out of bed was like pulling a wooden spoon from a pan of solidified porridge. I’ve had to cancel a meeting I had this morning, and am now sitting here with barely enough energy to press the keys on my laptop. And I’m still in pain.
On the brighter side, I’ve been invited to write an article for an on-line magazine, so at least I have another opportunity to get my name out there into the big world of letters. Someone told me yesterday that my surname is “posh”. Pilgrim? Posh? I hardly think so – he who would valiant be and all that maybe, but not posh. I have a friend whose surname is Cremieu-Alcan and another called Urquhart – they are posh names indeed – but when my by-line appears above my article I doubt if people will assume that I’d been born with anything but a plastic spoon in my mouth. However, I like my name: Richard Charles Pilgrim – it tells you exactly who I am. A knob perhaps, but not a nob (and there is a difference).
If you don’t ask, you don’t get – that’s a maxim by which I try to live these days. As an adage, it’s advice you hear all the time, but it’s not always that easy to follow is it? Sometimes - by asking directly for what you want - you risk getting a slap in the face with a wet kipper, but in my view that’s still better than being left guessing about whether the answer to your question would have been 'yes' or 'no'. So these days I don’t bother with any pussyfooting – I just come out with it and ask for what I want on the premise that if I ask often enough, I may just get it eventually.
Trouble is, the answer is invariably negative. I must be asking the wrong people I suppose but that’s always been my problem – the wrong people are (in my opinion) always the right people. I guess the real 'right' people just don’t interest me, unless we’re talking politics (which one should never do of course).
I’m rambling on because I’ve broken a rib and the pain is sending me delirious. I did it yesterday when I was out sailing in ferocious winds. We capsized badly, broke the mast, and I was thrown into the freezing water with such force that I caught my ribcage on the gunwale as I went. The whole episode was a bit crazy because we had to wait about thirty minutes before the rescue boat arrived (we no longer had means of propulsion, having no mast), during which time the boat was almost completely under water (and we with it- we'd climbed back in at this point). When I was finally transferred to the rescue boat I was trying to throw a line back to the stricken boat but my crewmate dropped it, whereupon it snaked into the water and immediately became wrapped around our propeller causing our engine to stop. So, now the rescue boat had no means of propulsion either and we were all adrift in a 40 mph wind, heading for the weir. Dangling by my toes from the back of the boat, I managed to untangle the rope from the propeller, re-start the engine, and we were on our way to safety. Nothing to write home about I know, though my ribcage is still killing me and I can barely sit up.
It’s a good job, after all, that I’m not in the throes of some passionate affair. Thrashing around in bed with someone would no doubt put unnecessary pressure on my thoracic region and presumably turn pleasure into pain. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?
Well, it seems I’ve finally shaken off the stray cat. I locked the cat-flap and dispensed with the milk-saucer over a week ago and there’s been no sign of him since. Usually, taking this action has no affect because he normally comes banging at the flap with his paw and mewing loudly, but this time he seems to have taken the hint. Like all stray cats he’s probably found someone else to take him in and right now he’s no doubt curled up on a sofa somewhere in this town, purring. I hope so anyway – I wouldn’t like to think of him squashed under a bus somewhere.
I’ve found someone who might want to turn my hypothesis about Rumpelstiltskin into a play – if I write the script. You may remember that I wrote here about this fairy tale some time ago; about how I view Rumpelstiltskin as the only one in the story who behaves with any honour, surrounded as he is by a cast of duplicitous, scheming, selfish and weak characters. There’s a guy I know who runs a theatre production company and he has been thinking for some time about staging something in which we don’t cheer when Rumpelstiltskin loses, but where we see him as the maligned hero instead. This guy has suggested that we collaborate on putting something together from a story I wrote some time ago called ‘The Tattoo’. My story is an allegorical version of the fable set in Nottingham’s clubland, where the Rumpelstiltskin character is portrayed as a guileless youth called ‘Young Tony’; the Queen as a chavvy, selfish tart; and the King as a ruthless drugs baron. It could work.
I’m getting quite excited about things now, although not for the reason that many people will be getting excited. Today is the 1st of December and of course, it’s the day the first chocolate of the Advent Calendar gets eaten (I don’t have one, by the way). This simple ceremony will inevitably instil excitement in millions of people throughout the land as they build towards the festival held here on 25th December. I hate this time of year, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m a person who believes in non-violence, I’d rip the very head off the next person to utter that most ubiquitous and banal of enquiries: “Are you ready for Christmas?”
A strange thing happened to me once. I was on vacation from university and all my friends seemed either to be away or busy so I took myself down to the pub, alone but with a book. I remember it was Daphne du Maurier’s I’ll Never Be Young Again which – at the grand old age of twenty – I believed to be true. So, with a nice pint before me, I was immersed in reading when someone sat down at my table and asked me for a light. I looked up and saw a man of about thirty, dressed in a bizarre fashion, holding his cigarette expectantly.
