Get A Grip!

“I have a horrid cold in the head and I do hope it will not turn into La Grippe”. So began an entry in the diary of Baroness von Bülop in her memoir ‘My Royal Past’ published in 1939. This memoir was in fact a spoof written by the photographer Cecil Beaton which I read when I was about thirteen. At that age I was somewhat fascinated by European royalty of the grand age – an age when the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs still trundled by royal train around the continent with their great entourages of Archdukes, Grand Dukes, Princes and Counts; taking the waters in Baden-Baden; cruising into Spitzbergen in their graceful yachts. Because of this I was fully taken in by Beaton’s little joke until, about half way through the book, I began to notice that most of the photographs of the Baroness – whether languishing under a parasol on the elegant terrace of some sprawling villa or standing bejewelled, stiff and formal at some glittering court reception – looked suspiciously like Beaton himself (who was credited with ‘editing’ the memoir). Ever since then I’ve wanted to write a spoof autobiography but have yet to find a suitable subject matter. One day, though....

I am reminded of that entry in the Baroness’s diary because I too have a horrid cold in the head. It began yesterday when I detected a dry tingling in my throat and a heaviness in my limbs – sure harbingers of worse to come. I had such an awful day yesterday anyway, I was trying to finalise my year-end accounts which (whereas I am normally so well organized in such matters) had somehow become as tangled as a ball of wool after the proverbial kitten has attacked. Missing invoices, incorrect entries in the ledger, unreadable credit card slips, mystery transactions in the bank statements – it all resulted in a day of hair-tearing and tears. I think this may have something to do with a lost weekend stretching from August to March, but the net result appears to show that my business has made a loss this year. Hmm, I suppose that at least this means I won’t be facing a crippling tax bill next January, but how am I going to feed myself in the meantime?

So - exhausted and very nearly hysterical - I writhed in my misery, all alone. I had designated Monday as a non-alcohol day so I wasn’t even able to drown my sorrows - all I could do was take the powders. Instead, I went to bed early and thrashed around in a pool of feverish sweat all night, hallucinating and squirming with fear. Now I have to change all the bedding, just when I feel especially incapable of doing so. I am so weak this morning that I desire an army of servants to attend to me. A dear friend – someone who cares – has already offered to come round with Chicken Soup and Lucozade and if only I had a chaise-longue upon which I could languish and be pampered, I’d take her up on it. If the Baroness von Bülop’s head cold did develop into La Grippe that day, that’s exactly what she would have done. Me? I'll just have to get a grip and try to ignore La Grippe itself. I was never allowed to be ill as a child, so I'm used to it.

Pure Evil

I suppose I shouldn’t really comment on this dreadful case in Austria where a man kept his daughter imprisoned in a dungeon for 24 years, but reading about the case is almost too awful to bear, and difficult to keep quiet about. It’s hard to imagine a punishment for this man that could be severe enough to bring retribution for his evil behaviour. Whenever I read about cases like this I begin to see an ugly facet to my character – I start turning green and bursting out of my shirt. I remember that when I read John Fowles’s ‘The Collector’ I was boiling with rage at the end.

One of the most pernicious acts of cruelty is to deprive someone of their childhood; it’s theft of the most spiteful & malicious kind. Because not only did this man imprison his poor daughter for so long, he apparently fathered six children with her. But there’s more – three of those children were kept imprisoned with her, and so there’s a girl of 19, and two boys aged 18 and 5 who, until they were released recently, had never even seen daylight. What sort of monster could do this? How could you not want to see your own children doing what all children should be able to do? These poor souls have never known the joy of running free, of climbing trees, of splashing in the river with the sun on their necks; never felt the pride of bringing home their first clay ornament from school; never felt the thrill of a first secret kiss; never known the mixed feelings of fear and exhilaration of attending their first school disco.

It’s impossible to imagine what these children have endured. To be robbed of the very best years of their lives in such a callous and pointless manner, and to be deprived of all normal social interactions, must leave them so psychologically damaged that it’s hard to feel they would ever properly recover. The ogre who did this is apparently a ‘respected’ member of his community and whose neighbours, suspecting nothing, regarded as a normal, decent family man. I can’t think of a punishment horrible enough for him. To want to seek revenge is (we are told) an insidious desire and one which lowers us to the same level as the beast within, but when I read about acts that are this evil I find it hard to contain myself. He deserves to be bricked up inside a wall and made to starve to death.

I’m sorry – I’m ranting, and this isn’t what you came here to read, I’m sure. There is nothing that I – nor anyone – can do about this sort of thing, and there’s effectively nothing that the law can do to prevent it happening to other children in future, so wasting energy by ranting about it is, I suppose, nugatory. There’s an adage somewhere that says we should only worry about or concern ourselves with the things we can change, and not about the things we can’t. I can’t stop monsters like that hateful man emerging, but putting these events out of my mind almost seems like abandoning those poor children. I think it was Liv Ullman who said that once you are a parent to one child, you are a parent to all the world’s children. This is why I feel so angry. Anyone who has known the sheer happiness of cheering on their child in an egg-and-spoon race, or of waking up on Fathers’ Day to a (badly made, but proudly presented) breakfast in bed, would feel the same.

Tomorrow, I hope to have something happier to report.

It's A Fair Cop Guv

Well how about this for a headline in this morning’s newspaper? ‘Prisons are so cushy inmates refuse to escape’. Notwithstanding whatever your opinions are about whether prison life is too soft or not, surely the odd thing about this headline is that the inmates are refusing to escape. Refusing who? Who is ordering them to escape? The prison officers? The Home Office? You can imagine the scenario: "Now come on Fletcher, your life in here is far too comfortable. You are requested to escape by 3:00 p.m. or there’ll be trouble for you, my lad". (Fletcher folds his arms and sits back in his leather G-plan armchair) "No. Shan’t. I refuse. Can’t make me." (Sticks out tongue). The world is indeed a strange place.

Last night, for the first time this season, I went sailing. We had an absolute blast round the course - it was blowing old boots at one point, and we were flying. We sail on a tiny stretch of river where it seems that for most of the time, the wind blows from the west. This means a hard beat upriver; constant tacking to make any headway against both the wind and the current and, in the force we had last night, having to hike out on every turn to try to keep the boat flat. It’s fantastic exercise and well worth the effort because then, as we round the top buoy, it’s up with the spinnaker and a fabulous charge for a mile downstream, the boat almost planning. And the best of it all was, we won the race!

Today I hear that a children’s Dalek suit from 1970 fetched £3,200 on eBay. The puzzling thing about this is not that someone would pay so much for a piece of old tat, but that the Daleks had children in the first place. I didn’t realize they could breed at all! No wonder Dr Who had so much trouble with them.

If I were looking for the perfect woman (and I’m not), then this recent ad I saw in a lonely hearts column seems to provide the answer: “Meet the new me. Like the old me only less nice after three of these ads without any sexual intercourse. 42-year old fruitcake (F.). Box no. 17/06” . Hopefully we won’t see a fourth ad from this poor soul.

Today’s quote (not from Horace; I’ll leave you to guess who said this): "I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally." Some days, I know exactly how he felt.

Look Behind You!

There is being unlucky, and there is being really unlucky. Of course, it can’t always be said that being a member of a minority group is necessarily an unlucky position to be in, but many minorities – by their very nature – receive less than favourable treatment from their majority counterparts, and so it might be assumed that being a member of a minority is, shall we say, an unwelcome place to be.

Imagine my reaction then to a television programme I was watching yesterday which featured a member of a support group for deaf gay immigrants in Sweden. I don’t mean a support group that includes deaf people as well as gay people as well as immigrants to Sweden. No, I mean a support group for people who are all three of these. The person being interviewed did not reveal how large this group is, but given that the percentage of people in the population with profound deafness is reckoned to be less than 2%; and given that (although it’s impossible to be accurate on this) the percentage of gay people in western culture is somewhere between 5-10%, and given that the immigrant population in Sweden is less than 5% of its total, and given further that Sweden has a total population of less than 10 million people, the chances of finding someone else in this group must be, I would think, fairly small.

This reminds me of a strange game I once played on a beach in Majorca. We were split into four groups – I can’t now remember what the groups were but let’s say they were pigs, sheep, chickens and cows. We were then blindfolded and scattered (by kindly assistants) to far flung parts of the beach whereupon we then had to seek out our fellow species by means of using our particular animal’s call only. Once we'd found someone whose call matched our own, we clung on to them and set off together to find others on the beach who were the same as us. It was harder than it sounds – there was such a cacophony of moos and oinks and bleats and clucks that it was difficult to locate someone who was in ‘your gang’. Although it was just done for a laugh, I found that it was nevertheless a strange experience to feel alienated and isolated, and to be desperately calling for recognition from people who were in my group, whilst straining in my blindness and hoping to hear a call that matched my own. Seemingly I was surrounded by every other kind of animal but my own kind as I struggled to locate a familiar, friendly voice in the wilderness. This must be similar to how a deaf gay immigrant to Sweden might feel, I think.

There is a further analogy (if you can call it that) to all of this, for it also reminds me of the story in Greek mythology about the suffering we endure to find our own soulmate. The story goes that originally we humans were combined of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. Zeus feared that this made us too powerful and so he split us all in half, condemning us to spend the rest of our lives wandering around the world searching for the other half to make us complete again. We are all looking for our soulmate, and the reason why this invokes so much suffering is because – like in the game on the beach – there is so much other noise and distraction going on, and so many random collisions, that the chances of making the right connection are always going to be relatively small.

Hmm. Bit of a mean-spirited bugger, that Zeus fellah, don’t you think?

The Quality of Friendship

Okay – I apologize for the error in a previous blog. My very good friend Fintan, who has an incisive brain on all matters of this kind, quickly pointed out that it was the Zombies, not the Animals, who did ‘She’s Not There’. I am respectfully humbled, m’lord.

This weekend has been rather odd. I met my new neighbours - two very attractive, feisty & intelligent (if slightly mad) girls who moved in a couple of weeks ago and who invited Fintan and me in for drinks on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, it all became a bit out of hand and so, after copious amounts of alcohol (very effective at removing the common-sense nodules from the brain), and even a cannabis lollipop (brought from Amsterdam by the ex-Mrs P and not effective at all – she woz robbed), we all collapsed. Somehow, the action had moved from my neighbour’s apartment back to mine, but I have no recollection of anyone leaving, just of waking up on the sofa at 3:00 a.m. surrounded by empty gin bottles and stains. Disgraceful behaviour yes, but fortunately counter-balanced by a day of restraint and artistic pursuit yesterday.

I went to see the film ‘Garage’ which is set in the (somewhat bleak) surroundings of rural Ireland. It’s an enchanting film on the theme of innocence and the loneliness of the human spirit. Dazzlingly photographed (the opening sequence is vaguely reminiscent of ‘Paris, Texas’), with exquisitely sparse dialogue, it’s a triumph of the understatement. Pat Shortt (I am told) is better known in Ireland as a comedy actor, but he skilfully discharged his duties as a serious actor with both the pathos and bewilderment required of him. Excellent – I urge you to see it soon.

Anyone who has ever been perplexed by the issues raised by the conflict in Northern Ireland (hopefully, now behind us, although not entirely resolved), should read Joseph O’Connor’s ‘Star of the Sea’ and Jamie O’Neill’s ‘At Swim Two Boys’. Of course, I would never condone the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians at any time, and always held the view that both Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were being disingenuous with their use of the truth, these two books evoke shame and humility in being English (which I am). I would reject utterly that I am in any way responsible for the atrocities carried out during the 800 years of English oppression of the Irish, but nevertheless I am less than proud of this heritage. Read the two books I have mentioned, and you’ll understand what I mean. All we can do now is hope for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Of course, whilst it’s equally unhelpful to generalise (if not in itself, racist too) I would say that most Irish people I have encountered are generous, charming, self-effacing, funny and above all fiercely intelligent. The fact that they can emerge in this way from a long and sordid history of vicious despair can only be a tribute to their spirit and integrity.

George Bernard Shaw (himself Irish) said: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Good point, GBS.

TWTWTW

This hasn’t been the best week of my life. But then, when would it ever be appropriate to say that a particular week had been ‘the best’ of one’s life? What would it take to make any week better than any other? I suppose if I’d won 2.4 million pounds on the lottery then I might be justified in saying yes, that was a good week. Or if I’d landed the perfect job perhaps, or (and this is impossible) succeeded in conquering the heart of someone I’d been in love with for ages. But none of those things have happened to me this week, so it’s hardly been the best. And now, to top it all, I have a horrible hangover and a nagging awareness that I may have behaved badly last night. Damn that alcohol stuff – it’s a menace; a public enemy, that’s what it is.

I see that Hazel Court, who apparently 'brought an impressive cleavage and a penetrating scream' to a number of popular horror films, has died. She was 82 (picture above). What makes this fact so remarkable is that I’ve never even heard of her. This might have more to do with my pathetic paucity of knowledge in respect of film (something I even bought a DVD player to rectify, which now gathers dust of course), rather than Miss Court’s position in the Hollywood Hall of Fame, but there we are. I think I wrote here a short time ago that Horace said ‘He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world’ and so, in so far as I am concerned (and I accept that I do not represent the world), Miss Court would not appear to have lived badly.

It’s now confession time: I sometimes listen to Radio 2. I shouldn’t be ashamed of this, I know, but there’s a vague whiff of embarrassment about admitting such a thing, even at my age. It’s a harmless enough pastime, and one that hardly tests one’s tolerance – or even nerve – until, that is, the producer decides to play The Animals singing ‘She’s Not There’ for the second time in a week. There are forty years of nostalgia they can dip into if they wish, so why would they find it necessary to play the same (rather irritating) piece of music twice in the same week? Maybe that’s what I mean when I say that this hasn’t been the best week of my life.

I need a holiday. If I had someone I could take with me, I’d go away for a dirty weekend to the seaside. Dirty weekends are certainly the tonic that could fix anyone’s malaise I reckon, but they’re not that much fun on one's own. It’s a good job there isn’t a gun under my pillow, that’s all I can say.

Instead of a quote from my mate Horace, here’s something that Cicero once said: 'If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need'. Well, I have neither, so where does that leave me, eh?

Listen To Me!

Okay, so these are the things I want to moan about today:

• People who step off an escalator in front of me and who then stop dead before deciding whether to go left or right.
• People who speak with a Spanish accent when they’re not really Spanish.
• Those annoying people who take Fancy Dress Parties too seriously.
• People who wear gloves for the wrong reason.
• Anyone who doesn’t like whisky.
• Anyone who DOES like whisky, but who drinks it with a mixer (especially something vomit-making such as lime juice – okay in curries, but whisky, no!).
• Californian wines (why can’t they stick to making films and having earthquakes?)
• The fact that we have ANYTHING in common with Americans (for example, those yellow plastic ‘Wet Floor’ signs are the same in America as the ones we have here).
• Fat people who think they can get away with wearing a shirt that is clearly five sizes too small for them.
• People who talk on their mobile phones whilst conducting a transaction at the bank counter – and especially when they apologize to whoever they’re talking to because they have to interrupt the conversation to communicate with the bank clerk. What about apologizing to the bank clerk for being so pig ignorant?
• Flies, that when I’m trying to liberate them through the balcony doors, turn back into the room at the point of exit, thereby facing annihilation.
• People who throw themselves over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
• People who walk slowly.
• Getting poked, licked, hugged, bitten or compared on Facebook (the same goes for having my Fun Wall clogged up with meaningless videos).
• Mad people who think it’s acceptable to talk gibberish to me as I stand waiting for the green man at the crossing – there’s no escape!
• Having to wear shoes that match.
• People who drop litter – who do they think will clear it up?
• Having to work for a living.
• Making the mistake of thinking that looking after pet fish would be easy.
• Running out of time, ALL the time.
• Running out of ideas for things to moan about.

Those are the things I want to moan about, today at least.

What's In A Name?

I once met a man – and this is perfectly true – whose name was Alick A Dick (and yes, that was the exact spelling of his name). Why he chose to use his middle initial in everything he gave his name to, I can't say – but he even had a plaque in the foyer of an office block I worked in saying: ‘This building was opened by Alick A Dick...’ Perhaps he thought that Alick Dick (without the middle 'A') would be even more embarrassing, but I think I’d have changed my name to Alex or something, if it had been me. This leads to me to wonder about the sagacity of some parents when choosing their children’s names. I worked with a man once whose name was Scott Scott which, I suppose, is rather neat in an odd sort of way, don’t you think? Perhaps his mother was a fan of Nabakov (I’m thinking of the protagonist of Lolita here), or perhaps she was just plain bonkers. I’ve always hoped to meet a couple whose surname is Hyde and who named their little daughter Tanya, but I guess nobody would be that stupid.

I’ve just had a really pleasant weekend in Sussex. I went to see an old friend of mine who was celebrating her 60th birthday. We’ve been sending each other Christmas cards for years, without meeting, so it was very soothing to get together again – I’d forgotten just how much fun she is! Here is a woman who has been presented with her own share of tragedy and despair, yet who faces it all with good humour and laughter. She made me – who has never truly faced either of those two demons – feel rather humble. I don’t often have the time to feel sad (I’m either too busy, or too drunk); but the acceptance of this fact has made me realize that I also don’t have the time to feel happy either. What a miserable existence – devoid of any of life’s deepest emotions and suffering under a slag-heap of futility, all because I'm too damned busy. This is probably what I meant when I said (some time ago) that when the time comes for me to leave this life (or Earth, depending upon what you believe), I may well be asking for my money back. I want a refund!

Well, I’ve had a busy start to the week. already. I had to deliver some work today which (although unfinished) kept me pre-occupied for a while because I hate failing to meet any deadline. So, this morning I was juggling all kinds of balls in the air – I had to print out this work which needed to be delivered at noon, as well as taking endless phone calls from a demanding client, AND preparing for a meeting this afternoon that was connected to the publishing venture that I (with my colleagues) am trying to set up. No wonder I took refuge in a pint of creamy Guinness later. Fortunately I have abandoned the practice of getting drunk (everything in moderation, don’t you know?), so I was able to continue to wade through mountains of paperwork this evening. I’m very tired though. Does anyone know what this phenomenon known as TV is? I don’t even get time to watch the fabulously acted and skilfully scripted Hollyoaks anymore.

No quote from Horace today – apparently he’s been arrested on 'suspicion of working in the UK without a permit'. WTF?

Worship the Body!

I used to be extremely fit. For years I exercised almost every day: Aerobics, Gym, Swimming, Circuit Training etc. And I supplemented all of this with regular sport: Squash, Tennis, Cycling, 5-a-side Football, Sailing etc. My body (to use an old adage) was like a temple. Toned & healthy.

But now I’ve become dissolute. Apart from the odd swim, the occasional sail, and a bit of pumping up and down on my thigh-strengthening machine, I hardly do anything to arrest the encroaching menace of old age. I smoke and drink too much too; this hardly helps. My muscles have become flabby, my lung capacity has been reduced to the size of a small rodent’s, and in some areas, cellulite can be seen bubbling under the surface of my pallid skin (yes, men do get cellulite as well as women).

So it came as a shock to the system yesterday when I played a very hard game of squash with a friend of mine. I tried very hard to win but, despite me putting up a brave fight, it was no wonder that he beat me hands down (although that was probably due more to his skill than to his strength). However, it made me feel wonderful just to have played. It’s about two years since I’ve been on a squash court and I’d forgotten just how invigorating it can be. True, there are certain parts of my body that are strongly complaining this morning (getting up from a chair seems to be difficult, for some reason) but it’s that lovely, delicious ache that you get when you know you’ve done a different type of exercise; one that has pushed the body to work in way that it normally doesn’t. I came away from the squash court beaten, but not defeated. I felt exhilarated and glowing, and I can’t wait to play again.

In the meantime, it’s all rush, rush, rush – as usual. I’m struggling to finish a piece of work that I suppose I left far too late to begin; I have several fish that need my attention (my Buddhist monk suggested that I stab them if they are causing me stress - I might take him up on the idea); I’m being chased by my accountant to get my Year End Accounts finalised and delivered to him (so boring); and to top it all, I now have to go away for the weekend because it’s an old friend’s birthday and she’s having this big bash in Sussex (although this will, of course, be fun). I wonder how I’ll fit it all in.

Lethargy is the habit of the immoral and the debauched. But now that I’ve started playing sport again (and I return to sailing next week), this will no longer be a problem. For when the body is alive, so is the mind. And when the mind is alive, so lethargy dissipates into oblivion.

I’m very excited by this. I feel that I have been travelling on the road to the Emerald City for too long. Now, I can put my foot down.

Horace asked me to tell you this: "Choose a subject equal to your abilities; think carefully what your shoulders may refuse, and what they are capable of bearing". Good advice? I think so.

A New Way

I would like to give you a warning: Mankind is on the brink of collapse. We are about to become vegetables, or it is possible that we’ll just end up like the inhabitants of the pods in E M Forster’s short story The Machine Stops (read it, it was so prophetic that it almost puts H G Wells in the shade). The reason for my recognition of this fact? Well, it was something we discussed at Buddhism last night.

We were talking about how it wasn’t until 400 years after the Buddha’s enlightenment that his teachings were first written down; until then, they had been passed on in the oral tradition only. I queried why this was – whether the Buddha had given an instruction that nothing should be written down, or whether there was no written format at the time (I doubted this because it was only 2,500 years ago). This query caused a small debate on the subject, and one hypothesis put forward was that maybe the Buddha wanted to ensure that his teachings were acceptable to all, not just to the educated people who had the ability to read and write. Another theory was that perhaps, as in the current more esoteric (i.e. Tantric) Buddhist practice in Japan, it was felt that by writing the teachings down they would become available to anyone who happened to pick them up, whereas they should only be available to people who were ready to receive them – that is to say, people who really wanted to learn. This seems too elitist for me.

However, Jinaraja (our monk) had another idea. He wondered whether the oral tradition isn’t a better way of gaining a deeper understanding of the teachings. He cited the example of learning poetry by heart – it makes us examine the structure and message of the poem more thoroughly, he said; as if we might miss its intrinsic meaning by a mere reading of the lines. He suggested that the Buddha’s intentions were probably more helpful in as much as the Buddha knew that by relying solely on people memorising the teachings, those teachings would become more heartfelt and meaningful. Jinaraja could be right, but we’ll never really know.

But then my mind wandered slightly and I began to speculate on the modern-day age of instant information that we all inhabit. These days we don’t need to remember anything that we learn. For example, we could learn one day how to split the atom if we wanted (or needed) to, but we aren't required to retain that information because if we forget it tomorrow, then we simply Google it again and read it up once more. There is no requirement for us to learn anything by heart because the information is always at our fingertips. How many times do you hear people say “I can’t quite remember the details – can you pass me your laptop and I’ll look it up.”?

Chilling stuff. Our minds are being emptied of retained information; we no longer have to consider the arguments and strictures of reason. We no longer have to take any measure of the facts – we are losing the ability to store data in our heads. Quite simply, we are losing the purpose to do so.

But I ask you this: What do we do when the machine stops? Do we become vegetables? If so, I rather fancy becoming an aubergine (a swollen mass of purple flesh), or maybe a bulb of garlic (a cluster of multi-faceted segments). How about you?

Horace is back from his vacation and he says: Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone. I rest my case.

STOP PRESS! My appeal of last week worked – one of my readers has found a home for Chi Chi. She is moving to a lovely lakeside home in Manchester where she will be adored and lovingly played. Sarah is delighted, and so am I (although it’s a shame that Chi Chi couldn’t remain in Nottingham, but there we are). Well done everyone!

Farewell To Arms

So, sometimes the Muse bar (in Nottingham) is a dangerous place to be. What might have started out with say, four people having a civilized drink, can end up in a bacchanalian fiesta of debauchery and excess. I went to see a film last night – it was Italian and was inappropriately entitled “My Bother Is An Only Son” (I say inappropriately because it suggests an angst movie about isolation and exclusion, whereas it was nothing of the sort) and, although it was exquisitely photographed and fabulously acted, there were still too many scenes where the director (or writer) forgot to leave the scene early enough. The final scene was overtly too long and quite possibly unnecessary and – despite the evocative music and (frankly) gorgeous imagery - made me want to run screaming for the exit.

Anyway, after a couple of drinks in the cinema bar, we retired to Muse. This was where the trouble started. How I could have confused a girl – who I had thought was Australian but who turns out, in fact, to be from Surrey – with a trainee psychotherapist, is anybody’s guess. We seemed to be spiralling out of reason and before we could say “Jack Robinson” (I wish I could meet someone called Jack Robinson), we had all agreed to play tennis AND badminton AND squash together. This was indeed a bizarre scenario.

Later, back at my beleaguered apartment, we continued to drink more than we should have, and yet again I will be trotting down to the bottle bank armed with groaning sacks of empties.

I am greatly encouraged that the French provocateurs managed to cause more disruption to the progress of the Olympic torch than the lily-livered Londoners did the day before. This is totally in keeping with the spirit of 1968 and is the one reason (apart from the fact that both of my daughters live with Frenchmen) that I still hold a candle to the Gallic cause (you wouldn’t expect me to do that, given the abuses I’ve suffered at the hands of the Gendarmerie – see previous blog). However, I am even more encouraged by Kevin Rudd’s insistence that there will be NO blue track-suited thugs guarding the Olympic torch in Canberra – he says that only “Australians” will guard the torch, and that only “Australians” will keep the peace. Gung-ho, or what? More power to that man’s elbow, I say.

Now, if you were thinking of taking a picture of the fascinating witches who put the scintillating stitches in the breeches of the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus – well, all you have to do is to get in touch.

The Muse bar has a lot to answer for, that’s all I can say.

Horace is on holiday.

Showdown Time

I’ll never forget the time I was almost gunned down by the Parisien police. To say that it was all a bit of a mix-up would probably be understating things, but it wasn’t so much of a mix-up in that I wasn’t their intended target, for I was. The confusion arose from the police’s misunderstanding of why I was in Paris in the first place. I had actually travelled there to deliver a lecture to the Montgolfier Institute, situated in the rue Pestalozzi. The lecture was on the subject of the world’s first ever air disaster, the infamous Hot Air Balloon Fire of Tullamore in County Offaly, Ireland which occurred in 1785. Fairly innocent stuff, you might think, but events took a rather obscure turn during my stay.

A friend of mine from Oxford, Maggie van Junger, had disappeared. Her mother, Olga, had - for reasons best known to herself - decided that Maggie had been kidnapped and taken to Paris. Olga had telephoned me and asked me to attempt to trace her daughter while I was staying in the city. Reluctantly, I agreed – despite already knowing that Maggie was really in hiding from her mother, whom she despised. I was staying as a guest of an old undergraduate friend of mine – Professor Caroline “Fatso” Wartburg – in her apartment on the Boulevard des Batignolles, and one drunken evening we decided it would be amusing to play a game on Maggie’s mother by pretending that we were on the trail of the kidnappers.

We wove a farcical (to us) story of intrigue and calumny, claiming that we had been contacted – through a drug dealer in a gay nightclub – by a member of the kidnap gang and that we were getting steadily closer to discovering Maggie’s whereabouts. The information that we dripped to Olga by telephone over those days was sparse and sketchy (deliberately), but our almost fatal mistake was that we had not made provision for the fact that Olga was barking mad, and hysterical to boot. Frustrated that our eventual discovery of Maggie – alive or dead – appeared to be about as elusive as the Gardens of Hesperides, Olga had apparently taken matters into her own hands.

Unbeknown to us, she had telephoned the Chief of Police in Paris (or some such high-ranking official) and explained to him that her daughter was being held captive by an evil gang, whilst her agent in the city (that would be me) was making poor efforts in his attempt to rescue her. Unfortunately, Olga’s command of the French language was pitiably poor (despite claiming to have been at Finishing School in Switzerland), and so in her garbled fashion she unwittingly succeeded in convincing the poor man that a) her daughter was a member of the Dutch Royal Family (Olga also claimed to be related to European aristocracy); and b) that I, Richard Pilgrim, was the actual terrorist holding Maggie captive in an apartment on the Boulevard des Batignolles.

Before anyone could say sacré bleu, the boulevard was cordoned off, and hundreds of armed marksmen had surrounded the building. Fatso and I were at first amused by the commotion, watching as we were from the upper windows which we had opened to allow us some respite from the stifling Parisien heat. Then we saw a man in a hat and raincoat – clearly in charge of the operation - bellowing into a megaphone. You can imagine my horror when I recognized the amplified echoes of my own name bouncing between the high buildings. I was being urged by this man to “come out with my hands up”. My first instinct was to head for the fire escape, but Fatso was right – it would only have made matters worse, and I would undoubtedly have been shot.

I can tell you, I have never felt closer to death than that moment when we both tentatively emerged at street level, hands above our heads, and saw a hundred police officers raise rifles to their shoulders, obviously waiting for the command to shoot.

It was a sobering experience. Fatso and I were arrested and spent two days in jail before the whole sorry mess was unravelled. It was only after the intervention of a man from the British Embassy that we were allowed to go free, and we were told that we were extremely lucky not to have been charged with wasting police time. Olga, of course, escaped scot free and Maggie – well, I never spoke to Maggie again.

So from Horace today: He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.

Finding Beauty

Now then – I have a request. If anyone out there knows of a big fat empty space that could house Chi Chi the rocking piano, get in touch. Poor Chi Chi (see pictures) is about to become homeless and this really isn’t fair at all. There isn’t a rescue home for unwanted rocking pianos, I fear. She’s the creation of my friend Sarah Davenport (those more loyal of my readers may remember hat I first featured her in a posting from last October) and she really ought to be the vehicle to catapult Sarah to the position of international design guru – instead, she’s in danger of being burned, or chopped up, or encased in concrete and thrown from the Humber Bridge.

Chi Chi deserves better than this. She deserves to be the centre of attention; to be played lovingly; to be rocked rhythmically to the soaring strains of Beethoven, Chopin or Rachmaninov. Chi Chi needs a home. Mind you, she’s big – not for her is your average Victorian parlour (nor indeed, my modest apartment). No, for Chi Chi needs space - lots of it - and a strong floor too. Sarah is the inspiration behind ‘Unleashed’ (see http://www.inspirationunleashed.co.uk/) and her creativity will be seriously thwarted if Chi Chi isn’t cared for soon. You have been warned.

Well, this evening I’m going to the Nottingham launch of my dear friend Nicola Monaghan’s second novel Starfishing (see http://aboutstarfishing.blogspot.com/). You might remember that I went to the London launch a couple of weeks ago, but tonight we’ll see more of the local writing scene and it will be a great event for Nicola to promote the book. For anyone in the region who hasn’t heard about it, then come along to The Bookcase in Lowdham at 7:00 p.m. and get the author to sign your very own personal copy of the book. Here’s how to find it: http://www.thebookcase.co.uk/. See you there.

And finally, at Buddhism last night we discussed the difference between desire and craving. Most of us would assume these to be one and the same, but they’re not. For example – we desire food because it prevents us from starving to death, but we can crave (say) oysters or hamburgers or tripe & onions which, if we can’t obtain them, causes suffering. We can desire clothing because without it we would be cold, or (some of us) would be laughed at in public, but we crave that latest Gucci belt or Paul Smith wool suit – and this is simply the worship of graven images; the chasing of false needs. Not mind-blowing stuff I’m sure, but a distinction worth noting.

All this has taken me a long time to type because – despite carefully prising off every single key from the top three rows of my keyboard and attempting to wash out the gin – the keys are still sticky. Damn those drunkards!

Watch out for my next posting - it will be about the time I had lunch with Pope John Paul the First (and not many people did that).

No message from Horace today – I tried calling him for one, but either he’d run out of battery or he had his mobile switched off.

And don’t forget Chi Chi. Leave a comment if you can help.

A Funny Old Day

Well, despite saying yesterday that I wouldn’t be doing any entertaining for a while, I had a few friends over last night for ‘dinner’. It would be slightly disingenuous to call it dinner as such, because what I had prepared was that old 1970s favourite – the fondue. I’d never actually cooked one before although I’ve eaten them many times, both at student dinner parties and in the Alps whilst skiing (well, not exactly whilst skiing, but you get the drift). Fondues always make me think of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party for some reason. I don’t think there was actually one featured in the play (I can’t remember), but I’m sure it’s exactly the sort of thing the character of Beverly would have aspired to.

Anyway, we had fun and made a hell of a mess. The instructions said “White wine is a good accompaniment to fondue, but don’t serve it too chilled or it could solidify the cheese in your stomach and cause pain”. How very odd. We couldn’t risk that, so we drank red wine instead. Lots of it.

I had a bizarre dream last night (might it have been the cheese?). I dreamt that Robert Mugabe and his wife (does he have one?) visited me in my kitchen and implored me to believe that the election in Zimbabwe wasn’t yet over and that there was still time to vote for him. He seemed rather pathetic and pleading, and seemed to be suggesting that I alone held his future in my hands. What a different picture the reality must be – who knows what scheming and Machiavellian treachery is going on behind the oak-panelled doors of Harare as I write? I wonder why the lure of power is so strong – surely by now he must have spirited away sufficient millions to a Swiss bank account to allow him to slip away unnoticed to a happy retirement? Presumably, ruining your own economy and butchering thousands of your own people is more fun than wearing cardigans, sucking on a Werther’s Original, and perhaps attending the odd fondue party in the Alps?

I’m a bit disappointed that no-one has played an April Fool’s joke on me yet. There’s still time, of course. Perhaps that’s what Mugabe is planning – in an hour or so he’ll announce his defeat and invite Morgan Tsvangirai to form a government. Then, just as Morgan is climbing the steps to the presidential chair, Mugabe will jump out from behind the arrass crying “April Fool!”. Now, wouldn’t that be completely refreshing?

Today from Horace: "A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius."