My name is Inigo Montoya ....

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father: prepare to die.

This deeply wonderful review of 'A History of Swordsmanship' has got me in full swashbuckling mode. How have I lived without knowing:

Salvator Fabris’s ruthless establishment of the drawing of the sword, getting it into action readily and rapidly, as his premier postura guardia, and his deriving and defining other guards from that origin; from Nicoletto Giganti’s exposition of the Lunge, from Ridolfo Capo Ferro’s first illustration of it and their bringing posture and movement into an entirely logical “in-line” progression; from Francesco Alfieri’s refining of this; from the abandoning of the pseudo-arcane geometricized esoterica of the Spanish school; from the gradual reduction of the rapier to shorter and lighter, more manoeuvrable diamond section, then colichemarde; then hollow-ground, three-edged blade forms, and the exploitation of their potential, by Liancour, Labat and Thibault, for rotational movement from its long axis for greater and greater varieties of defence, and greater possibilities of deception and compound or composed attacking with ever more finesse, a high level of new development and knowledge had already been reached. Angelo’s function was different; his training with Gianfaldoni, and then with Teillagory (said never to have been a great fencer himself, but the finest of teachers), his extraordinary horsemanship, his enthusiastic dancing, training with Guerinière, taking lessons from Vestris of the Paris Opera, will have united to give him consummate style, in an age when style was all, and harmonized into a superior grasp and command of the realities of physique and the physicality of action. He produced his recognition of what is true, efficacious and deadly, with simplicity and clarity of expression.

Even more thrillingly, on Googling the reviewer (Philip Stafford) I found that he is on the Equity Fight Directors List, so when I win the lottery I can take lessons from hm.

En guarde!

Lang Shining

The Three Emperors exhibition at the Royal Academy was astounding. Something that especially delighted me was that many of the paintings were by the influential court painter Lang Shining. It has long been a theme of mine that cultures are deeply intertwined so it was great to discover that Lang Shining was the Chinese name of Guiseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) a Jesuit.

His painting The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback is on the left (you can see a larger version if you click on it). The characters on his helmet are in Sanskrit, liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism. Wheels within wheels within prayer wheels.

A light cool room away from the thrust and bustle of the main exhibition is devoted to the painting and calligraphy of the literati. This is primarily monochrome work produced by artists who prided themselves on their indendence and amatuer status. It is very tranquil and beautiful work that looked very similar to some Japanese styles to me. It is certainly an area I would like to discover more about.

So, fingers crossed, I've moved my understanding a little beyond "The Water Margin", but - for old times' sakes - once more with feeling, can I hear Burt Kwouk?

The ancient sages said, "do not despise the snake for having no horns, for who is to say it will not become a dragon?".

So may one just man become an army.

Nearly a thousand years ago in ancient China, at the time of the Sung dynasty, there was a cruel and corrupt government.

These men riding are outlaws - heroes - who have been driven to live in the Water Margins of Liang Shan Po, far to the south of the capital city. Each fights tyranny with a price on his head, in a world very different from our own. The story starts in legend even then - for our heroes, it was said, were perhaps the souls reborn of other, earlier knights...

Harrison Bergeron

Sports Minister Ruth Kelly today promised that teams would not be allowed to select players by footballing ability.

In a bid to reassure critics of the sports white paper, Ms Kelly said selection would be against the law.

She insisted the code on transfers would be statutory.

Asked if selection by ability would be against the law, Ms Kelly replied: "Absolutely full stop against the law. I can give you a categorical assurance that that’s the case."

Ms Kelly told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme she was confident Labour opponents could be brought on board.

Ms Kelly said independence for clubs meant giving them “the freedom to succeed”.

She said they could manage their own assets and employ their own staff and have more freedom over tactics.

Ms Kelly denied the Government would have to rely on Tory support to get the plans through the Commons. She said the Tories had adopted a “common sense” position which was very close to the Government.

Shadow sports minister David Willetts said people had lost sight of the fact there could be selection within clubs.

He said an increase in setting would mean players could be coached with others of similar ability without large-scale transfers between clubs.

“We think that is a good practical way of raising the quality of football,” he told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.

Find and replace is a wonderful tool in a word processor don't you think? Do you remember this Kurt Vonnegut story from over forty years ago?

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance,
still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

Read on.

The Three Emperors

This afternoon I am off to "China: The Three Emperors, 1662—1795", the exhibition at the Royal Academy devoted to the artistic and cultural riches of Imperial China. I wish I could say that I was going because of the Chinese New Year next weekend, but in fact I am going because I was talking to Hugh about it at Bondy's party before Christmas and he suggested that we put a date in our diaries.

I wish I was more organised about this sort of thing in London. I finally listened to my CD's of Persian Fire that last time that I drove down to Cardiff and back, which caused me to regret missing 'Forgotten Empire - the World of Ancient Persia' at the British Museum. Any extra knowledge of the huge contribution of Persia to the culture of the world would be a balm during the current tension with Iran.

Even more ridiculously, back in 2004 I went to the Rubens exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts when we were in Lille after I read about it in the Spectator, but still couldn't manage to drag myself along to Rubens: A Master in the Making in the National Gallery which is only a tube journey away. I particularly regret that - if regret is an appropriate word for such a pathetic failure do get up off my backside - because one painting in Lille, an Adoration of the Magi, was the first one that I ever saw that made me think that I could spend tens of hours looking at it seeing new things all the time from how the paint was applied to the detail of the costume and what that tells us of the time.

Film Watch

I can't help but wonder if anyone will go and see 'A Cock and Bull Story' under the impression that it is the heralded gay cowboy movie.

Sir Tom Jones: Welsh Icon

Patient: Doctor, I can't sleep. Everytime I lay on my left I hear 'The Green Green Grass of Home,' and when I lay on my right, I hear 'Delilah.'

Doctor: I'm afraid you have a case of Tom Jones Fever.

Patient: Tom Jones Fever? Is that common?

Doctor: It's not unusual.

I'm brooding about Welshness, because I need a bone to gnaw in the run up to Wales' away game (as reigning Grand Slam champions) against England in a couple of weeks. In this fragile state, just about the last thing that I need to read is the headline "Welsh icons? They're all foreigners" on a site describing itself as the 'The National Website of Wales".

The provisional gloss that I have decided to put on this challenge for the time being is that the modern Welsh are in essence an aspirational, non-exclusive ethnic group, membership of which is open to anyone supporting fifteen men in red when they run out at Twickenham on Feb 4, and a superset of the honoured speakers of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in the western part of Britain known as Cymru, and in the Chubut Valley, a Welsh immigrant colony in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

While There's A Spotlight

I went to see the stage show of The Producers last night (rather than eating my way around the world in London) after Paul stumbled across the Get Into London Theatre 2006 campaign that is making cheaper seats available for a whole range of productions up until the end of March.

The Producers is a great musical - you don't need another review from me - and I was amazed at Mel Brooks facility with show tunes. The songs reminded me that in the days when I used to noodle around on the piano I wrote a lot of fragments in a sort of Broadway style that I was idly assembling into "While There's a Spotlight", the cheesiest musical in the history of the world. Unfortunatley, as I'm not really a trained musician and this sort of stuff is a lot more harmonically sophisticated than songs that you can capture with a melody line and a chord progression I've never managed to get any of it down on paper.

When Ouriel left a comment on this blog about transcriptions I started to wonder whether software mightn't help me with the problem and emailed him to ask, he replied:

The best tool for music transcription is a software called FINALE.
If i am not wrong you can do it indeed directly from an electronic keyboard or midi file

http://www.finalemusic.com/

you also have SIBELIUS
http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/home/home.pl.

So I think I will have a go with that if and when I get my gear hooked up again. It would be odd to have transcriptions of things I wrote that I was not really able, fluently to read.

In the meantime - to whet your appetite - here is the chorus of the song in my imaginary musical that the apparently jaded veteran with a heart of gold (details to be confirmed) sings to the discouraged ingenue (details to be confirmed) to persuade her not to give up on her dreams.

I know that the sun won't catch you crying
I know though the moon just broke your heart
While the stars are all spotlights shining for you
Let's make a brand new start

Break a leg.

SIXTY HORSES WEDGED IN CHIMNEY

The story to fit this sensational headline has not turned up yet.

I apologise but a favourable comment on my last post seems to have induced a postprandial Beachcomber reverie.

............. I think I hear a boiled egg calling to its young.

Justice Cocklecarrot Presiding

Our legal correspondent has brought a curious case to my attention.

Kevin Reeves, 40, was jailed for 15 months and ordered to pay £2,000 compensation after accepting £20,000 from a friend so depressed that she asked him to find a hitman to murder her. He even offered to do it himself, but got no further than pocketing the money.
.......
Judge Veronica Hammerton told Reeves: “This was a calculated deception, repeated three times. While it is clear you had no intention of arranging for someone to kill Mrs Ryder and didn’t propose to yourself, you deceived her into believing it would happen. It resulted in a substantial sum being paid to you; none of the money was repaid. In all the circumstances, these offences are so serious that a custodial sentence is unavoidable.” She ordered Reeves to hand over as compensation the £2,000 he had saved up to repay Mrs Ryder.

It does my heart good to find the spirit of Justice Cocklecarrot alive and well in the criminal justice system, and as I haven't quoted the immortal Beachcomber ("justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be believed") since last April, here is some more for your edification:

Mr Justice Cocklecarrot began the hearing of a very curious case yesterday. A Mrs Tasker is accused of continually ringing the doorbell of a Mrs Renton, and then, when the door is opened, pushing a dozen red-bearded dwarfs into the hall and leaving them there.

An expert witness is called...

Mr Bastin Hermitage (for the defence): Now, Dr Spunton, is there, to your knowledge, any disease which would account for Mrs Tasker's strange habits?
Dr Spunton: There is. It is called rufo-nanitis. The spymptoms-
Mr Hermitage: Symptoms.
Dr Spunton: Yes, spymptoms, but I always put a 'p' before a 'y'.
Cocklecarrot: With what object, might we ask?
Dr Spunton: I can't help it, m'lud.
Cocklecarrot: Do you say pyesterday?
Dr Spunton: Pyes, unfortunatelpy. It's hereditarpy. Mpy familpy all do it.
Cocklecarrot: But why 'p'?
Dr Spunton: No, py, m'lud.

Later

The court had to be cleared owing to the roars of ribald laughter which greeted the appearance in the witness-box of the twelve red-bearded dwarfs all in a heap. Their names were read out amid growing uproar. The names appeared to be: Sophus Barkayo-Tong, Amaninter Axling, Farjole Merrybody, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Churm Rincewind, Cleveland Zackhouse, Molonay Tubilderborst, Edeledel Edel, Scorpion de Rooftrouser, Listenis Youghaupt, Frums Gillygottle.

Cocklecarrot: Are these genuine names?
A Dwarf: No, m'worship.
Cocklecarrot: Then what's your name?
Dwarf: Bogus, m'ludship.
Cocklecarrot: No, your real name.
Dwarf: My real name is Bogus, your excellency.

(At this point the court had to be cleared)

Sublime or Ridiculous?

More - via the heartbreaking yet invaluable Sudan Watch - on the strange, new ubiquity of blogs.

Jan 14, 2006 (NAIROBI) — The leaders of the main rebel movement in Sudan’s Darfur region were once brothers in arms. But last year, the two powerful men had a falling out, and each proclaimed he was the rightful president of the Sudanese Liberation Army. Things got ugly.
But not a single shot was fired. Instead, the feuding insurgents battled as bloggers over the Internet.
"I got his e-mails and read those bitter diaries," said Mohamed al-Nur, a founder of the rebel group, at a conference held here late last year by the United States to try to bring the two sides together.
"That’s the only place we hear from you — on that Internet!" hooted Saif Haroun, a spokesman for Minni Arko Minnawi, the newly proclaimed leader. "You run your rebellion from a computer?"

You can read the whole article from the Sudan Tribune here.

I used my dog's shampoo

Something that I heard on the BBC World Service about Finland's current elections lodged in my mind, especially after yesterday's discovery that practically everyone is blogging.

It seems that with exception of President Tarja Halonen all of the seven other candidates have been writing their own weblogs.

In particular, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen appears to be some sort of Pooterish comedy genius read by 20,000 to 30,000 people each day.

"I broke my glasses last night," he wrote recently.

"While I was watching television I noticed that my vision in one eye had deteriorated. I rubbed my eye, but nothing happened. I thought it must be due to fatigue. But I realized what it was when my finger went right through the frame of my eyeglasses. I've ordered new glasses for next week."

He even provided his cell phone number so readers could let him know whether he should get bold or discreet frames.

Another day he wrote: "I didn't go skiing. I took a nap instead. To get some exercise I shoveled snow."

And yet another entry: "This morning in the shower, still half-asleep, I used my dog's shampoo. It smelled strange."

It is almost as if he is channelling Viv Stanshall from the great beyond. I would vote for him in a heartbeat. His website is at http://www.mattivanhanen.net/ but my Finnish is not even up to the modest task of understanding if that is the weblog or not.

Blogs to right of them, blogs to left of them

I put a comment on Professor Deborah Lipstadt's weblog this morning that referred in turn to my post about her interview with the BBC and was pleased and surprised to receive a gracious acknowledgement from her by email. What an extraordinay medium the weblog is, the more I work with it the more conversational it seems to become.

When I posted about David Irving this morning I had no idea that Nick Grifffin of the BNP was due to go on trial today on race hate charges arising from a 2004 undercover documentary. (Nick Griffin and co-defendant Mark Collett - just like everyone in the world these days it seems are also putting their case via Blogger.)

I predict that this trial will turn out to be an even more egregious example than Irving's of Lipstadt's warning that "we should not allow them to become martyrs".

I bet that part of Griffin's defence will be that what he said has been proved by the London bombings of 7/7 to be true. Imagine how inflammatory that is going to be.

More and more I am convinced that all this hate crime legislation is counter productive. Consider the recent interview by the police of Sir Iqbal Sacranie with regard to homophobia.

Such proceedings encourage rather than alleviate tension.

Let him fade into obscurity

I've been meaning to write for a while about what I think is the absurdity and the danger of the nauseating David Irving sitting in an Austrian jail after being arrested in November last year over two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

But hold, there is no need for me to feel I ought inadequately to sally forth because Deborah Lipstadt (the American Jewish academic who dramatically crushed Irving in the British courts when he sued her for libel after she published as book that described him as "one of the most prominent and dangerous Holocaust deniers") has given an interview to the BBC in which she expresses opinions exactly congruent with mine.

"I would not want to see him spend more time in jail."

"I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people for speech. Let him go and let him fade from everyone's radar screens."

"Generally, I don't think Holocaust denial should be a crime, I am a free speech person, I am against censorship."

"I don't find these laws efficacious. I think they turn Holocaust denial into forbidden fruit, and make it more attractive to people who want to toy with the system or challenge the system. "

"We don't have laws against other kinds of spoken craziness. If you're a medical quack and you hurt someone, there's a law against that.
"But if you're a medical quack and you stand on the street corner preaching that you have an elixir that cures cancer and saves lives, no one throws you in jail."

"Germany and Austria are not so far past the Third Reich. So I can understand that the swastika symbol, Mein Kampf, Holocaust denial, being a neo-Nazi and all the rest have a certain potency there that they would not have in the United States.
"And Austria is a democracy. If the citizens of Austria were against these laws, they could change them. Austria and Germany are different, but I would not support those laws being instituted elsewhere."

"I am not interested in debating with Holocaust deniers," she says. "You wouldn't ask a scientist to debate with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. They are not historians, they are liars. Debating them would be nonsensical.
"But we also should not allow them to become martyrs. Nothing is served by having David Irving in a jail cell, except that he has become an international news issue. "

"Let him go home and let him continue talking to six people in a basement. "

"Let him fade into obscurity where he belongs."

I'm not sure that I agree about Austria and Germany but I can see it is a point worth discussing, in general though she lines up all the ducks and then knocks them over. Bang, bang, bang, brilliant.

I was also pleased and surprised to find that she has a blog at http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/

trying to make a point

Viv Stanshall having brought comedy heroes to mind, and the spoof mastercard ad probably having scared off anyone frightened by using language, as Dylan Thomas termed it in 'Under Milk Wood', here's Lenny Bruce from a less prissy age taking the free speech fight to the contradictory underpinnings of hate crime:

Are there any niggers here tonight?

Can you turn on the house lights, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving for a second?

And turn off the spot.

Now what did he say?

'Are there any niggers here tonight?'

There's one nigger here. l see him back there working.

Let's see. There's two niggers.

And between those two niggers sits a kike.

And there's another kike.

That's two kikes and three niggers.

And there's a spic, right? Hm?

There's another spic.

Ooh, there's a wop. There's a Polack.

And then, oh, a couple of greaseballs. There's three lace-curtain lrish Micks.

And there's one hip, thick, hunky, funky boogie.

Boogie, boogie. Mm-mm.

l got three kikes. Do l hear five kikes?

l got five kikes. Do l hear six spics?

Six spics. Do l hear seven niggers? l got seven niggers. Sold American!

l'll pass with seven niggers, six spics, five Micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop.

You almost punched me out, didn't ya?

l was trying to make a point, that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

Dig. lf President Kennedy would just go on television and say, "l'd like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet."

And if he'd just say "nigger, nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie, boogie, boogie, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger," till it didn't mean anything any more!

Then you'd never be able to make a black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger in school.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

When I visited Chris and Kim early in the New Year we started talking about associating old teatime shows from our childhoods with the food we ate while watching them. (Shades of Proust's madeleine.) I can remember very, very little about Do Not Adjust Your Set, the ground breaking show with pre-Pythons Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, plus David Jason, Denise Coffey, and the Bonzo Dog Doo Band, but I vividly remember tucking into a steak and kidney pie - with a filling that seemd to have been heated to the temperature of erupting lava - as I sat in front of the TV one day when it was on.

I genuinely love the Bonzos and especially Viv Stanshall. It is amazing to me that I have never paid tribute to the Ginger Geezer here. He wrote what could be the blog's motto - the very warp and weave of A Welsh Born Icon - My Pink Half of the Drainpipe:

........ the incredibly fascinating story of your life and every day to day event in all it's minute and tedious attention to detail... And was it a Thursday or a Wednesday? Or, oh, no, it wasn't though. Oh, who cares anyway because I do not so Norman, if you're normal, I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen, incessant quotations from "Now We Are Six" through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head.
So theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrre!

...... priceless

If Chris can have adverts on his blog I don't see why I shouldn't.

(Actally it is motivated as a test of a new Google service. If it doesn't work try here. I found that the blogger HTML validator seemed to strip a lot of content out of the object tag that Google supplied when I posted so I have had to put the code in an inline frame in a page I uploaded directly via FTP.)

Somebody Up There Likes Me

According to Welsh Heart, you are reading "a colourful blog by a Welshman with a fine turn of phrase".

I'm flattered, but I can always do with more.

The Gaucho Grill

Eat Your Way Around the World in London alighted on Argentina last night at The Gaucho Grill. We arrived at 6:30 and were amazed to find it was absolutely mobbed with "men at steak". We were lucky to get a table, I'd definitely recommend booking.

Steaks, as implied above, are generally the order of the day in South America, cut thick, seasoned with salt and chimichurri oil then grilled. I had 300g of Bife de Chorizo (sirloin) and Paul had 300g of Bife de Cuadril (rump) along with the Gaucho Grill's own label (Terruno) cabernet sauvignon. It was indeed great meat, but there is not a lot more to say about it (except that my performance did lead me to wonder if I will be up to the Lobster Challenge).

The real revelation was the starters. We both had Ceviches. I had diver caught scallops marinated in saffron and aji amarillo with yellow tomatoes, shaved red onion and coriander; and Paul had the Peruvian - merluza (hake), tiger prawn and octopus tossed in tomato and citrus juices, olives, jalapeno, red onion and orange segments. Ceviche is fish or other seafood that is marinated in citrus juices and other ingredients so that it is "cooked" without heat. A new taste to me, and something I could eat every day.

(Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.)

Lamentable Legislation

Here, via The Law West of Ealing Broadway, is an extract from a recent Court of Appeal judgement that required interpretation of some of the provisions in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Here is the practical result of the mania for initiatives that create new crimes.

Thursday, 8th December 2005
B E F O R E:
LORD JUSTICE ROSE, MR JUSTICE CRANE, MR JUSTICE OPENSHAW

THE CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE (CLAIMANT) -v- SOUTH EAST SURREY YOUTH COURT 9DEFENDANT)

extract from paragraph 14 of the judgement:

So, yet again, the courts are faced with a sample of the deeply confusing provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and the satellite Statutory Instruments to which it is giving stuttering birth. The most inviting course for this Court to follow, would be for its members, having shaken their heads in despair to hold up their hands and say: 'the Holy Grail of rational interpretation is impossible to find'. But it is not for us to desert our judicial duty, however lamentably others have legislated. But, we find little comfort or assistance in the historic canons of construction for determining the will of Parliament which were fashioned in a more leisurely age and at a time when elegance and clarity of thought and language were to be found in legislation as a matter of course rather than exception.

Respect

Christopher Howse writing in the Telegraph today points out an interesting precedent for Tony Blair's Respect Action Plan.

Bonasera: I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but -- I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend; not an Italian. She went to the movies with him; she stayed out late. I didn't protest. Two months ago, he took her for a drive, with another boyfriend. They made her drink whiskey. And then they tried to take advantage of her.

Vito Corleone: I understand. You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living. The police protected you; and there were courts of law. And you didn't need a friend like me. But uh, now you come to me and you say -- "Don Corleone give me justice." -- But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you uh ask me to do murder, for money.

Bonasera: I ask you for justice.

Vito: That is not justice; your daughter is still alive.

Bonasera: Then they can suffer then, as she suffers... How much shall I pay you?

Vito: Bonasera... Bonasera... What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And that by chance if an honest man such as yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.

Don Blair: We need to accept that what works in practice is a measure of summary power ......... anything else is the theory ....... utterly useless to the ordinary citizen on the street .....we will attempt to create the conditions in which respect can flourish .......... and I believe that, together, we will eradicate the scourge of anti-social behaviour and restore Respect.

Minutiae

Yesterday lunchtime I went to get my hair cut at Ed's Barbers. This is not, I'll readily grant, a terribly exciting event, but it is where I've taken my five year old to be sheared since he was knee high and I just wanted to record the fact that he has christened it in a charming, malapropistic, but deeply logical way as "Heads".

After that I popped in the Lebanese Gourmet Express, next door but one, for a shawarma and found that they were handing out free samples of little ground lamb, chilli and pine nut pastry parcels that I was told were called sambousik. I'd never heard of them, never mind tasted one before. If you get the chance you should try some too. Once again, scarcely earth shattering but worth recording somehow.

Not Clinging On

I see that the great All Blacks captain Tana Umaga has retired from international rugby ostensibly to to spend more time with his family.

I can't help but wonder though about the possible influence of PooterGeek's ungallant call after New Zealand's 23-19 defeat of England this year for the the banning of Klingons from Earth rugby internationals.

Mingis is the Scottish pronunciation

Apart from idly wondering if I still drink more than Charles Kennedy did before he jumped aboard the wagon, I haven't been paying much attention to the Liberal Democrats' leadership tussles.

Now however that Sir Menzies Campbell has thrown his hat into the ring, I am glad to see that the BBC is asking the important question - if we've had Thatcherites and have Blairites:

What should Ming's backers be collectively known as?

Ali G, in his US series, offered prophetic advice:

So, if this show teach you anything, it should teach you how to respek everyone: animals, children, bitches, spazmos, mingers, lezzers, fatty boombahs, and even gaylords. So, to all you lot watching this, but mainly to the normal people, respek. West side.

You may now retire to consider your verdict.

Merton Abbey Mills

It was disheartening, but not surprising, to read in the Wimbledon Guardian that the buildings that have sprouted around my office in the old Liberty Apprentice Shop in Abbey Mills rate very highly in their Merton's Monstrosities campaign.

One of the interviewees described the development as "ugly and overcrowded with no reference to the history of the site it occupies", which couldn't help but bring the Abbey that once stood here to mind as well as the Wikipedia entry for it that I kicked off last April.

Looking at it today for the first time in months I was surprised to see that it had been updated nine times since I last worked on it. You can see the changes here.

The gradual but inexorable agglomeration of information on Wikipedia is one of the most fascinating phenomena of our age. I wonder what it will look like in ten years time when you consider that just over a decade ago Yahoo looked like this?

Stuff and Nonsense

Generally I take a very firm line vis a vis the debased coinage of celebrity, but as Chris has brought it up, I suppose I can bestir myself from Mount Olympus to offer a comment on the current exemplar of car crash, nuts and sluts TV.

Maggot to win obviously, but if only Michael Barrymore can be persuaded to give swimming lessons to George Galloway and Pete Burns the exercise may not have been entirely in vain.

touche

Deadlines

We get a fair percentage of our work - and a higher percentage of our best customers - when we step into the breach because they have been let down.

Sometimes that means weekends like this one, when I worked late last night, worked today, and will work tomorrow for a Monday morning deadline.

This animated gif pretty much sums up what it feels like. (Hat tip wendyg).

Aloo Aloo Aloo

I spent a rare day code wrangling yesterday; something I don't get to as often as I would like. It is easy to forget how compelling programming is once you get the bit between your teeth. Time flew and I ended up working so late that I decided to pick up a take away on the way home.

As I'd blogged about it recently I picked up a vindaloo rather than my traditional dhansak for the first time in years.

When I tasted the potato in it, I remembered something that I'd read in Wikipedia:

Restaurants often serve this dish with chicken or lamb sometimes mixed with potatoes. Traditional vindaloos do not include potatoes, the discrepancy arising because the word 'aloo' meaning garlic (presumably derived from the Portuguese word 'alho') is mistranslated as 'potato' as it is in Hindi.

Isn't that great?

Epiphany

The Epiphany is today's feast of the visit of the three wise men to the infant Jesus.

An epiphany is a sudden intuitive realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something.

A light bulb goes on over my head, and I realise that I've been blogging long enough now - on the theme of how we are all so deeply interconnected culturally that we should be chums - to make it worth quoting myelf.

Thus allow to me recommend - from January last year - A Welsh Born Icon: Wise Men and Iran.

Fathers and Sons

Kevin and I go way back. Infant, primary and secondary school class mates in Cardiff and then, before he moved to Hong Kong, near neighbours in London.

I always got on very well with his father (and indeed, last year, blogged about what he told me of listening to the Tommy Farr/ Joe Louis fight in 1937) so I was very sorry to hear that he had died.

In a week when I have written about my son, father, and grandfather; another conversation with him comes to mind. I remember when we were chatting in the Nelson years ago, he told me that once, when he was on sentry duty in Italy, the guy standing next to him had been shot dead by a sniper.

When I passed this on to Kevin - who didn't even know that his old man had fought his way up through Italy with the Eighth Army - asked, "why doesn't he ever tell me things like that?"

I've thought about it often since then, and I'm not sure that a father could ever tell his son something like that in passing. It would be bound to come across as some sort of lesson or moral instruction that shouldn't be thrown away, and yet he could say it to me without any of that baggage.

I can understand it. I think I would feel the same.

On the Waterfront

I was talking to my Dad about my Grandfather when I was back in Cardiff just before Christmas. My father told me that when he was a boy, his Dad used to get up around 4am each morning so that he could walk down to the docks to see if there was any work available unloading the ships that had come in. The practice of standing in front of the foreman - or whatever he was called - and trying to catch his eye was called bobbing apparently.

To me of course this is tremendously resonant with Marlon Brando's turn as Terry Malloy in 1954's On the Waterfront. I wish I knew more about life in Cardiff in the forties and early fifties. One of my uncles told me he used to "run numbers". I have no clear idea of exactly what that means but it sounds like a New York movie as well.

Self Aggrandizement

I boasted yesterday about New Year's Eve at Jake's in Jamaica.

Seeing 2004 in with a view of the palm fringed Indian Ocean at the party on the lawns of the Taj Malabar in Cochin wasn't too shabby either.

I don't remember much about the Millenium New Year, but nine months later on 30 September 2000, the little fella on the left arrived so there is really no question which was the best ever.

Jake's in Treasure Beach Jamaica

For this morning's New Year post I have decided that, having moved on from self pity to self absorption, I may as well step up to self regard. (I will probably do do self aggrandizement tomorrow.)

Did you know that I am so remarkably cool that back in the late nineties I spent the New Year at Jake's in Jamaica?

Jakes is a small boutique resort on the South of the island frequented by people like Lennox Lewis, Adam Clayton, Annie Lennox and me.

It's managed by the charming, efficient yet - due to patois, and at least to my ears - incomprehensible Jason Henzell - "nuff tings a gwan, respec', my brother".

The property has been extended from a beach house on a few acres owned by his bohemian parents, Perry Henzell, the director of 'The Harder They Come', and Sally Henzell, a set designer.

I could write about it for hours, but tempus fugit. What particularly brought it to mind this week was the New Year's Eve party. At the stroke of midnight, several guests produced hand guns and started firing live ammunition into the air by way of celebration. No one seemed to bat an eyelid, although you could have knocked me down with a feather. (If it had happened this year, by way of contrast, at the The Old Barn Inn on the outskirts of Swansea I wouldn't have been surprised at all.)

Recalibation

At the turn of the year, and as I move on from self pity to my customary self absorption, I thought that it would be worthwhile to record the total work that Technogym tells me that I have done since the Virgin Active gym opened six months ago.

The runnng totals are:

Mass: 1,134,693Kg
Distance: 244.8Km
Energy: 56,381Kcal.

I found a reference that claims that one pound of body weight is equivalent to 3500 calories which implies that my exertions have been equivalant to 16 pounds; an amount that is eerily close to the weight that I have actually lost and tends to confirm my intuition that I have been able to shed weight gradually through exercise alone without changing my eating and drinking habits. That's rather gratifying. I wonder if it will continue?

2006

2005

My attitude to this last year is pretty much summed up by the graphic on the left.

I started 2005 as a rather austere, remote, laconic figure of whom Jane said she had never seen such a large vocabulary employed to so little effect, and then in the keeping of this journal came down with a severe case of loggorhea as the words came tumbling out.

My attitude to self expression was still essentially that the deeper the emotion, the broader the farce until she gave me the bum's rush, but since then I have turned into such a touchy-feely, problem-sharing cry-baby that I am practically lactating.

Such are the contradictions and paradoxes of the 21st century geezer.

Robert Sheckley

I was sad to read an obituary of Robert Sheckley in the Telegraph yesterday.

I was a real fan of his quirky work when I was deeply into SF as a teen and I have always thought that 'Mindswap' - my favourite novel of his - was the template for 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. It seems to be out of print now which is a ridiculous state of affairs in this technological age and shows what headroom there still is for 'print on demand' and e-publishing.

Thinking back on my days of fandom, I was amazed to discover the other day that the Robert Conquest who used to edit annual "Best Of" SciFi story collections with Kingsley Amis is the same person as the Robert Conquest - the historian who did so much to expose the horror of Stalin's purges.

Vindaloo

A little known but tremendously cool fact is that Vindaloo - a curry originally from Goa on the West coast of India - derives from the Portuguese vin d'alho a wine and garlic sauce. (I got some genuine vin d'alho when I was in Portugal a few years ago and it was absolutely disgusting, but then again I might not have understood how to cook with it properly.)

As I was knocking up a Vindaloo from my handy jar of Patak's paste the other night I noticed that Tamarind and Chilli are the two main featured ingredients. That got me to thinking.

Tamarind is native to Africa and was almost certainly introduced to India by Arab traders while Chilli is native to America and was introduced to India by Europeans.

That makes vindaloo Euro-Afro-Arab-Ameri-Asian which doesn't really leave many people out.

So next time you are tucking into one on a Saturday night raise your lager and drink a toast to the world's pre eminent, globalised, multicultural dish. (It is also a good response to the bores who insist that chicken tikka massala is somehow not authentic because it was dreamed up in Birmingham.)

In the words of Fat Les:

Me and me Mum and me Dad and me Gran
And a bucket of Vindaloo
Bucket!
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
Vindaloo Nah Nah
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
Vindaloo Nah Nah
Vindaloo
Vindaloo
And we all like Vindaloo

Nihari

My brother met a British Hindu policeman of Pakistani descent at a social function over Christmas and I was flattered and delighted when he told me that my blog had given him plenty of things that they could chat about.

One of the things that they discussed was the Aum symbol that I wrote about back in July when I was working on my cycle of harmony. It is interesting that John's new friend was pleased and surprised that he knew about it and keen to tell him more, while some of the company were subtly aghast that he had the temerity to bring religion up at all.

John is right and his timid companions are wrong.

Looking back now I've been conscientiously posting for a year, I think that this quote from Vikram Seth probably inspired, subconsciously back in January, many of the little projects I have set myself over the last twelve months.

...to learn about another great culture is to enrich one's own life, to understand one's own country better, to feel more at home in the world, and indirectly to add to that reservoir of individual goodwill that may, generations from now, temper the cynical use of national power.

Every word of that is right on the button - which is why I am so opposed to Said's perversion of Orientalism, but that is a subject for another day - and the copper made his own contribution to the "reservoir of individual goodwill" by talking John through his own speciality. This was a slow cooked lamb dish that sounds to me like it may well be Nihari, a favourite curry often taken for breakfast with a naan.

I've tried it for brunch on the weekend occasionally at the Lahore Karahi in Tooting where it in turn has contributed to my reservoir of goodwill even before I was eating my way around the world in London formally.

---

A couple of months ago I changed the blog to use charset=UTF-8, which means that I ought to be able to display Unicode on it now. The Aum is Unicode U+0950. Here is a test: ॐ. Can you see it?

Kicking Against the Pricks

When I was young and even brattier than I am now I used to delight in the phrase "kicking against the pricks" because it sounded vaguely offensive, but it was in fact according to the Acts of the Apostles - what the risen Jesus said to Paul when he was converted on the road to Damascus.

I must have been, to use one meaning of the word, an annoying little prick in those days. The prick in the Bible appears to have been a wooden shaft with a pointed spike at one end that a man working an animal would use to exert control. Sometimes a defiant ox or horse would kick back at this goad, but only succeed in causing itself more pain, so to "kick against the pricks" is to indulge in a futile gesture of rebellion.

I was amazed to read the other day that Dionysus uses the same phrase in Euripedes' The Bacchae which was written four hundred years before around the time that the Athenians surrendered to the Spartans at the end of the Peloponnesian War. A similar timespan would take us back from today to Shakespeare.

Yet more proof (in a year in which I learned a little of the Bacchus in Donna Tartt's The Secret History and the Peloponnesian War in Victor Hanson's A Ward Like No Other) that culture is richer, stranger, more resilient, deeply entwined and universal than we credit in these educationally self-abnegated days.

Buzzing

Raybs caught his foot jumping over a wall on Thursday and fell onto his knee splintering his patella in four so he has been in hospital over Christmas. He had a three hour operation on Christmas Eve and we hope that he will be out today or tomorrow.

When I brought his brother back a little early from Wales to see him, Ben insisted on entering the ward brandishing the cap gun that he had won (hooking a penguin) and the Cardiff Winter Wonderland.

When Rayburn noticed the firearm, we exchanged the following hard-boiled dialogue.

"I bit a cap once when I was small, " said Raybs.

"Why?" I asked.

"To see if it would explode."

"Did it?"

"Yes."

"Hurt much?"

"I won't say it didn't smart a little."

I don't think that would disgrace Rick in Casablanca.

He made me laugh when I visited him yesterday as well by telling me that after he had been given him some morphine for the pain he had accidently pressed the button to call the nurse.

"Are you buzzing?" she asked when she arrived.

"Buzzing?" he replied. "I'm high as a kite."

The Gift of the Magi

My present to you all this year is a story from a writer who should be better known.

Merry Christmas!

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank

I watched a TV show about the genesis of the Pogues' Christmas classic "Fairytale of New York" recently. Shane MacGowan comes across - at least on the box these days - as a barely sentient being. It seems a miracle he can - or could - write so well. Here are the lyrics to the only great song about the day before Christmas:

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
And I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars
Big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old

When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on the corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing
Out for Christmas day

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Living there almost dead on a drip
In that bed

You scum bag
You maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God
It's our last

I could have been someone
So could anyone
You took my dreams
From me when I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

They May Not Mean To

Been back in Wales a couple of days now...

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old style hats and coats
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

Dancing Dan's Christmas

Hello folks. I'm still in Cardiff and we went to the pantomime in the New Theatre this afternoon. It is early hours of tomorrow morning now. Everyone else is asleep, but I am committed to posting everyday.

Today's seasonal story is Damon Runyon's Dancing Dan's Christmas:

Now one time it comes on Christmas, and in fact it is the evening before Christmas, and I am in Good Time Charley Bernstein's little speakeasy in West Forty-seventh Street, wishing Charley a Merry Christmas and having a few hot Tom and Jerrys with him.
This hot Tom and Jerry is an old time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.
But anybody will tell you that there is nothing that brings out the true holiday spirit like hot Tom and Jerry, and I hear that since Tom and Jerry goes out of style in the United States, the holiday spirit is never quite the same............

Child's Christmas in Wales

I'm in Wales for a few days this week - a road warrior with only dial up access - so I have collected a few seasonal stories to keep the blog ticking over.

First A Child's Christmas in Wales

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. ............

Pulled Pork

We hit North America last night as we continued our mission to eat your way around the world in London. Bodean's BBQ Restaurant in Clapham was the venue. I'd read that they serve up authentic Kansas City BBQ there, but Paul - perverse to the last - came over all Cajun and had Smoked Chicken Gumbo followed by Crayfish Jambalaya.

I had Clam chowder to start and very fine it was too. I know that it is really a New England speciality but the pure BBQ theme had already been traduced. (Clam chowder is a sore point with me because the recipe for it was torn from the copy of "Hometown Cooking in New England" that I bought as a souvenier of skiing in North America in 2000.)

For the main course I had baby back ribs with pulled pork, fries, and 'slaw. Pulled pork is shredded shoulder and I think that this must be the slow smoked meltingly tender BBQ of legend.

Portions were so generous that I may not eat again in 2005. For the sake of completeness all was washed down with a bottle of Argentinian Santa Julia 2004 Fuzion which was a blend of tempranillo and malbec.

(Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.)

Someone to Watch Over Me

I've found a transcription of Keith Jarrett's version of Someone to Watch Over Me, from The Melody at Night With You album.

I've followed it through by eye listening to the track (something that I was pleasently surprised to find that I could still do after all these years). It looks like it might be manageable although I will have to rearrange some of the chord voicings to suit my little baby hands.

I've a New Years resolution to dust off the Kurzweil, then, and see if I can't add this to my repertoire.

Similarities and Differences

While never denying that the differences are real, I have always thought that there should be more emphasis on the similarities and overlap between the great world religions and less on their antagonisms.

Here is a fine Yuletide essay on the same topic from William Dalrymple. I can't think of a better thing to point to on the Sunday before Christmas.

There is a 16th-century manuscript in the British Museum which contains a painting of what - at first - looks like a traditional Nativity scene. In the middle is Mary holding the Christ child, whose arms are wrapped lovingly around his mother's neck. In the foreground, hovering nervously, are the Three Wise Men, ready to offer their gifts. So far, so conventional.
But look a little closer and you begin to notice just how strange the picture is. For the wise men are dressed as Jesuits, Mary is leaning back against the bolster of a musnud, a low Indian throne, and she is attended by Mughal serving girls wearing saris and dupattas. Moreover, the Christ child and his mother are sitting under a tree outside a wooden garden pavilion - all strictly in keeping with the convention of Islamic lore, which maintains that Jesus was born not in a stable, but in an oasis beneath a palm tree, whose branches bent down so that the Virgin could pluck fruit during her labour.
Read the whole thing.

In Denial

I want to compare and contrast some things that happened in the week with regard to my special hobby horse of the insanity of laws against expressing opinions no matter how ridiculous or even bad these opinions may be.

Firstly, the Istanbul trial of Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk - who faces a possible three-year jail term for "insulting Turkish identity" by saying that a million Armenians were killed in massacres 90 years ago and 30,000 Kurds in recent decades - was adjourned on Friday to give the Justice Ministry time to decide whether the case was in line with judicial procedures.

Secondly earlier in the week, the new Iranian president gave vent once more to his views on Israel and the Jews:

Speaking at a gathering in the southern Iranian town of Zahedan (Sistan va Baluchestan Province), Ahmadinejad said, "Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets".
"The Europeans say that during the Second World War six million Jews were killed, and they are determined in their claims to the point that even when scientists question them they deal with such scientists and jail and punish them", he added.

I checked out his assertion about jailing and punishing, well at least as far as looking at Wikipedia which says:

Public denial of the Holocaust is a criminal offence in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland, and is punishable by fines and jail sentences.

I simply can't understand what essential difference there is between those laws and the Turkish ones that are exercising the EU so. Why should such a denial should be a crime? Indeed it seems to me that it is more likely to lend some sort of mad credence to the claims of lunatics, rabble rousers and conspiracy theorists.

What am I missing?

Further I feel a sort of pressure after writing to words above to demonstrate that I'm not a holocuast denier myself. Can that be healthy?

To pluck a random and trivial illustration from the air, when I was a boy I read Michael Bentine's autobiography and was amazed to find that he was among the troops who liberated Belsen and that a man could go on to a career as a comedian after witnessing such horrors. I deny the Holocaust not.

Want Ads

Messrs Bond and Bearryman are throwing, and have been kind enough to have invited me to, the Tighten Up Christmas Dinner tonight. Bondy having been my host and Hugh a fellow guest at last Sunday's Bacchanalia, I think I can expect something of a ribbing. I remember very little of its later stages and have little idea of what hi jinks occurred between mid afternoon and my waking up in the hotel at the Winning Post next morning. It seems likely that I may have well have lived up to the Kerouac paean to madness that I invoked before I set off.

The cup of Bernard Shaw's wants having been dashed from my lips, I have decided to adopt, for today at least, D.H. Lawrence's - as cribbed from The New Yorker:

The real way of living is to answer to one's wants. Not "I want to light up with my intelligence as many things as possible" but "For the living of my full flame-I want that liberty, I want that woman, I want that pound of peaches, I want to go to sleep, I want to go to the pub and have a good time, I want to look abeastly swell today, I want to kiss that girl, I want to insult that man." Instead of that . . . we talk about some sort of ideas. I'm like Carlyle, who, they say, wrote 50 volumes on the value of silence.

The New Taboos

Andrew Sullivan, writing from the perspective of a gay rights campaigner, makes a series of spot on observations that I think have general applicability and are widely relevant to the inimical nature of all hate crime legislation and the new official and unofficial thought policing that it is engendering.

There is a troubling aspect to the otherwise laudable campaign to provide basic civil and legal equality to gay citizens in this country and around the world. That aspect is the attempt to prevent or even criminalize the expression of hostility to homosexuality, or gay rights, or indeed any other form of anti-gay speech. This is inimical to the principles of freedom on which the campaign for gay rights must rest. For centuries, the First Amendment was the only security for gay people; without freedom of speech, there would have been no gay rights movement. The idea that that movement would now attempt to restrict the rights of our opponents is truly disgraceful. You see it in Canada, and there is a recent grotesque example in England. It seems to me that gay groups need to end their silence about this and rigorously defend the free speech rights of our opponents, as well as their right to practice their religious faith in any way they see fit, and to proselytize within the law as aggressively as they want. We need to defend the free association rights of groups like the St Patrick's Day parade organizers and even the Boy Scouts, however repugnant their views of gay people. Words cannot harm people; in fact, because those in favor of gay equality are telling the truth, we have every incentive to magnify and extend the debate. Silencing opponents is a sign of weakness, doubt and intolerance. Gay groups can and should do better.

I recommend that you follow the link to his grotesque example from England and wonder at this sinister quote from a Police spokesman:

"All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."

It is an utter outrage that the Police have been reduced to intimidating members of the public simply for expressing unfashionable views. Am I homophobic for raising a quizzical eyebrow at a government that reduced the homosexual age of consent to 16, but is now proposing to "consult" on raising the age at which a youth may enjoy a post coital cigarette from 16 to 18? How are we going to have any meaningful discussions of anything at all in the forest of new taboos?

dedicated to small-busted women

I went along to the Merton Chamber of Commerce Christmas Lunch yesterday to do a bit of networking. Although for most of our decade in business we have worked for large organisations we are starting to pick up more jobs for smaller businesses who generally seem to be at the mercy of rogues and charlatans when it comes to databases and web applications.

The first Chamber of Commerce networking do I attended was at Jim Thompson's Flaming Wok about six months ago. I well remember meeting the charming founder and proprietor of AA Lingerie the online store dedicated to small busted women.

The challenge of keeping your gaze horizontal and steady, and not even glancing south when a woman describes such an entrepreneurial venture to you face to face is one I am ashamed to say I failed.

makiyaki

The first esoteric fact that I ever learned on the World Wide Web was that tempura came from the Portuguese influence on Japanese food, which brings me rather neatly to yesterday's destination - as Paul and I attempt to eat our way around the world in London - makiyaki, a Japanese restaurant in South Wimbledon.

We shared sukiyaki which was cooked at the table.The main ingredient is thin sliced beef (not yak, the word "yaki" means "sautee" or "grill" in Japanese) which is simmered in a pan in the sukiyaki sauce with vegetables. You dip the cooked beef in raw beaten egg before popping it in your mouth if you are brave like us.

(Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.)

Stocking Filler

Here is a great idea from jurygeek (via Clive Davis).

This year for Christmas, I'm promoting the idea of buying New Orleans music for Christmas presents. I can't think of a better way of using the market to help out the musicians from that great city. And let's just make one thing clear -- there is no point to rebuilding New Orleans without its musicians.

New Orleans is (was) one of the few cities in which being a musician isn't considered self-indulgent, but in which musicians are seen as the cornerstones of the community. It is (was) also one of the few cities in which the lines between 'black music' and 'white music' are pretty much ignored.

New Orleans is the home of American music - jazz, ragtime, swing, dixieland, blues, rhythm & blues, rock and roll and more hail from there. But today, New Orleans musicians are dispersed across the country, as the rooms in which they made their livings and honed their chops remain closed.

I've put a couple of suggestions below. The links to Amazon use my Associate ID and I'll donate any commission I get if anyone buys using them.

AWWW!

I am off to Bondy's Christmas drinks party this afternoon. I'll be on my own for the first time in years and years and ironically it was at one of these parties in the late Nineties that I well remember deciding quietly to myself that Jane was the one for me.

Please note that I wish the querulous, garrulous drunkenness that will inevitably ensue to be interpreted, not as something squalid, but rather - a la Kerouac - as a vivacious, life-enhancing affirmation:

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes "AWWW!"

1,000,000 kg

The Merton Abbey Virgin Active gym is fitted with Technogym equipment and uses Technogym's Wellness software to manage exercise programmes and track progress.

I noticed back in July, that the system keeps a running total of how much weight you have lifted, and I am very pleased to announce that, as of today, I have now shifted in excess of 1,000,000 kg.

Further, due to the wonder that is Google, I can tell you that this represents nearly nearly ten times the capacity of a Boeing 747-200 freighter aircraft, and is also the amount of highly enriched uranium that was estimated to be in the former Soviet Union at the beginning of the 21st century, enough to manufacture ten thousand atomic bombs.

It is also 11,364 times my body weight, even when that mass has been boosted by a £4.25 celebration 'big breakfast' at the Commonwealth Cafe.

Scope

I am off to Nigel's funeral today so I won't have much time to write.

Scope is an organisation that contributed a lot to his life.

You can use this link to make a donation if you like.

Among the New Films

Beerfest is a heartwarming saga of two brothers who go to Oktoberfest and stumble upon a super-secret centuries-old beer games competition. Like Fight Club, but with beer games.

These guys get their asses kicked by the Germans, and come back to America, where they assemble the greatest collection of all-star beer games dudes, in order to go back to Germany and kick the shit out of the Germans.

Pretty cool, right?

SO goes the pitch for a new movie that, according to The Hollywood Reporter, has been given the green light by Warner Bros. Pictures (who acquired the project from Sony) to begin filming in January in New Mexico.

Perhaps I should work up a script or two as well and save the British film industry.

Harry Lime

I'm still reading 'A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Sparta Fought the Peloponnesian War'. Poster boy that I am for comprehensive education I had no idea at all that the Greek Golden Age was so brief or so burdened with strife. It puts me in mind of Orson Welles' classic speech from The Third Man.

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce - the cuckoo clock!

Or perhaps the ancient Chinese curse:

May you live in interesting times!

P.S. Victor Davis Hanson (author of 'A War Like No Other') is often caricatured as some sort of loony paleoconservative. This is baloney. Read him here on why the McCain Amendment should be supported. I was so disappointed to hear Condoleezza Rice apparently supporting rendition on the radio yesterday.

La Tasca

We were working at a clients' near Victoria yesterday and everything went so well that we were looking for somewhere to eat earlier than we had thought and before many restaurants were open.

In the end we found a place called La Tasca one of a chain of Spanish tapas bars and restaurants founded in, of all places, Manchester in 1993.

When we ordered a Paella de Carne (with chicken and chorizo) we were told that it would take about three quarters of an hour to prepare. I was quite impressed with this because it showed that it was really being cooked to order. (I might have preferred a paella Valenciana or a paella de Marisco, but Paul is allergic to bivalves.)

We whiled away 45 minutes over a bottle or two of Las Camapanas Crianza, fresh bread with extra virgin olive oil and sherry vinegar, and pan a la Catalana - lighlty toasted bread topped with garlice tomato and coriander - and the paella was well worth the wait.

I suppose that paella is Valencian, our bread was Catalan and the wine was Navarran so I have classifed the meal as North West Spanish as we attempt to eat our way around the world in London. (Follow the links for our real and imaginary destinations.)

Foodie Maps

Monday has come around again, so it is time for part two of our ongoing project to Eat Your Way Around the World in London. I thought it might be a good idea to keep track of this on both a local and global scale by using Google Maps to show the locations of both the restaurants where we eat and the regions that they represent. I've had a first crack at it below. I plan to fine tune master maps as we go and to have a link to both included in each write up.

No More "I Love You's"

I am brutally sad to have to say that after six very hard months Jane and I have split, or perhaps more accurately she has split from me. There's a lot more I could say but this is not really the time.

I used to be a lunatic from the gracious days
I used to be woebegone and so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed for you to see

Oh but now
I don't find myself bouncing home

Whistling buttonhole tunes

To make me cry

No more "I love you's"
The language is leaving me
No more "I love you's"
Changes are shifting outside the word

Ugandan Discussions

Less than a week after complaining that - while the rest of the world seemed to be falling into line, no one was looking at "A Welsh Born Icon" from the entire continent of Africa - I have noticed via Google Analytics that it has now been viewed from Kampala in Uganda.

The internet is truly an amazing phenomenon.

The Actor Prepares

I did my MBA in the days before the City University Business School metamorphised into the CASS Business School and moved into swish new premises.

In those days the school was spread over a couple of floors of the sprawling Barbican Centre which was also, in those days, the Royal Shakespeare Company's London home.

A year or so into my studies the RSC put on a production of a deeply obscure sixteeth or seventeenth century Spanish play in "The Pit", their small Barbican theatre. It was, and indeed remains, so obscure that I can't remember what it was called, but I went to see it because an actor called Anthony O'Donnell - an Old Illtydian like me - was in the cast.

At the end of the performance, I applauded, got up and walked straight to my regular post-lecture pub. The Barbican can be a confusing labrynth but as I was attending it three times a week I knew it like the back of my hand and flew like an arrow to the bar.

When I got there several members of the cast - who moments ago had been on stage in full make up, false beards, ruffs and full Elizabethan rig - were already there washed, changed and drinking happily. Outstanding. It made me wonder if "Exit; theatre to pub" was perhaps available as an advanced course in RADA.

Feb 86 Intake

I (front row center) was delighted to get a phone call out of the blue from David (second row left) to say that he is organising a get together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our starting out on the MBA programme at, what was then, the City University Business school. The dust subsequently being stirred by a confirmation email that he sent out to everyone he had contacted, Dierdre (middle row second from right) came up with this photo of the 10th anniversary reunion.

Doing a degree in the evenings was a long hard slog, although some of the firmest friends I made among the 'Feb 86 Intake' were the other folk who used to bale out of economics at the mid evening break and retire to the pub. As the picture shows, intake was indeed a fine collective noun for us.