Hoorah for Maria!
And not just because she's Maria.
Whenever I am feeling like crap or have lost the will to blog she rides to my rescue with a meme.
This one's a book meme, and as I am addicted to books way beyond all reason (my house is merely a vast book repository with a bed squeezed in there somewhere), I will inevitably expand it exponentially and take this post to previously unheralded levels of tedium and pretentiousness.
I may swear from time to time, too.
Just so you know.
Right!
Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin … (Ten credibility points for anyone spotting where that comes from and it's not a book).
1) Books That Changed Your Life.
I've read a lot of great books but as for books that have actually opened my eyes to something and turned my whole life around? Those are a rarer species.
I mean The Bible and The Qur'an are great books and I still read them both but I was brought up on one and the other hardly came as a surprise. As I don't believe in any God or Gods or in any deluded concept of "afterlife" (as if this life weren't draggy enough) they don't really have much influence on me except for their merits as historical and literary texts. They rank alongside the Mahabarata, the Epic of Gilgamesh (great chunks of which have been copied straight into the Old Testament much as a really bad student would steal stuff for homework assignments) and the Gnostic Gospels; fascinating, poetic, beautiful and occasionally unintentionally hilarious but hardly life-changing.
As an outspoken Marxist I would have to cite Book 1 of Karl Marx's "Capital" as a life-changer; in fact a life-definer.
I'll allow criticism of it only from those who have read and absorbed it and are therefore entitled to an opinion.
Any book that takes "The Wealth Of Nations" (I have that, too, but I keep it in the bathroom, where it belongs), shoves the splintered gatepost of righteousness straight up Adam Smith's pimply arse and makes him spin around gets my vote.
People who criticise Marx or The Qur'an or "The Six Bunny-Wunnies And Their Layover In Anderson, Indiana" or indeed any other book without having read it can frankly go fuck themselves.
I've said this so many times but it is crucially important and it bears repeating here: "Read the source material and make up your own mind. It's what your brain is for. Don't simply believe what somebody else tells you about it." … (least of all, me).
Another biggie in the life-changing stakes was Dostoyevsky's "Crime And Punishment", the book that first started the rabid biblio-fetish which long ago engulfed my life and spat out the sad pedant you see before you.
On my last day of school I cleared out my locker and wandered off into the great wide world thinking "So … That was school. Other than some maths and physics and how to screw girls it's taught me fuck all about life so if I'm going to live it I'd better head to the bookshop and start reading."
On my way home I bought cheery old Fyodor's Bumper Book of Guilt and Responsibility and immediately identified with Raskolnikov's plight.
Quite apart from my own personal issues at the time it taught me that books need not be the joyless exercises in lit crit we had been taught; indeed they could be enormously enjoyable and that the best of them could guide and enrich my life.
These days, every year come October I hit my Dickens and The Major Russians hard. Right through the dark winter months the glorious triumvirate of Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky sustains me as much as food and drink. Rather pretentiously I love to sit in my big wingback chair, reading them by candle-light.
They are not mere stories; they are life and they are truth and they contain far more of both than can be found in the Old Testament and can and should be read at least once a year by everybody on this benighted planet.
Borders now sells ALL of them at two pounds a pop (yes, £2) so you've no excuses. You can work your way up to the fine, tooled leather and Venetian handmade paper editions when you become an addict like me.
On a lighter note I discovered Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" when I was thirteen and carried the damned thing around in my back pocket for years. Appalling tosh as it was, it taught me to enjoy poetry and to enjoy reading aloud (something I'm particularly fond of and good at) and it helped me to the remarkable and life-changing discovery that being mysterious to the point of bafflement can get girls naked (thanks, Bob).
2) Books That You Have Read More Than Once.
Most of my books I read over and over. Which is why I don't tend to read disposable "airport" books or "bestsellers" (non-books - life's too short).
This is where we come to the difference between a "book" and a "non-book".
A "non-book" is something from the bestseller lists, churned out for a particular market; a page-turner written to a formula, be it a thriller, a romance, a celebrity or TV tie-in; whatever. No bad thing in themselves, as they keep the publishing industry afloat, yet soul-destroying to read. I try to give them a chance on occasion, but no matter how well crafted the storyline might be they are inevitably written by people with no conception of how to write beautiful prose. I'll happily watch the movie but I usually throw the books down in disgust after a few pages with a cry of "Yes, it's a good story, but learn to write, you ignorant fucker!"
The modern novel doesn't have to be a lazy piece of hackwork but most are and it seems to me that the kind of people who buy bestsellers aren't that interested in reading, just in passing the time.
The last "bestseller" I found readable was Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"; it was an enchanting story but more importantly it was beautifully written. Sadly it was published fifteen years ago. Come on, people. Write me something worth reading!
The very best modern novels are - like Dickens or Tolstoy - true works of art that can be read and enjoyed time after time. You are not merely turning the page to "see what happens next" (for fuck's sake, leave that to Grisham); you are lost in a whole new world.
A "book" is pure joy; something that enhances your life every time you read it. Just because you know Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice and allows himself to be crucified doesn't stop you reading The Gospels (Awww! You spoiled it now!); similarly, knowing the ending of Bleak House (which you certainly won't get from the BBC adaptation - or more accurately, the TV soap loosely based on a few of the characters from Bleak House) takes away not one iota of the pleasure of reading Dickens' prose; that marvellous first section (where most people tend to give up because they have no soul) brilliantly written in such a deliberately dense and obfuscatory manner to conjure and echo the miasmic London fog and the eternally turgid case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce. There's a sentence in there that's almost a page long; the most breathtakingly masterful use of the semicolon I have ever found. I love reading that aloud. I can picture old Boz setting aside his quill after writing it, then jiggling his legs up and down under the table and giggling with unalloyed glee at his own incomparable cleverness.
More real "books":
J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher In The Rye";
Jose Saramago, "The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis";
Mario Vargas Llosa, "The War Of The End Of The World";
Yukio Mishima, "Spring Snow";
Herman Melville, "Moby Dick";
John Steinbeck: "The Grapes Of Wrath";
George Orwell, "Animal Farm";
Harper Lee, "To Kill A Mockingbird";
all books that everybody should have read and should treasure and each one worth far more than a hundred years worth of throwaway trash Grishams or Cooksons.
As for books that I read every single year: most of these will be (with the exception of the Greek and Roman classics - I always have one of those on the go) non-fiction - Goldsmith, Pepys, Mommsen, Gibbon, Hodgkin, Russell, Descartes, Churchill, plus a bunch of quantum physics stuff that's mostly numbers (each to their own); but as most people seem to read fiction, let's start with my annual re-reading fiction list: Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Dante's "Divine Comedy", Shakespeare's tragedies, Milton's Paradise Lost, Gœthe's Faust, the big Russians, Dickens, the list in the paragraph above and lots more.
Remember that I spend probably seven hours a day reading on the train and in bed, so I don't expect you to keep up that kind of rate yourselves, but if you're going to read, for Pete's sake read something worthwhile.
Every couple of years I'll also try to fit in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books (the first two, anyway) and some Tolkein, just to recapture a little of the wonder of my youth.
Pretentious twat that I am I do confess to a liking for one particular genre of non-book: classic American pulp fiction. Long time blogpals may remember my old Edward Hopper post and my quoting that marvellous Raymond Chandler line so evocative of Hopper interiors: "A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet."
Chandler is wonderful with "American English" and the master of its use in the modern pulp is surely James Ellroy (if you've seen the movie L.A. Confidential you'll know who I mean); his Pete Bondurant novels especially; his use of dialogue in "The Cold Six Thousand" is as near as pulp fiction gets to true literary art.
3) One Book You Would Want On A Desert Island.
Hmm … I suppose one of Ray Mears' survivalist handbooks would be practical, but possibly not a literary orgasm to be enjoyed time and again.
I used to think my original Mrs. Beeton's Household Management would be an excellent choice for a desert island castaway. For starters (under "Colonial Cuisine") she has no qualms about giving instructions as to the best way to slaughter terrapins (be sure to break their legs before boiling them alive to prevent them clambering up in a heap and allowing some to escape - See? You've learned something new today) and how many parakeets per person to put in your pie (three), but she also goes on to explain the duties of butlers, housemaids and kitchen staff. I think that life on my desert island would be made immeasurably richer for knowing the most appropriate form of neatly folded origami linen napkin to use when serving broiled lizards. If I am to be driven mad with the torment of loneliness I want to be sure to use the correct cutlery. A very English insanity.
However, I am a creature of habit and for decades have always carried precisely the same books with me on holidays abroad (don't ask me why; I have no idea).
These are: William Burroughs' "The Place Of Dead Roads", Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities", Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and Swift's "Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World, In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First A Surgeon, And Then A Captain Of Several Ships", better known in these unenlightened times as "Gulliver's Travels". I try to add one classic novel by an author from the country I'm visiting, to help understand the culture a little better, and a Langenscheidt dictionary for any local words that I come unstuck on (the Langenscheidts are those lovely little yellow rubber dictionaries that are virtually indestructible - the Germans do compound nouns, blitzkrieg, genocide, denial and yellow rubber books so well - mine are full of hastily scribbled notes jotted down during conversations in marketplaces and bars).
4) Two Books That Made You Laugh.
Ah, Douglas Adams, bless him.
The first two Arthur Dent books ("The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" and "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe") are without doubt the funniest and silliest things ever written in any language.
And for light, throwaway "non-book" funnies to read on the train, I confess to having the complete Pratchett hidden away in the third bedroom; not so much books as "episodes" in a very silly comedy series. I think the current running total is thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the little buggers; I'll have to count 'em when I remember.
5) One Book That Made You Cry.
Shit, I cry at just about any book or old movie. Kleenex should give me a medal for years of sterling service … okay, so not just for crying.
Right. Guaranteed Dive tearjerkers: Poor old Sidney Carton doing a Jesus in "A Tale Of Two Cities" always leaves me blubbing like a baby. Henchard's grave in "The Mayor Of Casterbridge", ditto. Rose of Sharon's heartbreaking final paragraph in "The Grapes Of Wrath", tritto.
I don't cry at melodrama; for instance Little Nell's fate leaves me shrugging with indifference, but generally at sacrifice and suffering (I'm an Atheist but I cried at the reading of John-19 in church on Good Friday - I still go to the big days for a sermon and a sing-along). Non-fiction, too: Solzhenitsyn's multi-volume "The Gulag Archipelago" leaves me totally wrecked, as do the First World War poets and Primo Levi's accounts of the Holocaust.
6) One Book You Wish You'd Written.
I wish I'd written the Harry Potter books; not for any literary reason (though I've not read them so I cannot comment on that) but the idea of having a pile of cash bigger than the world to disburse in whatever contrary fashion I please is not unappealing.
From a literary standpoint it could be any of those above, but I'll choose a different one and go for Saramago's "Histório Do Circo De Lisboa", because it is so unutterably lovely (in the English translation by the incomparable Giovanni Ponteiro - "The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon" - as well as in the original Portuguese).
7) One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written.
Not so much never written as left alone and not fucked with: The New Testament.
Several generations after Jesus' death, the Christian church was still a loose collection of bickering Jewish sects, persecuted by Roman and Jew alike, yet in possession of a large body of eyewitness accounts and commentaries of the life and teachings of Jesus himself.
It was in the last years of Emperor Constantine's life that he decided to cover all his bases with regard to an afterlife and convert to Christianity and what's more, to make it the official Roman State Religion.
To the disparate Christian sect leaders this was too great a prize to refuse, even though it came at a price. And that price was deciding which of the many conflicting accounts - the Gospels - written by Jesus' disciples and friends would constitute the official canon.
Most of the Gospels; notably those accounts of Peter, Mary, Thomas, Philip and Judas himself were rejected, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was what Constantine thought would "sell". If he were to introduce this religion all across the known world he wanted it to be consistent and acceptable to Roman citizens.
The rejected texts were not - unlike Marcion's "unofficial" canon - rejected as heresy, they were simply no longer taught and disappeared into obscurity, only to come to light again in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945.
In accordance with my mantra of "read the source material and make up your own mind" I feel that all Christians should have a look at these rejected works, keeping in mind that what we now know as the New Testament was a drastically abridged version of the witness statements of Jesus' friends and followers specifically designed to "sell" to the Roman citizenry.
It's not heresy; it's merely akin to looking at the "extras" on a "special edition" DVD, but it puts a lot of things into much needed perspective.
Oh, and I really wish that good old Mervyn Peake had stopped after the first two Gormenghast books, so perfect in themselves with their glorious use of English and the heartrending tragedy of Steerpike, and not gone mad in his dotage and written the complete abomination of arse-gravy that is Titus Alone.
8) Books That You Are Currently Reading.
Right:
On my bedside table (that's "nightstand" for the Colonials):
The Bible (currently reading Daniel);
Virgil's Æneid;
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations;
Maya Angelou: "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings"(as Robyn pointed out to me that it's her birthday this week);
Downstairs, on the coffee table by the reading chair:
The Canterbury Tales;
Volume eight of Pepys' Diaries;
Albert Hourani's "Arabic Thought In The Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939";
Volume eight (1965-1966) of Fantagraphics' glorious twenty-four volume hardback series "The Complete Peanuts".
Beside the computer:
Japanese For College Students: Vol 1.
Basic Kanji: Vol 2.
The Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations;
Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary;
The Oxford Book Of Japanese Grammar;
In my bookbag for train journeys:
Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" in both Japanese and English;
Langenscheidt Japanese Dictionary;
Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
9) One Book That You Have Been Meaning To Read.
I love to read books in their original language, for the same reason that subtitled movies are infinitely superior to dubbed.
The classics merely highlight the crappiness of my schoolboy Latin and the virtual non-existence of my Greek; Camõens' "Os Lusiades" and some of Saramago's books I can manage in Portuguese, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is not much of a problem in my strangled Franglais; Dante I struggle pathetically with in mediæval Italian, although I love reading it aloud; "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain" I adore in Anglo Saxon (again to read aloud, stalking around the room, gesticulating wildly; the alliteration gives me a stiffy); Chaucer in Middle English, of course; and Mishima uses such archaic Japanese that he is a real pain in the ass to read, but I hope to improve enough to appreciate him without Mayuko's help.
In English I suppose the fact that I have yet to get round to reading The Great Gatsby would appall any Americans, but I'll get there eventually.
Finally - and closer to home - in blogs we increasingly find criminally unpublished writers of far greater ability than most of the authors staining the "bestseller" lists.
We have some even here in our little community whose works I would proudly display on my shelves if only publishers weren't so blindly obsessed with celebrity "autobiographies" and TV tie-ins and would actually publish them.
At the very heart of Blogville, Maria writes so perfectly that she regularly has this forty-nine year old man in floods of tears, or indeed laughing fit to bust.
But she does not write fiction; she writes of her life and she writes so well that it often overwhelms me. Blogville's closest thing to Pepys; a perfect diarist.
As well as being a fellow guitar player and an all round cool guy, Utsav is a poet of quite breathtaking delicacy and beauty and his pieces invariably leave me awed (and extremely jealous of such talent).
And the same goes for painter, political polemicist and poet, Katherine.
We do, however, have a pair of first class fiction writers among us; Robyn and Lynn.
Lynn writes (as well as a novel and her journalism) gripping and occasionally erotic short stories with all too real heroines.
I first encountered her when she appeared in my comments box with an acute observation. Following her profile link I came across what seemed to be a terrifying suicide note from a woman on the edge.
It turned out I had stumbled upon the first chapter of her novel, "Under A Train" which she had posted without any indication that it was a work of fiction. Her writing had shaken me pretty badly (how do you reply to someone about to kill themselves?) and - after laughing at my unfounded concern and altering the blog to make it clear that this was an example of her creative writing - her wonderful stories have ensnared me ever since. Whether it's the feel of paint on canvas or of silk on skin there is a palpable sexual tension to her writing, and her dialogue - especially the underlying suspicion between lovers - is so real (and at times so funny) that it hurts.
In complete contrast, the deceptively gentle slow-burn of Robyn's writing reminds me of the feeling I got on first reading Richard Russo's "Mohawk" and that tranche of new American writers who, at the end of the last century unleashed "dirty realism" on a helpless world.
In the beautifully written prose of her novella "Mrs. Branch", events of shattering, life-changing enormity tear the small town heroine's life apart yet Robyn writes in exquisite, almost painful detail of the everyday things we need to survive the unstoppable tsunami of devastation about to overwhelm us; of quiet heroine Maryann emerging from denial into a world gone mad, clinging stoically to physical and emotional minutiæ so sharply observed that they catch the edge of your heart and unravel it.
The publishing industry needs a shake-up; it needs to ease up on greedily churning out formulaic crap for short-term profit and to concentrate at least some of its effort on nurturing good new writing. The music industry's collapse gets blamed on "home piracy", yet the real reason is that for the past thirty years they have ceased to invest in talent and instead marketed "product" to an increasingly disillusioned public who inevitably said "enough is enough" and stopped buying.
There is good writing out there; it just isn't getting published.
Thank goodness for the internet.
Just reading through that pretentious pile of twaddle I realise how the books I mention above only just start to scratch the surface of "what you should all go out and read right now", so I may well do a series of posts on one book or one author, to give any "non-book" readers a taster of what they're missing.
You have been warned.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Mikey! Yaaaaay!!!!!
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Great Expectorations
Old Dive would like to apologise for the brief blog hiatus.
After eleven lovely days of breathing fresh, clean country air, getting back to filthy London last Wednesday and inhaling the fœtid, dank stench of The Great Wen, plus being trapped in trains and tubes full of coughing, hacking bastards, reeking of B.O. and halitosis, led to the inevitable hybrid flu/cold/leprosy/dengue fever/udder rot combined with several diseases that would raise eyebrows at Porton Down germ warfare research labs taking up residence in my saggy old bod (you know the kind of thing; women shrug it off with a single polite cough while men collapse into bed for a week and moan like fuck).
I still feel like something freshly squeezed from Gojira's arse this morning but I can actually move my limbs without screaming, so - predictably vindictively - I've crawled back to London to spread viral revenge on the stinking capital.
I'm a one man epidemic with a twitch and a bad attitude so watch out London; it's Twelve Monkeys time!
After eleven lovely days of breathing fresh, clean country air, getting back to filthy London last Wednesday and inhaling the fœtid, dank stench of The Great Wen, plus being trapped in trains and tubes full of coughing, hacking bastards, reeking of B.O. and halitosis, led to the inevitable hybrid flu/cold/leprosy/dengue fever/udder rot combined with several diseases that would raise eyebrows at Porton Down germ warfare research labs taking up residence in my saggy old bod (you know the kind of thing; women shrug it off with a single polite cough while men collapse into bed for a week and moan like fuck).
I still feel like something freshly squeezed from Gojira's arse this morning but I can actually move my limbs without screaming, so - predictably vindictively - I've crawled back to London to spread viral revenge on the stinking capital.
I'm a one man epidemic with a twitch and a bad attitude so watch out London; it's Twelve Monkeys time!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sick Saturday - New Kid: Episode 2
Oh, crap.
More New Kid … and it doesn't get any better.
This week: anorexia, obesity, sex, drugs and pædophilia.
Next week (mercifully the last): animals.
More New Kid … and it doesn't get any better.
This week: anorexia, obesity, sex, drugs and pædophilia.
Next week (mercifully the last): animals.
Friday, March 28, 2008
A Leg Man Writes …
Mme. Benaut has kindly reminded me in yesterday's comments box (and in doing so has made my heart leap with nostalgic joy) of my old school's attempt to enforce the ridiculous, prudish and joyless "six inch rule".
Come with me back in time, girls and boys, to the heady heyday of the mini-skirt and of the vain and misguided adult attempts to prevent schoolgirls from wearing mini-skirts with the hemlines somewhere up around the clitoris area.
The time: Uncle Dive's Schooldays.
The place: "C" corridor of an English co-ed grammar school.
Dramatis personæ:
Mrs. Gardner (Deputy Headmistress; combining Medusa's gaze with a propensity to explode with the awesome fury of Mount St.Helens several times a day);
A cold, stone flag floor;
A six inch ruler;
Any number of pretty young girls in regulation school dresses customised to be as short as humanly possible;
A smirking Dive and his unsavoury clique.
Brief aside: Just as the pitiless fiend Mrs. Gardner is used as a personal rottweiller by reclusive Old Slump, the wily headmaster (think Emperor Palpatine but without the looks or charm), Young Dive is in turn Mrs. Gardner's pet … I look like her son (who has run away to India) so she dotes on me, which allows me some considerable latitude for "unconventional" behaviour, a gift which I don't hesitate to abuse in a most disgraceful manner.
Thanks to her intervention I am excused uniform (at least when I reach the upper sixth form and Præfect-hood), allowed to play rock guitar with my disreputable chums in the school hall (to the apoplectic rage of our viciously splenetic Head of Music who won't allow guitars on the school grounds as "they are trash and have nothing to do with music"); allowed to publish a cynical, profane and frankly disturbing monthly satirical riposte to the official school magazine - the creation of myself and one Bavis … think Small Glass Planet with sick cartoons - and she turns a blind eye to my using the keys to the art department office to have copious sex with überbabe Judith Flaxman, prettiest girl in the lower sixth.
Anyhoo; back to the plot:
Mrs. Gardner stalks the school (again, think of that mechanical robot Jedi thingie in the last and crappiest Star Wars movie, put a wig on it and there you have Mrs. G), slapping a ruler against her palm and woe betide any girl who doesn't heed the warning cry of "Cavé!"
This woman rules by inducing sheer, pants-wetting terror, and any hapless girl not sharp enough to yank down her hem is brought smartly to heel by the barking of her surname and forced to kneel on the stone floor while the gorgon slaps her ruler against the poor girl's leg to ensure the hem of her dress is no more than the regulation six inches above her knees.
Ah, the glorious days of corporal punishment; any girl found transgressing the rule is hauled off double quick to the Deputy Head's office for a stern sermon followed by a good old-fashioned spanking (or for repeat offenders a splendidly noisy and stinging caning), emerging flushed and tearful and rubbing her bottom only to be forced to endure the long walk down a corridor mysteriously filled with a lot more smirking boys than it is at any other time.
And you wonder how I turned out like I did …
Those were indeed the days. Lounging in the common room, surrounded by bevies of pretty teenage girls with their dresses hitched up to flash their knickers at the world.
Sigh …
The demise of the mini-skirt is (with the possible and grudging exception of the Great War) the most truly tragic event of the twentieth century, something that scars us still today and that leaves grown men - myself included - crying themselves to sleep in hopeless despair.
Stop this madness. Bring back the mini-skirt as compulsory wear for all girls and weemen (except lard-arses; that's just gross … If you can't keep away from the fridge, stay indoors so we don't have to look at you).
This has been an appeal on behalf of world sanity.
Come with me back in time, girls and boys, to the heady heyday of the mini-skirt and of the vain and misguided adult attempts to prevent schoolgirls from wearing mini-skirts with the hemlines somewhere up around the clitoris area.
The time: Uncle Dive's Schooldays.
The place: "C" corridor of an English co-ed grammar school.
Dramatis personæ:
Mrs. Gardner (Deputy Headmistress; combining Medusa's gaze with a propensity to explode with the awesome fury of Mount St.Helens several times a day);
A cold, stone flag floor;
A six inch ruler;
Any number of pretty young girls in regulation school dresses customised to be as short as humanly possible;
A smirking Dive and his unsavoury clique.
Brief aside: Just as the pitiless fiend Mrs. Gardner is used as a personal rottweiller by reclusive Old Slump, the wily headmaster (think Emperor Palpatine but without the looks or charm), Young Dive is in turn Mrs. Gardner's pet … I look like her son (who has run away to India) so she dotes on me, which allows me some considerable latitude for "unconventional" behaviour, a gift which I don't hesitate to abuse in a most disgraceful manner.
Thanks to her intervention I am excused uniform (at least when I reach the upper sixth form and Præfect-hood), allowed to play rock guitar with my disreputable chums in the school hall (to the apoplectic rage of our viciously splenetic Head of Music who won't allow guitars on the school grounds as "they are trash and have nothing to do with music"); allowed to publish a cynical, profane and frankly disturbing monthly satirical riposte to the official school magazine - the creation of myself and one Bavis … think Small Glass Planet with sick cartoons - and she turns a blind eye to my using the keys to the art department office to have copious sex with überbabe Judith Flaxman, prettiest girl in the lower sixth.
Anyhoo; back to the plot:
Mrs. Gardner stalks the school (again, think of that mechanical robot Jedi thingie in the last and crappiest Star Wars movie, put a wig on it and there you have Mrs. G), slapping a ruler against her palm and woe betide any girl who doesn't heed the warning cry of "Cavé!"
This woman rules by inducing sheer, pants-wetting terror, and any hapless girl not sharp enough to yank down her hem is brought smartly to heel by the barking of her surname and forced to kneel on the stone floor while the gorgon slaps her ruler against the poor girl's leg to ensure the hem of her dress is no more than the regulation six inches above her knees.
Ah, the glorious days of corporal punishment; any girl found transgressing the rule is hauled off double quick to the Deputy Head's office for a stern sermon followed by a good old-fashioned spanking (or for repeat offenders a splendidly noisy and stinging caning), emerging flushed and tearful and rubbing her bottom only to be forced to endure the long walk down a corridor mysteriously filled with a lot more smirking boys than it is at any other time.
And you wonder how I turned out like I did …
Those were indeed the days. Lounging in the common room, surrounded by bevies of pretty teenage girls with their dresses hitched up to flash their knickers at the world.
Sigh …
The demise of the mini-skirt is (with the possible and grudging exception of the Great War) the most truly tragic event of the twentieth century, something that scars us still today and that leaves grown men - myself included - crying themselves to sleep in hopeless despair.
Stop this madness. Bring back the mini-skirt as compulsory wear for all girls and weemen (except lard-arses; that's just gross … If you can't keep away from the fridge, stay indoors so we don't have to look at you).
This has been an appeal on behalf of world sanity.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Talking 'bout My Generation
… and moaning about the next one.
Maria's post about her experience with a house full of twenty-somethings woke up a bugbear of Old Dive's …
Designing schools for a living as I do, I get to hang around kids a lot, and over the years I have noticed something rather dispiriting: The Young are fast becoming what the Old were when I was young (if you follow me).
Though the flipside of that, however, is that my generation have become irrevocably and indisputably cool (which we knew all along).
Grab a coffee and let me explain …
I'm going to hit fifty this year, yet I feel younger, cooler, more culturally aware and way more of a rebel than most of the dull, grey kids and twenties I see these days.
Kids - and I use my usual definition of "kid" here: anyone under the age of thirty-seven (or indeed over that age but "a bit too excitable") … kids seem to me now as boring, conventional, dull and lacking in any department that could possibly be connected with "cool" as my grandparents appeared to me back when I was a kid.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
As the admirable J.M.Barrie observed in the equally Admirable Crichton: "I'm not young enough to know everything", which was kinda mean, coming from the guy who wrote Peter Pan, but also true. At seventeen, kids know everything; then again at twenty-seven. It's only when they hit thirty-seven that they realise they know fuck all and start to learn stuff for real.
Even though the young people of today are generally opinionated, self-obsessed and a bit too full of themselves they are - rather tragically - totally unable to comprehend that they know "nothin' 'bout nothin'", and that they have created or achieved nothing of any value that has not been created or achieved before; usually (much to their chagrin) by their own parents.
The teenagers I go to college with on Thursdays bizarrely think I'm "cool" for my musical tastes and for having done all the crap I've done (and because I really am cool) and they are forever "borrowing" stuff off my iPod and asking my advice on bands, clothes (! … this is inexplicable to me, but the kids at college buy the same shoes as me and dress much the same - Louisa even sent off to Kyoto for the same 浴衣 as I wear), movies, drugs, relationships, all sorts of crap.
It's genuinely weird when I'm sitting in the refectory, reminiscing with Lin, the only other forty-something still in college and a bunch of seventeen-year-olds are hanging on our every word, mouths agape with amazement (and not just amazement that people can live this long and still be sentient).
When I was a kid, people as old as I am now were dead to the world (and smelled of wee). At seventeen I would never have dreamed of asking a fifty-year-old about new and cool music (they'd have just said "I don't understand all of that rock and roll rubbish; it's just noise."), or where I could get shoes like theirs, let alone the finer points of "how to give a good blowie" (thanks for asking that one, Louisa; it's just a shame that you insisted on using our thumbs for the demonstration … hey ho; at least it made Lin laugh stuff out of her nose).
Anyhoo; Maria was bemoaning feeling old among the twenty-something kids …
But listen up, my fellow baby boomers:
We are the lucky generation.
The cool generation.
The best generation.
We grew up when it was all NEW!
We did it first and we fucking loved it.
We were the first Beatles fans; the first punks; the first metal-heads; we saw Dylan and Bowie The Clash when THEY were young!
Por exemplo, from the potted history of Old Dive:
I'm a fifties kid; born with rock and roll; from the post-war generation, whose dad came home from messing about with nuclear bombers in the air force carrying boxes of Black American music; Fats and Chuck and John Lee (we're talking real R&B … not the derivative crap "product" the marketing morons call R&B these days) and of course Elvis.
Boy did we hit the sixties swinging …
Along came The Beatles and I got my first guitar. I went to school surrounded by mini-skirted dolly-birds, the pill and the space race and the very first colour TV (back when they had programmes worth watching).
We didn't have wimpy fucking al Qaeda to piss about with, we had full-on nuclear armageddon, to the accompaniment of dope and psychedelia and CND and Vietnam and presidents getting shot or impeached, and it was cool and it was fun, waiting for some twat to press the big red button.
I was eighteen when Punk happened and it was brilliant (when kids call themselves "punks" these days it is so pathetically sad), playing in bands and having a fucking glorious time.
I dropped out of college and played lead guitar in rock bands back when it was the cool thing to do.
As my generation has got older, "cool" has moved along with us.
And conservative, reactionary, responsible boredom has moved the other way until the kids these days think and act just like my grandparents did.
Look at your kids …
Unless you're Chavs, they don't smoke or drink and they disapprove of recreational drugs.
They're conscientious and responsible.
The closest they come to rebellion is wearing a Nirvana hoody (for fuck's sake, how long has Cobain been dead, you cretins?) or acting sullen (yeah, that's new).
They "borrow" cool from our generation (the Nirvana hoody, the Ché teeshirt, Converse All Stars, anything "punk") because they have neither the wit nor the imagination to do or to create anything remotely cool themselves.
Shit, even the teen pregnancy rates have stalled; daughters no longer come home at five in the morning, tattooed and pregnant (again, Chavs are fighting a brave but lonely rearguard action here).
They listen to dull, derivative muzak product; anything remotely new and exciting is too "weird" for them (it's all noise, like rock and roll was to my grandparents). Shit, even today's most "exciting" indie and dance bands are just pale and insipid re-hashes of seventies and eighties music. We've heard it all so many times before. Come up with something new, you fucking morons!
They watch the cookery channel and they go to the gym instead of hot-rodding old cars and cruising for girls (Phil was so totally awesome at customising cars, and he's mercifully never grown up) with a back seat full of beer and the music up FUCKING LOUD ("Fucking Loud" copyright Bob Dylan; Manchester Free Trade Hall, 1966, kids; listen and learn).
They manage their money and SAVE (fucking hell) instead of blowing their student loans on guitars and riotous living and sleeping in a squat and stealing milk off doorsteps and food from the backs of supermarkets.
They talk about mortgages and insurance!
They wouldn't know how (or why) to kick against the pricks, they're such dumb, TV-addled crap-corporate-consuming retards.
The fucking idiots believe what they're told!
They don't make bombs and blow shit up like we used to (okay, so maybe that was just me).
They are "sensible". They have "careers advice" instead of just saying "Fuck the future; I'm gonna play in a band, take drugs and screw around." (Hey, it worked for me)!
They don't sit in a dingy room with a bag of grass, a couple of pipes, some pretty guitars and some very pretty girls and not worry that the only food in the house is half an onion and a sausage (maaaaan, those were good times).
They don't go on protest marches and photograph the secret service men who are photographing them (that was always so much fun).
They don't drive around the city following a police car, tokin' on a monster Camberwell Carrot and waving it at the nice coppers.
They have fucking pension plans (kill me now).
They don't try to bring down multinational corporations; they apply for fucking JOBS in them!
They cut their hair! Sweet Cheeses of Nazareth, what is the world coming to?
And THEIR PARENTS EMBARRASS THEM!
As Douglas Adams put it: they're so un-hip, it's a wonder their bums don't fall off.
The sad conclusion I have reached is that The Young Are The New Old.
Our children have squandered their glorious inheritance … all of our hard work of rebellion, sexual freedom, irresponsibility and FUN has been subsumed by the unimaginative, the responsible and the tedious.
One can only hope that the next generation rebels against this pathetic lot of uninspiring sad-sacks and kicks their sorry arses hard!
They so richly deserve it.
Townshend was almost right in "My Generation" when he said "hope I die before I get old"; what he should have written was "hope I die before I get to see my kid grow up to be a fucking accountant."
Kids; we're not angry, we are just very, very disappointed.
Maria's post about her experience with a house full of twenty-somethings woke up a bugbear of Old Dive's …
Designing schools for a living as I do, I get to hang around kids a lot, and over the years I have noticed something rather dispiriting: The Young are fast becoming what the Old were when I was young (if you follow me).
Though the flipside of that, however, is that my generation have become irrevocably and indisputably cool (which we knew all along).
Grab a coffee and let me explain …
I'm going to hit fifty this year, yet I feel younger, cooler, more culturally aware and way more of a rebel than most of the dull, grey kids and twenties I see these days.
Kids - and I use my usual definition of "kid" here: anyone under the age of thirty-seven (or indeed over that age but "a bit too excitable") … kids seem to me now as boring, conventional, dull and lacking in any department that could possibly be connected with "cool" as my grandparents appeared to me back when I was a kid.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
As the admirable J.M.Barrie observed in the equally Admirable Crichton: "I'm not young enough to know everything", which was kinda mean, coming from the guy who wrote Peter Pan, but also true. At seventeen, kids know everything; then again at twenty-seven. It's only when they hit thirty-seven that they realise they know fuck all and start to learn stuff for real.
Even though the young people of today are generally opinionated, self-obsessed and a bit too full of themselves they are - rather tragically - totally unable to comprehend that they know "nothin' 'bout nothin'", and that they have created or achieved nothing of any value that has not been created or achieved before; usually (much to their chagrin) by their own parents.
The teenagers I go to college with on Thursdays bizarrely think I'm "cool" for my musical tastes and for having done all the crap I've done (and because I really am cool) and they are forever "borrowing" stuff off my iPod and asking my advice on bands, clothes (! … this is inexplicable to me, but the kids at college buy the same shoes as me and dress much the same - Louisa even sent off to Kyoto for the same 浴衣 as I wear), movies, drugs, relationships, all sorts of crap.
It's genuinely weird when I'm sitting in the refectory, reminiscing with Lin, the only other forty-something still in college and a bunch of seventeen-year-olds are hanging on our every word, mouths agape with amazement (and not just amazement that people can live this long and still be sentient).
When I was a kid, people as old as I am now were dead to the world (and smelled of wee). At seventeen I would never have dreamed of asking a fifty-year-old about new and cool music (they'd have just said "I don't understand all of that rock and roll rubbish; it's just noise."), or where I could get shoes like theirs, let alone the finer points of "how to give a good blowie" (thanks for asking that one, Louisa; it's just a shame that you insisted on using our thumbs for the demonstration … hey ho; at least it made Lin laugh stuff out of her nose).
Anyhoo; Maria was bemoaning feeling old among the twenty-something kids …
But listen up, my fellow baby boomers:
We are the lucky generation.
The cool generation.
The best generation.
We grew up when it was all NEW!
We did it first and we fucking loved it.
We were the first Beatles fans; the first punks; the first metal-heads; we saw Dylan and Bowie The Clash when THEY were young!
Por exemplo, from the potted history of Old Dive:
I'm a fifties kid; born with rock and roll; from the post-war generation, whose dad came home from messing about with nuclear bombers in the air force carrying boxes of Black American music; Fats and Chuck and John Lee (we're talking real R&B … not the derivative crap "product" the marketing morons call R&B these days) and of course Elvis.
Boy did we hit the sixties swinging …
Along came The Beatles and I got my first guitar. I went to school surrounded by mini-skirted dolly-birds, the pill and the space race and the very first colour TV (back when they had programmes worth watching).
We didn't have wimpy fucking al Qaeda to piss about with, we had full-on nuclear armageddon, to the accompaniment of dope and psychedelia and CND and Vietnam and presidents getting shot or impeached, and it was cool and it was fun, waiting for some twat to press the big red button.
I was eighteen when Punk happened and it was brilliant (when kids call themselves "punks" these days it is so pathetically sad), playing in bands and having a fucking glorious time.
I dropped out of college and played lead guitar in rock bands back when it was the cool thing to do.
As my generation has got older, "cool" has moved along with us.
And conservative, reactionary, responsible boredom has moved the other way until the kids these days think and act just like my grandparents did.
Look at your kids …
Unless you're Chavs, they don't smoke or drink and they disapprove of recreational drugs.
They're conscientious and responsible.
The closest they come to rebellion is wearing a Nirvana hoody (for fuck's sake, how long has Cobain been dead, you cretins?) or acting sullen (yeah, that's new).
They "borrow" cool from our generation (the Nirvana hoody, the Ché teeshirt, Converse All Stars, anything "punk") because they have neither the wit nor the imagination to do or to create anything remotely cool themselves.
Shit, even the teen pregnancy rates have stalled; daughters no longer come home at five in the morning, tattooed and pregnant (again, Chavs are fighting a brave but lonely rearguard action here).
They listen to dull, derivative muzak product; anything remotely new and exciting is too "weird" for them (it's all noise, like rock and roll was to my grandparents). Shit, even today's most "exciting" indie and dance bands are just pale and insipid re-hashes of seventies and eighties music. We've heard it all so many times before. Come up with something new, you fucking morons!
They watch the cookery channel and they go to the gym instead of hot-rodding old cars and cruising for girls (Phil was so totally awesome at customising cars, and he's mercifully never grown up) with a back seat full of beer and the music up FUCKING LOUD ("Fucking Loud" copyright Bob Dylan; Manchester Free Trade Hall, 1966, kids; listen and learn).
They manage their money and SAVE (fucking hell) instead of blowing their student loans on guitars and riotous living and sleeping in a squat and stealing milk off doorsteps and food from the backs of supermarkets.
They talk about mortgages and insurance!
They wouldn't know how (or why) to kick against the pricks, they're such dumb, TV-addled crap-corporate-consuming retards.
The fucking idiots believe what they're told!
They don't make bombs and blow shit up like we used to (okay, so maybe that was just me).
They are "sensible". They have "careers advice" instead of just saying "Fuck the future; I'm gonna play in a band, take drugs and screw around." (Hey, it worked for me)!
They don't sit in a dingy room with a bag of grass, a couple of pipes, some pretty guitars and some very pretty girls and not worry that the only food in the house is half an onion and a sausage (maaaaan, those were good times).
They don't go on protest marches and photograph the secret service men who are photographing them (that was always so much fun).
They don't drive around the city following a police car, tokin' on a monster Camberwell Carrot and waving it at the nice coppers.
They have fucking pension plans (kill me now).
They don't try to bring down multinational corporations; they apply for fucking JOBS in them!
They cut their hair! Sweet Cheeses of Nazareth, what is the world coming to?
And THEIR PARENTS EMBARRASS THEM!
As Douglas Adams put it: they're so un-hip, it's a wonder their bums don't fall off.
The sad conclusion I have reached is that The Young Are The New Old.
Our children have squandered their glorious inheritance … all of our hard work of rebellion, sexual freedom, irresponsibility and FUN has been subsumed by the unimaginative, the responsible and the tedious.
One can only hope that the next generation rebels against this pathetic lot of uninspiring sad-sacks and kicks their sorry arses hard!
They so richly deserve it.
Townshend was almost right in "My Generation" when he said "hope I die before I get old"; what he should have written was "hope I die before I get to see my kid grow up to be a fucking accountant."
Kids; we're not angry, we are just very, very disappointed.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
What I Did On My Holidays
Much as I love my job I hate coming back to work after a nice break.
I took last week off to do the gardens and luckily for me the weather sucked such huge arse that I could do no more than oil the lawnmower.
So I spent the whole week doing fat all.
Wonderful!
The alarms didn't go off at 4:40AM!
I lay in bed every morning, watching the news until six o'clock!
I ate breakfasts!
I took long, lazy soaks in the bath instead of snatched 5AM showers.
I read books.
I watched crappy old movies.
I watched NASA TV on the computer and saw the guys doing their spacewalks.
I cooked real meals instead of grabbing sushi on my usual dash for the train.
I wore out my old PS2 (the PS3 is coming at the weekend).
I ate the Easter Bunny.
And an octopus.
I made a great, fat, Dive shaped depression in my sofa.
I walked around the countryside, cycled and made clattering noises in my gym.
I bought way too many books.
I pounded the fuck out of the local kids at snowballs.
All in all I had a splendid time.
I can thoroughly recommend spending a week doing bugger all.
The only thing is, I forgot what a bloody awful thing my commute is …
I just suffered my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to work this morning; driving through snow to get to Norwich; enduring a crawling, uncomfortable two-and-a-quarter hour train journey accompanied by screaming kids (school holidays) and shouting chav parents on their way to the airport for a week's binge-drinking brawl on some benighted Mediterranean isle (these people were chugging back cans of Stella at six in the morning); cramming onto a stinking tube train full of halitosis and B.O. and finally walking through the rain to the office to discover I'd forgotten my security access widget …
It takes a good week of this crap to become immune to the stink of London, to re-acclimatise myself to getting home all sticky and filthy, binning my clothes and leaping into the shower.
Gack!
Repeat: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job …
I took last week off to do the gardens and luckily for me the weather sucked such huge arse that I could do no more than oil the lawnmower.
So I spent the whole week doing fat all.
Wonderful!
The alarms didn't go off at 4:40AM!
I lay in bed every morning, watching the news until six o'clock!
I ate breakfasts!
I took long, lazy soaks in the bath instead of snatched 5AM showers.
I read books.
I watched crappy old movies.
I watched NASA TV on the computer and saw the guys doing their spacewalks.
I cooked real meals instead of grabbing sushi on my usual dash for the train.
I wore out my old PS2 (the PS3 is coming at the weekend).
I ate the Easter Bunny.
And an octopus.
I made a great, fat, Dive shaped depression in my sofa.
I walked around the countryside, cycled and made clattering noises in my gym.
I bought way too many books.
I pounded the fuck out of the local kids at snowballs.
All in all I had a splendid time.
I can thoroughly recommend spending a week doing bugger all.
The only thing is, I forgot what a bloody awful thing my commute is …
I just suffered my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to work this morning; driving through snow to get to Norwich; enduring a crawling, uncomfortable two-and-a-quarter hour train journey accompanied by screaming kids (school holidays) and shouting chav parents on their way to the airport for a week's binge-drinking brawl on some benighted Mediterranean isle (these people were chugging back cans of Stella at six in the morning); cramming onto a stinking tube train full of halitosis and B.O. and finally walking through the rain to the office to discover I'd forgotten my security access widget …
It takes a good week of this crap to become immune to the stink of London, to re-acclimatise myself to getting home all sticky and filthy, binning my clothes and leaping into the shower.
Gack!
Repeat: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job …
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Advertising Feature
It's fucking snowing yet again today. At five this morning I couldn't even find the road so I told the office I'm taking a snow day and went back to bed.
As I really don't have the heart to take any more fucking snow photos, here are a bunch of my favourite Natalie Dee drawings (if anyone isn't already a fan, you can find her here … she rules):
mmmmmmmmmmmm …
Boxes For Dummies
I don't know why this is funny but it just is.
Peahen, why does this remind me of you?
Hoorah for sweary girls who can't cook for shit
'merica … 'nuff said
Ooooooh!
As I really don't have the heart to take any more fucking snow photos, here are a bunch of my favourite Natalie Dee drawings (if anyone isn't already a fan, you can find her here … she rules):
mmmmmmmmmmmm …
Boxes For Dummies
I don't know why this is funny but it just is.
Peahen, why does this remind me of you?
Hoorah for sweary girls who can't cook for shit
'merica … 'nuff said
Ooooooh!
This is your children, blog-moms.
So … another crap filler post, but at least this one makes me giggle.
So … another crap filler post, but at least this one makes me giggle.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Buggrit!
Fuck!
I mean, what the fuck is this?
Did I order "I'm Dreaming Of A White Easter", with Bing Crosby as a fucking singing bunny on skis?
No, I did not.
I know we English folk are famous for complaining about the weather, but I WANT SPRING AND I WANT IT NOW!
Say "Hi" to my forsythia.
And my car roof (I've put the poor thing away in the warm garage now).
And the first snowman to be seen in the village in years.
Mum's had her fair share in Suffolk, too.
I mean, what the fuck is this?
Did I order "I'm Dreaming Of A White Easter", with Bing Crosby as a fucking singing bunny on skis?
No, I did not.
I know we English folk are famous for complaining about the weather, but I WANT SPRING AND I WANT IT NOW!
Say "Hi" to my forsythia.
And my car roof (I've put the poor thing away in the warm garage now).
And the first snowman to be seen in the village in years.Mum's had her fair share in Suffolk, too.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Two Seasons In One Day
Well … So much for the snow.
This was the view of some of my pesky trees seen from my kitchen door a couple of minutes ago.
All of a sudden the sun came out and the snow is almost all gone.
Weird …
This was the view of some of my pesky trees seen from my kitchen door a couple of minutes ago.
All of a sudden the sun came out and the snow is almost all gone.
Weird …
Later That Same Easter Sunday Morning …
The Church is somewhere back there."Eostre": the Saxon festival to celebrate the coming of spring (borrowed by the Christians as it kinda coincides with Passover from time to time).
Yeah, right.
I'm glad I ate the Easter Bunny.
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