Gloam is where the heart is

I'm typing this at seven minutes to four in the afternoon, and it's virtually pitch black out.  You certainly wouldn't be able to negotiate a country lane without a miner's helmet on, not unless you like being run over by threshing machinery, that is.

Still, onwards and upwards.  I'm off out for a drink with former colleagues this evening, and it's good weather for gathering together in a cosy boozer on the banks of the Thames to share a couple of mugs of foaming mother's ruin with friends.  It's starting to feel like Christmas already.  And, let us face facts, Xmas is a bacchanal.  I know the Pope or Aled Jones would have you believe otherwise, but don't listen to them; the pagan festival that takes place at the end of the year, with all its attendant dancing, boozing and rutting, far far predates the arrival of Christianity.  The church simply chose to hitch its star to winterval's wagon.  So, be in no doubt, it's all about the carousing.  Happy Christmas - debase yourself.

The only downside to this season is its length.  Everyone is clammering to get drinks in the diary - former colleagues, relatives, old school friends, tramps I once gave money to - everyone.  This makes matters a little cluttered.  In a couple of weeks' time for example I've got carols (and drinks) on Tuesday, drinks with former colleagues on Wednesday, work's Xmas do on Thursday and a shindig at the neighbours' place on Saturday.  That leaves Friday free, and Friday, as everyone do be know, is pub night.  Phew is right.  I'm getting bilious just typing out the schedule.

Croak a computer

Mrs O attempted to turn on our aged and infirm Macintosh computer the other day, and instead of wearily booting, it coughed up some digital blood and shuffled off this mortal etc.  This is no massive surprise as it's had a good desktop innings.  Unfortunately, as JL pointed out to us before being shot by a maniac, life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans.  In accordance with this law, I had been planning to back-up the Mac for some time.  I didn't.  I must point out by way of mitigation, however, that I am a shiftless and an idle man, so it's not my fault.

Needless to say really, there's a ton(ne) of stuff inside the cadaver of the machine that I'd quite like to get back - music, photos and other bits of electronic flotsam.  In desperation I had a quick trawl of the web, and there might, just might, be a chance that the system unit has been overwhelmed by dust, which is why it's refusing to start - the digital equivalent of having shit in the carburetter, if you will.  So in the tradition of devil-may-care British idiocy I decided to take it to pieces and hoover its guts, in the hope this might give it another six months of poor quality wheezing (ahem) life.

I've completed the first part.  I dismantled it on Monday, following some thankfully very comprehensive instructions that some jolly egg had posted on-line.  I then wedged in the thinnest nozzle in the Dyson arsenal and gave it a good old suck.

Tonight comes the final part, the reassembly.  And, frankly, if it works, I'll eat my hat and coat.  Still, stranger things have happened I suppose.  I just can't think of one.

The North-South Divide - define your terms

I've been pondering the north/south divide.  The reason for the ponderage is that I don't believe it exists - not in the simplistic and rather offensive way the term implies anyhoos.

If you're not from England, a quick precis is in order.  The north is an ill-defined and loose coalition of disaffected English people who hate "the south", and believe that "the south", and southerners generally, have got it in for them, and that this displeasure manifests itself by their hoarding all the money and coal at the country's disposal for their own ends.

Now, the first problem with this north/south thing is that no-one from the south (myself included) believes "the south" to exist.  We do not define ourselves as southerners; the demographics of southern England are far too complicated and diverse for us to do that.  What possible overarching sense of self links me, a Londoner, and a farmer from Somerset?

Also, it ignores the geographical arbitrariness of the designation.  Penzance is 400 miles west of Ipswich; these are wildly different places.  One looks like the west of Ireland; the other looks like The Netherlands.  Penzance is in Cornwall, the poorest county in England.  Ipswich is commutable distance from London.  But according to the orthodoxy of the NSD, they are of a piece - southern, and, therefore, equally guilty of raping the north.

Sheffield, on the other hand, is 180 miles from London, but is apparently a victim of the south's economic conspiracy.  The logic would appear, then, to rest on not absolute distance from London, but the degrees of latitude crossed by that distance.  Longitude has no bearing on the matter (pun intended).  What absolute sheight.

Also, whither the midlands?  Are they in the north?  Generally they're not considered to be.  But they're certainly not in the south either.  No Black Country denizen would thank you for suggesting that he or she is a southerner.  But all would agree that they fit the material criteria: north of the capital, former industrial heartland of England, laid low by de-industrialisation and recession.

This implies that the north is a cultural construct.  That also explains why the Scots and the Welsh aren't counted.  As far as the Scots are concerned, the northern English are just the same as the rest of us.

And the final point is this.  The term assumes that southerners contrive to do down northerners.  This fails to recognise that the south is home to plenty of northerners.  If the south gets more money than other regions, it is due to this economic internal migration as much as anything.  The south east of England is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Boys and their toys

I bought a new bike on Saturday.  I'd been planning to for ages.  My commuting bike of the last 12 years finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, so I had a bike-shaped hole in my collection.  I did think (briefly) about not replacing it.  The Mrs and I had a purge of our belongings during the summer.  We also rejigged the furniture, which made the old homestead feel rangy and splendid.  Whilst I was caught up in hysteria this engendered, I thought it might be nice to thin out the number of velocipedes cluttering the downstairs.  The mood passed, however.

In fairness, I do (I suppose) need two bikes.  Should one develop a mechanical, then I always have another at my disposal, which is reassuring.  They are tools, rather than playthings for me.

The funny thing about making major purchases like this is that it doesn't excite me anymore.  When I was younger, I used to sweat cheddar finding the money for guitars and stuff.  I'd salt away tiny amounts of cash whenever I could.  I remember I used to walk down to my building society branch late at night and stare at the balance on the cash point machine, just to give myself a little frisson; my dream was getting nearer.  And on the day of the purchase itself, I'd spring out of bed hours before the shops were open and spend the morning pacing the up and down like an expectant father.

I remember in particular the joy I felt when I bought my first good guitar, a 1974 Fender Stratocaster.  After getting it home, I would sit and stare at it for hours, such was my love for it.  This was in 1986.  About four years ago, nearly a quarter of a century after that initial guitar purchase, I had occasion to buy another good guitar.  I was playing in a band with friends at the time and needed to upgrade my machine.  This experience was the polar opposite of that mid-eighties one.  I had tons of money, so I trundled up the Denmark St, tried out a few guitars, found the one I wanted, slapped down the money and simply waltzed home with it.

Even as I minced up the Charing Cross Road with it en route to the tube station, I was aware of the disappointing contrast with my teenage self walking back to Mum and Dad's with that strat.  Age and money had made me unshockable.  I could buy any production guitar in the world without feeling the financial impact, and that was the difference.  Also, the later guitar wasn't charged with future possibility and aspiration.  It was simply a rather nice object that allowed me to indulge a much-loved hobby, just like my new bike.  Sigh...

Grimble gromble hatstand

I'm not sure what's happening today, blog wise.  I've found by rereading my diary that I've started dropping into a very prescriptive form for my daily entries.  The weather first, followed by how busy I am at work, followed by my route home and ending up with what's on the telly.  There's no scope for empty-headed scat scribbling within this highly-structured form.  I need, therefore, to break its face with a forearm smash of art terrorism.

When I was younger (i.e. at any time prior to now) I used to be so tired and hungover when filling in brer diary that my musings would meander wherever they saw fit.  This was useful because rereading it was like reading the thoughts of a dissolute stranger, who just so happened to be inhabiting my body at the time as I was using it.  This is as exhilarating as its sounds.  But as I've aged, I've become more and more bound by bourgeois routine.  And the old BR absolutely hates improv.

This is age creeping up on one of course.  However, I'm a great believer that age-appropriate behaviour is conditioned - nurture rather than nature.  Given this, it is possible to override it.  I shall do this using positive affirmation and hyperventilation.

Who steals my verse steals trash...

I haven't written any poetry for a while, if one can refer to several years as a while.  As with most things, it's a question of context.  But anyways.  The thing with poetry, in my experience, is to set yourself a technical brief and then see what subject matter these strictures suggest to the unconscious.  And don't be afraid to swear if you feel it's artistically justified.  Only one-nation Tories dislike swearing, so use it as you see fit.

I'm really flagging at the moment - both physically and mentally.  Luckily, I've managed to lift myself out of this fug by reading Scott Adams' blog.  It really restores one's belief in the basic worth of humanity.  I often get down due to feeling isolated.  My isolation stems from a fundamental disinterest in the things that most people seem to find fascinating and/or important.  Reading SA's blog helps to dispel the myth that everyone on the mothership is like this.  Most are, yes, the vast majority in fact, but not all.  And that fact gives me hope.

And so to bed...

Rhine, women and song

Mrs O and I are fresh back from a weekend in Berlin.  It was one of those exhilarating lightning-quick city breaks, the kind of thing that convinces to you give adult life a second chance.  We both clambered on the plane home yesterday afternoon with a feeling of unfinished business.  We didn't stop once the whole time we were there, but still left with the feeling that we'd only scratched the surface of this fascinating place.  

So - we've resolved to go back.  We're also going to get some rudimentary German under our belts.  We're not setting our aim too high, just the ability to order food and drink in a reasonably fluent manner would be nice.  Mrs O studied German at school, which is useful because she has the vocab, albeit buried.  But I'm a complete novice.  I find it sufficiently close to English to make listening comprehension fairly easy, however, so that's half the battle won.  French, which I speak reasonably well, is a nightmare in this regard.  I find it murderously difficult to follow people's responses to me in France.  I'm hopeful that German will be less tortuous on the English ear.  

Another benefit of German is that now and again you encounter the oh-so pleasing instance of a German phrase that is exactly the same as its English cousin, albeit with a more sinister accent.  "Brown beer" or "all in order?" are examples of this charming phenomenon.

It's funny too that one feels a certain unspoken affinity with other northern European races.  The Dutch, the Germans and the English are very much cousins as far as outlook and society is concerned.  And, cliche though it is, I always feel comforted when in Germany because things are so well organised.