Talk is cheap; some talk's cheaper

Sneering at mobile phone users appears to be waning. Perhaps most of us now have mobiles and have discovered that the sentence “I’m on the train” is not inherently funny.

I only experience mass phoning on my rarish trips to see Plutarch at the Blogger’s Retreat in London (as yesterday). And then it’s the quality of what’s said that disturbs me. Clearly it’s time to update Thoreau (“Most men lead lives of unfortunately audible desperation.”) since one can’t help worrying about the homes such utterers return to. TV commercials must come as a great comfort. Is that a sneer? I suppose it is.

The saddest call I ever overheard was of a salesman failing to make a sale. Since I depended on space salesmen to finance the magazines I worked for, I had some sympathy with this troubled fellow. But I would have wished him better selling technique. Too many responses started with “Perhaps if we… “

That’s why it was unexpected, yesterday, to hear the following from a bearded guy across the aisle who laughed delightedly throughout:

“That’s a philosophical question.”
XXX
“I’ll put you on the loudspeaker if you aren’t careful.”
XXX
“I hope some people ended up with bloody noses.”
XXX
“It’s good to hear from you; how are you in yourself?”
XXX
“That goes for my wife as well.”
XXX
“And didn’t your immediate boss inform him?”

Fill in the Xs and there’s a short story. Alas I have longer fish to fry.

Profit from my mistakes

The perfect comment? Does it exist? Here are some of my imperfect comments deconstructed.




Great post! Great pix! Great philosophy! Meaning: I haven’t got the hang of blogging, I’m still into post-cards.

Loved your photo of the Grand Canyon. The white dot in the corner is in fact a 1997 Harley Davidson, the one with the power-operated kickstand. Meaning: I am unaware of natural beauty and am fixated on steel things that go broom-broom.

(0) Meaning: I am an inoffensive wading bird. I have left a footprint soon to washed away by the tide. Plus a neat pile of waste products. I shall now fade away.

My grandson Zach… Meaning: They’ll never love me but they may love him.

In 1947, when we ate stewed pebbles twice a week for lunch… Meaning: Deprivation and old age – an unbeatable plea for sympathy.

Your post about Barbara Cartland’s views on chivalry didn’t go far enough. You will remember in Ulysses when Bloom meets Dedalus… (Five hundred words later) … which goes to prove Joyce’s pre-eminence. Meaning: It’s been five weeks since I reminded people I’ve read Ulysses.

Ca va sans dire. Meaning: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Rebutting this thesis, Heidegger said… Meaning: Even if you haven’t got it, flaunt it.

The bottle was a touch pricey at… Meaning: Flaunt it in another way.

The pouches under my eyes… Meaning: I’m so self-effacing.

I banged my head on the beams inside. Meaning: But I’m physically impressive.

Celebrating the flexibility of language

A handy Newspeak decoder.

UNACCEPTABLE Entity the government dislikes but for unspoken reasons (eg, the presence of oil, uncommitted voters, muslim bad feeling) refuses to condemn. The larger the entity, the more risible the adjective. As with: The behaviour of the serial killer who murdered half of Camden Town is clearly unacceptable.

UNCOMPETITIVENESS Result of imposing any form of restriction on the banks. Mass unemployment is felt to be a small price to pay for avoiding this.

REPATRIATION Historically the act of returning people to their homeland. Now used to include human remains and various vague abstractions thought to have been stolen from Britain by the European Union.

NATIONAL TREASURE Elderly celebrity (usually male and with a full head of hair) who has avoided controversy for ten years and is just this side of twenty-four-hour care.

GROWTH Any measurement of the national economy that doesn’t show decline.

OPENLY GAY Gay. Since secretly gay is a sexual preference that cannot be referred to.

DEBT Sum of money that is owing. Sovereign debt: similar but larger.

FEMINISM Much diminished campaign to achieve women’s rights. Now applied by rightwing press to any complaint by any woman about anything.

FUNDAMENTALIST Informal singing group subscribing to the values expressed in a small number of carefully selected Old Testament texts.

WIND FARM Ironically labelled collection of large propellors from which very little is harvested. The system is switched off when wind conditions become ideal.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING Ritualistic event whereby trades union officials receive from an employer a list of members being made redundant.

HOORAY! HOORAY! Granddaughter Ysabelle, now a degree holder, has a job. Modest title, modest pay. But a job.

Picture. BB now rises at 6.30 am to pursue writing career. View from his window.

Did we set the world to rights? No

Nothing sadder than an empty. This sloe gin from Lucy should have been traded for a jar of Mrs BB’s marmalade. But we were less happily engaged during the narrow 2010 marmalade-making window and anyway Lucy made her own marmalade that year. I offered (sort of) to return the bottle but Lucy said it was OK. The sloe gin was multi-layered and adult in flavour which was to be expected, given the source.

Ginned up yesterday I reflected on meeting blogging acquaintances. One bonus is that the stage-setting questions (When? Why? How?) can be junked because both sides know the answers. With Lucy the introductory/felicitative phase added up to zero: she phoned us at 7.30 am then dropped into our car an hour or so later. In both cases it was like resuming a conversation broken off ten minutes previously.

No time to wonder whether we would get on because “getting on” was already happening. Engine noise precluded plane chat and interrupting the Lumix would have been cultural vandalism. At lunch I may have prepared several devastating questions but already Tom and I were wallowing in the RAF and electronics. For the Mol-walk afterwards we split into same-gender couples and lo we were soon saying goodbye.

Where had it all gone? Of course there were remembered characteristic flashes, exchanges which confirmed, IMHO, things were working as they should but – goodness me! – it seemed we had devoted ourselves entirely to pleasure. And my knowledge of Rilke hadn’t advanced a bit. Shame, really. Query: Are the best social encounters those that pass in a blur?

NOVELS Gorgon Times - with several agents (three have turned it down). A Stall Recovered – now being assessed by Plutarch. Blest Redeemer – 1423 words.

Ambassador to the nasty bits

Orla Guerin, BBC TV war correspondent, an enthusiasm shared with Mrs BB.

A flattering photo. Skeletal Orla, with panda eyes, weighs seven stones (98 lb) and is daughter to one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – take your pick. Her Northern Ireland accent is quite different from the romantic mush uttered south of the border and is, alas, forever associated in Anglo ears with two decades of bombings, impromptu executions and internecine political warfare between extreme Republicans and those who ironically call themselves Loyalists in that troubled province west of the Isle of Man.

We first noticed her in Israel, intent on evolving into a corporeal symbol of that agonised stretch of sand and dissension, forcing us night after night to avoid being blasé about irreconcilables. Abruptly, when on the verge of dying from sheer compassion, she turned up (I think) south of Zimbabwe trying to make sense of Robert Mugabe. Was this a BBC joke, a sort of holiday? Seems the Israelis had kicked her out for over-sympathising with the Palestinians. Can one over-sympathise?

Thereafter floods in Bangladesh, refreshing forays into Afghanistan, disasters in central African states and… I’ve lost count. Presently wearing a flak-jacket she’s reporting the Libyan rebels. Why are we touched? Because she puts herself in harm’s way and has the capacity to lower that unpromising accent into a groan of suppressed rage about man’s inhumanity to man. She couldn’t be less glamorous but then stars don’t need glamour.

GORGON TIMES “I do think you write well, but I think it would be quite hard to place - I'm just not convinced it would catch the eye of the editors of literary lists, which is where I think its market would be.” Anne Williams, agent.

Denied a mobile I deconstruct

Driving away from the toils of the garden centre I look for catharsis and find it in the deconstruction of hymn libretti. Here’s: Oh God Our Help in Ages Past, verse four.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night,
Before the rising sun.

The urge to embellish meaninglessly; the second simile evokes a shorter period of time than the first. So why bother with the first?

Eternal Father Strong to Save (ie, For Those in Peril on the Sea) contains a bit of the Town and Country Planning Act:

Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep.

Amazing! The sea apparently defined its own boundaries. And, alas, the bidding didn’t work. Yet as I sing the hymn my throat contracts with emotion; this is a noble tune, I’ll reserve my banderilla for something else.

My final example requires no deconstruction or, for that matter, any further comment:

A message came to a maiden young;
The angel stood beside her,
In shining robes and with golden tongue,
He told her what would betide her.

By now the car is in my own driveway and catharsis is complete. I have passed into the state that follows: the exact word escapes me but it is characterised by a desire to post.

Intra-world travel

From Belmont, my Hereford home, to The Blogger’s Retreat, central London, is 145 miles. Lunch is at 12.30 so I rise at 06.40 rather than 09.00. I’m angry I didn’t prepare things and thus avoid disrupting Mrs BB who may or may not be asleep. Picking up keys noiselessly from the table is impossible.

A cold dawn. I snap the 75 bus but, worried the driver might think I’m a time and motion spy, or a copper’s nark, I explain the camera. More shots in Hereford’s deserted centre because of the stillness. Time for a warming Americano at the station buffet where I’m asked if I want milk. Wouldn’t be an Americano.

Low-level winter sun hinders reading The Guardian on the two-carriage diesel out of Hereford in which the loudspeakers pronounce Cymbran with Welsh punctilio. At Newport a moment of uncertainty boarding the London Paddington train (ie, going east) minutes after a Manchester Piccadilly train (ie, going north) has left from the same platform.

A socially disdavantaged man at Didcot Parkway is taking train numbers. In my extreme youth I did that.

The last leg, by bus, is about three miles and I’ve ninety minutes in hand. But it isn’t enough. Students are revolting. I leave the bus in Regent Street, cut through Soho, cross Leicester Square, pass St Martins-in-the-Fields and jog along The Strand. Five minutes late! But then there’s champagne, chicken korma and a world of talk.

ANTHEM
Tune: Onward Christian Soldiers

Linked by broadband magic
Oz to Prague and back
Famous for erratic
Service, curries, craic*

As to conversation
It’s the tops my dears
Nation speaks to nation
Drenched in Asian beers

Bloggers seeking respite
Join in the elite
Exercise your blog-right
Lunch at The Retreat.

*Craic is Irish - a state of happy stimulation

Dreaming all the while of Hobe Sound

Oh joy! All the way from Hobe Sound, Florida (An address, I suspect, more glamorous than the place itself.) comes my XXXL Super Soft Henley nightshirt, coloured Forest Green and made in India. Discovered by The Crow who from now on can fulfil all my clothing needs.

As the arms suggest a US XXXL is a mite bigger than a British XXXL and covers the body weight range 251 – 310 lb (18 – 22.14 stones). To Rouchswalwe’s chagrin the Henley’s neckline plunges deeply enough to make undoing the cleavage buttons unnecessary. And before anyone concludes Yorkshire people go to bed in their socks this was purely a photographic session, thanks to Occasional Speeder. Mrs BB is broadly favourable and says I’m welcome to her bed thus clothed.

The PJs were unearthed at La Redoute, the mail-order company, by OS some days after The Crow’s email about Wittmann Textiles. My thanks to everyone whose spirited responses temporarily boosted declining interest in Works Well.

WORKS WELL’S WORLD Looked at your blog’s statistics recently? There’s a facility for eliminating the owner’s own hits, so who were the 36 others flitting untraceably through WW yesterday when only one comment was logged in? Odder still is a list of five of my posts, the oldest dating back July 29, 2008. These appear to be random and four record very modest numbers of pageviews, well below the average of 12 for all posts since WW was born. A world map reveals WW’s limited (but very select) audience with a tiny blob just south of Alaska; brief reflection identifies this as Vancouver, home of Marja-Leena , a very early WW link.

A musical morsel

I don’t care for Verdi’s operas, for anything by Khachaturian (especially the Sabre Dance), for Bizet’s Carmen or for le tout Berlioz. But none of my blind spots are interesting since I am a musical ignoramus. What’s fascinating is when someone who knows music says “I don’t like…”

Julia did music at uni and limbers up regularly at the piano. Months ago I tried to get her to blog about music but she refused. With an apprehensive Mrs BB at my side when we were in Prague, I asked Julia why. Seems she has friends who are professional musicians and fears their critical reaction. I sighed, said it was a terrible waste, suggested she was denying her elitism – all the usual journalistic ploys.

But Julia is not a natural refuser. She pondered then let slip a morsel – about Mozart yet. In playing string quartets (You didn’t imagine she was limited to the keyboard, did you?) she’d noticed WAM’s cello writing wasn’t up to much. Bingo! We both agreed this was a price he’d had to pay for ennobling so many soprano roles in his operas. With Beethoven things are the other way round; his sublime quartets were paid for by an inability to come to terms with the human voice, except in the Prisoners’ Chorus.

An important discovery not otherwise available to an ignoramus. Retired fifteen years now, I still have this urge to pry. Mrs BB hates it when I do. I tell her it will be harder next time.

PRAGUE PERSIFLAGE. Lunch on periphery of Old Town: half a duck, red cabbage, potato dumplings – Czk 205 (say £7). No need for dinner but somehow I forced it down.

Text, with added value

Unlike Rick who came to Casablanca for the waters (Police Chief: But there are no waters here. Rick: I was misinformed.) the BBs came to Prague to hear/see opera and were not misinformed. Good music at half London prices. The initial target of four had to be cut down to Figaro (fine ensemble in small Estates Theatre with limited onstage resources) and Magic Flute (State Opera House; directorial flaws; first-rate Papageno and Pamina). A marionette version of Don Giovanni was avoided, possibly due to prejudice.

In the daytime we were guided electro-magnetically by Julia who enhanced her Prague Polymath status. Discouraged by Sunday crowds at the Castle we accepted her default and stared tranquilly at the handwritten conductor’s score of Beethoven Five in nearby Lobkowski Palace. The following day, as a further antidote to excess humanity, a text (Julia texts as naturally as breathing, but much more quickly) directed us to an all-embracing cliff-top view of the Vltava and an adjacent cemetery containing Dvorak, Smetana, Capek and Neruda.

Tomorrow again, as we stood bemused by a string of cubist Picassos at the National Gallery another text arrived at midday suggesting we lunch at the Bohemian Bagel “just across the road”.

Text-Julia is witty, sympathetic and ever on tap. Real-life, three-dimensional Julia offers fiercely fast conversation driven by enthusiasm over a Wikipedia range. Unsurprisingly polymathic, of course, but she listens with equal intensity and that’s unbeatable. And her husband answered my bedevilled question about Henry James in a couple of gentle and concise sentences. The best holidays are not architecture but people over dinner.

Don't draw it, shout in my ear

Entering the loo of an unfamiliar restaurant or filling station I am often beset with uncertainty: which door for fellas and which for the other lot? I’m a wordsman, proud to know the meaning of riparian - prehistoric man responded to pictures but for me their message is non-immediate. Especially when heavily stylised (see inset).

At 70 mph my doubts become riskier (see above). Because journalists are told to eschew exclamation marks (screamers) I ponder their justification at the roadside when I should be stamping on the brake. The tee-boned car graphic raises the question of verb tense: “Has happened.” or “Will happen” The hare seems fast enough to look after itself. While the car sign is as useful as a warning about oxygen in the air.

But God forbid I should ever have to wrestle with the philosophical implications of the unavailable T-junction. My first interpretation was “Do a U-turn” but does the red diagonal forbid the reverse direction as well? I mention these things on behalf of a dying minority – aged literates.

SUPERIOR SPAM? My new AV software, Kaspersky, has just blocked an attempt by Cambridge University Press to sell me the works of Ruskin. I need to think hard about this.

EBOOK TRIUMPH Plutarch is re-reading GORGON TIMES to check how I’ve responded to his suggestions. He points out, quite gently, that digesting 100,000 words via a computer monitor is not easy. So I’ve loaded the MS on to my Sony ebook reader and posted it to him. He reports it’s now “easier to make notes” suggesting the publishing world may have to wait a little longer for this masterpiece.

Coreopsis has set in, says Dr P

My 387 th post and I note the ebbing away of the blog’s felicity, inventiveness and entertainment value. Proof there is only so much stuff to go around and since September 21 2009 it’s gone to my other mistress. Special pleading? The inbred West Riding whinge? Guilty, m’lud.

Here’s Dr Plutarch reminding me why I need to work harder. “You seem worried, sometimes unnecessarily, about saying the obvious in this book.” It’s true. Would I rather be accused of being obvious or obscure? The latter it seems. Actually it’s “sometimes unnecessarily” that spurs me on.

Dr P again. “I have to admit going to the dictionary (to check ‘obloquy’). Is there a simpler word?” There is, of course. And I should also verify “smarty-boots”.

And again. “X and Y have no children. Is this worth explaining or reflecting upon?” First reaction: I said I’d explained this. Second reaction; On re-reading what I’d written I saw the opening for a useful addition. Third reaction: As a result of writing this useful addition I saw a further opportunity for a 1500-word passage in a new penultimate chapter I have yet to write.

Finally. The need for that new penultimate chapter was suggested by… Dr P!

But don’t get the wrong impression - these are not complaints. I am lucky Dr P is willing to work so hard on my behalf. But that’s as nothing compared with the fact that his suggestions immediately ring a sonorous bell of recognition in me. He’s right. Why then isn’t Dr P writing the book himself? Perhaps his blog commenters should launch a campaign.

So, as I’ve said before the blog suffers. Ars Gratia Artis as the MGM lion still roars.

Wit or meaning?

Words can creep up on you, carry you off. Lucy recently had visitors and admitted her batteries needed recharging. But ended her post with: “Lovely to see them, withal.” No prizes for guessing the abductive word. The dictionary stigmatises it as archaic and offers two meanings: besides and nevertheless - quite a close two-horse race. My untutored view is it works because the sentence is short and the effect comes at the end, like a mini whip-crack. I’d like to use it myself but I’ll have to wait. Currently I’m overshadowed.

Just recently I’ve been road-testing forsooth. This is doubly stigmatised as archaic and/or humorous. It means indeed but like that word it can be used sarcastically. Parvenu: We’ve just exchanged our Peugeot for a Bentley. Clever-Clogs (or if you like, Journalist): A Bentley, forsooth! Normally I’m proscriptive but the screamer is, I think, justified. I file posts like this under Anti-over-the-moon Substitutes.

WELCOME TO THE CHRISTENING I’ve been discussing the novel’s title with Plutarch. It started out as Con-Rod but that was dropped because it excluded the joint main character. Changing Gear brought in that character via a jeu de mots link but was a little too obvious for my allusive taste. Plutarch frowned on my third attempt, Working Stiffs, and talked about corpses. It’s American and means working class. It’s been scratched subsequently but the text will carry an allusion to the phrase at the very beginning and right at the end.

The subject is relevant given the popularity of Wolf Hall, a title which is almost meaningless to the subject matter. But does that matter? Wolf Hall is short and fairly memorable and that may be enough. Plutarch thinks Working Stiffs might put people off. But it is memorable. Well Employed would work but has it got pizzaz?

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE (SEE BELOW)

Watched Mrs BB prepare Sticky Ginger Cake with Ginger Fudge Icing and was disturbed. I'm Virgo, needing control and tidiness, and recipes don't allow for me. This one required 87½ gm of black treacle (halved from the original) which Mrs BB table-spooned from the tin. Tolerances must have been ±50%. More precision with the butter since the paper packet had lines indicating popular fractions. Worrying work.

NOVEL Dr Plutarch has auscultated and biopsied the MS, done an MMR scan, cardiogram, endoscopy, X-rays and Rohrschach, measured blood pressure and sugar. Vital signs detected. Two months remedial.

FINE DESIGN I stuff the washing machine when I arise. The blue stuff is conditioner, function unknown. However, I approve of the bottle cap. Note the "moat" round the measure. It acts as a catchment and it's almost impossible to spill the liquid.

GOOD READ Finished Wolf Hall. An excellent primer on how to govern a country. Newspaper jokes suggest the book is an intellectual challenge. Not so, it's a good easy read. But the initial pages ominously list the characters. Stuck with the names of real people Hilary Mantel risks confusion since there are several Annes, Jos and Marys. Other than that, dive in (Most commenters to Works Well already have) and thank goodness that a free press, capable of scrutinising rulers, developed two or three hundred years later.

LINGUISTIC STIGMA (Finally it works) Recording my voice to forewarn those hearing it au nature brought unexpected reactions. I felt my accent had virtually disappeared (and good riddance). Others talked about cosy northern tones. I've recorded someone else's sonnet, rehabilitating the accent. Click here for UNCOSINESS

Brooding at the crematorium

Went to a funeral today. My solitary suit, a light grey, mini-tweed bought for my daughter’s wedding (see inset - photo credit Sir Hugh) was out of place, as were my thoughts. Despite being urged I was unable to offer thanks to a god who, I was told, not only bestowed life but created the brain tumour which capriciously subtracted life from a gentle, sixty-year-old woman both of us rather liked. However I held my peace and did my bit. From memory I bellowed “All things bright and beautiful” and would have done the same for “Love divine, all loves excelling.” had I known the tune.

Such ego-centricity! But for a moment emotion exceeded a sense of duty. I suddenly realised that the frail, hunched figure on the front row was Mavis’s bereaved mother! Natural law should ensure parents never have to attend the funerals of their offspring.

MY NEW computer – swank, swank – was assembled to ease my advancing years. USB is great but I hate feeling through the cat’s-cradle at the back to plug in something new. Instead I have a twin-berth dock at the front into which goes: (a) a four-socket USB hub, (b) a hub for camera and mobile phone cards, (c) a remote hard drive holding all the contents – nearly 9 GB – of my previous computer.

JOHNNY-Come-Lately I am almost through Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”, winner of last year’s Man Booker Prize. Would it have been as popular if it had been straplined “How the Tudors did politics.”? Not everyone raves about politics and re-creating historical events as fiction requires a talent for animating the familiar. Mantel has this talent but Gore Vidal (whom I otherwise admire enormously) doesn’t with his accurate but dull series which includes “Burr,” “Lincoln”, etc. Mantel has one failing – anachronisms such as “cutting a deal”.

FUNERARY ADDENDUM Honesty compels this footnote. Both my sisters-in-law died young and horribly, one of cancer of the spine, the other of motor neurone disease. The former took a year to die and spent it - as a Christian believer - in robust dialogue with the local vicar. Her funeral was High Anglican and the vicar was able to refer to the discussions he had had in some detail. Not that my opinion matters, but I found this acceptable. It was exactly what she wanted and I found myself absorbed by the ritual. My other sister-in-law also had time to consider her funeral and chose a Humanist service with music by Brahms and Simply Red. The eulogy wasn't a eulogy as such, simply a number of observations gathered from her nearest family and presented by a man whose only qualificaion was that he was a Humanist. The event made a direct intellectual appeal to me and I was astonished to find myself discussing the service with an elderly aunt whom I had always regarded as a freethinker (she did chemistry at Oxford when this was a distinctly unfashionable career choice for women) and finding her leaning towards country churches with yews and wisteria. I have to say that both funerals fitted the nature and character of my darling sisters-in-law and that this, in the end, is what matters.

BB speaks through the techno-mist

Recently I confessed to an accent formed during my youth in the West Riding (ie, a part of Yorkshire, one of our grimmer northern counties). Why confessed? Because I for one cannot take anything seriously said in that whining drone suitable only for voicing complaint.

I have already met two bloggers who comment on Works Well and neither was prepared for the accent. Julia says it's time I took a more adult view and provided some kind of warning for other such unfortunates. As a result I have recorded one of my sonnets based on memories of a walk I took over fifty years ago with the woman who was to become Mrs BB.

you may click HERE and discover my angst.

 

How about wearing a burqa?

Dined in Stratford-on-Avon with Mr and Mrs Relucent Reader, Mechanicsville, VA, passing through GB on a whirlwind tour. Such encounters present me with a dilemma. Those who know me only via the blog know me at my best. The fleshy presence is another thing. Apart from talking too loudly and hogging the limelight there is the shock of discovering my utterances on life, art and the material world are megaphoned in a regional accent that is difficult to take seriously.

Would it be kinder to issue my side of the conversation on yellow Post-Its? Or via mobile phone text? Fortunately the RRs were tolerant as well as witty and I had Mrs BB by my side to restrain my wilder impulses. Much of the talk concerned books since the RRs have experience on the other side of the counter, in libraries.

THE NOVEL Still revising but in new ways. Aware that I use “He smiled.” (covering several reactions to something said) and “He nodded.” (Agreement without saying “Yes.”) I wondered if I used them to excess. So I unlimbered MsW’s Find function and went trawling. Yes I do – but not now.

Worried that I had repeated details of Clare’s upbringing too often. This was more difficult so I trawled “parents” and “wealth”. The jury is out, perhaps because the search words are not sufficiently representative.

THE PICTURE Note the date! This wine was created while France was still occupied. I have blogged about this before. My job was to taste this in 1995 on someone else’s behalf. If it was duff he would be charged £450 for the bottle, if OK £550. It was OK

Novel writing - the electronic approach

LANGUEDOC LEISURE
I took tons of improving books to the villa and didn’t read any. Instead I occupied myself (French equivalent: s’amuser) with two well-thumbed Michael Connellys whose work I liken elsewhere to junk constructed in Meccano. However, I did examine my own novel on a Sony ebook reader, trying to see it as another person might.

The initial paragraphs describe a modern, architect-designed office building on a French industrial estate. The Crow suggested these be deleted and the novel start with the first mention of Hatch, the co-central character. Stubbornly I refined my start, and refined it again, unwilling to kill off my literary conceit. And yet it read undigestedly. The ebook reader showed it in a new light and hinted at a solution which might satisfy both The Crow and myself. We’ll see. In the meantime ”Mme le Corbeau, je te félicite. assuming you accept the familiar form of the pronoun.” (Grammatical booboo now changed in last sentence.)

LANGUEDOC LIMITATIONS
Over the fortnight five Iphones were intermittently available at the villa but only one was used briefly to access the Internet. Money was the determinant. Linking up cost £5 but no one seemed sure whether this covered a 12 hr period or a single hit. We were hag-ridden by a report in which someone casually downloaded a couple of films while in France and faced a £6000 bill on returning home. However two Iphones carried Solitaire, the bargain of the century at 59 p for the app, and frequently I drifted off into Solitaire dreamland where the mind works but not a thought emerges.

The sedan chair moves on

Technology was never far away en route to the Languedoc:

CHANNEL TUNNEL Once you bought a ticket via an agent, though never at the site itself. Time moved on and you paid online, received a number, printed it out and presented it at check-in. Time moved on again and the online reservation was confirmed by simply pushing your credit card into a slot. This year – lo! When we arrived at the check-in a read-out said “Welcome, Barrett Bonden” presumably after scanning the car’s number plate.
APING PONTIUS PILATE Washed my hand at the Eurotunnel terminal and faced a hand-dryer made by Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame. Some giddy new principle or other. Unbearable roaring but it did the job. Apparently they’re far from rare. This unit was seen at a café in Millau, beneath the beautiful bridge.

YAH SUCKS BOO Roadwork on the autoroute. But the French soften the blow with an animated sign showing how to switch lanes. Sarkozy 1, Cameron 0.
SATNAV NOT FOR DUMMIES Left Hereford, picked up other half of the entourage and set the satnav for Eurotunnel. Not out of necessity (I’ve done the journey many times) but to give Jane, my preferred satnav voice, some practice. Twenty-five miles from the tunnel Jane was announcing an ETA an hour ahead. Why so slow? In fact one of satnav’s little trickeries. The night before I’d entered some French destinations and forgotten to switch back to the UK mode. As a result the screen was predicting our arrival at the Calais rather than the Folkestone end. Without explaining the bit in between.

The greatest spectator sport

Hay Festival, Woodstock of the Mind according to Bill Clinton, who spoke here several years ago, continues to throw pearls before swine.

As Chief Swine I fell in love with the interpreter to the last three French presidents, explored the Credit Crunch with Mrs Moneypenny of The Financial Times, watched Kazuo Ishiguro discourse gravely on his latest novel (?) Nocturnes, received instructions on being a philosopher from A. C Grayling, was disappointed by Lord Robert Winston on the downsides of science and am now waiting to hear the editor of The Guardian interview Harry Evans former editor of The Sunday Times. More follows.

The star turn was a double-header in which a steely lawyer, Philippe Sands, interviewed first Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former British ambassador to the UN, then Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, present French ambassador to the UK, both involved in the build-up to the Iraq war. The irrestible force meeting two immovable objects as Sands relentlessly yet politely questioned two of the world’s foremost diplomats. You’ve seen all that on telly, you say. Oh no you haven’t.

These weren’t a couple of politicos lying their heads off. In precise words they described how each did everything possible, within their professional remit, to forestall the outbreak of war. Dates, official documents and witness testimony were invoked and the answers arrived in language that was all the more forceful for being emotionless. Judicial theatre at the highest level. Hay – you done it again.

HAY, FINAL DAY (for us). Anthony Beevor: (Stalingrad, Spanish Civil War) How the modern historian works and why the digital age will make things harder. Harold Evans (former Sunday Times editor). Why still-photo journalism matters in this video age; what can and can’t be published. Mike Mansfield (Left-leaning lawyer known for defending unpopular clients). Fuming about that morning’s news re. Israeli attack on aid flotilla. Ian Stewart: An attempt to simplify and popularise maths – total disaster. Martin Evans (Nobel-prize-winning laureate). Why stem cell research matters and what it may lead to.