I don't remember the square buttons

All being well, as my Granny used to say, Mrs BB and I aim to take a little holiday in a foreign country, starting tomorrow. To mark this I intend to put up a post stuffed full of philosophical potential, something knotty which will leave passers-by testing their intellect and mourning my temporary absence. Trouser flies are my chosen subject.

Recently I ordered some casual trousers online and the world of fashion seems to have turned full circle. No zip, just four buttons. Access to what needs to be accessed is much slower due to the stiff new fabric. Luckily the country we have in mind is quite forgiving about accidents in this area which is just as well.

I was born into a Britain where all flies buttoned. Far more buttons than four, too. Did accidents occur? My lips are sealed.

I am also old enough to remember the buttoned-fly watershed. Starting during the war when Britain was invaded by military personnel whose flies zipped. Americans, of course. Weren’t they capable of a little patience? Hilarity ensued after a spate of medical incidents in which Arizonans and Vermonters had to be separated from their pants. Condign punishment for an unnatural desire to speed things up.

I had no sympathy – until it happened to me. Surely the most hideous male dilemma of all time. Metaphorically speaking, being required to retrace one’s footsteps. A double whammie in the lingo of those who suffered first. Ah my dear member: I envisaged a much better future for you than this.

Thereafter awareness of the zip disappeared. Down and up and one was done. Except for a final stage. Lack of awareness leading to forgetfulness. The gap that is the stigma of old age. There, something to chew on.

Miss Kappelhoffer came a long way

It is fashionable to mock Doris Day. She presently lives on the Carmel Peninsula in California (for which I profoundly envy her) and has latterly devoted her life to animal welfare. It was my impression she'd filled her house with cats but I accept The Crow's correction (see below) that the cats were dogs. As to her singing she’s probably remembered for bouncy inconsequential numbers like The Deadwood Stage, and Ya-Ya Roly Poly Bear. She appeared in a suprisingly wide range of non-singing movies of which intellectuals were wont to complain about the sexual ambiguities implicit in those with Rock Hudson

With the “professional virgin” thesis disposed of, I thought the Day/Hudson movies were quite witty, but that’s another matter. What is criminal is that her voice might be forgotten. A very precise and lovely instrument indeed capable of handling dross (A Bushel and a Peck), trades union negotiations (Seven and a Half Cents), great thirties standards (Bewitched, A Foggy Day, I’m Beginning to See the Light) and much more. It was said she sounded too healthy, too happy to be a great singer but, for goodness sake, she did Hollywood films.

Away from rank commercialism she could move me as much as Ella, Sarah or Peggy and she was just as technically accomplished. Still think I’m a sentimental old twerp? Try Fools Rush In, exquisitely accompanied by the Andre Previn Trio – very slow with beautifully sustained, rock-steady tone control. Forget the anatomical impossibility line (“my heart above my head”) and dwell instead on those aching final words “and let this fool rush in.” Despite the richness of the voice the sentiment is expressed modestly, the gentlest of pleas.

Incidentally she is the subject of an excellent biography by A. E. Hotchner who, at the time, had just done Hemingway and thought he was above movie stars. But she said she’d tell him everything and she did.

BB's behaviourism lab

PORSCHE PREPARATIONS Once I’d driven it (see What’s a Good Present for a Hooligan?) I was regaled with stories about the difficulties of organising the project. Like the day Mrs BB inexplicably asked me to come out into the garden to see a withered dahlia while Younger Daughter rifled my wallet indoors, taking away my driving licence needed by the hiring company. And did I realise, I was asked, that my wallet lacked a driving licence for over a week? The two of them crowed about my inferior powers of observation.

Younger Daughter who was due to spend a couple of days with us, drove her Seat to the hirer to pick up the Porsche but was disinclined to take her cairn with her for reasons that can be imagined. Which meant that my first task was to drive YD to her home, 45 minutes away, in the Porsche to pick up the cairn. There must be something anti-canine about Porsches because the cairn appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown during the return.

CAKE QUESTION Elder Daughter and Peter stayed with us over my birthday celebrations and I was getting ready to take them to the bus station for their return to Luton when I was suddenly visited by a question I needed to put to Mrs BB.

How long does it take her to create those little cakes/buns that are done in paper cups?

Such questions arrive randomly but it’s no use telling Mrs BB that; she prefers to read between my non-existent lines and look for non-existent reasons. Thus I drove to the bus station (less than two miles), called in at Tesco’s filling station to pick up The Guardian, found they’d run out, drove back across the road to the main store, bought one there and then drove home. And you can guess what lay gently steaming in the kitchen when I opened the door. (Enhanced only with raisins I should add; the picture above came from Google).

“Have one while it’s hot,” said Mrs BB triumphantly. Delicious. But I must insist – however futile my insistence – that self-interest played no part in the question. Such questions crop up in my mind almost daily and the answers are filed away for random use (often in the novel) weeks or months into the future.

The answer is, by the way, twenty-five minutes

Booze isn't the only option

From eight of us round the coffee table (seen here, ten hours later) eight monologues rose in gathering incoherence. Soon Rusty Nails (scotch and Drambuie) would be served and thereafter madness. I asked: “Doctors. Men or women?” and for ten minutes I had their attention.

OS surprised me: “War correspondents. Women! It’s gotta be that hard one on the BBC.” Meaning Orla Guerin already mentioned on WW. Somebody said: “Priests?” and Peter, PB’s partner, said monosyllabically, “Men.” but he is of RC stock. I considered ski instructors. Mine had been Swiss and in all that mattered – build, seriousness, strength of leg, stubbornness – the sexes were indistinguishable.

OS admitted to reading more books by women than by men but we agreed this was an unfruitful comparison. A host of trades and professions – dentist, soccer player, police-person, politician – slid by gaining raucous single-word judgements which I failed to memorise.

The next morning Mrs BB and I vacated our bed early so that a young couple, who’d occupied couches, could take over. Peter was already up, reading his Kindle in the garden. I acquired pen and paper and returned to my first love, interviewing.

Doctors? Mrs BB: “I’d rather a female doctor was talking about my female bit (sic).” Peter: “It’s different for me. But then I’m not sure I’d want a man messing about with…”

News presenters? Mrs BB: “Female. Because I like Fiona Bruce and I don’t think women get as much cherishing.”

Taxi drivers? Peter: “I was going to say men but I know a woman (driver). She’s scary and she’d kill me if I said men.”

Prime minister? Mrs BB: “Oh male! The only female was an absolute disaster.”

A rowdy party? Call in BB to damp things down

What's a good present for a hooligan?

In future I need to take more care about casual remarks. Twice while holidaying in France this year I mumbled to myself “I’d like to try out a Porsche some day.” unaware I’d been overheard. Yesterday I opened my front door to find a 22-year-old Porsche Carrera at my beck and call for the day. Thanks to Mrs BB, OS and PB. Yet my birthday is still two days away.

Thereby hangs a tale. Insurance companies take a dim view of old fools in Porsches and the cut-off age is 76; at present I’m 75. OS pointed out that the Carrera is as old as granddaughter Bella but certain cars do age graciously. Old men become incontinent, old Carreras become classics.

Parts of the Carrera are woefully antique. The dashboard is utterly non-ergonomic, starting the engine requires the brief but irritating insertion of a chip, the convertible body creaks and groans, at slow speeds the steering is as heavy as that of an oil tanker, and the unassisted brake pedal ideally requires both feet.

But the faster you go the more responsive things get. Not only does the car gobble up corners as if on rails, it invites you to accelerate round them. The lazy 217 bhp engine makes a noise like a washing machine (greatly disturbing OS’s cairn terrier) while you and Mr Toad struggle continuously for control of the steering wheel.

Took a little drive via Golden Valley to Hay-on-Wye, and the hills were alive with an engine beat that belonged to my youth. Speed, said Aldous Huxley, is the only new vice of our modern age. D’accord. Hay has the most beautifully located car-park in Britain: spot the Carrera.

Seduction for the elderly

Some music arrives by the back door.

When I was still in my editorial pomp a Swiss businessman, who had better remain anonymous, spent a good deal of his company cash currying my favour. Got me tickets to Glyndebourne, accompanied me to the Paris Opera for Berg’s Wozzeck, dined me at Le Grand Véfour (then a Paris three-star), chatted about his Ferrari and about his vintage violin on which he played Bach. We got on. I sent him LPs by Solomon, piano master of Beethoven’s slow movements, and he urged me to try Notturno by the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck.

Schoeck who died in 1957 is modern-ish but not oppressively so. Notturno, for string quartet and voice (baritone in my case), incorporates settings of four German poems. I bought the LP, played it once, didn’t take it in, let it languish. A decade later I transferred my LPs to CDs and thereby re-discovered Notturno. Gentle, reflective, predominantly minor-key, it’s a small masterpiece; it’s playing now and the German word traurig (sad) recurs. Perfect music for someone of my age and disposition.

I wrote thanking him for this late-flowering piece and he phoned me back. Meanwhile Notturno shuffles its way into my consciousness. Again, this is not a recommendation: too much would have to come together for that. Just a celebration of how things can happen and hopes of further Notturno moments for all of us.

NOVEL Nineteen out of twenty chapters subjected to first-pass revision: result 6579 words (out of the original 119,154) have bit the dust. I feel cleaner for it.

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.

Ahead in an over-crowded race

Know what you’re thinking. Lurid paperbacks proffered by that fearfully pretentious BB who likes to boast about Ulysses and Proust. Indeed. One point: these titles, mostly secondhand, were gathered lovingly throughout the world via Abe Books and all have been re-read. My discovery.

Ross Thomas, an American, died in 1995. Wikipedia refers to “his witty thrillers that expose the mechanisms of professional politics.” A narrow view but you get an idea from jobs he’s held: “public relations specialist, reporter, union spokesman, political strategist in the USA, Bonn and Nigeria.” He writes about power and its misuse, but not all the time. As to “witty” there are clues in some of the titles: The Fools In Town are on our Side, Twilight at Mac’s Place, and Ah, Treachery!

His men and women get on with the job, don’t complain, hide their intellect, feature in labyrinthine plots, hover on the brink of irony. They travel around and there’s always a sense of place.

As with his predecessor, Dashiell Hammett, Thomas’s dialogue says a lot in almost no words at all. Here’s Chinaman’s Chance:

“Was he evil?”
“Evil. That's not a word I use much.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t suppose he was. Or is.”
“What he did, he did because he thought he was right.”
Durant shook his head. “He didn’t just think it; he knew it.”
“But he wasn’t was he?”
“Well, he’s in jail,” Durant said.
“But that doesn’t mean we were right.”
“No,” Durant said, “it means we got away with it.”
“And that’s what counts.”
“Usually.”

There’s a reason I’m not recommending Thomas: if you tried him and didn’t like him, it might change our relationship.