Hello again. Happy New year to those of you to whom I haven’t
already managed to wish in person. Well, here we are well into 2013, a year
that for me, is brimming with promise and potential. I find myself excited at
the prospects that lie ahead, there’s so much to look forward to; pleasures to
be sampled, tears to be shed - from both good and bad causes, knowledge to be
acquired and new experiences to be had. On top of that, as ever, there will be
news that’ll make us spit feathers (generally the antics of politicians and
people claiming to be celebrities), gasp in amazement at scientific discoveries
(life on Mars?), or laugh out loud (at, say, another Gangnam dance craze).
Whatever, it brings, I sense a year of promise ahead. Inevitably, setbacks
will arise. On balance though, I expect a good year. Don’t know why, I just do.
Life has always brought gifts. Bangs on the nose too of course, but more kisses
than slaps have probably coloured my outlook. I expect undeserved gifts
- all the time, let’s see if this is what transpires. Life continues apace.
Here are a few thoughts on things that came into my field of vision since the
last letter.
I mention ‘tears to be shed…’ above and that makes me think of a
phrase I read today, which is: “Better safe than sorry”. Really? I mean Really?! What an appallingly
pitiful way to justify negativity or dodging life by sitting on the fence. If
you stay safe, then for sure, you won’t make a mistake, won’t look foolish, get
a bloodied nose or skinned knees - but also, you won’t tread the path less
travelled, or learn anything from Life’s capricious twists & turns and body
swerves. Most importantly, you won’t contribute to your mates’ amusement. What kind
of friend are you if you can’t make them laugh once in a while?
On the subject of making mistakes; a poem that my Dad introduced me
to as an 11 year-old was the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám. I read it every now and
again but one quatrain stuck in my mind from all those years ago: “The moving finger having writ, moves on. Not
all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all they tears
wash out a single word of it.”
Such blinding truth - written a thousand years ago by a Persian
poet, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician (strange bedfellows indeed, our
logical and emotional sides - yet still appearing hand in hand regularly throughout
history). However, back to the moving finger…
Far too often for comfort, we act or speak more harshly, more
quickly than is wise. Once the words are out, the deed is done, whatever regrets
prevail in the instant that follows- it’s too late. What’s done is done. You
can’t change it however hard you wish. In other words, don’t have regrets;
accept your mistake or misfortune; move on. What will regret, wishing it hadn’t
happened and indulgent annoyance do? Other than prolong your suffering, not
much. Look ahead, not back.
Which leads me to a philosophy that I have tried to bake into the
New Year Resolutions every year for the last 20 years at least, and that is:
Don’t criticise - Don’t complain - Don’t Apologise - Don’t Explain.
Now, straight off, I have to break the last one by qualifying this
in that I mean ‘Don’t Apologise and Don’t Explain’ unnecessarily. It is
a curiously British trait to assume that you are in the wrong and should start
any conversation with “Sorry”. An apology is warranted once in a while, when,
in your own estimation, you’ve erred - but to start, by default, a conversation,
with an apology - well that’s just pitiful, pathetic and wishy-washy. This
follows on from my last letter where I noted how easily politicians, police,
bankers, cheats and liars apologised for things that they or their predecessors
had done. What an easy way to pretend you care and in doing so, dodge a bullet.
When an apology leads to someone going to jail, then it will have the welcome
and pervading fresh coffee aroma of sincerity. Saying “Sorry” is easy. Meaning
it, now that’s another matter.
However, the Don’t Criticise, Don’t Complain bit holds good. Avoid
those two and your life becomes a lot easier. Now, I’m sure a couple of you at
least will say, “Hang on a tick. You’re always whinging about things”. How
unfair! What I do is comment as an Observer of Life. They’re not criticisms or
complaints per se. I’m surprised you can’t tell the difference.
Naturally, over the Christmas break, there has been a lot of special
TV. One programme that caught my attention was on BBC4, The Best Songs Ever
Written. When I see “The Best Ever (anything)” I smile, as it is usually only an
opinion and therefore questionable as to whether it is truly ‘The Best Ever’.
In this case the rationale was based on using Royalties as a measurement of
quality - which makes some sense. ‘Sales’ are an unreliable guide as we have
more disposable income than, say, 40 years ago. Today’s songs should win easily
if measuring by Sales alone - before considering that record companies have
been known to buy their own songs to distort pop charts. However, if several people
want to record a song you’ve written, then all of those Sales and more importantly,
Performance Royalties, due every time a song is played, are a better yardstick.
It was interesting that melodic love songs dominated the list - White
Christmas, Stand By Me, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, Every Breath You Take,
Unchained Melody et al, but what was most interesting was the runaway winner -
Happy Birthday (not the Stevie Wonder version).
One of my sister’s Christmas presents was an electronic photo frame.
Photos, in our family, have always been important. Our collection has been boosted
by Mum’s B&W pics going back to her days in Burma as a nurse, and Dad’s
love of photography - which he passed on, precipitating the enthusiasm that
you’ll have detected in prior letters. It may be a family thing as my Aussie
cousins also snap away happily and in this digital age, share their treasures freely.
Consequently, I was able to set up a card for her frame that had 600 photos of
our parents, grandparents and the Aussie cousins across the last 10 years.
It’s this setting up of a memory card that I want to talk about.
What a fine game that was. I started by loading photos to a card that steadfastly
refused more than 255 pics, even though there was plenty of space left. This turned
out to be a technical limitation overcome by simply reformatting the card. PCs offer
up to FOUR different format systems, so I chose another, reloaded the pics and
sailed well past 255. I was happy - until the new format, while allowing the
card to load 600 photos, wouldn’t work in the frame. The frame being new, didn’t
like the (old) format system I’d chosen.
More reading of user manuals and no little trial and error, led to
yet another formatting, in what was now a third format system, whereupon all
was fine and dandy and the frame worked perfectly. ('O
frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy. - Jabberwocky: Lewis Carroll). Mimi was
delighted to see so many photos of which she was unaware. These included the
Aussie cousins and Mum & Dad, plus our grandparents and aunts & uncles
- in India in the 50s.
Unfortunately, the same 600 photos going around and around soon
palls, so I set about loading some new ones to a USB memory stick. This time I
was aiming for about 1000 and loaded 1087; memories from four Chelsea Flower Shows, explorations
of the Cornish harbours of Charlestown Bay, Polperro and Mevagissey, plus visits
to the Eden Project and The Lost Gardens of Heligan.
On top of this, when I send you PowerPoint presentations of
beautiful or unusual photography or
clever Photoshop work, I keep the presentation, save its pics to this PC and
look at them from time to time so I can gaze upon those wonderful sights.
Adding these to my own, the new collection reached, as stated above
- 1087. Once again, like an annoying Jobsworth, the frame refused to work, tilting
it head, sucking its teeth in and quoting Health & Safety, collective union
agreements and the real reason - technical limitations.
Again, I deleted large swathes of pics till it worked, then added back
in small bites, till, in baby steps, I found the new limit. It was 1001, which
gives you 1 hour 20 mins of photos in five second bursts before it starts at
No. 1 again. That’s quite enough. This is, I believe, a limitation of the photo
frame’s internal slideshow programming and not the way you format the card. If
you have an electronic photo frame that you can’t get to work, get in touch,
I’ll see what I can do. My own frame is on every day in the kitchen and I am warmed
constantly by those memories.
Over the Christmas period, I lost two mates. Firstly, Jim Carville
from the long-established September Golf Tour. Jim was a source of some of the
e-mails that I forward so his passing will diminish all your lives in some way
as well as our mutual golfing mates. What a turnout for his funeral! It says
something about you when you fill a church with people coming to say goodbye.
I may mention these guys in some of the e-mails that I forward. It
is an indulgence. They are still on my mind. I miss them and look fondly on my
memories of them. Please bear with me till I adjust.
In all of these letters, I mention the Herculean Task that is the
clearing up of this study. Although supposedly an exercise in ‘tidying up’, it
is really a Voyage of Discovery. Last week, I discovered an old Big Issue from
2009. About to chuck it, as I was sure I would have read it, I noticed
something about poetry on the cover so started to read the first few pages.
There were several short articles from new authors praising a site called
ABCtales, where unknown authors can publish short stories and poems - http://www.abctales.com/.
So far, I have published three poems and a short story and will use
it to test the water for future works. Up till now, I have been trying out my short
stories on Ruth Underhill and Phil Burrell. While their comments have proved
useful, they are only two and as friends, probably tend to be kinder than
strangers with their observations. The reception I have had on ABCtales has
been for the most part, friendly and complimentary but (unfortunately, fair) criticism
has appeared too. Luckily, I have seen the worth of those comments and noted
them. Future works will bear that in mind. It is all part of the gauntlet of
apprenticeship that aspiring authors have to run.
With the inclement weather of the last few weeks, I’ve stayed in a
lot, giving me the chance to write more. Short stories from night school
homeworks are being reworked and while demanding, takes them in a new style, to
a new version.
Heads & Hearts is getting a major rewrite and is growing into a
much bigger tale. Those of you who read it first time around will find the same
story, wrapped in perceptibly different, hopefully more visual language, with
many more characters from the Irresistible Forces appearing in small cameos.
They just flit in and out to add lightness, otherwise a story written initially
for a nine year-old as a birthday present, is in danger of becoming undesirably
serious.
After that, there are three or four stories that progress in my head
every day. They’ll have to wait; focus on Heads & Hearts is key. For once,
I’d like to finish a story to my satisfaction.
I see this letter is already on page 4 so let’s close with a couple
of things that caught my attention recently. Before sleep, I like to watch
something light, Castle, Body of Proof, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Big Bang Theory, that
sort of thing. In watching QI recently, the sage Stephen Fry mentioned that, when something is lost, saying out loud the name of the thing you are looking for, will help you find
it. I lost all my USB flash drives recently. One day they were on this desk. Next
time I looked, the rascals were hiding. Surprisingly, ‘Say it out loud’ worked.
I recommend it. I also lost and found something else with this approach but for
the life of me, can’t remember what it was. The technique doesn’t seem to have
much effect on a flaky memory once the lost thing is found.
Let’s close with a few snippets as they cross my mind… I see Mo
Farrah, double Olympic Gold medallist, got stopped from re-entering the U.S.
where he does his training. Initially, he was banned from the country for 90
days while they investigated whether he was a terrorist or not. As usual, the
Americans declared to the world how insular, ignorant of world events (The
Olympics!), neurotic and paranoid they are, unaware that he was a double
Olympic Champion even though he showed them his gold medals. It took an FBI
agent who was a friend of his coach to get them allowed in. The unworldly, self-absorbed
insularity of Americans is staggering.
“Police in India are due to formally charge…” the five men accused
of rape. Apart from the split infinitive in this BBC News banner headline, I
wonder… can police charge ‘informally’? We should expect more from the BBC,
formerly the standard-bearer for the English language. Do we pay a licence fee
to have our children taught bad English by illiterate example?
HMV not honouring their gift vouchers is interesting. I wonder, is
that legal? Surely they’ve taken money in exchange for an IOU? (Incidentally, how
does this differ from a share issue?)Their accounts should record a liability for
the cash accepted as no goods nor services were sold. What’s puzzling is - though
they have a stock of goods, they refuse to use that to settle the vouchers. If it’s
legal that companies can go into administration and then not honour these vouchers,
why would anyone buy vouchers in the future, not just from HMV - FROM ANY
SHOP? If you ever buy a gift voucher again, look in the mirror. Chances
are you will have MUG tattooed across your forehead. Potentially, you’re just giving
money away - and not to a good cause like a homeless Big Issue seller but to a
profit making organisation whose directors will smile at your gullibility as
they pocket your kind donation. Perhaps that’s the ‘gift’ part of ‘gift
voucher’? An interesting twist.
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