Variety is the spice of life, so they say, and they were probably right, as usual. I suggest that monotony is the clingfilm of life. Anyway, our last fortnight has been as varied as vindaloo.
I have been trying to write songs in a sort of George MacDonald Fraser middle-aged frenzy, brought on by lack of pension. I remember him saying on Desert Island Discs that he sat down in his forties and determined to make some money by writing best selling fiction. His scheme was based on the disused literary character of Flashman upon whom he fell and exercised squatters' rights. Ka-ching: the rest was history. Or, more accurately, bogus rewritten history, with sexy bits. In the same spirit I have been looking for a disused musical character but have so far not come up with a suitable candidate. Beethoven is a little high-brow for me and George Formby, although a firm favourite, is perhaps a trifle narrow. I would welcome suggestions.
The weather has varied by the width of a well stocked spice rack too, leaving us never knowing if we were on the receiving end of a proper full-blooded heatwave or of just a limp wristed heatwaggle. Small fans were purchased, then repaired in steady sequence as they malfunctioned under heavy use and frequent vertical trips to the floor. I also had a good go at fixing our battery powered pepper mill which, having given six months of sterling labour-saving service, recently decided to grind no more. It takes six batteries but suffers somewhere from a poor contact. I have suggested that we use it for smashing peppercorns as it is very heavy with all the batteries in it.
Camberwell Arts Festival came and went, remaining largely unvisited by us. I did catch some sort of outdoor musical event in front of Peckham Library with several musicians playing in short bursts behind a man who wished to convince us that Jesus could get your suit clean. That sounded impressive and I stayed to see if pepper mills were also being attended to. They weren't and I realised after a while that the suit claim was actually part of an extended metaphor to do with stains. I like extended metaphors and resolved to make more frequent use of them myself.
Later I noticed that there was a special promotion at the Camberwell Baths, a reduced rate of 50p per swim. That represents good value as of itself, but less good value when one considers the hidden cost of replacing all of one’s clothes after they’ve been nicked from the locker.
Lots of school stuff happened. School plays, school concerts, uniform fittings and orientation sessions for next year. The mood was pervasive and we even watched 'School Of Rock' on cut-price video, which was much better than my worse fears and has introduced us all to some new words and ideas. I quite enjoyed explaining why anyone would want to play a twenty minute guitar solo.
Yesterday I played my first gig for many years, on a stage in the middle of Leicester Square, as part of West End Live, a Westminster Council self-celebration. I had to accompany sets of primary school children from the Borough of Westminster as part of a five piece band. The family came to see me, despite being told not to expect crowd diving or extended rock-outs.
Unfortunately they didn't actually manage to arrive in time and missed the whole thing because of heavy traffic and the officiousness of a bus driver who refused to open the doors of his bus between stops, despite having remained absolutely stock still for quarter of an hour. Now they may never see me play a note in anger, or cool professionalism anyway. They are growing up, their innocence evaporating. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is taken away.
There have been mood swings and several mood roundabouts too. I have a godson who was recently confirmed. I am now officially absolved of my duties re God, but not yet re Mammon. I await that ceremony with interest. I also bought these for a friend boasting the same birthday. Big hit, especially with the young.
This Friday afternoon I was having a drink with a friend in Clapham, outside a Young's pub on the Common, rallying the old spirits with a pint of Young's Special. We sat and chewed the fat, comfortably sheltering under a large umbrella which said 'Young's' on it. The Young's theme was unmistakeable. I felt a drop of rain fall wearily from out the leaden skies. Shortly thereafter an arm appeared over my shoulder. "Excuse me," said a young man, "We have to take these in." He proceeded to lift the umbrella out of the hole in the table and walk away with it, leaving us exposed neath a sky of malevolent aspect. More drops fell. More umbrellas were rescued. I felt suddenly disoriented and I wondered whether this was how Royalists felt in 1649 when Charles the First, their overarching protector and self-appointed all round mini-firmament had his Kingship revoked, leaving them with no barrier above, no one to intercede. Nearer to God perhaps, but unprotected. I reflected on how uncomfortably unmediated Protestantism could be, when compared closely with the plight of the under-dressed pub-goer in uncertain weather.
I wondered in what conditions they had forseen that their umbrellas might be of any use to their clients. More rain fell, almost sympathetically now. More thoughts formed: darker thoughts. Perhaps we had just witnessed a daring daylight umbrella robbery. I guess I'll never know.
Gorgeous weekend all round. The weather at last constant, fixed in purpose and content, comparable to a summer's day. Flowers gorgeous in the garden, details unfurled, their little faces glowing with sun worship, mute, awestruck, grateful. Me gorgeous in shorts restoring our garden furniture with a pot of something white and sludgy.
I slopped the stuff on and miraculously the ashen timbers of our bench and table suite turned slowly back to a healthy brown. Contrived parallels with the career of Michael Jackson sprang irresistibly to mind, yet somehow I resisted them. I'm pretty sure I heard a small 'Yeep' from the table at one point but it could have been the heat, or the fumes.
But this was not the highlight of the weekend, oh no. Just for any of you out there who really weren't paying attention to the world of cricket I must repeat that Australia lost to Bangladesh. You read that correctly. To Bangladesh. The nation that has dominated world cricket for a generation, with an unprecedented ruthlessness, lost to a nation that spends a good deal of its time underwater. Next day the Oz lost to England, too.
Elsewhere, in a stunning return to form, Rose Tyler, 23, was able by the power of her mind alone to vapourise an entire invading Dalek fleet numbering around 2,000 ships. Many old hands in the Press Box felt this was the best performance in a single episode since Bonnie Langford's devastating display against the Cybermen in 1973.
Some have accused this touring Dalek side of arrogance and they are certainly vulnerable to the charge that they are an ageing outfit - the current management has been in post as long as anyone can remember. In a sulky post-match interview the captain of the defeated Dalek tourists admitted:
"Yes, she gave us problems. But I am God. GOD! Don’t you DARE question my tactics or my selection policy. I selected only one cell in a BILLION! Those blasphemous fools who call for the return of Davros will be EXTERMINATED! And their contracts will not be renewed."
Others blamed the over-reliance of the Daleks on outdated motivational techniques and simplistic sports psychology, which some compared to the methods of the ancient Earth leader Glenn Hoddle.
Rose herself was modest but keen to talk strictly about the match amid romantic speculation linking her with a no-hoper boyfriend, having recently been spotted 'a deux' in a London chip shop. She fielded questions gamely.
“Ms Tyler, how do you feel after that? Those are pretty impressive figures - the best by a Tardis assistant in a home series for several millenia. You couldn't make it up, could you? Would you like to talk us through it?”
"Yeah, brilliant," she replied with an infectious giggle. "No one would dare write that, would they?"
"How did you do it, Rose?"
"Well, I just saw this white light and I was sort of zoning after that. I don't remember much, really. As I say it was all about confidence. There was a lot at stake and I love the big occasion. And basically I’m just proud to be part of such a great side. I'm sure the Daleks will be back for the Ashes in the future, and it is a shame that that's all there is left of Australia right now."
In a related but no less extraordinary turn of events Bernie Ecclestone has announced he will not be doing another series as Doctor Who, prompting fevered speculation that the wheels have finally come off the long running media circus that has become his private fiefdom.
"Not the wheels," he quipped. "Just the tyres."
Jackson has been found not guilty as charged. That much is clear but there are some things arising from the whole trial that I have not seen addresssed in print. I’m vain enough and little enough to explore a few of them. (If you want light reading matter and a few jokes then skip this whole thing.)
I expected him to be cleared, partly because the prosecution did not make a compelling enough case but mostly because the defence did a ruthless job of destroying the credibility of the witnesses. This was the best hope of getting Jackson off because child abuse is a private affair and proving it in the end comes down to the credibility of witnesses, usually children, against the credibility of the accused, usually adults.
The lesson of the O J Simpson trial was that destroying the credibility of witnesses is a defence strategy that can outbalance the traditional heavyweight pointers of motive, means and opportunity. Jackson’s trial has confirmed this. All the main witnesses were discredited on primarily financial grounds. The pattern of inappropriately intimate relationships with 12 year old boys, though pointed out, was not seen or believed by the jury, whereas the pattern of financial motivation of the witnesses was seen and believed, even in the case of some witnesses who clearly had no such motives. So what will follow?
The nasty lesson from this trial is that poor people will not be believed if they testify against rich people. Or put more clearly, obscure people will not be believed against famous people. There is now a permanent, persuasive example on file of how witnesses can be presented as money grabbers in high profile trials, a charge to which all such witnesses must be vulnerable because the media’s open chequebook can clearly be seen behind the witness stand. The celebrity of the accused automatically puts a price on the story of the witnesses outside the Courtroom. So, will our major stars ever be accountable for their private actions? A pattern of cupidity will always be imputed or assumed behind any body of oral evidence. Always.
Criminals are not allowed to benefit financially from their crimes. Will the same now be true of those who bear witness? Even before such benefit has arrived? Even if they don’t actually want it? This is not evidence, but meta evidence against which no witness on earth can be defended effectively. Will money and the promise of money drive truth out of our legal system in such cases?
I think certain processes within a society are very revealing: the management of bad luck, money, armies, prisons, public spaces can be instructive about the value placed on humanity by that society. Celebrity culture is hollow, futile, fatuous: fun. But it is not truly self-regulating and it is moving further and further away from developing proper processes to do so. The more we evolve from a class based society, based on personal face-to-face obligations, and towards a status based society, based on third party financial transactions, the more desensitised we are becoming. Fame has become increasingly random, capriciously bestowed on persons with miniscule talent and no sense of connectedness. Class grows out of local networks: fame grows out of national and global corporations.
The inequalities of celebrity run right through the Jackson trial. Consider how inequitable and barbaric we would now consider the immunity that Victorian politicians and gentlemen would have enjoyed if accused in paternity suits by milkmaids or prostitutes. Now consider the unbridgeable gap revealed by Jackson’s defence team. The temerity of those trailer trash testifiers was unacceptable to the jury. Status cannot be equalised this way.
If every witness can be discredited for being in a position to benefit financially from their role in a celebrity trial then the fame owners are safe forever. Let those who wish complain about landowning but the claim to title is accepted, regulated and transferable. And they’re not making any more land. Fame is a new commodity, unregulated and poisonous to its owners, debilitating to its consumers. Worse, they’re making lots of it, and it’s falling into the wrong hands. Yes, that’s you and your mates Mr Murdoch.
Back to the detail. What of MJ’s future, and more specifically his future conduct? What child will be believed now? Which DA will prosecute now? What lessons have been learned, specifically by Michael himself? Will he now see that coming into the lives of these children is a form of manipulation, a relationship so unequal, so transitory that its long term consequences can be thoroughly negative in some cases? Or will he simply learn to be more discreet?
And what will others learn? Maybe Jackson is the one individual in recorded history who deliberately, systematically engineered opportunities for extended periods of intimacy with 12 year old boys and really was a naive, guileless, asexual being. Maybe. And has he, in the process, provided a viable defence for any less well-intentioned person who does the same on a regular basis without the fame and the money to help? Play innocent, hit hard. Win.
Jackson can rarely have encountered a more vulnerable child than Gavin Arvizo. If Arvizo’s own poverty meant he was not believed we have cause for concern.
Am I a bit slow here, or can I still claim a googlewhack? And still be an accepted member of polite blog society I mean. Pobloso matters to me.
My wife put it to me that I did it myself but really I didn't.
"No," I replied.
A good line, I think. (It should be. I nicked it from both General de Gaulle and Doctor Who.)
Anyway I don't think she understands. "How often do you google yourself," she asked.
"I don't," I lobbed back tactically, turning defence into attack with devastating economy of syllables. (I claim that one as my own.)
"I might just google 'my wife doesn't understand me' and see what I get," I threatened, but I was bluffing.
'tartiest quadrille'.
It's nice to know I have something unique to offer. See for yourself.
I've been a bit quiet here after a busy May. Some reasons follow.
I set myself the task of writing three songs this week, from scratch, words and music. This is quite demanding, especially considering I've still got to find the time to fit in some Sudoku. I've done two and some bits. With luck more will arrive today.
An old friend has a boy of six. He does not live with the child's mother, who now lives with someone else. Last Thursday the boy revealed that his mother's boyfriend has been sexually abusing him. My friend immediately took him to a doctor who made him a social services referral. The boyfriend moved out and the boy was returned to his mother on Monday afternoon. By the next day the little boy changed his story and accused his father of the abuse. Police investigation will follow.
I have been distressed over several years by the systematic manipulation that this poor little boy has suffered at the hands of his mother, who is entirely impervious to suggestions that she emotionally neglects him and ruthlessly poisons his mind against his father, who is a decent and truthful man.
The blog world has not been entirely happy recently, it seems to me, and I have been reluctant to put up reports of self-absorption and human folly, but I have had nothing else to offer. I have been wanting to write about manners for a while, especially after some brainless child yelled into my ear in our local corner shop, perhaps wishing to make me jump for his amusement. No chance, pal. I have nerves of steel and the flinty-eyed steadiness of a hit man; in general, but particularly in corner shops in Peckham. In addition I would mention that I have shared stages with some of the loudest drummers in the Universe so he had a tough standard to match and "Boo!" delivered at two feet by a thirteen year old larynx pales into TOTAL insignificance beside a brass snare drum addressed by a professional skin swatter through a 10 Kilowatt rig with side fills and wedge monitors.
Our recent family doings include an accidental encounter with the end of the Oxford rowing festival known as Eights Week, the start of rehearsals for Zoe's Summer Term play (she's got lots of lines this time) and a reappearance of Yugioh fever, an insidious infection that I thought we had got licked. I haven't the emotional energy to whip that all up into a sparkling literary confection (see above) but I hope to have good news about the songs soon.
Or not, in which case this site will continue in its new role as a resource for those researching the career of Dr Nigel Spivey, the new king of unsupported assertion. Hello people. Here's a test. Subject: Art History (General). One Hour. Question 1. How did Art make the World? Give examples and show your working. (Candidates are not permitted to use the word 'clue'.)
