SEX ON THE BRAIN

There's a statistic informing us that men think about sex every few minutes during their waking hours. Honestly, I don't think about sex every few minutes (or even every few hours), but when I happened upon the following scene, 'impure thoughts' sprang to mind. I was in a coffee shop and...

.. an attractive girl in her early twenties was making coffee. She was from the far-East - possibly Japan - and she stood before the coffee range in an attitude of deference and concentration. Her shoulders were rounded and she appeared to give her full attention to the task in hand. She held a stainless-steel jug with both hands and slowly lifted it back and forth, sliding it up and down so the solid blowtorch penetrated the milk. She continued the momentum, with the heat pipe plunging in and out of the milk, until eventually it frothed and boiled.

Oh yes. So, perhaps it's childishness - in the same way that 12-year-olds (armed with the new and startling knowledge of where they came from) fixate on telegraph poles entering the earth, and pencils fitting into sharpeners, etc. Do we all, if we are honest, equate the sexual act with the stuff that surrounds us? Or is it just me?

TRICORN CENTRE

On Wednesday 24th March, demolition work began on Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre, a development 'celebrated' for its supposed ugliness. Like a perverse beauty pageant, a large sash draped unforgiving slogans (‘Tricorn down! Portsmouth up!’) over the multi-storey car park, while camera crews and journalists from local and national newsrooms were in attendance to capture the occasion and discuss the Tricorn’s striking appearance. A ‘local dignitary’-type was there to ‘declare the building closed’ and do some reverse ribbon-cutting (hazard tape now instead of trimming), while concrete-munching cranes, poised at the ready, nodded enthusiastically like vultures eager to descend on a carcase.

The Tricorn should be made a listed building and alterations to the fabric of the building banned, not encouraged! The distinctive Trelick Tower in Portobello Road was a notable example of 60s architecture (high-rise housing) and for years it was a sink estate. But times change and with a bit of investment in the area, it’s now one of the most fashionable addresses in West London.

It wasn’t my intention to write at length about this, but The Tricorn will now exist only in pictures; architecture needs to be seen in three dimensions. The Tricorn was probably the best example in the country of a 60s development extending to more than one building (think: The South Bank Centre) but its scale and no-frills brutality were even more extreme than the South Bank. For me, it brought to mind the best efforts of a child equipped with bricks of only two shapes: cylindrical and oblong. Unfortunately, you can no longer view it to see what it brings to your mind, because soon enough it will exist only as a footnote in architecture textbooks. Enormous slabs of stout reinforced concrete made it a sight to behold and a striking example of its time.

I watched the news bulletins and took note of the town planners’ comments, (it doesn’t “blend in”, people deal drugs there, etc), but must everything look like a shiny monument to commerce just to exist? The Tricorn's calamitous fate was not to "look pretty". But so what? It had other virtues, it was bold, uncompromising and interesting (unlike the rest of Portsmouth), and it gladdened my eye whenever I saw it. People deal drugs behind Reading’s Oracle Centre, up the road from where I’m sitting. People will deal drugs anywhere. I was sad to hear about the Tricorn’s demise because it is symptomatic of this country’s homogenisation... I am certain such a thing would not happen in France.

In another fifty years, surely we will regret this.

TURGENEV (again)

Returning to ‘First Love’. Princess Zinaida often plays games (both senses! She’s a twisted l'il Princess) with her admirers. All the suitors fancy their chances and she – aware of this – plays with them ‘as a cat plays with a mouse’:

“…Zinaida interrupted him again. ‘Let’s play a game instead’.
‘Forfeits?’ said Looshin.
‘No, forfeits are boring. Let’s play analogies.’ (Zinaida had invented this game herself. An object would be named, and everyone tried to compare it with something else. The person who thought of the best analogy won the prize.) She walked to the window. The sun had just set. Long red clouds stood high in the sky.
‘What are those clouds like?’ asked Zinaida, and without waiting for our answer said: ‘I think they are like those purple sails on the golden ship in which Cleopatra sailed to meet Anthony. Do you remember, Maidonov? You were telling me about it not long ago.’
All of us, like Polonius in Hamlet, decided that the clouds reminded us of precisely those sails, and that none of us could find a better analogy.”

She’s like a dictator, surrounding herself with a court of ‘yes men’. She’s wily and capricious, but I like her. The following, quite brilliant analogy reminded me of Zinaida’s made-up game and would surely win any prize on offer:

“Philip is a living example of natural selection. He was as fitted to survive in this modern world as a tapeworm in an intestine.”

THE TEMP JOB

Offices are strange. The division of this bank is ‘Partnerships and Affiliations’. Somebody’s job title is ‘Relationship Manager’. I could be working for a counselling organisation rather than a financial conglomerate.

It tries to sound caring by emphasising its joint ventures but succeeds in sounding bogus.

I don’t know whether I’ll knuckle down again to a permanent job in a conventional office. Temping has things in its favour, and if I’m there for something between a day and a month, there’s no time to accidentally alienate the ‘straight’ people or become bored to the marrow.

MADRID BOMB

Bored by the temp job, I went out at lunchtime. Wandered to the bank to withdraw my usual, pitiful tenner, and noticed that the bank had a television for the benefit of people waiting for appointments. So I sat down and watched the midday news. The bombs had gone off the previous day and were dominating the headlines. It was obvious that I was idling and once I sat down a couple of others followed my lead. (Watching tele in a bank?! )

There was a live link, of course, with a journalist outside the Spanish embassy in London. The studio newsreader was asking the location journalist: “So, why is it that people here have such an emotional reaction?” The journo replied that Brits are nervous of the same happening in London, that it’s an attack on the ‘free world’ etc, but then said “And Spain is a place where people go for holidays. Many of us have second homes there”…

SOME ‘cRaZy MiXeD-uP’ METAPHORS:

Take the bull between the teeth
Don’t rock the applecart
He was barking up the wrong end of the stick
Pull (something) out of the bag

AFTER BEING DRUNK

Last Friday I drank too much (this doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to). As invariably happens a few hours after falling asleep drunk, I woke up at about 4am, wired and wide-awake. There was nothing I could do. I’ve never figured out why this happens. Someone suggested it’s a sugar hit, as your liver moves the sugar from the alcohol into your blood. (Something like that)

It’s the worst possible time to suffer from insomnia – not least because it brings the hangover forward, which you wouldn’t otherwise have to face for a few more hours. All the good things about being drunk have vanished, leaving you with only a thick head and dehydration. As if that weren’t enough, you have vast tracts of quiet undisturbed time to reflect on the evening and remember the things you said and did. And your thoughts can end up drifting back to a particular person… Four in the morning is too early to make a phonecall, start the day or have a bath, and it’s too cold to get out of bed. It’s too awful, lying there… trying and failing to get comfortable and/or back to sleep.

Why does this always happen? There must be a physiological explanation, but I don’t know it.

TEMP JOB (AGAIN...)

Writes a journalist… “‘Come the credit revolution of the 1980s… lenders clamoured to cultivate a more welcoming image: an image that said “Why should it only be rich people who can accumulate massive, crippling debts? Now you can too!’ These days, credit lenders are shameless whores who’d dish out a platinum card to a child and point him in the direction of Woolies if they thought they could get away with it.”

Quite! - today I had to reply to the following letter which ended up on my desk, presumably because no-one else could be bothered to deal with it. It was written in shaky handwriting on A5, Basildon bond-sized paper:

[A bucolic-sounding address in rural England]
Dear Sirs,
I thank you very much for a Platinum card from [a trade union] but I have no idea how one uses it. I am 85 and thought one just went to a shop and bought what one wanted and had enough money in one’s purse to pay for it. What does one do with a card? Please tell me. I’ve read the papers with your letter but I don’t always understand them, sorry to be so foolish now, I was a headmistress years ago. Please tell me what to do with a Platinum card when one has one.
Yours sincerely,
[name from an older generation]
PS I live on an ‘age’, old-age pension and savings and my husband died about 2 years ago, aged 81.

I assume she was ‘playing dumb’ re. not knowing what a credit card is for, so I wrote a nice, ‘dumb' letter back to her, ignoring her irony (if that’s what it was).

SHERGAR

Articles in the press at the moment about the kidnapping of Shergar, a champion racehorse whose stud value alone was in the region of £8million.

The gang that stole Shergar clearly hadn’t reckoned on dealing with an enormous, horny, thoroughbred: “The gang appears to have underestimated the difficulty of taking a stallion hostage – Shergar was in stud at the time and at his friskiest”. Imagine it!

“They are thought to have panicked and killed Shergar within hours”… “They couldn’t cope with him, he went demented in the horsebox, injured his leg, and they killed him”… “I assume he would have got very troublesome. And with them not knowing horses they would maybe have got a bit scared of him.”

Of course it’s a shame for the horse (not least because he was about to enter into a retirement of fornication) and undoubtedly it’s a sad story. But it’s also a story that’s crying out to be made into an ‘Irish joke’ – a la Did you hear the one about the Irishman who kidnapped a horse instead of its owner (who was worth much more than £8million, and who also - presumably - would've been considerably easier to handle)?

JOB

It's easy to be gloomy about temping. It's unchallenging, uninteresting, etc, and it gives permanent staff the chance to dump the worst parts of their job on someone else. Also, some posts are staffed by a sequence of temps because the jobs are unfillable

So, it sucks, but it can be eye-opening. Recently, I worked in the legal dept of a hospital where all the cases were things like mismanaged childbirth, misdiagnosed cancer/meningitis, etc. Interesting, and highly confidential…

Last week I started a two–three week assignment in the credit department of a major bank on the same day that the Daily Mail (who else?) ran a hand-wringing headline reading “CREDIT ‘KILLS’ FAMILY MAN”. Here’s an excerpt from the newspaper:

Greedy banks were blamed last night for the death of a young father who hanged himself to escape debts of £70,000… It is clear that he was offered credit way beyond what a man earning £22,000 could afford to carry. Around £50,000 of the debt is thought to have been generated by interest, bank charges and the cost of card-protection insurance. Said his wife, ‘These companies are ruthless. They feed on misery and push people to obtain credit without making the consequences clear. Some are still pursuing me for his debts’.

He was clearly a victim who handled his affairs badly but I don’t think the banks were completely at fault.

Because I’m at the bottom of the food chain in this office, my desk is very public with no privacy. I’m very visible as folk walk past every few minutes, heading for their proper, private offices. Figuring that it’s a fairly normal response to read news headlines, I left the folded newspaper to one side of my desk all day, with the headline strategically placed. I wondered if anyone would pause to glance at it and, if so, whether any signs of life would cross their face. S’prise, s’prise… not a flicker.

WORDSPY

www.wordspy.com is a tremendous site, full of neologisms, puns and portmanteau words. Americans are much more innovative with language. Don't visit the site unless you've got about an hour to spare because it's difficult to tear yourself away. Here are some of my faves:

leapling n. A new baby born on February 29; a person born on February 29.
latte factor n. Seemingly insignificant daily purchases that add up to a significant amount of money over time.
security mom n. A woman with children who believes the most important issue of the day is national security, particularly the fight against terrorism.
anacronym n. An acronym where few people remember what each letter stands for (anachronistic + acronym).
askable parent n. A parent who is willing to answer their child's questions and who encourages their child to ask questions, particularly about sex.
baked potato n. A person who watches television or videos while high on drugs
big hair house n. A house that has a garish style and that is overly large compared to its lot size and to the surrounding houses.
fiscalamity n. Dire financial or economic distress created by fiscal mismanagement.
go Cyrillic vb. When a computer display becomes corrupted and its text is unreadable.
inhuman-interest story n. Tabloid jargon for a story about space aliens.
learning a living pres participle. Working in a job that requires the constant learning of new knowledge and skills.
knee mail n. A prayer, especially one said while kneeling.
swiped out adj. Relating to a credit card or bank card with a magnetic strip that no longer works.
wardrobe malfunction n. A problem with a part of one's clothing; an error in fashion judgment.
quirkyalone n. A person who enjoys being single and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately.
niche worrying n. Dealing with fears by worrying about one thing at a time.
egosurfing pres participle. Scouring the Internet's search engines for mentions of your own name or your business name.

APHORISMS

Once upon a time, many years ago, an ice-cream van drove to the top of our suburban Yorkshire cul-de-sac, announcing itself with the familiar tinny tune (I can still hum it but I’ve no idea where it's from). Dithering about how much I wanted a lolly or (more likely) trying to persuade my parents to give me some money, I missed my chance. By the time I got outside, the van was turning the corner at the bottom of the street. When I came back into the house, defeated, my grandmother announced portentously to everyone present: "He who hesitates is lost". Her voice wasn’t shrill but she was serious. She was fond of that line. She always applied these maxims to the most ordinary circumstances.

Another one she liked was "A rolling stone gathers no moss", sometimes addressed to the TV when ‘Crossroads’ and the like were showing. Clearly, the meaning depends on whether moss is taken to be good or bad. I assumed the gist was: "Keep moving; continue looking forward and you’ll avoid parasitic 'bad stuff'. This was always my understanding, which I accepted unthinkingly... until recently, when I wondered if moss could be considered desirable in the context. Moss is velvety and colourful after all, and could cushion a stone. This would subvert the meaning, turning it on its head to mean: "Don't keep moving around. Stay settled in one place to accumulate some 'good stuff' (rootedness, community, friends, etc)".

Guesswork tells me the former interpretation applies but I'm not certain. More significant than the aphorism is the peculiarity of blithely accepting something as 'correct' for decades without ever thinking about it or checking. This can happen with the meanings of words. Fresh eyes and/or lateral thinking can shed new light on things you thought were understood. Also, I wonder if Mick and Keef have ever thought about this and if even they know for sure?? It’s hard to believe they’d name the band with a nod to a proverb in praise of stability.

TURGENEV

My recent(ish) 30th birthday triggered a mild panic about the passing of time. So when I read the following, at the close of Turgenev's 'First Love', it struck a chord. It’s great writing but a little turgid. I’ve read this passage time and again but I’m still not completely satisfied I’ve understood it to its fullest extent, and I wonder whether the translator did a bad job.

"O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring - as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, "I alone am alive - behold!" even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun... like snow... and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds - gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts - that he has a right to cry "Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time ...."
..."What has come of it all - of all that I hoped for? And now when the shades of evening are beginning to close in upon my life, what have I left that is fresher, dearer to me, than the memories of that brief storm that came and went so swiftly one morning in the spring?"

It's not that I too think 'the shades of evening are closing in', but he describes youthful insolence and lack of care so well, and the rueful hindsight that comes later. “Even sorrow sits well upon your brow” brings teenage goths to mind - most of whom seem to enjoy cultivating an aura of misery. Teenage goths seem happy enough, in the main, though they'd all have you believe otherwise. It's also reminiscent of Dylan, too: “Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriousleee, he brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerousleeeeee”
But returning to Turgenev, what, *exactly*, is scattered to the winds? There are too many negative constructions in the first paragraph.

FLURRY OF ACTIVITY: Wenlock Edge

"When the ground stiffens bone-hard, the snow flurries come. Huge, dark mops of cloud shake out swirls of white powder. Bit by bit it sticks - on gardens, pavements, pastures, meadows, ploughed fields and around trees - until the whole landscape is iced with a frozen, sparkling sugar. Under clear blue skies and a soft but brilliant sunlight, the effect is a dazzling transformation. Each scrunching footstep trespasses through a new stillness. The snow has shut the birds up for a couple of days.

Up on the Edge, the cold sweeps the scarp slope through gaunt trees and as the wind flings upwards through a huge old beech with some dry leaves and mast clinging to its leeward side, it sings like stream water over pebbles. Tracks reveal the ways of animals but end in mystery. A rabbit hops along the old quarry workers' track. Then there's a circle of red blood droplets and the tracks are gone. The rabbit vanishes, abducted from above. A fox jumps a wall, heads in a straight line of immaculate footsteps, one behind the other; another jump and it too vanishes, leaving only an old, spicy pong. The snow lasts a couple of days but the land feels renewed, cold and shriven. Nothing holds up spring for long, though, and with the red rudeness of thrusting rhubarb shoots, the season shoves its way back up. Birds of woods and hedges claim the morning sun with calls and song like a wild drumming on high-tensile cables, glass, stones and sticks. Out in open parkland pasture, huge walnut trees and an ancient field maple have known a few centuries, but days like this are rare and precious and their branches are full of buds and birds and brilliant light."

Lifted from a newspaper's "Country Diary" column, this passage appealed to me. It's very crafted, and sentences such as "Tracks reveal the ways of animals but end in mystery" have a lovely rhythmn. It was very cold today (Thurs 11 March). Brrrrr.