Leslie 1941 - 2011

Your voice echoed the dreaming spires
Your face the folk of the four corners
Your companion Listening Woman
Your burial a bone pointed to a blue sky

In the midst of death there is farce.

I have been reading, thanks to the NYT, the ideas of Gene Sharp in From Dictatorship to Democracy which is available as a free download.

Well someone has to start thinking strategically about the downfall of rubber man, the clagster and coalition forces! It also fits in with ideas about how to encourage slow politics.

It is somewhat unnerving that the world changes so quickly and leaves so many with their trousers round their ankles (Mr Blair endlessly snogging the green and latterly brown tyrant) It is also unbelievable that more have not been killed though no doubt there will be deaths untold and horrors that we will not (and some will not wish to) know about.

A lighter, farcical, note was provided by Robert Fiske reporting in the Indie

It now emerges, thanks to a genuine old-fashioned scoop in Le Monde, that President Ben Ali didn't really intend to flee his country at all. He planned to fly his immediate family to safety in Riyadh and then return to Tunis next morning to continue his reign. Only when the Tunisair crew arrived in Saudi Arabia and saw al-Jazeera in the airport's VIP lounge, announcing Ben Ali's overthrow, did they call Tunis and receive a new flight plan to take off at 1.30am the following day. They discreetly flew away while the President slept, leaving the dictator planeless in Riyadh.

Worthy of Boot of the Beast.

I wonder what the world will be like at $200 per barrel. I can’t see that level of power being wasted on democracy. As evidence m’lud I cite a certain Mr Put In. Tovarish of this parish and one time member of the organs of state security. He has achieved a such a lot on $100 a barrel!

Happy Birthday 2

Further to our recent post:-

If you want to see what the other buggers look like, mugshots here.

Most of them thrown out of the Securitate for cruelty!

Happy Solving.

Tax Matters

(In the voice of E L Whisty)

Dear Gideon,
I hope you forgive the familiarity of my calling you that but since your hands have been all over my assets I feel a certain closeness. I am writing to you because I would like to pay my income tax at the same rate as a certain Mr Barclay who owns a bank in these parts. If I am to believe a report in the Grauniad newspaper today he is charged a very reasonable 1 %. I took the liberty, recently, of submitting a tax return to you in which I calculated that my income attracted a much higher rate and that even after this I still owed Her Delightful Majesty's Revenue and Customs Service 35p.

I am an old man surviving, for want of a better word, on a small pension. I have to use the local library (due for closure) for books which I cannot afford to buy. I try to get out now and then to places like Thetford Forest (rescued from privatisation, for the time being) but the local public transport is appalling and the kindly folk at Suffolk County Council are restricting the use I make of my travel card.

I know you think I shouldn't complain. I live in a peaceful country free from nuclear attack and screaming jihadis. A land of plenty of litter where pit bulls and rottweilers roam free.

If you could see your way to a 1% tax on my meagre income I would be very grateful and would see you alright, if you know what I mean. I don't want to be too explicit in case I get you into trouble, but expect a plain brown envelope to arrive any day soon.

I look forward to hearing from Her Delightful Majesty's Revenue and Customs Service in due course and if you could forget the 35p we can call it quits.

Yours and Oblige,

Lord Buddhist Pizza
c/o Barclays Bank
Cayman Islands.

Bumblebee Lectures

We sat, yesterday evening, entranced and moved by the elegant and eloquent defence of the rights of children given by Michael Morpurgo in the 35th Dimbleby Lecture. It was more though. It made the case passionately for books and libraries and the space for children to grow and learn and develop. The iPlayer link is here and I will update that if there is a permanent record after 7 days.

I didn't notice any members of the cabinet in the audience. I'm sure if they were and were tackled about the issues raised they would only have shaken their wise heads and said:-

Yes I know, terrible isn't it? I blame the last government!

Come on Dave. We want a society that is big enough to cherish and nurture all its children as a priority!

Happy Birthday!

It's good after the start of a year with so much death to be able to celebrate a bit of life.
Araucaria is 90 today; a very, very happy birthday you old bugger!

That may seem a strange thing to say about someone who I have never met and would not recognise if I tripped over him in the street. However, he has provided me, and doubtless many others, with some rare moments of pleasure, frustration, confusion and satisfaction. He is a great distraction and consolation when dealing with the NHS and other bureaucracies.

An affectionate tribute here by Simon Hoggart in the Grauniad, and even an editorial, I'm impressed.

Roll on 91 I say, that's over a hundred more crosswords.

Certainty

We are all willing to talk about taxes some of us have very strong opinions and are not unwilling to share them. Death is, as they say, an entirely different kettle of herring.

I attended the death of a much loved family member. It brought sadness, tears and the recognition at the end of the process that the person was no longer there and would be no more. The consolation, if any existed, was that the death was dignified, peaceful and by all the evidence without pain. Since I had been there I felt a duty to report this to members of the family as appropriately as I could. I hope it was part of the process of grieving and life for us. One appeared very grateful for this, wanting to know but not knowing how to ask.

My own experience of the dead started early in life. In death my family were laid out in an open coffin in our front room (a 2 up 2 down slum) in Salford. Family, friends and neighbours would visit to view the body, pray and, of course, take tea. The corpse would remain with us overnight before the funeral and burial. I knew what the dying and the dead were like. I have avoided a fear of dead bodies but I am sure will piss and panic at my own death if I am conscious.

Different traditions exist in different communities. I read an article in the NYT by Ben Daitz about attempts to enable the Diné to speak of death and the dead. While it is necessary to discuss these from the perspective of care and near death provision the Diné religion and tradition makes this very difficult if not impossible. It was reported that one way to ease this process was to read the poem below with those affected.

When that time comes,
When my last breath leaves me,
I choose to die in peace
To meet Shi’dy’in

Metonymy

Metonymy flashed up on the old peepers recently and, as a word that I was not familiar with, was cause for investigation and reflection. There is a very good example by Elif Batuman in a recent blog. I don’t think I will forget the link between Ajda – Pekhan or tea glass and the meaning of metonymy.

Mr Collins has a much less vibrant description in his excellent book of words

the substitution of a word referring to an attribute for the thing that is meant, as for example the use of the crown to refer to a monarch

However, I was instructed at the end of this definition to - compare synecdoche!

You can not go around giving orders like that to a young lad without there being consequences. I confess I have wrestled with synecdoche almost as long as I have wrestled with the demon drink and sins of the flesh. I have used mortification of the body and spiritual exercises to cope with this word but it is no use. It has me defeated.

Mr Collins may briefly define it thus

a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part, as in 50 head of cattle for 50 cows, or the army for a soldier

and be back at the rashers and eggs in no time, washing it down with lashings of tea I’m sure, but I am destroyed. The little worm is there; the tautological quantum elusiveness of the smile on Schrödinger’s Cat:- a part is substituted for a whole or a whole for a part

I’m extirpated!

(Ed. There, there. Come and sit down and have a cup of tea. Do you want me to call your Mammy?)

Nobody Escapes the Spanish Audition.

I noticed the LRB has, in its series of Winter Lectures, one by Elif Batuman:-
Cervantes, Balzac and double-entry bookkeeping.

Now you know how something like that can set me off.

Wikipedia has it that

Cervantes worked as a purveyor for the Spanish Armada, and later as a tax collector. In 1597, discrepancies in his accounts of three years previous landed him in the Crown Jail of Seville.

So there I am with this picture in my head. Poor old Cervantes up against some hatchet faced cleric with a pencil moustache and goatee beard, his Gracious Majesty’s Auditor General.

So Miguelito, you say the Santa Pinyada sank with all hands and a fortune in gold bullion in the Irish Sea?

Yee.ss.

Just outside a port known by the heretic English as Liverpool, such disgusting names?

Yee.ss.

Then can you explain to me how a ship, a ship looking remarkably like the Santa Pinyada, was seen in a dry dock in this Liverpool having its name repainted as the New Brighton Ferry?

Can you further explain why a claim has been made by you on the insurance for the Santa Pinyada, loss with all hands and gold bullion, on the Armada No 1 Policy, at the Holy Catholic Insurance Society in Sevilla, (In God we trust and for the rest HCIS)? No, no explanation? Well I can only say how disappointed I am, deeply disappointed, and you do not want to disappoint the Spanish Audition!