The Daily Novel

This morning I woke up with another flow of ideas related to recent events, not religion. But when I came downstairs, I had to deal with money. Smile has just charged my wife £30 because she exceeded her £500 overdraft limit. And I was nearly up to my limit last month. The savings account is down to £2.17. And Paris is no longer as cheap as it used to be.

So top priority was selling the PEPs and ISAs bought in one of my rare attacks of financial prudence. It took forever. The first call was to Abbey National, head office, Number 221b Baker Street. Now trendily called Abbey. After going through the usual options I dialled 3 and got more messages. Finally a human being came on the line. All I wanted to do was to sell, not buy anything else, not have financial advice. Eventually she agreed to sell for me. She pressed some buttons on the computer and said:

‘Sorry. The computer is down. Call back in twenty minutes’. I called back in three quarters of an hour. Another voice told me: ‘Call back in half an hour.’ So I went on to the Legal & General, Scottish Widows and Egg,

They all told me much the same thing at interminable length. And sometimes I was transferred to another voice asking the same questions. I did manage to get a human response from Scottish Widows by telling them how much I loved their Scottish accent., because of my Edinburgh-born grandmother was.

The worst of the lot on the telephone was J. P. Morgan. Even after we had done the business, he still urged me to take advantage of their financial advisory service. Very politely, of course, because ‘this message is being recorded for training purposes’. I told him that I was a trained financial journalist who did not need advice.

That was not exactly true. I go for months without noticing whether the stock market is going up and down. I choose my investments for quite idiotic reasons.

I bought Scottish Widows because I was haunted by the image of the woman who has never aged in their ads. The nearest thing to the Mona Lisa that the advertising industry has come up with. I bought Legal & General, because I liked the jolly little multi-coloured umberella in their ads, such a contrast to their very sober name.

Egg is the internet arm of the Prudential, one of the oldest British insurance companies which owns that dignified red brick building in Holborn opposite the ghastly red and green glass building that the Daily Mirror built in the 1960s. What moved to me to buy was one of the favourite jokes of my childhood. Then their salesmen used to knock on the doors of the working classes and ask: ‘Is your mother in the Pru?’ ‘No’, said little Bobby, ‘She’s in the loo’. Sadly the old and new did not make a happy marriage. So in 2005 my investment was sold to Fidelity. Which meant I had to talk to both Egg and Fidelity!

Behind the J. P. Morgan investment is another tale of woe. I bought a Fleming PEP. Partly because they were one of the few British merchant banks which had not been taken over by the Germans, the Japanese or the Americans. But mainly because in the years of my naievity Richard Fleming impressed me as a very honest man, whose word really was his bond. Those visits helped to cure my naievity because his brother, Ian Fleming, used to lunch regularly at the bank And they told me that although James Bond is pure invention, Goldfinger was the spitting image of another regular attender at Fleming lunches. Fleming sold out to Morgan at the height of the big bang which and left me in the hands, J. P. Morgan, who was the gloomiest and most boring of all the Robber Barons..

It was nearly 4 PM when when I had dealt with that lot and rang Abbey again. Sorry. Computer still down. Try again tomorrow.

The day was nearly gone and, too tired to write any more, I sank into depression. I did not like anything I had written. None of it was quite right.

I checked my email and was briefly cheered by one from my Ph D student, who had found, at last, a photograph of the man who founded the Daily Telegraph in 1855. I smiled at the memory off him falling in love with my scooter and buying himself a Harley Davidson. Which he promptly fell off.

But still to tired and depressed to write anything else. So I went and put a pizza in the microwave. On top of the pile of newspapers on the kitchen table, was the unopened Observer Review, advertising a two page story inside based on an exclusive interview with the author of Zen on the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is all about a ride on a Harley. I looked at the spread and my eye caught the quote in the right hand top corner. It was about the Buddha. More religion. Why does it not leave me alone?

But I did read it. It is very long and covers almost as many subjects as one my blogs. The journalist who wrote it, Tim Adams, revealed that he first read the book when he was 14. It is an example of good interviewing. It is not question and answer format. Tim reports what is going on in his mind, as well as his questions and the quotes from Robert Persig’s answers. It gives the reader something that he cannot get from radio or television. A ringside seat watching a dialogue between two minds. I think you will get something from it whether you have read the book or not even heard of it. You can also read the full transcript in three parts by clicking on Part One, then Part Two, then Part Three.

When I resumed the blog this morning I was in quite a different mood. So I wrote the following paragraph.

This book is not about religion. It is not about education. It is not about the wisdom that comes out the mouths of mad men. It is all about how to repair your motor bike.

I am going on to write down the stream of quotes that came into my mind, some remembered, some invented. They start with the one Tim chose about the Buddha.

The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, shoot him.

Freud’s greatest invention was the Freudian slip. But did he see the joke?

Teachers should not punish plagiarism. They should grade it. Top marks for the student who copies from the brilliant classmate. Zero for those who copy from the student talking rubbish.

Every great saying is only half true.

It’s not the motor bike that matters. It’s the motor cycling.

The best way to teach journalism is to let the students into the teacher’s secret. Skipping classes is good for you.

Workers of the world unite, you’ve nothing to lose but your jobs.

Henry Ford thought he had made the world safe for capitalism. What he did not know was that all those boring repetitive jobs on his production line freed the minds of the workers to plot the revolution while he was paying them.

If you can’t cry, you can’t laugh. If you can’t laugh, you can’t feel anything at all.

The camera never tells the truth.

Journalists always lie.

A cliché a day keeps the editor off your back.

Five million readers can be wrong.

The bomb is mightier than the pen.

Everything worth saying has been said before.

Out and Good Night.