The Daily Novel

Not the best time to write in defence of God, and particularly the Christian God. Easter has been marred this year by the spectacle of the Roman Catholic church once more getting its casocks in a twist. The Pope in his Easter message referred to the ‘idle gossip’ about his church. According to Catholic beliefs he is the supreme human being with infallible powers to interpret the word of Jesus Christ, and his father in heaven.

The ‘idle gossip’, to which the Pope referred, were the stories that have been carried by the world’s media, about those Roman Catholic priests, who have abused the little boys, and some of the little girls, in their flock. Not idle gossip but the personal testimony of their parishioners, speaking out many years after the event, encouraged by the publicity, to speak out many years after the events which marred their childhood.

The Vatican defence of the present Pope is that thoughout his career, he was working on the inside against such practices, quietly and without publicity. Which he probably was. But only those within the closed society of the tiny Vatican state, could believe that this is a sensible message to broadcast to the media. To those outside, it seems much the same mindset that caused the Pope to answer allegations about the Vatican’s failure to speak out against the Nazi treatment of the the Jews. We helped Jews ‘discreetly’ is what he said.

The Vatican is not alone in getting religion a bad name. All those US christian fundamentalists, who supported George W Bush, are still around. And on the other side the Taliban are still urging all Muslims to undo women’s emancipation. And the Dubai muslims are sending tourists to jail for kissing in public.

Yet millions of people around the globe persist in believing in a God. And thousands of others, like me, believe that God was one of the best inventions of evolving human beings. The God who urges people to have faith. The God who urges us to listen to the voices within. And listen intelligently.

Like Philip Pullman, who has just written a novel, suggesting that Christ was one of twin brothers. Christ the saint and Christ the scoundrel.

Maybe in his next novel he will go one step further and suggest the even more amazing possiblity, that all human beings are a mixture of saintly genes and scoudrel genes.

We have the choice as to who rules the roost. And some of us spend hours in agonising internal debates.

Enough of all this. Despite all our scientific advances the holiday weather course in these parts was wrong. The sun came out, showing Golden Cap at its best. And in the garden the daffodils flowered.

Now that’s something to wonder at.

Sixteen days since the Daily Novel came out! No, it’s nothing to do with the trade unions, although the Daily Novel is a hundred per cent union shop. And certainly not because there is a shortage of news to interpret and comment on. The Football Associiation has lost its boss yet again and just before the World Cup. The Wolves managed  a draw on Saturday away against ancient local rivals, Aston Villa, who are near the top of the Premiership, whereas the Wolves are struggling to avoid relegation. It is their first ever  year in the Premiership, but for most of the year it is looked as if they would go right back down again. They still do not compare with the First Division club of the days of Billy Wright. And they are keeping the fans on edge and may go on doing so until the last whistle of the season.

And then there’s another orgy  of politician shaming, with ex-cabinet ministers being taken in by an old-fashioned sting of the kind that the News of the World used to excel in.Only this time around it was Sunday Times and Channel Four journalists hamming it up by pretending to be high powered lobbyists, eager to pour money into MP’s pockets. Right and left were targeted the headlines were filled by the ex-ministers, so that Labour will probably be more harmed by it in the forthcoming election.

And then there’s the trade unions. The public service unions are striking today – Budget day! The airline cabin staff are fighting a battle royal against the a tough boss. But their success in downing about twenty per cent of the planes is paltry compared with the mostly adverse headlines they have generated. The railwaymen are gearing up for action.

All this is a salutary reminder that Britain no longer has an effective left wing press. The big battalions, led by the Murdoch papers, the Telegraphs  and the Daily Mail, are staunchly right. The Guardian, the BBC and Channel Four are doing some splendid reporting but they also stick (well, mostly) to the conventions of serious journalism, keeping a balance, giving victims ample space to challenge their reports.

So it is not suprising that the overall impression that the nation is at risk because of a new generation of union bully boys of the likes of Arthur Scargill is gaining hold. Whereas the truth in the paragraphs of small print is that union membership has plunged as badly as the crowds at the Wolves ground, 20,000 compared with the 70,000 who flocked to the Molineaux of my youth.

Much to write about. And before a crucial general election. Hopefully the Daily Novel will be daily again, before Brown announces the election date. But I cannot be sure, because the modest technical changes being made have already taken three months longer than I expected.

Must go now. And grapple again with computer stuff.

I am not going to bore you by repeating here the thousands of words written about Michael Foot, who died yesterday aged 96. (Yes, he was born the year before the First World War.) But I  do want to celebrate the life of one of most decent human beings I have known. And what better way to start than with the Foot I, and hundreds of my neighbours, knew. Because, like us, he travelled on the 24 bus, which is much the best most sensible way of travelling from my neck of the woods to Camden Town, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square and the House of Commons.

And, because, like us, he used to relax by walking on Hampstead Heath. Note, walking mostly with a dog. Not jogging, like that other neighbour, Alastair Campbell, part of the New Labour team under Tony Blair, who got Labour re-elected, which is what Foot did not manage to do, when he was leader of the Labour Party. Joggers can’t stop. Walkers can. But only a minority of walkers, of which Foot was most definitely one, are ready to be engaged in coversation with anyone who stopped him. Or anyone who sat next  to him on the 24 bus.

Note, the ‘engaged in conversation’, but I might have written, ‘chat’. But ‘chat’ is not an accurate description of what Michael Foot did, when people stopped him, be they the educated middle classes or the less well-educated working class, with whom we live cheek and jowl in this part of London.

He talked to all classes  in the same way. And if he ever had become Prime Minister I am absolutly certain the the Queen would have come to a better understanding of the socialists amongst her subjects.

Just as I am absolutely certain he would have snorted ‘bollocks’ if he had read his own obituaries telling him he was too ‘nice’ to be prime minister. Nice suggests sugar and spice. 

Foot knew his English language, as demonstrated in his journalism and his books. He talked the same way to whoever he talked to. On that score he is the polar opposite of those polriticians who trim their sails to appeal to whoever they are talking to.

Of everything I have read about Foot the person whe shows most understanding this aspect of Foot, is Brian Brivati, who was Foot’s book editor, and is now Professor of Contemporary History at Kingston University. Here is a paragraph from what he wrote published in yesterday’s Guardian.

The gifts of how to live that one gets from knowing him are first, how to be, then how to read, and finally, the importance of being yourself. The first way he teaches you how to be yourself is in his political philosophy and attitude to the sanctity of humanity. He is not a pacifist, but he puts humanity first. Giving is his natural way of being and it is infectious as a way to live. The second way is by personal example, by the way in which he has stayed himself.

Had he ever become Prime Minister he would have been an excellent role model for the nation’s youth. Far better than any of the three leaders contesting the 2010 election. Let’s hope that his publishers rush out new versions of his books, so that thoughtful voters are reminded of what he stood for.

Although he would not have wanted the country to be run by the bunch of Old Etonians around David Cameron, currently leading the opinion polls, Foot came from a priviledged upper middle class background. He was educated at two private schools, the second being Leighton Park School in Reading, which has been called the ‘Quaker Eton’. It wass very good at getting its pupils into Oxbridge and Foot went on to do the Oxford PPE at Wadham, a degree which prepares people well for a career in politics (and a career in journalism, at which Foot also excelled).

This blog is not intended to be hagiography so before I end it I must write about what I believe to be Foot’s worst mistake. I was listening on the car radio one Saturday morning when I was taking the family to Wales for our holiday. Normal service was suspended as the BBC took us to the House of Commons, where there was an emergency debate on Thatcher’s decision to rescue the Falkland Islands.

Foot, then leader of the Labour Party, gave her his full support. His Quaker school teachers must have quaked, as I did, when I listened to his speech.

So he had his faults.

But if you read what he wrote, you will see, that, although he was an upper middle class toff, he understood far better than many New Labour ministers and MPs the priorities of the working class and their champions, the trade unions, who politicians of all parties are too ready to dismis as ignorant cart horses.

Dr Johnston (him of the dictionary) said pithily that the misguided honest man was an even bigger pain than the worst scoundrel.

Maybe.

But at tthis time in our history(MP’s expenses)  British politics needs a few honest men.

Like.

Michael Foot.

(Photo: By Graham Turner from The Guardian. Messed by the new technology for which apologies. The original is much better.)

One of the trials of the manic depressive temperament is that in the mainc phase the ideas flow fast and furious. So as well as party ideas my unconscious mind has been popping up ambitious new plans for improving my blog and has been urging me to jump on the iphone bandwagon. So on top of having to relearn Excel in order to keep track of who was coming to the party I saddled myself  quite un-necssarily with having to learn Applespeak.

After a few initial failures to connect to the internet, it is now working like a dream and I love mine almost as much as  Stephen Fry loves  his. I can now read the mobile Guardian and my emails in bed. It is a most beautiful example of the new technology and it has turned me into a fan of Steve Jobs who got up from his death bed a couple of years ago and organised its design and launch.

But it is not perfect. As I found on Wednesday when I felt confident enough to change the keyboard layout to Dvorak. This keyboard, designed by August Dvorak in the late 1920s is far more efficent than QWERTY, as you can discover if you click on Campaign to retire QWERTY at the top of this blog. Apple has been including Dvorak as a standard item on its computers since the pioneering days, many years before Bill Gates made it a standard offer for PCs with the introduction of Windows in the 1990s.

Sadly Jobs has not put it in the iphone. I did manage to find one from a third party developer. It worked fine.

Once.

When I turned off my phone and turned it on again, it had disappeared.

It may just be teething troubles. I willl keep you posted.

Meanwhile I have to postpone the next round in the fight to retire QWERTY and write something about Michael Foot.

The other trigger for my dream last night came from a jest in a thank you letter suggesting we take  the show on tour. The show was the one I put on at Lauderdale House, the former home of Nell Gwyn on Highgate Hill, which is now a favoured location for parties in the Gospel Oak part of London. This party to celebrate my wife’s 70th birthday took me and my daughters two months to organise. Which is one major reason why Daily Novel blogs have been so thin on the ground in 2010.

The emphasis was on singing and dancing rather than speechifying. To get it going required a lot of browbeating of  relatives,  friends and neighbours to stand up and support me in a sing a long to make the guests sing for their supper. It had to include, Leaning on a Lamp, and since I am tone deaf it required the support of James, one of my daughter’s friends on the Brazilian ukelerle, and Michael, the neighbbourhood lumberjack singer.

And, of course, a decent jazz band to provide the sort of music my wife and I, along with many of our neighboursr, have enjoyed for the past ten years at the Humphrey Lyttelton charity concerts organised by the friends of the Royal Free Hosital. The concerts have gone on performed by the jazz men who worked with him. Happily the pianist for our party was Ted Beament who played in most of those concerts and was happy to bash out my very eclectic choice of songs. All of the Tucker Finlayson band, which is a mixture of men who have played with Humph, Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball, entered into the spirit of the occasion.

So this was one of my manic ideas that actually worked. The dream did not give me quite enough energy to start a new career as an impressario, but it did provide the impetus for a third blog.

In the dream I was invited in by the new City University chaplin, who just happened to be Norwegian, to take the Sunday service on his new Church of the Internet jointly with him. I protested that I was an agnostic who even found much to admire in the works of Richard Dawkins, author of  the God Delusion. That did not matter, he told me, he just wanted me to do whatever I felt like doing in the moment. Much like the Quaker style of encouraging people to speak out when the spirit moved them. That is based on a belief that the voice of God can be found amongst our inner voices.

The dream event was a success. I managed to give a half-way decent sermon, stating my belief that the evidence suggests it is extremely unlikely the world was created by an all-powerful God, but that the great religions of the world  rank amongst the most valuable human inventions. Religious belief, I argued has survival value if it does not become rigid and doctrinaire. It protects human beings from arrogance. It reminds them that the voices within include devilish types who may be urging violence against others or self-destruction. All the great religions have meditation and prayer which, in my view, can be a great help in sorting out personal and polical conflicts and making more, rather than less, rational decisions.

The sermon went down OK. More surprisingly I hammed it  up by singing  a few music hall songs in my off-key voice and the congregation joined me  in the choruses.

So I am due to go back next Sunday. In the dream, of course. City University has not yet brought in a radical Norwegian pastor.

My dream, however, was partly triggered triggerd by what is happening at City. On Tuesday evening the journalism department mounted a great debate to decide whether the 2010 election would be more influenced by new media or the old media’s first ever television debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg which are expected to win an audience of 10 million or more. The verdict of the audience was 75 to 80 per cent in favour of the old media debates.

But yesterday, the video of that event went out on the City journalism web site and I  spent nearly two hours watching it. And one of the thoughts that struck me before I went to bed last night was that this was itself an indication of how that the media will be a powerful influence on this election. City J has moved on since I rettired two years ago and thanks to the inniatives of Professor George Brock and Professor Ivor Gaber. City J journalists can now ‘preach’ to the  whole world thanks to the wonderful world of the internet.

The old media in the debate were represented by the powerful BBC voices of Nick Robinson, political  editor and Evan Davies, the newish anchor man of the BBC Radio Four Today programme. Powerful because of their eloquence and experience. Powerful because they have behind them the authority of the biggest news oranisation in the world, which has a presence on the web as well as via television, radio, videos, cds, dvds and mobile phones.

In my childhood I had problems in tuning in to the right wavelength to hear the voice of God, but through the head phones of my two valve radio I could get the BBC. That was a sort of miracle that had a tangible reality. To me, and millions of others, the BBC news readers had a God-like authority.

There was another, quite different trigger for my dream last night, which will be the subject of my next blog.

Meanwhile readers might like to watch the much more down to earth City J debate by clicking on the video link above. Or, if they don’t have two hours to spare clicking on this link to the report by Guardian journalist, Kevin Anderson.

According to Associated Press the White House physician urged President Obama to continue his smoking cessation efforts in his latest check-up. I beg to differ. I, for one, will sleep safer in my bed knowing that the leader of the free world is having the occasional cigarette when he feels like it. I totally accept the serious effects of smoking on health. But most of the world is denying that nicotine does have some beneficial effects.

Notably it helps you to keep calm when everyone around you is panicing. And it helps manic depressives like me to manage their condition. At 76 I am feeling some of harmful effects. My coughs in the morning can be heard in the house opposite.

But Obama coming up to 40 is a picture of health. It may kill him in the end but not very soon, because he does not smoke many. He does not have to do, because like me he smokes Camels, which is a blend of Virginia and Turkish. Just the right cigarette for a President who is concerned with fostering better relationships with the Muslim world. And dedicated to keeping the peace rather than rushing into wars.

The doc is also worried about his tendonitis, which they think is to do with his regular basket ball playing. Maybe that will give him a heart attack sooner than smoking. But I am not suggesting that he take up something more sedate like golf. But perhaps he might benefit by cutting down on his basket ball and having a fag or two when he feels the urge to leap up to the net.

Off to Lyme Regis for a lunch at a rather posh hotel organised by the friends of the museum at which the speaker was Ann Jelicoe, best known for her play, The Knack, which hit Broadway and was later made into a film. We arrived at the Alexandra Hotel at 12 AM precisely for our £25 lunch. I did not mind shelling out £25 quid, because it was going to the Lyme Regis Museum, but of course, there was half an hour or so to kill before we sat down. I went to the bar and ordered two drinks, a white wine spritzer and a glass of Rose. I watched mesmerised as my drink was poured out. The bar tender poured the wine into a metal measure, and then transferred it to the size of wine glass I normally use,  There was enough to half fill the glass.

The bill was £10.15. The Ritz Hotel in London W1 probably charges more. But not much more.

I tell you this, so that you will know that your truth telling reporter at this event, may be influenced in what he is writing by some personal feelings. Which were exacerbated when Ann rose to give her talk, nearly two hours later.

She began by saying:

I knew that i wanted to do – go into theatre – when I was four years old……..  From that moment I never dobuted. It made life very simple.

What rot, I thought. At 4 i probably wanted to be an engine driver. At 14 I wanted to be Prime Minster. As life happened i started as a journalist and then went on to be a teacher of journalism.

But when I listened to the rest of her talk, I realised that her life had been far from simple.

She went straight from school to the Central School of Speech and Drama in the closing years of the war. The teachers were tired. Most of the men were still away at the Front. The course was far too long. But in her final year – of a three year course, which she said was far too long – was a huge success, because she starred in a play produced by a young playwritght, Christopher Fry. for the school.

That did not launch her career. Despite her outstanding talent, she could not get a job in theatre. And she became quite seriously depressed. She was rescued by her old school, who gave her a job teaching their students. Who included Vanessa Redgrave, whom everyone at today’s lunch had heard of.

Her own success came years later. When she made her name as a writer and director of plays, thanks partly to the help of George Devine at the Royal Court theatre in Chelsea, one of the key figures who revitalised British theatre in the 1960’s.

So Ann Jelicoe’s story is far from simple. For the last thirty years or so, she has been developing community theatre in Dorset, which does not hit the headlines. She is still going strong at 82. She can still bend an audience to what she has to say.

Even though she is a mistress of the art of self-deprecation. Because when you hear her in person, you realise that her life has not been simple or easy. She has stayed faithful to her own imperatives. Despite the many difficulties on the way.

In one of her plays, she invented a new planet called, ‘Hope’. The scientists have not yet found it. No matter. Utopia has still not been found.

But meanwhile there are many worse things you can do with your lives, than working to find an alternative to American consumer capitalism.

It was only when I received a message this afternoon from a fellow manic depressive who had got something from reading what I have written about this condition, that I realised that I had been depressed deep down inside for the last two weeks. Which is the main reason I have not written a blog for two weeks.

Depressed about the state of the world. Notably  the news that Barack Obama has plunged in the US approval ratings to a record low and that the health bill is still a long way from approval. Depressed by a nasty cough, which is also a reminder that diseases of the flesh are bound to strike with increasing frequency as I get even older than I am now. Depressed because because nothing I thought of writing seemed worth writing. Depressed because so few other human beings share my concerns.

Since I am a manic depressive, just one positive message can jolt me into a manic phases, in which the ideas come tumbling so fast, that I cannot get them down quick enough. And I don’t have time to eat. (Which reminds me of another worry. Replaced the scales, which broke two years ago, and found my weight is a stone below the usual.)

So I will go get some dinner soon.

After expressing my anger about the current fashion for labelling us lot, ‘bi-polar’. Manic depression describes my temparament much more accurately. I spend days when I don’t even feel like getting out of bed, cannot even get out of the starting gate on any worthwhile task. Then I switch and want to sprint a mile.

Have to sprint, because if I don’t I might get submerged by the glooms, yet again.

Still, ‘mustn’t grumble’, which is the title of a book about the English I got for my birthday.

Which I will blog about, if I ever get time to read it.

But before I go dinner.

One key thing about us manic depressives, we are all different from each other.

As are all human beings.

Which is another reason why I doubt the creation myth. Human beings are not cast in the same mold cast by one celestial sculptor. They are beings who have been shaped by genes, social and economic background and by the life experiences they have lived through.

Which is, when you think about it, really wonderful.

In the dream I am hurrying to a West End theatre to see a Shakespeare play which is probably, Much Ado About Nothing. I am late. The usherette, a striking brunette who resembles the new girl friend of my wife’s cousin, whom I met for the first time on Sunday, tells me  I shall have to stand at the back until the first interval. But once inside I join a group of middle aged men who are sitting on the steps talking amongst themselves in rather loud voices with public school accents.

 They are also watching the action, taking place on the stage a long way below – we must be in the gallery. The actors are too far away for me to hear more than a few words of what they saying. But I hear enough of them to know that the words they are speaking are not those of the Shakespeare play. And they are all in modern dress. What I am watching must be the creation of a contemporary playwright who has been inspired to write something of his own, loosely adapted from the original.

 Within a few minutes the first interval arrives and I head for the bar. In the corridor I go through a doorway leading to a white spiral staircase. It is unlike any staircase I have seen. On either side there tooth like pillars of irregular height, vaguely reminiscent of the fangs of a tiger.  It is narrow, too narrow for people coming up to pass people going down. It seems to go on endlessly, and I have no wish to climb them all on the way back. I want out. But the youths also walking down tell me there is no exit until the bottom, which we reach eventually.

 The staircase ends, not in the street, buton what must be the river bed. It seems much bigger than the actual Thames river bed, more like the seashore. All I can see in front of me is sand and water. No sign of the opposite bank. There is a light mist which adds to the beauty of the scene, which might have been painted by Turner. The tide is coming in and as I walk along the shore I have to step around rivulets of water.

 Soon I meet up with middle aged men from the balcony, still talking to each other in loud voices. But happy to help me. I am trying to light a cigarette, but both of the two lighters I have with are refusing to ignite.  Three of them offer their lighters. After the first so satisfying inhalation, I wake up and discover I am in our London flat, looking out on a white winter wonderland.

 The snow is back and my guess is there has been a fall of about two inches during the night.

 That is all I remember. But my belief is that the unconscious mind is telling us stories and painting pictures for us during the night, and that what I am remembering is part of much bigger construction. Whether or not the unconscious is sending me messages with important meanings I am not sure. But what I do know is that my free night-time film is sometimes much more entertaining than much on offer by the one hundred odd channels on my television set.