Eurodivision
Approp of nothing
Snow Falling on Horsham
Tales of the Unexplained
Turtles and Tuileries
Riffing Off the News
Perfectly Content
The Pod People
Return
Eurodivision
25 May 2008
You’ll have to forgive me if today’s chronicle is a bit more disjointed and muddled than usual. I was up late last night (well, late for me, anyway) participating in our annual wine drinking and chip and dip munching while watching an epic European Battle-of-the-Bands contest on the telly. That’s right, this was the weekend of the Eurovision Song Contest.
If you missed my primer on the Eurovision Song Contest, you’ll have to BUY MY BOOK and check out the chapter titled, “Peek-A-Boob” telly, or be content with my mini-explanation that it is a chance for 45 nations to each sing a song and then enter an excruciatingly protracted period of voting, wherein the participants all vote for the most politically popular country.
Pardon me if I appear cynical, but it’s heartbreaking to see a good thing ruined. Eurovision used to be about the songs, and the songs were trippy and naff (think “Waterloo,” the 1974 winner) and Ireland used to win a lot. Now, nobody gives a toss about Ireland politically, but back then the voting wasn’t about politics; it was about the music.
That the music has taken a back seat is evidenced by the disappointing entries and milquetoast songs. Most of the songs from southern and eastern Europe were performed by a pretty brunette with bronze skin and windblown hair who shimmied about in a skimpy outfit. For all I know, it was the same woman in different costumes. Likewise, most of the Scandinavian entries were sung by long-limbed blondes sporting teeth so dazzlingly white they would leave a Hollywood starlet in a rage of envy. These women had to be a set of identical quadruplets separated at birth, or at least products of the same shallow gene pool (but that about describes Scandinavian, doesn’t it?).
The song that deserved to win was Ireland’s entry, a proper piss-take of the contest sung by a popular TV-puppet known as Dustin the Turkey. That, however, didn’t make it past the first round. Of the eligible winners, Latvia’s pirate anthem, “Wolves of the Sea” was one of the few songs espousing the true Eurovision spirit, and that only garnered a paltry 83 points. Had the contest been about the songs, this would have been the clear winner.
But around the turn of the century (I’m talking about the year 2000, not 1900 – c’mon, keep up) Eurovision started to be about politics instead of music. You can tell because that’s the time when Ireland stopped winning. The last Ireland win was 1996. In 1998, the UK won; in 2003, they didn’t receive a single vote due to their alliance with the US in the Iraq war. Winners since 2000 have included counties like Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine.
You could, of course, draw from this the conclusion that western European countries have simply been producing crap songs, but that’s misses the bigger picture. These days, because of the political voting, most of the songs are crap. They don’t have to be good, or memorable of even naff because the voting is pre-ordained by political alliances. This means England is left sitting on the bench—like the socially awkward, brainy kid from the well-to-do family on the other side of town—while all the popular kids from the local neighborhood, whose families all know each other, get picked for the team. It may not even be that all the other players dislike the kid, but peer-pressure keeps them from showing any consideration toward him.
To carry this analogy even further, the ‘popular’ kids are not necessarily the nicest. As in my high school, the kid everyone wanted to be friends with was often the bully who, if you weren’t his friend, meant you were a target. Take Russia’s astounding win (42 points ahead of the second place winner) handed to them by the territories they had formerly subjugated. When I questioned why all of these counties kept handing Russia maximum points for a rather pedestrian song, my wife opined, “Russia is still a big county, and they are very close by.”
This is why I think the US should enter. The astute among you are by now scratching your collective heads and thinking, “but the United States isn’t part of Europe.” True, but Israel has been a participant since 1973 and the last time I looked, Israel was not located in Europe, either. The last time I looked, incidentally, was last night when I was trying to locate another participating country—Azerbaijan. I eventually found it, and its location is, basically, “nowhere near Europe.” So there is no reason the US should not take part, and a variety of reason they should.
At the very least, it would give the recently admitted countries someone else to pointedly snub during the voting and keep Britain and Ireland from feeling too lonely sitting on the bench. Politically, Israel would have to vote for us or face the prospect of the withdrawal of US aid. Likewise, some of the European countries might consider their trade deficits or recall their unpaid loans while voting, and that could give the US a respectable showing. But mostly, by introducing the US, it might make the political atmosphere so charged that countries would shy away from it and begin voting for the songs again.
I believe, as the most powerful nation on earth, we have a moral obligation to get involved (and really, doesn’t the US always, eventually, get drawn in to sort out European conflicts?). It’s time to end our Eurovision isolationism; Dustin the Turkey is counting on us.
Apropos of Nothing
15 May 2008
Say, are you sick of the Toast Post yet? I know I am. I’ve been wanting to replace it for weeks now but have been too busy working to do much else.
You see, one of my sites is going live this week (that’s project manager talk–try not to let your envy get the better of you) so I’ve been leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning and not getting back until late, leaving precious little time for cigars and beverages on the balcony, keeping up with “CSI” and, oh yes, updating my web site. I’m not looking for pity–although it is always appreciated–this is just part of life for a high-powered businessman like me (again, keep a check on that envy).
In all seriousness, I really don’t mind the long hours as they are A) temporary, B) about to end and C) a fitting Ying to the 25 years of Civil Service Yang I enjoyed in the States. When asked about how working in England compares to working in the States, I always say that the culture shock of going from the US to the UK was nothing compared to the electric-chair jolt I received moving from the public sector into a privately owned business where, as Dan Aykroyd trenchantly observes in ‘Ghostbusters,’ “they expect results.”
Working in the private sector does have its advantages: it’s gratifying to actually accomplish something from time to time and I am rarely set upon by cranky pub patrons accusing me of being over-paid and under-worked. (When this used to happen in the States, I always smiled and effused, “Why yes, I am paid a lot of money for doing next to nothing; don’t you wish you had my job?”)
The downside of productive employment, however, means the occasional stretch of days where my writing career (lucrative as it is) must languish in the background while I scramble for whatever free minutes I can find. Consequently, upon finding myself in the Guildford bus station with about 15 minute to spare before the number 63 arrives, I thought I’d fire up the AlphaSmart and free-type until I regurgitate enough words for a respectable Chronicle.
Strange to think that barely a month ago it was snowing and now we’re into full summer. Spring lasted about 36 hours this year: one day we were complaining about the cold, the next day we went for a walk in the wood to see the bluebells and the day after that we started complaining about the heat. And boy, was it hot! High 70’s and low 80’s. (Yeah, but you try that without air conditioning. And besides, they use Celsius degrees over here and everyone knows they’re hotter than Fahrenheit degrees.)
I’m happy to report today shows signs of cooling down, and none too soon as the heat makes the locals do some nutty things, such as forget their clothing.
You would be astounded at the amount of clothing normally placid British folks are willing to go without when it is hot. And allow me to quell that fresh spurt of envy by advising you it is not all creamy curves and pleasantly perky pomegranate breasts. Much of it is wobbly, white, hairy as a wild boar’s backside, and protruding over the horizontal belt-buckle of a man old enough to know better than to wear black socks and sandals with Bermuda shorts but is too old to care.
Some of those people are in the bus station here with me; it is not a pretty sight.
Another thing I get to see in the bus station is a new way to queue-jump, courtesy of the smoking ban. While the civilized, smoke-free Brits form an orderly queue, bevies of rowdy youths or couples with eastern European accents (or both) nip through the door for a quick fag just as (coincidentally) the bus arrives. Then they stub out their butts and are suddenly first in line. (The very fact that I notice such a thing, much less care, signifies I have been here too long.)
But I was already aware that I had become a veteran Englander by virtue of the fact that I’m here right now, without adult supervision. Time was, if I wandered out of sight in a strange town, you had to alert search and rescue, but I get around on my own fairly well these days, thank you very much.
Ah, here comes my bus. And wouldn’t you know it, some skinny young blonde wearing a handkerchief for a halter-top and a pair of shorts barely wider than her belt just slipped out the door for a cigarette. I’m sure she deserves to be first on the bus ahead of all of us who have been patiently waiting. She must be dead on her feet after putting in such a hard day of shopping.
I would like to know what green grocer she visited, however; she has a lovely pair of pomegranates.
Snow Falling on Horsham
06 April 2008
We woke this morning to the unmistakable hush of snowfall. It’s not something I have experienced in a long time but it’s impossible to forget that peculiar stillness the air takes on when snow begins to fall. And this was proper snow; something I have seen only two or three times in the past six years, and only this once at the optimum moment–a lazy weekend morning.
Waking to snow on a weekday was always a followed by a feeling of dread, as the thought of digging out your car and driving to work while sharing the highway with 120,000 other commuters–half of them creeping along at ten miles an hours and the other half screeching past in SUVs because driving a big, heavy vehicle means you are not subject to the laws of physics–begins to coalesce in your brain. But snow on a weekend, when you have nothing pressing to do, was generally a welcome event.
Today was no different. Despite it being April, the snow was greeted with glee by nearly everyone. Before we had even finished breakfast the children in our block were out in the forecourt making snowmen. (Or are we legally required to call them snowpersons these days?)
These were Indian children (children from India, not Native Americans; you people in the US, keep up) who had never seen snow before. I can be sure of this because many of them were born here and the others came as toddlers with parents who wore parkas in May because it was so cold; these are not people intimately acquainted with sub-freezing temperatures. And yet, as soon as a respectable accumulation built up, parents and children alike began making snowmen. (Actually, they looked more like big-piles-of-white-stuff-men, but I doubt they’ve had a lot of opportunity to practice.)
I can only conclude from this that human DNA contains a snowman gene, passed down from our distant past, when our ancestors dug their way out of their caves as the snow piled up around them, to answer the irrepressible urge to stack oversized snowballs on top of each other until they represented something vaguely symbolizing a human figure. Why did they do this? Was it to appease the snow-gods, or was the man who made the most aesthetically pleasing snowman allowed his pick of the choicest child-bearing females? Is this how the snowman gene originated and passed into our genetic make-up?
It must have been something like that. Even in NY, where snow was anything but an anomaly, the first few snowfalls of the year were bound to entice at least a few families out of their warm homes to make snowmen on the front lawn. (After that, everyone just grumbled about the cold, complained about the snow ploughs, and hunkered down to wait for spring.)
As for me, I felt a bit torn. On the one hand, it was ever so pretty and I had never had the opportunity to see Horsham covered with snow. On the other hand, it was April for chrissake!!! Still, knowing it would be melted by noon, my wife and I bundled up in what warm clothes we could find and headed out into the blizzard (hey, we make the best use of what weather we’ve got).
The snow was quite deep by now (okay, it was just over an inch, but that’s deep for here) and coming down so thick I had to shield my eyes and squint through the flurries in order to see our High Street, looking like a movie set for a low-budget remake of ‘A Christmas Carol.’ En route to the park we encountered the requisite teenagers wearing short sleeved shirts because (and I know this from personal experience) when you’re sixteen you’re too cool to feel the cold, a handful of couples walking in the snow with umbrellas and a few older teens having a snowball fight (the snowball-fight gene is also part of the human DNA but it’s easy to see where that came from: “Ugh! What this? We make weapons!”)
The park looked like a fairyland, or, more precisely, a fairyland inhabited by short, rotund creatures and their servants: young parents and eager children who patted their pudgy white bodies with great affection, drew faces for them, fashioned arms out of twigs and even, in some cases, dressed them in scarves and hats. This was the snowman gene in full vigor, energetically embraced by people who see little enough snow to make it special, yet have enough experience to not make a hash of it.
We didn’t stay long. The snow continued to fall, spring remained resolutely in hiding and our own, respective survival genes were beginning to kick in: the Tea and Hot Cocoa genes.
I’ll let you guess whose was whose.
Tales of the Unexplained
23 March 2008
Easter morning! Spring is here, the flowers are blooming, the trees are budding and, outside it’s, well, miserable. No matter where you are in the British Isles today it is either raining, hailing, snowing, sleeting or a combination of all of these accompanied by gale-force winds and sub-freezing temperatures. A quick peek at the weather map confirms that even our outposts in the Isle of Mann and Northern Ireland are not exempt. The Republic of Ireland, however, is somehow miraculously missing out on this apocalyptic weather. We can draw only one conclusion from this: God is proper pissed-off at the British.
It could be over the way we handled the whole Paul McCartney – Heather Mills thing. If Jesus had been here, He would have just bitch-slapped them both, calmly explained to Heather that demanding half a million pounds from your ex so you can donate it to charity is not exactly the spirit of giving He is looking for, and then assigned them some challenging missionary work, like street-preaching the gospel in Tehran. Or it might be the current brouhaha in Parliament over our anticipated Frankenstein-esque foray into animal-human cloning; it’s not hard to see how God might be displeased with us for encroaching on His copyright.
Whatever our transgression, we’re certainly feeling the wrath here. It’s grey and wet and cold and windy and not at all like Easter. Also, it’s snowing, but it isn’t coming down in big, friendly flakes; instead, the wind is whipping tiny, hostile ice pellets that hit your skin like freezing needles. It’s turning my thoughts from spring to mid-winter, that time of dark, leaden skies, long nights, and tales of the unexplained told in hushed tones around a convivial fire. So pull up a space heater, grab a flagon of Oxbow cider, turn your attention from the howling wind outside and listen to my tale.
This is something I have been wanting to share for a while now, but couldn’t imagine how to work it into a post, until . . . , well, you’ll have to wait to find out.
One of the oddest things I discovered after moving here is that, when you drop something, it occasionally disappears. No, I’m serious. In the States, if something slipped from my fingers, I reached down and picked it up. Here, I look down, and it’s nowhere to be seen.
This first happened when I dropped a coin. I scoured the room looking for it and eventually had to conclude it had slipped into a rend in the space-time continuum and fell into another dimension. Maybe it has to do with being so close to the Prime Meridian, or the fact that aliens always seem to land in England to make their crop circles, but whatever the reason, it happens regularly, if infrequently.
Over the years, I have lost a pair of reading glasses this way, as well as a pair of socks. In both cases, I was standing in the bedroom when the items slipped from my hands and simply disappeared. Prolonged searches turned up nothing and this past summer we even took all of the furniture out of the bedroom to paint the woodwork.
It is just now occurring to me that I also lost the coin in that same bedroom, so perhaps it isn’t England in general, but my bedroom in particular that acts as a conduit to another astral plain. The more I think of it, the more it makes sense, especially in light of what happened this morning.
I was making the bed, as is my habit on Sunday morning, when I found a stray pillowcase stuffed between the mattress and the wall. It was not there the previous week and, given the fact that I turn the mattress once a month, I can be absolutely certain it wasn’t anywhere near the bed three weeks ago. But it was there this morning, a pink and blue stripped pillow case that neither my wife nor I had ever seen before.
When I asked what we should do with it, my wife, ever practical, said, “Put it in the wash,” but I have to wonder if I shouldn’t send it to the crop-circle believers so they can run their spookometer over it. It was clearly dropped by someone on the other side of the space-time continuum; I hope they liked my socks.
Oh, gotta run! The wind has dropped and the snow is now coming down in big, friendly flakes. And it’s sticking. I want to take my wife outside and show her how to make snow angels.
And, as a Bonus:
Once a post passes, I don’t tend to look for more comments, but while I was doing some site maintenance the other day, I found an additional comment on a post I did last October. My post had mentioned the winding British roads, and the commenter included a poem by G.K. Chesterton which made me smile. So, I am posting it here for all to enjoy:
The Winding English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
Turtles and Tuileries
24 February 2008
My son and his girlfriend spent this past week with us and the most significant thing that came of that visit was the revelation that there are no turtles in the UK. Sure, the odd sea turtle washes up on the beach from time to time, but snappers, painted turtles and box turtles—nada—which explains the absence of turtle soup.
Now, while this was significant for me, for them, her promotion from girlfriend to fiancée and his accompanying elevation from boyfriend to her intended would more likely be higher on the list. I give the boy credit; he put a lot of thought into this, unlike my own casual (some might say, offhanded) proposal:
We were having breakfast on the second morning of my first visit to the UK, which was only a month and a half since I had met my future wife while hiking in Ireland. The discussion turned to how we could possibly conduct a long-distance relationship and I made the suggestion that I could give up my job and move to England. She then said we might live together if I did that and I, without first engaging my brain, said, “If I give up my job and move over here, I would want you to marry me,” to which she responded, “Well, if you did that, I suppose I would.” So my proposal was more of a slip of the tongue than anything else; happy to say, it has solidified considerably in the ensuing years.
But the boy has been planning this for months. He bought the ring last autumn and even took a day off of work to drive the two and a half hours to his girlfriend’s parent’s house so he could ask them for her hand in marriage. His intention was to ask her this coming spring but as their plans for a trip to England firmed up and the day out in Paris was confirmed, he changed his mind. I can’t blame him; Paris is such a mythical city for most Americans, and the idea of being there, in the city of love, and popping the question while strolling along the Seine was too good an opportunity to pass up. The only catch was, he wanted me to take photos of the event.
My wife and I had several conversations about this, but neither of us could come up with a scenario that would (or should) put us anywhere near the happy couple while this event was taking place. I mean, I never thought to ask my dad to take photos of my proposal.
So, with this odd request residing uneasily in the back of my mind, we enjoyed a few days touring southeast England, and then boarded the Eurostar for Paris. It was a cloudy but mild day and when we reached the Tuileries gardens—the Louvre behind us, the Champs-Elysées stretched out before us, with the Arc de Triomphe standing nobly at the far end, and the Eiffel Tower visible in the distance—the boy leaned over to me and said, “Get ready, I’m going to do it now.” He then led his prospective bride-to-be a few paces away and went down on one knee. I have to admire his style, but the sight of my son, who I am more accustomed to seeing in juvenile court, suddenly turning into a soppy romantic nearly made me forget my role.
Recovering quickly, I pulled out my camera and began snapping photos like a Parisian fashion photographer, circling the couple, experimenting with different angles and lighting while his girlfriend remained oddly oblivious. I could only observe the event through my viewfinder, but it seemed to be going well enough. After it was over—and the affirmative answer confirmed—I tried to get back to the business at hand, which was, in my view, sight-seeing. My wife, however, lobbied for leaving them on their own a bit, so we wandered off, affording them the opportunity of basking in the glow of their newfound status without me pointing out landmarks.
Therefore, our time in Paris was spent touring the Louvre, which even on this dreary February afternoon was hot, crowded and smelled as if the sewers were backing up, and wandering down the Champs-Elysées to get a closer look at the Arc de Triomphe. But none of this has anything to do with turtles.
Mostly, I’m chagrined that, for the past six years, this important piece of information has eluded me. But when my future daughter-in-law brought it up one night during a cider-fuelled conversation in our local pub, the answer was readily obvious. Granted, it’s been some time since I’ve enjoyed a lazy afternoon swimming in the creek or spent any quality time with a woodland pond, but you think I might have noticed their absence by now.
So amazed was I by this bit of trivia that I Googled “Reptiles of Great Britain” at my first opportunity and discovered that, in addition to turtles, the UK suffers from an appalling dearth of amphibious life in general. All they can boast is a handful of salamanders, a few types of toads, and three species of snakes, only one of which is poisonous. Not a rattler, copper head, gila monster, scorpion or alligator among them.
So, with that one quizzical comment, all the mysteries were solved: why I have never seen Frogs Legs on any menu in the past six years, why there were no public service announcements during the recent floods warning people to watch out for water moccasins and why dogs and cats living near waterways don’t mysteriously disappear more often.
I did attempt to interest my son and his blushing fiancée in this important discovery, but they remained strangely unconcerned.
Riffing Off the News
14 February 2008
We spent this past Sunday morning engaged in our traditional routine of reading the Sunday papers. As is my habit, I scanned the various sections hoping to find a news item I could turn into an article and, as has been the case since I moved here, put them each aside without having mined a single snippet of inspiration.
I find this frustrating. In the States, newspapers were a major source of comic material, but here I come away baffled and slightly depressed (the news in Britain is universally awful—we’re rarely expected to make it past the end of the week). After this most recent exercise, I had occasion (i.e. there was nothing pressing on my To-Do list) to ponder why my quest for humor in the Sunday papers produces nothing but disappointment. The answer, I am chagrined to say, is startlingly simple: I don’t understand it.
Now maybe I’m becoming more simple-minded or the world is becoming more complex but my recollection of American newspapers is of easily comprehendible, black and white issues I could lift whole from the page and, like a clown with a tube-shaped balloon, fashion something comical out of it. Here, issues seem drawn from an impressively expansive pallet of greys, off-whites and the occasional magnolia.
This week, I had hopes of running with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s gaffe about Britain needing to allow Islamic laws to run parallel with the British court system. What a brilliant thing to say (comic-wise, that is); a mother lode of hilarity simply begging for the prospector’s pan. The only problem was, he didn’t actually say that and, truth be told, I can’t be sure of what it was he did say.
For example:
“It is uncomfortably true that this introduces into our thinking about law what some would see as a ‘market’ element, a competition for loyalty as Shachar admits. But if what we want socially is a pattern of relations in which a plurality of divers and overlapping affiliations work for a common good, and in which groups of serious and profound conviction are not systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty, it seems unavoidable.”
It took people smarter than me to figure out what he was on about, and people smarter than them to comment intelligently on it, and it will take people smarter than the lot of them to fashion astute and witty articles out of it. I mean, how do you riff off of “…while not compromising or weakening the possibility of unqualified belief in the authority and universality of sharia…”?
I don’t even know what he’s talking about, and who is this Sharia guy, anyway?
All of this could, however, be due to the newspapers I read. Years ago, when the minutia of our new life was being forged, the question of which Sunday papers to buy, due to the fact that I was new to the country, fell to my wife. Raised as a good Socialist, her criteria included thoughtful and balanced news coverage but neglected comic potential, so these papers tend to not be The Daily Mail, where, I am led to believe, issues are less complex, and most social ills can be deftly blamed on having allowed so many immigrants into the country. While the idea of being a Daily Mail reader holds a certain pleasing irony for me, my wife insists her family will disown us if we bring a copy into the house.
Now, I’m not suggesting that the venerable Albany Times Union is on a par with a reactionary, right-wing rag or that Americans require their newspapers to play mummy for them and cut their news into bit-sized bits, I’m just saying the papers here confound me; make of that what you will.
Take the seemingly simple issue of forcing lay-abouts living in council houses to get off benefits and find a job. You couldn’t, I was certain, come up with anything more clear-cut. But as I read through the editorials, I found articles by people who, arguably, have contributed much to society and who pointed out that when they, themselves, started out—as writers or actors or any other artistic endeavor with a dubious pay check—such a law would have effectively ended their careers, consigning them to jobs involving hairnets and name tags. People sucking the government tit are easy targets, but do I really want to take pot-shots at budding artists? (Note to self: Must stop being so liberal.)
I’m sure The Daily Mail managed to keep this issue from becoming all woolly around the edges. They probably blamed the immigrants.
Perfectly Content
27 January 2008
Just now, it happened—a moment of pure, perfect contentment: I’m sitting on my balcony. The sun is shining. Fluffy white clouds float in the blue sky. It is warm but not hot. The breeze is low and languid carrying the faux promise of spring and a rogue scent of freshly baked scones. I have a fine cigar in one hand and a glass of mead (no, really, mead) in the other. And it hits me: I am, at this moment, perfectly content.
This doesn’t happen often and, when it does, it doesn’t last long. Soon I began thinking that I have yet to solve a thorny plot problem in my hopefully soon-to-be novel-in-progress and that my web site needs updating. The sun, the clouds, the breeze remained, but my perfect contentment dropped from 100% to a paltry 80.
But let’s face it, that’s still pretty good; when was the last time you felt perfectly content? Can you even remember? That’s the other ingredient of being perfectly content—recognizing when you are. You have to be quick, you have to know yourself and, in many instances, you have to lower your standards.
Being perfectly content doesn’t mean everything is perfect; it never is. It’s simply a moment, however fleeting, when everything is flowing in the right direction. It doesn’t have to be—and in fact, rarely is—a grand epiphany, but more of a quiet realization that, if someone ran up to you at that moment and demanded, “Is anything wrong? Is there anything you need?” you wouldn’t say, “well, I’m a bit cold, and this drink tastes sorta funny, and there’s a mole on my butt that I’m a bit concerned about.” You would, instead, respond with a definite “No” to both questions.
I’m sure I experienced this in America. I don’t recall being particularly malcontent there, but it was so long ago it escapes me. Maybe I should have taken note of it at the time or, perhaps, it’s simply so far in the past I can’t recall. America, itself, sometimes seems like a long ago and far away land to me now (so much so that I have to check local web sites to see what is going on at street level: Do you know who Amy McDonald is? What do you call Bin Liners? Do you use the word “Bespoke”? Is “Waking the Dead” playing on TV?), which makes recalling a specific PCE (Perfect Contentment Episode) from that time a little like trying to remember the name of the second girl you ever kissed; you might, after a protracted period of introspection, be successful, but it’s much easier to recall the most recent.
Such as last night.
We were with friends at our yearly Panto outing. (If you need to swot up on Panto, check out Wikipedia.) During the sing-along, when the other side of the audience was making their attempt to out-sing our side, everyone in my camp suddenly, in unison and on key, chanted, “WHAT a LOAD of RUB-bish!”
How does this constitute a PCE? Allow me to explain.
In America, at a basketball match, when an opposing player tries for a basket but completely misses the backboard, the crowd, if they are paying attention, spontaneously chants, “AIRRRRRRR BALLLLLLL!” Not surprisingly, no one does that here. Instead, they chant, “What a load of rubbish.” But I wouldn’t have known about that had I not recently attended a football game (that’d be a soccer match for you folks playing the US version).
Several times during the match, the fans enthusiastically bellowed this chant. It was always spontaneous and always in unison (and with good reason; I know nothing about soccer and even I could tell these guys were playing like amateurs). If the chant was meant to inspire our beleaguered team to victory, instead of merely register the crowd’s collective opinion, it didn’t work; our side suffered a humiliating defeat in a contest everyone thought was gong to be an easy victory.
But at least I learned about the chant, and, last night, when our side of the audience grew tired of shouting “Oh no you’re not!” to the other side’s, “Oh yes we are!” we switched, as if on cue, to the ‘rubbish’ chant, providing me with a rare and complete feeling of belonging; an unspoiled moment of contentment in a day filled with contentment.
As I said, it’s not always a grand epiphany; sometimes it’s just knowing that things feel right.
So when might I except another PCE to come along? Well, the sun is still shining, the smell of scones has been replaced by bacon and I’m feeling fairly content right now—though smug also covers it—at having completed an article for my web site. Okay, it’s not the best article I’ve every written, but I still managed nearly 900 words on, what I am certain you will agree, is a fairly flimsy subject.
That might not constitute a PCE but it comes in at a solid 85%, and compared to a drizzly afternoon stuck inside watching Big Brother, I’ll take that any day.
The Pod People
04 January 2008
Recently, I acquired an iPod, something I swore I’d never do. I’m not sure why I felt that way, aside from the fact that I’m a Microsoft love-slave and, therefore, suspicious of all things Apple, and, of course, my natural tendency to gravitate toward the minority.
I am not, however, new to the MP3 craze. Some time ago, I discovered my phone could play music so I installed a larger memory card and rather painstakingly uploaded about 60 songs, which enabled me to wrangle with my phone’s hands-free head set and play the song list in order. Not a giant leap toward musical nirvana, but it was better than listening to the ring tones. Just.
Still, this seemed satisfactory until my wife bought a real MP3 player, affording me an opportunity to covet its capacity and leading me into iPod temptation. Soon, I felt myself slipping toward the Dark Side.
I bought an iPod because of its flexibility, the virtually endless number of songs available for it and my failure to realize that listening to a static list of 60 songs is the limit of my technological ability. Having the freedom to select from thousands of songs and create play lists and sort by artist, album, genre or what drugs the performers were on when they recorded the songs hasn’t enhanced my musical quality time, it just means that what little time I do have to listen to music is taken up with searching for something to listen to.
Also, I have discovered I am not someone who can gracefully multi-task. My wife listens to her MP3 player with the television on in the background while she knits and does Sudoku, but if I’m listening to music I can’t even walk down a flight of stairs without putting myself in danger. (This was nearly critically demonstrated the other week while attempting to cross a road while talking on my phone.)
But when the mood strikes, and if my to-do list allows for a few guilt-free minutes of sitting and doing nothing else but listening to music, the iPod is amazing. Perhaps too amazing.
Through the iPod and the iTunes Store, I now have easy access to all those brilliant songs from my youth, the ones I listened to endlessly, after having camped for hours by the radio with a tape recorder and my finger hovering over the Record button in case they came on. Then, of course, there was the art of hitting the Start and Stop buttons at the right time to get the maximum amount of song and the minimum amount of DJ chatter. Even so, I never thought myself inconvenienced because I loved those songs and, once captured, I could play them until the tape wore out.
But now that I can download them at will for 79 pence apiece, I find that reality doesn’t quite measure up to my memories.
Listening to those songs without the benefit of a worn-out reel-to-reel tape playing though tiny, crackling speakers is a revelation. With the sound originating from a state-of the-art whatchamacallit wired straight into my ears and embodying the type of fidelity generally associated with Emperor Penguins, it quickly becomes evident that many of the cherished songs of my childhood are, well, rubbish.
Where I had been anticipating a languid stroll down memory lane, I rapidly became ensnarled in the brambles of jarringly awful lyrics and bogged down in the mire of amateurish production. And in one song, I swear they sang an entire verse out of tune.
Our parents were right—we were listening to crap.
Disappointed but undaunted, I managed to find some modern-day songsmiths who compose pleasing melodies, know how to carry a tune and enjoy the advantage of Dolby Sound and digital enhancement, and can now walk proudly to the bus stop with white cords trailing from my ears and disappearing into the collar of my jacket as if I’m some sort of hip Secret Service Agent.
But now that I have become one of the Pod People and can summon my Wall Of Sound at will, immersing myself in a musical maelstrom designed to block out the world and everyone in it, I have discovered a truth that few people understand:
Silence is terribly under-appreciated.
