Sworn.
Who can work? The boy's about to be sworn in. Number 44.
Hard to take in the humanity of the vibe, apparently everywhere in America. When did we have such a touchy-feely-poeticy inauguration? When did the prayers of a pastor over the new Commander in Chief sound as much like the prayers in local church?
"Our father, who art in heaven..." leads Rick Warren.
"Sweet land of liberty..." sings Aretha Franklin.
"Holy, blubbing cow..." chokes some bloke in Bournemouth.
But let's not forget.
Baz?
This is a guy who's about to define the word 'pressure'.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sand.
Sand.
We traipsed a few grains of seafront sand into London over the weekend. A little symbolism.
The time had come round all too soon to wassail a few hearty hurrahs and bon voyages to Jules and Angela, as they prepare to move life to Bahrain - a country familiar with sand. The capital was suitably wet and windy to wish them off.
Their flat was heaving. And still half full of people wanting breakfast by Sunday morning. But even a hearty Sardinian sausage can't properly compensate for losing your chums to warmer climes. But, in the end, Mr and Mrs CJ had, as ever, simply created another excuse to get a good group together to enjoy themselves.
It's obvious a lot of folk will miss you in London, chaps. If any of our gang in Bournemouth decided to follow a star to the Middle East, or even Middle England, I know it'd be a trauma for the rest of us. Great holiday opportunities not withstanding.
Stiff upper lip, everyone.
---
This week is another one creaking at the seams here. Strategy and branding stuff close to delivery, plus various bits of artwork to get in shape and some more research to do for a music job. No complaints at being kept so reassuringly in shape in such tricky times. My brain may be close to full, but it's a much appreciated problem for as long as it lasts. The problem or the brain.
But it's a challenge coming up with good thinking while being mentally in a number of places at once. You have to keep coming back to things. Hoping you remember where you left them.
With all the GISBBI* running around already this year, though, sad to say that the laptop has been an invaluable way to make the most of time on trains and boats at least, if not beaches (you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere).
(*Gosh I'm So Busy Being Important)
We traipsed a few grains of seafront sand into London over the weekend. A little symbolism.
The time had come round all too soon to wassail a few hearty hurrahs and bon voyages to Jules and Angela, as they prepare to move life to Bahrain - a country familiar with sand. The capital was suitably wet and windy to wish them off.
Their flat was heaving. And still half full of people wanting breakfast by Sunday morning. But even a hearty Sardinian sausage can't properly compensate for losing your chums to warmer climes. But, in the end, Mr and Mrs CJ had, as ever, simply created another excuse to get a good group together to enjoy themselves.
It's obvious a lot of folk will miss you in London, chaps. If any of our gang in Bournemouth decided to follow a star to the Middle East, or even Middle England, I know it'd be a trauma for the rest of us. Great holiday opportunities not withstanding.
Stiff upper lip, everyone.
---
This week is another one creaking at the seams here. Strategy and branding stuff close to delivery, plus various bits of artwork to get in shape and some more research to do for a music job. No complaints at being kept so reassuringly in shape in such tricky times. My brain may be close to full, but it's a much appreciated problem for as long as it lasts. The problem or the brain.
But it's a challenge coming up with good thinking while being mentally in a number of places at once. You have to keep coming back to things. Hoping you remember where you left them.
With all the GISBBI* running around already this year, though, sad to say that the laptop has been an invaluable way to make the most of time on trains and boats at least, if not beaches (you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere).
(*Gosh I'm So Busy Being Important)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Straight. And Soft.
Straight. And Soft.
Now, I don't know if it's because of being so generally loose and floppy-haired and unshaven and late for things, or whether it's inexplicably at odds with it, but I'm famously one for straight lines and right angles and generally lining things up. Makes me rub my thighs a little.
So at the weekend, away from the studio and normal stuff, I was almost beside myself.
I'll explain, if I can.
Getting lost for hours in over-working the production on a piece of music is probably one symptom of liking considered engineering. Tidying my studio floor or doing the washing up before I can think straight is probably as much a symptom of putting off work I don't fancy doing as any neatness compulsion, but it's there too. But it is, of course, working as a designer that tends to most bring out my nerdy tendency to attach everything to grids.
Lining up, making it match, underscoring uniformity... don't get me started. Why do I love this? I need to sit down.
In practical terms it's all about legibility of course - making an ad or a poster or a brochure or a website intuitive to read. It's about ensuring stuff is easy to use by people.
But I'm hardly a slave to practical, am I? It's more than that. It's some weird, personal compulsion to drool over signage and airport graphics and that kind of strictly uniform stuff that is beautiful, precisely because of its functionality.
Which would sound odd if you'd ever actually seen me. You could starch me into a naval dress uniform and rivet me to a deck ladder and I'd still find a way to lean. I don't usually look right with the top button done up.
But give me the Helvetica family and the colours black and white and a strict No Curves rule and I'm likely to have a ball. A square one.
---
It is, at risk of puncturing my impending profound thesis on the subject, ultimately all to do with a conviction that the very best design makes a single statement. An immediate, instantly appreciable identity.
Logo, website, advert, car - even a pop tune. With the good stuff, you know instantly that it knows what it is. To me, that clarity shows good creative; it's what I'm always trying to do.
And, pertinently to this story, I'd say it's a conviction that certainly applies to one of the hardest but most important things to do this with.
Buildings.
---
First full week of oh-nine was largely about preparing for a particular branding presentation. A client I've been working with for a few years had commissioned Momo to develop the branding for their partners across Europe, and subsequently invited me to present the conclusions to their head office in France, at their annual new year kick-off meeting.
"Hoorah" I remember thinking coolly, as the head of the company was originally rounding on asking me to do this, during his call before Christmas, "..go on, go on - invite me to Paris. Give me an actual reason to say I'm bloody well going to Paris on business..." I don't believe I said any of this out loud.
"This year we're meeting somewhere else for a change" he said. "Le Havre. Thought it would make life easier for you. ..Can you make it?"
"Yee-uh. ..Er, yeah. I can make it. To Le Havre."
"Great. Just great. ..You'll need to catch the overnight ferry. Meeting's first thing and you're on right at the start. See you then" he said nicely, ringing off.
---
Despite the uncomfortably rapid from-the-cabin-bunk-straight-into-the-room-full-of-expectant-French-people-who-are-decidedly-unsure-about-this-whole-branding-business segue that morning, my enthusiastic apologies to the room, en Français, for being able to do nothing more than apologise en Français, seemed to work. I saw a few smiles and a few laughs at my universally understood William Shatner impressions. Which I'll explain some other time. But yes, it was an actual business presentation I was doing.
Caroline was with me on this trip, to prolong the trip into a night away and a subsequent morning properly off, loafing around French cafés. Which is, as you know, largely why I go to work in the first place. We were both welcomed into a friendly environment and fed a smart, friendly three course lunch and encouraged to not worry about clearing off again in the afternoon to enjoy our hotel room without bothering any more about work. I do so love the French.
"Where are you staying tonight?" one of the chaps asked Caroline warmly.
"Le Havre" she answered sweetly. She says his face flickered momentarily.
Given that we were, that morning, in the pretty little seaside town of Trouville, set in the rolling, relaxed Normandy countryside bathed in frosty winter sunshine, he could easily be forgiven for wondering if we were off our bleedin' chariot.
---
But here's the deal. And I mean, who knew.
Le Havre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A whole central chunk of it.
Hard to imagine, as you swoop over the Seine estuary through a forest of lekky pilons and belching refinery chimneys and squatting gas reservoirs, that anything of such impressive-sounding renown should be so well hidden in this busy, traffic-vomitting artery of the channel. But it's there. Unhidden, once you've found it.
Auguste Perret's vision appears to be one of straight lines. Blocks of right angles and perpendicular lines. And I was sort of in heaven, the more we walked around it.
Now, it's not the sort of heaven that most people would get. We would have sounded fantastically like we were convincing ourselves, as we wandered and pondered and pontificated on the ponts and quais. UNESCO badged the the city centre in 2005 for its "innovative utilization of concrete's potential." But fans of Communist social architecture and/or Thunderbirds might understand.
I was obviously weak at the knees.
The 133-hectare space is, according to UNESCO, "an exceptional example of architecture and town planning of the post-war era" - and it really, distinctively, oddly is.
It's rare to come across such a large geographical area that seems so born of a single idea. So controlled and planned. For all the variety of details, the whole seemed wonderfully, to my mind, single-minded. Complete.
Msr Perret apparently once employed a cocky young upstart called Le Corbusier. Who learned from who, I don't know, but wandering around Le Havre is a bit of an architect's wet dream. Not because it's any of the finest individual architecture you've ever seen, but because of the sheer scale of the vision they managed to actually deliver. It's a whole fifties toy town. Vast boulevards, arrow-straight to the sea front, large properly square squares - and all of it low, at only five or six stories. It gives you loads of hopeful sky to look at. (..Mercifully distracting you from all the concrete, perhaps. Cynic.)
The merrits of concrete as a material to actually live with are, yes, debatable. And you might also point out that the entire vision here is really of the motor car - it's all designed to be watched from a moving window, sliding gracefully past in continual, shifting, perpendicular perspectives.
But it feels very airy. And purposeful. With very tall shop frontages, there's plenty to keep the human eye-level occupied, without looking up. But when you do, from wherever you are, you see the looming, moderno-gothic imposition of Saint Joseph cathedral - which looks like it should peel open robotically and reveal a giant rocket with CCCP and a red star on it. To do what, who knows. Who cares? To just show off.
Fantastic.
It's all quite surreal. But in the sunshine at least, all quite something.
The thing is, something about the clarity of the single idea here is comforting. The design places you well - you can always see where you are in relation to something distinctive, but more than that, you feel you are somewhere very definately sure of itself. Somewhere that knows exactly what it is. And this is a surprisingly fundamental human need - to feel placed.
---
Our hotel was an unexpected temple to this modern dream - a recently converted Ministry of Finance building. And as a consequence of all those Fibonace squares and perfect proportions, the rooms were huge and angular and just FULL of straight lines. Square taps, rectangular lamps, risque 'diagonal' throws. And all with a spa on the other side of the choridor. They had to drag us out of the place.
The thing is, as Caroline and I swapped notes - urban designer to graphic designer - the interlocking issues between the disciplines that we'd so often mused (oh the long winter evenings just fly, etc...) were just obvious, writ large all around us. Space, place, legibility, identity.
And most important, after all, was how the space was being used. For right in the centre of town, set in a vast public square, was the Hotel de Ville - the town hall. It had a huge square clock tower you could place for miles around, and a wide open frontage designed very firmly to do one thing - one especially French thing. Encourage people to gather.
As we stood and watched the growing hoards of people with Palestinian solidarity banners, chanting for 'les enfants de Gaza', reminding us of the smashed, chaotic streets and decrepit, jagged, infrastructure of a strip of land so small you can see all it's boundaries from the top of a tower block, yet has a million and a half people living in it, on top of eachother, locked in and unable to leave, I knew the graphic design of the city we were standing in must be working on some significant level. I stopped looking at it.
I stopped thinking about right angles and straight lines and hard materials and got lost thinking about the soft tissue of people.
We came home feeling oddly clear-headed.
Now, I don't know if it's because of being so generally loose and floppy-haired and unshaven and late for things, or whether it's inexplicably at odds with it, but I'm famously one for straight lines and right angles and generally lining things up. Makes me rub my thighs a little.
So at the weekend, away from the studio and normal stuff, I was almost beside myself.
I'll explain, if I can.
Getting lost for hours in over-working the production on a piece of music is probably one symptom of liking considered engineering. Tidying my studio floor or doing the washing up before I can think straight is probably as much a symptom of putting off work I don't fancy doing as any neatness compulsion, but it's there too. But it is, of course, working as a designer that tends to most bring out my nerdy tendency to attach everything to grids.
Lining up, making it match, underscoring uniformity... don't get me started. Why do I love this? I need to sit down.
In practical terms it's all about legibility of course - making an ad or a poster or a brochure or a website intuitive to read. It's about ensuring stuff is easy to use by people.
But I'm hardly a slave to practical, am I? It's more than that. It's some weird, personal compulsion to drool over signage and airport graphics and that kind of strictly uniform stuff that is beautiful, precisely because of its functionality.
Which would sound odd if you'd ever actually seen me. You could starch me into a naval dress uniform and rivet me to a deck ladder and I'd still find a way to lean. I don't usually look right with the top button done up.
But give me the Helvetica family and the colours black and white and a strict No Curves rule and I'm likely to have a ball. A square one.
---
It is, at risk of puncturing my impending profound thesis on the subject, ultimately all to do with a conviction that the very best design makes a single statement. An immediate, instantly appreciable identity.
Logo, website, advert, car - even a pop tune. With the good stuff, you know instantly that it knows what it is. To me, that clarity shows good creative; it's what I'm always trying to do.
And, pertinently to this story, I'd say it's a conviction that certainly applies to one of the hardest but most important things to do this with.
Buildings.
---
First full week of oh-nine was largely about preparing for a particular branding presentation. A client I've been working with for a few years had commissioned Momo to develop the branding for their partners across Europe, and subsequently invited me to present the conclusions to their head office in France, at their annual new year kick-off meeting.
"Hoorah" I remember thinking coolly, as the head of the company was originally rounding on asking me to do this, during his call before Christmas, "..go on, go on - invite me to Paris. Give me an actual reason to say I'm bloody well going to Paris on business..." I don't believe I said any of this out loud.
"This year we're meeting somewhere else for a change" he said. "Le Havre. Thought it would make life easier for you. ..Can you make it?"
"Yee-uh. ..Er, yeah. I can make it. To Le Havre."
"Great. Just great. ..You'll need to catch the overnight ferry. Meeting's first thing and you're on right at the start. See you then" he said nicely, ringing off.
---
Despite the uncomfortably rapid from-the-cabin-bunk-straight-into-the-room-full-of-expectant-French-people-who-are-decidedly-unsure-about-this-whole-branding-business segue that morning, my enthusiastic apologies to the room, en Français, for being able to do nothing more than apologise en Français, seemed to work. I saw a few smiles and a few laughs at my universally understood William Shatner impressions. Which I'll explain some other time. But yes, it was an actual business presentation I was doing.
Caroline was with me on this trip, to prolong the trip into a night away and a subsequent morning properly off, loafing around French cafés. Which is, as you know, largely why I go to work in the first place. We were both welcomed into a friendly environment and fed a smart, friendly three course lunch and encouraged to not worry about clearing off again in the afternoon to enjoy our hotel room without bothering any more about work. I do so love the French.
"Where are you staying tonight?" one of the chaps asked Caroline warmly.
"Le Havre" she answered sweetly. She says his face flickered momentarily.
Given that we were, that morning, in the pretty little seaside town of Trouville, set in the rolling, relaxed Normandy countryside bathed in frosty winter sunshine, he could easily be forgiven for wondering if we were off our bleedin' chariot.
---
But here's the deal. And I mean, who knew.
Le Havre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A whole central chunk of it.
Hard to imagine, as you swoop over the Seine estuary through a forest of lekky pilons and belching refinery chimneys and squatting gas reservoirs, that anything of such impressive-sounding renown should be so well hidden in this busy, traffic-vomitting artery of the channel. But it's there. Unhidden, once you've found it.
Auguste Perret's vision appears to be one of straight lines. Blocks of right angles and perpendicular lines. And I was sort of in heaven, the more we walked around it.
Now, it's not the sort of heaven that most people would get. We would have sounded fantastically like we were convincing ourselves, as we wandered and pondered and pontificated on the ponts and quais. UNESCO badged the the city centre in 2005 for its "innovative utilization of concrete's potential." But fans of Communist social architecture and/or Thunderbirds might understand.
I was obviously weak at the knees.
The 133-hectare space is, according to UNESCO, "an exceptional example of architecture and town planning of the post-war era" - and it really, distinctively, oddly is.
It's rare to come across such a large geographical area that seems so born of a single idea. So controlled and planned. For all the variety of details, the whole seemed wonderfully, to my mind, single-minded. Complete.
Msr Perret apparently once employed a cocky young upstart called Le Corbusier. Who learned from who, I don't know, but wandering around Le Havre is a bit of an architect's wet dream. Not because it's any of the finest individual architecture you've ever seen, but because of the sheer scale of the vision they managed to actually deliver. It's a whole fifties toy town. Vast boulevards, arrow-straight to the sea front, large properly square squares - and all of it low, at only five or six stories. It gives you loads of hopeful sky to look at. (..Mercifully distracting you from all the concrete, perhaps. Cynic.)
The merrits of concrete as a material to actually live with are, yes, debatable. And you might also point out that the entire vision here is really of the motor car - it's all designed to be watched from a moving window, sliding gracefully past in continual, shifting, perpendicular perspectives.
But it feels very airy. And purposeful. With very tall shop frontages, there's plenty to keep the human eye-level occupied, without looking up. But when you do, from wherever you are, you see the looming, moderno-gothic imposition of Saint Joseph cathedral - which looks like it should peel open robotically and reveal a giant rocket with CCCP and a red star on it. To do what, who knows. Who cares? To just show off.
Fantastic.
It's all quite surreal. But in the sunshine at least, all quite something.
The thing is, something about the clarity of the single idea here is comforting. The design places you well - you can always see where you are in relation to something distinctive, but more than that, you feel you are somewhere very definately sure of itself. Somewhere that knows exactly what it is. And this is a surprisingly fundamental human need - to feel placed.
---
Our hotel was an unexpected temple to this modern dream - a recently converted Ministry of Finance building. And as a consequence of all those Fibonace squares and perfect proportions, the rooms were huge and angular and just FULL of straight lines. Square taps, rectangular lamps, risque 'diagonal' throws. And all with a spa on the other side of the choridor. They had to drag us out of the place.
The thing is, as Caroline and I swapped notes - urban designer to graphic designer - the interlocking issues between the disciplines that we'd so often mused (oh the long winter evenings just fly, etc...) were just obvious, writ large all around us. Space, place, legibility, identity.
And most important, after all, was how the space was being used. For right in the centre of town, set in a vast public square, was the Hotel de Ville - the town hall. It had a huge square clock tower you could place for miles around, and a wide open frontage designed very firmly to do one thing - one especially French thing. Encourage people to gather.
As we stood and watched the growing hoards of people with Palestinian solidarity banners, chanting for 'les enfants de Gaza', reminding us of the smashed, chaotic streets and decrepit, jagged, infrastructure of a strip of land so small you can see all it's boundaries from the top of a tower block, yet has a million and a half people living in it, on top of eachother, locked in and unable to leave, I knew the graphic design of the city we were standing in must be working on some significant level. I stopped looking at it.
I stopped thinking about right angles and straight lines and hard materials and got lost thinking about the soft tissue of people.
We came home feeling oddly clear-headed.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Screenwipe.
Screenwipe.
Charlie Brooker. Am I right to be applauding him on?
I'm becoming increasingly unsure whether watching his show is standing against the gradual, erosive downfall of civilisation or hastening it.
Watch the current episode on BBC iPlayer in disbelief.
..Why would they make Konnie Huq do that? Why?
Charlie Brooker. Am I right to be applauding him on?
I'm becoming increasingly unsure whether watching his show is standing against the gradual, erosive downfall of civilisation or hastening it.
Watch the current episode on BBC iPlayer in disbelief.
..Why would they make Konnie Huq do that? Why?
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Pressure.
Pressure.
Technically, we're half way through Week 2 of January. Already. Enjoying being back, so far?
To a background of job losses and teary Woolies employees, my own pressured first full week back in the saddle can only be a blessing. There's a reassuring amount for Momo to be pre-occupied with as the year starts, and it's been nice seeing some of my clients and work chums again already.
But the studio's certainly changed back from a bouncing New Year dancefloor to an arena of plate-spinning. Honestly. ..It feels like Imperial Rome does The Generation Game.
With clever-sounding presentations to write and clever-looking creative to pull out of the air, I fear for my Quality Street-addled brain. And I think the rest of me is still a few per-cent proof - I seemed to keep dropping things in meetings yesterday. Knocks the edge of your winking finger pistol when you simultaneously throw your pen across the room.
---
As I soldier on manfully through a pressured long one today then, as pre-occupied as I am, I can't keep other news out of mind. Isreal. As far away as the situation is, all the usual joke-making here feels a little uncomfortable.
Not that this seemed to affect me when my father died, of course.
You have to get on. Of course.
But. Shit. It's an Orwellian hell out there. Just an ever-worsening madness. I can't compute it. What's anyone, like, doing?
Having to get on with what's in front of us and not think about it, mostly.
We have deadlines.
This post from Iloveravi on Current.com was interesting, I think:
Technically, we're half way through Week 2 of January. Already. Enjoying being back, so far?
To a background of job losses and teary Woolies employees, my own pressured first full week back in the saddle can only be a blessing. There's a reassuring amount for Momo to be pre-occupied with as the year starts, and it's been nice seeing some of my clients and work chums again already.
But the studio's certainly changed back from a bouncing New Year dancefloor to an arena of plate-spinning. Honestly. ..It feels like Imperial Rome does The Generation Game.
With clever-sounding presentations to write and clever-looking creative to pull out of the air, I fear for my Quality Street-addled brain. And I think the rest of me is still a few per-cent proof - I seemed to keep dropping things in meetings yesterday. Knocks the edge of your winking finger pistol when you simultaneously throw your pen across the room.
---
As I soldier on manfully through a pressured long one today then, as pre-occupied as I am, I can't keep other news out of mind. Isreal. As far away as the situation is, all the usual joke-making here feels a little uncomfortable.
Not that this seemed to affect me when my father died, of course.
You have to get on. Of course.
But. Shit. It's an Orwellian hell out there. Just an ever-worsening madness. I can't compute it. What's anyone, like, doing?
Having to get on with what's in front of us and not think about it, mostly.
We have deadlines.
This post from Iloveravi on Current.com was interesting, I think:
"I agree that Israel should go after the Hamas soldiers
launching rockets into Israel.
Fucking right. Go get them.
But if you start killing innocent people including kids
then you loose your moral high-ground. Fast.
Israel has had enough of being afraid of rocket
attacks and has taken action.
Sadly the action they have taken is way, way,
way off the fucking deep end.
They are using weapons that most of the world
has agreed are too horrible to use EVEN in war.
They are using these weapons on civilians.
On children. They are killing hundreds of innocent
people without regret.
This is wrong no matter what your motives are.
Israel has transformed from a people with a
legitimate complaint to a dangerous and violent
monster that needs to be stopped.
I just hope the international community gets their
shit together before it is too late."
launching rockets into Israel.
Fucking right. Go get them.
But if you start killing innocent people including kids
then you loose your moral high-ground. Fast.
Israel has had enough of being afraid of rocket
attacks and has taken action.
Sadly the action they have taken is way, way,
way off the fucking deep end.
They are using weapons that most of the world
has agreed are too horrible to use EVEN in war.
They are using these weapons on civilians.
On children. They are killing hundreds of innocent
people without regret.
This is wrong no matter what your motives are.
Israel has transformed from a people with a
legitimate complaint to a dangerous and violent
monster that needs to be stopped.
I just hope the international community gets their
shit together before it is too late."
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Wirelarse.
Wirelarse.
So anyway. You watch the news and you feel several serious shades of something unpleasant. Angry and pissed off and all that useless stuff. So you write an angry, pissed-off blog, hit Post, and flick on the radio for some light relief.
Next thing you know, in an uncomfortably obvious emotional volte-face, you find yourself being recorded on a hip, electro-beat, youth radio programme, sounding far too pleased to be on it.
Tragic.
Naturally, most people don't expect the phone to ring while doing the washing up of a Friday evening to have Radio 1 ask if they'd like to pop on air with their amusing anecdote-come-obviously-hip-music-choice. But I quietly patted my hands dry, cleared my throat imperceptibly and coolly took the call. Obviously.
We think Annie Mac is a poppet for being nice about some old bloke ruining the feel of her show.
Momo on the Mash Up
So anyway. You watch the news and you feel several serious shades of something unpleasant. Angry and pissed off and all that useless stuff. So you write an angry, pissed-off blog, hit Post, and flick on the radio for some light relief.
Next thing you know, in an uncomfortably obvious emotional volte-face, you find yourself being recorded on a hip, electro-beat, youth radio programme, sounding far too pleased to be on it.
Tragic.
Naturally, most people don't expect the phone to ring while doing the washing up of a Friday evening to have Radio 1 ask if they'd like to pop on air with their amusing anecdote-come-obviously-hip-music-choice. But I quietly patted my hands dry, cleared my throat imperceptibly and coolly took the call. Obviously.
We think Annie Mac is a poppet for being nice about some old bloke ruining the feel of her show.
Momo on the Mash Up
Saturday, January 03, 2009
How the other half live. Apparently.
How the other half live. Apparently.
Picture the scene.
Nice suburban home, nice couple, nice kids playing in the lounge as the family are interviewed by a radio reporter. Birds in the sunny garden keep up a calming chirrup of atmosphere among the citrus trees, through the open patio doors. Fresh juice clinks on a tray as the nice young mum sets it down.
It's a home you want.
"Tell me what it's like to live here" says the radio reporter.
"Well," begins the young lass beside her husband, with a tip of her head and a slightly forced smile, "after eight years, you begin to plan around it." She then laughs a little what-can-you-do laugh. A serious gesture.
"We tell the kids that if they ever go anywhere, they must always run if they're outside. No hanging around. And if they're at home, they must stay downstairs and not stray too far down the garden from the house. We only get about ten seconds warning."
She shrugs. Her husband picks up: " Of course we have some sympathy - they're being brutalised by their leaders. But, y'know, they voted for them. And these same leaders want to see our children dead."
His wife interjects: "Yes, we have sympathy - of course we do. But they had warning of our strikes. We texted them. Our planes ticker-tape dropped thousands of leaflets telling them we only wanted to target military installations and that they should leave those areas. They had warning."
"Then we hear of the family of five children sleeping across the road from a munitions stash... and so, what can you do? When this is over, it will be quiet again for us. At last. My kids will be able to play in their own garden safely."
---
It's hard to imagine anyone sitting by quietly if rockets dropped on Southbourne for eight years. I look out of the studio window at all the homes of decent, moderate people I see around my streets every day, and understand this decent family's honest defiance. It sounds like something anyone around me here would say. What I would say, in their shoes.
This young couple from somewhere like Sderot in the western Negev, heard interviewed this morning on the Today programme, sounded more together and resolved and, well, 'normal' than many of the region's similar residents. They're taking sleeping pills and arguing and seeing their house prices plummet and their marriages fragment. They're worn down by the endless threat of rocket attacks by Hamas, from the Gaza strip just a short drive away. These are people like you and me who want to get on with their lives and not be traumatised.
Who can blame them for wanting something done?
---
The other report, run back-to-back with this one this morning, was from Gaza. On the dawning of Day Eight of the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, a local radio producer interviewed people there.
It was hard to hear some of the recorded responses over the thumps, roars and sometimes blasts of the fighter planes and missile strikes. Plus, of course, some of them responded in Arabic and so needed the voices of translators fed over the top of their own.
"I am standing here talking to you now," said one doctor, in English, "but I honestly don't know what could happen in the next five minutes."
"We have some supplies, but no electricity. Water has been cut off too. But we have God. He will protect us, and he's all we have. We will be okay."
Another aid worker, English sounding, said: "We brought in a family this morning that had been hit by a missile attack. Little (name) who is four died in front of us from her injuries. Her sister, (name) was brought in dead on arrival. Their brother, (name) we thought would be okay. He was brought in breathing. He died this morning, however."
"Some are calling in the streets for revenge on Isreal. Some are calling for God's mercy." said the Gaza-based reporter calmly, in English. "Hospitals are over-run and infrastructure demolished. The death toll is reported as in the many hundreds now. Humanitarian efforts are being badly hampered by the situation." In the background was the sound of more thumping explosions, and of people wailing and shouting.
---
Ed Stourton was reporting from a cafe on the border. Those same birds from the family's back garden seemed to be with him there, calming the morning sunshine as troops sat around near him, playing cards and laughing.
"It's all very pleasant here" he said. "There's even a promising looking garden centre just over the road." He then added: "Gaza is half a mile away. I can see the planes and I can hear the constant crump of missile strikes."
And I could exactly picture it.
Israel can seem so pleasant, so relaxed. So darned congenial. Everyone, on each side of the cultural divide, can make you so glad you visited. And you can find youself sitting there, in a citrus grove, with a cup of mint tea, birds lulling you, mediterranean breeze caressing you, and not feel the reality of the war zone walking distance away.
This is probably true of many war zones - especially domesticated ones like this.
Gaza is, as Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg put it impromtu on the radio this morning, half the size of the Isle of Mann, with one and a half million people squashed into it. How easy are 'surgical strikes' on such a theatre of operations? However seriously, humanly, the F16 pilots take their role.
It's not just any strip of land though. It's not like someone just declared war on Boscombe. (No jokes, locals. I shop there willingly.) This is a strip of land that's been cut off from the outside world for the last umpteen months. If not years, practically. It's had at best intermittent electricity and water and food. It has been a humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, for a long while. It is a people living in enforced poverty. In enforced misery. In an enforced fucking war zone.
---
The issue here isn't the politics of Olmert vs the Likud in looming Isreali elections. It isn't the politics of Bush's last days of US presidency and his proudly pro-active support for Israel's government. It isn't about Fatah's decades of corrupt incompetence undermining the Palestinian cause, or the PLO's cultural complacency over the same time. And it isn't about Hamas' violent rhetoric against Israel's right to exist.
The issue is about what we are told. And not told. About how we hear stuff. All of us. How it's edited.
So, in Israel, the issue is that decent people can live in pretty houses with their children shelling distance from a war zone and have never seen it. That ordinary tax-paying families can hope for military action against neighbours they've never properly met. Who's anhialated streets they've never walked down. Who's stories they've never listened to.
I can't imagine the fear of living under bombardment in the nice little streets around my house. I mean, somebody text me WTF. I can't imagine what it would do to my thinking, can you?
I can't help feeling though that, once the present flames are out, a practical tonic for some beleaguered Israeli residents might be to walk around Gaza for a day, and share a glass of tea or two with some of its residents.
Now. I'm off to a nice cafe.
Picture the scene.
Nice suburban home, nice couple, nice kids playing in the lounge as the family are interviewed by a radio reporter. Birds in the sunny garden keep up a calming chirrup of atmosphere among the citrus trees, through the open patio doors. Fresh juice clinks on a tray as the nice young mum sets it down.
It's a home you want.
"Tell me what it's like to live here" says the radio reporter.
"Well," begins the young lass beside her husband, with a tip of her head and a slightly forced smile, "after eight years, you begin to plan around it." She then laughs a little what-can-you-do laugh. A serious gesture.
"We tell the kids that if they ever go anywhere, they must always run if they're outside. No hanging around. And if they're at home, they must stay downstairs and not stray too far down the garden from the house. We only get about ten seconds warning."
She shrugs. Her husband picks up: " Of course we have some sympathy - they're being brutalised by their leaders. But, y'know, they voted for them. And these same leaders want to see our children dead."
His wife interjects: "Yes, we have sympathy - of course we do. But they had warning of our strikes. We texted them. Our planes ticker-tape dropped thousands of leaflets telling them we only wanted to target military installations and that they should leave those areas. They had warning."
"Then we hear of the family of five children sleeping across the road from a munitions stash... and so, what can you do? When this is over, it will be quiet again for us. At last. My kids will be able to play in their own garden safely."
---
It's hard to imagine anyone sitting by quietly if rockets dropped on Southbourne for eight years. I look out of the studio window at all the homes of decent, moderate people I see around my streets every day, and understand this decent family's honest defiance. It sounds like something anyone around me here would say. What I would say, in their shoes.
This young couple from somewhere like Sderot in the western Negev, heard interviewed this morning on the Today programme, sounded more together and resolved and, well, 'normal' than many of the region's similar residents. They're taking sleeping pills and arguing and seeing their house prices plummet and their marriages fragment. They're worn down by the endless threat of rocket attacks by Hamas, from the Gaza strip just a short drive away. These are people like you and me who want to get on with their lives and not be traumatised.
Who can blame them for wanting something done?
---
The other report, run back-to-back with this one this morning, was from Gaza. On the dawning of Day Eight of the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, a local radio producer interviewed people there.
It was hard to hear some of the recorded responses over the thumps, roars and sometimes blasts of the fighter planes and missile strikes. Plus, of course, some of them responded in Arabic and so needed the voices of translators fed over the top of their own.
"I am standing here talking to you now," said one doctor, in English, "but I honestly don't know what could happen in the next five minutes."
"We have some supplies, but no electricity. Water has been cut off too. But we have God. He will protect us, and he's all we have. We will be okay."
Another aid worker, English sounding, said: "We brought in a family this morning that had been hit by a missile attack. Little (name) who is four died in front of us from her injuries. Her sister, (name) was brought in dead on arrival. Their brother, (name) we thought would be okay. He was brought in breathing. He died this morning, however."
"Some are calling in the streets for revenge on Isreal. Some are calling for God's mercy." said the Gaza-based reporter calmly, in English. "Hospitals are over-run and infrastructure demolished. The death toll is reported as in the many hundreds now. Humanitarian efforts are being badly hampered by the situation." In the background was the sound of more thumping explosions, and of people wailing and shouting.
---
Ed Stourton was reporting from a cafe on the border. Those same birds from the family's back garden seemed to be with him there, calming the morning sunshine as troops sat around near him, playing cards and laughing.
"It's all very pleasant here" he said. "There's even a promising looking garden centre just over the road." He then added: "Gaza is half a mile away. I can see the planes and I can hear the constant crump of missile strikes."
And I could exactly picture it.
Israel can seem so pleasant, so relaxed. So darned congenial. Everyone, on each side of the cultural divide, can make you so glad you visited. And you can find youself sitting there, in a citrus grove, with a cup of mint tea, birds lulling you, mediterranean breeze caressing you, and not feel the reality of the war zone walking distance away.
This is probably true of many war zones - especially domesticated ones like this.
Gaza is, as Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg put it impromtu on the radio this morning, half the size of the Isle of Mann, with one and a half million people squashed into it. How easy are 'surgical strikes' on such a theatre of operations? However seriously, humanly, the F16 pilots take their role.
It's not just any strip of land though. It's not like someone just declared war on Boscombe. (No jokes, locals. I shop there willingly.) This is a strip of land that's been cut off from the outside world for the last umpteen months. If not years, practically. It's had at best intermittent electricity and water and food. It has been a humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, for a long while. It is a people living in enforced poverty. In enforced misery. In an enforced fucking war zone.
---
The issue here isn't the politics of Olmert vs the Likud in looming Isreali elections. It isn't the politics of Bush's last days of US presidency and his proudly pro-active support for Israel's government. It isn't about Fatah's decades of corrupt incompetence undermining the Palestinian cause, or the PLO's cultural complacency over the same time. And it isn't about Hamas' violent rhetoric against Israel's right to exist.
The issue is about what we are told. And not told. About how we hear stuff. All of us. How it's edited.
So, in Israel, the issue is that decent people can live in pretty houses with their children shelling distance from a war zone and have never seen it. That ordinary tax-paying families can hope for military action against neighbours they've never properly met. Who's anhialated streets they've never walked down. Who's stories they've never listened to.
I can't imagine the fear of living under bombardment in the nice little streets around my house. I mean, somebody text me WTF. I can't imagine what it would do to my thinking, can you?
I can't help feeling though that, once the present flames are out, a practical tonic for some beleaguered Israeli residents might be to walk around Gaza for a day, and share a glass of tea or two with some of its residents.
Now. I'm off to a nice cafe.
Friday, January 02, 2009
New year re-delusions
New year re-delusions
So, here we are on the second day of a new year - and some things are just scrolling back to the beginning again. Some things don't know how to do anything else.
I don't know about you, but the change in the air at the end of the year had given me a faintly hopeful mood against all the odds looking into '09. About I don't know what, really. But one situation seems monumentally doomed to cyclical failure. Say it with me: Israel.
Oh sodding shit. Oh effing bloody eff. Even were I to spell out all the bitter Anglo Saxon I could think of, I wouldn't cover it. And I don't propose to work myself up into a lathering fit pointlessly.
Fight and strike and hit and hate and blast and fire and smash and choke and punch repeatedly until swollen, broken and split open - use all the simple aggressive verbs you like, Isreal's political leaders keep swelling the dictionary of fear. But they do nothing to solve their problem. When all the jagged, concrete of frail Gazan infrastructure is collapsed, the fear will still stand, a monument. The ignorance kneeling in front of it.
I hate the sound of empty anger like this. People running from the rockets have shouted louder and with more conviction and not been heard. Why bother.
---
A press conference today brought together the sort of uncomfortable bed-fellows that only a truly hideous event can - Annie Lennox at one end and George Galloway at the other. Just speaking up about the military strikes in Palestine.
Somewhere in the middle, Alexi Sayle spoke with customary intelligence about Jewish people's need to speak out against Israel. Observantly, he then said quietly: 'Israel has the mentality of the rapist, the murderer, the bully. It sees itself as the good guy and blames the victim for making it take their life.'
Tragically spot on.
I'm tired of it. Are you? I'm tired of not being able to keep up with it emotionally. Of having to switch off. Of not being able to do a sodding thing. Of it all being so wrong and so far away.
Tonight, there it is on the BBC news homepage: 'The UN warns that Palestinians in Gaza face a serious health and food crisis as Israeli air strikes continue for a seventh day.'
Seven days of airstrikes on a strip of land a mile wide? Over four hundred children, women and men dead? Overwhelming ground forces massed on the border to go in? Tanks queueing up on the scrubby grass like Veedub campers at a festival.
When will Israel understand the very simple, very old truth - dehumanise your neighbour and you both become monsters.
Provocation does exactly what it says on the tank.
Don't state the obvious. Don't. Hamas, rockets, corruption, cultural blindness, blah. And duh. Tell me who has the more pressing moral responsibility - the bloke with the flick knife or the bloke with the sawn-off and six mates?
The thinking of Israel's leaders seems lost; as lost as it's ever been. Just deluded. How many young people are also lost now to the process of talking and listening? Of building peace?
Well, I know there are people in the region who want peace and who recognise the humanity in those around them. Who see themselves in the victims. Israel's leaders have built a culture of blindness - to humanity and to effective strategy. What they're doing won't work. It will do the opposite of working.
As the year dawns, no one can question their resolve. No one can question them at all, it seems.
So, here we are on the second day of a new year - and some things are just scrolling back to the beginning again. Some things don't know how to do anything else.
I don't know about you, but the change in the air at the end of the year had given me a faintly hopeful mood against all the odds looking into '09. About I don't know what, really. But one situation seems monumentally doomed to cyclical failure. Say it with me: Israel.
Oh sodding shit. Oh effing bloody eff. Even were I to spell out all the bitter Anglo Saxon I could think of, I wouldn't cover it. And I don't propose to work myself up into a lathering fit pointlessly.
Fight and strike and hit and hate and blast and fire and smash and choke and punch repeatedly until swollen, broken and split open - use all the simple aggressive verbs you like, Isreal's political leaders keep swelling the dictionary of fear. But they do nothing to solve their problem. When all the jagged, concrete of frail Gazan infrastructure is collapsed, the fear will still stand, a monument. The ignorance kneeling in front of it.
I hate the sound of empty anger like this. People running from the rockets have shouted louder and with more conviction and not been heard. Why bother.
---
A press conference today brought together the sort of uncomfortable bed-fellows that only a truly hideous event can - Annie Lennox at one end and George Galloway at the other. Just speaking up about the military strikes in Palestine.
Somewhere in the middle, Alexi Sayle spoke with customary intelligence about Jewish people's need to speak out against Israel. Observantly, he then said quietly: 'Israel has the mentality of the rapist, the murderer, the bully. It sees itself as the good guy and blames the victim for making it take their life.'
Tragically spot on.
I'm tired of it. Are you? I'm tired of not being able to keep up with it emotionally. Of having to switch off. Of not being able to do a sodding thing. Of it all being so wrong and so far away.
Tonight, there it is on the BBC news homepage: 'The UN warns that Palestinians in Gaza face a serious health and food crisis as Israeli air strikes continue for a seventh day.'
Seven days of airstrikes on a strip of land a mile wide? Over four hundred children, women and men dead? Overwhelming ground forces massed on the border to go in? Tanks queueing up on the scrubby grass like Veedub campers at a festival.
When will Israel understand the very simple, very old truth - dehumanise your neighbour and you both become monsters.
Provocation does exactly what it says on the tank.
Don't state the obvious. Don't. Hamas, rockets, corruption, cultural blindness, blah. And duh. Tell me who has the more pressing moral responsibility - the bloke with the flick knife or the bloke with the sawn-off and six mates?
The thinking of Israel's leaders seems lost; as lost as it's ever been. Just deluded. How many young people are also lost now to the process of talking and listening? Of building peace?
Well, I know there are people in the region who want peace and who recognise the humanity in those around them. Who see themselves in the victims. Israel's leaders have built a culture of blindness - to humanity and to effective strategy. What they're doing won't work. It will do the opposite of working.
As the year dawns, no one can question their resolve. No one can question them at all, it seems.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
r A t.
r A t.
Banksy said: 'imagine a world where graffiti wasn't illegal… where standing at a bus stop was never boring… where the street was like a party that everyone was invited to.'
Think of the colours, the freedom, the entertainment. Think of the justice of it. And think of the architects weeping.
There's a whole book in here, I think. But, if I tried to write it, I would use ten times the wordage with none of the succinct wit and wisdom, or eloquently profound and playful illustration of Wall and Peace. ..See? Just look at that sentence.
It's a book that I think Caroline should have on her Important Urban Design Texts shelf at work, next to Jane Jacobs and Fifty amusing skylines (25th edition).
But the fact that Banky's subversive, stenciled rats speak so cleverly has everything to do with context. ..And the fact that my primary adjective there was 'clever' rather than 'funny' or 'bloody-spot-on-mate' makes it obvious I'm a middle class bloke who got the book for Christmas and has subsequently joined the revolution by idly reading it in the bath and thinking it was marvelous, darling. Plus, I used the word 'context'.
But it is about context. Without the mindless street clutter of signage, Banksy's rats would have nowhere to play. Without the boundaries, we have no way to be naughty.
What fun is football on a tiny stretch of grass in a suburban cul-de-sac without the gloriously sanguine No Ball Games sign rooted quietly in one corner? No fun either way for me, but I'm not getting my own point. Or what about Mark and Lard - they were at their funniest when on Radio 1 daytime, precisely because they hated the playlist.
The designer makes effective pieces of visual communication by setting up fields to work in. Invisible grids to break out of and create dynamism. Ah, grids. Don't get me started on grids. The grid is your friend, subversive graphic designer.
Now, the problem with packaging Bansky into a book is that it becomes a bit of a commodity and something to be consumed in the bath, rather than lived with as a piece of the human environment, challenging the human story. But I don't care, because it's brilliant, inspiring stuff. And the fact that my new copy now has slightly damp, wrinkled corners seems to make it slightly better to me.
But this is all something to do with Christmas.
As Banksy also said, when you are the outcast, the thrown-away and the useless of society, the rat is your rolemodel.
What is art, or design, if it communicates nothing? If it speaks for no-one? Yet the very structures we need to speak up and challenge are often the things we need to hang our message off; the very fabric of our environment the canvas of our communication.
That's why, while we're all rightfully trying to use Yuletide as the time to be with whatever family we can pull together around us, and take time off, and think about what matters, I'll also be trying to remember the little baby at the centre of the Christmas story, Jesus.
Now that quaint manger painting, beautifully rendered, covers a brutal, ugly back street reality that is the genius beginning of a real inspiration.
At least to us subversive rats.
Happy Christmas day.
xx
Banksy said: 'imagine a world where graffiti wasn't illegal… where standing at a bus stop was never boring… where the street was like a party that everyone was invited to.'
Think of the colours, the freedom, the entertainment. Think of the justice of it. And think of the architects weeping.
There's a whole book in here, I think. But, if I tried to write it, I would use ten times the wordage with none of the succinct wit and wisdom, or eloquently profound and playful illustration of Wall and Peace. ..See? Just look at that sentence.
It's a book that I think Caroline should have on her Important Urban Design Texts shelf at work, next to Jane Jacobs and Fifty amusing skylines (25th edition).
But the fact that Banky's subversive, stenciled rats speak so cleverly has everything to do with context. ..And the fact that my primary adjective there was 'clever' rather than 'funny' or 'bloody-spot-on-mate' makes it obvious I'm a middle class bloke who got the book for Christmas and has subsequently joined the revolution by idly reading it in the bath and thinking it was marvelous, darling. Plus, I used the word 'context'.
But it is about context. Without the mindless street clutter of signage, Banksy's rats would have nowhere to play. Without the boundaries, we have no way to be naughty.
What fun is football on a tiny stretch of grass in a suburban cul-de-sac without the gloriously sanguine No Ball Games sign rooted quietly in one corner? No fun either way for me, but I'm not getting my own point. Or what about Mark and Lard - they were at their funniest when on Radio 1 daytime, precisely because they hated the playlist.
The designer makes effective pieces of visual communication by setting up fields to work in. Invisible grids to break out of and create dynamism. Ah, grids. Don't get me started on grids. The grid is your friend, subversive graphic designer.
Now, the problem with packaging Bansky into a book is that it becomes a bit of a commodity and something to be consumed in the bath, rather than lived with as a piece of the human environment, challenging the human story. But I don't care, because it's brilliant, inspiring stuff. And the fact that my new copy now has slightly damp, wrinkled corners seems to make it slightly better to me.
But this is all something to do with Christmas.
As Banksy also said, when you are the outcast, the thrown-away and the useless of society, the rat is your rolemodel.
What is art, or design, if it communicates nothing? If it speaks for no-one? Yet the very structures we need to speak up and challenge are often the things we need to hang our message off; the very fabric of our environment the canvas of our communication.
That's why, while we're all rightfully trying to use Yuletide as the time to be with whatever family we can pull together around us, and take time off, and think about what matters, I'll also be trying to remember the little baby at the centre of the Christmas story, Jesus.
Now that quaint manger painting, beautifully rendered, covers a brutal, ugly back street reality that is the genius beginning of a real inspiration.
At least to us subversive rats.
Happy Christmas day.
xx
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Perky.
Perky.
Q: What do you do when you're thirty-eight and recovering from a rookie's night out with friends? (Don't ask. I'm well aware what the First Step is...)
A: Bay window sequence dance in your underpants to Sebastien Tellier's Divine.
I did the cocktail shaker, the train, the hand jive, the head swoop, the thumbing-a-ride - everything. In the pants. In the window. Tom Cruise style. ..Except, come to think of it, undoubtedly camper.
If there's a better way to feel better about just about anything, I know it not. Doesn't so much do away with the throbbing head and the wobbly tummy as hide them behind a sparkly costume.
Nice. It's been on five times in a row.
..I know.
..I really AM a silly sod.
> 'PLAY' <
Q: What do you do when you're thirty-eight and recovering from a rookie's night out with friends? (Don't ask. I'm well aware what the First Step is...)
A: Bay window sequence dance in your underpants to Sebastien Tellier's Divine.
I did the cocktail shaker, the train, the hand jive, the head swoop, the thumbing-a-ride - everything. In the pants. In the window. Tom Cruise style. ..Except, come to think of it, undoubtedly camper.
If there's a better way to feel better about just about anything, I know it not. Doesn't so much do away with the throbbing head and the wobbly tummy as hide them behind a sparkly costume.
Nice. It's been on five times in a row.
..I know.
..I really AM a silly sod.
> 'PLAY' <
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Momo Chrimbo.
Momo Chrimbo.
Well, so here we are. December 17 and I've put on some CD called Christmas Crooners, all on my own in a fairly jolly, sunny studio. It's Christmas, and there's not much more I can get done in the next day and a half now.
Though, of course, there's loads to get done.
Anyway, hard to care now - because Christmas has come a little early to Momo. I've finally managed to get four new, mastered mixes up on the re-upholstered Momo:tempo website. At last. At long, bloomin' last, I have something that people can point their iPods at.
Yes, Disfunkshun is out there. Check it out at http://www.momotempo.co.uk
It's alluding to the imminent finish of the whole album, I'm alarmed to say. But more of that in January. Let's not spoil the festive calm with deadlines and productivity.
Time for brandy and a mince pie.
(..Sh**t! Is that the freakin' time?)
Well, so here we are. December 17 and I've put on some CD called Christmas Crooners, all on my own in a fairly jolly, sunny studio. It's Christmas, and there's not much more I can get done in the next day and a half now.
Though, of course, there's loads to get done.
Anyway, hard to care now - because Christmas has come a little early to Momo. I've finally managed to get four new, mastered mixes up on the re-upholstered Momo:tempo website. At last. At long, bloomin' last, I have something that people can point their iPods at.
Yes, Disfunkshun is out there. Check it out at http://www.momotempo.co.uk
It's alluding to the imminent finish of the whole album, I'm alarmed to say. But more of that in January. Let's not spoil the festive calm with deadlines and productivity.
Time for brandy and a mince pie.
(..Sh**t! Is that the freakin' time?)
Made off.
Made off.
Oh come on.
Come on.
..Mr MADOFF?
At a time of gigantic economic meltdown, a world-revered investment banker has taken unexpected extra billions from the banks through spectacularly simple swindling... and his name is Bernard MADOFF?
What is this, Dickens?
How bad is it all gonna get?
"Roit, mista Neerly-Madoff, heavens to goodness, the Peelers are roit on me tail to meet out some timely come-uppance. But only in fair response to some very hundreds of tiresome, tightly-type-set pages of detailed human reality and suffering, so it is. I so wish I'd thought abaaht the human condition sooner, so I do, and chosen to value me nearest and dearest over the fleeting fancies and phantom charms of the devil's jingle in me purse. Run, sir."
Well, you need a bit of Dickens at Christmas, after all.
Oh come on.
Come on.
..Mr MADOFF?
At a time of gigantic economic meltdown, a world-revered investment banker has taken unexpected extra billions from the banks through spectacularly simple swindling... and his name is Bernard MADOFF?
What is this, Dickens?
How bad is it all gonna get?
"Roit, mista Neerly-Madoff, heavens to goodness, the Peelers are roit on me tail to meet out some timely come-uppance. But only in fair response to some very hundreds of tiresome, tightly-type-set pages of detailed human reality and suffering, so it is. I so wish I'd thought abaaht the human condition sooner, so I do, and chosen to value me nearest and dearest over the fleeting fancies and phantom charms of the devil's jingle in me purse. Run, sir."
Well, you need a bit of Dickens at Christmas, after all.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Scenes from my life.
Scenes from my life.
1: The typical Momo working week:
Flight of the concordes does the French daydream.
2: The typical Momo weekend:
Top Gear drives the Ferrari Daytona around the Riviera.
>sigh<
..I've been almost fourteen hours at this ruddy Mac.
1: The typical Momo working week:
Flight of the concordes does the French daydream.
2: The typical Momo weekend:
Top Gear drives the Ferrari Daytona around the Riviera.
>sigh<
..I've been almost fourteen hours at this ruddy Mac.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Forward and back.
Forward and back.
The moon was a striking crescent, low in the sky with a single evening star, as I popped out in the car earlier. Looked almost like a special effect, painted behind the silhouetted December chimney pots and roof lines. For yes, it is now the first day of advent - even if the dusky heavens looked more like an Islamic postcard.
Nearly Christmas.
So where did the year go?
Yesterday wasn't the bright, fresh start to the holiday season that today managed all day. It was a day to stay inside with the lights on again - gloomy and wet and windy. But, as I said chirpily to Jules while we head-downed through the chilly sleet of Petty France the other day, I'm still loving the autumn and winter vibe. Don't know why; it seems to fortify somehow.
Yesterday wasn't really a day to be cheerful, though. Yesterday was Dad's birthday.
He would have been 75. And he would have had a fit at what we'd done to his bedroom by the time dawn broke.
Caroline has made it her mission for him and for Mum - while she enjoys the festive snows of Colorado for a couple of weeks - to sort through his spectacularly time-filled room of memorabilia. Mike and Emma even gave over a whole Saturday to helping us strip walls and cart furniture away across town. It was a kind of fab day working together; Mikey hadn't been back to the flat in quite a while. We fed them too much afterwards to say thankyou.
But the weather, the memories, the date. I should have been some shade of maroon blue this weekend. But I don't really deal with stuff in that formal, respectful way. I mean, do I? With all that's going on as the year ends, I know there's plenty to weight the heart a little. And it is. I miss him. And probably only a bit as much as I'm going to.
But what can you do? If I didn't get on with the creative at hand, I might grind to a halt. Which I'm not sure I can do.
So I thought of Dad and I wondered where the year had gone and I thanked him for leaving the room in such an indecipherably dense state back at the flat. And I pulled on my headphones as the rain lashed against the studio windows and spent the day trying not to fall asleep in order to finish the loud, brass-heavy, entirely inappropriate electro madness of the tunes I'm trying to get mastered - figuring that yesterday was precisely the day for pushing on and trying to get things done and trying to prepare for new things.
And prepare for a big fat, jolly Christmas, surrounded by loved ones for as many days as I can get away with it. It was Dad's favourite, kitsch, colourful, loved-up time of year.
And I figured he'd be pretty pleased that I was too distracted with making music to wallow in loss or dwell on his unhappy birthday last year. That's what I figured. You don't sit still and remember Brian - you get on and do practical stuff, or you grin and whistle.
Which is what I continued to figure as I drove to the little studio out in the New Forest tonight, under the last new moon before Christmas listening to Metrophilia - a distinctly whistly, wistful tune - to drop off the final mixes.
The moon was a striking crescent, low in the sky with a single evening star, as I popped out in the car earlier. Looked almost like a special effect, painted behind the silhouetted December chimney pots and roof lines. For yes, it is now the first day of advent - even if the dusky heavens looked more like an Islamic postcard.
Nearly Christmas.
So where did the year go?
Yesterday wasn't the bright, fresh start to the holiday season that today managed all day. It was a day to stay inside with the lights on again - gloomy and wet and windy. But, as I said chirpily to Jules while we head-downed through the chilly sleet of Petty France the other day, I'm still loving the autumn and winter vibe. Don't know why; it seems to fortify somehow.
Yesterday wasn't really a day to be cheerful, though. Yesterday was Dad's birthday.
He would have been 75. And he would have had a fit at what we'd done to his bedroom by the time dawn broke.
Caroline has made it her mission for him and for Mum - while she enjoys the festive snows of Colorado for a couple of weeks - to sort through his spectacularly time-filled room of memorabilia. Mike and Emma even gave over a whole Saturday to helping us strip walls and cart furniture away across town. It was a kind of fab day working together; Mikey hadn't been back to the flat in quite a while. We fed them too much afterwards to say thankyou.
But the weather, the memories, the date. I should have been some shade of maroon blue this weekend. But I don't really deal with stuff in that formal, respectful way. I mean, do I? With all that's going on as the year ends, I know there's plenty to weight the heart a little. And it is. I miss him. And probably only a bit as much as I'm going to.
But what can you do? If I didn't get on with the creative at hand, I might grind to a halt. Which I'm not sure I can do.
So I thought of Dad and I wondered where the year had gone and I thanked him for leaving the room in such an indecipherably dense state back at the flat. And I pulled on my headphones as the rain lashed against the studio windows and spent the day trying not to fall asleep in order to finish the loud, brass-heavy, entirely inappropriate electro madness of the tunes I'm trying to get mastered - figuring that yesterday was precisely the day for pushing on and trying to get things done and trying to prepare for new things.
And prepare for a big fat, jolly Christmas, surrounded by loved ones for as many days as I can get away with it. It was Dad's favourite, kitsch, colourful, loved-up time of year.
And I figured he'd be pretty pleased that I was too distracted with making music to wallow in loss or dwell on his unhappy birthday last year. That's what I figured. You don't sit still and remember Brian - you get on and do practical stuff, or you grin and whistle.
Which is what I continued to figure as I drove to the little studio out in the New Forest tonight, under the last new moon before Christmas listening to Metrophilia - a distinctly whistly, wistful tune - to drop off the final mixes.
Monday, November 17, 2008
You don't 'che.
You don't 'che.
Just touching base here to basically fill you in on a classic. Made my blood run cold, to be honest, but let's be fair, I can run but I can't hide. Mea culpa.
Turns out I talk in almost total cliche. Who knew?
Little survey on the BBC news site has flagged up, beyond any shadow of doubt, that I only know how to talk in the verbal equivalent of a finger pistol. 110%.
Now, you might say: 'No sh*t, Sherlock'. But - not being funny - the full realisation only dawned on me, actually, as I was ticking off the whole nine yards.
Just back from a meeting in a motorway service station - as is only natural in the stimulating and original life of a freelance creative - I can count a worrying number of them from this little online article that I used IN the meeting.
"Songsheet, pipeline, end-of-play roll-out scenario solutions deliverables." Literally. ..Although the day I DO use the word 'scenario', or - heaven forfend - 'solutions' >gaaakkk< I should have something lethal put in my drink, please.
At the end of the day, we're all only human, I guess.
..Although. Hmm. You'd think the least a bloody allegedly-professional writer could do is a rather cleverer job of writing in cliche - when actually trying to write in cliche.
It's no good just talking the talk... (ohshutup.)
Just touching base here to basically fill you in on a classic. Made my blood run cold, to be honest, but let's be fair, I can run but I can't hide. Mea culpa.
Turns out I talk in almost total cliche. Who knew?
Little survey on the BBC news site has flagged up, beyond any shadow of doubt, that I only know how to talk in the verbal equivalent of a finger pistol. 110%.
Now, you might say: 'No sh*t, Sherlock'. But - not being funny - the full realisation only dawned on me, actually, as I was ticking off the whole nine yards.
Just back from a meeting in a motorway service station - as is only natural in the stimulating and original life of a freelance creative - I can count a worrying number of them from this little online article that I used IN the meeting.
"Songsheet, pipeline, end-of-play roll-out scenario solutions deliverables." Literally. ..Although the day I DO use the word 'scenario', or - heaven forfend - 'solutions' >gaaakkk< I should have something lethal put in my drink, please.
At the end of the day, we're all only human, I guess.
..Although. Hmm. You'd think the least a bloody allegedly-professional writer could do is a rather cleverer job of writing in cliche - when actually trying to write in cliche.
It's no good just talking the talk... (ohshutup.)
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Yes.
Yes.
..we chuffing can, apparently.
Overnight, America got its mojo back.
We've grown so used to the Bush administration's incompetence that we've almost forgotten about the little chap that's still apparently to be found in the White House. But the all-but landslide of Obama's electoral victory lastnight has, at a stroke, put America back where it wants to be: inspiring the world.
Now, stick with all this, because I'm not sure that today's a day to get hung about hyperbole.
I'm not sure it's being silly to feel a lump in the throat about it all, some five hours away at nearest landfall. ..I'm not sure it's OTT to shout OMG! out in the bleedin' street, to be honest - and I'm really not sure that words will cover the genuine significance of the symbolism.
Think about it.
America managed to find a man who was not only intelligent and considerate but inspiring ..AND willing to run for public office. And thin. And then it actually chuffing well voted him in to the highest seat in the land.
Oh, and apparently his skin colour's a novelty. Whatever.
Really. Just feel a little lightness about something groovy having just happened in politics for once. Feel no shame about the sentimentality. Because America just said no to the incompetent, narrow-minded, corrupt, basically hateful attitude of old fashioned right-wing Americanism. By one college vote under an official landslide.
Yes.
Whatever the combined circumstances, it did. And Barrack's retort to his well-wishers that this wasn't so much his victory as everyone's, because it was victory secured with countless counting hands and feet mobilising - that's simply true. For once, the rhetoric is kinetic.
Interesting, though.
In America, they've always proudly said that any idiot can get into the White House.
It seems that both administrations, incumbent and elect, have proved it beyond doubt.
..Bloody get in, Baz.
..we chuffing can, apparently.
Overnight, America got its mojo back.
We've grown so used to the Bush administration's incompetence that we've almost forgotten about the little chap that's still apparently to be found in the White House. But the all-but landslide of Obama's electoral victory lastnight has, at a stroke, put America back where it wants to be: inspiring the world.
Now, stick with all this, because I'm not sure that today's a day to get hung about hyperbole.
I'm not sure it's being silly to feel a lump in the throat about it all, some five hours away at nearest landfall. ..I'm not sure it's OTT to shout OMG! out in the bleedin' street, to be honest - and I'm really not sure that words will cover the genuine significance of the symbolism.
Think about it.
America managed to find a man who was not only intelligent and considerate but inspiring ..AND willing to run for public office. And thin. And then it actually chuffing well voted him in to the highest seat in the land.
Oh, and apparently his skin colour's a novelty. Whatever.
Really. Just feel a little lightness about something groovy having just happened in politics for once. Feel no shame about the sentimentality. Because America just said no to the incompetent, narrow-minded, corrupt, basically hateful attitude of old fashioned right-wing Americanism. By one college vote under an official landslide.
Yes.
Whatever the combined circumstances, it did. And Barrack's retort to his well-wishers that this wasn't so much his victory as everyone's, because it was victory secured with countless counting hands and feet mobilising - that's simply true. For once, the rhetoric is kinetic.
Interesting, though.
In America, they've always proudly said that any idiot can get into the White House.
It seems that both administrations, incumbent and elect, have proved it beyond doubt.
..Bloody get in, Baz.
History.
History.
So here I am. Sitting up with a cup of tea, ages after I should have followed my instincts to bed, watching the waffly overtures of the BBC's coverage of the US election. They keep saying it's an historic evening.
First results are in and they're interviewing Ricky Gervais. Right to the heart of the action.
They're also showing squads of bloggers in Times Square, keeping the online momentum of the evening belting along breathlessly. I wonder what they're all banging on about? The concerns of the chap who's really at the centre of this election - Joe the Blogger? That guy speaks for me, sure.
Oh dear, can I face the tedium and adrenalin mixed? If so, it shows I might have coped with being an airline pilot.
I've even been scribbling in my journal, just to prove I was here on this 'historic night'. Like historians are going to be concerned with what I half-heartedly scrawled in my underpants on the sofa on the night the first black president of the USA wasn't elected.
Actually, a little voice whispered in my idle wonderings, while cynicism bellowed in the background something obvious about America 'buggering it up at the last bloody minute', that maybe - just maybe - Obama will win by a landslide. An actual landslide.
If he does, let's just accept it - it would be historic alright.
A president who understands disco.
So here I am. Sitting up with a cup of tea, ages after I should have followed my instincts to bed, watching the waffly overtures of the BBC's coverage of the US election. They keep saying it's an historic evening.
First results are in and they're interviewing Ricky Gervais. Right to the heart of the action.
They're also showing squads of bloggers in Times Square, keeping the online momentum of the evening belting along breathlessly. I wonder what they're all banging on about? The concerns of the chap who's really at the centre of this election - Joe the Blogger? That guy speaks for me, sure.
Oh dear, can I face the tedium and adrenalin mixed? If so, it shows I might have coped with being an airline pilot.
I've even been scribbling in my journal, just to prove I was here on this 'historic night'. Like historians are going to be concerned with what I half-heartedly scrawled in my underpants on the sofa on the night the first black president of the USA wasn't elected.
Actually, a little voice whispered in my idle wonderings, while cynicism bellowed in the background something obvious about America 'buggering it up at the last bloody minute', that maybe - just maybe - Obama will win by a landslide. An actual landslide.
If he does, let's just accept it - it would be historic alright.
A president who understands disco.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Vote.
Vote.
Oh, crikey. Can we really get through this? This last agonising day? Sitting on our hands and wondering.
It's like watching football. Especially from my point of view, as a person who didn't even begin to understand it until he watched an international match - it's all so very real to your adrenalin gland, yet all so practically academic. How will it change my Wednesday either way? Really.
Now, if I was funny or creative, I'd punchline-out with something about the Glenrothes bi-election, and how I've been following it's every move and, oh, is there something happening elsewhere, etc...
But anyway that's on Thursday and I can't be arsed.
I'm just not looking forward to the radio coming on tomorrow morning and, y'know... finding out.
It's academic, you're right. These things are probably more important at local club level, again you're right. And the heroes on the pitch can sometimes turn out to be prize twits without a steadycam running along the touchline beside them. I know. ..I also know the US presidential elections should sooner have a baseball metaphor than a 'soccer' one. I know.
But my point is, we get very excited about England's chances of possibly one day maybe qualifying for an international tournament again, when all they stand the slimmest hope of ultimately winning is a trophy and some sponsorship.
The winner tonight gets to take home the Free World and the keys to our burnt-out, sitting-on-bricks economy.
And I so want that guy to at least have a fighting chance of being able to out-live Sarah Palin's time in the VP's office.
Oh, crikey. Can we really get through this? This last agonising day? Sitting on our hands and wondering.
It's like watching football. Especially from my point of view, as a person who didn't even begin to understand it until he watched an international match - it's all so very real to your adrenalin gland, yet all so practically academic. How will it change my Wednesday either way? Really.
Now, if I was funny or creative, I'd punchline-out with something about the Glenrothes bi-election, and how I've been following it's every move and, oh, is there something happening elsewhere, etc...
But anyway that's on Thursday and I can't be arsed.
I'm just not looking forward to the radio coming on tomorrow morning and, y'know... finding out.
It's academic, you're right. These things are probably more important at local club level, again you're right. And the heroes on the pitch can sometimes turn out to be prize twits without a steadycam running along the touchline beside them. I know. ..I also know the US presidential elections should sooner have a baseball metaphor than a 'soccer' one. I know.
But my point is, we get very excited about England's chances of possibly one day maybe qualifying for an international tournament again, when all they stand the slimmest hope of ultimately winning is a trophy and some sponsorship.
The winner tonight gets to take home the Free World and the keys to our burnt-out, sitting-on-bricks economy.
And I so want that guy to at least have a fighting chance of being able to out-live Sarah Palin's time in the VP's office.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Gore-p.
Gore-p.
Almost-last shot of sharp-tongued Guardian critic Charlie Brooker's gonzo-gore undead mini series, Dead Set:
zombies in soulless shopping centre staring vacantly at zombies in Big Brother house, staring vacantly back out of widescreen tellies in Dixons or similar.
Nice work, mate.
Almost-last shot of sharp-tongued Guardian critic Charlie Brooker's gonzo-gore undead mini series, Dead Set:
zombies in soulless shopping centre staring vacantly at zombies in Big Brother house, staring vacantly back out of widescreen tellies in Dixons or similar.
Nice work, mate.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Planks.
Planks.
I do sometimes think the British media would sink itself if left unchecked. Not that I'm sure who is actually doing the checking.
Vital, dynamic and creative this country's press and broadcast media surely are. Even world-leading they tell me - and after all, who can argue with Harry Hill's TV burp? But so many people manning its armada of little ships seem hell-bent on torpedoing the flagship - that big ol' Thames barge, the BBC.
My phrasing there is something that those with Auntie in their periscope cross-hairs would leap on as illustrating the point - who says the Beeb is Great Britain's broadcasting flagship?
They must resent the implication - and see it everywhere, probably.
"While we have to lash together ad revenue as creatively as possible to vigilantly tar the decks against sinking, the good ship HMS BBC simply pumps out her bilges with public finance. A huge, fat, free tax on the tuners-in. ..AND, while we're at it, they can promote cross-platform like no-one else. Bastards. ..Load tubes One and Two."
You can see their point, though they sound like they've been at sea rather too long. A bit like this metaphor.
Any brooding resentment of the corporation isn't helped by the fact that the BBC does seem to have always reflected the British beaurocracy of its day, like a true institution - middle-heavy, inefficient, even miopically self-cultural. ..And quote me on that, as it sounds dead clever, like what a sniping left-wing critic might column. ..Or is it the right-wing critics who really have it in for the liberal toffs at Broadcasting House? I forget.
Anyway, the point bearing down on us very slowly like a lumbering container ship is that I think this is the wrong way to see the Beeb.
---
The 'brandross beast' - which, incidentally, sounds like a new Sherlock Holmes adventure - may have exposed Russel and Jonathan as pratt-liable twits sometimes, but back-of-the-classroom showing off by the two over-confident popular boys is really a matter for the detention hall. Not the Commons.
Make 'em run round the playing field in their pants once or twice, maybe. Make 'em look into the eyes of the sweet old man they've been rude to and see the two softies blub, sure. Warm their backsides. But fire them? Fire everybody?
One of the most risible aspects of one of these essentially pointless squalls on the waters of popular entertainment is, of course, the personalities who suddenly clamour for the mic. The Unfunny.
We've had a parade of distinctly humourless people passing comment on how to make jokes this week. "A-HA," they light up indignantly, like Dr Alan Statham waving a triumphant finger at a resentfully witty medical student, "THIS is the problem with smirking and smiling and strutting about in funny wigs - it's dangerous. It's uncalled-for. It's... it's... funny. ..And this is where funny gets you. Hm? Who's laughing now? Hm?"
I've long thought that comedy is like sex - as soon as you're trying to describe it, you're missing the point. And the word 'responsible' kills it dead.
---
I think the BBC is an institution, alright. A national one. With all its problems, it's a bally British cultural cornerstone. Maybe filled with uptight, lefty nitwits who forget how lucky they are - though I doubt that's more than half true - but a thing to cherrish.
We should hold those who helm the Beeb to high account. Tell them when they get the chance to work there: "This is the bloody BBC, mate. Don't f**k it up." It's a woldwide brand like nothing else we own in the UK - like nothing else in the world, in fact. An idea of altruism. The ultimate service of communication. And it communicates an idea of Britain better than any tourist board campaign or political diplomatic push, by the way.
And radio without adverts? Sport and drama and movies and factual stuff without breaks? Full hours of content, not forty limping minutes? Surely brilliant that they found a way to do this. It matters to a nation's intellectual well-being that it can access some information without being force-fed consumer society values and pressures.
Adverts help sharpen the creative cutting edge. They're fun, put simply - and they help busineses sell things and build our once-comfy economy. Plus, ad breaks can be welcome relief, of course. But, chuff. Too much turns your brain to soup.
No, I think the good ship HMS BBC may need a sharp skipper inspecting her every winch and block, but she should sail on proudly. Let her navigate uniquely - she is a beacon of difference. If she should be challenged, let it not be by mean-minded pirates trying to break her up, but by the sheer creative excellence of her commercial counterparts, willing her to perform her best for the sake of the whole flotilla.
However romantic it may be, I just think there's something about the BBC that somehow sodding matters.
---
Okay, I'll come clean. The boat metaphor was inspired by an actual Thames barge - one I found myself sitting on, right in the heart of London last weekend.
Our essentially gorgeous former neighbour, Mary, introduced us to her very interesting new chap, Iolo, when we popped up for a night - and Iolo lives on an actual Thames barge. Big bloody thing. A snapshot of working waterways history from blunt bows to snub stern - and a fascinating new perspective on the capital. London does not look the same from the river.
Can't tell you how nice it is to meet people who see things differently to you. We seemed to chat constantly for 24hours straight.
Originality keeps us all afloat.
I do sometimes think the British media would sink itself if left unchecked. Not that I'm sure who is actually doing the checking.
Vital, dynamic and creative this country's press and broadcast media surely are. Even world-leading they tell me - and after all, who can argue with Harry Hill's TV burp? But so many people manning its armada of little ships seem hell-bent on torpedoing the flagship - that big ol' Thames barge, the BBC.
My phrasing there is something that those with Auntie in their periscope cross-hairs would leap on as illustrating the point - who says the Beeb is Great Britain's broadcasting flagship?
They must resent the implication - and see it everywhere, probably.
"While we have to lash together ad revenue as creatively as possible to vigilantly tar the decks against sinking, the good ship HMS BBC simply pumps out her bilges with public finance. A huge, fat, free tax on the tuners-in. ..AND, while we're at it, they can promote cross-platform like no-one else. Bastards. ..Load tubes One and Two."
You can see their point, though they sound like they've been at sea rather too long. A bit like this metaphor.
Any brooding resentment of the corporation isn't helped by the fact that the BBC does seem to have always reflected the British beaurocracy of its day, like a true institution - middle-heavy, inefficient, even miopically self-cultural. ..And quote me on that, as it sounds dead clever, like what a sniping left-wing critic might column. ..Or is it the right-wing critics who really have it in for the liberal toffs at Broadcasting House? I forget.
Anyway, the point bearing down on us very slowly like a lumbering container ship is that I think this is the wrong way to see the Beeb.
---
The 'brandross beast' - which, incidentally, sounds like a new Sherlock Holmes adventure - may have exposed Russel and Jonathan as pratt-liable twits sometimes, but back-of-the-classroom showing off by the two over-confident popular boys is really a matter for the detention hall. Not the Commons.
Make 'em run round the playing field in their pants once or twice, maybe. Make 'em look into the eyes of the sweet old man they've been rude to and see the two softies blub, sure. Warm their backsides. But fire them? Fire everybody?
One of the most risible aspects of one of these essentially pointless squalls on the waters of popular entertainment is, of course, the personalities who suddenly clamour for the mic. The Unfunny.
We've had a parade of distinctly humourless people passing comment on how to make jokes this week. "A-HA," they light up indignantly, like Dr Alan Statham waving a triumphant finger at a resentfully witty medical student, "THIS is the problem with smirking and smiling and strutting about in funny wigs - it's dangerous. It's uncalled-for. It's... it's... funny. ..And this is where funny gets you. Hm? Who's laughing now? Hm?"
I've long thought that comedy is like sex - as soon as you're trying to describe it, you're missing the point. And the word 'responsible' kills it dead.
---
I think the BBC is an institution, alright. A national one. With all its problems, it's a bally British cultural cornerstone. Maybe filled with uptight, lefty nitwits who forget how lucky they are - though I doubt that's more than half true - but a thing to cherrish.
We should hold those who helm the Beeb to high account. Tell them when they get the chance to work there: "This is the bloody BBC, mate. Don't f**k it up." It's a woldwide brand like nothing else we own in the UK - like nothing else in the world, in fact. An idea of altruism. The ultimate service of communication. And it communicates an idea of Britain better than any tourist board campaign or political diplomatic push, by the way.
And radio without adverts? Sport and drama and movies and factual stuff without breaks? Full hours of content, not forty limping minutes? Surely brilliant that they found a way to do this. It matters to a nation's intellectual well-being that it can access some information without being force-fed consumer society values and pressures.
Adverts help sharpen the creative cutting edge. They're fun, put simply - and they help busineses sell things and build our once-comfy economy. Plus, ad breaks can be welcome relief, of course. But, chuff. Too much turns your brain to soup.
No, I think the good ship HMS BBC may need a sharp skipper inspecting her every winch and block, but she should sail on proudly. Let her navigate uniquely - she is a beacon of difference. If she should be challenged, let it not be by mean-minded pirates trying to break her up, but by the sheer creative excellence of her commercial counterparts, willing her to perform her best for the sake of the whole flotilla.
However romantic it may be, I just think there's something about the BBC that somehow sodding matters.
---
Okay, I'll come clean. The boat metaphor was inspired by an actual Thames barge - one I found myself sitting on, right in the heart of London last weekend.
Our essentially gorgeous former neighbour, Mary, introduced us to her very interesting new chap, Iolo, when we popped up for a night - and Iolo lives on an actual Thames barge. Big bloody thing. A snapshot of working waterways history from blunt bows to snub stern - and a fascinating new perspective on the capital. London does not look the same from the river.
Can't tell you how nice it is to meet people who see things differently to you. We seemed to chat constantly for 24hours straight.
Originality keeps us all afloat.
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