Propaganda

Don’t you just love German synth pop. They have taken something - pop music - that should be trivial and flighty and fun and turned it into some sort of existential angst. Only some po-faced Germans would try putting an Edgar Allan Poe poem to music. The German film director Fritz Lang was also an influence. Heavy. But you know what? They somehow managed to pull it off (sorry, this clip is rather long but I think, worth it).



I remember this band from the 80s when earnest music like this was seen as a cut above the rest - up on the intellectual high ground that Duran Duran and their like could not even dream to inhabit. New Order were up there as well. I also remember being extremely intrigued as a very young man by Claudia Brucken and also, but not quite as much by Susanne Freytag. Claudia could do things with a German accent that I didn't think possible - she could make it sound deeply sexy.

As a band, they burned briefly but brightly. Critically acclaimed, they rather imploded, managing to fall apart for more reasons than any other band I can recall - disagreements over performing live, artistic differences, personal differences, bad contracts with their record company, personal relationships that caused resentment among the band and many other reasons. The initial lineup lasted little more than 18 months.

Twenty five years on and looking back at some of their output, I still think their music stands up today, far better than most of what was produced in the eighties. I think/hope they had a sense of humour - they appeared to have a lot of fun making the video below. I dearly hope they weren't trying to make some sort of deep meaningful statement with it because that would almost certainly ruin my enjoyment.

Faster, Harder, Louder, Stronger...

It's not unusual for modern records to be based around a sample taken from an earlier song. This isn't altogether a bad thing. The original artiste gets a nice royalty and perhaps an unexpected boost to their pension and the new artiste gets a catchy little ditty on which to hang their own tune. It's a collaboration of sorts and the original artiste will usually have the right of veto if they do not approve of their original riff being exploited inappropriately. All good, nothing bad.

Of course sampling is most commonly used in more recent styles of music - techno, house, hip-hop, ambient, rap and the like. These style generally have a quicker tempo than the styles they are borrowing from. The result is invariably that the sample has to be adapted in order to fit the modern style.

When you spot a sample in a modern record you may recognise it but it's often interesting to go back to what is often the rather obscure original and you'll invariably find it's not quite how you remember it. The new artiste will have played around with it - added a backbeat, bumped up the tempo and other digital trickery. There's nothing new or particularly wrong with that either. You might recognise and think you remember the actual riff but on re-hearing the original you'll be surprised how different it actually was at the time.

I was reminded of this when listening to the following tunes. The first clip is from the new song, and the second clip is the original track that was sampled.

The original song stood up on its own quite well at the time but now sounds positively funereal - it actually sounds like it's been slowed down. It sounds wrong. If you go back to the first song you quickly realise that no-one could play the horn section at the speed it's now being reproduced but it sounds right.

Do we do everything so much faster these days? I guess we do. Let's slow it all down a bit.

Judgement

You would have thought one of the most important attributes of a politician is to have good judgement. The ability to intuitively smell a rat. An instinct to know right from wrong. The perception however seems increasingly to be that your judgement isn't really that important. All that you actually need is good PR.

Our prime minister - an ex PR man himself - employed as his director of communications the former editor of the News of the World - a Sunday newspaper with a notorious reputation for juicy and salacious tittle-tattle. It didn't acquire the nickname The News of the Screws by accident. Yet the prime minister obviously thought a former editor who could flog 2-3 million copies a week of this paper would have his finger on the national pulse.

Yes, he probably did know how to tickle the nation's fancy. But you only had to take a brief look at the newspaper he was producing each week to see that he was obviously a specialist in engaging the national interest by stimulating what goes on below their waistline as opposed to trying to engage with whatever goes on above their shirt collar. Aim low is what a man like this will tell you.

Given the choice between being seen canvassing the opinion of an intellectual academic or alternatively finding out what the latest nineteen year old pop starlet thinks, politicians increasingly want to be seen discussing matters with the singing poppet because, they will be told, it will guarantee they get that all-important male 14-55 demographic to sit up and pay attention. This is what hiring the former editor of a tits, gossip and sports tabloid will tell you.

Yes, it goes without saying that 90% of men's attention will almost instantly be diverted by the appearance of a good-looking young woman but that doesn't automatically mean we'll all instantly disconnect if we're presented with a slighly more intellectually rigourous scenario.

Tabloid editors know what sells and the brief they get from their bosses is to sell more of it and do whatever you can to get those sales. As the News of the World scandal rumbles on and politicians from across the political spectrum desperately try to work out how to redefine their relationship with the popular press whilst simultaneously trying to retain its support, we can only hope it leads to an outbreak of discussing important matters on their merits and not solely on whether it can conveniently be presented alongside a nice pair of tits.

Bargain Hunt

I occasionally work from home. I'm lucky that I can choose two offices to go to if I want to go in but sometimes the prospect of rush hour public transport into Central London or a 90 mile round trip in the car don't appeal and I just stay at home.

I conscientiously take a lunch break at about midday and there's really not much you can practically do in that time so I have something simple to eat and stick the TV on for some mind-numbing daytime entertainment.

I usually land up watching a programme called Bargain Hunt. It's a simple premise and stock daytime TV fodder. Two teams of two people are given a modest sum of money and have to find three items at a local "antique fair". They are assigned an expert adviser to help them and the items purchased are then sold at auction and the winner is the team that can make the best return on their purchases. The show is overseen by another expert - a gap-toothed, aging dandy called Tim who has a terrible penchant for shapeless floppy hats worn at a jaunty angle. I'm sure the format is repeated the world over.

The subtext of the programme is that somewhere out there will be a lost masterpiece just waiting to be discovered. The expert carefully assesses the prospective purchases and uses a glossary of stock phrases to describe the items and suggest their value and potential for profit. The implication is almost always that the items on sale have some value and desirability.

But this is television and we all know that what you see on television rarely reflects reality. "Antique fair" is a terrible misnomer for a start. Usually the wares look no more-appealing than the contents of a house clearance because that's mostly what they are. The expert will study an item and perhaps declare it to be "collectible" or use some other somewhat evasive description. The implication is invariably that the value of the item is greater than its functional worth.

Of course, all items are nominally worthless as is anything in this world. We all think our car is worth £2000 until we discover we can only find someone prepared to give us £500 for it at which point it becomes worth exactly £500. Unless an item has some sort of base value - gold or other precious metals can always be melted down - their only value is actually what you can convince somebody else it is worth and, harder still, get them to part with their cash for it.

I am pretty sure these antique fairs are simply a relentless churn of the same items being endlessly resold, each purchaser hoping to make a profit from the next buyer they hope to find. There are far too many snuff boxes, walking sticks, tea caddies, gruesome items of usually chipped or cracked pottery and other gewgaws to believe there are serious collectors out there. "Collectors" are simply buyers waiting to find somebody prepared to pay more than they paid and hopefully to make an occasional killing.

Contestants rarely make a profit. It's innocent enough fun but it's also touchingly detached from reality. Having watched quite a few episodes I now present my interpretation of what the expert rather flatteringly tends to say about the items discovered and what I suspect they actually mean.

It's decorative: It's useless

It's quirky: It's worthless

It's charming: It's useless and worthless

It's unusual: Some people actually like this junk

It has a functional charm: It's ugly

It's an artisan piece: It's badly made

It's organic: It's very badly made

It's from the Arts and Crafts movement: It's dull and badly made

It's colourful: It's vulgar

It requires careful restoration: It's broken

It's desirable: I actualy managed to flog one of these a few months back

It's collectible: some idiot thinks it's worth something

It's difficult to date: It's a reproduction


Any more suggestions?

Happy Trails...

It's funny where a Wikipedia trail can take you.

I've just been watching a film called Coogan's Bluff released in 1968. Not a very good film but it has late sixties New York as its backdrop and although I don't know New York particularly well, I know it looks sort of different today.

The closing scene of the film involves a large twin-rotor passenger helicopter taking off from the roof of the Pan Am building. The shot pans away dramatically as the helicopter takes off to show the New York cityscape. I was interested to see if this passenger service still operated.

First I googled the Pan Am building which took me to the Wikipedia page for the building. From there I discovered the helicopter passenger service only ran for a little over two years ending in early 1968 so the film was probably made in 1967. The service briefly resumed in 1977 but was ended after a particularly gruesome accident where the helicopter landing gear collapsed during landing and a helicopter rotor broke away and flew into a group of waiting passengers killing four people. Debris falling from the roof killed a pedestrian in the street fifty nine storeys below.

One of the people killed was a film director called Michael Findlay who along with his wife Roberta Findlay, directed and produced numerous sexploitation movies. They have been described as "the most notorious filmmakers in the annals of sexploitation".

Coogan's Bluff is mentioned on the Pan Am Building Wikipedia page as one of several film to feature the skyscraper. One of the actresses in the film is called Susan Clark. She was born in Sarnia in Canada - a place I've only ever heard of once before as the hometown of a girl called Kelly who I met on a group holiday in South America that I took in 1998. She was lovely. Her catchphrase was "better living through chemistry".

Kelly seemed to have arrrived in South America with most of the contents of her local pharmacy in her luggage. We laughed at her and her apparent dependence on all this medication but after a month of fairly vigourous travelling through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia we had all taken advantage of something from her medicine chest. "Better living through chemistry" became a catchphrase of that holiday as also did the habit of inventing different names for each other which was started by two New Zealand vets who were also on the holiday who always called each other Ken. Their real names were Sarah and Michelle. They were very funny girls and I think of them whenever I hear the name Ken. I always hear it in my mind in a broad New Zealand accent - "Kin".

Coogan's Bluff also stars Lee J. Cobb. An actor I remember for two particular roles. He was the racist bigot in 12 Angry Men and he was also in The Virginian - a western TV series that was shown on British televison in the sixties and seventies. Good wholesome family viewing.

The Virginian was played by an actor called James Drury - a name that has always stuck in my mind because I think I watched a lot of episodes of The Virginian as a small child and his name was very prominently featured in the opening titles as if he was BIG STAR. At the time I thought he must be the most famous man in America. I don't recall seeing him in anything else but he appears to have had a reasonable acting career and also worked in the oil and gas business. He has a son who is a keyboard player who worked with The Eagles and is currently with Whitesnake - a band that has had many, many, many lineup changes over the years.

Whitesnake was one of my favourite bands as a teenager. It was founded by David Coverdale who became something of a poodle rocker in the 80s - I went off them then. I always like the more rock/blues-influenced early albums. David Coverdale was born in Saltburn which is a small Victorian seaside resort in the north of England a few miles from where I grew up.

Sullivan Ballou

I remember watching The American Civil War documentary the first time it appeared on UK TV and it's been good enough to reappear occasionally over the years as well as being available on DVD (see it if for some reason it has passed you by in the last 21 years). I never fail to watch an episode if it appears in the schedules.

Beautifully narrated, comprehensive, and full of first hand accounts of events it's still one of the finest and most moving pieces of television I've ever seen.

Today, on the radio, I was reminded of one particular excerpt from the series. It's a farewell letter from a volunteer major to his wife days before he was due to go into battle. You run out of words to describe it but it's touching, eloquent, heartfelt and heartbreaking. Doubtless there were many other letters like it (maybe even finer ones) that did not survive but you can only work with what is left and this is, I'm sure, about as appropriate and relevant as any. Spare yourself three minutes and listen to it but please do not be put off by the silly 30 second intro.



That TV series also introduced me to some great voices. I keep thinking about doing a blog post about great voices but I can never think of a way to present it without just showing a bunch of YouTube links which is just lazy. This series heavily featured Shelby Foote and Garrison Keillor.

If the message is important or you hope people will listen, you need to deliver it through the right medium; I sometime think people forget that. A good speaking voice has given hope to many a lost cause and it perhaps correspondingly has also given excessive creedence to bad ones - but there you go, some you win, some you lose.

Less is More

At this time of year the UK enters its annual sweet spot of public holidays. Most countries spread their public holidays throughout the year. In the UK we're a little top-heavy and squish most of them into the first half of the year.

This year we have four days off in a period of seven working days. Woo and indeed hoo. First we have Easter Friday and Easter Monday, then at the end of next week we have another Friday off for the royal wedding (neither I nor the BBC it seems can decide if it's Royal Wedding or royal wedding) and then the following Monday is just a regular bank holiday. We have another day off at the end of May. That makes for two four-day weeks with a three-day week between them and another four-day week a few weeks later.

We have only one public holiday from the end of May until Christmas - a barren time for the wage slave.

Forward thinking types have planned ahead for this and apparently two million of us are fleeing the country in the next week - many I suspect wishing to be out of the country for the wedding.

I tend to favour understated decoration. Less is more. Below is Regent Street in Central London. One of the most elegant streets in the country; a fact confirmed by its premium price and location on the Monopoly board. Do you think they've gone a bit too far and turned it into what looks like a cheap souvenir shop?

I'd Like to Officially Apologise for....umm...Everything :)

In recent years there seems to have developed a fashion for national governments to apologise for acts committed by their country throughout history. The descendents of the perpetrators of an injustice apologising to the descendents of those against whom the injustice was perpetrated.

The British have a long history of imperialism and many events in our history we should probably rightly not feel proud of. But I'm not sure of the significance of these apologies or what they are meant to achieve.

The latest of these involve the Prime Minister David Cameron accepting Britain's responsibility for "many of the world's problems" and in this particular case the poor job we did in 1947 in the partitioning of India and Pakistan. As the article points out, in recent years we've also apologised for famine in Ireland in the 19th century, our participation in the slave trade and to children that were shipped to Australia during the middle half of the 20th century. The comment in the article “This is typical of the UK’s schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past." I think is very accurate.

Where India/Pakistan and Australia are concerned I see the significance as there are still many people alive who were wronged and to whom an apology will be relevant but I don't detect in these often very cautiously worded apologies that they have anything more than soundbite relevance. There's an element of political grandstanding to them that suggests to me that the politician offering the apology just feels a little judicious faux contrition about events long gone by will ease the passage of the more immediate objective they might currently be trying to achieve.

There is also the way that we attempt to project 21st century morality onto people and the way they acted sometimes hundreds of years ago. Many people find it difficult enough to compare their own outlook on the world with that of their parents or grandparents so how we can project back the way we think now onto people hundreds of years ago bemuses me.

I'm not sure I'm the right person to judge this situation. I'm the product of an education that taught us that the British brought a lot of good to the world by their activities and whilst I'm not dumb enough to accept that is completely true I don't think everything we did was universally bad either. As far as I can tell, children today are taught a rather different version of history to the one I learnt. I have, in recent years become increasingly uncomfortable about the way we always seem to be front and centre and first at getting involved in events currently taking place around the world. There is still a strange mindset in this country that believes British diplomacy - either verbal or on the end of a terrifying piece of military hardware - is more even-handed than most other countries are capable of administering which I think is a dreadful arrogance.

You can't rewrite history and you also cannot with any accuracy work out how the world would have turned out were certain events not to have taken place. The world, for better or for worse, is the way it is now and apologising for events gone by is not going to change them nor is it going to change the current circumstances that those events created.

Are there whole nations and peoples still out there harbouring resentment about events from history? If there are, I'm not sure an apology is going to help that nor will it give them the "closure" that we are so often told they crave when one of these apologies is offered or sought.

I'm not saying we are blameless, I'm simply not sure these mealy-mouthed reversals that it now seems fashionable to hand out will achieve anything and the more that it happens will inevitably mean that each apology is a little more devalued than the previous one.

The world is not perfect now but it is better than it was then (whenever "then" was). We should think to the future and how to improve that and stop thinking we can change history by apologising for it.

Peppermint, Camomile or Raspberry...

Why are some hotels such unsatisfying places to stay? They have the novelty and excitement of being somewhere else in the world which instantly endears me to them but generally their claim to make you feel at home makes me feel exactly the opposite. They manage to create the most unhomelike experience you can possibly imagine. They offer things that I never get at home (because I don't care for them) and all the creature comforts I do want from home, they manage to reproduce in a strangely unsatisfying manner.

Let's start with the basics. Hotel beds. Who still uses sheets and blankets at home? Not me. And nobody I know does either. My mum was a bit of a radical back in the early 70s when she introduced duvets to the family home but since then they've become the norm in just about every home I know. But hotels still persist in giving you a bed made up with sheets and blankets. The first thing I do to a hotel bed is pull the whole thing apart so the covers do only that - cover me. I don't enjoy being clamped into a bed with sheets and blankets strapped across me as tight as a drumskin.

The TV. Why are the batteries in the hotel TV remote controls always just about one millivolt short of being completely flat? I suppose people pilfer the batteries if they're any good...I have no idea but hotel TV remotes never work quite right. Hotel TV channels? Who actually watches CNN when they're not imprisoned in a hotel room? Nobody I know does. When was the last time somebody asked you over the watercooler if you saw that show on CNN last night? Yet it's piped into every hotel room in the world as far as I can tell, churning out their 30 minute looping diatribe of flypast news reporting. The only pleasure is watching news from your home country being misreported or misinterpreted by the reporter. Movie channels? The best you can hope (?) for is the latest Adam Sandler vehicle and some generic globalised soft porn.

Tea and coffee-making facilities in every room boasts the literature. Yes, that'll be a tiny limescale-encrusted kettle with a lid that’s impossible to open and when it is open you can’t get it under the tap in the bathroom so you have to fill it via the bathtub. It will take 10 minutes to boil half a pint of water. They then supply you with a few sachets of lo-grade instant coffee or bloody Liptons Yellow Label teabags. If my home ran on a 200 dollar a day budget then it would have a NASA designed kettle and the finest coffee I could buy. My home runs on about 10% of that budget and I don't have to scrimp on the coffee or the peripheral electrical appliances.

The bathroom. Have you ever tried to take a shower and use a hotel supplied bar of soap? There are two types. They're either the size and shape of a large pebble or alternatively appear to be modelled on slightly chunky credit card. Both are deeply unsatisfactory if your preference is still to use a bar of soap to wash - which mine is. Give me a large family bar of soap and I’ll use it for the duration of my stay so you don’t have to replace it every day and it doesn’t need to be made by a goddamn Parisenne parfumerie. I’ll probably bring my own shampoo (no jokes about what a bald guy needs shampoo for, I just still happen to use it). I cannot comment on hotel hair driers as I have no need of them but I know many women that do pass comment on them and it is rarely complimentary.

The breakfast. Don't try and present me with what you claim to be an authentic English breakfast if you have never actually seen an English breakfast, and trust me, most hotel chefs around the world have never seen a proper English breakfast. British cuisine may have a pisspoor reputation but an English breakfast, properly done, is a life affirming joy. Fat juicy pork sausages, proper cured bacon, eggs (fried, scrambled, or joy of joy, poached) and real HP sauce. Eggs should be prepared on demand - you cannot keep eggs prepared in the above manner and keep them in some sort of warming device – their condition deteriorates rapidly in such an environment.

If you’re really going to go for it an English breakfast can also include mushrooms, fried tomatoes, kidneys and black pudding (personally I think black pudding is disgusting but it’s an essential colour in the English breakfast spectrum). Beans are eaten at teatime when you come home from school and are served on toast – not at breakfast. And Mr. Hotelier, if you really want to go authentic English at breakfast time then how about a kipper or some kedgeree? Delicious.

Hotel toasters? They are usually the size of a small filing cabinet and look like they cost a fortune yet seem unable to do much more than heat, or at best, slightly discolour the bread.

Coffee? The world has become addicted to weak milky coffee. Thanks Starbucks ya bastards. I like coffee that stings my eyeballs when I drink it. You can’t get it any more unless you’re in Paris, Brussels or Rome. Tea? We English are admittedly a bit quirky about our tea but tea the world over should be prepared with boiling water. Yes, BOILING. You can’t make tea with water below 95 degrees. Most hotels seem to consider anything exceeding about 60 degrees qualifies as “boiling”. Breakfast tea should be black Assam. If I ask for tea I don’t expect the response to be “Peppermint, camomile or raspberry sir?” These are not even teas – they are infusions and should be given their correct nomenclature. And stop calling me sir as well - I don't get that at home either.

The truth is of course that not even hotels in England will attempt a breakfast spread like the above. Some top hotels will make a decent stab at it though. I think the full-on, heart attack on a plate English breakfast died out in Edwardian country houses some time before the First World War started.

I would actually prefer a local breakfast when abroad. When in Rome ‘n’ all that.

I love to travel – business or pleasure. I actually don’t mind staying in hotels mainly because they are not home and that means I’m somewhere else in the world – hopefully somewhere fun and interesting. What I resent is hotels telling me that they are like my home when I find it hard to believe that they are like anyone’s home. They should market themselves as not being like my home and I would like them even more.

News P*rn

I used to keep up with current events. I still do but I’m getting more and more disillusioned with the way in which it is presented. It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish facts from rhetoric and separate detail from speculation.

News used to be reported as facts. A sombre individual sat behind a desk and read out a concise and crisply edited statement of events. An expert correspondent might be drafted in to give an opinion. A location report might also be included; again, presented with the emphasis on the facts.

Now with rolling 24 hour news channels you need more than facts. You have to sustain a drama as well. Even when nothing is happening you have to give the impression something is happening, or is about to happen.

This has reached its nadir in Japan where the distressing scale of human suffering should be enough to confine any self-respecting presenter to simply report facts and observe events. But no, it’s not enough. I’ve seen some reports where the broadcaster seems to be positively salivating at the prospect of a nuclear meltdown. There now seems almost tangible disappointment in their reports that the situation may be coming under control. They all know that “Disaster averted” is nowhere near such a good headline as “DISASTER!!!!” Some reporting has bordered on the grotesque, such is the voyeuristic and salacious manner in which it is delivered. Ocasionally a scientist will be brought in, ostensibly to add technical detail, but they're rarely given a chance to answer anything more than "When's it all going to BLOW UP?"

Not even the studio-bound newsreader is expected to just read the news. They now put emphasis and intonation into the reports that make them sound like they’re reading a bedtime ghost story to a ten year old rather than simply reporting the news. Whilst the words may be impartial, the presentation style tends to quickly expose the political or editorial opinions of the TV station or newsreader.

I don’t want my news as melodrama or simply used as a vehicle for the presenter’s ego. I want it as facts. Is that too much to ask?

In The Dark All Cats Are Grey...

Eight reasons for taking an older woman as a mistress...according to Benjamin Franklin.


1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8. They are so grateful!!


The full transcript of the above can be found here - a website I thoroughly recommend.

Forbrydelsen, aka The Killing

If you want to lose a weekend - in the way I have just done - then can I suggest there is no better way to lose it than by watching the first 10 episodes of Forbrydelsen (UK title - The Killing) which is running on the slighlty off-radar BBC4 arts channel here. I had to watch ten episodes in a row (thank god for catch up TV) to get up to present events and I have the next 10 episodes to look forward to - a double episode every Saturday night.

A colleague alerted me to this Danish serial which follows, one day per episode, the 20 days following a murder inquiry into the death of a teenage girl. I guess it borrows from 24 (which I've never watched) but it's the most dramatic piece of television I've seen in ages. It's dark, brooding and absolutely gripping.

Every one of the characters is brilliantly formed and developed as the series progresses. I really can't choose a standout performance but, if pressed, it would be Theis, the tortured father of the murder victim and played by Bjarne Henriksen. The central character, Sarah Lund, played by Sofie Gråbøl is also pretty good.

If, by some remarkable fluke, you have seen this series then please do not comment on how it might end as I'm determined not to Google this and find out what happens although the anticipation is almost unbearable.

And no, the subtitles do not detract from the drama although I suppose you might get more from it as a native Danish speaker although it'd be hard to see how as it's pretty much perfect already.

Fried Ego

An earlier comment provoked me to think a little harder about something I said but I'm going to stand by my original opinion which is approximately thus - are we the person we think we are or are we the person people perceive us to be?

I'm sure this is an idea that's been kicked around by many people smarter than me but it occurred to me a long time ago, mostly I guess through personal experience.

I think we all imagine ourselves to be a little misunderstood. People are rarely as confident and self-assured as they might appear. Whilst I tend to avoid moments of solipsism which I mostly find to be rather self-indulgent, it is human nature that we tend to look inward rather than the reverse. We believe we have a fairly good grasp of the kind of person we are yet we are confused sometimes by the way people react to things we say or do. The only real conclusion to be drawn from that is that despite the impression we think we give off, we appear to be giving off a different version of ourself to others.

I can't think of particularly good examples but we're all familiar with the bulllying and aggressive businessman who's rather too keen to profess to actually be a pussycat who hates confrontation. Whatever he may think, people see a bully and act accordingly. He might actually enjoy the reputation and may seek even to encourage it but he's also anxious to suggest there is another side to him.

You might also find yourself in conversation with a relative stranger and they make a statement from which they are obviously seeking or expecting your approval and you think to yourself, at what point did I suggest I might be sympathitic to the point of view being presented to me?

The outcome of all this is that despite who you think you are, people react pretty much exclusively to their interpretation of how they see you. I contend, if your life is defined by your interactions with others - and this is the world that we live in - then other people's impression of you is far more significant than your own impression of yourself. The outcome of this is that you are defined in the world by the opinions of others and not by your own.

I don't want this to sound like I spend my nights tormented that I'm constantly misunderstood but I do sometimes wonder why people react in a certain way. Yes, we all have preconceptions and there are many experiments to show that our preconceptions can easily override evidence that utterly contradicts those preconceptions yet we continue to believe our preconceived idea to be the right one. That is more about opinions than impressions.

So, if you follow my rather random thoughts there, I think we are primarily the person that people see us as, and not really the person we see ourselves as. The hard truth is that whatever you think of yourself, people do not react to that, they react to what they think of you. And although there is also - depending on individual circumstances - a higher or lesser element of self-determination in our lives, the reality is you can't usually get through it without others and they will see you as they find you, not how you find yourself.

Once in a while, you find a person who can clarify your thoughts even better than you can and they actually understand you better than you understand yourself. As a young man in my twenties I was exquistely analysed and dismantled by an ex-girlfriend. She read me like a damn book. It made me think about how I am perceived and how subtle the process of being misunderstood can be. The relationship foundered but I told her then, and subsequently - very gratefully - that nobody ever did that to me and I was I hope a better person for what she did. I don't know if it ever helped me in the future - only others can be the judge of that.

A la Recherche...

It has long vexed me that if you chip away at the hard, flinty exterior of my heart you are are only likely to encounter a hard, flinty interior. I know this because this is what people tell me.

People don't change and so perhaps I should accept this is the way that I am - because that's the way people see me - I don't think I'm as impenetrable as that but you are the person that people see you as, not how you see yourself.

So at this time of year - or whatever time of year you find appropriate - I urge you to embrace those that you love because people fade away without you noticing. It's a slow process which is why you don't see it happening. Sometimes it's only when you look back that you notice they're gone and what was unsaid will now forever remain that way.

Nuff said - have a wonderful Christmas. Remember those who have touched you and try to reciprocate in some small way. It will be noticed. I embrace you all and wish you all that wish for.

Ashes to Ashes

English is a wonderful language. If a word has not been invented in English to express something and a perfectly good foreign equivalent already exists, then we just pilfer that word and assimilate it into the language. So far Finnish has only contributed one word to the English language but I'm sure they will come up with more. It's "sauna" by the way.

Two of my favourite imported words are hubris and schadenfreude.

Hubris - this is generally described as the comeuppance experienced following a display of misguided confidence. The "unsinkable" Titanic is a good example of hubris (although not for the poor souls who died upon it).

Schadenfreude is a cruel (but often satisfying emotion) and is the ability to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. I don't think it's intended as a vindictively cruel word - you would not, I think, experience schadenfreude seeing someone endure unnecessary pain however you might experience it upon seeing a particularly irritating colleague caught outside in the office car park in a torrential rainstorm whilst you are watching from a position of warmth and comfort. You might even be in a position to help them....but choose not to.

On the eve of an Ashes series against Australia these words may well soon be seeing plenty of use.

There is a worrying excess of confidence regarding the prospects of the English. We've not won The Ashes in Australia in 23 years. This is no walk in the park. You do not beat the Australians in their own back yard. They are a great team and could easily duff us up.

This is a pre-emptive post to announce that despite the confidence of the English team, the English press and various TV pundits, I am not expecting anything but the toughest of scraps from the Australians. I would expect nothing less and I am confident they will deliver.

Here's to a great series.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about - it's cricket.