A New Year

It's New Years Eve and I wish I could tell you I was at some swinging party where everyone was a friend and that lovely lass over there is standing under the mistletoe but no. Once again the event got away from me and I doubt if I will manage to stay awake to watch the fireworks at midnight. 

Is it the sceptic or the cynic in me, the jaundiced, disenchanted, disillusioned, pessimistic or simply misanthropic, you can take your pick. I used to be a party animal, loved being out with people, loved dancing and drinking loved the laughter and the silliness of it all.

What changed and why. They say your surroundings have a lot to do with your mental outlook but it's not as if my mental outlook is misplaced it's simple changed. Perhaps I have grown up, but then fun and the light hearted behaviour is also an aspect of being grown up since the Presbyterian outlook on life has no more claim to being grown up than the comedian who lives his life as a joke.

The failure we have, is to take ourselves too seriously on the basis that others care. Of course some do but are we beholden to those who would pontificate on another persons behaviour if no harm is done or intended. 

Too often the 'values of others' gets in the way of our own values and we do ourselves a grave injustice not to do what we are truly comfortable with and 'is becoming to our own temper'. 

I sound like a scribe in Leviticus.

Where ever you are, when the bell tolls midnight. 

Happy New Year and may the new year bring you happiness.

Good food, good company

What is it that makes a good night out. The people you are with obviously, the ambiance of the venue or the striking surroundings in which you find yourself. 

Most of us have triggers which ignite memories  of yesteryear, the music or the decor, the lighting, the service, all collaborate to stimulate a moment or a period when you felt on top of the world and everything you did was enjoyable. Living and eating amongst other cultures at a time when you were less sceptical and more open was a memorable and informative experience which never left you and needs only the right ingredients to spark afresh.
The Brasserie in Swansea always ticks my box for having a good night out. The food is delightful, the setting always reminds me of being overseas, the service and the bohemian lack of formality is what makes it special.

When I come to Swansea it's become a ritual to go there with Angela and Marie before I leave and return home and so last night we were there, happily chatting away  lost in the hold of the good ship Brasserie as she ploughed her course of escape from the wet streets of of a wet dark town. A bottle of wine to help steer the course was opened and we chose our food with barely a thought to those Vegans amongst you and even less I'm afraid to the animals that had preceded the choice. We humans can be a self centred lot I'm afraid and although we can philosophise later and attend to our Hail Mary's, if we feel it appropriate, the thought for the day was "would it be tender" !

Faced with the two women in my life I'm sometimes taken to task for a minor infringement. 'Something I have done without noticing' or 'noticing something I have done without thinking' or, as is usually the case, 'just something I have done' !! 

I play the Boycott defence, soft hands deflecting the ball to point or gully, perhaps silly mid-off if the claims are wild and too ridiculous. Play each shot with patience, lots of patience. Never fall foul of sledging or wild accusations, leave that to the umpire. Never wave your bat at a out swinging comment, simple watch it away into the keepers gloves. Never feel intimidated when the bouncers are being balled at you, the aim is not to dismember but to warn, remember, the bill has still to be paid !!

I love these evenings when we are all together but we miss that other member of the team,  Andrew who would always provide an off stage commentary as to why we had misunderstood the true meaning of the game, it wasn't soft hands that were important but a rewriting of the rules which then made a mockery of needed a scorer since the runs were irrelevant !!

That was last night and tomorrow it's back down the M4 into 'Gods own country' facing the M25 with an Englishman's stiff upper lip "throw at me what you will".

The front door will be barricaded with mail, mostly junk but hopefully a message to pick up part 2 of the second years (2013) 'blog annual'. It's like going back to my childhood and opening the Rupert the Bear Annual, (my best Christmas gift). My blog stories laid out in technicolor on a shiny, china clay coated  page in sharp relief, capturing the import of a story in April or May or a critique of government and a warning of the dire events to come. A modern day Nostradamus.

Japan

One society which has not opened its doors to multiculturalism is Japan. A society of rules and tradition, especially away from the major cities which came back to me as I remember, back in the 60s when I was there, feeling the gulf between what my culture allowed and what the Japanese way of life demanded

I'v just been reminded watching a Japanese TV companies broadcast, the solemnity and the pace of the documentary was so tastefully different to what we are used to. The formality and the structure, what one could describe as the sense of poise that ever present social decorum which is embedded in the people.

The documentary dealt with one of the towns where art and tradition had been preserved. The Geisha and the quite flimsy wooden buildings designed to withstand earthquakes. I remember these neighbourhoods, the sliding doors and what seemed paper walls dividing the structure into rooms. The formality of respect. Taking off the shoes and the eternal bowing, acknowledging the others presence and your involvement in the unity of polite conversation. 

It brought it all back to me of how strange it seemed but in a sense how the formality and the respect made ones presence count. 

In the bustle of the big city we loose this interactive acknowledgement and I am reminded of a story Peter Ustinov used to tell of being in the Airport in Tokyo with thousands of people milling around but respecting each other's space and hardly ever colliding and contrasting it with a visit to Alice Springs where the one and only other person in the Airport building bumped into you.

Shinto and Buddhism play a large part in the psychological make up of the nation with piousness  the critical commentary on ones own virtu and behaviour playing a part in the outward display of moral rectitude. 

It was a far cry from the secular individualism I was used to.  The superficial but polite bond with others, the displays of conservative accountability, you were there and were counted as a collaborating member of the human race was intriguing to one used to the indifference of Western Society.

An age of deference to others

As I watch the 'sports section' of the news today, a parade of interviews with various managers and coaches who control the football Premier League and the major clubs in the Rugby Union business they seem to come from all over the world with few of our local people in control. 

Is this another example of our increasing subordination to "others". 

Perhaps we should be asking "why" before the Brit becomes extinct, like the dodo, other than for the most basic of jobs. 

Is it the result of our increasing deference to so many structures and hurdles which our modern society has developed for us.  To control our instinctive reactions and rather force us to follow the rules.

The English particularly were always considered a rule defined society. It was said that if we received a bureaucratic instruction, say from the European Parliament, we create further layers of laws and rules on top of the initial requirement just to fully define what everyone was supposed to do.

This domination of a rule based society with its clauses and sub-clauses, and our increasingly inherent fear of this complex society with its gender and religious considerations, it's disability considerations its minority considerations. Is it any wonder that after sifting through the issues which arise in each one of these so called considerations, the person who has grown up taking the PC high road from conception is hardly in a position to bark when barking is needed. 

The assertive Australian or Kiwi, the no nonsense Dutchman or German, the highly strung Spaniard or Italian, all these people now have the lead on our highly feminised, frightened of their own shadow British man or women, frightened of the legal consequences if they are challenged, frightened of being frightened !

We have been taken for suckers as we weave our way through the mire of compromise, waiting for others to tell us what we should do.

I remember the days when Leeds United and other clubs in the Football League, played a game of football which was feared. A centre half who could tackle the legs off the forwards and full-backs who were kamikaze in the penalty area. The pretty boys on the continent hated playing the English league clubs because of their physicality and so they changed the laws. Today, no one dare tackle. If they do, the forward goes down, rolling around as though they were disabled for life. Two minutes later they are on their feet, no worse for wear. The defender given a red card the actor / forward smirks, fully acknowledging his deceit 

a night out

Every time I come down to Swansea I suggest to my daughter she takes me out on the town. Usually it falls on deaf ears but occasionally she concedes to let me go with her and we drive into town to a selected gig or pub where I can't do any harm.

 Jazz is a popular venue and some of her friends are members of a band or play as a group who  sit in and play for the evening. I'm always envious of a person who can make music, who can immerse themselves in the entertainment of others and carry the night with their creative flair. 

Swansea seems like a final resting place for many a well worn guitarist. People who have been there and done it, now happy in their own skins, satisfied to 'jam' together before returning home through the wet early morning streets to a small house in one of the suburbs. The excitement of the riff and a pint is enough !!
Down the main entertainment drag in Swansea, a street called Wind Street (which runs at right angles to the bay and no doubt gets  its name from a winter gale or two) the clubs and pubs have taken over the once imposing buildings, initially  banks and merchants now cavernous drinking halls were the ubiquitous bouncer lurks on the door. Sensing I am well past presenting a problem, he lets me in with Angie and we enter to the welcome of some of her pals who's patch this is.
Tall leggy females in ever so tight clinging dresses and a Maurice Gibb look alike speaking a dialect which, even on a calm evening would be difficult to decipher but amidst the noise and bedlam of the band and the shouting to be heard make understanding what is said a lost cause.
It's a funny old world.  In my day the girls were all demure and dressed to attract but not to suggest ! Today the suggestion is shrieked from the roof-tops as the material she wares covers only what the law lets them get away with.
Once upon a time a girl would wait for a chap to ask her for a dance. Today the guys are sidelined as the girls dace with each other in some sort of tableau or rite.
It reminded me somewhat of an African tribal performance. Nubile maidens stamping their feet, displaying bodies in front of the men, a sort feline filly auction in Kentucky's horse country.
The men play no part in this Wind St burlesque. They are the bit players in the performance, there to look and contemplate but not to touch.
I suppose, after the girls have set out their stalls the real work begins but I had long gone home by then to my coco and the ubiquitous electric blanket.

What time is it now

As I sit here typing away at the centre of my own world with my belongings around me, communicating with you, some only a mile or two down the road others going to sleep on the other side of the globe.  I think what a magnificent opportunity it is to be in the master of my environment interacting with you and yours, each different, each deriving your own speciality.

I was trying to describe a couple of blogs ago the almost ridiculous observation that the atoms in my left and right hand could have come from different supernova exhibiting their colossal impact on their galaxy millions, even billions of light years ago.
Galaxies describe the collection of stars, millions of stars, such as our Milky Way in which our sun sits on the edge of the Galaxy.
Galaxies are now recognised to form clusters of galaxies and to be interactive with each other through gravity. These superclusters of galaxies are so massive that they produce the effect which Einstein predicted, the curvature of light in space due to the mass of the object and the gravitational force which bent the light as it passed the object and its the measurement of this curvature which allows calculations regarding the mass and therefore the weight of the Galaxy.
The calculation that takes in the observable light emitting from parts of the Galaxy reveals that at a proportion of 10 to 1, there is 'dark matter', non light emitting matter which predominates in the mass or weight calculation of the Galaxy.
What this dark matter is has yet to be determined. It is not the hydrogen helium and lithium, the light elements which were at the start of the Big Bang and which constitute the initial substance of everything we consider as having substance.
Gravitational lensing, the method used to detect the curvature of light in proximity to mass describes phenomena so huge, so difficult to comprehend.
The telescopes that locate these clusters of galaxies are discovering further clusters behind the ones we can observe.
Every spot of light on the image received is a Galaxy not a star. Each Galaxy contains 100 billion stars along with hundreds of billions of planets. The image, 5 billion years old,  was emitted 500 million years before our sun was formed and much of what we see has ceased to exist during the passage of time it took for the light to arrive.
So when I press 'send' and the electrons which make up the current on which this message is carried, sets off around the world, it puts into perspective our environment and no matter how narcissistic I am I could do with more star gazing before I become too despondent with my local environment.

Christmas

We are all hyped up and ready to go, it's Christmas Eve and the tills have collected as much as we were willing to buy and now it's time to spend on yourself.
Amazing that we, like sheep are willing to follow others when our common sense should have ruled otherwise long ago. We are in a competitive frenzy to out-do what our normal intuitive mind tells us is crazy.
I was listening on the radio to a set of interviews taken at this time of the year, interviews with youngsters and their parents discussing what they wanted for a present that particular year.
1964 the child's imagination was for a colouring book and an annual, by 1984, imaginary inflation had set in and the requests was for toys which belonged to the 'marketeers dream', the add on, clothes to dress the doll in or guns to make our hero invulnerable.
2004 was the start of the 'gaming' craze. Large amounts of cash handed over to the to be one of the 'select band' who could say "I have one".

Today it's an amazing range of interactive internet connected gizmos which only the kids know how to use as we the parent look on and wonder where did all the innocence go.

Mummy, Daddy. He's been he's been!! Tracy's eye's were full of excitement her grin splitting her face from East to west as she stood at the bedroom door of her parents. Still sleepy from the late night last-minute rush to parcel up the presents which had been hidden away on top of the wardrobe, Mum and Dad were infected by her thrilled belief in Santa which had held for another year.
All across the country this scene was being enacted as the children, wide eyed were re-living the mystical story of the Reindeer ride across across the rooftops and Father Christmas squeezing down the chimmely, into the lounge with a sack full of toys. The advent of central heating has proved a problem but not insurmountable since the parcels are there under the tree each year without fail.
Can I open this one. Who's name is on the label. "Daddy". Well that's for me lets find one for you.
When you wrote to Santa what did you ask for. A doll with red hair. Like Angela.

 Yes. "Where is Angela". She's still in bed, out with her friends until very late, not for disturbing thank you.
The paper so carefully folded and fastened is torn off the box in a frenzy, yes yes it's my dolly thank you Father Christmas. I suppose I mustn't hold a grudge but it wasn't him trudging around the shops in the miserable weather wondering if he could afford another gift, we haven't got anything for aunt Agatha. But then this is the season of "Joy" and since she has left her credit card at home I suppose I will have to forgo that sweater in M&S and hope someone buys me socks 'again' !!

Happy Christmas