Happy New Year!

The turn of the year. A time for looking back and giving thanks - see the eloquent post 'To Glorify Things Just Because That Are' on this great blog (December 28). My year was, abundantly, one of discoveries - among them Shirley Hazzard (this time last year I had not read her! It seems incredible...), William Maxwell, the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Rebecca Goldstein's extraordinary Betraying Spinoza, the late novels of Penelope Fitzgerald, the critical essays of V.S. Pritchett (The Essential Pritchett is surely one of the most richly rewarding single volumes of the 20th century). Then there has been much rereading and rediscovery - including the delight of finding The Leopard as great and as magical as I remembered it from my teenage years.
Other discoveries include, miscellaneously, the Musée Angladon in Avignon, the wide-skied beauty of Dutch Zeeland, Birdsong radio, the paintings of Robert Dukes, the Carmenere grape (and Menetou-Salon, and the Spanish aperitif Pacharan), the King of Shaves Azor (a mad new razor which has given me much simple pleasure) - and, of course, the joy of cravats. Along the way I've had, despite the grim summer, some wonderful butterfly experiences, including a thrilling encounter with a purple hairstreak in my own garden... And I was happily and amazingly reunited with two old friends I hadn't seen in more than 35 years. And, of course, this was the year in which I finally started my own blog. I have not for one moment regretted it.
More than enough to be thankful for there (along with health, loved ones and paid employment). What strikes me is how much of what I've enumerated has been related in some way or another to the great wide world of the web, and in particular to the circle of like-minded souls in the blogosphere who have sent me off in so many rewarding directions and, as a result, hugely enlarged my experience and enjoyment of life. Whatever may be said against blogging, in the right hands and minds it is hugely enriching (in a non-material sense, needless to say) and, in the best sense, educative. It is now for me an essential element in a vital life-enhancing, life-enlarging process of endless discovery and rediscovery. As I look back thankfully, I thank all you out there who have contributed so much to my year, and I hope you have found my thoughts and hints and recommendations as rewarding as I have found yours.
Oh and my Book of the Year is Me Cheeta. I think it was the only newly published book I read, actually...
A Happy New Year to all who read this!

Desert Island Book?

A curious thing happened on Desert Island Discs the other day. The guest was Baroness Haleh Afshar - I must confess I hadn't heard of her, but, as a Muslim feminist and enemy of the Iranian Ayatollahs' thugocracy, she had an interesting tale to tell. Come the end of the programme, she was invited to choose a book to take with her to the notional desert island, in addition to the Bible and Shakespeare that are, quite rightly, provided. When she opted for the Koran, she was told she couldn't have two religious texts. This seems harsh, even misguided, and I hadn't noticed this rule being applied before. You'd have thought in these multicultural, pluralist times, the BBC would be keen to encourage variety in this field - but apparently not...
I've really no idea which book I'd take myself (choosing those eight records is hard enough). It seems like an impossible choice. Has anyone out there got a Desert Island Book lined up for when the call comes? Remember - religious texts are not allowed. I don't make the rules...

'Fast losing its compassion'

Look here upon this story, and on this. Both demonstrate a radical cluelessness about what's wrong with the NHS and how it could be made better. Both in fact demonstrate how far that great bloated monster of an institution has drifted from its proper purpose and business (as have so many other institutions, but the NHS dwarfs them all) - and why is this? Precisely because of endless managerial interference, with the consequent bloating of a self-serving bureaucracy, the never-ending attempt to quantify and rank everything and to reduce it to boxes that can be ticked, targets that can appear to be met. The process itself, in all its ramifications, overwhelms everything - including what used to be meant by professionalism and judgment - and you end up with an NHS which is indeed 'fast losing its compassion' - along with its efficacy and its capacity to do the job it is supposed to do, which is to heal people or, failing that (and every bit as important) make them feel better. One looks back fondly to the old days when GPs understood that their job, as often as not, was to keep the patient entertained while nature effected a cure. Now their patients are in effect being invited to comment on the quality of the entertainment, in a singularly fautous exercise that certainly will not develop an Amazon-style market in the practice of medicine. How could it, as long as medicine is practised by real doctors in real geographical locations - unlike the online virtual market(non)place? 'Feedback' of the kind proposed merely encourages the permanently aggrieved (and idle) and makes no difference to anything - none in the right direction anyway. Still, it gives the scary Ben Bradshaw his moment in the limelight while things are quiet between Christmas and New Year.

Harry and Randy

Over Christmas, I heard quite a lot of this album, which was definitely one of the best things the wildly wayward Harry Nilsson ever did - and, in effect, one of the best Randy Newman albums. Nilsson was blessed with a remarkable, even beautiful voice, and it does wonders for these early Newman songs (as the album did for Newman's profile). If you don't know it, it's well worth seeking out...

Harold and Eartha

Thanks, everybody, for your cheering Christmas messages. I am now back from my five-day silent tribute to the late Harold Pinter...
Harold Pinter... (the ... is a quote, of course) - was he half as good as he was cracked up to be? I've always suspected he might have owed his success to mastering a particular clever trick of suggesting everything, stating nothing, and using it to the hilt - to good theatrical effect, creating tension and menace galore. But really was there anything much there? His plays feel hollow and unsatisfactory - trivial even - compared to those of Beckett (from whom, clearly, Pinter learned a lot). Of course, when it comes to theatre (and, indeed, new 'literary' novels), critical standards are pretty indulgent, coloured by a conviction that theatre (like the 'literary' novel) is somehow a Good Thing - and helped along, in the case of theatre, by the determination of a paying audience to convince themselves they haven't wasted their money. In the hothouse atmosphere of the theatrical world, adulation - whether merited or not - thrives. As for Pinter's 'poetry' - had it been written by anyone else, it would surely never have been taken seriously for a moment, would it?
Eartha Kitt also died over Christmas. Here was a woman who had a remarkable life - outlined here. I remember she gave an extraordinarily emotional interview to Anthony Clare in his radio series In The Psychiatrist's Chair, in which she looked back over her traumatic early years and the frequent wrong turns and catastrophes of her later life. Was there, Clare asked the sobbing Eartha towards the end, one man she truly loved and could have been happy with? Yes, she replied, Arthur Lowe. For years afterwards, I cherished the image of a passionate affair between the feline, ultra-sexy Eartha and Captain Mainwaring - but alas, it turned out to be a Hollywood studio executive of the same name. Another illusion gone...

Happy Christmas

Something tells me that I'm going to be sucked into the Yuletide maelstrom tomorrow, so I'll take this opportunity to wish all those who visit this blog a very happy Christmas. Thank you for all your interest and contributions and comments - keep 'em coming. It's been a rather good year, blogwise - a theme to which I intend to return before it's quite out... Meanwhile, God rest ye merry, one and all!

The Persistence of Twitter - and Questions about Donkeys

I'm not sure about this - it either demonstrates a heroic dedication to 'citizen journalism', or the peculiar kind of derangement that can grip you if you get involved with Twitter. Imagine if it had been Stephen Fry...
Meanwhile, this bizarre affair continues. Reading the guy's posts, you can see he wants to do some serious reporting about the state of things in Israel/Palestine - but every morning, as soon as he pops up on the Today programme, all they want to talk about is the fllippin' donkeys - how very English. You can hear the poor chap's frustration increasing with every report... But why is a supposedly serious news programme pulling this stunt in the first place, and presenting it as re-enacting a historical event - the journey of Joseph and a pregnant Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem? Most theologians (and all historians) agree that it never happened, but was shoehorned into Luke's gospel to bring the story into line with Jewish prophecy - the 'census' being an ahistorical device to explain the narrative. But even the sceptical Humphrys raises no questions - except about the donkey, of course...