Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Meanwhile in the Nest
The boss of Twitter may be inarticulate, (see yesterday's post), but the members of Twitter are often witty and fun. Today, I was reminded of this when Timehop threw me back the Tweets from a game some Tweeters played a while back, (four years ago, as it happens).
The idea of the game was pretty simple: people were invited to contribute the names of cooking songs. Here are some of the suggestions that I found amusing, with attributions, where available:
"It's a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll", (contributed by the Northern Territory News, apparently);
Paul Young's "Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you";
"Yabbie Road";
"The chops are burning", by Midnight Oil;
"Happiness is a warm bun", (my brother came up with that one);
"Still haven't found what I'm cooking for" (a Tweeter called @dkfcdotnet);
"Addicted to l'oeuf" (@kandidan);
"Please cheese me";
"We are the champignons" (@JonPowles);
"House of the rising bun";
"I'll never find another stew";
"Let it brie";
"The first time ever I saw your plaice", by Roberta Flack;
"Peas train", by Cat Stevens;
"You've got a friand", by James Taylor;
"Bette Davis eyes (#cannibalcookingsongs)";
"I left my heart in San Francisco (I never cared for offal)".
So many people tell me they don't like Twitter, that it is vicious and vile and a seething tank of hatred and horror, but I think these kinds of games, (which happen quite regularly - and always spontaneously), show that there is the odd pocket of sheer silliness in there too. And silliness, surely, is never a bad thing.
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
Chief Twit
"As we iterate on the logged out experience and curate topics, events, moments that unfold on the platform, you should absolutely expect us to deliver those experiences across the total audience and that includes logged in users and users in syndication."
This breathtakingly meaningless sentence was created by the Chief Executive of Twitter recently. The brilliant Lucy Kellaway dismantled it with great skill, for those of us who don't understand modern English.
This breathtakingly meaningless sentence was created by the Chief Executive of Twitter recently. The brilliant Lucy Kellaway dismantled it with great skill, for those of us who don't understand modern English.
Sunday, 3 May 2015
A Dollop of Trollope
On a long car journey recently we whiled away the time listening to Nigel Hawthorne read The Warden by Anthony Trollope. I had tried to read the book myself several times, egged on by numerous enthusiastic friends and acquaintances, but the first dozen or so pages always found me marooned.
With Hawthorne, we sailed through what I'd have to say are fairly dense thickets of exposition and reached the heart of the matter. Which didn't turn out to be all that wildly exciting. Of course, it would be more than possible to recognise a great deal that is relevant to politics now in the text - and also to make out what turned out to be a prescient, if sadly ignored, lesson in the portrayal of the damage that the Radicals' reform-for-reform's-sake zeal ended up causing. All the same, the stand of the Warden seemed slightly pointless, ultimately, and, whether or not Trollope intended it, the character I particularly liked was not the saintly figure of the title but his son-in-law, the extremely flawed, but very human, Dr Grantly.
I'm quibbling though. The lack of thoroughly gripping or convincing plot didn't really matter. Two other aspects of the book made it fun for me. The first was Trollope's excellent characterisation. Take Sir Abraham Haphazard as an example.
Trollope describes this eminent lawmaker as having“the appearance of a machine with a mind”.
He goes on to tell the reader that Haphazard was “a man whom you would ask to defend your property, but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love. He was bright as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable. He knew everyone whom to know was an honour, but he was without a friend”
“Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest at the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he always sparkled; whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the courts of law, coruscations flew from him; glittering sparkles, as from hot steel, but no heat; no cold heart was ever cheered by warmth from him, no unhappy soul ever dropped a portion of its burden at his door.”
“And so he glitters along through the world, the brightest among the bright; and when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his fathers, no eye will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for its lost friend.”
Also always of interest to me are any descriptions of food provided by a novelist. Trollope gives us not one but two meals, plus an intriguing post-prandial interlude. That is more than enough to make me his fan.
The first meal Trollope provides for us is the rather marvellous breakfast provided at Dr Grantly's establishment:
The breakfast-service on the table was equally costly and equally plain; the apparent object had been to spend money without obtaining brilliancy or splendour. The urn was of thick and solid silver, as were also the tea-pot, coffee-pot, cream-ewer, and sugar-bowl; the cups were old, dim dragon china, worth about a pound a piece, but very despicable in the eyes of the uninitiated. The silver forks were so heavy as to be disagreeable to the hand, and the bread-basket was of a weight really formidable to any but robust persons. The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the very thickest; there was dry toast and buttered toast, muffins and crumpets; hot bread and cold bread, white bread and brown bread, home-made bread and bakers' bread, wheaten bread and oaten bread; and if there be other breads than these, they were there; there were eggs in napkins, and crispy bits of bacon under silver covers; and there were little fishes in a little box, and devilled kidneys frizzling on a hot-water dish; which, by the bye, were placed closely contiguous to the plate of the worthy archdeacon himself. Over and above this, on a snow-white napkin, spread upon the sideboard, was a huge ham and a huge sirloin; the latter having laden the dinner table on the previous evening. Such was the ordinary fare at Plumstead Episcopi.
He then moves on to the rather less satisfactory dinner that the Warden finds for himself in London, while trying to keep out of sight of Dr Grantley:
Having furnished such a wonderfully vivid picture of what it was like to try to find a meal in London in the 19th century, if you didn't know your way around, Trollope goes on to introduce us to a phenomenon that I had never heard of - and that I rather wish still existed - the cigar divan, (and his description makes me wonder what exactly was offered in the guise of coffee - or is it simply that the Warden is by this time very, very tired?):
"... as he paid his bill to the woman in the shop, [the Warden] asked her if there were any place near where he could get a cup of coffee.”
“Though she did keep a shellfish supper-house, she was very civil, and directed him to the cigar divan on the other side of the street.
Mr Harding had not a much correcter notion of a cigar divan than he had of a London dinner-house, but he was desperately in want of rest, and went as he was directed. He thought he must have made some mistake when he found himself in a cigar shop, but the man behind the counter saw immediately that he was a stranger, and understood what he wanted. "One shilling, sir,—thank ye, sir,—cigar, sir?—ticket for coffee, sir;—you'll only have to call the waiter. Up those stairs, if you please, sir. Better take the cigar, sir,—you can always give it to a friend, you know. Well, sir, thank ye, sir;—as you are so good, I'll smoke it myself." And so Mr Harding ascended to the divan, with his ticket for coffee, but minus the cigar.”
“The place seemed much more suitable to his requirements than the room in which he had dined: there was, to be sure, a strong smell of tobacco, to which he was not accustomed; but after the shell-fish, the tobacco did not seem disagreeable. There were quantities of books, and long rows of sofas. What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee? An old waiter came up to him, with a couple of magazines and an evening paper. Was ever anything so civil? Would he have a cup of coffee, or would he prefer sherbet? Sherbet! Was he absolutely in an Eastern divan, with the slight addition of all the London periodicals? He had, however, an idea that sherbet should be drunk sitting cross-legged, and as he was not quite up to this, he ordered the coffee.
The coffee came, and was unexceptionable. Why, this divan was a paradise! The civil old waiter suggested to him a game of chess: though a chess player he was not equal to this, so he declined, and, putting up his weary legs on the sofa, leisurely sipped his coffee, and turned over the pages of his Blackwood. He might have been so engaged for about an hour, for the old waiter enticed him to a second cup of coffee, when a musical clock began to play. Mr Harding then closed his magazine, keeping his place with his finger, and lay, listening with closed eyes to the clock. Soon the clock seemed to turn into a violoncello, with piano accompaniments, and Mr Harding began to fancy the old waiter was the Bishop of Barchester; he was inexpressibly shocked that the bishop should have brought him his coffee with his own hands; then Dr Grantly came in, with a basket full of lobsters, which he would not be induced to leave downstairs in the kitchen; and then the warden couldn't quite understand why so many people would smoke in the bishop's drawing-room; and so he fell fast asleep, and his dreams wandered away to his accustomed stall in Barchester Cathedral, and the twelve old men he was so soon about to leave for ever. ”
With Hawthorne, we sailed through what I'd have to say are fairly dense thickets of exposition and reached the heart of the matter. Which didn't turn out to be all that wildly exciting. Of course, it would be more than possible to recognise a great deal that is relevant to politics now in the text - and also to make out what turned out to be a prescient, if sadly ignored, lesson in the portrayal of the damage that the Radicals' reform-for-reform's-sake zeal ended up causing. All the same, the stand of the Warden seemed slightly pointless, ultimately, and, whether or not Trollope intended it, the character I particularly liked was not the saintly figure of the title but his son-in-law, the extremely flawed, but very human, Dr Grantly.
I'm quibbling though. The lack of thoroughly gripping or convincing plot didn't really matter. Two other aspects of the book made it fun for me. The first was Trollope's excellent characterisation. Take Sir Abraham Haphazard as an example.
Trollope describes this eminent lawmaker as having“the appearance of a machine with a mind”.
He goes on to tell the reader that Haphazard was “a man whom you would ask to defend your property, but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love. He was bright as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable. He knew everyone whom to know was an honour, but he was without a friend”
“Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest at the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he always sparkled; whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the courts of law, coruscations flew from him; glittering sparkles, as from hot steel, but no heat; no cold heart was ever cheered by warmth from him, no unhappy soul ever dropped a portion of its burden at his door.”
“And so he glitters along through the world, the brightest among the bright; and when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his fathers, no eye will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for its lost friend.”
Also always of interest to me are any descriptions of food provided by a novelist. Trollope gives us not one but two meals, plus an intriguing post-prandial interlude. That is more than enough to make me his fan.
The first meal Trollope provides for us is the rather marvellous breakfast provided at Dr Grantly's establishment:
The breakfast-service on the table was equally costly and equally plain; the apparent object had been to spend money without obtaining brilliancy or splendour. The urn was of thick and solid silver, as were also the tea-pot, coffee-pot, cream-ewer, and sugar-bowl; the cups were old, dim dragon china, worth about a pound a piece, but very despicable in the eyes of the uninitiated. The silver forks were so heavy as to be disagreeable to the hand, and the bread-basket was of a weight really formidable to any but robust persons. The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the very thickest; there was dry toast and buttered toast, muffins and crumpets; hot bread and cold bread, white bread and brown bread, home-made bread and bakers' bread, wheaten bread and oaten bread; and if there be other breads than these, they were there; there were eggs in napkins, and crispy bits of bacon under silver covers; and there were little fishes in a little box, and devilled kidneys frizzling on a hot-water dish; which, by the bye, were placed closely contiguous to the plate of the worthy archdeacon himself. Over and above this, on a snow-white napkin, spread upon the sideboard, was a huge ham and a huge sirloin; the latter having laden the dinner table on the previous evening. Such was the ordinary fare at Plumstead Episcopi.
He then moves on to the rather less satisfactory dinner that the Warden finds for himself in London, while trying to keep out of sight of Dr Grantley:
He was rather daunted by the huge quantity of fish which he saw in the window. There were barrels of oysters, hecatombs of lobsters, a few tremendous-looking crabs, and a tub full of pickled salmon; not, however, being aware of any connection between shell-fish and iniquity, he entered, and modestly asked a slatternly woman, who was picking oysters out of a great watery reservoir, whether he could have a mutton chop and a potato.
The woman looked somewhat surprised, but answered in the affirmative, and a slipshod girl ushered him into a long back room, filled with boxes for the accommodation of parties, in one of which he took his seat. In a more miserably forlorn place he could not have found himself: the room smelt of fish, and sawdust, and stale tobacco smoke, with a slight taint of escaped gas; everything was rough and dirty, and disreputable; the cloth which they put before him was abominable; the knives and forks were bruised, and hacked, and filthy; and everything was impregnated with fish. He had one comfort, however: he was quite alone; there was no one there to look on his dismay; nor was it probable that anyone would come to do so. It was a London supper-house. About one o'clock at night the place would be lively enough, but at the present time his seclusion was as deep as it had been in the abbey.
In about half an hour the untidy girl, not yet dressed for her evening labours, brought him his chop and potatoes, and Mr Harding begged for a pint of sherry. He was impressed with an idea, which was generally prevalent a few years since, and is not yet wholly removed from the minds of men, that to order a dinner at any kind of inn, without also ordering a pint of wine for the benefit of the landlord, was a kind of fraud,—not punishable, indeed, by law, but not the less abominable on that account. Mr Harding remembered his coming poverty, and would willingly have saved his half-crown, but he thought he had no alternative; and he was soon put in possession of some horrid mixture procured from the neighbouring public-house.
His chop and potatoes, however, were eatable, and having got over as best he might the disgust created by the knives and forks, he contrived to swallow his dinner. He was not much disturbed: one young man, with pale face and watery fishlike eyes, wearing his hat ominously on one side, did come in and stare at him, and ask the girl, audibly enough, "Who that old cock was;" but the annoyance went no further, and the warden was left seated on his wooden bench in peace, endeavouring to distinguish the different scents arising from lobsters, oysters, and salmon.
Having furnished such a wonderfully vivid picture of what it was like to try to find a meal in London in the 19th century, if you didn't know your way around, Trollope goes on to introduce us to a phenomenon that I had never heard of - and that I rather wish still existed - the cigar divan, (and his description makes me wonder what exactly was offered in the guise of coffee - or is it simply that the Warden is by this time very, very tired?):
"... as he paid his bill to the woman in the shop, [the Warden] asked her if there were any place near where he could get a cup of coffee.”
“Though she did keep a shellfish supper-house, she was very civil, and directed him to the cigar divan on the other side of the street.
Mr Harding had not a much correcter notion of a cigar divan than he had of a London dinner-house, but he was desperately in want of rest, and went as he was directed. He thought he must have made some mistake when he found himself in a cigar shop, but the man behind the counter saw immediately that he was a stranger, and understood what he wanted. "One shilling, sir,—thank ye, sir,—cigar, sir?—ticket for coffee, sir;—you'll only have to call the waiter. Up those stairs, if you please, sir. Better take the cigar, sir,—you can always give it to a friend, you know. Well, sir, thank ye, sir;—as you are so good, I'll smoke it myself." And so Mr Harding ascended to the divan, with his ticket for coffee, but minus the cigar.”
“The place seemed much more suitable to his requirements than the room in which he had dined: there was, to be sure, a strong smell of tobacco, to which he was not accustomed; but after the shell-fish, the tobacco did not seem disagreeable. There were quantities of books, and long rows of sofas. What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee? An old waiter came up to him, with a couple of magazines and an evening paper. Was ever anything so civil? Would he have a cup of coffee, or would he prefer sherbet? Sherbet! Was he absolutely in an Eastern divan, with the slight addition of all the London periodicals? He had, however, an idea that sherbet should be drunk sitting cross-legged, and as he was not quite up to this, he ordered the coffee.
The coffee came, and was unexceptionable. Why, this divan was a paradise! The civil old waiter suggested to him a game of chess: though a chess player he was not equal to this, so he declined, and, putting up his weary legs on the sofa, leisurely sipped his coffee, and turned over the pages of his Blackwood. He might have been so engaged for about an hour, for the old waiter enticed him to a second cup of coffee, when a musical clock began to play. Mr Harding then closed his magazine, keeping his place with his finger, and lay, listening with closed eyes to the clock. Soon the clock seemed to turn into a violoncello, with piano accompaniments, and Mr Harding began to fancy the old waiter was the Bishop of Barchester; he was inexpressibly shocked that the bishop should have brought him his coffee with his own hands; then Dr Grantly came in, with a basket full of lobsters, which he would not be induced to leave downstairs in the kitchen; and then the warden couldn't quite understand why so many people would smoke in the bishop's drawing-room; and so he fell fast asleep, and his dreams wandered away to his accustomed stall in Barchester Cathedral, and the twelve old men he was so soon about to leave for ever. ”
Saturday, 2 May 2015
Blowing in the Wind
Have you noticed how certain words and phrases you have never heard of before suddenly emerge as normal parts of everyday speech - or at least they become a regular part of the vocabulary of people who talk on Radio 4 and who write columns in newspapers?
These neologisms don't always last for long, although sometimes they become part of the linguistic furniture for decades. Whether they are fleeting or permanent is irrelevant in my experience, since I rarely manage to grasp precisely what they mean, no matter how long they hang around.
At the moment, the two that I seem to encounter daily are:
1. "binary". Things are very rarely binary apparently. We should not be presented with choices that our merely binary. Problems do not submit to binary solutions. What is the alternative to a binary solution? A solution in triplicate? A pluralist solution? No solution at all is usually the answer.
2. "transactional". I first heard this at dinner one evening when the EU official next to me observed that "Britain has always preferred a transactional approach" to the Union. The next day a young pregnant woman told me that her obstetrician was good but very "transactional". Since then it's been a "transactional" snowstorm, hardly a conversation has gone by without someone referring to something as being "transactional". No idea whatsoever what it means. It's a good yardstick for working out whether someone's a bit of a bore though - if they use it, chances are they might be.
These neologisms don't always last for long, although sometimes they become part of the linguistic furniture for decades. Whether they are fleeting or permanent is irrelevant in my experience, since I rarely manage to grasp precisely what they mean, no matter how long they hang around.
At the moment, the two that I seem to encounter daily are:
1. "binary". Things are very rarely binary apparently. We should not be presented with choices that our merely binary. Problems do not submit to binary solutions. What is the alternative to a binary solution? A solution in triplicate? A pluralist solution? No solution at all is usually the answer.
2. "transactional". I first heard this at dinner one evening when the EU official next to me observed that "Britain has always preferred a transactional approach" to the Union. The next day a young pregnant woman told me that her obstetrician was good but very "transactional". Since then it's been a "transactional" snowstorm, hardly a conversation has gone by without someone referring to something as being "transactional". No idea whatsoever what it means. It's a good yardstick for working out whether someone's a bit of a bore though - if they use it, chances are they might be.
Monday, 27 April 2015
Questions
1. Does anyone else routinely, to their own bafflement, read newspapers from back to front - that is to say, starting on the last page and moving systematically to the front page?
2. If anyone does, are they also baffled by their behaviour, or can they provide a rationale for this quirk?
3. Does anyone else find that they don't get through the weekend papers until the week after the weekend after next (partly because on the weekend that each set of new weekend papers appears, they are still working their way [backwards] through the ones from two weeks earlier - this dilemma is sort of akin to compound interest, in a remote sort of way.
4. If anyone else does get out of sync in this way with the weekend papers, have they noticed that the weekend papers actually improve by this crude form of cellaring? The stuff that seemed absolutely cutting edge in its hot off the press relevance has usually been superseded by the time the articles in question meet the eye. Which means there is much more time for the really interesting articles.
5. Speaking of which has anyone else caught up to the point of reading the Guardian of Saturday 18 April, and, if they have, did they read the astounding article about Cordula Schacht, daughter of Hitler's Minister of Economics, suing Random House for royalties for the Goebbels family because a Random House published biography of Goebbels uses quotes from Goebbels's diaries?
When Random House replied by offering to pay Schacht royalties, provided she give the money to a Holocaust charity, she refused the offer. Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany believes that other publishing houses have paid for the use of Goebbels's diaries and Random House is the first not to. "We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal" he is quoted as saying, "I [do]not want to believe that anyone can claim royalties for Goebbels's words".
The questions this story raises are endless. I will leave others to ask them and, with luck provide some answers. I am too angry to think rationally on the subject.
2. If anyone does, are they also baffled by their behaviour, or can they provide a rationale for this quirk?
3. Does anyone else find that they don't get through the weekend papers until the week after the weekend after next (partly because on the weekend that each set of new weekend papers appears, they are still working their way [backwards] through the ones from two weeks earlier - this dilemma is sort of akin to compound interest, in a remote sort of way.
4. If anyone else does get out of sync in this way with the weekend papers, have they noticed that the weekend papers actually improve by this crude form of cellaring? The stuff that seemed absolutely cutting edge in its hot off the press relevance has usually been superseded by the time the articles in question meet the eye. Which means there is much more time for the really interesting articles.
5. Speaking of which has anyone else caught up to the point of reading the Guardian of Saturday 18 April, and, if they have, did they read the astounding article about Cordula Schacht, daughter of Hitler's Minister of Economics, suing Random House for royalties for the Goebbels family because a Random House published biography of Goebbels uses quotes from Goebbels's diaries?
When Random House replied by offering to pay Schacht royalties, provided she give the money to a Holocaust charity, she refused the offer. Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany believes that other publishing houses have paid for the use of Goebbels's diaries and Random House is the first not to. "We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal" he is quoted as saying, "I [do]not want to believe that anyone can claim royalties for Goebbels's words".
The questions this story raises are endless. I will leave others to ask them and, with luck provide some answers. I am too angry to think rationally on the subject.
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Perfect Pets
I was listening to a radio discussion about the latest iteration of the film Bladerunner the other day. At the time I saw the film - ie when it first came out - I thought it was mainly a metaphor for "the human condition". That is, the desire of the replicants for a longer lifespan was really a human desire in mechanical clothing.
What I didn't foresee all those years ago was that, within my lifetime, conditions anywhere in my world might begin to mirror those in the film. A trip to Shanghai cured me of any illusions on that score. Or, to put it another way, if you want to know what Shanghai's like, watch Bladerunner..
And, while elsewhere urban environments haven't quite reached the constant warm rain and overwhelmingly dense population stage, slowly but surely the first generation of pre-replicants have been creeping into our lives. No, I know we haven't got things that are indistinguishable from humans yet, but we have got gadgets that it is very easy to anthropomorphise, and some of us at least are already starting to get in a muddle about the dividing line between machine and cuddly little animate being.
The first time I realised this was when those funny round vacuum cleaners that speed about people's houses first appeared. As soon as I saw them for sale, I found them appealing. The only reason I didn't buy one was that I was told they can't cope with old rugs - the fringes make them miserable, apparently. However, I wasn't surprised when I read that people who do buy them start to grow as attached to them as if they were a family pet. When they break down, their owners take them back to the shops they bought them from but, when offered a new replacement, they often get upset. They don't want a lovely shiny thing in a box out the back; they want the one that's part of the family. "No, no, you've got to fix our one", they cry, "he's special".
Which sounds a bit silly, until you start to see how sweet and pliant robots can be.
Or possibly I'm just unusually susceptible to the charms of small machines. I certainly have lost my heart to another example of the genus, which I see from time to time in the big park near my house.
The park contains a lake and around the lake are sloping lawns that often need cutting. Rather than a team of men with noisy mowers, the local authorities have chosen a robotic machine for the job. It rushes up and down the grass with what I regard as a touching eagerness. When it has finished its tasks, it scampers back to its master's side. Without waiting for any kind of reward, it manoeuvres itself into the correct position and trundles obediently up a ramp and into the trailer its been brought to the park in. You can see the man in charge finds it extremely hard to restrain himself from giving it a grateful pat.
Here is a video of the dear little thing at work. It comes from the machine's makers - who are a company called Dvorak, so I assume they are very clever Czechs or Slovaks - and it doesn't quite capture the machine's cuteness, (the machine, by the way, is called a Spider). All the same, if you watch it, it will give you a faint hint of its charm:
So. while someone in my house has just got themselves a small dog, I am not yearning for anything fluffy. Why would I, when I could have a Spider. Like a dog, a Spider comes when you call it. Unlike a dog it doesn't demand food or walks and there is no need to arrange for it be looked after when you decide to go away overnight or for a weekend.
What I didn't foresee all those years ago was that, within my lifetime, conditions anywhere in my world might begin to mirror those in the film. A trip to Shanghai cured me of any illusions on that score. Or, to put it another way, if you want to know what Shanghai's like, watch Bladerunner..
And, while elsewhere urban environments haven't quite reached the constant warm rain and overwhelmingly dense population stage, slowly but surely the first generation of pre-replicants have been creeping into our lives. No, I know we haven't got things that are indistinguishable from humans yet, but we have got gadgets that it is very easy to anthropomorphise, and some of us at least are already starting to get in a muddle about the dividing line between machine and cuddly little animate being.
The first time I realised this was when those funny round vacuum cleaners that speed about people's houses first appeared. As soon as I saw them for sale, I found them appealing. The only reason I didn't buy one was that I was told they can't cope with old rugs - the fringes make them miserable, apparently. However, I wasn't surprised when I read that people who do buy them start to grow as attached to them as if they were a family pet. When they break down, their owners take them back to the shops they bought them from but, when offered a new replacement, they often get upset. They don't want a lovely shiny thing in a box out the back; they want the one that's part of the family. "No, no, you've got to fix our one", they cry, "he's special".
Which sounds a bit silly, until you start to see how sweet and pliant robots can be.
Or possibly I'm just unusually susceptible to the charms of small machines. I certainly have lost my heart to another example of the genus, which I see from time to time in the big park near my house.
The park contains a lake and around the lake are sloping lawns that often need cutting. Rather than a team of men with noisy mowers, the local authorities have chosen a robotic machine for the job. It rushes up and down the grass with what I regard as a touching eagerness. When it has finished its tasks, it scampers back to its master's side. Without waiting for any kind of reward, it manoeuvres itself into the correct position and trundles obediently up a ramp and into the trailer its been brought to the park in. You can see the man in charge finds it extremely hard to restrain himself from giving it a grateful pat.
Here is a video of the dear little thing at work. It comes from the machine's makers - who are a company called Dvorak, so I assume they are very clever Czechs or Slovaks - and it doesn't quite capture the machine's cuteness, (the machine, by the way, is called a Spider). All the same, if you watch it, it will give you a faint hint of its charm:
Friday, 17 April 2015
King Lear - Northern Broadsides
It is astonishing that Jonathan Miller is so little used as a director in British theatre. If I ruled the world, he'd be opening a new production every week, (it sounds a lot, but he's no spring chicken so we need to wring the most we can out of him, while we still have him).
In my experience, the plays performed under his direction are intelligent, surprising, entertaining and moving. But others seem to disagree. There is some vague idea abroad - started I think by Stevie Smith, who wrote a mean little short story about Miller as a child (a spoilt child, as she saw it, or a, heavens forbid, precocious child; too often a "precocious" child is really a child who has not been thoroughly and effectively squashed) - that he is egotistic, whereas, at least as a director, he is the least egotistic person alive. His approach to plays is to read the script closely and try to animate it, without the use of gimmicks.
Meanwhile, the likes of Rupert Goold are feted. They are good at hysteria and pyrotechnics. They are good at the kind of productions Hermann Koch describes so well in his rather horrid novel Summer House with Swimming Pool:
"It was the first time I'd been invited to a Shakespeare production. I'd already seen about ten of his plays. A version of The Taming of the Shrew in which all the male roles were played by women; the Merchant of Venice with the actors in nappies and the actresses wearing rubbish bags for dresses and shopping bags on their heads; Hamlet with an all-Down's-Syndrome cast, wind machines and a (dead) goose that was decapitated on stage, King Lear with Zimbabwean orphans and ex-junkies; Romeo and Juliet in the never-completed tunnel of a subway line, with concentration camp photos projected on the walls, down which sewage trickled; Macbeth in which all the female roles were played by naked men - the only clothing they wore was a thong between their buttocks, with handcuffs and weights hanging form their nipples, performing against a soundtrack consisting of artillery barrages, Radiohead songs and poems by Radovan Karadzic. Besides the fact that you didn't dare to look at how the handcuffs and weights were attached to (or through) the nipples, the problem once again was a matter of how slowly the time passed. I can remember delays at airports that must have lasted half a day, easily, but which were over ten times as quickly as any of those plays."
Miller meanwhile understands that a director is not a primary creative artist but an interpreter. He studies the text, he works with the actors, together they read the playwright's words closely. Thus they are able to bring life to a script, while remaining faithful to it. This is integrity in theatre. There is too little of it on the stage these days.
Anyway, I went to see Miller's production of King Lear, performed by the Northern Broadsides company. It is touring Britain. If you get a chance, go and see it - tour dates here. It is really, really good.
In my experience, the plays performed under his direction are intelligent, surprising, entertaining and moving. But others seem to disagree. There is some vague idea abroad - started I think by Stevie Smith, who wrote a mean little short story about Miller as a child (a spoilt child, as she saw it, or a, heavens forbid, precocious child; too often a "precocious" child is really a child who has not been thoroughly and effectively squashed) - that he is egotistic, whereas, at least as a director, he is the least egotistic person alive. His approach to plays is to read the script closely and try to animate it, without the use of gimmicks.
Meanwhile, the likes of Rupert Goold are feted. They are good at hysteria and pyrotechnics. They are good at the kind of productions Hermann Koch describes so well in his rather horrid novel Summer House with Swimming Pool:
"It was the first time I'd been invited to a Shakespeare production. I'd already seen about ten of his plays. A version of The Taming of the Shrew in which all the male roles were played by women; the Merchant of Venice with the actors in nappies and the actresses wearing rubbish bags for dresses and shopping bags on their heads; Hamlet with an all-Down's-Syndrome cast, wind machines and a (dead) goose that was decapitated on stage, King Lear with Zimbabwean orphans and ex-junkies; Romeo and Juliet in the never-completed tunnel of a subway line, with concentration camp photos projected on the walls, down which sewage trickled; Macbeth in which all the female roles were played by naked men - the only clothing they wore was a thong between their buttocks, with handcuffs and weights hanging form their nipples, performing against a soundtrack consisting of artillery barrages, Radiohead songs and poems by Radovan Karadzic. Besides the fact that you didn't dare to look at how the handcuffs and weights were attached to (or through) the nipples, the problem once again was a matter of how slowly the time passed. I can remember delays at airports that must have lasted half a day, easily, but which were over ten times as quickly as any of those plays."
Miller meanwhile understands that a director is not a primary creative artist but an interpreter. He studies the text, he works with the actors, together they read the playwright's words closely. Thus they are able to bring life to a script, while remaining faithful to it. This is integrity in theatre. There is too little of it on the stage these days.
Anyway, I went to see Miller's production of King Lear, performed by the Northern Broadsides company. It is touring Britain. If you get a chance, go and see it - tour dates here. It is really, really good.
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