Why does John Lennon's Imagine have such a hold over people? It is an anthem for the age, by which I mean one for children of all ages. It's routine for it to be close to the top of almost anyone's list of special music (and if it isn't, you'll find All You Need Is Love in its place). Indeed, I propose that celebrities on Desert Island Discs be presented not only with a copy of The Bible and the collected Shakespeare but with Imagine too. That really would show that the BBC can please Murdoch and move backwards with The Times.
Well, I think Imagine is self-centred, egoistic, nauseating drivel, just as I think hippies are, in general, a selfish, calculating and greedy bunch. "I hope someday you'll join us..." US? Away wi' ye back to yon penthoos wi' yer wee wifey, mon!
And this was the man who wrote Strawberry Fields Forever.
Next week: how could the same Paul McCartney write both Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time and Blackbird? That one keeps me up at night, I can tell you.
All the best arguments end in beers. Argue with me.
Friday 30 July 2010
Monday 26 July 2010
Belgians of the World, Ignite!
Belgians is it?
Let's scotch that shameful "I bet you can't name 10 famous Belgians" jibe for a start. Adolphe Sax, Georges Simenon, Audrey Hepburn, Frankie van der Elst (he was a footballer), Arthur Grumiaux, Rubens, Breugel, Magritte, Jacques Brel; and of course the world's (let alone Belgium's) greatest cartoonist*, Georges Remi, AKA Herge. See: there's 11 for a start, and I deliberately left out Eddie Merckx to reinforce my case. OK, some of those may not be Belgians, but you get my point. And anyway, Andy Townsend played for Ireland, so does it matter at all?
Then there are Bruges, Antwerp, Gent, the Grande Place in Brussels and those lovely glowing, yellow bollard-shaped light things at motorway exit slip roads. And the beer.
* Oh yes he was! Read 'The Calculus Affair' - but not on the shiny paper of recent editions so you get the magical colours of Geneva in and after rain on pp 19-20.
Let's scotch that shameful "I bet you can't name 10 famous Belgians" jibe for a start. Adolphe Sax, Georges Simenon, Audrey Hepburn, Frankie van der Elst (he was a footballer), Arthur Grumiaux, Rubens, Breugel, Magritte, Jacques Brel; and of course the world's (let alone Belgium's) greatest cartoonist*, Georges Remi, AKA Herge. See: there's 11 for a start, and I deliberately left out Eddie Merckx to reinforce my case. OK, some of those may not be Belgians, but you get my point. And anyway, Andy Townsend played for Ireland, so does it matter at all?
Then there are Bruges, Antwerp, Gent, the Grande Place in Brussels and those lovely glowing, yellow bollard-shaped light things at motorway exit slip roads. And the beer.
* Oh yes he was! Read 'The Calculus Affair' - but not on the shiny paper of recent editions so you get the magical colours of Geneva in and after rain on pp 19-20.
Sunday 25 July 2010
On Tattoos
Aren't tattoos horrible?
I know what you're going to say: it's just my personal opinion, which is no better or worse than anyone else's. Moreover, you may add, since most adults now seem to have them, I am outvoted. Who am I to talk?
Balls. Away with you! No - stay awhile ...
I'm not just talking about those tattoos that come to look more and more like a nasty attack of varicose veins as people get older and fatter. The new filigree style has made them a thing of the past, although God knows what people will look like in a decade or so's time. Cobwebbed, I suspect.
And I admit that some of these newer tattoos are nice designs. (But so what? French gothic cathedrals are even nicer but I wouldn't have a scaled down model of one implanted on my head, even though do suffer from low self esteem. Likewise, as a passionate follower of Charlton Athletic Football Club - until I die, by the way, so this is not up for debate - I don't need to incorporate a representation of the fact because I know it already and if I want you to know - and if I think you will be interested, which is quite another matter - then I'll tell you. At length.)
No, my real objection - or rather an objection that I believe is not merely a matter of personal taste, but one that I would invite others to share because it has a wider significance - has to do with what tattoos may be taken by their hosts to mean, what I think they may be trying to say through them and - since so many people now wear them - what this may say about all of us and how we tend to go about things.
Only a little while back, tattoos were seen as permanent. Firstly, you couldn’t get rid of them without a painful, expensive and sometimes botched or at least unsightly operation. Secondly they were evidence of some idea of permanence: I love my Mum; Derek 4 Julie; Charlton Athletic Till I Die. To that extent there was a certain nobility about them. They were worn as external evidence of an unchanging internal commitment.
What's changed is that they have become just another short-term designer thing – like hair styles, street argot, dangerous dogs and loving human relationships.
What interests me - and what I'd like your views on - is that the concepts around permanence and representation of internal commitments, values or beliefs still hang in there, but they are different. The difference is that we are increasingly changing our commitments, values and beliefs at a whim (and, being fashion, we follow and do not lead, even if we like to think we lead). We too easily confuse our personal and often infantile inner needs with deeper meaning. In this sense, we children of the market are just that: isolated, scared children. Yet if you were to put to someone that their ‘personal’ statement was not actually a revelation of who they really are but evidence of their inner confusion and a cry for more permanent and - dare one even say it these days - shared meaning, you’d probably end up in hospital.
Which reminds me of an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister. She was visiting an old people's home and walked up to a lady slumped in an armchair. "Do you know who I am?" she said in a loud voice. "No," came the reply. "But ask Matron: she'll tell you."
Must dash: here comes Matron now.
I know what you're going to say: it's just my personal opinion, which is no better or worse than anyone else's. Moreover, you may add, since most adults now seem to have them, I am outvoted. Who am I to talk?
Balls. Away with you! No - stay awhile ...
I'm not just talking about those tattoos that come to look more and more like a nasty attack of varicose veins as people get older and fatter. The new filigree style has made them a thing of the past, although God knows what people will look like in a decade or so's time. Cobwebbed, I suspect.
And I admit that some of these newer tattoos are nice designs. (But so what? French gothic cathedrals are even nicer but I wouldn't have a scaled down model of one implanted on my head, even though do suffer from low self esteem. Likewise, as a passionate follower of Charlton Athletic Football Club - until I die, by the way, so this is not up for debate - I don't need to incorporate a representation of the fact because I know it already and if I want you to know - and if I think you will be interested, which is quite another matter - then I'll tell you. At length.)
No, my real objection - or rather an objection that I believe is not merely a matter of personal taste, but one that I would invite others to share because it has a wider significance - has to do with what tattoos may be taken by their hosts to mean, what I think they may be trying to say through them and - since so many people now wear them - what this may say about all of us and how we tend to go about things.
Only a little while back, tattoos were seen as permanent. Firstly, you couldn’t get rid of them without a painful, expensive and sometimes botched or at least unsightly operation. Secondly they were evidence of some idea of permanence: I love my Mum; Derek 4 Julie; Charlton Athletic Till I Die. To that extent there was a certain nobility about them. They were worn as external evidence of an unchanging internal commitment.
What's changed is that they have become just another short-term designer thing – like hair styles, street argot, dangerous dogs and loving human relationships.
What interests me - and what I'd like your views on - is that the concepts around permanence and representation of internal commitments, values or beliefs still hang in there, but they are different. The difference is that we are increasingly changing our commitments, values and beliefs at a whim (and, being fashion, we follow and do not lead, even if we like to think we lead). We too easily confuse our personal and often infantile inner needs with deeper meaning. In this sense, we children of the market are just that: isolated, scared children. Yet if you were to put to someone that their ‘personal’ statement was not actually a revelation of who they really are but evidence of their inner confusion and a cry for more permanent and - dare one even say it these days - shared meaning, you’d probably end up in hospital.
Which reminds me of an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister. She was visiting an old people's home and walked up to a lady slumped in an armchair. "Do you know who I am?" she said in a loud voice. "No," came the reply. "But ask Matron: she'll tell you."
Must dash: here comes Matron now.
Friday 16 July 2010
I am no longer available for selection for the England football team
Following Emile Heskey's shock announcement that he will no longer be available for selection for the England football team, I wish it to be known that I am not available for selection either. In fact, I think we should start a national campaign in which everyone over the age of 16 should declare to the Football Association that they are not available for selection for the England football team, and I will happily deliver a list of these people to Soho Square, along with a large wheely-bin full of potato peelings. I await names from my many supporters, including those of you who have a foreign passport but English ancestry. You can't be too careful these days.
On measuring Age
The conventional way of measuring age (that is, how long you have lived) is wrong. Measuring age as 'birth plus' is probably quite useful in some ways, mostly administrative and including, I suppose, desiding when people should start schooling. But going on to draw all sorts of conclusions about people just because they happen to have been around a certain amount of time is quite another matter and has no justification so far as I can see.
For example, it's crazy that a fit, active, compos-mentis man or woman should have to retire for no other reason than that they're 65 or 103 - or whatever it is the Government wants these days - while some drink-sodden wastrel of 40 whose only exercise is to crawl from the sofa to the front door when the pizza arrives can continue taking paid sickies for another quarter of a century with near impunity.
A better way of measuring age is 'death minus' (that is, how long you are likely to have left, assuming you aren't hit by a bus or catch a disease that could afflict anyone or is no fault of your own). This way of measuring age takes into account not just how long someone has lived, but how they've gone about it. In a nutshell, measuring 'death minus' means that people who are fit and active are considered younger than others of the same 'birth plus' age.
Just think, it means that fit people could actually start to boast about being old (in the 'birth plus' sense) rather than get all hot under the collar about it. The world would change overnight! To see what I mean, here is the new way of calculating age that I propose.
First you have to do a little assessment, like these two examples:
1. A fit 43 year old, based on an assumed death at 90 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 47.
2. A lazy 43 year old git, based on an assumed death at 60 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 17
Then the clever bit: you take the above figures and then find out the average birth-plus age of death across the population as a whole; let's say, for the sake of argument that it's 75 for men. Now your real age looks like this:
1. Fit 43 year old: 75 minus 47 = actual age of 28.
2. Lazy 43 year old git: 75 minus 17 = actual age of 58
See! You never have to worry about your age again - unless you're a slob. If you are really super-fit this would open the intriguing prospect of there even being certain over-25s pubs and clubs that might actually deny you entrance or refuse to serve you unless accompanied by an obese person several years your junior (working on the faulty current 'birth-plus' formula)!
Right, I'm off to the pub.
For example, it's crazy that a fit, active, compos-mentis man or woman should have to retire for no other reason than that they're 65 or 103 - or whatever it is the Government wants these days - while some drink-sodden wastrel of 40 whose only exercise is to crawl from the sofa to the front door when the pizza arrives can continue taking paid sickies for another quarter of a century with near impunity.
A better way of measuring age is 'death minus' (that is, how long you are likely to have left, assuming you aren't hit by a bus or catch a disease that could afflict anyone or is no fault of your own). This way of measuring age takes into account not just how long someone has lived, but how they've gone about it. In a nutshell, measuring 'death minus' means that people who are fit and active are considered younger than others of the same 'birth plus' age.
Just think, it means that fit people could actually start to boast about being old (in the 'birth plus' sense) rather than get all hot under the collar about it. The world would change overnight! To see what I mean, here is the new way of calculating age that I propose.
First you have to do a little assessment, like these two examples:
1. A fit 43 year old, based on an assumed death at 90 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 47.
2. A lazy 43 year old git, based on an assumed death at 60 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 17
Then the clever bit: you take the above figures and then find out the average birth-plus age of death across the population as a whole; let's say, for the sake of argument that it's 75 for men. Now your real age looks like this:
1. Fit 43 year old: 75 minus 47 = actual age of 28.
2. Lazy 43 year old git: 75 minus 17 = actual age of 58
See! You never have to worry about your age again - unless you're a slob. If you are really super-fit this would open the intriguing prospect of there even being certain over-25s pubs and clubs that might actually deny you entrance or refuse to serve you unless accompanied by an obese person several years your junior (working on the faulty current 'birth-plus' formula)!
Right, I'm off to the pub.
Binge Drinking
‘Binge drinking’ is George Best; it's the flat opposite where the blinds are always down; it's Richard Harris going down to the corner shop for a pint of milk and coming home a fortnight later. We have a problem with how we use alcohol in this country and always have had. But going out and getting tanked on a Friday night is not binge drinking. Please resist, peacefully, those who claim it is.
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