Tuesday 24 December 2013

A Christmas reflection on the significance of continuity.


Christmas having been with us for nearly three months now and showing no signs of going away, I have retreated to my bunker, the approaching red, muzak-wielding Nicholine hordes nearly inaudible down here, to consider why, even in multi-billion dollar films and with the power of CGI and modern editing techniques at the fingertips of highly observant and gifted men and women, the continuity between one shot and the next is so often absolutely shocking

I invite those likewise disposed this Christmas eve to peruse, as only two of many pieces of supporting evidence, the opening scene of 'The Sound Of Music', in which Julie Andrews runs up a hill in bright sunshine to belt out the most famous opening line of any film beneath a sullen, grey sky, and the one on the snowy mountainside in 'The Fellowship Of The Ring' in which Boromir spies and covets the Ring in a blaze of sunlit colour and Aragorn promptly intervenes in ghoulish twilight.

Shocking. Just shocking. Do any more spring to mind?

And while I'm on the subject, why, in 'Calendar Girls', after shooting the whole film on location in lime- and gritstone-built Yorkshire, is a dispensable part of the final scene - supposedly taking place in the same village - shot in the very red-brick and southern hamlet of Turville in Buckinghamshire? OK, Pinewood is nearby, but if they'd forgotten something why set the conversation outside?

It really gets me and it threatens to ruin my Christmas. And because this is a time for sharing, here is a final thing that, if you have a beard, I hope will ruin yours too: do you sleep with it inside or outside the bed covers?

I know: it's Christmas and all I do is moan, moan, moan.

But REALLY.

Saturday 21 December 2013

The Way We Live Now (3)

Tesco’s again.

I chose an orange juice and a lemon chicken wrap from the ‘Snacking’ fridge. Each had a “Meal Deal for £3” sticker, so I took them to the till with the specified coinage.

“Would you like any help with your pack...”

“Don’t fuck with me, lady.”

“Of course, Sir. That’ll be £3.30, please.”

“I think these are on your £3 Meal Deal offer.”

A quick scrutiny of the till. “You didn’t get any crisps.”

“A correct observation in which, however, I fail to discern the slightest relevance to the comment I have just made.”

“It’s only £3 if you get crisps too. That’s the Meal Deal. It’s a deal, you see.”

“A deal that appears to mean the less I buy, the more I pay. I really must present that idea at our next sales conference. It'll go down a treat with hard-pressed consumers.”

“No, it’s a deal. You have to get crisps to get the deal. “Meal Deal” – look, it says it here.”
She looked a bit annoyed.

“Madam, please don’t take this personally, but does anything seem strange about the fact that your company is asking me to pay less for buying more? On that principle, might I be allowed to have one of your excellent 60-inch flat screen TVs in lieu of the crisps?”

“No, IT'S A MEAL DEAL.”

Friday 29 November 2013

The Way We Live Now (2), or Never Ask How, Only Why


Another supermarket just yesterday, but it wasn’t Tesco’s. It could just as well have been another organisation, though - let me see now  ... your local council, for instance? I should warn you that this has a happy ending.

 
Lady at the ‘Baskets Only’ till: “I’m sorry, Sir, but you’re not a basket.”

Hang on, let’s start that again. Bloody pikeys.

 

Lady at the ‘Baskets Only’ till: “That’ll be £1.78, Sir. Would you like help packing?”

Myself: “I beg your pardon?”

The Lady: “Would you like any help to pack your groceries?”

I look carefully at what I have bought.

After a while: “No ... no, it’s just two small bags of lemons. I think I can manage.”

I lean against the counter for a short while, breathing as deeply and as evenly – and, indeed, as crisply – as I can. A late autumn fly dances the dance of love and death among the late autumn corporate Christmas decorations.

Myself: “Excuse me, but may I ask you why you asked me if I needed any help packing a total of 8 lemons?”

The Lady: “Our manager says that we have to ask everyone that, however little they buy.” She gurns conspiratorially.

Myself: “So the manager of a flagship branch of one of the most ruthless retail empires on the planet asks its employees either to take time away from serving customers or to call another member of staff away from whatever carefully planned and rationalised task they are supposed to be doing in order to help a physically able man pack 8 lemons in a bag?”

The Lady: “Yes. I did ask him why but he said we just have to do it. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But I did ask.”

Myself: “Madam, you are a heroine, the golden leaf that fell at the flutter of a butterfly's wing in that northern forest!”

The Lady: "Enough of your sauce, young man!"

More conspiratorial gurnings, this time shared. There is hope after all.



 

The Way We Live Now


The Way We Live Now, named in honour of that great man Richard Hoggart, will be a collection of absurdities to which I encourage all to contribute.
Any contributions must:
- be true
- have been witnessed by you or related to you by a trusted person
- only be embellished to enhance the original effect, and only if the urge is irresistible
- be linked to a wider theory of why we're all going to hell in a handcart
 
Here's my starter

Scene: a British supermarket (my legal team's advice is that I shouldn't name it, so its initials are M-O-R-R-I-S-O-N-S).

Customer: "I see that your organisation is presently offering to dry-clean 4 items of clothing for what, I must say, is the distinctly reasonable price of £16.00 - that's just £4 an item!"

Deskbound institutionalised automaton jobsworth: "Indeed we are, Madam, and may I say we are proud to do so as a gesture to our customers!"

Customer: "Then I am delighted, for that very purpose and in the spirit you so generously evince, to reciprocate by vouchsafing the requisite number of articles unto your keeping."

DIAJ: "Thank you. Madam ... Ah, I'm afraid that one of them is silken in nature, of material inappropriate."

C: "I quite understand, and thank you for saving me future sartorial empurplement: just the three items then!"

D: "Certainly, Madam! That'll be £17.50."

C: "I beg your pardon?"

D: "That'll be seventeen pounds and fifty pee, please."

C: "Alright, cut the crap: how come it's £16 for 4 and £17.50 for 3?"

D: "The offer is for 4 items, Madam. You only have three."

C: "So you mean you're charging me more for giving you less work?"

D: "The special price is for 4 items, Madam, as our literature clearly explains."

C: “Thank you, and so it does. BUT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO CHARGE ME MORE FOR GIVING YOU LESS WORK?"

D: "Well, Madam, I ..."

C: "Dry-clean THIS, sucker!"

etc. etc.

 

Saturday 2 November 2013

Cut the Deficit!

When I trained to be a youth worker about 15 years ago, I was warned against what was called "the deficit model of youth". This was held by governments, officials, teachers, parents and park keepers everywhere. I always took that to mean that we shouldn't pigeon-hole the young.

Today it seems to me that there is nothing more ... deficitful than, on the one hand, our obsession with young people's apparent low self esteem and, on the other, only working with them because they accord to certain definitions, for example being "at risk of offending" (a condition more often suffered by their potential victims, I'd have thought) or "at risk of abusing alcohol" (by occasionally experimenting with it, as we have done for centuries) or "at risk of having unsafe sex" (as if having "safe" sex weren't dangerous enough these days, as anyone who has ever had it with me will testify).

But such targeted work - and very little else - is what youth services around the UK, including mine, are being told to do in order to safeguard their very existence. I thought we had social workers, youth offending teams and health services to do just that. They are welcome to recruit or contract youth workers to help, but they, not we, are the experts.

Youth work is different and almost unique (there may still be a few educators among the teachers out there) in that firstly, it doesn't select but is open to all who wish to have access to it and secondly, it's developmental, not least of young people as moral agents and creative, curious personalities.

If it is remedial, that is a by-product of this work, not its prime purpose. We should try to keep it that way in case, by the time the recession is over, we've forgotten altogether.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Too Hot to Handle



http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/09/10/mb-hot-tea-coffee-burns-winnipeg-iteam.html?cmp=fbtl

 
If you are going to drink a hot drink it needs to be hot, PROPERLY hot, just like ice lollies need to be frozen and meringues avoided like the plague. Unfortunately this means hot enough to scald anyone over whom it may be spilled.

It follows that it's not a good idea to drive a car with a hot drink in a position where it might go all over you. I and many people - including this lady - do it, and I'm sure many of you do it too. But that doesn't make it sensible, or this lady right.

I say this because, while she may not be as mad as the American woman who sued McDonalds because she stuck a cup of their take-away coffee between her legs (well, you didn't expect her to DRINK the muck, did you?), she is asking - I presume on behalf of the rest of us sillies - for legislation to set take-away drink temperatures far lower than they are now.

While undoubtedly well-meaning, I think she is wrong.

I'm not a dermatologist but I suggest that any coffee or tea that is too cool to scald will also be too unpleasant to drink.

In fact, if I may speak as a confirmed silly and therefore among the majority she wants to save, I have enough problems with lukewarm Costa and Starbucks coffee as it is and don't want tepidity made compulsory for me and other hot beverage lovers on account of my and your stupidity. In short, it is we and not the law who need reforming, and good coffee should be left alone for both fools and the wise to enjoy.

That said, I intend to continue to drive while drinking hot coffee, and to be fully responsible and red of both face and groin if I get scalded as a result.

But I won't be suing anyone, and I won't be asking the government to do my thinking for me either.

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Friday 5 April 2013

Richard Dawkins's 'The God Delusion': Religiosity is too widespread to be pinned on believers.


In ‘The God Delusion’ Richard Dawkins makes a good scientific case for rejecting the existence of God. He argues that He would have to be infinitely more complex than the universe He is supposed to have created, so where (the Hell) did He come from in the first place? He also sets out (Dawkins that is, not God) – if at an unheavenly length – the many foul acts that besmirch the Bible and other holy books, and that have since been perpetrated by religious fundamentalists down the centuries. He also makes a great case for science and scientists, who by and large are able to change their views when evidence contradicts them.

Some reservations, though:
Dawkins is convincing about the matter of the genesis and development of life but not about the genesis of matter, which this scientifically dense but otherwise literate reader can’t recall him addressing (in this book at least), or about the development of the human race, which in my view has pretty effectively rewritten most of the books about evolution that even Dawkins has read, to the extent that some of his attempts to reconcile human peculiarities with natural selection appear a bit ... guessy and unscientific.

In chapter 7, ‘The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist’, Dawkins addresses the common counter-argument that the greatest crimes have been committed not by religious bigots but by atheist regimes (he mentions Hitler and Stalin and not Mao or Pol Pot, but what’s a few million?). He makes a weak attempt to paint Hitler as a religious man and the worship of Stalin as analagous to faith in Christ, ignoring the fact that Nazi racism was based as much on bad (but paradigmatic) science as on blaming Jews for the murder of Christ, and not only that Stalin’s dogma was explicitly atheist but that some of the most persecuted and obdurate of those he incarcerated and murdered were believers who both retained their faith and were living (and dying) human examples to many others who had none. Highlighting Hitler’s Catholic upbringing and selected quotations from speeches from the early 1920s is no good if you ignore both the fact that Hitler was a supreme political liar and his own statement (in ‘Mein Kampf’ - so far more likely to be true) that he actually had no problem with Jews until he actually met one, which says a lot more about something else in the man and about a cultural racism which had long moved beyond the religious.

Nor, given Hitler, Stalin and the rest, is it possible to believe Dawkins’ assertion that there is a consistent, if sometimes erratic, historical direction in the 'Zeitgeist' - a term he uses horribly freely - towards greater liberalism. Perhaps some readings in discourse theory might have come in useful here: have these Zeitgeists not been ... exorcised? In fact the 20th century is unique both for the number of innocents who were murdered and for the bogus justifications that were made for the carnage, few of which had anything but the most vestigial remnants of religious underpinning. Surprisingly, there is little mention of the real professional murderers but only the blip in this liberal teleology represented by American religious conservatives and the Taliban, who appear to share the same bed even if they rarely break sweat together. That's not good history.

When, Dawkins asks, has anyone ever murdered people in the name of atheism? That's not the point.