Gertsamtkunstwerk

About blogging

There are people who think the world revolves around them. They exist in every walk of life, but for a long time they didn't show their faces in the blogosphere.

I have to say, I have a smidgen of sympathy for the poor bint who got a book deal and cried and cried when the bastard newspaper (who's paid her a tidy sum for the serialisation) revealed who she really is.

But hey naivety is no crime. We've all made mistakes.

But the whining self-pity. Ooh I appeared on Woman's Hour. Ooh, my private life is all out in the open. People might know I have sex. Ooh, I've been on Richard and Judy, plugging a book about my imaginary sex life. Ooh, people might know who I am. Look at me look at me book deal look at me. Invasion intrusion privacy

Self-centred egoists are hypocrites. Fine, that's how they get on. Better to treat yourself as a doormat than treat other people. But quit the whining and grow up. And accept a bit of responsibility instead of blaming the stupid bimbo from the organisation that stoked your ego bank-balance. Ooh, I've been sacked. Should have joined a Union. Okay, you got the bookdeal. Well, no need to keep writing the blog then, is there, considering it's now just a litany of self-pity interspersed with ego-trip.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ladettes to Ladies

Best show on the TV. Annoyed we missed the first in the series.

Very mixed feelings about the people; Ithink that's what they call thought-provoking. Or, at least, conversation-provoking.

We love Cook; she has people-skills. She can persuade and win respect because she listens and empathises yet does not tolerate nonsense. We laugh at Flower-Arranging Woman. Shame she can't talk proper; string a sentence together. Shame she's so stilted and awkward.

Some of the stuff they teach is rot. I mean, flower arranging. Isn't that what bored housewives do when they're too broom-up-their-arse to have an affair, even when hubby's screwing the secretary. My view, either put some nice flowers in a vase, or pay a professional to do it.

Flower-arranging woman is stuck in the Fifties where Nice Ladies married City Bankers. In the Noughties, Nice Ladies become City Bankers. Or whatever. The 'Ladettes' lack a sense of appropriateness, a sense of what impacts on other people, and an ability to adapt to context, to read a situation.

I had a brief thought of what would happen if some of my friends and I did the Ladettes to Ladies course. Presented with the public school oikish chinless wonders, quite a few, myself included, would go dyke. I can imagine quite a few exclaiming over the lack of vegetarian alternatives and coldly explaining to The Ladies Who Lunch that in 2006 a lack of veggie alternative, perhaps pre-negotiated by email, or a lack of regard of food allergies, is Plain. Bad. Manners.

I'd like to run a finishing school. Turn girls into women. They'd learn how to run a Residents Association, what to do when they break down 200 miles from home on a dark rainy evening. How to deal with insolent Twunts in Call Centres. How to adapt. (Overheard outside the Royal Opera House 'she's gone to change from her evening dress into cycling gear'). How to survive in the workplace without being exploited. How to make choices that aren't fashionable. And most of all to feel the sense of achievement. Of anything. Anything that needs a struggle, anything that's a challenge.

But if I ran telly, I'd do a programme that converts public school twats into human beings. Men mainly. But Miss Flower Arranging, too. I'd take her to a football match, on a pub crawl, on a week's hill-walking. On an audit to dockyards and Public Enquiry Offices and subsistence-level hill-farms. Or a Community Law Centre, to Rehab.

Trouble is, programme is commissioned by kinsoles. Coke-sniffing public school twunts with pony-tails. Know nothing about life. Want to take the piss out of people who've not had their chances, who've not had Daddy open the door so that they can sit on their fat arses earning Stupid Money.

Or what about Lads to Citizens. Teaching Grunts a bit about respec'. Starting with Self-Respec'.

Woah, stop it there. Laughing at blokes. Woo, might make my willy shrink. Koff.

The Straw Veil

Ooh, Jack's set the cat among the pigeons.

Too bloody right. Personally, I'd like to ban them, even though I know that it isn't possible to do so (without banning scarves wrapped round to keep warm on a cold day, without banning scarves worn to hide facial disfigurement).

Why are these women covering their faces, their entire bodies? Some bloke on the telly, chairman of Blackburn Mosques or whatever, said it's because people shouldn't show their face to people they can marry. Ironic really, considering he was showing his face to millions on TV.

Oh, he meant women. Don't worry mate, I really didn't fancy you. Never crossed my mind to get damp with lust.

'People they can marry'. Bit euphemistic really. I think he meant shag. Can't allow his little woman to be looked on by another man in case he gets an uncontrollable urge to shag her. Well, I've met Jack Straw on a number of occasions, and we chatted, and he seemed a nice bloke, friendly, not overly warm. I didn't think he was eyeing me up and down, lusting after me, struggling to control an irresistible urge to shag me. I'm sure Jack Straw's as red-blooded as the next man*, he encounters women all the time, not especially being women, just being constituents, colleagues, shop assistants, opponents, people-in-the-street. Jack Straw isn't the type of loser who puts women down. Doesn't need to. He's busy, intelligent and confident, with a wife at least equally so.

My mother has a couple of friends who are IBVM nuns. They've been friends for sixty years. They went to a conference in Oldham about Religious Women. The nuns, that is, not my mother. There was a woman there clad head-to-foot in the veil thing, and the other women challenged her, why are you dressed like that. She came out with stuff about modesty, about holiness. So, she's in a womanspace, not any women, but specifically religious women, being all ecumenical. So it can't be about the marriage thing, because, among women, that should render the veil thing unnecessary. (It would be sheer evil to throw Civil Partnerships onto the table).

I am torn, there is a libertarian argument. You see, I hate tattoos. I don't like seeing bodies covered in tattoos. I would never have one done. I find them unsightly, and I ponder the stage at which the tattoo-wearer will regret them. But regardless of my personal feelings, if a sober adult wants to get tattooed, fine. Freedom, your body, your choice. None of my business.

If someone wants to wear ill-fitting clothes with their underwear on the outside, permit me to deride. But please, carry on doing so. Your right.

So why should I feel differently about the veil in all its different forms? Walk into a bank and see the signs saying 'remove motorcycle helmet'. We know the reasons why. Why retain face-covering veil, then. If I was to do a bank job, I'd do it in Moslem garb. Or shoplift. What are you hiding? Shopping centres ban hoodies (which I don't agree with, but it happens), so do they ban Moslem veils, too?

But I wish Jack would stick his neck out further and say "Veils are demeaning to women and insulting to men, because you're dysfunctionally sex-obsessed."

In Cairo, the capital of an Arab, predominantly and officially Islamic country, we were given a tour by an Egyptologist, who explained that in Cairo about half the women cover their heads for religious reason. Some are Christian and some are Moslem. She explained that she was a practising Moslem. Her head was uncovered. I know some highly educated and intelligent women in Britain cover their heads as a political statement, but I also believe that the majority who cover their faces are subjugated to men: economically dependent, intellectually subordinated and physically intimidated, by threat or action. There is a long standing tradition in Britain that when you deal face-to-face with people you uncover your face. Unless you have something to hide, unless you are lying.

I see no reason whatsoever to defend a custom which is explicitly about putting women down. I'm not interested in multi-culturalism when it treads on women's rights**. And I'm certainly not interested in tolerating religions, when for centuries they have been controlled by men who are frightened of women and their sexuality and thus use their physical and economic power to oppress women. I don't believe in repatriation, and I celebrate the sheer diversity of British people, culture, cuisine, life. But every time I see a woman in a veil, I see a sign saying "British men are all rapists who can't be trusted to control their raging hard-ons at the sight of a naked face."

* okay the next man happens to be John Prescott

** nor when it treads on gay rights, either (but I'm intolerant of that section of gay male culture which is overtly misogynist)

Cosy by the fire with toasted crumpets

Autumn is the season for TV-viewing. An impressive and varied line up was on the Sky+ when we returned. Kath & Kim, Arrested Development, Lead Balloon, Swingers...like Gert Cottage is Comedy Central.

Also Galapogos, strictly for the male portion of the house. Ancient Rome, so far too masculine and battle-heavy compared to the shagfest that was last year's Rome.

Jane Eyre, shaping up nicely to be a brilliant and well-acted evocation of one of the very great novels of all time, lots of noir...blimey, I've taken this long to mention Toby Stephens. Jimmy doesn't know the story, so I'm resisting the temptation to blurt out about the Mad Woman in the Attic...it was like when Pride and Prejudice was shown and my mother made some passing reference to "the wedding" and I was "You've ruined it, I had no idea" and she was shocked that I had no idea. then a few days later it was under discussion at work and S. my manager said something like "No doubt you women are all excited about how they'll film the wedding" and J. went "Wedding? They get married!", and W. ticked S. off for spoiling it: S. was shocked that the book hadn't been read, and turned to me for moral support. Smugly, I responded "Don't worry S., my mother's already ruined it by revealing the ending". I digress.

And then we have Robin Hood.

What a pile of pants. Looked forward to. Hey, I'm a Nottingham graduate, I do Robin Hood. I have a teddy bear on my PC table dressed as Robin Hood.

That was turned off after half an hour; we only endured that long in the mistaken belief that the other was enjoying it. The dialogue was so stilted. Which might have been deliberate, to hammer home that it was set in "Old Times". And they might have got way with it if the actors could have, you know, acted. I was trying to work out whether it was a particularly bad example of Jackanory Playtime, or just an extreme case of AmDrams overparted. The lead was leaden; in general I was trying to work out whether the style was ham or turkey.

Such a shame it had to be switched off because Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne) is eye-candy in an evil sexy way.

I couldn't live without my telly, but I don't feel any great urge to lap up all the formulaic shite they generally hurl at us

Being on holiday

I love people-watching. It's great when you sit in a cafe beside the harbour or lake and watch people go by. Even when you are negative about their clothes, or scathing that they are too thin or too fat, it's not personal or malicious. You're not making a leap that because they look good/bad they are good/bad people.

When you have a chance to get to know people, at work or neighbours, you tend to suspend judgement on their appearance because of that subconscious knowledge that you will see them again and again, get to know them at least a little, find the clues to their personality. I assume a new colleague to be nice unless I find out otherwise. And even when there is an argument or an irritation, it's not the whole relationship, so those incidents are forgiven and forgotten in the light of the more frequent examples of niceness.

Holiday hotels are different. I know that some people go on holiday with the hope of finding friends in their hotel. I don't. I'm prepared to be polite, but increasingly cautious of anything that resembles friendliness. There you are, sitting exchanging anecdotes from this or previous holidays, and it's all very civil, when they say "Of course, where we lived until we sold the house, it's full of Asians so house prices went down, because they're all terrorists." I can't continue that conversation. Years ago someone advised me - after a similar incident on an intercity train - that the best tactic is just to say "I no longer want to continue this conversation" and go back to reading your book. But that's difficult to do without being confrontational. You can walk away, but that presupposes another available seat.

At least by opening their mouth they've revealed themselves to be ignorant. The more they mouth on the more they make it clear how stupid they are. People who will offer an opinion on anything and are insulted when the opinion is challenged. When I suggest that without facts to back up their opinion, it's useless. When they round off the discussion by saying "It's the Africans who are causing global warming, why do all those women in Africa have seven children, it's because they've got AIDS, that's why, but what would women know, they're all stupid like her" loudly, gesturing to me.

And then sends his dowdy downtrodden wife over to say "You've got a nerve going on about The Gambia, why, you're here, and you've got a laptop so you know nothing about The Gambia..." "What? I said nothing about The Gambia...you know, there's more to Africa than a few holiday resorts in one country." Not worth saying. She wouldn't understand. Can barely string a sentence together. Lives with a man who thinks that all women are stupid. "Look love, if you're going to have a discussion about something, bring some facts, or analysis or anecdote or reflection to the table. Don't sound off like you've absorbed a Sun editorial." No, can't be bothered. She wants a confrontation; it would make her holiday complete if I glassed her. I don't glass people. Turn away "Whatever..."

Real Tories...

State school pupils are 'potted plants', says Tory

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who will be fighting one of the Tories' target seats at the next election, also gave the impression that he thinks that anyone educated in the state sector is incapable of writing an "articulate" letter.

They still don't understand why they are so hated...

Anatomy of a crime

An interesting programme. Fly-on-the-wall documentary of how the police piece together the evidence to solve a crime. It's made with the Greater Manchester Police, but Greater Manchester is a large place which I rarely visit these days and even back in time I knew very little of.

Tonight's programme was a Cold Case, a rape of a prostitute from 1994, somewhat reminiscent of Waking the Dead, revisiting old cases, using advances in DNA technology and the DNA database to re-examine evidence and identify a culprit that was not possible then.

They introduced the programme by saying it was a crime that had been committed in Altrincham. There are few towns I know better than Altrincham. Or did know, anyway. But, if you include all the constituent villages and hamlets, Altrincham's a large place and I rarely visit these days.

Then they said the crime had happened at the Pelican. It occurred to me there are few spots on earth with which I am more familiar than the Pelican. Almost every single school-day I passed it twice a day...maybe there was a dozen, two dozen at most, times in thirteen and a half years that I didn't pass it. The most obvious way into Altrincham, for shopping and social, too. For years I thought Pelican Crossings were so-called because there was one more or less outside the Pelican (the one on which I used to strategically climb out of my pram).

Almost my local pub, except that it was the height of naffness to actually drink there. Full of under-age drinkers, which is why I took my brother there for a drink on his sixteenth birthday. Also a motel, as they explained in the programme, one in which the rooms don't need to be approached through reception. And nice grounds, through which runs Sinderland Brook, which forms the ancient boundary between Altrincham and Sale.

At the end they had a "If you've been affected by the issues in this programme..." helpline. Why should I be affected by this and not by shooting in McDonalds or The Fridge - somewhere that was a major drinking venue for me for a number of years, last visited little over a year ago. And why should I be surprised by perverse practices in a motel when it's over twenty years since I first learned about auto-erotic asphyxiation with fatal consequences following a Sale and Altrincham Messenger report of a travelling salesman whose body was found in the Pelican?

I suppose Brixton is a special case, one expects Brixton frequently to be in the news, but it's strange when a crime reconstruction programme happens in the leafy suburb you left because nothing ever happens. What was interesting was that the culprit - who got twelve years - lived as an affluent businessman in Wilmslow. In Wilmslow they like to think they're the bees knees. I expect when the story hit the local press, half the local population were genuinely shocked and the other half recognised that prosperous respectability is just a veneer.

Ring and book

L.A. Opera plans 'Ring' 'for the millennium'

32 million USD for a 'not expensive' Ring. Poor sods in LA, getting John Treleaven as Siegfried...

Tenor Domingo to write opera book

The Joy of Opera will offer insights into masterpieces and describe the factors which make singers so good.

"Opera for so many people remains a mystery, a curious and strange art form when it really should be much more part of our everyday lives," he said.

Tenor Domingo to convert non-opera fans

The book will delve into great masterpieces by composers as diverse as Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Richard Strauss along with insights into why they are the best-loved works, and will discuss how performers create a role; the art of listening; the community formed by audience and artists; and what it takes to make an opera singer great.

Back from Crete

There we were larging it every night in Malia. Never saw daylight. We drank the most lethal cocktails got pigging drunk every night...

Nah, not us. Agios Nikolaus, us. Really nice restful holiday spent doing vey little except for a couple of boat trips. We split our time between beaches and restaurants. I'm as brown as very brown person, and a bit disoriented because we travelled overnight, arroved back at seven and went to bed until mid-afternoon.

The stuff for Google. We stayed in the Hera Village, halfway between Agios Nikolaus and Elounda. It was advertised as 4* although we paid 2*, and it was 2*. Very clean, staff friendly and helpful, food eatable without being exciting. We went all-inclusive, but on the basis that we were paying the price of a B&B, and any 'free' drinks we scored were a bonus. Scarcity of double rooms; in the twin rooms the single beds were separated by an immoveable stone table. Hmm. The hotel should never make or break the holiday, and it did neither. The private beach is a joke. I never got there, knowing that if I walked a treacherous path down a sheer cliff face I would probably never get back. And it's not a beach, but some flattened rocks that make the sea just about accessible. I actually took hundreds of photos, but there's a limit to the number of seascapes that hold interest, so there will be judicious publishing over the next few weeks.

There are lots of nice beaches around Ag Nik, and the bus goes past the hotel. It's pretty frequent, but irregular, so a timetable is necessary. Or stand at a bus stop and a taxi is bound to stop.

Wonderful opportunitues for people-watching, and plenty of sources for writing. I'm just sorting through emails now. I've deleted over a hundred spam comments, most of them disgustingly vile, so I'm glad I didn't leave anyone in charge of deleting them. At least they don't get published now.

More blogging sometime