Thursday 11thJuly

We are in danger of confusing things.  In fact we are always confusing things.  What people think about things is rarely what is actually happening.  Sometimes this is the result of news media trying to sway us one way or the other.  The most important and desired job is that of news editor; in other words the person who decides what is actually news, and how it will be reported.  This is why a speech is often trailed as groundbreaking before it is delivered, it is subsequently reported on as if it really were, and yet when we read it for ourselves it is simply a rehash of previous announcements.  Blair was particularly good at this.

We are also swayed by reportage of sentiment.  When the CBI or Institute of Directors say that they can feel the economy is beginning to grow, this is more often sentiment than based on any facts.  Sentiment is what you wish for, what you want to and hope will happen, and it is mostly based on your own desires.  The fact that it is often reported as fact can certainly help confidence.

Confidence is the most fickle of beasts, the sun shines and  Murray wins Wimbledon everyone feels a bit more confident.  It rains, we are unceremoniously dumped out of yet another World Cup and confidence sinks.  But if enough sentiment is expressed as fact then confidence takes off and then real growth can result.

Fact is so often behind the game, whereas sentiment and confidence are ahead of it.  The facts come out and they show that some of that confidence was misplaced, in fact it was mostly market sentiment and so confidence takes a knock and sentiment is amended, usually to express that despite the facts; things are not actually so bad and once confidence returns the facts will prove this sentiment correct.  And so the cycle continues.

And in the real world, people still lose their jobs, a third of people are now working part-time, millions are still on the minimum wage and food banks and payday loans are the fastest growth areas in Britain.  Ah…..but I am just being sentimental.

Wednesday 10thJuly

I have always been a victim of compulsive behaviour;  only a mild one I must admit, but I do like the comfort of routine, and the more that that routine is self-imposed the happier I am.  I start my day with a pee, while I am running the hot tap slowly.  This gets the temperature right – not the pee, but the hot water.  Then it is the shave, and in strict order I shave in neat rows from the ears down, leaving an ever-narrowing strip of white until just a Hitler moustache remains.  I cannot bring myself to change this routine.

I check my pockets methodically before I leave the house (even to walk the dogs); credit card wallet, internet dongle, memory bar, zovirax, money, phone, mp3 player, tube pass and keys.  And usually in that order, then invariably as I am just about to shut the front door I check again.

On the tube in the long walkways between lines I make sure I do not step on any lines; the tiles are laid in large metal trays, it is the lines of these trays I avoid, but I do it by measuring and adjusting my stride to make sure I casually overstep the dreaded cracks.  As a child walking to school I always avoided the cracks, and I am reminded of this compulsive behaviour I have continued into adult life, and it is comforting.  I am safe on the squares of life and by compulsively avoiding the cracks I will avoid pitfalls.  But I do get a secret thrill from stepping as close as I can to the crack, almost daring myself to break my compulsion.

Sad?  But hey, this is the twenty-first century, as long as it doesn’t cause a murder, to paraphrase Frank Zappa.  And if you examine your life you too will find it riddled with similar little rituals, routines and habits you dare not change as they may threaten the very fabric of your life.

Tuesday 9thJuly

Excuse me while I put on my grumpy old man hat.  Now, that’s better.

I occasionally have to bank cheques.  These are not for my personal bank account but for a non-profit making small limited company, so I do not have a bank card and therefore cannot really use one of the automated machines.   So I queue up to hand them over to a cashier who stamps the counterfoil in the book and everything is hunky-dory.

Or not quite.  Every branch I visit nowadays has a limited number, often only one or two, of cashiers and a veritable army of machines.  Now, I may be stupid, but I thought that market forces would kick in somewhere and the banks would cotton on to the fact that the serried ranks of shiny machines are not being used and the queue for the human cashiers gets longer and longer.  But strangely their response is to simply put in more machines and less people.  It is the same with the supermarkets, where ones frustration boils over as ‘unexpected item in the bagging area keep repeating itself’ until a run-off-their-feet member of staff comes over and swipes their card to stop the bleating machine.

And so I stand in line and wait and each person is getting hot and annoyed, and the cashier politely says ‘sorry you had to wait.’  I doubt that they are sorry at all, or sorry maybe that they are so overworked, and that sooner or later they know that they too will be replaced by a machine.  So, why do the banks (and the supermarkets for that matter) not learn and stop annoying their customers (because when you do complain the staff say that yes, everyone hates the machines but head office won’t listen) and start giving the service we would like.

Because they know that ultimately, though annoyed at the time, we are too lazy to change banks because of it, and besides all the banks (and the supermarkets) are driving headlong down the same road.  When will they ever learn?  Never, because sooner or later we will stop complaining and like it or not learn to interact with steel and glass and when there is no-one even left in the bank to complain to they will have won.

Monday 9th July

What a transformation.  London when the sun shines comes alive.  What was drab is now bright and clear, all that grey concrete becomes white and almost shines out its whiteness, the gold on the top of the few famous buildings glistens, but mostly it is on the faces of the people.  That simplest of all pleasures, to feel the sun on your face is so wonderful.  And the last couple of years it has been so rare, too much rain, too many overcast drab skies, too cold – and then suddenly we had the most glorious long weekend of summer.

It brought back memories of the seventies for me, where despite all the political turmoil, three day weeks and oil crises, it is the long lazy days in the sun I remember mostly.  And this weekend we had it all again.  Families quickly organized barbecues, bottles of wine hastily chilled down in the fridge, friends popping round unexpectedly.

And to top it all, in all that sunshine we watched the unbelievable – Andy Murray actually winning Wimbledon.  I was torn between the agony of watching him lose break point on break point, and our friends gathered around the barbie.   At any excuse, making the tea, getting bread for the ducks, clean plates – I escaped back into the house and unbelievably the sets toppled away.

Andy won out in the end and I saw most of the third scary set.  I am still of the opinion that had Novak broken back and saved that set it would have been all up for our un-charismatic winner.

But just like the sun, Andy was shining and somehow held it all together and won.  The perfect end to a lovely summer’s day.

Sunday 7th July

I occasionally saw dragonflies as a child, but not that often, and I cannot really remember being that impressed by them.  We learnt in school that they were in fact one of the earliest of insect species and have hardly changed in millions of years.  While bees and wasps and flies and spiders went off and evolved into all sorts of weird and wonderful variations the humble dragonfly just kept on eating and reproducing, hovering gently over ponds and swamps and not bothering to change in the slightest.

And when you look at them you can see why.  They are actually perfect.  They resemble miniature helicopters, hovering on the spot, then swooping and diving to the surface of the water, then off again in the blink of an eye.  If you look carefully though you can see the wings are nothing like a helicopter.  There are two sets of wings on each side of the short thorax just behind the dragonflies head, and they stick out at ninety degrees and revolve around each other.  In slow motion this can be seen as two interweaving figures of eight.  But incredibly fast, and by the perfection of it they never hit each other, they simply move around each other in perfect sychronisation, their muscles relaxing and expending hundreds of times a second.

But as well as being the most perfect flying machines ever invented, capable of keeping them perfectly still in the air, or moving up or down or back or forwards with ease they are also incredibly beautiful.  Their colours are irredescent blue and green and shimmer in the sunlight.  Amazing if what the scientists say is true and this was indeed one of the very first insect species, because they are just so wonderful.

And now I look out for them, especially now in mid-summer as they skim over the lakes and ponds unchanging and unchanged and totally unaware of the modern world and humans, who will surely never last another million years let alone the many millions that dragonflies have been around for.

Saturday 7th July

The flame of democracy has been snuffed out.  Just like that; this time in Egypt, where the army has stepped in to remove a democratically elected President after only one year.  Democracy has failed the Egyptian people, who desperately want to join the modern world, who want to be accepted as more than dirty ‘ragheads’, especially the young – who like the same clothes, the same music and the same internet sites as young people all over the world.  And yet democracy has failed them.

But maybe democracy is failing us all.  The trouble with democracy is that by and large – the winner takes all. The voices and opinions of millions count for nothing if a simple majority votes for something else.  But where there has been an almost un-reconcilable difference between people and fighting has broken out, then a different sort of democracy can sometimes prevail.  The power sharing agreement in Stormont seems to actually work a bit better than our fractured system.

The trouble is that, however well meaning, and I give those in power in Britain that benefit of the doubt, party politics supersedes the will of the people.  At the last election we had a very fractured vote, and an uncertain result.  Labour definitely lost the election, and quite badly, though the first past the post system meant they retained a lot of seats.  The Conservatives certainly did not win either, falling short of a majority.  The LibDems actually lost votes and MPs.  But we have ended up with a situation which nobody voted for – a very Tory dominated Government pursuing radical policies which in their wildest dreams most Tories never thought they might see.  And all in the name of the grand coalition which was supposed above all other objectives to have removed the deficit and to have got Britain back on its feet.

But in our so-called democracy it will not mean a thing that millions are dissatisfied, and no matter how many take to the streets and fill – say, Trafalgar Square, the army will never step in and remove a deeply unpopular Government which has failed in all its stated objectives.

I am not sure if what has just happened in Egypt is any less democratic than here, and in some ways you could say it is more so. Until we come up with a system where the beaten still have some say in the way the country is won we will never have a true democracy.  Actually until people are prepared to do a hell of a lot more than vote once every five years we will never have anything like a democracy.

Friday 5th July

Joni came out of that early folk movement where Joan Baez and Judy Collins and Buffy sang songs of medieval nights and faery queens.  But Joni was always something else too – a poetess of the heart.  Her songs were confessional poems of longing and loss and those of us who worshipped at her altar appreciated her for her words as much as for her music.  But it certainly wasn’t just the words that mattered.  She developed her own style of playing both guitar and piano that continued to push the boundaries with unconventional tunings and rambling and seemingly random piano chords sprinkled like confetti on the marriage of music and words.   She also had the voice of an angel which like all the best artists is instantly recognizable as Joni, whatever she sings.  It felt like she was singing just for you, it was so intimate.

She rose quickly to fame with the album ‘Blue’ and followed this with at least half a dozen superb records, each pushing her voice and poetry to new limits.  But more and more she was drifting towards jazz in her singing until what for me remains possibly her greatest album ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’ and it’s follow-up ‘Mingus’ managed to alienate most of her earlier devotees.  She stopped playing live and seemed to spurn fame and though she continued to record for a few years has returned to her first medium painting.

She stopped recording almost two decades ago and though her fans continue begging her to tour or make another record I think she is right. She has nothing to say to us now and we must glean our wisdom from her earlier work, where she has managed to distill beauty from sadness time and time again.  Favourite album – a tough one, I used to love Blue best of all, but now it may be Hejira or Don Juan that contain the best of Joni.  But really it is all good, even her later more conventional albums contain rare gems that suddenly lift the heart as you listen.

Thursday 4th July

I keep reading little snippets about Bitcoin.  To be honest the whole idea sounds daft.  It is ostensibly an internet or virtual currency, with which one could (in theory) buy and sell things safely.  But it is a currency which has never existed and never been earned; there will never actually be any bitcoins or notes.  Have I lost you yet?

Of course most actual currencies do not exist, not in their entirety.  The vast majority of dollars or pounds are not in notes but in numbers swirling around the worlds computers.  And despite the promise on the back of the banknote in reality if everyone tried to ‘cash in’ their money (for what exactly) at the same time the currency would collapse.  Sterling, Dollars, Euro’s and all the rest retain their value both relative to each other and to the price of goods because of confidence.  It is the knowledge we have that a pound will buy roughly the same amount of say, food, tomorrow as it does today that gives us the confidence to leave some in the bank or our pockets and not rush out and buy carrots.

But Bitcoin has never existed.  There have just been so many that have been ‘invented’ on the internet and investors are invited to purchase them with ‘real’ money and trade them.  The price has fluctuated wildly from 13 to over 200 dollars and back now at 90.  So in essence it is a gamble, a huge game of pass the parcel where as long as you sell your Bitcoins on before the music stops all will be well.  And it may do spectacularly well, or die a death.

Whether it will prevail and eventually we all use Bitcoin instead of pounds and dollars is a longer shot.  In essence why not?   At least the value of bitcoin would be determined by a collective agreement, or market jitters or just speculation rather than being manipulated by Governments around the world.   I haven’t even decided myself if it is a good idea or not but I am watching developments.  I want to see if it can fly first before attempting boarding.

Wednesday 3rd July

I am still suffering from post holiday blues.  Why is it that we always feel we could have done more on our breaks?  It isn’t that we actually wasted them and at the time we were often quite contented, it is just that niggly feeling that it was sort of less than we could have achieved.  And then you look at the next few weeks, and thank goodness it is only a few weeks, of work ahead and you feel so dismal at the prospect.  It isn’t that the work is particularly onerous or difficult even, it is more that you just are bored by it.  And the alternative prospect of sitting face tilted up to the sun for a few days is so alluring.

I used to have a mantra, a little thought that would pop up and I would repeat it to myself, silently mouthing the words ‘Be Philosophical’ whenever life seemed a bit grim.  I am not sure if it ever worked, other than calming me a tad.  I almost enjoyed the feeling of being stoical for a few minutes.  It never made the problem go away of course, and inveterate worrier that I am I soon returned to it, but for a moment it could cause a smile to hover across my furrowed brow. And now as I contemplate the day ahead, the sheer repetition of the work, the same problems, the same people, the same incompetence I will encounter, I must learn again to smile away these post-holiday blues and repeat to myself those gentle words of wisdom ‘Be Philosophical.’

As I read the news, the Tories seem to have got over some of their woes and preparing once more for battle, and the economy despite Osborne’s best efforts is beginning to recover – I just have to smile and say to myself ‘Be Philosophical.’

Tuesday 2nd July

There have always been loan sharks, and I suppose it would be almost impossible to completely legislate them out of existence.  When people are so desperate for money they will resort to anything and risk their entire existence for a few quid.  But when they are caught their punishment should be relative to the damage they have done; to prey on other people’s misery is one of the worst crimes.

But we seem to have got ourselves into a legitimate loan shark world where the likes of Wonga and PayDay Pig and many others leaping into the lucrative field are advertising on the television.  The whole idea of pay-day loans is sickening.  Of course when you are desperate to pay a bill, or to put food on the table, a loan of a hundred pounds seems a trifling business.  The little fact that you will sign away one hundred and twenty when your wages hit the bank seems unimportant in the scheme of things at the time.

The trouble is that the people taking out pay-day loans are by and large fairly ignorant, at least in terms of managing their finances, and either do not realise or do not care that they are being preyed upon so voraciously.  And the next month as they are now one hundred and twenty pounds short the temptation is all the more pressing to borrow that sum and repay one hundred and forty five.  In fact the numbers I am quoting are at the lower end of the scale charged by some.  It is in fact akin to stealing sweets from babies’ mouths.

Then there is gambling and the also increasing proliferation of betting firms advertising on telly.  From smart city slickers to bored housewives we are being exhorted to have a flutter.  What a sad world.  And undoubtedly some of those payday loans may end up straight in the pockets of the bookmakers.  And undoubtedly too the same greedy Tory businessmen will be running both disgusting schemes.   F*^k them all.