Sunday 11th August

But in the midday sun it might just be.  Luckily we have a nice umbrella and an overhanging balcony to give us some welcome shade in our little back garden.  We have loose paved it, and now about a third is taken up by the swimming pool.  We were paying for a few bits and bobs in ‘The Range’ and waiting in the queue when I noticed a veritable mountain of boxed swimming pools – all at half-price.  So on a whim I picked up the £40 one, now priced at only £20, which was eight foot in circumference and nearly two feet deep.  We were both skeptical as to how it would work.  But amazingly it is wonderful.  Dead easy to set-up and fill; the weight of the water keeps the thing fairly rigid.

And on a sunny afternoon, there is nothing nicer than dipping into the cool water.  Laying back in the sun and floating on ones back, it is never too hot.

Friday 10th August

So far, so good.  I am here in France with my parents, which is a miracle in itself.  When we bought the house we extended the usual invitations to our family to come out and visit us.  My children I expected to take up the offer, if not straight away then at some point, but I never really expected Mum and Dad to want to come.  They are both just turned eighty, and though fairly fit, are to some extent stuck in their ways.

To my great surprise they got their expired passports renewed and asked when they could come out.  I went over and did the on-line booking and then on Wednesday evening went over and we travelled out here together on Thursday.

And so far it has been fine.  No dramas, no words, no trouble at all.

Now when I was younger my mother had a temper and a half, and inevitable by day two of any visit it was getting fractious and I was ususlly glad to call it a day.  But as I have gotten older I have been mpre relaxed and confident with them.  They seem to have accepted me more and more, and so we get on a lot better.  And I find too that I am not anxious anymore; no longer waiting for the row to erupt.

The weather is lovely, warm without being too hot; sunny and brght but not overbearing.  And all is going well….so far.

Friday 9th August

Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.  Girls in blue denim hotpants.

I could just go on and on.

But really what a fantastic fashion sweeping the capital in this hot weather.  Makes you glad to be alive.  And tragedy of all tragedies – I am leaving all those peachy cheeks peeking out for France.  In fact I am already there.

And probably dreaming of girls in blue denim hotpants…..

Yes. J’ai retourne a France.  For seven days I will be here again, so there may be the occasional day when I will miss a post, but hopefully not for long.

Thursday 8th August

Harry Nilsson was a brilliant vocalist, a competent song-writer, a superb interpreter of songs and a lousy drunk.  He also refused to ever sing live, preferring the anonymity and perfection of the recording studio.  He produced some incredible albums in the late sixties and early seventies and was one of the few artists the Beatles were in awe of.  His greatest success came in 1972 with Nillson Schmillson with its great single ‘Without You’.  This song and the album went to number one both here and in America.  It was as if everyone fell in love with the sentiment of the song, and Harry’s soaring voice, which almost wrenched at the heart-strings.

But the success of the song may have also been his downfall.  He now had enough money to do what he wanted; and it seems what he most wanted was to get drunk.  Along with Ringo and Keith Moon he was part of the eighteen month binge that became known as John Lennon’s ‘Lost Weekend’.

He continued recording, and there are some gems, but too many albums are ruined by poor song choice and a throw-away attitude.  He did record a superb album of standards and then almost his last album was nearly his best.  Titled Knillson (his album name choices and appalling covers are legendary) it just hit the spot, great songs and great voice – it makes you realise if he had stayed sober he could have been one of the greats.

His continued drinking led to ill-health and he died young.  But thank goodness he still left us the records.  If immortality is ever achievable (and who remembers Alexander the Great today) it may well be in artifacts such as books paintings and recordings.

Wednesday 7th August

The main reason I am writing on this subject today, is that as usual truth is stranger than fiction.  I am writing a new book, and it is about a dystopian near future.  One of the features is that largely because of climate change a large proportion of people eat ‘synth-food’.  A bit of a clumsy name, and one that may need revision, perhaps.  It sounds outrageous – the human race, eating synthetic food, doesn’t it?

And of course it isn’t a new idea.  There was a film called Soylent Green’, where the future population ate slabs of ‘Soylent’, a completely manufactured food.

But of course, reality has beaten me to it.  The boffin burger has arrived.  Grown from cow muscle cells; in its raw state it looks distinctly unappetizing, and has had to be flavoured and coloured to even resemble meat.  The verdict was that it tasted vaguely of beef.  But beef it mostly undoubtedly was.

And now for the hard part – do we approve.  On one level as a ‘sort-of’ vegetarian, in that I eat more far more vegetarian meals than I do meat ones, I couldn’t really care less.  I don’t imagine I will be rushing out to buy a synthetic burger, and the technology will have to improve if they are going to make it competitive.  In its stated aim of alleviating world hunger, who can complain.  And environmentally it should stop all those cows wandering around where crops can be grown, and farting methane into the atmosphere too.

But the point of synth-food in my book, and in ‘Soylent Green’ too incidentally, is that the creation of synthetic food will bring about another great divide in the world.  Already there is a section of society who eat fresh organic, hand-reared, well sourced food – and another that eats processed ‘junk’ food.  Will this potentially wonderful invention mean a widening so that those with money can eat real food, and those without will have a diet of ‘synth’.

I tend to think that once Capitalism gets its hands on this technology, this might be the case. Already food technology is frighteningly clever; give it another fifty years and who knows.

Tuesday 6th August

Employment has two basic components, work on the one side, and pay on the other.  This is a given; it shouldn’t even need to be said.  However we are rapidly creating a situation where even this basic principle is being flouted.  Would you work for nothing?  And I don’t mean occupying yourself in retirement for a couple of afternoons at your local Oxfam shop.  I mean, would you work for NOTHING.

No, of course not; you have a mortgage to pay, and food to buy and all the rest of it.  However in three insidious ways the concept of working for nothing is creeping in to our society.

Firstly – there is volunteering.  And on the surface there is nothing wrong with that – if it is truly voluntary.  However many young people are persuaded that a year’s voluntary work would look good on their CV.  That is a year without pay.

Then there is internship.  Or free labour – as I would call it.  Again young people, often graduates with a hefty loan already, are invited to work for three or six months for a company.  For NOTHING.  They are being eased into the world of work, or introduced to an industry, with the dangling carrot of a possible full-time job at the end of it.  Rich parents subsidise them while they work for NOTHING, not even a guaranteed job, not even a certificate to say they have passed a course, just three or six months of being a slave.  I say slave, because the definition of slavery is basically working for NOTHING.  Actually in a way this is worse, as slavery usually entails food and shelter.

And now we have zero-hours contracts.  I work in the catering industry where the majority of waiting staff do not have guaranteed hours.  What usually happens is they will be rota-ed for say five or six shifts a week, but often if business is slack, it will be suggested that they go home early.  And forfeit the lost hours pay into the bargain.  Young people, and again it is mostly young people, feel they have no real choice.  Besides most still live at home, or have a hand-to-mouth existence in digs.  And now we have over a million people working on zero-hours contract.  No guarantee of any work at all.  And of course they are employed so cannot claim any benefits.  This is madness.

As you can see, I feel really ANGRY about this.  I can assure you if the Tories had their way, all workers would be on zero-hours contracts.  They have been exhorting the workforce to be flexible for years.  Just how flexibly do you have to be?  Kneeling down is one thing, bending over to be fucked is another.

Monday 5th August

It is almost inevitably a fact that we aren’t told everything.  Governments would argue that they cannot possibly be as open and transparent as many of us would like.  And in the world of diplomacy certainly it would be a strange change of centuries of practice if we were actually told of ongoing discussions.  So, being more a pragmatist than you might think, I do not expect things to change, certainly not in the near future.  More and more politics is not about presenting actual policies to the public, but about deception.  It probably started many years ago, but was perfected during the Blair years, where presentation and spin became the order of the day, and you had to wade through all of that to discover what was really being done.  And Blair won three elections with that strategy.  It could be argued that the means justified the end, in that life became immeasurably better for so many.

However the same tactics were used in the run-up to the Iraq war and it was like watching a slow-motion conjuring trick.  You knew you were being duped, but somehow the hands were moving too fast, or the words weren’t quite in sync with the pictures.  And despite the protestations and the denials, the pathetic inquiries, the apologies even, it is still makes people very angry that we were dragged into a war that hardly anyone actually wanted.

And now we are being duped again. There is an un-admitted campaign to present the economy as almost healed, the skies ahead sunny, all problems solved.  And it might just succeed.  The Conservatives are certainly looking very confident for a change.   Labour’s poll lead is disappearing fast, and Milliband is either invisible or appears to be bewildered and seems to have no answers.

But what is really going on, is it mostly spin or is there really a change.  I suspect that the Tories will do just as Thatcher did, look after about half the population who are doing okay, and don’t give a fuck about the rest.  As always in Politics, it is getting re-elected that is more important than actually improving the world.

Sunday 4th August

It is Saturday as I write this, and what a day it has been.  I got down here to Walton on Thursday night, and after copying another batch of CDs onto the laptop and opening the small pile of letters it was soon time for bed.  Friday I had some bits of work to mop up, and then I sat down to write.  I mostly re-read and got the outline of the next two chapters done.  Somehow I couldn’t really settle.  What had seemed a lovely three day break was suddenly looming into a vast amount of time to fill.  Ended up watching far too much TV, choosing the least awful channel to watch.

Saturday morning and the lethargic mood was barely shifting, I read my e-mails and wondered if I would get much writing done today.  Then the phone rang.  The news that had been hovering in the back of my mind all day came through.  Grandchild number eight has been born, and my daughter who had a bit of a rough time with her first was speaking to me.  Much better this time around, and she and my new granddaughter were both doing fine.

I rang my Mum and gave her the happy news, then some frantic texting to friends.  Suddenly the world looked a brighter place.  Went for a nice walk, and just looked at the sea.

Then back and an incredible amount of writing done.  It just seemed to flow; the keys seemed to tap out the story themselves.  Whether it is any good is another matter.  I do re-read as I go along, and no doubt a few amendments will be made, but this bit – the first write is the most exciting.  The story is forming itself, unraveling from some other part of the universe almost.  I sometimes feel that the story I am writing is actually already written somewhere else, I am simply transcribing it.

Also a change in plan.  I am now returning a day early to London.  I need to visit John Lewis for cards and pressies.  As well as grandchild number eight, numbers six and seven also have birthdays coming up this month.  So, I feel good; I have had the best possible news, and also got another chunk of writing done.  What a day.

Saturday 3rd August

It s very difficult to judge the path of human progress, especially from any one point on that line.  Looking back we can see progress, and the temptation is to see it as a straight line, when in reality it has always been a somewhat bumpy ride, with often the grestest leaps forward coming after the worst troughs.  Certainly in the Twentieth Century this would appear to be so; after the horrors of two World Wars, both were followed by real and tangible improvements in the vast majority of working people’s lives.  The rich and privileged may have seen things in a different light however.  Both wars were a form of revolution; after the hardships and loss of life there was a determination that things should never be the same again – and so, the political will was there for vast changes to take place.

Solzhenitsyn commented that each generation had to learn for themselves.  He was lamenting that the young in Russia in the sixties had taken for granted all the achievements of the Revolution and now wanted to return to some sort of Capitalism, free choice, the chance to be rich.  I wonder though looking back if some of those now lament the old Russia as they look around at Putin and his coterie, and all the billionaires who have stolen the resources that once belonged to the people.

And in survey after survey when people are asked if their lives are improving they tend to be pessimistic, ignoring the vast improvements in health and education, and looking instead at the value of their house or how many foreign holidays they can afford.  So, it is very difficult to really ascertain if things are getting better or worse.  And who for?  For the poor it seems that things are going to get a whole lot worse.  For the rich life always gets better, recession or sunshine.  For the rest of us, somewhere in the middle; I don’t know.  Materially yes, but at what cost?  It seems to me that we are becoming more selfish again.  When most people think that benefits and immigration are their main worries it means the pendulum has swung back to the right again, how far further it will swing before correction sets in and a more socialist, selfless mood takes hold again we do not know.  But I suspect it still has some little way to go.

Friday 2nd August

I complain all the time.  About almost everything in fact; complaining, moaning about life has become a national hobby.  One of the things I complain about is my inability to carve out any time alone in which to write.  I do write my blog every day, of course, but this takes thirty minutes at most. (as long as that, you may well ask) and my ritual is to write it a day in advance while stopping for a coffee and almond croissant on the way to work.  I consider this half-hour daily routine as my treat for being alive.

But in order to really write you do need a fair chunk of time.  Workdays I get home about six, and after walking the dogs and cooking and eating dinner it is gone eight, and to be honest I am too tired to think about writing at all.  The idea of going down to a four day week was to give me Friday as a writing day, but so many Fridays are taken up by those essential household tasks and odd chores, so  more often than not I don’t get much writing done.

So methinks, a three day week will mean there is no excuse for not devoting at least one of those days to writing.  Returning from France on Monday, I am working until Thursday this week.  I have before me a long weekend of three days where I should be able to get some real writing done.

I have started a new story, and am quite excited about it.  I am only about 10% into the story, and have a general idea of how it is going to develop, though as usual, it is the transition of those vague ideas into a real plot that is one of the most enjoyable things about writing.  When I write I have to get into the zone, as I call it.  This involves a bit of re-reading with occasional corrections and takes at least an hour to immerse myself back in the story.  Then as each chapter gets written I immediately re-read and again correct as I go along.  So, it can be a slow process.  Anyway, this weekend I will be on my own at Walton, with no distractions, so I have no excuse at all.