Sunday 20th September

I have just had another problem with my bank.  We are living in surreal times where we can never be sure just what is happening or what you think is happening.  In order to save money (not ours incidentally) the banks are forcing us to go on line.  Of course everyone from Government down is forcing us all to do everything on the internet.  We are sold the idea that it is more efficient, that it is more convenient but the real reason is so that the banks can employ far fewer people so that we do the transactions, or press buttons so that computers do the transactions.  But what does it really mean?

Back to reality – I had to pay my builder who repaired a roof for me. Cheques are old-fashioned and take too long so we are persuaded to go on-line and pay people electronically.  And supposedly a BACS transaction is the electronic equivalent of signing a cheque.  In order to verify my identity I had to put in selected digits from both a four digit number and an eight digit password, both of my own creation and told to no-one and never written down.  Then I had to put my debit card into a card reader, enter another four digit code (my pin number) and press OK, and then the card reader displayed an eight digit number generated by an algorithm which I had to key into  my computer.  I then recived a confirmation that the payment had been confirmed.  As far as I understand it this is the equivalent of my signing a cheque.  It is pretty unlikely for anyone to forge this process as they would have to have stolen my debit card and my card reader and know all my passwords and pin number.

I e-mailed the builder and told him I had paid him,  He e-mailed me later that evening and said he the money wasn’t in his bank.  I went on-line and the money had gone from my bank.  24 hours after making the transaction that appears not to have been made I received an e-mail from the bank asking me to phone a number because of suspected fraud.  The bank had not made the payment.  I phoned up, confirmed my identity and that I wanted the payment made and they promised to pay the builder.  All they could say was sorry for the inconvenience…

Inconvenience is not the word for it.

So what does it all mean?  The bank does not trust it’s customers.  When we do something on the internet it really means nothing at all?  All the security checks were for nothing as was the confirmation.  You cannot believe anything.  I preferred the real world where a cheque meant something, when my signature was my word.  Has the whole world gone crazy, or is it just me?

Saturday 19th September

-[Of course, kindness was not a rarity; Janek must have been blind not to have seen that our system is riddled with kindness.  In fact, everything runs far better with kindness – we discovered that long ago.  The rich who owned the con-gloms didn’t need to treat everyone so generously, they could have simply taken their money and not given a f**k about anyone else; though the logic of Capital dictates that pretty soon their businesses would run down and eventually they too would have no wealth.  The great realisation was that despite the fact that you could make more profit by running a company with robots and hypercomputers if every company did that then sooner or later there would be no consumers.  It was only with the creation and licensing of the con-gloms that we eliminated competition.  Each con-glom has a monopoly within a defined geographical area; this and the replacement of money with cred, which is truly flexible, means that everyone can be employed; a constant source of consumers, and, so far, stability.

Sorry to keep repeating what should be so blindingly obvious, but it is remarkable how many otherwise intelligent people simply don’t get it.  By removing personal greed, or at least controlling the excesses resulting from its unrestrained usage, we have made life immeasurably better for the vast majority.  The trouble with those old ideas of Communism was that everyone was patently NOT equal, and to attempt to treat people as such will only end in tears.  We understand that people are different, so we have created the strata system, with the ever possible chance of moving up (or down).  In fact, we have to do very little now; the system runs itself.  That modicum of human ambition is enough to keep the young striving for the benefits their elders have already gained.  QED, as Nap (Norman Arthur Phillips, my old math-crammer teacher) would have said, though QED never quite works with people, they have this annoying facility for not behaving in their own best interests.

And already I think one can discern a certain dissatisfaction with Janek’s discovery of just how brutal life in the jungle really can get.  He has come from a safe clean environment where every wish, within reason and strata-level, was fulfilled.   He had a never ending supply of food, (most of it real or very high quality manna) stylish clothing, gadgets, screen entertainment, access to all the libraries the world has ever created.  Oh, and not forgetting, safe drugs for every desired mood change, and the best sex ever.  Janek has just derided syn sex, and compared it to old-fashioned porn.  But we know he was a regular user of level 3 syn, which is nearly the best we have yet devised.  So he is being more than a bit disingenuous.  Syn is far better than old-fashioned sex between people, because the terminal knows exactly what each individual user likes best; there is no need to consider the other person because there is no other person, just a holo-screen image of whoever the user’s mind conjures up as their perfect partner.  And it can last exactly as long as the user wishes, though most do in fact prefer, as in old-fashioned coupling, to come rather quickly, the average time being 7 minutes and 45 seconds for men and considerably quicker for women, (according to the latest stats).

We of course only caught up with Janek a few months later, but when we reviewed his progress on his little antique recording device it is quite obvious that he was already having some doubts about his disastrous decision to reb in the first place.]-

Friday 18th September

I have always been an early riser.  As a child I had my jobs to do in the morning, drying up (until I was promoted to washing up) and cleaning the family’s shoes.  My mother ran a very organized house and we all had our set tasks, so no laying in bed in the morning.  When I was about thirteen I got a paper round, and was up about six every day; I can’t remember if mum woke me or I had an alarm clock, but I was up before everyone else and racing to the shop often in pitch darkness to sort my papers and be on my round.  My first job in London was as a store-man at the Carlton Towers and we started at 7.30.  I would leave my bedsit at six and via the 73 bus would be at work by 7 and eating a hearty breakfast in the staff canteen. Before I knew it I was a single father and waking about six would dress and feed my son, and plonk him on the dicky seat on my crossbar cycle for half an hour to his nursery and then all the way into Central London to my work.

At a certain point I moved to Leyton, but my son was still at his Finchley school.  Again an early start and across London by train and bus, making sure he was at least outside the school gates if not actually going in, then on to work.

Made redundant when I was in my mid-thirties I started working self-employed two days a week at a Patisserie at almost the other end of the Central Line from my home. I used to catch the first train at 5.20, and start work at 6.30.  Later I had a part-time job two days a week at a Pasta factory, again starting at around 6.30 and leaving there at 8.30 to do my proper job.  I worked for a while at Sketch and was so overworked that I again voluntarily started at 6, just to catch up on my heavy workload.  For the last few years it was up at 6.15 and out of the house by 7.30.  And even on my days off a lay-in would be 7.30 or 8, in fact I don’t ever really recall sleeping much past eight, even on holidays.  And now in France I am up at 7.15 and on market days at 6 – the Café never sleeps…hahaha

I don’t really mind, except when we have been out late the night before drinking, and had a poor night’s sleep.  But having shaved and showered and fed and walked the dogs I am right as rain again.  So, an early riser all my life; and I imagine I always will be.

Thursday 17th September

One of the things that makes Jeremy Corbyn different from other politicians is his absolute refusal to indulge in personal abuse.  This is, of course, almost unheard of.  Politicians love to be rude about their opponents, the ruder the better.  In the House of Commons they have to refrain from using many words such as liar, but outside and especially in the Press, they and their friends have free rein.  In fact there is almost no level to which they will not stoop.  We had the unedifying criticism of Gordon Brown’s handwriting, caused because of poor eyesight.  We actually had one of the presenters (you know which one) of Top Gear refer to him as a one-eyed c….  Then we had the nonsense about Ed Milliband’s father, the Daily Mail making out that he hated Britain.  Sometimes of course these personal attacks actually backfire and the public is roused from its torpor and says enough is enough.

And now of course the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn has begun.  Yesterday he stood silent, head bowed, while the National Anthem was being played to honour those who died in The Battle of Britain commerorations,  How terrible of him not to sing along, the Press chorused.  Can you imagine the headlines if he had actually sung.  “The Hypocrisy of the Man”, how dare he, a republican sing our National Anthem?  This nonsense will continue right up to the General Election; they will try to destroy him because they know his ideas are truly dangerous.  Why, people might actually start to hear his message, might agree with him, so we must destroy his credibility and soon.  Of course, it may just be that because he doesn’t react and will not engage with this nonsense that people will see it for what it is and begin to like the man and wonder just why the Media hate him.  We will see…

Wednesday 16th September

People huddled together in the rain and cold waiting for a train.   They are here because of a War they had nothing to do with.  They have left their homes behind.  They have left almost all their possessions behind.  They have left many family members behind.  They have no idea if their life will be better in the camps or where they are.  Hostile Police are herding them onto trains, cramming them in, and these are the lucky ones.  Many more wait in the cold and the rain for other trains or are held back by angry Security forces.  They are bewildered and tired and unsure of their future.  They are scared, they have lost nearly everything and now their whole future is bound up with boarding that train.  It is the late nineteen-thirties, Jews are being shipped across the continent of Europe as their homes are bombed and bulldozed.  Whole communities are being ripped apart, centuries of security gone in an instant, the future uncertain.  The lucky few who have gained refugee status will have to rebuild their lives in foreign countries where people make it clear they are unwanted.

Fast forward eighty years and we are seeing the same bewildered faces on the children who have been bombed out of their homes, forced out of their country, separated from their families.  Their mothers, dressed from head to toe in black clothes look little different from the young Jewish mothers in the thirties.  People are scared, their country is at war, a war incidentally that we helped bring about. I never thought I would see this happening in Europe in my lifetime.  Let’s make sure it never happens again.

Tuesday 15th September

I always say that “All music is good music, there is just some I am not so familiar with”, not that I really want to explore the James Last Orchestra or Gregorian Chants or Japanese Kabuki music; there simply isn’t time.  In fact of course there isn’t nearly enough time to explore the pop, rock and singer-songwriter music of the late Twentieth Century or even the complete catalogues of my fifty or so favourite artists.  I hated punk and largely refused to listen to it, and later I had the same reaction to most rap music but I have modestly dipped my toe into the last really creative genre that emerged in the late eighties and early nineties, namely “Dance Music”.  Of course there are hundreds of sub-divisions within that I am sure and my guide and interpreter through the maze has been my daughter Laura who passionately loves this music possibly as much as I love that of the few decades which preceded it.  She regularly buys me for Christmas or Birthdays a new “Dance Music” record, and by and large I love them.  Probably my all time favourite was “Protection” by “Massive Attack” but “Groove Armada” run them a close second.

The best thing about Groove Armada is their great tunes. Every track has a good melody – words seem to be almost superfluous except on tracks like “I see you baby (shaking that Ass)”.  The instrumentation is brilliant though, with a wide range of styles and quite a lot of brass too.  The drum rhythms in Dance Music are quite distinctive and probably came from Reggae, black influences of course abound from Disco and Soul right through to early Blues.  Groove Armada play both fast and slow songs, in fact their slower ones are possibly even better and they are often used as soundtracks for TV and adverts especially “At the River”, maybe their very best tune.

I saw Groove Armada one year at V fest and they were even better live.  Maybe I am missing out by not exploring even more Dance Music, but although not my music of choice I find that I am rarely disappointed when I open my daughter’s next recommendation, so thanks Laura.

Monday 14th September

I must admit this was an impulse buy; it was about Leonard and so I got it on Kindle.  I am not sure exactly what I was expecting; some revelation maybe, some shared experience, maybe a few snippets of the real Leonard, who knows.  But I wasn’t really expecting the book I got.  I should have realized by the author’s name, it was obviously Jewish; not that that should have mattered, except that the whole book is really a disquisition on Leonard’s Jewish roots and his interpretation of, repudiation at times and final reconciliation with Judaism rather than trying to understand just how he wrote such wonderful poetry, such apposite lines and how his voice, deep and resonant meshes so beautifully with those words, in other words how the magic works.  There is actually quite a long disquisition about Canadian poetry, or rather the lack of it, and Canadian poets in the Twentieth Century, but without reading their works (which I have no intention of doing) they are just names on a piece of paper.  Likewise the investigations into the roots of Leonard’s Jewish beliefs are again lost on one who isn’t vaguely interested in the differing schools of Judaism.

There are some good passages in the book however and it does take us approximately chronologically through his career, but I learned little I did not actually know, and strangely despite the intellectual theorizing I came no closer to understanding the magic of Leonard’s songs.  Which actually, is maybe just how it should be – when the conjouror reveals his sleight of hand there is always some disappointment.  At school I always rebelled against the analysis of poetry, things like meter and onomatopoeia and alliteration happen naturally when you write poetry, they don’t need analysing.  The wonderful thing about Leonard’s poetry are the original lines, always with a twist in them like “the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend” or “Jesus was a sailor and he walked upon the water, he said all men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.” Or “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my own way to be free.”  There is nothing like them in modern music, even Dylan’s poetry doesn’t have these depths of meaning or beauty.  Anyway, even though the book revealed little for me, it was interesting, but unless you are a complete Leonard obsessive I would avoid it…

Sunday 13th September

The consensus Media view is that by electing Jeremy Corbyn as the Leader of the Labour Party they are committing suicide.  It has been likened to electing Michael Foot as leader back in the early eighties, but of course it is far more serious than that.  And I say serious, because this was actually Democracy.  This is the first leader to have ever been elected on a one-member-one-vote basis, and despite the problem of a degree of infiltration by both left-wingers and possible Tory voters he has won by such a huge landslide that the most certain thing you can say is that he has been elected undisputed and wholeheartedly by the vast majority of Labour supporters.  In the old days Michael Foot and others were elected by fellow M.P.s.  Then it was broadened out to include Trade Unions and Labour Party members while the M.P.s still retained a third of the vote.

So, what are we to make of Jeremy’s victory?  Forget what the Tory press will say, as they would have crucified whoever was Labour leader unless like Blair they were so Tory-lite as to be indistinguishable from the real thing.  My feeling is that there may well be a handful of M.P.s and other ‘Big Beasts’ in th Labour movement who will complain, a few may even refuse to serve under him, though I very much doubt there will be any defections to the Tories, or a new party formed or any of the other nonsense spouted during the last three months.  I believe and sincerely hope that Jeremy’s first task will be to unite the party and to be inclusive, both in personnel and in ideas.  If he doesn’t he will surely fail and be replaced.  But I suspect that things will settle down a bit and the Labour party will slowly work out the sort of policies and priorities that most working people will understand and support.  One of the misconceptions is that Labour at the election retreated to its traditional working class heartlands.  In fact Labour largely abandoned these traditional Labour voters and lost them in droves; it was the middle classes who voted Labour, especially in London.  The first real test will be how much Labour can begin to pull back voters in Scotland who decamped to the far more Socialist sounding SNP at the last election.  It will be an interesting few months, but I wish the man well, he has run a brilliant campaign, largely by refusing to criticize his fellow contenders, but simply to present an alternative view and to show himself as both open to new ideas and a thoroughly decent man.  Maybe it is in fact that honesty and decency that is seen by his opponents as his most dangerous weapon, which is why they will do their damnedest to destroy him.  We will see….

Saturday 12th September

There are two types of people; those who fight and those who do not. There are those who want to win at any cost and those who know that losing is their best option.  There are those who will happily kill and those who would rather die themselves.  There are those who wage war and those who strive for peace.  There are those for whom money is everything and those who see it as an illusion.  There are those who take advantage of all around them and others who see no advantage in that at all.  There are those who lick their plates clean and those who always leave a little on the side.  There are those who make a mess and those who clear up that mess.  There are those who wreak havoc and leave a trail of turbulence behind them and there are those whose ripple dissipates in seconds leaving an undisturbed millpond in their wake.  There are those who eat too much and those who are left hungry.  There are those who seek the truth and those for whom lies were created.  There are those who seek solace in religion and those who reject all fairy-tales.  There are those who believe unreservedly and those who struggle with their doubts.  There those who love Leonard Cohen and those who cannot abide his voice.  There are those who are landlords and there are those who are tenants.  There are those who wear disguises and those who walk naked.  There are those who are innocent of all crimes and those who harbour and treasure their dirty little secrets.  There are those who love chocolate and those who prefer sex. There are those who drink and those who remain sober. There are those who love easily and those who never let themselves fall, tumbling blindly and ecstatically into another’s arms.  There are those who like to push and those who are willing to be pulled.  There are those who write fluently and those who struggle to read.  There are those who see beauty in everything and those who cannot ignore the reality of this grubby little world. There are those who categorise and put people in boxes and those who can see no boundaries.  There are those who hate the differences in people and those who celebrate that diversity. But we are all neither exactly one type or the other; though there are those who will insist they are and others who may admit their imperfections.  There are those who think about these things and others for whom the thought has never struck them.  Have a good day whichever type you are.

Friday 11th September

Diary Entry – 20660513

“I have been working for two days now.  And when I say working I really mean it. For years I have sat at some computer terminal, at crammer, at uni, and then at my various job placements, and I always thought that was work.  But I never had to work with my hands before, a few chores around the home excepted; and I cannot begin to tell you how fucking hard it is.

I am picking potatoes out of the still part-frozen ground.  A tractor goes ahead of us, turning the soil and Ben and I scrabble in the freezing dirt for the small marble-sized potatoes.  My back aches every time I bend down and my fingers are bleeding and raw, the dirt is ingrained under my cracking nails.  We have worked all morning, and now that the sun is breaking through the morning sea-mist we are sent home.  Even the farmer is careful to only let us work while the fields are obscured in dense white cloud.  I haven’t heard the familiar whirr of a Polis copter out here, but no-one takes too many chances.

We are rewarded with a bag full of spuds, a cabbage and a couple of eggs each. “Now be on your way” the brutally unkind farmer waves us away, as if he will become contaminated by the scum he considers us.  We trudge the few miles home, tired and worn-out, but happy.  Before we get to our beds Ben has already traded most of his food for a small bottle of hooch, which is a rough and raw spirit made from the very potatoes we have just picked.  He was already swigging it before we got to the hotel.

I hand my little bag of food over to Charlene.  She protests that she cannot have it all, insisting I keep some to trade with. “It’s okay,” I say, “you fed me for the first few days I got here, this is my way of saying thank-you.”

“Don’t think I’ll fuck you though.  Not for just a few spuds and a cabbage.  I don’t know what sort of a girl you think I am, but I ‘aint that cheap.” She retorted.

“Look.  I just wanted to say thank-you.  There’s no ulterior motive here, I can assure you.”  I was amazed how everything was seen as a commodity, to be bought or sold; that old-fashioned kindness was just that.  Old-fashioned – and somehow suspect.

I lay down and slept until woken by the smell of cooking.  Charlene had made a meal and had even managed to boil the eggs in the cabbage water.  It tasted delicious, the potatoes, though tiny were so full of flavour.  We used to eat quite a bit of real food but it never tasted like this; it had probably been sprayed with some anti-bacterial shit and might have been cold-stored for months, who knew?

Later she crept up to my mattress and lay beside me, “Did you like the meal I made?” she asked, cuddling into my back.

“Yes, it was fantastic.  I never realised how wonderful food could taste, especially when you have worked so hard for it.”

“Janek?” she said, “Do you like me?  Do you think I am pretty?” and she opened wide her greeny-grey eyes and looked right into mine.

What could I say?  Compared to Cathy, my wife, she was certainly not pretty, but then my wife went to the gym and the salon twice a week, and had kept her skin tight, her tits pumped up and always wore make-up, even indoors.  Besides though in her fifties like me, she only looked thirty-five at most.  I had no idea how old Charlene was, but she had bags under her eyes and was a bit fat, her teeth were yellow and some were missing, and she had really straggly hair.  Oh, and she smelled.  I suppose I did too, but I had gotten used to my own smell by now.  But Charlene really smelled, she must still have had hair under her arms and no sweat reducing implants, so as she propped herself up on one elbow the waft of her strong body odour was right in my nose.

“Look Charlene, I am….was, married, back in my old life.  And though my wife and I haven’t you know, actually copulated for a few years, I haven’t done that with anyone else either.”

“Oh, so you only like syn-sex, is that it?” she said. “I just thought we might hook up and see how we went for a while.  Would you just like me to suck you, then?”

“I am sure that would be nice, but really I don’t need it.” I said, desperate not to offend her. “And it isn’t that I dig syn that much, in fact it really bores me.  It’s always good I suppose, but like porn before it – it’s always the same.  Besides, I just don’t want to get involved with anyone.  I really don’t know how long I will be staying here.  I am sort-of passing through.  I don’t know where I am really heading, but I don’t think I will be staying here for that long.”

“Okay,” she shrugged and turned her back to me. “But just let me lie next to you for a while.  I just want to feel the warmth of a body next to mine.  I don’t really like sex that much myself; done it with too many shits I s’pose.  You seemed nice, that’s all.  Different.  You’re different from the usual crap that ends up here.”

“Of course you can lay beside me Charlene.  I would really like that.” I lied.  But what did it really cost me, this small gesture of kindness.  And Charlene looked as if she had been through a lot of crap in her life, was kindness such a rare commodity here in two-oh-clickety-click?”