Half Full or Half Empty?

What was your best read of 2011?

2012-01-02T20:59:00.000Z

Mine was the wonderful One Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
I am a long term fan of David Mitchell (that is the literary one not the budding national treasure one) and knew I would like 1,000 Autumns but was not prepared for quite how much I would love it. It is a novel about understanding, how we communicate with others who speak another language. How different cultures communicate, trade, dominate, serve, love and hate. It has a massive sweep over modern history and examines the relationship between East and West. A novel set in 1800 yet speaking to us in the 21st century.
So what did you enjoy reading in 2011? By that I mean books you read in 2011 regardless of when published.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thousand-Autumns-Jacob-Zoet/dp/0340921587/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325537743&sr=1-2

Saving BBC4

2011-08-28T12:39:00.008+01:00

Like many other people over the previous two weeks I have been concerned about the future of my favourite BBC channel, BBC4. I love music, European crime drama, historical documentaries and even the odd scientific one too - especially if the lovely Jim Al-Khalili is presenting it. I laughed and nearly cried at Jo Brand's BAFTA winning nurse Kim in 'Getting On'. It is the channel I am most likely to watch.

Drastic cuts are being contemplated for this channel. It is expected that innovative drama and comedy made for BBC4 will be the first to face the axe. I hope that there will be funds available for the purchase of future foreign language drama series such as The Killing, Engrenages (Spiral) and the quirky Montalbano series (which now runs to 22 episodes, only 3 of which have ever been aired on British TV). But the future does not look bright for BBC4.

I understand the BBC has commissioned Ernst & Young to review BBC4 with a view to suggesting where savings can be made. This report will not come cheap and I can only assume that E&Y must have a particularly strong Media specialist division if they have been selected for this exercise. Now, I have no media background so I am unqualified to advise anyone but, as I am giving this suggestion away for free, I hope that maybe someone will listen.

First of all, I'm not sure why BBC4 is being considered in isolation here. The channel developed out of the older BBC Knowledge channel which was set up at the beginning of the 2000s with the introduction of digital Freeview channels. It was seen as being a digital extension to the quality programming that was then being shown on the analogue channel BBC2. Since then digital TV has become the norm rather than the exception for most TV viewers and over the next decade the analogue signals themselves will be phased out in the UK. There will only be digital channels available to watch. Why then is the digital only channel, BBC4, being considered in isolation when it shares so much common ground with the best of BBC2 broadcasting?

Surely it would all make more sense to look at BBC2 and BBC4 together. If the proposed budgets of the two channels were amalgamated they could be divided up between both. One channel could perhaps take on the programming for music, news and sport (including Top Gear) while the other specialised in drama (innovative and bought from overseas broadcasters) and documentaries. This is just a suggestion - there are probably many ways in which the sort of programmes assigned to the two channels could be allocated.

I would be a pity if the future of the excellent BBC4 were at risk merely because of lack of longer-term strategic thinking in the BBC as a whole.

(The petition to Save BBC4 can be found on http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/savebbcfour)

Sheringham Park in the Sunshine.

2011-06-03T17:45:00.007+01:00

Today has been a beautiful day. Blue skies with light fluffy clouds and warm but not burning sunshine. It was the perfect day to catch the last of the blossoming rhododendron bushes for which Sheringham Park in North Norfolk is famous. It was designed in the early 19th Century by Sir Humphry Repton, who those Janites amongst you may recognise as being mentioned in 'Mansfield Park' as the garden designer of the day.

Anyhow, I thought I would post a few pics of the place as I have never before been there on a better day.

Red Sky Tonight

2011-04-02T20:14:00.002+01:00

Spring appears to have arrived

2011-03-30T14:37:00.001+01:00

The Lost Art of Gratitude (with thanks to Alexander McCall Smith for coining this phrase)

2011-02-10T16:32:00.009Z

Many of you who follow me on Twitter will be aware that I have had 'sewage problems' of late. My next door neighbour and I were unamused to discover on Tuesday night that, only a month since the main sewage pipe into which our respective 'foul drains' discharge had been cleared, a further blockage seemed to be causing problems.

My poor neighbour had reached the stage where she was no longer able to flush her toilets. I was slightly better off and could still flush mine as my foul pipes have a longer stretch from the house to the sewer and so I had less build up of sewage to my house.

My neighbour and I are used to having to sort out building related problems for ourselves as we both have husbands who spend much time working away from home. However, in this instance, we gave a collective heave as we pulled off the heavy man-hole covers of our inspection chambers and stood, in the pitch darkness, shining my torch in to check on the extent of the problems therein.

Help was, however, at hand. The next morning I rang up Anglian Water to report a problem. The 'phone was answered after not too long a wait by an efficient lady who took the details, could see a plan of the sewage system I was referring to on her monitor, and informed me that, as my neighbour was unable to flush her toilet, someone would be out to us within 12 hours.

By late afternoon the man from Anglian Water arrived - a knight in a white van (if not on a white charger). With only rods at his disposal, he was unable to do more than move the problem down a bit so that my neighbour could at least use her toilet and have a shower that evening. But he arranged for a colleague to come the next day (today) and use a jetting hose to clear the blockage and move it on to the wider sewer on the road.

Mission was accomplished late this morning and I was very grateful that two extremely pleasant and efficient men had turned up, well within the time frames promised, and sorted out a distasteful problem.

So, I decided that I should get in touch with Anglian Water to express my gratitude to the two engineers they had sent out and my overall satisfaction with the service I had received from the organisation. This was when I encountered a problem. Nowhere on Anglian Water's website is there anywhere to leave a message of thanks. Nor is there any contact e-mail address given that I could have used. All I was able to find was an on-line query form which, judging by its wording, envisaged it would be used for bill queries and complaints. Indeed before I was allowed to send this form I had to find an old bill so I could quote my customer number (in the first field of the form). I just hope that the comments I made about the two gentlemen get seen by those they report to.

Is this what it has come to? Are we such an ungrateful nation of moaners and complainers that organisations such as Anglian Water assume the only reason we would want to contact them is to report a problem, query a bill or make a complaint? Is actually saying 'thank you' to people such a rare thing these days that no one who designed that website thought anyone would wish to do so through it?

Let me also, while I am on the subject, express my gratitude to Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891, pictured above) the man who founded modern sewerage systems without which, I now believe, true civilization would not have been possible.

The Papal Visit - Musings of a Protestant Agnostic

2010-09-12T14:13:00.002+01:00

I am angry at the prospect of the imminent papal state visit. Many others are too for various reasons which have been so rehearsed in the past few weeks that they need no recap here. I have just been listening to the radio where I heard an interesting discussion between David Starkey and Eamon Duffy – both historians whose work I admire. As I listened I started shouting out my agreement with David Starkey. I even tweeted it. Then I reflected on this and realised that the fundamental reason for my objection is that I am a product of my national inheritance. I may be an agnostic, but I am a Protestant agnostic.

Now, this may be strange. This is, after all, 2010 and there has been a great shift in religious adherence in this country, particularly with the presence of more Eastern Europeans whose religious affiliation, where is exists, is often Roman Catholic.

I have no problem with the pope making a pastoral visit to the UK in order to speak to the faithful. It’s happened before, it can happen again. There are many who will get a lot out of it, and I would not begrudge them that experience. However, this is to be a state visit – one that recognises the office of the pope as having both a secular as well as a spiritual authority.

Hold on, when did this country perform that volte-face? What happened to the Reformation of the English church in the Tudor period, the constitutional crises of the Stuarts which were fundamentally about an Englishman’s fear of the resurgence of the papacy as a temporal power over him? Yes, Britain (well England and Wales at least), which broke from the authority of Rome in 1534, is hosting an official visit of Pope Benedict at the cost of millions of British taxpayers’ money. British taxpayers whose country, strictly speaking, does not officially recognise the pope.

Now this may sound like the nostalgic ramblings of a history-loving, middle-aged woman, brought up in the days before multi-cultural diversity took hold. But there’s more to my point of view than that. It’s all to do with the nature of authority and the independence of the free-thinking mind; concepts that transcend cultural relativism.

I read the other day a piece in the Independent on-line by Johann Hari. He was exhorting British Roman Catholics to boycott the papal visit and cited, among other things, the pope’s lack of action over paedophile priests and his condemnation of the use of condoms in countries where HIV and AIDS are widespread. Though I agreed with much of what he wrote, I felt Hari was missing the point. He was employing an ‘ad hominem’ argument to persuade a group of people whose basic belief is that the Pope, whoever he may be at any point in history, speaks as the head of the church; the spiritual descendent of St. Peter, and not as a fallible man whose moral probity or integrity can be called into question. Such is the nature of authority in the Roman Catholic Church. I am aware that there are many Roman Catholics who want to see change and who do not agree with, and much less put into practice, many of the pope’s ex officio pronouncements. I would say to them that change will never happen in your lifetime while the notion of Papal supremacy and authority continues. It is now 2010 and high time you followed the lead of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and began to question the objective reality of that authority and its power over you. Some of you may well see the use of condoms as a greater evil than the AIDS epidemic. Fine, I suppose, if you’ve arrived at that view as a result of your own questioning but please, not just because you have to give lip-service to a Mediaeval figure-head.

And to think that this visit was, apparently, the brain-child of Gordon Brown, a boy brought up in a Scottish Presbyterian manse! Was he paying no attention when he studied the Reformation as part of his history degree at the University of Edinburgh?

Some thoughts on Twibullying

2010-07-27T11:56:00.002+01:00

Around this time last week a fracas broke out on Twitter over a seemingly insignificant matter - the repetition of one-liner gags. I noticed that Keith Chegwin was complaining about being bullied on Twitter by comedians who were indignant that he was using their gags without due acknowledgement. I did a quick Twitter search and discovered that there was, indeed, a backlash at Cheggers which could rightly be described at bullying.

I hate bullying and blogged on the subject. My main point was that comedians should be less precious and remember that, at the end of the day, it's not the individual jokes that matter, it's how you tell 'em.

This blog provoked an interesting discussion and I am particularly indebted to Tony Cowards for putting forward a balanced and reasonable case for those who write and perform one-liners and are trying to make a name for themselves.

Keith Chegwin has stated on many occasions in the last week that the jokes are either his own or are so old and well-known that it would be impossible for him to provide an attribution. Now I am sure that this is the case for many of the jokes Keith tweets but some jokes are recent and even I recognised the repetition of the Milton Jones joke told on TV a few weeks earlier. Milton Jones is probably a big enough name in comedy to be able to cope with this. However, Keith could help out a lot of the less well known comedians by giving them a mention from time to time. I do wish he would do this. It might go some way towards reducing the ill-feeling.

I and others have put this to Keith but with little response. He just appears to entrench himself further into his position. Meanwhile the bullying continues but not, I note, from most of the comedians affected but by the usual mob on Twitter who will jump on any bandwagon in order to hurl abuse at someone who seems an easy target. And it's not just abuse aimed at Keith. There are plenty of Keith's followers who are indulging in the same abusive behaviour against the comedians.

When did joking suddenly become such a serious, depressing business?

Cheggers nicked my joke, mummy.

2010-07-21T19:51:00.004+01:00

The most pathetic piece of schoolboy taunting has been going on today on Twitter. It would appear that a few of comedy's diddums have been having a mass hissy-fit because they think that Keith Chegwin has been nicking their jokes.

Now, let me admit right now that I can see why it is so easy for people to jump on the 'Let's bash Cheggers' bandwagon. I have only been on Twitter myself for 3 months and I clearly remember a couple of months ago saying to friends: 'Good news; I have my first celebrity follower on Twitter! Bad news; it's Keith Chegwin.' It got a laugh, yes. But, like a lot of the hissy-fitters' jokes, at the expense of someone else.

I have realised that all good old Cheggers is seeking to do is disseminate a few laughs each day. OK I don't always laugh at all them, but I find at least 50% of them amusing. I regard his tweeting as a thesaurus of one-liners. Now, I have been to a fair few comedy shows in my time and, for me, it is not those who tell 'jokes' who are funny, it is those who simply talk to the audience and can improvise that shine. Of those I have seen live in the last year, Rob Brydon, Marcus Brigstocke and John Bishop fall into this category. I really cannot imagine these wonderful comedians worrying that Cheggers has stolen their one-liner.

And for those who do feel like throwing a temper tantrum about it, remember this - no one has intellectual property rights over a joke. If you think you do - try to register it. You went into the comedy game in the full knowledge that this was the case, so live with it and grow up. If you're any kind of a comic you can get laughs just by standing there and talking to your audience, you don't need a trademarked, patented, copyrighted one-liner.

And as for the jumpers on the bandwagon - get a life, and an independent mind.

Planted this delphinium last year. Not bad considering I've done nothing to it since!

2010-07-08T17:12:00.002+01:00

Living Without Music?

2010-07-04T09:48:00.002+01:00

I was listening this morning to the religious current affairs programme on Radio 4. I'm not usually up so early on a Sunday but I'd had to drop my son off at the station as he was booked on the 7am train to London. He is going to the 'Wireless' festival in Hyde Park. Music has been an important part of my son's life since he was quite young. So it was with great sadness that I heard a discussion on the subject of Muslim children and music. It would appear that some Muslim parents are withdrawing their children from school music lessons as, in some circles, music itself is seen as un-Islamic and evil.

Just two days ago I was at a concert in Norwich Cathedral. It was the last ever school music concert in which my son would take part. He has just completed his A-levels and will officially leave school next week. Watching him sing in the choir, I could see in that 18 year old face, the traces of the five year old singer at his first school concert. When he played his drum solo, to loud applause, in the wonderful acoustics of the cathedral, my maternal pride was at an all time high - a feeling shared I'm sure by the mother of his friend who played the most sublime sax solo. But most significant of all was the fact that this was the final school concert organised and conducted by a truly inspiring head of music at the school, Mr. Colin Dowdeswell. He is retiring after 27 years in that position. And I wonder whether my son's musical career would ever have started had he not had all the musical opportunities afforded to him at school and inspired by that man and his staff.

It started with school music lessons but has gone beyond that. My son and friends have formed various bands outside school and have played at several venues in the Norwich area. All this began with an interest in music fostered at school. It is for this reason that I feel such sadness that some children will never get the opportunity to explore music. What it must be like to live in a culture which denies humans the right to enjoy such pleasure I simply cannot imagine. For me (in the words of John Miles):
To live without my music
would be impossible to do.
In this world of troubles,
my music pulls me through.

When is a cold -call really a call to help you stop getting cold calls?

2010-06-30T20:47:00.006+01:00

I have just received the most paradoxical of cold 'phone calls. I have been registered with the Telephone Preference Service for the last 8 years (i.e. since I have had my present 'phone number). It used to be a good, free, service but in the last six months or so I have had more unsolicited calls than I had ever received in the previous 8 years. My sister-in-law had noticed a similar increase and we had both intended to contact the TPS to find out what was happening. I never got round to it (don't know if she did).

So, a short while ago, my 'phone rang:

Mr. Man from call-centre in India: Hello. my name is -----, calling on behalf of V---

Me: Hold on, do you know I'm registered with the Telephone Preference Service?

Mr. Man: Oh yes, madam, that is why I am calling, You are still getting unwanted marketing calls despite your registration with Telephone Preference Service, is that not right? Now we at V---- are offering a service that guarantees that you will receive no such calls anymore.

Me: And how much do you charge for this service?

Mr. Man: Only £5 a month, madam.

Me: No thanks, bye!

Dear (sweet) F.A. I understand there's an upcoming vacancy for the job of England manager

2010-06-29T18:15:00.003+01:00

2010-06-29T17:21:00.000+01:00

The Quest for Identity and Why I Was Left Scratching My Head

Last weekend I listened to two talks given by Baroness Susan Greenfield. She was here in Norwich as the guest speaker and presenter of prizes at Norwich School. Both speeches were, substantially, the same; the subject matter being based upon her latest book ‘ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century: The Quest for Meaning in the 21st Century’. Not the catchiest of titles, so I shall refer to it as ‘ID’.

Susan Greenfield is not one to shy away from courting controversy, be it rattling the cages of the Royal Institution or questioning the effect on children of too many hours a day spent in front of screens of one sort or another.

Friday evening’s lecture took place under the auspices of the ‘Thomas Browne Society’ – a philosophical group consisting of various teachers and sixth-formers at the school. This was an inaugural meeting to involve a wider participation within the interested community and was open to parents, other schools and the public in general. It was a (not quite) death by Powerpoint presentation and included a 30 second explanation of neuroscience – from genes to consciousness; genes being the necessary but not sufficient conditions for consciousness. On the Saturday afternoon she spoke, without screens, to a much wider audience including a significant number of teenagers. Susan Greenfield has clearly given this talk many times before and is totally fluent. She is a good communicator who is so on top of her subject that the lay-person can only sit back and admire.

Her argument is that each human brain is unique. We start off with what our genes have supplied, but the development of that brain is not determined solely by genetic inheritance. Over time and through external stimuli, the human brain develops as connections are established and all those little root and branch-like parts of neurons multiply, grow and spread. It is in these connections that creativity is generated. This is how a person moves from merely ‘sensory’ to ‘cognitive’ experience. Those connections can, however, be broken. Having once been established with maturity they can be interrupted, temporarily, by the misuse of alcohol or drugs, or permanently through degenerative brain disease and dementia. It is on these latter conditions that Susan Greenfield’s area of research is concentrated. She stresses how important such research will be for coming decades when people will live till a very ripe old age and the proportion of elderly to young will increase significantly. In her talk to pupils (as well as their parents) on the Saturday she emphasised the children’s responsibility for ensuring a good quality of life for their elders. Here’s hoping they were listening.

The 21^st century, she argues, brings with it new challenges and opportunities in the form of biotechnology; nanotechnology and information technology. It is with regard to her comments on the last of these that she has had much media coverage and criticism. She questions whether exposing developing brains, and by this she means the brains of anyone under the age of 20 years, to an unmitigated diet of screen related experiences (video games, social media websites etc.) might not be harming the development of those brains. Is it possible that the lack of traditional social interaction and the abandonment of imaginative thought and active physical play in favour of electronic substitutes could be stunting the full development of the brain? True, such activity may enhance IQ levels, but what about creativity and empathy? She has been much maligned (by Ben Goldacre among others) for her promulgation of this view. However, on closer questioning of her, I discovered that she is merely seeking to raise the question. She is making no dogmatic assertion. And maybe the brain development of the future of mankind is important enough for the question to be posed. Anyhow I, for one, will read ‘ID’ to see how she explores these ideas in more detail before deciding how far I go in agreeing with her.

By the way, it is clear that the Baroness does not ‘get’ Twitter and that’s a pity as it can be a great forum in which to begin a discussion of ideas such as this. In fact I spent about an hour, on and off, tweeting on this very subject on Friday evening. Twitter is what you make of it; please don’t dismiss it too readily.

Whilst I was waiting to hear the Saturday talk....

Anyhow, from the higher intellectual musings on Baroness Greenfield’s speech to the far more mundane: I spent much of the prize-giving ceremony wondering just how many head lice the young girl (aged about 7) sitting in front of me was harbouring. She was one of three young children and so presumably must have had an older, fourth, sibling at the school, receiving a prize. Maybe her mother should have decided before so readily popping out quite many children that she should spend just a bit of time and effort checking one child’s head from time to time. If I could see the 30-odd lice crawling around on the top of the head from a (safe) distance of three feet away, then I conclude that the woman must be blind or woefully negligent not to have done something about her child’s infestation sooner. All children get a few head lice from time to time (thanks mainly to having to share classroom space with children of mothers such as this). But this was infestation on a grand scale. And this would not have been some socially deprived family. This was the prize-giving ceremony at an independent school where the fees are around £3,000 per term, for God’s sake! Anyway, what sort of person brings such young children to two hours of speeches which can generate long periods of ennui even in someone as old as yours truly. I suspect that, in this instance, the children’s brains would have received greater stimulation had their mother simply plonked them in front of a TV screen for those two hours, despite what the Baroness might say.

2010-06-29T13:51:00.000+01:00