Monday 30 July 2012

Spare Change


I knew a Californian once, one who had settled in England, who I fell to discussing drinking habits with.  In addition to his incredulity that the products of Messrs Gallo should be treated as fine-wines rather than the brown-bag juice that they really were, it was clear that by his San Fran lights pretty much everyone in Britain was, at the very least, a borderline alcoholic whereas I maintained that the bulk of them were pure and simple Drinkers and that there was a difference.

Similarly, I have been pondering the difference between a bibliophile and a biblioholic.  It comes down, I think, to the number of ‘units’ in the To-Read pile.  While a Bibliophile might have the occasional binge, the average size of their To-Read pile remains at a sensible and decent level. Say a dozen books or so.   A biblioholic, on the other hand, is a compulsive purchaser and has an ever growing To-Read tower, one that they will never, can never, get to the foundation of.

I prefer to count myself among the former.  Very occasionally I do actually get to the bottom of the pile and there are times when I really don’t have anything new and unread in the house.  Admittedly this doesn’t happen that often but the fact that it does and that I can consider myself a maintaining ‘phile is in large part due to avoiding impulse purchasing on Amazon.
It is far far too easy to get caught up in a flurry of enthusiasm after reading a review, or whatever, to begin clicking away and thus stir drones-unknown in some far-flung warehouse to picking and packing and despatching.  Indulge in these high-jinks as often as twice a week and, boy, that pile is going to grow.  So, unless there is a rare and genuinely compelling reason as to why a book must be bought right now, I tend to restrict myself to the vicarious thrills of adding items to my wish-lists, which do grow to inordinate length, and just have two or three binges, benders, or sprees of bulk buying per year. 

Which isn’t to say that I don’t buy books between times – I certainly do – but I don’t tend to buy them by the barrow load.  It’s like this:

I don’t tend, when I prepare to go out on a morning, to bother with too much small change about my person and at the end of the day, when I get back home, I generally dispose of what shrapnel I have accumulated into a couple of pots: one for 1,2,5p pieces and another for 10and 20ps.  When the former builds up to sufficient bulk I usually give it over to a local hospice, thus salving my charitable conscience.  The latter, on the other hand is my binge-fodder. 
 
Getting from pot to letter-box used to involve bagging the coins up into £10 worth of 20ps and £5 worth of 10ps, lugging them off down to the bank and handing them over the counter to the cashier who would dutifully weight them and credit my account accordingly.  Over the least tow or three years, however, I have experienced an increasing degree of resistance from the cashiers themselves and the general-factotum staff loitering about in the bank’s lobby to performing this service.  Rather, they have been very insistent that I should take myself off over to a machine that you tip the coins into and which weighs them and credits them and provides a receipt without any need for all that nasty inefficient human  intervention business.

At a mechanical level this all sounds sensible enough, especially if it offers an escape from ten minutes tedium in a queue.  In practice, I find that it takes the machine two or three times as long to do the work as it would a human cashier since said machine will only process so many coins at once and obliges you to navigate back down through four levels of the menu hierarchy for each batch.  It’s a minor irritation that the machine also has something of a penchant for always rejecting a handful of perfectly sound coins, seemingly at random.  The major issue, of course, is that I cant actually rely upon the machine being in ready and working order when I get there so I still have to bag the flaming coins up in case the cashier, reluctantly admits that I have no alternative but to take them to the counter.

This might all sound like the grumblings of a grumpy old early middle-aged man but there is a moral aspect too.  ATMs apart, I do have a prejudice against self-service in banks and, more specially, supermarkets.  Firstly, because the burden of the labour is shifted to me without any benefit that I can see apart from fractional time-saving.  Secondly, because I don’t feel that it is much of a great leap forward to further the profits of the banks’ and supermarkets’ share-holders by doing away with what are effectively entry-level jobs done, in the main, by women.

I should confess that this prejudice is reinforced in supermarkets by the fact that, on the evidence of the few occasions that I have allowed myself to be cajoled or bullied down the self-service route, the machines have a personal animosity towards me and my shopping that ends up with me getting red-faced, sweaty and cross and humiliatingly seeking assistance.
 
But, though I do still resolutely queue in Tesco or Sainsbury for the remaining manned check-outs, I have all but given up in the bank.  The last straw was when I refused to allow the cashier to usher me off – on the basis that she could do the work faster – and she, very reluctantly and as slowly as possible, got the scales out and weighed the coins and then tried to keep me at the counter by trying to bully me – I use the b-word deliberately – to take the time to compare my current insurance products with those that the bank was keen to offer.  I felt rather less committed to job-retentention after that encounter and now, invariably and dutifully, head straight for the machine, though I do feel dirty and diminished for giving in to corporate diktat.

Anyway, I got up bright and early a few weekends ago, did the bagging up (just in case), hauled the whole load off down the hill into town and to the bank, where the machine took three goes to process £74.20 (80p being humorously rejected) and after a visit to the barber and a stop for a coffee, came back home and got busy frivoling*, the last fruits of which have dropped through my letterbox today and built my To-Read pile back high.






*Frivoling (verb)- to spend money frivolously.



Sunday 15 July 2012

The Eastcastle Street Job


I caught a staged production of The Ladykillers a few months ago1.  It wasn’t at all bad, diverging enough from slavish adherence to the screenplay to be interesting and taking sufficient advantage of the relaxation in public morals since the 1950s to be wickedly funny.
Whether this line made it onto the stage or not I can’t recall but aficionados of the film will recall that there is a scene in which the villains try to intimidate the indestructible Mrs Wilberforce by threatening to implicate her as an underworld mastermind:  “I’ll tell ’em she planned the big one, the  Eastcastle Street job.” (Referencing a real 1952 robbery of a Post Office van which resulted in a haul of £287,000.)

Sunday, and I headed off into the West End to the early showing of Your Sister’s Sister, a smart, funny, indie chamber-piece and emerged at about 2pm blinking into broad daylight2.  I walked up through Soho to Ramillies Street, popped into the newly relocated Photographers’ Gallery for a browse about an exhibition of Japanese photo-books3, before cutting across the crowded pavements of Oxford Street  and heading off along the parallel, and much quieter, aforementioned Eastcastle Street.

It was at this point that the small Fiat pulled up alongside me and the besuited and beshaded Italian gentleman asked me for directions towards Heathrow Airport in heavily accented English.  Easy enough, I thought, and I obliged by giving him the right bearing for the Marble Arch and points west.  Then the scam began.

He explained that he was employed by Emporio Armani and had been running a fashion show at Harrods4.  And, by good fortune, he turned out to have a number of suits and jackets on the back seat of the car and wanted to thank me for my kindness.  Before I knew it I was being offered a feel of the quality of the materials while he explained that I would be doing him a favour by taking them off his hands as he would be charged to take them onto the ‘plane since they exceeded his luggage allowance.   

Two things struck me at this point.  Firstly, that it seemed a little odd that Armani couldn’t stretch to a few extra Euros in travel costs.  Secondly, that the very professional business card that he handed me bore a webmail address. 
 
“How much?” I asked as he made to start putting the things into a bag for me.  “Very little,” was the response, indicated with a Latin shrug and thumb and forefinger pressed closely together.  I shook my head.  “No.”  He took the card back and began rearranging his wears as I stepped off, checking my pockets to see that my wallet and my ‘phone were still present and correct.

I’d assumed that that was the last that I would see of him but a little while later, as I was sitting outside the Marquis of Granby enjoying a pale ale and a sandwich, the Fiat swung slowly around the sharp corner from Rathbone Street, still cruising in search of marks.  I gave him a cheery wave, which he didn’t return.

1The Ladykillers offers a remarkable view of what Kings Cross and environs looked like in the 50’s and  Martin Underwood’s website provides a thorough analysis of where the scenes were shot.
2There’s something deliciously delinquent about lunchtime showings.  For one thing, they tend to be nearly empty, for another it just doesn’t ever feel right and proper to leave a cinema in bright daylight.
3I like Japan.  Or the idea of it, anyway, since I’ve never yet been there.  To my mind it is possibly the most alien place on the planet with proper plumbing. 
4In retrospect, I think that mentioning Armani and Harrods was layering the luxury on with a rather large trowel.

Monday 9 July 2012

Radio Londres


Something has been bothering me about the London 2012 Olympics.

It’s not just the saturation media coverage that’s been counting down seemingly for ever and the lauding of male and female contenders in sports that neither I nor anyone I know takes anything like a regular interest in.  Nor is it the forthcoming transport disruption in London, Zil Lanes and all.

It’s only come to me tonight, as I surf Facebook and see the whooping comments and photographs posted by friends and acquaintances as they track the inexorably inane progress of the torch, that this is another Diana Moment.

Remember that?  The week of public mortification between the smash and the state funeral; the ad-hoc shrines and the breakdown in common-sense; and, above all else, the suppression of dissent.  It’s like that again now.  It’s back to being a member of the French Resistance, where you daren’t give voice to private misgivings, save to close and trusted fellows, for fear of being denounced.

There is a very heavy and very palpable social pressure to toe the line and not to moan in public about the (costly) fatuity of it all.  To do so is to risk being impugned as a misery guts.   Which, if you think about it, isn’t all too far removed from the post-Gulag tactics of the late and unlamented rulers of the USSR, who charged the dissidents of the worker’s paradise with being mentally ill.

Thankfully, it will all be over in a few weeks but for now:

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Bellow Zero


Saul Bellow.  Maybe it’s just me.  He sits high up there on the lists of the 20th Century greats and, after all Marty1 likes him, so maybe it’s just me but I’ve never yet felt that he cuts the mustard.

I’ve been reading Henderson the Rain King.  Is it supposed to be funny? Allowing for the fact that humour dates2, was it ever funny?  I haven’t cracked a smile.  Is it supposed to be, in some way, profound?  I haven’t felt the slightest of ripples of profundity lap over me. 

Seventy pages to go.  I suppose that there’s a chance that it’ll snap-to and, assuming that I can be bothered to finish it, it’ll leave me with such an impression that I’ll feel impelled to go back and read it over.  It seems pretty unlikely right now.    I tried The Adventures of Augie March some years ago.   I.  Couldn’t.  Get.  Into.  It.  Does this diminish me?  I don’t feel diminished. 
  
1 Mind you, Marty raves on about Nabokov too and I don’t think too much of him either.  Pale Fire is one of the worst critically acclaimed books that I have ever given up the precious unrecoverable hours of my life to not enjoying.  As for Lolita, it is just creepy.*

2 See: The Goons (mostly), Abbott and Costello, The Young Ones (which has dated horribly in a way that the contemporaneous The Good Life hasn’t).

* My sense of creepiness as regards Lolita was only heightened by taking it out in my bag one day, sitting down in a park to read it and only gradually, and awfully, waking up to the fact that I was sitting opposite the playing field of a girls’ school.  They were playing hockey.  I left.