SCOTLAND THE BRAVE

The al-Megrahi affair has shown up a number of individuals and institutions in characteristic attitudes.

The release of al-Magrahi on compassionate grounds presents a picture of a Scottish government acting boldly on its own convictions. (It is only a pity that some Scots political parties have seen fit to muddy the waters for what they see as political advantage.)

The attempted bullying by the FBI is a gross interference in another nation's affairs - a not uncommon attitude in that quarter. Are American neo-cons really so naive that they think that terrorists around the world are thinking, 'I'll get involved in a terrorist act; then if I can contract a terminal disease I shall have got away with it'?

The anguish felt by American parents who lost their children at Lockerbie is totally understandable. One is saddened, however, that it should so often take the form of the kind of rant extruded by the gun lobby: they seemed disappointed that they had been denied the pleasure of watching the accused dying behind bars.

The contrast with our own Dr. Jim Swire is marked. He too has suffered the death of a dearly loved child, yet he continues to maintain that the original conviction of al-Magrahi was unsound, and to campaign on his behalf.

Nothing can condone random acts of terrorism. Yet one can only notice a kind of horrible distorted justice in the arguments of Islamics who point to the shooting down of the Iran Airbus flight 655 in July 1998. The USS Vincennes was in breach of Iranian territorial waters, and failed to recognise a civilian aircraft on a scheduled flight. 290 pilgrims were killed. After attempts to deny the incident had been shown for the lies they were, the captain who gave the order to fire was awarded the Legion of Merit. The comment by Old Bush sums it up - 'I shan't apologise. I don't care what the facts are.' Fundamentalist religious beliefs are no excuse for wanton violence, on either side.

The stage-managed reception of al-Megrahi on his return to Libya was, to say the least, very unfortunate and ill-timed. But then Gadaffi has no taste.

An American actor, recently asked for his opinion on the al-Megrahi case, on a BBC chat show, replied, 'I sure want to see that guy dead!' The anchor-man, John Sargent, was visibly taken aback, as well he might have been. (Any intelligence that the interviewee might have possessed was easily masked by the fact that he was wearing the loon's head-dress - a baseball cap indoors.)

The American right presumably wastes little time watching performances of plays by a back-number Brit such as Shakespeare. Otherwise they might have pondered the fact that earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice.

COMPLIMENT / COMPLEMENT

The latest glossy illiteracy to drop through the letter-box -

'NEW! Now you can have a beautiful dinner-table, with napkins specially colour-coded to compliment your table-ware!'

One imagines the delightful conversation:

'May I compliment you on your latest colour scheme, Lady Denby-Ware?'

'Certainly not, Mr. Napkin. Get back under the table where you belong!'

GRUMPY OLD MEN

Why are you such a grumpy old man - always complaining about something?

I'm not grumpy by nature - in fact I am generally thought to be a rather jolly old codger, as you can see. And as I approach the end of things, for 'death, a necessary end, comes when it will come', I should like to think that my generation were leaving something worth while to the next.

But circumstances make it increasingly difficult. There can be no doubt that, looking back to my youth, I see a great many things that have deteriorated. Life in the streets is more violent - we only go out at night for a visit to the theatre, or a restaurant. Apart from that we are more than content to stay at home. There are compensations, of course. We have at our finger-tips a whole range of DVDs of great films and television. Music pours into the room with a startling clarity unknown a few years ago. But the world of strolling and chatting has faded.

In those days I was able to tour the country by cycle, on roads that were fairly quiet at the worst, and frequently, with a little map-reading, deserted. Cotton shirt and shorts, and panniers to carry a little kit; 3-speed Sturmey-Archer gears if one was lucky; and one was away. Nowadays they all seem to think that they are competing in the Olympics - hard hats with streamlining of no value whatever, tight lycra, t-shirts of distressingly discordant patterns, and above all, expressions of grim determination. When was the last time you saw a happy cyclist?

I won't multiply examples, but you will know what they are.

And taking a wider view doesn't help at all. There is no doubt at all now that we have ill-used the planet,and that it is in a shabby and run-down state. Those who come after us may be able to patch it up a bit, but most of what has gone is gone for good. Tribe quarrels with tribe, and generally seems to have no answer but blind rage and killing - especially when fuelled by the myths of the religions. The greatest power in the world seems to have no concept of constructive action, but launches its young men into campaign after campaign which in the nature of things it cannot hope to bring to any valid conclusion. Harry Patch said, 'In the end it comes down to talking, so why can't they do the talking first?' But nobody listens to us old fogeys.

Yes, I'm glad that I can make an appointment to see my GP whenever I want, instead of queuing up in a bleak waiting-room for the next turn. Yes, I am glad that the various conditions that are attendant on old age are comfortably controlled by better and better medication. Yes, I am reassured by the fact that when the weather turns bleak I can order our groceries on-line, and they will be delivered to our door - and in a great profusion unimaginable to me as a boy. And so on and so on.

But always there is this nagging sense that one world at least is coming to an end - youngsters kill each other on the streets for no reason, public facilities are mindlessly vandalised, popular music is a mass of violent noise, everyday speech as heard on radio and television is a mumbled jumble, and....and..... And what's new?

We have been converted to digital TV. Hooray! Our picture is now much brighter and sharper. But what is the greatest new feature that I am invited to wonder at? We are now able to receive no fewer than 70 channels! Of these about half a dozen sometimes show something worth watching. The remainder pour out a vast sewage of noise and clatter, of no imaginable value, ready to be lapped up by the rising generation.

Is it any wonder that I may occasionally give an impression of being grumpy? But saddened is what I really am. This is not the world I voted for in 1945.

I PROTEST!

What are these good people doing? Yes, that's right, sonny, they are protesting. Every Englishman's born right. But let's be quite clear - they are proTESTing. They are proTESTors. What they are engaged in is a PROtest, but that doesn't make them PROtesters. I proTEST that this is another nasty little distortion of the English language - imported, like as not, from Silicon Valley.

Along with that other increasingly popular mangling of decent speech - SUBscribers, who presumably SUBscribe to magazines or whatever. SubSCRIBERS, please. I suppose they don't pay a SUBscription - or, awful thought, do they? Anything goes.

The destruction of the English language seems to have developed a hideous momentum of its own, like a Greek tragedy. Take 'refrigerator'. A large mouthful for a common thing, so we contract it. Chambers lays it out quite clearly - contraction 'frig', pronounced, of course, 'frij'. But no, it must be spelt 'fridge'. I have waited years for the inevitable to happen, and the other day it did. A glossy brochure proclaimed the qualities of the latest - wait for it - 'refridgerator'. Another victory for the hordes of text-messagers.

You don't care? Many don't. I do.

ILLUMINATION AT LAST

So this is it, then - my excuse for the infrequency of posts lately; all my creative energies have been devoted to conquering this difficult task of illumination. The colouring is in gouache, which is a quite different technique from transparent watercolour. The gilding is something again, but I have made a post about this before.

I am quite pleased with this as a first effort, though the process of photography serves to disguise the fact that the gilding starts off pretty rough, but I was able to polish my technique as I went along.

Watch this space for more examples of this very retro art in due course.

RELIGIOUS THINKING

I have never touched on the subject of religion in this blog, mainly because the claims of the sects seem so meaningless and contradictory; but the sight of a Professor of Theology vapouring on TV recently on the subject of Darwinism has so enraged me that I feel I have to register a protest.

First to clear the ground. There are among many shades of thought two main types of thinking.

In logical thinking the process is to examine the phenomena, and to propound a hypothesis. The thinker then collects all the available data connected with the subject, and considers whether all or most of it supports the hypothesis. If this is so, then the hypothesis is accepted, at least for the time being, before it is supplanted by further information. A clear example of this kind of thinking is scientific study, though it is by no means confined to science. Its progress may be traced in the increased understanding of the shape of the universe provided by Copernicus, followed by Newton, followed by Einstein.

The other main type of thinking is religious. Here the process is to devise a theory. This may be the result of long hard thought, or it may just float into the mind - a process dignified as 'revelation'. Once the theory is felt to be acceptable, for whatever reason, a search is then made for all the data which may support it. Any contrary evidence is disregarded, or may be labelled as heresy, or may even be actively suppressed. The essential feature is that the conclusion must coincide with the original idea, and thinking proceeds backwards from this point. Ironically, a poet as deeply religious as T.S.Eliot summed it up perfectly - 'The end is where we start from.' The idea can then be reinforced by embalming it in dogma or holy writ. Men such as Galileo have been threatened, or tortured, or killed, for denying such embalmed chunks of prejudice. Darwin himself was inhibited for years from publishing the truth by the thought of the religious vilification he would have to undergo.

All this was brought to my mind by the antics of the theologian in seeking to explain that a belief in evolution was not incompatible with religion, since that although the irrefutable facts of evolution clearly show that much of biblical teaching is no more than fantasy, yet God had employed evolution as a tool in his creation of the world. This is to reduce the Bible to the level of a tale with coloured decorations.

How an apparently intelligent man could go about thus sticking plasters on a rapidly deflating balloon, when the increasingly obvious fact is that religiosity is merely a contrived, if fascinating, myth, and that the fundamental nature of the world about us, though terrifying in its complexity, is only to be understood by the gradual accumulation of carefully observed and collated fact, and not through a a cloud of vague and contradictory imagining, I find it difficult to understand.

But then, of course, he knew the answer was 'God' before he even began to consider the problem.

WHO GETS THE BONUS - AND WHY?

When I began this blog I promised myself - and anyone who happened to be looking over my shoulder - that I would never say 'I Told You So'.

So it is with a great deal of self-control that I just manage to adhere to this rule at present. All I will say is that if you care to look at my post of October 10 2007 you will see an accurate forecast of the financial disaster to come.

It cannot be that I have a clearer understanding of global wealth creation than the masterminds of the industry; after all they must be possessed of a good deal of low cunning to have got where they are (or were until recently). The only answer must be that they are much greedier than I am. They've certainly done a deal better out of recent events than I have.

And the solution? I suggested for a start that credit cards should carry much more advice and supervision. The other day I received a new card, carrying a little sticker reading 'Use credit wisely'. Well, it's a start, I suppose.

Perhaps if I gave some more advice it would also be followed. And then perhaps not.

IS MY JACKET STRAIGHT?

Ignorant use of language is always irritating, especially when it leads to confusion of thought or communication, but the most annoying form is where the speaker or writer is trying to create an impression by using words and phrases which may sound splendid but which he has not bothered to master.

A common example of this is a jeering reference to some older female relative as 'straight-laced'. Quite where this lace is being worn, or how it is kept straight, has never been thought out. English has two similar but distinct words in this area.

'Straight' means not wandering from side to side; as in a straight line, which those skilled in geometry know as the shortest distance between two points. So you can twang a stretched chalked cord to mark out a straight line.

'Strait' comes from a different source and means narrow or restricted. If your elderly aunt wears a corset her maid can pull at the laced-up back until Aunt is restricted into a suitably narrow shape. Aunt may not be able to move with any ease, though, and the scope of her activities is limited. So, the phrase suggests, is her mind: strait-laced.

The Straits of Dover are a narrow seaway. A strait-jacket is a garment for restricting the movements of violent patients. People who are severely limited in cash may be thought of as being in dire straits. [I was heartened to see that the group who took this as a name at least knew how to spell it.]

This not the only use of fuddled imagery. Patients born with a split upper lip need surgery to correct the hare-lip, which is no impediment to a hare. What the user thought of as a hair-lip I can't imagine - a kind of intrusive moustache?

Playwrights construct plays, as a metal-worker constructs wrought iron. So the original Mr. Arkwright built arks, or ships; Mr.Wainright wains, or carts; a wheelwright wheels.
None of them needed to be able to write. So let us have no more playwrites.

You think I refer to non-existent blunders? Within the last month I have seen in B&Q's bathroom area printed containers of 'Sealing Tape for Sanitary Wear'. Investment companies have advised me to reign in my spending. A man has boasted of travelling about in a decade old Buick - the wrong pronunciation of the wrong word. They're out there all right, the vandals who trample on the English language.

ILLUMINATIO MEA

Wozziss all about then, eh?

It's about the ancient craft of producing manuscripts by hand, and especially the art of decorating them with patterns, miniatures in capital letters, natural and fantastic forms, but above all by 'illuminating' them by the addition of real gold leaf.

This is a very tricky process, and mastering it has taken up a good deal of my time lately - hence the lack of posts recently. I have however manged to devise a pretty fool-proof technique, and in my usual generous way thought it might be a good idea to publish my findings. so -

GILDING

Gild before painting, except for minute areas.

Outline area with 2B pencil only.

Check that gesso is creamy and flowing. Flood it on to the area with a No.0 brush, using enough to form a raised dome. Leave to dry for at least 4 hours.

Coat the area with acrylic gloss medium [not gold size], aiming for a thin uniform glaze. Use brushes Nos.0 and 000.

Wait for 5 minutes. Then re-coat with a little more medium, aiming for a consistent semi-matte finish.

Wait for 5 minutes. Cut a piece of transfer gold leaf to fit the area. Press it down on the area with a finger.

Wait for 10 minutes. Remove the backing. Wait for 10 more minutes. Brush off the surplus leaf with a soft hair mop.

Wait for a minimum of 4 hours. Burnish lightly with a polished stone.

Can't go wrong!

RECALL OF TIME PAST


We live in age of constant change. This cliche is particularly true in the world of electronics, where today's must-have is tomorrow's old hat. Most of the exciting add-ons seem to me to be largely the result of nerds amusing themselves by seeing what new trick the box can be induced to perform, rather than arising from any deficiency they can supply.

And there is the tendency to confuse smooth technology with the need to have anything worthwhile to say. My experience of video games - very limited, gained from looking over younger shoulders - is that the images have become closer and closer to real time photography. This seems to me to have nothing to do with the value of what is being shown, which has no relation to any human sympathy, understanding, wit, articulateness, or any awareness of a world other than the non-existent virtual world in which so many young appear largely to live.


What is this extended approach march leading up to?


Only to this. As you know, I have an interest in the Victorian toy stage, which is a repository of a great deal of fascinating history which I shall be glad to expound to you any time you have an hour or two to spare. To the great majority this will seem the last asylum of the aging mind. Yet simply as an example of what was, and still may be, arrived at by the simplest of tools - in this case cardboard and paint - it is worth consideration. The greatest achievements of dramatic art are achieved by movements of men and material on a dusty stage, not by glossy video effects.


So here is a snatch of the world of the richly decorated theatres of the past, and the splendid effects that skilled technicians displayed in them, as recaptured in the cardboard world of 'penny plain and tuppence coloured'.

A QUESTION OF COLOUR

When you're choosing colours to distinguish three teams or three players you will automatically go for three primaries - red, yellow,blue. They are the most easily distinguished. But suppose you're designing for four teams - what's your fourth colour? Green, of course.

But why? Green is only one of three available secondaries. Why not orange, why not violet? But we all feel that green is the most distinctive. Orange might be a sort of weak red. Violet might be a kind of cool red. But green is no sort of yellow.

Why does green have this dominance over the other secondaries? Is it a matter of optics, something to do with how our eyes work? Or how our brains distinguish the messages that the retina sends? Is it a matter of familiarity - green being the most common colour to appear to us in large areas?

Or is it just tradition? Are children brought up to regard these as the inevitable four colours? Are school house sports teams distinguished by coloured motifs any more? I doubt if any infant minds are now greatly impressed by long winter evenings playing halma - if, indeed, they ever were.

Odd, this business of coloured playing pieces. Chess has only two uniforms, Black and White. Even if the exquisitely turned oriental pieces on the board are dyed crimson, officially they are Black. Strangely for a mathematician, Dodgson got it wrong. His Red Queen is the Black Queen of chess notation. But I suppose he wrote from the child's point of view, where the pieces are described as they appear on the board. Tenniel's illustration, being monochrome, would serve for either.

And while we're thinking about colour - what is happening to traffic lights? Clever lads were always keen to point out to their grandparents that the green lights were in fact blue-green to compensate for the yellowing effect of the foggy English climate. But now they seem to have gone turquoise. Are the authorities aware of some impending change in the colour of the atmosphere?

I have my doubts.

INTERIOR DECORATION

I have mentioned already a set of masks I have made for my own pleasure, based on an imaginary ballet of The Elements. In order to let us look at these occasionally I hang them, one at a time, in our hall, and rotate them with the seasons. A harmless eccentricity, I thought, until I remembered the picture of Mr. Pooter decorating his hall. Do I resemble him, I wondered, in such a pompous charade?

A disturbing idea - until I remembered that he, of course, was hanging a mass-produced plaster stag's head. This,he thought, gave his house 'style' (which in a sense it did). This seems to represent a level of absurdity all of its own, above which I feel a certain separation.

Still, it's odd, isn't it, what people display on their walls? I mean, of course, other people. One's own home merely shows a variety of interesting or amusing objects, all displaying the operation of a discerning mind. What, after all, could be a more rational ornament than the piggy-bank, an accurate representation of a Gloucester Old Spot, and affectionately known as Simpkin, which decorates our hearth?

And I can't feel that a frock-coat was ever a really suitable dress for doing anything - least of all amateur carpentry.

Here is Air -

LIVING ON CREDIT

Some months ago Tiresias took the opportunity to suggest that credit card companies had some responsibility for the approaching credit crisis, and that it was time that they took action to restrict the use of credit to sustainable levels.

Such is the influence of this blog that response was almost immediate. Egg took a stern line with customers who evidently had no intention of clearing their accounts, by blocking any further transactions. A harsh move, but one in the right direction.

Less commendable was their apparent attempted dropping of customers who regularly cleared their accounts by direct debit, presumably because they never paid exorbitant interest charges.

Is this the sort of action that Tiresias was recommending?

Er - well, no. But then, that's the way of fairy wishes. Readers of the brothers Grimm will know that they generally carry a nasty sting in the tail. Perhaps Tiresias would do better not to dabble in financial matters in future.

HELTER SKELTER

Shuffling the rim of the endless shore,

The holiday fun already a bore,

What are we going to do today

To fritter our empty lives away?

Here is a thrill you might enjoy,

A petulant giant's twisted toy.

They clamp you tightly on a rack

To see how soon your joints will crack;

And swing you up against the sky,

A most traditional way to die.

Horizons tilt, the clouds drop down,

And overhead is the seething town.

(But in the iron filigree something grates -

Or is it a shift of tectonic plates?)

Far off in the alien world below

Oblivious mannikins come and go:

On damp flat sands the children score

Trenches of a forgotten war;

A naked girl on a cockle shell

Drifts to the beach with the onshore swell;

And a soaring boy who had no care

Falls through the unsupportive air.

(A rivet shifts in a rusting girder.

Manslaughter is it - or is it murder?)

Over the top in the scything wind -

Oh, tell me, brother, have you sinned?

Then who is that hoodie by your side

Rapt in his bone-white-knuckle ride?

Hold on to your hat, your hair, your head.

Have fun. Have fun.

You're a long time dead.

Frederick

UNPOPULAR WARS

Reports come through of British service personnel in this country being required to travel to duties in civilian clothes and change into uniform when at their unit. Apparently men in uniform have been attacked and insulted by those who wish to protest against the apparent failure of operations in Afghanistan and the detriorating situation in the shambles of Iraq.

Typically, these protestors choose the wrong target; but the fact that such things can happen in our society is disturbing. There are wide-spread doubts as to the advisability of our policy in Afghanistan, and the futility of the so-called 'war against terror' in Iraq was clear from the start, and has only become more obvious as time has dragged on.

During the Second World War the necessity of fighting made it possible to raise a conscript army with, in general, the support of the nation as a whole. During those years the fate of the services was identified with fate of the community. By contrast, neither of the current operations could have got off the ground if it had depended on general mobilisation. Not only does your average civilian very reasonably wish to stay well clear of any personal involvement, but it seems to me that a widening gap in sympathy is appearing between the civilian and service communities. The particularly nasty mock recruiting poster displayed may be an extreme example, but it does highlight a growing attitude.

The British army has been recklessly deployed in pursuit of aims that could not be achieved, and at the same time has been starved of reliable equipment. And no-one outside of the services seems to care very much. There appears to be a general sense that soldiers of all ranks chose to follow this peculiar career choice, and now things are going badly they should be left to sort out their problems as best they can.

Meanwhile, of course, the power-drunk politicians who pushed them into this chaos drift into comfortable and no doubt profitable retirement.

And now reports too well-authenticated to be ignored appear of British troops' uncontrolled and violent treatment of Iraqi civilians. In our comfortable peace-time world the army would find it difficult to recruit men with the required characteristics of disciplined aggressiveness at the best of times: embroiled as they are in meaningless wars is it any wonder that recruiting fails to find the numbers, let alone the quality, that it needs? And however much the red-top press bleats about 'our lads' the bitter fact remains that the man in the street cares little for them, and the parents and partners of the killed and maimed feel abandoned in their misery.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

The view has been darkly expressed that this blog spends far too much space rabbitting on about standards of English speech.

Now, as you can see, the seriousness of the situation is being emphasised by Sir Jonathan Miller, Brian Sewell, Sir Peter Hall, Tony Benn........

Tiresias is glad to welcome support from such distinguished company; but don't forget - you read it here first.

THE PATH NOT TAKEN




So - it's only a ballad. But the voice is limpid (she could belt it out too when needed), you can hear every word, and the feelings expressed seem to articulate sympathetically the thoughts of a girl in one of those minuscule catastrophes which afflict the young. In any case, listening to any of the current chart-toppers, if you can get close enough to distinguish the words you will find that they are often merely sloppy sentiment disguised by a lot of bashing and strumming.

Why has so much of society rejected all tender feeling in favour of arrogant violence? Is our world really so much of a jungle that only harsh loud mindless noise can express it? Or does the constant outpouring of thumping banality induce this terrible insensitivity in the hearers?

For once, my ancient wisdom fails to see any answer to all this.

GALILEO

With this frail hand I stopped the sun,

Which else had geocentric run

Illimitable years;

And flung a million miles in space

The spinning earth, the human race,

The singing and the tears:

And though you rack my body, all

Your piety can not recall

The music of the spheres.

Frederick

MORE ARTWORK



Frederick



This is a watercolour of Pont's Mill, across the river from Fowey. It is based on a photograph of my own, taken in late autumn. I couldn't work in this detail devant le motif.

WINTER JOY

The clocks have gone back, the shops are already full of twinkly treasures, and the winter season clothes catalogues arrive on the mat.

And what a feast of colour they offer us! I quote from but one edition -

'Slate, Anthracite, Shale, Navy, Dusk Black, Dark Spice, Ivy, Dark Charcoal, Dark Brown......'

Never mind, the girls will be wearing cheerful wintry colours!

These are the girls' colours. Men are offered an even wider range of glumness -

' Blackberry, Hickory, Mahogany, Midnight Purple, Dark Earth, Iron, Hematite, Deep Lake, Dark Indigo, Dark Forest.....'

'Gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.' Why do we allow ourselves to be cowed into accepting whatever the rag trade decide is 'in this season'?

I tried to buy a short mack for the winter. My favourite outfitter could produce just the thing - in a shade I can only describe as frozen spinach past its best. 'Another colour?' 'I'm afraid they're all like this at the moment, sir.' So look forward to grey streets filled with trudging figures wearing boggy garments this winter, just when we could do with a bit of cheering up.

Of course, when it gets really cold........