It's History, but not as we know it.

I'd like to think that I have a working knowledge of history. The history of my own culture and country, which is that of the United Kingdom. A long history that is famously tortuous for children introduced to it kicking and screaming, and perhaps therefore it is not surprising that history is often absorbed as much through the media of feature films and television programmes, whether they are presented as truthful documentary or not.

I have long been struck by the way in which history can so easily be fictionalised. A single successful example of this is the Quentin Tarantino film indomitable bastards, in which in the story of the second world war is given a shocking new twist by way of a plot to assassinate the entire upper echelon of the Nazi party.

By so doing, the more is concluded much earlier than was actually the case.

But this is constructed as part of a believable plot is something that the director can only be admired for.

Many films take for their starting point is historical fact, and then proceed to create interesting but substantially fictional interpretations of those facts, such as for example through the national treasure franchise.

Most recently, I recorded and watched the film about Abraham Lincoln, American president.

Imagine my surprise when I realised for the first time that the formal title of this film was Abraham Lincoln vampire Hunter.

What is equally perplexing is the fact that so much of what I can remember to be historical fact has been reinterpreted as straightway kind of allegory that in some strange way it manages to fit the facts.

To the extent that for example speeches in fact given by Abraham Lincoln in the context of the American Civil War retain their meaningfulness in spite of the substantial reinterpretation of story to that point in the film.

Perhaps I should simply relax and appreciate that this is simply a clever use of fact as a backdrop to the subject, and at least retain confidence in the capacity for people as a whole to appreciate that what they are in fact viewing is nothing more than a clever fantasy.

Nevertheless, it feels somewhat strange to see the way in which modern culture can so cleverly use true history for what is ultimately simply an entertainment.

The Birth of Mystery

Strange sometimes when you get a new perspective on something that you think you are familiar with.

I first read The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins many years ago, but I have recently read it a couple of times thanks to audible.

A habit I have fallen into recently is looking things up on Wikipedia, whenever something occurs to me and for which some clarification might be helpful.

It is helpful to have a constantly available resource for answering simple questions of fact as they arise.

Whatever we might say or think about the usefulness or otherwise of information available through this kind of source I have found it to be almost always both accurate and informative.

Where once upon a time we may have had to struggle with several weighty volumes, now we can just Google it.

I don't think I fully appreciated the significance of this novel until I read a short Wikipedia entry that made it clear that this novel was perhaps the first in its genre.

An inspiration to the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and let's face it, we all love to read a mystery, taxing or otherwise.

The woman in White is on occasion incredibly old-fashioned, which is another way of saying that it is an anthropological insight into the way that society worked around the middle of the 19th century.

It reveals the sensitivity of the times with social position and the lengths that someone will go to for the sake of their place in society, and of course we so take for granted the advances that have been made in such things as how women can be independent and strong that on occasions it seems quite extraordinary that behaviour may have been tempered so differently by circumstances.

History is famously a subject that we are not very good at engendering, but as someone once famously said we must know our history so that we do not make the same mistakes again.

There is much about the world within which The Woman In White is set that does not fit with our modern world view, but it is a journey of insightful splendour, and a great reminder of how far we have travelled.

The author does not digress as much as someone like Victor Hugo, writing at a similar time in France, and something that I love about Hugos' digressions is that they throw a different kind of light upon those things that the author is interested in, whether it be Parisien street slang or the tendency for a people to rebel against society.

There is so much more between the lines, and perhaps it is the benefit of hindsight that enables so much more to be seen within the literature of our predecessors.

Bedknobs And Broomsticks

The memories of childhood are strong. Numerous fixed points remain in memory from that timehowever many years ago.

One such fixed point niggled with me recently, and strangely became clear for the first time.

It feels as if I have known the film bed knobs and broomsticks for the whole of my life, but it was only recently that I actually saw the film for the first time.

Since then, I have watched it three or four times, amazed at having missed it.

But equally amazed, by the extent to which I have so thoroughly enjoyed it.

It seems extraordinary that I should not have seen it before, but then perhaps it is the case that having seen it now, I am able to articulate to myself just exactly why I have enjoyed it so much.

Though it is ostensibly a children’s film, like so much that is of quality written for children it has themes that are both complex and adult.

Adult only in the sense that they are serious and important, particularly in respect of appreciating the shared history of all of us.

At another level, the film is important in the genealogy of film, in that it is one of a small number of films that combine live action with animation.

That it includes David Tomlinson only a few years after his appearance in Mary Poppins is significant, and provides a link between these two films.

But the primary material for the film is British history, most immediately the story of the struggle against Germany, which resulted in so many children being evacuated from the cities.

That three children should find themselves in the house of a witch is the starting point for an adventure, but in the course of the adventure, it is a story of love, and Angela Lansbury discovers that she does have a place in her heart for children after all.

Behind the simplicity of the witchcraft theme, there is another historical theme, that cannot be viewed purely in the context of the 20th-century.

That a raiding party of Germans is beaten back by the magical animation of old weapons and armour is on the one hand a safe and hilarious application of magic, but on the other links with a much deeper strand of belief in the importance of what England stands for.

I cannot help but think that the defeat of the Armada,when the Spanish raised a fleet to invade England and was beaten back by a wind which was said to have been raised by witches.

It is fascinating to see the way in which this simple story possesses a poetic grandeur, whilst telling a simple adventure story such as might come from the hearts of any child.

 I have been amazed that I did not see this film when I was my self a child, but strangely pleased to have seen it even now.

I was surprised to have recognised one of the bit part actors as Bruce Forsyth, is playing the role of Swinburn, the switchblade wielding crook working for the book man.

This was long before he had become established in our culture.

Language Games

I am 54 years of age, and I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 40.

And so for the last 14 years, I have lived with this condition, which let’s face it is not the worst kind of neurological condition. There are many conditions which are far more devastating than MS, not least of all motor neurone disease (MND).

MS can be extremely aggressive, but in my case has been mildly progressive, and though it has taken from me my ability to function as I might have taken for granted I have at least retained my capacity for language, and thought.

This at least his given me the capacity to continue with what has for me always been an important aspect to my life.

Although I have published numerous poems, I have never been able to sell a short story, and although I have self published my own book of short stories, as well as a couple of volumes of my own poetry, I have never even approached a publisher with a view to being taken seriously as a writer.

This does not mean that I have given up with this dream of mine.

Since I am able to use voice-activated software to type more effectively than I ever could, and have written three novels to date, although to be honest none of them are entirely finished.

Perhaps this final step is one that I am overly cautious about, because I might feel obliged to self publish a finished novel. And perhaps I am happier having written three incomplete novels, rather than the three novels that I could submit to knows that Express a professional opinion about.

But language remains something important to me.

Although when I went to university and, as the combination of my education, I studied for a degree in philosophy, sometimes regretting with hindsight that I did not have the perseverance for a degree in English literature.

But playing with language is something that is close to my heart, whether in my continued writing or as a matter of course in my daily life.

For example, with the staff of people that are responsible for my daily care and support.

Perhaps I am fortunate that in today’s UK social care I am able to benefit from a new way in which people are cared for, so that instead of simply receiving support From an agency with whom my relationship is simply that of a client with needs to be met, I have been enabled to employ my own staff directly, went to afford to exercise choice over whom those people are.

Since the people that care for me are my most important social contact these days, this is a sensible development.

Hopefully, my carers gain as much enjoyment from working in this different environment to alternatives that would have been current before this scheme called self directed support.

I suppose I am fortunate to have had some experience of previously having taken responsibility for employees, owing to the nature of my work before I was diagnosed with MS.

A not for profit organisation has been appointed locally to support people like myself with things like accounting for tax and the other responsibilities that come with employment.

And so local authorities are able to operate without the need to make the kind of day-to-day decisions for me that they would if I were only to be a client of theirs.

Perhaps this since of self determination does in fact give me a greater sense of control over my own life, and I do maintain a strong sense of positivity overall.

And we all have a strong sense of humour, finding things to laugh at more than things to be sad about.

As I said, the nature of my illness is fortunately not as aggressive as it might be.

And I have never given up hope that one day if not a cure can be found then at least a means of ensuring that MS does not become aggressive might be identified.

And in the meantime, thanks to the system that we have in the United Kingdom, of a health service that is free at the point of use.

At least I can feel that I am able to live with some dignity within the boundaries of what I can still achieve.

A Nation Respects

It was 50 years ago today that Winston Churchill was given a state funeral.

Like so many people, I have watched and been moved by the BBC documentary that recaptured this event, even speaking to many of the people that took part in some way and yet remain alive to speak of this important moment of national mourning.

I am shocked by the news that a recent survey of British students revealed that they had almost no knowledge about this man.

The most telling thing was that most students associated Churchill with the bulldog that has been the advertising device of an insurance company.

It is unfortunate that I was not one of those people surveyed about their knowledge of who this man was.

But of course, I am in my early 50s, and perhaps an unusual interest in such history, because my parents were of that generation that lived through the war and that Britain fought, at first alone, although always with the critical resources of the then British Empire to draw upon.

My father died in 1998, many years ago now, but my mother remains alive at the grand age of 95.

This I suppose I have had a direct connection to that struggle and to the way in which it has affected the lives of the generation that lived through it.

My father was a dock worker, commencing work within the Port of London authority when he was little more than 14 years of age.

As a dock worker, he had very particular reasons to perhaps mistrust Churchill, but in my father’s case I never heard this view expressed.

On the contrary, though a reserved occupation during the war, he and several others that were colleagues working in the docks, joined up as soon as war was declared, and in his case, he spent the next nine years in the forces, finally being mobilised from Palestine in 1948.

He and my mother had only married in 1938, no doubt because of the crisis that he would have laid down his life for.

The way my father told it to me was that by so doing, rather than waiting for conscription to call upon men like him, he was able to have more choice about how he could serve.

As a consequence of which, he served in the Royal Engineers, remaining throughout his service a private, and although briefly promoted to lance corporal, he was a private when demobilised.

I never did quite understand the reasons behind this, but besides a small number of simple stories he spoke little about his experiences.

It must have been hard for both of them to have spent the first 10 years of marriage separated because of the war, and there is no doubt that his experiences were behind his lifelong passion for pigeon racing, a solitary hobby that he shared with so many men that had served as he had.

Living within easy reach of the docks in which he worked, at the heart of East London, my mother was perhaps fortunate to have been engaged in war work which took her away from the constant bombing of that part of London.

At one stage she worked in an armaments factory somewhere in the Home Counties, and later moved to Lancashire where close to Blackpool she worked as a lathe operator.

He spoke of many different theatres of war, particularly of the desert war against Rommel.

He was at Tobruk, and rather than becoming involved in the D-Day invasion, he was part of the second and lesser known invasion through Italy that was part of the pincer movement to trap the axis powers through a second front.

I could not fail to become interested in the history of this struggle because of my parents part in it, and when I was quite young, I remember reading his doctors account of Churchill’s last years.

There is another reason why I have an interest in this moment of history, so much talked about, and so important to the national consciousness.

My father was one of 12 brothers and sisters, brought up in the east end of London to a typical working-class family.

One of his sisters married a man who was up until Churchill’s funeral in receipt of a small pension.

The family story does not go into too much detail, but apparently this arose from an indiscretion on the part of a member of the Marlborough family with someone that was in service at Blenheim Palace.

This particular branch of my family lived somewhere in Wiltshire, and were the only part of the family to have been able to make something of their lives, perhaps with the assistance of this pension.

With so many people in service in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries, I am sure that there are numerous families that have some similar story somewhere in their ancestry.

But it is something that today’s anniversary reminds me of, and doubly so as I watched the way the cranes dipped to honour the passing of his funeral barge along the Thames.

Literary Lodestones

You do not forget the good books that you discover.

Especially if they lead you to poignant emotional moments, and this has been a surprising recent discovery for me, and though until recently I had thought that my literary adventures were over, since I cannot even hold a book nor turn its pages, audio books have had a sudden resurgence thanks to such initiatives as Audible.

I had not even heard of the author of the two books that have recently had such an impact on me.

It is worth me describing briefly how I happened to suddenly discover the first, and thence discover the other.

I find the problem of choosing what to read as much of a difficulty as I ever did.

I was always an avid reader, and when I think back, so many of the good books that I have discovered have come to me almost by accident.

Perhaps this was a semi-conscious decision, when as a very young boy, I realized that it would be impossible for me to read every book in a big library.

And so I prepared myself to discover books by some form of serendipity.

On this occasion, I had quite  simply  chosen to read Max Hastings history of bomber command during the Second World War.

I didn’t expect this overview to be without its controversy, but at least I was partially aware of that controversy. Perhaps it was time that I discovered more.

Even before I settled down to listen to this weighty tome, I chose in addition the first of the two books by Elizabeth Wein that are the principal subject of this article.

The reasoning for this is similarly accidental, in that I was attracted by its title. Code Name Verity.

This suggested some connection with the Second World War, and with a part of it that is of interest to me because it is a component of an extended piece of writing that I have begun. Perhaps, I thought, this might shed some light by way of research on what I am trying to achieve.

And so I did not begin to read Code Name Verity at once, but only after I had completed Max Hastings fascinating book.

I have always found books that involve flight fascinating. I can immediately think of The Little Prince, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The author of Code Name Verity is a pilot herself, and the heroine of the book is a pilot too.

Being set as it is, the protagonist of the story becomes a member of the air transport authority, the only way perhaps that a woman would be able to fly in wartime Britain.

This would almost be sufficient in itself, but an extraordinary tale unfolds when she is introduced to special operations, that secret world of moving people and resources so that they can play an important part in a lesser known aspect of that total war.

I’m not going to explain much of the story as it unfolds, because that should be for an interested reader to discover.

Sufficient to say that having accidentally discovered this book, and being thereby introduced to Rose On Fire as another work by the same author, I have at last come to the work that has so affected me.

Although they are quite distinct works and could be read separately, having read them in the order that I did was important.

In other words, characters appear in both of these books, and there is an important sense of development between them.

The plot of this second book is quite exceptional, and incredibly well handled.

Once again, I won’t go into details, other than to explain that the title character, Rose Justice, is also an air transport pilot, this time American.

Through a carefully balanced plot, she finds herself over France, after the liberation of Paris, and before the end of the war.

She ends up being brought down by two German fighter planes, whilst flying a Spitfire, and of course because it is a transport plane, it is not armed.

She is forced to land at a German airfield, and becomes a captive. As a consequence of which, because she is a woman and a suspected agent, she spends six months in a concentration camp.

She survives, and in giving the authors own background as to how the book came to be written, it is clear that it came about as a consequence of writers workshops which took place at the location of the camp, almost a generation later.

In other words, it is a well researched fictional story, but with an extraordinary connection with the modern day location of that terrible place.

The story is told after she has escaped from the camp with a small group of survivors, and culminates with the end of the war and by no means resolves all of the questions concerning the future of important characters.

But it is a story that in its telling reiterates the importance of its telling, so that we can never forget.

It is rare that I have found a book to be quite so emotionally compelling, and for that reason, it must be recommended.

It isn’t an easy book to read at times, and perhaps that is the mark of a great work.

Certainly a book that for me has been transformative.

Deep Inside Popular Culture

There can be hidden depths sometimes to popular culture.

One of the strangest that comes to mind is something that may be vaguely apparent to many people, as it relates to one of the most popular films from the past 30 years.

Apocalypse Now is a strange film in parts, about the desire for the military administration to put an end to a rogue Cololel who ‘has gone native’ somewhere in Vietnam.

The soldier sent to fulfill the mission of the government eventually locates Kurt where he has set himself up as some kind of reclusive deity.

It is a film full of strangeness, and perhaps nothing is stranger than the talk between the Hunter and the Hunted in the darkness of
 the cave at the end of the film where Kurt very much makes a willing sacrifice of himself, and makes it clear that he has been expecting this confrontation.

Anyone that is particularly interested in cinematic imagery may be aware that the camera pans across some of the books in his library at the very end, as if to give an insight into the extraordinary thinking of this extraordinary man.

One of the books that appears only in one or two frames as the camera moves through the cave is James Frazer’s  extraordinary anthropological work, ‘The Golden Bough’ which is as its title proudly announces a treatise on magic and religion, and it remains today one of the most important works on the anthropology of ancient man.

The second book that is also clearly visible if you take the trouble to look frame by frame is a little known work that will be unfamiliar to most people entitled ‘From Ritual to Romance’, by Jessie L. Weston. One of the reasons why this book has been so little read is that it is an academic work that is hard work, and not for the fainthearted.

I have taken the time to read it, and it is fascinating. It looks at the Arthurian legends and relates them to the previously existing pagan legends as far back as Babylonian vegetation myths.

In other words, as it was written in about 1920 it is not so different in subject matter to the content of Frazer’s work.

Both books together, along with other works such as the Bible, shed interesting light on the nature of what might be uppermost in the mind of the soldier that has gone native.

Few films have so entered into a sense of the culture of the 20th century as this extraordinary work, and I think it is worth making some exploration of those depths to which it seeks to explore.

10 Pieces of my Life

Rarely do I see something programmed on the BBC that mirrors closely the working environment that I occupied until I stopped working around 2003.

Up until this point, I had worked in a number of ways that introduced people to unfamiliar art-forms.

Principally, I worked closely within large arts organisations receiving considerable sums from the Arts Council of England.

Perhaps it is quite natural that the investment of significant sums of public money in such ways should be accompanied by the proviso that these organisations should offer an education opportunity so that the widest possible audience should have the opportunity to appreciate the activity offered.

Thus at the age of around 25 I began working within the education department of Opera North based in Leeds, one of only a handful of professional opera companies in the United Kingdom.

Opera North was established as an independent offshoot of English National Opera, to enable Opera of the highest professional quality to tour principally the North of England, occasionally reaching further afield such as to Scotland and even overseas.

For example, in the time that I was working for the company a production of Attila by Giuseppe Verdi was taken to Rotterdam, helping to establish the international reputation of the company which had already achieved a significant National reputation for both its reach across the North of England, as well as a reputation for high quality education opportunities that enabled people unfamiliar with this art-form to attend performances and explore in more detail exactly what Opera is all about.

When I began working for the organisation, I had very limited experience myself of opera, but my work gave me the opportunity to see numerous opera performances as part of the company’s output.

With its base in Leeds at the Grand Theatre, where rehearsals and opening performances took place, the company travelled regularly to Manchester, Hull, Nottingham, and other occasional venues and festivals across England.

Whilst I am not musically trained, not even with an aptitude for music, I found myself working in the creative environment of the education department of an opera company, thanks I suppose to an interest I have always held concerning the empowerment of people.

Whilst this may sound rather strange, I can look back at my entire working life and see that this strand of empowerment has been critical in every aspect of every employment I have undertaken.

For the first 10 years of my working life, I became involved first with housing co-operatives, and then perhaps as a natural progression, with workers co-operatives.

In other words, I have often worked in ways that treat people as equals, and in some respects, the same can be said of creativity.

It is something that people of all ages and backgrounds and indeed capacity can participate in, and in many respects, the fact that I first worked in a department associated with an opera company is simply representative of the fact that I lived in a small northern town that was lucky enough to possess a large opera company.

When this was established in the late 1980s, originally as a linked and strategic component of English National Opera, somebody somewhere must have made the assumption that developing such a large creative organisation would have a transformation and regeneration impact on this city.

Opera North’s orchestra also has its own identity as a symphony orchestra, providing a regular season of concerts at the local town hall.

You cannot have 60 or 70 professional musicians and all of the ancillary staff associated with an opera company and not have an impact on its local economy.

Opera North also had a regular full-time chorus of over 50 people, occasionally swelling to larger numbers when particular repertoire was performed.

Although I began as a novice in my own right, I quickly benefited from the opportunity to be able to see as much opera as the company produced.

Opera is typically produced in small seasons consisting of between three and four different operas, for the sensible reason that professional opera singers are not able to sing every night of the week, and therefore different operas are performed each night of a season so that the principal singers can arrest their voices in between performances.

So in the course of a year it is likely that a company will produce and tour about a dozen different operas.

In each season, there will be a couple of fairly popular operas, which may have two performances each, and one less common opera, which may only be performed one night each week.

Touring Opera is a logistical exercise, often involving two or three enormous juggernauts, which contain all of the sets and costumes for each opera, as well as all of the technical equipment required to light each work, as well as any ancillary equipment such as for enabling performances to have surtitles or subtitles on stage.

Something that I quickly discovered as part of my initial involvement in the work of the company was that I cannot hear classical music of the kind that is performed by the professional orchestras involved with professional opera without appreciating it in perhaps a rather unique way.

Opera is of course made up from an extraordinary combination of story, music, and staging.

It thus involves every imaginable art form from the written word, through the visual arts concerned with staging and costumes, as well as music.

My experience of the kind of music played by a professional orchestra is where I have drawn my parallel with the recent BBC programme entitled 10 pieces.

This took an unusual approach in its attempt at making classical music more accessible to young people in particular, by showing the music of several well-known works performed both live by the orchestra in a studio context, but with specially commissioned film material designed to encourage those unfamiliar with classical music to see it as a form of storytelling.

We will all be familiar with this as a technique, whether we consciously realise it or not.

The classic example of this kind of ways to familiarise people with classical music was used by Walt Disney in his Fantasia.

What I find fascinating is my own particular experience of classical music, and the way in which it seems to speak to me as if I am unable to hear the music without seeing some kind of story.

Synaesthesia, the way in which our brains can experience sensory stimulus that results in additional perceptions, is not as unusual as you might think.

My best friend, for example, associates various words in the form of colours, so that for each of the days of the week, she associates a different colour.

Perhaps other people may have their own experience of synaesthesia, in my own case, one of my strongest interests lies with creative writing, and so it is perhaps not unusual that I should experience the kind of narrative that I have suggested when listening to classical music.

This has served me particularly well in the context of for example introducing the instruments of the orchestra to primary school children, as it is a very familiar exercise to simply play a piece of music to a small audience and discuss the feelings generated from it. This is a good starting point for looking at the way in which something like opera tells a story with many different emotional colours that have been portrayed by the composer in their use of the instruments available to them.

I have been very fortunate to have met and worked with some extraordinarily creative people and I have been privileged to be able to introduce their abilities to a wide variety of people, young and old, as diverse as inmates in prison to people with learning disabilities, all in the name of the art form education that has been the focus of my work.

It is perhaps no surprise that I have been inspired by the people that I have worked with to explore my own creativity later in life, especially now that I have so much more time than most, as a consequence of my disability with multiple sclerosis.

But it was nevertheless remarkable to see such a specific exploration of what I have spent my life exploring in that BBC programme, 10 pieces.

Rarely Seen or Praised

It is so easy to forget how fortunate I am. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis over 10 years ago now, and although I am severely disabled and limited physically in what I can still undertake, there are so many things that I have the time to appreciate.

Time is that most valuable of commodities, which few of us can appreciate unless we have the opportunity to pause in the muddle of our modern lives.

Of course I would not have wished to have my life prevented from achieving its full flowering, but I have had to remind myself that there are worse things.

At least the condition that I live with is no more fatal than everything else that we live with.

And since I live in the United Kingdom I am able to benefit from the fact of a system that protects and preserves those that cannot undertake those things that most of us take for granted.

The apartment in which I live has been made more extensible for my use as a wheelchair user thanks to alterations undertaken under the terms of a special grant, converting my bathroom to a shower room, and giving me a ramped access from the rear entrance.

A superior kind of ceiling hoist enables me to be transferred to and from my electric wheelchair, and I have a team of carers that ensure that I am well looked after.

The bed which I spend considerable time, but not so much that I consider myself to be bedridden, has been installed and is serviced by a special department operated by my local county council.

Recently, the handset that controls the movements of the bed had to be replaced, and the replacement handset has the additional buttons that enables the full function of this extraordinary item to be fully used.

My previous handset only had four pairs of buttons to raise the head, the bed itself, and what is called the leg break.

But the new controls enable the top and the bottom of this electric bed to be raised and lowered independently, a function that glorious in the unusual name of the Trendellenberg  effect, something that will be unfamiliar to most people.

Quite simply, it enables the bed to be raised or lowered so that the person in the bed slips in either direction.

More information about this can be discovered online.

With such an important piece of equipment, it is essential that it is properly maintained, and recently I had cause to discover that an engineer is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the event of problems occurring that disable search an essential piece of equipment.

I had cause to request that the engineer assist as part of the power supply had become disconnected, and although a backup battery ensures that the equipment will operate on an emergency basis for a fuel hours, the engineer arrived within a few hours to reconnect and have the bed working once again.

Few people have reason to know that such a service operates, and it is one of those hidden benefits of the system that of course we pay for through our taxes. And it is only when we need such services that we fully appreciate their existence.

Are We Really In Charge?

I had a soft spot for George Orwell when I was doing an A-level in English Literature.

I read many of his novels, his short stories, and his writings in general.

I admire much of his work, and there is no doubt that he has had much influence on our cultural ideas, if the measure of his influence might be judged by the number of words and phrases that he has introduced to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Perhaps his greatest and most influential novel has been 1984, and although we do not feel explicitly that we are as controlled as the social system described in this work, closer examination is worthwhile to assess the degree to which the State has become Big Brother.

I have been struck recently by the extent to which we are encouraged to experience emotion on a regular basis by the television schedule.

To this extent, clearly I am talking about the United Kingdom, although I am sure that someone with more local knowledge might be able to assess other cultures that share a similar set of control issues.

What has particularly struck me is for example the way in which Strictly Come Dancing has become as a ‘must watch’ programme within the BBC schedule.

Even from the perspective of its production values we are encouraged to perceive the success or failure of participants as an emotional journey, which we become excited about, and indeed feel as if we are participating directly in by way of public voting to determine the fate of our chosen favourites.

There is no doubting the quality of the professional dancers, and the skills of those that principally guide our thoughts about what we are seeing.

And the judges that guide our thinking also appear in many other televised contexts, often engaging additional emotional aspects of our lives, such as memories of holidays from times past, or as recently demonstrated, the way in which dance as an artform links to its expression in films from as far back as the 1930s.

There is a subtle link here with other aspects of our culture, and through such films as The Hunger Games, adapted from the book written by an author, Michael Morepogo, questioning the same territory that I am here touching upon.

The Poet, a Marchioness, and the Wardrobe

In the mid-1990s, I had reason to attend with my then wife the residence of the Earl of March and Wemyss, just south of Edinburgh.

It was not given to dropping in on members of the Scottish aristocracy, but my wife had good reason for this particular visit.

As a director of Opera, with her own company, she had been asked to put together a short tour of the Opera Venus and Adonis by John Blow, which would be performed by a small company in stately homes across Scotland.

The Earl was to be visited because of his role in being the founder of the National Trust for Scotland, and it was his wife, the Marchioness, that we were to meet on that day in order to look at the venue for one of the performances, his own house at Gosford, to which he intended to invite his own personal invitation list for what amounted to a private performance of the work.

The Marchioness was more than happy to show us the venue for the performance, and to help us to perhaps find an item of costume that we could use for one of the characters.

And  thus we found ourselves having tea with the Marchioness, and rummaging through a most extraordinary series of wardrobes in which the Earl kept several generations of clothing appropriate to his position as the most senior  noble in Scotland.

We had been looking for something specific form one of the cast members, and it had been the Earl himself that had suggested we may find something suitable in this storehouse.

As we soon discovered, the wardrobes at Gosford House  contained a vast quantity of historic items, much of which the National Museum of Scotland was anxious to become the curator of.

But the family resisted this, preferring to keep the items close at hand, although acquiescing to the need to keep much of the contents wrapped in archival quality tissue paper to ensure its protection.

After much searching through the contents of much by way of would be worn at the house of lords in London, we eventually found what we had been looking for, by way of a bright red cavalry officers uniform from the 19th century.

Though it was quite heavy in weight, thanks to solid silver epaulettes, it fitted perfectly with the costumes scheme for the performers, who would in effect dress themselves from a trunk that they would bring with them as they entered for the performance.

Which was to take place in the hallway of one wing of the house, which makes it sound like a small place.

But over 100 people were to attend this performance, as the hallway was like no other I had ever seen.

For a start, it  was white marble, with an open area at its summit that could hold about 100 people quite easily in an open space.

Gosford House is a substantial stately home in its own rigt  and one whole wing had been destroyed by fire during the second world war when it has been used as the barracks for soldiers, and they had accidentally literally set fire to one part of it, which had never been restored.

And so the hallway with its magnificent staircase was in a whole wing to itself, constituting one half of what remains of the original house.

Appropriately to the position of its owner, it was furnished with extraordinary things, and one such item we were able to use as the principal image in advertising the opera and its tour.

This was a 16th century painting of Venus and Adonis, a beautiful Renaissance oil painting, which we were able to have propped on an easel at the bottom of the stairs as people came to this particular performance.

Interestingly, a couple of years after the performance had taken place, this painting was sold at Christie’s in London for just under £20 million. Quite some set decoration.

It was a wonderfully informal performance at Gosford House, very much made up of people invited by the Earl and his wife the Marchioness.

People were encouraged to attend in fancy dress, and I remember that the Earl attended wearing nothing more than a simple toga, then I do not remember how the Marchioness dressed.

On The Interpretation of Dreams

I  rarely speak in my blog of my dreams. Quite simply, most people simply switch off if you were to relate to them the strange goings on in the world of your own dreams.

But this morning, I had the strangest of dreams, and I wanted to make a particular effort to remember this dream. And the only way of doing so is to make some notes about it immediately.

In this dream, the principal activity seemed to be some form of competition at the heart of which was to be the unlikely activity of moving meteorites around a physical course, meteorites of different shapes and weights, for no other reason than to see whom of the participants could do so most easily.

As an adjunct to this central component of the dream, an additional prize offered was something along the lines of entry into a competition that involved filming an activity also taking place on the same rural location.

In trying to identify what this might have been, the closest I have come is that activities were taking place which I have seen in the context of a program like Time Team. Something for participants in the principal activity won the opportunity to film or some ritual reenactment or some kind of ancient manufacturing process, but the most important aspect of this dream was that the choice of film material used was to be something fly blown, which I can only assume must meant timelapse photography.

But it is Interesting. here to think about other interpretations of this, so that the filming process involves watching something taking shape in the same way that for example you might watch the entire life-cycle of insects.

I can only think that having this dream may have been the result of having recently read the Dan Brown novel Deception Point, a principal part of which is concerned with the falsification of the origin of a meteorite discovered locked in Arctic ice.

This would account for an interest in passing with meteorites, although it says nothing about the other part of the dream.

Because I am severely disabled because of multiple sclerosis, I am always keen to appreciate that my brain is still functioning in some way, however strange. I am always reminded of the scene in the Matrix film, where near Neo is first told how the matrix works.

A battery is held up as an example of what the machine world is doing by exploiting the capacity of human development simply to produce electricity.

I take it for granted that the human nervous system is not fully understood, and that as long as I am still producing animal electricity, and because the brain has the capacity to find new ways of making connections in the body even if nerves of themselves cannot be repaired this plasticity of the overall system, giving me some hope that my brain might one day find those collections which are currently blocked by the sclerotic nature of the condition.

If nothing else, this is a demonstration of hope in the face of adversity. Never give up, never surrender.

Annonymity Even in The Information Age

We have become so accustomed to having information at our fingertips.

It is sobering sometimes to come across something elusive, and one such elusive thing has come to my attention recently.

We are of course that a critical point in remembering those that have fallen in conflicts across the 20th century.

There has been much moving coverage across the BBC capturing perhaps before lost in the mists of time first-hand accounts of those that have exhibited extraordinary bravery during the second world war, a conflict which is so nearly slipping into obscurity as those with personal experience begin to reach an age that prevents them from participation in person, Leaving only recollections for future generations.

It is important to remember, and although it is quite possible for the argument to be put forward that it is wrong to glamorise that sense of sacrifice. It is equally the case that we must never forget the importance of taking a stand against what is both brutal and at times offensive.

Although my father died many years ago, the fact that he served in the Armed Forces remains with me as a memory even though only second-hand. At one remove from personal experience.

I have on the wall of my bedroom, visible from my electric bed, the recruiting poster that remains perhaps one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.

I Cannot imagine that anyone the world over will not at some point have seen this image, that of Lord Kitchener facing straight to the onlooker and exclaiming that Your Country Needs You.

There are few images which can claim to have been so successful, if that is the term to use, in capturing the spirit of a time.

The poster that I have framed was given to me by one of my carers recently, having been a special giveaway with a Sunday newspaper at some point in the recent past.

It is a striking image, and I have it framed in front of me for several reasons.

One of them is simply as a reminder of so much of what is being remembered at the moment, but there is another very personal reason why it is important to me at the moment.

This is simply that Lord Kitchener possesses a stupendous moustache, very much a reminder of the kind of facial hair that was common at the time.

I have recently grown moustache of my own, which I use moustache wax for, and of which I am particularly proud.

Perhaps it is simply that when you have a red car, you see red cars everywhere.

I have begun to notice that there is an increasing fashion for extravagant facial hair such as was more common in the early part of the 20th century.

I was recently delighted to discover that thanks to the Internet, it was quite straightforward for me to find the source of moustache wax, a product which might be considered to be of interest only to a very small minority.

One interesting consequence of having this poster regularly in my vision is that I have noted the name of the artist that creates is the original poster image.

His name is Alfred Leete, and what I was surprised to discover was the fact that it seemed impossible to discover anything meaningful about this artists work.

Beyond the fact that the first appearance of the image came about in an obscure local newspaper, I have discovered nothing about the artist whatsoever.

This is something that I find so surprising given the times in which we live that I have felt it worthwhile to raise it.

It is strangely satisfying to discover something unknowable.

We are so used to being able to access information instantly, that it is quite remarkable that something so iconic should be so shrouded in anonymity.

The Warp and Weft of History

It’s not so much that I am obsessed with celebrity, and I have no illusions about my own sense of impact on history.

But I am fascinated at observing the way in which I can perceive the threads of connection between people and places.

There is great comfort to be had from a sense that I have been wrapped in these threads, and though it is clearly the case that we are all in some way connected to these threads and by these threads to everything, it is not necessarily the case that we are aware of those threads that bind us.

I suppose this particular blog is partly my reminiscing about the way in which I have been fortunate to have uncovered and become aware of some of these threads, and partly a means of finding some sense of meaning that I have gained from the whole process.

If I ever try to name drop about some of the people that I have met or worked with, more often than not other people do not know who I am talking about.

This only amuses me is, and perhaps underlines the fact that I have spent my life in a rarefied not to say mysterious world.

But it has been a world nevertheless connected to so many things.

This morning, as I was beginning to contemplate what I might write about, one of my starting points was to think of a title, such as why Les Miserables is such a favourite of mine.

Most recently, I am meaning the 25th anniversary film that Cameron Mackintosh commissioned to celebrate this important anniversary of his stage adaptation.

I did once see the staged adaptation, and it may have been in the 1980s, since I remember attending with my wife. Or at least the woman that was to become my wife.

I saw it at the Prince Edward Theatre on Drury Lane in theatre land.

When I was at university I lived only 30 minutes walk or so from Drury Lane, when I lived in Gower Street as a student. I was a student at University College London, the godless college in Gower Street.

Strangely enough, it was from an old-fashioned theatrical costumier close  to here that I first obtained moustache wax, when in my early 20s I first attempted to grow a relaxed moustache.

I have only one photograph from that time, the identity photograph from my London tube ticket.

I am currently attempting my second waxed moustache, and after much stress about whether or not I would be able to find another supplier for moustache wax, I searched on Amazon and was amazed at how many suppliers there were to be found.

This is an extraordinary reminder of how times have changed. It would have been unfixable in the early 1980s to use the Internet to shop for this kind of product, and yet today we can almost take it for granted.

I was even able to get some tips on how to wax my moustache from YouTube. Another unthinkable thing.

And of course having thought of Les Miserables, I made the connection with syndicalism.

Perhaps not everyone might have made this collection, but since my first working years were spent building a cooperative business, for me the link from those last scenes in the film where idealistic young men are talking about the blood of angry men and black, the colour of ages past.

Black and red are the colours of the anarchist flag.

Although I would not consider myself an anarchist, I would consider myself a syndicalist. And the two have a great deal in common.

Much of the Basque region in Spain has been the focus of significant industrial co-operatives, and I once owned a washing machine manufactured in one such business.

Working in eight co-operatives context has been an important part of my early experience, and indeed made me aware of some significant historical threads.

So for example the premises within which we operated a conference centre providing residential facilities for up to 40 people were provided to us at a peppercorn rent by a Christian socialist named Tom Lupton whose family had owned the Beechwood estate since Victorian times.

They had been manufacturers of fine woollen carriage cloth, and this substantial estate on the edge of Leeds was where they lived, in fairly grand style.

Examples of their cloth had been exhibited at the great exhibition in 1851.

Tom Lupton trained as an architect, and became a manufacturer of furniture. He eventually sold his furniture business to Terence Conran when that entrepreneur was building the Habitat empire, and since he lived in Oxfordshire he had no use for the Beechwood estate that he inherited from two spinster aunts in 1972.

As a Christian socialist, Tom Lupton was motivated to ensure that this resource was made available to pursue objectives that he had some belief in.

And so I became aware of the way in which Christian Socialists like him have had an important influence in the UK.

For example, the Scott Bader Commonwealth, located I believe somewhere close to Middlesbrough, is a chemical factory making injection moulding chemicals. The owner of the factory, Scott Bader, gave the entire factory to his workforce, in perpetuity, in the 1950s.

It is one of few examples of industrial cooperation in the UK, where co-operatives have tended to be consumer co-operatives.

Later, when I was working as the education officer for Opera North in Leeds, I became involved in a project to help the co-operative movement celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Rochdale Pioneers.

This took place at a national centre owned by the co-operative movement nationally, located in Staffordshire.

Strange how threads can link up on themselves, and I found myself in a unique position to appreciate what I was helping to celebrate by virtue of my own history.

It was whilst working at Opera North that I had the opportunity to meet and work with an extraordinary range of creative people, broadening my own horizons substantially.

Opera was not an art form that I had ever previously experienced, but for five years, I had the opportunity to see as many shows as I could, and never had to pay a thing.

I even had the opportunity to see work at other opera houses, including Glyndebourne and English National Opera, since the education officers at all of these institutions formed a small but unique network.

Thus I got to go to Glyndebourne twice, and though I did not possess a dinner suit, working for Opera North meant that I was able to be kitted out with a very fine dinner suit thanks to the wardrobe department.

And so it is that I have met many of the most important composers working in the 20th century, often only at those kind of drinks parties that take place when a production opens.

But nevertheless, to someone like myself interested in those threads of history, I have had a field day.

I met Sir Michael Tippett during the opera lost production of his last opera, New Year.

He was in his 90s and almost blind, but still composing.

As a conscientious objector, he was imprisoned for his beliefs during the Second World War.

Later, working as the development director for the Scottish chamber Orchestra, I would work closely with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, master of the Queens music, organising his international young composers course on his island home of Orkney.

And so in the course of my work, I have had dinner with the likes of Arnold Wesker, at the Cheltenham Festival, and gave Sophie Dahl her acting debut in Goldilocks and the three Bears.

When I tell people that I have had dinner with Sophie Dahl I usually omit to mention that another dozen people were at the table with us, including her mother.

But that is the nature of personal experience, you can choose what you wish to include in any anecdotes.

Where I now live in Worthing in West Sussex is just across the road from the Queen Alexandra Hospital home for soldiers, and every year this important place has an open day.

I have met Dame Vera Lynn at the open day twice now, and because I included a short story about meeting with her at the hospital, in a special edition of my first collection of poems, a copy of this collection has been included in the local history collection of West Sussex county council, where it is rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Balzac, and Kipling.

I must have no illusions about the reason for my poems being included in this prestigious selection, it is the importance of the hospital and of its connection with Dame Vera Lynn, but it is nice to be thus included.

Keeping Back The Damp

I have lived in my own home in Worthing for just over 10 years. I live alone, although with a dog, you are never alone.

When I first moved in, I received a small settlement as a consequence of an accident in a public space. It was entirely not my fault, and as someone that was still walking but with crutches, my fall though not serious did much to damage my confidence.

This small settlement I spent almost entirely on the redecoration of my small apartment, just one bedroom, two or three streets back from the seafront.

It is a 1920s house, the ground floor or what we would in the UK  call a garden flat.

I have access to the rear of my property over the adjoining property, which enables me to gain access in my wheelchair from the street.

When I bought the house, on a mortgage, I was aware that all of the internal walls had been dry lined with plasterboard.

After 10 years, what I might have suspected has proven to be the case, that the plasterboard walls hide a general problem of damp.

Not serious damp, but sufficient to require sorting out properly now.

When I first moved in, I was able to benefit from a disabled facilities Grant, which meant that the local council spent a considerable sum turning my bathroom into a wet room, and giving me a new ramped access at the rear, with new double glazed wider opening to the ramped access, as well as the installation of superior fire alarms.

In spite of these improvements, when it rains and the wind is from the south, I get water coming in and spoiling the decoration, which is simple and minimalist white throughout.

I had the notion that I would like to live in something that approached a gallery space, and so the ceilings throughout were skimmed to smooth out the stippled texture, and the overall feel is simple and perfect for the display of my numerous pictures and photographs.

One of my last means of earning money before I ceased working entirely because of my condition, multiple sclerosis, was as a freelance graphic designer.

To facilitate this, I purchased a large format printer, which can print in full colour up to A1 size. At very high quality.

This means that some of my picture frames contain images that I have printed myself, either from photographs I have taken myself, or of images that I like.

Thus I can change my environment to a great extent. And I can offer to print large images at photographic quality for friends.

This printer is a great luxury, and I still keep it in working order even though it is much less used them once it was.

It is a great pleasure to be able to print images in this such a large format, and at such a high resolution.

To complete the needed improvements to my small apartment will cost more than I can afford, and a good friend of mine has offered to help me with some fundraising that may be needed.

I have already had the assurance of a local council officer that I may be able to secure a small grant from the same council that helped me with the disabled facilities Grant, but the available money is small, and I may have to find some additional resources.

This is my project for the next season, it may be that work will not be able to commence until next spring, and I will need to be relocated for about six weeks whilst the work takes place.

But my independence depends upon having this island of my own in my sea of troubles, somewhere that is shaped to my needs, and from where I can survey the world.

I don’t know exactly how much will be needed, but the issues and problems have begun to be more closely identified.

So as experts are consulted, my dog has new people to bark at. And she barks so well.

Oscar is a girl, and we have been together for the whole of her life, since she was rescued at the age of just over a year.

And so she is elderly, very protective, pays no attention to my commands, and yet remains my constant companion.

She is walked professionally by my most important carer daily, and so in spite of suffering arthritis for which she receives anti-inflammatories, she is happy and healthy for her age.

Any help the two of us, strays both, can keep back the waters will be most gratefully received.

No doubt this blog will regularly update any readers on the progress of my little scheme.

A Radical Idea Concerning The Socialisation Of People with Physical Disabilities

No lifts, no stairs, no steps and no barriers: an innovation in the care and long-term support and socialisation for people with physical disabilities

If at first this proposal sounds like it might begin as an architectural competition, then that is precisely my intention.

My proposal is multilayered in the suggests that there could be considerable savings of scale to be made in the way that people like myself with physical disabilities are supported and accommodated.

Further, and very much by way of improving opportunities for socialisation and integration, my early work experience as a member of a workers co-operative providing conference accommodation for person centred organisations with small budgets has proven to me that there is a substantial need for meeting and conference space that could generate substantial sums of money that could cover the running and operational costs of such an innovative type of building.

The early 1980s, from an overdraft of £3000 I was part of a team that grew a conference business with a turnover of £250,000 per annum during a five-year period.

Clearly, the circumstances in which the business operated were rather different. In our case, we’ve benefited from the provision of a substantial Victorian estate by the goodwill of its owner at a peppercorn rent, and located only 3 miles or so from Leeds city station, we were ideally placed to attract a national audience.

But the need still remains today for businesses of all kinds to find affordable conference and meeting space, on both a daily basis and on a residential basis.

For the purposes of an architectural competition, I have plucked out all my head the notion that the capacity to accommodate 30 to 40 people on a residential basis in single rooms would be initially adequate, with perhaps 10 additional twin rooms that were organised so that they were fully disabled access suited, perhaps in such a way that carers and cared for people of different sexes might have sufficient privacy within that accommodation.

In addition, on a more permanent basis, accommodation for between 10 and 20 people with a variety of needs would need to be created, and their accommodation might consist of the kind of space within which all of their living needs could take place - such as a small bedsit.

On-site catering would be an important component of servicing conference needs, and on a day-to-day basis should be able to accommodate meetings of up to 150 people plus the residential people and their carers.

A licensed bar could be included, although some innovation might look at the way in which this is an innovation in what it stocks.

So for an example, it might be much more like a cafe bar rather than simply an alcohol bar, and indeed could offer a wide range of alcohol free and healthy drinks as an alternative for everyone when socialising.

It is such a building used the most recent innovations in every aspect of its accommodation and the way in which it were designed to be fully accessible by people in wheelchairs, then it might also be attractive for use in respect of functions such as wedding receptions, and indeed it should be attractively presented with work commissioned by a range of artists in disciplines that would make it an attractive space in which to meet.

A multiplicity of breakout rooms could be used for all kinds of specialist small meetings, and should be equipped with a high level of technical equipment.

This level of technical equipment would of course be available outside of conference times for the use of residents, and it may be possible for residents to be able to contribute to some of the work supporting the conference business, such as graphic design for the creation of reports and follow-up for each event.

Any fees that might be generated could be made over to the social enterprise at the heart of this community business, because of the sensitive earning position of those people.

One of the principal benefits of such integrated living and working circumstances would be the way in which residents would be able to socialise with visiting conference and meeting attenders, and if more than one of these kind of facilities were to exist, as centres of excellence in their accessibility, it would make it possible for residents to be able to have a change of environment, typical hotel accommodation be out of the question for the majority of them.

It may be possible to have some additional services available to be rented out to commercial purposes, and so for example it may be advisable for someone like cooperative legal services to have a branch office within the premises. Preference should always be given to the type of business and how it is structured, so that other community businesses or cooperatives might be deemed more suitable.

If constructed on a brownfield site, there may be scope for substantial parking, for the use of residents, residents families and carers, and of course those attending meetings.

I stressed at the beginning of the concept of no barriers, and the use of technology for door opening and the ability of wheelchair users to access all areas with the minimum of assistance is critical.

Hence the idea of access to different levels being by way of gentle slopes rather than by lifts or by stairs.

The Pictures Are So Much Better...

This might have been written by way of advertisement.

It is unashamedly a positive reflection upon a new service available through Amazon.

I have been subscribing to this service for only a couple of months, and it may sound trite, but it has rather suddenly transformed my life.

This may sound grand, but if I may recount is little background this claim will make much more sense.

The service I am talking about is Audible, the means by which it has become possible to download audiobooks at a fraction of their normal cost.

I have become an avid listener to audiobooks more recently, quite simply because though I have been an inveterate reader for much of my life, the fact of my multiple sclerosis means that I cannot hold a book, nor turnEach page.

Although I am able to make out what the text of a computer document is, my eyesight has been severely affected by optic neuritis.

And so, my recent discovery of this means by which I can immerse myself in the written word has restored something important that otherwise had been lost to me.

Now the only issue is that age old problem, what to read.

Over the past couple of years, perhaps for obvious reasons, I have become much more interested in film as a medium.

Now suddenly I have become fascinated with reading the novels that have become the basis of films, and it is extremely interesting to me as someone that has been interested in creative writing for many years to see where the resulting film perhaps differs from the novel that inspired it

This is one of numerous possible ways in which I might direct line interest the written word, although there may be numerous other means by which I could navigate and make choices.

But for now, this is an important first step, and goodness I have much distance to travel to catch up with where I may have reached is books had remained accessible to me.

I still like to surround myself with antiquarian books, their pages filled with extraordinary images, and the wondrous smell of old paper.

But my imagination is once again inspired by accessing works which I thought were beyond me.

And after all, just like listening to radio, the pictures are so much better.

Tthe Land of Memories

I watched a fascinating documentary on BBC recently, about British whaling and how it had continued into the 1960s.

This was quite a surprise to me, as I am sure it would have been to so many people. Something that is unthinkable today, and yet was happening as recently as in the 60s.

What perhaps has stimulated my thoughts in an unexpected way was simply the knowledge that the principal whaling station on South Georgia was called Port of Leith.

This is the kind of geography that no one would be expected to know, not even to remember.

I suppose I only remember it because for three years I lived in Leith, the port of Edinburgh, between 1995 and 1998.

In this period of my life, two years before I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I was working as the Development Director for the Scottish chamber Orchestra.

I have fond memories of my time in this employment, and it is perhaps more frequently in my thoughts these days as the vote for Scottish secession comes potentially closer.

Who knows which way the Scots will vote, and far be it from me to second-guess them.

But I do have personal experience of that peculiar sense of Scottish nationalism, in that working for a National Scottish company, I did experience at times what can only be described as racism.

I was told to my face on one occasion that the job I was doing should be done by a Scot, but when I spoke about this to my boss, who was also an Englishman, he reassured me and said quite simply that they had appointed the best person for the job.

What this has reminded me of our those experiences that I had living in Scotland, almost exclusively positive, as Leith in Edinburgh was definitely on the up during my time there, thanks primarily to the fact that a new Scottish office building had recently been constructed in the port area, as a preliminary to the construction of the new Scottish Parliament building.

This meant that the flat in which my wife and I lived was within 400 yards of an extraordinary selection of world class restaurants, most of which had been opened in the wake of the transformation of the old port as part of the general tidying up of a depressed part of Scotland’s capital.

We loved eating out, and we truly had an incredible selection within short walking distance of where we were living.

This was a purpose built block of flats, but constructed in about 1816. The style of apartment is particular to Edinburgh, and would be described as a drawing room flat.

In short, this meant high ceilings and a huge living room.

We had a period shutters and a truly gigantic living room, that gave us spacious living, and good views from our second floor position.

Another proposed development that happened whilst we were in Edinburgh was the location of a permanent mooring for the Royal yacht Britannia, in the Port of Leith itself, with an associated shopping mall linked to a mooring station for transatlantic shipping.

This certainly added to reasons why people might visit Leith, and perhaps explains why when we left Edinburgh, we made a small killing on the sale of our flat, after owning it for just three years.

Of all of the restaurants available to us, perhaps our favourite was a small French restaurant, the name of which escapes me.

This was located just a little out of the way in the conversion of one of the many old warehouse buildings that would have served the merchants of the port.

It was an excellent conversion, and whilst we never ate upstairs, there was apparently an upstairs room that could be used for functions is required.

But we quickly felt completely at home in the beautifully and simply designed ground floor restaurant, and we seemed never to have a problem getting a table.

Service was attentive and efficient, and the linen was crisp and white.

And the food. French influenced but of the minimalist and uncluttered by sauces, but beautifully presented on a fabulous selection of square white plates.

It became a home from home for us, and though not as inexpensive as we might have liked, it became the place that we regularly dined weekly at, and if occasion presented itself, at the least excuse.

I remember precious little detail of the menus, but then, this is not a restaurant review. Suffice that the food was excellent and to our taste.

I remember that the restaurant was presided over by the portrait of a woman, that was I think uncompleted. But this only added to the sense of the space, and it may have been a genuine period antique, though it may equally have been painted only recently but with an accomplished hand.

Everything about the place spoke of style, and no wonder that we wished we could eat there on a daily basis.

I wonder sometimes if it still exists, though it matters not as it remains one of my fondest memories of time spent in Scotland.

And in the land of memories, nothing need change.

Confessions Of A Moustache Waxer

I have recently started to wax my moustache.

Why this feels like some kind of confession, I don’t know.

It isn’t the first time that I have waxed my moustache, although to be honest I had thought that I was no longer subject to the vanities of youth.

I am 53 years of age, and severely disabled thanks to multiple sclerosis. So this is hardly something that is designed to improve my Saturday nights on the town.

The first time that I waxed my moustache was when I was much younger, and years before MS was over on the scene.

I was 22 years of age, living as a recently graduated student in London, and active in the management of the housing in which I had been living since my last year at university.

This was a housing co-operative in East London, and my only photographic evidence of my appearance at the time is my old underground monthly tube pass, which has a small passport sized photograph showing me with my waxed moustache.

Although I display this small image proudly tucked into the frame of a picture on one of my walls, most people that see it think of it as something rather quirky, and my ex-wife and good friend (still) has been quite frank with me, and says that I look as if I were some kind of terrorist.

I can’t say that I agree, but perhaps there is something less than typical about this photograph.

This would have been taken in about 1982, and at the time, I obtained my supplies of moustache wax from a small costume supplier somewhere off Drury Lane in the West End of London.

It was the kind of small shop that I imagine would have gone out of business many years ago, and so when it came to obtaining supplies of moustache wax once again only recently, I had no idea where I would obtain supplies.

Of course, what I had failed to take into account was the fact that we live in the Internet age, and a swift search of the Internet led me to a page of moustache wax suppliers on Amazon which quite took me aback.

The choice was astonishing, I had no idea that I would be presented with the problem of choice rather than the difficulty of finding the stuff.

Clearly, there has been a resurgence of interest in moustache waxing.

And of course, since I have started to wax my moustache, I have started to see waxed moustaches in many contexts where otherwise I might have entirely missed them.

So for example garden designers at the recent Chelsea flower show, and this has made me reflect simply that when you get a red car, you see red cars everywhere.

Another inspiration for me has been the recent BBC dramatised documentary of the 37 days leading up to the start of the First World War.

Set in that summer of 1914, it is a veritable parade of extraordinary moustaches, from all across Europe.

It has made me start to ruminate about the way in which this was of course the glory day of the waxed moustache, and I realise that I have been a secret collector of old photographs of men with grand moustaches, picking them up in junk shops and at the markets. Almost rescuing them or adopting them when they have become forgotten and unloved.

But there is perhaps something sombre and sad in the realisation that it was the First World War that put an end to this aspect of male vanity in its ultimate flowering.

Because all of those grand moustaches from the Edwardian period were destroyed in that terrible conflict, and in some respects, it is a terrible cliche that the young officer leading his troops from the trenches and into battle would have sported some kind of handlebar moustache.

But there it is, I have started to cultivate a waxed moustache, and in my case, given the limitations placed upon me by my multiple sclerosis, I am fortunate that my carers have risen to the challenge of waxing my moustache for me.

It has become part of my daily routine, being assisted with shaving using an electric razor, rather than having a three-day stubble which has been my typical appearance since forever.

And then, a slap and a wax. The application of aftershave, the slap, and then the waxing of the moustache.

It’s my only vanity, I console myself.

An Inspector Calls (1954)

For the first decade of my working life I lived in Leeds in West Yorkshire. This meant that I was a fairly regular visitor to Bradford.

Bradford has many attractions, not least of all the quality of its curry houses.

Fairly central to the city is the National Museum of Film and Photography, in my memory one of the first major national museums located purposefully outside of London.

And just outside of the Museum is a bronze statue of the novelist and playwright JB Priestley, someone whose writings have somewhat fallen out of fashion in more recent times.

One of his most important early works is his English Journey, and I remember that 50 years after it was written, another important writer of a different generation was commissioned to write a similar work that followed in the kind of footsteps of this pioneering writer.

In spite of having what might be described as socialist leanings, one of the most interesting facts concerning the original JB Priestley English Journey is that he undertook it from the back seat of his chauffeured limousine.

This perhaps sets him apart from someone like George Orwell, who of course famously went down and out in London and Paris, and whilst not exactly adopting a disguise to do so, he actually lived the life of someone without a penny to his name.

And this is the background to the man that wrote An Inspector Calls, perhaps one of his most famous stage works, and one that I have at some point in my theatre going life seen presented on the London stage.

Most recently, I have recorded a broadcast version of this work, and transferred it to my growing collection of over 600 films, accessible at the click of a mouse from a 2 TB hard disk attached to my computer.

It is extraordinary that such an elderly play can be so fabulously engaging even in the present day.

A recent blog entry of mine talked about the way in which the BBC has been looking at the circumstances in the lead up to the First World War, in this centenary year.

In some respects, this play is closely linked to an understanding of what was lost by the destruction of the generation that fought this terrible war.

At the outset of the play, we are told that it is 1912, and the events that take place on a single night that will forever transform the lives of the participants shed great light on this time in our nation’s history.

Without giving away any of the plot details, no spoilers, sufficient to say that a mysterious police inspector interrupts a family in the middle of a family celebration.

Without providing any significant detail, but simply by asking questions about the knowledge that the family members have of a young girl that has taken poison and died horribly at the local infirmary, it is discovered that each of them has played some crucial role in determining the fate of this woman.

It is an extraordinarily moral work, and one which it would be difficult to imagine staged outside of its own period.

But it is fundamentally a work of great insight into the human condition, and the way in which we affect the lives of others, quite fitting then that such an imposing statue of the author should stand so prominently as a memorial to him in his home town.

I am sure it was not simply a quirk of fate that it should be shown at this point in time, when there is so much s thought about the world left behind after this conflict.

That the play should have had such a durable life is a tribute to its quality, and if anyone has not read or seen it, catching the film is an excellent way of appreciating it.