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I suspect that having a lousy summer (weather-wise) has finally got to me - and most everyone around me. Fortunately, our annual holiday tied in with the only two weeks of decent weather to be had and, living on the high ground in the Weald of Kent, flooding was never an issue. The whole miserable thing was tolerated on the assumption that a bad July and August usually means an Indian Summer in September. No such luck as we have sidled now into low temperatures and gloomy skies. *********** Peter Mahoney's events once a month on a Friday night at Treadwells are already stimulating the spirit - one wishes one could say more but the whole point (in my opinion) is that it is experienced and not talked about. Whether I will stick the course, given the dangers of my dark side infecting a rather sunny programme of work, is a moot point but the whole thing is worthwhile and that opinon is clearly shared by others. ********** The business of life can be enervating. Two businesses to run and a domestic economy with all the juggling involved ... and we don't even have to worry about having any funds in Northern Rock. Sometimes it is harder when it is going well (as seems to be the case now), simply because time then becomes available to do all those jobs that one put off as not so important - they then catch up on you and prove to be important after all. So, it's away from living with the fairies and back down amongst the dark elves in sorting out insurances and pensions. I am not that sort of anal personality that gets their bourgeois rocks off by listening to the money programmes on Radio 4 and studying interest rates in the personal finance columns of the Sunday Press, but I have to accept that the job has to be done - eventually. And eventually is becoming now. ********** Book reviews now go on my Facebook Virtual Bookshop but I have to commend (as a short sharp guide) the little book on "What Do Astrologers Believe" in the Granta Series by Nicholas Campion as a sound and readable guide to this contentious area. I noted the odd accuracy of my 'stars' in my last entry but I retain an open mind - in both directions of scepticism and acceptance. What I am prepared to accept in all these occult arts (or sciences) is that something is going on in a space that is within the mind and maybe within matter itself where interpretation and action, will and intellect, being and becoming, operate as a grey liminality. Things are never as truly knowable as scientists and religions of the book may like to claim. This space may not be quite what many of its believers think it to be, but, with its shifting boundaries and symbolisms, it has been too easily dismissed as 'non-sense' by our intellectual elites, certainly in the last 350 years. It is not 'non-sense', it is 'different-sense'. I still hold to my view that the secrets of this unknown space will never be uncovered by conventional means. - though conventional science may push the boundaries forward to isolate the phenomena. it will create doubt that intellectual explanations are sufficient for what remains. Scientists may say that such-and-such falls within some Darwinian, neuro-physiological or physical framework but there is going to be a point where such claims are going to be matters of faith without serious recourse to scientific method. What will probably be uncovered will be fragile, shifting, subjective and dependent on time rather than space - and yet expressive of a reality no less for that. The proven impossibility of knowing anything formal about the numinous and the subjective is surely going to make the latter more interesting as its boundaries become more defined. At a certain point, rationalism will simply cease to deliver the goods and either have to cede ground or become what it despises - a religion of faith. Traditional faith and science-based ways of seeing have not protected us from discovering just how little control rational elites have over the course of current and future events - and how the interpretation of past events is so often contingent. The necessity of the present is generally drawn as a backward working from a fixed point when it might be equally fruitful to make imaginative leaps into the many possibilities that might have resulted from different decisions. Re-thinking time as possibility as well as actuality may be the most liberating development yet in the human condition, enabling decision-makers to halt their cowardly determination to act like cogs in a machine, no longer digging deeper when they are in a hole of their own making. Tags: general news, philosophy, religion
Current Location: Tunbridge Wells
Current Mood:  tired
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Some bits and pieces about a busy week with a separate note on evil to follow ...
First of all, a big thank you (in public - private to follow) to Christina for letting my son do a week's work experience at Treadwells. I kept out of the way but I know that he came home energised from working in that atmosphere and only hope he gave something in return for what he clearly got out of it. Thank you, Christina - and for filing out the bloody forms.
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We did one of those American High School quizzes the other day. I turned out to be a 'trendy Goth' (er, look at my photo!), my daughter was a nerdy Goth (which she seemed very happy with) and I can't reveal what my wife was classed as - for fear of my life if I do so.
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For those who think promises must be kept, you will be pleased to know that I did get to give Gerry Clark lunch this week [see Posting of May 23rd] at the Wine Library in Tower Hill, his favourite haunt. The wines were Spanish-themed. We had the last small bottle of a chilled very dry Manzanilla which we swear had the taste of the salt sea near where it is matured: the shop is not for plonk but the prices for the intelligent buyer are surprisingly good value for such a specialist outlet. Oh, how I love small niche shops (like Treadwells!). The Wine Library is at 43 Trinity Square, EC3 and its website is at http://www.winelibrary.co.uk/
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Another update for those following that disaster zone called Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. My definitive negative comment on the Tour de France is at http://timinlondon.zaadz.com/blog The matter is now closed!
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It is corporate hospitality season. We've been too busy to do anything about it at Pendry White this year (last year it was local cricket) but we'll make up for that in due course. 'Er indoors seems to be spending a lot of time at Lords Cricket Ground (with the excuse that a client is involved in an English Cricket Board Sponsorship) but the high point has been the invitation to the Holland Park Barber of Seville by our old friends at Beaumont Cornish (the place to go for corporate finance support for AIM listing). A superb production with a Rosina (as all the males in our party agreed) to die for - metaphorically speaking - and a wonderfully wild barber. Toby Stafford-Allen was Figaro, Frances Bourne was Rosina (grrrhhhuffff!) and Brad Cooper was Count Almaviva.
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The main business event of the week was a small dinner organised by the Next Century Foundation at which views were exchanged on what the Brown administration might mean for the Middle East, notably the Gulf since the host and two of the guests were Gulf Ambassadors. There is not much that can be said because these events are stimulating precisely because they are off the record, but some tribute must be paid to the NCF, in particular William Morris, its Director, for making these things happen. It is not always appreciated that Ambassadors need help to understand our peculiar British culture. Ambassadors, in turn, can give a perspective on their strategic situation that is very different from the stereotyping we find in even the best written and researched of our national media. Perhaps I can say this - if the Americans are stupid enough to believe that a pre-emptive strike against Iran is useful or that destabilising Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are without significant risks to global stability (economic and political) then we are all in a s**t load of trouble.
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I wish I had written about the ICA's Exhibition Memorial to the Iraq War which closed on June 27th and which I saw some two weeks ago (twice). This was an exhibition that actually gave conceptual art a good name and I urge you to get the free newsprint catalogue before the copies are pulped.
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And one last negative comment. What the hell do they think they have been doing at the Royal Festival Hall? OK, so the 'original design' is back but it forgets that it came out of a cold, cash-strapped and fundamentally utilitarian culture and the place had since organically morphed into a proper community centre. Now it is just a cultural mall - the shops below and the restaurants to one side surround a building that is treated as little more than an artefact in the culture industry. This is so typical of our attitude to culture - to 'make it pay' while preserving the core bit in aspic. Oh, despair! Oh, misery! I hate the culture industry! Selling nostalgia and consumerism in one uneasy package, like having stalls selling saints' relics in the nave of the cathedral while the service is still going on. Still, it is the way of our times. If they do this to our old culture, then we just have to create a new culture!.
Tags: general news
Current Mood:  relaxed
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Gosh, my last entry was turgid - that is what politics does to you. Yuk! But to edit it or remove it would be inauthentic - let it lie on the record! This is what I did since writing it ... * Chaired a Panel on the NUJ boycott of Israel * Met a pretty girl called Emira who swore she knew me but I could not place her * Met some journalists I haven't seen for ages * Dropped in on Treadwells and had a most stimulating conversation with the thoughtful Christina on matters both business and pagan * Discovered the Nell Gwynne pub (a true dive) in an alley in Covent Garden * Discussed Catholicism and the family over a drink with my sister's friend's husband's sister * Got merry in the Archduke near Waterloo with two members of the Nigerian opposition going 'into business' and my old pal Simon Partridge * Lost one client (change of executive within the company) but moved two others along towards significant new revenues: in our business, we know what we have to do and it is just a matter of doing it ... * Lunched at the RSJ with a business contact who had some insights into managing our sort of business * Decided I was not at all impressed with the clean-up of the Royal Festival Hall * Bought far too many books on paganism, philosophy and evil from the ICA - list on application * Had a pint in the ICA, then a cava in Charing Cross Hotel to steel myself for a philosophical lecture on the Limits of Knowledge * Enjoyed the company of my wife in the American Bar of the Savoy and discussed the limits of knowledge (I married an intellectual who wears it lightly) while the piano tinkled * Worked (lots more than the above implies) * Had an Octopus salad at Carluccios in Tunbridge Wells * Admired Sahra_Patroness' avatar photograph which reminded me of how appalling mine is. So three days of doing lots of little things ... now to concentrate on doing one thing well. There is one project that, if it comes off, I shall have to live and breathe for six months ... Tags: general news
Current Location: London & Tunbridge Wells
Current Mood:  confused
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Lobster 53 is now out and contains my quick dissection of State panic at the global security situation [Fifth Column: The Brittle Society]. This has already been well received based on contact from friends who are investigative journalists. Lobster is a small circulation, twice-yearly but longstanding review of parapolitics. It is edited by Robin Ramsay, who wrote the small Pocket Essentials Guides to Conspiracy Theory and to the rise of New Labour, but has written much else besides. Lobster eschews nonsense better suited to the X-Files, and looks openly at how political events, past and future, might be looked at afresh in terms of motivation and personal connection. It has some investigative scalps to its credit, including the original exposure of the scandals known as the Colin Wallace/'Wilson plots' story. This may be arcane stuff to today's youngsters but is important in reminding us that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Lobster is £3.00 and can be obtained from Robin at 214 Westbourne Avenue, Hull HU5 3JB - robin@lobster.karoo.co.uk - www.lobster-magazine.co.uk
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The Compass Conference on Saturday was worthy enough but not enlightening. The Left said what the Left says to itself. One gets the sense, still, of a community living in a world of ends and values but with no real will or strategy to effect the means ... meanwhile, conferences like this are good for meeting old friends and keeping in touch. The best value of the day was a friendly beer between Mark Seddon (Al-Jazeera, formerly Editor of Tribune), Ken Penton (Political Officer of Community), Peter Kenyon (Labour Commission) and myself and, earlier, meeting up with the Chartist crowd - Martin Cook, Duncan Bowie, Trevor Fisher et al - old comrades in the forlorn struggle for sensible democracy within both Party and State. I feel a sort of long, slow letting go of the past. The only really bright spark of the day was to see so many bright, lively and 'together' youngsters around the Conference. Chartist itself, a bi-monthly magazine, is just left-wing decency and commonsense writ large - www.chartist.org.uk It is the hidden jewel of centre-left political discussion (and that is not just because, once in a blue moon, it takes a grumpy middle-aged article from me).
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A new thread in this Journal is going to have to be my home town Tunbridge Wells. Oh, where to begin! A glossy magazine ['Issue One It's Full of Surprises'] has appeared through our door this week with an editorial telling us all how wonderful it is to live in Tunbridge Wells. Well, it may be so if you live in one of the nice suburban areas or one of the cute little Wealden villages within the Borough and come into town for the shopping, but if you live in the town itself, it is a decaying sink pit of urban degradation, disorder, environmental neglect and noise - pretty well like every other small town centre turned over to retail therapy and without a proper community to sustain it. We may return to this theme. The latest wheeze is to get us all excited about the Tour de France coming through the town - a day of may-hem for local residents so that the big retailers can send the extra profits back up to head office and the 'newsagent vote' can stay solid for the local Tories whose hold over the Borough is only one notch down from that of Nazarbeyev in Kazakhstan.
OK, so I sound churlish, but there is a bigger issue here. Events derived from real community enterprise are being displaced across the country by increasingly massive sponsored profit-making extravaganzas. This is becoming the reality of private/public partnership - not the employment of private will, enterprise and technique by a strong, intelligent and public spirited government but the delegation of wealth creation to 'circuses'. I am a strong supporter of the right sort of employment of the private sector in meeting social needs - housing, healthcare add-ons, specialist training and education or whatever will improve the lot of the people. But handing over our streets and communities to disruptive commercial sports and entertainment events! What good is that!
Communities are expected, indeed are assumed, because of the Press coverage, to be excited and supportive. Opponents are made to feel anti-social for 'spoiling other people's fun' by talking these events down. But this is from the official Tunbridge Wells Borough Council magazine: "The publicity caravan is expected to arrive ... just before 11.30am ... a large procession of sponsors' vehicles with people throwing goodies and souvenirs into the crowds and generally creating excitement for the spectators." Would you be surprised to know that this is a Council that has shifted to fortnightly rubbish collection and which claims to be environmentally conscious? Yet here is a Council officially getting excited about give-away consumer tat being thrown into the crowds artificially to generate excitement. This is a culture of Roman Circuses without the Bread.
Tags: general news, politics, tunbridge wells
Current Location: London & Tunbridge Wells
Current Mood:  cynical
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timlondon's journal
