Living with the Weather

In principle at least it was a good idea. We could get away from all the fun of the post-Christmas sales and have a few days of peace and quiet in France. Roaring log fires, a book or two, warmth and creature comforts including a bottle or two of wine, and a glass or two of port to accompany the remains of the Christmas stilton; even an invigorating cycle ride to the boulanger to collect the obligatory baguette each morning. Happiness!

At the cold and snowy Eurotunnel terminus on Thursday afternoon we realized that quite a number of people had the same sort of idea, and there was a delay while the inevitable backlog was cleared and cars with the letter “H” were allowed to embark.

There didn’t seem to be so much snow around when we eventually arrived in France, but as we neared our village we found that there was in fact sufficient snow and ice to make the surrounding hills (and the driveway to our “maison secondaire”) quite treacherous.

No matter we arrived safely. The house was still standing but quite chilly in the sub-zero temperatures. More so in that, during our four or five week’s absence the house had run out of central heating oil. The wife (particularly with her Scottish blood) and I are made of stern stuff and we knew that this presented only a small problem. You don’t have to have baths brimming with hot water, and steaming radiators in order to survive, and anyway we were able to negotiate a delivery of oil for the following morning.

Friday morning dawned with a furious red sky, enough to have the wife clamber out of bed to inspect it and say that she had never seen such a thing. Sure enough, we were in for quite a day of meteorological surprises. But first (and happily) the oil man arrived with a thousand litres of fioul. “Une heure” he told us to wait before we could restart the boiler. During that hour-long wait the wind started to howl and snow gusted down; I couldn’t get the laptop to work and we seemed to be losing TV reception because of the extreme conditions. Then, with ten minutes to go before restarting the boiler, we had a total power cut. So no heat (apart from one gas fire and one log fire), not enough natural daylight to read by, no hot water, and snow beginning to drift in our driveway. We had a torch or two, candles and plenty of food and drink, sufficient logs to last a few days before we started to burn the furniture, and the car didn’t look a good bet at all.

Three hours later we had electricity back and, after some anxious moments, a working boiler and a return (inside the house) to near normality. Soon afterwards the snow changed to rain, the main effect of which was to turn the graveled area outside our house into a skating rink. Last night enough rain poured down to melt most of the remaining snow and ice and we look forward to finding the area beset by flooding in the near future.

However as I sit typing away on a now-functioning laptop in a warm house, with the sun unexpectedly streaming through the window, it gives me a moment to reflect on the whimsical way our weather system works and, generally, how poorly equipped we are to deal with real periods of extreme weather. Certainly we had logs and candles, working gas cylinders and a good torch. But batteries run down (as do gas cylinders and food supplies). We had taken the precaution of bringing the car battery charger from England, but that is not much use if you have no mains electricity. I think I’ll review our stocks of logs, food and batteries, and maybe I’ll buy a generator on E-Bay which I’ll tow around behind my car wherever I go.

Temperance or Temperate?

It was Saturday; it was cold, but the sun shone brightly and nowhere more than at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The wife and I were on a pre-Christmas outing with friends who were sensible enough to insist that we had a look at Dale Chihuly's extraordinary glass sculptures. There must be more than a thousand of them and they pervade every corner of the gardens and greenhouses, bringing great swathes of colour and brilliance to complement rather than detract from extraordinary plants and stunning architecture. Although the Chihuly exhibits have been in place since May, there is a Christmas feel to them with cascades of colourful glass balloons in the Temperate House, and an extraordinary "Sun" in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I urge my readers to have a look before the exhibits are all removed in mid-January.


Chihuly is a prolific artist. Exhibitions of his glasswork fan out around the world from his home workshops in Seattle and Tacoma. Currently he is exhibiting at Kew and simultaneously (in similar vein) at the Fairchild Botanic Gardens, Coral Gables, Florida. There are further showings of his work right now in galleries in Toronto, Boca Raton, Bellevue, Orlando Florida, and Kalamazoo Michigan. His 2006 schedule includes more Botanic Gardens (in Missouri) and more galleries all over the USA. He is piratical in appearance (he lost an eye in a road accident when driving in the UK to visit the artist Peter Blake) and wears a black eyepatch.

But back in Kew it is not only the plants and glass sculpture that evoke Christmas. A temporary ice rink is in place and, viewed from the gallery of the Temperate House you catch a glimpse of Lowry-esque matchstick figures on skates.


And, particularly memorable, is the Thames skiff overflowing with a profusion of coloured glass, yet almost concealed from view in a quiet corner of the Palm House pond.


The only difficulty in an otherwise perfect day was that the Ranting Nappa had appointed himself "Nominated Driver" for the journey back to the distant South. Dinner isn't quite the same on a Saturday night when is behaving oneself from a temperance point-of-view. Still, next time I'll pilot a Thames skiff instead of driving a car!

Secondary Retailing; Ant and Dec

Okay, second things first. The Daily Telegraph really has taken over from The Times as the bastion of crusty-establishment Olde England. In keeping with their interest in all matters Tory the paper lauded Carol Thatcher on her victory on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here show. The Telegraph report by James Burleigh and Hugh Davies (it takes two to write up a world event of this magnitude) included the following piece of impenetrable journalistic pomposity:

“Speaking afterwards to the programme’s presenters, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, Thatcher described her ordeal ….”

I’m surprised that they didn’t refer to the presenters as Mister Anthony McPartlin and Mister Declan Donnelly.

It is interesting to hear that manufacturers are getting extremely uppity about secondary retailing (where one shopkeeper buys off another, rather than following his regular lines of supply). A recent survey has shown that nearly forty per cent of small traders buy part of their stock from supermarkets rather than the more traditional cash-and-carry outlets. At the insistence of their suppliers the supermarkets are promising to try and stop serving secondary retailers such as these.

But why, oh why, for Heaven’s sake? I, like most booksellers, have purchased multiple copies of Harry Potter books from Asda at their loss-leading prices in the past. I’ve then sold them on at a better margin than I would have if I had bought them from a wholesaler. Why not? It’s straightforward trading. If Sainsbury sell bottles of Baileys for four pounds below the cash-and-carry price, then good luck to them. But why should they have to refuse to sell them to the owner of the corner shop who can then sell them to the public at a more competitive price.

If manufacturers really want a Great Britain where the public are encouraged to purchase their goods exclusively from the four or five major supermarket chains, then fine. I’m off. Surely there must be some law to stop restrictive practices and discrimination in retailing. I can understand a sign in a supermarket saying “SPECIAL TODAY - 50% OFF - LIMITED TO ONE PER CUSTOMER ONLY”. But for trade associations to go and actively seek legislation to outlaw secondary retailing? Bah, humbug!

South Coast Pantomime Season

I have to agree with the BBCs Alan Hansen that “Pantomime season has started and there's none better than down on the South Coast”. With a cast of characters that includes Harry Redknapp, Dave “Harry” Bassett and Dennis Wise (playing Buttons), the Portsmouth-Southampton managership fiasco is as good as any TV soap opera ever gets.

We have Milan Mandaric and Rupert Lowe playing the Ugly Sisters (Mandaric’s gargoyle-like facial features require no additional make-up at all). There are also no less than two Cinderellas in Sir Clive Woodward (who better to bring a breath of fresh air to Southampton?) and Lawrie Sanchez (surely the obvious choice to manage poor old Portsmouth). Another of my favourite managers – Neil Warnock of Sheffield United – has already played his cameo role and returned home (what a sensible man).

Quite how Harry Redknapp got himself into such a muddle defies belief; and involving two clubs whose hatred of one another makes Arsenal-Spurs and Norwich-Ipswich rivalries look like mild spats amongst friends. Not even Liverpool-Everton, or the two Manchesters, or the two Sheffields can match the pure, passionate detestation that these teams feel for each other.

My guess is that by this time next year Mr Redknapp will be managing some team far, far away from the South Coast. Portsmouth will be relegated from the Premiership and will be scrapping with Southampton in the Championship relegation zone.

Pity the players! Pity the fans!

Blog 101 – Big Brother is Watching

You never know who is reading ones blog output, but receiving emails to mark the one hundredth (see passim) means that there are people out there in the ether keeping an eye on events. And so onwards to the one hundred and first in the series. 101 is of course the first three figure number to be palindromic. England beat Australia in a one-day international at Edgbaston by 101 runs in June 1977 (J.K.Lever four wickets for 29 runs as the Australians slumped to 70 all out; not out batsman J.K.Lever 27). How we enjoyed that day!

Although I’ve watched the TV programme Room 101 on many occasions, the derivation of “Room 101” has eluded me. Had you asked me thirty or forty years ago I would have pinned it down instantly, but it has somehow fogged over in the mists of time. Disgraceful, really, for a person who has spent his life in bookselling and publishing, and who played a role in marketing at Penguin Books in the mid-eighties.

What better use of my one hundredth and first blog to put my mind straight and to recall Chapter 5 of George Orwell’s 1984:

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing Winston could not see what the thing was.

Oh, rats, I’ve probably contravened every law of copyright in not asking the Orwell estate for permission to copy that. George Orwell in turn apparently got the notion for Room 101 from a conference room at Broadcasting House in which he sat through interminably boring meetings when he worked there in the early 1940s.

For the more scientific of my readers I would point out atomic number 101 - a radioactive transuranic element synthesized by bombarding einsteinium with alpha particles (seriously). The 101ers were a pub rock band in the 1970s (notable for giving Joe Strummer – later of The Clash – his first signing). The 101^st Airborne Division of the US Air Force (the Screaming Eagles) is currently serving in Iraq. At the time of the Normandy landings we could have done without the Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 – the crack SS-Waffen armoured unit, and so on, and so on.

Premium Numbers

Of course no-one will admit responsibility but some outlandish charges have been showing up on our phone bill - charges for calls to “premium numbers” for TV programmes. Now, being a belligerent old curmudgeon, I don’t “do” premium numbers, not even the ones that connect you to charming young ladies for a bit of chat on suitably saucy subjects. The wife doesn’t “do” them either, nor the daughter nor her boyfriend, nor even the cat. So who and why?

Yesterday evening was a typical Saturday night for TV addicts like ourselves. An hour of Strictly Ballroom during which neither the wife or I had enough interest to phone our support for Darren Gough, or Colin Jackson, or anyone else. Had the daughter been in the house, she might have sent a surreptitious text message vote for “Goughy” via her own mobile, but she and her boyfriend were safely aboard a USA-bound flight to catch a little pre-Christmas skiing.

After Strictly Ballroom there was The X Factor. Now I was as pleased as the next man that the wonderful Brenda made it through to the next round, but I didn’t vote for her. The wife assures me that Journey South will win it, and she is sufficiently certain about it that she assures me there is no need to vote. Over two million people apparently did vote however.

The came I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here. This was notable for Carol Thatcher’s effortless handling of snakes, rats and spiders, as much as for her nonchalant farting (I wonder if her mother released wind during her meetings with the French President?). But we weren’t going to phone support for Carol or anyone else. There was a dodgy moment when we lay in bed half watching the I’m a Celebrity Live follow-up programme which mostly consists of fly-on-the-wall camera shots of goings on in the camp. At the foot of the screen a phone-in “guess-the-number” game plays continuously and, alarmingly, the wife quickly worked out the correct answer. Even then she showed admirable restraint and left the phone alone.

Maybe we should have gone to France for the weekend to avoid all this phone-in nonsense. We would have been just in time for the French “Téléfon” charity appeal.

Footnote: For those readers who are interested this is the Ranting Nappa's one hundredth blog. They don't get any better do they?

Beating The Drum

I’ve droned on about the daughter’s boyfriend’s Tom Tom before. Retailers expect to sell record numbers of these satellite navigation systems this Christmas and new cars are being offered with (typically) £1,200-worth of Sat-Nav kit thrown in.

Now I could easily rant about the inherent dangers of the things - the daughter’s boyfriend often pays much more attention to the Tom Tom screen than he does to the road when driving, and having a bossy woman telling you which way to go at the next roundabout is liking having an extra person (daughter/wife?) in the car. The state of Britain’s roads however inclines me the other way.

At present my usual route to work is blocked by a bridge closure (8 weeks) on the old A3 south of Liphook. My secondary route (via the outskirts of Petersfield) has now been shut off by road closure (8 weeks), and I’m beginning to wonder where the next set of roadworks is being planned for my pre-Christmas entertainment. In circumstances like this a Sat Nav system might well be useful, or for when you are unexpectedly diverted off your intended course. The daughter’s boyfriend looked positively gleeful the other week when an articulated lorry flipped on the M20 (sideways across three lanes) and it looked as if the motorway would be closed – forcing traffic such as ourselves to be diverted off the motorway and onto the narrow lanes of East Kent. Happily for me we were too far up the queue (the motorway was indeed closed at Ashford) and we were able to squeeze around the stricken lorry on the hard shoulder, and thence home without further ado.

No blog on roadworks and Sat Nav systems would be complete for me without mention of the stupidest piece of road planning management ever known – the A3 at Hindhead. Anyone heading from London in the direction of Portsmouth will know that from Putney the A3 provides a serviceable dual carriageway heading south and connecting with the main coastal arterial (the A27) near Southsea. The problem is (and always has been) the Hindhead bottle-neck – a couple of miles where the dual carriageway stops and normal two-direction traffic winds around one corner of the Devil’s Punch Bowl before grinding to a halt at traffic lights where the A3 crosses the Haslemere-Churt road at Hindhead. Queues several miles long are to be found here on every day of the week. Breakdowns and accidents can paralyse the area completely and it has long been on Mr Darling’s list of priorities to sort out. We have passed the years and years of consultations and public enquiries, contractors have been appointed and all that has to be done is to build a 1.8 kilometre tunnel to sort the matter out. However nothing is to happen until at least 2009. The plans are stuck on the desks of three different ministers (yes, John Prescott is one of them), and the financial go-ahead is unlikely ever to be granted. The South is just not worth the penny to a government that knows that the North is where its votes come from. Bah!

Dynamite

Such has been my blog-writer’s-block in recent weeks that it required something really special to force me back into the writing habit. It came this cold Sunday morning in the form (not surprisingly) of the Right Honourable Geoffrey William Hoon, Member of Parliament for Ashfield and Leader of the House of Commons, talking about education on BBC TV. Asked by Andrew Marr about the number of Labour MPs who might be expected to offer immediate support for the new education reforms, Mr Hoon replied with the normal politician’s workaround: Labour has apparently doubled expenditure on education in its term of office; there are thirty thousand new teachers and, supporting them, one hundred and thirty-eight thousand new administrative staff. Whaaaaaat? I must have misheard – I’ll have to have the ears syringed again!

There has been so much to blog about recently that you have missed my musings on many subjects. So like enacting the works of Shakespeare in an hour long radio drama, I’ll list some of the subjects I have intended to blog about, but failed to so.

• Cameron – Davis

My Mum says “Cameron”. The wife says “Cameron”. Who am I to argue?

• Alastair Cook (not Cooke)

Well done England for summoning the young Essex cricketer to Pakistan. Let’s hope he gets a match or two. (And will Brett Lee sign for Essex?)

• Cheese and Supermarkets

How unsurprising that a supermarket can boast a range of over 150 different cheeses including many “small farm” items by ordering from just a handful of suppliers – Altria (Kraft), Lactel (President, etc.), Dairy Crest (St Ivel, Cathedral City, etc.) and one or two other megacorps.

• Sudoku Etiquette

“Bollocks!” intoned the younger brother when I told him that members of my family keep telling me off for pencilling possible numbers and connections onto my Sudoku puzzle. Sudoku is meant to train the brain, so you should keep all those marginal notes in your head and only enter “assured” numbers on the grid, not scrawl in the corners of the squares. Seeing that there is so much Sudoku merchandise in the shops this Christmas I have it in mind to find the younger brother a roll of Sudoku (Times-Killer-Fiendish) loo paper for Christmas.

• All Blacks Rugby

I was proud of England’s great performance against the New Zealanders yesterday. Sad about the result, though.

• Tony Blair

Now that he is being written off I have (finally) come to approve of him as a Prime Minister. He seems to be taking on major issues with great courage, usually confronting his stupid colleagues head-on regarding policies on health, education, terrorism, etc. Bravo!

• Bird Flu

The bantams have been giving me strange looks recently, and a small robin is trying to nest in our bedroom (totally ignored by the cat). I think vaccinations are called for.

Divided Loyalties

I spent the whole of today looking forward to England versus Poland in the last of the World Cup Group qualifying matches. Then, fifteen minutes into the match, I realised that the last instalment of Rick Stein’s French Odyssey was starting on BBC2 – an hour long finale to the wonderful ten-part TV series in which the celebrated Padstow chef has traversed France from Bordeaux (Atlantic) to Marseille (Mediterranean) in a rather fine canal barge.

I managed to reach a compromise, with the wife and daughter posted in the living room to watch out for goals on one TV, whilst I stayed in the kitchen learning how to prepare bouillabaisse on another set in the kitchen. At times we changed around (even meeting up for some supper at around half time). I ended up seeing both the England goals and almost the entire Rick Stein programme. What a great goal from Frank Lampard, and how fascinating also to see cucumber being served as a hot vegetable with John Dory and a sauce made with crème fraiche , fish stock and Noilly Prat.

Maybe we should spend next summer watching World Cup TV from a canal barge somewhere in South West France. Dream on!

The Misunderstood Thomas Hardy

Sunday, and the wife and I are being diverted around South Dorset as roadworks close the A31. From Wimborne to Blandford through avenues of autumnal beech trees, it is a pleasant outing on a sunny and crystal clear day, and soon we pass historic Dorchester and motor on in search of lunch at a seafood pub in Burton Bradstock.

We stop at the Hardy Monument, one of the highest points in the county and reflect on the popular misconception that this strange chimney stack (or is it an empty plinth) was put there to commemorate the life of Thomas Hardy the greatest writer to come out of those parts. The spectacular views soar for sixty miles or so and encompass everything from the Isle of Wight and Portland, Dorchester, Chesil Beach, Bridport, Paris probably (on a very clear day).

The monument of course was erected in 1844 to honour the other Thomas Hardy - Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (formerly Flag Captain of HMS Victory) who was born in nearby Portisham.

Readers of my recent blog about First Lieutenant George Joliffe, the nineteen-year-old killed on board HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of the Nile may be interested to know that Hardy was also at the Battle of the Nile (as well as Midshipman Aubrey, Admiral Nelson et al).

Poor Hardy. After the triumph of battle specially struck gold medals were awarded by the Admiralty to all the Captains who had commanded ships in the Bay of Aboukir, with the sad exception of Thomas Masterson Hardy, as he had only captained a brig.

Hardy is, of course best known for the death of Nelson and the famous dying words “Kiss me, Hardy”. History records that Hardy did plant a rather respectable kiss on the dying Nelson’s forehead and, a few minutes later, a second kiss on his cheek. But I am rather taken by the alternative version – that Nelson actually said “Kismet, Hardy” (using the popular Arabic word meaning “That’s Life” or “It’s the Will of Allah!”). How surprised the Admiral might have been in his dying moments to receive such a fond response. Modern historians assure me that the “kismet” theory is ludicrous, but I still like it.

Crying “Fowl”

It is Saturday and I’m looking forward to the England – Austria World Cup qualifier. But first, there is the small matter of lunch. Now the wife and the daughter are on diets and have promised themselves (and their menfolk) a lunch of Roast Chicken, but a small Roast Chicken enlivened (for their menfolk) by lashings of bread sauce, stuffing, Yorkshire pudding, assorted vegetables, etc., etc. It’s the perfect warm-up for an afternoon with David Beckham and the Big Match.

The Aga is fired up, goose fat is bubbling around the roast potatoes, a couple of bottles of Fleurie have been uncorked, and we are nearly ready to eat, when unexpected visitors arrive. From over the neighbour’s wall they have come and thence through the churchyard; they are animated, noisy and rather indignant.

It is a posse of bantams come to check out whether or not that strange smell means that we are about to eat “Mother”. After that, and Beckham’s sending off, and the awfulness of the Big Match, I think I’m about to turn vegetarian.

Another Ghost Ship – The 'Billy Ruffian'

What do Cheryl Ladd and Josiah Wedgwood, Oscar Hammerstein II and Bill Cosby, Gareth Edwards and Gareth Gates, Gaby Roslin and Anna Friel, Pablo Neruda and Lionel Jospin, R. Buckminster Fuller and The Ranting Nappa all have in common? Well we were all born on “Orangemen’s Day”, that doubtful and rather nasty commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

I bring this up because this morning I was stranded for a while in Petersfield while the wife’s car underwent a “While-u-Wait” service. My waiting had taken me to the main square where after filling myself with Café Latte and Danish pastry at the (heaving) Café Nero, I pondered on the statue of William III (William of Orange and perpetrator of the Battle of the Boyne) commissioned by a local landowner, William Joliffe, which stands at the centre of the square. Orangemen still come to Petersfield occasionally to lay wreaths at the statue and to sing hymns and taunt any Catholics who might be out shopping. But about Mr Joliffe I knew next to nothing.

Back at the office I did a little “Googling” and got completely sidetracked by mention of a plaque in St Peter’s Church, Petersfield, honouring 1^st Lieutenant George Joliffe who was killed in action aged 19 at the Battle of the Nile on board HMS Bellerophon.

Now the Bellerophon features in the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brien (much favoured by the Ranting Nappa). Known to the lower decks as ‘The Billy Ruffian’, she was a 2-decker, 74-gun, 3^rd rate ship of the line. At the Battle of the Nile in July 1798 she went on station against the French flagship, L’Orient a 3-decker, 120-gun ship of the line. She suffered appalling damage, was dismasted and lost a total of 193 men (including Lt. Joliffe), but she had also inflicted enormous damage to L’Orient and it was relatively easy for the following English ships to finish her off.

At Trafalgar the Bellerophon formed part of the lee division, and following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was compelled to surrender to Bellerophon's Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland at Rochefort, and she carried the defeated Emperor to England prior to his exile in St. Helena.

Readers of my previous blog will be aware that yesterday I spent some time looking at J M W Turner’s Fighting Temeraire in the National Gallery – recently voted Greatest Painting in Britain. The painting was completed in 1838 and shows the great veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar being “tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up”. The ship is painted in a haunting, silvery grey offset by the magnificent colours of the sunset. Co-incidentally the poor old Bellerophon was broken up at around the same time, and the two ships had both served as prison hulks for many years after the Napoleonic War. The same sad ending for two extraordinary ships that played such important roles in English history.

Ghost Ships, Ladies on Plinths, and Bookshops

To London today, to attend Linux World at Olympia for a useful hour spent as a visitor rather than as an exhibitor, and then, to my surprise, I had a free afternoon – no appointments, no ties, no responsibilities – the chance to reacquaint myself with our capital city and to see how it had changed in the eighteen-odd months that I had been away.

And, probably to the disappointment of my readers who sense a good rant a-coming, I didn’t mind the lady on the plinth at all. In fact I was curiously unaffected by her having spent a dizzy forty-five minutes reminding myself just what a great place The National Gallery is for Londoners and tourists alike. That ghostly Fighting Temeraire, the Monets and Van Goghs, the Constables and those Swimmers at Asnières; these and so many more world class paintings that I staggered out of the Sainsbury Wing exit in a bit of a daze.

I checked out the rest of Trafalgar Square and was slightly disappointed that, after so many years as a building site while the big pedestrian piazza project took shape, the Square is still a building site with large areas cordoned off. Leicester Square by contrast seemed, by day, a really pleasant, traffic-free place to stroll around. Tourist buses (the ones with open tops) have become much more modern; and there seem to be more pigeons than ever before.

And then to the bookshops. I did the mystery shopper thing in Waterstone’s, Piccadilly (which still seems more museum than bookshop, and which has lost the variety of little nookie snack areas which were a feature when it opened), to Hatchards (same, great shop for posh people and still not much good for computer books or graphic novels), and to the Charing Cross Road. Blackwell’s and Borders were pretty much unchanged, although the latter had a posse of managers arguing loudly about sight-lines. Foyles seems to improve all the time although the 20% off student promotion jarred slightly with this non-student. None of shops I visited, however, had copies on display of my test computer book (a current bestseller in a small way).

I found time to wander down Sicilian Avenue and to peer, nostalgically, through the bare windows of my still-unoccupied old store. I also had time to sit for a while on a bench on the South Bank near Waterloo Bridge. This is the place I have always gone to at moments of change in my working life. I’ll stare at the river and contemplate my most recent decision and hope I’ve chosen right. I didn’t stare at the river this time. I just reckoned that I need to find a new place to do my contemplation-thing now, as that stretch of river has never brought me much luck.

(Boring) Truths on Bookselling

So what would happen if we abolished speed limits in the UK? Would we all be scared off the fast lane of Britain’s motorways by Ferraris traveling at over 200mph? Would the M25 become a giant motor racing circuit with lap times taken at the Clacketts Lane Service Area? You really cannot tell until you’ve gone and done it.

From 1900 to 1997 the UK book trade conformed to a curious entity called the “Net Book Agreement”. As a result of this legislation books, like newspapers, were regarded as exceptional items and merited price protection. Thus a £1.95 paperback was always a £1.95 paperback whether you purchased it in a supermarket or in Harrods. This protectionism was loved and hated in equal measure, but it did have a calming effect on the industry allowing independent retail booksellers to develop their businesses, publishers to expand and flourish, and (most importantly) authors to get their books into print.

When the Net Book Agreement was abandoned the effects were partly as foreseen by the 1962 enquiry by the Restrictive Practices Court - that the number of stockholding bookshops would be reduced, and that the stocks held by bookshops would be less extensive and varied. The imminent takeover of Ottakar’s by Waterstone’s basically means that regional bookselling (outside major city centres) is now be in the hands of one company. What about W H Smith and British Bookshops/Sussex Stationers, you might ask? Well they are not stockholding booksellers – concentrating as they do on promoting 100 or so titles at special prices.

But it is the degree of “price-busting” which has most taken me by surprise. The experts thought that price-cutting would be limited to bestsellers and special promotions. They were wrong. There is scarcely a book in print that cannot be obtained (by members of the public) at a price below that at which a bookseller can acquire it from a wholesaler or publisher.

Last week the Harper Collins Award for Expanding the Market was awarded to Ted Smart, Chairman of The Book People. Ted is king of the “price-busters”, and in my measured opinion has done more to damage the High Street retail book business than any Amazon or Tesco. His skill is to suggest that his operation is that of a book club and to buy run-ons of current bestsellers direct from the publishers at cut-down prices. These are then peddled in factory canteens and through catalogues at “half bookshop price or less”. Add to Mr Smart the supermarket factor (I bought two current paperbacks at half price from Tesco last week, and Sainsbury have just appointed their first dedicated book buyer) and there is just no sense in trying to compete in any way.

But then, if the book trade has changed a lot in the last ten years, it is probably fair to predict that it will keep on changing. Spare a thought for the publishing houses and literary agents who will surely lose out to organizations like www.lulu.com and www.iuniverse.com as authors find that they can keep more control through self-publishing. Spare a thought for branches of Wottakar’s as a new generation of independent booksellers who are not governed by a central head office start to sell books properly rather than concentrating their efforts on three-for-two offers. Spare a thought for the Ranting Nappa – industriously making plans for Britain’s first Drive-Through bookshop.

Eating in France

Last night we found a decent restaurant in Le Touquet! It’s a town that has fifty or so eating places – some expensive (and mediocre), some medium price (and mediocre), and some relatively cheap (and mediocre). Small wonder that the Michelin Guide scarcely mentions any of them.

Now a decent restaurant in France should be one of two things – expensive and worth it, or cheap and worth it. The wife and I had reached the doorway and were on the point of entering the celebrated (but mediocre) fish soup restaurant Chez Perard in the rue de Metz, ready for a “Friday night is Fish Night” sort of meal which would probably have set us back 100 euros. Blocking the doorway was the inevitable singer (complete with silly hat and inevitable rendition of “Yesterday”). At that moment we both recalled the rather poor bag of prawns for which I had paid 17 euros on a recent visit to the adjoining poissonnerie, and we backed off.

Further down the street we found a more humble establishment called A Table: Brasserie Traditionelle which appeared to major on Moules Frites but with some other stuff on a blackboard. We went in and managed to manouevre ourselves into a four-seater table by the window. We both ordered exactly the same meal – a starter of Poélée d’Ecrevisses et Moules, Beurre et Ail as scrumptious as it sounds; main course of Medaillons de Lotte in a delicious sauce of tarragon and (surprisingly) red wine, served with lentils, roast tomato and a yummy mash incorporating slices of black olive; desserts of Poire Pochée, Caramel d’Endive á la Fleur de Bière et son Glace, coffee and a bottle of house Vin Rosé between us. The bill was half of what we would have paid at Chez Perard, the service was attentive and prompt, and we left with the glow of having enjoyed a really nice meal at a sensible price.

Probably next time we go there they’ll have changed hands, doubled the prices, and fired the chef (as is the French way). I hope not.

Just Leave Things Alone, Please!

I’m in a very huffy mood about Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts. I’ve always liked the things, despite the groaning noise that comes from the depths of my stomach whenever I open a bag. But they keep changing the things, adding new allsorts (not good) and taking away old favourites (worse).

Needless to say Bassett’s are a division of Cadbury Schweppes PLC along with Dentyne, Trebor, Stimorol, Halls, Maynards and others. The company boringly states that “Bassett's three most important varieties are: Liquorice Allsorts, Jelly Babies and Wine Gums. Also greatly enjoyed are Bassett's Bags in a number of well-known flavours including American Hard Gums, Murray Mints, Sherbet Lemons, Pear Drops, Everton Mints, Imperials, Mint Creams, and Fruit, Lemon, Strawberry or Toffee Bon Bons.”

Not content with Liquorice Allsorts, Bassett’s have developed “liquorice-free” Fruit Allsorts. Bah, where’s the world going to? What was wrong with the original 1899 sweets which George Bassett accidentally dropped on the floor (thus “inventing” the allsorts range)? Why did they have to add a blue “Michelin Man” to the mix? Etc, etc.

Thank heavens that there are still people around such as (on the web) http://www.thepinksugarmouse.com/SWSTLIAL. Long may they flourish!

All Choked Up

The big problem with “re-instating” around 2,000 book titles on Amazon (see previous post about the Internet hijacking) has been the huge blockage suffered by our email server. Every time a book is re-listed an email is automatically generated by Amazon and sent to my company’s email server. The email server then copies the email to several different addresses including my personal Hotmail account. You can do the maths! That’s at least 6,000 emails swimming around in a short period of time. Result – online indigestion. Like a blocked drain we have had to repeatedly switch the thing “on” and off”. Only now (a full three days after we finished the re-listing process) are we beginning to get a free flow of regular spam - intermingled with the occasional order - again.

Anyway, enough of technology! I’m still choked up with my coughing fits (now in their third week). The blazing straw-stack has eventually been extinguished after the better part of seven days. The wife has been given a Star Wars “storm trooper” boot by the local hospital in the hope that it will clear her tendon trouble. She clumps about the house in this thing (occasionally pausing to inflate it with a special pump), terrifying the cat and the bantams, and giving everyone plenty of warning about impending appearances. The daughter who is still in residence has decided to diet (so no more sloping off to the pub). It’s all too much. I feel in need of a wholly undeserved holiday

The Fire’s Gone Out and I’ve been Hijacked

It’s Sunday morning and after burning for three nights our straw-stack fire has stopped blazing. Like the Ranting Nappa it is sure to be still smouldering somewhere deep down, but the flames are gone and I think I’m cured of Hiawaffling at last.

However I’m not cured of the wretched cold and cough that have been my companions for over a week now. I’m still coughing something horrible and, last night, blew out half a tooth during a hacking fit.

I would have stayed away from work on Friday had I not been successfully hijacked on the Thursday evening. No, not by the daughter (who has been in residence and who did lure me down to the local after supper for a couple of pints), I was well and truly hijacked by an Internet fraudster.

What the nasty person did was to figure out (somehow) the password that accesses my little company’s seller account on www.amazon.co.uk. Having hacked his way in he changed various details so that I could no longer access the account which lists around 2,000 different books that I offer for sale through Amazon. He (or she) then listed some new items like state-of-the-art plasma-screen TV sets at ridiculously cheap prices (like £1,3000 each) with a footnote that potential customers should contact the fraudster direct for an even better deal. I guess that my site had been targeted because I have a good “feedback” rating with very positive comments from nearly 500 customers in the last 12 months. Thus the customer would feel that my business was to be trusted whilst being lured into giving credit card details directly to the hijacker. Yucky, eh?

Anyway, in the end little damage has been done, except that my “account” had been closed down as soon as trouble was suspected (by Amazon) and the wife and I have had to spend the weekend manually re-listing the two thousand books.

Cough, cough, splutter, splutter!

Burning Wigwam

From his windows, through the summer,
Nappa watched the farmers working.
Sussex downlands rich with barley,
Harvested with skill and caring,
Bales of straw like buildings climbing,
Higher, wider, plastic covered.
Then came youngsters playing loudly,
Hurling down the great bales of straw.
The farmers then built stronger stacks,
Larger yet to foil the youngsters
Difficult to climb and tamper,
Ready for transporting far away.
Then last night the mists descended,
From his windows no fine vistas,
For the Nappa to consider.
Then in morning came the knowledge,
Something burning amongst the mists.
Nappa walking for his papers,
Quickly came to understand:
Policemen out directing traffic,
Firemen using Main Street hydrants,
In the mists the stack was blazing,
Local lads had done their torching.
Through the long day the Nappa toiled,
Books to Cyprus, bills to be paid.
When in evening home he drove,
No more mist but clearly showing,
Was the farmers stack still blazing.
Firemen watching, waiting, patient,
As again the mists rolled downward.
So the Nappa closed his windows,
To stop cold air and insects both,
And more, the acrid smoking straw.

Like my cold and cough, I just cannot shake off the Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow took a year and a half to write his thing, so that's my excuse for this appalling doggerel.
Maybe tomorrow I'll have shaken it all off.

Hiawatha-Speak

I sloped off early from work yesterday afternoon, and while driving home listened to part of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha being read (brilliantly) by Geoffrey Whitehead on Radio 4. Everyone remembers the haunting rhythm of the thing:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

Apparently the 8-8-8-8-8 meter was nicked from the sacred Finnish epic poem Kalevala which in English goes like this:

In primeval times, a maiden,
Beauteous Daughter of the Ether,
Passed for ages her existence
In the great expanse of heaven,
O'er the prairies yet enfolded.
Wearisome the maiden growing,
Her existence sad and hopeless,
Thus alone to live for ages
In the infinite expanses
Of the air above the sea-foam,
In the far outstretching spaces,
In a solitude of ether,
She descended to the ocean,
Waves her coach, and waves her pillow.

Maybe not so gripping as Hiawatha, but still there’s the lilting rhyme again which Mike Oldfield also used in his 1978 album Incantations with Maddy Prior singing Hiawatha.

Like a popular jingle it sticks in your head. So much so that I woke up this morning thinking in Hiawatha-ese:

Ipswich-Norwich so distressing,
In Coca-Cola’s football league,
Sunday’s game, a one-nil beating,
The goal from Darren Huckerby.
Tearful mother, distraught brother
Angry at the ref’s decision
Sito shown the unfair red card.
Then on Tuesday, lowly Grimsby
Smash the smug and smarmy Spurs,
Huge delight for Haddock-lovers.
A single minute from full time,
Kalala strikes a goal sublime.
Wednesday’s treat, more the pity
Ain’t good news for proud Man. City,
Doncaster Rovers this time up
Show penalties can win the Cup.

Anyhow, I'd better get back to my wigwam and smoke a pipe of peace....

Women!

I don’t think I’ll ever understand how women's minds work. Getting dressed yesterday morning I put on clean underpants. I was, after all, going to a memorial service and wanted to look my best. Furthermore they were my favourite red and white striped boxer shorts – a gift from none other than the wife.

“I don’t want to make you angry,” she ventured from across the bedroom, “But wouldn’t it be more sensible to wear darker underpants?”

I looked at her in bewilderment.

“You’re wearing your suit, you see, and you haven’t worn it for months. It will be full of moth holes. People will see your pants through the holes….”

Damned Weather, Ken Clarke and “Yes, Dear”

Crisp blue sky, a beautiful sunny Sunday morning and so much to be done - cars to be washed, grass to be mown, excursions to be made (and that’s before one even starts to think about golf). And so what do I do? I spend the whole damned day feeling sorry for myself as I sweat through “the last of the summer colds”. The excursion is to Petersfield to buy Kleenex tissues, Benylin Day & Night and LemSip powders (Max Strength). The grass gets neglected, the cars get neglected, and I feel lousy.

It’s time to rant about Ken Clarke. Obviously he’s the best qualified candidate to lead the Tories – that is if you judge these things on experience and the well-tested law of “Buggins’s turn, next”. Well, it would be a calamity for the Conservative Party, probably a near-terminal calamity if he were to be elected. Watching him on TV this morning he carries all the scars and baggage of the last Conservative government (all those years ago), and is palpably the wrong man for the job. He just doesn’t have the charisma (or youth) to stand any chance of winning an election. The Tories must produce a new Disraeli, a top-class statesman to bring a sense of vibrancy to Parliament and put an end to the stagnancy and cynicism of the “New Labour” epoch in British politics.

Who else to rant about? Kate Moss and Wayne Rooney are way outside my league. If I made as much money as them at their respective ages, and was as good doing what I do as they are doing what they do (wow, that’s a bit convoluted), then I might be qualified to comment. They’ll both end up with peerages for distinguished service to British football/fashion and people will laugh at their youthful misdemeanours.

I’ll end on a cautionary note – on the dangers of auto-response. You know, you’re sitting watching TV or trying to do a Sudoku puzzle and the wife fires a series of questions at you – mostly trivial and unimportant. Lulled by a sense of false security you switch on auto-response and reply “yes, dear” to every question while paying more attention to other matters. Suddenly (as happened last night) I found that I had agreed to go on a research project “boot camp” to lose weight. Oh, strewth. I know that I have a Pickwickian problem holding my trousers up nowadays (Humpty Dumpty wore bracers), but this is ridiculous.

Writing Skills and Social Graces

I was a bit glum yesterday having experienced considerable difficulty trying to write a letter of condolence. However hard I try the result always seems unsatisfactory and unlikely to bring much in the way of comfort to the bereaved. It is just not one of my social graces (in the same way as the Cha-Cha-Cha is not one of my social graces).

Maybe I’m not built to be a writer. The Great British Novel is still my ambition but my attempts at putting pen to paper have not been going brilliantly well. My non-fiction debut was to have been the ultimate guide to running a business (written by someone who has made so many mistakes in this area that he knows it all). But it is very tedious penning predictable chapter after chapter. It’s rather like writing a school history essay where you are meant to use a formula to produce a passable result by plotting each paragraph to a specific theme (introduction, political impact, social impact, economic impact, etc., through to conclusion), so whatever the subject matter you have enough of a framework in place to scrape through your history A Level (as I did).

I’ve been studying prose styles and listening to interviews with contemporary authors who go on interminably about the months of careful planning, preparation, research, etc. Oh, how dull!

And then up popped Minette Walters on the radio yesterday. She was talking about her new book The Devil’s Feather and was asked about how she planned her books. She replied that when she wrote she had no idea how the plot would turn out, and that it would be extremely dull if she did. Her books just develop as she writes them.

That’s my kind of writing – utterly spontaneous. Now all I have to do is to get round to doing it.

Good days for St George

Not only a terrific Last Night of the Proms on Saturday night with extraordinary performances from the likes of counter-tenor Andreas Scholl and guitar legend John Williams, but also all the fun of having people in Glasgow, Belfast and Swansea involved in a complex TV link and trying to figure out exactly why they were singing England’s adopted anthem – Jerusalem? But the Ashes as well! Three or more cheers, please, for the triumphant English team, and a deserved pat on the back to the Australians who put up some brilliant opposition. More pats on the back for those members of the England squad who kept pace with Andrew Flintoff (still celebrating at 6.15 the following morning).

When St Peter gets to ask me a few questions I hope he doesn’t delve too deeply into matters ecological. You see I have been a shopkeeper in my time and, by a modest reckoning, I have purchased over 100,000 plastic carrier bags which have been given freely to my bookshop customers. That’s a lot of nasty plastic.

French supermarkets, bless them, no longer give out flimsy plastic carriers. The things are now outlawed in France! You make your purchases and you make your own arrangements as to how you are going to cart them home. Certainly you can purchase at the till a reusable bag, and some “hypers” will go through an elaborate procedure of charging you for one, and then giving you credit due to the size of your purchases (Auchun does this).

How long, then, before we Brits show a spark of environmental awareness and try to pull off a similar coup. Ages, I guess, before the Asda’s, Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s, and Morrison’s and their political advisors and lobbyists can collectively agree on a start date for an experimental phase to be launched in a test area (my guess will be Sunderland) in 2007 for a three month period with counselling laid on for suffering shoppers, and a special dispensations being awarded to the local police and social services for associated trauma and suffering.

Meanwhile the daughter reports of the difficulty in renewing Car Tax nowadays. She got the letter from the DVLA, assembled the documents (and cash), and patiently waited for 15 minutes in the queue at her local Post Office.

“No!” came the answer from behind the counter. You’re too early. We cannot issue October car tax until the 15^th of the month, but I’ll check your documents all the same. The Ranting Nappa surprisingly refreshes his Car Tax online. No need for “documents” as Big Brother examines your MOT and Insurance details via the National Database and you get the Tax Disc three days later (by mail).

Ho, hum! I think I’d better get the car out and fill her up with fuel. I haven’t done so since yesterday. Not that I’m panicking….

French Leave

We’re spending a few days in France. There are plenty of cows, not much sign of the sheep, a new wild cat trying to adopt our house (white with black blotches), and, to the amazement of the wife, a nuthatch. This is a small and apparently rarely seen bird that picks nuts from trees and then attempts to smash them outside our kitchen window.

We crossed the channel by a hovercraft operated by Speedferries. This is the no-frills, cheap-ticket way of crossing and you go from Dover to Boulogne which saves a few miles on the journey as well. Customer service however is pretty much non-existent (you amend your booking at your peril – and you are made to pay an “amendment surcharge” if Speedferries ever reply to your email). Speedferries also have a strange sense of timing. Our crossing was scheduled to depart at 14.45 and to take 45 minutes. We arrived at Dover Western Dock (the busy one with P&O et al.) at 14.15 and had only just boarded before the big, Australian-built craft set off. By 14.45 we were well clear of the harbour and enjoying the view of the fast-receding white cliffs. At 15.30 English time we were docked, on schedule, at Boulogne, but in reality the journey-time was an hour – we had weighed anchor, or whatever hovercraft do, by 14.30.

For the second year running my cousin Tim (see photo and note gaudy shirt and badge) is doing the Royal British Legion bike ride from London to Paris (see the dedicated website http://www.poppybike.org.uk/events/paris2005.asp for more information) and again we intercepted him at his refreshment stop just a few miles from our village. He is getting wiser in his old age having mastered the art of slipstreaming behind well built ladies. This way he saves himself a lot of pedaling and has time to enjoy the view. I thought that I was doing him a favour by reporting the latest Test Match news from the Oval but found that several of his fellow cyclists were wearing earphones with radios tuned to Test Match Special.

Tim invited me to join them for a few kilometers or so on my own bike but, having sweated up a few hills on the short journey to buy baguettes and croissants each morning, I know my place. Poor Tim would probably be a day late arriving in Paris if he had to hang around for the Ranting Nappa to fight with his gears on the uphill bits, even for “a few kilometers”.

Mugged by Lawrie Sanchez – Again!

I warned the wife before England’s football World Cup qualifier that Northern Ireland wouldn’t be a pushover, especially with Lawrie Sanchez in charge. How right I was!

Back in 1987, when I first became a Wimbledon supporter, Sanchez was a regular first team player. He came from a strange background (Irish mother, Ecuadorian father, but born in London) and was already a Wimbledon favourite, especially as it was a Sanchez goal that had taken Wimbledon into the First Division a year earlier.

He had come to Wimbledon on a £30,000 transfer from Reading where his main claim to fame was as the first footballer in the English league to be sent off for a professional foul.

In 1988 I was fortunate enough to be at Wembley to watch unfancied Wimbledon’s notable FA Cup Final victory against Liverpool. On that occasion, of course, the only goal was scored by Lawrie Sanchez.

Thirteen years later in 2001 the boot was on the other foot. I was still a Wimbledon supporter but Sanchez was now manager of lowly Wycombe Wanderers – very undistinguished performers from the Second Division.

I remember being at Selhurst Park on the bleak February evening when Wycombe played for a place in the Quarter Finals of the FA Cup. The Wycombe underdogs famously beat Wimbledon in a penalty shoot-out, and then Sanchez’s team went on to beat Leicester at Filbert Street in the next round before losing to Liverpool (just) in the Semi-Finals.

John Motson was with the Northern Ireland team on Tuesday when they were training for the match against England (on a “player identification” mission before doing his BBC TV commentary). "Lawrie's team talk was magnificent, stirring and made the hair stand on the back of my neck" said Motty. "It was a real battle cry to the troops."

So beware the underdog, particularly if a man of Irish-Ecuadorian parentage is in any way involved.

Caught on Radar

It happened on Friday afternoon. A nice sunny day and a short hill to climb in my noisy old Ford Fiesta on the road from Bordon to Petersfield. At the top of the hill that splendid road sign which denotes the end of a speed limit and beside it, a police car with camera. Bollocks! If I get a ticket I think I’ll appeal on the grounds that it is mechanically impossible to get my car’s ancient diesel engine over 30 mph in the distance between the mini roundabout and the top of the hill.

I was caught again on Saturday, but in a rather different way.

I took the day off to watch Hampshire versus Warwickshire at Lords. A great day for quaffing wine and champagne, lager and Guinness, eating lots and, given the amiable company of the older brother and his ex-lodger, every opportunity to rant away on any number of subjects. I recall the following in particular:

Whatever happened to Cheeselets? For years we used to munch Cheeselets with our midday glass of wine at cricket matches, and then a dreadful thing happened. Europa Foods (purveyors of Cheeselets to the gentry) were bought out by Tesco. The product range at the shop accordingly had to conform to supermarket rules and one of these is that Cheeselets are only sold at Christmas. Bollocks, again! At least my village pub still manages to sell them, but they’re damned difficult to find anywhere else.

Whatever happened to Warwickshire Supporters? I got really angry when, ten overs before the end of the match, the Brummies decided that they had lost and all went home. By the time poor Douggie Brown came out to bat (at number 7) he was greeted with almost total silence. Nick Knight’s impressive innings was warmly applauded, but mostly by Hampshire supporters and MCC members (I learned later that even the “dangerous looking crowd from Southampton” stood for him).

Business Rates were another rant. I had gone to Lords via Holborn and had detoured past my old shop in Sicilian Avenue – still empty and sad eighteen months after I vacated the premises. The landlords have money and can afford to hold out for exorbitant rents from the next tenants, while the London Borough of Camden allow them to go rate-free because the premises are unoccupied. How darned stupid. No wonder property prices are so inflated.

Being English, and yet all three of us avid readers of books by of Robert B Parker, the older brother and I challenged his ex-lodger to get his mind around “Box Scores”, we both having finished Parker’s book about Jackie Robinson (the first coloured American to play major league baseball in the US). I suppose it was fitting that we were watching cricket (a total mystery to most Americans), while agreeing that we couldn’t make head-nor-tail of the way baseball scores are reported in the American press.

Ranting apart, more light-headed buffoonery was provided by the brother as he showed how, as an umpire, he would signal a wide which also counted as four.

But what has all this to do with being caught on radar (unless Channel 4 captured the elder brother's antics)?

Well this morning, having recovered my health from the previous day, I strolled round to the Village Stores to collect the Sunday papers (head down lest I was spotted by worshippers coming away from the Family Eucharist service). The shop was bustling with people and all conversation was about the cricket at Lords. Peter (him behind the counter) spotted me and said, “Well I saw you on the train, yesterday, you must have been there, as well as all of us.”

I gulped nervously. “You mean you saw me going, or coming back?” I ventured. “Oh, on the platform at Petersfield station bright and early in the morning.” came the reply.

Phew! My condition on the return journey was not (if I remember at all correctly) much to be proud of. Dishevelled and very sleepy I only got two things right – waking up in time for Petersfield (rather than being thrown off the train at Portsmouth Harbour), and phoning the wife to come and collect me. But it does serve as a warning. More often than not, you are being tracked by someone’s radar, even if you are not aware.

Good Intentions

Well I thought that I’d figured out a strategy for Success in Life. All you need is to have the following four elements firmly in place and you should have it made:

The “Master Plan”

Whether for your personal life or for your business life, a “statement of intent” or “Master Plan” covering the next couple of years or so is an absolute necessity.

“Plan B”

We all know that “Master Plans” rarely succeed. So it is pretty much essential to have your fallback plan (also covering the next couple of years) ready for immediate implementation.

Luck

The best laid plans of mice and men…yea, even if your plans leave nothing to chance, then the ceiling will fall in, or you’ll be run over by a bus. All plans need luck and good fortune in some measure and you are unlikely to get much assistance in this regard if you don’t allow for it. So take the odd risk, and buy the odd lottery ticket.

The “Exit Strategy”

Not all plans work, and not everyone has luck on their side. Everyone should have a last-resort fallback plan which can take effect if the “Master Plan” and “Plan B” fail to work out and Luck does not materialise. If all else fails….

The only flaw in this brilliant grand design for life is that it doesn’t always work. My business and I have tried them all and I am left wondering “what comes after the exit strategy?”

The S & M Sermon

I’ve been meaning to preach the S & M sermon for quite a while. It’s a personal thing, you see, something that I’m totally serious about, and so I need to express myself very carefully.

As I get older I wonder from time to time (as do a lot of people I should think), “If I could start my life afresh what would I do differently?”

Well the answer is simple. I would have taken Sport (the “S” in my S & M) more seriously in my childhood. Particularly (and this applies to me personally), I should have concentrated my humble efforts on one team game – cricket, and one individual sport – golf. And, later, I should have been more insistent that my children chose sensible sports and I should have made more effort to ensure that they participated in them at every opportunity and hopefully excelled in them. Sport of all kinds educates the mind as well as the body, and helps you understand how to achieve goals both as an individual and as part of a group.

As for the “M” in my S & M, that stands for Music. How I wish that I had been actively encouraged to learn the piano when a child. How envious I am of those who can read music and make musical instruments come alive. Sure, I dabbled with a double bass as a teenager, but I should have been more serious about it. And, again, I should have been more insistent that my children chose sensible instruments and persisted at least for as long as it takes to be able to read music and to get genuine pleasure from playing. As in sport, music demands that you participate both as an individual and as a group.

The theme of the “S & M Sermon” is that, in the world today, proponents of sport and music are doing more for world unity than any amount of politicians or preachers, soldiers or diplomats, and accordingly should be encouraged in all people at all times.

When sportsmen and musicians decide to help stricken areas of the world the effect is immediate and, often, inspiring. Take this year’s Tsunami fund-raising events in many sports, (rugby and cricket stand out for me). Vast amounts of money were raised very quickly and put to immediate effect, and much of the £300 million pounds donated in the UK came out of S & M events.

Sir Bob Geldof’s Live 8 appeal to “make poverty history” stands out in 2005 as an incredible illustration of how pop music can work for others less fortunate. Another ambitious unifier is the World Orchestra for Peace, founded by Sir Georg Solti and now under the baton of Valery Gergiev, which brings together some 100 classical musicians drawn from around 80 different orchestras in 40 countries from Latvia to Cuba, via Japan, Korea and Kazakhstan. This deft amalgam of brilliant (unpaid) musicians is playing this year in London, Berlin and Beijing (marking the anniversary of the end of World War II) and may well be selected for ceremonies to mark the re-opening of Ground Zero in two years time. I hope so.

I’m not sure if the success of the Iraqi version of TV’s Pop Idol, has much to do with all this, but if a combination of football and Pop Idol can bring any sort of harmony and balance to that wretched, stricken land, then I’m all for it.

So, to conclude, I’m quite happy that sportsmen and musicians are amongst the most highly paid people on earth. I’m delighted that the Olympic Games will be held in London in 2012, and I’m pleased that Wembley Stadium is being rebuilt. And, I wonder, whose personal achievements of the leaders of our day will survive longest? Will it be Bush, Blair, Pope John Paul II, or Her Majesty the Queen, perhaps? I rather hope that Sir Bob Geldof outshines them all in history, because his contribution has been the most effective.

That’s enough of the sermon!

Bad Notices

Up until this weekend I have taken a ghoulish pleasure in reading reviews that really rip into inadequacies of restaurants, especially if the establishment concerned is on my list of “places to try”.

When we moved to West Sussex our landlord gave us a very useful fact sheet telling us where good local restaurants were situated and, generally, how they rated. Here were gems like JSW in Petersfield, which to me is one of the finest restaurants in England, and he also mentioned another Michelin-starred establishment in Emsworth called 36 On The Quay, but he wasn’t quite as warm in his praise. We put it on our list of “places to try”.

On Saturday Jan Moir reviewed 36 on the Quay in the Daily Telegraph Weekend section. In fact she did more than review the place, she castigated it. From the opening salvo “The woman behind the bar in 36 On The Quay looks up. Her expression is about as welcoming as a hole in the road…”, through the meal itself “all the dishes are moribund and pretentious, bogged down with rich sauces”, and even to the wine pouring “no-one seems happy in this house of misery by the sea, despite the waitress’s attempts to get as much wine down everyone’s neck as quickly as possible”, Ms Moir slashed her sword. How I enjoyed her piece, how I chortled with pleasure as her lunch (costing £50-£70 for two without drinks) went from bad to worse.

And yet, I thought later, what about the restaurant? It’s a family-run affair operating in a sleepy harbour, near Havant of all places, proud of their Michelin star and trying to make an honest living. Then they have a bad day. They’ve got a big wedding party to do and in sweeps this acid-tongued journalist. I guess that hundreds of thousands of people have read her piece (lead story on the back page), and one can only imagine the feelings of recrimination and anger amongst the restaurant owners and staff. Maybe we should give the place a try if only to cheer them up.

Today, two days later, Ms Moir is back in the Telegraph (page three news this time), condemning the purveyors of pre-prepared instant dinner party food in damning terms. “Louise screams when she sees the beef stroganoff: ‘It’s like two possums in the gutter; it’s like road kill’”. And so the owners of a number of small businesses doing their best to provide instant meals will be tearing their hair out today, rather than enjoying the Bank Holiday sunshine.

There’s Only One – Jamie Carragher

Congratulations to Liverpool FC – winners of the UEFA Super Cup (whatever that is) in Monaco last night. Pardon me if I give you the names of the players in the triumphant Merseyside side:

Reina, Finnan (Sinama Pongolle 55), Hyypia, Riise (Cisse 79), Luis Garcia, Alonso (Sissoko 71), Hamann, Josemi, Morientes, Carragher, Zenden. (Manager Rafael Benitez).

Now can you spot the scousers therein? Okay, so that’s an unfair question; what about "Can you spot the Englishmen therein?". Still unfair; so how about "Can you spot the British players therein?" If you think that Steve Finnan is a likely candidate, then you’re wrong. He’s Irish. Only Mr Carragher comes from Britain (Bootle, actually).

Funny, really, to recall how worked up we all got when English county cricket imposed a limit of two overseas players per side. Football teams in this country are now only as good as the cheque books that buy them, and nothing more.

By the way Liverpool’s opponents last night, CSKA Moscow, seemed to have as many Brazilians as Russians.

Side-Tracked by the World Wide Web

It’s strange how the Internet is becoming such an essential part of daily life:

Last evening for instance I wanted to know how to cook veal saltimbocca and couldn’t find a suitable cookbook. A few moments later (thanks to Google) I printed off an Elizabeth David recipe from www.ochef.com. It was all I could possibly want.

The boys in the office were challenging each other this morning about the meaning of the word wiggers. A quick look at www.urbandictionary.com not only educates me but makes me feel very old. There are so many words and expressions that I don’t know the meaning of (and to think that I considered myself pretty cool to have spotted chav and bling coming into regular use).

Newspaper reports about how wonderfully our young are doing with record numbers of GCSE passes had me musing about the whole issue of literacy and numeracy. Because I have been using English naturally for the best part of sixty years I have stopped thinking about the construction of sentences (gerunds, subjunctives, conjunctions and prepositions, and all that). In fact I have completely lost touch with some very simple basics of English grammar. I had to visit www.primaryresources.co.uk in order to reacquaint myself with adverbs and what they do and how to use them. Through the same site I got diverted by homophones, which was a bit worrying.

Hardly a day goes by without my consulting the fantastically good www.bbc.co.uk site. Weather, lottery numbers and, especially, the sports pages are all checked regularly, and the little box gizmo which shows the England-Australia test match score live at the foot of the screen is an essential item at this worrying time.

Meanwhile my family peddles its wares through www.ebay.co.uk, I run part of my business with two-way-traffic on www.amazon.co.uk and every morning I tend to check my emails before looking for the Royal Mail version. I find my way around with www.streetmap.co.uk, but so far I have refrained from playing online Sudoku and online Poker. How long I’ll hold out before I succumb to these last two is anyone’s guess.

Declivity (and Working in "Safe Mode")

It’s the sort of word you might expect to find on a French road sign outside Boulogne, intended to warn British motorists of a one-in-seven gradient (and, indeed, it is). But "declivity" also defines the sort of feeling of steep decline that tends to pervade the book-selling business during the month of August. Even when my business was successful August was a horrid month through which to try and work. The phone never rang, the postman never brought orders or (better) cheques, and the proprietor was mindful, as now, to pay more attention to cricket matches than catching up on his filing or maintaining his blog.

My little business has also been suffering from worms. Computers have been collapsing despite the best ministrations of our anti-virus software. Strange "kernel" diseases strike without warning and huge amounts of time and effort are expended on restoring lost files and trying to figure out ways of fulfilling our few orders without label printing software, or the ability to actually reply to customer emails.

We’ve all been working in what Microsoft Windows would term as "Safe Mode". The cat moves ponderously from room to room complaining that it is too hot. The wife, who has had her leg in plaster these past three weeks, has become adept at clumping around the house and garden in a Long John Silver sort of way (making a lot of noise, but not moving very far). The daughter and sister-in-law are preoccupied with themselves and the property market, and on Tuesdays the grandchildren have been coming to call.

These Tuesday visits are "full days" from eight am to seven pm and the wife is expected to provide not only a full catering service, but to return the children to their parents fed, bathed and ready for bed at the end of the day. This presented a small problem on the first Tuesday as it happened to be a glorious summer day and there was only one thing for it – the beach!

Needless to say it was early afternoon before children, grandparents, picnic, fly swats, beach chairs, windbreaks, parasol, rugs, towels, sun-block (factor 20), Hello magazine, Daily Telegraph, book, buckets and spades, swimwear, towels, nappies, pot, sister-in-law, the camera, mobile phones, money for ice cream, bottled water, things mysteriously called "wipes" and assorted footwear were all unloaded onto the West Wittering shoreline. But the concensus was that it was thoroughly worthwhile. West Wittering beach on a good day is as good as the British seaside gets. However we failed miserably to meet the deadline for evening baths.

Oh heck!

Music and Anchovies (lack of)

Well I never! A few weeks ago I expressed surprise that Sir Edward Elgar was a keen golfer, as well as a cyclist. Now The Daily Telegraph correspondence column informs me that he was also an avid follower of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club too, and, of course, he used his bike to make the 40-mile trip from Malvern for home matches.

One way or another I’ve taken in a bit too much sport in recent weeks. Spectating at the Open Golf plus playing a few holes myself, followed by a portion of the riveting First Test against the Australians at Lords, finds me almost overdosing on the stuff. I managed at least to pay no attention whatsoever to glorious Goodwood.

Indeed, when we woke last Sunday to torrential rain, the wife and I forsook the closing overs of the Test Match to join our old friend the Ayatollah celebrating his wife’s sixtieth birthday on Romney Marsh (where they live). Sadly we missed cousin Timothy’s egg and anchovy sandwiches at a rain-sodden Lords (a treat we’d usually travel miles for) but the Ayatollah and his wife have had a difficult year with hospital visits for both of them (including a “double” in Tenerife when they were simultaneously admitted to hospital for different emergency treatment halfway through their holiday). Their party was a grand occasion and the wife and I were able to catch up on the exploits of our respective godchildren as well as taking in copious quantities of food (and watching those few final overs of the England second innings on TV).

The week that followed has been just as exhausting. The son is moving house – in stages. This has entailed our giving him board and lodging temporarily while his wife and children are billeted on friends. Like a moth to light, this drew the daughter from Portsmouth and, after the other night, I’m surprised that the village is prepared to continue putting up with my family’s discordant, late night singing.

So it’s off to France later today for a few days “away from it all”. I reckon that I need it although it is well over a month since we last visited the French estate and I dare say that it will be overrun with weeds, rodents and exciting new forms of insect life!

A Few Words on Blogging

Having mowed the lawn this evening I was sweating like a good’un and, accordingly, retired to a pre-supper Radox bath. Zzzzzz! Radio 4 was broadcasting a David Dimbleby Any Questions programme and on the panel was a certain Lynne Featherstone MP who is (as you well know) the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Home Affairs. I would have happily continued with my zzzzz’ing but Dimbleby introduced her as a great “blogger”. And she is. Have a look at http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/blog.htm and you get an insight into how a politician turns blogging into a minor art form. Lynne also has a comprehensive website to cover the more mundane aspects of being an aspiring Liberal Democrat MP at http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/. Heaven forbid that www.rantingnappa.org ever tries to get its wheels off the ground.

But while blogs should be open diaries – letting the world know how you feel about just about anything – can also be dangerous. Take the example of an erstwhile work colleague, Chris H, for several years head of publicity at Secker & Warburg. Chris went to the USA and got a decent job as reviews editor with a celebrated online bookseller in Seattle, who we might call for the sake of cautiousness amazing.com. However Chris also became a blogger par excellence (you can see his work at http://www.kirklea.blogspot.com/) but one day he overstepped himself and said something disparaging about his employers. He was fired. And his blog suggests that his experience is but one of many and links indirectly to a cautionary BBC news report on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4115073.stm.

Anyway I’m getting tired of all these links. I’m now ready to say some very rude things about my employers and, with any luck, will end up firing myself.

Discontinuous Blogging

It’s been a while since my last posting. The last week has been spent on golf courses - mostly hauling my overweight bulk around St Andrews and watching golf as it should be played in the 134th Open Championship, but on three occasions actually swinging clubs myself on lesser courses.

The journey to Scotland in the ancient Jeep added the word “discontinuous” to my vocabulary and I now use it all the time. You’ll find the word on a road sign on the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow where motorists are advised of a “discontinuous hard shoulder”. It sounds like a golfing injury of the sort that might afflict the likes of Fred Couples or Jose Maria Olazabal but checking on Google I find dozens of references to discontinuous hard shoulders on Britain’s major roads.

The elder brother provided a good example of discontinuous postcard writing. Having had a good day of golf and wine with the two Jims and myself he retired to his room in the monastic student hall of residence where we were staying at St Andrews to write a postcard for an elderly American friend. He aimed to describe the adulation being bestowed on Jack Nicklaus who was making his last appearance as a competitor at an Open Championship. Sadly the elder brother fell asleep half way through a particularly convoluted sentence and at breakfast the next morning he had to admit that he could find no logical conclusion to the sentence. This has all the hallmarks of a great New Statesman competition and maybe we should try to copyright the idea: “provide a conclusion (in not more than 100 words) to the sentence in progress. Winners will receive a bottle of Famous Grouse…” etc., etc.

Arriving home from the golf I found that the “bantam that the fox killed” (see passim), had resurrected herself in a discontinuous sort of way. Apparently the fox had killed a similar fowl and ours had been hiding herself away for a couple of weeks sitting on an egg or something. The wife is keen to purchase an “Omlet” or “Egglu” fox-proof chicken coop so that we can start to rear our own (and have fresh eggs).

Discontinuity has also been affecting the wife’s goldfish. The pond in our garden is a contained space and there has been much celebration of the quantity of newborn fish spotted recently and respectively by the wife, the cat and the local heron. The trouble is that every time she checks the number of fish in the pond (small and large) she comes up with a different total, sometimes very much less and then, later, very much more. All too complicated, but might there be commercial possibilities here? I must start working on an outline business plan for Ranting Goldfish Hatcheries, PLC.