Lunch

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am obviously in a high rage over the American Senate's charming refusal to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, but I have gone all political on your ass for the last few days, so let us instead contemplate lovely things. I'll save the fury for tomorrow.

I went to have lunch with my sister. We ate: dressed crab, because the Fish Lady was in the village, and pheasant with roasted root vegetables, and griddled courgettes with pine nuts, goat's cheese and tomatoes. I know. Two courses, on a school day.

We talked of: family, dogs, the Pope, Jung, lap-dancing, the goddess Isis, death, gardening, dreams, optimism, vanity, love, and whether the pheasant was too dry. I said not.

I think that just about covered the waterfront.

We laughed a lot. It was very sweet.

Here is the delightful food:

And she sent me away with some sweet peas from her garden:

Family can be a complicated thing, and ours has had its share of difficulties, over the years. But when it is good, it is very, very good. That is my tiny thought for the day.

Also, since I am in bumper sticker mode: sometimes the glass really is half full. Sometimes, when the light is coming from the right direction, it is full all the way to the top, whatever the cynics might tell you.

After all that, the least you deserve is a good quote for the day. Even sceptical old Oscar Wilde had his chicken soup for the soul moments. Take this:

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

And now I am going to go away and smell my sweet peas.

One more thing

This is absolutley fabulous. Found via the always wonderful Michael Tomasky at The Guardian.

28,000 lives

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

There were so many things I wanted to write about today: a nice thing to do with potatoes and bacon, the real meaning of £16 billion, the nature of prejudice with specific reference to homophobia. In the end though, the figure of 28,000 human lives, which I read in the paper this morning, is the one that will not leave my head.

Imagine you were a politician. Imagine you could pass a law that could save 28,000 lives. It is a fairly simple piece of legislation, but it would involve some pretty complicated politics. You might easily lose office over it. BUT you would save thousands of people from pointless death. That would just be in your own country. If you fancied yourself as a bit of a statesman or stateswoman, you could get together with some other world leaders, and persuade them of the rightness of your case. You could go to the UN. God knows how many thousands are dying fruitlessly in other countries from lack of the same law.

What could this miracle of legislation be? Hold onto your titfers; it is slightly controversial. It is: to legalise drugs.

I know. Don't panic. Before you conjure up nightmarish visions of old ladies going down to the chemist to get their crack pipes, just consider the facts. The vaunted war on drugs is the least successful war in the history of warfare. It costs billions of pounds and dollars and euros, and what is the outcome of all this blood and treasure? People all over the world still take drugs. Ruthless gangs grow rich on the proceeds of illicit cocaine and heroin and skank; their profits often go to fund terrorist operations and other unspeakable illegalities. The tax office does not get a sniff of any of that cash, so no schools or hospitals may be built on the back of it.

A friend of mine recently went to a rather grand sixtieth birthday party. There were fine wines and fireworks, and everyone 'went to the loo rather a lot'. This was at a highly respectable gathering of sixty-somethings. You only have to go into any of the fashionable London drinking clubs to see the same effect. Years ago, I knew a boy whose job was to go round the radio stations getting them to play the records of the bands he worked for. The record company supplied him with a huge bag of coke each week. 'Two lines and they would play anything,' he told me. Drugs are not just confined to inner city estates; they are in the drawing rooms of country houses, the offices of media conglomerates, the lavs of three star restaurants, and backstage at pretty much any gig you can mention. This is how well the War is working.

In Mexico, the government sits powerless as two rival drug gangs fight it out between them. The cartels have policemen and judges on their payroll. Any dispute, real or imagined, is resolved with a shot to the head. This is where the 28,000 comes from. That is how many people have died in the gang battles in the last four years. It makes 9/11 look like an accounting error.

I know it's not that simple. But twenty-eight thousand. Imagine how many more are dying in the same way in the other drug-producing countries. Put on top of that all the users who die from tainted product, because when you are buying stuff illegally on the street, you have no idea what is in it. I know that legalisation would be complicated. I know it produces a visceral reaction. This is because we tend to think that all drug takers are out of control addicts with rheumy eyes and weeping sores. It is a powerful vision, but it is incorrect. It would be like thinking that all drinkers are like the tramp on the pavement who drank away his life. We do not think of the competent barrister who takes cocaine sometimes at the weekend or the doctor who smokes a spliff on holiday.

It just seems crazy that we ban drugs, but let people drink as much alcohol as they can afford. Drinks conglomerates are respected blue chip companies, part of any good pension plan. The Scots are rightly proud of their whisky industry. Guinness is practically the national symbol of Ireland. The dry martini is a world-wide indicator of sophistication. James Bond would not be Bond without shaken not stirred. The Exchequer smiles as it rakes in the duty on all forms of liquor.

The latest statistics I can find are for England. They are quite alarming: over 800,000 alcohol-related admissions to hospital, at a cost to the NHS of over £2 billion; over 6,500 deaths directly related to alcohol. The equivalent numbers for drugs are around 60,000 admissions and 1,700 deaths, the majority from drug poisoning.

I suppose you could say well, this shows the war is working, illegality is keeping those numbers down. You could also say it seems madly illogical to keep legal one substance which causes so much more death and disease and distress than all the other substances put together.

Imagine putting all those raging gangs out of business at one stroke. Imagine putting problem drug users into treatment instead of having them cluttering up the prisons, where they just learn to take even more drugs. Imagine that, instead of having to go to some seedy dealer in a back street, people would go to the pharmacist for their party pack. It might be legal, but you would still have to push through a curtain of social disapproval. I would be far more frightened of the beady eye of the good Margaret at my local chemist that of some small time dealer. I hardly dare ask her for Neurofen Plus.

Well, that's my idea of the day. If the war on drugs were a shining success, I should not have to have it. But from the opium fields of Afghanistan to the coca plantations of Columbia to the mean streets of Mexico City, there is no sign of progress. Is it time for someone to start thinking differently?

Now for pictures. The very kind Mystica, who always leaves the most delightful comments, has remarked that what she likes most at the end of a long day is some pictures of the dogs. This is very dangerous, because as you know I hardly need any encouragement. This blog was started as an adjunct to Backwards in High Heels, intended to cover all manner of subjects that might be of any relevance to the female condition. It was not supposed to be a canine festival, although on some days that is what it seems like. But then I think: what the hell, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And when there is so much ugliness in the news, is it not practically a public service to spread the beauty? And what could really be more beautiful than this? -

Or this?

(That is the face the duchess makes when she is rolling over for us mere commoners to scratch her stomach.)

Could anyone be less fretful about the war on drugs than this?

Or less bothered about the balance of payments than this?

Or really more perfect than this?

Humans are humans and dogs are dogs, but sometimes I think we may take a lesson from our dear canines. All they want is a biscuit, a rabbit to chase and some love. They are wonderfully straightforward about the love. They come and ask for it, when it is required. Once they have had enough, they go away again. I know that we cannot live on biscuits and rabbits alone, but sometimes I do think there is a small homily on priorities in there somewhere. Anyway, they make me very happy, and I love that you dear readers seem to appreciate them too. It is not at all what I thought would happen when I began this enterprise, and it makes me smile.

Consider the lichen

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I am feeling a little whimsical today. My brilliant co-writer has conspired with the publisher and the agent to get the deadline of the book pushed back, so I no longer need to feel as if I am a train hurtling down a track. I may stop, and smell the cool autumn air, and consider the lilies. Or, in this case, the lichen.

You may have noticed by now that I am slightly obsessed with lichen. It is partly because I find it so aesthetically pleasing. It is also because I like the fact that its abundance indicates the clarity of the air. I feel daily lucky to be living in a place almost without pollution. (Although the council does occasionally send out terrifying leaflets telling us that we shall all die of radon, a fatal gas that is produced by granite, so I suppose I can't get too smug.)

As the last of the flowers fade, and the roses and honeysuckles turn to hips, and the leaves begin to turn, the great consolation lies in the miraculous beauty of the lichens. I don't know if they have been growing particularly fiercely lately, or whether I am just noticing them more acutely, but they do seem to be flourishing just now.

Observe this extraordinary example, where an entire tree trunk appears to be wearing some kind of hippie sixties fur coat:

Then there are the delicate little balls, which make me smile with pleasure:

And the peculiar tufts:

And then the subtle little ones that merge with the tree bark, in a ravishing pattern:

And the ones that colonise half a tree, so that they look like some kind of sculpture:

And the more reticent ones that only occupy half an inch:

I did not know that there are 18,000 varieties of lichen in the world. I always want to know who does the counting. Wouldn't it be terrible if someone lost the piece of paper half way through, and they had to go back and start again at number one?

There is also a British Society of Lichen, where lichenologists may gather and share their passions. I have never met a lichenologist. I suddenly feel this is a terrible gap in my life.

As if all this glory were not enough, I still have the last of the flowers.

The salvia is in fine fig:

Observe the raindrops on roses, just as in the Sound of Music:

More sedum - one completely open:

One still shy and green:

I keep thinking I have seen the last honeysuckle, but then another one blooms:

The ferns are loving the cool and the rain:

As are the ladyships. Look at them, sniffing the air:

The shrinks all say that we should make little gratitude lists in our heads, so that we realise all the things for which we should be thankful. I generally go back to first principles: arms and legs, for example. I do not take those for granted. Sometimes I am passionately grateful for my ability to type. There is family and food, obviously. Clearly, I do not overlook the good fortune of living in a free country where I may vote and drive a car and walk outside without permission. But there are days when I would put lichen near the top of the list. Today is one of those days.

Big plate of crazy

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

My dear stepfather likes sending me little cuttings in the post. Today, one arrived guaranteed to send my blood pressure soaring. (I think he cleverly does this for medical reasons; I have hysterically low blood pressure.) In The Telegraph, Janet Daley has been complaining about a new wave of European anti-Americanism. As convincing evidence of this she offers 'the BBC's derisive treatment of the Tea Party movement'.

I have looked all over the BBC website and can find no evidence of this. (This appears to be a typical example of rather low-key Tea Party reporting.) I can't see the evidence for the anti-American bias in grumpy old Europe, either. I wonder where Ms Daley gets it from. In the latest Pew polls, from June, US favourability is at 73% in France, 65% in Britain, and 63% in Germany. This compares to the low forties and fifties of the Bush years. I know that bashing you with statistics can be rather tiring on a Saturday, but I can't resist giving you these amazing numbers. On the 'Will Do the Right Thing in World Affairs' question, George Bush in 2008 scored 13% in France, 14% in Germany, and 16% in Britain. Barack Obama in 2010 scores 87%, 90% and 84% respectively.

Let us just pause and contemplate that for a moment. It is so astonishing that I had to read the survey three times to make sure I got it right. (You too can gaze in wonder at the full thing here.)

Why would a reputable columnist in a reputable broadsheet write something that is based on no verifiable fact? The polling evidence, actual empirical proofs, present the exact opposite of what Ms Daley is saying. It is not just contentious, it is wrong. She may have political reasons for presenting this oddly incorrect narrative, but I think most of all she is falling into a category error. It is instructive that she cites the Tea Party when she talks of the cross old Europeans hating America. It is exactly the same argument the Right used when they accused people who did not like George W Bush of not liking America. I would make the exact opposite argument. It was precisely because I loved America that I was so sad to see it have a leader of such dubious qualities. Criticising a president does not mean you hate a country; they are two quite discrete attitudes.

In the same way, I find the Tea Party dispiriting, because I think America deserves better. Here is Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party's newest darling, recently elected as the Republican candidate for Senate from the great state of Delaware:

'But let me tell you something! They — homosexuals’ special rights groups - can get away with so much more than nobody else can. They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion! They’re getting away with blasphemy!' (Oh, oh, those naked, blaspheming homos.)

Or try this:

'Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it’s merely a theory. Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.' (Put that on your science agenda, you Godless heathens.)

Or this:

'During the primary, I heard the audible voice of God. He said, ‘Credibility.’ It wasn’t a thought in my head. I thought it meant I was going to win. But after the primary, I got credibility.' (For some reason, I find the thought of God booming 'Credibility' oddly funny. It doesn't exactly have the power and poetry of the King James Bible.)

Or this:

'We took the bible and prayer out of public schools, and now we’re having weekly shootings practically.' (A truly magnificent example of cause and effect.)

I shall not go on. It starts to feel like a cheap shot. If you want to see the collected wit and wisdom of Ms O'Donnell, you may find it here. I'm just saying that this is the woman the Tea Party currently loves only second to Mrs Palin, and she does not necessarily represent the most glorious side of a great nation. What is also odd is that commentators like Janet Daley are always banging on about freedom of speech, and the awful chilling effect of political correctness, which is all the fault of those pesky liberal fundamentalists, who want to exercise thought control over the citizenry. Yet, if someone should criticise the Tea Party, they are being anti-American. I don't know. Perhaps she is making a little joke.

After all that, the least you deserve are some soothing pictures:

A little autumnal tree:

Heathery heather:

I can't resist another shot of the sedum:

The magical bark of the salix:

Oh, did I say bark?

There. All better now. Have a wonderful weekend.

Furious Friday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It is quite hard not to grow cross when you have spent all week being told by men in frocks how immoral you are. Of course one can see that the fellows have a point. I am so damn immoral that I spent all yesterday afternoon making stew for my old mother. I ruthlessly delivered it to her today, for her lunch. No wonder the religious gentlemen think Britons have no health in them. I am selfishly having my sister and my niece's dogs to stay, and am cruelly giving them extra love, in case they should be missing their humans. On Sunday night, in an act of pure fecklessness, I shall go and collect the niece from the airport. In the moral relativism in which I am told I am mired, I send money each month to Africa, and the Red Cross, and Great Ormond Street hospital, and the Burma Campaign.

I have all the flaws that flesh is heir to. There are days when I am grumpy. I have no capacity to keep my office organised. I have moments of shocking laziness. I quite often refuse to do things (the compound will tell you that I am a famous chucker). But I make an attempt to be a reasonably decent human being, not because I think this will get me to heaven, but because I think that it's what humans should do. In a way, it is an act of selfishness, because I want to be able to look at myself in the glass each morning. If I had one creed it would be the line from EM Forster: kindness, kindness and yet more kindness. I like the slightly surprising cry from cross old Philip Larkin, who said all that is left of us is love. I am inordinately fond of the Hippocratic oath, which instructs: first, do no harm. But the Pope tells me that because I do not believe in a deity which turns wine to blood and a wafer to human flesh, I have no morality.

I do not wish to upset my Catholic friends. There are people I love and admire who have gods of all stripes, as well as none of the above. I think everyone must believe what they wish. But to say that one belief system has cornered the market on morality is just empirically incorrect. I am as guilty as the next woman of a sweeping generalisation, but in the end each person must be judged on their actions, not their creed. The good or bad comes down to individuals, not prescribed (or proscribed) groups. Belief or non-belief is not the marker for morals.

Richard Dawkins once said a very interesting thing. He said that all believers are also atheists, because there are Gods that they think do not exist. So, Christians do not believe in Allah; Hindus do not believe in Yawheh; Jews do not believe that Jesus was divine. Pretty much no one now believes in Thor and Odin, although when I was a child I remember thinking them very splendid sort of gods, with all that hammer action. There are ancient religions which are now dead as twenty-seven dodos. Zeus no longer commands worship, although there was a time when Pausanias could write: 'That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men'. No one has much time for Ra the Sun God. There are no more followers of Nin-Kasi, the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, even though she sounds a most delightful deity, or the lesser Siduri, the divine tavern keeper. As HL Mencken once wrote, who now worships Huitzilopochtli? Actually, I can understand why no one does. Quite apart from the fact that his name is impossible to pronounce, he was a savage god, requiring daily sacrifice. The chosen victim was held down while a priest used an obsidian knife to cut out his beating heart. Huitzilopochtli's sister goddess Teteoinnan, the earth mother, required even more gory worship. At each harvest, a young girl was chosen to be flayed; her skin was then carried to the temple and worn by the officiating priest.

The point is that there is a reason it is called faith rather than fact. Many different people believe in many different gods, now and throughout human history. There is no way of telling who is right. So it seems frankly peculiar that any one faith would make a claim to all human virtue. I absolutely see that the Pope would want to stand up for his church. I just feel a little disconcerted when he tells me that because I do not share his God, I have a 'truncated view of man and of society'. I'm truncating off now, to commit more acts of gross indecency. I have to make my mother some tomato sauce for her freezer, because that's what immoralists do, on a Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, here is the pack, in full fig:

Ready for their close-up:

Sister's poodle:

Niece's dog:

My old ladies:

And my dear old sedum, just coming into flower, pretty enough to soothe the most jaded soul:

I look at that and for some reason, I think of Hamlet. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. That will do as my quote of the day.

By Jingo, and other matters of national importance

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

If you can get the BBC iPlayer, and you have a little time on your hands, and you would like to put a big, fat smile on your face, go and have a look at the Last Night of the Proms, here.

I used to go to the Proms, a hundred years ago; a very splendid old gentleman kindly took me. I still remember the first time I ever heard a piano concerto for two pianos, right there in the Albert Hall, at the age of fifteen. I also had the outrageous fortune to see Murray Perehia play Mozart, and once heard a crazy performance of the Saint-Saëns organ concerto featuring the magnificent Albert Hall organ.

But the Last Night? I know; pictures of little England at its most little English. I like a good rendition of Jerusalem as much as the next girl, but there are limits. I only went along to the iPlayer this time because Fraser Nelson had an interesting article about the whole thing in the Speccie. He was struck by the flags. Of course there was a great deal of Union flag waving, but there were also flags from Japan, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, and many other countries I could not identify. The conductor was Czech, the viola soloist Ukrainian, the music composed by Russians and Germans. Rule Britannia was sung, without irony, by a charming American soprano. I suddenly realised: it is very English, but it is not little; it is the world in one Victorian hall.

The thing is very long. I did actually watch the whole three hours, whilst pottering in my office. If you want to understand the British, go to the last thirty-five minutes of the second half. Look at the good humour and honest enthusiasm of the promenaders; look at the gentle eccentricity and happy faces; see how they patiently stand all night. In true national tradition, they will have patiently queued for hours before that.

We are a tired island, just now. We no longer rule the waves. As the last chief secretary to the Treasury wrote, in his farewell note, there is no money left. But my God, we can still gather in halls and parks and sing Land of Hope and Glory. We are rather more hope than glory, nowadays, and perhaps that is as it should be. In my more fanciful moments, I think that as long as there are fellows who dress up as Spitfire pilots and sing along to Elgar, we may yet rally. It is not so much in great majesty but in small, human absurdities that our loveliness lies.

In other news:

There are days when the internets seem full of sadness and madness, but then there are days like today when they are filled with delight. Here is what my eye has just fallen upon:

Via the always enchanting Miss Whistle.

I wish I could remember how I find all the blogs I find. Some are passed on through blogrolls, some recommended by word of mouth, some sent through the email, some discovered through a random search. I have no idea how I stumbled upon A Beautiful Revolution, but I am terribly glad I did. Here are some of Andre Jordan's cartoons that made me laugh this morning:

 

One more thought, on the solid gold glory of old friends:

I called my dear friend P this morning, on a whim. We had not spoken in a while. He was mildly disconsolate. We had a bit of a Creative moan at each other. I shall not bore you with the details; it is the same conversation that all people who attempt to earn their living in the arts have whenever two or more are gathered together. But the absolutely lovely thing was that by the end of the conversation we had come up with two rather thrilling ideas. From low level gloom we went to Possible Projects. We always want to work together and now perhaps we shall. 'I'll call my agent,' I said, suddenly fired with purpose. We have known each other since we were foolish young things in our first term at university. Years ago, he said to me: 'If we stick together, we can do anything.' As I put down the receiver, I thought: yes, we damn well can. Another of my old friends divides people into Drainers and Radiators. P is a radiator, even when he is slightly pissed off. I love him very much for that.

Speaking of radiators, I cannot leave you without the now traditional glimpse of these ones. I believe they are contemplating something very profound, possibly to do with squirrels:

Happy Thursday.

PS. Wonderful comments yesterday, thank you. So glad I am not alone with the perfection genie.

The delights of imperfection

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I talk quite often of the perfection genie that lives on my shoulder and yells into my ear. In some ways, I think it is not an entirely malign thing. It is just as well that there is some internal engine that lashes me on to greater endeavour. I get quite cross about banal or careless or lazy writers who expect harried readers to give up hours of their priceless time to read rotten prose. It is important to pay close attention to punctuation, to check that grammar is not all over the shop, to place carefully the crucial semi-colon.

On the other hand, the perfection genie can ruin a perfectly good day, to no great effect. When Sarah came to stay, I got into such a hostess frenzy that by the time she arrived, my sensibilities were singed and I grew occasionally snappish, which was not the point at all.

I was thinking of this because last night turned out to be a perfectly enchanting evening. The guests turned up with fine wines; the conversation ran like a river in full flood; the house looked pretty; the dogs behaved well. There were jokes. We talked of the rise of China, the new Russians, boats, King Zog of Albania, education, Venice in the 1960s, travel, and manners. All this was despite the fact that it was not my best ever Irish stew. I KNOW. Irish stew used to be my signature dish, but I had not made it in a while, and although it was quite good, it was not excellent. I think I might have chosen the wrong cut of lamb. Also, I put slightly too much oatmeal in the soda bread, so it was a little too heavy and dense. In some moods, I might have decided this rendered the entire night a rank failure. I would have forgotten about the fact that the smoked mackerel paté turned out sublime, and the special salsa was delicious, and the cheese from the village was of the creamiest and finest. I would have forgotten that everyone had a perfectly lovely time. I would have grown fretful that my brother-in-law did not have a second helping.

Instead I thought: sometimes stew is just stew, rather than a world-beating item that people write home about. The point was, it could not have mattered less.

In some ways, I am rather fond of the perfection genie. I would rather have that than a blah who cares genie. It would be sad if people came round and I just opened a tin. I suppose I am learning that I don't have to listen all the time, that's all. For some reason, I keep hearing that old Kenny Rogers line in my head: you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. The striving itself may not be a bad thing, as long as one can forgive oneself for falling short.

In the spirit of imperfection, the pictures of the day are my utter failures. They are so out of focus and generally wrong that I do not know what half of them were meant to be. I think though that they have a sort of lovely badness all of their own:

And here is one I took yesterday, which I like very much, because although it is almost a disaster, it is just in focus enough to save itself:

And something to remind you that perfection does exist in the world, and it can be a very fine thing indeed:

 

Obviously, I am biased. Perfection is as perfection does, as Mary Poppins might have said.

 

PS. Talking of imperfection, I have been lackadaisical about replying to comments lately. You have left some very charming ones over the last couple of days, and I am so sorry I have not replied. Thank you for them all.