A lull between storms

Storm damage in Hill Street, Hastings Old Town

The past few weeks haven't been much fun, weatherwise.  Those of you living outside the UK may have seen the odd snap of people wading through waist-high waters in their living-rooms.  Or perhaps not - the UK media have given zero coverage to the disappearance of beaches and threats to coastal buildings down France's Atlantic coast.  For those of you ignorant of what's been happening, I can tell you that there are swathes of the British countryside seriously under water.  Hastings being built on largely hilly ground, we haven't had the flood problem.  But my God have we had gales.  The Shoebox and its nextdoor neighbour the Matchbox comprise a building two sides of which are built of a timber frame fronted by tiles.  The south-west facing wall is brick with a cement render.  In the winds - which have reached around 80 mph but who's measuring precisely? - the building moves, particularly noticeably on the top floor.  More importantly, the people who put the cement render on instead of a limestone one, around a century ago, seem to have ignored the fact that cement is inflexible.  So when the building moves, cracks form in the render.  And when the rain is being hurled against the cracked wall at 80 mph it gets in.

Not that we can complain.  We knew there was a problem and it'll get fixed - rather expensively - this summer.  Quite apart from the dire straits of those in Somerset and the Thames Valley, many of our neighbours have far more to grouse about: leaky roofs and crumbling chimneystacks result in soaked attics, boundary walls have been blown down, a landslip behind a row of houses on the front pinned the occupants in their basements.  And the house shown above lost most of its outside wall into a diminutive side garden.   

Today we have had a brief reprieve.  A cloudless sky with a gentle breeze.  We've been told more wind and rain are on their way.  It was terrible to begin with - but do you know?  we're actually getting used to it.  Even so, I'll be glad when it's over.

Antony Mair

Antisocial media

Translation: Last week we had a power cut.  My PC immediately gave up.  So I chatted to my family for a couple of hours.  They seem like really nice people.

I sometimes - actually every day - feel like a dinosaur, surrounded by evolving species that will survive and flourish long after I have become even more fossilised than at present.  Social media is/are something that I engage with on the periphery.  Yes, of course I email like everyone else.  It's Facebook, Twitter, texting and the various derivatives that cause me a degree of unease.

Before even getting into my specific objections, let me vent some brief spleen about the radio and television fashion for asking for input from viewers and listeners.  Time was when Radio 4's Any Answers and Points of View were the only moments of feedback from the Great British Public.  It was a great opportunity for those on the not-so-far right wing to air their grievances.  Now there scarcely seems to be a programme without a request for input of some sort - whether it's texting your vote for a contestant on a reality programme or giving a view on a particular topic.  In the latter case the invitation is usually expressed as "We'd love to hear from you" - one of the grosser instances of media insincerity.  Can I really suppose that the glamorous presenter in the television studio, tired after a day of interviewing evasive politicians, with the programme producer babbling into his/her earpiece, is really waiting for my uninformed input from Hastings?  I don't think so.

My objections to Facebook and its lookalikes are more specific:

1  the sacrifice of privacy is far greater than users appreciate.  You're concerned about the UK becoming a police state, with a greater concentration of CCTV than anywhere else in Europe?  Perhaps you don't realise how much your Facebook entries are revealing about your behaviour, tastes, opinions etc. - all ripe for exploitation via those "you may be interested in..." emails suggesting you buy anything from underpants to holidays.

2   the extent of posing and posturing has reached absurd levels.  Most of us lead fairly humdrum lives, which are rich in their own way.  I like to wonder what Jane Austen would have done with a Facebook page: "At Bath, in the Pump Room";  "Meeting a dear friend visiting the village".  Ok - but do I really want to see groups of alcoholised people gurning at a camera lens?  or the one liner of some wannabe who drops into the Ritz merely to mention it on Facebook?

3  Facebook interaction has become a synthetic and pathetic substitute for socialising.  Instead of people meeting and talking (without photographing each other or the food on their plates) there are banks of autistic saddoes staring at their computer screens and sending text messages to "friends" who would cease to be so if they actually spent real time with them.

"It's good to talk", the old BT ad used to say.  GCHQ may be listening in, of course, but at least there's a real voice at the end of the line.

Antony Mair

Idiocy in Westminster

The Palace of Westminster - courtesy Wikimedia Commons

There have been reports in the paper recently about young people's disaffection with Parliament and their consequent failure to vote.  The young aren't the only people disaffected with our present government.  I worry - though not very much - about becoming Disgruntled of Hastings, like those crotchety pensioners writing in from Tunbridge Wells, but have recently been thinking of the most obvious bits of Parliamentary idiocy.

Let's start with the so-called Bedroom Tax.  It all sounded so logical: council house tenants hogging accommodation too large for them needed to be induced to move to smaller homes, so as to free up the larger ones for those on the waiting list.  To incentivise them, remove some of their benefit if they stay in the over-large house or flat.  Nobody seems to have checked the availability of the smaller houses or flats that make the system work.  The result is that people are not moving, because there's nowhere for them to go.  They're merely being deprived of money that in many cases is needed to live on.

Of course there's an obvious solution, which is to build more public housing.  Which brings us to idiocy item number two: the Help to Buy scheme, i.e. government assistance to people wanting to get onto the housing ladder and buy their first property.  When everyone predicted that this would result in rocketing house prices and increased personal debt, the emollient tones of senior civil servants and members of Parliament chimed in to say that wasn't a danger and if it was something would be done.  Even the Bank of England appeared to belittle the likelihood of a housing bubble.  Hoho.  What do we now have?  housing prices rising everywhere, but particularly in London and the south-east.  Meanwhile those suffering from the bedroom tax are visiting food banks to stay alive.

This is stupid, but not necessarily nasty, unlike the increasingly aggressive attitude to immigrants.  UKIP has a frightening tendency to voice prejudices that should be kept quiet if not stifled altogether, and the Tories are now joining in.  Figures show that immigrant workers use less public services than the natives, and therefore contribute more in net terms to the economy.  Without immigrant labor many jobs would not get done because the unemployed Brits find them unacceptable (care home workers, carwash attendants, fruit-pickers etc.).  Nonetheless, the government is reinforcing the view, held by many, that immigrants are taking jobs from the natives and leaching the economy.  The British don't like to be compared with Germans in the 1930s, but the parallels are fairly clear.  So watch out, all minorities.

I could go on, but won't.  It doesn't make me want to withhold my vote.  But, for the first time since I was in Germany in 1968, I may join people protesting in the streets.  

Antony Mair

The decline of the gay ghetto

Not having been away since June last year, we decided to escape over Christmas and get a bit of sun in the Canaries.  We've done this before on a couple of occasions from France, and know the ropes, so we rented a small apartment and off we went.  As you can see from the picture above, with the not particularly attractive view from our rabbit hutch, the skies were generally kind to us, even if the evenings were chilly.

The dunes of Maspalomas

We go to Playa del Ingles, in Gran Canaria, which is a bit like a Spanish Blackpool - I don't know Benidorm, but imagine it's similar.  The one difference from Benidorm is that Playa is a bit of a gay centre, with a lot of bars and places catering mainly for what is called "the gay community".  It's all pretty relaxed, but if you're of a gay persuasion it's traditionally been good fun, with places catering for all tastes, from the raunchy to the more (but not very) sophisticated.

This time round, though, I thought I detected the beginning of a trend.  One or two of the places we'd gone to in the past were fuller than I recalled of distinctly elderly gents, and the atmosphere seemed less welcome and relaxed - even, dare I say it, a bit dull.  When we strolled around the enormous shopping centre called Yumbo (as in Yumbo the Elephant - geddit?) it was obvious that a lot of gay couples were going elsewhere, mixing with the general community.  

What we were witnessing was the gradual collapse of the gay ghetto that we grew up with, in a time when  society was less tolerant.  When being gay was stigmatised, the minority clung together and found solidarity in pubs and clubs frequented exclusively by their own kind.  Now that an increasing number of countries in Europe afford same-sex couples the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, the need for solidarity is reduced.  Just as internet cafés have largely disappeared as a result of advanced technology, with fancy phones, tablets and Wi-fi, so the exclusively gay venues are faced with a decline in demand.  It's a positive change - but at the same time some of the more extravagant flamboyance and eccentricity of the gay scene, that provided colour and amusement, are likely to disappear, as we assimilate the ways of the majority.  The gay scene in Mykonos has been swept into oblivion; it looks as if it may be on the way out in Playa del Ingles as well. 

Antony Mair

The New Year blows in

Cliffs to the west of Rock-a-Nore, showing the part that collapsed into the sea

A sea view is terrific, but it does come at a price - namely the winter gales.  Usually we have them in October, but it won't have escaped the notice of anyone except those dwelling in caves that this year the end of December and beginning of January have been dominated by gales blasting their way across the UK, fuelled, it appears, by extreme weather conditions in the United States.  

We're now pretty used to it, but experiencing the full onslaught of the usual southwesterly in the Shoebox is quite scary.  The building that houses the Shoebox and its neighbour No. 8 is only attached in part to the next house along.  Two of the building's sides are timber-framed and tile-hung (in other words there's a framework of oak beams with tiles then hanging on a frame added to the outside face of the oak beams; a degree of further protection from the elements is afforded on the inside by a combination of tongue and groove panelling and lath and plaster walls).  The result of this is that the building is not so rigid as a fully brick-built structure.  In a gale there is distinct movement, which can be alarming on the upper floors.  I take comfort in the fact that it's stood upright for 200 years and is not about to collapse.

We were away for the major storm just before Christmas, but there's been quite a lot of wind blowing down the chimney and against the windows since our return.  Mercifully we had the windows draft-proofed when the rest of the building works were done a year ago - though the guarantee only covers winds up to sixty miles an hour, which isn't always enough.  There will doubtless be some repairing work to be done in the Spring, but so far we're surviving.

Which is more than can be said of the cliffs along the road from us.  Sodden from the torrential rain, the sandstone has been under massive pressure from the onslaught of waves at high tide.  A large chunk of it collapsed a couple of days ago.  A video of the rockface crumbling into the sea was broadcast on the South-East News and as a result there were streams of visitors yesterday looking at the sight from the car-park.  The car-park itself was a bit of a no-go area, since the waves were crashing over part of it, and washing shingle over the sea-wall.  This morning we woke to calm: a welcome lull after what seems endless days of wind, but as I type this the windows are being buffeted again and it looks as if there is more to come.  The only good thing about this weather is that sooner or later it comes to an end.

Antony Mair

    

The UK's recovery: a painted façade

Half-timbered houses in Hastings Old Town

The more I listen to government pronouncements about economic recovery, the more I sympathise with the recurring criticism from the Labour front benches of government ministers being out of touch.  Overall statistics are one thing - and it's better for us to have some overall growth than nothing at all - but the truth on the ground is considerably more complicated than these figures would have one believe.  

George Osborne, our Chancellor of the Exchequer (a quaint title for what in any other country would be a Minister of Finance), would have us believe that the present recovery, such as it is, is due to his continuing measures for austerity.  These measures have consisted in brutal cuts on central and local government expenditure, the main impact of which has been felt by the poorest section of society.  Unemployment is said to have fallen, but the figures are distorted by people in part-time work or on so-called "zero-hours" contracts, which give them no guarantee of earning a wage.  Many who are employed are in jobs that pay so low a wage that it is difficult for them to make ends meet.  One of our neighbours is contemplating a job  in a residential care home, at an hourly rate of £6.84, giving him a monthly gross pay of £1,185.  There is a shortage of workers in the care sector, and recurring scandals about the way in which the elderly are treated in residential homes.  But I find it difficult to believe that the situation will greatly improve with wages at this level.  

In the run-up to Christmas this year the Hastings shops are all feeling the pinch.  The welter of cut prices and special offers in the chain stores is an indicator of how hard they are having to fight to maintain turnover.  When goods are being offered so cheap I scarcely dare think what people are being paid further up the supply chain.

But the real sufferers are the small independent shops, deserted because of a shortage of cash on the one hand and the lure of online shopping on the other.  We seem to be becoming a nation of screen-watchers, locked away in our homes.  At a time when the main problem besetting many elderly people is loneliness and isolation, the gradual erosion of our communities augurs ill for the future.  

So don't be fooled by the picturesque façade created by officials; it masks a far grimmer interior than you think.

Antony Mair

Rediscovering Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

A year or so ago I told Jo Grigg, leader of the Stanza poetry group I attend in Brighton, that I was reading Pound's Cantos in full for the first time.  She confessed she had never read Pound properly.  Our more erudite next-door neighbour, Tony Sillem, noticed my copy when he called by one day and said "I thought I was the only person I knew who'd ever read those".

I laboured away, with the aid of William Cookson's Guide.  There were flashes of brilliance, but quite a lot of obscurity; also a lot of affectation of language that now seems childish - pseudo-phonetic spelling to mimic accents, for example.  I finally gave up when it came to Chinese history, with the 85th.

But Pound himself remained a puzzle, and more recently I took down Noel Stock's biography of him, which has been sitting on my shelf for a very long time.  It's now rather dated, and is the work of an academic rather than a natural biographer: details, for example, of Pound's son - whisked away from his parents in Italy virtually at birth and deposited with his grandmother in England - and of Pound's natural daughter are sparse in the extreme, so that one gets little idea of Pound's relationship with his nearest and dearest.  But what does come across loud and clear is the key part that Pound played in what is now called Modernism, in the early part of the last century.  He was at university with William Carlos Williams, with whom he remained in close contact for the rest of his life; an intimate of Yeats and of T.S. Eliot (the present form of The Waste Land is largely due to Pound's revisions); and a friend and benefactor of James Joyce.  Indeed, Dubliners and Ulysses would probably never have seen the light of day had it not been for Pound's financial and moral support.  He also championed the younger generation: Hemingway and E.E. Cummings, whom he met in Paris in the early 1920s, and the now largely forgotten Louis Zukofsky, a key influence on the later so-called Black Mountain poets.  

Pound himself had a brilliant mind, although its very brilliance, coupled with his fondness for the arcane (the poetry of the French troubadours, for example, would probably have remained the province of academics without his translations) led him to believe that his opinions were self-evidently right.  It was not so much a case of not tolerating fools gladly; those who disagreed with his trenchant opinions tended also to be dismissed.  

His consignment to obscurity is largely due to his straying from literature into the fields of economics and politics in the 1930s and later.  He demonstrated lamentable judgment in supporting the Fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which led to his being arrested and deported for treason at the end of the War, and to his commitment to a mental hospital until 1958, when he was allowed to return to Italy. 

Posterity is fickle.  It may well be that in the final analysis his poetic reputation will rest more firmly on his translations than on his own original work.  But it's been an eye-opener for me to appreciate the extent to which he was not only at the hub, but indeed the hub itself, of what was happening in literature a hundred years ago.  

Antony Mair