12.00 April 2nd 2008 I am certain I will not be able to immediately cope with another day like yesterday and which has put back further continuing and completing consideration of Lord of the Rings and the achievements of Tolkien and Peter Jackson. I would like to believe that Tolkien would have approved my effort in finishing tasks as they are designed and to the comprehensiveness and nature of my principal activity although our path as are very different and he would have certainly wished that I applied myself more to the construction of my sentences and the improvement of the vocabulary. Peter Jackson should also appreciate the application and comprehensiveness but most the weirdness of the project.
12.15 Talking of weird, for more decades that I wish to remember, I have considered describing fish covered in batter before frying, (battered) cod) as quirky conjuring visions of someone such as John Clease chasing a fish with a hammer. This morning anyone glancing into the kitchen, if they had been able to do so, would have seen me reigning blows on four helpless bream with a hammer in what became a successful attempt to part them from each frozen other. I hope more will occur during the day so that my heading will not remain Battering Bream - The epic nature of my everyday
12.30 I also have a vivid recollection of my dream upon waking which involved getting on a bus which did not stop when the bell was rung, possibly because several companions also did likewise, and our pleas were ignored and the bus drove on and on leaving us in unrecognised country. The next instant we had reached our intended destination where the feeling was one of disappointment, before us a large hut like single storey building with the entrance at the side, but at the front there was a notice with our assignment. There are rarely people that I know in my dreams, so that I was part of a group is an interesting development There was so much more and I believe that I knew what was happening in this dream and therefore why, but I remember no longer. The more I dwell on this the more it reflects a core problem of think through why I did or did not things and then forgetting, remembering differently, or not at all. In one traumatic instance which changed my life I had forgotten a key document, although given the performance of my representative, I suspect it would not have been mentioned had I remembered.
12.45 Yesterday I was fascinated to learn that Tolkien had a recurring nightmarish dream in childhood in which he was enveloped by a hostile sea, with the suggestion that that this was part of the cause for the island home of people of Gondor sinking beneath the waves. My childhood dream was also about envelopment although the creature was more like the devilish being which enveloped Gandalf in the Mines of Moira. Freudian friends have argued that such dreams are usually experienced by those with sexual anxiety. Normal childhood includes dreams and experiences which fill us with terror and how such experiences affect us in later depends on our ability to communicate such experiences to others, and how these others respond. Loving, and understanding others will be able to help because they have had such experiences themselves and be able to reassure and comfort and there will be no need for analysis and applying adult knowledge and experience. The problem, which I briefly covered yesterday is what happens when the terror is not of dream but the reality of Man’s behaviour with children, either from direct personal violence or detached anonymous sending of lethal communications from out of the blue sky.
13.00 For the second morning in succession I fancied brown bread after my coffee and then glass of orange juice; for years I wondered why Australian "Neighbours," . drank something called OJ. Silly me Mini Me. My inkjet supplier is giving away not one but two radio controlled Ferrari cars, for orders over £500 as alternatives to the 2 for 1 offer.
13.15 I have really taken to the game of Hearts because its is colourful and therapeutic and I am unable to always win, or at worse pay insufficient attention and achieve a draw. I cannot lose. I mean I could lose but at the lower levels, I do not have to, and therefore the challenge is to achieve 101 wins, which is interesting enough, but at times boring. In Hearts the computer plays three hands against my one together with acting a dealer and so far only lets you win 10% to 17% percent of games on 50 games played
15.45. I had an enjoyable lunch of salad with prawns from the shell, going to be fishy tails day, a banana and coffee, saving the brown bread for a sandwich at tea time. The promised rain for the first day of the great bus travel has not developed but there is a fierce wind. I watched the wind from inside, but confirmed the impression when I took in a parcel, and later handed it over when the recipient came to collect. Earlier, on the radio, I learnt that from today there are tighter rules about those who canvass for direct debits on behalf of charities. They are required to provide information on the hourly rate received and other financial information. This form of income raising was said to account for over 60% of the funds of one major charity, built up over time as people tend to keep up their direct debits once they have signed up. It reminds of all those insurance schemes which give you a free pen, clock, and such like, and where all the premiums over the first couple of years go on the cost of setting up the scheme, and where the return in the longer term is modest to weak so the only advantage to not saving the money yourself in a building society or national savings is if you die within five years of taking out the scheme.
16. 45 I have used the past two hours to completed project work for March and prepare for April. I was pleased to report to myself the achievement of the target 120 new sets of 24 hours cards for the month, duly numbered and recorded with their artman signature card, bringing the total completions to 7190, 172560 cards, but ten short of the hoped for 7200. If the weather is not suitable for being out a lot during the month, and I resist the urge to take to the buses, I will aim to reach 175000 but will settle for another 100-125 sets. I should go out for some salad and for more of the pockets but have come over tired and with the wind and cold have no inclination so will have that sandwich and see if I am up to writing more about Tolkien.
17.15 The first part of the biographical notes about Tolkien reveals aspects of his personal experience which he brought to his writing, but I believe that it is also necessary to understand not just the nature of the society he inhabited with his close friend C S Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, but also something of the academic world of the great colleges of Oxford and Cambridge from before and after the Two World Wars. It is beyond my skill to communicate that Oxford University which I came to know well for a few years is an organic fusion of special buildings, of a history, and of some of the best minds of every generation. True many of those who still become undergraduates via the private education system of Public Schools, do not qualify as the academically brilliant, and the image of wild parties and excess living has some foundation, but there is something special and unique which makes the institution without peer, a few others come close, I believe.
17.45 The seeds of this viewpoint were first sown at the John Fisher School, although I cannot remember if it was the Mathematics teacher or the Jesuit teacher of modern history who first suggested we should aim higher than to become a clerk in a bank, in local government, or some business office, and similarly we should want to go to Oxford or Cambridge in preference to other universities. My actual knowledge, as with much that has happened in my life, began with books, and in this instance the writings of C P Snow, a Cambridge man, together with those of Anthony Powell I devoured soon after I arrived in the city on 1961 and then throughout the rest of the 1960’s I cannot remember if I bought the Masters before or after there was some radio adaptation but I was immediately hooked. As with Tolkien and CS Lewis, Snow, Powell and also Evelyn Waugh whose work came to me later, all served their county during wartime although the experiences of the two world wars were very different in some but not all respects. Snow became a Fellow of a Cambridge College, with a scientific interest and he was recruited into the civil services for the second world war to help recruit other scientists for the war effort, and then afterwards to help develop the application of academic science for industry and which brought him a knighthood, so of the four he is now known to have experience active service. I mention Snow because he describes how in the day to day management of college and university life it is possible to become preoccupied with personal ambition and position, jealous of the success of others and hyper sensitive about personal criticism, yet hyper critical about the work of others. (The New Men, The Conscience of the Rich, The Affair, The Time of Hope, Homecomings, The Light and the Dark, the Search, and Corridors of Power. I have to this day. I know I also read Strangers and Brothers, but do not possess a copy and later in 1974 I acquired In Their Wisdom). What sparked these reminisces and temptation to stop writing and read the books once more, is the note in the Wikipedia article that until Tolkien prepared and delivered his 1936 lecture on "Beowulf, the Monster and the Critics" (Beowulf the Anglo Saxon heroic epic poem in which he has battles with monsters), academics had argued this was childish and therefore devalued what is now generally regarded as major literary work. Tolkien disclosed that the poem had a great influence on his imaginative writings as he commenced and then completed Lord of the Rings before, during an after the second world war, although as he stressed his experience and influence was that of the first just over a decade later.
18.15 It was during references to the relationship which developed between the younger C S Lewis and Tolkien that I discovered that they had both lived at Headington, where part of Ruskin College is located in the Old Headington village, and where I lived for my first year 1961-1962, and returned to live near Headington Park in 1966-1967. I always make a pilgrimage in what has become annual visits, taking refreshment in the gardens of the Pied Bull or is it the Grey Mare, or watching football in other place, The Black Boy always a town v gown hostelry. Lewis is known for his fantasy work The Chronicles of Narnia which have sold over 100 million copies world wide and more recently because of the brilliant play and film about his later life relationship and marriage with the American writer Joy Gresham who died of Cancer- Shadowlands. (Lewis, Lewis Elliot is the central character in the books of CP Snow, just as Lewis is he name given to the Detective assistant to Morse, and who not has a series in his name following the death of the brilliant actor John Thaw who played Morse and where both series are set in Oxford City and its surrounding countryside) C S Lewis became an undergraduate at Oxford, University College, in 1916, after Tolkien had graduated and gone to War, but Lewis then enlisted in 1917 and was an officer among the trenches of the Somme when he celebrated his 19th birthday, was wounded at the battle of Arras and became depressed, recovered and turned to Oxford to be awarded First class honours in Greek and Latin Literature 1920, in Philosophy and Ancient History 1922 and English 1923. While other have achieved double firsts, a treble is rare. As with Tolkien, Lewis also had a special friend who died in the war and consequently he undertook care and responsibility for the man’s mother referring to her later as his mother, as his own had died, when he was a child, similarly to Tolkien. Apart from his academic work on medieval History, Lewis wrote The Lost Road which attempts to connect Middle Earth mythology to the pre Christian and post Christian history so their connections were many and therefore their bonding was strong.
18.45 (The other writers of Oxford and of a culture which had ruled an Empire were Anthony Powell of Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, who served in Intelligence during World War II moving into journalism, script writing and Editing. He wrote Afternoon Men 1931, Agents and Patients 1936 A question of Upbringing, The Acceptance World 1955 and At Lady Molly’s 1957 were part of his series The Music of Time, subsequently made into a TV series which led me to also buy combined three book editions which contained The Valley of Bones, The Soldier’s Art and the Military Philosopher’s, and Books do furnish a Room, Temporary Kings and Hearing Secret Harmonies. I also had another of these combined volumes perhaps left at the Dog and Dick Inn!. Amusingly going through the books this afternoon I find a book mark comprising a hand written note from the Innkeeper saying, "Please can you fill in a breakfast list and hand into the bar," and that "Breakfast Time is between 8.30 and 9.30." But where and when was this? Oddly, given that is epitomises the undergraduate life of the middle and upper classes at Oxford University, I only came to read Brideshead Revisited after the TV series a decade after leaving the city, and only then came to appreciate the other writings of its author, Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, Love among the Ruins, The sword of Honour Trilogy, and A little Learning-Memoirs are those I have also read. Waugh was very much Brideshead admitting that his university life was memorable for drinking for his college and he was one of those rare undergraduates awarded a third class pass, and you have to be really poor and unconcerned about your studies to achieve that. One of his classic lines is where a student is sent down from the college because of indecency and the College Porter comments, I expect you you’ll be becoming a school master sir," adding that is what most gentlemen do in similar circumstances. It was also not until my first term that I went and found a copy of Margot Heinemann’s The Adventurers, a book by a former student about what happens to the working class idealists and activists who enter a Gentleman’s College, via Ruskin or one the other adult education colleges with a special relationship. That’s the secret you see in addition to producing some of the minds of any generation, the university produces Ladies and Gentlemen equipped to run an Empire as well as owning the British Countryside and the fashionable areas of the capital cities.
19.00. The Lord of the Rings is also a book about race, some good and some bad and this had led to some accusing Tolkien of racism, something which as a Catholic and a enlightened human being was abhorrent to him, speaking out against apartheid in its many forms. He was anti communist although was more to do with authoritarianism and dictatorship. His sympathy with Franco was said to be more about opposition to the Republicans who destroyed churches and killed nuns and priests in number, and if so it always has to be remembered that the far right has always also killed the nuns and priest who are Christian socialists. He was also unashamedly an early conservationist, hating what industrialisation has done and was doing to the countryside, disliked motor vehicles and preferred the bicycle. However as his writings and as the film highlights, particularly through the characters of Gollum and Frodo, human behaviour and motivation is complex, and it is unwise to attribute single causes and explanations, or make hard judgements about any individual being without being in possession of all the relevant information. Most significantly Tolkien appears to have written the work for himself as he wanted and would be amazed but delighted that it is now regarded as one of great works written in the English Language during the twentieth century. I also believe he would be blown away by the three films and tickled pink that Peter Jackson has followed his approach with the Pandora’s box of films about films, about the characters, the actors and film makers, and about himself.
22.30 I decided on a change of mood and watched the Pursuit of Happyness (the spelling is accurate), the Will Smith film based on the life story of Chris Gardner who became a millionaire owner of a stock broking firm. Will Smith always tends to be Will Smith and the portrait that is painted of Gardner throughout the film is not a flattering one. The impression is of a man with great drive and ambition, a classic good talker and full of ideas and scheme which not only come to nothing but destroyed his marriage, breaks up his family and eventually makes him homeless, queuing up for a place at a shelter while he trains as an unpaid intern to be a stockbroker and financial adviser, and tries to sell portable X ray machines to the medical profession. This scheme involves investing his saving in buying the machines at one price and selling them at another. During the film he does not pay his rent, leading to one eviction after another, He does not pay car parking fines or his taxes and in one instance he runs away from paying a taxi fare. He does not tell truth although he tries, confusing how he would like things to be from how they are and throughout this time he is responsible for not one, as in the film, but two children. My sympathies were with his ex wife, and his children, and had little time for Will Smith who appeared to me to be the sole cause of all the bad things happening to him and his family. In my view it is a terrible indictment of the values of USA society if the character is held up as a model of any kind for anyone. Just as well that according to the Wikipedia biography, the real Chris Gardener comes across as very different. I gained the impression that the film is intended to perpetuate the belief that in the USA that whatever you circumstances, colour, race, education and family circumstances, if you work hard, and accept the lifestyle of corporate America, you can quickly make for yourself a place at the table and stay there. The film also suggests that only a thin line divides those who inhabit the world of corporate finance from those who do not. Whereas the government raids his bank account to remove all the profits from his sales activities ( because he has not paid his taxes), he is trained to advise the tax avoidance aspects of the financial schemes available to the executive class as a matter of pride. In the early 1970’s the local authority where I worked was visited by a party of Public Social Service providers at Federal, State and County Level from the USA on a trip which I believe was arranged by or through the British Government, a reciprocal visit to one being arranged, or had been arranged to the USA, and in a social meeting afterwards I was stunned by the explanation of the visitors of how they avoided paying taxes by investing in social housing. It was evident to me then, and is still, that the only way the US system can work, with some individuals making lots and lots of money, is for there to be a substantial underclass without any kind of effective safety net. The system needs more to fail than those who succeed. All politicians of all political parties everywhere are being dishonest if they pretend otherwise, just as there is need for wars, and for exceptionally poor people and nations if the system is to work. The fact that to date no other system can be shown to have worked better, and several have proven to be significantly worse is important but it should not blind from the realities, just as it is that we all die, and the issue is only when and how, and that the good and the bad, the wealthy and the poverty remain in the world for eternity.
23.20 There was a period in my life when I would rarely miss the life of Albert Square Eastenders and which tried to present something of the reality of every day life for the majority of those who live in the communities around the pubs of the East End of London. It was also a programme which attempted to reflect the changing society, so people with African or Asian origin skins were introduced, wine bars and drinking and music clubs and organised crime together with domestic violence, violence against children, violent and irresponsible youths, wheeling and dealing businesses and the street market and the black market economy, misbegotten children and misbegotten relationships arriving unexpectedly and the like which includes murdering and killings. I wanted to watch episodes this week because of the return to the Square of a number of former characters for the funeral of a former major character in the series over more than a decade. Despite the dramatic and eventful lives which everyone appears to lead, marriages, births and death are always great events when everyone puts on a good show and spends money out of proportion to their lives and occupations. These have always struck me as periodic pandering to sentimental illusions about the never existent romantic and social nature of the East End past compared to anywhere else, and where the film the Gangs of New York is a more realistic portrayal of what being a new arrival in a new and developing city is actually like. It is a fairy tale like the American dream, Walton’s Mountain and the Brady What struck me this evening was where are the Poles, and the other mid Europeans who have colonised the great part of London or the Yuppies, the serious Muslims and the disaffected youth? East Enders, the Search for Happyness and the Lord of the Rings are just fantasy shows. Take a train or a bus to Stratford, stopping for a walk around at every station or bus stop along the way, and you will see what I mean.
12.15 Talking of weird, for more decades that I wish to remember, I have considered describing fish covered in batter before frying, (battered) cod) as quirky conjuring visions of someone such as John Clease chasing a fish with a hammer. This morning anyone glancing into the kitchen, if they had been able to do so, would have seen me reigning blows on four helpless bream with a hammer in what became a successful attempt to part them from each frozen other. I hope more will occur during the day so that my heading will not remain Battering Bream - The epic nature of my everyday
12.30 I also have a vivid recollection of my dream upon waking which involved getting on a bus which did not stop when the bell was rung, possibly because several companions also did likewise, and our pleas were ignored and the bus drove on and on leaving us in unrecognised country. The next instant we had reached our intended destination where the feeling was one of disappointment, before us a large hut like single storey building with the entrance at the side, but at the front there was a notice with our assignment. There are rarely people that I know in my dreams, so that I was part of a group is an interesting development There was so much more and I believe that I knew what was happening in this dream and therefore why, but I remember no longer. The more I dwell on this the more it reflects a core problem of think through why I did or did not things and then forgetting, remembering differently, or not at all. In one traumatic instance which changed my life I had forgotten a key document, although given the performance of my representative, I suspect it would not have been mentioned had I remembered.
12.45 Yesterday I was fascinated to learn that Tolkien had a recurring nightmarish dream in childhood in which he was enveloped by a hostile sea, with the suggestion that that this was part of the cause for the island home of people of Gondor sinking beneath the waves. My childhood dream was also about envelopment although the creature was more like the devilish being which enveloped Gandalf in the Mines of Moira. Freudian friends have argued that such dreams are usually experienced by those with sexual anxiety. Normal childhood includes dreams and experiences which fill us with terror and how such experiences affect us in later depends on our ability to communicate such experiences to others, and how these others respond. Loving, and understanding others will be able to help because they have had such experiences themselves and be able to reassure and comfort and there will be no need for analysis and applying adult knowledge and experience. The problem, which I briefly covered yesterday is what happens when the terror is not of dream but the reality of Man’s behaviour with children, either from direct personal violence or detached anonymous sending of lethal communications from out of the blue sky.
13.00 For the second morning in succession I fancied brown bread after my coffee and then glass of orange juice; for years I wondered why Australian "Neighbours," . drank something called OJ. Silly me Mini Me. My inkjet supplier is giving away not one but two radio controlled Ferrari cars, for orders over £500 as alternatives to the 2 for 1 offer.
13.15 I have really taken to the game of Hearts because its is colourful and therapeutic and I am unable to always win, or at worse pay insufficient attention and achieve a draw. I cannot lose. I mean I could lose but at the lower levels, I do not have to, and therefore the challenge is to achieve 101 wins, which is interesting enough, but at times boring. In Hearts the computer plays three hands against my one together with acting a dealer and so far only lets you win 10% to 17% percent of games on 50 games played
15.45. I had an enjoyable lunch of salad with prawns from the shell, going to be fishy tails day, a banana and coffee, saving the brown bread for a sandwich at tea time. The promised rain for the first day of the great bus travel has not developed but there is a fierce wind. I watched the wind from inside, but confirmed the impression when I took in a parcel, and later handed it over when the recipient came to collect. Earlier, on the radio, I learnt that from today there are tighter rules about those who canvass for direct debits on behalf of charities. They are required to provide information on the hourly rate received and other financial information. This form of income raising was said to account for over 60% of the funds of one major charity, built up over time as people tend to keep up their direct debits once they have signed up. It reminds of all those insurance schemes which give you a free pen, clock, and such like, and where all the premiums over the first couple of years go on the cost of setting up the scheme, and where the return in the longer term is modest to weak so the only advantage to not saving the money yourself in a building society or national savings is if you die within five years of taking out the scheme.
16. 45 I have used the past two hours to completed project work for March and prepare for April. I was pleased to report to myself the achievement of the target 120 new sets of 24 hours cards for the month, duly numbered and recorded with their artman signature card, bringing the total completions to 7190, 172560 cards, but ten short of the hoped for 7200. If the weather is not suitable for being out a lot during the month, and I resist the urge to take to the buses, I will aim to reach 175000 but will settle for another 100-125 sets. I should go out for some salad and for more of the pockets but have come over tired and with the wind and cold have no inclination so will have that sandwich and see if I am up to writing more about Tolkien.
17.15 The first part of the biographical notes about Tolkien reveals aspects of his personal experience which he brought to his writing, but I believe that it is also necessary to understand not just the nature of the society he inhabited with his close friend C S Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, but also something of the academic world of the great colleges of Oxford and Cambridge from before and after the Two World Wars. It is beyond my skill to communicate that Oxford University which I came to know well for a few years is an organic fusion of special buildings, of a history, and of some of the best minds of every generation. True many of those who still become undergraduates via the private education system of Public Schools, do not qualify as the academically brilliant, and the image of wild parties and excess living has some foundation, but there is something special and unique which makes the institution without peer, a few others come close, I believe.
17.45 The seeds of this viewpoint were first sown at the John Fisher School, although I cannot remember if it was the Mathematics teacher or the Jesuit teacher of modern history who first suggested we should aim higher than to become a clerk in a bank, in local government, or some business office, and similarly we should want to go to Oxford or Cambridge in preference to other universities. My actual knowledge, as with much that has happened in my life, began with books, and in this instance the writings of C P Snow, a Cambridge man, together with those of Anthony Powell I devoured soon after I arrived in the city on 1961 and then throughout the rest of the 1960’s I cannot remember if I bought the Masters before or after there was some radio adaptation but I was immediately hooked. As with Tolkien and CS Lewis, Snow, Powell and also Evelyn Waugh whose work came to me later, all served their county during wartime although the experiences of the two world wars were very different in some but not all respects. Snow became a Fellow of a Cambridge College, with a scientific interest and he was recruited into the civil services for the second world war to help recruit other scientists for the war effort, and then afterwards to help develop the application of academic science for industry and which brought him a knighthood, so of the four he is now known to have experience active service. I mention Snow because he describes how in the day to day management of college and university life it is possible to become preoccupied with personal ambition and position, jealous of the success of others and hyper sensitive about personal criticism, yet hyper critical about the work of others. (The New Men, The Conscience of the Rich, The Affair, The Time of Hope, Homecomings, The Light and the Dark, the Search, and Corridors of Power. I have to this day. I know I also read Strangers and Brothers, but do not possess a copy and later in 1974 I acquired In Their Wisdom). What sparked these reminisces and temptation to stop writing and read the books once more, is the note in the Wikipedia article that until Tolkien prepared and delivered his 1936 lecture on "Beowulf, the Monster and the Critics" (Beowulf the Anglo Saxon heroic epic poem in which he has battles with monsters), academics had argued this was childish and therefore devalued what is now generally regarded as major literary work. Tolkien disclosed that the poem had a great influence on his imaginative writings as he commenced and then completed Lord of the Rings before, during an after the second world war, although as he stressed his experience and influence was that of the first just over a decade later.
18.15 It was during references to the relationship which developed between the younger C S Lewis and Tolkien that I discovered that they had both lived at Headington, where part of Ruskin College is located in the Old Headington village, and where I lived for my first year 1961-1962, and returned to live near Headington Park in 1966-1967. I always make a pilgrimage in what has become annual visits, taking refreshment in the gardens of the Pied Bull or is it the Grey Mare, or watching football in other place, The Black Boy always a town v gown hostelry. Lewis is known for his fantasy work The Chronicles of Narnia which have sold over 100 million copies world wide and more recently because of the brilliant play and film about his later life relationship and marriage with the American writer Joy Gresham who died of Cancer- Shadowlands. (Lewis, Lewis Elliot is the central character in the books of CP Snow, just as Lewis is he name given to the Detective assistant to Morse, and who not has a series in his name following the death of the brilliant actor John Thaw who played Morse and where both series are set in Oxford City and its surrounding countryside) C S Lewis became an undergraduate at Oxford, University College, in 1916, after Tolkien had graduated and gone to War, but Lewis then enlisted in 1917 and was an officer among the trenches of the Somme when he celebrated his 19th birthday, was wounded at the battle of Arras and became depressed, recovered and turned to Oxford to be awarded First class honours in Greek and Latin Literature 1920, in Philosophy and Ancient History 1922 and English 1923. While other have achieved double firsts, a treble is rare. As with Tolkien, Lewis also had a special friend who died in the war and consequently he undertook care and responsibility for the man’s mother referring to her later as his mother, as his own had died, when he was a child, similarly to Tolkien. Apart from his academic work on medieval History, Lewis wrote The Lost Road which attempts to connect Middle Earth mythology to the pre Christian and post Christian history so their connections were many and therefore their bonding was strong.
18.45 (The other writers of Oxford and of a culture which had ruled an Empire were Anthony Powell of Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, who served in Intelligence during World War II moving into journalism, script writing and Editing. He wrote Afternoon Men 1931, Agents and Patients 1936 A question of Upbringing, The Acceptance World 1955 and At Lady Molly’s 1957 were part of his series The Music of Time, subsequently made into a TV series which led me to also buy combined three book editions which contained The Valley of Bones, The Soldier’s Art and the Military Philosopher’s, and Books do furnish a Room, Temporary Kings and Hearing Secret Harmonies. I also had another of these combined volumes perhaps left at the Dog and Dick Inn!. Amusingly going through the books this afternoon I find a book mark comprising a hand written note from the Innkeeper saying, "Please can you fill in a breakfast list and hand into the bar," and that "Breakfast Time is between 8.30 and 9.30." But where and when was this? Oddly, given that is epitomises the undergraduate life of the middle and upper classes at Oxford University, I only came to read Brideshead Revisited after the TV series a decade after leaving the city, and only then came to appreciate the other writings of its author, Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, Love among the Ruins, The sword of Honour Trilogy, and A little Learning-Memoirs are those I have also read. Waugh was very much Brideshead admitting that his university life was memorable for drinking for his college and he was one of those rare undergraduates awarded a third class pass, and you have to be really poor and unconcerned about your studies to achieve that. One of his classic lines is where a student is sent down from the college because of indecency and the College Porter comments, I expect you you’ll be becoming a school master sir," adding that is what most gentlemen do in similar circumstances. It was also not until my first term that I went and found a copy of Margot Heinemann’s The Adventurers, a book by a former student about what happens to the working class idealists and activists who enter a Gentleman’s College, via Ruskin or one the other adult education colleges with a special relationship. That’s the secret you see in addition to producing some of the minds of any generation, the university produces Ladies and Gentlemen equipped to run an Empire as well as owning the British Countryside and the fashionable areas of the capital cities.
19.00. The Lord of the Rings is also a book about race, some good and some bad and this had led to some accusing Tolkien of racism, something which as a Catholic and a enlightened human being was abhorrent to him, speaking out against apartheid in its many forms. He was anti communist although was more to do with authoritarianism and dictatorship. His sympathy with Franco was said to be more about opposition to the Republicans who destroyed churches and killed nuns and priests in number, and if so it always has to be remembered that the far right has always also killed the nuns and priest who are Christian socialists. He was also unashamedly an early conservationist, hating what industrialisation has done and was doing to the countryside, disliked motor vehicles and preferred the bicycle. However as his writings and as the film highlights, particularly through the characters of Gollum and Frodo, human behaviour and motivation is complex, and it is unwise to attribute single causes and explanations, or make hard judgements about any individual being without being in possession of all the relevant information. Most significantly Tolkien appears to have written the work for himself as he wanted and would be amazed but delighted that it is now regarded as one of great works written in the English Language during the twentieth century. I also believe he would be blown away by the three films and tickled pink that Peter Jackson has followed his approach with the Pandora’s box of films about films, about the characters, the actors and film makers, and about himself.
22.30 I decided on a change of mood and watched the Pursuit of Happyness (the spelling is accurate), the Will Smith film based on the life story of Chris Gardner who became a millionaire owner of a stock broking firm. Will Smith always tends to be Will Smith and the portrait that is painted of Gardner throughout the film is not a flattering one. The impression is of a man with great drive and ambition, a classic good talker and full of ideas and scheme which not only come to nothing but destroyed his marriage, breaks up his family and eventually makes him homeless, queuing up for a place at a shelter while he trains as an unpaid intern to be a stockbroker and financial adviser, and tries to sell portable X ray machines to the medical profession. This scheme involves investing his saving in buying the machines at one price and selling them at another. During the film he does not pay his rent, leading to one eviction after another, He does not pay car parking fines or his taxes and in one instance he runs away from paying a taxi fare. He does not tell truth although he tries, confusing how he would like things to be from how they are and throughout this time he is responsible for not one, as in the film, but two children. My sympathies were with his ex wife, and his children, and had little time for Will Smith who appeared to me to be the sole cause of all the bad things happening to him and his family. In my view it is a terrible indictment of the values of USA society if the character is held up as a model of any kind for anyone. Just as well that according to the Wikipedia biography, the real Chris Gardener comes across as very different. I gained the impression that the film is intended to perpetuate the belief that in the USA that whatever you circumstances, colour, race, education and family circumstances, if you work hard, and accept the lifestyle of corporate America, you can quickly make for yourself a place at the table and stay there. The film also suggests that only a thin line divides those who inhabit the world of corporate finance from those who do not. Whereas the government raids his bank account to remove all the profits from his sales activities ( because he has not paid his taxes), he is trained to advise the tax avoidance aspects of the financial schemes available to the executive class as a matter of pride. In the early 1970’s the local authority where I worked was visited by a party of Public Social Service providers at Federal, State and County Level from the USA on a trip which I believe was arranged by or through the British Government, a reciprocal visit to one being arranged, or had been arranged to the USA, and in a social meeting afterwards I was stunned by the explanation of the visitors of how they avoided paying taxes by investing in social housing. It was evident to me then, and is still, that the only way the US system can work, with some individuals making lots and lots of money, is for there to be a substantial underclass without any kind of effective safety net. The system needs more to fail than those who succeed. All politicians of all political parties everywhere are being dishonest if they pretend otherwise, just as there is need for wars, and for exceptionally poor people and nations if the system is to work. The fact that to date no other system can be shown to have worked better, and several have proven to be significantly worse is important but it should not blind from the realities, just as it is that we all die, and the issue is only when and how, and that the good and the bad, the wealthy and the poverty remain in the world for eternity.
23.20 There was a period in my life when I would rarely miss the life of Albert Square Eastenders and which tried to present something of the reality of every day life for the majority of those who live in the communities around the pubs of the East End of London. It was also a programme which attempted to reflect the changing society, so people with African or Asian origin skins were introduced, wine bars and drinking and music clubs and organised crime together with domestic violence, violence against children, violent and irresponsible youths, wheeling and dealing businesses and the street market and the black market economy, misbegotten children and misbegotten relationships arriving unexpectedly and the like which includes murdering and killings. I wanted to watch episodes this week because of the return to the Square of a number of former characters for the funeral of a former major character in the series over more than a decade. Despite the dramatic and eventful lives which everyone appears to lead, marriages, births and death are always great events when everyone puts on a good show and spends money out of proportion to their lives and occupations. These have always struck me as periodic pandering to sentimental illusions about the never existent romantic and social nature of the East End past compared to anywhere else, and where the film the Gangs of New York is a more realistic portrayal of what being a new arrival in a new and developing city is actually like. It is a fairy tale like the American dream, Walton’s Mountain and the Brady What struck me this evening was where are the Poles, and the other mid Europeans who have colonised the great part of London or the Yuppies, the serious Muslims and the disaffected youth? East Enders, the Search for Happyness and the Lord of the Rings are just fantasy shows. Take a train or a bus to Stratford, stopping for a walk around at every station or bus stop along the way, and you will see what I mean.
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