2016 — 25 June: Saturday
The nearest I ever got to student activism was to help swamp an attempt on the part of the sociology chaps to make some form of mis-guided political protest. They clearly had too much spare time on their hands after writing the one or two essays per term wittering on about the latest trends in Jean Baudrillard's postmodern thinking, or whatever it was that Jacques Lacan thought, or the semiotic deconstructions espoused by Jacques Derrida. Of course, one set of French intellectuals was quietly beavering away on the long-term plans for a United Europe. I should (perhaps) have paid more attention to that than I did to shear flows, breaking strains, Reynolds number, what have you.
I cannot pretend to be pleased by yesterday's "decision" to exit the EU. But had that decision gone the "other" way, by the same unsatisfactory margin, I suspect it could well have been even worse. But what do I know?
After leaving school...
... in 1969, I stoically (and, after I reached the age of 18, occasionally drunkenly) spent the next four and a half years of my life 'working' for Hawker Siddeley (Aviation) Ltd. They kindly sponsored me as an aeronautical engineering apprentice in Hatfield. I enjoyed my "student" life in the local Polytechnic — after all, the course work was generally pretty interesting, and whenever it wasn't, I found much to read in the library, or do on the time-sharing computer system. So I continued my policy of educating myself while vaguely wondering what on earth it was I wanted to "do" as an "adult" for a "job".
I found myself dreading each block of Polytechnic holidays. During them, I had to don my overalls and metamorphose into my full-time "apprentice" guise. This meant enduring a variety of factory jobs1. I very soon worked out that whatever I did, it would have to be something in the greater non-engineering world.
Along came, in very short order early in 1974, a new (and continually interesting) job with ICL (initially as a trainee instructional writer), and an amazing (and continually interesting) West German lady called Christa. All was finally right with my world. Obviously I voted to "stay in" the EU in 1975. Less obviously, I did so again (but with a great deal less certainty that it was still a Good Thing) on Thursday. At this end of my life, I can but wonder what happens next...
Now that...
... all three seasons of "The Americans" are here, perhaps I can finally settle in for some serious couch-potato time, wallowing...
... in fictionalised nostalgia for the Cold War-era — in the naïve hope that it will be a mite less depressing than the current concerns of the "real" world. I couldn't take more than a few minutes of the frenzied accusations and counter-accusations being flung hither and yon on Britain's once proud "Home Service" national speech radio. This ill-advised2 referendum has shone a bright light into some very dark corners of the UK psyche. Divided, it seems, we just stand and yell at each other.
"Blessed are the cheese-makers!" (And the nonchalant, of course.)
The first shower...
... came and went, but it's been getting steadily darker, and I've just heard a rumble of thunder not too far away. [Pause] I've been crawling and clambering carefully around up in the loft, working up an appetite for a very late lunch — it's already past 15:00 — while making absolutely sure no further rain has been finding its extremely unwelcome way in.
My drip-catching apparatus (if that's not too grand a name for a couple of strategically-positioned plastic bowls) has a nicely-dusty look to it. I shall let the inch or so of accumulated water in one of them continue to evaporate on the assumption that we may yet see a return to warmer, drier conditions at some point before it's time for the snows of winter.
Today's other delivery...
... has been long-awaited, though reports suggest it may not be that compelling. I certainly enjoyed the claustrophobic TV version shown quarter of a century ago — some years after I'd bought the (superb) book in July 1982.
For reasons probably better left unexplored, the post-nuclear war "action" has been switched from a remote Welsh valley to a remote North American valley. [Pause] I stand corrected. It was the TV version that was set in Wales; it clearly made a deeper impression on me.
They lied? Really?!
... not since Suez has the nation's fate been decided by politicians who knowingly made a straight, shameless, incontrovertible lie the first plank of their campaign...
Now they have won and what Kipling said of the demagogues of his age applies to Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
Golly!
The rich are...
... undeniably different from the rest of us:
Every morning, she ran his bath for him and carried a breakfast tray into his room. He had been sent away to a Jesuit boarding school in the north of France and eventually to Magdalen College, Oxford, remaining uncertain which of these establishments was the most (sic)
unsatisfactory. He must have been the only undergraduate at Oxford accompanied by his nanny...
His game book records a red-letter day [at Kapuvár] in August 1935 when he and his guests, the Duc d'Ayen, Comte de Beaumont, Comte de Maillé, Comte de Montsaulnier, Prince Achille Murat, and Jean de Vaugelas, shot an astonishing 6,009 partridges.
Do the maths!