Across the pond

Barack Obama is the darling of the college kids, and increasingly he is making the still handsome Hillary Clinton look like an over-worked school teacher, who is desparately trying to get the children to listen to what she says. As he sweeps from victory to victory, he is demonstrating that a man in his forties can as well get votes from people old enough to be his father, but America’s oldies are fighting back.

Ralph Nader, aged 73 has just announced that he is entering the fray for the third time. He does not have enough money to pay for the advertising and press coverage necessary to give him a chance of winning. And, regrettedly, it is highly likely that most of America’s youf do not even know who he is. But many academics, as well as some journalists, have argued that his canditure in 2000, was a critical factor in getting George W. Bush elected. Nader’s reputation rests on his life-long campaign to make big business accountable to the electorae. Amongst his many other achievments as the champion of the consumer he pushed Detroit into making safety a selling point for cars, along with the more seductive features of speed and appearance. It was a platform bound to frighten away all decent Republicans. But it warmed the hearts of many Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrats, apart from the trade unionists, who thought that Nader in power might well mean that many of their member would lose their jobs.

This time he is making it even more explicit He is the candidate of the people, not the party machines, not the other candidates who are being in his view, much too lovey dovey with big business. This time around he will not be an effective spoiler, either for Obama or Clinton, if she emerges as the Democratic champion.

Why? For a short answer, the best quotes are those everyone knows, which happen to come from a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. You can’t fool all the people all the time. Powerful though his office is, the American President in 2009, cannot tell big business what to do. What I call, in shorthand, American consumer capitalism, is currently embraced by the Chinese, the Indians, and many of the Europeans. The giant international companies have many paymasters they have to satisfy. And they have become pretty expert in persuading their customers that their products and their world view is right.

Readers, you will all have read in the mainstream media, that Nader is running. But the point of this story is not, in accordance with the journalist training that those working in the mainstream media get, in the first paragraph.

It is the last paragpaph. Which will have to be a long one. And, as we all know, the mass readership only reads the first paragraph and the working classes don’t understand long words.

In the trawl for comments on Nader’s presidential bid, a CBS reporter asked Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor of New York, what he thought about it, at a routine press conference Bloomberg was giving about his business affairs. Bloomberg declared that every American had the right to stand for President. The message was go for it, Ralph. Additionally, as the CBS reporter dutifully reported, Bloomberg again denied that he was thinking of running himself for President. The CBS reporter worked hard and checked with the Bloomber supporters’ campaign. What they said is that Bloomberg will make his decision about whether he will run next week, after the results of the Texas and Ohio primaries.

Since I have written under the British libel laws, I would be the last person to accuse Bloomberg of lying. But I will say that his supporters know his mind better than he does! And I do think that Bloomberg could be a very serious contender. Not because I have not read my American history, and do not know of the long list of failed independent candidates. But because I believe that history never repeats itself.

But that is not a reason for not studying history.

Which reminds me, that the thing I am most proud in terms of my own personal biography is one of the things I did after I passed the British retirement age of 65, which was to start a new undergraduate degree is Journalism and Contemporary History at City University. All credit to City University for allowing, even encouraging me to start this degree. But my feelings about City University, like my feelings about most of the organisations I write about, are ambivalent.

Because a few years later City University fired me. (Message to the libel lawyers. This is journalistic licence. They did not actually fire me, they refused to renew my post-retirement contract, on the grounds, that, let’s face it, Bob, you are over seventy!)

But that’s just my own personal biog. So let’s return to the election for the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. The likely Democratic candidate is Obama, whom many still liken to JFK, for his appeal to youthful idealism. But they forget that the equally youthful George W. Bush, had made a pig’s ear of the job, so much so that anyone who stands for the Republicans is hobbled before he (or she, but so far there are not any she’s) has finished the first leg.

At the time I write, Obama is the clear front runner for the Democrats. On the Republican side there is no sign of a candidate who has any hope of stopping the bandwagon for McCain. His wife smiled at the press conference at which he was confronted with the New York Times suggestion that he had been fucking around with a blonde lobbyist. Quite different from Hillary Clinton, who looked distinctly uncomfortable when Bill was first being asked about Monica.

From my own viewing point, the sexual behaviour of the boss, is not the most important determinant. And, neither is it for the American electorate. Judged by the way people are voting, much of the American electorate does not vote according to prejudices about sexual preference, gender and race. This campaign has demonstrated that huge number of them are quite prepared for a woman or a black. (Whether they are ready for an openly gay President is still not indicated!)

And I don’t think they will blackball McCain because of the allegations that he has been an adulterer. Way back in the olden days, Palmeston acually won a British election when his opponents revealed his extra-marital affairs. Times change. But not too much. The journalists who followed Kennedy, knew all about his rather spectacular daily adulteries. They also knew that they doing in their own lives. Although they did not write about it.

But McCain has another problem, which has not been properly addressed by the mainstream media. He is 71.  And will still be ruling America at 75 if he wins. He is older even than Reagan, 69 when elected, and Eisenhower, 61. Eisenhower was still only 68 when I arrived to live in America in 1959, but he seemed much older. As does McCain.

Bloomberg in only five years younger, but he is more in tune with younger people. If he runs agaist Obama he might have a chance. McCain would lose a fight with Obama, but he would save the face of the Republican Party, because history would judge they had chosen a decent and honourable man (even if it is later proved that he cheated on his wife, because let’s face it, he is not alone on that score.)

In the years I have taught joirnalism students I have been concerned to teach them te be good journalists, And not to fall into the media studies trap af spending their lives complaining that the media is dominanated by the powerful .

Of course it is.

And they have a right to their say.

But the rest of us need to speak out as well.

When I met Murdoch, way back in 1968, I found him quite different to the stereotyped hate figure he already was amongst the Australian media, where I had many friends. He has succeeded partly because he has listened to the journalists he employs.  And he has been wise enough to avoid making the mistakes of so many newspaper propietors who have tried to tell their journalists waht to write.

 He appoints editors he can trust to follow his line. And he only phones them when he thinks theyui are not in tune witth his latest thinking.

 Like most of the world’s media, I have beenn wondering why it took the NYT so long to run their revelations on McKane. Because the NYT has had to endure its own agonies. It is now owned by Murdoch, who has aqquired his power by making millions from the Sun and the News of the World, who think that the British worknig classes only think about sex and slease.

Murdoch, has spent millions on losses at the London Times, because he knows that Britain’s opinon makers are influenced by The Times, rather than The Sun. And in America by the New York Times, rather than the New York Post or Fox Television, which Murdoch also owns.

 Six months ago, -Obama to Murdoch seemed an attractive option. Better than the clearly left wing Clinton and the undistingished people the Republicans were putting forward.

Now, Murdoch has realised that Obama may be as ‘left wing’  as Hillary Clinton, to whom he does not warm. So he is having second thoughts which are being communicated down his chain of command.

Let me end with a q;uote from the latest post of a humble Times reporter, reporting on Obama’s latest moves. .

Critics say his rallies are more like religious revivals, that voters are being deluded into following this freshman senator with dazzling oratorical gifts and the power to sell hope without asking if he is remotely ready to be president. It is the beginning of a backlash actively encouraged by the former First Lady’s aides, dismayed by a phenomenon threatening to destroy what only four months ago looked like an inevitable Clinton restoration.

 Murdoch is beginning to realise that if Obama gets in he and his ilk may not have the kind of read access to the White House and to Downing Street, that they ha’ve been used to.

Thinking about the sudden attack in the London Times, charaterising Obama implicitly as too left wing to get elected, I was reminded of the several times I have seen Obama on television, writing rather awkwardly with his left hand. But in the thousands of words that I have read about Obama in the mainstream media, I cannot remember reading anything there about Obama’s left handedness. So I decided to Google on Obama and left-handed. It produced a huge number of references. The majority were from blogs. And at least two of them very interesting.

The highest reference from the mainstream was an article from the New York Times from as far back as last June. When I checked the article I found that it was not really about left-handedness, it was about Obama’s willingness to play basketball, which many American men (this addressed to my Brit readers) follow with the kind of enthusiasm that most Brit males reserve for soccer, rugby or cricket.

The article, ’Where Obama  goes elbow to elbow’, looked at the meaning of the sports which American Presidents have favoured, comparing it to JFK’s sailing, Clinton’s golf and Kerry’s windsurfing. Had I written on this subject I would also have mentioned the hours Eisenhower spent on the golf course with his businessmen cronies. And I would have noted the progression in British politics of the left. The shift from Harold Wilson, who was content to sit in the stand at Huddesfield to Tony Blair, who took off his jacket and kicked a ball about to show that he was a man of the people.

The left-handed references in the NYT article were in passing. And it took me a while to find them, because the NYT does not do short articles, even about basketball. Obama throws with his left as well as writes with his left. And he is quite good at it. Even more interesting, given the current debate about whether Obama will be able to stand the flak when the battle for Presidency gets really nasty, is what the NYT had to say about his basketball. As the headline implies he has learnt to use his elbows, unsurprisingly since he had to compete with giants. (Most successful basketball players look at least seven feet tall to me.)

The two blogs I looked at  -

http://www.helium.com/tm/763455/noticed-opponent-barack-obama

and

2008/02/01/barack-obama-is-left-handed/

did have something interesting to say about left-handedness. Let me give you a quote from one of them, who responded to a query about whether America had ever had a left handed President.

The most interesting takeaway: Obama is left-handed. Four of our last six presidents have been southpaws: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. (The country has turned increasingly left-handed. Before Ford, only James Garfield and Harry Truman were lefties, though Truman could throw a baseball with either arm.) This would seem to bode well for Obama.

Most journalists are only too happy to write about candidate’s sporting preferences, but the way they are trained in Britain and America, encourages them to steer away from drawing any conclusions about traits such as left-handedness. That sounds too much like psychologising. And in a proper journalist wants to venture into those areas, he should be quoting a proper psychologist, not relying on his own judgment.

I have got over such inhibitions. So here are my views on left-handedness, gleaned from reading several good psychologists with as much zeal as I employ, reading the reports of the journalists on the spot in this American presidential campaign.

Internationally the average percentage of left-handedness in the population is about 15 per cent. In China that is the actual percentage of the population, or was when the studies which I read were made. But in Britain and America, only 11 per cent of the population write with their left hand. The psychologists think that this is because most left-handers were encouraged to switch to writing with their right hand. Because our society is geared to the right-handed majority, including many of the things we have to handle every day. And it is much more difficult to write fluently with the left hand. Because our writing is geared to the flow from left to right.

Obama, unlike the four per cent of left handers who decided to learn the majority way, stuck to his own perceptions. He remained his own man, even though he differed from the majority.

And I can see as I write now, that this fits in with what I have grown to like about Obama as I have followed this campaign. He makes up his own mind. He is not the prisoner of his upbringing or his racial origins. He was born a mixture of black and white, a coloured, which do not even have a constituency in the US. After all, many of the US coloured population came about because the slave owners, and later generations of posh east coast types, took their pleasure with their child minders.

This line of thinking leads me to reflect on Bill Clinton, who is above all an extravert who is blissfully happy doing the glad handed campaigning bit. (This is not a disguised criticism. He likes being liked. But that does not mean that his judgments are not mostly made from his above average intelligince and his acquired understanding of the way the world works.

Bill Clinton, like Lyndon B Johnson before him, was brougth up amongst the prejudices of the American south, where he was one of the white rulers. But as President he listened to what they said, and what all those coloured people from the world outside had to say about American policies.

I do not have any knowledge at all about what is happening in the Clinton household. But my guess is that they are not arguing about the latest undergraduate who Bill has chatted up at parities. They might well beconsidering whether it is not about time for Hillary to start thinking about whether she can can make her peace with Obama and take an important role in his administration.

Because on the lines of this analysis (so-called) Hillary knows about left handers.

They have a more difficult time than the majority in establishing their identities. >Perhaps that is why she was able to forgive Bill for his philandering.  Perhaps that would enable her to forgive Obama for beating her.

A big if.

But it is worth thinking about.

To the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis where the pantomime season had been extended into late February for all the vistors in half-term week who had not had enough of it at Christmas. It was Hickory Dickory Dock which I remember as a nursery rhyme rather than a panto. I was tempted to go further afield to Beer to see Snow White and Seven Dwarfs. But the local resident I consulted when I was there on Thursday advised against. She said there’s was a rather amateur company and they did things much more professionally in Lyme.

In fact the Lyme production was determinedly amateur. It was put on by the Lyme Regis Pantomime society, which for twenty-three years has been keeping the spirit of the traditional panto alive. The Society has three Honary Vice Presidents and 34 Vice Presidents and, judging by their surnames, several of the cast came from their families. Most of the adult members of the cast seemed to belong to my generation, contrasting with the high spirited fast moving young girls, who doubled as villagers, toy soldiers, servants, mice, fairies, pixies and water spirits.

We went to the matinee, which is perhaps why one of the local jokes fell flat. The Wizard of Bong said ‘Hugh Fearnly Witthenstall’ and waited for the laughs, which doubtless he had been getting at evenings throughout the week. There was not even a titter. The kids had probably never heard of the most famous cook in these parts. Or perhaps they had heard of him and disapproved of his campaign against the nearest Tesco, which kids love to roam around,, pulling all manner of things from the shelves. Whereas they have to be dragged into the River Shop in Axminster by their parents, who realise that the Whittenstall yoguart is far superior to the standard supermarket offerings.

The lang first half dragged somewhat, revealing the efforts of the script writer to make this rather thin story fill the alloted time. The shorter second half was done with greater gusto. The star was the diminutive lead Pixie, probably about twelve, who oozed charisma, danced expertly and made you think for a moment that you were watching Oklahoma. If she is so inclined she has the talent to hit Broadway in her adult life.

The encore was ‘Young at heart’ was sung with great energy by all the cast. For the first time, the Principal Boy and the Principal Girl stopped trying to act and behaved spontaneously. They actually smiled.

When the performance ended the cast rushed around to the entrance to hand out sweeties to the children. As I went out I passed the Wizard of Bong, who will not see fifty again. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘You look too old for a sweetie. Ha. Ha. Ha.’ Yes, I replied, ‘but I’m Young at Heart.’ He laughed but he still did not offer me a sweetie.

No problem. Little Dulcie gave me one of hers when we got outside.

I am still not at all sure how serious is the threat of global warming but it sure feels like Spring in Dorset The rains and 90 mph gales of a week or two ago have abated. And for the last two or three days the sun has been heating the house without any assistance from the central heating boiler during daylight hours.

I have lost my London pallour. And yesterday was in grave danger of getting sunburnt when I had lunch with my sister on the balcony of a pub overlooking the Exe River in Exford. What’s more the food was brilliant. I had haddock, done on a bed of spinach, along with new potatoes and topped with just the right amount of parsley sauce. Obviously the chef is taking his job seriously. Maybe he is hoping to get into the big money on television, where Jamie Oliver has been running into some flak because he has been pushing his own products down the noses of viewers.

(This is an extract from the first chapter of a novel.)

Bonzo woke up on that Monday morning in February feeling shabby and ashamed. On Sunday morning he had jumped out of bed full of zest and jumped on to his laptop before breakfast, writing a half humourous blog entitled, ‘Flog the Archbishop’. He ignored his own misgivings while he wrote it. He knew even as the words fled off the keys that he was doing what he didn’t ought to do. He was using over the top humour to make a serious point, and in doing so making fun of no less an authority figure, than that deeply serious man, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the United Kingdom that Sunday morning less than a million people would have been getting up to go to pray in one of the thousands of Church of England churches that still dominated the landscape in so many towns and villages in 2008. But the British constitution still rules that the CoE is the established church. So the job of whoever is the Archbishop is to be the spiritual head of all the British people. And that includes all the thousands of Poles and Russians who were flooding the country in the naughties to do the nation’s plumbing and take over part of the prostitution trade. And all the Hindus and Muslims who rushed here for refuge from dictators in some of the dicatorships in countries of the newly independent parts of the old British Empire in the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century. And also all those West Indian blacks who came in their thousands from the 1950s, to escape poverty in their own lands and to drive the nation’s buses.

His job is an impossible job. And he deserves some sympathy for trying to do it well. But it is also no different in kind to the job thousands of teachers in the British primary schools are doing every day. They are struggling to control the class and get them to behave properly. They are also struggling to understand the diverse backgrounds of their pupils and give them the confidence to be who they are AND to fit in with the laws and mores of

So the Archbishop’s speech and long interview with the BBC last week was designed to promote harmony in all the land, and specifically to get people to understand the good things that underly sharia law in the Muslim culture. Given the fact that some muslim countries are using sharia law were using sharia law in 2008 to justify the stoning and even execution of young women caught out in adultery that is not an easy task. Particularly when the national and international launchpad is not a pulpit, but the television screens and the tabloid newspapers, whose journalists translate the Archbishop’s message into a form deemed suitable for the mass media.

So it is not at all surprising that the archbishop’s attempts to pour oil on troubled waters resulted in what happens when you sprinkle petrol on the embers of a fire. The resulting fire was still raging on Sunday.

Bonzo no longer goes to Church. And on this Sunday his good mood continued as he drove out of London down to his bungalow on the

It was a peaceful end to a lovely day. Until he and Maria began to discuss which room to start decorating when the redecoration of the main living room is complete, hopefully in two weeks time. As they pressed their different preferences his wife’s voice escalated in volume to the level it reached when she was teaching secondary in the

If he went on he would explode. So he stopped trying to win the argument and fled to the computer, where he occupied his mind and his emotions by playing the card game Hearts, who has been available as a free extra, courtesy of Bill Gates, ever since Windows was introduced to Microsoft Computers. In the latest version, which comes with

He lost the first game, making a stupid mistake due to his seething emotions. He recovered to win the second but then lost two or three in a row. His score was now 47 per cent. He took a grip on himself, played carefully and got the score back up to 48 per cent. And then he stopped because however carefully he plays he has not managed to do 50 per cent or better since the first few days of this game.

Which does not matter of course. Because it is only a game. But now he realised that the rage had vanished. So he went into the next room, where Maria was just about to watch the 10 o-clock news. One of the first images he saw was of Rowan Williams being jostled by a media crowd. He was tight-lipped and sad eyed. One mighty unhappy Archbishop. And the voiceover told Bonzo that he was still sticking to his guns and determined to resist calls for his resignation, when he addressed the Synod, the church’s parliament of bishops, vicars and lay people, the following day.

Bonzo went to bed and was blessed with a good night’s sleep. But when he woke the following morning he was troubled by his own ‘conscience’. Now his yesterday blog did not seem like a bold stab at an authority figure. It seemed an ignoble act, not at all gentlemanly. It is called hitting a man when he is down. But as his mind went through all the arguments again he came to the same conclusion as when he wrote his blog. The Archbishop should resign and let someone else have a go at fulfilling this impossible role.

Bonzo then went on to cogitate about the explosion of anger between his wife and himself. The nuclear family is well named.  Which is why most of the murders, rapes etc take place within it. We are all at more risk from those we know very well and see often, than from the hardened criminals and psychopaths, who occasionally cross our paths. It made me realise that we are  both control freaks, though we conceal it from ourselves and others by spending a lot of time persuading them to do what we want, and even  giving up some of our own objectives in order to achieve the most important one.

Control freakerry is mostly talked about in terms the attempts of the control freak to order the chaos he finds in the world and to protect himself from the storms and tornados and the destructive behaviour of other human beings. But deep down in all control freaks the rage is still the rage of the infant, whose own needs were frustrated long before he could articulate them. And however loving the parent not a day passes without that parent frustrating what the infant wants to do, or does not want to do.

Adults can only speculate on the source of the rage of infants, be they individuals trying to recover how it was for them in those years or psychologists developing theories from observing infants, trying to understand they are behaving in the ways they do, and developing theories to explain it.

Following this line of thought Bonzo remembered the last time he had lastexperienced rage about a serious matter which was when he was locked up in a mental health ward because he was deemed a manic depressive who was a ‘danger’ to himself and other human beings. Bonzo did not quarrel with the diagnosis (which actually labelled him bi-polar but he preferred the older label) because the doctors had failed to realise that he had learnt to control the extremes of his manic depressive moods to minimise the danger to himself and others.

At the time he was locked up he was in a long manic phase, where he was using the incredible energy such moods bring to influence the course of events in his work place. And thus bringing himself into conflict with those who wanted to do things in different ways. But that did not get him locked up. He was locked up when the long Christmas vacation had already started and he had diverted his energy, by allowing full rein for his manic sense of humour.

That sense of humour can bring lots of laughs, but it always leaves some people upset. Not surprising when you think that sense of humour can suggest the Archbish should be flogged!

Now Bonzo would be the last to deny that manic depressives can be a terrible nuisance to those around them, but on blissfully sunny February Monday morning he suddenly  realised that the control freak within is potentially a far greater danger to others.

And of course the control freak in other human beings.

The Archbish has caused a huge rumpus by his speech. But he has not sparked off a wave of human beings killing each other. His speech was in part his own effort to get

Contrast the control freak within George W. Bush, who has unleashed the full power of American high technology to rid

And even more important, there is the tension between all three religious and racial groups, and the heavy dose of American consumer capitalism, which has been administered in large doses to

If

So Bonzo,  before he walked down to the ocean, prayed in his secular way. He prayed that American electors when they went to the polls in November would not

elect another control freak like George W. who wanted to make the world safe by bombing it.

…..only joking.

But I am getting seriously fed up with the acres of print broadcast and web coverage of the statements of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Ever since he got the job I have been reading stories by sympathetic journalists telling he what a fine intellectual mind he has, what a nice man he is, though a bit unworldly. Last week, in a long and very sympathetic interview he told us that it was inevitable that our multi-cultural society would lead to sharia law as an alternative to British law. And that this was a good thing.

There is a need for more understanding that sharia law has roots that are similiar to rituals in Christianty and Judaism and no more evil. But it is a plain fact that there are several Muslim states where, under the name of sharia law, women are stoned even killed for adultery. And there is a serious problem in this country where young Muslim women who want to depart from traditional Islamic practices, are being pressured by their families and some Muslim leaders to abandon their boy-friends and marry the person of the family’s choice.

The archbishop’s comments were a clear message to tip the scales still further against these young women. And they flew in the face of the long and patient efforts to rid us of the remaining powers of eclesiasticcal courts of the Church of England.

Rowan Williams has only himself to blame that the tabloids have had a field day at his expense. And I am tempted to advocate a simulated ritual flogging of the Archbishop on some reality television programme. This is not entirely a joke because he is clearly an obstinate man. But it is certainly time for his advisers to corner him in Lambeth Palace to tell him that the time has come for him to stop talking to the media and to return, as soon as possible to his former career of preaching to the faithful in Wales.

There he can do little harm. But while he continues as the spokesman for the Church of England nationally and internationally he is not only doing harm to the Church but he is exacerbating the tensions between British muslims and the rest of us.

There is an intellectual argument for increasing public awareness that

Rushing to the theatre last night, Janet had an uneasy feeling that her handbag had suddenly became lighter as we we pushed our way from Picadilly into the Haymarket. She checked and found  her purse was missing. She thought she might have dropped it after paying the minicab, but my guess was that it was one of Fagin’s children. And that these days they learn all about filching money from credit and debit cards as well as developing their light fingers as they did in the days of Charles Dickens.

The play would have to wait so we first rang Smile Customer Services, to get the irritating message ‘We are presently experiencing a large volume of enquiries.’ While she was holding on Lee rang Directory Enquiries and got a telephone number for Stolen cards emergency. I got through immediately on my mobile and got a human being on the second ring. But when I passed the phone to Janet, they could not find either of her accounts. She kept giving them more and more of her security information, shouting above the noise of the traffic and the early drunks.

It was now nearly 8 PM so I sent the children into the theatre, while we continued to insist to Smile that we were long-standing customers. Their computer finally found them after we gave them the post code of our new London flat. Nothing had gone out of the accuonts so far. So we began the same procedure for her Nat West credit card. By this time the play had started, the house was full and our seats were in the middle of the row.

So it was gin and tonics in the theatre bar and read the programme notes and think was there anything else in her purse which a thief might be able to turn to advantage. We could not do anything about the £70 in paper money. But what the hell we did not want our night out spoilt so we ordered drinks for all at the interval. £20 for five glasses of wine felt like another form of robbery.

 I was hoping to get a detailed report of the first half of he play but Kathy had checked her text messages, and according to her friend, Amanda, Camden Lock was on fire and there were twenty fire brigades fighting the blaze. Quite enough to stop the 24 bus getting through to take us home. So it was a black cab and a long detour around the smoke through Kentish Town.

Oh, the play? it was Brief Encounter, the Musical. The classic 1944 film of un-fulfilled illicit romantic love on the railway platform spiced up with some of Coward’s songs and some jazz music (which Coward also loved). The hero gazed longingly into the heroine’s eyes on the railway platform drinking railwy tea and listening to the train whistles. There was a moment when they started getting undressed that I thought we were going to see some un-1944 copulation on stage. But after a shake of her head, they slowly got dressed again all the time gazing longingly into each other’s eyes.

Very enjoyable. But I am still trying to understand the director’s programme notes, where she says what the play was really about was Coward’s own love life, which was blighted because he preferred the boys to the girls, and in those days, homosexual acts were against the law.

Although it is my seventy-fourth, this is the first birthday I have spent by the sea. So I am determined to make the most of it. The electronic barometer shows a picture of the sun but I fear the reading is more influenced by the central heating than the weather. Outside the sky is an unrelenting grey. I can just make out the outline of Portland Bill. On the other side the wreck of the Ice Princess lies on the ocean floor. It sank a few days ago in a 90 mph gale.

Today, the wind is brisk but nothing like gale force. And there were only a few specks of rain in the air as we set out on the muddy coastal path to walk down to the sea front. The Golden Cap was clearly visible but its colour was almost as black as the original Model T Ford. When we got down to the Charmouth sea front the waves  were splashing the one hundred yard promenade, so, unsurprisingly, there were no promenaders. The car park was scattered with pebbles thrown in by last night’s tide. The River Char was swollen by the rains of the last few days and by the incoming tide. The swans had retreated to a quieter pool, created in a nearby pool. On a dry in summer you can jump across it at low tide. But today you would have had to swim.

The footbridge was still above the water level and as we crossed it a cormorant spread its wings and gave us a demonstration of the best way to travel in weather like this. And it flies with grace and beauty. Nothing Boeing has produced can compete. Only the Concorde got near to matching it. And given its fuel consumption we are unlikely ever to see another plane like it.

My brother rang from Birmingham and was able to listen to the waves crashing over the rocks. Walking back through the village I saw a sign I had not noticed before, indicating that I was on the 615 mile route that Charles II took when he was fleeing from the Roundhead troops. Which reminded me that one of his first stops on that journey was in Mosely Old Hall, less than a mile from the house in which I was born in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton.

Back in the house I opened my presents which included a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales and a collection of his poetry. I quote one of the shorter ones, entitled ‘Epitaph on a Pessimist’.

I’m Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,

I’ve lived without a dame

From youth-time on; and would to God

My dad had done the same.

Hardy could have told Stephen Fry a thing or two about manic depression. I wonder how his life would have worked out if he had been born in our time. Would he have accepted the bi-polar label and gone on the pills? And if he had done so, would he have written Tess of the d’Urbervilles and all that poetry? Answers please from psychiartrists, poets and anyone who feels that the bleakness of  Egdon Heath is an apt metaphor for depression.

……..I want to get off.Although we did not leave Dorset until 1.30 PM it should have been a doddle getting to the Andrew Marr lecture last night at Queen Mary Westfield by 6.30 PM. But I underestimated the depths of incompetence I can rise to.

When we reached our Gospel Oak flat Janet said we should start out immediately so she would not stop to change.‘Plenty of time’, I said, ‘I know the route like the back of my hand. Besides I am going to change myself.’ So I fished out my charcoal grey suit and put on my wedding and funeral shoes. And went downstairs to get the rest of the luggage from the car with studied calm. Janet was getting more and more agitated, urging me to hurry.

When we hit our first traffic jam in Kentish Town Road she even suggested turning back and going out to dinner instead.‘We still have ample time’, I insisted, voicing my superior knowledge, ‘this lecture usually starts ten minutes late.’ I turned on the 6 o-clock news to discover what was happening in New Hampshire but the BBC only wanted to tell me about Gordon Brown’s first 2008 press conference. We reached the Angel without further mishap and I directed her to take the turning off City Road to pick up my favourite route through the back streets which avoids rush-hour traffic.

I did not become seriously concerned until I noticed a sign post telling me we were heading towards Highbury! I turned on Sat Nav but that made it worse. I kept pressing the wrong buttons and changing the screen and lost all sense of where we were. We might have ended up in Dover had it not been for a friendly motor cyclist who knocked on the window and said, ‘You look lost, where do you want to go?’ We told him the Mile End Road and he said no problem, just follow me.We waved him goodbye at Stepney Green. It was 7.15 PM when we reached QMW but I had recovered my cool. ‘We’ll go to the pub, have a drink and wander over in time for the party.’

We went in through the main entrance in what I thought was plenty of time, then turned a corner, and literally bumped into Professor Peter Hennessy and Andy Marr leading some hundreds of people to the drinks.I immediately apologized for being late and told Andrew that I would get the transcript and blog in due course.

That was my final mistake. Had I not confessed I could have used my rat-like cunning and done a half way decent blog by finding out from the students and teachers what Andy had said.

However, the evening ended well. When we got back to Gospel Oak we went out to eat at one of our favourite restaurants. The manager was just closing up, but he said no problem. I had the baked mushrooms and the halibut. Janet had the mussels and the sirloin steak. I could have written a restaurant review, except that I find writing and reading about food boring.

Tomorrow, if I manage to get out of bed without falling and breaking a leg, I shall return to matters Presidential on the other side of the pond. According to Newsnight Barack Obama is going to win again for the Democrats and John McCain is going to beat Huckabee to first place on the Republican side. But they are only guessing. They went on air two hours before the polls closed in New Hampshire and exit poll estimates are frequently wrong.