Current affairs

As I'm always moaning about how rubbish everything is today, I thought it important to point out that I do not withdraw from modern life into order to live in the past, refusing to trade the certainties of reaction for the uncertainties of revolution. That's not true. I tale a keen interest in current affairs and always try to be bang up to date on the key issues affecting Britain. Here I am just a couple of days ago reading the Saturday newspaper.

Not this Saturday, obviously, but Saturday, 19th February 1881. I'm reading the Illustrated London News for that day. The editorial I was reading said, amongst other things, that...

[Britain] should be glad to get out of Afghanistan without any breach of national honour, but it is even at this moment doubtful, notwithstanding the obvious and declared decision of the Government, whether we shall be able to give complete effect to the policy we have resolved upon.

Well, well. Now if I had been reading an actual Saturday newspaper for 23rd May 2009, I would have been reading about Jordan and Peter, MP's expenses and the finals of Britain's (not) Got Talent.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Is it concrete all around, or in my head

I've been having some profound thoughts about how brains work, partly because of something I read in Prospect about MRI psychology and partly because I was listening to music earlier on. I was on a fairly long flight and I started working on the plane as soon as the seat belt light went off -- I like the BA business class seats and they have just the right working position for me so I like to get the laptop out as soon as possible -- and fired up my iPhone for background music. I chose my "Mott" playlist, which comprises a few different Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople albums. It starts off with one of my all time favourites, the Ian Hunter Band's live double, Welcome to the Club, and includes both live and studio albums. Anyway, when "All the young dudes" came on, I felt the tears welling up again. How can music, especially such familiar music, make you cry? In the case of "All the young dudes" I sort of understand why, because it's about my feelings for my sons, but in other cases I have no idea why some tracks elicit emotion and others just don't. Another of their tracks -- "Saturday gigs" also makes me feel very emotional, but doesn't make me cry. On the other hand, Ian Hunter's "Sons and daughters" makes me feel like I want to cry, but I don't. Very puzzling. It's not just Mott the Hoople, of course. We were listening to a Tim Minchin album the other day and one of the tracks -- about your kids growing up -- had me blubbing like a schoolperson. You have to be pretty talented to write something like that.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

D & Deceased

I was surprised how sad the news of Gary Gygax's death made me. For those of you who aren't initiates, Gary Gygax was the man who invented Dungeons and Dragons. When I was first introduced to D&D, I had never come across anything like it before. I came from the borderline-autistic wargames school, having spent many happy hours (days, in fact) at University refighting the Yom Kippur war and repelling Soviet tank brigades sweeping through the Fulda Gap. The idea of a game where you could do, essentially, anything... wow.
I always loved the game, even after moving on to Runequest and Stormbringer. Now life has gone full circle: my kids and their friends love D&D and I still love playing it with them. In fact, playing D&D with your kids is even more fun than playing D&D with your friends. Thanks, Gary.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

It's a sign of the times

My younger son (11) was playing a game on the computer today. It was a detective game where you have to hunt around and find clues, solve puzzles, that kind of thing. But he was stuck, because he didn't know what a "cassette player" was. Even when I described a cassette to him, he still had no idea what I was talking about. So I went out in the garage and found a box of old tapes to show him.
I can remember getting my first cassette player -- I think for my birthday, but I'm not sure -- when I was 13, in 1972. The big, big song in the charts at that time was All the young dudes by Mott the Hoople. I absolutely loved that song, and I still do. It's had an odd effect on me actually, because when my eldest son turned 13, the song happened to come on the radio in the car and it made me cry! The opening chords evoke (in me) that feeling of being 13, of walking down the street (where my parents still live) on a Swindon council estate, listening to the best music I had ever heard in my life, not having a care in the world, looking forward to meeting my friends. It's a feeling that's never going to come back, so there's no point in wishing for it, yet the knowledge that my son feels that way is, in a way that I could never have imagined when I was 13, even better.
Mott's lead singer, Ian Hunter, was a favourite of mine for many years. I remember buying his first eponymous solo album when I was in the sixth form after hearing the fabulous "Once bitten, twice shy". I recorded the album on to a cassette tape some time later, and played it endlessly. Much later in life, the Ian Hunter Band's live double, Welcome to the Club, was (if I remember correctly) the first album that I put on my first iPod. It hate to say it, but they don't make them like that anymore.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]