MUSINGS

2008

Salaga in East Anglia on the Great Ouse

(Or, reflections of just another EU serf)

An occasional online journal, partly concerning music, plus the voyages of Narrowboat Salaga. All sentiments expressed are completely off-the-cuff and spur-of-the-moment; I rarely revise or rewrite anything, and it all represents my state of mind as it changes from day to day, expressed with appalling honesty and tactlessness. All of which will do me no good whatsoever, I'm sure. Oh - and I usually write it up on Sunday evenings, after having my regulation half-bottle of wine, which might account for any slight fuzziness of expression.

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Monday 12th May 2008

The change in weather in the last week or so after months of hopeless wind and rain has been quite startling! Suddenly and almost miraculously it turned to settled, dry, sunny and very warm - much warmer than average for May; which has certainly been nice for a change, but I can't help wondering if it presages a long hot summer, as they have been predicting, which could become a bit too much, remembering summers like 2003. It would be ironic if after last years floods we had a drought this year! Though it would give the global warming faithful something to get excited about, anyway. It's been lovely to be able to get back to a more sensible routine on the boat, and I have finally been able to do a bit of cleaning up and re-painting; and there have been one or two days when I've been moored in peaceful places when I'v really remembered how idyllic it can be on the river. Though central Oxford is definitely a place to avoid in this weather - specially at the weekend - as the sun also brings out the drunks and the yobbos. I tried mooring at a place called Kennington, just south of the city, where apart from a flock of manic geese it is a lot quieter and more peaceful than in the centre - it works quite well, and is only five minutes from a Co-Op shop, but I won't spend too much time there as it's within striking distance of one of the more frightening areas of 'East Oxford' and its denizens. It's opposite a lovely house on an island which used to be a pub and which I always admire as I go by - I noticed the other day that one of the relief lock-keepers seems to live there - lucky man. Also on the way to the shop I was amused to see that one of the houses in Kennington keeps three sheep and a goat in its large garden instead of a lawnmower; what an excellent idea - if only more people did it!

< Opposite the house on the island The house with the sheep >

< You occasionally pass very large things on the river

Whilst moored down at Abingdon I went for a long walk and finally found the remains of the Swift Ditch - one of the first ever pound locks built in this country, in the 17th century; there isn't much left now except the weir, and explanatory notice board and a few bits of old stone and brick work, but the place has a certain lonely and melancholy atmosphere.

< Information The remains of the old lock >

I have been reflecting once more on my life in Oxford, as a result of Mr. Cartwright's auspicious visit on May Day. I do realise, and I have mentioned it before, that I am very lucky to be able to live on my own narrowboat in the rather free way I do, surrounded a lot of the time by the beauties of nature, and with very much less in the way of wearing responsibilities than many people. Indeed, that is why I set out to take up this way of life - it was the result of several years thought as to the best way of living I could find that I could afford and that would allow me to live pretty cheaply, thus reducing my reliance on money-earning drudgery. And it has worked pretty well, on the whole. The fact that I spend so much of my time in these pages ranting on about the awfulness of things must seem very puzzling to people. But the reasons are quite simple, really. Firstly there's the 'grass is greener' factor - for someone weighed down with professional or family responsibilities the idea of floating round idly on a boat sounds delectable; but then from another point of view, it's those very responsibilities in many ways that give meaning to life, and independence can also be loneliness, lack of responsibilities and an absence of meaningful connections with other human beings. By moving to Oxford and onto the boat I think I did succeed in solving the problems I had with a decent place to live, but it didn't actually solve any of the other problems of my life! In some ways it has made them worse, because my unattached, nomadic life-style enhances my sense of marginalisation and disconnection from the metropolitan cultural complex. Even my attempts to connect with its equivalent in Oxford have virtually petered out. The danger is of simply losing touch with 'reality' (such as it is) and giving up the very attempt to engage with it. I think that is what is happening to me, and I try to resist it, but it seems more and more hopeless. And then my complaints about Oxford itself - everyone I know who doesn't live in Oxford has the impression it's a perfect place to live. And so it ought to be! But like almost anywhere, when you live in a place for some time you experience it quite differently from the way you do when you are merely a visitor; I saw Oxford as an almost infinitely desirable place to live when I was getting fed-up with London, and indeed as I've mentioned before, I was euphoric for about the first 6 months after I got here. Then I started noticing the realities that were so much in conflict with my image of the place. I shan't rehearse all the things that are wrong, because I go on endlessly about them on here,anyway, but the essence of the matter is that it's because Oxford has so much beauty, history and culture about it that one notices the increasingly jarring features so much; they are the same sort of things one experiences in urban areas all over the country, and more and more in rural towns, too, now- what I regard as the symptoms of the disintegration of our society. But when you experience them in places like Stoke-on-Trent or Hackney they seem inevitable as part of the anonymous urban squalor, whereas in a place like Oxford, which still retains so many of the trappings and appearances of civilisation, they are all the more ugly and upsetting. Of course I am aware that beauty and/or ugliness are often in the eye of the beholder, and my view of my surroundings is undoubtedly coloured by my feelings of deep gloom and a sense of frustration and failure in my own personal and 'professional' life. But the only way I can imagine an even slightly sensitive person living in Oxford and not noticing that something is wrong is either to be deaf and blind, or to indulge in wilful self-delusion and refusal to see what is in front of your nose - something that a lot of North Oxford-dwelling liberals manage somehow to do. Or possibly to be so busy you don't have time to notice, if such a thing is possible? I fear I must bore people with my 'negative' views, but I am the sort of person who can't restrain himself from saying what he things is true; and to people who say that the Oxford, and the England, or Britain, I am looking for only ever existed in my mind - the answer is that it did exist in the real world - I am old enough to remember it - and remnants, beautiful and moving remnants of it, exist all over the place if you know where to look, but they are without exception embattled and under threat from the barbarian hordes. With the advent of the tourist season and the increasing crowds and hubbub I've been thinking yet again that I really will have to leave Oxford soon. I sometimes feel i Just can't stand the tension of living here and the constant battering backwards and forwards between the moments and places of beauty and repose and the ugly and frightening symptoms of the disease of our contemporary 'culture'. if you can use that word about it. Today I felt for a while as though my head was going to explode with the frustration of it all; I think I would rather surrender and become a totally marginalised recluse in the middle of nowhere than live with this tension. At least during my times stuck in Shropshire I may have been bored and lonely, but at least I wasn't alienated and on edge all the time and I did feel vaguely 'at home'.

My latest discovery in the 'books about the collapse of western society' tradtion is one by Andrew Anthony called 'The Fall Out - a guilty liberal's loss of innocence'. An excellent title, for a start. It's a sort of autobiograpy - Anthony is a journalist who started off as a fully paid-up member of the 'liberal-left', having grown up in extreme poverty in Kentish Town in London (an area I know all too well), been through the comprehensive school system at its most revolutionary, chaotic and insane, finally gone to university in reaction to the prospect of a life of mindless drudgery and been fed the whole academic 'anti-establishment' establishment line to the point where he dutifully supported the miners, wearing his 'Cole Not Dole' badge (I wore one of those, too) and actually went to Nicaragua to 'support' the Sandinistas. You sense that disillusionment starting setting in even at that point, as his experience of 'revolutionary solidarity' in a foreign land, rather like Orwell's in Spain, had something of the opposite effect to what it was supposed to. But the big moment came with September 11th 2001, when he started realising what the typical liberal-left reaction to those events amounted to - namely that, in effect, the ruthless massacre of thousands of civilians of all cultures and ethnic origins, however 'shocking' was somehow 'justified' in the name of the 'oppressed peoples' of Palestine or wherever, and that basically America 'had it coming'; ignoring the appalling and demented religious and racial bigotry and desire for world-domination of the forces that carried out the atrocity in favour of the standard western self-hating 'anti-westernism' and Americanophobia. Since then he has found himself questioning the automatic assumptions of his former liberal-left colleagues (needless to say he has been cast out of their ranks as a 'racist' and 'fascist' for daring to question anything at all!) in all sort of areas, and made himself thoroughly unpopular at The Guardian - but rather touchingly he still insists he regards himself as 'liberal-left' all the same, not wanting to admit that his position basically amounts to conservatism; such is the Pavlovian reaction to that term that has been drummed into whole generations now. It's certainly a fascinating, vivid and in places amusing book, and deserves to be read widely, specially by those who consider themselves 'liberal' or 'left'. Unfortunately, it seems to me that books like this, and the many others along the same lines that have appeared in the last few years, will make little or no impact on the Polly Toynbees of this world and their academic equivalents who are all currently making a fat living out of stuffing young peoples' minds with tawdry threadbare propaganda! It's somehow as though they inhabit a parallel universe in which no matter how awful the things happening around them they will never be able to connect them usefully with what is going on in their heads and possibly - just possibly - adjust their view of the world as a result. Amazing really.

As ever, I also pursue a line in escapist reading to try to retain my sanity; lately besides reading all the Tintin books in Blackwells I've become somewhat addicted to the nautical novels of Patrick O'Brian - I've read about six of them straight off (fortunately he wrote seventeen, so I still have quite a few more to look forward to). I find them delightful - particularly for their evocation of an early 19th century atmosphere, ways of behaving and speaking. Some people consider them equal or even superior to C.S. Forester's Hornblower books, but I don't agree - I've been re-reading those for the umpteenth time as well, and they are definitely the best of their kind, but the O'Brian novels are delightful. One of the things that struck me is that the brig that Captain Aubrey has many of his adventures in would only have been about twice the length of my narrowboat (though admittedly much wider and deeper), but had a crew of some seventy men - what a thought! I've also been reading an enjoyable book called Kingdoms Beyond the Clouds, about the various small kingdoms of the Himalayas - it makes me want even more to go there, but my hopes of making it this year seem doomed to failure because of all the expenditure I've been forced to make on the boat and other things lately.

Thanks to Diana for alerting us in the Guest Book to her blog on Asian medicine and rabbits. I think her little tribute to her late mother is very touching.

Monday 5th May 2008

I made it round back onto the river again on Sunday - the river reacted a lot less to the heavy rain a few days ago than I expected. It's amazing how much difference it makes when the trees starting putting on leaf. So it was convenient for me to drop in to the Cathedral for evensong - I haven't been for while; I had to go as they were doing Howells' Collegium Regale service and my favourite God is Gone Up of Finzi. Specially in the glorious Howells I was struck again, watching the faces of some of the tourists, that for many of them it must be an experience unlike anything else they have ever encountered - hopefully a powerful and moving one, even revelatory, which just shows how important it is to preserve these little islands of ceremony, beauty and order in a sea of consumerist barbarism.

This was the week of Oxford's famous May Morning. I managed to drag myself out of bed at 5am to attend this year - and it didn't rain! It was the usual slightly surreal atmosphere, with hundreds of people milling around town at 6 am, including a number of over-excited and still drunk undergraduates who insisted in trying to join in the folk dancing and a general air of festivity and devil-may-care. Although there were one or two worrying features - for example the large number of thugish-looking 'security' men who erected barriers on a rather arbitrary basis at various points thus stopping a lot of people getting anywhere near Magdalen tower; I presume they were employed by the city council, although there was no way of knowing this or to whom they were acountable or what their legal status was, if they had one. Also there was a lot more traffic than there used to be, even at that time in the morning, including a lot of very impatient van-drivers who seemed to have no idea what May Morning was and no interest in it, either. I watched one guy almost run two students down, and when they indicated they weren't too happy about it, screech to a halt and almost pick a fight with them. That was an unsavoury moment - I mean, I know we live in an increasingly brutalised society, but - road rage incidents on May Morning, I ask you! And I felt the amplification of the singing from the tower wasn't quite right - it seemed to be more powerful than usual, and the result was it bounced off neighbouring buildings and distorted both music and speech. But nevertheless the joyous and spontaneous feeling of an Oxford May Morning just about survived; the Morris dancers were out in force, and the usual Jack-in-the-Green seemed to have spawned a smaller, junior brother (or perhaps sister). This year the 'foreign' guests were a group of lady clog dancers from Yorkshire (I think). I followed the morris dancers until about 8.30 or so and then retired to lie down and prepare for the auspicious visit of Mr. Cartwright, whom I had not seen for over 20 years, apparently. And very jolly it was, too.

< Awaiting the bells The Morris dancers begin at Hertford Lane >

< Jack-in-the-Green advances on Broad St. The dancers brave the van-drivers in the middle of the road >

< The ladies who clog

In reply to M. Qinquis' comment in the guestbook about my slightly tongue-in-cheek remarks on a 'long-overdue military coup'. I try not to go on too much about politics on here, but I would point out that I say slightly tongue-in-cheek because given what has happened to this country recently there are times when a military coup seems to me preferable to the EU serfdom and increasing pseudo-socialist police state we are now 'enjoying' in Britain after elevne years of New Labour. The armed forces seem to be the only remaining depository of decent conservative values, respect and honour, and loyalty to Crown and Country left in this disintegrating society. I would certainly trust any member of our armed forces a damned sight further than any politician. Of course I am imagining a thoroughly British coup - we are not talking about South America, Asia, or indeed, even France here, where people might be herded into stadiums and machine-gunned. We are talking about decent people with basically humane and democratic views perhaps having to suspend the 'democratic' system temporarily - not because they don't believe in democracy but precisely because our parliamentary democracy and our national sovereignty have been systematically subverted and betrayed by NuLabour (and the Tories before them) and the EU commissars in inexorable combination. Once we had restored our national independence, taken back control of the streets from the thugs and criminals, re-established control of our borders and removed or deteined all illegal immigrants and reinstated a meaningful immigration policy, then by all means we could return as soon as possible to Common Law and the rule of our the democratically-elected parliament we took centuries to achieve, unlike the vast majority of continental countries, which have scarcely any tradition of democracy at all in many cases. It's true that a few subversives like George Galloway, Ken Livingstone et al. might have to be detained for a while, and traitors like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown be arrested and put on trial, but apart from that I see no reason to expect large-scale unpleasantness. Of course, if people were to attempt armed resistance, then they would have to take the consequences, but I imagine the vast majority of ordinary British people would support such a move. Given a choice between living in a disintegrating society where everything I value is steadily being destroyed and dishonoured and I am in a constant state of tension and alienation and a military coup - yes, I think I would go for the miltary coup. Of course I am not really expecting such an event this instant, but perhaps if and when the really big terrorist attack comes and leaves part of the country uninhabitable and many thousands dead - or perhaps when actual civil war breaks out in areas that are currently only teetering on the edge of it and martial law has to be declared - who knows?

Of course we have all been entertained by the magnificent Boris Johnson's victory over that appalling Marxist drone, Livingstone, in the London mayoral election. Naturally Johnson, as a representative of Cameron's new Tories (or 'Blue Labour', as Peter Hitchens calls them) is not likely to do anything really significant to reclaim my home city, but at least he has a personallity, seems reasonable educated and well-meaning and will be a refreshing change from the poisonous smirking Livingstone and his 'pc,' terrorist-supporting cadres. Unfortunately the contest also demonstrated the disaster that is going to happen at the next General Election- namely the election of Cameron and Co., which will simply lead to more of the same (Cameron is purely and simply another Tony Blair) and the continuing disintegration of Britain, while the large protest vote will go to the revolting BNP rather than to the only sensible and constructive alternative to the 'mainstream', UKIP. Oh well - I can't say I'm very surprised.

Monday 28th April 2008

Rather to my surprise I have got back onto the river once again and haven't had to come off immediately because of bad weather. Mind you, the forecasts have been pretty dire on a daily basis, but the reality has not been quite so bad. After being moored for three days opposite Christ Church Meadow or the purpose of money-earning drudgery, I escaped yesterday afternoon upriver, and moored on a field mooring in the wide sweeping expanses north of Wytham Woods, amidst cowslips and reed-beds. The forecast was initially 'heavy rain', but fortunately it turned out to be wrong, and actually it was a delightful sunny and quite warm afternoon, though there was a sudden huge black cloud that appeared about 6 pm and a bit of rain, but now it has all cleared and there is a delightful sunset under way. There are however further dire predictions of hail and rain storms for the next few days and I shall have to remain wary - some of them at least are bound to turn out right, I imagine.

< Salaga with cowslips The wind among the reeds >

Today I went further up to Eynsham to pick up a new starter battery (more expense) and then came on to Pinkhill, which is such a nice peaceful place to moor, and had tea while listening to George Butterworth and looking out over the quiet fields; at moments like that the old England I believe once really existed - though some people evidently don't - seems quite real.

< There is honey still for tea, at Pinkhill

The tedious grind of Saturday at Christ Church was mitigated somewhat and the tourists entertained by the local Territorial Army cathedral service and parade. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the 'massed' Waterloo band of the light infantry looked very smart (even the diminutive ladies amongst them). There were soldiers of all shapes, sizes and unifroms all over the place, and it looked for a while as if a long-overdue miltary coup had finally happened (alas, it was not to be) - there was one officer with a very strange jazzy yellow thing round his cap, carrying a riding crop, whom I can only imagine was a member of the yeomanry, if such a thing still exists.

< The Light Infantry band prepares The parade is inspected >

Anyway, the whole thing was presided over by Sir Hugo, our ubiquitous Lord Lieutenant, who saluted everybody very smartly - including myself and a regular custodian on Tom Gate! And he took the salute in proper style from a podium pn the Meadow Walk at the end of proceedings. Then they all trooped off to the Town Hall for tea. Marvellous how these sorts of ceremonies persist with all their old-fashioned pomp, even thought the majority of the population are oblivious or even presumably actively hostile.

< A military melee. The man with the fancy belt, with his back to us, is Sir Hugo, the Lord Lieutenant

Coming down river through Godstow the other day I was astonished to be caught up by a large and rather posh cruiser crewed by about 10 elderly gentlemen all of whom appeared to be paralytically drunk! It was grotesque to observe, but also rather worrying - I was worried about them but also about myself and a possible collision. I'm amazed they hadn't had a serious accident already (though one od them fell over whilst taking a line at the lock) - as they went off into the distance at Osney I could only wonder how many of them would survive. Talk about a ship of fools!

Sunday 20th April 2008

Nothing of any real interest has happened in the last week. The weather has continued dreadful, with grey overcast skies and a freezing east wind most of the time; at least it hasn't rained excessively. After waiting in vain for Dusty the diesel boat at Duke's Cut, the junction with the river, I decided to come up to Kidlington on the canal yet again, to meet him; I was doubtful yet again about the state of the river, having heard reports of yellow boards out, and I didn't want to get stranded somewhere with my diesel running out. The diesel boat seems to be about a week late, so I've just been sitting here in the nice countrified bit of Kidlington, having a holiday from the urban horror (really!) of Oxford and the menial trivialities of work at Christ Church. It's been dull but sort of soothing.

I've been diverted by Radio 3's programmes for the Vaughan Williams anniversary. They've broadcast a few things I haven't heard for a while, like the Benedicite and the Five Tudor Portraits. Also all the symphonies, which I've mostly listened to courtesy of the Iplayer thingy on the BBC website. I haven't listened to the more 'modern' ones, like 4 and 6, for a while - they are amazingly powerful and also much more original than most people realise. Also it's been interesting to hear them interpreted by non-British conductors in some cases - it shows that contrary to accepted opinion RVW is accessible outside this country - in fact this anniversary may well be a time for his music to get better known outside the anglosphere; after all, if Russian or French music has an exotic appeal for us, why shouldn't it work the other way round? I had a look at the score of No. 4 again - love that gritty orchestration, and the sheer power, and bad temper, of the whole thing ('I'm not sure I like it but it's what I meant' is what the composer is supposed to have said after conducting it!). My own RVW tribute has been coming along quite well - I can see how it's going end now, and then I can go back and refine it a bit; I need to get the shape first, as I didn't know what it was going to be when I started. It's been about the only thing that has kept my mind occupied lately - I've been mentally so sluggish. And tired and sleepy all the time. That and answering emails from people who've been kind enough to get in touch (hallo Mr. Cartwright!). Oh - and reading of course. In between my more doomladen studies on the possible ends of the world, courtesy of Martin Rees, I have started reading all the Tintin books right through in Blackwells! I realised that I'd forgotten half of them and there are some I never read as a kid - I love them; specially my favourite, Captain Haddock with his violent temper and serious drinking habit. More regression, I suppose. But we can't always be reading Jung and theology and sociology, can we?

Sunday 13th April 2008

I have gradually been recovering from the Oxford Literary Festival which was held at Christ Church last week. Not, I should say, from the enormous cultural and intellectual impact of it all, but from having to stand around for nearly eight hours a day shepherding strangely confused festival-goers on their way to worship some literary 'celeb' or other. As well as the fact that the very strange weather patterns manifested themselves again in an icey north wind and the first proper snow fall in April that I can remember (they were tobogganing round Tom Quad one morning!). And I can also say that Melvin Bragg's bouffant hair-do is indeed as preposterous in reality as it appears on TV. If not more so. hy do they have literary festivals, I wonder? Still - six consecutive days of drudgery will have helped my financial situation somewhat. And then after that I was called in for another four days, too. I have spent so much time trudging round the quads of Christ Church, freezing to death in the arctic winds, I have had hardly any time to think about anything at all, let alone keep up this journal.

I finally escaped up-river today, but the heavy showers which have continued more or less since Easter have turned into huge downpours, and I foresee the river rising yet again and a fourth return to the canal; it's getting very tedious. Is it going to rain forever?

Thanks to Avril Joyce for her encouraging remarks in the guest book - it's nice to know people are actually reading these musings, however aimless they may seem!

I've been getting further into the spirit of this Vaughan Williams centenary year by reading a book on his symphonies by one Lionel Pike. It's a bit academic in places, and I found I had to skip large sections of 'analysis' which I found indigestible (why is it that it's considered important to describe in detail in clumsy words and symbols the sequence of modulations and motivic workings of music, when their only real significance is in sound? If you can't hear them then reading them is hardly going to help!) - but otherwise I found it a most interesting work, and one that makes some genuinely original points and draws due attention to the considerable originality and genius of RVW's music - something that is customarily obscured both by the composer's own humorous self-deprecation and the intellectual snobbery and myopia of the 'modernist' establishment. I see they are featuring a lot of Vaughan Williams at the Proms this year, which is a very good thing, though there are a number of big works which I would have loved to have heard which have been missed out, including Sancta Civitas, Dona Nobis Pacem and Pilgrim's Progress. At the very least they should have done the latter, which is one of the absolutely central creative projects of his life. Still - that's the modern BBC for you - it's a miracle they haven't ignored the anniversary completely in favour of a Birtwistle 'retrospective' or some similar horror! As it is I see we are to have a number of the atrocities of Stockhausen visited upon us in honour of his recent merciful demise. Oh well. (Actually, Stimmung is mildly entertaining fof about the first 15 minutes!)

My reading has been somewhat eclectic as ever. At Blackwells I came across an intriguing book by Sir Martin Rees called Our Final Century, which describes all the extraordinary threats that loom in the near future and give humanity only about a 50% chance of surviving to the end of the century. My favourite is the devouring of all life on earth by 'grey goo' made up of endlessly proliferating self-reproductive nano-robots. Although the spectacular arrival of a comet or large asteroid sounds quite exciting too! On a more banal level I've been having an attack of nautical fever in the form of Patrick O'Brian's series of naval novels, interspersed with some old Hornblower favourites. And short excursions into Peter Hitchens' The Abolition of Britain - one of the most important books of the last 10 years, which I find both fascinating and terribly depressing reading.

I took some photos of the unusual weather in Oxford:

< April in Oxford > (They are repairing the 900 year-old Castle Mound) >

< A note of frivolity entered the academic groves of Christ Church >

< During my stay in Kidlington I came across a very remarkable vehicle. I think they probably made it themselves!

Sunday 30th March 2008

The excitement of Easter is gone, and things have gone back to the usual routine - moving the boat up and down the canal and waiting for a break in the atrocious weather that might allow the river to become fully navigable again. I've been spending some time up at Kidlington - the more rural bit, which is really rather pleasant; the weather has been amazingly variable; yesterday was absolutely terrible with heavy cloud and driving rain all day - naturally, as it was the day of the University Boat Race. Oxford won magnificently, but the Cambridge crew put up a very impressive fight; I did feel a bit sorry for the participants in the waves and howling winds - I wouldn't want to be on the river in those conditions! Which is why I'm not on the river now - it's just about doable, but still in a very volatile state, and I have six consecutives days of work this coming week at Christ Church for the literary festival, and I have to get somewhere where I can moor without getting stranded in some sort of mad flood again. So it will have to be the canal, although there have been quite a lot of boats going down into Oxford, and I don't know where they think they're all going to go, as the river is a bit dodgy, so I think it's going to be a bit crowded.

I've put my imaginary flim music for The Hobbit online where people can hear it - in a computer realisation, obviously - my finances don't quite run to a large orchestra at the moment! It's available as a .wav file here:

http://www.badongo.com/file/8474289

It's quite a large file - about 95mb, but nothing much by today's connection rates. Those who know the book well will probably be able to work out which bit of music represents what. I have been working quite a lot recently on my second Vaughan Williams tribute of this year. My idea was to do the two short choral pieces first, which might conceivably have some chance of a performance, then indulge myself with an orchestral piece, which obviously has no chance of a performance in a million years! The latter has become a set of variations on 'Through Bushes and Briars' - a well-known Englisg folk song and, I think, the first one Vaughan Williams collected himself. Actually I'm quite pleased with it so far - inevitable it tends to keep sounding like RVW, but there are also bits which I think sound like me. I hope I can capture something of the deep feeling I have for his music in my own musical tribute.

The other day I came across a little book in Blackwell's called C.S. Lewis - a Short Introduction, by one Peter Van der Elst. It really is an excellent read, and coming around Easter time it was rather apposite. It's summary of Lewis's arguments in favour of religious belief and Christianity in particular is very cogent, though I still have problems with some of them. But interestingly the section that struck me most was the one on Lewis's political and cultural conservatism. I know I go on about C.S. Lewis rather a lot on these pages, but that it because he has been such a big influence on my life, despite my being an agnostic - and the thing is that he seems to be more of an influence, not less, as time goes by. Looking at this particular chapter it's not difficult to see why - his views of politics and culture in Britain and the world are pretty much the ones I've come round to in the last few years - except of course that he formed them about 50 years before me and expresses them much better! In fact I find his ideas so persuasive it almost makes me feel I ought to be a Christian if this is the view-point of a genuine follower of that faith. Of course people like Phillip Pullman would probably say it's all because I was brainwashed by the Narnia books as a child! It seems to me though that Lewis saw many of the tendencies in modern society that are so ugly and rampant today well in advance, and was trying to warn us against them; and if that includes his Narnia books, then I am only too glad to have been warned. I sometimes wonder what some contemporary children's books are inculcating them with! Fortunately the classics, including the Narnia books, are still massively popular, it seems - amongst children that can read, that is, which apparently is fewer and fewer under our magnificent modern state education system these days. Here is an example from this very interesting chapter of the book:

'Human beings, argued Lewis, cannot free themselves in this life from the limitations imposed by their flawed and fallen natures, therefore their attempts to establish a perfect society inevitably backfire and tend to recreate and intensify the evils they were meant to abolish. This happens not only because all schemes of social engineering increase the power of the State - and power corrupts - but also because utopian ideologies typically reject the constraints of traditional morality'.

and:

'In opposition to the modern, egalitarian, view of democracy, which has become dominant since the French Revolution, Lewis emphasised the inherent inequality of man. The case for democracy, in his view, is not that all men and women deserve and equal share in the government of the commonwealth because they are equally wise, which is clearly untrue, but rather that no-one is good enough to be allowed irresponsible power over his fellows'.

After 11 years of a utopianist, micro-managing, social engineering, socialist government masquerading as a 'third way' (whatever that is), these remarks seem to me to apply uncannily to modern Britain. Creating a massive underclass dependent on benefits and trying to interfere in every aspect of the upbringing of their children, while encouraging a large expansion in 'alternative family' upbringings which involve neither a family in any real sense or anything that could properly be called an upbringing, either; at the same time issuing a great deluge of new laws and regulations, many emanating from that totally irresponsible and unaccountable body the EU Commission while talking all the time about 'democracy' and 'the people'; and in all of it constantly seeking to police even our language through so-called 'political correctness' and the reduction of standards in every part of life to the the most debased lowest common denominator in the name of reducing 'elitism'. Yes - I think Lewis's views are most relevant to our times. And in a way I am only too glad for him that he didn't live to see such times - I think he would have been deeply upset to see the kind of vulgar, brutalised, trashy, deeply untruthful society that Britain has become in the 40 or so years since his death.

Easter Day 2008

It's been a slightly odd Easter - weatherwise, certainly - with howling gales again and swirling snowstorms! Though luckily the snow didn't settle, around here, anyway. IN between, when the sun has come out, with all the spring flowers and blossom it has felt like the right season, but then it suddenly lapses back into winter. I have remained on the canal at Wolvercote, waiting and wondering whether the river will go down again; today I went for a run up the canal and encountered a boat coming round through Duke's Cut - they had come up from Abingdon, and apparently the river is no longer on red flood warning, but is still on 'high yellow' (in other words the stream is still dangerously high), so it's looking hopeful. If they came up from Abingdon it must have been quite a struggle in places, so I think I will wait a bit before I venture on to the high seas myself. It all depends what happens in the next couple of days with regard to rain. After all my expenditure on the engine lately I've been trying to economising on coal, but of course it's turned absolutely freezing, so I've been foraging for wood for the stove, with some success. But it would be nice if it would warm up a bit soon.

My Easter festivities have been somewhat muted - gone are the days of my famous Easter tea-parties. I was going to make a simnel cake, but in the end I couldn't be bothered, and marzipan is so expensive these days, so I just bought a ready-made one from the Co-Op to end my cake fast for Lent. On Good Friday I went to Magdalen, where the choir had returned for Easter, where there was a long and elaborate Good Friday Liturgy. It lasted for two hours and was remarkable in solemnity and ceremony. At the beginning of the service when the clergy processed in I was rather taken aback to see them prostrate themselves full-length in front of the altar - I've never heard of that in an Anglican church before, apart from during ordinations, that is. The big crucifixion panting behind the altar was covered in a black cloth, so that when they later brought in a wooden cross for veneration and placed it on the altar it was dramatically outlined against a black background. The veneration process took quite a long time - the place was packed - and then after that there was a communion; even before that there was a long chanted and sung narration of the Passion. It all had a very medieval atmosphere. When they brought in the Host it was quite eerie, as it was brought in complete silence, accompanied only by intermittent triple rattles of a sort of ratchet thing. Never heard that before, either. I had to look it up afterwards, and apparently it's a traditional Roman practice between Maundy Thursday and Easter Day. I knew Magdalen was 'high', but not that high! Anyway - it was all done in a very dignified way, and avoided being excessively theatrical - all of it aided greatly by the beautiful unaccompanied singing of the choir. One section, the Reproaches, was quite hypnotic, with a repeated chorus and refrain that seemed to go on for ever. Near the end they sang Tallis's Salvator Mundi - an old favourite of mine, and highly appropriate for the occasion. I tend to avoid Good Friday services as they are so depressing, but this one, although quite harrowing in its way, felt like the right thing to do,and I'm glad I went. Easter is always a rather ambiguous time for me; on the one hand for various reasons of association going back to childhood I find it very compelling emotionally, and yet I can't fully enter into it intellectually, except as a very powerful and moving story and metaphor. Although I must say I do believe the events recounted did actually happen in some form or other, and even on a purely mundane level, the story of such a terrible death being suffered by a great teacher and healer like Jesus is very distressing and tells us something about human nature and its failings. I also get annoyed by the general indifference and ignorance shown by our society in general nowadays to this great Christian festival - when I was a kid even ordinary Sundays in London had a special, 'holy' feeling (slightly dismal, sometimes, it must be admitted) - let alone Good Friday and Easter Day. Now all the shops seem to be open and the majority just treat it as an extra Bank Holiday to be devoted to the usual boozing and crude self-indulgence. This year even the betting-shops were open on Good Friday! It's rather sad. It seems to me more and more that, whatever one thinks of religious belief, looking at the state of our society and the western world in general, the liberal, secular humanist version of things has singularly failed.

Musically, I listened as usual on Easter Morning to Vaughan Williams' glorious Easter from the Five Mystical Songs; it's just so uplifting. And I am at this moment listening to the conclusion of Elgar's great oratorio The Apostles:

'Lo - I am with you always, even unto the end of the world'.

Also I have been working on my orchestral tribute to Vaughan Williams for this annoversary year; it seems to have turned into a set of variations on a folk song. I am quite pleased with it so far - a lot of it sounds rather like Vaughan Williams - but then I don't see that as a problem as long as there is some of me in there too!

Sunday 16th March 2008

Well - after a week or so of high winds and intermittent rain, yesterday at about 8pm it started raining heavily, and continued to do so for some twelve hours! Which is basically a bit of a disaster; there was some chance the river might have gone down in about a week's time if there was no more rain, but after last night's deluge the whole of Easter will be a total wash out as regards the river, and I'd be surprised if things go back to anything like normal for a couple of weeks now. What a pain. Even the canal had risen by several inches this morning - a most unusual event. I wonder if it's going to go on like this indefinitely? Being stuck on the canal has a bad effect on my state of mind, there is no doubt.

Apart from such metereological excitements there is really very little to report. About the most exciting thing that happened this week was my dropping off copies of my Vaughan Williams 50th anniversary anthems at New College and the Cathedral, in the hope of some interest. Just managing to get round to printing something out and sending it to people gives me some sense of achievement, such is my lack of expectations these days. If I can just manage to 'keep going', that's something.

Oh - the only other event of note is that my starter battery doesn't seem to be charging properly - which is odd, as it's only about 4 months old. The domestic batteries seem to be charging OK, so it's a mystery - perhaps it was just a dud battery to start with; either that or I have done something nasty to it. So that's more expense in the near future.

Sunday 9th March 2008

Have been feeling a bit dismal on and off lately - partly I suppose because of the current appalling weather - back again to howling winds and torrential rain, and yet again I've had to retreat back onto the canal, which I must say I am thoroughly fed-up with. With the amount of rain coming down and forecast I can't see the river being navigable for another couple of weeks, at least, now - the ground is just so saturated. But I could be wrong, I suppose. Also the small burst of energy that I usually get at the beginning of the year seems to have worn off and I am beginning to get that familiar sense of stagnation again. I went down to Eton on Sunday for the harpsichord and organ competition, which was as usual quite staggeringly impressive and very enjoyable musically, which was uplifting; but even that made me feel envious of all the busy-ness and constructiveness of it all, and the feeling of a community achieving things, whereas I have this horrible feeling of achieving virtually nothing, virtually all the time, these days. It appears I have no 'role' in the world - I don't know why; probably I made terrible misjudgements in the past and it's all my fault.

I had a look at the river at Windsor, and was glad I hadn't gone down by boat - I would have ended up stuck at Maidenhead or somewhere for weeks! But it was deserted and atmospheric at sunset:

On a more positive note, I have almost finished my 'imaginary film music' for The Hobbit. The other day I came across this wonderful audio clip of Tolkien reading a bit of his book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VOdv2RE4jg&feature=related

You just don't get voices like that any more! Even from Oxford professors, I'm afraid. More's the pity. I came across mention of Tolkien's essay on fairy stories, when I was looking at books in Borders; it quoted his three principles, which are really very good - roughly speaking, (i) restoring our faith in simple and wholesome things (ii) helping to free us from our narrow and distorted modern perspective (iii) providing a sense of consolation, even in a world where evil persists. It strikes me these are what all art and creativity are - or should be - about; certainly it's the sort of thing I would like to think I am aiming at in my music, even if no-one's very interested in it. The distance that so much, if not most, contemporary art and literature is from such concerns is a measure of how bad our situation is. So perhaps my enjoyment of 'fairy tales', children's literature, etc., rather than Booker Prize - approved 'feisty' modern literature is not a sign of encroaching senility, after all

More from the Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense:

Education Brutal, violent intrusion of arbitrary material into the clean innocent heads of children, which should be left empty.

Elephant Large mammal that cries a lot.

Elitist Someone who knows more than I do.

Empiricism Absurd notion that observation and measurement are useful in getting to know about things (see positivism).

Enlightenment Sinister, destructive period of history which had a 'project' to dominate nature, prefer reason to superstition, and stop going to church. All a big mistake, but postmodernism will fix it.

Evidence 1. Something that can be tailored to the requirements of my arguments. 2. A tiresome thing that may conflict with something that I believe.

I particularly like the one on 'elitism'! At the core of so much rubbish that is going on in contemporary Britain.

On BBC TV this week, as part of their 'controversial' and unusually imaginative 'White' season, there was a very interesting programme about Enoch Powell's famous, or infamous, 'rivers of blood' speech. Of course the mere fact that it is always remembered by that name and that 90% of people who've heard of it think he actually said the streets of Britain would be 'flowing with rivers of blood' is an indication of how much such a programme is needed. It was surprisingly fair, and went out of its way to show Powell as a decent human being rather than the crazed monster that most of the left still depict him as. And it also was honest enough to posit the idea that perhaps, after all, in a way, Powell was right. My main reaction was that I'd forgotten how intense the atmosphere was at the time and how on the one hand, some of the things he said are being said quite widely now, whereas other things I'd forgotten he said couldn't be said at all. What I think happened was that he got carried away with the drama of the thing and overdid it, with the result that the very important. and I think true, warnings he wanted to give about the danger to our cultural and national identity from uncontrolled mass immigration got swept away in the reaction to some of the sensational imagery he used. He certainly paid a heavy price, inthe termination of his political career. All the fuss about the word 'picanniny' seems ridicuous to me, in the light of the connotations of that word for a man of Powell's generation; but saying that in a few years' time 'the black man would have the whiphand over the white man' was misjudged and wildly melodramatic. And though I am still quite sure that Powell was not a racist, either in belief or intent, it is true that his speech must have lent some credibility to genuine racists at the time, which was unfortunate. But the number of people I have heard recently saying 'well, perhaps he was right, after all' shows the continuing relevance of the real message he was trying to deliver. I'm glad, anyway, that it is being discussed now, and that a very intelligent, thoughtful and decent man is to some extent being 'rehabilitated'. By the BBC, of all people!

I recently put a counter on this page, and have been gratified to find that it gets something approaching 10 clicks on average per day - I' always imagined something more like about 3 a week! Who can all these people be who read my meanderings? Are they desperate?!

Sunday 2nd March 2008

March is here, then, and the weather has been rather mild on the whole, though apparently there's going to be a 'cold snap' over the next two or three days, with a possibility of snow. I have been on another brief excursion onto the river, which is looking more and more placid, but I'm now back on the canal to meet Dusty, the coal and diesel boat. Before this I was on a very awkward mooring at Wolvercote, as the little 48 hour mooring I usually like to visit has been occupied for several weeks by another boat! All the other moorings in the vicinity are in a hopeless state, with huge lumps of rock in the water which you get stuck on or based against when other boats go by. Apart from that though, it wasn't too bad - I like Wolvercote, and it's sufficiently far from the centre of Oxford to feel a bit countrified. There was an absolutely howling gale the night before last, but the only other feature of the location was that I was terrorised by a demented female duck, which for reason was quacking manically at intervals of just under a second for hours on end - including in the early hours of the morning! I've no idea what it was all about - perhaps she'd lost something? But ducks are quite curious creatures, anyway - much more so than people generally realise. I can hardly help but to have observed their habits sinceI've been living on this boat, so I know!

On the music front, as usual nothing happens. (Oh no, that's not quite true - a girls' choir in America are doing my Two Part Songs in a concert.) But I have finished my Two Mystical Songs, my tribute to Vaughan Williams for the 50th anniversary of his death; now I have to get myself organised to print out copies and send/give them to people in the hope of some interest. You'd think that in a place like Oxford, which is knee-deep in choirs. they'd have a chance of a performance, but recent experience does not bode well. Still - one must keep trying. Also I am nearing the completion of my Hobbit suite - imaginary music for the film; it's been rather fun to do, and I think it's quite good in it's way - not too serious, as it is after all a childrens' book. I was just finishing details of the orchestration when I remembered I really should put in some music for the goblins, so I am concocting a grotesue march incorporating suitable percussion such as whips and massed thumping implements! The goblins in The Hobbit are not as nasty as the orcs in The Lord of the Rings, but they are certainly not nice!

Reverting to my usual theme of the collapse of western civilisation, Plato's Children has continued to exert an influence over my thinking. It's another book everyone should read who cares about anything. In the chapter called Shopping O'Hear talks about our attitude to 'relationships' today:

'Social and physical mobility give the impression that relationships of family, birth and country are disposable, and that loyalty is an optional virtue, the more valid for having risen from conscious choice. In fact the oppostie is true. Loyalty and its benefits, like the benefits of family and origin, arise precisely because they are there, inevitable, unchosen, not subject to choice and hence not subject to whim or arbitrary abrogation. All this goes against the spirit of the age, and it goes against the spirit in which most people enter what they call relationships, that is what are now known as 'partnerships' of a sexual nature. ...They are attempts to have the advantages of a stable marriage, without the costs or conditions. They do not even have to involve a man and a woman, for they can be of a homosexual nature....a partnership of this sort is something which consenting adults can drop in an out of just as either party wishes, and providing that neither party feels oppressed by its continuing existence.'

Yes - I have always detested the term 'partner' when used in this sense - and not only because I don't have one, by the way! Also I am constantly shocked by the way people, whether married or not, seem to split up at the slightest whim these days, regardless of the appalling damage it does to their children and the huge amount of hatred and stress involved. I think O'Hear has puts his finger on it when he suggests that for most people 'relationships' these days are, like everything else, an extension of shopping. This strange fantasy world we are all expected to inhabit, where we have a 'right' to be happy and have the highest expectations of everything without having to put any effort into it, and then when our unrealistic expectations are dashed, we have the 'right' to jettison the person or thing involved and rush off to the next 'experience'. It's as though everything is one huge social experiment, the outcome of which we can hardly guess, but which we must pursue manically to the end.

I was alerted by Mr. Lipnicki to a website called Butterflies and Wheels. It's quite interesting, though tending towards 'leftist' attitudes I find unappealing - but at least the aim of the thing is to question all the jargon and technical-sounding, usually sociological, gobbledygook which infests official thinking and policies in our society today. The most entertaining section to my mind is The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense. For example:

Text Word it is mandatory to use instead of book; book very wrong indeed; must never never say book; everyone will stare if not laugh. Book elitist, hierarchical, last week, etc.

Thus A useful word to insert between two arbitrary assertions, thus making both appear to be vaguely justified. 'Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it.' Edward Said, Orientalism

Transgressive Desperate for attention, or publication, or tenure, or promotion, or all those. The route to solid bourgeois comfort in the academy is via being as transgressive as Madonna on speed.

Truth A quaint, old-fashioned word, like bustle or barouche-landau or button-hook. No longer needed.

A different kind of reading: I find that I need something really engrossing to read last thing at night so that I can relax and stop worrying about everything and hopefully sleep; I picked off the shelf above my bed one of my favourites - C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, the last of his 'interplanetary' trilogy - not nearly as well known as the Narnia books or his popular theology, but very remarkable and gripping in their way. I don't know how many times I've read it, but I always find it quite enthralling. I think I wanted to read it again because it connects up with a theme I've been thinking about a lot lately. The book I was struck by lately called A Secret History of the World basically described an 'alternative', spiritual history of human affairs as seen through the 'esoteric' tradition, involving the influences of various spiritual powers and influences. Now whether you believe literally in such things or not, there is no doubt such a view casts an intriguing light on current affairs. One of the things this tradition (preserved, possibly, in such movements as theosophy, anthroposophy, etc. ) suggests is that in modern history we have moved into a phase when the powers of evil are once again dominating things on this planet. (And it doesn't take a highly imaginative person to see how that might have been so in the last 100 years, and might still be so right now.) Now, I discovered recently that Lewis was influenced to some extent by his friends Owen Barfield (an anthroposophist) and Charles Williams, a novelist and poet very much of the 'esoteric' tradition; and although of course Lewis was a pretty mainstream Christian, these interplanetary novels reflect something of this influence. The theme of them is that Earth is 'the silent planet' (the first novel is called Out of the Silent Planet), because it is dominated by one of the malign 'eldils' (angels) - ie., Satan - and is cut off from the rest of the solar system which in Lewis's pre-space flight books is full of light and life. In That Hidous Strength there is a final apocalyptic conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light - the latter called down to Earth by a small group of Christian 'resistance fighters'. This sounds like the description of some awful trashy modern 'fantasy' novel, but being Lewis it is something much better than that. And of course, typically for Lewis, the forces of darkness are not mysterious black-cloaked figures and evil ghouls, but actually representatives of a quasi-governmental organisation called the N.I.C.E. - the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experimentation, which is all pseudo-scientific and rationalist and staffed by hordes of bureaucrats terribly concerned about 'progress' and 'modernisation'. Now does that seem familiar? Ironically enough, amongst the myriad quangos created by New Labour there is of course a N.I.C.E. - though apparently it stand for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (as if any clinics were seeking for mediocrity or even downright awfulness! - but then tha's NewLabourspeak for you). I'm not saying it's a satanist front - but! There is something very resonant in Lewis's idea that evil will present itself not in traditional guise but in smart suits and oh-so-reasonable projects for the 'betterment' of society and joy and prosperity for all. If you think about it, that is exactly what the communists said they were doing, not to mention the Nazis - also the progenitors of the EU empire and the 'things can only get better' modernisers Blair and his followers. And it always seems to involve the destruction and sweeping away of 'useless' old traditional ways of doing things, laws and institutions established over centuries, the 'tidying up' of things that were better 'untidied', and their replacement with tawdry gimmicks that cost a fortune, don't work very well, and seem to make people even more alienated and unhappy. There is a vivid and terrible sequence in the book where Lewis describes a college selling, or rather being forced to sell, and ancient piece of woodland to the N.I.C.E., and its brutal destruction by machinery and orc-like hordes, to no apparent purpose, but all in the name of 'modernisation'. I am not altogether sure yet if I believe in the existence of objective evil - but more and more I wonder what other explanation there could be for what has happened, and is happening, in the modern world. And of course, the one thing any force of objective evil would want to help it along would be for people to disbelieve in its existence. If so, then, as it said in the two compline services I have recently been to at New College:

Visit this place, O Lord, we pray,

and drive far from it the snares of the enemy;

may your holy angels dwell with us and guard us in peace,

and may your blessing be always upon us

Sunday 24th February 2008

On Monday I decided I should go to the evening service at New College, where I hadn't been for ages. It turned out to be Compline, rather than Evensong. Compline is a service I've often heard of but never attended; it was rather nice - all about the approach of night and warding off the powers of evil. It was done in the ante-chapel, by candle-light, with only the gentlemen in their black cassocks, without surplices, ranked along two rows of medieval pews, with the (small) congregation along the other two sides of a square. They sang music by Taverner and one of Tallis's Lamentations - highly suitable for Lent. It was beautifully sung, of course, and the whole thing evoked a monastic atmosphere well-suited to New College's ancient cloisters. I experienced a revival of my old feelings about Oxford, its history and atmosphere, and was reminded why I came here. and the preciousness of such traditions being kept up at least somwhere. The question is, whether these sorts of things can counteract the feelings of alienation I experience at the actual every-day atmosphere of contemporary urban life in Oxford, complete with beggars, junkies, drunken thugs and 'Islamic' ladies in black with face-masks. At the moment I just don't know.

This week's University Challenge was the semi-final, and Christ Church won again; I must say they are a very good team, although it was a bit closer than the earlier rounds and there were one or two wobbly moments. Once again I couldn't help reflecting that it was their general cultural awareness that gave them the edge; it's inevitable that Oxbridge colleges have the advantage in such a contest, not because they are cleverer, but because of the kind of schools most of them have gone to and the type of education they've received, which still includes a broad cultural 'initiation' as well as the various disconnected 'modules' of information on ideologically 'correct' subjects, without any context or attempt at a narrative, which appear to comprise 'learnacy' to use the latest piece of trendy jargon for what used to be called education. Mind you, if the insane people who govern continue to pressurise Oxford and other decent universities into accepting obligatory quotas from state schools regardless of quality, the situation may not last.

On Monday I also decided I really must get off that dreary canal, back onto the river. I was led to believe that the river was back to normal, but actually when I got onto the cut from Duke's Lock round onto the river it was still running quite fast, and I nearly panicked, but once I got on to the main river at King's Lock it wasn't too bad, and I made my way down to the Sheepwash channel, where I moored overnight. It was most refreshing to be back on the river, but the stream was still high enough to make me feel a bit uneasy, so the next day, Tuesday, I went back onto the canal through Isis Lock. While I was going through two boys appeared, and as usual I half-prepared myself for trouble, but it turned out to be one of those occasions when they were friendly and civilised. They asked sensible and polite questions about the lock and the boat, and actually listened to my answers, and they helped me through, and it was all most refreshing. I shall undoubtedly confirm my unfashionable and notably un-'pc' views once more by saying that they were almost certainly from an independent school - probably St. Edward's; again, they demonstrated the importance of imbibing civilised values as part of an education, rather than merely being encouraged to think of oneself as intrinsically 'cool' and owing nothing whatever to anyone else - least of all respect. I have had the occasional experience like this before on the boat, but sadly more often my experience of local youth on the waterways is liable to consist of sneering incomprehension or actual hostility, sometimes expressed by throwing stones. Still - it confirms what people are always saying, that not all young people are barbarians in this country today. Just an awful lot of them.

There's a sort of connection, there, with a TV series I've been following which has been fascinating. Entitled The Choir - Boys don't Sing, it has involved this young professional chorus master guy who believes that singing should be brought back into state schools (independent schools do it already, of course), and performed miracles in one benighted state comprehensive in his first series; in this second effort he went to a large, tough, all-male 'specialist sports academy' (ahem!) in Leicester to try to get them to sing. Allowing for the usual corniness and contrived effects of TV, it was a pretty impressive business. At the beginning the reaction of almost all the boys was along the lines of 'singing's for girls', 'singing is gay', etc, etc., but by herculean efforts by the end he had a choir of over a hundred who he managed to get motivated enough to sing at a youth music event at the Royal Albert Hall! It wasn't that in the end they were that good (although they were a million times better than when they started!) but what was impressive was that they were really so enthusiastic and they were trying so hard. Nothing could more different from the scruffy,. off-hand, casual 'oh we're just too cool to bother' rabble that he started with; it was really quite moving - by the end they were all smiling and laughing and exhilarated - totally different beings, in fact. Not only did it show just how good singing together is, but also simply that young people today are simply crying out for real challenges and achievements that actually requite some real effort - as opposed to all the 'child-centred', 'all-must-have-prizes', 'nobody must fail' which dominates contemporary educational theory and practice. You could see that they knew they were doing something difficult, and that when they managed to do it quite well the appreciation and respect they got was also real, not contrived and patronising. All they need is just the tiniest bit of genuine encouragment tempered with a bit of rigour (how many present-day state school 'learning facilitators' have even heard of that expression?!) The things that certain individuals in the group said almost brought tears to my eyes - there was one poor lad who'd been diagnosed with cancer, for god's sake, and he said that he couldn't do all the other things, like football and cricket and stuff, but he could take part in the choir, and feel really part of it all. And you could tell that it was genuinely important to him, and he was so amazingly un-self-pitying about it all. Even the school 'rappers', who had initially scorned the whole idea, were roped in by the end, and were transformed from sullen, scowling ultra-'cool' outsiders to normal, exuberant, laughing young men. How many more of these sorts of programmes need to be made before people begin to realise the sort of thing we need to do to try to reclaim the youth of this society and our education system?

Again there is a link with another interesting book I've come across, called Plato's Children, by one Anthony O'Hear. The Plato reference is to his famous Myth of the Cave, whereby he presents humanity as like inhabitants of a cave looking at shadows thrown by the outside world and mistaking the shadows for the reality. His thesis, which I totally agree with, is that in contemporary British society and the west in general we have somehow managed to construct a 'culture' which deliberately chooses to regard the shadows as the reality, and thus the extraordinary gobbledygook and jargon and fantasy concepts such as 'multiculturalism', 'diversity', 'access', 'political correctness', 'gender studies', 'training', 'quality assurance', 'social justice' and a host of others that distort every-day life, falsify our view of the world, involve so many of us in patent dishonesty and self-deception and drive most of us to distraction on a daily basis. One of the most important things he does is identify the 'Orwellian' misuse of language that has become routine, whereby words have little or no relationship to the real world, their etymology or the tradition within which they have been used, but instead mean whatever the person using them wants them to mean at that particular moment for their particular ideological reasons - frequently in fact the opposite of what they appear to mean. It's a very interesting and thought-provoking book, along the lines of some of the other 'the state we are in' books I've recommended recently, and again I would recommend anyone who is interested in or concerned about the insanity that is going on around us to get hold of it. But it does, again, tend to be rather depressing reading simply because when one realises just how far things have gone, as the author says, 'one despairs'. I shall try to include some quotes from the book on here next time.

I am back on the river tonight - opposite Christ Church Meadow and within sound of the booming voice of Great Tom, the bell of Christ Church and in sight of the 'dreaming spires'. How long I'll be here is another question - needless to say, after having been dry for two or three weeks and the river going down to normal, as soon as I came back on to the Isis is started bloody raining again, so I shall have to keep a close eye on the river and the weather forecast, as I have no wish to get caught in a flood again, and it is rather early in the year to have returned.

Sunday 17th Feb. 2008

On Thursday I was listening to This Week's Composer on Radio 3, who is Herbert Howells again. Today they played a little extract of Howells himself talking about being with Ivor Gurney one April day (presumably before the 1st World War) on a hill in Gloucestershire, looking out at the distant Malvern Hills, and Gurney telling him he should be influenced in his music for his whole life by the line of those hills. It was very touching, and it expressed a feeling about the English landscape and the relationship to it of the creative artist I immediately related to. Once again, I knew that I belonged with that generation, and with that England, and Britain - not with this sad, distorted, half-destroyed one that I'm living in now. How I hate what they've done to this country and its culture, and how I loathe the people that have done it - the soulless, humourless, relativistic 'modernisers' and control-freak micro-managers of New Labour, and their ilk, who want to destroy everything that ever mattered about this country and replace it with some nightmarish dystopia of their distorted materialistic fantasies. I really felt quite envious of Howells, when he talked about the way he'd written pieces inspired by or commissioned for places he knew and loved. That's all I ever wanted, really - to compose music reflecting the country and culture I was made by and am bound up with, and get some small satisfaction and recognition from it. But I was born at least 50 years too late.

I've been quite enjoying my little 'holiday' up at Kidlington, on the canal. It was very sunny and warm for a while, but in the last couple of days it's turned very cold, though still bright, with temperatures going several degrees below zero at night. (They're forecasting minus six tonight!) Only to be expected at this time of year, but a bit of a shock after being so mild lately. Today I rang Osney Lock and found that the river is back to normal as we've haven't really had any rain for a while now, so I was going to go round for a spin down-river to Christ Church, but I didn't want to bother going all the way up to Thrupp. through two locks and a lift -bridge, to turn round, so I decided to reverse down to Duke's Lock, and it took me so ridiculously long that in the end I stopped here again and decided to go through to the river tomorrow. If, that is, I am not frozen in - the ice was fairly bad this morning, and could be worse tomorrow, and though I am only a few hundred yards from the river it could be a problem getting there. Not that it's really important, as there is no real urgency - I would just like to get back on the river for a bit, away from this manky old canal I've been stuck on since the end of November!

All these strange weather effects we've been having. < Sparkly frosts on the Oxford Canal Port Meadow in the floods - invisible >

< On a walk through Lower Wolvercote I saw this notice on the gate of a small apple orchard.. It almost gave me hope for old England. Pity about the wassailing, though!

Sunday 10th February 2008

Time draws on apace, and a distinct air of Spring has descended in the last few days - rather premature, no doubt, and I expect there will be a spell of very nasty weather some time soon to dispel this temporary halcyon phase. I have retired slightly up the canal from central Oxford, into the country, partly to recover from the shock of the bill of a mere £487 I had to pay to have the engine problems sorted out at the College Cruisers' yard. It's such a relief not to have oil leaking into the bilges and to know that the valve problems and other things have been fixed (fingers crossed!), it's almost worth the expense. But as I spent over £100 on replacement oil since November, and also another £40 for disposal of the oil from the bilges, I am not feeling too happy at having been left in the lurch all this time. And now after all this the exhaust seems to be producing rather a lot of whitey-blue smokw which it hasn't done for quite a while, so I'm wondering about that. I know one has to be philosophical about these things, but I've more than used up the whole amount I'd allowed for maintenance for a year or so in the last 3 months! Oh well. I've also finally received my gold licence plates from British Waterways, though I already beginning to wonder if that was also a bit of an extravagance, so I am sort of free to cruise a bit now - though as the river is still swollen I can't really go that far, specially as I need to be within reach of Oxford for work. I thought I might try the Kidlington area for a bit - parts of that are still quite pleasantly rural, and there's a very good if overpriced bus service into Oxford.

I still keep finding interesting things in Jung's autobiography. Another consoling thought here:

' The decisive question of man is:Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilties, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. ...If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.'

Also, it occurred to me that his comments on the unimaginable outburst of evil expressed in political and social form in the 20th century, though he is obviously referring to Communism and Nazism, could equally well apply to the inhuman, nightmarish quality of the EU which so many people still can't seem to perceive:

'...at the end of the second millennium the outlines of a universal catastrophe became apparent, at first in the form of a threat to consciousness. This threat conssist in giantism - in other words, a hubris of consciousness - in the assertion: "Nothing is greater than man and his deeds." The otherworldliness, the transcendence, of the Christian myth was lost, and with it the view that wholeness is achieved in the other world. Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator....The Christian world is now truly confronted by the principle of evil, by naked injustice, tyranny, lies, slavery, and coercion of conscience. This manifestation of naked evil has assumed apparently permanent form in the Russian nation; (writing in the 1950's) but its first violent eruption came in Germany.'

'Hubris' is just exactly the right term for the megalomaniac attempt to impose a centralised, undemocratic, managerial unity on the variety of European cultures, and the contemptuous arrogance of the EU mandarins towards the electorates of Europe and even the pretence of accountability. I don't think that the term 'evil' is inappropriate for the deeply dishonest and corrupt thinking that is going on in Europe today, and the naked worship of worldly power and the horrible corruption of basic values of honesty and integrity that it all involves. Funnily enough, many Christian Zionists currently awaiting the end times confidently expect the Anti-Christ to appear in the form of a leader of the EU. Can it be a coincidence that there are now rumours confirming what I've been predicting for years - that Blair is to be the first EU 'President'? I must say that much as I dislike and deeply distrust the man I hadn't so far thought of him as a possible Anti-Christ. But then.... looking at him and that awful empty baleful grin of his....I wonder! Strange times, indeed.

Sunday 3rd February 2008

The weather has been a bit odd. At least it stopped raining, at last, and it's turned a bit cold and more like a normal Jan./Feb., but it's been so damned windy again - gale force winds, at times; I do get sick of the boat being banged around all night by violent gusts. Still - there are distinct signs of spring on the way - in fact there are even daffodils out already, as it's been so wet and mild.If I could just the engine properly sorted out and the river would go down I'd like to go cruising a bit. I've finally given up waiting for this mechanic guy to come back and sort out the problems I've had ever since he worked on the engin in November. He is clearly an unreliable person, and I would not recommend anyone to use him, and I certainly won't. (His name's Ian Cooper, by the way.)

I've been ploughing on through my various speculative readings. Nearly at the end of The Secret History of the World, and nearing the end of Jung's fascinating autobiography. The Jung book is full of the most wonderful insights - even though I have read it a number of times, and indeed possessed a copy for some years, many of his thoughts have struck me quite afresh. For example, after he had been seriously ill and almost died, and had a remarkable 'near-death experience', he writes:

'It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one's own destiny. In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory.'

'The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, that I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world's answer.'

I find these ideas rather comforting - I have been struggling for the last few years with feelings of defeat and frustration, but as Jung says, in the end you have to affirm your destiny, if you think you have one, rather than just give up and fit into 'the norm'. Then, as he says, even if you do end up defeated, at least you know you've tried to do something with your life. And far too many just accept 'the world's answer' - in other words, conform without thinking to whatever happens currently to be fashionable - at present that seems to be a combination of gross materialism, 'political correctness' and mindless populism. No-one can say I've succumbed to that sort of conformity. Setting out to be a classical composer was bound to be a gamble, after all, and not all of us can be lucky.

The trouble is that though I feel in my reading and thinking that I feel I'm on the right tracks for finding a renewed philosophy of life and an acceptance of worldly 'failure', the problem is, I think, that although I am and have been aware of this sort of thinking for a very long time, knowing about it in abstract is not necessarily a means of putting into practice. I need to find a way of bringing all these ideas together in a practical way. As someone said to me this week, what's really needed is spiritual discipline and practice. Which means going somewhere where one can actually partake of some sort of tradition. I suppose that's why I have this idealistic faith in India - I feel that in a place where such spiritual disciplines have been practises for thousands of years I should be able to find a lama or somebody to show me the way. There are of course monasteries etc., in the west where such disciplines exist, but unfortunately I think I would have difficulties with the organised Christian part of it all - though I daresay there are places where you don't actually have to join in if you don't want to. But then, 'joining in' is part of the point, isn't it.

This week the Christ Church team distinguished themselves again on University Challenge - at the rate they are going they have a pretty good chance of winning the contest, I would say. What I noticed was that they seemed to have a so much wider general cultural knowledge than the Warwick team - the sort things that I generally knew about at their age, after a grammar school education, and which so many young people nowadays seem not to have a cluse about. To put it bluntly, it was obvious that the Warwick team were mostly from state school backgrounds, whereas the Christ Church team were almost certainly all from independent or grammar schools. It merely reflects yet again on the appalling condition of our state education system, with its very narrow and ideologically-manipulated view of education. Call me an elitist (I would be proud of the label!), but I still believe in Matthew Arnold's definition of culture as 'the best that has been thought and said', and that inculcating the widest possible knowledge of such culture is what education should be about. This is of course a deeply unfashionable attitude in this day and age - which as far as I'm concerned is one of the reasons we are in the mess we are in.

Sunday 27th January 2008

As I continue with my weird and eclectic reading (which nevertheless seems to be leading me in some sort of direction or other at the moment), I came across two specially striking passages. Jung in his autobiography talks of meeting an old Pueblo Indian chief who was serenely confident that the Sun was God, and that his people's rituals were essential to keep the sun in its orbit and maintain life on earth. As Jung says:

'I then realised on what the "dignity" - the tranquil composure of the individual Indian, was founded. It springs from his being a son of the sun; his life is cosmologically meaningful, for he helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and descent. If we set against this our own self-justifications, the meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot but see our poverty. Out of sheer envy we are obliged to smile at the Indian's naivety and to plume ourselves on our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how impoverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth.' (Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

Meanwhile Graham Hancock, in his massive tome on the possibility of the existence of wide-spread submerged ruins around the world left over from pre-Ice Age civilisations inundated the collossal floods which did undoubtedly happen when the ice melted, is talking about his investigations in southern India, where extensive ruins have indeed been discovered out to sea which seem to have been predicted by India's very ancient religious texts, and the way that contemporary India still keeps alive a spritual tradition that has virtually disappeared elsewhere:

'Growing up in the industrialised and now the electronic world,dominated as it has been by the rival material philosophies of capitalism and communism, we automatically imbibe....the idea that civilisation is something that man invented in order to meet his material and economic needs. That is why, when archeologists look for the origins of civilisation, they look for the material and economic forces that might have driven hunter-gatherers to create the first village communities. But India, with its vibrant spiritual culture, its armies of ragged pilgrims, and its remarkable Vedas raises the possibility that the real origins of civilisation could be very different - not driven by economics but by the spiritual quest that all true ascetics of India still pursue with the utmost dedication.' (Graham Hancock: Underworld)

These quotes seem to me to link up well with my thoughts on materialism as the core of everything that is so very wrong with the world in general and this country and society in particular in the present day. As Jung also once said, 'There is a great tide of meaninglessness flooding across the modern world' (or words to that effect). The idea that people and the world in general are all just things which can be manipulated according to the latest theory to produce some ineffably 'progressive' result, and that the answer to every problem is more money and resources. This week a couple of things have come up that illustrate this in a small way - a proposal to put 'airport-style' detectors at the gates of schools to prevent pupils from taking knives in, and also a proposal to make cooking lessons compulsory. Eminently practical ideas, one might think (though nobody seems to have asked who will relieve the pupils of their knives when they are detected!). But when you stop and think, they are absolutely symptomatic of what is wrong in the thinking of the people who currently run our lives. Obviously metal detectors in schools are only an attempt to deal with the symptoms of a malaise which is eating away at the heart of our society - and that malaise is spiritual or philosophical - on other words, what is going on in the minds of school-children today that so many apparently routinely carry weapons, and how have we come to this? Regarding the cooking, although in some ways it could be very useful, again no-one seems to have stopped an asked themselves - how have we arrived at a state where not only do many children not have any idea what 'real' food is or how to prepare it, but in fact many children have never sat down at a table at home to eat a proper meal with the rest of their family, and often actually don't know how to use a knife and fork, let alone cook anything!? Again - the attempt to deal with the symptoms seems quite wilfully to ignore the fact that the malaise they indicate is something deep-seated and non-material - a massive collapse of the basic values of a civilised society, which has occured inexorably at the same time that New Labour have supposedly poured massive resources into education and measures for 'social justice', and everyone in this country is materially 'better-off' than ever in our history. Personally I can see no hope whatsoever for an improvement - quite the reverse - as long as the ruling elite of this country, of all parties, continues to worship at the shrine of materialistic 'progress' and fails to understand that it is the values - ultimately, perhaps, the spiritual values - of a society that makes it truly civilised. And these are just two small examples of the kind of lunacy that has become a daily occurence in 21st century Britain, and which many people have obviously come to regard as 'normal'!

On the boating front there is little to report. I am still stuck on the canal around Oxford, waiting for the river to go down, and also waiting to get my new Gold Licence stickers from British Waterways, who are certainly taking their time over relieving me of my money! Also I have been waiting in a sort of fatalistic resignation for the mechanic to return as promised and deal with my oil seepage problem. However, having left various messages over the last week or two I more or less given up on this particular gentleman(?) and am preparing to take the boat into a boatyard to get things sorted out, at further vast expense. It's very unfair, as I really shouldn't have to pay twice for work that clearly hasn't been done properly - but that's what comes of using freelance people who aren't acountable through any yard or company, I suppose. In future I shall always consult RCR over any repairs, as they have a reputation to preserve.

I still can't make my mind up whether to leave Oxford after Easter. There are things I do still very much like about the place, but then I can't walk down a street in the centre without feeling upset or affronted by what, and whom, I encounter. I don't need that sort of annoyance all the time. And also of course I have this rather convenient flexible part-time work which suits me quite well - would I be able to find anything like that elsewhere? It's a bit of a dilemma; I am waiting for my mind to make itself up in the course of time, which it usually does.

Sunday 20th January 2008

The rain has continued to pour and Oxford is once again surrounded by floods - it's very nearly at the stage it was in July, which were supposed to be the worst floods since at least 1947. And yet more rain is forecast this week! If this is going to become a regular thing in the future, it's going to make life on boats a bit more complicated!

I've been continuing my meditations on materialism and its opposites. Jung and The Secret History of the World continue to intrigue. When I say materialism I don't mean merely in the sense of 'oh aren't people greedy and materialistic these days', etc., - I mean it in a much wider sense: materialism as opposed to idealism as a philosophy and a way of understanding the universe. In fact the more I think of it, the more the problem of materialism seems to lie behind almost all the troubles of our society and times. For example - it occurred to me that the explanation of the peculiar horror of New Labour and the damage it has done to this country is that on the one hand it is controlled largely by people who either were or still are adherents of the specifically materialistic ideology of Marxism (remember 'dialectical materialism'?) - their ideas about the world were formed in their student days by the usual left-wing gobbledygook. But at the same time they have all been corrupted by the other kind of materialism - the worship of money and power - which became fashionable in this country particularly from the advent of Thatcherism. Thus they manage brilliantly to combine the worst of both worlds: they persist with the socialist idea that all that is required to make utopia on earth is more interference and more authoritarian control of peoples' lives, while on the other hand they are so corrupted by greed and megalomania that they see no contradiction in lining their own pockets and putting themselves into the power of big business and supranational hegemonies. And of course, as all values are equally 'valid' but totally relative, and as we all know the world consists of nothing more than 'things' that can be manipulated according to whatever flavour-of-the-month tripe happens to be in favour with what pass for our 'intelligentsia', the result is the mess we see around us every day. A society where traditional values and decencies have either been lost or deliberatley destroyed where millions liev according to what the TV has told them is fashionable that particular day. And the ruling class cynically exploit this collapse for their own ends whilst mouthing platitudes about 'social justice' and 'diversity' - all in the name of material progress. If you said 'But what about spiritual progress?' they honestly wouldn't know what you meant. The thing about a book like The Secret History, despite some of its wilder reaches, is that it reminds us that there always has been, and in some places still is, a timeless wisdom that has taught us for millennia that 'man does not live by bread alone', and that we forget that at our peril.

My own personal problem with all this is that although I have known of and been interested in all sorts of aspects of spiritual and philosophical traditions of this kind for a very long time, the great difficulty is bringing out of this awareness some sort of whole, rounded approach to life sufficient to counteract the sense of alienation - illness, almost - I experience in the face of every-day life almost all the time these days. That is the disadvantage, I suppose, of being unable to accept any specific formal organised religion or way of life - the C. of E., Buddhism and Hinduism all appeal to me, but I can't really envisage ever becoming a 'signed-up' member of any of these!

On the musical front, I have started writing two short choral pieces in memory of Ralph Vaughan Williams for this, the 50th anniversary year of his death. I may well write an orchestral piece too, but there is just slightly more chance of getting short choral pieces performed. I've chosen poems by two metaphysical poets, and I think I shall call them Two Mystical Songs. I've also been working away at my Hobbit music, which I must say I've been rather enjoying doing; conjuring up some music for Smaug, the great dragon, and his wrath-filled and fiery descent on Lake Town has been fun!

13th January

Here I am at the end of the Oxford Canal again, while rain continues to bucket down again day after day and the river rises inexorably. I was hoping we might have a dry winter to compensate for the appallingly wet summer, but that was clearly misguided; it's difficult to imagine when the river might ever be navigable again at this rate, and I foresee some serious flooding again unless there is a protracted dry period some time soon. I have decided to go for a Gold Licence this year, as it looks as though I will be on the canals a lot, and in any case I am contemplating moving on from Oxford. It's an expensive option, but at least you can pay in monthly instalments. I spent most of the last week up at Wolvercote, which I rather enjoyed - despite the loud trains and the noise from the ring-road it does still somehow feel rather countrified and remote up there, yet is in within an easy cycle ride of the centre of Oxford.

I must thank two recent contributors to my Guestbook for their contributions - Jeremy who has been doing some research on the Oxford Canal (I do think it slightly ironic that he says he 'worships' Dawkins! - perhaps he should read a book called The New Atheism which came out recently - or even The Dawkins Delusion? Not meaning any offence, but to my mind militant atheism is as worrying as militant faith. Also greetings to the crew of N/B Benevolence, which I have often noticed on the Oxford Canal - evidently a classic boat with some interesting history behind it.

I've come across another interesting book recently in Blackwells', called The Secret History of the World, by one Jonathan Black - it's a most remarkable summary, based on a lifetime's reading, of the doctrines and beliefs of various secret or esoteric world traditions, ranging from ancient mystery religions like those of Egypt and Greece, through Zoroastrianism, the Kabalah, Sufism, Gnosticism, et al., to Freemasonry, Anthroposophy, Jung, Theosophy and Magic, with lots more in between. It's general theme, which I find most intriguing and germane, is that there is and always has an alternative 'spiritual' tradition of understanding and interpreting the world as opposed to the materialist orthodoxy which dominates today, specially in Western thinking. While I may not agree with absolutely everything he says, his theme appeals greatly to me because I have recently been coming to the conclusion that almost everything that is wrong with our contemporary culture and society stems from this banal and reductive materialism, and that if we don't find some way of 're-enchanting' the world we live in we are doomed to increasing degradation and barbarism in the midst of apparent (material) plenty. This doesn't mean that I am about to become some sort of dread-locked crusty 'New Age' figure, but it does mean that I am encourage in my search for meaning outside of the conventional trappings of worldly and material 'success' that are all that are deemed worthwhile in our culture, what's left of it (cf. Theodore Dalrymple). For example, my frustration and anger at the current political and social idiocies which are rapidly destroying what's left of civilised life in Britain have reached such a burning, searing intensity that I have decided I just can't think about them too much - it's too self-corrosive, and it's so glaringly obvious that someone like me is not in a position to do much about them anyway. But it may be possible for individuals like myself to find paths to tread that at least partly escape from the nightmare - thus my idea of retreating further into the wilds and also of returning to India in the near future. There are millenia-old religious and philosophical traditions still alive in places like India which I believe may still have a lot to offer - certainly more for someone like me than trying to survive in the demented materialistic jungle which is modern Britain. I have been thinking a lot more along these lines, and shall attempt to amplify these thoughts in future entries.

Talking of Jung, I have been re-reading for the umpteenth time (but not for about 20 years) his fascinating autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. I first came across it in my teens, and it had an enormous effect on me then - in fact Jung was very influential on me at that time, and in many ways I think I was more on the right tracks at that age than I have been in more recent decades. I was partly led back to it by the fact I've been thinking about sleep and dreams a lot recently, and have been having some unusually vivid ones; my sleep patterns are still very disturbed and my nights restless, and I don't know whether the dreams are a result of or a cause of the unsettlement, but they are at least some sort of compensation, even though one or two have been pretty disturbing. Going back to the Jonathan Black book, he mentions the pineal gland, which apparently is involved with the production of melatonin and influences sleep, dreams and visions, and points out intriguingly that followers of mystery cults in ancient Greek art are frequently shown carrying wands with pine cones at the top of them, which represented the pinecone-shaped 'pineal' gland - many centuries before it was officially 'discovered' by modern science. Jung was always confident that the unconscious produces dreams that are necessary to tell us various things we are not aware of consciously, but need to know - if only we are attentive to them. Unfortunately my dreams tend to be rather chaotic and disrupted, but I am at least trying to be attentive to them, in case they can give me some signs of which way to go.

Sunday 6th January 2008

Ho-hum - well here we go again, then! Another year, the same planet. And so it all goes on, mysteriously. I have finally surfaced after the strange two week festive interregnum, which always feels like a bit of one of those parallel universes I am so interested in these days, and have returned to Oxford and the boat. I spent the New Year itself and the days after in London and then in Shropshire. It was reasonably diverting, and a change is always good at this time of year, but I do find I am always glad to get back to the boat and to my own space. At New Year it was all a whirl of social activity - I had more human contact in about four or five days than I normally have in the equivalent number of weeks, or even months! Mr. Robert Edwards came heroically on the train from Brighton for the day to Oxford, just before I went away, and accompanied me on a very short trip up the canal, despite some evident trepidation, after which we did a tour of some of Oxford's architecture and older pubs.

When I got to London I met up with Mr. Dickon Edwards, the Highgate celebrity and 'professional being', who is now more or less a vegan and lapsed teetotaller, and we went to the Millais exhibition at the Tate - as a member he kindly got me in free owing to the disinterested helpfulness of one of the assistants (so disinterested helpfulness does still exist in the world); it was quite interesting, though inconveniently crowded - Millais is a painter I've always liked; the conclusion I came to was that his earlier work is generally more interesting than his later, when he largely turned into a Victorian society painter, churning out work for the rich and famous, and that his best paintings, of his Pre-Raphaelite period, really need to be seen 'in the flesh' to be appreciated fully - the effect is startling, like very rich technicolour. If they still seem startling to our jaded modern eyes, then how extraordinary they must have looked to the Victorians! I also helped out Gordon with his t-shirt stall at Camden Market on the Saturday and Sunday - that was an experience! Not an especially pleasant one, I may add - I have rarely seen such an assemblage of unsavoury humanity gathered in one unsavoury place as Camden Market at the weekend, nowadays! Just being there for an hour or so gave me a terrible headache, I found. On Sunday I was partly saved by going for a coffee with Mr. Partridge and his odd Dutch hippy-friend 'Sky'; earlier I had visited Mark in his flat near Parliament Hill, where he showed me all his latest gadgets - I am slightly envious of people who lead a neat, bright, prosperous, modern life - but obviously I am not remotely prepared to pay the price in terms of full-time employment to afford such things; and after all, I do fairly well even here on the boat. The day before New Year's Eve Mr. Benson the actor came down for a brief visit from upstairs - he and some Czech friends were supposed to come for New Year's Eve, but unaccountably they didn't in the end, so in the end it was a pretty quiet evening mostly spent watching The Life of Brian and getting a bit drunk. The London fireworks looked quite good on TV, but I'm only too glad I wasn't down there amongst the drunken masses. New Year's Eve was always a terribly over-rated business, anyway. After that it was Shropshire and bucolic simplicity, which was quite pleasant really. Although not all my sojourns in that county have been that wonderfil at times, I do have a fondness for Shropshire and a feeling of nostalgia when I go there. I suppose as one of my several layers of fall-back strategies for dealing with my current problem of feeling like an exile in my own country, it's not impossible I might end up living in that part of the world, if I don't end up lving in India. After all the festive excitement I must now return to my hermit-like existence on the boat and try to be constructive - though I have decided to try to make it a little less hermit-like, though it is so very difficult to make new friends at my age and given my strange way of life.

I've had a little bit of an energy burst with the new year, though not as much of one as I would like, and had a few ideas for things. One thing that has occupied me is the idea of composing some music for The Hobbit - I was given the idea by the announcement they are going to make a film of it. Since few composers would have a deeper sympathy with Tolkien than myself I decided that really I should write the music. As I don't actually know of any of the people involved in the film project I thought I'd just write some music and then post links to it on the official Hobbit website messageboards. It can't do any harm, and might even just lead to something - I am not expecting anything, of course, but it's something to pass the time with, and with my snazzy new sibelius 5 programme I can produce some remarkably convincing-sounding results. At the same time I am contemplating two different Vaughan Williams tributes for this anniversary year. And I really need to galvanise myself to get going with the CD project again.

Meanwhile I will have to stay here mooching about on the Oxford Canal, at least until the river becomes navigable again - whenever that might be, given the amount of rain we're having again now. I've applied for a Gold Licence this year, as it will make things easier, specially if I pursue my plan to leave Oxford in the spring. It's ridiculously expensive, but I discovered that you can pay for it in monthly instalments. I am thinking of going up the canal a bit for a while, both to get away from central Oxford and into the country and also so as not to get into trouble for overstaying in the area, even though it's a very quiet time of year with very few boats moving anyway.

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