I am being royally teased by the Stan Clan at the moment because I have reached the stage in my life when I can properly appreciate a good pair of slippers.
I bought these from M&S and they are outrageous comfortable - you feel like your knackered old man's feet are being hugged by memory foam.
I could care less that they look like footwear favoured by OAPs. I mean, only my close family will ever see them and anyway just how trendy do slippers get anyway ?
Fashion faux-pas ? Je ne regrette rien.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Christmas Time
The Magistrate Court calendar is a little out of whack from reality. While some cases can be dealt with in a matter of days, others drag on for months. So just as the daffodils are coming out, Christmas has come to the courthouse in the shape of a bunch of offences dating back to December.
Christmas 2010 was not a season of goodwill to all men, and it certainly wasn't to all women. It was the season of dysfunctional families forced to spend time together, with an added sprinkling of financial worries, unreasonable expectations and binge drinking.
There's a widespread delusion that domestic violence is about a mentally deficient alcoholic man in a dirty string vest beating up on his long-suffering wife because his dinner wasn't on the table when he got back from the pub. In fact, it's hardly ever about that.
Tommy Cooper beat his wife. Hillary Clinton beat her husband. Ringo Starr beat his wife. Liza Minelli beat her husband. Abraham Lincoln was beaten by his wife. With Humphrey Bogart it was more 50:50 with his wife. The legendary libel lawyer George Carman punched his wife in the stomach when she was pregnant and threatened her with two knives, saying: "Which one do you want in you first?"
The abuse case I worked on concerned a very successful local businessman who took his family out for Christmas dinner, had a skin-full, went home and then proceeded to beat his wife and then his teenage son who had gone to protect his mum. Despite his entire family coming to court and giving consistent testimony against him, he still insisted that he was the victim - in his view his son had jumped him for no good reason and his wife and other kids had lied to get back at him (for reasons unknown). Had his dog been called as a witness, I'm sure he would have protested that that dog had always had it in for him.
There were some particularly disturbing details in the story. For example, the wife, as soon as the argument started, went to the kitchen to tidy cupboards while her husband verbally abused their teenage daughter in the lounge. It spoke volumes of a long pattern of abuse that she can cope with only be going to a place where she has power and blocking out the unmanageable.
I looked at the man in the dock and wondered what was going on in his head. I sensed incredible weakness - a man who had lost the control he craved and could only impose his will through throwing his weight around.
I almost pitied him.
Almost.
Christmas 2010 was not a season of goodwill to all men, and it certainly wasn't to all women. It was the season of dysfunctional families forced to spend time together, with an added sprinkling of financial worries, unreasonable expectations and binge drinking.
There's a widespread delusion that domestic violence is about a mentally deficient alcoholic man in a dirty string vest beating up on his long-suffering wife because his dinner wasn't on the table when he got back from the pub. In fact, it's hardly ever about that.
Tommy Cooper beat his wife. Hillary Clinton beat her husband. Ringo Starr beat his wife. Liza Minelli beat her husband. Abraham Lincoln was beaten by his wife. With Humphrey Bogart it was more 50:50 with his wife. The legendary libel lawyer George Carman punched his wife in the stomach when she was pregnant and threatened her with two knives, saying: "Which one do you want in you first?"
The abuse case I worked on concerned a very successful local businessman who took his family out for Christmas dinner, had a skin-full, went home and then proceeded to beat his wife and then his teenage son who had gone to protect his mum. Despite his entire family coming to court and giving consistent testimony against him, he still insisted that he was the victim - in his view his son had jumped him for no good reason and his wife and other kids had lied to get back at him (for reasons unknown). Had his dog been called as a witness, I'm sure he would have protested that that dog had always had it in for him.
There were some particularly disturbing details in the story. For example, the wife, as soon as the argument started, went to the kitchen to tidy cupboards while her husband verbally abused their teenage daughter in the lounge. It spoke volumes of a long pattern of abuse that she can cope with only be going to a place where she has power and blocking out the unmanageable.
I looked at the man in the dock and wondered what was going on in his head. I sensed incredible weakness - a man who had lost the control he craved and could only impose his will through throwing his weight around.
I almost pitied him.
Almost.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Three Wise Men (and Norbert)
We have a knitted Nativity set in our window at Christmas (doesn't everyone?).
This gets packed away in a big crate with the rest of the decorations in January and stowed on a high shelf in the garage. Except this year, one of our wise men fell down behind the sofa and missed out on being packed.
He's still around. This is partly because I can't be pestered to get the crate down, but mostly it's because it amuses us to have him around and we imagine he is Norbert, the not-so-wise man, who set off from the East with the Magi, but made an absolute hash of following the star (how hard is that ?) and ended up really quite a long way from Bethlehem still carrying his present for the baby Jesus.
Socks, I imagine - I don't believe Norbert's taste in presents is any better than his navigation skills.
This gets packed away in a big crate with the rest of the decorations in January and stowed on a high shelf in the garage. Except this year, one of our wise men fell down behind the sofa and missed out on being packed.
He's still around. This is partly because I can't be pestered to get the crate down, but mostly it's because it amuses us to have him around and we imagine he is Norbert, the not-so-wise man, who set off from the East with the Magi, but made an absolute hash of following the star (how hard is that ?) and ended up really quite a long way from Bethlehem still carrying his present for the baby Jesus.
Socks, I imagine - I don't believe Norbert's taste in presents is any better than his navigation skills.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Stand-up, Stand-up for Jesus
I couldn't quite believe "Thought for the Day" this morning. Some total whack-job (Rhidian Brook) evaded security and managed to deliver a surreal dead-pan treatise on why the gospels are more comic than tragic, before he could be dragged away from the mic, medicated and sent back to the Home for the Bewildered.
I'm no bible scholar, but isn't the story of Jesus highly tragic, with a twist of hope? Not comic, not by any stretch. Jesus by all accounts was a serious man with a serious purpose who was messily killed by other serious men. Yes, it is eminently possible for a sermon about some of the issues in the gospels to be comic and for a talented preacher to make a congregation roar while still making a serious point. But that doesn't make the source text in any way comic.
He was also seems under the impression that Jesus was born in a pig sty. Hello ?!
I'm looking forward to Rhidian's sequel, in which he explains to Muslims that the Koran is more comic than tragic. He should definitely avoid using cartoons to illustrate his points though.
I'm no bible scholar, but isn't the story of Jesus highly tragic, with a twist of hope? Not comic, not by any stretch. Jesus by all accounts was a serious man with a serious purpose who was messily killed by other serious men. Yes, it is eminently possible for a sermon about some of the issues in the gospels to be comic and for a talented preacher to make a congregation roar while still making a serious point. But that doesn't make the source text in any way comic.
He was also seems under the impression that Jesus was born in a pig sty. Hello ?!
I'm looking forward to Rhidian's sequel, in which he explains to Muslims that the Koran is more comic than tragic. He should definitely avoid using cartoons to illustrate his points though.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
A Change in the Weather
Can't actually remember the last time I read a novel from end to end - it has been several years anyway.
I did finally get the chance since I've been on the train to London and not the car - the police get all agitated when you try reading a good book while you're driving on the M6.
I'll probably not wait a couple of years now that I've read "Solar" by Ian McEwan. His protogonist is a physicist with a planet-sized ego and a planet-sized appetite (and not a small planet either). A fairly blatant metaphor for the human race in other words. If you want the plot spoiled, read this bunch of spoilers masquerading as a review in The Guardian, otherwise just trust that the prose is excellent and well-worth the effort. All but one of the characters are one-dimensional but this is absolutely justified since the book is written from the point of view of the Prof and this is exactly the way he sees the world.
Funny how climate science seems to be chasing me around whenever I get cultural - I enjoyed the imperfect but rather brilliant play "Greenland" at the National Theatre recently. Written by four separate playwrights it gives you four different human insights into our present muddle about climate change.
* A teenager who wants to do something and can't understand why everyone else (especially her parents) don't.
* A troubled mother and daughter in family therapy - the fact that the neighbour leaves a light on all night for his dog is a crime against the planet in the daughter's eyes. To the mother though, this fretting over nothing is a sign of mental illness.
* A geography student on a field trip to the warming Arctic
* A climate modeller's affair with one of Ed Milliband's advisers in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks
The play was treated by the critics and bloggers like a polar bear treats a guillemot chick, but I rather liked its complexity and craziness. Climate change is a complicated subject best left to atmospheric physicists, but our personal and political response to it is even more complex and this is where Ian McEwan and the four "Greenland" playwrights can make an important contribution to the debate.
The polar bear in "Greenland" was excellent too - worth the price of a ticket alone.
I did finally get the chance since I've been on the train to London and not the car - the police get all agitated when you try reading a good book while you're driving on the M6.
I'll probably not wait a couple of years now that I've read "Solar" by Ian McEwan. His protogonist is a physicist with a planet-sized ego and a planet-sized appetite (and not a small planet either). A fairly blatant metaphor for the human race in other words. If you want the plot spoiled, read this bunch of spoilers masquerading as a review in The Guardian, otherwise just trust that the prose is excellent and well-worth the effort. All but one of the characters are one-dimensional but this is absolutely justified since the book is written from the point of view of the Prof and this is exactly the way he sees the world.
Funny how climate science seems to be chasing me around whenever I get cultural - I enjoyed the imperfect but rather brilliant play "Greenland" at the National Theatre recently. Written by four separate playwrights it gives you four different human insights into our present muddle about climate change.
* A teenager who wants to do something and can't understand why everyone else (especially her parents) don't.
* A troubled mother and daughter in family therapy - the fact that the neighbour leaves a light on all night for his dog is a crime against the planet in the daughter's eyes. To the mother though, this fretting over nothing is a sign of mental illness.
* A geography student on a field trip to the warming Arctic
* A climate modeller's affair with one of Ed Milliband's advisers in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks
The play was treated by the critics and bloggers like a polar bear treats a guillemot chick, but I rather liked its complexity and craziness. Climate change is a complicated subject best left to atmospheric physicists, but our personal and political response to it is even more complex and this is where Ian McEwan and the four "Greenland" playwrights can make an important contribution to the debate.
The polar bear in "Greenland" was excellent too - worth the price of a ticket alone.
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