Peace by peace

On By Laura MorganIn Books1 Comment

As I may have mentioned here before, I am reading War and Peace. I’ve been reading it since the start of December, when I loftily and optimistically expected to be finished by the new year. As of this morning, I am 1,155 pages in with 289 to go, so I’m well in sight of the finishing line, relatively speaking, but I still don’t quite believe I’m ever going to get there.

Part of the problem is that the physical thing itself is so large that my reading locations are limited. I lug it to and from work every day and read it on the tube, but I can’t read it in bed – which is where I get most of my reading done – because I have a habit of dropping my book on my face when I fall asleep, and doing that with W&P would result in severe facial injuries (or at the very least a nasty shock).

Another distraction is the pile of mystery books I was given last week: I am currently also in the middle of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, which is as much fun as it sounds, and once I’m finished with that I’ve got an anthology of detective stories to read, as well as Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. All of these books draw me in and keep me breathlessly bound to them in a way that War and Peace is not doing, though I admit that the fault may lie with me rather than with Leo. I am so used to reading stories with a mystery that must be solved that I keep waiting for something to happen, some sort of denoumenent or revelation; and I can’t help feeling that all that will happen is that various people will get married and some of them will die, and it all will be a bit like real life, only…longer.

My sister recently emailed from somewhere on the Red Sea and said she’d given up on her current book because, in her words, “I was quite enjoying it, but all the characters had the same name and it always returned to describing war tactics”. Although she happened to be talking about One Hundred Years of Solitude, this is more or less exactly how I feel about War and Peace. I’m going to plough grimly on to the end, however, and will let you know if I experience a sudden change of heart, or if I find out whodunnit.

Early morning rage

On By Laura MorganIn TV and radio2 Comments

I think I need a new radio station to listen to first thing in the morning. On the days when I leap out of bed like the lark it’s not so bad, because I only get to hear the weather forecast, which is all I really need. But on the days when it takes me a little longer to emerge, blinking, from under the duvet, the Today programme is capable of rousing me to a state of apoplexy that isn’t healthy before breakfast.

I have always been bemused by the programme’s apparent remit to challenge everything their guests say, no matter how apparently uncontroversial. Fighting for the sake of a fight seems an unlikely position for a magazine show to take, although some presenters (I’m looking at you, Humphreys and Naughtie) are worse than others.

But a couple of times in the last week or two this stance seems to have tipped over into something a bit more disturbing. After the imprisonment of Metropolitan Police Commander Ali Dizaei earlier this month for misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice, John Humphrys interviewed Alfred John, current chairman of the Metropolitan Black Police Association, of which Dizaei was once president. Fair enough, except that a disproportionate amount of time was devoted to whether and to what extent the MBPA had been “discredited” by Dizaei’s conviction.

If a former police officer breaks the law, it’s the police service itself which is discredited (if anyone but the offender is), and not an association his membership of which had nothing to do with the crime for which he was convicted. What was really happening here was that Dizaei had rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way while at the helm of the MBPA, leading to a distrust of the association in some quarters, and this was a chance to smear it by insinuating that Dizaei’s criminal activity was somehow related to his insistence that the Metropolitan Police is still institutionally racist, when the two things are quite seperate. Just because he’s a criminal doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything. Both Alfred John and the other guest, Brian Paddick, agreed that there is still racism within the police service, and that the MBPA has a legitimate and important job to do.

“Given that you have tried and failed by your own admission”, responded Humphrys, “there must surely be a better way of dealing with this.”

This was a novel twist. The MBPA should be disbanded not because there isn’t racism in the police, but because there is. Alfred John dealt with this silly challenge quickly and easily, but he shouldn’t have had to. I’m not sure that emphasising Dizaei’s relationship with the MBPA was the way to go at all in this feature, but the suggestion that there’s a problem with the existence of the association itself because of the actions of one officer, no matter how high-profile, makes me uncomfortable and I think reflects very badly on the programme and its editors.

Then a few days later the Church of England got into another one of its wrangles about gay members of the clergy. “It’s a moral question, isn’t it?”, opined James Naughtie. Well, Jim, not really. Not unless you actually think there’s still a question to be answered about whether it’s OK to be gay. If there isn’t, it’s if anything a legal question about whether the church is breaking employment law by discriminating against a particular group of people. You ridiculous man.

Which made me wonder, incidentally, why we don’t prosecute religious organisations which don’t allow certain groups to do particular jobs, or religious figures who incite hatred by speaking out against certain groups or individuals. Why can’t we ban the Pope from the UK unless he stops attacking equality legislation, or take him to court if he comes? I am fervently hoping Peter Tatchell will rise to the occasion, but he shouldn’t have to. We should oppose discrimination wherever we find it and not avoid confrontation at the risk of offending someone. The Pope is just a man.

So as you can see, I need something calming to wake up to. Birdsong, possibly, or classical music. If you have any suggestions, please let me know before I burst a blood vessel.

Bath, Box and points west

On By Laura MorganIn Other cities, Reasons to be cheerful

Forgive me if I seem a little distracted: I’ve just returned from a weekend in the countryside, and it’s left me so calm I’m almost unconscious.

February is a difficult time to take a weekend break in the UK, because it’s too cold to visit the seaside (though we did it anyway this time last year) and the best attractions in the cities are often still closed for the winter. But after a busy few weeks at work and at home the time seemed ripe for a weekend away, and somehow the various options were whittled down until we had arrived at Bath as our intended destination.

Well, I would never stay at a hotel which wasn’t recommended by tripadvisor.com, and Foggam Barn B&B in Box, a village five miles outside Bath in Wiltshire, had better recommendations than any other guest house in the area, so we booked for a two-night stay. The first pleasant surprise came when I told the owner, Denise, that we’d be arriving by the five o’clock train and taking a taxi from Bath. “Don’t take a taxi,” she emailed; “I’ll come and pick you up from the station”. And she did, and dropped us off again yesterday, and gave us a lift to the restaurant a mile away where we ate on Saturday night.  She also put fresh flowers, chocolates and champagne in our room, unprompted and at no extra cost, and cooked us two very nice breakfasts. Ten out of ten for Foggam Barn.

We spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday in Bath itself. It’s quite as beautiful as everyone tells you it is, with no shortage of interesting things to do. The baths themselves are fascinating, and in places quite enchanting. Also warm, which had become a key consideration to me at this point. Everywhere outside London is colder than I expect it to be.

Afterwards, we tramped up the hill to take a look at the Circus and Royal Crescent, both of which I was keen to see, avid student of architecture that I, um, used to be. The Royal Crescent in particular is possibly more impressive at a distance than up close, the beauty of the individual buildings somewhat obscured by decades of dirt. You would think there would be cash available for the basic maintenance of a world heritage site, but what do I know? The overall effect is still very impressive, and a flat in the Royal Crescent remains on the list of properties I will consider buying when I come into my millions.

Next, we visited the Jane Austen Centre, just down the hill on Gay Street and a few doors away from the house where Austen lived with her mother and sister for a few years in the early 1800s. The rosy-cheeked lady behind the counter told us to take our tickets and wait upstairs in an ante-room. “Your guide will join you there shortly”, she announced grandly. We duly took our tickets and trooped up the rickety stairs to a small room where we watched a film of an unnamed man stripping to his pants. I think he then dressed up in Regency costume, but to be honest with you the memory of his hairy white belly is all I’ve managed to retain. Sorry.

Eventually, the double doors ahead of us swung open dramatically. “Hello”, said the same rosy-cheeked lady who had sold us our tickets a few minutes earlier, “and welcome to the Jane Austen Centre. Please take your seats in here ready for the introductory talk”.

We walked into the front room, elegant with its bay window and original fittings. Chairs were set out in rows, all of which bar the front and the back were filled before we got there. “Shall we sit at the front?”, I asked my beloved. “Let’s sit at the back”, he replied, and thank goodness, because if I struggled to keep my subsequent giggles at bay whilst hidden safely away in the back row, I don’t know how I’d have coped had I been within inches of the rosy-cheeked lady, who proceeded to give us a talk in the style of a Hitler parody delivered by somebody whose first language is not English. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to make an audio recording, because I can’t possibly do it justice in writing. She had obviously learned the whole thing from a script, and either had no interest in the subject matter or was so awkward about public speaking that she couldn’t work out where to place the emphasis. Sentences were cut off midway, dramatic pauses occured in the most unexpected places, sections were entirely incomprehensible and the whole thing was delivered at high volume and in a rattling style that would make an army major proud. It was brilliant. Particularly enjoyable was the fact that in her mind she had so completely separated the words in her script from anything she might say of her own accord that the speech ended like this:

Robotically: “…so thank you for visiting the Jane Austen Centre.”  Pause, breath. Brightly: “Thank you for visiting the Jane Austen Centre!”

Next, we were herded through to a third room where we got to watch another video, this one a knowing turn from actor Amanda Root, full of quizzical looks to camera and lines like “it’s easy to imagine Jane sitting in the window of this house…witty, wise and ironic”. If you say so, Amanda.

The reason for the elaborate preamble became evident as we made our way into the permanent exhibition, which contains – well, nothing. There are some costumes from screen adaptations (but none of the ones you’ll have seen), reproductions of portraits of Austen and various members of her family, and a few photos of modern Bath residents and Austen fans (and she does have fans, in the way that only certain writers seem to) pretending to be at a ball. And that’s it. It’s the most curiously content-free exhibition I think I’ve ever been to, which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. The whole visit was terrific fun, but perhaps not quite in the way intended.

There are Colin Firth-as-Mr Darcy fridge magnets on sale in the shop, which I think makes up for everything. I wish I’d bought one and I can’t think why I didn’t. Two excellent meals and a good night’s sleep later we arrived back in Bath with five hours to kill before our train home, so we had a walk around the city centre, stopped for a cup of tea and then went to see A Single Man, in which Firth stars as a bereaved lover, his more dramatic scenes punctuated by whispered “phwooooaaar”s from the beloved.

The only blot in an otherwise perfect landscape was provided by the local bus services, which seem to be operated by two rival companies. We bought return tickets into Bath on Saturday morning but our driver failed to warn us that the return halves would only be valid for one in four buses running on the return route, so we had to buy new tickets for the journey home. We ended up spending £17 on bus fares that day, which seems extortionate, especially when compared with London prices for public transport. But I’ll forgive Bath and the surrounding district for its shoddy bus service on the grounds that everything else was a delight, and there is almost nothing as cheering as waking up to the sound of a cock crowing (quiet at the back, there). When I’m a grown-up I’m going to go and live in the countryside (as long as I can live somewhere where I can still go to the theatre, and get the Guardian delivered, and buy milk at 3am, and won’t get snowed in).

The Infidel

On By Laura MorganIn Films, Reasons to be cheerful

Erratum: none of the below is true.

I took two weeks off between leaving my old job and starting my new one last summer, and in the gap I spent a day as an extra on a film set. The film is now finished, and although it’s not scheduled for release until April, a trailer was published today on the Guardian’s website. IIf you look very closely, you’ll spot me in the background of the bar mitzvah scene. Here is a still with an arrow pointing to the top of my head, in case you can’t find me:

(The film is about a Muslim who discovers that he’s adopted and is really a Jew. It has the potential to be horrible, but my film reviewer friend who’s seen it says that it’s quite good. Also that I am “clearly visible for several minutes”.)

Advice for parents

On By Laura MorganIn Uncategorized

I live opposite a primary school. On mornings when I start work at the usual time rather than in the middle of the night, I leave home just as a stream of Joshuas and Emilys, accompanied by their parents, au pairs, younger siblings and family pets, are making their way across the park in the opposite direction from me. Sometimes we play a hilarious game which involves me standing still for minutes at a time as the parade of mummies and buggies moves ceaselessly forward and I wait patiently for a gap large enough to allow me through the park gates.

It’s OK, I’m fine with that. Well, mostly.

Anyway, it gives me a good chance to peer closely at today’s five-to-eleven-year-olds, and I’ve noticed something which makes me anxious. The gender of small children, you see, is not always easily discernible from their outward physical appearance, which is why we have a tradition of offering clues to the innocent observer in the way we dress them and cut their hair. However, this tradition seems to have gone by the wayside in the last few years, with alarming results. There is a whole swathe of small children whose gender I simply can’t determine, because they have shoulder-length hair and wear dungarees, and none of that is enough of a clue for me.

Well, it doesn’t matter on the school run, because I’m not some kind of freak who befriends small children in the street. But it can make life more difficult when you meet the children of people you have met, whose gender you ought either to know or be able to discern. A couple of summers ago the beloved and I were at a garden party full of other people’s children, and were befriended by an angelic little blonde thing who might have been either or both. After close observation we agreed, it must be a girl. She has a girl’s face. We thought we’d confirm it.

“You’re a very pretty little girl, aren’t you?”, said my beloved. She nodded, bashfully. Phew, got it right.

After a while her father came over to retrieve her. “She’s lovely”, we said. He looked at us angrily. “His name is Oliver*”, he said. We felt bad.

So this is my advice for parents: by all means, have an androgenous-looking child. But either have an androgenous-looking child, or get cross when people can’t tell what sex it is. Not both.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Moving on

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

I was refused entry to a club on Saturday night. A party of six of us made the slightly booze-influenced decision that we’d go to G-A-Y at Heaven to see Jedward perform there. Yes, I know, but it sounded like fun at the time, and it was still early, and why not?

Well, we got there and the two women in our group were turned away by the female bouncer. “She can’t come in, she’s drunk”, she said as she herded my companion down the “rejects” funnel. Then she looked at me. “And you too.” I didn’t feel drunk. “What have I done?”, I said. “I’m not drunk!”. (I was, a bit.) “You’re with her”, she explained, as she sent me down the same path.

The four men in our party had been allowed in, but, gentlemen that they are, they left with us after we were turned away. But the whole experience was absolutely mortifying, and in trying to work out why I felt so humiliated I realised that I don’t think we were turned away for being drunk, or even for being women, which was what we decided at the time: I think we were turned away for being too old and too uncool for G-A-Y at Heaven, and though I know in my heart of hearts that I am too old and too uncool (and, yes, possibly too female) for G-A-Y at Heaven, it’s distressing to have it publicly confirmed.

So here’s my new-month’s resolution: from now on, I will only frequent pubs for grown-ups, where nobody assesses my suitability on the way in, and I’m allowed to hang on to my bottled water all evening. Take that, G-A-Y at Heaven!