AT LAST... A GOOD READ

Since Lockdown One I’ve been struggling to read properly.  

Properly  meaning reading a book from beginning to end. I’ve flipped through magazines and papers, I’ve dipped into books usually stopping out of frustration. Nothing seemed to grip me or suspend my thinking about the mechanics of reading. I was like the child in the car asking “are we nearly there yet?” 

A very clever and good friend confessed to suffering from the same affliction saying he read a book at the same pace now as he used to read Latin prose (mind you he got the top classics scholarship to the top college in Oxford over  half a century ago so he probably read Latin quite fast.) Now he flipped through the first few pages of a book and said he knew pretty well what the author was going to say and he couldn’t be bothered with fiction.

I got paranoid and went to the optician for a test expecting to be told I was going blind. Instead he prescribed reading glasses. I’ve taken a while to get used to them as when I have them on I can see the printed page clearly but the rest of the room is a blur and a glass of wine even before I’ve started drinking it seems out of focus. 

Harper Lee cured me when I read what she’d said:

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

The clincher was to realise three books by three of my favourite writers were out at the beginning of May. Robert Harris, Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. 

I’ve finished two in three days and the third will be read and done with by tomorrow.

I can read. I can read again.

“The Bomber Mafia” by Malcolm Gladwell is a study of the psychology of war. When in the late 1930’s a Dutchman invented the bomb-aimer so sophisticated it could (theoretically) enable you to drop a bomb from six miles up into a barrel of pickles, a group of young men, self-styled the Bomber Mafia, realise this could mean being able to end war which involved large armies killing each other and focusing instead on taking out key factories. The story (a true one of course) is the debate between this vision led by an intellectual  young General Hayward Haskell and the more pragmatic ‘obliterate-them’ view of an even younger get-it-done General Curtis LeMay.

In the event Haskell gets fired in the war against the Japanese and is replaced by the dour LeMay who leads napalm raids on 67 Japanese cities. The war was over before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Millions had been burnt to death before that final hammer blow.

Unbelievably May gets a medal from the Japanese for helping stop the war quickly and letting the US in rather than a prolonged break-up of Japan by the Soviets and Chinese.

Gladwell says:

“Curtis won the battle. But Haskell won the war.”

It’s a great story but I’m not sure I agree with that after recent events in Syria.

“V2” is by Robert Harris. They’re both war books. Obviously I feel aggressive. The book describes the story of Werner Von Braun’s V2 rockets and the attempt of the British to anticipate through trigonometry how to take out their launch sites.

It’s near the end of the war, Hitler’s last gamble. And as it ends with both sides thinking they’d inflicted vast damage on the other but ends with the line “we were both misled”.

Gripping, informative, readable and …. read.

And yet to come…

BEATING THE DOOM OF JUNE

I’m starting this Jubilee Blog with an image to terrify any civilised person. It’s about poor old Greece. From the cradle of civilisation to a rather messy deathbed. The man scrambling through the skip for a few drops of olive oil is you and me. Middle class, probably a professional not so much down on his luck as suffering because of geography, nationality and politics. But read Michael Lewis’ “Boomerang” to get a vivid insight into what Greekness is. He says that even the Greeks don’t like each other.

And having shuddered at this in a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I way,  thank your lucky stars you live here in Britain which is a great place to be.

Tim Smit from the Eden Project talking about the Big Lunch on Saturday Live on Saturday May 2nd was wonderfully irate about the doom merchants:-“I’m sick and tired of hearing ‘Broken Britain’. We can say what you want without being found dead in a ditch. We get free education, free health care and most people are really nice and get on with each other.”

Well said Tim.

And there’s one other thing that Matthew Parris noted. We currently have a marked “absence of crisis” this Jubilee weekend. All is not that well but it sure isn’t pear shaped or olive oil smelling. Absence of crisis may be boring but it’s calming.

 And talking about being able to say whatever you want can I make a strong comment about the marketing of cigarettes? As a consequence of Government intervention I really want to take up smoking again. Not slightly want to – I mean really, really want to. It’s that fabulous new packaging they’re going to bring in. I think they’ve got it all wrong. This is the biggest re-launch of fags ever. After years of their marketers fiddling around with designery stuff we’re going to get big bold plain packs creating a sort of Absolut for nicotine. Smokers kit not poncey brands.  Blank pack as role model. Note the words I’ve highlighted in red. Brilliantly satirical stuff….only they’re serious.

"WHAT IS PLAIN PACKAGING?

Plain packaging means that all tobacco products will be required to look the same. All brand names would have to be written in a standard typeface, colour and size. And all other trademarks, logos, colour schemes and graphics would be banned. 


As it stands, designed packs are the tobacco industry's last form of advertising. Shiny holograms, pretty pastel colours and wrappers are all used to attract children and lessen the effectiveness of health warnings on packs."

And then there’s Mr Krugman, the famous American economist who has won prizes for his insights and enraged opponents with his plain speaking.

I heard him speak and was dazzled especially when asked how he could be so rudely contemptuous of people who disagreed with him. He explained this was not the case at all, that he was only contemptuous of those whose views were contemptible. I could have listened to him for hours.

And finally in this world we are so lucky to inhabit where madness like plain cigarette packaging are provided as political comedy moments, where Paul “I am right and you are wrong” Krugman speaks with such beautiful certainty and where  the Queen is praised for her commonsense by PM Cameron  (sounds just like the school report that says “tries hard” meaning stupid but not naughty) I am going to drink some claret and dream of the future. Like the splendid Mark Twain did – why do the American’s have all the best lines?

'Twenty years from now you will more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines; sail away from the safe harbour; catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.  Discover.'

Happy weekend and catch those trade winds.