Do you have a noisier one, please?

I am going to whinge. You have been warned. I have a friend, John B., whose birthday falls on this date, 21^st July, which also happens to be Belgian Independence Day. He lives, in Brussels, in Ixelles, in a penthouse pad with a broad terrace overlooking the city and most years he celebrates his birthday with a party. The finale is the city’s fireworks display, laid on especially for him (as he puts it). This year we were saying goodbye to some departing good friends and toasting one ill absent friend, so the whole thing got a little bit misty-eyed, but we were inevitably cheered up by the display, which was truly splendid. Alas, the whole thing was spoilt for me by that bloody helicopter. I should explain. About four or five years ago the good Burghers of Brussels decided to heed the calls of the local police force and authorise the purchase of a big, fat helicopter. Ever since then, the Bruxellois have been persecuted on a daily basis by the whine of its engine and the clatter of its rotors. It is particularly noisy, and Brussels is particularly small, so we all get subjected to the din. As all children know, when you have convinced your parents to buy you an expensive toy, you had better play with it a lot or all credibility concerning future demands will have evaporated. So it is with the helicopter. I can imagine occasions when it might, just might, be useful. But it whines overhead every day and frequently hovers, noisily, doing nothing in particular extremely loudly. Maybe, just maybe, it has to do this so that its pilots get sufficient flying experience to keep their flying licences. Or maybe the chief pilot has a phobia about staying on the ground. Whatever, that bloody helicopter drives me mad. Worse, whenever there is a demonstration, no matter how peaceful, the helicopter is there, hovering overhead, needlessly creating a sense of tension. It also does this whenever the European Council is in town (see my 15 October 2008 post for the negative effects on ‘Europe’s’ image of security arrangements). But my whinge today is far more selfish. In the first place, this afternoon I was intent on writing a chapter of my masterpiece. What happened? That bloody helicopter hovered noisily overhead for three hours. And then, in the evening, as we were watching the fireworks from John B’s terrace, we heard a familiar whine as that bloody helicopter drifted overhead. We counted, as it circled five times around the firework display. As soon as the display was over, it flew away sharpish back to its Vilvorde base. In other words, dear Bruxellois, your precious taxpayers’ money was splurged on X amounts of unnecessary carbon pumped into the atmosphere and Y amounts of unnecessary noise inflicted on the good and mostly law-abiding citizens of Brussels, and all of that to enable the pilot and passengers in the police helicopter to enjoy grandstand views of the fireworks display. It is not for me to interfere in the due process of governance here in Belgium, but I know only that British journalists would very rapidly have found out who the passengers were and whether they paid anything and also just how much this daily infliction of unnecessary noise is costing. End of whinge.

Early this morning, in 1969, two men walked on the moon. Naturally, much of the attention has focused on those two men,  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and the extraordinary experience they had. But the one that interests me the most is the man who stayed behind, as they drifted down in the lunar lander. As Michael Collins meanwhile slipped behind the moon in the command module, he was famously, and poetically, described by Nasa as ‘the man most alone since Adam.’ For forty-eight minutes of each orbit Collins was completely alone and out of all contact. I try to imagine what it would feel like but what would I do? How would I react? In his autobiography, Collins says that his strongest feelings were of ‘awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation’. When people talk about a Zen state of relaxation perhaps this is what they mean. By the way, have people suddenly suffered an attack of good taste? Why have there been no linkages between the anniversary of the first lunar landing and the late Michael Jackson’s moon walk? Or maybe there have been and I haven’t seen them. If not, I am disappointed in the bad taste brigade.

Later, I stayed up and finished off Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs, which I had picked up and started in St Pancras Station on Friday. As the blurb on the back quite accurately says, James writes exactly as he talks – in other words, very amusingly. The memoir, which is a great read, is also full of aphorisms and witty observations about the human condition: ‘the human personality is a drama, not a monologue’; ‘it often happens that we are most touched by what we are least capable of’; ‘people don’t want to be charmed, they want to charm’; nothing feels more like home than the place where the homeless gather’; and so on. The underlying plot certainly rang a few bells with me. The book ends with James getting his university degree and knowing, just knowing, that he has to leave Sydney for the sophistications and attractions of England. In a similar way after my first degree I just somehow knew that I had to leave London and Oxford for what I imagined were the sophistications and attractions of ‘Europe’. There is probably a sociological thesis out there somewhere about the way suburbs and small towns spawn diasporas. I think it’s no coincidence that I and my siblings, having grown up in suburban London, have ended up spread out all over Europe. In their tribute album to Andy Warhol, Songs for Drella, Lou Reed and John Cale penned one song, entitled ‘Smalltown’ which paraphrased Warhol’s observations about his youth in Pittsburgh:

There is only one good thing about a small town
There is only one good use for a small town
There is only one good thing about a small town
You know that you want to get out

When you’re growing up in a small town
You know you’ll grow down in a small town
There is only one good use for a small town
You hate it and you know you’ll have to leave

 I’m not sure I ever hated the places where I did my growing up but, just like Clive James, I knew that to get on I would have to get out.

Thinking about The Omega Man reminded me that I went through a horror-film/scifi film craze in my early teens. I remember gory scenes with lots of ghouls and zombies, but the films themselves were unmemorable and justly I cannot remember their titles. There were however three exceptions. The Omega Man was one. The 1970 film Scream and Scream Again (starring Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing!) was the second. And the 1973 Soylent Green (again starring Charlton Heston) was the third. They had complicated plots with plenty of ironies and paradoxes and twists in their tales. And, in their own sweet way, they raised big moral and social and philosophical issues. The Omega Man I dealt with in the previous post. Scream and Scream Again, borrowing from Frankenstein’s Monster, imagines in a yucky way what happens when man-machines get out of hand (cf. 2001 A Space Odyssey and I, Robot, for example). Soylent Green, set in a dystopian Malthussian future of massive overpopulation and food scarcity, depicts a combination of institutionalised euthanasia and secret recycling of human protein. Now I have remembered them, I’ll be looking for the DVDs for, unless my memory is playing tricks, they were all well worthwhile watching. Scream and Scream Again, incidentally, has a dreadful joke discotheque title. Remember, this was 1970, in the UK, when dope-smoking was rife and the police were forever raiding pubs and clubs. The title of the discotheque? The Busted Pot. Groan!

In the evening enforced bachelordom enabled me to continue my scifi glut by watching the 2007 film I Am Legend. Mmmm…. Well, first of all, this is but a faint echo for Will Smith of his successes in films such as  Independence Day and I, Robot. (I don’t think he is declining as an actor, but the vehicles he chooses to exercise his skills are in decline; in this vein Hancock was also a great disappointment.) I know that this was a big-grossing film and I am sure a lot of that had to do with the stunning depiction of a deserted and overgrown New York, its bridges down, its towers blind. But the studio apparently willingly deserted the twist in the tail of Richard Matheson’s original novel (1954) in favour of a simple, too simple, ending. I have been a fan of this story since as a pimply fourteen year-old I saw The Omega Man in 1971 (this was the second of three films based on the original book; the story was first filmed as The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, in 1964). The protagonist of the story, scientist Robert Neville (played variously by Vincent Price, Charlton Heston and Will Smith) is apparently the sole human survivor of a bacterial pandemic that turns human beings into mutants (they become vampires in Matheson’s story). That is the story’s first deceit; that evolution is not necessarily progressive. Because the mutants are inhuman, Neville adopts a hostile attitude towards them, whilst also seeking a cure. Thus he is the ‘legend’ of the former human race. But the mutants begin to evolve. Increasing numbers of them seek to rebuild a society. From their point of view, it is Neville who is the murdering mutant. Alas, these twists were left out of the 2007 film. Warner Brothers might have grossed less money but they would have made a better film. In their soppy ending an enclave of human beings starts rebuilding society as we know it, so that it owes more to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids than Matheson’s excellent book. Shame.

I know, I know; before today my last post was on 29 June. The problem has been, quite simply, not enough time in the day to squeeze in writing up pieces and posting them. But I have been keeping notes and over the next few days posts should start miraculously appearing, all sneakily post-dated, and testifying to an even high-than-average level of activities over the past three weeks. Anyway, that’s my excuse.

Of we four brothers, I was the only one whose birthday fell out of school term time. There are far worse fates. One of my godsons had the misfortune of being born on 27 December, for example. Despite all protestations to the contrary from his family and friends, the proximity of his birthday to Christmas must have cost him a fortune in missed presents over the years. Because so many people have already drifted away on their summer holidays, my birthday has always had a sort of wistful air to it (unless, of course, I have also drifted away). The wistfulness was exacerbated this year by the fact that I have been stuck in the office all day digging into a massive backlog of e-mails and files. But an idea has come to me. I think I am going to invent a special birthday date for myself – you know, like royalty. This date would always be at a weekend and either when I am on holiday myself or when everybody else is around to celebrate my birthday with me. It could be catching.

One of the advantages of having children is that they can oblige you to watch things you wanted to watch but probably wouldn’t have been able to watch otherwise. This evening we watched Matrix Reloaded (doubtless, I’ll get to see the last in the trilogy next weekend).  I am a sucker for scifi and I love the philosophical questions these sorts of films raise. Of course, all of these stories (The Truman Show is an example from another genre) borrow from René Descartes ‘evil demon’ question. This can be summed up very simply: how can we know there’s a real world out there? Supplementary questions include: how can Neo fight with sunglasses on? And how come they don’t fall off, especially when he gets hit? Heavy.

What's that in your hand, boy?

I went with the family this afternoon to see the latest Harry Potter. It’s a curious mixture. On the one hand, Harry and his mates are starting to discover lurve. On the other, there’s the usual battle against the rotten old dark forces going on. But the special effects – now so commonplace that they’re not really ‘special’ anymore – work their magic and the hanging ending left my fellow viewers almost audibly panting for the seventh, and last, film. Everybody will have their favourite characters and actors. Mine is Severus Snape, played with brilliant consistency by Alan Rickman. A lot of the credibility of his character is based, of course, on the fact that there really were teachers like him. They tended to wear gowns and flit around, popping up in all the wrong places at all the wrong moments and always ready with a sneering put-down.

Well, I have used that title for a post already, I think, but the week that has just gone by can definitely lay claim to have been the longest and the toughest since I took up the cudgels on 1 October – now almost ten months ago. I don’t mean the hours – always in before eight never out before ten – though they have surely taken their toll. Nor do I mean the sheer quantity and quality of meetings – notably, directors, pre-session, enlarged presidency, Bureau, press conference, heavily charged plenary session (see separate posts), London  – though they certainly kept me on my toes. I suppose I mean that there were some very fraught occasions this week – par for the course, no doubt, for SGs, but until now a relative rarity for this one. Suffice it to say that when I got home from the station on the Friday evening it felt a little like what I imagine war correspondents feel like when they travel back to the peaceful world from a war zone! I have learnt a huge amount this week and will doubtless be all the stronger for that in the future.