Tom Waits and Me

Well today is, as it happens, my birthday. Here at NigeCorp, the traditional ox roast is getting under way, and the finest vintages are being brought up from the ancestral cellars. The workers are lined up in their best culluloid collars, hair slicked down, nervously fingering the rims of their doffed caps as they rehearse this year's birthday ode...
As historians will need no reminding, this day is also the anniversary of the regrettable Tumult of Thorn - but, more to the point, I share my birthday exactly (day and year) with the great Tom Waits. Our careers have followed slightly different paths, though, with enough booze and baccy on board, I can manage a passable (to me anyway) imitation. Happy birthday Tom! I am sure that, like me, you rejoice at being one year nearer to your narrow home...

How to Teach Poetry

Poetry is not being taught at all in British schools. This is the actual, as opposed to the stated, finding of an Ofsted report. This will make, for sensitive Thought Experimenters, grim reading. Perhaps the worst detail is the list of poems most likely to be taught in primary schools - Noyes, The Highwayman; Milligan, On the Ning, Nang, Nong; Carroll, Jabberwocky; Lear, The Owl and the Pusscat; Stevenson, From a Railway Carriage; de la Mare, The Listeners; Wright, The Magic Box; McGough, The Sound Collector; Dahl, Revolting Rhymes; Ahlberg Dog in the Playground.

Plainly the primary school teachers need incarcerating in special camps to be taught what poetry is. There they would have to learn by heart, Wordsworth, Daffodils; Shakespeare, the Phoenix and the Turtle; Stevens, The Rabbit as King of the Ghosts; Raleigh, The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage; Wyatt, They flee from me that sometime did me seek; Tennyson, Ulysses; Eliot: Song for Simeon; Pope, The Rape of the Lock;  Auden, Like a Vocation; Keats, Ode to Autumn. All are entirely appropriate for primary school children, provoking, as they do, wonder, awe and longing. 

While incarcerated, the teachers would also have to read and answer detailed questions on Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, the best book ever written on children and poetry. They would also have to write one thousand times, 'There is no such thing as children's poetry, there is only poetry.'

The Glorious Legacy of the People's Democratic Dome

Now, let me see, I wonder what implications this has for the Olympics. Cruelly, people have been saying that Blair will be remembered only for Iraq; I prefer to think he will be remembered for the Millennium Dome. That and not sacking Hal when he had the chance. 

Jeff and Amanda Aim High

And, while we are on the subject of great writers, the peerless 'Lord' Jeff has key'd some devastating insights into Othello. Not to be missed. Which made me wonder: what is Amanda up to? Oh, dear Lord, she's trying irony. 

Hero, Knight, Mentalist

Pausing briefly to hail this hero of our time, I must return to a story from yesterday (which I couldn't remark on, as the legendary NigeCorp technology was going into meltdown every time I went near the blog). When the latest international table of educational ignominy was unveiled, showing how 'our' 15-year-olds have slumped ten places or so to somewhere below Estonia in the reading and 'rithmetic league, the relevant minister, one Jim Knight, described the results as 'pleasing'. Yes, pleasing. I have been pondering this, slack-jawed, ever since. What exactly would Knight find displeasing? Presumably the UK suddenly powering its way to the top of the table. As that ain't going to happen, I guess we'll never know...
My mind is also boggling gently at the news that the noted TV mentalist (and Purley resident) Derren Brown (he's in Wikipedia) listens EVERY day - and before EVERY performance - to Bach's Goldberg Variations. He seems to favour Murray Perahia's version. Me I'm a Glen Gould 1981 man. But anyway, this must tell us something about Bach, or Brown, or both - or quite possibly nothing, what do I know?

How to Give the Nobel to a Proper Writer

The famously assiduous Dave Lull sends me this article. Why does the Nobel Prize go to 'socially responsible' novelists rather than John Ashbery? Ange Mlinko explains why - he's too good. Nice essay with lovely quotes - 'only time will consent to have anything to do with us'.

SAD and the Life of Keith

I am sitting here bathed in an unearthly glow. Seen from the street, I appear to be a saint in ecstasy. Yes, I have bought an anti-SAD light, a Lumie to be exact. I don't on the whole think Seasonal Affective Disorder really qualifies as a disease, but, in these darkening days, I do feel the lack of light. It seems to work. I have been feeling very wide awake since I bought it. This is not entirely a good thing as it is compounding my famous sleep problems. But, since I feel wide awake, it doesn't seem to matter. There is something of the Keith Richards approach to life in this and, not being Keith, it is likely that, in the near future, I shall fall down and sleep for several months. Or die. So, if, suddenly, only Nige blogs, that's what has happened. 

For Elberry

I receive a warm email from Elberry. This contains the important news that he has recommenced posting on his blog . Go there at once. Elberry has also just finished reading Aliens. He seemed to like it a great deal. While working on this book I had myself hypnotised and, while in London, I saw a flying saucer in Norfolk. The wonders of Nikon optics recently allowed me to recreate exactly what I saw, exactly where I saw it. So, Elberry, here it is.

My Considered Reflections on Canoe Man

I'm not sure I have the energy to get a grip on this Canoe Man story. It's probably something cooked up by the Little Sods to distract attention from the woes of their boss, Hal. What I will say, however, is that my unusually dilatory colleagues do not yet appear to have asked the big question - what hat was he wearing when he 'vanished'? Thought Experimenters will recall the controversy about the correct hat to wear in a canoe/kayak. This is the sort of detail that brings a story to life, but, so far, no news from Panama or Hartlepool. Come to that, why Hartlepool? Nothing has ever happened in Hartlepool. If you say it three times, it doesn't even sound like a real place.

Death and Taxes

This is the dark day on which, in 1798, William Pitt the Younger, heroic drinker and youthful Prime Minister, introduced the first Income Tax to afflict the nation. It was a modest affair and, of course, presented as a one-off, never-again measure etc. Back then, Tax Freedom Day - the day when we can start working for ourselves - was probably about January 3rd; now it's moved into June. Such is the modern state - and under Brown it will only get worse...
Pitt's dying words were, of course, 'I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies' (or 'My country! O my country!' according to choice). He didn't die on this day, but Bert Lahr, Benjamin Britten and Frank Zappa all did. And thus I have made this post match its title.