Recent fisticuffs over what Keynes meant, would have done, said, have raised past sins. When the Complete Works came out it was noted that in the Introduction to the German edition of the General Theory Keynes's expressed approbation of the Nazi economic proposals for dealing with the Slump - counter-cyclical spending, a raised degree of economic nationalism etc. - had been silently suppressed either by Richard Kahn or the nominal editor.
Which calls into question the worth of supporting present-day political viewpoints with sacred texts, and just how much those texts have been fiddled with.
Sunday 27 June 2010
Disbelief
Awful silence in Monculi. "We deserved to be out," being muttered bravely, followed by the eerily unreal, "It's only a game, anyway."
Going about remarking "Forza Kiwis!" has been strongly advised against.
Going about remarking "Forza Kiwis!" has been strongly advised against.
Monday 21 June 2010
Ripeness Lost To Rain
The heavens opened on Friday and remain so. Not camparis by the pool then, but lasagne al forno and the red. The fire has been lit for two evenings so it's also been bruschetta and grilled sausages on skewers with bay leaves in between (and more of the red).
Finishing Blood's A Rover has been aided by rivers of water pouring off every path and way through the woods, which is the only way over 600 pages of Ellroy inimitable prose style could have been downed (or drowned) as walks and outings are under drizabone and in wellies. Reading Ellroy does lead to disjointed conversational speech and hearing too.
A particularly posh conversation on the merits of various sherries became more surreal (after all, discussing sherry is not the norm, is it? Though norms are easily lost in walls of water advancing across the valleys) as provenance - which was OK-ish - moved on to a consideration of types of trees. Trees? Sherry? I'll down a glass of dry fino with the best but obviously there was more to it all for afficionados who even used plurals for the stuff. When talk of colour turned to blackness and visions of a kind of sherry stout tried to form, Ellroy interference with modes of communication had to be set aside.
"What are you all talking about? And why are you all suddenly so fogeyish about sherries? And how do you all know this stuff?"
"Cherries? Well this part of the world is famous for them. We were comparing the various sorts and flavours, and which we can still find - given the hail and difficulties with the downpours."
Oh.
Finishing Blood's A Rover has been aided by rivers of water pouring off every path and way through the woods, which is the only way over 600 pages of Ellroy inimitable prose style could have been downed (or drowned) as walks and outings are under drizabone and in wellies. Reading Ellroy does lead to disjointed conversational speech and hearing too.
A particularly posh conversation on the merits of various sherries became more surreal (after all, discussing sherry is not the norm, is it? Though norms are easily lost in walls of water advancing across the valleys) as provenance - which was OK-ish - moved on to a consideration of types of trees. Trees? Sherry? I'll down a glass of dry fino with the best but obviously there was more to it all for afficionados who even used plurals for the stuff. When talk of colour turned to blackness and visions of a kind of sherry stout tried to form, Ellroy interference with modes of communication had to be set aside.
"What are you all talking about? And why are you all suddenly so fogeyish about sherries? And how do you all know this stuff?"
"Cherries? Well this part of the world is famous for them. We were comparing the various sorts and flavours, and which we can still find - given the hail and difficulties with the downpours."
Oh.
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Choice Cuts
The removal of twenty four billion euros from Italian public expenditure has had no effect whatsoever in Monculi. Zilch. Everyone is out and about as usual, working gold, making clothes, gardening the countryside, entertaining paying guests in farms (agriturismo is a huge wealth creator) as far as the eye can see. And speaking of sea, everyone has spruced-up their mobile home or renovated their seaside flat/villa in time for the annual mass migration to the coast at the end of the school year.
They are also tending their tomatoes. We are to have four sorts this year, up from three last: large, ribbed salad; small, on-the-vine, salad and posh cookery, for those who can be bothered; smooth round, and smooth elongated (sort of soccer and football really) for bottling.
I am well on the way to bottling already - not the sterilising of the jars and lids, scrubbing out of giant brushed steel vats, checking-through of outdoor gas rings variety; more the familiar bottling of British political cowardice variety. My kitchen garden is very like the European Union: I supply land, seed (well, little plants), water, and the men grow what they want and ignore pleas for radishes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. Not even spinach will they grow, they prefer rape.
My lovely apple tree (planted, nb, by an Australian) flourishes; all other proposals (other than the loving pruning and feeding of scattered, ancient figs) for fruit and nut trees have been nixed on the argument that the birds/deer/boar/scrumpers will get them.
Mr Cameron does not begin to grasp the mountain of immovable cultural obstruction he must climb. What was once grown here has not been forgotten, despite the half-century hiatus, and folk wisdom reigns over modern decision-taking. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Berlusconi knows, no-one gives a hoot about so-called cuts. They aren't cuts, they're just using a different model for allocating resources.
They are also tending their tomatoes. We are to have four sorts this year, up from three last: large, ribbed salad; small, on-the-vine, salad and posh cookery, for those who can be bothered; smooth round, and smooth elongated (sort of soccer and football really) for bottling.
I am well on the way to bottling already - not the sterilising of the jars and lids, scrubbing out of giant brushed steel vats, checking-through of outdoor gas rings variety; more the familiar bottling of British political cowardice variety. My kitchen garden is very like the European Union: I supply land, seed (well, little plants), water, and the men grow what they want and ignore pleas for radishes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. Not even spinach will they grow, they prefer rape.
My lovely apple tree (planted, nb, by an Australian) flourishes; all other proposals (other than the loving pruning and feeding of scattered, ancient figs) for fruit and nut trees have been nixed on the argument that the birds/deer/boar/scrumpers will get them.
Mr Cameron does not begin to grasp the mountain of immovable cultural obstruction he must climb. What was once grown here has not been forgotten, despite the half-century hiatus, and folk wisdom reigns over modern decision-taking. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Berlusconi knows, no-one gives a hoot about so-called cuts. They aren't cuts, they're just using a different model for allocating resources.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Cultural Behaviour is Often Wrong For Political Health
The aging of the political class in Italy is getting embarrassing. All of a sudden the entire lot of them are over seventy. (Well, they are completely worn-out and used-up, even if some might manage to squeeze under the class of 1940 bar). While keeping down the generations below is a national pastime - the socio-legal structure is given over to holding back the oncoming generational tide - the slippage into dotage is becoming marked again.
There has been some improvement, insofar as not actually gunning-down the under-forties and fifties is much practiced any more; and the two most impressive politicians of the centre-right and centre-left are both middle-aged women with lots of business and political experience, and lots of money (always such a blessing -lots of money). But the mano morta rests still on the Italian body politic.
The slow death of social democracy because of its contamination by infiltration from elderly communist, socialist and fascist personnel - what you might call the Former Party - is devastating for the achievement of quite basic aspects of social justice: land redistribution, access to capital, support through advanced intellectual and technical training, access to elites various, and must be interrupted.
We need rid of old authoritarian men.
And if we really insist on having them, then at least let's have Giulio Andreotti (who puts England's Peter Mandelson into withering context).
There has been some improvement, insofar as not actually gunning-down the under-forties and fifties is much practiced any more; and the two most impressive politicians of the centre-right and centre-left are both middle-aged women with lots of business and political experience, and lots of money (always such a blessing -lots of money). But the mano morta rests still on the Italian body politic.
The slow death of social democracy because of its contamination by infiltration from elderly communist, socialist and fascist personnel - what you might call the Former Party - is devastating for the achievement of quite basic aspects of social justice: land redistribution, access to capital, support through advanced intellectual and technical training, access to elites various, and must be interrupted.
We need rid of old authoritarian men.
And if we really insist on having them, then at least let's have Giulio Andreotti (who puts England's Peter Mandelson into withering context).
Monday 7 June 2010
Tripe
All this talk of the collapsing euro is tripe. Tripe was the standard word for an argument or thing without value, in my father's usage of the word. You'd be surprised how many aircraft are airborne tripe, how much German philosophy (borrowed from the library in English translation in pursuit of understanding 'what made them do it?') is tripe.
Disgusting tripe ended up in the kitchen boiler: The Grapes of Wrath got it; but that was nothing to The Red Room - a small misunderstanding had led me to Francoise Mallet-Joris instead of H.G.Wells - and its fate as unnatural disgusting tripe.
Here we see that the kitchen boiler is possibly the best place for all the tripe being printed in the Sunday papers about the end of the euro and European Union as we know it.
Disgusting tripe ended up in the kitchen boiler: The Grapes of Wrath got it; but that was nothing to The Red Room - a small misunderstanding had led me to Francoise Mallet-Joris instead of H.G.Wells - and its fate as unnatural disgusting tripe.
Here we see that the kitchen boiler is possibly the best place for all the tripe being printed in the Sunday papers about the end of the euro and European Union as we know it.
Travelling Sensibly
People carrying lots of luggage on European flights are weird, so I was taken by this site.
After all, wherever you go there is all that is needed already there - other than your own clothes (and even those can be replaced in Germany. Well, Paris too but that's very expensive. Moscow was disappointing - no valenkis, despite all those Russian novels where people tramp through the snow with felted-up feet; they even denied they understood what I was talking about - though that's not unusual.)
So, while returning from London involves filling a case with ginger cake from Waitrose (which means arrriving with spare capacity in the first place) for every other European destination one small bag is enough.
After all, wherever you go there is all that is needed already there - other than your own clothes (and even those can be replaced in Germany. Well, Paris too but that's very expensive. Moscow was disappointing - no valenkis, despite all those Russian novels where people tramp through the snow with felted-up feet; they even denied they understood what I was talking about - though that's not unusual.)
So, while returning from London involves filling a case with ginger cake from Waitrose (which means arrriving with spare capacity in the first place) for every other European destination one small bag is enough.
Thursday 3 June 2010
The Knight Bus
Leaving late from Rome and arriving only an hour later near London, the Knight Bus carries Mr HG this evening to a conflab on this'n'that tomorrow.
Costing only 11 euros it charges extra for amenities such as hot-water bottles, toothbrushes, and hot chocolate, not to mention large suitcases, and portmanteaux stuffed with entire lives and fear of flying.
Lots of Muggles resent flying Ryanair, they say it spoils the pleasures of travel. Well, that depends on what you want, with respect. If you want to get somewhere else reliably, fast, on or before time, and cheaply -
Go Knight Bus!
Costing only 11 euros it charges extra for amenities such as hot-water bottles, toothbrushes, and hot chocolate, not to mention large suitcases, and portmanteaux stuffed with entire lives and fear of flying.
Lots of Muggles resent flying Ryanair, they say it spoils the pleasures of travel. Well, that depends on what you want, with respect. If you want to get somewhere else reliably, fast, on or before time, and cheaply -
Go Knight Bus!
Russia Revisited
The villages of the Don were portrayed in pen and ink sketches by my father-in-law, taken by their rural loveliness, as he led his small band of soldiers to disaster nearly seventy years ago. At least, unsually, he led them out again, most of them.
Now we see the President of Europe, the President of the European Commission and the Prime Minister of Russia (someone else is having a turn at being President of Russia at the moment) in Rostov-on-Don sorting out further relations between Europe and Russia more amicably.
Perhaps we too will soon be able to board a train and set off for Russia without a visa ( and without an artillery unit) wave from our sleeper car at Monculi, glowering on its hill in its long outworn defences across the Giotto landscapes, as did my dear father-in-law from his troop train, and on through a Europe that must hold fast to the vision of no more fighting. Russia is as much part of Europe as it is part of the East and, indeed, part of the Mediterranean.
Big, Russia is, as Field Marshall Montgomery noted. And not an enemy, as perhaps he didn't.
Now we see the President of Europe, the President of the European Commission and the Prime Minister of Russia (someone else is having a turn at being President of Russia at the moment) in Rostov-on-Don sorting out further relations between Europe and Russia more amicably.
Perhaps we too will soon be able to board a train and set off for Russia without a visa ( and without an artillery unit) wave from our sleeper car at Monculi, glowering on its hill in its long outworn defences across the Giotto landscapes, as did my dear father-in-law from his troop train, and on through a Europe that must hold fast to the vision of no more fighting. Russia is as much part of Europe as it is part of the East and, indeed, part of the Mediterranean.
Big, Russia is, as Field Marshall Montgomery noted. And not an enemy, as perhaps he didn't.
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Forza Ireland!
The Irish aid ship Rachel Corrie continues on course to break the Gaza blockade. The Prime Minister of Ireland has called upon neighbouring powers to allow the aid ship free passage.
Italian citizens dragged from other aid ships by piratical state action in international waters and falsely imprisoned are demanding to be charged with any known offence under law.
Italian television and media continues to decry the behaviour of rogue elements of the state of Israel in their assault upon the lives of others.
Australian journalist Paul McGeough (56), an Irish-born journalist and chief correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, who has reported from the Middle East for two decades, is among those held in a detention camp in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva.
Italian citizens dragged from other aid ships by piratical state action in international waters and falsely imprisoned are demanding to be charged with any known offence under law.
Italian television and media continues to decry the behaviour of rogue elements of the state of Israel in their assault upon the lives of others.
Australian journalist Paul McGeough (56), an Irish-born journalist and chief correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, who has reported from the Middle East for two decades, is among those held in a detention camp in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva.
Republic Day
2 June is a great day here. Not surprising really - how many places have real live centaurs in their celebrations?
Not the kind of person you'd fancy meeting in a dark alley though
Not the kind of person you'd fancy meeting in a dark alley though
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Muddy Waters
The well-digging is going slowly because the ground is solid earth; if it were solid rock I expect it would be going slowly but with another set of explanations. The men are having to shore up the sides, or something. This is a whole new vocabulary so understanding of what is going on is one of those exercises in pragmatics where the listener has to make a real effort to read every possible sign and sound but the whole undertaking is limited by a profound lack of interest in the mechanics of what the communication is about, and the mechanics themselves. I find I don't care about wells.
Oil wells, Somerset, paintings of men being hauled in and out of by the hair by chaps in outrageous pink leggings, treacle, truth at bottom of, rising-up of emotions..., I turn away from them all when the word appears. Imagery for wells is too obvious, used too often. Wells are deeply boring.
Oil wells, Somerset, paintings of men being hauled in and out of by the hair by chaps in outrageous pink leggings, treacle, truth at bottom of, rising-up of emotions..., I turn away from them all when the word appears. Imagery for wells is too obvious, used too often. Wells are deeply boring.
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