Wrong Side of History

I have a flair for being on the wrong side of history- I was reading Conrad, for instance, when I heard Chinua Achebe had died and I'm the only person I know who will still argue that the Thatcher sale of council houses was immoral as well economically inept.  The NuLabor boys ask me why poor people should not own their own homes too ​(as if I owned mine!) and look at me curiously when I say that public property should not be hived off for private gains.

So my indifference to Thatcher's demise may not be surprising.  I found I really didn't care.  But Thatcher's tears leaving Downing Street pleased me greatly, and it was then that I sang 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.'  The song sold well after she died and the BBC hesitated before deciding to play a few seconds of it during the chart programmes.  The BBC seemed to prefer censorship to the possibility of offending whoever is offended by the cheery songs of munchkins.

​It's a fitting tribute to a woman who hated freedom of speech.  For all her pretence about democracy we remember her silencing Gerry Adams (cutting off his 'oxygen of publicity' she called it), we remember Clause 28, and we remember her abolishing a left leaning tier of local government.

​​She is largely responsible for the existence of what the French c​all la pensée unique in Britain today.  It's an under-reported and particularly disgraceful part of her legacy, and I join myself to the sentiments and expression of Cee Lo Green.  I bet the BBC can't play this song either.  It might offend someone.

Poète, vos papiers !

​I was walking home from the supermarket yesterday, weighed down with so many bottles that even Dylan Thomas would have been impressed, when I saw Arthur Rimbaud.

​He was just loitering on the street, 

​I have not yet read a dozen of his poems but I love this one

Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi.
- Au Cabaret-Vert : je demandai des tartines
Du beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.

Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte : je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie. - Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,

- Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure ! -
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,

Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail, - et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.

Arthur Rimbaud

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'It's a mixed-up, shook-up, muddled-up world...'

​For the last week the right wing in France has been attacking the socialist government over public order.  Nothing particularly surprising there except that the rightists are accusing the left of being too brutal in stopping a protest march that strayed from its authorised route.

A bunch of anti ​gay marriage activists decided to go down the Champs Elysées and were stopped with teargas.

The rabbits (I think they're actually hares) in the picture above illustrate a world turned upside down but the monk who drew them could not have imagined a world as topsy-turvy as ours before drinking several hogsheads of bière d'abbaye.​

I don't go on nearly as many demonstrations in Paris as I should but they nearly all end with us chanting 'Elysées, Elysées, Elysées' and the organisers and speakers telling us not to go there.  And we don't.  Apart from anything else we're not stupid enough to believe we'll get to walk in front of the President's Palace or the US embassy (both of which are just off the Champs Elysées) without getting teargassed by the French police and risking much worse from the US marines.  You can't even walk on the pavement on your own ​in front of the US embassy.

But rightists don't understand this.  This is because they believe the Elysée Palace belongs ​to them.  I hope a little tear gas will help them understand this is not so.

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Save me a little space in pseud's corner

Sometimes, not very often, a single image can lift my whole day.  I read this one on the way to work last week.  The hero is just out of the shower and combing his hair:

“Son peigne d’ambre divisa la masse soyeuse en longs filets orange pareils aux sillons que le gai laboureur trace à l’aide d’une fourchette dans de la confiture d’abricots.”

This comes from Boris Vian's L'écume des Jours​- ​​​ and the photo below is of the pianocktail the same character uses to mix his drinks.  Each note corresponds to a liquor or flavour and playing a piece will compose the cocktail.  In the book the machine is not quite perfected.  The player has to hold back on the fortissimo pedal or risk getting far too much egg in his drink.  I saw the pianocktail earlier today at the Salon du Livre de Paris.

That's my copy of L'écume des Jours you can see reminding me not to use the flash

My place in pseud's corner is assured because I won't provide a translation and because the sentence I quoted is more important to me than what I have to do in my working life.

Hugo Chavez

'When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on'  ​George Orwell in 'Homage to Catalonia'

​Sebastiaio Salgado

Miners in Serra Pelada, Brasil

​There is an ambiguity in Orwell's phrase.  Some people sympathise with the policeman not the worker.  It's a preference I find incomprehensible but other than that politics is not especially complicated.

I do not think that Hugo Chavez had to ask himself whose side he was on.  ​

We are all poorer for his leaving.

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