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Lost masterpiece of winston churchill

Per the description, the show will be a “window into one of history’s most remarkable and complicated women.” Churchill” will also follow her courtship with Winston and struggle with motherhood, fractured relations with her young niece, Diana Mitford (who was brainwashed by fascism), a climactic trip to Stalin-era Russia and influential partnership with American Harry Hopkins (FDR’s conscience), who held the purse strings to what would eventually be the Lend-Lease Act that would ensure England could withstand Nazi forces. She was known as the “Broke Beauty,” as she refused to marry for money and wouldn’t settle for anything less than love. “We don’t allow copies.PBS Docuseries ‘Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed The World’ Gets a Premiere DateĮach episode of the miniseries will follow Clementine through pivotal moments of her life, tracing her childhood in poverty with an unstable mother to her origins as a suffragette working two jobs. “We don’t allow reproductions,” said Fielder. No prints of Karsh’s work have been allowed since his negatives were given to Library and Archives Canada in the 1990s. I assumed it was stolen for its value,” said Fielder. I don’t know if someone, some super-fan, maybe, wanted this to hang in their living room. “Obviously, this theft was very carefully planned. The portrait, which “went viral, but in a slower form” said Fiedler, was used on the British five-pound note in 2016. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.” By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, ‘Forgive me, sir,’ and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. I waited he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. “I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. Karsh recalled Churchill lighting a fresh cigar, puffing it “with a mischievous air” and then relenting to allow a single photograph. “I timorously stepped forward and said, ‘Sir, I hope I will be fortunate enough to make a portrait worthy of this historic occasion.’ He glanced at me and demanded, ‘Why was I not told?’” The image of a scowling Churchill was an “exception”, said Fielder.Īfter watching Churchill give an “electrifying” speech to the Canadian parliament in 1941, Karsh waited in the speaker’s chambers for the chance to take a portrait of Churchill and the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King.īut when the two entered the room with arms linked, Churchill “growled”, Karsh later recalled. “He just had a way with people and putting them at ease,” And I think it allows people to feel that they can be themselves,” he said. And when you were with Yousuf, you knew right away he was the real thing. “For the kinds of people that he photographed, they could spot a sycophant or a phoney a mile away. Karsh, whose fled the Armenian genocide with his family and spent much of his life in Canada, was renowned for his mastery of image-making, both in the studio and when working with his subjects. He also had a studio on the sixth floor until 1992. It hosted his first-ever exhibition in 1936 and he and his wife lived on the third floor for nearly two decades. The remaining five have recently been removed until they can be properly secured, the hotel said.įielder, who worked closely with Karsh, says the photographer had a long relationship with the hotel. The hotel was gifted 15 original works by Karsh, six of which were in the lounge. It is unclear when the print of Churchill, which has hung in the hotel for 24 years, first went missing. “We are deeply saddened by this brazen act,” the Fairmont hotel said in a statement, adding that it was proud of its “stunning” collection of Karsh prints. Once the theft was discovered, the Ottawa police were notified and began investigating. So it took me just one second to know that someone had tried to copy it,” Fielder told the Guardian. The hotel contacted Jerry Fielder, who oversees Karsh’s estate, to assess the signature on the suspect print. The frame on the photograph didn’t match the other five portraits in the room, all of which had been taken by the acclaimed Canadian-Armenian portraitist Yousuf Karsh, whose subjects included Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Queen Elizabeth II.

Thoughts on River?

Complicated.

1. First of all

For this to make sense you need to know that when I first got into Doctor Who, I didn't watch the episodes in chronological order. That was because it was a friend of mine who first introduced me to the show, and the first ever episode she watched with me was Time Of The Angels/Flesh And Stone. That also means that I didn't know anything about the library, which did influence my view at first, I think.

So, after my very first 'encounter' I was pretty neutral. I liked the mystery that surrounded her but I had problems imagining the Doctor and River actually becoming a couple. I simply didn't care for that part of the character, I was more into the whole 'who did she kill?' thing. Around the time Doctor Who had first started to devour my life, I began to get more and more into her relationship with the Doctor aswell. I was really hyped at first. People had told be about it and the whole concept sounded amazing.

The problems started to arise when I actually watched through Eleven's seasons. There were holes were the actual relationship should have been, things being implied that never paid off. I just hadn't really realise that because, until then I had always assumed, that all those things missing were merely parts of the story I hadn't seen yet.

But the truth was that they just weren't there.

2. So, where does that leave us?

I do not like River Song. But I wanted to like her. And part of me still does. She had some great moments and is played by an amazing actress. My problem is that I never felt like I could actually tell who she was as a person. Her entire personality was built around a concept and while that can work, from a writer's perspective it just is not advisable when it comes to love interests. Romance is something that needs to be character driven. This is something I sincerely believe as both a writer and a consumer of media.

River's concept was great but therein lies the problem: Because her character was always put back, behind that amazing mystery. It's almost comical how much River's existence revolves around the Doctor and the wedding/murder mystery. She literally would not exist if it wasn't for that.

And remember, that plot was the one that originally interested me. Why did she kill him?

3. Moffat's answer: She is a psychopath.

The answer to all questions, apparently! Don't question her actions — she is a psychopath! Don't ask why she fell in love with him all of a sudden! She is a psychopath! Non of her actions make any sense but that's ok — she is a psychopath, alright?

In short: She falls in love with the Doctor, because she is told that she will fall in love with the Doctor. Great. Oh, and speaking of Let's Kill Hitler. That was the point when I officially gave up all hope.

4. River's character is a big Meh.

River's character is entirely based on tropes. Now, I'd actually advise untrained writers (such as myself) to sometimes use tropes as an inspiration. But a) you will eventually need to move on from that trope and built an actual character where it merely functions as the basis and b) Moffat is not an inexperienced writer.

River is the Femme Fatale and the Tragic Romance trope shoehorned into each other and while I actually like the latter, in combination these were unbearable. The Femme Fatale trope stems from a time when women's sexuality was still viewed as sinful, so the only female characters that were allowed to own their sexuality were evil ones. That whole sassy and sexy behaviour, that people tell me is so very Feminist™️ comes from a sexist trope. So while I can't deny that Alex Kingston looks awesome making a Dalek beg for mercy, kissing the Doctor to poison him and flirting with the people around her, all that comes from the trope she is built on and it shows! Moreover, it doesn't go with the kind of love tropes Moffat uses to bring Eleven and River forward, so you can see her switch between the two sides of her. And it doesn't feel natural.

I hate to compare her to Rose but: Throughout series one, Rose is characterized as a very caring person. But one of her main flaws is that there is sometimes a hunch of pity for the people she cares for, the belief that they can't help themselves. Gwyneth remarks that, although Rose deeply cares for her, she still thinks Gwyneth is stupid. This is a character flaw that is established in the very first episode. So when Rose safes her father in Father's Day or when she gets mad at Mickey for going out with someone else even though she left him, when she bluntly tells him that there is "nothing left for her" at home, we are not really surprised. Still, she is there for people, she cares for them. But that doesn't erase her selfishness and vice versa — her sometimes egotistical ways do not taint her. She is caring and selfish both at the same time. Two characteristics that seem like they couldn't work together — empathy and compassion paired with selfishness — actually make for an interesting and (even though I hate that word) complex character.

River, on the other hand, is always just switching between being The Woman Who Loves The Doctor and being The Perfect Psychopath. There is no nuance. She fits the trope of the Femme Fatale so perfectly, it's almost laughable (sexy, cunning, uses her sexuality to try and kill someone. Also, notice how she is always flirtatious in her Kind Of Evil Mayhaps?? Moments?)

5. River Song's relationship with The Doctor is a big Yikes.

A few weeks ago I watched a video on YouTube that talked about Doctor Who. In that video, the romantic relationship between the Doctor and Rose is painted as the worst part of season 1 because of the age gap between the two. Now, I'd of course argue that Rose is not only over 18 but also never forced into anything. The relationship is shown to be healthy. But that's not my problem. My problem is how in the same video, Moffat is praised for writing a "complex and nuanced love story".

Funnily enough, he, who said it probably thought he was making a compliment here. But what he really did was just summing up what is inherently wrong about the relationship: It isn't romantic — it's complex. But a love story doesn't need to be complex — I'd actually argue that the simpler the better. The only complex thing there should be in a written relationship are the characters.

It isn't even complex, it's just needlessly complicated. We are given clues, hints at a relationship, even after their supposed wedding, so we don't realise that any actual information about their romance is missing. Never (until The Husband Of River Song) are we shown an intimate, romantic moment that isn't in any way compromised by either the Mystery Plot™️ or his knowledge that she is going to die.

(Now, I have no idea where that "nuanced" comes from because all of the relationship is black and white: She hates him; she loves him suddenly. She is the woman who kills him! Why did she do that? Oh, she was forced. She never even falls in love, she just accepts that she will.)

6. The relationship is tainted from the very beginning.

The Doctor knowing that and how she is going to die, like many things Moffat does, sounds amazing on paper. In reality it prohibited any actual healthy relationship from ever developing. Whenever the Doctor is with her, he is secretly suffering because he knows what will happen. And that is not a good thing. When you are so focused on making things "complex" you may forget how actual healthy relationships work: Both parties in them need to he happy. Love and devotion aren't enough.

Not only that but the Doctor as a character cares about a lot of people. He loves a lot. So, creating a relationship between the Doctor and another character is difficult, as you have to truly make their relationship stand out. When RTD did that with the Doctor and Rose, it took him essentially two whole seasons, in which Rose was constantly present as a main character. Moffat took a half baked, cool sounding concept and gave River cameo appearances.

They also constantly have to force themselves on each other because of their time line thing (— something that, again, sounds cool in theory and is hindering to the relationship in practice). The scene when River first kisses him and he is very obviously uncomfortable and doesn't know how to react is just sad. Not tragic, not romantic, just sad. Communication is literally impossible because they are never on the same page! Please, tell me, how is it so hard to grasp that romantic relationships are supposed to be romantic?

7. Also River is supposed to be bi.

I do no longer identify as bi. But when I first got into Doctor Who, I did. And I never felt represented by the hints that were giving about River's supposed bisexuality. I was starving for bisexual content at the time, yet most of those hints flew over my head. Jokes are not how you write representation, unless you are writing a comedy show! That is, however, all I'm going to say about this, as I am planning on making a post on that topic (cheap representation in the Moffat era — literally all lgbt characters that aren't Bill).

So, all in all, I don't like River because she represents everything that is wrong with the Moffat seasons: Character arcs that are concept driven, the sole usage of tropes when it comes to the writing of female characters, cheap representation and a misunderstanding how relationships (should) work.

Hi! Do you like Gone with the Wind and what do you think about Scarlett O'Hara?

So.  Gone with the Wind and I have a complicated relationship.

I.  I’m a young child.  Maybe seven or eight.  My mom’s playing Gone with the Wind, which she would because my mom loves it.  It’s pretty boring, though I distinctly remember bits like Scarlett getting drunk after her second husband’s death and Scarlett and Rhett dancing while she’s in her widow’s weeds.  But there’s a scene I find particularly disgusting--when some guy’s leg gets amputated.  It’s gross and gory (to little me) so I’m like fuck this shit.

II.  I’m thirteen, in the eighth grade.  Gone with the Wind is a classic, and I was on a classic kick at the time because I’d just read Wuthering Heights and decided that it was one of my favorite books ever (it still is).  I check GWTW out from the library, and UGH, a fire is lit.  I devour that long-ass book.  I read it again.  I go on various websites dissecting it, read articles and analyses of what it all meant.  I watch the movie, buy the DVD, buy an ancient copy of the book because it’s beautiful and a paperback because I need more than one copy.  I read my mom’s book about the making of the movie, watch other movies Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh did.  I make the book the centerpiece of my final project/paper for 11th grade high school English, basically about how Rhett symbolized reconstruction south and Ashley symbolized the antebellum.  (I get an A.)  

III.  Some time passes.  I read more about how Butterfly McQueen felt about her role as Prissy--and I’m increasingly made more uncomfortable with her scenes.  I read about the paradox roles like Prissy and Mammy present, because while they’re not good representation for black women, it’s not like we can dismiss the importance of Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar win or the quality of those performances.  I think about what it means, exactly, that the movie cut the KKK plot from the book (and how did Margaret Mitchell feel about that plot--does the fact that Rhett, a character who symbolizes inevitable and necessary progressive change, think it’s bullshit mean something?).  And what about that marital rape scene?

Basically, I think that a lot of what you’ll see old white male film critics (who never consider the book, which admittedly aside from a few changes like aforementioned KKK plot and Scarlett’s first two children) critique about GWTW is bullshit.  The story itself, from a story perspective, is epic and complex.  It’s both entertaining and deep--there is intentional symbolism, there are incredibly deep characters.  I think it’s so important that the book was written by a woman and is about a woman--and a woman who isn’t good at all, but is selfish and sexually voracious and not a good mother or friend.  But who does love people truly and deeply, and doesn’t do what she does solely for personal gain (though that’s often her motivation).  Scarlett’s a real human being.  So is Rhett.  Many of the other characters are plot device-y, but those two felt and still feel wholly real to me.  (And though Melanie isn’t super real I love her anyway.)  

The issues with Gone with the Wind have nothing to do with things like character and story and everything to do with the fact it’s dated and inherently problematic.  Though I should note that Margaret Mitchell apparently disliked that the movie turned the story into a romantic ode to the bygone era of the south, when Mitchell herself evidently saw it as a story about how the south of Scarlett’s childhood had to die.  It was weak and unsustainable, like Ashley.  Does this mean she was progressive?  No.  There’s something wrong with Mammy’s undying loyalty to Scarlett, despite her critiques of the woman.  The slaves are treated as simpletons, more in the movie than in the book.  In the book you see Scarlett think stupid shit like “well the slaves wouldn’t get on without us” but you’re also like mmmm Scarlett is a dumbass a lot of the time and couldn’t do a lot of what she does without Mammy, SOOOO what’s really going on here.  I don’t know if that was intentional on Mitchell’s part, so I can’t critique it.

It’s impossible for the material to not be dated and problematic and I think that it’s important to consume it with a critical eye.  But yes, I absolutely love Gone with the Wind.  It’s one of my favorite books and favorite movies and Scarlett O’Hara is one of my favorite characters.

(I didn’t address the marital rape scene because... it’s another thing I have very mixed feelings about.  And I basically have to measure the scene by the way that Scarlett feels about it--which is also mixed.  Do I think it’s problematic that her reaction to that scene is basically “best sex of my life”?  Yes.  Do I think it’s out of character that Scarlett, a malicious person who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others, who has enjoyed fighting with Rhett most of their relationship even before they married, and loves getting a rise out of him to find that experience thrilling?  Not really.  Does that absolve Rhett?  Nope.  But there’s also an element of “they deserve each other” to Scarlett and Rhett’s relationship tbh because while he’s hideous to her at points, she’s also incredibly emotional manipulative and abusive to him at times.  I’ll also say that the scene is waaaay more interesting in the book, for obvious reasons because the movie at the time couldn’t show what happened AFTER they went into the bedroom.  And even in the book it’s vague, but it’s debated for a reason.)

I love Scarlett so much and I measure a good character by Scarlett sometimes.  She’s just such a hateful person, and yet so many of us love her?  She’s an antihero, a borderline villain to be honest.  When you really look at GWTW, it’s this 12-year saga of a woman-child who wraps people around her little finger romantically and platonically, is incredibly jealous and vindictive and basically sets out to ruin another woman’s life because of events entirely out of her control.  She’s a horrible wife, basically not giving a fuck about her first husband, only marrying the second because she needs cash (and ruining her own sister’s prospects in the process) and ignoring the fact that she loves Rhett and absolutely destroying him emotionally in part because... he genuinely loves her?  She genuinely loves him?  It’s complicated.  Also she’s like the worst mom and it’s kind of HILARIOUS in a dark way.  Scarlett being like “BE A LITTLE MAN WADE” to her sobbing toddler in wartorn Georgia as they struggle to escape Atlanta is... terrible but iconic.  It’s implied that her second child suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and Scarlett just dislikes her because she’s ugly.  Rhett is literally a better parent to his two stepchildren than their own mother, which isn’t saying shit because Rhett is a human disaster whose indulgence of his child indirectly leads to her death.

But the thing is that I admire so much Scarlett’s ability to survive.  Her sheer determination and resilience.  I think the book is kind of about the fact that in order to survive certain things, you have to let your inner rabid animal out.  You can’t necessarily be a good person and live through certain traumas, and that’s... okay.  Maybe you can recover your goodness, but if letting go of it means that you’ll keep your life and your sanity intact--that shit happens.  And it’s also about growing up and shedding the dreams of what you thought life would be, accepting the reality that the world has given you.  That’s what Scarlett as a character is about, really.  

And just as landmarks of fiction, the book and the movie are hugely impactful.  The book contributed heavily to the idea of the flawed female protagonist, sometimes the antagonist of her own story.  It’s an erotic read, and the movie for the day was an erotic movie--and that eroticism is targeted towards WOMEN, the female audience.  Scarlett is allowed to be a sexual being--in fact, it’s a big part of the Ashley vs. Rhett conflict.  Sure, Ashley is her romantic dream, but what if a woman doesn’t just want romance?  What about the sexual side of her that isn’t necessarily about love--it’s about getting fucked and well?  (Say what you will about That Scene, but the image of Vivien Leigh SINGING in bed after implied sex was a pretty big deal for the 1930s, esp. when it came to mainstream blockbusters.)  God, what about the fact that though Rhett leaves her at the end, Scarlett isn’t necessarily “punished” in one big sweeping way.  Her life is a nightmare, sure--she loses her parents, her favorite child, her unborn baby, the husband she loves ditches her after she finally realizes that she loves him.  But she’s alive.  She’s got her ancestral home.  She lives to fight another day and ends the story with hope.  After all she’s done, the story STILL lets her have another shot at life.  Hell, she’s still only in her late twenties.  Few male protagonists got away with that kind of shit, let alone females.  I love it.

Also, she definitely gets Rhett back after the book is done, I’m not saying it’s right or fair, I’m saying that Rhett Butler is her emotional bitch and there’s no way he didn’t take her back eventually, the end.  

Ride A Dove by Harry Pussy

Reissue of the second Harry Pussy LP, "Ride A Dove", originally released on Siltbreeze in 1996. "By 1996, with one LP, a handful of 7"s, and a couple dozen gigs under their collective belts, Harry Pussy had thoroughly scrambled the mid-90s scuzz-rock ecosystem. Their acclaimed first LP, described by David Keenan as 'a black hole that devoured genre and flattened any attempt to classify it,' fused Japanese noise, '80s hardcore and post-Ayler jazz into a dense, white-hot ball of punk anger and insanity. The band's newly expanded trio lineup of Bill Orcutt, Adris Hoyos and Mark Feehan toured with Dead C, Sebadoh, and Sonic Youth. Thurston played their video on MTV's 120 Minutes. Nirvana gave them shout outs. Everyone expected the sophomore Harry Pussy LP would be more of the same, a logical next step, a synapse-melting punk orgasm that would shatter the coke-bottle spectacles of noise stoners, record store clerks, and college radio DJs across the USA. Instead, we got Ride A Dove: a 30-minute, tempo-less, musique concrète collage of feedback, whiny Sonic Youth fans, overdriven room tone, hijacked jungle beats, unhinged screaming, and the near-constant squall of the self-oscillating low-pass filter on Orcutt's Korg MS-20. Recorded on Sony Walkman and Tascam Portastudio, mixed through a RAT distortion pedal, then chopped and scrambled with SoundEdit 16, it took to new heights the Siltbreeze tradition of terrorizing mastering engineers by burying everything with shitty post-production (cf. Jim Shepard's Radio Shack reverb on his Picking Through the Wreckage With a Stick LP). Thanks to the single unbanded groove on each side (and similarly unindexed CD), the relationship of Ride A Dove's 'songs' to its listed song titles -- which allude to Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees, and most of all, Black Flag, whose 'Rise Above' is echoed by the malaprop of the album title -- was decidedly obscure. One might be forgiven for characterizing this career anti-move as a simple challenge, an 'ok, sell THIS' to an unsuspecting distributor -- Matador Records, who surely had no idea what they were getting into when they scooped up Siltbreeze for a manufacturing and distribution deal -- or to fans naively anticipating simple catharsis. Rather, Ride A Dove is an intensely personal document of a disintegrating marriage and band; a snapshot of an era when noise groups were unexpectedly emerging from complete darkness into mere shadow; a diary of questionable decisions regarding marital fidelity and drug consumption. It's a raw, vulnerable record that is more Rumours (1977) than Metal Machine Music (1975). In the aftermath of Ride A Dove, and the near-apocalyptic Harry Pussy/Shadow Ring/Charalambides tour that followed it, life went on. Bill and Adris split up, guitarist Mark Feehan decamped, and Harry Pussy soldiered on for a few more records, including the sleeper double LP Let's Build a Pussy (EMEGO 146LP), which perhaps stands closer to Ride A Dove's high-register wail and conceptual monomania than any other of the band's recordings. As for Ride A Dove itself, the intervening decades has made it almost fashionable, yet harshly adorned in a raggedness that's as cozy as a fiberglass sweater." --Tom Carter Christina Carter from a blindfold test in The Wire Harry Pussy “I Started A Band” From Ride A Dove (Siltbreeze) 1996 [After crowd noises at beginning] Oh! It’s Harry Pussy! I don’t know what era this is from. 1996, from Ride A Dove. I haven’t heard this since... 96? The year it came out. Charalambides toured with them... I think the controversy has been settled. I felt it was a controversy because... make no mistake, it was chaos at times, from the audience’s perspective. However, I always knew it was a lie that [Harry Pussy] didn’t know or couldn’t control what was going on. There was one tour we went on where it was pretty out of control, but I felt that people didn’t realise it was chaos because they were pushing it towards that, or allowing it to happen; they had the ability to rein it in. Things were technically precise, they were executing complex pieces. [Guitarist] Bill Orcutt will say I’m a nerd for saying it like that [laughs]. One thing that has been great in the recent past is seeing him play and getting to spend a little time with him again. I think they’re amazing musicians, especially Adris [Hoyos, drummer], and that used to tick me off, the attitude of some people that she’s just randomly playing. It’s complicated when you get into technical ability, emotion, intent, but this is not random. This is organised, conscious music that had the ability to create a type of chaos, but also, if you could understand, because it was repeated night to night, a type of restraint and focus. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had because I was able to see them over and over. That’s an important part of touring for me, and touring with another band, to see how different people deal with these conditions, having to be up there in front of people night after night, how they handle that, what they bring to it. How they deal with being in the centre of whatever type of vortex it is. Touring with them was really fun, too. Do you think you have a handle on touring now? No, I haven’t had the chance to do an actual extended tour for a very long time. I think I got fairly good at dealing with the boredom, the routine. How do you keep yourself interested and excited night after night? You don’t. I don’t believe in building false excitement or interest. It would naturally come. You’re in a new place, you’re playing for new people. And hopefully there is an atmosphere established by the people putting on the show. I never went on tour where I played the same thing every night. If I was playing the same group of songs, I always had more than I would play in any one night. I never played them in the same way, often in radically different ways. And often I would make things up on the spot as well, putting myself into a precarious position. And that’s the exciting part, to see what’s going to come out of that. And sometimes failure is just as interesting, especially when you feel you’ve failed and other people disagree. credits Adris Hoyos - drums, vocals. Bill Orcutt - guitar, vocals. Mark Feehan - guitar.

Bb is for Book. Cc is for Cleaning

One of mine, just written...

Me and cleaning.

We're acquainted, you know; we meet in the street, there's a nod of recognition - but we don't put our shopping bags down and chat for five minutes. Still less, adjourn to Costa for coffee and tiffin. It's not that I'm dirty. Or lazy. Or enjoy mess. The nexus of our tenuous connection isn't to be found there. 'It's complicated', people inevitably say of irregular relationships. So say I about me and cleaning. If I was pushed to name names, I could legitimately point the finger of blame at mum. Not that she was a slattern, you understand.

Our house was ever spick and span. The ancient hoover used to rumble and clatter from room to room, and clunked on each and every step of the stair (there were thirteen to the landing, then a turn, and another one). The cupboard under the sink was full of relevant paraphernalia. We stocked Lanry, Vim, Brillo Pads, Windowlene, Swarfega, Pledge, and a forgotten tin of ancient lavender funiture polish. Dusters were ever old pillowcases, torn up - but there was a purpose bought floor cloth. And there were always J-Cloths for kitchen messes.

I've mentioned Vim. Now there was a product. It scoured everthing scrupulously clean – and left a film of white residue on every surface it touched. What on earth was that about? I think it was deliberate. You had to use another product and wipe everything over in order to get rid of the residue. In effect, you had to clean up twice. There was the Protestant Work Ethic and the Capitalist Profit Motive writ large, in bold, and underlined. That we were Catholics and Socialists didn't alter the outcome – we still had to clean up twice.

Next to the Brillo Pads (in the old, handle-less, cream and gilt-patterned teacup) were the donkey stones. One yellow, one white. They've been consigned to history now, along with most of the other products and mores of my childhood. God forbid, back then, that your backyard wasn't swilled and your front / back steps not mopped and donkey-stoned. Not to have that chalky white or yellow edge marking on each step was tantamount to admitting you lived in a hovel. Our donkey stones were sourced from the rag-and-bone man (also consigned to history). Periodically, this affable character would jingle along back streets on an old, wooden, flat-bed cart, pulled by a comfortingly-scented horse, and give out a timeless call; “Aag-Bow!”. You could hear him half a street away, which gave your mum time to rummage about and find some booty. You gave him whatever salvageable detritus you had and he'd give you a donkey stone. It was a sort of anti-bacterial barter arangement. Everyone was a winner. He had stuff to recycle, you got rid of clutter, and your mum was not labelled a brothel-keeper.

You might think I'm undermining my assertion that mum is responsible for my ambivalent relationship with cleaning, since I've given a long litany of cleaning products and house-proud moments worthy of an article in Lancashire Life.  But no. Not so. She is the prime culprit.

She encouraged me to read. You know – Aa, Bb, Cc: the alphabet, books... She was a reader herself – she'd always have a magazine or book to read in the evening after dad had gone to bed. Her magazines were of the era: the People's Friend (with its watercolours of Scotland); the Reader's Digest; or a slim novel. Later in life, her reading was more devotional and always included the Daily Office for the Secular Franciscan Order. I associate mum with magazines, books, puzzles: word searches, crosswords, arrow-cross. She kept her brain exercised long after she'd allowed her body to take more ease: ever a force to be reckoned with if you watched Countdown together. Switched on to the very last, mum.

So, there was mum with her familiar pile of books and magazines and there was dad, saying goodnight and heading off to bed (being a wagon driver, he had to be up early). Now, as I cast my mind back, I see that he had a hand in my aversion to cleaning, too. Not that he, too, was a reader: I can only recall him reading three books in my lifetime: The Robe, Lloyd C Douglas; Cherrill of the Yard, Fred Churrill: and a book about the Border Regiment's campaign in Burma (that was his war). Dad made a more subtle contrbution: the morning routine at 89 Napier Street was built around his need to be up and out early. That routine was instrumental in binding me indissolubly to books.

But I started the story with mum and the fact that she signposted me to the written word.

Not a sporty child, not interested in sport (except for Wimbledon fortnight), I was a devotee of Hollywood musicals, and books. The literary devotion started early. I was a member of the local public library as soon as I could hold cards in my own right. I held six in my name; I was voracious. I was one of the (few) kids who learned to read using the ITA system – the idea being that you if you taught children to read using a phonetic method, where words were written as they were pronounced, it would speed up learning. Then, at age seven or so, you'd switch to regular spelling and ditch the ITA alphabet. Some adults schooled in ITA, I have read, have never been confident spellers, as a consequence of not using the standard alphabet at the beginning of their schooling. As you can see, that is not my story. But, I digress.

I'd walk down to the library almost every Saturday morning, scooping up books  before heading home to devour them through the coming week. When I was eleven I sat the 11+ exam. I was one of the last kids to do that (it was phased out in the late 60's and early 70's as Comprehensive Schols supplanted the Grammars and Secondary Moderns). Having pased the exam, I was enrolled at St Thedore's RC High School in Burnley, and the shape of my life was definitively cast.

Mum and I would sit up and read late in the evening, after dad had gone to bed. Then, in the morning, I'd read before getting the bus to St Ted's. Dad would wake me at about 6:15am, as he left the house. (Thinking about it now, I have no idea why he didn't wake either of my elder brothers. Well actually, I probably do – they would have been unrousable. They didn't need to be up, and would have resisted any attempt to stir them into premature activity. I was more pliable.) My job then, by default, was to get up, light the coal fire, and wake up the rest of the household at the appropriate times. The bus I used to reach school was BCN Transport's 60. It wended its way from Nelson to Burnley via Halifax Road, Hill Place, Marsden Road, Briercliffe Road, and Eastern Avenue. I used to get on at Hill Place:if I left the house at 8:10am, I could reach the stop in good time. I'd be joined there by Andrew Thornton and Keith Haydock - classmates at St Ted's.

So, now you see me - solidly located in the 70's, on any given weekday morning. Dad's up and gone, the fire's lit, and I am aged eleven and I have nearly two hours to fill before I go for the bus. What is there to do but read? No such thing as Breakfast TV back then. Nowadays, when there is breakfast TV, I still prefer to read. In fact, I get up 90 minutes before I'm due at work so that I can read. By doing so, I invite another snag: I can't put the bloody book down! I'm usually 'last minute' or marginally late, arriving at work. But we're talking books... What can you do? The setting conditions for my literary efflorescence were present throughout my adolescence: mum was promoting literary explorations and dad was affording me ample opportunity to stick my nose where it belonged.

All of this may appear to be but tangentally related to my allergy to cleaning up but the two are, actually, inextricably bound. In my universe, Books and Cleaning are binary stars; suspended in the vacuum of space, locked in an eternal embrace.

The incomparable Quentin Crisp had an unique perspective on cleaning. He said, “There's no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years, the dirt doesn't get any worse”. Now, that's a sterling silver quotation – great to deploy if the Aggie and Kims of this world ring your doorbell, step into your home, and proceed to look snootily down their noses at you, whilst pinching their nostrils firmly closed. So, thank you, Quentin.

But don't think this lets you off the hook. I haven't forgotten how you died the night before I was scheduled to see you on stage in Manchester, in November, 1999. You owe me for that lack of consideration. When we meet in the heavenly (diabolical?) Cage aux Folles in the sky, I expect you to obtain a corner table for our exclusive use, with mood lighting. If push comes to shove, we can always drape one of your pink chiffon scarves over the table lamp. I'll stand us drinks but I anticipate, from you, a cavalcade of hilarious and outre anecdotes. Don't disappoint. Though I appreciate Quentin's contribution to the debate, we're not allies. We may both be Friends of Dorothy but I don't subscribe to his philosophy of detergence. I like clean and neat. I like minimalist.

I am my mother's son, after all. She liked elbow grease and order, and knick-knacks were strictly regulated; few in number and of weight and moment. We're similarly constituted, she and I. I readily confess that this outlook on the house beautiful lends itself well to spick-and-span, clean and calming. I sign up to that: I love it when my space is elegantly muted, crisply orangised, dust-free and soft-sheened. But the truth is, my impulse to clean always defers to my impulse to read.

Some people say that when food whispers to them, Eat me, they are helpless to resist. I sympathise. Books, I tell you, are equally invidious.They beckon, invitingly. They murmur, insistently, Read me. I try to be motivated by hoovers and mops. I urge myself to be excited by Mr Sheen. It'd be great if Cilit Bang raised my blood pressure. But it doesn't. I struggle. Even the most jaundiced comentator will acknowledge that Descartes' aphorism states Cogito, ergo sum not Expurgo, ergo sum. Still, I'm no slothful coward. I am not one to admit defeat easily. I've devised a graded cleaning routine to spur me to action.

I'm not one to boast, but the USA has adopted something similar to grade their national preparedness to defend against threats: they call it DEFCON. The Yanks and I share an ordered sequence of alert settings. You can find theirs on the internet. For simplicity's sake, I decribe mine below.

DEFCON 4: There's visible dust on flat surfaces. Response: SCOWL DISAPPROVINGLY OVER THE EDGE OF THE BOOK

DEFCON 3: Visible dust, an assortment of specks / crumbs on the carpet. Response: PAUSE MOMENTARILY IN MY READING. CONSIDER HOOVERING, at some unspecified future date

DEFCON 2: As above, plus fluff balls near skirting boards. Response: SET BOOK ASIDE, WITH ILL-GRACE. QUICK HOOVER and a bit of DAMP DUSTING

DEFCON 1: Imminent arrival of guests (particularly transatlantic ones) or,  threat levels as detailed above, plus shower cubicle and bathroom sink clouded by soap scum. Response: BLITZ EVERYTHING

Sometimes, for reasons I don't quite understand, the C-in-C seems to initiate DEFCON 1 without adequate justification. I mean, if book precedes clean in the dictionary, by how much more does it precede deep-clean? Ah well. Fits of absence of mind have been know to happen. Or maybe it's the breath of God blowing through me - a burst of genuine enthousiasm? Of course, it's possible, too, that (in the depest bunker of my brain) there is some unimagined Stellar Intelligence Service that continually monitors the binary stars Book and Cleaning and detects perturbations in their orbit. Once an aberration is discovered, the agency leaps into action to rectify any threat to the creative tension that holds them in equilibrium. A bit like NASA, but with Marigolds and a pinafore. If so, it's effective.

The upshot of DEFCON 1 – however it's triggered - is a mad two hours; every resource is allocated. There's a burst of frenetic activity which I sustain until, sweat dripping off my nose end, I have successfully transformed my homely abode into a showpiece. I must admit, the sense of statisfaction arising therefrom is a natural high. It's lush. I beam, inwardly. And what is it that I do next, when I hit this high? I'll tell you.

I make a pot of tea, get comfy on the sofa, and pick up my current book.

© Damian, June 17th, 2019.

Expert: Humankind, being an inherently tool-making species, has always been in a relationship with technology. Our tools, weapons, machines, and appliances are crucial to forging the cultural criteria of human life. At present, amid the technology created phantom-scape of mass media’s lurid — yet somehow sterile — imagery, one can feel as if one’s mind is in danger of being churned to spittle. On a personal note, an informal consensus has formed among my friends who share a passion for reading: We read far fewer books since the time we became enmeshed with the internet. Worse, we find the feelings of isolation that we have attempted to mitigate by an immersion in online activity, at best, provides only a palliative effect. Yet, in the manner of addiction — or a hopeless love affair —  we are prone to trudge deeper into the psychical morass by further immersion into the very source that is exacerbating our feelings of unease and ennui. Yet we insist on remaining mentally epoxied to electronic appliances, as the oceans of our technology besieged planet die, as the atmosphere is choked with heat-holding greenhouse gas emissions, and, as a result, exquisite, living things disappear forever. Therefore, it is crucial to explore why we are so isolated from each other but so connected to our devices, and are married to the belief system that misinforms us, technology can and will lift us from our increasingly perilous predicament. When reality dictates, if the past remains prologue, a fetishising of technology will further enslave us in a de facto techno-dystopia. A reassessment, for numerous reasons, of the relationship between humankind and technology must come to pass. Moreover, the reevaluation must include machines, at present and in the future, we have created in our own image. For example, those such as IA technologies, that on an increasing basis, will cause a significant number of the workforce to be rendered idle. Of course, it is a given, bottom line obsessives that they are, capitalists crave to replace workers with an automated labor force. The parasitic breed has always viewed workers as flesh machines, of whom, they were inconvenienced by having to pay wages. Capitalism is, by its very nature, dehumanising. From the advent of the industrial/capitalist epoch, the system has inflicted mass alienation, societal atomisation, and anomie. Moreover, the vast wealth inequity inherent to the system allows the capitalist elite to own the political class — a mindless clutch of flunkies who might as well be robots programmed by the capitalist order to serve their agendas. The question is, what effect will the nature of being rendered superfluous to the prevailing order have on the powerless masses — who have, up until now, been kept in line by economic coercion, by meretricious, debt-incurring consumer bribes, and by mass media indoctrination and pop culture anaesthesia? Will consumers continue to insist that their mental chains are the very wings of freedom? Yet the Age Of Mass Mechanisation carries the potential to bestow an era of liberty, artistic exploration, scientific inquiry, intellectual fervour, the pursuit of soul-making, and inspired leisure. Or the polar shift in cultural raison d’etre might inflict a crisis of identity so harrowing that demagogues rise and despots promise to seed a new order but harvest the corpses of dissidents and outsiders. A couple of weeks back, during a visit to a neighbourhood playground with my four year old, I had a conversation with an executive on voluntary leave from her management position at BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke). She was grousing about a infestation of seaweed choking the beaches of the Florida Keys she had encountered on a recent excursion to the US. When I averred the phenomenon of the warming oceans of the planet, the progenitor of the exponential growth of the sea flora she had been troubled by, was caused, in large measure, by the very socio-economic-cultural dynamic that financed her trip to Florida in the first place…well, it put a crimp in the conversation. It can be unsettling to be confronted with one’s complicity in the ills of a system that, by its very nature, provides camouflage to its perpetrators — the big bosses, down to its functionaries, and foot soldiers. Soon, she, by a series of subtle moves, extricated herself from the conversation — and I cannot say I blame her. I myself experienced discomfort by the thought of the discomfort I inflicted on her. Therefore, as a general rule, under the tyranny of amiability, which is the rule of the day of the present order, one is tempted to avoid trespassing into the comfort zones that aid in enabling the status quo. Yet we are faced with the following imperative: The system and its machines must begin to serve humanity, as opposed to what has been the case since the advent of the industrial/technological age: the mass of humanity serving the machine. Therefore, there must arrive a paradigmatic shift in metaphors and the ethos of the era; e.g., a renunciation of the soul-decimating concept of human beings as flesh machines — who must, for the sake of monomaniacal profiteering, divorce themselves from human feeling as well as must forgo exploration, enthusiasm, and craft in the pursuit of expediency. We do have a choice in the matter, all indications to the contrary. Yet, in the prevailing confusion regarding what ethos should guide our relationship to technology, we are confronted with phenomenon such as the situation chronicled in a recent article in The Guardian. Headlined: “The Sex Robots Are Coming: seedy, sordid – but mainly just sad“. Regarding the supercilious nature of the headline, wouldn’t it be more propitious for all concerned to ask and explore why, under the present order, men are so alienated, socially awkward and lonely, as opposed to lapsing into all the predictable moral panic, wit-deficient snark, and supercilious value judgments these sorts of stories evoke? Isn’t being attracted to consumer goods what it is all about, identity-wise, under the present order? Don’t customers demand that the de facto slaves of the service industry evince the demeanour of compliant androids? Isn’t it a given that the underclass workforce, holders of service industry jobs, will soon be replaced by robots? Do we not worship and are ruled by the gospel of the cult of efficiency? Withal, for the present order to be maintained, it is crucial for the general public to remain both alienated thus using consumerism as a palliative, and that includes the production and retailing of sexualised, simulacrum appliances that mimic sex partners and the psychical release valve of finger-wagging, easy virtue and shallow vitriol aimed at the poor sods who seek comfort from them. Addendum: I’m much more mortified by robotics designed for surveillance and war than for ones designed for simulacrumatic sex. I’m simply beastly that way. Robots can be programmed to simulate copulation but it is doubtful that machines can be tuned and tweaked to experience the manifold, complex states of being that define human consciousness and its innate ability for self expression; for example, the ability to express themselves by means of spontaneous generated metaphors. While it is true, AI technologies can mimic forms of poetic and artistic expression but, in any honest account of the processes they utilise, machines engage in the activity sans a depth of feeling, the facility to evince empathy and the ability to access imagination; i.e., the phenomenon we human beings term soulfulness. Sans the ineffable quality of soul, AI entities, as is the case with our present information technology, will contribute the palliative, yet inherently alienating, effects inherent to our hyper-commodified era. In contrast, writers/artists/activists must proceed to dangerous places. It is imperative that they descend into the danger zone known as the soul. The soul is not a realm inhabited by weightless beings radiating beatific light. Rather, it is a landscape of broken, wounded wanderers; inchoate longing; searing lamentation; the confabulations of imperfect memory; of rutting and rage; transgression; depression; fragmented language; and devouring darkness. The reductionist metaphors inherent to the age of mechanisation — which limn human beings in mechanised, commodified terms — as opposed to the organic, unfolding pantheon composed of needs, longings and desires we are — inflicts not only alienation from our fellow human beings but from our essential natures. In our misery and confusion, we have bloated our bodies, maimed and poisoned the earth, and scoured the hours of our lives of meaning by the compulsive commodification of all things. Therefore it should not come as a surprise when alienated, lonely men become enamoured of glambots. We have delivered insult after insult to the soul of the world, and yet it loves us with an abiding and bitter grace. The question remains: do we love it in turn, and deeply enough, to mount a resistance to the present order thus turn the tide against the love-bereft forces responsible for the wholesale destruction of both landscape and soulscape. http://clubof.info/