In which the pond does a Tootle and wanders off the tracks ...

 

 

Could this finally be the end of Boris? 

Could this be the end of the pond asking if this is the end? 

Why is there such an enormous amount of reading assigned for an end of term assignment?

 

 

 

Phew, best leave that sort of existential question alone, and wait for the Graudian satirists to do their thing, and for the pond to dance away gaily, not giving a fig for it all ... the urge to do a Tootle is strong in the pond this day ...

Remember, a climate denialist onion muncher's sparrow's fart shouldn't be taken as a sign that there's going to be a reptile summer any time soon at the pond. 

The pond is still intent on celebrating its freedumb, even as hundreds of geeks, nerds and noble code monkeys toil away to crack the evil empire's wall (don't get agitated about that term, there's incontrovertible proof that most simians are more sensible than their human cousins).

So the pond would like to turn back to the matter of Spotify, as signalled in the Daily Beast ...

 

As instructed, the pond went to Spotify, and copped this as a bonus ...

...I want you to know that from the very first days of the pandemic, Spotify has been biased toward action. We launched a variety of educational resources and campaigns to raise awareness and we developed and promoted a global COVID-19 Information Hub. We donated ad inventory to various organizations for vaccine awareness, funds to the World Health Organization and COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) to increase vaccine equity and supported the Go Give One fundraising campaign. And we established a music relief project to support the creative community. While this is not a complete list, I hope it gives you a sense of how seriously we’ve approached the pandemic as a company.
I trust our policies, the research and expertise that inform their development, and our aspiration to apply them in a way that allows for broad debate and discussion, within the lines. We take this seriously and will continue to partner with experts and invest heavily in our platform functionality and product capabilities for the benefit of creators and listeners alike. That doesn’t mean that we always get it right, but we are committed to learning, growing and evolving.
Daniel

Oh really, Daniel, we're on first names basis, are we? 

Well Danny boy, as the Celts would say, you're a fookin' eejit, though of course the pond says it in a friendly way, as an admirer of gibberish about platform functionality and product capabilities.

Incredibly complex, learning, growing and evolving? Even better ... 

Can't you just say you invested squillions in that fookin' eejit, Joe and your philosophy is show me the money, I need the money? And I'll make up bullshit without changing a thing, eh Danny Boy?

Can't you remember the days of Tipper Gore, when one of her labels was greeted with comedy and nobody paid any never no mind to advisories up against the raw grist at the fake news Spotifying musical Deliveroo mill?

 

 

 

It's gratifying that Spotify has taken a minor hit on the stock exchange, but even more pleasing when addicts wake up to their addiction.

Next up the pond would like to declare an abiding pleasure in the sketch comedy of Mitchell and Webb, which clogs up the pond's YouTube logarithms almost as much as Yes, Minister. 

Yesterday Mitchell was out and about in The Graudian and it was a splendid read. First there was the introduction:

The pond only means to take a few quotes, for the pleasure of the read. Firstly there's the description …
I went to private schools and was generally fond of those institutions. As a left-leaning centrist but also a conservative with a small “c” (a woolly position that makes me a massive “c” in the eyes of some), I’m uncomfortable with abolishing, or otherwise driving out of existence, non-profit-making educational institutions. I don’t like banning things in general. I can see the logic that these schools, which undoubtedly provide something good for thousands of children, might nevertheless be causing societal harm overall. But I’m squeamish about taking that logic and commissioning some politicians to turn it into a great big illiberal bunch of laws. So the truth, private education system, is that I was still fluttering my eyelashes at you.

The pond sometimes thinks of itself as a bit of a "c", but then came the real Mitchell (no Major here, here no Major) juice when the talk turned to private schools setting up the Middle East, and conforming, in much the same way that they might have done for Herr Adolf  …

A spokeswoman for Royal grammar school, Guildford defended this approach, with reference to that institution’s Qatar branch, saying that the school “must comply with the laws of the country in which we are operating”. Then she added: “Royal grammar school, Guildford will always challenge bullying, whatever the root.” But what if the root is an unjust and bigoted non-democratic regime? They’re not challenging that, they’re accommodating it. They don’t have to set up a school there. What possible reason could there be for doing so if core principles of a liberal education, including equality and mutual respect – presumably the very ethos the school is hoping to bring to this other country – are illegal there?
Sherborne school in Dorset insists that “school policies and practices are inclusive and supportive of LGBT people”, which Sherborne school in Doha does not. A former teacher at the Dubai branch of Brighton college has said that they were forced to cover up Israel on maps of the world. And, according to the Times, the Doha branch of King’s college, Taunton changed the definition of bullying set by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to exclude the word “homophobic”. When I looked at the King’s, Doha website (albeit not from Doha, where it might look different), I actually did see homophobia mentioned there, but I was struck by the juxtaposition of these schools and the NSPCC. These organisations all enjoy charitable status, but for some reason only one of them is not looking to expand globally. The NSPCC isn’t seeking franchises in other countries where the law requires charities to be more equivocal about the issue of cruelty to children.

There was a little punctuation:

If Conservatives were ever squeamish about morally vacuous globalisation, they show few signs of it these days

Dear sweet lord, the English were squeamish about the empire? Do go on ...

It’s not looking to be flexible about that and so perhaps change its name to something less controversial like the National Society for the Prevention of Killing Children, or even the National Society for the Prevention of Killing Too Many Children, in order to build a client base in a new territory and expand the global outreach of its collection boxes. It’s a powerful reminder of how institutions with charitable status behave when they happen actually to be charities.
This empty-headed push for more branches, like Our Price in the 80s, Gap in the 90s and Jamie’s Italian in the 2000s, couldn’t be more out of step with the exigencies of the climate crisis, an issue these schools presumably wouldn’t teach their pupils about if opening a branch in Texas. And the notion of spreading British private education to the world, of planting the seeds of our own corrosive class system, like socioeconomic knotweed, all over the planet – as a sort of heritage product, but stripped, wherever local governments require it, of anything worthwhile it might stand for – is loathsome. The fact that the aesthetic of Britain’s ancient public schools is so attractive to brutal Middle Eastern regimes should tell us everything we need to know.

The pond has left stuff out because this is a promotional service, not a reptile takeover. Suffice to say, the pond loved every word of it, that linking of Eton and Saudi Arabia, and commends the link ...

Then came The Bulwark and this note about the mango Mussolini, here, though you can find a note about it at the Graudian as well here …

Inter alia …

 

But it worked tremendously well in the days of Herr Adolf, when those who took part in the Beer Hall Putsch were rewarded with a medal singularly lacking in design ...

 

Surely the insurrectionists should be rewarded with a pardon and a memento, helping them celebrate their valiant deeds? Something matching Herr Adolf's Albert Speer style aesthetics ...

That'll do pig, that'll do nicely.

After all, the overthrow of American democracy is no small thing, and worthy of celebration.

And now to continue the pond's erratic course by turning to a keen Keane at Crikey ... it was outside the paywall, so there's no point in the pond running, except for the power of the read.

 

 

For good measure, the keen Keane ended this way ...

There is no excuse for, no explaining away, no dodging, this disaster. The blood of the dead is on their hands. And the grisly toll of their incompetence grows more horrific each day.

The pond would only beg to add a coda - this is the sort of mass killing field the reptiles have been calling for for yonks. Killer Creighton would be satisfied at a job well done.

Yet some might remember the pink batts scandal. Four workers were killed in that affair, and the Rudd government was rightly chastised for the part played... 

 

 

 

So long ago, so many righteous and indignant reptiles out and about ...

But when it comes to the hundreds dead now? 

Crickets … (though when you think about it, crickets make a lot more noise than News Corp when it comes to their hero).

The pond realises that the conversation has turned this day to the pitiful pay on offer in the aged care sector, but the killing fields should also be remembered.

On a lighter, positive note, at last the two Davids have returned ... the infallible and the immortal ...

 

 

Ah, it's not just Crikey's Keane that has been Kean. 

Dammit, this other Kean has turned up in the bloody Graudian, where his thoughts might be read outside the paywall by all, under the astonishingly impudent header NSW businesses need federal leadership to ensure strong economic recovery ...

Comment is free, they boast,  apparently unaware of the Chairman and his son and their paywall ... and it will take every reptile, stoutly sheltering behind the Chairman and son's paywall to explain how there actually is leadership ... and not just stories such as 'Treading water': no sign household savings are flowing to small businesses...

Moving along, the pond would like take a journey down memory lane, or more to the point, celebrate slivers of memory ...

The pond found the book in a street library, a chance find because Covid hasn't been kind to street libraries. 

It was published in 1986. Adair had been born in December 1944 in Edinburgh but spent time in Paris, or so says his wiki, so anyone can do the math on his memories and the space he moved in.

Truth to tell, the pond had only a vague memory of Adair and his work. What's captivating is how some of these slivers also lodged in the pond's mind, while others are completely alien.

The bigger point is that the reptiles are completely useless for this sort of stuff. 

The pond had once thought of giving some of these slivers of memories a run, as a way of inspiring slivers of memory in others, but never found a space for it. 

Now, the reptiles can just sod off and make room ...

Adair did provide an explanation for his methodology, and for what it's worth, here's part of it, as it appeared in the preface, and naturally there's a French component ...

 

 

 

So quaint, so Roland Barthes, so semiotic and structural, and so to this Adair transformation into English. 

There were some 400 of them, so perforce the pond has had to limit the numbers … but the pond is sure some of them will trigger memories, and the pond will only interrupt once ...

 

 

 

 

And there's where the pond must jump in ...

Just as the pond admires Mitchell and Webb, long ago it admired Tony Hancock, but damned if the pond could remember the precise East Cheam address … though the pond instantly knew what east Cheam meant because for a time, the pond lived in the low rent section of east Tamworth …

That's the sort of sideways linking and tracking the pond can indulge in, while the reptiles trudge their pitiful, narrow ideological lane …

Cue The Independent's Andrew Roberts' celebrating Hancock on 28th October 2014 under the header …Tony Hancock: The star of Hancock's Half Hour is still influencing comedy, (soft paywall), with the tag sixty years after its debut Hancock’s legacy can be seen through the delusions of Basil Fawlty and David Brent’s dreams of minor celebrity:

Sixty years after the first radio broadcast, Tony Hancock’s legacy can be seen throughout British television comedy – the delusions of Basil Fawlty with his Marks & Spencer-tailored provincial interpretation of David Niven and David Brent’s dreams of minor celebrity, the pomposity of Dougal of The Magic Roundabout and Captain Mainwaring and the anger of Reginald Perrin.
The 37 surviving tapes of the TV Hancock’s Half Hour initially seem rooted in a lost England of woodbines, Teddy boys, and Formica-clad coffee bars. Yet because Galton and Simpson’s scripts are so firmly rooted in time and place and because of Tony Hancock’s genius for comedy acting, his trials are universal – in a country where almost every “technological advance” will inevitably wear an “out of order” sign within two weeks, one can imagine him doing battle with recalcitrant self-service check-outs. Tony Hancock was, and always will remain, the Malvolio of the outer suburbs, heralded by Wally Stott’s lugubrious tuba theme, self-important, deluded – and immortal.

And did you notice that reference to John Betjeman? 

The pond hasn't thought about him or his poems for years, and yet in a trice, outside the reptile paywall, like that little train off the rails and tripping with the flowers in the meadow, the pond could be here, reading Middlesex ...

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Dreen;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden - father's hobby -
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney singers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters,
Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.

Now on with the memories … because the pond rudely interrupted, right in the middle of Adair recalling Jayne Mansfield's headless corpse, which might have set the pond off recalling Kenneth Anger, with a read that once transfixed the pond and not because of the cover ...

 

 

 

Oh how the pond devoured that book. How did a copy end up in Tamworth?

A poem and Anger in one day, when free of reptile anger? Oh it's too much, more memories please, and about that decapitation, do go on...

 

 

 

Of course the full to overflowing intertubes rather ruins things, what with a wiki on Mickey Hargitay, sic transit Mr Universe muscles, but do go on ...

 

 

Well yes, the pond remembers those, and it also remembers celebrating this ancient Pope cartoon way back when it appeared, featuring a man wreathed in the mists of time ... as ancient as monuments on Easter Island ...and as bereft of meaning ...

 

And now to a credit for the book, which is frankly dated and quaintly Roland Barthes and semiotics and such like, but what the hell, Archy, toujours gai …

 

And so to something completely outside Adair's experience. 

The Tamworth post office was once a towering symbol that dominated the main street. Every town of any considered self-importance had one. Albury, for example, had an exceptionally fine and splendid tribute to itself via its post office ...

In Tamworth, in the usual way of lack of foresight (thinking grandeur would be enough), bits and pieces were tacked on out the back, and the space was cramped and the pond once had the pleasure of seeing mail sorting men at Xmas check out which parcels had the right tinkling breakable stuff sound, before throwing said suitable parcels thirty feet across the main sorting room into a bag, with an air of drunken glee …(not the parcels, the mail sorting men).

Nowadays they've all gone, as has the American postal system ... just like the drunken mailman who sat in the deep gutter outside the PO, sobbing his heart out, mail strewn all around him, his brown leather mail bag completely empty, the mail never to be delivered, a middle-aged alcoholic with domestic difficulties, forced to cope with Xmas ...

Oh it's an Adair memory all right, and what the pond recalls when it sees this ...

 

 

Yes, he was sobbing his heart out, right next to that bubbler, with the man standing beside it, which you can see because once upon a time, there were people who thought post offices were worth a postcard ...though the bubbler and the man had been long gone by the time the sobbing had started, and soon enough the sobbing had ended, as had the marriage ... and yet it still stands, in its Freudian way, and the pond can only remember that infernal gonging by the PO clock, a faux Big Ben noise, which could be heard all over town in the stillness of the night ...