Monthly Archives: March 2007

Another fab song – from Bones

I’m watching tv out of the corner of an eye whilst editing leaflets and generating PDFs, and there was a rather lovely song in an episode of Bones. Guitar-ry, piano, sad, hummable bass line, a little like Dido, although no-one else on the internet seems to be saying that, so maybe that’s the only thing in my frame of reference.

I can’t see the stars any more living here
Let’s go to the hills where the outlines are clear
Bring on the wonder, bring on the song,
I’ve pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

It’s by Susan Enan, who doesn’t yet have an album you can buy, and isn’t on iTunes, but does have two songs up on her Myspace Music site.

You can also sign up to her “coming soon” website, and know when the first album will be ready. Latest news on Myspace is that it was being mixed in January by someone with a serious music CV.
I’ve been watching a lot of Bones lately. It caught my eye because it looked like something I’d really like – forensic procedurals like CSI, and early Patricia Cornwall are firmly in my list of favourites. I read Kathy Reichs avidly too, and this series is stars her character Dr Temperance Brennan. Or at least a version of her. And it also has the guy who played Angel. Who could ask for more?

Well, actually, in the first few episodes it seemed really clunky. Some of the invented technology and the clumsy characterisation really jarred. But as the first series progressed and the second series started, there’s a change in feeling, and it’s deliberately tugging at the heartstrings much better rather than making fun of the geeks. The extensive back story is great.

EDIT:  P’s just come in and said that if I like that Susan Enan stuff I’d like Sarah McLachlin. Then he played some, and unfortunately, and for no reason I can put my finger on, I don’t.  Bah.

Good conf

I did have a good conference and didn’t get fed up with people. Stayed in a lovely guest house called Acorn Lodge that had been block-booked by friends from the south.  The proprietors were incredibly helpful and friendly even though I managed to turn up in the middle of the night, and, I’ve just found out, leave with my room key.

I wonder how many Lib Dems are posting keys back to Harrogate tonight.

It was great to catch up with my friends too.  After six years in politics, it seems some of my friends are about to become PPCs.  Well, at least one of them is in a key seat.

Lunar eclipse

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Last night, many of conference’s reps took time out from drinking and singing in the Glee Club to watch the lunar eclipse. At least two of us recalled other times we’d seen them. For me, it was more than twenty years ago as a cub scout standing outside Tenbury Wells High School where we used to meet, before we moved on to a purpose built scout hut next to the swimming baths. Back then we still wore shorts, socks with bands of elastic holding them up, neckerchiefs, woggles. I don’t suppose anyone would be surprised to hear I had an armful of badges. The representative next said the last time he’d seen a lunar eclipse, he’d been on the banks of the Amazon. Slightly more exotic.

I did try to take a photo of the moon, but armed only with my cameraphone, that was unsurprisingly ineffective. So, I took a picture of people watching the moon instead.

My thoughts on Ming

Yesterday’s conference speech in the Trident debate was about the best I think I’ve ever seen him. Impassioned, impromptu, impressive and moved the debate on.

As readers will know, I’m not pre-disposed particularly to like Ming, and I wasn’t buying his argument on Trident either. And yet I was impressed by what he said – and it was at about then in the debate I made my mind up that even if the amendment fell, I’d still vote for the unamended paper, as better than nothing.

I’m not sure, however, I buy the theory that it was Ming that swung it. No, that was shadowy strong-arm tactics. Key PPCs got phonecalls from high-ups. Local party chairs (like me) got a lobbying pack we were supposed to give to our conference reps posted out to us, but those on the other side of the argument were denied first the opportunity, then the data list to send the mailing themselves. Lots of the Parliamentary party were brought to wave their voting cards. All of that adds up to more than the 40 votes that swung the argument.

Moving on to today’s keynote speech. A good performance. A good speech – and as I was hearing it, it was setting me thinking along the lines of plenty of good material to plagiarise from it for leaflets. As there always has to be, there was plenty for the audience hearing it there and then, and plenty for audiences beyond.

But I’m still not happy. I’m cross about the need to stage manage the final speech so much. The video montage of Ming was tolerable.

But the pointless engineering of not one but two standing ovations was a bit much. It looked like the entire shadow cabinet were stationed on the front row primed to leap to their feet clapping the minute the leader appears, guilting the rest of us to follow suit. I’m too bloody-minded to join in, but pretty much everyone else did. I thought there were more bolshies than that!

The same deal was repeated at the end of the speech. In fact, if the shadow cabinet hadn’t leapt to their feet cheering, I wouldn’t have known the speech had ended.

It’s now become important that the clapping at the end goes on for a while because the journalists are hiding in the wings with stopwatches to benchmark this year’s claps against last year’s and read some huge significance into changes. (That’s why Charlie was rushed off stage at the last conference, it would somehow be considered embarrassing if we’d clapped more for him than for the leader.)

So to keep us clapping, we now have to watch the leader wander through the crowds, shake hands, kiss Elspeth repeatedly.

It’s all a bit unsavoury, and missing a sort of British reserve. There’s something of a messianic cult about it. We’re the British Liberal Democrats, not some sort of congregation going for spiritual advice. We’re not there to bow down in adulation before Ming, we’re there to hear what he says and decide for ourselves whether or not it’s reasonable. Just the day before, when we were wandering around telling each other it had been an excellent debate, and how other parties would never dare to do that, and so on, we were congratulating ourselves as representatives for being able to think and reason rationally, even if we came out with different answers. Then a day later, it seems we’re all supposed to pretend we’ve been struck with some sort of Mingmania and the man can do no wrong. I don’t like it, and I would be surprised if Ming likes it. He has a deserved reputation as an elder statesman, and we don’t need to reinvent him as some sort of snakeoil salesman who needs 2,200 Lib Dems to cheer him out of the room.

Funeral

My aunt, my mother’s sister, died last week at age 49, from a cancer that first seemed beaten, then was discovered untreatable in her spine.

The family rallied round at the crematorium on Friday. My mother’s family all share a distinct sense of humour that’s obviously very similar to my own, so such events, whilst still being very sad, are underscored with hardly stifled laughter all the way through.

A few years ago when we all gathered for Grandad’s funeral (at the same place, I think) the service was taken by a preacher who didn’t know him, but who had come to meet my aunts and hear about him. The resulting service was odd, partly because none of us could quite work out whether the preacher was a man or a woman, partly because s/he misunderstood some bits, and partly because s/he mixed up her/his notes, and gave the eulogy meant for someone else’s Grandad. Se referred to recent holidays in Benidorm and Cyprus, which didn’t sound like our Grandad at all. And she misunderstood his “interest in glass” – he was an academic physicist, and the author of “The Physical Properties of Glass” – she thought he liked looking at stained glass windows. I mention this to highlight my families’ response – which was to joke about it rather than to complain or get upset. So much so, that when planning my aunt’s funeral, my uncle even considered feeding the next minister more misinformation – or even the same misinformation – just to make us laugh.

The sense of humour also shows through in merciless teasing of each other. Which means it’s very unfortunate that my brother programmed his sat-nav wrong. He should have been headed for Newcastle (under Lyme) Crematorium. He ended up well on the way to Newcastle upon Tyne. Text messages about the progress of his journey up from London worried me a little, but it wasn’t until he said he was stuck in traffic outside Sheffield that I twigged what was wrong. When he eventually arrived, there was lots and lots of mickey-taking.
More about my aunt. She had a marked Potteries accent, like most people in Newcastle. So much so, that just hearing her work colleagues talk like that in the pub after the service really reminded us of her. A family anecdote has me, meeting her when I was wee, noting her pronunciation of “book”: “Oh, auntie, I could have sworn you just said ‘b-euw-k'”

She like frogs. On the day she died, this hopped into our lean-to at home:

Frog in lean-to

Taxing times

Two busy days in the run up to conference.  Thursday was spent trying to get ahead of self, and largely failing.  As well as all the work, I had to get a Lib Dem newsletter printed and off to the volunteers who will stuff it on Monday.  Since I’ll be in Harrogate away from my printer, I had to get it ready in advance.

Which meant slaving over the Riso at midnight.

Which meant taking my eye off the clock.

Which meant my bloody car got locked in the Bingo hall car park again, and I got stranded in Chesterfield after midnight.

Which meant I didn’t get home until 10am on Friday, which was both the first day of Lib Dem conference and a family funeral.

Lots of mad running around, driving across the country on unfamiliar roads, turning up at a hotel (Chesterfield) and a guesthouse (Harrogate) in the middle of the night, relying on sat nav which worked – arriving at a crematorium with 80 minutes to spare – and then let me down – dumping me in the countryside 20 miles north of Harrogate at gone midnight…

Thank heavens for conference bars open till, erm, well, quite late actually. I really needed the, erm, several beers I’d had to miss during the day since I was driving. I didn’t leave the bar till well after three.
It’s all rather surreal.

And being in the conference bar with the last men and women standing is hilarious, particularly if most of them are way drunker than you.