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December 2002 |
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Monday 2 December After weeks of not going out at all, we have hardly had an evening at home for the past few days. On Thursday we saw Opera North's new production of Puccini's Tosca. This has had some negative press reviews because of its modern staging and costumes. They have given it a totally contemporary setting, complete with a large poster for Italy's ruling Forza Italia party, and some opera traditionalists have been put off by this. But I thought that the setting was quite appropriate for this very modern story of a corrupt chief of police who tracks down and tortures political activists in the name of a war against terror, and sexually blackmails Tosca (the girlfriend of one of them). The singing and orchestral playing was well up to Opera North's high standards, and I much preferred this production to Opera North's previous Tosca a few years ago. As a bonus, the Grand Theatre has at long last installed surtitle monitors, so that they can stage operas in the original language and the audience can still follow the plot. The next evening we went to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see Pretending To Be Me, a one-man show written and performed by Tom Courtenay. In it, he plays the part of the poet Philip Larkin, reminiscing about his life and reciting some of his poems. It was a bravura performance, as a one-man show has to be if it is to succeed at all. I can't begin to imagine how one person can hold an audience's attention so closely for an entire evening of entertainment. It's hard enough to hold students' attention for a 50-minute lecture without half of them going to sleep. One of the poems included in Tom Courtenay's performance was Larkin's last major poem, Aubade. It is a typically morose Larkin piece, about the black thoughts that sometimes surface when you wake at four in the morning. It includes the lines
which I used as the epigraph for my before page when I first set up this site. These lines have always struck me as very true, and very sad: you only have the one life, and by the time you've sorted out the way it should go there may not be that much of it left. I found that there is a web site with a link to a RealAudio file of Larkin himself reading 'Aubade'. You can find it here. For some light entertainment after two evenings of high culture, we went to see the latest Harry Potter film last night. We both enjoyed it, though it would have been more fun if we had been able to take a small child with us (not too small, though—some of the scenes would have been too scary for young Tom). It's a very well made film, and J K Rowling is wonderfully inventive. In a way, it's also quite educational, with plenty of authentic information about mythological creatures such as basilisks and phoenixes. But it's too long. My attention span doesn't run to two and a half hours of escapist fantasy.
For the past couple of days, the British media have been saturated with hysterical coverage of a totally trivial non-story about the Prime Minister's wife and her business dealings. This has obscured the real news of the day, which you can find here: Barbara Roche, the government minister for social exclusion and equality (eh? I never knew there was such a post), has announced an intention to give gay men, lesbians and bisexual people the same rights as married couples. This would bring the UK into line with several other European countries and some American States which already have such legislation. Remarkably, the Conservative opposition have said that they will support the measure (see my entry last month). But don't get too excited about it just yet. For one thing, the government's timetable won't allow this to take place for at least a year from now. Also, Mrs Roche made it clear at once that these "civil partnerships" would not be the same as marriage. That is undoubtedly because the Conservatives, the churches and the tabloid press would start foaming at the mouth at the very idea of "gay marriage". The fact that a civil partnership is different from a marriage will give the opponents of gay rights every opportunity to try to whittle away the rights conferred by this bill. It's almost certain in any case that the House of Lords will reject the bill and will have to be over-ruled. But it does seem that the government feels strongly that the time has come for same sex couples to have the same property and inheritance rights as heterosexual partners. Public opinion probably backs them in this. As a Guardian columnist put it:
As I was saying last month, there has been a massive change in public opinion since the wretched 1980s when the Thatcher government was virtually inciting gay-bashing. I'm very pleased that we are living in more progressive times now. But I have lived long enough to know that it probably won't last. Social attitudes seem to swing from one extreme to the other over a period of about 20 years. Who would have thought in the heady days of the 1960s that things would be so bad in the 1980s? It's my guess that by 2020 there will be another shift towards reactionary conservatism. My only consolation then will be that by the time I celebrate my 100th birthday in 2041 we'll once again be in an enlightened era. I'm not entirely cynical about social progress, however. I think that on balance the gains made during liberal periods outweigh the setbacks in more conservative times. But that will only continue if we push as hard as we can for social advances when the climate is favourable. The more gains that are made now, the harder it will be for the bigots to undo them when the tide turns in their direction. As always, Shakespeare said it best:
I'm an advertiser's nightmare. My mother brought me up to be very sceptical and mistrustful of advertising, and I usually don't notice adverts at all. I have never had any brand loyalty towards goods of any kind (except jeans—I would never buy jeans other than Levis). So it's a bit surprising that I became aware of an advertising campaign by a broadband ISP called Boltblue. They have been running a series of adverts featuring a pair of little action figures in different settings. There's no reason at all why I should have paid any attention to these adverts. After all, I'm still very pleased with the NTL broadband service that I signed up for earlier this year, and I have no intention of switching to another provider. But one of the Boltblue adverts caught my eye. It shows two male figures wearing only their underpants, snuggling up to each other and engaging in some obviously gay dialogue. I think that's great. It's yet another sign that people nowadays take gay life and relationships for granted as just a normal part of their world. What a change from the world I grew up in.
Well I've taken the first major step towards (partial) retirement. I have completed and sent in the university's application form for their Premature Retirement Scheme. This doesn't actually commit me to leaving next summer. That will only happen when I formally sign on the dotted line some time next spring. Also, there is no guarantee that they will accept my application. They will only do so if my Head of Dept confirms that my departure would be "in the managerial interest", and provided that there are not too many of my colleagues also wanting to retire at the same time. I don't think either of those things will cause any problems. As far as I know, there is only one other person in our department who is thinking of leaving next year. And the Head of Dept is in some sense junior to me, so if I tell him that it's in the department's interest to get rid of me, he's unlikely to argue. I shall also make it a condition of retiring that they agree to re-employ me part time for the next three years. Financially, it looks as though I'll be almost as well off partially retired as I am on a full salary. The university's pensions officer has given me his figures for the pension that I would receive, and it's actually rather more than I was expecting. The key thing that I'm relying on financially is that Liz should graduate from her course next summer. At present, we are supporting her to the extent of about £10,000 a year for her fees and living expenses (to say nothing of the €24,000 that we have just given Steve and Jo towards the purchase of their new flat in Spain). When we no longer have to pay that, our finances should improve dramatically. The only danger is that she may fail her exams and have to repeat the final year. I'd rather not think about that possibility, and I have carefully avoided saying anything about this to her, for fear of adding to the stress that she is already feeling about her finals. So I was surprised to hear Mary saying on the phone to Liz last week that she had better work hard and pass first time because next year her father was going to be an impoverished pensioner who could no longer afford to support her. In fact, I could hardly believe my ears, that she would say something so thoughtless. But afterwards, when I told her that she had been saying the very things that I have been carefully not saying to Liz, she said that she had done it quite deliberately. She thinks that Liz has been taking her final year studies far too casually, and needs a bit of a kick up the ass. She's almost certainly right—she understands Liz much better than I do. The more I think about it, the more I'm looking forward to giving up any administrative responsibilities, just doing some teaching for one semester each year and being free to do my own thing for the rest of the time. It will be even better when Liz graduates and we're finally through with supporting our kids. ("Kids"?! They're in their 30s, dammit.)
The holiday season seems to have started early this year. We have been going out almost every evening to one event or another. On Thursday and Saturday we went to concerts at the York Early Music Christmas Festival. We recently joined the Festival Friends (for a hefty membership fee), as a result of which we were invited to a lunch on Sunday for the Friends at the home of their Administrator. We didn't know any of the other people there, but they were all very friendly (as I suppose Friends should be) and we stayed there all afternoon. I shall not be able to go to any of the concerts at the Summer Festival next July, because it clashes with my annual walking holiday in Scotland. But Mary would love to go to some of them, and she was pleased to find a couple of Friends who live quite near us and who will be willing to give her a lift. On Monday we went with Mary's theatre group to the Playhouse to see their production of The Little Shop of Horrors. We took our kids to see this show many years ago when they were small, and they loved it. But this production was a disappointment. The acting and singing were good enough, but the production lacked the sparkle and the camp comedy that this show needs. The best part of the evening was the mince pie and fruit punch reception that we were treated to before the performance. Yesterday was the day of our departmental Christmas lunch, at which there was supposed to be a presentation to my colleague and good friend John, who retired last year and moved away from Leeds. We had arranged to take John and his wife out for dinner yesterday evening, along with a couple of other colleagues and their wives. But at the last minute John's wife was taken ill and they were unable to come. The rest of us decided to go out to dinner anyway. We had a good meal and enjoyed the evening, and we agreed that we'll have to do the same thing some time next year when John finally comes to collect his retirement gift. On Friday our young friends Steph and Fran, who house sit and cat sit when we're away, are coming over for dinner. Then on Saturday Liz arrives, just in time to celebrate Mary's birthday on Sunday. Liz's boyfriend Paul will also be coming to stay for Christmas, but he can't get away until the last minute because of his job. I'm not sure how long Liz and Paul will be staying with us, but I doubt whether I'll be able to get near the computer while they're here. So this is likely to be the last journal entry for quite a while, and I'll conclude this entry with my usual Christmas greeting, wishing you the very best of the season of goodwill. Oh, and I should confess that the banner at the head of this entry was purloined from Nick, to whom I send my apologies and thanks.
Liz and Paul are still staying with us, but they are glued to the television this afternoon watching an old film so I have time for a quick journal entry. The last week has flown past. Mary and I were trying to remember this morning how we have spent it, and we couldn't recall having done anything much—lazing around, eating and drinking, playing Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit in the evenings. We haven't gone out much, because the weather has been wet nearly all week. Liz and Paul wanted to go for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales on Boxing Day, but when the day dawned…well it never did dawn really. The cloud was so low and thick that there was scarcely any daylight at all. And it was raining steadily. Definitely not a day for hiking. I was glad that we stayed home on Boxing Day, because at lunch time Steve phoned to give us the news that his Christmas present to Jo had been an engagement ring and that they intend to get married sometime soon. It has never bothered us that they are not married. The fact that they live happily together is quite good enough for us. But we were very pleased that they have finally decided to take steps to make it legal in the eyes of God. Or whatever. In fact, they have occasionally made half-hearted attempts to get married, not for any ideological reasons but simply in order to qualify for better social security benefits. But Spanish bureaucracy always defeated them. I guess most marriages in Spain are conducted by the Catholic church, which may be why it is so hard to fulfil the requirements for a civil marriage. It got to the stage where they decided it would be easier for them to be married in Gibraltar. But then Jo lost her passport so they couldn't go to Gibraltar, and the whole idea was shelved. But it seems that there is less red tape in the area where they live now, so with luck they may even get married before the second baby arrives. Back here in Leeds, the weather stayed the same all week, very mild for the time of year, but always wet. Then yesterday, despite the forecast of another damp day, there was actually blue sky to be seen. We all got up fairly late, but we decided to take advantage of the fine weather and go for our hike after all. Mary stayed home for the day and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast while Liz, Paul and I bustled around making sandwiches, filling water bottles and so on, and were ready to leave the house by 11 a.m. There was the usual traffic jam in Ilkley, but we got to Bolton Abbey by midday and set off up the Valley of Desolation towards Simon's Seat. The valley, despite its name, is very beautiful. A stream tumbles down through a series of little waterfalls in a narrow ravine, and the path climbs over the shoulder of a hill overlooking the ravine before meeting and crossing the stream higher up the valley. The trail then leads up through some woodland and out onto the open moor. From there it is another couple of miles along a gently climbing path to the rocky outcrop of Simon's Seat. From the moor, we could hear the sound of gunfire across the valley, presumably from a grouse shooting party. There were plenty of grouse on the moor where we were. They stood on rocks close to the path, looking just like those on the whisky bottles. They obviously knew that this part of the moor is protected 'open access' land for walkers, where they are safe from the guns, because they stood their ground even when we came to within a few feet of them. We had a picnic lunch at Simon's Seat and admired the splendid view down on the upper Wharfe valley, along with dozens of other walkers who had taken advantage of the one sunny day of the holiday period. But it was cold and windy on top, so we did not linger long before making our way back by the same route.
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Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3
