Wednesday 3 November
What are we waiting for, assembled in the public square?
The barbarians are to arrive today.
Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?
Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What further laws can the Senators pass?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.
– from Expecting The Barbarians
by Constantin Cavafy (translated by Rae Dalven)
I left the bedside radio on all night and dozed intermittently. As the presidential election news went from hopeful to worrying to forlorn, I remembered the feeling of going down an endless dark tunnel that I had in the dismal days of 1987 when Margaret Thatcher won her third election victory and it seemed as if she would go on for ever. If it's any consolation at all to our American friends, Dubya can't do that. Four more years is his limit (unless he gets a constitutional amendment to allow him to continue, or to enable his foreign-born friend Arnie to succeed him – but you don't even want to think about nightmares like that, do you?).
After 1987, Maggie went from bad to worse. With a massive parliamentary majority, she brought in the infamous Local Government Act 1988 which denounced "homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." But she over-reached herself, first by trying to bring in the disgracefully regressive poll tax, and finally by her shameful "No! No! No!" to European union. She was forced out of office in November 1990 and there was dancing in the streets.
Shakespeare wrote "The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones." But in Thatcher's case the opposite seems to have happened. The good that she did in modernising Britain's economy has survived, but her evil social policies have not (particularly since the 1988 Local Government Act was finally repealed just a year ago, in November 2003).
It looks ominously as though Bush, with his new mandate, will be as extremist and aggressive as Thatcher was. The most depressing thought is that he will probably be able to make two or more reactionary appointments to the Supreme Court during the next four years. In that way, the evil that he does will certainly live after him.
Cavafy's poem Expecting The Barbarians actually ends on a cheerful note, with the news that the barbarians are not coming after all. I really was hoping to be able to include that part of the poem at the head of today's entry. Too bad things didn't work out that way.
Sunday 14 November
Most evenings, radio 3 broadcasts a concert, and during the interval there is a 15- or 20-minute talk, which is sometimes interesting, sometimes not. A few weeks ago, the interval talk was a reappraisal of Thoreau's Walden, on the 150th anniversary of its publication. I didn't really listen to the talk because I was concentrating on something else, but it prompted me to dig out my copy of Walden, which I have been slowly re-reading since then. It's a good book to have by your bedside – it lends itself to reading a page or two at a time, to give you something to think about as you drift off to sleep.
Walden had a big effect on my life. I first read it in 1977, when we lived in Manchester, and I was struck by the famous passage in the first few pages of the book: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats." It would be an exaggeration to say that I was feeling quiet desperation at the time, but it was certainly true that for various reasons I was unsettled and dissatisfied with life in Manchester. Reading Thoreau's book made me realise that I needed to do something to get away from the place. I wrote to a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania to ask if I could go there for another sabbatical year (having spent two previous years there, I thought of it as a second home).
The visit to Penn was a huge success. In fact, it stretched into two years, and in the meantime I got an offer of a position in Leeds, so I never did go back to Manchester. Also, I was getting two salaries, one in England and one in the USA, and not paying tax at either end because of some loophole in the tax laws. But that's another story.
The lease on the house where we lived in Philadelphia expired at the end of June 1980, and Mary took the kids back home to sell our Manchester house and look for one in Leeds. But I had to stay on in America because I was one of the main speakers at a big conference in Kingston, Ontario, in the second half of July (again, that's another story). That left a couple of weeks to fill, so after saying a fond farewell to the family at JFK airport, I set off to explore the six States of New England. One of my main aims in this vacation was to visit Walden Pond. So after spending a day in Newport, Rhode Island, I drove north to Concord, Mass. I found Walden Pond easily enough, but when I got there I was in for a shock.
Thoreau wrote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." I wanted to experience the solitude and tranquility of the cabin in the woods beside the lake, where Thoreau had lived for two years. But when I arrived at Walden (which is a State Reservation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), I was directed to one of the last remaining places in an overflow car park and I saw that the whole lake area looked like Blackpool beach on a bank holiday. There were hundreds of kids swimming in the lake, and every square inch of lakeside was occupied by families preparing barbecue meals, or groups of students throwing frisbees. It was only then that it dawned on me that it was the fourth of July, a date which has no particular resonance with me but which is celebrated in those parts by going for a picnic in Walden State Reservation.
A helpful Park official gave me a leaflet and suggested that I walk round to the other side of the lake to the site of Thoreau's cabin, where it was much less crowded and I at last found some of the peace and tranquility that I was looking for. I found the memorial cairn by the site of the cabin, and looked around for a rock to add to it. But others had had the same idea before me, and there were no stones to be seen anywhere in the neighbourhood. I walked away from the lake until I found the railroad track (which features in the book, since it was the main means of transport in Thoreau's day) and I stole a lump of ballast from the track. When I got back to the cairn to deposit the stone there, I found a small group of people listening to a Park warden who was conducting a guided tour of the historic parts of the park. She had a set of flash cards containing short extracts from Walden, which she was giving out for people to read at appropriate points of the tour. When I joined the group she handed one of these to me. I was pleased to find that it was one of my favourite passages from the book: "The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats." So despite the holiday crowds I eventually found something of what I went to look for at Walden Pond.
Reading Walden again after all these years, I still find it a thoughtful and fascinating book. Thoreau is at his best when describing the natural history and changing seasons of the area. But when he turns philosophical, some of his ideas seem totally impractical and irrelevant to the real world. And I'm surprised to find that in some ways Thoreau comes across as a really obnoxious character. In the episode I read last night he describes going on a fishing trip with a destitute Irishman who is struggling to feed his starving family. Thoreau boasts of how he managed to catch a whole string of perch while the Irishman caught nothing. Yet it doesn't seem to have occurred to him to hand over any of his catch to the unfortunate man. Instead, he concludes: "... he is a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty ..., not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity."
One more favourite quote from Walden: this one is framed on a shelf in my office, and it gives advice that I have always tried to follow. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Wednesday 17 November
Liz came to stay for the weekend, and as usual she nagged me about the amount of butter I use. My excuse, as always, was that it's the wartime baby syndrome. When I was a child, butter was rationed, two ounces per person per week. Mum needed some of that for cooking, so the amount left for us to spread on our bread or toast was practically zero, just the thinnest possible smear.
I have been compensating for that ever since. I like to plaster a real thick layer of butter on my breakfast toast. And it has to be the real thing, none of that "Utterly butterly" or "I can't believe it's not ..." stuff. I can tell only too easily if someone tries to palm me off with some yellow goo derived from a petrochemical byproduct.
I can understand Liz's concern, especially when the doctor tells me that my cholesterol levels are too high for comfort. But I'm not impressed. There is absolutely no history of heart disease in my family, and I don't think my arteries are in any danger of getting clogged. So I shall continue to horrify my daughter by piling the butter onto the bread. (I think she's just a little bit jealous, because she has serious problems keeping her weight under control, whereas I seem to be able to eat whatever I want without getting any heavier.)
Ways in which Europe is better than America (#2 in a very occasional series; #1 was in January 2003): butter is sold in sensible units. When we lived in America I was always exasperated by the way they sell butter in dinky little quarter pound sticks that scarcely last me a day. Everything else there is sold in supercolossal jumbo sizes, so why do they have to be so exiguous with the butter? Everywhere in Europe it's sold in sensible 250 gramme packages.
The one disadvantage that butter has, compared with its petrochemical rivals, is that it's too hard to spread straight from the fridge. So I always keep the current package at room temperature, in one of the kitchen cupboards. There, it ought to be at a constant temperature all year round. The house thermostat stay at the same setting all year, and it seems to me that the indoor temperature is more or less constant. But the butter can tell the difference: it's noticeably softer in the summer and harder in winter. What's more, the transition occurs very suddenly. It happened on Monday. On Sunday, when Liz was criticising my profligate ways with it, the butter was soft and easy to spread. But by the next day it had hardened for the winter. I suppose that the entire fabric of the house must cool down quite quickly at this time of year.
Sunday 21 November
We have been in London for the past three days. The trip was built around the Math Soc's annual dinner on Friday evening, a very pleasant occasion where we met lots of old friends. This is the first year when I am no longer a trustee of the Society, so we had to pay our own way. We economised by staying in the cheapest hotel in the neighbourhood. It was a bit old and run-down, but it is in a quiet back street and only has a few rooms on each floor. We had a better night's sleep there than in the big, bustling hotel where we usually stay, which is on a busy street and has noisy guests coming in late and drunk from night clubs.
We took the train to London on Thursday afternoon and had an early dinner at the Chuen Cheng Ku restaurant in Soho. In China they only eat dim sum at lunchtime, but the Chuen Cheng Ku panders to ignorant western tastes by serving dim sum throughout the day. Both the savoury and the sweet varieties are excellent, just right for an early dinner. After dinner, we went to see the show at the Prince of Wales theatre (about which I don't want to say anything).
On Friday we spent most of the day at the National Gallery, where there is currently an impressive exhibition of Raphael's early works. We also wandered round the gallery's permanent collection. As far as I remember, I have only ever been there once before, and that was when I was much younger and didn't have much patience for art galleries. Later in the afternoon, Mary went back to the hotel for a rest while I went to the Math Soc's AGM followed by the presidential address from the retiring president. Then there was a reception and the aforementioned annual dinner.
Yesterday morning, Mary wanted to see the Millennium Bridge, so we took the Underground to St Paul's and walked down to the river, crossed over the bridge and strolled around the south bank looking at the Globe Theatre and stopping for coffee at the Tate Modern gallery, before going to the Royal Academy. We have a couple of friends who are members of the Friends of the Academy, and they had arranged to meet us for lunch in the Friends' dining room. We stayed there chatting with them for half the afternoon, then took the train back to Leeds to be greeted by a very hungry cat. (No, we hadn't left her to fend for herself all that time. Someone had been coming in to feed her twice a day, but she tried to tell us otherwise.)
Okay, having impressed you with all those cultural artistic activities, maybe I'm willing to confess what we did on Thursday evening. IT WAS MARY'S IDEA. She has been asking for months to be taken to see Mamma Mia!, which is a musical essentially consisting of a compilation of songs by Abba. I was not expecting to enjoy this at all, and it certainly doesn't fit the image that I like to present of myself. The best I can say about it is that I sat through it without complaining and without going to sleep. In any case, sleep would have been difficult, because we were sitting in the very front row, practically on top of the orchestra pit, with the percussionist at our feet. Frankly, I thought the show was a bit of a waste of an evening. But Mary loved it and was very pleased that we saw it. So at least that has given me an idea for one of her Christmas presents: a CD of Abba's greatest hits (just so long as she doesn't play it when I'm around).
It's strange how our tastes differ. Five years ago we saw Les Misérables. I was completely spellbound by it, and I wrote here about the effect that it had on me. But it left Mary completely cold. This time, it was just the other way round. Mary was entranced with the Abba songs, but I wouldn't mind if I never heard them again. We always tell each other that we're totally incompatible in just about every way, and this was a good example. It makes you wonder how we've stayed together so happily for getting on for 40 years.
Tuesday 30 November
There can't have been much publicity about it. I wasn't aware that it had happened. But a couple of weeks ago the Queen signed the Civil Partnership Bill, which thereby became the Civil Partnership Act 2004. Here is what the Government news network has to say about it.
LANDMARK CIVIL PARTNERSHIP BILL RECEIVES ROYAL ASSENT
Ground-breaking legislation to give legal recognition to same-sex couples for the first time has received Royal Assent.
The Civil Partnership Act will allow same-sex couples to make a formal, legal commitment to each other by entering into a civil partnership through a statutory civil registration procedure. At present, same-sex couples have no way of gaining formal legal recognition for their relationship and as a result suffer a range of unnecessary problems in their everyday lives.
A range of important rights and responsibilities will flow from entering a civil partnership, helping same-sex couples to organise their lives together. Provisions in the Act include:
• a duty to provide reasonable maintenance for your civil partner and any children of the family;
• civil partners to be assessed in the same way as spouses for child support;
• equitable treatment for the purposes of life assurance;
• employment and pension benefits;
• recognition under intestacy rules;
• access to fatal accidents compensation;
• recognition for immigration and nationality purposes.
Jacqui Smith [the government Minister for Equality] said: "This is one of the most significant pieces of social legislation the Government has introduced. The Civil Partnership Act sends a clear message that we value and support the contribution committed same sex couples make to each other and our society.
"A loving relationship, whether of opposite sex couples or same sex couples benefits society as a whole and I am delighted that this Act is now on the statute book.
"I hope this Act will help create a more equal society. It opens the way to respect, recognition and justice for those who have been denied it for too long."
The process of entering into a civil partnership will be administered by the local registration service. On the day of registration, each member of the couple will sign the register in the presence of the registration officer and two witnesses.
There will be a formal, court-based process for dissolution of a civil partnership.
The Act also allows for same-sex couples who have entered legally recognized overseas relationships to be treated as civil partners in the United Kingdom.
The Civil Partnership Act is expected to come into effect in about a year. Implementation involves significant changes in many areas, for example in court rules, the registration service as well as training and guidance for employers. It is expected that these changes will take about a year to put in place.
What a turnaround from the days of Margaret Thatcher and her homophobic Local Government Act 1988. The thing I find most heartening is that a clear majority of MPs in all three main parties, including the Conservatives, voted in favour. There was a last-ditch attempt to wreck the Bill in the House of Lords, of course. But even there, nobody felt able to oppose it outright or to speak in an openly bigoted way against homosexuals. Instead, they tried (unsuccessfully) to make the Bill unworkable by proposing amendments to extend civil partnerships to almost any pair of people sharing a home (unmarried sisters, invalids with carers, and so on).
The Act has 264 Sections plus 30 Schedules, so I won't try to summarise it. If you really want it, the full text is here.
A civil partnership is not the same as marriage, and some gay activists were against it for that reason. They argued that there is no reason why the existing civil marriages should not be made available to same-sex couples. It's true that in this way there is still no complete equality between same-sex and heterosexual couples (in the UK, that is – I believe that Belgium, the Netherlands and a few Canadian provinces are currently the only places where genuine gay marriage is recognised). Even at the level of legal benefits, civil partnerships miss out on some of the advantages of civil marriages. There is a good summary of OutRage's opposition to the new Act here. I can see their point, but I still think that the Act as passed is the best result that was politically attainable, and it represents a huge advance in public attitudes to gays and lesbians.
I think I have mentioned here previously my theory that social progress runs on a 40-year cycle, with 20 years of liberal progress followed by 20 years of reactionary conservatism. But there is also a sort of ratchet effect whereby gains that are sufficiently consolidated are able to withstand subsequent erosion. I think that the 2004 Civil Partnership Act will be such a landmark, and that it will survive any backlash even if the next 20 years see social attitudes slipping back from this high point.
Unfortunately for our American friends, the USA seems to be at a very different point of the 40-year cycle. But things will improve there too, sooner or later.
