Archive for April, 2010

the Tory logo: 'for some reason, I still expect the torch'.

He was a plump man, with a freshly-shaved, gammon face. His clothes — cords, checked shirt, fleece — indicated a country gent. I imagined him pointing a shotgun at a flock of ducks. He leaned awkwardly against the doorframe, and I caught sight of a badge pinned on his lapel. A white badge, with a green logo. Green?

‘I am campaigning for the Conservative candidate for Winchester, Steve Brine‘, he said.

Ah, yes. The new, green Tory logo. It’s been around for years, but for some reason I still expect the torch.

I was in my pyjamas holding a baby, but it didn’t seem to matter. Doorstepping campaigners are a bit like Jehovah’s Witnesses: vulnerable, an open target, automatically on the defensive. Even when homeowners are looking rather dishevelled, the campaigner’s the one that feels awkward. But I’m not one to take pot shots. I actually wanted to discuss some of the issues. Read the rest of this entry »

"It's poetry, the penknife. It's a tool of the earth".

For many years now, I have carried a small Swiss Army knife everywhere I go. It’s a habit I picked up while writing my first novel, when I did a stint working for Daunt Books in Marylebone. Bookshop workers often carry penknives. The humble-looking tools are invaluable for opening boxes, prising open rusty cash registers, and — on occasion — defending the shop against disgruntled members of the public.

To this day, I use my penknife several times a week at least. I suggest you follow my example. The penknife is one of those objects-of-old which the digital age has failed to suppress. It’s poetry, the penknife. It’s a tool of the earth. Ploughshares, moleskines, penknives. Practically Biblical. I bet Hemingway had one. Plus, the smallest models are no problem to carry in your pocket. And you’ll find it’s of far more use than you thought.

Which brings me to the point. Last week I went to the Passport Service building in London, and my precious penknife was taken from me. To be fair, they gave me a receipt, but I forgot to redeem it; by the time I realised I was penknife-less, I was halfway to Winchester on the train. So I was forced to buy a replacement, which I did yesterday on Amazon, feeling slightly guilty at not giving the business to the local gun shop.

The penknife arrived this morning. The amount of packaging was obscene. I thought it was a book, at first. The tiny sucked sweet of a knife was encased in plastic and surrounded in a swanky cardboard box, as if it were an ipod or a male grooming set. With a mild sense of outrage I set about freeing my knife from its natural-resource-derived shackles. I struggled for a couple of minutes before the irony hit me. It hit me so hard I had to sit down.

In order to open the Swiss Army Knife packaging, you need a Swiss Army Knife.

Ah, the bastards. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Pigs: a psychological deterrent?

I am reading a book called Son of Hamas, a memoir written by a Palestinian who worked as an informant for the Israeli secret service. The author, Mosab Hassan Yousef, declares at the beginning of the book that he is going to ‘disclose secrets that have never been known before’.

One of these secrets, delightfully enough, involves the Israel Defence Force’s rather unusual approach towards guarding bases on the West Bank. Rather than deploying highly trained Dobermans or Alsatians, the IDF uses pigs — yes, pigs — to patrol the perimeter fence. The reason for this, as Mosab puts it, is that ‘the presence of pigs and the threat of possible contact with them would serve as a psychological deterrent to any prospective terrorist who was a devout muslim’.

He doesn’t elaborate further, but one would assume that rather than attempting to train these pigs to become aggressive killers — which, as every Englishman knows, is contrary to the nature of the pig — the Israeli special forces would employ a strategy of encouraging their friendlier side. After all, what could be more off-putting to a would-be suicide bomber than the sight of an affectionate, doe-eyed porker ambling good-naturedly towards him?

Just another example of the surreal nature of life on the West Bank.

Will a heavenly messenger show you a word cloud of your actions?

This morning I stumbled upon my profile at www.journalisted.com, an uncannily all-seeing website which is a bit like an OCD God with an obsession for journos. An interesting feature of the site is the ‘wordcloud’, which collects a journalist’s oft-used words and arranges them in a little box. Each word is sized in dependance upon its frequency (so ’limpid’, for example, would probably be rather small, unless you were writing a piece about whether you can see the bottom in Hampshire rivers). I can imagine that in this day and age, when you die and arrive at the pearly gates, a heavenly messenger will produce for you a word cloud of your actions in this life (together with links to people who have acted similarly, who you will be able to recommend and share). You would then be either spam-filtered or bookmarked, depending on the result.

Anyway, so on my profile I was a little surprised at how many of the words were Jewish-related. I suppose I’ve written a few pieces on the subject. In the word cloud, ‘Jewish’, ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ feature in — as Larry David might say — ‘pretty, pretty’ large fonts.

But I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the inclusion of a word which, at first glance, appeared anomalous, but then made perfect sense. You know the old joke, ‘ten Jews, eleven opinions’? The word was this: ‘arguments’. In the plural.