Of Books and Buses

Nowadays, I tend to do the bulk of my reading either while waiting for the bus, or on it.  I don’t usually read too much in the evenings and I go to bed quite early during the week because I have to get up so early for work.  This, in and of itself, isn’t a particularly bad thing, but it has led to a problem of late, in which I find that the bus driver always ensures that we arrive at my stop in the morning just as I’m getting to a really good bit.  I can’t start reading again until lunchtime, an infinitely long 5 hours or so later.  It’s very frustrating.

I don’t know why they’d do this.  I’ve phoned the bus company in the past to complain about their poor service (the company’s, not the drivers, who are usually fairly amiable) and it’s possible that the drivers have taken this as a slight upon themselves and wish to punish me.  I’m also not entirely sure how they know when I’m at a Good Bit though.  Possibly they make sure they can see me in their rear-view mirror, and gauge the quality of the particular section I’m reading by how absorbed I appear to be, accelerating if it looks like I might finish that bit before we reach my stop.  It’s the only thing that makes sense really.

It seems like a low and petty thing to do to a person, and I’ve been tempted to complain about it, but I imagine that they wouldn’t take me or my complaint seriously.  I’d have to ask to speak to someone who reads a lot, but they might not have anyone.  It is Stagecoach after all.  The only other thing to do is ask the driver to circle for a few minutes if it looks like we’re approaching my stop; maybe take a more scenic route for a little while.  The other commuters wouldn’t mind too much, I’m sure.  It would be a treat to them; these people who see the same roads, the same houses, the same lamp-posts and fields twice a day, every single day, while I am exploring distant worlds in the sanctity of my own head.  True we might be ten or fifteen minutes late, but that’s no worse than the bus company often manages entirely without my input.

And if I’m fortunate enough to be reading a book which consists, cover to cover, of one long unbroken Good Bit (such as, to choose a completely random example, Three Men on a Pilgrimage: A Comical Progress by Thomas Jones, published by Whispering Tree Original Books and available online and through all good bookshops), then we could go somewhere really different while I read it all, detour through far-flung fields, hills and meadows, verdant forests and majestic mountains which would uplift their spirits, something that badly needs doing to assuage the soul-ache of knowing that soon you will be in Luton.  It would be good for the driver too.  It would do wonders for their alertness, morale and general joie de travail.  We are told that it is very bad to travel on monotonous roads, that it leads to drowsiness, inattention, property damage and death.  By persuading them to go on this circuitous but picturesque journey, road safety will be increased, my fellow commuters will be happier (and therefore more productive once they get to work, easily off-setting the slight lateness that may result), and more importantly still, I’ll get to finish my book.

Everybody profits, no-one loses out.  I may well write to the Prime Minister and suggest that he puts the idea before parliament.

I’ll expect my OBE in the post.

NaNoWriMo 2014

I try and make it a rule not to post anything on here unless I actually have something to post, but I’ve not put anything up for over two weeks and thought I better had.  I could just post an amusing picture of a cat with a misspelt caption, but I’ll try and talk about something vaguely relevant instead.

As you may or may not be aware, because it’s the October of an even-numbered year, it’s going to November next month.  The time when clean-shaven persons grow moustaches for charity, fireworks are let off to celebrate a successful counter-terrorism operation 400 years ago, and the weather upgrades from ‘A Bit Dreary’ to ‘Absolutely Miserable’.

It is also, of course the month in which the total word count (if not the total literary quality) of Planet Earth leaps, as tens of thousands of people engage in National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated as NaNoWriMo, further abbreviated as NaNo).  As you may recall, last year I succeeded in the target of thrashing out 50,000 words in 30 days, but only by the skin of my teeth.

This year, I have yet to decide whether or not I’ll be taking part.  I’d like to, but it looks like November is going to be very busy for us in terms of weekends, which is valuable catch-up time for all the writing that doesn’t get done during the week.  Added to that, my wife won’t be doing it this year due to academic commitments and it’s always less fun when you’re doing it by yourself.

I’m also not sure that my idea for this year will actually stretch to 50,000 words.  I’m planning something a bit different to my usual swashbuckling word-churners.  This year’s project will be a children’s comedy adventure, with the working title ‘Galapagos Finch and the Dodo Do-Do of Doom’.  The titular hero is a biologist/conservationist/international adventurer who learns that there is a surviving population of dodos on a remote island in the Indian Ocean.  However, others are also after the dodos for nefarious purposes of their own.  High jinks, as the saying goes, ensue.  It will be silly and fun, with a vague environmental/conservation theme.

It’s an idea that’s been knocking about in my head for a while, getting refined and extended.  Even so, it may not stretch for required the word count.

I’m thinking I will probably at least attempt it.  If it doesn’t stretch, or if I don’t hit word count due to weekendly busyness, at least I’ll have made a good start on the first draft.

In other news, I’ve finished the second of my New Adventures of Malartic and Lampourde, a story entitled ‘The Love of Chevalier Malartic’.  If you’re very good, I’ll post it on here at some point soon.

Watch this space.

Of Silk Purses and Sow's Ears

I suspect that I may be unique in that I do not hold a strong opinion one way or another on the subject of Margaret Thatcher.  We are told that she was raised as a Methodist, and this is either proclaimed proudly or admitted sheepishly by Methodists depending on their political outlook.  Possibly I’m just too young to have formed a strong opinion.  At the time I was far too busy with important things like Lego castles and Transformers to pay much heed to what boring-looking people on the news were up to, what with their disappointing ability to turn themselves into cars or fire lasers at anything at all.

All this is really just preamble to a story I read in the paper last week about a speech that Margaret Thatcher wrote.  It was a blistering attack on the Labour party for their support of the mining unions and refusal to condemn picket line violence, accusing them of having been infiltrated by extremists and riven with factions.

This speech was to be delivered at the Conservative Party Conference in 1984.  It was never made.  An IRA bomb was detonated at the hotel hosting the conference, killing 5 people.  In the wake of the bombing, Mrs Thatcher received hundreds of letters of support, sympathy and condolence, many of which came from Labour politicians, and this moved her deeply.

She tore up her aggressive, antagonistic speech and wrote something rather gentler.  That handwritten first draft was later taped back together and kept.  The newspaper story quotes someone from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation as saying “It is ironic the speech is softened by an act of great violence.”

I suggest that that person is very wrong.  It wasn’t the act of violence that softened the speech; it was the acts of kindness, sympathy and compassion from people who were her political enemies that made her rethink her angry words.  It is a good example of what I have written about before about the existence of evil.  After all, without hurt, without hate, without these acts of violence and evil, how could we forgive, how could we love, how could we show compassion and courage and solidarity?

I’m not trying to claim that the perpetrators of that attack are in some way noble or good for having created the conditions in which such virtues are necessary, but when people ask why a good God would permit such things to happen, I will point to the wonderful and unexpected outcomes that can be the result of the evils in our world.

Extremism, Freedom and the Lowest Common Denominator

This week, there was a story on the BBC news website regarding Theresa May’s outline for additional ‘anti-extremist’ legislation, curtailing the freedom of speech, movement and association of organisations deemed ‘extremist’ (whatever that means).

The extremely worrying nature of the proposed laws would probably take up a blog post by itself, but that’s not what I want to concentrate on here.  The comments section swiftly filled with people either decrying or hailing the ideas.  Predictably, many people took ‘extremism’ to mean primarily ‘Muslim extremism’ and couched their remarks accordingly.

At least one person said something along the lines of the following, and I have seen it multiple times before:  “If I was living in a Muslim country and tried to convert people to Christianity, or tried to build churches or went out on the streets preaching the destruction of the country I was in, I’d be arrested and imprisoned/deported in the blink of an eye, so why do we allow these people to do the equivalent here!”  A direct quotation for you:  “My feet wouldn’t touch the ground.  My head would.”

What their argument boils down to is “These countries are oppressive and dictatorial, so why shouldn’t we be?  It’s what they’d do in our place!”  This isn’t even an ‘eye for an eye’ argument, it’s a desire to equalise everyone at the level of the lowest and the worst.  “Why should we uphold personal freedoms when they don’t?”  “Why should we have the rule of law when they don’t?”  “Barbarians murder, torture and rape, so why shouldn’t we?”  “The beasts of the field root in the muck for food and fight tooth and nail for scraps.  Why shouldn’t we?”  Why should we try and be better than them?

We should be proud that we live in a society in which one can believe what one wants, say what one wants, wear what one wants, do what one wants, assuming it doesn’t hurt others.  It should be a matter of pride that the poor and the dispossessed of the world make a beeline to us.  Instead of whining about immigrants taking advantage, complaining about ‘scroungers’ on benefits, we should be standing tall, happy to be an example to the world that the best and only way of truly judging a country is by how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable.

The true test of whether you live in a free society is whether you can speak out against that society without fear of prosecution.  It is whether you can state categorically that you disagree with the fundamental truths of every single other person in that society, if that is what your conscience dictates, and do so without fear of persecution. At the moment, I am proud to say that I do.  I am truly afraid that this may not always be the case, and I do not believe that the greatest threat to our society is in what our government is pleased to refer to as ‘extremists’.

Why should we treat them well when they wouldn’t do the same for us in our place?  Many of the people asking this question insist that British Muslims are refusing to integrate, forcing their culture on ours and forcing their values on our British Christian ones.  Here’s a Christian value for you:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.  You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” 

  

 That seems fairly clear to me.