#9 NINE LIVES

NINE LIVES!

"NUMBER NINE - Doctor's orders!"   Quoi?  It's not intuitively obvious where this bingo call comes from, but your grandparents would have known. In World War 2, army doctors used to give out a laxative, which was called 'Number 9'. Have I given you a fascinating piece of trivia to fill any conversational lull in your next dinner party, or what?  

Nine is not as rich in associations as seven but there are a few: nine bells (no idea) nine ladies dancing (12 days of Christmas, or gay edition of Strictly?), Nine Elms (New Covent Garden, Battersea Dogs Home), dressed up to the 9s (9 is a biblical superlative, later often associated with clothing), the whole nine yards (highly disputed origin), a stitch in time saves nine,  cloud 9, 'nine times out of ten', nine day wonder, and of course, the wonderful Niner Simone.  There are two other weird aspects of 9: one is that back in the days of, literally, dialling telephone numbers on a revolving dial, the 9 was almost the furthest number, and therefore the longest to move round to and longest to return to base, in order to dial the next number. So in picking 999 as the emergency number it would take longer to summon help than necessary. Now of course 111 has been chosen for non-emergency medical help. A lesson learned? Not really, these things don't apply to push button or mobile phones in the same way, and there's less hurry with a non-emergency call.

Finally, when you multiply a number by 9, then take the resulting digits and add them together, it always come to 9. For example, 6 x 9 is 54. Add 5 to 4  =  9. I can't think of a single aspect of my life which is helped in any way by this numerical phenomenon, so it is relegated to the category of clever, very hard to explain and utterly useless).

All numbers are unique, but to paraphrase Orwell, some numbers are more unique than others. Seven is the single most popular number in our culture but nine runs it close for use in expressions. Of course, cats have nine lives, or they think they do, which is why they often look knowing, and quite smug.

DIFFERENT IS GOOD

 In the next few weeks I would like to 'memorialise' some people who have made a unique contribution to history, by daring to be different. Some choices may be surprising to you but probably not the first one:

Muhammad Ali

 Ali used his fame when he was at the top of his game to
make a stand against the Vietnam War on religious grounds. One of the most popular sportsmen in history, known all round the world, with a higher recognition factor than Elvis Presley, he drew the wrath of the American Establishment by these actions. Arguably he was the greatest boxer ever, just like he said, but the humanitarian model he created was just as influential as his dancing in the ring. Parkinson's is taking him but the memory will linger on and on.

 ALI'S QUOTE/UNQUOTE:

'It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.'

'I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.'

'Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can't talk. The man can't fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he's gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.'

TEEN A-Z

I used to be such a fogey: this is something I started to write a few years ago, probably as an outlet for anger. Fortunately the star of this particular show is now fully mature and unrecognisable from this portrayal, it says here...

A           ACNE:  eruptive skin condition, disfiguring, varying from the spot to the relief map.

               See also: ‘ackney  (once a very poor London Borough, now a very poor London Borough)

                                Acme: 1950s floor polisher

                                AC/DC:  bisexual rock band

B           BISEXUALITY: in teenagers, condition of uncertainty about sexual orientation often        lasting for more than an hour at a time.

C           COOL: ultimate accolade. State of grace impossible for anyone to achieve over the age of 25

D          DENCH (as in Dame Judi):  cool. Transient term, origin obscure. Likely to be only slightly more opaque in two years’ time than it is now.

E          ELECTRICITY BILL: meaningless paper transaction mapping how not-Green people are. Teenagers may safely ignore this till they leave home; however vengeance can be wreaked on cruel parents by leaving all lights and appliances on 24/7 and turning up thermostats. Parents will soon tire of nagging about this.

F           F-WORD: Used sparingly it still has great impact, particularly when grandparents and guests are around. Over-use, to the same level as parents’ usage, persuades parents that teenager is now adult, can support him/herself, without further pocket money.

G         GREEN: All teenagers say they will vote Green when they are old enough. This is a bit cool, and saves them finding out anything about the major parties and politics in general, about which they know next to nothing, having prioritised gaming for the last 10 years.

H          HILARIOUS:  slightly funny. Good example of Chronic Exaggeration Syndrome e.g  ‘BREAKING BAD is the best television programme EVVUH’, ‘I look so bad in this people will vomit’, ‘You are SO mean, £100 is NOTHING these days’

I           I:  the first word in every sentence, will probably also be median and final word.

J           JESSIE J:  Already disappearing over the horizon, damned by too many parents liking her

K          KOOL-AID:  the soft drink used to disguise the poison used in the mass suicide in Jonestown. Examination of the victim’s records showed that every one of them was American and had two or more teenagers at home.

L          LESBIAN (see BISEXUAL) compulsory stage of teenage girls’ development coming between ballet classes and vegetarianism.

M         MUM:  Hate-figure, Madonna, nag, confidante, traitor, teacher, rival, companion

N          NEUROSIS:  is entirely normal, in fact obligatory for teenagers; only psychosis should raise an eyebrow.

O          OMG: textspeak, for Omigod. A strange incantation, for the totally godless non-believer.

P           PERSONAL HYGIENE: a State of Grace devoutly to be desired but still having the status of 

              an ambition rather than a habit.

Q           QUEER:  see bisexuality

R           RANSOM NOTE CRISIS: when teenager is kidnapped, awful dilemma at to whether to pay,              pretend you haven't received the demand for a few days in order to have a holiday, or write                  back saying 'forget it, we've let his/her room'.

I don't know why it stopped at 'R', probably she came in the room and I had to cover up.....

POST OF THE WEEK

FILM REVIEWS:

THE GOOD:  The Danish Girl. I liked this a lot and found Eddie Redmayne very plausible, if not as a woman, then certainly as a man who desperately wanted to be one. His journey from transvestite though transgender to transsexual (though stopping short of TransSiberian railway) had the ring of truth and evoked sympathy and admiration for his courage. I am reliably informed by my local sexual politics expert that his portrayal is flawed, though how you can know this without seeing the film beats me. Hearsay, rumour and received opinion I guess. Hmm.

THE BAD AND THE UGLY:  High Rise. The Guardian liked this film and gave it 4 stars. I actually can't remember a film I've enjoyed less, left early (as one of the later departees, having given up hoping for a bomb scare) and would have left after 15 minutes if I hadn't spent £12 to get in, and it hadn't been so cold outside. Ben Wheatley directs the film based on a J.G.Ballard novel about a dystopian 1970s tower block. So, potentially good story, excellent cast (though Tom Hiddlestone may be photoshopped as in some shots his head looks much too small for his shoulders) lots of room for lovely retro seventies interiors, clothes and hairstyles – but with all that going for it, it's still a disaster. Packed with gratuitous sex and violence (I prefer sex and violins these days) it starts off badly and quickly deteriorates, having tried to out-do Tarantino and failed. Truly self-indulgent film by a director who was clearly on some left-over 1970s acid. You must go and see this film – if you've done something really bad and deserve sadistic punishment. May become a cult film on grounds of rarity value as the director will clearly never work again. OK, I liked one shot, lasting about 7 seconds, of the car park, from the top of the block: very painterly. That's it. If I have said anything at all which makes you want to go and see it, I apologise for my mistake. Sorry.

#8 PIECES OF EIGHT

PUNISMENT (sic)

On the first page of a novel (whose name I forget) by an author I can’t recall (though I have an image of him as a slender Angus Deayton-like figure, so we can rule out Clive James and Oprah), – anyway, there is, in the first paragraph, one of the best word-plays I can ever remember reading. I’m not going to call it a pun because puns for me connote the rather contrived, sneaky, self-regarding manipulation of similarities in sound or meaning beloved of my father’s generation, producing winces rather than laughter. No, the quotation in question is something else, a majestic sweep of the English language, causing it to turn a balletic somersault, landing unwaveringly on its feet, and skipping off the mat on tiptoe to the rapturous applause of the audience, knowing they are privileged to witness such virtuosity.

The author writes: “If Oxford is the City of Dreaming Spires, then for me Cambridge was the city of perspiring dreams”. Imagine the surge of excitement, joy even, as that equation was formed in his mind; the patience and frustration as he waited for an opportunity to use it; the realisation that he might have to write a whole novel after using it in the first page, just to see it in print. How many times did he read it back to himself, looking at it from every angle, passing it around his mouth like a good claret? I think he deserves every ounce of the self-congratulation he undoubtedly lavished on himself.

This kind of verbal gag is very situational: they need to be seen as spontaneous, of the moment, not rehearsed and produced as if just thought of.  True confessions time: I once stored away a gag in the back of my mind for about 6 months, waiting for the right opportunity to use it. Eventually it came during a meal in a caravan on the Isle of Mull, with seals playing on the beach outside and a clear view of Iona – a suitably beautiful backdrop to the birth of my gag, after a long confinement:  picking up a vegetable dish, I offered it to our guests with the words: “Would you like a few increments of celery” .  OK, Oscar Wilde can take this level of competition without worrying, and you may be thinking “What kind of a geek would even remember something like that, let alone want to celebrate it, in public?”.   My kind of a geek, I suppose.

In Psychology, nothing truly exists without a reference, and so those habits of thinking and belief make me apologise for providing no data on the book itself, or its author. Sorry. Memory loss, hair loss and just plain loss are the order of the day, so I’m writing now, while stocks last.  Sic transit gloria mundi. (‘worldly things are fleeting’) or as we say here in Billericay, ‘the van’s broken down, Gloria’ll nip down and pick it up early next week’.

My personal favourite turned up in The Guardian, many years ago, in the sports pages. The writer described how the Scottish nation get very excited around the time of the World Cup and, when they've qualified, send their team off to the finals with a sincere and euphoric belief that they are actually going to win the thing: invariably they go out in the early stages to a team of paraplegic part-timers from Paraguay, This syndrome has been widely recognised as a clinical disorder and has been called 'Premature Jock Elation'.

It gets worse: Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Last week I posted one on FB which I think merits a mention: under the heading 'The Holly and the Ivy', I suggested that there should a Jewish Christmas Carol called "The Chollah and the Oy veh'.

And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did...

 FEAR NOT (said he,  for mighty dread had seized their troubled minds)

Driving down the M1, I listened to Gloria Steinem on Woman’s Hour. It was inspiring, not in a revelatory way because we are of the same generation, as are Greer, Dworkin, Angela Davis and all the other pioneers, and had a consciousness of feminist issues raised just by virtue of swimming with the tides of the 60s, or surfing them. Steinem always had a way with words and could have been a top political copy-writer, or advertising woman. This morning she said “Follow your fears: they are the way to growth”. I assume she meant follow them, throw them to the ground or trip them, and kick the living shit out of them.  Then they are dead and you are free of them.

If I have one regret about my life it is that in childhood and adolescence I carried too much fear and anxiety. Some were conquered or simply passed; others instilled ways of thinking and feeling as habits, which ensured that they lasted way beyond their natural span. Steinem is essentially right, they are better confronted than buried, only to to do their mischief beneath the surface. To slay the dragon, be it air travel or public speaking or spiders or anything, takes courage: and the person who does so is far, far braver than the person who was not afraid of these things in the first place (though who is generally seen as the more courageous). Easy to say but hard to do. There’s no ‘how to’ manual, no Idiot’s Guide to Fearlessness. But I can say, however tritely, from my own experience, that the anticipation of the dreaded event is so much more frightening than the actuality. And if you can, rationally, realise that truth, you have taken the first step, because you have struck a blow against phobiaphobia, which is even more crippling than the original problem. The next step is to do that thing (whatever it is that you fear, Just Do It) whereupon you discover that indeed it is way less terrifying than you expected. That's the first course of bricks out of the wall. Persist, do it again, and the wall of fear starts to crumble, at a remarkable rate....

Who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”?  Well, allegedly it was Churchill quoting

F.D.Roosevelt, without attribution, apparently. On the button, whoever said it first.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE

Abraham Lincoln                            

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.


Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

KEY TO THE HIGHWAY

I recently lost my keys, including a car key/remote. I've managed with my malfunctioning spare key for a few weeks, but then it occurred to me that, given my propensity for losing things, sooner or later I would lose that and then I would be completely screwed. So I went to Spire in Kentish Town (BMW agents) yesterday to get a new key, forearmed only with the knowledge that they are 'expensive'. The nice man asked me for £139.40. When I regained consciousness, I put it to him that for that money I would expect to have a key with an onboard chip that sent a GPS location to the police whenever somebody of a different fingerprint picked it up, made decent espresso, and contained a memory stick with a playlist which included Dylan and the Bach cello suites. "Sadly not", he said, ''for those features you have to pay an extra £2.70, and I can see from your charity shop clothes you don't have that kind of money".

 

You may be thinking 'serves him right, shouldn't buy pricey German cars' which is fair enough, I can understand that and I'm suitably admonished and contrite. Until the nice man told me that the very same key for a Vauxhall Corsa is an eye-watering £175.  Deutschland Uber Alles, as I always say.

PIECES OF HATE  (reprinted from FB)

                                                                                                                                                             
       

                                                                                          "FUCK THE JEWS"                      
                                                                              

                                                                                                                                        

On a lighter note I make no apology for repeating this cartoon I posted on FB some months ago: I chose a bad time and it missed most people. It's one of the best cartoons I can remember seeing.

GALLERY

                           'Handbags' by Dominic Dibbs       (dominicdibbs.com)

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