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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

today : be afraid

Saturday, January 30, 2010

today : a perfect day for pretending to be well read

So, everyone has read Catcher in the Rye. Even those who clearly never did. I'm wondering why Salinger's death is getting so much attention. This book, hardly read nowadays, was American and barely taught in English schools, or, as far as I know, read by English people.

Of course, the answer lies in the cult of personality. Nothing makes someone more interesting than lack of access. And even in a post-structuralist world people are still obsessed over the artist way more than the art.

Anyone who has read Ian Hamilton's book 'In Search of...' will know that Salinger was a fairly typical New Yorker sort of author of his age. Existing on the edge of celebrity with his almost marriage to Oona O' Neil (later Chaplin) and his interesting counter-intelligence war work. What was allowed to be written was quite interesting.

But as a writer his published oeuvre: one novel, a few novellas and a selection of short stories is pretty scant. He was blessed by appearing in a world of change and newness, where American authors of the post-war could easily find fame and fortune just by the endorsement of a certain New York establishment. Capote, Harper Lee (whom I am convinced is probably Capote anyway), Heller, Salinger. All are known for mainly one influential work. And I guess the publishing and published world was pretty small in those days. It seems that anyone who got a story in the New Yorker, got a book deal, even when some, like Brodky didn't actually write a book for decades but suffered the fame anyway.

Now that Salinger is dead, it will be interesting to see what remains. The potential is that there are fifty years of manuscripts lying around.

I also find it ironic that Catcher in The Rye is almost an aside to what appears to be Salinger's main fixation, and that most of the people who are naming it today have seemingly never read Franny and Zooey, or Nine Stories, Seymour: An introduction, or For Esme, and wouldn't know the Glass Family if they came home and found them on the sofa watching The One Show.

I wonder what might happen today. Salinger's break came with 'A perfect day for bananafish' - A story about an apparently crazy honeymooning man who plays rather suspiciously with a six year old girl on the beach. I always thought it was plainly weird. I doubt in today's climate, it would get a hearing, just as I suspect that Nabokov would have been shunned on submitting his most famous manuscript.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

today : i-don't geddit

So Apple launched another thing today. I know this because the news (the News!) announced it a full 18 hours before it happened (also third item on the news on Channel 5 - Avatar makes loads of money. Fourth item: man jailed for killing three children).

Don;t get me wrong. I like gadgets - especially those that help me. I have a touch-screen phone that is also a pretty fully loaded MP3 device (not an Apple one, I got mine on a free upgrade to go with my contract. It was a good deal, less money: new phone) and I like it a lot.

But here's the thing I don't get. The whole queuing up overnight to get a gadget. Running and wrestling to the front of the queue. Paying premium money to get the latest thing. How empty a life do you have to possess before you begin to masturbate over leaked pictures of electronic communication devices?

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

today : star witnesses

I know it's a huge long shot, but what if all the witnesses to the Chilcot Inquiry are being honest and telling as much of the truth as they can recall?

It's interesting to watch the likes of Christopher Meyer, Alistair Campbell, Jeff Hoon et al giving their evidence. So far, it seems that only Meyer has been in any way maverick. But then again, if you read his book DC Confidential he is a maverick kind of character. Lord John Marbury, if you like. But even then, he didn't rock the boat too much and what he said more or less fitted with the larger narrative.

Last week the reporters got all hot under the collar over Jeff Hoon. In some ways this is understandable, as Hoon might've shed more light on his recent attempt to oust Gordon Brown. But, it was never going to happen. The inquiry was not about what happened last week, and I imagine that Hoon is not so stupid that he doesn't realise he already looks a bit foolish. The worst it got was the fact that there might have been more helicopters for use in Afghanistan, had the green light been given five years ago. It's pretty convoluted and speculative, and, despite the right wing press endlessly exploiting the relatives of dead soldiers to to try and make it so, hardly controversial. The worst you could say was that the government didn't envisage what might be needed some years into the future and on the far side of both a UK and a US election. Having 20-20 long term foresight is something no government can even be credited with.

One blessed relief is that when the evidence has been shown, it has just been shown with none of the usual presentational tics, such as a correspondant breaking in every few seconds to tell you what you are watching and, whilst trying to summarise what you just heard, stopping you from hearing what you wanted to hear now. I imagine all the people whose job this usually is, sitting around having tea and cakes with their feet on the desk.

The heavyweight political correspondants are puffing and wheezing, as trying to find cynical angles and points of outrage is proving pretty difficult. The other day they got all worked up to a frenzy when they found out the date of Tony Blair's appearance. I think they will find themselves disappointed. How likely is it that Blair will sit there and announce that it was all a conspiracy, and that he is a swivel-eyed colonialist and had planned to start a war all along, whilst deceiving everyone on all the details and even personally murdering David Kelly in order to shut him up? Blair's answers will prosaically chime with those given already, even as the press and TV will try desperately to hype up every word to try and create controversy (especially given that this is a 'Labour' issue and much of the press and Sky News are in pre-election mode, where everything is about trying to undermine Labour).

The fact remains that there are two main camps. Those who think that the war was wrong and that there were conspiracies, who will never really change that view whatever is said or done, and those who believe it wasn't so bad in the end, who really don't want to spend any more time raking over the details, given that Iraq inquiries are getting a bit like a Status Quo greatest hits. People have a habit of vehemently defending their previous positions by any means necessary. To do otherwise would be to show embarrassment at their previous actions and statements.

The Chilcott inquiry will change nobody's mind on the issues. All it seems to be there for is to give political junkies something to have wet dreams about.

Friday, January 01, 2010

Today : My New Year Message to The World

Calm down, let it go. Try not to be horrid.

Monday, December 28, 2009

today I'd be a millionaire...I'd be a Fred Astaire

I know there's a fashion for it at the moment, where old bands put on special shows where they run through a long player, but there aren't that many albums that can really stand up to it. Even before the days where the album as a concept became pretty much irrelevant, there were always one or two tracks that could be skipped over and, lets face it, many albums were a hit single or two packaged with some other tracks, which may or may not be excellent, and often crushingly dull. This is especially true of pop, as opposed to rock. Genesis or Cream or Zeppelin operated in the album form, and hardly ever released singles. They could probably perform IV or Disraeli Gears or Selling England by the Pound in full and get away with it. Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall likewise. OK Computer at a push. But pop music is built on the three minute radio-friendly ditty. The very idea of pop is to have hits and be popular. And the economic model of pop is to concentrate on the singles and follow up with the album - hence the very concept of filler.

Which is what makes ABCs The Lexicon of Love so remarkable. At the time it was widely hailed as one of the best albums of the 1980s and has since cemented its place in the critics top howevermany of all time. This, for a pop concept album on that perennial pop topic of love and heartbreak. It's a difficult trick to pull off. Write a song cycle that more or less describes the arc of a love affair but make it not cheesy, not cloying and not sentimental. In fact, pack it with wit, honest emotion, clever wordplay, a pinch of pretension and even political allegory, but without tipping over into detached cynicism. But do all this to music which makes people dance, smile, sing along and suffer a sublime soaring heart from the first to the last second.

But ABC pulled it off. Orchestrating a timeless and joyful brew of 80s funk, Philly Soul, Bacharach and David, 60s film soundtracks, shiny electro-pop and even a slight nod to Vegas and musical theatre. The LoL also contains several of the greatest pop moments ever committed to tape. Like the bit in Poison Arrow where the girl declares: "I care enough to know I can never love you" and the drums crash back in (and for that matter the simple injerjection of her saying "Goodbye" as a percussive beat in Look of Love), or the bit in All of My Heart where there's a piano arpeggio that goes all the way down the keys, ending with a resonating bass note (which was soon after nicked by Quincy Jones on Michael Jackson's I Just Can't Stop Loving You), or the climax of Valentines Day: "If you gave me a pound for the moments I missed And I got dancing lessons for all the lips I shoulda kissed I'd be a millionaire I'd be a...Fred Astaire", or the tension break when Many Happy Returns segues into Tears Are Not Enough, or the way the electric piano break Show Me loses it's echo and suddenly feels really close to the speakers. Or the three shimmering guitar chords on All of My Heart that back the words to the bridge..."I won't be told, there's a pot of gold, at the end of the rainbow..." that are like the wind ruffling the surface of a mill-pond.

So to watch Martin Fry, band and orchestra perform The Lexicon of Love a couple of weeks ago was potentially a special experience. It was also potentially a naff nostalgia-fest for gone-to-seed, stuck in the 80s former new-romantics. But in fact there were fewer of the 80s nostalgia crowd in attendance than I thought. Maybe ten people or less would have also paid to see, par example, Spandau Ballet. You could tell them by their recently washed and pressed 80s nostalgia tour T shirts.

I truly love that album. It's travelled with me throughout my adult life, reflecting my youth as if in gold lame, reinvigorating the part of me that loves pure edge-of-kitsch pop music as much as I might also like Janacek's String Quartets or Sketches of Spain or heavy metal like Hanoi Rocks. And it seemed I was in a room with several hundred like-minded folk. There were plenty of middle aged men with their slightly less interested wives, but also a smattering of people from all ages. One row was taken up with an entire posse of teenaged girls. Odd, but explained when Martin Fry dedicated a song to his daughter and one of the girls squirmed and blushed whilst her friends pointed and giggled.

The first half of the show was a run through of the other, less brilliant hits - how else could they structure a show such as this? And then a civilised interval where people queued in a middle-aged, civilised way for wine and premium lagers.

The sense of anticipation in the room increased. You could feel it. I mention this because I never quite expected what would happen next. The orchestra came on, followed by Anne Dudley, to strike up the overture. After a smattering of classical concert styler applause, everyone went silent. Then the band appeared and moved smoothly into Show Me, tremeloed bass harmonics and all. It was great. I could feel my face smiling and I couldn't stop. But then the quite unexpected happened. As the piano arpeggio/glissando and handclap intro to Poison Arrow began, people began to stir. Almost as single person the audience stood, as if ordered. And by the time the intro led into that 7 note slap bass fill before the real song began everyone was keening towards the stage with tension and expectation. As the bassline and the drums kicked in properly the place went absolutely chaotically, uncontrollably mad. People were jumping up and down. Groups of middle aged folk ran from their seats to places where there was room to dance. The people on the balconies were throwing shapes and cheering along as if their team had just scored the winning cup-final goal. Everyone just let go. It was almost bacchanalian and out of control. At the song's abrupt end the place roared its approval. People stayed on their feet for Valentines Day, dancing a little less energetically, but then came The Look of Love and everyone entirely lost their senses again. For the next thirty minutes the energy gradually dissipated. But then after Anne and the orchestra had finished Look of Love prt 5, the band skipped back on and encored Look of Love (part two), causing mayhem again. People booed when a second encore didn't materialise. I genuinely think they could have heard the hits two or three times over and still have been left wanting more.

What was so brilliantly joyful about it was that this wasn't a crowd of uninhibited teenagers on too many blue alco-pops and half a dodgy E. This was a respectable middle aged crowd who'd got baby sitters and driven their people carriers to the show. Perhaps its not so shocking that the place exploded. All that middle-aged respectibility can be so restricting. And to have your favourite ever songs playing in front of you in a way you never thought you'd see and at a level of quality you never expected is the excuse you need to let it all out and express the fact that even though you're 45, you still feel 15 inside.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

today : politics: a warning from history

It's very clear...Gordon's not here to stay. What with the press upping the ante with their attacks on him and everything he does being portrayed as incompetent and blundering. And unless something really stands out as a topic requiring comment in the run up to the election in a few months, I think I'll leave it all alone. I don't really feel the need to use my 'umble blog to play at being a pundit. After all, it's the Nick Robinsons and the Adam Boltons and the John Pienaars and the Laura Kuensbergs who get to do that. And it's a slight pet hate of mine to see that lots of people use Web 2.0 to endlessly broadcast the minutiae of their stupid opinions, like the web was a great big local radio phone-in. So here's all I have to say. If you are going to vote for the Tories next time because you're bored with Labour, or are taken in by the endless negative press on Brown, or even if your political instinct is conservative, don't come crying to me when it turns out that you didn't quite get what you thought you were getting.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Today : Saltydog's now traditional Xmas music selection

It's Christmas (or December, at least) and each year I like to post a Christmas Video or two. Let's start with the best one

and a new one that's quite good

and a bonkers one

and proof that some people can make even those tired old naff Xmas songs swing like a mother

Be nice to people.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

today : a small step

What with all the floods and the Queen's Speech and all that, this interesting news story kind of slipped by. Nobody seemed to have noticed that the bank involved was RBS. Remember them? They ran themselves into the ground by sheer unadulterated greed and incompetence, and are currently existing purely on the backs of Britain's tax-payers, including paying their useless and rat-faced former CEO a 'pension' of 3 million quid a year.

And then they want to spend money on appealing a decision that treating people well is kind of something you should endeavour to do.

Whoever decided to appeal this decision on their behalf should be sacked forthwith, and possibly replaced with a disabled person. At least we cripples tend to have some perspective on things like managing our meagre finances and what it is like to live in the world rather than a palace made up of diamonds and sculpted towers of cocaine.

Friday, November 13, 2009

today : practice

As I'm still recovering from my ankle operation and am facing a pretty crucial couple of weeks (will ever walk again?), I am planning to take another short break. The plan ts to indulge in the simple joy of sitting and playing the guitar for a bit.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

today : the importance of a hat

Say what you like about Hamid Karzai. He may be corrupt; a US puppet who turned out to be more Punch than Judy. He may be President of an unrulable country (how many people in Afghanistan are part of the 'political class' - with access to being in government? I guess there are as many as tens of people based in Kabul who are potential Presidents of the nation that is really not a nation at all), but he does always look well turned out. Apart from from his rather benign, dapper, avuncular looks, his luxury bathroom-carpet-based hat is especially impressive, especially when accompanied by the heavy curtain-based shawl in Wimbledon Tennis colours.

Friday, October 23, 2009

What is it about the colour pink that scares men so much? I was watching the Heineken Cup Rugby Union the other day and Stade Francais were playing. They wear a pink strip, and I played a little game. That was : see how long it took the commentators, for no particular Rugby related or sporting reason, to begin making childish remarks about the pink strip, snickering whilst offering innuendoes about the sexuality of the players wearing it.

It took about 10 minutes. One of the commentators made a vaguely homophobic comment. Another one made a point of saying that these particular 'dressed-in-pink' men were, remember, burly rugby players.

A similar thing happened not so long ago when Nicolas Bendtner, the Arsenal striker, wore a pair of pink boots in a game. The Sky commentators spent an unreasonable length of time discussing them, rather than the football itself. And reading between the lines of their comments it was pretty clear that all of their focus was based on the connection between the colour pink and homosexuality. (it doesn't help but Bendtner's name lends itself to puns about people being 'bent' and Arsenal contains the word 'Arse'. I actually heard one or two people make these puns in conversations, and I imagine the pub I was in was not the only place these 'jokes' were made amongst men).

I've experienced it myself even. A couple of times I've worn stuff like a pink tie to social events and it inspires a kind of adolescent nervousness amongst a certain type of men (i.e. the kind of men who, like Sky commentators, make jokes about people with foreign sounding names.) They make 'banterish' comments that are just too much for something as small and insignificant as a tie. They over-comment on it. They slightly obsess about it. It grows in size and significance. They start to make slight homophobic innuendoes about it, whilst backpeddling from them just in case you actually are gay and the pink tie and the man-bag aren't just metrosexual fashion statements. I personally quite enjoy the idea that I can unsettle people so much with the colour of my tie. I would have not worn sequins, make-up and strange hair colours when younger and playing around with the the ideas of stereotyping and campness. A pink garment of any kind would have had the same effect. It simply doesn't culturally compute. In the eyes of many still, straight men somehow aren't allowed to like showtunes, Marc Almond records, electric cars, wine, pastel colours of any kind or cultural stuff like books and art. It's suspicious. Wearing pink and having a man-bag automatically puts you beyond the pale.

You can play another little game to see how unpopular and distressing pink is to many men. Go to one of those shops that stocks last years leftover designer clothes (TJ or TK Maxx, Marshalls and the like). There you will find a splendid selection of pink mens' clothing, leftover from last season because most men just will not buy it.

This person reckons that the association started with the Nazis making gay people wear a pink triangle whilst imprisoned. A quick zip through the internet provides no better theory. although I did find out that pink used to be the colour for a boy until WW2.

I can only conclude that the massive power the colour exerts on people is symbolic. It's not colour itself, but a reminder about the profound discomfort that society feels about homosexuality. How strange that it should reside in something so seemingly harmless as a colour?

Monday, October 19, 2009

today : a dilemma

Here's my dilemma. When Nick Griffin appears on Question Time, should I watch?

Reasons for: I want to see what happens. I'm curious to see what the audience and the other panellists make of having a fascist horror in their midst. I want to see what someone whose entire ideology I utterly abhor, might say. What weasel words will he use?

Part of me would also like to see him screw up big time. Squirming when reminded of his previous convictions for inciting racial hatred and his close associations with violent anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and other unpalatable racist thugs. I'd love it if he slipped up and made prosecutable comments on TV.

Reasons against : I would be offering him exactly what he wants. I'd be a viewing figure. And even though I could convince myself that I'd just be 'observing', by tuning in to watch him debate I would be participating in his awful project to legitimise the politics of evil and hatred.

When I was younger, and a University student, I was pretty uncomfortable with the then NUS policy of offering 'No Platform' to people whose views were dodgy and unacceptable. This was the mid 1980s - so that involved many sitting MPs and pretty much anyone who'd not supported the miners. There was an ugly trait amongst some left wing activists that smacked to me of extremism, and sometimes it struck me that the agendas were not political but personal. People were outcast and stuff was censored and proscribed for no good reason. I guess it was mainly young people who had a bit of power and got drunk on it.

But I am more than twenty years older now. I still an inveterate fan of free speech but am a solid believer in offering no platform to fascists. And I don't think the two are mutually exclusive in a mature society. I cannot really understand why The BNP is not just banned from standing in elections, or at least aggressively prosecuted every time they show their ugly faces in public. It does nobody any good for them to spread their poisonous falsehoods under the banner of political ideas. Their rhetoric and policies are monstrously retrograde and demeaning to anyone who believes in democracy.

Should I watch?

Update : I didn't watch, but didn't need to. The news gave it blanket coverage. In fact only a couple of hours later I'm sick of the sight of the odious rat faced fascist.

Monday, October 05, 2009

today : too eazi

I rarely just repost stuff I find on the web, but this is too easy and fun. These are the people who are more worried about Obama giving a start of term talk to their kids and 'indoctrinating' them with his dangerous communist bullshit, but hardly ever complaining about the state of the education in their schools.

Monday, September 14, 2009

2 unpleasant symptoms

Where do you put your anger? I ask this rather difficult question because I'm watching a report on the G20 finance minsters' conference and it reminds me that bankers are still bleating on about the necessity to pay themselves colossal bonuses on top of their rather generous pay packets. And it reminds me that we own them. They work for us. These people who are more than comfortable with cutting lines of credit to businesses, throwing people out of work and lines of credit to homeowners. Literally destroying lives at the stroke of their gold-plated overpriced pens. These people who rail against state intervention as some kind of ultimate evil but who ravenously bit the arm off governments when it meant they can stay in their country mansions and still drive their childish and unnecessary sports cars. These people whose moronic ultragreed led us all into disaster.

If we the poor non-bankers deign to rip off a couple of quid from the rich or figuratively steal a loaf from their gluttonously laden tables face prosecution and punishment. Yet as a result of their mutant imbecility they are invited to continue to suck the blood of our pitiful labours, laughing as they bury their pig-snouted faces into salvers of cocaine, feeding their baseless arrogance.

I'd like to see these bastards digging pointless holes until their hands bleed and they cry out with pity. They work for us: we should insist.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that lots of folk have a bit of them that enjoys other peoples' discomfort. How else do we explain the popularity of TV shows like Total Wipeout, and the fact that skateboarding accidents and car crashes are always at the top of web-video charts? Schadenfreude is not simply a German concept, even though plenty of other nations accidentally forgot to invent a word for the concept.

Which is why I've taken to quite enjoying watching American politics in the past few months. You can't help but laugh at the fact that plenty of Americans (i.e. the dumb-ass Right Wingers) are quite happy to piss away the fact that they have an intelligent and pro-active President. It's not even like they even object to what Obama is doing or planning, because their ranting and raving is always targeted at some ridiculous scheme that he isn't actually enacting. So far we've had him banning guns, creating death panels, introducing compulsory government funded abortion and gay marriage, and punitively taxing everybody in order to create big government for no other reason than he hates people having money and simply loves big government. Oh, and he doesn't want to fight any wars and kill anyone if he can help it.

Of course the apogee of this is the 'Health Care' debate. It's not about health care at all, but about the fact that the right wing has demonised Obama in any way it can. It started during the campaign and just got more extreme. They can't seem to get out of that Attwater/Rove thing where you don't win by being better, but win by insisting the other guy is worse. It's not so difficult with a black man because the fact is that many 'natural' Republicans hate black people (which is part of why they are 'natural' Republicans), but even for those Bible-belters who might be post racist, there is plenty more for them to chew on. He has been portrayed as everything from an illegal immigrant to someone whose politics are slightly of Castro. His Christianity is questioned, his morality is attacked, his stated policies are simply not believed.

Okay, so he is probably the most left wing President of all time, but that's not saying much in a world context. What's extreme left in The USA is right-leaning social democratic to everyone else. Another out-of-step phenomenon is the fact that in almost every other democracy the political spectrum is a shifting, organic thing. In Britain the incumbent party tends to lead the way in the way everyone thinks. Other parties analyse what is popular and adopt similar stances. It's pragmatic and it means that that almost everyone hovers around the centre and never strays too far to the right or left. The political landscape moves around - a little bit left, a little bit right - reactive to context and events. The same kind of thing happens in France, Germany, Australia, Spain and most other countries you could care to name. Since Reagan, however, the opposite has happened in the USA. Whatever happens the Right wingers stay nailed to right hand wall like shy kids at a disco. Politically they are going la la la with their hands over their ears.

In fact, any excuse is legitimate in making them dig in to their positions and shift even further right.

The fun in this is in watching these dunderheads screaming at town hall meetings, Like the young woman bursting into tears with fear over her country turning into Russia, or the woman who embarrassed John McCain by accusing Obama of not being an American. The fact that they are so easily susceptible to the downright lies they are clearly bombarded with is worrying in one way, but watching them is a bit like watching one of those compilation shows of the stupidest ever answers on Family Fortunes.

The fun is also in watching the self-styled paragon of democracy having a hilariously frozen, dysfunctional democracy. The nation that recently has been spreading its 'freedom' around the world battling its own citizens over what they do with their own bodies. A nation that prides itself on being fair and free giving money away to the rich and punishing the poor. Nobody seems to have reminded Bush and co. that 'huddled masses' are something America has always been there to cosset - not create.

It's hugely entertaining to see Americans rushing headlong into disaster because a blinkered few refuse to accept that their healthcare system needs reform. It's like watching 'Funniest Home Videos when you can see the banana skin on the ground. Never mind the huge deficits crippling the government because of costs, how about the fact that every other G10 nation has sorted out their healthcare system, leaving America as the only straggler. And lets not get started on literacy rates and educational standards.

Basically, we in the rest of the world are able to sit and chortle as America blunders recklessly onto the slippery slope of decline. China and India are pretty much falling off their chairs with laughter. Because that's what is happening. 26 years of post-Reagan economic policy has left the country with bridges that fall down, schools that are a haven for violence, major industries that are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and entire states running out of water and barely able to keep the lights on.

It's a kind of insanity to be so violently opposed to the 'other' party that you become obsessed with blocking anything that they do, even if it is necessary for the nation, and morally out of tune with your stated belief (I'm thinking the evangelist right wingers forgetting the Good Samaritan and insisting that uninsured people remain uninsured).

And that is why we laugh.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

today : The Baroness

I didn't personally know Baroness Nicky Chapman but for much of her life she lived on my street, so we were used to - for as long as I can remember and from when she was a child - her being around. I saw her last year tootling along in her wheelchair. She wasn't much older than me but I didn't have anything to do with her because Nicky was educated at home and then at a special school for people with disabilities. My Mum says that she used to chat with Nicky's Mum and even at a young age, perhaps ten or eleven, Nicky would join in and voice strong opinions. She told me that because Nicky was so small people would look strangely at two women apparently chatting with a baby in a pram (an image that puts me in mind of Stewie Griffin - although not in character, obviously). I was reminded of her later when I went to College to do my PGCE. It was the same college where she'd got her degree and people still talked about her. She was a star wherever she went.

Lucky for me that my congenital disability wasn't debilitating until recently. Nicky Chapman was written off at birth with brittle bone disease. In 1961 the fact that her body was so frail and problematic meant her brain and personality were disregarded. Her parents were apparently told to put her in an institution and then try for a 'normal' child. Shocking, I know. Not too many years later I was in hospital for the first two months of my life and my parents were only allowed to visit for a few minutes a day. I think it still upsets my Mum when she goes into hospitals.

Famously, Nicky Chapman kept statistics of negative discrimination, counting the 9 London taxis that ignored her in one day and the hundreds in a year. From the House of Lords she used her voice to highlight this hidden and ignored discrimination. And now that I am using stuff like wheelchairs and walking sticks I am acutely aware of it. How nobody thinks to design the built environment to be disabled-friendly, despite it being very easy and cost-effective. How so much of life is inaccessible because people just don't think - such as supermarkets placing heavy objects on high shelves out of reach of wheelchair users and too heavy to lift for many, including the elderly. How the lot of the disabled is ignored or even disparaged (I should really - Nicky-style - compile stats of the large number of people who complain to me, an obviously disabled driver, about blue-badge parking being some kind of undeserved privilege, or the people who speak to me like I'm an imbecile because I'm shopping from an electric cart).

Two personal examples I could give:

I worked on the 9th floor of a building. Arriving one morning the lift was broken, which meant to get to my office/teaching room I would have to go up 18 flights of busy, crowded steps. Instead of going home I did the steps and it took me almost 40 minutes. I phoned upstairs and apologised in advance for missing the daily morning meeting. When I got to the 9th floor with my dodgy foot screaming in pain, a couple of management types made cutting remarks about my absence and, even when I re-explained what had happened, because of previously booked meeting that was scheduled before I started there and my office was considered 'spare', I was still reshuffled to work in another room on the floor above for part of the day. This meant four more flights of stairs as well as the 18 to get back down at the end of the day. Perhaps they did it as some kind of punishment as they were pretty nasty people all told. But I guess they actually did it because it was easier for me to move out than for them to use another room and tell the attendees about the change. Other peoples' pain is easy to ignore because you can't see it and in my experience there is a no win situation. If you complain you are a complainer: if you are stoic then there is clearly nothing wrong.

Some time ago I went to a wedding. Planned into the schedule of the day was drinks on the lawn of the hotel. Very nice - apart for anyone who simply cannot walk on soft and uneven ground. Then, the photographs were taken on the lawn and nobody took into account the fact that I couldn't be involved. A week or two later I got a thank-you card from the bride and groom. Inserted was a memento of the day. A copy of the group photo of every guest raising a glass of champagne. Except I wasn't on it. It was as if my effort to attend had been wiped from history. The couple are lovely, kind people. I am sure it was just a minor detail overlooked - like forgetting to put a vegetarian option on a menu. But its impact was pretty big on me. I'm okay with not being able to join in the country dancing in the evening, but it made me feel as if I was a pretty pointless invitee.

I am always wary of signalling the achievement of disabled people as special. Anything a disabled person does is often not in the face of their condition, but in the face of other peoples' prejudiced perception of their condition. So she should be celebrated simply as an achiever first. The fact that she was the first peer ever to be born with a serious disability itself says a lot. I can only think of David Blunkett as someone else in Parliament with a serious disability. It's pathetic that it took until the turn of century for these people to get into positions of influence. The statistic is all we need to tell us that not so much has changed in her tragically too-short lifetime.