After our three days of balmy spring weather the cold, high wind and possibly rain, judging by the heavy cloud, are back.
Every three months or so, thanks to the Maffins of Huddersfield, a rolled up bundle of Sunday Times “Culture” sections lands on the doorstep. Some time back, can’t remember exactly how long, we decided after forty or more years of loyal readership to give The Sunday Times a miss. This was because our paper, expensive enough, was gradually being whittled down to virtually nothing as one after the other the extras were removed (though the price needless to say remained the same), and when the Culture section went, despite howls of outrage from readers, that’s when the Sunday Times also went. Since then I get the Mail on a Friday for the reviews; film, theatre, books, and the Maffins have provided the missing Culture section. For a single postage at slightly more than the cost of one issue of the Sunday Times I get three months worth and the paper loses that revenue. I had hoped a lot of other expats would follow my lead but somehow I doubt it.
I love A.A.Gill’s TV column, and any other he may happen to write. In fact, to put it mildly, a faint feeling of jealousy creeps over me every time I read him but I must say, over the years, he has given me so much reading pleasure, every time I break into a chuckle or sit back in admiration, I can put the jealousy aside. In the issue of the 4th of January he writes about “The 39 Steps”. I read this book many many years ago and of course have seen the Hitchcock movie a couple of times but I never knew anything about John Buchan and A.A. told me all I need to know in a potted biog of half a dozen sentences. And how is this for summing up our hero in this book? “the strange, sensually neutered understatement and studied insouciance that is the default setting of your archetypal Edwardian hero. Those weird boy-men, tongue-tied around women but effusive with horses and dogs, scrupulously fair but comprehensively prejudiced, a bizarre collection of public-school contradictions, repressions and neurosis became the template for derring-do heroes.”
Of course there are other S.T. writers I miss. India Knight’s column I always enjoyed but she has an equal in the Mail so I will stick with that.
In the same issue is a revue for a recently published book titled “From Genocide To Continental War,” a history of what has been happening in various African countries since the 1950’s and you can only wonder what the future of the dark continent can be when you realise what has been happening over the last fifty and more years: the intertribal conflicts, the wars, the coups, the genocides, the corruption, the crime, the starvation, the disease, AIDS, the torture, the lopping off of limbs, the child soldiers, the looting. Leopold might have looted the Congo when the colonialists were in charge but somehow they were as nothing compared to modern times. It would seem Africa’s riches are there for the grabbing by the few whilst millions live in direst poverty or starve. That fruitcake Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a prime example, building his garish vulgar sugar plum palace at what cost when his country is printing notes for a zillion because of inflation, and the vice-president of that benighted country who is supposedly worth millions is trying to defy sanctions by illegally selling off Congolese gold.
Not mentioned in this book are the ridiculous beliefs of the incredulous; that raping a baby will cure AIDS or that the body parts of murdered albinos as is happening in Tanzania will make powerful muti, or that some police have to be corrupt because if they don’t obey the wishes of the local witch-doctor they might as well call it a day. Perhaps the day when all this is past will come but it will be a long time coming.