British Library - balancing the books

Criticising landmark developments is the great British disease. The Channel Tunnel, the Millennium Dome, Wembley Stadium - they never had a chance. Now it's the turn of the Olympic complex. We wanted the Olympics in the UK. I remember cheering when I heard we had won the bid. But already the carping has started. Any big project such as this is going to incur cost overruns. It goes with the territory.

Do you remember how people criticised the British Library as a white elephant? It cost £500m and took 20 years to build from concept to opening. Even Prince Charles couldn't resist a jibe, describing it as a "secret police building." He was wrong. The British Library is a magnificent building, particularly on the inside which must offer some of the best facilities for undertaking concentrated work that I have found anywhere.

Part of its secret is what is not there: no telephones, no interruptions, no noise. Instead there is comfortable seating with strong, broad desks and an efficient ordering and delivery service. More than that, for those of us who use it,the service is a tangible return for the money we pay in taxes.

A well stocked, efficient library, offering free access to those of a nation's citizens who wish to read and research in quiet contemplation must form the bedrock of any reasonable definition of civilization. The only improvement that could and should be made to the British Library is to extend its reading services to other locations outside London.

But this isn't going to happen. What should be part of our birthright, the principle of unfettered access to one of the world's greatest collections of the written word, is under threat. The British Library has warned that it might need to start charging readers for its services, if the Treasury goes ahead with proposed cuts to its budget.

I hope this is no more than posturing, the sort of heavyweight barging that always takes place when Government departments are competing for their slice of the pie. My reading pass is a treasured possession. I love the British Library in the same way that I love the British Museum and the National Gallery. I love them most of all because their doors are open, offering free entry to all who visit.

You might run the world's biggest company and rub shoulders with the power elite every year in Davos, but if you want to see the Wilton Diptych or Vermeer's Young Woman seated at a Virginal you will have no better view than the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Last week the Government was starting a debate on Britishness. For me it starts with fair play and free access. The British Library didn't charge Lenin or Marx. I hope it won't charge me.

David Rattray - historian and speaker

Anyone who went along to the lectures on Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana given annually at the Royal Geographical Society over the last few years, or was lucky enough to visit his lodge, Fugitive's Drift, will know something about David Rattray's extraordinary storytelling qualities.

Within two minutes of listening to a Rattray talk, you were there, standing in the smoke and battle, witnessing the scenes unfolding as he described them with a rare combination of passion, detail and empathy.

So it was with great sadness I discovered he had been murdered by members of an an armed gang that broke in to his lodge last week. South Africa is a beautiful country. It deserves better than this.

Daily Telegraph obituary.

Lies, damned lies, and so-called fishing flies

Some people fish for salmon using spinners. Some people fish using flies. Some salmon waters have banned spinners (that are much easier to cast and generally easier to fish with), declaring them fly only.

Now some wise guys at Grays of Kilsyth have produced the spinhead, a spinner attachment for your fly. If this is used on a fly-only water it is downright cheating. In water that permits spinning there may be an argument for casting something like this with your fly rod but I can't, for the life of me, think what it is. In fact there is no real difference between using this device and attaching a Mepps spinner to your fly leader. The fly-only rivers should move swiftly to ban its use on their waters.

If all you want to know is: "Will it catch fish?" Of course it will. I discussed these moves to create "spinning flies" in one of my fishing columns here. Here is an article trying to justify its use.

From Davos to the real world

Back to the Workworld media awards: when Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist picked up his lifetime achievement award he couldn't resist the opportunity for a dig at Davos - the world's most overrated talking shop. "Congratulations to all of us for not being at Davos," he said.

Did he know that Alan Rusbridger (see previous blog) was jetting out there the next day to leave yet another hefty carbon footprint on the alpine slopes? I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

As one of the award judges I get to see all the entries. One of my favourites this year, winner in the "Scoop of the Year" category, was an Inside Out documentary made by BBC Newcastle. One of the news team, working under cover, secured a job with National Car Parks in Sunderland as a trainee parking meter attendant.

With a secret camera and microphone, he was able to expose what really goes on among these people. One of the attendants boasted that he had slashed all four tyres of a car in an act of revenge against an angry motorist. Another admitted extorting the price of a pint from another car driver in exchange for waving a ticket.

These may be seen as devious journalistic tactics but sometimes it's the only way of getting at the truth.

Craigslist and Carnegie

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian was handing out the honours this week at the annual Workworld media awards run by the Work Foundation. The gathering was held at the London Picadilly headquarters of BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts).

He showed a few slides beforehand, highlighting the predicament of newspapers. One of the slides featured a picture of Renzo Piano's New York Times Tower, now under construction on 42nd street, New York. When finished the tower will provide office space for 10,000 employees.

The next slide featured the unassuming San Franciso house (pictured here) that Craig Newmark and his 22 employees use to produce Craigslist, the internet advertising phenomenon that Rusbridger fears is "sucking the life out of newspapers" with its free access and free advertising deal for most advertisers.

Craigslist's revenue is drawn from paid for job advertisements in various cities and apartment listings in New York. If you look at the advertising rates (the top rate is $75) and note that the site gets 500,000 new jobs advertised every month, the revenue model begins to make sense.

Everything about Craigslist (apart from the HQ and the number of employees) is big. It gets more than 5 bn page views a month, 10m unique visitors and places more than 10m new classified ads each month.

As Rusbridger pointed out, Piano's crystal tower is "old economy". So is Rusbridger's salary: base pay up 14.7 per cent from £272,000 to £312,000 a year as Private Eye was kind enough to remind us this week. I assume his £175,000 bonus awarded on top of that figure recognises that the declining newspaper circulation might have been much steeper without his efforts.

I have been unable to find a salary figure for Craig Newmark (here is his picture gallery instead), founder of Craiglist, but, since it is a not for profit venture, I doubt that it will be anything like the $210m that Home Depot paid its unsuccessful former chief executive, Bob Nardelli, simply to go away.

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, has bemused New York analysts by telling them that the aim of the venture is not to maximise profits but to perform a service. Newmark himself does not seem to be switched on by thoughts of cash mountains. He says in this Wired magazine interview that the only thing he lacks is a private parking space.

This is described as "new economy" thinking today but it's not all new. Traditional old economy entrepreneurs wanted to make money, sure enough, but what got them out of bed each day was the desire to make a product or service ever better.

That should still be the aim of the "stewards" who look after public companies today. Instead too many of them spend most of their waking hours talking to analysts, journalists and investors as they concentrate on the ever more feverish activity of buying and selling companies while feathering their individual nests.

What remains unclear to me, is whether the new economy idealists will continue true to their vision of democratic open-sourced, accessible, enterprise or whether they will sell out to the multi-car owning, multi-home-owning, private-jet, luxury yacht lifestyle of almost every other status-building materialist on the planet.

I don't include Bill Gates in that roll-call. Whatever you may think about Gates' Puget Sound home, he has committed himself to philanthropic and charitable ventures in the spirit of Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century steel baron whose own ideal of capitalist responsibility was outlined in an essay on wealth, popularly described as his "Gospel of Wealth" in the North American Review. Making your money is one thing. Spending it wisely and judiciously is no less difficult.

The Organisation of One

The heading above is the working title for a book I'm writing. It's how I think of myself these days. A bit pretentious? Maybe.

This morning I have been working on the chapter outline. I'm thinking of calling the first chapter "Office Rot". I want to convey something of the dismal attitudes that have developed around office work and office life, moving on to where we need to be.

Ricky Gervais as David Brent summed things up pretty well in this extract from the first series of The Office, episode one:

“What is the single most important thing for a company? Is it the building? Is it the stock? Is it the turnover? It’s the people, investment in people. My proudest moment here wasn’t when I increased profits by 17%, or cut expenditure without losing a single member of staff. No. It was a young Greek guy, first job in the country, hardly spoke a word of English, but he came to me and he went ‘Mr. Brent, will you be the Godfather to my child?’.
Didn’t happen in the end. We had to let him go, he was rubbish. He was rubbish!”

I also liked this quote on achievement from Gareth:

“He’s thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?”

More quotes from the series here.

Lost and found

So I found this motorbike on the beach. I was just walking the dog like always and there were these containers all washed up and open. A few people had found bikes and all sorts of other things. Anyway it was just lying there, didn't belong to anyone. Lost over board from that wrecked container ship. Finders keepers, I say. Why should the salvage people get it? It's no more their's than it is mine, so I'm salvaging it. That's what I'm doing. My bit for the environment, clearing away a bit of wreckage and waste.

It's hardly been touched by the salt, good as new really. I've put it in the shed. They're saying it's looting on the news but I don't see it like that. It's not stealing is it? I'm not a thief. Who am I stealing from? Big Business? I mean everyone's insured. Who's lost anything?

The papers are calling us scavengers but everybody was down there carting things away so I thought: who's the mug? What am I worrying about? Some of them were posh people. One woman was stuffing washed-up bits of make-up in to her handbag. She said she didn't wear it, but will now. It's funny how the chance of something for nothing changes us.

They say I have to fill in a form to tell the Receiver of Wreck about my find. That will make me a registered salvor eligible for a reward. The bikes sell for £12,000 so it should be good for a few bob. I could do that, or I could just keep quiet. But I don't ride a bike so I'd have to sell it. I could stick it on Ebay but the police will be on to that. Maybe there'll be someone interested down the pub. There's going to be some good car boot sales in Devon this weekend but it's a bit big for that.

I mean I'm not a criminal, I just found it like those Scottish islanders did when they stashed away cases of whisky in that film Whisky Galore. Everyone laughed at that because it's human nature. Why shouldn't they get the whisky? They had hard lives. Well my life isn't what you'd call hard but it's not every day you see a gift horse like this.

It's a nice bike. Maybe I'll just leave it there and not tell anyone. Keep it in the family. In a hundred years it would be a classic and really worth something. And who would care about any of this then? It's all a bit of a worry. I'm beginning to wish that storm hadn't happened. After all, I was only walking the dog.

Old game, new players

Video proof with new players, that the old gags just go on and on.

Art, holly and heroism

A visit to Compton, the Watts Gallery and Chapel. Before its TV exposure on the BBC's Restoration series that features dilapidated buildings in need of repair, the Watts Gallery was one of the UK's best kept secrets.

I wanted to see it before work starts on its lottery-supported £10m refurbishment in the Spring of 2008. The tattiness of the place is part of its appeal although I agree that something has to be done about the decay. I hope that the restoration retains the gallery's charm and eccentricity. Some of the older chairs have sprigs of holly on the cushions designed to ward off anyone who might want to sit on them.

The green-painted walls are packed with the paintings of George Frederic Watts plus a few works by other Victorian painters gifted from other collections. It has been suggested that one reason that Watts is not better known today is that most of his works were kept together in his private collection.

In reality, however, he is not in the first rank of British artists, although his best sculpture such as his statue of Lord Alfred Tennyson stands comparison with Rodin and his exceptional portrait of the Anglo-Greek Ionides family has the lustre of an Ingres. His first Royal Academy picture, The Wounded Heron, exhibited in 1837, is also a very fine work.

Most of the collection, however, reflects the sentimentality of the Victorian era, coupled with a concern for those less fortunate than the wealthy patrons from whom he drew his support. Titles such as The Irish Famine and Found Drowned, set the tone for much of his work although there is the odd amusing work such as The First Oyster BC depicting a naked couple on the beach, the man about to taste an oyster. One contemporary critic suggested that BC stood for "before clothing". I think Watts had something else in mind.

Before going along to the collection I had not known the connection between Watts and the commemorative plaques in the City of London's Postman's Park, recording otherwise unsung acts of heroism.

Watts had written to The Times newspaper proposing a memorial recording stories of heroism in everyday life. The project, mooted to mark Queen Victoria's jubilee, was ignored by the organisers but Watts went ahead anyway, erecting a 50-feet-long open gallery in the small park created on the site of the former churchyard of St Botolph, Aldersgate.

There are dozens of tiny parks within London's "Square Mile", the original Roman City boundary that has become the capital's financial centre. Postman's Park is my favourite. The tiled plaques laid by Watts and his wife are poignant reminders of the small tragedies that befell people daily in the late 19th century.

Many, such as the scalding to death of Thomas Griffin a 21-year-old sugar refinery labourer, were caused by exploding boilers. Griffin died after rushing in to the steam in an attempt to save a workmate. One plaque commemorates the selflessness of Mary Rogers the stewardess of a sinking steamer called the "Stella". She went down with the ship after giving her lifebelt to one of the passengers.

If you are ever visiting London and have a little time to spare after seeing its better known attractions, the park is well worth a visit. It's about five minutes walk from St Paul's Cathedral.

One last thing about Watts: he and his wife, Mary Seton Watts, were strong supporters of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Mary Seton Watts established a pottery that provided work for Compton villagers. A short distance from the gallery is a very fine chapel that she designed, inspired by Art Nouveau, Celtic motifs and the knot designs found in the Book of Kells. It's an architectural gem.

Metrosexuals

A conversation about commodities yesterday deviated somewhat in to a discussion of metrosexuals. I must confess that I was ignorant of the term. So when it was explained that a metrosexual is someone who is not gay, or not necessarily gay, but who is in touch with his feminine side, I thought: "that's for me." I have bags of empathy and enjoy the company of women.

Now I'm not so sure; about the metrosexual tag, that is. At the time I was wearing a pink shirt which apparently ticked a box. Another useful accessory, I was told, is a "man bag". I sort of have one of those but don't use it much. In fact I've never used it. It's a woolly, ethnic thing I bought in India or possibly Africa, or was it Leeds? No matter.

I mentioned it to my eldest son, John, 22, this afternoon. It's more than a man bag, he says. Metrosexuals are big in to moisturisers and spend quite a lot on cosmetics. "You know how women take a long time to get ready before they go out? Well metrosexual blokes do that," he says.

One of his friends waxes himself, says John. There is also a vogue, it seems, for men trimming their pubic hair. "Some girls really like it. We had a lot of discussions at university about that."

So it's a little bit more than washing under your armpits and splashing on a bit of aftershave, then? "Some blokes shave their armpits," he says. What? Armpits? Shave? I feel like Peter Kay's grandad when he first heard of cheesecake: "Cheese? Cake? Cheese and cake?

I don't suppose it's so long ago that my own grandad would have been scrubbing up in a tin bath sitting on a clippy hearth rug. What goes around comes around.

Gone in thirteen seconds

China fires a test missile in to space, destroying one of its weather satellites, a move with serious political and economic ramifications if it triggers a debate over extending the multi-billion dollar "son of star wars" missile defence programme; not to mention worries about increasing amounts of junk in space.

As a news story, however, it receives slightly less attention than Big Brother house evictions. As a political story in the UK it rates somewhat lower than the chancellor's hopes for national success on the football field.

But it's much easier for media commentators to pass a view on human relations and football than it is to say anything seemingly intelligent about the geopolitical implications of a Chinese missile test.

Besides, the China missile story does not allow us to indulge in what has become a favourite national pastime - watching people squirm.

So when Chancellor Gordon Brown said he wanted the World Cup in England in 2018 it was only natural that the Scottish-born soon-to-be Prime Minister of Britain would be asked which team he hoped would win it.

A well-briefed Brown would have smiled mischievously and said: "England v Scotland final, with the Scots nicking it 3-2 in the last minute of extra time." Everyone would have laughed and the agenda would have moved on to more important things.

But he fluffed it, saying he would be backing the host country, only changing his mind when he chose to temper his sensitivity to the West Lothian question with what most right-thinking people would accept as a reasonable national sporting sentiment - a Scot wanting a Scottish victory. So we watched the chancellor squirm and felt better about things because it wasn't any of us in the frame.

This celebration of the misfortunes of others extends far beyond Britain's borders. Bizarrely it earned a US chat show invitation for Midlothian barmaid Mairi Duncan, all because of her misfortune in one 13-second video clip taken 10 years ago. Who says you need 15 minutes of fame? Today it's measured in seconds.

Hair today....

How times change. Twenty years ago when I joined the Financial Times the idea that the newspaper would have featured a news story about a popular television show would have been laughable.

Today I see there is a front page story about Big Brother and four other pieces inside. The decision by Carphone Warehouse to suspend its £3m sponsorship is business news. The show's impact on chancellor Gordon Brown's tour of India is political news.

Celebrity moves everything these days. It even moved Clay Harris to comment in his FT Mudlark column after spotting an advertisement on a tube of hair restorer endorsed by Cheryl Baker who used to sing in a pop group called Bucks Fizz.

As Clay writes, it didn't say "formerly of Bucks Fizz" or "of Bucks Fizz fame." Instead it said: "formerly of Bucks Fizz fame." Good one Clay. Now what were you doing looking at tubes of hair restorer?

You are watching Big Brother

If you look closely at your television set you will find that somewhere, usually down in the bottom right hand corner, is a button marked "off". If you push this button it will deactivate your TV set. Alternatively, if a TV programme is not to your taste, you can switch to another channel.

But, for reasons I can understand (as a Daily Telegraph reader who hates its "little Englander" image while drawing some guilty nourishment from its understated voyeurism), thousands of people who perhaps should know better, do not press the "off" button when watching "Big Brother".

I do not watch the programme but I have hovered there a minute or so occasionally when flicking between channels. That's all you need - that and the acres of newspaper coverage it receives - to know what is going on.

There is no doubting that this kind of television stirs opinions. Even David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, has something to say about it.

British diplomats need to have an opinion too because rioters in India are burning effigies of Big Brother producers. Thousands of people who did not press the "off" button want the programme banned. Why? Because they regard aggressive comments made by some of the people in the house as offensive and racist.

I regard them as offensive too. But this is reality TV. It is not an episode of Eastenders or the Archers, the kind of dramas that present the acceptable face of multicultural Britain. Big Brother presents another reality: the dark underbelly of society.

Jade Goody, the protagonist in this latest row, displays the kind of brutal demeanour that can emerge from social deprivation in childhood. Her confrontational behaviour is typical of that portrayed every day on the Trisha or Jeremy Kyle daytime TV shows.

In America Goody would probably be dismissed as "trailer trash". In the UK , for no other reason than she has appeared on TV, she has acquired celebrity status, a source of abiding irritation for the Telegraph readers of Tunbridge Wells.

Goody is the reason that the middle classes send their children to private schools. There are thousands like her. Most of us, however, can feel smugly secure in our superior intellects and standards. This is a woman who thought the Mona Lisa was painted by someone called Pistachio. On the ABC social auditing scale, she would probably slip off the register.

But Jade Goody is not only part of reality TV, she is reality. Moreover, her xenophobia - and this is the big ugly secret that most of us would rather not share - is not confined to a single lower class. It exists at all levels.

Remember Alan Clark and his suggestion that immigrants should be sent back to "Bongo Bongo land" and the Duke of Edinburgh's comments about the "slitty eyes" of the Chinese?

You don't hear such comments in trendy London bars where people of all ethnic backgrounds mix freely in a spirit of intellectual liberalism. But racist language, and the attitudes that inform it, remain as a persistent stain on our national character.

There are those who will highlight racial differences in most societies. For those who support multiculturalism, who have struggled to close the racial divide, who try to understand, even celebrate, cultural and ethnic differences, to be reminded of such undercurrents is painful, hence the thousands of complaints against Big Brother.

But how can you complain against reality? If Big Brother does one good thing, it is to reveal the grubbier side of life that we prefer to sweep under the carpet. It strips away pretension to expose the squalor of ignorance that no amount of celebrity can conceal. The bad thing about Big Brother is that it invites us to wallow in its social meddling in the name of entertainment.

So what is Big Brother? Social window or trash TV? Both, I would say. In the meantime Big Brother exists and will continue to do so just as long as we continue to watch.

See a judge's opinion.

American football

When Dominique de Villepin, the French Prime Minister, gave Harold Pinter the Legion D'Honneur this week he praised Pinter's poem, American Football.

If you read the poem you see that Pinter too uses the American form, ass. But that, I'm sure, is quite deliberate.

Hanged by a comma

Do you know the difference between their and there and between its and it's? Do you know when you should say fewer rather than less? Do you care?

The English language has more than its share of rules and conventions so people can be excused for making occasional mistakes. I think it's great that children who might be reluctant to do their English homework will get themselves on to the internet and begin written conversations, post on forums, or write their blogs on MySpace.

But this means that teachers need to get in these spaces too where they can make a difference . Take the teaching out of the classroom and follow the kids. I spend a little time now and again on a forum where I try to correct grammatical mistakes posted by others, some of them teenagers, but many of them adults. Yes, some call me a pedant, but I think, at the same time, they learn something.

Some of the most common mistakes are those I mention above. The best way to think about using their is to think of the possessive. Are you talking about their property, their car, their brother? You don't need to know that their is a possessive pronoun. You just need to know how to use it properly.

The best way to think about there is to think about geography. Are you going there? Is it over there?

When you write its try to lengthen the phrase to "it is" or"it has". If you can do that, then it needs an apostrophe. If not, then it doesn't. It can't get any easier than that. The other form of "its" appears when it is used in the possessive form as I did in my second sentence.

In her book Eats Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss writes that if you can't learn this simple lesson
"you deserve to be struck by lightening, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave." She is too forgiving.

Some people will think my final point about the difference between less and fewer is antiquated. What's the point of labouring these distinctions, you might ask, when young people are writing sentences on the internet without using capital letters? But these smaller points matter.

If you say you noticed that there were less dogs in the park today, people will know what you mean and some of those people will note your grammatical failings. The basic rule here is the separation of things. If particles of sand, say, are lumped together in a pile and some of that pile was removed you would say there was less sand remaining. But you would talk about fewer grains of sand. So you would have fewer friends than you had last week, not less friends. As a rule of thumb you should use fewer with plurals, less with quantities.

If you don't think that grammar matters, read up on the trial of Roger Casement, the Irish revolutionary, executed in 1916 for treason. British legal experts had been concerned that since the activities for which he was being tried had been carried out in Germany and not the UK, it would be difficult to bring a prosecution. That appeared to be the thinking behind the original medieval law. But the law makers had failed to punctuate the sentences properly so that the letter of the law prevailed, leading to the conclusion that Casement was "hanged by a comma".

Some other so-called fatal commas

Postscript: I notice that the spellchecker always throws up the word internet if it's not capped up. Should the internet be a proper noun?

PPS. I'm posting this here on March 6 to make it easier to link from the comment below. This is the site referenced.

Let's call the whole thing orf

I get quite a few advanced copies of books. There's one on my desk just now called The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University in the US.

The book makes some good points, asking why we should put up with people at work who make our lives a misery. We all know who they are. Sutton discusses alternative descriptions such as: "bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, serial slammers, despots or unconstrained egomaniacs" but argues that asshole "best captures the fear and loathing I have for these nasty people."

"If you are truly tired of living in Jerk City," he writes, "If you don't want every day to be a walk down Asshole Avenue, well it's your job to build a civilized workplace.

I agree with his sentiments entirely but I have two problems with asshole. The first concerns the word itself. I think that I first encountered the American spelling of ass, meaning posterior, bottom, rear end (we really don't have a good word for it do we) when reading Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead many years ago. I remember hesitating briefly, wondering why a donkey should have entered the story, but it was clear that Mailer was referring to something I had hitherto known as an arse.

It just didn't work for me. Not only was the pronunciation all wrong, the word ass, to my mind, represented beach rides at the seaside or manger scenes at Christmas. It did not create the initial image of a Rokeby Venus or the kind of plump cheeks you see in a Rubens. Without this image it was difficult to translate the word in to its colourful pejorative meaning.

The No Arsehole Rule would be fine. It works wonderfully. Offices are full of arseholes and if you read the book you find yourself wondering if you might be one of them. Yes, there is no escaping the arsehole test and I'm sure, if we're honest, most of us might have qualified at some time, if only briefly. So there is much rich observation to discuss here.

Which brings me to my second problem - the Financial Times where I would most likely write about this book. I know that the newspaper is no longer quite so prudish as it was. But I know too how sub editors wince by proxy from the editor's office at anything that is challenging the newspaper's traditional (that is: old fashioned) sense of taste.

It doesn't need the editor to make this point: if it makes readers feel uncomfortable we don't use it. Ah but! There has to be an "Ah but!" here. Supposing the majority of readers are comfortable with arsehole, as I am? Should we pander to a minority?

Unfortunately, as I have already explained, the debate is complicated by the different spellings and pronunciations on either side of the Atlantic. Modern film usage has made asshole slightly more tolerable in the UK but it still grates to hear American slang entering the Queen's English.

I should add that I'm sure Her Majesty would never stoop to calling anyone an asshole. In fact Oxford English demands a long "A". Just as "off" becomes "orf", ass must be pronounced arse. In fact the Queen would have no problem calling anyone a "silly ass" and her pronunciation would be the same whatever her true intention.

The upshot is that I don't know what to do about it. It's a quandry. As Fred Astaire once said, using Ira and George Gershwin's immortal lines: "You like tomato, I like to-may-to, let's call the whole thing off." Or should that be orf?

Cymbidiums: an apology

It pains me to write this, but this morning I found a budding Cymbidium shoot decapitated on the floor. It must have been knocked off by a carelessly drawn curtain. A coincidence? Or did the Cymbidium sense my disapproval of its hitherto dismal performance? Did it somehow know that it was going to be the target of ridicule? Are these the consequences of what was, it turns out, an unfair attack on its flowering potential? I think there may be a case for redress.

Contrary to any impression a previous blog may have given about the uncooperative, surly nature of Cymbidiums I would like to point out that the Cymbidium orchid is a truly magnificent flower that makes an ideal houseplant and behaves well with children and animals. Please accept my unreserved apologies for any distress caused by the original report.

Sex, drugs and Orchids that grow in the dark

Orchids are amazing plants. Firstly they are the biggest flower group in the world with about 35,000 varieties. Secondly they have developed all kinds of diverse ways to pollinate themselves.

Take the Bee Orchid. Somehow - I suppose it has to be natural selection - it has evolved a flower that looks the image of a female bee. So male bees hop on board for a bit of casual sex. While doing so the orchid's pollinia - its pollen sack - hooks on to the bee which deposits it at the next Bee Orchid to which the bee has taken a fancy. So as the bee does what birds and bees do, in blissful ignorance of the way it has been duped, the only real sex that's going on is between the orchids.

Slipper orchids attract thirsty insects looking for a drink in their flower pouch or sack. Often the insect slips in, gets wet and hooks the pollinia as it dries off.

One orchid is a little more sophisticated, exuding a narcotic substance that puts the insect's lights out when a lid closes over the sack. When the lid lifts, the insect comes round then crawls out with the pollinia attached. In this case the narcotic is addictive enough to drag the insect back to other flowers, like tiny insect junkies visiting their suppliers.

I know all this because we went to the Royal Horticultural Society Wisley today to photograph trees. There were daffodils in bloom. Daffodils in mid-January! Just to prove it I photographed Gill with some (above). On the way out we called in the plant centre. It was Orchid Weekend so the shop was packed with orchids and there was a Gardeners' Question Time-style presentation where, apart from the above, we learned that there is an orchid in Australia that grows underground. What's the point of that?

Wisley's resident expert assures us that Orchids are pretty easy to grow. Don't you believe it. We bought a Cymbidium two years ago and after a wonderful initial flower display we have had nothing but leaves. I took it outside in the summer, just as I was told to do. I have been sparing with food and water. It doesn't get too much sunlight. I have even tried talking to it in my best Prince of Wales' brogue.

After all the excitement at the start of this note I might have expected an X-rated Cymbidium by now, a Cymbidium so outrageous that it has to be stored on the top shelf , away from prying eyes or, more alarming still, a visit from the obscene vegetation squad.

Sadly I think we have bought the most Puritanical orchid on the planet. It doesn't dance, sing or flash at any passing wasps. It simply sits there looking green, dull and bored. It needs to get out more.

Sailing logic

London, Saturday; another year, another Boat Show. All those boats and nowhere to sail them. It's simply overpowering. After about ten minutes I'd had enough. But I didn't go to see the boats. I went to see my old friend Philippe Falle.

If you want to learn sail racing Philippe is your man. Check out Sailing Logic Racing, a business that that moulds winning crews from absolute beginners to those who already enjoy a racing pedigree. He has won the Royal Ocean Racing Club school boat trophy for the last three seasons running and should have been representing the UK in the Commodore's Cup had there been any justice in the team selection.

Philippe's Puma Logic crew qualified on the water but they clearly didn't carry enough clout with the stuffed shirts at RORC headquarters and so they were overlooked. Now he's recruiting teams for this year's racing season that includes the Fastnet race.

I'm hoping to get a berth with someone for the Fastnet, maybe even an Open 60 if I get lucky. I decided that to declare that my ocean sailing days were over after a tortuous Round Britain and Ireland Race last summer was a hasty reaction. It's amazing how quickly you forget how bad it all was.

Almost all of my sailing experience has involved going hell for leather trying to get the maximum boat speed every bit of the time. Having done very little cruising, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to sail a boat leisurely. Must try it some time.

Saturday junk

One of life's luxuries is a Saturday morning at home, reading the newspapers. One of life's little irritations is the junk that falls out of those newspapers when you open them.

So I just want to relay this message to the Isle of Man Department of Toursim and Leisure, The Spirit of Adventure Cruise Ship, City Index spread betting, Acer Computers, Dell Computers, Cotton Traders, Telegraph Home, Vobage call service, The National Trust (already a member) and Magnet kitchens. Your mail is in the bin. It went into the bin last week and it will go there next week and the week after that.

I don't buy your products (apart from the National Trust and since your mail was aimed at new members your material was irrelevant). I do buy fishing equipment, occasional bits of clothing, food, train tickets, petrol and books. But not much else.

How long can this waste continue? Short of inventing some particularly sadistic torture for the marketing heads of these companies I'm struggling to think of a solution.

Maybe I should fish the leaflets out of the bin and pass on these exciting commercial opportunities to someone who might value them. I have picked out just one of these companies. It happens to be Dell. Now who in this rogues'gallery of senior Dell executives deserves to get my personal mail shot of leaflets from the aforementioned companies? I suggest Richard L. "Dick" Hunter, Vice President Customer Experience. Two reasons: it's part of his remit and he isn't wearing a tie (standing out from the crowd Dick, always dangerous). Imagine if everyone who received junk mail started sending it back to the marketing heads of those companies churning it out. It's in your hands folks. Happy reading Dick.

Saying our prayers

Just watched an episode - well three on the trot in fact - of West Wing (it's our idea of a good evening in) where the US President is saying the Lord's Prayer with an injured serviceman.

I know the Lord's Prayer, Gill knows it; but it occurred to me that our three boys would not know it. They were not Christened and were not brought up within the Church. I asked the eldest just now. He knew it. Why am I pleased about that?

Apocalypto

You have to hand it to those Mayans: they were all heart. As cinema bad guys go, the Mayan hunting party leader will go down as a classic with his jawbone-clad arms and Yul Brynner stare.

There are shades of King Solomon's mines in this one; shades too of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trying to outrun the posse. At every turn I was expecting the runaway hero to ask: "Who are those guys?" They just keep on coming and he just keeps on running.

It's gut-wringing, breathless stuff from first to last as you might expect with a water birth, tarantulas, a few poisoned darts, snake bites and a jaguar that makes two of anything driven by John Prescott.

The animals fare almost as badly as the humans. I didn't stay for the credits but I would need to be convinced if there was the usual assurance that no "creatures were harmed in the making of this film."

Among the body-count was a tapir, a jaguar, at least one monkey and a sickly-looking toad that wasn't half as sickly as the chap who was "toaded". Still the props and computer imagery is so lifelike these days. I suppose they'll be claiming that the decapitated bodies were really dummies. I don't think so.

Imagine Rambo meets The Fugitive in the hot house at Kew; give them some bows and arrows and a few neat flinty clubs, then endow your hero with all the curative wonders of the rainforest. Gash your leg? Just stitch it up with the jaws of a soldier ant. Arrow wound? Bung in a bit of bark. Imminent execution in front of thousands? Pray for a solar eclipse. You could have got good odds on that at William Hill.

I tell you what: basketball games will never be the same again for me after this film. Gill was a withering wreck at the end, save for this one plaintive request: "Can we go see Beatrix Potter next week?"

Travel boasting

I just found this cool map that helps you boast about all the countries you've visited. I thought I was well travelled until I noticed all the gaps. Some of it, however, is cheating. In China I have never been beyond Hong Kong yet a lot of country gets filled in when you tick the China box. Equally Canada is vast yet I haven't been any further than Newfoundland. It's a big world out there and sometimes we're so busy travelling we don't spend enough time looking and getting to know a place.

I know Americans who "do" Europe in a fortnight. That's akin to walking past the pictures in an art gallery, giving each one no more than a glance. I suppose we all do it. But sometimes it's better to stop and get to know one thing or one place well. What's the point of global tourism if nothing sticks?

Anyway, it's an excuse to link to some of my travel pieces like this one on Curacao. I was there to write some features on the Netherlands Antilles as a tax haven. Every morning I would trot out from the beach hotel in my suit, carrying a briefcase, walking past holidaymakers staking out their pitches and lathering themselves with suntan cream. It didn't seem fair.



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Pomegranates - the land fill connection

Pomegranates. Punica granatum. Love them or hate them, you can't ignore them. Or maybe you can. In fact I think I did ignore them for far too long. Even now they are an occasional purchase that enter my fruit eating orbit about twice a year.

The problem with pomegranates is their packaging. Their leathery skin is the devil to peel. It's easy to be too rough and split the pips with all its sticky consequences. Equally it is difficult to avoid the bitter-tasting yellow pith that binds the pips together.

Having said that, there are few sights in nature more satisfying than the snugly fitting arrangement of pips on the inside of a pomegranate.

My quandry is whether they are worth the effort. Down at my local Waitrose I was about to reach for one of these six-monthly challenges when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flat-pack plastic box of pomegranate pips. I guess there would have been the equivalent of a single fruit.

Comparing costs, the ready-pipped fruit was priced about the same as the full fruit. The equation didn't stack up. I would have thought that "pomegranate minus effort" would have been more expensive than "pomegranate plus labour". So I bought the box, feeling a little bit pleased with myself... until I got home.

"You should have bought the pomegranate," said Gill. "The last thing we need is more packaging. We have to take a stand."

Gill, my wife, is our household recycling gauleiter. This means we have upended tin cans drying on the radiator and more uses for a plastic milk container than Blue Peter had for its ubiquitous Squeezy bottle.

The rest of the family has been a little tardy in learning all we need to know about recycyling but Gill appears to be ahead of the game since there are new proposals for councils to penalise those who don't recycle and reward those who do.

The danger here is that penalties will encourage fly tipping or the clandestine emptying of rubbish in to the bins of neighbours. How long will it be before we have locking wheelie bins? I would go for incentives every time. I remember taking back crates of bottles for the refunds you had on the empties when I was a boy. At the same time we carted old woollens to the "rag man" and bits of lead and copper to the scrap metal dealer. Recycling is virtuous and necessary. We don't have the land fill to cope with increasing levels of waste.

Incentives or taxes should also be levied on those who produce packaging such as the pomegranate pippers. As a born-again recycler I must recant any previous attraction to packaged pips. How could anyone believe they could better nature's glorious packaging? The pomegranate is the future, sticky pips, pith and all.