Save the Radio Four Theme
I’ve been quiet of late, not because nothing has happened to me but because none of the things that have happened to me have stirred me to put fingers to keyboard. Well, something has happened that has done the requisite stirring.
BBC Radio 4 is planning to stop playing their “UK Theme” at 5.30 am. This is an orchestral arrangement of traditional songs from the four nations of the UK that starts every day’s programming. Much loved by insomniacs and early risers, it has, for many, become a comforting and uplifting soundtrack to pre-dawn preparations for the day: the groping for the alarm clock’s snooze button, the bleary-eyed shambling into the bathroom and fumbled coffee making. Unashamedly old-fashioned, its stirring melodies manage to be both reasssuring and uplifting just when you need some reassurance and uplift – er, -ment.
So incensed is one listener, he has produced a web site with a petition to sign. Sign it and lobby your MP. Raise Hell!
Proust and Masonic Spam
The BBC today started a six-part dramatisation of one of the greatest works (in any language) of 20th century literature, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu or In Search of Lost Time, by Proust. Why is this significant? Well, when I was an French Studies undergraduate at Warwick University I was expected to read this book and found it pretty heavy going.
In a disconcertingly post-modern way, it dispenses with the conventions of narrative and focuses on mood, characters and – most particularly – memory. Sentences could get very long (two pages long on occasion) with so many sub-clauses you could have a tea-break in the middle. No doubt it provided fascinating insights into the human condition, but, aged 19 and three quarters I simply didn’t have the intellectual maturity to digest it. Now, however, at the grand age of 35, I reckon I might have acquired sufficient profondeur (or at least pretentiousness) to approach it with a little more confidence, by listening to the BBC’s version on my hour long trips to and from work in Gloucester over the next week.
A friend in Barbados forwarded me this bizarre email, which simply had me smiling, shaking my head and thinking “Riiiiight…..”. Make of it what you will:
Subject: 2005 GRANT,VERY URGENTThe Freemason society of Bournemouth under the jurisdiction of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our 2005 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at the round table of the Freemason society.
These grants are issued every year around the world in accordance with the objective of the Freemasons as stated by Thomas Paine in 1810 which is to ensure the continuous freedom of man and to enhance mans living conditions.
We will also advice that these funds which amount to USD2.5million be used to better the lot of man through your own initiative and also we will go further to inform that the open slot to become a Freemason is optional, you can decline the offer.
In order to claim your grant, contact the Grand Lodge Office secretary David P. Owen.
Grand Lodge Office Secretary’s email: [address deleted]
Paul Landy,
PRO Freemason Society of Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth.
Freemasonry and Christianity
religionQuickly:
Rush over to BBC Radio 4′s “Sunday” programme site and click “No” in the poll on whether or not Christianity and Freemasonry are incompatible.
You can listen to the piece in the most recent edition that prompted the vote here.
Failure to vote “No” will result in a visit from my burly Ukrainian political minders who know a thing or two about influencing voters 
Real meat, Spam and Jung
To continue yesterday’s food theme, I found The Real Meat Company after they got an airing on BBC2 last night. They offer meat which has been reared humanely and is properly hung and probably tastes a lot better. When I’m back in the earning way, I’m tempted to celebrate by ordering something nice from them.
Lycos Europe has launched a screensaver called “Make Love Not Spam” which sends traffic to the websites advertised in the junk email we all get. The idea is that the spammers’ bandwidth bills go up as the websites respond to the fake traffic. Yes, we all want to hit back at the spammers, but is it legal and does it only generate more bandwidth, slowing down the net for everyone?
If you are in a profound mood, Melvyn Bragg’s BBC Radio 4 series on the history of ideas was good this morning. It was about Jung, the famous and influential Swiss psychologist who had a famous spat with Freud. He rocked the psychoanalytical boat by suggesting that sex wasn’t behind absolutely everything and believed that the natural outcome of therapy was a spiritual worldview, contrasting with the Freudian perspective which saw a materialist/rationalist worldview as the ultimate outcome of successful psychotherapy. He also influenced some of the thinking behind the New Age movement and created a branch of psychotherapy, to the extent that if you meet a shrink at a party, your opening gambit can be “Are you a Jungian or a Freudian?” And did you know, he wrote a book on flying saucers? Oh yes.
Anyway, listen to the programme again here or download it in MP3 format and burn it to a CD for your in-car listening pleasure.
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