About philosophy

Sometimes there’s an angry little man inside my head and I find it difficult to make him go away. He rants and raves with a sense of righteous indignation, leading me to shout from my bike at passing cars, to fire off angry e-mails, and to be generally irritable and bad company. This is unpleasant for all concerned. He literally generates bad blood which poisons my system and stops me from having a good night’s sleep. He turns my otherwise sanguine Dr Jekyll into a Mr Hyde.

He was there quite often just before my half-term holidays. He then disappeared while I enjoyed a relaxed and relaxing week of not doing much in Monfalcone, apart from seeing friends and family, cycling and walking and generally admiring the autumn foliage in particular of the “sommacco” on the Carso, even if the weather was rather indifferent.

No sooner had I returned to Brussels and work than he was jumping up and down inside my head again. So I thought it was time to get a grip and be more “philosophical” about my disappointments, frustrations and difficulties. I decided to deliberately exercise some patience and positive thinking during a two day trip away for work which would involve me having to confront some of my pet hates.

1) the inadequacy of STIB: I steeled myself for a Brussels public transport journey to the airport on a Belgian public holiday. I listened to some Shostakovich string quartets on my iPod: the perfect mood music for a cold and damp grey November morning with dead leaves being gusted down deserted ugly streets. The tram came on time but left me waiting 35 minutes outside for the airport bus while my feet gradually froze.
2) airport security: it took 20 minutes to clear security on a relatively quiet day for Zaventem, removing and replacing the requisite artcicles from about my person.
3) Finland in November: as expected we reached our hotel after nightfall (4 pm) it was even colder than in Brussels and raining heavily. The hotel turned out to be located conveniently close to the conference centre on the campus of Aalto University, but miles from anywhere else. So contrary to my usual custom, I decided not to bother to venture out from my hotel room, and contemplated the limited possibilities of filling in the next few hours.

Remarkably my Zen held up and the angry little man did not appear inside my head. In fact I was having quite an enjoyable day. The main reason was that I had started to read “The Consolations of Philosophy” by Alain de Botton.

Alain de Botton writes a good book, he has a direct and humorous style, he is careful to relate points to the everyday and he never fails to be thought provoking. In this book he writes about the thinking of six philosophers which may help console us in our daily lives.

He starts with the father of western philsophy, Socrates,
and his logical system for challenging commonly held beliefs. De Botton holds up Socrates as consolation for unpopularity: he stuck to what he believed to be true, even if it made him unpopular and he was sentenced to death for it.

In the classical world he next covers Epicurus. Epicureanism is not, as you might think, sheer hedonism and indulgence of luxury, but rather the ability to take pleasure in the simple things of life, where friendship counts for far more than material possessions. Epicurus offers us consolation for not having enough money.

Then comes the Roman Seneca, who was eventually ordered to death by his pupil Nero. He is included as the representative of the contrasting Stoics who concentrate on pain rather than pleasure and teach us to accept suffering and frustration as inevitable, which means they are not worth getting worked up about. We should expect the worst and not get angry when our desires are thwarted. Seneca offers us consolation from frustration. However, there is a fine line to draw between not letting something bother you and not caring about it. It remains important to engage and to strive to improve. This has been the motor of human progress after all. The Romans didn’t put up with water shortages in their cities, they built aqueducts to supply them.

It was with some pleasure that I found De Botton’s fourth philosopher to be one of the renaissance rediscoverers of the classics, Montaigne. Montaigne, let me remind you is my inspiration for writing these essays on this blog about myself. Montaigne believed that the human condition is fully present in every man. Therefore, the best way to write about it is to describe the person you know best - yourself. Montaigne’s book, the “Essais”, is unique and difficult to classify. I studied Montaigne at university as literature, but it is certainly not fiction. Bertrand Russell in his “History of Western Philosophy” clearly doesn’t rate him as a philosopher at all and only mentions him in passing. Yet, over 400 years later, Montaigne’s writings speak to us directly and truly about life and can teach us more about it than many other philosophers’.
His main message is that human existence is physical and that the mind and body are inseparable: “Et au plus eslevé throne du monde, si ne sommes assis que sus nostre cul” (“And on the highest throne in the world, we are only seated on our arse”).
From this it follows that Montaigne was only really interested in those writers in his vast library of classical authors who had something to say that related to tangible life of which he had had a fair experience himself (having been mayor of Bordeaux and active in public affairs, managed a fair sized estate and travelled on horseback through what in those days was a fair portion of Europe). He had no time for mere bookish learning, his quest was for wisdom. And so, in the Greek etymological sense as a “lover of wisdom” (“philo-” love, “sophia” wisdom) he was a true philosopher.

In fact this concept of philosophy brings us back to Socrates and his notion that not enough attention is given to the craft of living, which ought to be our most important concern. He uses the analogy of the potter: there is an art and craft to making a Greek vase and you have to get it right if it is going to be any good. For Socrates there is an art and craft to living and this properly is the subject of philosophy.

Philosophy as an academic discipline has rather lost sight of this. I listened recently with great interest to podcasts of Marianne Talbot’s lively five introductory lectures to philosophy at Oxford University. However, I couldn’t help feeling that it was all too abstract, too sterile for me. Philosophers, over the centuries, have spent far too much time pondering on the nature and perception of reality. It sems to me that such a debate is purely theoretical, only of the mind. The body can tell you straight away what reality is. Life is not so much a case of “I think, therefore I am” as a case of “I eat and shit, therefore I am”. There are more urgent things to apply my mind to than “how can I be sure that I am sitting on a chair looking at a computer screen ?” My bum and eyes know the answer already. In my opinion, any speculation otherwise serves no useful purpose whatsoever. “Ah, but how do you define ‘useful’ ?”, asks the academic philosopher. Good point; so I will accept there is room for pure philosophy just as there is for pure mathematics as an academic discipline. What I am really interested in myself though is, I suppose, applied philosophy.

So let us return to De Botton’s book on the Consolations of Philosophy. Montaigne can offer us consolation for inadequacy: the human condition by its nature is not going to be perfect, that indeed should be its charm which we all share, rather than a source of disappointment to us.

The next chapter covers another physical aspect of ourselves viewed through the thoughts of Schopenhauer. I’ve not read Schopenhauer and I’m sure he covered a lot of other things, but De Botton uses him to offer consolation for a broken heart.
Deep within us and beyond our control is a will to live, felt by even the most pessimistic and world-weary. The will to live takes two forms; the desire to survive and the desire to reproduce. So given the importance of the second, it should come as no surprise that we are constantly distracted and our chain of thought interrupted by, to put it bluntly, sex. The problem is that the body (or subconscious, if you prefer) makes its choice of potential reproductive partner and therefore is sexually attracted to persons of the opposite sex whose genes would best complement our own in our offspring (often by being the opposite). This does not necessarily, and in fact most usually does not, make the loved one the ideal companion to live with. So we should not be surprised that many relationships don’t work out and our hearts get broken. You see, Schopenhauer was a pessimist. It’s an interesting theory, but I personally feel that the bond of shared experience in a couple will prove stronger than sometimes divergent interests.

The chapter on Schopenhauer is something in the way of a short amusing digression before De Botton takes us on to the weightier Nietzsche. Nietzsche too started off as a pessimist but had something of a revelation while holidaying in the bay of Naples, swimming in the Mediterranean, eating good Southern food and enjoying the stimulating companionship of arty intellectuals: he realized that life was actually ok, in fact rather good. I can identify with that, enjoying a stay in Italy myself.
Only patches of it are not so good. In the same way that you cannot separate mind from body, you cannot separate pleasure from pain in life; they make up a whole.
Nietzsche was also a keen mountain walker. I can identify with that too. He knew that the uplifting glorious vistas can only be reached after a period of hard slog during which you might otherwise be tempted to give up and go back down. So Nietzsche offers us consolation for difficulty. It is an integral part of life; in fact difficulty is even worth seeking out and when you come through it you feel satisfied and fulfilled.
This is something I have often felt myself, but I needed reminding of it.

Indeed, after a spell of being a grumpy old man, it was good to be reminded of the consolations of philosophy, to become more philosophical about my lot, to keep the angry little man at bay.

So to recap on De Botton’s six philosophers and how they might have an impact on my life.
Considering Socrates and his logic, I like to think that I can think for myself, but you had best judge yourself from these blog postings and I won’t be offended if they don’t please you.
I reckon I am fairly close to Epicurus and tend to be more interested in and get more pleasure from doing and being rather than from having; last week I skipped Italian shopping and went mountain biking on the Carso. I ought to spend more time with my friends though.
I could still learn a lot from Seneca about not feeling frustrated. Getting irate is just counter-productive. Between the Epicurean and Stoical approach to life, I must not forget that on the whole my life is very comfortable and my frustrations only minor.
While in Finland, the Mayor of Espoo proudly pointed out that Newsweek had worked out that Finland is the world’s best country to live in. Well, that’s the kind of result you get when you take a series of “objective” indicators like per capita GDP, public services, law and order, health and education, lack of corruption and so on. Yes, it’s clean and things work, but the who the hell wants to live in a country where it is dark and freezing for half of the year ? What about those statistics on alcoholism and suicide in Nordic countries ? All in all, Belgium is not a bad place to live, even if I don’t rate the public transport too highly.
Montaigne I have long admired and feel close to in spirit.
Not suffering from a broken heart, I have no immediate need for Schopenhauer.
My curiosity has been aroused about Nietzsche and I shall read some of his writings.

But what of the six philosophers' application of philosophy to their own lives?
Scorates and Seneca were sentenced to death by the powers that be, but took it with equanimity; Socrates because he knew he was right and preferred the truth to popularity; Seneca because he always knew the worst was going to happen. Schopenhauer was a miserable old bugger. Nietzsche went crazy. Epicurus basically lived with friends in a commune.
The one with the sanest, most useful life was, you guessed it, Montaigne.

Well, if you were expecting to learn a lot about philosophy from this essay, you’re probably disappointed and you would be better off reading Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”, which I promise I will finish one day.
My point is rather that if the distilled thoughts of some of the great minds from the past are to be of real value to us, they are better put to practical use in everyday life rather than studied in a vacuum.

I need philosophy to make the angry little man go away.

Philosophy is for everyone every day.

About the European Union

I have been working for the European institutions for over twenty-five years. Last year, rather quaintly, I was even given my European public service medal for it, a surprisingly heavy gong which looks like gold-foil wrapped chocolate and is routinely given to staff after twenty years’ loyal service.

It’s good to work, albeit in a humble and minor capacity, for European integration, a cause in which I believe. This over-riding purpose gives a dimension to what I’m paid to do that helps offset some of the more humdrum aspects of routine.

When people, especially my compatriots, complain about “Europe” they all too often fail to see the bigger picture, which put most simply is that the European Union has given this previously war-torn continent over half a century of peace and prosperity.
This is something easily taken for granted, but which in fact has to be worked at laboriously. The minutiae of European integration are mind-numbing and the whole thing moves forward at the speed of a glacier, so that when you’re on it, not much may appear to be happening. This is fine as it must not be forgotten that the enterprise is consensual and involves gradually changing mentalities from the narrowly national to the broadly European in outlook, all of which takes time. Thanks to European policies and legislation I have nonetheless seen major changes in my everyday life during the last decades.

I have not lived in my country of origin, England, for as long as I’ve been working here and have, therefore, gone totally native. I make no apologies for regarding myself as a European who was brought up in England, rather than as an Englishman.
For all its insularity England and later Britain has always been an important part of European history and culture, interacting in events and movements on the continent. Brits, although they ape the Americans and think they speak the same language, actually have more in common with their European neighbours on the mainland in terms of their cultural heritage, outlook on life and expectations of the state.
It’s funny but so often I have to be on the defensive explaining the benefits of the EU to some people in Britain, things which seem obvious to those of us here on the continent. Partly that”s because of consistent disinformation on the part of the British media. Partly it’s also because successive United Kingdom governments have chosen, for example, not to participate in the single currency (euro) and border-free area (Schengen) thereby depriving those who live there of the ease with which the rest of us move about Europe and make cross-border purchases.

You may think that last bit sounded reductively economic. In fact the economic is where you start and the founding fathers of Europe knew what they were doing in starting with the Coal and Steel Community and then moving on to the Economic Community in the 1950’s. It’s above all by doing business with each other that peoples first come into contact with each other on a mutually beneficial basis which requires peace and trust. Subsequently they become so dependent on each other for their livelihoods that the very idea of going to war with each other becomes absurd.
I believe that the Roman Empire and related spread of the Latin vernacular was a long-term success not because its military might forced the peoples in its provinces to espouse its ways but because they saw it as a way to improve their lives and get on in the world. “What have the Romans done for us ?” goes the sketch in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”, “All right, apart from the roads, the schools, the sewers..” and so on. That scene can be seen parodied on YouTube as “What has the European Union done for us”, in an attempt to persuade the knee-jerk anti-Europeans that benefits are real and that most people, politicians and countries are in the EU because they want to be.

So what are the benefits of the European Union ?

The Economic Community, as it grew out of the Customs Union, used to be known as the Common Market, and the Single Market remains at the heart of the project. If you look at what is on the shelves of your local supermarket compared to what there was a few decades ago, you must acknowledge that it has delivered greater consumer choice.
By availing itself of the economies of scale of a very large market, Europe has produced world beating champions of industry. In the process some names have come and gone, but the overall result has been greater wealth creation.
A later major adjunct to the single market has been the single currency. You can read my positive views on the Euro in “About the Euro” (May 2010).

For the single market to work, a vast rule-book has had to be created to ensure common standards for safety, labelling and compatibility (etc) of products to make them acceptable across borders. This is one area where the EU gave itself a bad name in the 1980’s by trying to standardize too many things, since then the approach is rather to ensure that a few essential requirements are met. The Commission has for example abolished many of the rules on fruit and vegetable standards: yes, bent cucumbers are again ok.
The Commission is, on the other hand, pushing mobile phone manufacturers to develop a single charger good for all models, which would be welcome. By the way, on the subject of telephony, the Commission, in its capacity as competition watchdog on the single market, has successfully forced operators to reduce roaming charges as they did not reflect the real cost of international calls.
The single market has also been used as a pretext for imposing such things as minimum environmental standards and working conditions throughout the EU to avoid companies getting an unfair advantage by locating to where local rules are lax and cheaper to respect. Generally this had led to a levelling upwards which has worked in favour of citizens rather than business.

Another area where the EU has moved on is the Common Agricultural Policy. It was originally conceived in the 1950’s with the purpose of feeding countries whose agriculture had been seriously damaged in the war. It was so successful that by the 1970’s farming was over-producing mountains and lakes of subsidized food we could not consume ourselves and which were then often dumped on the world market to the detriment of dveloping countries’ agriculture.
The CAP has since then been undergoing constant reform eliminating its worst excesses and wastefulness, along the way reducing its share in EU spending from two thirds to one third. I admit that is still pretty big and the managing of it accounts for a lot of the meetings I work in. However, I have to say in its defence that all developed countries bolster their agriculture for two sound reasons: firstly, it would be foolish to abandon your own capacity to feed yourself even if you can buy food cheaper elsewhere, because the world is an uncertain place and nothing is more essential to a society than food; secondly, it would be foolish to abandon economic activity and land management in the vast rural areas of our countries.

These days, the EU spends about another third of its budget on various forms of regional and “cohesion” policy in a redistributive act that seeks to improve prosperity in its less-favoured areas, often through infrastructure projects (most obviously roads) but also by investing in human capital. Ireland has been a success story in this respect, moving from being one of the poorest members (per capita) when it joined to being one of the richest today.
More generally the EU invests in research and development to improve the lot of all its members.

The four initial economic freedoms of movement enshrined in the Treaty of Rome include not just those of goods, services and capital but also that of people. Doubtless originally conceived as free movement of labour, it has over time developed into a right for EU citizens to reside in any EU country they choose as long as they are not a financial burden on the host state. With that comes the practical ease of moving around a border-free area in the Schengen passport union and even the concept of EU citizenship, including the right to vote and stand in municipal and European elections in the country of residence.
The Erasmus programme for EU student exchanges is a practical example of promoting a sense of European citizenship, creating a new generation at ease with the idea of horizons broader than the merely national.
Generally, I would like to think that any European Union sponsored event which brings together people of different nationalities but similar background helps foster a feeling of shared European identity much more than any piece of legislation could.

As job-seeking people move more freely across borders so too does the criminal element and the EU has been at pains to enhance coordination in the vast area of justice and home affairs to keep up with that, which I’m afraid will also mean making sure that the speeding fines you pick up in other EU countries follow you back home.

On the world stage, the EU enables a lot of individually not so important countries to act together internationally and to be seen collectively to be a big player. As an individual it’s when you travel to another continent (Asia, Africa) that you start to realize that Europe isn’t just a figment of some political theorist’s imagination and that we do have a shared European identity. So maybe it should not come as a surprise to us, who are so often obsessed by our differences and immersed in internecine squabbles, that we are actually pereceived by the rest of the world as a monolithic bloc.
This is partciulalry true in the area of trade where it is always the EU and not the individual member states that engage in negotiations in WTO and elsewhere. Europe as a zone of limited natural resources but of great inventive and manufacturing capacity has for centuries gained from trade. The EU has always been a strong advocate of free trade and notwithstanding certain restrictions we do practise the lowest rates of customs duties in the world and have the biggest export and import volumes. According to economic theory, which is most often borne out in practice, free trade allows countries to make the most of the comparative advantage they enjoy in certain areas thereby enabling them to earn more. Trade not aid is the true motor of develoment.
Having said that the EU also supplements its members’ official direct aid, making us collectively the world’s biggest donor.

In terms of a Common Foreign Policy, the EU is still fumbling, notwithstanding the Lisbon Treaty’s attempts to raise its profile. Its members’ interests simply don’t always coincide and fudge is often what comes out as a common position. There are those who argue that you can’t have a common foreign policy without a common defence. I don’t hold with that myself. It’s part of our European identity that we are more interested in the carrot than the stick, conciliation rather than confrontation. At least on the continent, the challenge internally has been to supplant war with peacuful co-existence and that is externally the not so clear-cut message we seek to project to others.
Even so, we cut a more convincing figure as a union than as individual members.

These are just some of the benefits that come from EU membership. The nature of EU integration is that it is a work in progress: “the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” (to quote the first article in the Treaty).
Its benefits are much greater than can be construed in terms of whether a member state is in financial terms a net contributor or beneficiary, of what after all remains only a very small part of its GDP. Germany, for example, may be the biggest net contributor, but German industry benefits immeasurably from the single market.

However, as I hope you will have been convinced by my brief enumeration, the EU is far more than an economic union: it is a political project that seeks to promote and protect the peace and prosperity of the peoples of Europe.

About work

I’ve just spent another boring day at work.

That’s ok, it is in the nature of work, as properly understood, to be potentially boring a lot of the time.
The French for work “travail” (we need only think of its English etymological equivalent “travail”) comes from the Latin “trepalium”, an instrument of torture. Work, by antithesis, is not pleasure: it’s something you do for pay even if you don’t particularly enjoy it; because you have to, because you need the money, because that’s all you’ve found to do that pays. Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to take pleasure in your work some of the time, but almost by definition, not all of the time.

The whole point of work is that it forces us to overcome our natural laziness and disinclination to do something we can usefully do, but would prefer not to. Day after day (five days a week at any rate) we assert mind over body, knuckle down to it and get on with it, with a superficial appearance of professional readiness and a smile. It’s one of life’s many little miracles and surely a cause for some personal satisfaction that we manage to show up at all.

This victory over our less attractive selves is fundamental to our social side. Notwithstanding his innate selfishness, man is a social animal. Society does not owe us a living, we have to go out and earn it. It’s worth noting that the organization in which most people work is actually in most languages called a “society” (“société”, “Gesellschaft”) and so in English when we say “company” , we should understand the word also in its more companionable sense. The workplace is a microcosm of society and in it the normal rules of human relations apply, a fact economists and bean-counters ignore at their peril. Fairness, honesty, politeness, loyalty, consideration, tolerance, gratitude and so on are all relevant virtues; it’s a world of give and take, not just take. In the long run (which is generally ignored by those addicted to quick profits) a contented workforce will be ready to go the occasional additional mile for its employer.

Work is essentially a social activity for it is at work where we interact with other human beings, while we make our productive contribution to the overall wealth of society, which has then to be divided among those who can work and those who cannot. This distribution is properly the subject of politics.

Work is something so basic and essential to the human condition that the concept has been created of “the right to work”. The Italian constitution, it may surprise you to learn, starts by stating that “Italy is a democratic Republic founded on work”.
This is in itself a profound thought as to the nature of a society, but it is also very much of the twentieth century. Contrast the US Declaration of Independence from the eighteenth century where the rights are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
This prompts me to make two points. Firstly we in the 20th and 21st centuries may have got our priorities wrong by putting work so high on our list. Secondly those in the 18thC Age of Enlightenment may have been unrealistically naive about happiness.
A century later the more pessimistic Dostoyevsky realized that man is also inclined to pursue suffering: the only explanation for some peole’s actions is that they are deliberately trying to get themselves into trouble and pain. Indeed the rounded human experience, it can be argued, demands a certain dose of suffering.
In which case, what better way to suffer than by getting paid for it. Thus remunerated suffering becomes useful, obviating the need to invent other kinds of suffering; for believe you me, idle rich people of leisure are sensitive and do suffer, but for all sorts of trivial reasons. At one and the same time then, work satisfies our basic existential demands for unpleasant experience and a source of income.

Here I would like to suggest that in our material age,
financial independence has largely replaced earlier concepts of honour. It is honourable to be seen to be earning your own living, it is shameful to be seen to be scrounging off society on the dole. Just try proposing to a young educated lady of today that she might like to become a kept woman: you’d probably get a slap in the face; and rightly so - it”s not honourable.

More importantly work is seen to confer a social identity.
These days you are not so much pigeon-holed by others on the basis of where you come from and who your parents are as by what you do. “And what do you do?” is a question I try to avoid immediately asking someone just introduced to me at a party, so as to give an opportunity for other impressions to coalesce first. The awful truth is that we really do have a tendency to categorize people on what is only part of their lives. Which is why in turn having a job is extremely important to people. We also tend to categorize others with quite a dose of snobbery. However, if we can step back from all that social stereo-typing for a moment, we have to admit that pretty well all jobs, however great or humble in the common perception, are useful to society. Actually right now I’d probably think more highly of a plumber than a trader in stocks and bonds.

Not everybody feels good about their job. In his enjoyable and thoughtful book “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, Alain De Botton spends quite some time guiding the reader through the extreme division of labour in the modern economy in order to make the point that many individual jobs are strangely disconnected from a meaningful context. His example of the manufacture of chocolate biscuits is very amusing.
He writes “When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others.” In many jobs sadly that is not immediately obvious.
In my own work as an interpreter I can see through the booth window the expression of understanding or bafflement on the delegate’s face and sometimes even expressions of gratitude that I have facilitated understanding. Many workers, however, are denied that immediate response, in the words of Marx describing 19thC industrial manufacturing processes they have become “alienated”. In these circumstances it is difficult to feel job satisfaction. If I had to work in a distant room off an AV feed and couldn’t see my delegates through the window, I would also feel alienated. Likewise, a craftsman who turns out a chair by hand feels some satisfaction at the production of a well made lasting object, whereas the factory assembly line worker screwing some widget into an endless series of incomplete machines does not.
While everyone craves to have a job to give some meaning to their life, in practice the nature of many jobs is that they provide little satisfaction and self-fulfilment.

What about my own working life?

When I was young I lived a relatively charmed life coming to proper full-time paid employment only at the late age of 24. I was a student for a long time and between a combination of saving out of grants and scholarship money, parental generosity, voluntary work and taking up invitations, I never had to work for money during my long vacations. I should also explain that I had no particular desire to acquire material possessions so I felt no need to take paid work to save up for anything and was happy living from hand to mouth. During this time I did also have two posts as a language assistant in schools in France and Germany, but the teaching duties were minimal and so too correspondingly the money to live off, but it didn’t seem to matter. I have always had a knack of living within my means, affording what I want but not wanting what I can’t afford. It’s not that I’m frugal or mean, it’s just that I have the Yorkshireman’s natural aversion to extravagance.

My transition to regular work was fairly smooth in that suddenly I found myself doing for real what I had been training and practising for, only it took up more hours in the week, leaving me feeling more tired and with less free time but with a healthier bank balance.

On Bertrand Russell’s definition of real work as “altering the position of matter in relation to the surface of the earth”, I have hardly done a day of it for pay in my whole life (though plenty for free for family and friends). I did once do a day of garlic harvesting in the South of France, which left me with a stiff back and blistered hands; so I didn’t think much of it. Since I have not needed to, I have not repeated the experience. The supposedly praiseworthy nobility of manual labour is an invention of those who would get others to do it without doing it themselves.

As a conference interpreter, I count myself lucky in having a good job with shortish hours and highish pay which is varied in terms of human contact and content, even at times interesting and enjoyable. I can be directly useful in helping people understand each other.
I work for the European institutions, whose greater purpose is to promote peace and prosperity on our continent. While that purpose may not be immediately apparent in the minutiae of negotiating and implementing legislation, it is nonetheless present even if only by dint of constantly bringing people together from different countries. I can believe in the ultimate usefulness of my work in a much broader context.
There are also occasionally genuine opportunities to travel, that is without having to rush back immediately, thereby enabling me to venture beyond the airport, hotel and meeting room.
Another big plus point is that when a meeting is over, that really is the end of the day’s work, leaving the body free to engage in other activities which it needs to after sitting in a box all day and also the mind, that is if it is not suffering from overload and feeling like an evening off. Yes, some days I do come home feeling like a zombie.

For as I tell students aspiring to interpreting as a career, it’s just a job and like any other job it has its good days and its bad days. To be honest, a lot of it can be stultifying: there’s a limit to the amount of mileage to be had out of customs procedures or pesticide residues. Still, it’s what I do for pay and with a bit of patience a more interesting meeting comes around and the colleagues are generally good company, so on the whole I enjoy it and stick with it, partly I guess because by now there’s not much else I know how to do.
I suspect this is largely the nature of most people’s work and their attitude towards it.

Therein lies the trap, for to quote Paul Simon:

“We work in our jobs, collect our pay,
Believe we’re gliding down the highway,
When in fact we’re slip sliding away”.

Work accounts for most of the days in our week, most of the weeks in our year, most of the years in our life.
The sad reality of many jobs is that they just don’t leave much time and energy for much else once the daily logistical business of merely existing has been attended to.
The great absurdity of the progress of mechanization and automation throughout human history is that it has not as it should have done led to a significant reduction in working hours for all, thereby allowing a greater quality and enjoyment of life, but rather an increase in the numbers of unemployed. We live in an economy where many patently work too much and others not at all. It’s quite absurd. Russell pointed this out already in the 1930’s and things have not changed.

Those in work cling desperately to their jobs as they need the money and their work has come to define who they are, almost to the exclusion of anything else, while the unemployed feel they have lost a meaningful rôle in society. Both categories would benefit from a more equitable share-out of the limited amount of work there is. (For if work is in theory limitless, tell me how come in practice so many people are unemployed?)
However, economists pour scorn on these notions and it is true that the bold French socialist experiment of the 35 hour week was not successful in creating more jobs. At the end of the day, most people are also just not prepared to take the concommitant pay cut for shorter hours and to down-size their life-style. In short they are trapped in the organized materialism that makes our economies go round.
I am very fortunate in that I am able to put some of my ideas into practice: every summer I manage to take a month of unpaid leave; I earn less but have a better life.

This “all or nothing” illogical distribution of work among the willing also applies to our overall working life. All of a sudden full-time workers are expected to stop at retirement age and enter a world of more leisure than they know what to do with, instead of progressively reducing the amount they do to phase in a new life-style. Nonetheless, many do become understandably fed up of the relentless daily grind and seek early retirement, often actively encouraged to do so by their employer so that they can be replaced by someone younger, not yet burned out and on a lower wage. However, not every job requires brute force and speed and in fact vast amounts of experience and, dare I say it, wisdom are squandered in this way. The natural way of things would be for older workers gradually to do less and still make a small but quality contribution until quite late in life.
I hope that when the time comes my employer will still be offering a scheme of pre-retiremnt part-time work.

Some of the points in this essay, you may say, are easily made from my position of a well-paid, not too time-consuming, secure job. I accept that. However, I do believe things could be organized much better than they are and I know the reason they are not is quite simply our society’s preference for brute economics over human well-being.

Work is a useful part of life but in the end it is better to work to live than to live to work.

About security

I’m afraid there’s no pretty picture to illustrate this post.
I was going to take a photo of security checks in action, but that’s not allowed for security reasons.

Before I go on, let me make clear my prejudice: I don’t believe “security” actually effectively protects me, it merely curtails my civil liberties. In the blitz it was “business as usual”, but the terrorists have really won this war as they’ve forced us to change our previously relaxed way of life.

I’ve just spent two days working in a meeting of the Civil Aviation Security Committee. This is where representatives of EU member states get together to discuss such things as the introduction of body-scanners and the possible relaxation of the liquids ban for passengers at airports, amongst other things. By definition air travel is cross-border so experts from different countries need to agree to do the same thing. I better not tell you too much more, as the proceedings are of course confidential and there’s probably a member of the secret police out there reading this blog, so I may find this article removed for security reasons.

Seriously though, I find it interesting to work in this committee as they discuss things that have an impact on my life as someone who is obliged to travel frequently by plane for work. I tend to avoid travelling by air for private journeys. It’s not that I’m afraid of flying or worried that my plane will be hijacked and crashed into a skyscraper. It’s not even that I’m guilty about my carbon footprint. No, it’s just that these days I find flying such a squalid, uncomfortable and inconvenient experience, I’d just as soon take a bit more time and cover the distance on the ground. One of the main reasons for that is the hysterical airport security we have to confront “post 9/11” which requires you to arrive at the airport an inordinate amount of time before your departure (at least from a major airport like Brussels). So I like to keep up to speed with developments by listening to the regulators in the Aviation Security Committee.

To prevent a reoccurence of the 9/11 attacks, where terrorists armed only with “box-cutters” were able to wreak havoc, there was a rush to adopt prohibitive measures. At EU level this basically meant giving force of law to ICAO’s existing convention. Under that passengers are not allowed to carry with them onto the plane a number of prohibited articles which may serve as weapons. These basically fall into four categories: firearms, knives, blunt instruments and explosives. Guns are obviously undesirable: firing one could puncture the pressurized cabin with disastrous results. The category “knives” has unfortunately been extended to include anything vaguely sharp: I’m sure you too have had nail-scissors confiscated. “Blunt instruments” covers nasty things like baseball bats and less obviously tools, though curiously the Americans tolerate tools up to 18cm and Europeans only 6cm (no comment). Explosives... this brings us of course into the area of liquid explosives so now, just to be on the safe side for security reasons, there’s a general ban on liquids. This came as something of a blow to me as someone who used to like to take as a gift to friends and family a personally chosen bottle of wine (without entrusting it to the vagaries of baggage handling inside a case alongside with stainable clothes). My only option now is to buy an expensive untasted one from the airport shop. I hesitate these days to use the words “duty free” as items are consistently more expensive than in town.
Isn’t it weird how the powerful airport shop lobby engineered an exception for stuff bought there as long as it’s in some “tamper evident” bag? It strikes me that even inside a special bag a bottle of wine would make a pretty good blunt instrument for hitting someone over the head with or if you were to smash it you’d have a pretty good sharp knife-like object. Yes, many security rules are absurd.

To enforce all of this we have to put our hand baggage through an X-ray machine and pass ourselves through a metal detector, having previously removed numerous articles from our pockets and possibly too our belt and shoes. All of which takes time and leads to very long queues. Metal detectors are curious things, their going “beep” depends on what they’ve been set to. I once had to remove from my person a leather-bound diary with little metal corners; but I also once inadvertently carried an Opinel through one undetected. The Opinel is a French pen-knife where the metal blade folds back into the wooden handle. I was amused to learn once in the Aviation Security Committee that inspectors like to use them to see how good detection is.

Human ingenuity is, however, boundless and a clever terrorist will always find his way around restrictions. I used to say that it will one day end with us having to strip naked before boarding a plane. Now it appears that thanks to modern technology this may not be necessary as there are now machines that can virtually unclothe us, I refer of course to body-scanners.

There’s been a lot of talk about body-scanners following the predictable knee-jerk security industry reaction calling for more of them after the Christmas incident of the potential Detroit underpants bomber. Whether, of course, he would actually have been detected using one is another matter. The European Parliament soon weighed in, declaring them to be an affront to human dignity and the raiser of fundamental rights and health issues.

But what are body-scanners and how do they work ? Here too, I was lucky enough to attend a presentation to the Aviation Security Committee by an American manufacturer. Or should I say “sales pitch”? At 100 000 to 200 000 euros a throw we’re talking serious business opportunities here, if these things were ever to become mandatory.
The particular model I saw explained uses “millimetre wave” technology. The rival technology “backscatter” is X-ray based and bad news for your health on the ionizing radiation front. Millimetre waves, however, are more benign and emit a level of radiation actually considerably lower than what you get from your mobile phone or leakage from a micro-wave oven (quoth the manufacturer, though this has evidently also been independently verfied by scientists). Basically you enter a portal and stand still for 10 seconds while two curved panels scan you much like a radar would, allowing a 3D image to be compiled of what you look like under your clothes. But fear not ladies (or ageing men with unflattering silhouettes)! What you see has not the quality of a “Playboy” centre-fold; rather it looks more like a black-and-white blurry X-ray photo of a skeleton covered in papier mâché, but crucially with extraneous objects sharply revealed as dark patches. The advantage of the body-scanner is that it can also “see” non-metallic objects, such as ceramic knives and solid and liquid explosives.
The manufacturers have been working hard to overcome the invasion of privacy issue. Initially they offered options of blurring the face and even private parts. Now they are talking “automatic threat recognition”. Basically there would be no need for a human being to study the image; a computer throws up a stick diagram of the body telling you where the offending object is so then a human can conduct a hand search.
Believe me, these things are coming. It strikes me they’re more effective than metal detectors for a start. The only question is how much they will have to raise airport taxes by to pay for them, because you can be pretty sure the extra cost will be passed on to you and me, the passenger.
In the end, I don’t really mind what they do as long as I don’t have to waste so much time queuing. I fear, however, not much will change in that respect as they’ll still be used in tandem with existing procedures.

Existing procedures bring me of course to the human factor. Let’s face it, security staff wouldn’t be doing the job they are, if they had had a better education and more opportunities in life. They of course know this and are naturally resentful of people who have apparently succeeded in life because they are travelling by plane. This is a golden opportunity for them, especially as they are wearing a uniform, to get their own back on society. Rules are rules after all, and there is nothing more satisfying than humiliating someone who thinks he’s better into total compliance.
I’m sorry about that, I realize they are nice people like you and me, who are only doing their job and with our best interests, indeed security, at heart. Can I go now, please?

I’ve noticed signs up in airports in the UK, which as the natural aper of the US is particularly hysterical about security, to the effect of “Warning, our staff have no sense of humour”.
Years ago, pre 9/11, I once had to fly out of Alexandria. The “airport” is miles out of town on the edge of the desert and is actually a military airfield. You enter a barbed-wire perimeter fence with machine-gun guard and arrive at a small modest building. In those days in a hot country I always travelled with a metal water-bottle. The swarthy moustachioed military man in a khaki uniform who was on duty to inspect my bag eyed the water-bottle with suspicion and made me open it. He sniffed it and asked me what was in it. “Water”, I said. “Dreenk!” he commanded. I did and pulled a funny face sticking my tongue out with an exaggerated expression of disgust. He laughed. It was another age. No, I wouldn’t do that now.

Once, for one scary moment, I thought I was on my way to jail when I was about to fly home from JFK and was informed that my shoes had tested positive for explosives. Except I wasn’t told that immediately, I was asked these weird questions like “Do you like gardening? Do you play golf?” I had actually walked one week before on the lawn at Mount Vernon which had recently been fertilized, I know that because the guide apologized for how it stank. That was sufficient to test positive for explosives.

Ah, airport security, does it irritate you as much as it irritates me? Take the train!

But you can’t escape it, daft security is around us everywhere. We get a lot of it at work. I periodically have to get my security clearance renewed to work in all these confidential meetings. The Commission hasn’t the means to do it itself, so it asks the member states to do it. It’s a joke, I haven’t lived in the UK for almost 30 years, they don’t know me from Adam. Or maybe they do, perhaps a little man in MI whatever is reading this blog as I write it.

Then, once I’ve been allowed inside the building, there are secure doors which I have to swipe my badge to get through. Only some won’t open when they should. So as I know the building I just walk around to where there’s an open door. What is the point? This locked door obsession also obliges me to take the lift for one storey when I would happily take the stairs. Good news for the environment.
Ah but, security is so important it has no price.

Only when push comes to shove, it doesn’t actually protect you.
Greenpeace once managed to build a brieze-block and cement wall across the main entrance to the Council building to protest about a fish quota meeting. You couldn’t get in or out.
The security service, looking out, felt that as the wall was technically on the street it wasn’t their area of responsibility. The Brussels police turned up way too late, after they’d mustered enough numbers to feel secure, and just found it amusing, which I guess it was.
Heaven help us if one day Al-Qaeda mounts such a slick operation against the building.

I’ve been talking a lot about physical security, but more insidious than this is virtual security. In our internet age vast amounts of personal data are being accumulated on us and passed on. Three cheers here to to the European Parliament for vetoing an EU/US agreement to let the Americans see as much of our banking data as they might want to via SWIFT. Incidentally, on the subject of banking, for security reasons, I am not allowed to open a current account at a bank in my own country as I don’t live there, unless that is I’m happy with making a £5000 interest-free loan to one (sounds a bit like walking round to an open door again).

This amassing of data on us all is not paranoia, it’s a fact, the technology is there and in addition to what we’ve put out there on the net voluntarily (or under coercion to be able to buy on-line) none of us is immune from hacking. Of course, I’m recklessly contributing to the pool of material on me right now. But what the hell! I guess the British secret service has by now formed a sufficiently rounded picture of me to be able to tell my employer that although occasionally irritable I am fundamentally harmless.

But the point is, often the conclusions reached by security services are pure misjudgements based on stereotyping and are prejudicial to individuals. There has been a famous case of a 6 year old white middle-class American girl who, for God knows what reason, is on the Homeland Security’s “no-fly list” and can’t get off it. Welcome to the world of Kafka, Orwell’s “1984” and Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. This is where we are.
Until you’ve been adversely affected yourself you may take a benign view of infringement of data privacy for security reasons. But like any other absolutist over-riding reasons, we are right to be suspicious and afraid of them. Since 9/11 civil liberties have quite clearly been eroded in Western society, often quite arbitrarily and for little demonstrable benefit. What used to be normal rules no longer apply.

These days, if you want to stay out of trouble with security and be able to go about your everyday business, I’m afraid you just have to put up and shut up.

About Proust

I have just spent a year living with Marcel Proust.

Last summer I read Alain de Botton’s entertaining and enlightening “How Proust can change your life”, which prompted me to make a serious attempt on the entirety of “A la recherche du temps perdu”. I had already read “Du côté de chez Swann” but I felt it important to start again at the beginning of the 3000 plus pages (as type-set in the Pléïade, which I was reading in the Folio paperback reprint).
I started in September 2009 on the train to Strasbourg. It was my first trip down there to work for the plenary of the European Parliament. I had heard that this involved a lot of hanging around, so it seemed to me that “In search of lost time” would be a rather poetic choice of reading for filling in those idle hours.
In the end I didn’t read the novel just during my monthly trips to Strasbourg but on and off over the whole year finally reaching the end in September 2010, almost a year to the day since starting.

Was it worth it? Most definitely, yes! However, before you rush out to buy a copy on my recommendation, I must warn you that it is not at all like reading any other book you may know.
For a start not a great deal happens. The Monty Python “Summarizing Proust” sketch is most relevant in this respect. It is impossible to summarize Proust in a meaningful way. You don’t read “A la recherche” to find out what happens next. This means that not infrequently you get bogged down in it, saturated, fed up and the best thing to do is to go off and read something else, returning to it when you’re in the mood. Generally I found I could not read much more than about 40 pages in one go. Still, having at this rate got to the end after a year, here is my entry in the summarizing Proust contest.

The narrator (who only once drops his guard and reveals his name to be Marcel) relates to us at length in roughly chronological order the events which most shaped his life. We read especially of his childhood visits to Combray in the countryside, his seaside summers as a young man at Balbec attracted to young women, his introduction to high society particularly through the aristocratic Guermantes family, and especially the homosexual Baron de Charlus, his obsessive love of Albertine who he attempts almost to keep prisoner, but who escapes through untimely death, and his final realization that he has been wasting his time on snobbery and infatuation and better get on with writing his magnum opus.

If you know the work, you will have spotted how my sectioning of the summary corresponds to the initially obscure titles of the seven volumes. Gradually the intricacy resolves itself into a grand overall well balanced design - rather like how you might visit and observe a cathedral admiring the craftsmanship in individual parts before standing back and appreciating the whole (a metaphor of Proust’s own, also taken up in the Folio paperback covers which feature different Monet views of Rouen cathedral). I wrote after the first 1000 pages “It’s not unlike doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle: images start to emerge slowly and fit together into a greater picture, but sometimes you just sit staring at the same piece for ages” and that analogy proved to be true as the further I got into the novel the more I knew where to put the pieces.

Some of the pieces are indeed very beautiful. Proust is a master of style and his French is fastidiously precise, often making use of unusual vocabulary. He is justly famous for his seemingly endless sentences and paragraphs. This makes it difficult to find a place to break off when you’ve had enough. Sometimes it even becomes necessary to turn back a page to the start of the sentence as you realize your attention has wandered and you’ve lost the thread. Still it may surprise you to learn that sometimes “A la recherche” is quite direct and laugh-out-loud funny as Proust is quite merciless in his observation of human foibles and people’s use of language.

You may well have wondered what the title of the first volume “Du côté de chez Swann” means. It refers to the countryside walks taken on Sundays by the narrator’s family in his childhood. They had two favourite routes, one taking them past Swann’s property, the other towards the land associated with the Guermantes. This becomes a metaphor for the different influences on the narrator’s life and the direction it takes accordingly: fascination with the arts (personifed by Bergotte for literature, Berma theatre, Vinteuil music and Elstir painting) and fascination with the aristocracy (personified in particular by Robert de Saint-Loup, the Duchesse de Guermantes and the Baron de Charlus). Finally he comes to see art as all important for its evocative power, and the aristocracy as worthless for its superficial hypocrisy.

The central section of “Du côté de chez Swann”, “Un amour de Swann”, is the only part of the book written in the third person and its story predates the narrator’s account of his own life. However, Swann’s obsessive love of Odette, prefigures Marcel’s own of Albertine and the key characters in this section reappear as important figures in the narrator’s own life, not least Swann himself who plays a key rôle in initiating him into the arts. Mme Verdurin, a social climber, also reappears as she dabbles too in the worlds of the arts and high society, but in a much less appealing way.

The rest of “A la recherche” is written in the first person interspersing reminiscences of things past with reflections on the narrator’s inner life, describing how events and his relationships have their impact on it.
In the course of the five middle volumes the indecisive narrator successively struggles to come to terms with: the uncertainty and contradictions of his attraction to the three key women in his life, Swann’s daughter Gilberte, the Duchess and Albertine; how to make himself known in high society while wondering about the true nature of his new acquaintances; the changing nature of his one true friendship with Saint-Loup; the implications of Charlus’ homosexuality; his suspicion that Albertine is also homosexual; Albertine’s death; his vocation as a writer.

Proust brilliantly draws all the threads together in the last volume, “Le temps retrouvé”. He starts it by revisiting the “madeleine” episode which is right at the start of the first volume and is the one bit known to (especially French) people who have not read all the book: it’s the particular flavour and texture of a small cake dipped in a cup of herb tea that brings childhood memories flooding back to him. The notion that lost time can only be regained through this kind of revelatory sensual memory is expanded on much more in “Le temps retrouvé”.
Then, in one of the best sections of the whole work, the narrator attends a party bringing back together all the main characters twenty years or so later on in life. The narrator himself realizes how much they and more importantly he himself have aged and are the same people only in name.

Names and how they suggest notions to the individual that may not tally with reality and which change over time with experience are another thing that fascinates Proust. Key characters in the book also change name through marriage in a way that is deliberately paradoxical and confusing.

At the end of the novel the Swann side and the Guermantes side merge as the conclusion of the “plot”, which I won’t give away. Then in the final reflective digression from the narration of events, which is the book’s standard modus operandi, the narrator realizes he is the sum of these ultimately chance influences and that it his resulting life that forms the substance of his book to be.

It should by now be apparent that what most interests Proust is how objective outer reality impinges on our inner subjective reality through how it is percieved and misperceived. The “madeleine” moment is one of heightened perception that can transcend time by tapping into what is unchanging in ourselves. But the novel is also littered with far more countless moments of misperception where characters, not least the narrator himself, get the wrong end of the stick, especially in their mistaken conclusions about the nature of others, misjudging from their external behaviour. This does indeed result in wasted time.

Thus the subject of “A la recherche du temps perdu” is how we experience life. This may sound odd as Proust’s and therefore the narrator’s life is far-removed from our own: it is that of an unmarried man in France at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, sufficiently well-off not to have to work but in ill health, largely living as a recluse engrossed by the arts and introspection, now and then venturing forth into high society, while all the time trying to get his act together to write a book. And yet as Proust observes himself, the reader must recognize as right and true everything which in the work of the writer corresponds to the reader’s own experience of life. As you read this does happen time and time again. So as you plough on thinking “What the hell do I care what late 19th century French high society was up to?”, you suddenly feel “Wow, I’ve felt that too!”.

One of the key ways in which De Botton believes Proust “can change your life” is by bringing you the reader to rediscover the delights and fullness of life in its banal and everyday form. That is not unlike what French painters of the time such as Monet were trying to do and what in a rather different way his contemporary Joyce does in “Ulysses”.
This is what great literature can do for you: help you to grasp that this life we experience is all we have, but it is sufficient.

So Proust too writes “about being here”.

About films

There is no doubt that I have seen more films than I have read books.

I can account for about 750 films I have seen (yes, sadly I have attempted to list them), but there are countless more I have forgotten, so I must have watched well in excess of 1000 - a sobering thought.
It’s obvious why films consumed outnumber books: it’s much easier to watch a film than it is to read a book and it takes far less time. It usually requires no effort and is quite passive. Film watching is generally both undemanding and engrossing. In fact I find that at some level I enjoy most films I watch, or maybe that’s also because I’m fairly discriminating in choosing what to view.

The cinema is described in French as the Seventh Art; I’m not quite sure what the first six are, but it is quite appropriate as it is a distinctive medium in its own right.
The moving picture with sound is actually the art form which best gives an imitation of real life, hence its accessibility and immense popularity.
But of course films are not like real life at all, they are usually far more structured and have a soundtrack. That structuring often becomes more apparent as time goes by, some old films, though still compelling, seem quite stilted and artificial; indeed they appear to be the works of imagination and fiction that they really are. The shots that make up a good film are each carefully chosen to tell a story. Narrative is hugely important in films and those without it tend to be quite boring. Even if some arty critics may rave about them, feature films without a story are a disappointing affair.

Films are made to be seen in the cinema. There is something special about sitting in the large darkened room as part of an audience, usually discovering a work together for the first time. The image on the big silver screen and the loud sound usually mean, unless someone is rustling pop-corn next to you, that there is nothing to distract you from total involvement. It doesn’t matter how big your TV is, the desert scenes in “Lawrence of Arabia” are just not going to have the same impact in your living room.

And yet I must admit that I have probably seen only half of my notional thousand plus films actually in a cinema. They come round on TV and we buy or rent them on DVD these days.
Watching a film this way on the TV set is good for your cultural knowledge, as indeed is listening to a work of classical music on a CD rather than in a concert hall, or knowing a picture from an art-book rather than a gallery; but like them it is not quite the same and a somewhat diminished experience.

Over the last few years, not least because of the increasing availability of classic films on cheap DVDs I have nonetheless become interested in filling in the gaps in my cinematic knowledge and also revisiting films only half paid attention to when previously seen on the TV . Though here too, recent opportunities to see old favourites such as Fritz Lang’s “M” or the Marx Brothers’ “Night at the opera” on a proper screen at the Cinematek have revealed a new intensity to me. However, many of the acknowledged greats of the history of film can rarely be seen on the full screen now and were originally shown in cinemas long before I started to go to them.

Which gives me an opportunity to digress.
I cannot with hand on heart remember what the first film was I went to see at the cinema. I would have to ask my parents, though I suspect that Walt Disney cartoons would be a strong contender.
In Ilkley, the town where I spent most of my childhood, there were two cinemas: the Grove, reputed to be slightly more up-market, and the Essoldo. The Grove was pulled down to make way for a car-park, the Essoldo, after a period as a bingo hall, was demolished to make room for a supermarket. They were typical of their period: large theatres with stalls and a balcony (the worst place to sit was the stalls below the balcony edge, as you could be bombarded with discarded ice-cream tubs). They had fancy red curtains which were raised to reveal the screen.
I can still just remember when you used to get a B film and an A film, or at least an A film with shorts before it. Then there was the unseemly rush at the end to get out while the credits rolled so as to avoid having to stand for the national anthem. It was a sport and if you hadn’t quite made it to the back you still stopped and stood stock -still facing the screen as the drum roll came before the first chord. My parents used to deposit my brother and me at the Essoldo on Saturdays for a full afternoon of children’s special performance, with Tom and Jerry’s, films including child actors sponsored by the British Youth Film Foundation (or something like that) and Norman Wisdom’s which even then seemed ancient. It seemed like a real treat to us, but I now realize that it was a god-sent opportunity for my parents to be free of the kids for a few hours.
Later when we all went to the cinema together my family’s cult film was the start-studded American comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” the script of which we had down pat from repeated viewing so it became the source of many catch-phrases.

Going to the cinema, unlike some other activities, is something I’ve never stopped doing throughout my life, admittedly with varying frequency. Clara sometimes says I’m not a keen cinema goer, but the truth is I like my entertainment live and tend to regard cinema as second best. I go to more concerts and theatre performances than films at the cinema: the present score ths year is 13 films to 18 live events; but I think that’s still quite a few films. My attitude is that since a film is an unchanging fixed artefact, it’s not urgent to see it and if I miss it at the cinema I can still see it later on TV, though I realize to lesser effect than in the cinema. I also don’t like to sit inside a dark room on a light summer evening so I tend to go more in the winter or when it’s wet. But when I do go to the cinema I definitely enjoy it.

Before the feature film, there used to be shorts and newsreels: believe it or not I remember, when I first arrived in Belgium, seeing a really naff Belgavox with the King on an official visit to the Congo watching semi-naked African tribal dancers. But now of course you only get trailers and adverts which you have to put up with if you want to get in early enough to have a decent seat that won’t give you neck-ache from having your nose up against the screen. While I’m a real sucker for the trailers which do indeed get me to go to see films I might otherwise not have considered, I tend to loathe the adverts, which, if you go with any frequency, you’ve almost certainly seen before, and appear to concentrate on pedalling fantasies no one could possibly believe about motor cars and alcoholic beverages. So it is something of a relief when the film actually starts.

In choosing what to go to see at the cinema, apart from being inspired or put off by trailers, I read reviews and listen to what friends think of what they’ve seen recently. I tend to choose a film on the basis of its director rather than who’s starring in it and have a penchant for films that give me an image of and insight into daily life in other countries (ie not USA), which is one reason I liked “Slumdog Millionaire”. I usually shy away from over-hyped, colossal-budget, action-packed Hollywood blockbusters, but some do turn out nonetheless to be worth seeing (most recently “Avatar”). I certainly have to admit that technically the Americans can’t be faulted whereas the Europeans can often be a little self-indulgent when it comes to their editing.
Being a linguist, I prefer to see films in their original language version. Living in Brussels is good for this; for as it is officially a bilingual city, nearly all films are shown in the original with French and Dutch subtitles. I had a curious experience in Talinn once watching the "Da Vinci Code" in English. There was a passage I didn't understand so I looked at the subtitles and had the choice between Estonian and Russian. After struggling with my schoolboy Russian for a moment to decypher the cyrillic, I realized the unknown language was actually Latin and my schoolboy Latin was at least as good.

From my initial comments it is clear that I could run a regular piece for “About being here” on films watched last year, but I’m not sure I will. In the end, most films are quite ephemeral and whilst entertaining the eye and ear for two hours actually leave little mark on the brain and so soon fade from memory. It is, therefore, a sure sign of some greater value if they do actually stick in your mind for any length of time, or indeed make you want to watch them again. A good film, like any good work of art, will bear repeated appreciation.

Films can be memorable for a variety of reasons.
There are those where the image of a certain scene has become an often quoted icon of cinema history.
There are those where the story is particularly compelling. Those that make you cry or laugh without fail every time. Those which in short are just beautifully made in terms of photography and timing, editing if you will, where every time you will notice some new detail carefully included to leave no loose ends.

So now is the time to list some of those films I have enjoyed re-watching, without making any claim for their constituting a definitive list of the best films ever; for having looked at various critics’ attempts at list-compiling in this area, I now realize this to be a most hazardous and utimately quite subjective enterprise. Indeed, in working my way through a composite list of critically acclaimed films (on the website “They Shoot Pictures Don’t They?”), I have made some great discoveries but also seen a fair few which I found disappointing and wondered why they were so highly thought of. There are three directors I find particularly over-rated in this respect, who won’t be on my list but I mention them as they are frequently represented by several films in critics’ “Top 100 films”: Godard for being utterly pretentious (while “A bout de souffle” is still quite fun, “le Mépris” is awful), Hitchcock for playing amusing but ultimately vacuous games (however well crafted “Vertigo” and “Psycho” are) and Chaplin, for not actually being funny, though admittedly occasionally moving.

So here are twenty-four, which I won’t comment on individually.

Amadeus (Forman,1984)
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930)
Cabaret (Fosse, 1972)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
The Graduate (Nichols,1967)
It's a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)
Kes (Loach, 1969)
Ladri di biciclette (De Sica, 1948)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962)
M (Lang, 1931)
A Night at the Opera (Wood, 1933)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957)
Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (Hand,1937)
Some Like it Hot (Wilder, 1959)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
West Side Story (Wise, 1961)

It’s too early yet to know whether I want to include them, but the two I have enjoyed most in the last three years are

Das Leben der anderen (von Donnersmarck, 2006)
Gran Torino (Eastwood, 2008)

You’ve probably seen most of these already, but if you haven’t I can warmly recommend them.

About the Euro

I feel quite attached to the euro, so it pains me that recently some people have been talking nonsense about it collapsing and disappearing.

I feel I have a personal stake in the euro in so far as I was there when it was launched. I worked as an interpreter in a lot of economic and financial meetings in the late 1990’s which were meticulously preparing for it. I remember Belgium passionately, and successfully, arguing its case for being let in even if its debt was way over the 60% threshold. I was there when the decisions were taken in May 1998 on membership and the exchange rates. The formal decisions had to be taken by the ministers of finance, for who I was working, in Council session. They were not best pleased that notwithstanding their careful preparation they (and we) were kept waiting hours while the heads of State and Government, as a matter of national pride, wrangled over who would be the first President of the new European Central Bank.

The single currency is one of the greatest achievements of the European Union. It is a bold endeavour. I remember one senior British government economist (typically) saying that it was a remarkable experiment and he was glad others were trying it to see whether it would work. The British Treasury at Gordon Brown’s request later undertook a vast twelve volume consideration of the possible advantages and disadvantages of UK’s joining and predictably reached no clear conclusion.

That is because in the end joining the euro is an act of faith. I use the word faith deliberately, as it is the essential nature of any currency that it is only worth what people are ready to believe it’s worth. We only accept bank notes, or these days numbers in bank accounts, as remuneration for goods provided and services rendered, because we believe other people will accept them in turn; without which the system breaks down and they are worthless. So whatever people seek to prove to you about the “fundamentals” of an economy behind a currency, if there is a crisis of confidence and a run on the banks, it’s of no use to you. Psychology is all important.
This is why I get cross about people deliberately talking down the euro (or any other currency) in order to provoke a climate of instability and therefore wild swings of fluctuation on the back of which speculators can make a killing and Joe Public lose his savings, when in fact there’s nothing seriously wrong with it.

Answer me this: the country with the biggest debt in the world is the United States of America; one of the states of the Union, and in fact the largest one economically, California is technically bankrupt and in cessation of payments - so is the dollar about to collapse and disppear ? No. So why should the euro disappear if one of the states in the euro area is near default ?

There is a problem with Greece: its deficit has been out of control for years as for decades people have become accustomed to milking a corrupt state. Incidentally I was also there when the decision was taken to let Greece join and I don’t remember any wild protests then about its debt being in excess of 100% of GDP (like Italy and Belgium who were already in). In retrospect, we now know that Greece only joined on the basis of having cooked the statistical books. However, ultimately that’s irrelevant, for although the decision to join is dressed up in economics it is essentially political. At the time the feeling was “the more the merrier”; if Greece joined that meant every one of the then 15 EU member states would be in, apart from the three who wanted out (UK, Denmark and Sweden).

Let’s get a sense of proportion here: Greece represents 2% of the GDP of the euro area (California accounts for 13% of US GDP). It’s a bit like discovering you have dry rot in 2% of your house. It doesn’t mean your house is about to fall down, but you will have to deal with it before it spreads.

The currency of any large country is an immoveable object, in the sense that it goes up and down in value, but it is here to stay. The idea that the US dollar might disappear is absurd as the USA is a large country. It beats me why some people say the euro is doomed; it is the chosen adopted currency of sixteen countries who together form the second most important currency zone in the world after the dollar. Given where we used to be, that is a great achievement of which others are jealous. The Americans don’t like to see the hegemony of the dollar challenged. No serious economist really believes the euro will disppear, but bad-mouthing it can stir up the “markets” to the advantage of a few speculators.

Nor will Greece ever leave the euro. There is no treaty provision for exit, the process is at one point in the texts described as “irreversible”. Anyway if Greece already cannot pay its debt denominated in euros, it would be insane for it to have a national currency worth even less.
So the euro is stuck with Greece, just as the dollar is stuck with California - but it’s strange how no one seems to make a big fuss about that.

The euro may well depreciate heavily. But what the hell ! Our goods priced in euros will become cheaper to the rest of the world, so we will export more: that means more jobs for Europeans. Conversely, we will import less from China. Who knows, as the euro goes down, the renmimbi may even appreciate to a level closer to its real value. Oil will become intolerably expensive so maybe we will finally do something about more efficient use of energy, which will be good news all round.

I am quite sanguine about the euro: I earn my money in euros and spend most of it in the euro area; what it is worth elsewhere in the world is largely irrelevant to me. Incidentally, that’s the same principle on which the US economy has always operated.

In the meantime the euro has made a huge difference to my private life. I live in a small country, Belgium and am soon over the border. To get around between say France, Germany, Italy and Spain I used to have a box full of different currencies which I periodically had to replenish, not any more. When I went out of Europe I first had to change my Belgian francs into something that would be accepted like US dollars or Deutschmarks, not any more.
I can now make cross-border bank payments and get money out of the wall in any euro area country free of charge using my Belgian bank account and card. I can also compare prices easily in a wide range of countries I visit. It’s all much simpler.

Of course, when the euro was introduced physically in 2002, there was a bit of a difficult learning process. You might not realize just how important a piece of mental furniture your anchor scale of monetary values is. It takes time to change it, but certainly 8 years down the road I now think in euros and have forgotten what the Belgian franc I was previously used to was worth.

The introduction of the euro, by the way, thanks to very careful preparation was incredibly successful with hardly any hitches in what was a monumental operation of physically introducing a new currency and withdrawing an old one.

Let me say a few words about the physical euro. The banknotes in their different sizes and colours are a whole lot prettier and more practical than dollars. The strange thing about the notes is the 500 euro which the Germans insisted on having to replace their 1000 DM. You never see them and no normal shop accepts them. Their only conceivable use is for large cash illegal transactions. It’s slightly odd that the EU elsewhere engaged in fighting money-laundering should have sanctioned them.
There was at the time a long debate about where the coin/note boudary should be. People belly-ached about 2 euros being worth a fair bit while seeming loose change. I think in the long run it was right to start the notes at 5. In the US despite a number of attempts they have not managed to replace the 1 dollar bill with coins; that strikes me as daft in the rich States, but I guess handy in dollarized economies like Cambodia. Notes used too frequently wear out quickly and have to be replaced more often than coins.

There are of course too many small euro cent coins, the 1c and 2c are a nuisance. They had to be introduced in order to allow exact conversion to two decimal places, but everything has long since been rounded up. The Finns thought they could get away without them, but they discovered that the first minted ones in the starter kits of small change had become expensive collector items, so they flooded the market with more. The coins coming in 16 different national sides are emminently collectable and it’s quite amusing to go through your pocket, turning over the coins from their common face to the national one to discover just how far they have travelled. The euro is nice to handle.

When the euro was introduced a lot of small ticket items you buy frequently like cups of coffee were rounded up quite considerably giving many the impression that the euro had provoked rapid inflation. However, big ticket items purchased less often didn’t change and even came down in price with the advent of easier cross-border price comparison provoking competition. Generally inflation in the euro area has been on the low side, though the subject of inflation differentials between euro members exercises macro-economists considerably. Again, different US states have different rates of inflation.

Macro-economists also worry about the “one size fits all” interest rate set by the European Central Bank. On the whole it’s probably done more good than bad as the large critical mass of the euro area which for a long time was free from speculative attack, unlike the previous currencies it succeeded, has allowed the interest rate to be relatively low facilitating more investment in many member economies.
Without the levers of exchange rate policy (competitive devaluation) and monetary policy ( changing the nterest rate to help the economy) at their disposal, euro members have to make their adjustments by using fiscal policy (increasing/decreasing government spending, taxation and borrowing) which is why the treaty says it is a matter of common concern and the Stability and Growth Pact is such a big deal. Very few countries have actually been respecting the SGP recently as it seems to have been designed for a crisis free age. Also the sanctions contemplated in it would be pretty counter-productive anyway. Since it’s all about peer pressure and everyone is misbehaving, there’s not much point in getting excited unless a member is way out of line, like Greece.

A final word on the absurdity of the recent debt crisis.

Has it escaped everyone’s attention that the very ratings agencies, Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s and co., who have been down-grading sovereign debt are the same people who triggered the financial crisis in the first place by giving triple A ratings to repackaged sub-prime mortgages ? Because of their worthless advice to greedy banks we found ourselves in a mega-financial crisis and had to bail out the banks with trillions of tax-payers’ money. And guess what, that now means countries are heavily in debt. So this seems like a good time for “the markets” whoever they are, but probably ultimately the speculative divisions of the same banks we bailed out, to be gunning for countries with large debts some of which are in the euro. So our currency goes down and taxpayers lose more money as the value of their savings goes down.

Why do we put up with this obscene nonsense ?

The term global governance is at present rather empty but we need it badly to protect the real economy that makes things and the people that work in it, spend and save, from the marauding parasitical might of big international finance, who are a law unto themselves and for whom it is again sadly “business as usual”.
Nothing has been learned, nothing has been done, only vast amounts of taxpayers’ money have been poured down a black hole (and presumably into a few fat cats’ pockets), while we have got ourselves heavily into debt for which apparently we are now to be punished by the same people we bailed out. Surely this has to stop.

In the meantime, don’t panic. The euro is going to stay and we will happily keep on spending it.

About A pî po’l bwè

I’d like to tell you about a strange chance meeting I had in November 1982.

I had been living in Brussels for two months doing my training at the Commission to be an interpreter. One of my senior trainers, Jean Zinc, had recommended that we get some fresh air and exercise during our weekends off, in particular by going to a place called the “Ardennes”. This turned out to be difficult to locate with any great geographical accuracy until I realized it was just the expression the Belgians vaguely use to designate the hilly and forested South of the country.
I had no car and knew no one else interested in hiking so I used the then quite extensive Belgian rail network to get down there, experimenting with different destinations. Armed with a map and a rucksack containing waterproofs and a picnic I would then walk by myself from one station to another. (This wouldn’t work so well now as many of the smaller halts have sadly since been discontinued.)

So it was on a Saturday morning in early November 1982 that I alighted from the train in Vielsalm. As I walked down the platform, I couldn’t help hearing the raucous voices and laughter of a noisy young crowd who had got off the train behind me and were following me. Curiosity got the better of me, so I turned my head to see the source of the commotion. Being discreetly English, however, I didn’t want to create the impression of stopping and staring, so I just kept on walking... SMACK right into a lamp-post. Needless to say the group found this hilarious and laughed even louder. Feeling, understandably, a little humiliated I strode ahead as if nothing had happened and marched out of the station... Only to be greeted by a long haired young man in hiking boots and a rucksack, who insisted on shaking my hand and introducing himself. As I was wondering if this was a quaint Ardennais custom, the group caught up with me and it became apparent that I had just been mistaken for one of its members. The situation was explained with much amusement and the leader of the group told me that they were from Liège and about to set off on a weekend’s hiking. If I had no partciular itinerary in mind and wanted to join them, I would be more than welcome. This invitation seemed like an excellent idea and so I became a member of the jolly crew.

They would be staying overnight in a hostel type of place and asked if I would join them for the whole weekend. I can’t remember what reason I had but I needed to return to Brussels that evening, so I declined. Before parting though, Philippe, the organizer took my address and said they would let me know when the next weekend hike would take place.

I had largely forgotten about it all when a few months later a letter duly arrived through the post, this was the pre-internet era after all, inviting me to a weekend in the Petite Suisse in Luxemburg.

It was a hot spring day when we reached Echternach and some free time was granted before our departure from the bus station, come to think of it they were probably mostly having a beer at a terrace. I decided I could really do with a pair of shorts so I went to buy one. Unfortunately when I returned to the meeting place the group had already left. I knew they were heading for the Petite Suisse, so I bought a map and set off in pursuit. Luckily I soon caught up with them and the accident-prone Englishman had another exploit to his name.

This was my first full weekend so I experienced for the first time the joys of communal cooking and rough and ready accommodation that are the hall-marks of this organization. It was just like being on one of my holiday camps for teenagers: I loved it. The evening was copiously lubricated with cheap Luxemburg Rivaner white wine. I recall that over dessert there was a spirited rendition of the French creole classic “Salade de fruits, tu plais à ta mère...” with percussion from assorted kitchen utensils.

In 1984 the organizers, Philippe and Claudine, known to all as Boudi and Codie, as it is the kind of group where nicknames thrive, started to do everything under their own auspices (instead of under a student travel organization, not least because participants were no longer students) and so they needed a name.
After much consideration and rejection of such epiphets as “la godasse qui pue” (the “stinking boot”), they decided on the poetical “A pî po’l bwè” which is Walloon for “à pied par le bois” or “on foot through the woods”.

A pî po’l bwè continued to have a spring and an autumn weekend outing until 1988 by when its members had begun to get married and start families. I was a regular till about 1987. In fact when I bumped into them or rather the lamp-post, it was only their second outing which makes me one of the core. There were also related cross country skiing weekends in the winter, when you used to get more snow in the Ardennes in the 1980s.

In 2006 as members’ children were now old enough to look after themselves at weekends, the group was relaunched. Someone must have asked “Whatever happened to that mad Englishman?” as one day in 2007 quite out of the blue I got an e-mail at work from Boudi who had managed to track me down. I couldn’t make it that autumn, but our friendship was resumed in spring 2008 on a weekend near Trier in Germany.

Some participants looked the same, others had aged more and I couldn’t remember all of their names, but the old camaraderie was soon in place. People now had respectable jobs and grown up children. Inevitably in a group that size, one much loved and very funny partcipant, Bura, had died of cancer.

Arrangements are now made by e-mail and payment by electronic bank transfer. Where we used to spill boisterously out of a train onto a deserted countryside platform, we now fill the car-park in front of the “gîte” with largish cars. Still when a group of twenty or so 50 to 55 year olds who used to muck about together in their 20’s get together again, it’s very rejuvenating and things are soon as they were. Now we don’t have to carry our sleeping bag and what we need for the night with us the whole weekend, the distances are a bit shorter and the cooking is a bit more sophisticated, but it’s still the same old spirit.

A weekend with A pî po’l bwè is two hikes of about 20 km, usually in the Ardennes or neigbouring Luxemburg, though recently we have been as far afield as the Rhine valley by the Lorelei. As we stride along (they tend to go at a fair lick, though do show sympathy for my now dodgy knees) the day is spent in conversation catching up with what’s been happening in people’s lives or ruminating on the problems of the world in general and Belgium in particular. Fairly early on in the day there will be the picnic break in a rural idyll (though last time we ended up in the middle of a village medieval festival one day). This tends to make the afternoon seem very long, so if at all possible, there will be stops for a beer at the terrace of hostelries. Codie will also provide us with historic and cultural background information on some of the places we pass through (she’s a teacher) though some members of the group merely take this as an excuse to make puns and disrespectful anachronistic remarks (they were once naughty boys at the back of the classroom).
We spend the night in between the hikes in rudimentary youth-camp/scout style accommodation for groups, where snoring in the dorm may be an issue. We have dinner at a big table for about 20 with plenty of food and drink prepared together, accompanied by loud conversation, jokes, catch-phrases and singing. In the morning there’s a big breakfast and enough supplies for each participant to prepare their own picnic sandwiches to taste. Then there’s a general clean-up before leaving.

It’s all a big laugh, where things that go wrong become the subject of jokes and folklore: such as serious mis-readings of the map like when we had to sprint across a dual carriageway, dishes that don’t work out as planned like the crème brûlée without an oven, or showers that turn out to belong to the local football team...
The whole proceedings are in the broadest of Liégeois accents with some set-piece command performance stories even in Walloon dialect, such as “dèl trôye vèrète” (about the farmer who has to take his sow to be covered) beautifully told by Michel who is nicknamed “Jésus”.
It is all deeply Belgian in the best sense.

Basically these weekends are the typical stuff of a big group outing of old friends and are a real break from our very different routines. Since it’s only twice a year and people can’t make them all it remains a special event. Recently we’ve also been blessed with some spectactularly fine weather.

A pî po’l bwè is a real tonic.