M J Johnson
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Books
    • Niedermayer & Hart >
      • Reviews for N & H
      • The Prologue
      • Sample the Book
      • Animations
    • Roadrage >
      • Reviews for Roadrage
      • Roadrage Sample
  • Contact Me

Once Upon a Christmas Time

21/12/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Once, when I was very small, I remember Father Christmas flying past our house in Trecynon, Aberdare. Later on, my big brother attempted to convince me that the sleigh and reindeer had been mounted on the back of an open-backed truck, but I know what I saw, there was no truck, just Santa Claus waving at all the children as he flew by! No memory remains more powerfully lodged in my mind than this one which has helped to build the magic of Christmas ever since. Of course, in Wales in the late fifties, Christmas celebrations revolved around our chapel life, singing carols, the  Christmas party in the vestry with jelly and sandwiches and lemonade pop, with games and prizes to follow. But it wasn’t all laughs! Christmas came at that time of year when us kids were forced against our will to wear hand-knitted itchy balaclavas, and worse, mittens attached along each arm and secured beneath our coats by elastic strips with enough durability to power a mediaeval siege engine.
 
Christmas was a time when the air itself was infused with exotic smells, chocolate and cinammon and the citrusy smell of tangerines. I remember assisting my Dad on Christmas Eve, charged with the important task of taking our turkey to the local bakehouse, then excitedly returning after dark to collect it once it was cooked and being allowed to pick and eat a steaming morsel of meat from its wing. Everything seemed to add to the excitement and magic of Christmas.  Television consisted for us of just the one BBC channel, and I recall how they used to show each year a stop-frame animation about how Rudolph the Reindeer saved Christmas - a sort of animated bio-pic for mesmerised children.
 
There were of course our family traditions, like unpacking and re-hanging the brightly coloured paper decorations which concertinaed across our living room, which had undoubtedly been bought at Woolworths along with our small artificial tree. The tree was gaudily decked out with tinsel and coloured lights, which invariably proved to be a trial for my Dad; I think the bulbs themselves must have belonged to a powerful trade-union because if one blew they all went out and it was merry hell to find the culprit! A few years back I took that threadbare old tree to the tip when my mother, unable to look after herself any longer, went into sheltered accommodation and the task of dismantling our family home fell to me - it was a time of many emotional highs and lows, causing me to relive a host of sad and happy memories, the merry-go-round of this bitter/sweet experience we call life.
 
There were always amazing presents, I remember, and best of all one early Christmas was a doctor’s kit furnished with precision medical instuments made out of chunky plastic, probably bought from stalls in Aberdare market or the aforementioned Woolworths: there was a thing for peering into ears with, a lamp for the forehead to inspect a patient’s tonsils, a hammer to test reflexes, a stethoscope, some plasters and bandages, and a card that identified me, Martin Johnson, as a trained medical practitioner. Mam, driven to be imaginative and practical because of a shortage of money, had arranged the kit in a white metal lunch box with a red cross attached to the lid to delineate purpose made with sticking plaster and red ink! But I almost forgot, there was also a blue plastic clock for checking a patient’s pulse - after I’d outgrown my doctor’s kit this clock became a Christmas decoration and still hangs on our tree to this day.
 
But the very best thing of all that I remember about Christmas, and I don’t know if this is a Welsh Valleys thing, or something initiated by my Dad, I’ve certainly not come across it anywhere else - about half of the content of our Christmas stockings as children were booby prizes (Father Christmas had a very funny sense of humour we were told!) - people tend to look at me like I’m daft when I mention it! In our stockings eagerly left at the bottom of our beds and filled by Father Christmas as we slept were to be found all manner of things which we opened with glee. The bounty had been stuffed down into an old rugby sock, all carefully wrapped in newspaper with little cryptic messages attached, there were chocolate coins, toy soldiers, tangerines wrapped in silver paper, nuts, toy cars, plastic magnifying  glasses, gob-stoppers and usually a practical joke like a blood stained bandage that you could slip over your finger that had a large nail protruding from either side. Dad’s booby prizes were generally introduced with a label like “You’ll definitely love this!” or “Very useful item” - these could be anything from a candlestick off our mantlepiece to a carrot or potato. Father Christmas undoubtedly adored all the children in the world but he definitely enjoyed teasing them too! When I reflect on all those past Christmasses it is this memory of our Christmas stockings that fills me with warmth and brings a little moisture to the eye. It was the attention to detail of my folks, and that unfakeable sense of being held and embraced within the family fold.
 
In a few days time, I shall relive many of these feelings again by observing the joy Christmas brings to my wonderful little granddaughters. Yet, despite it being a family occasion, we are reminded that Christmas is a time for wishing peace and goodwill to all mankind, so as we settle down to a feast amongst our families, please spare a thought for those who are less fortunate. We share a planet with thousands of other species and we so often tend to take it all for granted, but it isn’t money or power that makes Christmas special, it is simply love made manifest. Be kind to each other and have a lovely Christmas.  

1 Comment

Is My Daily Reading Being Affected by Brexit?

22/6/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I read news articles daily to keep myself informed, and generally end the day with some recreational/vocational reading. I seem to be on a dark path lately when I enter that normally peaceful haven of bedtime reading. In mid-May I re-visited Nineteen Eighty-Four ( here’s my review/blog ), only previously read when I was a teenager. I followed this with William Golding’s cautionary tale about the savagery lurking just beneath humanity’s civilised veneer in his classic, Lord of the Flies, where a group of polite English schoolboys are stranded on a desert island and cease to behave nicely. Lord of the Flies was a GCSE book when I was at school, but only during alternate years; our group read My Family and Other Animals. Lord of the Flies had always been on my mental to-read booklist - it is now, along with Nineteen Eighty-Four, on my list of books worth reading again (as is My Family and Other Animals, for that matter).

Earlier this year, I read Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny, about her interviews with the former Kommandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, Franz Stangl, whilst he was held captive in Dusseldorf prison in 1971 ( my review/blog ). It is the only book I’ve come across, throughout a lifetime, that forced me to abandon bedtime reading because its content was just too upsetting to facilitate a sound night’s sleep; I had to find daytime moments to complete this book, which I am very glad to say I did. I firmly believe that it behoves all of us to understand something of the history that has shaped the world we live in. Not every book I’ve read this year has been serious; there have been a few entertaining reads, but I am currently reading The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis led Germany from Conquest to Disaster by Richard J Evans. This is the final part of Evans’ brilliant, highly accessible history of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis. Despite being easy to read for the layman like myself, the books are still pretty hefty, due to their subject matter, so I’ve tackled a volume a year for the past three years.

I’ve always read a wide, eclectic, mix of books, I do think however, that my choice of reading has been greatly affected by the Brexit referendum (2016) and the rise of populism across the world. For about three months after the Brexit result, my wife and I woke up every morning feeling slightly shell-shocked - like we couldn’t really be awake and it was all just a terrible dream. The Trump victory later that year only made matters worse, especially when the triumphant Trump was photographed outside a golden lift with the so-called, self-styled Bad Boys of Brexit. Until that moment, I for one, wasn’t even remotely aware of the sinister connection between the various populist movements around the world. It was only in the weeks and months that followed the US elections that I learned about Breitbart, Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica, AIQ and of the unquestioned Russian tampering in our democratic processes, both at home and in the US. Here in Britain, our politicians, of all persuasions, still seem reluctant to fully address the extent and effect of such meddling: it’s as if they’d prefer not to look, and hope the bogeyman will simply go away. The mainstream press remains fairly inert too, but perhaps with them it’s something akin to shame, like admitting they’ve been caught asleep when they were supposed to be on the watch. Consequently, lone voices like Carole Cadwalladr, writing for the Observer and Guardian, have been dismissed as loony conspiracy-theorists. Yet there are undoubtedly questions that demand answers: the role of George Cottrell for a start: at twenty-two he was senior adviser to Nigel Farage, UKIP fundraiser, once kicked out of his posh school for gambling, and (more recently and seriously) convicted of money laundering in the US. During the US elections, Cottrell met with senior figures in the Republican party and with Russian officials. Then there’s Arron Banks, the largest private donor to any political party in British history. Some accounts concerning his wealth suggest he’s nowhere near as rich as he’d like us to believe he is, and if not, then where did his large donations originate from? Banks, Farage and fellow UKIPer Andy Wigmore have all consistently tried to conceal their dealings with Russian officials. Incidentally, three of the four named Brexiteers above also appear to possess dual nationality (Farage may have tried to apply for German nationality post-referendum, and hasn’t denied this, apparently) - not really what you’d expect from a band of lion-hearted patriots, fighting to rescue us from EU domination, is it?

Money has come to play far too great a role in influencing democracy - I am beginning to think that tax-payer-funded election campaigns might be the only answer. Equally, money wields too much power and influence over the press. And never before have I found myself questioning the impartiality of organisations like the BBC, who, it’s only fair to say, have consistently downplayed or attempted to dismiss just about everything mentioned in this piece. We live in strange times; Brexit has given the xenophobes and racists free rein, yet I’m certain that most of those who voted to Leave the EU are neither racists nor xenophobes.Some voted with their hearts, some voted because they genuinely fear the effects of immigration, a large number may have believed the false claims that we’d be financially better off outside, or wanted to restore Parliamentary sovereignty (that turned out to be a pretty bad joke this week). But however people voted, surely it would benefit all of us to know the full extent of another country’s interference in our democratic affairs? Would people feel quite as confident about the referendum result if they knew for certain that they had been targeted and manipulated by Russia, and American billionaires with far-right leanings? Our nation was swiftly aroused recently, when a foreign state appeared to have poisoned three people with an alleged nerve-agent on British soil; yet, when it comes to the possibility of the same country stealing a life-changing referendum from us, it is met with passivity.
​
What twentieth-century history shows us very clearly is that you simply cannot appease the Far Right. They may wear white shirts and chinos, or dress in smart suits with discreet ties these days, but they still espouse the same drivel of hate and lies, and they must be called out.

0 Comments

Psychological Thriller ROADRAGE Free on Kindle for a Limited Time

16/5/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Someone recently asked me how I’d come by the idea for ROADRAGE. I explained to her that the seed of a plot came about quite by chance at about 2.30 am on the M4 motorway around Briton Ferry near Swansea in South Wales. I was driving, and my passengers, my son and wife, were both fast asleep. We were on our way to visit my mother who had not been widowed very long at the time. Almost at the end of a four hour car journey and late at night, you can imagine my eagerness to complete the last few miles. As I came onto a long, dark, deserted stretch of road, I saw, in the distance, a solitary car moving slowly up ahead. I was covering the gap between us fast, so as I approached I indicated to let the other driver know I intended overtaking. As I passed this car, it took me a few moments to realise that I wasn’t making the progress I might have anticipated. I still didn’t quite get it, and simply accelerated, thinking it would immediately be the solution.  Yet the car alongside me maintained its position, despite my having increased my speed. Suddenly, I realised what was going on and felt, I’m almost ashamed to say, a sudden burst of anger at the other driver’s rank stupidity. For a minute or so I reacted (as I was undoubtedly meant to) by continuing to accelerate, but nothing I did could shake the other car off. Then, sanity came to me by way of a simple, clear thought: “The people I care about most in this whole world are asleep in this car, am I going to risk their lives, and my life too, for the sake of some daft vendetta?”

I slowed down to forty miles an hour and immediately dropped behind the other car. As soon as I’d reduced my speed, and had drawn in to the left hand lane, and was once again following, the car in front immediately dropped its speed down to forty miles an hour again. We remained travelling in convoy like this for the next few miles; fortunately, my exit from the motorway was fairly close. Incidentally, I made sure they’d passed the exit before giving them any indication that I planned on taking this route myself. It occurred to me that I didn’t want someone like this following me to my destination!

And there you have it. Naturally I make this incident considerably more dramatic in the book, fleshing out a back-story for my seemingly hapless hero, and take the antagonist’s malice well beyond the bounds of sanity. The underlying theme of ROADRAGE is the corrosive nature of hate. I used an appropriate classical quotation to set the mood for the book:

Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour.
Euripides, Medea

ROADRAGE, which has never been offered free on Kindle before (and may never be again!) is available to anyone with an e-reading device from midnight PST on Thursday 17 May - midnight PST on Monday 21 May.

It’s scary. Enjoy.

Here's the link: ROADRAGE free on Kindle


0 Comments

Past and Future

13/5/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
I was prompted to read 1984 again, after recently watching the  movie (1984) starring John Hurt, Suzannah Hamilton and Richard Burton, who all give superb performances. It is a very watchable film, presenting us with a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world, with which we are sadly all too familiar as modern cinema-goers. The last time I read this book was as a teenager, forty-odd years ago, and although it undoubtedly influenced and shaped my view of the world, I always felt Orwell was out, at the very least, by a few hundred years.

After re-visiting the book, one instantly becomes aware of how inferior and far short of the book, despite remaining fairly faithful to the story, the movie is. This is because Orwell’s 1984 is not simply about the dysfunctional love story that happens within a totalitarian state; but far more than this, it is also a polemic on the abuse of state power wielded against the individual. Orwell depicts for us a fully-realised world where rebellion is not possible, in which a global elite constantly perpetuates itself, where history is unceasingly reviewed and updated, and the thinking of the individual is repeatedly crushed by the application of Newspeak and Doublethink.

I think the movie version was, as I’ve already said, engaging, yet it largely misses the opportunity to take full advantage of the talents of a truly great actor in Burton, sadly in his last film role before his death, and who was simply made for the part of O’Brien, Winston Smith’s interrogator and nemesis. There are so many brilliant speeches of O’Brien’s in the book that Burton would have delivered with aplomb and the most impeccable world-weariness and cynicism. Film however, despite having been once known as The Talkies, tends to shy away from long speeches - perhaps movie moguls fear losing their audiences through too much talk; it’s always a far better bet to concentrate on the torture and horror! Unfortunately, Orwell mostly conveys the message behind this terrible futuristic vision, through his mouthpiece, O’Brien. The movie of 1984 is a decent film, but if only it had had the courage to increase its running-time by twenty minutes, it might have been a masterpiece!
​
We live in strange times, where government spokespeople are heard to refer to 'Alternative facts', and we are warned by many in authority and in the mainstream media that much of the news we see is 'fake'. In such a time, it behoves all of us to exercise our hard won democratic rights to free speech, to ensure that we are served by a free, fair and unbiased press, one that is not simply the mouthpiece of a handful of powerful oligarchs. Like I said at the top, when I read this book when I was fifteen, I don't think I thought it could really happen; now, many years on, I'm not so confident ...
 
I highly recommend this brilliantly written book, justifiably a classic.

2 Comments

The Plot Thickens - Niedermayer & Hart

23/3/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture

​I seem to have been telling my readers for ages that the follow-on story to Niedermayer & Hart was almost ready. I wasn’t fibbing, honest! I started the proofing and fact-checking process well over a year ago, but a lot has been happening for me and my family (in the most part, I’m pleased to say, good things) which has somehow managed to slow everything in the Odd Dog Press publishing department down to almost a standstill at times.

Picture
​​However, we did recently manage to produce a newly updated version of my wife Judith Johnson’s book Southborough War Memorial, which lists the two-hundred and fifty-five names on our local war memorial. The original book was printed in 2009 and has been out of print for a number of years, although we did produce a Kindle version in 2012. The revised book contains some photographs and information not previously seen, as several names have been added to the memorial since 2009. Naturally, being a local history book, it was never expected to appeal widely or to sell in vast numbers, yet it continues to sell steadily, and not just in our local community but also within its far wider diaspora. This book took Judith seven years to research in her spare moments and remains, in my view, a very fine achievement. So, hooray for Southborough War Memorial I say!
​​​
To return to the subject of Niedermayer & Hart; the second  book in the trilogy is at its final proofing stage. Actually, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned a trilogy. I concluded N & H with the words The End because I didn’t want to promise a trilogy at the time (although it was always my intention), just in case the book didn’t go down very well. Fortunately, most of its readers seem to approve. A reviewer said this about N & H last week on Amazon UK:
“A real rip snorter of a page turner. I don't normally read anything other than Stephen King (I'm a bit of a King snob and generally find other Sci fi / horror authors don't quite meet the grade) but Johnson has written what I love to read. Looking forward to reading more of his books.”

Picture

​​The cover artwork for the new title (soon to be announced) is being prepared at the moment. I’ve seen the rough drawings and find it suitably unsettling. Like Niedermayer & Hart and my psychological thriller Roadrage, the new book will not only appear in a printed format but also as an ebook. Actually, we’re also planning to bring out a new printed version of Niedermayer & Hart, if not simultaneously, then shortly afterwards. This is mainly because stocks of the original are running low and it’ll be good to have both titles conforming to the same style. An actor friend recently commented that they thought N & H would make a highly compelling film or TV series. If that ever happened, it would of course be terrific, but in the meantime, I’ll just keep on writing! Meanwhile, if you do happen to have an original copy, hang onto it, as the first edition will most probably go out of print sometime this year.
​
Oooh yes, almost forgot! I’m planning to do a series of promotions/giveways etc. over the coming weeks, so WATCH THIS SPACE, as they say!
​


0 Comments

The Shape of Water

4/3/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
The wife and I rarely make visits to the cinema these days, mainly because we don’t find very much that we consider worth watching, it’s quite common for us to have torn the film to shreds before reaching the car park. Our local cinema, despite the fact that it operates ‘eight screens of magic’, generally only shows the most commercially successful offerings. I read Marvel comics as a teenager, and watched the original Star Wars in my early twenties, but don’t want to see these stories endlessly re-packaged again and again, and have become a little weary, not to say wary, of any more feel-good movies (save me, please!). The current state of the movie industry is I think what happens when money dictates the rules to creativity - the loser is always originality. Nor do I like the way in which the film industry has cynically increased the violence and bad language (in my view, they’d probably disagree, but then they would) in films graded as suitable for younger audiences.

When The Shape of Water was released I was unusually eager to see it. I’ve watched a number of Guillermo del Toro movies, and although I can’t say I’ve adored every single one, I certainly found them absorbing and often thought-provoking. I hadn’t read any of the reviews when I saw The Shape of Water, and still haven’t, so the views stated here are entirely my own. I did know however that The Shape of Water cost very little money to make by movie standards - probably less than some movie stars pick-up for headlining on a picture. From the pre-release blurb about the film I was led to expect something along the lines of a fifties Sci Fi B movie, cross-pollinated with some art-house touches. Yes, all these elements are there, however for myself, and for aforementioned wife, what came across most loud and clear to us was the film’s allegorical voice. I very much doubt whether this will become a ‘must-see’ film in the Trump White House, for it is a tale deeply ingrained with liberality and liberal values.

The story is set in Baltimore in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, presumably at a time before it was necessary to ‘Make America Great Again’. The central character, Eliza, played by Sally Hawkins, works as a cleaner along with her friend, Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, at some kind of secret military establishment. All the main characters in this movie are outsiders, outcasts even; Eliza is mute and Zelda is a down-trodden black woman; Eliza’s friend and neighbour, Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, is a lonely gay man. Eliza, we glean, has a fascination for water, and when an amphibious man, played by Doug Jones, is brought to the secret establishment where she and Zelda work as cleaners, she is immediately fascinated and starts to communicate with him through sign-language. There is a strongly subversive undertone in this movie, with its authority figures, a secret-service man Richard Strickland, played by Michael Shannon, and General Hoyt, played by Nick Searcy, shown to be corrupt, sadistic and decadent. These two share a powerful scene with some excellent dialogue about the quality of ‘decency’. Even the (normally) bad guy, a Russian agent posing as a research scientist, demonstrates more humanity and understanding than these bastions of the establishment.

I don’t do spoilers, so I’ve said more than enough already. I liked this film and can honestly say that I enjoyed watching every frame of it. At a moment in time when the voice of reaction seems to be getting louder and society’s ‘outsiders’ are accorded little value, I am delighted to watch a film, albeit a fantasy, that favours difference and diversity. My previous blog was a review of Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny, who interviewed Franz Stangl in Dusseldorf prison shortly before his death; Stangl had been Kommandant of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Poland where approximately a milion ‘outsiders’ perished. As we came out of the cinema, Judith and I agreed that the Nazis would almost certainly have despised and banned this movie and labelled it decadent art.
​
So do please see it, if only to piss off a Nazi!

0 Comments

Buddy Reading The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland

5/2/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
I’ve mentioned before how, together with a small bunch of reading enthusiasts discovered on Twitter, we take on a group read twice a year. This time we read The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland. I vaguely recall having watched the 1957 film of the same name which starred Peter Finch on TV, probably sometime in the late Sixties, on one of those long drawn-out Sunday afternoons that always held a kind of dread back then, and seemed to colour everything a little bit grey - strange, because I love Sundays these days, and aim (not always successfully) to do as little as possible.

D’Arcy Niland was a writer dedicated to the great art of short-story writing, and during his relatively short life (1917-1967) he managed to produce over five hundred. He left school at fourteen to help support a large family, and seems to have lived a life as an itinerant worker in much the same way as Mac Macauley does in The Shiralee. He had been encouraged to write by the nuns at his school and he seems to have self-educated himself whilst on the road. He married New Zealander Ruth Park in 1942. She, like Niland, had done some journalism, and they decided they would try and pursue their ambition to write full-time. They had five children together and they both won various literary prizes to support their writing. In 1952 Niland was awarded £600 by the Commonwealth Literary fund to write a novel, and the result was The Shiralee (published 1955). It has never been out of print since and has been translated into many languages.

What did I think of The Shiralee? It is a very fine novel. Niland possessed a short-story writer’s eye for capturing detail that might otherwise pass as mundane or fleeting. It’s not a very thick book but what it lacks in size is made up for in weight. I laughed and wept and genuinely felt a little sad when I finished it, simply because there were no more pages to turn. Niland was a very good writer, as was Ruth Park, whose Harp in the South trilogy, set in the slums of Sydney and partly based on what they observed from living there, is equally worth reading.

Mac Macauley, the book’s main character, is walking the backroads of New South Wales, always on the look out for work, his four year old daughter Buster, the shiralee (burden) of the title, alongside or trailing behind. Macauley is hard and uncompromising, like the land and the life he has always known. He bumps into friends and enemies along the way but this is a story about a man and a child, about loyalty and love. The characters he meets are wonderful, rich, poignant, sometimes spiteful, occasionally violent, but most often surprisingly generous and kind-hearted. I think Tommy Goorianawa, Beauty Kelly, Luke and Bella Sweeney, Wigley, Sam Bywater and the wonderful Desmond have established themselves in my psyche just as firmly as Ham Peggotty, Yossarian or George and Lennie. This is an exceptionally good book, the writing is wonderful. I would go so far as to say that it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and it will most certainly be making my Favourites shelf on Goodreads. I urge everyone to read it.
​
Thanks to my clever Twitter book club friends for suggesting another great book I would probably never have discovered without them! Having both read it, the wife and I are now very keen to trek up to London to see the Australian Impressionists exhibition. 

2 Comments

First Post 2017

4/1/2017

1 Comment

 
PictureThe Bullshiteers (with a nod to Hans Holbein) - limited edition print by Tom Johnson
​A friend sent me an email recently enquiring if I was okay because he noticed I hadn’t updated this blog in a while. The truth is that since 23 June, 2016, I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged, and for the first time in my life probably, I began to feel uncomfortable about my British identity. I had always enjoyed the feeling of connectedness to our friends  in mainland Europe that EU membership brought us, along with the longest period of peace and cooperation between nation states in European history. The xenophobes and far-right may view the Battle of the Somme or the Battle of Britain (perhaps backed by the Dam Busters’ theme) as our finest examples of British nationhood; personally, whilst I don’t gainsay the brave sacrifice of those men and women, I ‘d personally opt for the abolition of slavery, the creation of the welfare state and the NHS.

I don’t think the EU is perfect, but then, what political model is? The European Court of Human Rights is something to be admired, and we may well lose some of our workers’ rights by leaving. Of course, the right wing press has whinged on for years about Brussels red-tape, but it’s always easy to find fault. I certainly don’t share the UKIP leader’s disgust for the EU passport; in fact, I’m fairly sure I share none of Nigel Farage’s Little-England views. I find it extraordinary that this man, the product of a private education at Dulwich College, an ex commodities dealer, and proclaimed worshipper at the shrine of Margaret Thatcher, has somehow promoted himself as the crusading hero at the forefront of an anti-elitist battle to reassert the rights of the ordinary man (sorry, I should have inserted the word ‘decent’ - ‘ordinary, decent, man’ - which in the lexicon of the right wing seems to mean ‘xenophobic reactionary’). Farage is a man who has regularly demonstrated his utter contempt for the intellectual lightweightedness of his fellow UKIPers, so I am incredulous that he can actually embrace ‘ordinary people’ -  at arms length perhaps, whilst wearing latex gloves and a nose-peg. But Farage didn’t pull off Brexit alone, although he’d like us to think he did; let’s give credit where credit is due, Boris Johnson was actually the campaign’s figurehead with Michael Gove at his right hand. When I consider this opportunistic pair, I  can’t help thinking of Jabba the Hutt and his sidekick Salacious Crumb from Return of the Jedi. This unattractive twosome, so deserving of each other (as demonstrated by Gove’s subsequent stabbing of the Johnson back), once guaranteed their loyalty to David Cameron, now a former tenant of 10 Downing Street as a result of trusting them. They seemed prepared to sink to any level of vulgar populism during the debacle that was the referendum debate.

Shortly before standing down as Prime Minister, David Cameron claimed that he didn't regret holding the referendum because he was so completely committed to democracy. He blamed EU rules on immigration as the reason he lost - nothing whatever to do with any of his domestic policies, like his party’s failure to build enough decent homes for our people or the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Apparently, he’d once joked at a meeting with EU leaders, when some had voiced caution about holding a referendum in the first place, “Don't worry, I'm a winner”. So, this pain we're all suffering could be seen as stemming from one man's arrogance. I daresay the Murdoch press or one or other of the big publishing houses will see him alright with a million or two as an advance on his memoirs. I now hear that our failed Prime Minister is being tipped for the top job at NATO. Mmmmm ...
2016 was a very odd year indeed. Does anyone recall the public vote In March called by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to suggest names for their new research ship? Overwhelming numbers voted for ‘Boaty McBoatface’ - 124,000 votes with its nearest rival polling just 34,000. However, it seems that ‘the will of the British people’ a phrase so often quoted at us by our politicians post-Brexit, could in this particular case be waived in favour of upholding our national dignity - the ship was subsequently named RRS David Attenborough (phew!). Yet, when it came to the most important referendum there has ever been (whose remit was always stated as advisory), less than 38% of the eligible voting population was enough to stand for the overwhelming will of the British people.

The thing that upset me most about Brexit was the lack of intelligent debate during the campaign, especially, if not solely, from its victors. However, the Leave camp did plumb depths which I personally have never witnessed before in a British electoral campaign. The Leave politicians all seem to have recently distanced themselves from their much-paraded claim “We send the EU 350 million a week - Let’s fund the NHS instead - Let’s take back control”. And no politician with any decency could have stood before that poster, as Farage did, of (brownish-skinned) migrants streaming across the Slovenian(?) border with the caption “Breaking Point - The EU has failed us all - we must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders.” Or what about Michael Gove’s derogatory remarks about the considered opinions of experts on the bad effects of leaving the EU?

It’s hard to gauge the Brexit referendum’s impact on that other big election of 2016, the US Presidential election of Donald Trump in November (or, is that the Precedential Election, Donald?); it was a double-whammy for Remain voters like myself. The victorious campaigns had many similarities: they were shockingly light on fact-based argument, didn’t shy away from making outlandish statements, were quick to berate the press as biased whenever it criticised them, and both campaigns were remarkably swift to identify, claim and draw to their hearts the large numbers of disenchanted voters on both sides of the pond who found themselves hurting and seeking someone to blame for their ills. What came to light shortly after the US election was the influence that the (presumably self-named) Alt-Right Breitbart News organisation exercised over both events. I had never even heard of Breitbart or of its executive chairman Stephen Bannon before; he’s the man now destined to become Donald  Trump’s Chief Strategist at the White House. Yikes!

We are being told on both sides of the Atlantic that our real enemy is a global liberal elite. Across the water, Donald Trump’s cunning plan to ‘drain the swamp’ of Washington insiders is to backslide on a number of promises he made to his electors during his campaign and fill his White House team with lobbyists and insiders of the very worst kind. What strikes me as particularly scary is Trump and the Alt-Right’s lack of respect for democracy. One of the greatest vulnerabilities in democracy is a requirement on the part of those who partake in elections to conduct themselves with a certain level of decorum, honesty and fair-mindedness. Do you think Vladimir Putin (who may, or may not, have authorised a few computers to be hacked in order to help Donald win)  really admires him, or does he think he’s a moron, like the three million majority of Americans who voted against him?

The first book I completed in 2017, which I sincerely hope doesn’t demonstrate any kind of prescience on my part, was The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans.  It charts the forces at work in Germany from the end of the Bismarck era, through the Wilhelmine period which led up to the end of WWI, then on through the years of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis from fringe group to power. I always believed Hitler was elected Reich Chancellor by popular vote. This wasn’t the case; he was installed as Chancellor through a deal with some right-wing politicians who were under the woeful misapprehension that they would easily be able to control him. They couldn’t have been more mistaken. The Nazis, who possessed no respect for democracy whatever, never won an election by fair means, and once they’d achieved power, they quickly suppressed (often by killing) any opposition. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the way they seized and held onto power is the speed with which they managed to silence any opposition - within just weeks of assuming power they had established the notorious Dachau concentration camp along with several others to detain their political opponents.  This is the first book in a trilogy by Evans about the Third Reich which was clearly written with the layman in mind. It is beautifully accessible in its writing and Evans’ scholarship gives a superb overview of this terrible period in European history.

In light of our Brexit referendum and the US elections, the banal rhetoric, the racist slurs, blatant lies, these words seemed even more chilling words whilst reading The Coming of the Third Reich:

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be ... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but the power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (Mein Kampf)

Can’t allow Hitler the final word on my blog.
​
I wish all lovers of freedom and democracy, however they may have chosen to vote, a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017!

1 Comment

Austria Again!

7/10/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
A few weeks back we returned from our summer holiday. We’ve picked the Austrian Tyrol five times over the past seven years. I assure you we are capable of imagining other destinations, yet the Tyrol remains an absolute dead cert for us, ticking all the boxes for two people inclined to overwork themselves. Sometimes, we’re not aware of how exhausted we are until we arrive and find ourselves taking extended afterrnoon naps over the first few days.

“Blimey,” one of us remarks, “didn’t realise I was this tired!”

The scenery is breathtaking, and taking a cable-car to the nearest mountain-top never fails to excite us - we’re easily pleased. This time we stayed for our first time at the relaxed and charming, family-run Schneeberger Hotel in Niederau, literally five minutes away from the Markbachjoch lift station. Every summer tourist is presented with a Wildschonau Valley Card which offers unlimited travel on two lifts, daily swimming at the local heated outdoor pool and entrance to the local museum - all free! Our main pastime is of course the daily walking; generally we start off with a few easy ones before tackling the mountain hikes. We always nip into the local tourist office when we first arrive and buy a copy of the best map available - an invaluable purchase if you mean to do any serious walking. Even so, map or no, we still seem to go wrong at least once or twice; this experience has been known to produce some exasperated sighs and even the odd bad word, especially when you realise the last 200m downhill descent you’ve been finding such an incredible doddle was completely wrong and you now need to entirely retrace your steps back uphill.

If your idea of a summer vacation includes wearing a pair of slingback heels (I’m thinking of the ladies here, please don’t imagine me shod in this way!), then you should probably avoid this destination. However, that’s not to say the holiday’s only fit for serious mountain hikers; not at all, there are good paths and walks for all ages, every fitness level and ability; even so, if you’re planning a walk, a pair of walking-boots, a hat, a rucksack containing waterproofs, something to eat, some sun-cream and a water bottle are all advisable - the weather can change very quickly in the mountains.

We generally avoid large towns, however, on this occasion we did a lovely round-trip walk from Niederau through woodland to Worgl. We bought some lunch in Worgl and became a tad overjoyed on spotting a C&A store; these have been long extinct in Britain and our excitement probably only serves to give away our age. I remember my mother taking me to Swansea C&A in the mid-sixties to buy my first off-the-peg suit for chapel. For old times’ sake I bought a linen shirt and a new pair of shorts, and Judith got herself some t-shirts.

The coffee, even when served at a hutte on the top of a mountain, is almost invariably good; we did however get an expensive cup of instant (surely a work of the Devil?) at one alm that we had instinctively wondered about before entering - the place was scruffy and seemed a bit grubby - so very untypical for sparkly-clean-in- every-way-Austria; we should have trusted our instincts, but let’s face it, a two-week holiday where the only bad experience is one lousy cup of coffee has to be a winner.
​
Apart from the walking, there was of course always time for daily reading. I happily devoured Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (see review in previous blog),The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, Oh Pioneer by Willa Cather and The Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis - all different but all great reads and definitely recommended.

1 Comment

Their Eyes Were Watching God

3/9/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
This book was chosen for the buddy read I take part in with some pals discovered on Twitter a few years back. We don’t exert any pressure on each other to complete the read within a set time period, although we always have an agreed kick-off date. There are no rules, and so far we’ve read books by writers previously unknown to us (certainly unread). What generally happens is that someone suggests a book and the others either agree with the choice or raise an objection - we’re all pretty amenable and accommodating, I suspect, because this establishing the next book phase usually only requires a few short tweets - so, If you’re the Genghis Khan type, inclined to dominate your sewing circle, please don’t consider joining our little reading group - otherwise, everyone’s welcome! The reason why I have so far enjoyed this twice-yearly interaction so much is because of the way it has introduced me to literature I might not have found otherwise.

I daresay, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (published 1937), is a prime example of a book I would never have experienced without the gentle encouragement of this group. The novel is related through a Southern Black dialect by an anonoymous narrator, telling the story of its main protagonist, Janie. The narrative takes place over approximately twenty-five years and describes Janie’s marriages with three different men. The first two relationships leave her unfulfilled, but she finds true love and a sense of spiritual enlightenment  as an individual through the third marriage. The book was out of print for some years and was for a time condemned for its lack of political comment. It’s true, the book has no particular moral or political agenda, nor does it make any strong statement about race, although it certainly touches on race issues; it does however powerfully depict the struggle of the protagonist as an individual to inhabit her own voice. I have never read another novel that is anything remotely like Their Eyes Were Watching God, and in this respect it is unique. The book does however have some flaws, and a number of passages that I felt might have read so much better had they been whittled down - the mule dialogue for instance. The book does however contain some wonderfully poetic images that managed to fill my head with pictures as I read.

The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods - come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value.

Unique. Poetic. Definitely worth reading.

0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    Amazon.com
    Picture
    Available in paperback and ebook:
    Amazon.co.uk
    ​Amazon.com
    my read shelf:
    M.J. Johnson's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

    M J Johnson

    You can join Martin on
    Facebook
    If you'd like to subscribe to this blog, click on the RSS Feed button below

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Books
    Family Matters
    Film
    Historic/Factual
    Might Raise A Smile
    Miscellaneous
    Music
    Niedermayer & Hart
    Places Worth A Visit
    Roadrage
    Tea 'n' Coffee
    Theatre
    TV Stuff
    TV Stuff
    Wales
    Wilhelm & Laszlo
    Writing

    Archives

    April 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    June 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011

© 2018 M J Johnson. All rights reserved.
             Contact               Blog                 N & H                 Roadrage