h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Morning Peanut

Yes. I thought that you had messed up your body clock..

Money worries can do that. I suppose that the whole question of Hiccup earning will come up some time soon..In my [quite extensive] experience of teenage girls they get to feel that their lives could be so much "richer" if they could earn a bit. Mind you I did my paper round, and Christmas Post and summer casual work in the Oxford Examination Schools. The Christmas Post when I was 15 paid for my first suit, and made it possible to go to Ballroom Dancing lessons- and get to grips with the opposite sex, to the astonishment of my "peers" in the boys Grammar School.

We actually got a cheque from Inland Revenue this week for Mrs Cass' overpayment of tax on her pension. In fact when she got her P60 and I thought they had deducted too much earlier in the year, she suggested that I should do her tax Online as I have done mine the last two years, and got a refund both times.

Cass

Morning Cass

I made sure I had a rest yesterday afternoon, no napping, so an early night last night

Do you like dancing or did you just do it meet the girls?

I have two left feet. I do enjoy a barn dance but there doesn't seem to be many of those anymore and I have always had a yen to learn a Morris Dance or two so if that opportunity ever presents itself I would give it a whirl

Peanut

Morning Peanut

Yes. I suppose I do enjoy dancing..

And Mrs Cass reproaches me that we had projected taking up dancing when we retired.. but then we never actually projected buying a second house etc, nor beginning to get to feel decrepid. WE do tend to get caught up in "Strictly"- but in fact that programme just really emphasises that nowadays almost everything is about "showing off" and pairing off, not about bringing people together- which was the point of a ball and a ballroom.

When we were first married we did go to evening classes for a year or so. But the question of levels was a bit difficult. I had learned Ballroom and Latin American up to when my then girlfiend and I started preparing for our "Gold".

Mrs. Cass had been doing ballet, her great passion, since about the age of seven, and was always interested in the challenge of new steps. But it meant in practice that I had to go back to the most basic steps an start all over again, while Mrs.Cass never "got" the fact that Ballroom Dancing is essentially social and sociable, qualities that, in fact, neither of our home backgrounds possessed.

In a way we both rebelled as teenagers- as teenagers do, and both of us rebelled through introspection, reading, thinking, and loving to just wander around on our own in Nature. But, I can see it very clearly now, that, perhaps in part because my family situation was much worse than hers, I realised that any hope for me involved coming to terms with the outside world in a way which was clearly impossible for those of my family that were left, after my brother had gone into the RAF, surely in part to get away.

So that two piece suit that I bought in the Burton's New Year Sales allowed me to step out into the world at the age of 15 as a "young man", as one did in those days. And, short of funds as I, and we were, that "stepping out" involved two cheap new weekly elements in my life. (a) I discovered a little hall in the centre of Oxford where a couple of professional dancers taught various classes and (b) I decided to go and join in the singing that I had often heard in the bright modern Church that I had often passed when walking the dog.

I suppose both decisions had "history" behind them. Some of my earliest social experiences involved the dances that my father organised in the late Forties as the Social Secretary of the local Labour Party. It was a time of austerity when ballroom dancing, choral singing and DIY entertainment were all part of keeping up the morale of the community.

And both dancing and the Church were crucial in taking me through what I described in a song cycle I wrote when I was 30 as "The Journey From Child to Man".

By then I had a wife, an 18 month old son and a profession so I supposed that I could say that I was properly a man.

Cass

Hi Cass

It is a lovely Auntum day here, seasons greetings to you

I loved reading that last post, it made me smile to think of you 'stepping out' in your Burtons suit. I'm quite intrigued as to how the church was crucial to you,I s'pose I am asking in what way, spiritual, communal, social. I hope you don't mind the question.

I got through everything I needed to during the week, so I feel I can just dump the stress of that for a couple of days and make the most of the weekend

Peanut

Morning Peanut

Good to read that things are positive and you can feel that you merit a week-end.

As for the Church, very much like ballroom dancing, it seemed a logical and natural way to start to live as an individual in my own right and independently of the tragedy that was our home life.

But I had already taken responsibility for my life before that Xmas Post and its earnings.

At 15 there was the whole question of whether I should leave my grammar school and start work, or not. Around the age of ten I had conceived this ambition to get to university, and this meant the crucial decision to insist on staying on. The pretty toxic relationship between my mother and father were stirred up by this: my father favouring an apprenticeship in motor mechanics and my mother really anxious that her son might get to university.

But realising that ambition was quite a challenge for the purpose of my lessons at Grammar School had often not been obvious for someone not born into that kind of middle class culture: and I realised that I had not really acquired the base that I needed to tackle O Level.

But our Oxford School took only Oxford Examinations and I had only to enter their offices, take out some of my newspaper round savings and buy the syllabuses and sets of past papers, so that I could more or less start from the beginning in those subjects that are cumulative. In fact the following summer I was much better prepared, and exceeded by some distance the exam performance of all my classmates.

It was also the time that I lost weight, became physically active, and started a regular regime of physical exercises and training runs. But in all of this I was basically alone and doing it for myself, within the rather strange and spartan tradition of the Grammar School, that was based upon the Thomas Arnold Public School. My parents could not help for they had left school of 12-13.

So both dancing and the church were part of the process of moving out and becoming part of the wider, and really living, reality, and so beginning to live as a real human being of my time.

"Getting to grips" with the opposite sex, therefore, did lead to girlfriends. But actually both the dancing and the church brought me into warm and friendly contact with the feminine side of life that was largely missing in my home and my school. Ballroom Dancing involves things like the Snowball that are deliberately intended to "break the ice", throwing total strangers into one anothers arms and making them learn to mix and "get along". I taught me to be totally at home and relaxed in female company and able to mix without embarassment.

And the Church "embraced me" in friendship in just the same way. Our lovely vicar, a refugee from Eastern Europe, had taken the name "Dr.Hope", and he had a very wholistic view of life that suited me. e.g. As I habitually attended evensong for a year or so, one evening as I was going out and shook his hand, he said that really it might be worth my while coming to morning service because there were quite a few rather pretty girls attending at the time.

In fact, though many homes had a family TV by then, teenage life was often still dependent upon DIY, and I became one of the committee organising and running our Church Youth Club.

There were, of course, large questions to face up to regarding God and religion. Famously the "Bishop of Woolwich" wrote a book back then entitled "Honest to God".. But I had grown up within the embrace of the beauty of Oxford, purpose built for the exploration of a Humanist Christian Civilization: and the whole idea of going to university was really inspired by this idea of a venture and Odyssey towards, as far as possible, trying to produce things on Earth that can only happen totally in Heaven.

And those who attacked religion and the whole idea of God seemed to do so on the basis of what the History of Man proves about God, using "Heavenly" standards in order to condemn God. In practice such people then try to play God and wipe out those parts of Creation that they have decided are "vermin", justifying "necessary evil" as a short term necessity. Perhaps not surprisingly for someone whose childhood was over-shadowed by Hiroshima and the Nazi Holocaust, I have often felt that, given the choice of marching to the gas chambers as a believer or staying alive in a world that had been "purified", my gut instinct would take me with those who believe in good and turning my back on those who practiced necessary evil.

But there are no short cuts on this particular journey.. And on that most crucial adolescent part of my journey- my ascent on university entrance- the friendship of a woman and mother, who was part of our Youth Club team, and also of my dancing-partner girlfriend- were crucial.

But by the time that I had five A Levels, more than enough to get into university, I had realised that Oxford was still Matthew Arnold's place of "Sweetness and Light" and "Dreaming Spires". I felt that my journey involved turning my back on Oxford and heading out to discover life, as I had had earlier to turn my back on my family in order to discover life, trying at the same time to keep a lifeline open so that I might help those left behind their own escape.

Cass
.

Morning Cass



A quick post this morning but I just wanted to say what an incredible journey. It is really fascinating to read, how your place in history, the people and organasations, the place in which you lived influenced your life which is half the story I guess.
You responses, the decisions you made and the determination to achieve your goal of going to university and to carve out a life for yourself shows real character



*leaves extra * I think we might need them today

Peanut

Morning Peanut

Hope you have a good day.. Is Hiccup home for the day? I rather assume that the college involves more travelling than before.

Actually- I have realised just how much "going out and getting to grips" with people counted in my life, and how I have allowed myself to become almost as isolated as Mrs Cass and her family, as some of the outward bound generation have died while others are getting too old for adventures.

There was an old vaudeville song "My World you do look queer" performed by Stanley Holloway, in which he walked down the street meeting all kinds of people who said that to him and he gradually got to feel at death's door. Until someone said how great he looked, and then suddenly he was fine.

Thus last summer I chanced upon an old pupil outside the old school when I was turning up for a colleagues retirement- and looking a bit smarter. The pupil in question is young and attractive, having studied Peforming Arts and actually done enough West End shows to prefer running a small club teaching her first love gymnastics- which she did to international level up to about 14-5. It does an old body good when such a young lady's face lights up with pleasure and she says "Sir. You do look fit!".. especially when later on you remember that "fit" these days does not mean quite the same as of old.

And it makes me realise that I have made a bit too much of having to walk away from the world, hoping that the world might actually come to find me.. If you do not "opt into" the world it is usually too busy to go out of its way to fit you in.

So there were pupils who when we parted saying "Have a good life" also said that it would be nice to keep in touch sometimes. A couple did back when I joined Friends Reunited, one telling me that no-one used that anymore.. And I can see that our children use Facebook to creat some kind of "Joined up" world. So I looked at the h2g2 Facebook link, which would not let me have an account on the same line as Mrs Cass.

Anyway I used Mrs Cass' Facebook account to check up on lots of those old pupils in the last couple of day. Just looking at the hundreds of photographs of people whose on going story has been bound up with mine has reminded me of all that love and affection from some, which helped to give me a sense of worth and belonging.

So late last night I set up finally my own email account and am now wondering whether I even have a photo to post..on facebook.

As for your opening statement about "your place in history" I suppose almost all the work that I have done in history is based upon the fact that "high-achieving individuals" are those who read their times and manage to catch the tide in the affairs of man.

Cass

Hello Cass

I have seen the topless thread and don't really know what to say, especially as I am off out shortly. I'm not sure I want to post, certainly I am not going to panic post. You are my friend it is difficult not to feel defensive

I hope you are ok

Peanut

Peanut

Good day to you.. An interesting day.. I woke up feeling initially terrible.. And then decided to act on "putting my own house in order".. I really could not face my normal breakfast etc routine and hanging around in pyjamas..So I immediately got dressed and went out for a bracing walk for nearly an hour. It did me a power of good.. And I did not even feel like breakfast afterwards. Yesterday was so wet I hardly went out at all, and it seemed dark so early. I can not have used up much energy, and sometimes one can just eat out of habit.

Since then I have put another post on the topless thread, having had a really frustrating time late last night, when I lost my reply to HonestIago, amidst other blips- constantly having to sign on etc.

I am not sure exactly what you mean about the Topless thread.. If you feel like being "on my side" please do not post just as an act of friendship.

I think that you have probably understood by now just why I have such a strong and individualistic approach and persona. I am an old "warhorse". On Saturday I had a lovely little walk with our neighbour and her little girl, 2 next week. We encountered a neighbour from over the road with his huge dog, who barked at me. Our next-door neighbour said that her old dog used to bark sometimes in the house, and she would say to him that it was OK, it is only Cass with his loud voice- penetrating from inside our house to hers, though we are detached from each other.

Some of those responses are such barking- and to my mind "up the wrong tree". But if they feel that people are ganging up on them they will just retreat more into their entrenched positions.

I suspect that, when and if I ever find a publisher, any eventual editor will want to cut out a great deal just for the sake of any potential readership.

Hope you are having a good day.

Cass

Hello Cass

I wouldn't respond just out friendship, that h2g2 has become so partisan is one of the reasons that people are leaving in droves.

The state of h2g2 troubles me, it is something that I have managed to put them aside (well, mostly) for a while and just bibble around on my threads in my gooey goodness, but they seem to keep bubbling to surface. I have my comfort zone, which is good for me, I enjoy the time I spend here and the people I spend it with, I don't like it I suppose when these worries intrude on that head space

I will stay out of the Topless thread because I can only see that it will get messy to get involved and that in itself makes me heavy hearted

end of grouch, sorry

We went to Glastonbury today and wandered round the village, I think Hiccup is eyeing up birthday presents. We did enjoy ourselves

Peanut

Hi Peanut

You are better placed than me I believe, but do I detect perhaps a different sense of "ownership" and tenuous belonging, which would be quite natural under the circumstances.

I know that h2g2 existed before the BBC took it on, but that surely made it part of a global public-service system. When the BBC declared that it was abandonning it, a group of "partisans" and volunteers made sure that it continued to live on. A bit like Britain and Rhodesia, and Mr Mugabe and his "war veterans" like to treat Zimbabwe as their "personal space" and resent these "post-colonial" intrusions from the post-Imperial "global village age".

Nice to hear about a trip to Glastobury. Mrs Cass' homeopath lives down near there. And are birthday wishes due soon?

Cass

oh god Cass,*gasp*



comparing to Zimbabwe is harsh and makes think me, you what?

on the other hand these sorts of things often happen at a Sunday lunch when my family get together

Peanut

I suppose "a bit harsh" sums up an approach I often use in potential conflict situations, for I tend to use the scientific technique of magnifying situations (as in the use of telescopes and microscopes) in order that people might perceive "the shape of things to come".. "if people do not change their ways"..and thing just increase and multiply.

Unfortunately so much "scientific" thinking depends upon "post-mortem analysis", being wise after the event and resorting to blame and recrimination, while trying to make something vaguely functional in a kind of "scrap heap challenge"... I may have already recounted the story of my excellent Headteacher who acknowledged that, with Hindsight, I had usually been right.. Not really much comfort when opportunities have been lost.

Reading your earlier post, I realise that it may have been Hiccup looking for presents for herself- not you.

Cass

Hi Cass,

I tend to go the opposite way. Ramping up a situation up is tends to be inflamatory. You are doing yourself no favours on the Topless thread.

~jwf~ doesn't mind poking a fire and you are are experating people like Vip, that takes some doing

StoneAart, Trig, Honestlago are also good people, not ones for taking sides and I don't see that you have listened and thought about what they have posted, I mean really considered from in their shoes. I am not saying write a long post back to them but sometimes I worry that you can be a little oblivious to what is going on around you

The whole point Cass is to communicate with each other, which as you know takes a whole of skills not just putting your point across

I'm sorry that is blunt, pretty brutal even

Please go careful

your friend

Peanut

er, first sentance, I would tend to go the other way in this instance

Hi Peanut

It is not a question of "ramping up a situation" but presenting people with the logical outcomes of their ideas.

It is perhaps true as Matthew Arnold said that the English especially are not prone to thinking things through to their logical conclusion.He said that somehow an English reserve checks them from going too far. And he specifically praised the German ability to fully think things threw.

As I have written on other threads at other times, the Nazi Germans were entitled to feel that they were just take the full logic of an English/British conception of the World Chaos and the Malthusian nightmare and marry it to their own sterling resolve to deliver the Final Solution that would save Humankind and make it possible to think of our story going on another thousand years.

The problem with that English tradition of "ducking and diving" by this time was that it had served the English very well when mighty powers were creating the main thrust of world history, like great dinosaurs, producing havoc around them, and thus lots of opportunity for a small quick-witted country that had a real expertise in "catching the tide in the affairs of man"..

But we are now signed up to exactly those kind of monstrous commitments, in a "do or die" reality, of the kind that Hitler imposed on the Germans. For our post-war world actually assumed that the Nazis got a lot of things right, though no politician actually can say it. The problem was not the policies but totalitarianism and Hitlers paranoid dictatorship.

But I was attracted as an adolescent to the more rigorous and far-seeing German and French approach to life,though my flirtation with Germany and German girls was very brief. French culture was generally more popular and less dark in those post-war decades. Many French people are amazed and delighted to meet an Englishman who engages with ideas the way that I do; and I have often thought that I should really approach French publishers. The kind of stuff that I write is being constantly published it seems in France.

The British stick with trying to just "cover three main points"- the same old ones.

Cass

Cass

You are not presenting logical outcomes or corralations and this tendancy to relate things to the worse things that have in human time like the halocaust is pretty offensive. I could try and argue against it but I can't detangle to find a start point.
And I would only get another long post back

I don't think you did listen to me then, there is no feedback or acknowledgement that you have heard what I was saying, let alone taken it onboard

Peanut

Peanut

Relating things to the Holocaust may be offensive to you, but it was the daily reality and background in which I grew up and had to learn to live with. I was born in 1944 when man's inhumanity to man had not yet finished that destruction of 55million people, and it was still "counting" during my childhood when for example the Partition of India is now recogned to have killed two million people, and then the Korean War, while Europe and Asia were awash with refugees that needed the Oxford Committee of Famine Relief.

These were things that were produced by the collective force produced by millions of individual people. "For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing". The sins of omission that leave room for the sins of commission. "Don't blame me. I did not do anything"- apart, that is from "leaving undone those things that ought to be done"- in order to guarantee that our inevitable process of interaction with our world is life enhancing and not life destructive.

The windows of opportunity in the history of the last few centuries have been few and short, and our present historically privileged lifestyle is historically anomalous and quite possibly leading us to a Dead End. As jwf observed on a recent thread "the meek shall inherit the Earth" because though we may have pity for those who live in terrible poverty and need, they probably have a better chance of their way of life enduring into the Future, as it has already endured over centuries indeed Millennia. Ours is less than a century old and will probably destroy itself before it destroys the Earth.

The need for a sweeping change based on change by every person is the theme of many of the contributions to a book called "The Way Ahead. A Visionary Perspective for the New Millenium" (1992)

Just opening it at random my eyes fall upon "The energy of millions of minds for regeneration can create deep and lasting change. The ability to imagine is far more than just a helpful tool on the way to making something happen. Imagining is what makes it happen..Imagination is the vital key to challenging and transforming a darkened world."

John Lennon's "Imagine" was part of the London Games that touched so many of the individuals who got caught up in it, and who now know experientially that their contribution to the massive task of creating a better world is "atomic".

It may not be a convenient truth for people who are just satisfied with what J.K. Galbraith called "The Culture of Contentment", which includes people who feel that doing things in cyberspace can somehow sum up to a "real presence". When machines and technology crash we are left with trash.

In friendship and sorrow.

Cass

Cass,

I am tired now so I am going to leave this for tonight

I would like to end on a note of friendship not of sorrow though, I can't say that I am enjoying this but we work through our differences, elsewise we would not have got this far to be friends

please do not be too sorrowful about this, or the world, there is much good in it

Peanut

Peanut

Yes. There is much good in the world.. especially here in Greater London where people have chosen, or been compelled, to face full on the struggle for the Future, in spite of the best efforts of evil.. London is equipped to survive as long as it remembers "to thyself be true"- that is the things that have made it possible for this great city to get through the last 1000years plus.. This too is part of my life experience.

Nite. Nite.

Cass