Fact really is stranger than fiction. The BBC reports today that house prices in Afghanistan’s capital are soaring. Most obviously, one ex-pat has this to say:-

According to Richard Scarth, day-to-day life in Kabul remains relatively unaffected despite the global downturn.

“That is because the economy is UN-driven,” he says. “Money just keeps coming in regardless of what is happening in the wider world.”

I was spraying my pits with Gilette “Cool-surf-tiger-action-savannah-man” something or other this morning when I noticed that it claimed to provide “over 24 hour protection”.

Now, it hasn’t escaped my notice that just 24-hour protection came before that, and I could cast my mind back to times when 12 hour protection was deemed sufficient for the modern male homo sapien.

We are all aware of the famous 1 blade, no-you-need 2 blades, no-you-need 3 blades, no-you-need 4 blades, no-you-need 5 blades, etc. indecision of the famous blade manufacturers.

In both cases we’ve seen a natural, predictable one-upmanship for a cerain time before a stagnation point is reached and there is simply no more room for blades without moving into cheese-grater territory.

The case with pit-sprays is this. Although I don’t mind the adverts calling me a dynamic 24-hour man, juggling work, wife, mistress, blood donations and my volunteering role as a mentor for under-priviledged kids who only smile when they see me coming down the road on my super-cool urban scooter, being called a 48-hour man would only imply I hadn’t had a shower in two days. And although not showering in two days doesn’t really bother old “Oh-do-I-have-to-dress-for-success?” Naz (you should see smell my record!), I still don’t like it to be pointed out to me.

Reckon they’ve already realised this? Welcome to Stagnation Point.

My my, there’s been a lot of hyphens today.

David Nutt is a professor at Imperial College London and until last week was also chairman of the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He was dismissed last week by Home secretary Alan Johnson, presumably for disagreeing with the government policy on upgrading certain Class C drugs to a Class B.

Professor Nutt has written a critical article appearing in The New Scientist today about how governments can get it wrong by not heeding their advisors when cementing policy.

Some telling excerpts are:

“Policies that ignore the realities of the world we live in are doomed to fail. This is true for just about all the biggest issues that we confront, from energy and climate to criminal justice, health and immigration. I’m not arguing that science dictate policy; considerations such as cost, practicality and morality also have a role. But scientific evidence should never be brushed aside from the political debate.”

“On ecstasy, for example, it made policy first, sought advice second – and cynically rejected the advice it was given. The result is shambolic policy-making which gives great cause for concern if that is how governments operate more generally.”

“The results of a government inventing its own reality and acting on it can be seen in the appalling consequences the George W. Bush presidency had for world peace, the environment and human rights.”

You can find the article here. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18099-david-nutt-governments-should-get-real-on-drugs.html

Here Chief Scientific Advisor Professor John Beddington backs him up saying research showing the drug to be less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes was “absolutely clear cut”, 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6902240.ece

I thought I had blogged about a science fiction story I had read called “Blood’s a Rover”. It was by Chad Oliver positing a future where a holy language is found encoded in a person’s blood.

But it was the title (as well as its appropriateness to the story) which caught me.

It’s part of a line from an A.E.Housman poem called “The Shropshire Lad”

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

Up, lad; when the journey’s over

There’ll be time enough for sleep.” 

I thought this was by Bob Dylan because of the voice and lyrics, but the style was quite different. It’s by Hockey and is being played on radio now.

Song Away :

Make me a deal and make it good for me
I wont get full of myself, coz I cant afford to be
This is small town music, this is big town music
He’s ahead of his time you know but, he cant use it
If only he could prove it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Hey

See what your man has done to the world
see what the world has done to your man
You know im leaving you, you dont need me
Lovin you wasnt always so easy

This is believe me music, this is forget me music
This is who can love me you know, this aint no roxy music
This is new form music, this is old form music
This is i paid attention not some makes his prediction music
Oh he could let me use it

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Not wanting to write a truthful song over an eighties groove
I like to let you know I’ll always be straight with you
I stole my personality from an anonymous source
And I’m gonna pay for it too, I dont feel bad about that
Give me my chance back

This is on the rise music, this i novelty music
This is who can blame music, I dont get fooled by it
This is where dyu go music, this is come home music
This is down to the wire I’m such a perfect angel music.
Who really tries

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

This is success music and what’s it to ya?
My lawyer always says these are the facts about the future well

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away

Tomorrows just a song away, a song away, a song away
Its just a song away

Heard the beautiful song by The Cardigans on Kerrang today; threw me right back to a certain Moscow cafe for a brief flash.

I had a vision I could turn you right
a stupid mission and a lethal fight
I should have seen it when my hope was new
my heart is black and my body is blue

Lyrics here http://www.nazmania.co.uk/?page_id=64#game

Let me explain. She is our current Poet Laureate, and she writes the kind of poems that don’t always rhyme. I mean they don’t rhyme rigorously, as I always expected poems to when I was younger. When I composed, my slavish devotion to metre often forced me to include/exclude words that didn’t belong in that poem (much like lyrics with “Oooh baby” filling the gaps). But it never occurred to me then that poetry can be different, and that conveying the thought might be more important. Not obeying the mathematics of poetry suddenly sets the poet free.

I admit to having, until recently, sneered at ‘prose poetry’ but now am embarrassed by my intransigence.

So as part of my repentance I’ll give you dear reader some of Carol Ann Duffy’s beautiful poems. I would advise any budding poet to make note of how easy the language is, and yet how mellifluous and evocative. Without the superfluous.

And then what

Then with their hands they would break bread
wave choke phone thump thread

Then with their tired hands slump
at a table holding their head

Then with glad hands hold other hands
or stroke brief flesh in a kind bed

Then with their hands on the shovel
they would bury their dead

Away and see

Away and see an ocean suck at a boiled sun
and say to someone things I’d blush even to dream.
Slip off your dress in a high room over the harbour.
Write to me soon.

New fruits sing on the flipside of night in a market
of language, light, a tune from the chapel nearby
stopping you dead, the peach in your palm respiring.
Taste it for me.

Away and see the things that words give a name to, the
flight
of syllables, wingspan stretching a noun. Test words
wherever they live; listen and touch, smell, believe.
Spell them with love.

Skedaddle. Somebody chaps at the door at a year’s end,
hopeful.
Away and see who it is. Let in the new, the vivid,
Horror and pity, passion, the stranger holding the
future.
Ask him his name.

Nothing’s the same as anything else. Away and see
for yourself. Walk. Fly. Take a boat till land reappears,
altered forever, ringing its bells, alive. Go on. G’on.
Gon.
Away and see.

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

p.s. This book must be returned to the library soon. You can buy it here.

Damn, I do miss playing the old game. I heard this poem on telly, it was read most beautifully and in the spirit of the Ashes I shall post it here. Try reading it out loud…

ON HAVING GIVEN UP CRICKET

I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others’ leisure.

I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.

And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I’ve done without.

And I’ll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will efface

the faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.

– Michael Laskey, from ‘Thinking of Happiness’ (Peterloo, 1991).