The Optimist's Almanac

February 29th

A break...

Since there have been very few February 29ths in history, I thought I'd run my original post explaining what this blog is about. It's also the point where I am going to have to break off for a while - I have a paid job which is getting busy again and I have to prioritise. It's easy to pick up and I'll fill in the gaps when I have more time.

I have been trying to get this idea off the ground for a while - as a book, as a newspaper column, as a tv programme, as a radio idea. No-one seems to get it, or think it's even worth 'getting'. I should have realised that a blog is the best way to realise it.

For me the Optimist's Almanac is pretty important because it's partly an attempt to change my own attitude to life and not be ground down by the way the world is, or is reported to be.

There's a lot of bad news about, we have to admit that. Newspapers and tv bulletins almost seem to take pleasure in wallowing in it. But apparently, today's bad news isn't enough - we have to be  reminded constantly that such-and-such a date is the anniversary of another terrible tragedy.

 

9/11, 7/7 and in Spain 3/11 are the days when the media really go to town and reopen the wounds once more. But there are many others and the list is growing every year - we have World Aids Day, World Holocaust Day, World Tsunami Day. I don't want to be disrespectful to any victims or their families, but private grief is one thing; we don't have to turn it into an industry.

It seems like every day is an anniversary of something horrific, dreary or depressing and the calendar is being swallowed up by the merchants of doom and gloom. If you really want to depress yourself, try this thought from Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d’Urbervilles": every year we pass over the date of our own death and never even notice.

It doesn't have to be this way. There is a more optimistic way of looking at life and reclaiming the calendar for positive thinking. This Optimist's Almanac will try and show for every day in the year both an anniversary of bad news and, more importantly, a reason be cheerful; to rejoice in the ingenuity of mankind and the amazing world it has built. Which one we focus on is up to us- are we optimists or not?

 

February 28th

The Moorgate tube disaster

In 1975 a tube train inexplicably sped through a station at the end of the line and smashed into a blank tunnel wall, killing 30 people including the driver. Fingers were pointed at this poor chap and as usual the tabloid press had the sharpest nails. It’s a feature of British disasters that some individual, usually an ordinary working man, has to be blamed. The Marchioness riverboat disaster, the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, the Paddington rail crash – they were all followed immediately by anger and outrage at the blunders of one person, whereas in almost every case, there were major corporate failings of penny-pinching and bad management. Here is an insider’s view of how badly the dead driver was treated.

So today, I will cheer myself up with this:

‘Dord’ briefly enters the language

In the 1934 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary, the word ‘Dord’ appeared as another word for “density”. You can read how it happened here and here.

It existed for five years before someone at Webster’s spotted it had no etymology. For me it’s a heartening example of how language can and should grow. I much prefer for a new word to enter the language through simple error than because of the workings of a publisher’s PR department. How many times have we read that the new Oxford English Dictionary has included the word “bling” or “minger” in an attempt to gain newspaper column inches and more sales at the expense of credibility?

February 27th

The burning of the Reichstag

Oh dear – it’s the Nazis again. Today in 1933 the Reichstag, the German parliament building, caught fire. Whoever was responsible, there was enough smoke for Hitler and Goering to eliminate Communist opposition. The German people were sufficiently spooked to give the Nazis all the slack they needed to pass the Enabling Act, which basically allowed Hitler to do whatever he liked in the interests of “national security”. His omnipotence stems from this event.

It really is heartbreaking, considering what the German people are capable of; their achievements in music and architecture and literature and engineering, that they should be so easily manipulated by uniforms, flags and oratory.

By way of contrast, today is also the anniversary of...

The foundation of the Labour Party

New Labour may have made a mess of running Britain in the last 11 years, with the biggest majority ever, but it must never be forgotten that the Labour Party, founded today in 1900, has been the single greatest force for the betterment of the lives of the working class. Almost every proposal by Labour to limit working hours, increase basic pay and improve working conditions, housing, social security and basic rights, has been opposed by the Conservatives.

Labour’s incredible post war achievement after dumping Churchill on his backside was building a welfare state. In 5 post-war years they had laid the foundations for a fair and equal society which was decades ahead of its time – the United States still hasn’t caught up with it. Welfare dependency has contributed a great deal to Britain’s problems over the last ten years (New Labour had a chance to fix that and blew it) but this anniversary has to be worth celebrating by anyone in Britain who went to school for free.

February 26th

Buddha statues destroyed by Taliban

Yes, the Taliban were armed by the United States and yes, they have committed many more horrible crimes than this, but if you want an example of the sheer bloody-mindedness and medieval stupidity of the Taliban, look no further.

The statues had stood at Bamiyan for over 1500 years and in the early days of the Taliban, they felt no need to destroy them, as there were no Buddhists left in the region to worship them and thus offend against Islam. It was only when the Taliban received a request from an international delegation for access to restore the statues that the Taliban decided to blow them up.

The argument for destruction offered by Mullah Mohammed Omar was that it was offensive to spend money to restore statues and not for humanitarian purposes. The irony in that statement from a the leader of the Taliban is almost funny.

There was an interesting plan to restore the Buddhas by a Japanese artist:

I don't know what became of it.

For today’s good news, I was going to mention that it would have been Johnny Cash’s birthday, and I’m grateful he was around to record performances like this

But I can’t have too many birthdays in this blog, so I’ll go for a kind of antidote to the Taliban:

Tim Berners Lee invents the World Wide Web.

It was today in 1991. I don’t pretend to understand this – I think technically the Internet is the computers and wires and the Web is the shared information. Tim Berners Lee enabled people to share stuff like documents, sound and videos on the Internet without understanding computers. It’s the sharing thing that defines the internet for me – stuff you can see for free because someone you don’t know thought you might like it. An astonishingly powerful agent for change that nobody could have predicted in an incredibly mercenary age. I don’t think people should be able to own other people’s creative work for nothing, but looking at it, browsing (the operative word) stuff at your leisure is an amazing and brilliant thing. Youtube, Wikipedia and Google – where would we be without them? I think Tim could borrow Sir Christopher Wren’s epitaph – si momentum requires, circumspice.

February 25th

Colt patents the revolver

Samuel Colt got his patent in 1836. He was inspired by the ratchet system on a ship’s capstan, which allowed a drum to revolve and then lock in place. Colt’s revolver wasn’t the first one ever – but he was a terrific salesman so, by the time of the Civil War thousands of Americans had the ability to kill more people much faster.

Once again we can see how the American genius for invention is undermined by the Dark Side; nothing fuels European uneasiness about Americans so much as their unnatural love of firearms.

Tom Courtenay’s birthday

Another birthday; another great Englishman. It was a great thrill for me and my flatmates, who all came down to London in the early 80s, to discover we lived around the corner from him in Putney for a bit.

Tom Courtenay, now Sir Tom, was born in 1937. He is one of those great actors whose own life, as much as his acting roles, embodied the 1960s emancipation of the working class hero.

It all comes together for me in Billy Liar – my favourite film of the ‘Kitchen Sink’ period and one of my top ten films ever. If Tom had only made this one picture, never mind The Dresser, or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner he would still merit the knighthood. 

 

 

 

 

February 24th

First meeting of the Nazi Party

You could say this was more than just a bad day in history. The assorted collection of freaks, nutters, disillusioned war veterans and intelligent opportunists had been gathering together since 1919 under the innocent sounding name of the German Workers Party. The extraordinary thing, if you believe the source, is that Hitler was sent by military intelligence to infiltrate the party and was won over.
At the infamous meeting in the Hoffbrauhaus in Munich (above) on February 24th 1920, the now imperious Hitler announced the addition of the "National Socialist" bit to the name and outlined the 25 aims of the party - anti-semitism underpinned the movement from the start. Unfortunately, the Hofbrauhaus is now a tourist attraction.

William Otis patents the steam shovel

Another great American invention, from 1839, which allowed one man and a machine to dig as much as a hundred men could dig in one day. But you'll know this if you've read "Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel" - a great kids book with wonderful illustrations. I'm annoyed though, that the rather mean Mayor of Popperville gets away with trying to cheat Mike out of his money.

The steam shovel came at just the right time to cope with the explosion in demand for railways and roads throughout the United States, and most impressively, the building of the Panama Canal.

You'll also know from Mike Mulligan, that the reign of the steam shovel was short, and that by the 1930s people were turning to diesel machines, but by then the steam shovel had built modern America.

February 23rd

USA Leased Guantanamo Bay from Cuba

In 1903 a permanent naval base was secured in perpetuity by America on the island of Cuba. Although it was never the plan to store candy floss and cuddly toys at Guantanamo bay, I don't imagine even the hawks of the US Navy could have imagined the shameful future this place would have. I've never understood how the Americans managed to maintain a military presence here throughout the Castro years and particularly the Russian missile crisis of the early sixties and yet seemed to be powerless to prevent many of the things they disapproved of. Still they have been able to get on with some top quality abuse of human rights, including, we now know, Waterboarding - a kind of controlled drowning. How many Americans wish they'd never set foot there?

Bruce Forsyth's 80th birthday

This is a cheat because Brucie was actually born yesterday (I'm sure he'd have a response to that) and I missed it, or it would have featured in yesterday's blog. Although Bruce Forsyth has made some terrible television (Bruce's Big Night) he is a genuine showbusiness legend. He has been on stage or tv in some way or other since he was a boy and is still entertaining prime time tv audiences - "an entertainer" is all he wants to be.

I have been lucky enought to work with Bruce on a few occasions - once I interviewed him for a radio documentary about the late Les Dawson and it struck me then that he was one of the last of a generation of "old school" comedians and entertainers. I also discovered, when I edited out all of Bruce's ers and ums and "ewewewers", and stuck them all together, I had what sounded like a bizarre alien ray gun: "erererewewewewerer".

Best of all for me, I got to work with him on a great episode of Have I Got News For You, when Bruce hosted it like a combination of all the gameshows he'd ever done. It was recorded around the time the Labour Government's "45 minute" lie over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was being exposed. Bruce's joke on the elusive WMD was "It would be nice to see them, to see them...nice!" Here's a bit of the show, and let's raise a glass to Brucie.

February 22nd

Members of the White Rose Movement executed

One of the things I enjoy about this blog is the stuff I find out. Today in 1943 was a shameful day for the German nation, one of many I’ll come across no doubt, but I’m glad I have learnt about the White Rose movement. It was a tiny group of incredibly brave and idealistic students from Munich, who formed a passive resistance group and tried to appeal to the nation’s young people and intellectuals, to help bring down the Nazis after the tide of the war seemed to be turning. They started a leaflet campaign and painted simple slogans on walls like “Down with Hitler”. They were ignored by the other students and turned in by a University caretaker. The three principal members, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst, were tried and executed for treason on the same day.

The first Woolworth store opens

F.W. Woolworth opened the first five and dime store in 1879 in Utica, New York. It wasn't quite as grand as this.

It wasn’t just an original idea to have only two prices but also in its day it was one of the first stores to have any fixed priced item at all – the price of most goods could usually be haggled over.

For an English kid the phrase “the five and dime” spoke as much to me of America as soda fountains, Sam Spade, Elvis, cars with tail fins and the New York Skyline (which, of course, included the Woolworth Tower). It’s inspired drama, a genre of fiction and a lovely song by Nancy Griffith.

In Britain, Woolworths were once pretty glamorous, exciting places. A great part of my childhood was spent in the Barnsley branch of Woolworths – it had pic’n’mix, a photo-booth and it sold records! It was the big city come to town for a 12 year-old in 1974.

The Woolworths tv ad was a big part of every Christmas, like a proper tv special. Everyone would wonder which cheesy celebrities will they have lined up this year (Anita Harris and the Goodies, usually). Now every supermarket from Morrisons to M&S is at it, but none can compete with the wonder of Woolies

 

 

February 21st

The battle of Verdun begins

This battle is seen as a great moment in French history, when their forces repelled a massive assault by the Germans in 1916. From it came the famous phrase “They shall not pass”. But however great the French achievement, however noble the sacrifice, and however crucial this battle was, it remains the most hideous, brutal engagement of the First World War, and that’s saying something. Verdun is the battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard – half a million Frenchmen and 430,000 Germans died. But the worst aspect of the battle was that the German objective was not a breakthrough but massive casualties. The aim was to attack a crucial, heavily fortified position which the French dare not lose, whatever the casualties; thus as long as the Germans could keep their casualties down, they could “bleed the French white". It's too appalling to think about.

Instead, try to remember today for another giant technological leap forward.

The first locomotive is demonstrated

In 1804 - the first self-propelled locomotive on rails was demonstrated at the Penydaren mining tramway in Wales. It was built by Richard Trevithick. He was a Cornishman, but Wales will always be associated with the birth of the railways for me. If you haven’t visited any of Wales' enchanting steam railways you should – it’s like being in an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, or more appropriately, Ivor the Engine.

Anyway, Trevithick, like a lot of inventors, was standing on the shoulders of some other clever people, but hats off to him, he built the first one, and although he got plenty wrong, everyone else was able to stand on his shoulders. Railway historians often say that it’s hard to imagine the impact the railways had on the 19th Centrury, but I think it's comparable to the impact the internet and the mobile phone has had on the last 10 years.

Fiction is always a good way to gauge these things: in the same way that the mobile phone and the internet have forced dramatists and film makers to dream up new ways of creating tension and excitement (imagine the plot of “Dial ‘M’ For Murder” working with a mobile), you can see how the explosion of the rail network gave Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson a great toy to play with. 

February 20th

Edward VI crowned King of England in 1547

The male heir  Henry VIII caused so much trouble to sire (see 11^th Feb); he was only nine years old and no-one could have expected him to throw himself into the Reformation with quite so much gusto. His fierce Protestant reforms teed up the religious conflict between his step-sisters Mary and Elizabeth perfectly. Can’t blame the lad I suppose, surrounded as he was by unscrupulous, opportunistic bastards, but it would’ve been better if he hadn’t been born.

I'd rather celebrate the birth in 1757 of...

'Mad' Jack Fuller 

He wasn’t mad, he was eccentric, although he was buried in a pyramid-shaped tomb, which is a bit mad.

Jack spent considerable sums on the arts, science and making the landscape look interesting. He was the kind of person we should all aspire to be – a philanthropist.

I think I would rather be known as a philanthropist than anything else (not that I’ve done nothing to deserve the title) except, maybe, “a man of letters”. There was a time when BBC radio programmes were full of philanthropists and men of letters but almost since the advent of television, they’ve disappeared. Here is a rare tv glimpse of one - it's not J.F. MacDonald, it's Bertrand Russell: