Swedish competitors were remarkably successful, but none more so than those in the ‘Running Deer Shooting, Double Shot’ event in which they took the first eight places! They also won the Team Single Shot event. In all, they took 7 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze in the 18 shooting events and 4 out of the 5 equestrian gold. They won all three medals in the triple jump, also had seven out of the eight finalists in the Women’s Platform Diving. The Modern Pentathlon was also a great Swedish success, with Swedes in the first four places, plus sixth and seventh.
In track and field athletics, however, US athletes were dominant. They were 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th in the 100m after seven (!) false starts in the final, the first three by the gold medal winner, Ralph Craig. Craig also took gold in the 200m, with Lippincott second. The US took the first four places in the 110m hurdles and the 800m, when all four runners broke the previous world record. In the pole vault, the US was 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th equal. They were also 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th in the shot put.
The 1500m was won by Arnold Jackson from Britain, with the photo finish camera used to determine second and third places. The man adjudged to come second, Abel Kiviat of the US took part in the torch relay in 1984 at the age of 91, carrying it for 1 km in NY City.
The Greco Roman wrestling bout between Russia’s Martin Klein and Alfred Asikainen from Finland went on for more than 11 hours before Klein won. But both men were too exhausted to fight Swede Claes Johansson in the final and he was declared the middleweight champion, with Klein second and Asikainen third. The light-heavyweight final between the Swedish hope Anders Ahlgren and Finn Ivar Böhling was abandoned after nine hours. Both were declared to have lost (!) with no gold awarded. They were given silver medals instead.
The Games were officially ended on 27th July with a banquet at which Coubertin made a hopeful speech about the future. But the First World War broke out two years later and the 1916 Games that were supposed to be in Berlin, were never held. Many of the competitors who took part in Stockholm were killed in the war, while Otto Herschmann, a member of the Austrian silver-medal sabre team and previously a bronze medal winner in 1896 in the 100m freestyle swimming, died in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland in June 1942. He was President of the Austrian Olympic Committee in 1912, making him the only sitting national OC President to win an Olympic medal.
Friday 30 November 2012
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Olympics - Sweden and the Games 3
The thorny question of professionalism also raised its head. The star athlete of the Games was Jim Thorpe, who won both the pentathlon and the decathlon as well as performing well in individual events. The Swedish king told him he was the greatest athlete in the world, Tsar Nicholas gave him a jewel-encrusted chalice and he was also presented with a bronze bust of Sweden’s Gustav V, but he was stripped of his medals when it became known he had played minor league baseball in North Carolina for a small sum of money. It was not until long after he had died in poverty that he was officially reinstated. Replicas of the medals were given to his family and there is a memorial plaque to him at the old Olympic Stadium in Stockholm.
The impressive red-brick venue, still in use, was constructed in two years, financed by lotteries as the Riksdag (Parliament) was doubtful about the project. The cost was far greater than originally estimated, so little has changed in that respect too. There was no Olympic Village. The US contingent lived on the boat they came to Stockholm in, while most others stayed at small hotels or rented private rooms.
There were also two tennis events, one indoors, the other out. Both were held before the official opening of the Games, indoors at the beginning of May, outdoors in late June. The covered court tournament attracted a stronger entry as the other one clashed with Wimbledon. There was disappointment for the Swedes in the outdoor mixed doubles final, won by a German pair. The home players would undoubtedly have given a better account of themselves had Sigrid Fick not smashed her partner’s face instead of the ball early in the match. According to the official report of the Games, the incident ‘seemed to put him off his game, for his play fell off tremendously’.
The soccer tournament was popular, with eleven teams, all from Europe, taking part. Britain beat Denmark 4-2 in the final in front of a crowd of 25,000. Eleven of the side’s 15 goals in the tournament were scored by Harold Walden, who later became a popular music-hall comedian. The most remarkable feat, however, came from Gottfried Fuchs of Germany, who scored ten goals in one match, against Russia.
(More to come)
The impressive red-brick venue, still in use, was constructed in two years, financed by lotteries as the Riksdag (Parliament) was doubtful about the project. The cost was far greater than originally estimated, so little has changed in that respect too. There was no Olympic Village. The US contingent lived on the boat they came to Stockholm in, while most others stayed at small hotels or rented private rooms.
There were also two tennis events, one indoors, the other out. Both were held before the official opening of the Games, indoors at the beginning of May, outdoors in late June. The covered court tournament attracted a stronger entry as the other one clashed with Wimbledon. There was disappointment for the Swedes in the outdoor mixed doubles final, won by a German pair. The home players would undoubtedly have given a better account of themselves had Sigrid Fick not smashed her partner’s face instead of the ball early in the match. According to the official report of the Games, the incident ‘seemed to put him off his game, for his play fell off tremendously’.
The soccer tournament was popular, with eleven teams, all from Europe, taking part. Britain beat Denmark 4-2 in the final in front of a crowd of 25,000. Eleven of the side’s 15 goals in the tournament were scored by Harold Walden, who later became a popular music-hall comedian. The most remarkable feat, however, came from Gottfried Fuchs of Germany, who scored ten goals in one match, against Russia.
(More to come)
Wednesday 15 August 2012
Olympics -- Sweden and the Games 2
The early revivals differed from the modern Olympics in that they were on a national rather than international level. However, the first Games at which all the continents were represented were not those in Athens in 1896, but in Stockholm in 1912. There were a number of other ‘firsts’:
* the use of photo-finish equipment
* electronic timing (as a back-up for the stopwatch)
* swimming events for women
* the modern pentathlon (introduced by Coubertin)
* an official poster
Known as the ‘Sunshine Games’ because of the fine weather, they were also acknowledged to be the best organized to date and served as a model for later Olympics. There were nevertheless political and other controversies that too, were to recur.
* The Russians were dissatisfied about a separate team being allowed to take part from Finland, then a Grand Duchy of Imperial Russia. (When the Finns beat the Russians at football, the Russian flag was raised — with a placard saying the Finns had won!)
* The Austrians were unhappy about a separate team competing from Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
* The star athlete of the Games, Jim Thorpe, was stripped of his medals when it became known he had played minor league baseball in North Carolina for a small sum of money. It was not until long after his death that he was officially reinstated.
* The poster was not accepted by some countries. In China, the Postmaster General banned it as ‘offensive to Chinese ideas of decency’ and when it was displayed at a railway station in The Netherlands, it was confiscated as being ‘in the highest degree immoral’.
More to come...
* the use of photo-finish equipment
* electronic timing (as a back-up for the stopwatch)
* swimming events for women
* the modern pentathlon (introduced by Coubertin)
* an official poster
Known as the ‘Sunshine Games’ because of the fine weather, they were also acknowledged to be the best organized to date and served as a model for later Olympics. There were nevertheless political and other controversies that too, were to recur.
* The Russians were dissatisfied about a separate team being allowed to take part from Finland, then a Grand Duchy of Imperial Russia. (When the Finns beat the Russians at football, the Russian flag was raised — with a placard saying the Finns had won!)
* The Austrians were unhappy about a separate team competing from Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
* The star athlete of the Games, Jim Thorpe, was stripped of his medals when it became known he had played minor league baseball in North Carolina for a small sum of money. It was not until long after his death that he was officially reinstated.
* The poster was not accepted by some countries. In China, the Postmaster General banned it as ‘offensive to Chinese ideas of decency’ and when it was displayed at a railway station in The Netherlands, it was confiscated as being ‘in the highest degree immoral’.
More to come...
Saturday 28 July 2012
Olympics -- Sweden and the Games 1
Pierre de Coubertin was by no means the first person to revive the ancient Olympic Games. The idea was born much earlier in the Renaissance period, with its renewed interest in the classical world. Thus the first Cotswold ‘Olimpick Games’ were held in England in the 17th century and there were similar events in other countries well before the first of the modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.
An Olympic Association formed in southern Sweden arranged its Games at Ramlösa (Helsingborg) in 1834, with four series of competitions that included jumping over a horse and climbing a mast, as well as running various distances. They were all held on the same fine summer’s day in July.
The first event was a kind of gymnastics competition, in which there were seven competitors. It was won by a student from the old university city of Lund, who was awarded a gold ring. This was followed by a race in which an apprentice blacksmith finished ahead of nineteen other runners, he being similarly rewarded, while the winner of the wrestling tournament, in which seven men took part, was given a silver jug. Competitors in the final event had to climb a slippery pole some 10m (33 ft) high, with a silver cup going to the first person to bring it down from its perch at the top. As this favoured the first ones to try, lots were drawn to decide the order. However, the hearts of the crowd went not to the winner, but a young boy who later shinned up the soapy pole in great style, and they made a collection for him.
The prime mover behind the Helsingborg Games was a gymnastics and fencing teacher, Gustaf Johan Scharteau. He held them again in 1836 and later turned his attention to Stockholm where a similar event was scheduled for 1843 in the large open area known as Gärdet. Unfortunately, it proved a dismal failure, not because of a lack of public support, but the reverse. It was too popular. Far more people came than the officials expected or could cope with. Tickets had been sold, but there were thousands of gatecrashers and all ended in chaos. Moreover, the winner of the slippery mast-climbing event had only just received his prize when it was snatched from him by one of the spectators, whereupon a new event was added to the schedule, a great chase after the culprit, who turned out to be a 14-year-old boy.
More to come...
An Olympic Association formed in southern Sweden arranged its Games at Ramlösa (Helsingborg) in 1834, with four series of competitions that included jumping over a horse and climbing a mast, as well as running various distances. They were all held on the same fine summer’s day in July.
The first event was a kind of gymnastics competition, in which there were seven competitors. It was won by a student from the old university city of Lund, who was awarded a gold ring. This was followed by a race in which an apprentice blacksmith finished ahead of nineteen other runners, he being similarly rewarded, while the winner of the wrestling tournament, in which seven men took part, was given a silver jug. Competitors in the final event had to climb a slippery pole some 10m (33 ft) high, with a silver cup going to the first person to bring it down from its perch at the top. As this favoured the first ones to try, lots were drawn to decide the order. However, the hearts of the crowd went not to the winner, but a young boy who later shinned up the soapy pole in great style, and they made a collection for him.
The prime mover behind the Helsingborg Games was a gymnastics and fencing teacher, Gustaf Johan Scharteau. He held them again in 1836 and later turned his attention to Stockholm where a similar event was scheduled for 1843 in the large open area known as Gärdet. Unfortunately, it proved a dismal failure, not because of a lack of public support, but the reverse. It was too popular. Far more people came than the officials expected or could cope with. Tickets had been sold, but there were thousands of gatecrashers and all ended in chaos. Moreover, the winner of the slippery mast-climbing event had only just received his prize when it was snatched from him by one of the spectators, whereupon a new event was added to the schedule, a great chase after the culprit, who turned out to be a 14-year-old boy.
More to come...
Tuesday 10 July 2012
On their minds (2)
With the torturous tooth no longer uppermost in my thoughts after the antibiotics had done their temporary work, I was soon among a different set of local inhabitants, thousands of miles away from those concerned about the Wellington ‘spy car’. So what was on their minds?
Now it was gun laws, taxes on the rich and the so-called ‘trickle down’ effect, whether or not poverty is a prime cause of poor educational results, obesity, the proposed Californian high-speed rail project, healthcare and banning outdoor smoking in public areas, that drove readers to make their views known in the press.
“It’s not guns but people that kill,” stated a staunch supporter of the National Rifle Association after yet another rampage shooting – which sounded bizarre to someone who has always believed that if you haven’t got a gun you can’t shoot anybody. “California has one of the strictest gun laws in the country,” it was averred, yet at the same time it was revealed that semi-automatic weapons are not banned!
Back in Sweden, mercifully not part of the Eurozone, minds are concentrating on the all-too-brief, but intense, summer season despite its exceptionally damp start. Last month was the wettest on record in the Stockholm area and parts of the country are suffering from severe flooding. July is the main holiday month in these parts and we still have faint hopes of better weather to come, though it has yet to make an appearance on the weather maps.
Meanwhile the politicians were gathered last week on the offshore island of Gotland, along with an army of lobbyists, PR consultants, media hordes and many more for the annual jamboree in which most of them are busily employed seeking publicity for themselves or those they represent or aim to promote, while 8.1 per cent of the rest of the work force have no employment at all, with the figure for young people some three times as high.
However, holiday time it is and even my dental problems, after flaring up again for a time, are taking a much-needed rest after being calmed in my trusted tooth-soother’s lie-flat chair.
Friday 9 March 2012
On their minds
Pumped full of antibiotics and painkilling pills there’s no doubt what has been uppermost on my mind lately – an infected tooth with no respect for international agreements banning the use of torture. To find out what is on the minds of the inhabitants of the world’s most southerly capital city, however, I turn as usual to the letters they write to their newspaper, in this case Wellington’s ‘The Dominion Post’.
On the local level, the Council’s ‘spy car’ has raised the ire of many a motorist. It has been driving around photographing vehicles parked where they shouldn’t. One aggrieved lady took her complaint to court, claiming she had simply moved over to allow the spy car to pass and was so taken aback to find herself being photographed that she started to shake, and couldn’t move off until she had regained her composure. She lost her case.
Rubbish collection is another subject making many reach for pen or keyboard. There is a charge for rubbish bags as well as bins, and the charges are due to rise, along with the fees for a number of other services. Also, there is considerable debate over whether the capital city should follow Auckland’s example and merge all the councils in its urban area to form a single ‘super-city’. More efficient, say some, moving power away from the people, say others.
Nationally, there is much discussion of the Government’s well-advanced plans to sell off 49 per cent of four, highly-profitable, state-owned power companies. Although heralded in the autumn election campaign last year, the move is largely unpopular, to the extent that the unions and certain other organisations are trying to get at least 300,000 registered voters to sign a petition calling for a referendum on the matter. As legislation paving the way for the sell-off has already been introduced in Parliament, it could be as one commentator put it like trying to lock the stable after the horse has bolted.
Also unpopular among a majority is the sale of a block of 16 dairy farms to a Chinese company, with complaints that New Zealand interests have been ignored by the National (Conservative)-led Government under John Key, a former currency trader in London, said not to have hesitated to speculate against the NZ dollar during his time there. The farm sale is now under review.
The Government also plans a number of cost-cutting measures to reduce the budget deficit, including ‘reforms’ to welfare benefits, and cutting a large number of public service jobs, among them 300 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, critics claim, could seriously affect the country’s diplomatic representation overseas.
In all, there are a lot of people beginning to feel the pain – without having an infected tooth.
On the local level, the Council’s ‘spy car’ has raised the ire of many a motorist. It has been driving around photographing vehicles parked where they shouldn’t. One aggrieved lady took her complaint to court, claiming she had simply moved over to allow the spy car to pass and was so taken aback to find herself being photographed that she started to shake, and couldn’t move off until she had regained her composure. She lost her case.
Rubbish collection is another subject making many reach for pen or keyboard. There is a charge for rubbish bags as well as bins, and the charges are due to rise, along with the fees for a number of other services. Also, there is considerable debate over whether the capital city should follow Auckland’s example and merge all the councils in its urban area to form a single ‘super-city’. More efficient, say some, moving power away from the people, say others.
Nationally, there is much discussion of the Government’s well-advanced plans to sell off 49 per cent of four, highly-profitable, state-owned power companies. Although heralded in the autumn election campaign last year, the move is largely unpopular, to the extent that the unions and certain other organisations are trying to get at least 300,000 registered voters to sign a petition calling for a referendum on the matter. As legislation paving the way for the sell-off has already been introduced in Parliament, it could be as one commentator put it like trying to lock the stable after the horse has bolted.
Also unpopular among a majority is the sale of a block of 16 dairy farms to a Chinese company, with complaints that New Zealand interests have been ignored by the National (Conservative)-led Government under John Key, a former currency trader in London, said not to have hesitated to speculate against the NZ dollar during his time there. The farm sale is now under review.
The Government also plans a number of cost-cutting measures to reduce the budget deficit, including ‘reforms’ to welfare benefits, and cutting a large number of public service jobs, among them 300 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, critics claim, could seriously affect the country’s diplomatic representation overseas.
In all, there are a lot of people beginning to feel the pain – without having an infected tooth.
Sunday 19 February 2012
Time travel
My latest time-machine travel (see previous post) took me to New Zealand on the first day of this year. It was December 30 when I boarded the plane in San Francisco, the morning of January 1when it landed in Auckland. New Year’s Eve had vanished. Gone without murmur or mention, let alone festivity. The nearest I came to any celebration was the sight of some bedraggled left-over revellers in Queen Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare.
Auckland is the country’s biggest urban area by very far, with about a third of the country’s entire population of some 4.4 million people. But it hasn’t been the seat of government since 1865, when the move was made to the more centrally located Wellington, the world’s most southerly capital city, where I have been for the past month. It is built on and between the steep slopes that surround one of the world’s biggest deep-sea harbours. Look up and you can see innumerable private homes and commercial buildings perched on the steep hillsides, often amid greenery. Very attractive – but for the fact that this is very much an earthquake-risk region with no fewer than four fault lines, one of them running through the city.
The last major quake may have been in the 1850s, but there have been two well above 4 on the Richter scale felt here since I arrived and the next really big bang could come tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time or many decades or scores of years from now. This has been known for a long time, of course, but minds have been sharpened by the Christchurch disaster on February 22 last year, when much of the centre of that city and thousands of homes were destroyed, or have had to be demolished. 185 people were killed, 115 of them in one high-rise building. And most of the devastation remains to be seen. And repaired.
A new report into the ability of Wellington to withstand an earthquake on a similar same scale estimates it would cost the economy 37 billion NZD (tens of billions of anyone’s money), that many important enterprises and the Government itself could be forced to leave, perhaps permanently, though little is said about the potentially devastating human cost. 435 city buildings have been identified as being particularly hazardous. Many are located along important roads so that the few routes into and out of the city could be blocked by rubble.
A map has been published marking in red streets at risk from what are termed ‘earthquake-prone’ buildings, while those 'potentially' at risk are in orange. If I look at the street where I am staying and where I am right now (in a high rise building)... I see it is in the darkest of reds.
Hmm...
Auckland is the country’s biggest urban area by very far, with about a third of the country’s entire population of some 4.4 million people. But it hasn’t been the seat of government since 1865, when the move was made to the more centrally located Wellington, the world’s most southerly capital city, where I have been for the past month. It is built on and between the steep slopes that surround one of the world’s biggest deep-sea harbours. Look up and you can see innumerable private homes and commercial buildings perched on the steep hillsides, often amid greenery. Very attractive – but for the fact that this is very much an earthquake-risk region with no fewer than four fault lines, one of them running through the city.
The last major quake may have been in the 1850s, but there have been two well above 4 on the Richter scale felt here since I arrived and the next really big bang could come tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time or many decades or scores of years from now. This has been known for a long time, of course, but minds have been sharpened by the Christchurch disaster on February 22 last year, when much of the centre of that city and thousands of homes were destroyed, or have had to be demolished. 185 people were killed, 115 of them in one high-rise building. And most of the devastation remains to be seen. And repaired.
A new report into the ability of Wellington to withstand an earthquake on a similar same scale estimates it would cost the economy 37 billion NZD (tens of billions of anyone’s money), that many important enterprises and the Government itself could be forced to leave, perhaps permanently, though little is said about the potentially devastating human cost. 435 city buildings have been identified as being particularly hazardous. Many are located along important roads so that the few routes into and out of the city could be blocked by rubble.
A map has been published marking in red streets at risk from what are termed ‘earthquake-prone’ buildings, while those 'potentially' at risk are in orange. If I look at the street where I am staying and where I am right now (in a high rise building)... I see it is in the darkest of reds.
Hmm...
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Time And Money
“The twenty-four hour day has come to stay,” wrote Max Beerbohm, who lived from the late 19th to mid-20th century. He wasn’t entirely right.
Fly from New Zealand to California, for example, and you arrive nine hours before you started despite the twelve-hour journey. That makes a forty-five hour day! In the opposite direction, you leave in the evening and arrive two mornings later. Before landing in Auckland you will have experienced the ultimate in lost time, the zero-hour day! People have been known to riot for less.
Yet it has been worse. When the Gregorian Calendar was first introduced in 1582 no fewer than ten days were lost to make up for discrepancies in the Julian system, more than ten days in countries which changed at later dates. Many people were outraged, convinced their lives had been correspondingly shortened. Airline passengers, however, seldom make a fuss.
There are, of course, many lesser examples, not involving the International Date Line or change of calendar. Move from any time zone to another and you lengthen or shorten your day, or your playing time — in the north of Sweden there’s a golf course that straddles the Finnish border, with a one-hour time difference from one side to the other.
Twice a year, with the beginning or end of summer time (or daylight saving), you don’t even have to pack a case or golf bag to get an hour added to, or subtracted from, your day.
Now in theory, the forty-five hour day has much to commend it. I have only to think of all I could do that I never have time for to see its attractions. Having experienced it a number of times, however, I know the result to be disorientation, fatigue and days wasted in trying to recover. So perhaps it’s wisest to stay within Beerbohm’s bounds.
What worries me is that the length of his hours seems to have changed. I swear they are getting shorter and shorter. The days disappear! Weeks flash by. The years roll on at an accelerating pace. I have only to blink and hey presto! — there isn’t a hope of doing a quarter of what I’d intended. I should complain to the police, the Government, the public time-keeper (if there isn’t one, there should be). What we need are daywatchmen! My kingdom for honest, trustworthy, vigilant, time-protecting persons prepared to fight for every minute.
When I think of all my unfinished projects; of those hundreds upon hundreds of slides and negatives that have been waiting in vain to be scanned and join the many thousands of unprocessed digital images on my hard drive; of the dozens of books I’ve been meaning to read but don’t (I go on acquiring them at the same rate regardless); of the films I mean to see but never do; of the concerts and sporting events I don’t get to; of the exhibitions I miss; I can only ask: where does the time go to? WHERE? And the only answer I can come up with is that it is being stolen. From under my very nose!
It isn’t as though I spend countless hours in front of the box. Why, I’m a disgrace to the good statistical name of the Scandinavian nation in which I reside, a traitor who simply doesn’t care. Every respectable home in the country has at the very least one large television set, which, if it is not to hide its head in shame will have a very flat panel and offer the chance to flick through an extraordinary number of channels. Not mine. There was a time when I had no TV at all. And I have never subscribed to any of the cable services or owned a video recorder of any description, seldom watching (free-to-air) programmes once let alone over again.
I must have been a prime suspect for the telecommunications people’s unpaid-licence-detecting brigade. What a hope they had! They could have sat outside my door for ever with that magic contraption of theirs during my total abstinence period without registering the faintest blip or bleep. They did knock once. I’m sure they didn’t believe me when I told them the situation. Mind you, I didn’t dare say I haven’t a mobile phone or car either. You can’t stretch the limits of credibility too far. Neither did I claim to be unemployed. Why, if they depended on me, the likes of Nokia, Sony-Eriksson and all the car makers of this world would go out of business, and then where would we be?
Nix. Time is being taken away from me, I say. From others too. I think I now understand why so many men shave their heads. They never manage to make it to the barber. W.H.Davies would have understood the situation perfectly:
What is this life if full of care
There is no time to cut your hair?
And time, we are told, is money, which could help explain why my bank balance is in such an unhealthy state. But only in part. On all other counts it should be bursting with well-being and you don’t have to be much of a mathematician to work out why.
Take the price of a packet of cigarettes. Multiply it by two, or three, or four. Multiply that by fifty-two and the answer by the number of years that have elapsed since I would have started smoking if I’d had sufficient talent to learn. Enter the total in the right hand column. Then start on the beer and do the same. All right? Now take wine and spirits. And steaks. Put all the totals beneath each other.
Then add a small down-payment on a modest vehicle plus monthly instalments on same. Don’t forget repairs and maintenance. And fuel. Then take a telly box of anything other than diminutive proportions, and video recorder, or hard-disk system. Include cable TV charges for many years and licence fees for some. And a cell phone - or phones. No self-respecting person sticks with an old model.
Unless you are sleeping in the street, these are just the bare, normal, natural essentials of life in acountry such as Sweden. Without a phone to your ear, or at least in your hand, you are likely to suffer from desperate feelings of loneliness and isolation when travelling on those moving call centres, the Stockholm underground trains. OK, I have a computer, but not the latest and greatest and without it I would have been destitute long ago, so that doesn’t count.
Right. Add it all up. Make additional allowance for a modest, accumulated rate of interest, minus tax. And you see what you get? Well where is it? WHERE IS IT?
There is only one conclusion to be drawn: whoever is stealing my time is making sure he has the means to enjoy it!
Fly from New Zealand to California, for example, and you arrive nine hours before you started despite the twelve-hour journey. That makes a forty-five hour day! In the opposite direction, you leave in the evening and arrive two mornings later. Before landing in Auckland you will have experienced the ultimate in lost time, the zero-hour day! People have been known to riot for less.
Yet it has been worse. When the Gregorian Calendar was first introduced in 1582 no fewer than ten days were lost to make up for discrepancies in the Julian system, more than ten days in countries which changed at later dates. Many people were outraged, convinced their lives had been correspondingly shortened. Airline passengers, however, seldom make a fuss.
There are, of course, many lesser examples, not involving the International Date Line or change of calendar. Move from any time zone to another and you lengthen or shorten your day, or your playing time — in the north of Sweden there’s a golf course that straddles the Finnish border, with a one-hour time difference from one side to the other.
Twice a year, with the beginning or end of summer time (or daylight saving), you don’t even have to pack a case or golf bag to get an hour added to, or subtracted from, your day.
Now in theory, the forty-five hour day has much to commend it. I have only to think of all I could do that I never have time for to see its attractions. Having experienced it a number of times, however, I know the result to be disorientation, fatigue and days wasted in trying to recover. So perhaps it’s wisest to stay within Beerbohm’s bounds.
What worries me is that the length of his hours seems to have changed. I swear they are getting shorter and shorter. The days disappear! Weeks flash by. The years roll on at an accelerating pace. I have only to blink and hey presto! — there isn’t a hope of doing a quarter of what I’d intended. I should complain to the police, the Government, the public time-keeper (if there isn’t one, there should be). What we need are daywatchmen! My kingdom for honest, trustworthy, vigilant, time-protecting persons prepared to fight for every minute.
When I think of all my unfinished projects; of those hundreds upon hundreds of slides and negatives that have been waiting in vain to be scanned and join the many thousands of unprocessed digital images on my hard drive; of the dozens of books I’ve been meaning to read but don’t (I go on acquiring them at the same rate regardless); of the films I mean to see but never do; of the concerts and sporting events I don’t get to; of the exhibitions I miss; I can only ask: where does the time go to? WHERE? And the only answer I can come up with is that it is being stolen. From under my very nose!
It isn’t as though I spend countless hours in front of the box. Why, I’m a disgrace to the good statistical name of the Scandinavian nation in which I reside, a traitor who simply doesn’t care. Every respectable home in the country has at the very least one large television set, which, if it is not to hide its head in shame will have a very flat panel and offer the chance to flick through an extraordinary number of channels. Not mine. There was a time when I had no TV at all. And I have never subscribed to any of the cable services or owned a video recorder of any description, seldom watching (free-to-air) programmes once let alone over again.
I must have been a prime suspect for the telecommunications people’s unpaid-licence-detecting brigade. What a hope they had! They could have sat outside my door for ever with that magic contraption of theirs during my total abstinence period without registering the faintest blip or bleep. They did knock once. I’m sure they didn’t believe me when I told them the situation. Mind you, I didn’t dare say I haven’t a mobile phone or car either. You can’t stretch the limits of credibility too far. Neither did I claim to be unemployed. Why, if they depended on me, the likes of Nokia, Sony-Eriksson and all the car makers of this world would go out of business, and then where would we be?
Nix. Time is being taken away from me, I say. From others too. I think I now understand why so many men shave their heads. They never manage to make it to the barber. W.H.Davies would have understood the situation perfectly:
What is this life if full of care
There is no time to cut your hair?
And time, we are told, is money, which could help explain why my bank balance is in such an unhealthy state. But only in part. On all other counts it should be bursting with well-being and you don’t have to be much of a mathematician to work out why.
Take the price of a packet of cigarettes. Multiply it by two, or three, or four. Multiply that by fifty-two and the answer by the number of years that have elapsed since I would have started smoking if I’d had sufficient talent to learn. Enter the total in the right hand column. Then start on the beer and do the same. All right? Now take wine and spirits. And steaks. Put all the totals beneath each other.
Then add a small down-payment on a modest vehicle plus monthly instalments on same. Don’t forget repairs and maintenance. And fuel. Then take a telly box of anything other than diminutive proportions, and video recorder, or hard-disk system. Include cable TV charges for many years and licence fees for some. And a cell phone - or phones. No self-respecting person sticks with an old model.
Unless you are sleeping in the street, these are just the bare, normal, natural essentials of life in acountry such as Sweden. Without a phone to your ear, or at least in your hand, you are likely to suffer from desperate feelings of loneliness and isolation when travelling on those moving call centres, the Stockholm underground trains. OK, I have a computer, but not the latest and greatest and without it I would have been destitute long ago, so that doesn’t count.
Right. Add it all up. Make additional allowance for a modest, accumulated rate of interest, minus tax. And you see what you get? Well where is it? WHERE IS IT?
There is only one conclusion to be drawn: whoever is stealing my time is making sure he has the means to enjoy it!
Friday 10 February 2012
Camera Lies
It never was true that the camera can’t lie. Apart from standard elementary methods that could be used to distort, such as special filters, studio lighting effects, printing paper with different degrees of contrast, shading or ‘burning in’ in the darkroom etc., there have always been more advanced levels of manipulation, including retouching negatives or prints after they were made. In the digital age, however, image manipulation has been taken to new heights.
Moreover, whereas in the past such things were not openly bragged about except perhaps in the specialist press, nowadays it is trumpeted from the rooftops. Software developers brag about the ability of their products to add or remove people, objects, wrinkles, birthmarks, other human or inanimate blemishes or shadows, and to improve or change colouring, turn colour into black-and-white and heaven knows what else.
I was sharply reminded of all this in December at the Landscape Photographer of the Year Exhibition in London. There were indeed several striking scenes on display, but there was also an all-pervading air of unreality. And by each exhibit was a little card unashamedly revealing how it had been created: the colours saturated, this part treated one way, that part another, and more revealing to those still unfamiliar with the ways of the digital imaging world, how many different shots had been ‘stitched’ together to create the finished work. At least one photographer claimed to have used twelve! I would have changed the name of the exhibition to Landscape Manipulator of the Year.
Oh for the great Cartier Bresson, who would not allow the slightest crop to his photographs let alone any form of manipulation. He portrayed life as he and his camera saw it. Unadulterated.
www.binnyandbelloe.weebly.com
Moreover, whereas in the past such things were not openly bragged about except perhaps in the specialist press, nowadays it is trumpeted from the rooftops. Software developers brag about the ability of their products to add or remove people, objects, wrinkles, birthmarks, other human or inanimate blemishes or shadows, and to improve or change colouring, turn colour into black-and-white and heaven knows what else.
I was sharply reminded of all this in December at the Landscape Photographer of the Year Exhibition in London. There were indeed several striking scenes on display, but there was also an all-pervading air of unreality. And by each exhibit was a little card unashamedly revealing how it had been created: the colours saturated, this part treated one way, that part another, and more revealing to those still unfamiliar with the ways of the digital imaging world, how many different shots had been ‘stitched’ together to create the finished work. At least one photographer claimed to have used twelve! I would have changed the name of the exhibition to Landscape Manipulator of the Year.
Oh for the great Cartier Bresson, who would not allow the slightest crop to his photographs let alone any form of manipulation. He portrayed life as he and his camera saw it. Unadulterated.
www.binnyandbelloe.weebly.com
Sunday 5 February 2012
Names
There are those who do not know and those who do not care. Amelia Bloomer’s parents could hardly have been aware that her surname would be given to an item of women’s underwear, nor Charles Cunningham Boycott’s family that he and they would ever after be associated with a refusal to have anything to do with something or other. There are many more examples of such surnames. Those of Samuel A. Maverick, Jean Martinet, Samuel Plimsoll and Etienne de Silhouette are but a few.
What is more difficult to understand is why people would consciously want to inflict first names on their offspring that could make them figures of fun. Yet somewhere in Britain there are parents with the surname Dwyer who decided to call their child Barb; a Mr and Mrs Case chose Justin for their son; the Cades have a little one called Barry; and the Turner family have an infant called Paige (doubtless hoping he will turn into a best-selling author.)
In Sweden, at least, such names would almost certainly not be allowed. The legislation clearly states that a forename may not be such that it can be perceived as offensive or can lead to unpleasantness for the person bearing it.
The above parents and those of Stan Still, Mary Christmas and Chris Cross in the UK, and Bill Board and Carrie Oakey in the US, please note.
What is more difficult to understand is why people would consciously want to inflict first names on their offspring that could make them figures of fun. Yet somewhere in Britain there are parents with the surname Dwyer who decided to call their child Barb; a Mr and Mrs Case chose Justin for their son; the Cades have a little one called Barry; and the Turner family have an infant called Paige (doubtless hoping he will turn into a best-selling author.)
In Sweden, at least, such names would almost certainly not be allowed. The legislation clearly states that a forename may not be such that it can be perceived as offensive or can lead to unpleasantness for the person bearing it.
The above parents and those of Stan Still, Mary Christmas and Chris Cross in the UK, and Bill Board and Carrie Oakey in the US, please note.
Monday 23 January 2012
Toys 'R' Noise
There was a time when toys were modest, unassuming, well-behaved objects that went quietly about their business, amusing or teaching new skills to young minds and hands, with little disturbance to anyone else. Not so any more. Now they are a loud-mouthed lot clamouring for attention, incessantly buzzing or whirring or mechanically speaking, singing, sounding sirens, beating their drum in a bid to outdo each other and create maximum disturbance to those for whom they are not intended. And that is to say nothing of the ‘games’ that are no longer played face to face with other children, but staring at a screen, with all the action and sound effects provided.
Such are the reflections of someone who once again has taken part in two Yuletide festivities on consecutive days, the first on the 24th December, the second one day later, both occasions replete with a plethora of parcels and packages for the young ones (four kids on the first occasion, five on the second), all the Xmas-wrapped battery-charged gifts just waiting for the moment to stand revealed and release their pent-up energies after being piled for days under a rapidly drying evergreen cut down long before its prime.
Oh for the silent playthings of old! And for a strict limit on the number of gadgets and games showered on children who hardly know which to turn to first. And who have no idea how privileged they are.
Such are the reflections of someone who once again has taken part in two Yuletide festivities on consecutive days, the first on the 24th December, the second one day later, both occasions replete with a plethora of parcels and packages for the young ones (four kids on the first occasion, five on the second), all the Xmas-wrapped battery-charged gifts just waiting for the moment to stand revealed and release their pent-up energies after being piled for days under a rapidly drying evergreen cut down long before its prime.
Oh for the silent playthings of old! And for a strict limit on the number of gadgets and games showered on children who hardly know which to turn to first. And who have no idea how privileged they are.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)