Record Box 2 - More Classical

A second look at my ancient vinyl LP records (Albums), and the stories they bring back, before I sell or pass them on. Following the post about the Beethoven Symphonies, this is about the other classical records I have, of which there are ten. It is incredible how an old record can remind you of things not thought about for decades, as happened much to my delight here. 

I had no interest in classical music until the age of 16 or 17. It was too highbrow and sophicticated for the likes of me. My family and friends listened mainly to popular music on the radio. 

My friend Neville was from one of the diminishing number of northern working-class families that still had a piano, and lessons had included one or two simple classical pieces. His elder brother has taken this further, and assembled a small collection of classical records. He went off to university leaving them unattended in their front room. I asked about them, and Neville told me more. I think it was Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik he played first. Attracted next by the sumptuous excitement of George Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris’, I went through the rest of the collection. That was my introduction to classical music. I tape-recorded most of them. I don’t think Neville’s brother ever knew. Thanks Mike! 

Before long, I bought some of the records myself, exactly the same versions. There was the aforementioned Gershwin, and The Planets.  

Slowly, I acquired more. Peer Gynt was an early buy. The Walton symphony fascinated me when played on the radio, although I was not sure whether I really liked it. I bought it with money over from exchanging the Beethoven boxed sets as explained in Part 1. Walton took some getting used to. It is one of those pieces you (well, I) need to listen to two or three times before you get it, but is brilliant once you do.

After going late to university, I began to go to concerts with discounted student tickets. You could hear buses going round Hull City Hall, but they had some of the best national and international orchestras. I bought some of the music I particularly enjoyed. The Vaughan Williams I still would, but the others I am not so sure. 

One record puzzles me: La bohème. How did I come by it? I cannot imagine buying it because (sacrilege!) I don’t like Opera. Although it has a few good tunes and songs, basically, I don’t like the style of singing. Ballet is wonderful, the music and colour and lighting and movement, but opera does nothing for me. 

Many adore it. One chap who travelled around Europe for the computer company I was with, took the opportunity to attend every major opera house he could. Booking a seat was the first thing he did. La Scala, Vienna State, Palais Garnier, you name it, even the Bolshoi Opera, he had been to them all.  

The first time he went, to Covent Garden, was in his twenties. At the interval, he realised he was sitting next to the formidable feminist writer Germaine Greer, who was also on her own. He asked if that was who she was. “Yes,” she snapped back, looking irritated. “Who are you?” He told her, and feeling inadequate, thought he should say something else. The first thing that came into his head was: “The microphones are very good, aren’t they”. She recognised his awkwardness, and spent the rest of the interval patiently explaining that no, they do not use microphones, what you hear is their actual voices, and talking about the training they have and techniques they use. 

He was one of the most likeable and enthusiastic people I have ever worked with. I have not thought about him or that delightful story for maybe thirty-five years. It came back gradually. What it illustrates to me is how, if we allow space for our minds to work as they should, they can pleasantly surprise us. But if we are afraid to do that, and fill them with constant smartphone distractions, it does not happen. 

The last record I have, Brahms Symphony No.3, was bought as a present in 1987. After that, my wife came along with an extensive collection of classical and popular cassettes and CDs. I went over to CDs and still use them. I prefer to listen to music through and in the order intended, and like having sleeve notes to look at. I think this is why there is renewed interest in vinyl records. As well as what some regard as better sound quality, they are objects of interest and beauty. 

Paranoia?

The last post mentioned the Beethoven Symphonies received as a leaving present from my first job. There is a second story loosely associated with it. 

As mentioned, that job lasted five years. I worked mainly under a man called Len, one of the Seniors just below Partner level. I enjoyed his dry sense of humour, but he could never understand my obsession with Monty Python and Jethro Tull. He thought them subversive. That, of course, was their appeal. 

Otherwise, we got on well and had similar interests. Len walked the Yorkshire Dales before it became popular, and took stunning photographs. He got me interested in coin collecting. He was knowledgeable about classical music, and to him I owe much of my love of it. He liked to play the Beethoven symphonies on the Stereo Cartridge player (remember those?) in his car while we were travelling to clients. Another quirk was that he was the best whistler I ever knew, as good as professional entertainers. In parts of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, he had a trick of whistling both the main and counter melodies at the same time by means of a warbling action with his tongue. I tried for years to emulate it, but was never able to. 

We went to wool spinners and dyers in Yeadon and Guiseley, an Engineering works in Ossett, a company in Bradford that made television adverts, a large firm of solicitors, a chain of bookshops with branches in York and Sheffield, Joe Kagan’s clothing factory at Elland, clients at Selby; jobs where you followed trails through offices and factories and asked questions; jobs that took a month instead of a few days; jobs dealing with systems. Not only were they interesting, your lunch was provided, sometimes in an executive dining room, or pub lunches or the original Harry Ramsden’s fish restaurant at Guiseley. 

There were small clients too: grocers, hairdressers, little garages, a model agency, a man who refurbished and exported old metalwork machines, and so on. Another client was the first winner of Bruce Forsythe’s ‘Generation Game’ television show. He showed us the prizes he had won on the conveyor belt, and talked about how Brucie had been the perfect host, taking all the contestants out for a meal after the show, and then for drinks with his friend, the Scottish singer, Kenneth McKellar. 

Len handled some of the most interesting clients, so it was good to work with him. He trusted me to be thorough and accurate. Even when occasionally he wanted me to do something tiresome, he would say that only the good guys get the bum jobs. I think he liked me, but not all was well between us when I left. I suspect other Articled Clerks, two in particular who were always in league with each other, thought there was favouritism, and had it in for me. They enjoyed working for Len, too. Other Seniors were not so pleasant to work with, and some jobs were a chore. There was one warehouse just a short walk from the office where you could be stuck for months doing the most tedious work imaginable. 

I mentioned to Len I was going to London for the weekend, to a friend’s twenty-first birthday party. It was also the weekend the clocks changed, and the topic moved on to wondering what happened with the telephone speaking clock. I joked that I would still be awake, so could go in a phone box to check. Idle chat, quickly forgotten, but I later remembered one of the two Articled Clerks was also present in the room. 

On the Monday, Len seemed unusually quiet. I was at my desk when he appeared to try to telephone an Inspector Green, and asked “Did you manage to trace it?” Naturally, I asked whether anything was wrong. Len said he had received abusive telephone calls in the early hours of Sunday morning. The calls were drunken rants full of Monty Python references over a background of shouted insults and foul language. 

He asked about the trip to London. Was it a good party? Had there been a lot of drink? Had I been in a phone box to check the speaking clock? Had I been too drunk to remember? Then he said, “It was you who made that call, wasn’t it?” He was convinced. “It sounded just like you”. I was always going on and on about Monty Python. He accused me again two or three times before I left that job, and then twice more when I saw him later at staff reunions, lastly about twenty years ago. 

The accusation was deeply upsetting, but I probably handled it badly. I did not have the social skills to deal with it. Whoever made those calls, it was not me. I would never do such a thing. Actually, I think we had returned to where we were staying soon after midnight. I have searched my mind over and over, could it have been me? I can imagine the phone box and turning the dial, Except I didn’t. It may be paranoia, or simply coincidence, but I strongly suspect those two other Articled Clerks, privately educated to put competition before principle, were behind it, as if it was all a game. 

Sadly, the damage was done. I did not work so much for Len again, and there was a distance between us. I regard it as my first experience of underhand, bastard behaviour to gain advantage. There were other examples from the same individuals, such as taking all the credit for stock checking carried out by others on a Saturday morning in a silent factory, after spending most of the time playing with fork-lift trucks and electric overhead cranes. 

Len left the firm some years later. He was not eligible for Partnership because he was a Chartered Company Secretary rather than a Chartered Accountant (Chartered Secretaries handle the statutory duties of large companies - he liked to call it the Institute of “Secs”). When other Articled Clerks became qualified accountants, some in due course were offered Partnerships. Len found himself working for them, given more and more of the bum jobs, and fewer interesting ones. It was hard to take from those he had helped train.  

Record Box 1- Beethoven’s Symphonies

I have two boxes of vinyl LP records (Albums) which I have decided to sell or pass on, but I would like to remind myself of what is in them first. They bring back forgotten stories. Two boxes is not a huge number, some friends had shelves floor to ceiling, but I had a reel-to-reel tape deck instead. I do still have my Sansui record turntable, but it has been in the loft for 30 years, and no one here is likely to use it. The tapes are long gone, but the LPs remain. 

I spent my first five years after school as an Articled Clerk with the same employer. When I left they held a collection for a leaving present. What would I like? I asked for the Deutsche Grammophon boxed set of Beethoven Symphonies conducted by Herbert von Karajan, the definitive version of the day. It seemed an appropriate leaving present from a professional firm. 

But, you observe, that is not the von Karajan set pictured, it is Karl Böhm. When I took the von Karajan set home, I put on the Ninth Symphony which begins with a very quiet section, and was dismayed to be able to hear an intermittent high-pitched whistle in the background. The manager of the record shop could not hear it, but it was still clearly audible to me on his equipment. Now I am older, it is unlikely it would be, like the high-pitched cat scarers our neighbours have in their front gardens, which my daughter can hear but I can’t. 

The manager offered to exchange the records, but fearing that the van Karajan sets would all be the same, I asked for the Karl Böhm set instead. It was disappointing. You might think that Beethoven’s Symphonies are Beethoven’s Symphonies, and always the same, but that is not the case at all. Somehow, the Böhm recordings did not have the same sense of excitement, at least for me, and I have rarely played them. He performs them marginally slower and more stately. 

It taught me that conductors, performances, and recordings can be quite different. There used to be a programme on Radio 3 on Saturday mornings called ‘Building a Library’, which compared different recordings of the same classical pieces. I think it is now in the afternoon. The variation is astonishing. Some recordings are pretty poor alongside others. 

So it is with Beethover’s symphonies. My wife has a set of CDs on period instruments conducted by Roger Norrington. They are much too quick and bright for me. My current preference, from online sources, is Daniel Barenboim with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which is made up of musicians from the Spanish world and the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine.

Here is a link to my favourite, the Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony, recorded in 2012. At 42 minutes long few may want to watch it through, and this YouTube version is broken by a couple of irritating adverts, but the balance and the way the different instruments and their solos are brought forward is, I think, absolutely superb. The video, of course, adds a dimension absent from stuffy 1970s recordings. The musicians look as if they are enjoying themselves, although the woodwind tend to show off a bit. Barenboim looks as impressively in command as ever. 

https://youtu.be/aW-7CqxhnAQ 

Infallibility

Gordon Allport (1897-1967)

I remember reading, around forty-five years ago, something by the influential psychologist Gordon Allport, who developed Trait Theory. It was about very highly successful individuals. He asked whether there might be any particular quality or qualities common to high levels of achievement. 

The successful people he studied were distinguished academics: university professors known internationally for their work, who had published shelves full of academic articles, attracted large amounts of research funding, and influenced lots of others in their field; people like himself, perhaps. 

There seemed to be only one factor common to them all: a total, unshakeable belief in their own infallibility. The trouble was that this sense of infallibility often extended beyond their area of expertise. 

I suppose a modern-day example might be a very rich and successful engineering and technology entrepreneur, who becomes an instant self-appointed expert on politics and social policy, making pronouncements on topics such as child protection, and belittling the judgment and experience of those who have been working in the field for years, because “they know better”. 

But then, what do I know? I have tried to find the Allport article again, but been unable to, so am working from memory, and personality psychology has never been my area, anyway. Although things like that don’t seem to matter much these days.

Metastatic Lung Cancer

Gamma Knife Radiosurgery (a precise form of radiotherapy)

Twelfth Night has passed, and 2025 is well and truly here. To tell the truth, I never expected to see it. 

When I had a seizure nearly three years ago, and was told I have metastatic lung cancer, and that life expectancy can be as little as three months, it was hard to believe. There were no symptoms and I was perfectly well. In the autumn we had been walking up mountains in North Wales, and my wife bought an electric bike to keep up with me on our local hills. But no one imagined I would still be here now. 

A relative said that the trouble with these things is that the treatment is often worse than the disease. Too right it is. You go through it in the hope of a cure. 

Perhaps I should have written more. Our late friend Weaver of Grass’s open and honest account of her ageing and illness was helpful as to how these awful things can play themselves through, as was gz’s (“ook?!”) account of her partner, “Pirate”. They give a human and personal perspective beyond the purely medical. I have written a little, but it seemed impossible to write about it as a whole without ending up with something too horrific to post. Every procedure is a gruesome tale. I hope the following is informative and not too insensitive, although this is not all of it. 

Take gamma knife radiosurgery (a very precise form of radiotherapy) in which a metal cage is screwed (yes) into your skull. It holds your head absolutely immobile during treatment. They want you in Leeds at 06.30 to fix it to your head, do an MRI scan, and take measurements to plot the coordinates for treatment. You might then have to sit with the cage on your head until the afternoon, because treatment can take an hour or more per person. They feed you, but there was so little space around the cage I could hardly eat. Poking poached egg and baked beans on toast with your fingers through a small gap into your mouth is very messy.  

Or consider CT-guided lung biopsy. You lie face-down on a CT-scanner while they retreat behind a radiation screen to plot positions. The surgeon then re-enters to take a sample with a tubular needle through your back. I wondered what was the cold liquid in my throat, until I coughed rich red blood out all over the scanner. There was so much of it. You don’t think of blood in your lungs as cold. 

But Top of the Procs (or Ops) has to be chemotherapy. What a foul treatment that is! Just as you begin to feel a bit better, they give you another dose and you cannot believe it possible to feel so sick. Following close at Number 2 is brain surgery. It leaves you so confused you can’t work out how to use the phone or switch on the radio. 

Hardly making it into the charts is lung radiotherapy. Despite dire predictions, there were no adverse effects for me. The most difficult part was the 50-mile round trip to Leeds every day for a month. Very tiring. 

After all that, they said it was incurable. That was two years ago when they referred me to the hospice and issued a bag of controlled narcotics. I wished they would stop coming round and telephoning, a different person every time going over the same questions. “How far can you walk?” “Do you have any problems with bowel movements”? “Can you look after your own personal hygiene?” I was still well. 

The biopsy identified a known tumour mutation, for which there is a targeted drug that blocks its growth. I believe it costs the NHS around £60,000 p.a. (the actual figure is commercially confidential). The tumours became stable, and even shrank. But the side-effects are challenging. The worst is fluid retention. It gives you elephant arms and legs that make it tiring to move around, and your clothes too tight. It collects in and around your lungs, and you become breathless and have difficulty talking. 

Several times in December, I became seriously short of breath and unable to breathe deeply enough to get it back. It took quite an effort not to panic. The usual remedy of taking long deep breaths was impossible. A cold would have finished me off. There was nothing else but to stop the drug. Despite reservations, I stopped completely for ten days and then went on to a half dose until the end of the month. Thankfully it worked. Within a week I was no longer short of breath, tired and grumpy. The dose can probably be reduced again if needed, but there is the danger it allows the tumours back. Some patients develop new mutations. 

Most frustrating of all are the things I am no longer allowed to do: they stop you driving straight away; or cannot do such as walk more than half a mile or so. I also am unable to read fluently because of a blind spot. Thank goodness for text-to-speech. And there are also things it would be silly to try, such as riding my bike, or staying away from the familiar low-risk safety of my home environment. But I can do a bit of gardening, and jobs around the house, and write blog posts, and listen to music, and enjoy a bottle of beer. My contemplative nature means not needing constant activity. As Weaver showed us, you have to make the best of things. Otherwise, you go to bed and don’t get up again.    

Have Fun With Your Tax

This young chap clearly enjoys using his HMRC app. 

Back In Time For The Weekend

New Month Old Post: first posted 2nd February, 2016

   

I see BBC2 have a new series starting tonight [in 2016]: Back In Time For The Weekend. Tonight the 1950s.

Some of us were in it long before presenter Giles Coren and the participants the Ashby-Hawkins family.