A Logical Response

If there is one thing that I have learned in twenty-something years of marriage to Val, it is that while she is more than happy to abide by rules and guidelines - she works in an occupation that is highly regulated by statute, after all - she will fiercely challenge any that either make no sense, are not logical, or are superfluous. One such set of rules concern the liquids that airline passengers can carry in their hand luggage. We have just returned from a week holidaying in Cyprus, and our experience at Stansted Airport on the outward journey highlighted how nonsensical these rules are, but also how the security staff who are supposed to implement them neither understand them completely nor actually enforce them correctly.

For the third year running, Val and I stayed at The Annabelle in Paphos, Cyprus

Restrictions on the amount of liquids that can be carried in hand luggage were introduced in August 2006 following what officials described as "a threat from liquid explosives."  It is lost in the mists of time - or perhaps was never actually defined - as to whether that threat was a credible one or not, but my suspicions are that this was a knee-jerk reaction to a threat so remote that it was barely plausible, but which was justified on the grounds that the authorities were doing something, even if it was not necessarily logical. The fact is that a mixture of everyday chemicals could be concocted on board a plane to create an explosive, but these individual chemicals would need to be refined and concentrated to the extent that they would  be volatile enough in their individual states to explode under anything other than laboratory conditions before being an attempt was made to combine then into an explosive state, a process that would need to be conducted in a temperature controlled environment that could not be replicated on an aeroplane. The palaver we all go through at airport security with our liquids is really little more than a piece of theatre that reassures the more nervous passenger that 'something is being done.'

Airport security, otherwise known as The First Circle of Hell

Having fallen foul of these rules in the past, we decided that prior to our flight to Cyprus we would pack our liquids in appropriate plastic bags so as not to go through that rigmarole of transferring toiletries into one at the airport. The first thing we noticed, having kept a bag from a previous holiday, was that the bag that airport security supply does not conform to their own restrictions. The rules say that passengers' liquid containers

 'must be in a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag, which holds no more than a litre and measures approximately 20cm x 20cm'

Two things here: First, the bags airport security give you are not 20cm x 20cm, they are 19cm x 19cm, which I grant you is little different, and the rules do say 'approximately' but if twenty by twenty is allowed, then that is what you should get. Second, there is no way that a bag 20cm x 20cm will hold a litre of liquid in bottles; it is not possible to get ten, 100ml bottles in one, but the bag itself will hold 1.5 litres of a liquid not in bottles even though the rule says it should hold no more than a litre. Already, these rules lack internal logic.

And let's go back to those dimensions: 20cm x 20cm is a two-dimensional measure - let us assume these refer to height and width - no measure for depth is stated, presumably because the bag airport security give you is flat, like a sandwich bag. But the rules do not say that passengers cannot use their own bags, so in the interest of using a bag that measured twenty by twenty rather than nineteen centimetres square, we used one that some suntan lotion came in from Boots. The bag measures exactly 20cm x 20cm square and is about three or four centimetres deep. It zips up and in all regards meets the rules imposed by airport security. This pleased Val who packed her liquids in this bag for the flight, confident that she would sail through security. I had my doubts, not because I thought Val was wrong, but simply because airport security is one of those areas where rules are for the obedience of all, not just the fools, and are applied stringently despite any logical argument against them. The people employed to apply the rules tend not to be open to negotiation or compromise.

Val used a bag exactly the same as this to get her liquids through airport security.

Inevitably, Val's attempt to take her own bag through was challenged. "It's too big," she was told. "Oh no it isn't," she replied, "yours are too small." Fortunately, Val had a tape measure with which she was able to prove that the bag was 20cm square and thus conformed to the rules.  As expected, the depth of the bag was challenged, but as Val pointed out, the rules do not mention depth. A supervisor was called, and he agreed that as the rules stand, there is no limit on the depth of the bag, and at 20cm square, and being resealable, the bag was compliant. So, the Boots bag passed its examination, and in theory, I suppose, one could take a bag that is 20cm x 20cm x20cm, through but that might be stretching it a bit far.

Meanwhile, although my meagre amount of liquids (contained in an airport issue bag) passed without comment, my other toiletries - a stick deodorant, a toothbrush, and a razor - were deemed worthy of closer scrutiny. I also had to remove my shoes, a process that seems to be required only of random passengers, with little or no logic. On a previous flight, I saw a woman asked to remove flip-flops for examination, while a baby in a buggy had his bootees removed and X-rayed.

On the way back, security staff at Paphos Airport passed Val's toiletries, still in their Boots bag, through without demur, but did investigate in some detail, a small bag containing some jewellery. The conclusion that I draw from this experience - and it is not the first time I have thought this - is that these security measures have little basis in logic.

The argument from the authorities would be that they are responding to credible threats or actual attempts. The shoe search began after Richard Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001. In 2006, British officials foiled a plot to blow up a plane with liquid explosives, hence our having to squeeze our shower gel and toothpaste into a small plastic bag.

This is how flights will look if the normal responses to threats are taken to their logical conclusion.

In 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 with a bomb hidden in his underwear. We should be thankful that the authorities did not apply their usual logic in response to that incident.

Taking Stock

Five years ago this summer, having been told that my job was 'at risk,' I was waiting to learn if my role was indeed going to be demised and that I would be faced with the choice of redundancy and early retirement, or if I wanted to try to find a vacant job elsewhere within the bank. It was not a difficult choice and I politely but firmly rebuffed any suggestion that my managers help me find another position.

Five years ago, my daily commutes via Liverpool Street were winding down. 

Come September, when I was told that yes, my job would be disappearing, I was reconciled to my impending change of circumstances. In fact, I was relishing the prospect of no longer having to work, but like any other life changing event - like getting married, having children, or suffering a bereavement - it is something that benefits from some consideration. Other people, already retired, had told me that what with all the myriad things they had going on in their lives, they could not now understand how they had had the time to go to work prior to retirement. And I have said exactly the same thing to people since, although there is a certain element of Parkinson's Law about it, and it is easy to sit down with a cup of tea, start browsing social media, or scrolling through the TV channels and suddenly find that your tea is cold and an hour has elapsed. In fairness though, I can remember days at work when it would have been possible to do that, but there again I had some jobs that were either feast or famine at times.

One of the things that the bank did to ease people through the process of redundancy - whether that meant early retirement, or if they needed (or just wanted) to get another job - was to bring in a company called Working Transitions to provide support in the form of workshops and seminars and advice on CV writing, opportunities to do voluntary work, or simply provoke thought on what to do in retirement. Since I had neither the need nor desire to carry on working after leaving the bank - although I would not have ruled it out completely - I had to give some thought to what I would do with all that extra time that was going to suddenly come my way, and one of the things I gave serious consideration to was writing.

Ever since I was very young I have enjoyed writing, even if simply for my own pleasure and not for others to read, and even before I retired I had been writing regularly for Romford Football Club's programme, so when considering a hobby, or pastime in retirement, writing was inevitably one of the front-runners. The internet has provided a vast array of resources for the aspiring writer;  from Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing for those aspiring to be the next JK Rowling or Jeffrey Archer, to the plethora of blogging platforms for both serious commentators and for the casual writer. And a blog seemed to me to be just the thing to provide me with an outlet with the minimum of fuss.

One of my articles in Romford FC's programme

But now, four-and-a-bit years and two-hundred and thirty-two blogs later, it is time to take stock. Are the reasons why I started writing Rules, Fools and Wise Men still valid? It started as a means to impose a bit of structure and routine into a life that, after thirty-six years of work, had seen those things taken away. It was intended to be cathartic, to allow me to examine my changed status in life, and to vent my spleen about things that irritated me, or to enthuse about things that excited me. These days I have many things going on and my blog sometimes becomes something of an afterthought. There have been weeks when I have had to think long and hard about a subject; there have been weeks when I have had to squeeze writing into a rapidly shrinking timeframe, and there have been weeks when I have had to write two blogs so that I could publish one during a week on holiday abroad.  There have been weeks when the number of hits the blog has received has been a trickle, and there have been weeks when it has been, if not quite a torrent, then at least a respectable stream. The Midland Odyssey series of blogs have proved pretty popular, and have been some of the most fun to write, but there have been some blogs that have been less well received in terms of numbers.

In his novel, Nod, Adrian Barnes, writing about writers - specifically poets - describes a scenario in which, "the sensitive souls who submitted their work to literary journals outnumbered those who read those same publications by a margin of about ten to one. Everyone wanting to be heard; no one interested in listening." There's more than a grain of truth in that, the internet has enabled anyone who wants to be a writer to be one, providing a platform, but not necessarily an audience, which has made me grateful for the number of hits - approaching 80,000 at the time of writing - that this blog has had. But that grain of truth reminds me that a reason I started this blog was for fun, even if it was just my fun.

In writing those two-hundred and thirty-two blogs - or the best part of 290,000 words - I have sometimes knowingly, and sometimes unknowingly, repeated myself. I have started off more than one blog only to realise that it is following a very similar trajectory to one of my previous efforts. I have lost inspiration and abandoned blogs a few hundred words in on more than one occasion, and I have cobbled something together without great enthusiasm a couple of times just to be able to publish something, too.

But through it all, it has been fun. But as the bookmakers' ads say, "When the fun stops, stop," and right now a little bit of the fun has gone out of writing this blog. In truth, there are times when it has become a bit of a chore recently, and that isn't what it was supposed to be.

This isn't to say this is the end, but this will be the last Rules, Fools and Wise Men for a few weeks at least. When it will be back remains to be seen; that depends either on how much I miss writing it or if some topic too irresistible to write about presents itself. Today we are all off to vote in the General Election: that irresistible topic might present itself earlier than I imagine.  

All Or Nothing

This year, I bought a diary for the first time in - well, I can't recall the last time I had a diary. It is one of the conceits we have that we can remember things without having to write them down, but with age, that conceit is shown for exactly what it is, a vanity because now, without a shopping list I would return from the shops without the single most important item I set out to buy, and without a diary I would forget appointments and regularly double-book myself.

When it comes to double-booking, everyone must be familiar with the frustration that comes with going weeks, or even months, without anything special planned, only to find that two equally attractive opportunities present themselves on the same day. Less frustrating, but much more tiring, are the times when it seems that every day there is something happening - this usually follows a period in which one's diary has been stubbornly blank for weeks. Me, I've just had one of those 'all or nothing' periods as in the last fortnight I have been to three concerts and five BBC Radio recordings.

The Friday before last, I was at the London Palladium to see Steve Hackett in concert. One time member of prog rock giants, Genesis, the first half of Hackett's show featured his solo material, including tracks from his latest - and in my view, best - album, The Night Siren, while the second half was dedicated to Genesis material, with songs from Wind and Wuthering featuring prominently. It is remarkable - and not a little scary - to note that Wind and Wuthering is forty years old this year: where did that time go? As seems increasingly common at concerts I go to, especially where the average age of the audience is north of forty-five, the show featured a very necessary interval for comfort breaks!

Steve Hackett (centre) and band at The London Palladium

Two days later, and Val and I were at the BBC Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in Regent Street for a recording of The Vote Now Show featuring Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. A topical version of The Now Show aimed squarely at the upcoming General Election, The Vote Now Show includes an element of audience participation, with members of the public asked for jokes - ours was read out in the theatre, but did not make the edit, so if you heard the show, you would not have heard our contribution. It being a lovely day, Val and I supplemented our regular walk to the BBC from Liverpool Street with a walk back along the Thames to Tower Pier and then a boat to North Greenwich before getting the Tube.

From Victoria Embankment

The following evening I was at the Islington Assembly Hall to see Polish prog rock band, Riverside.  I got into Riverside just after discovering, about ten years ago, that prog had not quietly slipped away into the night, but was in fact flourishing. The only issue I have with the band is that for some reason, I can never remember the names of their songs. Still, it was a great show on a balmy, hot evening at a great venue I had not visited before. It was not until the next morning that I learned of the terrible events in Manchester at Ariana Grande's concert the same night.

Riverside at Islington Assembly Hall

Twenty-fours later, and it was back to the BBC for Val and me, to see Quote...Unquote, the quotations panel game hosted by Nigel Rees. It's been going for over forty years and is one of those whimsical, witty shows that the Beeb do so well and in which the play-write and screenwriter Julian Mitchell was a thoroughly engaging and entertaining member of the panel.

After a night off, it was back to the BBC for the both of us to see The News Quiz. Unsurprisingly after the events of Monday evening in Manchester, security had been tightened and a suspicious package found in the adjacent Caffe Nero resulted in the building being evacuated and a late start to the recording. The News Quiz is a show for which it is quite difficult to get tickets, and although it is very popular, goodness knows what BBC Radio 4's stereotypical listener thinks of it. While many on the left-wing of the political spectrum often accuse the BBC of pro-Tory partiality, this show is so ardently left-wing and virulently anti-Tory it is a wonder the Labour Party don't use it instead of party political broadcasts. Dominated by the overbearing Jeremy Hardy, the show also featured the woefully unfunny Andrew Maxwell, whose main contribution was to witter on about those members of the population who are over seventy-five years old, and according to him have an obsession with riding around on buses all day. Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

Caffe Nero at BBC Broadcasting House

Friday dawned hot yet again, and after never previously visiting the Islington Assembly Hall, I was back for the second time in five days, this time to see Israeli singer-songwriter Aviv Geffen and his band, Blackfield. Geffen's collaborator in Blackfield, the ubiquitous Steven Wilson, had not been due to appear, or so it said when I booked my ticket, but a message he had tweeted the day before suggested that he would be playing, and so he did, although on only three songs. Had that been known in advance, I reckon the audience - which was a good few smaller in number than had been present for Riverside - would have been much greater. Considering my limited knowledge of Blackfield material, the show was really excellent, as was the support act, a guy by the name of Pat Dam Smyth, who seems worth checking out.

Steven Wilson (centre) plays with Blackfield. Aviv Geffen is on the right of the picture.

Three days off before the next event, one of The 2017 Reith Lecture series, and a talk given by the author Hilary Mantel (best known for Wolf Hall) at the fabulous Middle Temple Hall. Built between 1562 and 1573, the hall survived The Great Fire of London and both World Wars unscathed and was where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was first performed, in 1602. As is our custom when going to these sort of events, Val and I had walked to the venue from Liverpool Street, crossing The Millennium Bridge to walk along The South Bank, where, near Tate Modern, we had seen the actor Mark Rylance, who played Thomas Cromwell in the TV adaptation of Mantel's book. As it transpired, he was in the audience, along with a number of other famous faces, including Ben Miles - who has played Cromwell on stage - and Tristram Hunt, who until recently was Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent, but is now director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Hilary Mantel's lecture, which was on the historical novel, was engaging and entertaining, albeit that the acoustics in the hall had me straining my ears at times. One small point; when questions from the audience were taken, more than one person asked something that had been covered in the lecture. Dame Hilary was far too polite to point this out and happily reiterated her points of view. So interesting was she, I'm putting Wolf Hall on my reading list.

Middle Temple Hall, outside and in.

Finally, for the moment at least, it was back to Broadcasting House last night (Wednesday) for another recording of Quote...Unquote, in which Sally Phillips and Matthew Parris were particularly entertaining - especially Phillips on the subject of clown school.

I cannot recall a time when I've seen so many shows in such a short space of time, and as enjoyable as it has all been, I'm looking forward to a not having them come quite so thick and fast for a while.

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The Now Show and The News Quiz, being topical shows, have been broadcast on BBC Radio already, but remain available in the Radio iPlayer. The 2017 Reith Lectures given by Hilary Mantel (there are five in total) will be broadcast in June, while Quote...Unquote will be aired in October and November.