Whose day is it today anyway?

2007-09-27T00:46:00.001+01:00

I am currently writing a daily column in similar vein to this at:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article516.html

And a new blog Plattitude: personal, political

Come and take a look!

2004-11-07T18:40:00.000Z

7 November 2004

It's Hug a Bear Day and I'm not sure what to make of it. Like most of the other oddball days and anniversaries promoted on the internet, it's mainly a marketing tool to sell tacky toys, cards and gifts. Why can't you just hug the bear of your dreams and leave it at that? Bears are for life, not just a day . . . .

2004-11-06T18:17:00.000Z

6 November 2004

Ekaterina II, aka Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, died on this day in 1796. Stories about her death form an essential part of the unofficial history curriculum in schools throughout the world. The best known of these involves her being crushed to death when courtiers lost control of a horse that was being lowered onto her for sexual purposes.

Although it's true that Catherine had a prodigious sexual appetite and kept a secret room filled with erotic carvings and paintings of all manner of sexual acts, including bestiality, no horse actually played a part in her death. Instead, she suffered a stroke while straining on her commode in St Petersburg and died a day later.

Catherine's husband, Peter III, would not have been among the mourners, even if he hadn't been overthrown and murdered in 1762 in a palace coup led by his wife. As Catherine described their relationship: 'In short, never did two minds resemble each other less than ours; we had nothing in common in our tastes, nor in our ways of thinking. Our opinions were so different that we would never have agreed on anything, had I not often given in to him so as not to affront him too noticeably.'

2004-11-05T09:29:00.000Z

5 November 2004

I don't suppose there are many people (in the UK, at any rate) who are unaware that 5 November is Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night, commemorating the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. (And if you think the bonfires and fireworks are getting bigger and noisier every year, just wait for the 400th anniversary next year.)

What's probably less well known is that the day was an official holiday until comparatively recently – and even had a special church service and ritual detailed in the English Book of Common Prayer. The ceremonies on the streets, by all accounts, were conducted on a colossal scale. According to the mid-19th-century Chambers' Book of Days, for example:

'In former times, in London, the burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November was a most important and portentous ceremony. The bonfire in Lincoln's Inn Fields was conducted on an especially magnificent scale. Two hundred cart-loads of fuel would sometimes be consumed in feeding this single fire, while upwards of thirty "Guys" would be suspended on gibbets and committed to the flames. Another tremendous pile was heaped up by the butchers in Clare Market [the present-day site of the London School of Economics], who on the same evening paraded through the streets in great force, serenading the citizens with the famed "marrow-bone-and-cleaver" music. The uproar throughout the town from the shouts of the mob, the ringing of the bells in the churches, and the general confusion which prevailed, can but faintly be imagined by an individual of the present day.'

They don't ring the church bells on Guy Fawkes Day any more, which is a shame because we'll be putting a few George Bushes on the flames tonight and I'm sure the born-again president would have appreciated the gesture.

2004-11-04T17:38:00.000Z

4 November 2004

It's 25 years today since Islamic militant students stormed the US embassy in Tehran, seized more than 90 hostages and plunged the final year of Jimmy Carter's presidency into turmoil. Despite an abortive rescue mission, during which eight US soldiers were killed, most of the hostages remained in the hands of their captors for a further 444 days. They were released on 21 January 1981, the day of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as US president. The relationship of the US with the Islamic world – and with the Democrat party, for that matter – has never been the same since.

2004-11-03T17:38:00.000Z

3 November 2004

Be afraid, America, be very afraid! Forty years after the event, the election of Lyndon B Johnson seems to belong on an entirely different planet. But look at what Vietnam did to him and his 'Great Society', and consider what Iraq may yet do to Bush and the whole modern world . . . .

2004-11-02T18:40:00.000Z

2 November 2004

Lay the tables tonight for the Faithful Departed, for this is All Souls' Day, when the souls of the dead return home to check up on what's going on. Actually, it's not everyone's soul, according to the Catholic church – only those that have not fully atoned for past transgressions or are not fully cleansed of their venial sins. These are the ones who spend the rest of the year floating around in purgatory, and who need their relatives and loved ones to help them out by saying prayers, offering alms and performing the Sacrifice of the Mass on their behalf.

In other words, this is a great time to get your own back on the dead. 'Still here, grandad? Told you that you shouldn't have left that Welsh dresser to Auntie Christine, didn't I? Sorry, can't pray for you tonight – too busy. Try next year. Give my love to Purgatory, won't you?'

2004-11-01T15:08:00.000Z

1 November 2004

And it is All Souls’ Night
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
-- W B Yeats, 'All Souls' Night'

It's All Saints' Day and All Souls' Night, the Roman Catholic inventions that were introduced to replace old pagan customs like the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Catholic church has been particularly good at this sort of thing over the years, replacing ancient traditions with ones more suited to its own view of God and the world. The Aztec festival of El Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), for example, which also takes place today, was moved from its original time at the end of July/beginning of August to fit in with the Catholic calendar. Perhaps we shouldn't shed too many tears, then, for the fact that Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators against the English parliament get themselves thrown on bonfires every year at around the same time.

2004-10-31T10:36:00.000Z

31 October 2004

The Tower-burning party (see below) got off to a bad start yesterday, when the planned fireworks display was confiscated by anti-terrorist police and the fancy-dress party was broken up by a Black Watch battalion on its way to Baghdad. Tickets to the Scissor Sisters' Brixton bash sold out months ago, so I'm having to make do with Monday night after football.

As for today, it is, of course, Hallowe'en, the Samhain festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the Celtic new year, which starts tomorrow. The night of Samhain is when the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead evaporates and the dead return to earth, wreaking all manner of mayhem. The festival was first corrupted by the medieval Christian church, which gave us All Saints Day (on 1 November) and All Souls Day (on 2 November); and then by modern Mammon, which gave us 'trick and treat', tacky plastic horror masks, hairy-palm gloves and what is now the third-biggest festival of the year (in terms of consumer spending) in the UK.

2004-10-30T08:47:00.000+01:00

30 October 2004

Most of England is taken up with one huge bonfire and fireworks party at the moment. Shops are banning the sale of eggs and flour to under-16's for fear that they will use them irresponsibly on Hallowe'en this weekend. Family pets are being terrorised by bangers and crackers and explosions and flashes. And all fire brigade leave is being cancelled in preparation for our annual orgy of burning and looting on 5 November.

In this anarchic spirit, tonight some of us are planning to mark another anniversary as an alternative to next weekend's ritual burning of poor old Guy Fawkes, the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions, as the saying goes. Our party will commemorate the burning of the Tower of London on the night of Saturday 30 October 1841. This destroyed the royal armoury, and at one time threatened the White Tower and Jewel Tower as well.

The crown jewels and regalia were rescued by the swift action of Superintendent W F Pierse, of the recently-formed Metropolitan Police. He took a detachment of constables to the Tower and, with the help of the keeper of the Jewel Tower, broke into the building to save them from the flames. None of those involved took so much as a minor diamond as recompense for their efforts, while the royal family showed typical gratitude by awarding them not so much as a thank you.

2004-10-29T08:47:00.000+01:00

29 October 2004

It's International Internet Day, if you're interested in another of those obscure – and often little-observed – special days that I feature here from time to time. It's also Take Back Your Time Day, according to some internet sources, which could well lead to a clash of objectives in many homes.

Unfortunately, those who've booked in TBYT Day for today seem to have already taken back a few days too many. This is because officially the occasion was supposed to be marked last Sunday, according to organisers at Take Back Your Time (http://www.timeday.org). Nonetheless, they say they're happy for people to take back their time at any time. So why not set aside an hour or two today to ponder the fact that more people in Britain spend far more time at work than in any other European Union country prior to the 2004 expansion.

International Labour Organisation figures show that 15.5 per cent of the British workforce spends 50 or more hours at work. This compares with well under 10 per cent in the rest of the EU, ranging from 6.2 per cent in Greece to just 1.4 per cent in the Netherlands.

The real gluttons for punishment, though, are to be found in the US and Australia, where people working more than 50 hours per week increased from 15 to 20 per cent during the 1990s; New Zealand, where the figure is 21.3 per cent; and Japan, top of the 'live to work' brigade with 28.1 per cent.

2004-10-28T08:35:00.000+01:00

28 October 2004

Full moon in Taurus, and a total lunar eclipse this morning for those who got up early enough and were blessed with clear skies.

Meanwhile, as a footnote to yesterday's entry about the sadly-deceased John Peel, I'm told that one of the less-welcome coincidences of his life saw him working in an office job at Dallas's Radio WRR at the time that John F Kennedy was shot. Some versions of this story have grown in the telling and place him in the Texas School Book Depository Building used by Lee Harvey Oswald for the shooting, while another report, more accurately, says that he was present at Oswald's killing by Jack Ruby.

In fact, having moved to Dallas in 1960, Peel got a commission from the Liverpool Echo to cover the press conference at which the police produced Oswald and he was shot by Ruby. It's said that Peel can be spotted in the background of some of the TV film of the occasion.

I'll leave any further details to the urban myth-makers and conspiracy theorists. But I'm sure there's at least one book to be written about the real reasons why this son of a successful Cheshire cotton broker subsequently left the USA, changed his name from John Robert Parker Ravenscroft and became a radio DJ under the name of John Peel in England.

2004-10-27T09:27:00.000+01:00

27 October 2004

Bruce Springsteen made the cover of both Time and Newsweek on this day in 1975, a remarkable feat for a rock star whose career was only just beginning to reach the heights.

One man's career that was to constantly help remodel the rock and roll business was also beginning to reach high peaks by this time. This was the much-love and now much-missed British radio DJ, John Peel, who died aged 65 yesterday. Peel discovered more bands than most record cmopany A&R men, and helped others to achieve a prominence they might never have managed by their own efforts alone.

His 'Festive 50' was one of the annual highlights of British radio. As far as I know, Bruce Springsteen only ever made it once, with 'Born to Run'. This is Peel's full 50 for 1978, the year in which Springsteen appeared. The full set of lists can be found at: http://www.rocklist.net/festive50.htm

Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK
Clash - Complete Control
Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device
Magazine - Shot By Both Sides
Sex Pistols - Pretty vacant
Clash - White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Buzzcocks - What Do I Get?
Public Image Ltd. - Public Image
Undertones - Teenage Kicks
Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster
Buzzcocks - Boredom
Damned - New Rose
Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
Clash - White Riot
David Bowie - Heroes
Only Ones - Another Girl, Another Planet
Sex Pistols - Holidays In The Sun
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird
Rezillos - I Can't Stand My Baby
Van Morrison - Madame George
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden
Clash - Police & Thieves
Jam - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
Elvis Costello - Watching The Detectives
Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Buzzcocks - Moving Away From The Pulsebeat
Derek & the Dominoes - Layla
Stranglers - Hanging Around
Stranglers - No More Heroes
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Helter Skelter
Motors - Dancing The Night Away
Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone
Elvis Costello - Alison
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Overground
Who - My Generation
Stranglers - London Lady
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Switch
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Mirage
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Jigsaw Feeling
Jam - In The City
Sex Pistols - EMI
Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
Flying Lizards - Summertime Blues
Neil Young - Like A Hurricane
Thin Lizzy - Emerald Siouxsie & the Banshees - Metal Postcard

2004-10-26T11:43:00.000+01:00

26 October 2004

Gunfight at the OK Corral. The fight took place in Tombstone, Arizona, on this day in 1881; and most people who've heard of it probably know that it involved Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, fighting the Clanton and McClaury gang. But how did the OK Corral get its name?

Well, it's all down to the former US president, Martin Van Buren, who is attributed with popularising the phrase 'OK' by adopting it as his election slogan in 1840. (American linguists say 'OK' came about as a Boston newspaper joke in which the initials were said to stand for 'all correct' – part of the joke being that neither initial was correct. It's worth noting, though, that this interpretation is still the source of some controversy, with alternate claims for the phrase's origin being found on all continents.)

Van Buren took 'OK' from 'Old Kinderhook', the name of his New York home. A club called the 'OK Club' was formed, and the OK Corral was named after this by its first owner, John Montgomery. I don't suppose it mattered much to those who were shot there.

2004-10-25T15:27:00.000+01:00

25 October 2004

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The 150th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade and the 589th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Meanwhile, the British troops in the Black Watch are moved deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq. Which of the first two anniversaries will the third most resemble in years to come?

2004-10-24T11:43:00.000+01:00

24 October 2004

It's United Nations Day today and the start of the UN's Disarmament Week. The day marks the anniversary of the founding of the United Nations on 24 October 1945, which was when a sufficient number of ratifications of the UN Charter had been obtained to launch the new body officially.

Former Soviet president Nikita Kruschev (see 23 October) once defined the UN's purpose as 'to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small'. From the other side of the Cold War fence, former US president Dwight D Eisenhower, said: 'If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organisation and our best hope of establishing a world order.'

There's never been any shortage of hypocrisy among the world leaders who set it up, but for all its failings the UN is still the least-worst international institution for peace and disarmament at our disposal.

2004-10-23T11:13:00.000+01:00

23 October 2004

The day that communism died – or at any rate the day that the Soviet corruption of communism died.

The Hungarian uprising, which began with a peaceful demonstration demanding the reinstatement of the former prime minister, Imre Nagy, on this day in 1956, lasted barely a fortnight. It was crushed with ruthless force by Soviet tanks on the orders of Nikita Kruschev, the more 'liberal' successor to Stalin, who denounced the crimes of his predecessor in a secret party congress that same year.

The invasion led to a massive haemorrhage of support from communist parties across the world, including many writers, artists and intellectuals in the west who had been drawn to communism during the fight against fascism. Although Soviet-style communism was to survive in Europe for another three decades, its moral authority was shattered and already ebbing away.

2004-10-22T11:00:00.000+01:00

22 October 2004

Twenty one years ago today, Ronald Reagan was intent on moving Cruise missiles into Europe and some of the biggest-ever anti-nuclear demonstrations were taking place across the continent. Six hundred thousand people protested in Berlin, and between 200,000 and one million (depending on whose estimates you believe) in London.

This was when I first came across the 'Nuclear War' game, although it was already celebrating its 18th birthday at the time. The creation of Doug Malewicki, it's the only game on the planet where in two out of every three games, everybody loses. The introduction to the game's rulebook gives an idea why:

'Nuclear War is a game for two to six players. Each player represents a major world power and attempts to gain world domination through the strategic use of propaganda techniques or nuclear weapons. A sound strategy, however, is not always a guarantee of success. As in the real world, the results of strategic decisions are not predictable and such factors as the chance dispersion of deadly radioactive fallout particles may significantly alter the course of events.'

Victory is achieved by either eliminating the populations of competing 'nations' or persuading them to join you. The game includes rules such as eliminated competitors being allowed a 'final retaliation' in which they can use their remaining weapons to obliterate as many of their opponents as possible. The last player left in the game wins only if he has at least one million of his own population remaining: hence the high number of games in which the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) means that there are no winners.

Nuclear War has sold more than 250,000 copies and spawned various offshoots since it was first released in 1965. Unfortunately, world peace isn't one of them.

2004-10-21T14:42:00.000+01:00

21 October 2004

It's a well-known maxim in the media business that you should get your anniversaries in early. No one much bothers these days with commemorating famous events on the days that they actually happened; and the bigger the event, the longer the period before its actual anniversary when newspapers, magazines, television and radio are showering the public with commemorative articles and programmes.

Now seems as good a time as any, then, to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, which took place on 21 October 1805. For those of you who missed it, the British won, Admiral Nelson was killed and his death scene, when he was said to have uttered the immortal words 'Kiss me, Hardy', has had spotty schoolboys sniggering through their history lessons ever since.

There have been plenty of attempts to re-write Nelson's final lines for the history books, and not only by imperial types who thought it possibly didn't present the most desirable impression of life in the British navy. One such attempt suggested that Nelson was in fact saying 'Kismet, Hardy' ('Fate, Hardy'). Others said that no one could have heard a word than anyone said in the heat of the battle.

Yet despite the doubters, it does seem likely that the popular version is true. Even if it was difficult to hear what Nelson said, there were at least two close witnesses present, as well as Nelson and Hardy, who saw what was done. These were Alexander Scott, Nelson's chaplain, and William Beatty, his surgeon – and they recorded that Hardy had kissed Nelson not just once but twice.

2004-10-20T10:49:00.000+01:00

20 October 2004

An exercise in nostalgia today from Ron W, of the Other Place, allows me to take a rest from writing. So cast your minds back 35 years to Saturday morning pictures at the Palace. Ron writes:

On this day, 1969, the ‘Palace’ cinema closed. To the rest of the country, this was a non-event, but to the people of Rock Ferry, in the Wirral, it was the end of an era.Generations had been weaned on the adventures, heroics and romances at the ‘Palace’. And it didn’t cost much.

The first four rows were the ‘neckcranks’. The head angled at 60 degrees and an oblique vision was seen, usually tapering off on the far side. This was cinema in three dimensions before 3D ever appeared. Usually, after two hours in this position, the result was a stiff neck and a square eyeball.

The price of the first rows was four pence, the rest of the bottom floor was nine pence, and the really affluent could luxuriate in the balcony for one and nine pence. On a Saturday afternoon, we would be enthralled with ‘Flash Gordon’, 'The Scorpion’ and many others, after which the Cowboys and Red Injuns would knock hell out of each other. Discipline was strict, with the 'Sergeant Major', ex Indian Army, enforcing discipline with his big cane if, or when, it was required.

We toured the world, swashbuckled with Flynn, gangstered with Edward G Robinson, conquered the West with Gary Cooper and sailed on the ‘African Queen’ with Bogart. Then we danced with Fred and Ginger and Gene Kelly, we sang with Julie Andrews, then listened to Elvis with his great rendering of ‘Dixie’.

We also found time to beat hell out of the German’s and every other nation on the planet. We fought the Romans, Angles, Saxons, Normans and anyone else that was in the way. We fought the Saracens, then Agincourt, then Wellington. With ‘Drake’, we beat the buggery out of the Spaniards and their Armada and fought with Nelson at Trafalgar. We sailed with Cook discovering unknown worlds. All this for a few pennies!

Aye, at the Palace we were immortal. There was no death. Life became infinity.Our family highlight was Saturday night, when we would go with my mother and father, plus a half pound bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, plus Wall's ice cream at the interval.

In all the happy years at the Palace, there was only one bad night. I was ten at the time and played what I thought was a funny joke on my family. I won’t go into details, but it ended with us being ejected by the sergeant major. I was 25 years old before I eventually confessed to my father that it was me. He wasn’t too pleased even then!

And now all those wonderful days are gone, and so has the childhood magic. Indeed, so has the Palace. There remains only the shell of the building now.It is a car maintenance depot now, tyres, exhausts, etc. But the old ‘Roses’ where the lights used to be still remain, and if you listen carefully you can still hear the same old five military music records that they played at the interval, and the kids are still cheering on Buck Jones as he rounds up the baddies. Will you join me and drink a final toast to the Palace?

2004-10-19T10:36:00.000+01:00

19 October 2004

It's 15 years ago today since Gerald Conlon, Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson had their convictions overturned for IRA pub bombings in Guildford in 1975. The 'Guildford Four' had served 15 years for crimes they did not commit and were the first in a series of high-profile acquittals of Irish prisoners in British jails. On 14 March 1991, the 'Birmingham Six' were released after 16 years in jail and on 26 June 1991, the Appeal Court released the 'Maguire Seven'.

Evidence brought before the Guildford Four appeal hearings showed that police officers had tampered with the notes of so-called confessions made by the defendants, colluding in the wording of their statements and adding or changing details after they were made. The bombs in Guildford killed five people and injured more than 100. Paul Hill and Patrick Armstrong were also wrongfully convicted of a bomb attack in Woolwich, south London, which killed two people.

One of the investigating officers in the Guildford and Woolwich cases was Peter Imbert, later Sir Peter Imbert, who was Metropolitan Police Commissioner when the convictions were overturned. I interviewed him just before the Appeal Court judgement, taking the opportunity to question him about the cases.

Imbert had taken down the 'confessions' of the so-called Woolwich bombers, and he also took the true confession of an IRA man involved in the Balcombe Street siege, who admitted to the Guildford and Woolwich bombings when in jail. He told me, though, that he had not 'gone away and lost sleep over any of them'. Even after the appeal hearings he said he 'hadn't any doubts about their guilt'. The police knew they were involved with the IRA, he said: jail was where they should stay.

After the appeal court judgement, he began to get cold feet about some of his statements to me, which were due to appear as part of an interview for the Independent Magazine. I was asked to remove all references to the Guildford Four. In return I was promised 'special access' to senior police officers for future articles and a private meeting with Imbert at which he could 'explain things about the case that could not be made public'.

Whether Imbert was covering his own back, or that of the Metropolitan Police more generally, I never discovered. I was leaned on heavily to comply with the Met's requests, receiving a series of telephone calls right up to the publication of the interview – after which there was total silence. None of my subsequent calls were returned; none of my subsequent requests for interviews were granted.

As it happens, I don't think Sir Peter Imbert was corrupt. I think that the pressure to find the people responsible for the mid-1970s bombing campaign led him to make mistakes; that in his eagerness to get a conviction he convinced himself that the police had caught the right people; and that later he couldn't bear to admit to the corruption and malpractice that must have taken place.

Imbert and his fellow officers on these cases are all retired now. But a new generation of police officers is having to deal with a new generation of terrorists, this time Islamist extremists, under the same sort of pressure to find those responsible, whatever the cost in civil liberties and proper police behaviour. The alienation of the Irish community, in large part due to oppressive police practices, the suspension of civil liberties and the conviction of the innocent, was a major reason for the longevity of the IRA. It's far too easy to envisage the same sort of thing happening again.

2004-10-18T08:53:00.000+01:00

18 October 2004

'Le Bateau', a painting by the French artist Henri Matisse, went on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on this day in 1961. The exhibition in which it featured attracted an estimated 116,000 people. Yet for 47 days nobody realised that the painting was hanging upside down.

Stacy Herbert, the office manager of the Department of Visitor Services at the Museum of Modern Art, confirmed the story, which some commentators had dismissed as apocryphal, in a recent email:

'Towards the close of the 1961 exhibition, "The Last Works of Henri Matisse", a French-born stockbroker and Matisse fan named Genevieve Habert questioned the hanging of a 1952 gouache, "Le Bateau" (The Sailboat). The work depicts a sailboat and its reflection. Habert felt that the artist "would never put the main, more complex motif on the bottom and the lesser motif on the top".

'Habert brought this to the attention of museum staff on a Sunday, December 4th. On Monday, Monroe Wheeler (Director, Exhibitions and Publications) agreed and the work was re-hung within two hours.
'Habert had attended the show three times. The show opened 47 days prior, on October 18th. An estimated 116,000 people had attended by that point. "Le Bateau" hung in a corner of the Museum's ground floor, the next-to-the last work before entering the public cafeteria.'

2004-10-17T08:53:00.000+01:00

17 October 2004

According to the International Olympic Committee, it was a 'deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit'. It resulted in the two athletes involved being suspended by their national team, expelled from the Olympic village and sent home to the United States.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medal winners in the 1968 Olympics 200 metres race, had raised their hands in black-gloved, clenched-fist salutes during the medals ceremony in a silent protest against racial discrimination in America. Jeered by many people in the crowd and subject to abuse and death threats on their return home, the pair nonetheless achieved worldwide support for their stand, which had been backed by the Olympic Project for Human Rights, organised by a professor at San Jose State University.

Their actions, on 17 October 1968, were also backed by some white athletes at those Olympic Games. They included the Australian athlete, Peter Norman, who won the silver medal in the 200 metres race and wore an OPHR badge in support of Smith and Carlos following their suspension. Martin Jellinghaus, a member of the German bronze medal-winning 4 x 400 metres relay team, did likewise.
The price Smith and Carlos had to pay for their protest, however, was high. In an interview to mark the 35th anniversary their actions, John Carlos described being treated as an outcast in America: 'We were under tremendous economic stress. I took any job I could find. I wasn't too proud. Menial jobs, security jobs, gardener, caretaker, whatever I could do to try to make ends meet. [My wife and I] had four children, and some nights I would have to chop up our furniture and put it in the fireplace to stay warm. I was the bad guy, the two-headed dragon spitting fire. It meant we were alone.' Unable to cope with the strain, Carlos's wife committed suicide in 1977.

2004-10-16T14:55:00.000+01:00

16 October 2004

Yesterday may have been the first day of Ramadan, the month of fasting, in most of the Muslim world, but it's a moot point whether or not it was in Britain. This is because the new moon that marked the onset of Ramadan was only three degrees above the horizon in Britain at sunset yesterday evening and was not visible to the naked eye.

Ramadan takes places during the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Astronomical calculations can be used to determine when it begins, but many Islamic countries also rely on physical sightings. This means that the beginning of Ramadan can vary according to the method used to calculate it and where in the world an observer is located. This year, Libya determined that Ramadan would start on Thursday (14 October), while most other Arab countries opted for Friday (15 October) and yet other Muslim scholars settled on today (16 October).

Whichever day is taken as its starting point, I've failed to join the fast. Do you think Allah will mind if I wait for Lent instead?

2004-10-15T14:23:00.000+01:00

15 October 2004

Praise God and pass the pastries.

It's the first day of Ramadan and instead of fasting I've been binging. Salted peanuts, cheesy biscuits, rice crackers, liquorice allsorts, sugared almonds, chocolate raisins, frozen orange-pops – crap and comfort foods of all descriptions . . . After playing three football matches in four days, I feel that I can justify a spot of gluttony, but the comedown from too much sugar, salt and saturated fats is a cold turkey I could do without.

Moderation in all things? Of course it makes perfect spiritual sense. But how do you achieve it? Answers on a postcard, please . . . and meanwhile excuse me for a moment while I stick two fingers down my throat . . .

2004-10-14T14:13:00.000+01:00

14 October 2004

It's ten years today since the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and foreign minister, Shimon Peres, were awarded the Nobel peace prize. The award was controversial at the time, with one committee member resigning because he felt Yasser Arafat was 'too tainted by violence, terror and torture', and it was criticised for being based on 'hopes of peace rather than peace itself'.

The critics seemed soon to be proved right. Little more than a year later, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist. Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians continued and the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted after a visit to the site of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by Ariel Sharon, who became Israeli prime minister in 2001. Peace now seems as far away as ever and the peace prize award an act of unjustified optimism.

Other Nobel peace prize winners have been less controversial. These have included individuals such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King; and organisations such as the International Red Cross, the International Labour Organisation, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Almost certainly the most controversial winner of all was the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who masterminded the secret (and illegal) bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war, and sponsored various murderous right-wing dictatorships, particularly in Latin America, throughout his period in office.

2004-10-13T08:58:00.000+01:00

13 October 2004

It's Black History Month in the UK and if you feel up to the challenge, try the 'Blaggers Challenge' quiz I devised for Channel 4's black history website. Do you know who were the first black residents of Britain; who was the first British ruler who demanded the expulsion of 'these kind of people'; and why The Times believed that black actors would never succeed (their lips are too big). The quiz is at:

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/blackhistorymap/game2.html

On the same theme, lovers of the 'On this day in history' format might be interested in the Africana: Gateway to the Black World website at:

http://www.africana.com

Africana's first entry for today tells of the introduction of a law in Virginia in 1670 that divided non-Christian servants into two groups. Those who had come to the colony by sea (that is, Africans) were to be slaves for life. Those who had come by land (that is, Native Americans) were to be indentured servants.

2004-10-12T09:04:00.000+01:00

12 October 2004

Yesterday's item on Harold Wilson suing the pop group, The Move, for publishing a cartoon postcard of him has resulted in Ihsan Caralan, the editor in chief of the Turkish paper, Daily Evrensel, writing to me. He says:

'Can I draw your readers' attention that our newspaper is facing a large fine (around £5,000) and further legal action for publishing a caricature of our prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

'Erdogan likes to talk about democratisation. He is actually way behind even the logic of the sultanate. That the Turkish law courts, instead of taking an attitude on the side of freedom of the press, prefer to take decisions that will please the state power demonstrates clearly the deplorable situation our legal system is in.'

Ihsan Caralan says that: 'A democracy that imprisons humour is one that is tragicomic more than anything.' He asks sympathisers to fax letters of protest to the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on 0090 312 419 1326.'

Meanwhile, people who have asked me for more information about John Major's libel action against me can find it at:

http://www.steveplatt.net/archive/newstatesman/johnmajor/index.htm

2004-10-11T09:48:00.000+01:00

11 October 2004

Harold Wilson won his fourth general election as leader of the Labour Party 30 years ago today – a record matched by no other British political leader since all adults got the right to vote. Coincidentally, it was also on this day – in 1967 – that he successfully sued the pop group, The Move, for publishing an unflattering cartoon postcard of himself in the nude.

The postcard was being used to promote The Move's single, 'Flowers in the Rain', which went on to become the first single ever played on BBC Radio One. Wilson's lawyers, led by Quentin Hogg QC, issued libel writs against the group's members, its manager, the artist who designed the card, the advertising agency who published it and the printers. All were forced to apologise in court for a 'violent and malicious personal attack' and to meet Wilson's costs. As part of the libel settlement it was agreed that all royalties from the record should go to charities of Wilson's choice.

Only one other British Prime Minister has taken libel action since the second world war. That was John Major in 1993 – and I was the target.

2004-10-10T10:16:00.000+01:00

10 October 2004

A brilliant goal and a superb tactical booking to avoid the Azerbaijan game saw David Beckham lead England to a 2-0 win over Wales yesterday. So the England captain can celebrate the 51st anniversary of England's 4-1 win over Wales in the 1953 World Cup qualifiers, which coincides with ex-England skipper Tony Adams' 38th birthday today, without having the press doing its usual best to wipe that idiot grin from his face.

Football's most significant – or at any rate most unusual – anniversary today, however, is that of the 1972 European Cup game between Panathinaikos and CSKA Sofia. It's unusual because Eufa ruled that the game should be replayed because the Russian referee, V Lipatov, made a mistake in the original match.

So what's new? And what was special about that one?

2004-10-09T11:07:00.000+01:00

9 October 2004

Spelling test. A lot of people aren't too hot on spelling in their own language, so it's asking a lot for them to get it right in a foreign language – especially when you first have to transliterate words into the roman alphabet and not everyone is agreed on how to do it.

The world is full of place names that were originally misheard or improperly transliterated by speakers of western languages. Hence Peking is now more accurately rendered as Beijing, Bombay has become Mumbai, and so on. Today seems like a good day to start to get to grips with Korean.

This is because it's Hangul Day, also known as Hangul Proclamation Day or Korean Alphabet Day, in South Korea. It commemorates the creation of the Hangeul native alphabet, consisting of 29 phonetic sounds, by King Sejong the Great and scholars of the Jiphyeonjeon, or Hall of Worthies, in 1446. This was published in the Hunmin Jeongeum document ('The Correct/Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People') and the day was celebrated as a legal holiday until 1991, when Korean businesses successfully demanded an increase in the number of working days.

The Hangeul alphabet went a long way towards rationalising spelling in Korea but there's still some way to go before the romanised version is ironed out. In fact, there are at least three different romanisation systems of the Korean languagr: the Yale romanisation, used mainly in academic literature; the McCune-Reischauer romanisation devised by two Americans in 1937; and the Revised Romanisation of Korean developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language and released on 4 July 2000.

According to the revised romanisation, Hangeul is spelt Han-geullal, so Hangul Day should properly be Hangeullal Day. I won't even begin to explain why the equivalent day in North Korea is on 15 January and is called Chosŏn'gŭl Day. We've already covered more than enough Korean spelling for one day.

2004-10-08T09:18:00.000+01:00

8 October 2004

'It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes . . . We make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.'

The Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on this day in 1970 'for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature'. The idea that we construct 'truth' to fit in with our own interests – that we believe what it suits us to believe – is not a new one, but it's one of the hardest of all for us to get to grips with. Probably the main reason for the existence of evil in the world is not that human beings are innately evil but that we have a terrible capacity for convincing ourselves that in doing evil we are actually doing good.

2004-10-07T11:07:00.000+01:00

7 October 2004

I was doing some research last year for an article on an orphanage in Kenya and needed to find the dates of birth of some of the children. I'd been able to find most of the ones I needed in the orphanage's files, but I'd got stuck with one boy. His twin brother's date of birth was listed, but not his. I won't tell you how long I spent searching for it before I finally worked it out . . .

Twins have always fascinated me, so I was sorry to miss the shopping trip to Felixtowe organised on this day in 1977, when 90 pairs of identical twins came over to the town from Sweden. Each pair was dressed identically, including the captain of their ship, Sune Dahlström, also a twin, who came up with the idea in the first place.

Of course, probably the best-known twins in the world at the moment belong to George Bush. They've already been trying to match their father's reputation for hard drinking. As David Letterman commented at the time of the Republican convention: 'You probably know it's been crazy here in New York City with the convention. We have had naked people in the streets. We have had all-night parties, arrests. And that's just the Bush twins.'

2004-10-06T10:56:00.000+01:00

6 October 2004

'Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet. Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain't heard nothin'! Do you wanna hear "Toot, Toot, Tootsie!"? All right, hold on, hold on. Lou, listen. Play 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie!' Three choruses, you understand. In the third chorus I whistle. Now give it to 'em hard and heavy. Go right ahead!'

Some of the most famous lines in film history made their big-screen debut today in 1927 when Al Jolson sang his blacked-up heart out in Warner Bros' 'The Jazz Singer'. The film, which opened in New York, was Hollywood's first full-length talking picture and made $3.5 million for Warner Bros, a colossal sum in those days.

In fact, there were only 291 spoken words in 'The Jazz Singer', but the talkies had arrived – and Al Jolson singing 'How I love you, how I love you, my dear old mammy' had entered cinematographic history. Real black actors had a long wait before they got to share in the Hollywood limelight.

2004-10-05T11:07:00.000+01:00

5 October 2004

The Devil looks after his own.

The evangelist, Jim Bakker, was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment on this day in 1989 for defrauding 116,000 viewers of his TV show, 'Praise the Lord', out of $158 million. Bakker's ministry had grown from humble beginnings in Fort Mill, South Carolina, in 1974 to become a multi-million dollar operation that by 1987 included a 500-room luxury hotel, a 2,300-acre Christiam theme park, an amphitheatre and a cable TV network with 13 million subscribers.

Bakker lost all this as a result of his business (and other) improprieties. His wife, Tammy Faye, who'd enjoyed a luxury lifestyle along with him, abandoned him while he was in prison and married one of his best friends.

But you can't keep a good con-man down for long and Bakker was as good as they get in a very crowded field. He got himself released from jail after only five years, started a new ministry, remarried and is now back on TV with 'The Jim Bakker Show'. Never let it be said that crime – or TV-evangelism – doesn't pay.

2004-10-04T13:54:00.000+01:00

4 October 2004

It's 27 years today since the Soviet Union beat the United States into space with the launch of the satellite Sputnik. A month later, a dog called Laika became the first living creature to be launched into space from Earth; and in 1961 the Russians again got in first with the first manned space flight.

Stung by the Russians' success, in May 1961 President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On 21 July 1969, the Americans finally did so. Plans for a party on the moon to celebrate the landing didn't go ahead, however. 'There wasn't any atmosphere,' said a NASA spokesman.

2004-10-03T04:15:00.000+01:00

3 October 2004

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, born on 14 July 1912, died on this day in 1967. 'Woody' was one of America's greatest songwriters and a lifelong socialist and trade unionist. Probably his best-known song is 'This Land is Your Land', although not everyone knows the original, radical version.
Here, then, is 'This Land is Your Land', as published in 1945, with an extra two verses from Woody Guthrie's original version, which he wrote in 1940:

This land is your land, this land is my land,
From the redwood forest to the New York Island,
The Canadian mountain to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land is made for you and me.

As I go walking this ribbon of highway,
I see above me this endless skyway,
And all around me the wind keeps saying,
This land is made for you and me.

I roam and I ramble and I follow my footsteps,
Till I come to the sands of her mineral desert,
The mist is lifting and the voice is saying,
This land is made for you and me.

Where the wind is blowing, I go a strolling,
The wheat field waving and the dust a-rolling,
The fog is lifting and the wind is saying,
This land is made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking my freedom highway,
Nobody living can make me turn back,
This land is made for you and me.

And the extra two original verses:

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple,
By the relief office, I've seen my people,
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign there, it said, 'No Trespassing',
But on the other side,iIt didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

2004-10-02T13:29:00.000+01:00

2 October 2004

Happy birthday to Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi, born on this day in 1869 and assassinated on 30 January 1848.

'What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?' this great nonviolent leader once asked. No doubt George Bush could give him an answer with regard to Iraq.

I dare say George Bush could also tell us a thing or two about what Gandhi identified as the most destructive spiritual traits facing humanity:

Wealth without Work;
Pleasure without Conscience;
Science without Humanity;
Knowledge without Character;
Politics without Principle;
Commerce without Morality; and
Worship without Sacrifice.

2004-10-01T13:01:00.000+01:00

1 October 2004

Today is the feast day of my near-namesake, Saint Plat, according to Chambers' Book of Days. This tells us that he was the 'apostle of Tournay, martyr, about 286' – and nothing else. Nor can I find out anything more about him (or, just possibly, her) from any of my other usual sources. So, if anyone can give me any more information about this mysterious martyr, I'd be pleased to have it for Le Plat family tree.

There are a few other saints who are almost named Platt. These include Saint Plait (aka Placidus), a Benedictine abbot who died around 675, and a couple of Saint Platos, neither of them the famous one.

The first Plato was the brother of Saint Antiochus, martyred at Ancyra, Galatia, around 306. The second, who lived from about 734 to 813, spent most of his life at a monastery on Mount Olympus. When he decided that his end was nigh, he arranged for his grave to be dug and spent his last days in it receiving friends and visitors and praying.

2004-09-30T10:24:00.000+01:00

30 September 2004

Having reproduced two poems about death yesterday, it's probably giving too much rein to my morbid side to reproduce another today. But I've just bought a copy of the recent anthology, 'Poem for the Day Two' (Chatto & Windus), and the entry for 30 September caught my attention.

The first 'Poem for the Day' anthology was put together by Nicholas Albery, who died before completing the second. Each contains 366 poems – one for each day of the year, including leap years. Nicholas's idea was that the poems would not only delight and inspire their readers, but also encourage them to learn some of the verses by heart. Poetry, he believed, is meant to be recited aloud, and he did it often – including after lunch each day to his friends.

Some of those friends completed the compilation, 'Poem for the Day Two', all proceeds from which go to the Nicholas Albery Foundation. This supports a number of innovative projects that aim to come up with creative solutions to some of the problems of the world. The projects include the Institute for Social Inventions, the Natural Death Centre and the Poetry Challenge.

The Poetry Challenge takes place in London on the first Sunday of October each year, with associated events taking places in schools throughout the autumn term. The idea is to get people to learn and recite a poem by heart in aid of charity. I'll be doing one, which I'll post on here on Sunday. Further details about the challenge are available from: poetry@alberyfoundation.org.

In the meantime, here's the 30 September entry from 'Poem of the Day Two'. It's W S Merwin's poem, 'For the Anniversary of My Death'.

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

2004-09-29T08:46:00.000+01:00

29 September 2004

My birthday and a good day for dead poets. W H Auden, one of the best, died on this day in 1973. And William McGonagall, commonly referred to as the very worst, died on this day in 1902.

Auden's thoughts on death included his poem, 'Stop all the Clocks':

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

William McGonagall, meanwhile, bequeathed us a whole series of poems on death and disaster, including this one on 'The Death of the Rev Dr Wilson'. The first few verses will have to stand for the rest:

'Twas in the year of 1888 and on the 17th of January
That the late Rev Dr Wilson's soul fled away;
The generous-hearted Dr had been ailing for some time,
But death, with his dart, did pierce the heart of the learned divine.

He was a man of open countenance and of great ability,
And late minister of Free St. Paul's Church, Dundee,
And during the 29 years he remained as minister in Dundee
He struggled hard for the well-being of the community.

He was the author of several works concerning great men,
In particular 'The Memoirs of Dr Candlish' and 'Christ Turning His Face Towards Jerusalem';
Which is well worthy of perusal, I'm sure,
Because the style is concise and the thoughts clear and pure.

How glorious is the English language, that it can accommodate two such giants of poetic verse . . .

2004-09-28T09:01:00.000+01:00

28 September 2004

A woman was arrested for smoking a cigarette in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York 100 years ago today. Nowadays that's one of a shrinking number of places in the city where she wouldn't get arrested.

It's smoking marijuana, though, that really gets the New York Police Department going. Annual arrests for partaking of de 'erb increased 70-fold in the eight years from 1992 to 2000, from 720 to 50,830. That represented about 15% of all arrests in New York, and about 9% of all arrests for marijuana possession nationwide.

It's reassuring to know that the US police had got their priorities in order when the Al Qaeda terrorists were planning their attacks of September 2001.

2004-09-27T10:57:00.000+01:00

27 September 2004

The steam locomotive is 200 years old this year. And it's 175 years ago today that the world's first locomotive-powered passenger train was pulled down the tracks of the Stockton and Darlington line.

George Stephenson's 'Rocket' marked the onset of a revolution in transport and helped to usher in a new era of trade and industry. It also marked a great leap forward in human evolution, with the emergent sub-species of homo trainspotter beginning to don anoraks all across the globe.

Which reminds me . . . What do you get if you combine trainspotting with an eating disorder? Answer: Anoraksia nervosa.

2004-09-26T10:33:00.000+01:00

26 September 2004

I owe this entry to Chris Walker of the Other Place, with whom I agree entirely that this largely unknown person deserves to have today as his own.

On this day in 1983, Stanislav Petrov saved the world from Total Global Nuclear War and Mutually Assured Destruction.

Petrov (born c 1939) is a retired Russian army colonel, who refused to launch Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles on 26 September 1983 despite computer indications that missiles had already been launched at the USSR from the United States. The Soviet computer reports were later shown to have been in error, and Petrov is credited with preventing World War III and the devastation of much of the earth by nuclear weapons.

Because of military secrecy and political and international differences, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998. So most of the world has never heard of this man, arguably a hero who saved the lives of millions.

2004-09-25T13:49:00.000+01:00

25 September 2004

When did the first Briton stand on top of Mount Everest? 1953?

Wrong. In fact, it was on 25 September 1975, when Dougal Haston and Doug Scott reached the 29,028 feet summit in an expedition led by Chris Bonnington. The May 1953 expedition, which reached the summit of Everest a few days before the coronation of Elizabeth II, may have been a British one but the climbers who got to the top weren't. Tenzing Norgay (Sherpa Tenzing) was Tibetan and Edmuch Hillary was from New Zealand.

The Brits had to wait another 22 years before they planted their feet on the top of the world's highest mountain. Now half of the universe seems to have been there – and left their rubbish behind as proof.

2004-09-24T08:55:00.000+01:00

24 September 2004

Today is Mercedes Day in the Dominican Republic, parts of Peru and other places in Latin America. It's not a celebration of German motor cars, as you might have gathered, but the feast day of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, Our Lady of the Graces.

This is just one of the many incarnations of the Virgin Mary, who is also honoured on this day as Our Lady of Mercy (or Our Lady of Ransom), particularly in Spain, and as Our Lady of Walsingham, particularly in England. She has countless other feast days and celebrations in her honour across the world.

The Peruvian armed forces are among her special fans. The Virgen de las Mercedes is their patron and they celebrate her day with pomp and ceremony throughout the country. Like many Latin American Catholics, though, they hedge their bets and their religious practices have strong links to the pre-Conquest beliefs of their ancestors.
For example, many modern saints and feast days are substitutes for pre-Christian deities and festivals, often connected to important harvest periods.

Christian rituals are still often accompanied by elaborate fertility rites, including animal sacrifices or the ritual burying of coca leaves or spilling on the ground of chicha – the local alcohol – in deference to Mama Pacha, or Mother Earth. Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes is very often none other than Mama Pacha in Catholic guise.

2004-09-23T11:01:00.000+01:00

23 September 2004

Welcome to my star sign. Libra, the scales, is the seventh sign of the zodiac. It's beyond me why anyone should have chosen this insignificant constellation, with no major star, as one of the four cardinal signs and representative of one twelfth of the human race. But they did, and I'm stuck with it.

Of course I possess all the classic Libran virtues such as tact, diplomacy, sensitivity, fairness, balance, beauty, creativity and sensuality. I'm also gullible and self-indulgent, and find it utterly impossible to reach a decision about anything – from what to have for breakfast to what to do with my life. I'm pleased to share my sign with Oscar Wilde, Mahatma Gandhi and Bruce Springsteen – but rather less so with Margaret Thatcher. I'm sure that the fact that Libra's stars were once part of the scorpion's claws is highly significant in this context, although I'm less certain of the meaning behind the fact that Libra rules the lower back and internal reproductive organs. Likewise, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Libra is the youngest constellation in the zodiac and the only one not to represent a living being.

Do I take astrology seriously? It depends who I'm talking to – and how good looking she is . . .

2004-09-22T09:08:00.000+01:00

22 September 2004

'I don't know half of you half as well as I should like. And I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.' – Bilbo Baggins on his eleventy first birthday, which was on 22 September, like all his others.

He shares his birthday with his nephew, Frodo, and my daughter, Rachel, who might have been saddled with a very embarrassing name if she'd been a boy . . .

2004-09-21T11:48:00.000+01:00

21 September 2004

Rocky Marciano, the Bockton Blockbuster, heavyweight champion of the world, got knocked down on this night in 1955 by Archie Moore, the light heavyweight champion. The fight, in front of 61,574 people at the Yankee Stadium in New York, was the toughest of Marciano's career. Moore put him down after one minute 19 seconds of the second round before himself sustaining a fourth and final knockdown in the ninth round.

The 31-year-old Marciano had been unbeaten in his previous 48 fights, 42 of which were won by knockouts or because the fight had to be stopped. The fight with Moore was to be his last, making him the only world champion at any weight to win every bout in his professional career. The contest was supposed to have taken place the night before, but it was postponed because of the imminent arrival of Hurricane Ione. It seems the weather was already causing problems even then.

2004-09-20T11:08:00.000+01:00

20 September 2004

As you may have noticed, I've been getting my autumn references in early. The autumnal equinox – and the beginning of autumn – actually falls on 22 September this year (at 16.29 Greenwich Mean Time, to be precise). But the nights already seem to be longer than the days in this part of the world and some of the usual autumn migrant bird departures have already occurred, as too have some of the usual autumn arrivals.

On the other hand, there are a number of plants and animals in England that seem to think it's spring, with some of them blooming or breeding two seasons ahead of their usual time. It's all a product of global warming, of course, and the climate contortions that follow from it. The weather – and hence the seasons – is becoming less predictable than ever.

Pity the poor weather forecasters, then, who have to struggle to keep up. There are likely to be a lot more like the one who lost his job after getting the forecast wrong every day for three months. He had to emigrate to escape the public opprobium. When he's asked why he moved, he tells people: 'The climate didn't agree with me.'

2004-09-19T11:55:00.000+01:00

19 September 2004

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

John Keats wrote 'Ode to Autumn' on 19 September 1819. But much as I love the season of my birth, and Keats' vision of it, I can't help also feeling the coming chill of Thomas Hood's 'old Autumn in the misty morn':

The year's in wane;
There is nothing adorning;
The night has no eve,
And the day has no morning;
Cold winter gives warning!

How cold will it be this year? I'm reminded of an old story.

Some years ago the native people on a remote reservation asked their new chief the same question. Like many of his people, he was caught between the old ways and the modern world, and he wasn't sure how best to predict the weather. In order to be on the safe side, he told his people that the signs said that the winter was going to be a cold one and that they should stockpile a large supply of wood for fuel.

Being a modern leader, with knowledge of science and meteorology, the chief also decided to consult the government's weather forecasting service to see what they said.

'Is this winter going to be a cold one?' he asked.

'Our long-range forecasts say this winter is going to be quite cold, yes,' the weather service's meteorologist replied.

So the chief returned to his people and urged them to stockpile even more wood for fuel in order to be prepared for the winter. Then, a couple of weeks later, he contacted the government weather service again to get a more up-to-date forecast.

'Are you sure this winter is going to be a cold one?' he asked.

'Yes, we're increasingly convinced that it's going to very cold,' came the reply.

The chief returned to his people again and urged them to stockpile every piece of wood they could find. And a couple of weeks after that he contacted the weather service for a final check on their forecasts.

'Are you absolutely sure that this winter is going to be a very cold one?' he asked.

'Absolutely, we've no doubt at all about it now,' the meteorologist answered. 'It's going to be one of the coldest ever.'

'How can you be so sure?' the chief asked, puzzled by the certainty of these government scientists.

'Well,' replied the meteorologist. 'The natives are stockpiling wood like crazy!"

2004-09-18T14:29:00.000+01:00

18 September 2004

Tomorrow (see yesterday) brings today, of course – the 24th anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix. From his first hit single, 'Hey Joe', which came to symbolise the Vietnam war and resistance to it, to his versions of the Troggs' 'Wild Thing' at the Monterey Festival in June 1967 to the 'Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock in 1969, Hendrix's performances were like psychedelic shooting stars illuminating the late Sixties and the height of the hippie era.

Hendrix also came to symbolise its end – or at any rate the end of the hippie illusion that good music and good motives alone were enough to bring peace and love to the planet. His last festival appearance was at the three-day Love and Peace Festival at Insel Fehrmarn in Germany. The festival was marred by fighting – including gunfire – between rival motorbike gangs. The gangs set fire to the stage and razed it to the ground.

A Rolling Stone readers' poll in 2003 put Hendrix at the top of the '100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time' list. Here's the full list to argue over:

1 Jimi Hendrix
2 Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band
3 BB King
4 Eric Clapton
5 Robert Johnson
6 Chuck Berry
7 Stevie Ray Vaughan
8 Ry Cooder
9 Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin
10 Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones
11 Kirk Hammett of Metallica
12 Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
13 Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead
14 Jeff Beck
15 Carlos Santana
16 Johnny Ramone of the Ramones
17 Jack White of the White Stripes
18 John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers
19 Richard Thompson
20 James Burton
21 George Harrison
22 Mike Bloomfield
23 Warren Haynes
24 The Edge of U2
25 Freddy King
26 Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave
27 Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits
28 Stephen Stills
29 Ron Asheton of the Stooges
30 Buddy Guy
31 Dick Dale
32 John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service
33 & 34 Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
35 John Fahey
36 Steve Cropper of Booker T and the MG's
37 Bo Diddley
38 Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac
39 Brian May of Queen
40 John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival
41 Clarence White of the Byrds
42 Robert Fripp of King Crimson
43 Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic
44 Scotty Moore
45 Frank Zappa
46 Les Paul
47 T-Bone Walker
48 Joe Perry of Aerosmith
49 John McLaughlin 50 Pete Townshend
51 Paul Kossoff of Free
52 Lou Reed
53 Mickey Baker
54 Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane
55 Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple
56 Tom Verlaine of Television
57 Roy Buchanan
58 Dickey Betts
59 & 60 Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien of Radiohead
61 Ike Turner 62 Zoot Horn Rollo of the Magic Band
63 Danny Gatton
64 Mick Ronson 65 Hubert Sumlin
66 Vernon Reid of Living Colour
67 Link Wray
68 Jerry Miller of Moby Grape
69 Steve Howe of Yes
70 Eddie Van Halen
71 Lightnin' Hopkins
72 Joni Mitchell
73 Trey Anastasio of Phish
74 Johnny Winter
75 Adam Jones of Tool
76 Ali Farka Toure
77 Henry Vestine of Canned Heat
78 Robbie Robertson of the Band
79 Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps (1997)
80 Robert Quine of the Voidoids
81 Derek Trucks
82 David Gilmour of Pink Floyd
83 Neil Young
84 Eddie Cochran
85 Randy Rhoads
86 Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath
87 Joan Jett
88 Dave Davies of the Kinks
89 D. Boon of the Minutemen
90 Glen Buxton of Alice Cooper
91 Robby Krieger of the Doors
92 & 93 Fred "Sonic" Smith, Wayne Kramer of the MC5
94 Bert Jansch
95 Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine
96 Angus Young of AC/DC
97 Robert Randolph
98 Leigh Stephens of Blue Cheer
99 Greg Ginn of Black Flag
100 Kim Thayil of Soundgarden

2004-09-17T11:45:00.000+01:00

17 September 2004

Pause the World Day was yesterday. Time's Up Day is today. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is celebrating his 21st birthday as a US citizen. What on earth will tomorrow bring?

2004-09-16T11:31:00.000+01:00

16 September 2004

Cheap Joke Day. I meant to tell you all about 'Do it! Day' (aka Fight Procrastination Day) on 7 September but – you guessed it – I put it off until now.

2004-09-15T09:23:00.000+01:00

15 September 2004

You're almost certainly unaware of the fact, but this is Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month – so be nice to me this morning.

It's also Children's Good Manners Month, International Gay Square Dancing Month, Update Your Resume Month and Shameless Promotion Month. Oh yes, and it's National Mushroom Month – which is my excuse for experimenting with some fresh Ecuadorian psychedelics in the run up to my birthday.

The birthday's on 29 September, since you ask, which by some strange coincidence just happens to be National Attend Your Grandchild's Birthday Day. I can't work out what grandparents are supposed to do if their grandchildren were born on any of the other 364 days of the year, but tomorrow is Pause the World Day so there shold be plenty of time to find out.

2004-09-14T04:36:00.000+01:00

14 September 2004

On 14 September 1814, Francis Scott Key is said to have seen the US flag flying over Fort McHenry 'by the dawn's early light', and was inspired to write the American national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.

Like many anthems and other songs, however, the music was not original. In this instance it was borrowed from the 'Anacreontic Song', a drinking song of London's Anacreontic Society. The society took its name from Anacreon, an ancient Greek poet, and was dedicated to 'wit, harmony and the god of wine'. The tune seems to have been a collective effort by members of the society, while its president, Ralph Emerson, wrote the words.

It's one of those rare occasions when a national anthem is probably an improvement on the original, but you do wonder what the Founding Fathers would have thought about an anthem that is derived from a celebration of alcohol and the pleasures of the flesh. Here's the first verse to give you a sense of how it went:

To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of Harmony sent a petition,
That He their Inspirer and Patron would be;
When this answer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian.
'Voice, Fiddle, and Flute, no longer be mute,
'I'll lend you my Name and inspire you to boot,'
And, besides, I'll instruct you like me to entwine
'The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine.'

2004-09-13T11:22:00.000+01:00

13 September 2004

It's three years today since Ian Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservative Party. It's true that his election was overshadowed by somewhat bigger events in world politics, but the politician who became known as 'Ian Duncan Who?' might have promoted himself more effectively in the following months. Instead he nicknamed himself the 'Quiet Man' of British politics and threatened to 'turn up the volume' if people didn't start paying attention.

They still didn't hear him. For example, twice on the TV show, 'Who wants to be a millionaire?', contestants were asked to name him. Both times they had to use up a lifeline and ask a friend before getting the right answer. On one occasion, a father-and-son duo asked the audience for help. The majority couldn't identify him.

Spare a thought then today, if you will, for Ian Duncan Smith: truly the sort of man who was not even a household name in his own house.

2004-09-12T10:35:00.000+01:00

12 September 2004

Arsenal won 3-0 at Fulham yesterday, 90 years and a day since they beat the same team by the same score in the old second division of the football league.

The earlier game was played in wartime, with the first world war having just started, and the Football Association was under fierce pressure to suspend the football programme. Frank Keating, writing in the Guardian last week, quoted the Times as saying in 1914 that any club employing a football player 'is bribing a needed recruit from enlistment, and every spectator who pay his gate money is contributing towards a German victory'.

In the Daily News, meanwhile, the Scouts leader, Lord Baden-Powell, was remarking: 'War is the real man's game, full of honour and adventure for those with guts in them. Come on, my lads, and lend a hand. We can do our football when we have done our War.'

As a sort of compromise, half time at the 1914 Arsenal v Fulham game was given over to the War Office to appeal for recruits. At the end of the match, a military band was to march to the nearest recruiting station, leading those who had volunteered to serve king and country.

It wasn't a great success. According to Keating, the Times headline the following Monday proclaimed 'One Recruit at Arsenal Match'. Football continued to be played until the end of the 1915-16 season, by which time the government had run out of volunteers and introduced conscription.

2004-09-11T11:38:00.000+01:00

11 September 2004

The eleventh day of the ninth month; and while remembering the American victims of terror on this day in 2001, let's not forget the victims of American terror on this same day in 1973.

Back in the early 1970s, Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent [President] Allende from coming to power or to unseat him". In fact, they made the whole country scream with their backing of the coup that murdered Allende and brought in Augustus Pinochet's military dictatorship.

At least after it's own '9/11', the United States can still choose its own president. In Chile, they couldn't even choose their own poets.

Victor Jara
words by Adrian Mitchell, music by Arlo Guthrie

Victor Jara of Chile
Lived like a shooting star
He fought for the people of Chile
With his songs and his guitar
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

Victor Jara was a peasant
He worked from a few years old
He sat upon his father's plow
And watched the earth unfold
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

Now when the neighbors had a wedding
Or one of their children died
His mother sang all night for them
With Victor by her side
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

He grew up to be a fighter
Against the people's wrongs
He listened to their grief and joy
And turned them into songs
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

He sang about the copper miners
And those who worked the land
He sang about the factory workers
And they knew he was their man
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

He campaigned for Allende
Working night and day
He sang 'Take hold of your brothers hand
You know the future begins today'
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

Then the generals seized Chile
They arrested Victor then
They caged him in a stadium
With five-thousand frightened men
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

Victor stood in the stadium
His voice was brave and strong
And he sang for his fellow prisoners
Till the guards cut short his song
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

They broke the bones in both his hands
They beat him on the head
They tore him with electric shocks
And then they shot him dead
His hands were gentle, his hands were strong

2004-09-10T13:39:00.000+01:00

10 September 2004

What were you doing on 10 September 2001? Most people can tell you where they were and what they were thinking when they heard about the hijacked planes being crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But what about beforehand? What were the issues that were concerning us? Did the world really change forever on 11 September, as so many commentators were quick to say it had?

The New York Daily News front page on the day before the twin towers came tumbling down was headlined "Killer Mold". It was a story about an East Side apartment building infected with Stachybotrys chartarum – a potentially toxic black mould that Time magazine had reported earlier that summer as spreading "like a biblical plague". Inside the paper, one of the main column features was discussing "Pets and their Celebrities".

On the economic scene, after a day of ups and downs, the Dow Jones index had returned to its opening figures, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 made small gains. A panel of business economists had lowered their expectations on US GDP growth for 2001, but with America enjoying the longest economic boom in living memory, optimism remained high. The pension funds crisis and revelations of boardroom corruption were still in the future.

There was also optimism on the international front. Anti-globalisation protests were placing the issues of poverty and development high on the world's agenda. The Jubilee 2000 Coalition's campaign to secure a fresh debt-free beginning for a billion people had brought together an unparalleled campaigning alliance. "The world will never be the same again," it had declared in celebration of its perceived success.

Meanwhile, the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations was concluding in New York on 10 September 2001 with the adoption of the far-reaching Millenium Declaration, spelling out policies on globalisation, development and poverty, peace, security and disarmament, the environment, human rights and democracy.

The largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled, the Assembly had set itself ambitious targets. These included ensuring the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002; and, by 2015, halving the proportion of people with income of less than one dollar a day, and of those suffering from hunger and lack of safe drinking water; ensuring equal access to all levels of education for girls and boys and primary schooling for all children everywhere; reducing maternal mortality by three quarters; and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.

Only one world leader, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, mentioned terrorism in his statement to the summit. He called for a study of the funding of internationalism terrorist groups, particularly in countries that are "bridgeheads for terrorists".

No one showed much interest. George Bush's international priorities at the time were very different. On 10 September 2001, his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was leading the attack on a military spending bill that would cut $1.3 billion from Bush's request for missile defence and restrict testing to keep it in line with international agreements. Earlier in the summer, the new US president had identified China as the principal threat to American interests, calling it a "strategic competitor" and talking of tougher trade and other sanctions to keep it in line. He also spoke of the importance of developing a "special relationship" with Mexico; floated the idea of a total amnesty for illegal immigrants; appeared to be supportive of the Kyoto treaty; and pledged to "show humility" in world affairs.

Whatever they meant for the world, the 11 September attacks made sure that George Bush's presidency at least would never be the same again. "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive," he declared soon afterwards.

It was certainly decisive – and a lot more expensive than a couple of million dollars. The US Congress has provided at least $165 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other anti-terrorism efforts since 2001. Estimates for 2005 put the cost of the Iraq war at around $5 billion per month. This is all on top of an annual military budget that has now reached more than $400 billion.

The sums are comparable with what the US was spending a generation ago on another war against a different enemy. During the eight years between 1964 and 1982, the US spent $111 billion, or more than $494 billion, adjusted for inflation, on its war in Vietnam – an average of $5.15 billion per month.

In one key respect, then, nothing has really changed at all since 11 September. The richest country in the world still spends the sort of vast sums on prosecuting war that could surely, if spent wisely, buy a better peace at a very much lower price.

2004-09-09T13:31:00.000+01:00

9 September 2004

On this night in 1956, a staggering 82.6 per cent of the US television audience tuned in to the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. What were those 54 million viewers so anxious to see? A 21-year-old singer by the name of Elvis Presley, who was being paid a record $50,000 to perform two songs: Don't Be Cruel and Ready Teddy.

Elvis spent the next two decades making – and breaking – a lot more records, and continued to do so after his death in 1977. Between 1956 and 1996, he had 149 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100 – more than any other performer in the US. And in the UK, he holds the record for the highest number of consecutive weeks in the charts, with 13 hit singles, from A Mess Of Blues, in 1960, to One More Broken Heart For Sale, in 1963, spending a total of 144 weeks in the charts. In all, Elvis's records have spent 1,155 weeks in the UK charts since his first hit, Heartbreak Hotel, was released on 11 May 1956.

2004-09-08T15:46:00.000+01:00

8 September 2004

Born on 8 September 1886, Siegfried Sassoon, the British poet and writer and infantry officer in the first world war, was wounded and twice awarded medals for bravery. He was a hero who had no illusions about what that meant. His poem, 'The Hero', was met with outrage when it first appeared in print in 1917 for stripping bare one of the realities of war and potentially denying every mother who had lost a son one of the comforting illusions on which all wars are based.

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read.
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quivered to a choke.
She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

2004-09-07T10:10:00.000+01:00

7 September 2004

Born on 7 September 1533, Elizabeth I became queen on 17 November 1588 and ruled until her death on 24 March 1603. Her namesake who currently occupies the same throne has probably gone through many periods when she agreed with Elizabeth I's remark that, 'To be a King and wear a crown is a thing more pleasant to them that see it, than it is pleasant to them that bear it.' But then, as Elizabeth herself also said, 'Those who touch the sceptres of princes deserve no pity.'

A remarkable woman, who held power as a woman at a time when such a thing seemed inconceivable, Elizabeth's most famous remark was made when addressing her troops at Tilbury before the arrival of the Spanish Armada. 'I know I have the body of a week and feeble woman,' she declared, 'but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.'

Just as effective in its own way was her comment to the French ambassador, when he praised her linguistic skills. 'There is no marvel in a woman learning to speak,' she said, 'but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue.'

2004-09-06T08:32:00.000+01:00

6 September 2004

The day of Diana, Princess of Wales' funeral in 1997, this was an occasion when much of Britain stopped for a large part of the day. You didn't have to buy into the monarchist mystique of the Windsors, nor the faux republicanism of the Spencers, to get carried along by the sentimental power of the event. And you didn't have to buy Elton John's schmaltzy reworking of his ode to Marilyn Monroe to be moved by the emotion of it all.

Diana was a woman who died suddenly, unexpectedly and violently before her time. She was fragile, imperfect, all too human – and her death put millions of people in touch with their own fragility, humanity and personal experiences of death and loss among their loved ones.

Her funeral stopped London's traffic briefly. Millions watched as the cortege passed by. I went for a run on London's empty streets and thought of Len, much loved, who we'd nursed through cancer earlier that year.

2004-09-05T08:16:00.000+01:00

5 September 2004

I'm afraid I'm back on the Number of the Beast again. (And by the way, thanks to Jim from the Other Place for asking about 667 – the Neighbour of the Beast.) Even worse, it involves Bill Gates and Microsoft. So hang onto your bibles and keep your rosaries within easy reach.

On 5 September 1995, former Los Angeles Times staffer Jim Riley greeted the release of Windows 95 with an immoderate little article entitled 'Bill Gates is the devil (and other Windows 95 musings)'. Riley meant it literally: ' It all begins with Gates' name. William Henry Gates III. Shorten it to Bill Gates III, convert each letter to its ASCII character, and the sum of the numbers is 666. Do the same with MS-DOS 6.21. The sum is 666. Do the same with Windows 95. The sum is 666.'

Actually Riley is wrong. Gates is God, not the devil. He even gets credited for things he hasn't done, much like God gets the praise for every two-bit hymn in praise of crack, hoes and Rolex watches at any gangsta rap award ceremony in the business.

Take Gates' supposed speech on 'Rules Kids Won't Learn at School' to the graduating class of Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, California. This has been circulated widely via email and on the web (Google gives you 21,600 hits for 'Bill Gates Whitney High School') and provides a list of 11 worldly pearls of wisdom along the lines of 'Life's not fair: get used to it' and 'Be nice to nerds: you might end up working for one'. According the preface that usually accompanies the list, it's meant to show 'how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world'.

Gates never made the speech. Nor did Kurt Vonnegut Jnr, who has also been credited with producing the same words of wisdom at his own college graduation. Nor did advice columnist Ann Landers, who has printed it several times, nor Duluth state representative Brooks Coleman, who has also had his name appended to it in print.

The list is actually the work of Charles J Sykes, author of the book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add. In Sykes' version, it has three extra rules; it's a lot less pithy and well-edited than the internet-circulated version – and of course it carries none of the weight of having been authored by the richest man on the planet.

There's a version of the list, which I've taken from Diddleysquat's excellent Bravenet journal (http://diddleysquat.bravejournal.com), together with my own adaptation of it below.

Bill Gates' (supposed) speech to Mt Whitney High School in Visalia, California about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

And Steve Platt's version of the same advice:

Rule 1: Life is not fair – so join a union.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. Friends will, so choose them wisely.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 right out of high school – unless daddy already earns $60,000 a week. In this case, you won't need to EARN anything to be a vice-president with a car phone.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Mostly they are bastards.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. But it's more satisfying if you own the burger shop.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Unless you're a CEO, of course, in which case mistakes will earn you a bonus.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They just spent too long delousing their own closet and forgot that there's a whole world out there.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Yeah, right, that's why everyone goes to Harvard.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. It's divided into rich and poor. Only the rich get summers off.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. The real stuff is far less believable.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Not because you work for them, but because that's the best way to be.

2004-09-04T06:56:00.000+01:00

4 September 2004

After a three-year inquiry, the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, chaired by Sir John Wolfenden, reported on 4 September 1957. The 'Wolfenden Report' argued that Britain's laws against homosexual behaviour infringed civil liberties and recommended that sexual relations between adults in private should be decriminalised.

The Conservative government of the day rejected the report, however, and it was not until ten years later that this limited decriminalisation was carried out. In Scotland, gay men had to wait until 1980 for the law to be reformed. The age of consent was only made the same as for heterosexual behaviour in 2000.

Most democracies have now rescinded laws against homosexuality, although only a handful offer equal rights across the board. The largest democracy in the world, India, still forbids male homosexual behaviour under threat of a maximum sentence of life in prison. In Kenya, it is punishable with up to 14 years in prison; in Jamaica by up to seven years hard labour. China only removed homosexuality from its official register of psychiatric disorders in April 2001.

In many Muslim countries, meanwhile, the laws against homosexuality remain as savage as they have ever been. In Malaysia, homosexual acts are punishable with up to 20 years in prison and lashing. In Pakistan, they are punishable with life in prison and corporal punishment of 100 lashes, while Islamic law, which can also be applied, requires punishment with up to 100 lashes or death by stoning.

Even this is moderate by Iranian standards, under which homosexual behaviour is punishable by four possible forms of execution: being stoned to death; hanged; cut in two with a sword; or dropped from a high place. It makes George Bush's opposition to gay marriage appear liberal in comparison.

2004-09-03T11:11:00.000+01:00

3 September 2004

Enough of numbers and of endings for now – today marks the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the second world war. It's also the 61st anniversary of the beginning of the end of fascist rule in Europe, since this is the day on which the allied invasion of mainland Italy commenced. We can find cause for celebration in the latter date, if not the former.

The Italians surrendered five days after the invasion started, leaving the Nazis to fight alone. The first allied landings in the 'toe' of Italy faced little resistance, with surrendering Italian troops 'rejoicing and exuberantly trying to fraternise with their captors', according to a correspondent for The Times newspaper.

The lack of resistance from the Italian troops added a reputation for supposed cowardice to the undoubted incompetence of their armed forces. Crude jibes about the number of reverse gears fitted to Italian tanks have continued into the present day.

In their eagerness to surrender, however, the Italians were in part demonstrating an opposition to fascism that Mussolini and his Blackshirts had never managed to eradicate to the same extent as Hitler and the Nazis. Their unwillingness to fight the allies should be a cause for pride not shame, even without the idiocy of a military leadership that had left its fighter pilots to communicate with each other by hand signals and its navy to do without aircraft carriers until the last year of the war.

Italy may have been like a dog hit by a car because it tried to bite the tires, as the US war correspondent Ernie Pyle put it. But at least it came out the war better than the rabid monster that lived next door.

2004-09-02T09:19:00.000+01:00

2 September 2004

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. Or thereabouts.

Today is 2.9.2004, or 9.2.2004 if you prefer the American notation. Two times nine is 18, or three sixes: 666. Two plus nought plus nought plus four makes another six. So what does that give us? The number of the beast plus another six for good measure. Four sixes are 24, and two plus four is six. Take away this six from the four sixes you had before and what are you left with? Six, six, six. Yet more proof, in other words, that the end of the world is nigh (see 1 September).

This takes us back neatly to 2 September 1666 (no need to point out the obvious in this date), when the Great Fire of London started in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane. Over the next five days the fire destroyed three quarters of the medieval city, consuming more than 13,000 houses, 87 churches, six chapels, four river bridges, three city gates, 44 company halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, the Guildhall and St Paul's Cathedral.

And it had all been predicted 14 years in advance by the astrologer William Lilly!
In October that year he was summoned before the Speaker's Chamber of the House of Commons to explain his foreknowledge of the fire, since people had become suspicious that he himself had something to do with it. He denied it, of course, and claimed that his astrological readings had not been precise enough to forewarn people properly.

Parliament accepted his explanation, but the significance of the date was not lost on numerologists. In Roman numerals the year 1666 is written MDCLXVI – a declining sequence (1,000; 500; 100; 50; 10; five; one), which was taken as a clear indication that it marked the beginning of the end for not just London but the whole world.

2004-09-01T15:02:00.000+01:00

1 September 2004

Not a lot people mark the occasion these days, but the world was created on 1 September 5509 BC, according to the Byzantine calendar. The creation commenced at sunset the previous evening, to be precise, since the timekeeping used in this case measured the beginning of each new day from when the sun goes down.

The emperor, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, described the Byzantine calendar thus: `Hereby may the imperial power be exercised with due rhythm and order; may the empire thus represent the harmony and motion of the universe as it comes from the Creator.'

That 'due rhythm and order' included a date for the end of the world, as well as its beginning. This was to occur, according to the calendar, on the 'Eighth Day' or Eighth Millenium of Creation – 1 September 1492, as it happens.

Now it's extremely complicated adjusting dates from ancient calendars to modern ones. But it's clear that whatever way you look at it the world did not end on 1 September 1492. A man by the name of Christopher Columbus, however, did discover a 'new world' in the Americas at pretty much this time – setting in motion a chain of events that was to lead to the end of the world for many civilisations, most obviously those of the Americas but eventually also including that of the Byzantines.

2004-08-31T10:59:00.000+01:00

31 August 2004

On this day, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash (1997); Jack the Ripper murdered his first victim (1888); the future Roman emperor, Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula, was born (12AD); Henry V died of dysentry in France (1422); Malaysia (1957), Trinidad and Tobago (1962) and Kyrgyzstan (1991) obtained independence. And the first radio news bulletin was broadcast from Detroit in 1920 – on the same day that Belgium started paying old age pensions.

I can't trace what was reported on that first broadcast (it's a fair bet that Belgian pensions didn't comprise the lead story), but I do know that the radio station had opened 11 days earlier with the words 'This is 8MK calling.' The announcement was followed by a broadcast of recorded music from the Detroit News newspaper HQ in the city. The station changed its name twice in the next year or so, finally settling on WWJ, which it retains to this day.

As well as broadcasting the first radio news bulletin, WWJ also claims responsibility for the first election returns broadcast (also on 31 August 1920), the first live sports broadcast, the first full symphony performed on radio and the first regular religious programming.

The BBC, incidentally, started regular broadcasting in 1922. Its coverage of the 1953 coronation is still thought to have achieved probably the biggest radio audience of all time.

2004-08-30T14:48:00.000+01:00

30 August 1976

Sticking to the music/festival theme, it's 40 years this weekend since the first Notting Hill Carnival in London. It's also 28 years ago today that the tenth carnival (they have taken place in most but not every year since 1964) ended in a riot. There have been other disturbances and even deaths (including two in 2000) at Carnival since then, and many attempt have been made to close it down or change its route or venue.

But nothing that has occurred at Casrival during the past three decades has attracted quite so much attention as that first serious outbreak of trouble. It foreshadowed the much more serious inner city riots of the 1980s and led to a militarisation of British police training, tactics and eqipment that had not previously been considered necessary. Yet that very militarisation played its part in increasing the hostility towards the police in inner city areas, and therefore played its part in increasing the severity of the disturbances that took place in later years. Tackling issues such as racism and community policing in order to prevent riots breaking out in the first place was to take a lot longer than training and eqipping the police to deal with them once they had started.

2004-08-29T13:34:00.000+01:00

29 August 2004

The dancing feet are sore, the legs ache, the eyes long only for sleep, but the first-ever Cross Central Festival in the old goods yards at King's Cross Station was a 39-hour party and a half. I counted at least six indoors, stages, two outdoors, a cinema, 40-odd live acts and 70-odd DJs. Courtney Pine and his band get my vote for sheer musical excellence and the new four-piece Spectrum get it for innovation. The KillAllHippies club area was also a lot friendlier and gentle on the ear than it might sound. Anyway, I don't think that even Primal Scream want the hippies dead these day.

In the circumstances, this seems like an appropriate occasion to mark the 30th anniversary of the last Windsor Great Park free festival. The third in an increasingly successful run of events, this one was broken on 29 August 1974 by more than 600 police officers, who moved in early that morning. Several hundred people were arrested, few of who were ever charged, in scenes that were to be repeated many times over the next two decades – including, most notoriously, as the Battle of the Beanfield in 1984.

The free festival scene attracted a disproportionate amount of attention from the authorities. At its height it attracted tens of thousands of people to a summer circuit of festivals that spanned the length and breadth of Britain. Many who went on to become successful musicians and other performers cut their teeth at these events, which also provided an alternative source of income or subsistence to several thousands of people.

Today's highly organised (and almost entirely commercial) festival circuit in the UK is one of the legacies of the free festivals of the past, which still take place each year from time to time. Indeed, it can argued that club culture as a whole originated from the free festivals and, more specifically, the 'raves' that they inspired. This weekend's event at King's Cross certainly made no attempt to disguise its heritage.

2004-08-28T18:35:00.000+01:00

28 August 2004

Martin Luther King had a dream of racial equality on this day in 1963, the same day on which slavery was abolished in the British Empire 130 years earlier. Sunday trading was legalised in the UK on this day in 1994. The borough of Liverpool was created by King John on this day in 1207. Nephthys, the Egyptian goddess of the underworld (and childbirth), was born on this day a few thousand years ago. And it's Software Freedom Day in 2004.

There's also a rather good all-day-and-nighter on in London today, which is where I'm off to now.

2004-08-27T10:03:00.000+01:00

27 August 2004

The Beatles were two weeks into their second US tour on 27 August 1965, when they were invited to meet Elvis Presley at his home in Beverly Hills. It was the first and only time that the two greatest icons of 20th-century music got together. John Lennon, who said Elvis was 'the guy we had all idolised for years from way back when we were first stating out', described the meeting in an interview later.

After they'd been introduced, an embarrassed silence descended on the room, which was eventually broken by Elvis. 'Listen guys,' he said, 'if you're just going to sit there and stare at me, I'm going to bed. Let's talk a bit, huh? And then maybe play and sing a bit?' Several guitars were produced and Elvis and the moptops got into an impromptu rendition. They started with a Cilla Black song, 'You're My World'.

None of the Beatles ever met Elvis again – which is probably just as well because he didn't hold them in high regard. In fact, in 1970, he wrote to US president Richard Nixon expressing a strong desire to join him in fighting 'the drug culture, hippies, the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society, one of the leading anti-Vietnam war organisations], and the Blank Panthers'. Elvis and Nixon met at the White House to discuss these issues in December of that year.

According to the White House memorandum recording what was said at their meeting: 'Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England, where they promoted an anti-American theme.' Presley told Nixon he was 'on your side' and 'kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore respect for the flag which was being lost . . . He also mentioned that he is studying Communist brainwashing and the drug culture for over ten years.' Sociologists call it participant observation.

2004-08-26T07:22:00.000+01:00

26 August 2004

Zola Budd clipped ten seconds off the women's world 5,000 metres record on this day in 1985. The former record holder, Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway, also broke the world record, but came in nine seconds behind Budd.

Budd, a white South African, got around the anti-apartheid boycott of South African athletics by obtaining British citizenship in 1984, just in time to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics. She finished seventh in that year's 3,000 metres race after colliding with the favourite, US runner Mary Decker, who was left sprawling on the track.

Budd returned to South Africa four years later and was eventually able to compete again internationally after the abolition apartheid in 1992. She never repeated her earlier achievements, however, and never really overcame the consequences of her refusal as a young athlete to condemn the apartheid system.

Her complicity with apartheid means that she'll probably never be fully acknowledged in South African or Olympic athletics. A pity, because she could have taken her place in a multi-racial tradition that began 100 years ago, when South Africa's first ever three entrants participated in the St Louis marathon. Two of those three runners were Zulus, whose names were recorded as Lenthauw and Yamasani and who were thought be members of a dancing troupe that was in St Louis at the time.

2004-08-25T10:46:00.000+01:00

25 August 2004

It's 60 years since the liberation of Paris from the Nazis and a friend has flown over for the occasion on a pre-booked cheap-flights deal that is costing him and his partner just £19 apiece. Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the first daily commercial scheduled international air passenger service, which started between London and Paris in 1919. A single fare on the service cost £21. How many other examples can you find of things that cost less today than they did in 1919?

Today also marks the anniversary of two other significant events in air travel. It's the 220th anniversary of the first manned balloon flight in Britain; and it's the 72nd anniversary of Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly non-stop across the United States. She'd become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic earlier that same year, although problems with the weather and her place meant that she only reached Ireland and not Paris as originally intended.

2004-08-24T09:44:00.000+01:00

24 August 2004

' . . . It seemed as though the sea was being sucked backwards, as if it were being pushed back by the shaking of the land. Certainly the shoreline moved outwards, and many sea creatures were left on dry sand. Behind us were frightening dark clouds, rent by lightning twisted and hurled, opening to reveal huge figures of flame. These were like lightning, but bigger . . . It wasn't long thereafter that the cloud stretched down to the ground and covered the sea.

' . . . Now came the dust, though still thinly. I look back: a dense cloud looms behind us, following us like a flood poured across the land. "Let us turn aside while we can still see, lest we be knocked over in the street and crushed by the crowd of our companions." We had scarcely sat down when a darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.

'You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting. Some were calling for parents, others for children or spouses; they could only recognize them by their voices. Some bemoaned their own lot, others that of their near and dear. There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was one last unending night for the world.

' . . . It grew lighter, though that seemed not a return of day, but a sign that the fire was approaching. The fire itself actually stopped some distance away, but darkness and ashes came again, a great weight of them. We stood up and shook the ash off again and again, otherwise we would have been covered with it and crushed by the weight. I might boast that no groan escaped me in such perils, no cowardly word, but that I believed that I was perishing with the world, and the world with me, which was a great consolation for death.'

Pliny the Younger's first-hand account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, when it destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum, paints an evocative picture of a terrifying event in which many thousands of people died. Vesuvius erupted at about noon on 24 August, burying Pompeii under a layer of ash about four metres deep. Stabiae and Herculaneum were buried beneath mud and volcanic debris. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, was killed in the eruption, choked by the ash and fumes. Vesuvius is still active – and due for another eruption. More than four million people live in the area today.

2004-08-23T10:51:00.000+01:00

23 August 2004

Sixty five years ago today, the world was stunned by the signing of one of the most cynical treaties in history. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression treaty signed by foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop on behalf of the former arch-enemies of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. A secret additional protocol agreed the respective spheres of influence of the German Reich and the USSR in eastern Europe.

Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, together with Poland as far as the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The Germans were freed to seize the rest of Poland and carve up the Baltic, which they did so barely a week after signing the treaty, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. The Soviets invaded Poland from the east on 17 September.

The Soviet leader, Stalin, had been preparing the ground for this treaty with his greatest enemy for some time. In April, for example, he had replaced his Jewish foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, a supporter of an alliance with the western democracies, with Molotov, who was in favour of provoking war between Germany and the west.

Apologists for Stalin, then and now, maintain that the Soviet Union had no choice but to buy time through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when the west failed to join the USSR to fight the advance of fascism in Spain, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Few nations come out of the run-up to the second world war with clear consciences, but David Low's famous cartoon of 20 September 1939, provides a biting assessment of the cynical Realpolitic of this particular episode. The two dictators, Hitler and Stalin, bow to each other over the corpse of Poland. 'The scum of the earth, I believe?' says Hitler. 'The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?' replies Stalin.

2004-08-22T11:46:00.000+01:00

22 August 2004

The ghosts of Vietnam return to haunt American politics from time to time, and never more so than right now over the Iraq war and the Bush presidency. In a nation divided over the past as well as the present, the war record (or non-record) of the two presidential hopefuls has become a central issue. And old events and anniversaries have taken on fresh importance in the light of another American war that isn't being won.

Words such as 'traitor' are being bandied about with little respect for their real meaning or application. So today, 32 years to the day after one of the events from the Vietnam war that was regarded by the pro-war lobby as among the most traitorous of all, it's worth remembering actress Jane Fonda's radio broadcast from Hanoi, in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Was this really the unforgivable act of a traitor, as Fonda's critics insist to this day? Make up your own minds: this is the full text of her broadcast.

'This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life – workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

'I visited the [Dam Xuac] agricultural co-op, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

'In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

'I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam – these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

'I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

'As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

'One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

'I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

'But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created – being committed against them by Richard Nixon – these people own their own land, build their own schools, the children learning, literacy – illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

'And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders – and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism – don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.'

2004-08-22T11:44:00.000+01:00

2004-08-21T00:22:00.000+01:00

21 August 2004

It's a little over 200 years since President Jefferson secured what must be one of the best bargains in world history. With Napoleon's France short of funds for its war with England, Jefferson reached an agreement to buy what was then called Lousiana from the French for three cents an acre. The whole Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million and as well as more than doubling the size of the United States at that time, it opened up the west of North America for further expansion.

As soon as the purchase was complete, Jefferson organised an expedition under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find a navigable river route to the west coast. By 21 August 1804, it had reached the area of the Sioux River.

In their expedition journal, which Jefferson had insisted they must keep, Lewis and Clark detailed their various travels between 14 May 1804 and 26 September 1806. Two hundred years ago today, their entry refers to the Pipestone Creek quarries, Minnesota, which they recorded as 'a place of Peace with all nations'.

The quarries were – and still are – a sacred site for Native Americans. Tribes travelled across North America to quarry red pipestone here in order to make pipes and effigies from the soft stone. It was known as a place of peace because of an ancient tradition that whatever wars or violence were occurring elsewhere, a permanent truce was in place in the quarries themselves.

You can read the whole of Lewis and Clark's journal, with accompanying notes and other information here:

http://lewisandclarktrail.com/index.html

2004-08-20T10:21:00.000+01:00

20 August 2004

The English Civil War, between parliamentarians and monarchists, began on this day in 1642. Today the greatest supporters of our monarchy are American tourists, gay Palace servants with a story to tell and tabloid newspaper editors who want to publish it. No one worth going to war with, in other words.

2004-08-19T10:53:00.000+01:00

19 August 2004

The ancient Greek athletic contests at Olympia took place every four years between 6 August and 19 September. You have to go back to 1920, however, for a modern Olympics taking place at the current time of year.

Then it was 'plucky little Belgium', who got to host the Olympics as a reward for its people's bravery during the first world war. Almost 2,700 athletes took part from 29 countries (one more than took part in the war). Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria were all barred.

As well as introducing the Olympic flag, oath and ice hockey, the 1920 Olympics also said goodbye to certain events, including the tug-of-war. The undoubted star of the occasion was the distance runner, Paavo Nurmi, who won three medals for Finland. One of the Great Britain team's successes was in the 1500 metres race, where Philip Noel-Baker, a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, took the silver medal.

There were just 77 women competitors in 1920. The founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, opposed their inclusion altogether, considering it 'impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect'. The International Olympic Committee did allow 11 women to participate in lawn tennis and golf at Paris in 1900; and women swimmers were allowed to enter the 1912 Stockholm games (although not from America, which prohibited female athletes from taking part unless they were wearing long skirts). But female competitors were not permitted in track and field events until 1928, when so many collapsed at the end of the 800 metres race that this event was then banned for the next 32 years.

2004-08-18T09:41:00.000+01:00

18 August 2004

Apart from the tests that lead to the bans – and even they are often avoided – there is little that is positive to be found in the modern Olympic movement's need to bar athletes for drug taking. Forty years ago today, however, the International Olympic Committee took one of the proudest decisions in its history by banning not individual athletes but an entire country from the Tokyo Olympics.

The country was South Africa; the reason was apartheid. In instituting the ban the IOC took one of the first major steps in a worldwide sporting boycott that was to last, in the case of the Olympics, until Barcelona in 1992, when South Africa was readmitted following the repeal of its apartheid laws a year previously.

The apartheid regime, having taken the political decision that men and women of different races could not participate in sport together on equal terms, accused its opponents of 'bringing politics into sport'. Over the years, it even found occasional allies in the world of sport. Men such as England cricket captain Mike Gatting, they were usually drawn by cash more than conviction, and they comprised a small and ever-declining minority.

For most sportsmen and women, the boycott of South Africa involved little or no personal cost. For some, however, not least the South Africans themselves, it meant missed opportunities and sometimes lost careers. Those that willingly put their own sporting ambitions to one side merit medals better than gold. Salute them all, then, today on the winners' podium of the fight against apartheid.

2004-08-17T18:41:00.000+01:00

17 August 2004

I spent the night when Elvis Presley died, on 17 August 1977, camped on a north Wales clifftop near to the architect Clough Williams-Ellis's fantasy village of Portmeirion. Williams-Ellis called Portmeirion, which was the setting for the 1960s cult TV classic 'The Prisoner', a home for abandoned buildings. He brought all sorts of architectural gems, salvaged from demolition, to his village, which he opened to the public in 1926, leading a correspondent for Country Life magazine, writing in 1930, to describe it as 'a glorious medley of Italy, Wales, a pirate's lair, Cornwall, baroque, reason and romance'.

I'd spent the previous few days there at the time of Elvis's death, sneaking backing in again to savour it all the better when it closed each evening to all but residents. Then, when tiredness took over in the early hours, I'd retreated back to the tent a couple of miles away on the cliffs.

I heard that Elvis had died because that particular night saw a helicopter land virtually on top of my tent. It turned out to be engaged on an air-sea rescue operation, and the place I'd chosen to pitch camp was the only piece of clear, flat land close to the cliff edge in the area. Opening your tent flap to dazzling spotlights, thundering chopper blades and their fierce down-draught is not the sort of alarm call I'd recommend.

It did mean, however, that having been woken up in such dramatic fashion, I decided to forget about sleep – at least until the rescue operation was over – and turned on the radio instead. In this way, I got to learn the details of Elvis's death as news came in – from Radio Luxembourg, as it happened, which stayed on air all night long to console Elvis's distraught fans.

Clough Williams-Ellis lasted less than a year longer than Elvis, though he lived twice as long, being 94 when he died. He once boasted that: 'I never built a block of flats or offices, or a shop, nor a factory or a cinema anywhere – nor wanted to.' Not quite true because his Portmeirion includes many flats for holiday visitors, shops to service them, the occasional office and even a cinema. Elvis never performed there, though, more's the pity.

2004-08-16T16:03:00.000+01:00

16 August 2004

He's the patron saint of pestilence, plague, epidemics, rashes, skin diseases, cholera, surgeons, invalids, diseased cattle – and bachelors, tile makers and dogs. San Rocco, or St Roch, is one of a small number of saints who are represented as anything less than perfect: images show him displaying a plague sore on his leg, often with a dog licking it.

The connection with disease – and dogs – comes from Rocco's experiences during the plagues of medieval Europe. Born into a noble family around 1340 in Montpelier, France, Rocco gave away all his possessions, took a vow of poverty and embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome. There he spent his time treating (and supposedly miraculously curing) many of the victims of a particularly virulent plague that had swept across Italy.

Unfortunately, Rocco's efforts led to him contracting the plague himself and he was banished from the city. He found shelter in a cave in a forest and survived for a while on leaves and water. He would certainly have died, however, had it not been for a dog, which fed him with food from its master's house.

One day, the owner of the dog followed it into the forest, where he found Rocco and had him brought to his home. Rocco duly recovered from the plague but on his return to France he was imprisoned as a spy by the people of his home town. He died in prison on 16 August 1378. Amazingly, shortly before his death, his canine friend turned up in his prison cell and asked him how he felt. 'Ruff,' Rocco replied.

2004-08-15T03:50:00.000+01:00

15 August 2004

This is the Holy Day of Obligation, feast day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, when her body is said to have entered into heaven and been reunited with her soul.

It's also the day on which India became an independent nation in 1947 – an occasion that the author, Salman Rushdie, chose for the birth of his narrator, Saleem Sinai, in his 1980 Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children. 'I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time,' Saleem tells us at the beginning of the book. 'No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night . . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.'

Sadly, the Muslim-Hindu divisions that tore the subcontinent apart at the time of independence continue today. Symbolic of those divisions is the fact that India and Pakistan couldn't even bring themselves to share the same Independence Day. India celebrates it today, while Pakistan celebrated it yesterday.

2004-08-14T15:20:00.000+01:00

14 August 2004

Today I offer you the memory of Maximilian Kolbe, a 20th-century saint and martyr. Kolbe joined the Franciscan Order when he was 13 and after serving as a parish priest he later became the director of one of the biggest Catholic publishers in Poland.

At the outbreak of the second world war, Kolbe became involved in helping Jewish refugees – an activity for which he was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941. While he was there a prisoner escaped and the Germans retaliated by selecting ten inmates who were to be starved to death.

One of those chosen was a Polish army sergeant, Franciszek Gajowniczek. To the astonishment of the camp commandant, Kolbe offered up himself in Gajowniczek's place. The offer was accepted and Kolbe was taken away to die with his nine companions. He supported the others through their ordeal, being the last to die on 14 August.

2004-08-13T09:25:00.000+01:00

13 August 2004

Which side of the big divide do you fall on: right or left? Well today's the day to fight for your right to be left – left-handed, that is – because this is Left-Handers Day. Aims include to 'celebrate the strengths and advantages left-handers possess, and dispel many of the superstitions and fiction that have surrounded left-handedness in many cultures for hundreds of years, and which still create prejudice today'.

Those superstitions include an association of the devil with the left hand that goes back thousands of years. There are at least 100 favourable references to the right hand and 25 unfavourable ones to the left hand in the bible. The devil and evil spirits have long been thought to lurk over the left shoulder. Wearing wedding rings on the left hand originated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who wore them to fend off the evil associated with that hand. Even our language makes the connection, with the word 'sinister', for example, coming from the Latin for on the left.

It's obviously all untrue, of course. Leonardo da Vinci, Jimi Hendrix and four of the five designers of the original Macintosh computer were left-handed. Bill Gates, on the other hand . . . has four fingers.

2004-08-12T08:58:00.000+01:00

12 August 2004

It's one of the most rousing pieces of music and verse of all time and should almost certainly be the English national anthem. Instead, we are forced to grit our teeth through either a monarchist dirge (God Save the Queen) for Britain as a whole or an imperialist war cry (Land of Hope and Glory) for England.

Jerusalem, the words to which form the prologue to William Blake's poem 'Milton', is 200 years old this year. Today is the anniversary of its author's death in 1827.

An artist, a poet, a political activist and a passionate pupil of life ('Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained,' he wrote), Blake is one of those rare people who gives patriotism a good name. His love of country was rooted in love of freedom for all humanity and hatred of oppression, imperalism, war and untrammelled industry and commerce. 'It is easier to forigve an enemy than to forgive a friend,' he once remarked wisely – which may be why he came down so hard on the ills of his own country.

He never lost faith in humanity's capacity for improvement, however, and our ability to build that New Jerusalem. 'When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!' he urged.

'Jerusalem' was put to music by the English composer, Hubert Parry, in 1916, and first performed at a Votes for Women concert that same year. It was orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar in 1922.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills? A
nd was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of Fire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

2004-08-11T15:04:00.000+01:00

11 August 2004

Not realising that the sound was on, my old pal, Ronald Reagan, announced during a radio voice test 20 years ago today that he had 'signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.' The Soviet Union chose the same day to carry out an underground nuclear test. The rest of world was not laughing.

2004-08-10T12:48:00.000+01:00

10 August 2004

'This side enough is toasted, so turn me, tyrant, eat,
And see whether raw or roasted I make the better meat.'

In August 258, the Roman emperor, Valerian, issued an edict that all bishops, priests and deacons in the Christian church should be put to death. Lawrence, the archdeacon of Rome, was commanded to surrender the treasures of the church, to which he responded by offering up the poor of the city, declaring: 'These are the church's treasures.'

The authorities didn't appreciate his comment and on 10 August he was martyred by roasting on a gridiron. Before he died, legend has it that he mocked his tormentors with remarks such as the one above, asking to be turned over. Eventually he is reputed to have said of his burning flesh: 'It is cooked enough. You may eat.'

Lawrence's tears are said to be represented by the Perseid meteor shower associated with the Swift-Tuttle comet, which can be seen most clearly around this time of the year. He is the patron saint of, among others, butchers, cooks, restauranteurs and comedians.

2004-08-09T20:13:00.000+01:00

9 August 2004

Beware the Ides of March – and the second Monday in August. For this is an 'unlucky day' in English folklore, the day on which Sodom and Gomorrah were supposed to have been destroyed.

Mind you, there's no shortage of unlucky days to choose from for the English. Almost any day when the national football team is playing in a competitive match falls into this category. And there are plenty of other biblically-inspired unlucky days too, not the least of which is the first Monday in April, which is the day on which Cain was said to have killed his brother Abel.

One 15th-century calendar listed no fewer than 32 unlucky days in all: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 15 January; 6, 7 and 18 February; 1, 6 and 8 March; 6 and 11 April; 5, 6 and 7 May; 7 and 15 June; 5 and 19 July; 15 and 19 August; 6 and 7 September; 6 October; 15 and 16 November; 15, 16 and 17 December. If you also happened to be superstitious about the thirteenth day of the month, this would take you up to 44 days in the year when it was best to stay in bed.

2004-08-08T00:26:00.000+01:00

8 August 2004

Nothing illustrates the arrogance of power so well as the way in which those who abuse it often record their abuses in the most intimate detail. Thus the Nazis, for example, catalogued their crimes against humanity in a painstaking system of record-keeping. Secret service files of organisations the world over condemn their authors in their own hand, as too do minutes, memos, emails and innumerable other records kept by bodies ranging from big business to local government.

The intoxication of power is such that those who hold and abuse it never expect to be called to account for their crimes. If that is the case, why bother to worry about incriminating yourself in your own records?

And so it was with Richard Nixon, who resigned 30 years ago today as a result of his complicity in the 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Nixon was hoist by his own pétard* in the form of the White House tapes – recordings of his conversations, which proved beyond doubt that he knew about and authorised the break-in.

Nixon managed to avoid the criminal proceedings that saw the five Watergate burglars and two White House staff jailed. Altogether, 40 government officials were indicted, while Nixon got away with an unconditional pardon.

Etymological note. The word pétard derives from the French noun 'pet', or fart, and means 'a loud discharge of intestinal gas', or a particularly explosive fart. It was applied in medieval France to a kind of siege engine that was used for breaking down the gates of a city. In English, to be hoist by your own petard means to blow yourself up with your own weapon – to be undone by your own devices. There is something especially apt about the expression in the case of the notoriously foul-mouthed Nixon.

2004-08-07T07:50:00.000+01:00

7 August 2004

Why was anyone surprised by the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington? After all, Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organisation had given plenty of notice of their murderous intent. On 7 August 1998, for example, two simultaneous attacks were carried out by the group on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed and over 4,000 injured in the busy east African cities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Virtually all of them were civilians, including the passengers on two buses and the occupants of a five-storey office block demolished by the blast in Nairobi.

US president Bill Clinton described the bombings as 'abhorrent' and said that he would 'use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice'. At the trial of four men accused of the bombings, a former aide to Osama bin Laden testified that he had warned US officials of a likely attack on their embassies two years previously. Sue Bartley, who lost her husband and son in the Kenya bombing, commented: 'That information had not been dispensed to our families.' Nor, it seems, had anything been done about it.

2004-08-06T07:49:00.000+01:00

6 August 2004

Hiroshima. The biggest single incident of civilian murder in history. Japanese figures at the time put the death toll at 118, 661. Radiation poisoning subsequently killed more than 20,000 others.

2004-08-05T09:23:00.000+01:00

5 August 2004

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old, age shall not wither them northe years condemn . . .

The first world war began, for Britain at any rate, 90 years ago yesterday with Germany's invasion of Belgium and Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Over the next four years the lives of the young men of Europe were to be squandered on a scale never before seen in history.

But it's not just slaughtered soldiers whose memory is preserved in the aspic of everlasting youth. Increasingly, it's the images of celebrities who have died young that have become iconic in western culture. It took Hollywood just four years after the second world war to coin the phrase 'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse' for the pretty-boy delinquent, John Derek, in Knock On Any Door.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the death of someone whose corpse was as good-looking as they get. Marilyn Monroe, who was found dead in bed in Los Angeles at the age of 36, is among the most iconic of all icons. The reverence accorded to a pre-auction display of some of her clothes a few years ago led to comparisons with the exhibition of saint's relics. 'St Marilyn' was shown to have as large and devoted a following as any saint. The Jean Louis dress she wore at John Kennedy's birthday tribute in 1962, when she famously sang 'Happy Birthday', went for more than a million dollars. It was regarded as a bargain at the time and would almost certainly sell for several times more than that today.

Trivia quiz question (answer tomorrow): Who said kissing Marilyn Monroe was 'like kissing Hitler'?

2004-08-04T16:32:00.000+01:00

4 August 2004

Ninety-nine per cent of the 18,000 voters in Gibraltar opposed plans to negotiate joint sovereignty between Britain and Spain in a referendum in 2002. Gibraltar has been British for 300 years and its 35,000 residents want to keep it that way.

Spain views things rather differently. Today is the anniversary of the Anglo-Dutch seizure of the port in 1704, which resulted in the expulsion of the Spanish population and has deprived that part of Spain of an outlet for trade and business ever since.

There was bound to be some sensitivity around the anniversary. So Britain decided that it wasn't averse to a touch of 21st-century gunboat diplomacy by deploying HMS Grafton to perform the fire a 21-gun salute in Gibraltar's harbour for the first time in more than half a century. Rumours that this had anything to do with snubbing the new Spanish government because of its recent withdrawal from Iraq can of course be discounted.

2004-08-03T08:05:00.000+01:00

3 August 2004

I'm called Stephen because my mum wouldn't have me called John, as her mum wanted, after my grandad. Instead, I got named after a saint, whose feast day is held on the day my mum and dad got married: Boxing Day, 26 December. For some strange reason, which is probably rooted deep in the family psychology, I subsequently spent most of my primary school years pretending to be named John. Even today, no one except my mum calls me Stephen; it's always Steve, or something else less pleasant. If someone I've only just met uses the full, double-syllabled version of my name, it sends a shiver through me. The whole world trebles in size, I revert to being a four-year-old again and start worrying about why I'm in trouble.

Before I lock myself in the cupboard under the stairs, I just want to say that this recollection is not unrelated to the present date of 3 August. This is because, in addition to St Stephen having a feast day on 26 December (27 December in the east), there is also a feast of the Invention of St Stephen, which takes place today. This feast marks the discovery of Stephen's relics, or bones, in the early fifth century, when a priest named Lucian learned by revelation where his body was and had it exhumed.

2004-08-02T14:12:00.000+01:00

2 August 2004

Psychic Week starts today, a day after Simplify Your Life Week and six days before Scrabble Week. Not that any of the psychics that I know of have had advance notice of it. In fact, it seems not to have been foreseen by any of them.

The week was devised by the Hollywood press agent, Richard R Falk, in 1965, apparently, but no one knows why – and Falk is no longer around to tell us. It was probably a publicity stunt of some description for one of his clients, since Falk was a master manipulator of the media. He once had the task of promoting a flea circus on its arrival in New York, for which purpose he booked the star attraction, a flea named 'The Great Herman', into the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He skipped on the transport arrangements, though – the fleas had to itch-hike everywhere . . .