William Nicholson's Blog, page 3

No pasaran!

For some reason nothing makes me quite as angry as being asked to enter a password and finding I don’t know what it is.

I started out in the halcyon dawn of the internet age with one password that I used everywhere, disregarding all advice on best practice. I told myself that I’d rather have my identity stolen than suffer the bewilderment of multiple passwords. But the system has its own way of stopping this. Every time Apple updates its operating systems it seems I have to create a new variant of my password, with ever more kinks and wrinkles. My strategy is to add bits on to the existing password. By now I have about six versions of my password, and I have no idea at all which one applies to iTunes, or my email account, or O2, or Southern Rail, or John Lewis… All demand a password, all work to different rules. The result is that when asked for a password I spend indefinite amounts of time tapping in variants that don’t work, and end up limp and impotent with rage.

My only consolation is that when the online fraudsters tackle me they too will be as baffled as I am. I imagine them gritting their teeth as they go through all the passwords they’ve managed to find that relate to my accounts, only to discover that none of them are quite right, just as I do. Perhaps that’s the object of the exercise. Perhaps some stern but benign deity knows it does us no good to manage everything through computers, and is slowly and deliberately strangling the entire online world.

So the rebel cry goes up, as it has done throughout history, ‘No pasaran!’ – ‘They shall not pass!’

Into the sunrise

My early morning walks continue, and throw up new challenges. As I make my way down the lanes many creatures dash away from me in terror, pigeons clatter out of trees, rabbits burst out of hedgerows, pheasants explode like rockets from the tall maize. It’s all very disconcerting. I feel like some sort of ogre menacing their peaceful existence as I clomp by. But most disconcerting of all is the discovery that there is another human on the lanes, a fellow walker whose route follows mine. I come upon him at the halfway point for me, which is the village, from which he is presumably just setting out. He’s a courteous elderly man with a stick, but not for all that a slow walker. Twice now he’s appeared ahead of me. My own pace, being a little faster, means that I come up behind him like a mugger, and pass him slowly, and then feel his eyes on me for the next half mile. This is of course ridiculous. I should be happy to have company on my road. But I’m not. I feel aggrieved. I feel invaded. I feel the solitude of my early mornings has been compromised. There are cars that pass me, but they don’t count. Cars aren’t people. Another walker, on my route, going in my direction, at almost my pace – that’s crowding me.

Virginia produced the obvious solution: go round the other way. This morning I did this. Setting off just after 6.30 I found that the sun had not yet risen, and I was walking into the sunrise. It was a crisp early morning, the air sharp, my hands chilly, the pre-sunrise sky pale blue, streaked with white cloud. This was a bonus that I had not expected. With each gap in the hedge I got a new glimpse of the brightening sky, until the sun itself appeared. And then so did my fellow walker – but of course, this time he was heading towards me. This was just fine. We passed, greeting each other, and he was gone.

As I looped back down the far side of the circular walk, there he was coming towards me once more. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘take care, you’re going anti-clockwise.’ ‘But I’m walking into the sunrise,’ I said.

Joy ambush

Here’s a puzzle: from time to time I catch some unexpected piece of music on the radio and find myself flooded with joy; I then go out and buy the CD and play it at my leisure, but the the experience isn’t the same. Somehow it’s just less magical. It’s as if as soon as I have it at my command, its value diminishes. Is this yet another instance of that cruel rule that declares we only long for what is out of reach? Or is it more to do with coming upon the moment unprepared, unexpectant, innocent?

In our car we have a system that plays six pre-loaded CDs, which means if the radio music isn’t to my taste I can switch to music I’ve already selected and know I love. But I don’t do this. It seems I’d rather hang on grimly though some piece I don’t enjoy in the hope that I’ll be ambushed by the next piece, and the joy will return.

I remember when I was about 13 buying my first pop single, which was ‘Wonderful Land’ by the Shadows. I played it over and over, and at last tired of it. Then I turned it over, and found a curious number on the other side called ‘Stars fell on Stockton’. It was fresh, it was surprising, I found I liked it better than ‘Wonderful Land’. But of course I tired of that too.

As a result I’ve never built up much of a music library. I go through life waiting for the experience C.S.Lewis called being ‘surprised by joy’. It’s a good phrase, but unfortunately it’s been torpedoed for all of us who know that C.S.Lewis was indeed surprised by joy, in the form of Joy Gresham, the New Yorker who broke down his defences and married him. So I’m proposing ‘joy ambush’.

The habit of walking

Last Friday I began what I intend to be a new habit: walking to the village each morning to get my daily newspaper. I’ve been convinced to attempt this by reading about the many benefits of regular walking, both for body and mind. I’ve been in favour of a daily walk for a long time, but somehow there has never seemed to be a good time of the day to fit it in. Then it occurred to me that the pre-breakfast time, when I sit and drink coffee and listen to the Today programme, was an available slot. Moreover, it’s the time when my brain is waking up, and potentially at its most creative. So why not walk then?

So far, the plan is working. I get up shortly after 6am (a long-time habit, and no hardship), wash and dress, go out to my office (the garage block by the house), make a mug of coffee, and listen to the radio (by then it’s the financial news on the Today programme). Then at about 6.30am I put on trainers and set off up the lanes. Right now, of course, the weather is perfect: the air cool but not chilly, the sun rising over the fields of tall maize. My walk is a circular trip, a little under three miles, and takes me forty minutes. As I walk I think about my current writing project, and listen to the birds, and glimpse the scurrying rabbits, and nod at the odd passing car (most often I can’t see through the windscreen because of reflected light, but the chances are I know the driver, so I nod anyway). At the start of my loop there’s a long rising hill, so by the top of it I’m warm. As I go through the village, most of the houses are dark. The village shop is bright, the paper boy getting ready for his round. I carry my paper in a light nylon rucksack so that my arms are free as I walk. I don’t know why this is necessary, but it is. And so on through the village and back past farms and fields of grazing cows, my brain now buzzing with ideas, down the ever-narrowing lanes, to home.

I arrive warm enough to shed my jacket. By 7.15am I’m having my breakfast and reading the paper. By 7.45am I’m at my desk and at work. My body feels thoroughly awake, as does my brain. So it’s all working as planned.

But will I keep it up?

Two tests await me. One is bad weather: rain and cold and early morning darkness. Once the clocks go back my entire walk will take place in the dark. The other is weakness of will. At present the idea is fresh and exciting, and I’m secretly proud of myself. How will it be when going on walking has no novelty, but causes me mild distress? My great hope is that before that time comes I will have created a habit. I’m a great believer in habits. They deliver me to my desk, and cause me to work hard every day, simply because I’ve been doing the same thing for so long now. Once I establish a habit, it’s easier to repeat the pattern than to break it. For example, long ago, chastised for not cleaning the bath, I forced myself to clean the bath every time I used it. Within a very short time I was unable to leave a bath without cleaning it. But I also have a long history of broken habits, or habits that I have attempted to form and failed. I’ve tried to stop myself having a glass of wine in the early evening, and to stop myself accompanying that glass with some crisps, but every evening my yearning body says, Just this one more time.

It may sound as if I have a puritan drive in me, but I don’t think I have. I’m a great indulger, I like wine with dinner, I love good food. But I’m 66 years old, and I don’t want to grow obese, and I don’t want to become immobile. I want to stay physically  and mentally active for the next thirty years. So I hope to create this habit of walking early every morning, and make it so powerful that it carries me off even as I protest that I don’t want to go.

Four mornings down. We’ll see how far I get.

My Eyes Wide Shut

At an event last night, organised by The Space in Brighton, I shared the platform with Jan Harlan, the veteran producer of Stanley Kubrick’s movies. In conversation over dinner beforehand I told Jan that I thought Kubrick’s last film, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, was terrible. I spoke forcefully about its adolescent immaturity on the subject of sex. Jan was courteous and tolerant, and asked me how long ago I had seen the film. I told him I’d seen it on its release, fifteen years ago. ‘Stanley thought it was his best film,’ said Jan gently. ‘Why don’t you take another look?’

I was at once ashamed of myself. I realised I’d launched into my rubbishing of the film not because I retained any clear notion of its faults, but because I wanted to present myself in a certain light: as one who has passionately held opinions, that he is not afraid to utter. My comments were in fact a pose; I was adopting a pose, not with my body, but with my words. I do have vague memories of thinking ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was a poor film, but given Kubrick’s achievements in his other work, this, his last film, deserves to be taken more seriously than I was doing. So I will watch it again.

Meanwhile I’m left with the shame. Am I still so immature, so insecure, that when I meet a new person I must perform like a stag at a rut? The artistic merits of the film are irrelevant. I was opinion-barging. I think this is a real fault of mine. How much more graceful it would have been to begin our meeting with happy memories of, say, ‘Barry Lyndon’. I still recall with wonder the scene in which a distant carriage crosses the landscape lit by a shaft of real sunlight that tracks it like a follow-spot. Or the almost-perfect ‘Dr Strangelove’. ‘Or ’2001: A Space Odyssey’, a film I’ve loved since the day it was released. Then, perhaps, we could have eased into my disappointment with ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, and I could have listened, and Jan would have told me why Kubrick thought it was his best film, and I would actually have learned something.

Instead I have to come home, and sit at my keyboard, and learn something else.

The happy café

Last night I was at an event at the Emporium, a former church in Brighton now converted into a multi-purpose venue. It’s a delightful place, both very big and very welcoming, an unusual combination; a sort of giant living room. It’s also, so a leaflet told me, a ‘happy café’, part of the Happy Café Network. This is new to me.

‘Happy Cafés.’ reads the leaflet, ‘provide a warm welcome for anyone interested in happiness and wellbeing – and encourage them to meet together for a drink and a friendly chat. Happy Cafés also display inspiring and informative material to help people discover new ways to improve their wellbeing and make others happier too. Action for Happiness supporters may also identify themselves by wearing a sticker provided by the café, to help them connect with other likeminded people. Let’s make the world a happier place together.’

Why does this make me want to punch someone in the face? I agree with every word of it. Am I so sorrowed by cynicism, or maybe by irony, that I can’t handle a direct appeal to me to ‘make others happier’? Why am I even now itching to write witty and sneering putdown comments on the campaign and its thumbs-up logo and its smiling poster boy? It’s almost as if I’m ashamed to admit to a desire to be happier myself, and to live in a happier world. Why should this be so?

Part of it is that dreaded concept, ‘cool’. It’s so very uncool to grin at everyone and seek to improve their wellbeing. Cool people don’t smile; they show in their every move that they know the world is a dark place. I, however, am simply too old to be cool. Too old also to behave like a child, and there’s something child-like in this chirpy sharing of happiness. And yet they’re right, surely. If we all behaved more like children, and shed our miserable self-consciousness, and just enjoyed ourselves more openly, wouldn’t that make life more fun? Then I recall that as a child, for some of the time at least, I was tormented by self-doubt and fears of being friendless. So maybe the problem with the Action for Happiness campaign is that we sense it to be unreal. You can’t take ‘action for happiness’. You do what you can to get through the day, and happiness happens by, if you’re lucky.

Begonias and wine

We decided a little while ago to replace the Japanese prints that hang on our stair walls with paintings bought from artist friends, or from shows where the prices are modest, looking not for investment value but for pictures we love. We have six to date, and lots of wall space waiting. Two local artists, Rachel Wyndham and Sasha Turnbull, have a joint selling show in Lewes at present, and we’ve bought lovely paintings by each of them. Rachel has a habit of painting still lives of quinces, which she says makes her a ‘quince tart’. We now have one of them. Sasha’s painting is of begonias.

When I told Sasha what we’d bought, she said that it had been inspired by a painting of begonias by William Nicholson, the painter (and father of Ben Nicholson) who died just after I was born. From time to time I get requests on my website from people who confuse us (“Have you illustrated any other books as well as ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’?”), and have to explain that not only am I not the painter, but we are in no way related. Even so, I feel a connection; and I’m also a very great admirer of his work.

I looked up this painting of begonias by William Nicholson, and found he painted it in 1939, at Bretton Park in Yorkshire, while working on a portrait of Lord Allendale. In a letter to his daughter he recorded that it was painted “with an urge”, during one long overnight session, “after a perfect dinner (O! the wine)!” I love this. It’s a beautiful painting: a glass jar of begonias alongside notebooks, an ink bottle, and red sealing wax, all lit by the glow of an oil lamp. It’s in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

He seems to have been a most loveable man, my namesake. He made artistic virtue, I read, of considered understatement and controlled freedom. I can only aspire to emulate him. I’m already there in one respect: O! the wine!

Things run out

In the converted garage where I work I have my own loo. I bring out loo rolls from the house, usually three at a time, which of course last for a very long time. But not for ever. Yesterday I replenished my supply, and found myself wondering, Should I bring out more than three? Why not six? Or ten? That led to me thinking, How many loo rolls am I going to need for the rest of my life? And it’s not just loo rolls: it’s the reams of paper I use for writing and printing out my work; it’s the toner for my printer; it’s the light bulbs in my lamps; it’s soap, and toothpaste, and shaving foam, and razor blades, and dishwasher tablets, and batteries for my portable radio…

Things run out. All the time, all round me, things are running out. It’s a constant battle to stay ahead of naked need. Why can’t I bulk buy all the non-perishable goods I’ll ever need for the rest of my life, and stack them in our barn, and know for certain that I’ll never be caught short? I’m sixty-six: I’ll give myself another thirty years. That’s 10,958 days, including leap years (I think). Not much more than a hundred boxes of dishwasher tablets, at one a day, in boxes of 100. As for light bulbs, they last a couple of years, so fifteen should do me. If I buy the new LED type, which last six years, I’ll only need five.

Suddenly I’m five light bulbs off the grave. This is not a good way to think. Better to live in the present moment. So I’m on my loo and I realise I’ve failed to replace the loo roll, but at least I’m not dead.

Dickie RIP

Just back from a brief break in France to learn that Dickie Attenborough has died. I worked with him on two films, ‘Shadowlands’ and ‘Grey Owl’, and remember him with unusual affection. Unusual because the film business is hard on friendships. I was never close to Dickie, and can’t claim any intimate knowledge of him, but I remain grateful to him for the way he showed that films can be made, and made superbly, without the customary tantrums, brutalities and deceits. He was courteous, warm-hearted and respectful all the time. It’s hard to explain to those outside the business quite how extraordinary this is. Film making seems of its nature to turn people into monsters. I suppose it’s the combination of power, flattery and insecurity; whatever it is, the cocktail is poisonous. Dickie was immune to the poison. He must have been a deeply driven man, no doubt driven by insecurities, as we all are, but he had his demons under control.

I last saw Dickie in Denville Hall, the actor’s home where he spent his final years. He could no longer talk clearly, and I think didn’t recognise me, but his beaming smile greeted me nonetheless, reminding me of the sheer power of goodwill. The tributes that will now follow his death are well earned. We who work in the industry can best honour his life by following his example, and valuing kindness in our professional dealings with each other.

Righteousness scares me

We saw the Old Vic’s production of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ last night. It’s a superb production, but what struck me most forcibly was how good the play is. I’m hard to please in the theatre, and usually emerge muttering, ‘I didn’t believe any of it.’ This is written in a semi-Biblical 17th century English that should have set my teeth on edge, but I believed every word and every moment. The dramatic structure that Miller has built around the Salem witch trials is masterly. He simply never puts a foot wrong. The greatest tribute I can offer is that it chilled and horrified me, not about Massachusetts two hundred years ago, but about the world today. As the play ground towards its grim climax I wanted to punch the chief prosecutor Danforth in the face until he could no longer speak.

For some reason I dread the power of groups to enforce an ideology on individuals almost more than anything else. This isn’t just about religious orthodoxies, or cults; it’s about any form of pressure that tries to prescribe how I dress or speak or hold opinions. I’m not a rebel at all, so I don’t quite know where this violent reaction comes from. Perhaps from a sense of my own weakness, my own tendency to conform and want to please. Perhaps all too aware of how I, if placed under pressure, would name names, I despise McCarthy’s show trials and I despise Soviet show trials. I reject utterly those intellectuals who argue that we must collude with a lie in order to serve a greater good. This is what leads British judges to condemn innocent men rather than bring the law into disrepute, and what leads the police to close ranks and lie, and what leads the members of any institution to silence whistleblowers, saying, ‘Hide the lesser crime for the greater good.’ There is no greater good.

Righteousness scares me. Robespierre, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the fighters of the Islamic State have all been convinced of their own righteousness, that they do what they do for the greater good. In this new century, even we, the tolerant West, torture for the greater good. Arthur Miller understood that there is no greater good, only what is good.