My funeral

(Written 30/04/2015, in response to a Facebook advert suggesting I save for my funeral costs.)

Yes, I realise they're tailored to my browsing history, so I see a lot of adverts for bands, booze and fast cars. Also goats, sadly. Tonight, though, my dander is well and truly up!

 

"Funeral dealt with?" enquires an ad. "Aged 56? Get £10,000 of life cover for £1.16 a week. Pay bills or leave a cash gift!" The ad is illustrated by a sprightly older chap wearing glasses so thick he could be confused with Colonel Blink, The Short-Sighted Gink (apologies to younger pals who may never have seen "The Beezer" comic, where said military gentleman appeared), who is celebrating his funereal readiness with a happy thumbs up. Seventy years ago, it would have been the stock photo for a newspaper front page article headed "Londoners tell Hitler 'We can take it!'"

 

No, my funeral isn't dealt with. Not unless you consider telling my nearest and dearest that I want the William Croft arrangement of the Burial Service - surely, the greatest, most beautiful music ever written - "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", Jon and Vangelis' "I'll Find My Way Home" (a great shout of faith) and the Cropredy Chorale singing and playing "Meet On The Ledge" at the end, followed by "Launch Chorus" from Apollo 13 at the crematorium.

 

By "dealt with", I assume that the advertisers mean "paid for", and the answer to that is a firm "No, and pray fuck off." I intend to die with a negative bank balance, owing money to many credit card companies, also said nearest and dearest. However, that is for the future, and not for consideration in the present - a present where I have only recently let go of my youth. And that took a Court Order, delivered by a biased judge who was swayed by the farcical arguments of the Goat Protection Squad. In short, I now find myself entering early middle age, a state whose requirements I refuse to comply with on the grounds that I was brought here against my will. (Personally, I think the rum'n'rohypnol tinctures were, in hindsight, a mistake.)

 

Deal with my funeral? Shan't! I won't be there, and, apart from the music, I frankly don't care what happens. Shove me in an old cardboard box, don't spend money on a coffin, especially money that could be better employed for the booze-up afterwards.

 

It is for the same reasons that I do not respond to the urging of Michael Parkinson and Julie Walters to pay into their "avoid an embarrassing death" funds. "It will pay for those final costs", they say, in an understanding tone, as if there is something shameful about dying without the readies to settle the end-of-life bills. To which I respond "Sez you".

 

My old friend Paul Douglas's uncle ordered a pint in one of Portsmouth's most comedic pubs, the Fawcett Inn (on Fawcett Road, naturally). The foaming glass was duly served, he took a gulp, pronounced it excellent, then went a funny colour and fell to the ground, the victim of a massive heart attack. Now, Noel Coward once remarked that to be born an Englishman is the equivalent of being born one drink up. Dougie's uncle died one drink ahead, as he hadn't paid for the pint, and the general feeling in the Fawcett Inn was that going through uncle's pockets for the cash might be misinterpreted if the ambulance crew or the police stepped in at the wrong moment.

 

Now, that's the way I want to go! One drink up, with enemies surprised to be named in my Will - "He left you his Visa card. We take cheques..." Deal with my funeral? What, when there's so much more music to be listened to? More women to meet? More sunny days? More food experiments to be carried out, like the pineapple jelly I made with coconut milk last weekend? (And, BTW, OMG.)

 

No, I'm too young for all that... or, at least, to the casual observer, I act too young for that. Most of the schoolfriends I am in contact with are, these days, very much older than I am. They're surprised that I go to music festivals, they don't really know what a podcast is, they certainly wouldn't download one, they don't go to folk clubs, and they don't understand trance music. The drugs they take are not recreational, they're prescribed.

 

I truly do not intend to die anytime soon, and I certainly don't intend to die with anything organised.

Another Govt IT system that doesn't work, apparently

(Written 18/9/2013)

 

I see the latest Universal Credit IT system project has been roundly condemned for being a bit useless. I am not surprised one bit.

 

Systems are fairly easy to design and code. Take it from me, I am a qualified systems analyst, accredited by the University of Birmingham. Ask me to design a system that assesses all the benefits a claimant is entitled to and I'll give you one in about three months. Ask me for a system that will assess the benefits that several million people are entitled to and I'll deliver it a few months later. What's more, it will work seamlessly within the parameters you've specified.

 

So why don't Govt IT projects work - ever? Because of useless Ministers who try to make political capital out of what they think will be delivered, and useless Civil Servants who think they know best.

 

Look, getting a computer to take certain values, manipulate them a bit, shove the result into a formula and use the final value to initiate a monetary bank transfer is simple if you have the ability to break down the sequence into logical steps and a tame programmer to work with. Once you can do that for one claimant, you can do it for a million - a billion, if you're prepared to use enough resources. If it works for one transaction, it'll work for (n) transactions.

 

What tends to go wrong, though, and causes massive delays, is when people either forget to mention an element of the kernel formula that ought to have been drawn to the hapless analyst's attention on day one ("Yes, people on sickness benefit don't qualify for tax relief on their bloat-mobiles, but registered disabled chubbies can claim an allowance for them if they have no other transport. It's obvious, why did you leave that out?") or they change the specified parameters ("The Minister has told the House that your system will also root out illegal benefit claims, please build that in before 'go live' testing starts next week. Some kind of fingerprint or iris recognition technology would be best.")

 

You see, what happens then is that the system build team have to add some more steps to the process diagram, run their theoretical systems tests again to make sure that all the right benefits go to all the right claimants, then add several hundred/thousand lines of code, and run a test of the program to make sure that all the screens don't light up with <"Out of cheese error"> (or, worse:

 

<Error 3791 - missing subroutine>

<Error 939 - divide by zero error>

<Error 7302 - divide by error 5804 error>

<Error 1603 - missing ")">  Ho, ho... but where?)

 

Then, when everything seems to work, both theoretically and without crashing dependant systems ("Claimants bank accounts frozen! Millions starve!" - Daily Mail), test scenarios can be run. Assuming that they all produce the correct results - and if they don't, we all go back to the start of the last paragraph, we do not pass "GO", but we still get paid the £200 a day - we move on to load testing.

 

This is where all the data is put onto the system, while we wait to see if the servers can take it. When they can't, we remind our masters that "buying better servers" was one of the items they removed from the system spec because their own in-house Scotty said that the engines could take it. And that extra dilythium crystals would make the project "Verra, verra expensive, Captain."

 

The person responsible for buying adequate servers is actually a committee of 30 that rarely makes a decision due to the conflicting interests of its members. Imagine an early-adopter techno-geek, a time-served C++ programmer and a parsimonious skinflint trying to arrive at a server-buying policy that will be acceptable to a Minister who struggles to find the "Start" button on his laptop, then multiply the confusion by six and you'll realise why an urgent project-saving decision can take three months and five meetings before it's implemented.

 

So, now the data loads without bringing down other essential systems ("Bulgarian scroungers walk through open borders as passport recognition systems fail!" - Daily Mail) and it's time to see if the system - which is already a few months overdue and over budget - can cope with many multiple operations at the same time. To test this, around a hundred Civil Servants are temporarily relieved from their duties and put in front of PCs, then handed a script and told not to deviate from it. The script runs along the lines of:

 

Press button "A"

Now click on "New claimant"

Choose "Romanian" from the drop-down list

Click on "Asylum seeker"

For "Dependant children", choose "4"

For "Sort Code", enter "11-11-12" and "123456" for Account Number

Click "Done"

The result is £0.00.

Please raise your hand if you get any other result, including <Out of cheese> error.

 

Many of the scripts run other more complex or simpler scenarios, and they're kept at it all day while Scotty looks at the load levels and mutters. Finally, it seems that everything works.

 

So now the training team can go to work. They were recruited quite a long time ago (just before the bloat-mobile confusion happened) so that they could document the system in ways the eventual users could understand. These documents are known as "manuals", and they contain many screenshots with helpful arrows labelled "Press this button" and the like. They have also been devising training scenarios and stitching them together into 90 minute presentations. Four such presentations will eventually become one training day. The trainers, too, are costing the project £200 a day, plus expenses.

 

The training team are mightily pissed off, because they are now on version seven of the manuals due to the ever-changing screens that the project build team are amending. On the plus side, they're at the top of their leaderboards on Bejewelled Blitz, they're enjoying their hotels and the owners of various ethnic restaurants welcome the distribution of their chargeable expenses.

 

Now that the system works, and there's a training programme that reflects the current build, a two-month training schedule that's at least six months overdue can start. And here's where the real problems arrive, because most Civil Servants will avoid training on new systems with might, main and meetings. I speak from experience. Most training sessions will run at 75% capacity. Meaning that the two-month training schedule is extended by a month to pick up the no-shows, the final few of which have to be dragged in with whaling harpoons as they claim that they have an urgent meeting concerning national security with the Prime Minister. At Buckingham Palace.

 

You have a working system and trained staff. It's nearly a year overdue, you've bought servers that were not included in the project cost and during that year-long over-run you've been employing trainers earnig £200 a day from an agency that charges £600 a day for each one and a system build team from the people who made the software. They're usually more expensive than trainers.

 

"Go Live" day coincides with Budget Day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announces significant changes to the benefits system, changes that have been secret to prevent press leaks. We all start again...

 

My best advice for project managers? Nail the system parameters down tight, refuse to accept any changes to it - ("The bloat-mobile tax allowance is now called Fatties On Castors, please change the relevant screens." "Tough, you're getting what you paid for.") and insist on quality kit that copes with almost anything from day one.

 

The final system still won't work, of course, but it will be delivered on time and on budget. And in the crazy world that is Government project management, that's much more important than a system that works properly.

 

Just ask ATOS.

The Colin story

(Written 16/4/15. I don't usually post scripts I've written for my FolkCast "Story Behind The Song" slot, but if there's one tale I've been asked to tell more than any other, it's this one. If you want to hear what it sounds like when put into the hands of a good producer, or the song this story inspired, or even Colin playing, then Google "folkcast" and download the show from May 2015.)

Hiya, FolkCasters, Babba here with another tale of the events that inspired a folk song. For once, though, this tale doesn’t need any research to tell – because I was there when the events took place. If you’ve got a copy of Free Reed’s excellent “Cropredy Capers”, you may recognise this <intro, brief>, but whether you know the song or not, allow me to tell you why, nearly twelve years ago, so many people were asking “Where is Colin?”

I first met Colin Lennox in the mid-1980s. He was a huge Fairport Convention fan and he’d never missed a Cropredy since 1977, when Fairport played their last-ever gig in the village hall. My first Cropredy was 1982, and I haven’t missed one since then. By 1986, Colin and I were meeting at his place in London every August, then travelling to Cropredy together. If you came to the Festival between 1986 and 2002, you might well have seen us after the music in the arena had finished, because we used to go back to the tents, brew coffee, open a bottle or two, get our guitars out and have a bit of a sing.

Sadly, Colin was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1990s. He fought hard against it, and his doctors fought harder, but at the start of 2003 he was told that the condition was terminal. He spent his last few months at home recording the music he loved to play, and the background music you’re hearing comes from this legacy that he left his friends and family.

Colin died in the spring of 2003. Shortly before he passed away, he had an email from the Fairports, wishing him, and I quote, “Much love at this difficult time”. Dave, Simon, Ric, Chris, Gerry – if any of you hear this, you should know that Colin was over the moon when he read your message. Thank you.

Colin made it clear that he wanted his ashes scattered over the arena field at Cropredy, but this hadn’t happened when August rolled around that year. A day or so before the Festival, I took a call from Colin’s best friend Paul. “I’ve just had Colin’s sister on the phone”, he explained, “And she’s got a favour to ask… but she says she’ll understand if you think it’s too weird.” Well, your Uncle Babba has never been a stranger to weird… so Paul explained that Colin’s family were trying to find a date when they could all get together to scatter his ashes, but they remembered that Colin never missed Cropredy… and would Paul and I take his remains to the Festival and bring them back?

Well, why not? It was the least we could do for our pal. And so it was that we set off with a cardboard box labelled “Human Remains” in the passenger foot well of my car, carefully zipped into a small black nylon bag to avoid offending anyone. Once we’d pitched the tents in our usual spot on Field 2, we met up with lots of friends, and without fail, every one of them said “Such a pity Colin’s not here…” To which, of course, we replied, “Oh, but he is!” and showed them the black bag. It may sound odd, it may strike some people as being disrespectful, but there was a lot of love in the air that evening.

The next morning, we met a mutual friend, David Hughes. David offered his condolences and we went through the by now familiar routine of “He’s here!” At which, David smiled and asked whether we thought Colin would like to go on stage at Cropredy, because David was playing a spot that afternoon. Of course he would – which is why David went onstage carrying his guitar… and a small black nylon bag, which he carefully placed at his feet.

A small nylon bag that he completely forgot about when he left the stage… and went off to sign copies of his new CD, while Ralph McTell started his set. What could we do? Paul and I joined the end of the queue for David’s CD, and fully twenty minutes later, David Hughes looked at our smiling faces, the penny dropped and he said a certain word. Just once, but with a lot of feeling.

As soon as Ralph’s set was over, he went back to retrieve Colin from the stage – but Colin couldn’t be found. An ashen-faced Hughes joined us and explained “I’ve had to tell Dave Pegg!” (the then Festival organiser) “He’s closed the site down, nothing leaves or arrives until we’ve found Colin. And he can’t stop laughing.”

Colin was found in a dressing room about half an hour later, to everyone’s relief. The story, though, didn’t end there.

The next morning, Saturday, we met David Hughes again. “Peggy’s telling everyone who goes backstage! He’ll never let me forget it,” he moaned. “But Colin’s finally made it – he’s a Cropredy legend!” Later that evening, after the Festival had ended, someone nipped round to our tents with an invitation for Colin to join the backstage party, and a couple of invites for Paul and me. Colin went back to his family the next day, and that, I thought, was that.

Until the following weekend, when Colin was the entire front page story in the Banbury Guardian.

And the weekend after that, when Colin made page 6 of the News of the World. For the next few months, the story of the fan who didn’t let a little thing like death stop him going to his favourite festival cropped up in papers all over the world. Over a year later, the BBC made a radio programme about the Cropredy Festival, and yes, Colin’s story was mentioned.

It was during the autumn of 2003 that I had a call from David Hughes. Fairport Convention had been so intrigued and amused by the events that they’d commissioned him to write them a song commemorating the whole thing. He wanted to check that Colin’s family wouldn’t be offended, and after Paul had made some enquiries, we were able to reassure him that they were all for Colin being remembered in song.

And this is the song…

<Where Is Colin?>

At Cropredy 2004, Colin’s ashes were discreetly scattered. You won’t find a memorial anywhere on the field, but there’s some of him by the bar, some down the front, some by Jonah’s Oak and a little everywhere.

So that’s the tale of Colin, the Fairport fan who finally made it on to the stage at Cropredy, who closed down the entire festival for half an hour, made the papers all around the world and is remembered forever in a Fairport song. He, truly, would never have believed it. But you can – because I was there and I saw it all.

I’ll be back next month with another story behind the song, but probably not one that I was personally involved with. Until then – Fare Thee Well!

Listening to John Renbourn...

(Written 28/6/15)

Just been playing the John Renbourn tracks I have on the iPlayer, and his perfect version of "Lord Franklin" came on. You know how some music can drag you back to a certain time and place? Well, "Lord Franklin" delivered in spades, with VAT added and fries to go, because it took me back to two times and places.

The first was in the early 70's, when I was just learning the guitar and soaking up influences wherever I could, then repeatedly failing to reproduce them on the nylon-strung acoustic that was the only guitar I had - and that was on loan from school. A similarly pimpled guitar-playing friend recommended Mr Renbourn for advanced bemusement and envy, so I bought "The John Renbourn Sampler" for what was, even then, a bargain price of 99p. Bear in mind that I was a very new guitarist and I knew nothing about tunings, so trying to play even a bar of what JR was smoothly delivering left me with a broken finger, hand, string and guitar.

"Lord Franklin", though, stood out. Great tune, interesting lyrics and that strangled electric solo... it was the song I came back to time after time. What's more, I learnt to play it. Very slowly, over several years, and nothing like the Renbourn version, but the song relies on the three chord trick of E, A and then B. Mind, B is a bloody difficult chord to play, so I used C, D and G. Which led me to the art of transposition. Later on, someone showed me how to play the B chord as a barred E shape at the seventh fret (E transposed by seven semitones is a B) and that other chords could be played with a barred E shape, with interesting results. E at the third fret is G. At the fifth, it's A. At the tenth, it's D.

Even better, at the ninth, it's C sharp, a fiendishly difficult chord. B flat is another chord straight from Satan's bottom for the new guitarist with a cheap instrument and finger difficulties... until someone tells you that it's a barred E at the sixth fret.

So there I was, transposing and barring for quite some time, playing "Lord Franklin" in any key you like and playing many other songs, too in any key I liked. And then another pal said " Try removing the bar for A at the fifth and B at the seventh."

Good Lord! Just put an E shape above the fifth, or the seventh and it all works! Bonus - it sounds a bit folky, too. So there's me trying out all the three chord trick songs to see which ones worked and sounded a bit folky, too... and I discovered Led Zep's "Rock'n'Roll". I played it to Colin, he said "Cor!" and we recorded it. Yes, a folky "Rock'n'Roll" on a couple of acoustic guitars, recorded in my kitchen - and it was one of the tracks picked for Colin's memorial album.

"Lord Franklin", once transposed, now played without the bar at the root, the fifth and the seventh, was coming on quite nicely.

Then some kind soul lent me a guitar at a jam session in Winchester one night, saying "It's in D. You know how to play in D, right?" I confessed that he might as well have been speaking in Tagalog and could have handed me a herring, so little did I understand his meaning. He cheerfully demonstrated that the guitar was in a non-standard tuning, but that many familiar chords could be played with fewer fingers than usual, leaving the others free to hit some interesting frets, meaning that the digit-destroying C sharp flattened ninth swam into my orbit. Making a note of how to tune the guitar (by now, a steel-strung Eko Ranger 6 jumbo), I probably bored my then partner Karen stupid running through the songs I knew that worked really quite well in this new world of "tunings".And yes, "Lord Franklin" sounded softly mysterious, folky and on the edge of professionalism when played in a D tuning with spare fingers on interesting frets.

Need I add that once transposing, barring, not barring but just moving chord shapes up and down the fretboard and non-standard tuning were under my belt, the Richard Thompson songbook opened up in front of me? As did quite a lot of John Martyn's work (without that Echoplex, or those pedals, obviously).

"American Pie" taught me how to play the guitar. "Lord Franklin" took me from basic pimply Girl Guide chords to supporting Johnny Coppin when he played Winchester Folk Club and some excitable people asking me whether I might play "Anji" for them. (Absolutely no chance, I left that sort of thing to Colin.) With a bit of retuning, though, I did play "Solid Air" that night. There's only three chords to it, after all, and two of them are one-finger bars, leaving more fingers to hammer on interesting frets - like John Martyn did, to confuse the new guitarist and camouflage how easy it is to play.

Going back to the early 70's though, I was intrigued by the tale told through the lyrics of "Lord Franklin" and wanted to know more about him. Now then, younger people, we had none of your modern Internet, no world wide web, and computers were both very large and attended by white-coated scientists. The concept of owning a computer in the home for my school friends and I was banjaxed at the first hurdle, viz. there was no way your mum would buy you a white coat without a significant improvement in your science grades. So any research had to be done using the quaint old-fashioned building known as a "library" and a search engine known as "a librarian".

I was fascinated by the history I found, of an adventurer setting off to find what would become the North West Passage over the top of Canada, his ship being ice-bound, how the crew set off walking to where they thought land was, taking some really odd things with them like a desk because they were all nuts from eating canned food contaminated by lead, how none of them survived or was even found, how more people were killed in the search for them than were in the original crew - honestly, if I played "Lord Franklin" on stage, the intro lasted longer than the song.

As for the second time the song took me back to, it was a year after FolkCast started, and I had just completed the last Folk Calendar of traditional events. "Any ideas about what you want to do now?" said FolkCast originator Phil Widdows... and "Lord Franklin" appeared on the horizon, hailing me across the icy seas. "Well, I could have a chat about the history behind some folk songs. Like 'Lord Franklin', for example. Did you know that...." After a few more hastily-cobbled together examples, "Parcel of Rogues" and "Fighting For Strangers" (I think), Widds was sold on the idea.

Thus was "Story Behind The Song" born. The very first one was "Lord Franklin". I privately thought there might be a dozen songs at best that would fit the slot. I didn't count on listeners suggestions, people writing songs aimed at a Story Behind The Song airing, being able to commission songwriters like Carys and Roy Mette to compose songs about major events (the Gunpowder Plot and the Fire of London) from which no songs survive, and I certainly didn't think I'd write nearly ninety Stories - ably abetted by top producer and soundscape artist extraordinaire Phil Widdows.

"Lord Franklin" has taken me from hopeful plank-spanker to supporting a folk artist I'd previously paid folding money to see many times with his old band, Decameron and solo, too. It's also taken me into the reflected glory of FolkCast, invitations to Cropredy as a guest of Fairport Convention with full backstage privileges, free passes, food and chalets at Butlins Folk Festival... and being greeted warmly by the Godfather of British folk/rock, "The Guv'nor" Ashley Hutchings with the words "I'm a big fan of Babba!" Gaw...

Really, that's not too bad for a single John Renbourn track!

RIP, Sir Terry Pratchett

(Written 12/3/2015, the day Sir Terry Pratchett died.)

How can the death of someone I knew was dying affect me so much? I never met the man, and all I knew of him was his writing, writing that often divided people. Us Pratchett fans often feel that people who don't like Sir Terry's work somehow don't "get it". Or that the literati automatically dismiss popular authors, because the masses rarely choose great literature over entertaining rubbish. Of course,  they forget that Dickens was an enormously popular author in his own lifetime, as was Hardy... as was Shakespeare.

I suppose I'm affected because Pratchett wrote stories that grabbed the reader, turned their world upside down and shook it until something funny, something that made you think or some great illustration of the human condition fell out. He created characters that strode out of the pages, characters like Sam Vimes, originally Sergeant of the City Watch, a man who lived on bacon sandwiches, Old Bearhugger's Whisky and his wits. Sam Vimes is the main character in all the detective/police novels, and in my mind he's always been the late John Thaw.

Or there's Granny Weatherwax, a witch who rarely uses witchcraft because other means - mainly "headology" - are usually easier. Doesn't stop her scaring the daylights out of the villagers in The Ramtops where she lives ("Bein' respected", Granny would correct me.) Then there's her two other coven members, Granny Ogg (Miriam Margolyes), who likes a drop of Scumble ("It's made of apples. Well, mainly apples.") and has one tooth, a blackened pipe, a murderous cat called Greebo ("He's just an old softie") and is likely to bankrupt you if play Cripple Mr Onion (a card game) with her; and Magrat, a vaguely New Age witch who has many cures that involve herbs, and with whom you would only have to be for a few minutes before the words "wet hen" rose unbidden in your mind.

The coven (the maiden, the mother and the crone) feature in all the "Witches" books, which often concern the plight of elderly women in an agricultural society. Or there's the Arch-Chancellor of the Unseen University where all the magic happens, where they have a proto-computer that runs on ants (and has a sticker on it proclaiming "Anthill Inside"). The Arch-Chancellor is a huntin', shootin', fishin' man (forever Robert Hardy in my mind) who got to the top of the academic tree by killing everyone above him - as has every Arch-Chancellor before him. He is constantly wary of traps, unexpected potions, poison in his favourite Wow-Wow Sauce and the insertion of a portal to the Dungeon Dimensions in his bathroom.

And then, of course, there's Death. Death doesn't kill you, something or someone else has to do that, but Death is always around to pick up the pieces, offer what reassurance he can, and point you to somewhere that is never defined. Death is emotionless, but at the back of those piercing blue eyes there's a kindness... and a fascination with what it is to be human, something that Death doesn't understand at all. He tries, though.

The thing is, that (with the exception of Death, I hope) we all know those characters in the Roundworld. We've all met them in one form or another. As many of you know, I have also been lucky enough to meet the Librarian of Unseen University, an orang-utan. And once you've had a two-way encounter with an orang-utan, you're soft on them for the rest of your life. As was Sir Terry, who raised a lot of money for the Urang-utan Preservation Trust, and made two documentaries about those gentle apes.

The greater thing, though, is that police officers are certain that Pratchett must have worked in that profession, such is his command of the procedure, the daftness and the in-jokes that coppers share. Academics have praised his deep understanding of the university system. Morris sides are convinced that only a Morris dancer could understand their arcane ways and parody them so finely. Witches are mainly silent, but psychologists have written warmly about his use of headology to mimic rural "magic". The man was a master of facts, a prolific reader of both fiction and non-fiction, and brought all his experience from every aspect of life to a fine point that incised his prose.

Sir Terry Pratchett wrote terrific novels, books with plots, parodies, many fine jokes, quite a lot of slapstick jokes, puns that would make you want to slap him, and moments that would pull the reader up short with tears in their eyes. You might be reading for several pages before you realised what was being parodied, but when the magic moment came, you felt as if you were sharing a secret smile with an old friend.

Like the playwright with a touring company who attracted inspiration like a rod attracts lightning, and who was having trouble with a new play. He'd just torn up the line "Is this a duck, it's beak toward my hand?". Or the child of Satan, born to be the AntiChrist, but mixed up at birth and handed to completely wrong parents, a middle-class couple with middle-class values - and if anything will drive the Devil out, it's a diet of "Antiques Roadshow" and regular bowel movements. On his eleventh birthday, he is to be gifted a Hellhound, but when it arrives with red eyes and slavering jaws he treats it like any eleven year old boy does, so it shortly becomes a family pet - called "Dog". Not long after, it becomes clear that we're reading a parody of the "William" books, albeit with The Apocalypse looming, complete with the four bikers of the Apocalypse, and a couple of angels (one from each side, but over the aeons they've become friends who both want to avoid the end of the world because they don't want to lose their jobs.)

My favourite of his books is "Reaper Man", where Death is about to be replaced (because he has developed a personality) and has to get a job on the Discworld. Thanks to his skill with a scythe, he becomes a reaper on a small farm and ends up fighting a mechanical reaper. Along the way, he assists the farm owner, Miss Flitworth, to her death and a reconciliation with her much-loved husband, lost in an icy grave.

("When did you do it?" YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU SAID "OH, YOU'LL BE THE
DEATH OF ME?" "Yes?" WELL, I WAS.)

"Night Watch" is probably his finest work, being a parody of Les Miserables with added time-travel and the very best way to lift a seige. By pushing it out of town, obviously. Please don't go and read those two books if you want to know how good Pratchett is, it would be like starting to read JRR Tolkien with The Silmarillion followed by The Two Towers.

Sir Terry's last book was "A Slip Of The Keyboard", and I urge you to read it. It's a collection of his non-fiction articles, covering themes such as writing ("Most people who say they would like to write actually want to have written"), orang-utans, the joy of reading, early-onset Alzheimers and assisted suicide. It is a magesterial example of how to write prose with style, with precision and with a voice.

As far as the fiction is concerned, start at the beginning and enjoy reading an author learning to find his voice, then using it to tell tales that will make you gasp with wonder, snigger a lot, entrance you, make you shed the odd tear and guffaw out loud on trains.

Pratchett was accused of literature from time to time. Now that he's gone, it's an accusation that will be levelled a hell of a lot in the future. Swift, Wodehouse, and other giants of humour - welcome another to your band. Others are welcome to disagree (I'll expect to see your working, mind), but we've just lost the greatest writer of our generation.

Sir Terry Pratchett, a knight who made his own sword from iron ore he dug, smelted, hammered, folded, hammered again and ground to an edge, Carnegie Medal winner and author of 70+ books is dead. Not by his own hand, finally (although I hope he got that glass of brandy and the Thomas Tallis he planned for his chosen send-off), but from natural causes, with his family around him and his cat asleep on his death bed.

Told you there's a kindness behind those piercing blue eyes...

Hunting with Dogs

(Written 12/07/15)

I see a positive blizzard of posts on FB along the lines of "Save the poor fox, don't mess with the hunting law!" accompanied by snaps of cute foxes. You will not find me liking any of them, and here's why.

There are two things you have to understand about the Hunting with Dogs Act. 1) It is a perfect example of law made in haste being bad law, and 2) it has almost nothing to do with fox hunting.

Let me address the second point first. Hunting foxes in silly costumes on horseback with dogs running ahead to flush out the fox and keep it moving until it is exhausted and can be dispatched is still, regrettably, completely legal. All the Act did was to limit the number of dogs, and prevents the dogs killing the fox. The fox still suffers terribly, but is now shot.

As to the first point, the Act doesn't mention foxes - it simply refers to hunting "animals", presumably to cover hunting deer and particularly stags. However, nobody thought about the rabbits. They are a pest and not only damage crops, they eat grassland back to the roots. All those country folk arguing for a repeal of the Act - they're chicken farmers, right? Wrong. They're vegetable farmers who can't sell a cabbage, a cauli or a carrot to Tesco with a healthy rabbit bite out of it, let alone the debris left by rabbits in the asparagus field. They're also the cattle farmers whose cows have little fresh grass to eat because the pasture has turned to mud thanks to rabbits. Cows have to eat, obviously, so a lack of fresh grass has to be supplemented with expensive hay, driving up the price of beef.

There are many ways of controlling rabbits - setting snares, putting nets across all the exits of a warren except one, then putting a longdog into that one so that the warren population flees into the nets, "lamping" (catching a rabbit at night in the beam of a spotlight, then shooting it as it freezes) - but the very best way is to go for a walk across the fields with a dog or three.

A rabbit will break cover and run from a dog. It's daft, because if a dog met a rabbit doing rabbit stuff, it would give it a good sniff and carry on to the next interesting smell or BALL! BALL! GET IT! And yet, your rabbit will bolt - as will the dog/s.

Having been a party to walking dogs across fields with the intention of getting a few rabbits for the pot, I can confirm that dogs can run faster than rabbits. What's more, they dispatch them almost instantly, the jaws go round the rabbit's neck, the dog rolls and the neck is snapped. A properly-fed and trained dog does no more than that, allowing the owner to take the rabbit(s) home for skinning, butchering and eating. Cows wanting grass to eat and supermarket produce managers wanting unchewed veg give thanks to the dog owner and his faithful "SQUIRREL!" friends.

The Hunting with Dogs Act kept braying superior Hunts alive, and actually contributed to the fox overpopulation problem by them breeding their own foxes to be released in a specific location yet has criminalised working farmers and other country folk who try to control vermin rabbits with the most effective and humane end to their lives - dogs.

The Act needs to be reviewed, redrafted, debated again and made to affect the very thing it was intended to stop - the vile hunting of foxes by people on horseback who delight in an exhausted, cowed fox that is then torn apart by a trained pack of dogs.

If you like to eat chicken, you have to be for controlling foxes. If you like your veg, you have to be for controlling rabbits. If you enjoy, or celebrate their slaughter, though - or, worse, demand that other celebrants wear your nonsensical red coat uniform, then I truly don't want to know you.

A good lunch

(Written 1/10/2013. My very good friend, Doctor Chris, emigrated to India some twenty-five years ago. He returns every year to renew his visa and visit his pals. He's a non-executive Director of the Blue Elephant and La Porte Des Indes restaurant chains, and I'm lucky enough to get regular invitations to dine with him at one or other of their London sites.)

To London with Dr Chris today, so that he could pick up his yearly dividend from his part-ownership of the Blue Elephant group http://www.blueelephant.com/

 

Last year, we ate at the new Blue Elephant near Clapham Junction, so this time he'd decided we'd lunch at La Porte Des Indes, close to Marble Arch - http://www.laportedesindes.com/london/

 

We were clearly expected, as the Group Executive Chef was waiting for us in Reception, ready to escort us to the bar. With a couple of pints of Kingfisher in front of us, he briefed Chris on the current state of work on the latest addition to the franchise, La Porte Des Indes Dubai, scheduled to open on December 1st.

 

From there, he handed us over to his wife, the Group Managing Director. She took Chris through developments announced at the last AGM, the profit expectations for the year ahead, then collected the menus we'd been handed and asked if we'd let her order the food - "Let me put a selection together for you. You'll be wanting a bottle of wine?" Yes, a bottle of the house white would be a good idea.

 

This shortly arrived, together with an "amuse-bouche", a tiny pastry containing tilapia and mashed potato, with a fruit chutney and a green herb sauce. Gracious, what a taste explosion it was, an initial blast of spice that threatened to be overpowering but disappeared in seconds, followed by a sweet fruitiness combined with creamy mint. And if I thought that was a remarkable demonstration of the chef's subtle arts, it was as nothing compared to what followed.

 

A large dish of starters was placed before us - a couple of enormous tandoori-roasted prawns, fully eight inches long, two lamb kebabs, two cheesy herbed and spiced concoctions piled on individual biscuits, briefly-grilled scallops in a saffron sauce and a couple of lamb chops marinaded in yoghurt and spices. To accompany the dish, a garlic and shallot naan, and four chutneys, mango, mint, assorted fruit and chilli. The last we were warned to treat carefully, as it was very spicy.

 

The Managing Director popped back to introduce our waitress for lunch, the newly appointed Restaurant Manager. "She'll look after you, now, how's the wine?" In response to Chris' questions about who chooses the house wine (which was very good indeed - but at £28 a bottle it ought to be), it seems that the wine buyer left a few years ago, but not before forging excellent relations with several vineyards that continue to supply the Group. The house white comes from Austria, and apparently the wine-maker's Alsace is even better. Hearing that the "Alsace" is actually a blend of four Alsacian wines, including Gervurztraminer, I ventured that such a wine, with its flinty background, would probably go exceptionally well with spicy food.

 

Recognising a knowledgable dipsomaniac, S said "Oh, then you must try a glass!" Turning to our waitress, she said that there was quite a lot of an open bottle remaining in the kitchen, and to be a dear and fetch it. Thus it was that our wine bill was augmented by most of a £39 bottle. And, gosh, it was good.

 

Folks, you might enjoy a glance at the wine list - http://www.laportedesindes.com/london/indian-restaurant-menu/wines/?level1=35 Please don't take issue with me over the prices, La Porte Des Indes aims itself squarely at the top ten percentile of diners, and prices reflect that.

 

Telling us to get cracking with the lamb chops, as they go a little glutinous when cooling, she left us - but not before saying "As I ordered the food.... you're my guests. There'll be no bill. Enjoy your meal!"

 

Resisting the urge to order three more bottles of wine and a flask of Jack Daniels, I went for my lamb chop. Now, I know some people like their lamb on the pink side... but I would have never been so daring as to serve lamb as pink as this. The centre of the chop was, I swear, raw. And yet... the sixteen chefs who work at La Porte Des Indes are masters, and I trust them. So, into the mouth, chew.... and crikey, so meltingly delicious! All I can say is that they must have absolutely top meat suppliers.

 

The (fully cooked) tandoori prawns were spiced with care, the cheesy/herby/biscuity thing was another mouthfilling riot of flavour, and the lamb kebabs were dense parcels of meaty goodness. The naan had just enough garlic so that you knew it was there, but not so much that it dominated the finely-shredded shallots, and the chutneys added several more dimensions to the starters. The warning regarding the chilli chutney was timely - more than a smear would have been volcanic. I got the firm impression that it would have burst into flames if I'd simply looked at it the wrong way.

 

The wreckage of the first course was cleared away, and then the main course(s) began to arrive. It took three deliveries to the table! By this time, Chris and I had worked out that La Porte Des Indes was doing its very best to show off. There was a pork vindaloo, a dry chilli beef dish, a banana-leaf roasted fillet of cod encased in a caramelised barbecue sauce, spinach cooked with paneer, saffron rice with slivers of nuts, pomegranite raita, green mint sauce and a cheese-filled naan. Everything was exceptional - the cod was cooked to perfection, the pomegranite raita was a revelation, who knew that pomegranite worked so well with yoghurt? - but I have to mention the vindaloo in particular.

 

Fearless Babba is no wimp when it comes to the chilli. In Indonesia he ate gado-gado (oh, look it up) at napalm strength and followed it with a curious fruit salad smothered in a peanut sauce apparently conjured from Satan's own blast furnace. Heat does not bother our boy. No, it is the bitterness of the chilli that spoils the taste of the food he chooses, and that is why his preferred curry strength is "Madras". The vindaloo, the tindaloo, the phal is a step too far... or so I thought.

 

Unquestionably, the pork vindaloo was spicy, spicier than I would choose. And yet, it was politely spicy, building the warm embers so slowly that I hardly noticed when the chimney caught fire. Long-roasted pork enlivened by weapons-strength Goan red chillies, garlic and malt vinegar, oh, man, I loved it. And not a trace of bitterness.

 

Sated beyond imagining, Chris and I sank back and contemplated the empty bottle of white wine. "Another?" he suggested... and someone claiming to be me replied "Um... actually, I think I'm too full." At which, our waitress mentioned that house white was a) available by the glass, b) that nothing would make her life more complete than fetching us two of same and c) we might just as well, as dessert would be a minute or so in arriving. So we did.

 

Dessert, which arrived in a trice, consisted of a pistachio yoghurt, a chocolate mousse in a dried banana leaf parcel and a mango ice-cream complete with chunks of mango. All were sublime.

 

It was suggested that we might prefer to take coffee in the bar - "And a couple of large brandies!" Chris insisted - so, thanking our waitress/Restaurant Manager profusely for the truly fantastic lunch we'd enjoyed, we sank into the comfortable sofas next door, where the Executive Chef dropped in to check that we'd had a good time and that his chefs had properly shown off the finest that La Porte Des Indes could offer. As a couple of goldfish bowls filled with an inch or two of Courvoisier and fitted with stems so that they could masquerade as glasses were placed on the table, we showered him with praise.

 

No question, it was one of the very finest meals I have ever had. Long will it live in my memory.

 

I'd write more, of Dr Chris and I venturing down the Thames to Greenwich, our return, the three large Italian brandies at Carluccio's... but it's getting late. (And I was pissed.)