The world wide web is 16

Today may well be the 150th anniversary of the first serialisation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, but I’m talking about a tale of two technologies. Thankfully, the child of the internet, www, is no longer jailbait. It’s legal. It can get married and die for its country. But it can’t yet drink. God help us in two years’ time! We’ll be collecting its vomit-flecked and bleary-eyed face from a gutter in the ripped backside of the other end of town. Back in 1993, April 30th was the day when CERN, where the world wide web internet application was developed, announced that it would be free for anyone to use – allowing the two technologies of the internet and world wide web to take off unimpeded by competitors. Since which time information technology has totally taken over our lives. Has it freed us up or tied us down? Or both, at once, in 3D? Can you remember when you first started using the web? The first time I went on, there were only three websites. God. Coca Cola. And one featuring fundamentalist advice on how to bomb America. Whatever, I like the comment from the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams: “The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.”

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

One chord wonders

Now, somebody somewhere will be remembering that Marvin Gaye died 25 years ago this very day, shot by his own father. Marvin went at 45. Fewer still will be remembering David Bowie’s guitarist, Mick Ronson, who went today in 1993 at 46. Neither reached 50. As I approach my 50th, the brands and people of my life are walking out to centre-stage, demanding attention, reminding me who they are, telling me what they represent. Some I’m glad to see, others not. Alongside the heady euphoria of recollection, there’s the sadness of involuntary reconnection. It’s as if I’ve performed some rite of time, conjuring forth visions and mantras that would have stayed buried until the final film strip of my last days on Earth. One of the most welcome of these brands is punk music. First encountered at the age of 17 in November 1976, with the issue of the UK’s first punk single, New Rose, by The Damned, punk has set the tone for the rest of my life. Now that, in hindsight, all the major names are known and have their place in history, what is not recognised is just how few records had emerged by this time in 1977. In fact, thanks to a media-fuelled backlash, by 29th April 1977, most punk acts worthy of the name had been banned from performing live in towns and cities throughout the country. Ironically, it was from this point on that they began producing killer 45s. Up until this time, there had been a couple of offerings from The Ramones and Blondie, but the British bands were slow to get into vinyl. We’d had one from The Sex Pistols and The Clash and The Buzzcocks, two from The Damned. Even before its vanguard had died a death, punk was quickly metamorphosing into new wave, with already emergent bands such as The Jam and Stranglers, riding this energetic movement. But there were lots of smaller bands, many not mentioned today, who managed no more than a handful of vinyl singles. One such was The Adverts. And, on this day in 1977, as The Jam made their debut with In The City, so did The Adverts with One Chord Wonders, on Stiff Records. Now, there are many ways to cut a list. But, in my list of personally favourite punk singles, this is top.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Did yer like that?

In my Mr Memory Man vision bank: a flat-capped, forty-something bloke running for all his might from the path of a falling industrial chimney, honking a clown’s horn on the end of a rope around his neck, shouting, ‘Bloody hell, it’s goin’, it’s goin!’ And narrowly getting away with his life once again. Then, when the dust has settled, grinning ‘That were good, wan’it? Did yer like that?’ Bolton’s Fred Dibnah was born middle-aged. One of those blokes who was never young. At the time Fred first began appearing on TV, I’d still have been a student at Bradford University, in a city still mourning the loss of its proud Victorian industrial power. Many a dark, drunken night we walked home past abandoned, brokendown factory hulks housing the ghosts of fob-watched philanthropists, looking down from orange-lit warehouses shrouded by coughing chimneys. All tombstone-quiet by then, just waiting for the handy work of Fred Dibnah, chimney feller fellah. He never set out in life to knock down disused chimneys. It’s just how he ended up, TV-famous, like, you know. On April 28th 1938, the day Fred was actually born, King Zog of Albania married Countess Geraldine of Hungary. Fred’s was a different world. One that had disappeared before he was born (and he knew it). A world of steam, machine tools, crankshafts, mill wheels and a windswept, working–class, sepia-tinted philosophy of a lost golden industrial age honed atop many a redundant factory chimney. A white world of empire where everyone knew their place. Well, Fred fell from his chimney of life back in 2004. He’d have been 71 today. Strangely, although I was never part of his world, he is very much part of mine.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Mary and Marco

If you work in social change, you need to be aware of and open to the influence of feminine values. Peace. Tolerance. Flexibility. Communication. And more. Today, we should all be taking note of the fact that one of the founders of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, is 250. A writer and a philosopher to boot, her most famous work was A Vindication OF The Rights Of Woman, in 1792, at the height of the French Revolution. In it, she argues, quite reasonably, that women are not naturally inferior to men. If they appear to be inferior, it’s all down to lack of education. In tune with her age, she posited that both men and women should be treated as rational beings. The social order she had in mind was very much founded on reason. I like her stance and am proud of the feminist in myself. I couldn’t do the work I do without it. But my experience on this planet has largely informed me of the unreasonability of human beings. As a result, I spend my whole life pursuing and provoking the subjectivity that rules human hearts and minds, male and female. Apart from occasional and uncapturable moments of enlightenment, we all hide from ourselves most of the time. Of necessity, we are pirates of our own imaginations. Which typically masculine point, brings me, obtusely, to the celebration of the 50th birthday of one Marco Pirroni. You remember Marco – the chubby one who made Adam Ant look good when he was standing and delivering, on the highway and in the rigging. Well, Marco is still at it. His career is as long as his belt. What began with punk band The Models, in 1977, had progressed to the constantly gigging, little known but music media-reviled Adam And The Ants in 1980. When Malcolm McClaren got hold of the Ants, Adam left. While Malcolm made the antsy rump into Bow Wow Wow, Marco helped Adam convert Adam and the Ants into the dandily successful early 80s group that sold 18 million records worldwide. OK, Marco’s post-Ants career has been wasted on the likes of Sinead O’Connor (no Mary Wollstonecraft, to be sure), but we’ve all made mistakes. Now, Marco is glamming it up with The Wolfmen. No great shakes, but plus ça change…Anyway, well done, Marco, you too made it to 50!

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

The world's first snooker and sumo fest

In Japan, I was disappointed not to be able to attend a sumo competition. Not the right season. But I’ve returned to the world snooker championship. And now I can’t get me pie and gravy down without considering whether suffering Steve Davis should go for the pink or the brown or worrying exactly where the white ball is going. Let’s be honest. Snooker and sumo are the world’s two most perfect sports. The rest are so much cheating childishness. Of these, football is by far the worst. In snooker and sumo, the rules are known and never bent or broken. There seems no desire to cheat on the part of players who are mental athletes as much as physical. In fact, fat chaps do rather well in both. Forget team sports. It’s the one-on-one that qualifies as true sport in my book. Who will be first to organise the inaugural international snooker and sumo fest? I’d be the first through the (wider than usual) door. Don’t laugh. If someone called Captain Sensible can reach the age of 55 today, then I can put such a thought out into the world. To rise above the smugflation, it just takes a bit of imagining …

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Bad day, by George!

This day has died. When it comes to celebrating their national day, the English are diffident, reticent, sheepish. Hardly surprising. For what are/were they celebrating? Empire? Better keep that one quiet, then. Victory? Can you picture another country in which the peace was so overwhelmingly lost? Slaying the dragon? Well, the Welsh fire was put out in the fourteenth century (and don’t my genes know it!). At present, then, April 23rd seems like a day of death. According to Isaac Newton, Christ died this very day, in 34. Of course, the day is named for George, after the beheading of the English patron saint in 303. As a day for death, April 23rd has certainly accounted for a few other English stalwarts over the centuries. From Ethelred I in 871 to William Shakespeare in 1616. From poet William Wordsworth in 1850 to first Dr Who, William Hartnell, in 1975. Racing driver, Stirling Moss, went early in 1962. Film actor, John Mills, went late, in 2005. Today is actually the 25th anniversary of the day the dreaded AIDS virus was first identified, something which knows no national boundaries. Actually, with the recent death of Ian Tomlinson, shortly after being pushed by a policeman in the recent G20 demonstrations, it’s more pertinent for this country to remember the death of New Zealander, Blair Peach, who died at the hands of the infamous Special Patrol Group of the Metropolitan Police when attending an Anti-Nazi League demo, 30 years ago today. As some people in this country quietly celebrate a mythical, sword-wielding knight in armour, it would be timely to remember that it’s best to encourage history not to repeat itself. So, it would be great if the English could find it in their withered souls to rebadge their national day as a day of life rather than death. The government professes multiculturalism and I support them in that. Why not recreate it as a day for peace? Now, given the history passed down to us, that would be very un-English – and the Eton Rifles wouldn’t wear it - but a nice surprise. And we need more nice surprises.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

What a waste

I couldn’t go to Japan without visiting Hiroshima. Some people could. But I couldn’t. It was the same when I visited Poland. Cracow was beautiful, but I went to Auschwitz. I just had to know. Know by feeling. By being there. On the bullet train approaching Hiroshima my stomach was turning over and over. The morning we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, I wanted the sky to be a perfectly clear blue. It was. I wanted to see a marker in the sky, five hundred metres above the ground, where it exploded. A small ring of circling doves seemed to be marking the spot. The A-Bomb Dome, a burnt-out shell of an exhibition hall, still stands at the point almost directly below the blast. It’s a kind of thought-leader, focusing your mind as you enter the Peace Park. You see, it stood, while everyone within it, and for hundreds of metres around, fried in the 3,000 degree heat and shock wave. There are still people who say, “Well, yes, but…” Actually, we know all the arguments, the positions, the whys and wherefores. And the nearby museum presents a fairly balanced view of it all. Personally, I’ve never been able to stomach anything nuclear. I campaigned against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific during the mid-90s. I marched against the UK government’s persistent testing in the 80s. Today marks the anniversary of a British nuclear test at an underground site in Nevada in 1983. As far as I am concerned, nuclear is no answer to anything we face as human beings. I’ll leave this in the words of Kraftwerk in their 2005 rework of Radioactivity: “Sellafield 2 will produce 7.5 tonnes of plutonium every year. 1.5 kg of plutonium makes a nuclear bomb. Sellafield 2 will release the same amount of radioactivity into the environment as Chernobyl every five and a half years. One of these radioactive substances, Krypton 85, will cause death and skin cancer.” And now, as this government posits a French farce future with nuclear at the centre of our energy policy, I am appalled again. We have a problem. And I, for one, won’t be blinded by science.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Don't let it pass you by

Has anybody noticed? That today is the day Henry 8th became King of England? Exactly 500 years ago to this very day? That’s half a millennium. Sort of half time in the modern history of this nation. Do we have him to thank for our divorce rate? Our relationship with the Pope? Our determination to be good at sport but never the best? I know I’m mesmerised by time, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

No cure for originality

I’ve always thought of Robert Smith, 50 today, as being somewhat Japanese. I think the kind of music he produced with The Cure would have worked very well in J-Pop. Walking the streets of Tokyo and Osaka today are many young people who look like Robert Smith did in his youth thirty years ago. A particular look that started with him is peculiarly suited to the Japanese physique. I’m talking about a time well before the ghastly Goths arrived to claim him for their own. I’m making a big thing of people turning 50 this year. Very soon it’s going to happen to me. Today it’s happening to Robert Smith. Now, despite his long, hirsute and black-clad Cure career, the best song he ever made with that band was the b-side of their very first single, 10.15 Saturday Night (the a-side was Killing An Arab). The next best thing he did was jump in as emergency guitarist for Siouxsie And The Banshees mid-tour, stopping them from splitting up early in their career. The rest is his story, but I’d rather have his prologue. My long-lost friend, Ray, is also 50 today. Unlike Robert, nobody looks like Ray. Another true original. Where Robert stooped to conquer, Ray stooped to tie his shoelaces. The view from Hotel High Up gave him a certain prescience. Japanese English might describe Ray as dancing like an octopus army admiring a spaghetti collection. Now, he too has made it to 50. Originality of any kind needs such anomaly structures.



Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Thunderbirds are go

Japan. Back from Japan. I think I’m going to be blogging a lot about Japan. While we were away we missed Gerry Anderson’s 80th birthday. And yet, we didn’t at all. We surely lived it out in Tokyo. Was it the jet lag? I felt I was walking about in a futuristic Thunderbirds cityscape, no strings attached. At one moment I was an unfeasibly tall puppet travelling in an unimaginably fast airliner without wings called a bullet train. The next I was failing miserably to insert my frustratingly unbendable western legs beneath a shiny, lacquered table into a position I had not assumed since school assembly before consuming impossibly beautiful dishes of such still-life delicacy and exquisite taste. I knew not whether to come or go and frequently did both simultaneously. Such is the effect of modern Japan on someone who has waited two decades to get there. And now I bring back with me the memories that will make a difference: the incredible service mentality, the even more incredible high heels; the marvellous effectiveness of everything that needs to work efficiently, especially the toilets; the inimitable cherry blossom and blue sky combination, illuminated by an eye-watering brightness. Small people amid tall buildings, working temples and wizzard technology. A baffling and amusing sense of chromatic juxtaposition with the words of the English language. Do you dreams come true? Oh, the pains of being pure at heart. We will exile the monster someday. The Japanese add this type of English brand language to their Kanji on advertising hoardings. But it isn’t any kind of English we would recognise. And that’s why we love it. Attitude makes style.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk