Jellyfish spines and transparency

39 Steps

The John Abercrombie Quartet. Guitar, piano, bass and drums. I like the simplicity of this sort of music. Being able to hear exactly what every instrument is doing. No smears or smudges, yet no hint of sparseness, either.

There's a picture of part of a football pitch on the cover, and most of the original song titles have connections to Hitchcock films. I'm sure there's explanations for both. It starts with Vertigo, a few notes by way of introduction, and then the quartet's swinging, and there's that amazing, lush, warm envelopment great music can bring.

The album sweeps you away, and then you're back, and everything's somehow better.

Cameron stung by jellyfish...

...the headline said. Feverishly, I was searching for the 'stung to death', the 'fatally stung', the 'deadly jellyfish'. Sadly, it was a routine jellyfish. A common or garden jellyfish. Austin Mitchell might describe it as an 'ordinary' jellyfish, and advise Miliband to get in the sea and do some mingling.

Steve Bell, a great cartoonist, has Cameron as a jellyfish, and later as a balloon and an inflated condom. Why? Because there's nothing in there.

He's a true TeflonMan.

Like Havermeyer in Catch 22 and Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, he's one of those destined to get through without so much as a scratch. Bell said that after listening to him for hours, there's nothing there, nothing at all. He wants to promote good stuff and clamp down on bad things, and solve the economic crisis and stop all that pesky flooding, and do it all transparently. But, as ever, nothing changes.

I had the misfortune to meet many politicians while in the fire brigade. Local Authority types, and those that put themselves forward to make decisions, to steer the future of the London Fire Brigade. They loved talking over us, shouting us down. These men and women who've never been crawling around a burning building on their bellies at three in the morning with their arse half alight, apparently knew more than we did. My reaction under these circumstances is always to walk off. I'm quite happy alone. I particularly don't need the company of those people who talk over one of our guys with a great anecdote or relevant observation with their nonsense (one was some sort of expert, I kid you not, on folding sheets in hospital laundries – how will to live sappingly boring is that?). Another gave us a tongue-lashing about how long his friend had had to wait for a water tender to arrive at his property. We exchanged winks and waited, let the idiot run his course, then let our most laconic guy act as spokesman: “this is the London Brigade?” The aggressive response was “and...”. “And...we don't have any water tenders.”

So it isn't anything personal, Dave. I'd celebrate a fatal jellyfish / politician interaction, like, generally.