Cancer all around us

I saw this evening the story of a Rochdale and former Tranmere footballer who has had to retire from the professional game at the age of 29 because he has had cancer twice in the last six years. He is clear now but believes that his body can no longer take the life of a professional player. It is sad but you could see on the report the looks of joy of his wife and daughter as well. They had been through the last years with him and must have felt that he was now giving them the best chance of seeing him around for some years to come.In the past cancer was not a disease that many people knew much about . In the late nineteenth century, Frederick, heir to the throne of Germany and the husband of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky, was diagnosed with throat cancer. Being a person in the public eye this case was followed with interest. In the end Frederick managed to become Emperor of Germany but did not last in the post. He survived as Emperor for one year and two months. In most people’s lives cancer was not talked about or publicised. It has only been in the later twentieth century, when treatments for the many forms of cancer became available, that the disease was accepted as a fit subject for conversation. We now have Cancer Research advertising on television with before and after segments to show how far research has come and helping us believe that having cancer need no longer be an immediate precursor of an quick death.

What interests me particularly is how cancer affects different families in such different ways. Of course if you are a smoker you will inestimably increase your chances of getting lung cancer and this has helped reduce smoking in the last twenty years or so. But equally interesting to me is how many women get breast cancer who already have relations who have had the disease. It makes me wonder just how many cancers are the result of lifestyle choices and how many are genetically determined. I do not see this as being publicised; probably because to accept that your DNA is a causal factor in getting cancer is far too dispiriting to be widely circulated – if true.

It is very encouraging that more cancers can be dealt with and that cures occur. I remember vividly, in the mid-1970s, in the primary school at which I taught in Harlow, the response to the reurn to school of a seven year old who had had leukemia. That was, then, a great breakthrough in cancer treatments. When the boy came to assembly for the first time there was a wholely spontaneous round of applause from his fellow pupils – and no one wanted to stop it. It is easy to live with and understand people dying of cancer in their years of retirement – it is just one of those things you think. But it is very different when see a promising life cut short for no apparent reason. That is why the account of the career of Joe Thompson of Rochdale was so moving

Bach – Mass in B minor

This evening I listened to a performance of the B minor Mass by J S Bach, conducted by John Butt and featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chrous. Benjamin Britten thought that this work was one of the greatest pillars of western culture and many others have agreed. I have had the pleasure of singing in the chorus a couple of times and it can be quite overwhelming. It is the summation of all Bach’s life and work. It was never perfomed in his lifetime but a lot of the music is found in his earlier works. One of the reasons it was not performed was simply because a full setting of the six movements of the Mass was not part of ther Lutheran liturgy, and that was the church for whom he worked.

John Butt has gained a fine reputation for his skilful performances of major Bach works over the last few years. However, this performance was unlike any other I have heard him give. For a start the forces were large in number – orchestra and choir. This was not a ‘period performance’ by any stretch of the imagination. And that was the greatest problem with it as far as I was concerned. The orchestra was of such dimensions that the soloists had almost to fight to be heard in some of the solos. Equally it made the size of the chorus suitable for balance but this did not help the texture of the work. It seemed to me to be like a large engine trying to pull along a series of freight cars where what works best in the B minor Mass is a smaller engine pulling along a few beautifully sprung carriages. Bach’s fugues require intense concentration and accuracy. With the numbers here that was very hard to maintain. Also the balance in large choruses is always hard to get right. Here we had some very assertive bass choral singing and the splitting of the sopranoes into the necessary two parts made them seem rather distant.

Despite my criticisms I was moved in the more exciting moments such as the start of the Sanctus or the Gloria and by the sheer exuberance and volume from the Barbican. I just missed the most detailed interactions and subtleties. In many respects it was the kind of performance we have heard for years from large choral societies – except that this was a very superior choral ensemble and orchestra.

Euphemisms

Very, very many years ago when I was at primary school, we were introduced to this strange word ‘euphemism’. It was defined as a way that an offensive or unpleasant thing was described with different words to make it more acceptable. The classic example which we were given was refuse collector instead of dustman. Yes, those men who came round every week (!) and emptied all that was in your dustbin were to be mollified for their unpleasant job by calling them something less offensive. I have great admiration for those who follow lorries through our streets collecting waste of all kinds and have been known on more than one accasion to go up to them and express my thanks.

But the whole world of the euphemism has gradually spread far and near. I heard someone on the radio talking about the origins of PTSD – post traumatic stress disprder. It all started as ‘shell shock’ in the First World War. The intensity of the artillery fire on the Western Front could lead to serious physical and psychological disorders. This, though, became smoothed out into ‘battle fatigue’ so that it could encompass those affected by war but not under artillery fire. Next it was operational disorder which made it more bland and less upsetting for relations of the sufferers. Then it became post-traumatic stress disorder and it is likely to stay that way since it isnow an acronym (PTSD) anf they rarely change.

I have a particular dislike of the way that those in the throes of death are described. I cannot stand ‘passed away’. For hundreds of years it was perfectly respectable to say that someone had ‘died’. When my mother died she did so, at least in part, by refusing food since she could see that her life had lost its purpose. She died, she certainly did not pass away. And I cannot believe that an old friend of mine from student days, who died of pancreatic cancer at 60, passed away. He would have been railing against the disease to the last if he had more voice.

I feel sure that you can think of hundreds of euphemisms. They are rampant in the world of employment where we do not want to call a simple job by its name but must give it a three or four word description. There is one area which is troubling, and for good reason. That is the language we use to describe people of different coloured skin from ourselves. I never know whether I am allowed to use black or coloured or brown or Afro-Caribbean or anything else. The origin of the problem is simple. For some hundreds of years Western civilisation was more prosperous than a lot of the world and believed that the people with whom we traded or enslaved were inferior. So they invented all sorts of words to describe them and sensitivity was not in play. Now the situation is different. I find it best and easiest not to refer at all to anyone’s ethnic background. We are what we are and using adjectives that come from a prejudiced past do not enlighten or help. Yet, this is a very hard area to change because offensive words about others are not based on what they are but what we would like to percieve them to be. It is all too easy and saves thinking. Food for thought today ?

Waste

Every Tuesday evening it has fallen to me , in our snall block of flats, to take out the waste for re-cycling. There is the green box for bottles and plastic containers, the green bag for paper and the brown bag for cardboard. It is easy to forget but then we get a build-up. I have great admiration for the men who travel round the town with their lorry, each Wednesday, doing this valuable but tough job. It feels good to make some contribution to the re-cycling of our waste.

But we seem unable, as yet, to have found a way of re-using plastic packagaing. We were all reminded of this with the address by Sir David Attenborough at Davos. We are pretty often confronted with television programmes about what we are doing to wildlife and the oceans by our use of plastics. It is great to see the retreat of plastic bags from supermarkets but there is a huge amount still to do, I am sure. Yet that is only one area.

Another, and one that was brought up on radio this morning, the problem of ‘fast fashion’. Apparently it is now no longer accepteble for a woman or girl to have a favourite outfit which she wears to special events. Now you have to dump such an outfit after one wearing if it has featured on your social media site. It is necessary to get something new for the next ‘event’. Men, on the whole, do not seem to be so troubled but I am not in touch with adolescent and young adult men’s fashion choices. Oh, the virtue (in environmental terms) of the well-cut suit !

But if all that wasn’t enough we are next supposed to be worried about food left over that goes to waste – from hotels. It is not enough to look mournfully at your fridge and try to devise interesting dishes with what is leftover there. No, now we must reduce plate size and make transferring food to a dish harder so that people at buffet breakfasts do not take more food than they are really going to eat.

So why do we have all thes problems ? A large number of people in the world have not enough food to eat or clothes to wear. So we really ought to look at our waste. The answer is simple – it is all based on prosperity and greed. Are we likely to stop it ? Perhaps partly, but I hold out little hope for a major re-think in the prosperous parts of the world. After all the advertisers and their social media lackeys would suffer.

Democracy in Decline ?

I have been listening to the news from Venezuela with interest and the response of various countries in the world. It seems quite clear to me that Hugo Chavez, for the best of reasons, increased the power of the Presidency and reduced that of the elected legislative chamber so as to achieve his political goals. The trouble has been that his successor, Maduro, has not been able to cope with the country’s economic problems and, as a result, has clamped down on all the opponents who seek to use democracy to change the situation.

The result has been that a rival has emerged claiming to follow the constitution and seeking elections. This has been taken up by countries on one side of the issue or the other. The sadness is to see which country has joined which side. Those on the side of Maduro – now being dismissed by his opponents for a rising dictatorship – have, as I recall, been Russia, China, Turkey and Iran among others.

No one can consider Russia to be a democratic country despite holding occasional elections. Opponents find themselves being prosecuted in very dubious situations so that they can be excluded from the next election. Presiden Putin’s friends,the oligarchs, seem to have enormous economic power which again is a hindrance to democracy. What of China ? I wrote about the increasing control of the population exercised by the party / state in China. Once again, it is not in any sense a democracy – just ask those citizens of Hong King who want to retain the powers to have a say in government which was left them by the British when they relinquished power.

The next on the list of Maduro supporters is Turkey. Once again we have a country with a Presidential system which has been changed to favour the existing President. Whatever his motives, and he may be happy that his are good, the President has engineered a reduction in democracy through management of the legislature and the use of armed forces over some years. The last country I listed, Iran,has been a theocratic state since 1979 when the Shah was ousted and religious leaders, backed by the Revolutionary Guard, took control. There have been elections, albeit with some strange results in the 1990s, but little sympathy for changing course under democratically elected governments. So there we have it – Venezuela backed by four major countries with little pretence at democracy and you can be sure that they will do all they can to stop Venezuela following any political system that not only allows people to vote but allows their choices to have any competent say over what the future is to hold. We, who live in a democratic state where the government can be defeated by 230 votes in a crucial motion in the House of Commons should be grateful that that is the case and that it cannot be overridden by an authoritarian president.

What’s on the Bookshelf ?

Over the last week I have had plenty of time to read and it has been enjoyable. I do wonder if the rising generations will ever again have the pleasure of reading that for me, at least, has meant so much over the 50 or so years. I have been thinking of this subject since a column I read in a newspaper on Saturday revealed what one journalist did have on his shelves. I decided to investigate my collection of books.

First I looked at the shelves themselves. In this flat I have about 50 shelves and they are all of about the same length. Next I looked at how many were full of fiction and how many of non-fiction. Yes, you can tell already that I have the bopoks organised. I found that 26 were filled by non-fiction and 13 by fiction. A serious reader you might thnk. But then I added in my ‘Kindle’. This has allowed me to expand my fiction collection hugely. My final conclusion is that I have just about the same number of non-fiction and fiction books.

So what does my collection tell you ? Perhaps the easiest way to judge my taste is to look at the authors of whom I have, say, 10 books or more. You might find this interesting or not. I will try to put the authors in alphabetical order : Kate Atkinson, Jane Austen (including juvenilia),Arnold Bennett, Lee Child, Agatha Christie, Len Deighton, Colin Dexter, Charles Dickens, Dick Francis, George Macdonald Fraser (Flashman books), John Galsworthy, Elizabeth George, Michael Gilbert, Robert Goddard, John Grisham, Philip Kerr, Rudyard Kipling, Donna Leon, Anthony Powell, J D Robb, Dorothy Sayers, Tom Sharpe, Georges Simenon, Anthony Trollope, Anne Tyler, Eveleyn Waugh and P G Wodehouse. That makes 27 authors and, I estimate, over 400 books. Few non-fiction writers have as many books on my shelves. Make of all this what you will.

Holocaust Day

Today is the international day each year for remembering the Holocaust. As someone born after the Second World War ended but someone whose peace and lack of a need to fight a war has benefited from that 1939-45 epic I was glad to see a programme about Holocaust survivors this evening.

I have watched many film and TV programmes about the event and, as a student of history, have also read a fair amount about the subject. I also remember being very moved by the Diary of Anne Frank. Yet this programme hit the hardest. For here were people who had been through that experience at a very young age. The number of survivors who were adults at Auschwitz or other camps is now tiny. And so the programme told so much about the feeling of surviving when all the rest of your family and relations were no more. These young people had to work out how to live their free lives with little or no guidance. They could not call on parents or grandparents for advice and experience. They had to do it all for themselves while, at the same time, grieving for their dead relations.

And the stories which they told were not epic or significant in a broader sense. Most of them were intimate recounting of some minor event but one which meant so much to them. It is hard for us to even imagine seeing your parents shot before your eyes; not as might happen in a crime or accident but organised and regimented by soldiers with no interest at all in the persons whom they were killing. The sheer anonymity of so many Holocaust deaths is what they could tell us about. And it makes the loss of lives in Eastern European camps and, also in years afterwards, in Rwanda, Darfur and the countries that came to life with the break-up of Yugoslavia more inexplicable. How can people see the lives of others as being of no value whatsoever ?

It was also shocking to hear that a survey in the UK found that one in 20 people did not believe that the Holocaust of the Second World War happened. I can understand if those questioned did not know how many people were killed but, seriously,to deny something which has been so exactly detailed is extraordinary and does not give one much hope for the human race. Let’s have more programmes and let’s make adults as well as children see them.

Choir Practice

There was an interesting item on the Today programme this morning about a choral workshop which the King’s Singers were undertaking in Moscow. the idea of the workshop and the piece was to celebrate the idea that music could be a harmoniser, a bringing of peace between people with conflicting ideas.

This came to mind this afternoon when I took choir practice at our church after a month off. We always have a practice-free January to make up for all the practice and work that the members have done in December – extra services, carols at the old people’s home and carols before the service on Christmas Eve. It was a pleasure to see the assembled group this afternoon. The church was pretty cold but there was a willingness to look at new material and we managed to practise half a dozen anthems as well as Sunday’s hymns.

They are a lovely group of people to work with and we always try to perform some special piece every Sunday – motets during holy communion or stand alone anthems at morning prayer. In January we keep up this programme but use material that we know well so that it can be sung without practice. It is a bit risky but cold January afternoons are not very inviting. I shall be interested to see how we cope with our Easter anthem (I know it is nearly three months away but the more time the better). We are going to do the Easter Anthem by the eighteenth century American amateur composer, William Billings.

Choirs are a wonderful way to see how positive working together can be and how the finished work is greater than its component parts. Singing in choirs is a wonderful emotional release as well – long may we continue.

Exciting Music

I have been listening to a lot of Mozart lately. This morning I picked out a recording of his Exultate Jubilate in a wonderful recording from 1984 with Emma Kirkby singing the soprano solo in the title piece and others, along with the Academy of Ancient Music and conducted by Christopher Hogwood. Although I enjoyed the title piece it was the following item that spurred me to write this blog. It is a Regina Coeli K108. This indicates a work of his adolescence (1771 in fact) and it has a chorus followed by a solo and then a final chorus and solo. It is the opening by the orchestra and chorus that I want to draw to your intention. It is intensely exciting and drives you along with it. You cannot not pay attention. Mozart has that ability to make anything he writes express exactly what he wants to say – or that is the impression he gives.

So I began to think of other pieces of music that are exciting. I am sure that anyone who reads this will have his or her own ideas but may I offer you two more of my choices. They are both pieces, like the Mozart that catch your attention at once and will not let you go. The first is the beginning of Mendelssohn’s 4th symphony (the Italian). It was written in 1833 just after he had taken up a conducting post in Dusseldorf when he was just 24. Many performances are ‘quite’ exciting but just occasionally a conductor is filled with the same joie de vivre as the composer and it comes to life.

The third of today’s selection is the opening of the overture to the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila by Glinka, written in 1842. I remember first hearing this piece on 100 Best Tunes when I sat in my study on Sunday night, at boarding school. It still gives me the same sort of thrill listening to it, especially if it comes upon me unexpectedly. So there you are – three exciting pieces to me. Music is capable of stirring so many different emotions but excitement is not as often present as you might think.

Skill in Sport

This morning I was walking through our town when I passed a barber’s shop with a motorbike in the window. For some while, I had pondered the story behind this since it was not an ordinary road bike nor a track bike – I knew that much. But this morning the barber had no customers and so I went in and enquired about the window model. I suggested that it was a scramble or motor-cross bike since I knew no more. I was wrong.It was a trials bike and so I asked about that sport.

The answer I got was fascinating and he furthered my knowledge by showing me a series of extraordinary videos on his phone. Here I saw men going over huge rock barriers, mounting tree stumps and even jumping over small fences from a standing start. It was very impressive, mostly because of the level of skill involved. The riders need such a degree of skill to be able to control with such precision and boldness to attempt some of the obstacles. The riders have to follow a course between marker tapes and are penalised if they put a foot on the ground to steady themselves. And they are timed over the course. It strikes me that this is sport of a far more complicated fashion than just racing round a flat course as fast as you can. The closest parallel I could think of was white water canoeing where you have to go as fast as you can but have obstacles or gates in the way and they have to be manoeuvred properly or extra secionds are added to your time.

The more I thought about it the more I realised that there is a sharp divide between sports that require the contestant just to complete whatever is the task as fast as possible and those where the elements of skill are added to qualify that speed. Previously I had incorrectly thought of the divide between speed sports and those that require judging – take gymnastics as an example of the latter and swimming or athletics as examples of ther former. This third category – sports with a skill level that qualifies speed alone and does not require judges is probably the highest level of sport that we can aspire to. After all judges can be biased and many animals are faster than human beings or can jump further. I shall, from now on, look at the skill level of any sport with much greater understanding and admiration.