On the Face Of It

On the Face of It

In human experience, the face is critical.  In each of our brains a vast proportion of clustered neurons is devoted to facial recognition.  Those with conditions in which this ability is compromised suffer, as do all who lose what the rest of us take for granted.  In language, we enshrine the facial image with significance.  If we fail to maintain our social standing, we speak of ‘losing face’.  When we do not wish to comply, we ‘fly in the face of’ whatever we choose to challenge.  But we recognise its superficiality, perhaps, when we ‘put on a brave face’ or assess a situation ‘on the face of it’.

And we possess so many faces.  Freeze one frame per second of a minute’s footage and you’ll see some portion of the parade.

Joy is radiant, clear, open as an ocean in satellite view.  Anxiety’s a clench, a knot work of furrow; taut, twisted and strained.  Grief ups the ante, filling anxiety’s template with pale skin tones, red edged eyes and a darkened swell below.  Confusion contorts the eyebrows, engenders rippling creases and slightly parts the lips.  Love is a softening glaze, lost eyes, the face of a question.

We’ve all looked at photos of ourselves and regretted their existence, perhaps admitting that there is something about them that we do not recognise.  Or do not wish to recognise.  We want what we think we see in the mirror, but more often than not, that’s just our looking-in-the-mirror face that no-one sees but us.  We want what we want, but here on the screen or in the print are strangers, canny devils who have stolen our clothes and approximated our features.  They look back at us and laugh.

Some faces can close and hide, in poker poses of utmost self-control.  For as long as the situation requires, those faces resist change.  When freed of the need, do they burst into paroxysms of gurning?  Others cannot hide.  We say what they feel is ‘written all over their face’, a graffiti of anguish, a scroll of pleasure or a document of despair.  Faces change.  Sooner or later, all faces change.

Look at those you encounter as you clamber through another day.  Watch them for long enough and they do not stay the same.  Light and shadow play games of chance with them.  Muscles tense and relax.  Flesh re-arranges around them.  The old for moments look young.  The young for moments look old.  Everyone has a repertoire.  Beauty has an ugly look.  Disfigurement’s exquisite in its originality.

Perhaps this is an indication that the face is not so superficial – that the soul or the psyche of the person possessing the face can influence its features.  If those with what we define as ‘beauty’ also have a hardness and a harshness within, does this harden and harshen the face with its habitual expression?  Similarly, if there is beauty where many see the lack of it, maybe inner beauty can shine through – beauty of thought and intention, of compassion.

When I was young, I thought that age brought only decay.  Now I’m here, that’s not so clear.  It’s so with some, that can’t be denied, but others find a fine sort of form that in youth was denied them, a grace they never knew before.  A gauntness or conversely a thickening of flesh can enhance a face that once, perhaps, lacked character.  (Compared to such a process, plastic surgery seems a crude tool, botox the bluntest of instruments.)

Change can also bring loss.  The face of the child, for example, does not always survive into the face of the adult.  A woman I know spoke of her three sons: in two she can still see the child face; in the third, she says, changes at puberty were so drastic she can never again find the features she knew before.

But maybe still, despite any losses, the repertoire tends to build.  We store more faces with time.  At least until time brings that parade to an end, and our one final face is composed.

Charles Eisenstein – A Glimmer of Hope

Charles Eisenstein – A Glimmer of Hope

I have some good hearted (no, really…) but somewhat cynical friends to whom I would hesitate to recommend a book entitled ‘The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible’.  I had some doubts myself when the book was recommended and lent to me.  But its author, Charles Eisenstein, won me over.

You can find out about him and his ideas on his website ( charleseisenstein.net ) – so I’m just writing this to outline some of the stuff I found myself connecting with in his thinking.  His basic riff is that we humans have shunted ourselves into a state of what he calls ‘separation’, where we are disconnected from awareness of our truer, deeper and better natures.  This to me bears some resemblance to what I was told in sociology lectures long ago about the concept of ‘alienation’.  Eisenstein uses this term also, so I infer that in his mind there is a distinction.  Maybe so, but whatever you want to call it, it’s the root problem we need to sort out before we can deal with our current fan-load of shit.

A good many people I consider friends tend to be of a liberal disposition.  Post Brexit, facing the oncoming US presidency of Donald Trump, looking on with horror at what’s unfolding in the Middle East and the giddying acceleration of global warming, they tend to be pretty depressed as 2017 begins.  Me too, much of the time, and maybe I’m clutching at straws but in the thinking of Eisenstein I see some remaining cause for hope.

Eisenstein writes that, globally, we are embedded in a story we have created for ourselves.  That story includes many aspects of what capitalism has wrought – the idea that economies must ‘grow’, that planned obsolescence fuels trade, that we must build and deploy arms, that we must exploit fossil fuels, that we need ‘strong leaders’ etc.  It embeds us in the feeling that this is just how it is.  Human beings can’t get along any other way.  That’s how we’re wired.  It blinds us to the consequences of our flawed activities.

Within this story, mindset or whatever you’re going to call it, change cannot happen.  You can campaign, you can lobby – but you are still playing a part in the existing story, so cannot achieve real change.  Change cannot come about until we change the story, change our consciousness, accept responsibility etc.  Eisenstein suggests that the old story is becoming less robust now.  Although the democratic decisions for the UK to leave Europe and for Trump to become US president seem pretty disastrous for the world, they were brought about in part by a growing disillusionment with politics and politicians amongst a growing number of ordinary people.

The hope this engenders is by no means of a blissful, Aquarian nature.  As our current knee-jerk decisions lead us into instability, breakdown and chaos, people will suffer and people will die on perhaps unprecedented scales.  Nevertheless, he foresees the possibility that ‘the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap’.  (I’m quoting not from the book here but from a recent online essay titled ‘The Election: Of Hate, Grief and a New Story - http://charleseisenstein.net/hategriefandanewstory/ )  This is a point of opening possibility.  Something better could emerge from this turmoil.  In the closing chapters of the book, Eisenstein at least sketches in how this might come about.

What I like about him is that he makes it sound possible, but does not shy away from the likelihood that the new story might never be established.  He is pointing to a chance, not a certainty.  He may have something of the guru about him, but he does not trade in false confidence.  Throughout the book he is constantly putting a check on his own statements, questioning the thought processes that have led to them.  He makes no pretence that he has everything sussed out.

The occasional contentious statement does pass unchallenged – but the feeling I get (wrongly or rightly) is that if one pointed this out to him, he would at least listen and consider.  The virtue in his approach, for me, ties back to something I considered tentatively in my first series of blogs concerning the genesis of the ideas behind ‘Wilful Misunderstandings’.  If my stories in the book share any such virtue, it is because they are intended to promote what I termed, back then, ‘mental flexibility’.  They invite us to consider that consensus reality, no matter how solid and certain it may seem in our present world, is not the only version.  Get to this point and the opportunity to create a better reality seems just that little bit more available.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Wilful Misunderstandings gets a review in the latest issue of online magazine 'Gonzo' .  Check it out at:

https://www.flipsnack.com/9FE5CEE9E8C/gonzo215-6.html

Then, when suitably impressed, go to http://lepusbooks.co.uk/wilful-misunderstandings/ and treat yourself to a signed copy.  There will be no regrets.

Rebuttal

Written a few years back (after our last cold winter in the UK) but still seems to hang together...

                                 Rebuttal

There is no global warming – we’ve no reason to think twice:
Last winter all our city streets were paved in gleaming ice.
You tell us that’s just ‘weather’ – a claim we find surprising:
Should summers not be long and hot, if temperatures are rising?

We’re in denial, we’re in denial – let’s get this off our chest
And cherry pick the evidence to suit our thinking best.
We’re in denial, we’re in denial – we’ll be the loudest criers…
You ‘experts’ think you know it all, you ‘experts’ are all liars.

There is no global warming – so let’s run each last appliance.
If power goes short they’ll find us more, for that’s the role of science.
The world’s so vast we’ll find the oil – our enterprise just thrives –
‘Neath Arctic ice or locked in shale, to fuel our four-wheel drives.

We’re in denial, we’re in denial – there’s still so many trees…
‘Deforestation’s one more of those ‘Green’ conspiracies.
We’re in denial, yes, in denial – we think this fear is forced:
Biodiversity’s just fine; there’ll be no holocaust!

There is no global warming – it’s investment policies
That underpin earth’s status quo, not people hugging trees!
You say we need to change our ways, conserve this world’s resources…
But you’re just out to snatch our wealth and disrupt our market forces.

We’re in denial, still in denial – can’t stop consuming now
We’re doing what we’ve always done and milking our cash cow.
We’re in denial, yes, in denial – this planet’s life support
Can take care of itself, you’ll see, exactly as it ought.

There is no global warming, we think the idea’s crazy.
It’s all built up on ‘if’s and ‘but’s, and frankly rather hazy.
You can’t decide amongst yourselves on ‘safe’ amounts of CO2,
So why should we take notice when you tell us what to do?

We’re in denial, oh, in denial… Don’t buy this climate gloom!
We think it paranoia, when you predict our doom.
We’re in denial, we’re in denial – your logic we’ll deride.
You must concede our point of view,

     for God is on our side!

Martin Stone - A Friend I Knew But Never Saw

Martin Stone – an appreciation.

It’s been a rough year in too many ways.  In the world of popular music, household names have been dropping like ninepins, bookended by Messrs Bowie and Cohen.  At round about the time the latter left the planet, Martin Stone succumbed to cancer and made his own quiet exit.  I only picked up this event a few days ago.  Even amidst the buzz and chatter of online news there isn’t much to be read about it.  Wikipedia still has him in the present tense.

Whatever his other talents may have been, Martin Stone excelled in two fields.  He was a superb guitar player, a contemporary to and – to me and many others – an equal of Clapton, Beck and Page.  Then at some point in the 1970s he turned his back on rock’n’roll to become a book dealer.  Or perhaps to be more precise a ‘freelance book scout’.  In that arcane field he earned an extraordinary reputation also – celebrated by litterateurs such as Iain Sinclair and John Baxter.  It is said that he had an ability, that some found near uncanny, to locate rare first editions of often extraordinary works.  Google his name and you’ll find this legend embellished by a good many folk who’ve had dealings with rare books.

But it’s for the former artistry I shall chiefly treasure Martin Stone.  I first heard him play guitar on the debut album by the band Mighty Baby, with its vivid Martin Sharp sleeve design.  At that stage the band combined a hard rock sound, influenced – I would think – both by Cream and West Coast American psychedelic music, with unusually philosophical lyrics that seemed to indicate a deep and serious search for meaning in life.  Some of the titles give you the flavour: ‘A Friend You Know But Never See’ or ‘House Without Windows’.  They played around with allegory and paradox. I know a lot more about the band now than I did then, and amongst the facts I’ve read that Stone himself was the lyricist.  In part, I’m sure, directed by extensive experience with LSD, he’d become immersed in the writing of G.I. Gurdgieff, an influential early 20th-century mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer.  This led Stone, and subsequently all bar one of the band to Sufism and, as he put it, ‘we all turned muslim’.

 The influence of Sufism was deeply entrenched in the band’s second album ‘A Jug of Love’, with the musicians – increasingly bearded and dressed in ethnic togs – posing on Arabic rugs on the front cover and a quote from Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī on the back.  It was the first Mighty Baby album I owned and after a few plays I fell in love with it and have remained so ever since.  It’s a mellower listen than the first album, new influences such as The Band filtering into the mix, but explores and lingers amongst a variety of sonic textures.  That said, it’s not without its flaws as various band members themselves have admitted.  The vocals have charm but are not what you’d call powerful, the songs tend to ramble a bit and mostly lack much in the way of hooks.  It’s the atmosphere it generates that sucks you in, that and the constantly inventive ripple of Stone’s ever-fluid guitar work, weaving in and around the music.

Not long after that album’s release, Mighty Baby disbanded, and apart from a reunion gig or two around 2005/6 (recordings of which I’d love to hear), have not played together since.  Stone, with old friend Phil ‘Snakefinger’ Lithman, then found his way into country rock and western swing band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers – who were stalwarts of the mid 70s ‘pub rock’ scene.  Actually, the Willis played quite a variety of styles, including some hard grinding blues tunes.  This, I found out as I researched Stone’s pre Mighty Baby career, was very much at the roots of his style.  He’d been a member of the Savoy Brown Blues Band, playing on their first album, and had had his own band, Stone’s Masonry, who played in a similar vein.  He’d also been a session musician on recordings by visiting black bluesman Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton.  Such was his reputation in the blues field that he was on the list of Alexis Korner’s recommendations for a guitarist to replace Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones.

The full band Willis can be heard on the very fine ‘Bongos Over Balham’ album and live on the Zigzag Magazine 5th Anniversary Concert box set (available by mail order from RGF records).  Stone’s guitar is less prominent in the mix, but now and again he steps forward and shines brightly.  They were managed by Jake Riviera, who went on to be a founder of Stiff Records, and after the band called it a day, Stone became associated with that label.  For a while he joined anarcho-rockers the Pink Fairies (‘I was so pleased to don the black leather jacket and shades’), releasing a single on Stiff.  He also, I think, reformed Stone’s Masonry for a track on a Stiff sampler.  And then played with Joe Strummer in the 101ers towards the end of their run.  Thereafter, he disappeared off my radar for a good many years.

It was only when I was re-introduced to the work of Iain Sinclair, whose poetry I had encountered in the mid 70s, and read ‘White Chappell – Scarlet Tracings’, that I discovered Stone’s subsequent career (if that’s the appropriate word) as a book scout had commenced.  The book begins with a graphic description of Stone (as ‘Nicholas Lane’) vomiting copiously in a state of extreme bad health.  I doubted then that he had long to live, but survive he did to reappear in subsequent Sinclair books.  Sinclair even has him, in ‘Landor’s Tower’ playing a gig in a waterfront bar in Port Talbot to an audience including several local gangsters.  If that account is true, I wish I’d been there, as I lived nearby at the time.  Stone as a books man also featured in Sinclair and Chris Petit’s ‘The Cardinal and the Corpse’ film and added some fine rootsy acoustic guitar picking to the soundtrack.

He’d relocated to Paris around that time and had been drawn back into making music, playing in a band with Wreckless Eric (another émigré) and forming a couple of bands of his own – Almost Presley and the Tallahassie Rent Boys.  Best of all, from my point of view, he recorded again – as Les Homewreckers, with French colleague Laurence Bama and with older friends appearing on some of the tracks.  It’s a long way from Mighty Baby, that album, taking its cue I think from ‘Beggars Banquet’ era Rolling Stones and maybe Iggy Pop and James Williamson’s ‘Kill City’.  The songs – all written by Stone apart from a tidy cover of Donovan’s ‘Hey Gyp’ – no longer feature enigmatic aphorisms but tend to be downbeat reflections on matters of the heart.  But the guitar fills and solos are as immaculate as ever.  It’s a bit of a rarity now but can still be tracked down on Casino Music.

I know from Googling that, thereafter, Stone occasionally played gigs in London with surviving colleagues from various points in his career and presumably continued to play live in France, but I largely lost track of him again until hearing of his demise.  As mentioned, there’s not much in the way of news about it – though I trust Mojo and Uncut will be giving him obits in their upcoming issues.  There’s a couple of online obits that are worth reading on:

https://blog.vialibri.net/martin-stone-1946-2016/

and:

https://greatwen.com/2016/11/10/rip-martin-stone-guitarist-bookseller-hustler/

with some heartfelt comments by those who knew him as to his personal charm, wit and generosity.  Myself, I’m writing as a fan, so from a greater distance than those people, but the love is shared.

(Info sources include Brian Hinton’s extensive 1995 Ptolemaic Terrascope interview, Mighty Baby and Chilli Willi CD reissue sleeve notes and the work of writers and obituarists referred to above.)

Mail Order Fun

Richard-

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

PLEASE NOTE: For domestic parcels: Your tracking number, whether UPS or USPS, can be tracked through UPS.com. Your package will have tracking information within 24-48 hours.

For international parcels: USPS International Air Mail tracking numbers only confirm receipt of the parcel and no further updates are available. Your order should arrive between 1-4 weeks. UPS and DHL provide comprehensive tracking numbers.

(1) David Nelson Band: Once in a Blue Moon

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, December 9, 2014.

We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.


Hi

Thank you for your message.

A second satin pillow will be placed beneath my front door letterbox to soften the landing of my CD upon its arrival.  The package will then be reverentially lifted and placed on a sheet of purple velvet, surrounded by scented candles and gently burning incense, on my dining room table.

I have notified my neighbours of its impending arrival and they will be summoned to gather therein and witness the opening of the package, which will be accomplished by the deft use of my finest gold-plated scissors.

We will then pass on a group message of solidarity and gratitude to the people of Portland, which will be carried across the Atlantic and most of the American continent by a relay team of carrier pigeons (though, for health and safety reasons, I would suggest that no one holds their breath whilst awaiting this).

I and my neighbours will don white cotton gloves, and pass the CD with absolute care from hand to hand so that each of us, in our own way and according to our religious beliefs, can worship and adore this sublime artifact prior to its placement on the newly cleaned CD tray of my state of the art stereophonic system, perfectly confident that - such is the care with which CD Baby employees have inspected, polished and packaged it - the CD will play from beginning to end, without skips or distortion of any kind.

We will boogie long into the night and finally retire to our beds, each of us culturally enriched and grateful for the cordial entente that exists between the peoples of the UK and the USA.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, indeed!

Richard

Best bit of mail order correspondence I ever had.  Eat your heart out Amazon!

great album, too, by the way

Treat... Or Trick?

“I hear your Oliver’s off school again this week.”

Alice Potter leaned on the front fence and Julia found herself wondering if it would support the weight.  She’d been hoping to get down to the village shop and back without encountering anyone she knew.  Oliver’s condition still seemed so utterly improbable that it was a source of deep embarrassment to her.  Not to mention her anxiety regarding some of her ten-year-old son’s proclivities since his unfortunate affliction had become manifest.  “Yes, Doctor Goody has contacted the Head.  It’s all in hand.  I’m sure they’ll be able to do something about it quite soon, and then he’ll be right as rain in no time.”

Alice gave her a somewhat hard stare.  “That’s as may be, but I’ve been hearing one or two rumours lately and it all sounds a bit…  you know…”

Julia glanced nervously back at the newly constructed shutters that blocked off all daylight from little Oliver’s bedroom.  “I…  I’m not sure I know what you mean, Alice.”

“Well,” said Alice, delighting in Julia’s discomfort.  “I don’t want to mention bats, but…  there’s been some quite peculiar sightings in the village these last few nights…”

Julia straightened her back and, posture adjusted, spoke as assertively as she was able.  “Alice Potter, that is utterly ridiculous, if you don’t mind my saying.  It is true that we were completely unable to remove the costume after Trick or Treat night, but we are firmly of the belief that a simple surgical procedure will entirely eliminate the problem.”

“I’m only saying.  I just hope you’re right, Julia.  We don’t want anyone else complaining about bite marks on their necks, do we?”

Julia hastened to the village shop, her mind in turmoil.  It was her husband Adam’s fault.  He’d insisted they buy the costume.  “Now that is serious value for money,” he’d said, but she’d felt from the start that such an elaborate costume should have gone for a much higher price.  Oliver had been thrilled when he’d put it on.  It was only when he’d started speaking in a strong Transylvanian accent that they’d suspected anything was amiss.

The ‘bite marks’ to which Alice had referred had indeed been inflicted by their son, on at least two villagers who had refused him the requisite treats.  He’d made surprisingly quick use of the rather fearsome set of fangs that came with the costume.  At this point Adam and Julia had stepped in quite firmly and informed him that Hallowe’en was at an end as far as he was concerned.  They’d tried to get him to apologise, but all he’d done was hiss loudly at his victims.  It had all been quite disconcerting.

More so when they found that the costume, along with the fangs and the black and white body paint, appeared to have fused to his body.  They’d had to put him to bed, dressed as he was.  Then, next morning, they’d had to search for him when they found the bedroom empty.  He’d eventually been located cowering timidly in a large trunk down in the cellar.  He seemed to be under the impression that, exposed to any form of sunlight, he would be reduced to dust particles.  It was at that point that they called for the services of Doctor Goody.

Julia was conscious of suspicious eyes watching her as she purchased a litre of milk and a few pounds of frozen beefsteak for Oliver to suck at as it defrosted.  No doubt the likes of Alice Potter had been spreading unpleasant and malicious rumours.  The sooner Oliver could undergo the required medical procedures and have himself extricated from that shroud of obscene cloth and shiny plastic, the better.  Then and only then would the whole business blow over.  At least, she reflected as she left the shop, it was a blessing that they hadn’t gone for the werewolf costume.  All that matted, blood stained fur.  Very unhygeinic.

As for ‘Vlad’s Morphsuits’, they’d be hearing from Adam’s solicitors in due course.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the The Bullshitter’s Arms, there appeared to be something of a carpentry and outdoor crafts workshop under way, as two burly men took turns to carve a piece of four by four into a large and very sharp stake.  A number of the remaining gentlemen were preparing burning torches to ignite, as dusk came to an end.  Whilst indoors several women distributed crucifixes and garlic.

It was distinctly possible that Julia’s blithe optimism was built on somewhat shaky foundations.

Dodgy Reg

Dodgy Reg

“I think this room is bugged,” says dodgy Reg, scratching his unruly beard before returning to the construction of a twig thin Old Holburn roll-up.  This doesn’t surprise me.  Reg is obsessed with conspiracies.  There is no doubt in his mind that it was the CIA who assassinated John F Kennedy, that the moonwalk was a Hollywood fake and that a small cadre of mega rich people known as the Illuminati control every political decision made across the entire world.

“Oh give it a rest, man.  Why on earth would anyone want to bug my living room?”

“On earth?”  He lights up with a battered old Ronson.  I get a brief whiff of lighter fuel, before he breathes out a pungent cloud of rolly smoke.  “You’re not thinking outside the box, my friend.  E.T.s may well walk amongst us, Richard, and if they do they’ll have connections in the highest of places.  Mark my words.”

I throw up my hands.  “Reg, I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.  Let’s just stick with you explaining to me why on-  Why anyone would go to all the effort of bugging my living room.  I mean, what would be the point?”.

“You’ve been on marches.  You’ve associated yourself with one or two radical causes in your time.  You’re on the records.  GCHQ, they’ve got your name, your details, your photo…”  He gestures with the roll-up throughout this speech, rhythmically prodding the air as if running through bullet points in a presentation.

I recline in my armchair, feeling somewhat smug.  I’ve heard this sort of guff from Reg on more occasions than I can remember.  He’s a sweet enough guy, in many ways, providing you can get him off this topic.  “That was years ago.  I had hair then.  There’s no resemblance to the bald old git I am now.”

He leans towards me.  His stare is intense.  I’m already starting to think that a brief ‘let’s not go there, eh, Reg?’ would have been my best response.  I’ve probably only got myself to blame for this onslaught.  “But you are on the internet.  Photos on Facebook, yeah?  They can update, no problem.  And you use a mobile.  Weren’t you listening when Edward Snowden told us all what was going on?”

“Okay.  Take your point.  But I don’t have any ‘extremist’ connections.  Don’t think I ever have had.  So why should they have any interest in me whatsoever?”

He’s tapping ash into his empty coffee mug.  I realise I’ve neglected to provide an ashtray.  Oh well.  It’ll rinse.  He’s wearing a thick, lined check shirt and ridiculously skin tight jeans – and there’s not a lot of hygeine goes on below those clothes.  One of the laces on his trainers is rainbow coloured, the other black.  “I’m not saying you’re top priority, Rich,” he says.  “I’m not saying there’s a guy somewhere with a pair of earphones listening in right at this moment.  What they have is algorithms.  That’s how they do this stuff en masse.  All you have to do is use a few key words, in an email, or a phone call, or even sitting here in this room, and your rating goes up a notch.  Few more.  A notch or two more.  Eventually, yeah, someone’s listening.”

“Alright – the network stuff, I can see that.  But how do they get a bug into my living room?”

“Didn’t you tell me you had BT Connect in a few weeks back?  Were you watching the engineer every minute?  Did you know exactly what he was doing?"

“Actually, Reg, her name’s Heather, and she was a real sweetheart, if a bit over-chatty.”

“She might not even know she’s doing it.  But that’s just one way.  You leave your windows open in summer when it’s hot?”  I nod.  “Right.  So you’re not in the room.  Drone flies in through your window, pops a little device under your coffee table.  Flies out.  Job done.”

“That, mate, is pure and utter paranoia.”

I get the intense stare again.  “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Eventually I nudge him off-topic.  A mutual pal we’re both concerned about.  Some dubious dealings by the local council.  I enjoy talking with him about stuff like that.  He’s knowledgeable.  He’s a friend.  Another coffee, another roll-up and he’s on his way.  I open the window to clear the whiff of Old Holborn, muttering to myself in the process.  “Drones.  Bloody hell!  What next?”

I get to thinking about a film - 'The Conversation' - I saw, years ago, in which Gene Hackman plays a bugging device technician.  They have conventions, these buggers, displaying and selling the latest devices, seminars on technique, all the business.  Hackman gets involved in some complex plot threads, conscience tweaked, concerned that his own work will result in a murder.  At some point he realises that he himself is being bugged.  The film ends with him demolishing his own apartment in a desperate search for the device.

I remove the pile of books, magazines and the empty cups from the coffee table.  When it’s cleared, I pick it up, turn it over and have a careful look.

Just in case…