Seeing another Human Being Die.

I come from a family of Police Officers for whom the sight of a recent sudden death is not an uncommon experience. I suspect that my huge respect for them, and my certainty that it is a job I could never ever do, stems from an incident in my childhood when I witnessed somebody actually die – for the only time in my life so far thankfully.

I was about eleven years old and I remember it was a spring day because the daffodils were out on the road opposite the shop where I had just been to buy some football cards – a weekly ritual for me in those days as I squandered my generous pocket money.

Served immediately after me in the shop, with some cakes and other treats I seem to recall, was a lady of the village known to me as “Miss Lappard”. My father had taught us all to always address adults in such a way no matter how familiar they were. She was not particularly familiar and I remember that on that day she was dressed in unseasonal dark colours and that apart from being clearly quite elderly she was otherwise fit and well as she passed me on the shop steps to return to her house just 60 yards away.

She was returning to her home which had been there for considerably longer than she had, standing by the busy main road which divided it from the village, a road even older than the house – one that had Roman origins and ran straight past Great Stukeley but which was, nevertheless, busy and fast.

In his essay “A Hanging” George Orwell describes the execution of a Burmese native by the British Imperial Judiciary during his military career. The most poignant moments for him are first when on hearing that his appeal has failed the condemned individual urinates in his cell where he stands, out of pure terror, and the second when as the same prisoner walks the short distance to the scaffold in bare feet he carefully steps to one side to avoid a puddle. To Orwell this trivial unconscious act underlined the brutal significance of taking the life of a perfectly functioning human being.

For me, at least looking back, I remember a similar significant moment as Miss Lappard stepped off the kerb carefully to avoid tripping over with her bag of shopping – carefully placing one foot after the other to avoid a slip or twist of an ankle. Once safely on the road she simply stepped out towards her home…

The image that stays with me to this day is that mass of dark clothes flying into the air on the impact of the car and the following silence. Even now I do not remember a car stopping or a driver rushing back to her – I just remember that heap of clothes and the realisation that a human being had just ended their life in front of me.

I stood there, motionless for a few seconds probably rapped by terror and childhood curiosity, and then ran back into the shop to find an adult. Time changes things of course, but the basic details have remained vivid I think.

I think that, at that moment, my own mortality suddenly became real and my adult self was born.

The Trouble With Organised Religion...

OK – I have no problem with people of faith at all. If anyone has a belief they strongly adhere to and which informs their life then fantastic. I just don’t agree with them and resent the fact that those views are always given credence and integrity by our institutions. As an Atheist, here are ten things about religion that I have a major problem with:

1. Dictatorship. Most religions presuppose a deity who is basically all watching and all knowing and judging. The ultimate Big Brother. Step out of line and you’re toast. That, and the fact we are all apparently born into sin and will die with our sins to answer for, makes it a pretty bad deal.

2. The Old Testament. Basically condones fratricide, genocide, slavery, incest, rape, murder and a few other nasty deeds in the name of religion. Please.

3. Proselytising for charity. If you care and want to help fantastic but don’t make it all conditional on faith or worship.

4. Miracles. Metaphors are fine, but don’t pretend that the universal laws are suspended just to make a point every now and again.

5. Denial. Of dinosaurs and the Earth being more than 6000 years old. OK maybe only the most extreme believers hang onto this but it is so irrational it undermines any attempt at serious debate.

6. Certainty. Anyone who has it is dangerous – and I include fellow atheists in that category. I admit I cannot prove non-existence of a deity but I happen to think that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and the burden of that proof de facto rests with those who would use their belief to interfere in the lives of others.

7. Rituals. Some are fine – hatches, matches and despatches are social glue – but the high ceremonial extremes with incense, chanting and snake-wrestling are just plain silly and outdated in every form in every religion. Plays to the Paganism gene in us all and is just risible.

8. Sex obsession. Why is religion obsessed with sex – how you do it, who with and why? Celibacy, Virgin births and miraculous conceptions are in most religions proving, fairly clearly, that they were written by men with a fear of female reproductive organs.

9. Directives. Why does God hate Pigs so much? Why be even bothered what meat we eat? Our universe may be one of billions and our galaxy one of tens of billions all carefully designed and coordinated by someone who cares if we have pork for lunch? Honestly.

10. Subjugation. It’s a key objective in the Koran (convert, subjugate or destroy) and in the Old Testament. Religion has, for centuries, hindered scientific development. Without Islam the Arabs may have had the Internet by the 1800s at the rate they were progressing. Today whole societies are kept back by medieval doctrines and dogmas embarrassing to anyone of intelligence.

There – I feel better now!

Mercury Music Prize Winners The XX - A truly great album.

The XX


Remember how it feels to be in love? I mean obsessively irrationally nothing-else-matters crazily in love? Then having that love shattered before your eyes like a broken snow globe and all the feelings of powerless pain and anguish that followed? If you can, then you will find The XX album an experience to savour.

Musically it is ethereal and quirky at times, but from the instrumental introduction onwards this is an album that wants to be seen as genuine, the real deal, but it's also an album to listen to closely and all the more rewarding for it. A decent bass woofer would be useful too as some of the production rumbles up from Hades.

Many of the songs take the form of a dialogue between two parties in a failed or failing relationship and the broad sweeps of the music underpin and symbolise the emotions of each piece – particularly in "Fantasy" and "Crystallised" . You feel, at times, as if you are reading the secret diary of a young girl who has had her whole world destroyed by misplaced love but somehow is still trying to cling on. At times the depth of pain in the voice reminded me of The Blue Nile. It is universally moving and yet totally genuine and personal at the same time.

There is poetry in these lyrics too. “Shelter” reads like a simplified Sylvia Plath or Stevie Smith with a relevance and poignancy echoed in a delayed single string guitar refrain that eventually sees the song segue into the more accepting finality of “Basic Space”. You feel like a secret voyeur on a disintegrating relationship – think “Picking Up After You” by Tom Waits or The The “Infected” album.

The highlight for me is “Infinity”. The male vocal implores the protagonist to “give it up” whilst she responds “I can’t give it up” over and over again like a text conversation stuck in auto-send. All accompanied by some “Wicked Game” guitar.

The last track, "Stars", does hint at redemption for both with its acceptance of sometimes just letting things happen slowly. A wonderful denouement.

These are not songs to strum and sing round a camp fire. You can hear New Order, Chris Isaacs, Velvet Underground , Tori Amos and Bowie if you listen hard enough. The end result is a thoroughly satisfying album that is deserving of its plaudits and whilst they have said they have no plans for another, it would be fascinating to see what this band grows into.