Author: James Lark

This guy explains why.

And he explains a bit more here.

Further explanations to follow, I expect.

The press have been making it tediously apparent that the world and his Stephen Fry have become obsessed with Twitter, and as I like to keep abreast of what’s down with the kids (or indeed the artist formerly known as Lord Melchett) I have given it a go.

And I have to say, so far I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s like the “status update” part of facebook has been removed to its own website, so you get a running stream of sentences telling you what people are up to.

The problem is, it’s that mundane. If people used their allotted 140 characters to make witty comments or insightful observations then it might be an interesting website to pop onto, but what it actually boils down to is a lot of people saying what they had for dinner, a handful of technogeeks posting their latest observations about the failings of the internet, and Stephen Fry admiring his fans admiring him.

I’ve tried to make my own updates – sorry, tweets (sigh) – like tiny Dickensian bon mots, but I fear I’m ploughing a lonely furrow. Even Stephen Fry hasn’t mastered the art of fitting his usual wit and sagacity into 140 letters.

That such a master of verbosity has championed this website above any other is really quite surprising; you’d have thought blogging would be more up his street. But clearly he likes the ability to make a sneaky update on what he had for dinner in between takes of whatever TV programme he’s guesting on, and I can see why that would be appealing. I’ve taken to doing it myself.

It’s just not very interesting for the people reading it.

Neither is it a useful photo-sharing or staying-in-touch tool like Facebook or any of the other ones I haven’t taken to using. It’s just plain stalking. But not the interesting stalking that makes you feel aroused if you’re into that kind of thing: this is the most moribund stalking you can possibly imagine.

So, sorry to those of you I’ve been “following” (see, even the terminology is sinister) – I don’t care that you won’t be in London for all those dates, Mr Fry; I don’t care that you’re warming to the snow, Mr Carr; Mr Aylett I don’t even understand what all those internet terms mean; and all of the rest of you, your dinner is of no interest to me unless I am invited to join you for it.

If blogging is old fashioned then I’ve got two words for you: dumbing down.

Just finished school, heading home for pork chops.

“Hee hee hee! This young man thinks he’s getting an excellent deal in return for relinquishing his desire to put his feet on the seat – little does he know that I never have a bag because I don’t have any arms!“

In school today I came across a GCSE music question which I couldn’t answer. It asked for definitions of homophony, polyphony, monophony and heterophony; the first two are simple enough, the (largely choral) styles of writing based either on chords or on contrapuntal lines. By extension, monophony is the art of writing single notes, so a simpler term to use is “tune”.

But heterophony? I’d never heard the word. On the surface it sounds like it ought to be the opposite of homophony, but that role is already filled by polyphony.

It turns out, as a student had to explain to me, that heterophony is “like, when you have one note and then another note on top of it which is, like, the same note, but there are more of them and they move at a different speed”.

But it does seem odd to me that from starting to learn the recorder at the age of five through to completing the Cambridge music tripos some 17 years of musical education later that I never once came across this undoubtedly useful term. In school today I voiced the theory that it has just been made up in the interim to make GCSE music more interesting.

And then it occurred to me that heterophony sounds like the kind of practise that might, until recently, have been found abhorent by normal homophonic musicians. Maybe it was even illegal until Blair’s government passed an act giving heterophonics the same rights as other people. Could it be that until the mid-90s, heterophony was only really found in the dark shady underground of the music world – in heterophonic bars and clubs, in heterophonic saunas, on Hampstead Heath or in Amsterdam?

It put me in mind of certain other musical deviations which, to date, are still not talked about in GCSE papers, or even mentioned in polite society:

Necrophony – using chords written by dead composers

Bestiophony – using animal noises in music (cf Banchieri’s ‘Contrapunto bestiale alla mente’)

Sodophony – leaving a concert before it’s finished

Masochophony – listening to Philip Glass for pleasure

Transvestophony – singing countertenor

Cacophony – music involving faeces

…I expect there are more where that came from…

James likes to write down the first 10 search results.

James likes to relax by swimming, walking the coastal footpath with Jane or catching up with the TV programmes he’s recorded.

James likes to talk.

James likes to throw curveballs.

James likes to keep it hot.

James likes to carry other divas.

James likes to focus on institutions.

James likes to clean the counters.

James likes to be beside the seaside.

James likes to DJ at Corporate events and cook gourmet meals.

…the funny thing is, five and a half of these of these apply to me, four and a third of them apply to the other James, and only one of them applies to P. D. James – but none of us relax by walking the coastal footpath with Jane.

I’ve been visiting opticians regularly since 1987 and until today I thought I knew all their little tricks. The machinery has gradually got more hi-tec looking and they have over the years added in tests to measure the curvature of your eyes and the like, but basically it’s still about reading letters in the distance.

So there I was at the optician’s this afternoon, going through the usual exercises and thinking I knew exactly what was coming next, when the optician said “just put your chin on the rest a moment, I’m going to turn your eyelids inside out.”

And before I could say “you’re going to WHAT?????” or even think of protesting “you’re doing no such thing, they didn’t need to turn my eyelids inside out in 1987 and you’re not about to start” she had her fingers inside my eyelids and was inserting the eyelid equivalent of a shoehorn to flip them inside out.

So I sat there with inside out eyelids. I haven’t even checked to see if she put them back afterwards. I certainly didn’t have the nerve to ask her why she felt the need to turn my eyelids inside out, and I’m worried that it’s a joke that opticians play on people just because they can.

In the meantime, I think I’m traumatised for life.

Later today we will know who is taking over from David Tennant as the Doctor, but in the meantime bookmakers and journalists are enjoying all sorts of speculation which ranges from the too obvious to the completely barmy. So let’s just have a quick run-down of who’s being pipped for the post and, more importantly, why…

Paterson Joseph

Who?: David Mitchell’s boss in Peep Show.

Why?: because he’s black.

I say that with the greatest respect for his acting skills: even before the Presidential election it was fashionable to have a black candidate for everything, and it’s the reason he’s the favourite to win. But in much the same way as Christopher Eccleston being Northern didn’t massively refresh the character of the Doctor a few years ago, let’s hope Joseph isn’t simply going to be “the black Doctor”; when they ticked the “black assistant” box a few years ago they thought that it was enough that she was black so didn’t bother writing her a character. That was a mistake, that was.

David Morrissey

Who?: the star of Basic Instinct 2.

Why?: because in the Doctor Who Christmas special broadcast just days ago, he played a man who thought he was the Doctor. He wasn’t. Much as I can understand why nobody would put themselves through watching said Christmas special, the fact that he turned out not to be the Doctor suggests he’s going to turn out not to be the Doctor.

Russell Tovey

Who?: the least appealing character in The History Boys.

Why?: because Russell T Davies wants to sleep with him. This much he has admitted in so many words in his new book, in various interviews, and probably to himself every night before bed for the last year. It doesn’t necessarily mean Tovey would be a good person to play the Doctor. In fact I suggest it would be a hideous error of judgement, primarily because Russell T Davies is old enough to be his father.

Catherine Zeta Jones

Who?: that Welsh one.

Why?: because she’s a woman.

It has been virtually obligatory to jokingly suggest a woman for the role since 1981. At least, let’s hope this is a joke. Please please please please let it be a joke…

Billie Piper

Who?: singer of 1998 number one single “Because we want to” and Mrs Chris Evans.

Why?: this, I fear, is completely unanswerable.

I mean, what on earth is going on here? Billie Piper played the Doctor’s companion for two years, cropped up again in 2008 and was last seen snogging a clone of the Doctor on a beach in Norway in a particularly twisted story development where she basically got a fuck-buddy who looked the same as a different man she had lustful desires for; are the production team really going to take this a step further and suggest that the original Doctor, having seen himself playing tonsil tennis with his former companion, is suddenly overcome by a desire to look like her? That if he can’t get his hands on the real thing he’s going to follow her lead and make himself a copy, even if that copy is himself?

I mean, really? Is Billie Piper really a candidate? Has the whole world gone completely mad????

…and the possible final sentences for 2008 are as follows:

As one year of recession gives way to another, my heart is gladdened by the thought that we don’t need money and security when we have love and friendship.

I can only hope that in 2009 I’ll get a few more nights off pleasure.

Either due to lack of time or lack of discipline, my private journal has become increasingly sporadic over the years, but until 2005 I strove to keep a daily diary and this day of the year always had a feeling of ceremony about it. I suppose I wanted to leave readers either with a satisfying feeling of closure, or in more ambitious years on a bit of a cliffhanger so they’d want to come back for more of my thrilling life story. In the embarressing optimism of my early teens this often took the form of a mawkish summary; in 1997 I went for the ultimate season finale with half a sentence which I finished in the next diary. (A sweet idea which I have just noticed is completely ruined by an elementary grammatical error.)

But whilst I remember often putting a great deal of thought into wrapping up my year, flicking through my old diaries I have discovered that my favourite final sentences are actually masterpieces of anticlimax. A few of the best ones:

1994: Dad let me have 3 glasses of wine, 3% alcohol. (You absolute rebel, you 15-year-old James Lark.)

1998: If. (A pretentious year, then.)

2001: Tsk – I’ve become a stereotype. (A moment of terrible self-realisation.)

2002: Walked home in nasty rain with grumpy sister. (This one is my favourite for its beautifully grim sense of realism.)

2005: 2006 will be better. (A sad one this, especially as I have a feeling it didn’t turn out to be true.)

There will be no sense of ceremony about writing my journal tonight, probably because I will fall asleep before I get around to doing it, but I am pondering what kind of final sentence I might have applied to 2008. In fact, for the lack of a final page to put it on, I might as well blog whatever options I come up with. I’ll get back to you…