The Miserly Smile

Most English dread passing someone on a quiet road or in a park. It seems we have come up with a solution, not quite a smile but some tight arsed acknowledgment that involves a momentary tightening of the lip and a minute nod of the head. 

What is it’s meaning? What does it save us from, this mean little mannerism? 

The other person, the stranger passing, can now know he has been seen, but has it made either the giver or the receiver happier? The giver, with this terrible offering, feels, well I am assuming here, having never tried this pseudo greeting but judging by the unease of the facial grimace, a kind of relief in it being over, ‘there we are, stranger greeted, that will do, can’t say I’m rude, I didn’t ignore him.' So this meagre type of acknowledgment comes down to duty. I did my duty, I recognised there was another human close by and I was decent enough to acknowledge this. I could have looked down as I passed, I could have crossed over, but no, I pursed my lips into a straight line, pushing my bottom lip up, so making my mouth turn down at either side and at the same time moved the head down three or four centimetres in a poor man’s nod; a bit like giving brown money to the homeless. 

And what of the receiver? How are they to greet this poverty stricken act of reaching out? It can be worse if the receiver has said a, ‘hello’ or a friendly, ‘good morning.' To have offered a verbal greeting and in return get the misers nod feels like a kick up the arse, wondering were you in some way being intrusive or worse a pushy, possibly lonely, person. So the miser’s nod can land as an attack. 

Maybe only a withholding person would use this form of address, if you can call it that. I think it belongs in the stable with such expressions as: ‘That wouldn’t be my choice but of course its up to you.’ What the fuck does that mean? I could include the: ‘bear with me’s’ but they are so beleaguered and over used they now reduced to phone punctuation, just letting you know I have a screen in front of me and I cannot talk and use it at the same time, so now it will go quiet for a bit. The ‘bearing with’ is a pause, its hollow and empty and possibly irritating but it does not seek to belittle. 

‘That wouldn’t be my choice,' is a nasty little way of starting a sentence. It instantly alienates, seeking to get the upper ground, but also to undermine; a double pronger. By the time you get to ‘of course it’s up to you,' which is what, apart from meaningless garbage of unfelt sentiment, a waste of words that slab forth coated in fair mindedness.  How mature they are, they don’t agree with you but as a liberal nice human,  they will remind you, how, it is, after all, your choice. And the unsaid, like the nod, is not at all the intention, the intention is a passive off loading of unexpressed judgment. 

Like the driver that beckons the pedestrian across the road, he doesn’t offer his palm up as he might if he were standing without his car around him. Out of the car he may mange the grace of a subtle step back, a smile and even the, ‘after you’ but in the car the ghastly man will do a quick chopping action with his hand, a sort of hand signal version of ‘come on, come on, don’t take all fucking day.’ Women too, they do it, usually from high up cars. They rush you along with a quivering fine fingered gesture, unimaginably rude face to face but up there, they rationalise that they are being decent, letting their fellow man ‘in’ before them, don’t ask me for grace as well, isn’t it enough that I allow it. I  have segweyed into another dynamic, these horrid hand signals don’t seek to put down the pedestrian, the fact that they do is an inadvertent by product, what the driver is actually suffering from is temporary loss of humanity bolstered by the car, he has become a lower human, like a beast in the jungle, he has to fight the temptation to just  keep going and kill you. From his perspective this reigning in of instinct is laudable. So, although the hand signal does demean it is not it’s first motive. What I am trying to focus on is the conveyor belt of attacks, but it is interesting how a lot of low communication is justified by decency.

The passive aggression of jumping into a full lift and triggering the doors to reopen, the wincey little smile that is felt by this greedy, self centred, person as apology enough. Are we to feel apologised to, or are we left with the rage? A mock cringe and silly smile only suggest, ‘don’t hit me,’ we were not thinking of hitting you, merely of hating you, had you said, ‘God, sorry, how selfish of me,’ the hatred would have dissipated, yes you were bad but you know you were bad, justice.

Back to that miserly smile, these people would be the same people that when  colliding with another human will wait for the other person to issue the knee jerk response of an 'Oh sorry' and they in turn will respond with: 'thats all right'.
Not only does that not complete the transaction between two humans bumping into to each other, it forces the ‘oh sorry' person into being the one who bumped, the bad one. The, ‘that’s all right,' person will have assumed the position of wronged one, and in keeping with this outlook will not seem in the least ‘all right’  instead he will utter these words as further rebuke but again housed in polite nothingness.

It is this lack of generosity that makes life so barren. At the checkout I offered a lady with one thing in her basket to go before me. She was old, I know from my mum how old people hate to stand, so I offer her my place, and the young mum in front of me busy ignoring her child and reading a paper she has placed over her shopping on the checkout (This in itself was sort of bad, not too sure how but it got to me-possibly the way in which the child seemed so utterly neglected, standing there with no mother, huge rucksack full of homework, ridiculous school uniform advertising the independent status, tired, ignored and alone.) The young mother glanced round when she heard me make this offer, since I had said it loud enough for her to also offer up her place, her eyes scanned the situation quickly, giving up a place in the queue, pretend not to notice? Or was she to be forced into being human? Tough choice for her, she was happy to duck out of parenting, rather read a free sheet, was she really about to give away two minutes to a stranger, not bloody likely. She was pretty sure no one had seen her furtive little glance, she turned her back, signalling ‘nothing doing.’ The old lady felt self conscious, she tried to get back behind me saying it didn’t matter. How odd that this display of hideousness should result in the older lady feeling that she was the bad one. 

I once smashed into a bus. I crashed and smashed off the drivers mirror, my fault, in his lane, no two ways about it. There was an eye stinging back story to this, where I had just come from, what I had found out, but still in that moment, I was utterly to blame. I had my three year old son with me, he was scared and crying. I got out and walked around to the driver who had left his cabin. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eye’s and said, ‘it’s all right don’t worry, you didn’t see me did you.’ Next he turned to the car, took in my son and asked me where I was off to, to see Jungle Book at the pictures I said. He replied that it would be a good thing to do after such a shock and that I shouldn’t give it another thought, no he did not want my details, he’d think of something to tell the garage. 

At that time in my life I would have been floored by an increase in my insurance, but even more than that, how badly I felt to have crashed with my baby in the car, and this stranger came forward and loved me and I walked away as though I was a good mother but a stressed one and I had been seen as that. It was all right I should continue on to Jungle Book. I did, and it was better than if I hadn’t collided with the bus. The man eclipsed what had gone on that day before the crash, he wiped it out with his kindness. 

Tiny, tiny acts of love have immeasurable returns. If you smile at a baby, the baby smiles back, well mostly. The smile you get back is always worth ten of the smile you gave, they give it for free, they do not hesitate or limit the smile they smile for as long or as short as they feel.  Have I stumbled into, ‘A smile costs nothing,’ oh dear.

I have to say when I first heard a phone operator suggesting I ‘bear with him’ I felt drawn into the cause. I had a picture of him standing on a rowing boat, bearing down on his oar and he was asking me to help, that if we both pushed together we could cast off from the muddy bank and start out on our journey, A coming together.  I am not sure why that image, the bearing I think, like bearing down in childbirth, an old fashioned pursuit, hence being imbued with something decent. Like the first time the check-out lady in Waitrose apologised for the wait. I felt she was offering kinship, a moment of empathy, even a small collusion between me and her against the slow oaf she’d just dealt with, the only attack in either of these expressions is the moment you realise it’s what they say. The Waitrose check-out ladies are told to say it. Corporate friendship.

‘Excuse me,' and other bits of elbowing commentary has become the city speak for fuck off. We are the drain rats who would go for the throat if it was get awayable with. As it is we have our electronic devices and our debased manners to shield us from unscheduled and unwelcome confrontations from the outside.

Mad King Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld seems to be shrugging off his Parisian pomp and returning to his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang roots. Meanwhile the fashion press remain in a manic state of denial; the reapearence of the Brothel Creeper being met with an almost ecstatic response, 'Chanel Cruise 2013 cements the trend: Brothel Creepers are cool!' Grazia Daily, hmmm. This type of shoe has been doing the rounds for some time now but then again, Karl is master of the encore.

                        

                                         A Marie Antoinette Romper suit

However his detractors are heavy weights. Last year Tina Brown's Newsweek dared to focus on how heavily he relies on the Chanel brand for his inspiration. 'Lagerfeld has simply broadened a road built by Chanel herself.' His furious, ill thought out, response was to announce that she was 'dying (professionally).'

                                   An Artist's impression: Karl and Tina

Lagerfeld’s ambivalence towards women is hard to miss, swinging from the total idealisation of the female and her form, to utter contempt, This schizoid position can get a bit tricky when your job is dressing women. 
How do you dress what you secretly desire to debase? Could this be the true inspiration for S/S 2013:

                                Chanel's  billboard, The Hoola Hoop Bag 

As with all obsessions there runs a schism of murderous hatred, the desire to become is overshadowed by the desire to kill off. The bitchy remarks that come burping out, constantly revealing this inner struggle. I am reminded of Psycho with poor old Norman standing at the top of the stairs with his skewed bonnet, he had become his mother, the perfect way to triumph over the old cow, and when I read how Karl’s mum ‘had striking white hair’ it all begins to get a bit spooky. 

                                    

Part of a painting by Lagerfeld. A distinguished gentleman with black monocle, who reminds Lagerfeld of 'someone now dead.' His mother wore a monocle.

His mother, an ever present inspiration seems to have taken a sadistic pleasure in belittling her son, warning the eight year old child he should steer clear of hats lest he end up ‘looking like an old Dyke’ Karl goes on to add ‘She was quite funny, no?' NO, not really. Had Lagerfeld identified this remark as an attack he may been able to avoid slavishly living out the prophesy.

However unlike most people that suffer abusive parenting, it has served him well, not all psychological warps need be destructive. An obsession with the idealised mother has made for some beautiful high points in an illustrious career but at some point there comes exhaustion. Manic defences, no matter how stridently erected, falter. How anxious he must now be feeling as he reaches his tricky octogenarian years, the hysteria of narcissus runs wild. Death is badgering him and truths become harder to sit on. There is a madness to his work, to the way he chooses to dress, to his strange boasts ‘I am a brain-bodybuilder...a Schwarzenegger of the brain." Possibly then this latest collection is the victim of steroids as well as revenge.

Biography:
Luke Leitch: Chanel S/S 2013. Telegraph, 21 December 2012. ‘Chanel Spring/ Summer 2013'
Maureen Orth: Kaiser Karl: Behind the Mask. Vanity Fair- February 1992.
Robin Givhan: Newsweek January 2012
Alicia Drake: The Long Fall 2006
Hannah Almassi: 'Chanel Cruise 2013 Cements The Trend.'  Grazia daily.com May 2012
Detail from Karl Lagerfeld's illustrations: 'A Secret Ball.’ Vogue Magazine November 2008
Stills from: Chanel S/S Cruise 2013 and S/S 2013 
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang 1968.

                 

Into the Mystic

Old pop stars, not the ones still plugging on more or less in the public eye, no, I mean the ones who have become reabsorbed by the ordinary, have lived out their middle age in Bath or Taunton and have been found dead or in need of a new liver/heart and there they are staring back from the news story, a nasty little picture capturing their fall from a life which must have been one of the lives that at least started out perfectly.

Who would have suspected he would have been found dead in his kitchen from a heart attack, no foul play suspected. Of course the foul play came from the inside. The foul play was how that life played out so foully. How can it start with youth and plenty and end with middle age nothingness?

We love these stories, we love seeing our own trajectory more painfully magnified. The starker version of our own. Can life be anything else than tragedy? If it were to be classified by genre wouldn’t it come under tragedy? Again I wonder at the possibility of money shielding us from entropy but that pop star from the seventies band was just as likely to have been comfortably off as living pot-less. The tudor style mansion didn’t save his destitute life, where all he had was in an unforgiving past tense. 

There must be happy people but who are they? How do they operate? How do they navigate the slow falling apart, the shuffle towards the end.

There is this one enduring sharp focused memory of jumping two - three stairs at a time. I am nine or eight and I am wearing a dress, sandals and pants. The dress is the easiest dress, it is a tunic and short enough not to ever get in the way of a stride, a jump whatever I needed to do. My pants felt invisible. I remember feeling the ease, almost nude, it was a day where the weather felt the same temperature as your skin, there was no clue you were in or out, no wind, no cold, no heat just the same. I jumped down my stairs of my flats to meet with my friends to play. 

Play because play formed a part of my life then, it could be a fantastic game of he with enough of us to make it really good. I ran down these stairs and I felt my body was capable of anything, I was whole, I didn’t need need to go to the loo, I wasn’t hungry, I was entirely right with a power under my skin that would allow me to do whatever was required, ride my bike, dismounting in one sweep, it no doubt feeling more streamlined than it was but bike riders do become aligned with their bikes, they don’t have the tricky dismount, they don't seem to be atop this many wired, metal contraption, they have become enmeshed, the wheels grown from them, I was like that with my bike, curbs, hills, corners, swinging it around, crashing it down, my bike, like my body, able, fast. Climb over a wall, a tree, scuff your knees, hurt your hands-no biggie, the body could take it in it’s stride, hang upside down, laugh really laugh, according to research over fifteen times a day. 

Children laugh on average fifteen times a day. Of course they do, emotional gravity must hardly be felt at that age, what do you know of ‘preparing’ to climb into a back seat of a car, of planning a little how to navigate your mass into the back seat, the gratitude of reaching the seat and sitting. The prep is almost subliminal at fifty but I can see how this moves into the conscious with the same slow shuffle that each day makes less possible.

We started as these creatures of great abundance of power and perfection, our skins unimaginably perfect, our muscles ready and springy. We started brand new. Is that why we like new things, new cars, new fridges, no I don’t suppose so, we like new things because they work better, they look better, they are better and we have the choice, we can throw the old one away. Unless we are poor then we have to put up living with old stuff, the shitty car that gets humiliated at the garage, limps through the M.O.T at vast cost yet we find the cash and somehow carry on. We don’t have much confidence, we live with the expectation it wil let us down, we are invisible to other drivers we get no recognition out there. The shiny metal coats we wear out there, a version of youth, at least in my new Audi I am part of the future, the equivalent of perfection. Unscratched unbeaten by time, acceleration with an easy pressure, sheer rush of ease.

I have no first hand experience of a new kitchen or a new house with perfect things in it but maybe that wards off the poverty of middle age, does luxury offer ease but what of the contrast, you may be swathed in Egyptian cotton but perfection must then single you out, you're spoiling the view.

Wives get tossed for less. Mirror back at me the downey little tummy, the pretty toes, don’t keep reminding me of my sagging backside that is now defined by a crease where my thigh starts, dear God I look like those old men on the beach. I cannot look at her and be constantly reminded of how we used to be, hammered in constantly if not by her then your beautiful unmarked children, get a new model or go with it, go with the flow like the rest of us, we settle for less, we chill out we grow fat we sit around more, we become more inert. Each day we become stiller, a point of refuge from the exertion, a word not able to be given to describe the movement of youth. They bounce towards their goals, we haul ourselves. Haul ourselves out of the bath, out of the pool or use the steps. I wonder when the last time actually was that I could put my knee up as leverage and pull myself up out of the water, the last time I subconsciously knew that I would not try that again. 

It is odd that at eight or nine I had that moment inspired by happiness at how good it felt to be in my body, like my mind put down a marker, remember this, remember this moment,  I knew how good it was, how great to have my body that day. 

I imagine great recognition, a pop star, David Essex still alive still doing his stuff, we have all recovered from the shock of his grey hair, I imagine he just gets on with it. Maybe he is still grateful that he can fill the Apollo, Victoria, maybe he even tells himself little lies like he’s better than ever, maybe he is. Maybe my perspective is jaundiced what about Leonard Cohen he has managed to make the youth gauche; you would rather be old listening to him, there is a camaraderie, you are part of his clan, the old sardonic unstriven gang, we who have seen, like Clint Eastwood, they do age in a way that looks like a maturing piece of well polished walnut, smooth with age, holding a sense of history, wisdom, knowledge.

Possibly the mocked are those that achieved a brief flicker of recognition young and then fade back to the nothing. Maybe they more painfully mirror the majority. Our youth being our time, our moment in the sun, and then we return to our rickety cattle carts lumbering along quietly to towards the end. 

Possibly the people who do achieve sustained excellence are not identifiable with but sustain the hope, the hope that we will do something magnificent that our dream whatever it is will be achieved in the last quarter, as unlikely as that is it is probably better to have that, and so former members of the Bay City Rollers are, by their lives trajectory banned from that. It was too good back then and therefore it has to be worse now, the arc is in place, too pronounced to be argued with.

Breasts: the Ultimate Fashion Blunder

      Breasts: the Ultimate Fashion Blunder

Vanessa Bruno S/S 2013

Gamine, fragile, beautiful. Had the Vanessa Bruno model been a 36c cup the look would have gone girl band/rock chick.Tits destroy silhouette. A jacket needs to drop from the collar bone in an insouciant schlump, not launch out at a 80 degree trajectory. Big breasts immediately send a look careering off to a gauche place. 

Carine Roitfeld

Glacially cool, Galouise reeking, Carine Roitfeld showing impeccable leopard print wearing attitude helped by her discreet breasts. 



Kate Moss

Even though Kate Moss can pull off slutty cool she would still be sunk if she had to contend with a bust. As it is, she can practice her cool irony, safe in the knowledge she’s no where near the Rovers Return.

Coleen Rooney

The terrible bag (not seen, bright red Channel type deal) and scarf kill off this outfit anyway, but even without this, the lapels have that big busted thrust which voids the edgy intention.

These denim shorts tell us that the wearer is focused on seduction. Had she been smaller breasted she might have achieved ingénue/child bride, and made the onlooker the sex fiend but with the bigger breasts she is in perfect collusion...

                                               

Whilst these shorts tell us that although she is gorgeous this was not her central intention. The  attitude achieved is independent and accidentally alluring.

  

                              Tom Ford Keira Knightly and Scarlett Johansson

Notice the placement of the Vanity Fair spread; Tom attempts to kiss the ice cold neck of Keira, whose detached body language signals that she holds power, whilst poor old Scarlett has to lie on the floor and show her bum. Could they have swapped places? No, since Scarlett could not have attempted Keira’s pose as it would have exposed a heavy lolling breast appearing from under the arm, eeww. As it is Scarlett relies heavily on the floor, her breasts being squashed up against it allow her to expose the side of them like a small breasted, person.

Why does Keira hold the power? She is no prettier, her body is not nicer? Yet in terms of Babe Paley elegance she wins hands down. In spite of her delicious curves, Scarlett has managed to climb the ranks of fashion acceptability, due in part to the fame cross over dynamic but if you look around she is in the meagre minority. Fashion icons must be elusive. Big tits suffer from lack of mystery and being confused with body fat. Straining button Bond girls need not apply.  

In the Dock

In the Dock - why I watched The Leveson Inquiry

In terms of spectator sport it nears the magnificent. Lead council Robert Jay. QC, the perfect foil for these professional liars. How simple the truth now appears. Did anyone have the foresight to realise the impact that hour upon hour in the dock would actually have. Where else have we been witness to such intimacy with public figures. Here we see them, with little to play off, nothing to respond to except the relentless questions of Robert Jay who most of the time doesn’t even bother to look at them when they answer, instead he is head down scanning his pages for the next question with seemingly little regard to the response.
Forget the hot seat of Newsnight or question time in the commons, here there is no reaction, no readying for a spot of hot fire stichomythia, a public exhibition of mental agility. No, you don’t get any of that down the Leveson. For your appearance in the dock you must try to look relaxed, to look nice, to look like a nice person. You must avoid the temptation to look over towards the camera, nor to look skyward, the warning from the lawyers that you’d look like you were remembering what to say, it must seem natural.
Ken Clarke of all people was not a liar; he was grandiose, smug, a bit glib but he had little reason to lie, it wasn’t his fight, he had no need to circumnavigate around phone texts or intimate suppers. His only tell was relief.
Blair was probably one of the most casual of liars, like a Ferrari engine doing 40 mph. His five star countenance acknowledging only that he had been brought in to assist the process. He turned his appearance into a United Nations meeting of world leaders type deal. This fine mind was needed to get round the thorny issue of a free press, with remarkable candidness he artfully confessed to stage managed regrets,the charismatic theoretician sharing his expertise. He deftly avoided the ‘dock’ demeanor and turned himself instead into the international trouble shooter. Aside from the conspicuous body guards, the impossibly white cotton shirts normally assigned to Goldman Sacs high ups he managed to have removed himself from culpability by no longer seeming British, he was passing over us, details, an irrelevance, cute cutaway’s about not knowing back then how to use a mobile phone! Distancing himself not only by time, but by not being some juvenile texter. Like Clarke, he wasn’t under direct fire but even so the whole attendance at Mount Sinai? The close friendship that made it’s clean transition from

‘working relationship’, all of these areas of potential trickiness were worked through seamlessly.
Despite Prime minister status, Cameron never managed this manouvre and remained firmly in the dock. If not sweaty then at least hot under the collar. I don’t think I heard him use the title Sir, when addressing Lord Justice Leveson, did he? Wouldn’t that of clashed with the public perception as leader of the United Kingdom, high stakes player at the euro table, but his appearance didn’t strike us as odd, he looked about right sitting there having to remember his lines wondering how or when he would get through this without something terrible happening. I hadn’t been that excited by the knowledge he would be appearing, I didn’t think they’d get him. He had the script weeks before, he knew what they’ be covering. After all this is a man that defended Coulson. He had already staged a very inner sanctum, houses of parliament, ye old gothic historic, wood paneled drawing room in which to defend his friend. They brought in a pedestal and there he stood a cross between Sarkozy, Louis the fourteenth, Ritz type glamour and knights of the round table. He addressed his press public with strident repetition, ironing out the actual truth of the situation leaving no stone unturned, if only they could understand, people, all people, need a second chance. Andy was just such a man, he needed a second chance, was it right that he lost his position as the man who brought us the news of the world. Each week he had tried to bring us the most interesting aspects of the news from the world, he didn’t know, he didn’t know what was going on, but like any good General, he chose to step down, shoulder the blame, and move on. Surely that was the sort of man needed to help run the country. No one bought it but the bluff was so good. He didn’t shun the press, quite the opposite, bring them on, I shall fell each one in turn. Possibly Cameron’s main character defect is this almost exultant self belief in his ability to out manouvre, out play his opponents. Throughout his day in the dock Cameron played defense, fielding, wriggling, hand gesturing his way round absurd situations, distasteful associations and disastrous judgments.
Ironically even Andy himself was better in the dock, like a police officer, without personality he answered the questions gave little away but like Cameron, economical.
The Dock was a new, untested arena. It seemed like it was the same old but no, wait, it was far more revealing. The ultimate test, the test of integrity. It wasn’t about getting caught, not getting caught, it was about the person themselves. Were they honorable, were they the sort of people who cheated, who threw away odd bit of debris from their car windows? Did they pay all

that they should in taxes? Would they be good neighbors? These bottom line questions played out silently against the strident flat back responses, whilst they remembered all the points and justified and cleverly sidestepped, the lie detector flickered quietly away allowing us the public a clear, unfettered view.
Truth definitely made it’s comeback. Truth was king. And time, time for us to take them in, to watch not what they said but how they said it, how they reacted, moved, breathed. In this current world we don’t have time, people are spliced together, asked for their views and then talked over. Unwittingly we have colluded with the liars. Suddenly in all this high tech caboom comes Ye olde worldly Leveson space, where we take breaks for lunch and breaks for the stenographer, you will be up there for hours mate. We don’t really do irony, well not if it’s yours and we prefer if you answered the question. Expansiveness is not encouraged, you may as well leave all your bag of tricks at the door. Under this looming eyeball we will hold you for hours if not days. The staggering contrast between the liar and the truth teller was far more apparent than I think any of us could have realised. Testimony that ranged from dishonest to straightforward stuck out like dogs balls.
Gordon Browns account of his Baby was obviously the truth, it rang out from the heart of him, a stillness, no artifice, no mocking smile, no reflecting back to the screen or the page, but as he moved on to the conversation with Murdoch he kept referring to evidence, there was ‘no evidence’ that the conversation ever took place. Suddenly his face awash with incredulity, eyebrow raising, he’s on. The same tactic was used by Osbourne, the bluffly delivered shtik over the ‘conspiracy theory’ as if he was reviewing some 911 Youtube video. Poor Gordon was probably advised to use the same approach, but how did this fit with the belligerent Scot? He’s not a witty repartee man, he’s dour and dry and not given to elastic facial grimaces. All we saw was the twitching arm of the lie detector it’s arc ever wider. As soon as he wavered from the truth he became out of kilter with us, it was no longer any good.
The Leveson Inquiry with the telly option has reaped much more than mere evidence it has allowed us intimacy. Paxman, Newsnights’ Judge Judy, I had thought, was the nearest thing we had at attempting to bring people in power to account. I now see that the hostile, invasive questioning so in fashion nowadays gives the perfect environment for short natty (devoid of content) retorts. Political thought has been reduced to gamesmanship of the fast comeback, verbal quick fire chess. The Dock by contrast allows the defendant to slow cook for several illuminating hours. Quick wittedness looks like what it is, avoidance. Under oath obviously helps the cause, and the

information itself can, at times, (though not as often as we had all hoped) help but beyond the nuts and bolts we have a far clearer idea of who these people are.
Are they straight, are they good? Questions that have not really been on the agenda for years. Down the Leveson we see them appear before us like shaved cats.
Strangely it would seem that no amount of coaching can eradicate the lie. If a man appears before us and cannot speak the truth, no matter how well prepared he is, there is something dulled like frozen compared to fresh. The truth has an oxygen that no well rehearsed lie can deliver.
Various glove puppets tried, Michael Gove, the ‘A’ star student spoke like a man reciting. A lack of normal deviation, of errs or umm’s, instead he rolled out the
product and sat back triumphantly. The after taste, the gut instinct was to find this man non human, or at least without a soul. Here was a man..... capable of following orders, what ever they might be.
Nick Clegg faired better, possibly because in recent months the level of sadness inside him has grown. He has truly known the disappointment of being a disappointment to oneself. You can see him at question time, a shade off wincing as he hears the emphatic Cameron shielding his party with ever more annunciated diction. Mind you it would help Labour considerably if they sorted out Ed Milliband’s speech. Some speech impediments are not conflictual with content and some distort, his points are lost in a soft muffle. How to rally the troops when it sounds like it’s being delivered through a duvet? Although Ed did seem like a good person in the Dock where really all that is required is the truth.
The dynamic of the dock then, in this never before experienced platform, has been like a truth drug. Not in the way it was supposed to perform but in a far more human normal, back in the day form, when public figures required a moral backbone, before they were synthesized through the medium of news moments.
This revealing chair can only work on the humans that are themselves aware of their own deceit. Therefore the exceptions find themselves in another category, the psychopaths.
Murdoch. He lost it, he found the whole deal uncomfortable, he didn’t want to be in the dock, he didn’t want to abide by his army of lawyers, and much to their horror, obviously tossed their many careful warnings aside to go rogue

and off script but despite all these messy moments there was no sense he was lying. This then is a man who does not delineate between truth and lies. There is no moment of decision, no fall out, no torment. His agenda is to win, to kill off the opposition and to win. Unlike Blair who must know moments of anxiety, who wonders how he got to this point in his life, who has segued off to the fuzzy land of near truth and denial, Murdoch appears to have little time for such namby pamby preoccupation's. He has total belief in himself and as such will do whatever it takes. The bizarre love for Brooks comes from the recognition that they are the same. Neither one would bother with the facts when it comes to winning. Winning, for them, is the ultimate truth. I won, I must be right.
With a gleaming amorality the dock offers little in the way of
insight, we get to see the horror and power but we can in no way suss them out, they are impenetrable since they are not like the rest of us. Brooks seemed to enjoy her time in the dock, she managed to force a smile across Jay’s face with ‘You need better sources Mr Jay’ She did this with such grace, such ease. She did use ‘Sir’ when addressing Lord Justice Leveson, but with overtones of ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ . A courtesan blushingly forced to confess all her iPhone contacts, helpless to her own powers of seduction. Leveson too fell at her feet. By the time she revealed and played and became serious, and looked up from looking down, she had given only what she wanted to away, a nasty slap in the face to Cameron, that will teach you, delivered like a ‘oops I dunnit again, but yes, that was what he said, and the fabulous, ‘Should I put it back to you, if the Browns had asked me not to run it I wouldn’t have done.... it is the only way we would have put it in the public domain.’ Wow, so what, what does she mean to tell us, firstly she deftly takes back the reigns, with ‘shall I put it back to you’... a shifting of the dock dynamic into a two way conversation, almost akin to ‘let me ask you a question’ and then with swift absoluteness she assured us that had Brown objected she would have pulled the story, yeah right. Mind you it sounded so good, she couldn’t actually be lying could she? I mean it’s so blatant it’s telling us a certainty, she has already made sure that the air of dispelling myths is well underway, no she was not given clothes by Murdoch with which to exit the nick, no (slight giggle, I was not his Venus being born, good sport) she did not take swims with Murdoch. She has led us all to a place where this highly professional, highly ethical woman is now telling us exactly what went down. All this setting the stage perfectly for the final knock out blow, we wouldn’t have published if the Browns were unhappy.
This level of non truth is only to be used by the real killer elite and so really the Leveson Inquiry can be said to have unearthed far more than it set out to do. Even to the extent of singling out Murdoch and Brooks as possibly the

only two that are without conscience, with Gove and Osbourne coming up the rear.
Even strange James Murdoch seems to have a semblance of conscience or at least aware that there are people who do and they notice stuff like that. That last engagement with dad in another dock saw James blush as he tried to hold dad back.
I am left with very clear impressions of all those I managed to see. Adam Smith was a young man about nine years off his childhood, the perfect fag. He was a good boy but had fallen in love with the wrong crowd (man)? Gove well he Osbourne and Cameron are really all facets of the same neglected privilege.
In a way Jeremy Hunt deserves his own category, not a liar exactly, but a narcissist who only has space for one truth, his. Fred Michel a modern day Maurice Chevalier (during the occupation). Hugh Grant is throughly great. Ian Hislop, who has made a living as a lie detector never made the needle jump. Milly Dowler’s parents were probably the yard stick of how good people do actually behave.