Proper Job!

When I lived in London I was very partial to LBC. Describing itself as London's Biggest Conversation, LBC is a 24 hour talk radio station, where listeners are invited to call in with insightful comments, rant, rave, ramble or witter on aimlessly as the fancy takes them. I would often have this station on in the background as I tapped away at my keyboard, and it almost became like audio wallpaper for me.

All this ended when I moved. You can't get LBC in Sussex, other than on Sky or online. And, as these two methods of access are not always convenient, I have rediscovered the joys of Radio Four.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Radio Four. The Archers, The World at One, the Afternoon Play (sci-fi week this week, with an offering from Iain M. Banks), the Shipping Forecast (especially the late night edition, preceded by a wonderful piece of British light music, Sailing By, composed by the fabulously-named Ronald Binge)...and Front Row.

Front Row, presented by Mark Lawson, is, let's not deny it, an arty-farty programme. Lots of media people extolling the virtues of other media people, or explaining in five minute interviews their motivation for the latest play/film/poem. Last night's edition focused, among other things, upon actors who came from 'ordinary' families. Actor Anthony Sher told of his down-to-earth South African father who had never met an actor until he sired one. Mr. Sher senior dutifully attended his son's plays, but invariably fell asleep only minutes into the first act, on one occasion slumbering peacefully in the front row whilst the rest of the audience gave his son a standing ovation for his Richard III. It seems that, as an ordinary bloke, he found it difficult to come to terms with his son's thespian status.

Not for the first time, this got me thinking. Is the arts a 'proper job'? Very few would disagree that bricklaying, coal mining or car assembly are 'proper jobs'. But what about acting? Can the actor return home to his humble cot, exhausted with the honest toil of pretending to be someone else for a few hours? Is bashing out his or her lines equivalent to bashing dents out of the bonnet of a Fort Cortina? Or is it just a bit of a lightweight pastime that some are lucky enough to get paid for? And whilst we're on the subject, what about poets? Is there a nobility in knocking out a few stanzas or verses that these days don't even need to rhyme? Doesn't this not-rhyming-thing smack of a lack of effort? I mean, if you're a poet, and that's all you have to do, you're got all the time in the world to find something that rhymes with 'silver' or 'cadaver'. I'm not a poet, but even I can manage a non-rhyming poem; viz:

There was a young lady called Janet
Who used to support Queen's Park Rangers.
At a match in the rain
She caught a bad cold
And had a stiff neck for a fortnight.

And I can even cope with the odd haiku. Here's my offering acknowledging the existence of shredded carrots:

Have you noticed that
Every pre-packed salad has
These orange bits in?

All of a sudden T.S. Eliot (an anagram of toilets) and Seamus Heaney aren't looking quite so clever, are they?

Don't get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for the arts. I've got a degree in some arty subject or other, and always found science a bit of a trial at school, especially those equations where you had to balance up the molecules of oxygen or sodium or similar. But I do think 'arty' people sometimes think (and talk) too deeply about what they do. You only have to watch the 'extras' disc of any Hollywood movie DVD to realise this. When Dustin Hoffman was cast in Marathon Man, he prepared for the part by doing a large amount of running. When he told Sir John Gielgud, the noble knight remarked, 'Dear boy, why don't you just act?'

I went out to post a letter today. As I was returning home, I saw an elderly gent with a zimmer frame (Comedy Goddess - you know what this is now, don't you?) Now, zimmer frames in Sussex are not exactly as rare as hen's teeth; they're very common, in fact. But not so common was this old gent's appearance. He was wearing red shoes, a pair of grey trousers with a generous four inch gap between top of sock and bottom of trouser, a ladies' pink anorak with an orange hood, and, to top off the ensemble, a child's red school cap.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with LBC, or Radio Four, or Anthony Sher, or even poems that resolutely refuse to rhyme? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. But, dear fellow blogger, I had to tell someone...