WHOSE STAR WARS?

Posted 22nd December 2015:

It’s here, it's with us.  And a strange calm settles over the world of Star Wars super fandom. The people who I thought would feel most strongly, who would rave at its brilliance or spit bile at its loathsomeness, don’t know what to make of it.  It’s not that they don’t like it, they do.  It’s not that it doesn’t live up to their expectations.  Because they didn’t really know what to expect.  They just don’t know. 

AIRPORT PHILOSOPHY PART 1: IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

“The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle that states that there cannot be separate objects or entities that have all their properties in common. That is, entities x and y are identical if every predicate possessed by x is also possessed by y and vice versa; to suppose two things indiscernible is to suppose the same thing under two names.”

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Or, to put it simply, if two things are the same, at least one of them doesn’t exist. Or, to put it simpler still, to exist you have to be different from everything else. A simple enough idea I picked up in a philosophy tutorial way back and somehow have never quite shaken off.  In fact, I think of it often, and drop it into conversation. When conversation is slow.  Which can cause some problems, because people tend not to believe you.  Oh come on, they say, what about those coffee beans. Or those baked beans. They’re all the same.  And all exist.  No they’re not the same, I counter.  They have equivalent physical properties, but positionally they are quite different, i.e. one’s here, one’s there.  Therefore they’re not the same.  And the doubter retreats, not so much vanquished, as bored.

PRIMARY 1 NAILS IT

Here it comes.  I brace myself as the conductor-cum-child-herder raises her hands to call the primary choir to order.  It’s time to unleash the cutest thing anybody has seen - at least since last year’s carol concert.  It’s time to forget the stress and endless 'to do' lists that mark the irrevocable descent into Christmas.  Forget for a moment the on-going pressure of locating, securing, hiding, wrapping, hiding again and covertly depositing the small mountain of gifts gradually converging on the house from all four corners of the globe. The audience holds its collective breath in a state of anticipatory rapture.  This is it, the pay off.

IRON MOUTH

“I don’t know what I’m looking at," said the dentist, as we clustered round the screen to examine my X-ray.  

That, I thought, was an unusual thing for a dentist to say.  Because if there’s one thing you can be sure about with dentists it's that they always know what they’re looking at. And exactly how to describe it to the person whose job it is to write it down.  Without questioning.  Let’s face it, when was the last time you heard a dental assistant say: “Hang on a minute, slow down a bit. Are you absolutely sure you got that right?  Doesn’t sound very likely to me.” You don't.  Because when it comes to the inside of your mouth, there are no surprises. There’s nothing there that doesn’t have a name.  And the dentist knows what it is.

THE DAY FIFE STAYED AT HOME

Last night they closed the Forth Road Bridge - completely.  Someone had suddenly found a technical fault - presumably a piece of road hanging off, or a high tension cable gnawed through by some passing sea monster.  I hardly slept a wink, imagining the scenes of terror and panic that would greet me the following day as I attempted to cross the Forth to Edinburgh.  

Presumably the Kinkardine bridge - the alternative road crossing to the west - would simply be overwhelmed with traffic and topple over into the mudbanks.  The motorway to the North would be overrun with crazed reprobates ramming through the road cones and 'having a go’, or tearing through crash barriers and rampaging through the gardens of Dalmeny and Inverkeithing to find an alternative route.

BEING JOHN SWINNEY

Sitting in the car waiting for the ferry to Ardrossan we saw a bloke in a blue cagoule who looked just like John Swinney.

Surely not.  What would Scotland's Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy be doing in Broddick?  On a Thursday?  Weren’t there affairs of state to be dealt with?  And what was a man of his stature doing waiting for the MV Caledonian Isles with us half-term, half-arsed holiday makers?  Shouldn’t he be safely stowed in a motorcade of long black sedans with fluttering flags, before being whisked aboard a private jet by a possy of heavily armed men in black suits and sunglasses?

Never one to pass up on a celebrity encounter I got out of the car and walked casually towards him.  There was no one else walking on the pier, so no natural cover to camouflage my approach.  Accordingly I took a wide sweep of his left flank, hoping to catch a glimpse under his hood without raising suspicion.  

NEW COAT

A couple of weeks ago, while holidaying on the luxury island resort of Arran on the Costa del Clyde, me and the woman I call my wife dared to think the unthinkable.

I don’t even think we’d taken alcohol.  There was no excuse, except perhaps an uncharacteristic fit of joie de vivre brought on by some unseasonably clement weather.  We decided we were going to buy coats with North Face written on them.  Coats with three-figure price tags, boasting as much technology as the International Space Station, but far more desirable to get into to.  Because it suddenly occurred to us that it’s what people like us do; save thirty quid a week by shopping at Aldi then blow two month’s savings on a coat that keeps us warm at -30ºC.

PANTONE 291

Posted 4th November 2015:

Astonishing revelation.  Having carefully pre-watched the prequels in preparation for the release of Star Wars Episode VII, it turns out the kids, by their own admission, don’t give a toss about Anakin Skywalker. Nor any of the other minuscule characters that scuttle against the gargantuan backdrops. Apart, that is, from Obi-Wan in Episode III. He’s cool.  

DEAD AGAIN

Today I stumbled upon a thought, the magnitude of which can barely be comprehended. In fact I’m seriously considering patenting it, and then using it to start a new world order that will probably change the course of human history. Not a new ‘religion’ you’ll notice. Because that’s the point. We don’t need religion any more. Because of my new thought.

ALHAMBRA

I stand frozen on a Soho street corner transfixed by a terrible quandary.  Tourists and trendies flow around me regardless, as my mind goes back to Granada in Spain twelve months earlier.

We were taking a tour of the Alhambra palace and fortress.  All around us hoards of social media junkies slavishly digitised every inch of the decor to re-create it on Facebook for the benefit of friends and family back home. And I was transfixed by the almost tangible torrent of data rising into the cloud from that parched hill. So many images of the same thing taken from the same angle, the only difference being the visage that places itself in the foreground and smiles triumphantly as if to say: This is it. I’ve done it. Finally I’m here.

HAN SOLO

Last night I watched The Empire Strikes Back with the kids. 

And I felt a forgotten anxiety reawaken from long ago. A huge and bewildering fretfulness from a wet night in Bradford in 1980. For the previous three years the Star Wars characters had sustained my imagination, the templates for countless games and flights of fancy, more real than any earth-bound contemporaries. But sat in the Odeon that night with my two older sisters, I witnessed them falling apart.

I saw the princess putting more energy into avoiding Han’s flirtatious advances than the swarms of tie fighters pursuing them through the asteroids. I saw Luke fail miserably to complete his Jedi training, and then I saw him lose a hand. But worst, I saw Han shipped off to God knows where, frozen in a block of carbonite. And as the closing scenes played out, it became horribly apparent they weren’t going to get him back before the end. And at that moment, 1983 seemed an eternity away.

Since then my family, like the imperial star fleet, has dispersed across the galaxy. Me and my sisters have gone our separate ways and grown apart. My father is dead. I no longer live in Yorkshire and the people who populated my youth have faded into the past.

And I wonder whether the significance of Empire was that it was was a taste of things to come. Because perhaps the first person I ever lost, was Han Solo.



More thoughts on Star Wars: Whose Star Wars?   Pantone 291   Space Shoddity

@jesoverthinksit

FOOLS AND HORSES

At my barbers they play Only Fools and Horses on a looping DVD. All the time. I sit and watch while I wait my turn, chuckling occasionally, despite myself. Welcome back, says the barber to the guy in the chair as he whips the cape off with a flourish and invites him back into the world of the respectable haircut.

Then I’m in the hot seat and I ask him whether he ever gets sick of Only Fools and Horses. No, not at all. He doesn’t actually watch it. He’s too focused on what he’s doing. He has to wait until he gets home to watch it properly. He’s a funny guy, of Italian descent. His colleague at the other chair asks him if he’s looking forward to his holiday in Barbados. No, this is a holiday he remarks. Cutting the hair of fine gentleman like me.

NEW JACKET

Last week I bought what I thought was a fashionable, high quality jacket. It had a security jab attached next to one of the pockets which prevented me from opening it. Which I tried to do because there was something inside it which intrigued me. It looked like a canvas condom protruding slightly from the partially open zip. When the sales assistant removed the tag the mystery was solved. It was a small bag, into which the entire jacket could be stuffed. Like a miniature sleeping bag. Initially this worried me. Can anything stuff-able into something no bigger than a large salami really be worth fifty quid? Is this jacket going to be in any way capable of repelling the elements? For the moment I needed to at least pretend the jacket was a good buy, so I pocketed the bag and decided to revisit the issue at a later date.