Change and Decay work in progress Chapter 9

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So it wasn't until a couple of day later that I met Helen again. She breezed into the room at mid-morning, wearing a quilted jacket and jodphurs.

"Do you want to tour the estate?" she asked.

"Yes, that would be interesting - I've been reading about the various properties."

"OK - do you ride?"

She seemed neither surprised nor disappointed by my negative response, and went off to secure some spare boots and to gather the dogs.

* * *

It was a crisp Spring morning; the grass was heavy with dew. Plumes of vapour marked our breaths. As we crunched our way down the drive, Helen pointed out buildings near and far, with the complacency of ownership.

"That's Park Farm - the tenants there are the Edwards brothers. You can tell by the state of the fences that they're not very good caretakers. We keep telling them that binder twine isn't a fencing material, but it doesn't do any good."

Rugger waddled ahead of us, pausing to sniff occasionally. Birds chattered warnings of our approach from the trees. We reached the lodge at the end of the drive, where it met the public road. The small garden behind the lodge was largely filled by a rusting car beneath a tarpaulin.

"Disgraceful- we've asked them to get rid of it," Helen said crossly. "It's rented out now - it used used to be for one of the servants from the house."

"I know," I replied, glad to have something to contribute, "in the 1860s it's listed in the land terriers."

"At least when it was under our control we could insist on how it was looked after."

"I'd have thought the terms of the lease would still give you that?"

"Yes, in theory. But try evicting people- you'll end up paying a fortune in legal fees. It's hardly worth it. It bneats me why the nouveau riche are so keen on buy-to-let: they must be mad or stupid."

She walked up the short slabbed path and rang the doorbell twice. I stood back, noting the architectural deatils: Victorian Gothic, with elaborate decorative ridge tiles and terracotta brickwork. After half a minute's silence, Helen turned.

"They must be at work: both the Johnsons have jobs in the town."

"I suppose it must be strange now that so few people work on the estate?"

"I'm used to it - it was in Gramps' time that we lost them all - went to war and never came back."

I must have looked perplexed, since she went on to explain.

"Not dead - just never came back. They found other jobs, shorter hours, better pay. That's gratitude for you!"

I had always had some doubts whether noblesse does indeed oblige, and I wondered now why it obliged such arrogance. But equally, I could not deny the attraction I felt for her despite the horrible views she expressed with such conviction.

* * *

We reached the junction and turned to the right, the main road dropping to stone bridge over a stream. I knew a lot about this.

"This bridge is quite famous - or at least, well-represented in the records. In the 1820s there was a long legal dispute about who should pay for its repair. Thomas Sheldon argued that it was a county road, to be maintained from taxes, but the Court of Quarter Sessions said it was a parish road, so the rates should pay. Sheldon kicked up quite a fuss- he wrote letters all over the place."

Helen didn't know this; nor, to be honest, did she show much interest in the information now that she did. I peered at the weathered inscription on the parapet: "This bridge erected by Littleworth parish, 1831". "So Sheldon must have lost."

Helen frowned. "Didn't you know?"

"Not for sure," I explained, "The papers I saw were the initial negotiations and the proofs in evidence taken to court. The final judgment would be recorded in the Court Rolls, by the Clerk of the Peace, and there need have been little documentation sent to the parties."

Helen stopped and looked at me. "You are funny, you know. You've got all these little lectures in your head." I was unsure how to respond to her bantering tone.

We crossed the stream and followed the road up the valley side, then climbed over a stile in a thorn hedge. I was about to start talking about the Enclosure Act and its effect on field boundaries, but stopped myself when I recognised that this would constitute another lecture. I decided to take the offensive.

"Penny was telling me about the estate office - do you work there full-time?"

"Not as such - although for tax purposes I do. I help out when it gets busy- like next week, when we're having a party for objectors to a planning application."

"So, what - stuffing envelopes? That doesn't sound like much of a job."

"I don't know - I get a lot of free time to ride and so on. I did work in London last year, but didn't enjoy it. It's no fun living there unless you can afford to go out and can time off for holidays. Anyway, there isn't anything in particular I want to do."

"Did you go to university?"

"No, that was Jeremy- he's the one with the brains. My school focused on personal development, sports and life skills, rather than exams, and I didn't really fancy it."

"Don't you get bored, staying here all the time?"

"Not at all- you underestimate the value of being able to please yourself what you do every day."

"I suppose so. I find archives so interesting I'd probably work on them for free if I won the Lottery."

"Yes, I think you would."

* * *


We passed a patch of bloodstained fur on the path.

"Foxes are such nice animals," Helen sneered. "I used to love hunting - riding at will, as fast as I could, following the pack wherever it went."

"I thought the hunt still met?"

"Yes, but it's not the same. They have to be so careful about keeping the hounds in hand that you never get that wild feeling - it was so natural - you, the horse, the dogs, the fox - all running across the fields. That's the tradition that has gone."

"I'm not sure how ancient that tradition is: most of the trappings were invented by the Victorians. I suppose these days that counts as ancient. But at least you are arguing from experience- you enjoyed it. The rational arguments for hunting always seemed the weakest- that this was the most efficient and humane way to control the fox population, that it employed thousands of people, that people would get rid of their horses, that the foxes enjoyed it. It's never hard to come up with good reasons to preserve a situation that serves your own interests!"

"But we were sincere."

"I don't think that makes much difference."

An awkward silence fell and we walked on.

* * *

We crossed another stile and entered an ash copse.

"We had a den here, in a ruin."

"The gamekeeper's cottage?"

"How did you know that?", Helen asked, surprised.

"It's in the archives - the gamekeeper used to be listed as the occupier here."

Helen pointed out the site, overgrown with brambles. She shook herself.

"We used to scare each other silly with ghost stories. Supposedly the house was cursed by the last gamekeeper, Old Will. He had been injured in a shooting accident, and then one day just vanished. Jem would say he could hear him limping through the undergrowth while we hid."

A little further along the path, the trees opened out and we could the Hall, a couple of fields away. We climbed the slope, panting.


* * *

After washing and changing, I return to the archives, keen to check the personnel files. It didn't take long to find the one I wanted. Williams Jenkins had been born in 1892; in 1906 he wrote a letter of application for a job on the estate, and in 1908 he countersigned a tenancy agreement for the cottage. The final document was a doctor's bill from 1938, recording treatment for a gunshot wound to his leg. Then Old Will vanished from the paper trail just as he had from his home.

Overheard

CHILD: Can I have an ice cream now?

PARENT: What's the magic word?

CHILD (puzzled): Um ... Abracadabra?

New word corner: Thermostat

Thermostat: unwanted utensils that fill the shelves of kitchen cupboards. From 'thermos' + 'tat'.

Radio comedy sketch: Checklist

FX: Aircraft noises

Captain: This is Alpha Tango 213 preparing to take off.

Control tower: This is control tower. Proceed with pre=flight checklist.

Captain: Roger. (to co-pilot) Ready?

Co-pilot: Check.

Captain: Fabric pattern made up of squares of alternating colour?

Co-pilot: Check

Captain: Means of payment?

Co-pilot: Cheque

Captain: Inhabitant of Central Europan country?

Co-pilot: Czech

Captain: Chess move threatening the king?

Co-pilot: Check

Captain: Checklist complete. (ON RADIO) Alpha Tango 123 proceeding to runway.

FX: Jet engine

Variations on a theme

Old monetarist economic theorists never die, they just lose their currency.

Old fireworks manufacturers never die, they just light the blue touch paper and retire.

Change and Decay work in progress Chapter 8

Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7


For the next few days, I was left largely to myself, disturbed only by the occasional visit from the dogs as they snuffled around myopically. I glimpsed the Sheldons as they followed their individual orbits- Margaret's from kitchen to conservatory, Charles' from study to dining room. Helen, in spite of her comment, was nowhere in evidence. Why did I mind that?

On Wednesday, my usually-solitary breakfast in the kitchen was varied by the presence of Margaret, assembling crockery and cutlery on a large tray.

"It's the estate meeting today", she explained, unbidden, "the family go through all the business matters- and you'll get to meet everyone, unless you'd rather not be disturbed?"

"Not at all", I replied emphatically, unsure of how to communicate my lack of enthusiasm for meeting new people politely. I remembered the time my careers master at school had asked if I'd like working with people, and his shock at the eloquent negative the question triggered.

I finished my coffee, washed my hands to clean off any grease or breadcrumbs, and went down the passage to the records store, closing the door on the bustle of arrivals in the distance. I worked through a bundle of letters, trying to establihs a date: 19th century from the handwriting, but hard to pin down, beacuse their authors had indicated only day and month. Soon enough, or perhaps only quite soon, a reference in the body of a letter to 'our new queen' fixed the timescale to the early 1840s. The correspondence was an indiscriminate mixture of family news and business, similar in all probability to the meeting running on next door. I reflded the letter, replaced it in the envelope, and re-tied the ribbon around the bundle, pausing to lightly pencil the date on the top. I rose to get a drink, as much from a desire to stretch and become mobile as from thirst.

To my surprise, the kitchen wasn't empty: a woman sat at the table, laboriously urging two small children to eat.

She said "Hello" brightly but with an interrogative inflexion.
"Hi - I'm Derek - looking at the archives."
"Yeah, Jeremy said you'd be around - have you seen him?"
"No, he's the son, isn't he?"
She grinned. "Son and heir, you mean."
"What about Helen?"
This time she smiled broadly and tutted. "Wrong sex, I'm afraid. It me a while to realise how it worked. I met Jeremy at uni- I was doing History of Art, he was doing Land Economy, whatever that is. I still don't know - I don't think he knows, either."
Penny paused, retrieving a juice cup from the floor and handing it back to its owner.

"I come from Yorkshire, from a big family. We're always doing things together- parties, outings, shopping. But this is different, more dynastic. You wouldn't believe just how interested Ma and Pa were in Jon and Emma here. They'd have come to the ultrasound scans if I'd let them. Now they're not too bothered about Emma - she can do what she likes. But Jon, he's the future: one day this will all be his. Won't it?"

She directed this last remark at the presumptive heir, who was currently reaching for a handful of dog biscuits from a bowl on the floor.

"I suppose they might say it's a responsibility, keeping the estate together", I suggested, without much conviction.

"Yes, that's just what they say. It's quite a handy argument, you know. When you want something new. Like this house- smart kitchen units, expensive, modern - that's investment. But everything esle is what they had already". She sighed.

I smiled at her eloquence. She glanced at the door.

"Not that I'm complaining, of course. But, Christ, it's nice to talk to someone who isn't on their side - you're not, are you?".

I shook my head. "It's not for me to judge - they seem nice enough, but that might just be politeness".

This earned a snort from Penny.

"Manners aren't everything, you know. I had a hard time when Jeremy first brought me here. The Spanish Inquisition has nothing on the treatment a prospective family member gets".

Emma methodically licked jam off her fingers.

"And that first Christmas - it's funny now to think of it. I thought - you know - garnd house, owns half a county, posh car, swish clothes. What can I buy them as presents? Jeremy kept saying not to worry, but I did, of course. In the end, he just told me he'd deal with it. Thirty minutes, it took him: a scarf each for the women, a tie each for the men."

"The difference between capital and revenue, I suppose."

"That's what he says. What they all say. You can't keep an estate together over the centuries unless you're careful about your balance. Not that it works these days. No matter how little they spend, it doesn't make enough. There's only so much money in farm rents. Every time we have a crisis, tax or whatever, it's something else sold off, which means less income." She sighed again. "But now I'm sounding like them."

Jon looked up at his mother. "Can we see Gramps now?"

"Not yet," she replied, tutting. "Little creeps. To be fair, they do like the kids."

Emma asked about Auntie Helen, echoing my thoughts.

"I don't think she's here today."

Diane Lazarus and the Suffolk murders: two stories are better than one

Psychics recognise that the support of their believers does little to persuade the general population of the reality of their abilities, and they have often sought validation by associating themselves with police work and missing person cases. In the US, where psychics are fixtures of mainstream television, this has led to unedifying spectacle of Sylvia Browne telling Shaun Hornbeck’s parents that he was dead (see http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/ ).

Little is said about this in the UK from the police side, although a recent FOI enquiry reported in the Skeptic Express found only one, unsolved case, where the police authority acknowledged the use of a psychic.

Diane Lazarus, winner of Channel Five’s Psychic Challenge, is keen to follow Browne’s example, and has claimed involvement in several cases, including Mark Green and Muriel Drinkwater (see Skeptic Express ), and most recently the Suffolk murders. Although she offered her help to the police, they did not take her up, and therefore she spoke to the press, leading to a story published in Wales on Sunday
Twist religious motive behind deaths 17th December, also
analysed in the Skeptic Express.

The only specific characteristics of the perpetrator were: “a young lad, a hoodie” and strong “religious” character.

Shortly afterwards, a suspect aged 38 was arrested on 18th December. He was then bailed and a second man, 48, was arrested on 19th December, and has now been charged with the murders. So not very young, then.

But in addition to the Wales on Sunday story, she had also spoken to the rival South Wales Guardian, who printed their story on 20th December.
Psychic senses profile of Suffolk strangler.
Since the South Wales Guardian is a weekly paper, it is not clear when the story was written (ie whether before the first arrest on the 18th). But what is clear is that the information provided by Lazarus differs considerably from that in the Echo:

She believes that the man - probably in his thirties - has large hands and is much stronger than he appears.

Nothing about religion there.
Lazarus has therefore covered the ground with the only specific information of which she is sure: that the murderer was a young lad, or in his thirties. If either of these choices had been correct, her powers would have been confirmed by incontrovertible evidence.

If the accused lawyer is smart, he will call Lazarus as a witness, in the hope that some members of the jury will believe in psychics, so that the following exchange can take place:
Lawyer: So you’ve helped the police in the past?
Lazarus: Oh yes, several times : Mark Green, etc etc
Lawyer: And you’re convinced that you can sense the true perpetrator
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: You sensed a young man with religious convictions was the murderer?
Lazarus: Yes
Lawyer: Would you describe the accused as such a man?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: You sensed a man in his thirties with large hands. Is this the accused?
Lazarus: No, definitely not.
Lawyer: So you believe that the accused is not the man who is responsible for the murders?
Lazarus: Yes I do.

This should be enough to implant reasonable doubt in the jury and hence lead to his acquittal, guilty or not.

Kingsley and the Women: review of Zachary Leader's The Life of Kingsley Amis (Cape, 2006)

Modern biographies thrive on revelation, but there is little that is new in Leader's monumental study. This is hardly surprising, since Amis's life has already been well documented in his 1200-page Letters, edited by Leader, Martin's Experience, his own Memoirs, Eric Jacob's biography, compiled shortly before Amis's death, and in various autobiographical articles, supplementing the fictionalised life traceable in the fiction. Leader discusses the problem, and concludes that there remains something to be said of man and works, mainly because it is now possible to fill out the partial views which KA stamped on accounts of his life.

Thus although in late Amis there is much allusion to Hilly or Hilly-type figures, it is refreshing to hear directly from her descriptions of the chaotic, energetic, doomed marriage of the 1950s (previously she was best represnted as a sort of voice off in the footnotes of the Letters). Similarly Elizabeth Jane Howard emerges with more credit here than Kingsley post-divorce ever allowed her, although Leader seems colder to her than to Hilly.

The book's chapter are arranged chronologically, although the works are dealt with out of sequence. The earliest chapters are the best, telling a relatively unknown story, and expertly sewn together from autobiography, letters, others' testimony, and the two fictional accounts of the period from The Riverside Villas Murder and You Can't Do Both. In later years, domestic drudgery and tedious infidelity takes over, interestingly paralleling the novels but otherwise sparse in incident. Although it is not intended as a critical study (Amis's claim to be a titan of 20th-century literature is assumed), there are perspicuous summaries of most of Amis's works (including a good account of the poetry and high praise for Take a Girl Like You, The Old Devils and The Alteration). At times the pace is breathless: the later years are padded out with accounts of sales fugures and advances, mainly of economic interest, and it is in general hard to establish how well Amis was appreciated by his reviewers and audience.

This breathlessness extends to the larger questions raised by Amis and his politics. Two pages are spent discussing Amis's views on race, which isn't much. It would have been more honest to set out clearly that Amis was, in public writing, anti-racist, outspokenly so, and that there was a tension between this and his views as expressed in conversation or correspondence with his cronies. Similarly, Amis's anti-semitism is shown as mild but definite, despite the fact that well into the 1960s he would treat the prejudice as a sure sign of dullness. Perhaps this is partly a reflection of his experience of ageing as the process by which we turn into our parents. But as Leader does point out on numerous occasions, Amis's political views were emotional and illinformed, unlike his views on literature. But there remains the truth that in later years Amis was as famous for his opinionated journalism as for his more nuanced fiction, and he can hardly complain that he is taken at his word. It is, though, hard to take too much notice of the late 60s hippy-hater who had turned his early 60s Cambridge house into a proto-squat of rolling bacchanalia of sex and drugs.

And what of feminism? Amis lived through the raging sex war of the 70s, taking much of it, with good reason, personally. Looking back now, it is notable that the virtues he praised in women: of straightforwardness, honesty, and disdain for conventional morality, were those advanced by his foes.

Leader's prose is serviceable but indistinctive, giving the frequent quotations from Amis and Larkin a shocking comparative verve. The sad theme running through the second half of the book is the problem of Sally: while Philip and Martin emerged from their disrupted and unconventional childhoods intact, she did not; it is hard to read of her alcoholism and death without asking (as Leader does) who is at fault. Not that this type of question is likely to lead to resolution. It seems hardly necessary to lay this at Amis's door, since Leader shows that he had alaready suffered fear, doubt and remorse about this as about much else. Amis was better at analysing his flaws in his fiction than in correcting them in his life, but that is hardly surprising.

This is not the place to start for those new to Amis: they should read his fiction first, then his Letters. But this account raises a series of questions about the novels, while also showing how the latterday Colonel Blimp had started as a radical who instinctively sided with the unprivileged, the dispossed and the powerless.

The Dagenham code*: review of Yehuda Berg's The Power of Kabbalah

Some modern systems of belief are explicitly new: Scientology was created by L. Ron Hubbard; others claim continuity with past traditions, such as the wicce. Yehuda Berg places Kabbalah somewhere in between: he presents its teachings as a body a secret knowledge which has been the preserve of a tiny obscure and misunderstood Judaic sect for at least 2,000 years, but which has only recently been publicised to the wider world as a tool for personal growth, accompanied by the contemporary trappings of bookshops, specially endorsed substances and products, and celebrity advocates like Madonna, her husband Guy Ritchie and her onetime lover Sandra Bernhardt. The book is written in a lively and clear style, and starts with a section debunking the misconceptions that have accumulated about Kabbalah, before looking at the drivers of human behaviour. There follow sections on Kabbalist cosmology, cross-referenced to contemporary scientific theories which parallel or confirm its model, a section on meditation and the power and meaning of the Hebrew alphabet, and a series of appendixes including a history of Kabbalah. Although the book is probably not designed to produce this effect, it creates in the reader a shift from neutral acceptance towards increasing skepticism and irritation. The first principle he cites is that there should be no coercion in spirituality, and he hopes that the accuracy of his depiction of the world should convince the reader of the validity of the cosmological model underlying it, which is a good place to start, although this obscures the extent to which his views are reliant on authority and revelation as their source.


Understanding oneself
The key argument in Berg's analysis of behaviour is that most people live humdrum lives only rarely reaching transcendence: he argues that these moments of transcendence are a connection with another realm of being, and occur when we act in line with our core identity. He suggests that the reason many people feel dissatisfied is because they misunderstand their nature and desires, becoming focused on the wrong goals (for example stating their goal as "becoming a millionaire" rather than "being financially secure": the former becomes a treadmill, possibly doomed to unfulfilment; the latter is a state of mind and could be achieved by anyone). He gives some good advice here about how to achieve a better state of mind while living in the world by changing one's attitude. He firmly discourages the culture of blame or guilt: it is a person's own responsibility to sort out their life. More questionable is his attitude to rational thought: his advice is to go with intuitions and to distrust rationality. I am unconvinced that people in general, or particularly people with problems, are over-reliant on thought, and his testimony from scientists which is supposed to support his argument fails to do so, since what is recounted is a series of cases where the scientists, having rationally defined a problem, have then intuited a solution, subsequently confirmed by rational thought. This is not a transferable model for personal lives, whatever he says. Perhaps more dangerously, he also says that when in times of doubt, trust in the certainty of Kabbalah is the best response; he presents a complex and unconvincing example of a businessman who suspects he is being defrauded by one of his salesmen: he denies all the apparent evidence, and is rewarded by it not being as bad as others feared. The danger here is that Berg is giving licence to anyone who gets into a state of denial that they are right, not wrong.


Science proves Kabbalah right
Berg likes science, or at least he appeals to it often as a source of credibility, although he is sometimes naive, saying for example that "a burning candle emits no light against the backdrop of a brilliant sunlit day" (p. 68), a piece of reasoning on a par with the lodgings landlady who closed the curtains on bright winter days because the sunshine put the coal fire out. Similarly, he uses the term 'selfish gene' (p. 111) to mean a gene that makes people selfish, a complete misunderstanding of Dawkins' concept. This becomes a serious problem when he cherry-picks scintific theories to demonstrate that Kabbalah got it right:

• he is happy to parallel Kaballah's creation with scientific Big Bang, although the newer concept of a steady state universe of cycles of Big Bangs and Big Crunches doesn't fit at all


• he is happy to say that matter is of dual nature like electrons and protons, ignoring the existence of neutrons which undermine such an argument


• he is happy to link the 10 'dimensions' of the Kabbalah universe with the 10-dimensional space of superstring theory, but igonres other string theory elements proposing 11 or 46 dimensions, or the metatheory M theory that proposes 4 branes and 11 dimensions (not that I'd claim to know what this means)

It would therefore be unwise to argue that modern science has confirmed Kabbalah's cosmology: the most that could be claimed is that some modern theories fit some interpretations of Kabbalah.

Meditation and the Hebrew alphabet
The recommendation of meditation as a way of improving one's sense of well-being is hardly revolutionary, any more than a doctor's prescription of more exercise and less alcohol. Clearly, the ritual of meditation (in the sense of the regular conscious application of time and thought to one's mental life) yields benefits to many. The approach recommended by Berg is in many ways simialr to the Taoist I Ching: to focus on the pictogram of a Hebrew name of God, related to a phrase or purpose, eg 'to remove egomania', with a short passage of advice. Berg might be expected to argue that such meditation makes people feel better, or perhaps evene changes them in some way to make them into better people. But he goes a step further, and argues that meditation can cause miracles. He relies on the evidence of Dr Spokojny, who recounts two cases where his use of Kabbalah has proved efficacious where his medicine hasn't. Dr Artur Spokojny is a Harvard-trained MD who now has his own Total Healing practice. He oversaw experiments on Kabbalah-blessed water:

'"We have reversed entropy and reversed the second law of thermodynamics," contended Dr. Artur Spokojny, a cardiologist who oversaw the independent lab tests [on behalf of the Kabbalah Center]'.

The full evidence for these claims, as for the ER miracles, has not yet been presented to the world.


Theology of Kabbalah
Although the 'theory' of Kabbalah is not presented clearly as a single body of belief by Berg, some elements stand out:

• the key commandment that one should love thy neighbour as thyself


• the 10 commandments, on the other hand, are a misunderstanding and do not apply


• reincarnation and multiple lives happen


• the Devil is real and the world is full of temptation and evil

History of Kabbalist thought
His brief summary of history starts with the 'Book of Abraham' written before most the Bible, a book known only to Kabbalists; Moses then wrote the Pentateuch, encoding within them Kabbalah knowledge. He then has Pythagoras as a Kabbalah devotee, although Josephus' version (97 AD) of what he says Hermippus of Smyrna says about Pythagoras is not so specific, and in general Pythagoras' number mysticism is different to that of Kabbalah and sourced from Egypt and Assyria, if anywhere. Plato and Aristotle are also roped in on the basis of what Dr Seth Pancoast says (this is the Seth Pancoast who

"extended this thinking in his Blue and Red Light: or, Light and its Rays as Medicine (1877), in which he cautioned against “light quacks” even as he claimed to have cured Master F., an eight-year-old paraplegic, after only a week under red glass, and Mrs. L., a 32-year-old widow suffering from severe sciatica, after only three sittings in a bath of blue light." (Cabinet Magazine).

The only surprising inclusion in later history is Isaac Newton, who again was interested in number mysticism and theology but is not normally included amongst followers of Kabbalah. The surprising omission is the tedious visionary Nostradamus, who Berg doesn't mention.


Authority and evidence

Regardless of the coherence of the body of belief that Berg presents, there remains a fundamental issue of epistemology. How can Berg know that there are 10 dimensions or that reincarnation happens? The answer has to be that for every belief not susceptible to direct verification by our senses or minds, we must rely on what we have been told. And so despite the initial gestures towards confirmation by experience, Kabbalah is reliant on two bodies of authority: written texts and interpretation.

As a result, Kabbalah is out of step with more modern cults, since it requires belief in Holy Writ. Berg makes many mentions of the Bible without gloss: his US readers probably read this as their Bible, although the Jewish Bible is meant; he argues against literalism in interpreting it, presumably expecting his audience to be of fundamentalist tendency. But in Kabbalah the Bible contains God's word, but encrypted. Kabbalah also requires the acceptance of two further holy works, the books of Abraham and Zohar, neither of which is known elsewhere.

Further than this, though, Kabbalah's validity relies on the work of its interpreters: if Berg and his father and their predecessors are wrong, their beliefs are wrong.

Thus the pantheistic almost godless cosmology with the individual's mind at its centre that Kabbalah appears to be at first glance is actually a scripture- and revelation-driven set of specific beliefs requiring faith in a Hebrew God and a complex interpretation of His works.


Further reading

In the course of researching this review, I came across various strange stories, including:

The Strange Case of Supernatural water (Kabbalah water proposed as a cure to citrus canker in Florida)
Red String to protect you from the evil eye
Psionic Kabbalah Manifesting Capsule
Madonna breaks bones in fall despite wearing Kabbalah bracelet
Jerry Hall renounces Kabbalah after pressure to fundraise
Celebrities linked to the Kabbalah Center



* 'Dagenham' is known to Londoners as the District Line underground station two stops beyond Barking.

The skin factor: X Factor and reality TV racism

Leona Lewis is going to be the Christmas No. 1, and we have X Factor to thank for unearthing the new Maria Carey or Whitney Houston. I must admit I'm not sure we need a new Maria or Whitney, but then I'm not sure I needed the old ones. I don't watch X Factor- if I wanted to hear indifferent cover versions of 80s hits, I'd listen to Girls Aloud. But I would in any case be put off by the blatant manipulation of the ever-lengthening pause for the 'and the winner is...', a trend started by Davina and Ant&Dec, but now universal. I now avoid all results shows on principle. Imagine how fresh and shocking it would be if someone were to revert to saying simply 'hand up who's not been evicted - no, not you'. However, we also have the X factor to thank for killing off a tendentious strand of comment arguing that the UK public was too fundamentally racist to ever allow a black contestant to win a reality contest.

This view was first advanced by Faria Alam, philosopher, social commentator and person-famous-for-having-sex-with-slightly-more-famous-people to her Celebrity Big Brother housemates Dennis Rodman and Traci Bingham. She told them the British public would "never let a black or Asian win"; we were denied the opportunity to find out, since the public decided that it wouldn't let Americans or ex-PAs who they'd never heard of win, regardless of colour.

The Guardian's Comment is Free forums then spent the summer bickering about it: white liberals suggesting that the dismal record of non-white contestants was due to chance, their individual performance, or, perhaps, the tendency of the voting public (mainly the old and silly or the young and silly) to promote those who were most similar to themselves (although until BB6 I wouldn't have guessed there was such a large consituency of Portguese transsexuals in the UK). But now we can say straightforwardly that it is not true: the British public will vote for a black contestant. I never really accepted the argument: I think, and hope, that politeness and tolerance are virtues fostered here. I always feel a surge of pride when visiting London to see its astonishing casual cosmopolitanism (a word whose meaning is presumably being shifted towards 'very very interested in sex and make-up').

But what do we really think? The Freakonomics authors have looked at how people behave on the US version of the Weakest Link, to see who gets voted off despite scoring well. They conclude, perhaps surprisingly, that blacks are not discriminated against; the old and Hispanics are, though. There's all sorts of methodological pitfalls with studies of this kind: just how fixed are these racial categories? Are they self-descriptions, or based on the researcher's opinion? Is it based on skin colour, country of ancestry, language, name? But if they are describing a real phenomenon, I'm still not sure that their analysis is correct. They say that the reason that blacks are not discriminated against is because it is no longer socially acceptable to behave in an anti-black way. Why can't they accept that (white) people might not be anti-black?

Conversation in a hotel bedroom

MAN: I had to use your razor: I've left mine at home.

WOMAN: Yuk- I hope you washed it!

MAN: Oh yes, of course ... beforehand.

Last thoughts on Sandi Thom

Sandi's been down in Australia, which would account for the lack of promotion of her current UK single, 'Lonely Girl', which was scheduled for release last week. 'Punk rocker' is their song of the year, having sat for 14 weeks at No. 1. In an article in the Melbourne Age, the webcast myth is taken at face value:

But while her webcasts attract thousands, her popularity doesn't necessarily translate to the clubs. After details of a "secret show" in the city were released online on Tuesday, a crowd of only 25 turned up. The concert was then cancelled.

The article is respectfully titled "Very modern artist longs for age of innocence", but their web editor lets their feelings through by giving the page url as "that-blooming-punk-song".

Review: The Innocence Project

Law works well on television, with its theatrical conflicts, alternation between exposition and rhetoric, rivalries, alliances and betrayals. It's not surprising that it has spawned a long line of iconic series: The Paper Chase, LA Law, Ally McBeal, Law and Order. The British roll-call is less long and distinguished: apart from Rumpole, which plays for laughs, there's what, Sutherland's Law, Crown Court, Kavanagh QC, and Judge John Deeds, which just aren't as good.

Nor is The Innocence Project. As a concept it might have worked: law lecturer helps his students hone their skills by taking on cases of alleged miscarriage of justice the professionals wouldn't touch. But the execution proved fatal (as executions do). The students were too samey, not in the way real students are samey (overweight, smoking and scruffy), but all earnest and moderately well-kempt and deeply dull (and, one might add, wooden: either they are good actors trying to sound ill-at-ease with the concept of speech, or bad ones). This needn't have proved disastrous (much the same could be said of Torchwood, which gets by on energy).

At the heart of the failure is the story-telling. The nitwits sit in the pub, or sit in a big room with a white board on which they try to puzzle out the details:
"If the cat was on the mat, then .. he ... must .. have been ... sitting"
"Omigod, the witness said he saw the victim draw his table leg and point it at the armed officer"
"Hey, maybe somebody was ... lying!"
Faced with quite simple brainteasers for these quite simple brains to unravel, tension has to be created by irritating obliqueness: so we see someone finding a file on Google - what is it? - we don't know, she just says 'yes' and prints it out, and we don't get to hear the answer until the enxt scene, where she says "I've just found this..."

But even with this, and the addition of extraneous sub-plots to show how each of the students is deeply troubled, sensitive or whatever, there isn't enough matter to fill the time. I was watching an episode without access to a clock, and when it finished I genuinely believed I had sat through a two-hour double episode, and doubted my sanity when I found out it was only 9 o'clock. The pace isn't just glacial (glacial in the global warming sense of moving backwards); every scene, every shot, is just a bit longer than necessary. Two of the team are talking as they walk through the campus; they finished their conversation and move out of shot, but the camera stays to show... nothing.

One can only conclude that the BBC decided to show the series at the moment to demostrate that Robin Hood isn't as bad as all that after all. They seem to have come to their senses, though: they are going to drop the last three episodes, presumably in favour of something better, like Eldorado.

Home life of the famous: Monica Lewinsky

Monica returns after a date at the White House, wearing a stained black dress and an odd smile.

FLATMATE: "What's come over you tonight?"

News item: road pricing

With the new road pricing scheme, the congestion charge for gridlocked London will rise to £12 per day- that's £2 mileage and £10 storage.