pumpkinstrokemarrow

On the way there, found ourselves sitting opposite two book lovers on the tube to Oxford Circus. The first, a small old lady in red cardy and red beret, presumably French, was reading a well thumbed paper back copy of Levi Strauss's 'Tristes Tropiques' in the original French. Which I recall as being a rather impressive and moving book. Quite accessible by L-S's standards. But quite a serious book for someone who had to read with the aid of an illuminating magnifying glass. Must have been very keen. The second, a rather larger and younger lady. But notable because she was reading a fat paperback called 'The Museum of Innocence' by one Orhan Pamuk. Or more precisely, notable because I had never heard of the chap until the day before when I had come across him in Vauxhall. On exit at Oxford Circus rather bewildered by the large number of people milling about. This at around 1830 when one might of thought that the rush hour was calming down and decent citizens were heading off home. It was also getting dark which meant that we were unable to eat our sandwiches in Cavendish Square as planned. But I did remember about a stray bench just outside, alongside the motor cycle parking bay, so that had to do instead.

On the way back got to thinking about the significance of the letter B. Why do so many celebrated composers start with B? Bach, Beethoven, Benda, Bruch, Britten, Berlioz, Boyce, Brahms, Bartok & Borodin to name the ones on just my shelves. Is there some numerological link out there that I don't know about? No other letter seems to come anywhere near.

And then this morning I get to read about how that superman of retail, Sir Philip Green, is going to sort out all that waste in the public sector. Off hand, I can think of three other supermen brought in for much the same purpose over my time there. Sir Derek Rayner, another superman of retail, Lord Levene and Sir Peter Gershon. These last two from that bastion of efficiency and common sense, the defence industry. I suppose, given that public servants are apt to be more interested in public service and less interested in money than their peers out there in the real world, one has to do this sort of thing from time to time to keep them on their toes. I certainly never exhibited, nor saw exhibited, the sort of zeal for making savings such as is said to be exhibited by the likes, for example, of the Aldi brothers.

So the man probably has a point. But I bet that if you set someone of his calibre onto any large and complicated organisation he is going to be able to identify savings. That is what calibre is all about. This is not to say that he should not be let loose on public servants; just that in fairness one should remember that one could do much the same thing anywhere else. But anywhere else is the responsibility of those other dead sheep (see October 11), the shareholders. Nothing to do with the public at large for whom, however, public service is fair game.

PS: PC very wobbly today. Crashed while idle and now blogger is very twitchy. Keeps being unavailable despite all the lights on the router looking hunky-dory. It there a bit of trouble down at the Google server farm? I wonder if they do tours. Must be quite a sight.