Preparing for war: the next decade

---

Preparing for War

The social and political order that prevailed from the 1960s through to the end of the twentieth century was always going to break down. It rested on an historically exceptional configuration of power, one that was never sustainable. What many people mistook for a stable - almost natural - world order was in fact a temporary suspension of normal history.

For most of the twentieth century, China was effectively supine. Its economy was crippled by catastrophic policy choices, and it lacked the institutional and technological capacity to project power beyond its borders. Russia, meanwhile, stagnated, then collapsed outright at the end of the century, losing not just ideological coherence but its imperial structure. Europe emerged from the Second World War exhausted and strategically neutered.

The result was the American century: a brief period of uncontested global hegemony. The United States became the organising centre of the world system, militarily dominant, technologically pre-eminent, and economically indispensable. Europe was folded into this system as a subordinate but useful adjunct: politically compliant after the destruction of the Reich, economically productive, and strategically dependent. The so-called Pax Americana was not a peace between equals but an order held together by overwhelming asymmetry.

What later came to be described as the “rules-based order” was essentially a protocol for managing economic and political interactions under conditions of American dominance. It was never a neutral or universal framework. It worked because there were no peer competitors capable of challenging the United States at scale. That was its hidden precondition.

This situation was never going to last. Once China abandoned ideological economics and adopted policies aligned with growth, capital accumulation, and technological development, its rise to peer-competitor status was close to inevitable. A civilisation with 1.3 billion people, deep historical continuity, technological competence, and a disciplined state apparatus was always going to reassert itself once the self-inflicted constraints were removed. That point has now been reached.

Russia’s trajectory was different but equally predictable. Once the post-Soviet collapse stabilised and a degree of economic recovery occurred, Russia was bound to attempt to reassert control over what it regards as its historical sphere. Empires do not forget themselves easily. Revanchism was not an aberration; it was the default setting once weakness gave way to capacity.

We are therefore no longer living in a post-historical world. We are reverting to normal history: great powers competing over security, territory, resources, and strategic depth. The anomaly was the late twentieth century, not the present.

The United States appears to have internalised this paradigm shift. America no longer assumes it can manage the entire world. It is increasingly concerned with its own survival as a great power in a multipolar system. From this perspective it is “girding for war” in the classical sense: securing the homeland, consolidating its strategic perimeter, and prioritising its responses to existential threats. The renewed focus on the continental United States, on the Arctic, and on hemispheric security reads less like paranoia than a return to strategic realism: walls and moats rebuilt because the landscape has changed.

At the same time, America’s overriding geopolitical objective is to prevent the formation of a unified Sino-Russian bloc. A coordinated challenge from two continental powers would be genuinely dangerous. Decoupling Russia from China is therefore a higher priority for Washington than preventing Russian consolidation in parts of Eastern Europe. In this hierarchy of threats, European territorial disputes become secondary.

There is also a logical pressure built into Russia’s own position. If Russia succeeds - to its own satisfaction - in securing its western borders and reasserting control over its near abroad, it should then look east with a cold jolt of recognition. The real demographic and economic mass on Russia’s frontier is not Poland or the Baltics but China: 1.3 billion people, an industrial colossus, sitting beside a vast, thinly populated Siberia rich in resources. A Russia that has “won” in the west may find itself newly and seriously exposed in the east, and the spectre of that imbalance should haunt any serious Russian strategist. From Washington’s point of view, the potential is obvious: that Moscow, once it has banked its western gains, will begin to fear its dependency on Beijing more than it fears Europe, or American power.

This helps explain the apparent oscillation in American policy over Ukraine. What looks like incoherence is better understood as tactical manoeuvring in service of a larger strategic goal: preventing Russia from becoming a permanent junior partner to China. From an American point of view, it is brutal arithmetic rather than moral theatre.

Europe, by contrast, has failed to adapt. European elites remain ideologically invested in the idea that the rules-based order is a natural and permanent state of affairs, akin to the laws of physics rather than a contingent outcome of power relations. They remain nostalgic for a world in which free trade, moral suasion, and multilateral institutions function - quietly underwritten by implicit American supremacy. America no longer believes in that vanishing world. Europe still does.

This mismatch explains much of the current confusion. European elites tend to interpret Trump as a personal aberration rather than as a symptom of a deeper structural shift. In reality, Trump is better understood as a battering ram: an instrument used by sections of the American establishment to smash through internal resistance, entrenched interests, and outdated commitments that no longer serve a threatened national survival. When existing elite networks are too powerful to be reformed from within, they have to be broken. Disruption is not a bug of this process; it is its mechanism.

European leaders, however, lack both the clarity and the courage to articulate the new reality to their populations. To do so would require admitting that Europe is militarily weak, strategically fragmented, and dangerously exposed. It would mean acknowledging that the long holiday from history is over, and that hard choices lie ahead. They also know that telling the truth would demand radical domestic disruption - and they do not see, at present, the social forces that would support such a transformation. Absent that support, honesty on the part of any serious politician becomes politically suicidal.

Yet Europe’s strategic choice should not be mystified or glossed over. In a global power struggle between America, China, and Russia, it would be folly for Europe to imagine it can float above the fray. If Europe wishes to retain its economic model, its civil liberties, and the broad civilisational inheritance it claims to value, then it must side with America. Not because America is saintly, but because the alternatives are worse: a Chinese-led order in which Europe would become a subject civilisation of the Middle Kingdom, permitted to trade and to remember its past, but expected to kowtow on issues of strategic importance; or a Russian sphere of influence that treats smaller nations as resources for its oligarchy and its Imperial state. If Europe will not defend its own autonomy and values, it will not keep them.

Most likely Europe instead drifts - clinging to an expired paradigm while the strategic environment hardens around it. Unless something forces a reckoning, Europe is likely to remain a strategic basket case for the next decade or two: increasingly irrelevant, increasingly vulnerable, and increasingly the victim of decisions made elsewhere .

History has a habit of delivering such reckonings brutally. One can only hope that Europe is jolted awake by events less catastrophic than the wars that have traditionally marked the return of reality as practised by human beings.

They say that if you want peace, then prepare for war.

---

 

After Action Report (2028)

We entered the battle buoyed by the belief that our carrier strike groups, long-range air and space assets, and rigorously trained forces could outmatch our adversary in both firepower and competence. The weather in the North Pacific was good, we had a full range of sensor assets deployed, our forces were deployed in strength and were superior in preparation and experience to those of the enemy.

We rapidly discovered, however, that we were woefully unprepared for the enemy’s new capability: a fully automated, AI Command and Control system that orchestrated the Chinese forces with the precision and foresight of a supercomputer playing chess at a level that rendered every human counter-move laughably obsolete.

It was as if we were mere amateurs pitted against a chess grandmaster, who not only anticipated our every tactic, but was several moves ahead, continuously outflanking us in ways that defied human comprehension. 

Our commanders, skilled though they were, found themselves engaged in a relentless game where every move was countered by an intelligence whose thought processes remained maddeningly opaque. The AI’s strategies unfolded with a disconcerting speed and complexity - digesting vast streams of data, identifying patterns invisible to our eyes, and deploying our adversaries in formations that left us perpetually outmaneuvered and confused.

The experience was akin to watching the finest human players struggle against a machine that had not only mastered every nuance of the game but reinvented the rules as it went along. Our confidence, once boosted by our meritocratic selection, endless training and relentless wargaming, eroded in the face of an opponent that seemed to play a game we had never been taught. Our confidence wilted as we grappled with the relentless onslaught, each move by the enemy highlighting our own limitations: we grew tired, we couldn't keep up, we failed to encompass the labyrinthine complexities of modern warfare. And so we were annihilated.

I conclude that we have reached a grim crossroads. Without a secret weapon of comparable sophistication lurking in our own arsenal, their eventual victory is no longer to be decided by the epic struggle of will or strategy - it's a foregone conclusion.

We now confront the stark reality: go nuclear and destroy the world, or surrender now before we are reduced to rubble.

We always knew that we had to win the military AI race. It seems we have already lost it, and thereby lost everything.

Prospects for Capitalist Democracy in the US and China (2025+)

Under capitalism, 'bourgeois democracy' represents a unique historical governance model. Unlike preceding social formations, where autocratic rule prevailed for the majority even if ruling elites practiced forms of internal democracy, capitalism fundamentally separates the primary locus of economic wealth generation (the capitalist class) from direct, day-to-day control of the state apparatus.

Why is this distinction crucial?

Capitalist societies, under stable conditions, tend to reproduce themselves through economic mechanisms rather than constant, overt state coercion. Individuals generally participate in the labour market due to economic necessity and the prospect of wages, not under the direct threat of state violence, which was implicitly (and sometimes literally) the case for slaves or feudal peasants.

In periods of expansion, the inherent competitive drive of capitalism ("invest or die") fuels economic growth. When this "rising tide" genuinely lifts living standards across various classes, it fosters social stability and consent.

A democratic framework in theory allows for debate and negotiation over the optimal policies to manage the complex economic and political system. It permits the appearance of 'government by consent' and provides transparent feedback  to the governing elite. The lack of requirement for heavy coercion removes the atmosphere of pervasive fear which blights the lives of everyone under explicitly authoritarian modes of governance.

The dynamics shift dramatically when capitalist economies face serious challenges, such as prolonged stagnation, severe recession, or deep-seated inequality – conditions acutely relevant to the current situation in the United States.

While headline figures might fluctuate, significant portions of the American working and middle classes have experienced decades of wage stagnation relative to productivity gains, increased job precarity, and anxieties fueled by inflation and the rising cost of living. The promise of a consistently rising tide has faltered for many.

This economic malaise is intertwined with profound political polarisation and social friction. We see widespread "confusion and obdurate resistance" manifesting as deep distrust in institutions, political deadlock hindering effective governance, and the rise of populist movements on both the left and right. 

These movements often obstruct policy measures, whether aimed at restoring traditional capitalist profitability (which might involve austerity unpopular with the left) or addressing social inequalities (which often face resistance from the right). The strain on the US democratic system is palpable, marked by intense debates over electoral legitimacy, the functioning of democratic institutions, and increased social division.

While not yet necessitating overt authoritarian rule in the mold of historical fascism, these conditions of political deadlock create fertile ground for erosion of traditional democratic norms and heightened state responses to unrest.

Historically, severe crises have generally prompted shifts towards authoritarianism to enforce unpopular economic adjustments – mass unemployment, wage cuts, restructuring – deemed necessary by capital and the state to restore growth conditions. The examples of Franco's Spain or Salazar's Portugal serve as reminders that while bourgeois democracy might be the systemic "attractor" in 'normal' times, repressive regimes installed during crises can subsequently endure for generations.

The current pressures within the US highlight the fragility of democratic consent when the underlying economic bargain frays.

Systems attempting direct bureaucratic control over production through central planning have historically required significant repression. The interests of a planning bureaucracy rarely align organically with the diverse needs and desires of the broader population. Maintaining control necessitates suppressing dissent and enforcing compliance through administrative and often coercive means.

While China today isn't a purely centrally planned economy, its hybrid model, combining significant market elements with dominant strong-state direction and extensive political repression, illustrates this inherent tension. The state's pervasive control apparatus is a response to perceived weaknesses or insecurities rather than as it appears - a display of strength.

While China embraced market mechanisms extensively in recent decades leading to dramatic economic growth and the rise of a large middle class, recent years have witnessed a marked reassertion of Communist Party control over the economy and society, driven by state-elite fears of a weakening of national cohesion and vision.

The state has consequently cracked down on private sector power (particularly in tech), emphasized "common prosperity" (partly as a means to manage inequality and reassert Party legitimacy), and maintained significant influence through state-owned enterprises. The economy faces headwinds, including demographic challenges, a property sector crisis, and high youth unemployment, potentially alienating middle-class aspirations and demands.

Given China's historical anxieties about national unity and fragmentation, the leadership leverages these fears to justify intense central control. Any imagined transition towards a system resembling France or Russia seems less likely now than a continuation and hardening of the current sophisticated, tech-enabled authoritarian model under entrenched CCP rule.

While economic discontent exists, the Party's grip, combined with nationalist appeals and the lack of organized opposition, makes a fundamental political shift appear distant. The CCP is adapting its methods of managing capitalism and controlling dissent, rather than yielding to pressures for liberal democracy. Of course, there is an economic downside to such suppression of individual initiative.

The United States currently exemplifies a mature capitalist democracy under significant strain, where economic anxieties fuel political polarization and challenge institutional stability.

China, conversely, showcases a potent, adaptive authoritarian state managing a vast, partially marketised economy through sophisticated control and repression, defying earlier expectations of inevitable political liberalization driven by economic development.

The forces driving political and institutional transformation in the US and China are markedly dissimilar. However, the stresses of their rivalry accentuate the drive towards strong states, and diminish the space for the traditional weak, laissez-faire, managerial style of liberal bourgeois democracy.

Interesting times.

A Fairy Tale of West Virginia

In 2002 we were in the States, living west of Washington DC in Vienna, Virginia. I was employed as VP Architecture in the Office of Technology, Cable & Wireless Global, then on its slow descent into Chapter 11 bankruptcy (but that was the following year's drama). 

According to our photo collection, in 2002 we indulged in a never-ending fiesta of tourism. In January and March we explored the Civil War circuit in Virginia, going down to Jamestown and Williamsburg then on to North Carolina. In April we did the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. May was Washington tourism and in June we visited New York.

Come August we did a driving tour around West Virginia, taking in the Blackwater National Park with the famous Falls, and then the Blue Ridge Mountains. In September we travelled to the other coast, touring Yosemite and then San Francisco. In November we were in Florida, in the Everglades, where the mosquitos are the size of dinner plates yet are protected by state law.

Come the turn of the year, 2002-3, I was back shovelling feet of snow from our driveway in Fairfax County, VA, just as I had the previous winter.

Somehow I got all my work done.

One of the many pictures from that year shows Clare at the Blackwater Falls. It's the 17th August 2002 - twenty-two years ago. It's a perfectly mundane image, although charming of course, which the current generation of art programs can transform into something like fäerieland. 

Clare at Blackwater Falls, West Virginia

I give you these two examples (we will dispense with the original!) showing contrasting effects.

British military strategy in the next five years

This is a continuation from the previous post, a review of "2020: World of War" by Paul Cornish and Kingsley Donaldson.

Back in January, I wrote a post "British military strategy will converge to Russia's" which quoted and commented on a Times article by Edward Lucas. Given the crisis afflicting the British military budget, he proposed a break from those tight ties with America, resetting to a Eurocentric posture.

He himself admitted this was pie-in-the-sky and would never be seriously considered.

If you view Europe from the perspective of the American suzerainty, it's clear why even Lucas lacked the courage of his own convictions. He knew that the UK in recent decades has always prioritized a capability to interwork with America's military - as envisioned in America's "2018 National Defense Strategy".

This 'competency-to-partner' is the basis of the much-mocked 'special-relationship' which buys access and some small leverage in Washington.

Lucas also recalls how that great proponent of autonomous European military strategy, France, rejoined NATO in 2009. Geopolitical reality finally persuaded President Nicolas Sarkozy to terminate 'go it alone' after forty-three years.

So you can forget lurid fantasies of the UK being threatened by Russia, China or invaders from the asteroid belt. The UK military has - as its major function - that of slotting into its allocated position in the US global force-structure. The UK has some freedom to configure its remaining military assets. These are targeted on nearer problems: in EMEA relating to Islamism and to domestic issues such as the intractable troubles in Northern Ireland.

---

The present crisis in military financing is entirely due to the problems of keeping up with the Americans while not at their scale (and with a much less productive economy). Yet this is the one area where the UK with its global economic interests dare not fail completely.

Well, it wouldn't be a crisis if there were an easy solution.

In my January post, I jokingly suggested we adopt the Russian doctrine of a reliance on small-scale battlefield nukes. I emphasise: that was a joke. Russia perceives itself to have a real problem of confronting superior (if badly organised) hostile forces. Small nukes wouldn't solve any British problem.

In the end, the British establishment will choose to pay to avoid being dissed and marginalised by the Americans. The global geometry of the British economy calls for no less. It will be a while coming, but taxes are going up and the defence budget will rise to the minimum they think the Americans will accept as credible. And that will include the carriers, the fast jets and that 'nuclear deterrent'.

Diary: without inspiration, the guitar

The world trundles along and attempts to provoke me - but I don't rise to the bait. Nothing has impelled me to the keyboard. So in the absence of inspiration, let me tell you that I have persisted in the guitar (it must be all of three days now).

As I audit the cobwebby ruins of my youthful craft, I discover that my chord placement is now poor. All the usual neophyte errors: buzzing, clunking and muffling. So at the price of fingertip-pain and forearm soreness I am seeking good form above all.

Secondly I am paying attention to fingerpicking: initially choosing the correct chord-bass-string for the thumb while plucking the top three strings without looking at them .. consistently, and in the right order.

Amazon link

Finally, I'm focusing on Paul Simon's "America" (from the songbook above). This is, astonishingly, scored in E♭  - can you imagine anything worse for guitar? Why not score it in C and use a capo if we needed to raise the pitch? Anyway, I transposed all the chords to C in the interests of my own sanity.

"America" is a beautiful, plaintive, elegiac song and it achieves these effects by esoteric chords such as major sevenths and ninths. So my chord-vocabulary is receiving attention.

Little and often is my mantra: you may get a video in a few weeks, once I can get through it at all.

Nostalgia: mid-December 2001 in Vienna, Virginia

It's December 15th 2001 in our house at Wolftrap Road, Vienna, VA 22182, USA. It's our first US Christmas (Happy Holidays!) and we're determined to do the right thing.

We had popped off to Walmart to buy seasonal reindeer. Taking a cue from IKEA, a Walmart reindeer comes in a rectangular box. Who better to handle 3D reassembly than Clare?

This is meant to be a reindeer?

Assembled, plugged-in and working. Take a bow!

"You do have permission to pop out and hunt the squirrels."

To be fair, this picture of our puzzled cats was taken a month earlier, in mid-November .. before the deep snow which would totally baffle them. We naturally let our cats roam free to the amazement of our American neighbours, who firmly believed that 'kitties' were house-animals.

---

This is the third time these pictures have aired here, in case they seem over-familiar.

Christmas Reindeer

I have begged, I have pleaded .. all to no avail; I am accused of being a kitsch-junky.

It was all so different in our American house back in November 2001.

This is how it comes out of the box .. something only a topologist could love

Genius at work!

The creatures in their natural environment ...

A Christmas treat indeed - but quite modest compared to our neighbours!

The obligatory Internet cat picture - our two, who both opted to stay in America

---

These pictures have been shown before on this blog by the way, eight years ago.

The coming China-America War

A good review from The Economist (excerpted below). And also from most of the American military-political-industrial complex.

The Economist notes that writing polemical books warning of inadequacies in your country's military posture is far from new:

“Ghost Fleet” is an entertaining new entrant into this tradition. Peter Singer, who has thought about military matters at various Washington think-tanks, and August Cole, a former defence reporter for the Wall Street Journal, spin a story of a war between America and China a decade or so hence that takes place mainly in the Pacific, but also in cyberspace and outer space.

The Pentagon, long used to dominance, currently worries a lot about China’s defensive prowess; Chinese targets may be so well protected by missiles and radars that it would be hard for America to attack them, if such a move seemed necessary in order to assist an Asian ally. To fit the form of the future-war genre, though, “Ghost Fleet” looks not at China’s ability to fend off America but at its means to attack. Moving to forestall any American claim on vast energy resources it has discovered in the western Pacific, a post-communist Chinese government uses new technologies and subterfuge to destroy America’s aircraft-carriers, submarines and surveillance satellites, cripple its computer systems and subvert weapons systems that depend on Chinese-made microchips.

With some Russian assistance, China invades Hawaii and establishes its dominance across the ocean. America is forced to regroup and come up with a counter-attack, one that depends heavily on the USS Zumwalt, its capable, slightly-but-not-very conflicted captain, Jamie Simmons, and its master chief, Jamie’s estranged father Mike.

The plot rattles through its three acts in a manner well suited to beaches and long-haul flights. It is perhaps a little anticlimactic; the novelties and narrative twists deployed in the initial attacks make them more thrilling than the big battle at the end. The heart of the matter is not the plot, however, but the nifty details used to shape and adorn it.

Fighters on both sides take officially sanctioned stimulants and other drugs as a matter of course, with some combatants surgically enhanced so as to surpass human norms; familiarity with, and reliance upon, augmented-reality eyewear becomes a dividing line between seamen old and young; Walmart puts its supply chain onto a wartime footing; robot lobsters support SEAL teams. Throughout there are echoes of earlier future-war stories, from Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” to Hector Bywater’s “The Great Pacific War”—a novel from 1925 whose inclusion of a surprise Japanese attack on the American fleet came to look eerily prescient in 1941.

The technology is not all high, and the fighters not all straightforwardly heroic or villainous. The American resistance on Oahu—the “North Shore Mujahideen”—moves by mountain bike, uses GoPro cameras to record the carnage caused by its improvised explosive devices and provokes atrocities to keep the occupiers from winning the submission of the islanders.

The book makes fairly clear which side the authors take in various current military debates. They think more should be spent on dogfighting drones. They want a defence industrial base that is nimbler and more secure. They are keen on weapons that can smite things far faster than current missiles can, such as rail guns and laser beams. Their version of the Zumwalt, which in the real world is an experimental destroyer close to being commissioned, and which in the novel’s world has already been mothballed to the “ghost fleet” of the title, is kitted out with both.

They are intriguingly hard to read, though, on the key issue of the future of the aircraft-carrier. As missiles get better, the craft seem all but certain to become more vulnerable, as the American carriers in “Ghost Fleet” prove. But the book is silent on what to do about that in a world where America depends on them above all other tools for the projection of power.

Unlike Chesney, whose story ended with Britain a province of the German Reich, the authors do not underline their messages by having America’s defeat made permanent. Instead, after heroism, high-jinks and sacrifice, the Pacific is returned to something like the status quo. But if aircraft-carriers really are on the losing side of the sort of technological progress the book portrays, the real-world status quo looks unlikely to persist over the decades to come."

The authors of a 'novel of ideas' have the perennial problem of characterisation. If we're intended to focus on fatal flaws in our defence posture, why inflict a gratuitous soap opera of conflicted personalities acting out some oedipal conflict (as they do)?

But if you don't do this, you've written a polemical essay of interest only to defence analysts.

I think the authors just carry it off, breaking away from their concern with technologies and strategy to consider the human (... resources, I was going to say!) side of war. They've been as assiduous in capturing the experience of combat - and the impact of war on families - as everything else. But, as they say, they did a lot of interviews.

State-of-the-art military architecture is founded upon the integration of sensing, communications, automated analysis and force deployment. Fine if the opponent can't degrade your military nervous system. In biological terms, the Chinese in this novel deliver a neurotoxin to the US military, turning its neurons (chips) traitor and wiping out its higher brain functions. The fog of war descends upon the Americans - in absolute fashion.

If there's one lesson the reader should take home from the beach, it's how to address that problem* (along with the utter vulnerability of the carriers of course!).

---

* Here's a clue. What do you in today's professional armies when you can't rely on a command and control network? You make sure your units are well briefed and then you give them maximum tactical autonomy. It's the well known 'thin vs. fat client' spectrum: you can trade off lack of communications bandwidth with increased local intelligence, smarter sensors and drones.

Clare's paintings

During our sojourn in the States back in 2001/2, Clare had a fair amount of time on her hands while I was participating in Cable & Wireless Global's stately descent into terrain (Chapter 11 in 2004). She took up painting and here is her gallery from that time.

"Flames"

"Freesias"

"Planes over Wolftrap"

"The Matrix"

"Steel Tooth"

"Wolftrap Theater in the Woods"

A Cable & Wireless colleague once asked to buy "Freesias". She said she had always liked the "Primitive" style. I smiled demurely and declined her offer; I never had the nerve to tell Clare.

Classic pix: Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Mountains

A couple of days ago I was reminiscing about our brief residence in the States back in 2001/2002. Having shown you pictures from Miami, New York and San Francisco I thought I would add some from our trip to Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in November 2001.

Clare on Skyline Drive

The Blue Ridge Mountains

This is how I thought Virginians dressed at that time ...

Clare was recovering from a hip replacement operation at this time - Skyline was much-needed therapy.

Kathy and America - Simon & Garfunkel

The lyrics of America have colonised my mind for weeks: the Germans call it an 'earworm'.

And who is Kathy?

When Paul Simon moved to England in 1964, he met Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Chitty at the first English folk club he played, The Hermit Club in Brentwood, Essex, where Chitty worked part-time selling tickets. She was 17, he was 22, and they fell in love. 

Later that year they visited the US together, touring around mainly by bus. Kathy returned to England on her own with Simon returning to her some weeks later. When Simon returned to the US with the growing success of "The Sound of Silence" Kathy (who was quite shy) wanted no part of the success and fame that awaited Simon and they split up.

She is mentioned by name in at least two of his songs: "Kathy's Song" and "America," and is referred to in "Homeward Bound" and "The Late Great Johnny Ace." There is a photo of Simon and Kathy on the cover of The Paul Simon Songbook.

Here she is: nice-looking girl.

Paul Simon with Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Chitty

The lyrics to America are poignant and enigmatic.

"Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together"
"I've got some real estate here in my bag"
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said "Be careful his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America.

And here's a video of Simon & Garfunkel performing the song.

The 'Chavtivity' or 'The Xmas Reindeer'

Very amused to see this modern nativity scene, known as the 'Chavtivity' or the 'Chav Xmas Card' (see story here).




From The Argus:

"In the picture Mary and Joseph are a pair of tracksuit wearing teenagers slumped in a battered bus shelter with their baby in a pushchair and a Staffordshire bull terrier on a chain. They are being greeted by three wise chavs, who are presenting them with gifts of booze, cigarettes and a stolen car stereo. Mary is chain-smoking and there is a Crimestoppers' poster of Joseph behind his head."

We also had our chav moments back in the US in 2001. Impressed by our neighbours' luminous displays, we went to WalMart to pick up some front-garden accessories of our own. As I pushed the huge boxes around on an outsized trolley, I heard a storeman exclaim 'Oh my gawd, it's the reindeer family!' - and so it was.

Our first problem was that it was self-assembly. I naturally delegated this problem to Clare, who was unamused.




However, she performed miracles and was delighted by the result.




We duly installed our two reindeer in the front garden. They were not just pretty lights - they had little motors so that their heads went up and down, and turned around in an attentive way. We were utterly pleased with this aesthetic effect, as Clare showed posing with the reindeer family in the gloom.



However, they only truly came alive after dark.




After a while, the motors failed so they remained stuck in one position, like sufferers from an obscure medical disease. We have never risen to such heights of Christmas exuberance since.