British Library: Sound and Vision

Some years ago, I was contacted on behalf of the British Library to ask if I’d be willing to contribute some or all of my recorded songs to the Sound & Vision collection. I was, of course, happy to do this, and forwarded sound files as albums were released, until I stopped getting a response as the files were offered for transfer. Eventually I realized that this must have been because of the serious ransomware attack carried out against the Library in 2023.

Seeing a reference to the Sound & Vision catalogue today, I took the opportunity to see whether any of my work had become available again to BL reader’s pass holders. Well, a couple of my books apparently are in the Interim Catalogue, though I didn’t have the patience to check through all the Harley-related references for work specific to me rather than all the various David Harleys et al listed there. (It’s extraordinary how many of us there are…) But it seems that the Sounds catalogue is not yet available, though it may be restored sometime this year.

To be honest, I probably won’t get to hear when and if my music does become available again. I don’t have a Reader’s Pass because they only allow access to archived material to visitors in person, and London and Yorkshire a both a long trip from where I live. So if you really want to see what music of mine is still around, for the moment your best bet is still Bandcamp. Though given the present state of the world, who knows how long that will still apply?

David Harley

An Ideal Candidate

“The ideal candidate doesn’t have a 9 to 5 mentality.”

I have an idea I may have stolen that line from the very talented artist/illustrator/author Andrea Benko – ah, apparently I did. (As well as plundering Oscar Wilde’s dramatic oeuvre for the title of this article.) However, I really did have a departmental manager in A Certain IT Unit – at a medical research charity, if it matters – who dropped a very similar remark into the conversation when he took me to the pub for an informal getting-to-know-you chat.

“I can’t say this, but I’d be very disappointed if my staff always left the office at 5pm sharp.”

Fast forward a decade and a half. I was in a hotel in Bratislava. I was on one of those conference mini-breaks where you spend three days in the US, one at home, three more in the Far East, then two more somewhere in Europe. Of course, I’m not even trying to calculate the additional days spent travelling. But this time I’d left home in the early hours to travel halfway across England to get to Heathrow, waited around there for several hours, then taken not one but two flights to get to Bratislava because there wasn’t a direct flight. So I was ready for an early night. I don’t speak Slovak (or even Czech), so local TV was probably not going to keep me awake.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet turned my work phone off – in fact, I rarely did in those days.

DDDDRRRRNNNNGGGG!!!!!!!

It was a PR droid-in-charge (of something or other, but not me…) in the US, wanting me to talk to a high-profile journalist/influencer about some current security brouhaha. And he, fresh as a McFlurry on a bright morning in San Diego, couldn’t believe that an ageing security maven a million time zones away was in bed, rather than jumping at the opportunity to talk security to a professional sceptic who was always going to adapt anything I said to him to fit his preconceptions*.

“But it’s only 9pm over there!”

I should have told him to go forth and multiply (after sharing a couple of home truths about whose manager he wasn’t), but I’ve always been too polite for my own good, and I did do the interview. And I was quoted in such a way as to fit the journalist’s preconceptions…

By the time I actually retired, that cellphone had gone to the great Cellphone Warehouse in the sky, but one of the first habits I broke myself of was leaving my cellphone on overnight. If you need to talk to me urgently, use my landline. If you don’t know my landline number, it’s not ex-directory, but you probably have no reason to speak to me urgently anyway.

*I’m not going to name the journalist, who is, after all, a very competent writer with a genuine understanding of security issues. All I can say is, “he’s not the Messiah, but he’s far from the naughtiest boy in the media.”

David Harley

Night Terrors

Revisiting ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ a few days ago was an uncomfortable experience, given recent events in the Middle East, though it’s a decent example of Le Carré’s writing skills. Immediately afterwards, I got much more pleasure out of reading ‘Terry Pratchett – a Life with Footnotes’ and thinking for at least 15 seconds that I might attempt an autobiography. However, I eventually decided that I’d rather read Pratchett’s biography than mine, despite the sadness that clouded his final years. Still, there have been some moments of joy in my own life that I wouldn’t swap for anyone else’s memories. (I wonder if you know who you are!)

Yes, there’ll probably be a tune for this sooner or later: I don’t think it’s great poetry.

Sometimes I lie awake,
Cataloguing my mistakes,
Catastrophizing in the night:
Caught up in night terrors
Review comedies of errors: 
The ones I sometimes call my life.
And yet there've been sweet dreams
Among the nightmares and the screams,
Good love and good music on the way.
I've tried to keep to the Highway Code,
And though I'm running out of road,
I hope there aren't too many fines to pay.