He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence (William Blake)

I had started watching one of BBC 4's excellent historical documentaries presented by James Fox -Bright Lights Brilliant Minds about three Cities at defining moments of the 20th Century.

This one was on Vienna in 1908 – it's golden age and it all looked very grand but behind the scenes things were getting neurotic; Freud was discovering the Oedipus Complex, the artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Shiele were breaking out and the mayor Karl Luegar was spreading his anti-Semitism. There was also the underbelly of Vienna with it's 50,000 prostitutes and sewer dwellers.

Also a young man with a dream to become a painter arrives with a letter of introduction to a well known artist at the gates of the Royal Opera House. However his courage wavered and he fled. Later in his life he confessed to this being his one last opportunity and that life would have been much easier if he had had the confidence to become an artist. That man was Adolf Hitler.

This took my mind straight back to a phone conversation I had had earlier in the day. My friend was saying that her husband had been all the way to Twickenham Film studios about a job. Anyway I said that it reminded me of when I was young and not knowing were my future lay had walked around to Twickenham Film Studios with the idea of asking for a job – felt it could change my life – but I had got cold feet and only made it to the entrance. My friend in contrast remembered that in the 60s she had marched into a recording studio and asked for a job. This was when women didn't work even work in recording studios. She was taken on – she wasn't one to hesitate. As she says she had FRONT. All the Jewish women I have met have a certain something – in Yiddish it's “Chutzpah”– which means audacity....for good or ill.

She had chutzpah in other ways too with those 'notches on the bedpost'. David Bowie when she was 15 in Bromley. At that period he sported a blue velvet suit – so they called him “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” At 17 her parents didn't know where she had got to till they saw her on the television news, on stage dancing with Robert Plant to “Whole Lotta Love” at the Bath Festival... another notch. The lead singer of Whitesnake is in their somewhere. When Lemmy died in 2015; I asked her if she had known him – she gave me that look – I said “ Not Lemmy as well!?”

Hesitation was a script I acted out on many other occasions including with women though when I pushed through the resistance my core anxiety didn't help me progress. But I never had the inclination to take my resentments out politically nor militarily; I always turned to the bottle to sooth my frustrations. I believe Mr Hitler was teetotal.

At the end of the documentary the Austro-Hungarian empire have annexed Bosnia -they really should have hesitated with that one. It was the beginning of the end as far as the old order was concerned. That was where the trigger lay which was to kick start the First World War and Hitler fought in that and brooded and bided his time.