I was delighted when the Independent gave away booklets explaining in simple language the theories of the world’s philosophers. The only philosopher I had met was Bertrand Russell and he was barking mad. Now I can confirm what I have long suspected; philosophers talk rubbish. Plato and Locke have both suggested forms of government they believed would increase human happiness. Both have been tried in the last century with disastrous results.
Plato’s Republic was made manifest in Fascism with a seasoning of Nietzsche; its iron discipline was realised in Hitler and Pol Pot. The quest for racial purity inspired the Holocaust. Locke believed we should elect a monarch and hand to him absolute power. That gave us Stalin and Attila the Hun.
The only philosophy which has been used universally is Muddle. My chum Bengy Carey Evans is Lloyd George’s grandson. As a boy he met all the leading statesmen of Europe. He told me they were pretty second rate: surprisingly ordinary men and not all that bright. Any reading of our history over the past century confirms that.
Most of our troubles stem from the mess we made when the Ottoman Empire fell and Britain and France sought to grab Arabia. “Statesmen” led us into the totally unnecessary World War One which began the destruction of Western civilisation and into its continuation in Spain, Ethiopia and World War 2. That Second World War was made inevitable by the reparations demanded in Versailles at what has been called “The Peace that Passeth All Understanding”. When, incidentally, America stepped shyly onto the world stage with its “14 points”.
But that is all Olde Worlde. In the Brave New World of the 21st century America has taken the helm more confidently. Americans see themselves as new Romans and have copied their political structures and architecture from that greedy Empire, of which Dr Johnson said, “When they were poor they robbed each other and when rich looted the world.”
America has failed as a World Leader. She makes costly and embarrassing mistakes and, heavily in debt to her enemies, she is pursued by a new band of Apocalyptic Horsemen: Brazil, Russia., India and China.
They have resisted the temptation to patch up their economies by introducing credit cards - those poisonous blooms only flower in the profligate West. Worse than that, they are supplying the goods we are buying with our cards. Between them, those four countries hold 3.6 trillion dollars of foreign currency reserves, two thirds of the global total, and they account for half of the world’s GDP.
It is some years since Gore Vidal warned that America was in hock to China. The Chinese government bought huge quantities of dollar assets - about $200 billion worth in 2004, and possibly as much as $300 billion worth this year. This is economically perverse. China, a poor country where capital is still scarce by Western standards, is lending vast sums at low interest rates to the United States.
These dollar purchases by China and other foreign governments have temporarily insulated the U.S. economy from the effects of huge budget deficits. Money flowing in from abroad has kept U.S. interest rates low despite the enormous government borrowing required to cover the budget deficit.
And how is America spending its borrowed money?
According to the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglist, the Iraq War has cost America three trillion dollars, which is 200 times more than Bush said it would cost. One sixth of that figure would fund social security in the U.S. for 75 years.
America is spending 12 million dollars a month on the war. It gives Africa 5 billion dollars a year in aid, which is the cost of 8 days’ fighting in Iraq. China is pouring resources into that dark continent.
For me, the worst statistic to surface from this economic cesspool is that for the cost of two weeks’ fighting in Iraq we could banish illiteracy from the planet.
Talking of expense, I have been upset by the news that G.P.s were paid over a hundred thousand pounds salary per year. Then my practice nurse explained that out of that they have to pay the cost of the surgery and its contents, the running costs of the practice, the wages of the staff and all other expenses. They are also subject to constant re-examination of their work.
A recent peer, the lowest kind apart from life renters,, recently criticised nurses. My nurse tells me that one of the practice district nurses recently burst into tears in the staff room because she could not keep up with her appointments. That day she had 42.
A reader doubts that I could have been asked to leave the Black Watch (RHR) twice. Indeed I was - and the second time I was a civilian.
Ancient readers will remember that in the early fifties National Service soldiers were required to return to their regiments for further training.
Unwisely the Black Watch (RHR) called me to the colours at Fochabers, in Morayshire, a tented camp for a territorial battalion.
Unfortunately I was not able to make it on the day they suggested and, when I did go, I thought I might as well break my journey in Edinburgh to see my Uncle Jimmy, who was my family favourite by a mile.
When I finally reached Fochabers, I was somewhat shocked to discover they had started training without me. An act of ill manners the C.O. compounded by putting me on a charge, which was a sad way to mark the return of a prodigal son.
Alas, that meant I missed the C.O.’s Parade with which he started the proceedings. On reflection, that might have been why he was so upset.
Actually he should have been grateful because he did not exactly cover himself with glory.
Officers in Highland regiments can easily make themselves look ridiculous but this one had a special talent. He carried a cromach (a shepherd’s crook) which senior officers often affected. This was puzzling because it is unlikely there would be unruly sheep on a battlefield.
To make matters worse, the cromach was the burlier of the two and the C.O. looked rather like a standard lamp, the shade of which had slipped to the middle. His kilt lacked only a fringe.
His choice of image was not of the happiest.
“Chaps,” he began, and 1400 hundred Glasgow keelies looked at him in disbelief. “Chaps” were what cowboys wore and they wondered if they were improperly dressed.
“Some of you,” he went on, “will resent being torn from civilian life. But do not feel that way. Look on this as a return to your Club.”
Again the keelies knew only of one kind of club. That was used for defensive purposes in the Gorbals and had been left at home in the belief the army supplied weapons. Was this omission a chargeable offence, wondered the more nervous?
But the C.O. went on. “Perhaps you will meet old friends. Soldiers you have not seen since St Valery.”
St Valery was a battle in World War Two but, to the eighteen-year-olds assembled, the name had a Papist whiff and Protestants in the ranks were deeply offended. It was Hearts ‘v’ Hibs, Celtic ‘v’ Rangers all over again, and blood wobbled dangerously on the edge of spilling.
Then the C.O.made his Grand Gesture, clearly the result of long rehearsal.
He stepped forward until he was level with the front rank. Peering down from his immense height, he smiled at the nearest squaddie, a small and excessively dirty soldier who had only been in the battalion for a day but had already cut his tam–o-shanter down so that it looked like a sailor’s hat and stuck in it an Indian Red Hackle of enormous size, also against dress regulations. His trousers were folded over his gaiters, weighed down with the heavy metal chains which could readily be turned into weapons. His fists were turned up at the wrists. All the marks of a hard man and the wrong man for the C.O. to greet with, “For instance, I seem to recognise your face.”
The little man looked up from his 5ft 3 ins, the maximum allowed for living in Glasgow. “Ah’ve nivir seen ye in ma bliddy life, Jock,” he said.
The week went from bad to worse and I fear I behaved as badly as anyone. Foolishly the C.O. sentenced all who misbehaved to extra days in the camp after the battalion had gone home.
We heard the pipe band playing the “Black Bear” and getting fainter and fainter. “Right wee men,” one of our number said, “that’s us for the toon.”
I thought the officer who had been left in charge was going to cry. So we crept away and left him to his misery.
A few days after I returned home I got a letter from the C.O. suggesting that I might be happier in another regiment. I wrote back saying I had decided against joining any regiment and that was the last I heard. So in the next war they are on their own.
*******************************************
My Dangerous Cuttings Book
First hand experience of the trials and tribulations experienced by a pea when it is frozen will soon be on offer to visitors in the Science Museum it was announced yesterday.
The chance to pass through a pea freezer, modified for use on humans, will be available in a new permanent gallery due to open at the museum this autumn.
“We are going to let visitors feel what it is like inside a blast freezer and imagine what it is like to be a pea,” Miss Jane Bywaters, project manager, said.
Ends
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Saturday, 23 February 2008
OF CABBAGES AND KINGS AND HOW TO TELL THEM APART
Robert Burns regretted that God did not give him the power to see himself as others saw him. In fact God has given us a much more dangerous gift. The power to make other people see us in the way we want. Leadership, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Louis X1V was in no doubt about his position. The Sun King was a job description. After a series of military defeats he stormed. “Sometimes I think God forgets what I have done for him.”
To keep his quarrelsome courtiers in order he insisted they all live in Versailles where he devised a system of etiquette of precedence so byzantine – it even dictated the number of steps to a door which a host should take depending on the seniority of his guest - that the courtiers were so involved in keeping their place in the pecking order they had no time for mutinies.
The basis of all power is a cheap confidence trick. If you bet on horses or cards and lose, hard luck. If you bet on banks who lend money to people who cannot pay it back, the government swallows your losses because our perception of a shareholder differs from that of earthier gamblers. They are our superiors.
A bespectacled old lady in a glass hat, unsuitably wearing an evening gown in the middle of the day, plays a charade of instructing parliament in its duties for the next session. Her speech has been written for her by her First Minister, who is in fact her employer. She dare not alter it by so much as a comma. Yet we see the Queen, magnificently robed and bejewelled, giving Her orders to Her parliament; demonstrating that leadership is a concession awarded by the led. Misreading, surely, Locke’s dictum that the masses should give absolute power to an individual and then obey him.
Other members of the Royal Family, male and female, are garlanded with gold crosses, festooned with crescents, the traditional emblems of the brave and the noble, which, unearned, have been handed to them like after dinner mints.
I could be just as brave as Royalty in the eyes of the world were I allowed to wear, as they do, decorations won by my father, uncles and father-in-law.
The Wizard of Oz got it right when he made the lion brave by giving him a medal, the straw man wise by awarding him a diploma and the tin man romantic by giving him a heart. The wizard knew that qualities were unnecessary. It was the label that counted.
Quentin Crisp wisely pointed out that our feral young express their individuality by all dressing exactly the same. They adopt the shared uniform by which we recognise difference; shaved heads which speak of fighting strength, hoods so that children suffering from terminal acne can terrify old people who fought at Arnhem.
In fact any street fighter will tell you that it is surprise that wins fights: victory invariably goes to the man who hits first.
I am by nature a timid man of quiet pursuits. Yet when I wore the kilt I was perennially on the look out for a fight. In the red sash of a Provost Sgt, I terrified drunks who could have eaten me were it not for the power they wrongly perceived I held.
As – briefly - an officer cadet, I saw how one man in the squad was always the first to volunteer, the first to leap into a river or climb a height, in order to be thought “officer potential”, when wiser heads thought he was an idiot.
These uncharitable thoughts come from reading Wendy Berry’s book, banned in this country, about the private life at Highgrove of the petulant ‘Prince of Wails’ and the beautiful basket case he married. Lorries regularly brought gifts from manufacturers of everything from kitchens to hats which were regularly burned because of fears that the goods would be stolen and marketed on E Bay as royal property. Apparently it occurred to no-one to tell the manufacturers not to send them. That and other books by royal servants leave one with a poor opinion of every member of that unhappy dynasty, with the exception Prince Edward and the Queen, both of whom are praised for their consideration and good manners.
I cynically remember a friend, no stranger to command, who always made sure his adjutants were martinets. It enabled him to be easy going and thus popular.
I have known two VCs. One was awarded for bravery in repulsing an oncoming Chinese horde by throwing beer bottles at them. A useless gesture which one assumes only made them angrier. He had been thrown out of our regiment and a lowland regiment. After the award, the lowland regiment called him back and promoted him to RSM.
******************************************
One of the many mistakes the Army made about me was to assume I had leadership potential. They were not alone. A similar misjudgement by a headmaster made me a disastrous form captain and I can only assume that when the Editor of the Mirror appointed me as night news editor, a mistake subsequently made by three other editors, he must have been barking mad.
But there I was. Two days a soldier and a designated O.R.1, potential officer. So it was natural when a group of us had to be fitted with W.D. spectacles, steel, other ranks for the use of, I was put in charge of the party.
Fourteen of us mustered for the journey from High Legh Camp at Knutsford to Saighton Military Hospital, twenty miles away in Chester. And a pleasant enough journey it was. That is until we climbed down from the lorry at the gates of the camp and wandered, chatting pleasantly, to report at the guard room.
We never made it. A very small sergeant with the voice of a much taller man shouted implications about our families that I am sure he came to regret in quieter moments. He then demanded to know who was “In charge of this shower…”
To a man, my squad of Judases pointed at me.
“Then get them fell in, in three ranks,” he barked. Alas, he didn’t tell me how so I had to whisper to them to get in some sort of line, which they
unobligingly did.
We had our tests, were promised our spectacles and began the journey home. Unfortunately I discovered, in the in the excitement of the morning when we got back to Chester General Railway station, that I had left the travel warrants in Saighton Camp.
I pointed to the least belligerent looking member of the party. “Nip off back to the camp and collect the warrants.”
“F …. Off,” he advised me.
“I’m in charge. You said I was,” I replied.
“Only when we are being shouted at, “he explained.
So I had to go back for the warrants. I told the party to wait for me at the station but none of them did. And because the lorry had gone by this time I had to catch two buses - and in doing so missed three trains. I travelled back to High Legh, accompanied by 14 travel warrants but without a single soldier.
“Good God,” said the orderly officer when I told him what had happened,
“we didn’t lose that many on D Day.”
From My Dangerous Cuttings Book
Polite society should evolve a new code of etiquette for the mobile phone brigade.
The Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph Ian Watson, dining at the Savoy Hotel, was interrupted by the cloak room attendant with the words: “Excuse me sir, but your overcoat is ringing.”
Louis X1V was in no doubt about his position. The Sun King was a job description. After a series of military defeats he stormed. “Sometimes I think God forgets what I have done for him.”
To keep his quarrelsome courtiers in order he insisted they all live in Versailles where he devised a system of etiquette of precedence so byzantine – it even dictated the number of steps to a door which a host should take depending on the seniority of his guest - that the courtiers were so involved in keeping their place in the pecking order they had no time for mutinies.
The basis of all power is a cheap confidence trick. If you bet on horses or cards and lose, hard luck. If you bet on banks who lend money to people who cannot pay it back, the government swallows your losses because our perception of a shareholder differs from that of earthier gamblers. They are our superiors.
A bespectacled old lady in a glass hat, unsuitably wearing an evening gown in the middle of the day, plays a charade of instructing parliament in its duties for the next session. Her speech has been written for her by her First Minister, who is in fact her employer. She dare not alter it by so much as a comma. Yet we see the Queen, magnificently robed and bejewelled, giving Her orders to Her parliament; demonstrating that leadership is a concession awarded by the led. Misreading, surely, Locke’s dictum that the masses should give absolute power to an individual and then obey him.
Other members of the Royal Family, male and female, are garlanded with gold crosses, festooned with crescents, the traditional emblems of the brave and the noble, which, unearned, have been handed to them like after dinner mints.
I could be just as brave as Royalty in the eyes of the world were I allowed to wear, as they do, decorations won by my father, uncles and father-in-law.
The Wizard of Oz got it right when he made the lion brave by giving him a medal, the straw man wise by awarding him a diploma and the tin man romantic by giving him a heart. The wizard knew that qualities were unnecessary. It was the label that counted.
Quentin Crisp wisely pointed out that our feral young express their individuality by all dressing exactly the same. They adopt the shared uniform by which we recognise difference; shaved heads which speak of fighting strength, hoods so that children suffering from terminal acne can terrify old people who fought at Arnhem.
In fact any street fighter will tell you that it is surprise that wins fights: victory invariably goes to the man who hits first.
I am by nature a timid man of quiet pursuits. Yet when I wore the kilt I was perennially on the look out for a fight. In the red sash of a Provost Sgt, I terrified drunks who could have eaten me were it not for the power they wrongly perceived I held.
As – briefly - an officer cadet, I saw how one man in the squad was always the first to volunteer, the first to leap into a river or climb a height, in order to be thought “officer potential”, when wiser heads thought he was an idiot.
These uncharitable thoughts come from reading Wendy Berry’s book, banned in this country, about the private life at Highgrove of the petulant ‘Prince of Wails’ and the beautiful basket case he married. Lorries regularly brought gifts from manufacturers of everything from kitchens to hats which were regularly burned because of fears that the goods would be stolen and marketed on E Bay as royal property. Apparently it occurred to no-one to tell the manufacturers not to send them. That and other books by royal servants leave one with a poor opinion of every member of that unhappy dynasty, with the exception Prince Edward and the Queen, both of whom are praised for their consideration and good manners.
I cynically remember a friend, no stranger to command, who always made sure his adjutants were martinets. It enabled him to be easy going and thus popular.
I have known two VCs. One was awarded for bravery in repulsing an oncoming Chinese horde by throwing beer bottles at them. A useless gesture which one assumes only made them angrier. He had been thrown out of our regiment and a lowland regiment. After the award, the lowland regiment called him back and promoted him to RSM.
******************************************
One of the many mistakes the Army made about me was to assume I had leadership potential. They were not alone. A similar misjudgement by a headmaster made me a disastrous form captain and I can only assume that when the Editor of the Mirror appointed me as night news editor, a mistake subsequently made by three other editors, he must have been barking mad.
But there I was. Two days a soldier and a designated O.R.1, potential officer. So it was natural when a group of us had to be fitted with W.D. spectacles, steel, other ranks for the use of, I was put in charge of the party.
Fourteen of us mustered for the journey from High Legh Camp at Knutsford to Saighton Military Hospital, twenty miles away in Chester. And a pleasant enough journey it was. That is until we climbed down from the lorry at the gates of the camp and wandered, chatting pleasantly, to report at the guard room.
We never made it. A very small sergeant with the voice of a much taller man shouted implications about our families that I am sure he came to regret in quieter moments. He then demanded to know who was “In charge of this shower…”
To a man, my squad of Judases pointed at me.
“Then get them fell in, in three ranks,” he barked. Alas, he didn’t tell me how so I had to whisper to them to get in some sort of line, which they
unobligingly did.
We had our tests, were promised our spectacles and began the journey home. Unfortunately I discovered, in the in the excitement of the morning when we got back to Chester General Railway station, that I had left the travel warrants in Saighton Camp.
I pointed to the least belligerent looking member of the party. “Nip off back to the camp and collect the warrants.”
“F …. Off,” he advised me.
“I’m in charge. You said I was,” I replied.
“Only when we are being shouted at, “he explained.
So I had to go back for the warrants. I told the party to wait for me at the station but none of them did. And because the lorry had gone by this time I had to catch two buses - and in doing so missed three trains. I travelled back to High Legh, accompanied by 14 travel warrants but without a single soldier.
“Good God,” said the orderly officer when I told him what had happened,
“we didn’t lose that many on D Day.”
From My Dangerous Cuttings Book
Polite society should evolve a new code of etiquette for the mobile phone brigade.
The Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph Ian Watson, dining at the Savoy Hotel, was interrupted by the cloak room attendant with the words: “Excuse me sir, but your overcoat is ringing.”
Sunday, 17 February 2008
A SEPTIC ISLE,SET IN A SILVER SEA..........
I am not entirely convinced that if I fly to the Isle of Man bits of the English coastline will drop off the edge of the planet. Nor that Iceland will become a Land of Milk and Honey, and the desert will bloom with an abundance of orchids, if I so much as light a bonfire in the garden.
Climate change has dictated Earth’s history and will continue to do so. We are profligate with her bounty but governments which fly emissaries to the far corners of the world to junket and preen will never take the measures necessary to change our excess.
Any natural happening is pressed into evidence that warming is man caused. Global warming and wind change have even been blamed for the appearance of giant turtles on the Welsh coast. Turtles have been washed onto our Welsh coast with almost monotonous regularity for years. Wales is washed by the Gulf Stream which is their natural habitat. There is even a poem about it written by Robert Graves.
I am far more worried about the vast underwater island of plastic, the size of America, which broods off the coast of Hawaii poisoning marine life and feeding toxins to the minute organisms which are the first elements in the food chain. It is certainly responsible for the death of turtles and many other forms of marine life.
There is a hope. In a letter to the Independent, David Sevier, of Aqueous Logic Ltd, pointed out that nature has washed and sorted thousands of tons of a valuable resource and moved it near to several of the world’s markets.
Plastic, he says, is a good feedstock for many products including plastic wood. This, he claims, is an excellent building material since it does not rot or need painting. Apparently, the problem generally has been the cost of collecting and washing it. But the sea has done this for us. It has given us a truly huge business opportunity, a large, fairly concentrated raw material, near highly developed markets, which can be collected free, since it is in international waters. Naturally, since this important news is not doom-laden, it has not been taken up by the rest of the media,
Instead, I have been invited to "Earth Hour" on Saturday, March 29 at 8:00pm. "Lights off for only one hour, wherever you are in the WORLD!"
To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://wm.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=8240986531
In half the world, of course, it will be broad daylight. But I suppose it is the thought that counts.
On Tuesday we went to Cambridge to watch a student production of “The Pirates of Penzance”, which was by a country mile the finest I have seen; indeed it was one of the finest productions of any kind I have seen.
Hardened G and S watchers like me will be familiar with near geriatric chorus lines, three little maids with a combined displacement of an ocean liner and the other horrors we gladly undergo for the music and the wit of the lyrics. This chorus was made up of manly and athletic pirates and a bevy of Major General’s daughters who were pretty, young and talented.
The British reaction to G and S is one of the great puzzles of life. As a body of work, any other country would be proud of it. There would be festivals of G and S. They would be worshipped as the Strausses are worshipped, statues erected, G and S souvenirs in every shop. Here D’Oyly Carte were kicked out of their home, refused an Arts Council grant and patronised by our artistic establishment.
There is a similar, though less obvious, reaction to Elgar. Goodness knows what would have happened to his reputation had he not written the Enigma Variations and Jacqueline du Pre had not recorded the Cello Concerto.
On the way home from the theatre, across the treacherous Fens, fog made driving a hazard and brought back memories of the post-war years when fogs were so thick that the only way to get home was to tailgate a bolder spirit and hope. Several times this led me into Ladybarn Park (Manchester), across the road from my home, when the lead driver took a wrong turning.
On one occasion, the lead driver jumped from his car and ran past the convoy screaming. We caught him, and calmed him, and asked whatever was the matter.
“I nearly knocked over an elephant,” he sobbed.
He had.
I remembered, just in time to prevent a stampede, that Fossett’s circus, another greater English institution, was visiting and had hobbled its elephants in the park.
********************************************
I used to earn an honest crust from Vernon’s Pools, going to winners who had marked the cross for no publicity and attempting to persuade them to change their mind. I had to give it up because it was turning me off the human race.
There was the man who earned his living scrubbing the inside of the tanks of railway engines and told me that, despite winning a fortune, he was not giving up his day job. Then there was the man who told me off for waking him up in the afternoon to tell him he had won £40,000. And the publican who told me to whisper how much he had won because he didn’t want his customers to know. The bar was empty at the time.
Only once was I offered a drink and that was by an elderly widow who had won £2,000 and gave me a sherry she said she had been saving in case she ever won the pools.
But the queen of them all was Nellie McGrail. She was a lady from Hyde, Cheshire, who was the first big winner of what was then riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
I was running the Mirror news desk in Manchester at the time, and I sent a reporter called Chris Reynolds to see her and take her to the amusement park at Belle Vue to get pictures of her and her children on one of the rides.
He rang several times to ask if he could come back to the office because he was running out of money. She made him pay for ice creams, lunch, candy floss and all the rides.
“Stick with her,” I said, “you’ll be bound to get a drink out of it when you take her home.”
So he took her home, paying for the taxi, and rang me again.
“That’s it,” he said. “You can sack me but I am coming back to the office. I have paid for everything all day. Carried whining kids and tried to cheer up Nellie. We’ve just got home and she said, ‘I expect you could do with a drink?’ I said I could. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’”
There was a sequel. When the news of Nellie’s great win broke, a taxi driver reading of it in his Daily Mirror said to his wife “I used to go out with her” and became very thoughtful.
Some months later I covered his wedding to the pools winner at the village hall in Heaton Moor. Happily on this occasion we drank champagne; indeed my abiding picture is of four policemen detailed to keep back the crowds drinking it from the bottle, long before that disgusting habit became fashionable. Though thankfully they did not shake it and spray it in the vulgar manner of racing drivers.
**********************************************
My Dangerous Cuttings Book
Seen in a Post Office window in Barmouth was this postcard:
“Dear Geoff, Audrey and Martin,
“Having a lovely time. The weather is good. The children are all enjoying themselves. See you soon,
Olive, Gwyn and the children.”
Written in the address section under a 9p stamp is:
“Forgot your address”
Climate change has dictated Earth’s history and will continue to do so. We are profligate with her bounty but governments which fly emissaries to the far corners of the world to junket and preen will never take the measures necessary to change our excess.
Any natural happening is pressed into evidence that warming is man caused. Global warming and wind change have even been blamed for the appearance of giant turtles on the Welsh coast. Turtles have been washed onto our Welsh coast with almost monotonous regularity for years. Wales is washed by the Gulf Stream which is their natural habitat. There is even a poem about it written by Robert Graves.
I am far more worried about the vast underwater island of plastic, the size of America, which broods off the coast of Hawaii poisoning marine life and feeding toxins to the minute organisms which are the first elements in the food chain. It is certainly responsible for the death of turtles and many other forms of marine life.
There is a hope. In a letter to the Independent, David Sevier, of Aqueous Logic Ltd, pointed out that nature has washed and sorted thousands of tons of a valuable resource and moved it near to several of the world’s markets.
Plastic, he says, is a good feedstock for many products including plastic wood. This, he claims, is an excellent building material since it does not rot or need painting. Apparently, the problem generally has been the cost of collecting and washing it. But the sea has done this for us. It has given us a truly huge business opportunity, a large, fairly concentrated raw material, near highly developed markets, which can be collected free, since it is in international waters. Naturally, since this important news is not doom-laden, it has not been taken up by the rest of the media,
Instead, I have been invited to "Earth Hour" on Saturday, March 29 at 8:00pm. "Lights off for only one hour, wherever you are in the WORLD!"
To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://wm.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=8240986531
In half the world, of course, it will be broad daylight. But I suppose it is the thought that counts.
On Tuesday we went to Cambridge to watch a student production of “The Pirates of Penzance”, which was by a country mile the finest I have seen; indeed it was one of the finest productions of any kind I have seen.
Hardened G and S watchers like me will be familiar with near geriatric chorus lines, three little maids with a combined displacement of an ocean liner and the other horrors we gladly undergo for the music and the wit of the lyrics. This chorus was made up of manly and athletic pirates and a bevy of Major General’s daughters who were pretty, young and talented.
The British reaction to G and S is one of the great puzzles of life. As a body of work, any other country would be proud of it. There would be festivals of G and S. They would be worshipped as the Strausses are worshipped, statues erected, G and S souvenirs in every shop. Here D’Oyly Carte were kicked out of their home, refused an Arts Council grant and patronised by our artistic establishment.
There is a similar, though less obvious, reaction to Elgar. Goodness knows what would have happened to his reputation had he not written the Enigma Variations and Jacqueline du Pre had not recorded the Cello Concerto.
On the way home from the theatre, across the treacherous Fens, fog made driving a hazard and brought back memories of the post-war years when fogs were so thick that the only way to get home was to tailgate a bolder spirit and hope. Several times this led me into Ladybarn Park (Manchester), across the road from my home, when the lead driver took a wrong turning.
On one occasion, the lead driver jumped from his car and ran past the convoy screaming. We caught him, and calmed him, and asked whatever was the matter.
“I nearly knocked over an elephant,” he sobbed.
He had.
I remembered, just in time to prevent a stampede, that Fossett’s circus, another greater English institution, was visiting and had hobbled its elephants in the park.
********************************************
I used to earn an honest crust from Vernon’s Pools, going to winners who had marked the cross for no publicity and attempting to persuade them to change their mind. I had to give it up because it was turning me off the human race.
There was the man who earned his living scrubbing the inside of the tanks of railway engines and told me that, despite winning a fortune, he was not giving up his day job. Then there was the man who told me off for waking him up in the afternoon to tell him he had won £40,000. And the publican who told me to whisper how much he had won because he didn’t want his customers to know. The bar was empty at the time.
Only once was I offered a drink and that was by an elderly widow who had won £2,000 and gave me a sherry she said she had been saving in case she ever won the pools.
But the queen of them all was Nellie McGrail. She was a lady from Hyde, Cheshire, who was the first big winner of what was then riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
I was running the Mirror news desk in Manchester at the time, and I sent a reporter called Chris Reynolds to see her and take her to the amusement park at Belle Vue to get pictures of her and her children on one of the rides.
He rang several times to ask if he could come back to the office because he was running out of money. She made him pay for ice creams, lunch, candy floss and all the rides.
“Stick with her,” I said, “you’ll be bound to get a drink out of it when you take her home.”
So he took her home, paying for the taxi, and rang me again.
“That’s it,” he said. “You can sack me but I am coming back to the office. I have paid for everything all day. Carried whining kids and tried to cheer up Nellie. We’ve just got home and she said, ‘I expect you could do with a drink?’ I said I could. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’”
There was a sequel. When the news of Nellie’s great win broke, a taxi driver reading of it in his Daily Mirror said to his wife “I used to go out with her” and became very thoughtful.
Some months later I covered his wedding to the pools winner at the village hall in Heaton Moor. Happily on this occasion we drank champagne; indeed my abiding picture is of four policemen detailed to keep back the crowds drinking it from the bottle, long before that disgusting habit became fashionable. Though thankfully they did not shake it and spray it in the vulgar manner of racing drivers.
**********************************************
My Dangerous Cuttings Book
Seen in a Post Office window in Barmouth was this postcard:
“Dear Geoff, Audrey and Martin,
“Having a lovely time. The weather is good. The children are all enjoying themselves. See you soon,
Olive, Gwyn and the children.”
Written in the address section under a 9p stamp is:
“Forgot your address”
Sunday, 10 February 2008
As the Archbishop said to the Author
I once chaired a discussion at the Hay Literary Festival on the likelihood of the Disestablishment of the Church of England. Among the debaters was Rowan Williams, at that time Bishop of Monmouth.
Some days before, I had been confessing to a chum, Dr Barry Morgan, Bishop of Bangor in North Wales, who incidentally in moments of stress bakes the most delicious gateaux, that I knew nothing about the subject. Barry Bish the Dish, as he was known locally, said rather unkindly, “That has never worried you in the past.”
I said, “But Dr Williams is on the panel and he has got a brain the size of Cardiff.”
“He is a friend of mine,” said Barry. “Tell him if he is unkind to you it is crosiers at dawn.”
In the event he was kindness itself and the voice of sweet reason. In the light of the present row when he made some harmless suggestions in a debate on law, I am sure his intentions were good. The problem is, of course, that he is far too religious to be Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not saying it is a job for an atheist, but there is no doubt that deep beliefs such as he holds make it awfully difficult to do a job, more the chairman of a fractious liberal party, with all the horrors that implies. Politics rather than faith is called for. However, he will not be the first deep believer to be crucified and in debates of this kind it as well to remember the Daily Telegraph Poll which disclosed that only a minority of Anglicans believe in God.
I was much more worried to read the warnings of scientists that transmitting songs into outer space may attract the anger of unfriendly aliens. Heartening though it is to think that our stellar neighbours have a musical ear, it reminds me of something I have been warning about for years.
The bench marks by which people judge behaviour are many and varied. From the old salt’s “I know what the lads on our ship would say”, memorably recalled in the film “Odd Man Out”, to public school and regimental tradition, even reference to biblical sources or that rather wishy-washy “ not quite the thing” of old colonials.
I have a different test, which involves spacemen landing on a market research mission, with Bristol boards and biros in each of their ten arms, stopping passers by and saying something like this: “We have polluted our planet and we are looking for a new home. Before we decide whether to settle here, would you mind answering a few questions?”
Now, if you are faced with a creature with ten arms, three heads and an eye in the centre of each one of them, the chances are you are not going to push him to one side. So when he asks you where you are going, you are going to hold your hands up and enter a plea of guilty.
“I am going to the pub,” you may say.
“Pub? What is pub?” the three heads will chorus, and you will explain it is a building, either draughty and scruffy or luxurious in a naff sort of way. You will explain how there is a thing called a bar and you all line up on one side whilst a man on the other side serves you drinks.
“Drinks?”
“Liquid made from juniper berries or wheat with sugar and things.”
“It tastes good then?”
“Well no, actually. It is a bitter taste and it furs your tongue. Or you can have spirits and they make you feel slightly sick as they go down.”
“So you don’t drink those… spirits?”
“Well, yes, but you put another liquid in them, so you cannot taste the spirits.”
“But you drink them because they have a nice effect?”
“Well, that is not quite true. They can make you fall over, or you might get in a fight with a stranger, and at the best you say silly things. And then the man behind the counter throws you out because you are behaving badly.”
Now at this point you can tell the three heads are puzzled, because they are looking into each other’s one eye and tapping their foreheads with all ten arms.
“This man behind the counter? He gives you this liquid which he knows will make you fall over and when you do fall over he throws you out? Is that entirely fair?”
“Well, no, but anyway he doesn’t give it to you. He sells it to you for money.”
“What is…?”
“Money is bits of paper or round things made of metal and the man behind the counter puts them all in a thing we call a till where a bell rings when money is put in it.”
One of the heads which is quicker on the uptake than the other two says, “I see”. And he explains to the other two heads that this thing called money is a sort of punishment token and is given to people who have misbehaved and they have to take it to this punishment place called a pub where the man behind the counter keeps it to show they have been punished.
And you don’t like to interrupt but you have to put them right.
“You don’t quite understand,” you say. “These are not punishment tokens: they are rewards, and to earn them we have to work.”
“Work?”
“Oh, some people go hundreds of feet down a hole in the ground every day and dig out fossilised trees. It’s very dark down there and filled with a dust which in the end kills you. That is if the roof doesn’t fall in.”
“And what do you do with this fossilised wood you have worked so hard to find?”
“We burn it.”
At which point all three heads and ten arms make a rush for the spaceship crying, “Which way is Uranus?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When the world was young and I could still keep up with it, I worked in Liverpool for the Daily Dispatch, though I spent most of my time bumming drinks in the Liverpool Press Club.
Sometimes, when we got bored with the club, we would go down to the docks where there was this mine sweeper which never seemed to go to sea. The Daily Herald man “Dicko”, one of our group otherwise known as “Zum Zum” because that was the noise he made when he reached the stage of inebriation where conversation is easy but pronunciation difficult, reckoned it was welded to the Dock Wall. But he did have a tendency, when not zum-zumming, to exaggerate.
Anyway, the Press Club enjoyed reciprocal membership with the ship’s wardroom. Well, I say wardroom but it was more of a wardrobe really, because mine sweepers are quite small.
Anyway, this one day we were enjoying rums all in when the Daily Dispatch was bought out by the Daily Mirror and the first I knew about it was when a messenger arrived at the wardroom door and said, “The news editor said don’t hurry with your copy because the paper has closed down.”
I went white and the skipper said, “Whatever is the matter, Skiddy?”
I said, “They’ve closed my paper. I’m out of work again.”
“Didn’t you know it was going to happen?” he said, and I said, “No. Bolt from the blue.”
“Well, I can only say,” he said, “that if their Lordships of the Admiralty took a ship of mine out of commission without due warning, I should send them a pretty snotty signal.”
And I said, “lf I knew the telephone number of our proprietor, Lord Kemsley, I should give him a piece of my mind.”
“It is Mayfair 2326,” said the Daily Mail man Medlicott, thus showing why we called him Harry Slime or the Turd Man.
“You can use the ship to shore radio,” the skipper said.
Ship to shore? The ship was part of the shore. But when I had swallowed a few more rums it suddenly seemed a good idea. So we all went off to the radio room and the wireless operator connected me with Lord Kemsley.
A distant butler said, “Lord Kemsley’s residence” and I said, “You’ll not know me but like you I used to be in the employ of Lord Kemsley until he sold the paper from under my feet.”
The butler said he was extremely sorry to hear that. His Lordship was not at home at the moment but he would be happy to give him a message.
And did I give him a message? It was a corker and I could tell the butler was enjoying it because he was writing it down.
“Run a newspaper?” I ended. “He couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.”
“Or a bunk up in a brothel,” offered the Express man Les Clare, who was listening.
“May I have the phone?” asked the skipper.
“Certainly,” I said, and I passed it over.
“P.S.,” he said. “That goes for Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
In “Urgent Fury”, as Washington with unintended irony called The Grenada Caper, the Americans showed up with the aircraft carrier Independence and its associated battle group, a veritable armada comprising naval fighter bombers, air force gun ships. a 1,250-man heavily armed Marine amphibious unit with tanks, and two army Ranger battalions.
On day 2, two battalions of the 82nd airborne Division were sent in to help and on day 3 more troops arrived.
The details of the invasion are still classified after six years. “They have got a lot to hide,” said Edward Luttwak at the Centre of Strategic Studies. While Ronald Reagan hailed the invasion as a victory which left Americans “standing tall”, the reality was a fiasco. The tiny island was invaded by 20,000 troops after a bunch of Marxist thugs (about 20) shot the prime minister and seven others.
At one point the Marines, the Rangers and the 82nd Airborne were all planning to attack the same targets at the same time. There was no intelligence from the island and no maps. The war was waged with tourist maps and a British Admiralty chart dated 1895. The primary purpose was to “rescue” 600 American medical students. The military thought they were in one location. The parents knew they were at another. Nobody asked the parents before the fleet sailed.
When the invasion was launched the navy could not talk to the army and the air force could not talk to the Marines because of a communications screw up. A navy observer on shore got in touch with his ship with a call via Washingtonm from a public call box on the island . The army radios ran out of batteries. They got 700 new ones two days after the war ended.
Carrier jets not only bombed a lunatic asylum killing 17 but also an 82nd airborne command post wounding another 17. The myth of a vast Cuban invasion was not only heavily hyped from Washington but in military planning. Three helicopters crashed in an assault by the Rangers on a Cuban camp that turned out to be empty. When the battle dust settled the only Cubans to be found were 43 middle aged and poorly armed construction workers.
At the end of the day the army handed out 9,802 decorations. There were also dozens of Purple Hearts for wounds in action. Behind the Washington cloak of secrecy there is an uneasy suspicion that the invading forces shot more of their own side than the defenders.
END
If you enjoyed that try; http://www.northtrek.co.uk/
Or; http://www.gentlemenranters.com/
Some days before, I had been confessing to a chum, Dr Barry Morgan, Bishop of Bangor in North Wales, who incidentally in moments of stress bakes the most delicious gateaux, that I knew nothing about the subject. Barry Bish the Dish, as he was known locally, said rather unkindly, “That has never worried you in the past.”
I said, “But Dr Williams is on the panel and he has got a brain the size of Cardiff.”
“He is a friend of mine,” said Barry. “Tell him if he is unkind to you it is crosiers at dawn.”
In the event he was kindness itself and the voice of sweet reason. In the light of the present row when he made some harmless suggestions in a debate on law, I am sure his intentions were good. The problem is, of course, that he is far too religious to be Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not saying it is a job for an atheist, but there is no doubt that deep beliefs such as he holds make it awfully difficult to do a job, more the chairman of a fractious liberal party, with all the horrors that implies. Politics rather than faith is called for. However, he will not be the first deep believer to be crucified and in debates of this kind it as well to remember the Daily Telegraph Poll which disclosed that only a minority of Anglicans believe in God.
I was much more worried to read the warnings of scientists that transmitting songs into outer space may attract the anger of unfriendly aliens. Heartening though it is to think that our stellar neighbours have a musical ear, it reminds me of something I have been warning about for years.
The bench marks by which people judge behaviour are many and varied. From the old salt’s “I know what the lads on our ship would say”, memorably recalled in the film “Odd Man Out”, to public school and regimental tradition, even reference to biblical sources or that rather wishy-washy “ not quite the thing” of old colonials.
I have a different test, which involves spacemen landing on a market research mission, with Bristol boards and biros in each of their ten arms, stopping passers by and saying something like this: “We have polluted our planet and we are looking for a new home. Before we decide whether to settle here, would you mind answering a few questions?”
Now, if you are faced with a creature with ten arms, three heads and an eye in the centre of each one of them, the chances are you are not going to push him to one side. So when he asks you where you are going, you are going to hold your hands up and enter a plea of guilty.
“I am going to the pub,” you may say.
“Pub? What is pub?” the three heads will chorus, and you will explain it is a building, either draughty and scruffy or luxurious in a naff sort of way. You will explain how there is a thing called a bar and you all line up on one side whilst a man on the other side serves you drinks.
“Drinks?”
“Liquid made from juniper berries or wheat with sugar and things.”
“It tastes good then?”
“Well no, actually. It is a bitter taste and it furs your tongue. Or you can have spirits and they make you feel slightly sick as they go down.”
“So you don’t drink those… spirits?”
“Well, yes, but you put another liquid in them, so you cannot taste the spirits.”
“But you drink them because they have a nice effect?”
“Well, that is not quite true. They can make you fall over, or you might get in a fight with a stranger, and at the best you say silly things. And then the man behind the counter throws you out because you are behaving badly.”
Now at this point you can tell the three heads are puzzled, because they are looking into each other’s one eye and tapping their foreheads with all ten arms.
“This man behind the counter? He gives you this liquid which he knows will make you fall over and when you do fall over he throws you out? Is that entirely fair?”
“Well, no, but anyway he doesn’t give it to you. He sells it to you for money.”
“What is…?”
“Money is bits of paper or round things made of metal and the man behind the counter puts them all in a thing we call a till where a bell rings when money is put in it.”
One of the heads which is quicker on the uptake than the other two says, “I see”. And he explains to the other two heads that this thing called money is a sort of punishment token and is given to people who have misbehaved and they have to take it to this punishment place called a pub where the man behind the counter keeps it to show they have been punished.
And you don’t like to interrupt but you have to put them right.
“You don’t quite understand,” you say. “These are not punishment tokens: they are rewards, and to earn them we have to work.”
“Work?”
“Oh, some people go hundreds of feet down a hole in the ground every day and dig out fossilised trees. It’s very dark down there and filled with a dust which in the end kills you. That is if the roof doesn’t fall in.”
“And what do you do with this fossilised wood you have worked so hard to find?”
“We burn it.”
At which point all three heads and ten arms make a rush for the spaceship crying, “Which way is Uranus?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
When the world was young and I could still keep up with it, I worked in Liverpool for the Daily Dispatch, though I spent most of my time bumming drinks in the Liverpool Press Club.
Sometimes, when we got bored with the club, we would go down to the docks where there was this mine sweeper which never seemed to go to sea. The Daily Herald man “Dicko”, one of our group otherwise known as “Zum Zum” because that was the noise he made when he reached the stage of inebriation where conversation is easy but pronunciation difficult, reckoned it was welded to the Dock Wall. But he did have a tendency, when not zum-zumming, to exaggerate.
Anyway, the Press Club enjoyed reciprocal membership with the ship’s wardroom. Well, I say wardroom but it was more of a wardrobe really, because mine sweepers are quite small.
Anyway, this one day we were enjoying rums all in when the Daily Dispatch was bought out by the Daily Mirror and the first I knew about it was when a messenger arrived at the wardroom door and said, “The news editor said don’t hurry with your copy because the paper has closed down.”
I went white and the skipper said, “Whatever is the matter, Skiddy?”
I said, “They’ve closed my paper. I’m out of work again.”
“Didn’t you know it was going to happen?” he said, and I said, “No. Bolt from the blue.”
“Well, I can only say,” he said, “that if their Lordships of the Admiralty took a ship of mine out of commission without due warning, I should send them a pretty snotty signal.”
And I said, “lf I knew the telephone number of our proprietor, Lord Kemsley, I should give him a piece of my mind.”
“It is Mayfair 2326,” said the Daily Mail man Medlicott, thus showing why we called him Harry Slime or the Turd Man.
“You can use the ship to shore radio,” the skipper said.
Ship to shore? The ship was part of the shore. But when I had swallowed a few more rums it suddenly seemed a good idea. So we all went off to the radio room and the wireless operator connected me with Lord Kemsley.
A distant butler said, “Lord Kemsley’s residence” and I said, “You’ll not know me but like you I used to be in the employ of Lord Kemsley until he sold the paper from under my feet.”
The butler said he was extremely sorry to hear that. His Lordship was not at home at the moment but he would be happy to give him a message.
And did I give him a message? It was a corker and I could tell the butler was enjoying it because he was writing it down.
“Run a newspaper?” I ended. “He couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.”
“Or a bunk up in a brothel,” offered the Express man Les Clare, who was listening.
“May I have the phone?” asked the skipper.
“Certainly,” I said, and I passed it over.
“P.S.,” he said. “That goes for Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
In “Urgent Fury”, as Washington with unintended irony called The Grenada Caper, the Americans showed up with the aircraft carrier Independence and its associated battle group, a veritable armada comprising naval fighter bombers, air force gun ships. a 1,250-man heavily armed Marine amphibious unit with tanks, and two army Ranger battalions.
On day 2, two battalions of the 82nd airborne Division were sent in to help and on day 3 more troops arrived.
The details of the invasion are still classified after six years. “They have got a lot to hide,” said Edward Luttwak at the Centre of Strategic Studies. While Ronald Reagan hailed the invasion as a victory which left Americans “standing tall”, the reality was a fiasco. The tiny island was invaded by 20,000 troops after a bunch of Marxist thugs (about 20) shot the prime minister and seven others.
At one point the Marines, the Rangers and the 82nd Airborne were all planning to attack the same targets at the same time. There was no intelligence from the island and no maps. The war was waged with tourist maps and a British Admiralty chart dated 1895. The primary purpose was to “rescue” 600 American medical students. The military thought they were in one location. The parents knew they were at another. Nobody asked the parents before the fleet sailed.
When the invasion was launched the navy could not talk to the army and the air force could not talk to the Marines because of a communications screw up. A navy observer on shore got in touch with his ship with a call via Washingtonm from a public call box on the island . The army radios ran out of batteries. They got 700 new ones two days after the war ended.
Carrier jets not only bombed a lunatic asylum killing 17 but also an 82nd airborne command post wounding another 17. The myth of a vast Cuban invasion was not only heavily hyped from Washington but in military planning. Three helicopters crashed in an assault by the Rangers on a Cuban camp that turned out to be empty. When the battle dust settled the only Cubans to be found were 43 middle aged and poorly armed construction workers.
At the end of the day the army handed out 9,802 decorations. There were also dozens of Purple Hearts for wounds in action. Behind the Washington cloak of secrecy there is an uneasy suspicion that the invading forces shot more of their own side than the defenders.
END
If you enjoyed that try; http://www.northtrek.co.uk/
Or; http://www.gentlemenranters.com/
Saturday, 2 February 2008
A Brush with fame
When I told her that an Art Club wanted to paint me, the Head Ferret said “I hope you are not going to take your clothes off” and I said “It is not that sort of modelling. They are a very respectable group of portrait painters who meet every week and they think I have an interesting face.”
“It is not your face that worries me,” said the Ferret unkindly. “The secretary of the group is Lady President of my Golf Club. Not only that,” continued the Ferret, anxious to show me how serious she was, “she has recently lowered her handicap.
I do not want you lowering the tone by immodest display.”
For once the Ferret was worrying unnecessarily, though I do make a practice of not taking her seriously.
In most things in life I follow the example set by Dean Martin. Urged by Sinatra to be serious, he said he had tried being serious and all he could get was construction work. ”Do you want a hernia at $3.50 an hour?” he asked.
Although, like Martin, I avoid being serious, standing as we are in the deepening twilight of Armageddon, it is time to look at the cultural hysteria which pervades our society. Art Schools which despise drawing and painting; efforts to ban the teaching of history; self regarding authors who are much bought and little read; nations bound together by an indissoluble hysteria, the Diana syndrome.
It was not always so. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance artists were tradesmen who put in tenders and the only art permitted was representation of religious subjects. Any landscapes were purely incidental background. Painters ground or brewed their own paints. It was only very gradually that the landscapes grew until they covered the whole canvas.
Each generation learned from the last and added something to the body of knowledge. As the Welsh artist Sir Kyffin Williams said, they were building a mansion room by room. (Which gives me the opportunity to tell you can get the biography I have written about him “A Figure in a Welsh Landscape” on Amazon any time now.)
In time the notion that art was something special grew. Artists were classed with poets and musicians. The discovery of the spectrum in the porcelain industry, the camera, squeezable paint, the prints and watercolours of the East all added to this body of learning and skill.
Then along came Picasso, the worst thing that has happened to art. He was a genius who mastered art in all its forms and traditions and then threw them aside. He could, and indeed did, make a work of art out of a saddle and handlebars. Because it looked easy he had imitators.
The next enemy was a man called Coldstream. In the 40s and 50s he ruled the world of art in Britain. He was a prey to American culture and sent a very fine colourist Ray Howard Jones and her boyfriend, another Ray, to study methods in American Art schools.
Years later Ray Howard Jones told me they discovered that in America drawing was no longer taught, tradition was despised and free expression was the aim. That was imported by Coldstream and his cohorts and the destruction of representational art followed as their pupils became teachers and curators.
Advertising guru Charles Saatchi has continued the debasement. He picks unknown artists fresh from college, buys their work cheaply and in bulk, publicises them, arranges exhibitions, and then when their prices soar sells their work.
All this dyspeptic ranting was brought upon by reading a quote from Damien Hirst: “I remember a time, and it was not all that long ago, when I could not give my paintings away.”
The Good Old Days?
*******************************************
My great chum Masha (Lady Williams) was an obvious choice for interview in “Times Remembered”, the R4 series I was offered.
She was a genuine Russian Princess, the widow of a titled diplomat. Her family had been forced to flee Russia when the revolution broke out and landed up penniless in London. They used jam jars as cups and orange boxes as furniture.
Things were so bad that her mother ordered her father to get a job.
“A job?” he said. “But I cannot do anything.”
She said, “You could be a servant. We had four hundred serfs, you must have some idea what they did.” He said the only one he had come into contact with was his butler.
“Very well,” said Masha’s mother, and they looked down the adverts for a “butler wanted”.
Beautifully attired, the Prince presented himself at the house which had advertised its need. Naturally, he went to the front door, having no idea there were such things as side doors for tradesmen. The maid who opened the door thought he was a luncheon guest and showed him into the drawing room.
As other guests arrived, he assumed they were also after the job but he chatted amiably to them and was doubly courteous to his host and hostess.
“I do like your Russian friend,” the host told his wife.
“MY Russian friend?” she said. “He is not my friend. I thought he was yours. “
Unobtrusively the host drew the Prince on one side and questioned him. The Prince said he had come about the job as butler.
“Butler?” said the host. “I couldn’t employ you. I would be waiting on you.”
He did a great deal more. He gave the Prince an allowance and paid for the education of the young princesses.
Masha’s London house was on the edge of Hampstead Heath. We sat before a roaring log fire on an autumn afternoon in her L-shaped drawing room, with the producer and recording engineer out of sight in the angle of the L.
Masha had a lovely voice, lightly accented and musical. The room was very hot and I was resting in a winged armed chair, accompanied, as always, by a hangover. It all acted on me like Mogadon and I slept soundly during the entire interview. Not a question or a response of any kind. I woke in the silence at the end of the interview.
Masha hadn’t noticed; the producer had been so carried away she hadn’t noticed and engineers don’t notice anything as long as someone is talking.
So I resolved the keep stumm and wait for the wrath of the Radio 4 Mighty to break over my head. I thought it was the end of my broadcasting career. In the event, it was the best thing I ever did. The BBC was inundated with calls of congratulation from listeners for its brilliance in finding an interviewer who didn‘t interrupt.
I think of Masha every morning as I listen to “Today” and the poor souls who are being interviewed by James Naughtie Of The Interminable Question, trying desperately to get a word in.
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
In a story from the Derry Journal, I learned of a Northern Ireland bank official who decided on a spot check on a branch office in the Inishowen area. He found the door locked even though it was half an hour before closing time.
Letting himself in with a pass key, he spotted four members of staff playing cards in a back room and, determined to give them a shock, he rang the burglar alarm.
Immediately, the bar tender from across the street arrived with four bottles of Guinness,
“It is not your face that worries me,” said the Ferret unkindly. “The secretary of the group is Lady President of my Golf Club. Not only that,” continued the Ferret, anxious to show me how serious she was, “she has recently lowered her handicap.
I do not want you lowering the tone by immodest display.”
For once the Ferret was worrying unnecessarily, though I do make a practice of not taking her seriously.
In most things in life I follow the example set by Dean Martin. Urged by Sinatra to be serious, he said he had tried being serious and all he could get was construction work. ”Do you want a hernia at $3.50 an hour?” he asked.
Although, like Martin, I avoid being serious, standing as we are in the deepening twilight of Armageddon, it is time to look at the cultural hysteria which pervades our society. Art Schools which despise drawing and painting; efforts to ban the teaching of history; self regarding authors who are much bought and little read; nations bound together by an indissoluble hysteria, the Diana syndrome.
It was not always so. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance artists were tradesmen who put in tenders and the only art permitted was representation of religious subjects. Any landscapes were purely incidental background. Painters ground or brewed their own paints. It was only very gradually that the landscapes grew until they covered the whole canvas.
Each generation learned from the last and added something to the body of knowledge. As the Welsh artist Sir Kyffin Williams said, they were building a mansion room by room. (Which gives me the opportunity to tell you can get the biography I have written about him “A Figure in a Welsh Landscape” on Amazon any time now.)
In time the notion that art was something special grew. Artists were classed with poets and musicians. The discovery of the spectrum in the porcelain industry, the camera, squeezable paint, the prints and watercolours of the East all added to this body of learning and skill.
Then along came Picasso, the worst thing that has happened to art. He was a genius who mastered art in all its forms and traditions and then threw them aside. He could, and indeed did, make a work of art out of a saddle and handlebars. Because it looked easy he had imitators.
The next enemy was a man called Coldstream. In the 40s and 50s he ruled the world of art in Britain. He was a prey to American culture and sent a very fine colourist Ray Howard Jones and her boyfriend, another Ray, to study methods in American Art schools.
Years later Ray Howard Jones told me they discovered that in America drawing was no longer taught, tradition was despised and free expression was the aim. That was imported by Coldstream and his cohorts and the destruction of representational art followed as their pupils became teachers and curators.
Advertising guru Charles Saatchi has continued the debasement. He picks unknown artists fresh from college, buys their work cheaply and in bulk, publicises them, arranges exhibitions, and then when their prices soar sells their work.
All this dyspeptic ranting was brought upon by reading a quote from Damien Hirst: “I remember a time, and it was not all that long ago, when I could not give my paintings away.”
The Good Old Days?
*******************************************
My great chum Masha (Lady Williams) was an obvious choice for interview in “Times Remembered”, the R4 series I was offered.
She was a genuine Russian Princess, the widow of a titled diplomat. Her family had been forced to flee Russia when the revolution broke out and landed up penniless in London. They used jam jars as cups and orange boxes as furniture.
Things were so bad that her mother ordered her father to get a job.
“A job?” he said. “But I cannot do anything.”
She said, “You could be a servant. We had four hundred serfs, you must have some idea what they did.” He said the only one he had come into contact with was his butler.
“Very well,” said Masha’s mother, and they looked down the adverts for a “butler wanted”.
Beautifully attired, the Prince presented himself at the house which had advertised its need. Naturally, he went to the front door, having no idea there were such things as side doors for tradesmen. The maid who opened the door thought he was a luncheon guest and showed him into the drawing room.
As other guests arrived, he assumed they were also after the job but he chatted amiably to them and was doubly courteous to his host and hostess.
“I do like your Russian friend,” the host told his wife.
“MY Russian friend?” she said. “He is not my friend. I thought he was yours. “
Unobtrusively the host drew the Prince on one side and questioned him. The Prince said he had come about the job as butler.
“Butler?” said the host. “I couldn’t employ you. I would be waiting on you.”
He did a great deal more. He gave the Prince an allowance and paid for the education of the young princesses.
Masha’s London house was on the edge of Hampstead Heath. We sat before a roaring log fire on an autumn afternoon in her L-shaped drawing room, with the producer and recording engineer out of sight in the angle of the L.
Masha had a lovely voice, lightly accented and musical. The room was very hot and I was resting in a winged armed chair, accompanied, as always, by a hangover. It all acted on me like Mogadon and I slept soundly during the entire interview. Not a question or a response of any kind. I woke in the silence at the end of the interview.
Masha hadn’t noticed; the producer had been so carried away she hadn’t noticed and engineers don’t notice anything as long as someone is talking.
So I resolved the keep stumm and wait for the wrath of the Radio 4 Mighty to break over my head. I thought it was the end of my broadcasting career. In the event, it was the best thing I ever did. The BBC was inundated with calls of congratulation from listeners for its brilliance in finding an interviewer who didn‘t interrupt.
I think of Masha every morning as I listen to “Today” and the poor souls who are being interviewed by James Naughtie Of The Interminable Question, trying desperately to get a word in.
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
In a story from the Derry Journal, I learned of a Northern Ireland bank official who decided on a spot check on a branch office in the Inishowen area. He found the door locked even though it was half an hour before closing time.
Letting himself in with a pass key, he spotted four members of staff playing cards in a back room and, determined to give them a shock, he rang the burglar alarm.
Immediately, the bar tender from across the street arrived with four bottles of Guinness,
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Ph Dunces
A small group of brainy young Ph Ds sit in the heart of every bank developing its strategy. The size of their bonuses is dictated by the amount of money they make. One group decided to make money by lending money to poor Americans, canvassed by salesmen whose salary depended on how many clients they brought it. Although they must have known their clients would be unable to repay, they bundled up the worthless mortgages into bonds and sold them to Pension Funds and other banks. Another small group of brainy Ph Ds tucked them away without first examining them. Yet another brainy youth lost his bank billions without anyone noticing. That is the reason why the world is in recession.
Among the hardest hit are another group of brilliant young men who emerged forty or so years ago. They were called asset strippers. They bought flourishing companies and some that were less so, sold their assets, threw out their workers and closed down their factories. The financial community treated them with contempt.
They are still with us, but have become very respectable. Despite the fact that they buy up companies about which they know nothing, with money they haven’t got, and have to borrow from banks which now refuse to lend it because they do not trust each other. In a world where trust is an essential ingredient and cannot function without it.
I know so little about mathematics that, having spent all my life on a monthly income, I have been unable to work out how much I earn a week. Even so, given those facts, I think I might have worked out the result. It is not surprising that a mere recital of the causes of the credit crisis gave the satirists Bird and Fortune material for one of their funniest routines,
Perhaps that Incomparable Duo should look at another of the unreliable planks on which we walk unsteadily across the chasm of existence: Time.
Time is a majority verdict. If a thousand clocks said half past three, it would be a bold watch which insisted it was 4 pm. Different parts of our country used to have different times. It was the coming of the railway which united them. Stations are long gone from many communities, but the tyranny of time remains. At its most extreme, shops in Corwen, North Wales, close for lunch an hour early to accommodate the arrival of a train which no longer runs to a station eliminated by Dr Beeching.
Corwen is a town still obsessed with its railway, which now awaits the arrival of the private railway from Llangollen which is recovering the old track. In the graveyard is an epitaph to Owen Owen, a driver who died at 29. It reads:
“His life is over
Death has put on the brake,
His soul has been signalled
Its long journey to make.
When death sounds his whistle
The steam of life fails
And his mortal clay shunted
Till the Last Judgement calls.”
Time is a notional notation. If we travel aboard we quite often arrive before we have left Britain. Doesn’t bother us, but we suffer early darkness for the benefit of a minority of Highland crofters whose preference for light mornings rules us all.
One would have thought that with devolved government might go devolved time keeping. I passionately believe that Scotland should misrule itself in the way the Scots have misruled Britain in recent years and I am happy for them to start the morning in a blaze of sunlight.
My old man reckoned his greatest moment came during the siege of Erskine Street, in Manchester, where a desperate gang of IRA terrorists were trapped in a bedroom, armed with more guns than were passed round at the Alamo.
Whilst his inspector paused, wondering what to do without causing casualties, my old man charged up the stairs firing so wildly that his inspector called out, “Get that bloody gun off Skidmore before he kills us all.”
The IRA gang surrendered to a man, but not before my father was shot in his head. In later years he became convinced it was his inspector who shot him out of self interest.
The IRA men got life but, in the way things are, they were shortly afterwards paroled and went on to a life of luxury. When I came out of the army my old man took me to Eire, where there was no rationing, to buy me a suit of clothes.
In Mooney’s bar in Dublin he reminisced about Erskine Street and the man called Shaugnessy who shot him. He asked the barman what became of him. “As rich as Guinness himself,” the barman said. “He manages the dog track at Phoenix Park.”
At the park we asked for Mr Shaughnessy and the girl behind the office counter asked, “Who shall I say wants him?”
“Tell him it’s the man he shot in the head,“ said my old man.
Minutes later, a man the size of a Connemara Cliff burst into the office and grabbed my old man warmly by both hands. “There was nothing personal,” he said. “It was political and no offence meant.”
“And none taken,“ said my old man magnanimously. “Anyway, it was my inspector that did it.”
After a few moments of surreal conversation, Shaughnessy took my father’s race card and marked a dog in every race. I backed them all and they all obliged - until the one in the last race which went down spectacularly with my evening’s winnings.
My old man, who had not bet on a single dog, had a terrific evening being smug. As we trudged out of the stadium, he said, “I knew that would happen. The last time I met yon bastard he shot me in the heed.”
ends
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
“PERFUMED COFFIN STOLEN”
“Thieves stole a coffin at Kiberia Legio Maria Church last Saturdy while mourners were in the church praying.
The incident occurred at Kamera Labu Sama in Nairobi. Followers went berserk when they learned the coffin had been stolen as they prayed.
Pastor Peter Iama said the coffin, which had cost Shs 3,000, contained perfume worth Shs 1,700.
He said: ‘We decided to keep the coffin by the door while we all went in for special prayers. I sent one of our followers to get help in bringing the coffin in but it had already been stolen.’”
Among the hardest hit are another group of brilliant young men who emerged forty or so years ago. They were called asset strippers. They bought flourishing companies and some that were less so, sold their assets, threw out their workers and closed down their factories. The financial community treated them with contempt.
They are still with us, but have become very respectable. Despite the fact that they buy up companies about which they know nothing, with money they haven’t got, and have to borrow from banks which now refuse to lend it because they do not trust each other. In a world where trust is an essential ingredient and cannot function without it.
I know so little about mathematics that, having spent all my life on a monthly income, I have been unable to work out how much I earn a week. Even so, given those facts, I think I might have worked out the result. It is not surprising that a mere recital of the causes of the credit crisis gave the satirists Bird and Fortune material for one of their funniest routines,
Perhaps that Incomparable Duo should look at another of the unreliable planks on which we walk unsteadily across the chasm of existence: Time.
Time is a majority verdict. If a thousand clocks said half past three, it would be a bold watch which insisted it was 4 pm. Different parts of our country used to have different times. It was the coming of the railway which united them. Stations are long gone from many communities, but the tyranny of time remains. At its most extreme, shops in Corwen, North Wales, close for lunch an hour early to accommodate the arrival of a train which no longer runs to a station eliminated by Dr Beeching.
Corwen is a town still obsessed with its railway, which now awaits the arrival of the private railway from Llangollen which is recovering the old track. In the graveyard is an epitaph to Owen Owen, a driver who died at 29. It reads:
“His life is over
Death has put on the brake,
His soul has been signalled
Its long journey to make.
When death sounds his whistle
The steam of life fails
And his mortal clay shunted
Till the Last Judgement calls.”
Time is a notional notation. If we travel aboard we quite often arrive before we have left Britain. Doesn’t bother us, but we suffer early darkness for the benefit of a minority of Highland crofters whose preference for light mornings rules us all.
One would have thought that with devolved government might go devolved time keeping. I passionately believe that Scotland should misrule itself in the way the Scots have misruled Britain in recent years and I am happy for them to start the morning in a blaze of sunlight.
My old man reckoned his greatest moment came during the siege of Erskine Street, in Manchester, where a desperate gang of IRA terrorists were trapped in a bedroom, armed with more guns than were passed round at the Alamo.
Whilst his inspector paused, wondering what to do without causing casualties, my old man charged up the stairs firing so wildly that his inspector called out, “Get that bloody gun off Skidmore before he kills us all.”
The IRA gang surrendered to a man, but not before my father was shot in his head. In later years he became convinced it was his inspector who shot him out of self interest.
The IRA men got life but, in the way things are, they were shortly afterwards paroled and went on to a life of luxury. When I came out of the army my old man took me to Eire, where there was no rationing, to buy me a suit of clothes.
In Mooney’s bar in Dublin he reminisced about Erskine Street and the man called Shaugnessy who shot him. He asked the barman what became of him. “As rich as Guinness himself,” the barman said. “He manages the dog track at Phoenix Park.”
At the park we asked for Mr Shaughnessy and the girl behind the office counter asked, “Who shall I say wants him?”
“Tell him it’s the man he shot in the head,“ said my old man.
Minutes later, a man the size of a Connemara Cliff burst into the office and grabbed my old man warmly by both hands. “There was nothing personal,” he said. “It was political and no offence meant.”
“And none taken,“ said my old man magnanimously. “Anyway, it was my inspector that did it.”
After a few moments of surreal conversation, Shaughnessy took my father’s race card and marked a dog in every race. I backed them all and they all obliged - until the one in the last race which went down spectacularly with my evening’s winnings.
My old man, who had not bet on a single dog, had a terrific evening being smug. As we trudged out of the stadium, he said, “I knew that would happen. The last time I met yon bastard he shot me in the heed.”
ends
FROM MY DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
“PERFUMED COFFIN STOLEN”
“Thieves stole a coffin at Kiberia Legio Maria Church last Saturdy while mourners were in the church praying.
The incident occurred at Kamera Labu Sama in Nairobi. Followers went berserk when they learned the coffin had been stolen as they prayed.
Pastor Peter Iama said the coffin, which had cost Shs 3,000, contained perfume worth Shs 1,700.
He said: ‘We decided to keep the coffin by the door while we all went in for special prayers. I sent one of our followers to get help in bringing the coffin in but it had already been stolen.’”
Saturday, 19 January 2008
For F……….’s Sake
Words are important to a writer in precisely the way screws and nails are vital ingredients in the vocabulary of a carpenter. So it follows that I am distressed at efforts to make certain assemblies of innocent letters illegal.
We must not describe what, to many, is unnatural behaviour in brief and vivid words. Equerry is permissible; queer, which is little different, isn’t. Three letters permit its entry into polite society.
At times like this we must remember that we are ruled by an Establishment made for the pen of Dean Swift. With not a trace of humour, our extraordinary Home Secretary has put an end to terrorism. Now, she has ruled, we must call it Anti-Islamic Activity. You can sense the chill that must bring to the hearts of Mad Mullahs everywhere. But I suppose if you cannot govern a country, you can comfort yourself that you are a Canute of the waves of words.
Personally I am offended by obscenities in plays and on radio and TV. Irrational, I know. Copulation in its daily dress describes moments of deep love and heightened sensitivity. More than that, it provides vernacular architecture for people with limited vocabulary.
I had a friend who ascribed to the limited vocabulary of the young the breakdown of so many marriages. On the grounds that once a young swain has said, “Do you come here often?” the only other expression of devotion his vocabulary permits is, “Will you marry me?” A compliment rather than a commitment.
In the workplace, the news room or the barrack room the copulatory verb is probably used more often than “the”. I used to wonder why that was, until I realised what a portmanteau of a word it is. A chameleon, too. The addition of three letters, another verbal trinity, turns it into a noun or an adjective. It can express the extreme of surprise, delight, or revulsion. Preceding a command or any one of a thousand responses it acts like a flourish of trumpets.
I swear in order to add colour to a sentence. Yet I am offended by the use of bad language in newspapers or in the presence of women, even though my wife gave up football because of the foul language of the other lady players.
When I met her, the only swear word my convent-reared wife used was “Horrors” or in extreme cases “Multiple Horrors”. Why not make that assembly of letters illegal?
Wise old Montaigne wondered why when he sneezed people said, ”God Bless you” yet if he expelled air from another part of his body he was shunned. Why should words which describe procreation and pleasure be taboo? Yet massacre and genocide be on everyone’s lips?
Nothing about our government suggests that words are suppressed out of sensitivity. There is no benevolence in the 3,000 or more new laws which have appeared on the Statute Book under New Labour. But they do show in the clearest possible terms that we must do as we are told.
Our freedom, which for centuries defined us as British citizens, is no longer fit for purpose. Restrictions on gun ownership, imposed in the hysteria which followed Dunblane, had no effect on gun crime. Rather the opposite. The “dangerous dogs” laws, which sprang from hysteria following several savagings, have not affected dog behaviour. Hunting was never as popular as it became after the recent legislation.
At one level this restricton of freedom is irritating, but at another it is profoundly worrying. Like the legislation which prohibits smoking and driving on the grounds that if you smoke and drive there is a remote chance of your having an accident. You could, of course, ban the act of driving on the same premise. They are all instruments of control and encourage a mindset which accepts restriction of liberty.
Age has produced in me an increasing tendency to break wind. An American magazine bluntly advertised “Fartypants”, which contain an absorbent charcoal pad.
I hastened to order two pairs. Hearing of it, my friend Geoff Mather, former features editor of the Daily Express, sent this:
” I was told by friends from Mexico that there is a creature known as a garrapata which has an inlet and no outlet. It blows up, they said. Be that as it may, here is a curious explanation of the garrapata, translated from the Spanish:
‘The garrapatas often are in the high grass, where they hope in the end of a leaf to try to enlist to any animal or person that happens. A very common false idea is to think that the garrapata is able to jump off the plant to the guest, but the only method of transmission is the physical contact. The garrapata is ended up loosen of the animal when it fills, but this can take several days. In their mouth, the garrapatas have a structure that allows them to enlist firmly to the place of which they are absorbing blood. To throw off a garrapata to the force can often make that parts of the garrapata are given off and they remain in the mordedura, whole the apparatus buccal, which can produce infection. Between the methods to extract the garrapata without leaving within the skin the head or the mouth, they are for example anestesiar to the garrapata with a substance like the ether.’”
Another friend, John Julius Norwich, produces an anthology every Christmas and I thought this explanation might merit a place. Almost by return, the Earl produced the following gem:
“Though I myself am no mean farter
I'm glad I'm not a garrapata;
As for my apparatus buccal,
It seems a trifle near the knuckle -
And though my movements can't be purer,
I think I'll stick to the mordedura.”
………………………………………………………….
In his delicious “Brief Lives”, John Aubrey recalls the unfortunate Earl of Oxford who was so nervous at being presented to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth that, as he performed his bow, he broke wind. Aubrey says the Earl was so embarrassed he immediately left court and exiled himself abroad.
Years later he returned and once more was presented to Her Majesty. “Ah ,Oxford,” she called out when he entered the Presence Chamber, “we have quite forgot the fart.”
Acker Bilk’s brother David told me of a time when he and his brother were playing in the band at a Hunt Ball. As they queued for supper, David broke wind. “Mr Bilk,” roared the Master, “are you aware that your brother has broken wind before my wife?” “Oh well,” said Acker, “I don’t suppose ‘e knew it were her turn.”
And I cannot resist the story of the young couple who were out riding one day when the man’s horse broke wind. He apologised profusely. “Please do not worry,” said the girl, “I thought it was the horse.”
And that, I am sure, concludes a case for the prosecution.
DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
From Peterborough, Daily Telegraph:
“More humorous animal names have been sent to me. This time a tale of two cats called Castor and Pollux. They belonged to an astronomer who late at night, I am told, found himself unable to call the latter’s name in a deserted suburban street.
“My favourite of the last batch of cats’ names came from a lady in Norwich whose daughter had named her cat Ceremony. Whenever visitors arrived, she warned them not to stand on it.
“A reader in Surrey also tells me of a neighbour who bought a pair of Siamese kittens – one of which was excessively greedy and other addicted to long periods of sleep. They were christened Chew and Lie.”
………………………………………………………………
P.S. Since I may well find myself in durance vile for this blog, why not try for a really good read, Mather’s blog: www.northtrek.co.uk?
We must not describe what, to many, is unnatural behaviour in brief and vivid words. Equerry is permissible; queer, which is little different, isn’t. Three letters permit its entry into polite society.
At times like this we must remember that we are ruled by an Establishment made for the pen of Dean Swift. With not a trace of humour, our extraordinary Home Secretary has put an end to terrorism. Now, she has ruled, we must call it Anti-Islamic Activity. You can sense the chill that must bring to the hearts of Mad Mullahs everywhere. But I suppose if you cannot govern a country, you can comfort yourself that you are a Canute of the waves of words.
Personally I am offended by obscenities in plays and on radio and TV. Irrational, I know. Copulation in its daily dress describes moments of deep love and heightened sensitivity. More than that, it provides vernacular architecture for people with limited vocabulary.
I had a friend who ascribed to the limited vocabulary of the young the breakdown of so many marriages. On the grounds that once a young swain has said, “Do you come here often?” the only other expression of devotion his vocabulary permits is, “Will you marry me?” A compliment rather than a commitment.
In the workplace, the news room or the barrack room the copulatory verb is probably used more often than “the”. I used to wonder why that was, until I realised what a portmanteau of a word it is. A chameleon, too. The addition of three letters, another verbal trinity, turns it into a noun or an adjective. It can express the extreme of surprise, delight, or revulsion. Preceding a command or any one of a thousand responses it acts like a flourish of trumpets.
I swear in order to add colour to a sentence. Yet I am offended by the use of bad language in newspapers or in the presence of women, even though my wife gave up football because of the foul language of the other lady players.
When I met her, the only swear word my convent-reared wife used was “Horrors” or in extreme cases “Multiple Horrors”. Why not make that assembly of letters illegal?
Wise old Montaigne wondered why when he sneezed people said, ”God Bless you” yet if he expelled air from another part of his body he was shunned. Why should words which describe procreation and pleasure be taboo? Yet massacre and genocide be on everyone’s lips?
Nothing about our government suggests that words are suppressed out of sensitivity. There is no benevolence in the 3,000 or more new laws which have appeared on the Statute Book under New Labour. But they do show in the clearest possible terms that we must do as we are told.
Our freedom, which for centuries defined us as British citizens, is no longer fit for purpose. Restrictions on gun ownership, imposed in the hysteria which followed Dunblane, had no effect on gun crime. Rather the opposite. The “dangerous dogs” laws, which sprang from hysteria following several savagings, have not affected dog behaviour. Hunting was never as popular as it became after the recent legislation.
At one level this restricton of freedom is irritating, but at another it is profoundly worrying. Like the legislation which prohibits smoking and driving on the grounds that if you smoke and drive there is a remote chance of your having an accident. You could, of course, ban the act of driving on the same premise. They are all instruments of control and encourage a mindset which accepts restriction of liberty.
Age has produced in me an increasing tendency to break wind. An American magazine bluntly advertised “Fartypants”, which contain an absorbent charcoal pad.
I hastened to order two pairs. Hearing of it, my friend Geoff Mather, former features editor of the Daily Express, sent this:
” I was told by friends from Mexico that there is a creature known as a garrapata which has an inlet and no outlet. It blows up, they said. Be that as it may, here is a curious explanation of the garrapata, translated from the Spanish:
‘The garrapatas often are in the high grass, where they hope in the end of a leaf to try to enlist to any animal or person that happens. A very common false idea is to think that the garrapata is able to jump off the plant to the guest, but the only method of transmission is the physical contact. The garrapata is ended up loosen of the animal when it fills, but this can take several days. In their mouth, the garrapatas have a structure that allows them to enlist firmly to the place of which they are absorbing blood. To throw off a garrapata to the force can often make that parts of the garrapata are given off and they remain in the mordedura, whole the apparatus buccal, which can produce infection. Between the methods to extract the garrapata without leaving within the skin the head or the mouth, they are for example anestesiar to the garrapata with a substance like the ether.’”
Another friend, John Julius Norwich, produces an anthology every Christmas and I thought this explanation might merit a place. Almost by return, the Earl produced the following gem:
“Though I myself am no mean farter
I'm glad I'm not a garrapata;
As for my apparatus buccal,
It seems a trifle near the knuckle -
And though my movements can't be purer,
I think I'll stick to the mordedura.”
………………………………………………………….
In his delicious “Brief Lives”, John Aubrey recalls the unfortunate Earl of Oxford who was so nervous at being presented to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth that, as he performed his bow, he broke wind. Aubrey says the Earl was so embarrassed he immediately left court and exiled himself abroad.
Years later he returned and once more was presented to Her Majesty. “Ah ,Oxford,” she called out when he entered the Presence Chamber, “we have quite forgot the fart.”
Acker Bilk’s brother David told me of a time when he and his brother were playing in the band at a Hunt Ball. As they queued for supper, David broke wind. “Mr Bilk,” roared the Master, “are you aware that your brother has broken wind before my wife?” “Oh well,” said Acker, “I don’t suppose ‘e knew it were her turn.”
And I cannot resist the story of the young couple who were out riding one day when the man’s horse broke wind. He apologised profusely. “Please do not worry,” said the girl, “I thought it was the horse.”
And that, I am sure, concludes a case for the prosecution.
DANGEROUS CUTTINGS BOOK
From Peterborough, Daily Telegraph:
“More humorous animal names have been sent to me. This time a tale of two cats called Castor and Pollux. They belonged to an astronomer who late at night, I am told, found himself unable to call the latter’s name in a deserted suburban street.
“My favourite of the last batch of cats’ names came from a lady in Norwich whose daughter had named her cat Ceremony. Whenever visitors arrived, she warned them not to stand on it.
“A reader in Surrey also tells me of a neighbour who bought a pair of Siamese kittens – one of which was excessively greedy and other addicted to long periods of sleep. They were christened Chew and Lie.”
………………………………………………………………
P.S. Since I may well find myself in durance vile for this blog, why not try for a really good read, Mather’s blog: www.northtrek.co.uk?
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