The Isle of Eigg has a lot going for it. One of the most beautiful Hebridean Islands, 10 miles off the Scottish west coast, south of the Isle of Skye,the island has superb wildlife and birdlife and a temperate maritime climate.
Even better, its 87 inhabitants are sharing out a million pound win. A reward/bribe for being green. The £1m goes in the kitty with £300,000 won in January for its revolutionary electrification project, which generates 24 hour power. The system incorporates a 9.9 kW PV system, three hydro generation systems (totalling 112 kW) and a 24 kW wind farm. It is supported by diesel generators and batteries. The combination of solar, wind and hydro power should provide a network that is self sufficient and powered 98% from renewable sources.
The island's website boasted: "We were entirely dependent upon making our own power and the clattering of generators was always to be heard. Now, the generators are silent and suddenly we have leapt to the forefront of electricity generation."
Sad, really, that this week the islanders have been told "Put that light out! Go easy with the toaster and put away the electric iron." Once more the voice of the generator is heard in the land.
Electricity began being rationed in June after 3 days of mild weather caused supply to fall short of demand. Goodness knows what they will do if global warming happens.
Mind you, there is still money to be made from wind turbines, most of it by rich landowners who will earn millions exploiting the lucrative system of subsidies for generating renewable energy.
The richest Scottish Peer, the Duke of Roxburghe, plans a 48-turbine scheme on his Scottish estate which will "generate" an estimated £30m a year, shared with developers. About £17m of this would come from subsidies from consumers. The firm which will erect the turbines said: “We will build and operate the wind farm and the landowners will receive an annual payment.” He is seeking planning permission for 48 turbines on his grouse moor at Fallago Rig in the Lammermuir Hills in Roxburghshire, again in the face of strong local opposition.
Others seeking to capitalise on the new wind rush include the Duke of Beaufort, Sir Reginald Sheffield, father of Samantha Cameron, and Michael Ancram, the Tory grandee. One controversial proposal is at Mynydd y Gwair, near Swansea, on land owned by the Duke of Beaufort’s Somerset Trust, where RWE power wants permission for 19 turbines. The scheme, which has 1,600 objectors, would generate an estimated income of about £12m a year, including £7m of subsidy.
The growing interest in wind farms stems from the government’s subsidy system. A typical three-megawatt turbine will generate about £670,000 a year, of which £350,000 comes in subsidies. Since the machines cost £2-3m and have a lifetime of about 25 years, the profits are considerable, even after running costs are deducted. Many schemes have gone ahead despite objections from local residents concerned about blight and from economists who bridle at the “excessive” cost of the subsidy system.
No surprise that developers, landowners and wind farm supporters say Britain must accept changes to its landscape, plus the cost of subsidies, as the price of cutting CO2 emissions. RidgeWind is a company set up by Hg Capital to seek out large landowners to set up wind farms. Last August it switched on an eight-turbine wind farm at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre estate of Sheffield, the father-in-law of the Tory leader, generating an income of about £3.5m a year, shared with developers. RidgeWind will soon erect 10 more turbines, each about 410ft high, on the Ellingham estate in Northumberland, owned by Lady Belinda Gadsden, whose title dates back to 1642.
Ironically, the Renewables Obligation certificate (Roc) scheme was created by a Labour government but is handing large profits to investors and country landowners. Under the system, renewable energy generators can claim a Roc certificate for each megawatt hour of electricity produced. A 3MW turbine produces about 7,000 megawatt hours a year, with the electricity fetching £320,000 and the Rocs another £350,000 at current prices. Power companies are obliged to buy Rocs to meet government targets for renewable power but pass the cost to consumers. They also take the bulk of wind farm profits.
.................................... ................................
I hope, in its commendable erasure of New Labour's prodigality, the Coaltion will kybosh schemes like the one by which it helped the University of Warwick to pay
£14,793 for a piece of sculpture "Wet Road" by Richard Long.
Not any old piece of sculpture you understand. According to the Review of the National Art Collection fund at the time,Long combined the awful purity of the modern art gallery with the awful emptiness of the extreme, uninhabited and often remote landscape.
How?
He took a piece of paper and typed on it details of a walk he did on a rain-
soaked road. One piece of paper,fourteen uneven lines of typing and he is £14,793 better off.
The Wet Road
"The times of walking on the rain-wetted road
"Along a 19 day walk of 391 miles
"From the North Coast to the South Coast of France
First day 1 and a half hours
Third day 2 and a half hours"
It is called soft sculpture and the University of Warwick believed it had not only got a bargain piece: it had also got a prose poem.
The Skidmore Collection of Soft Sculpture is a retrospective assembly of works by the Master of Elwyn Court. It represents his development as an artist in this exciting field. It includes Betting Slip, an early work almost stark in its conception, giving subtle hints of the power that lay dormant in his fingers; note the isolation of the nom de plume which speaks of the essential loneliness of the human condition.
Coppernob
2.30 Haydock Park
shilling e.w
Debs Delight
The Master was capable of a tenderness which makes a sonnet of the declaration:
Alice.
Back of school bike shed. 4 pm. Bring mac.
Bring mac. What caring those simple words imply. What pictures of wet playing fields, the heedless passion of youth, tempered with the practical, the almost seminal fear of rheumatism, unique in one so young. Yet in maturity this was to be echoed and re-born as brooding pessimism in the impressive "Application For A Job as Reporter on the Kidderminster Shuttle", a series which he was to extend to cover most of the weekly newspapers in Northern Britain.
The collection contains many examples of his art in its maturity. The cycle of Daily Mirror weather stories conjours up past summers in soft sculpture in a way only Monet acheived in paint. Haunting phrases recur: "Holiday makers in Blackpool
sweltered in the August sun" has the narrative quality of Dutch genre paintings.
For many years the Master explored the possibilties of humility in what came to be known as the Canon of Cringing Letters to the Midland Bank. Impossible to do
justice to their tonality and plasticity in newsprint.That requires the medium on which they were conceived, A4 Just Write Copier, supplied by his patron of many years, the BBC.
(This blog is available as a monochrome print, signed and numbered by the artist.)
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Saturday, 26 June 2010
love's labours might get lost
My advice to the lovelorn young would be to let your lawyer write your love letters. Undying love is more often than not a contradiction in terms. Then there is the natural carelessness of the mail. Fidel Castro's letters to his mistress and his wife put in the wrong envelopes. That puts me in mind of a friend sent to retreive his wife's ear ring which had fallen off in the car. Alas, the ear ring he brought back belonged to someone else.
I was interested at the way people cite the 12th century lovers Abelard and Heloise. I assume they haven't read them. They were written AFTER Abelard had been castrated by her vengeful uncle Fulbert. Not surprisingly, his letters are heavy on recrimination and self pity. Lines like “You know the depths of shame to which my unbridled lust had consigned our bodies...even during the days of Our Lord’s Passion” do not seem to me to be the stuff of romance. And if you think lust at Easter is bad, he also admits to having his wicked way with her in the refectory of a convent.
It's years since I received a love letter. Though only this week Givenchy sent me a scented advert for a “unique fragrance for men that ignites passions and heightens desire". I have put it in the drawer under my shirts. I await the postman with mounting excitement.
I once had a letter from a listener which claimed that, when I was 12, I had invited her to an orgy and admitted she regretted turning me down. I was highly flattered and quietly proud of my precocity.
TRAVEL ON......
Reading last week's musing about travelling, I thought of my much mourned friend Ronnie Knox Mawer, the former Chief Justice of the South Seas. You cannot get much further than Tonga where in his robes he danced on a beach with the king. Ronnie was no stranger to London’s top hotels and shops. In retirement he toured them regularly seeking handouts for the homeless. It could create difficulties, largely because Ronnie was not a snappy dresser, even by tramp standards. Few retired judges wear TWO elderly Oxfam top coats. Not surprising that a policeman who saw him wheeling a trolley of sandwiches to the tramps’ shelter asked him where he had got them. Ronnie said he had been given them by the manager of Boots.
“Tell that to the old bastard on the bench,” the disbelieving policeman said.
“He WAS the old bastard on the bench,” said a passing tramp fondly.
That most eccentric method of travelling is jogging, of which Australian art critic Bob Hughes wrote:
“The glutton, gross in paunch and thigh,
Eludes the Reaper grim.
Swollen of nose and pink of eye,
The drunkard laughs at him.
The chairbound journalist, the Don,
Carelessly quaff champagne,
The Pop star lives for ever, on
Pills, bimbos and cocaine.
Frustrated by this doleful news,
Death newer victims picks.
He laces on his jogging shoes
And catches Mr Fixx.
The author Thomas de Quincey worshipped Wordsworth who invited him on a visit. de Quincey walked from Manchester to the Lakes. Within three miles of Wordsworth’s home his nerve broke. He returned to Manchester.Then he had a typically de Quinceian notion. He thought he would practise going to the Lakes by making a trial run to North Wales, which he had heard also had mountains and lakes. He was the first Rambler but he had no tent. He slept under an umbrella. His most frightening moment came in Chester as he walked along the banks of the River Dee just as the annual tidal wave The Dee Bore was about to happen. de Quincey longed to ask a stranger what it was. There was a problem. They had not been introduced. He wrote:
“Here now be it understood that in the midst of any great natural convulsion - earthquake, say, waterspout or eruption of Vesuvius - it shall and may be lawful for two English people to communicate with each other, although it shall have been proved by affidavit that no previous introduction had been affected. In all other cases the old statute of non intercourse holds good.
Meantime the present case might be regarded as ranking among the first fruits or blossom of an earthquake. Therefore I spoke without scruple."
Arabist Thomas Kinglakeraces in 1814 published "Travel Brought Home from the East". Riding across the Sinai Desert he spotted an Englishman bearing down from the opposite direction.
“As we approached each other, it became with me a question of whether we should speak. I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him. The traveller perhaps felt as I did, for except that we lifted our hand to our caps, and waved our arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond Street."
The masters had no sooner passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped and entered into conversation. The stranger was the first to speak. “I dare say you wish to know how the plague is going in Cairo?”
Augustus Hare was an early guide book writer. He also travelled the country houses of Britain gathering marvellous stories which he used in two books “The Years With Mother” and “In My Solitary Life”. He had been adopted by an aunt in a curious manner. His parents were a fashionable pair of travellers Happy to dump their children - and not just for the holidays.
“It occured to my godmother as just possible that my parents may be induced to give me up altogether. In July she wrote her petition and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it met with. My father’s reply was very brief. 'Certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is weaned. And if any of your friends would like one, kindly recollect we have others.'”
He wrote of his wealthy aunt Caroline: “Her companion was a Mrs Barbara with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times. She had a large pension after my aunt’s death. It used to be said that the reason she only had one arm and part of the other was that Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.”
THAT FOOTBALL GAME OF INNUMERABLE HALFWITS
World Cup blogger to The Guardian:
"22 millionaires ruining a lawn"
I was interested at the way people cite the 12th century lovers Abelard and Heloise. I assume they haven't read them. They were written AFTER Abelard had been castrated by her vengeful uncle Fulbert. Not surprisingly, his letters are heavy on recrimination and self pity. Lines like “You know the depths of shame to which my unbridled lust had consigned our bodies...even during the days of Our Lord’s Passion” do not seem to me to be the stuff of romance. And if you think lust at Easter is bad, he also admits to having his wicked way with her in the refectory of a convent.
It's years since I received a love letter. Though only this week Givenchy sent me a scented advert for a “unique fragrance for men that ignites passions and heightens desire". I have put it in the drawer under my shirts. I await the postman with mounting excitement.
I once had a letter from a listener which claimed that, when I was 12, I had invited her to an orgy and admitted she regretted turning me down. I was highly flattered and quietly proud of my precocity.
TRAVEL ON......
Reading last week's musing about travelling, I thought of my much mourned friend Ronnie Knox Mawer, the former Chief Justice of the South Seas. You cannot get much further than Tonga where in his robes he danced on a beach with the king. Ronnie was no stranger to London’s top hotels and shops. In retirement he toured them regularly seeking handouts for the homeless. It could create difficulties, largely because Ronnie was not a snappy dresser, even by tramp standards. Few retired judges wear TWO elderly Oxfam top coats. Not surprising that a policeman who saw him wheeling a trolley of sandwiches to the tramps’ shelter asked him where he had got them. Ronnie said he had been given them by the manager of Boots.
“Tell that to the old bastard on the bench,” the disbelieving policeman said.
“He WAS the old bastard on the bench,” said a passing tramp fondly.
That most eccentric method of travelling is jogging, of which Australian art critic Bob Hughes wrote:
“The glutton, gross in paunch and thigh,
Eludes the Reaper grim.
Swollen of nose and pink of eye,
The drunkard laughs at him.
The chairbound journalist, the Don,
Carelessly quaff champagne,
The Pop star lives for ever, on
Pills, bimbos and cocaine.
Frustrated by this doleful news,
Death newer victims picks.
He laces on his jogging shoes
And catches Mr Fixx.
The author Thomas de Quincey worshipped Wordsworth who invited him on a visit. de Quincey walked from Manchester to the Lakes. Within three miles of Wordsworth’s home his nerve broke. He returned to Manchester.Then he had a typically de Quinceian notion. He thought he would practise going to the Lakes by making a trial run to North Wales, which he had heard also had mountains and lakes. He was the first Rambler but he had no tent. He slept under an umbrella. His most frightening moment came in Chester as he walked along the banks of the River Dee just as the annual tidal wave The Dee Bore was about to happen. de Quincey longed to ask a stranger what it was. There was a problem. They had not been introduced. He wrote:
“Here now be it understood that in the midst of any great natural convulsion - earthquake, say, waterspout or eruption of Vesuvius - it shall and may be lawful for two English people to communicate with each other, although it shall have been proved by affidavit that no previous introduction had been affected. In all other cases the old statute of non intercourse holds good.
Meantime the present case might be regarded as ranking among the first fruits or blossom of an earthquake. Therefore I spoke without scruple."
Arabist Thomas Kinglakeraces in 1814 published "Travel Brought Home from the East". Riding across the Sinai Desert he spotted an Englishman bearing down from the opposite direction.
“As we approached each other, it became with me a question of whether we should speak. I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him. The traveller perhaps felt as I did, for except that we lifted our hand to our caps, and waved our arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond Street."
The masters had no sooner passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped and entered into conversation. The stranger was the first to speak. “I dare say you wish to know how the plague is going in Cairo?”
Augustus Hare was an early guide book writer. He also travelled the country houses of Britain gathering marvellous stories which he used in two books “The Years With Mother” and “In My Solitary Life”. He had been adopted by an aunt in a curious manner. His parents were a fashionable pair of travellers Happy to dump their children - and not just for the holidays.
“It occured to my godmother as just possible that my parents may be induced to give me up altogether. In July she wrote her petition and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it met with. My father’s reply was very brief. 'Certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is weaned. And if any of your friends would like one, kindly recollect we have others.'”
He wrote of his wealthy aunt Caroline: “Her companion was a Mrs Barbara with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times. She had a large pension after my aunt’s death. It used to be said that the reason she only had one arm and part of the other was that Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.”
THAT FOOTBALL GAME OF INNUMERABLE HALFWITS
World Cup blogger to The Guardian:
"22 millionaires ruining a lawn"
Friday, 18 June 2010
TRAVEL WITHOUT MOVBEMENT
It is holiday time and all my friends are going a-travelling.Travelling? I needed Quells to cross the Menai Bridge. I travel instead through TV and books.
Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel book in 1322. Were he living today he could have walked onto a job on the Sun. He pinched most of his stories from other reporters and when he couldn't steal them he made them up. But he only stole the best. He was very big on dragons.
"In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras in form and likeness of a great dragon. A young man who wist not of the dragon came into the cave and found a chamber. There he saw a damosel that combed her head and looked into a mirror; and she had much treasure about her. She turned her head and asked him what he would? He said he would be her paramour.
"She told him to come on the morrow and kiss her on the mouth. And have no dread for I will do thee no harm, albeit thou see me in the likeness of a dragon. This is an enchantment. If thou kiss me thou shalt have all this treasure and be my lord.
"And the man came on the morrow to kiss this damsel. And when he saw her come out of the cave in the shape of a dragon, so hideous and so horrible, he had so great dread, that he fled. When she saw that he turned not again, she began to cry, as a thing that had much sorrow. And anon the knight died."
Here he is on the Great Khan in Cathay:
"He always hath three wives with him wherever he may be and after his wives on the same side sit the ladies of the court. And all those that be married have a counterfeit made like a man’s foot upon their heads. All wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made with peacocks feathers and of other shining feathers. That stands upon their heads like a crest in token that they be under a man’s foot and under subjection of man..."
In Rome, Adam of Usk witnessed a curious custom at a Papal Coronation which followed the scandal when a woman pope gave birth on the Vatican steps: "He is seated on a throne of porphyry which is pierced beneath and one of the younger cardinals makes proof of his sex...” The cardinal, on proving the Pope had privates, sang "Habet" (he has), whereupon the congregation sang "Deo Gratias" -or "Thank the Lord for that."
John Aubrey was a biographer, folklorist, antiquarian and mathematician. He helped found the Royal Society. Today he would be working for the News of the World. He loved a salacious story of High Life. He tells how Sir Philip Sydney’s sister had a peephole made so that she could watch the stallions serve the mares and then act the like sport herself with her stallions. Sir Jonas Moore, he relates, cured his sciatica by boiling his buttocks. And this is how that great traveller Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, entered history:
"This Earle of Oxford, making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a fart, at which he was so abashed he went to travel seven years. At his returne the Queen welcomed him home and said, “My Lord, I have quite forgot the fart.'
In 1923 Lord Bangor recalled walking in the fields outside Shanghai:
“Colonel Hayley Bell had lagged behind to examine an old shrine. Suddenly the rest of us were charged by a water buffalo. They are very dangerous and hate foreigners. I suppose we smell different. I was up a tree and my two friends were in a shed. The buffalo was snorting and flicking his tail. The beast stamped its foot and lowered its head. Hayley Bell walked straight up to it and kicked it hard on the nose. The astonished animal turned tail and lumbered off. 'Shock tactics is what it is about,' said Hayley Bell as I climbed out of my tree. 'Just go up to an animal and show it who is master.'”
Francis Kilvert's journals are a joy:
“Miss Childs and her sister, stranded in London at night, went to London Bridge Hotel, having missed the last train. They had little money, no luggage, except for an owl in a basket. The owl hooted all night in spite of them putting her up the chimney, before the looking glass, under the bed clothes and in a circle of candles which they hoped it would mistake for the sun. The owl went on hooting, upset the basket, got out and flew about the room. The chambermaid almost frightened to death dared not come inside the room. Miss Childs asked the waiter to get some mice for the owl.
But none could be got."
LIES, DAMNED LIES - AND STATISTICS
Oh dear, I had such hopes for the Coalition. Sadly they are not above using dubious statistics to acheive their ends. It was ever thus. What is doubly annoying is that, like passive smoking (the WHO researched it for five years but had to admit it could find no proof it caused disease), and the unit measure of safe drinks (which the government has admitted was a guess), the drink drive problem is false. The present figure, and the future reduction of deaths if the limit is cut, is based on a theoretic calculation based on figures for accidents in Australia and Europe. Even the statistic of deaths is false. It is based on deaths in which drink plays a part. AND THAT MEANS DRUNKEN PEDESTRIANS which form the majority of deaths. It also includes collisions which were the fault of the sober driver involved and not the drunken ones.Why do they do it? Is it all part of a programme of controlling the population, like the new law every quarter of an hour the Labs brought in?
Sir John Mandeville wrote a travel book in 1322. Were he living today he could have walked onto a job on the Sun. He pinched most of his stories from other reporters and when he couldn't steal them he made them up. But he only stole the best. He was very big on dragons.
"In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras in form and likeness of a great dragon. A young man who wist not of the dragon came into the cave and found a chamber. There he saw a damosel that combed her head and looked into a mirror; and she had much treasure about her. She turned her head and asked him what he would? He said he would be her paramour.
"She told him to come on the morrow and kiss her on the mouth. And have no dread for I will do thee no harm, albeit thou see me in the likeness of a dragon. This is an enchantment. If thou kiss me thou shalt have all this treasure and be my lord.
"And the man came on the morrow to kiss this damsel. And when he saw her come out of the cave in the shape of a dragon, so hideous and so horrible, he had so great dread, that he fled. When she saw that he turned not again, she began to cry, as a thing that had much sorrow. And anon the knight died."
Here he is on the Great Khan in Cathay:
"He always hath three wives with him wherever he may be and after his wives on the same side sit the ladies of the court. And all those that be married have a counterfeit made like a man’s foot upon their heads. All wrought with great pearls, fine and orient, and above made with peacocks feathers and of other shining feathers. That stands upon their heads like a crest in token that they be under a man’s foot and under subjection of man..."
In Rome, Adam of Usk witnessed a curious custom at a Papal Coronation which followed the scandal when a woman pope gave birth on the Vatican steps: "He is seated on a throne of porphyry which is pierced beneath and one of the younger cardinals makes proof of his sex...” The cardinal, on proving the Pope had privates, sang "Habet" (he has), whereupon the congregation sang "Deo Gratias" -or "Thank the Lord for that."
John Aubrey was a biographer, folklorist, antiquarian and mathematician. He helped found the Royal Society. Today he would be working for the News of the World. He loved a salacious story of High Life. He tells how Sir Philip Sydney’s sister had a peephole made so that she could watch the stallions serve the mares and then act the like sport herself with her stallions. Sir Jonas Moore, he relates, cured his sciatica by boiling his buttocks. And this is how that great traveller Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, entered history:
"This Earle of Oxford, making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a fart, at which he was so abashed he went to travel seven years. At his returne the Queen welcomed him home and said, “My Lord, I have quite forgot the fart.'
In 1923 Lord Bangor recalled walking in the fields outside Shanghai:
“Colonel Hayley Bell had lagged behind to examine an old shrine. Suddenly the rest of us were charged by a water buffalo. They are very dangerous and hate foreigners. I suppose we smell different. I was up a tree and my two friends were in a shed. The buffalo was snorting and flicking his tail. The beast stamped its foot and lowered its head. Hayley Bell walked straight up to it and kicked it hard on the nose. The astonished animal turned tail and lumbered off. 'Shock tactics is what it is about,' said Hayley Bell as I climbed out of my tree. 'Just go up to an animal and show it who is master.'”
Francis Kilvert's journals are a joy:
“Miss Childs and her sister, stranded in London at night, went to London Bridge Hotel, having missed the last train. They had little money, no luggage, except for an owl in a basket. The owl hooted all night in spite of them putting her up the chimney, before the looking glass, under the bed clothes and in a circle of candles which they hoped it would mistake for the sun. The owl went on hooting, upset the basket, got out and flew about the room. The chambermaid almost frightened to death dared not come inside the room. Miss Childs asked the waiter to get some mice for the owl.
But none could be got."
LIES, DAMNED LIES - AND STATISTICS
Oh dear, I had such hopes for the Coalition. Sadly they are not above using dubious statistics to acheive their ends. It was ever thus. What is doubly annoying is that, like passive smoking (the WHO researched it for five years but had to admit it could find no proof it caused disease), and the unit measure of safe drinks (which the government has admitted was a guess), the drink drive problem is false. The present figure, and the future reduction of deaths if the limit is cut, is based on a theoretic calculation based on figures for accidents in Australia and Europe. Even the statistic of deaths is false. It is based on deaths in which drink plays a part. AND THAT MEANS DRUNKEN PEDESTRIANS which form the majority of deaths. It also includes collisions which were the fault of the sober driver involved and not the drunken ones.Why do they do it? Is it all part of a programme of controlling the population, like the new law every quarter of an hour the Labs brought in?
Saturday, 12 June 2010
I COULD HAVE BEEN A CONTENDER
When I was a stage struck child writing musicals, making puppets and doing a song and dance act for them, my parents said I was good enough to be on Ralph Reader's Gang Show, a talent contest in which, if memory serves, Mr Reader dressed as a boy scout. Unfortunately during a brief career with 42 Parrs Wood Road Scouts I had water poured up my sleeve for swearing in camp. Fearing this might affect my prospects, I eshewed Mr Reader and his toggle and set my sights on Big Jim Campbell and his Cowboy talent show. A little later I might have tried Carrol Leavis Discoveries, or Hughie Green, or any one of a number of shrewd entertainers, themselves without a discernable talent, who toured the country with talent shows in which they were the only ones getting paid. When Butlins opened, entertainment was centred on talent shows. I cannot remember a time when there wasn't a child prodigy, an elderly baritone and whole companies of ventriloquists giving their miniscule all on a stage near you. So why, I wondered, has Simon Cowell been given a BAFTA award for his "innovative contribution to show business"?
What was innovative about his entertainments?
According to John Willis, chairman of the Bafta TV committee: "Over the past few years he has not only helped change the entertainment landscape but has re-invented Saturday night family entertainment. His shows enable exciting new talent to shine and are the most talked-about programmes on British television. He is quite simply one of the most brilliant entertainment producers of our time."
Cowell, I read, became a TV mogul after rising to prominence as a judge on Pop Idol, later creating The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, which finished this weekend, as well as becoming a big name in the US with American Idol. He has helped to make Susan Boyle a neurotic worldwide success and the 'Got Talent' format is now screened in more than 40 countries. He has also acquired a stable of money-making entertainers which allows him to live like one of the Mogul Emperors. I would have thought an award for industry would be more appropriate.
Young TV viewers in my family are besotted by vampires. Channel 4's "True Blood" is the latest in a long line of sexually explicit, violent and vulgar programmes. It is a shocking tale of depravity, explicit sexuality (bordering on pornography) and vile language. Even before the opening credits in the first episode, we see a young woman pleasuring a young man while driving her car. The programme is full of characters with fantastical powers. A telepathic waitress, Sookie, and a ‘shapeshifter’; ‘Fang-bangers’ - humans who like having sex with vampires - and the drug dealers. There’s oral sex, overt discussion of genitalia, graphic sex scenes bordering on the deviant, and foul language. We see a man having sex with a woman while watching a video of the same woman having sex with a vampire. It’s animalistic, violent, corrupt and scary.
Surpringly, there is no move to ban it. That is reserved for the most innocent of entertainment: the Circus.
The self righteous "assassins" of this ancient art have the statuary long hair, lupine features and that air of deep, throbbing self-satisfaction that is the hallmark of the apostle of the single issue.
The kids in circus queues have eyes that dance with expectation and the animals who entertain them crackle with the joy animals always exhibit when they are about to show off to the humans who supply them with food and protect them from danger. The "assassins" seek to persuade Councils to deny a resting place to circuses which employ animals to entertain human beings.
I have been a circus fan all my life. I cannot think of one which employs cruelty to train animals because that never works. When I've been furious with my dogs they have ignored me. When I offer them treats they blindly obey my commands.
The love that circus keepers have for their animals nearly got me the sack from the Daily Mirror in the days when it was still a newspaper. For reasons which we need not got into here, I persuaded Billy Smart’s Circus to put on a show in the grounds of Southport Infirmary. Afterwards I marched down Lord Street at the head of a procession which included Whimsical Walker and his troupe of Clowns, a bevy of beauties on horseback and a small Arab on a camel. We stopped at a pub called The Bold and I bought a drink for all present to thank them for their services. I noticed the Arab, who had taken a small lemon juice, looked unhappy and asked Brian Cartney, Billy Smart’s PRO, why.
He said: “You haven’t bought a drink for his camel.” I said I thought camels only drank every three days and he said, “This is the third day.”
I bought the camel a bucket of water. The barmaid charged me half a crown, so I put on my expenses: “To bucket of water for camel: half a crown."
The accountants who were just beginning to rule newspapers thought I was making a joke at the expense of money, which was blasphemous, and demanded I be sacked.
In a world where the accountant is king, the long-haired assassin will no doubt get his way. In Africa kids are starving and animal cruelty is endemic. Harmful TV programmes abound and will contiue to flourish. The clown will be broken-hearted as the animals who aren't shot will spend their lives pacing mindlessly in zoo cages.
IT'S THE RICH AS HAS THE PLEASURE
The mention of starving Africans inevitably summons the vision of thousands of empty-bellied, slum-dwelling South Africans trumpeting with joy at a series of tedious games that have cost them millions. Yet on every face the default gesture is a smile. They live in the Murder Capital of the World. What have they got to smile about?
We who live cosseted lives are sour-faced and glum because our leaders warn us that things are going to be tough. So what else is new?
The simple truth is that although life anywhere in Britain has not a lot going for you it is a lot better than it is in a Third Country. Forbye, even here it is not too good if you are poor - and even less if you are old and poor. I had an old friend who lived in Liverpool. Nothing would induce him to go out at night, his doctor treated him like scum and the police set up an observation post in his spare room to keep an eye on the pistol-toting gangsters who use the pub next door as a headquarters.
Life, he told me, was much more expensive for the poor. The rich pay cash and can do a deal for almost anything. The poor buy on hire purchase with an added interest charge. But they are in a minority. The rest of us have much to smile about.
My wife and I are lucky to be living in the Fens - and not just because we have a sub-tropical micro climate. We live in a market town in walking distance of two vets, two medical practices, three supermarkets, two dentists, an optician - and a pawn shop.
On Anglesey, where we last lived, our village shops closed down until the nearest shop to my home was two miles away. The bus service did not operate at night. Fine for me because I could jump in my car. Not so good for the older, non-car-owning ladies who lived next door. Not all that good for me, really, because petrol is more expensive in the countryside than it is in the cities. Car tax and insurance have gone up in a comic effort to relieve traffic - in inner cities. In my rural paradise we paid extra community tax to fund profligate city councils.
Rural post offices closed and the business transferred to banks and supermarkets, which killed local shops. The nearest bank to our village was four miles away. Local farmers lived on £5,000 a year and went bust in battalions.
Here too, the eyes of the schoolchildren sparkled, their young bodies galvanised with high spirits. See the same children as they sprawled listlessly on a bench a month after they left school. Their eyes were dead. The few jobs they were offered , the bus fares took up most of the wage.The future may be grim. For an awful lot of us the past wasn't all that to boast about but compared to the South Africans we are millionaires.
What was innovative about his entertainments?
According to John Willis, chairman of the Bafta TV committee: "Over the past few years he has not only helped change the entertainment landscape but has re-invented Saturday night family entertainment. His shows enable exciting new talent to shine and are the most talked-about programmes on British television. He is quite simply one of the most brilliant entertainment producers of our time."
Cowell, I read, became a TV mogul after rising to prominence as a judge on Pop Idol, later creating The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, which finished this weekend, as well as becoming a big name in the US with American Idol. He has helped to make Susan Boyle a neurotic worldwide success and the 'Got Talent' format is now screened in more than 40 countries. He has also acquired a stable of money-making entertainers which allows him to live like one of the Mogul Emperors. I would have thought an award for industry would be more appropriate.
Young TV viewers in my family are besotted by vampires. Channel 4's "True Blood" is the latest in a long line of sexually explicit, violent and vulgar programmes. It is a shocking tale of depravity, explicit sexuality (bordering on pornography) and vile language. Even before the opening credits in the first episode, we see a young woman pleasuring a young man while driving her car. The programme is full of characters with fantastical powers. A telepathic waitress, Sookie, and a ‘shapeshifter’; ‘Fang-bangers’ - humans who like having sex with vampires - and the drug dealers. There’s oral sex, overt discussion of genitalia, graphic sex scenes bordering on the deviant, and foul language. We see a man having sex with a woman while watching a video of the same woman having sex with a vampire. It’s animalistic, violent, corrupt and scary.
Surpringly, there is no move to ban it. That is reserved for the most innocent of entertainment: the Circus.
The self righteous "assassins" of this ancient art have the statuary long hair, lupine features and that air of deep, throbbing self-satisfaction that is the hallmark of the apostle of the single issue.
The kids in circus queues have eyes that dance with expectation and the animals who entertain them crackle with the joy animals always exhibit when they are about to show off to the humans who supply them with food and protect them from danger. The "assassins" seek to persuade Councils to deny a resting place to circuses which employ animals to entertain human beings.
I have been a circus fan all my life. I cannot think of one which employs cruelty to train animals because that never works. When I've been furious with my dogs they have ignored me. When I offer them treats they blindly obey my commands.
The love that circus keepers have for their animals nearly got me the sack from the Daily Mirror in the days when it was still a newspaper. For reasons which we need not got into here, I persuaded Billy Smart’s Circus to put on a show in the grounds of Southport Infirmary. Afterwards I marched down Lord Street at the head of a procession which included Whimsical Walker and his troupe of Clowns, a bevy of beauties on horseback and a small Arab on a camel. We stopped at a pub called The Bold and I bought a drink for all present to thank them for their services. I noticed the Arab, who had taken a small lemon juice, looked unhappy and asked Brian Cartney, Billy Smart’s PRO, why.
He said: “You haven’t bought a drink for his camel.” I said I thought camels only drank every three days and he said, “This is the third day.”
I bought the camel a bucket of water. The barmaid charged me half a crown, so I put on my expenses: “To bucket of water for camel: half a crown."
The accountants who were just beginning to rule newspapers thought I was making a joke at the expense of money, which was blasphemous, and demanded I be sacked.
In a world where the accountant is king, the long-haired assassin will no doubt get his way. In Africa kids are starving and animal cruelty is endemic. Harmful TV programmes abound and will contiue to flourish. The clown will be broken-hearted as the animals who aren't shot will spend their lives pacing mindlessly in zoo cages.
IT'S THE RICH AS HAS THE PLEASURE
The mention of starving Africans inevitably summons the vision of thousands of empty-bellied, slum-dwelling South Africans trumpeting with joy at a series of tedious games that have cost them millions. Yet on every face the default gesture is a smile. They live in the Murder Capital of the World. What have they got to smile about?
We who live cosseted lives are sour-faced and glum because our leaders warn us that things are going to be tough. So what else is new?
The simple truth is that although life anywhere in Britain has not a lot going for you it is a lot better than it is in a Third Country. Forbye, even here it is not too good if you are poor - and even less if you are old and poor. I had an old friend who lived in Liverpool. Nothing would induce him to go out at night, his doctor treated him like scum and the police set up an observation post in his spare room to keep an eye on the pistol-toting gangsters who use the pub next door as a headquarters.
Life, he told me, was much more expensive for the poor. The rich pay cash and can do a deal for almost anything. The poor buy on hire purchase with an added interest charge. But they are in a minority. The rest of us have much to smile about.
My wife and I are lucky to be living in the Fens - and not just because we have a sub-tropical micro climate. We live in a market town in walking distance of two vets, two medical practices, three supermarkets, two dentists, an optician - and a pawn shop.
On Anglesey, where we last lived, our village shops closed down until the nearest shop to my home was two miles away. The bus service did not operate at night. Fine for me because I could jump in my car. Not so good for the older, non-car-owning ladies who lived next door. Not all that good for me, really, because petrol is more expensive in the countryside than it is in the cities. Car tax and insurance have gone up in a comic effort to relieve traffic - in inner cities. In my rural paradise we paid extra community tax to fund profligate city councils.
Rural post offices closed and the business transferred to banks and supermarkets, which killed local shops. The nearest bank to our village was four miles away. Local farmers lived on £5,000 a year and went bust in battalions.
Here too, the eyes of the schoolchildren sparkled, their young bodies galvanised with high spirits. See the same children as they sprawled listlessly on a bench a month after they left school. Their eyes were dead. The few jobs they were offered , the bus fares took up most of the wage.The future may be grim. For an awful lot of us the past wasn't all that to boast about but compared to the South Africans we are millionaires.
Friday, 4 June 2010
WHA DAUR MEDDLE WE US
Twice kicked out of The Black Watch (RHR) as an "undesirable" and a lifelong anarchist, it was fairly clear if the Army had to choose between me and the Wehrmacht I would have come a close second. I loved every moment of my army life; even the bits in durance vile. Alas, my love was not returned. So why my brief membership of the Black Johns should remain the apogee of my life and "Johnny the One" the only saint I would light a candle for is beyond rational explanation.
My most treasured possession is a diced glengarry, picked up on the beach in Dunkirk, given to me by the sailor who found it, so I looked forward to the raft of programmes celebrating that defeat; though I have never understood why it is celebrated. The French do not celebrate Agincourt,Crecy or Waterloo.. Indeed with some justice they see Dunkirk as a betrayal. The TV coverage is a second betrayal
The 51st Highland Division fought on in France after the main part of the BEF had been evacuated from Dunkirk on 4th June. On Churchill's orders they defended the seaside town of St.Valery-en-Caux. It was a useless gesture made to dupe the French into believing the BEF wasn't running for home. The Highlanders were mostly TA part-time soldiers and not fully trained. Some only had five rounds of ammuntion and had hardly eaten for three weeks.
Neverthless an attack on the town was repulsed in the late afternoon, although it was later surrounded. Final plans were made for the evacuation, beaches allotted and orders given but these did not reach the 2nd Seaforths cut off in Le Tot.
To their dismay the 51st were placed under French Command On the morning of June 12 the French flew a white flag from a church 150 yards from the HD HQ, The Divisonal Commander Victor Fortune was furious and ordered an officer to climb the steeple and take it down. Told the surrender had been ordered by his superior the French commander he said the HD would fight on.. When the order came from the British High Command to carry out the evacuation it was too late. The Division arrived in the harbour to find there were no ships waiting to take them off. The Navy had withdrawn on the 11th and after coming under air attack pulled further out to sea. A combination of fog obscuring the coast, the loss of several boats and the fact that the enemy occupied the cliffs overlooking the town made evacuation impossible.
Various local demands for surrender, specifically to 2nd Seaforths and Ist Gordons, were robustly rebuffed. Preparations were made for a last resistance. Meanwhile the French capitulated at 0800hrs on the morning of 12th June. In St Valery another fierce battle developed and the 2nd and 4th Seaforth Highlanders, 4th Cameron Highlanders, 1st and 5th Gordon Highlanders and the 4th Black Watch fought determinedly until completely surrounded, out of ammunition and supplies.. General Fortune considered all the options; a counter attack, further resistance, retaking the town. Against this, there was no possibility of support, the men were exhausted and virtually out of ammunition, with no artillery ammunition at all.There was no opportunity for evacuation. Shortly before 1000hrs on 12th June General Fortune took the most difficult of decisions - to surrender. In view of their bravery Rommel allowed his men to march into captivity carrying arms. Some 10,000 were taken prisoner. At the end of the war, after five years of starvation and forced labour, they were forced to march from Stalag XX-A at Turig 450 miles to another camp on the Luneburg Heath. As a final indignity they were straffed on the way by the American air force. In the war the HD had 19,.524 casualties. St Valéry-en-Caux is a Battle Honour.
Under the circumstances it was odd that St Valery was hardly mentioned in any of the TV prorammes. It was left to a very fine historian Saul David on R4 to interview HD survivors who have still not forgiven Churchill..
They might take comfort from the fact that Churchill, the Mandelson of his day whose contribution to winning the war was inventing Spin, has not escaped censure. The historian Noble Frankland put it on record that the PM thought air support on a battlefield would add complication without advantage, that the Germans would not be able to break the French on the Western Front, that the Japanese would be too cautious to enter the war and, if they did, Singapore would be invulnerable. He thought neither submarines nor aircraft would pose a serious threat. He sent the battleships " Prince of Wales" and the" Repulse" to Singapore without air cover, where both ships were sunk.The Repulse was comanded by the officer who from the beaches had organised Dunkirk. Churchill thought kites a better defence than Radar. At the end of the war when we were broke and exhausted he ordered the Chiefs of Staff to make a battle plan for invading Russia. Despite his pretension as a historian, he ignored the fate suffered by Napoleon and Hitler when they tried to capture Moscow.
Churchill's "battle honours" included St Valery, the bombing of Dresden, the failed invasions of Norway and Crete. In an earlier war he masterminded the Gallipoli disaster.Earlier, having persuaded the Cabinet to rebuff the offer of alliance with the Ottoman Empire, he drove them into arms of the Kaiser by hijacking two ships they were having built in British yards.
Some chicken. Some brass neck.
HAPPY RETURNS TO THE DAY
On my birthday last month I mused that I only have19 years to wait for my letter from Her Gracious. I wasn't looking forward to the celebrations. The older one gets, the less exciting the prospect of celebration, because you realise the next one could be a wake. I suppose the wisest thing to do is to celebrate past birthdays. This gloomy thought came as a result of leafing through an old diary and finding this entry for my 66th birthday:
"I was 66 today, more of a Bingo Call than a birthday. The house is filled with friends, neighbours and those of the Welsh glitterati who are both neighbours and friends, all enjoying themselves at a champagne lunch. Kyffin Williams who paints in Welsh,Aled Jones, Tom Firbank who wrote "I Bought a Mountain", June and Ronnie Knox Mawer who between them wrote everything else, and Rosie Swale who lives her adventure books before she writes them. And my landlord the Marquess of Anglesey.
"All celebrating.my birthday? Not on your life. The dog is a hundred today and my wife has launched her newest prize- seeking missile, "The Terrible Tale of Tiggy Two". I said, couldn't you put a PS on the invitations, just mentioning your elderly husband is clickety click? Presents graciously received?
"Not a chance. 'You had one last year,' she said. I have one every year but I am not surprised she hasn't noticed. Too busy counting the prize money.
"Jealousy, of course. Doesn't like it that Kyffin and I were both born on Ascension Day, so we are entitled to
two birthdays every year, just like the Queen. In our case, Ascension Day and the day of our birth. Though I wish to place it on record I didn't have a party on either of them.
"Did have a lovely dinner, mark you, at which I was allowed to have my favourite things. So we had white Bordeaux
with the whitebait, Burgundy with the steak and kidney pie, Muscat de Rivesaltes with the trifle and Warres Warrior port with the Stilton.
"Next time maybe she will let me join her party. It would be a lot cheaper."
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Not all diary memories are happy ones. I also read in that diary that fifty years ago, out of unhappiness and sheer boredom, I took an aspirin butty. Rushed to the City Hospital in Chester where a Chinese nurse saved my life in ways too disgusting too enumerate.When I woke up, the first thing I saw was her anxious face peering down at me. I thought it must be heaven because they have Chinese restaurants. Wondered if you could get ducks' feet in abalone sauce? On earth, as aficionados will tell you, the dish is only obtainable by Chinese nationals.
The point was, that at butty tasting time, I was a rapidly failing newspaperman with a mountain of debt and a broken marriage. The only thing I had going for me was a drink problem. Since then I have had careers as a broadcaster, TV presenter, author, reluctant after dinner speaker, and occasional columnist, restaurant,book and theatre critic. Also I have met a wife I adore, despite her terrible penchant for winning literary prizes.
Happily the drink problem is alive and well and living at weekends and birthdays (oh that that was still true.. Ed).
At least I do not have the drinker's knighthood which the doctors had tipped as their nap selection. You know the one? Arise Sir Hossis?
Better on the whole to be than not to have been.
THE BREAKING OF LAWS
One is reminded of hippos dancing, watching parliament extricate itself from the folly of its aptly named members.
Danny Alexander was scarcely in his new seat in the Treasury before the Telegraph disclosed he too had quickly picked up the principles of creative accounting.In his case senior accountants likened his buying a South London flat to Hazel Blears, the former Labour minister. Miss Blears was forced to repay money to HM Revenue and Customs after selling a property designated as her second home for parliamentary purposes, without paying CGT.
There is no suggestion that Alexander has broken any tax laws. He bought the flat in south London in 1999. It is not known how much he paid for the property. Around the time he bought it, flats in the same row of terrace houses were sold for between £144,000 and £235,000, meaning he is likely to have made tens of thousands of pounds of profit. An admirable qualification for a Treasury official. Especially one who according to his expenses as revealed in the Telegraph spent years in perpetual first class motion between Westminster and his highland home
Mr Laws,too, is a man universally acknowledged to be a financial expert, chairman of a bank at 22 and a millionaire to boot. He insists, nonetheless, he did not realise it was unwise to pay a fortune out of the public purse to his companion.. His purpose, he says, was to hide the fact that they were lovers..The relationship was known and accepted by most of their parliamentary colleagues.. Fellow Westminster cottagers have made no secret of their perfectly legal proclivities. Homosexuality is so popular I am surprised it isn't compulsory,so I do not understand why he had to resign.. It was within the rules that he should pay rent for shared accomodation. The rules merely say that such money should not be paid to a relative or partner. Surely to become a partner within the meaning of the Act you should go through that unofficial marriage ceremony which is so popular wih his fellow parliamentarians. The damage to the housing market would be catastrophic if you couldn't buy anything from a person in parliament with whom you have had sex.
Something that does bother me. The same coalition contains Clarke and Cable, two giants of the Treasury, so why was Laws' successor a man with no financial background? It suggests that Alexander was there as a seat warmer whilst prim politics is placated.
The country is broke and the luckless Laws and Alexander have already demonstrated the financial dexterity needed ability to rescue us.
They have paid back the money, done nothing illegal .LET THE GET ON WITH THE JOB.
.................................
My most treasured possession is a diced glengarry, picked up on the beach in Dunkirk, given to me by the sailor who found it, so I looked forward to the raft of programmes celebrating that defeat; though I have never understood why it is celebrated. The French do not celebrate Agincourt,Crecy or Waterloo.. Indeed with some justice they see Dunkirk as a betrayal. The TV coverage is a second betrayal
The 51st Highland Division fought on in France after the main part of the BEF had been evacuated from Dunkirk on 4th June. On Churchill's orders they defended the seaside town of St.Valery-en-Caux. It was a useless gesture made to dupe the French into believing the BEF wasn't running for home. The Highlanders were mostly TA part-time soldiers and not fully trained. Some only had five rounds of ammuntion and had hardly eaten for three weeks.
Neverthless an attack on the town was repulsed in the late afternoon, although it was later surrounded. Final plans were made for the evacuation, beaches allotted and orders given but these did not reach the 2nd Seaforths cut off in Le Tot.
To their dismay the 51st were placed under French Command On the morning of June 12 the French flew a white flag from a church 150 yards from the HD HQ, The Divisonal Commander Victor Fortune was furious and ordered an officer to climb the steeple and take it down. Told the surrender had been ordered by his superior the French commander he said the HD would fight on.. When the order came from the British High Command to carry out the evacuation it was too late. The Division arrived in the harbour to find there were no ships waiting to take them off. The Navy had withdrawn on the 11th and after coming under air attack pulled further out to sea. A combination of fog obscuring the coast, the loss of several boats and the fact that the enemy occupied the cliffs overlooking the town made evacuation impossible.
Various local demands for surrender, specifically to 2nd Seaforths and Ist Gordons, were robustly rebuffed. Preparations were made for a last resistance. Meanwhile the French capitulated at 0800hrs on the morning of 12th June. In St Valery another fierce battle developed and the 2nd and 4th Seaforth Highlanders, 4th Cameron Highlanders, 1st and 5th Gordon Highlanders and the 4th Black Watch fought determinedly until completely surrounded, out of ammunition and supplies.. General Fortune considered all the options; a counter attack, further resistance, retaking the town. Against this, there was no possibility of support, the men were exhausted and virtually out of ammunition, with no artillery ammunition at all.There was no opportunity for evacuation. Shortly before 1000hrs on 12th June General Fortune took the most difficult of decisions - to surrender. In view of their bravery Rommel allowed his men to march into captivity carrying arms. Some 10,000 were taken prisoner. At the end of the war, after five years of starvation and forced labour, they were forced to march from Stalag XX-A at Turig 450 miles to another camp on the Luneburg Heath. As a final indignity they were straffed on the way by the American air force. In the war the HD had 19,.524 casualties. St Valéry-en-Caux is a Battle Honour.
Under the circumstances it was odd that St Valery was hardly mentioned in any of the TV prorammes. It was left to a very fine historian Saul David on R4 to interview HD survivors who have still not forgiven Churchill..
They might take comfort from the fact that Churchill, the Mandelson of his day whose contribution to winning the war was inventing Spin, has not escaped censure. The historian Noble Frankland put it on record that the PM thought air support on a battlefield would add complication without advantage, that the Germans would not be able to break the French on the Western Front, that the Japanese would be too cautious to enter the war and, if they did, Singapore would be invulnerable. He thought neither submarines nor aircraft would pose a serious threat. He sent the battleships " Prince of Wales" and the" Repulse" to Singapore without air cover, where both ships were sunk.The Repulse was comanded by the officer who from the beaches had organised Dunkirk. Churchill thought kites a better defence than Radar. At the end of the war when we were broke and exhausted he ordered the Chiefs of Staff to make a battle plan for invading Russia. Despite his pretension as a historian, he ignored the fate suffered by Napoleon and Hitler when they tried to capture Moscow.
Churchill's "battle honours" included St Valery, the bombing of Dresden, the failed invasions of Norway and Crete. In an earlier war he masterminded the Gallipoli disaster.Earlier, having persuaded the Cabinet to rebuff the offer of alliance with the Ottoman Empire, he drove them into arms of the Kaiser by hijacking two ships they were having built in British yards.
Some chicken. Some brass neck.
HAPPY RETURNS TO THE DAY
On my birthday last month I mused that I only have19 years to wait for my letter from Her Gracious. I wasn't looking forward to the celebrations. The older one gets, the less exciting the prospect of celebration, because you realise the next one could be a wake. I suppose the wisest thing to do is to celebrate past birthdays. This gloomy thought came as a result of leafing through an old diary and finding this entry for my 66th birthday:
"I was 66 today, more of a Bingo Call than a birthday. The house is filled with friends, neighbours and those of the Welsh glitterati who are both neighbours and friends, all enjoying themselves at a champagne lunch. Kyffin Williams who paints in Welsh,Aled Jones, Tom Firbank who wrote "I Bought a Mountain", June and Ronnie Knox Mawer who between them wrote everything else, and Rosie Swale who lives her adventure books before she writes them. And my landlord the Marquess of Anglesey.
"All celebrating.my birthday? Not on your life. The dog is a hundred today and my wife has launched her newest prize- seeking missile, "The Terrible Tale of Tiggy Two". I said, couldn't you put a PS on the invitations, just mentioning your elderly husband is clickety click? Presents graciously received?
"Not a chance. 'You had one last year,' she said. I have one every year but I am not surprised she hasn't noticed. Too busy counting the prize money.
"Jealousy, of course. Doesn't like it that Kyffin and I were both born on Ascension Day, so we are entitled to
two birthdays every year, just like the Queen. In our case, Ascension Day and the day of our birth. Though I wish to place it on record I didn't have a party on either of them.
"Did have a lovely dinner, mark you, at which I was allowed to have my favourite things. So we had white Bordeaux
with the whitebait, Burgundy with the steak and kidney pie, Muscat de Rivesaltes with the trifle and Warres Warrior port with the Stilton.
"Next time maybe she will let me join her party. It would be a lot cheaper."
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Not all diary memories are happy ones. I also read in that diary that fifty years ago, out of unhappiness and sheer boredom, I took an aspirin butty. Rushed to the City Hospital in Chester where a Chinese nurse saved my life in ways too disgusting too enumerate.When I woke up, the first thing I saw was her anxious face peering down at me. I thought it must be heaven because they have Chinese restaurants. Wondered if you could get ducks' feet in abalone sauce? On earth, as aficionados will tell you, the dish is only obtainable by Chinese nationals.
The point was, that at butty tasting time, I was a rapidly failing newspaperman with a mountain of debt and a broken marriage. The only thing I had going for me was a drink problem. Since then I have had careers as a broadcaster, TV presenter, author, reluctant after dinner speaker, and occasional columnist, restaurant,book and theatre critic. Also I have met a wife I adore, despite her terrible penchant for winning literary prizes.
Happily the drink problem is alive and well and living at weekends and birthdays (oh that that was still true.. Ed).
At least I do not have the drinker's knighthood which the doctors had tipped as their nap selection. You know the one? Arise Sir Hossis?
Better on the whole to be than not to have been.
THE BREAKING OF LAWS
One is reminded of hippos dancing, watching parliament extricate itself from the folly of its aptly named members.
Danny Alexander was scarcely in his new seat in the Treasury before the Telegraph disclosed he too had quickly picked up the principles of creative accounting.In his case senior accountants likened his buying a South London flat to Hazel Blears, the former Labour minister. Miss Blears was forced to repay money to HM Revenue and Customs after selling a property designated as her second home for parliamentary purposes, without paying CGT.
There is no suggestion that Alexander has broken any tax laws. He bought the flat in south London in 1999. It is not known how much he paid for the property. Around the time he bought it, flats in the same row of terrace houses were sold for between £144,000 and £235,000, meaning he is likely to have made tens of thousands of pounds of profit. An admirable qualification for a Treasury official. Especially one who according to his expenses as revealed in the Telegraph spent years in perpetual first class motion between Westminster and his highland home
Mr Laws,too, is a man universally acknowledged to be a financial expert, chairman of a bank at 22 and a millionaire to boot. He insists, nonetheless, he did not realise it was unwise to pay a fortune out of the public purse to his companion.. His purpose, he says, was to hide the fact that they were lovers..The relationship was known and accepted by most of their parliamentary colleagues.. Fellow Westminster cottagers have made no secret of their perfectly legal proclivities. Homosexuality is so popular I am surprised it isn't compulsory,so I do not understand why he had to resign.. It was within the rules that he should pay rent for shared accomodation. The rules merely say that such money should not be paid to a relative or partner. Surely to become a partner within the meaning of the Act you should go through that unofficial marriage ceremony which is so popular wih his fellow parliamentarians. The damage to the housing market would be catastrophic if you couldn't buy anything from a person in parliament with whom you have had sex.
Something that does bother me. The same coalition contains Clarke and Cable, two giants of the Treasury, so why was Laws' successor a man with no financial background? It suggests that Alexander was there as a seat warmer whilst prim politics is placated.
The country is broke and the luckless Laws and Alexander have already demonstrated the financial dexterity needed ability to rescue us.
They have paid back the money, done nothing illegal .LET THE GET ON WITH THE JOB.
.................................
Friday, 28 May 2010
far from grim fairy tales
There was the girl for whom we bought fifty tickets on the Liverpool ferry and then photographed plying across the Mersey to New Brighton and back. The story we sold our news editors was that her doctor had ordered her to take a cruise for health reasons: the ferry trip was the only one she could afford.
Then there was the dog we tied to the railings of the police Bridewell, a note attached to its collar "My daddy threatens to shoot my dog. Please Mr Policeman would you hide him somewhere safe?" Which we signed "Simon 11" after cleverly misspelling "threaten".
Both stories were page leads in our newspapers and aroused much comment. Animal stories always caused comment. I almost lost my job by suggesting The Daily Mirror motto should be "Every Day Has Its Dog". In my defence I pointed out that the day before we had run two stories. One on page one told how stray dogs were moved from cages each day at the RSPCA kennels until they reached the one labelled "Tuesday". When a dog reached the "Tuesday" cage it was put down. The day that "Tuesday's Dog" appeared, the paper was snowed under with cheques and postal orders to pay for its continued life; our phone lines jammed with calls. One caller offered a thousand pounds to have the dog brought out to Italy and a life of luxury. In the same issue I wrote a story of some limbless ex-servicemen who after superhuman efforts got themselves a workshop to make things to sell. They were a month behind with their rent and their landlord threatened to evict them. Only five readers rang up about that story and not enough cheques arrived to meet the arrears.
Liverpool district reporters on National newspapers in those days would have got a "first" on any Creative Writing Course. Nor were we without help. We had to find a story a week for our sister Sunday papers. Bert Balmer, the city's Assistant Chief Constable and a Press Club member, used to make them up for us on request, over a convivial glass in the club bar.
So it might seem a bit odd that I have cancelled my subscription to Daily Mail newspapers in disgust at its treatment of Lord Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association. I think little of the FA and when I saw the photograph of the Lord and his lady (?) Melissa Jacobs I thought of the judgement of a commanding officer on one of his subalterns: "One would hesitate to breed from this officer." But love is allowable, even among the unsightly. What is not allowable was for her to pass on an innocent remark he made about his fear of bribery of referees to the Mail on Sunday and for that paper to give her £75,000.
I wasn't sorry to see the paper go. I had been reading the facsimile edition on line and, though in bribery the Mail group is second to none, it has yet to turn out readable facsimilies. I see The Times is offering a similar service. I will try it without hope.
Certainly it is time our newspapers caught up with the computer world. As I sat at my news desk surrounded by the most modern gadgets, I used to reflect on the expense and labour involved in gathering, illustrating, printing and publishing the day's news. Yet all depended on a small boy on a bicycle. If he slept in or forgot to deliver the morning paper, the whole costly process collapsed.
Now that news has been largely supplanted by the vapourings of celebrities one wonders whether mytrade deserves to survive. Interviewed in The Sunday Times, the 61-year-old actor Jeremy Irons
speculated that disease or war could become Nature’s way of halving the population.
Irons, who owns several cars and six houses, including a pink castle in County Cork, Ireland, nevertheless dismissed the idea that a recovery in consumption would help Britain out of recession: “How many clothes do people need? People must drop their standard of living so the wealth can be spread about."
He rightly suggests there are too many of us yet this father of two says: “I don’t think you can tell people not to have children."
The grimmer alternative, says Irons, is to continue to inflate the richer western economies to bursting point at the expense of poorer nations: “We would have to ringfence those who are starving and fighting over water, keeping everybody out. We’d live in a sort of fortress world, with an area which is fine, with its guarded oil pipe coming from Afghanistan or wherever, but I can’t see that working.”....Thus spake the fecund owner of six cars and a pink painted castle on an Irish Lough.
Reading that last comment I am uncomfortably aware of pots calling kettles pink. My personsal Ship of Fools is swift approaching the rocky channel of overdraft times. This week my late cousin's library went up for sale. It occured to me it would have been nice to own a small collection of his books to remind me of the many happy hours I have passed in that room of wonders. I chose first editions of the "Hound of the Baskervilles"," Johnson's Lives of the Poets" and the Surtees' Jorrocks collection. I noticed in time the bid I was making would carry me into the overdraft shallows and equalled the amount I have promised to pay my charities for the rest of the year. One of these is Help for Heroes and, as it happens, one of those heroes was interviewed on radio. He was a Lance Corporal who had lost three limbs. His esprit was shaming. I tore up the cheque for the auction.
Then there was the dog we tied to the railings of the police Bridewell, a note attached to its collar "My daddy threatens to shoot my dog. Please Mr Policeman would you hide him somewhere safe?" Which we signed "Simon 11" after cleverly misspelling "threaten".
Both stories were page leads in our newspapers and aroused much comment. Animal stories always caused comment. I almost lost my job by suggesting The Daily Mirror motto should be "Every Day Has Its Dog". In my defence I pointed out that the day before we had run two stories. One on page one told how stray dogs were moved from cages each day at the RSPCA kennels until they reached the one labelled "Tuesday". When a dog reached the "Tuesday" cage it was put down. The day that "Tuesday's Dog" appeared, the paper was snowed under with cheques and postal orders to pay for its continued life; our phone lines jammed with calls. One caller offered a thousand pounds to have the dog brought out to Italy and a life of luxury. In the same issue I wrote a story of some limbless ex-servicemen who after superhuman efforts got themselves a workshop to make things to sell. They were a month behind with their rent and their landlord threatened to evict them. Only five readers rang up about that story and not enough cheques arrived to meet the arrears.
Liverpool district reporters on National newspapers in those days would have got a "first" on any Creative Writing Course. Nor were we without help. We had to find a story a week for our sister Sunday papers. Bert Balmer, the city's Assistant Chief Constable and a Press Club member, used to make them up for us on request, over a convivial glass in the club bar.
So it might seem a bit odd that I have cancelled my subscription to Daily Mail newspapers in disgust at its treatment of Lord Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association. I think little of the FA and when I saw the photograph of the Lord and his lady (?) Melissa Jacobs I thought of the judgement of a commanding officer on one of his subalterns: "One would hesitate to breed from this officer." But love is allowable, even among the unsightly. What is not allowable was for her to pass on an innocent remark he made about his fear of bribery of referees to the Mail on Sunday and for that paper to give her £75,000.
I wasn't sorry to see the paper go. I had been reading the facsimile edition on line and, though in bribery the Mail group is second to none, it has yet to turn out readable facsimilies. I see The Times is offering a similar service. I will try it without hope.
Certainly it is time our newspapers caught up with the computer world. As I sat at my news desk surrounded by the most modern gadgets, I used to reflect on the expense and labour involved in gathering, illustrating, printing and publishing the day's news. Yet all depended on a small boy on a bicycle. If he slept in or forgot to deliver the morning paper, the whole costly process collapsed.
Now that news has been largely supplanted by the vapourings of celebrities one wonders whether mytrade deserves to survive. Interviewed in The Sunday Times, the 61-year-old actor Jeremy Irons
speculated that disease or war could become Nature’s way of halving the population.
Irons, who owns several cars and six houses, including a pink castle in County Cork, Ireland, nevertheless dismissed the idea that a recovery in consumption would help Britain out of recession: “How many clothes do people need? People must drop their standard of living so the wealth can be spread about."
He rightly suggests there are too many of us yet this father of two says: “I don’t think you can tell people not to have children."
The grimmer alternative, says Irons, is to continue to inflate the richer western economies to bursting point at the expense of poorer nations: “We would have to ringfence those who are starving and fighting over water, keeping everybody out. We’d live in a sort of fortress world, with an area which is fine, with its guarded oil pipe coming from Afghanistan or wherever, but I can’t see that working.”....Thus spake the fecund owner of six cars and a pink painted castle on an Irish Lough.
Reading that last comment I am uncomfortably aware of pots calling kettles pink. My personsal Ship of Fools is swift approaching the rocky channel of overdraft times. This week my late cousin's library went up for sale. It occured to me it would have been nice to own a small collection of his books to remind me of the many happy hours I have passed in that room of wonders. I chose first editions of the "Hound of the Baskervilles"," Johnson's Lives of the Poets" and the Surtees' Jorrocks collection. I noticed in time the bid I was making would carry me into the overdraft shallows and equalled the amount I have promised to pay my charities for the rest of the year. One of these is Help for Heroes and, as it happens, one of those heroes was interviewed on radio. He was a Lance Corporal who had lost three limbs. His esprit was shaming. I tore up the cheque for the auction.
Friday, 21 May 2010
DON'T ASK WHERE I LIVED
I once lived in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. When I said it English listeners found my command of language impressive. Welsh speaking listeners shuddered.
That was my problem. I lived in a place I could not pronounce.
The Welsh can do things with their curious assemblies of letters that in other cultures can only be achieved by musical notation. Welsh is not just a language: it is performance art. "Bechod" is pity carried almost to the point of tears and no girl, surely, can resist the sweet blandishment of "cariad"; against which sweetheart sounds like a lump of toffee.
In Wales, pronounciation is the key to acceptance. It is phonetic freemasonry and it is planetary.
I used to broadcast every week to Australia a newsletter about life in Britain. I was a sort of Alistair Coookaburra.
Because - as it sometimes seems - the entire population of Australia is either Welsh or from Liverpool, which is much
the same thing, my producer insisted that I call it "A Letter from Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-
llantysiliogogogoch".
I tried not to because whenever I did an irate Welsh Australian telephoned me from Brisbane to complain. His
telephone bill must have been longer than my address. Not only can I not PRONOUNCE Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogoch; nor even act it. I cannot write it down except with great difficulty. Mail order purchase, the mad lottery of the glossy magazine bargain offer, was forever closed to me. There was never room on the coupon for my address.
An abbreviation? There was once.LlanfairPG. But there is a Welsh phrase for political correctness too. LlanfairPG is an invitation to the curled lip. The only acceptable PC alternative to PG is Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll. You cannot go
very far with an abbreviation that is twenty letters long. Nor can you easily get credit. I was refused credit for the purchase of a word processor. The credit regulatory office was in Leeds. And the Yorkshire computer would not accept that an island called Anglesey existed.
To live in a fictional island, in a village you cannot pronounce, is to know despair.
I once had a letter from Wiltshire. It was sent air mail.
To be strictly ecumenical, I have had some pretty bizarre postal experiences in England. When we used to live on the
City Walls in Chester I worked under the window in the drawing room - I will write in a future column about bitter
injustice and how whenever we move my wife gets a study and I write on the corner of a table. Through the window I could watch the postman coming, a mixed blessing when you owe as much as I did in those halcyon days of determined debauchery.
One day a month I looked forward to his visits. That was the day he brought my selection from Records With Pleasure,
recordings of potted versions of Shakespearean plays put out by the Daily Express. On this occasion I hurried to the door to take the precious recording from his hands. Too late. He had already folded it neatly in half and posted it through the box.
There was a certain cachet in having the only crescent-shaped production of Macbeth on record, but playing was not easy. No sooner had the warrior tones of Macbeth boomed questions at the three witches than Birnam Wood was galloping to Dunsinane as the needles slipped down the inner slope of the crescent like demented skiers.
The man the Post Office sent to process my complaint was dressed to intimidate.Why else should a man who arrived
on a red bicycle wear a crash helmet and black leather gauntlet gloves? He clearly did not believe my story. Indeed
he seemed convinced I was the Mr Big of an international ring of record benders. Finally he conceded my complaint. But he was not done. As he left he uttered a sentence that has lodged itself in my mind: "Do not dispose of the record without permission," he warned. "It is now the property of the Post Office and we may need to call it in."
For God's sake, tell me. Does the Post Office run to crescent-shaped gramophones?
A VALUABLE SOCIAL LESSON....
A pity if you missed the chance to read this week's 'Ranters' blog. Ranters is a weekly meander round the newspapers of their youth by old stagers and is the inspiration of my chum Revel Barker, sometime Consiglieri to Cap'n Bob Maxwell of the Mirror. A regular contributor is William Greaves, who this week offered a useful piece of etiquette, which, in keeping with another hallowed tradition of our trade - stealing another chap's bright ideas - I "lift" without shame.
If you are not already on its journalists’ mailing list, and want to be reminded when the site is updated each week, send your name and email address to: rantersreader@gmail.com
Short arms, deep pockets
By William Greaves
There is one familiar expression in the English language which appears in no international phrase book – for the simple reason that foreigners would be able to make neither head nor tail of it.
The phrase is: ‘It’s my round.’ It has a number of variations: the assertive ‘No, no, it’s definitely my round’, the quizzically aggrieved ‘Whose round is it?’ and even the faintly aggressive ‘It can’t be my round again, surely.’
When two or more people assemble to quench their thirst in a public place anywhere east of Dover or west of the Scillies, a bill is pushed under the saucer each time a new batch of drinks arrives. Or a beer mat is marked, slate chalked or spike spiked. Upon departure, the final tally is then added up and divided among all present. Fair – but unsporting.
No nation which invented cricket could seriously be expected to comply with a code of conduct so morosely bereft of complication that all the niceties of lifemanship and etiquette are swamped by simple arithmetic. So the difference between the British pub and every other kind of alien bar is that, here, we pay before we sip. Correction: one person pays before everyone sips.
So the British pub – and the atmosphere which prevails within – is unique in so much as every new order is a personal gift by one patron to all his or her friends or colleagues.
But who is that one patron? Here is the nub around which the very British game of ‘pubbing’ revolves. For not only is the ‘round’ (defined in my Collins Concise as ‘a number of drinks bought at one time for a number of people’) deeply engrained in the national ethos, it is also deliciously ill-defined in the matter of whose turn it is to dig deep.
There was a time, before bitter gave way to Budweiser, when such a question would never have had to be asked. Tyro drinkers would be so overawed by their surroundings – and the dangers that lurked within – that they would nervously ape their experienced elders. In other words, they would learn by natural instinct when it was their turn to put hand in pocket.
Some years ago, in the days when newspapers lived in Fleet Street and the round often assumed titanic dimensions, I became aware that standards were falling. Appalling laxities like tossing a coin or engaging in a game of spoof in order to determine who should pay were creeping in to replace the proper order of things. Some players even sank to the unpardonable depths of ‘round avoidance,’ arriving late, enjoying several drinks and then, in the nick of time, spotting someone across the room with whom they ‘must just grab a word.’
It was not entirely the young students’ fault. A new and impetuous generation may well have sprung, improperly dressed, upon the scene – but who can learn when the teachers have forgotten how to teach? In those darkest hours, I realised that The Word had to be spread before a glorious national heritage was allowed to wither on the vine.
The result of this initiative became known throughout the pubs in that street of shame as Greaves’s Rules. Under their auspices not only were rounds ordered but tribunals commissioned and even sentences passed. Once-respected men today walk shoeless down Oxford Street for having transgressed against them.
It was a fragile claim to eponymous immortality – and certainly not one I sought to patent in documentary form – but this website has now invited me to publish those same edicts as a reminder that nothing in our history is so sacred that it cannot be forgotten.
And so, for whom it might concern, here are Greaves’s Rules. Pin them up above or near the bar counter. Then even foreign visitors might stumble across some thinly understood enlightenment.
GREAVES’ RULES
1.When two or more enter the pub together, one - usually the first through the door - will begin proceedings with the words "Now then, what are we having?" He or she will then order and pay. This purchase is known as "the first round".
2.This player, or "opener", will remain "in the chair" while other friends or colleagues come through the door to join the round. He will remain in this benefactory role until either (a) his own glass sinks to beneath the half way mark or (b) another drinker finds himself almost bereft of his original refreshment and volunteers to "start a new round".
3.In the absence of new arrivals, any player other than the opener may at any time inquire whether it is "the same again?" On receiving his instructions, he will then order and pay for "the second round". (N.B. The second round is the last one to be specifically numbered. Beyond that point, nobody wishes to be reminded how many they have had and, anyway, no-one should be counting.)
4.The round acknowledges no discrimination. All players, regardless of sex, age or social status, are expected to "stand their corner". (Pedants might like to note that we are talking here of the only "round" in the English language that also contains a "corner".
5.Any new entrant, joining the session after its inception, is not expected to "buy himself in" but should be invited to join the round by whoever is in the chair (see Rule 2). If, however, he is greeted by silence he may either (a) buy a drink just for himself or (b) attempt to buy a round for all present. If (a) or, worse still, (b) is not acceptable to the congregation then the new entrant has been snubbed and should in future seek out more appreciative company. There is one important exception...
6.For reasons of haste or poverty, a new arrival may insist on buying his own with the words "Thanks, but I'm only popping in for one". If he is then seen to buy more than three drinks, he will be deemed a skinflint, neither broke nor in a hurry to get home, and will be penalised for his duplicity by being ordered to buy the next round.
7.Although everyone in the group is normally required to buy at least one round before leaving, the advent of either drunkenness or closing time sometimes renders this ideal unattainable. In such circumstances, any non-paying participant will (a) have "got away with it" and (b) appoint himself "opener" at the next forgathering. However, any player who notices on arrival that the round has "got out of hand" and has no chance of reaching his turn before "the last bell", may start a "breakaway round" by buying a drink for himself and all subsequent arrivals. This stratagem breaks the round in two, keeps the cost within manageable proportions and is the only acceptable alternative to Rule 5.
8.When a pressing engagement elsewhere precludes further involvement, it is wholly unacceptable for any player who has not yet been in the chair to buy a round in which he cannot himself be included. In such circumstances Rule 7 (a) and (b) therefore apply.
9.In the event of any one glass becoming empty, a new round must be called immediately. This should not necessarily be called by the owner of the empty glass, however, because this place the slower drinker at an unfair fund-saving advantage. (N.B. Whereas it is permissible for any member of the round to decrease the capacity of his individual order - "just a half for me, please" - the opposite does not hold good. A large whisky, for instance, may be offered by the chair but never demanded of it.)
10.Regional variations. In various parts of the country, a particular establishment will impose its own individual codicil. In one Yorkshire pub, for example, the landlord's Jack Russell terrier expects to be included in every round. Where such amendments exist, and are properly advertised, they must be piously observed. We are, after all, talking about a religion.
END NOTE FROM NEW YORK TIMES
"Marriage is like water. You have to drink it. Swinging is like wine. Some people feel it’s delicious the first time they try it, so they keep drinking. Some people try it and think it tastes bad, so they never drink it again."
MA YAOHAI, whom a Chinese court sentenced to prison for “crowd licentiousness".
Crowd licentiousness?
That was my problem. I lived in a place I could not pronounce.
The Welsh can do things with their curious assemblies of letters that in other cultures can only be achieved by musical notation. Welsh is not just a language: it is performance art. "Bechod" is pity carried almost to the point of tears and no girl, surely, can resist the sweet blandishment of "cariad"; against which sweetheart sounds like a lump of toffee.
In Wales, pronounciation is the key to acceptance. It is phonetic freemasonry and it is planetary.
I used to broadcast every week to Australia a newsletter about life in Britain. I was a sort of Alistair Coookaburra.
Because - as it sometimes seems - the entire population of Australia is either Welsh or from Liverpool, which is much
the same thing, my producer insisted that I call it "A Letter from Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-
llantysiliogogogoch".
I tried not to because whenever I did an irate Welsh Australian telephoned me from Brisbane to complain. His
telephone bill must have been longer than my address. Not only can I not PRONOUNCE Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogoch; nor even act it. I cannot write it down except with great difficulty. Mail order purchase, the mad lottery of the glossy magazine bargain offer, was forever closed to me. There was never room on the coupon for my address.
An abbreviation? There was once.LlanfairPG. But there is a Welsh phrase for political correctness too. LlanfairPG is an invitation to the curled lip. The only acceptable PC alternative to PG is Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll. You cannot go
very far with an abbreviation that is twenty letters long. Nor can you easily get credit. I was refused credit for the purchase of a word processor. The credit regulatory office was in Leeds. And the Yorkshire computer would not accept that an island called Anglesey existed.
To live in a fictional island, in a village you cannot pronounce, is to know despair.
I once had a letter from Wiltshire. It was sent air mail.
To be strictly ecumenical, I have had some pretty bizarre postal experiences in England. When we used to live on the
City Walls in Chester I worked under the window in the drawing room - I will write in a future column about bitter
injustice and how whenever we move my wife gets a study and I write on the corner of a table. Through the window I could watch the postman coming, a mixed blessing when you owe as much as I did in those halcyon days of determined debauchery.
One day a month I looked forward to his visits. That was the day he brought my selection from Records With Pleasure,
recordings of potted versions of Shakespearean plays put out by the Daily Express. On this occasion I hurried to the door to take the precious recording from his hands. Too late. He had already folded it neatly in half and posted it through the box.
There was a certain cachet in having the only crescent-shaped production of Macbeth on record, but playing was not easy. No sooner had the warrior tones of Macbeth boomed questions at the three witches than Birnam Wood was galloping to Dunsinane as the needles slipped down the inner slope of the crescent like demented skiers.
The man the Post Office sent to process my complaint was dressed to intimidate.Why else should a man who arrived
on a red bicycle wear a crash helmet and black leather gauntlet gloves? He clearly did not believe my story. Indeed
he seemed convinced I was the Mr Big of an international ring of record benders. Finally he conceded my complaint. But he was not done. As he left he uttered a sentence that has lodged itself in my mind: "Do not dispose of the record without permission," he warned. "It is now the property of the Post Office and we may need to call it in."
For God's sake, tell me. Does the Post Office run to crescent-shaped gramophones?
A VALUABLE SOCIAL LESSON....
A pity if you missed the chance to read this week's 'Ranters' blog. Ranters is a weekly meander round the newspapers of their youth by old stagers and is the inspiration of my chum Revel Barker, sometime Consiglieri to Cap'n Bob Maxwell of the Mirror. A regular contributor is William Greaves, who this week offered a useful piece of etiquette, which, in keeping with another hallowed tradition of our trade - stealing another chap's bright ideas - I "lift" without shame.
If you are not already on its journalists’ mailing list, and want to be reminded when the site is updated each week, send your name and email address to: rantersreader@gmail.com
Short arms, deep pockets
By William Greaves
There is one familiar expression in the English language which appears in no international phrase book – for the simple reason that foreigners would be able to make neither head nor tail of it.
The phrase is: ‘It’s my round.’ It has a number of variations: the assertive ‘No, no, it’s definitely my round’, the quizzically aggrieved ‘Whose round is it?’ and even the faintly aggressive ‘It can’t be my round again, surely.’
When two or more people assemble to quench their thirst in a public place anywhere east of Dover or west of the Scillies, a bill is pushed under the saucer each time a new batch of drinks arrives. Or a beer mat is marked, slate chalked or spike spiked. Upon departure, the final tally is then added up and divided among all present. Fair – but unsporting.
No nation which invented cricket could seriously be expected to comply with a code of conduct so morosely bereft of complication that all the niceties of lifemanship and etiquette are swamped by simple arithmetic. So the difference between the British pub and every other kind of alien bar is that, here, we pay before we sip. Correction: one person pays before everyone sips.
So the British pub – and the atmosphere which prevails within – is unique in so much as every new order is a personal gift by one patron to all his or her friends or colleagues.
But who is that one patron? Here is the nub around which the very British game of ‘pubbing’ revolves. For not only is the ‘round’ (defined in my Collins Concise as ‘a number of drinks bought at one time for a number of people’) deeply engrained in the national ethos, it is also deliciously ill-defined in the matter of whose turn it is to dig deep.
There was a time, before bitter gave way to Budweiser, when such a question would never have had to be asked. Tyro drinkers would be so overawed by their surroundings – and the dangers that lurked within – that they would nervously ape their experienced elders. In other words, they would learn by natural instinct when it was their turn to put hand in pocket.
Some years ago, in the days when newspapers lived in Fleet Street and the round often assumed titanic dimensions, I became aware that standards were falling. Appalling laxities like tossing a coin or engaging in a game of spoof in order to determine who should pay were creeping in to replace the proper order of things. Some players even sank to the unpardonable depths of ‘round avoidance,’ arriving late, enjoying several drinks and then, in the nick of time, spotting someone across the room with whom they ‘must just grab a word.’
It was not entirely the young students’ fault. A new and impetuous generation may well have sprung, improperly dressed, upon the scene – but who can learn when the teachers have forgotten how to teach? In those darkest hours, I realised that The Word had to be spread before a glorious national heritage was allowed to wither on the vine.
The result of this initiative became known throughout the pubs in that street of shame as Greaves’s Rules. Under their auspices not only were rounds ordered but tribunals commissioned and even sentences passed. Once-respected men today walk shoeless down Oxford Street for having transgressed against them.
It was a fragile claim to eponymous immortality – and certainly not one I sought to patent in documentary form – but this website has now invited me to publish those same edicts as a reminder that nothing in our history is so sacred that it cannot be forgotten.
And so, for whom it might concern, here are Greaves’s Rules. Pin them up above or near the bar counter. Then even foreign visitors might stumble across some thinly understood enlightenment.
GREAVES’ RULES
1.When two or more enter the pub together, one - usually the first through the door - will begin proceedings with the words "Now then, what are we having?" He or she will then order and pay. This purchase is known as "the first round".
2.This player, or "opener", will remain "in the chair" while other friends or colleagues come through the door to join the round. He will remain in this benefactory role until either (a) his own glass sinks to beneath the half way mark or (b) another drinker finds himself almost bereft of his original refreshment and volunteers to "start a new round".
3.In the absence of new arrivals, any player other than the opener may at any time inquire whether it is "the same again?" On receiving his instructions, he will then order and pay for "the second round". (N.B. The second round is the last one to be specifically numbered. Beyond that point, nobody wishes to be reminded how many they have had and, anyway, no-one should be counting.)
4.The round acknowledges no discrimination. All players, regardless of sex, age or social status, are expected to "stand their corner". (Pedants might like to note that we are talking here of the only "round" in the English language that also contains a "corner".
5.Any new entrant, joining the session after its inception, is not expected to "buy himself in" but should be invited to join the round by whoever is in the chair (see Rule 2). If, however, he is greeted by silence he may either (a) buy a drink just for himself or (b) attempt to buy a round for all present. If (a) or, worse still, (b) is not acceptable to the congregation then the new entrant has been snubbed and should in future seek out more appreciative company. There is one important exception...
6.For reasons of haste or poverty, a new arrival may insist on buying his own with the words "Thanks, but I'm only popping in for one". If he is then seen to buy more than three drinks, he will be deemed a skinflint, neither broke nor in a hurry to get home, and will be penalised for his duplicity by being ordered to buy the next round.
7.Although everyone in the group is normally required to buy at least one round before leaving, the advent of either drunkenness or closing time sometimes renders this ideal unattainable. In such circumstances, any non-paying participant will (a) have "got away with it" and (b) appoint himself "opener" at the next forgathering. However, any player who notices on arrival that the round has "got out of hand" and has no chance of reaching his turn before "the last bell", may start a "breakaway round" by buying a drink for himself and all subsequent arrivals. This stratagem breaks the round in two, keeps the cost within manageable proportions and is the only acceptable alternative to Rule 5.
8.When a pressing engagement elsewhere precludes further involvement, it is wholly unacceptable for any player who has not yet been in the chair to buy a round in which he cannot himself be included. In such circumstances Rule 7 (a) and (b) therefore apply.
9.In the event of any one glass becoming empty, a new round must be called immediately. This should not necessarily be called by the owner of the empty glass, however, because this place the slower drinker at an unfair fund-saving advantage. (N.B. Whereas it is permissible for any member of the round to decrease the capacity of his individual order - "just a half for me, please" - the opposite does not hold good. A large whisky, for instance, may be offered by the chair but never demanded of it.)
10.Regional variations. In various parts of the country, a particular establishment will impose its own individual codicil. In one Yorkshire pub, for example, the landlord's Jack Russell terrier expects to be included in every round. Where such amendments exist, and are properly advertised, they must be piously observed. We are, after all, talking about a religion.
END NOTE FROM NEW YORK TIMES
"Marriage is like water. You have to drink it. Swinging is like wine. Some people feel it’s delicious the first time they try it, so they keep drinking. Some people try it and think it tastes bad, so they never drink it again."
MA YAOHAI, whom a Chinese court sentenced to prison for “crowd licentiousness".
Crowd licentiousness?
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