The Middenshire Chronicles

Pieless in Lewes

2012-02-14T19:19:00.019Z

Every now and again it's good to get out and do something. So on Saturday Mrs H and I decided to go for a wander round Lewes, the county town, and have lunch in one of the many eateries that are dotted along the high street.

I like Lewes, but there's something about the place that I can't quite put my finger on. The late Keith Waterhouse said that Brighton 'looks like a town that is helping the police with its enquiries.' But Lewes, on the other hand, looks like a town that is best mates with the Chief Constable, and tells you that you'd do well to remember it, as you both try to nab the last parking space behind Waitrose. Most of its inhabitants look quite well heeled and have that air of self-assurance that I've never been able to carry off. Even the down and outs are posh. A ruddy-faced street drinker strummed a guitar as he sweetly sang 'you killed ma wee brother ya bastard' or something very like it to passers-by; in any lesser town the same words would have been screamed out in the middle of the night outside a block of flats, and without the benefit of a classical twelve string. But I digress.

Mrs H and I negotiated the doors of our chosen eatery and were greeted by a shaven-headed whirling dervish, masquerading as a waiter, who handed us a couple of menus and promised to seat us soon. Initially, the menus could not be read as our glasses had steamed up. But we needn't have worried. The 'soon' turned out to be a few minutes as the dervish multitasked his way round the restaurant, clearing tables, laying tables, collecting monies and delivering meals. But eventually we were deposited at a table for two in the middle of the restaurant and left to our own devices to study the menu now that the fog had cleared from our spectacles.Eventually Mrs H settled upon a little smoked cod and haddock dish with chunky chips, whilst I decided to tackle the steak and kidney pie. Off went the dervish to fulfil the order, which gave us the leisure to examine our fellow diners. Behind us was a husband and wife with two children; one a girl around three years old, and her little brother, probably no more than nine months old. They had clearly been waiting some time for their food, as the girl was in the process of demolishing two slices of bread, which she laboriously buttered with a knife that was almost as big as herself. And, after every mouthful of bread, the child wept copious tears for no readily apparent reason. Her little brother, in contrast, was rather quiet and solemn, dressed as he was like a mini country gentleman, with a tiny tattersall shirt and a grey waistcoat. I expected to see a gold dummy on a watch chain tucked into his waistcoat pocket, but disappointingly this was absent.

After waiting for more than half an hour for our food, I enquired of the dervish as to its whereabouts. Off he sped, and returned five minutes later with the news that my pie had been dropped on the kitchen floor just prior to its delivery to our table. This piece of information I found very hard to believe, for the following reason. I noticed that someone in the kitchen would ring a tiny bell when food was ready to be collected. One of the junior dervishes would then dash into the kitchen, emerging with said food. And, whilst I had heard many tiny tinkles during the preceding few minutes, I had not heard the tumultous crash of a steak and kidney pie, encased in a ceramic pie dish, hitting the kitchen floor. I suspected that they had simply forgotten us and our order, and had concocted the dropped pie story to cover their tracks. Deciding not to cause a fuss, I let it pass, and settled down to my dish of complimentary olives to await pie number two.

A few minutes later, a young female under-dervish arrived.

'I'm really sorry, ladies,' she said. 'I mean, sir and lady,' she added, having noticed that I was, in fact, a man.

'It's the hair, isn't it?' I said.

She blanked this rejoinder. 'I'm really sorry, but it was me who dropped your pie.' I gave her a half smile in an effort to show that I felt her discomfort. They had obviously drawn straws in the kitchen, and this young lady, having picked the short one, had been selected to confirm the story concocted by the senior dervish.

'Your food will be here in a couple of minutes.'

Our food arrived in a couple of minutes and, I have to say, it was well worth the wait. But what was even better than the food was the middle aged, middle class couple on the next table, who were clearly having a blazing row about where they were going to spend their next holiday. However, it was conducted in a very quiet and civilised manner, like two people who barely knew each other politely conversing about the weather. She wanted to go to Aspen in Colorado. He wanted to go to Europe. What have you got against Aspen, she asked. The length of the journey, he said. You didn't think Bermuda was too far away when you wanted to go there, did you, she asked. Well, then we'll go to Aspen, he said. I really want to go to Aspen. What's the snow like at this time of year, he asked. I have no idea, she said...

We paid the bill and departed before things turned really nasty and they started dipping their fingers in the carafe and flicking water over each other.

Incidentally, I can thoroughly recommend the restaurant to you. Sorry, did I not tell you what it was called? Oh dear...

Hoarder! Hoarder!

2012-01-26T20:35:00.000Z

In the course of my life I've had six house moves. This averages out to a move about every nine years. Most of them happened when I was quite young, so I didn't get fully involved in the trauma that is The House Move. But my most recent one was just under three years ago, when I upped sticks from London to the comparative peace of East Sussex. And I discovered that a move gives you the opportunity to go through your possessions and, hopefully, have something of a clearout, so that you start life in your new house with rather less clutter. What a pity I failed to use the opportunity. As a consequence, I am now, three years later, still making weekly trips to the charity shops and the Council tip, getting rid of the stuff that, had I disposed of it earlier, would have saved me a good few pounds by enabling me to hire a smaller removal van.

But I do struggle to give things up. Ask Mrs H and she'll quite happily tell you. I have more books than you can shake a stick at. I have a shed full of odds and ends that I've been collecting for years, in the belief that they might one day 'come in handy'. And drawers full of fossils, miscellaneous pebbles picked up from beaches, old pens, bits of electrical equipment and beer mats that I can't bear to throw away. The declutter experts advocate getting rid of something if you haven't used it for a given period - six months, for example - but I find it nigh on impossible to ditch things that I haven't used for half a lifetime. Or more. I have tried to declutter; heaven knows I've tried; but I invariably get stuck after the first item. And that first item is usually a bus ticket or a till receipt.

So, I'm a rubbish declutter-er. But just lately I've begun to wonder whether I shouldn't have hung on to all of it. For in the North Laine area of Brighton there is a large emporium called Snooper's Paradise, wherein a positive gallimaufry of antiques, curios and collectibles are for sale. Walking round Snooper's Paradise is like taking a stroll through your life. A bit like a near-death experience, only in slow motion. I was in said emporium a couple of weeks ago, and saw a good many items from my past. I used to store my fossils and sea shells in old Havana cigar boxes; the shop had them for six pounds each. My father cleverly rigged up an internal telephone system in my bedroom so my mother could phone me when dinner was on the table. Those same telephones, long since gone to landfill, are now worth around £100. And old bits of military clothing which I picked up for pennies at jumble sales in the sixties when such things were in favour (blame the Sergeant Pepper album) now cost as much as a new suit.

So, dear reader, I've come to a decision. I shall call a halt to any kind of de-cluttering. I wil start to fill my house with piles of newspapers, empty bottles and cans, and my garden with redundant bits of furniture. And I shall retain every book, CD, electronic gadget, empty takeaway carton and any other object that passes my way, on the off-chance that it may, at some point in the distant future, be worth a few bob. OK; if you visit me you might have to wipe your feet when you leave the house; but on the plus side, I think I'll soon have my very own documentary series on TV.

New Year?

2012-01-01T23:28:00.006Z

I may be mistaken, but it seems only twelve months ago that it was last a new year. And the older I get, the more I wonder what there is to celebrate about a new year, which is, after all, just a simple change from the end of one month to the start of another. Apparently, around two million turned out to watch the fireworks in Sydney, Australia, whilst a rather more select 250,000 attended the London pyrotechnics. I, as always, watched from the comfort of my living room. With a cup of tea and a biscuit.

What is it about the turn of the year that obsesses us, both individually and collectively? TV stations and the printed news media give us their Reviews of the Year, often focusing on a list of those luminaries who died. Magazines tell us how to be A New You, offering tips on resolutions, diets, giving up smoking and the like. All of which beg the question...if you want to turn your life around, why wait for some arbitrary date to do it? If it's October and you're thinking of packing up smoking, why wait until January? If for no other reason, it'd save you a bit of money. If you have a twenty-a-day habit, stopping smoking in October could see you saving around five hundred pounds.

I've decided that, if I do have to celebrate the new year, I'm going to do it on the 25th of March. At the risk of being a bore, I've previously mentioned that, until 1751, the new year started on that date, otherwise known as Lady Day. Falling as it does exactly nine months before Christmas Day, it's the day when the Archangel Gabriel is said to have informed the Virgin Mary that she was to bear Jesus. And this year (or next year, to be pedantic), it falls on the Sunday when the clock is advanced by one hour, giving us 12 hours, 30 minutes and 53 seconds of daylight during which to celebrate. Contrast this with the measly 8 hours, 1 minute and 47 seconds vouchsafed to us on the first of January.

Dare to be different. This March the 25th, wish all your friends and neighbours a Happy New Year. And rather than giving something up, take something up. Clear your clutter. Construct model aircraft from kits. Learn Anglo Saxon. Or even start morris dancing...

Not painting the banisters

2011-10-20T19:53:00.002+01:00

Someone recently asked me if I live on the Forth Bridge. I think the question was prompted by the fact that I always seem to be decorating. Dear friends, I can state quite categorically that I do not inhabit a Scottish railway bridge, but rather an Edwardian house by the Sussex shore that is in need of a lick of paint here and there. And I'm not always decorating. On some days - today, for instance - the sun was shining, so I went for a brief trundle round our local shops.

There often seems to be a kind of contest going on between the shops in Seaford. Earlier in the year many of the traders had circus-themed windows, featuring clowns and the like, and I suspect there must be a prize for the best dressed shop. At the moment, their theme is Hallowe'en, so pumpkins, skeletons, ghoulies (not a misspelling) and ghosties are much in evidence. But I was rather disappointed to see that our local funeral directors seem not to have joined in, however. As I mused upon the kind of display they might usefully have created, I bumped into a couple of programme sellers from the Seaford Bonfire Society.

Today marks the first procession of the newly reformed Seaford Bonfire Society. At around 7pm a motley group of pirates, smugglers (or Seaford Shags) and wreckers will , for the first time since 1977, march with blazing torches from their headquarters, through the town centre and on to a field close to Martello Tower no.74, where there will be a bonfire and firework display. There is a great tradition of bonfire societies in Sussex, most of which march to celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of the 'Popish Plot'. It is our avowed intention to watch the celebrations tonight, and perhaps partake of a few glasses of ale thereafter. After purchasing my programme and exchanging pleasantries with a medieval lady and a female smuggler with a Jack Russell terrier, I met Mrs H and we betook ourselves to a salvage yard somewhere near Heathfield.

Salvage yards are fascinating places; full of stuff that the likes of you and I (or probably more likely, our parents) ripped out and threw away years ago. As a child of the sixties, I remember the television programmes featuring Barry Bucknell, the first TV DIY star. Mr Bucknell showed his viewers how to cover up an ugly Victorian panelled door with hardboard, and how to rip out those dreadful old fireplaces and install a nice electric fire their place. And now we're spending hundreds or even thousands of pounds to have them put back in. We were quite fortunate; in one of our spare bedrooms, behind a sheet of hardboard, we found an intact Edwardian cast iron fireplace, complete with grate, tiles, and the remains of the last fire.

Anyway, this salvage yard was a veritable treasure trove of old fireplaces, butler sinks, ancient doors, massive oak beams and reclaimed floorboards. One of the most interesting items was what appeared to be the cast iron columns that would originally have held up the glass canopy of a Victorian railway station. We were looking for a fender - one of those metal contraptions that fits around a hearthstone - but sadly none of the size we required were to be found today. There are plenty more salvage yards to go round, so that will be a task for another sunny day when I'm not giving the banisters yet another coat of paint.

After our foray into the world of salvage and reclamation, we drove home via the coast road through Eastbourne. The early autumn sunshine sparkled on the sea as trippers sauntered along the promenade or took the air on the pier, pensioners dozed in the sun-rooms of the seafront hotels, and ice cream sellers made the most of the unexpected warm weather. I'm told that these decent temperatures will be with us for a few days yet. It'll help the paint on my banisters to dry a little faster.

Beer, bells and badges

2011-10-03T19:36:00.004+01:00

I like beer. And I like living in Sussex. So I suppose I should regard myself as exceptionally fortunate that I live in the county that is home to a beer to which I am particularly partial. I speak, of course, of Harveys beer. Harveys was founded in 1790 and is still, I'm pleased to say, going strong. And it was to Harveys brewery in Lewes that I and my morris dancing compatriots made our way last Saturday to dance in the Old Ale.

Dancing in the Old Ale has become an annual tradition, and this was my second visit to the festival, having been dancing with Long Man for just under two years. Long Man and other morris sides entertain the crowds, Harveys (by whom we are sponsored, incidentally) lay on a plenteous supply of Old Ale and a buffet lunch, and there is more dancing and general merriment in the afternoon.

After our first dance, I was called forward by the foreman (our 'dance master', if you will), who announced to the assembled public that it was time to present me with my badges. Our Squire (the head of the side) shook my hand and awarded me the much-coveted badges. For a morris dancer, being given your badges is a significant event. It means that the side's 'officers' believe you have reached a satisfactory enough standard to be awarded full membership. So, for the first time on Saturday, I was able to dance with my badges. And The Hat!

Of course, this is just the beginning. I still have a long journey to be anywhere near as good as the long standing members of the side, and there are still many dances from various traditions to learn and retain. But I am extraordinarily proud to be a member of the side and to wear its badges.

Oh, and the beer was pretty good on Saturday, too.

Oh, the Huge Manatee.

2011-07-07T17:15:00.002+01:00

Food shopping. I've never quite got used to food shopping. I know it needs to be done and, since we got rid of the manservant, we have to do it ourselves. I'm afraid I find it rather a grim ritual, so, rather unfairly, I tend to leave Mrs. H. to do the useful stuff, like decide on what veg we're having, checking the date on the milk, etc. whilst I eye up the unusual cheeses and cooked meats, and generally get in everyone's way. And it's a curious thing, but I do get in everyone's way. All the time. Because it seems, dear bloggy friend, that wherever I stand whilst I'm waiting for Mrs. H. to determine the appropriate quantity and persuasion of mushrooms that will find their way into the trolley, I'm blocking someone's view of something, or preventing someone from getting to their favourite supermarket item. Last Friday I thought I had the problem licked. I parked myself in front of the Quinoa, whatever the heck that is, and congratulated myself with the thought that no-one was likely to bother me. I could, I thought, stand here, on and off, for days and days. And yet, dear blognator/blognatrix, within a minute a supermarket employee was saying, 'Excuse me, but can I just get to that Quinoa, please?' Next week I'm going to stand in front of the pickled dugong slices. Oh, the Huge Manatee!

But hang on. Perhaps I'm missing a trick here. Maybe I could offer my services to supermarkets to help them shift unpopular items. Let's say they've overbought on lemon puff biscuits. They call me. I stand in front of the lemon puffs for a couple of hours. Sales go through the roof. I'll draft the letter tomorrow.

Although I'm not that partial to the weekly shop, I always enjoy the drive back from the supermarket. As you climb the steep hill just beyond Old Town the last few houses at the edge of Eastbourne are left behind, and then, suddenly, you're on top of the Downs. To your right the rolling, whale-backed hills with views far to the north of the county; to your left, flocks of newly-shorn sheep biting the grass against a backdrop of the shimmering sea and, in the distance, the Belle Tout Lighthouse, famously moved 57 feet back from the edge of a cliff in 1999 to prevent it tumbling into the English Channel. The road rolls eastward through East Dean, Friston, Exceat (with its little bridge over the Cuckmere River) until at last you reach Seaford. And one such recent journey was more fun than usual as a result of something I'd heard on the radio.

The Radio Sussex presenter was talking to a guest; an animal behaviourist, I fancy it was, with specialist knowledge of dogs. And the good people of Sussex were phoning in with their questions and queries about their own animals. One very pleasant-sounding lady was the proud owner of an animal that was a cross between a West Highland Terrier and a poodle - a "Westie-Poo", apparently. This got me thinking. How many other interesting-sounding crossbreeds could I come up with? A Collie crossed with a Lhasa Apso and, hey presto, you have a Collapso. Or a Lhollie. A Pug and a German Shepherd would be a Pugger. And what you'd get if you crossed a Bulldog with a Shih Tzu is nobody's business...

I rather like local radio. In recent years it's suffered at the hands of the likes of Steve Coogan via his portrayal of the tacky, oleaginous Alan Partridge ('Who is the best Lord? Lord of the Flies, Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Dance?'). But on the whole, I like the fact that the presenters are rather more laid back than their counterparts on national radio, or indeed those who work on London stations. Comments and opinions that would result in your call being terminated within seconds on Radio London or LBC are aired on local radio, untramelled by the 'dump' button so often used to deal with callers to stations in the capital. And how refreshing it is to hear news bulletins about truly 'local' issues: the South Downs National Park, the effect of the recession on the rural economy, and items concerning the day to day minutiae of country life. In London, the stations appeared to be incapable of covering 'local' news; they seemed to be obsessed with international issues, government, and the latest edicts from the Mayor of London. And although local radio has its fair share of 'hang 'em and flog 'em' correspondents, the anger and bitterness one encounters on the Big City media seems to be absent. Ok, so they might question immigration policy, disagree with the mores of a percentage of Brighton's community, and spit feathers if a neighbour plays Radio 3 on their wireless after four in the afternoon, but you still feel you'd probably quite like them if you met them propping up the bar in a local pub, or out rambling with their Westie-poos on a Sunday morning...

Sunday morning just gone saw us taking a slow walk along the beach, soaking up the warm July sun and watching a procession of small sailing vessels tripping lightly across the shimmering sea. To our left, the chalky heights of Seaford Head with its colony of wheeling, squalling kittiwakes. To our right, the broad sweep of Seaford Bay, with the port of Newhaven, nestling in the shadow of the Victorian fort, its defensive guns forever silent. And, as the sound of children playing at the water's edge mingled with the lap of the sea and the distant bells of St Leonard's Church, I thanked my lucky stars, for the umpteenth time, that I live in this place.

If you're looking for serious or intelligent content...

2011-05-08T17:26:00.003+01:00

...then you've probably come to the wrong place. Because, try as I might, I don't seem able to comment on some of the weightier issues that now regularly feature on Twitter. Every other day, I log on and find someone or other blowing a virtual gasket about rising sea levels, the royal wedding, foreign unrest or the Alternative Vote system. Twitterati urge me to display a logo in support of this; a ribbon against that; or to bang a drum on their behalf about the other, whatever the other is. And I'm beginning to wonder whether my inability to engage with these weighty matters makes me a Bad Person. I'll give you an example.

The other day, amongst the usual crop of supermarket flyers and half price roller blind offers in the paper, I found a pamphlet from WWF, urging me to 'adopt a tiger'. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't adoption usually involve assuming the role of a parent? I thought to myself, 'if I agree to adopt one, how would I cope with the bottle feeding, the nocturnal roaring and the housetraining?' But then I read on, and realised that all they actually wanted was three pounds a month, not for me to act in loco tigris. In exchange, apparently, I would get a cuddly tiger, and updates about my chosen animal three times a year. What would these 'updates' be, I wondered. Would it be 'January the ninth: wandered about the jungle for a bit. Scared a couple of people. Ate a monkey'? Or would it just be some bland corporate statement about the importance of engaging with authorities in the subcontinent to ensure the continued existence of this particular species? Douglas Adams was of the opinion that the best way to save an animal from extinction is to start eating it. I disagree. I think the best way to save tigers for future generations is to give them names. I think we should try it. I guarantee that poachers would find it much harder to kill a tiger if they knew the Bengal in the cross hairs of their rifle was called Colin. Or Doreen.

See? I must be a bad person. I can't even take endangered wildlife seriously. It's always seemed strange to me that conservationists spend so much time and effort saving creatures that, given half a chance, would kill and eat them. That's probably why I couldn't be a vet, being pecked to pieces by a raptor when all you're trying to do is mend its broken leg. It'd be like a doctor having to fight every patient s/he tried to treat.

I seemed to have strayed from the point a bit. Nothing unusual there. Anyway, when, in an idle moment, I decide to browse through Twitter's timeline, I get the distinct impression that I'm out of step with the rest of the human race. In fact, I'm even beginning to wonder whether I should be on Twitter at all. Let's look at the evidence. I don't hate the Royal Family, or, come to that, Margaret Thatcher, the Daily Mail or the United States. I'm not a 'single issue' tweeter, be it about childcare, or crochet work or science fiction. And I don't feel the need to curse and swear about things that don't impact upon me and that I cannot change. In fact, I can't think of a single issue that would get me up early to carry a placard in a march to 10 Downing Street. But perhaps my fellow tweeters are the same. Maybe they wouldn't be happy marching on government to demand the banning of something or the saving of something else. Perhaps they feel it's enough to eff and blind about it online in a sort of cyber-tourette's outburst. A very good example of this occurs when BBC airs Question Time on a Thursday night. The panel is usually fairly balanced - a tory, a labour politician, a libdem, a right wing thinker and a left wing journalist, or vice versa for the last two. Once the programme gets under way, Twitter's timeline is full of venom and vitriol for the right-wingers, whilst at the same time pointing out how statesmanlike, cogent, intelligent and fair the left leaning panel members are. The programme's live audience are also, I suspect, tweeters on a night out, as almost to a man (or woman) they boo the tories and applaud the socialists. And that's when I start wondering...how do right wing parties get voted into office when everyone seems to hate them so much? Why did the UK vote so overwhelmingly against AV when everyone on Twitter seemed for it? And why is it that the Daily Mail has the second highest circulation in the UK when it is, apparently, hated with a fierce intensity? And that's also when I long for a return to Twitter's halcyon days. The days when tweeters were content to list their favourite love songs, replacing the word 'love' with 'knob'. Or selecting a species of fish and inserting it into the title of a film or play (example - A midsummer night's bream).

Hmm. I'm in danger of straying into the realms of serious discussion here. Time for a lie down, I think. In the next post it'll be back to morris dancing and Middenshire. Far less controversial...

Ale and Fare Well

2011-02-20T19:12:00.010Z

It occurred to me today that it's rather a long time since I last wrote anything in this humble blog. Let me assure you that I haven't been entirely idle. I'm getting to grips with the part-time job; working twenty hours a week gives me a good reason for getting out of bed in the morning, and helps keep my brain active. I've also started working on a new Middenshire-based project - Old Thuck's Book of Middenshire Days - detailing the history, customs, folklore and people of the long-vanished shire in the style of Chambers' Book of Days. I've written some new material and have jotted down a few ideas for later, and hope to get the thing finished some time this year.

The dancing continues. I've learnt a number of stick dances and can execute them with a fair degree of proficiency. And so, a couple of weeks ago, it was decided that it was time to start me on some hanky dances. Hanky dances, dear reader, are the morris equivalent of flying a helicopter. Whilst listening to the music and counting your dance steps, you need at the same time to be moving your arms and hands in a manner determined by the 'tradition' you are dancing. So, you might be moving your right foot whilst flourishing right hanky, using both hankies to describe a circle in front of you, sidestepping to the left or right whilst flicking out with the hanky...the variations are many. And last night I had the chance to see how much I had absorbed.

The Kennet Morris Men, who hail from Reading in Berkshire, extended an invitation to Long Man to join them at their Kennet Ale. In morris-speak, an 'Ale' is a gathering of morris sides to dance, sing, enjoy a meal together and (let's not deny it) drink small quantities of beer. I and three vastly more experienced dancers than I took them up on their kind invitation, and last night saw us in Bracknell with Kennet, Bathampton Morris from Somerset, Victory Morris from Portsmouth, and Icknield Way Morris from Oxfordshire. There was an interesting start to the evening. It's apparently traditional for the Kennet men to serve pickles to their guests on arrival by way of an aperitif. Last night, as well as offering pickled onions and eggs, they presented us with some rather less common items, including garlic and brussels sprouts. Never being one to shrink from a challenge, I partook of a pickled sprout, and found it piquant, tasty and rather moreish. I might have a bash at making some myself.

The pickles being polished off and tankards filled, the dancing started. It never ceases to amaze me how many talented people are involved with The Morris; not just dancers, many of whom are much older than me and considerably lighter on their feet; but also the musicians. Violinists, concertina, melodica and banjo players and a smattering of accordionists deftly played their way through a plethora of traditional morris tunes. Now, it's a rule at the Ale that, if you turn up, you have to display one of your side's dances. And this presented us with a bit of a problem. Most morris dances are performed by either six or eight men, and our own dances, unique to Long Man and called the Wilmington Tradition, all require eight men. 'Chris,' said our Foreman (morris-speak for dance master), 'what's the last dance you did on Friday?' I thought for a moment. 'Alfriston Tye,' I said truthfully, and added 'but that was the first and only time I've danced it.' The Foreman smiled. 'Alfriston Tye it is, then!'

Thus it was that I performed a brand new (to me) hanky dance, hastily adapted to cater for four dancers instead of eight, in front of an audience of dancers with a combined experience of around a thousand years. And it worked.

After much massed dancing, we sat down to a meal, washed down with copious amounts of beer. Then, the plates being cleared away and cheese and biscuits produced, a representative of each morris side sang a traditional song to the assembled company. This was the prelude to the night's main sing-along. The tables were moved, our chairs were placed in a wide circle, and the floor was given to any man who chose to rise to his feet and sing. It was traditional fare - mostly sea-shanties, which seemed curious as we were so far from the sea - but this didn't matter. The port was passed round, and then round again and again as we joined in the choruses of these old songs. And it didn't matter if you didn't know them; you joined in with gusto and no-one minded.

Under normal circumstances, a male only function with (seemingly) an endless supply of alcohol would be a recipe for disaster. At the very least, one could expect raised voices, anti-social behaviour, possibly even violence. But this was nothing of the sort. There was no swearing, no voices raised in anger, no smashing of glasses or incivility of any kind. Just a group of men, happy with each others' company and brought together by a shared love of traditional dance. I can't remember when I enjoyed such a convivial evening among a group of people I'd never met before.

The scout hut in which our bash had been held also served as our hotel for the night. As might be expected, there were a few bleary eyes the next morning and an atmosphere that could, perhaps, be described as 'subdued'. But those of us who had met as strangers parted as friends.

And will I go again next year, if I'm invited? Let me see...

New Year Greetings

2011-01-02T19:02:00.004Z

Greetings one and all, and a happy new year to you. It seems like an awfully long time since we last spoke - November, I fancy - for which I apologise. But there always seemed to be something else that needed doing. A bit of decorating here; a bit of morris dancing there; and a new job to get to grips with.

I'm not much of a one for new year resolutions. I've always believed that, if you want to do something like give up smoking or lose a few pounds, you should do it when the fancy takes you, and not wait until the 'new year'. In truth, the first of January is probably a very bad time to think about changing your lifestyle in any appreciable way. I mean, let's face it. Christmas has only just gone, so there's still most of the Christmas cake left and a freezer full of the little snacks that seemed such a good idea when you did that Big Shop on Christmas Eve. The drinks cabinet is still bulging with a stack of half empty bottles of port, sherry and those weird liqueurs left over from your last holiday abroad. And you haven't even started on the Advocaat. Apart from all of these very good reasons for delaying your metamorphosis, we haven't even hit Twelfth Night (the traditional end of the yuletide festivities), and the time of wassailing to ensure a decent crop of apples for the year is still a long way off on January the 17th (old Twelfth Night in the Julian Calendar). Nope. Not a good time to give things up.

Allow me to make a suggestion. Why not start your personal reformation on the 25th of March? Otherwise known as 'Lady Day', this was regarded as the start of the year prior to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. Beginning your resolutions in March will have two advantages. Firstly, you should just about be getting to the end of all that overbought food and drink. Secondly, Lady Day falls around the same time as the start of British Summer Time. The longer, lighter days bring with them a sense of optimism and a feeling that anything is possible; even losing a bit of weight or getting fitter. Lady Day. March. Spring time. New year resolutions. You know it makes sense.

Happy new year.

Why I'm having more fun than anyone else

2010-11-27T20:45:00.000Z

This post is long overdue. Long, long overdue. Every now and then it occurs to me that I should really knuckle down and get it finished. But something else always seems to get in the way. Just lately it's been yet more building work in the house. We've had a couple of walls knocked out in the kitchen, the ceiling re-plastered, and the bricked-up fireplace in the dining room opened up. Oh, and we've had new windows and doors put in and a shiny new fire escape installed. That's about it really. And in amongst all this I've managed to find myself a part time job, five mornings a week. Quite a lot to be going on with. And I'm still morris dancing.

Apparently, some years ago, someone said, 'Try everything once except incest and morris dancing'. Now, I had always thought that it was conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, until I discovered that he had said 'folk dancing'. After a wander through the halls of cyberspace, it appears that this phrase, or something like it, has (allegedly)been uttered by a good many people over the years. Politicians (Sir Winston Churchill); Writers (Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw); Renaissance men (Stephen Fry); actors (Woody Allen); philosophers (Bertrand Russell); composers (Sir Arnold Bax); all seem to have got in on the act. And even the 'model' Linzi Drew used the phrase as the title of her autobiography. You'll probably be pleased to hear that I've only ignored half of the advice given me by this positive gallimaufry of personalities.

Little did I realise, when I retired from my job back in August 2008, that two years later I'd be kitted out in knee breeches, bells, baldric and rop (that's what they call the spotted neckerchief, apparently), stepping out with Long Man Morris at various venues throughout East Sussex and beyond. And I have to admit, dear bloggy friend, that I find morris dancing curiously addictive. Only yesterday I was dancing Much Wilmington in a freezing car park in Polegate, and next week we'll be in Eastbourne and Alfriston (a pretty little village, and in Hailsham a week after that. So, why, when others are sprawled in front of their TVs, drinking wine and eating chocolate, do I put myself through what is to all intents and purposes a special forces style workout every week? Apart from the sheer enjoyment of the dancing (frustrating though it can be when I can't get the steps right), the motivation is acquisition of The Hat.

The Hat. Many morris sides wear hats. Some have bowlers. Others have bucolic straw numbers, with or without flowers attached. Ours has a black top hat, beribboned in the sides's colours of yellow and two kinds of green. And I'm not allowed to have one. Not yet, at least. Because I have to satisfy the Squire and the Foreman of the side that I am sufficiently proficient a dancer to merit the award of my badges. These badges, worn upon the baldric, are leather, and bear upon them our motif - the chalk hill figure (not to be confused with Tommy Hilfiger, which is something else entirely) known as The Long Man of Wilmington, from which the side takes its name. And until I have earned my badges, I may not acquire The Hat. Every now and then I will glance wistfully at an elderly top hat, sitting forlornly in an antique shop in Lewes or Brighton, and thinking how well it would sit atop my head. Or I might come across one upon the excellent website of the Vintage Shirt Company and think, 'if only...'

But I shall not tempt Providence by purchasing The Hat too soon. So, dear bloggy friend, it shall remain upon that antique shop shelf, gently gathering dust until, wavers (hankies to you) in my hands, I shall Bledington-step it up to the counter, impatient to exchange hard cash for a top hat that has (like me) seen better days.

Not a very happy anniversary

2010-10-25T19:30:00.004+01:00

This post was to have been called 'Why I'm having more fun than everyone else'. However, something else has occurred to me and I hope, dear bloggy friends, that it will not prove uninteresting to you.

At around 5.34pm on Sunday the 25th October 1942, sixty eight years ago today, a single German aircraft flew low over the English Channel in order to avoid detection by radar, and approached Seaford, East Sussex, intent on a 'tip and run' raid. With machine guns blazing, it dropped four bombs. The first fell on Broad Street - the town's main shopping street - destroying two shops and flats, killing 85 year old James Gale and his 53 year old daughter Fanny, and wounding eighteen more people. The three bombs that followed exploded in Sutton Road, Sutton Park Road and Vicarage Walk. Bomb number two completely destroyed two houses, killing George Borissow and his daughter Kathleen, Jessie Andrew, George Farnes and Mary Willis. It also caused serious damage to a third house - the house in which I now live - and killed Kate Holcombe, who was sixty eight years old. The third bomb killed sisters Fanny and Mary Buck, Catherine Meeson and Sarah Smith. The fourth caused damage to several properties but fortunately only one injury. The last fatality was a 54 year old air raid warden named William Tomley who, whilst making his way to an ARP control point, was struck in the chest by machine gun bullets and killed instantly. Sadly, this was the third death in the Tomley family; William's two sons, who served with the RAF, had been killed in action earlier in the war.

Altogether, there were thirty seven raids on Seaford during the second world war, resulting in twenty three deaths, sixteen dreadful injuries and 2064 properties destroyed or damaged. Rather strangely, it suffered far more than the port of Newhaven, three miles to the west, which one would have thought to be a more likely target for Germany's bombers.

Eventually, the war ended and life in Seaford returned to something approaching normality. My house, solidly constructed in 1907, was repaired. The two houses next door, being too badly damaged for repair, were replaced by a small block of four flats. Kate Holcombe was laid to rest in Seaford Cemetery. Her name and the names of all Seaford's war dead were inscribed upon the memorial that still stands in Sutton Road...

Today was a beautiful autumn day in Seaford. A gentle breeze rustled the fallen leaves and the sun shone in a cloudless sky, its light glinting on the calm and unruffled sea. On such a day it is hard to imagine the fear and horror suffered by the residents of my home town all those years ago.

Why is everyone having more fun than me?

2010-09-01T20:15:00.013+01:00

It's now just over two years since I walked out of my police station for the last time, and into 'retirement'. A good deal of choppy water has passed under the bridge since then, I can tell you. Protracted negotiations to buy the house of our desires, a family bereavement, the death of a close friend, a couple of job interviews that didn't result in a job, a shed load of work on the house to get it shipshape, and the seemingly endless search for a bottle of Briannas blue cheese dressing. The latter was eventually run to ground in Waitrose, Eastbourne, by the way.

One of the most difficult aspects of retirement for me is, potentially, being under Mrs. H's feet all day. When I had a full time job I'd sail off to work, leaving her at home to do whatever it was she did whilst...um...I was working. Now, of course, I'm there all day, leaving teacups unwashed next to the sink, messing up the sofas by sitting on them, and basically just getting in the way and making the place look untidy by my mere presence. But I've found a novel way of combating this. I just go out of my way to find things to do around the house. Only small things, mind; a bit of painting here, some wallpapering there, a set of door handles to replace, a new mirror to put up. If there's nothing to do, I'll stride around the house with a purposeful air, toolbox in hand, whistling some tuneless ditty as I pretend to tighten screws or tap recalcitrant nails back into the floorboards. Mrs. H. thinks I'm doing something useful, I get to survey my dominion; we're both happy. Inevitably, however, there are times when even someone as inventive as I can run out of imaginary jobs. On days like these, Mrs. H. will signify that it is her wish to go Shopping. With a capital S. I recently had one such day. And I started it by making a child cry.

Mrs. H. and I had compiled a list of the things we needed. A new roller blind for the breakfast room; a light switch for the living room; a couple of pots of paint to replace the stuff I've been using this week. So, off we wended to Eastbourne, to an emporium of household accoutrements entitled Dunelm Mill. The first couple of aisles were taken up with bed linen - sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases. Curiously, pillow cases are divided into two distinct types; 'Oxford' and 'Housewife'. I have often idly wondered, just before dropping off to sleep at night, why this should be so. Were 'Oxford' pillowcases designed in Oxford? Did they originate in the colleges of that seat of learning in the fourteenth century? Or is there some other, more sinister explanation? And why 'Housewife'? Isn't that rather a pejorative term in these more enlightened days? Shouldn't they be called 'Non-gender Specific Homemaker' pillow cases? I said as much to Mrs. H. She told me to button it.

I left Mrs. H. to browse the linen aisles whilst I made a whistle-stop tour of the entire ten acre site that composed the rest of the store. Despite the size of this emporium, I had no fears that I would have any difficulty finding Mrs. H. thereafter. I was confident that I would find her exactly where I had left her, minutely examining the Egyptian cotton valances with the painstaking thoroughness of a forensic scientist. And I was proved right. When I eventually persuaded her away from the Percale duvet covers (whatever they might be) we hied us to the portion of the shop that sells inexpensive art. Now, I'm not sure why this is, but why does inexpensive art these days seem to consist mainly of black and white photographs of the Eiffel Tower and the Manhattan skyline? How relevant would these be if you lived in a house in Eastbourne? I wonder what Parisians and New Yorkers have on their walls? A monochrome picture of Eastbourne Pier, perhaps? Or maybe a print of Beachy Head lighthouse? Somehow I think not.

As I mused this great muse, I found we had wandered into Faux Flower Land. A vast array of pretend petunias, fake foxgloves and imitation irises bloomed all around us and, through the false foliage, I saw a shopping trolley containing a small child. This solemn child was watching me intently, as young children are wont to do, so, dear bloggy friend, I did what I am wont to do, and smiled. A sudden change came over the child. He burst instantly into a flood of bitter tears. His mother rushed to comfort him, wiping away his copious tears and asking him what was wrong. I said, 'I think that might be my fault. I smiled at him.' Well, of course, she laughed politely, and said something about the possibility he was 'coming down' with chickenpox, having recently attended a party with another child who had been subsequently struck down by said affliction. But secretly, I think she would have wanted to snatch up a bunch of those imitation blooms, and beat me about the head with them. I'm fairly sure the child would have laughed at that.

Mrs. H. eventually made a few purchases and we went home. Whilst she was pottering about the garden, I decided to log into the Hey! Everyone Here's Having More Fun Than You! microblogging site, otherwise known as Twitter. Now, we've spoken about Twitter before, so you know how it works. Sometimes, I vouchsafe my innermost thoughts to my 'followers' in 140 characters or less; at other times, I just see what everyone else is saying and doing. And this is when I discover they're having more fun than me. 'They' always seem to have just signed a book deal (every other person on Twitter describes him/herself as an author, artist, illustrator or similar), just that minute arranged a holiday in Tahiti (leaving in two hours!), be hanging out in an exclusive caviar and champagne bar in Knightsbridge, or are trying to get everyone to sign up to some noble cause (Free the Temperance Seven!) when the rest of us non-academic, stop-at-home non-caviar-consuming sans-champagne apolitical herberts just want to play word games involving the deletion of the word 'love' and insertion of the word 'bum' into the titles of as many 1960s songs as we can remember...

I think I need a little lie down. I'm hoping the next post will be entitled 'Why I'm having more fun than everyone else'.

A blatant plug

2010-08-06T18:06:00.004+01:00

Don't you get tired of being subjected to a constant stream of advertising? On TV, in the papers, even on the back of your car park ticket or at the petrol pump, you can't get away from someone trying to sell you something. So this post gives me a tiny twinge of guilt. But only a tiny one, mind you, because I'm not selling anything. I'm giving you something for nothing!

There now. I've roused your curiosity, haven't I? Let me explain.

The humble blog you are now reading is called The Middenshire Chronicles. Except that it isn't actually the chronicles of the County of Middenshire. It's the stream of consciousness ramblings of Chris Hale. The 'Middenshire Chronicles' tagline sounded rather good at the time, and reflected, I thought, my continuing interest in the history of that now lost County. But as time has passed and the hairs in my ears have grown ever longer, I have reflected upon my continuing failure to tell you more about Middenshire. So it's now time to address my error.

I have a new blog. It's called 'The diary of William Thuck.' In this new blog I will explain what Middenshire was, where it was, and what happened to it. And, as time passes, I will be handing the blog over to seventeenth century printer, engraver and remembrancer William Thuck, who will guide you through the rich, but not terribly well executed, tapestry that was Middenshire.

Enjoy.

Driving morris men to drink

2010-07-15T20:35:00.010+01:00

I know it's not like me to be silent for long. But the fact of the matter is, I've been busy. At long last, our builder ran out of excuses (his words, not mine) and, for the last three weeks, I've been helping him to rip out one of our bathrooms and replace it with a lovely new one. Now, this may sound like a long time to do a bathroom, but we did rather complicate things. We wanted a radiator where a basin used to be, a basin where a radiator used to be, a toilet where a toilet used to be, but at a different angle, and a shower where nothing used to be at all. All of this involved yards of extra pipework, the partial removal of two walls and a considerable dollop of plaster. We now have an extra large shower, shiny tiles, and a posh toilet that I'm loath to use. Regular readers of this column will recall that DIY and I do not lie comfortably together, but nevertheless I have become, if not adept with chop saws, routers and electric planers, at least familiar with their functions and would be able to wield them at a pinch. Were it not for this dodgy back. We start bathroom two on Monday, so there's a couple more weeks of noise, dust, and constant clearing up to look forward to...

You'll probably be glad to hear that my new job as unpaid builder's labourer hasn't kept me away from the morris dancing. Since we last spoke, there have been sessions in Pevensey, Lewes, Eastbourne and a few little villages in the surrounding area. It may not surprise you to learn that most of our performances take place outside pubs -last night it was the Blackboys Inn in the village of Blackboys (named after the men who used to make charcoal in the nearby woods) - indeed, the Long Man Morris Men are sponsored by Harvey's Brewery. Beer and The Morris have a long association. But I wonder for how much longer. Moves are afoot to lower the legal alcohol limit for driving, which would make anyone who drives with more than just a trace of alcohol in their body into a criminal. This is likely to have a considerable impact. Many old and beautiful Sussex pubs are miles from anywhere and accessible only by road transport. If people stop driving to them, they will go out of business very quickly. Of course, would-be customers could go by cab; I did this myself in January when attending a dinner at the Trevor Arms in Glynde. Glynde is nine and a half miles away from my home. A return cab fare cost me forty pounds. How many people are going to spend forty quid (or more) to go out for a couple of drinks? But let's suppose for a moment that a few pubs do remain open, and a few customers decide to stump up the necessary cash for a cab to and from. How are we to get the morris side to them, and still enjoy a drink ourselves? The answer is obvious - we design and build a Morris Support Vehicle, or MSV.

The MSV would be similar to those police vans one often sees at public order events. You know the type - reinforced windows, a metal cage to protect the windscreen, and a stack of equipment on board. The MSV would have a green and yellow stripe down the side (LMM's colours) and sufficient seats on board for all the dancers. At the back would be storage for sticks (for the stick dances), a stock of fresh 'wavers' (as morris handkerchieves are called), a sewing box for running repairs to breeches, shirts, etc, and a comprehensive first aid kit for MRIs (Morris-Related Injuries). There would also be space for a barrel of beer. This would be cleverly mounted on three or more gimbals to counteract any yaw, pitch or roll of the vehicle. In effect, at the van moves in three dimensions, the beer remains still. No one likes cloudy beer.

It is to be hoped that there might be a few pounds left to fit a couple of luxury items to the MSV. A video recording system with slow motion playback, which would be used to film the dances and would act as a valuable training aid during debriefs. And a customised satellite navigation system. This would have a special 'morris route plotter', pre-loaded with the location of every pub in East Sussex. Thus, the Designated MSV Driver Of The Day would simply punch in a start and finish point, and the satnav would calculate a route that takes in the maximum number of pubs on the way. The satnav would also be 'Sussex Intuitive'. Let me explain. Let's say the MSV is parked in the town of Lewes. The driver programmes the satnav to take him to The Wheatsheaf in Willingdon Village. A warning beep sounds and the machine exclaims, 'Ah! If you're going to The Wheatsheaf in Willingdon I wouldn't start from here if I were you!'

The Designated Driver would also have another function, and an extremely important one; that of Gentleman Surveyor of the Morris. He would be required to attend every proposed dance venue, and carry out a survey of the dance area, reporting back on the type of surface (tarmac, loose gravel, grass, bare earth), terrain (flat, undulating, steeply sloping), and hazards (poor drainage, fixed pub umbrellas, rabbit holes) to the Squire of the side. The Squire would examine the report, and carry out an appropriate risk assessment, allowing the venue if it affords sufficient safety to his dancers. Any venue with an excellent survey result, and where the landlord is particularly well disposed to morris dancing, would be given the option of becoming a DMV - Dedicated Morris Venue. If s/he desires this status, the Squire will cause the dance area to be marked with a large white letter "M" enclosed in a white circle - somewhat in the manner of the helicopter landing sites one sees at hospitals.

All this talk of MSVs and specialist equipment is, of course, a dream, unless one of us wins the lottery. But what will become of the morris? Perhaps sides will become more local, attracting members from within walking distance of a particular pub. I suppose other businesses could start sponsoring dance sides - we might just see The Skinny Latte Morris Men capering outside a coffee shop, ("This next dance is called 'The Caffeine Overdose'")or The Burger Bar Border Boys performing a stick dance in front of a takeaway. But I just hope I'm not around to see it.

Or should it be 'Homer Selmeston'?

2010-06-01T20:15:00.002+01:00

We're still waiting for our builder to start work on our two bathrooms. The shower cubicles, basins, taps and all manner of other sanitary accoutrements have been languishing in what used to be our dining room for weeks now. It's the waiting that gets to you. But we haven't been idle. Mrs H and I have been discovering The Joys of Wallpapering - she as chief paster, me as apprentice paperhanger. And, to be fair, the results aren't too bad, but I still have this terrible fear that I'll get up in the morning and find that every single sheet of paper has peeled off and is lying in neat folds on the floor. So far, fortunately, I've been disappointed.

Life hasn't been all work and no play. I've been out dancing with Long Man, and discovering a few beautiful little Sussex villages and their pubs along the way. We recently danced at The Cricketers' Arms in Berwick. It was already approaching dusk when we arrived there - the pub is halfway down an unlit lane - and by the end of the evening we really were dancing in the dark. I'm told that light is normally provided by a nearby phone box, but the bulb seemed to have blown. Perhaps the side's funds will run to a few miner's lamps.

Berwick. It's one of those English place-names that flummoxes overseas visitors and, in the process, provides us with a little amusement. 'Can you tell us how to get to Burr-Wick?' they ask. We chuckle, knowing that it's actually pronounced 'Berrick'. Except that in this case, the visitors are right and we're wrong. It's likely that a good percentage of the village's population are (like me) incomers to the county, and, quite naturally, fall back on the standard pronunciation when telling folk where they live. But I'll bet there are a few older inhabitants who will tell you that the correct pronunciation is, in fact, 'Burrwick'.

There's nothing more calculated to make you look like an outsider than to mispronounce a place name. So I've spent a bit of time looking at some of our towns, villages and landmarks, and noting how these are pronounced. Here's a few for you; place name followed by local pronunciation:

Alciston = Aston

Ardingly = Arding-Lie

Bodiam = Bodge-Em

Burwash = Burrish

Cuckmere = Cookmere

Heathfield = Heffle

Horsham = Hores-Ham

Selmeston = Simpson

Steyning = Stenning

Pevensey = Pemsy

Piddenhoe = Pidd'n-oo

Although we're talking about pronunciation here, not the actual spelling of the place name concerned, it got me thinking about the broader issues of place names in general. I'll give you an example. The Italians have a beautiful city that I was once fortunate enough to visit. It's full of canals and gondolas. They call it Venezia. We call it Venice. The question is, why? Venezia is its Italian name, so why don't we call it that? An orchestra putting on an opera by Giuseppe Verdi wouldn't change his name to Joe Green on the poster, now would they? Mind you, I did once work with a lady called Mrs. Longbottom who, when living in Germany, received a letter addressed to Frau Langenhinten. But that's beside the point. I can think of no good reason why we don't speak of Brugge, or Antwerpen, or Warszawa. They're no harder to pronounce than the names of some of our own towns and villages. Look at Ainderby Quernhow, Heanton Punchardon and Yockenthwaite. In the face of these, how hard can it be to say Roma?

And while we're on the subject, why do we decide to go the other way with some locations, and use the country's own spelling and pronunciation? I'm thinking here of Peking, Bombay and Calcutta, that in the media miraculously mutated into Beijing, Mumbai and Kolkata overnight without so much as a by-your-leave. Who decides? Is there a quango that determines these things? Is it 'political correctness gone mad'? Or something more sinister? Whichever, I'm going to write to the local Council, demanding that the little East Sussex village of Firle be henceforth known as 'Furrel'. If nothing else, it'll assure map makers of a bit of extra cash...

Conscious incompetence on the Bluebell Line

2010-05-01T20:28:00.015+01:00

The morris dance practice season is now at an end, and all over the country morris sides are 'dancing out' at pubs, fetes and festivals. And (if you don't count my impromptu inclusion in The Vandals of Hammerwitch at Eastbourne Library at the tail end of last year) I have recently had the honour of dancing out with my worthy brethren of Long Man Morris for the first time.

My first outing was on the 23rd April at the Wheatsheaf in Willingdon, where we were joined by another local side, the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men, to celebrate St. George's Day with dance, song and, let's not deny it, a few glasses of Harvey's bitter. As a relative 'new boy' I haven't yet made the leap to hanky dances, but managed to give a reasonable performance in a couple of stick dances. Unfortunately, I was in the process of getting over a cold, so my attempts at joining in with the singing afterwards just made me sound like some wheezy old accordion. You can see some footage of us dancing here.

Yesterday was the first of May. And, for the first time for about a year and a half, I was up and out of the house before 5am. Driving through the wet, dark lanes of East Sussex, avoiding rabbits and toads, I soon found myself in a small car park in the village of Wilmington. A few hundred yards away, barely visible through mist, was Windover Hill, and the chalk-white outline of the Long Man of Wilmington, England's largest hill figure. This was my second 'dance out' with the side, who, by tradition, dance in the lane at the foot of the Long Man on the first of May every year. And this year the BBC were there to film us.

The senior members of the side were fully kitted up: corduroy breeches, white shirts and stockings, red spotted kerchiefs, bell pads, top hats, and ribbons and baldrics in the side's colours. Some wore black waistcoats or frock coats, bedecked with dozens of badges - a record of the hundreds of events they had danced at. They put me in mind of seasoned military men; men who have seen just about everything in their long careers, for whom today was just a little gentle exercise. Some have been dancing for more than thirty years, and are still just as keen and eager to dance as if it were their first outing. Some are older than me, but their ability to execute the dances without expending huge amounts of energy - dances that leave me sweating and hungry for oxygen - never fails to amaze me. The BBC crew - a young man and woman - introduced themselves to us. The young woman was on crutches, not (as we supposed) in honour of the Long Man and his two staves, but because of a Dancing Accident. She too was a morris dancer, and had sustained an ankle injury dancing a solo jig. Dancing can be dangerous.

The word was given. We formed up and processed down the lane to the designated spot. Thankfully, the earlier rain had stopped, and we stood ready to dance. A small crowd had gathered, and the BBC crew set their camera rolling. And then we danced, I again being permitted to take part in a number of stick dances. I felt quite honoured when Dave, our Fool, introduced me to the early risers, who had turned out to watch us, as Long Man's new recruit, and when he temporarily renamed one of our dances - Young Collins - as Young Christopher. I especially liked the 'young' bit. But it still seems strange to be the 'new boy' at the age of 55.

At the conclusion of this event, the sticks were packed up and the small crowd melted away, probably to return to bed. The BBC crew told us that their footage was to form part of a BBC4 programme on folk dance, and then bid us goodbye. Most of the experienced dancers set off on a dancing tour of two local railway preservation societies. I went home, and joined them later at Sheffield Park station on the Bluebell line. We danced for twenty minutes or so on the station platform, accompanied by the hiss of steam and the shrill whistles from the locomotives.

To the outsider (as I think I have said before) morris dancing just looks like a bit of stick or hanky waving, but there is much more to it than that. Dances must be executed using particular stepping patterns, the rhythm of which can vary from dance to dance. It is also imperative that you start on the correct foot. Get this wrong and your ability to be in the right place at the right time is severely compromised. Speed and agility are also vital, as is an awareness of what the dancers either side of you are doing. Lose sight of these and the whole thing becomes ragged. My own bête noir is a manoeuvre called the 'half gyp', which requires you to throw your weight forward and advance to the other side of the set, then fall back and turn until you resume your original place. I struggled so much with this that the cry 'Keep up, Chris!' was often to be heard during the Friday night practice sessions. I'm convinced the phrase will be written on my tombstone. I've now been dancing for around seven months, and have at least reached the stage where I know when I have made a mistake and can take steps (no pun intended) to rectify it. So, dear bloggy friend, I have reached the stage of conscious incompetence as stated by Howell (1982):

The transition to this state from being unconsciously incompetent can be a shocking and sudden realisation, for example when you meet others who are clearly more competent than you, or when a friend holds up a metaphorical mirror to your real ability.

I couldn't have put it better myself. I know what I don't know.

Some people don't 'get' morris dancing; probably in the way I don't 'get' football. But there's something about the morris that grabs hold of you; that makes you wish you'd started thirty years earlier. Alright, so I do get nervous before dancing, and I do make the odd mistake. But I make that mistake with a smile on my face. And although it would be easy to use such hackneyed phrases as 'The morris makes one feel closer to nature' or 'it is a way of connecting with our forbears', I genuinely feel that Long Man helps to keep alive one of our traditions that would almost certainly have been lost, had it not been for the work of Cecil Sharp at the tail end of the nineteenth century in preserving the details of Cotswold morris dances; those same dances that we performed in a damp, misty lane at the crack of dawn, under the watchful gaze of an ancient hill figure.

Too much porn and not enough goulash

2010-04-29T17:10:00.003+01:00

Warning - this blog entry contains sexism, stereotyping and spelling errors.

The last couple of weeks have seen some poor spelling and a seemingly never-ending search for sanitary ware. Idly flicking through the local authority jobs online, I came across one that involved dealing with ‘members of the pubic’. I wondered whether to apply, at the same time pointing out this rather amusing faux pas in the application, but quickly thought better of the idea. Nobody likes a smartarse. However, everybody likes a handy set of three fridge storage boxes, and the co-op were doing a special deal on them last week. Except that the notice described them as ‘fidgde storage’. I wasn’t sure how to pronounce that.

Back to the sanitary ware. The time is fast approaching for our friendly builder to start work on the refurbishment of our bathroom and shower room, and it’s not until you start to make a list of the necessary fixtures and fittings that you realise how much stuff you need to get. Bath, two basins, two toilets, two shower cubicles and trays…then there’s the taps, tiles, floor covering…I have to admit that, when it comes to choosing such things, I’m an amateur from the school of ‘let’s just get something, shall we? This’ll do.’ But my pathetic, half-hearted interest in things ablutionary doesn’t go down well with Mrs. H.

Mrs. H is a porn addict. Perhaps I should qualify that remark. She has no interest (as far as I am aware, dear bloggy friend) in magazines featuring gentlemen dressed (or rather, not dressed) as gladiators, firemen or horny Vikings (I refer to their helmets, which are always incorrectly surmounted by horns). No. Mrs. H. is into something far worse - Home Porn. On the days when she finds time to do so, she can be seen in our breakfast room, surrounded by catalogues; bathroom catalogues, tile catalogues, household gadget catalogues, and magazines featuring home decorating and refurbishment. These publications always seems to feature some thirty-something woman who has turned her bleak 18th century shell of a cottage into something out of Grand Designs for a few hundred quid. They always seem to ‘know someone’ who can build them an entire kitchen out of salvaged ships’ timbers, or who rewired their house for a couple of pots of home-made jam and a bottle of elderflower wine. It is these publications that Mrs. H. will read in preference to the latest novel by Mr. Dickens or Mr. Thackeray, and I have to admit to feeling rather uncomfortable with my bed time book - Three men in a boat - whilst Mrs. H. peruses the most recent update to the John Lewis catalogue.

The Sunday papers really don’t help the cause of those of us who find the whole business of decorating rather less interesting than, um, just about everything else. Their lifestyle supplements often carry articles about a couple who have refurbished their house. Invariably, of course, they are a Perfect Couple. She is often a fabric designer, whom we see engaged either in arranging flowers or baking cup cakes in her kitchen with her unnaturally well-behaved children. He is an IT consultant with that shaven head that seems to be rather popular in certain circles, poring over his laptop whilst a curiously quiet jack russell terrier sits at his feet. Their house, which is usually in Hastings Old Town, looks fabulous, with its shabby chic (or as I like to call it, badly-painted) furniture and little accessories dotted about, and has clearly cost a small fortune to get to that standard. But we have to listen to all this ’we had a really tight budget’ nonsense. Why not just be honest and say, ’it cost us an arm and a leg to do the place up.’ All this false modesty makes them sound like politicians who, having gone to a private school, try to persuade us that it really wasn’t much better than Bash Street. But I digress. I just wish they’d stop parading all this Home Porn before our eyes.

During the course of our bathroom odyssey, we came across one of those discount furniture warehouses. You know the kind - the ones that sell ‘genuine oak furniture’. Yep, it’s genuine, all right. The only problem is that it’s…how shall we say…rather chunky. The coffee tables have legs so thick that they might have been constructed from recycled fence posts or railway sleepers for all I know, and weigh so much that I’m surprised they haven’t collapsed in upon themselves like neutron stars. This particular warehouse only had a few sad, massive pieces dotted about; all the rest of the stock was in huge cardboard boxes, piled higgledy-piggeldy three or four high, either side of a central walkway. As we stood there, an employee was lugging another huge box on a wheeled truck into the bowels of the warehouse, and I was suddenly transported back to the final few moments of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the crated up Ark of the Covenant is buried deep in some US government warehouse. I said as much to Mrs. H. She said I think too hard for my own good sometimes.

This seemed to be a good time for us to depart and, as we walked through what appeared once to have been a office, I saw some coat hooks on the wall. Or rather, I didn’t; I saw one coat hook, and three sets of screw holes where three further coat hooks must once have hung. Beneath the one good hook was the name Terry. Beneath the screw holes were the names Phil, Andy and Paula. What was going on here? Was this some kind of employee incentive scheme? Was Terry awarded the only coat hook on the basis of his superior sales figures? Were Phil, Andy and Paula new members of staff who, due to their inexperience, had not yet qualified for the coveted hook? Had they previously had hooks, but been relieved of them for some misdemeanour, or for failing to meet their sales targets? Or (which seemed unlikely) had the hooks simply fallen off and not been replaced? I barely had time to ponder this before I saw a sign just outside the warehouse. It said ‘Hand car a £5’. This seemed a rather curious instruction. How do you hand five pounds to a car? If I had taken my car over to the sign, would someone hand me five pounds? No. 1 daughter seemed to think the sign should have said ‘Hand car wash £5’. By then I had already done far too much thinking and headed for home.

As we’d had quite a busy day we thought a takeaway might be in order - Indian, Chinese, or just good old fish and chips. Then No. 1 daughter pointed out the leaflet she’d picked up for a Hungarian takeaway. Now, I don’t know much about Hungarian cuisine, but I do know they’re supposed to be famous for something called goulash, and I thought that might be rather nice for a change. Sadly, I scanned the menu for this piquant item in vain. I did, however, find the following treats:

Fried Camenbert cheese with rice, served with blueberry souce
Hungarian sausage wraped in port fillett
Fried streaked chicken breast with cheese souce
Gipsy stily pork steak
Grilled pork fillett topped with traditionell Hungarian Lecso served with rosted potato
Crepes filled with creamy popeyseed with cherry souce.

I took a look at their website. Sadly, some of the food looked as if it had already been eaten by someone else. Food porn it wasn’t.

I opened a tin of baked beans.

I should cocoa...

2010-04-04T13:55:00.003+01:00

Easter is here and, predictably, the shops are busy. The busiest seem to be those selling chocolate because, as everybody knows, Easter and chocolate are synonymous. Whatever synonymous means. Although I’m not one to follow the crowd generally, I thought it proper that an impending visit to my mother in London should, perhaps, be accompanied by some chocolates. This being decided upon, I trundled into Thornton’s on Thursday to see what item might take my fancy. I eventually hit upon a milk chocolate assortment, and joined the end of a queue to make my purchase.

The queue was moving very slowly; much slower than usual. Not that I’d know how fast a queue in Thornton’s generally moves, of course. I hardly ever frequent such places. But it eventually became apparent that the slowness of the queue was due to each Easter egg purchaser (or should it be ‘egg donor’?) availing themselves of the opportunity to have the name of the recipient piped onto the egg in what appeared to be white icing. Each donor had more than one egg, and the shop had not thought it appropriate to designate a single egg-calligrapher for the day. So each transaction was brought to a halt as the relevant chocolatier laboriously wrote ‘Sid’ or ‘Penelope’ or some such on the convex surface of the egg with all the deliberation of a Benedictine monk in a medieval scriptorium. By now I was bored. I looked at the box of chocolates; it contained around twenty separate morsels, and for a moment I toyed with the idea of getting my calligrapher of confection to pipe the word ‘Mum’ onto every single chocolate. I said as much to Mrs. H, but she didn’t think much of the idea, explaining that it might make me and, more importantly, her, look foolish. The idea was quietly dropped. As I handed over my money, I idly wondered how long it would take to reproduce a page from the Book of Kells, using a slab of Dairy Milk and different coloured icings. Quite a while, I thought.

Today saw me shopping yet again, this time for the everyday necessaries of life; chicken, cheese, chives, and, of course, chocolate. I shop alliteratively, you see. Rather like the QI programme that designates every series with a different letter of the alphabet, I purchase foods that start with the same letter and advance through the alphabet as the weeks progress. (Next week it’ll be duck, doughnuts and Danish pastries). As I was scanning the wine aisle for chianti, I saw a curious sign. It advised that, if I looked as if I were under 25 years of age, I’d be asked to prove I was old enough to buy alcohol. I found this a bit confusing, since I’d always understood that the minimum age for the purchase of alcohol was 18. I guessed there must be a very good reason for this, and determined to look it up on the internet when I arrived home, which I duly did. The result made rather less sense than I had hoped. The scheme is called ‘Challenge 25’. Its posters say, ‘If you are lucky enough to look under 21, you will be asked to prove that you are over 18 when you buy alcohol or tobacco.’ But the scheme is actually aimed at the under 25 age group (hence the ‘Challenge 25’ name). So the reality is that, if you’re under 25, and look as if you’re under 21, you’ll be asked to prove you’re 18. Call me stupid, but isn’t the whole thing far too complex? How about ‘if you appear to be under 18 when purchasing alcohol or tobacco, we will require proof of age’? Or, even simpler, ‘ID to be produced if requested’.

As we unloaded the shopping at home and consigned the chocolate to its designated place, I started to wonder why the resurrection of Christ should lead to children consuming an average of two and a half kilograms of this particular confection over the holiday period, so, having exhausted the whole ’Challenge 25’ thing, I spent a bit of time looking for answers. The consensus seems to be that chocolate, being a luxury, is given as a gift to celebrate the end of Lent, a period of fasting and austerity in the Christian calendar. I’m afraid I found this to be a very lazy explanation. Since when was chocolate a luxury? One dictionary defines luxury as ‘something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort’. Ask around and I’m fairly sure most people will tell you that they regard chocolate as essential - in a similar category to water and oxygen. The Concise Oxford speaks of ‘choice or costly surroundings, possessions, food, etc.’ Choice? Costly? Isn’t Aldi selling chocolate bunnies for 99 pence each? The Roman Emperor Augustus railed against excessive luxuria in the Empire, but I’m sure even he wouldn’t have stuck a senator’s head on a pole for buying a 99p bunny. No. the time has come to supplant chocolate as the alleged ‘luxury’ Easter gift. But what to replace it with? Some kind of food would seem to be appropriate. Almas caviar springs to mind; weight for weight, it’s more expensive than gold. And it fulfils the whole ‘egg thing’ surrounding Easter. There are even cheaper alternatives around - lumpfish caviar, available from most good supermarkets, is a fraction of the price. Or we could go for truffles. The chocolate shops seem to shift a lot of Belgian truffles, so people might go for an Italian white truffle (tuber magnatum). One drawback is that it doesn’t smell (or taste) like a Belgian chocolate truffle, but on the other hand, it is reassuringly expensive at around £3125 per ounce. But if you wanted to move away from the whole chocolate substitute idea, precious metal is always an acceptable gift. And just about the most precious metal you can get is Plutonium. At around £6,600 per ounce, a pendant made from weapons-grade plutonium is sure to give your loved one a warm glow.

Happy Easter.

Coat tales

2010-03-22T15:46:00.013Z

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the World was round, goes the popular ditty. I'm not surprised. He should, of course, have said 'spherical', or, more properly, 'an oblate spheroid' in order to avoid becoming an object of ridicule. And I'm fairly sure that they (whoever 'they' might be) laughed at Prince Charles when he said that the British Library looked like the assembly hall of an academy for secret policemen. And it was to that same library I betook myself on Wednesday last in order to renew my reader's pass for another three years.

I've held a reader's pass for some years now. When I first started using the library it was still a part of the British Museum at Bloomsbury; the old round reading room was opened in 1857, and researching there amongst the polished wooden desks, leather chairs and gold-tooled books made you feel for all the world like some old Victorian scholar, or the member of some exclusive club. Most of the 'members' seemed to be elderly, or at the very least middle-aged, and tweed clothing was much in evidence. In some ways, the round reading room felt a bit like a church where the written word was god, and the librarians were the priests and acolytes, working from a central, round pulpit. You could no more think of raising your voice there than of singing a comic song in the nave of Westminster Abbey.

Sadly, things move on. The old library wasn't big enough to house the ever-growing collection; it took hours for your book order to arrive; and many of the books were stored at outstations around the UK, making them even less accessible. So it was that the present incarnation of the British Library at St. Pancras came into being, and that's where I found myself on Wednesday.

Brimming with confidence and armed with my new pass, I entered the Humanities Reading Room and flashed said pass at the security guard.

'I'm sorry, sir,' he said, 'but you can't come in with your coat.'

I was momentarily taken aback.

'No coats are allowed in the reading rooms,' he said. 'You'll have to leave it in the cloakroom.'

I presumed it was some kind of security initiative. Perhaps someone had once tried to smuggle the Lindisfarne Gospels out of the place beneath an Inverness cape. For a moment I toyed with the idea of questioning this directive. It wasn't a particularly warm day and I didn't want to catch a chill. However, I adopted the standard response to a seemingly pointless rule and decided I'd best obey it, otherwise I'd get nowhere. I took myself off to the cloakroom. It was the biggest cloakroom I'd ever seen. I wasn't overly worried that my coat would be stolen, or sold, or mistakenly given back to someone else, but I was concerned about what to do with my 'stuff'. I had two wallets (one large, one small), a bunch of keys, a mobile phone, and a camera. Too much stuff to cram into my trouser pockets. I needn't have worried, though. The library helpfully provides its readers with clear plastic carrier bags in which to put their things. I picked up a bag and studied it. It less like something you might find in a library, but more like an item to be found at an international airport in these days of heightened security. No coats, bags or umbrellas, it warned. No pens, highlighters or sharp implements (did my keys count as sharp implements, I wondered). No food, drink, bottled water (how is bottled water different from 'drink'?), sweets or gum. And lastly, No Cameras. This was beginning to feel less like a place of study, more like Prince Charles' Secret Police Academy. I dumped all my stuff into the bag, with just a slight concern that I had a camera on me. What would happen when I tried to enter the reading room? Would the camera be noticed and confiscated? Would they take it and hang on to it until I was about to leave, as teachers do when kiddies take banned items into school?

I decided to forget about this particular concern, and went to hand in my coat. This biggest cloakroom I'd ever seem also had the smallest number of staff I'd ever seen; just two men. Now, in some circumstances, it is possible for two men to do the work of ten. It just needs enthusiasm, drive and determination. These two cloakroom attendants seemed to be doing the work of less than one man. It appeared that neither really wanted to be there, and the whole business of giving and receiving coats was, to be quite honest, a bit of an inconvenience. I bet they couldn't wait till summer. Not many coats then. I handed in my coat and received a token, the entire transaction being carried out in silence, apart from my 'thank you' to the Trappist Collector of Coats.

Now coatless and armed with my clear plastic carrier bag, I was granted unfettered entry to the reading room. I found myself a desk and had a quick look around. To be sure, it has the polished wooden desks, the leather, the brass fittings; but it still feels so new, as though it hasn't had time to develop a soul. And the clientele seems to have changed. Gone are the tweedy scholars with their leather-bound notebooks, replaced by young women with impossibly short skirts, young men with impossibly asymmetric haircuts, and all of them armed with Apple laptops. I idly wondered what on earth they were all studying. I doubt very much that they wondered the same about me.

It was, by now, too late in the day to order any book and hope to get it before closing time. I resolved to get there earlier on my next visit with a clear plan of action. I thought I might go there on a warm day so I wouldn't need a coat.

I wandered back down to the cloakroom. They seemed to be having a bit of a rush on. There was a queue of around forty people in front of me, waiting either to deposit or collect. I noted that this sudden surge in business had not resulted in any attendant increase in the speed of the cloakroom brethren. They went about their work slowly and deliberately. I wondered about their lives. Were they always this morose? Or were they the life and soul of the party outside working hours, regaling friends with tales of the interesting coats and bags they had encountered that day? I decided the question probably wasn't worthy of an answer.

I caught the Lewes train at Victoria. As it left the capital, I watched as a tableau of events beyond the carriage window presented themselves and then winked out of sight. A man walking slowly along a footpath. A queue of traffic at a junction. The backs of nondescript industrial units on a trading estate. Smoke from a bonfire. Trackside detritus - gravel, sleepers, bits of plastic cable trunking. Suddenly, built up areas were left behind and we entered the chalky, undulating ploughlands of East Sussex. In the distance, the whalebacked Downs. As dusk crept over the land a light mist had appeared and I found myself, apparently, inside a watercolour painting by Eric Ravilious. This is an ancient landscape...

I was suddenly transported back to the here and now. A young man opposite me with a hands free kit was talking very loudly to a friend. 'Yeah,' he said, 'he takes that corner really tight every morning. Then, last week, he hit the bank. Now it's a perfect shape and he can really zoom round it.' I sighed to myself. I thought I'd left these kind of boy racers behind when I emigrated from London. But as the one-sided conversation progressed it became clear that he was talking not about some high-performance car, but a Massey-Ferguson tractor. This young man was a Sussex farm worker. During the course of the journey I also discovered that the John Deere is his favourite tractor, and that it is difficult, but possible, to steer with the knees whilst talking on one's mobile and drinking a cup of tea. I had hoped to hear some dialect words tripping off his tongue, but the closest he came to archaisms was 'bollocks' and 'pissed'.

It was just about night when I arrived in Seaford. As I made the short walk home, I could smell wood smoke. I could hear the suck of the pebbles dragged down the beach by the tide. I could see shadows on the curtains as the people of the town went about their lives. And I was glad of my coat. It was bloody freezing.

A terrible case of mistaken identity

2010-03-11T15:58:00.003Z

This is a very unusual post; unusual in the sense that it is all about me. I won’t hold it against you if you decide, after a paragraph or so, to wander off to put the kettle on and grab some chocolate biscuits.

I think I may already have mentioned to you, somewhere in this humble blog, that the good people of my little town are a friendly and pleasant bunch. Not long after I arrived here I noticed that people would smile and nod as I passed by, so I would, of course, return the compliment. On one occasion I was even waved to by the occupant of a passing car and, once again, felt bound to reciprocate. It seemed to make all those years of working in a potentially dangerous job - where people, although they did not perhaps actively seek to kill you, wanted you dead through some unspecified but effective means - worthwhile.

But then something happened. I was mooching about the town - Church Street, I fancy it was - when a middle-aged chap walking towards me smiled and said, ‘Hello, Pete.’ I did my usual brief nod and smile in return, and then suddenly realised what had happened. He had called me Pete. Why? Was he a theatrical mind-reader who had decided to take a stab at guessing my first name? Did I perhaps look more like a Pete than a Chris? Had I simply misheard? Anyway, the moment passed, and I though no more about it.

Then it happened a couple more times. And a lady flashed me a smile of rather greater warmth than one might expect of a stranger passing another stranger in the street.

Then one day, quite by chance, I came across my doppelganger. It was in my local pub. We’d popped in for a drink and something to eat, and there, propping up the bar, was Pete. His hair was about the same length as mine, he had a similar beard and similar glasses (or ‘spartacles’ in Sussex dialect), but his skin was a little darker in complexion than mine. Probably something to do with a lifetime of living on the coast. I could understand why people had confused us upon seeing us separately, but put us together and the differences would be blindingly obvious. For a brief moment we glanced in each others’ direction and exchanged the usual nod. I suspected that one or other of his companions had advised him that there was a stranger in town and that the stranger bore a passing resemblance to himself.

Sadly, my similarity in appearance to Pete has not resulted in any benefit to me. No-one has offered me a drink when I walk into the pub. No-one has pressed a note into my hand, saying, ‘here’s that fifty quid I owe you, Pete’. But equally, nobody has said, ‘when are you going to repay that money you owe me, Pete?’ so I suppose I should be grateful.

Only last week I was standing at the counter of the local bathroom tile emporium, waiting, not surprisingly, for a quote on some bathroom tiles. There was one other person in the place - a builder, I suspected. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but has anyone ever told you that you look like Pete? Only I saw you outside Morrison’s last week and nearly tapped you on the shoulder. It’s the hair, you see.’

It’s The Hair. Yes. The Hair. Another potential source of embarassment. No; I’m lying. An actual source of embarassment. Around a month ago, I was wandering around Morrisons (I do plenty of wandering; early retirement and a desire to escape the decorating that needs doing) and paused to peruse a shelf laden with pickles, chutneys and spices of the East. Then, quite unexpectedly, I was mildly jostled by a gentleman shelf-filler.

‘Oops! Sorry, madam!’ he said, then hastily corrected himself. ‘I mean sir!’ and that was it. Not only was I someone else; I was apparently someone else and a woman as well. With a beard. I went home and regaled Mrs. H with this tale, and she professed herself much amused by this case of mistaken gender, then she boxed my ears and told me to get on with the decorating. It has also just come to mind that, last December, I was sitting in a restaurant in Ruislip with Mrs. H and my mother (also Mrs. H, but I didn’t want to cause confusion) when the waitress popped her head round the corner of the booth and said, ‘Have you ladies decided what you’re having yet?’

It happened again yesterday. I live in an area where water is metered. The little meter sits at the bottom of a hobbit-hole just outside my front gate and, being a ‘retentive’ sort, it is my habit to lift up the inspection cover from time to time and check, with a torch, how much water I have used. As I was hunched over the hole, trying to read the tiny figures on the display, a female voice said:

‘What a clever young lady you are, to be able to do that.’

I looked up and found that the remark had been made by a pleasant-looking middle-aged lady. Seeing that I was, in fact, a man, she lost nothing of her composure. She merely stated:

‘Oh. You’re a man. I thought you were a girl. It’s the hair.’

It’s The Hair. Later that evening I told Mrs. H of my encounter. She likened the incident to the conclusion of the 1973 film Don’t Look Now, where Donald Sutherland confronts what he believes to be a child in a red duffle-coat, only to discover that it is a grotesque dwarf who stabs him to death.

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

Sussex mud and fornication

2010-03-06T19:51:00.004Z

The weather has been quite pleasant this week, if a little cold. Last week was a different story. We had rain. Lots of rain. More than our fair share, if the overflowing gutters and temporary lakes were anything to go by. And with the rain came the mud. I had thought that Middenshire was the muddiest place on this earth; but no - I think the prize (last week, at any rate) should have gone to East Sussex.

The South Saxons had their own word for mud - àdela; and the word for ‘muddy’ was gyru. That would appear to be it. Not exactly up there with the number of Inuit words for snow - allegedly somewhere between seven and a hundred. But more recent Sussex residents had some interesting dialect words to describe soggy conditions brought about by wet weather, the resulting mud, and where it ended up. Ground made swampy by wet weather was flushy; indeed, it could be said to be sabbed, or saturated with water. Any wetter and it would become a swank - a bog. Down on the farm, the cattle would be stoaching - trampling the ground into stodge or slub, both terms for thick mud. Walk through this slab gubber (wet and slippery black mud to you) and, depending on your term of preference, you would be grom, grabby or stoachy. And woe betide you if you trod this into the house. You’d be stabbling or spanneling, both of which would make you rather unpopular, especially if the floor had been newly swept or washed.

All the above dialect words were collected in the nineteenth century by the Reverend W D Parish or his acquaintances. I introduced you to the good Reverend here just under a year ago, but his Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect is so interesting that I felt he deserved another airing. Once can just imagine this Selmeston vicar, notebook and pencil in hand, passing the time of day with some old Gaffer or Gammer, hastily jotting down an interesting word or phrase. But one can’t help wondering whether his parishioners were having a bit of a giggle at his expense, as he dutifully wrote down their innocent-sounding definitions of the following words: Fornicate, Hard-Dick, Crap, Jack-Up, Nonce, Pimps and Shag. And I’ll leave it to you to research these and get back to me.

Joking aside for a moment, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the Rev. Parish and his ilk. In most villages the vicar or parson was the only man to have undergone a university education, and many such men of the cloth made extensive notes of the world they inhabited - take a look at the diary of Francis Kilvert, or the Natural History of Selborne, compiled by Gilbert White. Their notes and diaries give us a fascinating insight into the people, places and events from an age that is now almost entirely lost to us. Equally, if William Douglas Parish had not taken the trouble to note down these old words and sayings, so much would now be lost to us, and our language (and this blog!) would be much the poorer for it.

Anyway, I think I’ve fornicated for long enough now. I shall bid you adieu.

Port whine?

2010-02-16T19:52:00.017Z

Newhaven. It's quite a pleasant name, isn't it? I can imagine Newhaven as a cosy little seaside town in New England; all white painted, weatherboarded houses with paling fences; a couple of bearded old salts mending their nets on the quay, spinning yarns for the tourists; sand dunes sloping lazily down to the sea; the smell of freshly cooked lobsters...

But the Newhaven close to where I live is a very different place. It's a port town at the mouth of the River Ouse in East Sussex, handling passengers and goods bound for Dieppe, and port towns always seem to have a rather scruffy air about them. Our Newhaven is no exception. It has a hinterland of industrial estates, scrap yards, sewage treatment plants and empty factories, one of which, the Parker Pen company (remember them?) has recently laid off all its workers and moved operations to France. That's nice of them, isn't it? The town centre isn't much better. Many of the shops are empty and some of those still operating seem to be in two minds about it. As I walked down the High Street a herring gull was pecking at an empty pizza box, trying desperately to turn it over in order to reach whatever residue was left inside. Every time someone passed, the gull would wander off, feigning a lack of interest in the box. You could almost hear it whistling and staring vacantly into space. But when the passer-by had gone it renewed its assault on the box. A child coughed without putting its hand over its mouth. Outside a nearby pub a heavily tattooed employee was enjoying a doorstep cigarette, whilst at the bus stop, someone had helpfully written the word "ARSE" four times on the red plastic bench beneath the shelter.

All of this might lead you to think that I've got a bit of a downer on Newhaven. Curiously, I haven't. There's something about the place; something that gives it special character that one only finds in marine towns. Alright, so the pubs might look a bit scruffy, but they have a kind of faded grandeur; a sense of having been buffeted by the weather for a couple of centuries, a bit like some weather-beaten old sea captain. And, what's more, they're still open and offering bed and breakfast to the traveller. The street lamps in the High Street have canopies that are reminiscent of the sails from some old square-rigger. There are no less than three war memorials placed in a tiny but beautifully kept garden at the edge of the town. The smart marina, set about with pastel-coloured apartment blocks, is home to a large number of expensive-looking yachts, their halyards slapping against their masts in the stiff breeze. And there is a special quality to the light; a brightness that is not seen in an inland town; a brightness that makes you want to take up a paintbrush and commit something to canvas...

Just occasionally, I look out of my bedroom window at night and see a ferry steaming out to sea, its bright lights reflected in the inky blackness of the English Channel. Sailors have been putting to sea from Newhaven and other Sussex towns for centuries, rowing, sailing or under power; many have failed to return, due to war, weather or shipwreck. But watching these great vessels gliding silently to goodness knows where brings a sense of continuity to an ordinary event. Newhaven has seen better days, but it battles on regardless, like a tramp steamer chugging on in the teeth of a westerly gale. Long may it do so, I say.

Blimey. I got all poetic there for a moment.

Why I don't follow Stephen Fry

2010-01-19T18:16:00.007Z

My knees and ankles are playing up today. I put this down to one of two things; it’s either the boot camp style training regime I was put through at last Friday’s morris dancing session; or it could be a result of all the bending and stretching I’ve been doing over the weekend in putting together some IKEA furniture. Either way, the pain’s the same. I wonder if they have morris dancers, or something similar, in Sweden? They could do the Hemnes dance, which involves complex machinations with allen keys and cross-head screwdrivers as they put together a jolly nice set of drawers; or perhaps the Ektorp, where the dancers sit on a sofa for hours at a time, sloshing aquavit and eating Lant Chips…but I digress. Having set aside my Ikea-ing, I sat down at my computer to read my emails, do a bit of writing, and check to see if anyone new was following me on Twitter.

I’ve spoken at length about Twitter before, so I’m not going to bore you with explanations as to how it works; suffice it to say that one aspect of this micro-blogging site is that it allows you to ‘follow’ (ie read comments made by) fellow Twitterati. Amongst us ordinary folk there are a good many ‘celebrities’, including US President Barack Obama, comedian Bill Bailey, Phill Jupitus (he of Never mind the Buzzcocks), the wife of PM Gordon Brown, and a fair old smattering of singers, writers, broadcasters and actors. One of the most popular tweeters is Stephen Fry.

I don’t follow Stephen Fry. And, by this, I don’t mean “I don’t know what people see in Stephen Fry”. Mr. F. is an exceptionally witty, talented, well-read and urbane gentleman. I thoroughly enjoyed the Fry and Laurie programmes a few years ago. I still laugh at his appearances in Blackadder, particularly in his incarnation as General Melchett. And, if I can help it, I never miss QI. What I mean is, “I don’t follow Stephen Fry on Twitter”. And before you accuse me of being churlish, let me assure you that I have nothing but Mr. Fry’s best interests at heart. Allow me to explain.

On the 14th of January 2010 at around 5pm, I logged into Twitter to see how many followers Mr. Fry and I had. My total stood at 336. Three hundred and thirty six individuals had, at some point, decided that they were interested enough in what I had to say (whatever that might be) to click on the little 'follow’ button on my Twitter page. And Mr. Fry? Oh…he had 1,244,658 followers.

One million, two hundred and forty four thousand, six hundred and fifty eight people have pushed Stephen’s button, if you’ll pardon the expression. Take the population of Birmingham, add the good people of Brighton, and you’d still have to find another four thousand people (twice the population of St. David’s, the smallest city in Wales) to equal the number of Mr. Fry’s followers. On a world scale, his followers outrank the population of seventy countries, including Swaziland, Bahrain and Luxembourg, and represent 0.0183 percent of the world’s population. Assume that this number consists roughly of half men and half women of average height; if you laid them end to end, not only would they be quite comfortable, but they would also stretch in an unbroken line from Lisbon in Portugal to Haasdonk (pop: 4000, twice that of the city of St. David's aforementioned), a little village about 7 miles south-west of Antwerp, a distance of 1315 miles. If Stephen decided to stand for the Fry Party in the next general election, he would, using the stats from the last general election, be the fourth most popular “party” behind the LibDems with 4.59 percent of the votes, outgunning UKIP and the Scottish National Party combined. Perhaps we could persuade him to stand for Parliament…

Can you imagine what it would be like if every single one of those individuals decided to send a “tweet” to Stephen in response to some erudite remark he had just made? A “tweet”, if you didn’t already know, is a Twitter message, and can be up to 140 characters long. I calculated that it would take about six seconds to read a single tweet. For Stephen to read the tweets of every single one of his followers would take a solid eighty six and a half days. If, intelligent chap that he is, he decided to spend only eight hours a day reading them, then it would employ him for nearly 260 days. I think I’m beginning to understand why ‘celebrities’ rarely reply to tweets from us mortals. One and a quarter million messages in one hit...it’s like being shouted at by a major conurbation.

I know what you’re thinking. Not all of Stephen’s followers would be online at the same time. Some would probably be working; others watching TV or listening to the radio. Still others might be digging a hole, putting on makeup, having sex, eating a banana or playing a trombone. (That’s what I call multi-tasking). This being a likely scenario, I decided to carry out an experiment. I sent a tweet, asking those of my followers who read it to reply to me. Of my 336 followers, I received twenty replies; around six percent of the total. Apply this to Stephen’s followers and you arrive at a figure of around 74,680. That’s still more than twice the population of Liechtenstein, and equates to being yelled at by every inhabitant of the town of Carlisle in Cumbria. This 74,000-odd are a heavy lot, too. Heavy, but quite useful. Using rough averages, their total weight would be around 11,855,767 lbs, or 5293 tons, if you prefer. If we decided to break these 74,680 into their component elements for recycling (something I’m sure Mr. Fry would heartily approve of), we would have enough phosphorus to make 164,296,000 match heads (that‘s 1,932,894 boxes of Swan Vestas); carbon to make 67,212,000 pencils; sufficient fat for 522,760 bars of soap or 5,601,000 candles; and iron enough for 75,000 3 inch nails. Of course, we mustn‘t forget water; from these lucky people we could extract 746,800 gallons of water; far more than the 660,253.09 gallons it would take to fill an average Olympic-sized swimming pool. If we decided of dessicate every one of Stephen’s followers, we could collect 55,687 tons of water - a weight equivalent to eight fully-loaded Saturn V rockets.

If Mr. Fry is reading this (and I hope some day he may do so), I trust he will begin to understand why I don’t follow him. For one thing, there are already one and a quarter million people tugging at his virtual sleeve; I’m astonished that he ever finds time to make polite replies to any of his followers. For another, he probably doesn’t need another 2200 matches, 900 pencils, 7 bars of soap or 75 candles, a single three inch nail or ten gallons of water that an additional individual could provide. And, since I’m not very tall, I wouldn’t bring his unbroken line of followers that much closer to Haasdonk.

I logged on to Twitter a moment ago. I see I’m down to 333 followers - The Number of Half a Beast. Stephen, on the other hand, has 1,267,172; 22,514 more than last time which, curiously is very close to the population of a small town in East Sussex. It’s called Seaford. It’s where I live…

The politics of snow

2010-01-06T15:05:00.017Z

In common with just about everyone else, we've had large amounts of snow dumped on us over the last week or so. I haven't been able to get my car out, as it is garaged on a road with a very steep and, I might point out, ungritted, gradient. The upshot of this is that we've done our shopping locally (something which is fairly easy, as we live in a proper little town with all the day to day shops you might need), and I've spent more time indoors than I might otherwise have done. This has given me time to potter about, drink coffee, and think.

The climatologists are busy berating us ordinary folk at the moment, accusing us of confusing "weather" with "climate". Every time some newspaper columnist pops up and says, "what's happened to this global warming, then? I'm under six feet of snow!", s/he is accused of being a climate change denier, and the point is re-iterated that these cold blips have nothing to do with global warming, which is progressing nicely thanks to the use of fossil fuel that we are currently using to keep ourselves warm.

Okay. So this cold weather has nowt to do with climate change. But what if there is some other force at work? They say that 100% of statistics can be used to prove 75% of things 88% of the time, so perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that this current cold snap is due, not to cold fronts and all that stuff, but the the people we currently have in government. It's Labour's fault that we've had so much snow.

You don't believe me, do you? I don't blame you; I quite often wrong about things (so Mrs. H tells me). But I've done the maths, and I'm perfectly willing to share my findings with you.

Since January 1900, we've had fourteen political administrations. Of these, seven have been conservative, six labour and only one Liberal. The Tories have been in government for about 60 years and ten months since January 1900. During their terms of office, there have been fifteen winters described by the Met Office as "snowy", one winter "very snowy", and six White Christmases in London. So under the Conservatives we're likely to have a snowy winter every four years or so, a very snowy winter only once every sixty years, and a White Christmas every ten years or so. But thinking about it, the only really bad Conservative winter (1962/3) was under PM Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who was MP for Kinross and Western Perthshire in Scotland. The weather's pretty awful up there at the best of times. Perhaps he brought it with him.

How about Labour? What do they do to our winter weather? Well, they've been in office for about 31 years and 5 months, during which time there were eight "snowy" winters, two "very snowy" winters, and four White Christmases. So, with Labour you're looking at a snowy winter every 3.9 years (very similar to the Tories), a very snowy one every 15.75 years, and a White Christmas about every eight years. So perhaps Gordon Brown could stand for re-elction on the basis that you're more likely to get a White Christmas under his administration than under David Cameron's. But this year is likely to go down in history as "very snowy", which skews the figures somewhat, and means that under Labour we're likely to suffer a very snowy winter every ten and a half years!

But I'm forgetting the poor old Liberals. They were last in office in October 1922, having been in power for around 16 years and 10 months. During their era, there were four "snowy" winters, one "very snowy" winter, and two White Christmases. Curiously, this is close to a snowy winter every four years (just like the other parties), a very snowy one every 16 years, and a White Christmas about every eight years.

Now, I'm probably the least political person I know, and I realise that politics is about more than having to stock up with de-icer and firelighters. It's not for me to tell you who to vote for this year; I'm simply quoting the facts. If it's a White Christmas you're wanting (and don't we all love those, dear bloggy friend?) then there's nothing to choose between Labour and LibDem. Likewise, "snowy" winters are fairly evenly distributed amongst the parties (anyone would think there was some kind of conspiracy, wouldn't they? A bit like "paired voting" in the Commons!). The big difference comes when we look at the "very snowy" winters. Under Labour, we'd get one every ten years or so. The LibDems would see to it that, if they came to power this year, our next major snow fall would be in November 2026. But the safest party would seem to be the Conservatives, with a really bad winter only every sixty years.

So, not for the first time, I ask, "what am I on about?" This is the bottom line, I'm afraid: Every time we get a really bad winter, we whack up the central heating and produce more of those greenhouse gases. Statistics show that, under a Labour administration, we're six times more likely to get snowed in and, therefore, six times more likely to burn more of those naughty fossil fuels. If we want to cut down on our production of CO2 - vote Conservative! You know it makes sense. Possibly...

A hundredweight of drivel

2009-12-31T19:09:00.004Z

I think it was one of my now long-departed grandparents who said, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Were they alive today, that same grandparent might also advise that "If you can't think of anything to blog about, then don't blog at all." Were I to follow this latter piece of advice, it's likely that this blog would be either very sparse, or (which is more likely) non-existent. The truth of the matter is that, over the last year and a bit, I've managed to say very little of consequence, but have said it a hundred times. This is indeed my hundredth post.

We've had to batten down the hatches here in Sussex over the last few weeks. The weather has been terrible, giving me an excuse to have a proper open fire in the grate, something that, coming from smoke-free London, still fills me with childish delight. The recent stormy weather has also resulted in a rather curious phenomenon. We inhabitants of Seaford found ourselves with a sandy beach. Seaford beach is usually resolutely pebbled, its mile or so of flint being marshalled and kept in place by an army of heavy bulldozers that fight to prevent longshore drift from scouring away the beach completely. But over the last couple of weeks, the storms washed away the shingle and left behind a beach that, although it didn't rival those of Thailand or the South Seas, would nevertheless have allowed the building of sandcastles. If anyone had been there to build them, that is.

It's been a funny couple of weeks. In one of my (thankfully) exceptionally rare visits to Tesco's, I saw a raincoated sixty-something man get increasingly frustrated with the self-service till. He'd bought a couple of small items, and, sensible man that he was, had decided to pay with some of those vouchers that the supermarket sometimes sends one through the post. Upon the appropriate prompt, he put the aforesaid voucher into the appointed slot. Nothing happened. Our friend then decided that the voucher must have become lodged in the machine. So, he grabbed a handful of leaflets from the counter (Clubcard application forms, I fancy they were), tore them into strips, and started to insert them into the voucher slot. Nothing happened. Then something happened; the machine disgorged the voucher. He put the voucher back in. Nothing happened. He inserted further bits of Clubcard leaflet. Out came the voucher again. By this point, I was both wearied and fascinated at the same time, so I had a discreet word with a nearby sales assistant, suggesting that the gentleman might need a little help. He was only about three feet from the assistant, but at no time did he ask for anything in the way of aid. Perhaps he was at a loose end that day and the whole thing afforded him with a little diversion. I'm not keen on those self-service machines. They always tell me there's an "unexpected item in the bagging area." That unexpected item always turns out to be my shopping. If shopping is unexpected, what would be an "expected" item? A set of false teeth, perhaps? A copy of Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy? Or maybe a sense of ennui? Whatever that is.

A few days after this, I saw Mr. Toad of Toad Hall fame, outside the station. Of course, it wasn't actually a toad; it was a man. But he was sporting the kind of garb Mr. Toad would have worn to drive his car - bright yellow corduroy trousers, lovat green jacket with a red check, peaked motoring cap of a similar material. It was with great difficulty I resisted the urge to say "poop poop!" before running away. Just thought you'd like to know.

This post is in danger of turning into stream of consciousness drivel, if it hasn't already. My initial purpose was to wish you all a very happy new year. I don't make new year resolutions, and the closest Mrs. H has come to one so far this year is when she said, "I think I'm drinking too much. I think I'll just have a couple of gin and tonics." (She doesn't drink too much, dear reader!) No; I think if you resolve to make some change to your life, any time is a good time. Why wait until January the first? However, if I were to make a resolution, it would be to get something written other than this humble blog. The pilot episode of Pardon my Jaguar, perhaps? Or some more of the perpetually unpublished Middenshire Chronicles.

I think I've already taken up far too much of your time. A very happy new year to all of you, my bloggy friends. I'll see you in 2010. Perhaps then I'll have something useful and/or interesting to say. It would make a change, wouldn't it?

A Christmas message (or Yule Blog, if you prefer)

2009-12-25T17:44:00.004Z

Happy Christmas to one and all, and especially to you, my dear bloggy friends. I realise I'm probably not the first to wish you the compliments of the season, but this does not diminish the sincerity of my wishes.

Each nation has its own peculiar customs. By 'peculiar' I do not, of course, mean weird, odd, strange, call it what you will; but rather, 'singular'. It may be a particular mode of dress, a type of dance, a sport, or even a national characteristic. Most of our national customs seem to be crammed into a single day of the year - Christmas Day. It is, of course, customary for us to eat turkey (with 'all the trimmings', whatever they might be), Christmas pudding and mince pies. But there are so many other little bits and pieces associated with Christmas, and particularly Christmas dinner, that change what could be a simple meal at home with the family into a nightmare of complexity. You've got the turkey; now, what about stuffing? And those little chipolatas wrapped in bacon? Oh, and the cranberry and bread sauce that hardly anyone likes? And not forgetting the brandy butter for the pudding...

It fell to me to make the brandy butter. How hard could it be, I thought. Get some butter and mix it with brandy. But no, it isn't that simple. You have to stick sugar in it as well, and beat it until it attains a smooth consistency. So, I took equal amounts of butter and sugar, and combined them (the chefs love the expression 'combined', don't they?) in a bowl until, it seemed to me, they were of the smooth consistency aforesaid. At this point I tipped in some South African brandy (there was no expense spared in the Hale household, I can tell you!) and then whisked the agglomeration as if my life depended upon it. As indeed it might have. The resultant mixture very closely resembled the substance called brandy butter, that I had seen on sale in the various food emporia in the run-up to Christmas.

I tasted it. It tasted buttery and brandyfied, I grant you. But there was something curious in its consistency. It was not the smooth paste I had anticipated. It seemed...well...gritty. It reminded me somewhat of the sensation you get when you bite into a bit of seafood from which not all of the sand has been eradicated. This wasn't brandy butter. It was Sandy Brandy. Or possibly Sandy Butter. Of course, Mrs. H was supportive as always, saying that it didn't matter, but that next time I might try using icing sugar to reduce the...grittiness. Anyway, there being no time to experiment with alternative ingredients, the Seaford Shingle Butter, or Brandy Gravel, or whatever the heck it was, had a cooling session in the fridge and then was duly placed upon the Christmas table as the tradional accompaniment to the (sensibly) shop-bought pudding.

I noted that its spell in the cooler had changed my Sussex Brandy Pebble-dash. It had started to separate, and now looked suspiciously like a tub of value range humous, or that lumpy mix that forms in the cheese vat just after the rennet has been added. An hour in the kitchen's answer to the naughty step had only served to make it even more unpleasant than when it started out. I gave it a quick twirl with a fork, hoping to force the ingredients into some kind of homogeneity, but it was no good. There had clearly been a falling-out in that particular marriage.

As we ate our pudding, no. 1 daughter had pushed a spoon into the centre of the admixture, leaving a little depression. The brandy started to exude from the solids to form a little pool in this concavity. The thing now looked like some terrible medical emergency; a huge, suppurating wen, perhaps; or a long untreated bedsore. At daughter's behest I scooped out a tiny amount of the glistening, purulent liquid and tasted it. It was clearly a mixture of brandy and sugar that somehow managed to combine the worst characteristics of each ingredient, whilst eschewing anything good that might otherwise have been present. I couldn't bear to be it the same room as this creature any longer.

I was all for chucking it down the sink, but Mrs. H quite rightly pointed out that our drains are over a century old. So it went into a bin bag. It's been very quiet since.

The rest of the meal was fine, by the way.

Happy Christmas.

Imprecations on the A120

2009-12-18T15:09:00.000Z

I have always loved the poems of John Betjeman. Even as a child, the Englishness of his work and the underlying humour in many of his poems captivated me. I remember seeing Sir John at Oxford Circus back in the late sixties or early seventies. I was wandering aimlessly round the west end shops (as was my wont), when I happened to notice the great man, wearing his trademark trilby and a rather shabby raincoat, making his way through the crowds with an other-worldy expression on his face. I like to think that I was the only one who noticed him.

I speculated here on the type of poem dear Sir John, were he alive today, might have written about our reliance on computers. But there are huge swathes of 21st century life -"reality" TV, recession, fears of global warming - that might well prompt him to put pen to paper. However, as I recently bought my first "satnav", I thought that ought to be the poet's next topic. It is loosely based upon Meditation on the A30, and I have attempted, as far as possible, to keep the original rhyme scheme. It is entitled Imprecations on the A120. I hope it will amuse!

A man on his own in a car
Is creating a terrible stink
His effing and blinding’s a product of finding
His satnav has gone on the blink

“She’s stopped telling me where to go,
She should have said ‘left’ at that fork!
This journey is going too slow,
I think I’ll just get out and walk

“Why can’t you just give me directions?
It is your damned job, after all.
My wife said today she’s been playing away
With Derek from near Coggeshall.

“If I had a Garmin, let’s say
Or Tom Tom ‘Go’ with Lane Assist
I’d find Derek’s lair straight away
And introduce him to my fist.

“This satnav is trash, and a waste of my cash, and
I will bin you, God knows I will!”
As he pokes at the screen, he hasn’t yet seen
The DAF truck closing in for the kill.

Cloth encounters

2009-12-04T16:00:00.000Z

It's now three weeks until Christmas Day, and the tills are ringing with all the gusto of yuletide bells. Except that tills don't ring any more; they kind of spit and splutter and refuse point blank to do anything without a barcode. And it seems that I always manage to choose the one item on the shelf that doesn't have a barcode. But it was fine. John Prescott, the former deputy Prime Minister, was on the till at B and Q in Eastbourne, and he seemed more than equal to the task of keying in the product information manually, thus enabling me to take home, and install, a brush-type internal letterbox flap to keep the sea breezes at bay. Strange how these celebrities keep appearing in the shops of East Sussex.

Eastbourne was rather crowded on Wednesday. I'm not sure why, but I always feel somewhat resentful about this. What are all these people doing, taking my parking spaces and filling the shops? I enquired aloud. Haven't they got jobs to go to? Why are they there during the day? But I was quickly reminded by Mrs. H that I was, of course, part of the problem. In an attempt to engage my interest in something other than the crowdedness of the shops, she took me to a linen emporium.

In truth, it was a linen shop, rather than an emporium. And it wasn't crowded. I very quickly discovered why. There are very few shops (other than those selling commodes or surgical supports) that are as stultifyingly dull as linen shops. The shop window display indicated that it was, indeed, Christmas by displaying novelty yuletide tea towels featuring the Jolly Old Gent, snowmen, reindeer, and all manner of other seasonal motifs. There was also a smattering of Christmas stockings, ready to be filled with oranges, nuts and...aww, who am I kidding! But the best bits were inside the shop...

The place was full of curtain poles and blinds, tie-backs, tea cosies, bedding, net curtains; in fact, just about everything linen-y. But tea towels seem to be the staple of this particular shop. There were large metal cages full of them, all at extraordinarily low prices. Perhaps tea towels will have some sort of role to play if ever nuclear war threatens, and the government advises us to wet them and use them to cover our heads. If so, I'll be there to avail myself of their three for a pound offer. Further cages were dotted about the shop, containing towels, duvet covers, and something called a 'Jane Rug'. Jane Rug seemed to me like a marvellous name. Stick another 'g' on the end and it becomes a Dickens character! Persuade the Americans to use Jane Rugg instead of Jane Doe in their cop programmes! I told Mrs. H as much, but she was preoccupied with an orangey-red throw that she'd taken a fancy to. Not for herself, you understand, but for a friend's Christmas gift. Now, I'd always thought of 'throw' as a verb, and here they were, this linen shop, using it as a noun. But this use of nouns as verbs and vice versa seems to rear its head quite a bit at this time of year. Which of us hasn't heard someone say, 'I'm going to marzipan the cake tomorrow', quite oblivious to the fact that marzipan is a noun? I decided to keep these particular thoughts to myself. Until now, that is.

Boredom does strange things to a man. So, in the listlessness of despair (this phrase copyright Jerome K Jerome) I started to use the objects in this shop as puns in song titles...

Duvet know it's Christmas?
A Question of Valance (alright, so it's an album title - but this is my game!)
Nice day for a white bedding
I'm linen on an lampost
Long Towel Sally
Sheet Child of Mine
The Throw must go on
Anything by Curtains Mayfield

Probably just as well I didn't start on film titles. After all, who could forget The Towelling Inferno? Or The Counterpane of Monte Christo? Or GI Jane Rugg? Or even Who Shot Liberty Valance? Sorry; the last one was just too far-fetched.

My frankly rather pointless reveries were brought to a close when Mrs. H decided that The Throw wasn't quite the thing, and determined to take us off to Debenhams where, I believe, these items are called bedspreads.

An encounter with a retired politician; twenty minutes of punning; a look at some of Eastbourne's finest bedding. I can't remember when I had a better day...

One man's morris

2009-11-21T19:13:00.000Z

On the 26th December 1899, Cecil Sharp, a forty year old composer, was dining with his wife at the home of his mother-in-law, Mrs Dora Priestley Birch, in Headington, Oxford. At some point during the day, a rag-tag group of men betook themselves Mrs. Birch's home to perform a traditional dance. The leader of this group, William "Merry" Kimber, a bricklayer by trade, was hoping to make a bit of extra cash during a slack period in the building trade. Kimber and his men were morris dancers. Sharp had never seen anything like them before, so he asked Kimber and his fellow dancers to return and perform the following day so that he could make a proper record of the tunes to which they had danced. This event marked the start of Sharp's interest in, and his attempts to, keep the tradition of morris dancing alive; a tradition that would almost certainly have died without his intervention.

So, why am I telling you this? Because I have recently decided to do my bit to ensure that morris dancing doesn't fade forever into the mists of history...I've joined a morris dancing side. Long Man Morris, to be precise.

Long Man Morris were formed in 1978 to perpetuate the traditions of Cotswold morris. Most of the dances they perform were collected by Cecil Sharp from Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire. Warwickshire and Northamptonshire in the early years of the 20th century. Within those counties, village morris sides had their own traditions and styles of dancing; thus, the morris dancers of Adderbury would have performed different dances to those in Bampton, Brackley or Upton upon Severn. Long Man have also started their own form of dance (which they call the Wilmington tradition), some of which I'm currently attempting to learn!

To the uninitiated, morris dancing looks like a load of old men waving hankies or sticks around. But to dismiss it as such is to do it a grave disservice. Each morris "side" has a repertoire of dances, each dance having its own accompanying tune, its particular footwork, its pattern of dance (heading up, heading down, back to back, hay), and any number of peculiarities to confuse or confound the novice dancer (ie me!) A dancer of many years standing recently told me, "You wait till your first dance in public. There'll be lots of people watching you. Most will be watching you wave your hankies; they're the public. A few will be watching your feet; they're the off-duty morris dancers." And it's getting the feet right that's currently occupying my efforts at our Friday night practice sessions, a two-hour workout that leaves me exhausted, with aching knees and a terrible thirst that can only be slaked by a pint of Harveys best bitter.

Although I'm not yet proficient enough to "dance out" with the side, I trundled off to Hailsham last night to watch Long Man dance. They were accompanied by a couple of "Border" style sides; Hunter's Moon and Old Star Morris. Take a look at Hunter's Moon here. They are an extraordinary bunch of people, with blacked up faces, tattered coats, and an exuberant dance style that is quite fascinating. Towards the end of the evening, Mrs. H made a rather interesting observation. She said, "Just about all of the audience have gone home. They're just dancing for themselves." And she was right. Morris dancing isn't about putting on a display for the public (although this does help to raise a fair bit of cash for local charities), but it's rather about a bunch of like-minded people getting together to keep a tradition alive. At least, that's how it appears to this particular novice.

In his novel Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy introduces his readers to a group of mummers; purveyors of simple, traditional plays acted out on village greens from time immemorial. He notes that genuine mummers can be distinguished from modern revivalists in that the former perform their plays with a sense of gloomy obligation, whereas the latter will appear to be enthusiastic. Under Hardy's rule (if it can be applied to morris dancers), I'm afraid you'd have to mark us down as revivalists!

It isn't a speedy process, becoming a morris dancer. One of the most recent recruits took around three years to become a "full" member of the side, and he probably didn't have two left feet like me. It seems to be a matter of constant practice and repetition, until the moves become second nature and you suddenly realise that you're keeping up with everyone else. When this is going to happen to me is anyone's guess!

At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, traditional Chinese folk dances were much in evidence, both during the opening and at presentation and award ceremonies. There are, apparently, no plans to feature morris dancing, or any other traditional form of English, Scottish or Welsh dance into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London. Cecil Sharp, where art thou?

A flaming good time

2009-11-07T21:03:00.000Z

Question. Where can you see, all in one place, Vikings, smugglers, Siamese dancers, a samba band, and a bunch of Zulu warriors? Disneyland? Wrong, I’m afraid. What if you add a torchlit procession complete with fiery crosses, the burning of a Pope, some blazing tar barrels and a dyslexic pirate? The set of some British low-budget cult film? Wrong again. In italics. All these curious characters and props can be seen every year at the bonfire night celebrations in Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. And it was to Lewes, despite the exhortations of the local law enforcement agencies that ‘outsiders’ should stay away, that my family and I, and several thousand other curious visitors betook ourselves on November the fifth.

When, on the 5th November 1605, the ‘Popish Plot’ to kill King James and his parliament was discovered, the day was declared to be ‘a holiday for ever in thankfulness to God for the deliverance and detestation of the Papists’. Officially, the day was celebrated with a church service of thanksgiving, but in the seventeenth century and earlier it was traditional to mark significant events with the lighting of bonfires, so it is quite likely that an ad-hoc bonfire party was held in Lewes, as well as many other towns and villages, on the 5th of November 1606. Now, you have to bear in mind that, in the absence of councils, police, health and safety officers and a whole host of EU regulations, these celebrations were nothing like the well-ordered, all-ticket affairs we have now, and were probably more like drunken riots. Little wonder, then, that Oliver Cromwell sought to ban these and all other similar ‘celebrations’ when he came to power.

When Charles the Second ascended the throne, Cromwell’s ban was rescinded, and bonfire celebrations in Lewes resumed and continued haphazardly until the 1820s, when semi-organised groups of ‘Bonfire Boys’ lit fires and set off fireworks, but these were still riotous affairs. In 1838 a magistrate who remonstrated with the boys was unceremoniously chucked into the River Ouse, and in 1847 a contingent of a hundred Metropolitan Police officers were drafted in to prevent disorder, the riot act was read and a good number of police officers were injured in the ensuing fight with the ‘boys’.

It was clear that this sort of thing couldn’t carry on. And so it was that, in 1853, the Cliffe and Town (now Lewes Borough) Bonfire Societies were established. Other societies were established later, and the night took on a rather more orderly air. On the night of the fifth, these societies, whose members wear amazing and elaborate costumes, march through the town carrying flaming torches (and fiery crosses in memory of Lewes’ Protestant martyrs), throwing firecrackers around, and throwing blazing tar barrels into the Ouse. The Cliffe Society displays flaming banners, proclaiming ‘No Popery’ (I’m amazed some over-zealous individual hasn’t tried to ban this!) and ‘We Wunt be Druv’, reflecting the determination of Sussex people not to be pushed around by the self-appointed or over-zealous individuals aforesaid. According to one very nice lady to whom I spoke, there is intense rivalry between the societies. I’m afraid I put my ‘London head’ on at this point, suspecting all manner of incidents such as drive-by shootings, kidnaps and knee-cappings. I suspect, however, that a little good-natured ribbing about the merits of their respective societies is as far as it goes! And here's a small aside...I managed to spot, and greet, a fellow Twitter user (@_Flik_) who was part of the South Street procession. Who says social networking is a waste of time?

One of the high points of the evening is the burning of effigies. Of course, Guido Fawkes and Pope Paul the Fifth are regulars. But each year the societies also choose a number of ’hate’ figures who are also consigned to the flames. This year, they torched a very realistic effigy of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and some other politician, sailing in a gravy boat with a pig for company. The banking fraternity, symbolised by a massive Fat Cat, was given similar treatment.

I have to say that Bonfire was a most amazing night out. It’s the type of festival I thought had been legislated out of existence years ago, but, thankfully, it has survived. Despite the presence of all those flaming torches, bonfires and fireworks, there were (as far as I’m aware) no major incidents or injuries. I saw no violence, no disorder, and the police were at their unobtrusive best in letting everyone get on with enjoying themselves. I’m pretty sure the worst casualties were (like me) just a little over-zealous with the local brew.

What I’m going to say now is likely to upset both police and council…don’t listen to their pleas for you to stay away! If you find yourself anywhere near Lewes on the next November the fifth, do yourself a favour and trundle along to the Bonfire celebrations. I guarantee you an amazing experience. I’ll be there, so tap me on the shoulder and I’ll buy you a pint of Harvey’s Bonfire Boy. Maybe even two pints.

Oh, I nearly forgot about the dyslexic pirate. He had a carrot on his shoulder...

The minimum wages of sin

2009-10-29T15:55:00.000Z

Having now been officially 'retired' for over a year, and looking to fill my waking hours with something other than decorating, I have recently turned my attention to the thought of work. This isn't just a whim, dear reader. Having been fully employed for the last thirty plus years, and now getting to the stage where I have started looking over Mrs. H's shoulder at Dulux colour charts and thinking, 'hmm...Dusted Damson looks nice...', I find that, contrary to my pre-retirement expectations, being 'work-free' is not all it's cracked up to be. I have decided that I need to get some kind of job.

I always fancied a career to do with books and, as if by magic, a number of local library jobs appeared, both full and part time. Undaunted, I applied for one of them, and, wonder of wonders, I was called in for interview. At a local library, three very nice ladies quizzed me for around twenty minutes as to what skills I possessed, whether I was IT literate, whether I was confident handling money, and how I would deal with difficult customers. Now, the police service, although it doesn't take money over the counter in the same way as ASDA, likes to think of itself as having 'customers' (by which it means arrested people, victims of crime, casual callers to the station, etc.), so I had no problem in explaining how I dealt with 'difficult' customers, since I had encountered more of these than the average librarian could shake a stick at. Imagine my surprise when, a week or so later, I was notified that the job had gone to someone else. I was advised that I was 'a very good interviewee', but that I had not demonstrated my skills with sufficient vehemence to justify entrusting the job to me. I felt rather peeved at this. Had I not spent the last thirty years honing my inter-personal skills, organisational abilities and leadership qualities? Had I not dealt with incidents that the average library assistant might only have read about between the covers of a racy detective novel? Was I really not good enough to stamp library books and collect fines? You see, this is what being 'management' for nigh on twenty five years does to you; it gives you an exaggerated sense of your own importance. How could there possibly be a better candidate than me?

A few weeks later, another library job hove into view, and off went my application. Back came the invite to the interview, and this week saw me, hair combed and beard trimmed, in front of the same three ladies. Now, I had learnt from the first interview (you see - another skill!) and spent far more time talking about my all-round qualities that would make me an ideal assistant in the busy world of the public library. The ladies were very kind. They nodded. They smiled. And one of them even said, 'very interesting' after I had regaled them with a police-related example of my ability to multi-task. But, a few hours later, I received the familiar phone call. This time, apparently, I had been pipped by someone with 'a background in retail' - someone who had worked in a pub, it appeared. Perhaps working in a library has more in common with pulling pints and retailing bags of pork scratchings than I had thought.

So, dear reader, what am I to do? Would I be correct in thinking that spending thirty years in a responsible job is not what the modern employer is looking for? Would I have been better to flit, butterfly-like, from job to job? Does my three-decade career simply demonstrate that I am unable to embrace change? Should I get a job as a part-time barman to make myself more attractive? In an employment kind of way, I mean.

This afternoon I was flicking idly though lists of jobs on the internet. A few things struck me about the way these job ads are written. A job isn't just a job, it's 'an exciting opportunity,' or even 'an exceptional opportunity'. And a company isn't just a company, it's an 'exciting and innovative company', or a 'cutting edge organisation'. And what about the ideal candidate? He or she should, it appears, be 'dynamic', 'possess excellent communication skills and the drive, determination and resilience to succeed', or, in one notable instance, have the ability to 'make a good time great.' Now, I may have been unlucky in my choice of shopping venues over the years, but just where are all these dynamic communicators whose sole purpose in life would seem to be to enhance my Retail Experience? I haven't met them yet. Or perhaps I have. The liveliest, most dynamic people on the High Street are the charity muggers who are constantly attempting to separate me from my bank sort code. But maybe they've been sacked from their retail jobs for being just too dynamic; for 'high-five'-ing each other after every sale of family-sized washing powder, or imprisoning elderly customers in clothing stores for hours until they give in and buy a comfy cardigan in taupe. The ones that are left to man the tills look at me with heavy-lidded eyes as the pass my groceries over the scanner, barely acknowledging my presence...except in Morrisons. They're OK in Morrisons. Oh, I almost forgot. The other interesting point about these jobs that are looking for a candidate who is a cross between Lord Sugar and the Messiah? Almost all of them are offering the minimum wage.

It's Friday tomorrow. On Fridays I go morris dancing. They don't expect me to be dynamic. Just good with a stick...

Are you Smellie?

2009-10-09T20:19:00.000+01:00

I’ve been rather preoccupied with the house just lately. I won’t bore you with the details, dear reader. Suffice it to say that there has been an orgy of stripping (oooer missus!), wallpapering and painting, which is likely to continue for some time to come. Yesterday we finished removing the old paper from the living room walls a day earlier than anticipated. So, I have some downtime, and a chance to exercise my mind with something other than decorating.

I’m not the world’s best handyman or decorator. I like to think my skills lie elsewhere. But Mrs. H is convinced that I’ll get better if I do more, and in relation to some jobs she’s being proved right. In those areas where my skills are lacking, I find swearing helps to get the job done. So, if I’m struggling with a roll of wet wallpaper, the wiring up of some lights, or some other technical task, I find it helps to call the job every name under the sun…

And speaking of names, we all have one. In fact, most of us have two or more. Having just one name seems rather pretentious, or even downright egotistical; look at Jordan, Prince, Squiggle (Prince’s now not-so-new name), Superman…see what I mean? The Queen shies away from being called just Queen, for fear she should be confused with the eponymous rock band. And even Dr. No had the decency to prefix his name with his medical qualification; otherwise, could you imagine the confusion? ‘What’s your name?’ ‘No.’ ‘Sorry, I just need your name.’ ‘No.’ ‘Why do you have a problem with telling me your name?’ And so on…you’d be there all day.

How did names evolve? Those who study such things suggest that names fell into five categories; whom you served, whose son you were, your occupation, where you lived…but these are all pretty dull stuff. The most interesting category is the nickname. Now, there’s a great tradition in this country of giving nicknames which probably confuses the heck out of The Rest Of The World. A short man is called ‘Lofty’; a chap who’s not terribly bright is deemed ‘Einstein’; another who wears glasses is landed with the name ‘four-eyes’. As you can see, some of these are rather insulting, and, within the last few years, there have been attempts within the police service and other public bodies to ban nicknames altogether. One former colleague who hailed from Wales was taken to task by ‘the management’ because he called himself, and was happy for others to call him, ‘Taff’. Many people rejoice in their nicknames; within an organisation like the army or the police, it gives an individual a sense of having ‘arrived’. If your colleagues like you, they’ll come up with a nickname for you, and you’ll be happy to answer to it, albeit some would say you were being ‘complicit in your own oppression’. Hmm…

However, be they pleasant or offensive, our nicknames are just that - nicknames. They are not our surnames, and we don’t have to declare them in our passports, admit to them in job applications, or have them engraved forever on our driving licences. But things were a bit different in the middle ages, where a nickname effectively became an individual’s surname. Although the peasantry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have long since closed their eyes upon this world, and left no mark upon it to speak of, their names live on - in manor court rolls, deeds, military muster lists and taxation records - and all of those I am about to impart are genuine. There were some innocuous, and even pleasant names, of course. Agnes Singalday might well have delighted everyone with her ballads; Gilbert Wysdom seemed like the sort of chap you would go to if you had a problem; and the man or woman who rejoiced in the name of Smalbyhind would no doubt have been as happy about the fact as s/he would be in our present century. But the medieval English were possessed of a wonderful sense of humour; so it is equally possible that Agnes’ caterwauling was sufficient to wake the dead, Gilbert was in reality renowned for his utter stupidity, and he or she of the small behind might have had a rump that would put an elephant to shame.

Ironic or not, the above pale into insignificance as we uncover a somewhat less pleasant group of names, and I start with poor Alicia Shitte. How on earth did she come by such a name? Does the surname denote that her character? Or her smell, perhaps? Or did she suffer from (as our ancestors would have it) The Flux? Sadly, we will probably never know. Whereas we have a fair idea what William Aydrunken (always drunk) must have been like. Perhaps, after a particularly heavy session with Messrs. Drinkalup and Potfulofale, he would have picked a fight with William Milksop? Or woken from a boozy night in a pigsty belonging to Reyner Piggesflesshe? He might even have propositioned Letice Uggele. And, with any luck, she would have declined his no doubt tender blandishments and booted him into the aforementioned pigsty…

Sex was not a taboo subject in the middle ages. So it is, perhaps, no surprise that a few…how shall we say…’racy’ names make an appearance. Those of you who have a delicate constitution might want to look away now. To the rest of you who clearly have a stronger constitution, I have to say that I would blush to comment upon the attributes of the owners of the following names; I merely present to you John Fillecunt, whose name appears in written records in 1246, Bele Wydecunthe, who puts in an appearance in 1327, her contemporary, Matilda Strokelady, and the relatively fortunate Alice Strumpet. Hmm.

We live in enlightened times. We no longer think a person’s name is likely to denote his or her character. We don’t expect Mr. Wagstaff or Mr. Shakespeare to be belligerent (incidentally, ‘Shakespeare‘ was also a name given to a gentlemen who enjoyed the act of, how should I say it delicately, ‘self-ravishment'), any more than we expect Mr. Bastard (yep, there is such a surname!) to be the product of an unmarried couple. Oh, I dunno, though…but wouldn’t it be fun if we still received our surnames in the old-fashioned way? What would we have now? An inveterate social networker might be called Gilbert Facebook or Alice Twitter. What about those who use ‘recreational substances’ when clubbing? John Offhisface or Laura Snortpowder, maybe. And how about some names for the financial fraternity? William Bonus or Anna Reckless. And we can’t forget politicians, can we? Gordon Pinchpension, David Emptywords, Nick Notahope…you’ll notice that, like the BBC, I’ve been balanced and fair in this last category, and this is probably the closest you’ll ever see me get to a political comment!

Not quite sure what I’d be called in this new medieval age. Chris Beard? Chris Workfree? Chris Notsotall? Whatever it might be, judging by my current standard of DIY, it certainly wouldn’t be Chris Handyman…

I am one of the noticeable ones - notice me

2009-09-16T19:43:00.000+01:00

I met Simon Cowell in Brighton the other day. He was serving at the checkout of a shop where I had bought some kitchen roll (extra absorbent) and bin bags (extra large, for my next trip to Cradle Hill Recycling Centre). Alright, so he had the words ‘alley rats’ tattooed on his neck, and he was wearing a badge bearing the name ‘Kevin’. But these contra-indications didn’t fool me for a moment. I had noticed that it was Mr. Cowell, and Mr. Cowell, in turn, noticed that I had noticed. Neither of us said anything, unless you count his saying ‘That’ll be two pounds, please’, and my saying, ‘There you are. Thank you.’

I suppose it’s only to be expected that I cracked Mr. Cowell’s little game. After all, thirty years in law enforcement does help you notice things. Things like the dirty great boot mark in the centre of the flower bed at a burglary scene; the fridge lobbed over the balcony of a block of flats, intended to cause a few minor scratches to the ‘company car’; the look on someone’s face when you catch them in the act of doing something illegal. But these skills pale into insignificance when you compare them with the observational skills of Mrs. H.

Mrs. H would have made an excellent police officer. Or, if not a police officer, the Head of Surveillance for MI6. She has this almost supernatural ability to ‘notice’ things. I’ve recently been painting the boy’s bedroom. I was pretty proud of the fact that I’d made a reasonable job of it. But then Mrs. H ‘noticed’ that I’d missed some bits, so I gave the room a second coat of paint. And guess what? Yep. Mrs. H ‘noticed’ that a couple of the walls still looked patchy. Coat number three here we come…

If I wash up, she notices the glass I’ve missed; if I hoover or dust, it’s the minute specks I have totally failed to see. When watering the garden, I generally manage to miss at least one pot plant completely. But even this does not escape Mrs H’s notice and I’m soon back out with the watering can.

At first, these incidents were the source of mild amusement.’ Silly me,’ I would exclaim as I once more reached for the duster or dish mop. But after a while I grew concerned. What if my failure to notice things is but the first symptom on a rocky road to forgetfulness, absent-mindedness, or something worse? Did I really not notice that bit of fluff under the sideboard, or did my subconscious urge me simply to ignore it in order to provide Mrs. H with some more target practice because, deep down, I am a masochist? Or conversely, does Mrs. H simply have too much time on her hands, and has decided to become a professional Noticer of Things by way of diversion? I worry that one morning I will find her in the breakfast room, white gloves on and clipboard on standby, ready to carry out the sort of inspection that would make a barrack-room sergeant major look positively idle and sloppy. Heaven help me if she found dust on top of the mirror. The kind of dreadful punishment she might mete out to me doesn't bear thinking about. Whitewashing our supply of firewood, perhaps? Or maybe I'd have to run up Seaford Head with a fifty pound pack? I'd better quieten down. She might read this and I've already given her a couple of ideas...

I’ve started to wonder whether I should attempt to boost my own ‘noticing’ skills. I could start with simple stuff. I could, for example, notice whether a light is on or off, whether we need a fresh carton of milk, whether I’m wearing the grey socks or the black ones. But I fear my efforts would be doomed to failure, and that I would soon be back to my old self - the one who doesn’t know what day it is half the time; the one you, dear bloggy friends, are familiar with. Part of the problem lies in my gender. As a man, my head is constantly full of stuff that has absolutely no bearing on everyday life. Whilst Mrs. H scans the brochures for paint colours for the living room, I imagine what it would be like to be a Red Bull Air Race pilot. Whilst she sensibly tries to choose bedroom furniture, I concoct puns and comedy haikus. Here's one I prepared earlier:

Mum went to Brighton
And all she brought me back was
This lousy T-shirt

So, dear reader, I shall be content to be a bumbling Watson to Mrs H’s Holmes, constantly astonished by her visual acuity; or perhaps a fifty-something Mr. Magoo to her Hawkeye. And I shall, like the frog footman in Alice in Wonderland, 'sit here on and off, for days and days' until I hear those immortal words once more: ‘Chris…I’ve just noticed…’

You'd laugh to see a pudding roll...apparently

2009-09-06T01:11:00.001+01:00

Are you a Lollard? Of course, I don’t mean, ‘Are you a follower of John Wycliffe, a critic of traditional religious beliefs in the 14th century?’ I mean ‘do you LOL when you Tweet, or Face Book (if I’m allowed to use FaceBook as a verb) or whatever it is you do?’ Because it seems to me that LOL (or Laughing Out Loud to the uninitiated) is fast becoming one of the most overused expressions in cyberspace. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a miserable old git. I probably find at least one thing every day that makes me laugh out loud. Why, only last week I saw a gentleman in London whose greying hair resembled nothing less than a Davy Crockett hat. This would have caused me to laugh out loud, had I not been sitting in a restaurant, surrounded by other diners who would undoubtedly have thought I was a couple of clicks away from full sanity. But I’d be worried if I was tempted to laugh out loud at some of the things I read on the internet.

My preferred social networking site is Twitter. I find its 140 character limit per message (or ‘Tweet’) encourages me to marshal my thoughts more carefully before I commit them to the screen. It’s no place for a rambler, which is curious, when you look at the way I tend to ramble within the environs of this Humble Blog. I’m beginning to wonder if I suffer from some kind of computational bipolarity, wittering on one minute and being succinct the next…but I digress. I have begun to worry about the things my fellow Twitterati find is worthy of a LOL. And fear not; I haven't had a punctuation bypass; I reproduce these Tweets exactly as they appear on Twitter:

Busy day ahead. Need an extra strong cup of coffee LOL.

Manchester. Yay. LOL.

Waiting for my Avon delivery. Fun stuff, its like christmas every 2 weeks! LOL

Having my hair done. LOL.

LOL what day is it?

There’s a whole lot of LOL-ing going on. Perhaps some of these individuals would, to coin the phrase oft used by my grandmother, laugh to see a pudding roll. In the space of the two minutes it took me to type a couple of sentences, LOL was used on Twitter no less than 1004 times. And the above examples are a fairly good indication of the things folks are LOL-ing about. Now, read them aloud, then laugh out loud at the designated time. Does it make you feel slightly unhinged? It does me. This is why I have never used LOL, either in my blog, or on Twitter. If I read something I think is amusing, I will send a message to its writer saying, ‘I think what you have just said is very amusing.’ Which probably makes me sound like some ludicrous caricature of an Englishman as featured in the Anglo-American sitcom, Pardon My Jaguar. Oh well…

I’d like to propose that we kick LOL into the long grass where it belongs or, if there isn‘t any long grass, into that gravelly area up against the house wall adjacent to the outside water tap. But some folk are so devoted to it that I fear the absence of a LOL-fix is likely to drive them half mad. So I have come up with a few new acronyms that might be used to more accurately reflect the writer’s feelings at the time. You will note that they follow a progression of intensity of emotion:

BRAS - Barely Raises A Smile
SQUITS - Smiles Quietly To Self
MALT - Mildly Amused - Little Titter
GLAG - Giggling Like A Girl (with thanks to Cordy Williams for this one!)
SIDOS - Sides In Danger Of Splitting
BLOIP - Big Laugh Occasioning Incontinence Pad
SOFISM - So Funny I Shat Myself

Of course, these new expressions will take a bit of time to get used to. I can’t expect LOL-ers to break their pernicious habit immediately. It’d probably be as dangerous as alcohol withdrawal. Each culprit (sorry, I mean victim; we live in a society where the idea of someone being guilty of something is anathema) will be allowed one LOL a week, its appropriateness to be determined by a new Quango, the ICOTOCAA - the International Council To Combat Acronym Abuse. If any ‘victim’ is found to have LOL-ed inappropriately, they will be issued with a LOLBO - a Laugh Out Loud Banning Order - and taken for re-training to ensure they have a proper sense of what is, or isn’t, funny. The first session will involve a slide show of criminally bad hairstyles (including aforesaid gent with Davy Crockett hair), selected highlights from You've Been Maimed, and the pilot episode of Pardon My Jaguar.

I hope you’ll not take my comments amiss. I’m sure there are no Lollards amongst my undoubtedly intelligent fellow-bloggers. But if there are, there is hope for you. Call my LOL helpline now on 0898 244 8487 for confidential help and advice. Calls charged at £1 per minute; minimum call length thirty seven minutes. And I guarantee you'll find nothing to LOL about when the phone bill arrives...

Stop press. If you find LOL a serious irritation then you can join BLOT - Ban LOL On Twitter. You know it makes sense!

Where have all the brand new combine harvesters gone?

2009-08-23T11:54:00.000+01:00

Isn't it funny. You live somewhere for years and your life assumes a regular pattern. You get up, you go to work, you do the shopping on the same day and at the same place every week. You swear to yourself, when I retire I'm going to break all of my routines. So, here I am, one year and six days after retirement...and blessed if I haven't got into a new kind of routine!

Sunday has become Dump Day. There's barely a week goes by when I don't have a car full of stuff to take to the Cradle Hill Recycling Centre - AKA The Dump. This week it was carpets. I must, of course, praise the generosity of the former occupants of this house in leaving the carpets for us. Sadly, however, those carpets were, shall we say, a little less than perfect, covered as they were in interesting single celled organisms, and languishing in the loft. They were also possessed of an interesting aroma; you could probably use them as an air freshener if you lived at the centre of a sewage farm. I'm hoping that the leaving of the carpets was not an oversight on their part, and that I'm not going to get a visit from the previous owners, asking for them back. I'd have to come clean - something that the carpets would never do, even with a generous dose of napalm - and I would also have to admit to disposing of their interesting collection of damaged house bricks.

That was the dull bit of the Sunday routine. After that was the bit I like best - wandering into town to get the papers. I always go via the beach to see what interesting stuff the tide has thrown up. There wasn't much this morning; some seaweed, a few bits of old rope, some driftwood that wasn't worth taking home to use on the fire...but on the positive side, the sky was a brilliant blue, the sea was sparkling, and I had the place almost to myself. I could quite happily have stayed there all day but, as we have a couple of friends popping in this afternoon, this would have seemed churlish. So, home I went.

As I turned into the road in which I live, I noticed an elderly gentleman, sitting on a low window sill opposite the baker's shop. Nothing remarkable about that, of course. Seaford is full of elderly ladies and gentlemen having A Nice Sit Down; they've got it down to a fine art. But, as I passed this particular elderly gent, he started to sing Where have all the flowers gone? And he sang it in tune with a strongish voice; not in that curious, quavering way that many elderly folk have. He would probably have been around twenty one years old when the song was released. This led me to speculate on what tune, should I be fortunate enough to reach the age of seventy-odd, I myself could sing whilst having A Nice Sit Down on that rather commodious window sill. Mamma Mia, by Abba? Perhaps. Save All Your Kisses For Me, by Brotherhood of Man? Maybe. But, on balance, I think the winner by a short straw has to be Combine Harvester, by the Wurzels.

I love these Old Classics.

Warning No. 2 - Contains nudity, sex and swearing

2009-08-06T20:45:00.000+01:00

So if you are easily offended, please look away now.

'Brighton is still very gay and full of balls', it's been said. And it was to Brighton that I betook myself the other day, intending to have a mouch round the shops. And mouch I did, in a very slow and idle manner, rather characteristic of Brighton itself. The short walk from Brighton Station to the North Laine area (one of the more interesting bits of the city) is rather dull, characterised by employment bureaux specialising in the hiring of medical staff, second-hand shops dealing in old banknotes, stamps and model railway bric-a-brac, and rather seedy-looking newsagents selling unpronouncable Polish beers, but the traveller is ultimately rewarded, of which more later.

Just before you arrive at North Laine, and almost opposite the Cuttlefish Organic Hairdressers, you encounter a rather dour-looking building on the way there called The Galeed Strict Baptist Chapel. In what way is it strict, I wonder? Does the minister with his carefully-tonsured chin beard and black stove-pipe hat look daggers at any latecomers as they sneak into the back of the chapel? Or do they take a fierce delight in having the temperature of the baptismal pool close to freezing point? Or does the congregation indulge in an orgy of tutting every time a gaily (without connotation) dressed individual saunters past? In any event, I wasn't about to find out, so I toddled on to the shops.

I suppose North Laine would describe itself as 'trendy'; possibly 'off-beat'. It's certainly that. It contains a myriad of small shops that provide more quirky goods, services and foodstuffs than you can shake a shamanic fortune-telling stick at. Do you want to buy a 'Bananaman' t-shirt? Have yourself tattooed? Get a tarot reading? Toast the fine weather in a glass of wheatgrass with added guarana (I thought that was the stuff seagulls are always depositing on my car...or is that guano)? Or even buy some vegetarian shoes? Then North Laine's your spiritual home. And if you should get the urge to dress as a pirate, a parlour maid, a burlesque starlet, complete with tassels, or even a bumble bee, the necessary items can be found in this small area of Brighton.

At this point, I'm afraid I have to express a rather childish delight in the variety of greetings cards to be found in North Laine. Clearly at some point, a group of tanked up students got together round a table littered with lager cans and empty KFC boxes and said, 'Now, what can we do to offend the maximum number of people?' and came up with a variety of ideas: a doctor, white coated and stethoscoped, exclaims, 'Here's my diagnosis - you're a wanker.'; another card notes, 'You're a genius! Pity you're such an arsehole...'. There were many other cards of an equally diverting nature, but I would blush to repeat them here...

Having had my fill of North Laine, I took a walk across Old Steine, past the Victoria Fountain and War Memorial with its sadly green and stagnant pool of water, and into St. James' Street, Kemp Town. Now, Kemp Town, the brochures will tell you, is home to Brighton's gay 'community'. I'm afraid I have always felt rather uncomfortable with the notion of splitting the population into separate 'communities' - The Bengali Community, The Chinese Community, and so on - it's something the media does all the time, and creates the assumption that every member of that 'community' thinks/feels/acts in the same way. Clearly not so. Within the 'gay community' (which makes up around a quarter of Brighton's population) there must be Conservative and labour gays, lesbians who like a drink or who have chosen to be teetotal, gay men who collect stamps, spot trains, hate Judy Garland. Anyway, be that as it may...

Kemp Town has a village feel. Most of the shops are small independents; the cafe, the barber, the Bona Foodie grocers. I wasn't sure whether this latter shop was Italian owned, or whether this 'Bona' was Polari for 'good'; Polari was a kind of slang devised and used by gay people in the 1960s, when homosexual acts in private were still a criminal offence and gay people needed a means of communication that excluded 'outsiders' - rather like cockney rhyming slang. A good example of Polari can be heard on Round the Horne, a 1960s radio programme in which comedian Kenneth Horne would converse with two gay men - Julian and Sandy - who dusted their conversation liberally with Polari. In my naivety (be fair...I was only ten years old!) I just though Julian and Sandy were two men who spoke funny. Sadly, I didn't meet either Julian or Sandy in Kemp Town; but I did encounter some curious incidents. I saw a woman carrying an English bull terrier. Then, moments later, I saw another woman carrying an English bull terrier. At this point, I thought 'perhaps it's some kind of fashion statement. Either that or there's a ban on dog leads'. But my latter thought was confounded moments later when I saw a gentleman out for a constitutional with another gentleman...on a lead. I saw a newspaper bill-board with a headline one could only find by the coast: 'Body found near crazy golf course'. And, in a gay greeting card shop, another of those cards that Brighton seems to specialise in: 'It's not homophobia - everyone hates you'. Many of the shops were flying rainbow flags; and this, coupled with the area's quietness after the roaring traffic in Old Steine, meant I felt as if I was in some small independent country; a kind of gay Vatican City within the City of Brighton. But without the Swiss Guard or the nuns.

Nor were there any nuns in Brighton Museum. But there was a pair of breeches (fifty two inch waist) belonging to the Prince Regent (later George the Fourth), worn during his sojourn at the palace better known as the Royal Pavilion. Apparently, 'Prinny' had a hatred of the new-fangled trousers that were becoming fashionable around 1810; so much so that he banned trousers from Court until 1815. It's believed that Prince George's dalliances with sundry ladies was emulated by his hangers-on at the Brighton Court, which led to Brighton becoming a magnet for those intent on affairs, sexual encounters and 'dirty weekends'.

The dirty weekend has become a bit of a standing joke; all rather Max Miller or Carry On. In less enlightened times teenagers would turn up at Brighton B and Bs on a Friday night, claiming to be 'Mr and Mrs Smith', but very rarely fooled the Dragon in the shape of the Seaside Landlady. Back in the 1930s, men who wanted to divorce their wives would rent a room in a Brighton boarding house, and pay a chambermaid to 'discover' them in bed with a prostitute. These days, the dirty weekend is all but defunct. One academic noted that 'people no longer come to Brighton for a dirty weekend; they move to Brighton to have a dirty life'. Interestingly, Brighton Museum also has a small glass case that details the Dirty Weekend. Amongst the treasures it contains are a couple of telephone box 'flyers'. The first features a buxom young woman exhorting us to 'lick my melon's'; clearly a crime against punctuation. The second exclaims, 'Transexual - tits and tackle - twice the fun all in one,' which I'm afraid rather left me lost for words. Not a common occurence.

I was still deep in thought when I arrived at the entrance to The Lanes, Brighton's jewellery and antique corner. But all this changed when I saw an elderly, bearded gent, sitting on the pavement, surrounded by little bits of origami that he was trying to sell for a few pence. I was both pleased and surprised to see him. I thought his business had folded.

Oh, and the chap who said, 'Brighton is still very gay and full of balls'? It was poet Samuel Rogers, speaking in 1829.

Warning - Reading this may produce eye strain

2009-08-02T10:30:00.000+01:00

The scaffolders turned up out of the blue yesterday to take down the superstructure that has covered the house for the last three months. Mrs. H and I were just returning from a trip round the shops and a sneaky lunchtime drink, when we noticed scaffolders swarming all over the front of the house. Sadly, they didn't take it all down; there was insufficient room on the lorry to carry it all away. But they've promised to come back later this week and remove the rest of it. I won't hold my breath...

Despite the recession, I would imagine that scaffolding companies probably don't do too badly. Our burgeoning Health and Safety culture means that most traders will refuse to do anything above first floor level without scaffolding. Time was when roofers would scramble up a ricketty ladder, run up the tiles and onto the apex of the roof, whilst eating a cheese sandwich and smoking a roll-up. But all that's changed. Perhaps we should start advertising for native Americans (or, more specifically, Mohawks from the Kahnawake reservation) to do the high stuff. It's said they were employed in the USA to build skyscrapers as they had no fear of heights, although it's more likely that hopping around steel girders hundreds of feet up was just an opportunity to display the same sort of bravery they exhibited at ground level.

In the UK, Health and Safety legislation has more or less put paid to the old-time tradesman's ability to take calculated risks. Way back then, workers like the common or garden roofer knew instinctively what was safe and what wasn't. He wore the right gear for the job; knew how slippery or otherwise the slates or tiles were; and had a good enough notion of his ability to climb or balance. But now, the law decides what is or isn't safe, and ensures that you or I have to stump up huge amounts of money for scaffolding whenever we want so much as a tile replaced. But I'm not complaining.

So, how did Health and Safety take over the world? How have we wound up with a world where bags of nuts display the legend 'contains nuts'? Where a teacher is forbidden from putting an Elastoplast on a child's grazed knee in case the little treasure is allergic to it? And where a police force that shall not be named (oh, alright, Northumbria Police!) is planning to dispose of its £200,000 fleet of motorbikes because the police officers riding them are "particularly vulnerable to collision"? I'm really not sure, but the Health and Safety gurus would probably say that 'It's all about protecting the public'. So, if we are only now living in a world where we are well-protected from hazardous chemicals, poisonous foods and unguarded machinery, how the hell am I still here? Let's look at the evidence...I'm 54 years old. When I was born in 1955, polio and whooping cough were still common. At school I rubbed shoulders with kids who had measles and chickenpox (and managed to catch both simultaneously), and took part in rough playground games. I ate and drank things that were far less strictly quality controlled than foodstuffs are now, and totally failed to wash my hands. I travelled on buses and trains, literally surrounded by 'strangers' who hadn't been checked out by the police. And I'm still alive.

But I'm only joking. I'm grateful for Health and Safety legislation. It means that the water I drink is unpolluted, that my food is mercifully free from rat droppings, that my gas boiler won't gas me. But, watching Seaside Rescue last night, it struck me that we are still unprotected from the biggest danger of all - ourselves. Seaside Rescue regularly shows RNLI lifeboat crews, lifeguards and Royal Navy Air Sea Rescue risking their lives to save members of the public who have put themselves in danger through their own stupidity, be it climbing crumbly cliffs, surfing in dangerous conditions, or putting to sea in imposibly small boats with no lifejackets, navigation equipment or skill in sailing. What amazes me is the professionalism and good humour exhibited by the crews as they rescue the umpteenth moron from a situation in which he has placed himself (or, indeed, herself). Don't they ever get irritated by it, like I do? Do they ever think, 'Oh no. Not another dopey townie who thinks he's Bear Grylls!'?

And another thing...the RNLI is funded entirely by voluntary subscription. Its lifeboat crews are all volunteers, who will put out to sea in all weathers. To the best of my knowledge, they have never refused to turn out, no matter how dangerous the conditions are. So why is it that paid members of the emergency services on land failed to prevent a man from drowning in 18 inches of water? Because the 15 foot embankment he had tumbled down after being hit by a car was deemed 'unsafe'...So, if you witness an incident at your local pond or stream, don't call the fire brigade or police; ask for a lifeboat.

So, what the hell am I on about? Not for the first time, I'm unsure. Perhaps I'm trying to say that I do not subscribe whole-heartedly to Health and Safety culture. After all, I've managed to live through six decades, most of them health and safety free. I've taken (and survived) calculated risks, both at home and at work, and maybe a couple of times I've done things that were stupidly dangerous. But I've never done anything daft enough to warrant a trip on an air sea rescue helicopter. So, how do we promote safety for all without burdening society with yet more laws? It's simple. It's my belief that every child, as soon as it is old enough to read, should be handed a laminated card bearing a single word - 'THINK'.

But I'd make sure the corners were rounded. After all, those laminated cards can be awfully sharp. They'd take your eye out...

If you like a lot of brassware on your coffin, Join Our Club!

2009-07-14T11:39:00.001+01:00

Today was a momentous day at Hale Villas (albeit the sign next to the door reads, rather more appropriately, Wits End). I had the nod from Andy the builder that the work on the front of the house is now complete and the scaffolding can come down. Within a day or so, I shall take tea on my newly-refurbished balcony, but for now I contented myself with a small sherry by way of celebration.

A very good friend (you know who you are!) told me the other day that sherry is an old person's drink, which seems appropriate, because there is a lot of chatter about the cost of caring for the elderly at the moment. The government is looking at ways of funding care for an increasingly ageing population, whether it be by taxation, lump sum payments out of retirement gratutities, or some other method. Most old people (those who own property, and can still afford sherry) fear that the home they intended to leave to their nearest and dearest will be sold to fund the cost of their nursing care which, in some cases, seems to run at about a thousand pounds a week. And what happens when the cash runs out? Do they get thrown onto the streets?

None of this is new. The elderly have always had a fear of being alone and destitute. Back in the days before the advent of the nursing or care home, the next stop for a poor old widow or widower was the Parish Workhouse. This doleful place features in the novels of Charles Dickens (especially Oliver Twist), and it is hard for us to understand the abject terror that struck the Victorian elderly at the thought of being uprooted and placed in the workhouse. As a charitable businessman told Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, 'Many would rather die' than be subjected to the tender mercies of the Parish.

Going hand in hand with the fear of the workhouse was a great horror of the thought of a pauper's funeral. Victorians excelled in the celebration (if that's the right word) of death, with plumed horses, mutes (professional mourners) swathed in black, and elaborate and expensive coffins. The pauper's funeral was generally marked by a cheap, re-usable coffin, trundled to church on a handcart, mourners in ordinary clothes, and burial in an unmarked grave. And it was these fears that prompted the rise in popularity of so-called Burial Clubs amongst the working classes.

Burial clubs were often operated from public houses by pub landlords. This wasn't an altruistic public service on their part; they knew that money would be spent on beer for the 'wake' when the death benefit was eventually paid out. The working man would toddle off to the pub, pay his dues (often only a few pence) into the club, and his subscription would be marked up in a register. He could contribute for himself, and for his wife and children, if he could afford it. And, when the sad day came (provided it was more than two years after the start of subscriptions) the family would collect the money, which would help to defray the cost of a decent funeral. Having a respectable send-off was so important to the Victorians that, according to historian Audrey Collins, they were prepared to go without in life so as to be well provided for in death.

Of course, things didn't always go smoothly. Some collectors embezzled the money, so that there was nothing left when a grieving family member went to collect the benefit. Some companies (echoes of modern day here!) tried to wriggle out of paying the money over - in 1836 the Globe Public House Burial Club in Covent Garden refused to pay Sarah Forrest the £5 she was due, because (they said) her husband had died 24 hours before two years had elapsed. She did eventually get her money, but had to go to law to do so. But, most chillingly, husbands and wives were murdering their spouses and, in some cases, their children, to claim the burial money. In 1854 'a prosperous town' which is not named had a working class infant mortality rate of 56%; this is set against the 18% for children of the better sort in the same town, and was four times higher than the child mortality rate in rural Dorset. And the reason - parents were killing their children for the burial money. A few years earlier, in 1851, Essex girl Sarah Chesham was convicted of murdering her husband, her two children and another unnamed party, and all for the cash from the burial club.

In these more prosperous days, there is less likelihood of any one of us being on the receiving end of a pauper's funeral, and as a result burial clubs have pretty well died the death, if you'll pardon the pun. But not quite. Watch any satellite or cable station for more than ten minutes, and you'll be exhorted by some ageing celebrity to buy 'peace of mind' insurance in exchange for a cheap DVD player or some Marks and Sparks vouchers. For 'peace of mind', read 'save your kids from having to stump up the cost of your funeral.' And speaking of ageing celebrities, I've heard of a couple of bizarre variations on the burial club theme, courtesy of a former colleague. One is the Celebrity Death Club, where you nominate a well-known personality whom you believe to be on his (or her) last legs, and pay a couple of pounds a month into a 'kitty'. When your favoured celebrity finally bites the dust, you claim the money that has accrued since the last fatality. The other involves a group of ageing friends in a Buckinghamshire pub, who place informal bets upon which of their number will be the next to die...

You will, I hope, be pleased to hear that I haven't seen fit to buy my own 'peace of mind' insurance yet. I have absolutely no intention of dying, I don't need a DVD player and I've got a full bottle of sherry in the sideboard.

I need to get out more

2009-07-05T20:51:00.000+01:00

Ask me if I'm a soap fan and the likelihood is I'll say 'Of course not! What? Watch that rubbish? I've got better things to do with my time!' However, take me to the pub, buy me a couple of pints of Harvey's Best Bitter (brewed nearby in Lewes) and then ask the same question, and you may get a very different answer. Because soaps are not only very popular and successful, but also (in my opinion) extremely well written. My own favourite, were I to have one, would be Coronation Street.

The Street, or Corrie, if you prefer, has been on our screens since the 9th December 1960. Some of the earlier episodes were broadcast live; something that many present day actors would probably baulk at. I remember Corrie in the sixties as a grim, gritty, black and white piece, populated by women in snoods and hairnets, and men wearing cloth caps and waistcoats; a bit like Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar, but without the humour. Back in the sixties the dark satanic mills were still milling away like crazy; this was long before most northern industries closed down, unable to compete with imported goods, and the factories were sold off as stylish apartment blocks.

Of course, there have been a good many changes to The Street over the years; most of the old 'well I'll go to the foot of our stairs' characters have gone, replaced by brash underwear manufacturers, corner shop magnates and serial adulterers/adulteresses. But the scripts remain strong and, moreover, take themselves far less seriously than in the early years. But I can't help feeling that, despite the humour, The Street is more akin to a Greek tragedy than anything else. Sophocles couldn't have written anything better. Back in the old days, Corrie had a proper chorus - Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst, three old ladies, holed up with their milk stout in the snug of the Rovers, commenting upon the things taking place in their narrow world. Then there's the way the characters are constantly punished by the gods...sorry, I mean scriptwriters. Eileen finds herself a boyfriend (again); won't be long before she discovers he's an escaped lunatic, a fraudster, or he gets murdered. Jack Duckworth wins a fortune on the horses; his betting slip is bound to go missing, get eaten by a pigeon, or used as loo paper by an elf. And don't even get me started on the misery, mayhem and bloodshed that inevitably accompanies every soap wedding...

I understand that scriptwiters prefer their soaps to be called 'serial dramas' now. I suppose it makes them sound more like serious pieces of work. And some of them are serious. Take Casualty, for example. You can't get any more serious than that. But Casualty is unintentionally funny, because it is filled with (in my opinion) stereotypical medical drama characters, bizarre coincidences that wouldn't be out of place in a Dickens novel, and patients/others who effect such swift about turns in their attitudes and relationships with others it's a wonder their heads don't spin. Set in a hospital in Holby (because the writers couldn't spell 'Bristol') it deals with the lives of the doctors, nurses and patients who are unfortunate enough to either work there, or wind up on a trolley (at which point they invariably go into 'VF', whatever that is, even if they only popped in to ask about an ingrowing toenail). All the stereotypes are there; overbearing consultants, senior administrators banging on about finances and waiting times, loopy doctors, cheery, empty-headed porters, stroppy patients, demanding relatives...

I'd quite like to write a Casualty script. There needs to be a sub-plot running, which later impacts on the main action. There have to be a couple of new characters, introduced early on, who either get killed or maimed and have to visit aforesaid hospital as a result. And someone's life/views/attitude has to be changed beyond all belief by the end of the show. Here goes...

1. A group of hooded teenagers are hanging around Holby town centre, drinking cheap cider and swearing at passers-by. One elderly man (war hero, with medals) remonstrates with them and is floored by a cider bottle slung by one of these ne'er-do-wells. A young and openly gay man challenges the youths and then runs to render first aid to the elderly man, who says, 'Get off me. I won't be touched by your sort!'

2. An ambulance is called to deal with the above and loads up the casualty. As it drives off, it is pelted with bottles and windscreen is broken, putting it out of action. The paramedic's hands are badly cut by flying glass. Another ambulance attends and the crew of the first waits for a breakdown truck.

3. Meanwhile, across town, a plate glass salesman is saying goodbye to his wife: 'Won't be long, dear, I've just got to walk this huge sheet of glass across town. The pond's frozen, so I think I'll use it as a shortcut. It should be fine.'

4. Back at the hospital, loopy doctor has been invited to deliver a lecture on pulmonary embolisms to a group of visiting GPs. She agonises about said lecture to at least six colleagues, all of whom say, 'you'll be fine'. Loopy doctor eventually takes a copy of something she has found on the internet.

5. On the other side of town, a tanker driver is receiving his day's orders. He has been told to take a tankerfull of nitric acid to Holby Docks. He punches the details into a brand new satnav, and is given a route which is set to take him past the Holby Glycerine Works.

6. Back in the town centre, the police spot the youths who assaulted the old man. The youths run off and one of them is knocked down by a car, right in front of the disabled ambulance. The paramedics, being heavily bandaged, are unable to save his life and he dies at the scene.

7. Back to our plate glass salesman. Whilst crossing the frozen pond, he accidentally drops the glass and it breaks the ice, tipping him into the freezing water. He apparently drowns.

8. At the Hospital, loopy doctor is delivering her lecture. Unfortunately, in the audience is the writer of the article she has stolen from the internet. He challenges her and she becomes distraught and hysterical, running out of the hospital, intending to kill herself.

9. Whilst driving past the Glycerine works, the tanker driver has a heart attack. His vehicle crashes through the gate and into the factory. The resulting fireball and huge loss of life sets the scene for next week's episode.

10. Loopy doctor decides to drown herself and runs down to Holby pond. But she sees the plate glass man under water, forgets about her own miserable life, and saves his.

11. Gay man tries to visit the elderly gent in hospital, but the latter tells him to go away, citing his lifelong hatred of homosexuals.

12. Nurse overhears elderly man and engages him in conversation for a few minutes, seeking to explain the error of his ways.

13. Elderly man's eyes are opened for the first time in ninety years. He embraces the gay man as if he were a long lost grandson and invites him to tea.

14. The dead youth is brought into casualty. As he is taken through to the mortuary the heavily bandaged paramedic realises that it is, in fact, her brother's son. She tries to phone her brother on his mobile.

15. We cut to a mobile phone, ringing in the cab of a blazing lorry outside the glycerine factory...

Well? What do you think? Is there a career for me in the heady world of serial drama? Or should I just stick to blogging...?

Everything but the oink

2009-06-25T20:05:00.000+01:00

In common with most towns, my new adoptive home has a few charity shops. A couple of them are really rather good; the Oxfam shop in particular has a rather splendid selection of books, whilst the Cancer Research establishment has a superior line in Bric a Brac. And it was in this latter shop that No.1 daughter purchased a piggy bank.

Said piggy bank has a kind of charm about it that can generally be found in china objects made in...erm...China. It has a rather smug, self satisfied look, and eyelashes that wouldn't look out of place on a L'Oreal TV ad. It is also pink and fat, which is the least you expect from a piggy bank. And it only cost her two pounds, which to my mind is something of a bargain. However, one thing does seem a little curious to me. Given that the purchase of a piggy bank generally heralds an intention to start saving money, then why begin your savings regime by splashing out cash on a china receptacle? Cash that you could have put in a drawer, a pocket, an empty jam jar, or even (heaven forfend) a bank? I recently saw a painted earthenware pot called a Terramundi (which is Latin for, I believe 'Land of the World'). It costs twenty quid, comes in several different colours and designs, and, like the piggy bank, you put your spare change in it. However, unlike the piggy bank, you have to smash it to pieces to retrieve your money when it's full. Now, let's look at the logic of this. You waste twenty pounds you could have saved buying a pot that you will ultimately destroy and will not be able to reuse. Then, you use twenty pounds that you have retrieved from the shattered Terramundi to buy another one, and the whole sad business continues, either until the company that makes the Terramundi goes bust, or you come to your senses and stick the money in a drawer as I first suggested.

It's uncertain as to why pigs became favoured as money boxes. There's a suggestion that, in the middle ages, people placed whatever spare money they had (and I doubt there was much) in a receptacle called a pygg jar. In case you're wondering, pygg was a type of orange-coloured clay. Our modern day salt pig is a living reminder of these original pyggs. It's also mooted that the piggy bank was a kind of china representation of the real animal; in earlier times, families kept a pig that was fattened on scraps until it achieved sufficient weight to be slaughtered. The piggy bank likewise hoovered up bits of spare change until it, too, was 'fat' enough to be broken open.

The pig finds its way into quite a few sayings. We use the expression 'pigs might fly' to denote something that's unlikely to happen; we call a stubborn individual 'pig-headed'; and describe someone as 'happy as a pig in muck' when they are in a particularly cheerful mood. And we mustn't forget 'bringing home the bacon', which denotes the act of working to put food on the table. Did I say bacon? Dear bloggy friends, have you any idea how many bacon-related products are out there? Apart from bacon itself, of course. You can buy bacon flavoured dental floss, toothpicks, and even mints, marketed under the Uncle Oinker name. If you should be unlucky enough to stab yourself on a toothpick, then there are plasters amusingly shaped like mini rashers. Time to go to work? Put on your bacon tie, wrap a bacon scarf around your neck and pick up your bacon briefcase. Ah! Lunchtime! I think I'll have a bacon doughnut, washed down with a nice cup of Java coffee, flavoured with bacon and maple syrup...

I seem to have become a little carried away with the bacon motif. I do apologise. But they all exist, I swear. And don't even get me started on bacon undergarments...

Have you ever wondered what sound pigs make in other countries? Well, not the sound they actually make, of course; that probably doesn't vary that much across the globe (unless, of course, you know differently!) No, I'm talking about the (supposedly) onomatopoeic word we ascribe to their grunting. For some obscure reason, oink oink has become the phrase of choice in this country. But what of the Great Abroad? Croatians would have it that pigs exclaim rok rok. In Japan, pigs go buu; or more properly, buu buu. In Thailand your average prime porker ood oods away to his heart's content, whilst his Vietnamese counterpart goes for ut it. The prize, however, goes to the French for the rather racy groin groin. (Stop press! Late entry from my good friend Punk in Writing in Sweden, where the pigs say nöff nöff).

I think the final word has to go to Sir Francis Bacon. 'Acorns were good until bread was found'. Try telling that to pigs. They love acorns.

Help! I'm turning into a pensioner!

2009-06-08T20:47:00.000+01:00

Some years ago, that most ubiquitous of facial preparations, Oil of Ulay, unaccountably changed its name to Oil of Olay. What made this even stranger was the fact that, in Germany, its name remained Oil of Olaz. This change occupied my waking thoughts for at least an hour. Why did they do it? Did they realise how expensive the change would be, reprinting all the packaging and re-shooting the TV ads? I don't think they thought it through properly. What they needed was someone like me. Someone who could step back from the problem, mull it over, look at the pros and cons, and then announce: 'No. Leave it as it is'. Just think of the money I'd have saved them.

I naturally assumed that the change wasn't just some whim. It had to be because Olay turned out to be some filthy word in Farsi, or Esperanto, or somesuch. After all, that's why you'll never see a Foden lorry in Portugal, and why Ford went for 'Capri' rather than 'Caprino' when launching their sporty car in the 196os. Sadly, the best I could come up with was that Ulay was the stage name of a German performance artist of the 1960s and 70s. So, Ulay wasn't the Icelandic word for 'arse'. I was quite disappointed. I rather liked the idea of a beauty product being called 'Oil of Arse'. But a point occurs to me. If (as it appears) that Ulay was called Olaz in Germany due to the difficulties experienced by the Teutonic tongue in pronouncing the former, why on earth would a German artiste give himself a name that was unpronouncable in his own language?

If you look at the blurb produced by the Olay people, you'll see that they make a big thing about The Seven Signs of Ageing. So I looked them up on my ever-helpful computer, and this is what they are:

1. Lines and wrinkles

2. Uneven skin texture

3. Uneven skin tone

4. Appearance of pores

5. Blotches and age spots

6. Dry skin

7. Dullness

Having reached my grand old age, I think I can say without doubt that I have the lot. Especially the dullness. Because there's something about ageing, nay, about retiring, that changes you in subtle ways. You don't notice it at first. You think you're the same person you were when you were working, plying your useful trade and having (in my case) cups of tea made for you without even having to ask for them. So, yesterday, as I sat on my comfy sofa, listening to my hair (especially the hair in my ears) grow whilst I polished off yet another sudoku, it suddenly occured to me that the Olay people had got it all wrong. Yes, I do have their seven signs, but no, they're not really important. It's not just my skin that's changing; it's my personality as well. I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I am undergoing a Kafka-esque metamorphosis, a change which involves seven signs of ageing of a rather different flavour. Listen in...

1. Heightened Fiscal Awareness. As a shift worker of many years, shopping was something usually done at the gallop. This was generally because (i) we needed to do it before I went off to work; or (ii) we needed to do it after I returned from work when the last thing I wanted to do was go shopping. So (as Mrs. H would tell you) I tended to walk a few paces behind her, muttering and mumbling, willing her to fill the trolley and get to the checkout with all due speed. I didn't particularly care about the cost; notes were proffered and change accepted and I couldn't get out fast enough. Now, things are different. No work, so I have no excuse to rush Mrs. H round the shops. The effect of this is that I can now tell you the price of bottled water in all the local shops (36p), the date when Morrisons' discount on chilled Chicken Jalfrezi ends (14th June) and the fact that a very useful cleaning product called The Bar Keeper's Friend is marginally cheaper in Sainsbury's than elsewhere. I have a serious case of this, but it's probably reversible. I need to adopt a trance-like state when shopping and feign indifference to the special offers.

2. A Need for Semi-Recumbency. You know they say that, when cows lie down, it's going to rain? Round here you know that, when pensioners sit down, it isn't. Age seems to bring with it this overwhelming desire for 'a nice sit down'. If it's 'a nice sit down with a cup of tea', that's even better. The other day, in an uncharacteristic fit of fiscal abandon I paid a nice Kosovan gentleman to wash my car. Did I go for a walk whilst he was doing it? Did I survey the wondrous hills, the clouds heaped up on high like ragged battlements, or the nearby stream as it chuckled its course over glistening flints? No. I went for a cup of tea and a nice sit down.

3. Consummate Procrastination. Remember the old adage: 'Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today'? This phrase might have been the watchwords for my former trade or calling. Policing demands immediacy. We've all heard stories about the cops turning up two days after the burglar was disturbed, but generally speaking things that demanded my immediate action were acted upon immediately. But now it's more like 'Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow, or preferably next week'. I have (as you can imagine) a whole housful of jobs that need doing. None of them are urgent, so I think they can probably wait until I've finished this post. In fact, next week might be a better time to start. I need to stop procrastinating, but not yet.

4. Stranger Engagement. When I was a child, off to school or about to run some errand to the corner shop, my Mum would say, 'Don't talk to any strange men'. Of course, I always agreed not to, not really knowing what she meant. I do now. They are the strange men (and women, let's have a bit of equality here!) who insist upon engaging you in conversation, having not been properly introduced to you; in fact, having not been introduced to you at all. Their favourite haunts tend to be the checkout queue, the bus stop, the post office; in fact, in any place where it is impossible for you to escape without abandoning your trolley, missing your bus, or not posting your parcel. The conversation will generally tend to feature the weather, the length of time s/he has been waiting, and sundry other topics of a most diverting nature. I was recently stopped by an elderly gent outside the bank, who proceeded to try to recruit me into a retired business peoples' luncheon club. I am as yet undecided as to whether I should accept his no doubt well-meant invitation. I am in the early stages of this sign of ageing, indulging in light banter with shop assistants. No doubt the full horror of Total Stranger Engagement will follow soon.

5. Monomaniac Tendencies. If you get a chance, visit a steam railway. There the retired will be. They'll be wearing little engine drivers' caps, waving flags, selling fudge in the station shop... Why? because of Late Onset Monomania. When you're a child, you develop all-consuming obsessions. It might be about cranes, lorries, particular types of mobile phone; but whatever it is you manage to jabber on about it unceasingly, until your friends' eyes glaze over and your parents threaten to thump or disown you. Then you grow up and put aside your obsessions in favour of leading a balanced life. But what happens when you retire? The obsessive gene switches on again and you devote a sizeable portion of your time (and sometimes money) to train spotting, stamp collecting or genealogy. My current obsession is writing, where I have managed to combine the maximum of effort with the minimum of financial recompense. Would that my obsession were decorating. I have so much of that to do.

6. Professional Purposelessness. Have you ever gone to the corner shop to buy a newspaper, and then, on a whim, just decided to wander about for no particular reason? In fact, for no reason other than that you can? Have you ever gone into a charity shop just to browse the books, or sat down in a library to skim through Practical Woodworker magazine? You have? Then, oh dear, you, like me, have become Professionally Purposeless. When I worked in London there were whole tribes of these PPs. They would meet in Macdonalds for an early morning coffee, and then betake themselves to Uxbridge Magistrates Court, where they would listen to the litany of drunkenness, shoplifting and casual violence that went before The Bench. Their afternoons were generally spent snoozing in the library, and then they would toddle off to their respective homes when it closed, only to repeat the whole dire routine the following day. I have this sign of ageing in a mild form. I sometimes take the long route home from the paper shop via the seafront, but only on a Sunday. I think I need to work at avoiding becoming fully PP.

7. Forgetfulness. I can't remember what I was going to say about forgetfulness.

So there you have it, dear bloggy friends. The Real Seven Signs of Ageing. The Seven New Geriatric Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now that you know your enemy, you can work at avoiding them, just as I am attempting to do. If you should happen to see me in the street, reading the 'for sale' ads in the newsagents' window (you know - the ones that look like they've been written by kidnappers - upper and lower case letters in the wrong places), or attempting to strike up a conversation with some unsuspecting soul in a bus queue, do me a favour; strike me about the head until I stop.

Mrs. H has just brought me in a cup of tea, so, now that I've finished, I'm off for a nice sit down on the sofa.

The Spies Who Snubbed Me

2009-06-01T09:30:00.000+01:00

Way back in the fifties and sixties, when I was smaller than I am now and you could buy individual Hovis loaves for around sixpence, it was fashionable for the Security Services to recruit their staff from public schools and universities. I often wondered how the selection process worked. Did a member of HMG just sidle up to some floppy-haired undergrad, hand him a prospectus that had been produced using an ancient 'Roneo' copier, and say, 'If you're interested, old son, give us a ring.'? Was that how it worked? No glossy brochure, no website with interactive content, no email address to contact? The student probably didn't even have access to his own personal phone; you can imagine him in the lobby of Jesus College, two old pennies in hand, waiting for the public phone to become free. 'Hello...is that MI5? It's about the spying job...'

I was both a public schoolboy and a government servant, but, sad to report, no-one ever tried to recruit me into the probably terribly bureaucratic world of spying. Now that I have my Open University degree, I suppose I could be in the frame. But the OU, despite the high regard in which it is held, is unlikely to attract the attention of MI5's upper echelons ('Get Hale at any cost...yes, the one who wrote the dissertation on Roman dinner etiquette!) I'm probably more likely to be recruited by some charity wanting a late middle-aged Chugger who is marginally less irritating than the young, failed-TGI Friday wannabees who currently accost one in the street. But I digress. As per usual.

How did spying work way back when? We're so used to having the internet, mobile communications, video and audio surveillance that it's a wonder how spies were able to cope with their job. How could you tail a target vehicle if you didn't have a vehicle yourself and no tracker to slip unobtrusively under the car? What if you needed to phone in a sighting of a terrorist and there wasn't a phone box handy? It must have been hell. In modern spying a suspect can be tracked by satellites with cameras powerful enough to read his number plate from space; then, you just hoped that your binoculars were good enough to clock the index. If you could get any binoculars out of stores, that is. In my juvenile mind I like to think that modern spying is as sophisticated as it appears in 24, where Jack Bauer is able somehow to tap into the schematics of an apartment block, and activate the security cameras to see the baddies holed up in some washroom. And then call in a helicopter gunship to 'take them out' by being all shouty down his cellphone.

Taking someone out by calling for a helicopter gunship wasn't something that ever came to mind when I worked for HMG back in the mid 70s. On my desk I had a blotter, a mug with a couple of pens in it, and an old sit-up-and-beg phone, that actually made a ringing sound when it...er...rang. My desk had two drawers; that's because I was an Executive Officer and was only entitled to a desk with two drawers. A Higher Executive Officer was in receipt of a desk with four drawers - two each side - and the next rank up got something nice in polished wood. Our desks were uncluttered by computers. Everything had to be written out longhand and then forwarded to the typing pool in a brown folder. It would come back a couple of days later, riddled with errors that could easily have been spotted if the typist had actually bothered to read over what she (and it was always a she) had just typed. I once visited the typing pool. You couldn't actually go in; you just handed your work through a little hatch in the wall and then went away. I like to think that the ladies in the typing pool were a kind of 70s equivalent of galley slaves, tapping away to the drum beat of the Hortator or Pausarius. Either that, or the poor girls were so dangerous that they were kept under lock and key for our safety. But there was a little light relief. On the wall outside the room was a much photocopied picture of lots of little cartoon men falling about laughing, bearing the legend, 'You want it when?'

I spent three and a half years with HMG, each day more exciting than the last, especially when a new consignment of paperclips was due. But my work colleagues were a quirky and marvellous bunch and, were I gifted with the power to write a sitcom, I'm sure I could do something with Arthritic Near-Pensioner, Welsh Lady with Glass Eye, Cheeky Barrow-Boy Type, Snooty Colonel's Daughter, and Glamour Puss with Sulty Voice and Loads of Make Up...

Which reminds me. I asked Mrs. H if she had any ideas what I could write about in my next post. She thought for a moment, and then said, 'make up'.

So I got there in the end.

World domination...if the carbon paper lasts

2009-05-23T13:25:00.000+01:00

Those of you who know me will be aware of my most recent trade or calling. What is less widely known is that I was previously a civil servant (paper-shuffler supremo) and, before that, an ironmongery assistant (pumping pink paraffin for the people). But, even less widely known, was my first career in creative writing. Sadly, enjoyable though it was, I fear that I peaked too early with that particular line of work. I think I was eight years old at the time.

It was 1963. Doctor Who was on the telly. And then along came the Daleks. The Daleks caught our youthful imagination in a way that nothing had done before. We were seized with Dalekmania, which was a bit like Beatlemania, except that Daleks didn't have pudding basin haircuts or nasal Liverpudlian accents. The marketing people caught on very quickly to this developing phenomenon. Within a short space of time, we had Dalek Books, comics, sweets, Dalek toys that sparked when you pushed them along the floor, badges (I recently saw one in a Brighton antique shop for twenty pounds), soft toys and soaps. And I started the Dalek Club at the Kensal Rise Junior Boys' School.

The Dalek Club was a very simple concept. Anyone could join. The only requirement was an all-consuming obsession with Daleks, and an inclination to talk about them to other club members at every available opportunity. Very soon, however, even my partially formed eight year old brain determined that this Skaro-related chit-chat wasn't going anywhere, so I started writing my own Dalek stories for other club members to read at sixpence a time. Sadly, I can't remember any of the stories, and the copies I kept have long since vanished, but what quickly became clear is that there was a great demand for them. The difficulty, in those days before computers, laser printers and photocopies, was producing them in sufficient quantities for my adoring readership. All I had was an old sit-up-and-beg typewriter (I think it was called a Corona), and my one finger at a time typing skills. Using carbon paper, I discovered I could produce a maximum of three copies at a time. So, I'd line up the paper and carbon...tap tap tap...three copies. And then the next three copies. And the next. Eventually (you've probably already guessed it!) I got tired of this, and the task of typing was taken over my dear long-suffering dad, from whom I don't remember a single word of complaint! There was a happy ending to all this, however. Dad became an amazingly quick typist, I made a few bob, and the money went to buy some new books for the school library.

So, dear bloggy friends, why am I telling you all this? Not for the first time, I'm unsure. But perhaps it does indicate the huge changes over the last forty-odd years in the way we handle and disseminate information. What dad and I were doing then was akin to the labours of medieval monks, slavishly copying manuscripts borrowed from some other religious establishment in a freezing scriptorium. Equally, it shows that some things don't change that much. I'm thinking of the keyboard I'm currently tapping, that hasn't altered significantly since Christopher Sholes came up with the QWERTY keyboard in the 1870s, in an attempt to stop 'typebar clashes', when the little metal rods containing the letters got stuck and had to be manually disentangled. The keyboard layout also enabled typewriter salsmen to amuse potential clients by tapping out the word typewriter using only the top row of letters. Incidentally, you can also type trout query. And terrier poo.

Apart from the standard letters and numbers on the keyboard, there is a positive gallimaufry of weird and wonderful characters lurking on the right hand side near the number pad. Take the @ symbol, for example. What on earth is that about? It's called, rather boringly, the at sign, and was originally used by merchants to show the unit price of a number of items, thus: ten whatsnames @ 17/6d. In renaissance Italy, an @ was shorthand for an amphora of wine; and in 15th century Spain, a unit of weight. More recently, however, the @ sign appears as the middle bit of your standard email address, and is employed as part of one's user name by Tweeters. Apparently, in the most recent recording of the Museum of Curiosity, author Philip Pullman attempted to promote the usage of the word 'Astatine' as a name for the @ symbol (astatine being a chemical element). This sounds like a characteristically apt and astute idea from Mr. P. I, on the other hand, see it more as shorthand for a bit of cockney headgear, as in, 'Blimey, guv'nor, where did you get that @?'

Another rather arcane symbol is #. This looks for all the world like the little grid we use for noughts and crosses (or tic tac toe), and is generally referred to as a hash. In the US, the # is used to replace the word 'number', and is also employed as shorthand for the pound weight. The humble # has, unlike the undervalued @, acquired a good many slang names, including crosshatch, gridlet, crunch, and, bizarrely, octothorpe, which sounds like a small village in Suffolk. I don't think Mr. Pullman has ventured to suggest a new name for the #, but if he did, it would probably be something like Neodymium. I quite like Casement, because it looks a bit like the glazing bars on a Georgian window. Or Baden-Powell, seeing it resembles the crossed twigs of a boy scouts' camp fire. We could also use the # in the same way as the @, as a word or part of a word, but it would be somewhat limited; #ish, # brown potatoes, corned beef #. See what I mean?

Your humble keyboard has so much more to offer than mere letters and numbers. Look carefully and you will find a tilde, a caret, a vertical, and a backslash. And, if it were not already past my bedtime, I would venture to suggest some rather more interesting names for these curious little beggars. But, to tell you the truth, I'm *~@#¬%!

Do you follow me?

2009-05-12T17:51:00.000+01:00

At some time in your life you must have encountered it. There you are, walking down the street at dusk; hoofing it along some echoing tunnel on the London Underground (other subways are available); or climbing your stairs at home. And suddenly you get the sensation that you are being followed. Now, this could mean one of three things; (i) you're suffering a paranoid episode and there's no-one there; (ii) there's someone who just happens to be going in the same general direction as your good self and there's nothing to worry about; or (iii) you're being followed.

In meatspace (as some folk have taken to calling the real world) option (iii) is not to be recommended. The follower could be a psychopath, hell-bent on slaughtering you in a revolting, but interesting, fashion, a private detective, who for some reason unknown to you is logging your every move and reporting back to your partner via a short-wave radio (if such things still exist), or (worst of all) a Chugger, who will greet you like a long-lost brother/sister and attempt to get you to sign up to regular charitable donations. I think you're probably safer with the psychopath. At least you can reason with them on some level or other.

Victoria households advertising for maids-of-all-work or other servants would often specify 'no followers' upon the handbill. The last thing they wanted was for hordes of disreputable working class men hanging around outside their villas, waiting for young Ruby to knock off so that they could whilsk her off to the music hall. It lowered the tone of the street, and it reduced Ruby's ability to concentrate on her work. Now, of course, it wouldn't be a problem. Ruby would switch on her laptop, log in to Blogger, Twitter, or some such, and have any number of 'followers' at the tips of her poor chapped fingers. Seedy young gentlemen in houndstooth jackets with pomaded hair and waxed moustaches could make mildly indecent suggestion to Ruby all night long without the mistress being any the wiser.

I have thirty four followers on Blogger; quality followers, all of you, to a man (or woman, of course). On Twitter, I currently rejoice in the friendship of ninety five fellow humans. One thing I've noticed on the latter application (albeit not amongst those with whom I currently correspond) that there seems to be, for want of a better word, a 'competition' to see who can acquire the most 'followers'. Personally, I prefer quality rather than quantity, so I hesitate to have as my 'follower' an American gentleman who does nothing other than witter on about James Dean and Marilyn Monroe (whoever they are), a chap of indeterminate provenance who claims I can make millions just by using Twitter, and a lady of dubious moral character who already seems to have far more gentleman callers than is good for her. But why do we feel able to sidle up to people electronically and ask them if they will be our friend? Would we do this in meatspace? What reaction would we get if we did? Tomorrow, try walking up to a total stranger, tug the sleeve of his/her coat, and enquire, 'Will you be my friend?' And then post a comment on this blog to let me know how you got on. If they let you keep your laptop in the cell, that is. So I shall stick to the company of those who intrigue, fascinate, engage or amuse me, and leave the virtual sleeve-tugging to others.

But I can't help worrying. I've been stuck on thirty four Blogger followers for an awfully long time. Is there something wrong with me? Oh. I now seem to have thirty five...

You're history! Or rather you will be, eventually

2009-05-07T12:37:00.000+01:00

First things first. I'd like to thank Argentum Vulgaris, Madame DeFarge and Derrick for their recent, and very kind, awards. Apologies to you all for not acknowledging same sooner. Having recently moved we have embarked upon a course of building work that is now in full swing. As I write the water main is being replaced and the sound of drilling is close to driving me bonkers. I've got at least another three weeks of this, so I have resolved to seek my solace through this blog. Once again, thank you all. It is my intention to devise my own Middenshire Award in due course, so watch this space.

I took a trip up to London on Monday, my first since moving down to Sussex. My destination was the Henry VIII - Man and Monarch exhibition at the British Library. Now, this library (for which I am fortunate enough to have a reader's ticket) is normally a haven of peace. Elderly ladies doing historical research for novels rub shoulders silently with students writing up their theses; staff bustle about unobtrusively with trolleys loader with leather bound tomes; and the loudest sound is usually the clickety-click of laptop keys. But not on Monday; oh no. The Library had succumbed to Living History.

There were hundreds of kids there. Some wore normal clothes; others had been dressed in the style of King Hal, with doublets, paper crowns and beards that had been drawn on with eyebrow pencil. The Library had laid on a feast of Bank Holiday Entertainments for them. There was a King Henry lookalike contest, a few Tudor queens knocking about (including Anne Boleyn with a head), a begowned scrivener, an apothecary with a bottle of widdle to disgust the kids, some musicians, and a crossbow-firing contest, which I stayed well out of the way of. And the kids were doing what kids do best - running riot, climbing on walls, crying, moaning for food...

But I did find the whole thing interesting. The heritage industry has this knack of engaging kids' attention (and mine, clearly!) by staging swordfights, jousts and the like in a way that never happened when I was a child. In those days, museums and ancient monuments seemed to go out of their way to be as dull as possible. No heritage centres then; if you were lucky you might find the odd postcard (black and white) or a guidebook that seemed to have been produced in someone's front room. Now you can't move for glossy guidebooks, pencils, chocolate and cuddly toys appropriately themed for the venue (though I've yet to see a headless Tudor bear). Of course, the whole Living History thing is sanitised; you don't get the stinking bodies, the rotting teeth, the musty clothes...these are things best kept in the background. But most such history directed at children usually manages to mention either 'poo', 'wee' or both during its course. One particularly good heritage event takes place at Hampton Court Palace every December, where a Tudor Christmas is re-enacted. The old kitchens are re-opened, and a group of cooks, expert in Tudor food, spends hours making cakes, roasting joints of mutton, preparing sallets, which they then refuse to let anyone taste because of health and safety regulations!

We are fortunate as a nation to have such a long history. The Saxons, the Norman conquest, the Tudors; all of these lend themselves to re-enactment groups. You only have to look at organisations like The Sealed Knot (civil war) and The Ermine Street Guard (Romans!) to see how popular the whole thing is. But I have a question. How will we be viewed in the future, and how will our 'heritage' be portrayed? Will it reflect the view that 'abroad' has of us? Will they have bowler-hatted city gents chatting to Beefeaters (yes, I know they're Yeoman Warders) whilst children in Benetton-style clothes play hopscotch or whizz around on skateboards? Or will it be something more sinister? Will visitors to NoughtieLand (a celebration of the 21st century heritage) be able to walk round a perfect re-creation of an inner city 'sink' estate, complete with burnt-out cars and sofas dumped at bus stops? Will they be accosted by Chuggers or Muggers - all in fun, of course? Will they witness fake drug deals between theme park employees, or watch a recreation of a drive-by shooting? And what food will be on offer? Will the menu reflect the multi-ethnic communities we have in our inner cities, with curry goat, tabbouleh and the like? Or will it be pizzas, savoury pancakes and Walls Vienetta? Will the restaurants be sponsored by the equivalent of Raymond Blanc, or by Iceland? Perhaps (if NoughtieLand isn't too far off) there will be jobs for our present generation of recidivists. Then, at the age of eighty, they'll be able to sit on an old car seat and regale children with tales of how they hotwired their first motor, or what it felt like to shoplift and not get caught.

This post seems to have become needlessly cynical, coming as it does from someone who now lives in the country and is more likely to encounter a moo-cow than a mugger. But I do wonder, when the history books of our own era are written, what will be seen as important. It is quite possible that those things that currently exercise our minds (climate change, recession) will sink into obscurity, and all we will be remembered for is our addiction to cheap high street clothes, our amazingly unfailing ability to moan about anything and everything, and our obsession with the weather. Don't you think it's been chilly for the time of year? Still, mustn't grumble, I suppose...

Blognator fuit hic

2009-04-30T21:11:00.000+01:00

The third worst curse in ancient China is supposed to have been 'May you live in interesting times'. What's wrong with living in interesting times, I hear you ask? Well, my bloggy friends, there's a difference between interesting and...well...interesting. And the last couple of days has been interesting in italics; we've had the plumbers in.

I'm not sure why, but having tradespeople in the house makes me nervous. We've a biggish house (six bedrooms at last count), and it should be fairly easy to avoid them as they go about the business of ripping out old washbasins and making good the walls (or should that be 'making the walls good'?) but, for some reason I just can't seem to get away from them. Every time I walk into a room, turn a corner or start to climb the stairs, you can bet a length of copper pipe that one or other of them will be there. After a while you feel sure that they feel sure that you're just checking up on them; making sure they put down the dust sheets before ripping plaster off the walls, or placing their umpteenth cup of tea (two sugars) on the coaster, not on top of the recently polished pine drawers. So, having been made to feel like an interloper in my own house, I just gave up moving around the place, and, for the last couple of days, I've become something of a recluse, sat in front of the computer, idly dipping my toes in the electronic surf instead of getting out and walking by the real stuff. So perhaps it's not surprising that the subject of plumbing has been rather on my mind.

The word plumbing comes from the Latin word plumbum, meaning lead (that's why the chemical symbol for lead is Pb). Way back when, plumbers didn't change tap washers or ballcocks, mainly because neither of these things existed. Plumbers were artisans who worked with lead. The chances are that, if the lead of your local church roof is still intact and hasn't been pinched by a bunch of desperate ruffians, it was installed by plumbers. The roof of Old Saint Paul's Cathedral in London was referred to as 'The Leads', and gentlemen of note would climb up to the roof to take in the prospect of London. Often they would carve their names in the soft lead covering to prove that they had been there. Or rather, they wouldn't; they would get a servant to do it for them. How posh is that - employing someone to do you graffiti for you!

Of course, the roof of the cathedral, and everything else, for that matter, was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Diarist John Evelyn recorded that 'the stones of Paul's flew like grenadoes, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them'. Curiously, he doesn't mention dogs. Or rats, of which there was a superabundance.

The use of lead pipes in plumbing is far older. The Romans (he's on about the Romans again!) used huge quantities of the stuff to feed private homes, public fountains, baths, and, of course, the Emperors' palaces. Lead would be bashed out into flat sheets, then wrapped around a wooden pole to make a rough cylinder and soldered. Pipes were joined together with the same solder. Citizens could pay to have water piped directly into their homes, paying different amounts depending upon the bore of the pipe; a kind of early water-metering system. Some examples of Roman lead pipe can still be seen in the wonderful city of Bath, or Aquae Sulis as the Romans called it. Lead was the preferred metal for water pipes into the 20th century; my own house, at the ripe old age of 102, still has odd bits of lead pipe sticking out of the walls at odd angles!

Lead pipes aside, the Romans were quite hot on hygiene, which makes the following all the more surprising. Roman latrines were often quite cleverly designed. Stone benches with appropriately sized holes in them were sited over a drain or gutter, along which fresh water would flow to take away the...erm...waste products. These latrines were generally a communal affair, with quite a number of available seats and absolutely no privacy; you could pass the time of day with the neighbouring user, or perhaps even transact a bit of business. Pictorial reconstructions generally show Roman soldiers sitting on these things and sharing a joke or two with their fellows, but it's now accepted by many historians that they squatted on the bench over the hole, rather than sat - not unlike the current practice in many Mediterranean countries. Now, here comes the surprising bit. Sad to report, the Romans didn't have access to toilet paper but, ever enterprising, they came up with a novel idea; sea sponges. Natural sponges were harvested from the sea, attached to sticks, and used in lieu (in loo?) of toilet paper. One simply dipped the sponge in the running water below, deployed it as instructed, and then dipped it in the water to rinse it off. These sponges were communal. A slave, destined to die in the Flavian Amphitheatre, cheated the masses by ramming one of these sponge-sticks down his throat and choking to death. What a way to go. But at least it shows that, even those who were about to die for the amusement of the Emperor had access to life's little comforts.

Now, you probably want to know about the other two Chinese curses, don't you? The second worst was 'May you come to the attention of those in authority'. And the worst: 'May you find what you are looking for'. Now, where did I put that winning lottery ticket?

Getting the chop - Tudor style

2009-04-22T15:59:00.000+01:00

As those of you who read Derrick's excellent blog will already know, this year marks the 500th anniversary of Henry the eighth's accession to the English throne. By way of commemoration, there are any number of events occurring this year (there is an exhibition at the British Library that I fully intend to visit), as well as an excellent TV series on Channel 4, presented by David Starkey.

Much has been made of Henry's transition from slim and handsome Renaissance prince to bloated monster. And there's no getting away from the fact that he did get a little tetchy as he became older. Author Philippa Gregory believes he may have suffered from Cushing's syndrome, which causes obesity and mental instability, and there is little doubt that he had chronic constipation. This latter could well have been brought on by over-consumption of meat; people were somewhat suspicious of fresh fruit and veg at the time, believing they promoted 'the Bloody Flux'. Poor old Hal also had open sores on his legs, and possible brain damage from a fall whilst jousting in 1536, that had left him unconscious for two hours. All of these go some way to explain why a fair number of executions occurred during his reign. According to chronicler Ralph Holinshead, it's believed that around 72,000 were despatched on the orders of 'Good' King Henry.

A good proportion of executees suffered their fate for treason; in other words, daring to disagree with the king. Those of noble birth could look forward to a swift beheading - Anne Boleyn was famously dispatched by an adept swordsman from France - and generally in 'private' before a selected audience. However, Henry's increasingly erratic behaviour as his reign progressed could explain why he chose to have Thomas Cromwell, one of his closest advisers, executed by an inexperienced teenager with a blunt axe. Generally, however, a beheading was preferable to the fale meted out to commoners; to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

There is some debate as to the meaning of the word 'drawn'. Some say it refers to the fact that the subject was pulled (or drawn) on a hurdle to the place of execution; others, that it denotes the act of pulling or 'drawing' the subject's entrails from their body. Be that as it may, the subject was first hanged for a short period of time, then cut down, revived, and placed on a large table. The executioner would use a large knife to slit the subject open, and his organs would be removed and generally burnt before his eyes. Sometimes his 'privy parts' would also be removed. Finally, the subject's head was cut off, the body quartered, and parts dispatched to various bits of the kingdom to be displayed as a warning. It's believed around ten thousand met their end in this way.

I have also discovered one rather less common method of capital punishment. This was placed on the statute books in 1531 as a direct result of an incident that occurred in the household of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. In February that year, a number of members of the household were taken ill after eating porridge, and two, Benett Curwen, a gentleman of the household, and a widow called Alice Tryppytt, died as a result. The latter was one of the poor people who were regularly fed at the kitchen door by the Bishop as an act of charity, as was the custom of the time. The King expressed great indignation at the crime, and declared that henceforth poisoning would be regarded as High Treason, ordering that

'the said Richard Roose shalbe therfore boyled to deathe withoute havynge any advauntage of his clargie.'

The sentence was duly carried out at Smithfield in London on the 15th April 1532. I can find no account of the execution itself, which is probably just as well.

Something interesting strikes me. The population of the kingdom during Henry's reign was around three million. It's about twenty times that now. If we projected a still bloodthirsty Henry into the twenty first century, he would have to dispatch 1,440,000 souls in order to match the proportion of the population done to death during his reign. Should a freak wormhole open in space and you suddenly find yourself confronted by the larger-than-life Tudor monarch, just do yourself a favour...agree with everything he says!

The miller's tale - Middenshire version

2009-04-19T18:32:00.000+01:00

I have been very remiss. In italics.

For months now we have been conversing, over our virtual garden wall, as it were, beneath a banner proclaiming this blog to be 'The Middenshire Chronicles'. And over these few months of getting to know each other, I have made the odd tantalising reference to the (sadly) lost County of Middenshire, but without elaborating or, indeed, regaling you with any of the fascinating tales of that County from the hoard of manuscripts, unearthed in curious circumstances a few years ago, and in the process of being co-edited by the worthy Stevyn Colgan and myself. The time to reveal something of their wonders is long overdue. So, today being the feast day of Middenshire’s Saint Gug, what better way to introduce you to the County than to recall the tale of that holy man’s life.

'What’s the bravest thing in the world?' This question is the feed line of what is probably the oldest recorded joke. The punch line, surprisingly, is not a lion or tiger, but 'a miller’s shirt, for it grasps a rogue by the throat every day.' This would hardly leave modern day audiences rolling in the aisles, but in the middle ages just about everyone would have understood the joke, painful though it was, For the truth is that medieval millers were the byword for dishonesty.

I have already explained elsewhere that peasants were expected to pay their lord for the privilege of doing almost everything except being born. And, as they eked out an existence on their little strips of land, hoping for a decent harvest that would sustain them through the winter, the peasantry knew that, come harvest time, they would have to take their corn to the lord’s mill for grinding. Not only would they have to hand over a portion of the resulting flour to the miller for the lord of the manor‘s table, but they could be sure that the miller would ‘load’ his scales in order to take more flour than necessary and keep the excess for himself.

In the year 1100, the miller of the manor of Pendlebury was one Gug. This particular grinder of corn was unusual for Middenshire in that he was regarded as a fair and honest man. He was scrupulous in weighing the peasants’ flour, keeping nothing for himself. Because of this he became known by the somewhat literal-minded villeins as ‘Gug the Honest Miller’. As a result, Gug would often find small gifts of flour, bread or root vegetables upon his doorstep in the morning; tokens of esteem from the local populace, who could ill-afford them, but nevertheless believed that Gug’s honesty should be rewarded.

The fair-minded Gug’s behaviour did not sit well with the other millers of the Shire. Peasants from neighbouring manors started to grumble about their own corrupt millers, and some secretly acquired their own quern-stones and begun to grind corn at home under the cover of darkness. The millers banded together and paid one Wat of Winkwood Pisham, a noted ruffian, to be ‘le gryndour fyndere’. Wat would creep about the villages at night, listening for the tell-tale sound of mill-wheels grinding together. He would then report back to his collective masters, who would arrange for the quern to be confiscated and the house of the offending villein to be torched.

The seizings and burnings continued, but so did civil disobedience, so the Shire’s millers decided to deal with the problem once and for all, by killing Gug. Late one night, armed with flaming torches and mud-pitches, they broke down the door of his mill, and found Gug in an attitude of prayer, asking God to deliver his fellow-peasants from the rapacity of those in authority. Four of the largest millers held Gug down on the floor, whilst another half-dozen manhandled his mill-wheel from its spindle. At a given signal, they dropped the heavy gritstone wheel upon Gug’s head…and it bounced harmlessly off Gug’s bald pate, landing on the feet of the miller of Middenbury, crushing his toes. They tried several more times to end Gug’s life, but each time the wheel failed to do him any harm. They then hit upon a plan to suffocate him by filling his nose and mouth with flour, but every time Gug let out a mighty sneeze that propelled the flour into the faces of his attackers, blinding and choking them and rendering them powerless.

The noise and commotion roused Gug’s neighbours, who banded together to investigate. Although not usually given to direct action, the peasants managed to drive off the millers using bill-hooks and fierce ducks. Thus, Gug escaped death at the hands of his dishonest brethren, who returned to their respective manors, vowing to make a further attempt upon Gug’s life at a later date. However, each of them found, on returning to his respective mill, that his own grind-stone had unaccountably returned to the material from which it was made. In place of their mill-wheels, they found nothing but a pile of sand. As news of these happenings spread from miller to miller, a great sense of fear prevailed, and the millers decided to leave Gug be, believing that the disintegration of their wheels must have been some kind of divine punishment for their actions.

Gug lived to a ripe old age, eventually choking on a single crumb from a stale bun he had just enjoyed, given him by a near neighbour. His fellow-villagers each donated a portion of flour for his funeral, and Gug became unique as the first and only miller ever to be buried in a pastry coffin.

In the autumn following his death there was an exceptionally good harvest, which the good people of Middenshire saw as a miracle and attributed it to Gug. Although his beatification was never referred to, or ratified by, Rome, Gug was regarded as a saint by all in the shire, and became the patron of honest millers, pastry cases (often referred to as 'coffins'), bald men and, somewhat unaccountably, rheumatism.

There is a curious post-script to this story. More than three centuries later, Gug was accidentally disinterred by a sexton and his 'coffin' was miraculously found to be intact. The priest gave permission for Gug’s body to be viewed, and the lid of the pastry coffin was duly opened. Even more miraculously, Gug’s body was found to be completely incorrupt, but the previously dry interior of the coffin contained, in the words of the priest, ‘a darke liccour wch lookyd and dyd tast lyke unto a riche sawce’.(the modern equivalent would be gravy). At this point one should, perhaps, ask two questions. Firstly, how did Pendlebury church acquire a literate priest? And secondly, what manner of man tastes the contents of a coffin?

It would appear that the priest was not alone in sampling the dubious delights of what is often referred to as ‘coffin liquor’. Antiquarian John Aubrey recounts the following story of an incident that occurred in 1666, just after the Great Fire of London:

‘John Colet, D.D., Deane of St. Paule’s, London. After the Conflagration (his Monument being broken) somebody made a little hole towards the upper edge of his Coffin, which was closed like the coffin of a Pye and was full of a Liquour which conserved the body. Mr Wyld and Ralph Greatorex tasted it and ‘twas of a kind of insipid tast, something of an Ironish tast. The Coffin was of Lead, and layd in the wall about 2 foot½ above the surface of the Floore. This was a strange rare way of conserving a Corps; perhaps it was a Pickle, as for Beefe, whose Saltness in so many years the Lead might sweeten and render insipid. The body felt, to the probe of a stick which they thrust into a chinke, like boyld Brawne.’

William Thuck, the chronicler of Middenshire, records that St. Gug’s body likewise seemed to have been pickled or cooked by the liquor in which it was steeped. If one may be allowed a little humour in speaking of this pious miller, it seems he was both braised and praised in equal measure.

Better than a blank page. But not by much

2009-04-15T17:31:00.000+01:00

Funny, the things you lose in a house move. The kick plate from a freezer. A magnum of champagne. A small green scoopy thing you use to transfer compost from bag to flowerpot. At the time of writing, the first two have turned up. One is attached to the bottom of the freezer, the other has long since been imbibed and its container recycled. The third item has failed to surface; I had to use a metal trowel instead.

Funny, too, the things that you find after a house move. Amongst the gew-gaws, assorted trinkets and brickbats, I came across the following piece of writing. Now, many years ago, when No.1 daughter was at school, she was 'tasked' with producing a short piece of fiction concerning The Gold Rush. And, as a good Dad (I like to think) I did what good Dads do; I interfered, suggested, advised, and generally gave all manner of (unwanted) input as to how said piece of fiction should be written. Eventually, I saw the error of my ways and, as someone who had always been vaguely interested in writing, penned my own version, which closely follows her (then) somewhat quirky style, for my own amusement. Here it is in its entirety. I have included it (a) to show that I am really a shameless self-publicist with all the talents of William McGonagall on mogadon; (b) to clear up doubts, if any existed, that my huge rollercoaster Middenshire novel is ever likely to be published; and (c) allow you to whisper, point and snigger at me whilst I think of something more useful to say.

Anyway, here it is...

A whole village was going to settle in a new place. A huge meteorite, made entirely of cheese, had landed on their old one, and the sad, inbred inhabitants were still covered in small slivers of burnt mozzarella. Billy, Jane, Bella, Indiana and Jesse were moving in a group together. Almost all of them were in their twenties. It was 1848, only two years away from 1850. The Gold Rush had started when a man came into the village, shouting, 'Gold! Gold! I've found it in the American River! Look, here it is!' After he had been shot and subsequently buried, ostensibly for telling lies, the simple villagers had discovered that he had, in fact, been telling the truth. The unwashed villagers dropped everything and raced to the now well-known Gold Rush.

Billy was the leader, because, despite being the thickest, he was both the oldest, and a man. Jane was the youngest. She was ten years old and still completely illiterate. As they headed over California, they became hot and tired.

'Gee, I'm becoming hot and tired, Indiana. When are we going to be there?'

'Soon, Jane old girl,' said Indiana, without the faintest idea what she was talking about.

All of a sudden, they heard waggons, and the neighing of buffalo.

'It's the chuck waggon!' said Jesse.

As the waggon got closer, the people driving it said, 'Keep your filthy horn-swoggling hands offa the waggin, you dirty and misbegotten old cow pokes.'

After burying the chuck wagon driver and a big dinner they camped and had a rest. In the middle of the night, Jane suddenly awoke. She could hear the whoop of baboons, the hum of a nuclear generator and the distant crump of shells from a heavy calibre machine gun. She went back to sleep without even wondering what these sounds meant.

In the morning, Indiana was the first person to get up. 'My God!' he said, 'What's happened round here?' In front of his eyes were the scattered remnants of Red Cross parcels, broken biscuits and waggons that had apparently been burnt to a fine white powder. There had been an ambush. The rest of the team got up.

'Oh well, you young'uns! No gold for you this year!' said the Sheriff. 'As you can see, there has been an armed conflict of some kind in the middle of the night. Thank goodness no-one was hurt.'

'But Sheriff, what about that huge mound of bodies?' said Billy.

'Dang these glasses!' the Sheriff said.

'Thank goodness you were here, Sheriff. You're my hero!' said Jane.

'That's OK, little missy.'

After burying the Sheriff, the group headed back to their village. They all got up on their horses and rode into the sunset. No gold this year. Perhaps they could corner the market in meteorite cheese instead.

The curse of the chocolate lagomorph

2009-04-10T19:59:00.000+01:00

Around this time of year, rabbits begin to pop up in the strangest places. In TV and newspaper ads; on greetings cards; on the sea-cliffs near my home; and as small chocolate representations in the supermarket. Why, I even saw one for sale in our local pet shop, just last week. Now, someone told me that their appearance coincides with, and apparently has something to do with, Easter, but I'm not sure why. Easter is, of course, a Christian festival and, at the end of the forty days of fasting that precede it, Christians have prepared themselves spiritually for the death and resurrection of Christ. So where does the rabbit (and here I include the hollow chocolate bunny) come in?

The truth is, of course, that he shouldn't. Easter is associated with new life and fertility, and they don't come much more fertile than a rabbit. Your average female rabbit (rabbitess?) can, in theory, produce around eight hundred offspring during its nine month breeding period. This is probably why, in the middle ages, the rabbit was seen as a symbol of promiscuity, sexual pleasure, and (let's not beat about the bush) downright sin. Is this really the kind of example the church was looking for?

Well, no, because over the years we've got our rabbits mixed up with our hares. In the medieval bestiary, the hare was a symbol of purity. Unlike the rabbits, who were 'at it like knives', hares were thought to reproduce asexually, changing gender in order to do so; a belief which started in ancient Egypt and carried through to eighteenth century Europe. A single hare in church art represented the Virgin Mary, and a trio of hares (sometimes seen as carved roof-bosses) were symbolic of the Holy Trinity. In the middle ages it was believed that hares were in a permanent state of alertness, never closing their eyes, and being incapable even of blinking; this perhaps explains why they were thought to spend all night staring up at the moon. But, if hares were this alert, one wonders how the Romans were ever able to catch them; because Pliny the Elder wrote that eating hare meat was a cure for sterility, and a means of enhancing sexual attraction for nine days. Why nine, I wonder?

Some think that the rabbit has been associated with Easter since the inception of Christianity. In fact, the Easter Bunny doesn't make its first appearance in written sources until 1682. In that year, German Professor Georg Franck von Franckenau wrote an essay De Ovis Paschalibus (On Easter-Eggs) in which he stated:

In Alsace and the neigbouring regions those eggs are called rabbit-eggs because of the myth that is told to make the simple-minded and children believe that the Easter Rabbit was laying and hiding them in the grass of the gardens, so the children search them even more eagerly, for the delectation of the smiling adults.

So, for reasons we've already seen, it's inappropriate for the naughty little rabbit to represent Easter. But in some cultures, the bunny was highly regarded. The Aztecs apparently had a pantheon of four hundred rabbit gods known as the Centzon Totochtin, that were effectively 'patrons' of drunkenness and partying; in Korean mythology, rabbits live on the moon and make rice cakes; and likewise in Japan, the lunar surface is their abode, but these particular bunnies are engaged in producing sticky rice. However, closer to home, on the Isle of Portland (which is, incidentally, very close to Middenshire) the rabbit is regarded as unlucky, and even speaking its name is likely to offend the locals. This is because their burrowing was likely to cause potentially fatal landslips in the stone quarries that provided the island with most of its income. Portland islanders even now would rather refer to the creatures as underground mutton or furry things. In deference to this belief, posters displayed on the island for the Wallace and Gromit film The curse of the were-rabbit, omitted the 'R' word, and read The curse of the were-bunny instead.

So next time someone mentions the Easter Bunny to you, be sure and point out the error of their ways. Tell them that it's a hare. And then prepare to be condemned as a hopeless killjoy and pedant. But you can always blame me.

Twittens, frellits and dumfunglers

2009-04-07T21:39:00.000+01:00

One thing I've noticed in my move from suburb of Londinium to the Kingdom of the East Saxons is that people here are...well...different. They say 'good morning' to you. They smile at you in the supermarket queue. They hand you back the wallet (contents intact) that you inadvertantly left in a shop an hour before. And they stop their cars and make a friendly gesture for you to cross the road without a hint of wanting to mow you down. Now, all this is very strange for a cynical ex-copper more used to making sure his wristwatch is still there after shaking hands with someone. But I'm starting to get used to it, and doing my own fair share of smiling and nodding.

I was in conversation with one of our neighbours the other day; a Sussex lady, born and bred, when she happened to use the word twitten. Now, I wasn't sure at first whether I had misheard, and that she was, in fact, talking about Twitter, the micro-blogging site. I hadn't misheard. A twitten is a Sussex dialect word for a narrow alley or passage.

When one thinks of dialect, one does not, perhaps, immediately think of East Sussex. After all, Brighton is practically a suburb of London; it's only an hour and a half from the metropolis by train; and it's full of members of the chattering classes like the ones you've seen on Location cubed. But 'twas not always thus. The journey from London down to Sussex was once far more arduous and dangerous than it is now, and not something to be undertaken on a whim. Mail coach passengers were rattled around in badly-sprung horse-drawn contraptions for at least eight hours on roads that were thick with mud in winter, and dusty tracks in summer. Coach travel could also be dangerous; on one dark night the 'Independent' mail-coach overturned at Findon, throwing the passengers into the road and crushing one elderly man to death under the body of the coach. Most people couldn't afford the luxury of coach travel anyway; many never got further than the nearest market town, and a good many others never left the confines of their villages, because everything they needed (which was, in truth, very little) could be found within their own community. So it was that people in these remote areas came to have their own private vocabulary before the days of universally available newspapers and our 24 hour electronic media; and fortunately, much of that vocabulary has been recorded. I am grateful to the Rev W.D. Parish, Vicar of Selmeston, whose dictionary of Sussex dialect was published in 1875.

Here are a few dialect words that may amuse:

Amendment - manure (adds a whole new meaning to 'pleading the Fifth Amendent')

Backsters - wide pieces of wood, worn on the feet by fishermen who have to walk over shingle or soft mud. (Also known as flappers - it seems odd that such a specific item should have two names!).

Balderdash - an obscene conversation (not sure whether the lexicographer meant Criminal Conversation - the old expression for adultery).

Lawyer - a bramble bush (so named because, like lawyers, the bush is hard to escape from once it has hold of you).

Mints - the mites found in cheese or flour. Not like After Eight mints, then.

Naughty-Man's-Plaything (stop it!) - a stinging nettle.

Rebellious - bilious.

Yeasty - gusty or stormy.

I think such words add richness to the language, which I believe is becoming too homogeneous. It's my view that we should start using slang or dialect of our own making in conversation. I'll get you started with some that Stevyn Colgan and I came up with long since:

Strug - a flat piece of wood with no useful purpose.

Thwackett - two strugs tied together.

Scritchylumps - an irritation of the skin caused by sleeping in silage.

Frellit - the middle prong of a three-pronged fork. (The outside prongs don't have names. What would be the point?)

Sturmers - the buttocks.

Drongler - a novice bell-ringer.

Dumfungler - any ideas?

I look forward to hearing your own in good time, which I shall, of course, steal and send to a publisher, drang my old sturmers with a thwackett if I don't!

Wobbling about like wonky wheels

2009-04-04T21:14:00.000+01:00

In this great Blogdom we inhabit, there seems to be something of a thirst for information. Every now and then a fellow correspondent will enquire, what piece(s) of information would you care to reveal about yourself to your expectant blogdience? These reasonable requests are generally known as 'memes', and I have no doubt that those of you who read this humble blog from time to time, ask such questions out of a genuine sense of interest and curiosity. It is nothing like the how are you? that we British use as an all-purpose greeting. In these circumstances, what we certainly do not want is for the recipient of the question to give a detailed bulletin of their state of health.

Anyway, the questions are asked, and away I go with my bits of info; just try and stop me from telling you that I'm an avid plane-spotter, or can't say the letter 'b', or that my life has been so much better since I discovered plain chocolate Hob-Nobs. Only one of these is true, incidentally. But these aside, I recently chose to reveal that the only thing in this world I will not eat is a toffee apple.

For some strange reason, I feel unjustifiably proud of myself for being able to state that the combination of sour apple and sweet toffee on a wooden stick is my sole culinary bete noir. Does it make me a better person than the next man (or woman) who turns their nose up at mashed potatoes, retches at the mere thought of Brussels sprouts, and has a blue fit when presented with a morsel of blue cheese at the conclusion of a meal? Or does it make me a worse person? Does my omnivorous nature somehow reveal in me a lack of discernment or discrimination? Why don't I shudder at the thought of snails in garlic butter, or a handful of spicy mealworms (dead, of course), or a platter of the assorted fried viscera of some farmyard friends? I'm not sure. But it can't be very chic, can it, to state to the world at large, 'I'll eat anything, me!' I don't think restaurant critic AA Gill has anything to worry about.

Number one daughter has seemingly inherited my omniphagic tendencies. Over the years she has consumed snails, frogs' legs, kangaroo, ostrich, alligator nuggets (the mind boggles), assorted bottom-feeders (gastropod and bivalve) and assorted fish (pelagic and demersal)...and tripe. But I have to report that she very nearly met her culinary match today in the form of a tub of jellied eels.

Jellied eels are a cockney delicacy, and have been around since the eighteenth century. Freshwater eels are chopped up (when I was a child, we would watch with horror as the fishmonger dissected live ones before our eyes), and then boiled in a spiced stock. The slimy nature of the eels means that fats from its body mingle with the stock to produce a savoury jelly. My grandfather, who was born in Lambeth where such things were popular, swore by them. Tubby Isaacs (we lead, others follow) was the most famous purveyor of them. And No.1 daughter was today the dubious recipient of a tub of them.

We both looked at the contents of the tub. Greyish-yellow jelly, coloured perhaps with nicotine, and dotted with large chunks of equally grey stewed eel, which looked for all the world like some exhibit in a coroner's cabinet of curiosities. Despite the fact this creature was purchased in East Sussex, not the East End, I formed the impression that it had somehow winked at us from the recesses of its tub in a cheeky, cockney barrow-boy sort of way. By now a cheese sandwich was looking infinitely more appealing. We tentatively tasted a portion. The eel meat had a kind of chewy texture, and a flavour reminiscent of pilchards fed entirely on a diet of mud. The jelly was rather like that to be found in a pork pie, but a little sloppier. By now, even toffee apples were looking appealing. We persevered with this dismembered mud-fish for a while, but I regret to say most of the poor creature died in vain, and is now languishing in a secure receptacle, awaiting collection by the Seaford and District Sanitation Collective.

So, is there a moral (not a moray - that's an altogether far more frightening species of eel) to this story? Could it be, 'never eat a creature whose name has more vowels than consonants?' Or 'if the food on your plate looks like it's already been eaten and/or recycled a couple of times, it probably has'? No; rather, 'try everything once, but (unless you are an eternal optimist) prepare for a bit of a disappointment'. Especially if your chosen delicacy has been spoon-fed on silt for most of its life. But I still won't eat toffee apples.

Mafflers, manducation and a mug of mobby

2009-04-01T11:53:00.000+01:00

Some of the more sharp-eyed of you have probably realised by now that English is my mother tongue. And what an amazing language it is, or rather combination of languages; for over the centuries we have begged, stolen or borrowed words from other languages to supplement our own. When William the Bastard landed in England in 1066, the native Saxons were busy farming their cows, pigs and sheep, but it was the Normans (who were originally from Scandinavia themselves - literally North Men) who introduced the terms beef, pork and mutton; an indication, perhaps, that it was the Saxons who reared the livestock but the Normans who got to eat it. Subsequently, the rise of Empire and international travel brought words as diverse as bungalow (Bengali), curry (Tamil), gabardine (Breton), cravat (Croatian), bludgeon (Cornish) and robot (Czech) to the language. At the time of writing, we're still half-inching words from across the globe.

There are many different kinds of English. There are the dialects in counties such as Devon, Yorkshire and Norfolk, where accents are so thick that you could cut them with a knife. Then there is the formal language of the courtroom and of Parliament, where business was originally conducted in Latin or Norman French. There is the BBC Radio 4 presenter, with his or her clipped accent (albeit this has been much watered-down over the last few years - except for newsreader Charlotte Green!). And we must not forget the language of the majority of us, with its informality, its slang, its nuances and its ability to talk utter rubbish. 'If it's not one thing, it's another!' True. If the thing on my plate is not a sausage, it must be something else. 'I'm all fingers and thumbs today!' Well, what else is there?

Speaking of sausages, I suffered, or rather encountered, a curious coincidence today. A couple of days ago I was perusing the website of a magazine that rejoices in the name of The Oldie, when I came across a book entitled Fopdoodle and Salmagundi in their recommended books list. Now, you will be aware that the former word refers to a fool or insignificant wretch, and the latter to a mixture of chopped meat and pickled herrings with oil, vinegar, pepper and onions, and equally you will be aware that both words appear in Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and it seems only fair to give a nod to the good Doctor in this the tercentenary of his birth. Anyway, today, whilst sorting out my rather extensive collection of books, I came across an 1837 copy of the dictionary aforesaid. And, despite a suggestion to the contrary in the Blackadder episode entitled 'Ink and Incapability', the dictionary does contain the word 'sausage', which is described as a roll or ball made commonly of pork or veal, minced very small with salt and spice. So that's alright then.

The dictionary was published in 1755, six years later than intended. This is mainly due to the fact that the Doctor produced the whole thing almost single-handedly. For this incredible piece of lexicography, he received the princely sum of 1500 guineas (that's £1575), so he effectively earned £175 per year; this at a time when a footman could earn £8 per annum, an artisan £40, and a gentleman of the 'middling sort' would be happy with £100 a year. Doctor Johnson could have used some of his hard-earned cash to buy himself a suit of clothes (£8), rent a set of rooms (his friend Boswell paid around £40 a year for his), or pop down to the barbers' shop, where he could get a shave and have his wig 'dressed' for sixpence.

My dog-eared copy of the dictionary runs to 732 pages. Dear reader, I shall not weary you with a plethora of definitions, but here are three that may amuse:

Lexicographer - "a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification, of words". (Johnson is describing himself!)

Camelopard - ''An Abyssinian animal, taller than an elephant, but not so thick". (He was talking about a giraffe - hi Raph!)

Gastromyth - "One who has the faculty of speaking out of his belly". (I couldn't explain this one until I saw Johnson's definition of a ventriloquist - "one who speaks in such a manner as that the sound seems to issue from his belly". Goodness only knows what the dummy looked like!)

Oh, and the words in the title of this post; a maffler is someone with a stammer, manducation is the act of chewing, and mobby was apparently an American drink made from potatoes. Nice.

One final question. Would Samuel Johnson have made use of the computer, had it been available to him? I think so. He was of the opinion that 'The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book'. The good Doctor would certainly have found the internet extremely useful in this context. He also believed that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money'. (So what does this blog make me?) A computer would have allowed him access to a whole world of books, and would certainly have speeded up the process of producing his dictionary. And I think the computer's 'cut and paste' facility would have seen a fair amount of use. Johnson said, 'read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out'. Oh, and the word computer appears on page 123 of the dictionary. It's another term for an accountant.

The Pickwick Blogs, by Charles Dickens

2009-03-30T10:15:00.000+01:00

Dear blogsters, this is my third and final foray into that alternative universe where literary giants from history had access to computers. I have settled this time upon Charles Dickens.

Many of Dickens' novels were published in weekly parts and, as such, were eagerly awaited by his public. It's my belief that Dickens would have embraced computers and the internet whole-heartedly, and would almost certainly have been an active blogger. It also seems likely that his instalments would have been made available as downloads, and the public readings which so delighted his audiences would no doubt have found their way into podcasts and YouTube. But this is all speculation by me.

Anyway, enough of my chat. Please note that this post contains innuendo as one of its principal ingredients, which I hope you'll not take amiss; the character of Sam Weller (a roaring success with Dickens' public) was given to a degree of irreverence in the original novel. I have merely projected his character traits forward through time for a 21st century audience. Please read on and, I hope, enjoy!

At precisely seven of the clock on the morning of the eleventh of July, in the year in which these voluminous papers are carefully recorded, Mr. Pickwick arose, refreshed, from his slumbers. Having made a most particular toilet, and partaken of the familiar view of Goswell-Street from his chamber window, Mr. Pickwick betook himself to the drawing-room. Mary, beloved spouse of Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's faithful servitor, was already bustling about, setting the breakfast-things upon the dining-table, buttering toast, arranging the napery, and performing all manner of other culinary and domestic evolutions of a most comforting nature.

After saluting Mary with his customary diurnal greeting, Mr. Pickwick went to his writing desk and withdrew a leathern case from a capacious drawer. Within the case was Mr. Pickwick's newest purchase; a lap-top computing device, obtained the previous day from Mr. Benjamin Tiggers, Computer Purveyor, of Golden-Cross. Mr. Pickwick beamed, and thought of the ease and alacrity with which he would henceforth be able to note down the perambulations of his beloved club. He was just about to place his noble index finger upon the switch that would bring this useful article to animation, when his action was halted by the arrival of the irrepressible Sam Weller.

'Vy, sir, there's a werry nice set o' equipment, as vun gent said to another ven they vos conwersing in the gentlemen's vash-room,' said Sam.

'Why, thank you, Sam,' retorted Mr. Pickwick, that gentle soul upon whom all innuendo was lost, 'I am rather proud of it. Do you know, this machine...'

'Is the werry latest in nineteenth-century computing technology,' said Sam, who had seen the hand-bill advertising Mr. Pickwick's machine in the window of the ingenious Mr. Tiggers' shop not four-and-twenty hours previously. 'Is is true that this 'ere machine comes vith the werry latest Vindows Wista pre-loaded?'

'Indeed so, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'but that's not the least of it. It is possessed of the most up-to-date processor yet available, together with a veritable plethora of software. Take Word for Windows, for example...'

'I have used that 'ere application,' declared Sam, 'on more than vun occasion, ven composing Walentine poems for my Mary, but I find it werry confusing.'

'Why, bless my soul, Sam, whatever is the problem?' said Mr. Pickwick. 'I have always found it quite straightforward.'

'Vell, sir,' said Sam, straightening his waistcoat and brushing from it the crumbs of his earlier breakfast of muffins, 'Vord for Vindows has this werry ingenious bit of kit called a spell-checker, but I'm werry much afeerd that it don't vork! Vy, every time I types the vord 'Veller', or 'Walentine', or 'vanker', blessed if it don't vant me to use a wubbleyou or a wee instead!'

At once, Mr. Pickwick's enormous brain perceived the answer to the seemingly insoluble problem with which the faithful Sam had been deliberating.

'My dear Sam,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, his countenance beaming like the sun that was streaming through the windows of the room, 'the solution is a very simple one. You have clearly been using Word for Windows. You should be using Word for Windows for Manservants. It has long been perceived that the class to which you belong habitually transpose the consonants 'v' and 'w'. The spell-checker within the program I have mentioned deals once and for all with this matter! Oh, how droll, Sam! How very droll!'

'Vell I'll be blowed, as the gen'l'm'n said, ven the young 'ooman in Drury-Lane asked him vat his particular pleasure vos on a summer's evening,' Sam said. 'Vy, I've been using a program as vos intended for my betters! Perhaps I should dismiss myself from your serwice for such wicious behaviour!'

'Not a bit of it, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, alarmed as the thought of imminent abandonment by Mr. Weller junior, and the notion of evenings alone in Goswell-Street with nothing but a bowl of gruel by way of sustenance, forced themselves upon his active mind. 'It is my earnest wish that you remain in my service for as long as you wish. Please banish all thoughts of resignation!'

'Wery vell, guv'nor,' said the irrepressible Sam, 'I shall be content to serve you until vun of us is struck dead, or taken to the Fleet, or transported, or hung.'

'Thank you, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'you may go.'

Sam executed a low bow and left the room. Mr. Pickwick was once again just about to switch on his computing device, when a knock came at the door. Mr. Pickwick heard a brief exchange of words in the hall. Then, to his inexpressible delight, the door opened to reveal his Pickwickian companions; the poetic Mr. Augustus Snodgrass, the sportsmanlike Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, and the amorous Mr. Tracy Tupman.

'Gentlemen,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, 'this is indeed a happy meeting! I had no idea that it was your joint intention to come to my humble lodgings today.'

'But Mr. Pickwick, did you not receive my email? Why, I sent it two days ago,' said Mr. Winkle, who appeared to be fingering something deep within the recesses of his surtout pocket.

'My dear Mr. Winkle,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, 'I did not. I fear that you have sent it to my old in-box, as I have just made the acquaintance of a new internet service provider. It apparently has an excellent reputation for reliability, according to its proprietor.'

'Pray, Mr. Pickwick, who would that be?' Enquired Mr. Tupman. Tracy Tupman, to his regret still a bachelor, spent many lonely hours at his keyboard, attempting to engage suitable young ladies of breeding in conversation with a view to marriage, and spending not inconsiderable sums of money as a consequence.

'Why, our old friend Mr. Jingle,' Mr. Pickwick replied.

This information had a curious effect upon Mr. Tupman. He first turned very red, and then turned very white. A dangerous perspiration started from his brow, and he swayed visibly.

'Ah! Me!' swooned Mr. Tupman, as he remembered how Mr. Jingle had ingratiated himself into the company of Miss Rachel Wardle, and replaced Mr. Tupman in her affections. 'Mr. Pickwick, tell me it isn't true! Tell me that you have not chosen that snake as your new internet service provider?'

Mr. Pickwick's countenance showed marked discomfort at Mr. Tupman's words. He immediately rang the bell and within moments Sam Weller was at the door.

'Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'would you please obtain a cool flannel for Mr. Tupman. I fear he is unwell.'

'That's a werry interesting colour as you've discovered, sir,' said Sam, addressing Mr. Tupman in relation to the hue of his countenance. 'I'm werry much afeerd as you are about to go off bang, as the young ooman said to her particular acquaintance the muffin man, ven she placed her hand upon his muffins.'

At this moment Sam's wife Mary entered the room, bearing a basin containing a length of calico, liberally sprinkled with cool water. Mr. Tupman allowed Mary to minister to him in his present state of discomfiture, and within minutes he professed himself much better. There was little that escaped the notice of the intelligent Mr. Pickwick. His gaze rested upon Mr. Winkle, who still appeared to be engaged upon some barely perceptible machinations within his pocket.

'Winkle! Why, whatever are you doing?' Enquired Mr. Pickwick. 'Is that a gun in your pocket?'

'Or are you werry pleased to see us, as the young 'ooman said to..'

'Pray be quiet, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick. I insist upon knowing what you are doing.'

Mr. Winkle looked sheepishly at Mr. Pickwick, and withdrew a small object from the pocket in which it had been hitherto confined. 'It's a BlackBerry, Mr. Pickwick. You can use it to send emails and things,' said Winkle.

'Hand it to me, Winkle,' insisted Mr. Pickwick. 'I have had a desire for some time to purchase one of these devices. If you would allow me to peruse it for a moment, perhaps it would enable me to decide whether it would be useful to me.'

Mr. Winkle did as he was bidden. Mr. Pickwick took the BlackBerry in his hand and pressed a button.

'Ah, so there are your emails, Mr. Winkle. I'll just open one, thus,' said Mr. Pickwick, for whom technological matters held no fear. 'But what is this?' And so saying, Mr. Pickwick placed his spectacles upon his nose and recited, verbatim, the content of one of Mr. Winkle's emails:

Mr. Robert Posstot of 12, Mincing Lane, begs leave to suggest that gentlemen may increase their circumference by a considerable degree with the use of a patented device. This useful item is only available from the aforesaid Mr. Posstot for the consideration of half a guinea. Email imaposstot@alfredjingle.com.

'Bless me, Mr. Winkle, whatever does that mean?' enquired Mr. Pickwick who, for the first occasion in his long life, was genuinely mystified.

Mr. Winkle turned very pale. 'Ah, um, well, Mr. Pickwick. I believe it is some item, intended to increase the appetite of a gentleman who is off his food. Hence the mention of circumference,' ventured Mr. Winkle, hoping this hastily-concocted explanation would satisfy Mr. Pickwick's curiosity.

'Begging your pardon, gen'l'm'n,' interposed Sam, 'but I ha' seen emails of this particular wariety afore. And there's a werry particular name for 'em as vell.'

'And what is that, Sam?' said Mr. Snodgrass, venturing into the conversation for the first time. Mr. Snodgrass knew nothing of computers and was content to compose his sensitive poems through the more traditional medium of ink and quill.

'Vy, sir, they are called Gammon,' Sam explained helpfully. 'Ven vun gent asks another gent to part vith his coin, on account of some vonderful thing as the first gent has inwented, ve calls it 'gammoning'. Vy, I get at least vun and tventy pieces of gammon a veek wia my Sony Waio! But, begging your pardon again, I think this 'ere bit of gammon has werry little to do vith a gen'l'm'n's vaistline. I rayther think it has more to do with this 'ere sporting gen'l'm'n's name.'

'What do you mean, Sam? What on earth is meant by increasing the size of a Nathaniel?' Enquired the innocent Mr. Pickwick.

'Vy, bless your old boots and gaiters, guv'nor,' said Sam, 'I vos talking about the name of Vinkle.'

At Sam's retort, the three visiting Pickwickians looked decidedly ill at ease. Mr. Tupman attempted to cram a leathern riding glove into his mouth in a not altogether successful attempt to hide his amusement at Mr. Weller's explanation of the unsolicited electronic missive from the inventive Mr. Posstot, Mr. Snodgrass allowed a flicker of a smile to creep across his other-worldly countenance, which he contrived to conceal behind a small nosegay of flowers, whilst Mr. Winkle simply fainted away.

'Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'I believe that we will be requiring calico and cold water once again.'

'Vell I'll go to the foot of our stairs, as the old gent said ven his vife kicked him down two flights and into the cellar by vay of recreation,' said Sam. 'I think Mr. Vinkle vill be needing something rayther stronger to rewive him.'

'And what would that be, Sam?' enquired Mr. Pickwick.

'Vell, sir, I received an email from my dear old father this werry morning. You know, him as drives the Dorking coach and is ved to the circus acrobat?'

'Yes, Sam, I do recall,' said Mr. Pickwick, who had met Mr. Tony Weller at the start of an eventful journey to Dingley Dell in Kent. 'Pray tell us how we can revive Mr. Winkle?' Even now poor Mr. Winkle remained supine, but was showing signs of returning animation.

Sam remained silent for a few moments, to ensure that the full attention of the Pickwickians was focused upon him. He folded his arms, uttered a gentle cough, and then said, 'Vy, sir, it's a remedy as the old 'un svears by. It's called Wiagra. And, thanks to the Vorld Vide Veb, Mr. Vinkle can awail himself of a supply vithout limit from a werry nice on-line sawbones in Wirginia!'

The Canterbury Tales ver 1.3

2009-03-28T12:29:00.000Z

Yesterday, you may recall, we met Sir John Betjeman, and speculated on the way modern technology might have influenced his poetry. Today, I'm going back a bit further; to the 14th century, in fact. I have read (and enjoyed) Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, both in modern and middle English. So, I wondered, how would the poet have viewed one of our present-day computer users? Read on, but first an apology. I don't regard computer users as geeks, necessarily. But the word 'Geake' leds itself so well to Middle English.

Would Chaucer have used a computer, had there been one available? Probably. A laptop would be far easier to use on the back of a horse than the conventional quill pen; no need to carry around the water, oak galls, iron nails and gum arabic necessary to make the ink; and no need for a bag of pounce to prepare the parchment for writing. But he might have had a problem using Microsofte Worde; Middle English spelling was rather random, so I think a spell-checker would have been out of the question.

I've done now. Oh, but a quick note on Middle English pronunciation. You pronounce every letter. For example, 'manne' is pronounced 'mann-er'; 'lappe-toppe' is 'lapper-topper'; and so on. Otherwise the verse doesn't scan properly. Now I've really done.

A Geake ther was, a manne from neare Brightonne
That ynto cybere systemes had y-gone.
His cloothe was chepe, a teeshirte clad his breste
Wyth Thunderbirds are Go writ on the cheste.
A payre of Convers traynours dyd he weare
Than semeth hadd ben maulyd by a beare.
His breeches wer ful lowe, and dyd hys arse
Shine lyk the Moone to folke that dyd y-passe.
And now that I do thinke it, sooth to saye
This moost hav bene a dressen-downe daye.
A lappe-toppe holden he in honde
And typen texte that no wight understonde.
Hys conversatioun was nat for me
It was in trewth like talkynge wyth a tre.
He spook in Englysshe, but with wordes straunge
As 'Blog' and 'Twitter' like a manne deraunge.
This worthie man hath fiftie poundes a yeare
But sooth to sayn had naught betwixte his eare.
This wight dyd not to Caunterburie go
To seek the Hooly Blisful Martir; no.
Hys purpose was but pagan I recalle
He wended there a netwoork to installe.
But, nathelees he kepte our companie
Unto the inne at holy Caunterbrie.
Herein we dyd essaye to mak hem drinke
But he was jooste a lyte-weet, I doe thinke.
For after only oon smal disshe of ale
He turnyd grene and vomit yn the payle.

The Laureate and the Laptop

2009-03-27T20:34:00.000Z

On the 19th May 1984, that great and (in my view) most English of poets, Sir John Betjeman, died. He was laid to rest in the quiet churchyard of St. Enodoc in Cornwall, a place he loved. Sir John's death came less than four months after the introduction of the Apple Macintosh computer. The 1980s saw great leaps forward in the computer industry; the inception of MS-DOS, the introduction of the floppy disc, and the launch of the Commodore 64, allegedly the best-selling computer of all time.

I'm not entirely sure that Sir John would have been comfortable with computers, had he lived to see their development and the development of the other technology that now surrounds us. I always saw him as a 'fountain pen' sort of poet; scribbling on sheet after sheet of paper, blobbing ink everywhere, scratching out the bits he didn't like...

But one thing is certain about Sir John. For all his apparent other-worldliness, he knew how his fellow-citizens ticked. His poems are full of the ordinary, the mundane, the trivial. How many other poets do you know that have written about the Metropolitan Railway? That's probably why I love his work so much.

I'm probably going to regret this. I've written a little poem in Sir John's style. It fondly imagines that he is still around today, and is (of course!) fully aware of the available technology and its importance to us. And, if you're reading this from somewhere, Sir John - sorry!

Janet, on the train to Ruislip,
Opens up her MacBook’s lid
Takes the dongle from her pocket,
Plugs it in and emails Sid.

‘Are you coming round this evening?
I’ve a brand new shoot-em-up.
And, if you bring round your X-Box,
We’ll replay the last World Cup.’

Sid is deaf to Janet’s missive;
(Hard drive’s melted like ice cream)
And he contemplates the message -
‘Fatal error’ on the screen.

Sadly, Janet, in her bedsit,
Eats a micro-meal alone.
Rests her MacBook on the duvet
Whilst she texts Sid from her phone.

Where are you, you lousy bastard?
Why are you ignoring me?
Sid replies with explanations.
Janet texts, ‘Well, I’m still free.’

But this evening must be fated,
Janet’s credit’s down to nil.
Sidney’s signal strength is zero;
He is angry, she feels ill.

Gentle reader, don’t feel sorry
For this quite unlucky pair
Sidney only lives two minutes
From young Janet’s pied-a-terre.

Singing like a canary

2009-03-26T17:39:00.001Z

Well. I've finally bowed to the pressure of no-one in particular and signed myself up to Twitter. No, it isn't a magazine published by the RSPB, but rather a kind of micro-blogging service which asks the question, what are you doing? Users can send and receive messages of no more than 140 characters (known as Tweets) to their circle of acquaintances, and have the opportunity to follow the ramblings of others. It certainly seems to have taken the internet world by storm, including within its members Barack Obama, Richard Branson, Stephen Fry, and many other stars of stage, screen and surgery.

Remember the fun we had with the word blog? I think we could make a go of Twitter and Tweet as well. Is a user of Twitter just a Twit? Would the comments of a gentleman who makes bread be a Baker's Tweet? How many users are there in the little Welsh town of Lllantwit Major? And, if there are any French users out there, will we be able to read the Tweeties of Versailles? This has endless possibilities for someone like me who has an infinite capacity for wasting time when I should be doing something else. Like decorating. I did point out to the worthy Stevyn Colgan that I really needed something more personally appropriate; a micro-blogging site called Gibber, perhaps. But, until someone far more computer-savvy than me comes along to do the honours, I'll be twittering along from my small twig in Sussex.

Castor, Fratercula, Rissa...and Mater

2009-03-23T23:14:00.000Z

Sunday was Mothers' Day in the UK. Or rather, it wasn't. In reality, this day when young children make appallingly bad cards, and take their long-suffering mums a cup of cold tea in bed, is properly termed Mothering Sunday.

Mothering Sunday is a moveable 'feast'; its date is dependent on that of Easter, but it always falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent. For this reason it was sometimes called Mid-Lent Sunday. Another alternative name for the day was Refreshment Sunday, as Lenten rules were relaxed for this one day only. Boys and girls in service were given the day off in order to visit their mothers, taking with them a little cake or a bunch of wild flowers. A far cry from today's blatant commercialism that encourage sons and daughters to spend outrageous sums of money on presents.

Lent is held by Christians to be a time of penitence and fasting in preparation for Easter. In the middle ages the Lenten diet was strictly controlled, and meat, eggs and dairy products were effectively banned during the forty days. But, not surprisingly, there was a way round the ban, and, sad to say it was the church that found the way round it. Well, monks, actually. These devious tonsured gentlemen determined that the beaver (then still living wild in the UK) was actually a fish, because it spent so much time in the water and had a scaly tail. Puffins, with their exclusively piscine diet, were also looked upon as fish. One presumes they stank of fish as well, so perhaps the monks can be forgiven! But the most curious 'fish' was the barnacle goose. This creature was thought to develop from the gum or sap of fir trees tossed into the sea. As the 'goose' grew, its beak would hang downwards in the water, it would develop feathers and eventually break free of the tree and fly away. What our monastic mates were looking at was the goose barnacle; how they came to associate the one with the other can only be guessed at. But not by me.

There were no beavers, puffins or barnacle geese in evidence during our post-lunch walk along the beach yesterday; just a few noisy gulls and the wheeling kittiwakes that form a colony at Seaford Head. These birds were apparently considered good eating by the islanders of St.Kilda, that most remote of Scottish islands, and about as far from Seaford as it's possible to get and still be in the United Kingdom. It's a surprise to me that kittiwakes were not regarded as fish by our forbears, because they apparently smell and taste every bit as bad as puffins. But there's no accounting for these things. I'm glad I went for the liver and bacon.

The Widdle of the Sphinx

2009-03-20T17:58:00.000Z

It's strange, the things you come across on the internet when you browse idly. Not that I have time to be idle, of course. A house move, a shed load of decorating to do, wine to drink...so why did I type Ancient Egyptian Urine into Google? I'm not sure. But I did discover something interesting. The ancient Egyptians had a pregnancy test involving urine and wheat and barley seeds. They would steep the seeds from these two plants in the urine of a woman who was believed to be pregnant. If the wheat seeds sprouted, a boy was predicted; if the barley put forth green shoots, the child would be a girl. If neither sprouted, it was 'sorry, Mrs. Rameses, but I think you've made a mistake.'

Could I leave it there? Dear bloggy friend, what do you think? I had to see what use my old chums the Romans had for that (almost) inexhaustible supply of liquid we carry around with us. And it came back to pregnancy again, but this time, a way of preventing it. Apparently, if a woman could somehow get her gentleman friend to imbibe his own urine in which a lizard had been drowned, this dubious drink would act as an antaphrodisiac. It's the lizard I feel sorry for.

This was only one use for Roman widdle. Their ladies used it to clean their teeth, and it was also popular as a mouthwash. Apparently, Portuguese urine was the best for this purpose, but there is no record as to whether some kind of breath freshener was employed in conjunction with this bodily by-product, or how Romans managed to persuade the Portuguese to part with it in the first place; but it seems likely that the process involved threats of some kind. A slightly more palatable use for urine was in the cleaning of clothes; the ammonia apparently got Roman togas whiter than white. The dry-cleaner, or fullonica, would place large vats outside his premises into which passers-by could relieve themselves, and use this product to bleach these peculiarly Roman garments. Bingo! Citizens who were caught short were always sure of a place of easement, and the fullers acquired a completely free supply of cleaning fluid. Did I say free? Sorry. The emperor Nero devised a tax on the urine collected by the fullers - the vectigal urinae. And, although it didn't last long, a later emperor, Vespasian, re-introduced it. Perhaps this is why public toilets in Italy are referred to as Vespasiani.

Have you heard of the constellation of Orion, the hunter? Apparently, Orion means urine. The Boeotians (who lived near the Gulf of Corinth) had a myth that involved Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes urinating on a bull hide to provide King Hyrieus with a son. Poor old Orion. I wonder what sort of time he had at school? As he was the son of a king, did this make him the Royal Wee?

Sadly, as always, I seem to have omitted the New World in favour of the Old, so I should perhaps redress the balance by giving the Aztecs a mention. It appears that they too used urine for cosmetic and medicinal purposes. One such remedy for 'Roughness of the Face', otherwise referred to as Ixchachaquachiviztli (good grief), involved washing the face with hot urine and then smearing it liberally with powdered yellow chilli. This would be followed by another dousing in hot urine or wormwood sap and azpan sap. Sounds delightful, but I think I'll pass.

I suppose I could continue this post by looking at urophagia. It's interesting to note the number of websites that promote the drinking of one's own urine, and that provide detailed recommendations of the way in which this should be undertaken (in a glass, in a cup, lukewarm, hot and steaming, with/without rituals or incantations...). But I think you'll agree that enough is as good as a feast. And, as this blog is generally characterised by its sense of delicacy, I think I should spare you from the less palatable aspects of human behaviour.

An absence of barbecued haddock

2009-03-15T17:18:00.000Z

It's the Ides of March today. It was on this day in 44BC that Gaius Julius Caesar was done in by a number of senators who were attempting to save Rome from his (alleged) ambitions to be king. Except that, to Caesar, it wasn't 44BC. I rather think it was 710 AUC (anno urbis conditae - from the founding of the city) as this was one of the methods the Romans used to denote what year it was. Ironically, this method of dating was introduced by Caesar only a couple of years earlier, and it was taken into use only a year before his assassination. They also used consulships as an aide memoire - for example In the year of the Consuls Tiberius Claudius Nero and Publius Quinctilius Varus.

Now, the sharp-eyed amongst you will notice that the Romans I've mentioned above all have three names. This was referred to as the tria nomina (erm...three names!) The first, the praenomen, was a bit like our forename; it was a given name, individual to you. Except that it wasn't that individual. There were only around seventeen of these names in common use, ranging from Caius (the most popular) to Vibius (the least so), with Caia and Vibia as the feminine equivalents. There wasn't any room for innovation, so you couldn't go out on a limb and decide to call your son Brian, or your daughter Doris.

The second name, the nomen, indicated the gens (or clan) you belonged to; in other words, you were loosely associated with every other family with that nomen. Thus, Caius Julius Caesar belonged belonged to the gens of the Julii, and Mr. Varus, the consul I mentioned above, to the Quinctilii. Which sounds like a painful condition. There were a good many families in Rome, so plenty of family names, starting with Acilius and going all the way down to Volumnius. Sadly, there was no Biggus Dickus (as per Life of Brian) but the nomen Fannius might raise a chuckle among the more childish. It made me laugh...

The third name of the trio was the cognomen. This was almost, but not quite, a nickname. It would quite often refer to the physical characteristics, personality, career or place of birth of the first ancestor to bear the cognomen. Thus, the poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) must have had an ancestor with a big nose (that's what Naso means!); and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus is likely to have had a red-bearded forbear. I was initially confused when it came to the orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. 'Cicero' means 'chick pea'. Does this mean that our Marcus had an ancestor who was a chick pea? Or who farmed chick peas? Or who thought he was a chick pea? No. Apparently, said ancestor had a little cleft at the end of his nose that made it look like a chick pea. Just imagine the time he had at school. When Cicero entered politics, he was advised to change his cognomen to something a bit more serious, but he refused, saying at least he wasn't a Scaurus (swollen ankled) or a Catulus (puppy).

I seem to have got rather bogged down in this Roman stuff. I had originally planned to talk to you about drains, barbecued haddock, and an afternoon walk along the beach, but all this can wait. At the risk of ruining your day, I'm going to tell you how to pronounce Roman names properly. In Latin, the letter C at the start of a word is always 'hard'. Thus, Caesar is properly pronounced Kaizar; and Cicero (not surprisingly) Kikkero. Yes, I know they always say Caesar on the History Channel. But what do they know?

London Sur Mer

2009-03-12T19:57:00.000Z

I'm conscious of the fact that this is my second posting this month with a French title. I apologise. I shall try to be more inventive demain.

We took a little trip to Brighton today. Brighton, beloved of the Prince Regent, and the first resort to make sea bathing popular. This latter claim to fame was a the result of a paper published by Dr Richard Russell, MD FRS, in 1750, 'Glandular Diseases, or a Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water in the Affections of the Glands'. The good Dr Russell recommended that those who wished to be cured of such ailments should not only bathe in the sea, but drink the stuff as well. Russell himself lived in Lewes, but recommended his patients take to the water (and take the water) at the nearest seaside town...Brighton.

Our visit today did not involve the imbibing of sea water; no. It was to see the comedy Lloyd George knew my father at the Theatre Royal, a 'proper' theatre with gilded mouldings, etched glass, velveteen seats...and very little leg room. Were Victorian Brightonians tiny people with little legs, I wonder? If so, then they must have suffered alongside London theatregoers, for I have never found an old theatre with anything approaching a decent amount of leg room!

We went to the matinee performance. Now, in London the matinee is beloved of the student on a budget. In Brighton, however, the pensioner is king (or queen) of the matinee. Dear friends, it would probably not be an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Hale and I were a good two decades younger than the bulk of the audience. We were surounded by sweet old ladies reminiscent of Miss Marple, who probably live in Rottingdean or somewhere equally pleasant, and their husbands, decked out in crimplene slacks and those light-coloured shoes beloved of the elderly. I felt as if I had wandered onto the set of the remake of Cocoon. All around me I could hear prostates popping like champagne corks, and the crackle of newly-permed hair. None of which is true.

The play, which starred Edward Fox (at his spendid best) and Claire Bloom, was a gentle drawing-room comedy of a type I haven't seen for years, and seemed ideally suited to the (mostly) elderly audience, who roared with laughter at the jokes and applauded politely for just long enough at the final curtain. I did say to Mrs. Hale before the play started that I hoped it would not be too dramatic, as some of our fellow theatregoers didn't look as if they could stand anything too shocking. But I needn't have worried.

Afterwards, we sallied forth onto the streets of London on Sea, as Brighton is sometimes called. And yes, I can see why. We encountered Big Issue sellers, a couple of Greenpeace Chuggers who greeted us like long-lost relatives, saw a small posse of street drinkers engaged in polite conversation within the environs of a bus shelter, and came across The Temple That Is Primark. But get away from all of these things; wander round the jewellery quarter that is The Lanes, visit the quirky shops in North Laine, or just enjoy a couple of hours looking at Brighton's distinctive architecture, its narrow streets and squares before rounding off the day at a decent seafood restaurant. That's the Brighton for me.

I think I'm going to like living down here. And the Tourist Board aren't paying me a penny. Honest.

Six of the Best

2009-03-10T22:22:00.000Z

Now, you probably thought Madame DeFarge was a Dickensian invention from his Tale of Two Cities, who knitted at the foot of the guillotine as the upper classes were led to their messy deaths at the hands of the good Dr. Guillotin's invention. But you'd be wrong. She is not a hatchet-faced tricoteuse, but rather an astute and highly literate servant of the peepul, and she's jolly well tagged me to list six things or habits of no real importance about myself, thus:

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog. Yep, done that.

2)Write the rules. Yep, done that too.

3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you. Please see below.

4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.

5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

Here are my Six Things:

(i) My first soft toy was a stuffed Eeyore, whom I insisted upon calling Gooby.

(ii) I have a particular interest in the seventeenth century diarist and Bon Viveur John Aubrey. It could be something to do with us sharing a birthday. Albeit he was born before 1752 when the calendar changed. So we don't really share a birthday at all.

(iii) I am almost totally omnivorous, but the one thing in the world I will not eat is a toffee apple.

(iv) I have just eaten half a bar of Milka chocolate. It is currently a bargain at 99p at W.H.Smith.

(v) My hair is now the longest it has been in more than 33 years.

(vi) I have never ridden a horse.

And now, it's time to tag...

Rob - For a Canadian perspective on the ordinary.

Comedy Goddess - Because I think she will come up with some very quirky answers.

Stevyn - For an ex-pat Cornish writer's sextet of mundanities.

Derrick - He's led such an interesting life; now let's hear the dull stuff!

John Soanes - Because This Oscar Wilde Lookalike Can Always Be Relied Upon For An Apt Comment...And Lots Of Capital Letters.

Raph - Because giraffes must sometimes encounter les choses ordinaires.

Over to you, boys and girls!

Blatant Apart Height

2009-03-10T20:20:00.001Z

Those of you who are kind enough to visit this blog occasionally may well have formed an opinion of the kind of person you think I am. This opinion will be partly based on my damn-fool ramblings, and partly upon the tiny image of me attached to my profile. Through my photograph you may detect a kind of inner calm, rather like that possessed by the skipper of a trawler in rough seas. I like to think it shows a person of character; insightful and thoughtful, but at the same time approachable and affable. But there are things it doesn't tell you. My height, for example.

Now, I'm not particularly tall. Like my friend and fellow blogger Mme Defarge, I have...um...little legs. But then neither am I particularly short, and I am not self-conscious about my height. But there was a time, dear reader, when things were very different.

On Sunday the 13th August 1978, I arrived at Hendon Police College as a (very) young and nervous probationary law enforcement officer. And it wasn't until the following morning, waiting in line to be 'sworn in', that I suddenly realised how many tall people there were in this world. I felt, with hindsight, a bit like Lemuel Gulliver in the land of Brobdignag. And wasn't I reminded of the fact for the next sixteen weeks!

This was back in the days when drill staff would seize, with delight, upon any supposed 'flaw' and exploit it to the full. Apparently, I already had a character defect because I had what was called a football moustache (five hairs a side), as did many of my fellow inmates. But with my height they had a field day. Alternative career paths were suggested; apparently, I could have been a fighter pilot for Airfix, a racing driver for Scalextric, or an Action Man with realistic gripping hands. According to one member of staff, my uniform would be supplied by Mothercare because the Hendon Stores didn't have anything small enough! A few people asked how I'd managed to get in , and I said I'd lied about my height. I also told anyone who would listen that the Metropolitan Police were looking for officers who could keep a low profile, and you couldn't get a profile much lower than mine! Nowadays, equality officials would probably say that I was being complicit in my own oppression; rather like a member of an ethnic group who professes not to mind an apparently inappropriate nickname.

I suppose this 'banter' did test me a little at the time. But, in law enforcement, you learn to develop a rather thick skin to deal with the kind of inventive and comprehensive insults that get thrown at you pretty well every day. And, believe me, the Great British Public can be pretty insulting, especially when it's had a few glasses of something. Thirty-odd years on, I can look back with a degree of affection at the ribbing I got at training school. In recent years, equality laws meant that police forces had to scrap height restrictions, so it came to pass that, before I retired, average height me was able to tower over some of my younger colleagues! But these five-foot-somethings were among some of the bravest officers I have ever worked with.

But doesn't it sometimes seem that the world is designed with tall people in mind? Most models, male or female, tend to be on the tall side. Clothes, unless you have them made to measure, look better on tall people. Apparently, tall people, on average, earn more money than us shorties. TV ads do not, in general, feature men who are around five foot seven inches tall (unless it is to portray them as dim-witted and in thrall to their taller and more intelligent wives!) And why is it that short people with attitude are told they have a Napoleon complex? It's apparently alright to be stroppy, forthright or demanding, but only if you're tall.

Of course, there are advantages to being short. You don't get too uncomfortable in the economy seats on a plane, you suffer less from acrophobia because your head is closer to the ground, and, if you trip over, you are less likely to suffer serious injury as you don't have so far to fall. So, on the whole, I'm reasonably happy with my five-seven, even if it does mean I have to use the step-stool to dust the top of my bookcase. But it is quite a tall bookcase...

So, what lessons have I learnt from all this? (i) Size matters; (ii) Size really doesn't matter; (iii) If in doubt, lie about your height; and (iv) if you really have a problem with your height (or lack of it), make friends with a tall person (or giraffe) today. Hi Raph!

Proper Job!

2009-03-06T22:06:00.000Z

When I lived in London I was very partial to LBC. Describing itself as London's Biggest Conversation, LBC is a 24 hour talk radio station, where listeners are invited to call in with insightful comments, rant, rave, ramble or witter on aimlessly as the fancy takes them. I would often have this station on in the background as I tapped away at my keyboard, and it almost became like audio wallpaper for me.

All this ended when I moved. You can't get LBC in Sussex, other than on Sky or online. And, as these two methods of access are not always convenient, I have rediscovered the joys of Radio Four.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Radio Four. The Archers, The World at One, the Afternoon Play (sci-fi week this week, with an offering from Iain M. Banks), the Shipping Forecast (especially the late night edition, preceded by a wonderful piece of British light music, Sailing By, composed by the fabulously-named Ronald Binge)...and Front Row.

Front Row, presented by Mark Lawson, is, let's not deny it, an arty-farty programme. Lots of media people extolling the virtues of other media people, or explaining in five minute interviews their motivation for the latest play/film/poem. Last night's edition focused, among other things, upon actors who came from 'ordinary' families. Actor Anthony Sher told of his down-to-earth South African father who had never met an actor until he sired one. Mr. Sher senior dutifully attended his son's plays, but invariably fell asleep only minutes into the first act, on one occasion slumbering peacefully in the front row whilst the rest of the audience gave his son a standing ovation for his Richard III. It seems that, as an ordinary bloke, he found it difficult to come to terms with his son's thespian status.

Not for the first time, this got me thinking. Is the arts a 'proper job'? Very few would disagree that bricklaying, coal mining or car assembly are 'proper jobs'. But what about acting? Can the actor return home to his humble cot, exhausted with the honest toil of pretending to be someone else for a few hours? Is bashing out his or her lines equivalent to bashing dents out of the bonnet of a Fort Cortina? Or is it just a bit of a lightweight pastime that some are lucky enough to get paid for? And whilst we're on the subject, what about poets? Is there a nobility in knocking out a few stanzas or verses that these days don't even need to rhyme? Doesn't this not-rhyming-thing smack of a lack of effort? I mean, if you're a poet, and that's all you have to do, you're got all the time in the world to find something that rhymes with 'silver' or 'cadaver'. I'm not a poet, but even I can manage a non-rhyming poem; viz:

There was a young lady called Janet
Who used to support Queen's Park Rangers.
At a match in the rain
She caught a bad cold
And had a stiff neck for a fortnight.

And I can even cope with the odd haiku. Here's my offering acknowledging the existence of shredded carrots:

Have you noticed that
Every pre-packed salad has
These orange bits in?

All of a sudden T.S. Eliot (an anagram of toilets) and Seamus Heaney aren't looking quite so clever, are they?

Don't get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for the arts. I've got a degree in some arty subject or other, and always found science a bit of a trial at school, especially those equations where you had to balance up the molecules of oxygen or sodium or similar. But I do think 'arty' people sometimes think (and talk) too deeply about what they do. You only have to watch the 'extras' disc of any Hollywood movie DVD to realise this. When Dustin Hoffman was cast in Marathon Man, he prepared for the part by doing a large amount of running. When he told Sir John Gielgud, the noble knight remarked, 'Dear boy, why don't you just act?'

I went out to post a letter today. As I was returning home, I saw an elderly gent with a zimmer frame (Comedy Goddess - you know what this is now, don't you?) Now, zimmer frames in Sussex are not exactly as rare as hen's teeth; they're very common, in fact. But not so common was this old gent's appearance. He was wearing red shoes, a pair of grey trousers with a generous four inch gap between top of sock and bottom of trouser, a ladies' pink anorak with an orange hood, and, to top off the ensemble, a child's red school cap.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with LBC, or Radio Four, or Anthony Sher, or even poems that resolutely refuse to rhyme? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. But, dear fellow blogger, I had to tell someone...

Le Chien Noir

2009-03-02T19:59:00.000Z

Winston Churchill, that great wartime prime minister, suffered terribly with depression. He called it The Black Dog. When the dog was upon him he was almost unable to move, so great was the weight of depression upon his shoulders. Commentators have pointed out that any politician of our present age who suffered similarly would be unlikely to make high office, so it's probably just as well that parliament in the 1940s was rather more accommodating.

If you trawl the internet (as I'm sure some of you do some of the time!) you'll find a good many references to the black dog of depression. But what you'll also find is a very different kind of black dog. I'm talking about the spectral hounds that seem to be very common in Britain, including Sussex, my new home county.

These canines are generally very large, albeit some apparently have the ability to change their size, if not their shape. They are often described as having glowing eyes, very large eyes, very large heads, more than one head, and sometimes no head at all. They also have the rather worrying ability to disappear and then re-appear somewhere else entirely, especially if you happen to be passing by that somewhere else when they do their re-appearing act!

Black dogs can appear pretty well anywhere, but are commonly encountered at crossroads (a place of burial for witches and murderers), footpaths, roads, graveyards, and in areas where ancient barrows and burial mounds are common. These latter locations suggest that the dogs are attracted to ley lines, the supposed ancient lines of power that criss-cross the country and supplied our long-dead ancestors with spiritual energy.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, to see a black dog portends the death of the viewer or of a close relative. In Peterborough in the 16th century a black dog somehow managed to wring the necks of a number of parishioners in two churches, and set fire to a similar number. But not all are so homicidal; tales are also told of spectral hounds that have protected travellers or saved them from harm.

This being Britain, you would not, of course, expect black dogs to be called...um...Black Dogs. Curious names for them abound. Here in Sussex, they are generally referred to as Witch or Wish Hounds. But elsewhere you may be unlucky enough to encounter Black Shuck, Barguest, Guytrash, Yeth Hounds, Shriker, Black Skeff or Moddey Dhoo.

Just south east of the village of Ditchling in Sussex, a headless dog haunts an old 'corpse road'; a track along which coffins were taken to church for burial, giving rise to the suggestion that this particular beast may be a guardian of the dead. And at a wood near Henfield, tales have been told of a dog the size of a calf with flaming red eyes, albeit it is believed to be an invention of local smugglers, who wanted to keep prying eyes away from the wood where they stored their booty!

I've only just started researching the subject of these nice doggies, so I don't know whether they appear in folklore elsewhere in the world. All I will say is, if you should happen to be out walking when you encounter a black labrador the size of a horse, with six heads, two tails and fiery breath, do yourself a favour...run!

To read this post, press one...

2009-02-28T10:37:00.001Z

I've had things too easy for too long. Every now and then I might need to cancel a direct debit, set up a new one, or pop into a bank to order a new cheque book. All fairly small transactions, I'm sure you'll agree. But I wasn't prepared for the amount of treacle (or molasses, if you prefer!) I would have to wade through as a result of Moving From One House To Another. The capitals are deliberate, by the way. Having read through this post a couple of times, I feared that it might be the worst kind of post; A Rant. But please don't dismiss me as a miserable old git. I think most, if not all of you will have encountered something similar in the recent past.

I like to think that I'm fairly well organised, and I thought I could approach the Moving House thing in a systematic way. You don't spend thirty years in law enforcement without at least learning how to run a tea club (a very difficult task) or talk a robbery suspect down from a four storey building, (a rather easier task than running a tea club), so I thought the old move would be simple by comparison with such things. I made a list of all our bank accounts, direct debits, account numbers; you name it. Then, I determined to approach each one systematically. Dear bloggy friend, they didn't make it easy for me. One organisation was insistent upon a letter with both old and new addresses; another would only allow me to give the information by phone; still another, only via its (unnecessarily complex) website. The phone ones were fun. They would demand (for security purposes) the first line of my old address, the first line of my new address, my new post (zip) code and my name. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they just asking for the information I would be about to give them if they hadn't interrupted me with these 'security' questions in the first place? Some demanded a password that I had apparently agreed with them at some time in the distant past. If I wasn't sure what it was, they'd try to prompt me. Doesn't that defeat the object of a password in the first place?

Another telephone encounter left me bemused. After the usual crop of 'security' question, they added a whole new layer of bureaucracy. 'If you have to phone us again, you'll need to answer these questions: (i) the name of the hospital where you were born; and (ii) the place where you took your first holiday as a child.' Dear friend, I will not be calling them again.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It's almost impossible for an average person to open a bank account these days. The banks place so many obstacles in the way of the ordinary Joe or Joanne to prevent money laundering. So poor Mrs. Miggins can't open an account because she can't produce three recent direct debit statements in her own name. Meanwhile, wealthy ne'er-do-wells who know how to circumvent the rules are gaily engaged in laundering vast amounts of cash under the bankers' noses! Whilst standing in a bank queue this morning, I heard a Respectable Middle-Aged Lady fulminating at the fact that, in trying to pay money into her account, the bank wanted both her signature and her date of birth. No, said R.M.A.L, I'll not sign anything, and I'm certainly not giving you my date of birth. You can just give me the cash straight back. So that's what they had to do. Oh, by the way. A collective noun for bankers; a Wunch. And the definition of a banker: someone who lends you an umbrella when it's sunny and takes it way when it's raining.

Internet banking. Now there's a whole new topic. What a marvellous idea; to be able to pay bills, move cash around, set up direct debits, and all on line! But, of course, every banking house has a different login procedure. Some ask you to input a twelve digit number sent to you by post, then your mother's maiden name, and then a four digit PIN you've decided upon yourself. Others want to know your debit card number and whether you prefer fish to chicken (true, I swear!). Still others send you a little plastic keypad that you need to use when carrying out online transactions. Now, what's the result of having all these accounts with different login numbers, PINs, favourite relatives, foods or pets? You have to do the unthinkable. You have to start writing them all down somewhere. Which is something, dear friend, that banks have been telling us not to do.

The post arrives early where I live. Among the letters that plopped onto the mat this morning was from one of my building societies, telling me not to lose my ISA allowance for this year. Now, this building society was one of the first to be notified of our change of address. And guess what? The letter had been redirected by the Royal Mail from my old address.

To return to the top of this post, press two. To leave a comment, press three. To speak to a genuine human being, press four...

God's Waiting Room

2009-02-25T19:20:00.000Z

We took a trip into Eastbourne yesterday. Now, for those of you who don't know it, Eastbourne is a busy seaside resort at the eastern end of the South Downs. It is often referred to as God's Waiting Room because of the large number of elderly people who have chosen it as their last dwelling place upon this earth. I must admit to having seen a number of folk who would make Methusaleh feel like a young whipper-snapper, and you do have to watch that you don't get run over by those little motorised trollies or injured by badly-handled zimmer frames. These things aside, Eastbourne is a fairly pleasant place; a bit like Brighton but without the vibrant gay and artistic communities. Many of its hotels have seen better days, and now have a kind of faded grandeur. One can imagine them staffed by aged waiters and chambermaids called Arthur and Tilly, who have probably been serving Brown Windsor and turning down beds since Charles Dickens came to stay.

One curious fact that came to light was that more elderly people than youngsters in Eastbourne have been served with Anti Social Behaviour Orders. It seems that they get involved in late night DIY to the annoyance of their neighbours and all manner of other cantankerous encounters. One man, a self-employed gardener, was issued with an ASBO for trying to drum up custom for his business in an aggressive manner. I wonder what was said...Come on! You know you want your roses pruned! It'd be a shame if those garden gnomes fell down the stairs, now wouldn't it?

Eastbourne is close to the dizzy heights of Beachy Head, a 535 foot chalk cliff with a lighthouse at its foot. Apparently the Head has been a popular venue for suicides since the 1600s (I wonder where they went in the 1500s...or were there other preferred methods of suicide before the 17th century?) with around twenty people a year choosing to step off the edge of the cliff and into oblivion. 'A six hundred foot drop can be deadly', says the BBC's Inside Out website in a curious case of stating the rather obvious. Some years ago a telephone box was placed close to the edge of the cliff with telephone numbers for the Samaritans plastered all over it, so one would hope this would reduce the incidence of suicides. One chap threw himself off, only to land on a ledge two hundred feet down the side of the cliff. Having been spoken to by a local policeman and clearly having got something out of his system, he then calmly lit a cigarette and waited for the helicopter to arrive!

Our trip was not troubled with anything so disturbing as a two hundred foot cliff tumble, no; it was merely to purchase some curtains and enjoy a leisurely lunch. And so, surrounded by the octogenarians of what is supposed to be the sunniest resort on the South Coast, we ate, we drank, we curtained. If, of course, you will permit me to use curtain as a verb.

Blowing my own small trumpet

2009-02-22T17:43:00.000Z

Alright. I know that, in the greater scheme of things, it's not War and Peace. Nor is it the start of a great literary career. But it gives me a small degree of satisfaction nevertheless.

I have always loved the Victorian ghost story; particularly those of M.R. James. They always seem to pop up on UK television around Christmas, and it was a good few years ago that I decided to pen my own nod to the genre. And what did I do with it? I put it in a box and forgot about it.

Then, last year, at my stepson's wedding in Cyprus, I got chatting to the editor of an 'Ex-Pat' magazine. She was looking for something suitable for Christmas; I mentioned the ghost story; and the rest is history.

I've had odds and ends published in the past, but this is my first short story in print. And I've got to say it's given me a little satisfaction. So I'm sure you'll excuse me, just this once, for blowing my own little trumpet.

Oh, and you can read it here, by the way!

Building a family

2009-02-18T22:29:00.000Z

I must confess to being something of a house and home programme buff. It's probably something to do with being so focussed on house buying and selling over the last year or so. But I'm beginning to wonder whether there are two kinds of people who buy houses; me on one side and everyone else on the other. Because the people who appear in the (mainly Channel 4) lifestyle programmes appear to inhabit a different universe to my humble self. Take Relocation, relocation on Channel 4 tonight. It featured a thirty-something couple who had £1.4 million to spend on a house and wedding venue. This was followed by Grand Designs, where a cutting-edge architect and his wife decided to build a 'passive' eco house, using a system of exterior tiling more usually encountered in medieval Spain. So, I ask...am I going wrong somewhere? Are my aspirations to sand down the banisters and give the hall a coat of Farrow and Ball's House White simply not ambitious enough? Should I be sourcing my window blinds from a sustainable hardwood forest in Estonia rather than B and Q? And would it help if I shaved off my (now) shoulder length hair to make me look more like a participant in one of the above-mentioned programmes?

One curious aspect of all these programs is the incidence of pregnancy. The couple buy a tumbledown house on a desirable plot, then proceed to knock it down and resign themselves to living on site in a draughty caravan for a year and a half whilst the new house goes up. And what happens? Three months into the project, they announce to the presenter that a baby is on the way. The poor child is eventually born in said caravan and lives its first few months in an unheated box, surrounded by camping equipment and primus stoves. What's happening here? Is the act of building/purchase an aphrodisiac in itself? Or is it just a case of poor planning by folk who otherwise appear to be able to plan a house build down to the last nail? Let's face it, these programmes invariably feature a planning officer somewhere along the way. Perhaps that individual could draw up a list of 'to dos' that includes the advice 'attempt to avoid getting pregnant if you are likely to be involved in bricklaying, humping RSJs or digging drains for the next few months.' I'm beginning to wonder whether the pregnancy thing is written into the programme contract, thus giving the presenter a chance to re-visit the finally finished house and meet little Poppy or Oscar. But perhaps this is going too far, even for television. Or is it?

Cuckmere Carpenters, Seaford Shags

2009-02-16T22:46:00.000Z

Now, before you ask...no, I didn't take this picture, but I wish I had! Doesn't it look like something from the lid of a chocolate box, or some Beautiful Britain calendar? It's a view of a series of sea cliffs called 'The Seven Sisters' from Seaford Head, just a short distance from my new home. The houses you can see are former coastguard cottages at Cuckmere Haven, one of which was featured at the end of the film Atonement, and is presently inhabited by a carpenter called Cassian Garbett, who makes extraordinarily expensive pieces of furniture from driftwood collected on the beach.

Seaford, my new home town, is only about 60 miles from London, but it's a world away. It has a proper, old-fashioned high street with a butcher's shop, a greengrocer's, a fish shop (we had some brilliant fresh squid for lunch the other day), and an old hardware store where you can buy anything from a single nail to a bag of nutty slack (erm...coal, I mean!) It also has something that I have always wanted; a number of decent pubs where you can have a sit down meal, or just relax with a pint of beer for as long as you want.

At present, we are so preoccupied with the business of sorting out the house that we haven't had time for a leisurely stroll on the beach. But spring and summer are around the corner, and once the boxes have been cleared away and the last ornament has been carefully dusted and placed upon the shelf, there will be plenty of time for such things! And, best of all, the sun, the sea and the beach are all free.

Apparently, in the 1500s, the good people of Seaford were in the habit of lighting fires to lure ships into Seaford Bay. The ships ran aground, were wrecked, and were then looted by the local populace, who were colloquially known as shags or cormorants. What's the difference between a shag and a cormorant, I hear you ask. I am certainly not going to get involved in any such vulgar discussion! At the time of writing, I haven't seen any desperate fellows wandering through the town, carrying casks of rum or baccy. But it's early days yet.

Anyway, it's way past my bedtime. We countryfolk are normally abed at sunset, but tonight I have special dispensation to stay up and chat. But all good things must come to an end. My cup of cocoa awaits, as do my nightcap and hot water bottle. Night night all!

I'm back. And to prove it, I'm here!

2009-02-13T22:27:00.000Z

Greetings, dear bloggy friends.

After a not altogether untraumatic moving day (which I may tell you about when I feel a little stronger!), and a couple of weeks wrangling with BT (the phone company, to those of you elsewhere in the world who are fortunate never to have encountered this arcane and circumlocutory institution) I am, at last, back on line!

We chose, it appears, the worst time to move. Heavy snow, high winds, driving rain, mountainous seas...we've had the lot. We're still waiting for the locusts and boils, however.

I write this missive from my living room (drawing room would be pretentious, would it not?) with my late father's laptop...erm...on my lap. Do men have laps? Do Lapps (or Sami, as they are correctly termed) have laps? Two weeks away from my keyboard has neither dimmed nor dulled my sense of enquiry with regard to such matters.

To say I have missed our cosy fireside chats (incidentally, I do have a proper fireside now) would be an understatement. I have missed the humour, the banter, the erudition and the giraffes - you all know who you are! As we wade our way through the tide of boxes, my postings may be a little more sparse for a while; but rest assured I shall be reading, and commenting upon, your own commentaries upon life.

Kind regards as always,

Chris.

Hello. And goodbye. But not for long!

2009-01-29T00:36:00.000Z

Greetings, my dear bloggy friends.

It's said that two of the most stressful events in one's life are bereavement and moving house. Well, this month I've had both. Regular readers will note that my father passed away on New Year's Day, but what you will not be aware of is my imminent move from just outside London to East Sussex; to Seaford, in fact, a small town just a few miles east of Brighton, that vibrant jewel of the south coast of England. The process of estate agents, solicitors, and stupid amounts of paperwork and delays has proved to be extremely annoying and aggravating!

All being well, me, my family and our belongings will be transported to our new home on Friday. Sadly, the move will necessitate a temporary loss of the internet, but I assure you that I shall return (I hope!) invigorated by the sea air (less than ten minutes' walk away!) early in February. My life with my current service provider has but twenty four hours to run, so any words of comfort or encouragement within that timeframe would be gratefully and graciously received.

I look forward to our future encounters.

Kind regards,

Chris.

Let there be light...eventually

2009-01-12T14:40:00.000Z

You will all know what I'm talking about here, won't you? Perhaps you're wrestling with something technical; say, trying to put together an Ikea wardbrobe by referring to the wordless instruction booklet. Or maybe you're trying to remember who that actor was in Brief Encounter that smacked Myrtle Bagot's bum in the station refreshment room. You can't figure out the former, and you certainly can't recall the latter. Then, all of a sudden...ping! You realise in a flash that you need the smaller allen key to tighten the little metal screw-type thing, and the name you've had on the tip of your tongue is, of course, Stanley Holloway. Congratulations, my bloggy friend; you've just had a light bulb moment.

Depiction of the light bulb moment is very common in advertising these days. There is an ad currently running on UK television where the husband and wife (or they could be unmarried partners or in some other informal relationship - I'm very broad-minded about these things!) have large incandescent bulbs strapped to their crania, which then illuminate, presumably at some point crucial to the purpose of the advertisement. I'm sad to say, dear reader, that the ad had so much impact upon me that I'm damned if I can remember what it's selling. Be that as it may, the lightbulb also appears above the head of cartoon characters when they are struck with some startling thought; quite often the individual will be a scientist (often mad or at least eccentric) or an inventor, perhaps. What it is intended to depict is that Eureka! moment, when an idea evolves or a solution presents itself in a flash.

So, what do we do now that the European Union has decided to withdraw the incandescent bulb in favour of its low-energy successor? The new bulb is 'eco-friendly', in that it reduces carbon emissions (but has a downside in that it contains small amounts of mercury that, in theory, require specialist disposal), and it also lasts for a ridiculously long time. However, what it does not do, when you flick the switch, is bathe your room in instantaneous bright light; no. It's a kind of 'slow burn' light; a bit like a Victorian oil lamp just after you light the wick. It seems to struggle for a bit, giving you the sort of illumination Mr. Dickens probably wrote The Pickwick Papers by. Eventually, it seems to summon up energy enough to light whatever it is you wanted to do, but by then you've finished whatever it was and you turn the thing off again. It this bulb was a person it would probably be David Essex on beta blockers.

So, not for the first time in this blog, I ask...where am I going with this? I'll tell you. Now that the incandescent bulb is on the way out, what will we use in ads and cartoons to denote the instantaneous brainwave? The new generation of bulbs seem to me to be far better suited to philosophers or 'ologists'; those who spend a bit of time pondering the existence of deities or the meaning of life, and to whom ideas come, not in a flash, but rather as a dawning realisation over the course of weeks or even months. In due course of time, the light bulb moment could be used as a derogatory term for a particularly slow-witted individual. Or a philosopher. If the two are different.

So what do we use to replace the current image? I'd like answers on a postcard, please. If you switch that lamp on now you should be able to see enough to write it by Friday.

New Year's Daze

2009-01-02T09:17:00.000Z

This post is dedicated to my Dad, Roy, who passed away on New Year's Day. He was a true 'Silver Surfer', having developed a keen interest in computers late in life. He enjoyed reading this and other blogs. Dad, this one's for you.

It’s traditional to wish each other a happy new year on the 1st of January. However, this was not always the case. But before we embark upon a whistle stop tour of this curious and interesting topic, can I advise you to lay off the Cherry B and Crème de Menthe for the time being? Even sober, the subject started to give me a head ache, and I determined to keep it simple enough for me to understand. Anyway, here goes…

The ancient Romans celebrated the 1st of January as New Year’s Day, and the day was held as a festival to a greater or lesser extent in the years following the fall of the Empire. However, up to 1752, Christian countries regarded the 25th of March as New Year’s Day, and it was on this day that the year advanced. Thus (for example), the 24th March 1625 was followed by the 25th of March 1626. As you might have guessed, religion had a hand in this rather curious situation. The 25th of March was, by tradition, the date of the annunciation, when the angel is said to have informed Mary of her pregnancy (with Christmas falling exactly nine months later, you will note - would that all babies were that punctual!). Now, the church counted ‘Anno Domini’ (The Year of Our Lord) from the conception of Jesus, not from the date of his birth, and it is for this reason that the 25th of March came to be regarded as the start of the year. The day was colloquially known as Lady Day, and was one of the four quarter days; in other words, a day upon which rents fell due and contracts started or ended. It also marked the start of both the legal and the tax year.

Things poodled along happily for years, but then got a bit complicated in 1751, when England decided to replace the Julian calendar with the Gregorian one. Most other countries had already done this in 1582 (although Russia and Serbia waited until 1918 to adopt the Gregorian system). The reasons advanced for this were that the Julian system was:

…attended with divers inconveniences, not only as it differs from the usage of neighbouring nations, but also from the legal method of computation in Scotland, and from the common usage throughout the whole kingdom, and thereby frequent mistakes are occasioned in the dates of deeds and other writings, and disputes arise therefrom.

Under the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750, the 1st of January, not the 25th of March, was deemed to be New Year’s Day. The changes were implemented in 1751/2, with the result that 1751 was a short year of only 282 days, running from the 25th of March to the 31st of December, and 1752 began on the 1st of January.

But the changes didn’t end there. Oh no. The old Julian calendar (created by Julius Caesar) had too many ‘leap days’, which meant that, over many years, the calendar was out of kilter with the solar year (the time taken by the earth to complete a single orbit of the sun). This caused problems for the church, because it used the vernal equinox to calculate the date of the moveable feast of Easter. The inaccuracy of the Julian calendar meant that vernal equinox (when day and night are of equal length) could not be guaranteed to fall upon the 21st March. The simple solution the government came up with was to advance the calendar by eleven days. So, if you had been around in 1752, and had gone to bed on the 2nd September, you might have been surprised, on waking the next day, to be told that it was now the 14th of September. It’s alleged that this action caused mass panic amongst the great British public, with demonstrations and the waving of banners declaring ‘Give us back our eleven days!’. There is no real evidence for this, but it's a good story, nevertheless!

So everyone accepted the change from the 25th March to the 1st of January, did they? Not a bit of it. The taxation authorities wanted to keep the March date as the start of the tax year, but were worried that the eleven days removed from the calendar would mean that they were able to collect eleven days’ less tax. So, they simply stuck them back in after the 25th March, so that the tax year for 1752 started instead on the 6th of April. There it remains to this day, a relic of changes to our calendar over two and a half centuries ago, and a reminder that, even then, the Government wasted no opportunity to screw every penny out of the populace.

I think I’ll stop before I get too political! May I wish you all a Happy New Year.

Floored by a Rollmop! Or is it Rolled by a Floormop?

2008-12-27T13:20:00.000Z

A few Christmases ago - three, I fancy it was - I was brought to my knees by a Rollmop; you might know it as a pickled or soused herring. Now, I have always been extremely partial to this particular piscine product, but this individual held a nasty surprise in store for me. I will not go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that, in that year, I celebrated Christmas by consuming nothing other than water. The effect of this event was profound. Although I still continue to consume all other kinds of seafood, oysters included, I have not, from that day to this, eaten a Rollmop. So, if a single run-in with an individual clupea harengus in acetic acid can produce such abstinence, why, oh why does it not work with alcohol?

When it comes to alcohol, it seems that the phrase, 'you learn by your mistakes' is written in some language indecipherable to many of us. Because, dear reader, I would argue that we don't learn from our past mistakes when it comes to drinking. Picture the scene; you're invited to some bash or other - perhaps a Christmas party, or a leaving do - and you know you've got to be up and out early the next day. 'I'll just have a couple', you say to no-one in particular, but then, a few hours later, having acquired the taste for whatever you happen to be drinking, there you are, quaffing and carousing, and making Shakespeare's bibulous old Sir John Falstaff seem like a tea-drinking Methodist.

Then you start making mental calculations. 'If I leave in half an hour, I'll be home by one. That'll give me five hours sleep, time for a quick shower, and then out.' But then someone buys you another drink, and the whole thing has to be re-calculated, at a time when your mathematical skills are not, shall we say, at their sharpest. This you have already demonstrated by handing over a large denomination note for every round you buy, because you've lost the ability to count out the right amount of change.

Eventually, you find your way home, albeit probably not at the time you intended. Your clothes are all awry, and your pockets bulge with 'drunk's change' - piles of low-denomination coins. You somehow divest yourself of your clothes and tumble into bed and into a dreamless sleep.

But, in the morning, comes the reckoning:

'He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning...his mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.'

Kingsley Amis' description of Jim Dixon's hangover in Lucky Jim encapsulates the whole experience rather nicely, I would say. In the course of my fifty-odd years on this earth, I've had more hangovers than you could shake a Martini at. The pounding head, the overwhelming nausea, the unusual perspiration...yep, I've had them all. And, as I get older, they seem to last longer, despite my best efforts to treat them. So, in the absence of something called will power that might actually stop me drinking to excess in the first place, I need one of two things; either (i) something to lessen the effects of the alcohol; or (ii) a surefire hangover cure. Interestingly, my researches indicate that most of our forbears' energy was expended in finding preventative measures, rather than cures for the subsequent effects.

The ancient Greeks apparently believed that drunkenness was caused by noxious fumes rising from the wine they drank, but thought that the effects of the fumes could be nullified by wearing a wreath around the head. These wreaths were generally of myrtle, roses or violets, but some also believed in the efficacy of cabbage leaves, ivy or parsley. I suppose that, if this preventative measure failed, you could at least chew on the parsley to make your breath a little less unpleasant!

Cabbage and parsley also make appearances in ancient Rome. Emperors drank boiled cabbage water to prevent intoxication, whilst the politician Cato favoured the vegetable itself. "It will make you feel as if you had not eaten, and you can drink as much as you like." Unlike the Greeks, the Romans were not foolish enough to believe that wearing a parsley wreath prevented drunkeness. Of course not; they made it into a necklace instead.

I think, perhaps, we should be indebted to Pliny the Elder for his tireless search for remedies to prevent intoxication. In his Naturalis Historia, he lists a number of these: two raw owls' eggs drunk in wine over the course of three days; roasted sheeps' lungs; eels 'suffocated' in wine; powdered pumice in one's drink; a mixture of ash from the burnt beak of a swallow and myrrh; and, if all else failed, deep-fried canary. It is, perhaps, ironic that Pliny the Elder died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, due, according to his nephew, to 'some unusually gross vapour, as I conjecture, having obstructed his breathing and blocked his windpipe'. In other words, inhalation of pumice dust.

Preventatives of, and cures for, drunkenness seem to have been in short supply during the middle ages. However, the one that keeps popping up is eels and bitter almonds. Raw eels were mixed with the bitter almonds, ground up into a paste and then served on bread. I suppose we can only hope that the almonds were cultivated rather than wild. Apparently, the ground up wild almond, unless roasted or treated in some other way, produces cyanide. A permanent hangover cure, I suppose.

I know I keep coming back to my old friend John Aubrey, but he does seem to have something relevant to say for almost everything I write. In his Brief Lives, he mentions the actions of Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher, and the method he employed to lessen the effects of alcohol:

'When he did drink, he would drink to excess to have the benefit of vomiting, which he did easily; by which benefit neither his wit was disturbed (longer than he was spewing) nor his stomach oppressed.'

So there you go. Drink until you spew. If you want.

Time marches on. In the eighteenth century, that Age of Enlightenment, we do, at last, find a hangover cure. And to my mind it's quite pleasant. Drip some clove oil onto a sugar cube and suck it, then chew a bit of parsley (parsley again!), followed by a nice cup of camomile tea, and round off the process nicely by taking a teaspoon of honey every half hour for two or three hours. By which time (to my way of thinking) the hangover will have gone of its own accord!

I'm not going to bore you with all the new-fangled hangover cures that involve paracetamol, or Alka Selzer. You've probably tried all of them at some stage anyway, with (I'm sure) varying degrees of success, and you might even be able to suggest some of your own that are more efficatious. All I will say is, if all else fails, knock out a quick prayer to St. Viviana. She's the patron saint of the hangover.

Christmas Greetings from England's smallest County

2008-12-25T10:24:00.000Z

Hi All.

May I wish you and your families a very happy Christmas.

I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking to all of you in this my first year of blogging. I look forward to continuing our acquaintance in 2009.

Have a great day!

Io Saturnalia!

2008-12-19T16:58:00.000Z

Sorry it's a bit late, but can I just wish you all a happy Saturnalia!

I seem to recall mentioning Saturnalia in passing a few posts back; mainly in connection with Christmas, and the fact that the latter festival's timing owes something to the pagan festival held in Rome. But I didn't really go into much detail, did I? Otherwise I'd have been off at a tangent (nothing unusual for me) and would have found it quite impossible to get back on track.

Saturnalia commemorated the dedication of the temple of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and the harvest. In Rome's mythology, when Jupiter ascended the throne of the gods, Saturn is said to have escaped to Rome and ruled the city, presiding over a period of unprecedented peace and harmony - a so-called Golden Age. It was in honour of this period that Saturnalia was celebrated at around the time of the winter solstice - December the 17th.

Originally, Saturnalia, like Christmas, was a single day of celebration, but it became such a popular festival (for obvious reasons, of which more later) that it ended up being a full week long, despite the attempts of emperors to reduce its length. As with all Roman festivals, there were 'official' celebrations; the emperor, in his role of Pontifex Maximus (high priest) would make sacrifices to the god, and priests of the temple would perform other rituals. The feet of the statue of Saturn, bound with woollen thread for the rest of the year, were unbound to symbolise liberation, and the image (which was hollow) was filled with fresh olive oil - one of Rome's agricultural bounties.

For the general population, Saturnalia was a family holiday; a chance to let the hair down and have some fun. Schools were closed, official government business was suspended, and prisoners on death row were spared...but only until the festival ended! Roman armies fighting abroad suspended all hostilities for the duration of the festival, although whether they played football with their enemies in Gallia or Germania is not recorded. The rather formal toga was abandoned in favour of a colourful 'dinner suit' (the synthesis), and everyone wore a pileus - a little pointed hat - which was symbolic of freedom (slaves were traditionally given one of these on being freed). Some sources say these hats were made of paper...now, what does that remind you of?

Families got together to eat and drink, and to exchange gifts. Houses were decorated with boughs and other greenery brought in from outside, and lamps were lit. In those households with slaves (in other words, most households except the poorest), the social order was turned upside-down. The master was expected to both cook, and serve, dinner to his slaves, whilst the slaves were allowed to treat the master with a kind of jokey contempt. Personally, I think it fairly unlikely that there were many masters in Rome who could even boil water, so I suspect the slaves prepared the food for the master to serve it up. The slaves were also exempt from punishment at this time of year, and were allowed to gamble with dice. Romans lived in constant fear of slave revolts, or of being murdered in their beds by their own household slaves, so were probably a bit wary of their slaves getting too much of a taste for freedom during this season of laissez-faire. A slave who was less than respectful to his master at some other time of year would be asked sarcastically, 'Is it December already, then?'

Of course, there were always a few that went over the top. The streets of some parts of Rome, albeit patrolled by the Vigiles (a cross between a police force and a fire brigade), were still extraordinarily dangerous by modern standards, and some used Saturnalia as an excuse for getting extremely drunk and performing random acts of violence upon innocent passers-by. Two such individuals who put on disguises, got drunk, and wandered around Rome's red light district picking fights and beating people up were emperors - Caligula and Nero. Although we cannot be sure that these acts were perpetrated during Saturnalia, it seems pretty likely with Nero. His birthday fell upon the 15th December; two days before the start of the festival. In his twenty-second year he had his mother killed, and celebrated his birthday by shaving off his beard. How better to round the year off than to dress down and inflict a bit of ultra-violence on your people?

Well, I hope your winter celebrations involve something a little less confrontational. Io Saturnalia!