All There

In the New York Times, Roger Cohen quite brilliantly highlights the major irritants of English-speaking life at present:

Roger Cohen

There is a reflexive pronoun epidemic in England that, while it may not be high on the list of the world’s problems, is suggestive of some serious social weirdness. It’s a straining for exaggerated politeness or elevated speech that reflects a society still riven by class.

“Does that work for yourself?” “Could we perhaps have a quote from yourself?” “Is the water temperature right for yourself?” “We will have that fixed for yourself as soon as possible.” “I have booked the flight for yourself.”

Yes, that is all fine for myself!!! (I would not dream of ending that last sentence with a period as it may appear unenthusiastic when I want to exude delight at being addressed with such deference.) In fact, thanks to yourself, it’s been a great day for myself!!!

What on earth is wrong with little old “you” and “me?” They are words too short and too plain for the hospitality and service industries that now make up a big chunk of the British economy. People used to manufacture machines. Now they manufacture obsequious multisyllabic reflexive pronouns with a letter quotient designed to aggrandize yourselves, and so render yourself pliant to opening your wallet.

It’s all part of the “bespoke” experience!! Don’t get me started on that.

Of course, I have to curb the overwhelming urge to tell people that “you” and “me” are just fine for ME (as they should be for YOU), as that would reveal my own snobbery in reaction to their inverted, or misplaced, or attempted snobbery; so sharpening corrosive social divisions.

That would not be good for a country, or what is left of it, that recently saw two old Etonians, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, duel over Britain’s European future and produce a disaster for myself, yourself, herself, himself and just about any self.

There is no doubt, at least for myself, that this reflexive pronoun business has now outstripped apostrophe abuse as the supreme grammatical annoyance. Its such an irritant in it’s way — perhaps also to yourselve’s?!?!

There is also the uncontrolled use of the word “pop” to consider — “pop a signature on there,” “pop your seat upright,” “pop me an e-mail” — but it’s a short word that falls within the ambit of that maddeningly meaningless phrase: It is what it is.

Now if any British corporation “reached out” to its employees on the issue of the misuse of reflexive pronouns, it would probably have to “take the issue offline” because of its sensitivity, “unpack” all the nuances, make discussion of it “a regular thing going forward,” “drill down” as far as possible, “get its ducks in a row” before deciding to “action” any change, and generally have a “thought shower” (“brainstorm” is now, it seems, considered offensive to epileptics) about how its clients “themselves” might react.

Not bothering with all this is clearly a no-brainer!!!

I know that there is no escaping the little irritants in life, like asking for ice in your Coke in France and getting a single ice cube; or the beeps and pings that now issue from every electronic contraption; or seeing a bottle of good wine emptied by some overzealous sommelier into four glasses filled almost to the brim; or losing out to the fine print; or being defeated in the quest to speak to a human being by some devilish labyrinth of automated responses; or having to listen to an explanation of why anyone would want a driverless car; or password hell; or just finding yourself in an airport alongside all the other suckers who know for a fact that whatever happened to Osama bin Laden was grossly insufficient punishment.

So it goes. You just have to breathe deeply and be grateful for the gift of breath. YOLO! Don’t get me started on that, either.

The English reflexive pronoun thing has not crossed the Atlantic, yet, but “no worries” has (having previously made the longer crossing from Australia). I’m just not in a space right now where I can deal with that. (“Oh, really, where are you then?”)

It may just be time to “offboard” as I’m not sure I have the “bandwidth” to be “looped” into a discussion of how anyone can say “no worries” at this particular moment in history, whatever side of the Atlantic himself or herself happens to be situated on. I mean that’s just beyond. What would be even the thematic tent poles of the debate? I can’t even!!

Let’s face it: “Does that work for yourself?” is never going to work in New York City, which would rather tell you to “drop dead” than adopt that affectation. So there are limits to the global homogenization of bad English after all. Neither deference nor pomposity is a New York thing. America is not classless; it’s just not class obsessed.

That in plain English will about do it for myself.

So Called Thoughts

A few wisps of something vaguely resembling thought have been drifting through my head as I go about my business in these rather unsettling times.

For instance, after unavoidably glimpsing a picture of a blonde US politician who always appears to be on the brink of exploding, overcome by an inner volcano of rage and irrational hatred, it struck me that describing someone as "self-contained" is peculiar, in that it would be fairly dreadful if we weren't all adequately contained within our own skins. I mean, just imagine the alternative.

Following this peculiar revelation, in order to cleanse my mind of the glimpsed image I went out for a country walk. Not perhaps entirely disconnectedly, it then occurred to me how odd it is that humans are the only creatures I know of that can't eat any old thing, no matter how raw it is, regardless of whether it is fly-ridden or muddy or whatever. Hygiene doesn't seem to be important for a cow or a crow. I say" not entirely disconnectedly" because the thought of such creatures, having eaten their dirty foodstuffs, being unself-contained is an even less attractive one than the thought of unself-contained humanity.

To distract myself from all these unsavoury prospects, I sat down on a bench and sent some utterly unnecessary emails. I did this purely to hear that lovely whooshing sound emails make when you send them from a telephone. Is it just me, or is it very cheering, on a par with the rustle of an emptying electronic wastebin, but far more readily available? Whoosh, whoosh, gosh, does it really matter that the world is on the brink of who knows what, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

You've Got Mail

In an aeroplane recently, I was given a copy of the Daily Mail. It was the first time I'd read that newspaper, (if that's what it is), and it revealed a new world to me - multiple-dishwasher-world to be precise.

One woman was featured because she has been converted to double dishwasherhood:

 Two others can no longer live without four:

 "For me, the desire for multiple dishwashers is rooted in my childhood" - is that not one of the greatest lines ever uttered?

 What are we coming to? Particularly when you consider this, from the Financial Times, which I also read on the same trip:

 Why can we not be at least a little more like Angela Burdett-Coutts; why is the magazine How to Spend It devoted to yachts, watches and, possibly, diamond encrusted dishwashers, rather than deserving charities to suit all tastes:

 While I quite liked the description of what Daily Mail journalists believe to be the Princess Royal's natural habitat:

 I think the very clever Twitter poet, Brian Billston, should have the last word on the paper:

 PS The Times is scarcely better than the Mail now, so far as I can see. And, on that note, while this is some months old, is anyone else surprised to note that spending £14 on a pair of tights has somehow become frugality?

Just Listen - Moscow by Jack Grimwood, Audible Book

I bought this because it is set in Moscow in the 1980s and I was in Moscow in the 1980s. I also read a review that said it was fascinating and evoked the atmosphere of that time and place. It isn’t and it doesn’t.

On the setting front, apart from name-checking a few Soviet car makes and having his hero smoke papirosi (as if - I’ve tried them, yeurgh, no one would choose to, given any sort of choice -  and he has plenty) the writer does not make much effort to conjure up Moscow at that era, especially for readers who never witnessed it firsthand.  But then it would not surprise me if Mr Grimwood never witnessed it at first hand himself, but just checked Google to find his few his few scraps of superficial local colour.

As to the “fascinating” claim, the book is an unoriginal if “racy” whodunnit that involves a lot of specifying of car and motor bike horsepower, a lot of male drinking and a lot of violence, usually applied to women - and in those cases described with what strikes me as creepily meticulous detail.

The characters are as substantial as steam and the only thing that marks the novel out from all the other books of its kind, (I think the Italians call these kinds of novels “gialli”?), is its setting, (see above for the disappointing nature of same), plus the fact that the author has thrown in Northern-Ireland-conflict-PTSD for good measure and added the requisite quota of "sexy ladies" who flirt and even sometimes fall into bed with the hero - because that’s what women are for, right?

I didn’t enjoy the book, but I’m sure lots of people, (mainly male?) would. That doesn’t stop it being total rubbish really - but it is not too badly read by one of Audible's narrators. How he managed to take the text seriously is beyond me.

A Great Read

Someone cut and pasted this and didn't tell me where it is from so I cannot give it full attribution, (thanks, Dave Lull, it is apparently from The Times, although I don't know what date). It is by AA Gill and, whatever your views about the EU, it is a hugely good read:

Brexit: AA Gill argues for ‘In’

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”

It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.

The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.

And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.

All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.

There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.

The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.

Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty

We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.

Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”

When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.

Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’

You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.

Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.

The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.

There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.

The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.

Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?

I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in."

Humpty Dumpty

One of my favourite bits in Through the Looking Glass is when Humpty Dumpty tells Alice how he uses words:

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'"

I thought of this passage, when I read this blurb on the BBC website, promoting a forthcoming programme:

"Bettany Hughes investigates the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx. Born to an affluent Prussian family, Marx became an angry, idealistic radical, constantly on the run for his political agitating and incendiary writing. In Paris he first formulated his explosive analysis of capitalism and its corrosive effects on human nature. In Brussels he co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Frederick Engels. In London his obsessive theorizing dragged his family into poverty and tragedy. 

Marx's masterpiece Das Capital was largely overlooked in his lifetime, and only 11 people attended his funeral. Yet his ideas would generate one of the most influential, and divisive, ideologies in history. Drawing on expert opinion and new evidence, Bettany reveals the flesh-and-blood man and his groundbreaking ideas."

All well and good, except that the programme is called "Genius" and Marx is being presented as the first example of the species.

No. No. No. The last half century or more endured by those who have lived in countries run along Marxist lines does not provide evidence that Marx can be classified a genius - at least not from where I'm sitting wearing this nice cravat - or is it a belt? - atop this very fine wall*.

*  "What a beautiful belt you've got on!' Alice suddenly remarked.

(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) 'At least,' she corrected herself on second thoughts, 'a beautiful cravat, I should have said—no, a belt, I mean—I beg your pardon!' she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn't chosen that subject. 'If I only knew,' she thought to herself, 'which was neck and which was waist!'

Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.

'It is a—most—provoking—thing,' he said at last, 'when a person doesn't know a cravat from a belt!'"

Wonders

At lunch yesterday someone's meal arrived with chips - not something you'd remark on in Belgium, almost one of those things where you're actually saying the same thing twice, (oxymoron?) There, if a meal didn't arrive with chips, it would be a very remarkable thing.

But I'm in Australia and yesterday only one of the three meals we ordered for lunch arrived with chips. By the end of the meal though not one of us had resisted their allure.  As a result, I began to wonder if anyone has ever in the history of the world since chips were invented been able to sit at a table with a bowl of the things and not eat at least one or two.

(In the same vein, I remember someone who lived in France wondering if a baguette had ever reached anyone's home after purchase, without the end being nibbled off.)

While we were in the restaurant, it started raining pretty heavily. At the end of lunch, going out into the street behind a group of people I did not know, I heard the one at the front observe to their companions that it was 'pissing down', and the next thing I knew I found myself forgetting about chips and wondering instead about when 'it's pouring down' was replaced by 'it's pissing down'. The latter seems to me to be far more the common usage these days, sadly, in my view. But I shall restrain myself from pulling out the soap box and climbing onto it to rant and rave about the sad decline in contemporary taste and manners.

Besides, I had a wider horizon on which to wonder - namely, whether as a species we are too far decayed to be redeemed. It was the dreadful murder of a British MP by a frenzied madman, possibly egged on by things he'd read and seen on the Internet, that prompted this line of gloomy wondering. For a change, the man's rage had not been whipped up by misinterpreters of a religion, so far as I know, but by haters of a different kind.

People have, since the event, been lecturing anyone who'll listen about not using inflammatory language, but it's too late for that, I reckon. Now the Internet exists, with all its wild pockets, that horse has well and truly bolted and there is no stopping the madness. Maybe trying to stay in touch with each other, attempting to lessen isolation between neighbours, might help, even if some of them seem a bit nutty. Easier said than done though, if your neighbours are slightly terrifying.

I felt pretty miserable as I pursued this line of thought. I was in the car by this time and the radio news was on. Some gotcha journalist had dug up the fact that the Prime Minister of Australia, while making an attempt to bridge gulfs between different groups by having a dinner to do with Ramadan at his house, had unwittingly entertained a guest who has in the past advocated violence to homosexuals.

As the guest's name was Shady, it does strike me that someone in the checking process probably ought to have given him a second glance, but it isn't really the most enormously huge deal, in my view. From my perspective, it looked like one of those increasingly regularly whipped up little storms in teacups beloved of journalists these days, the kinds of things that make me wonder whether the media has got muddled and begun to think that provoking outrage is their main role, rather than providing information.

Anyway the journalist asked their snidey little question and the Prime Minister began to answer it and I drove along half listening and feeling sad about the world. And suddenly the Prime Minister started talking about love and how really it is the only thing that matters and that had been the only point of the occasion, to promote love, which really is at the heart of everything and actually the most important thing in all of existence.

And as he spoke, I saw a bus stop on my left, and in it - the bus stops in Canberra are hideous, circular concrete things to look at from the outside but, much as I hate to admit it, really rather cozy when you are inside them - there was a young couple sitting on the curved bench running around the inner wall. They were holding hands and chatting. They looked happy and possibly not without love. The sight of them reminded me that not all humans are frenzied madmen or homophobic preachers or gotcha journalists.

Sadly, since that cheering moment, I have been unable to find any footage of the Prime Minister's odd little outbreak. Until I heard it, I'd been very unsure what I thought of him, but the honesty and lack of spin his words seemed to contain made me wonder if perhaps he is really quite all right and we may be in safe hands, (at least until 2 July, when we hold our election and he might find himself feeling no love from the Australian people).

Mind you, someone I'm very fond of suggests that what he said - as I recounted it - was just motherhood stuff and a frightful load of cliche. She may be correct - but she didn't actually hear it. And maybe I didn't either. Maybe I slipped briefly into a parallel universe or I had a moment of delusion. If so, it was nice while it lasted.

Sadly, that wasn't very long.