What I Did on My Holidays III

I looked at this Stubbs painting in the National Gallery in Washington:

 and liked the absurdity of its title:

from which is missing the name of the only creature in the whole picture who Stubbs appears to have had any real interest in:

 What a sensitive and noble face.

(I also liked this one, by the same artist, of a rather worried looking poodle, standing on a punt):

What I Did on My Holidays II

Admired the humour of whoever arranged this display in a Boston bookshop:

What I Did on My Holidays I

Got annoyed, yet again, at the use by the British 'hospitality' (and there's another abused word, right there) industry of the word 'discretionary':

I should make clear that I have nothing against a service charge being levied - it is the dishonesty of calling it 'discretionary' when it is not (try querying it and see what happens, if you don't believe me).

(Warning: coming up over the next few weeks - or whenever I get around to it - will be a series of blog equivalents of that longlost 1950s suburban 'entertainment': long, dull slide nights of all the things I saw and did over the last month.)

Someone Else Got There First

Once again, I discover my own unoriginality. This time it is in the Georgetown branch of Urban Outfitters. I am standing around waiting, while one of my daughters makes a valiant effort to persuade herself that the expensive garments on offer do not look as if they've been made from Ye Olde Tea Shoppe's discarded lace tablecloths and someone's great aunt's boarding house curtains circa 1957. In fact, she is doing more than that - she is engaged in an attempt to suspend her own disbelief and brainwash herself into believing that these misshapen, ill-formed rags might actually appear smart, even elegant and chic, should she ever pluck up the courage to wear them in public view.

I pick up a book (Urban Outfitters sells them too, along with 'quirky knick knacks', in case you've never had the pleasure of entering the store). I don't notice the book's name. The Hundred Best Things Anyone Said? The Hundred Most Brilliant Statements Ever Made? A Hundred Things to Know Before You Die (that 'before you die' franchise is doing surprisingly well, considering its dashing use of the great unmentionable ie death)?

Inside there are a load of banalities by Alain de Botton and other such burblers. Then I turn a page and find this:

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings and that which we take the least care of all to acquire". La Rochefoucauld.

Yes, I think, that's what I was trying to say.

(The daughter failed to persuade herself, by the way, which may possibly be a sign: if you're holding Urban Outfitters shares, you might want to tell your broker to sell).

Do Not Go Gentle

A letter in the Washington Post a couple of days ago went like this:

'In the March 17 Style article "In tails and cuffs," reporter Aaron Leitko described "watching a former Batman get tossed into a paddy wagon." One would think that a newspaper of The Post's reputation would be sensitive to the offense that this term would cause to Irish Americans. While there is some dispute as to the origin of this word, the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins states that "paddy wagon" is a "nickname for the police patrol wagon used to tote lawbreakers off to jail [and] is a carry-over from the days when the Irish were low men on the social totem pole and hence fair game when a roundup of miscreants was needed to create favorable publicity for the law enforcers." In light of this article being published on St Patrick's Day, it is the right moment to criticize the continued acceptance and use of this offensive term.'

Even if one leaves aside the fact that this original meaning of the complained of term is so obscure that it is necessary for the letter writer to quote his chosen dictionary's statement in full, to explain his grievance to otherwise mystified readers, even if one leaves aside the fact that it is just as likely that the term actually derives from either the fact that police vans once had PD written on them and this got elided into paddy or the fact that so many American police officers were of Irish descent, this letter seems completely misconceived to me.

The thing is words change their meanings. Indeed, many people believe that the very reason English is such an enduring and dominant language is precisely because it is so adaptable. There is barely a page of the dictionary that does not contain words that have lost their original significance and sometimes even changed so utterly that they convey the opposite of what they originally did. Flippant, for example, used to mean nimble. Silly once meant blessed. 'Informal' formerly signified that something was unformed and irresolute. More recently, slow - as in slow food, the slow movement - has shifted from being something one avoided into a quality one admires.

Therefore, to dredge up a meaning that no-one ever thinks of and insist that a writer has cast a slur on a group of people by using it, when that association no longer has any relevance to the word in question, is to provoke oneself into outrage where there are no grounds to do so. Sadly, it seems to me, this is an all too common pastime, not just for letter writers, but for all sorts of chat show/panel discussion/column writing whingers.

Of course, no-one should go round making racist remarks or taking cheap shots at women or minorities or the disadvantaged. However, by the same token, occasionally the various groups who live side by side in society might choose to hesitate before rushing to embrace a sense of grievance. Self-pity is a pleasure that it is usually a good idea to avoid.

Progress

I am embarrassed to admit that, despite my attempt at a veneer of sophistication, I take tourist buses to orient myself in new places. It isn't something you're supposed to do, unless you are a very inexperienced, gauche kind of person, but I find it often helps me figure out the lie of the land and also supplies bits of (sometimes, I'll admit, somewhat useless) information that I'd never discover any other way.

Anyway, enough of the self-justification. The point is, yesterday, in Washington DC, while on one of these shameful excursions,I heard an exchange that made the whole thing worthwhile. After the tour guide had told us about Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court and the lawyer behind the Brown v. the Education Department case and explained that the Brown case ended segregation, I heard the small boy in front of me ask his mother, 'What's segregation?'

(I also learnt that the cup cake shop near my hotel - the one with the permanent queue - is a cult, thanks to a TV programme, so bang goes my theory. Or perhaps not.)

Life's Necessities

It is fairly obvious that Georgetown is a very wealthy area of Washington DC, (think Toorak/South Yarra for an almost perfect parallel). However, had I been in any doubt about the matter, the long queue I passed this morning - 15 or 20 women all waiting for the cup cake store to open - would have proved the case once and for all.

Having said that, my daughter's just pointed out that, were they truly wealthy, they'd have a maid to do that stuff for them. Which is true, but I still think my cup cake wealth indicator has a place in the pantheon of socioeconomic theory.