The Magic of the Magic Porridge Pot

January 25th, 2012

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  Just ask my wife.  She hates it when I do a lot of thinking, as it tends to end up with me dressed up in her clothes and parading around the house as “Dorothy”.  Some people, of a cynical disposition, might argue that I am a closet transvestite and that when caught by Mrs A, I construct an elaborate explanation that not only explans away my fetish, but also promotes an aspirational intellectual nature.  This is, however, pure bunkum.  If I was a transvestite, I would call myself Celeste or Chanel; not Dorothy.  It would be a curious thing to label myself as a frump even before I had started.  I mean – who is called Dorothy?!  Except for Dot Cotton, of course, who is called Dorothy.  I never figured out Dr Leg’s first name though.  He looks like a David.

But turn boldly away from my digression.

I have been grappling with the single common issue inherent in some of my favourite childhood tales.  In short, I have been trying to come to terms with the impossibility of certain major events that happened in such stories.

My favourite story by far was The Magic Porridge Pot.  For a man of my ever-expanding girth and density, being exposed in my formative years to the idea of an endless source of food explains a great deal.  It has shaped me.  The sphere in to which I am evolving can be directly attributed, I think, to the central precept of The Magic Porridge Pot.  In the words of Johnny Morris, anthropomorphist and High Priestess in the masons, “Thanks to The Magic Porridge Pot, I am becoming a fat bastard.”

Let us remind ourselves of what happened in The Magic Porridge Pot.  Essentially, you had a family in poverty, close to starvation.  They came in to possession of a large cooking pot, which had the uncanny ability to spontaneously produce delicious piping hot porridge at the mention of a magic word.  A second magic word was used to cease the flow of porridge from some never-ending metaphysical source.  The sting in the tail with this story, was that they forgot the magic word used to turn off the porridge flow and it got completely out of hand.  The porridge kept coming; it spilled out of the pot, filled the kitchen, burst out of the little cottage in a deluge and flowed down the street in a raging torrent.  In proportion, at least, it was a bit like when you spill some tea on the sofa at your mum’s house.

I will say at this point that while the story had an obvious moral to it – don’t order too much porridge – as a child this never worried me.  Ever a fat man trapped inside a medium-sized man’s body, the idea of swimming in delicious, piping-hot porridge always presented itself to me as an enviable scenario.

But these days, I can’t help but wonder how the hell they did it.  How does a seemingly normal cooking pot manage to produce – quite spontaneously – an infinite supply of ready-cooked porridge?  How was it done?

I think to answer this question, we need to look at the entire episode with more of a critical eye than we might be accustomed to.  Firstly, it is important to challenge the notion that the supply of porridge was infinite.  This would mean an infinite supply of oats and and infinite supply of milk, to make the porridge; and that would mean an infinite amount of space for the porridge source to be contained within.  Infinity, while a fascinating area of physics and metaphysics, can surely only exist once, by its very nature.  The premise of The Magic Porridge Pot would suggest that infinity is given over fully to some vast porridge reservoir.  It seems ridiculous.  Where would everything else go?  I don’t see stored porridge everywhere I look.  Do you?

The second precept that we need to tackle, is the notion of The Magic Porridge Pot being a “normal” pot.  Actually, there is no real evidence that this was the case.  It may have looked normal – in the same way that a magician’s magic chest looks normal – but nobody in the poor cottage actually examined it in any detail, by my recollection.  My guess is that the pot must have had a discretely positioned inlet, through which the “endless supply” of porridge poured.  Positioned at the base of the pot, such an inlet would never have been discovered since it was always covered by porridge.  As soon as the porridge was dished out, more porridge appeared – welling up, no doubt, from the base of the pot.  From the hidden inlet.

Such a mechanical device would explain our seemingly supernatural phenomenon, quite easily.  The hidden inlet would be connected to a pipe, which in turn, would be connected to a source of porridge, able to be pumped through to the pot on demand.  To flood an entire cottage and to fill a street, the source of the porridge must admittedly have been ample; but this is not to say it was infinite.  My guess is that there was probably some huge vat, within half a mile of the cottage, connected to the cottage by an underground conduit (being underground would have a dual purpose.  It would remain hidden from sight, thus sustaining the illusion of a magic pot being filled spontaneously with porridge from a metaphysical source; and it would be well insulated from the cold, thus ensuring that the porridge remained piping hot as it travelled through half a mile of pipe).

Of course, this leaves one remaining mystery.  The impact of the magic word.  A magic word (or mantra) was used to bring forth the porridge; and a magic word (or mantra) was used to cease its flow.  So our question is:  If the supplier of the porridge is half a mile away, how do they control the flow of porridge in reponse to the magic invocation?

The answer is disappointing in its mundanity.  In the modern age, simple radio technology would be able to transmit the invocation across half a mile.  A well-hidden transmitting “listening” device, placed within the kitchen of the cottage, would allow the controller of the porridge flow to listen in to any conversations taking place within the vicinity of the pot.  On hearing the magic word or mantra, the flow could be activated.  Now, given that the story was created before the advent of radio technology, we must look for an alternative explanation.  But it isn’t hard to find!  We have already surmised that there is a pipe running from the source of the porridge to the kitchen – and that this pipe is then connected to the inlet on the porridge pot.  It takes little imagination to conclude that a second pipe was run alongside the first.  Once again hidden underground, this second pipe was empty, and was simply used as a very crude telephone line.  Anything said in the kitchen of the cottage would echo down the pipe, to be heard by the controller of the porridge flow.  On being uttered, the invocation for porridge could be immediately acted upon.  It would seem, to a supersitious person living in the cottage, that they truly did have a Magic Porridge Pot, connected to an infinite supply of delicious piping hot porridge, that could be activated on the utterance of a simple invocation.

And why would we want to dispel the myth for them?  In a way, we wouldn’t.  Being supplied with porridge in this way meant that an impoverished family was well-fed, while at the same time was given every reason to believe in a metaphysical force much greater than itself.  This must have been a comfort not only to the belly, but to the spirit as well.  In this, we can applaud the motives of the person or persons who supplied the porridge.  It is also laudable that the porridge was supplied in such a way that the family did not feel obligated for the charity.  Since it was coming from a metaphysical source (so they believed) it was seen as a gift; and they needed to offer nothing in return but their gratitude.

The problem comes, of course, in the fact the suppliers of the porridge did not turn the flow off when the second invocation was not made.  A great deal of damage was caused because the suppliers of the porridge were trying to make some kind of moral point.  Don’t order too much porridge.  The damage sustained by the cottage – and the environment outside – does seem an excessive and disproportionate way for such a moral point to be made.  It is possible, of course, that when the porridge filled up the kitchen, the telephonic pipe was blocked and so the suppliers of the porridge, being half a mile away, were unaware of the drama that was unfolding.  It is possible…but the jury is out.  You would have though they would have planned for such a scenario, and would have some contingency at hand.

Who am I to judge, though?

The point is, I have worked out the mystery of The Magic Porridge Pot.  I have seen through the tricks and devices used.  They were clever and have sustained a wonderful story for many, many years.  But at its source, the trickery was simple.  Now that I have exploded the myth, I strongly believe that the story should be retitled:  The Cunningly Manufactured Illusion, In Which A Pot With A Hidden Inlet Was Connected To A Large Vat Some Half A Mile Away, A Vat Filled With Delicious Porridge And Kept Piping Hot By An Internal Heating Mechanism, And Whereby (Thanks to a Second Pipe Used For Telephonic Voice Transmission) The Illusion Was Created That A Magic Word (or Mantra) Could Be Employed To Access An Infinite Supply Of Delicious Piping Hot Porridge.

A much more accurate title, I think.

 

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Physical Abnormality & Its Effect on Political Radicalism

October 21st, 2011
While watching the news this week, I was fascinated to see members of the Basque Separatist group, Eta, giving a press conference.  While I have been aware of Eta as an organisation, for many years, this was the first time I had actually seen them.
Basque separatists, Eta

Eta Terrorists give a press conference

What struck me – first and foremost – was the obvious physical characteristics of the terrorists and the clear parallels that can be drawn between these terrorists and the famous Victorian sideshow freak, Joseph Carey Merrick – better known as the Elephant Man.

While the Elephant Man channelled his own personal tragedy in to something positive – Merrick was celebrated as a gentle, sophisticated man with a love of the arts and an inherent social grace – one can assume that members of Eta have been unable to sublimate their own resentment successfully.  Clearly, a genetic condition causing physical deformity – a random tragedy for anyone that suffers it – elephantitis has led members of Eta in to acts of violence and terrorism.  Assuming that they all share the same deformity, we can probably conclude that the political organisation itself was created as a vehicle to express shared resentment.  If, on the other hand, it is the case that the terrorists at the press conference do not represent the overall physical condition of Eta members, then we can probably conclude that these members were attracted to the organisation for its violent methods and in the knowledge that they could use politics as a facade to legitimise their need to expel pent-up aggression.

This led me to consider the relationship between elephantitis and political radicalism.  The more one looks in to the matter, the more one realises that Joseph Merrick was exceptional in the way he dealt with his own devastating ill-fortune.  Few people with the condition have managed to steer their life’s course away from violence and anti-social behaviour.  Few people with the condition have managed to remain as sanguine and as accepting as Merrick.  He was a martyr to good grace.

With the Eta separatists as our first example, we can begin to see the case build as we examine other clear examples.  Take the Ku Klux Klan.  A quasi-political group based on racial hatred and bigotry, the KKK wore violence as a badge and terrorised target social groups at will.  There was no sound reasoning behind the actions of the KKK, but when we look at it from the point of view of men with elephantitis needing to vent their anger at nature’s fickle cruelty, we can begin to make some sense of what lay behind the acts of terror.  It may not be excusable; but it can be explained.  Any historical account of the KKK at work will show photographs of the organisation and the sole characteristic that is evident at a glance, is their startling resemblence to Jospeh Merrick.

A member of the Ku Kulx Klan reaches for a bag of Brussels Sprouts from the vegetable aisle, unaware that there is a hiden camera at the back of the basket

The Ku Klux Klan - ashamed of their physical deformity and projecting their shame on to racially-based target groups

Similar gatherings of elephantitis sufferers around a cause has been seen in Afghanistan, with anti-western terrorists going out on Arab television, proclaiming their threats against the infidels.  Again, the physical characteristics are the most prominent aspect of such terrorists and the defining driver, if we are to subscribe to this hypothesis, is stark.  The politics behind their rage are, in truth, irrelevant.  Deformity has spread from the physical to the moral sphere in such people and from the severity of the physical deformity associated with elephantitis, we can gauge just how great their moral degradation is.  It is for this reason that violent acts of terrorism are so easily perpetrated by the individuals concerned.  Having found a target upon which they can vent their anger, all violence is released in devastating acts of sublimation.

Arab threatening terrorist attacks against the west - yet again we see the characteristic hood-centric physical qualities that we associate with John Merrick, the Elephant Man.

The list goes on.  The Palestinian Liberation Army is another prime example of an organisation attracting angst-ridden individuals with severe elephantitis.  The Palestinian Liberation Army, however, demonstrates that such organisations are magnets for such disaffection; they do not necessarily stem from the disaffection itself.  This becomes obvious when we look at a figurehead such as Yasser Arafat, who looked nothing like an elephant, and everything like a camel.

Yasser Arafat - a camel with a candle - beside a member of the PLO, clearly suffering from elephantitis. Elephantitis does not make the organisation; but it works well within the organisation, for the frustration and violence it inspires in the individual sufferer.

And then there is the notorious gang of highwaymen that patrolled the road from Lincoln to London, throughout the late 1800s.  These highwaymen were an organised band with a political agenda which sought to “raise funds through violent means, for the prosperity of our families who continue to be repressed by a feudo-capitalist system intent on social, political and cultural dominance”.  Calling themselves The Wurzels (a coincidental precursor to the high energy agricultural-based rock band of the same name), this band of violent individuals left a single photograph which eloquently demonstrates their shared characteristic and the true driver behind their violent political activities:

The Wurzels - we can see from this that elephantitis was a condition shared by the entire group. Was this, rather than their political philosophy, the true motivation behind their acts of violence and social disharmony?

I cannot pretend that my analysis is final, or in anyway perfect.  It can of course be pointd out that lots of violent, evil people do not have the condition, elephantitis.  Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, did not have this condition when he led his reign of terror across Yorkshire in the 1970s and 80s.  One might be excused for thinking, however, on seeing recent pictures of the high-voiced lorry driver, that he has developed elephantitis since being in Broadmoor.  This may be the case – and it may be that latent elephantitis in his system was enough to set off his rampage of aggression.  This, however, would contradict our hypothesis that it is frustration engendered by an advanced stage of the condition, due to the sufferer having no physical target to blame, that causes the aggression.

The fact remains.  There is a correlation between sufferers of elephantitis and their leaning towards acts of violence and political radicalism.  What you do with this information is up to you.  You can shove it in the toilet for all I care.  I was just saying.  I was just sharing my observations.  There is no need to get all high and mighty about it.

Joseph Carey Merrick - He was not an elephant. As a sufferer from the rare and debilitating condition, however, Merrick was rare in his attitude of grace, social respect and non-violence

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The salacious sausage

September 21st, 2011

I have just been looking at my site statistics.  I always knew they weren’t up to much – but I am surprised that the amount of visitors I get every month actually dips in to negative numbers.  I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

As well as being able to see how many people haven’t visited my carefully sculptured masterpiece, I am able to see what phrases people put in to search engines, to get to my site.  Up until a month ago, by far my biggest shepherd of an unsuspecting flock was “spontaneous human combustion”, “SHC” and “pictures of spontaneous human combustion”.  Which is very disappointing, really, as spontaneous human combustion features only minimally on my site.  I did have numerous pages, at one stage, but they all disappeared in a terrifying conflagration that swept through my domain.  It was a definite case of SWPC.  Now let’s see if any bastards type that in to Google.

After spontaneous human combustion, the next greatest proponent of my site was – and I am equally disappointed to admit this – “badger”.  Yes.  Badger.  You would be amazed, the amount of people that type “badger” in to a search engine.  My suspicion is that they mean beaver.  After all, nobody wants to search the internet for badgers.  Why would they?  On the other hand, most people online would be happy to look at beaver.

For a long while, after spontaneous human combustion and badger, the next search term to win my fickle affections was “cream cracker” or “cracker”.  I have to admit, this has been a little more encouraging to me.  I am a great fan of the noble cracker and it feels good to sustain a mutually beneficial partnership with the savoury snack.  The benefit to me is that it drives people to my blog; the benefit to the cream cracker is that, in driving people to my site – which is as random an association as you can get – the cream cracker demonstrates that it is as adaptable a foodstuff online, as it is in the real world.   Offline, cream crackers can be twinned with any supplementary adornment, from cheese, through to marmite, pâtés, a variety of flavoured pastes and hammer drills.  Online, a cream cracker will open doors to a myriad intellectual experiences, from a detailed history of Jacobs biscuit manufacturers, through to a dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang, cheese-taster forums, basic foodstuffs to be found in the trenches of World Ward I and, of course, my feeble attempt at informative blogging.  It’s a powerful thing, the cracker.  A bit like an ant, it is small and hardly noteworthy on a superficial level, due to sharing its physical characteristics with millions of others, just like itself.  However, it is able to lift and carry objects up to a hundred times its own weight.

Lately, there has been a notable shift in the search terms that have been shepherding unsuspecting web surfers to my little leafy corner of the world wide web.  For the past few weeks, “Bungle” has been top of the list, with our pinched-faced hairy friend ushering people my way with the elegant, friendly manner we would expect of him.  Fatima Whitbread, too, has been doing her bit; javellin in hand, she has become my two-bit ho, tempting people to my domain.  It is funny to think that people would type “Fatima Whitbread” in to a search engine, when it is so much easier to type “beaver”.  I can only assume that the world wide web, as well as playing host to fantatical religious terrorists, paedophiles, office workers and and Keith Chegwin, also attracts people with a deep interest in the 1980s javellin scene.

And then, of course, there is the search term that has has lurked around my site almost since the beginning of my online venture.  It seems that those shady back-room internet perverts who spend their time typing “Womble” in to Google, eventually find themselves in Stefsville.  It makes me shudder, if I am to be honest.  There is the occasional variation on the theme, with some people typing “Orinoco Womble” and others – filthy wombophiles – typing “Bulgaria Womble”…but the result is always the same.  They end up at my blog.  They make me feel unclean.  It happens so regularly that I have stopped taking a shower every time I see that a wombophile has dropped by.  Instead, I have tailored an outfit out of damp flannels and well-soaped loofahs, which I wear about my person whenever I am working on my blog.  They are fiends, these people.  Fiends.  May they rot in Wimbledon Common.

The point is, though, that the traffic through my site remains wholly disappointing.  There just isn’t enough of it.  And so I have decided that it is time to throw down the gauntlet and stimulate a bit more interest in stefanallsebrook.co.uk.  And this is where it starts.  In this article, I am going to perform the online equivalent of streaking naked across the pitch, during a heavily televised world cup final.  I am going to do the cyber equivalent of joining Emily Pancake, when she chained herself to the rails of Parliament (silly cow!  She didn’t even have the means to extricate herself!  I bet the washing up didn’t get done that night…).  I am going to unscrew my digital flask and drink deep of the virtual soup of Münchausen syndrome.  I am going to get some attention.

Out here, alone, on the vast ocean of online content indifference, I shall let off a flare.  From all around, the search engines will recognise my presence and will flock to me.  I will be as a toupee;  and the search engines will be as semi-bald people with consequent inferiority complexes, rushing to lay their pixelated hands on me.  Oh yes.  It starts here.  It starts here.

You see, this morning (and here I go…hold on tight), I had for my breakfast, a salacious sausage.  It was a mammoth rod of bursting meat – easily a twelve incher.  Beneath the gentle glow of my kitchen light, it seemed to pulsate like a beacon of lust.  It vibrated and glistened, like an organic love weapon of the most formidible hue.  Had my kitchen been bursting at the seams with lustful nymphs, I have little doubt that they would have fought over my salacious sausage, each desperate to be the one to get it inside of her.  For you see, it was full of protein.  It was a tempting, mouth-watering delight, that any lustful nymph would be eager to get her hands on.  Of course, such was its length and girth that, given such a scenario, the insatiable vixens would have been able to share my salacious sausage – and there would still have been plenty to go around.  It is quite conceivable that they would have turned it in to a game, toying with it playfully, as each took a gentle bite and put some in her mouth.  It was, after all, a big sausage.  A huge sausage.  A salcious sausage.

Of course, the savoury nature of a sausage does cause one to hanker for something sweet, to complement its ingestion.  For this reason, it was happy coincidence that I had some plums to hand.  Juicy, sweet plums.  I bit in to one and the juice ran down my face, with exquisite eroticism.  I did chuckle at the time, since it occured to me that had the lustful nymphs been a reality they would have done anything to get their hands on my plums.  I could imagine the chaos that would ensue, as a roomful of sex-starved hunnies all fought to be the first to reach my plums.  So many desperate women grappling for what they saw as hanging fruit.  And as their fingers reached the prize, they would all want to be the first to get their full, red lips around my juicy, sweet…anyway.  I have gone off track.

Fulsome melons.  Yes, I did have fulsom melons in my fridge, which might have rubbed nicely alongside my juicy plums.  Indeed, had I been feeling creative, it could have been a real cordon bleu occasion.  The things one can do with a twelve inch salacious sausage and a pair of fulsome melons is no one’s business!  The juicy plums would have been left dragging along behind.  I can’t pretend that I didn’t give some real consideration to the melons – after all, they were huge and ripe and glistened quite seductively with a light coating of dew.  But sometimes, I find, the joy of melons comes not in the tasting, but in the act of admiring them.  And so I decided to look at the melons, rather than get down and dirty with them.  That said, I did cop a feel, giving them a gentle squeeze to assure myself of their organic legitimacy.

One can only begin to imagine what would have taken place had my lust-filled nymphs chanced upon such ripe and juicy melons, practically bursting with sensual promise.  They would undoubtedly have crawled and writhed over each other, their bodies glistening with fervour, in a mad attempt to get hold of the melons.  They would all have one thing on their mind – satisfying their own throbbing appetites.  It would have been carnage.  The melons would be grabbed and fondled, as one pair of delicate feminine hands was replaced by another.  As one lusty nymph found herself in possession of the melons, she would sigh contentedly, only to groan with frustration as the glistening fruit was pulled from her loving grasp.  My kitchen would be filled with the sound of moaning women, of gentle sighs and satisfied groans.  I would wish that I had never got my melons out in the first place.

I will leave it there.  I hope now that the search engines may decide that my blog is worth a visit.  While to your average reader, my description of my salacious sausage is perfectly innocent and above board, the search engines – I hope – will see a deeper level of meaning therein.  They are subtle beasts, search engines, using complex algorithms, high level formulae and a fair bit of intuition.  They also rely heavily on thesaurii.  In their lunch breaks, they read the Daily Mirror.  In bed, they read Mills and Boon.  The point is, that they are able to interrogate the nature of content, based on words, phrases, repetition and context.  When they scan my account of my salacious sausage, my hope is that they will perceive my blog as a work of blatant pornography.  As a result, they will direct web surfers to it, whenever they type something as innocuous as “cardigan”, or “car seat”, or “map reading” in to the search bar.  On top of this, spam engines will have yet another excuse to send me regular information on how to get a penis extension.

On the off-chance that my ploy doesn’t work, however, may I just try flagging down the multifarious search engines out there with these three words:

Beaver.  Beaver.  Beaver.

My salcious sausage - it is easy to imagine a group of lusty nymphs fighting over it, each desperate to satisfy her own dribbling appetite

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The Art of Conversation

September 17th, 2011

I don’t have it.  The art of conversation, that is.  I don’t have the art of conversation.  I have other things.  Charisma.  Sexual allure.  Dance moves that could fell a thousand trees.  Wings.

But the art of conversation, I do not have.

This occured to me yesterday, when I was putting myself through my paces at the gym (putting myself through my paces at the gym generally means walking from one exercise station to another, stroking my chin and gazing at each one with a significant expression).  There were two women, who clearly frequent the gym, together, on a regular basis.  They performed a good work-out, I’ll give them that.  The treadmill, the bikes, the rowing machines, the steppy things that I never quite understand, the weights, the mats…they tackled each one dilligently and worked very hard.  But throughout all, they didn’t stop talking.  I mean, there literally wasn’t a pause.  You couldn’t have slipped a sheet of paper between the constituent parts of their dialogue.  It was like a stream.  A torrent.  It was incessant.  It was awesome to behold.

And I listened.  You couldn’t not listen.  The gym was filled with their conversation.  And I marvelled.

The thing is, I don’t get conversation.  I never have done.  It baffles me.  I try to analyse people’s conversations, sometimes, in an attempt to understand how to do it.  It intrigues me how you get from one subject to another;  and how you spin out  a given subject to a conversational length;  and how you know when that particular conversational subject has gone on long enough and it is time to move on to the next;  and how you know when it is your turn to talk, and when it is the other person’s turn to talk.  I just don’t get any of it.  It doesn’t come naturally to me.  When I try to embark on a conversation, and I have ownership of the talky part, I always notice my conversational partner glazing over.  They start looking around, interested in just about anything but what I am saying.  They feign listening and then when I reach the end of my point – whatever that may be – they remain expectant, as if my conversational offering has left them unsatisfied.  It makes me think I haven’t made myself clear, or I have somehow managed to miss getting the point across.  I probably have.

So then I tend to give the floor over.  And they embark on their part of the conversation.  And to be fair, their part of the conversation always seems so well structured, so relevant and so naturally conveyed, that it leaves me dumbfounded and full of respect.  Often – usually – there is nothing left to say.  I have said my part, they have said theirs – and at that point the conversation dries up, leaving an uncomfortable silence in its wake.  And so, after some mental grappling, we will embark on the next topic.  One of us will say our piece;  the other will follow, faithfully, and then that topic will be at an end.  And I suppose this is where my conversational aptitude falls flat.  For me, conversation never extends beyond topic-based chunks of dialogue, with each participant putting forward their point of view.  And when this is done, the conversation is exhausted.

I find conversation very tiring.  It is an effort.  How people sustain dinner parties, I will never know.  I mean – what the hell do you say for that prolonged space of time?  On the rare occasions I have found myself in those ghastly situations, I have just reached for the wine bottle and prayed for the night to be over.  I hate that feeling of “chatting”, when you’ve not really got anything to say, and you scrabble desperately for things to introduce in to the conversation.  Because it is a sin, socially, to allow radio silence when in a social setting.  For me, though, there is nothing more comfortable, more natural, than social interaction being punctuated by long silences, with just a handful of well-chosen words scattered across the sonic plain.  I know who my real friends are, because we can sit in silence – perhaps with a cup of tea, perhaps a pint or a glass of whiskey – and say nothing.  There is nothing uncomfortable in this.  It is just an acceptance that actually, there is nothing to say.  And when something does come up that is worth a mention, or a brief explore, it rises naturally and we tackle it without the pressure of having to sustain an elongated Socratic dialogue.  We say what needs to be said and then settle back in to a happy silence.  Job done.

It’s something I often feel about business meetings.  Business meetings, for those who haven’t ever experienced one, are low-grade murmuring forums, where people talk a lot, but nothing is said.  The dynamic of a business meeting is rarely about negotiating issues to an acceptable conclusion.  What they tend to be about, is an opportunity for the participants to demonstrate that they are busy to the outside world, and often to themselves.  But I have participated in so many such meetings, where I have listened to the lack of content in what is being said and I have thought:  If everyone could just be happy to be silent, and only speak when there is something relevant or creatively worthwhile to expound, then this meeting could actually produce genuine results.  But it never happens.  People, it seems, are afraid of silence.  In such situations, they are even more afraid not to say anything.

But these women in the gym!  Heaven hold my plums!  It was a real lesson for me, in the art of conversation.  I am not saying that I could do it – I don’t think I will ever have that gift – but I began to understand how the whole process comes together.  Essentially, it was one long stream-of-thought dialogue.  It was impressive how both women tapped in to that same stream and were able to simultaneously spin the conversation – and what really fascinated me, was the way they jumped from one topic to another so effortlessly.  And they would branch back to previous topics aswell, after major digressions.  It was like multi-tasking on the vastest scale.

From memory, let me sketch out the general route their conversational journey took.  Come with me…

They started by talking about their daughters, who were both thinking of doing auditions for the school play.  This facet of the conversation explored such things as the commitment needed for such a venture, the pressure, the way it impacts on other work and the girls’ social life.  It then branched off and considered another mum that one of the women knew, who’s daughter didn’t want to do her play because they had to rehearse on Sundays, and she liked her Sundays and wasn’t prepared to give them up.  Then the conversation branched on to the topic of Sundays.  Good family day, but a chance to unwind.  Sundays are like any other day of the week though, now there is Sunday shopping.  When they were younger, Sundays used to have a very different feel.  But going back to that woman who’s daughter didn’t want to rehearse on Sundays, she works in Tesco now.  One of the women (I learned) doesn’t go to Tesco anymore.  She does it all online.  The other one sometimes does it online, but not always.  They then talked about the benefits of online shopping, comparing notes on the “favourites” tool and how this can really save time.  To elucidate this whole point further, they then brainstormed exactly what it means to do a physical shop.  You have to drive there.  You have to walk around and find the things you need.  If you bump in to anyone you know – as invariably happens – it delays you massively.  And if you find you have shopped beyond your budget, you have to put things back, at the point of tender.  Having done your shop, you have to unload everything on to the conveyor belt, put it in bags, pay, put the bags in the trolley, push the trolley to the car, put the bags in the car, put the trolley away, get your car out of the car park, drive home and then unpack everything and put it away.

This part of the conversation was really just a teaser.  They went on to talk about their cars, their houses, the children’s school, where they wanted to go on holiday next year, how often they exercise, what their exercise routine is, holidays, tanning, exams, universities…it just went on and on and on.  It reminded me of the Magic Porridge Pot.  They seemed to have tapped in to an endless well of things to say and the well was overflowing and they couldn’t say the things fast enough, before moving on to the next topic.  They did all this while exercising.  It was incredible.  Me, I would have got stuck on the Tesco thing.  My sum total contribution to the entire hour long conversation would have gone along the lines of:  Tesco really gets on my nerves.  I hate shopping.  And then I’d have spent the next hour squirming, not sure where to take the conversation.

The Magic Porridge Pot as a metaphor for unhindered conversation. Do good conversationalists have access to a metaphysical porridge pot of unceasing creative generosity?

The funny thing was – and this is absolute gospel truth – when they had finished their exercise routine, a chap came in, who they obviously knew.  He said hello and they said hello back.  And he said to them:  Have you finished for the day then?  And they said – honest to God, they said:   Yep.  All done.  We’re off now for a coffee and a chat.  And I thought, WHAT??????  What can there possibly be left, to chat about?  Surely they have exhausted just about every avenue of conversation in the entire world.  It seems though, that they had not even got started.  Amazing.  I really am in awe.

I asked my beloved, when I got home, if this is how she chats with her friends.  She seemed nonplussed by my description of the women’s conversation.  To her it sounded like the kind of conversation she would have with one of her friends.  She gave me an example of how a conversation might go and sure enough – even though she was doing both parts (her and her imagined friend) – she seemed to access an infinite well of topics and digression, there and then, before my very eyes.  It staggers me.  I mean, seriously.  Where do the ideas come from?  How creative do you have to be, to have this infinite repository of random content at your very beck and call?

The women in the gym were a phenomenon.  But they are not special.  They represent the majority of the population, who seem able to spin dialogue with incessant ease.

I will never have that level of creativity.  I will never boast such a generous Muse.  It’s a strange thing to admit, but I have to take my hat off to anyone that can converse.

 

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Showdown

September 13th, 2011

Winston Churchill.

I’ve nothing against the man.  I believe he was an excellent figurehead during World War II, a motivational catalyst around which civilians and the military were able to rally for the greater good of the struggle.  I’m no military or social historian, but I would guess that many of Churchill’s decisions were dubious; and that much of his strategy was flawed.  By the same token, I would imagine that many of his decisions were excellently judged and a good amount of his strategy was entirely commendable.

The point is, his qualities as a war leader were not to be found in the fact he was a military super-brain with a keen understanding of consequence and collateral.  In a sense, his abilities as a strategist – as a military planner – were largely irrelevant.  The success of Churchill’s time as war leader can be put down to the fact he was able to bring some sense of coherency to a chaotic and meaningless situation.  He was able to bring some clarity to the conflagration of death and destruction that was sweeping across the globe.  He defined it; he gave it parameters; and in so doing, he nurtured the belief that it could be contained, controlled and eventually extinguished.  He gave the British people a flag by which they could march.  He explained to them how they ought to feel about what was happening on the global stage.  He made them understand their part in it.  And having baked the cake of political explanation in the kitchen of his destiny, he finished it off with a generous layer of marzipan and a delicate covering of sweet, sugared icing.  The marzipan was courage.  The icing was hope.  Were he in a flippant frame of mind, he may have put two figurines on top of the cake – one of himself, the other of Betty Grable, positioning them so that they were in a compromising embrace.  But I don’t think he did.  Churchill took his cakes seriously.

I’ve nothing against Churchill.  I admire him for what he was.  Admittedly, I have reservations about some of the things for which he has long been commended.  His speech about fighting on the beaches, for example, was rubbish.  Who wants to fight on a beach?  No one.  That’s who.  You’d spend the better part of your scuffle tripping over deckchairs and slamming in to ice cream vans.  You’d get a hankering for some crab sticks every time you passed a shellfish stall and this, we can conclude, would not be conducive to a quick victory.  More than this, when you broke off from the fray to refuel yourself with some carefully made sandwiches, you would inevitably find them to be full of sand, regardless of how well you had packed them.  Fighting on the beaches is a daft idea and I can’t believe that Churchill has been lauded for it for so long.

Winston Churchill - Liked crab sticks

Something else that Churchill said, that never fails to utilise my nostrils as a thoroughfare, was his commonly quoted phrase:  “It is better to jaw-jaw, than to war-war.”

Since the attack on the world trade centre – the ubiquitously-phrased 9/11 – I have heard politicians glibly quote Churchill’s war-war-jaw-jaw comment, over and over.  They do so with a sense of smug superiority, as though Churchill’s words were chiselled by God Himself, on tablets of stone, and handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.  What none of them seem to suffer from, when they quote it, is an acute sense of embarrassment.  This I can’t understand.  You would have to pull my legs off with giant tweezers before I said anything so mind-numbingly stupid in a serious context.  And even then I’d be more likely to allude to the fact my legs had just been pulled off by giant tweezers, than I would to quote something so banal.  You might then resort to ripping my arms off at the sockets.  But again, I am doubtful this would entice me to dip a toe in the sludge-filled waters of linguistic suicide.

As I pulled myself out of the interrogation room by my chin – little more than a human stump with an almost supernatural will to carry on moving – you might wonder at the strength of my resolve.  I am assuming that you would not have had an appropriate instrument with which to de-chin me and so, giving up on ever getting me to quote Churchill’s stupid phrase, you let me go, with the final organ of my perambulative potential still intact.

But why wouldn’t I say it?  Why wouldn’t I say:  It is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war?  Because it’s a ridiculous thing to say, that’s why.  It’s somewhere between a really bad nursery rhyme and highly-acclaimed twentieth century performance poetry.  It’s just shite.  Churchill was a man that mobilised troops across the globe, negotiated with desperate statesmen on the international stage, steered the British economy through the toughest times, launched bold propoganda to drive Britain’s military might forward – and all this, while keeping the civilian populus positive and bouyant.  In many ways, he was alll that stood between Britain’s independence and a terrifying dictatorship.  He controlled civilians, politicians and soldiers.  He made vast life and death decisions.  And yet throughout all that, he managed to come out and say something as childish as “better to jaw-jaw than to war-war”.  It may just be me.  But the whole thing just makes me cringe.

A Quick Digression

Okay, while I am on the subject.  Please give me leave to vent my spleen, for just a few seconds.  This ill-judged, badly contextualised use of language really does muster my hump.  I was listening to the news on Radio 4 the other morning and some politician was on, talking about something or other.  I can’t even remember what it was.  It is unimportant.  So anyway, she was using the usual politician’s language (I could write reams about this, too – politicians have linguistic  seasons, I have noticed, where they all use linguistically seasonal words and phrases.  It is viral, and spreads to the media at large.  We are coming up to Autumn, which is “Draconian” season.  Everything will be “Draconian”, in the next couple of months.  Just mark my words and listen out for it.  The police…the courts…international political regimes…domestic political party machinery…the unions…everything will be described as “Draconian”.  It pisses me off, but we go through it every year.  Politicians and news reporters will stop using words and phrases like “severe”, “uncompromising”, “forceful”, “extreme” – and will plump for “Draconian”, every time.  And what you’ll notice is that they will all say it with a supercilious smugness, as though they are the first person to have discovered the word and that they are plumbing their own intelligence by using it)…

I digressed again.  I’m going to start a new paragraph, just to get myself back on track.  Ooo – before I do, though, I saw a film this evening called “The Day The Earth Stood Still”.  It was a 1951 B-Movie, about an alien coming to Earth.  He had a robot with him.  The robot was awesome in its invincibility.  I haven’t enjoyed a film so much since I saw Brief Encounter a year or so ago.  If you get the chance, watch it.  Amazing film.  Amazing.

So.  This politician on Radio 4 was using the usual politician’s language – verbose and nicely crafted, if devoid of content – which was fine.  But then she had a sudden lapse in to vox pop and described something as a “no no”.  It was blood curdling.  So her sentence would have gone something like this:  The issues inherent in the social unrest are complex and manifold, and it is important to tease out the causes as well as condemning the consequences.  The behaviour that resulted from whatever issues lie at their heart however, was a complete and utter no no.  I mean, do me a favour.  To say something is a “no no” is surely descending in to the language of a child at nursery?  What the politician wanted to say was that it was inexcusable; it was inappropriate;  it was morally dubious;  it was ripe for condemnation.  But she slipped on the banana skin of her own cliche and opted for “no no”.  It’s just laziness.  It didn’t ally with the rest of her diatribe.

A politican on radio 4...or a pair of khaki pants?

A similar one is when people in discussion refer to something as a “no-brainer”.  That one drives me nuts.  I hear it in sales meetings, time and time and time again.  No brainer.  It’s not a clever phrase.  It is grammatically defunct.  And it is, again, pure cliche.  Everyone uses it and no one questions it.  But you could use so many other words.  You could bring colour in to your conversation.  How about “the facts shepherd us towards a single conclusion”?  Or “the outcome is stark and we would be foolish to disregard its veracity”?  Or even the very simple “it is obvious”?  Cliche takes creativity and it strangles it until it is dead.  Unfortunately it has its own very powerful weapon – in using it, we are made to feel pretty damn clever.  It makes us feel as though we have tapped in to the nerve centre of human communication, that we have discovered the ultimate means of expression, perfect and fully-distilled .  It’s a bad illusion, but it works.

And I’ll just leave this digression on a final note.  Why, oh why, oh WHY, do people use the word “guestimate”?  It’s another word that fills people with a sense of their own linguistic dynamism.  But it makes no sense.  It just doesn’t.  When you guess at something, you take a stab in the dark.  When you estimate something, you are guessing but on an informed and educated basis.  So what the hell is guestimate?  Surely it is a guess or an estimate?  There is nothing inbetween.  There just isn’t.  I asked God.

Beyond the Quick Digression

Churchill then, I have nothing against.  Just some of his linguistic foibles annoy me.  And in all honesty, it is not really Churchill himself that annoys me.  It is the obsequious mythologising of his words, by a blindly sycophantic following, that irritates me.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Churchill regretted some of the things he had said.  The whole “jaw jaw” thing, for example.  I bet he kicked himself for that one, realising that he could have been so much more eloquent, had inspiration struck at an opportune time.  But once he’d said it…the cat was out of the bag.  The fox was among the pigeons.  The Ripper was in the whorehouse.  The bus was in the depot.  The train was at the station.  The vast transatlantic zeppelin from the jazz era was docked on one of those whopping great electrical pylon things.  The snake was in the pit.  The soup was in the bowl.  The lemon was in the tree.  The dingleberry was in the crack.  The burger was in the bun.  The twinkle was in the milkman’s eye.

It is often said that Winston Churchill was one of the great orators of our time.  Many would argue that he was the great orator of the twentieth century.

I am not of a mind to argue with that.  But I would like to put it to the test.  What I would dearly love to do, is put Churchill in the ring with another great orator of the twentieth century.  An orator of superb skill and linguistic dexterity.  An orator with natural crowd control and a magnestism of the keenest hue.

I would dearly love, more than anything in the world, to put Winston Churchill in the ring with Frankie Howerd, letting them pit their wits and and their command of the English language against each other.

I would like to see them glance and parry.  I would like to see Churchill’s vision of fighting on the beaches go head to head with Frankie Howerd’s vision of two elephants on the underground.  I would like to see Frankie Howerd deliver a right hook with an “awww missus”, only to be blocked by Churchill swinging forward with an “in the morning, madam, I will be sober; you will still be ugly”.  I can imagine the tension as Churchill lunged at Howerd with a sly “although I’m prepared for martyrdom, I’d prefer that it be postponed”, while Howerd ducked and parried with a well aimed “my flabber has never been so ghasted”.  Throughout all of this, of course, Howerd’s footwork would be poetry to observe, while Churchill would be puffing on his cigar and creating a smokescreen to his advantage.  A bit like Wacky Races.

It would be a titanic struggle, of course.  I can see it now, with Churchill stepping forward in a surprise move, hitting Howerd with a sharp “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”.  Howerd staggers back, taken completely by surprise, finding himself on the ropes, confused and disorientated.  It is almost inspiration from the gods themselves that causes him to jump forward with a “not on your nelly”, sending Churchill sprawling across the floor.  Howerd stands over him, breathing hard, his face a picture of menace and rage.  He knows that he must subdue the war-time prime minister while he is down and so he comes in with a killer “nay, nay and thrice nay”, leaving Churchill fully unconscious on the canvas.

Frankie Howerd - In my opinion, he would kick Churchill's arse from here to Bethnal Green. If his toupee fell off during the scuffle, it would drive him on with greater aggression and more vigour.

This is all supposition, if course.  I don’t know who would win in truth.  My money would be on Frankie Howerd, but I know that Churchill would be a canny opponent.  Howerd was inconsistent in his performance delivery.  Suffering from a deep sense of worthlessness, Howerd’s confidence was never high and it would take the smallest thing to send his performance in to rapid decline.  He suffered terribly from nerves and stage fright.  His self esteem was drastically low.  All of this would mean that on a bad day, Howerd wouldn’t stand a chance and would be pummelled beneath Churchill’s wit.  That said, Churchill suffered from the “black dog” of depression and could also be adversely affected in his performance.  He was known to go to pieces in the House of Commons, when under the spell of his own depression.  He would suffer from nerves, forget his words and tangle himself up dreadfully.

Both men, then, could suffer from deep depression, which would critically inhibit their creativity and inspiration.  Yet when at the top of their game, neither could be matched by anyone in their field.  So we must conclude that a number of factors would influence the outcome of their fight of wit.  And every fight could promise a different outcome.  If they were both depressed, then perhaps they’d go the full rounds, with the fight being decided on points.  If one was up, while the other was down, the former would have the advantage.  And if they were both in high spirits, then they would be like two juggernauts playing chicken.  It would be an exciting thing to see – but the outcome would be impossible to predict.

It is probably this complex nature of both men’s genius that made them the way they were.  Because of his complex genius, Winston Churchill agreed to sit for countless modelling assignments, happy, we must assume, to be turned in to Toby jugs.  Because of his complex genius, Frankie Howerd would never be parted from the toupee that he so proudly wore.

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Damn you Michael Parkinson

September 9th, 2011

I’ve just bought another Stannah stairlift.

That’s the fifth one this week.

Damn you, Michael Parkinson.  Damn you.

 

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I salute you, Brigadier General

September 8th, 2011

It’s only me.  Thanks for stopping by.

So basically, after an entire year of focused procrastination (just to digress quickly:  I’m not one of these people that prefers “focused” with two s’s; and as for “procrastination”, myth has it that it can a) turn you blind and b) cause your palms to go hairy), last week I finally got round to insulating my loft.  It has needed doing since we moved in to la Chateau du Steffe, three years ago.  Because it was so badly insulated, the condensation during winter was such that we had an almost tropical ecosystem going on in our roof.  Furthermore, when the houses all around us had frost and snow on their roofs, we had nothing but a warm glow.  My house stood out as a likely cannabis factory in my respectable village and the police kept doing nocturnal raids.  I was always in my pants.  It was embarrassing.

I say that the house was badly insulated.  That is something of an arrogance.  Given that my DIY doesn’t extend as far as putting a shelf up straight, I dread to think how inadequately insulated the house is, now that I have had a stab at it.  When the new ice age descends and heralds in a second Dark Age, during which humanity will be thrust back in to its primitive form, the nucleus of the new freeze will undoubtedly be identifiable as my house.  If this does happen – and I cause social upheaval across the globe with my DIY incompetence – I apologise in advance.

Anyway, once more I digress.

So I was up there reinsulating my loft.  There is an old wasps’ nest in my loft.  It has been there since we moved in.  It is a fairly sizeable construction, wedged right in the corner, under the eaves.  There has never been any wasp activity around the nest and my understanding is that after a season, wasps move on, leaving the nest uninhabited.  Once it has been abandoned, a nest will remain redundant forevermore.  Thus it was, I had no worries about disturbing a hive of buzzing industry, during my work in the loft.  So confident was I of this analysis, that I might have taken out the wasps’ nest and kept it as a momento.  I remember kids at school bringing wasp nests in to school, to show us all, after their dads had found the abandoned nest in their garage or their attic.  Unfotunately for my son, he will never enjoy such prestige when he goes to school.  The nest in my loft gave me the veritable heebie-jeebies and I’m not touching it.  I’d sooner stick my hand in that old stump thing that they use on Arboria for initiation ceremonies; the one that heralded in the demise of Peter Duncan.

It was one of the hottest days of the year when I chose to insulate my loft.  I deign myself a stupid fool.  It was ridiculously hot up there – not helped by the fact I was wearing a one-piece protection outfit, to keep me from being irritated by the fibrous Bungle hair (it is a lesser-known fact that standard loft insulation is made from Bungle hair, which is a known irritant.  Look at Zippee.  Permanently irritated.  George was immune.  Bungle hair doesn’t affect hippos.  Zippee is the personification of a wok, however, and cooking implements are notoriously susceptiple).  At one point two charity workers came to the door, collecting.  I answered the door in the closest thing to a space suit that can be purchased from B&Q.  I gave no explanation and they must have thought I was some kind of psychopath.  Or that the aliens had landed in my back garden and I was single handedly containing the situation.  Had they noticed the fibres stuck to my person, they might have concluded that I was carrrying out illicit Bunglesection in the basement.

It was while I working in the vicinity of the abandoned wasps’ nest that he appeared.  A massive, huge-bodied wasp, making his way towards me.  Such was his weight that I saw him drop everytime he relinquished wingpower.  He bumbled along the wall, with a low, sonorous buzz.  He was huge and he was clearly ancient.  Had he more human characteristics, I am certain that he would have had white hair and a huge, white handlebar moustache.  He was an old general; a brigadier.

I knew immediately what I was dealing with.  While the nest had been abandoned for some years, this old veteran was there to guard the fortress until the bitter end.  I wondered if he even knew the rest of his colony had moved on.  I wondered if they had moved on under the cover of darkness, without telling him, so sick were they of his old war stories.  I like to think, though, they would have taken him with them - only he had become so senile that it seemed kinder to leave him at the nest, living out his own battlefield fantasies.

He was impervious to wasp spray.  He was undoubtedly bronchial enough already and the spray went unnoticed.  I have to admit I didn’t spray him with much conviction.  A couple of bursts was all I could muster because really, I didn’t want to kill him.  He was an eccentric old boy and for this, I loved him.  It soon became clear to me that he didn’t pose much of a threat.  He was too slow and unwieldy to attack me.  So cumbersome was his perambulation that I had plenty of time to get out of the way, were he determined to make an attack.  Besides, I think his sting was probaby droopy.  He was blowing a bugle on the field of battle, but ne’er a sabre nor a gun nor a cannon didst he own.

I finished laying the Bungle pelt without harm befalling me or the wasp.  It was with affection that I gently closed the loft hatch, locking him up there, triumphant of protecting his grand old castle.  I have little doubt that he put it down to his own formidable skill on the field of battle.  I suspect that he slept well that night, contented in the knowledge of a job well done.

I salute you, Brigadier General.

Bungle is now insulating my loft

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Hitler’s Underpants

September 3rd, 2011

No pun intended, but I will make this brief. 

That’s half a pair of pants. 

A pant.

The story is a simple one.  My great grandfather was a tailor and specialised in undergarments.  Horatio Allsebrook-Duval travelled across Europe during the inter-war years, bringing luxury undergarments to the populus.  I found this out just a few weeks ago, when I went to get an earthworm out of the fridge.  Great grandfather Horatio was the preferred supplier to the elite classes – the aristocracy, royalty, politicians, wealthy merchants and artisans of high-cuture.  A glance through any of his ledgers is a window in to early twentieth century wealth and fortune.  In many ways, his ledgers are a Who’s Who of 1920s and 1930s society, with state leaders across Europe wearing his pants and discerning customers from the eschelons of high culture donning his long johns.

One of Great Grandfather Horatio’s loyal clients was aviator Amelia Earhart.  Having tailored various undergarments for the intrepid adventuress – including petticoats, shifts and a special girdle for a photo-shoot – he was asked by Earhart to look in to a problem that had puzzled women for centuries:  How one might travel across the Atlantic Ocean in a sensational solo flight, without stopping for a change of underwear.  As a result of this challenge, my grandfather designed a special pair of functional bloomers for her transatlantic crossing in 1928.  These bloomers had multiple functions – from keeping the wearer fresh and cool, through to invigorating them via the medium of inspirational music, which was pumped out at the pulling of a drawstring (the bloomers had a gramophone hidden in their stitching.  The curious shape of the amplification horn that stuck out of the rear gave rise to the popular name of these bloomers:  “Shakespeare’s Beard”).

In 1930, Adolf Hitler got word of my great grandfather’s skill in tailoring ultra-comfortable underwear.  He ordered seven pairs of underpants from my grandfather; one for each day of the week.  Great Grandfather Horatio was asked to create each pair of underpants in a different shade of beige.  At the heart of Hitler’s pants policy was the notion of camouflage.  Were he ever to find himself in enemy territory, out in the wilds, in just his pants – Hitler was fond of saying – he wanted to ensure that he would be camouflaged.  My grandfather made a note of his client’s eccentric perspective on the back of a butcher’s recepit that has remained in the family to this day.

Great Grandfather Horatio was a fine tailor – but he was a poor chemist.  In order to create the seven shades of beige demanded by the soon-to-be-dictator, he mixed his own dyes using hemp, bark, grass seed, sap, iron ore and several gallons of beige coloured paint.  His initial ruminations are recorded in his remarkably unsuccessful book – “Explorations in to the World of Beige”.  It is worth mentioning that apart from a few copies given to Amelia Earhart, Adolf Hitler and  Jeremiah Beige (inventor of the colour beige) as gifts, the book had no readership to speak of (although it did sweep across Russia in its translated format, selling over thirty million copies and sparking a new beige movement that, at one time, threatened to topple Joseph Stalin.  It also sold more than twelve thousand copies in Lancashire, and at one point nearly caused Stan Laurel to give up comedy).

In “Explorations in to the World of Beige”, Great Grandfather Horatio talks about the seven shades of beige to which he aspired in the creation of Hitler’s pants.  He lists the various hues of beige as:  Dark, Light, Silt, Chocolate, Clay, Mud and Morris Marina.  He managed to achieve six of these but was unable to perfect the Morris Marina shade.  British Leyland, he claimed, in managing to evoke such a colour, “could surely only have done so through the most cunning alchemy”.  It took several weeks of intense chemical experimentation before he finally created a dye that he was happy to call Morris Marina Beige.  While it was a few shades away from being accurate, it was near enough to fool most people.  Wrestling with his integrity, my Great Grandfather decided to use this dye to colour the final pair of Hitler’s pants.

There was a problem.  In his quest to achieve this elusive beige, Horatio Allsebrook-Duval had to use mercury as a final colourant.  The consequence of this was to change the course of history and shake the world to its very foundations.  As any chemist will tell you, mercury is a dangerous metal.  If you ingest it, it acts as a poison.  If you wear it close to your groin, it causes one of your bollocks to drop off.  This, if course, is exactly what Hitler did.  With the mercury forming a prime constituent of his Thursday underpants (referred to by Hitler as “mein Donnerstag unterhose”) he made the tragic mistake of bringing the dubious element in to dangerous proximity with his testicular danglies.  By Saturday, he had lost a bollock.

There were two significant outcomes to this shocking testicular loss.  One was the arrival of the famous music hall favourite, “Hitler has only got one ball”, being played out in music halls across England.  The other – while admittedly not having the impact that comes with making joyous references to the Albert Hall – was perhaps much more catastrophic.

Hitler makes it plain in the final part of his Mein Kampf trilogy – Mein Pants – just how adversely he was affected by the loss of his testicle.

It is a terrible thing to lose one’s testicle.  It simply fell off.  It dropped down my trouser leg, bounced off my shoe and rolled down the aisle.  I saw it disappear under the seats of Row G but was unable to find it when I carried out a search.  The janitor told me that he thought he saw it bounce up in to The Gods.  We looked.  But we couldn’t find it up there, either.  I like to think it escaped and made a better life for itself.

I was never the same man, after that.  The loss of something so crucial to my self identity – I always used to think of myself as Adolf “Two Bollock” Hitler – had a dire effect.  It was as though mein soul had been ripped out.  I went through all of the classic stages of bereavement…but I never got past the stage of anger.

I was full of rage.  I felt wounded and wanted to lash out.  I hated everyone and I hated the world.  I wanted to make people suffer for what had happened to my Jackson Pollock.  In my mind, I saw fire and I saw pain.  I saw anguish and I saw misery.   I saw the annihilation of millions.  I saw war. 

   War. 

       War…

And so it was.  Because of his testicular loss, Adolf Hitler became a man possessed by the spirit of hatred.  It could have happened to anyone, I suppose.  But it happened to Hitler.  And the consequences are recorded in history.

I said I’d be brief.   Half a pair of pants.  A pant.  And I hope that I have achieved this aim.

I suppose what I am saying is this:  I am sorry for the part my family played in igniting the second world war.  I am sorry for the dire consequences that came from my Great Grandfather – Horatio Allsebrook-Duval – being unable to attain the shade of Morris Marina Beige, without the use of mercury.  And I am sorry that having used this dubious metal in creating a dye, he then went on to introduce this lethal concoction to Adolf Hitler’s underpants.

I only wish things had been different.

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Correspondence with an ant

July 29th, 2011

Dear Ant,

I hope this letter finds you well.  I have been giving you a lot of thought over recent days and felt it would be a good idea to drop you a line and ask you a few questions that have been on my mind.

What’s it like being an ant?  As a human I feel fairly invulnerable, in the greater scheme of things.  I know that a natural disaster, or disease, or a simple accident could impact detrimentally on my life at any time.  But on the whole I am in control of such things.  Human wisdom and technology allows me to prepare for such eventualities, to prevent them or to overcome them.  I can foresee accidents and avoid them.  I can draw upon the vast social support infrastructure to overcome any disaster that may befall me.  And on the rare occasions where I am unable to draw on medical technology to immunise myself against disease, I can instead do the same to cure whatever it is I have contracted.  While death stands as the inevitable end for each and every one of us, I am – within this single constraint – in control of my own destiny.

As an ant, can you say as much?

And as a human, I am free.  I am guided by my own free will and my own independent intelligence.  I can develop the skills and understanding that I want to develop, and in so doing can carve out my niche in society.  I can follow the pursuits and interests that are dear to me and fill my spare time with happiness and contentment.  I am a musician and so I fill my spare time with music.  But were I a carpenter, or a fisherman or (on a less Jesusistic theme) a body builder (which isn’t to say Jesus didn’t have a fine physique) or a racing car driver, then I would be able to follow such interests equally.  It is for me to decide how I run my life; and with what I choose to fill it.  I work when I want.  I rest as I need.  I sleep as I choose.  I befriend whoever attracts me and I avoid those who repel me.

As an ant, can you say as much?

It is perhaps the greatest gift in mankind’s legacy, that we are able to love.  Love is a driving force and a beautiful thing.  My heart aches every day, every hour, every minute, with love.  I love my wife.  I love my son.  I love the people that enrich my life.  I love the family I have and the family I have lost.  Love is an emotion sublime.  It is beautiful and delicious – the most exquisite food for any hungry soul.  Love fills my life with colour and enriches it with meaning.  My first memories are tinged with love; and I will love until the day I die.

As an ant, can you say as much?

Humans have many different aspects and they fall under two primary categories.  We have the physical aspects of humanity; and the metaphysical aspects of humanity.  The human being works, rests and plays.  He makes things.  He builds.  He negotiates and performs.  He learns and he explores and he creates and he modifies.  This is the physical aspect of humanity.  And then, of course, the human being dreams.  He weaves fantasy in the sanctuary of his soul.  If he chooses to, he keeps his dreams and they provide him with a private retreat, a place where he can be by himself – be himself.  And if he chooses, he can share those dreams and the world of fantasy becomes a shared place for kindred spirits to meet and explore.  This is the metaphysical aspect of humanity.  Together, these aspects form the human experience.  It is a well rounded experience, in which past, present and future become embedded in the human heart.  It is a holistic experience, in which a bridge is extended between the material world and the world of dreams.  In such an experience anything is possible.  It is a transcendental state of being, through which man finds his character, his purpose and his meaning.  The random meaningless of life is therefore triumphed over.

As an ant, can you say as much?

We travel, we humans.  We have an instinct to reach out and to explore.  We seek out differences - in people, in places – and in recognising these differences, we ourselves grow.  We expand.  We expand our horizons and we expand our perception of self, of our place in the universe.  Yes, it is true – we have a homing instinct, too.  We love to nest and build a home.  We feel the need to mark our territory, to create a fortress into which we can retreat and become separate from the infinity of existence, outside.  And yet it is from this defined space that we can branch out.  It is from this space – our home – that we have a sense of place.  And thus we find the confidence to travel.  And human beings, we have travelled.  We have travelled across land and sea.  We have colonised the oceans and laid claim to the very sky above our heads.  The entire globe is our playground and we travel as the need – or the desire – arises.  And more.  We have been in to space.  We have been to the moon!  We have travelled and we will continue to travel.  Not just by miles – but by worlds, by knowledge.  We have travelled in to the world of the microbe, of the atom!  Every day, we travel through the abstract realm of cyber-space, sharing information, experiences, thoughts, belief.  The human psyche is vast, because we travel in body, in spirit and in mind.

As an ant, can you say as much?

And so I ask you, once again.  What is it like to be an ant?  Do you feel the constraints of living a regimented existence, inside your soulless world?  Do you feel affinity with the cold tunnels of your nest?  As you climb atop the parapet and forage industriously, obediently, in the world outside, do you wonder what lays beyond that furthest horizon?  Do you feel the absence of love?  When you sleep…do you dream?  Or are you like a car, with its engine turned off?  Are you an individual among many; or a faceless part of a single whole?  Can you see a future?  Do you know of a past?

Or are you a soulless organ, meaningless without the context of the organism of which you are such an expendible part?

Tell me, little ant.  What is it like to be you?

Yours sincerely,

Stefan Allsebrook

 

Dear Stefan,

Thank you for your letter, asking me what it is like to be an ant.

It’s okay, really.  The only problem is that my antennae can be a little cumbersome at times.  It’s like having whopping great traffic cones sticking out of your head.

I hope that answers your question.

Ever yours,

Ant.

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China – The New Super Power

July 3rd, 2011

Hail to thee, men and women of Britain.  Even as I type these words, we are sailing steadily in to the turgid waters of a brave and unfamiliar new world, with all the stealth and sang-froid of a narrowboat down a waterfall.  Contrary to the slogan on that advert – I think it was for a washing powder – the future is not orange.  It is a kind of dull grey colour (though in the right light, one might be forgiven for thinking it was a dingy mustard).

I’m talking, of course, about China.  To take the narrowboat analogy down another path, we are onboard our homely vessel, afloat the stench-infused waters of Poo Creek (also called Faeces Creek, Dump Creek, Number 2 Creek, Peter Jackson Creek and various other names which shall remain unnamed for the simple reason half my readership works in a library and I know for a fact the article will be firewalled if I use the word “shit”).  Oh bugger.  It slipped out.  Okay – I am now down to one reader.  Hello Paul.  Anyway.  Back to the analogy…

The traditional decorated watering-can that sat atop the roof of the narrowboat has fallen from its longheld perch in to the opaque waters below.  It bobs lethargically on the surface, ready to sink in to the turgid depths at any moment.  We never used paddles as a mode of thrust, aboard this vessel, but had we done so it can be said with some certainty that at this moment, we would find ourselves without them.  As it is, the barge’s engine has run out of fuel and we are drifting helplessly on the random eddies and currents that ride the waters below.

China is quickly becoming the dominant world economy and Britain is falling quickly behind.  I watched a documentary about it the other night.  Whereas China used to be the workshop of the world, the nation is now competing on the world stage for intellectual and creative purchase, in the world economy.  This means that whereas in the past, Britain might have  invented a running shoe and China made that shoe – thus Britain got revenue for every shoe made by China, while not actually making any of the shoes in Ol’ Blighty’s workshops  - China is now inventing the shoes itself.  Britain will soon no longer have anything to sell.  Not even ideas.

Ah, you may say, holding up a questing finger like David Bellamy on a lecture tour, but if we continue to have the best ideas, then we will still lead the way and spearhead the world economy.  If we continue to produce new medical innovations, technological innovations, engineering innovations and continue to lead in the arts, then we have nothing to fear.  To this, I will stare at you in disbelief, as I contemplate your Bellamic ignorance.

The reason we are leaders in these areas, I will say, with all the force of Terry Nutkins entering the debate, is because we have a world-class educational establishment.  Our schools, colleges and universities are the engine room of our innovative brilliance.  But China continues to send Chinese students to Britain to benefit from this educational platform;  more importantly, China sees the importance of education and, with its intellectual aspirations, is now developing its own world class education establishment.  China is already on the cusp of boasting home-grown intellectual brilliance;  world-class innovation;  and a ruthless ambition to drive this forward.  With the sheer scale of it population – China is home to about fifty billion trillion squillion Chinese nationals – it seems inconceivable that China will not be able to tap enough talent to lead the world in everything but haircuts.  We are, to quote Winston Churchill when he saw that the Nazis had acquired the ark of the covenant, doomed.

I don’t think the population of Britain has quite registered what this means for our future.  While we scrabble around, striking for better pensions and better working conditions; while we continue to import Polish workers, because they are happy to work, while we would rather stay at home on the dole and watch Jeremy Kyle;  while we continue to become so inward-looking that the apex of our children’s ambition is to win Britain’s Got Talent one day, or to become a pop star of a footballer’s wife;  the world is catching up with us.  It is overtaking us.  There will soon come a day when we are the workshop of the world, looking after China’s intellectual innovation.  And when this happens, there willl be no pensions, no workers’ rights and our kids will sure as hell have no chance of winning Britain’s Got Talent.  Because then it will be called Blitain’s Gor Tarent and for every British contender, there will be about six million Chinese contenders.  It’s simply down to our population differentiation.  We will be small fry on the global stage.

And what does this mean for global culture?  Well, Britain will lead the way in cheap restaurants and take-aways.  Many of us will emigrate to China, to ply our trade and bring English cuisine to a middle class Chinese population.  A Chinese professional will order a number 34, a number 61, a number 26 and a number 87.  They will get, in return, bangers and mash, mushy peas and rhubarb crumble for afters.  They might ask for a side order of tomato sauce, if they are feeling particularly exotic.

We will also be very prominent in the areas of laundry service, complimentary health and trinket manufacture.  Laundry service speaks for itself, though god help a Chinese person if they want us to wash something delicate.  If it’s not got the robust integrity of a pair of pants from M&S, the English laundry is liable to ruin it.  Furthermore, if my wife happens to be working in the laundry parlour, then there is a very good chance everything will come out a hell of a lot smaller than when it went in.  Our complimentary health will be controversial, with the Chinese pharmeceutical establishment jealous of its position, but for those members of the Chinese population willing to plough their own medical furrow, we will offer a great alternative.  For headaches, we will offer a nice cup of tea.  For stomach upsets, a nice cup of tea.  For nerves, a nice cup of tea.  And for muscle cramps, Big Bertha from Number 48 will walk over you in stilletoes, for a fiver.  Or a yuan. 

And then there will be our trinkets.  I’m not sure what the Chinese equivalent of small models of London Taxis, London Buses, the Tower of London or a queen’s beefeater would be.  But we will become world-renowned for making novelty trinkets and garish ornaments that break easily and stand on any domestic shelf at a wonky angle.  A pottery rendition of the Beijing Noodle Emporium.  A tea towel denoting a man with a shark-fin burger and an impossibly large penis.  A mug with a Chinese pop star (known for a his sexy hip thrusting delivery of “Ying Tong Yiddle I Po”).  The Chinese public will make jokes about our industrial output and we will be a laughing stock.

It is not a happy thought, but the driving rhythm of progress is what it is.  When my Harry is old enough to take an interest, I’m going to make sure he learns Mandarin (which, until I saw that documentary this week, I thought was a fruit, a member of the orange family).  He’s going to need it to get on the world.  I’ll teach him how to wash clothes, how to cook English cuisine and how to make dodgy trinkets.  I will also ensure that he cuts his hair in a bowl cut, so that he fits in when I send him over there to eke out a living in the Beijing slums.

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