Commentators

An artefact of running a blog that is never apparent to most readers is the phenomenon of visitors commenting on old posts. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it is a common occurrence, and it always brings me up short.

To me, looking at my old posts are an indulgent excavation, too frequently a surprise for me to feel entirely comfortable about the state of my memory, but at least quite commonly a pleasant surprise. For the most part, any sentimental journeys I make into the archives are prompted by someone wandering past and dropping in a comment on some (to me) long-forgotten post. It’s always nice to be reminded that, once written, the words are not dead, even if they seem irretrievably distant from me-now. To whoever reads something you’ve written for the first time, the dialogue is taking place now, this very alive moment.

And so we get the curious encounter of some passing web traveller now with the ghost of me two years ago. Sometimes, as in this exchange on stone-sucking, it’s a Note & Query that can happily take place over the span of years. Sometimes, as in this shared journey back to beginnings, returning to the past feels very appropriate.

On other occasions, as with this ongoing and increasingly Byzantine thread on academic conferences spam, I feel as though it would be rude of me to step back in with my casual opinion when so many people feel so much more strongly about than me.

Best of the lot, the comment that asks or offers no explanation, but quickly sketches a picture of a place where, frankly, I’m very happy not to be.

Leaning

Why is it that when you’re struggling to retain balance, say, almost pitching off the log you’re using to cross a small brook that’s tumbling off the moors, you lean the wrong way? Imagine slipping to the left: you push your body weight out to the right. But this is your hips and your trunk. Your head and shoulders almost inevitably end up canted to the left, that is, the way you’re falling. More logically, you would make a simple pivot at the hips, angling your whole upper body away from the direction of fall.

I supposed that it must be more to do with the need for the head to feel as though it’s vertical, but this is completely wrong: the head ends up at a more severe angle than otherwise. I think it must be two things.

First, it’s about keeping your weight above your feet, reducing the likelihood of trying to maintain an impossible angle and slipping off entirely.

Second, once you lean your whole trunk over, you can’t correct: you’re committed, and you might just as likely overcompensate and fall over the other way. With hips out one side and head the other, you can perform that recognisable finessing wobble until you’ve recovered fully.

Me, I cheated. The dog, on a retractable lead, had already crossed, and was ahead and to my right. Fixing the lead and giving a sharp tug pulled me back upright and on over the bridge. Good dog, as I effused afterwards, to her bewilderment.

Awards season

It’s not just the Weiszs, Johanssons and Lauries of the world that are getting excited about the prospect of reaping a few awards this week. This weekend is the third annual awards for my football (it isn’t a club, not really a team either, so it’s just “the football”).

This means my first evening out since the household increased in size about five months ago, to a local pub and then a meal. Weekly subs of one pound sterling mean that, after the costs of buying a new ball and pump every six months, bibs and corner flags (a bridge too far, some thought), we have enough in the kitty to stand everyone an annual slap up meal.

It would be unfair to suggest that a free meal is anyone’s prime incentive for playing, but it is noticeable that a couple of almost-forgotten players have crept out of the woodwork since Christmas, just in time for inclusion. Generously, we feign to believe that this is their New Year’s health kick in action, and not the siren call of a hot and heavily subsidised biryani.

One charming tradition of the awards themselves is that, in the tradition of kindly schools everywhere, there is a prize for everyone. The entertainment comes in constructing categories for achieving this. In the past, we’ve had the honest appraisal (”Most Improved Player”), the corporate vagueness special (”Best All-round contribution”), the award for Effort (”Most Appearances” and “Most likely to be on time”). The year I (jointly) won “Most likely to pick balanced teams” was a personal high-point.

More fruitful, in general, are the slightly (or significantly) sarcastic categories (”Most likely to be late”, “Most entertaining goalkeeper”), sliding towards the downright pointed (”Most likely to cause an injury”, “Most likely to cry on the pitch”, “Most likely to cause an argument”, “Biggest risk to own defence”).

I’ve written most of this year’s awards, and it seemed like a good idea to use the shining examples of our modern day professional footballers to give the categories an extra incentive. Some examples:

The Rio Ferdinand award for forgetfulness
The Emile Heskey award for balance in front of goal
The Little Mickey Owen award for goalhanging
The Alan Smith award for leg-nibbling
The Craig Bellamy award for on-pitch gobbiness
The Teddy Sheringham veteran’s award (although none of the current players are quite of Mr Sheringham’s vintage)

Normally I’d be aiming for the “Best Winger” award, on the basis that I can occasionally cross the ball left-footed, which my colleagues regard as some kind of voodoo, but I understand is due to my actually being left-footed. Unfortunately, I forgot to put in a winger category, so my hopes this year rest mainly in the Emile Heskey and the Steven Gerrard (for defence-splitting passes, of which I helpfully unveiled a couple for the benefit of the voting constituency last week). I’m only grateful that there’s no Lawrence Dallaglio award for “best use of rugby-style handoffs”, for which I retain an unfortunate and confused aptitude. Wish me luck!

Oily noog

Some miniature delights.

The author of the hoax Betjeman letter mentioned below has identified himself, and to nobody’s great surprise, it was rival biographer Bevis Hillier. A literary banker if ever there was.

Football, which I don’t talk about much, but do follow, rarely offers up memorable lines. Savour then this from France manager Raymond Domenech on the increasingly irritating Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho:

He is the best coach in the world, he said so himself.

Finally, from Jared Diamond’s enthralling Guns, Germs and Steel, which for 378 pages has been patiently scientific and relentlessly prosaic, this moment of inadvertantly Carollian verse:

Most [plants domesticated in the Sohel zone of northern Africa] are still grown mainly just in Ethiopia and remain unknown to Amercians - including Ethiopia’s narcotic chat, its banana-like ensete, its oily noog

The oily noog goes right on the list of things that I must see.

Enigmas and keepers

What Christmas present to get for the spy who has everything? Why, anEnigma machine of course. [Actually, a Nema machine, the Swiss knock-off, but still. Contents may settle in transit.]

Elsewhere, I am clearly going to have to start a ‘goalkeepers’ category, if only to properly capture this delicious winter anecdote about the goalkeeper booked for building a snowman.

Cold storage

I walked into my kitchen the other day to hear the end of a conversation. I caught only the phrase “…in a fridge, with her handbag”.

I was rather proud of myself for guessing correctly that this was a recollection of the rumour, back in September 2001, that the Queen Mother had inhaled her last G&T, but that the news was being held back on account of all the September 11th business.

These things always set my idling mind spinning at the origin of these rumour tropes. Who first was alleged to be kept on ice; gone, if you like, but not defrosted?

To me, it sounds terribly Cold War: I recall the fate of more than one Soviet leader (Brezhnev, the fleeting Andropov) being speculated upon while they failed to make any public appearances for a while. Popes also seem to be favourite targets for this rumour, hence, I suppose the sad malarkey this year with the late John Paul II having to put in reassuring appearances at his hospital window.

The movie ‘Dave’, a presidential version of The Prince and the Pauper, using a life support machine to keep the President of the USA technically alive and governing for its mainspring, but this is comparatively recent, and I don’t know of any other American instances.

I suspect that the assumption that the Russians would flash-freeze their leaders is a slightly shocked reaction to the mummification of Lenin, with all of its confusing intimations of saintliness. Otherwise, the trope seems to operate on the ancient assumption of some kind of connection between king and land: even a wounded king is better than a dead one. It could hardly express more clearly the common belief amongst the rest of us that it’s the possession of power that counts, not the ability to use it. The practical mess that a frozen leader would mean for the government of any country should make us dismiss the idea out of hand, but there’s no denying the power of the symbol of the indestructible leader.

Finally, I wonder if the myth of the frozen leader isn’t, at heart, a consolatory fantasy as seen in the myth of Avalon. Although Arthur is gone, we hold onto the slightest promise of a return should things really require it. I wonder if every apparently callous rumour of a frozen, unburied, aristocrat or politician is really our fear of letting them go. Does anyone these days depend on the Once and Future Queen Mum?

Hot tea when you need it

On those occasions when I’m struggling to comprehend the behaviour of my own countrymen, there’s one object that I only have to recall in order to reconnect myself to the innermost soul of the Brit: the teasmade.

Tea itself is the cliche of Britishness, but I think it’s the Heath Robinson madness of the teasmade that truly opens out the true desire of the typical inhabitant of this dyspeptic isle. Think of it: given the choice of any luxury, any convenience to make life a genuine pleasure, we chose to build a machine that ensures that you have your morning cuppa the moment, no the moment before you wake up. It doesn’t matter that it’s weak, pumped through uncleanable tubes, with night-old milk and effortfully lukewarm at best. It’s a cup of tea, and you didn’t have to make it yourself. Joy almost unbearable.

I don’t think I’ve seen a teasmade since staying at my granparents’ as a kid, where, in a rare display of youthful good taste, I refused the machine’s strange brew. My feelings were mixed, then, when I chanced upon the inevitable web community on teasmades. I fear that these are thin times for teasmades. There are only three models available now (read all about them in the marvellous Teasmades in the news) section, but showing that blitz spirit, the home page has a link to eBay for chasing up second-hand models.

Nothyng but beastely furey

Whether you choose to believe it or not, the Scottish football season has just begun, and the English season officially begins this weekend with the Charity Shield. So much for the summer (and so much for the Ashes, but there’s a different story for you).

So when I stumbled across Joseph Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (first published 1801), which naturally covers everything from dice to mummery via cricket on horseback, I immediately looked up what he’d put together on the people’s sport:

Sir Thomas Elyot, in his charming little work entitled The Boke named the Governour, first published in 1531, says of football that it “is nothyng but beastely fury and extreme violence, whereof procedeth hurte, and consequently rancour and malice do remayne with thym that be wounded, wherfore it is to be put in perpetuall silence”.

What can Elyot have been thinking?

I have a marginal connection with Strutt. At my school, in Strutt’s home town, by way of aping public school traditions the boys were divided into four houses for the purposes of inspiring an insipid version of manly Victorian competition, more than a century too late to prepare us for the Boer War. My house was named for Strutt, which I had neglected to remember until now.

Before we leave, please also note Elyot’s nicely Carollian book title. The Boke named the Gouvernour is a contradiction in terms, as it is not named the Gouvernour. More confusing than one of Shane Warne’s flippers, if you ask me.

Business as unusual

Sometimes things seem to flutter around you like butterflies. No, better, like those shiny bits of paper at the end of The Crystal Maze. Here, then, rather than thinking of it as sticking insects with long pins, I’m catching bits of gold leaf:

Hundreds of movie title screens

Why Tintin never grew up: a scientific study of the repeated head traumas suffered by the Belgian cub detective who tucks his trousers into his socks.

Before take-off the cabin crew perform a strange folkloric rite that involves synchronised arm movements and warnings of fire and our possible immersion in water, all presumably part of an appeasement ritual whose origins lie back in the pre-history of the propeller age. The ceremony, like the transubstantiation of the host, has no meaning for us but is kept alive by the airlines to foster a sense of tradition.

- Who else but JG Ballard?

My favourite tiny moment of PR genius (via the keen eye of Kevan. National Be Nice to Nettles week (18th-29th May) is kicking off with ‘WeedStock’:

An absolute feast for all nettle and weed fans! Stalls, Plays, Games and even a mini opera on all of gods weeds! With special guest confirmed (John Nettles).

Finally:

The Sopranos has been described by some as the finest television series ever made but, for various reasons, I never quite got round to watching it. I confessed my predicament to a friend, who introduced me to the DVD revolution; the entire first series of The Sopranos in one boxed set. It has lain on my shelf for nearly a year, unviewed. This week, I decided to hand it back.

- Armando Iannucci on learning not to worry about the amount of stuff that you’re missing. This resonated particularly with me as I too have the first series of The Sopranos on DVD courtesy of a well-meaning friend who couldn’t believe I hadn’t watched it. Time, I think, to return it.

The sense of an ending

Perhaps I’m going all Chomskian in my senescence. The house was full of nephews and neices over the weekend. As I was repeatedly jumped on, hid & sought, bounced, and was endlessly nattered at by various toddlers and crawlers, my mind naturally turned to the knotty question of language acquisition.

In particular, I noted the way one of little chaps got all of his endings right while mislaying the starts entirely. So, the toy binoculars of which he was so proud were “noculars”. A rabbit was an “abbit”. His younger cousin, who has come up with a fine little language of his own consisting entirely of monosyllables, showed the same tendency. So, cat was “aaa” (not to be confused with that bird beloved of Scrabble players and cruciverbalists, the a’a).

When I look at my own frankly horrible attempts at adult language acquisition, I sense that I’m concentrating far too much on the start of the words, when I should be getting down with the kids and skipping straight to the ending.

The ending is after all where most of the subtle action tends to be, with your verb endings, plurals and suchlike. I never delved very deeply into the realms of the universal grammar, so of course I suspect that my thoughts are either very well known to everyone else or else empirically incorrect. All the same, I can’t help thinking that if only I could force myself to peep, burble and mangle my words like a child, I’d soon be able to communicate with the peoples of the world, or at least their kids.

Telling it like it is

There was a rather interesting interview of Phillip Pullman by Melvyn Bragg last night for The South Bank Show. I’m guessing it was a repeat, although there’s neither hide nor hair of it on the website.

Bragg clearly felt that Pullman should be answerable for the fairly broad comments against established religion he’s liable to come out with. So we got the unusual sight of the hugely soft & woolly Lord Bragg using that charmless traditionalist Peter Hitchens as a stick with which to hit Pullman for producing propaganda as an “anti-[C.S.] Lewis”. What did Pullman think? He thought that Lewis’ Narnia books were despicably world-hating, but at least were readable compared to Tolkein.

What emerged was that Pullman, for all of his image as a kind of literary Richard Dawkins, was far more exercised by the technicalities of writing narrative than by the possibilities of the novel for projecting (or destroying) beliefs. When Bragg beadily seized on the loss of the author’s father as a child as an explanation for the orphaning of the child protagonists in His Dark Materials, Pullman offered a bat straight enough to satisfy even Geoffrey Boycott. In a story about children going on adventures, he mused, the big problem is what to do with the parents. Killing them off, he was suggesting, served his narrative before it served his psyche.

The writer’s workshop continued with a little exposition from Pullman on the peculiarity of the narrator; that genderless, ageless, timeless, ubiquitous, omniscient, protean voice that drifts through all literature. I had one of those moments where I wasn’t quite sure if the speaker was suggesting an argument he didn’t want to pursue, or if my own mind was racing away unbidden. Was he offering a craftsman’s take on that old narrator-as-God warhorse? Pullman certainly seemed to offer a craftsman’s view of the narrator: it occupies a supernatural and creepily omnifacient position in narrative simply because it’s needed. I wondered whether Pullman had in mind a similar craftsman’s view of the development of the idea of God,because it fills a space, but didn’t want to offer any more hostages to Hitchens.