Dockland of the Dead

On days like today you could go snowblind from the sun’s reflection off the pavement.

That, and all the clammy white flesh on display around Leeds – you could be forgiven for thinking there had been a mass break-out from the veal farm.

Although my skin is fairly resistant to sunburn, my eyes are another story. I think I must be part owl or have ginger retinas or something. When the sun comes out, one or both of my eyes start to ooze pretty quickly.

Nevertheless, the sudden appearance of the solar deity’s winged chariot has turned my daily tramp around Leeds into an almost enjoyable experience. And not a day goes by on my wanderings on which I don’t learn something.

For example: getting punched in the face is clearly a much more commonplace event than I had previously thought, given the number of men and women staggering around the city centre with either black eyes or missing teeth.

Anyway, today I wandered down to Clarence Dock.

Apart from the Royal Armouries Museum, there is practically NOTHING there any more. The store directory website has four things on it...one of which is the Royal Armouries Museum.

It is pretty mainstream to bemoan the lingering death of British high streets, strangled by chain stores, stranded by traffic swarms and befouled by street drinkers, chuggers and other sundry mentalists.

Here is just the latest jeremiad I came across – in which former TV gobshite Wayne Hemingway puts a positive spin on it all by arguing that the ruination of city centres will “open up space for quirky start-ups”. Hilarious. Let them eat cake Wayne!

But spare a thought for the “luxury mixed developments” like Clarence Dock. The high street might be dying, but in terms of deadness this was like the goddam pyramids. No shops. No people. Just a barge decked out to look like a U-boat.

Which, I have to say, looked AWESOME. 

Scott - One hundred years on...

Last week saw a strange coincidence. Firstly, I finished reading "Scott’s Last Expedition" – the diary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who died on the way back from being the second person to reach to South Pole.

Secondly, I watched Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton’s attempt to become the first person to reach the South Pole on a bicycle. For charity. 

Now, I call it a strange coincidence but it’s not really that strange. It is now almost exactly a hundred years since Scott himself died of starvation and cold, eleven miles away from a supply depot. Right now, we are somewhere between the centenary of Captain Oates going outside to his death (pictured above, as imagined by JC Dollman) and the remaining three members of the South Party (Scott, Wilson and Bowers) dying a couple of weeks later.  As such, the country is full of Scott exhibitions, memorabilia and whatnot.

Naturally, I will blissfully ignorant of any of this until I started reading the diary. Indeed, it was this very blog which led me to do – as in December I said that there were no British explorers whose memoirs were free off of the internet, in defence of my reading Norwegian hard-case Fridtjof Nansen’s account of not actually reaching the North Pole in the 1890s.

Having made this categorical statement, I checked the facts of the matter some weeks later – and found that Scott’s Last Expedition is indeed free on t’internet. Don’t worry about it being “Volume 1” – Volume 2 is just all their scientific findings, and dating as they do from a hundred years ago they are all probably completely (and, to our eyes, insanely) wrong.

So, as I said before, I’ve just finished reading it. The main conclusion I reached is that I have now wasted quite enough of my life reading diaries of historic Polar expeditions.

Nansen at least had the decency to go through typically Scandinavian moping bouts of theatrical depression, which he kindly set down in print.

Conversely, the consistent tone of Scott’s diary is one of primly-stiffened upper lip. “The horses have all died. It is probably for the best” – that sort of thing.

Ah yes. The horses.

Now, I am far from an expert in such things, but as both an ENGLISHMAN and a BLOGGER I’ll be DAMNED if I will let that stand in the way of me reaching conclusions I cannot be swayed from that are based purely on my own opinions.

Many people have suggested that Scott’s decision to rely on horse transport was a fatal error. Firstly, it gave the race to the South Pole to Amundsen by making it necessary to start much later that he did (going by dog sled). Secondly, it slowed them down on the way, what with carrying all the necessary hay and other horse food, picking them out of crevasses and getting naughty horse Christopher into his harness every day.

Apparently, Oates himself (the resident horse expert of the expedition) thought that the particular horses they had were dreadful – begging the question, precisely what kind of horse should one expect to be good at climbing over sea ice in a blizzard.

Also, it is in respect of the horses that Scott comes closest (not close, but closest) to admitting that perhaps his preparations were not 100% perfect – when he mentions that they only had one pair of horse snow shoes for the whole party and that they hadn’t actually practised making the horse walk while wearing them. 

Despite, I should add, having had NOTHING TO DO for the preceding six months.

From my own experience, I have noted that horses always look bloody miserable in snow - while dogs absolutely love it. Sadly, nobody asked for my advice, even though it could have saved them. 

I don’t blame the horses for Scott’s failure. Indeed, they were all dead and eaten long before then. But they are indicative of Scott’s attitude – which brings me back to Nansen.

Clearly Scott had read “Farthest North” - he mentions it somewhere. OK, the Arctic isn’t exactly the same as the Antarctic (fewer penguins, more polar bears for starters), but Scott seems completely wilful in his disregard of the lessons on “how not to die while travelling across Polar wastes” that Nansen had released some 20 years earlier.

Did Scott and his party die because of British chauvinism?

Ah yes, I have found the angle for my Guardian column! Certainly, there are a lot of references to the virtues of tea throughout the book.  

Firstly, the Terra Nova expedition took about 40 dogs to pull sledges, but sent them back fairly early in the attempt on the Pole because Scott didn’t believe they would do any good. On what basis, the diary does not mention.

Guess how Roald Amundsen got to the South Pole before him? Guess how Nansen got back from Farthest North? Dogs. Not horses. Or walking.

Secondly, Scott seems to regard skiing as a bit of a novelty – something he could do, but which he didn’t regard it as essential for all the members of his party to be any good at. As far as I can tell, Henry Bowers didn’t ski at all and walked the whole way. 

Thirdly, Nansen went on about how they were far too hot in their fur gear (“wolfskin capes” to be precise). What were Scott and co wearing? Seemingly stuff they’d bought from Milletts. I might also add that as you can see NONE OF THEM had the sense to GROW A BLOODY BIG BEARD as a means of warding off frostbite of the facial areas.

And yet, all those lessons had been available for almost 20 years. Amundsen followed them and he got to the South Pole first, and he got back alive - here he is, feeling the benefit. Scott didn’t follow them. 

Was this the product of the belief that while things like riding on dog sleds, wearing fur, having an inner life etc might be alright for silly foreigners, it was quite unnecessary for British people to do anything quite so dramatic, and that a combination blind optimism and good old amateurism would see them through just fine?

And it’s not just Scott. Let the record also show that Lawrence Oates – who plenty of people right now would canonise – did not regard having had his thigh bone shattered in the Boer War some ten years earlier and one leg shorter than the other as likely to represent any kind of an impediment.

I don’t know. The last section of the book is genuinely moving, particularly the account of Oates’ death.

Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates' last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not—would not--give up hope to the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning--yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, 'I am just going outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

So, some 48 hours after having read this, to see Helen Skelton refusing to kite surf on her way to the South Pole because it was too easy and insisting on riding a bicycle instead made me realise just how much the world has changed in a hundred years.

Again, the strange coincidence of the opening paragraph is perhaps not so strange. She was raising money for Sport Relief, and of course, as the sun begins to show its face for more than a few minutes before and after work, the season of aggressive charity fund-raising is upon us. And I expect she probably chose this particular challenge not entirely without reference to the Scott centenary.

Had Scott taken her route to the South Pole, I think he’d almost certainly have succeeded. Seemingly it was completely flat and the weather was lovely.

That’s not to denigrate Helen Skelton’s achievement. Well done to her indeed. But – and here my Guardian piece turns into a Daily Telegraph piece – doesn’t the world seem a lot smaller when the unconquered wilderness that made heroes out of those who died trying to tame it is now a tourist attraction where people go for an “experience”?

I will say it again. After setting the world record for the fastest 100km kite surf, Helen threw away her kite and decided to carry on by bike – because kite surfing wasn’t hard enough.  

That must have been one hell of a hundred years. 

Your Racist Friend

In the course of my work, I have to read and pretend to enjoy lots of extremely tiresome articles about social media, how freakin wonderful it is and how it can transform your business.

Apparently, it’s not enough for businesses to just sell things any more. They have to be part of your life as well. I suppose that stems from the Great God Google itself – which like the Christian God not only demands that you obey It on pain of damnation, but that you love It as well.

Much more entertaining are the articles about social media in the mainstream press – for example, this hilariously ill-informed piece from the Daily Mail, which claims that the mass-copyright-infinging-picture-collecting-social-network-for-girls Pinterest is in fact named after Harold Pinter.

I’ve been trying to get back into Twitter (not under the @RogerofSicily name, which I’ve pretty much abandoned – in spite of all the attractive but down-on-their-luck young ladies looking for love that I’ve never met before who have kindly decided to follow me), but it seems to me either like shouting into the void, standing next to some strangers having a conversation while smiling, nodding and trying to force your way in, or just doing email in public.

I do a bit of professional social media on Linkedin, under my real name - which, if you learn it, gives you the power to summon and command me (or at least to email me). But mostly I do social media on Facebook.

Which brings me on to the needlessly provocative and They Might Be Giants-referencing headline of this post.

The social media article I am waiting for is the one that tells you the right way to deal with connections who treat their social media presence as a way to carry across what Members of Parliament would politely and pompously call “saloon bar” language and attitudes into the public sphere.

There are things we might all say in private to shock, amuse or just to be transgressive for the hell of it – which we would nevertheless not say in public or to people we were not intimately familiar with and who we trusted. I will not deny saying things that are offensive or awful to get a laugh or just to be obtuse. In fact, I did such a thing last night (while watching Crufts of all things...) and Elvira bollocked me for it, because I had indeed crossed the line where shocking-good becomes shocking-bad.

Everyone does it but at the same time, everyone has a level at which they too would say “that’s out of order”.

So my question is, how should you respond to social media acquaintances who broadcast “jokes” or comments that you find offensive? They’re not speaking directly to you – or are they? They are inviting your response.

“Unfriend them”, you will say. Done that. Is that enough though? Is it enough to just walk away without saying anything?

You may think this is unduly pious, but as well as the standards of human interaction and mutual respect which I proclaim and attempt to uphold, I’m thinking of my own arse here. The Great God Google and – indeed – the security services suck up all this data (for our own good, of course).

People have lost their jobs and even been sent to prison for things they have said on social media. How long would it be before my online presence became guilty by association for having sat by and “tolerated” this?

PS – I couldn’t think of a suitable picture to go with this post, so I followed general internet protocol and put a picture of a cute animal on instead.