Who was Roger of Sicily?

Generally, I shy away from writing about matters of fact. Not because I think – with Ronald Reagan – that facts are stupid things. Rather, it is because opinions are much easier to produce, being essentially incontrovertible. Even if all the premises are wrong, no one can say for definite that the conclusion is when it’s just a matter of opinion.

Furthermore, you may have noticed that ODHSNM house style directs that if a fact is to be stated, it will be phrased thus:

“So anyway, there was this...”

Thereby implicitly casting myself as an unreliable narrator (in the particular vein of a pub bore). In this way, I assume an ambiguously ironic stance to all statements of fact, getting myself off the hook for having to prove the veracity of anything I say. Does he mean it? Or not?

I am, in a sense, simply inviting you to consider (from the aesthetic point of view) the consequences of “what if” these things were true. It saves me a hell of a lot of time, which I would otherwise have to spend making sure that I’m not talking bollocks.

So anyway, there was this time called the Middle Ages with knights and dragons and shit.

We often think – isn’t it? – that the Middle Ages were a barbaric time, when life was nasty, brutish and short. To the extent that we think about it at all.

After the Romans, most people’s grasp of British history is basically (i) Saxons, (ii) some Vikings, (iii) 1066, (iv) “beard and crown” kings, (v) “bob and beret” kings until (vi) Henry VIII.

Beard kings

 And 1066 was “The Norman Conquest”. The Norman era lasted until the 1940s, whereupon the world’s parents decided never to name another child Norman again. FACT.

It may therefore surprise you to discover that the Normans’ story was not exhausted by the Battle of Hastings, keeping Robin Hood down and eventually becoming the English upper class. Oh no.

Bob kings

Turns out, there was this whole other arm of the family which did some rather more exciting stuff than building squat little round castles and churches and logging the contents of Britain in the Domesday Book. Not least in Sicily.

I have no fucking idea what happened in Britain in the 12^th century. Monasteries, or something? But from 1130 to 1154, there was this AWESOME Norman king ruling southern Italy, Sicily and a chunk of North Africa. And he was called Roger II.

Read the article is you are REALLY into facts. I came across Roger of Sicily when I was reading “The Middle Sea” by John Julius Norwich, also known as Viscount Norwich.

A viscount, for foreign readers, is a kind of lord here in the UK. Here is a full rundown of the British orders of nobility along with a handy system for remembering it:

6. Baron = Villain

5. Viscount = Biscuit

3=. Count = Vampire

3=. Earl = Hillbilly

2. Marquess = Tent

1. Duke = Alsatian

Anyway, this book is a history of the Mediterranean. I picked it up in an airport a few years ago. And a right rollicking good read it is too.  

And in it – meriting about 3 pages, which is a lot by Lord Biscuit’s standards (ancient Egypt gets about the same) – is this Roger II of Sicily.

He built up a giant kingdom (which I’d never heard of), faced down the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor and had the good sense never to go on a Crusade. More than that, he actually made his kingdom function properly and – to quote the Wikipedia article:

The king welcomed the learned, and he practiced toleration towards the several creeds, races and languages of his realm.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I took him on as my namesake. At a time when stupidity, thuggery and intolerance reigned here was a ruler who celebrated the life of the mind and didn’t care about the petty differences that divide people.

Showing you the life of the mind

So, at a time when stupidity, thuggery and intolerance reign, I think Roger II of Sicily is a ruler worth remembering. 

Is This The Most Awful Drink Ever?

This is Fernet Branca. You may recognise the label, having seen it in a dusty corner of a bar’s back shelf, among that plethora of liqueurs you’ve never seen anybody buy or drink but which nevertheless seem perennially to be stocked “just in case”.

I have, of late, being trying these concoctions wherever I can. This started off with my and Elvira’s 2011 trip to Prague, where I discovered Becherovka – which is right now my favourite drink in the universe (I am also, I think, the only British Campari drinker aged under 70).

So, I embarked upon a voyage of discovery into what the Teutons call “Kräuterlikör” and the Latins call “Amaro” – spirit-based liqueurs flavoured with herbs of an essentially bitter nature.

The first thing I discovered is that this is not a conventional British thing to drink or express an appetite for. The only such thing you are likely to come across in your local boozer is Jägermeister – and the only reasons I can see for its unique position is:

• Jägermeister’s (relatively) colossal advertising spending; and
• The Jägerbomb – which adds Red Bull to the equation, so as to combine ridiculous amounts of alcohol, sugar AND caffeine in a single gulp.

Indeed, I was recently on a works drinks evening, when some poor drunken subordinate suggested a round of Jägerbombs. As the boss-in-attendance, everyone was very keen that I should be included in this round – but I insisted that – as a parent – I would not drink Red Bull in the evening. I have to sleep, you know, and I observe a strict regimen of uppers in the morning and downers in the evening.

So I asked, to the bemusement of the barman and my colleagues, for my Jäger neat. And then we all necked everything in our glasses, so that nobody really tasted anything.

On another works occasion, I was told I was the only person my colleagues had ever seen to sip Jägermeister from a shot glass. They probably concluded that this is because I am a huge ponce who thinks he’s “oooh so continental” but is in fact just odd.

Anyway, I went from Jägermeister to Becherovka to Unicum to Kuemmerling to Rammazotti, eventually pitching up at Fernet Branca. Where I came to a grinding halt.

After a few mouthfuls I poured a big glass of it into a potted plant. The plant did not immediately wilt in an amusing manner, but it probably did not do it any good.

Now, whilst drinking these other drinks I have frequently been told by others that they are disgusting and that how I can possibly stomach them is incomprehensible.

That is how I felt about Fernet Branca – which is apparently popular in some parts of the world. The article linked to here describes is as tasting like “black licorice-flavored Listerine".

Certainly, my immediate thoughts were of oral hygiene:

• Firstly, because it tastes like toothpaste and generates the same burning sensation and unwillingness to swallow as mouthwash
• Secondly, because my panicked brain declared “oh my god what the hell have you just put in your mouth?”

Now, I know that everybody hates their first beer, their first cigarette, their first whisky, their first Becherovka – and some people then persist and come to acquire the taste by bloody-minded perseverence in the face of their body’s strenuous objections.

But this was different.

When I tasted this I assumed a joke was being played on me. Perhaps that bottle has lain there, untouched, since before the First World War and it has, in fact, gone very badly off.

Later, when I read the article I linked to earlier, I realised to my stark amazement that IT IS SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE THAT.

I presume it has an eagle on the logo because Fernet Branca tastes like the semi-digested carrion this noble bird regurgitates to feed its young. 

I thought I could drink anything. I was so wrong and felt suitably abashed. Everybody has a limit, and I found something that is WAAAAAY beyond mine. It was a lesson – and not one I shall quickly forget.

By the way, I must add that I would NEVER normally throw away a drink, even if I believed it to be disgusting and over a hundred years old. Fortunately, we were on an all-inclusive package holiday at the time – so I made an exception, poured the Fernet Branca into the poor, unsuspecting plant and washed the foul taste away with a free pint of Disaronno. 

The True Meaning of Christmas

I’ve been helping my eldest with his homework: a project on Christmas around the world.

Now, there are no doubt people out there – not ODHSNM readers, of course – who would find this outrageous.

Not me helping my son with his homework. The “around the world” bit. The true meaning of Christmas, they declare, can’t be reduced to some multicultural, relativistic blah blah blah...  - a line of argument which you know full well will inevitably end in someone blurting out the word “Immigrants!”

The true meaning of Christmas, they will say, is...erm...

Well, dear readers, let me put this to you. Christmas is just a celebration of good stuff at a crappy time of year. It has had all sorts of stuff superimposed on it over the centuries, but at the end of the day that’s what it started out as and that’s what it still is.

Don’t give me all that “it’s the birth of Jesus” malarkey. Christ is a late addition to Christmas.

He’s been stuck on top of at least two sets of pre-Christian traditions.

Pagan dessert

Firstly, the Northern European pagan Yule celebrations around the winter solstice. That’s where you get your holly and ivy, your Druidic mistletoe, your Christmas trees, your Yule log (chocolate or otherwise) and all those other Germano-Celto-Scandinavian accessories.

Not one of those things – except perhaps a log – would have been found in the Iron Age Middle East, so have clearly come from somewhere other than the Jesus story.

The second source is Greco-Roman paganism, specifically the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia (Kronoia for the Greeks among us) was a month long celebration of the good old days before that bastard Zeus cursed mankind with the need to work for a living. It involved:

• Gift giving
• Eating and drinking to excess
• A general end-of-term, office party kind of vibe all round, when slaves were afforded freedoms usually denied them and the bosses made fools of themselves

Sounds Christmassy, doesn’t it?

There are loads of other hypotheses kicking about saying that the Christian myth is based on other bits of

Not real

ancient lore, but why get into all that? It’s like arguing about whether Tolkien’s orcs were green or grey. Even if there’s a right answer, it doesn’t matter what it is because it’s ALL MADE UP.

The point is – and I’ll go out on a limb here – it is completely impossible to extract a “true” Christian core or indeed a “true” pagan core. It’s a big syncretic mess of bits and bobs appropriated from here, there and everywhere.

Look at Santa Claus. Where does he fit in? Don’t try to tell me that he’s “really” Saint Nicholas, the fourth century Turkish bishop and early Christian martyr. What the hell would he be doing with reindeer and elves? He’s as obviously mashed up as Baron Samedi.

Balls

Why do you think the Puritans banned Christmas in 1647 as “a popish festival with no biblical justification”? Precisely because they could see how pagan it all was. At least Oliver Cromwell had the balls to recognise it for what it was instead of whinging about the corruption of the “real” meaning on Radio Four.

You can’t select certain bits and say that’s the “real” Christmas and the rest of it isn’t – the Christian bits, the non-Christian bits, whatever. Every step along the way contributed to getting us where we are today. Who can say where taking any of them out would have taken us? There is no distinction between the signal and the noise.

The materialistic aspects of Christmas are just as ancient as the spiritual aspects.

And if we accept that consumerism is our current religion (or substitute for it), then a 50 year tradition of buy-buy-buy from Black Thursday to the January Sales is getting on for half the age of all “ye olde traditions” the Victorians bequeathed us.

It’s as silly to worship a tree or indeed money as it is to worship a big old beardy sky-fairy.  If you pick away rationally at every part of the Christmas myth, eventually you’re left with nothing but a bloody long winter ahead of us.

Maybe we don’t need to have a justification for having a party. The weather’s shit, it’s dark all the time – don’t we have a right to cheer ourselves up?

Perhaps THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the true meaning of Christmas. 

Apocalyptic Visions

My kids love going to the fairground. I do not share this love with them.

A trip to the fair inevitability concludes in:

1) A large wad of cash wasted – one leaves either with nothing at all to show or with something that is actually worse than nothing, such as a dart gun or a squeaky inflatable dolphin.

2) A screaming tantrum from one or both of the boys, who do not realise that there are precisely zero ways for them to have fun at a fair when the cash reserves have been exhausted.

For them to have fun, I say.  There is one thing I take pleasure in at funfairs – and best of all, it’s free.

I am, of course, talking about admiring the astonishing artwork on display.

Now, I like charmingly amateurish unlicensed renderings of popular cartoon characters as much as the next man. But what I really like are epic-scale depictions of beautiful people having KERRRAY-ZEE PARTY TIME!

In hyperreal colours!

Via airbrush!

This, for example, appears to be Amanda Palmer, with the words “Energy Dome” exploding out of her ears. Perhaps this fairground owner is a massive Dresden Dolls fan.

Actually, that’s quite a good one.

What I really like are the ones that defy the laws of perspective; which look like superficially skilful renderings of the human form (or of Porsches), but which have disturbing, subliminal inaccuracies which leave the viewer uneasy for reasons they cannot describe.

You can’t tell me that is not a disturbing image.

If Hieronymous Bosch was alive today, I think this is what his last judgments and visions of hell would look like. 

Self Improvement Through Beer

“Two wrongs do not make a right”, it is often said. And yet I have disproved this axiom through the unlikely medium of homebrew.

Permit me to explain. For my birthday, I was given a homebrewing kit – pictured.

I find the image on the box very misleading, because I don’t think any woman has ever reacted like this to the idea of homebrew. Unless of course she is thinking: “At last! Indisputable grounds for divorce!”

Home brewing is almost exclusively a male pursuit. I suspect this is because “yes, it may taste awful; give me the worst hangover I’ve ever; had AND the shits – BUT there’s 40 pints of it” is a thought which has never occurred to a woman. 

But I was telling you how two wrongs can make a right.

Ever since I have had this homebrew kit my consumption of beer has fallen to virtually zero. Why? Because I haven’t started making the homebrew yet, because I am lazy. At the same time, I refuse to buy any more beer when I have 40 potential pints lying around the house, because I am mean.

So laziness and meanness have joined together to create virtuous abstemiousness. And there you have two wrongs making a right. 

Bring Back the Battle of the River Plate

A pocket battleship - HA HA HA

I was shocked and dismayed to discover that the naval battle recreated in Scarborough’s Peasholm Park in the “Scarborough Naval Warfare” event is now presented as fictional.

Because ever since I heard that a park in Scarborough staged a re-enactment of the Battle of the River Plate, I have been yearning with a passion to go and see what must have rated as one of the most randomly bonkers events going.

What does the very name “Scarborough” evoke, more than the 1939 South Atlantic encounter between the German commerce raider Admiral Graf Spee and Commodore Harwood’s Force-G? Nothing, obviously.

Tancred and I recently pitched up in Peasholm Park. Roger Jr had fallen off his scooter and was being examined in Scarborough hospital within an hour of our arriving in the North Yorks Moors on holiday. Elvira was in attendance, and the youngest and I were attempting to salvage some sort of pleasant leisure out of the whole accursed experience.

Roger Jr was fine, by the way – and that hospital’s bad reputation was, as far as we could see, entirely undeserved.

The Naval Warfare event wasn’t on that day, but the ships were out in the lake. Apparently, they are operated by council employees. People’s council tax is being spent training miniature sailors, for god’s sake.

I know that most people today would probably have no idea what the Battle of the River Plate was, or would give a toss if they did know. And that's probably why it was changed.

SCUTTLE! goes the real Graf Spee

But it seems a terrible shame that they – whoever “they” are – have just turned this event into a demonstration of little boats pretending to fight in a lake, rather than a lunatic commemoration of real history. 

A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 5

It has been 17 months since I last posted on this subject, which perhaps gives you a sense of how thoroughly I have been pursuing this particular personal goal.

Well, let me tell you how I have been getting on in the meantime:

1. Since my iPod packed up, I have transferred all my Michel Thomas German CDs onto my iPhone. I haven’t listened to any of them yet. By the way, Amazon are offering me £15.90 to trade the course in – and yet, I have it all in electronic form now! HA HA HA.
2. While we were in Barcelona last weekend, Elvira and I went to see Rammstein...who are German.

One of the problems I always experienced with language learning at school was that learning to read and write something is in no way a guarantee – or even particularly helpful – in learning to understand what someone is saying to you.

That made the marks I achieved in different exams somewhat erratic: explaining the C I got in AS Level French – back when that was a proper exam, not just a certificate for getting through the first half of sixth form - as the outcome of my inability to do French listening with any degree of accuracy.

So I have been honing my German listening skills by playing a lot of Rammstein. This has expanded my vocabulary into many areas left out of the pre-GCSE syllabus, like cannibalism. 

As a parent, one has to be careful about the rock music one exposes one’s kids to. I was horrified to hear Tancred sing back some Turbonegro lyrics to me after I had been carelessly murmuring them to myself.

But Rammstein have the advantage of singing in German – so that with a handful of exceptions, one can relax about the lyrical content: my kids are ENGLISH! They will NEVER speak a foreign language properly! And it is frankly hilarious to hear 2 and 4 year olds impersonating Till Lindemann booming “Amerika ist Wunderbar”.

Anyway, on to the gig review.

• Rammstein live – Awesome. Especially the keyboard player’s treadmill. I was transfixed.
• Rammstein’s audience – Old and very respectable. Lots of neatly tucked in tour t-shirts (which, I might add were priced from a minimum of 25 euros). Somehow, we ended up with tickets in a section that had been sold exclusively to middle aged Germans. The thoroughness of their jaunty familiarity with Rammstein’s more gruesome lyrics was disturbingly at odds with their general appearance.  
• Palau St Jordi – Great concert venue. It’s got balconies you can get outdoors on. Ample toilet facilities (although not as ample as La Sagrada Familia). Weirdly, the seat numbers on our row went 13, 15, 14, 16 – this was a relief as for three months I had been a little anxious about having asked for seats together but in fact getting tickets for seats 13 and 15. In the end though, I was just relieved they were real. 
  
  
  
  
  

Barcelona: It was the first time that we met

Elvira and I have just come back from a long weekend in Barcelona, which has just leapt to the top of my list of favourite cities in the world.

Here are some of my pensées arising.

More whining about airports

As I mentioned last week, coming up with blog material is – for me – dependent on having time and space to mull over an idea continuously, until it has been mulled out of all proportion.

This is why I have written so thoroughly on air travel before. There is always a lot of waiting, and there is always something absurd happening or about to happen to think about.

For example – is the whole “take your shoes off to go through the scanner” now a permanent thing? On the basis that once ever – 12 years ago - some fucknut put a bomb in his shoes, which failed to go off?

I know that real life terrorists tend not to be the brightest, but is anyone really likely to try this again – when everyone’s shoes have to go through the scanner?

As if the superiority of pretty much every other culture to the British was in need of any evidence, Barcelona airport has accommodated this state of affairs by carpeting the walkway through the scanner. That, my friends, is a real sign of civilisation.

La Sagrada Familia

This, for those of you who don’t know, is that funny looking church.

Seriously – I thought it was the most impressive building I have ever seen. It is like nothing else on earth. And it’s not even finished yet.

The exterior is simply astonishing. From a distance it looks organic – like something HR Giger would have drawn or HP Lovecraft would have written about. The towers in particular look unchristian, like something that has risen out of a crack in the ground during an earthquake. I was particularly struck by how they have "Sanctus" written around them in exactly the same font as hotels have "Marriott" written on them. 

Plastic martians come out of it

Close up though, it is as ornate and religious as Notre Dame or Chartres cathedral. Above is a picture from the Nativity facade. This is presumably the first and only turkey featured on a major religious building.

For all its organic, sensuous curves, the Nativity facade is recognisably a more-or-less conventional church door. Contrast that with the modernist Passion facade, which is terrifying in its own way. 

I have to say that, while it was still very impressive, the interior of La Sagrada Familia didn’t move me like the exterior did. My first impression was that is resembled the set of a 1960s sci-fi, particularly when I saw the lifts going up and down the towers.

But what impressed me more than anything was the sheer ambition of it. Gaudi and everyone else who has worked on it knew they would not live to see it completed. Yes – that is true of cathedral builders throughout history, but to think that 20^th century people thought like that as well? The work, I suppose, is itself a collective act of devotion – very difficult for us individualists to comprehend. And yet there it is, being built with the money from the hordes of visitors paying 13 euro 50 a head to go and look.

If you go to Barcelona, you MUST go and see La Sagrada Familia.

Barcelona itself

It’s never a fair comparison to put somewhere you go on holiday alongside somewhere you live and/or work.

But let’s do it anyway.

Barcelona has a warm welcome for sailors

The weather was beautiful. Everyone we spoke to was friendly and helpful – despite my having gone there with the belief that it was simply a matter of time until we were pickpocketed. Everything was clean. Families were doing things together. Generations and nationalities were getting along just fine together. The food was good. Nothing was overcrowded. Even the many dogs seemed polite and relaxed.

I saw none of the waddling, tracksuited urban peasants one sees everywhere in the UK. Maybe they were all at home watching “Javier Kyle” instead of wandering about public spaces like grotesque overweight zombies.

LOL: "Quim"

OK, we did see a fair sample of that uniquely Iberian phenomenon - the man with long hair up in a bun - but then even the beggars were picturesque... ;)

No-one seemed to be doing anything purely for the sake of pissing everyone else off – apart from the (mostly, but thankfully not exclusively, British) stag and hen parties.

It almost made me think that living in a city need not be a hell on earth. And the scooters!

OK, on the last night on the way home we saw (i) needles, (ii) vomit on the Metro and (iii) a broken bottle on the station steps – but the fact that this was remarkable rather than entirely commonplace seems important.

Like I say, it’s probably not a fair comparison. Tourists who jet in and do the sights for a few days only see the theme park Barcelona. I’m sure it has its problems. But my god, its best side is so much better than the best side of any city I’ve ever seen in the UK.

So THAT is where I am retiring to.

¡Visca Catalunya!

A Tribute to Dora the Explorer

We seem to be at the stage now where neither of my kids want to watch Dora the Explorer any more. 

Despite Tancred being a mere two years old, he has decided that it is too babyish for him.

He’s probably just copying Roger Jr on that, but it raises the prospect of waving goodbye to one kiddie programme I’ve become quite fond of.

To begin with, I was just as horrified by Dora as I was by all the other offerings of CBeebies, Nickeloden and whatnot. And yet, it soon grew on me enormously.

Not to the point where I would choose to watch it by myself obviously.

To the point where:

• It doesn’t do my head in completely.
• I will happily sing along with songs on it, even in the presence of adult visitors.
• In general, I find myself hoping that there’s another episode on next, rather than something else.

In all seriousness, Dora is a brilliant role model for all kids:

• She’s a minority-ethnic character but that’s just one aspect of her. It doesn’t define her completely. This is how kids think about “difference” and it’s how we should encourage them to carry on thinking about it.
• Similarly, she’s a girl doing traditionally non-girly things. That she’s a girl is just a fact about her, unlike 95% of other girls in kids’ media, where being a girl necessarily entails adherence to some kind of pink princess-fantasy. We have two boys and if you don’t have kids, you’d be astonished at how quickly little boys can become raving sexists. I think that Dora has had a positive on their perception of “geee-uuuuuuuurls”.
• My god, it took some getting used to, but she’s so bloody NICE! Dora never gets angry, she’s never rude and she always wins over baddies by being reasonable. I wish I could say that she’s influenced our kids in this way as well...

Of course, the voices are tremendously irritating and I’d rather my kids were a little older before the American cultural blog absorbed them fully - although having said that I don’t think the five voice actors who overdub EVERY SINGLE non-UK produced kids TV programme with British accents need any more work.

And yes, we have occasionally found ourselves in the odd situation of our kids knowing the Spanish word for something and not the English. It’s pretty weird to be told “Daddy, look an arco iris!”

But I will genuinely miss Dora the Explorer if the kids are giving up on it. For myself, I will continue to say “Oh Maaaaan!” in the manner of Swiper the Fox until the day I die. 

It’s (not) Christmas (any more)!

Christmas is now but a distant memory, with only a cupboard full of unwanted chocolate and ever-greater discomfort around the waist to remind us it was ever here.  

Lots of amusing things happen over Christmas, don’t they? And yet because we’re “away from our desks” over the period and because once we’re back at them Christmas is the last thing anyone wants to think about, we rarely get an opportunity to dissect them.

Well, fret no more! ODHSNM once again strides out where the mainstream media fears to tread and features a Christmas-focused article in mid January.

Much like Tulisa, One Direction and other glitzy celebs, the Pope tossed off a book for Xmas this festive season.

And "The Infancy Narratives - Jesus of Nazareth” did not disappoint with its no-holds-barred, warts-and-all, nothing-left-to-the-imagination account of how the Christmas story is not actually true.

You sit on a throne of lies

It may come as rather a shock to you to hear this coming from His Holiness Benedict XVI – accustomed as we are during December to driving past empty-looking churches festooned with passive-aggressive posters insisting “if it wasn’t for Jesus you wouldn’t have ANY Christmas”.

Particularly in the light of the various absurd articles of faith the Holy Father has not yet seen fit to debunk.

But if Jesus was not actually born on December 25, then what is stopping us from having a staggered Christmas season?

Not that sort of staggering, you cheeky monkey you.

No, why can’t we just choose when to celebrate it? For example, shortly after the January sales? Everyone doing it at once is highly inefficient. It creates queues, allows businesses to ramp up prices, makes us all take a really quiet week in the office as leave etc. Plus the weather is always shit.

If we’re all getting the date wrong anyway (and I refer you to the Pastor aeternus of 1870 – the bit on Papal infallibility), Jesus would presumably not mind if we all got it wrong on some other, more convenient date of our choosing.

I told you this year’s theme was going to be calendar reform. We’re starting early.

Speaking of “starting early” one of the best things about Christmas is the expectation that you will – nay, obligation to – drink alcohol during the (admittedly scanty) hours of daylight.

WHY?

Not only that, but you are entitled to drink things that you would never consider drinking at any other time – such as advocaat, sherry or banana liqueur.  Or indeed red-coloured paint thinner with clove oil in it, also known as “mulled wine” at this time of year.

Nothing quite beats the feeling of settling down in a chair thinking “it’s 3pm, I’m hammered, I may well fall asleep and nobody is going to give me a hard time about it”.

And if it wasn’t for Jesus, you wouldn’t be allowed to do that so you really should go to church to make it up to him. He looks a bit annoyed.

But really, Christmas is a time for the kids (and if it wasn’t for Jesus, you wouldn’t have any kids).

What I really want to know is, when did it become necessary to have a set of wire cutters about your person when sitting down to open kids’ presents?

I have seen nuclear reactors less comprehensively sealed and 50-storey buildings less securely anchored than most of the things our boys got this year.

A plastic horse we got for Tancred (retail value, I dunno, about £5?) was (i) in a cardboard box that was (ii) taped shut inside and out and then (iii) attached to the packaging by tightly-wound wires around each foot and its tail.

The whole thing is completely crime-proof unless you...oh, I don’t know...STEAL THE BOX AS WELL.

As it was, my finger ends were bleeding raw by lunchtime from repeated attempts to separate box and plastic lump. 

Jesus really doesn’t like all that packaging. He’s tutting and pursing his lips right now.

But if you look round at him, he’ll pretend to be doing something else. 

Is there anything, readership, you would like to share about Christmas? Perhaps you bought ten lighters for a euro and some batteries at an English market in Germany? Or maybe you wonder why the official canon of Christmas songs ends at around 1986? Let's have your amusing observations below. 

The Best Barber in the World

It may come as a surprise to you to discover that the best barber in the world is situated in Greengates, Bradford.

And yet here is the proof: BEST BARBER IN THE WORLD.

This, I should point out, is at least the second version of this sign that has been displayed on this shop. The first version was just a banner – as you can see, the owner has decided to go for something a little more permanent.

Clearly, this was one of those “president for life” elections, after which all future polls were abolished - after all, if he really is the best, why vote again?

Having spent that much on the sign, I don’t think he plans on putting his record before the public again any time soon.

I drive past this shop most days, but it was not until this weekend just gone that I put my head into the hands of the best barber in the world.

He was alright – he met my five criteria admirably. £7 for a cut, parking outside (none of those pictured are my car, psychopathic readers!) and plenty of Daily Stars to read while I waited.

It is not, however, the boldness of his claim that impresses me most, but rather the carefully hedged wording.

Was he voted the best barber in the world by his customers, whom he describing as loyal?

Or was it only the loyal customers who voted him best barber in the world – with the sign a coded rebuke to those disloyal customers who voted for someone else?

Top five things I look for in a barber

I am a simple man with simple hair. This is all I need from the person who cuts it:

1. No appointment necessary
2. No queuing
3. Under a tenner
4. Comfortable with long silences
5. Doesn’t smell bad

The place I went to in Leeds city centre yesterday fulfilled all these conditions. Plus, he had a jar of product on the counter called “Cholesterol”.

Coming soon: the promised second part of "How to Win School Appeals"...

Architecture and Morality

I have been wandering around Leeds city centre at lunchtimes since the start of the year.

Given that one can only get so far and still have enough time to get back to the office, as you can probably imagine, the novelty soon wore off.

However, seeing as I am doing it for exercise – having cancelled my gym membership at the end of the year – I have been persevering with it, while trying to find new ways of making it interesting.

First off, I am listening to my Michel Thomas German language course a lot. All I need to take this to the next level (as we say whilst inwardly dying in management meetings) is find someone else who wants to speak German and start speaking to them. In German.

Right now, all I’m doing is walking about whispering to myself – which is, of course, the international language of the mental patient.

Secondly, I am looking up.

Most of the people shuffling around the city streets rarely raise they eyes above the level of the shop-fronts. I, however, have been looking at the uppermost parts of Leeds’ buildings and I’ve reached two conclusions:

1. There is a hell of a lot of vacant commercial property in the city centre - so if you need business premises, you should be able to get a very good deal.

2. If you flooded or buried Leeds to a depth of about 15 feet, you'd actually be left with quite a beautiful place.

There are some really fascinating buildings around which you would never give a second glance to because of the staggeringly banal contents of their ground floors. The most extreme example of former "oooh" and present "meh" surely has to be the one-time Jubilee Hotel on The Headrow – now the "Red Leopard" lapdancing establishment.

My personal favourite is St Paul’s House in Park Square (right). It looks like the Doge’s Palace, only with an “office space to let” sign pinned to the outside.

The Leeds City Markets building (at the top) would not look out of place in Paris or Vienna, despite being inhabited primarily by people offering to unlock stolen mobile phones. And the Town Hall is also a thing of beauty.

THEN, you look at what’s in between these brilliant examples of Victorian ambition and craftsmanship and you realise that if the Victorians were wrong about one thing, it was that history moves forwards towards a better future. 

Pretty much every building from the 20^th century onwards looks horrendous, cheap and nasty.  The court buildings look like they’ve been made out of Lego, for example. And they probably have. 

“Ah, here he goes again, imagining the past was SO MUCH BETTER than the present”, I hear you say. “The reason why old buildings look better than modern ones is that the crap old buildings fell down or were knocked down years ago.”

Please excuse any Prince Charles tendencies here. Some modern buildings are indeed impressive and beautiful in their own way. The Gherkin in London is quite something.

But – to me - they are things you look at and say “that’s a clever statement” rather than “that is a work of art”. Same as the difference between Tracey Emin’s bed and a Caravaggio.

 So, present-day architects: more stone-work please. More domes. More intricacy, less concept please. OK?

Tetley Brewery - or what's left of it

Another thing you notice about Leeds’ buildings is how many of them are completely derelict. I’m not talking about boarded up shops – I mean entire city blocks of buildings going to ruin. The whole area just north of the bus station, for example, around Templar Street and Lady Lane.

Clearly, no one is going to buy them or rent them in their present condition. So why not demolish them?

In fact, here’s an early policy for my future dictatorship. If a building is left unoccupied for more than a year, it has to be EITHER opened up to homeless people OR blown up and returned to nature until someone can think of something worthwhile to put there instead. 

The day I went to Chester

Last week, I spent an afternoon wandering aimlessly around the historic city of Chester.

Since the start of 2012, I have begun wandering aimlessly around every city in which I happen to find myself. Having given up my gym membership last year, I am now going for walks around Leeds every day I am at work. The effects so far have been (i) half a stone lost in a month and (ii) I have a much better knowledge of the place where I have been working every day for the last four years.

So, when I found myself at a loose end on the Welsh border, I naturally thought “I must find a town to wander around” – and there Chester was.

Chester dates back to Roman times. It has an amphitheatre and everything. But the city centre is mostly medieval, full of wonky doorways, tiny passageways and long drops. Of the places I have been to, it reminds me most of Edinburgh – only warmer.  Or Godalming in Surrey.

It is one of those beautiful English towns where normal people like you and I have precisely zero chance of ever owning a reasonably-sized house. 

The only way people who are not either professional footballers or oil billionaires – two groups of people hardly renowned for their appreciation of historical architecture – could afford to live in Chester is by inheriting their parents’ property.

When is this property market insanity going to end? Well, in 318 days I suppose - same as everything else.  

Indeed, housing is starting to look like Albania in 1996, so it will probably end with us all machine gunning each other to steal bricks.

I walked a full circuit of the city walls. Sensibly, they are at their highest facing Wales. Ravening Celts would be obliged to cross the River Dee, the racecourse, a 30-foot wall AND the inner ring road before managing to sack the cathedral.

Chester cathedral is home to some of the finest medieval carvings in Europe. It also costs £6 to get in, unless you are going “for an act of worship” – in which case it’s free. So I didn’t go in. Until they find a way of charging to look at the outside of things, I will content myself with this sort of view.

I did go into the Newgate Street multi storey car park, though.

Honestly, who knows the height of their car? When it says max height 6’ 9”, do you expect me to get out and measure? Or to drive in, and start backing out when the roof box scuffs the ceiling? Hopefully I will be able to get out later on.

Postscript – Shortly after finishing the above, I found that I had lost my parking ticket. I expected to get fined £10, but the attendant let me out for the normal price. Sometimes, having the face of an idiot is a huge advantage. 

Rhapsodies of Bohemia - pt3

Neville Chamberlain once washed his hands of Czechoslovakia by calling it “a far-away country of which we know nothing”.

As such, I like to think that these three blog posts about my recent trip to Prague are working to prevent such appeasement of any future Hitler.

By making you not know nothing about it, and in fact know something about it.

The Czech Republic, that is.

Czech Technology

I shouldn’t really have been surprised by this (because it happened to me in France as well), but the first thing I did on getting out of the airport was to try and check my emails - and of course, I couldn’t get the internet on my phone. So I had to hold out for a WiFi network.

Naturally, I was very uneasy until I got online. God knows how anyone managed to go on holiday in the past. Or to places where they don’t have WiFi.

Anyway, pursuant to my remarks about the Czech language I was a little disconcerted when faced with the Czech keyboard. Now I know that other countries have different keyboards. But if ANYONE knows where the @ symbol is on the Czech keyboard, please let me know. In order to log in to my email, I had to Google “at symbol”.

Just another reason not to have all those silly accented letters in your alphabet taking up valuable keyboard space.

Czech culture

Ever seen this little chap? 

If - like me - you used to watch the eerie foreign cartoons on BBC2 around teatime circa 1983, you may have a vague recollection. If not, he’s called Krtek (which means “mole”) and as far as I could tell, he is the single most popular thing in the entire Czech Republic.

Perhaps one in every three shops and market stalls in Prague stock every kind of Krtek merchandise you can imagine.

On our last day there, I was starting to think this mole was a little too popular when I spotted him on the front page of a daily newspaper.

But it turned out that his creator, Zdenek Miler, had died that day. Very sad, because in just three days I had become a Krtek fan too.

Alongside Krtek, Prague is overrun with Kafka-kitsch and the occasional Svejk – but no one comes close to the mole.

In conclusion

Elvira and I had a great time in Prague. To be fair, we would probably have had a great time anywhere without the kids, but the location definitely contributed. Prague is easy to get to, (relatively) cheap, safe, simple to navigate, beautiful and fascinating. I give it two thumbs up, and despite the piss-taking in the foregoing three posts, I am now a firm fan of the Czech people and the Czech Republic. 

But after our foreign trip it was nice to come back to the kids and to Boston and see the familiar signs of home.