August betrays us again

April is the cruellest month, said TS Eliot in “The Wasteland”, but surely August has a good claim to being the most perennially disappointing.

Conditioned by the school calendar, we tend to think of the eighth month as the height of summer. And yet just look out of the window. It’s AUTUMN.

We’re in that weird little intermezzo when a brief glance at the populace reveals people clad in flip-flops and vests co-existing alongside people in coats and scarves. When people are kidding themselves that it’s still summer by reference to the date.

It’s rare that my blogs are inspired by other people, and even rarer for me to give credit when they are – but this one came from my wife, Elvira of Castille, who pointed out August’s treacherous qualities to me last week.

Like Steven Gerrard/Frank Lampard/Wayne Rooney in an England shirt, August lets you down every time. You know in your heart that it won’t deliver on its promise, but you can’t help but hope it’ll be different this time. Gradually, that hope turns into belief just in time to let you down painfully. 

Also, it never snows at Christmas. 

The Horn

​If your car does not have a properly functioning horn, it will fail its MOT.

I find this rather surprising, insofar as the only function a car horn has is to declare to the listening world that the driver sounding it is a wanker.

Let us consider the full range of situations in which any driver in the UK has ever used their horn:

Situation 1
Intended meaning: “You just behaved in a way which caused me a slight inconvenience and/or to caused me to turn my steering wheel/slow down when I didn’t want to – I am unreasonably angry about that”
Meaning actually conveyed: “I am a wanker”

Situation 2
Intended meaning: “Someone is breaking into my car. Hopefully this noise will scare them off rather than encourage others to join in”
Meaning actually conveyed: “I am a wanker”

Situation 3
Intended meaning: “The traffic lights have changed and you have not noticed it as quickly as me”
Meaning actually conveyed: “I am a wanker”

Situation 4
Intended meaning: “I recognise you! Hello! Oh dear, you have had a heart attack”
Meaning actually conveyed: “I am a wanker”

Situation 5
Intended meaning: "Get out of the way pigeon - no, THAT pigeon, not all of you in a 500 metre radius"
Meaning actually conveyed: "I am a wanker"

Situation 6
Intended meaning: “I am sitting outside your house. Come out, because I am not coming to the door”
Meaning actually conveyed: “I am a wanker. And also a taxi driver”

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. 

Why Talking About British Values Will Never Go Anywhere

The reason why nobody is able to define “British values” or “English values” without coming across as complete tit is as follows.

Great Britain came into being as a result of the Acts of Union of 1706 and 1707, combining England and Scotland – which had previously been separate states in personal union (ie with the same monarch) since 1603.

That became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland following a couple more Acts of Union in 1800. Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1542.

If “Britain” can be said to have values – in the sense of something that more or less united its people in pursuit of something or other – then that was global economic and political dominance, expressed as imperialism and colonialism. 

The primary beneficiaries of imperialism and colonialism were the aristocracy of wealth – not the British people as a whole. That is, of course, not to say that the British poor and working class didn’t do somewhat better out of colonialism than a lot of the colonised peoples. But I think it’s reasonable to say that the principal benefits they accrued were:

• Not being killed or formally enslaved
• A vicarious sense of being part of the biggest and best power in the world – much like the World Cup today

At the height of the imperial period, local elites in Edinburgh and Dublin started agitating for a bigger share of London’s power – and started developing ethno-cultural Scottish and Irish nationalism as counterforces opposing “Britain”.

Economic grievances in poor parts of England and Wales were no doubt comparable to some of the suffering experienced in Scotland and Ireland. But they have lacked voices capable of mobilising those grievances behind an articulation of “being different”.

That Britain has already lost its struggle. It lost it with decolonisation, which really began with the Easter Rising of 1916 in Ireland.

And so of course there is nothing we can say really represents “British values” – because in a postcolonial world, nothing that you could genuinely hold up as “British” is considered a virtue any more, other than instrumental virtues or means to ends we can’t talk about any more.

Why should “keep calm and carry on” be a virtue? Carry on doing what? Endure whatever shit you are being subjected to quietly, without questioning why you should be going through it in the first place?

Hence we make a virtue out of stoicism or quietism, no matter what use it is put to. Hence we make a virtue out of democracy, no matter how disgusted we are with what it leads to.  

These are just means to the sort of ends people can actually identify with.

In 1962 the American Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said:

Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.

52 years later, it pathetically avoids finding a new role by clinging on to its absurd imperial dreams, buying aircraft carriers at the same time as closing hospitals; pretending there’s nothing wrong at home while threatening pointless wars abroad.

No wonder a hell of a lot of Scottish people want to leave. Because the hope of something better is the kind of motivator people can get behind, even when it’s irrational or even when that hope is forlorn.

It’s only in recent years that people have begun to think about “Englishness” at all, primarily as a result of recognising how moribund British identity is compared to those which have defined themselves in opposition to it.

Are English people really more selfish and right-wing than Scottish people? Or are English people really less hospitable and prone to romanticism than Irish people? I don’t think they are. I think these are attributes appropriated by cultural nationalists to distinguish the Scots, the Irish etc from cold, materialistic Britain – in the sense of the British Empire. And they’ve proved themselves on the right side of history by distancing themselves from that.

Trouble is, what does that leave the English to define themselves with? A whole host of “good” virtues and attributes pinched by various Celts, a load of “bad” virtues and attributes nobody sensible wants to associate themselves with any more or a load of thoroughly tedious virtues and attributes that no one gives a toss about?

We might as well be discussing “Ukrainian values” or “Iraqi values”. Or Austro-Hungarian values or Yugoslavian values. The people who live or lived in these places form multiple communities based on values, but those communities don't and never did coincide with the shapes marked on the maps going by those names. 

Only when the English let go of “Britain” will they be able to decide who they want to be. Once they’ve done that, maybe we’ll find that we’ve got more than we thought in common with all our fellow inhabitants of the British Isles. 

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. 

Looking Inside Myself

It’s June and this is only the 11^th blog post I have written this year.

Long-term readers will perhaps have noticed a downward trend in the frequency of updates since the prolific days of 2011, when by June 2^nd I had racked up 28 posts.

Quantity is obviously not everything, and no doubt there are those (from whose number I do not automatically exclude myself) who think that the quality has deteriorated since then too, when I declaimed loudwise about the divinity of the sun, about dinosaurs and about Eurovision.

Monologues like that – whether intended to be funny, serious or whatever – just don’t seem to come to me complete and ready for compression into 1,500 words or so any more.

Perhaps I have exhausted the store of all the experiences, ideas and connections built up over my 38 years alive that seemed worth sharing. Perhaps I am running on the fumes of what occurs to me between posts.

I dunno.

Part of it is definitely work-related. It’s all got a bit more serious in the last couple of years, and so when I have mental free time it tends not to be spent on flights of fancy but on the tiresome matter of making money for somebody else. Not on purpose, obviously – but I used to quite enjoy waking up in the dead of night with a thought I couldn’t get out of my head, whereas I don’t really now.

Part of it is just sheer ennui.

He is perfectly capable of not pulling this stupid face

Yeah, I COULD write about UKIP but what’s the fucking point?

I’m not doing this to point out what other people have written or thought, or to provoke people into arguments. I’m doing this to express my views where they are different or new. And I seem to just have fewer views than ever before.

I could write about Eurovision again – which was won by a bearded lady this year. How shocking. Oh no, wait. Didn’t a transgender person win it in 1998? Wasn’t that more shocking? Or does the beard push it over the edge? Doesn’t it stop being shocking when you know it’s all being done purely with the intention to shock?

I haven’t watched Eurovision in years. The whole thing just feels like (i) an in-joke that everyone is in on and (ii) something that takes place solely for the reason of generating opinion pieces (or “ten ways to have a Eurovision party” articles). The Buzzfeedisation of everything makes me want to blow up the internet. But I still look at it. 

I could write about Ukraine, but OH MY GOD how much work would it be to actually form opinions based on some foundations of fact rather than “goodie/baddie” or “everybody baddie” narratives we are presented with? Ukraine won Eurovision in 2004, with Ruslana’s “Wild Dances”. Just Google it yourself – I don’t need to link to it, do I?

This is what I KNOW about Ukraine

I can’t believe some of the topics I wrote about in the past, insofar as I can’t believe I gave enough of a shit to spend the time writing about them – and being satisfied enough with what I’d written to give it a public airing.

Don’t worry by the way – I am not going to treat this like a cheap sitcom Xmas special, where we reminisce over a load of links to past posts. Do you remember Viktor Bout? (Fade to late 2010...switch on laughter track...)

I have long resisted the temptation to start reviewing TV programmes or films, but...but then, what would the point of doing that be? We already have the Radio Times.

Dear readers: would you rather see more or less on here? Would ODHSNM be better as a blog with a theme rather than just as a random assemblage of ephemera? Should I perhaps experiment with the possibilities of the blog as a literary form rather than ape the columnists of the dead tree press (complete with punning headline – BUT WHY?)?

Answers below please. Come on – I NEEEEED your validation so bad. 

Good Grammar? No Thing Cost!

I went to an English grammar school, but I don’t remember learning any English grammar while I was there.

Similarly, I have GCSEs in English Language and English Literature, but I don’t recall ever being really explicitly taught anything about the former. Just a lot of the latter.

I also did GCSE Latin, which is pretty much the only reason I know anything about grammar today. In retrospect, the modern languages we did at school covered a lot of grammar, but at the time I don’t think anyone really appreciated that that's what it was.

Now, before anyone loses their shit at me for despoiling their childhood, I’m not saying this is good or bad or even that this is what actually happened. This is just how I remember it 20+ years on.

What I am saying is that, on the internet these days, there seems to be a thing called being a “grammar snob” or even a “grammar Nazi” – which consists of sneering at other people’s ungainly efforts to express themselves, presumably from a position of knowing the “right” way to do it.  Or complaining about people who do that. Whatevs.

And I find this strange, because I find myself having – at best – an instinctive sense of what English grammar is and not an explicit understanding. I’m fairly well educated and I’ve made a living out of online content (not THIS! My real job!) for some years now. So I ought to know more than most, right?

I have found that it is only my vestigial knowledge of Latin (why does the stuff you learn at school stick around? “Then, first, before the rest and with a great accompanying crowd, Laocoon came blazing down from the citadel...”) and my subsequent attempts to learn German that have taught me what auxiliary verbs are and what “subjunctive” means. No English teacher ever did.

How many self-proclaimed grammar snobs can tell a gerund from a gerundive? I can’t. And how many of the tiny percentage who can say yes can only do so because they learned a different language?

Now, I don’t believe for one second that I have ever been unable to communicate with a fellow English speaker because of a lack of formal grammatical training. I suspect that one of the good things about this language is its openness to innovation (errors, if you prefer, snobs) and its flexibility.

Grammar snobs can piss off, telling people they are using language wrong. No - if you think language is a delicate flower that needs to be protected from use then you're wrong. The nail got knocked in whether you did it with a wrench or a hammer. When it comes to our own language (not your own), communication is what matters. 

But might our national problem with learning other languages not be ameliorated a little if all that conjugation and declension bollocks we got forcefed was treated as something we are already coping with just fine every time we speak or write? Something that is not completely new and alien, but just another way of doing something we’re doing all the time?

I certainly don’t want to be called a grammar snob, but a little grammar would surely help a lot.

Comments welcome below. First person who works in education to make a snidely predictable remark about Michael Gove wins a commemorative tea towel.