The end of empires (and even the United States - utterly inconceivable only to those poor souls who don't listen to Radio Four)

There is a very good, not to say quite fascinating, series running on Radio Four at the moment called A History Of The World In 100 Objects. The presenter, who, I think also wrote the series, chooses one of the many artefacts in the British museum and expands on it and thereby brings the history of the world to life. And it is series such as this which can demonstrate, as it is demonstrating to me, how essentially ignorant one is.

For example, I had previously heard mention of the Indus civilisation but knew little else. And although, tantalisingly, we know remarkably little to this day, I now know a lot more. Most fascinating was that the Indus cities were exceptionally well-built with a sanitation system and that to this day archaelogists have found no evidence that the people of that civilisation went to war or even had a standing army.

Another equally fascinating programme detailed (and this I did already know) that people throughout the Middle East had a flood legend and that they predate the mention of Noah in the Old Testament by many years.

Today the chap chose something or other from the Assyrian empire (I don’t now what as I missed the first five minutes but I think it was an account, or rather two accounts, one from each side, of the conquest of the Assyrians of Judea). 

After hearing it, I looked up the Assyrian empire on the net and was astounded to learn that it lasted almost 1,500 years (from the 2,000BC until around 600BC, although its existence straddled two distinct phases with at one point the Assyrians being vassals of the Babylonians.

Those 1,500 years rather knock into a cocked hat our own British empire, which at its peak was effective for a mere 120 or thereabouts - if you agree with me that the empire’s slow decline began after the end of the Great War - but also rather put in context what might be referred to as the American empire. Granted that the U.S. doesn’t behave as empires of the past have done, but I think a good argument could be made to suggest that there is a de facto American empire. That has lasted - what? - 60 years.

At present it seems inconceivable that the United States could ever ‘break up’ and even less conceivable that it might be ‘broken up’, but then an end to the Assyrian, Roman and Byzantine empires would also have seemed inconceivable to those who lived in them when each was at the height of its powers.

Ashes to ashes . . .

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 3

At the risk of sounding tactless, if not out and out callous, the old chap who was apparently at death’s door a week or two ago has rallied. So there is nothing to report along those lines, whether ironical or not. I shall be seeing him this coming Wednesday night on my way back from London, and I shall do my best to cheer him up. It’s not that he is ill, simply that he is 83 and that his body is slowly packing up. I managed to cheer him up and get him to laugh again the last time I saw him, but it is so crass to chat along the lines of: ‘Look, I don't know what you’re worrying about, it might never happen’, when, in fact, it will happen and unless I end up in a horrible motorway crash tomorrow on my way to work, it will happen to him rather sooner than it will happen to me. The only thing I can do, or one of the only things I can do, is to remind him of his Anglican faith and to ensure he becomes less anxious.

Having said all that, here’s another joke to be getting one with.

The wedding reception was held at a lovely hotel and everyone agreed that it was one of the nicest occasions they had ever attended. Finally, at about two in the morning, the last few guests drifted off and the newly-wed couple retired to the honeymoon suite where they decided to have a last glass of champagne. They were discussing out the day had gone and who had been there, when the bride noticed that her new husband had grown a little silent.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing, darling, nothing at all, nothing my dear,’ he said.
‘Come on, something’s bothering you, what is is?’
‘Really, it’s nothing,’ said her husband, ‘nothing at all it’s just . . . it’ll keep, really.’
‘Look,’ said the bride, ‘tell me now. Let’s start as we mean to go on and be completely open with each other.’
‘Well . . . ah, no, it’s nothing, seriously, nothing at all, it’s just, y’know, something I’ve been wondering about, but, y’know, another time, really.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake out with it.’
‘I don’t, y’know, I don’t want to upset you.’
‘You’ll upset me if you don’t stop beating about the bush,’ said the bride, ‘now come on, out with it.’
‘Well . . . it’s just y’know, I’ve often wondered . . .’ The newly-wed man fell silent.
‘Wondered what?’
‘Well, y’know, I’ve often wondered whether, er, y’know . . .’ Again he drifted off into silence.
‘Whether what?’ the bride asked, now sounding a little impatient.
‘Well . . . OK, I’ve often wondered, y’know . . . I’ve often wondered whether, er, whether I was your first.’
The bride was silent for a moment, and then she sighed. ‘Oh God, if I had a pound for every man who’s asked me that!’

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 2

I had intended publishing my next blog entry along the lines of the imminent death of an elderly friend, how sad I was blah, blah, blah and meditations on how profoundly the demise of someone very, very close can impact on the ego, especially the sensitive, ineffably well-developed ego of the remorselessly self-centred blogger. Reflections on irony were to play a large part in that entry. However, I usually draft these entries on before publishing them and the draft to that particular entry is on another laptop (officially I have two, in fact, for reasons it would be far to tedious to go into here, I have four), so that shall have to wait until another day to be published. In the meantime I shall tell you another joke, one which has gained a certain status on the Daily Mail feature subs’ desk as ‘Pat’s Polish farmer joke’.
Here it is:

At the end of World War II when Poland gained a large chunk of the east of Germany and Soviet Russia gained a large chunk of east of Poland, the Soviet and Polish authorities set about deciding where the frontier should be between Poland and Soviet Russia. They finally agreed on a suitable frontier whose only drawback was that it went right through a Polish farmer’s property. So they called him in, sat him down and explained the situation to him. They asked him where he would rather have his farm: in Poland or Soviet Russia.
‘Oh Poland,’ he told them, ‘without a doubt, without a doubt, it has to be Poland. Those Russian winters are terrible.’

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 1

David and Maurice were two Jewish friends who had known grown up together, worked together and known each other all their lives. Now that they were both retired, they met up two or three times a week at a French cafe in North London to gossip and read their newspapers. David was always a Daily Telegraph man and Maurice preferred The Times, but one day, David is amazed to see that Maurice is reading The Flame, the newspaper of the National Front.
‘For God’s sake, Maurice, why are you reading that bloody awful rag?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, David,’ says Maurice, ‘I like The Times, but it was beginning to depress me. It was all so negative and downbeat, nothing but inflation, misery, scandal, horror, crime and disaster . But The Flame is so different, it’s much, much more positive and upbeat. Did you know that, apparently, we own all the world's banks, run Hollywood and have complete control of the White House?’

Smell of cow shit brings a promise with it

This will sound daft, but I know spring is one its way, not because January is slowly drawing to a close, but because I can smell the cow shit in the air.
I arrived back her at Higher Lank about ten minutes to midnight, and getting out of the car, the first thing I noticed was the smell of cow shit. I am not trying to be funny - for once - when I say I like the smell a great deal. (The waste from vegetarian animals simply doesn't smell offensive.)
The thing is that you can never smell the cow shit in the winter. Why, I don't know. Perhaps it is too cold, but then that can't really be the answer because last week when we had a mild smell, I still couldn't smell it. But now I can, and now I know spring is on its way.
BTW Another smell I like a lot is that of silage.

Saved from a fate worse than death — apparently

So much for winter hell on Earth. After spending more than a week away from home and seriously concerned that I would miss out on important episodes in my children’s childhood (such as discovering it is quite possible to watch TV 24 hours a day if there is no one there to curb such excess), I was determined to get back to Cornwall from work last Wednesday. Being of late rather more mature and responsible (I’m afraid it happens to us all, dammit, despite all those grass-induced late-night pledges that ‘I’m not going to grow up, man, I mean like, you know, who needs it, I mean like growing up, I mean why lay that trip on yourself, man, when there are people dying everywhere, you know, dying, just dying, and all the fatcats, you know, man, all the breadheads, are just sitting there and they don’t give a fuck man’ etc ad nauseam) I checked and double-checked the forecasts — in London, Exeter (where I would travel to by train and pick up my car), Okehampton in the middle of Dartmoor and here at home in St Breward — and did so several days running to ensure I had the very latest information. I even rang up the BP service station at Belstone, just outside Okehampton for an up-to-the-minute eyewitness account of the situation, and a guy there confirmed that the A30 was not only passable but completely free of snow. So I took off.
The first thing I noticed on my journey, or rather the first thing I didn’t notice, was snow. According to the TV news, everywhere apparently, except the small corner of West London where I live and work between Sunday and Wednesday, was several feet deep in snow. So, I asked myself looking out of the train window, where the bloody hell was it all? Where had it gone? For most certainly the TV pictures had not been faked (we have strict laws against that kind of thing — only radio phone ins and TV quizzes can be faked these days), but where was the snow?
The mystery deepened when I got to the station at Exeter St Davids. There the streets were, I must admit, a little damp — it was foggy — but incontrovertibly snow-free. The road out of Exeter to the A30 and the A30 itself were also resolutely snow-free. I did eventually get to see a little snow when I got as far as Belstone, but it was an embarrassment, nothing but small patches in the grass which couldn’t make up its mind whether it was still snow, whether it had become ice or whether it was by now something in between. Snow should be majestic. There is undoubtedly something wildly impressive when you come across a six-foot bank of freshly fallen snow, however inconvenient or even dangerous it might be. You cannot but respect it. It is there and it is beautiful. It might even move some, although not me, to try their hand at verse. But this kind of snow, the kind of whatever it was masquerading as snow on Dartmoor? It was as embarrassing as a fat man man in late middle-age reeking of nicotine and with hair which is beyond thinning who still comes on as though he were some virile he-man in his mid-20s. And for this I endured an additional three days in London? Give me a break.
Thursday and Friday the temperatures climbed and today
was as mild as any day one might enjoy in late winter or early spring. Today it is also pissing with rain which is very re-assuring. The weathermen, who completely cocked up over the ‘cold snap’ are informing us that we should not be fooled by the ‘mild spell’ and that the cold temperatures could last until well into April. Yeah, right. Sounds like a bad case of over-compensation to me. And his from the guys who promised us a ‘barbecue summer’ last year. Did we get one? Answers on a postcard, please, addressed to your nearest municipal dump.
The two pictures were taken just a few minutes ago. They show the remains of a snowman my children built. One is a general shot, the second is a — very necessary — close-up. Take especial note of the rain.
End of rant.

Snow, bloody snow...

So far this blog has consisted of longwinded accounts of the cars I have owned and crashed interspersed with whatever irrelevancy has preoccupied me at any given time, so this entry will be an exception. We are going through hell in this country, as will already be known by British readers and readers with an unusually keen interest in British weather (I think there’s a retired tailor in Panama who qualifies and who, by virtue of having once had a grandmother from Belper in Derbyshire, feels a certain bond with Britain and all things British. He is the president of the Panama/Derbyshire Friendship Society, although, as far as I know, also its only member). It is an icy hell, a snowy hell. It is, of course, as nothing compared to the slightly bad weather experienced each year in Minnesota and the other northern states of America, but this is Britain, where we are more accustomed to week-long for than snow, so for us it is hell.
On the bright side, it has been the kind of winter which makes for media heaven. Cliches have been taken out, dusted down and proudly used which have been all but forgotten for many a year. One group of New Year revellers were snowed in in a pub in the Peak District and couldn't leave for four days; a pensioner couple have frozen to death in their bungalow despite several neighbours alerting the police and social services that they needed help; the public has been sternly informed that any attempt at clearing snow and ice from pavements in front of their homes is illegal and they face a fine of up to £5,000 or up to two years in prison for doing so; in Portsmouth — this kind of thing usually takes place in Portsmouth — a neighbours put aside their petty differences and, organised by a resident wing-commander, got together and cleared their street of snow in under an hour. A satellite photograph of Britain was published a few dayas ago showing the country completely covered in snow. Or almost completely, because for me, the irony is that except for a brief flurry of snow last Wednesday, which immediately turned to slush and then ice in the subsequent sub-zero temperature, my neck of the woods has stoutly remained snow-free for the past week. Worse, five days ago, the ice melted and our streets have been bone-dry.

A scene, untypical of West London and not seen for many years, in which the streets are obviously not in the slightest bit bone-dry.

Everyone is, quite naturally, remarkably and, it has be to said in view of my situation, remorselessly cheerful. I, unfortunately, was unable to get home because St Breward, which lies on the edge of Bodmin Moor and is approached by hills on three sides (the moor being the fourth) was cut off. Sounds rather dramatic, I know, but it was true that no vehicle could get through to the village until a few days ago, so icy were the roads. Naturally, it was heaven for Elsie and Wesley, who tell me they have built a snowman and been sliding down a short slope we have in the back garden, but it meant that I was unable to go home last week and have been hunkered down here in London. Ironically, I might well have been able to travel the first 255 miles home reasonably easily, although in some discomfort, but once I got near home, I would have been stuck and would have risked becoming yet another media statistic.
That was all going to change today, Wednesday, which is my going home day. I have been keeping an eye on the various weather websites and they all promised that temperatures would haul themselves from their sub-zero comfort zone and start behaving themselves: around 4c today here in London and St Breward and 2c in Exeter (relevant because I shall have to take the train to Exeter then pick up my car to drive that last 64 miles home), rising to 5/8c by the end of the week. And that would mean a thaw (with, naturally widespread flooding and more misery to keep the media happy) and far easier travelling conditions. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the bloody weathermen were wrong. I woke up this morning to find the streets here in West London covered by almost a foot of snow, traffic crawling as only traffic knows how to crawl, and anguished reports from the West Country of motorists trapped in their cars for up to eight hours. I my homecoming might well be postponed by a day, and if it would have to be more than a day, it would again make more sense to stay in London. Altogether now: fuck, fuck, fuck.

An occasional series

"Marriage between a good man and a good woman can be the closest we shall ever get to Heaven on Earth. For some poor unfortunates, marriage can be Hell. The rest of us must settle for Purgatory."
- Jan van Huis, chemist (1750-1806)

"When men tire of war, they seek out more subtle means of destruction."
- Lucius Bacillus, soldier and poet (125-153)

"If it ain't subtle, it ain't true."
- William F. Forrester, novliest, playwright, screenwriter and journalist (1896-1969)


"Payment is the sincerest form of flattery."
- William F. Forrester, novliest, playwright, screenwriter and journalist (1896-1969)

A PS

A few years ago, in fact, many years ago - it was in 1990 - I mentioned something to my girlfriend at the time and she, being French and, perhaps, a little more intellectually arrogant than we stout Anglo-Saxons care for (it's not unknown), described my observation as a lieu common. Even my limited French could translate that as a commonplace and further translate her description of my insight as something of a slap in the face. Perhaps it was a necessary one. I don't know. But as a result, I have become rather oversensitive to the possibility that what I say is sometimes blindingly obvious to others; and that by saying it, I am doing nothing more than making a big fool of myself. That thought has occurred to me again after completing the previous entry. So, if what I write is blindingly obvious, I apologise.

By the way, the French woman was called Rozenn Milin. She was from Britanny and spoke French, perfect English, though with a marked American accent, Breton and Welsh. At the time she was working as an actress but has since gone on to do other things. And if by chance she comes across this entry: Hi, Rozenn, get in touch.

Something which has been knocking around my head for a few years now, but examined here in a none-to-clear way. And rather at length.

Earlier today, on my way to work (just a 20-minute walk, which must be unique for a commute in London), I was listening to Start The Week on Radio 4 (chaired by Andrew Marr, not my favourite person and who I once purposely annoyed at a Conservative Party conference. That tale is worth an entry in its own right, so I shall say nothing here, except that the encounter confirmed my previous suspicion that he is something of a self-regarding pillock and he’s a short-arse to boot.)

His programme is, however, always interesting, though you often feel you are eavesdropping on metropolitan bien-pensant at a North London dinner party as they trade good impressions of themselves. This morning’s edition was up-to-scratch, with contributions as usual from this and that expert in this and that area, and one contributor was a Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, Barbara Sahakian, who (this description is from the Radio 4 website) ‘believes it’s time for an open debate about the ethical issues surrounding the use of new types of drugs which could in the future be used to make us all clever, well-behaved and sociable’.

Among other things, she reported that ‘16 per cent’ of students at U.S. universities regularly use cognitive-enhancing drugs which can boost your intellectual performance as athletes often use drugs to improve their physical performance. And it’s not just students who resort to that kind of respectable drug-taking. She claimed that arriving at a conference, she was offered one such drug to help soothe her jet-lag and that further inquiries among her peers revealed that quite a few of them took these cognitive enhancers as a matter of course - in the words of one colleague - to ‘get a good day’s work in’.

The programme went on to discuss ‘neuro-ethics’ (as in just how ethical it might be to resort to such drugs when others could not do so because they couldn’t afford them and whether the advantage they gave you over those not taking them was unfair). Whether taking them will be deemed unethical or not, we were also told that in the future taking them will be a matter of course for many people. Prof Sahakian also said that at the moment these drugs to not seem addiction forming or to have any side-effects.

To all that my response was a polite and restrained horror. But - and here’s the rub - as I am now 60 (as close readers of this blog have no doubt gathered over these past weeks), my future participation in such a brave new world of cognitive-enhancing drugs will be somewhat limited. But what interests me is this: is my horror merely that of an older man whose spirit is increasingly too ossified to adapt to a new cultural development? Am I now too long in the tooth to adapt to such a development? Or is there more to it than that?

I might, of course, be expected to claim that there is far more to it, that despite my age, I am as opened-minded as I ever was, and that my horror at the thought that in 100 years time dropping a tab of some cognitive enhancer will be as usual as drinking a morning cup of tea is principled and rational. But, in fact, I shan’t claim there is more to it than that for the simple reason that I don’t think there is more to it. Things change and the young are far more adept at changing with it. We who will not see 59 again must reconcile ourselves to that.

The fact is that my two children, one now 13 and the other 10, will grow up with such innovations and take them in their stride, much as I grew up with, say, the ease with which I could buy and run a car, whereas for those of my father’s generation owning and running a car was not something they took for granted in their younger years. Or to give what might be a better example, my generation is accustomed to buying what it wants here and now, thanks to the acceptability and availability of credit in the Western world. My parents, however, were still of the kind, when they were younger, of actually saving up for things.

So when young Wesley and Elsie are in their middle-age, who’s to say that popping a pill of a certain kind before an important business meeting will not be accepted as a matter of course?
But that is not quite the point I wanted to make in this entry. The fact that my children will adapt far faster to innovations made when they are young (though undoubtedly they will also suffer the fate of being increasingly horrified and disconcerted by change as they get older) has an unavoidable implication which is of far more consequence.

That they will not regard as odd what I regard as odd rather queers the pitch for those who like to claim that standards are standards and must be observed. Furthermore - and this is, admittedly, something of a leap for which the reader will be wholly unprepared but which I do feel it is a valid leap - it rather queers the pitch for those who believe there is an immutable morality which governs all our lives. At the very least, the fact that something is ‘right’ and acceptable in 2009 which was not ‘right’ and acceptable in, say 1954 or 1808 makes arguing for the existence of such an immutable morality a damn sight more difficult.

If standards - that is what is acceptable - can and do change from generation to generation - and much changes quite drastically quite apart from standards - doesn’t that mean that at the end of the day our moral values have as much permanence - that is to say, have as little permanence - as this year’s winter fashion? And if our moral values are not as fixed as we would like them to be and can change and be adapted almost at will, in what does their imperative lie? What give those values their moral force?
At this point, those people who have a faith get a rather useful get-out-of-jail-free card on this score: they can claim that all morality derives ultimately from God (or Allah or Jehovah) and that this is what makes it immutable. They have a point, although, at the end of the day people who resort to such reasoning are doing nothing but shifting the essence of the argument. And invoking God in this manner does, as it happens, bring with it its own difficulties: one very pertinent example is what to do about homosexual clergy? It seems that God is not quite as clear on that matter as everyone would like God to be. But that aside - if that and other matters can be put aside - having God as your fixed point is very useful.

Those of us who don’t have a faith (or, in my case, have such an obscure and private faith which I would find it extremely difficult to outline to anyone and which doesn’t involve anyone ‘being divine’) are left with the problem: what is the fixed point at the centre of our ethical systems? Here it should be pointed out that we all have an ethical system, whether we think we do or not, rather as we all have health, irrespective of whether that health is good, bad or indifferent.

Our ethical system might be a shining example to us all or downright corrupt and tawdry, but we all, nevertheless, have such a system. Having said that, though, I am also obliged to point out that those characters whose ethical systems leave a great deal to be desired are the least likely to break their balls and anguish over exactly what gives ‘morality its imperative’. And although the point I make might superficially sound flippant, it does shine a certain necessary light on the matter.

Following on from that thought, it is also pertinent that at this point I can resort, quite legitimately and quite honestly, to being utterly and disconcertingly bathetic. For the fact is that what I have, in my own rather cackhanded fashion, indulged in and what men and women with far better brains than mine also indulge in is something of a luxury. Pondering on the nature of morality, ethics, good, bad, right and wrong is, when all is said and done, a pastime for the leisured classes.

Folk with more pressing needs, such as where to find food today, where to find help for my sick child, how to avoid those rebels who want to kill my and my kind, probably spend rather less time analysing the nature of morality and what gives ‘the right thing to do’ its moral force. They might, of course, do so, but, I should imagine, from position of bewildered despair.

This entry is all rather confused, and I’m not too sure I even know what it is about. But it is about something which has preoccupied me for some time, and I find that writing things down like this imposes a certain discipline which means I have to think it through more carefully. The unfortunate thing is that you have just been marched up to the top of the hill, then down again, but with very little to show for it.

Sorry about that. What needs to be introduced to make it all a little more comprehensible is the notion of relativity which has cursed these past 120 years. Cursed? Well, it was meant to make things easier, but actually makes them twice as complex. What can ‘good’ mean if it is ‘good’ for you but not ‘good’ for me? Some would say it means nothing. And that is less than helpful.