Taking the moral and intellectual high ground

If you haven't discovered the delights of Conservapedia yet, then you should abandon all thoughts of work for the rest of the day. Imagine an encyclopaedia with most of the facts taken out and replaced with snide, rightwing, dishonest and disingenuous commentary (e.g. it presents George Washington as an orthodox Christian rather than a deist: he and the other Founding Fathers accepted that there was a creator, but that he'd since lost interest). 

The site is an object lesson in 'playing the man not the ball'. If you're an atheist, for instance, Conservapedia is very keen to link that to your perceived moral or physical failings. Rather dangerously for an American website, given that nation's unfortunate tendency towards ponderousness, it thinks that the most damning thing it can say about any atheist is that they're a little porky because they aren't Christian. Here's a selection from the list of Atheists

Dara Ó Briain is an Irish comedian and he is an atheist.^[201] A 2008 picture of an overweight Dara Ó Briain can be found HERE

Walter Block is an atheist economist. A picture of an overweight Walter Block can be found HERE.

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE,(born 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. Carol Ann Duffy is an atheist.^[202] A picture of an overweight Ms. Duffy can be found HERE

Edmund White is a author, literary critic, homosexual and an atheist.^[203][204] Photos of an overweight Edmund White can be found HERE and HERE.

The Bible declares lesbianism to be a sin (Romans 1:27) and lesbians have significantly higher rates of obesity.^[214]Since the Bible declares gluttony and lesbianism to be sins, no doubt there are obese people and/or lesbians who reject Christianity, despite the abundant evidence for Christianity, and decide to become atheists rather than repent and become Christians. 

That last entry is accompanied by a photo of Beth Ditto. Perhaps they've got it in for Buddha… and footnotes.

Why the Liberal Democrats are (and deserve to be) dead ducks

A very interesting report into the operation of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was published today. Unsurprisingly, it declared that the Lib Dems are too few, too poor and too weak to make much difference to the Tory juggernaut.


Most damning of all was this bit:

In a sign of the ideological unity inside departments, the unit said: "There have been very few – if any – cases where ministers in departments have divided on party lines.

"Indeed, across whole swathes of policy the coalition partners have discovered little difference in their policy responses when confronted with the hard choices of government.

We on the left have always known that under the Arran jumpers and sandals was a party of selfish rightwingers, but many deluded people have seen them as the 'nice' party. No longer. Why vote Lib Dem if they're Tories? If you're a Tory, vote Tory. If you're not, vote Labour, Green or the imaginary Green Socialist party I've just thought up. If you're actually a Lib Dem, be honest and vote Tory. 

Everybody needs a holiday

The world continues to crash round our ears. The environment is ruined to such an extent that there's no escape. It's too late. The NHS is being dismembered. The poor and the sick and the old and the young are under constant attack. Universities and schools are degraded in the pursuit of a low-skills, low-wage economy. This city has 25% empty shops and a host of social problems associated with social decay.

What's my MP, the lovely Paul Uppal, doing about it? Well, the good news is that he's put in a cameo appearance in the city. The bad news - according to his Twitter feed -  is that he's spending it lounging around in the gardens of a National Trust stately home, in the only area unaffected by his party's disgraceful policies. No doubt charming the rich old ladies who volunteer (and - entirely coincidentally - vote Conservative) there is exactly what Cameron thinks the Big Society is all about, but it's not going to get the rest of us out of the mire, is it?

Still, there's a great view from Wightwick Manor (one of my favourite places). From the manicured lawns, Uppal can gaze down on the tumbledown schools, abandoned nurseries and sink estates which are his and his party's legacy.

Wondering about Uppal's workrate? Well, this is what you get when you put his name into Google News:

Your search - "Paul Uppal" mp - did not match any documents.

Meanwhile, some naughty Wrexham supporter living here has also been teasing Mr. Uppal. Are we in a situation where his detractors put in more effort than the target of our affection?

Where I live, imaginary MP Paul Uppal (a man who’s only connection to Wolverhampton seems to have been getting a shiny Mick McCarthy sticker in his Italia 90 Panini album) represents us having won under First Past The Post.  

Your friend the corporation

It's a truism that corporations resent the warm fuzzy emotions people get from doing things you can't commodify: love, in particular. That's why so many ads try to insert their products into scenes of joy: family life, relationships and so on. It's called simulation, whereas the relationships they can't actually appropriate are known as symbolic exchanges, in Baudrillard's terms.


Some companies actively take the piss though. Chief amongst them is Vodafone. Fresh from its triumph in tapping every Greek mobile phone call on behalf of the American Embassy, they've released a short film and campaign called Our Power, in which they attempt to claim a central role in the Egyptian revolution.

The video goes on to show images from protest rallies in Cairo's Tahrir Square before claiming: "We didn't send people to the streets, we didn't start the revolution … We only reminded Egyptians how powerful they are."

The short film features screengrabs of Facebook and Twitter messages posted by Egyptians approving of the Vodafone ad campaign, then an audio recording of Hosni Mubarak's resignation as president being announced on TV.

To make matters worse for Vodafone and JWT, both the original ad campaign and the latest video feature Adel Emam, a veteran Egyptian actor who initially denounced the pro-change protests in January and has been widely derided in Egypt for his close links with the Mubarak family.

Vodafone is one of several firms in Egypt that agreed to shut off its mobile and internet networks in the early stages of the revolt as the government attempted to isolate anti-Mubarak protesters. It also allowed the Mubarak regime to send out anti-revolutionary text messages en masse to subscribers.

The firm is facing a series of legal challenges over what some critics have called its "complicity in dictatorship". It is accused of passing on information about opposition activists to the Mubarak regime's security services – a claim seemingly confirmed by Vodafone's global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, in February 2009 but later denied by Vodafone Egypt. 

By a funny coincidence, a mobile phone provider called Vodafone followed the dictatorship's orders and closed down their network to prevent the revolution spreading. 


I wonder if they're related.


This is of course an extreme example of how capitalism works, and it's no surprise to see Vodafone back-pedalling like mad, but it's a mode of behaviour that's become normal. Every gig you attend 'sponsored' by a hair gel firm or a lager maker is a trap. They've bought a captive audience, and it's you.

More tales from the Rock and Roll frontline

You may know that I share an office with Alan Apperley from post-punk heroes The Nightingales. It emerged this morning that my colleague Alison co-wrote this track by OK Venus. It's… well, it's of its time. They got on TV a couple of times but didn't quite make it.

For Ryan Giggs, Max Mosley and the other shrinking violets

I went to the Wolverhampton Beer Festival last night, which was a hoot. The crowd was of course drawn from the road and drum tech fraternity (bellies, beards and prog rock t-shirts, but also a surprising number of the young and trim). 


Top tip: Skinner's Ginger Tosser was lovely, though slightly spoiled by the image of Paul Scholes I couldn't shake off. It's made with ginger (duh) and honey. Mmm. Top marks to the Hobson's Mild (tastes of nuts) and the various mindblowing chocolaty stouts and porters. No pork scratchings though, what an oversight for a beer festival.


After that it was back to my place to drink more fine ale and play records: REM's Document, some Burt Bacharach and Wire's Pink Flag. Which reminded me of their 'Field Day for the Sundays'. I imagine Mr. Giggs might empathise with the lyrics.

I wanna be a field day for the Sundays so they can fuck up my life
Embarass my wife, and leave a bad taste
That striped toothpaste can't remove on Monday mornings
I wanna be a target for the dailies so they can show
Pictures of me with a nude on page three, so lacking in taste
Touched up near the waist,  looking as limp as Monday morning

Good Mormon USA!

So, the Republicans have finally got an official Presidential candidate who isn't howlingly mad (i.e. not Palin or Ron Paul).

Or have they? OK, Mitt Romney ticks all the boxes for a candidate from any party: hugely rich, privileged and ideologically well to the right. But what caught my eye is his Mormon belief. Now as far as I'm concerned, any religious belief is akin to mental illness (whether you agree with a Vengeful God or a Nice God, you'd still rather think that somebody deliberately made Auschwitz, plague and Justin Bieber rather than accept that physics brought them about without regard for our feelings).

But Mormonism. Wow, that's crazy. And offensive, especially when you get to the bit about Americans being the chosen people. I've never quite got why God would go 'eeny meeny miny mo' when it comes to humanity, and it's certainly clear enough that Somalians, for instance, haven't come in for any special treatment - unless from the Vengeful Smiting God), but there's something rather unpleasant about Joseph Smith announcing that Americans are the Special Ones. You can bet he didn't mean African-Americans or Native Americans, too: black people were only recently permitted entry to the priestly caste in 1978. Apparently Christ did have a go with the natives, but they didn't take to it.

What of other Mormon beliefs. Well, like Catholicism, it's male supremacist, which is why you only get neatly-dressed young men wearing out your door bell. We'll pass over the polygamy: like mainstream Christianity dropping social justice when it made a pact with political power, most Mormons quietly dropped this when Joseph Smith got Utah into the Union after Missouri chucked them out for staging a violent insurrection (wonder what Romney thinks of that). Smith was lynched while awaiting trial for treason.

This is the Joseph Smith who was given the new texts of Mormonism on solid gold plates, dropped off by an angel. Solid gold plates that he carelessly mislaid.

Oh yes, and Mitt Romney will be wearing the special and compulsory Mormon Religious Underpants.

I'm uncomfortable with anyone religious wielding power, because I want them to answer to and act on behalf of their citizens, not their religious beliefs. Perhaps I'm more bothered by Romney because his chosen sect is so recent and therefore merely looks more bonkers than Catholicism or Islam.

There are plenty of reasons to find Romney repulsive, starting with all his revolting hard-right policies. But I still think that anyone who has to wear special undercrackers shouldn't have the nuclear launch codes.

Take the sex test

VS Naipaul (not a writer I particularly rate) has made some headlines claiming to be able to spot a writer's sex immediately. He also claimed that there are no female writers at all up to his standard.

So try this Guardian quiz. I got 7 out of 10 right. How will you do?

What gives it away? I'm not sure. Many women writers don't dwell on female bodies in the drooling way a certain group of male ones do. I can tell the difference between Austen and Amis, for example, but a lot of it is period, class and subject matter. On similar grounds and generations, it's more difficult. There is linguistic research into gendered language use, but it's not my field at all.

Filling in the longeurs

With marking done and my desk disinfected, there's a danger that my waking hours will once more become a wasteland of sitting around in my pants rocking back and forth in front of Jeremy Kyle…

Luckily, The Hegemon's management are so unpleasant and incompetent that those magic hours with Jeremy will have to be postponed in favour of emergency union meetings. The latest wheeze is to reduce the hours reserved for various types of activity, so that it looks like we aren't horrendously overworked. In reality, of course, we're hugely understaffed. Classes are too big, administration (only managers get admin staff) takes weeks and research doesn't get done unless you're one of the Big Beasts who refuses to teach, sit on committees or help students.

Here's one of my favourite meetings, from the glorious Glenngarry GlenRoss, a film summarising why I like working in the public sector, despite everything.

Rats!

I spent the morning tiptoeing round the corpses of rats in my apartment block's basement, trying to find my water meter - very unpleasant. The rest of the day should be slightly better: reviewing a paper on Hinduism for a colleague, then off to my local Beer Festival! Huzzah.

Meanwhile, my Canadian readers and those of you who've been to Canada might care to offer tips on Coping With Canadians: last night I had a farewell drink and curry with my young friend Jim, who's off to Toronto for a year. He was there for a year as a student, but now needs to find a job.

My friends… national treasures!

This is what Mojo (I know it's about the dead, read by the nearly dead, but bear with me) had to say about The Nightingales' London gig on Monday:

…the astonishing revelation of Rob Lloyd's Nightingales. Formed out of the ashes of blackly-comic Birmingham punk upsetters The Prefects, Nightingales Mk. 1 existed from 1979 to '86, Black Country Magic Banders spinning Daedalian indie skronk around Lloyd's slashing gnomic utterances. Since reforming in 2004, Nightingales Mk 2 have survived - like post-punk fellow-travellers The Fall - as an ever-shifting cast of players, a tightly schooled all-ages boot-camp in the employ of one man's absurdist poetic invective.

Recently retrained at Jochen Irmler's Faust Studio, tonight Lloyd and founder Prefects guitarist Alan Apperley field a side barely three weeks old. Bassist Andreas Schmid, a Faust Studio apprentice, is suitably young and severe, the possible leader of some Marxist-Leninist '70s student cell, in academic black suit and socialist haircut. Skinny in black jeans and black western shirt, hair like squid-ink candy floss, rhythm guitarist Matt Wood resembles a teenage Horrors offcast, while from behind her own heavy witch-black fringe ex-Violet Violet drummer Fliss Kitson pounds out the glam-kosmische bin rhythms. As Lloyd takes the stage - stout, bespectacled, wily smile flickering between joy and contempt - the image is complete; it is the embittered Marxist history teacher fronting the school band, the academy in peril.

With no time for nostalgia, tonight The Nightingales ignore any notion of greatest hits in favour of joyous reinvention. Feeding off the hard-drilled energy of these junior initiates, Apperley spins frayed Bo Diddley riffs around Lloyd's tumbling psychedelic eavesdroppings, allowing the singer to recycle, reinvent and repurpose thirty years of vituperative notebook aphorisms, constructing an intense, breathless narrative from the recycled past to the scorched present. And, like some Christ-like curmudgeon, newly risen to grouse again, Lloyd feeds off the audience fervour, growing stronger, yet ever wary; grinning broadly, flicking the Vs, and mouthing "What the f---?!"

With every repurposed song - plus a combative cover of Gary Glitter's I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock & Roll) - the band become yet more powerful, Apperley and the kids locked in a heavy zig-zag groove as Lloyd bellows out caustic images from his mordant world-view, like some Black Country Stuart Staples, holidaying in the window of an Arndale Pound Shop. The cumulative effect is one of euphoric delight, of old knowledge in the hands of new disciples. "Dig the depth of the furrow of mirth that I can plough," sings Lloyd on The Overreactor. Tonight The Nightingales hit an epic new low. Catch them when they're at it again.

The Scotsman has this to say:

The combination of youthful fire and Lloyd's grouchy old geezer persona made for a set with real personality. Suited, bespectacled and with the air of the teacher everyone knew not to mess with at school, Lloyd wasn't as cantankerous as the Fall's Mark E Smith, although his insistence that one chatterbox "****ing shut the **** up" was the kind of thing most singers probably wish they had the guts to do.

Although often lost amidst the wash of jazz-shaped discord, battering beat group stomps, primal new wave and psychedelic interludes during tracks like Wot No Blog? and Workshy Wunderkind, Lloyd's lyrics were the highlight of this set. They painted bleak but vivid pictures alongside a drumbeat battering down like rain during Born Again in Birmingham, their anger and humour the main argument for this band claiming the credit they're long overdue.

They (and Ted Chippington) went down well in Bristol. Even the Shropshire Star's getting in on the act!

Ewar's latest wheeze

OK, before I start cleaning my desk and corner (my office mates are horrified by the squalor), I need to plug Ewar's current activity. Now lectures and exams are finished, he and his minions are clearly very bored.

So they - in concert with the ne'erdowells over at Football 365 - have decided to subvert Next's 'Next Model 2011' PR stunt by nominating someone called Roland Bunce.

It seems like a good use of your time. So don't be a dunce, vote Roland Bunce.

Got your Olympics tickets?

I applied for all the fencing finals, hoping I wouldn't get them all as it would cost a fortune.
It looks like I've got about half of them: £196 has gone from my account, but there's no notification from the organisers as to which ones I've managed to get.

Hopefully I'll be working (voluntarily) at the Olympics anyway: interview towards the end of June. It's way too late to be on the referees list (though I've done the Modern Pentathlon World Cup and some other international stuff), but I hope to get something exciting.

Ici commence l'aliénation

Alienation starts here: one of the slogans of the 68 uprising, in which French students and workers united against the capitalist regime of Charles de Gaulle, which they saw as neo-fascist, with some strong evidence in their favour, and as the local manifestation of systematize oppression. Over a period of months, strikes, riots and savage police violence brought France to the brink of revolution, only for minor reforms to buy off the voters.

Do I sound wistful? I am of course. Before we were all bought off with consumerism, the 68ers had the intellect, the vision, the strategy and the bravery to force bourgeois capitalist democracy to reveal its contradictions and hypocrisies. Not just in France, but in the US, across the developing world and even in the UK. The moment passed, but it can be revisited, even improved upon. The witty, spontaneous UK Uncut and the student protesters of last year were hopefully merely the beginning. We may be cowed by our narrowed imaginations, our debts and our manners, but we all have the potential to express ourselves with the joyous rage of Mai '68. We mustn't nostalgically revisit 68, but we should remember that cowed acceptance is not the way it's always been.

Here are some of the posters produced by the Atelier Populaire during the evenements of 1968.

Be Young and Shut Up. 

Have an iPhone and leave the politics to the grown-ups.

They revolutionnaires believed that French tertiary education removed potentially troublesome individuals from their class, nipping rebellion in the bud: it was time to reconnect the proletariat with the student body. It worked for a time too, though there are always points of tension (even Chaucer's students are smartarses).

Or as another slogan had it: the owners need you: you don't need the owners.

What distracts the population? Racial antagonism, foreign wars, TV, minor concessions. Sound familiar?

Systems are automatically oppressive. Foucault called them 'disciplinary systems' and they certainly are still in play here.

Time to end the exclusive and ideologically conservative nature of education and make it a public right, available to all. Time to revive this one, I feel.

Kids with no books tend to be less good at reading!

I know, what a shocking conclusion to this report. Four in ten 11-13 year old boys own no books, and 3 in 10 girls. Poor kids and those from ethnic minorities tend to own fewer books and have lower literacy rates.

I wouldn't be too bothered about the ownership figures if it wasn't that the government's closing libraries to pay for the bank bailout. I read my first school's entire library in two years, then they had to buy more just for me. That still makes me proud. I was also taking out the maximum number of books from the local library each week. Having exhausted the kids' section, I started on the adult collection, only to find my mother interfering constantly (anything secular was a point of contention). Libraries are brilliant and every kid should be marched down there once a week. If parents won't do it, schools should, like the weekly trip to the swimming pool.

So (even though I obsessively buy books), I'm not too hung up about ownership. But without free access to libraries, we need to find ways of getting books into houses and persuading parents to communicate enthusiasm for them. There are plenty of charities, but I'd target the Sure Start Centres: literacy can be included in the parenting classes. We can prescribe reading like doctors prescribe exercise or medication. Free boxes of books can be presented to every child on his or her birthday for the first 5 or 10 years: it's bound to be cheaper than remedial classes and unemployment benefit.

So: what would you put into the Big Society Library? We live in a Golden Age of children's literature: what should they be reading? I'd try to avoid anything to obviously educational: enforced reading and 'improving' literature will only lead to a book-free, drug-fuelled adulthood. I'd shovel the most shocking, lefty propaganda available at them: Kenneth Grahame, Pullman, The Phantom Tollbooth, Trease… keep adding them. If you're into children's literature, you really need to read Alison Lurie's wonderful Don't Tell The Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature.

What have I received today? Belloc's translation of Joseph Bédier's reconstruction of 10th-Century Tristan and Iseult, Gottfried von Strassburg's 13th-century Tristan and the version he based it on, Tristan by Thomas (in translation) because I'm on a European Arthurian kick at the moment. Also a collection of Paris 1968 Uprising posters (Beauty is in the Street) and 2 more volumes of the DMZ series (think Baghdad transplanted to New York).

A Lady's Guide to Suffrage

I'm leafing through Lady Clodagh Anson's Another Book, and a charming read it is too. Here's the section on Votes for Women. You have to read it in a posh, slightly scatty English accent:

Susan and I were tremendously keen on women's suffrage at that time, and though we did not clamp ourselves to the railings in Downing Street or drop lighted matches into letter-boxes ourselves, we none the less realised that the brave women who did these things had grasped the great truth about the English character, in that if you behave well about anything and do not make a fuss, everybody thinks that you do not mind and will not to a hand's turn for you. But if you make yourself a nuisance and behave as badly as possible, the authorities will do anything to keep you quiet. However, in those days all really nice people looked with horror at these performances; so Susan's husband, Hugh Dawnay, used to take great delight in saying to respectable acquaintances of ours that we were suffragettes, just to see them shy away from us with panic-stricken faces.

What larks: the next paragraph is a series of anecdotes about 'a Yorkshire yokel'. No more to be said about the franchise.

Free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last

I don't know if you care about or have been following the shenanigans at FIFA (sharp businessmen + sport + £billions = corruption!!!!!), but it's fascinating. I'm involved with my sport's governing body as it tries to modernise from amateurish snobby incompetence to professional outfit, so I can see some of the pressure points.

What's wonderful about FIFA is the pantomime villain quality of these people: they've turned their organisation (like the IOC, run for decades by actual card-carrying Fascists) into a cash cow protected from corruption enquiries, tax authorities and justice (gotta love the Swiss), and they still acting like they're the victims.


Hence Sepp Blatter's plaintive cry in his re-election speech today (unopposed, his opponents having been less subtle than him with the suitcases of cash):

""Football belongs to everyone and we are in charge. I have found my voice again. If you agree with me, say it!"

It brings to mind images of poor Mr. Blatter bound and gagged in the cellar of his Zurich eyrie, eyes rolling as his opponents drag trolleys of gold bullion towards waiting trucks before making a fast getaway. You wouldn't think he's been there since 1975, and President since 1998…

What a rotten bunch. And talking of rotten football records:

Jung at heart; or, Psychobabble corner

Over on Sue's blog, she suggests taking the Myers-Briggs personality test to cure boredom. Very interesting results, though because I can see how the questions relate to each other and what they're after, it's impossible to get an objective set of answers.

But I did my best, and it's not promising given my chosen career.

Your Type is  INTJ

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Judging
Strength of the preferences %

56

75

1

78

You are:

• moderately expressed introvert

• distinctively expressed intuitive personality

• slightly expressed thinking personality

• very expressed judging personality

A 1 for 'thinking'. That's where it's all gone wrong. Perhaps I scored so low on that and so high on 'Judging' because I've been marking essays for weeks. No thinking involved, but an awful lot of judging people (hence the calls and e-mails flowing in today).

So, what does INTJ mean? Well, it means I'm not cut out to be a teacher. I'm a MASTERMIND!

Masterminds are rare, comprising no more than one to two percent of the population, and they are rarely encountered outside their office, factory, school, or laboratory. Although they are highly capable leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead.

Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, and traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchwords. Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted; those that don't, aren't, no matter who thought of them. Remember, their aim is always maximum efficiency. 

Masterminds tend to be much more definite and self-confident than other Rationals, having usually developed a very strong will. Decisions come easily to them; in fact, they can hardly rest until they have things settled and decided. But before they decide anything, they must do the research. Masterminds are highly theoretical, but they insist on looking at all available data before they embrace an idea, and they are suspicious of any statement that is based on shoddy research, or that is not checked against reality. 

Yeah, screw The Man! Actually, I'm getting a strong whiff of psychopath about this. All these qualities would apply rather well to international terrorists, dictators and the like. You know I occasionally mention that most of you belong in camps? Looks like I've got all the skills required to make sure you actually end up there…

Famous INTJ types?

Oh dear. The nerd quotient, I can take. But Ayn Rand: a fascist fraud? Say it ain't so! That list looks deeply suspicious to me. Apart from the fact that even the living ones are unlikely to have taken the test or made it available to some web-based charlatans, it's got a whiff of positivity about it. OK, Rand's the thinking person's nightmare, but lots of Americans think she belongs in the Pantheon. The others are largely unexceptional or even positive role models. I doubt, somehow, that the monsters appear on anyone's results ("People like you: Pol Pot"). So what jobs can I do?

They are often led into technical positions such as scientific researcher, design engineer, environmental planner. The developing field of genetics benefits from their intensity as does the field of medicine. In education they are most often found at the college and university level. In the professions, they may be a lawyer, a business analyst, or strategic planner. Some have a strong artistic/creative bent and may become an artist, inventor, or designer. 

It's OK. This stuff is obviously total bollocks designed to get me to buy (or buy into) something. I can relax into my lazy and inefficient ways safe in the knowledge that nobody's expecting me to either revolutionise physics or make billions. And you can rest easy in your beds… Or can you?

Literary byways

I've acquired a few books recently. And a map of the Chilterns from 1967 from a bin. Amongst them is a fascinating, odd little book written in a beautifully naive mode.

Here's the first paragraph, which sums up the tone pretty well:

Last night I went to a cocktail party, and somebody suggested that I should write another book. I said "My dear, how could I? I can't be born again, it sounds so biblical somehow". But she didn't care, and somebody else remarked, "After all, no one need read it," which comforting thought seemed at the time to impress us all as a good reason for writing a book. I gave way and started; quite inexcusably really, as I hadn't even drunk a cocktail, being unfortunately unfitted by nature to swallow strong drink of any kind, but do I get any credit for this abstinence? Not at all. My sister Susan says, "What a good thing you don't drink, because if you did you would drink such a lot," which remark inclines me to believe that any good points I may possess are purely negative… Quite a lot of people seem to like me for some obscure reason which even they cannot account for, but nobody ever approves of me, and I long to know why, just out of curiosity. 

It's Lady Clodagh Anson's Another Book, sequel to her smash hit Book: Indiscreet Memoirs. I haven't done more than dip into it, but it looks like a lovely refugee from a vanished time, place and culture. Anson (1902-1992) was (as her name suggests) a member of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. In her world, the struggles between the two nations were over: her life consisted of privilege, fox-hunting, delightful Irish mansions surrounded by cute Catholic peasants and the London townhouse, from which she'd sally forth to Society Balls. Though to be fair she did minister to 'Down and Outs' in London. All this, despite publishing Book in 1931 and Another Book in 1937, well after the Rising, the Civil War and the burning of the Big Houses. On the 1911 census, she lists her occupation as 'Lady Clodagh', something I'm sure my Aunt Clodagh would appreciate having the luxury of doing!


It's an odd piece of work: it has a price (12/6), but it's PRIVATELY PUBLISHED as the frontispiece puts it, on lovely thick creamy paper, and obviously addressed to a very restricted readership. Amongst them of course is her friend the Duchess of Devonshire (Deborah Mitford as was), who lists Anson as one of her very favourite authors in her own scatty delight, Counting the Chickens:

I suppose our friends are as honest as the next lot, but it is odd how books disappear. Not the fat and heavy biographies of politicians in two volumes, which no one could read in bed (or out of it), but the attractive ones you pick up over a weekend and don't have time to finish. They vanish like summer snow and although I sometimes search every room in our huge house I never find the missing loved one. So I have resorted to selfishness, gathering irreplaceable volumes in my room where it is unlikely that anyone would bag one, even from the pile on the floor.

Perhaps my unstealables would not appeal to everyone. Fowls and Geese and How to Keep Them (1935,1/6d and worth every penny); Book by Lady Clodagh Anson and Another Book by the same author - classic descriptions of Anglo-Irish life before the Great War; nice, thin 1930s Betjemans, Continual Dew and Mount Zion; the real Oxford Book of English Verse on India paper; the poems chosen by that professor whose name is a mixture of duvet and sofa, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; What Shall We Have Today? by X Marcel Boulestin (what did X stand for?), and The Life of Ronald Knox given to me by good, kind Evelyn Waugh, who knew I can hardly read, so mercifully the pages have no words on them. They are all blank.

A book that would disappear by next Monday if left in a visitor's room is A Late Beginner, Priscilla Napier's autobiography. Brought up in Egypt and seeing pyramids against the sunset from her nursery window, she asked, "What are they, Nanny?" "Tombs, dear. Where's your other sock?" You can't do better than that and I do not want to lose it. The works of George Ewart Evans are next to The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley by Diana Petre, White Mischief, The Prince, The Showgirl and Me, The Day of Reckoning, Rio Grande's Last Race and books with pages covered in print, dash it, by E Waugh, P Leigh Fermor and J Lees-Milne. Most precious is The Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. If that goes I give up.

So what's it like? Well, it reads like a mix of P. G. Wodehouse and Joyce Grenfell: amusing, slight anecdotes appreciated by the toffs. The only reference to Irish independence I've found so far is a not very funny anecdote about the Irish not wanting to join the British Army in WW1, and the rather hasty 'as I left Ireland in 1921' in the midst of a story about a delinquent dressmaker ('Time has no limit in Ireland, there is no hurry about anything'). 


What I like about this stuff is the sense that absolutely nothing, whether her role in the colonial occupation or the slaughter in the trenches, is allowed to interfere with having a jolly good time. 


Here's a taste, courtesy of The Ardmore Journal and the Waterford County Museum:

She came back to London to have me, and Nanny and I were left at Curraghmore with my uncle and his wife while she went back to the ranch for a year. Nanny was very good at talking to babies and I learned to speak very early. When mother arrived back at Curraghmore I was 10 months old. I was in my pram and she came towards me making baby noises. I sat up held out my hand and said "how do you do". She was so astonished that she cried. 

We then took to bathing in the boat cove, at high tide, with our friends, and this didn't go down at all well, as mixed bathing was considered very fast in Ireland at that time. There was an article in the Dungarvan Observer saying "The disgusting British practice of mixed bathing is being carried on in Ardmore, corrupting the morals of the children in the nearby houses".

The next week they wrote again "In spite of our protest of last week, this disgusting practice is still carried on." 

I know you'd love to get a copy, but I can't find Book or Another Book (even in the later public version, Victorian Days) online anywhere, so it looks like my copy is pretty rare. If anyone comes across Book, let me know. I hate not having a complete set.

Education Advice Needed

OK, it's a long time since I applied to university and I didn't do it in a very orthodox way (headmaster deliberately gave me an evil negative reference; arse up A-levels; get a place by audition on a prestigious Trinity College Dublin Drama and Theatre Studies course with 400 applicants and 10 places only for horrified parents to put their collective feet down; get a place on Clearing to do English; finally thrived once I actually got to Bangor), so I'd like some advice on behalf of my beloved aunt (a Vole reader, so be nice) and her daughter.

I'm not a parent so can only imagine rather than feel the pressures from that perspective, though I agree wholeheartedly with her assertion that a joint honours with a language would be both useful and wonderful. It's a bit easier to see my cousin's position, but really I'm too old and bitter to really empathise with her either! Additionally, fees didn't exist back in 1993 so the pressure of being £50,000 in debt didn't hover over my head. I didn't give a moment's thought to personal statements, course qualities, employment prospects or any of the stuff that the current generation have to consider. I was only good at things I liked: they came easily, whereas no amount of hard work made any difference to the subjects I hated.

So: listen to parents and be strategic about your degree choice? Or go with your instincts? How did you decide on courses and institutions? Did you change course, or consider it, once you got there? What are the things you wish you'd known when you applied? How much parental engagement did you allow? And anything else you think might be useful?

I had a fantastic time at Bangor, and would recommend it to anyone (which is why I stayed for an MA and only did my PhD elsewhere because I got a scholarship). However, if I'd known that I could have gone off to the Netherlands or Scandinavia to do a degree - more cheaply - I'd have been off like a shot. Now the UK has imposed this insane fee system, I'd be even more keen on going abroad.

Except of course, that The Hegemon is a wonderful institution to which you should all apply.   (That should save my job).

Meanwhile, my cousin's older sister is a student at Manchester University, which means it's actually my duty to post a relevant song by Manchester's premier grouch. It's The Fall, and the song is 'Hey Student' (based on an earlier track called 'Hey Fascist').

Ah-well I'm walking down the street,
It's always students that I meet,
Long hair down and sneakers on your feet.
Write your letters to the Evening News
I clench my fist and sing this tune:
I said Hey student, hey student, hey student,
You're gonna get it through the head,
I said Hey student, hey student, hey student,
You're gonna get it through the head, I said...
Well, walking to work,
It's always students that I meet
Henna in your hair, [...]
As you [...]
I clench my hand before I flip my lid.
CHORUS.
I'm walking down the street,
It's always students that I meet,
Long hair down and sneakers on your feet.
As you listen to Pearl Jam in your room.
I'm thinking like that when I sing this song:
CHORUS.
I said I walk some more, walk some more,
Walk some more, wah wah wah x2
I'm walking down the street,
It's always students that I meet,
Long hair down and sneakers on your feet.
As you stare in your room at Shaun Ryder's face
Down long long long long days
CHORUS.
I said I walk some more, walk some more, walk some more, wah wah
wah x2
The dead brains of class A-B
[...]
Twin swastikas
I'm thinking like this when I sing this tune:
CHORUS.
I said I walk some more, walk some more,
Walk some more, wah wah wah x2