Well, she is definitely going deaf. I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I am convinced she is getting worse. I know this because I was explaining to her the difference between a bolt and a machine screw at breakfast the other day, and she said,
“I can’t hear you!”
Or did she say,
“I’m not listening to you!”..? Same difference.
She refuses to see the doctor again and, in any case, would undoubtedly refuse to wear a hearing aid. Vanity, vanity. Seeing the doctor is still difficult, but we did manage to get our annual free influenza vaccinations this week, a novel experience this year as it was executed as a “drive-through” to minimise the CV19 risk to the medical staff. We drove into the local rugby ground, were directed to a little pavilion in the car park, stuck our arms out of the car windows, were duly punctured, and were then sent on our way with a smile. It was different, but very efficient, as it avoided sitting in a crowded waiting room in the doctor’s surgery next to the usual sickbay rangers and sick people. As I write, of course, we have the predicted after-effects of mild flu symptoms. Or could it be…no, surely not.
This week President Trump of the USA joined the club of those who have come down with Covid 19 and was admitted to hospital though, having seen pictures of the hospital, I would say it was a facility that Mr Spock would describe as,
“It’s a hospital, Jim, but not as we know it”.
Still, he is the leader of the free world so I dare say he deserves a few perks (he is out now after three days, though still being treated). I have no comment other than that: I have American relatives or friends who are Republicans, and American relatives or friends who are Democrats; I am staying out of it, other than observing that the forthcoming presidential elections are going to be a bloody time for all of them, and our cousins across the pond have my deepest and most sincere sympathy for what lies ahead.
Here in the UK, the predicted “second wave” of Covid 19 infections and deaths appears to have levelled off and deaths are declining again, daily deaths (as I write) standing at 33 for the whole country. There has not been a single Covid-related death in our local Big City hospital since early June. Restrictions in the UK still stand, however, and doubtless will be praised for the avoidance of the second peak. It would not surprise me to read that Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, has decided to burn down Glasgow in an attempt to curb the spread of infection and bring it up with a round turn. Christmas and New Year are still cancelled and no date has been given for a review of restrictions.
At least Halloween has been cancelled, thank heavens. I hate All Hallows’ Eve, not because of the evil spirits, but because I object to the legalised blackmail practised by some children (“Give us some sweets or we’ll kick your dustbin over and spray paint on your front door”). Mind you, a friend of mine opened his door one year to find two well-developed teenage girls on his doorstep shouting,
“Trick or treat?”.
Quick as a flash he said,
“Wow! Treat please”.
They left, disgruntled.
We never used to celebrate Halloween in England when I was a lad, we just walked the streets carrying a hollowed out turnip (what southerners and the rest of the English-speaking world call a swede) with a candle in it. If pumpkins existed in Britain in the 1950s then they had not penetrated as far as Tyneside. Times were hard, the candle saved the gas for cooking and my mother would let me have a piece of the turnip for supper if I had been a good boy, once my father had had the lion’s share. The present Halloween, with its costumes and “trick or treat” behaviour is, alas, one of the less-welcome American imports. I did think of joining into the spirit of the thing many years ago by wearing a skeleton costume and shroud, hiring a fog generator, and scaring the living daylights out of the little blighters, but Jane stopped me, saying that the scythe of the Grim Reaper was too dangerous and the outfit too frightening. A friend of ours tells me that, when her daughter went “trick or treating” with friends about thirty years ago, the householder tipped a bucket of water over them from an upstairs window. This story cheered me up immensely.
It was a hard upbringing as a child on Tyneside in the 1950s and early 1960s. We lived in a tiny terraced house with an outside lavatory, no bathroom, no central heating, no garden and no car. The back lane behind our house was cobbled, and decorated with washing hanging out to dry (all whisked in when the coal man came to deliver his load). Sometimes the nights were so cold that my dad would suck a peppermint just to keep us warm as we huddled together in the one living room, with the cold north easterly wind rattling the window panes and Souter Lighthouse blasting out its mournful foghorn like the nautical equivalent of Gray’s Elegy. My Christmas stocking was a seaboot stocking from dad’s sea chest, loaded with two walnuts, a brazil nut and a lump of cold figgy duff. I had few toys, but I made my own amusements and would play for hours on the old bombed sites and pillboxes with a disused water pipe and a gas mask left over from World War II. My favourite toy was a piece of coal that I found one day washed up on the beach. That piece of coal was everything to me: it was an aeroplane, a space ship, a six-gun, a submarine, a ship, a car, an asteroid… I took it everywhere with me and my friends used to cast envious eyes on it. Then, one day – it would have been the year ’56 or ’57 as I recall – my mam caught the ague and had to take to her bed. The situation was grave and the whole family was worried. My brother and I were wrapped in old coal sacks and sitting on upturned buckets in the living room, gnawing on a piece of stale Hovis bread covered in dripping that was our supper, when my father came in and said,
“Horatio, the fire in your mam’s bedroom is about to go out, and we’ve burnt the last of the furniture. I’m sorry, son, we’re going to have to burn the piece of coal”.
I understood. I was only a small boy, but I knew what I had to do. With a little tear and an unspoken farewell, I handed over the piece of coal and my dad put it on the fire in the bedroom. And do you know, that piece of coal burned with a warm glow all night and all the next morning. When it had reduced to ash, my mam opened her eyes, rallied and smiled.
“Thank you son”, she said. She tucked into her whippet stew with gusto and never looked back.
Aye, they don’t make coal like they used to.
In Blog 58 I raised the question of whether one’s accent mattered. This week I raise a similar question: do we judge people by their style of dress? Well, of course, I do but you could be excused for dismissing my views on the matter as the ramblings of an anachronistic relic from the 20th century. But, in general, do first impressions, based to a significant extent on dress, count? I think they do. Why else do we dress up for a job interview (unless we are applying for a job in the entertainment industry)? The question of sartorial standards came up in the Shacklepin household the other day when the memsahib, perusing her magazine, read out a rhetorical question by a journalist asking why it was that women spent hours perfecting their hair, eyes and face, and choosing a matching smart outfit and shoes for an evening out, only to be joined by their men wearing a pair of faded jeans, grubby trainers and a polo shirt.
“Hrmph”, said Jane, nodding. “So true!”.
I was a little hurt, conscious of the fact that I had worn that bow tie and shirt combination twice already this fortnight and noting a scuff on my gleaming right toecap.
“Not you, darling”, she said affectionately when she saw my expression, ”you’re different”, as if praising an ancient artefact crafted by Chippendale. I was, of course, immediately mollified, but it made me think about the whole business of dress. I was given a book on male fashion and style some years ago and it contained many sage comments, one of which being that if you dressed well and businesslike on “dress down Friday”, then you would stand out as exceptionally smart and competent compared to the rest of the office. The Times newspaper has just started a current affairs radio station in competition with BBC Radio 4, and the content is worth listening to. But the new station was advertised with a picture of two of its journalists who would host the first programme: the female was smartly dressed and looked professional; the male was wearing a tee shirt and jeans and looked like he was a plumber about to change the lavatory cistern. Given this introduction it was hard, at first, to be attracted to the new radio station and to be impressed by its credibility. I suppose the “dress thing” depends on the job the wearer does: I would not expect a carpenter to wear a jacket, collar and tie, for example (though workmen did in the 1950s and 1960s). I do expect a professional, such as a politician, a doctor or a lawyer to be smartly dressed, however if they are to inspire confidence in their ability, and I also think that special occasions deserve dressing up. Some years ago, the TV chef Jamie Oliver was photographed receiving his MBE from the Queen while dressed in a nondescript suit with an open-necked shirt instead of the traditional Morning Suit. The photograph was the subject of a caption competition and some wag came up with the perfect caption on what the Queen was saying to him:
“It’s an MBE. It stands for Make a Bloody Effort!’”.
My sentiments entirely. Stand up straight, hold your gut in, shave off that stubble and smarten yourself up. And wear proper polished shoes. No, not you dear – I was speaking mainly to the men.
In the pre-muzzle days before CV19 Jane and I were in some café or other and I heard the bloke ahead of me in the queue say to the waitress,
“Can I get a cup of tea?”.
I was incensed: what was this, “Can I get…” business? Where was this man’s manners? You say, “Please may I have…” or, if that sounds too nursery, “Could I have…please?”. If I had been the waitress in that café, I would have said,
“You certainly can, sir. This is a café, so we do serve tea”.
But then I don’t suppose I would make a successful café proprietor. Or cruise liner captain, for that matter (“It’s one minute after leave expired, Mr Mate [tapping watch with finger]. Single up and let go the gangway”). Returning to the rude tea drinker, his “cup of tea”, when it arrived, comprised a large mug with a spoon, hot water and a tea bag in it; a capsule of UHT milk; and a paper tube of sugar. Since when has that been a cup of tea? Tea is brewed in a pot, preferably with large loose leaves, and comes with a teacup and saucer, a separate jug of fresh milk and a bowl of sugar. The water is added to the tea leaves when boiling hot (100 degC at International Standard Atmosphere) and the mixture is allowed to brew or mash for five minutes before pouring, usually through a tea strainer. Milk is added afterwards so that you can adjust the colour and strength to taste. Mind you, I have just read an article that says we British have been wrong for centuries in using boiling water: apparently we should be adding water at 80 degC, not boiling (50 degC for exotic green tea). Nice idea, but I won’t be changing my habits, not least because I don’t have a pocket thermometer to carry around. Tea bags, mugs, UHT milk and “can I get” indeed: this could be the start of the downfall of the British Empire. Appalling.
This morning I was reading an article in The Spectator magazine by a female journalist on the subject of gentlemen’s clubs and their exclusion of ladies as members. I always pay particular attention to articles by female journalists because it gives me a little insight into female thinking and I take the view that it is important to know your enemy. Anyway, the journalist was, surprisingly, supportive of all-male clubs as she felt that it gave men the opportunity to let off steam with their chums. Ditto for all-female clubs. But she then went on to decry some website or other called Bluebella, because she felt it was degrading to women. Well, of course, I couldn’t let that reference pass me by: I simply had to see the website so that I could sympathise appropriately with the next woman I met socially. Way-hay! I nearly choked on my morning coffee. It wasn’t a porn site, I was relieved to observe, but a site for selling exotic ladies’ lingerie (I mean the lingerie was exotic, not the ladies, though it was a close-run thing). I must say, women’s underwear has come along a bit since the days of the corsets and the ‘lift and separate’ Playtex brassieres in my mother’s mail-order catalogue. One pair of knickers on offer could probably have been more accurately described in the singular, since only half the garment appeared to be there: the model’s bottom was criss-crossed with bits of string like the complex rigging of a frigate under full sail. It was shocking, quite shocking. If you are a man reading this then I commend the web site to you as a lesson against impure male thoughts and the gross exploitation of women as a sex object. If you are a woman reading this then just roll your eyes; mine did.
Note to self: I wonder if Jane would welcome a set of underwear like that instead of those gardening gloves this Christmas? Perhaps not.
Thinking of that website reminds me of a chap who was unfortunate enough to catch an anti-social disease – a hazard that faces all us sailors (except me, of course, as I used my runs ashore to view local flora and fauna, art, and historical artefacts before retiring to my bunk with a sensible cup of cocoa). Anyway, this chap reported sick, was duly dosed by the full range of antibiotics and, after a lengthy period of treatment, was declared fit again. At the next port of call he was feeling his oats and the need to celebrate his recovery . Ashore, he met a pleasant young lady who shared his interests in cultural matters and friendly international relations. So extensive was their discussion that she took him back to her flat to sample the local coffee, and he spent the night. The next morning, as they lay in bed, he asked the inevitable question, to which she replied,
“Well, you weren’t very good”.
Wounded by the criticism of his masculinity, he protested,
“Have a heart! I’m a bit rusty. I’ve only just recovered from treatment at the STD clinic and it took ages”.
She came alive and was all ears.
“Have you?”, she replied with genuine curiosity. “What’s it like? I’ve got an appointment there tomorrow”.
We still do not have our library back in operation. Nearby towns have achieved that goal, but not here in sleepy Melbury despite the fact that we are all under the same local authority. Instead, Melbury Library is offering a “collection after ordering on-line service” or the issue of a selection of books “that you might like”. Browsing is totally out. What kind of a service is that? I don’t want a book that someone else thinks I should read, I want one that appeals to me after flicking through the pages. Mind you, British libraries have been going down the pan for many years now and are no longer peaceful havens for bibliophiles or researchers, where people used to speak in hushed tones and could enjoy themselves for hours in a calm atmosphere. They are now crèches, meeting places, cafés and noisy mad houses with a few (a very few) optional books thrown in for you to read – if you can concentrate, that is. So the fact is, I won’t be missing our library as I haven’t been in there for years. If I want to browse or read a book in peace I go to a bookshop in The Big City where some sense of decorum and respect still prevails.
Churches are going the same way as libraries. They are no longer havens of quiet spiritual contemplation: places to clear out the lumber of countless sins in hallowed portals imbued over centuries of worship. Insidiously, the Church of England is throwing out its pews in favour of portable chairs so that the churches, cathedrals and abbeys can readily be converted into all-purpose venues, suitable for concerts, markets, art exhibitions, coffee bars, skate boarding, money lending or whatever. The pews were introduced by the Victorians, so they are doubly condemned. Change for change’s sake, it seems to me, though a friend “in the know” tells me that the change is essential in order to gain much-needed upkeep revenue: sanctity forsaken for filthy lucre. I suppose it has to be, but noise and bustle are the bane of our modern lives and it is such a shame to lose the ability to sit silently in a church listening to…the sound of silence… or God. A church, cathedral or abbey being used as a general purpose hall will not provide that atmosphere. Incidentally, lest you think I am being facetious about the reference to using a church for skate boarding, this actually happened a year or so ago in nearby Wiltshire in Malmesbury Abbey. I wonder what William of Malmesbury (11th Century monk and historian) would have thought of it. I imagine he is spinning in his grave.
Technology is a wonderful thing. I discovered the other day that you can choose a mobile phone ring tone to match the person calling, provided they are on your contact list. I showed this to my son during one of his rare and fleeting visits, and waxed lyrically about the potential of having such a facility, but he was unimpressed Apparently he had been aware of that feature since the Bronze Age (“Oh really Father, that is so passé!”), and used it on his phone extensively. I was deflated, but impressed. Did he have a ring tone for me, I asked? Yes, he said. Foolishly, I asked what it was. He played it. It was The Imperial March, Darth Vader’s Theme from Star Wars. Get Alexa to play it or look it up on the internet and you will get the gist. Bit of a back-handed compliment in a way. That’s my boy for you: the Force is strong in that one.
I had decided, on the spur of the moment, to order some flowers for Jane. I do this occasionally on a random basis under the policy of “keep ‘em guessing” outlined in Blog 48 and, once the decision had been made, I had to follow it through. I have found, through long experience and the occasional twinge from unhealed scars, that women do not appreciate being told, “I nearly bought you a bunch of flowers”, well-meant though the statement always is. It never goes down well. Some years ago I passed on this little gem of advice to my godson as part of my valedictory guidance to him on the occasion of his marriage and him moving outside my sphere of influence, but (sigh) several years later he reported to me that he had made the slip himself, despite the sage advice. Strangely, it didn’t go down well with his wife either. Silly boy – I did try for him, but sometimes advice is not enough: you have to learn from experience. Anyway, to get back to my story. I normally order from the local florist, the aim being to keep our High Street as a running concern, but it is difficult to visit the shop without raising suspicion and awkward to make a clandestine telephone call for the same reason. Besides, I always find it embarrassing dictating the card to the girl in the shop: “To Miss Whiplash from her Sex Slave. Mercy Mistress” always seems to result in a hollow silence followed by a nervous giggle. They also charge for delivery. So this time I thought I would try an online company called Seranata, which we have used very successfully before to send flowers to friends outside the town or county. They deliver the next day by courier, do not charge delivery, have very reasonable prices and (if the recipients can be believed) produce beautiful flowers. They are also a very slick operation, with excellent – if somewhat unconventional and matey – communications (“Hi Horatio, our gift guru is excited to roll up his sleeves and warm up his paws to ensure the present you picked arrives perfectly packaged and right on time…”). Seranata is highly recommended and, no, I am not on commission. Ensconced in my study on the pretext of writing for you good people, I placed the order and, the next day, I retired to the garage workshop after asking Jane to listen out for a delivery that I was expecting. Hours later, at about teatime, covered in sawdust and beginning to suffer the first stages of hypothermia in the freezing workshop, I was rewarded by the sight of my wife appearing in the doorway and wearing a beatific smile.
“It was such a lovely surprise”, she said. ”I thought the man must have come to the wrong house. Then I couldn’t work out who could have sent them…I knew they couldn’t have come from you…”
My wife: as appreciative and forthright as ever. So nice that I can still surprise her (he said through gritted teeth).
8 October 2020
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 