Blog 70. Too Many People

Everyone is my friend today.  And every other day.  I know this because, when I conduct any business or meet someone, they call me by my Christian name and introduce themselves in the same vein.  Emails start with, “Hi, Horatio” and end “Best wishes, Pete” (or whoever), as if I had known my interlocutor all my life.  I am sure these are all perfectly decent people and, perhaps, I would enjoy having them as a friend given a bit of time.  But could we not get to know each other a little first: share a cocktail, take in a show…?  I recently read of an elderly French woman living in America who, when addressed by her first name, always replied hazily, “Did I once sleep with you?”.  When I was a Midshipman I wrote in my weekly journal, shortly after joining my ship, that I found the members of my first wardroom to be somewhat remote, unwelcoming and distant; in reply, it was explained to me that, when one is going to live in the close confinement of a ship’s wardroom with someone for three years or more, one becomes very wary of making close friends too quickly. I have never forgotten that piece of advice.  The French and the Germans have the right idea: their pronouns distinguish between people they meet in everyday life (“vous” in French) and family or intimate and close friends (“tu”); to address a stranger with “tu” in France would be to take a great liberty and cause significant offence.  Good for them.  I don’t know when the British lost their formality and respect; it was certainly in my lifetime, perhaps in the 1960s when men in the City stopped wearing bowler hats and the BBC dropped the Light Programme on the wireless in favour of Radio 1, but it was a sad loss.  Being addressed informally by a stranger grates with me but, of course, like every other polite person when asked their preference, I invariably demur to familiarity: I would find it hard to reply, “Mr Shacklepin please” or “Sir, to you” when asked how I wish to be addressed, because it would sound stuffy and pompous (yes, yes, even if I am stuffy and pompous).  I think the rot set in when children started calling adults by their first name instead of “Mr Scrooge” or “Uncle Ebenezer” – the latter title even if not related.  We have a young Greek friend, the nephew of good friends of ours,  who has spent all his adult life in Britain and is now in his thirties.  Yet he still addresses us with the prefix “Mr” or “Mrs” because, again, that is the culture of Greece: respect for elders. This new chumminess is all very well, but what privileges do I offer my true friends, if not the ability to call me by my Christian name?  And speaking of names, why do people change their given names to abbreviated ones?  Why, for example, refer to someone with the proud and time-honoured name of ‘Alexander’ as ‘Zander’?  Personally, I am perfectly happy with my Christian name in full, but I’m afraid the abbreviated version has become established as the norm over a long career, so I have become inured to it.  Pleasingly, my full name is still used by my closest friend and by the memsahib – though the latter usually as the precursor of a warning or reprimand, which is frequently.  Concluding the nomenclature theme,  I remember a friend telling me that his young son once asked him why he could not call his father by his Christian name, like all his father’s friends.  In his reply the father confided to his son that he was a very special person, so special that he was the only person in the world who could call him “Daddy”.  An excellent point.

Erratum.  For “Christian name” above, read “First name”.  No-one is going to accuse me of being antiquated or “un-woke”.  I try always to be up with the hunt. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

As far as names go, it was much easier when serving in the Royal Navy because, in the matter of address, as in every other part of one’s life, you knew exactly where you stood: superiors were addressed as “Sir” or “Ma’am”, senior ratings were addressed by their rate and name (eg “Petty Officer Smith”), junior ratings were addressed in the same way or simply by their surname. It was also not that long ago that it was quite commonplace to receive official letters in the Service starting with the salutation, “Dear Shacklepin” or whatever.  Believe it or not, that was an informal type of address and not at all considered rude (as some people would consider it today); it was just the same as Dr Watson saying to Sherlock Holmes, “My dear Holmes…”: a familiar form address between friends.

I introduced this concept of “knowing where you stand” and having an ordered routine in Blog 68, and there is much to be said for it. When serving, I knew exactly what time I had to be onboard, what outfit to wear every day, what time to get up, when to start and finish work, when to eat, and what I would be doing on that day. I have heard it said that, as one became more senior, one could be a little more flexible in one’s routine but, while that may be true when one reaches flag rank, I cannot say I ever found it true among the hewers of wood and drawers of water at my sort of level. I well remember when I was Senior Engineer of HMS NONSUCH and she was alongside in Portsmouth. I was on the upper deck at 0930 examining the six-ton crane which was part of my considerable inventory, following the standard dictum that all machines like to be visited (Blog 44). As I gave the crane a good “looking at”, who should come over the brow but my boss, the Commander (E), still in plain clothes (he lived locally). I saluted and said,
“Good Morning, sir”. [I glanced at my watch]
“Ah, none of that, Senior”, he said, catching my subtle disapprobation, “I’m setting an example to the boys and girls”
“Now then”, he went on, ”when these young sailors look to us for example, who do you think they aspire to be? You, a Lieutenant Commander? Up at 0630 for a quick set of rounds before breakfast, woken up most nights at sea, working all the hours God gave you? Or me: all night in, nice cabin, comes onboard at 0930, plays golf occasionally in the afternoon. He or she is going to say, ‘That’s the job I want: I’m going to be a Commander’”
I confess, I had never thought of things that way, and I considered it a salutary lesson for the future as a means of inspiring one’s people and encouraging their ambitions.
Entirely coincidentally, two days later the Captain wanted to see my boss, the Commander (E), at 0830 and he was not yet onboard. The day after that the Commander (E) was onboard, in uniform, bright eyed and bushy tailed, at 0730. And at the same time every day thereafter.
Just as a Roman soldier who is tempted off the solid Roman road ends up floundering in the marshes and fighting off the Iceni, so one deviates from the established path at one’s peril.

The downside of having served in the armed forces with an ordered routine, is that there is a danger of becoming institutionalised. It is true that, ultimately you put your life on the line, the hours of work can be long, you are not paid overtime and there is no annual cash bonus; but food and accommodation (at cost if ashore) are provided, if single you do not have to commute and, as I said in the previous paragraph, you do not have to think too much about your personal routine. Take this staple framework away, however, as happens when men and women leave the Service, and some single veterans have great difficulty in coping: it is estimated that as many as 6% of the homeless in the UK are veterans (11% in the USA), and these figures are exacerbated by those ex-servicemen and women who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is something to think about when we consider giving to Service charities such as the British Legion. Fortunately, I have not had that problem because I am no longer single and, when I retired, I moved from one ordered and disciplined régime into another one. Peace be upon her.

Well, here we are at Blog 70: thirty five blogs since I started these little missives when CV19 impinged on our lives in March.  I admit that I didn’t think I would still be writing a blog as we approached Christmas, but there you go.  England has, in name at least, come out of its second lockdown and is now back in its regional tiered system, with restrictions applied according to the perceived state of infection in different parts of the country.  However, as revealed in the last blog, 99% of England has been dumped into Tier 2 or 3, defined as ‘High Risk’ or ‘Very High Risk’ respectively, and the majority of us still cannot mix indoors with our fellow man (or woman). With daily positive test results yesterday down to about 16,000, and deaths at 504 in a population of 66 million, it is totally illogical and unnecessarily restrictive.   An MP was reprimanded the other day for sitting at the same table as his wife in the House of Commons Dining Room, invoking the comment,
“It seems in Covid-19 Britain you can sleep with a woman for 37 years but you can’t have lunch with her.”
However, there are some items of much-needed good news.  First, thank heavens I live in England and not Scotland or Wales, where the restrictions are, on the whole, more draconian than those in England though those countries’ infection rates and deaths show little significant difference from those in England.  Second, the rate of positive test results in England continues to fall rapidly, and the number of daily deaths attributed to CV19 has peaked and is now falling.  Third, the Pfizer vaccine has been certified as safe to use in the UK (apparently the first country to do so) and the immunisation programme will start next week.  Finally, Christmas is coming, we have illuminated our Christmas lights in the garden, and snow has fallen in parts of England and Scotland.  What more can you ask?

In years to come, if asked to summarise one of the key memories of this dreadful period in our lives, then I would do it with six words:
There are too many people around.
It seems that everywhere I go outside there are people: wheezing, red-faced, fat men and women huffing and puffing as they shuffle along in an attempt at jogging; brisk walkers in hiking boots, striding along with ski poles as if heading for Zermatt; dog walkers with their little black turd bags; clumps of earnest cyclists riding two abreast and clogging up the roads.  And this is not in the town centre (which is fairly quiet): this is on suburban roads and streets near where I live on the edge of town.  Even our regular milk collection at the farm across the road has been hindered by crowds of people hanging around in the farmyard, socialising at two metre distances or queuing for milk.  After nine months I still have not become accustomed to it and continue to ask myself, “why are these people not out at work?”.  I am being selfish and have been spoilt, of course.  When I retired I became used to the streets being fairly quiet after everyone had gone to work or school; my routine and tranquility is now being disrupted by these supposed “workers at home” and I resent the invasion of “my” space.  It is just one of those things that I will have to adjust to: “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, though I don’t love myself too much at the moment either; I am beginning to look old and I think I may be getting split ends again. Pass me that vanishing cream and conditioner – I wonder if my hair would look better with a side parting?

Right.  So what is this practice of men – some of them old enough to know better – walking around in the winter, in town, wearing shorts?  Can they not read a calendar? Do they not feel the cold?  Is this the Costa del Sol? Have they not yet grown up?  I stopped wearing shorts for everyday wear when I was eleven and only now wear them when abroad in hot countries or at home in the back garden on exceptionally warm summer days. I do not parade my shapely calves,  muscular thighs and thread veins to the general public in Britain: those treats are reserved for Mrs Shacklepin, and a very select number of close friends by subscription.  Putting aside the extraordinary seasonal sartorial choice, it is not as if the shorts worn are smart khaki cotton shorts with creases up the front, complemented by knee-length stockings and shoes: no, they are shapeless synthetic shorts with elasticated waists, worn with flip flops as if the wearer has just crawled out of bed.  They probably have.  Do men no longer care about their appearance?  And why do their womenfolk not keep them in order?  Mine does (“…and you’re going to wear that bow tie for our FaceTime session with Freda and Colin this evening are you?”).

Being in the right rig at the right time has always been a matter of pride to me, but I had one friend, whom we will call Robert, who was the epitome of preparedness and smartness. I always maintained that, if he swam ashore in a diving suit he would be able to peel it off to reveal a full dinner jacket with buttonhole, like James Bond in one of those 007 films. Robert was so unfailingly correct and punctilious that I decided, one day, to play a prank on him. I invited him to dinner with my wife and another couple and, when Robert asked me about the rig for the occasion, I was vague and offhand in my reply: “Just come as you are”. In the meantime, I told our friends that the dinner was ‘black tie’ and my wife and I dressed accordingly. On the evening of the dinner, all except my very parfait friend were assembled in the drawing room having drinks and looking awfully smart in our evening wear. The doorbell rang.
“That will be Robert ”, I said.”Let’s see how he copes with this!”
I opened the door, and there he stood in a sailing smock, baggy corduroy trousers and desert boots. Seeing my mode of dress, he looked so shocked and woebegone that I had to apologise.
“I’m so sorry, Robert”, I said,”But I couldn’t resist the prank. You are always so correct and prepared for anything that I always maintained that, given a situation like this, you would have a fallback solution and would still be able to come up smelling of roses”
“Like this, you mean”, he replied.
Whereupon he stripped off his smock and baggy trousers, and kicked off his desert boots, to reveal himself in full dinner jacket with buttonhole, stiff piqué shirt with gold studs, bow tie, dress trousers, cummerbund, and patent leather evening shoes. Of course, someone had tipped him off.

My jaw dropped and, for the first and only time in my life, I was totally, utterly and completely speechless. Which is how I leave you now.

4 December 2020