Vive la France

I’ve been a Francophile for as long as I remember, putting me at odds with the majority of my fellow Englanders. Where my compatriots see a nation of simians prone to laying down weapons with an unhealthy enthusiasm, and afflicted with an innate weakness for cheese and shit wine, I have tended to see a nation of philosophers and poets, artists and beautiful people. The country of Monet, Rimbaud and Zola. And Plastic Bertrand.

I think I can trace this love of the French to my early years, sitting in Hulme Library reading Tintin*, immersing myself in a world of espionage, adventure, fluffy dogs, exotic countries and drunken sailors.  My early impressions of France was that it was a country of excitement, where round heads and tiny quiffs were the uniform of the super-cool, where the streets were narrow and everyone seemed to carry a gun.  It was my kind of place.

My experiences were drawn a little more into reality with my first French lesson at St Thomas Aquinas High School**, when we were introduced to the French family who inhabited the pages of Tricolre, the text book of choice in 1980s French classes.  This was a (stereo)typical French family, with a mere, a pere, a young son and a teenage daughter called Marie-France. It is to Marie-France I apportion the inspiration for my real attraction to France, because Marie-France would have been about two years older than me, and was stylish, studious and pretty fit. As line-drawings go, anyway. Not a Francine Smith or Lois Griffin, but enough for a pubescent adolescent to get distracted by. If French girls were like that, I wanted in.

So, to my initial belief that France was a country riddled with spies and pirates , the carefree, stylish young-girl-about-town was added***.  And so, until my twenties, this informed my vision.  France: a country of two-dimensional adventure and penciled objects of desire.

I’ve recently returned from a trip to France, and every time I go, my original simplistic love is diluted with real France, as it occurs in the actual country. It’d be going a bit far to call it a disappointment, because I still love it. But it would be fair to say that I’ve met few philosophers, artists or pirates.

Most annoyingly for me, however, is that France has long had a reputation for being tres chic, the home of style, the fortress of couture.  When I first met real live French people, twenty-odd years ago, I was struck by the lack of correlation between this idea, and that ever-pesky annoyance, reality.  Then, in my very early twenties, all the Frenchies I knew looked like they were dressing like their parents, or had been dressed by their parents.

Nothing has changed.  The cheese is great, the wine is risky, the clothes are shite.  At some point in the fifties, French fashion was probably lightyears away from the staid, drabness of the rest of Europe.  In fact, for people over fifty, the clothes would still be classed as very stylish. But the fashion for the under forties is, with a few exceptions, best described as Meeting-the In-Laws-Friendly. Not so much cutting edge as Alderley Edge.

So, while I am always sad to leave, and for a fortnight afterwards dine on French produce purchased to draw out the holiday buzz, and read some Baudelaire and Tintin with wistful pangs of regret for the life Marie-France and I never made together,  the pain of leaving is easily lessened by purchasing some actual fashion on my return to Blighty.

So tomorrow I’m getting a tiger-stripe onesie.  I bet Tintin never had one of them.

*I know he’s Belgian, but at the age of seven I assumed he was French. I don’t think I really became aware of Belgium’s  existence until the 1982 World Cup.  An awakening that has not improved my life in any measurable amount.

** Which no longer exists.  Twenty-seven teachers won a lottery syndicate a few years after I left. The school hit a rapid decline following twenty-seven resignations shortly after.

***Like a younger Genevieve from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Or Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, if vous preferez. 

The Sun'll Come Out...

Macbeth, the character, in Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's funniest comedies, upon hearing of the death of his wife, starts prattling on about 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

Essentially he's doing the uber-goth thing of reflecting on the pointlessness of life, because tomorrow - or at least some tomorrow in the future - everyone is going to die. Unfortunately for him he was born after Gone with the Wind, otherwise he’d know that Tomorrow is Another Day, and so there is no point getting stressed and all miserably nihilistic about it. 

Macbeth’s main problem is that he knows he’s fucked – he’s probably going to die soon – and so, naturally, his disposition is not so shiny as it might be. His other problem is that he hasn’t learned the joys of procrastination. He may be going to die tomorrow, but it’s not tomorrow yet, it’s today. He should stop getting in a tither, crack open a can of Stella (Or a Bottle of Buckfast, given that he’s Scottish) and enjoy the good life while he can.

Because the fine art of procrastination is one that requires little skill other than the realisation that there’s always going to be something that you ‘should’ be doing. As I type I know that the kitchen is in need some of desperate attention – dishes are piling up, lunch is not being prepared, and the art of bread-making is being sadly neglected.

In front of me, a pile of books is accusing me of being an incompetent teacher, a half-written novel is goading me with jibes about having no staying power (a goad I am used to, from many sources, for many reasons).

But to get all of these things done would wipe out my entire Sunday, and that would leave no time for the real pleasures of Achieving Fuck All on the Sofa – an activity at which I am a master.  There is mindless Nazi history to be watched, and Arsenal/Spurs game to come, and many and varied Facebook statuses (stati?*) to be liked. These things don’t take care of themselves.

Recently, I bought my niece a Riverside Shakespeare for her Eighteenth Birthday, because that’s the kind of fun-lovin’ uncle I am, and wrote in it ‘ Everything you want to know about life is in here somehwere’. *** Taking that sweeping statement as my cue, I’m learning from Macbeth. He frets, and strides, and furies and clangs. But tomorrow does eventually come, and he does eventually die. Painfully and humiliatingly. And his head gets put on spike, and people probably piss in his eye sockets. Although Willie doesn’t explicitly mention that in his script. Probably censored.

So not only does Macbeth lose his life, but he spends his last day getting worked up about it. You can’t avoid the inevitable, But you can pretend it’s not there. If he’d known this, he’d at least have enjoyed his last few hours of life.

Eventually I will have to plan my lessons for tomorrow – including, not coincidentally, Macbeth with Year Nine. I will have to do the dishes. I will have to eat. But if I wait, I’ll get them done with the minimum effort required. Right now, there is televisual learning to be done, and reclining to be practised.

I’m learning from Macbeth. Procrastinate, procrastinate and procrastinate.

I’m learning from Macbeth. You may die tomorrow, so enjoy today.

I’m learning from Macbeth. Now how do I turn this into a lesson for thirty fourteen-year-olds?

I’ll tell you tomorrow.

* It’s fourth declension - of course  – so statuses (Anglicised usage) or status. Not stati.** D’oh! I’m such a dumbass pleb at times. How could I have forgotten that?

**And I also bet Toby ‘kill me with a battered copy of Lewis and Short’ Young doesn’t know that either. Because he’s a twat.

*** Unless, of course, you want to know about Angry Birds or the Harlem Shuffle.

1966 and All That

Mrs Chemist, a native of Kiwiland, is in the process of applying for the right to remain resident on this emerald isle, this other Eden, this idyll home of Nectar Points and railway enthusiasts.  Being the caring partner that I am I have decided to help in this endeavour by being actively and enthusiastically involved in the process. Especially the citizenship test.  To this end, I dug deep into my pockets and bought a study guide off Ebay for the bank-breaking price of Ten New Pence.

This was last week. The test tests whether would-be immigrants know such useful details as who is entitled to free dental care and how many Nectar points are two bottles of Bishop’s Finger worth? Essentially, a dry document of dry details  - presumably to make Britain seem like a place of dull facts and, by extension, an equally dull existence.

Bizzarely, the very day the fruits of my largesse arrived in the post, the present ‘government’ announced that the test was about to change. No longer would those wishing, and willing, to become a weave in the fabric of the history of this Land of the Free* have to learn such grey statistics as the number of practising Methodists in the district of Merthyr Tydfil, or how many stripes there are on a standard zebra crossing. No siree!  Out with such nonsenses! Because now, following the general re-writing of reality that the shambles who are  running the country are attempting to impose across the entire spectrum of society, the test is now about Great British History, as judged by a couple of people who are really good at pub quizzes, but probably shit at rational thought and human interaction.

You may have seen sample questions on various news websites.  You can try the test here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/21229722.  It seems fairly innocuous during your first perusal.  There is, however, one essential flaw. It’s completely fucking useless.

Unless you live in Trafalgar Square, there is no need, or value, to know that the tiny figure you can’t see at the top of Nelson’s Phallus is Admiral Nelson, one-armed, half-blind adulterous attention seeker.  Similarly, knowing that Stonehenge is an ancient Neolithic monument not only has little intrinsic worth, it also makes  visiting the site itself redundant, as you’ll already know all there is to learn about our fascination with rocks arranged in circles by bored/pissed Ancient Britons.

I’m sure there are also questions about cigar-smoking midget Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but all it would really tell anyone becoming acquainted with the famous folk of British yesteryear is that there was a propensity towards Very Stupid  Names**. And very stupid hats.

I think, in actuality, this test has been written by Michael ‘Death can’t Come Soon Enough’  Gove, because it is exactly what I imagine he wants a GCSE in History to look like – 200 questions like this, getting increasingly obscurer as the exam progresses.  It starts with an easy Stonehenge, and ends with a question on the legal name in 1302 for a falconer who had had their licence suspended for improper human-avine relations.

The citizenship test should be reduced to one question: Would you vote for the Conservative Party. A ‘No’ gets you entry.  A ’Yes’ gets you shot in the face.  Piece of piss.

* If you’re rich and white

** See also: Horatio Nelson,  Ethelred the Unready, Cogidudnus and anyone called Wayne.yne.

Take yer Eastenders aand shove it ...

It's half one in the morning, and I'm reclined on the sofa at my mum's, finally wrestling off the vestiges of my New Year's Day hangover with the aid of a hot chocolate and Fake Bailey's. The festive season is crawling off, wounded, into the gossamer field of memories, and the bleak, soulless January spreads before us - a bitter necessary evil to be borne,to be faced with determination and, hopefully, to be survived. It wants to defeat you. You must resist.

However, there are remnants of Christmas still with us, and they make the slide from Yule Joy into New Year Horror the more bearable.  There are still some Roses left, and not just the shitty caramels and poisonous orange creams. I've got more Stilton than I can hope to eat in this lifetime, and the novelty of my Christmas toys hasn't worn off yet. And there is still a smattering of interesting and unusual TV to watch, a festive selection pack of viewability.

Not a whole lot though. It's not been a vintage year for Christmas telly.  Readers of a certain vintage will remember the pre-Christmas excitement when the bumper double issues of Radio Times and TV Times were released on the approach road to the holidays. Gaggles of small children would pour over the pages like pirates drooling over new treasure maps, carefully planning the fortnights viewing, accompanied by intermittent 'oohs' and 'ahs' as another televisual wonderment was unearthed*.

I remember TV at Christmas as being packed with nuggets of distraction, fizzing with spectacle, transmitting unending fantabulousisms. Among the ever-present Bonds, Poppinses and Wizards of Ozzess were mornings of wacky cartoon treats, obscure gems like Anne of Green Gables and strange films from the Australian Children's Film Workshop. There were big film premières  middle-class seasonal uplifters like Truly Madly Deeply, and costume dramas so superior to Dumbtown Abbey they could kill it with one hand while munching a mince pie and sipping a brandy.

Even the nostalgia was better then,.

During the Yule weeks, one of the great things over the years has been lazing around, hungover, watching good honest programming.  Unfortunately, these last two weeks it seems to have mostly been Diagnosis Murder and Bones repeats, with the occasional scrap of quality meat thrown at our feet to remind us how shit everything else is. Even Christmas Day's Dr Who was a bit of a limper.  Sadly, the best TV has been the four episodes of Match of the Day**.

But tonight, I've found some nuggets. A programme about nasty insects. Two BBC Four docs  - on Roman Art and Art Nouveau. And a QI I haven't yet seen.  And I'm watching them. Because I must. Christmas is a time for traditions, and I refuse to let those traditions die.  Even if I am dog-tired, and there is the siren call of bed awaiting.  If I give up on this, I let January win.

Never let January win.

* I may be slightly over-romanticising this.
**Apart from the one where Sunderland beat City which was both implausible and overly-tragic. Like Mike Leigh's Naked in sporting form.

Ebeneezer's Gift

It is sometime suggested that the very rich should pay their slice of the tax burden. That, in a society where people are able to make stupidly large piles of cash, the contribution of those who benefit most should be, equally, the biggest contribution.  This reasonable suggestion is often pursued by the squealing, petulant cries that this is The Politics of Envy. Cries which can be heard all the way from The Carlton Club to The Commons.

Gideon’s been at it again this morning, uttering the bizarre statement that those who see their benefit-scrounging neighbours asleep, as they themselves rise at the crack of sparrows and trudge off to a day's hard work, should be treated fairly. What he means by this is that the sleeping neighbour should be treated more harshly, and that this deceitful act of sophistry will somehow make the world a sunnier, shinier place.  

This is bizarre on many levels, not least because anyone who sees their neighbours sleeping as they are work-bound is either a peeping tom, shagging someone from next door, or has a neighbour passed-out on their front lawn. Only one of those scenarios elicits even a slither of sympathy, and given that the streets and avenues of England aren’t strewn with snoring, vagrant slumberers, I can only assume that Gideon has the first two situations in mind.  I’d hate to live near him.

The real issue, though, isn’t that Mad George thinks that people are shinnying up drainpipes to gaze in anger at the terminally, and temporarily, unemployed – snugly wrapped in their beds of workshy irresponsibility.  The real issue is that that the rich out-of-touch spoilt, sheltered, sniveling, social and economic human failure masquerading a sentient being has decided to address the concerns of these sinister, but employed, voyeurs, by pinning future benefit increases to 1%, well below inflation.

This is the real politics of envy.  Because it makes not a jot of difference to anyone if the out-of-work residents in my ‘hood are getting a rise of three pounds weekly, or one pound a week.  We won’t see any of that money. The taxes we pay won’t decrease. Nurses won’t find the money saved in their paychecks, nor teachers, nor the five-oh. The only effect is that those who are already living at the shittest end of the stick of life will be getting prodded with an even bigger, shittier stick. And those prodding the stick will be getting bigger, pointier, goldier* sticks.

I’ve lived on the dole. In fact, I was brought up on it. It’s wretched. There’s just enough money to survive. The reason people on the dole stay in bed late is because it costs nothing to be asleep, and nothing is pretty much what you can afford.  Besides, TV is utter dross before midday, at which point it becomes just about tolerable. There’s really no point in getting up early if you’re skint and unemployed. Let’s face it, only the criminally insane, and criminally annoying, are keen to be up and about at dawn on a day of no work.

Back to the whingers. There will also be those who peddle the same miserable lies that everyone signing on has Sky, and a mobile phone, and other such luxuries like shoes and a change of socks.  I’d hazard a guess that anyone with Sky, in receipt of benefit, isn't paying for that out of their benefit.  In fact, I’d hazard an equal guess that there are many illegal Sky sets kicking around the black market.  And to anyone who wants to complain that people are getting Sky for free while they have to pay a small fortune for it, can I suggest you’re looking in the wrong direction.  Rupert didn't look hungry last time I saw him. He did, unfortunately, still look alive. Not short of a few spare pennies, but still, sadly, not dead.**

 It is a depressing aspect of our society.  There will always be people who don’t work. Some will choose not to, some will have it thrust upon them.  Some will be born stinking rich and not have to, but will instead find themselves the focus of seven pages of The Mirror because they got knocked up and felt a bit queasy.

 Just because there are a handful of people who will take the piss, doesn't mean we collectively punish to assuage our Daily Mail-fuelled belief that the poor of Britain are actually sitting on bags of cash, drinking Cristal while watching Bargain Hunt on their Plasma Teevs. It’s bollocks. The poor of Britain are generally having a miserable old time, and it’s getting shitter every day. A reverse Beatles, if you will. ***

So, Gideon, stop picking on those too weak and weary to fight back. Stop using a crane to crush a fly. Remember that you’re where you are because your daddy racked up the dollars selling interior décor. If only he’d had a grasp of social responsibility and made the contribution to society he could have.

And had a vasectomy on reaching puberty.

 *Neologism. Pedant.

*Dear Santa, with Christmas approaching, and your skillset in breaking and entering, and leaving without a trace, I have a very particular request…

*This one 

Tricky Treats

The unfolding events  in New York and along the Eastern Seaboard of the past few days have seemed, to me at least, to be Hollywood Live.  I know that there has been massive destruction, and many have died, but this is also true of Haiti and Jamaica among others.   Only the news from The States has been an uber-intense uber-spectacle.

The media build-up, and rolling reporting, was like an interactive movie event.  Part of this is that New York, for most people, only exists on the cinema screen – and quite often getting its arse handed to it on fat concrete plate by giant apes, earthquakes, global warming,  alien invaders and giant smiling marshmallow sailors.

It is this same American Cultural Omnipresence which has changed the nature of this  very evening, too.  When I was a nipper, Halloween was the shittest name in the Calendar of Special Days of the year.  It only really manifested itself in the crappy drawing of pumpkins and witches at school.  I didn’t actually know that a pumpkin was real vegetable until my twenties, when they started to slowly appear on the supermarket shelves.

The spook creep didn’t end there.  Halloween parties started to pop up all over the place, as did a plethora of sexy devil outfits and killer nurse outfits.  Why killer nurses would wear fishnets and skimpy tops is beyond me.  Surely they’d get blood and viscera everywhere.  They would if they were doing properly anyway.

And now: it’s a Wednesday, and I’m getting ready to go to my brother’s flat for some Halloween shenanigans.  Outside, packs of children trot from house to house, feeding their inevitable diabetes and burgeoning hatred of their own flabby bodies by begging cheap sugary yuck from the local community. Inside, the news is banging on about some Halloween shit I’m trying to tune out.  My brother is putting on nibbles and drinks to celebrate the mythical thinning of the gateway between this world and the next.

How did this transformation come upon us? It wasn’t witchcraft, contrary to what the Christian Right would have you believe.  I blame it primarily on The Simpsons, with a slice of Buffy, Michael Myers and generic  American sitcoms.   The children of Britain have come into being in world where Halloween is not about sticking your head in bowl of water in the fruitless pursuit of a floating apple, but a festival of the plastic macabre, of demonic prostitution, of green creme eggs.

And why might I whinge so, you may ask? Because it’s Halloween.  If my words can create even an ounce of misery and doubt, I’ve done my bit for today’s evil.

Whahahahahahahhahaaaaaahahahahahaahahahahaaa etc.

Conference Tricksters

Watching CallMeDave’s speech at the Conservative Pantomime Season today I was reminded of that episode of Family Guy in which Peter exhibits the skills of a great debator *– he repeats his assertions - each time a little bit louder - assertions which are non-sequiturs of such magnitude they’d make Harold Pinter soil his underwear with sticky pearly love juice.

According to Dave, Labour want to borrow.  I said they’re going to Borrow.  They’ll Borrow money, y’know.  BORROW. BORROW. BORROW. Hitler borrowed money.  Peter Sutcliffe had a bank loan.  Borrowing is evil. Satan’s running the infernal shades of Hell at an increasing deficit. Therefore, Labour are Satanic Nazis - with a side of Yorkshire Ripper.

They may not have been his exact words, but they may have well as been, because he clearly thinks that Tory Conference attendees will applaud anything, and that voters are more gullible than Rozencrantz and Guildenstern jauntily hopping into the English court with their I Heart Hamlet mugs in one hand, certificate of execution in the other. Because all governments borrow, you dead-eyed moron. Even I know that, and I’m financially incompetent.

As confidence tricks go, this speech was ambitious in the extreme.  The Eton Toad would have us believe that he wants to create an Aspiration Nation. I worked at a school once which gave all students target grades which would not have been achievable without divine intervention, or systematic fraud.  Upon questioning these targets, I was told that they were ‘aspirational’ and that I was doing The Youngsters (This was the generic term de jour for the students -a bit like Childern of the Corn) a disservice by writing them off. 

While this is seemingly reasonable, I would contend that it is, in fact, sophistic bullshit which neither understands anything of the complexities of interaction that occur in the learning process nor understands that if you try to emotionally blackmail me I will spread scurrilous rumours about you at the pub. Involving dogs, car parks and Vaseline. I may even photoshop some evidence.

It was this same clumsy technique, more suitable to a school-yard debate over whose mum's the fattest, that was employed by the tadpole-faced vacuity which masquerades as Prime Minister.  Bang and blame. We are your overlords. We are the party for aspirational achievers. We are the Will to Power. Lazy people kill children. Jam tomorrow. (Jam today for me). If you oppose us, you hate kittens. Do you hate kittens? Do you? Do you really? Death to the Kitten-Haters.

The problem with this is pretty straightforward.

Firstly, Dave – you are a mendacious little slugshit. Your lies are so many they’ve taken on a life of their own and have run to all corners of the Earth to spawn further colonies of lies, and given birth to tribes of utter porkies, gaggles of grim fibs, hoards of dark untruths. You are, essentially, not a man to be trusted. If you told me it was Saturday I’d go to work. 

Secondly, no one really wants to be lectured to about the pleasures of hard graft, and the joys of greasing the wheels of social mobility with the oil of ambition, by a man whose experience of hard work is watching the servants, and who is the antithesis of social mobility. You were born unhealthily rich, and you’re still loaded.  Although you're not exactly shifting through the classes. Why aren’t you Emperor of the Known Universe if all it takes is a slice of elbow grease and a gritty determination? 

Go on Dave. Show us how it’s done. Get a Ming the Merciless costume. Declare yourself the Ruler of All Life. Wear a big shiny crown of gold and plebs' bones.

And then fuck off into space. And then die.

* This actually happens in lots of episode.  This is a fine example.