Foxes, cheese, all that

This is not a French-bashing post.  A French-bashing post is, as any scholar of social history will tell you, a pole that existed in many villages during the Napoleonic wars to which suspected French spies or sympathisers (anyone smelling of garlic), was tied for their beating.  Today only a few exist as relics, historical curiosities and gallows for foreigners with beards.  Or for passing historians who cannot explain why the Napoleonic wars are called the Napoleonic wars when we sodding won!

Today, Britain has a much healthier relationship with the Continent, so good in fact that when teachers run off with under-age schoolgirls, France is the country they choose to flee to.  Amazing that you can get to 30 years of age, be a teacher and yet still not capable of basic research such as Googling ‘what do they do to peados in prison?’ followed by ‘What countries do not have an extradition treaty with Britain?’.  Of course, not everyone can afford the ferry fare to Equador and, to be fair, Mr Forrest may have Googled ‘Equador’ after Googling ‘what do they do to peados in prison?’ and made an informed choice.

My favourite quote about the Continent comes from Peter Mandleson, who once remarked ‘don’t talk to me about the French social model…the whole country’s in flames’.  Glossing over the events of last summer, Lord M had a good point – maybe it’s because as we are always being told fuel is so much cheaper on the Continent, but bloody hell do they love a riot and petrol bombs!

Possibly then the ‘rather a lot’ tax on fuel is intended to make rioting too expensive for the classes that want to riot, traditionally, ‘working’ and ‘under’.  Rarely do you see a couple wearing Hunter wellies on the forecourt filling up milk bottles with four star because they are upset about something.  This is because the middle classes are not upset enough to riot…yet, and because if you can pay a hundred quid for fucking wellies, then your sense of values are so totally warped you can pretty much put up with anything.

Britain does a lot of things very, very, well.  War and sport (which is just war with rules), that’s what we do.  And magnificent food.

Pardon?

Oh yes we do.  And here’s why – a popular myth has grown up that somehow or other Britain was less able than other countries in the cooking Department up until a few years ago.  Let me raise a point here – rationing.  We were an island cut off by Nazis.  Underwater Nazis.  Nazis in submarines.  No wonder we learned to do interesting things with offal. 

Also, we love offal. 

But I have to say fair play to Jamie Oliver (the man who taught me to love cooking as well as food).  What ignited, with his help, around the turn of the century was a passion for cooking. 

The passion for food had always been here because, with rationing people never got enough of it, and in the seventies prawn cocktail and Angel Delight were just scrummie.  They burned your mouth with chemicals, but what the hey.

Now, things are very serious indeed.  Austerity is biting and there are flaming riots in Spain, where people are annoyed, possibly at being charged so much for sun loungers because Christ knows that always annoyed me.

Luckily, France is currently exempt from this sort of thing.  I know this, because recently I was in a French restaurant (in England, obviously, what do you take me for?) and saw the delightful advertising that decorates this post, a fox and a crow advertising camenbert cheese.

Now, it’s obvious that there is some kind of story here. The fox wants the cheese, the crow wants the cheese, they share the cheese, the fox craps cheese, I have no idea.

All I know is this.  I had an excellent coffee in the French place but I had my dinner at Jamie’s.  It wasn’t (I hope) snobbery or xenophobia, or even that foxes are more likely to crap in my garden than plunder my cheese, it’s just that the Brits do food better than the French.

Epecially the paella.

This, by the way, is what a fox really looks like.

Valet app

Why did Apple include a feature on their last iPhone that was supposed to be a robotic personal assistant?

The answer may be that they were trying to integrate the personal organiser functions on their telephone using an interface that saved you from having to flip from feature to feature to try and find out the simplest local information, or remember your dry cleaning, or your mother's birthday. In other words, they spent millions of dollars developing an application on their gadget to replace the Yellow Pages, or a diary, or a post it note, or a conscience. Or some basic sentient being skills like remembering.

This was presumably because the cognitive energy otherwise needed to remember that you are meeting Simon for cocktails at five on Tuesday can be instead channeled either to work on your next oh-so-droll tweet, or vigerously deny that binging on spirit-based drinks early on a Tuesday afternoon is evidence of alcoholism.

Selling a voice recognition package as some sort of personal assistant went well beyond the obvious reason why Apple may have done this; to make iPhone users' relationship with their iPhones even more unhealthy, reaching the point where the dependency is actually a recognised medical condition that The Metro can publish articles and Channel 5 can screen sensationalist documentaries about.

So perhaps the real reason was the economy and Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey cut right through any doubts whatsoever that Britain ever had a chance of becoming, in John Major's term, a classless society. Britain bloody loves being a class-structured society. We love it so much that we recently invented a whole new class - 'under' - to meet increasing demand to have somebody to look down on. It's like the Indian caste system but without decent railways. Downton Abbey's success, penetrating the nation's consciousness like a sex toy in a novel that sells well on Kindle, demonstrated that we know our place. It's in front of the TV at nine o'clock on a Sunday night.

Two things unite Downton Abbey viewers, they all think they are at least one social class higher than they actually are, and all of them think their life would be a whole lot easier if they lived in a stately home and had an army of servants to iron their pyjamas.

That's why Apple produced an interactive feature on their 'phone, because having something that reminds us that we are due at the pox clinic tomorrow, or that we have forgotten to pickup our dry cleaning, again, is the closest that most people are going to get to having staff. Even the gripes about the voice recognition was a deliberate feature, as it allowed people to complain about the staff (it also gave long term Apple gadget users a warm glow of satisfaction, they have been moaning about Apple's interfaces for years, like the handwriting recognition on the Newton. Long term users consider recent adopters nouveau riche).

But the economy being what it is, the middle classes can't afford to retain servants any more, though that doesn't mean that they don't want them, if only to fire.

What's needed is to confront this thing head on and model the interactive features on the iPhone 5 like a traditional country house. This means that instead of having one feature that does everything a bit crap and can't understand you if you have a speech impediment, like a lisp or working class accent, it has lots of apps with different specialist functions.

Surely it can't be that difficult to interface the iPhone's camera with a valet app that could archly criticise both your grooming and your lifestyle with pithy comments, all the while maintaining a faintly camp and slightly sinister tone? A simple click of the shutter, some diagnostics and the phrase 'sir is pleased to jest' will alert you to a potentially shaming sock/tie combination.

Certainly such an app is needed. While the erosion of the servant classes may have resulted in a removal, at least superficially, of some class barriers, it also means men's grooming has reached the point where an association football shirt is considered suitable attire, the away kit being deemed 'formal'.

Open letter to 'The Guardian'

Dear 'The Guardian',

It's not me, it's you.

I'm leaving you.

There's no easy way to say it (actually there is, it's 'I'm leaving you', three simple words that economically convey an important message but which you would no doubt spin out to a five page splash in your weekend magazine or a themed special supplement or, even more likely, a recipe special featuring comfort food, meals for one and a way to make pot noodle using tears - and that's part of the problem), but there it is. Recently I've felt that we have less and less in common.

We used to have a lot of shared interests: incisive reporting, informed comment, Posy Simmonds. I'm still interested in all of those things but you appear obsessed with speculation, 'lifestyle', oh-so-funny columns, recipes and fucking, fucking, fucking Will Self.

There's something else you should know. For quite a while now I've been seeing 'The Telegraph'. We kept bumping into one another at friends' houses and it seemed that we had more and more in common.

Of course, we disagree about a lot of things, and at times I'm not at all sure if The Telegraph's views are sincere or ironic or simply intended to provoke reaction (usually spluttering disbelief) but The Telegraph has kept up to date with current events, knows what is going on in the world beyond a few South London post codes, and is more likely to print a story about rising tensions in the Trossachs than, say, a review of a DVD box-set of a tee vee show from the eighties that concludes that it was not as good as you remembered. Really? Well hold the fucking front page.

(I just want to make clear that I've never been with The Times. Well, a couple of occasions. But I never paid for it, it was derived free with my groceries. And it was overpriced.)

So I've been seeing another newspaper. But you've hardly been an innocent party in this yourself, have you?

Over the last few years you've had all sorts between your sheets. I could understand when they had something interesting to say, but when it became meaningless, that really hurt. 

As for your friends. Jesus Christ, I've seen the letters that they write to you. I thought that the columnists you hung out with we're spectacularly devoid of something to say, but the letters page is breathtaking - especially when a chain of correspondence involving bad puns runs over a number of days, or weeks. It's like being trapped in a car on an interminable motorway journey to hell where somebody has invented the shittest car game ever and you don't know whether to lunge for the door handle, the steering wheel or the gin.

But that's as nothing compared with 'Comment is free'. Three categories: people out to make a point about how clever they are; people who are happy at last that they have a place to leave uninformed political comments without being challenged; and the sort of person who thinks that white bread leads to global warming.

So that's it. You remain on the newsagent shelf and you have been deleted from the 'favourites' on my browser.

And here's the reason why. Even when, a couple of years ago, you published a column with no apparent trace of irony by somebody who said that they would push somebody under a train for eating a burger or something - the week after a woman was pushed under a train - I was prepared to overlook such behaviour. But last weekend you published an interview with a man who, after buying a too-tight pair of shoes, wears them painfully but does not walk in them, calling them his 'barstool shoes'. That's right, instead of throwing a bucket of shit over him and screaming 'REALLY?', you publicised what can only be described as twattery on a grand scale.

This is what Richard Littlejohn is talking about when he refers to 'Guardianistas' as being self-regarding twats. You made Littlejohn right! Fuck you!

Goodbye.

 PS. I would try to get custody of Steve Bell, but I don't want to take him away from his home.

Site-specific folklore

But is there anything as deliciously British as site-specific folklore?

 Maybe pork scratchings.

Every country has its folklore. Britain is a haunted country with a spook and a story hiding behind every bush. Creepy old houses, stone circles and telephone boxes that smell slightly of wee and the paranormal are standard issue.

 Continental Europe specialises in grimmer folk tales, from the trolls of Scandinavia to the unhappy happenings in the dark forests of the interior. The United States has some cracking folklore, from native American superstitions those those from the modern age: crossroads, prairie campfires and spectral locomotives being especially popular.

As for the Far East, they have so many batshit crazy wailing ghosts that they have formed the lynchpin of the continent’s film industry.

That stories (or can we use the term ‘tales’ in this context? yes, yes I think we can) about strange events or weird happenings attach themselves to certain locations should be no surprise; let’s be pragmatic here, people are always looking for some way to attach fame to a location for sound commercial reasons.  If Queen Elizabeth I actually did sleep in as many historic houses, now conveniently converted into boutique hotels, as claimed in the brochures, it’s amazing that she found any time at all to get out of bed, put on a ginger wig and twat the Spanish.

It’s when the locals seek to play down a place’s association or reputation that the stories are likely to be authentic.

Britain leads when it comes to the sheer volume of weird tales in the haunted landscape. Sometimes you are forced to conclude that every postcode has its own legend. Possibly this is because you can’t go far in Britain without seeing a spooky house, an oddly shaped tree or a sinister looking alley, country lane or bus stop. But more likely it’s because of the proliferation of public houses and the treasured local custom of talking bollocks and teasing tourists.

There are places though, both ancient and modern, where it doesn’t take much to imagine strange or sinister things happening.  This can be a crooked country lane at dusk but can just as easily be a grimy underpass, especially if it smells of cider-pee and hoodie.

Deserted rural landscapes provide a happy home for local legends, like Black Shuck, the devil dog of the Fens.  Black dogs are a popular myth in East Anglia, seen as harbingers of death, but Black Shuck, an enormous spectral hound that haunts the North Norfolk coast, has the distinction of being the legend that, when recounted to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he was staying in Cromer, inspired him to write ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, although SACD relocated the action from Norfolk to Dartmoor, possibly at the bidding of the Dartmoor tourist board, or the Norfolk tourist board, it's not clear.

It’s natural enough to imagine a landscape soaked in blood and history as the home of spooky tales, real or invented, but because all folktales have to start somewhere I don’t see why modern landmarks shouldn’t have their own gruesome tales attached, even if there are fewer ‘heritage and culture centres’, or ‘pubs’ as they are also known, than there used to be for those stories to be invented, told and retold.  

For instance, canal towpaths are more than places where condoms are discarded and fishermen take refuge from their unhappy marriages, they can be genuinely spooky places when deserted at twilight, even if they are only a graveyard for shopping trollies. A road laybys can be spooky too, and not just because they are the evidence disposal site of choice for lorry drivers.  I know of at least three laybys where the smell of bacon sandwiches has been reported, even though there are no cafes present.

It takes a certain something for a site to cross over from being sad to spooky. Caravan sites, children's playgrounds and concrete corners that are strangers to sunlight can all seem forlorn, and can even be tipped into tragic through the simple edition of half a dozen petrol garage bouquets left there, but to become spooky they need time and imagination. Or maybe just an unexpected creak.

The Village Hobby Pt 2: Men and train sets

Hobbies are a low key Faustian pack, at least among those who are in gainful and resentful employment. The deal is that you will work in an unrewarding job that is simply there to bankroll your real life. It's like being a super-hero, you spend all day pretending to be normal, and spend your nights making dioramas of famous scenes from World War II if dinosaurs had been involved - and who doesn't thrill a little when confronted with a 1/32 scale recreation of a T Rex battling a British tank unit on a Parisian street corner, or a Spitfire downing a pterodactyl over Big Ben (yes of course the dinosaurs fought on the side of the Axis - they were recreated using perverted Nazi science, what are you, thick?)

One of the positives of this trade-off is that while you sure as hell don't give work a thought while you are away from it, you can devote time at work to your hobby. Not overtly of course, as for instance waders, a tackle box and a keep-net writhing with angry fish might cause comment as you take communion, but you can certainly give your pastime some thought.

This is because, as anyone who has ever sat in a meeting featuring PowerPoint and has spent the time from Slide three until 'any questions' idly wondering if you could capitalise on the upcoming badger cull by introducing a range of 'Woodland Soups' without being too specific about the content, or the likelihood of contracting TB as a result of ingestion, will be able to confirm, musing is not easily detectable (unless you operate a lathe or are a surgeon, in which case bloody well concentrate and stop wondering whether that triceratops model you ordered for your recreation of the siege of Stalingrad has arrived yet).

If you have a hobby, and you are at work, and your badge says that you are 'happy to help', then you are a fibber. But that's OK because badges that read 'Hello, I'm Gary, ambivalent about helping, but if you want to discuss what would win in a fight, a T Rex or a Cromwell, I am very much your man' are difficult to find, even on the Internet.

When you leave work for good you are unencumbered by nine to five distraction and the fear that your colleagues might find out what you do at the weekend and judge you because you rather like folk dance, or weaving, or competitive masturbation, and you can level up from hobbyist to enthusiast. And there is no better place to see retired folk in enthusiastic action than a railway line run by enthusiasts (unlike commercial train companies, which are staffed by unenthusiasts).

Retired enthusiasts are such a regular feature of steam train lines that you could be forgiven for concluding that the train crew came with the engine when it was new and have simply stuck with it after it was acquired by a trust formed of people who like grease, polishing things and smelling faintly of equal parts soot and sawrfega.

Because maybe it's the grimy faces, but bloody hell do the enthusiasts look happy when they smile. And who can blame them? You know that whooshing feeling you get in your stomach when you see a bloody big loco thunder by and the whistle shrieks and the clouds of steam flow back over the carriages like a white mink stole thrown over the shoulder of a silent movie starlet, well they get that all the time, from marmite to horlicks and in their dreams as well.

Steam enthusiasts are the ultimate hobbyists. You can be enthusiastic about your skydiving, or your golf, or your fishing or God help you your Morris dancing (by the way, putting on some bells, thwacking a twig and doing a jig in a car park followed by ten hours of drinking makes you a Real Ale enthusiast, not a folk dance enthusiast, although the two are often confused), or about dressing up as a Roundhead or investigating paranormal activity (usually in pubs, handy for accessing spirits) but being a steam enthusiast, traction or rail, is commitment. And romantic.