English eccentricity

If there’s a standard scale for sanity, and there probably is but who wants a search history that can be used against them in court as a result of their looking up ‘am I normal?’ on Google so I’m not going to attempt to find out, then, like metric and imperial, there will be one scale for the rich and another for the rest of them…I mean us.

Let’s call the scale of sanity for the ordinary man in the street, or indeed Jasper Carrott’s nutter on the bus, the Metric scale.  A reading of zero means that you can pass for ordinary, you don’t twitch or drool and you don’t feel the need to perform a cleansing ritual after meeting a gypsy.  At the top end of the scale, 100, are people who are so insane they occupy positions of power, or kill people, or indeed both.  It’s around the 60 to 70 range that things get interesting, that’s where your, let’s face it, more amusing mental health issues are pitched, like believing what you read in the Daily Mail.  Tracking back towards zero we pass through the superstitious range, which encompasses everything from paying actual money for a palm reading ‘you are very gullible’, to wearing your lucky shirt on match day.  Oh, and by the way, one day you will realise that because you always clean and iron your lucky pulling shirt, those actions make it your lucky pulling shirt.

For the rich, the Imperial scale covers three main ranges.  Firstly, there is fucked up, which is what happens to an eighteen year old when they come into a trust fund.  They spend the fund initially on drugs and booze, and thereafter on trying to quit drugs and booze, possible solutions including therapy, The Priory, or a cult.  Secondly, there is inbred.  If you can inherit the family chin, stands to reason you can also inherit the family kinks in the cognitive reasoning, including the firm belief that it is still acceptable to use the term ‘darkie’ if you lower your voice while doing so.

Then at the top of the scale we have eccentricity.

Madness plus money equals eccentricity.  If you wanted to marry a goat you would be, depending on the community you lived in, laughed out of town or stoned to death.  Regrettably, there are also some corners of geography inhabited by people that would probably apportion some of the blame to the goat.  These are the same sort of people who, in conversations about women’s rights, make the sort of comments that give you the distinct sensation that your arse is clenching into your hat.  If you have a title, an estate and, and this is the important bit, some say over who gets to be vicar in the parish you own, the one with a charming Norman church, a rather lovely rectory and no knife crime at all, then it’s pretty likely that the bans will shortly be posted for the forthcoming nuptials of the Earl of Kinkey and Miss Willamina Goat.

Let’s be clear, being eccentric is fabulous, as long as you don’t hurt anyone in, for instance, your scientific experiments largely involving melons, you’re beloved.

Ever had a day, a whole day, when you have not got out of your pyjamas?  You have moved from bed to sofa to fridge to sofa to bed in one glorious relaxed manner, and you’re not even ill?  Fabulous, isn’t it.  Now imagine not getting out of bed for a week because you can’t be arsed.  That’s eccentric.

Working class and in Tesco in your jim jams?  Out, you fucking scum!  Titled and in Fortnum and Mason in a dressing gown?  Of course you are, you don’t need a wallet, you’ve got an account at the place.

The English tolerate eccentricity because, by and large, it’s more entertaining than harmful.  An aristocrat with a thing for trains may indulge his obsession by building his own railway, miniature or, my preference, full sized, on his estate.

Eccentricity is not madness, it is more refined.  It is the state of mind that causes one to be entertaining and harmless, and leads to one being fondly admired.