From The Archive: British and Proud of It

From The Archive is a special Friday feature. It features posts from my earlier (now-deleted) blog: Stuff & Nonsense and a few items from previous versions of A Tangled Rope that I feel deserve reprinting here, mainly as a way of archiving them. The dates are only approximate, I’m afraid, and there is a possibility that some links may no longer work (although, I will try to remember to test the links before republishing the piece).

British and Proud of It - 19/03/05

A couple of days ago I read an article on the (UK) Prospect website where various folk (including: Kenan Malik, Roger Scruton, Gordon Brown, Billy Bragg) discuss 'British Identity'.

Now, I am British. I was born in Britain - and, as far as I know, so were most - if not all - my ancestors - so I am about as British as it is possible to get. But, still I don't know whether I feel British. As far as I can tell, I don't know what it means to feel British.

I have - for example - always found the American notion of patriotism rather baffling. The seemingly unreflecting earnestness of it makes me uneasy, uncomfortable. I don't doubt it - or - particularly - want to - demean it. But, I have to wonder what this - obvious - PRIDE in one's country means to such people.

So, what can pride in one's country mean, especially in my case of being British?

I have little, or no, time for the monarchy. I am indifferent to them and their activities. As for the current royal kerfuffle, as far as I'm concerned Charlie can marry who - or what (remember he is royalty) he likes. The only reason that I'm not a rabid anti-monarchy republican is that all the other options for a head of state seem worse than the one we've got. President Blair - or even President Howard (stop laughing at the back) - fills me with... well, unpleasant thoughts at the very least.

As you may have gathered I'm not overly impressed with our politicians either. Britain may claim to be the mother of all parliaments and so on, but I couldn't have anything approaching respect - let alone pride - in the current bunch of incumbents.

The famous British traditions, rites and rituals? The civil service? The aristocracy? No, I can't say that any of those make me feel anything approaching respect or pride, let alone anything approaching that current nonce phrase - a sense of identity.

The folks in the Prospect discussion mentioned above talk of the 'British traditions': a sense of fair play, tolerance - even the famous stiff-upper lip, at one point. But I don't see those things as being particularly, uniquely, British. They are personal attributes - some folk have them, some folk don't. Remember this so-called land of tolerance and fair play also is the home of the Daily Mail, Kilroy-Silk and hordes of the hanging and flogging brigade.

British arts and British culture - well, yes. We do Have Shakespeare, the Beatles, Monty Python, Newton, Milton, Dickens, Valerie Singleton and all the other names that I can't quite remember - or remember how to spell - at the moment. But there are other folk in other countries that have produced art and culture of equal or greater stature.

But why should I feel a greater pride in Shakespeare because he was born a few miles down the road from where I'm typing this than in - say - Beethoven who was born hundreds of miles away? They were both great blokes, did great stuff and will probably always be remembered for it. What I don't understand is why one should count more to me because of the accident of where he was born.

So that is one more thing to cross off the list.

So, it is not the institutions that make me feel any sense of British-ness, it is not the royal family, it is not the politicians, it is not the culture or the great men.

What does that leave? The people? The place?

The people? Well, the people are the people. Take one aspect - the famous British sense of humour. Now I like a good laugh myself - but Americans, Australians and others have all made me laugh at one time or another. The Germans even laugh at Monty Python - so I don't think there can be anything that special about the 'British sense of humour', or any of the other stereotypical so-called national characteristics. It seems that British people are British people, just, and only, because they are born in Britain.

As for sports, in everything - except football, for some reason I can't put my finger on - I am always pleased when - as usual - Britain, or England, fail, or lose, or whatever. That is mainly because it means we won't be constantly reminded of our great victory at every conceivable - and quite a few inconceivable - opportunity by a suddenly obsessive media.

For example, recently the English team apparently won some rugby match or other, and suddenly everything: the telly, the radio, the newspapers - everything - went rugby mad. But soon, when the rugby team got back to normal and starting losing again, rugby went back to being - more or less - ignored.

The same applies to any other international contest or competition, like the Eurovision Song Contest, or the current Olympic bid by London, or how many Oscars the 'British' films or actors will get. None of them stir any great feeling in me, apart from a mild annoyance that I am being bombarded by yet more dull, useless, trivia.

So that just leaves place.

I like Britain. I like its scenery. I like its rain (what other countries call weather). But then, I was born here - so it's what I'm used to. Other countries have just as good - if not better - scenery, countryside or whathaveyou. Although, I have never seen a place other than Britain that gets that particular shade of green in the countryside.

I see Britain as just a name on a map, a way of distinguishing one part of the map from another. I don't feel anything towards it, except that it is my home, and my family's home and that is why I want to keep at least this bit of it, anyway, in as good nick as possible. But that is all.

The only thing is that Britain is an island (or rather a bunch of islands of varying sizes), so it makes it easier than some other countries to give it a beginning and an end. However, what I can't see is how people can take that... I don't know... call it a leap of imagination, and say all the stuff on this side of the line (or border) is the good stuff, my stuff, our stuff, and that over there is the other - less good - or even, bad - stuff.

After all, despite Britain's island state making it a bit of a special case in this respect, the idea of the nation is a fairly recent invention in humankind's history, perhaps it is only a phase. So, maybe I'm right not to feel anything special towards, or about, it.

There are good things and there are bad things about this country as there are with most - if not all - countries. I am lucky - I know - to live in a place where the good things massively outweigh the bad things. And I do want to keep those good things, and do all I can to improve the bad things, or even make them go away altogether. But I don't think that it only applies to this country - to Britain. I would like the good things to happen all around the world too, and to get rid of all the bad things in the world.

A conclusion? I don't know.

As I said at the start - I don't understand patriotism. I would want to fight for what I think is right, but I know that my country (in the sense of the government, and in the sense of popular opinion) and I don't automatically see eye to eye on what those things are. I don't think I could ever say 'my country right or wrong', I think I would put right and wrong above and beyond country.

For example, if a situation like WWII ever arose again, I wouldn't fight 'for Britain' especially, but - without a moment's hesitation - I would fight against fascism.

And I don't know what 'feeling British' means, or rather, I can't find, put my finger on, a 'British' feeling inside me.

So, all I can say is - that for me - the question turns out to be a non-question - meaningless, but not pointless.

So, when any politician, or other member of the great and good exhorts me to do, feel, think or act in a particular way because of my 'British-ness' I will know now that it is just empty rhetoric and can be safely discounted.

But, the only thing that I can think of that would - for me - go some way to defining a sense of 'British-ness' would be a scepticism towards all attempts at defining something as nebulous as such a concept. Theorising about abstractions is something we British tend to prefer to leave to Johnny foreigner. Maybe that is an example of the famous British Pragmatism….

Oh, shit, that's buggered my whole bloody thesis hasn't it?

[This article was also published in 2005 Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere by Tim Worstall (Editor)]

Doing The Right Thing

Then we go, as though we understand. It is as if it all suddenly makes sense and we know what to do, where to go and what to say. But we do not know and the words never come to our lips. We know what ought to be said in such situations, but the right words seem wrong somehow, overused and worthless. Doing the right thing seems like going through the motions, somehow insincere. It is easy to be believable when it doesn’t matter, but so hard to be sincere when it is meant, the awkward hesitation and uncertainty, the tentative un-sureness of the felt seems false when compared to the glib assurance of indifference. The hand feels uncertain as it reaches out for the one like itself, as though learning how to touch for the first time, the fingers have to find a way of holding that doesn’t seem perfunctory.

Bibliophiles

On The Grauniad’s Book Blog we have the deep joy of encountering The rise of the virtual bookshelf, where – for some reason – people publish photos of their bookshelves for the delectation of others of a like-mind.

My comment:

I remember back in the days of newsgroups - when the Grauniad's website was still all fields - one contributor to rec.arts.books saying he was going to give up reading the group because it seemed he spent all his time reading about books, rather than reading the actual books themselves.

Such is the rate of technological progress that now we can, instead of merely reading about books, look at photos of them instead of reading them.

Groovy.

Monday Poem (On A Tuesday): Labyrinth

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

Labyrinth

Once gripped tightly in eager hands,
the thread has long since unravelled.

Fallen apart.

Nothing more to be revealed now,
except the darkness and empty spaces.
It is easy to slip,
down into a pale lifetime of only waiting.
Drifting through these contrived passages.

There is no way back.

In the depths of the labyrinth,
once lost, we are forgotten.
We no longer live
inside the memories
of those, far above,
walking the Earth.

Days Alone

It was one of those days when everything seems small and unimportant and the hours drift by un-remarked and unremembered. There was no real sense of time passing, of the day moving on. Things happened but slipped from my mind almost immediately.

I seem to recall that the cat came to me, tail up and haughty, perhaps feeling I could almost be worthy of giving her a little fuss. But, I cannot be sure. There is nothing left of that day for me to latch onto and say; "This is what really happened."

Days are like that when you are on your own and alone. They are days where you have no obligations to the clock and no need to be here or there for anyone. There is a joyous freedom to be found when you realise you do not have to depend on the hands of the clock for what you say and do that day.

Like most things, though, there are dangers. It is easy to slip down from where time has no control to the point past which you lose all sense of time passing and no longer care if it does.

Reaching For A Revolver

An article at The Grauniad on the BBC’s dire Culture Show*, which treats ‘culture’ as a form of playtime. A sort of Playdays for the metropolitan ‘culture consumer’, for whom knowing what is currently hip is more important than knowing what is worthwhile.

For example, the programme spends an inordinate amount of time on rock music which has been of decreasing cultural significance since the late 70s and now is little more than the pop music it sprang from. Although events like Glastonbury may have some sort of significance for sociological study, culturally it is no more important than the entertainment put on at any other holiday location, a sort of trendy middle-class version of this.

The same thing happened with those other aspects of popular culture that briefly flowered in the late 60s to late 70s, but died, like TV and film which the Culture Show also features to excess. Film and TV too in those decades seemed to acquire some deeper sensitivity that would take them beyond mere entertainment and grow up into forms that could be taken seriously and approach serious concerns without trivialising them.

All that has – mostly – gone now of course. That period was – unsurprisingly – the period when the TV arts and culture programmes were worth taking seriously themselves, several of which like The Ascent of Man, Civilisation etc have become all-time classics of serious TV programme making. This was mainly due to the fact that they took themselves and their subjects seriously and weren’t afraid to be serious. It was an all too brief period when it seemed that the serious (in art, politics, science, philosophy, history and every area of human endeavour) could be made popular and the popular could be therefore worth taking seriously. The sort of thing that can now only be found on the radio in a few programmes like In Our Time, Analysis and so on, on radios 3 and 4.

I suppose all this is the result of the deadening effect of the anti-elitism argument, inevitably flattening everything down towards the mediocre rather than allowing the overlooked a chance to stand – or fall - on its own merits, which was its original aim. There are signs that this anti-elitism - brought about by the wholesale adoption by the universities of academic cultural theory - is dying of its own contradictions and dead ends. However, the people now in change at places like the BBC, and other such cultural institutions, are the ones infected with its inanities whilst they were at university. So, it may take some time for any significant changes to take place in our cultural institutions, that is if they do survive this current fashion for ‘dumbing down’.

Luckily, though, with the collapse of ‘New’ Labour, people are beginning to see that the whole Left philosophy which has dominated the humanities in universities and in academia as a whole is intellectually barren, and unable to come to terms with the real world. Just as Left economic notions collapsed in the late 70s, it seems that the remnants of the Left philosophy – mainly social policy – are all now having a crisis of their own as we see that the application of these theories creates more problems and leads to more unintended consequences than the problems they were intended to solve.

I used to believe in the ideals of the Left, but now that I see what it has done from this deadening of a once thriving culture and on right throughout all the rest of its social policies, I feel it is time it should be put out of our misery.

[N.B. For an interesting discussion of the quotation my title alludes to, see here (scroll down a fair bit)]

*WARNING – this link leads to a silly little… well… I don’t know what to call it, apart from a waste of time.

Doubt

It is easy to think of these things if you do not mind letting go of your mind. Do not hold it so tightly with conceptions of what it is right to think or what is wrong to consider. Take your dearest and most treasured opinions, thoughts and conclusions and look at them carefully. Then say to yourself 'what if they are not true, or right, after all?' Like Descartes, start by doubting everything. What is so special about your opinions anyway? If you changed everything you ever thought and believed, you would still be you, wouldn't you? Or would you?

What is this 'you' anyway, or me - for that matter? Where are we? Where does the 'I' that is me cease to be me? How much of me would have to change - say by transplant - for me to cease being me and become you?

TV News

Time changes slowly and nothing is new. The same day, time after time. Always coffee in the morning and the TV news from nowhere. Days spent watching a world unfolding in the corner of the room like some old map. A map full of guesses, evasions and eagerly regurgitated half-truths.

These are stories told to create a sense of knowing, a sense of being at the centre, a sense of being a part of it and in the know. All that goes on, goes on around this centre. All that happens, happens because of this centre. Led safely by the hand into the heart of it all and then back out again.

Monday Poem: Star

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

Star

There are times when it is all
just an idea in the night,
hanging, like a solitary star.

Pick out each of those moments
taking each one down
out of the skies of time
to polish it, then to hang
it back up as a star.

If I knew how, it would be easy
to hold it all in my hand,
to find a place in the sky
I could point towards,
take my star, and hang it there.

The Odyssey

All these people like walking shadows
leaving no mark on the corridors
or in the rooms, just passing through
like faded ghosts of real lives.

There will be no songs about them
no legends retold around winter fires
telling of their superhuman heroism
against a monster filing cabinet
or an ogre of a hard disk
or even the weary accountant
wending his tired way home
to a weary waiting wife.

[Please note: as with all the pieces marked as Fragments these poems are unfinished and abandoned early drafts.]

Things Grow Old, Things Become New

There is nothing to stop us now. We are here with the world spread out around us and at our feet. Up on this highest hill we can see as far as seeing goes, to the places of horizons and mists. These are places where rumours and legends grow. Who really knows what lies beyond, what lies beyond the next bend in the road? We have maps; we have the tales of those who have passed this way before. But neither can tell us everything, and sometimes they do not tell us anything.

Here and there are the remnants left behind by those who have passed this way before. They are little use to us. Each day the world changes as each dawn brings a new world into shape around the new day. We have not passed this way before; time changes the shape of the world around us. Things grow old, things become new.

Poems Published @ Agenda Poetry

I have just been informed that two of my poems: Heatwave and Rain have been published at the Agenda Poetry website in the Lauds supplement (pdf).

How To Build Your Own Celebrity

Zoe Williams at CiF (where else) almost gets it right in regards to modern celebrity

My comment:

Well, yes. The 'celebrity' in popular culture is a created artefact with a 'real life' as well-constructed as any other fiction role, say on film or TV screen.

If the audience demographic for that particular entertainment niche altered so that it became more of an audience-puller to be gay, then you would have a situation where many heterosexuals would be pretending to be homosexual in order to gain that audience.

The wise 'celebrity' will play their given or chosen role well, the foolish one will really believe it is all real and probably crash and burn as a result.

Greatest Hits

Whither the Greatest Hits album at The Grauniad’s CiF.

My comment:

The purpose of the Greatest Hits album always seemed to revolve around the last three to half a dozen tracks on the album. These always seemed to be from the band/artist's later years after they'd hit their peak - i.e. made more than three albums.

It seemed that the record companies put these later tracks on in the hope that whoever bought the album for the earlier good stuff might be tempted into buying some of the later albums by these tracks from the later albums, thus freeing up some valuable warehouse space for the company.

However, in the age of the CD this tactic failed because the listener could either stop the Greatest Hits album before it got to the naff tracks, or programme the machine to avoid all the embarrassing songs.

Doing The Blair Hustle

Robert Harris at The Grauniad’s CiF argues that Brown’s current woes have more to do with the absence of Blair than with Brown himself. He may have a point.

My comment:

I always used to say I voted Labour in spite of Blair, not because of him. Increasingly though it seems as though Blair - even though I've never met anyone who would admit to liking him - won those elections in spite of Labour, not because of them.

It was obvious right from the start that Blair had no interest in Labour and was only of the Left because it was more fashionable, trendier, than being a Tory.

He was never as bright as Brown either, but Blair realised long before Brown (if Brown ever did) that the Left is dead. It choked to death on its own internal contradictions and unintended consequences. However, Blair realised that there still remains a sort of sentimental attachment in certain people’s (of which I was one) minds to what were once perceived as the ‘values’ of the Left: social justice, fairness, equality and… well, you know the tune and the lyrics.

The Labour party was, by the time Blair became leader, so desperate for power that it would ditch any and all of its founding principles and do anything he said to be able to get its revenge on the evil Tories.

Blair was always the con-man, with the con-man's eye for the weaknesses of his mark, who used the Labour party - which was little more than a hollow shell after so many defeats - to further his own individual ambitions.

So, he got the party into power, but once they got there they had no idea what to do, or even how to do it - hence all the money, goodwill and trust wasted over the years on initiatives, consultants, PFI, endless revolution, policy reviews and so on.

Blair realised that as long as Gordon kept the juggling the balls in the air in background the con trick would last, but as soon as one of those balls dropped without him there to bluff his way out of it, then the whole edifice would come tumbling down. I think he was as surprised as most of us that it lasted as long as it did, and that he managed to get out just in the nick of time.

Now Blair sits in the sun admiring his bank statements like every successful con-man in every Sting-like film and TV show and grinning at his own success.

Meanwhile, Gordon sits there bewildered amidst the wreckage around him and like every con-man’s mark, like every one of us who has ever voted Labour, like everyone who used to believe that the Left would bring us a better world, he is slowly coming to realise what a massive con-trick the whole thing was.

Monday Poem: Crystal

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

Crystal

Naked, she runs, pale
as a ghost of my desire
through knee-deep green grass
and flowers and bright summer
to the mountain-snow cold river
and dives straight in,
as deep as dreaming,
to surface up once again
through sparkling crystal water.

Mr Livingstone, I Presume

Some bloke called Ken Livingstone has – apparently – lost an election in some out of the way place somewhere down south. His excuse for losing is here in The Grauniad’s CiF.

My comment:

If there is one thing the Left have achieved in recent history, with your erstwhile help, of course - it is revealing that the Left is not 'Progressive' at all, if it is anything at all it is Regressive.

From communism at one extreme to Blair's hopeless 'Third Way' of watered-down Socialism with a trendy face and all points between, it has failed and failed dismally.

The only reason 'the Left' still exists is that its tropes have become the default unthinking reflex of the trendy metropolitan folk - like Grauniad readers for example. Where to be anything other than 'on the left' is regarded as only slightly more abhorrent that being a paedophile, or admitting still having a liking for last year's hip new band, or being seen drinking a coffee from an unfashionable retail coffee outlet.

Not Any More

Not any more.

Even the sky stands apart, aloof, not looking down upon us with any great favour. But we do not expect the world to be anything but indifferent, not these days. There was a time when we believed that this was all spread out and around for us.

Not any more.

There was a time when we thought the stars would speak to us, tell us of what tomorrows they would bring. But now we now about the indifference of distance, so we know they cannot know of anything except the emptiness of space.

Not any more.

There was a time when we thought he had hands to shape us, and we thought he left a little piece of himself in every form, not any more. Indifferent at best, if existing at all, we no longer need such a father.

Not any more.

We thought that we would be hand in hand for always along these endless beaches, listening to the sea whispers with our every step. But not any more, you are gone and I am here alone on the beach waiting for the tide to turn and wash away all our shared footsteps. I will not walk this way with you ever again.

Not any more.

Distances

It is not that often we get the time to think about it, not now, not these days. Of course, when it happened we had no chance to think of anything else. Now, though, it is fading away into the past. Soon, it seems, that we may forget about it altogether, only to be suddenly reminded of it when some TV programme or other reminds us of its anniversary and we sit back and think ‘how could I have forgotten that!’ and ‘has it really been that long, seems like only yesterday.’ and other such things.

Time and memory is like that, though. Sometimes there are these big things that happen to us. They seem so big there seems no way around them; they stand in the river of our lives like some huge boulder where we can’t see our way around it. The water of our flowing lives backs up and pools behind it, and it seems we will never get past it.

Eventually though we do squeeze by it somehow and when we do look back the boulder gets smaller and smaller each day, until one day we turn the next bend in our river and it is lost from view.

Monday Poem (On a Tuesday): Cold

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

Cold

There are no embers now.
Only dusty ash lying still,
cold as the silent night.

There is no fire left for us.
We sit, each alone here
wrapped inside the blankets

of our own solitary thoughts.
We breathe cold sadness over
the frosty ground between us.

Good Citizen Journalism

A piece in the Grauniad’s CiF about things like… er… well… CiF and suchlike.

My comment:

But, after a while, when reading sites like CiF you come to realise that the bit written by the professional journalist at the top is usually the bit you skip because all the real action is in the comments. Especially when you know that some of the people in the comments know far more about the subject than the person writing the article, for example Polly Toynbee's shaky grasp of economics compared to the knowledge demonstrated by Tim Worstall et al.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Jonathan Freedland at the Grauniad’s CiF on that election result.

My comment:

By the end of the 1970s it was obvious that (for want of a better description) left-wing economic notions were found to be incompatible with reality - they simply did not and could not work. This led Labour into the wilderness for decades as they learnt they had to ditch left-wing economic notions. Once they did that they got back into power.

Unfortunately Labour still retained left-wing notions of how society - apart from economics - worked. These too have now been found to be incompatible with reality. It is simply not possible to centrally control society and to social engineer it into a politically-correct shape. Thins like feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism, welfareism and so forth have been found not to solve social problems, but to exacerbate them, destroying society rather than strengthening it.

So, Labour will have to spend however many year it takes in the wilderness until that learn to live without these other left-wing notions.

Sad really, because I used to be a believer too, all through those post-1979 years, desperately wanting a Labour government, even one with Blair, right up to the time we got one.

Unfolding

She knew, even before she touched it, what it would be. Once she opened the padded plain envelope and tipped out the small gift-wrapped box into her hand, she knew.

She knew it would be small, tasteful, discreet. Something subtle to wear on her ears or around her neck, perhaps even on her finger. But no, not a ring. He would have to know her size. He would not guess, and as far as she knew, he did not know the size of her fingers with any accuracy.

She put the small present down on the table next to the chair where she sat with her legs tucked up underneath her, she pulled her dressing gown down to cover her bare legs. Although it was spring, it was still sometimes chilly in the mornings, this morning in particular with touches of frost here and there on the lawn outside her window.

She turned away from looking out through the window and looked down at the padded envelope in her hands. She had not realised that she had been attempting to fold it, neaten it, tidy it up. Annoyed with herself she dropped the envelope onto the table next to her and picked up the small present, watching the envelope unfolding itself.

Typical, she thought, no matter how I try to straighten things out, tidy them up, everything always seems to unfold in front of me.

Doing The Right Thing

Then we go, like as though we understand. It is as if it all suddenly makes sense and we know what to do, where to go and what to say. But we do not know and the words never come to our lips. We know what ought to be said in such situations, but the right words seem wrong somehow, overused and worthless. Doing the right thing seems like going through the motions, somehow insincere. It is easy to be believable when it doesn’t matter, but so hard to be sincere when it is meant, the awkward hesitation and uncertainty, the tentative un-sureness of the felt seems false when compared to the glib assurance of indifference. The hand feels uncertain as it reaches out for the one like itself, as though learning how to touch for the first time, the fingers have to find a way of holding that doesn’t seem perfunctory.