Category: Comment
Quotes that made me laugh #51
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North*
Despite being a Graun-reading, socially liberal ‘bit-of-a-leftie’ I chuckled at Management’s recent despairing exhortation:
“Do you always have to be an unreconstructed 1970s northern male?”
Me? A wannabe Gene Hunt?
Gene Hunt: I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.
Sam Tyler: An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Gene Hunt: You make that sound like a bad thing.
Really? I think not! But not quite renaissance man either, although I have had a bit of a soft spot for Longfella’s poetry ever since he performed his 2013 poem ‘This is the Place‘ at last year’s vigil in remembrance of the Manchester Arena bombing.
In fact, Longfella (aka Tony Walsh and now surely the de facto northern laureate having gently nudged Roger McGough aside) has written more generally in praise of the north in his poem ‘Up ‘ere‘ and there is nothing of the unreconstructed northern male about it (actually, the poem is explicitly about the north-west). In it, he writes in a rather overblown way:
“… and some things run right through us just like sticks of Blackpool rock;
Courage, kindness, humour, hope.
Sometimes … it’s all we’ve got.“
I suppose that’s the price of his declamatory style and can be forgiven, but now, be honest, does an unreconstructed 1970s northern male quote Tennyson and Tony Walsh in his blog posts? Nay, missus! Nay, nay and thrice nay! So, now that’s out of the way, any chance of a brew, luv?
* The Princess: O Swallow, Tennyson
Whether the weather be fine …
or whether the weather be not …
It’s astonishing that with most of the UK covered by weather warnings for snow and ice over the last couple of days, we in Aberdeen and the northeast of Scotland have yet to see sight of it (well, maybe on the far-distant Grampian mountains).
We’ve had two cold but beautifully sunny days with a third forecast for tomorrow. The Met Office weather warning infographic shows how much of the UK has been affected, with Aberdeen and its environs warning free.
Impressive, huh?
A limerick a week #64
Innocent but Profumed guilty
The early 1960s sex and spy scandal, the so-called Profumo Affair, led to the downfall of John Profumo, the UK Secretary of State for War, and, it is believed, both Harold Macmillan as the British Prime Minister and his successor’s Conservative government.
Christine Keeler, a central character in the drama that unfolded has just died at the age of 75. She was not a paragon of virtue by any means but should be remembered now as a victim and not a culprit.
Profumo successfully redeemed himself off-grid by quietly volunteering for decades at an east-end charity in London, but the reaction of the day was for the establishment to look after its own without any concern for the price paid by others.
One of those others was Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite who killed himself in the midst of later court proceedings that related to trumped-up charges of living off immoral earnings; a case now believed to be both a miscarriage of justice and an act of revenge in behalf of the establishment. Another was Keeler who, in the 1970s, defined her later life as surviving not living.
Growing up through the 1970s, my generation was fully aware of the scandal, where it was posited in terms of good-time girls on the make corrupting a highly thought of politician. In fact history shows it to have been down to the self-perceived entitlement of powerful men within the establishment to do as they please.
Keeler’s early life had been one of poverty, abandonment and sexual abuse. She arrived in London, vulnerable, in her teens at a time when the 1960s free-love revolution was about to take off. Her participation in that revolution, which she freely acknowledged, led to the subsequent condemnation of her as a cheap tart whereas it now bears all the hallmarks of the abuse of a woman by men in powerful positions. The recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein et al simply revisit that behavioural paradigm.
Keeler’s son put it well in a comment that he made to the political correspondent Lewis Goodall soon after her death, “I hope we now live in a time where we stop blaming women for the urges of men”, a view reinforced with clarity by the journalist Josh Lowe, “Apt time I guess for us to remember a young woman mistreated by powerful men then painted as the architect of their downfall.”
The veteran writer and political commentator Harry Leslie Smith also opined tellingly: “I hope Christine Keeler found some measure of happiness in later life because she was horribly abused by men, the press and a system that favoured the entitled. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
So, it’s a serious limerick this week …
The Minister that tried to conceal a
Licentious and lewd misdemeanour
Paid for his vice
At a fraction the price
That was paid by the ill-starred Ms Keeler.
In contrast to the advantage taken of her by others, when faced with an obligation for a nude shot that Keeler didn’t really want to do, the photographer, Lewis Morley, cleared the studio of others and had her sit against the back of a chair (a copy of the classic Arne Jacobsen design). Thus was she fully naked as contractually obliged, but without any onlookers and with all the naughty bits concealed (at least that is one account – according to Keeler herself she was still partly clothed, either way Morley respected her in a way that few others in her life had).
I don’t think it is gratuitous to show it here. It is, after all, a photograph in the realm of fine art and not voyeurism and it is certainly one of the most iconic photographs of the 1960s
Captured on medium format 120 film rather than 36mm stock, ‘that’ picture was the last shot taken during a studio session to promote a film that, ironically, was never made.
Here’s the contact print from Morley’s photographic negatives:
The eleventh of the eleventh plus one
The time of his life (addendum)
Following on from the previous post, I was intrigued by HWS’ Soldier’s Pay Book for use on Active Service. The details of his daily pay on commencement of active service are illustrated below:
The pay book also includes a couple of pages that allowed the soldier to record a short form of will, presumably for individuals that had not drawn up a traditional last will and testament. HWS had completed the relevant page, but in writing that was so small that it was difficult to decipher (hence the delay in posting it here).
In fact, HWS had not written a will in his pay book. The text he had included comprised a poem: The Steel of the D.L.I A Tale of the White Gurkhas (author unknown to me) that had appeared in the Westminster Gazette in tribute to another of the DLI Battalions, the 2nd. Here it is in HWS’ hand writing:
A record of the poem can be found online in the Durham County Record Office:
(This image comprises one from a slide show Life and Death as a Soldier in the First World War (slide 22 of 27) produced by the Durham Records Office.)
HWS was not a warmonger, in fact I knew him as a peaceable, good-humoured gentleman who, like many, simply served his country in two world wars. I suspect he copied the poem into his pay book not in any glorification of the victory at Hooge, but to pay tribute to the courage of his colleagues in the DLI (and their fallen) in battles throughout the war.
I have transcribed the slide show image below (anyone paying close attention will see that HWS chose the spelling ‘enquire’ over the archived document’s spelling of ‘inquire’ – that’s my kind of pedantry – and, as in the Records Office version, the last verse appears to be the intentional concatenation of what otherwise appears to be two verses).
How the D.L.I. Fight
Magnificent Endurance and Spirit at Hooge
A tribute to the fighting qualities of the 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry is paid by a poem published in last night’s Westminster Gazette under the title “The Steel of the D.L.I.: A Tale of the White Gurkhas”. The following summary of the exploit prefaces the verses, which we take the liberty of reproducing. The 2nd Battalion Durham L.I. are known at the front as the White Gurkhas. At Hooge in the early part of August, as part of the Sixth Division, the D.L.I. had to attack a part of the German trenches. At dawn they lay in front of our trenches when the artillery lifted on to the German third line. One of our mines was exploded. The D.L.I.s were in and at them. Some sixty men held the crater for three days. They went in to section as a battalion and came out under 200 strong when relieved. When they marched out their bugle band met them in the communications trench and played them out under shell fire. As they went to the huts at Poperinge the troops lined the road and cheered them.
The Steel of the D.L.I. A Tale of the White Gurkhas
Just ask them down at Armentieres,
At Arras, at Neuve Chapelle,
Inquire of the Germans at Ypres and Hooge
Inquire down below in Hell,
And ask where the shrapnel bursts and screams
And the whiz-bangs crack and fly –
You’ll find the Germans don’t forget
The steel of the D.L.I.;
Yes, especially well you’ll find in hell,
They remember the D.L.I.
But Hooge was the show where we got to grips,
And they didn’t have all the laugh,
We taught them some tricks in bayonet play,
And we showed them that two can strafe;
And we went all out and we went right thro;
And we hustled some off the map,
And we got us back just a bit cut-up
From out of that blood-red scrap,
Yet we mustered then barely seven-score men
At the end of that bloody scrap.
The night that followed we got relieved,
God knows we had earned a spell;
But we swore to show them just what we thought
Of their perishing shot and shell.
So we marched right out from before their lines,
What was left of us, grimed and sore,
And we swung away with our bugle band,
Playing us out before
Let them blaze and slam, not a farthing damn
Cared we more than we cared before.
We marched right out for them all to see,
To strafe if they thought they could;
To show them they never could get us beat,
That we’d come again strong and good,
And the band in front played us right away,
Like a pukka band we went.
And we marched away to the huts and sleep,
The sleep of the well-nigh spent.
So ask them down at Armentieres,
At Arras and Neuve Chapelle,
Inquire of those left of the men we met,
At Hooge, where we gave them hell,
Inquire of the dead that our bayonets left
To rot neath the August sky;
You’ll find that the foe has not forgot,
The steel of the D.L.I.,
And especially well you’ll find in hell,
They remember the D.L.I.
Postscript: More can be read about HWS’ battalion on the Durham at War website.
The eleventh of the eleventh
The time of his life …
The watch:
The movement:
The case:
The history:
This antique pocket watch is worth about £30. It is at least 103 years old as that is when my great uncle inscribed it.
Here’s part of his story:
Harold Whidby Speight (b. 30 Aug 1893) seems to have inscribed the watch on his 21st birthday in August 1914 – perhaps it was his parents’ gift to him.
Having signed-up with the army reserve 22 months earlier, August 1914 comprised the month not only of his 21st birthday, but also that of his mobilisation with D company of the 7th Durham Light Infantry. In April 1915, he embarked for Belgium as a sergeant with the 50th Northumbrian Division, arriving just in time for the second battle of Ypres (with neither gas mask nor steel helmet). He earned three shillings (15 pence) a day of which two shillings was remitted to his parents in Sunderland, leaving him with one shilling a day for any local expenses at the front.
On 30 September 1915 he was sent to recce the enemy positions along with another sergeant. On reaching the German wire they made their observations and dropped off some copies of ‘John Bull’ before returning to their own front line. (‘John Bull’ was a popular English magazine of the time with its circulation in 1914 estimated to have been in excess of 750,000.)
Later, when looking over a parapet to show an officer where they had been, he was shot by a sniper. The bullet entered his right cheek and exited behind his left ear. After being hospitalised in France and England he joined the reserve battalion until being demobbed in early 1919.
(The wound left him half deaf with a slightly palsied face and permanently weeping eye.)
Twenty-five years later, in March 1944 the Royal Navy called for volunteers to man small craft in support of the D-Day invasion and so, in July 1944, he found himself serving in the Second World War, this time as a deck hand on an armed diesel trawler carrying shells and depth charges to the fleet as they returned from Normandy for more ammunition.
In civvy street, having joined the Sunderland office of the Institute of Weights and Measures in 1909, he qualified as an inspector in 1919 after demobilisation from the army and joined the Newcastle office, becoming chief inspector in 1936. He retired in 1953 as a Fellow of the Institute having also been its Chair for two years during the Second World War.
Thereafter he moved to Kendal where he volunteered for the local Red Cross in 1954, helping out into the 1970s. He also painted in watercolour, wrote poems, corresponded worldwide with other Esperanto enthusiasts, and cycled everywhere on an original Moulton F-frame bike. He even spent two months on holiday in Australia in 1977 at the grand old age of 84 (but without his bike).
While still getting over his injuries and the trauma he experienced during the First World War, he took a long sea voyage, working his passage to and from South America. During that trip he visited Peru and the hot and steamy port of Guayaquil in neighbouring Ecuador which, many years later, I visited a number of times in a professional capacity. I wonder what he thought of it – I hated the place – but compared to the trenches it must have felt like an oasis of calm to him!
A limerick a week #60
Ordure, Ordure!
If you are old enough, you will remember The Two Ronnies TV show when the titular duo were at the peak of their fame. You might even remember the mini-serial that threaded through their shows in 1976: The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town.
I thought about that when new episodes started to appear in the current soap opera surrounding the pervasive and inappropriate behaviour of powerful men in the Palace of Westminster. Each new instalment seems to introduce another ‘actor’ in the risible life of what passes for the UK Parliament and its band of lecherous cronies. Only, now, the name of the mini-series has changed as we are beginning to find that the miscreants are well-known to the gossip-mongers of the Westminster village (and the Parliamentary whips).
In fact, they are so well-known that some have been given their own nicknames. So what should our mini-series be called? How about The Phantom Taxi Tickler of Old London Town, a phantom whose modus operandi is to accost fellow passengers in the back of a London cab (where, of course tickler is a mere euphemism).
Or could it be the Phantom Lift Lunger of Old London Town, whose speciality is to lunge at otherwise unaccompanied women in elevators? Apparently the Lift Lunger is so well-known for his misdemeanours that young women are advised never to be with him if otherwise unaccompanied. It makes you wonder what they mean when they talk about being ‘elevated’ to the House of Lords.
(Unfortunately, Happy Hands does not fit into the standard Two Ronnies title, so we would have to re-phrase it slightly, Happy Hands: The Phantom of Old London Town and that just doesn’t work, does it?)
The thing is, if the offenders are so well-known then why has nothing been done about it until now other than to give them alliterative nicknames? Why have shameful (or worse) behaviours been allowed to continue until they become almost institutionalised when they could, and should, have been nipped in the bud? Time for a clear-out methinks.
Meanwhile, here is this week’s limerick:
You don’t need a magician to conjure
A scandal to wantonly plunge a
Patriarch-ridden
Political midden
Into ordure; just ask the Lift Lunger.
Postscript: Jo Brand showed how to nip things in the bud this week when calling out the all-male panel on Have I Got News For You this week when it made rather too light of sexual harassment. It’s not often that you see the likes of Ian Hislop with his tail firmly between his legs. A quietly-stated but very powerful intervention from her.
(And talking of Hislop, “yes” I do know that this post’s heading is not original. It originates from Hislop’s periodical: Private Eye.)
World cup woes. ..
Life is short? So are our footballers!
Gordon Strachan, Scotland’s current football manager, has recently added a cracker to the pantheon of lame excuses for his team being not good enough.
Apparently, “Technically we’re fine, but our guys have to work harder to get on the ball than bigger lads at six foot three. … What I do know is that genetically we are behind … Genetically we have to work at things. It is a problem for us.”
Hmmm, I suspect he may be the butt of a few jokes as a result of that.
Jokes did I say? Well guess what? Irn Bru has stepped into the breach by re-issuing a seven-year-old advert on Facebook in which a lassie fae Dundee sings a lullaby to her bairn claiming to have “done the deed” with a Brazilian chap to enhance the gene pool of Scotland’s footballers.
Or as Irn Bru trolled Strachan: “Let’s make babies with Brazilians (like we said way back in 2010)”
Computer says “No”
Berger & Wyse produced this little gem, in the Graun, on the same day that I was trying to activate my digital subscription to that esteemed organ.
Did I succeed? Did I bollocks! My password wasn’t, er, recognised …
That’s what dads are for!
I just loved Firstborn’s Instagram post last week …
