What Michael said #2

(Or more precisely: “What Sid said Michael said”).

One of the knee-jerk reactions of neo-liberals to anyone that expresses left-of-centre views is to consider them as ‘commies’ and to point out that communism didn’t work.

Of course most sensible people realise that ‘left-of-centre’ encompasses a spectrum of views that is just as wide as the spectrum of right-of-centre views. Not every conservative is a fascist and facism didn’t really work either, did it?

Which is why, once again, I reach for a quote from my favourite fishery scientist of the past, Michael Graham, a former Director of the Lowestoft fisheries research lab, this time on the distortion of political ideals by extremists.

As recalled by Sidney Holt, Graham wanted all his scientists, of whatever grade, to be called naturalists, to spend the same amount of time at sea on research vessels as each other working for the common good and not as an individuals on their own research projects, and … for everyone to be paid the same! (The pay thing wasn’t allowed – this is the hierarchical UK Civil Service of the 1940s and 50s we’re talking about).

Anyway, as also reported by Holt:

“Graham came from a farming background, Quaker family in Northwest England, and had socialist tendencies – Fabian style. “Then“, he said to me, after we had been talking about Engels’ The Dialectics of Nature, “Lenin came and f***** it all up”. Until then I didn’t know that respectable middle-class intellectuals used that sort of language, and presumed he must have picked it up from the fishermen, who hardly used any other sort of language“.

(I must have picked up my occasional use of intemperate language from the same source!)

Postscript: Graham, true to his beliefs, spent his sadly short retirement helping restore deprived areas in Salford into urban green spaces. Sidney Holt tells of this and much more in an online essay entitled “Three lumps of coal“; a good read for anyone interested in the political influence of American scientists on the misdirection of generations of fishery scientists into the fruitless pursuit of fisheries’ holy grail, the so-called maximum sustainable yield.

Quotes that made me laugh #19

The Titanic had no sooner been launched than more than 1500 people died in one of the worst-ever peacetime maritime disasters when a supposedly unsinkable ship ploughed into an iceberg and sank.

Meantime, Boris Johnson considers that Brexit will be a Titanic success. Another quote that made me laugh in despair and not in humour:

“Brexit means Brexit and we are going to make a Titanic success of it“.

So much for a classical education …

A limerick a week #6

I was at primary school when Dad’s Army first aired on UK television, but I still remember the fuss there was over a comedy being produced about the Second World War. After all, the realities of war were still to the fore in the minds of many. Initially, my folks didn’t let me watch it, but when it became clear that it was inoffensive humour based on the real life experience of Jimmy Perry, one of the writers, they relented. And thanks to the multiplicity of TV channels its repeats are still going strong fifty years later.

Possibly the most famous quote from the series arose in the episode where Captain Mainwaring’s hapless platoon was detailed to guard a captured U-Boat crew and in which the gormless Private Pike so irritated the submariners’ Captain (played superbly by Philip Madoc) with the rhyme: “Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp. He’s half barmy, so’s his army, whistle while you work” that Madoc demanded his name. “Don’t tell him Pike!” was Mainwaring’s reply in a phrase that has since entered the British lexicon.

Don't tell him Pike!
Don’t tell him Pike!

As is well known, Perry, who recently died, wrote a number of other sitcoms with ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum‘ and ‘Hi-de-Hi!‘ probably the next best known. His co-writer, David Croft died a few years ago, but their obituaries both referenced the other as integral parts of the whole. So, based on Pike and the submariners, I give you my valediction to them both:

You taunted a man from the Reich
With a rhyme that he just didn’t like.
It made him exclaim:
“You! Give me your name”,
So Mainwaring said: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”.

(Non-native English speakers, and probably some native ones, should note that ‘Mainwaring’ is pronounced ‘Mannering’. My apologies for the last line. It does scan, but you have to get the phrasing right – Frank Sinatra’s speciality; he’d have found it a doddle to say!)

Quotes that made me laugh #18

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer have been quite earnestly described as the comedic equivalent of the European avant-garde Dadaist art movement of the early 20th century. (In fact Reeves, an art school graduate, presented BBC4’s recent ‘Gaga for Dada’ programme).

In short this means people either ‘get them’ or they don’t. I do, but I’m the only person I know that does. Hence no-one else that I know has watched more than a smidgen of any episode of their TV series ‘House of Fools‘; a programme that I found to be laugh-out-loud funny.

All of which means that no-one reading this is likely to understand why I laughed at Vic Reeves’ quote when he recently discussed a cruise ship advert that he had just seen:

‘The fjords – we aren’t the best cruise ship, but we go from Dover.’ I thought: well that’s not far. And I’m very fond of pickled fish.

… just don’t call it surreal

Postscript: I’ve just realised that one of my favourite jokes is (i) Dadaist not Surrealist and (ii) consequently, it no longer makes sense:

“… and now the football results, Real Madrid 3, Surreal Madrid Fish“

Me ∩ Osborne = {Team Demelza}

I would never in a million years have thought that George ‘Gideon’ Osborne and I had anything in common, but bizarrely we do. It appears that we are both on Team Demelza regarding the current TV production of the Poldark novels.

Initially rather shaken by this discovery, I can show this to be the only thing that we have in common through the following illustrative diagram in which Team Demelza comprises the sole element belonging to the intersection of Osborne and me or, as the mathematicians would have it:

Me ∩ Osborne = {Team Demelza}

The intersection of me and George Osborne

As far as the Poldark series is concerned, I view Osborne as more of a George Warleggan type, or ‘Evil George’ as the Graun’s commentary on the series calls him … now there’s a coincidence 😉

Quotes that made me laugh #17

A former captain of the Australian rugby union team, John Eales, was nicknamed ‘Nobody‘ by his international team-mates in recognition of his excellence and consistency. It was a play on words insofar as: “Nobody’s perfect“.

Eales was, but I have to confess that occasionally (and despite my best endeavours) I’m not perfect (no, seriously!). And sometimes that is even made clear to me by my nearest and dearest 😉

It’s at those times that I take solace in the words of Tim Dowling, Guardian columnist and downtrodden husband:

“I have long maintained that the secret to being a good husband and father is taking the time to point out to one’s wife and children that they could do a whole lot worse“.

I even printed it out in coloured foil, framed it and put it in Management’s Christmas stocking a few years ago …

... from "How to be a husband"
… it’s sooo true!

… or if you prefer Homer Simpson’s take on the situation: “I won’t lie to you, fatherhood isn’t easy like motherhood” 🙂

I’ve been sleeping with Priscilla … again!

I fancied an early autumn trip over to Shieldaig in Wester Ross to try the informal campsite on the community grazings and it just so happened to coincide with two of the finest October days that I can remember: no rain, no wind, very sunny (and very warm in the sun) and too late in the year for midges. Idyllic!

Just getting there was impressive enough with terrific views of Torridon …

Beinn Dearg and Liathach on the road to Shieldaig
Beinn Dearg and Liathach on the road to Shieldaig

… not to mention the location and views from the grazings

Priscilla at the Shieldaig community grazings
Priscilla at the Shieldaig community grazings

… or from the bedroom window!

A room with a view!
A room with a view!

I took the bike with me and had a couple of short rides. It is much hillier than I remembered for cycling and some of the steep ramps finished me off sooner than I would have liked, but I’m not going to complain when everyone else is having to be at work during the week (and just to rub it in: Q – what’s the technical term for a fine sunny day after two days of wind and rain? A – Monday!). 

It got cold enough during the evening for those in tents to need quilted jackets and bobble hats when sitting around their stoves; no such necessity with Priscilla although my clothes were pretty Baltic to get in to in the morning (memo to self: switch heater on for 15 minutes before exiting the sleeping bag).

The weather was perfect for my trip. It’s nice to be able to shoot off at the last minute when the forecast is for such fine weather, but for those who can’t be quite so choosy and always seem to end up getting wet on their trips west, here’s a camper’s rhyme that I learned whilst at primary school:

Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not.
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot.
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not!

Postscript: Since when did ‘bobble hats’ become ‘beanies’? Or more precisely, when did they become ‘pom-pom beanies’? According to an article last year in the fashion pages of the Graun: “There is no doubt that when future generations prise open the fashion time capsule marked “Winter 2015”, it will contain a beanie hat with a furry pom-pom on top“. The accompanying pictures were of bobble hats, referred to in the article as ‘pom-pom beanies’, with several costing less than a tenner. A couple were designer ones north of £100 including this one from net-a-porter.com:

A Eugenia Kim bobble hat - yours for £175!
A Eugenia Kim ‘pom-pom beanie’ (inclusive of faux-fur bobble and a dodgy looking stitch at the front) – yours for £175!

… or as one of the comments to the Graun article said: “Pom-pom beanie, my a**e!”