FAVOURITE PLACES

As the years tumble by, as my creaky joints get creakier and my old back bends like a wind-swept willow, I come to accept that there are many famous sights, that I will not in person ever visit.  I shall not melt to the Taj Mahal by moonlight, nor traipse down the Great Wall of China, nor climb up to the Inca shrine of Machu Picchu in Peru. I know these are sights which should feature on my “bucket list” to be seen before I kick the aforesaid receptacle. But actually I prefer my pleasures close to home, close enough for only a short hop, close to a convivial pub and close to a well-equipped NHS hospital. In defiance, I may speak disparagingly of the great global sights, speculating that they will be knee-deep in tourists stretching out their arms to take their endless “selfies”, spoiling the picture by including their own florid, grinning physogs. How sympathetic I feel towards those celebrities, like Pope Francis, Obama, Cameron (RIP), or Sam Allardyce (RIP), entrapped by the impertinent and pushy faithful, electors or fans, impossible to offend, who have to embellish the “selfie” with their own inane grimaces, uneasily knowing the selfie will become someone’s cherished family heirloom!

I personally have lived in Aberdeenshire, London, The Cotswolds, Athens, Samos and Folkestone; photos of each of my favourite places give you a flavour:

Feuch from the Bridge of Feuch, Banchory

Golders Hill Park, North London

 

Bourton-on-the-Water, Cotswolds

Mount Hymettus and Kaiseriani Monastery, Athens

So the torrential Feuch, with salmon leaping upstream in season, in matchless Deeside gives way to a push-chair lugging or dog-walking paradise in manicured Golders Hill Park, followed by tranquil Bourton, very near where we lived in the Cotswolds. Mount Hymettus is well-wooded and overlooks our Athens home, dominating the eastern suburbs. The peaceful bay of Avlakia, where I swam a few weeks ago, epitomises the joys of Aegean Samos, while The Grand, on The Leas at Folkestone, whose promenade I meander down, is the 1899 icon of traditional sea-side establishments.

The bay of Avlakia, Samos

The Grand, Folkestone, Kent

Of course all of us have our favourite places. One friend loves gardens and scours Southern England, and even France, to savour them. Another finds pleasure in the incomparable coast and valleys of West Wales: while yet another rides on horseback round his finca in Costa Rica, replete with her uniquely rich flora and fauna. The Northern joys of the gentle Pentlands and Lothian entrances another. All my readers will cherish some corner of their existence – by all means tell me about them. Most, I fancy, will be within 20 miles of their own front door.

Some of us are lucky enough to know well some places where a brief walk brings you face to face with buildings and monuments of historical significance and often of beauty too. I am thinking of delicious times I spent in Oxford, The City of London and Plaka in Athens – all very special to me and to all visitors.

In all the world there must be favourite places, intrinsically or by association, close to every person. I imagine a lovelorn swain, even, say, in benighted North Korea, who can join long-gone Donald Peers in his signature tune:

In a shady nook, by a babbling brook

That’s where I fell in love with you!

SMD

29.09.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

THE FUTILITIES OF POLITICS

One of the many errors we fall into through our modern inanity is to take politics seriously. We take an obsessive interest in the pronouncements, conferences and personalities of our leaders believing that our fate substantially lies in their hands. We deceive ourselves and overrate these political panjandrums. Believe me, we would get on perfectly well without them and their permanent mark on the public fortunes is usually more or less invisible.

I state my case by reflecting on the current changing of the guard – David Cameron already gone after 6 years at the helm of the UK, Barack Obama soon to slip away after 8 years as US President and Angela Merkel nearing her swansong after 11 years as German Chancellor.

David Cameron

Barack Obama

David Cameron is a plausible, well briefed and quite likeable politician with the self- confidence imbued by a very privileged background. In office he cobbled together a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and his unremarkable ministry concentrated on reducing the national deficit – applauded by the EU, the IMF and the usual suspects, in an exercise of dull economic Orthodoxy. There is no evidence that Cameron had even one original thought on economics. He just clung on to turbulent Scotland in 2014, shaking off his lethargy in the last week of an ill-managed campaign.

Provided with a fresh independent electoral mandate in 2015, he threw away office by negotiating an ineffably feeble EU deal and then showing his contempt for his citizens by campaigning for it. The vote in favour of Brexit became inevitable. His government failed to stem the influx of jobless EU immigrants to the justified alarm of non-metropolitan England. Overseas he misjudged his intervention in Libya and had to be restrained by the Commons from a similar mistake in Syria. His relations with Obama were those of a craven lackey, even when that President insulted the UK over the consequences of Brexit. The great achievement of Cameron, as puffed up by the liberal intelligentsia, was to legalise same-sex marriage, hardly an admirable legacy. He lacked true passion and left the stage petulantly; he will be neither missed nor, in time, even remembered.

Another failure has been the Presidency of Barack Obama. He has a certain oratorical gift and he is an unconventional black man, so we have had to endure 8 years of vapid hot air and constant reminders of how wonderful it is that at last a black man got to the White House. It is rammed down our throats that the US President is “the mightiest man in the world” but the achievements of Obama in office have been deeply unimpressive. Okay, he eventually forced through his Obamacare health reforms (some 50 years after Europe had done the same and more) and he did not foul up the economy too much. But is the US a happy country? Every other day, it seems, some trigger-happy cop guns down a black and every month some crackpot decides to mow down his friends and colleagues with his easily acquired AK-47, his right to bear arms (and then murder) defended by the infamous 1788 Constitution. For it is that Constitution too which has paralysed Obama’s government as he battled a hostile Congress – maybe the creaky Constitution needs an amendment or two,  targeted to overcome these all-too-regular bouts of paralysis.

 But Obama has not just been a let-down at home. He has alienated his country’s erstwhile UK friends by threats which only boosted the vote for Brexit, he led the US into a mire in Syria and inevitably failed to establish order in Afghanistan. He has allowed Putin to annex Crimea and threaten Eastern Europe with evident impunity. At inauguration, his promise was to close Guantanamo; it is still open 8 years later. Obama is a worthy enough fellow, but nowhere near the class of an FDR or even a Ronnie Reagan.

Angela Merkel contemplates her problem

Angela “Mütti” Merkel is still going strong, but her reign is likely to end by the 2017 elections. The voters eventually tire of their masters and Germany has prospered under the tutelage of “the Swabian housewife”. Probably Germany has sufficient entrepreneurial impetus and sound economic institutions to prosper under any Chancellor. She has built up vast foreign exchange reserves and has a highly advantageous position within the Euro.

The economic health of the Eurozone has become crucial for Germany and this has led Merkel to unleash her hell-hound Wolfgang Schaeuble to discipline and oppress struggling Mediterranean Europe, especially Greece. But Austerity has failed and Europe is in turmoil. Add to that the tsunami of refugees fleeing from death in the Middle East and starvation in basket-case Africa and Angela has her hands full. In a flash of Lutheran conscience she opened her borders; 1,300,000 penniless migrants made a bee-line for Germany and despite plans to share them out, they will stay. European liberal values are being tested: the four Visegrad countries are about as liberal as the late Emperor Franz Joseph. France has already got quite enough Muslim fanatics, merci beaucoup, and the writ of Brussels in this matter has run into the sand. Angela faces a very angry electorate and surely will be dropped by her party. She will see that the time for her to go has come – just as Maggie Thatcher tearfully accepted her departure in 1990.

So a new generation of politicians will soon entertain us. The UK already has Theresa May, a sharp lady, but starting uncertainly by sucking up to the farmers with promises of matching EU largesse, and by proposing the reintroduction of grammar schools, probably too crude and divisive a move. The Court Jester is Boris Johnson, quite an amusing clown, fond of his classical quotations but an unknown quantity as Foreign Secretary. The Americans will have the hideous contest of deeply unattractive Hillary Clinton and obnoxious Donald Trump – as Boris would say, the choice between Scylla and Charybdis. It is much too early to name Merkel’s successor but some say we will hear much more of AfD’s leader, another lady, Frauke Petry.

Frauke Petry, Chancellor in waiting?

So Girls and Boys, “On with the motley!”

SMD

21.09.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

INSULTS AND OATHS

Sir, your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods! Thus spoke the Good Doctor Johnson on clashing with an impertinent Thames waterman and a fine orotund insult it is. Johnson’s contemporary, the agitator John Wilkes, made his sharp contribution too. When an enemy told him he would die either on the gallows or of the pox, he replied: That depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress! The decline of the insult, or at least the well-expressed one, is a sad feature of our thin modern vocabulary.

What the Bench might call “abusive language” is found everywhere. No longer do religious-based oaths cause a sharp intake of breath – my God, go to the Devil, Christ’s Nails or Holy Mary, Mother of God raise hardly an eyebrow. The epithets bastard, bugger or the US’s sonofabitch have long ago lost their ability to shock. The f-word is still frowned upon in polite society, but since 90% of the population do not inhabit polite society, it is commonplace to hear young people f***ing and blinding, depressingly using the only adjective they know. The film industry opened the dam on the use of the f-word some years ago, no doubt in a move to “democratise” the medium, but the end result is much ugly and moronic dialogue. The internet social media use the abbreviations OMG and wtf freely. The c-word was thought unusually offensive and still subject to some kind of taboo, but a lady judge in Chelmsford recently had the following dialogue with a miscreant (23 previous convictions and an ASBO) found guilty of racial abuse and sentenced to 18 months jail:

Miscreant: You are a bit of a c***.

Judge: You are a bit of a c*** yourself. Being offensive to me does not help.

Miscreant: Go f*** yourself!

Judge: You too!

While the judge’s reactions were wholly justified (and widely applauded), I think it was unwise to trade obscenities with such a low-life.

The studied insult is normally more amusing. The waspish Evelyn Waugh had a lengthy feud with insufferable Randolph Churchill. Hearing that Randolph was recovering from lung cancer surgery, Waugh observed: Isn’t modern medicine wonderful? They examined all Randolph’s body and removed the one bit of it that was not malignant!

Evelyn Waugh

Randolph Churchill

   

Britain had a reasonable bunch of insult-purveyors recently. Gilbert Harding, (remember him?) was in the 1950s known as the Rudest Man in England, a title he rather played up to, and journalist Bernard Levin debunked many pompous politicians of the 1950-80s era in his various columns. Referring to Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, the eminent Attorney-General and later Lord Dilhorne, Lord Chancellor, as Sir Reginald Bullying-Manner, Lord Stillborn was a typical Levin shaft. Clive James also has a gift with disobliging words: here he is on Boris Johnson:

It’s not his clothes and coiffure, but his personality that makes him look as if he has been rolled on by a horse and then seduced by it. My own guess is that the suavely cool Theresa and the barking head-case Boris will be the greatest political double act since Ferdinand and Isabella, for at least five minutes.

Other ripe Australian insults have emanated from peerless Dame Edna Everage, who has made a 50-year career by hilariously insulting her audience and feisty Germaine Greer gleefully calling a spade a shovel as she mocks transsexual Caitlyn Jenner in her uninhibited prose:

Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn't make you a f***ing woman, I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a f***ing cocker spaniel... A man who gets his dick chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.

Caustic Bernard Levin

Philosophic Germaine Greer

Here in Greece the f-word is subordinated to the ever-invoked malakas (wanker, masturbator) as much used as a bantering word among friends as a deadly insult. Last week we swam in the balmy Aegean at the best sandy beach in Samos. A young man allowed his small dog to cool down in the sea and he was immediately assailed by a noisy lady and her 11-year old son who objected to this gross pollution of the ocean. They called him malakas, vlakas (idiot), illithios (stupid). The man gave as good as he got, the air turned blue and an ugly crowd gathered itching for fisticuffs.  Eventually it all calmed down and apparently the young man and an aggressively obese Greek-Australian discovered they had an uncle and/or cousin in common and all was sweetness and light.

My knowledge of curses and insults in other languages is very limited. I am sure the French can do much better than zut alors and sacré bleu and the Germans than verfluchte Scheisse (damned shit), not to mention the Spanish with at least a millennium of suppressed indignation bubbling away. My expert readers can enlighten us all.

It remains for me merely to proclaim Gadzooks!

SMD,

6.9.16

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2016