Cutting Out The Middleman – You Know It Makes Sense

Last Sunday (17/11/13) I was unfortunate to wake up early enough to listen to BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship. That particular day it was from Headington Parish Church. Still, I thought that a bit of hymn singing never did anyone any harm so I continued to listen. What I had forgotten about was that there was a sermon to be got through and as last week was the 50^th anniversary of the death of CS Lewis, he was chosen as the subject under, erm, discussion?

The bacon butty. Always a small slice of heaven - and almost my premature passport to the Pearly  Gates. Image courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

But, heigh ho, I persevered, after all they do say that suffering is good for the soul – even though I had already sold mine a couple of years previously. However, what I heard almost made me choke on my crispy bacon butty.

Before going any further, let me quote the BBC website’s (badly punctuated[1]) disclaimer concerning the content of the Revd. Prof. Alister McGrath's sermon: "This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors ...changes may also be made at the last minute...".

Disclaimer nothwithstanding, this is indeed what the Reverend quoth from The Last Battle by CS Lewis:  [On seeing the new Narnia the Unicorn declared:] “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here”’. Then the lips of the Revd. Prof. dropped this pearl of wisdom (my bold): "For Lewis heaven is the "other country"  for which we were created in the first place.". Rather woolly thinking in my humble opinion.

OK, I know that greater, more capable commentators than I have written, spoken, chewed over and even been burnt at the stake for questioning the existence of god and his(?) designs for milennia. I know that the debate on free will has rumbled, and will continue to rumble, on for centuries, but I have to express my indignation at the above quotation. I find it so infantile, so silly, so... totally bollocks.

Quite simply, if we were all created for heaven in the first place, then why do we have to pass through this vale of tears? Come on, Rev., please! What kind of god dumps us here first? Why doesn't he just let us straight in instead of having us chance our spiritual arm? I'm sure that even the greatest monsters of the 20th century who caused so much anguish and suffering such as Mao, Hitler, Stalin and a whole host of smug TV presenters were once innocent children who helped little old ladies across the road.

Indeed, the Judaeo-Christian god himself is a cruel, vainglorious spiteful monster. He smites sinners[2]  razes whole cities and drowns innocent people and animals (which, of course, are amoral and do not have eternal souls that can be damned) because of the sins of a select few. Perhaps he more than most should not even be allowed to fill in the visa forms for the "other country".

The divine Ford Mustang Shelby. It would seem  that the celestial waiting list is even longer than  the now-defunct British Leyland’s was for its  magnificent Morris Marina. Image courtesy of amcarguide.com

Even his son wasn’t averse to saying the occasional porky to raise his audience ratings (my bold): "And I say unto you, ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." (Luke 11:9-10) I've been askething for a Ford Mustang Shelby for decades and I still haven't receivethed.

What's more, I've been looking for a set of lost house keys for the last 3 months - to no avail. 
Luckily I have a spare set, so I don't have to knocketh. These days JC would be hauled up under the Trades Descriptions Act (and figuratively crucified on Radio 4's You and Yours?).

 So please god, if indeed you do exist, then cut out the middleman and let us all in now so we don't have to suffer illness, mortgages, German motorbikes that don't work, bad TV series, Coca Cola at room temperature, unwashed hippies, people with halitosis and yet others that fart in lifts. After all, according to the Revd. Prof. Alister Mcgrath's reading of CS Lewis, we were all created for heaven anyway.

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[1] There shouldn't be a comma before the and.

[2] For example he fulminated Onan for coitus interruptus, for spilling his seed instead of impregnating the widow of his dead brother whom his father had forced him to marry – hence the term Onanism. 

Why Britain Should Be Thankful to Spain

… and not for the cheap good-quality wines, the olive oil (cheaper than oil labelled Italian, probably produced in Spain and bottled in Italy), or the holidays, be they of the cultural or beach variety. And definitely not for the histrionic, over-rated pretentious pap peddled by film director Pedro Almodóvar and considered "Art" by many misguided souls.

No, Britain should be grateful to Spain for the amount of highly-qualified, highly-cultured engineers, doctors, nurses etc. who want to make a decent life for themselves in the UK.

My colleagues and I have just finished a long and gruelling round of language certification exams for the students of our august university, a university whose internal schizophrenia is reflected in the student body and the population of Seville itself. I am, of course speaking in general terms, but it would seem to me that the students could be classified into two main groups, the backward-looking parochial types and the ambitious, motivated ones with an international outlook. 

The Humanities seem to fall quite neatly into the antiquated, parochial pigeonhole[1] while the Sciences are definitely more forward-looking, more academically up-to-date and definitely more innovative. In fact, the Faculty of Medicine here is a true centre of excellence, something also true of Life Sciences and Engineering.

Anyhow, back to the main argument. In my last round of oral exams, I was truly gratified by the scintillating performance by over 80% of the candidates, young people with great ambition, high expectations and limitless drive. Not only was I impressed by their use of English, but by their intellect and depth of thought. These are just the sort of people a country needs to progress economically and socially. Unfortunately for Spain, most of them want to contribute to the progress of other countries, mainly Britain, the US and Germany.

Spain isn't working.  

And it's not the fault of the Spaniard in the street 

(sometimes literally).

 Image: elcorreo.com

Perhaps “want” is too strong a word, perhaps not. Would these bright people stay in Spain if Society as a whole offered its young people more opportunities? Perhaps most would, I cannot say. But I can speak from personal experience. My own son is an economic migrant, although within Spain. In Andalusia he had little chance of getting a stable job – or indeed training – in his own field of interest and specialisation: high-performance motorbike mechanics. In reality, he had little chance of finding any type of job at all. Now, after three years of training and practice, he and a colleague from his course have just opened their own workshop in Barcelona (Global Motos, Josep Tarradellas 55, Barcelona. Tel. +34 931 413 084).

By dint of hard work and application.

By dint of hard work and application they have found a financial backer and have also received support from an official motorbike dealership in the form of workshop equipment and advice. In Andalusia, such a thing would be well-nigh impossible – unless you had connections in high places, in which case some sort of subsidy might well be forthcoming.

As in Andalusia, as in Spain in general (Catalonia excepted). Spanish Universities are producing whole battalions of highly-educated young people and then consigning them to a life of dependency upon their parents. If they are “fortunate” they will sweat out their youth in a series of short-term Macjobs with no real future of betterment. If not, then the only alternative left to them is to master the finer points of the latest X-Box or Play Station.

This is why British Society should be grateful to Spain. Thanks to such gifted young people, the British economy will have a brighter future while Spain, after two decades of economic effervescence, will once again fall into the sclerotic economic torpor to which its usually inept and far too often venal, rulers (now with the connivance of the EU) have condemned it for much of the last five centuries[2].

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[1] Could you believe that the Journalistic component of its Master’s in Translation concentrated exclusively on the translation of reports of 1950s football matches and abstruse fashion articles into Spanish??? Well, believe it. Really contemporary, mainstream stuff.

[2] As an economic migrant myself, I benefited from an excellent British state education and migrated to Spain in the late 1980s. I have never paid income tax in the UK, but now find that my Spanish income tax is contributing to the education of such brilliant young people who will in turn go to Britain and pay their taxes there. The ironies of life!

REFLECTIONS ON, AND FROM, A BALDING PATE

Or: Turn on Your Shears Relax and Float Downstream.

Yesterday I was using the electric clippers – number one – on my Amazonian rainforest of hair (i.e. the total area covered is decreasing alarmingly, especially on the uplands). As I was doing great execution on the remaining vegetation I entered into a Proustian state of remembering. Here is the result of my musings:

First came to mind the comment of Victor, coiffeur of choice to Liverpool’s punk and new-wave, of cutting it “down to the wood”. Victor. A fifty-plus old-fashioned barber. He had his one-chair business in what I imagine had been in former times the porter’s lodge on the black and white marble-tiled mezzanine floor of a beautiful, 19^th-century run-down office building in Whitechapel, less than 100 yards away from the NEMS music shop. If you were really lucky, he would show you the spaces between his fingers, encrusted with the hairs of the faces he had shorn and give them a squeeze, resulting in a satisfying ooze of interdigital pus.

In my memory (albeit rather sketchy due to the fact that I spent great part of the late 70s and early 80s in a confused state of chemical enhancement) the shelves jostled with the accoutrements of his trade and while you sat in your creaky, boil-inducing, leather trousers on an old bus seat waiting for the chop, you might find yourself sitting next to Robbo the massive, muscled skinhead – a gentle giant reputed to be an eight-times-a-night man or a suited gent, sporting a Masonic tie clip, from one of the offices above (what did they do there?). Victor’s was a place where people of all classes and conditions met and interacted.

Image courtesy of
http://tonsorialist.wordpress.com/category/haircuts/

At that time, my cut of choice was a flat-top[1] now, unfortunately, impossible. If I let my hair grow to a length of 1in.-plus, it forms a rather hestitantly ridiculous Robbie Williams crest. I am contemned to suede-headedness for the rest of my life, unless I decided to go in for a comb-over. Hell will freeze over first. Less, in this case, can indeed be more.

As the clippers continued to graze over my dome, my mind wandered further back. To the days of Les’s the Barbers. Les was a consummate hacker when there were only three computers in the whole of GB. All the boys in my primary and middle school went there for our monthly short back and sides, our hair hacked at and chewed up by Les and his blunt scissors. His scissors may have been blunt, but his hatred of kids was extremely keen; he brought a whole new meaning to the term slaphead. If we moved our heads, we would be cuffed around the ears and invited to “fucking keep still, yer little git”. And this in front of our dads! Dads, of course, were treated with great deference and their haircuts usually ended with a murmured ”Something for the weekend, sir?” at which point certain “surgical supplies” or “prophylactics” would be slipped into the dad’s top pocket. Such discretion! Now the properties of the London Rubber Company’s finest products[2] are trumpeted proudly on TV.

Granddads, in their turn, would obtain something even more mystifying and well worth watching: they would have the tips of their hair singed (even their ear hair!) once the ordeal of hacking and mangling was over. Now what was that all about? I suppose that, returning to the Amazonian metaphor, we could call it a minor case of slash and burn. I later learnt that htis was one of those old beleifs that hair was hollow and when cut, exposed the inner part to invasion form all sorts of nasties. Hair is not hollow; only some of the heads that sport it - footballers, for example

But back to the man himself. We were given our haircut money, plus a sixpenny tip, when sent

Similar to Thornton's - not quite the same but you get the idea. 

Image from the Web - sorry but I've forgotten the site. 

to get our hair cut. Obviously the wilier victim would hold back the tip and buy choccy next door at Old Mr. Thornton’s[3] (no relation). But such petty crime had its desserts. Miffed at not having received his Manegeld, your next haircut would be even more vicious. Oh, what a lark! Les was such a card, the Bastard!

He was also an enigma. Everyone knew at least something about everyone else in the neighbourhood[4], except about Les. He seemed to have no existence outside his den of torture. No-one, for example, ever saw him enter or leave the premises. No-one knew why he had one leg a good couple of inches shorter than the other. Motorbike accident? War wound? Birth defect? Why didn’t he get an orthopaedic boot? No-one knew. Everybody knew, however, who had had their hair cut at Les’. The layers in the hackee’s hair would be stepped corresponding to when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Of further, sociological, interest is the parade of shops itself. This formed the frontier between our neighbourhood of shabby genteel Victorian mansions and villas and the terraced housing, home to the rough boys who also went to my school – and Les’ Barbershop. I think all the kids on both sides enjoyed their first illicit encounters with alcohol (Bulmer’s cider) and ciggies (Woodbines) thanks to the rather liberal interpretation given to the law by Mr. Mackie, the owner and manager of the off-licence to be found at the end of the parade.

At the age of about thirteen I graduated to a Unisex salon, all chrome, black leather and smoky mirrors where, before it was cut, you would have your hair washed by rather attractive young damsels whose smocks always had the top two buttons undone. That is all I remember about that place – that and the large poster (changed monthly) of a naked lady stuck thoughtfully on the ceiling for the washee’s contemplation. Of little interest indeed compared with sadistic Les and, later, garrulous Victor whose décor and services (and in the case of Les, skills too) were basic, but whose ambience lingers still in the minds of all who went there for a haircut.

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[1]  A rather tenuously-related anecdote. In the Beatles’ “Come Together” Lennon begins with the lines: Here come old flat top/He come grooving up slowly. He later revealed in an interview that they were from a Chuck Berry song. Berry promptly sued for part of the royalties. And won (obviously).

[2] Including the famous Easy-on. Yet, if they are easy to put on, wouldn’t it be correspondingly easy for them to slip off during the act? I myself was conceived in such a manner when the easy-ons didn’t exist (in the days of, ahem, hard-on, easy off?) but the easy-offs most certainly did.

[3] Thornton’s general shop sold everything from ciggies, home-made ice cream and bags of broken biscuits to paraffin from a large tank at the end of the row of biscuit hoppers. Imagine a shop like the Local Shop in The League of Gentlemen. Old Mr. Thornton looked like an (even more) irascible Arthur Lowe with a Hitler moustache. When he died the “young” Mr. Thornton (60+ years old) took over until he succumbed to Parkinson’s.  

[4] Like Old Joey from the pub, who somehow already knew in the mid-60s that micro-electronic devices could be inserted into dental work and dentures so that “they” could keep tabs on us. His first order at the bar was a pint of bitter and a half of mild in a pint glass, this latter being where he would drop his dentures until chucking out time when he would retrieve his gnashers and drain the rather unappetising gargle. Or vice versa. In all fairness, he did work on the Polaris nuclear subs at Cammel Laird’s shipbuilders and perhaps knew, and talked about, stuff he shouldn’t.

HOW TO GO ON STRIKE WITHOUT REALLY STRIKING OR WITHOUT LOSING A DAY’S PAY.

This week is a week of strikes in Spanish education. Students will be striking for three days while teachers at all levels will be striking on Thursday, in some cases whether they want to or not.

But first, why the strike? The strike has been called to protest against the right-wing Spanish Government’s latest educational reforms. I will not bore you with the details, apart from saying that this one, like all such reforms, is a proverbial curate’s egg – good in parts and stinkingly rotten in others. Educational reform, promoted by whichever party in whichever country will always be divisive and will always (obviously) serve party dogma. Like hurricanes and other such phenomena, educational reform is cyclical. All that the long-suffering populace can do is simply batten down the hatches, mumble and grope around in the dark and endure stoically before emerging blinking into a new, strange panorama. They will then try to make a good fist of the wreckage until the next one hits.  

The “democratically elected”[1] powers that be of the august educational establishment for which I work are, obviously, against the government’s proposals, but to be fair on them, they have also opposed decisions taken by the previous left-wing government too. Basically, they are a bunch of grandstanding progressives. Indeed, so progressive are they that strikers lose no pay!!!

Surely the legitimacy of a strike lies in the fact that the workers sacrifice a day’s pay to voice their concerns? Where the reward for those whose conscience dictates that they  disagree with the call? Working or not, we will all get paid and thus the decision to strike or not loses all credibility. Evidently however, the figures will look good on the news. This Thursday I will be “striking” because the centre where I work will be closed down, not because I particularly want to.

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[1] Our glorious leaders are elected by vertical democracy. This was a wheeze used by the the Franco régime in order to give itself a veneer of democracy. It consists of different collectives, in this case, let’s say, teaching staff, unions, students, administrative staff, &c. electing various representatives who then elect the next tier of representatives &c., &c. &c. until we arrive at the Rector and his Cabal. The idea of a directly-elected team is somehow anathema – perhaps for the same reason that Franco and his mateys didn’t like direct elections: the result might not be the “correct” one. 

Plebgate; Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodies? Or, My Own Tuppenceworth

Someone I know once voiced, rather sententiously, the none-too-original opinion that anyone who wants to join the police force shouldn’t be allowed to. Obviously, there are many selfless bobbies out there whose vocation is to serve the common weal and who, tragically, lose their lives so doing. There are also many who forget that it is not their person, but their office which demands the respect of the public. Thus it is in all public service. When a court rises as the judge enters, it is to honour the judiciary as a whole and not the individual in the robes and wig.

I AM THE LAW!

And so it should be with the police. Unfortunately, it would seem, many officers demand that the rest of us respect their office while they themselves do not, as the latest Jimmy Savile revelations would appear to demonstrate. The police seem to think that they can act with impunity or worse. they sometimes delude themselves into thinking that they are the Law, like the post-apocolyptic Judge Dredd from the excellent 2000AD comic, and not its servants.

I think that a lot of people are getting tired, even the Prime Minister David Cameron, with the illegitimate interference of the long-cossetted police and the Police Federation in the political life of our country.

The breathaking arrogance of the police is in the news yet again with the treatment of the three Police Federation officers who after a meeting with Andrew Mitchell MP gave a false account of the content of the meeting. Their  reprehensible behaviour has resulted in their being… erm, told they were naughty boys and not to do it again? Here is my own personal experience of certain officer believing that being a copper conferred upon him/her some sort of superiority over the rest of us mere mortals.

Last year, when surfing Twitterdom, I came across a private tweet written by a police officer at the Northampton Police Cells who tweeted about life there. The tweets were written during working hours and gave the impression that they were, at the very least, tweeted with the knowledge of superior officers.  Apparently this was not the case.

I eventually protested to the Northants Police when the tweeter boasted: “Called in to start work early. Bed to office in 25 mins! I impressed myself.” When I asked the officer if s/he had respected the speed limits and traffic lights I got no reply.

The officer also tweeted this picture:

A none-too agreeable mugshot

It looks extremely like a mug, and if so was probably produced in quite large numbers and sold to correspondingly large numbers of police officers. The background wording tells us this is a British, not US, police mug. Don’t you find the message in black arrogant and insulting? I do.

If we speculate that large numbers of this mug were produced and sold, what dear reader does this tell us about our police forces? Nothing good, I fear. 

As a result of my complaint, the officer was told to shut down the twitter account, @NorpolCustody. Apart from that I don’t know if, except for a good talking-to, the officer was in any way disciplined. No rubber hoses or falling down the stairs in this case! 

STRAWBERRY FIELDS, or Steak is Lentils

Probably one of John Lennon’s best and most iconic songs is the starting point of today’s post, a post in no small measure inspired by Silver Tiger’s recent blog, Out, Out, Damned Internet. 

Here is a link to a rather toe-curlingly embarrassing video of the Fab Four prancing and cavorting around pretentiously in what would now be classed as an early (excruciatingly wince-inducing) pop video of Strawberry Fields.  I wish I had never seen it.

And never have a song’s introductory lines been more topical. Here's a reminder (my italics):

“Let me take you down, ‘cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields,

Nothing is real.”

Although the song was released in the UK on February 13th 1967, the above lyrics reflect our contemporary society perfectly. Today we are living in a society where a large part of our daily lives is conducted with a virtual interface. Let me explain. If we buy a concrete article, or indeed a virtual service, we will probably pay with plastic, with our phones or with an electronic transfer. No real money changes hands. We can shop for real groceries in virtual supermarkets – we can even buy unreal books to download onto our e-books. This in fact is a rather nice circularity. The immaterial thoughts of an author, once exclusively recorded on physical media – paper – for transmission to the reader’s own mind can now be transmitted through virtual systems. A form of mediated telepathy, I would venture to call it.

Let me give a more personal example: mobile telephony. Here in Spain there is no such thing as a Movistar shop actually run by Movistar; they are all franchises, as I suppose is the case of all other mobile phone companies. I know someone who recently had her mobile stolen. Needless to say the SIM card was immediately cancelled, but to kill the phone she had to go to the police and report the theft. The police report was then sent by email to the phone company and the phone was duly killed. Most of the process was carried out remotely and at no point did she actually see any employee of the phone company face to face. And the phone? €400 down the drain. €400 that she neither saw in her hand nor in her pay packet as all of this money only ever existed virtually. It only existed because we are told and believe that it exists. All rather Buddhist I think. It is one of modern life’s great paradoxes that as we are all more interconnected, we all shrink more into our own little personal carapaces and pay less attention to the world around us, all rather Buddhist I think. 

And so to Buddhists. A question: have you ever seen a poor working class Buddhist? I haven’t. In my experience, Western Buddhists tend to be well-off middle-class people, usually retired, on some sort of pension or, as they used to say, with a private means of income. In other words people who in the past would have been flâneurs; people who have nothing better to do.

Those who do have things to do range from peddlers of their own type of Buddhism to peddlers of death-dealing weapons. I know one who teaches you (for a modest consideration) how to prepare for your physical death and transition to the next step in your existence by relating to a pebble sold to you at a rather extortionate price from the great collection with which Karma has blessed his rather large goat farm. He sells the goat’s milk. I never did find out what happened to the kids. Perhaps they were all loaded into a nice comfy cattle truck and taken to other, greener, pastures to live out their lives into a venerable old age in caprine contentment. More probably, they were shovelled, panic stricken, into an old van, trundled off to the abattoir and hung upside down to have their throats cut and bleed to death.

I know of yet another who spends half the year as an arms dealer and the other half eating lentils (no meat please, it involves the killing of sentient beings). Then again, as the ideologues of US National Rifle Association never tire of telling us guns don’t kill people; people kill people.  

And so to the subject of food. A Buddhist once told me that although the eating of dead flesh is a no-no, if that’s all there is to eat, you can eat it no problemo. How? Simple. You tell yourself that the mouth-wateringly delicious, juicy steak in front of you is in fact a bowl of lentils and hey

The biggest bag of lentils ever?
Photo from grammyshouse-susan.blogspot.com

presto!  Lentils it is. As everything is merely an hallucination that our perverse senses call into being, then logically if your upper consciousness tells your senses that steak is lentils, then steak is lentils. Pass the mustard, please. I wish it were a trick that worked in the other direction – good steak is hellishly expensive, or as they say here in Andalusia: mu, mu caro.

This rather surprising denial of reality has other benefits for Buddhists; they don’t really need to engage, for good or for ill, with what we poor benighted creatures call the real world. We do of course know that the Buddhist monks in Burma tend to make life more than a little uncomfortable for Burmese Moslems, yet as this is all a dream, does it really matter? Indeed, in the Buddhist mind, is this reality in Burma really real at all?

As reality does not exist, then neither do Buddhists have to help their fellow men. They prefer to help animals instead, animals that have survived for millions of years without the interference of Man – even dead ones. I have actually been witness to a dead pigeon (it was found expiring by a Buddhist of my acquaintance) being kept in the family freezer along with the peas, carrots veggie burgers &c. for months until it was finally laid to rest in a peaceful wood some miles outside Seville. Luckily it was a moribund pigeon she found and not and Alsatian as there would have been no room in the freezer. Unless it was chopped up.

"Instant Karma's gonna get you"
From Instant Karma, John Winston Lennon.

Karmic Brownie points can of course be accumulated by helping people. As long as it doesn’t cost too much money or effort. As the main aim of the Buddhist is to navel gaze and improve his or her own soul, little time is set aside for the improvement and well-being of those around them – unless of course there’s money to be made helping them along their route to Nirvana. Indeed, in the case of the arms dealer, maybe the unfortunate involved may not exactly wish to be helped out of this vale of tears, but hey ho.  Never in my life have I met such a smug, self-deluded bunch of people. Nice people in general, but very, very, very mistaken. They are definitely up there with the Moslems and Christians.

Finally, if there are any Buddhists reading this, don’t worry. It’s nothing more than a corrupt figment of your basest imaginings created by your oh-too fickle senses. After all, nothing is real. 

Footnote:
Since writing this, I have re-watched the Strawberry Fields video and have decided that although a bit naïf, it does in fact communicate the theme of mental disassociation that runs throughout the song. In other words it's rather confusing and confused

Eureka! Or: What Archimedes and Physics Teachers Never Told Us about Displacement

Image courtesy of mizantrop.co.il

We have all heard about Archimedes and his famous bathtime activities of splashing around, his wooden duck falling onto the bathroom floor with the overflow. This discovery helped us all understand why things float and why rubber ducks are better than wooden ones (fewer painful splinters and fewer cracked tiles). What we have never been told is why he was in the bath in the first place. For hygienic reasons, perhaps, but I reckon old Archie was there as a literal and figurative displacement activity.

Probably he should have been out shopping in the agora for that day’s dinner in Teskonotos or Asdakopoulos. But hey, it was a hot day, the streets were full of hoi polloi and Konon the barbarian slave was occupied clipping wifey’s toenails. Perhaps, even, he should have been drawing up plans for some new invention to help the contemporary Athenian’s life be that little bit more connected, more interactive, with easy-to-use eikons. Anyhow, to postpone the dreaded moment he decided to have a bath and pluck the hairs off his toes. He definitely was not worrying about the state of the Athenian Oeconomy and the overbearing demands of his Teutonic masters to reign in government spending. After all, the nothern barbarians were still running around naked and fighting Russel Crowe and his dog Wufus on the Danube.

Whatever. First he decided to have a nice, hot bath. No energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly showers for this lad. And in so doing he discovered displacement and - more importantly - the displacement activity.

I am a Master of Displacement. Sometimes, when not involved in displacement activities, I have the dubious honour of working for one of the, gulp, world’s top 500 universities. In fact, this post is a displacement activity in itself – and so far I have left it three times. I have convinced myself that it is imperative that I (wet) shave

I actually remember this type of washing
machine! Image courtesy of permaculture.co.uk

and on the way back from the bathroom look at the bed to remind myself that, eventually, I will have to make it. Finally I had the unavoidable urge to check that the washing machine is still going round. I love watching our washing machine (good pronunciation practice that bit, I’ll have to use it in a class!) but I love the old ones better. They used more water and you could see lots of little bubbles and the clothes sloshing about, displacing the grey water.

Where was I? Oh yes, displacement. This year my commute is slightly longer than before and involves a one-hour drive to work. I therefore need to commence the leaving process at least two to three hours before starting work. Why? First I have to have a shower, get dressed, have a mighty powerful hot drinking coffee and get to the car. This obviously involves all of the above, but also might include re-arranging the stuff in the bathroom cabinet while looking for the deodorant I bought last week but will not need until the other, full, can has been exhausted.  Then I might also look for the sachet of sugar that a colleague gave me to put that into my coffee instead of using the jar of sugar in the kitchen. There then ensues a lengthy round of checking up on emails, Facebook, etc. Finally I get into the car and drive off.

My Ford is the best car in the world. It isn’t new, but has enough technology to keep me happily occupied while driving. I set the fuel consumption display to show how many miles are left before I need to fill up. This means driving at various speeds to see how this figure rises and falls, the occasional overtaking and scanning of the skies for traffic helicopters &c. &c. &c. Therefore, the one-hour drive might take 45 minutes in Rammstein listening mode or it might take 1 hour 20 minutes if I’m in end-of-the-month fuel-saving mode. It all depends.

Once at work, I have time to check my emails (usually publicity or official university emails that I delete unopened), chat to the admin. staff, flirt, have a coffee, peruse our own lending library, enjoy some banter with colleagues, read a blog or two, start listening to Radio 4 and then realise class is about to start.

The classes themselves are a goldmine of displacement activities: I observe the idiosyncrasies of the students and mentally note them for use at a later date; I play with the computer (obviously after freezing the image on the projector) and, of course, reach the day’s teaching objectives while trying to keep the students interested and amused. Although I say so myself, I usually manage all three quite successfully.

I sometimes wonder if, in fact, work is my real displacement activity. Classes over for the day, the whole process begins in reverse. I –

Sorry, must go. There’s a crooked picture on the wall facing me and I absolutley must straighten it before going for a wander around the local supermarket to see how much Bombay Sapphire gin costs this week – it’s a great indicator of the pound-euro exchange rate. You could try something similar at yours, using a bottle of Sherry or Rioja.

PS. Bombay Sapphire is currently €21.95 in Mercadona. The pound is on the up.

What Did The Romans Ever Do for Us? Manly Grooming Advice

An early ZZ Top fan.
Photo courtesy of 

fastfancydress.co.uk

Well, apart from aqueducts, sanitation, roads, &c., as acknowledged in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, the Romans gave Europe the craze for depilation. Indeed, Roman bathhouses were full of the yelps of Romans (and Rowomans, let’s not be sexist, here!) having excess body hair removed as hirsuteness was considered as being barbaric. Indeed the words barbaric and barbarian come from the Roman word barba, or beard.

Eheu!!! Quod nocet!!!

Depilation was performed all over the body using tweezers and slave labour – even such sensitive bits as the armpits were denuded using this eye-watering method.

And it is about beards that I want to talk yet again. Readers of my blog might remember this post. In the last few months, I have had a change of mind and am now once again clean-shaven. This obviously entails shaving and the corresponding purchases of essential shaving tackle – face scrubs, aftershave, razors, skin toners, moisturisers, shaving foam, &c.

Well, actually, let’s pass on the shaving foam. I shave like a Roman. Do I use tweezer-wielding slaves? No. I use oil and not the expensive shaving oils that you find on the High Street. I use either olive oil straight from the bottle – obviously if it has been in the chip pan it has lost a lot of its properties and gained some crusty bits . This may seem an extravagance, but compare the price of a litre of Extra Virgin olive oil to the price of a small bottle of shaving oil. Alternatively, I use baby oil. Both have many other exotic uses, but try shaving with them. It’s cheap, natural, moisturising and gives excellent results. Ea.

How to Speak Non-lexical Spanish and Impress People

Constant is the debate between Spanish and English speakers over which language has more words, which is the richer, &c. &c. &c.

English, obviously!

However, there is one area where Spanish has English firmly beaten: non-lexical interjections. This is probably due to the Latin roots of Spanish. As anyone who has studied Latin knows, it is bursting with such interjections. Arturo Pérez-Reverte, one of Spain’s most popular authors – his books are actually readable instead of the usual logorrhoea pumped out by writers in Spanish both past and present – has on occasion referred to English as the onomatopoeic chirrups of a race of shepherds. In so saying he is referring to the brevity of English words and syntax. In other words we can usually say a lot in English in a small space. However, when it comes to non-lexical portmanteau interjections, Spanish trumps us hands down.  

My favourites are "ea", “ojú” and “halá. The first two are common in Andalusia, while halá is common coin throughout Spain. To become a master of the ea, you pronounce the e as the English letter A, and then follow it with an a, as it at) You should also try to add a slightly nasal twang for optimum effect. “Ojú” is quite easy to pronounce: o as in odd and a nasal jú as in who?, coupled with the rising intonation of a question. There are other variations for those who crave variety: “Ofú”, as in tofu – without the t; rising intonation;  and “Osú”, also with a rising intonation. It also helps if you let your cheeks go loose to give any of the above versions a certain slurred plosive quality. True experts and other advanced practitioners might even venture to add the merest hint of a smidgeon of a cough for a truly dramatic effect. The pronunciation of "halá" is as follows: silent h, a as in at and la as in lad, the stress falling on this second syllable. Usually the second a is quite a prolonged affair, maybe lasting a couple of seconds, or even more.

First, ea. This is a multi-use expression usually employed to denote finality. If you want to add emphasis to a statement, or turn an opinion into a universal fact, add ea.  

 “My dad's bigger than your dad. Ea.”

Mine's got more 
emeralds. Ea.

Mine's got a nicer suntan. Ea.

“My church’s statue of the Virgin Mary is prettier and more miraculous than yours. Ea.”

This issue is actually quite a serious matter here in Seville where people seem to have forgotten that even though the idols might be different, the deity being adored is the same. Still, logic and religion have always been strange bedfellows. Ea.

It can act as "I told you so.":
"Ea. What did I tell you? Now you've gone and burnt the gazpacho."

A: "Ofú! My MP3's on the blink.
B: " Ea. Didn't I tell you that buying a cheap Chinese one was a false economy?"

You can also use it as a form of bidding people farewell as you get up from a meeting/leave the pub to go home:
“Ea, gents, I’m off to tell the wife I've just got the sack. Ojú”

Let us now take a look at “Ojú” and its variants. Ojú is used to introduce a statement, usually with an element of fear, exasperation and resignation.

When the boss finds out you’ve been stealing pencils and paper clips.

“Ojú, I’m in for it now...”

On a hot day (40ºC+):

“Ojú, I’m sweating like a pig.”

When your child comes home from school with his/her exam results:

“Ojú, ojú, ojú, ojú, ojú.”

For greater emphasis, add vamos (va as in van, mos, as in moss. The more experienced can remove the s and say: “vamo” while the true expert can experiment with the even shorter “amo”.

Indeed, Vamos and Ojú can be concatenated indefinitely:

Adolescent daughter: “Daddy, I’m going to have a baby. Rodrigo and I love each other and he says he wants to marry me”

Sofa-bound son with a mouth full of crisps: “Haláaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

Terrified father: Ojú, ojú ojú, vamos, ojúuuuu, amo, amo, amo, ojú, ojúuuuu, vamos. Osú osú osú. Vamo, vamo, vamo.

Practical mother: “Ea, I told you he was only after one thing, vamos.”

Finally, halá denotes surprise, annoyance and outrage at any form of undesired excess, or disbelief at an obviously egregious lie. For even more emphasis, you can add a sort of strangled gargle at the end:

On being overtaken on Sluice Road by a boy racer rattling past at 60mph: 
"Halaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagghhh! Where's the fire, brat?"

William Hague to the British press 08/08/2000: “I drank 14 pints of beer a day when I was a teenager.”

Plain People of Britain: Haláaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

A: “How much did you pay for that fake iPod?”

B: “€50”

A: “Haláaaaaaaaaaaa. You can get one for €10 in the Chinese shop.”
B: "Yeah, but will it still be working next week? Ea.

Tutti Frutti

On being woken up at 3am when the glass recycling container just under your bedroom window is being emptied: 

“Haláaaaaaaa! How’s a body to sleep with all that din?”

When your neighbours' annoying child vomits on your rug after scoffing the tub of your favourite ice cream (selflessly given to him by your good lady wife) you were keeping to enjoy while watching Real Madrid vs. Barcelona that evening:

“Haláaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Who’s going to clean that up? I’m not.

Fast and Spurious

Boy Racer talking about his superannuated Opel Corsa in the Saracen's Head, Holbeach St. Marks: “I did 115mph down  Sluice Road on the way here.”

Unimpressed mates: “Haláaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Drunken Husband: “Sorry I’m late, darling. The boss just sacked me for stealing pencils and paper clips.”

Exasperated wife: “Haláaaaaaaaaa, Who’s going to pay for my bingo cards and the baby clothes now, eh?

Or, if you are into brevity, quite simply say:

“Haláaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhh!”

Ea. That’s all for now.