Summer Solstice in El Acebrón

El Palacio de El Acebrón is a neo-Palladian Palace built in the 1960s in the middle of Doñana Natural Park, already mentioned en passant in a previous post, Strangers on the Shore.

Sunset at El Acebrón with its chapel on our right. Note that for all its
pretence of grandeur, it rather lacks depth. It's really nothing more than a
glorified shed - the only thing missiing was the dried bag of cement to sit on
while supping your tea.

Today, the palace is an interpretation centre for the National Park and is quite a surprising sight - definitely not typically Spanish. Seeing a building that would not be amiss on a Pink Panther film set certainly  takes you aback.

The Palace's history is rather strange: it was built by a wealthy landownwer, Luis Espinosa Fondevilla. Luis was a very charitable man. This and his obsession with the palace finally ruined him as he poured all of his fortune into helping others and the rather ill-conceived construction of El Acebrón. While the ground floor boasts brilliant marble floors, a hugely ornate fireplace and a red marble staircase, the first floor was a poor, unfinished space, the roof made of sheets of corrugated asbestos.

In fact, the palace was never really finished and Luis died in November 1975, the same month and year as Franco's demise. Even before then his precarious financial situation had forced him to sell up to a local paper mill, who took over the stands of eucalytpus that had been his main source of income. He was allowed to stay on and live out his final years in his folly. The Palace was abandonded until 1982 when it was bought by the State and refurbished - including the installation of a proper flat roof.

According the the building's caretaker and researcher, the building boasts over 360 mystic and religious symbols, starting with the scroll on the pediment with the letters LEF - the initials of both the owner and of the French Revolution's motto: Liberté Egalité, Fraternité, which are also Masonic watchwords. I must add, however, that I do have certain problems with symbolism. Just like literature and the myriad allusions to be found therein, I think that a lot of such insertions are just coincidence and/or put there because they are pretty or just barefaced flourishes to make a work more "interesting", more "profound".

What the Butler Saw? Men in pinnies holding
hands. 

Luis was rumoured to be gay, as members of the household staff were not unused to elcoming quite large groups of exclusively male visitors who held strange rituals in the chapel. Indeed, rumour among people who remember that time has it that these mysterious men were even seen wearing aprons and holding hands - something not unknown in any Masonic Lodge. There is, however, no documentary evidence to support this - hardly surprising given the fact that we are talking about events in Francoist Spain.

Sunset in the the formerly grand 

gardens.

So to the present. On June 21st the Palace was the scene of Regular Masonic Lodge Itálica 107's Summer Solstice celebration.  First, the Summer Solstice ceremony was held in the chapel, now used as a space for audiovisual presentations on Doñana. After the Solemn Ritual, we all enjoyed a talk on astronomy, including a session of stargazing on the flat roof, before going down to a buffet dinner in the dining room.

Looking towards a dingly dell.

All in all, it was not a very enjoyable night. This next part is a rewrite following my decision to leave the Lodge: Well OK, maybe it wasn't.  Everybody split off into little cliques - quite amusing really to see exclusive groups inside a rather exclusive organisation based on values brotherhood and equality. I think that this night was when I started to reconsider my commitment to Freemasonry - at least to this particular self-congratulatory Lodge that seems to be run for the greater glory of a select few. For example, we chose to park in the designated car park and not outside the house itself. At the end of the night,  it would have been, in my eyes at least,  logical if my so called "Brethren" had offered us a lift to the car park 500 metres down a sandy track instead of driving by seemingly blind to the fact that they were choking us with dust and that perhaps we would have said yes to such an offer. 

It is the first time that I can claim to have dined in a palace- one that on reflection seems to be a metaphor for Italica 107 - seemingly quite magnificent and welcoming, yet one that, beneath the stucco and atrezzo is nothing more than an overblown, if somewhat shallow shed.    For more pictures of this architectural folly, go to this blog. 

And of course, the whole event had nothing in common with Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut! 

No goats or chickens were sacrificed in the making of this entry - although a lot of  crustaceans were indeed boiled alive previous to the proceedings. And jolly tasty prawns they were too! it's a pity that the company didn't live up to the food.

Long Live The White Pigeon!!!

Last weekend (June 21st - 22nd) was the Summer Solstice and we were due to attend a celebration in the Palacio del Acebrón, Doñana (see above). As this is about 200km by road from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, we decided to overnight in the nearby village of El Rocío.

  Ascot comes to El Rocío: the 
  White Pigeon is seen here 
  sporting a rather fetching hat, 

  even though the brim is somewhat
  smaller than the regulatory 4 
  inches minimum demanded of 
  those ladies who want to sashay
  around the Royal Enclosure. Does
  this Lady tell her nags to "move
  yer bleedin'arse!!!"? I wonder. 

Now, this is a really weird place, a virtual ghost town built on sand dunes with no metalled roads. So what is it all about, then? The village of El Rocío has sprung up around a hermitage that is home to the statue of Nuestra Señora del Rocío, Our - or better, Their - Lady of the Dew, aka  La Blanca Paloma, or the White Pigeon; there is no word in Spanish for dove. Many of us of a certain age might remember the disgraced Jonathan King's version of Una Paloma Blanca, although I much prefer the Wurzels' parody.  In Christian symbology, the dove represents the Holy Spirit, which makes this statue's soubriquet quite unique in Christian idolatry. 

Legend had it that some local peasants found a statue of the simpering White Pigeon in the

At home with the White Pigeon. Note the

austere Christian simplicity of the 

knick-knacks.

marshes. This "miracle" was happening all around Spain at the time as wily priests tried to keep their flocks happy by giving them their own Our Lady of... statue - a bit like when football clubs get the occasional Brazilian player (the players are occasional; their performance, at best, rather erratic) to keep up their fans' interest. But I digress. As they started to lug the statue back to Almonte, their local town, miraculously it  got progressively heavier until they had to abandon it and go home for the night. Is it any surprise that an unwieldy lump of wood gets heavier as you carry it through marshland - especially after a hard day's work? When they returned the following day, Lo! The White Pigeon was back in its original place! This to-ing and fro-ing was kept up for a few days until the priest, probably mighty tired of trundling the statue back to where he had hidden it in the first place night after night in his handcart, decreed that the White Pigeon wanted to stay where it was and that a hermitage had to be built on that very site - probably his "nephew" owned the plot. And thus it was.  

One of the 23 horses to die during the 2013 party. Photo courtesy of
ecorepublicano.es 

The El Rocío pilgrimage is now one of the world's largest and there are many confraternities dedicated to the White Pigeon throughout Spain. Each year roughly one million "pilgrims" make their way to the village on foot, horseback, air-conditioned luxury SUV etc., taking one of three recognised routes. The torments and constant sacrifices of this week-long journey are leavened by nightly parties - true Bacchanalia involving sex, drugs, croquette-sized mosquitoes and migraine-inducing Flamenco. Luckily for the participants, the sins of the journey are washed clean by the mass on Sunday.

In the village, there is plenty of space for the rich and ostentatious to prance their horses around. Many of these horses die of exhaustion and are left to bloat and rot in the streets. A sacrifice to the mother of the god of love.

But for the 4x4s, Clint Eastwood

wouldn't look out of place in 

this picture

Anyhow, we reserved a room in a pension for €46. During the pilgrimage it costs €500! After we had unpacked we went for a trudge through the sandy streets where we saw hundreds, literally hundreds, of houses that lie unoccupied more than 300 days of the year. We also saw the cofraternities' houses - if such a term can be used for these enormous buildings, some of which occupy a whole block.

One of the many cofrat houses.

As we can see from the various pictures, this village is a wonderful example of the how Christianity has become corrupt - at least as far as the Roman sect goes. Where now humility, lack of ostentation, wallet-busting charity? The cofraternities often boast of their charitable works. If they were truly charitable, and if the private householders were truly Christian and worthy of the status of pilgrim, they would put their property to better use - summer residences for underprivileged children for example? Better still, they could sell off these highly desirable holiday residences and open soup kitchens for the needy poor of their own cities. They could even - Lord preserve us! - offer up their greatest sacrifice; forgoing their pilgrimage and employing the money saved and the time gained to help the poorer citizens that surround them in their daily lives.

A view along the street to two more cofrat houses.

Hippy squatters take note: you have a whole village to 

occupy and do your "alternative" stuff in while leeching
off the capitalist society that you so noisily reject.

Such hypocrisy. It makes my blood boil!

 

Walking The Dead

Liverpool St. James' Cemetary

with the Anglican Cathedral in 

the background and the 

Huskisson monument to the

fore.

Glasgow Necropolis

In 19th-century England overpopulation of traditional church graveyards meant that several were, in some cases, literally full to bursting. This led to the creation of municipal and private graveyards, such as St. James' Cemetary in Liverpool.,
Bristol's Arnos Vale and Glasgow Necropolis, this latter also being Europe's largest Masonic cemetary. An aside:Wavertree's Holy Trinity Cemetary, Liverpool, is a mere stone's throw away from Penny Lane and contains the graves of one Eleanor Rigby and a certain Father Mackenzie. All photos of the Bristish graveyards are courtesy of the websites mentioned.

The romance of Arnos Vale, Bristol.

As now, the graves could be rented or bought freehold and soon these cemetaries were also filling up. we could say that, ahem, they became dead popular - or that people were dying to get a plot there! When full, these places were abandonded to nature. The photo of the (now) lightly-managed Arnos Vale gives us some idea of the fate that overtook these necropolises. One solution to overcrowding was the rise of cremation, made possible by the industrial production of town gas as a fuel. Now, in the 21st century many people enjoy a stroll around these Victorian monuments to the dead, enjoying the romantic decay and Gothic art to be found at every turn. Indeed, such places could be said to be a metaphor for life itself: they were born, flourished, died and decayed. More worryingly, if we maintain the conceit, they are now slowly rising from their own ashes.

The flowers might be artifical, 
but the sentiments certainly 
aren't.

Unfortunately for me, I no longer live in Britain and so such strolls have become a rare luxury. Yesterday, however, I decided to take a walk around the old cemetary in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Municipal graveyards in Spain are somewhat different to their British counterparts in several respects. Here, most churches never had a churchyard so while the rich and powerful were buried within the church, hoi polloi have always been buried in the outskirts in what to British eyes might appear to be filing cabinets for the dead.

Another angle of the same avenue, with the
chapel at the end.

In other words the dead were buried aboveground in rented or freehold niches. Renters could, and still can, expect a 50-year sojourn in their niche before being removed to an ossuary, slowly to moulder for all eternity. As I walked around Sanlúcar's cemetary I was first surprised by the fact that there is a complete absence of the smell of rotting flesh. 

Examining these houses of the dead, I saw empty niches awaiting new occupants, old, negelected niches and others with a glass front so that not only could you see the gravestone but also grave goods - photos, holy statues etc. Little messages on scraps of paper fluttering on the end of a piece of sellotape. It all sounds incredibly mawkish, vulgar even, but in fact I found it strangely moving that people - now nothing more than scraps of flesh and motes of dust - are still so present in the thoughts of the living.

A Visit to The Local Electrician's...

... resulted in his showing me this video on which he was the colour tecnician. It's a local video firm's version of the Pharrell Williams video. Here's the first image:

It's well worth watching.

A Goodly Pan of Scran

Or Scouse.

Last weekend, expecting visitors, I made a huge pan of Scouse - cheap cuts of beef and/or lamb, loads of onions & carrots and piles of taters. 

Scouse: ambrosia from the Pool of Life.

My recipe:

Fry in olive oil the chopped onions & carrots in an open pressure cooker until they're soft .

Remove the veggies.

Brown the meat in the oil with a dobble or two of salt.

When browned, chuck in a bit of white wine to help soften the meat & reduce.

Add in the taters. When cutting them, don't cut all the way through; cut halfway through and then lever the piece off. this will make the sauce thicker.

Chuck in the veggies & pour in water. This should not cover the ingredients, as the taters will release their own water.

Pressure cook for 25-30 min.s and then leave to cool. 

When you want to serve it, reheat the part needed in an open pan and serve.

Scoff with crusty bread and heart-clogging salty butter, sauces of your choice and a nice strong cup of tea.

You'll probably have a lot left over. Don't worry! It's even better the second and third times around. 

When it has finally reduced to a paste, you can even make scouse butties or scouse on toast. I've been eating it all week and my inner man is well pleased.

Scouse, just brilliant!

STRANGERS ON THE SHORE

Perhaps a  quick listen to this will set the mood for reading what follows.

Here in southern Spain Spring does indeed spring - one day it just jumps out at you from behind a cloud and all of a sudden it's beach time.

Sanlúcar Beach with Doñana in the

background.

So on Saturday we left home, ambled 300 yards down the road and enjoyed a 2-hour stroll along Sanlúcar's strand. As yet the teeming hordes of Summer tourists haven't descended, so it's possible to go for quiet walks and admire the views across the Guadalquivir Estuary towards Doñana, Europe's largest Nature Park.

 Doñana was once the private hunting estate of the Dukes of Alba[1] and it was there that Goya painted his two famous paintings, La Maja Vestida and La Maja Desnuda of the then Duchess of Alba to whom, it was rumoured, he also rendered services of a more intimate nature. Malicious gossips have it that his daubings and dabblings of the Duchess went beyond the merely pictorial. 

Chipiona Lighthouse

The Spanish house of Alba Fitzstewart has so  many noble titles that the Dukes or Duchesses of Alba are the only humans on the whole of planet Earth of whom protocol doesn't demand that they bow and scrape to a British monarch - there are those of us, however who wouldn't anyway. The House of Alba also has a claim to the British crown – and why not, indeedy? They’d just be another bunch of foreign benefit tourists to add to the present gang of Germans and Greeks swanning around in golden coaches at the taxpayer’s expense.

Anyhow, I digress. After a walk on the beach in Sanlúcar, we went to a beachfront restaurant for a fish supper and were sore disappointed – the particular member of the finny tribe that we wanted was not on the menu. In fact, we felt like Joseph and Mary when they got to Bethlehem. There was no plaice at the inn! (Sorry, I just couldn't resist it.)

Undaunted, we had a long, cool, refreshing drink of rebujito[2] – Manzanilla, Seven-up and loads of ice – before toddling home to have dinner there.

Another client enjoying
a "relaxing cup of
café con leche".

Sunday proved to be just as sunny, so we decided to be adventurous and drive to Chipiona, 8km down the road. In summer Chipiona – or Chipi (pron.: shippy) for the initiated – becomes a  sort of Seville-super-Mare and is to be avoided at all costs. At the moment, however, there so few people that you can actually see the sand on the beach, hear yourself think and not have to suffer the unedifying view of middle-aged fat shouty gits in singlets vaunting their armpit hair at close quarters in the bars and restaurants.

At this time of year, Chipi is a haven of tranquillity. We had a relaxing drink at one of the beachfront cocktail bars, soaking up the sea air in the company of other privileged patrons. After refreshing the inner man – and woman – we continued our stroll along the promenade before stopping for an ice-cream and coffee to fortify us for the long trek home which would take us past the market gardens that produce such delicious tomatoes, – on a par with the famous Worthing tom.s – green peppers,  magnificent new potatoes &c.

On the way back to the car.

Could be Greece or Italy, but these crystalline waters
are the Atlantic Ocean.

Conclusion: out of season, Chipiona is a delightful place to visit and as yet is still off the international tourist radar. At this time of year and with the mild weather that we’re having, it is a wonderful town for a weekend visit.

The sun sets behind the 

lighthouse.

---

[1] One Duke of Alba was in charge of the famous Spanish Armada – and also of the brutal repression of the Low Countries. In fact the Dutch version of our bogeyman is the aforementioned Duke. As far as the Armada was concerned, and luckily for the English, as they had run out of gunpowder and shot: “God blew and they [the Sapnish ships] were scattered”.

[2] A word to the wise: rebujito is both delicious and refreshing – but also extremely intoxicating; more than one long glass and the ground turns into a trampoline.

Middle Age – O, The Injustice of It All!

Recently as I left a café, here in Seville, global capital of courtesy and exquisite good manners[1] I held the door open for a lady of a certain age who was behind me. Now, I had been taught in my childhood to open the door for a lady, to say please and thank you &c., &c., &c. so holding a door open, especially a spring-loaded one that was liable to slam back in another person’s face, seemed to me a wholly logical as well as courteous thing to do.

HM the Royal Trout, dentures out, & enjoying
a quick ciggie in the back parlour while Phil
the Greek fixes a G&T and gets out the pork
pies & crisps.

What took me by surprise, however, was that not only did the lady (and I use the term
 very lightly indeed) not say thank you, but also that her only acknowledgement of my presence was her shoving me aside to scuttle out first. Initially nonplussed, I recovered quickly enough to remonstrate with the old trout for her exceedingly bad manners. Now it was her turn to be nonplussed. I suppose I could say that she stood there gaping like a fish out of water.

And so to the nub of the matter. I now have, as they say,  snow in my beard and as such am all but an officially old git. Old gitdom has both its advantages and disadvantages – but a lot fewer disadvantages.

Advantages:

Even though at my advanced age, one is half blind and has the reaction times of a sprightly glacier, car insurance costs a hell of a lot less.

I’m beginning to understand the attractions of a nice bowl of soup and a chucky egg for supper.

I now comprehend the interest in and, indeed, usefulness of technical knowledge of the carpet slipper. Many a jolly in-depth conversation is to be wrung from the subject when in the company of other bollocks-talking old gits.

Wellington in his party hat.

I can wear a cushion on my head and pretend to be Napoleon or Wellington, whichever takes my fancy.

And I can wear a loud tartan dressing gown and a smoking cap around the house – and wear them to go outside and throw out the rubbish.

Playing dominoes becomes a source of endless fascination.

Make me laugh, Granddad

Playing with one’s dentures (I have all my own teeth, let it be known) in public is to be expected, especially if you learn how to make clacking noises when you talk. Also recommended for denture wearers is a goodly supply of strong mints to hide the aroma of trapped, fermenting saliva but hey, that's not the denture owner's problem. As they say "every dog likes the smell of its own farts" talking of which...

Farting in company. While still not acceptable, it is accepted. This is all part of cultivating one’s image as a racy old rascal; embarrasing but not embarrassed.

Embarrassing one’s children. Is there anything better?[2]

But most wonderful of all is that once you’re over the age of fifty you somehow automatically gain respect. Now this truly is mysterious. You can do and say what you like – for example telling (even) old(er) ladies off for bad manners without being regarded as an uncouth brat.

OK, all of this is rather jolly, but the point of this entry is quite simply to point out the injustice of the fact that when we reach a certain age, we automatically enjoy the respect of those around us, however scandalous our behaviour might be (re. the old trout and the door). How do we magically arrive at an age where opinions we have always held become serious and worthy of consideration while the nose-pierced young “hooligan” sitting next to me on the Clapham omnibus might hold the same opinions, yet his are deemed worthless and his protests bad mannners?

Let us cut some slack for the kids and be a bit more demanding of the older members of society. Respect isn’t a privilege that comes with age – it is something that has to be earned and maintained by hard work.

---

[1] An example of, as they say here, fine British irony.

[2] Obviously, I do none of the above; I just quote them as examples.

The Jaded Rabbit

More unreliable Chinese crap: China's Moon rover hits trouble: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-25908527

OK, I know that other countries' space missions have sometimes failed too, but they tend to be probes that have travelled further and they also tend to be relatively rare events, but to send a probe to the moon (probably using "borrowed" technology) and get it wrong in the 21st century???

Like I said, unreliable Chinese junk. What else is new? Especially considering the vehicle is known as a (god help them) rover. Now I find this ironic, as Rover was a crippled British car company bought by a Chinese corporation and shipped to the Middle Kingdom lock, stock and rusty barrel a few years back[1]. 

Rover was, of course, infamous for its bad managment, poor quality and bolshie workforce, the leaders of this latter being revolutionary communists. In the long run it looks as if they've won. Rover is indeed producing crap cars in a workers' paradise, aka an oppressive communist regime. China.

---

[1] Thereby doing British industry a great favour while confirming my own pet theory that Chinese industry is addicted to producing low-quality crap – they’ll even go to the lengths of buying such industries in!

Why Cyclists Are More Dangerous Than North Korea

I’m sure that older readers will remember Ricky Martin’s song, María: with the unforgettable chorus of Un, dos, tres, un pasito p’alante María. Un dos tres, un pasito p’atrás  - literally 1,2,3 one step forward María, 1,2,3 one step backwards. If not, here’s a link.

Well this is how pedestrians have to walk, or rather jump, about the pavements in Seville as cyclists zoom recklessly towards them, making the most of their god-given right to put everyone's life at risk – including their own. Indeed, watching a pedestrian trying to walk along the average Sevillian street is rather like watching someone in a Western “dance” as the baddies shoot at their feet. Desperation, lack of concerted coordination and the fear of imminent death or mutilation are common to both sufferers.

And the problem is this: enlightened Seville (a city for people[1], according to its own rather brainless propaganda) now has cycle lanes incorporated onto its pavements, but cyclists here (indeed, anywhere) respect neither the lanes nor the traffic rules. Speeding cyclists are a greater menace than speeding cars (at least in general terms cars do not speed along the pavement!). Yet for some reason, best known to themselves, cyclists do of course have greater right of way than any other form of life.

Cycling seems to have become a new form of Fascism. Once the wearing of a black, brown, or blue shirt with its corresponding armband raised the possessor above the ranks of the common herd. He – or she – became an exalted member of that class of  beings who, as Orwell so famously put it, are more equal than others. Such fascists, or communists (basically the same genus of being) could do what the hell they liked without fear of reprisal or punishment by the authorities. Now to be more equal than the rest of urban humanity what you need is a bike, tight fitting Lycra, no undies and a total lack of inhibition about parading your middle-aged bag of rusty spanners around.

Once mounted upon his or her gleaming, non-polluting charger, the rider becomes a sort of knight in hi-viz armour, bearing down upon the cycle-less villeins with all the contempt and recklessness of a Norman aristocrat taking a constitutional on his palfrey among - or even over - his serfs.

“By what right?” You may cry. “By the divine right of the non-polluting eco-warrior” Sallies forth the reply as, bell a-ring, lights a-twinkle pedals a-whirr and bollocks a-jiggle (with a bit of luck he'll be rendered incapable of spawning any progeny) the oppressor bears down on you. You have two options: stand your ground and get hospitalised or jump back and let the arrogant bastard waft by unchallenged.

 Teeth a-grind, we let the chevalier thunder past, as in days of yore. 

In a word, most cyclists are arrogant, selfish turds who deserve a timely stick thrust through their flashing spokes.

And so to North Korea. For all of the chemical weapons, nuclear bombs and avunculophage dogs that that particularly distasteful regime might vaunt, as yet it has not been a real threat to my life and physical integrity – or indeed yours, unless you have the misfortune to live there. The cyclist, on the other hand, is a real daily meance and a greater threat to your, or my, existence than the hermits of Pyong Yang. "Leave North Korea alone!", I say.  Get the UN Security Council onto the case of the cyclo-fascists.

Let us not, however, bomb them back to the Stone Age; let us merely put them back where they belong – on the roads, not the pavements – where they can put their own lives at risk without risking ours - even if this will entail some damage to cars. Either that, or send the whole parcel of them to Guantánamo and thence unleash them on the Castros.

---

[1] As opposed to a city for insects, dolphins or lemurs, I suppose.

Carelessly Thrown together in The PRC - Or Giving The Expression Chinese Junk A Whole Nother Meaning.

As 2013 wheezes slowly to its end, presents opened, turkey consumed and Boxing Day Cornish pasties scoffed with bubble and squeak, thoughts turn to presents given and received.

All of mine given and received had one thing in common: none of them were Chinese tat. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not rich - not even comfortable; the Spanish State for which I work has seen to that. No, the point that I want to make is that we have all avoided the made in PRC label for one very good reason. We wanted to make sure that the gifts were still serviceable after New Year's Day. 

Notwithstanding most Euopean and American brands who maintain acceptable levels of quality in their Chinese subcontractors, any generic article emanating from the PRC tends to be, in a word, crap. And crappy crap of the crappiest crap kind.

Take the case of the two timer plugs that I bought this year. The first, an electromechanical affair, made in PRC, was purchased in summer. It lasted for about three weeks before getting thoroughly confused with our western imperialist electricity and rebelling. As such our immersion heater was switched on and off  with all the oriental inscrutability of an I-Ching reading. Peradventure the Feng Shui of the immersion heater was not propitious.

Two days ago I bought a (rather expensive) digital timer switch from an upmarket Spanish department store. It didn't even last an hour. When pressing the reset button, said button fell inside the device and so made it unuseable. I then looked at the maker's details. What a surprise! It was yet another fine article carelessly thrown together in the PRC. I should have known better. 

However, the real problem is the fact that retailers the world over seem to prefer the cheap and cheerless Chinese tat to (not much) more expensive articles made in the UK, EU or USA. We are being robbed of choice, subjected to a tyranny of tat while we see our own manufacturing jobs exported to the long-term benefit of no-one.

Instead of being condemned to endlessly replacing things that should last a lifetime, I would happily pay twice or more for an article that I know is not going to break or fall to pieces . In the case of the timer, I would prefer to pay the rapacious electricity companies more (at least electricity is produced fairly locally and employs people here) than line the pockets of billionaires living half a world away in an oppressive one-party regime with a human rights record that most third-world dictators would envy. 

And it would seem that most people are beginning to think the same. Many small Spanish shops have closed in recent years, driven out of business by the Chinese bazaar next door. Now we are beginning to see Chinese stores close down as consumers begin to realise that low prices and the lowest of abysmally low quality is not a real economic option.

So my wish for next Christmas is that our own business and political leaders realise that there is no real economic or social advantage in trade with the Middle Kingdom; just short-term gains and long-term losses. And please, Santa, bring me a serviceable timer switch, made in the UK, EU or USA! 

Update: Yesterday (18.01.14) I bought a different model of timer at the same store only to discover that the instructions included had absolutely nothing to do with the new model - they referred to the previously purchased piece of junk. Obviously this new timer was also chucked together in the same oriental sweatshop as the last. Wasn't it Einstein who said that madness was when one endlessly repeated the same action in the hope of a completely different result? Who is the lunatic, me for committing the same mistake twice in the same department store, or our society/economy for continuing to buy and peddle such low-quality crap from a corrupt rapacious, undemocratic country that oppresses its own people?

Note: Does PRC mean People's Republic of China - or, as I suspect, Produces Rivers of Crap?

A REVELATION

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

At the moment I am reading G.W.M. Reynolds’ Mysteries of London. Written in the 1830s, it is now considered by some as the first steampunk novel. I was pointed to the book by Asa Briggs through his masterly tome Victorian Cities. I have no idea of its the length – I have it on my Kindle. Suffice to say that I am now on chapter CXXV and am not yet 50% through the story.

The plot is no surprise to readers of Victorian improving literature: fallen women, honest journeymen and tradesmen ruined at the hands of dastardly noblemen, unscrupulous bankers and speculators; aristocrats who pay their debts of honour within a matter of hours while letting their tradesmen lose their livelihoods by refusing to pay them for months; a wronged hero and a cast of thousands, mostly of a disreputable nature. Add to this mixture a corrupt body politic, a callous judiciary who show nothing but contempt for the poor while indulging the high spirits of the aristocracy and what you have is a super-long novel that condemns the whole of British (English?) society. You can however, skip tens of pages at a time when the author starts spouting off about the one true saviour &.c &c. &c. To Reynolds’ credit, however, professional clerics and the Church of England in particular also come in for a good lashing.

The difference between Reynolds and Dickens is Reynolds’ total lack of sentimentalism. This is a documentary novel where occasionally the characters rather mysteriously have a grasp of the statistics regarding their particular calling over and above what they should reasonably know. They also have a tendency to regale their companions with the story of how they came to sink so low – a literary device that lets the reader see many aspects of how the poor were oppressed in so many different industries and callings. The novel, however, was not written just as an entertainment.  As mentioned before, this is rather an essay upon the plight of those members of the British population who have the misfortune not to belong to the aristocracy or to the highest class of capitalists – not that these latter are themselves completely safe from ruin and degradation.

Another great difference between Reynolds and Dickens is the fact that Reynolds does not only describe society; he examines it and the causes of its corruption and economic instability.

The most surprising elements of the book, however, is the fact that what Reynolds wrote 180 years ago is still true today: irresponsible banks and unscrupulous speculators (now called fund managers) who play with other people’s hard-earned money for their own enrichment while their victims find themselves on the street; the duality of the legal system where the aristos get fined (for them) meaningless sums (at least they do get fined – we all know about the infamous driving offences of the Saxe-Coburg, sorry, Windsor family that are never punished) for acts of high-spiritedness while the plebs who commit the same offences get jailed. The list is interminable.

For any of you, be you British, American, European or whatever, who think that you live in a free society where everyone is to some extent equal; I recommend that you read this book. You will find that, omitting the absolute misery and squalor in which people lived in the early 19^th century, we really haven’t progressed that much. Admittedly we are cleaner, healthier and materially better-off and better fed, but we are also more productive and more profitable for our masters.

As far as the economic gulf that separates us from our “betters”, it still remains the same – as does our reverence for such exalted beings, perhaps now both the gulf and our reverence are even greater.  

Read the book. You will be surprised by how contemporary the issues and social and economic abuses are. Even then, for example, Tower Hamlets had a reputation for being a sinkhole!

In Memoriam: Nelson Mandela

As the world mourns the death of Nelson Mandela – a truly great man – perhaps we should do so with a bit less open-eyed breathy wonderment and a bit more sensibly.

He was a mortal. He should have died months earlier, but his natural span was unnaturally and cruelly prolonged by the miracles of modern medicine. Had he been our father or grandfather[1], he might have been allowed to die with more dignity. However, the selfishness of the world, clinging to the wreckage of that once-great man, was unwilling to let him pass[2].

In my opinion, religion is an irrational security blanket that many need in order to face the uncertainties of life and death. Even though there are fortunately many others who have seen through the incense, smoke and mirrors of religion, some of them still feel the need for a secular idol – some greater being or ideal external to themselves. Some choose a pop star, some an actor; the most weak-minded choose a footballer or a fashion designer – perhaps even a shoe designer. Yet others, more intellectually and politically aware, chose Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was one of the greatest figures of the late 20^th century. He was a great man, a great statesman and a great father to post-apartheid South Africa. No-one could deny that his greatest achievement was that he showed the world how a single, dedicated man could change society. Yet at the same time what lay at the heart of his struggle was the belief that, in essence, we are all equal.

Bearing that in mind, perhaps the exaggerated reverence in which so many have held him for so long does in fact go against the grain of his philosophy and makes a mockery of his achievements. We will have to see if, without his presence, South Africa under the ANC will mire itself ever further in corruption and gradually return to being a one-party State, if it hasn’t already become one. 

Nelson Mandela was a man. No more, no less. Yes, a mere human being like you – like me – and as a man he surely had his faults just as the rest of us do. He might even, heaven forbid, have called his dog rude names when it did its number twos on the carpet.  He was not some sort of Christ-like figure as the first reports on BBC Radio 4 would have had us believe. I cringed as various journalists gushed on about his humility, his compassion; his capacity for forgiveness. I was half-waiting for news of his resurrection on the third day. At this moment in South Africa I am sure that, like the Roman soldiers around the cross played dice for Christ’s robes, a rather unseemly struggle is taking place to see who can make off with the great man’s mantle and political legacy. No doubt pretty soon the revisionist vultures, to their credit or shame[3], will also start to sink their talons into him and start to dig up the dirt.

Let us mourn then the man and his work and not the screen onto which so many politicians, artists and other trendy intellectuals, pseudo- or otherwise, have projected their own second-hand, lacklustre visions[4]. Rest in Peace Mr. Mandela, a peace that you have done so much to promote in your own country and continent. Let’s just hope that the example that you have set your land and countrymen will not, like your own remains, crumble into dust.

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[1] Although some people have deluded themselves into believing that he was indeed some sort of "universal" grandfather!

[2] Has anyone in the media said: “We shall not see his like again” yet?

[3] It all depends on your point of view.

[4] And no doubt made tidy sums on the royalites from their songs demanding or celebrating his release from prison – or indeed both.