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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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.