The Return of Medieval

Walking to the station one afternoon, I passed the office block where, on the pavement, sheltering under an overhang, a man had been living in a tent for several weeks. Now, however, he was striking camp. The street-team had thrown his tent on to a refuse lorry and were scrubbing the pitch clean. Meanwhile, he was being led away by a police woman and several social workers (as I assumed them to be). Further on, I passed other street-dwellers, all in their usual places and untroubled by eviction – perhaps because they inhabit sleeping bags and are therefore not in contravention of town-planning byelaws applicable to tents. Dealing with homeless people is, I am sure, complex – as are the circumstances of their plight.

I was on my way to York to attend a friend’s* book launch and, while there, take in some of the tourist attractions. It was my first time in York, yet I was not surprised to find the same degree of vagrancy on the short walk from station to centre as there exists in other cities. One law of economics is universal: if you are begging, then you must site yourself in the midst of the maximum number of potential donors, especially nowadays, in the light of at least three developments. The first is that fewer people carry cash in their pockets; the second is that people are experiencing compassion fatigue; the third is that donors are increasingly persuaded by the argument that giving money to individuals merely buys their next drug fix, whereas funding registered charities is more likely to help in their rehabilitation. This latter I subscribe to, though I am convinced that vagrancy can only be eradicated by re-balancing our socio-political system. I am working on that.

The day after the launch party, I took a walk along the city wall to get a feel for the antiquity of York. I also visited some ancient buildings, among them the small church of All Saints, where the medieval stained glass windows are not only remarkable but also very accessible, being at shoulder-height. One of them, (pictured) from 1410, depicts a man in ‘eyewear’ that might be fashionable in hipster circles today. But it was the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall that really interested me because of its continuity (it is still owned and used by the society that founded it in 1357) and the fact that part of its original function was to provide respite for the destitute at a time when government was not concerned with such issues. There is much more to see in York, of course, but I ran out of time.

Back at Manchester Piccadilly, I encountered a scruffy-looking man dragging a reluctant creature on a leash. “Is that a ferret?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied but, as he was about to warm to conversation, I caught a whiff of a pungent odour which deterred me from getting closer. In fact, it put me in mind of medieval hygiene. I left him and his pet – which was struggling to propel itself along the slippery tiles. Although the smell of ferrets can be very unpleasant, there are ways of minimising it. This man evidently had made no effort to do so. In fact, he had even acquired it himself. Outside the station, the street-dwelling vagrants awaited and, swathed as they are in grubby blankets and sleeping bags, they added to my impression that I had slipped into a medieval time warp. Overall, I am sure that the human condition has improved with the progress of civilisation, though by Samuel Johnson’s measure – “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation” – that progress has surely stalled in recent years.

* Robert Powell

  

Knock Knock. Who'sThere?

What an enigma is Russia! Despite a political history that appears to have been characterised by brutal repression, corruption and militarism it has been – and still is – a breeding ground of massive talents in the arts, literature, music, philosophy and science. How can that be? And how is one supposed to come up with a popular characterisation of your stereotypical Russian? Are they cultured sophisticates who have shaped Western European arts and sciences? Are they vodka-swilling brutes, lost in a sea of nostalgic yearning for the Soviet era? Are they oppressed victims of a succession of callous political systems, inured to hardship, imbued with cynicism and devoid of hope? The fact that stereotyping the people of a nation is a lazy route to superficiality has never prevented us doing so, but with Russians, it seems particularly tricky. I know only one Russian personally – a young academic who has a winning smile, a sense of humour and a love of classical music. She has lived and worked in England long enough to be comfortable with both the language and the people – so much so that, when I told her she didn’t seem very Russian, she replied in an accent chillingly reminiscent of that Cold War character Olga, the nasty piece of work in From Russia with Love, “I can do if you want.” Therefore, based on my sample of one, I conclude that Russians are not easy to characterise.

Nevertheless, Putin’s henchmen are doing quite a good job of reinforcing the “nasty” image just now, sending heavies over here to bump off their surplus-to-requirements citizens, then claiming it has nothing to do with them. (Their assertion that the British Secret Service is to blame might just wash in a ‘spy-counter-spy’ scenario but having just witnessed Putin’s pretence of a democratic election, it is more likely that his regime blames the West in order to bolster its ‘strong leadership’ credentials at home.) Whilst it may be beneficial to London’s economy to have Russian oligarchs spending loads of money in the retail sector and lining the pockets of British lawyers with their endless ownership squabbles, we really must insist that they moderate their gangsterish tendencies, at least while guests in our relatively law-abiding country.

The question is how can we insist? Fighting talk of Britain “punching above its weight” is jingoistic, nostalgic nonsense. We moved into the lightweight category soon after WWII, where we have languished – resentfully – ever since. When faced with a powerful adversary, it is useful to cultivate powerful allies – regardless of their moral credentials – and it is with this pragmatic approach that British politics proceeds. Of course, diplomacy is always to be preferred to conflict but in this instance, diplomacy has hit a couple of obstacles. One is Russian insistence that the West is out to do them down. The other is Boris Johnson. Notwithstanding there has been a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats, this has achieved nothing so it may be time to adopt subtler tactics such as, for example, those employed in the latest spat between India and Pakistan.

The Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad recently complained that he was awoken at 03.00 when someone rang his doorbell and ran off. He insisted it was Pakistan security agents. A few days later, the Pakistani deputy high commissioner in New Delhi was awoken at 03.00 by an identical doorbell-ring-and-run incident. It was, he claimed, an act of retaliation. Now, this kind of low-level tit-for-tat diplomatic activity has its advantages. For one, it is a lot cheaper than expulsions, though just as effective. For another, it is well within the capabilities of Boris, a man well qualified to be leader of a doorbell-ring-and-run gang: we may be confident that he has at least some understanding of what the job entails. Furthermore, the Russians will be extremely annoyed, as it is well known they have no sense of humour.

Only Nine Months to Go!

The end of the world is nigh again. I saw the notification, outside Pret a Manger, by Victoria Station, written in black felt-tip on two sheets of cardboard propped against a wall. The sentences were ungrammatical, written more like a mood-poem with words like Lord Jesus, final judgement, angels, fire, destroy, etc. However, it conveyed its message effectively and was unequivocal about the date: December 2018. The presumed author and wild-haired prophet of doom sat at a nearby pavement table, a camouflage-print survivalist rucksack and a freebie golfing umbrella at his feet. He was nursing a Pret beverage and studying a copy of the Metro. Just why he would bother reading about news and current affairs is a mystery, considering that soon they will cease to be. I watched him through the window while I sipped my coffee. Was he was taking a well-earned break from proselytising, or just idly passing the time ‘til December? Whichever, he was making very little impact on his target audience. One person did stop to read the notices, a middle-aged woman carrying shopping bags, but then she glanced disdainfully at the off-duty prophet and plodded on, shaking her head.

I certainly hope the world will not end that soon – there is so much I would like to do that I can’t fit it all into the next nine months – but if it does, it will certainly not be the work of an avenging god and his cohorts of angels. If there were a god, why would he go to all the trouble of creating disobedient humans only to destroy them when they proved to be disobedient? In any case, would he do it just before his son’s birthday? I don’t think so. More likely, if the end comes at all, it will be because of the falling-out of two pumped-up egotists with eccentric hairstyles and itchy trigger-fingers. Still, it got me thinking that I should draw up a list of priorities to allow for life’s shorter-than-expected span. I could make a start by getting up earlier, then eliminating every moment of downtime from my daily schedule e.g. staring into space or watching property-porn on TV. Then I could pick off other pointless activities, such as going to the gym: fitness will not be advantageous in the event of one’s imminent and inevitable demise.

I finished my coffee and, with a renewed sense of urgency, went to catch my train for Margate, one of the places I have been curious to visit – but only since it got its new art gallery, the Turner Contemporary. Margate is one of many seaside resorts that lost its appeal when holidays in Spain became popular. The town’s investment in a ‘destination’ gallery aims to compensate for that loss of trade. I certainly hope it works although, like the Council’s other major developments in recent times – the civic centre, the tower of flats, the shopping centre – it is an ugly brute of a building in a very prominent position. The magic only happens when you step inside: the windows face the sea, so that the marring of Margate, be it new and overbearing or old and decaying, is not visible. Looking out to the sea and sky, it is possible to imagine a positive future for the children busy in the bright studios and workshops.

The main exhibition, currently, is themed to connect with T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. He worked on his creation while in the town, recuperating from a nervous disorder. In 1921, he sat in the ornate Edwardian shelter overlooking Nayland Rocks and wrote “On Margate Sands / I can connect / Nothing with nothing.” A bit like the Council, I thought, as I looked up at the wall of the adjacent bunker-like public toilets, where they had tacked the blue plaque commemorating the poet. How much more ugliness could they conceive in nine months?

Painfully Obvious

Today, March 8^th, is International Women’s Day, the culmination of a series of events intended to keep the spotlight on the fight for the equality of the sexes. There was a symbolic IWD procession through town last Saturday and, although I toyed with the notion of joining it to demonstrate my solidarity, I decided not to on the grounds that a) I would have felt like an interloper and b) I have lately developed nasty pains in my upper feet.

Besides, I was set to go shopping for a new pillow. Three years ago another pain afflicted me, attacking my right shoulder while I was in bed. The doctor I consulted had no explanation to offer, other than to say that the shoulder is a very “complex” joint. He offered me a nasty-sounding injection of steroids to numb it temporarily but I opted instead for his suggestion that an orthopaedic pillow and some gentle exercises might help to settle it down. Eventually, the pain went because, I assume, of my assiduous exercise regime and determined use of a brick-like pillow acquired from Ikea. However, now the pain is back. I suspect that the pillow has outlived its efficacy and I am on a mission to find an alternative. The problem, as I was to discover, is that the panoply of pillows on offer is bewildering. They come in many shapes and thicknesses; there are different fillings – feathers, foam, memory foam, polyester, or anti-allergenic fibres; some are elaborately designed to support the neck; and there are options for back, front, or side-sleepers (but none for restless sleepers). In the end, I bought one that I thought might do the trick, though I have embarked, I am sure, on a series of trials that could take a while and involve several discarded pillows.

Meanwhile, the IWD movement gathers momentum for its cause – aided by revelations from high-profile figures in Hollywood and various other businesses. Men can no longer dismiss the sex-equality issue as ‘women’s lib’ nor make light in any other way of the oppression and discrimination many women still endure. The subject fills the media, culture, and the arts and, though I did not join their march, I am supporting the cultural side of things. I went to see Manchester Art Gallery’s retrospective show of Annie Swynnerton, the painter who in 1922 became the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Academy, 154 years after its inception. (It goes almost without saying that she was also a suffragist and a Mancunian.)

Everywhere I look just now, there seems to be another story of women succeeding against the odds. It turns out that Hedy Lamarr was more than just a glamorous film star of the 1940s era: she was an inventor who, among other things, held a patent for the invention of a system to encrypt radio communications. I have just read the memoir of Daphne Phelps, an Englishwoman who moved, on her own, to Sicily in 1946, where she succeeded in rescuing a villa, despite her penniless state and the odds stacked against her by the ultra-patriarchal system.

I finished the book just before taking my painful feet along to the doctor – a woman (I’m getting used to it) – and one I had not seen before. She prodded them to see whether she could make me wince. “Well,” she said, “the foot is very complex,” then, tactfully addressing my age, “It’s probably just wear and tear.” I had suspected it might be but was hoping, nonetheless, for a miracle cure. She offered Ibuprofen and, when I expressed reluctance to mask the problem with painkillers, suggested I could try putting moulded inserts into my shoes. I headed hopefully for the shops but was a little dismayed to find there are many different types of insert. I would like to think I have more important things to do...

Social Heterogeneity

Though it takes just five minutes, the walk from home to the gym can be quite eventful. Starting in China Town, it passes the ornamental symbolic gate, where I am often caught, inadvertently, in tourists’ photos; then past the ATM on the corner, where the regular beggars have learned not to accost me; thence around the back of the coach station, where travellers sometimes ask for directions to the front of the coach station; then across the main street in the gay village, where I dodge another beggar-cluster and – occasionally – hear a busker; then, finally, past a bar-cum-nightclub that sometimes hosts daytime events for specialised-interest groups, such as Furries, Goths, Transvestites or visiting Belgian football supporters. Last Sunday it was pug owners.

Approaching the bar, I had become aware that I was sharing the pavement with more than the usual number of dog-walkers. Strange, I thought. Stranger still, however, was the fact that the dogs were all of the same breed. Later, on my way home and with my curiosity unabated, I approached a man standing by the door of the bar who had custody of two of these dogs. I asked him what was happening. “Pugfest” was his curt reply. Seeing that I was none the wiser, he repeated it. “Pugfest,” and then, elaborating, “in ‘ere,” he said, cocking his (pug-like) head toward the doorway of the bar. I suppose he deemed it a waste of effort to explain to the uninitiated the purpose of a Pugfest, let alone why it should be held in a bar in the gay village but, since he was disinclined to engage further, I went on my way, stepping deftly over a trio of tiny turds on the pavement.

Later, however, I looked up pugs on the internet. What I discovered was intriguing. They are bred as lapdogs, a project which seems to have been successful in that they are small and deemed to be playful, charming, docile, clever and sociable. On the downside, however, they are prone to flatulence, which must be something of a disincentive to actually holding them on one’s lap. But perhaps the dogs manage to overcome any consequent embarrassment or unpleasantness by deploying one of the other traits attributed to them – a good sense of humour. So far, so amusing; but there is a seriously undesirable consequence of their breeding – the panoply of health problems inherited from and exaggerated by their small gene pool. I am indifferent to dogs (and suspicious of the notion of their ‘ownership’) and, though some people interpret my indifference as dislike, it is nothing of the sort. The absence of love does not imply the presence of hate. From a neutral stance then, it seems fair to ask whether the breeding of pugs constitutes cruelty, since their genetic manipulation disregards the creatures’ suffering in order to maximise their human entertainment-value.

So, are pug-owners cruel people? Encounters like these, brief though they may be, highlight something that we know exists, yet do not necessarily or ordinarily engage with: social diversity. The walk to the gym takes me past people of various interests, beliefs, backgrounds and ambitions. Sometimes I speak to them. Sometimes I merely observe. Inevitably, I make value judgements about them. By the end of the walk, I am inclined to marvel that so many people, of so many different persuasions, can actually live together in relative harmony. Do we really have anything in common other than a degree of tolerance that keeps the peace? How do I respect the pug owner while pitying the pug? And if I were to stage a protest at the next Pugfest, would they set the dogs on me?