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?

My Sporting Heritage

Whenever I have attended a live sporting event, I have left the ground disappointed – if not early. Apart from one cricket match at Lords back in 1996, when a full-figured lady streaker ran across the pitch in my direction, nothing exciting has ever happened. Admittedly, I have attended very few events (not being a sports fan) and I may have been unlucky that they were all dull. Nevertheless, I am not prepared to kiss any more frogs – especially after last week’s rugby match between the Sharks and the Saracens, teams with names so misleadingly scintillating that they probably contravene the Trades Description Act.

Despite all this, I am partial to watching the occasional game of rugby on TV, thereby eliminating the inconveniences of driving and queuing, the inferior quality of refreshments, the high cost of tickets and – not least – the poor view of the action (supposing there is any). Perhaps the faint but lingering interest I have in the game is a legacy of my education at a boarding school in Plymouth, where participation was mandatory for all boys in possession of four functioning limbs. I was neither an accomplished nor enthusiastic player but I did have an uncle who played for Plymouth Albion. Let’s just put my attachment down to nostalgia, a feeling that has dominated the last few days especially, since I have been on a trip, with my partner, to Plymouth, the city I left in 1966 and have visited only rarely since.

A lot has changed there – as one might expect. For one thing, the old school is gone, its land sold to developers long ago. This saved my partner from the ritual of having to go and see it although, in fairness, she was indulgent when listening to my commentary on other landmarks. These included places such as the outdoor pools where I swam as a child, the shelter on the prom where I first kissed a girl, the hall where I danced to Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps and the pub where I bought my first (illegal) pint. Her tolerance of my nostalgia was exemplary, though it may have been enhanced by the fact that the sun was shining and the feel-good factor was high. The city’s extensive and varied seafront, from the Mayflower Steps at the Barbican, westwards around the Hoe, to the former Royal Naval stronghold at Mount Wise, looked at its best. And there was decent espresso where once there had been only Nescafé; sourdough where once there was only Wonderloaf.

Since Elizabethan times, the local economy has been dominated by the Royal Navy but, now that the “Senior Service” is shrunk to a fraction of the size it used to be, some fundamental changes are manifest. Admiralty land and buildings have been sold off, enabling the development of housing where once the industrial/military complex hogged all the best sea-facing locations. Not that sea-facing locations mattered to me as a schoolboy: I was more impressed by the futuristic architecture of the city’s central area, re-fashioned in the 1950s after the war-time bombings. The wide boulevards, lined with the clean contemporary temples of retail, intersected by the broad Armada Way running south to the war monument on the Hoe, all seemed perfect to me. Nowadays the shops, having to adapt to new ways of doing business, are under strain and some of them are looking less than glamorous. Nevertheless, the original street-plan remains harmoniously intact and, as such, lives up to the confident, optimistic vision of the future that inspired it and that appealed so much to my youthful idealism.

Overall, with encouraging signs of a revival of economic fortune based on tourism and higher education, the old place certainly has a lot more to interest me than just nostalgia.

Hazlet?

One evening last week I was reading David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men when, realising eventually that my power of concentration was no longer equal to the complexities of his imaginative and inventive prose, I gave up. I closed the book and picked up instead one that I had previously read and knew to be less taxing – Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. It’s an especially easy read for me because I have an affinity with the notion of travelling around Britain savouring the peculiarities of its varied parts. In fact, as it happened, I was due to set off the next morning on just such an expedition.

The destination was Barnard Castle, a classic market town on the upper reaches of the River Tees. I say classic because, like Appleby 30 miles to the west, its core is recognisably intact: it straddles a river, has a castle, a broad main street for the market stalls and numerous pubs, all of which are still trading. My visit did not coincide with market day but the shops compensated for that: many are owner-managed and are stocked therefore with local produce and specialities offered by friendly – sometimes eccentric – characters. Consequently, I am now the happy possessor of a hand-brush made of wood and bristle and a bag of small, brown, dried peas known as carlins which, although normally used as animal feed, are eaten by locals on a particular day in the ritual run-up to Easter. The brush will certainly find a purpose in the campervan but the carlins will probably remain in the back of a cupboard long after Easter has been and gone.

Dried peas apart, the food available in Castle Barnard is mouthwatering, especially for those who, like me, have a fondness for old-fashioned delicacies such as hazlet, pressed tongue, black pudding, pease pudding, faggots, pork pies, farmhouse cheese and artisan bread. With two butchers’ shops, three bakers and four grocers all on the same street, the ratio of outlets for fresh, locally sourced produce to density of population exceeds the wildest dreams of a foodie resident in central Manchester. I embarked on an orgy of stocking-up before we left the area, afraid that, if I did not support them, the shopkeepers would go out of business. I was mindful of the recent news headline that half of all the food now bought in Britain has been “processed” – which is to say that someone has added to it that which would be better left out i.e. sugar, palm oil, various chemicals and excessive quantities of salt and fat. This morning’s headlines were no surprise to me, therefore: the consumption of processed food contributes not only to obesity, but also the likelihood of contracting cancer. I hate to say “I told you so” but we hippies ( I was loosely associated) knew back in the day that ingesting food additives was unlikely to be good for one’s health, hence the popularity of our ‘fads’ such as brown rice, wholemeal bread, vegetarianism, macrobiotics etc. Not so much notice was taken of the medical advice concerning the ingestion of mind-bending chemicals, but no one is perfect. Nor did we hippies diet in vain: we sowed the seeds so that, alongside the rise of processed food, there is now a growing band of vegans determined to save the planet from excess, animals from harm and their digestive systems from contamination.

But the excursion was not all about food. One day was devoted to a walk up and down Teesdale, following the fast-flowing river that attracts daring canoeists in helmets and rubber onesies. Another was spent following the river Wear through nearby Durham, where the water is slow and wide and competitive rowing is the preferred sport. Durham is rightly famous for its history, its cathedral, its castle and its university, the library of which is named for one of its ex-chancellors - Bill Bryson.

How Very Civilised

In 1969 the BBC aired its “landmark” 13-part series Civilisation. There was – and still is – controversy over the title, given that the scope of the programme was confined to an appreciation of a limited range of western art, though in fairness to the producers, its remit was qualified by the subtitle A Personal View by Kenneth Clarke. This week the BBC announced the imminent broadcast of a similar “landmark” series, the nine-part Civilisations (note the plural.) The stated focus of the series is on art and creativity, though I suspect that the underlying question of what constitutes the civilised will be in play throughout. If, however, we believe that civilisation started with cave paintings 40,000 years ago, then perhaps it makes sense to see art as an index of its development.

Wiser men than me have baulked at the prospect of trying to come up with a definitive description of what civilisation is, as their frequent recourse to humour on the subject seems to indicate. Oscar Wilde once quipped, “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation between” – though we should bear in mind that he died in 1900 and much has happened since. Others have come up with definitions that, notably, do not mention art. They include: Arnold Toynbee, “Civilisation is a movement and not a condition”; Samuel Johnson, “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation”; H.G. Wells, “Civilisation is a race between disaster and education”; and Emile Zola, “Civilisation will not attain to its perfection until the last stone of the last church falls on the last priest”. And let us not forget Ghandi’s withering riposte when asked what he thought of western civilisation: “I think it would be a good idea.”

The elusiveness of the essence of civilisation seemed to permeate two films that I saw this week. The first, Makala, a documentary about the life of a Congolese charcoal maker, was tough to watch. His precarious, hand-to-mouth existence – trying to earn a living by making and selling charcoal in a war-ravaged country that has no infrastructure and with no support outside of family – seemed unimaginable, though true. The very absence of civilisation was palpable. The second, Phantom Threads, portrays an opposite extreme – the life of a fashionable London couturier circa 1955. It’s a love story, ultimately, but the pampering environment in which it is set – all frocks, flounces and tantrums – led me to question whether this facet of civilisation is, in fact, civilised at all. Decadent seems more apt.

However we might choose to define it, civilisation is always in the process of development, absorbing and incorporating diverse elements along the way – the more the better, for diversity builds resilience. Civilisations built on monocultures have all peaked and declined– Egyptian, Greek, Roman, to name a few. They were ousted by more powerful rivals, which suggests that more of the same would be futile in the long term. The sooner we get used to the idea of a global – but inclusive – civilisation, the better. That is why I was encouraged by other news this week. The village of Cheddar, which already punches above its weight in the fame stakes, has now come up with another knock-out. Eponymous Cheddar Man, a 10,000-year-old skeleton, has provided scientists with DNA that reveals his skin was black – or dark brown – and that he had blue eyes. People of white British ancestry alive today are his descendents, which means that the connection between Britishness and whiteness is a relatively recent phenomenon. There are probably some of us who may not like the idea, but to them I have to say “hard cheese.”