Curses of a Drinking Class

In Parliament:

20th of February 1735
Petition from His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for Middlesex:
 
‘That the drinking of Geneva (gin) and other distilled spirituous liquors hath, for some years, greatly increased, particularly among the people of inferior rank, thus debauching their morals and driving them into all manner of vice and wickedness. Resolved: that the low price of spirituous liquors is the principal inducement to the excessive and pernicious use thereof’.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron preaches a sermon of desiring to end the ‘scandal’ of binge drinking throughout our good nation. Under a proposed policy ‘low-priced’ alcohol will increase between 40p and 50p a unit. Cameron’s own cabinet Ministers are in public revolt against such measures. The Education Secretary Mr. Michael Gove, in the manner of a 19th-Century Whig, described the plans as ‘an assault on individual liberty.’

1810
 
‘The member for Sussex, Mr. Fuller, entered the House in a state of inebriety and too audibly mistook the Speaker for an owl in an ivy-bush. He was removed by the Serjeant’.

Ex-Army officer and Labour MP Eric Joyce recently pleaded guilty in court to four charges of assault and affray having, after indulging in the low-priced alcohol served in the Strangers Bar at the House of Commons, become quite drunk he did attack four other parliamentarians, head-butting a Tory MP amidst the fracas. On the premises a glass of Merlot costs just £2.35. A pint of bitter, to you my Honourable Friend, is £2.40. The taxpayer subsidises MPs’ bars and canteens to the amount of £5million per annum.

Nobody has ever taken successful measures in the prevention of the British imbibing the demon drink, from the days of Roman wine, then the barbarians mead, to the present day of the Chavs alcopops. In a recent letter to the Daily Telegraph Mr. James Fenton of Oxford wrote that ‘drinking is already expensive and the desire to drink excessively usually comes simply from wanting to let off steam after a week at work, which provides the funds.’ Thus implying that a tax on the purchasing price of alcohol will not have its intended effect. Finnish citizens report that a higher unit price leads to less consumption, so that when they do drink they have less tolerance, and become drunker faster, with unfortunate consequences.

Excerpt: ‘Piccadilly Jim’ by P.G. Wodehouse

Scene: A Man About Town, the morning after the night before, and his butler:

‘Bayliss?’
‘Sir?’
‘A conviction is stealing over me that I am about to expire’
‘Shall I bring you a little breakfast Mr James?’
A strong shudder shook Jimmy. ‘Don’t be flippant Bayliss,’ he protested. ‘Try to cure yourself of this passion for being funny at the wrong time. Your comedy is good, but tact is a finer quality than humour. Perhaps you think I have forgotten that morning when I was feeling just as I do today, and you came to my bedside and asked me if I would like a nice rasher of ham. I haven’t and I never shall. You may bring me a brandy and soda. Not a large one. A couple of bathtubsfull will be enough.’
‘Very good Mr James’
‘And now leave me, Bayliss, for I would be alone. I have to make a series of difficult and exhaustive tests to ascertain whether I am still alive‘.

The hangover. The lack of prevention, the quest for the cure. For the stricken individual, supine under the covers of the bed, does contemplate the remains of the day with pink elephants, a pain of a certain magnitude behind the eyes, and the distress from the noise of falling leaves outside. Comfort must be sought. Palliatives and remedies are plentiful and easily acquired. And so, restorative medicine, food and aspirin, is taken. We live to drink another day.  

Mr. Fenton declares, rather sagely and of common sense, that ‘if the Government wishes to curb such behaviour, the tax increase would have to be on bacon and Alka-Seltzer.’

The Costume Maketh The Drama

ITV’s Sunday evening ‘Downton Abbey‘ has been a ratings success, but as soon as the second series began it then became a viewer’s guilty secret, with most of its audience acknowledging that rather than portraying reality through dramatic escapism it is a soap opera/costume drama, showing in style what it lacks in substance.

‘If England was what England seems
An’ not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass an’ paint,
’Ow quick we’d drop ‘er! But she ain’t!’ – (Rudyard Kipling)

I wonder how many of the production teams of the many recent period dramas are aged enough to remember or have any experience of the times they are attempting to evoke. ‘Mad Men’ was far too stylised and resembled a Martini advert. The cast of ‘Pan-Am’  look and sound completely contemporary, while the remake of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ has no essence of Edwardian people and the era that the 1970′s original so subtly portrayed.

In the Forsyte Saga books the writer John Galsworthy would describe how members of the family would step out of the front door of their townhouse near Green Park not being able to see a clear view of the end of the road because of the heavy, dense fog and also the pollution from the local industrial plants (which up to late Victorian times were sited in town for supply reasons). Anyone stepping outside would have their opera cape covered in grime, soot and dust before they traversed into the awaiting Hansom cab. Servants at the turn of the of 20th century did not have daily access to baths or showers. They spent half the working day black-leading fireplaces, carrying coal scuttles around and scrubbing stairs. They would definitely not have looked as though they had just indulged in a ten minute session on the make-up counter at Harvey Nicks. In the film ‘Legends of the Fall’ there is a World War 1 battlescene that had obviously been shot in a studio, the soldiers were far too clean for having lived in mud-filled trenches, there was no smoke or dust in the air from artillery bombardments – it reminded me of Thunderbirds.

The concept of redefining history, of it’s people and contemporaneous events is nothing new to producers of entertainment. And realism is a different form than escapism. Downton Abbey’s evocation of the English class system is superficial, a softly filtered view of a selective romanticism.  But the fashion and styles are pleasing and the storylines humour us. Which is what Sunday evenings are for.

‘Downton Abbey: Tracking The Anachronisms’
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/3133/

‘Anachronisms Beyond Nitpickery’
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3767

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8838401/Downton-Abbey-characters-caught-using-modern-phrases.html

Flywheels, Shysters and Flywheels

The American network ABC is to film their own pilot of ’Only Fools and Horses’ (to be written by the writers of Scrubs). Steve Carell, who played the lead in the US version of The Office, has said that playing the David Jason character would be his ‘dream role’, though Mr. Carell’s suggestion that Ben Stiller play Grandad requires strenuous use of the imagination.

Del Boy was a clever creation of the lovable rogue variety: true and loyal to his friends and family even if he did pocket a larger share of profits co-earned on their escapades, but my vote for all-time shyster and shifty so-and-so has to be Sergeant Bilko, as played by Phil Silvers, in the 1950′s US series (no, I am not referring to the film remake starring Steve Martin – to have even thought to undertake his own reprisal of the role I considered to be the most foolish, misguided and unforgiveable sacrilege).

Ukridge (Christian names: Stanley Featherstonehaugh) the P.G. Wodehouse literary character, is a close second: an Edwardian schemer generally to be found wearing a yellow Mackintosh, pince-nez held in place with wire from a ginger beer bottle and a shirt collar rather loosely attached to his shirt. Suffering from lack of a regular income Ukridges’s adventures involve continually attempting to fund a lifestyle of whisky, cigars and pork chops by extorting those closest to him. But the character is never malevolent or unlikeable even when at a dinner party one evening (in the finest of short stories: ‘Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate’) he is inspired by a dining colleague telling of subscribing to an insurance policy in a tabloid and was in receipt of a payout subsequent to an accident. Ukridge suggests that they one and all subscribe to as many policies as they can manage, a volunteer would then undergo a staged accident and the resultant dividend would be distributed amongst all involved. Financial largesse does not initially bring volunteers, being asked to have their legs broken, forward: but Ukridge has plans.

Sgt. Bilko is in a class of his own. His adventures, in each episode of the Phil Silvers Show, take place in the barracks where Bilko and the soldiers under his command reside. Once Silvers had settled into the role he created a manic, devious, and comedic legend who sleeps in every morning dreaming how to get rich (‘What’s that music?’ he mumbles half-asleep in bed as the bugle for reveille is played in the yard), avoids most of the duties the military has assigned to him and causes chaos throughout the Army base that results in his Colonel having a perpetual dazed expression of being unable to quite work out what is happening to him.

Pvt. Paparelli: ‘Bilko’s gonna think of something. Remember the time I got that letter from my wife saying that she wanted to break up with me? Remember what Bilko did?’

Pfc. Holbrook: ‘He got your wife back?’

Pvt. Paparelli: ‘No, he got me another wife!’

The programme was repeated on British television in the 1980’s and 1990’s but not since. CBS have released only the first series of the show on DVD and have stated that they have no plans to release the other three series, which if I was a lawyer I would do my best to prove constitutes a crime. Why many other fans and I are to be deprived of being able to watch 142 episodes of one of the all-time great tv comedies deserves explanation. There is an on-line DVD petition at the Phil Silvers Appreciation Society.

Sgt. Bilko DVD Campaign Petition | GoPetition

Charles Dickens PLC

At the turn of the century many internet worshipping soothsayers predicted the complete and final demise of the book in paper form. Within a year or two of this proclamation J.K. Rowling had solely created a new-found enjoyment for a whole new younger generation, millions throughout the world, with the printed novel.

On the bi-centenary of the birth of Charles Dickens there is much rejoicing ‘pon the land: services, readings, tv and radio programmes – the Prince of Wales laid a wreath at the author’s grave in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey, all in recognition of the Victorian novelist’s significance (I wish Dickens had been a politician as well as a writer).

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books are selling in thousands subsequent to the recent BBC productions. If more esteemed literature of such kind was taught in schools it would serve a recognised social and educational purpose – the biographer Claire Tomalin has recently lamented that children aren’t being taught to how to read and appreciate the novelist’s works.

The anniversary/bi-centenary, a brief media episode now already passed, has benefited the publishers who are piling up the coins at the counting houses. The government should ensure that all libraries are kept open and that our schools curriculum is revitalised. May I suggest to them the Elementary Education Act of 1870 as appropriate reading.

The Origin of the Speeches

I’m occasionally asked by friends the meaning of certain words and expressions I vocalise, in jest or when shouting at someone, myself being a frequent employer of pre- and post-Second World War English vernacular, courtesy of my Grandmother. Mostly I’m unaware as to origins or literal meanings, only the context. 

My Grandmother used the expression ‘right said Fred’, in apropos of: ‘well there we are, that’s that,’ say on completion of the washing up or at the conclusion of debating the quality of Salieri’s unfinished works. ‘Orf we jolly well go‘ Gran would declaim when departing for shopping or a visit to a friend. Both expressions I continue to use, only until recently finding their true origins. This resembles a linguistic DNA, an invisible connection of code, brought to existence by words mentioned in passing. Sayings that sub-consciously are passed between family and friends, surviving, in perpetuity.

At work, having tidied a pile of socks, I once uttered ’right said Fred’ and then witnessed my boss promptly burst into song: ‘#let’s have a cup of tea#’. It was then, years after my Grandmother had passed away, that I discovered the expression had originated from a song recorded by Bernard Cribbins in 1962 (the composer Ted Dicks passed away this month). The other saying is courtesy of Jimmy Young, as I recently inadvertently discovered when reading radio history. Having discovered the origins of the sayings has made me even more fond of them.

‘Minimum Wage, Minimum Effort’

A job is advertised in the press:

The employer requires that:

‘you will be confident, driven and highly-motivated, you will have experience, you will have the relevant background, you will have the relevant qualifications, you will provide high standards of service, you need to have excellent leadership skills, you will be a team worker who can operate as an individual, you will generate daily, weekly and monthly targets, and

we offer a competitive salary of £6.95 an hour.’

How can £6.95 per hour be competitive? As in competing for almost the lowest wage on offer? Job descriptions invariably display, in rather lengthy lists, the employer’s demands and requirements for the prospective employee. And for all this the lucky soul is to be rewarded (the UK minimum wage for workers over 21 years of age is £6.08) with pay of a paltry few shillings above the minimum wage.  

Please Sir, could I have some more?

Every Dog Must Have His Dinner

The shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has referred to the government’s proposed NHS reforms as ‘a dog’s breakfast’. What happened to the ‘dog’s dinner?’ Will the cuts affect supplies of Winalot? Does the dog have a say in this? Which MP represents said dog in which constituency? Can the dog obtain tax credits if he can no longer afford a dinner and can only manage a breakfast? Ian Duncan-Smith, are you listening, it’s not just the people of this country who are going to be affected by your actions.