The BBC comedy sketch "Real Housewives of Isis" is being condemned as absolutely tasteless, but I thought it was funny, topical and a lot less offensive to pious ears than the lyrics of "Colonel Bogey" (which, if you don't know, describe the anatomy of various leaders of the Nazi high command).
I hope it is seen by a hundred thousand British schoolgirls. Mocking murderous thugs (and their female enablers) is an enduring part of freedom-loving British culture.
Update: I am not sure how people assert with intellectual honesty that the sketch mocks ISIS's victims. These girls are clearly from England. One even mentions Birmingham.
Showing posts with label Britain in General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain in General. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 January 2017
Thursday, 15 December 2016
Muslim "Reality" TV Show
The clever people who brought The Great British Bake Off to our screens had another brainwave and recruited ten Muslims to live in a house together for a week or so. B.A. and I watched with great interest, and we often felt sorry for these poor people. After watching each of the two episodes, I went to Twitter to see what others thought, and so many people demanded a "Christians Like Us" show that nightmarish visions of disparate Catholics all screaming at each other in the kitchen about Pope Francis danced in my head.
Because I once wrote about a British TV show and at least one of the cast, Googling himself, read what I wrote about him and wrote something confused in the combox, I won't mention the Muslims by name but by archetype.
Praying in Front
The Neo-Trad. The Neo-Trad was a young Black British convert from Christianity, a boxer. He has been in prison for attempting to travel to Syria on a fake passport. He upset all the others by citing the Koran and the hadiths for his beliefs and was therefore the focus of everyone's attention.
The Bully. The Bully was a supposedly good-natured young Black British convert from Christianity, a comic. He runs a soup kitchen and won hearts of viewers in the first episode by crudely saying that his religious philosophy included not being a "d***". He lost those hearts by going insane when someone else took the onions he had bought out of his own pocket (for probably no more than 89 p) and cut them up. "Who's the Bully cooking for?" I wondered. More on this theme anon.
The Victim. The Victim was an Asian Scot who was filmed brushing his beard a lot. He was there because he identifies as gay. He insisted on a "coming out of the closet" ritual, which divided the Muslims in the room, naturally. There was some discussion if you can be gay and Muslim. "Surely not if being gay is your religion," inwardly snarled little Dorothy. When the Victim wasn't brushing his beard, stealing onions, entertaining gay friends or explaining what "a bear" is, he was pawing at:
The Ambiguous. The Ambiguous was a bear-like Asian Brit whose family told him he was marrying his cousin, and his reaction was surprise and acquiescence. He has never met this girl but chats with her often on the phone. For an guy soon to be married he was strangely passive about all the hugs and caresses he received from The Victim. When the house was entertaining an English Young Fogey, the Ambiguous did an entertaining impression of a bashful young miss in a hijab.
The Philanthropist. The Philanthropist was a young Syrian visitor of a peaceful and heroic disposition. In the first episode, he helps the Neo-Trad in his attempts to convert the people of York to Islam, and on his way home attracts the attention of a self-described member of the English Defense League, who wonders what the filming is about. The Philanthropist is delighted and attempts to befriend the EDL guy. When the EDL guy says he hates ISIS, the Philanthropist declares that he also hates ISIS, as they have destroyed his country. The EDL guy is taken aback. It's clear he doesn't want to think a Syrian Muslim could ever be his friend, but it was obvious The Philanthropist had made him think. When the joyful Philanthropist goes home to tell everyone about this, he is given absolute hell by The Bully. The Philanthropist replies something along the lines of "You are right, brother. I apologize."
Incidentally, there was no evidence the kid was a paid up member of the EDL. The British poor love to shock people by claiming association with far-right groups. Friends canvassing in my area were often told by tenants that they were voting for the BNP. There wasn't a BNP candidate for miles. More on the indigenous British poor anon.
Praying Behind
The Beauty. The Beauty was a polite but self-assured young South Asian Londoner, a genius with the make-up bag, fashionably dressed, and if she wanted to be the friend of any one of us, we would be in awe that anyone so cool wanted to be our friend. She didn't wear hijab, and got angry when the Neo-Trad gave her pamphlets against "Free-Mixing" of the sexes and modest dressing.
The Intellectual. The Intellectual was the one woman who covered her hair. Unlike the Beauty, she seemed to have a scholarly interest in Islam. She was South Asian and went on at length about British values being racism, colonialism--all those things we would never associate with, e.g., the Mughals or the Ottoman Empire. She believes music is "haram" but to show good-will went along to the Beauty's planned karaoke night.
The Shia. Like the Intellectual, the South Asian Shia woman gave evidence of having read Muslim scriptures. She has a star turn in the second episode when the Neo-Trad refuses to condemn the murder of Shias by other Muslims and she is so mad, she cries. The Neo-Trad apologizes off-camera, and the Shia tells the tale, once again putting the focus on Mr Neo-Trad.
The Elderly Hippy. The Elderly Hippy was a "well-spoken" Englishwoman married to a South Asian man. She is now about 70 and wears a light shawl over her head, Pakistani style. She shouted a lot and threw her meagre weight around, possibly under the impression that because this works for Pakistani grannies, it would work for her. It didn't. She was livid whenever the conversation returned to racism. B.A. couldn't stand her, but I felt sorry for her until she said "Wear a hijab on your tongue, girl" to the Beauty. Maybe Asians find this lovable in old Asian ladies, but nobody with an ounce of English or Scottish blood thinks this is charming in aged English hippies.
Not actually praying
The Lapsed. The Muslim twitterati were in stitches over her explanation that she doesn't pray in traditional Muslim ways but by writing letters to Allah. In short, middle-aged, West Asian, possibly Muslim in Name Only, as doesn't have much interest in religion, actually
Here is a link to the episodes, so I can go straight to my general observations now.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
First, the dominant figures of the show were the Neo-Trad, who gave the impression that there was something more to Islam than feeling good about doing good, and the Beauty. The Neo-Trad and the Beauty were clearly attracted to each other. This is hardly surprising as the Beauty was the most feminine woman around, and the Neo-Trad was the alpha male everyone else was afraid of. Scarily, the Neo-Trad was the only man who made Islam sound interesting and life-changing. The Philanthropist merely reminded me to be a better Christian.
In the last minutes of the second episode, the Intellectual binds the Beauty's hair up in a cloth, and the the Neo-Trad practically blushes. The Beauty herself seems a bit overwhelmed by the Alpha Male's delight, and I was pleased to see more evidence for my pet theory, which is that religious conservatism handswomanly certain kinds of women power on a plate. Meanwhile the Bully was too obsessed with his own victimhood (including at the hands of other Muslims) as a black man to take the Alpha Male mantel from the Neo-Trad.
Second, the official charity shown was mighty cold. The Bully was supposedly a good guy because he runs a soup kitchen. One wonders how pleasant this soup kitchen is, for when he was about to cook for his housemates, he made that incredibly unpleasant scene about the onions. The Victim took it very personally and then went out into the garden for a cry.
The Beauty was annoyed when the homeless Englishmen she met in a York soup kitchen blamed their homelessness in part on immigrants--first mentioning the Poles, incidentally--because of the battle for social housing. The papers did not bother to report that these homeless guys also admitted their own fault. The Beauty looked miffed as soon as they mentioned immigration, and to do her justice I think she would have thrown a strop even if they hadn't mentioned "the Asians." They did, so she did throw a strop, which the homeless guys were probably hoping for. (I suspect they mentioned the Poles thinking the Bollywood-pale beauty might be a Pole.) Maybe in Pakistan the homeless crawl at the feet of their benefactors, but this is Britain. The British poor don't crawl.
Not having heard of the Preferential Option for the Poor, the Beauty told them that if her parents hadn't come to Britain, she wouldn't have been there, and they wouldn't have had lunch that day. Twitter was delighted at her sass, but this was--of course--total nonsense. Not only do British soup kitchens predate the Beauty, they probably predate Islam.
I am of two minds about shouting at the homeless for their political opinions. If I were serving soup to homeless Mohawk Indians in Toronto and they complained about white people hogging Social Services, I wouldn't throw a strop. I wouldn't feel at all menaced by the opinions of homeless indigenous people. On the other hand, maybe that is because I have so much social privilege, it would be like a duke dueling with a footman in a Georgette Heyer novel. By telling off the homeless, the Beauty showed she thought she and the homeless Englishmen were social equals, and if so, good for her.
Third, I am not sure what lessons the BBC wanted us to take from their show, but here's what I got out of it: Muslim women do not have to wear foreign or offensive clothing to be considered "good Muslims." At the end of the day, wearing a headscarf (let alone the ugly black bag, as one Muslim woman called the jilbab) is a matter of personal choice, just like wearing a political button or a mantilla at Mass. You can argue on feminist grounds that Muslim women can wear whatever they want, but you can't argue this on Muslim grounds without annoying all the Muslim women who prefer to wear western dress in the west---or, indeed, their own non-Saudi indigenous costumes.
Fourth, I am glad the organizers cast a Shia, for FINALLY the ideas of sect and sectarianism in Islam have been introduced to the great mass of TV-watching British people.
Fifth, I was disappointed in Episode 2 that so many of the cast refused an invitation to see a Second World War memorial. (Naturally the Elderly Hippy was one of them.) You could almost read the RACISM COLONIALISM MURDER thought balloons over their heads. The irony is, of course, that the thousands of British (which at the time included vast numbers of South Asians) who lost their lives in the Second World War were fighting a staggeringly racist, colonialist, murderous regime. Saying no to a night out in a bar is one thing, but turning up your nose at a war memorial--in Britain--is something else entirely.
UPDATE: You will no doubt wonder why I have called someone all the newspapers are calling a fundamentalist, disgusting, outrageous, etc., etc., etc. a Neo-Trad. It is because I don't feel a need to distance myself from the young man and pretend he doesn't represent anybody else in the whole of Britain. Quite obviously he does, and he even has an argument. It might not be a good argument, but it is an argument. We were rather cross that he was not allowed to finish his sentences. "You should wear the jilbab because--" "SHRIEK BOO HORROR STOP!" "But homosexuality is haram because---" "OH! ARGH! SHRIEK!" One felt a bit sorry for the man.
As a traditionalist Catholic, I am interested in what my religion has actually taught ubique et semper. As a neo-traditionalist Muslim, the young man is interested in what his teachers say "the purest form of Islam" is, but it's actually more Neo than Trad because it arguably dates from the eighteenth century.
The scariest person on the show was actually the Philanthropist because although he was a truly decent, humble man, he bowed down and kissed the feet of hatred because a stronger man told him to. Not good.
UPDATE 2: While mulling over who I liked in this show--besides the Beauty--I decided I also liked the Shia because she was able to shut up the Neo-Trad with a real argument, which was along the lines of "How can you complain about discrimination [against Muslims] when you discriminate against Shia?" I also liked the Young Fogey because he exhibited the old-fashioned English aplomb and humour one once expected English Like Him to have in social situations. Chippy class-conscious Twitter hates him, but he reminded me of my favourite Young Fogeys, and as for the disdainful remark about Nando's, B.A. also never wants to go to Nando's.
Because I once wrote about a British TV show and at least one of the cast, Googling himself, read what I wrote about him and wrote something confused in the combox, I won't mention the Muslims by name but by archetype.
Praying in Front
The Neo-Trad. The Neo-Trad was a young Black British convert from Christianity, a boxer. He has been in prison for attempting to travel to Syria on a fake passport. He upset all the others by citing the Koran and the hadiths for his beliefs and was therefore the focus of everyone's attention.
The Bully. The Bully was a supposedly good-natured young Black British convert from Christianity, a comic. He runs a soup kitchen and won hearts of viewers in the first episode by crudely saying that his religious philosophy included not being a "d***". He lost those hearts by going insane when someone else took the onions he had bought out of his own pocket (for probably no more than 89 p) and cut them up. "Who's the Bully cooking for?" I wondered. More on this theme anon.
The Victim. The Victim was an Asian Scot who was filmed brushing his beard a lot. He was there because he identifies as gay. He insisted on a "coming out of the closet" ritual, which divided the Muslims in the room, naturally. There was some discussion if you can be gay and Muslim. "Surely not if being gay is your religion," inwardly snarled little Dorothy. When the Victim wasn't brushing his beard, stealing onions, entertaining gay friends or explaining what "a bear" is, he was pawing at:
The Ambiguous. The Ambiguous was a bear-like Asian Brit whose family told him he was marrying his cousin, and his reaction was surprise and acquiescence. He has never met this girl but chats with her often on the phone. For an guy soon to be married he was strangely passive about all the hugs and caresses he received from The Victim. When the house was entertaining an English Young Fogey, the Ambiguous did an entertaining impression of a bashful young miss in a hijab.
The Philanthropist. The Philanthropist was a young Syrian visitor of a peaceful and heroic disposition. In the first episode, he helps the Neo-Trad in his attempts to convert the people of York to Islam, and on his way home attracts the attention of a self-described member of the English Defense League, who wonders what the filming is about. The Philanthropist is delighted and attempts to befriend the EDL guy. When the EDL guy says he hates ISIS, the Philanthropist declares that he also hates ISIS, as they have destroyed his country. The EDL guy is taken aback. It's clear he doesn't want to think a Syrian Muslim could ever be his friend, but it was obvious The Philanthropist had made him think. When the joyful Philanthropist goes home to tell everyone about this, he is given absolute hell by The Bully. The Philanthropist replies something along the lines of "You are right, brother. I apologize."
Incidentally, there was no evidence the kid was a paid up member of the EDL. The British poor love to shock people by claiming association with far-right groups. Friends canvassing in my area were often told by tenants that they were voting for the BNP. There wasn't a BNP candidate for miles. More on the indigenous British poor anon.
Praying Behind
The Beauty. The Beauty was a polite but self-assured young South Asian Londoner, a genius with the make-up bag, fashionably dressed, and if she wanted to be the friend of any one of us, we would be in awe that anyone so cool wanted to be our friend. She didn't wear hijab, and got angry when the Neo-Trad gave her pamphlets against "Free-Mixing" of the sexes and modest dressing.
The Intellectual. The Intellectual was the one woman who covered her hair. Unlike the Beauty, she seemed to have a scholarly interest in Islam. She was South Asian and went on at length about British values being racism, colonialism--all those things we would never associate with, e.g., the Mughals or the Ottoman Empire. She believes music is "haram" but to show good-will went along to the Beauty's planned karaoke night.
The Shia. Like the Intellectual, the South Asian Shia woman gave evidence of having read Muslim scriptures. She has a star turn in the second episode when the Neo-Trad refuses to condemn the murder of Shias by other Muslims and she is so mad, she cries. The Neo-Trad apologizes off-camera, and the Shia tells the tale, once again putting the focus on Mr Neo-Trad.
The Elderly Hippy. The Elderly Hippy was a "well-spoken" Englishwoman married to a South Asian man. She is now about 70 and wears a light shawl over her head, Pakistani style. She shouted a lot and threw her meagre weight around, possibly under the impression that because this works for Pakistani grannies, it would work for her. It didn't. She was livid whenever the conversation returned to racism. B.A. couldn't stand her, but I felt sorry for her until she said "Wear a hijab on your tongue, girl" to the Beauty. Maybe Asians find this lovable in old Asian ladies, but nobody with an ounce of English or Scottish blood thinks this is charming in aged English hippies.
Not actually praying
The Lapsed. The Muslim twitterati were in stitches over her explanation that she doesn't pray in traditional Muslim ways but by writing letters to Allah. In short, middle-aged, West Asian, possibly Muslim in Name Only, as doesn't have much interest in religion, actually
Here is a link to the episodes, so I can go straight to my general observations now.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
First, the dominant figures of the show were the Neo-Trad, who gave the impression that there was something more to Islam than feeling good about doing good, and the Beauty. The Neo-Trad and the Beauty were clearly attracted to each other. This is hardly surprising as the Beauty was the most feminine woman around, and the Neo-Trad was the alpha male everyone else was afraid of. Scarily, the Neo-Trad was the only man who made Islam sound interesting and life-changing. The Philanthropist merely reminded me to be a better Christian.
In the last minutes of the second episode, the Intellectual binds the Beauty's hair up in a cloth, and the the Neo-Trad practically blushes. The Beauty herself seems a bit overwhelmed by the Alpha Male's delight, and I was pleased to see more evidence for my pet theory, which is that religious conservatism hands
Second, the official charity shown was mighty cold. The Bully was supposedly a good guy because he runs a soup kitchen. One wonders how pleasant this soup kitchen is, for when he was about to cook for his housemates, he made that incredibly unpleasant scene about the onions. The Victim took it very personally and then went out into the garden for a cry.
The Beauty was annoyed when the homeless Englishmen she met in a York soup kitchen blamed their homelessness in part on immigrants--first mentioning the Poles, incidentally--because of the battle for social housing. The papers did not bother to report that these homeless guys also admitted their own fault. The Beauty looked miffed as soon as they mentioned immigration, and to do her justice I think she would have thrown a strop even if they hadn't mentioned "the Asians." They did, so she did throw a strop, which the homeless guys were probably hoping for. (I suspect they mentioned the Poles thinking the Bollywood-pale beauty might be a Pole.) Maybe in Pakistan the homeless crawl at the feet of their benefactors, but this is Britain. The British poor don't crawl.
Not having heard of the Preferential Option for the Poor, the Beauty told them that if her parents hadn't come to Britain, she wouldn't have been there, and they wouldn't have had lunch that day. Twitter was delighted at her sass, but this was--of course--total nonsense. Not only do British soup kitchens predate the Beauty, they probably predate Islam.
I am of two minds about shouting at the homeless for their political opinions. If I were serving soup to homeless Mohawk Indians in Toronto and they complained about white people hogging Social Services, I wouldn't throw a strop. I wouldn't feel at all menaced by the opinions of homeless indigenous people. On the other hand, maybe that is because I have so much social privilege, it would be like a duke dueling with a footman in a Georgette Heyer novel. By telling off the homeless, the Beauty showed she thought she and the homeless Englishmen were social equals, and if so, good for her.
Third, I am not sure what lessons the BBC wanted us to take from their show, but here's what I got out of it: Muslim women do not have to wear foreign or offensive clothing to be considered "good Muslims." At the end of the day, wearing a headscarf (let alone the ugly black bag, as one Muslim woman called the jilbab) is a matter of personal choice, just like wearing a political button or a mantilla at Mass. You can argue on feminist grounds that Muslim women can wear whatever they want, but you can't argue this on Muslim grounds without annoying all the Muslim women who prefer to wear western dress in the west---or, indeed, their own non-Saudi indigenous costumes.
Fourth, I am glad the organizers cast a Shia, for FINALLY the ideas of sect and sectarianism in Islam have been introduced to the great mass of TV-watching British people.
Fifth, I was disappointed in Episode 2 that so many of the cast refused an invitation to see a Second World War memorial. (Naturally the Elderly Hippy was one of them.) You could almost read the RACISM COLONIALISM MURDER thought balloons over their heads. The irony is, of course, that the thousands of British (which at the time included vast numbers of South Asians) who lost their lives in the Second World War were fighting a staggeringly racist, colonialist, murderous regime. Saying no to a night out in a bar is one thing, but turning up your nose at a war memorial--in Britain--is something else entirely.
UPDATE: You will no doubt wonder why I have called someone all the newspapers are calling a fundamentalist, disgusting, outrageous, etc., etc., etc. a Neo-Trad. It is because I don't feel a need to distance myself from the young man and pretend he doesn't represent anybody else in the whole of Britain. Quite obviously he does, and he even has an argument. It might not be a good argument, but it is an argument. We were rather cross that he was not allowed to finish his sentences. "You should wear the jilbab because--" "SHRIEK BOO HORROR STOP!" "But homosexuality is haram because---" "OH! ARGH! SHRIEK!" One felt a bit sorry for the man.
As a traditionalist Catholic, I am interested in what my religion has actually taught ubique et semper. As a neo-traditionalist Muslim, the young man is interested in what his teachers say "the purest form of Islam" is, but it's actually more Neo than Trad because it arguably dates from the eighteenth century.
The scariest person on the show was actually the Philanthropist because although he was a truly decent, humble man, he bowed down and kissed the feet of hatred because a stronger man told him to. Not good.
UPDATE 2: While mulling over who I liked in this show--besides the Beauty--I decided I also liked the Shia because she was able to shut up the Neo-Trad with a real argument, which was along the lines of "How can you complain about discrimination [against Muslims] when you discriminate against Shia?" I also liked the Young Fogey because he exhibited the old-fashioned English aplomb and humour one once expected English Like Him to have in social situations. Chippy class-conscious Twitter hates him, but he reminded me of my favourite Young Fogeys, and as for the disdainful remark about Nando's, B.A. also never wants to go to Nando's.
Tuesday, 8 November 2016
The Christmas Cake is in the Oven!
Great was my concern when I saw via Facebook that my mother had already baked, wrapped and put to bed her Christmas Cake for its long Advent nap. However, I have been busy clearing the decks for my trip to Warsaw, so I managed to start only yesterday. That's when I bought, washed and dried the sultanas, California seedless raisins and currants and soaked them overnight in brandy.
Today I bought the rest of the ingredients for the fun part, which is putting everything into a vat and mixing it up with my arm. My vat used to be part of a tabletop oven. I have no interest in the heating device/lid, but the safety-glass oven itself is excellent for mixing the Christmas Cake batter.
Christmas decorations appeared in Edinburgh shops on November 1, and there are now post-Bonfire Night supermarket adverts--actually alluding to Bonfire Night--on TV counselling us not to resent Christmas stuff. "Too soon?" asks a supermarket ad husband, showing his wife a Christmas song CD. "Nah, bring it on," says the supermarket ad wife.
Since proper Christmas Cake must soak in brandy (or rum, if your family uses rum instead) for at least six weeks before eating, the appearance of Christmas adverts is a sign that it is now time to start the Cake. Perhaps this is why I don't mind the beginning of British Christmas shopping season falling on November 1. Meanwhile, many Britons--including my husband--get holidays from Christmas Day until New Year's Day, so there are at least Eight Days of Christmas, instead of Almost Two Months and Then Blah. Friends of ours have an annual Twelfth Night party, too, so traditionally enought that is the last hoorah before Burns' night.
This year I have promised B.A. that I will not go crazy with the Christmas baking and will even make a small version of the trifle. I didn't say anything about the Cake. Or the Bun. Wigilia Supper, however, has been banned by name.
"Unless a Pole spends Christmas here," I qualified.
"No," said B.A.
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Every Backpacker's Mother's Worst Nightmare?
Of all the places to be attacked by a young "French national" yelling "Allah Ahbar", who would imagine a backpacker's hostel in Queensland, Australia?
Probably a mother, that's who.
One of my sisters had the Australian backpacker adventure, working as a waitress in some outback tavern, bungee-jumping, hugging koala bears... It never occurred to me to worry about her being stabbed to death by "French nationals." That was before I had access to the internet, so I didn't yet know about the cats-meat imam, the beach rioters and other colourful characters who have popped up in Oz.
My father has been to Australia a number of times, and he once brought back a book called "Dangerous Australians." It featured extremely scary snakes, man-eating plants, jumbo-jet sized bugs and probably fanged hedgehogs. Thus I was a bit nervous that my sister might encounter them.
I have a special horror of tourists who behave badly. Canadians pride ourselves on being our usual polite, self-effacing selves on holiday, and we flinch at the loudness of Americans. (Most American tourists I've come across abroad have been perfectly nice, but comparatively loud. A study should be done to see if Americans really are louder than anyone else. Germans are also loud, incidentally, and seem to think nobody around understands German when they make fun of the nuns walking across a piazza in Rome, etc.) In fact, there are also loud Canadians, very likely including me. It's hard to tell when it's you. Meanwhile, B.A. and I cringe at stories of Britishers abroad, especially the ones who go to Poland, already out of their minds with drink. The worst tourists I have seen abroad were British men. However, I have never heard of a British backpacker suddenly hauling off and stabbing other backpackers--and a dog--while shrieking "Allah Akbar."
Incidentally, I also have a special horror of foreign students who behave badly. This incident sank deep into my soul. This is partly because I was a foreign student at the time. However, it may also be because I have the highest respect for foreign students who can conquer language barriers and culture shock well enough to get a university degree abroad.
Whenever I think about going to the Jagellonian to finish my theology PhD ( one of my we-win-the-Lotto dreams), I feel chills of terror. Currently I am reading Benedict XVI's "Why I believe" in Polish, and it is soooo harrrrrrrd.
Probably a mother, that's who.
One of my sisters had the Australian backpacker adventure, working as a waitress in some outback tavern, bungee-jumping, hugging koala bears... It never occurred to me to worry about her being stabbed to death by "French nationals." That was before I had access to the internet, so I didn't yet know about the cats-meat imam, the beach rioters and other colourful characters who have popped up in Oz.
My father has been to Australia a number of times, and he once brought back a book called "Dangerous Australians." It featured extremely scary snakes, man-eating plants, jumbo-jet sized bugs and probably fanged hedgehogs. Thus I was a bit nervous that my sister might encounter them.
I have a special horror of tourists who behave badly. Canadians pride ourselves on being our usual polite, self-effacing selves on holiday, and we flinch at the loudness of Americans. (Most American tourists I've come across abroad have been perfectly nice, but comparatively loud. A study should be done to see if Americans really are louder than anyone else. Germans are also loud, incidentally, and seem to think nobody around understands German when they make fun of the nuns walking across a piazza in Rome, etc.) In fact, there are also loud Canadians, very likely including me. It's hard to tell when it's you. Meanwhile, B.A. and I cringe at stories of Britishers abroad, especially the ones who go to Poland, already out of their minds with drink. The worst tourists I have seen abroad were British men. However, I have never heard of a British backpacker suddenly hauling off and stabbing other backpackers--and a dog--while shrieking "Allah Akbar."
Incidentally, I also have a special horror of foreign students who behave badly. This incident sank deep into my soul. This is partly because I was a foreign student at the time. However, it may also be because I have the highest respect for foreign students who can conquer language barriers and culture shock well enough to get a university degree abroad.
Whenever I think about going to the Jagellonian to finish my theology PhD ( one of my we-win-the-Lotto dreams), I feel chills of terror. Currently I am reading Benedict XVI's "Why I believe" in Polish, and it is soooo harrrrrrrd.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Fifty Shades of Patricide
This is, actually, the worst (probably teenage) daughter I have read about in my whole entire life. Words fail me. I just can't imagine being in the shoes of anyone who could do that. The only guess I can come up with is that she has been thoroughly coarsened by the pop culture of which FSG is the nadir.
Strict father, my eye. My parents would have had my guts for garters had they caught me reading the 1980s equivalent of FSG, let alone overheard me saying it was my favourite book.
Update: Words have come back. "Honour your father and mother" is the fourth commandment, and it is not conditional. If you have terrible parents, you get to a safe distance as soon as you can, work to forgive them so that your horrible childhood has less of a hold on your soul, and you save them--even if at arm's length--from dying in a bus shelter in their old age, if you can.
Fortunately, most people do not have terrible parents. Most of us have flawed parents, and those flaws are most noticeable when we are shifting from a childhood perception of our parents as all-wise and invincible--that is, when we are teenagers. In theology school, we called such a time "critical distance." In short, we move from a false image of someone to an unhappy new realization and, hopefully, we get through it and come to accept the person for who she or he really is.
Sadly, various forces--most clearly advertisers--take advantage of the teenager's period of "critical distance" to direct a child's natural (and divinely commanded) loyalty to his or her parents to some other authority, like an artist with music to sell. Advertisers preach a gospel of teenage rebellion against parents as if it were a fact, not a construct made up by Hollywood. (When I was a teenager, I was not particularly interested in rebelling against my parents but in the stultifying hypocrisy that seemed to flourish in the Metropolitan Toronto Separate [i.e. Catholic] School Board. Oh, and also various prevailing ideologies, like multiculuralism vs the centuries-old process of fashioning a uniquely Canadian identity, similar to the process that had developed in Australia. But I digress.) This normalization of "teenage rebellion" makes things all that much easier for people who would seduce children away from their parents--for example, older, wilier, would-be boyfriends. It's almost amusing how teenage girls are so ready to disobey their parents to obey some new near-stranger, thinking that this is all very brave and grown-up and Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet, by the way, is the most misunderstood, and probably the most disastrous, of our culture treasures. To repeat yet again, the point about Romeo and Juliet is that their parents had everything in common and therefore the two principals were perfectly--from a social point of view-- matched, and the tragedy was caused solely because their fathers had a long-standing neighbours row. It is as if, in suburban Cardiff, Mr Jones and Mr Davies couldn't agree who owned the tree along the dividing line between their back gardens, and as a result, young Rhys Jones was not invited to the Davies' snazzy 18th birthday bash for their Carys. The quarrel between Capulet and Montague had absolutely nothing to do with race, ethnic group, social background, religion or even what age it was appropriate for girls to accept suitors. The Capulets were perfectly happy to marry Juliet off before she was 14.
Anyway, I am shivering in horror that things in the West have come to such a pretty pass, and that the attack on the family--which is what the celebration and promotion of "teenage rebellion" comes down to--has been so successful, that a girl in Britain would be psychologically capable of wrongly accusing her father of eight counts of incestuous rape, making up her testimony from a dirty bestseller.
Strict father, my eye. My parents would have had my guts for garters had they caught me reading the 1980s equivalent of FSG, let alone overheard me saying it was my favourite book.
Update: Words have come back. "Honour your father and mother" is the fourth commandment, and it is not conditional. If you have terrible parents, you get to a safe distance as soon as you can, work to forgive them so that your horrible childhood has less of a hold on your soul, and you save them--even if at arm's length--from dying in a bus shelter in their old age, if you can.
Fortunately, most people do not have terrible parents. Most of us have flawed parents, and those flaws are most noticeable when we are shifting from a childhood perception of our parents as all-wise and invincible--that is, when we are teenagers. In theology school, we called such a time "critical distance." In short, we move from a false image of someone to an unhappy new realization and, hopefully, we get through it and come to accept the person for who she or he really is.
Sadly, various forces--most clearly advertisers--take advantage of the teenager's period of "critical distance" to direct a child's natural (and divinely commanded) loyalty to his or her parents to some other authority, like an artist with music to sell. Advertisers preach a gospel of teenage rebellion against parents as if it were a fact, not a construct made up by Hollywood. (When I was a teenager, I was not particularly interested in rebelling against my parents but in the stultifying hypocrisy that seemed to flourish in the Metropolitan Toronto Separate [i.e. Catholic] School Board. Oh, and also various prevailing ideologies, like multiculuralism vs the centuries-old process of fashioning a uniquely Canadian identity, similar to the process that had developed in Australia. But I digress.) This normalization of "teenage rebellion" makes things all that much easier for people who would seduce children away from their parents--for example, older, wilier, would-be boyfriends. It's almost amusing how teenage girls are so ready to disobey their parents to obey some new near-stranger, thinking that this is all very brave and grown-up and Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet, by the way, is the most misunderstood, and probably the most disastrous, of our culture treasures. To repeat yet again, the point about Romeo and Juliet is that their parents had everything in common and therefore the two principals were perfectly--from a social point of view-- matched, and the tragedy was caused solely because their fathers had a long-standing neighbours row. It is as if, in suburban Cardiff, Mr Jones and Mr Davies couldn't agree who owned the tree along the dividing line between their back gardens, and as a result, young Rhys Jones was not invited to the Davies' snazzy 18th birthday bash for their Carys. The quarrel between Capulet and Montague had absolutely nothing to do with race, ethnic group, social background, religion or even what age it was appropriate for girls to accept suitors. The Capulets were perfectly happy to marry Juliet off before she was 14.
Anyway, I am shivering in horror that things in the West have come to such a pretty pass, and that the attack on the family--which is what the celebration and promotion of "teenage rebellion" comes down to--has been so successful, that a girl in Britain would be psychologically capable of wrongly accusing her father of eight counts of incestuous rape, making up her testimony from a dirty bestseller.
Thursday, 16 June 2016
Strange Bedfellows
Once or twice a week I go to the public library with the small knapsack that has replaced the handsome wool-and-leather shoulder bag I gave B.A. and then stole back. (Another lesson of the Chartres Pilgrimage is that carrying a heavy bag over both shoulders is really more comfortable.) After my latest visit, I reflected that the contents of the knapsack reflected the content of my character, as they included:
1. Polish missal, which I forgot to take out on Sunday.
2. Polish dictionary, which I was going to use soon.
3. Polish children's book, which I am reading in depth.
4. Polish notebook, dedicated solely to the aforementioned children's book
5. Gruffalo-themed pencil case with motto "Everyone is afraid of me."
6. The 5:2 Fast Diet Cookbook
7. Delicious Dishes for Diabetics
8. High Heels and a Head Torch: The Essential Guide for Girls who Backpack
9. The Abolition of Britain from Winston Churchill to Princess Diana
10. Success with Languages
11. Teaching and Learning Languages: A Practical Guide to Learning by Doing
12. Survival Handbook in association with the Royal Marines Commandos
13. Wallet
14. Keys
15. MAC "Russian Red" lipstick
16. Old grocery store receipt
17. Umbrella
18. Water bottle
I felt guilty that there were no novels in this collection. I know I'm supposed to be reading novels. I'm supposed to be saying "Aha! Good opening sentence. Excellent sketch of surroundings. Masterful character development." Etc.
As you can see, my extramural interests lie with Polish, low-sugar diets, backpacking and life in the UK. I am not actually a diabetic (thank heavens); I've just chosen to eat that way. My daytime slap has been reduced to lipstick because "You look better without [the whole nine yards], darling."
The library books are currently swearing at each other. The big troublemaker is, of course, Peter Hitchens' The Abolition of Britain, which compares how poor, colourless, clever and morally upstanding the British were in 1965 to how rich, colourful, stupid and base they were in 1997.
The problem is not so much Hitchens' ideas--some of which are echoed by Theodore Dalrymple in Our Culture, What's Left of It--but the discomfort that lingers in the brain when reading anything else involving his themes. The first chapter, "Born Yesterday", was very entertaining, but I read his second chapter denouncing contemporary teaching methods just after a chapter of Teaching and Learning Languages: A Practical Guide to Learning By Doing. The focus on students rearranging their desks and talking to each other is the sort of thing Hitchens complains about and, as a matter of fact, when I was a child in Canada, basic French was banged into our heads not through teamwork but by group chanting of "Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, ON est, nouzzzz avons, vouzzzz avez, ils sont, elles sont." Today I long for a mind-numbing, but effective, recording of Polish verbs.
That I will ever finish Teaching and Learning Languages is now in doubt.
In the evenings, when my brain is less suited to philosophy, foreign languages and spleen, I have been turning to the Survival Handbook in Association with the Royal Marines Commandos and High Heels and a Head Torch: The Essential Guide for Girls who Backpack. These are very different books.
The first book is brilliant, serious, well-illustrated and full of excellent advice about how to deal with a number of gruesome possibilities. I am working up the courage to read the First Aid section, but meanwhile I have learned how to predict rain. I have also been inspired to assemble a survival tin, even though B.A. says such things as, "We won't need it just for walking in East Lothian." Ho! Confident words for a man who was slowly chased by cattle just the other day.
The second book isn't really about backpacking, it's about BACKPACKING, which is to say travelling around the world from hostel to hostel in search of thrills, including sex with strangers. Instead of assembling a survival tin, the author of High Heels and a Head Torch stuffed her backpack with condoms.
The transformation of British sexual morality is another subject at which Peter Hitchens gets all very gloomy. When I finished High Heels and, still sleepless, reached for The Abolition, I stayed my hand. Another dose of Hitchens after Duke's cheerful promiscuity would have been much too depressing. The Royal Marines Commandos are surely not prudes, but they completely neglected the subject of sex in their tome, possibly because in a survival situation you're not supposed to waste your energy on such frivols. (They even advise against over-reliance on rabbit flesh as you would spend too much energy digesting something much too low in fat.) Here is High Heels' top survival advice (besides never taking a taxicab from the airport in Delhi at night):
"I know I keep banging on about this (no pun intended) but it's easy to forget when you're away from home in an exotic location, you've had a couple of drinks, picked up a gorgeous guy, gone for a romantic walk along the beach and are about to get down and dirty in the sand. Pausing the action to ferret around in your bag for a condom may not be your first concern--but it should be. Especially with a partner you don't know. You probably wouldn't trust them with your money, your credit cards or your passport so don't trust them with your health either. The effects of losing that are far more long term (p. 152, emphasis mine). "
High Heels has a usually enjoyable tone, provides some interesting tips and provokes some giggles, so I am searching around in my mind for kinder adjectives to describe it. Louche, perhaps. It was written for girls travelling after their secondary education (i.e. high school), so the target audience is about 18 years old and--to judge by this book--drugged up to the eyeballs on the Pill. It is curiously classist and racist in that the author assumes that you would put out for a tall blond surfer/fellow backpacker in a heartbeat but not for an Indian rickshaw driver. This is especially interesting when you come across her joke/information that British friends might give the backpacker points for "each different nationality you get through."
Naturally I do not think an 18 year old English girl far from home should put out for an Indian rickshaw driver, either. I am even willing to admit that, for cultural reasons, he may be more dangerous than the Aussie surfer of the author's dreams. I have read rather less about gang-rapes by blond men in Australia than I have of gang-rapes by dark-haired men in India. Still, if you wouldn't trust a man with your money, credit card or passport, I don't know why you would trust him with the tenderest bits of your body. What would the Royal Marines Commandos have to say about it, I wonder.
The philosophy of High Heels is rather strange from a Catholic, or a Britain-in-1965, point of view, but may explain why so many men in hot, poor countries think white women/British women are barely different from prostitutes. (High Heels has much advice for white girls, especially blondes, to avoid being groped by colourful natives.) It also leads me to suspect that saying, "I'm not comfortable with this conversation; I'm a Catholic" will elicit white hot screams of "Are you judging me?" from your fellow (literally speaking) travellers.
My advice to Catholic backpackers would be to travel with another Catholic pal or another traditionally religious pal of good will and to seek out backpackers from cultures in which female chastity (at very least) is acknowledged as a sensible (if not desirable) choice. This is just a guess, however, as I never did backpacking of the hostel-jumping sort. In my youth, my few holidays abroad were never longer than two weeks in duration, and I always chose hotels over hostels. I also paid extra for First Class train tickets, thinking this would make me safer as well as more comfortable. This was done at the expense of food--which, by the way, the Royal Marines Commandos think should be avoided in the first 24 hours of your survival situation. Clean drinking water is more of a priority.
Saturday, 21 May 2016
The Haymarket M & S as a Metaphor for the World
 |
| Simply food if you can see past the sugar |
Afterwards I retraced my steps to Haymarket station and popped into the railway Marks and Spenser outlet so that I wouldn't have to go out again on my aching feet to buy groceries. I am, as regular readers know, on the Blood Sugar Diet, which means shopping carefully.
A railway M & S is small and naturally does not have the variety of foods of a big M & S food hall--which itself does not have the variety of a Tesco, Waitrose or Sainsbury's, come to think of it. It is a fast food joint of a supermarket, more of an upmarket convenience store. And although there are many more natural ingredients to be found than in your standard convenience store, and even healthy, calorie-controlled, 'superfood' salads for sale, it caters to the modern snacking habit. Suddenly I was struck by how many items for sale in Marks and Spenser are either composed of, or include, vast amounts of sugar--and if sugar isn't necessarily a poison, it certainly can be.
Row upon row, rack upon rack of delightfully packaged poison---so much poison and so ubiquitous that the shopper has to search carefully and read all labels so as to find a food that doesn't contain it. And suddenly I saw that the M & S was a microcosm of the world and all it has to offer--so much beautifully wrapped poison, so much work to screen it out and find the good stuff.
***
Once upon a time, there would not have been so much sugar on offer, or so visible, or so readily eaten. For one thing, before the 1980s, the British did not snack: there was a strong cultural protocol around eating, which changed slightly from class to class, but always included a horror of spoiling your appetite for the next regularly scheduled meal. There probably were no M & S's in railway stations, either.
High-fructose corn syrup became available only in the 1970s, and in the UK cane sugar was expensive and even, at times, unavailable. Thus, before the 1980s sugar-as-food was a rarity and a treat, generally confined to puddings, jams, and a lump in your tea, and it wasn't snuck into every prepared food, should you be eating prepared food. But today, of course, cake, chocolate and candy are staples of the British diet.
I don't care much for Emma Thompson's politics, but I was struck by her unpatriotic opinion that "Britain is a cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island." What made this clichéd self-hating British whine new was the mention of cake. Personally, I think Britain is delightful. It is not more misery-laden than, certainly, Toronto, and it isn't grey, it is green and gold and pink and blue and beautiful, and if it is as old as Arthur's Seat, it is also as young as the wee lambs gambolling on the hills. However, it certainly is cake-filled.
Does Britain appear so misery-laden and grey to Emma T because of the too-frequent cake? Yes, it rains a lot, but it is thanks to the rain that Britain is green, not grey. Too much greyness, of course, like too much sugar--and a culture of sin--leads to depression. I wonder if E.T. would have made such a gloomy denunciation of her homeland after a long weekend of hiking through the British countryside, far away from media, modernity and cake.
My feelings after a long tramp through a relatively small part of France--which included the sight of excited and curious little baby goats--is that the world, especially the European part of it, is an absolutely beautiful place, once you get away from the harmful things and the uglier aspects of modernity. (I'll say this for modernity: clean little hotel bathrooms with hot water, big towels and packets of soap.) There is so much nourishment to be found in European landscapes and cultures, as long as one stays away from the deceptively packaged sugar.
****
The Great Gifts of Our Otherwise Wicked Age to Human Happiness and Flourishing
1. Superior women's undergarments--so much better than before Vatican 2, not that Vatican 2 had anything to do with this, of course.
2. Clean indoor bathrooms with toilets, hot water, white towels, soap.
3. Relatively inexpensive hotel rooms with beds featuring clean white sheets, comfortable mattresses, locks on the door and no bugs.
4. Establishment of English as contemporary secular lingua franca. Controversial, but convenient for anglophones and an easier language to use than French, especially as anglophones don't mind what foreigners do to our native tongue. Mangle away, we don't care. (Naturally some of the most uplifting moments of the Chartres Pilgrimage was when 10,000 voices lifted together in our shared Christian Latin.)
Please add your own personal favourites to the list.
Monday, 25 April 2016
Good-bye to Simple Sugars, Gluten, Potatoes, Cake
"Women have a strange relationship with food," quoth I to B.A. the next day as we were sitting outside an art gallery, taking a rest before going to Mass. "This is a feminist cliché, of course. It's probably because women used to be in charge of cooking the stuff."
Actually, it's probably because women are worried about becoming fat, and actually once we are over a certain age and weight, we probably ought to be. This is particularly true if you are a freelance writer because (A) you spend long hours in front of a computer getting squodgy and (B) you can't afford new clothes when you grow out of your old ones. Apparently belly squodge is the worse squodge, too, leading to DISEASE, and I have more of it than I used to. Oh dear, I used to be so fit.
The Blood Sugar Diet is actually meant for people with Type II Diabetes, but claims it can rid any dieter of great slabs of belly fat in eight weeks. The basic idea is that you eat only 800 calories a day, and none of them must come from sugar or easily digested carbs like flour, bread, cookies and potatoes.
"What about booze?" demanded B.A., and lo, the good doctor-turned-diet-superstar concedes small amounts of wine, preferably red and probably because he knows his British readership. I think the supermarkets do, too, for suddenly there are plastic pots and bags of "courgette spaghetti" and "butternut squash noodles" for sale in local supermarkets. Naturally they cost more than uncut courgettes (that's British for zucchini) and butternut squashes. However, they do really fill you up like spaghetti.
Eight weeks does not sound like a long time for a middle-aged woman free from eating disorders to participate in the latest dieting craze, and indeed it seems tailor-made for people who give up diets out of sheer boredom. It also encourages you to eat a lot of foods I happen to like--blueberries, lentils, avocados, aubergines (British for eggplants), salmon, nuts (well, not too many nuts) and eggs. Really, it's more about what you don't eat, which I find much more relaxing than a charge sheet of what you must eat. When you get hungry between meals, you just drink a lot of water, coffee and tea, especially green tea, which I also like.
That said, I spent yesterday (Day 1) thinking about cake. I went through a gluten-free baking book to see if it had any sugar-free recipes for cake, but it didn't. If this seems like a fool's errand, you must understand that the cake is the British national dish. British women get fat because of cake. Slender American girls, be they foreign students or starry-eyed brides, arrive in the UK, and British women stuff them full of cake until they are fat. We are a cake-eating people, and Victoria Sponge is our song.
(Here, by the way, is how you make a Victoria Sponge. Having been here 7 years, I know this by heart: 1:1:1 butter, sugar, flour. 1 tsp baking powder, 2 eggs and 1/2 tsp vanilla per 100 g flour. Cream butter and sugar. Sift flour with baking powder. Add eggs, putting in 1 Tbsp of the flour per egg. Beat. Add vanilla. Add sifted flour/b.p. Do not beat too much. Put buttered, floured tin. [For best results put a square of baking paper on the bottom.] Put in oven at 180 C (350 F). Done between half an hour and forty-five minutes depending on size. [Check with fork.] It will be flatter than an American/Canadian cake. Cool. Cover with jam, cream, butter icing. Eat. Repeat.
Normally you make two at once and stick them together with whipped cream and/or jam in the middle, but if as slim American guest drops in without warning and you have only two eggs, you just make one and cover it with buttercream icing [soft butter, half box of icing sugar, smidge flavouring].)
So far seems to be impossible to make a cake without (A) sugar and (B) flour. I have made gluten-free cakes with great success, but a cake innocent of sugar, honey and all those frightening substitutes from Argentinan bark, etc. is hard to imagine. The only hope are the fruits The Blood Sugar Diet seems to like, i.e. blueberries, strawberries, apples and pears. Can you powder apples? I bet Heston Blumenthal knows how.
Meanwhile, I can think about this all day, which no doubt is an indictment of myself and my food-obsessed culture. When I announced on Facebook that I was going on a sugar-free, gluten-free, anti-simple carb diet, there were a flurry of comments from a wide assortment of Facebook friends, including one I was sure would drop me when I linked to the Eucharistic miracle in Legnica. He immediately gave me a recipe for cauliflower rice.
My mother, the annual post-Christmas dieter, remarked that it sounded worse than her tomato-open faced sandwich diet, which I can well imagine as the slice of bread under her tomato is most of her post-breakfast calorie intake. However, even at 800 calories a day I shall be eating more food than my mother does. For lunch I had half a cup of Umbrian lentils and a strip of streaky bacon. That was a wide strip, so I am guessing it was 90 calories whereas the lentils were 116 plus 119 max for the adhering olive oil (goodness), if a whole tablespoon adhered. So that's 325 calories. This morning I had 158 calories of oatmeal porridge and about 45 calories of blueberries, so that's 203. Goodness me, not a lot left for supper. Oh well. Time for a green tea.
Thursday, 21 April 2016
The Queen's Birthday
As an amusing aside, as Canada is clearly still colonial, can the term "post-colonial" really be applied to her literature? The only way Canada has changed, really, is that instead of being a colony of the UK, she is clearly, albeit to a lesser extent, a colony of everywhere else. I suppose, however, no government outside Canada officially calls the shots--although one of our governor-generals is rumoured to have called the Queen in a panic, and a very good idea that would have been, too.
Update: On our walk from Cramond to the bus stop, the last leg of our hike, we passed a memorial stone dedicated to "Pet Marjorie", a rather startling literary heroine of the Georgian era, as she didn't live to see 9.
My mother is a monarchist, possibly because she began school in Coronation Year and so education and the Queen are linked in her mind. Because members of the Royal Family pop over to Canada to visits quite often, and because the popular press enjoys writing stories (and the public enjoys reading stories) about real-life princes and princesses, they are often presented to the Canadian mind.
However, this is nothing to the extent to which the Royal Family is presented to the British reading/ viewing public, i.e. every single day. Never mind the fact that the Queen is on all the coinage--she is in Canada, too--she is top news on the telly at least twice a year--Remembrance Sunday and the opening of Parliament, and then there are the various Royal weddings, births, visits to colourful lands, jubilees, etc., etc. Frankly I love it because it makes me feel right at home, here in the centre of hte Empire Commonwealth, sharing historically in all the Britishness, if not in the local accent.
Naturally there are various progressives who profess to hate all this and plot to bring about soviet socialist republics, but even they reportedly snuck away from ironic anti-royal wedding parties to watch Prince and Princess William on television. Ordinary Glaswegians, discovering that there was no official Royal Wedding party, spontaneously partied on their own. At the Scotmid supermarket in Edinburgh's Portobello, Scotswomen discussed with great disfavour the hats of Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice. ("Who told them they looked nice?" demanded one. "Their mother," said another with irony dipped in poison. Sadly Sarah, Duchess of York, has never been restored to public favour. Poor old Fergie. The divorce was a huge mistake, even if it did, er, save the marriage.) This was when the Scottish separatist movement was at its height and the Referendum loomed.
But all the adventures of the younger Royals are mere spin-offs from the central drama of the Queen getting up every morning, having a cup of tea and reading her papers, which come in a special box, straight from Parliament. This is why, incidentally, a Canadian Governor-General telephoning the Queen when she or he is in a terrible fix re: parliamentary conundrums is such a good idea. Apparently, the Queen has spent her entire reign reading daily reports of what is going on in British parliament, and thus knows the British parliamentary system inside out and backwards, going back at least to 1953. Every week Parliament is in session she has a meeting with her Prime Minister to hear what is going on, which means that she has had the chance to pick the brains of all these chaps and the one Chapette.
I don't think I knew this before I moved to the UK--or perhaps before I toured the Royal Yacht Britannia, the Queen's beloved ship which wicked Tony Blair took away from her, boo hiss. At any rate, my esteem for the Queen, which was mostly cultural to the point of instinctual, increased even more. At that point I thought all she did was sign what she was told to sign and visit what she was told to visit and be incredibly gracious to all and sundry, the prisoner of the modern, post-colonial age.
Anyway, it is a terribly beautiful day for Scotland--sunny and warm, just like yesterday when B.A. and I went on a seven mile walk from South Queensferrry past Cramond, mostly along the clean white empty sandy beaches edging the Earl of Rosebery's estate--so I think I shall stop blogging and go outside. I shall just say that like almost everybody else in the UK, I am quite happy that we have such a hard-working, respectable and personable Head of State. Apart from all the other considerations, the disappointments, etc., I was rather embarrassed when the Pope Emeritus abdicated because elements of the British Press were smug that despite her great age the QUEEN hasn't abdicated. Yes, yes, all right.
Update: On our walk from Cramond to the bus stop, the last leg of our hike, we passed a memorial stone dedicated to "Pet Marjorie", a rather startling literary heroine of the Georgian era, as she didn't live to see 9.
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