Older generation should OF known better than that

One of my dwindling stock of small private pleasures is taking an almost daily look at a website devoted to photographs of Newcastle in the past.

The sort of thing that gladdens my heart (copyright unknown)

I still hope that one day I will come across a picture of my mother leading a gabardine-clad boy on our weekly Saturday pilgrimage to the Tatler or News Theatre, then on to R.A. Dodds in the Grainger Market for our Sunday joint, and Tilley’s in Clayton Street for cream cakes for afternoon tea.

Or perhaps by some remote chance someone captured the look on my father’s face in the 1930s, when a backfiring motorcycle on Pilgrim Street caused two shire horses to rear and the LNER delivery cart they were pulling to reverse smartly into the bonnet of his brand new car.

But sadly I fear that I am going to have to close off this small avenue of pleasure because I am regularly driven close to apoplexy by the comments beneath the photos, and particularly by their authors’ almost universal conviction that the verb “have” is spelt “of”. (And the few who differ on this point are almost all convinced that the correct form is “uv”.)

Somehow this is particularly irksome because the natural audience for sites trading in nostalgia is the older generation. Such sloppiness may be forgivable in the young, who have had the benefit of our marvellous comprehensive education system, but surely their seniors should know better? They should be among the “haves” not the “of-nots”.

Surely teacher would have mentioned the whole "of / have" business?

I realise that I ought to be capable of rising above this sort of thing and simply rejoicing when people take pleasure in expressing themselves. After all, their observations are still intelligible (if not always particularly intelligent), so why should they be hidebound by tedious old rules?

I also know that I am in no position to cast stones, since an ex-girlfriend who teaches English regularly pulls me up on this column’s terrible grammar (for which my only defence is that the Royal Grammar School, in my day, seemed to regard it as the cornerstone of teaching in every language apart from English).

But while I find it increasingly hard to remember how I ever got through the day without constant access to the internet, the wilful illiteracy of so many of its users is becoming increasingly hard to bear. Along with their penchant for posting questions to which the answer is blindingly obvious, if only they could be bothered to do a five second search before asking them.

Then there is the constant bickering about crediting photographs, and whether they may be shared or reproduced. (Can anyone explain to me why, if you are jealous of the copyright of your material, you would post it on the internet in the first place?)

Plus the sheer venomous ill will to be observed in comments on every piece of writing ever published by anyone on every website in the world.

I yearn for that gentler and slower world in which people wrote polite letters in copperplate then sent them on their way by Royal Mail. In fact, the very world captured in those black and white photographs from the 1950s that I really must stop seeking out online.

Perhaps just the one last whiff of nostalgia ...

Particularly when there are alternatives available in my family albums of the time that I never, ever look at; and the dozens of picture books that I have acquired over the years to sit gathering dust on my shelves. While I click on inferior images on my laptop that have the virtue of being instantly accessible, and a welcome distraction from whatever work I am supposed to be doing at the time.

Early in my career, an unkind but perceptive superior suggested that my epitaph would be “He had great gifts but was too lazy to unwrap them”. Now I suspect it might be “He acquired a great library but was too idle to get up and open a book.”

The distinguished science author Steven Pinker, interviewed on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday, expressed confidence that Twitter and textspeak would not destroy conventional English, any more than the telegram had done in the 19th century. I 4 1 wud leik to think he cud of bin rite.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The clowns take over the circus

Like every decent parent on the planet, I want my son to be better off than I was as a child.

Materially, it is no contest. He is growing up in a centrally heated house that does not have ice on the inside of the windows in winter, for a start.

Although not yet two, he also owns at least ten times more toys than I had accumulated by the time I deemed myself too mature for that sort of thing, and re-categorised myself as a model railway collector.

In the same spirit of improvement, on Friday his mother and I took him to Chester Zoo. Zoos never featured in my education, since there was not a convenient one on offer. My parents filled the gap with circuses on the Town Moor, where I saw pretty girls riding elephants, foolhardy men entering cages with lions, seals playing horns and dressed-up monkeys performing tricks.

Given that the animal rights activists now have zoos in their sights, it would not surprise me if they go the way of the animal-based circus in another half century or so.

I am not sure how much the boy got out of it. The lion’s roar clearly made the biggest impression, closely followed by the big digger removing the elephants’ dung.

The lion: before it started roaring

Some elephants, wisely keeping out of the way while the digger man scooped up their dung

Though his favourite exhibits were undoubtedly the remarkably tame wild ducks that have volunteered to make the zoo their home.

The best bit of the whole Zoo, which he could have seen at home

I found myself chiefly interested in the other visitors, most of whom wore a uniform of grey tracksuits and sounded as though they came from Merseyside. Despite deliberately picking a weekday during school term for our visit, we found the place reasonably busy. And it is not by any means a cheap day out.

It also receives no public subsidy, leading me to ponder on the mystery of how the split between public and private finance of various activities evolved in the first place. Whenever I take my dog to the vet, I am struck by the apparent ease with which people who look relatively poor hand over wads of cash to pay for the treatment of their pets, yet expect their own healthcare to be provided free.

Isn't God brilliant, though?  Having the foresight to provide his giraffes with perfect camouflage against Cheshire stonework

Why is it, in so many people’s view, a good thing for the state to subsidise the provision of live theatrical performances in remote rural areas? If you want access to a theatre, surely the simple answer is not to live in the back of beyond, and to pay for it yourself.

I am a great fan of opera, but can think of no reason at all why those on low pay should be taxed to indulge my hobby.

Libraries have been a great source of public good in the past, but I honestly question their relevance as technology moves ever onwards. Living a two hour round trip from the Lit & Phil, it seemed sensible to assemble a pretty good collection of reference books of my own. But now, even when I know that the answer can be found in one of the volumes shelved right behind my desk, I almost always find it quicker and easier to search for information I need online.

So should the state’s focus now be less on keeping libraries open than on making high-speed internet access available to all?

I merely ask the question. Increasingly I fail to see the logical connection between such Government policies as deciding that elite universities may charge up to £9,000 a year in tuition fees, but only if they simultaneously make it easier for those from deprived backgrounds to gain access to them.

Sack RAF pilots, scrap aircraft and then bomb Libya. Where is the joined-up thinking there? Increasingly it’s not so much a zoo as a circus, and it looks as though the clowns have taken charge.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

We need less rage and more debate

The truth of that ancient saying about old dogs and new tricks is currently being demonstrated every day behind the wheel of my car.

Along with the falseness of that other well worn claim that resorting to foul language is a sure sign of a limited vocabulary and lack of education. I happen to be exceptionally well educated, and somewhere I have the certificates to prove it.

Yet over 40 years of driving I have developed the habit of expressing my views on the deficiencies of other motorists, and our declining standards of road maintenance, with the happy economy of words that rarely contain more than four letters.

The new factor I have to contend with is the presence of a car seat containing an 18-month-old observer with many of the characteristics of a particularly cute sponge. He is now starting to repeat words that appeal to him, and I recognise that it would be wildly inappropriate if he began addressing the staff of his day nursery with some of the choicer expressions I use about those who speed along the narrow country roads of Northumberland with scant regard to what might be approaching them around the corner.

But how to reform? A nanny friend says that she can relieve her feelings quite substantially by judicious use of the word “Noodles!” One of her small charges asked her why she kept saying it and, at the end of the explanation, the little girl observed, “Oh, right. My mummy says [expletive deleted].”

The question currently interesting me is whether it would be better for my health to find a suitable word that sounds like swearing, but isn’t, as a way of channelling my anger, or to attempt to suppress it altogether.

I can be abusive in the car because I am safe in the knowledge that I am enclosed in a largely soundproof bubble. While offending motorists will no doubt get the gist of my thoughts from my contorted face and accompanying gestures, they will be gone in a flash as we continue to speed in opposite directions.

Would I actually be anything like as rude to another human being face to face? Absolutely not: cowardice would prevail. Those who tip over the edge into violent road rage are mercifully few in number.

The internet was once known as the information superhighway and has many of the characteristics of the road, including the tendency for participants to be massively offensive about each other from the safety of a cocoon – in the virtual world, that of anonymity, sheltering behind some fatuous pseudonym.

No respectable newspaper will publish anonymous letters, except in circumstances where the safety of the writer might be at risk, and even then the editor will insist on knowing the true identity of the author. Yet look at almost any story on a newspaper website or blog and you will find that it has attracted a series of often vilely abusive pseudonymous comments.

We all seem to be increasingly angry with a whole range of other people, from bankers to politicians, royalty to climate change sceptics, and given to venting our feelings. The important question is whether this serves as a safety valve or leads us down the path to the sort of physical violence currently dominating the headlines from Arizona. A useful reminder, incidentally, that political friendships across party boundaries are not a sign of hypocrisy, but of civilisation.

The academic consensus seems to be that venting anger is better for us than bottling it up, so long as it is released in ways that do not harm others. But before I shout even “noodles” in the car, in future I shall try pretending that the person who has annoyed me knows my full name and address, and can continue the debate in any way he chooses.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The ghost in the baby's bedroom

I am trying to be nicer, truly I am, though finding it more of a Brian Blessed Everest attempt than a mere uphill struggle. But I really must endeavour to set a decent example to the baby.

With his powers of imitation improving by the day, my wife and I are also striving to adjust our vocabulary so that, for example, the most shocking F-word in our repertoire is “Fiddlesticks”. This too is not without its challenges, particularly given the standards of other people’s motoring nowadays.

Then I discovered at the weekend that it may not be only our input we have to worry about. Although after midnight, I was still wide awake when the whispering voice came clearly over the baby monitor, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end in the way that happens so often in bad novels, but very rarely indeed in real life – or mine, at any rate.

I urgently shook my beloved awake to tell her that someone – or something – was talking to our son, but by the time she had come round enough to take it in, it had naturally stopped. Luckily she did not immediately ring for the men in white coats to take me away, because the previous day she had been puzzled to find his nursery light switched on when she went in to him in the morning – and not by either of us.

Added to which, we had both heard footsteps in his bedroom on more than one occasion when we were downstairs. In fact, I have been hearing those footsteps regularly since 1987, but as a hardened sceptic I have variously dismissed them as the noise of expanding hot water pipes, the dog, mice wearing hobnail boots or simple hallucinations.

Now, when we hear the baby happily chattering away in the early morning, we will no longer be able to assume that he is simply talking to his teddy bear.

I just hope his invisible friend comes from an age when higher standards of politeness prevailed. While yielding to few in my enthusiasm for the benefits of the internet, I am regularly depressed by one baleful side-effect: the plague of barely literate abuse from people sheltering behind the comfortable anonymity of pseudonyms. The venom to be read on the average website’s message board makes me feel like a thoroughly nice person already.

At least I knew the identities of the people who shocked me so profoundly on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday morning news flagship Broadcasting House, when newspaper reviewer Omid Djalili announced between chortles “I can’t keep a straight face” while discussing the murder of South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche, and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde chipped in “He was still alive when the police found him in his remote farm, so I suppose at least you could say it was slow.”

My, how they all laughed. I sat astonished, waiting vainly for the programme’s host to ask the obvious “So, you’re in favour of the death penalty, are you?” And trying to imagine the fuss that would ensue if a group of right-leaning people had similarly rejoiced in the death of a black political leader. Not that there is the slightest chance of any such thing being allowed on the BBC this side of hell freezing over.

Thoroughly nasty piece of work though he no doubt was, a human being had just been brutally hacked to death. Even I, who am constantly getting into trouble for my inappropriate sense of humour, can see that is not a fit subject for comedy.

There is much to be said for my late mother’s precept: “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, say nothing at all.” Now I just need to hope that the ghost in the baby’s bedroom reads The Journal.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.