The Fall of Rome

There wasn’t a wide range of newspapers available to read on the screens (reading stands) at School. The Times sticks in my mind - it introduced me to the word ‘brothel’ and its correspondence columns carried a fascinating exchange about ‘the abominable crime of buggery’. Apparently this had been put on the statute book by Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament. Under Mary that parliament’s legislation was repealed en bloc, so having the accidental effect of not only removing her father’s anti-papal legislation but also the secular penalties for sodomy. In Elizabeth’s reign parliament restored the status ante quo: sodomy was once more a crime. I think the correspondence was engendered by the imminent publication of the Wolfenden Report. There was, of course, no Daily Mirror let alone the Daily Worker. The only representatives of the popular press were the Daily Express, which fervently espoused Beaverbrook’s ‘dynamic creed of Empire’ and the News Chronicle, a token concession to non-Conservative thinking. On Sundays anyone whose family home was within travelling distance of the school was given an automatic exeat from the end of Chapel to evening prep. Consequently there were no Sunday newspapers.
  In the 1950s Anglicanism and Conservatism were givens at the sort of school I went to; I guess they probably still are. Between leaving school and going up to university I was received into the Catholic Church. University changed my politics. And with that went a change in newspapers. I started reading the [Manchester] Guardian during the week and opted for the Observer on Sundays. Whilst there was no real weekday alternative to the Guardian for an educated leftie, the Sunday Times would have been a possibility for Sundays. This was long before the Dirty Digger got his hands on it: the paper had a tradition of investigative journalism inspired by a strong sense of social justice. I think I went with the Observer because it had been founded in the 18th century - a period to which I’ve long had a romantic - or should that be an augustan - attachment.
  In 410 the world was rocked by Alaric’s sacking Rome. Although the Empire staggered on in the west for another 60 odd years, Augustine of Hippo was right to see it as an event of unparalleled importance. It marked the end of civilisation and the descent of Europe into its present day condition of squabbling Ruritanian statelets which the Americans quite rightly view with an incredulous mixture of amusement and contempt. On the 11th October I knew how St Augustine felt. The Observer published an article whose flouting of that newspaper’s liberal tradition was as violent as Alaric’s rape of Rome. Its headline - ‘I'll only be happy if smoking is banned. We should no longer tolerate the minority threatening the lives of the majority’ - says it all. Augustine wrote the De Civitate Dei in response to the sack of Rome. I wrote a letter to the Editor:

"Sir, Duncan Bannatyne has hit the nail on the head: passive smoking is, at best, a deeply unpleasant experience for the non-smoker, and the evidence that smokers seriously, and often fatally, damage their health is irrefutable. As is the evidence that the internal-combustion engine does enormous damage not only to the health of millions of humans alive today, but to that of generations to come. Damage not only to the human race but to every other species with whom we share this planet. Fortunately we can be sure that Duncan will have kicked the motoring habit. He will be advising the mothers of 12 year would-be athletes to make their sons walk to school thereby avoiding both obesity and poisoning the planet. To assume otherwise would be to accuse Duncan of the rankest hypocrisy: enjoying a feeling of moral superiority from condemning the vices of others whilst continuing to indulge his own."

It wasn’t published. I thought that I’d possibly made a mistake in appearing to attack the motor car. When I was an FE lecturer I found that to do so was a real no-no. Whilst I am sure that students would have quite happily accepted such essay topics as ‘Women are men’s natural inferiors. Discuss’, or ‘Write an essay supporting the idea that anyone with acne should be tortured to death’ - well it’s a view, they would have probably responded - when I set the topic ‘The motor-car is the curse of the twentieth century. Discuss’ they reacted with howls of rage. I was quite clearly mentally deficient.

The Observer did print a letter in response to Bannatyne:

"Perhaps Duncan Bannatyne should be appointed the government's pensions tsar ('I'll only be happy if smoking is banned", Comment). Then he can explain how the baby-boom generation survived in the decades when smoking levels were over 70% and is now causing the government such a headache with their long, healthy lives, despite Prof Gerard Hastings stating that 'few smokers live to collect their pensions'.

Perhaps, too, Mr Bannatyne can work out how to pay for all these pensions. In the old days, the chancellor would have simply whacked up tobacco duties, but not much point in that these days. A hefty tax on health club membership fees might do the trick. Jeff Fendall"

If I were a cynic, I’d imagine it was selected for publication because the weakness of its argument could only provide comfort to the Bannatynians. I therefore made a second attempt to repel Alaric:

"As an occasional smoker, I fear that Jeff Randall’s reply to Duncan Bannatyne’s article will only confirm the anti-smoking brigade’s belief that we are simpletons who need protecting from ourselves. When I was an undergraduate in the early sixties virtually all of my friends smoked; only one still does, the rest gave up decades ago. That is why they have lived to collect their pensions.

  The problem I have with anti-smokers as opposed to non-smokers is their tone of moral superiority. Their pretence that they are motivated by a concern for the public good. If they were they would be campaigning vigorously against the motor-car which by any measure does infinitely more harm to the planet than smoking. But that would mean sacrificing their own pleasure rather than someone else’s. I write as a motorist but not, I hope, as a hypocrite."

Again the letter wasn’t published. So as far as the Observer is concerned John Stuart Mill might as well have never lived. As long as the nauseating Bannatyne is happy the misery of millions of smokers no longer able to enjoy their pleasure in private is of no consequence. And I think the word ‘happy’ is the key to it. Yes smoking is a fairly disgusting habit and the world would be better off without. And the world was probably better off without the murderers on whom Lord Justice Goddard passed the death sentence. But, if his clerk’s account of the state of his lordship’s breeches is to be believed, the pleasure which the eminent judge received had little to do with the administration of justice. Given a choice between breathing a bit of stale tobacco smoke and listening to Bannatyne ejaculate in his trousers, I know which I’d opt for.

Blanket approval

My wife got back from England, yesterday, after a week looking after our grandson. In preparation for her return I tried to get the house looking presentable: hoovering, washing the floors and - finally - changing our bed-linen. The first of these tasks was quite fun: she'd bought a Dyson just before she left in attempt to save money on the exorbitant amount she was being charged for disposable bags for her existing vacuum cleaner - a similar scam to that perpetrated by printer manufacturers, except that the previous machine was very expensive. Dysons look really cool and apart from having to empty them every five minutes are quite efficient to operate. The final task was anything but fun.
Although, unusually for the 16th century, my old school’s charter established it as an academically inclusive institution - … ‘educati et enutriti deinde bonis moribus et litteraturis instituti si eruditioni et litteris [sic] apti fuerint literis [sic] opificiis et mechanicis artibus perite instructi … - by the mid-twentieth century it had long since ceased to teach any non-academic subjects. So for those of us who hadn’t joined the cadet corps and learned to shoot a 303 rifle the only practical skill the school imparted was how to make hospital corners. Beds were inspected every morning by the dormitory monitor and a sloppily made bed was a punishable offence.
I like to think that I’m not a luddite or a technophobe. I’ve cheerfully embraced most advances in technology. Producing lecture notes on a computer and photocopier was so much easier than typing them - with a huge expenditure on correcting fluid - and then running them off on a spirit duplicator. And as for the iPhone - Che farei senza that little Eurydice? But the duvet is a completely different matter. Whatever induced the British people to abandon the crisp sheets and blankets I was brought up with for this Scandinavian monster? For a nurse or a public schoolboy making a bed with hospital corners gave a satisfaction akin to that felt by joiner constructing a dovetail joint. A practical task completed with consummate craftsmanship. But stretching a fitted sheet over a mattress affords little satisfaction. And as for fitting a duvet inside its cover - that’s a labour that would have Sisyphus screaming to have his rock back. The wretched thing has a life of its own fighting back as you struggle to get it to lie flat and rectangular in its cover. Thank God the wife's back and I won’t have to try to cope with this modern ‘advance’ for another few months.

Dinner with the ambassador

Like nearly everyone of modest talents and humble background, my contact with the good and great is virtually non-existent. Apart from a very slight acquaintance with Stephen Fry when he was a student at the College where I taught and attending a party - when I was 19 - at which Dennis Waterman was a fellow guest, there is nothing to tell on a personal level. I suppose I must have shaken Princess Margaret’s hand, or at least bowed to her, when I received my degree - she was Chancellor at the time - though I remember nothing of the occasion, and I have listened to various literary worthies - Antony Thwaite, Beryl Bainbridge, Louis de Bernieres, George Barker and Thomas Blackburn among them - address the English students and staff at the College. But unlike a friend and colleague who unsuccessfully invited Rachel Cusk to spend the night with him in his dormobile, I was merely a face in a crowd.

But although I’m a non-runner in the Drop-a-name Handicap, I know quite a few people who have actually met the good and the great, and the not-so-good. My friend Ed must occupy the number one spot. He was taught by Tom Sharpe at prep-school, introduced to Bobby Kennedy as an undergraduate in South Africa - the great man said ‘Hi, how are ya?’ - had one of the visiting poets - and his inseparable companion, an attache case containing a bottle of gin - to stay, and actually taught Stephen Fry, on the rare occasions when the future luminary could be bothered to attend class. I had a friend at university who’d been to primary school with Christine Keeler and another on my postgrad. cert. ed. course who’d been to secondary school with Mick Jagger. And - prepare to be amazed - for the last 32 years I’ve been married to someone who once shared a doughnut with Vanessa Redgrave! But the jewel of my collection has to be a German mature student when I was an undergraduate at Keele. As a 14 year old leader of the Hitler Youth he’d travelled to Berlin to present Munich’s collection for the Winterhilfe fund to the Führer. The dictator asked him where he came from. ‘Ah my faithful Bavarians,’ he commented on hearing Hans’s reply.

Imagine my delight then, gentle reader, on receiving an invitation to dine with the ambassador.

Perhaps I should explain. Montefalcone is twinned with a village in Moldova and for some reason I can’t quite fathom the Moldovan ambassador to Italy was invited to visit our village, the event culminating in a meal at Lupo’s Locanda. I guess that in most of the places the ambassador visits there is a carefully selected guest list comprising the cream of local society. Montefalcone, though, is very small and cream is in short supply. I guess the town council were worried about having a sufficiently large gathering to meet him. They therefore sent a circular to every inhabitant inviting us to book a seat at the dinner for 16 euros a head. As my wife had gone off to England for a week yesterday to look after our grandson, I thought I’d go - it would save having to cook - always a depressing business when you’re on your own.

In anticipation of the event I googled Moldova. and discovered its chief claim to fame to be trafficking women sex workers to Western Europe. At the dinner, during the course of a very lengthy speech, His Excellency stressed the importance of strengthening commercial ties between the Marche region and his homeland. I hope, but this being Italy cannot be sure, that he only had in mind the wine to which he frequently referred and, even more frequently, imbibed. His speech also made several references to his country’s having once been a part of the Dacian province of the Roman Empire. The romanophile in me wanted to jump up and shout, ‘Civis romanus sum. My country too was once a province of the Empire (if you exclude Ireland and the north of Scotland which the Romans very wisely decided weren’t worth the expense of conquering).’ Fortunately my total lack of Moldovan, and erratic command of Italian restrained me. But the contrast between the two former provinces is, I think, instructive. Moldova is a very poor country and desperately wants to join the EU because it sees membership as a route to once again enjoying the peace and prosperity it had enjoyed under the pax romana. Britain is a country which, once very wealthy, is on an inexorable slide towards economic impotence. But because it was once the most powerful country in the world it imagines that it can still flourish as an ‘independent’ nation and resolutely opposes the greater european integration which could save it. However, if we look fifty years ahead when Moldova flourishes as an integral part of a federal Europe, it will no longer need to rely on its current staple industry. Could be an opportunity for the UK there!