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The Misadventures of Pongo McVitie

The latest in the St. Penrith’s series!

Pongo McVitie is making her way back to London after another day’s punting in Cambridge when she finds herself the victim of an accidental kidnapping. Anarchy ensues as kidnapping graduates to international espionage, and as an ever-growing cohort of Pongo’s chums join the madcap race to find her before it’s too late. Russian spies, automobile races, daring escapes, and even a Viking Re-enactment Society, this is a tale of romance and British eccentricity at its finest.

Protect Britain’s ancient trees

British trees have found themselves featured in the press fairly regularly over the past couple of months – mainly due to the apparent madness of Sheffield City Council deciding to remove thousands of healthy specimens seemingly for no other reason than that it would be expensive to revoke the instruction now that it’s been given. The decision provoked dogged resistance from locals, and even caught the attention of the environment’s surprising new ally, Michael Gove. These sorts of decisions matter – not just because they’re aesthetically unappealing (I can’t think of many people who want to live in a city stripped bare) but because as a nation we need all the nature we can get.

We know that global biodiversity is plummeting partly as a result of climate change and intensive chemical-fuelled agriculture – the French have recently recorded alarming reductions in bird numbers (so significant that experts are warning it could spell disaster for Europe’s wildlife) and Britain has been identified as being one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. One of the key factors behind this global dilemma is habitat loss.

In the UK, ancient woodland – constantly under threat from the pressure to “develop” green areas – is one of our most valuable habitats. What isn’t necessarily so obvious is the fact that a single veteran tree is in and of itself a crucial wildlife habitat – a little universe humming with life, a microcosm of diversity. According to Back from the Brink, 2000 species depend on ancient trees for their survival in the UK. Fungi, beetles, birds – as the Woodland Trust explain on their website, the fact that ancient trees are in a state of prolonged decay makes them a vital and complex home for a rich variety of flora and fauna. And crucially, as the Woodland Trust also goes on to point out, ancient trees often aren’t located within existing woodland. They are the solitary remnants of former hunting forests, the ancient guardians in our oldest churchyards, pockets of wilderness in housing estates and city centres.

Biodiversity aside, these ageing monuments to centuries past also offer us romance and mystery – a tangible reminder of what our landscape used to be, the connective tissue joining us to the millions of people who walked under their shade before us. Our ancient trees – Tolkein’s Ents – have born witness to princes and poachers, lovers and mourners, scrumpers and twitchers. And as a nation, we obviously do care. The protestors in Sheffield – ordinary people moved to take action by the bizarre destruction of their city’s trees – seem to be on the cusp of forcing something of an about turn. John Lewis-Stempel, Robert Macfarlane, George Monbiot – there’s a reason nature or countryside writers are in the ascendancy in Britain. Millions of us feel a keen affinity with our natural world, and as such want to see it protected.

And the first step in ensuring that protection is to enshrine it in law and government policy. Whilst it’s heartening to see that the campaigning of organisations like the Woodland Trust has led to new protections for ancient woodland in the  National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) , inexplicably individual trees have been excluded explicitly from these safeguards. It’s a critical oversight which seems to ignore the value of these precious habitats – and which encapsulates the pressures being felt by vital habitats the world over.  What we need to remember – to paraphrase the excellent videos made by Conservation International over the past few years – is that we need nature. It doesn’t need us. So let’s take the opportunity to remind the Government that whilst the developments regarding woodland protection are extremely welcome, individual trees are also of critical importance to our nation’s ecology. We have until 10 May to respond – the Woodland Trust makes it very easy to do so via their website: Truststronger-planning-policy-for-ancient-woodland/.

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

“Aristocrat, social renegade, wartime secret agent, shark-hunter, adventurer, racing driver, traveller, naturalist, poet and painter….and one of the most popular authors of wildlife books in the twentieth century.” This was the description offered of Gavin Maxwell in the blurb to his biography. They really don’t make them like this anymore.

As tantalizing as that image is, Ring of Bright Water isn’t devoted to these varied and fantastical biographical details – instead it tells the story of Maxwell’s beloved Scottish home, Camusfeàrna, and the otters who lived with him there. It is a joyful, lyrical, desperately moving account of his interactions with the natural world – and most importantly of all, of the deep love he felt for his two otters, Mijbil and Edal. As with A House in Flanders  I can’t recommend it enough for anyone who needs some respite from the last few months: it has given me such unadulterated pleasure.

The first hundred pages, then, are devoted to Maxwell’s arrival at the Arcadian Camusfeàrna in the late 1940s – the house by the sea in the West Highlands – as well as his neighbours and the richness of surrounding wildlife. His descriptions of the wildcats, porpoises, and deer are exquisite – vivid and full of humour, sympathetic without ever becoming sentimental. Take this, for example, his recollection of being invaded by his neighbour’s frolicsome goats:

Their cynical, predatory yellow eyes, bright with an ancient, egotistical wisdom, were ever alert for an open door, and more than once I came back to the house from an afternoon’s fishing to find the kitchen in chaos, my last loaves disappearing between agile rubbery lips, and Mairi Bhan [the nanny goat] posturing impudently on the table.

It feels almost otherworldly in its simplicity and peace, but there’s nothing saccharine here. Maxwell’s voice is always rooted in reality, and whilst he talks about his new home with a poetic affection you feel something of his mercurial, restless soul struggling with the solitude.

Once the stage is set and you’ve lost your heart to the sea, the burn, and the cottage, Maxwell introduces the core of the book and the thing for which it is most famous – his successive relationships with two otters, Mijbil and Edal, rescued from almost certain death in their native Africa. This section is almost unbearably moving, joyful, and funny – I fell in love with both animals so completely and rocked from laughter to tears as he explains the ways they took over his life.

They are, first of all, completely fascinating: each with his (Mijbil) or her (Edal) own personality, tastes, and mysterious intelligence. The descriptions of them working out how to turn taps on; tucking toys under their arms as they swim; and gambolling about in the bathtub, are irresistible. Again, neither Mijbil nor Edal is anthropomorphized – they are entirely splendid enough as animals and don’t need to be enhanced by a kind of false humanity. In any case Maxwell heads this off at the pass, acknowledging that “a dry otter at play is an animal that might have been specifically designed to please a child.”  He loves them for their mad vitality, not because they resemble toys, or people – and is even almost apologetic about the obvious depth of his affection.

“…several times a day he needed, as much psychologically as physically, I think, a prolonged romp with a human playmate. Tunnelling under the carpet and affecting to believe himself thus rendered invisible, he would shoot out with a squeak of triumph if a foot passed within range; or he would dive inside the loose cover of the sofa and play tigers from behind it; or he would simply lay siege to one’s person as a puppy does, bouncing around one in a frenzy of excited chirps and squeaks and launching a series of tip-and-run raids.”

The thing that really got under my skin, though, was how much Mijbil and Edal trust Maxwell. They clearly adore him as much as he loves them, and involve him whole-heartedly in their curiosity and constant quest for fun. As he says at one point, you don’t own an otter, you co-exist with them – and for a time they filled his complicated world with a simple, straightforward companionship. There is a moment in the book where that trust leads to a gut-wrenching tragedy – turning the idyll, temporarily at least, into a nightmare. Quite rightly it is an otter which restores Camusfeàrna’s equilibrium, and which let’s you turn the final pages with renewed hope.

I understand the reservations some modern readers have about a man trying to possess something wild, but it doesn’t affect how much I loved this book. Maxwell was obviously an extraordinary and complicated character, and this is a exceptional story -not, I think, intended to be a blueprint for conservation. In the end it is a stunning affirmation of life and, as he says in the preface, something we ought to be more aware of: because whilst we can’t all have a species of otter named after us, or live in a remote Scottish Eden, we can find a certain comfort in being closer to nature.

For I am convinced that man has suffered in his separation from the soil and from the other living creatures of the world; the evolution of his intellect has outrun his needs as an animal, and as yet he must still, for security, look long at some portion of the earth as it was before he tampered with it.

(c) Gavin Maxwell Enterprises

Brave New World

Normal: Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected

(Oxford Dictionaries)

I’ve been spending a lot of time worrying about Brexit recently – and now, to add a nightmare-inducing cherry to my anxiety-cake, Trump. The message liberals like me seem most keen to disseminate at the moment is that this is not normal. Newspapers, blogs, podcasts – commentators are trying, quite understandably, to make sure we don’t normalise this. It’s not normal to see two racist misogynists standing next to one another in front of a wall of gold, celebrating the elevation of one of their number to leadership of the free world. It’s not normal to allow an erstwhile school-boy with a penchant for Hitler-youth songs to lead a nation over an economic cliff. It’s not normal for a man to be elected president when he’s currently subject to a smorgasbord of sexual assault allegations.

Perhaps. I have to say, though, that I’m coming to think that it isn’t so much that this isn’t normal, but that it shouldn’t be normal. The vein of xenophobia running through the Brexit campaign and the overt racism and sexism of the Trump campaign found a boil in the public consciousness that didn’t take much lancing: people seemed primed for this. And what is normal if not something shared by the majority of an electorate: it just so happens that a lot of us thought standards were better.

Yes, the votes in both countries were pretty close, and the outcome was exacerbated by a cocktail of austerity, poverty and years of political neglect. But in the end so many people were prepared either to endorse xenophobia; sexism; racism – fairly enthusiastically in some cases – or to turn a blind eye to them in the name of “making America great Again”/”taking our country back” as to make discrimination feel acceptable. And the point is that I don’t think that takes us somewhere new as a society – I think it’s the normal that we’ve managed to paper over for a few decades with a handful of genuine gains in political equality.

The distinction matters because we need to know what we’re up against. It’s been suggested that part of the reason the Remainers and Democrats both lost was down to complacency, which seems reasonable in retrospect. Even before the reductive 140-character age of Twitter, we’ve always been linear creatures – we like a narrative, especially a neat one, and can have a tendency to assume that progress always moves forwards. Civil rights lead to Obama, feminism leads to Clinton, the hip Trudeau of the 60s leads to the Marvel hero of 2016….It feels right that we’d keep building on our incremental moral gains as a society, leaving discrimination and inequality in our dust. If this year’s proved anything, though, it’s that that’s just not how this goes. Trudeau, Clinton and Obama aren’t our normal yet – they’re exceptions. And whilst Trump and many of the most vocal Brexiteers might seem grotesque, their prejudices have turned out to be depressingly mainstream fare. That’s not to say that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, or that the Brexiteers were all driven by fears about immigration. But if we overlook the uglier underbelly of both campaigns, we risk forgetting how fragile our recent progress really is.

Even within my own family my feminism is seen as something of an eccentricity. As a white, privileged woman, I’ve been guilty of brushing away the occasional glimpse to discrimination or prejudice, writing it off as a rarity or a relic: essentially in the belief that, broadly speaking, society has put an infrastructure in place which is trying to eradicate discrimination. If we hold on to that faith too blindly, though, I fear we risk perpetuating the politics of 2016. Trump’s vitriol isn’t new – it’s very, very old, and we need to see it as such. We’re not resisting a sudden, horrifying normalisation of misogyny and racial abuse, we’re reacquainting ourselves with an old set of prejudices which never really disappeared. Yes, the rhetoric is particularly violent at the moment and feeling as though it’s been legitimised is extremely difficult, but I don’t think it’s as rare as we thought – particularly for those of us who aren’t white, non-disabled, cisgendered or heterosexual.

Ultimately I believe the shocks of the last few months will galvanise change and motivate a new generation of activists, but we need to prepare ourselves by recognising that the standards we’re defending now had never had time to become the status quo. It’s still normal to prefer an alt-right gameshow host to a woman who could not have been more qualified for the job. It’s just that it shouldn’t be.

“A House in Flanders” by Michael Jenkins

I found myself in a fantastic independent bookshop a couple of weeks ago – one of those quirky old places full to the rafters with an array of beautiful titles, displayed in a hotchpotch of authors and genres. Squeezing past groaning stools and book-strewn chairs I discovered a small pile of Slightly Foxed Paperbacks in the corner of the room. I couldn’t resist the thick cream cover or the press’s brilliant name; eventually I settled on A House in Flanders.

It turned out to be one of those occasions when a book couldn’t have appeared at a better time. After the political division and bitterness of the past few weeks and months, I needed something gentle, and kind – a dose of nobility. Michael Jenkins’ account of his time in France was the perfect antidote to a bellyful of Trump and Farage.

Over the course of several summers during the 1950s, the young Michael was sent to spend his holiday with a houseful of French “aunts” in Flanders. They weren’t really relations of his, but, as becomes clear during the course of the narrative, the introspective English boy was bound to the family by a bitter-sweet history. The sprawling French home reveals a riot of colour, familial love and shared secrets which prove to be a world away from his repressed English parents and boarding school, and he soon finds himself fulfilling the role of a go-between – not to enable a doomed affair as in L.P Hartley’s classic, but instead to offer a much-needed ear for the village, in the way outsiders often can.

Each chapter tells the story of a different relation or neighbour, their history, and role in the house. Tante Yvonne is the wise, childless matriarch who dedicated her life to keeping her family united under one roof. Gentle Tante Lise has control of the garden, Tante Florence oscillates between placidity and bursts of activity, Tante Alice jealously manages her property and Oncle Auguste is the former soldier occasionally beset by episodes of dementia. Apart from the exquisite cousin Madeline who inspires Michael’s first experience of love, the members of the household are octogenarians – at the end of their lives just as Michael is beginning his. One of the many special things about the book is the fact that the generational divide isn’t any sort of barrier to Michael being absorbed into their lives – their age gives the tantes a wealth of stories to tell but it doesn’t feel foreign to Michael. They become his world.

There is a sort of Edenic quality to Michael’s golden summers in the village – he wanders through golden fields on his various errands, absorbing the glorious countryside around him and learning its folklore. The memory of the world wars is never far from the surface, though, making itself known through the aunts’ stories; the confusion inspired by the few German characters to pass through the book; and the private sorrows and divisions which still haunt the village. Michael’s boyish thoughtfulness and lack of judgment integrate these flashes of brutality into the otherwise dreamlike narrative, so that the recent violence is somehow managed by his innocence. Death, loss, love, permanence and hope – they all have a place at the table here, managing to exist in harmony within the beautiful story.

At the core of the book is Tante Yvonne’s desire for the villagers to rub along with one another and for her family to stay close to home. Looking at her through Michael’s eyes you feel all of her strength and humour, as well as glimpses of the hardships she’s endured. Yvonne may have lived through war, lost loved ones and suffered the cruelty of being forced out of her home by invading soldiers, but there isn’t a trace of bitterness here – all Michael sees is courage, wisdom and an enduring faith in her neighbours. She’s both a peace-maker and champion of justice, steadfastly refusing to be beaten by war, grief or the passing of time.

What more of an inspiration could one want as this ruthless year draws to a close.

Article 50

Can you remember what it was like to read the morning’s headlines with anything other than dismay? The past few months have been truly grim – Brexit, Heathrow’s new runway; species extinction; Trump, the gang’s all there, making every new day feel slightly more precarious than the last. It’s difficult not to feel entirely defeated. After all, what can one person do in the face of such escalating madness? Take for example, this choice headline:

The paper then decided to add the following detail to their coverage: “The judges who blocked Brexit: One founded a EUROPEAN law group, another charged the taxpayer millions for advice and the third is an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer.” “Openly gay”? When did voices like this become a legitimate part of our national dialogue? Where do we even start to un-do some of the damage caused by this sort of journalism?

This week, despite stiff competition from the past couple of months, has been particularly bleak. To recap:

(1)    A remarkable woman called Gina Miller took the government to court over Article 50. To be clear, her case had absolutely nothing to do with reversing the referendum on 23 June – yes she voted remain, but this was, and is, a question of constitutional law rather than politics.

Her argument is that Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50 (which sets Brexit into motion) by relying on Crown Prerogative (a centuries’ old right which essentially gives “the Crown”, acting through the Prime Minister, the right to by-pass Parliament). Instead, she ought to take the decision to Parliament – on the grounds that triggering Article 50 will remove some of the rights we currently enjoy as a result of a piece of UK legislation (the European Communities Act 1972).

The fact that the referendum ended with a victory for the Leavers should be irrelevant in this context – to quote AV Dicey:

“The judges know nothing about any will of the people except in so far as that will is expressed by an Act of Parliament.”

The judges ruled in Miller favour – not because they are part of a metropolitan elite trying to thwart Nigel Farage, but because this is a well-established rule of constitutional law. And it is an absolutely fundamental one – we fought a civil war over this. No King, Queen, or, as it is in 2016, Prime Minister, can go rogue and make crucial decisions about rights conferred by legislation without first taking that debate to Parliament. This is not a fascist state. Our leaders are held accountable by our MPs. And ironically, as lots of people have already pointed out, Parliamentary Sovereignty was precisely what the Leavers claimed to be fighting for.

For her pains, Gina Miller has been subjected to a barrage of racist and misogynistic abuse. I know the UK isn’t alone in being home to some pretty vile trolls, but what’s so particularly sickening about all of this is that that response has been legitimised – by the palpable silence of our Prime Minister, and by the conscious intervention of the right-wing press. Grim.

(2)    Gina Miller wasn’t the only victim of the Great British Public this week. Lest we forget, the Daily Mail chose to run that headline the day after the ruling was handed down by the High Court.

Leaving the bizarre personal attacks on the judges aside, the point is that they have done nothing other than uphold the law. They’re not trying to frustrate the sinking of the Titanic (heaven forbid) – instead, they are protecting a rule at the heart of our largely unwritten constitution.

Liz Truss eventually made some half-arsed comments about the ruling which fell far too short of calling articles like this out, and after a long silence Theresa May offered some mealy-mouthed comments about the freedom of the press whilst deciding to take the case to the Supreme Court.

That doesn’t just demonstrate a disappointing lack of leadership, it’s genuinely quite frightening: as Dominic Grieve said yesterday, the government’s response (or lack thereof) to the sorts of articles which incite a hatred of our judiciary is chillingly reminiscent of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.  That’s an extraordinary thing to try to comprehend.

And Liz. Mate. The only things you’re responsible for as Lord Chancellor are protecting the rule of law and standing up for the judiciary. You’ve essentially just become the political equivalent of the Dinosaur Supervisor in Jurassic Park.

(3)    And then of course, there’s the assertion made by the Mail et al that this judgment is the work of the “metropolitan elite”. Ah, the elite – the right’s target-du-jour. According to sections of Fleet Street, UKIP and parts of the Tory party, anyone who opposes Brexit is an elitist traitor ignoring “the People.” And for good measure we’re also guilty of tearing the country apart with our “Remoaner” resistance to Hard-Brexit.

Of course there’s some truth to the fact that university graduates generally fell into the Remain camp, and that by definition, the country’s most senior judges are at the top of their tree. But the hyperbole of the demagogue is an extraordinary thing.

Because according to that logic, the 48% of people who voted to remain in the EU are all part of some kind of “elite”. Now I don’t know about you, but if I got VIP tickets to something I’d be pretty hacked off to find sixteen million people coming along with me.  We’re not an elite, we’re almost half the people who turned out to vote – more than that, if you consider the proportion of Leave voters who (i) weren’t actually voting to send the UK hurtling back into the 1950s and/or (ii) think it’s important to respect the constitution. Not to mention the fact that the people actually calling us elitists are:

(I)                  Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail and landowner – who’s received £460,000 in EU agricultural subsidies since 2011

(II)                Nigel Farage who, back in 2009, was reported to have received £2m of taxpayers’ money in expenses and allowances as a member of the European Parliament

(III)              Arron Banks, the businessman and Donald Trump apologist who apparently pumped over £7 million into the Leave campaign

They might not be in the same intellectual league as the judges they’re vilifying so enthusiastically, but wealth like that looks pretty elite to me.

Ultimately, if the Prime Minister genuinely thinks she has any hope of reuniting a country wracked with division, suspicion, disappointment and economic uncertainty, she might want to rein this nonsense in. We need to be talking to one another to understand our differences, not sneering at the distraught group of Brits who lost the referendum and undermining the judiciary for good measure.

(4)    In the meantime, the natural world continues to get a hammering. While our newspapers are filled with endless political train-wrecks, stories about us being on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020 get relegated to the back pages. We need to be focussing on implementing the Paris climate deal; addressing the fact that scientists think we’re living through the Sixth Extinction; finding renewable energy solutions rather than burning through fossil fuels. If the nation’s attention is devoted to averting constitutional disaster, and if every new right-wing development compels us to extricate ourselves still further from global cooperation, then how in the world are we supposed to work together as an international community to sort these problems out for the next generation? The fall-out from Brexit is a disaster not only because of what it’s doing to our sense of national identity but because it’s preventing us from engaging in the issues that truly matter.

For now, I’m not sure what to do. I suppose staying engaged is the key – even if it’s deeply depressing – so that we’re ready to work towards a solution once this toxicity has abated. And in the meantime, as my Dad always used to say, don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Harnessing the rage

The essential problem with becoming more political over the past couple of years is that I’ve genuinely started to lose the faith. I know that the best way to change people’s minds is to be positive and upbeat but honestly, after a couple of gins, I tend to veer into bleak (and no doubt extremely tedious) territory at the moment. The more you read about climate change, the environment, and the loss of biodiversity, the more it becomes apparent that our government is doing virtually nothing to avert catastrophe. Smug digs at Caroline Lucas aside, Theresa May’s government is doing what my dad would have called the square root of FA. Ratifying the Paris Climate Change is easy – anyone with a lady bic has got that bit covered – but actually doing something to help contain this problem seems to be utterly beyond Westminster.

I’ve been chewing over this for some time now, and here’s my analysis in all it’s world-weary glory: our current Conservative Government is incapable of prioritising anything over money.

Now I’m really not having a dig at anyone who votes Tory – I’m the only leftie in my family, for a start, and I do get it, to an extent. I appreciate that a society needs economic stability in order to thrive – but my god, this bunch uses that justification to cover a multitude of sins. Here are just a few of their policies that have been keeping me up at night.

(1)    Austerity: I’m no expert in economics (which by Michael Gove’s standards should fast-track me to the Treasury) but it’s abundantly clear that this policy is something of a clusterfudge. Leaving deficits to one side, how can it be justifiable to penalise the poorest and most vulnerable through endless cuts to public services, whilst continuing to offer tax breaks to big business and the fossil fuel industry? How is it reasonable or sustainable to promote a policy which is going so far as to breach international human rights – hammering, in particular, women, young people, ethnic minorities and disabled people? Why are we surprised when the “post-fact” promises peddled during the EU referendum nudged struggling communities into voting against their own interests? And then there’s nasty old climate change to think about – cutting funding for first responders and flood defences isn’t ideal when we can reasonably expect some pretty extreme weather in the coming years. It’s pretty diabolical.

(2)    Fracking: Let’s take a moment to remember that the EU Referendum was run on the promise of giving power back to the people – cocking a snook at those nasty Brussels bureaucrats and making sure that if we want flammable flags, then dammit we shall have them. You could almost hear Henry V’s rousing speech running through Boris’ head as he whanged on about independence day. It was all very Last Night of the Proms. And yet…the Government doesn’t really believe in giving power to local communities. Not when there’s a risk of us exercising our right to make a decision they don’t particularly like. Take fracking, for instance. When Lancashire County Council decided to reject a fracking application last year, the Government responded by changing the rules. Now any decision regarding fracking can be made by the government, if they consider the application to be in the national interest – which, given that they’re the party going “all out for shale”, casts serious doubt on the idea that an application will ever be turned down. So much for people power, chaps – when they want our opinion, they’ll give it to us.

(3)    Subsidies: Most of us are agreed that climate change is, in the words of Harrison Ford, a clear and present danger. In principle, I think it’s fair to say the majority of us have also made the connection between burning fossil fuels and global warming – apart from Donald Trump, who thinks it’s a Chinese conspiracy. Essentially if we’re to have any hope of keeping the temperature increase below  2°c, we have to stop now. This is not a drill. In fact, in most cases it is a drill, because our energy policy seems to be frack in national parks like your life depended on it.

Which brings us to the issue of subsidies. Not only are our leaders failing to support the renewable energy sector – subsidies for green energy were slashed last year – but they are actively propping up coal. The Paris Deal becomes depressingly theoretical when you read George Monbiot’s comment that ,“In Britain for example, tax rebates for North Sea oil and gas companies are so generous that over the next five years the government is likely to give them around £5 billion more than it receives in revenues. There are similar tax breaks for fracking companies – but not, of course, for renewable energy.” A child could identify the problem with this set-up: it’s short-sighted, hypocritical, and essentially driven by the fact that there is no chance of a right-wing government alienating insanely wealthy fossil fuel companies. The stakes literally couldn’t be any higher, and all they’re concerned about is the bottom line.

(4)    Hinkley Point: Now I don’t have any particular beef with nuclear power. My dad worked on a nuclear submarine, for heaven’s sake, so joining the CND isn’t really an option in my house. There are huge questions to be answered about how we store nuclear waste safely, but in principle this is surely something that needs to be explored if we’re going to wean ourselves off coal and oil. Hinkley, however, does yank my chain, for the simple reason that this is being presented as a green solution by the government when (i) see points 2 and 3 above: what’s the point of promoting this whilst hamstringing other forms of green energy (ii) it’s going to cost a fortune and the technology, by all accounts, is the equivalent of trying to “build a cathedral within a cathedral” and (iii) it seems likely that it’ll take a good ten years for this plant to be generating energy when we need to tackle our energy crisis now. Not in 2020. It’s hardly the silver bullet.

(5)    Bake Off: As if the summer couldn’t get any worse, now the Tories have stolen cake. Cake. What’s next?! Christmas?!

So here’s my dilemma: is it possible to talk about all that in an up-beat way? How can I evolve from teeth-gnashing into charm? Is there a more effective way to convince people than to collar them at parties and scream that we’re doomed? If there is, I haven’t found it – and  I suspect that my rage is as ineffectual as it is exhausting. Any tips most welcome – and in the meantime, it’s best to avoid me during cocktail hour.

“Is the Planet Full?” Editor Ian Goldin

We are living, apparently, in a post-factual age – where a referendum can be won on the basis of myths, lies and soundbites, and in which there is no place for experts. Our carefully curated Facebook feeds, driven by algorithm and assumption, create the echo-chamber in which we receive the constant positive reinforcement of our opinions. The BBC, hamstrung by its need to remain impartial at all times, can actually end up lending validity to the crack-pot ideas demanding equal airtime. Politics has become farcical, the fictions created in the social media bubble are reported as bring truths, and all the while our government offers us endlessly limp nautical metaphors about the need to “steady the ship”. Yes, we’re all likely to become poorer as a result of Brexit, and yes, our leading universities are already beginning to feel the effects of being NFI’d when it comes to EU funding. But the right-wing enclave of the Conservatives will no doubt be congratulating themselves on maintaining the neo-liberal status quo through Theresa May, and will ultimately get the split from Europe they’ve been squabbling over for generations.

Meanwhile, and despite the apparently imminent implosion of the Labour party, the left is organising. The Greens are assembling a petition calling on the Labour Party, SNP, Plaid Cymru, and the Liberal Democrats to form an alliance with them – with a view to blocking the Tories, rather than one another, when it comes to election season. Apart from the UKIPpers sculling around on the extreme edges, the Conservative party essentially has a monopoly on being right-wing. There are, however, myriad ways of being a liberal, with the result that centrists and leftists inevitably spread their votes too thinly across too many parties – fatal in a first past a post electoral system like ours. For the first time, it looks as though there may be a move towards collaboration.

I’m giving this as context, really: because it’s in the priorities of that embryonic Progressive Alliance that I hear echoes of the things explained so clearly in Is the Planet Full?

For the past eighteen months I’ve been swimming around in books about climate change; environmentalism; and sustainability. It was all triggered by Naomi Klein, of course. The books I’ve been reading aren’t “extreme” – although Michael Gove may disagree, given that they are written by experts – but translating any of the ideas from those works into a political arena is somehow seen as being an eccentric thing to do. It is accepted as fact that climate change is a critical threat, and that we need to amend our ways if we have any hope of preventing the most catastrophic levels of change. Articulating how to achieve that adaptation, though, and trying to implement it through a political manifesto is a very difficult prospect.

I don’t want to suggest that my enjoyment of this book relied too much on my post-referendum political obsession… However, I do think the timely idea of a Progressive Alliance gives this collection of essays a particularly interesting context. The premise of the volume is that a group of academics specialising in a range of disciplines are asked to answer the same question:“Is the Planet Full?” Each contributor focuses on a different ranges of priorities and perspectives – from sustainable food production to welfare economics – and in each case, the response is offered in an accessible and hugely engaging way. This is just as readable as “Feral” by George Monbiot, for example, or “Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations” by Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg, and certainly focused my mind.

I’ll admit, for example, that I’ve been guilty of twitching in self-righteous horror at the idea of British parents choosing to have huge families when our global commons are already under such immense pressure. And I don’t think it’s wrong to have a sense of self-awareness about a growing population, or to moderate your decisions accordingly. What these essays demonstrate, though, is that this really isn’t just a question of numbers. Yes we’re still growing at an alarming rate, but the global population will inevitably stabilise and even decline as the developing world becomes developed, and as more women are educated and given choices regarding their fertility. The problem is not really one of numbers – it’s one of consumption. Because it’s not the growing populations in the developing world which are putting our shared resources under such pressure – it’s the consumerist, extractivist mentality of the already developed world. As Goldin puts it in his introduction, “Is it just and fair that the 19.5 million residents of New York State consume as much energy as the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa?”

As I say, this book definitely isn’t a political manifesto – it’s an exploration of the ways we need to think about our global population if we want to stay within the planet’s carrying capacity. In an immensely readable way, it identifies the fact that “major accommodations” will need to be made to find a way to share our resources more equitably, and to change the lifestyles which are driving global consumption, if we are to have any hope of living sustainably. When sentiments like that are offered by politicians, of course – say, by the UK Green party – it’s still seen as being hugely radical. The redistribution of wealth, reduction in meat consumption and divestment from fossil fuel are seen as being properly leftie issues. When academic volumes like this are sounding exactly the same warnings, however, then surely the radical decision is to ignore what they experts are saying, rely on the post-factual status quo, and keep on flogging neo-liberalism to an ever-burgeoning middle class.

If Brexit genuinely kick-starts a Progressive Alliance with these questions at the top of its agenda, then maybe this grizzly referendum won’t have been for nothing. In the meantime, this is a really fascinating read.

Brexit: perhaps it is a drill after all…

This time last week, I was fairly upset. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend why someone would have voted Leave, and was enraged by the idea that I was going to have part of my identity erased by Westminster. I’ve signed every petition, I’ve written letters, and I’ve roared at the news whenever they’ve shown another clip about the fresh wave of hate crimes which seem to have been legitimised by the vote.

It’s been a tough, strange, disorientating week, and the dust hasn’t even begun to settle. The Tory Leavers are ducking and weaving in the hope that they won’t have to accept responsibility for the fissures creeping across the country, and there isn’t a coherent opposition to speak of. For a lot of the Remainers, and the Leavers who now regret the result, the hope is that the constitutional niceties of this will somehow block Brexit. Lawyers aren’t sure whether the Prime Minister can trigger Article 50 without the prior consent of Parliament; it’s possible that the 1972 Act which introduced us to the EU will need to be repealed; and Holyrood may try to block Brexit given the overwhelming support in Scotland for remain. It’s conceivable that this will all just…fizzle out – that the new Prime Minister will go into Brussels with a view to negotiating a compromise rather than actually pressing the button. For many, including me, that’s the hope.

But. The past few days have also been humbling. I fit squarely in the demographic for remain: I’m 31, a graduate, I live in a city, I have a steady income…I’ve never really felt the pressures of austerity, or immigration. And in retrospect, it looks as though many of the votes have been a response to a combination of those things. According to a report issued by the UN Human Rights Commission last Friday:

The Committee is seriously concerned about the disproportionate adverse impact that austerity measures, introduced since 2010, are having on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups. The Committee is concerned that the State party has not undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the cumulative impact of such measures on the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, in a way that is recognized by civil society and national independent monitoring mechanisms (art. 2, para. 1).

The same friend who pointed that out on Facebook also shared the following chart from the Washington Post, which shows how little the income of many families in the UK has increased over recent years.

Brexit chart

Reviewing the past few months with that in mind, the referendum suddenly looks like a tinderbox. Even from my liberal Oxford echo-chamber, I could see that the rhetoric used during the campaign was reductive, dangerous, and at times openly xenophobic. Combine that with Austerity Britain, and you’ve got a perfect cocktail of blame and confusion. Perhaps immigration really is putting impossible pressure on the schools and hospitals in some regions – but underlying all of that is the fact that our infrastructure has been hamstrung by years of funding cuts. The EU, with all of its flaws, became a useful scapegoat for years of financial struggle precipitated in part by this government’s economic policies.

And I’m not saying that that is the only reason people voted to Leave. We all responded to this in a myriad of different ways – rightly or wrongly – and the problem with the way this has been presented is that it all become so binary. You’re in or you’re out. Global or isolationist. Urban or rural. The 48 or the 52. In a political and economic context this complicated, that’s a recipe for disaster – because none of us fit neatly into one of two boxes, and the problems the people of this country (and Europe) are facing can’t be reduced to “Leave” or “Remain.” Our politicians failed us when they reduced this blend of issues into a series of inflammatory soundbites, and we’re failing each other if we start to view Britain through that over-simplified prism.

I’m not saying that I’m going to accept the result, or stop kicking back against the way this has been handled. A lot of people I have a great deal of respect for, like George Monbiot, have been saying this week that we have to accept the democratic outcome of the referendum. If the Tory Government has taught me anything, it’s that democracy is a flexible beast. When a County Council voted to block Cuadrilla fracking in a national park, for example, the Government suggested that they were going to centralise fracking decisions going forwards, as a way of thwarting local opposition. When democracy didn’t suit them, they decided to adapt it. With that in mind, going on marches, writing letters and fighting this outcome to the end is the least I can do. I believe in my bones that the referendum was a mistake, that the Tories don’t have a mandate to take us out of the EU subject to their own terms, and that the best hope all of us have is to try to fix this thing from the inside.

However. I will stop referring to myself as part of the 48%, as though that makes us the rebellious, liberal soul of this country. We’re in this together, chaps. We’re not Leavers and Remainers – we’re a struggling nation which hasn’t been communicating. Yes, the wave of xenophobia and racism needs to be stamped out urgently, and we really need to stop sending Farage out into the world as our envoy. But we can’t leave this up to Westminster anymore, or what’s left of it. We need to start talking.


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Digital Journal: Exposing dark side of bio-engineered food in Kenneth Eade’s thriller An Involuntary Spy

Interview with Kenneth Eade, author of "An Involuntary Spy" on Digital Journal Do you know what is in your food? Did you know that a lot of vegetables and fruit we are eating are genetically modified? I had the pleasure of interviewing Kenneth Eade with his latest book "An Involuntary Spy" which uncovers the untold story of the science behind the Genetically Modified Food industry. Here is … [Read more...]

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Platform One for abstraction, curiosity and appreciation

bookshelfI knew at once that it was one of those books. I was grazing along my bookshelves, a constant source of agitation to my librarian husband as they have books lodged at all angles with no apparent classification or logical system. I’ve tried various ways to approach some kind of order: colour, size, topic, usage factor, reference, fiction, hardback, but they elude me. I think the chance of discovery outweighs any benefits of orderliness.

 Running my hand along the spines, I randomly pull a handful forward at an angle of 45 degrees to reveal my book ‘stack.’  Library ‘stacks’ are often rows and  rows of very close bookshelves, dark and mystical places of lost and forgotten words.

 Funny how memory works  as I suddenly recall a Neil Diamond  lyric:

You got me waiting out in the back

Under a stack

Stuck in a bin

You been keeping me in

High on the shelf all by myself

Feeling like I’m doing time

Under a sign

That reads Forgotten

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WordPress Tutorials: Web Design Tutorial: How To Build a WordPress Website for a Restaurant Bar a Divi Theme Tutorial

Web Design Tutorial: How To Build a WordPress Website for a Restaurant Bar a Divi Theme Tutorial

Category: WordPress Tutorials

In this web design tutorial we’re going to learn how to build a WordPress website for a bar or restaurant. Check out the Divi Theme here: https://www.realwebsitehints.com/get/divi-bar-design/

Tools used in this tutorial:

Divi theme (affiliate link):

Web Images From Unsplash:

CSS angle tool clippy:

Setting up the google maps api key:

The Divi Map Module

Creating website hero area: 2:00
Solid background fade to an image: 10:00
Side by side slash or angle between columns: 14:20
Making your website work on mobile: 22:33
Separating your content from the background 27:27
Setting up the Map module: 32:05

Read the instructions and hints for this tutorial on my website:

Web Design Tutorial: How To Make A Small Business Website HomePage Bar or Restaurant example.

How to configure the Divi theme: https://youtu.be/i0gMJX-jElU

One of the most important things when designing your website is the first impression that your website makes on the visitor. The first section of your website sometimes called a hero area should quickly and simply communicate what your website is about. I walk thru exactly how to create an effective website hero area at 2:00

Part of web design is incorporating the tools that you have as part of the website builder with the clever use of images that you upload to your website. In this tutorial we look at creating a section that looks like it fades from a solid background color to an image. See how this was created 10:00

You can make your website stand out by incorporating design techniques that you don’t find on all websites. In this tutorial I look at creating a slash or angled transition effect between two columns check it out at 14:20

Divi allows you to make a responsive website however sometimes the web design that you create may not work well on mobile devices. Divi allows you to enable and disable sections rows and modules based on devices. In this video I show you how to setup a section of your website so that it looks good on both mobile and desktop. Check out the video at 22:33

Adding texture to the design of your website is important. Texture can make a bland design more interesting. One of the problems with adding an image that has a lot of texture or is very busy is that it can make it difficult to read or see the content that you add to your website. One way around this is by adding a solid background color behind your content. The Divi theme makes this really easy 27:27

If you are creating a website for a small business or a local business you probably want people to be able to find you! With the Divi theme you can easily add a map module anywhere on your website. The initial setup is a little bit difficult because you will need a Google API Key you can learn how to create a google api key using the link above. Then see how to add a map section to your website 32:05


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Current Affairs Politics The Irish Language - An Ghaeilge

Medieval Discrimination In A Modern Ireland

We'll have none of that Irish shite here! You're Irish! So speak English!
We’ll have none of that Irish shite here! You’re Irish! So speak English! (Íomha: An Timire)

The 14th century Statues of Kilkenny are generally remembered as one of the poorer attempts by the British state in Ireland to maintain its authority over this island nation during the Medieval period. They were a body of laws passed in 1366/7 to prevent the erosion of the distinctive identity of the Anglo-British colonists in the country and their assimilation into indigenous Irish society. It essence their purpose was to stop English men, women and children in Ireland becoming Irish men, women and children. Of course their prime target was the Irish language, that most obvious sign of Irishness.

“Whereas at the conquest of the land of Ireland and for a long time after the English of the said land used the English language, mode of riding and apparel, and were governed and ruled, both they and their subjects called Betaghes, according to the English law… now many English of the said land, forsaking the English language, manners, mode of riding, laws and usages, live and govern themselves according to the manners, fashion and language of the Irish enemies; and also have made divers marriages and alliances between themselves and the Irish enemies aforesaid; whereby the said land and the liege people thereof, the English language, the allegiance due to our lord the king, and the English laws there, are put in subjection and decayed, and the Irish enemies exalted and raised up contrary to reason…

Also, it is ordained and established that every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish; and that every Englishman use the English custom, fashion, mode of riding and apparel, according to his estate; and if any English, or Irish living amongst the English, use the Irish language amongst themselves, contrary to the ordinance, and thereof be attained, his lands and tenements, if he have any, shall be seized into the hands of his immediate lord until he shall come to one of the places of our lord the king and find sufficient surety to adopt and use the English language…

…no difference of allegiance shall henceforth be made between the English born in Ireland and the English born in England, by calling them English hobbe or Irish dog but that all be called by one name…”

Over 600 years later it seems that little has changed as the Supreme Court of Ireland has enacted a new Statute of Kilkenny for the 21st century: Irish-speaking citizens have no constitutional or legal right to be judged in court by Irish-speaking juries. In contrast English-speaking citizens have every constitutional and legal right to be judged in court by English-speaking juries. In fact it has been revealed that the Court Service of Ireland screens potential jurors to ensure their fluency in the English language. However it is not permitted to screen potential jurors to ensure their fluency in the Irish language. In other words English-speaking defendants are legally entitled to judgement by English-speaking jurors but Irish-speaking defendants have no legal entitlement to judgement by Irish-speaking jurors! From the Irish Times:

“While the State had instituted an informal screening system to ensure jurors in Dublin have an adequate command of English, it had argued it would be unlawful to operate such a screening system in the interests of producing a jury with an adequate understanding of Irish…”

How is this anything but discriminatory in form and practice? It places the rights of English-speaking citizens above those of Irish-speaking citizens. It places Irish-speaking defendants in court cases at a disadvantage when on trial if they choose to be tried through the medium of Irish in front of English-only juries who will require translators to follow the proceedings. Furthermore given the levels of antipathy towards Irish-speakers in society the very real possibility that some jurors will hold hostile views towards Irish-speakers will inevitably prejudice their trials.

What is any of this but a Statute of Kilkenny for the 21st century? Even some members of the Supreme Court are aware of the anomaly as pointed out by Justice Adrian Hardiman in his judgement, the only one of the five judges to express dissent at the decision of the court:

“Peadar Ó Maicín, the appellant in this case, is a citizen of Ireland who lives in Galway. He is a native speaker of the Irish language, that is Irish is his first language and he has spoken it continuously since he was able to speak at all. He subsequently learned English. He was reared and educated in Rosmuc in the Connemara Gaeltacht.

…part of what is implied by the constitution of this State as a bilingual State, by Article 8 of the Constitution. If that is impractical, or really cannot be done for reasons of resources, or for any other reason, then the position may be addressed by the Oireachtas, pursuant to Article 8.3. But, absent such action by the Oireachtas, the bilingual nature of the State requires that the Tribunal of Fact understand the evidence as it is given. I believe that in any other State that proposition would be regarded as axiomatic, as it clearly is in Canada, on the basis of the information summarised elsewhere in this judgement.

I have already quoted with respectful approval Clarke J.’s statement that:

“It follows that those wishing to conduct official business in Irish do have a right, derived from the constitutional status of the Irish language, to have their business conducted in Irish.”

If that statement was unqualified then there would be no difference of opinion in this case. But it is immediately qualified as follows:

“However it equally follows that that right is not absolute and must be balanced against all the circumstances of the case (not least the fact that the great majority of the Irish people do not use Irish as their ordinary means of communication) particularly the fact that other citizens are entitled to conduct their business in English as an official language, and also any other competing constitutional interest which may arise.”

As we have seen, this is not the first time where the rights of an Irish speaker are diluted by reference to alleged competition with the rights of English speakers.

This formulation and approach appears to me to ignore the fact that the effect of Article 8 is to render Ireland a bilingual country. This means that there must be parity of respect for each language and its users. Mr. Ó Maicín’s right to use the Irish language is in no way affected if the defendant tried before him, or the defendant after him, opts to take his trial in English. Equally, the rights of those English speakers are in no way affected by Mr. Ó Maicín’s opting to take his trial in Irish.

As we have seen, both the constitutional composition of the State, and the current policy of the State, is one of bilingualism or as the current policy document calls it “functional bilingualism”.

We have represented to the European Union that Irish is in use as a vernacular language in the State. I simply cannot understand how such a representation could be made if it is impossible for a citizen to have a trial in this “vernacular” language in the Courts established by the very Constitution which constitutes the State a bilingual polity.

Ireland became a bilingual State not because, as in some countries (Belgium, Canada, India), there were severe conflicts threatening the very existence of the State on the topic of language use, but as a deliberate choice. It was enshrined in the Constitution also as an act of deliberate choice. Once enshrined in the Constitution, the language provisions became part of what the Judges promise “to uphold”. That promise is to “uphold the Constitution”, not to “uphold it as far as may be reasonable in present day conditions, as perceived by them”.

If it is thought that it is now simply too difficult to uphold the Constitution in the manner identified by the various cases cited in this judgement, it would be more honest to amend the Constitution or to legislate in the manner permitted by Article 8.3. But neither of these are for the judges to do: action on them must be initiated by one or other of the political organs of government.”

[With thanks to Cuan Ó Seireadáin for the link to Justice Hardiman’s written judgement]

12 comments on “Medieval Discrimination In A Modern Ireland

  1. What a shame. It seems like Ireland is currently in the grip of an existential crisis or a crisis of confidence as a result of the economic crash, with thoughts of ‘poverty’ stalking the minds of a recently very prosperous nation perhaps re-kindling old feelings of ‘inferiority’ towards the mother tongue and all that it represents? Old habits die hard. Someone needs a good kick up the jacksie.

    Not sure you’re right to refer to the 14th C Statutes of Kilkenny as the work of the British state. The English state surely? As a Welshman I take exception!

    • There is definitely something turbulent rumbling away in Irish popular culture at the moment. Perhaps it is, as I have argued, the growth of an urban and metropolitan Irish-speaking population which is causing “kick-back” from those Anglophones who cannot come to terms with such a situation? The closet example is the reaction of some militants and extremists in the British minority community in the north-east of Ireland to the changing demographics there. They cannot abide equality or parity of esteem with a Nationalist community that in percentage terms is almost on a level with their own. The near 50/50 division is breeding new tensions within Unionism, new militancy, new violence.

      As Irish-speaking citizens and communities in Ireland assert their legal rights the long-standing discrimination of the Irish state towards them is under challenge. Old practices of bigotry are now under the spotlight. What was once accepted as the norm can no longer be so.

      I meant “British” as in England/London of course. I know many Welsh people rightly wish to have that word back as their own. Along, perhaps, with the lost lands of Lloegr 😉

      • The only people that can provide those rights are the Irish speakers themselves.

  2. There are in fact parallels to this in Wales, e.g. resentment of a growing urban Welsh-speaking ‘elite’. The more I look into the situation in both countries, the greater the parallels seem to be. Issues of confidence, speakers who aren’t users of the language, official lip-service, disintegration of the few remaining heartlands … Also apparent is the contrast with other oppressed or formerly oppressed minorities, Basques, Latvians … Now if only we really understood the poisonous nature of English …

    • Russian/Soviet invasion of Latvia can be compared to barbarian invasion of Rome.
      Less developed nation occupied and oppressed more developed nations.
      That was not the case with British colonialism.
      I’m not saying that colonization was a good thing – Brits of course were not saints, but it was not all bad – they introduced new technologies, language, common law, education and so on.

      Soviets/Russians on the other hand just wrecked the Latvian economy, deported and oppressed our people, etc..
      Soviet occupation gave us absolutely nothing good – we remember Soviet times as a nightmare and don’t want them back.
      That’s why we don’t even think of using Russian as our first language.
      That’s why we removed all of the Russian signs.
      That’s why we do not want to give that language official status.
      And that’s why I don’t speak Russian in Latvia at all (although I understand that language quite well).

      From what I have seen here in Ireland – looks like that most of the Irish people think that English language and culture are superior and they want to be like English themselves.
      It almost looks like that most of you think that English did you a favour by colonizing this island.

      • And Ireland didn’t have its own ancient civilization? The Irish were already adapting their language to the Latin alphabet when the Germanic peoples who were to become the English were still living as diverse groups in northern Germany, southern Denmark, the Netherlands and western Sweden.

        If the Latvians had lived for centuries under Russian rule do you believe that the average Latvian would be any different from the average Irish person in how they would view their own nation?

        The British did nothing for the Irish that we would have not done for ourselves. We still live with the legacy of the British colony on our island nation. And it is a poisonous one.

        • As a civilisation Eire was light years ahead of many others in the world.
          Roma knew exactly why Eire had to be conquered and why TaRa was laid bare and the so called snakes- female energy driven out.
          So much of our his/her story destroyed and hidden.
          Ireland as a nation is a deeply traumatised one with many living like anyone would in “Stockholm syndrome” bonded with their abusers in order to survive.

  3. Jānis,

    The English invasion and occupation of Ireland pre-dates the Russian/Soviet invasion and occupation of Latvia by many, many, many centuries. I imagine that has something to do with the generally ambivalent Irish attitudes and behaviour towards their mother tongue! (plus of course the rise of American popular culture via Hollywood in the last century).

    The English were, and are, in no way superior to the Irish. Just different. Don’t forget that the Irish had a major role in making Christians out of the pagan Anglo-Saxon English after they decided to move to Britain to live.

  4. It wasn’t the English (Anglo-Saxons) who invaded Ireland in 1167, it was the Norman-French, the same people who invaded England in 1066 and proceeded to swiftly and savagely conquer that country, much more swiftly and savagely than the long drawn out conquest of Ireland. There are striking similarities in the lead-up to the two invasions, the making of a propaganda case, the acquiring of Papal support, etc, and, of course, they went on to extend their conquests as far as Southern Italy and Sicily. The English, long before 1167, were themselves a conquered people and it took until the 14th Century before their language was fully adopted by the new ruling elite.

    • By 1169 the Norman-French had become Norman-English or perhaps more correctly Norman-British. I ceratainly agree with everything else you say. The English of Shakespere are not the English of Beowulf. The change in language and culture was quite profound. Something my English friends recognise though few of their countrymen do.

      • But aren’t ‘nationalities’ always constructed, the question is by whom. Btw Willy the Bastard had quite a few Bretons in tow along with his Normans. I don’t know if there are any traces of them in Ireland.

    • 1172 Eire and all her people were given as slaves by the Pope to King Henry 11

      First white slaves to Barbados etc, families split up and sold off.

      Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

      Cromwell- Jesuit connection.

      As usual, on all his campaigns, Cromwell consulted closely with his Jesuit advisers:

      Hence why Cashel was so important for the Queen to visit, yet how many asked why she visited there a while ago- on orders from Pope.

      See who can answer that?

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Schenectady, NY asked in Divorce for New York

Q: Hi, its been more than 8 month and my divorce lawyer is not able to serve notice to my wife.

Hi, its been more than 8 month and my divorce lawyer is not able to serve notice to my wife as she is intentionally dodging the service. He has not even able to get court permission for motion of publication. Also, i have a strong feeling that he is lying to me , he is not providing me the copy of all document that he submitted in court. Please advise what to do. THANX

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Ali Shahrestani, Esq.
Ali Shahrestani, Esq.
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A: If you're dissatisfied with the pace or rigor of representation, why not hire a better lawyer? 8 months of delay for service is ridiculous. More details are necessary to provide a professional analysis of your issue. The best first step is an Initial Consultation with an Attorney such as myself. You can read more about me, my credentials, awards, honors, testimonials, and media appearances/ publications on my law practice website, I practice law in CA, NY, MA, WA, and DC in the following areas of law: Business & Contracts, Criminal Defense, Divorce & Child Custody, and Education Law. This answer does not constitute legal advice; make any predictions, guarantees, or warranties; or create any Attorney-Client relationship.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Monkey See, Monkey Bite

You hear about this vicious attack by Travis the Chimp? Travis was a show business veteran who once starred in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola. I, for one, would never mess with a chimp who has gone Hollywood. Divas like Travis can get nasty. While working on his television sitcom, Lou Costello was bitten on the hand by co-star Bingo the Chimp. The wound was so severe that Costello had Bingo permanently removed from the show. In 1965, "Tarzan" Mike Henry was starring in Tarzan and the Great River when Dinky the Chimp sunk his teeth into his chin. It took twenty stitches to put Henry's chin back together.

J. Fred Muggs was the only show business chimp I know who was a true gentleman.

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Bonjour, hi.

This is the third of my “Advent Calendar” Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I’m challenging myself to complete it, see here.

I’m a Frenglish-Canadian.
You see, I was raised with two first languages, and have never been quite sure which box to check for “mother tongue” on official forms. I have a very English first name and a very French last name and have consequently had my name impressively mangled by both English and French speakers over the years. One French co-worker called me “Jane” for the two years I worked with her, because she just could not wrap her speech centers around “Jen”.
I’ve never been comfortable defining a spot for myself along the language continuum. In Quebec, you’re Francophone or Anglophone, and your social world will change according to your label. You read The Gazette, or Le Journal de Montreal. You either went to McGill or to UdeM. You spent Saturday nights at the bars on Crescent Street, or on Rue Saint-Denis. There were some who crossed into foreign territory, of course – it’s not as though there were language guards at the doors – but those people were definitely in the minority.
As a kid, I never really understood that there was an unspoken divide. We spoke French with Mom’s side of the family, and English with Dad’s side. It was English at home for the most part, but from kindergarten onward, I was in a French Immersion program, speaking French half the day. We didn’t just have French class, we had classes in French. Maybe one year, history and ecology would be in French, with math and music in English, and the next year it would change.
I didn’t feel like an Anglo, but I didn’t feel quite French either. That lack of specific language identity never bothered me until I got a little older and get a taste of bullying and language discrimination. I know, right? White girl in Canada, who am I to talk about discrimination? But when you’re walking to the city pool with your sister and a friend, and some French kids no bigger or badder than yourselves throw gravel at you because you’re speaking English, and tell you to “Go home, fucking English”*, what else can you call it?
The kids were idiots, obviously, and we ignored them and continued on to the swimming pool. I wasn’t traumatized by the event and I’m not crippled by it now. But it stayed with me. Every time I ask myself whether I’m Anglo or Franco, I remember sting of the gravel and the bite of their words. I’m both, and I’m neither. I can never remember the French word for peacock or the English word for pamplemousse. I stumble over the gendered nouns of French, and yet I’ll “put my coat” or “pass the vacuum” and not see a damn thing wrong with what I’m saying, despite the funny looks I get. My accent comes out when I drink, and when I’m really mad, or watching hockey, I curse in French.
I’m just going to define myself with my made-up “Frenglish-Canadian” and if you don’t like it, you can piss off, câlisse.
*One, I was home. Two, they insulted us in English. If you’re going to insult me, do it right.

3 thoughts on “Bonjour, hi.

  1. Anonymous

    Bravo! I believe Franglphone (Frenglish) should be a new denomination in Québec.Should we ask Pauline :)before she tables Bill 14 next Spring (to reinforce Bill 101)

  2. Annie

    I remember not remembering the name for wrists and calling them “arm ankles” = )

    Or referring to eyebrows as “eye whiskers”.

    Opening and closing the lights in a room = )

    Ah, the memories your post brought back!

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Tag Archives: babies

Two Weddings and a Baby

The First Wedding

We sat at the Cuddle Up Pavillion at Glen Echo National Park, alternately peeling our skin from the vinyl chairs and fanning our faces with the wedding programs. The groom paced near the altar, drinking lemonade and accepting hugs from family. His groomsmen scanned the area for signs of the bride.

There was a giggle from my left, and I turned to see a group of guests leaning over a cell phone. “That is SO like her,” said a woman in green, “to be late to her own wedding!”

I took out my own phone to check Facebook, and saw her post:

“I am going to be late to my own wedding. Shocker. Don’t worry, Ryan, I’m coming!!!”

I smiled, and then aimed my phone’s camera at the groom.

I sent her the photo with the message “He’s still here!”

He stayed, of course, and my good friends were married on a hot and beautiful August day, in front of all the people who love them most. They made fun of me later for the grin on my face through the ceremony, but when you’re that happy for someone, you can’t keep it in.

The Second Wedding

Rain on your wedding day is lucky, but not if your ceremony is outdoors. Luckily for my cousin John and his beautiful bride, the threatening skies held back and left the orchard dry.  Huge iridescent dragonflies dipped between the wedding guests as we sat by the apple trees and watched the happy couple promise their lives to one another. When the minister mentioned their son, soon to arrive and make them a family of three, everyone reached for a tissue to dry their eyes.

As we found our seats under the big tent for the reception, my little cousin Olivia ran to our table and held up a bag for me to see.

“I picked apples!” She beamed with pride.

“Wow, that’s a lot of apples! Are you going to eat them?”

“Nope!” She bounced away to show others her bag.

It was wonderful to be with the family for a whole evening. It was more like a party than a wedding – casual and comfortable and welcoming. The peaches in the salad were so good that I sneaked back to the serving bowl and played the claw game with the tongs to pull out more peach slices for my plate.

When the music started, I taught Olivia to twist – an essential life skill – and she dominated the dance floor for the rest of the evening. As one adult’s energy ran out, Olivia grabbed another’s hand and demanded they dance. Three years old, and she was already going to the deejay station to request her favorite songs. He was sorry to have to tell her that “Gangnam Style” wasn’t in his playlist, because it’s hard to disappoint someone so adorable.

It was a wedding to remember. A reunion and a beginning. It was love and happiness and a gorgeous Massachusetts apple orchard at the start of autumn.

The Baby

I came home on Friday and dropped my keys on the counter.

“Honey, I’m home!”

I heard Tasha laugh from the couch. She’d spent the day hanging out with the cats and the complimentary WiFi, because my vacation days were tapped out, but she’d wanted to visit me in August anyway, for a change of pace. We hadn’t had a chance to hang out and talk in ages.

“Welcome home!” She came up the stairs and motioned to the phone on the counter. “Someone called a few minutes ago,” she said. “I didn’t hear the message, though.”

I pressed the button and my heard father-in-law say “Hi. It’s me. Call us back when you get home.”

“Everything okay?” Tasha asked.

“Well,” I said, “it’s either bad news or baby news. With Sarah due in a couple of weeks, it could be any time.”

Happily, it was baby news. My sister-in-law had gone into the hospital that morning with contractions, but she’d been sent home. Not unusual, apparently. As of the time I called my in-laws back, though, she was back in Labor and Delivery and they’d decided to keep her there. Baby on the way! I hung up the phone after extracting a promise from my mother-in-law to call as soon as there was more news, even though it was likely to be in the middle of the night.

Tasha and I went off as planned to the Friday afternoon farmer’s market, looking for some tomatoes and green beans for dinner. Friday’s market is set up in the hospital parking lot, so I turned towards the side of the hospital that I thought might be the Labor and Delivery unit, and waved enthusiastically at the windows. “Go Sarah! You can do it!”

It turns out that my encouragement was appropriate. By the time I pulled into my driveway with my pal and my bags of local produce, I had two missed calls on my cell phone, giving me the good news that my beautiful niece had arrived. I’d like to think my cheers helped a little, but my sister-in-law sure did a hell of a job. So now I’ve got a niece, and she’s the cutest little squeaky thing. I can’t wait to see what she turns into as she grows up.


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Triticum monococcum

Triticum monococcum

Il Piccolo Farro, also called Winter wheat (Triticum monococcum L.) is a herbaceous species belonging to the Poaceae family.

Systematic –
From a systematic point of view it belongs to the Eukaryota Domain, Kingdom Plantae, Magnoliophyta Division, Commelinidae Subdivision, Liliopsida Class, Poales Order, Poaceae Family, Triticeae Tribe and then to the Triticum Genus and to the T. monococcum Species.

Etymology –
The term Triticum, according to Varrone, derives from beaten tritum, for the use of beating wheat to separate the grains from the spikes. The specific epithet monococcum comes from the Greek μόνος mónos one, unique and from κόκκος cóccos hazel, berry, cuddle: because of the monosperm spikelets.

Geographic Distribution and Habitat –
The Triticum monococcum is a species that grows wild in the hilly areas of the northern part of the so-called fertile crescent and Anatolia, although it has a wide distribution that goes up to the Balkans and, to the south, to Jordan, near the Dead Sea. It represents the spelled of the most ancient origin and cultivation. The fossil remains discovered by its wild ancestor, Triticum boeticum, which are dated around the X-IX millennium BC, indicate its main center of origin in the mountainous areas of today’s Turkey; Small cultivated spelled seeds are traced from paleobotanica to the VII-VI millennium BC.

Description –
The spelled small or monocock is a species of the family of the diploid poaceae (2n = 2x = 14); it is characterized by a thin and weak culm, with a distal spike, aristata, laterally compressed. The spikelets have consistent glumes (the outer one, or lemma, is aristata, the internal one, or palea, is membranous), which enclose one, very rarely two, laterally crushed kernels, a semivitrea fracture.

Cultivation –
The small or monocock spelled, along with other spelled species, has a cultivation technique that, traditionally, is followed in the typical production areas in a simplified and in some cases rudimentary as regards the technical means used and the way they are applied, with limited or absent uses of synthetic chemicals and herbicides; also the use of fertilizers is nonexistent or limited to very reduced amounts of nitrogenous fertilizers. Seedbed preparation is not as accurate as that of other winter cereals. The current agronomic trend towards the simplification of processing, with a lower number and intensity of the interventions, presents aspects of great interest also in the case of spelled cultivation, for the advantages deriving from the reduction of the cost of processing and the containment of environmental impact, applying agroecological techniques of considerable interest. The sowing is normally autumn, except in environments at high altitudes where it is performed at the end of winter to avoid the risks associated with the very low temperatures of this season. In relation to fertilization, usually the letamation or the fertility left by the grass is sufficient medical. For details of the cultivation technique refer to the following sheet.

Uses and Traditions –
The small spelled is considered the first cereal “tamed” by man around 7500 BC, in the Middle East; it is the domestic form of the wild Triticum baeoticum. The two forms, wild and domestic, are considered separate species or subspecies: Triticum monococcum, subspecies T. baeoticum (wild) and T. monococcum subspecies. monococcum (housed). The cultivated form (domesticated) is similar to the wild one, except that the ear remains the same when it ripens, while the seeds are larger. It was precisely the Triticum baeoticum to be one of the first domesticated and cultivated plants. The first, clear evidence of the domestication of Triticum baeoticum is dated between 10600 to 9900 years ago, and found in two archaeological sites in southern Turkey. The main difference between the wild and cultivated Triticum monococcum is the dispersal of the seeds. In the wild variety the container of the seeds breaks and the latter are scattered on the ground. This facilitates a subsequent grain harvest. In the cultivated variety, the seed containers remain intact. Human intervention makes the difference. The collection of small spelled with intact containers was simpler for primitive growers. With time and through selections, conscious or not, man’s preferences for intact seed containers have created the domestic variety, which also has slightly larger grains than those of the wild Triticum monococcum. The small spelled requires sowing and harvesting by man to perpetuate its existence. An important feature that facilitates the domestication of Triticum baeoticum and other annual grains is that the plants are largely self-pollinating, so the desirable characteristic (for the human farmer) small spelled can be perpetuated with less risk of cross-fertilization with wild plants that may have less convenient features, such as smaller grains, seed dispersal, etc. Once tamed, the small spelled, from the northern area of the fertile crescent, spread to the Caucasus, the Balkans and central Europe. The cultivation of Triticum monococcum in the Middle East began to decline in favor of spelled in 2000 BC. Its cultivation was never extensive in Italy, in the south of France and in Spain. The Triticum monococcum continued to be cultivated in some areas of Northern Europe during the Middle Ages and until the early twentieth century. The advantage of the cultivation of small spelled is that, even if it has a low yield, it can grow on poor, dry and marginal soils, where other varieties would not be successful. The small spelled, as for other ancient varieties of cereals, is grouped among the “Covered cereals”, since its core is not free from the coating of the seeds (gluma) with the threshing and it is therefore difficult to separate the slag from the grain. Today, the Triticum monococcum is a marginal cereal, which is rarely cultivated, although it has found a new market as a health food. The monococcus, from the nutritional point of view, differs from common wheat or hard wheat due to its high content of fats, phosphorus, potassium, pyridoxine and beta-carotene; substances that play an important role in cellular functions and are efficient antioxidant agents. In Italy the Triticum monococcum is grown in the province of Brescia, with the name of Shebar, in Piedmont, with the name of Enkir and in Sardinia. The average nutritional values of Triticum monococcum are: Total proteins; 19.30%; Ash 2.41; Carotenoids, 10.40 mg / kg; Tocopherols (Vit. E), 94.40 mg / Kg. Microelements: Zinc, 50.00 mg / kg; Iron, 41.70 mg / kg; Manganese, 38.00 mg / kg Moreover, the small spelled has a low gluten content (around 7%), it is bread-making, but it does not rise much.

Preparation Mode –
Triticum monococcum remains a local cereal, often used as bulgur (crushed wheat) or as animal feed. It is predominantly boiled with whole grains or porridge. Its aroma lacks desirable bread features.

Guido Bissanti

– Acta Plantarum – Flora of the Italian Regions.- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.- Treben M., 2000. Health from the Pharmacy of the Lord, Advice and experience with medicinal herbs, Ennsthaler Editore- Pignatti S., 1982. Flora d ‘Italia, Edagricole, Bologna.- Conti F., Abbate G., Alessandrini A., Blasi C. (edited by), 2005. An annotated checklist of the Italian vascular flora, Palombi Editore.

Warning: Pharmaceutical applications and alimurgical uses are indicated for informational purposes only and do not in any way represent a medical prescription; there is therefore no liability for their use for curative, aesthetic or food purposes.

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