Who Could Have Known?

It was my own fault. Maybe that is some consolation. I should not have any excuses but if I did it would be simple tiredness. Not that that would cut much ice with those who will now be subjected to a reign of unimaginable terror.

It was the early hours of the morning. Finally it was bedtime. There were two things I needed to do. Firstly listen for the local mouse who likes to ferret around in our skirting board. Then remove my watch. It gets attached to you when you always wear it. You know you have to remove spectacles because you cannot turn over without realising they are there. The watch is a different matter as it never gets in the way. But eventually I realised I was still wearing it and wearily loosened the strap. No one wants to handle a limp object at that time of night. So I could not be bothered to get up and put the watch in its usual place. I just leaned over and put it on the table. Big deal. It wasn't going anywhere. Off to sleep and forget about it.

Next morning I remembered it was on the table and strapped it on again from there. All well and good. I was not so weary the next night. So back went the watch to its usual post on top of the fridge. The flat is very small you see. Next morning as usual up again and off to work. One problem. The watch was not its usual shiny self. Something was wrong. It worked perfectly well but some of its metallic sparkle had gone. Where once had been crystalline sheen was now a barely winking dullness. Did it matter? I thought not. Then I realised what had happened.

Watches are by nature dependable. They are designed to do the same thing the same way over and over again and feed on their own regularity. But mine had now for the first time been introduced to a new place. It could not cope. In perplexity at a variation in its routine it had sought the place out again. It realised it could not move on its own. But the mouse could. It made the mistake of confiding in the mouse trying to find explanations of its strange feeling that there was a world beyond absolute uniformity. The mouse was only too happy to listen and take advantage of this temporary emotional bond. The inevitable happened. No one realised it to begin with. But soon it was clear that a horror had unleashed itself on the nation.

The first mechanical mouse was born about three weeks ago. At first sight it is harmless enough. Its movement is regular and it squeaks every sixty seconds so you know it is coming. The problem comes when you try to kill it. The first mechanical mouse gave birth to several others and each has their own orbital path. They move around this path with monotonous regularity nibbling away at anything they find. Nothing can prevent them and nothing can resist them. People are losing toes and abandoning their houses as there is no safe place for anyone or anything. Each controlled mechanical mouse zone becomes larger and larger as the mice breed and their orbital paths become wider and wider to fit them all in. Ours is the only flat in the block still holding out against the mice. We also have to hold out against the angry neighbours who have seen their property destroyed by these creatures and expect some sort of satisfaction from me as if I am a mechanical mouse myself.

The watches have been affected too. They are highly temperamental. You never know what time they want it to be as they are so afraid of making a mistake that they barely move and hope the time they show will come round again. They jump from wrist to wrist to seek sweat for food and comfort from the watches which remain more definite. They will not go within one hundred miles of a farmer's wife and have staged several audacious rescue attempts on their computer cursor operating brethren. It is a shame the circus found out too late. Herds of elephants stampede away from their shows and all over the surrounding area when watches in the audience frighten them. Already it may too late to prevent "the end of civilization as we know it". Or "Walsall" to use the correct terminology.

I meant no harm. I do not prefer mechanical mice and temperamental watches to the old ones. I did not understand the consequences of my actions. I also know none of this means anything now. The world is beyond what we call regularity. At least we all enjoyed the occasional burst of originality while it lasted.

To Stick In Your Tea

The great Al Jolson recorded a song called There's A Lump Of Sugar Down In Dixie. In it he refers to how sweet his Southern girlfriend is. What commentators often fail to realise is that the song was recorded just after the First World War. Sugar was a very scarce commodity in America then and particularly in the South. His girlfriend is therefore not simply sweet but very precious and hard to find anywhere.

Like a lot of Al Jolson songs this one has dated. It refers to a social situation which no longer exists. If he were alive today and still top of the entertainment tree he would be singing the same songs adapted to the world of now. A contemporary Jolson song would extol the virtues of a new target depending on the audience.

If Jolson lived in London it is obvious what he would describe his girlfriend as. She would be a plumber. Skilled tradesmen of any sort are hard to find and affordable ones even rarer. Furthermore there is a considerable drive to get women into non-traditional professions such as this. The chorus of the song would run "There's a lady plumber down in Dalston/Who I call my own - She's the cheapest little pipe restorer/I have ever known". Most singers would not create the response they would like with these words but as Jolson demonstrated many times during his lifetime he could pull it off.

If Jolson were back in America he would also not have to search too far for an object of his affections the audience could relate to. The rise of the religious right in that country has had the twin effect of creating a deep reverence for Scripture and creating an absurdly inflated sense of America's purpose in relation to it. The conflation of the Bible with the American Way has produced a nation of people who think they are put on this earth to take possession of Scripture and interpret it to the rest of us who were here thousands of years before and in some cases actually know what it means. It is no coincidence that the ludicrous Mormonism has thrived in this climate. In contemporary America Jolson would be singing "There's a secret scripture south of Erie/That we call our own - That declares we are the only nation /God has ever known". Jolson was of course Jewish and was brought up with such notions. An American audience would be so proud of itself that it would never consider the contradiction of a Jewish man acknowledging what the Fundamentalist Christian right regard as their private though unimpeachable truth.

But of course there is now a state of Israel. As the World's Greatest Entertainer Jolson would have been welcomed in his homeland with open arms even though he was actualy born in Russian Lithuania. He would be invited to sing in the most prestigious venues and be almost a personal pet of the President. What would he sing about in Israel? Lumps of sugar in Dixie would have no meaning there. The way to convey the same notion would be to invoke territory Israel claims or occupies which others dispute. Admittedly this applies to the whole country. Jolson however would sing "There's a group of mountains call the Golan/That I'm glad to own - There the sweetest little clumps of homeland security/We have ever known". The lack of scansion would surely be forgiven as long as extreme patriotism raised its head. If accused of being polemical Jolson would simply point to his lack of synagogue attendance and his support of Christian causes as well as Jewish ones. Not that he would care anyway as he could probably buy any country he chose and say Raca to all those who made comments about him.

All of these scenarios are feasible if Jolson rose from the dead as all his true fans know he will. This would however leave us with the Early Music problem. There are musicians who will play early music using all the instruments, techniques and styles of the period it was written so you hear what was actually intended. All that is missing is an audience from that time whose interpretation of what they hear would likewise reflect the period. In order to convey these concepts in a modern way to a modern audience you would also need a modern singer whose style everyone could relate to as a development from what they knew before. Who could hope to emulate Jolson? As always this column has the answer. Only the Crazy Frog who has topped the charts with non-music could deliver these new songs in the correct cultural context. This would of course have an added benefit. It would kill off rock and roll overnight and send everyone rushing back to the far superior Jolson as soon as possible. If the Crazy Frog is what we have come to it might just begin to cross people's minds that there might be something wrong with the assumption of eternal progress.

Resources At Our Liptips

Ken Dodd once drafted a book which outlined regional variations in what makes people laugh. He called it The Giggle Map of Britain. If something is intrinsically funny where its hearer comes from should not affect their response to it as Buster Keaton demonstrated. Nevertheless there are cultural quirks which define whether something is always funny or only funny some of the time. What is funny to a Northerner may not be funny to a Midlander. In fact very little is funny to a Midlander as some of us have found to our cost.

Ken Dodd's book is an important cultural study but it does not go far enough. In order to profit from it you have to tell jokes to people. But before you get to that stage you have to rehearse. This means telling jokes to dummies, walls, plants etcetera. It would be more useful if the tastes of these objects were defined and then related to human tastes. If we know how to make inanimate objects laugh we can apply the same techniques to humans to produce the same response.

Dummies are often considered funny in themselves which is one reason why ventriloquists have them. I would be sued for libel if I told you the other one. Dummies however regard their condition as the norm and the human condition as absurd. One source of amusement for them is how humans move their necks. Whereas a dummy can detach its head or turn it through 180 degrees humans have certain limits in both vertical and lateral movement. It must be very funny for a dummy to watch humans trying to point themselves in impossible directions to look at things and how easy it is for someone to come up behind them unawares. Similarly human speech must be highly amusing to a dummy. Dummies cannot talk on their own despite the best attempts of George W. Bush to persuade us otherwise. To hear humans coming out with the sounds of dummies on their own without hands up their backsides must tickle their fancies greatly. Humans also sleep. Most people seem to find fun in other people farting. Dummies must respond the same way to the sound of humans snoring. If would-be humorists did all these things deliberately they would learn how to create the best response in dummies and how therefore to apply the same techniques to human taste.

As we were told during the Second World War walls have ears. They absorb everything around them to create the culture of that building and several together create the culture of a street or town. That is why we respond differently to different places. But if walls could also talk all this accumulated experience would come out of their mouths and be lost forever. It must therefore be a great amusement to walls to see people trying to convey information by talking. Such futile gestures would be their version of the alternative oblivion comedy of the 1980's. Similarly they must be shaking themselves silly when humans forget things. How the allegedly superior human can fail to learn from their experience is beyond those whose mortar structure prevents them forgetting anything. Not for nothing is the structure of mortar the basis of computer memory systems whose own impish humour we have come to take for granted. Walls will also be amused by people standing still and saying nothing. Babies always smile if you imitate their every move. Walls must be cheered by the sight of humans pretending to be them.

Plants always respond to being spoken to. We are told this is due to the beneficial effect of the carbon dioxide we emit whilst speaking. Actually they grow more when they feel better about themselves as they do when they laugh. The growth rate of humans must amuse them. Why does it take eighteen years for humans to reach their optimum height when it takes a plant a few weeks? Similarly our faces must be funny. All the same colour unless it is particularly hot or cold. No stripes or speckles or differential responses to light. Nor does light make them grow. A plant magician would stick a miniature human in a cardboard box with a lamp in it and pull them out the other side exactly the same size to howls of laughter from their plant audience. Once again there are ample opportunities for humans to maximise their condition for comic effect and thus learn how to create the laughter they seek.

We have all seen embarrassing atttempts at humour. People who are being payed good money to appear on TV programmes fail miserably to connect with their audience. This is because they have never learned their trade. It is all very well making humans laugh. But if you have no idea how to make other things laugh you will not have the tools of your job and everything will be hit or miss. We have an alternative we have disregarded for so long. But there is a reason that funny ha ha and funny peculiar are the same thing with two different interpretations. Humans gave those interpretations to cover their lack of humour. To inanimate objects they are fundamentally the same and this fundamental of truth is ultimately what all of us will spend our lives trying to see by our widely differing pathways.

The Beacon Of Pitch Darkness

This morning I met Kate. This very nice King Charles Spaniel was wearing a coat saying "Support Dog". I asked its owner what this was about. She replied that Kate was there to help her with her mental health needs.

Clearly this has not been thought through. If dogs can really have a positive effect on mental health every dog owner would be an Aston Villa fan. But if that happened every dog owner would understand the international conspiracy which prevents us winning our rightful trophies and want to correct it. Then there would be no vast professional football industry creating millions in revenue and taxes because there would be no public interest in the game when Villa won every competition they entered. Even the best intentions of the best individuals would not survive against the vested interests of so many.

However the incident does shed further light on the psyche of those who rule us by controlling our welfare services. If a dog is supposed to help with mental health needs dogs must be equated with sanity. There are far more people diagnosed with mental health problems than ever before by those who have the power to do so. It is instructive to understand the version of sanity these people expect us to aspire to.

The first manifestation of our rulers' version of sanity is a wet nose. All dogs have one unless they have some medical problem. It has traditionally been believed that humans only have one if they have a medical problem. Presumably we are asked to believe this conventional wisdom is false. Nevertheless it takes a lot of effort on the part of humans to have a perpetually wet nose. Living in a continuously cold and wet climate would help but that would mean politically incorrect cultural assumptions were being made. No one would dare say that people who live in cold and wet countries were inherently more sane than others. Clearly there is an expectation that humans will do everything they can to have perpetually runny noses. To capitalise on this the National Health Service will soon be producing Nose Thermostats which rapidly cool and heat a perpetual supply of liquid when strapped to the face thus creating a perpetual cold in their wearers. This may sound extreme but it does at least create a visible benchmark for sanity. To avoid being cast out of society and labelled as sick for the rest of your life you simply need to wear one of these devices all the time and tell everyone how good they are. This will demonstrate your unimpeachable sanity in the eyes of the powerful and privileged who will all be wearing them themselves as a matter of course.

The second manifestation of sanity is being covered in fur. Most humans find this very difficult and would shy away from such a condition. The only known fur covered humans are the famous Andre Agassi and Stella McCartney and even Mr. Agassi has rebelled by shaving his head. Nevertheless we are now led to believe that this is what sanity consists of. Although this sounds just as absurd as the idea of everyone having a wet nose it is a much more sinister proposition. In the Old Testament the hairy man Esau lost his birthright to the smooth man Jacob when Jacob pretended to be hairy before their blind father. It is most unusual for a leading politician to be hairy and apart from Mrs. Thatcher there has not been a bearded British Prime Minister since the Marquess of Salisbury. By being hairy we might be sane but we will also give up our birthrights. All our liberties will be handed over without a fight to the smooth politicians who are making these rules. We are being encouraged to believe that this is the only sane and rational thing to do.

The third way you can demonstrate that you are sane is by wagging your tail. Humans do not have tails of course but there have been considerable moves in the last thirty years or so to reintroduce tails into the gene pool. First it was figure hugging jeans which showed off people's backsides and persuaded people to aspire to a distinctive tail again. Then there was a variety of new dance forms involving swinging the tail around or gyrating from the base of the tail which made it essential to have a protruding tail if they were to be performed on a daily basis. Then there was the publicity given to the "bum cleavage" of fat men and labourers on various television programmes which tried to persuade us that it was shameful to show the top of the buttocks if there was no tail visible there. Nowadays at party conferences you see a platform of senior politicians who appear to be shifting in their seats when speeches are being made. They are doing no such thing. Whilst the hoi polloi are applauding the speaker they are wagging their bottoms back and forth to demonstrate their sanity and therefore the higher authority of their response. Apparently sanity like Socialism can only be practised by those able to afford it.

It would be interesting to meet a human who fully manifested these characteristics of a sane person on a consistent basis. In all probability there will never be one which is why dogs are used as the exemplars. But there may in fact be a method in this madness. Every generation has its idols people try to live up to. No one ever does in fact become who they set out to emulate but they spend a great deal of effort trying. They would of course be better off trying to emulate our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ. But trying to emulate dogs to prove you are sane is hopefully the final absurd extension of this wilful refusal to be human. Then we will discover what sanity really is. All we will then need is to justify why we have chosen to ignore this for so many thousands of years.

Why Red Is Violent

Several U.K. towns are known for their association with acts of war. Hastings and Evesham are known for their battles and Roxburgh and Hereford for their sieges. In our more peaceful times these towns now promote themselves as places of historical interest on the basis of this association. Those interested can compile lists of battlefields and siege sites to visit and transport themselves to the world of their ancestors.

Few people would include the sleepy town of Market Drayton on that list. The town does have military connections as it is the birthplace of Clive of India. Yet it is not known for having seen action itself. There have in fact been two sieges of Market Drayton and one is going on right now. People are not aware of them because too many vested interests are too embarrassed to admit what has been fought over in that town.

Market Drayton has one famous product apart from Clive of India. It is the home of gingerbread. Most English people eat this confection and are happy to admit their appreciation of its taste and culture. Those same English people are however terrified of associating it with people. Everyone has had hair at one time and this hair is some sort of colour. Every colour bar one passes unnoticed. Yet if a person has hair the same colour as gingerbread it arouses deep animosity for reasons no one seems to know. There is a whole lexicon of abusive terms for ginger people which does not exist for any other colour of hair. To be ginger is to bear a mark of distinction so great that a range of irrational fears grips the less tonsorially gifted.

The first recorded usage of any of these abusive terms was in 1204. In this dark Plantagenet age we read of the "rowset playgue" spreading across the land. For centuries this was thought to refer to the Black Death until it was realised that "rowset" is a variant of "russet". Those with ginger hair were seen as some sort of sorcerors who could change their hair from a natural colour by magic. One day a ginger person was found with a packet of Market Drayton gingerbread. This was held to be the magic potion responsible and officers of the King descended on Market Drayton. Originally they rode around the town looking for the witches who were casting spells on cornmeal to change it to gingerbread and change hair colour. When they discovered that most of the town was engaged in producing the substance they declared that the place was a threat to national security. An army of men-at-arms and angry residents of nearby towns soon surrounded it. The townsfolk had no choice but to stay inside the town walls with the supplies they had left and defend themselves as best they could.

The siege seems to have lasted about eight months. We cannot be certain because only the winners write histories and no one in Market Drayton could read and write at the time. What is known is that the army invested and undermined the walls. The defenders at first used the usual tactics of hurling rocks and boiling oil from the battlements but soon realised that there would always be more people outside the walls than inside them. They therefore decided to destroy the royal armies from within. Rather than drive them away they enticed the royal soldiers closer and then hurled sticky gingerbread onto their heads. Those without helmets were immediately butchered by their colleagues when they were seen with this evil substance on them and those with helmets were made to sleep outside the camp on their own and were picked off one by one by small Draytonians who had crept out through the mine tunnels created by the army. The king of the time was John who was never popular and always in need of troops beside him to ward off frequent threats of rebellion and invasion. As time went by he realised that his knights would be better employed protecting him from people who might kill him than witches who might turn his hair ginger. In the middle of the night as legend has it he withdrew his depleted army from the town. The Draytonians woke in the morning to find the siege lifted and began rounds of wild celebrations. The local landowners agreed with King John that his humiliating retreat was never to be mentioned again. Nevertheless the townsfolk produced the ever-popular armies of gingerbread men who quickly conquered the taste buds to remind the world of their outstanding feat.

Over the centuries people forgot about the siege and the reason for the gingerbread men. Right up until 2003 in fact. Then the first murmurings of a new conflict began to appear. This time however it would be the exact reverse of the first. Both enemy and cause were different. But once again the conflict would inevitably centre on Market Drayton.

In 2003 political correctness was in full swing. All the abusive words hurled at people of other races and colours and physical conditions were declared illegal. With one exception. It remained perfectly acceptable to abuse people with ginger hair. Indeed it became the last refuge for all those convicted of political incorrectness in the past. With all the usual targets removed bigots found sanctuary in calling ginger people names. Very quickly the country polarised into ginger and non-ginger or normal and deviant as the other side would have it. Gingers were understandably angry and looked around for a way to fight back. All gingers are tormented as children by the story of the homophagic Gingerbread Man with whom they are always compared. Where else would he come from but Market Drayton? Determined to remove this slur which had so damaged their lives gingers descended upon Market Drayton but were immediately arrested for travelling whilst confectionery. They were rightly outraged. A national S.O.S. went out and the second siege of Market Drayton began.

So it has remained to the present day. Market Drayton keeps taunting ginger people by producing its confection. The gingers continue to control all supply routes in and out of the town and operate martial law in the surrounding district. No one wants to admit this is happening because they cannot bear the thought that they are being beaten by the people they have mocked for so long. But being beaten they slowly are. Soon political correctness for all will wipe Market Drayton off the map altogether. Then the final triumph of the superior ginger-haired person will be brought ever nearer for the benefit of all mankind.

There is no reason to abuse someone for the colour of their hair. It is sad that the poor people of Market Drayton have to pay the price for the national refusal to behave justly. But it is only right that supposedly moral standards for one should apply to all. Gingers have been under siege for longer than their abusers would ever dare concede. It is a kind of justice when the home of the politically incorrect gingerbread man is being destroyed because those who could preserve it are in a state they would never dare admit.