Eric, my financial and business correspondent, has informed me that Primark has seen a dramatic drop off in the sales of suits and a rise in the sales of pyjamas. This is evidence that yesterday’s Blog penetrated to the heart of the high street.
How could I have missed the fact that yesterday it was the 60th Anniversary of the verdict being delivered in favour of Penguin Books in the ‘Lady Chatterley Trial’? I still remember listening to the Home Service on the wireless and wondering what it was all about. We had a banned lexicon of words at home that included ‘ain’t’, ‘fool’ and of course ‘bloody’ but the two words in contention then were beyond imagination. I once got into terrible trouble for using the word ‘bastard’. Some years later I reported to my mother that after writing my column in the university newspaper a correspondent had called me a bastard. Her prompt repost was a rather huffy, “I can assure you you’re not.” The words that shocked the establishment in 1960 took a long time to become mainstream in the media and we still look somewhat askance at those whose vocabulary seems to be monopolised by them, but after 9 pm we accept them as dramatically authentic. I can’t imagine ‘Derry Girls’ or ‘Young Offenders’ without a fair seasoning of spicy vocabulary.
Truly bad language, I think, is not naughty words but language that misleads, antagonises, perverts, offends, mystifies, abuses, covers up and lies. God said, “Let there be light and there was light.” There was no disparity between word and action. The word was the Truth but now we assume it isn’t. Once we regarded the words of politicians and journalists as “as slippery as eels”, they misled by craftily nuanced meanings. Now they’re too lazy for that and just lie and brand the obvious as hoaxes or fake. We might as well dismiss words altogether; we might as well drop them and just sneer at or punch each other instead.
“Did you just write, ‘we might as well dismiss words altogether’?”. “No, I never wrote that.” “But it’s here on the screen.” “Yes, but I never wrote it.” So if the ‘f’ word is a bit crude and limiting as a means of communicating, the ‘T’ word is utterly toxic. I’ve just seen one of those appalling women festooned in Trump colours braying that he is the greatest president ever. Bring out the ‘f’ words, we viewers have need of them! I can’t stand that “Make America Great,” “Get Brexit Done” chanting that drowns out thought. Have they not read ‘Animal Farm’ with the “Four legs good, Two legs bad” bleating of the sheep? I woke up twice in 2016 to find our democracy had delivered the unthinkable – tomorrow I simply don’t want to wake up!
A friend has told us that when she gets together with her pals they are allowed one rant, one ailment and one grandchild. I’ve had a particularly big rant so will forego the privilege of the ailment and the grandchild.
We’ll include a daughter though. Today we took her out for a pre-birthday lunch – a logistical challenge in the present times, currently Tier 2, members of two households only able to meet outside. So we booked lunch at the Prince of Wales in Baslow, because Deirdre knew they used to be called Rowleys and Rowleys is like Rowsley where stands the Peacock, which is where she thought we were going. Anyway the Prince of Wales was fantastic, the food was delicious and wonderfully presented and the young staff looked after us as if we were their eccentric old grandparents who needed humouring, protecting and looking after, especially as we were clearly daft. We were awkward customers, insisting on eating out on the terrace, having the huge parasol erected to keep off the rain and expecting the staff to climb up several flights of stairs, back their way through a fire-door which the wind kept slamming on them, and then deliver the plates out there in a temperature of 7 degrees. The finesse of eating high quality dainty food is somewhat compromised by gloves, rugs, scarves, ski jackets, snoods, hats, shawls, thermal underwear, squalls of rain and blustery wind. But this is the new normal, and we determine to overcome inconvenience to support business and keep living. Thursday of course changes it all and we’re so sorry for all those in the hospitality industry who have invested thousands and been so inventive in making us safe and enabling us to go out.
I have been forbidden from posting the obligatory photo as we all look like those inflatable figures you get on the lawn at Christmas. Tonight there’s a bright moon in a clear cold sky, a crystalline sheen on the road and the promise of a frosty morning. We seem to have descended from Autumn to winter very quickly, so here is what my Acer tree, pictured three days ago, looked like yesterday, still with a few ragged leaves clinging defiantly on. Which is what we all need to do.