As St Andrew's Day Dissolves In A Mist Of Woolly Thinking, Cheering News Of The Limits Of English Ingenuity

As the Peebles Times-Picayune launches a thundering campaign to make St Andrew's Day a holiday, and I consider retiring to bed with a copy of Dance and Skylark: Fifty Years With Alistair Sim, I come across an advertisement for a set of four English Heritage mugs in bone china. Now, I can think of several English mugs, but these collectable pieces of crockery (£39.99 for the four, with free tea towel) celebrate the lives of those great Englishmen, Mr Bram Stoker (born Clontarf, Co. Dublin), Mr Jimi Hendrix (of Seattle, Washington), Mr Sigmund Freud (Freiberg, Moravia) and Mr John Lennon (Liverpool).
One out of four isn't bad, though which one of the four that is I wouldn't like to say.

St Andrew's Day Is A Good Excuse To Chase Rabbits, But Is There Really Anything To Celebrate In Our Funny Wee Country?

Unaccustomed as I am to pleasure, it was with a heavy heart that I agreed to give the toast at a St Andrew's Day dinner in Peebles tomorrow night. To be honest, I have always been unsure about St Andrew, based on my general suspicion of any practice that is based on the worship of bones.
My feelings of queasiness about Andrew and the symbolism of the saltire were multiplied a few years ago, when the Daily Record ran on its front page the image of a peculiarly-shaped cloud (or possibly two jet-streams). The white cross on a blue sky was said to be a good portent for the nation, just as it was when Angus won a battle in Athelstaneford in 831 AD having observed a lucky cross in the sky. (I have been to Athelstaneford on numerous occasions, and I understand that hallucinations are not uncommon there, especially amongst those who have sampled the turnip wine).
I am told that St Andrew's Day used to be a day of feasting. St Andra'ing, apparently, was a day on which rural people chases rabbits and drank, before settling down to a tasty dinner of singed sheep's heid. Now, of course, they do that all the time, without any excuse.
My speech is supposed to be an uplifting and optimistic look at Scotland. For four days now, I have been staring at a blank sheet of paper. This morning, I wrote "Tunnock's Teacakes" on my pad. This afternoon, I added: "Miss Deborah Kerr, beautiful daughter of Helensburgh". (I recently attended a screening of Mr Michael Powell's Black Narcissus, and I have been having peculiar thoughts about ladies-in-wimples ever since).
It is not such a bad haul. Religions have been founded on less. But on this freezing November night, I wonder: is there anything contemporary to celebrate about Scotland?

The Manchester Guardian, The Barclay Brothers, The Birds And The Bees: An Apology

The "corrections and clarifications" column in The Manchester Guardian has always represented the masochistic tendency of the liberal press in its purest form, but I was taken with the entry which appeared on Monday 28 November. On the advice of m'learned friends, I reproduce it here without any further comment, and certainly no jokes about Morecambe and Wise sharing a bed, the performance artists Gilbert and George or, indeed, Messrs Phil and Grant Mitchell from television's EastEnders.
The Guardian wrote: "In our report about the events at the Daily Telegraph ... we referred to Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, and then to 'their son' Aidan Barclay. Aidan Barclay is the son of Sir David Barclay."

The Death Of Mr George Best Was Reality Television For An Age In Which Religion Has Perished And Grief Means A Soft Rain Of Esso Flowers

According to today's newspapers, the funeral of Mr George Best, a former footballer, will be the biggest since that of Princess Diana. Half a million people are expected to line the streets of Belfast, though the arithmetic by which this number is arrived is not explained.
Certainly, Mr Best's passing has been a popular event. The details of his failing health were headline news for several days, and his doctor, Professor Roger Williams, became an unlikely celebrity.
No doubt the grief which surrounded Mr Best's hospital bed was real and sincere, but the play which unfolded outside the Cromwell Hospital was reality television taken to its logical extreme. I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here is a parlour game by comparison: this was a real death, served up as soap opera. It has been accompanied by all the usual paraphernalia of mass hysteria - the shrines and well-wishers' notes; the petrol station flowers, rotting in their Cellophane; the minute's silence at football games across the country. This brand of grief is often described as "an outpouring", which is helpful only in the sense that the term could apply equally to a jug of syrup.
What, exactly, are we grieving? Many who mourn the passing of Mr Best are in mourning for the loss of their own youth. Like Mr Elvis Presley, he represents a talent squandered; a shy man brutalised by the requirements of fame. He was a living symbol of the dangers of success, and the fact that wealth isn't everything, but also of the fact that a modest man could sometimes leave a mark on the surface of the earth just by being himself. Mr Best's death - the public event, rather than the private pain being endured by his family - is a parable in a time when religion has ceased to matter.
It is a hollow emotion, made more meaningless by repetition. The applause which greeted the hearse of Princess Diana as it drove through a rain of bouquets tossed from motorway flyovers was one sign of the confusion which exists in relation to celebrity and death. To be famous is to to court a kind of immortality. Fan-worship is a kind of faith. True, it is a nihilistic brand of religion, celebrating nothing but its own popularity, but that, in a sense, is where we stand in the early years of this century, in a world of war and famine and pestilence on every horizon.
But all religions are threatened when ritual becomes more important than values. This happened with Mr Best, whose death was notable for being celebrated in the newspapers on the day before it happened. That, too, is a matter worthy of grief.

Sentences Which Only Sound Charming When They Are Uttered By Sir David Attenborough # 1

"The copulatory behaviour of slugs is just mindblowing."
(Overheard on Radio 4's Front Row)

In Brechin, Where The Berries Were Plump And The Budgerigars Were Supersonic, Pleasure Was A Warm Heckly Biscuit

Several concerned readers, on digesting my "blogger profile", have written to ask about heckly biscuits. It is, I think, a sad fact of modern life that, though our High Streets are filled with restaurants from China, from Thailand, and from India, local delicacies are dying out. As a devotee of the Aberdonian buttery (a flat Frisbee made of pastry and lard) I find it baffling that our supermarkets are full, instead, of croissants, a breakfast roll from Turkey via France.
But at least it is still possible to find a buttery in Aberdeen. The heckly, a presbyterian treat (and thus a contradiction in terms) has all but disappeared. Several times last summer I took the Dormobile on safari into the North East - the natural habitat of the heckly - and returned empty-handed.
What, then, is a heckly? Well, A Heckly is the author of Epidural Hematoma as a Complication of Endoscopic Biopsy and Shunt Placement in a Patient Harboring a Third Ventricle, a paper in the bestselling journal Pediatric Neurosurgery. But that is not particularly helpful unless you are having trouble with your ventricles, which I am not, now that I have started wearing Wonderpants.
You will, recall, I'm sure, that M. Proust once wrote of a winter visit to see his mother. He was out of sorts, and was offered tea. Reluctantly, he accepted. His mother produced a "petite madeleine", a "plump little cake" which looked as if it had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell.
"And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal."
M. Proust over-writes a little, but the general thrust of his prose is good. A heckly is a reminder of my childhood trips to Angus, where the berries were fat, the jam was sweet, and nothing ever happened for a whole summer.
Before they colonised Peebles, the Elders lived in Brechin and Montrose, towns in which the depressing morrow was greeted like a bank holiday. They were kind, sweet-toothed folk, but suspicious of pleasure. They rode bicycles and raced budgerigars for sport. They were happy.
And when they were happiest, my grandmother, Mrs Elder (or Grandma'am), would make tea in the stewing kettle and fetch into her pinnie for hecklies, warmed from the hot cotton of her voluminous combinations.
I ate of lot of hecklies in Angus, and a great many Simmer's Butter Biscuits, and the thought of them makes me hopeful in a way that little else does.
I have teased long enough. A heckly is made of flour and the tears of the baker. It is a melancholy biscuit, a treat almost without pleasure. It is flaky, and slightly sour, tasting faintly of salt. You can eat it with butter, but to do so is to dabble with decadence. The true heckly eater takes it plain, with milky tea (stewed and boiled for no less than 45 minutes).
The name of the biscuit is something of a mystery, though I have heard suggestions that it is derived from the pattern of holes indented on the top of the biscuit with a "hackle", similar to the comb used in the manufacture of jute. It is possible to buy something called a "sweet heckly", but not advisable, unless one is licensed for public dancing.

If The Ladies Of The World Toilet Organisation Had Visited The Gentlemen's-Excuse-Me, They Would Not Be Asking For Equality

From Singapore, some extraordinary news. Acting on recommendations issued by the World Toilet Organisation, Singapore's National Environment Agency has issued guidelines which require public facilities such as restaurants, bars and nightclubs to have "equal facilities" for men and women. In larger venues, such as cinemas, the Ladies'-Excuse-Me will have facilities outnumbering the Gentlemen's by a ratio of 14:10.
The Australian newspaper, The Age, quoted Ms Elisabeth-Maria Huba, a German social scientist, as saying that: "The human female tendency to go to the lavatory in pairs is a natural instinct that has evolved over millennia, and is merely reinforced by social practice. Men have it quick and easy. For a lot of women the toilet is a place they are afraid of. When there are … disgusting toilets, women go together to protect each other."
Now, I am all for equality, and some of my best friends are ladies, but this - to paraphrase one of the Scotsman's vast legion of ex-editors - is "political correctness gone rife". One need not be incontinent to understand that the public lavatory is in crisis, and the facilities for gents are often of a standard that would be flattered by the word "basic".
A few years ago, against my better judgment, I attended a football match at Hibernian's Easter Road Stadium in Edinburgh. I still have flashbacks from my visit to the facilities there. It was quick, but it was far from easy.
The Gents was housed in a dark, damp cellar. There was no porcelain, or tiling. One went, so to speak, against the wall, and the urine ran down the famous Easter Road slope towards a gurgling maw. I cannot recall whether there were sinks in there, but I did get the distinct impression that anyone who loitered in order to wash his hands might have found himself embroiled in the kind of mortal danger one reads about in Japanese war comics.
Personally, I am all in favour of parity in public conveniences, but this would often mean that the facilities for gents required upgrading. As a rule of thumb, urinals should be replaced by cubicles with at least two reinforced doors and a ready supply of Marigold gloves and Toilet Duck.
Shy Bladder Syndrome is no joke. The World Toilet Organisation must get to grips with it.

The Late Mr John Timpson Was A Gentleman Of The Radio, Who Never Presented Today Whilst Dressed As A Swiss Pirate

The death on Saturday of the former Today presenter, Mr John Timpson, was greeted with a suitably affectionate profile on the BBC news. The report concluded with the observation that Mr Timpson, a journalist who preferred tweed, was "probably the last journalist you could imagine reading the news in a dinner jacket".
Obviously, it is a source of regret that the Corporation's hacks no longer dress properly, but what seems incontrovertible is that the gentleman broadcaster is almost extinct. There are isolated survivors - Mr Timpson's former colleague, Mr Robert Robinson on Brain of Britain - but, in general, broadcasting has abandoned the civilising strictures of that great son of Stonehaven, the late Baron Reith, in favour of the brusque idiocy of demotic speech. At times, listening to Radio Four is like eavesdropping at an audition for Billy Liar, or standing at the bus stop, waiting for a bus that never arrives.
Mr Timpson's successors are not really dinner jacket men. I have difficulty imagining Mr John Humphrys in anything other than a quilted gilet, moleskin plus-twos, and green wellington boots. In my mind's eye, I see Mr James Naughtie in rough tartan trews, a pirate's blouse, and a tyrolean hat made of mustard-coloured felt. I trust he will never pursue a career in television and spoil the illusion.

The Mock Sociology Of Little Britain Is Copied Lock, Stock and Tutu From Mr Dick Emery, But That Doesn't Make It Right Or Clever

Failing to get a joke is not a pleasant experience, but it is trumped, I think, by the sensation of getting a joke, recognising its characteristics, and concluding that it still isn't funny.
Over 9 million people watched Little Britain on BBC1 last night. (Roughly the same number voted Labour at the last election, though this may be a coincidence.) In these banal times, such statistics qualify the programme as a phenomenon, though it should be remembered that public executions, Mr Michael Barrymore, and the weary toilings of the England football team have all attracted big audiences.
Little Britain is original only in that its skits are threaded between a mocking sociological voiceover, delivered by the former Doctor Who, Mr Tom Baker. Everything else has been borrowed, lock, stock and tutu, from Mr Dick Emery, a comic actor whose stock-in-trade was the repetition of cartoonish characters to the point where the audience felt obliged to laugh out of a sense of familiarity. His types ranged across society: there was a frustrated "boot boy", a toothy spinster, and a posh tramp. He had a camp man called Honky Tonk, and Mandy, a silly blonde who located an innuendo in everything, giving Mr Emery his catchphrase, "Ooh, you are awful, but I like you," delivered with a clump of the handbag to the side of the head.
I have long been of the opinion that the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 was made possible by Mr Emery's Mandy. The subsequent transformation of the word "handbag" into a verb (see also Ms Annabel Goldie, another Emery-esque political character) is a further sign of the lingering masochism of the British psyche.
Personally, I preferred Mr Harry Worth, particularly when he did the splits in a doorway.

Dixon Of Dock Green Is Shot Dead, As Is An Innocent House Sparrow. What Now For Our Troubled Police?

The troubled Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has been musing aloud about the type of police service required by the British people. It is, to be fair, a vexed question. The British people can't be trusted to give a sensible answer on any matter of serious import, as they have proved repeatedly in general elections.
On policing, the public always asks for more bobbies on the beat, as this is seen as reassuring, ignoring the fact that if the Peelers are walking up and down the public avenues or - as is more often the case - queuing for white pudding suppers at Toni's Fish'n'Chicken Bucket, they are not really solving crime.
In general, the public hankers for a Dixon of Dock Green style of policing, while politicians favour the community policing of Mr George Orwell's 1984 (with CCTV, "thoughtcrime" and the "Two Minute Hate" on satellite television). The nostalgia for dear old PC George Dixon is in any case misplaced, as he was shot dead by Mr Dirk Bogarde during his first screen appearance, in the splendid Ealing film The Blue Lamp.
Sir Ian Blair suggests that the answer to the problems of policing lies in something called "targeted intolerance". As he says this, news arrives from the Netherlands that an innocent house sparrow has been shot dead after knocking over 23,000 dominoes, thereby disrupting a world record attempt organised by Endemol, the television company responsible for Big Brother. In other news, the shrill "wine expert" Ms Jilly Goolden; the "long-haired lover from Liverpool", Mr Jimmy Osmond; and Ms Carol Thatcher, the daughter of the former Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher; have signed up for the fifth series of the ITV "reality" TV series, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
If ever there was a justification for a display of targeted intolerance, that is it.