Groggy Monday

Late again. It would be shameful to specify the time I crawled from my pit this morning but, then, I was writing deep into the early hours to get an article sent off for the start of Monday. I now need to write myself out of my grogginess, induced by a deep and vivid dream in which the actress Stephanie Powers was chopping down trees… (No, I have absolutely no idea, either. Stephanie Powers?!)

I’ve been pondering some more about the government’s rumoured plan to give us all a £500 voucher and, yes, if it does sound like I’m slightly obsessing over the money, it’s because I am obsessing over the money. I’ve watched almost the entire country go on furlough, friends off work for months on full pay, whilst the people closest to me who are more much vulnerable to this virus have had no help through these difficult months when everything has been more expensive. The idea of a little help from the government feels like a light at the end of a tunnel. It’s a shame that light will have so many strings attached… Okay, dropping the light metaphor now.

Yet the voucher scheme did make me again think about class. Rob raises a good point in the comments that class is real but largely based around wealth and your parent’s profession. It’s a good thing for me to remember because discussing class sometimes makes it sound like the Divine Right of Kings, some esoteric magic lingering from previous ages. A lot of this has to do with the habits of our family, the things we do as a group. I watched Brooklyn 99 again last night where a character was talking about his fear of becoming a father because he feared being like his father. It’s not exactly a deep insight into human psychology but it is certainly true. We are shaped by our upbringing. Myself, I had very caring parents, but we always struggled. My psychology is entirely adapted to struggle. We never enjoyed holidays, so I don’t holiday. We learned to occupy ourselves at home, so I’m hugely invested in my interests. We never ate at restaurants, so I’ve never been comfortable eating in restaurants. I just don’t do it. It feels too alien to my way of life. Even when I do, I often apologise to the staff. I can’t handle being waited upon.

It’s why I’m already looking on the government’s voucher with considerable suspicion. It feels like one of those places which could all too easily expose big differences based around class. Let’s say they did limit it to use in the hospitality sector. Well, at the moment I wouldn’t be able to use it since I intend to stay sheltering until I have a better sense of how safe it is for people around me, should I resume my normal life. Even then, it would take me years to get through £500 simply eating outside, based on my habits of a rare coffee and panini. I guess others could blow through it in a few meals. As for my family members who have to stay at home, I can only imagine the frustration they’d feel if they couldn’t use the voucher unless they ventured out of doors. It seems extremely cruel. What began as a carrot ends up looking like a very big stick.

Now, I accept this is largely down to me being me but I know enough people who live similarly modest lives. At the same time, I know people with the same background who blow through money. My neighbours could probably spend that entire voucher if they were allowed to use in the garden ornament section of B&Q. I hear those illuminated rockeries with fairy fountains don’t come cheap.

But that only speaks to the other thing about class: it’s no more than a useful shorthand. There’s always room for huge variability in behaviour, outlook, and, of course, wealth.

The same is true of accent. Rob says that I sound comparatively posh, which I think is probably fair but that’s probably because our notion of accents are themselves shaped by culture. The Lancashire accent is relatively soft, with broad vowels. I’d told that people think it sounds gentle and kind, but it has the advantage of very little cultural baggage beyond Wallace and Gromit movies. There are other accents which are routinely mocked for no apparent reason. Brummie, George, and Scouse are too often the butt of people’s jokes. People with those accents are reduced to awful stereotypes: thick, rough, criminal.

It’s a shame since dialects are so complex. I think I just speak like anybody from around here. I come from the same town as Rick Astley. I think our accents are identical except I probably have a better singing voice…

A couple of miles away, is where Johnny Vegas was raised. His feels close to my accent but much thicker – I can do a half-decent impression if pushed. Get as far as the other side of St Helens, and into Whiston, Prescot, and Huyton, and accents become progressively Scouse. Yet in London, people assumed I was from Liverpool. I can’t hear Scouse in my accent but people tell me otherwise. Want to get on the wrong side of me: ask me if I’ve robbed any car wheels recently.

Dig deeper and you discover that Scouse isn’t even a single dialect, as proved by the Beatles. Lennon was said to have had the poshest Scouse. So too Paul. George spoke with a much more working-class Scouse, whilst Ringo had the thickest accent of all, having had the poorest upbringing. People in Liverpool can apparently hear which part of Liverpool other people are from.

In this little corner of the UK, there are so many distinct accents within a 20 mile radius, I guess an expert could spend a lifetime studying them, from all the various Scouse accents to the West, different types of Mancunian to the East, the wonderful Wigan accent (heading up to Peter Kay’s Bolton) to the North, and then all the accents south of here up to the Welsh border.

Last word on class…

Ennio Morricone has died. He was probably the closest I’ve come to being a fan of classical music. Again, that’s much to do with how I was brought up. Films were my first love and only came to know classical music through its use in films. I’m the same to this day. As I sit here writing this, I’m listening to Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-Flat Major, Andante con motto… Or I guess that’s how a posh person would write it. I only know it as the music from Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

Everybody will naturally talk about Morricone’s music for the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns but, for me, he’s the guy who wrote the soundtrack to one of my favourite films, Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Looking back on it now, the film can feel dated but perhaps that’s just me being slightly ashamed at how much I adore it. In a small way, it changed my life. Blew me away when I saw it in the cinema. First, it’s Connery at his gnarly best. Sod Connery as Bond. I like Connery in the films he made with Sidney Lumet (another of my favourite directors). The Untouchables also turned me on to the writing of David Mamet, a love which led me out of my old life and into, I hope, a better one. Morricone’s score was – tempted to say instrumental – so central to that. The percussive title is perfect, but my favourite is the music around De Niro as Capone. The stuff up the sweeping staircase, especially with the blaring horns… Lastly, there was De Palma, being just enough De Palma to be brilliant, but not so much De Palma that we’re left dizzy. Cannot recommend it more highly if you’ve not seen it.

Okay. I’ve waffled on enough for one day. I have an afternoon clear ahead of me. Have to make progress on something today.

5 thoughts on “Groggy Monday”

  1. You’ve clearly been watching repeats of Hart to Hart on the Sony channel, don’t worry it won’t go any further.

    I remember watching Liverpool down at Filbert Street on Boxing day 94, the Liverpool fans weren’t in particularly sparkling form and seemed happy enough to churn out the sleep inducing LIV-ER-POOL….LIV-ER-POOL song for the entire game. However it wouldn’t have mattered what they were singing, listening to the voices there was only one place they could be from. Fast forward to Boxing day last year and I watched them thrash Leicester 4-0 on the TV (a rare event as I now despise the premier league). Hearing the Liverpool fans sing, they could have been from anywhere quite frankly, one of the side effects of the gentrification of football.

    Broadly speaking the North East has five easily recognisable accents. Northumberland, Tyneside (Geordie), Wearside (Mackem), Durham and Teeside. I would imagine there must be sub-accents within that. To the rest of the country however, 2.7 million people spread over 100 miles north to south are simply all “Geordies”.

    The way people up there speak has definitely softened even in my lifetime. A big comedian locally was a fellow called Bobby Thompson, about as funny as a hole in the head as far as I’m concerned but people of my parents and grandparents generation seemed to like him. His speech pattern was the same as my nanna (there’s a regional word for you) and people of her age, not the accent itself but the way of speaking, it’s completely dead now.

    Here you can have a listen to the unfunniest man ever and see how much you can understand.
    https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-lifestyle-the-little-waster-makes-good-1976-online

    The vouchers are a terrible idea, for reasons that will become obvious if they are ever daft enough to issue them. Ebay must be rubbing their hands at the thought though.

    1. I learn something new every day. I also had a “nana”. Never thought to look it up. I think I must have subconsciously assumed it was something to do with her being Lithuanian. Didn’t occur to me that it might be regional. Don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody else use it and not a word I would have ever use for my other grandmother though, sadly, I don’t remember her.

      Gentrification is definitely changing football and, of course, success makes a huge difference. I’m technically a “woollyback”, which is close enough to Liverpool to mean I don’t feel too bad supporting them. United definitely suffered for it throughout their successful years and I’ve known native Manuncian City fans really uncomfortable with their success since their club lost the local feeling.

      I guess the biggest problem is that we’re consuming media from the cradle. We’re probably moving to some awful “normalized” English, complete with the upward inflection that comes straight from TV and which I personally despise.

      As for Hart to Hart: yes it was that. I realised I’d seen the DVD lying around. Not mine, though I always had a soft spot for Max.

    2. BTW I’m sure I’ve seen that guy before, though, at the same time, he’s like so many comedians of that era. He’s a bit Andy Capp crossed with Norman Wisdom and Norman Collier. Looks like quite a few relatives too.

      My Dad was into Blaster Bates. They were the records I was never allowed to listen to, though, now I have, I can’t say I found any of it particularly shocking.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbZsVd7j7l4

      Vouchers: I agree. Cash in hand would be easy for them to manage but probably be used in ways that defeat their purpose. Vouchers? Don’t see how it’s easily done and not open to abuse. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

      1. I’ve seen it written that Andy Capp was based on Thompsons Little Waster character. The fellow that drew Andy Capp, Reg Smythe, was from Hartlepool and certainly would have been aware of Thompson at the time he created the cartoon. Had never heard of Blaster Bates, does seems very tame even by the standards of the time.

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Why Dunciad.com?

It’s a cool domain name and it was available. Yes, I know. Available. Crazy, isn’t it?

Really?

Yes. It also helps that it’s also my favourite satire written by Alexander Pope, one of the most metrically pure English poets who also knew his way around a crude insult or two. If you’ve not read it, you should give it a try.

So this is satire, right?

Can’t deny it. There will be some. But it’s also an experiment in writing and drawing, giving work away for free in order to see how many people are willing to support a writer doing his thing. It’s the weird stuff that I wouldn’t get published elsewhere in this word of diminishing demands and cookie-cutter tastes.