A disagreement and Cromarty Fisherfolk...

I got caught up in a bit of a storm last night, a discussion between my daughter and her beau about the use of language and how it might be easier if everyone pronounced all words in exactly the same way. Of course this debate took place through the medium of texting, not that texting was even a word a few years ago, but, as The Jam once said, this is a modern wowld.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how language has changed over the last fifty years or so and how some worlds, and the words that went with them, are gone 4ever, never to return.

Cromarty, the stuff of late night weather warnings; I’ve heard all about it on the Shipping Forecast, it’s a wet and windy place by all accounts.

It also until very recently had it’s own unique dialect called Cromarty Fisherfolk, not an accent, a unique dialect which apparently had Germanic roots so there was no ‘wh’ and ‘what’ became ‘at’, ‘where became ‘ere’ it also had no ‘H’.

Last week the last speaker of the dialect, 92-year-old, Bobby Hogg died and with it Cromarty Fisherfolk.

I wonder if he ended up talking to himself?

Ten miles down the coast is another sleepy fishing village, Avoch, where another distinct dialect is spoken. This dialect now becomes the closest thing to Cromarty Fisherfolk, although it is very different. Think of that, two villages only ten miles apart speaking to all intents and purpose quite a different language.

“So what” I hear you say, and where is this going anyway? Or rather: “So at” I ear you say, and ere is tis going anyay?

My grandfather was born and bred in Lincolnshire and I could hardly understand a word he said. He’d use words that I couldn’t find in the dictionary, spoke in guttural grunts and snorts, and the nodding and shaking of his head seemed to play an important part in the way he communicated. I’m reliably informed I might have been able to understand him better if I’d been Dutch as the dialect he spoke was invented by the settlers from Holland who were his, and my, ancestors.

“Nar den, hoe jij ben?” He’d ask, “Hoe indeed?” I wondered.

Even then I could see that times and the way in which we spoke were changing, or rather vanishing as the older people died. I had a strong Oxfordshire twang as a boy; ‘milk’ was ‘moilk’, ‘girl’ was ‘goyl’, and in answer to the question of whether I was from Buckinghamshire I’d reply: ‘Bis oi Bucks? Bis oi baggery.’

Of course, I soon got this kicked out of me when I went to my semi-public grammar school, and I really do mean kicked out.

Even over my short lifetime (too long I hear you complain) language has been changing faster than at any time in the past probably . In some ways it is getting more interesting; new words are being invented all the time - innit - but in other ways language, particularly the way it sounds across geographies, is becoming bland and differences are disappearing.

In general, as the world becomes one big global village, and as people become more literate, the differences in cultures begin to disappear, with technology and the huge advances it has brought to communication being the driver behind the change. Most of the world read the same books, watch the same films and television, follow the same sports teams, drive the same cars, can speak the same few languages.

The world is becoming uniform and with that inevitably comes sterility and sameness, a grey world full of grey people saying the same grey things in a universal grey language.

Distance no longer matters. YouTube, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, mobile phones, texting, the ease with which we can fly to almost any part of the world; it’s almost as if nowhere is anywhere any more as places lose their identities and are absorbed into the bigger whole.

In language terms, one day we will all sound the same, use the same words, speak the same language, and of course understand each other with ease. Not that they’ll be any need to talk; after all when that day of total unison comes they’ll be nothing to talk about. People who agree generally just make noises.

One day we may all talk in Earthspeak, if we can be bothered.

Of course I’m overstating the case, but with each small loss of uniqueness the blandness creeps and we move towards a less creative future. Each time we lose something unique, like Cromarty Fisherfolk, a little bit of the colour of life vanishes, another Dodo is gone for good and Neanderthal man is cross-breedingly absorbed into Homo-Sapien.

William Shakespeare invented a new word each week or so of his adult life and once there were two Scottish villages only ten miles apart who invented their own individual dialects - ten miles beyond that there was another one, and ten miles beyond that another, and ten miles beyond that…

Without diversity the world is a poorer place.

Swatch out...

If you could see the rest of this picture you’d see a twenty-something curly-headed rogue, smoking an extra long Rothman’s, wearing an absolutely hideous shirt and looking decidedly puffy around the face – it must have been a heavy one the night before. I had plenty of those, still do.

Of course these aren’t my main reasons for cropping the picture (says he) so that all it includes is my hands holding something which is probably a fleece belonging to one of the three children who shared my life at the time - or rather let me share theirs.

Now, I’d like you to pay particular attention to my watch. See it? Sorry it’s a bit fuzzy but it was probably taken with one of those throw away cameras that came with free developing; you know the deal, you post off the Freepost envelope and two weeks later you get back 16 photographs of nothing much in particular, half of which were over exposed, out of focus, or half obscured with a big pink thumb. You don’t? Well, I’m getting old; it was all the rage back then.

Anyway, that watch… it got me into a lot of trouble one way or another, probably ended up changing my life; but for better or worse I’ve never really been able to tell. Life’s like that sometimes - something happens that leads to another thing and then, by snowball effect, you end up hardly recognising your life at all.

That watch is a Swatch, an eighties fashion accessory. ‘Fashion that ticks’ the hoardings said, one of the first before they became complicated and overly colourful. I seem to remember that they came in a number of basic colours, blue, red, white and yellow. I’m not sure about green, orange or purple but I expect that they did. Mine was a white one. I was very stylish.

One day I caught the strap of my Swatch on my desk drawer handle and it snapped. They had a tendency to become brittle and do that, so off I went to the Swatch shop in my lunch break to buy another. I don’t remember the exact details, but on my way I bumped into a work colleague who asked me where I was going, so I told her. She asked if she could come along too, as the strap of her white Swatch needed replacing also. I didn’t see why not, although we hardly knew each other, so off we went together.

In the shop I couldn’t decide between a blue strap and a red one. I wanted to jazz up my Swatch and thought that having a different coloured plastic strap was just the way to do it. Some time later Swatch hit on the idea themselves along with literally thousands of other colour-ways, but they weren’t doing it at the time. I ummed and I arred, but still couldn’t decide.

My colleague was thinking blue, and when I said that I couldn’t decide an idea popped into my head. Would she go along with it I wondered? No harm in trying, after all everyone loves a trier, so I suggested that she buy the blue strap and I buy the red and then we swap half a strap with each other giving us both red, white and blue Swatches (well, it was the eighties). I said I thought it’d look cool and she agreed. So we purchased our straps and went back to the office where we exchanged half straps and got on with our work making ads.

Anyway that should have been the end of it, but the world is complicated and intentions often misread. I won’t go into the details (they aren’t as dastardly as you might expect) but suffice it to say that the exchange of straps was interpreted as something more than a fashion statement by my colleague and I, being very male and quite bored at the time, allowed myself to get sucked into her fantasy until it started to become mine as well.

It’s a long time ago now but at the time… well, as I said these things tend to snowball, and before I knew where I was my life had turned upside down and I was given a couple of ultimatums by a couple of people and I needed to make a choice and I hate choices, always tending to take the easiest route for my own comfort, and that’s what I did on this occasion. Of course, and even so, in the end it didn’t work; they say that trust can’t be rebuilt, and I guess it was one of the nails in a coffin that I don’t like to admit I hammered together myself along the way.

She died a few years back, the girl with the other half of my Swatch strap. Breast cancer, I found out long after the event.

I’ve got into these types of muddles since. It seems I’ll never learn my lesson, but the Swatch strap exchange was so innocuous I couldn’t have know where it would lead. As the Swatch adverts used to say: ‘Time is what you make of it’. I wonder what I would have made of mine without my Swatch and that ridiculous strap, and I wonder what my life would be now if I wasn't such an emotional coward?

Jam jar madness...

Here we go, the bloody EU again – just what is this latest rubbish about? We can't re-use jam jars for packaging jam to sell? Just how are school and village fetes, car boots, jumble sales and the WI going to cope? Yes, our friends in Europe have decreed that re-using jam jars breaches health and safety rules. I can see the posters now:

JAM KILLS! Don't sell jam in re-used jars... by order of Europe.

Always swift to act (remember the inquisition?), legal advisers to Britain’s Churches have sent out a circular informing people that whilst they can reuse jars for jam at home or to give to family and friends, they can’t sell them or even give them away as raffle prizes at a public event. What a shame, I’m always pleased when I win the plum and pickle jam instead of the toilet roll cosy in the shape of a crinoline lady.

The Women’s Institute is also advising its 210,000 members that the re-use of jam jars is verboten, interdit, vietato, interzis, forbjudet, and very naughty… although that probably won’t stop those naughty, naughty ladies (well, have you seen those calendars?)

The FSA (F’ing Silly Arses Food Standards Agency) said the rules had been introduced because there was a risk of chemicals leaching out of old jars and contaminating food.

After researching long and hard the only report of ‘Death through Jam’ I could find was this one. It was translated by a machine, but I’ve left the errors in because its fun… and yes it could only happen in A’stralia mate!

BLOKE DTED AFTER HAVING EATEN JAM. MELBOURNE.

December 11.

JohnFrederick Flint, a labourer, died at Merriman's Creek yesterday shortly after havingeaten some jam. Ilis mate states that healso intended to eat jam, but havingnoticed that it had a peculiarly bitter tasteho did not swallow any of it. It is suggested that the jam contained poison Atinqurst was opened at Sale to-dtay, and adjourned for a week, to enable the police tonurpue their enmiiries. The contents ofFlint's stomach have been sent to the Government Analyst for examination.

“Mmmm…” (strokes chin and puffs on pipe) “Perhaps it was a contaminated jam jar Watson?”

“No Shit Sherlock.”

“Well there could have been Watson; you know how these Aussies are about cleanliness. They’re all convicts you know. Maybe they didn’t wash and dry the jars, then sterilise them by heating them thoroughly in the oven on a low heat as advised on the WI fact sheet.”

“Elementary Holmes?”

“No, alimentary my dear Watson.”

Apparently Kate Moss, who makes damson jam out of fruit from her Cotswolds estate, and the Duchess of Cambridge, who keeps pot to give away to friends (sorry that should read pots), are up in arms - skinny and jam free arms as may be.

Mary Berry went even further, saying: "This is absolutely bloody stupid. It is just going too bloody far. We are bloody encouraging people to save bloody money by using bloody fruits to make bloody chutneys and jam, and if they have to buy bloody new jars it will bloody become much too bloody expensive. It’s bloody daft.2

Of course, Mary’s bloodies are mine for emphasis and also as a rather clever play on words around Bloody Mary (the drink - Have I spoilt it by explaining?) Mind you she’s got a bloody point; pristine jam jars from Wilkinson’s will set you back two quid a piece and guess what… YES, they still need to be bloody sterilised.

Canon Michael Tristran, of Portsmouth Cathedral, said: "On realising this was not a belated April Fool’s joke, I was very anxious, not only from the fundraising point of view for all our churches, but also because it goes against the green agenda of recycling."

Holy strawberries Canon Mikey, good point . When I was a boy we used to collect beer and lemonade bottles from rancid ditches, take them back to the pub and claim the 3d deposits. It never did anyone any harm - other than the odd touch of cholera and occasional dysentery - and it saved the clutter of all those bloody plastic recycle bins that we are forced to fall over these days.

Used jam jars dangerous? I ask you. What will they come up with next; a ban on singing Jerusalem?

The magic roundabout...

I guess most of us have watched that bit in the film where the villagers gather in the town square, flaming, guttering torches in hand, greasy smoke floating into the damp night air. High above on the mountain the castle, in darkness except for a single light in the tower, casts a shadow over the town. Lightning flashes and, as if on cue (which of course it is), the villagers move as a single body along the road shouting ‘Rhubarb!’ and waving their fists in well-rehearsed ‘Grrrrrr’s’ ready to deal with the evil that lurks above.

Usually it’s Dracula or Frankenstein and his Monster, occasionally it might be a werewolf, but generally it’s some sort of creature of the night. Don’t worry I’m not going to move on to a rant here, and I’m done with Mr. ‘Clunk-Click Every Trip’ - at least for now.

I noticed the first fallen leaves of autumn today. Oh, I’m sure that they’d fallen long before I happened across them, but the stiff, cool breeze that had sprung up overnight sent them dancing and racing in front of my feet as I plodded my way along the road. I plod a lot these days, the spring in my step seeming to have lost its ‘doingggg’. Yes, it felt very ‘autumn is here’ this morning, only just here though. I watched the red-brown leaves scuttling away like squashed insects, looked up into the pale blue sky, the purple edged, not-quite-white clouds, and breathed in the slightly smoky air.

Zebedee… ‘doingggg!’

Zebedee? Where did that come from? Of course The Magic Roundabout was always the harbinger of autumn; Eric Thompson turning up every October to remind us that Halloween and Bonfire Night were on their way and that Christmas would follow closely behind; pumpkins and fireworks, Dougal, and Ermintrude the Cow.

I was probably a bit too old to watch The Magic Roundabout by the time it turned up on my childhood TV, but I used to enjoy those five minutes just before the six-o’clock news. They really were quite magical even though I can’t remember a single storyline. Mind you there were a lot of storylines to remember; something like 450. I didn’t realise at the time that the programme was French – Le Manege Enchante – nor that the English stories were different from the French ones. It was Eric Thompson, father of Emma, who wrote the English version, delivering it in his downbeat, subdued and very dry-humoured way. I’m not even sure if Zebedee, who always reminded me of Salvador Dali, even said ‘time for bed’ in the French version, he probably said ‘Oh-la-la, poo-poo moi’ or something else typically Gallic around the smellier bodily functions.

I was still watching in my twenties, way back in the early 1980’s. Mind you by then I had a daughter and two step-daughters to watch it with me. They loved it too, it really was timeless. I think the BBC ran it until 2000 or so and then a few years later Channel 4 started showing a CGI version, which I’ve never seen, but can’t believe it’s as charming as the original.

Well, well just look at that... Frankenstein’s castle, rhubarb, squashed leaf insects, Halloween, Christmas, Dougal, Ermintrude, Salvador Dali and Zebedee. See what a few fallen leaves can do.

Time for bed…doingggg!

If the hat fits…

Ever since the accusations about Jimmy Savile I’ve been thinking long and hard about the whole thing, particularly in light of what I believe about the Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest case.

I think that I am now at a point, given the mounting evidence against this very clever man, that I've made my mind up and I don't give a shit that he isn't here to defend himself. As I see it - lucky for him, and a shame for his victims.

I'm pretty sure, after watching the documentary, that Uncle Jim did the things that these women claim he did. I'm also pretty sure that some, probably all of them, weren't comfortable with it at all. Whichever way you look at it, it seems that Mr Savile was a manipulative serial rapist and I have to say that it has long been mooted that he liked far too young girls - surely everybody had heard that, it was whispered when I was in my teens.

Or did people really just think that he was just a little eccentric, no harm in him, a bit of a card?

I think another description might be monster; we’ll have to see; after all there hasn’t been an investigation yet. What is coming across the more that I look at it though, is that JS must have been a sad, lonely figure who couldn't form or didn't want real relationships. The sex might have been a way for him to pretend that he was a 'normal' red-blooded male when he probably wasn't, and by all accounts he liked it over with quickly. I don’t know what he was but I do know that he worshipped his mother, liked to wrestle, was outrageously camp in appearance and seemed incapable of growing up - a bit of a National Treasure really.

And a knight of the realm don’t forget.

I hope they ask a profiler just what he or she thinks about Jim.

In his defence, the times were very different back then. Lots of women married at sixteen and were serial mothers by 20. People were out at work in pits and factories at 15. You grew up quicker in the sixties and seventies, and of course a couple of generations earlier and those same teenagers would have been dead in a trench somewhere in France.

Yes, times were very different back then. I think we tend to forget that, in the world we inhabit now, our children are coddled and middle-aged adults live at home until they can save up enough money to buy a one room flat and when they do leave home they spend their time playing video games and eating pizza . Not too unlike Jimmy Savile really – which is worrying.

Context is everything, and I’m sure that all of the above will be used in Jimmy Savile’s defence as context for his actions. Even so, what JS did was very wrong in my mind. It isn’t just about what he did, it's also about the way he used his position to access it along with the serial nature of what he was doing. If he'd made a mistake with just one girl, even maybe if he’d had feelings for them all, I might have to think a little harder. But he didn’t, he just repeatedly abused lots of probably silly, certainly scared, feeling obliged, too-young teenage girls and the times in which it happened makes no difference at all. Nothing makes any difference for what I have no doubt he did.

On the Paedophile scale, with Jeremy Forrest being a one and Ian Huntley a ten, I’d put Jimmy Savile at an eight at least.

No, there's no excuse for him at all; deceased or not. Pass him the paedophile hat; he deserves to wear it.

Blue light…

Don’t feel like writing much today.
Instead here’s a photo I took on my way
home this evening.

Looks like autumn’s here again.
Someone was playing a violin.
I didn’t recognise the tune.

They played so well.
I stopped to listen for a spell.
Standing looking at the sky.

Then I took this picture.
See that blue from the lamp yeah?
Tesla electricity maybe.

Fuzzy felt man...

It’s a fuzzy old world. Not particularly warm, but definitely fuzzy and somehow it seems to be getting fuzzier every day. It’s an odd experience for me, everything used to be so sharp, ordered, neatly arranged. Even when it was random it wasn’t really, I think I was just pretending that it was - it was just a little busy really, busy and confusing. These days it’s like walking along in a television picture that isn’t quite tuned, all the edges are blurred, things that I thought were absolute aren’t. It’s almost as if the lines of absolution have been smudged, rubbed at by somebody with one of those grey grainy ink rubbers that, if you rubbed long and hard enough, would eventually go right through the paper. I wonder if I rubbed away at the edges I could get them to unblur again.

Tell me this. Why when people say they are going to do something, will definitely get back to you, why don’t they? You see in my old world that’s what I would have done. I thought it was what everybody did. But increasingly I find that I was wrong and people and things aren’t what I thought at all - and it’s fuzzying my world up. Even more (I was going to put worrying, but I’m not sure that it does worry me any longer) unsettling (yes that’s the word) not only is my world becoming fuzzy I’m beginning to fuzzy into it, blurring at the edges, not really trying to stand out from all the fuzzy crap around me. In some ways it’s a comfort, knowing that you can’t do much to control the television picture, letting it blur, blurring with it, becoming part of the blurred background of the picture rather than the picture itself.

“What is the probability of that happening?” I ask myself these days. In my old world, where the picture was crisply tuned high definition, the range was 0-1. It would or wouldn’t happen. In this new picture the range, whilst not infinite, is large, allowing me to expect any eventuality as I process incomplete and ambiguous data, accepting approximate values rather than the old absolutes I used to feel comfortable with. In reality even with all this fuzziness things will either happen or they won’t, it’s still a range of 0-1, but in between that 0-1 anything can happen, the outcome will still be the same but the journey is infinite almost and we might not ever get there and we might not even set off. Is the glass empty of full? Is there anything in the glass at all? Is it even a glass? What is empty anyway? It’s all fuzzy. Follow my logic? Fuzzy logic – messy, comforting, unsettling any outcome is possible. It’s like being not quite drunk all of the time. You expect nothing to happen but accept it when it does because it was always going to happen that way as soon as it happens. The glass tips over but the liquid doesn’t run away. Is it really liquid at all? Is that even a glass? Was it the glass that tipped or was it the world?

0-1 and almost everything in between. I wonder if I take my grey grainy ink rubber and rub away really hard I can make a hole in this picture and escape?