I don’t want a holiday in the sun

Warning, this post contains words that some people may find offensive

Unmistakebly the Sex Pistols, today’s title works on more than one level as it happens. I have just returned from Dubai where a lot of people spend their holidays in the sun. I spent a few days working out of the sun when I could help it as it was extremely hot. And today I am going on a holiday, to Prague in the Czech Republic, where we don’t expect to be too troubled by UV rays except in the hot nightspots we intend to frequent most evenings.

The other level on which it works is that I really wanted to talk about language. Not so much foreign language, though one of the things I did whilst in Dubai was to install an Arabic translation of our client’s software. This went about as well as I expected it too though my grasp of Arabic is so poor the screens could have said anything in the world and I would be none the wiser. Interestingly the abbreviation for the install started ‘ars’ which it turns out is the start of something rude in both Arabic and English.

I find it very interesting what language or words are acceptable to people and what they take offence at. Obviously this is a developing area, What was once totally taboo is not even bleeped out of our TV programmes now, indeed it is much more noticable when it is. There is still one last no-no, cunt, the only completely banned word on British TV, why is that?

When I was younger and I first heard Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols I was amazed at the language they used. Most notably on the song Bodies where one part goes:

fuck this and fuck that

fucking little fucker, fucking brat

Nice.

That song is fairly offensive on a number of levels but not because of the word fuck.

I had a jokey exchange with a colleague at work the other day where we both did the ‘whatever’ W gesture with our hands, I followed it up with the inverted M meaning ‘minger’. “Oh I don’t like that word” he said ” I don’t like the word it’s based on”. He’s no prude but he doesn’t like to refer to a ladies bits as a minge. Fair dos. When I was courting my wife I satyed at her house one new year at which they had a party. The next day at breakfast I nearly choked on my museli as they all discussed how such and such had called someone a twat. Over and over they kept repeating this word, a word that I had always been brought up to consider a ’swear’ word. They didn’t know though, they thought it meant a twit.

Going back to the word cunt, it stems from the german word kunton, meaning ladies front bottom. It has only been used as a term of abuse in the 19th/20th century, prior to that it was just a word to describe the femail genitalia. It was replaced with vagina in the same way that crap was replaced by excrement and urine ousted piss as the victorian words of choice to describe those particular bodily functions. Knowing people of that time it was no doubt an act of snobbery to add some syllables to words to make themselves appear more learned than the hoy poloy.

So if you went back a couple of centuries, or forward I should think, you will probably be both offended by others use of words and you will offend by yours. Indeed the same could be said of travel to places where the language and culture is different.

So I will go to Prague today and be very careful what I say, still as there is only one word I know I had better keep my mouth shut and open it only to imbibe a pivo or two.

pivo=beer

I would rather be anywhere else than here today

Not strictly true… Thursday is the day I work from home (or my day off as many of my family and friends like to describe it) so I am really rather glad to be here today. The line is (obviously) from Elvis Costello’s fine, if a little overplayed, song Olivers Army. The ‘Oliver’ I’d like to refer to is Jamie.

Did anyone see his new programme “The Ministry of Food” last night? I’d better explain what the show is about for those of you unable to see it through choice or circumstance. Just after the war (I think) the government of the day set up a ministry for food. The aims were to educate people about food and how to cook it, I suspect, in order to make the best of what was going to be in fairly scarce supply and also to fill in the gaps, educationally, that may have been filled by lost relatives. Jamie, bless him, thinks we are now at a point where we need the same thing again. He believes, and from the bits of the programme I have seen has ample evidence to prove, that people don’t know how to cook or don’t understand food to such an extent that even Delia’s ‘How to Cook’ series would pass them by. We have met someone who have never cooked a meal for their 5 year old child EVER.

Jamie intends to teach 10 people a recipe and have those people pass that on to a number of their friends and neighbours thus spreading spaghetti bolognaise and meatballs the length an breadth of the country. As with his previous foray into school dinners this is extremely laudible and Oliver goes about his mission with his usual mix of enthusiasm, knowledge and a certain everymanness that seems to endear him to men and women alike. He has even enrolled his nemesis from his previous programme, Julie Critchlow, who famously passed junk food through the railings of her childs school at the height of Jamie’s campaign for healthy dinners for kids. It looks, from last night, like he will be heading for some problems with the group now she is on board, should be entertaining and interesting to see if she can derail this campaign in the way she attempted to with the last.

So why am I writing about this?… well it struck me last night that people have a similarly poor grasp of spirituality and the possibilities that opening oneself up to the other, the unknown, as they have of food. Perhaps we need something similar setting up. Oliver has opened a ’shop’ in Rotherham where people can drop in and get free demonstrations and recipes. Extending my thoughts from yesterday perhaps I should open my pub and have different spiritual groups meet therein on different nights?

Incidentally, the people in Jamie’s show last night would feel right at home if they did ever go to a church, an exchange between the great man himself and his aforementioned ‘former’ enemy Julie went along the lines of:

Jamie: what’s up julie

Julie: You’re going to have some problems in the group, some people aren’t happy with somehting

Jamie: What?

Julie: They say you’re ……..

The number of time I had people say things like this to me before I left church was amazing. No one was ever unhappy with anything we did to my face but, seemingly, they all were, just couldn’t bring themselves to tell me and had to do so through a third party (who, btw, was always very happy with the state of things).

If you get chance to watch Jamie on C4 do, if you would like a job behind the bar at ‘The Buddha’s Arms’ (working title) then send me your CV….

Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please

I have been here before. I read on FaceBook today about a group at Leeds University, christians who have set up what I suspect to be ’some sort of emerging church group’ and they have given it the rather unimaginative title of ‘Cafe Church’.

Where to start…

This is a group of university students, remember in the 60’s some of them tried to take over Paris, rebels, brilliant bright young things off to change the world, to challenge authority, to…. I’ll stop there. I don’t know what they do at ‘cafe church’ and going by the name I wouldn’t be busting a gut to get a long there and find out. It’s just so cliched.

The other thing that does get my pip about the whole cafe church phenomenum is the word cafe. I alluded to this in the link above, cafes in England are places where you get tea, preferably in a mug, and fried food. I appreciate that we now have bistro style eateries, all Paris-like, and tables on the pavement, and that people prefer them to pubs because they in turn have turned themselves mini tv-cinemas with beer where you can watch foorball or some football related news all the while you are there. But let’s face it we are not French, it feels nice in the Summer (if we get one) to sit on the pavement and drink milky coffee (though your glass teacup, so beloved of the english cafe for serving milky coffee, has grown a few inches, it is still the same thing) we get to do that for about 9 days in any year. The rest of the time you want to be indoors (unless you smoke of course – we do make life difficult for ourselve don’t we?) out of the cold wind and driving rain (or summer as was this year).

I am serious about this, we could strike a blow for our heritage of pubs, where people shared conversation, by creating something called ‘pub church’, hmmmmm needs a better name (suggestions please). But in essence people meet in a pub, drink whatever they like (in moderation please) and talk to each other about stuff.

So, students of Leeds, get out of the cafe, shift your church to the pub and get them to turn the telly off, if nothing else you’ll sleep better without all that caffeine in you.

Don’t believe the hype

I was going to title this ‘crisis what crisis?’ but really, the chance to use Public Enemy over Supertramp was really no contest at all. I am a bit of a late comer to the rap/hip hop party, never really thought it was for me I suspect. Last week though I bought ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back’, old school 80’s rap by Public Emeny, and Roots Manuva’s ‘Slime and Reason’, arguably the best UK Hip Hop act around. I have to say I love them both. Roots Manuva is very laid back in comparison to Public Enemy but then that is probably a reflection on the times they were written in. 80’s American is fairly different from 00’s England in a lot of ways. Both great albums though in their own way and if you haven’t already I would urge you to give them a spin.

One way in which the 80s and now are a little bit similar is that some people in stripy shirts and braces, who work in a mythical place called ‘the city’ and have, until very recently, been getting very fat of wallet for doing very little, are now falling on hard times. We are in the midst of one of those financial crisis that come along once in a while whereby some people put their noses too far into the trough and get stuck only for the governement to come along, pull them out and give a nice bit of rhinoplasty (mainly so we don’t recognise them when it all happens again in a few years time) courtesy of you and I, the good and honest tax payers of this country.

Should we be worried that our banks/markets/businesses/houses/lives/legs are going to collapse anytime soon? I think not. It’s not good but as long as we stay calm we should weather it. The main losers in this will be schools, nurses, public sector employees and pretty much anyone who had a plan that involved some government funding for the next few years because you ain’t gonna get it. The money will be pumped into the banking system, all 50 billion of it, never to be seen again unless you are unfortunate enough to be run over by some total banker in his new porsche that he bought with next year’s bonus, earned presumably for turning a financial crisis (of his own doing) round and saving us all from some unimaginable (except to Robert Peston) financial armageddon.

I think it’s called a depression because it depressing to realise that no matter how hard you work and how frugally you save you are still at some small risk because the people you entrust your hard earned savings to are basically robbing bastards who don’t give a flying fiddler’s for you or your money or anyone or anything really, except themselves.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

Obscenity, who really cares?

Propoganda, all is phoney.

Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t believe the hype!