Bloggin’ Historians!

Last night I began reading the of fourth of five Roman histories which Pat had bought me for my birthday: The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain by Neil Faulkner. It promises to be an enjoyable read, despite my disagreeing with his fundamental premiss that ‘Rome was a system of robbery with violence … inherently exploitative and oppressive  … and doomed to collapse’. The same cannot be said of the three previous texts which seemed to me to belong to the world of blogging rather than books.

   The first of them, Blood of the Caesars by Stephen Dando Collins, was by far the worst. How the book ever managed to find a publisher defeats me. Its style seemed to be modelled on those ghastly American programmes infesting Sky’s History Channel which assume that the audience has the attention span and retentive powers of an inebriated gnat: some basic fact is repeated every five minutes -  ‘Rome capital of the Roman Empire’, for example - in an over-excited North American equivalent of a Birmingham accent. But at least that fact is true - or was so until the founding of Constantinople. Collins’s ‘fact’ is that Seneca secretly murdered Germanicus, an hypothesis as convincingly substantiated as the Scientologists’ belief that we’re descended from Thetans. Like the blog it’s badly written and batters the reader with the author’s private obsession. Unlike the blogger the writer has been paid to produce this garbage.

   The second and third histories were an enormous improvement on Collins, but were still blogs rather than books if for different reasons. Arthur and the Fall of Roman Britain by Edwin Pace argues that Arthur, Vortigern, or the Proud Tyrant, and Riothamus were the same person. The case is argued carefully with a wealth of detailed evidence. And therein lies the problem: ok they’re the same person, now tell me something interesting. For over three hundred pages Pace carries on like the pub bore - ‘and another interesting fact you may not know is …’ - as the reader’s eyes glaze over and he loses the will to live. One of the great joys for the blogger is that he is utterly free of constraints. There is no sub-editor pruning his verbiage, he doesn’t have to attempt to answer objections to the line he’s preaching, he doesn’t have to care whether there is an audience for his ramblings. Pace should have been a blogger.

  Which brings me finally to  Britannia the Failed State by Stuart Laycock. The author had spent time in the former Yugoslavia during the Balkans war. This underlay his insight that by basing their units of local government on existing tribal areas the Roman authorities perpetuated existing ethnic tensions. Once the iron hand of Rome - cf. Tito - had been removed ethnic conflict broke out and ripped apart the civilised fabric the Romans has created. I found the idea convincing and, unlike Pace’s Arthurian idea, significant. But, and it’s a very big but, it was a very dull read. The reason? Laycock’s an archaeologist and archaeologists make accountants seem like fun people. Page after page of the distribution of a particular kind of belt buckle is of no interest to anyone but a professional archaeologist. Laycock had an interesting idea: he simply needed to find a way of putting it across which didn’t suck the life out of it. The details about the buckles should have been saved for an academic conference - or a blog!

Parallel Universes?

A few days ago whilst completing a crossword I went into anaphylactic shock. Figuratively so. Or - to adopt current usage which employs the word as an intensifier in contempt or ignorance of its traditional meaning - literally. The answer to the clue was the name of a British bird: sis*i* was as far as I could get, the four letters I’d filled in supplied by the answers to other clues. In despair I  showed the puzzle to Pat. ‘Siskin,’ she said, without a moment’s hesitation. Hence the anaphylactic shock. I’d never ever heard or seen the word before. And it wasn’t the name of some exotic species recently discovered in the depths of the Amazon rain forest, but as British as a skinhead throwing a brick through an asian shopkeeper’s window. 

    I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of parallel universes, a common plot device in science fiction. A story I read many decades ago involved a time travelling tourist momentarily stepping off a bridge of twentieth century time into the world as it was several million years ago. When he returns to his own time he finds the US slightly, but balefully, changed. A right-wing extremist has just won the presidency - before the time-traveller left the Democrat candidate was heading for a landslide victory - and the English language has changed in many though subtle ways. When the time-traveller takes off his shoes he finds a butterfly stuck to one of the soles.

   I think I am that time-traveller. It’s not that I’m unaware that language changes as part of the normal course of events, although when I was young I hardly noticed it: ‘wireless’ being replaced by ‘radio’ is an example which springs to mind. And while the almost universal substitution of ‘train station’ for ‘railway station’  irritates me, and even more so when some ignoramus of a scriptwriter has Geraldine McEwan’s Miss Marple employ the term, I know my irritation stems not from a superior moral or intellectual perspective but merely from the horror of change which affects the elderly. No doubt there were old men in the 17th century deploring the vogue for referring to an ewt as a newt, and young people’s habit of using ‘indifferent’ as though it meant ‘uninterested’ rather than ‘impartial’. 

   But ‘siskin’ is different. I’ve been reading for over sixty years - much of it fiction I admit - but also thousands of articles in newspapers and magazines. And never once have I encountered the word. Pat thinks my ignorance of ornithology is the explanation. I don’t agree. I am deplorably ignorant of a huge range of subjects but I’ve seen the words they use. I’ve no idea what a quasar is, but the word forms part of my mental landscape.

   I’m not entirely sure when I stepped on the butterfly. Back in the late seventies or early eighties over a lunchtime pint, a friend, Graham, drew my attention to the word ‘resile’. Neither of us had ever heard it before, but suddenly it was on every politician’s lips. The recent vogue for ‘redact’ and ‘redaction’ is similar, though subtly different. As an English teacher, I was professionally acquainted with the term in relation to editions of books, but I find the expansion of its use utterly confusing.

   So I’m going with the parallel universe explanation. It’s not just No Country for Old Men but no Universe either.

The Divine Blogger.

Those readers familiar with Catholic exegesis - guess that’s you and me, Dave - will undoubtedly have been struck by the parallel between the internal workings of the godhead and the relationship of the blogger to his blog.

   To quote the theologian F. J. Sheed, the Trinity works as follows: 

        

‘The First Person knows Himself; His act of knowing Himself produces an Idea, a Word; and this Idea, the  perfect Image of Himself is the Second Person.  The First Person and the Second combine in an act of love - love of one another, love of the glory of the Godhead which is their own; and  just as the act of knowing produces an Idea within the Divine Nature, the act of loving produces a state of Lovingness within the Divine Nature … [the] Third Person of the Blessed Trinity … the Holy Ghost …‘

Rather hard going, particularly having to hack through that thicket of capital letters. The idea is put much more vividly by Milton - a covert Unitarian - in describing the relationship between Satan, Sin and Death in a brilliant parody of the doctrine of the Trinity. Satan arrives at the gates of Hell:  

… Before the Gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem’d Woman to the waste, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fould
Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm’d
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen. …

What thing thou art, thus double-form’d, and why
In this infernal Vaile first met thou call’st
Me Father, and that Fantasm call’st my Son?
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable then him and thee.

T’whom thus the Portress of Hell Gate reply’d;
Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair
In Heav’n, when at th’ Assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combin’d
In bold conspiracy against Heav’ns King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surpris’d thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzie swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side op’ning wide,
Likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright,
Then shining heav’nly fair, a Goddess arm’d
Out of thy head I sprung; amazement seis’d
All th’ Host of Heav’n; back they recoild affraid
At first, and call’d me Sin, and for a Sign
Portentous held me; but familiar grown,
I pleas’d, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thy self in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam’st enamour’d, and such joy thou took’st
With me in secret, that my womb conceiv’d
A growing burden. …

Pensive here I sat
Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transform’d: but he my inbred enemie
Forth issu’d, brandishing his fatal Dart
Made to destroy: I fled, and cry’d out Death;
Hell trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’d
From all her Caves, and back resounded Death.
I fled, but he pursu’d (though more, it seems,
Inflam’d with lust then rage) and swifter far,
Me overtook his mother all dismaid,
And in embraces forcible and foule
Ingendring with me, of that rape begot
These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry
Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceiv’d
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me, for when they list into the womb
That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw
My Bowels, their repast; then bursting forth
Afresh with conscious terrours vex me round,
That rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death my Son and foe, who sets them on,
And me his Parent would full soon devour
For want of other prey, but that he knows
His end with mine involvd; and knows that
Should prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane,
When ever that shall be;

The blogger, like God before the creation, lives in a solipsistic dream contemplating his own thoughts and deeds. And being narcissistic gives birth to his blog, the distillation of his spirit. Unlike the Deity, though, having created no actual world his blog doesn’t go on to dwell within all people of good-will; both those within the visible structure of Christ’s Church and those - protestants, jews, moslems, buddhists, atheists  etc - who through invincible ignorance as it used to be called, or good-faith as it’s more tactfully put these days, have failed to sign up to the Catholic Church.  

    But it’s fun even though, like the concept of God, utterly irrelevant to the world at large.   

Hymn No. 311.

Disclaimer: The recently introduced legge Alfano lays down that a blog must rectify a contested statement within 48 hours on pain of a 13,000 euro fine. There are, of course, various scurrilous suggestions flying around as to why il Cavaliere’s government should have introduced such a law. However, I would like to place on record that I have an enormous respect for sig. Berlusconi as a politician and a man, one equalled only by my admiration for the late Michael Jackson as a musician and a parent.

My favourite hymn at QEH was no. 311 in The Public School Hymn Book, ‘Lord Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing’ sung in Prayers on the last day of term. The only verse I can recall in full runs as follows: 

                                        “Lord dismiss us with Thy blessing

                                         Thanks for mercies past received

                                         Pardon all their faults confessing

                                         Time that’s lost may all retrieve

                                         May Thy children, may thy children

                                         Ne’er again Thy spirit grieve.’

Unfortunately, I can only remember two lines of the hymn’s best verse:

                                        ‘Those returning, those returning,

                                         Make more faithful, than before.’

Those words imply what the lines I no longer recall explicitly stated: some lucky sods who are singing this are doing so for the last time, as they are about to leave school for university or the wider world. Which brings me to last night.

    Yesterday evening Maggie and Phil came round for pre-prandial drinks before we all set off to Lupo’s for supper. Like James Hamilton-Paterson’s Gerald Samper. I’ve never considered having a passport in common sufficient grounds for striking up an acquaintance. My socialising with Montefalcone’s other English boarders is largely confined to a chat with Tony Weaver after mass, and an annual visit to the opera at Ripatransone with Gordon. We used to see a lot of Penny and Warren, but she moved to Amandola and Warren left School for the wider world - in his case back to the UK. However, Maggie and Phil are different - we used to see them fairly often and have gone to several of their memorable New Year’s Eve’s parties. But last night’s meeting was to get more detail on the information they’d emailed us: they too are leaving School - in their case for France - having sold their house to a retired pilot. Henceforth, we’ll be more reliant than ever on the day-boys for what passes as a social life.

Jimbledon fortnight.

Jimbledon fortnight ended this morning with the departure of the Wolf-Kirk caravan of camper vans bound for Lucca, Burgundy and finally, in the case of Dave & Sue, a dreary little island off the northern coast of Europe.

For much of the year Pat and I slump in front of the television every evening hoping that Sky Italia will have something entertaining to watch. Apart from Desperate Housewives, Lost and the occasional opera or equestrian event there is rarely anything we would positively choose to see; but torpor leads us to lounge there, nonetheless, watching endless repeats of programmes that didn’t particularly enthrall us when we saw them first time round decades ago in the UK. But in June the television comes in to its own with Wimbledon fortnight which has Pat glued to the screen from noon to dusk - or beyond. I watch fewer matches but enjoy those that I do.

From the fact that we sit in front of the telly every evening, the astute reader will have already gathered that we have no social life. Until that is Jimbledon fortnight arrives at the end of July and the beginning of August. This is composed of three elements: the day-boys return to Montefalcone from their English homes, Dave and Sue come for their annual pilgrimage - we make ours to Burgundy in April - and the comune lays on its summer programme. So this year’s Jimbledon fortnight ran as follows:

Week one: Thursday - to Jane (day-girl) Fineren’s for pizzas. Her elderly neighbour.

Tarsilla, and Tarsilla’s Romanian carer, Michaela were also

there.

Friday - Shona and Tony (day-pupils) came to supper

Saturday - the annual Sardine festival in the Tronelli Gardens. Had a

pleasant time in the company of Jane, Tony and Shona.

Sunday - Tony and Shona took us out to a delicious lunch at a restaurant

just outside Sant’Angelo in Pontano.

Monday - Alan and Sue Renwick (visiting team) came to supper.

Tuesday - went to see Rigoletto (click here for a film of the event) at

Ripatransone with Jane and Gordon (fellow boarder)

Wednesday - the Wolf-Kirk caravan arrived. Pat and Ian joined Dave and

Sue, Pat and me for supper

Week two: Thursday - a rest day.

Friday - painting exhibition in Palazzo Mercuri and Ligabue Tribute

band in the Tronelli Gardens. Tony & Shona eliminated from

Jimbledon and begin their drive back to the UK.

Saturday - Comunanza market, and, in the evening, Ogam, whose music

you’re listening to, in the Tronelli Gardens. The first part of

Ogam’s concert took the legend of the Sibilla as its theme,

recounting episodes of the story and playing music to evoke

them. There are two separate sources for these tales - although

even many Italians think they are alternative names for the same

work - Guerrino detto il Meschino, by Andrea da Barberino (1410)

and Il Paradiso della Regina Sibilla written in French by Antoine

de La Sale in 1420.

Sunday - Pat was shouted at by a lunatic Italian in the woods and all the

way from the castle to Luisa’s bar because Meg had jumped up

at him in the woods. He also came to the house to confront me

about it. Was greeted by Sue, whose total incomprehension of

what he was screaming rather disconcerted him. To the Tronelli

Gardens in the evening with Jane to listen to Lou - D Cage, a

band obviously influenced by John Cage’s work for prepared

piano. Apart from a set of bagpipes, they were an exclusively

percussion outfit. As well as a vibraphone, bongo drums etc.,

they played empty beer kegs, rubber piping, hub-caps etc. As

Dave said, mildly interesting at first, but there is only a

limited number of things you can do banging bits of old metal.

Monday - a rest day. There were very strong winds in the evening causing,

we thought, one shutter to bang although we failed to track it

down. However, today, whilst cleaning out the Albanian flat, Pat

discovered the glass in the flat’s bathroom window had

shattered: presumably it had been the window’s banging about in

the wind which we’d heard. Fortunately, in Italy reglazing a

window is a simple matter. The window is lifted off the spigots

which attach it to the outer frame - no hinges to unscrew - and

the glass slid out of the frame through a slot at the top of the

window. This also makes repainting a window a joy: no trying to

cut in carefully: you simply slide out the glass, paint the frame

and, when it’s dried, slide the glass back in. Normally to reglaze

the window you simply measure the size you need, including

thickness, and go to a glazier who will cut you a piece. This time

things being a little more complicated as the window

incorporated a ventilator, I took the complete window to the

glazier who cut the circle for the replacement ventilator and stuck

it in. And all incredibly cheap - even at the present lousy

exchange rate between the pound and the euro. Jane eliminated

from Jimbledon and drives to Rome to catch flight to England.

Tuesday - Drove to San Severino Marche, an extremely picturesque town in

the Macerata province. Unfortunately, Sue had hurt her foot by

falling over a dog - no it’s NOT funny, don’t you dare laugh -

before they came to stay so we weren’t able to show them round

the town. However, thanks to a passing Italian whom I’d accosted

to ask where there was a restaurant, we had an extremely good

meal at Da Piero’s.

Wednesday - to the Oasi hypermarket at the Battente shipping-centre in Ascoli

to get supplies for Dave & Sue’s journey to Lucca.

Today - the Wolf camper van leaves just ahead of the Kirks’. Accordingly,

Ian & Pat narrowly beat Dave & Sue to win Jimbledon 2009!