Remembrance Sunday and Germans

I'm just back from our little Suffolk town's Remembrance Sunday service.  The war memorial is brilliantly looked after, with family names of people from the town I recognise, who still live here, on it.  I remember people in the 1980s saying that the whole culture of remembrance would die out.  I'm personally very glad to see that seems to be far from the case.

Our family was/is completely non-religious and we never went to church except today - it wasn't about the religious act, it was about having a forum and an event to remember.  It was particularly important to us as my father was in the British Army and served in three armed conflicts (not including Northern Ireland).  My mother was very nearly a 23 year old widow a year into her marriage because of a mortar attack on my father in Aden in 1964.

Beautiful, well attended Remembrance Sunday in my town

Remembrance Sunday was also very poignant for us precisely because Mutti is German.  My grandparents literally fought on opposite sides in WW2.  My English grandfather had also served in the horrendous conditions of the trenches of WW1, one of the millions injured by German fire and invalided home.  This is quite an odd thing to grow up getting your head round.  It's something I share with plenty of other Anglo-Germans of course.

My German great uncle Walter was in the Afrikakorps and a British prisoner of war (he always spoke highly of the "Tommies" btw).  Another German Great Uncle, Heini, thought the War was a struggle for right and wrong between Germany and the Soviet Union.  He was sure Germany would win and did not want people afterwards to ask what he'd done, and to say "nothing".  He was 18, literally a kid, when he died outside Kiev in 1943.  His last letter home, just before Christmas, told how terrified he was to go out on patrol into the dark winter.

Amongst the first words of Father Andrew at our town ceremony was a call to remember the fallen, to call for peace and to celebrate the "reconciliation amongst peoples" - the former foes.  This has always seemed to me the complete nub of the matter.

The British Press

It's precisely for all of the above I am so sickened and fed up of recent items that have appeared in the British Press.  First we had the Daily Mail talking about the "Rise of the Fourth Reich" and Germany conquering Europe in the context of the financial crisis.  This has been going on for several months now.  They don't even have the historic knowledge to realise that a Gauleiter was a regional, not national, leader when they call Angela Merkel it.

Then came the Daily Express with its "Germany warns of War of Europe" headline, which was the most perverse distortion of Dr Merkel's speech to the Bundestag imaginable.  I don't want to send any traffic to either newspaper to boost their advertising stats: you'll have believe me.  I wrote in passing about the Express two thirds of the way down this blog.  This is a small but typical selection of the reader comments:

We also had the Church of England News publishing that absurd article about the "Gaystapo" and the "Gay Wehrmacht" - utterly devoid of any intellectual value, but so telling that the silly homophobic author chose to frame it in such language.  In passing I'd like to think that gay people will not fall for the same bigotry and prejudice in tarring all Christians with the same brush as the individual who wrote it.

Here we are 70 years on and some British appear still to be fighting a war that ended in 1945.  At school I regularly had kids who would give Hitler salutes.  I had swastikas drawn on my desk in the 1980s in Hampshire.  The fact I was born here, am a British citizen and my dad had actually risked his life serving 23 years in the British Army? Never mind.  When I was 19 at work on a gap year in Schleswig-Holstein the managing director of the company stopped me in the corridor.  Could I explain why the Sun had a headline "We beat them in 1945 and 1966, we'll beat them again" about the 1990 World Cup semi-finals?  I couldn't really and it was actually quite mortifying for me.  A few months later a letter arrived from one of the company's British dealers - it had the words "Did some old Nazi do this on purpose?" in it with reference to a faulty product that had been exported to the UK. Again all I could do was be desperately embarrassed on behalf of my father's country.

As someone who is half English and half German, and who has lived in both countries for many years (the first 12 were almost exclusively in Germany), I have -never- experienced overt prejudice or taunts for being half English in Germany.  All of the prejudice I've had directed towards me has been related to my being half-German and it is British people who do it. 

What is Actually Going On?

What seems to be going on for some/many* British people I think (*delete according to how generous you're feeling) is something like this:

• We're jealous of Germany.  How comes they still have a manufacturing industry, make excellent cars, washing machines, have a huge trade surplus, have superb high speed affordable trains that work, and are so wealthy compared to us? Also, why DO they always beat us at soccer?
• The reason we're jealous is actually when it comes down to it, we are well aware of how pants we are.  In essence we feel quite inferior.  Germany is perhaps the only European country we don't actually look DOWN on, if we're honest.  It's not like the rest of the "continentals" whom we can dismiss with some amount of mirth.
• At the same time, however, we also think/know we're superior.  This is utterly contradictory, of course, but an inferiority complex can quite often be bundled up with a superiority one.  It also doesn't matter, because at the end of the day WE WON THE WAR.
• Because WE WON THE WAR (but still feel jealous/inferior) we must bring this up at every opportunity to put the Germans in their place. (Never mind that almost 90% of German military casualties were on the Eastern Front and even with our terrible losses Britain suffered 2% the deaths the Soviet Union did - that's not how we teach history and it's definitely not what our movies will show, ever.)

There is quite a fundamental problem with the last proposition however - apart from the fact the Germans are well aware from their perspective where WW2 was lost/won.  It is essentially that the Germans tend to find the British obsession with "the War" actually genuinely puzzling: it certainly doesn't put them in their place to bring it up.  It just makes Britain (for whom most Germans have quite a lot of inherent respect) look faintly ridiculous.  Basil Fawlty needn't have said "Don't mention the War" to be polite: it's not polite to avoid it so much as to avoid a pretty sincere "huh?"

[My Twitter buddy @mynameisedd, who has a refreshingly younger person's take on all this (he's 17), has since put this to me as a young German person would probably react to a WW2 comment in much the same way we would if a French person came running up to us shouting "1066! 1066!" - I rather like this analogy.  Another might be an American expecting us to be offended or put down by mentioning 1776.  Would we care?]

Germans genuinely don't understand why anyone would bring up the War in the context of a sporting event, much less so in the context of their Chancellor making a historic speech in the very serious situation of impending economic meltdown.  Merkel's speech was about the need for Germans to assume their special responsibility, because of their history, and to reach into German tax-payers' pockets, to ensure that conflict doesn't arise again in Europe.  In case you're wondering, that is how many Germans see the overriding reason for the existence of the EU: something the Brits continually fail to see themselves.  For that to lead to the Express headline? Wow, just wow.

It's Not Just the Tabloids

This reaction is not because the Germans have no sense of humour.  The appearance of 'Allo 'Allo dubbed into German was I think a seminal moment for the country.  Similarly there have now been several home grown comedies about Hitler in recent years.  This is a very healthy development for a country that is acutely aware of its special responsibility to learn from the past, but which has moved on and is now in a very different place.

This isn't about humour at all - which of course the British can do brilliantly and which I personally greatly enjoy.  This is about deliberate, nasty, and apparently acceptable racism and prejudice.  And it also isn't limited to the Tabloid Press.  Their regular anti-German attacks are, incidentally, reported on in the German press and are generally met with a weary expression rather than any indignation.

Take a look at this.  It appeared two days ago in the Guardian.  The (slightly misquoted) German at the end is from 1861 (yep, 150 years ago) by the nationalist Emanuel Geibel.   It means the "May the world enjoy the German spirit".  This was a very particular phrase used by the Kaiser in the context of German Colonial Imperialism in Africa (he was of course busy trying to copy the British and French).  It was then employed of course by the Nazis in the context of their racial theories and policies.  The use of "Führung", in German, has only one interpretation in this context: it makes the reader think of Hitler and the Third Reich.  Angela Merkel's middle name is for the record, Dorothea.  "Hilda" means "Battle Maiden" from Old German.  This isn't casual racism - it is extremely deliberate and educated.

There are valid concerns, and there should be debate, about what is happening in the Euro Crisis regarding the interplay of democracy and economics.  Putting that aspect to one side, the Germans (and Merkel in particular) are damned on the one hand if they do not as Europe's economic powerhouse provide decisive leadership, as called for in particular by the Coalition.  On the other hand, when they do provide it, we do not have to wait long for calculated and spiteful racist commentary from not just the Tabloids, but also the so-called quality liberal press in this country.  Debate the issue, do not resort to frankly pathetic Third Reich jibes.

We Will Remember Them

Our War Memorial

And so we come back to this Day of Remembrance.  I think of the men who left our town in those dismal years of 1914-1918, and since then, who never returned.  I think of the service people who are serving and still suffering.  I think also of the millions of civilians who were injured, raped or died during conflicts: the emphasis is so much on military remembrance it seems, but many more civilians in particular during WW2, died.  I think of members of my own family, from both sides, who were pawns and victims in the divided politics of the 20th century.

And I really, really wish that people in this country could move on, keeping the personal remembrance, the dignity, and the gratitude; but without continually lowering themselves regarding the Germany of today: a country that in 2011 is our neighbour, our trading partner, our ally, and our friend.

Language of Twitter

Language fascinates me.  I grew up bilingually with German and English, and later took French and Spanish for years at school.  I read Modern and Medieval German and Dutch for my degree.  I'm a lawyer by training and profession and therefore well aware of the importance of precision in drafting, and the potentially huge and expensive problems that can be caused by ambiguity in language.

This blog is simply a random set of observations on some of the things I've seen on my favourite medium: Twitter.  I'm essentially fascinated to see how language adapts to new situations and how in some cases it can actually overcome ambiguity with the use of playful new spelling or vocabulary.

140 characters

The first obvious challenge of Twitter is brevity: everything has to be packed into 140 characters.  There is a real art form to doing this: broadly speaking the shorter the tweet, the more likely it is to grab the attention of a reader in a rapidly moving timeline.  I gather the skills involved in writing tweets are similar to those used in telegram messages: the imperative there was cost; now it is about conveying information in a way that is most likely to be read. 

Thrift with words and being punchy are clearly key.  When people resort to Twitlonger I personally have to be really interested in the particular author, or the contents of the first part of the tweet, to open up the link.  My timeline is racing by: there are other things to read and I will skip quickly pass a link.  If there is a complex idea to get across people often instead do this by multiple tweets, one following the other in quick succession.  I've seen people label these as "1/3, 2/3, 3/3" to make it clear they're part of a set.  That way they are more likely to be read than using Twitlonger, where the body of the tweet is obscured.  Tweet 3 might catch your eye, so you go back and read tweets 1 and 2 accordingly.  Twitlonger works fine, however, in a one-on-one conversation where you have a particular reader's attention.

The first thing to go in tweets are often the words "the" and "a/an" - in 140 characters there is little room for a definite or indefinite article - you simply drop them out, even if you're not hard up against the character limit.  The language of Twitter is much less formal than you'd use in an email or letter - but what is interesting is noticing that if you tweet a lot, it's actually an effort not to write texts, instant messages or emails in this same shorthand style.  It's all about the speed.  This is a bit beside the point, but I also find myself wanting to use hashtags in all of these contexts.  That will definitely only work if the other person spends time on Twitter...

Abbreviations

There's a whole range of abbreviations used on Twitter that take some getting used to.  Some originate in "text speak" others are unique to the forum.  We are well familiar with "LOL" for "laugh out loud" (love it, or hate it - personally I think it's great) and its relatives ROFL (roll on floor laughing) and "LMAO" (laugh my arse off).  If something is off the scale funny we may even see a "LOLOLOLO" - as observed several times this week on my timeline about the departure of Frankie Cokeupthenozza from X-Factor.

There are things like RT, HT, MT, which are unique to Twitter and have been created entirely by users of the medium - check out point 13 in my earlier post on "How to use Twitter" if you're unsure what they mean.

We also have FTFY (fixed that for you) - you take something someone tweeted and amend it as retweet, basically to take the piss out of them by changing a small but important detail.  The tweet then goes out to all their followers and says something entirely different to what you intended to say - but the FTFY makes it clear this is a joke.

 
The Playfulness of Language

What I like most about Twitter though is the sheer playfulness of the language used.  In the last few days I've seen the following examples:

Time for a screenbreak.. Moar coffee!

That's the best pic EVAR

Oooh we're spending Boxing Day in Snowdonia. I am tres excited!

A-MAY-ZING: That Kelly/Cocozza vid

The reenactment of Dambusters on BBC2 is acecakes

No question: this is tres amaze

You might well think, Jesus, these people need to learn some English.  In fact three of the above are from highly literate and intelligent lawyers.  "Acecakes" is from an outstanding writer on a well known daily paper.  "Tres Amaze" is from someone who works in Westminster.  If you write "That's tres amaze" in an email to your MP boss, he might think you're quite odd and/or illiterate- on Twitter it just seems to work.  It also indicates something - a warmth and kindly acceptance that is different to the plain "that is amazing."

What is going on here is a whole new fun creative language is being created.  The speed of adoption is breathtaking: I saw the use of "Klaxon" a few weeks ago (hardly a common word, though "Klaxonner" remains my favourite verb in French) - suddenly everyone is using it on my timeline.  Twitter is all about words... and here words are picked up rapidly, played with and used.

I exchange "Lolz" with an English teacher - and if something is really funny we use "Lolkatz".  I'm sure if one of her kids tried this in an essay they wouldn't exactly get top marks: we're using it almost ironically, between the two of us, because it's so "wrong".  The "Z" is *so* much fun in my opinion - you use "OMG" (oh my god) to express surprise - shove a Z on the front (ZOMG) and it becomes "zoooo my god" which really ups the excitement of what you're saying. 

The examples I've given above really demonstrably aren't from people who confuse their "you're and your" or "who's and whose": they are just playing with English.  I've seen how new completely ungrammatical constructions: "Son, I am disappoint".  "I am much excite": those both from a student of creative writing who is perfectly capable of getting his grammar correct in other contexts.  I learned ZOMG from an almost scarily bright young guy who has a degree in Chinese and is currently learning Korean.  Illiterate he is not.

The misspelling of words can soften their meaning.  I received the above tweet that said "it's just bubbles, silleh".  That's actually fascinating: had Dan (a graduate journo himself) written "silly" I could have taken it as a bit patronising - it's notoriously difficult to get tone across in written language and in so few characters.  Instead "silleh" (which I'd never seen before) came across as sweet and really very cute.  How is that for actually overcoming ambiguity?

We also of course have the whole language of the "Tw".  People on Twitter are "tweeps"; when they arrange to meet it's a "tweet-up"; I even attended a "twitnic" last summer.  I'm a "twaddict" for being on Twitter so often.  A new way of forming a noun has been created that indicates a link with Twitter.  These aren't in the dictionary, but everyone is quite clear what they mean.

Misuse of English?

Where does this all get us? Well nowhere in particular.  It's just a random set of observations.  You might be "totes snooty" about what you see as the misuse of English.  I'm not.  Language evolves constantly and rapidly: it has always done so and will always continue to do so.  We are seeing it happen here on Twitter and I'm fascinated by it and love it.

Whilst I'm perfectly capable of being a grammar fascist and explaining why (for example) in a formal letter you should use a possessive pronoun with a gerund - and more to the point believing that is a sensible rule - I really enjoy coming on to Twitter, letting my hair down and using a completely different linguistic register.  There is no compulsion to do so: many people form "correct" and full sentences; but I actually really enjoy seeing one of the most talented barrister bloggers I know asking for "Moar coffee".  It even got a little lulz from me :)

Swimming

Swimming makes me a happier person.
I have finally found the strength to head to the gym but after 30minutes of threadmill running, i did not feel satisfied.
But, 25laps in the pool made be a jolly person for the rest of the day.
Looks like water is my thing....

Free gym n huge pool n new mix of ppl.... I have entered a whole new world!

I will(must) get around to update more often. Unfortunately, Iphone blogger doesnt allow photo uploads. Whats a blog without photosss...

The Guardian and the Prince of Wales

Today the Guardian ran a number of related stories including their lead one "Princes Charles has been offered a veto over 12 government bills since 2005.  The cries of outrage resounded from my Twitter timeline.

The thrust of the article is clear.  The Guardian has described Prince Charles many a time as the "Meddling Prince" over the last five years and also uses this today in a related article.  Here is a private citizen, using "secretive constitutional loopholes" to stick his nose into matters that he has no right to. More than that, he has actually been using these powers to prevent democracy from functioning properly.  He has been doing this by holding up or vetoing laws that would otherwise have been passed by our elected representatives - and *our* government has offered him this!  Andrew George MP is quoted saying "Most people will be astonished to learn that [the Prince of Wales] appears to have in effect powers of veto over the government."  The article also uses the words "overstepping his constitutional role by lobbying ministers directly".

Bloody hell - no wonder people are concerned - didn't we have a Civil War over this type of thing before?!

Let's Pick it Apart

Except... when you read the article carefully you can pick this all apart and realise the Guardian is chucking quite a lot of mud around here, some of which is not actually connected and none of which is backed up by any evidence.

The first point to note is that the issue of lobbying ministers (for which absolutely no evidence is given here) is quite distinct to the issue of the Prince of Wales's "power of consent" to certain specific pieces of legislation.  The Guardian has deliberately muddled the two and thrown them in together to create the picture it wants the reader to come away with.

Next, any level of critical reading of the piece shows that the allegation of having "a power of veto over the government" is not in fact some general power over the business of government as is implied; in fact it is limited to a dozen government bills that the "Guardian investigation" has revealed.  The piece mentions the Prince's "pet concerns" of traditional architecture and the environment, but does not provide any evidence that the power of consent was in fact related to them.

Then we come to ever such a critical point.  Daniel Greenberg, a lawyer at Berwins is quoted as saying "It is something of a nuclear-button option that everybody knows he is not likely to push".... Ahh - so in fact this power of veto has never been used?  I didn't read this piece like that at first.  What with Andrew George MP's strident words I had the distinct impression the Prince was stopping laws going through on a regular basis - perhaps a dozen times in recent years, if you just skim read the article.

In fact the allegation (from the director of Republic) is that because this power exists it *may* give the Prince the power of leverage.  Reread and note the plentiful use of mays/mights throughout the entire article.  The Guardian gives us no proof in any way that the Prince has been seeking to influence matters through the threat of veto (the actual use of which would of course cause a massive constitutional crisis) - it's left to the reader effectively to assume there's no smoke without fire.  He *must* have done so, pretty much.

Mind Games

Now for the tone of the article.  We kick off with a great picture of the Prince.  Remember the nice pictures of Vincent Tabak used in the press before he was found guilty?  And then how they changed overnight because a murderer couldn't possibly be portrayed as an ordinary smiling man?  Yep, here we have the most unflattering image of the angry Meddling Prince that we can dredge up.  Minor point, but it sits with the headline in creating a particular impression the paper wishes to create.  All sectors of the Press, of course, do this continually.

The use of the words "secretive" and "loopholes" scares us as readers.  We all know what loopholes are - they are things that clever lawyers use to get undeserving guilty privileged clients off things they have done.  The language is emotive and absolutely deliberate.  We also have the use of "multi-millionaire Prince" in the related article to get some class and wealth envy going.  These are pretty crude tools.

Anyway, how secret are these loopholes though and how ever did the Guardian discover them then?  Well, let's try looking at Hansard.  Yes, do a search on "TheyWorkForYou.com" (many thanks @MrsTrevithick who takes a very different viewpoint on me to this whole subject) and up they all pop - each and every completely publicly available record of the Prince (along with the Queen) consenting to their prerogatives and interests being put at the disposal of Parliament.  The language is absurd "the Prince commands" etc- but it's not sinister, it's traditional; and multiple entries in Hansard isn't exactly my definition of "secretive".

Hmm.  Okay then, what of the fact that the Guardian says "Since 2005, minister from six departments have sought the Prince of Wales' consent to draft bills on everything from road safety to gambling and the London Olympics".  Is this some kind of new power?  The fact that 2005 is quoted gave me that impression.  The print version of the story went further along this line: it suggested that "ancient powers have been invoked" - the clear implication is to me that somehow these old powers had been discovered and resurrected.  The Guardian goes on "Neither the Government nor Clarence House will reveal exactly why he was asked to grant consent to a such a wide range of laws".  This is looking like a massive stitch-up and the government is in on it: ministers have handed over powers to Prince Charles in some secret deal to take away from their own power.  Except why would they do that?  Why would Labour and then the Conservatives have "offered" Prince Charles the power of veto over laws voluntarily?  Common sense tells me we're being led up the garden path again here.

If you're prepared to continue digging around the Guardian actually provides a link to another story (by themselves).   And here it all is: since the creation of the Duchy of Cornwall, back in 1337, the Prince of Wales's consent has been sought on laws that affect his personal interests as the holder of the estate.  The piece actually explains there that the Monarch and Prince's consents are required as a matter of parliamentary procedure and this is fundamentally different from royal assent to a Bill.  So this is nothing new.  It's in fact been here for almost 700 years.  It's not personal to the "Meddling Prince", Charles Windsor.  Each and every Prince of Wales has in fact provided such consents as a standard and regular matter of course (or not) down over the centuries.  Nor is it limited to him; the monarch also evidently routinely provides such consents, yet the Guardian has not chosen to suggest the Queen is somehow acting improperly - just Charles.

I'm not clear if this is a standard exercise of Royal Prerogative (I'm not a constitutional lawyer and I'm having my doubts about the Guardian's certain obvious lack of objectivity here) but if it is, I do know that since the 19th century this has in practice been vested in ministers, and specifically the prime minister.  It's a theoretical historical power that is never exercised by the monarch.  Should this power exist?  Almost certainly not, but this is a much wider subject for proper debate - not the misleading, personal warfare the Guardian is engaging in.

A Giant Load of Shit-Slinging

So where do we come to?  I really believe this is a monumental example of the Guardian driving its own agenda.  I would love to know why it decided to run this as its lead story today and wonder why (given years of similar attacks on Prince Charles) its editor or proprietors have this intense personal dislike of the Prince.  This isn't a news story.  It is a deliberately misleading, innuendo laden, crude piece of propaganda.  I suspect there is some pretty strong reason why the Guardian has it in for him, but we're certainly not going to find it out from them.

Did you see the Express last week?  There was a piece on Thursday that followed Chancellor Merkel's extraordinary, historic speech to the Bundestag.  Dr Merkel said that the EU had guaranteed peace in Europe for 50 years (a widespread view amongst Germans) and that if the Euro fell, the EU fell with it.  She warned that another 50 years' peace could not be guaranteed without the EU and that because of Germany's historic failings it had a special responsibility to reach in its pocket and do everything it could to prevent this.  After the death of well over 6 million of their citizens, the destruction of their cities, the blood of tens of millions on their hands, and 40 years of division, most Germans have a terror of War that we can not relate to.  This was powerful language indeed from a modern day German Chancellor in the Reichstag building and not deployed lightly.  The Express took this and chose to go with the headline "Germany Warns of War in Europe".  It carefully, deliberately, selectively and utterly misleadingly threw something out there and left it to its own readers to run with it knowing the reaction.  Here's a selection of the results:

The Guardian did pretty much the same today, but in a more sophisticated way, with a liberal lefty audience.  The effect was the same.  My timeline had comments in it such as "Doesn't Charles know what happened the last time a Royal tried this?" and "Unbefuckinglievable!" - we had cries of anger and outrage reacting to a story, that was in fact a different story, that had been dishonestly made and not proven in any way.

There are some serious questions about the position of the Royals in our constitution.  I will happily argue them out with a republican and I respect entirely the logic of their position.  No one would come up with this system today.  I'm told by @Mousehole1 that if you die intestate and without heirs in Cornwall your estate passes to the Duchy of Cornwall.  That's bonkers: I completely agree - but it's nothing to do with this Guardian piece.  There is also a serious issue in all this about wealthy, powerful people lobbying and the need to have all of such activity properly above board.  That is by no means limited to the Prince of Wales and again this article is not in fact about that.  There are questions as to why a consent (however formal) is required as a matter of parliamentary procedure - yes, let's talk about that rationally and sensibly, examine whether it is in any way affecting the business of government, and abolish it if there is reason to.

What the Guardian is not doing is conducting an evidence based, objective campaign calling for the abolition of the Monarchy.  It is running a personal vendetta against the person of the present Prince and I really am not prepared to respect that or run with it myself.  Above all, once again this whole subject is proof to me that we really must be critical of things we read in the papers.




UPDATE: The BBC is now running this story as a result of the fuss caused by the Guardian.  It is doing so in a far more balanced way and I believe both Clarence House and 10 Downing Street's statements fully back up what I'm asserting.  Note this in particular: "This is not about seeking the personal views of the Prince but rather it is a long-standing convention in relation to the Duchy of Cornwall, which would have applied equally to his predecessors."  There are some interesting and important constitutional issues to be discussed here; the Guardian has fallen over itself with its bias and thereby failed to present them in a way that facilitates proper debate.

Bless

To capture the true soul of a thing is an eternal challenge, one that has plagued the human race for ages, or since at least we made the disconnect between ourselves and the natural world. We attempt in fantastic ways to represent the living experience in sand, in stone, in metal, on paper, in words and music and song, with the help of silicon and the billions of transistors that feed each gadget we've come to rely on. Still, in all of our search and creation we can never quite capture the essence of what it feels like to be alive in this world. Great artists die heartbroken, because their time is done, and the ever-elusive muses have left them with parched mouths and aged, grasping fingers, still restlessly twitching with that lifetime ache to recreate the essence of the heart of the Universe. But the Great Goddess takes back what she generously grants, and we succumb once more to the deep dark warmth of her, satisfied with a life well lived, or not.

I struggled for over a month to find a fitting image for this 600th post. Some few readers made suggestions but none seemed to do personal justice to this seven year long happy accident of a tribute to a city I love so much. Finally, it dawned on me that the only appropriate thing was to pay homage to the craft I've been granted by having this final post honor the Great Mother, here in her aspect as Pomona, Goddess of Fruitful Abundance, and pray that she will grace us all with her love and care during our time here on her Planet Earth. And we, in turn, will care for this city, this island, as the least we can do in humble homage.

Thank you all for the past seven years. It's been a great run, but when the love of craft and of merely creating for it's own sake becomes ego-bound, a thing that happens to so many of us in this for-profit, monetizing landscape, it's time to return again to the source. I'm very proud of what I've done, but only because I'm not a photographer. I'm just a girl with a tiny compact camera who points it at what makes her happy, and who writes what makes her heart sing. I'll step out of the race and let this site stand, and be a completed thing.  

Respectfully yours,

Maria Alva

2000 years of Architecture with € Notes

When I'm taking my groups of Americans around Europe (Click here if you haven't read my evangelical enthusiasm for this part time job of mine!) one of the things I love to do is explain 2000 years of European architecture, art, history, politics and religion in 15 minutes... with the aid of Euro bank notes.  Okay, that might be overstating it a *bit* but if you want a very rough and ready overview, read on!

The Whole Spread

So I love Euro banknotes (and coins, but that's a whole other story) and wonder how many people know what they depict.  I don't want my students just wandering round saying "wow, everything's so old" - I want them looking at buildings and realising that styles don't exist in a vacuum.  They're intricately linked to what is going on in Europe at the time.

5 EURO CLASSICAL

Let's kick off with the 5 Euro.  The banknotes always depict an archway or window on one side, and a bridge on the other.  The structures are representative - they don't show a particular national building.  That is reserved for each country's own coins if they wish.  So what's the oldest still existing architectural style of building in Europe?  We need to head down south for it - it's of course the architecture of Greece and Rome. 

Classical Architecture

Look at the design: it's a familiar "classical" archway.  On the back we have something that looks a lot like a Roman viaduct.  We're obviously talking about broadly 2000 years ago and many of these buildings are now ruins, and are can be found located in southern Europe.  We have wonders like the Colosseum in Rome; the Arena of Nîmes; the peerless Acropolis in Athens.  There are of course however classical buildings and ruins in Northern Europe too - although the Romans did not penetrate much north of the Danube or east of the Rhine.

10 EURO ROMANESQUE

Of course "Antiquity" ends.  The marauding Germanic tribes descend on Rome and after several sackings put an end to the dying empire in 476.  There follows a period known as the Dark Ages (*cue bad jokes about people bumping into each other with candles*)  Nothing much is built, there's not a great deal of surviving culture as people wander to and fro across the continent, mingling and settling in new places.

Then, broadly around 800 or so we have a new style of architecture.  Except it's not particularly original: it's a simpler, less grand form of building than the Romans did.  It looks vaguely similar though, and for this reason we call it Romanesque architecture.  We can see it on the 10 Euro note.  The lack of complexity of the style is as a direct result of the political situation in Europe; we're coming out a period of intense turmoil and even whilst these buildings are being constructed there are still invasions from the North from the Vikings.

Romanesque Architecture

The arch looks familiar, no?  There's just one thing to note: there are semi-circular round arches, often one inside another.  There isn't too much Romanesque architecture around: you can find the odd church dotted here and there.  They tend to be quite small and basic, with massive heavy walls, small windows and they are fairly simple in style.  They are therefore quite easy to spot where they've survived: Lisbon Cathedral is a great example of a very large one in fact.  In Britain Romanesque architecture is normally called "Norman" whereas everywhere else it is "Romanesque".


20 EURO GOTHIC

NOW we're talking though.  A clever Frenchman, Abbot Suger (also known as "Sugar", but only to his closest friends) became the chief patron and adopter of a brand new style of architecture in the 12th century.  This is "Gothic" architecture, the great style of the so-called Middle Ages which broadly last until around 1500.  It is represented on the 20 Euro note.

Gothic Architecture

For Gothic Architecture, think tall and pointy.  It's mainly seen in churches: we are building upwards to the Glory of God.  A brilliant new invention, flying buttresses, allow the roof to be supported without the massive heavy walls of Romanesque structures.  Instead we can put in wider aisles, and large windows often filled with beautiful stained glass.  Gargoyles often complete the picture.

There are splendid Gothic churches and cathedrals across Europe.  Think of Salisbury Cathedral in England, Cologne Cathedral in Germany, or the breath-taking Cathedral at Chartres with its intense blue windows.  Perhaps the most spectacular of the lot is Notre Dame in Paris with its outrageous flying buttresses.  Many of these churches take upwards of 150 years to complete: one end is one variety of Gothic, and by the time you get to the other end the particular style of Gothic has changed.  St Vitus cathedral in Prague took an amazing 600 years to complete (they had a bit of an extended Staropramen/Becherovka break in the middle, it must be admitted)

50 EURO RENAISSANCE

When we hit 1500 we run into the two big R's.  Actually the first R started quite a lot earlier than that in Italy: it's the Renaissance.  It takes quite a long time, however, to reach the other parts of Europe.  Renaissance of course means "rebirth" - the people of the time begin dismissing the "blind belief" of the Middle Ages and look instead to rational explanations and science to try to work out how the universe works.

These guys admire the thought, art and architecture of the Classical Age.  They actually coin the term "Middle Ages" as a derogatory way of referring to the bit between the two periods of civilisation: Antiquity and Now (i.e. the 1500s).  The archetypal Renaissance Man is Leonardo da Vinci: a painter, sculptor, mathematician, scientist, inventor and writer.  Bet he was a right annoying sod to have as a dinner party guest.

Renaissance Architecture

Look at the 50 Euro note.  Does the style look familiar?  Yes, this is becoming a bit dull. It reminds us, not surprisingly, of the architecture of Greece, and even more particularly, Rome.  It's actually an absolutely conscious copying of the Classical style, with an emphasis on symmetry, geometry, proportion and a direct copying of the classical order of columns for example.  THE Renaissance city in Europe is Florence, but this architecture can be found all across the continent.  It takes until the mid 1600s to reach somewhere like Turku in Finland, by which time it has pretty much finished in Italy.

How do we recognise a Renaissance building?  Well, the columns are a give away, as is the symmetry and lack of fanciful decoration that Gothic buildings tend to have.  If it looks vaguely Roman in style but is in really good shape, chances are it's from the Renaissance.  It's had less time to become a ruin.

100 EURO BAROQUE

How about the second R then?  This is the Reformation, which kicks off with a vengeance (after some earlier mumblings) with Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses - complaints - about the Roman Catholic Church to a pretty insignificant church door in Wittenberg in northern Germany.  An invention by another German, Guttenberg, makes this unimportant event a revolution: the moveable printing press means the ideas about reforming the Church spread across Europe like wildfire.

What's this got to do with architecture?  Well not much, initially.  Protestant Churches are stripped of their finery - the emphasis is on the word of God - Luther has translated the Bible for the first time into German and people can hear and understand themselves what the book has to say.  The pulpit is the important place in a Protestant church - let's whitewash all over the colourful Gothic paintings and strip the altars of their gold.  The important thing to do is listen, not be distracted.

Baroque Architecture

Broadly much of Northern Europe has become Protestant: the movement has been very successful.  The South remains mainly Catholic.  Where the Protestants have swung to simplicity, the Catholics now go exactly the opposite way.  Let's show people what Heaven on Earth can look like.  Let's decorate our churches fancifully, with gold, with glitz!  We demand angels, beautiful paintings, magnificent altars.  This is the Counter-Reformation - and when the Catholic German Emperor becomes involves this becomes the Empire Strikes Back (is there no end to my bad jokes?)

This new style of architecture is Baroque.  It's bold, it's bling and it's on the €100 bank note. It's not just about a style of building either; we're talking a feast for the senses.  When you enter a Baroque church you will SEE the beauty; you will HEAR the new Baroque music; you will SMELL the incense.  It's a feast for the senses.  It is taking you out of your miserable hard mortal life and showing you what promises the Church can offer you - if you remain with the faith.  There will be a huge dome towering above you in a Baroque church: the circular form is typical of the style.

Baroque architecture is intimately linked to the Catholic faith, so you will find much of it in Italy, Austria, Southern Germany, France, Spain - and it's not just Church architecture - palaces are decorated in the same heavy, ornate style.  We don't see quite so much of it in Britain.  St Paul's Cathedral is our best example: and it apparently was kept under scaffolding until the end, because the shock of seeing such a Catholic structure in London caused a scandal.  Its highpoint is during the 1600s.  Castle Howard in Yorkshire is a splendid non-religious example of the style.  Late Baroque is called "Rococo" and it lasts through into the 1700s.  It's getting even more silly and gaudy by this stage.

200 EURO ART NOUVEAU

The 19th century, or Victorian Age, is pretty pants for new architectural styles.  I guess people are too busy building up either their overseas or continental empires (countries such as Spain and Portugal have already been busy exporting Baroque architecture to the New World with the help of the Jesuits).  They are also rapidly industrialising and society is changing.  In Europe we have no new proper styles of architecture throughout this period - instead we have "Historicism".

A drive around central Vienna is a perfect example of what is being built in the Historic Style.  We have a neo-Gothic town hall - the idea is that the middle class citizens of the Low Countries had a great deal of autonomy in the Middle Ages.  It's therefore a good thing to copy this style to show this isn't about the aristocracy or royalty ruling.  It looks just like a building from 1300: but it's over 500 years later.  It's "new-Gothic" (just like our own Houses of Parliament in London).  We see the Assisi Kirche: a massive neo-Romanesque structure, built in 1898, in a style that's been dead for 700 years.   The Austrian parliament building looks like a Greek temple: Athena stands with her back to it: it is pure neo-Classical: a direct copy of a style 2000 years old.  We also have neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque mansions, hotels and public buildings dotted around the Ring.

Art Nouveau Architecture

For crying out loud, no wonder people get bored with this crap.  We've seen it all before, right?  It's not actually an architectural style - it's just copying old stuff - so we're definitely not going to give it its own bank note.  We need something new, different.  In Vienna a group of artists (Klimt foremost amongst them) "secede" - they object so strongly to the historicism around them that they form their own breakaway movement.  A style of architecture develops that is playful and inspired by nature.  Plants and flowers are often used to decorate these new building facades, as are curved lines.

It's more than just a style of architecture: it's a philosophy, an art - a reaction against the stodge.  It has its heyday from 1890 to 1910.  There are beautiful, curious, wonderful Art Nouveau (literally "new art") buildings all over Europe.  In Britain some wonderful examples are found in Glasgow.  There are also some great art nouveau touches inside Liberty's in London.

500 EURO MODERN ARCHITECTURE

We pass on through Art Deco in the 1920s and 1930s (a more mathematical, geometric style of design and architecture that is not shown on the notes) and on to the architecture of today.  We are talking glass and steel.  Whether this is a uniform style or not is a good question, but the 500 Euro note is a serious bit of kit.  It's a massive note, designed in particular for Germans, who eschew credit cards and cheques.  They like to pay in cash, even for something like a car.  If you buy a £20,000 car in England you'd need 400 x £50 notes.  The same €23,000 car in Germany could be bought with just 46 of these big pink whoppers.  On the French Autoroutes they have signs warning no €200 or €500 are accepted at toll booths: not in French or English, but only in German!

Modern Architecture

There's not too much to be said about the style of the architecture other than there are, in my opinion, some absolutely superb beautiful examples of it (I *love* the Gherkin in London) and I'd quite happily knock down the Shard before they stick the last piece of North Korean lookalike glass on it (yes, Google Image Search Pyongyang and it's THERE).  They say you should give all architecture a generation before you judge it - so I'm penciling in 2030 before I hire a crane and a wrecking-ball.

Quite a Journey

But there we are.  It's been quite a journey to go from the Colosseum to the Shard, but I hope you've hung in there.  As I started out saying, architecture does not ever exist in a void - it's reflective of what's going on in politics, religion, art, society at the time.  I'm no expert, but I love looking at buildings, trying to understand more about them, and I love the fact that a prop such as Euro notes can be so handy in reminding us of the story.

I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing this!  Pictures of some of the buildings I've referred to can be found below.

Roman Arena, Nimes (€5 Classical)

Lisbon Cathedral (€10 Romanesque)

Notre Dame Cathedral Paris (€20 Gothic)

Hospital of Innocents, Florence (€50 Renaissance)

Castle Howard, Yorkshire (€100 Baroque)

Parliament Building, Vienna (Neo-Classical)

Apartment Blocks, Vienna (€200 Art Nouveau)

Swiss Re, London: the Gherkin (€500 Modern)

A Very Rude Word

I was walking in the woods today and noticed this daubed on a wall. Oh ho, ho, how funny/ shocking. Or is it? It got me thinking about this odd little 4 letter word and its strength and ability and offend.  I'm clearly not the first person to do so.  Just to reassure you, however, this blog isn't some 6th form college attempt at defending the C-word, trying to shock, or using it at every opportunity.  Please do read on!

The C-word is old

First off, this really is an old word.  Actually *ancient* in all likelihood.  Wikipedia cites this rather blunt advice given in the Proverbs of Hendyng (pre 1325):

"Ȝeue þi cunte to cunnig and craue affetir wedding"

(Give your c--t wisely and make (your) demands after the wedding)

The Oxford English Dictionary cites its first usage around 1230 in the context of "Gropecunt Lane", but it's much older than that.   It's likely to come from the Proto-Germanic kuntō (We are talking about 2500 years ago).  When people say "don't mind my French" in fact they should be saying "don't mind my Anglo-Saxon": most swear words in English are actually from Old English, and are therefore Germanic.  In our Germanic neighbour, Dutch, we still have the related word "kond" which is not a swear word and simply means "bottom".  This reflects a fascinating confusion akin to the British English and American English usages of "fanny".

The C-Word has survived the Viking raids, the Norman Invasion, and "polite" Victorian society.  Chaucer used it quite happily - anatomical words didn't seem to have the same stigma back then, but by Shakespeare's time it was becoming "obscene".  It's not a word taught at schools, and until recently wasn't hardly ever seen in print - its eradication from mainstream script shows that it could only have survived because people were still using in speech, sufficiently frequently, that it did not die out.  The word has literally been passed from mouth to mouth down the centuries.

It even actually disappeared from all main stream English dictionaries from 1795 to 1961.  Think about it: the C-word survived notwithstanding this fact. That's actually amazing.

Is it offensive or should it be reclaimed?

Well Germaine Greer thinks it's offensive: she said "It's one of the few remaining words in English with a genuine power to shock".  Likewise the Guardian in 2005 said it was the "most offensive word to the majority" and the Dictionary of Invective in 1991 said it was "the most heavily tabooed word of all English words."

The flip side are the now well rehearsed feminist arguments, also put forward by the likes of Greer*, that why should the "most offensive word in the English language" refer to the female genitalia?  Who has made it this way? Men.  Therefore to disempower the word it should be used as much as possible.  A "dick" is a fool; a c--t by contrast is pretty much the most offensive insult to throw at someone.  Let's take this power away from it.

We had a group of lesbian friends staying with us in Amsterdam at New Year 1998: I suggested this argument to them and still remember posh friend Henrietta shrieking and covering her ears.  By the end of the long weekend we'd used the word so many times (on purpose and jokingly) it *had* in fact ceased to have the same power.  Critically, though, this observation applied amongst us and in this limited societal context.

I've heard people say the very <sound> of the word is offensive.  It's apparently harsh and nasty.  As I touched on earlier, I'm not trying to show I'm all grown up and above petit-bourgeois norms by defending the C-word... but I do disagree with that contention.  Is "cat" or "cut" an offensive sounding word? No, of course not.  There is absolutely no such thing as an offensive sounding word: we as a society have given this word a special meaning unconnected to the actual word itself.

Context and intent are everything

Many words can be used offensively.  If you use the right spiteful, aggressive tone you can call me an "idiot" in such a way that it will hurt far more than if, say, one of my pals jokingly calls me a "daft c--t" with a laugh and a smile on their face.

My former boss is a quite frum Orthodox Jew.  A typical conversation in the office might have gone like this: "Oh Jeremy, sorry I forgot to send that email out you asked me to" .... "That's okay, Peter, you complete c--t".  The fact we were close friends and the wonderful inappropriateness of his using the word (his wife did it too) just turned the whole thing on its head.  We would write it "komplete kunt" to make it clear, I suppose, that this was our usage of the word and the not the more general one.  We had actually managed to make the C-word (or K-word!) a term of affection and humour between us.  Language is very much capable of this - but this is about a strictly specific and limited context: if we had gone around calling the trainees or the senior partner a "c--t" we'd have, quite rightly, been in serious trouble.

This understanding of and sensitivity to context is, I would argue, wholly lacking from the type of thing I set out below.  Laurie Penny (@pennyred), who is relatively well known on Twitter and blogs/writes for the New Statesman, has frequently thrown the C-word out there "to the world".  She once wrote a long blog on why it was such a great word and seems to use it to want to shock and draw attention to herself:

Note 31 people felt fit to retweet this "fascinating/profound" thought..

You may be aware that she called a writer/activist of the Third Estate group a c--t in January of this year (please click for a short explanation of the story) and this tweet followed on from it.  This was in front of around 100 people, of whom the target apparently knew around a quarter and had to work with the rest.  How would I have felt if my Mutti had been in the audience?  How would I have felt if *I* had been in the audience?  I'm not exactly a person of delicate Victorian language sensibilities - I would not otherwise be writing on this subject matter - but I'd just find that naive, coarse, unnecessary and in that context it would lower the speaker in my eyes.  I can't see how the standard feminist "disempowering argument" was PennyRed's intention: her tweet suggests she uses it very much to offend: it is about "baring her teeth".  I also find it odd she thinks men find the word offensive: my own life experience is that men are likely to use it far more often, and women are more likely to be offended by the C-word.

In any case, this blog is not intended as an attack on Penny Red.  She is obviously bright and writes some very good stuff; however this behaviour makes me think that she does have some amount of growing up to do.  She is of course not the only person who uses the C-word for effect: as we've identified: if nothing else, it can evoke strong reactions.  The above tweet and the story I mentioned are simply good illustrations of the point from someone who is "not shy" of the word.
 
The C-word on Twitter

In real life I'm very relaxed about using the C-word with certain friends.  They all know me well and they know that my intent is not to offend them.  I choose never use it as a term of abuse, because I think personally the misogynist undertones are pretty clear.  On Twitter, which is by definition much more public,  I deliberately do not ever use it in general tweets: I do use it every now and then, with a humorous intent, in an @message to a few people (eg @obotheclown or @hyperbolicgoat) because I'm pretty sure mutual followers of ours would not be offended given these guys' own style of "sweary" tweeting.

On a macro level I very much see the merits of the feminist "Lady Love Your C--t" argument put forward by Greer - but I am not going to change the world on a micro level by standing up in front of 100 people I did not know and using it as an insult. 

Cover your ears, Hyacinth!

You are of course perfectly entitled to use whatever language you like and we are all aware that people may well follow or unfollow us on Twitter on that basis.  I don't avoid c--t to keep followers, or from some "polite" or "prissy" Hyacinth Bucket view of language; I don't use it simply because I know a good proportion of people will find it offensive.  To misquote a legal case on the Egg-Shell Rule from English common law: "you take your audience as you find them".  Some of my followers couldn't care less, some might be mildly upset, a few would be very upset if I swore in this way.  It doesn't make me feel big or clever to evoke the 2nd and 3rd reactions.

Back to the Graffiti

To summarise the C-word is not a bad word of itself - as in any use of language, what makes it powerful or offensive is the way we decide to view it: both individually and as a society.  That changes over time and at the moment you hear the C-word more and more.  If this keeps up, it will become less powerful.  Huzzah to that... I guess?   The word has certainly been around a long time and as a former student of history of language I have a certain inherent respect for it on that basis.

I follow lots of people on Twitter who use it frequently.  Sometimes it is splendidly funny to hear someone you really don't expect coming out with it.  However, there are plenty of people who won't find it funny and will be upset.  I don't think randomly going round (intentionally or negligently) upsetting people is that great a thing.  Isn't that just common sense and the rules of basic social interaction?

Back to the graffiti on the wall: you know what? Meh.  I really couldn't care less if you'd written "Poo", "Faggot" or "Wibble Wibble" on that wall.  You're not offending me.  You have given me an idea to write about on my blog - but I'm not so sure that many of the older people walking round the woods with their dogs will be quite so relaxed.  It's a pretty pathetic and unnecessary thing to do to want to upset or shock them, isn't it?


[Update: many thanks to @AAEmerson for for pointing me to a recent video in which the incredibly likeable and brilliant Greer has since modified her position again, and is now celebrating the C-word as having "power".  She says she is glad the "normalisation" she called for has not happened.  It's a great watch if you have 11 minutes spare and are interested!]