…or ‘Why Differentiation Doesn’t Always Work’.

There is a fast-food shop on Oxford Road in Manchester that sells the type of takeaway fare instantly recognisable by countless drunken students across the UK and Europe.

However, even though it is located right on this major thoroughfare, recent unofficial polls by me suggested nobody knew it was a fast-food shop. Even though the people questioned habitually walk past the shop and indeed have done so with me on many an occasion.
When pressed, they variously replied that they thought it was a gift card shop, a milk shake vendor, etc.

Why?

Because the owner has painted his shop pink in the manner of a burger joint from ’50s-era Americana. One can only imagine the lost trade due to this unfathomable mistake.

Yes, we may laugh at unimaginative “Mario Pizza”, “Italia Ciao” or “Pizza Bella” (all genuine businesses round my area) shop names but these are names expected by the customers and it clearly doesn’t pay to deviate from the trodden path in this circumstance.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

Why I think this is a great example.

I love the use of language as an insider code that paints the cultured air, while the visual clues are of a different world entirely.

I also love the idea (one Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse explore later on in other sketches) that there are construction workers who appreciate the arts, and it is not the preserve of some snob elite.

A timely article by The Economist on that most-strange of English variants; the Journalist Speak.

The author talks about how fluent speakers of English can still be confused by the English found in mainstream newspapers and news sites. Definitely worth a ponder.

Everyday I come across headlines in the web that just can’t be made sense of. Yesterday the BBC had ‘Hammer Mother Murder Jailed’ or some equal such nonsense. Today I find ‘Millionaire Riot Student Guilty’!!

I often joke on Twitter about these headlines, i.e. What’s a Millionaire Riot, or what’s a Riot Student? But it takes someone not used to this format some considerable effort to parse these sentences. Brevity becomes an Achilles Heel here, especially as English has a lot of  natural ambiguity in terms of its adverbs.

As most people know, there is a formula for writing press articles called, I think, the Triangle approach. The headline at the top sums up the entire story as best possible, the next paragraph or two gives broader details, and the remainder of the article covers all the detail available at the bottom.

This style of constructing a news piece gives a casual reader / browser the opportunity to decide quickly whether they want to engage in the whole piece, and it is this more than anything else in my opinion that has led to our familiar browsing styles, which have carried on from print journalism to online reading.

It also helps us retain a familiarity with a chosen newspaper or news site; one as distinctive as editorial slant.

It’s funny how a book finds you rather than the other way around. I shall be expanding on this later, but for now some of the best excerpts I’ve found so far from this collection of Brecht’s short stories. You might recognise Brecht as a German poet and playwright; he wrote the plays Baal, Life of Galileo, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Duchess of Malfi, (and Antigone which was showing in Manchester Library a while ago).

They got up and stood around in the yard, trembling with the cold for they were mostly wearing only their shifts, it all happened so damn quickly, with God turning his face away from them to have a look at the harvest in Brazil instead. (Bargan gives up)

This man had put all his money on one card and now he was defending it. But the card was a loser, and the more he put on, the more he lost; he knew all about it, but he probably just wanted to get rid of all his money, he couldn’t help it any more. That’s what happened to him, this great man, a special effort on God’s part, and it’s what could happen to any of us: you get assaulted in broad daylight, that’s how secure we all are on this planet. (Bargan gives up)

Then he got into bed. We’re not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It’s whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, towards a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of planet we’re not responsible, he thought. But then it grew too dark in bed. (The revelation)

So the blind man walked in darkness and pondered how he could increase his sufferings in order to endure them better. For it seemed to him that a great torment was easier to bear than a small one. (The blind man)

When the captain arrived they were standing in an open space fifty metres apart, each with a carbine raised to his shoulder, and were sniping at each other in the half-light. Neither was in any danger, for they were dreadfully drunk. But everyone else was in mortal danger since the two of them, fervently and with trembling hands, were shooting holes into the morning.

If the captain had been incompetent he would have yelled and punished them but he only said: ‘You’re not hitting anything, why not beat each other up, that would make better sense.’ After which they had a drunken brawl which was a pleasure to watch. (The Lance-sergeant)

From: Collected short stories ed. Willett, J. & Manheim, R. Methuen London 1999.

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one

And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at ‘clink and bandy’ ‘chock’ and ‘taw’ and
ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a ‘swing’
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
thing
With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a stone
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rai n
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school oer ‘little field’ with its brook and wooden
brig
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name
‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’- O I never call to mind
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind
On the only aged willow that in all the field remains
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
chains
And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for the hills where they seek for
freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to kill
The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom chill
When I think of old ‘sneap green’ puddocks nook and hilly
snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
Whe n we threw the pissmire crumbs when we’s nothing
else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow

I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and
done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again
Inclosure like a Buonapar te let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors – though the brook is
running still
It runs a naked brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men
I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen
And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour
As keepsakes and pledges to fade away
But love never heeded to treasure up the may
So it went the comon road with decay

– John Clare

Composed c. 1832    First published 1908

It seems amazing that somehow, in the 21 years since Justin Fashanu came out as openly gay, there hasn’t been a single other instance of a footballer in the UK doing the same (and I believe it’s rare across the globe; France international Olivier Rouyer being the only other in 2008). I saw his niece doing a programme about this and it got me thinking.

If we’re prepared to discard the idea that there is something inherently about football as a sport that makes it difficult for gay people to play, then it stands to reason that there are gay footballers amongst the 5000 or so professionals in the UK.

Since not a single one in 21 years has openly claimed to be gay (although I don’t believe anyone has to; it’s nobody else’s business), one must assume that they’re hiding their homosexuality.

This leads one to think about how they might be doing this. Perhaps a lot of the footballers who lead the headlines in newspapers with their “lewd night romps” are actually gay and stage such bawdry antics to blow smoke and cover their actual preferences.

Quite a few names pop to mind.

If so, I think the public should reassure these footballers that it’s ok for them to be gay, and that they can stop pretending to be Lotharios and stop deliberately ruining their public image just because they fear the stigma of being gay.