Dabbler Diary – Testosterone

Builders have come, so Mrs Brit and the girls fled the house. The builders are of course very mannish men. Gnarly men. Practical men, who work with their hands and communicate in grunts and obscenities and take at least two sugars in their tea. Like all good building crews this one is pleasingly motley. There’s a very old one with no teeth, and a very young teenage one with a gold chain trying to look gnarlier. There’s a cheerful one with glasses and a surly bugger whose face has been moulded by the British weather into a permanent scrunchy gurn. They know what they’re about. It’s edifying to see very specifically-skilled men working with practised efficiency.

For myself, I enjoy Jane Austen novels and occasionally I cook risotto, yet for some reason the moment I’m left alone in the house I revert to caveman status. This means things like waking up on the sofa at 2am surrounded by empty beer bottles and the remnants of an absurdly overambitious Chinese takeaway, dimly wondering whether the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie showing on ITV4 is Commando or Predator. On Thursday I sat in front of Sky Sports News, tearing the flesh from the bones of a rotisserie chicken in the manner of Henry VIII. As Worm has wisely commented, the value of the civilising effect of a woman in a man’s life cannot be overstated.

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None of the arguments I’ve heard made by the supporters of Lords reform make any reference to the current system not working. They’re all based on supposed anachronisms and unfairnesses in the methods used to populate the House. Nick Clegg seems to think that electing members every 15 years would somehow make the Lords more ‘democratic’. But the Commons is 100% elected, and Clegg wants to push through specific constitutional reforms without any public support or mandate whatsoever. On the other hand, the Lords generally acts as a check when it knows the public is firmly against the Government. It all more or less works. Clegg wants to replace a Parliamentary system that works with an untried new system, without consulting the public whose interests he claims to know best how to serve. His democratic mandate for this is presumably that Lords reform appeared somewhere in the Liberal Democrat manifesto which attracted 22.1% of the national vote at the last election. But then Nick is a big supporter of the European Union, which is full of career politicians belonging to parties with words like ‘liberal’ and ‘democrat’ in their names, who also hate the general public.

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Having mentioned the pitfalls of being home alone, nonetheless it’s nice to be able to watch whatever you want on the telly. I finally got round to Charlie Kaufman’s arthouse film Syncecdoche, New York, which was Virgin-plussed ages ago and has been sitting there for months along with a load of other movies waiting for someone to be in the mood to watch it. Cost me a lot of dithering-time to choose it. Scanning your film collection is a strange business – you’re never in the mood for any of them, though when you do finally watch something you usually enjoy it. Not so long ago we used to do this in the video shop, a lengthy process of negotiation that was itself part of Saturday night’s entertainment. Have you seen this one?….Got mixed reviews. Could put it in the ‘maybes’ …What about this one? Saw it at the cinema. Would you watch it again? If there’s nothing else. I miss all that. Blockbusters and other video shops used to be everywhere, a significant industry once seeming so modern, even futuristic, now all but destroyed by technology’s unpredictable ways. See also print journalism and, apparently, professional porn acting.

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On the subject of technology’s unpredictable ways, Twitter is a horrible medium because the functions that give it a social and viral element – hashtags, retweeting and trends – have created the Twitterati: a bullying lynch mob culture where sanctimonious liberals hunt for perpetrators of thought crime and seek to humiliate and destroy them. Immediately after John Terry’s acquittal a Twitter mob was crying fix, many suggesting that his defence – that he was repeating incredulously an accusation of a racial insult, rather than originating one – was something cooked up by his expensive lawyers. Not so: Terry – by all accounts an unlikeable man, but no racist – has insisted from the start that this was what happened. Why did this pathetic case ever get to court when there was a total lack of habeus corpus (Anton Ferdinand did not even hear the non-insult) and of any kind of evidence other than a video of Terry saying the words that he openly admitted to saying anyway? It got to court because nobody knows how to handle ‘race issues’ in the face of the Twitterati other than hysterically. Like all groups founded on a desire to destroy heretics the Twitterati is paranoid and quick to scream ‘Witch’ at its own members – as Anton’s brother Rio has now found, having Tweeted his approval of a racially-based slur against Ashley Cole, who spoke in defence of Terry (‘choc-ice’, essentially meaning an Uncle Tom). Television and the papers now routinely report these cretinous Twitter-generated ‘stories’ as news, and thus the Twitterati has gained a wholly disproportionate power in setting the news agenda. The sooner Twitter goes the way of MySpace and FriendsReunited the better.

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More testosterone. A lads’ reunion at the Bierkeller. My third visit to this venerable Bristol establishment, the first two being stag parties, including my own. You wouldn’t want to go every week because the formula is unchanging, but a funnier Saturday night out is hard to imagine. The Oompah-pah Band (as motley a crew as our builders but clad correctly in lederhosen) storms its way through a relentless setlist of German drinking songs and rock classics, while you stand on tables roaring along and swinging your two-pint stein of cheap fizzy lager (or, this being Bristol, cider). You need to be pretty well-lubricated before you arrive because doors open and then almost immediately you have to Do the Conga. I always feel there are too few opportunities in life to Do the Conga. The world would be a happier, friendlier, less Twittish place if only we all Did the Conga at least once a week. Perhaps Tuesday mornings, 10am, that being the cruellest hour.

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Oh yes – Charlie Kaufman’s arthouse film Synecdoche, New York. What a load of rubbish.

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14 thoughts on “Dabbler Diary – Testosterone

  1. wormstir@gmail.com'
    July 16, 2012 at 08:48

    “You wouldn’t want to go..to a bierkeller..every week because the formula is unchanging”

    Yet our german chums seem to manage whole lifetimes of it, and never get bored of the whole pantomime. Eating the same food, drinking the same beer, listening to the same repetitive oompa music and wearing the same little leather shorts week in week out forever. They don’t do the conga though.

  2. hooting.yard@googlemail.com'
    July 16, 2012 at 09:31

    Perhaps the most amusing part of the Terry trial fiasco was the forensic examination of all the sweary invective. One lawyer suggested this showed that foopballers do not live in “the real world”. Quite clearly the opposite is the case. The lower orders speak to each other like this all the time – and without taking “offence”. Only in the minds of lawyers and Grauniad journalists is it some kind of aberrant language.

  3. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    July 16, 2012 at 09:34

    If you think that builders are blokish, try scaffolders, the SAS of the construction trade. Monosyllabic hard drinking nicotine stained bookies fodder, have the amazing ability to catch, with one hand, other scaffolders falling from above. The one (there’s always one) with the HGV licence, the one who ‘drives the truck’ that’s the one who brews the tea and reads the racing form book. They, in my experience, tend to prefer Rossini rather than Verdi and can often be seen threatening Ryanair check-in desk staff at four thirty in the morning. They used to earn as much as lawyers which is grossly unfair as their worth to society is far greater.

    They are however a bunch of pooftah’s compared with the local council’s female social services managers who spend their working hours imitating Amon Goeth.

    Re twitter, never ever visited the place, life is not meant to be spent in a septic tank.

    Re bierkellers, ask them to convert to a Brauhaus (bierkeller with grub) the fourteen pound plates of pork, cabbage and potatoes are one of life’s treats.

  4. peter.burnet@hotmail.com'
    Peter
    July 16, 2012 at 11:32

    I’ve never been a Twit, but I’ve seen enough of it incidental to blogging wars to realize it’s a very, very dark invention, made darker by being as addictive as heroin. A friend and cyber-sparring partner has a perceptive theory that Twitter (and much blogging) is the vehicle through which millions are giving free rein to their unrestrained ids–Lord of the Flies stuff–while telling themselves they are participating in healthy democratic debates on public issues. It’s a bit like defending the pub brawl as one’s contribution to community cohesion and solidarity.

  5. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    July 16, 2012 at 11:54

    Consider if you will the itinerant Portuguese scaffolder (Vincent the erector) wooden poles and string are his tools of the trade, Dao his daily brew, requiring a DGV (donkey goods vehicle) licence, no mean feat in a society drowning it the Euro. Still, no shortage of donkeys, or lawyers as they are known around Lagos.

    Regarding the squishy liberal left, N.Cohen takes an excellent pop at that liberal domain of deceit, the British Broadcasting Corp in Standpoint magazine this month, nails them nicely.

  6. russellworks@gmail.com'
    ian russell
    July 16, 2012 at 19:36

    Poor old Clegg. In a parallel universe he’s doing okay.

    ***

    I only Twitter to read Bryan Appleyard’s tweets. Kind of Tim Vine channelling Michael McIntyre (an intellectual version of him, from a parallel universe).

  7. Brit
    July 16, 2012 at 21:35

    I should point out that the Dabbler’s Tweets are of course the exception that proves the rule.

    (Can’t see the Yard still tweeting in a year’s time, Ian. He’s a sucker for fads.)

    • johngjobling@googlemail.com'
      malty
      July 16, 2012 at 23:44

      Can’t see him screaming again, either.

  8. Gaw
    July 16, 2012 at 21:52

    A great selection of compelling subjects there.

    I’ve noticed all the film buffs who used to work in video shops (and sneer at the clientele’s choices) are now reduced to bar work. Film is what they’re talking about when you’re waiting for your pint.

    The bierkeller is surely a form of torture. Sitting on an uncomfortable bench, bloated on fizzy lager whilst being deafened by appalling music.

    The reaction to Terry’s swearing is another demonstration that rough behaviour hasn’t really got worse, it’s just that it’s increasingly brought to the attention of the more shockable members of society. On that topic, have you noticed how binge drinking is no longer constantly being reported, editorialised and discussed? But that could be the weather.

  9. Gaw
    July 17, 2012 at 14:15

    I see the police are investigating a tweeter who accused Ashley Cole of being a ‘choc ice’ for testifying in Terry’s favour. I wonder if we’ve entered an infinite regression of foopball-related prosecutions for racism?

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      July 17, 2012 at 20:39

      Yes, the very Tweet approved by Rio Ferdinand. But if originating the racist slur is a criminal offence, is retweeting it not also one? Presumably Rio has many more followers too. A perfect example of the absurdity of twittering-as-news.

      • Gaw
        July 17, 2012 at 20:58

        Oh yes, you’d mentioned it up above. In fact I must have read about it here first. I blame twitter.

  10. bryan@bryanappleyard.com'
    July 20, 2012 at 16:23

    Okay you got me bang to rights, guv’nor. Fad lad that I am

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