1984..... possibly....

now, the other day the Beard was in touch with the other side.... well, radio 2 anyway... still possibly my favourite station, despite the almost demise of a certain Terence Wogan, Knight of the Realm... but I digress....

anyway, the point is that Jeremy Vine (not to be confused with his ersatz cousin, Jeremy Kyle... many have...) was holding a discussion on what you would like to see the back of on the date of the ending of teh decade... and what the beard and several others said they'd like to see the back of was people saying that it was the end of the decade.... after all, its simple maths folks... there was no year 0, so the end of the first decade was obviously 10AD.... so unless somewhere we added a year, or had technical difficulties and weree stuck with a decade of nine years at some point, it would follow that the end of this decade is in fact the end of 2010... just as 2000AD was the last year of the 1990s... honestly... and 2001 was both the first year of the century and the millenium.... but as i don't actually follow the Judaeo-Christian based Gregorian calendar, this is all academic to me.... after all, i have 13 months in the year.... but again i digress...

but it did get me thinking of dates, and one date in particualr kept coming to mind, the eponymous date of Orwells second most famous novel.... the most famous being of course the one with the pigs.... now, 1984 has been one of my favourite books since i did it at high school in Eng Lit... which is usually a sure firer way to turn people off any book you care to mention... but 1984 was a breath of fresh air after The Outsider by Albert the Camel.... a controversial book, not least because it was french, and was written in french by a frenchman.... which technically isn't a crime, but does beg the question as always of why it was being studied in English Literature.... after all, does a translation into Deutsch make Lord of the Rings German Literature??? personally I doubt it.. but again, I digress....

1984 was, if I remember rightly, the first time i argued with a teacher over the content or meaning of a book.... a thing that i did more famously with the ever lovely Mrs Degg nee Davenport when studying Hamlet... and yes, she accepted the validity of my argument, especially when i showed he rthe reference to "nunnery" in my dictionary of Elizabethan slang... but there we go... anyway, i got fed up with everyone saying that 1984 was some view of a future dystopia, when i was sure (and still am) that Orwell was being a damn sight cleverer than that....

you see, behind the one dimensional characters and thin plot lies the essence of the novel, and of the warning, if such exists.... not a warning against some evil totalitarian state, but a warning that the apathy of the proles (us!!) would lead to the perpetuation of the current system of government... yes, that's right... Orwell in 1984 gives us a picture of a world where there used to be three layers of society... the High, whose aim is to stay where they are, the Middle, whose aim is to become the high, and the low, whose aim is to survive... every now and then, there is a revolution of the middle against the High, using the low as foot soldiers... the high are got rid of, the top end of the middle take the place of the high, and the rest of the middle and the low stay where they were.... until the middle revolt again... and again.... the only strata which experiences basically no change is the low.... now, in 1984 Ingsoc, et al, have achieved something greater.. they have ousted the High without replacing it.... so there is now no new High for the remaining middler to expel.... the low of course have stayed where they were.... but the place of the high has been taken by a faceless, non existent character, Big Brother.... and as he does not exist, the middle rule, by a committee that, since it does not allow individualism, is perpetual.... the revolution has finally succeeded.... the middle know that the way to stop new rebellion is simply now to keep the middle in fear, and make sure that the low are preoccupied with an endless war, popular songs, novels, and are only taught what they need to be taught.... all that remains is to alter the language.... so far so totalitarian, yes??

but no.. take any totalitarian state yiou choose, and you will see that the High still exists... there is only one system in which the high has been ousted or marginalised, and a faceless middle rules perpetually... its called democracy at the minute, and its alive and well here... think about it... as teh great Winston Churchill said (and i admit this is a bit of a paraphrase) we always have the same Cabinet.. only the faces change.... in other words (hock!! shorror!!) the system outlined by Orwell is our own system... just as in Oceania in 1984, if several members of the ruling committee die, it doesn't matter, as it is the body that is strong, not the individual cells.... and just as in 1984, the proles are kept happy by slight increases in rations, the X Factor and popular television, novels and songs and films churned out in machine like fashion, and kept in fear of bombings and wars that actually exist mainly by agreement with the middles of the other nations... so there will be no revolution ever again... the system is forever, unassailable....

but don't take my word for it... read 1984 again, and ask yourself.... does the governmental system depicted remind you of Nazism, Faascism, Stalinism, with their real dictators countermanding their cabinets.. or is it more like the good old mother of parliaments.... I know waht I think.... and I'd be very disappointed in orwell if i was wrong.... but I'm going on a bit much for this late at night.... so, all I'll say is that New Years eve was a good one, and I'm off to bed.... so, until the future does lie with the proles, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i can tolerate anything....

except intolerance.. or so someone once said..possibly the Beard himself, but possibly, indeed probably not... but I digress... but I was musing this morning, whilst travelling up towards Kirk Langley on the changing nature of food intolerances and attitudes towards.... now, when I first became intolerant to milk, at the age of four, and it seems now not connected to a bout of mumps at all, no one I knew had ever heard of someone who couldn't have milk....even at 18 I was considered a bit of a freak.. peanut allergies were just coming into style, and coeliac problems were of course well known, but this was long before the spectre of lactose intolerance, caused in some cases, mine included, by a lack of faulty genetic material, had begun to haunt the pages of women's health magazines and the GMTV sofa.... we few with the problem (including, so I am reliably informed,75% of all sub-saharan Africans and their ancestors, descendants and forcibly shipped American cousins...) were treated like fussy eaters.... to the extent that a teacher once forced a lump of cheese pie into my mouth (those were the halcyon days of teacher power) and was very surprised by my projectile vomitting and severe case of the squirts 15 minutes later.... but I digress again.... starngely back then, someone with genuine problems was a wierdo, but someone who didn't like Chinese food, or tuna, or mayonaisse was totally accepted..... now of course, it seems to be the other way around.... everyone and his dog has some sort of (mainly self diagnosed) dietary intolerance ( and I'm not attacking intoleranced people...remember, the Beard himself has more than a lactose problem.. my genes apparently stopped accepting milk proteins, fats and sugars at the age of weaning, and unlike the more developed of our species, never aquired the gene that allows the milk of other mammals to be digested... so even the goats milk is off the menu.... soya milk, awful tasting as it undoubtedly i, is ok.. but finding the teats on the beans to get the milk is proving a thankless task... but I digress...) and whereas some peopel do find relief from cutting out wheat and milk from their diets, this does seem to be partly to do with the incredible power of teh placebo effect, and the natural effect of finally widening the diet after too much dependency on (a) a food meant for the babies of a different species and (b) possibly the most hybridised, treated, refined grass product there is.... this is bound to make anyone feel better, in the same way that switching from processed mushy peas to fresh garden ones, or from white bread to coarse wholemeal would.... too much wheat is bad for you.... but whatever, nowadays, not liking such modern staples as beef chow mein, tuna and mayo sandwiches and spaghetti bolognese is now seen as wierd... so teh Beard still cannot eascape being seen as fussy.... sometimes I feel I must be the only person in the world who can't stand tuna or salmon (partly I admit because I associate the smell with cancer, but thats by the by...) or indeed any other fish that isn't white and out of the sea... cod, haddock, coley, sea bass.. absolutely fine.. but with my aversion to salmon, fish eggs, and rare steak ( medium at the very least... sorry) I feel as out of place at a posh do as I did at the cheese and wine party I attended... as a designated driver.... and don't get me started on Mayo.... and not the area of Ireland.... sorry but the idea of beating together oil, vinegar and raw egg seems like some bizarre hangover cure, not something I would want with my food.... but dietary problems such as this cause problems all round... having to check ingredients is a minor inconvenience, down there with the dread of new and improved recipes, which invariably involve the adding of some milk related product.. why doi I need skimmed milk powder in my salt and vinegar crisps.. and for all the gods' sakes, what idiot though it was a good idea to put stilton in a steak and kidney pie.... the man should be shot.. and all food designers should be made to say "cheese is not an improvement" ten times a day... for its amazing where you will find the dread stuff... although as an aside, one brand of cheese and onion crisps had no milk products inside at all..... they were very proud of their artificial flavourings... oh, the heady days of the seventies... but i ramble and ramble... and once more i forget the point i wished to make.... except to say that just as attitudes to dietary intolerances have cahnged, so have attitudes to any intolerance... but unfortunately, just as the gluten free are no longer strange, but the tuna free are, so the butts of our other, more destructive intolerances have not faded away, merely changed shape and colour... years ago it was blacks, and asians, and jews, and gays.... now its muslims, afghans poles, eastern europeans... true, pockets of the old intolerances still persist, but soon we'll have forgotten who we were at war with.. its the old Eastasia/Eurasia thing again.... the war never ends.. only the name of the enemy changes.. and if you don't get it, read 1984.... Mel did, and I hope it meant something to her.... and hi to Roberto Ferrari while I'm at it.. but to sum up, if every one was a bit more tolerant, it would at least boost the agriculture sector.... so until we can all tolerate the tolerant and intolerant alike, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!