The Dutch

I've mentioned here already my soft spot for the Dutch, which even made me try to learn the language - an attempt I had to temporarily give up on due to lack of time. After having read Ben Coates's Why the Dutch Are Different I scrapped the idea altogether. I still think the language sounds beautiful, still admire the Dutch for their tolerant attitudes towards gays and drugs, like their Golden Age landscapes and so on. But I can't really love a country that flat, a country that overcrowded, and a nation that indifferent to the concepts of privacy and solitude. Of course, the book must exaggerate a bit, otherwise the Netherlands would have no autistic adults - they would all commit suicide well before adulthood - but still ....

Ben Coates: Why the Dutch Are Different

The problem was, in my opinion, exacerbated by the tone-deafness of a political class who lived in areas with few ethnic minorities, with immigrants more likely to give them a good price for retiling the bathroom than to take their job.

This is indeed a major part of the problem. The Western middle classes are so much more 'enlightened' about immigration not because they are more ethical than the Western working classes, but simply because they perceive immigrants as a personal convenience, rather than as a personal threat.

James Robertson: The Fanatic

He felt a growing need to sum up, to explain, to record his thoughts and his memories. He was - even in his thirties - entering his middle age.

(John Lauder, p 286)

I have been keeping various diaries since high school, but as early as after college I would every now and then attempt to whittle down these records of particular periods of my life into mere summaries that would simply give the general outline and only briefly mention the most notable details.

English cringe

Much was written about the Scottish cringe, the inferiority complex of some Scots, feeling that they should 'better themselves' by becoming 'more English'. The English cringe is something different. It is the reversal of the centuries-old habit of most of the world (except the Scots and the Welsh) to say 'English'' when meaning 'British'. Today some Englishmen, afraid of being politically incorrect, do the opposite: they say 'British' instead of 'English'. Which is just as ridiculous.

A case in point is Ben Coates' book Why the Dutch are Different. At one moment he states, "In Britain, patriotism is sadly rather tainted by association with a kind of small-mindedness and xenophobia. Symbols such as flags have been appropriated by far-right groups, so someone wearing a T-shirt with the flag of St George on it is likely to be sneered at and dismissed as a racist or a hooligan. Anyone who declares their love of their country too vigorously runs the risk of being branded a narrow-minded Little Englander, or worse."

He says "in Britain", but then actually talks about England. The flag of St George is the English, not the British flag, and the Scottish Saltire, far from having been appropriated by the far right, is ubiquitous throughout the country. Similarly, a Scot overdoing his love for his country may be called a lot of things, but certainly not a Little Englander.

Similarly, I've read a book called Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction, which was well-written enough, but actually dealt with medieval England. Scotland and Wales were only mentioned in the context of English efforts to colonise them; in fact, more space was given to Ireland and France.

I could go on with examples like these ad nauseam. What is it that makes some people unable to simply express themselves truthfully, and instead of saying something wrong say something just as wrong, but wrong in the opposite way?

Cracking sternocostal joints

Not cracking as in 'excellent'. Cracking as in 'cracking fingers'. Until a few weeks ago it hadn't even occurred to me that the joints between the ribs and the sternum might crack at all*, but unless my sternum (which is where the cracks actually sound/feel to come from) can crack by itself, it must be them.


* in fact until I've just looked it up now I thought there were no joints, that the ribcage including the breastbone was just one solid bone, like a red deer's antler - so much for what I still remember from biology lessons  ...

Alan Partridge

I first came across the character when working in an Amazon warehouse; before the Christmas of 2011, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan seemed to sell rather well. But I only learned who he was from a documentary about British TV comedy a few years later, and apart from some excerpt there, I only saw him the other day in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Not bad at all; the humour might occasionally get a bit cheap, but mostly it was to my liking, so if I come across more Partridge on iPlayer I probably won't hesitate to watch him again.