It’s not often one hears a public figure described as a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, but in some ways, this crass statement made my week. It was uttered by a flat-footed gangling practincole on tour down-under where he and his deconstructed, reconstructed schoolboy look-alike bed-fellow sidekick were on tour with their opinionated pranks. The phrase attracted my attention, opprobrium even, and for a variety of reasons. A debate ensued, though mainly with myself.
Note, however, that the phrase contains only e-words. There is not a single non-e in sight. When I, with my pen hardly even poisoned at this juncture, try to emulate, I immediately incur the wrath of F. U. Klondike and receive moderation in the form of pratincole. Now we all know that what I wanted to say was something shorter, pithier, earthier, even abbreviated, but F. U. Klondike has had his way with me again and demanded I redraft. All I wanted to imply was that the said persons were something akin to the fleshier parts of the human body, the parts we sit on to be precise. I might have used ‘bottom’, but could not stomach the politeness. Even bumptious would have been moderated, since the English, perhaps the first race since the ancient Greeks, have given over control of their language to someone else, and now only American meanings prevail and its three letter preface abuses rather than offends. The word I deliberately chose, however, was elided and a replacement demanded. I replace it, therefore, with glareola, a genus that is often encountered in flocks and is often very noisy. It seems to fit quite well. If, on the other hand, I had spelt my original word in the plural, with a capital P and lengthened it slightly, I could have prefixed it with the number two hundred and ten, placed it in Streatham High Street and claimed it was merely a mis-spelling of a famous department store. Commercial interests would have required me to correct the error, no doubt
The phrase ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, itself, did attract considerable attention, however. When subjected to detailed analysis of the variety whose competencies I first encountered in L523, Word, Words, Words, Syntax, Grammar And More: An Advanced Treatment Of Relevant Techniques For The Transmission And Summary Of Succinctness, it reveals precisely three elements, one of which has a compound structure. Since embarking on this search, my personal blog on the subject of contemporary identity, the culture of Britishness and things to do in retirement, I have come across numerous examples of seminal material that seem to scream out loud, ‘Analyse my potential’. This is one such occasion, so let me dissect the universe that expands out of this little phrase, ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’.
So ‘one-eyed’ is where we begin. This is clearly the compound element I referred to earlier. At face value, one-eyed probably indicates a person or other living entity that possesses precisely one eye. If this living entity happened to be a Cyclops, the writer or speaker of these words might justifiably be accused of tautology. This is a sin. In L523 we were told over and over again to elide tautology, to cut it out of everything we repeated. Clichés are something else to be avoided like the plague, even when pursuing kites. That’s why in A Search for Donald Cottee there’s no thriller plot, where some handsome but naughty boy screws around and shoots people, nor a horror scenario where pubescent girls turn green, grow nails, spit fire and bite your pelotas off. That would be cliché, and it is to be avoided.
I would, of course, offer a thriller where no-one was killed, where there were no bedroom scenes and pleasant young people, all starched Mormons, spent all day making lemon meringues and all-night sleeping. I could offer horror in the form of a newly morphed virus that causes people to change in mere seconds into daffodils that re-broadcast Radio Three. Now that would bring most people out in a cold sweat. But it wouldn’t sell, I’m told. It’s not what people want, so they, whoever they are, will just have to make do with an outbreak of exploding bootlaces or goonish references instead.
But for me, at least, the term ‘one-eyed’ signifies possession of, evidence of, perhaps admission of a state where a single operational optical or visual unit features somewhere in the visage. For most living organisms, at least most of those you or I have ever met, this indicates one fewer optically functional organ of vision than would be encountered on most encounters, an observation significant at the zero point zero one level of significance on the normal curve. The word ‘normal’ here refers to the name of a statistical distribution, not a value judgment related to expectation. It may be, however, an expectation of judged value.
Let me try to rephrase that. Normal in this sense is precisely a measure of expectation. That’s why we use it, as we were told in S100, Statistics. If we had no mechanism that allowed us to predict, we could never measure anything, and then where would you go for a pint?
If samples are small, however, the concept of ‘normal’ breaks down. This stands to reason if you ask me. If I was a sample of one, for instance, I could hardly claim my findings as normal, or even distributed. Such conditions are better described by the Student’s t-distribution. Now as students, we warmed immediately to the name of this tool, and expressed a preference for its use, if only out of identification with its presumed origin. Its name gave us a sense of ownership. We were later told that it was named after a man called Student and we thought that the tutor might be extracting the uropygium. Imagine a tome by someone called Book, a dictionary by Spelling or a bible written by a God.
One-eyed would not be a significant or meaningful description of an organism that had either many eyes or indeed false eyes. One wouldn’t refer to a male peacock, avoiding tautology at all costs, as being one-eyed. One might, but one would have to specify whether one implied that it could not see very well, or, conversely, it had only one tail feather. Equally, one would not refer to a poorly developed false eye pattern, such as that of Oxytensis naemia, as being one-eyed, especially in the case of this particular species because it spends most of the rest of its time trying to look like a piece of shyster.
To be described as one-eyed, therefore, one must assume that, unlike the cyclops, the organism is normally (statistically, that is) in possession of more than one optical tool, and that these are usually functioning, and, in addition, that they also do not occur in multiple forms. It was in An Inquiry Into Meaning And Truth that Bertrand Russell described a dog as a pattern on the light-sensing parts of the organ of vision that transmitted a series of interpretable signals to the brain, provoking cerebral sensory identification functions to carry out a matching analysis with previously assimilated experience and, perhaps, innate pre-programmed information, that eventually identified the sensation with a collection of concepts associated with ‘canine’. And all this happens in under five seconds in the average Kiddingtonian! Amazing. One clearly needs these visual capabilities to recognise the existence of a canine, unless, of course, you are blind, also known as visually challenged, in which case you can’t see, and need a guide dog.
Which is also the point... One-eyed does not mean blind. You can still see, still identify what might or might not be a canine. One may be ocularly challenged, optically deficient, perhaps, but one remains functionally equivalent to the binocular in that, at a distance, one might appear, behave, react in precisely the same manner as one might expect from a possessor of binocular vision. One might even be able to propel automobiles forwards, backwards, and occasionally round corners, like other humans. One might not, of course, be able to make a living out of doing it, or even talking about doing it, since for that one needs the added quality of being a totally boring pratincole.
But our ocularly impaired practincole would be significantly different from, let’s say, a pedimentally challenged person auditioning for the role of Tarzan, where the non-possession of bipedal status might conceivably affect the individual’s performance. And this despite the fact that the deficiency would have no appreciable impact on the actor’s ability to swing around the jungle on creepers, or even creep around a jungle on swingers.
Had this Tarzan been described as one-eyed, however, it might have cau
sed deep offence, as did the phrase, ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’. This one-eyed Tarzan, a white man who, because of his having been brought up in Africa, without the benefit of nursery bibs, pencil sharpeners, times tables, cream teas, baked beans on toast, Coronation Street or Tiswas, thus becomes, inevitably, by association and geographical accident, a language-less savage who grunts at gorillas, leaps on lions and probably humps hippos. This one-eyed Tarzan would yodel his way onto our television screens and no doubt would immediately provoke someone, somewhere, to compose and transmit an e-mail claiming offence at his being labelled one-eyed.
And next came the word ‘Scottish’. Now Suzie’s granddad was from Cardiff. He met Suzie’s grandma in the First World War, when, wounded at Paschendale, he returned to the care of a young nurse who ministered a bit more than breakfast. He moved up north and became adopted as a true Kiddingtonian. But it did take a couple of decades. We don’t rush things in Kiddington. But during those years Kiddington people used a nickname for him, and it wasn’t Nick. It was Welshie, a true feat of imagination. His surname was Jones, so he remained Welshie Jones, thus avoiding all possible tautology, until the day he died, passed away, met his maker, fell asleep, encountered his euphemism.
Now why do you think people called him Welshie when his name was Jones? What was it about him, his demeanour, his accent, his vocabulary, an analysis of his grammar, his dress, his habit of pinning a fresh leek to his lapel every morning? What was it that set him apart as Welsh? And were people wrong to use his geographical origins as a label?
Coming from Wales might have had its influence. But did he get angry and accuse Kiddingtonians of racism? I think not. Suzie’s mother did, I have to admit, always prefer to describe him as Welsh rather than Kiddingtonian because she always did her best to deny she had anything whatsoever to do with a pit village, her paternal grandparents having come from South Punslet. Her prejudice is now enshrined as the norm in our national character, of course, because now no-one would ever admit to being working class.
So why, when a flat-footed, gangling pratincole of a television presenter uses the word ‘Scotsman’ to describe a certain person who hails from Scotland does he arouse offended accusations of racism? Green-eyed Martians, even those who are one-eyed, will be sending e-mails soon denying that they were ever green-eyed and claiming never to have set foot on Mars, at least in the last twenty-five years, since pc arrived in the form of the personal computer.
The phrase ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’ thus attracted the opprobrium of several disparate and aggrieved interests. Campaigns on behalf of the blind, half-blind, visually impaired, ocularly challenged, optically limited and myopic mavens all scored their points. Even the twenty-twenty society put in its oar, claiming that the phrase did not adequately recognise the superior status of their own condition.
‘Scottish’ aroused accusations of racism, colonialism, Westminster domination, English arrogance, middle-class hegemony and haggisism. It might have provoked Tartan protest of sufficient vehemence to warrant the excavation of Wembley Stadium turf or the bombing of a National Express bus because its destination was nowhere near Scotland, let alone the presumption of its company’s name.
The third word, ‘idiot’, attracted not a single word of criticism, however. After all, it’s such an innocuous, everyday, meaningless platitude, a truism, a figure of speech, a euphemism for whatever one wishes, that no-one could possibly be offended by its use. You could go further and refer to someone as a staphylic factoid basilica idiot and it would still pass without comment. It proved to be one of the few occasions when all media simply agreed with one another. Later broadcasts of the phrase cut ‘one-eyed’ and ‘Scottish’, but retained ‘idiot’ on the grounds of not wanting to cause offence.
The flat-footed gangling pratincole of a television presenter continued his tour of down-under, incidentally. He went on to wear a hat sporting stringed corks around its brim, adopt the name Bruce and proclaim the absence of specific rules. He then fronted the activity for which his authentic experience has made him famous and, sincere-faced, eulogised about the perfection and authenticity of a set of flawed fakes.
Twenty One
If game shows provided the philosophy... - Don considers popular culture and rationing. He does the pools. He reflects upon popular culture’s propensity to promulgate ideology.
If game shows provided the philosophy, then Westerns were the politics. It was in the 1950s, a hot war recently concluded, while a cold one raged. We were still rationed until mid-decade, coupons being currency that might secure the tin of Ostermilk from the Co-op.
But, as austerity relaxed and people grew gradually used to the doubt of peace, the past conflict became romanticised in black and white. The Sunday afternoon war film kept our home fires burning and the societal propaganda-trip topped up to its high. It was not until the early 1960s that directions changed. Meanwhile, since we had never had it so good, we needed evidence to convince us of the claim. Television programmes about millionaires and others about debutantes emerging during the London season could not help. Here were people who clearly had not suffered, had not mucked in during the war like everyone else. These people were not generous, or selfless, and whatever they gave up for the common good, they parted with nothing willingly, and reclaimed the lot and more once peace again secured them.
At the same time, realism angered. Cathy came home to soul searching. While Ealing stereotyped for fun, documentary portrayals of the primary school brought home the class divide. I was already in my teens when the fresh-faced prep school lads mouthed their plummy tones to describe one of the assembled as ‘rather rough’. ‘Now win the peace - vote Labour’ had become a hollow slogan, and the flagship nationalisation of coal and rail were merely political advances, since private neglect and then war had left both in unreconstructable ruins.
A chance of winning became a symbol of progress. The Cottees did the pools every week, the strange little coloured coupons coming through the door to be completed and collected with a regularity that marked time. A wide column on the left listed the fixtures for the weekend. My dad would spend two evenings each week during the season looking at the form guide in both the daily and evening papers, absorbing patterns of 1, 2 and X, its horoscopy divined into a near and hopefully predictable future. When he eventually put pen to paper to place his crosses decisively in the matrix to the right of the teams, he had already completed several dummy runs on sheets of lined paper stripped from the thick foolscap pads he brought from work. My regular job was to rule the vertical pencil lines to mimic the coupon, and they had to be exact. I had to measure the width of every column, a quarter of an inch being the regulation. When I was younger, I missed a mark once or twice, and thus presented a page of useless diagonals, the resulting distraction being blamed for the rest of the week for our continued lack of dividend.
He never bet more than a penny a line and generally did six each time, just occasionally, when overtime helped, doubling it to a shilling dozen. Treble chance, we called it. I can remember the ritual of pool-filling vividly. It took place around the kitchen table, a dark oak gate-leg from the turn of the century that had come our way when great-grandparents had passed on their own hand-me-downs. There was always wood-work in the way when I tried to swing a leg in the void beneath its expanse. There my dad would sit, his centre parting apparently his public face as he pored and pawed over his newsprint, his scribbled notes, his trial sheets and the still pristine coloured coupons placed to the side, the inevitable ashtray close at hand, the fag smoke curling up between the cat’s cradle of left-hand fingers.
He wasn’t a miner, by the way. Tom Cottee, my father, worked in a clothes shop in Bromaton. He was a gentleman’s outfitter, not a tailor, but neither a shop boy. He was a retail assistant, one of those greasy types that would sidle up to you as you flicked through the sample books of suit material, a tape measure draped for status and identificatio
n around the neck, apparently a seam between flesh and dandruff-flecked shoulders. It was later that I twigged the possibility that his profession may have sweetened my advances towards Suzie those years later, since Mullins The Milliners might conceivably have empathised with Cottee The Tailor. He wasn’t a tailor, but at least he kept his hands clean. He was also quite successful in his own way, because it was only a few years later that he became an overseer of the region’s shops, a responsibility that brought with it a car.
He was of average height, average build, average intelligence. He wore a suit to work and would change into ‘slacks’ when he came home in the evenings. He kept the white shirt, but removed its collar and donned a waistcoat with a satin back, a garment to preserve the shirt front. On his way to work he carried an umbrella and a briefcase to the bus stop, only the bowler hat missing from the picture of a city gent. His plain navy suit had no pin-stripe, but, as he fingered his folded News Chronicle that would never quite stay under the buckle straps of his case, he would have passed for a clerk, a banker or a tax inspector.
The illusion, however, shattered whenever the onlooker’s gaze descended. Shoes were always an indicator of class, and perhaps still are. Where the gent’s soles suffered only the walk to the station, the working-class base regularly pushed at pedals. The toff’s uppers could regain and retain their shine, but the lower element’s leather would be scuffed and frayed at the seam, especially on the right, the foot that would set and release the bike’s rest. A keen eye would also discern the extra creases at the bottom of the trouser legs, the gentle spirals imprinted by the gather of the clips. For, though the green or red West Riding buses, the Leylands, the AEC’s and Albions, with their crash gears, black exhausts and rattling panels, were both dependable and reasonable, the bicycle saved money, and it was only four miles each way. The weather forecast, first on radio and then, later in the decade, on television, was a family ritual, a time to be observed in silence, its message absorbed. Rain or wind the following day brought frowns, while fine and dry provoked the optimism of raised eyebrows, the near future being labelled as a result either ‘a busser’ or ‘a biker’, the latter provoking the necessary double check that the roll-up plastic mac that occupied the larger part of my father’s briefcase was still there.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 21
