Arriving at my sister's yesterday, I commandeered the computer and watched some of Boyle's skits on YouTube. "He looks like a mongol!" he observed of Wayne Rooney in the first of these, delighting an audience with his frankness. "I don't want to sound like a prig," I said to Christine, "but how do you think they'd respond if they were instantaneously transported to 1930's Berlin and invited to compare Max Schmeling to a Jew?" My flight of fancy was interrupted by the doorbell. As Christine left to admit Spencer, I pondered the analogy's logical conclusion: there are no death camps in twenty first century Europe, but there are Swiss suicide clinics and an apparently benign preoccupation with "quality of life." Voicing my concern on their return, I was irritated by my brother's response of, "Tell the Daily Mail," a knee-jerk reaction to opinions he considers evidence of my rigidity. "Do you seriously think it's unreasonably stuffy," I demanded, "to expect better of a grown man than to stand in front of an audience and make fun of 'mongols'?" Spencer, who considers taking offence equivalent to donning a cardigan and slippers, merely shrugged. "What about D.J. Abortion?" I persisted, referring to a comedian, billed as 'Saying the unsayable' (a boast I thought as much a recommendation as 'He Eats His Own Vomit') who recently performed at the Red Lion.
"He wasn't offensive," said Spencer. "He was just an idiot."
"He was offensive and an idiot," I corrected him, remembering an excruciating fifteen minute set
through which D.J. targeted the physical defects of audience members ("who ate all the pies?") and aped disability by slapping the back of one hand with the palm of the other before concluding with a pointlessly horrible monologue about a children's home supervised by Fred and Rosemary West. "You're not exactly Lenny Bruce, are you?" demanded Spencer in the horrified silence that followed an inconceivably witless reference to molestation. This subdued heckle was sufficient to cause the manchild to visibly swallow before squawking a strangled, "Just forget it" and fleeing the stage. "I owned him," said Spencer to Christine, brightening as he recalled his paltry triumph.
At lunch, we were joined by Muriel and her friend Jackson for whose benefit I repeated a story told by a friend who embarked on a career as a psychiatric nurse in the 1960's. Early in his tenure, he referred to a patient as an "imbecile" only to be corrected by a senior colleague who insisted, "He's not an imbecile - he's a cretin!" Other formerly clinical terms "retard", "mongol" and "spastic", consigned to a linguistic black museum are rediscovered by successive generations of adolescents (Muriel and Jackson included) who find the combination of blunt syllables an irresistible means of causing offence. "We don't mean it, though," protested Jackson. "It's just a joke." The humour of child-hood with its emphasis on bodily functions and cruelty, is a rebellion against adult manners and propriety. Both Muriel and Jackson, I opined, had passed an age at which shocking for effect was acceptable. "This is a joke," I started, only to be interrupted by Christine who said, "At least you're telling us it's a joke. I always feel ambushed. By the time I work out you've embarked on a joke, I worry about when I'm supposed to laugh." I have to confess to being stung by this unexpected confession. Realising that she'd hurt my feelings, Christine, backed by Jackson, encouraged me to continue: Spencer and Muriel, however, quite deliberately talked through my preamble causing me to abandon the joke entirely, muttering "Forget it" and instantaneously realising I'd repeated the abject surrender of D.J. Abortion.
Later, making my way home through the slush, Frankie Boyle's mean-spirited brussel sprout of a face loomed in my thoughts. "He's like some malign child, sitting on a bus and laughing at everyone falling about on the ice," I said to Spencer who merely grunted in a manner that indicated that he had lost interest in the topic. "A joke that's intended to wound," I persisted, "is like a chocolate laced with strychnine." At which Spencer interrupted, saying, "But as long as you're not the victim, it's funny. Your stuff about talking horses and... leprechauns is just... " At this he faltered, doubtless judging my ego to have been sufficiently bruised. "Long winded?" I offered tentatively at which prompt he nodded, patted me, not unkindly on the shoulder and, breaking into a slow jog disappeared in the direction of the Red Lion. As I approached the house, I wondered if I'd over-reacted: time will tell, but I rather think not. The age in which we live is reflected by the brusque crudity of its jokes. Whatever unkindnesses they might inflict, though, comedians should resist the temptation to entirely dehumanise their victims. To mock someone without reason, aside from the fact of his otherness, is to accept a logic by which, followed to its conclusion, we might strike him, drug him or remove him from the proximity of merriment altogether.
*"I say it as I see it," is the self-regarding conceit of the boors and bullies who traumatise acquaintances with witheringly frank advice and observations. Those who pride themselves on "speaking their minds" can be recognised for the frequency with which they change them. To speak without reflection is equivalent to incontinence. Similarly, those who say anything that might elicit a laugh indicate a terrible neediness in their willingness to simultaneously demean and be demeaned.
It's several years since my presence was requested at Drumfeld Job Centre. Assuming that I'd been invited in an advisery capacity, I was astonished when, introductions concluded, I was asked, "So, Hamilton, what sort of work do you see yourself doing?" Initially amused by what I imagined was an honest mistake, I tried, as modestly as possible, to list my qualifications. "I know who you are," interrupted Gavin Rennie, the Assessment Officer, at which point the niggle that had hovered on the periphery of my consciousness since I entered the office identified itself. "You're Stig!" I blurted, remembering the despised acquaintance of my brother's adolescence. As Rennie glowered at my reference to a nickname which, on reflection, might not have been a source of pleasure, I recalled his desperate efforts to ingratiate himself to Spencer's clique and the indignities with which he had been rebuffed. "Spencer's home just now," I said meekly. "I'm sure he'd love to catch up." As Rennie's eyes narrowed, I offered a shameful appeal to his better nature: "Our mother died." It was to no avail.
Browbeaten and bewildered, I returned home from my excruciating interview to find a balefully hungover Spencer slouched in front of the television. "Your past has come back to haunt us," I announced, opening the tightly drawn curtains to admit the full terror of revelation: "Gavin Rennie is assessing my role in the workplace!" At this, Spencer's lips quivered. Assuming him to be overwhelmed by remorse, I continued, enumerating the insults Gavin had endured in my presence: "You wouldn't let him in your room; you made him smoke chocolate!" The grim satisfaction elicited by the sight of Spencer covering his face with his hands and shuddering turned to anger as I realised that he was laughing. "It's not funny," I protested, repeating Gavin's vindictive parting shot, that I'd be allocated a training placement in "supermarket skills - nothing too specialised" after being subjected to the intrusion of a "means assessment and audit." This caused Spencer to throw back his head and emit a skirl of laughter that can only be described as fiendish. "These are your chickens coming home to roost!" I protested, prompting the gleeful response, "But you're the one covered in bird-s__!"
That night, Christine suggested that Spencer treat Gavin to a night in the Red Lion and apologise for his youthful folly. This was emphatically rejected. "I'm not going anywhere with Stig," said Spencer before indicating me with his forefinger and continuing, "Anyway, they're not my chickens: they're his! Remember Stig's party?" This allusion caused Christine to snort violently while I was rendered light-headed by the memory of my apprehension in the guise of 'Tommy the Punk', branded with the word 'Spy', scrawled on my forehead in marker pen, and confined within a laundry basket. "That's what you get for clyping," continued Spencer, referring to the dossier containing evidence of sexual impropriety and drug abuse, waiting for the senior Rennies on their return from Portugal. Adopting a pompous voice, he concluded, "Every act has repercussions," the same admonishment with which I'd berated him earlier. Smirking provocatively, he drew his forefinger across his throat before rising and leaving the room.
*A prolonged unpleasantness was only resolved after the intervention of the Guisler Institute. Rennie's allegations that he was compromised by material obtained by hacking into his Bebo account remain sub judice. I last saw him in the Drumfeld Asda: a badge attached to his tunic which read "Gaven (sic) - I'm here to help!" seemed at odds with the terrible glower with which he responded to my request for assistance in locating an imported French coffee.
Last week, I was forewarned that Christine's socialist friend, Pauline, would be joining us for Sunday lunch. "You don't have to come," said Christine, doubtless recalling Pauline's last visit when I was browbeaten and manoeuvred into expressing opinions that were scathingly dismissed as "quasi-fascistic". On that occasion, Pauline was aided and abetted by a new boyfriend, Martin, whom she had met on a dating site for lonely Trotskyites. Martin, a pot-bellied gnome from Nottingham whose prematurely wizened features contrasted jarringly with his child-like ensemble of red combat trousers and converse boots, established his status as a free-spirit by smoking at the table (laboriously rolling a succession of straggly cigarettes that disintegrated in his saffron coloured fingers) and making indiscriminate use of a swear word I thought proscribed by right (i.e. left) thinking people. "I'm sorry, Martin," I interjected as he used the word to describe Nick Clegg, "I don't want to seem stuffy, but I don't think that's an appropriate way to talk in front of a fifteen year old girl." My well-meaning intervention caused Muriel to redden and fix me with a look of intemperate loathing while Martin embarked on an irrelevant diatribe about child-slavery in South East Asia.
The militant dwarf, I was reassured, had been sent back to Nottingham shortly afterwards when Pauline, already concerned about missing books and c.d.'s, found her lap-top still logged into the e-bay home-page from which he'd been selling them. "So much for her principles," I scoffed. "Whatever happened to 'property is theft'?" This spontaneous sally prompted an accusation of gloating and a tedious re-iteration of the various heartaches by which Pauline has been afflicted since she first visited the House of Coe as a sullen sixteen year old. "Life keeps kicking her in the teeth," concluded Christine sadly. My sister's loyalty does her credit but, on occasion, she gives me cause to doubt her common sense. Like many idealists, Pauline is judgemental, intolerant and addicted to conflict. The alacrity with which she proceeds from "I love you" to "I need you" and, finally, "I hate you and want you to die" has accounted for at least a dozen boyfriends, each subjected to a withering assessment before being dismissed from her history as completely as Stalin's victims were airbrushed from official photographs.
*
While natural spontaneity and a breadth of general knowledge are assets to any conversationalist, the key to genuine accomplishment lies in preparation. My brother mocks the diligence with which, anticipating likely matters arising, I scour my text-books and Google for nuggets of relevant information. (Needless to say, Spencer is the one who looks foolish when his contribution to the subsequent debate is limited to rolled eyes and splenetic outbursts, invariably directed toward me.) On this occasion, surmising that Pauline might know most of the protaganists in the Tommy Sheridan perjury case, I spent the week engrossed in the minutiae of his protracted humiliation. By Sunday, my disdain had turned to sympathy: his heroic bumptiousness notwithstanding, Sheridan whole-heartedly allied himself to noble causes; that he should end his political career tearfully defending himself against allegations of pettiness, venality and lechery is a terrible warning against the danger of hubris.
"Now he knows how Danton* felt," I offered feebly as Pauline, concurring with the former comrades summoned to give evidence against him, denounced Sheridan as a demagogue, liar and humbug. Spencer immediately contradicted me: "You mean he knows how Jeffrey Archer felt," he said, visibly brightening as his predictable quip elicited appreciative laughter. "I suppose so," I acknowledged, turning my attention to the cous-cous that appeared to have congealed on my fork.
*Immediately before his execution on the guillotine, Georges Danton turned to his executioner and said, "Don't forget to show them my head. It's well worth seeing!"
Twenty years on, my recollection of the ensuing exchange on the Glovers' doorstep still brings an instantaneous warmth to my cheeks. A verbatim account would challenge the abilities of a court stenographer. Suffice to say, I was disabused of the notion that Mrs Glover's attentions toward me could be anything other than hostile. "What would any woman want with your underpants?" she demanded with such incredulity I was stricken by a momentary conviction that I had lost the capacity to distinguish between reality and precognition. On returning to to the scene of the crime, however, I was reassured by a cursory inspection of the washing line on which disordered pegs and a gap commensurate with the breadth of a pair of boxer shorts indicated a recent intrusion. That night, I dicussed the matter with my parents. Neither seemed overly concerned by the violation I had suffered. "I couldn't go through a repeat of the Alexander business," said Mum, unfairly citing a long resolved unpleasantness precipitated by Dr Alexander's intemperate response to finding me in his wardrobe. Dad, meanwhile, restricted himself to the undeniable observation that, "It's your word against hers." Neither favoured police involvement: "It would be a bit of a cheek after what you said about them," said Mum referring to an interview in which I injudiciously referred to their work as 'janitorial'. On reflection, it was evident that further action might would, at the very least, prove a distraction to more pressing commitments and could leave me vulnerable to accusations of slander. Determined to remain vigilant, I decided, for the time being, to let the matter drop.
As any doctor will confirm, apparently trivial symptoms often indicate a darker malaise. Over the course of a long, troubled winter: I was debilitated by a succession of bugs compounded by the constant sensation that nemesis lurked in the lowering gloom. By spring, my spirits were bolstered by the return to lighter nights and the coincidental departure of the Glovers who moved to Glasgow in order to assist in the care of a grandchild who had been born with significant health problems. I thought little of them until several years later when Mum drew my attention to a notice of Jennifer Glover's death in the Glasgow Herald. "Loving wife, mother and grandmother," she read, emphasising the last word with a sharp glance, as if to say, "See? Nothing about stealing your underpants." Mrs Glover's posthumous exoneration was short-lived. Only weeks later, Gavin Sutherland, who bought their house, appeared unexpectedly at my door. "I think these are yours," he said, proferring a filthy rag which, on closer inspection, proved to be adorned by a tag on which the words 'Hamilton Coe' were still legible. "I found them when I was fixing the floor-boards in the shed," he continued with a slight shudder. "They were wrapped around some kind of carcass."
As a child visiting the David Livingstone Museum in Blantyre, I was thrilled to contemplate the explorer's jerkin torn in a lion attack. Future visitors to the Hamilton Coe House, I thought, would be similarly intrigued by evidence of my own attempted bewitchment. Mum, unfortunately, had less consideration for posterity: "Don't be so disgusting," she snapped as I argued the case for their retention. After a brief tug of war, I snatched the disputed underpants from her grasp and fled, hiding them under my mattress. Years later, months after Mum's death, I decided to move my bed. Removing the mattress, I was irritated by the realisation that the underpants were no longer there. With the unerring instinct, formerly used in the location of my siblings' cigarettes and contraceptives, Mum had found and, presumably, destroyed them. "For goodness sake," I muttered before, quite unexpectedly, my legs buckled and I sprawled beside my partially stripped bed, overwhelmed by a keening regret
The draconian measures being applied against the authors of injudicious Tweets have recently caused celebrity Twitter users to unite in a show of solidarity with those whose updates, under normal circumstances, generate considerably less interest than theirs. As someone who finds it difficult to construct a sentence using the words 'Twitter' and 'Tweet' without feeling like an idiot, I think they might attach themselves to better causes. While I'd hesitate to persecute someone who feels compelled to provide a running commentary of his day to day thoughts and activities*, I do think that the trend should be strongly discouraged, if not by court orders and ostracism, then counselling or behavioural therapy. Employers, in particular, are entitled to be chagrined by the realisation that they are being traduced in sream-of-consciousness diatribes frenetically tapped into Blackberries.
*My brother, predictably, disagrees. He thinks Tweeters "should be birched."
Edgar and Rutherford were furious. They had invested a great deal of time and money in the proposal, not least the purchase of a property which had inexplicably (as far as they were concerned) been found unfit for purpose. In the weeks following his rejection, Rutherford gave a series of interviews in which he accused council members of superstition, cronyism and racism (both he and Edgar are English). His particular ire was reserved for council secretary, Harry Duncanson. Harry's daughter, Karen, remembers Rutherford without fondness. "Dad loved the local folk-lore and, initially, he was keen to help, but Annabel and Niall didn't want to know. They were bluffers and they resented Dad because he knew they were bluffers." Rutherford, for his part, dismissed Harry as a bumbling 'teuchter'. "He came out with all this rubbish about Dad: he'd never been on an aeroplane; he couldn't pronounce 'lasagne'. I'm not even sure where it came from. None of it was true. They just wanted to make him sound like some bigoted old fool."
It's easy to scoff at the community council's intransigence. A ghost, however, is seldom an asset. I've investigated numerous 'haunted' buildings. Some are gloomily situated, others badly designed. More often than not, I tactfully recommend a lick of paint rather than an exorcism. In the past twenty years or so, I've conducted nearly a hundred investigations: of these, seventy eight were satisfactorily concluded with a natural explanation; twelve exhibited symptoms which might indicate some dormant malignancy (or subtle human mischief); seven were definitely haunted. One of these was Redlands House which Billy Ure and I visited in 1993 at the invitation of Outward Bound staff members, several of whom had been traumatised by their experiences in the building. Over the course of an afternoon, I successfully recorded three separate voices (one of which hissed "What do you want?") while Billy, sent to investigate the basement, epicentre of the Redlands' phenomena, witnessed the materialisation of faces in the brick-work and received distinct blows to both arms and head. Attempting to leave, he was horrified to discover that the door had been locked. Alerted by his screams, I initiated a search for the key which concluded thirty minutes later when, by sheer chance, a staff member noticed its tip protruding from my trouser pocket. (I'm not, I suspect, the first psychic investigator to fall victim to a poltergeist's warped sense of humour!)
That night, the Morrisons accepted Mrs Henderson's offer of a home-cooked meal. Also present were a couple from Glasgow, an Italian family and two female hikers from Manchester who had spent the afternoon in Glen Sannox. The food was well prepared and the Morrisons were enjoying the company of their fellow guests, particularly the hikers who seemed engrossed by Paul's account of the Goat Fell murder about which neither had previously heard. This, however, was unexpectedly interrupted when the Hendersons emerged from the kitchen, both clutching cordless microphones, and proceeded to a small dais at the far side of the room. "I hope you're all enjoying your meal," said Mrs Henderson, to which, of course, all present gave a muted but affirmative reply. "That's good," she continued, suddenly adopting a husky, mid-atlantic accent. "We thought you might enjoy a trip down memory lane." At this prompt, Mr Henderson switched on a karaoke machine and, to the Morrisons' astonishment, their hosts started to sing.
The Hendersons' repertoire (of which Isla remembers 'You Don't Bring me Flowers', 'Jackson' and 'Lucky Stars') was inoffensive and adequately performed but, in Paul's words, "about as appropriate as a lap-dance." The guests' embarrassment was compounded when Mr Henderson, leaving the stage to his wife as he served dessert, leaned forward to display a strand of mucous dangling from one nostril. As the Italians collectively recoiled, one of the hikers, screwing up her face in disgust, emphatically rejected the proferred dish with extended palms. Isla tried to discreetly alert Henderson to the cause of offence by indicating her own nose and apologetically mouthing the word 'snotter'. At this, the second of the hikers, already shuddering helplessly, regurgitated a mouthful of cola and covered her face with her palms. Apparently unperturbed, Mr Henderson quickly wiped his nose with a napkin, encouraged his guests to "enjoy your crumble" and returned to the stage where he joined his wife in an inevitable encore of 'I've Got You Babe'. By the meal's conclusion, the Morrisons felt like ship-wreck survivors, eternally bonded to their fellow diners by a shared trauma.
Later, lying in bed with her book, Isla listened intently for activity in Room Eight, but heard nothing but the howling wind, interspersed by sporadic explosions of merriment emanating from further along the corridor where, she assumed, the hikers were still regaling one another with impressions of their hosts. Reaching for the light switch, she was startled by a sudden noise from next door. "It was like someone dragging furniture," she recalls. "My instinctive reaction was, it's them: they're trying to freak us out." As the noise became more pronounced, her irritation heightened until she rapped the adjoining wall with her knuckle, eliciting an immediate response. "It was as if someone had thrown himself against the wall," she remembers. "I jumped right out of bed. Paul slept right through it, of course." Suitably admonished, she spent the rest of the night curled in an armchair at the far side of the room.
*Scanning the Scotsman's website several months after hearing Isla's account, I was startled by the headline, 'Guests Flee Botched Exorcism'. Scotland has several haunted - or ostensibly haunted - hotels, but the use of the word 'botched' summoned an instantaneous memory of Isla's description of the Hendersons. My intuition was immediately vindicated. The story, accompanied by a photograph of the couple keeping a sombre vigil outside the haunted room, provided a sardonic precis of the incident. Ewan Penny, a self-styled 'spiritualist' and 'New Age Healer' from Newton Stewart, was invited to perform an exorcism. "Colin tried to tell William that we wished him well, but that it was time for him to leave," explained Mrs Henderson. Whether irritated by Penny's presumption or the 'matey' witlessness of his approach, 'William's' response was unequivocal. "He was very angry," acknowledged Mrs Henderson before describing a chaotic interlude in the course of which, she claimed, "all hell broke loose." As the lights went out throughout the building, a cacophony of noise erupted in Room Eight, compounded by the fire alarm, causing guests in neighbouring rooms to flee. Mr Henderson, meanwhile, turning to join the exodus, was dragged back into the room where the hapless Penny had suffered a seizure. As Mrs Henderson struggled to pull her husband into the corridor, she shouted, "Stop it, William!" in response to which an object, propelled from inside the room, struck her on the temple, causing her to momentarily lose consciousness. By the time she came to, the lights had returned, revealing the detritus within Room Eight, where the furniture had been upended around the stricken figures of Mr Henderson and Ewan Penny. A medical examination revealed Henderson to be suffering the effects of shock, Penny, however was seriously ill and rushed to Glasgow's Southern General by helicopter.
**Last year, by sheer coincidence, I met Mrs Henderson at a function in Brodick. There's a unique pleasure in meeting people with whom we're vicariously acquainted by third party accounts. I have to confess that the Mrs Henderson with whom I shared pizza at the Eilean Mor was an entirely different creature to the figment nurtured by my imagination. The impression of the Morrisons as long suffering but good-natured victims of peculiar circumstances was also dispelled: my first reference to them caused Mrs Henderson's eyes to harden while her smile, almost imperceptibly, tightened into a grimace. "They're friends of my sister's, really," I said quickly, putting an emphasis on 'sister' that, I hoped, indicated scepticism about her judgment in general and the Morrisons in particular. Mrs Henderson was mollified by this small treachery and immediately brightened. Most guests, she insisted, enjoyed the musical accompaniment to their meals though some could be "a bit snooty."
As recently as twenty years ago the dark art of the poison-pen writer required levels of preparation and cunning that deterred all but the flagrantly maladjusted. The internet, of course, makes such demeaning behaviour horribly straightforward, providing both a provocation and an outlet to the thwarted and unfulfilled. "We're talking about people who are at the end of their tether," explains Nick Rossi who maintains the Gibson Institute's 'Creepwatch' data-base."Every day they feel ignored and humiliated. They come home, switch on the computer and it's a window into a world from which, for whatever reason, they think they've been excluded. They sit there with their virginity and their gingivitis, peering through this window and seething until whatever weedy passion they possess is sufficiently riled to put a brick through it."
In 2001, the Malicious Communications Act was amended to protect those harassed, menaced or traduced on-line. Last week, it was cited in the prosecution of Colm Coss, a thirty six year old Mancunian who recreationally defaced on-line memorials to the recently deceased. Coss, having effectively sabotaged his own defence by distributing illustrated fliers in which he declared himself an "internet troll", was sentenced to three months in prison. Rossi thinks that incarceration might, ultimately, rescue Coss from the relentless drone of his own thoughts. "He's abandoned himself to a level of malignancy that's more damaging to him than any of his intended targets. In prison he learn social skills and how to express himself through poetry and art. At the very least he'll celebrate Christmas with other people rather than sitting in his squalid pit, staring into the void."
In August, twenty two year old Australian, Jessica Cook, charged with similar offences, was placed on probation and banned from using social networking sites, her judge's leniency prompted by evidence that she had suffered sexual abuse and bullying. "The judge hasn't done Jessica any favours," argues Rossi. "She's trained her imagination like a junkie does his pit-bull. Every time she goes on-line, she let it off the leash. Without that outlet, it will turn on her and tear out her throat."
Anyone watching an exchange between politicians is aware that the purpose of clarification plays second fiddle to the mastery of one participant over the other. What applies to Westminster is evident in day to day life where the apparently incontestable points of a scatter-brain will be routed by a quick-witted debater with a well-ordered mind. In an exchange between better matched opponents, however, one versed in argument's dark arts will inevitably prevail. Conversational equivalents of low blows and eye-gouges include obfuscation, typified by the use of corporate jargon*, or the presentation of some meaningless proposition by which one disputant invites the other to ponder the equivalent of a hypothetical length of string. More obvious tricks include subtle digression, subject shifts and goading, a combination of which might discombobulate one's adversary as effectively as a rabbit punch. If he remains resolute, the last resort is the abandonment of the key weapons of argument (i.e. opinions) and the temporary adoption of those better suited to the destruction of his defence.
My recent post (On Opinions) was prompted by the realisation that, exasperated by the tactics employed by my niece** in disputing my insistence that Eminem is less relevant than Mahler, I resorted to several of these tricks. Recounting details of our pointlessly acrimonious exchange to my cousin, I was irked by her readiness to take Muriel's part. "That's not even an opinion, it's a lie," she snorted when I repeated my contention that Eminem had appropriated excerpts from Mahler's Sixth Symphony. For the second time in the evening, my points were countered by unkind personal observations and my opinions echoed in tones of frank incredulity. "What sort of idiot picks a fight with a teenager over Mahler in the first place?" she concluded, causing me to employ the clumsiest of defences: an indignant "we'll have to agree to disagree" followed by an abrupt change of subject.
*An entire strata of middle-management is now employed with the sole purpose of justifying its own existence. Its members can be identified by bewildering references to 'targets', 'strategies' and 'key competencies'. Irritation follows the belated realisation that their 'target' is to prosper at the expense of colleagues; their 'strategy' a compound of bluff and bluster and their 'key competencies' non-existent. The debasement of language is only the first symptom of a process that culminates in total demoralisation.
**In particular the repetition of words proscribed by her mother, specifically "retard" and "twat". The first of these, incidentally, is currently used so frequently and indiscriminately by Muriel's clique that it's as meaningless as it's offensive.
***For Muriel's benefit, I should clarify my belief that each of us develops a crust of conviction (or prejudice, if we're referring to people with whom we disagree) which inevitably influences the formation of any opinions formed in its vicinity. While a sensible person will alter his opinions according to experience, his core convictions remain constant.
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