Confessions of a Flaneuse.

Portrait of Lord Riddesdale
by Singer Sergeant; le flaneur
par excellence.

 Flaneur: a person who walks around, apparently aimlessly, but keenly observing urban society in a cool, aloof way. An honourable activity.  Flaneuse: the presumed female version of Flaneur. 

Although I walk every day, routinely, early, through/around/beyond the gorgeous Abbey Gardens, I am truly less of a flaneuse these days, more of a slow, stick-assisted, walking-for-my-health, ancient kind of person who, nonetheless, adores the walk and glories defiantly in the flaneuserie. Perhaps, being a flaneuse, if frailer and slower, underpins not only physical health, but mental well-being too. And the intellect is certainly stimulated by The Daily News, especially politics, read as I wander in and out of the Internet! I tend to veer between the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and MSBNC. Obviously I avoid Fox. I also allow myself one newspaper a week; at present, The New York Times. Alas I have not yet discovered a word for flaneuserie of the mind but that, too, is what I do.

No title needed! Trump, MAGA posters AND 
besotted followers in the act of worship.

So, this week’s blog is about things or sights that have caught my eye; maybe locally; maybe online; maybe nationally. Number One has to be the magisterial essay in the New York Times [an occasional treat] by Matthew Walther [19/20 Nov, 2022] which popped up to surprise and delight. Whenever the sudden reaction occurs, “I never thought of that interpretation!” then it is because a revelation occurs. I can see that Trump has backed losers in the recent elections; that he is clearly unfit for office; that he has, in effect, lost his mojo, but still, mysteriously, he continues to ignite vociferous support from millions, content to wear silly MAGA hats and proclaim clamorous approval for him. His policies and character seem almost irrelevant to his supporters because he carries the promise to 'clear the swamp'; 'stop the steal'; he promises the total destruction of the political ruling 

Napoleon Bonaparte in Emperor mode.
Two hundred years ago.

elite and the re-making of the legal, political, administrative and tax systems. He will make America great again. And THIS is a leader promising implicitly, as did Bonaparte, that lies, destruction of norms, rule-and law-breaking; tax evasion; vague notions that the world order is there to be ignored or damaged, are all to be embraced, not just changed, by his omnipotence. This is what your Leader will bring you because he can and you want it. Walther suggests that Trump sees himself, as do his devoted followers, in a quasi-religious light, as the embodiment of the nation; the Emperor, no less, with the throne as his birth-right. And the expectation of continued Emperor-ship!

And for an observation on the everyday; my favourite watch stopped so I popped up to the Wednesday market watch stall and left it for a new battery. When I returned to collect, the lady said it didn’t need a new battery, her ‘man’ had just given it a blow of air and it was fine. I couldn’t then believe there was no charge. AND the sun was also shining!! Such tiny courtesies do restore faith.

Roman grandsons and Birthday Boy as Zeus.

Then came my son’s 60^th birthday party with guests in various interpretations of togas a la Rome. It was an amazingly open-hearted, good-natured celebration and the abundant goodwill and kindness on display, struck me as a tribute to a good life being affirmed and lauded by friends and family, rather summed up in the entire crowd almost harmonising in the robust chorus of “You’re so fucking special” Sadly I only caught this tribute on video as I was abed watching Netflix by the time the singing erupted! But I continue to enjoy it hugely!

Today en route to a photographic exhibition in the Apex, discovered a splendid roundabout, a proper carousel, featuring dappled horses, no less, with the familiar hurdy-gurdy music alongside a small Christmas market which I hadn’t realised was continuing from the weekend. Shades of Brugge and its often magical Christmas market. A very satisfying discovery indeed! And the exhibition by local amateur photographers, proved to be remarkable in images and moods re-recreated. SO impressive I couldn’t resist a lovely photo of a kingfisher with a 
fish in his beak, sitting on a wooden notice which said, “No fishing.” Not only superb photography but, as always, embellished by the humour. How long did the photographer await that shot?!

Bury St Edmunds Camera Club.

At my usual Friday afternoon Mah Jong session, with four of us playing, I was ridiculously excited to win one game with a very rare combination indeed. It is rare because it is difficult, but amazing luck favoured me in a Goulash game. For me, winning is never the goal, though it is pleasant to stumble into it. It is finding a difficult combination of tiles that one might accomplish. Simple as that really! No more details as the uninitiated will be yawning!! Enough to say that minor, totally unimportant victories like this DO cheer a person on her way!

Nothing here for the uninitiated.
BUT for Mah Jong players, evidence of great luck +
All Winds and Dragons.

Post Script 

Baudelaire, a 19th century poet, is credited with identifying the flaneur in his essay, "The Painter of Modern Life", 1863, as a dilettante, but one who observes modern life with curiosity and panache.

Two elegantly-dressed participants in the London
Grand Flaneur Walk 14th July 2019.

Noughts and Crosses

 To the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich with a bus load of other members of the U3A Theatre Group on

Malorie Blackman

Saturday afternoon to see Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses. This production was part of the theatrical umbrella enterprises of Pilot Theatre, a York-based touring theatre company committed to creating high-quality theatre for younger audiences. As an integral part of its endeavour to create a cultural and theatrical space for the young, it offers school workshops and outreach work alongside its productions.

Malorie Blackman has written over 70 books for children and young adults, including the Noughts and Crosses series [six books so far!], receiving a number of awards for her work including the Eleanor Farjeon Award for distinguished contributions to the world of children’s books [2005]; an O.B.E. for services to children’s literature [2008] and honoured as Children’s Laureate between 2013 and 2015. This new production in Ipswich was adapted for the stage by Sabrina Mahfouz and had been previously adapted for the Royal Shakespeare Company by Dominic Cooke.

Noughts and Crosses is about forbidden love, set in a world where young people, full of dreams and
potential, are yet powerless to make changes against overwhelming societal and racial structures. The world portrayed is very similar to our world now but yet with crucial social differences. All power is in the hands of those with black skins, the Crosses, while the Noughts, the whites, are totally deprived and marginalised. There are special, inferior, schools for Noughts who may not own property or passports, who must live in inferior housing in poorer areas and may only do menial jobs for low income. They must remain, and are kept, servile and separate and uneducated; inter-marriage is impossible, forbidden by law. They have virtually no normal human rights in a society based on entrenched discrimination. One is reminded, with a skin-swap, of South Africa fifty years ago, or of the plight and status of Dalits or Untouchables in the Hindu caste system in India, officially, legally mitigated, but still largely there after 2000 years. Today, within three groups officially designated as Scheduled Caste or Tribe or, [even more breath-taking] Other Backward Classes, 39% have no formal education at all. India’s population numbers 1.38 billion.

Sephy and Callum

The Ipswich stage set was brilliant; there was a simple abstract space with a chequerboard of squares which could be used as doors, windows, walls or simply remain as static background. Furniture was minimal and occasional. This enabled the short, fast-paced flowing scenes, often high-octane and emotional; poetic and fleeting, to command the complete attention of the audience. The drama and relationships demanded centre stage attention and the onstage landscape effectively underlined and provided that.

This book is a G.C.S.E. set book and one can see why! It was interesting to me to note that Saturday’s [12/11/2022] audience was chiefly half and half; one half, exam. candidates enjoying a riveting and

memorable exposition of one of their set books; the other, elderly theatregoers fascinated by the quickly moving stage narrative and struggling with the feeling of watching contemporary life portrayed onstage, almost recognisable, almost familiar, and yet strangely, movingly, different. Interesting indeed to see how well each half-audience valued the theatrical altered reality on offer and so rewarding to see so many teenagers in the audience of live theatre. As we left, people were buzzing with appreciation and critical opinion. I rather think that this is what theatre should be about!

James Arden as Callum

Effie Ansah as Sephy

Lighting My Fire

 

This photo and heading BEFORE Rushi Sunak
became Prime Minister.

 That is, the fires of silent indignation! Mostly, unlit it must be said, but hearing that Jacob Rees-Mogg [whose father I saw described recently as “an establishment grandee”] is planning to repeal all E.U. laws on British books, then smoke starts to rise.

Theresa Villiers, a leading Brexit supporter no less, is quoted as saying that the proposals, if enacted, would take up a huge and disproportionate amount of Civil Service time, bringing the country to a virtual standstill. There are approximately 2,400 of these laws and many of them are broadly popular with the population. Jonathon Jones who headed the Government’s legal service from 2014 to 2020 and dealt with the complex legal challenges of Brexit said, “I think it is absolutely ideological and symbolic rather than about real policy."

This image is intended to give a slight clue as to the complexity
of the interwoven E.U. law and the U.K. law.

Damien Green M.P.

A Government spokesman denied there would be any major change to the bill, despite Whitehall sources declaring that there were signs of a rethink underway. Former Cabinet Minister, Damian Green, who opposed Brexit, said there were real questions about what would be put in place of legislation that would be scrapped and how quickly that could be done. “My fear is a practical one. These regulations will need to be replaced in a very short space of time otherwise there will be laws with big holes in them" he said. “I hope someone in government has thought through the practicalities of this."

Wendy Morton, former Chief Whip [left]
Gavin Williamson, Minister without Portfolio [right]

And in the meantime, another jarring storm in a teacup! Gavin Williamson, the Cabinet Office minister, lashed out at Wendy Morton, the Conservative Party’s first female chief whip, on September 13, amid unfounded claims that she excluded him from attending the Queen’s funeral at Westminster Abbey. Via What’s App he wrote, “There is a price for everything - your conduct was absolutely disgusting” and added that she had chosen to “fuck us all over.” When challenged, he replied that “it looks shit and perception becomes reality,” accusing her of exploiting the Queen’s death for political gain. Before Ms Morton resigned as chief whip on October 24, she made a formal complaint about Williamson’s behaviour. Sir Jake Berry, former Conservative Party Chairman, alerted the Prime Minister to the content of the messages before Ms Morton’s resignation. The ensuing brouhaha in Parliament and media underline the extent to which the revelations are problematic for both Williamson and Sunak who promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability” in his government and who now refuses to express confidence in Sir Gavin Williamson.

Matt Hancock in
Celebrity.

And one other Conservative M.P. renegade to add to this current list of deplorables: Matt Hancock, M.P. for West Suffolk and former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who has been left on the backbench by Rishi Sunak after his affair with a senior aide during Lockdown, was exposed. Strong rumours that he, Matt, had also channelled PPE contracts to influential friends, did not help his case. Matt has just gone to Australia to join I’m A Celebrity; Get Me Out of Here for which he will be paid $400,000, in addition to his Parliamentary salary of £84,000 which he will not be earning during his three -week Celebrity run. Local electors are angry to say the least, ‘let down’ being one of the more printable reactions, with a petition for his removal as M.P. currently under construction. though he clearly must be feeling that his political career is over anyway. Certainly, the three individuals described here seem representative of a political party which has lost its way. Merely to mention the names of Liz Truss or Suella Braverman, causes one to recoil in disbelief while Boris, still unaccountably beloved by thousands of enchanted elderly Party members, displays a cavalier disregard for normal standards of truth and morality, and trots off on a number of holidays, paid for by others, while he is supposed to be representing his constituents as Parliament continues to sit. It is said that he dropped out of the latest leadership jostling after he had been warned that, should he lose to Sunak, his extra-Parliamentary earnings would have halved from the anticipated £20 million.

B. Johnson.

As William Waldegrave observes in this week’s New Statesman, after lamenting the present state of the Tory party, "How on earth have British Conservatives, inheritors of the immensely pragmatic intellectual tradition, borrowed out of date, business-school speak and paraded themselves as ‘disruptors’ – a word representing everything they should oppose?” He laments the “self-inflicted destruction” and the loss of the Party’s habit of self-discipline; he longs for the return of the majority of the Conservative Party whose instincts derived “from habits of civility, decency, respect for tradition and for the middle way.” Waldegrave served for 16 years continuously in the Thatcher and Major governments.

William Waldegrave
Politician and Provost, Eton College.

Musing on Aunts

 

The incomparable Aunt Jane.

Perhaps the last card that 
my sister sent to me.
A lovely Quentin Blake.

I was over at my niece’s house last Sunday with my daughter, my nephew and his family, and obviously, the hosts, my niece, husband and son. Their mother, my sister, my best friend, died just over a year ago and I was musing silently and sadly on her absence; she is much missed as a mother, sister and aunt. And it was later that day that I idly started to consider the role of an auntie! My sister and I were always close friends and filled our separate auntie roles probably without much conscious thought. It was just part of who we were. I am, too, a mother and grandmother, but aunt is also a valued relationship. An aunt can be a combination of almost-mother and friend to whom one might turn for advice or for family news or making memories or undertaking joint activities.

As a Jane Austen fan, I remember a letter of hers, written in 1815, on October 30th^, to her niece, Caroline.

A sample of Jane's writing in 
part of a list she made of her
novels' titles. 1814.

"Now that you are become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence & must excite Interest whatever You do. I have always maintained the importance of Aunts as much as possible, & I am sure of your doing the same now. --- Beleive me my dear Sister-Aunt.”

And in another letter to another niece, Anna, written in November 1814, Jane is commenting on an early draft of a novel by Anna:

"His having been in love with the aunt gives Cecilia an additional interest with him. I like the idea --- a very proper compliment to an aunt! I rather imagine indeed that nieces are seldom chosen but out of compliment to some aunt or another. I daresay Ben [Anna's husband] was in love with me once and would never have thought of you if he had not supposed me dead of scarlet fever."

Letters of Jane Austen. Brabourne Edition.

Jane was aunt to over 30 nieces and nephews and James Edward Austen Leigh wrote the first of many biographies of her. 

"Though in the course of fifty years, I have forgotten much, I have not forgotten that Aunt Jane was the delight of all her nephews and nieces. We did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising and amusing."

Aunting: surely an Americanism!

Social science researchers, Laura Ellington and Patricia Sotirin, have published a paper on Aunting and the Cultural Practices That Sustain Family And Community Life in which, intriguingly, they move the word Aunt from noun to verb. They suggest that there are different paths to being an aunt; biology, marriage, circumstance, or choice, and there are lots of different ways of ‘doing aunting’; the fact that there is some discussion and research happening around a long-stereotyped role is, at least, a sign of change. They see today’s explorations of aunt-hood as part of a broader re-evaluation of the role of women in society. In fact, because aunts are unencumbered by a defined role or by the social pressure on parents, they have more freedom to “take us off into other directions, show us what else could be”; they can take on a normative maternal role if they choose or they can “liberate us from ideas about family relationships that hold us back, that don’t reflect the realities of how we actually live.” For Ellington and Sotirin aunts, whether mothers themselves or not, are “sort of leading the way in terms of opening up not only what women can become, but how families can change and what it means to be part of communities.”

While they acknowledge that for some women, to have to remain childless is very painful, a contributor declares that she would give a “very robust” response to anyone who asked her whether she was sad to be ‘only’ an aunt. “I wouldn’t say, if anyone saw me, my lifestyle, my relationship with the kids, that they would feel any sense of pity,” she says. Instead, her experiences of aunt-hood – as confidante and cheerleader for her brother’s children – have made her a firm “advocate for an auntie role.”

Beloved Aunty Lily with her sister Jane,
also loved but treated warily! 1965.

Thus far, thus positive. The experience of my sisters and me with one particular aunt, darling Aunty Lily, completely shaped our view of that role. OUR Aunty Lily pretty well walked on water; always there when needed, always approving, always modest and yet deeply interested in our self-focussed little lives. She had a dependably calm and sweet personality and, though we never noticed the fact, never asked anything in return for herself. Although now I see that what she did appreciate, I am sure, was our uncritical and endless adoration. She knew that she was very important indeed, in our lives and she somehow, brought out the best in us. When we had grown up, when my own children were growing up, Lily always came to stay for at least a week over Christmas, always bringing a choice bouquet of [for me then, unaffordable] huge yellow show chrysanthemums to decorate the hallway. From a small income, she saved up to buy them every year from a retired miner neighbour who lavished love and protective brown paper bags over the emerging blooms, as his chief hobby. Beloved Aunty Lily died in 1997 just days before her 90th, I miss her still and remember strongly all that she meant to me.

On the other hand, the incomparable P. G. Wodehouse either invented, or experienced, a terrifying breed of aunts as outlined below:

                                                                     1885-1975

                       A comic genius, with much of his work set in the Twenties and Thirties.

“Aunt Agatha is like an elephant ---not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.”  "My Aunt Agatha, the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all”.

“My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi Desert, while Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of Rugby football. In disposition too, they differ widely. Aunt Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when conducting sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam cupboard: whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a dame in a Christmas pantomime."  Although,  ”It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them!”

AND I have just discovered that the splendid Wodehouse actually wrote a book entitled, “Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.” A 1974 Jeeves and Wooster story which I must read!

What potentially interesting Aunting/haunting lives the Wodehouse family must have enjoyed!

P.G.Wodehouse in 1930 age 48.

Q.E.D.