Bedtime Blues and Clerihews

My younger son - to avoid confusion with the elder (Finn Jr), I'll call Ginn Jr (or maybe, Ginger?) - is at an age where he is changing his preferred method of falling asleep.

Until recently, the best way of invoking a nap involved strapping him into either a pushchair or a car seat and expending either leg or diesel power to trundle him into the land of Nod.

However, I'd noticed that my evening walks pushing the buggy around the streets of Mile Cross were getting longer and longer and the end result less certain. Sometimes I would complete the whole extended podcast edition of In Our Time and, whilst my knowledge of the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be satisfyingly increased, the little one would still be pushing the hood of the buggy back to get a better look at the people smoking outside Mecca Bingo.

I don't think we're in Mile Cross anymore...

I downloaded a step counting app to give myself an idea of how punishing these evening walks were becoming. The week when I twice recorded 19,000+ steps, I decided a new approach was needed.

I recalled a method of getting a child to sleep that had briefly worked with Finn Jr at a similar age. This is where I try waiting until he is really tired and lying down in the dark next to him and hoping like hell that he drops off before I do. 80% of the time, this works and I can transfer him to the cot and sneak downstairs for a rewarding glass of Côtes de Gascogne. The other 20%, my wife has to wake me up to tell me I've missed Only Connect.

In an attempt to stave off the inevitable wave of drowsiness that lying down in a darkened room brings on, I like to compose clerihews in my head. (I expect that you'll recall from this 2014 Finnginn blog post that clerihews are four line whimsical biographical poems that don't have to scan and follow an AABB rhyme scheme.)

A new crop of government ministers has revealed a rich harvest of names crying out to be Clerihewed (clerihewn?). Here are three that I have remembered long enough to write down:

Kwasi Kwarteng

Took up a pen

And wrote down a tax-and-spend policy

That wrote off the UK economy.

Suella Braverman

Do me a favour, man?!

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander:

Stick yourself on the next flight to Rwanda.

Goodbye, Liz Truss -

Gone by Christmas.

When Liz Truss sees the Christmas trees

She'll celebrate with a plate of imported cheese.

In the time I've taken to write and edit this, rumours have been circulating that Kwarteng has been sacked as Chancellor. You heard it here first!

In the interests of fairness, feel free to add your own clerihews about members of the shadow cabinet in the comments...

Notes on quitting smoking

Two years ago, perhaps a decade after the above photo was taken by my stepsister, I was convinced to give quitting tobacco a go - and I'm finally ready to talk about the experience.

There are two chief categories of ex-smoker that I encountered while bartending:

1. Those who secretly still love smoking - who will blag rollies off you when they are drunk and without their partner.
2. Those who apparently never really liked smoking in the first place and become vehement campaigners in the anti-tobacco lobby.

I think I am destined to be a category one ex-smoker. But here are my notes on quitting in case they are useful to anyone else thinking of sucking their final menthol tip.

The physical experience of quitting

Overcoming the physical addiction to nicotine has been made much easier by the invention of vaping. In the early days of quitting smoking, I was able to ease my cravings by vaping. Luckily, vaping is a thoroughly unpleasant experience and therefore much easier to stop.

When the battery was fully charged, the experience of vaping was like being at an amateur dramatics production of Macbeth when an over-eager stagehand gives the dry-ice machine full throttle. When the battery was low, the model I adopted was liable to malfunction and deposit a thin dribble of acidic vaping liquid into the mouth. 

I was able to give up vaping within a week (compare that to the smooth taste of delicious Golden Virginia, that had me hooked for a quarter century).

Some people seem to love vaping, so maybe I wasn't doing it right? Perhaps I lack the willpower to experiment with flavours and equipment to make it a proper habit. If so I might be the first person to give up nicotine through a lack of willpower?

The mental experience of quitting

I found it helpful to imagine there is a little compartment somewhere in the mind where you can put thoughts to ignore them. By definition, minds are mental phenomena, where the imaginary is real - so imagining like this is a feature that your mind possesses is sufficient to make it a feature that your mind possesses. Believing in your imaginary ignored memory compartment makes it real enough for our purposes.

Thus equipped, when your mind occasionally nudges: “Time for a lovely cigarette!”, you have a compartment ready to file away the thought. And you don't just have to use it for cigarette cravings - why not store your nagging regrets, resentments and anxieties in it too? Just make sure you seal it up really tight - don't want that lot leaking out on a random rainy Thursday hangover.

As you can see from this before and after, quitting smoking enables you to grow a fulsome moustache as you won't be setting fire to it trying to relight half-inch long rollies that have gone out. 

20/20 Hindsight, 10/20 Vision

I'm frequently distracted by the live feeds of unending crises. Since my last post here, we've had a Conservative election landslide, Brexit, global pandemic, war in Europe... and Liz Truss voted Prime Minister by a proportion of the electorate so small that I booked an appointment to get my eyesight checked at a local opticians' clinic just so I could see it. Turns out three years sat in a darkened room doomscrolling has left me a little myopic. 

An in-built desire to please/win makes me a terrible subject for eyetests. Five years ago, I went to a popular highstreet chain (that I'll just call GoggleGrafters). The optician conducting the tests did my good eye first. When he came to measure the problem eye, I remembered the sequence of letters and reeled them off perfectly.

This time I went to a friendly local independent clinic, the kind of place where they still make you a cup of tea while you're waiting to see the specialist, but also insist on you wearing a face mask so you're sort of left carrying a cup of tea around as the entropy in the room slowly increases. This optician had clearly met my type before - she did my bad eye first so I couldn't cheat.

One aspect of the examination not offered at GoggleGrafters (but thoughtfully included at my more recent test) was an explanation of my macular degeneration.

"Those bumps you can see on the right eye display are sun damage."

At some point in my childhood, I'd chosen to look at the sun and permanently damaged one of my eyes. I have no memory of this, but staring at the sun sounds like the sort of thing childhood me would have been sufficiently sensible and risk averse to attempt with just the one eye.

Once the lens strength appropriate for a solar-induced maculo-retinal deterioration had been determined, I was invited to inspect a selection of frames. 

"What did you have in mind?" 

I asked if they had something like the pair that Noam Chomsky wore for his 1971 debate on human nature with Michel Foucault. 

"What were you looking to spend?"

All that doomscrolling has left me with the distinct impression that there's a cost of living crisis on, so I hesitantly scribbled a suitably conservative (small-c) figure on a piece of paper.

"Ah... Perhaps you should have gone to GoggleGrafters?"

Header Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

Leaders Leaders Leaders Debate Debate Debate*

You're probably all familiar with the six demands made by the 19th Century parliamentary reform movement known as the Chartists. Four of them have more or less come to pass:

• Paid MPs
• Equal sized constituencies
• Abolition of the property qualification for becoming an MP
• Secret ballots

A fifth (universal male suffrage) has even been been surpassed, thanks to the direct action taken by the Suffragettes a century ago.

The final Chartist demand was for annual parliamentary elections. Be careful what you wish for...

Yes. It's election time again! As usual, the national discussion is starting with the big debate about which leaders should be allowed to take part in the big debates. 

Like the Xmas jumper (see Finnginn passim) the debates have an illusion of tradition but, in fact, they only started in 2010: when the incumbent Gordon Brown and challenger David Cameron spent the whole evening saying how much they agreed with Nick Clegg. 

In 2015, the Labour and Conservative leaders were in the same building but didn't debate each other, they each separately faced a grilling from the audience and Jeremy Paxman. The most memorable thing that happened was Ed Miliband managed to trip over stepping off the weird Q-shaped stage.

In 2017, the incumbent Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May - who had been watching her poll ratings tumble each time she appeared on TV - bottled it completely and sent Andrea Leadsom in her place. This was the year when there were 9 party representatives on the stage. So each only got about 45 seconds of airtime that was mostly spent being interrupted by Nigel Farage.

So, tonight, as is traditional (but actually for the first ever time) the leaders of the two main parties in the United Kingdom will present their policies and their rebuttals of their opponents' policies to the nation. 

The reason that Chartists wanted annual elections was so that if politicians failed to deliver on their promises, the people could quickly replace them. 

If you are depressed about the state of politics today, and feeling low about the struggles ahead, have a listen to the Chartists' Anthem (as rendered here by Chumbawamba) and remember how far we have come:

*For an explanation of why linguists think the title of today's post (Leaders leaders leaders debate debate debate) works as a theoretically parsable sentence in English, see my blog post from five years ago: Ask Finnginn II: The Recursion Excursion. 

The Coming Week in Politics

It was a cheap and obvious political gambit for the opposition parties to deny the Conservatives their desired three day recess for conference.

Naturally, the conference will go ahead anyway. I wonder what have they tabled for discussion in their absence? Here's what the Leader of the House (the oft-recumbent Jacob Rees-Mogg) has put forward: 

• Monday: Northern Ireland Executive Formation
• Wednesday: Domestic Abuse Bill
• Thursday: Women's Mental Health

I've been following the progress of the Domestic Abuse Bill in particular (one of the organisations I write for in my day job runs refuges for people who have experienced domestic abuse). An early iteration of this Bill failed for political reasons when Theresa May called an election in 2017.

A second reading of the Bill has been scheduled by the Leader of the House for Wednesday 2nd October. And a good thing, too. But I want to question the motives of this .

Seems likely that, with many Conservative MPs away at their conference, the Executive don’t want MPs taking advantage of the government’s lack of a majority to take control of parliamentary proceedings. By scheduling debates on Domestic Abuse and women’s mental health while they are away schmoozing with their corporate paymasters, the Conservative government are betting that the opposition parties won’t change the agenda back to Brexit for fear of looking like they lack compassion for these issues. 

Clever politics perhaps. But also revealing about where their neoliberal priorities lie.

Imagine a House of Commons where these subjects are given the prominence they deserve by people who care about the issues. That's the Commons we could have if the people choosing to attend conference (rather than debate the topics that they themselves have tabled for their absence) were removed.

Elections are coming. Question the motives and priorities of your representatives.

Nine New Brexit Metaphors

One small pleasure to come out of watching all the recent UK political conversations has been the proliferation of Brexit metaphors. You're probably familiar with the Red, White and Blue Brexit, the Hotel California Brexit and the Titanic Brexit. Keen observers can probably add the Blue Fluffy Monster Brexit and the Peppermint Tea Brexit.

As a gift to hardworking pundits as Brexit looks set to extend beyond the promised 29th March deadline, here's a few more to bear in mind...

Cathedral City Brexit

A Brexit aimed at pleasing the residents of parochial cities such as Norwich, York and Salisbury, this Brexit has the whiff of costly imported cheddar.

School Disco Brexit

A Brexit where all the Leavers are dancing away provocatively, whilst all the Remainers are sulking by the wall and wishing they were popular enough to join in.

Corned Beef Hash Brexit

I've been accidentally stockpiling corned beef for years before the threat of no deal Brexit made stockpiling fashionable. 

For reasons beyond my understanding, my wife doesn't like me to eat meals comprised chiefly of fatty processed meat. So, naturally, when she took Finn Jr down to visit the in-laws recently, I retrieved from the back of the cupboard the can of corned beef that was least past its sell-by-date to make a delicious corned beef hash. I even, as comedy tradition demands, managed to cut my hand opening the can. 

When I sat down to eat the meal of canned meat fried in butter with potato and onion, disaster struck! No HP sauce! 

The Corned Beef Hash Brexit is a Brexit defined by illicit enjoyment of a forbidden meal ruined by the fact that its ideal accompaniment is manufactured in the EU.

Drill and Fill Brexit

A Brexit that you keep putting off because you are convinced that you have advanced periodontitis, but it turns out you have just been over-indulging from the office biscuit tin and need a filling. 

George Orwell Brexit

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

Mad Cow Disease Brexit

[Insert Theresa May (DEFRA more politically correct?) joke here]

Black Spot Brexit

A Brexit handed to you by a blind pirate that makes you want to throttle yourself.

Full English Brexit

Bacon, mushrooms, fried egg, sausage, black pudding, toast, beans, Scottish independence, Welsh indifference and a hard customs border in the Irish Sea.

Full Irish Brexit

The same as above but with additional white pudding and a soft border between the Republic and the North.

Meanwhile...

The striking kids have got it right. Our actions are changing the habitability of the only planet we can live on. Perhaps we should be focusing on that?

Venturing into the Shed

It started, as so many things do, with the purchase of what I hope one day to be a flourishing Sorbus Aucuparia. Currently, it is just an 8 foot twig in a pot. As soon as the ground has thawed sufficiently for me to dig a hole, I plan to plant the tree in a space I have been saving in the corner of my traditional mixed hedgerow. I am going to need a spade and some compost. Unfortunately... that means venturing into the shed.

The shed was erected by the previous occupants of our house about a week before they decided to sell it to us. Quite why they decided to erect a shed on a property they intended to sell is a mystery. But our house came with an uninsulated, but relatively spacious, brand new shed.

Lots of famous writers have worked in sheds. Roald Dahl, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf and Philip Pullman spring immediately to mind, and I'll bet that you have your own favourites. I could imagine myself writing in my shed: blanket over the knees in winter, door open in the summer, staring out the window to see songbirds peck the berries of a flourishing Sorbus Aucuparia in the autumn - you get the picture.

The first hindrance was the lawn mower. I knew, I suppose, on some level, that lawns need mowing and that mowers need to be stored somewhere, and the shed is the logical place for the mower to be stored etc. But I can't imagine Virginia Woolf staring at a greasy lawn mower when she was bashing out To The Lighthouse on her portable Underwood (although perhaps that was her inspiration for Kew Gardens!).

Then came the barbecue. It was one of those kettle barbecues on a tripod of wheels that never feels well-balanced. I assembled it on the morning of Finn Jr's 1st birthday party, cooked on it in the afternoon of Finn Jr's 1st birthday party, and then put it and the accompanying bags of charcoal in the shed - where it has sat ever since, except when I have to move it so I can get the lawn mower out.

This winter, the lawn mower and the barbecue have been joined by two broken sofas, a bicycle, two bags of peat-free compost, various digging implements and all the recycling from when we missed a collection over Christmas.   

Today, I thought I would make a start on sorting it all out. Not least so that I could get to the spade and compost and plant my Sorbus Aucuparia. Have you ever tried to saw a broken sofa in half with a handsaw so that you can get it in the back of a Fiesta? I bet Dylan Thomas never had to do this. Do not go gently into that full shed!

The large twig to the right of the shed is my new Sorbus Aucuparia.