WELCOME TO HANGDOG HALL

Last week I became rather melancholic. I don’t like it. I can normally find a bright side to almost anything. Some say it’s infuriating and inappropriate to keep on smiling. But my Mr Loud and Mr Laughter became Mr Lugubrious (and what a glorious word that is – a cross between lubricating and moody.) That was me last week, full of moody glue. I felt stuck.

There were a series of reasons. The Ukraine horror show overwhelmingly so. But blanket Russophobia whereby if it’s Russian it’s bad upsets me. 

Vodka, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Potatoes (Russians like potatoes a lot), Beetroot (Ditto), Ballet, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, Beef Stroganov, Garry Kasparov, Boris Spassky, Yul Brynner (he’s dead – yes but he was Russian), Fabergé, White Russian Cocktail and Tea (tea? Yes they love it hence their samovars.)

All the above are Russian so we must hate them and avoid them – including tea? Yes, especially tea.

Already Russian Oligarchs are rightly being sanctioned with their bank accounts frozen and their yachts impounded. We’re hitting Putin and his friends in their wallets. But I’m not sure where it stops. Valery Gergiev, rated the world’s greatest conductor has been removed from the Presidency of the Edinburgh Festival and any further involvement musically in Britain. Russian driver Nikita Mazepin's F1 contract has been terminated by the Haas team and the Bolshoi Ballet have been cancelled by the Royal Opera House.

Being Russian now is evidently  a very bad thing to be. Being “Poo Tin” as Matt Chorley  in the Times now calls him is obviously much worse but if you have any Russian blood in you, you’re (by definition) a wrong ‘un.

All this has made me increasingly maudlin. It’s racist and silly. So I’ll scoop up my caviar, have a shot of Jewel of Russia Ultra Black Label and reflect on the distinction between leaders and people. Between, for instance,  Putin and those nice Russians I’ve met. Between Johnson and the rest of us whose image he has imbedded in all our reputations. Is that fair?   

But hang on. It appears Alexander Boris may have Russian blood himself. An ancient ethnic group (the Circassian community) from the region around Sochi has claimed Boris Johnson as one of their own. People there are famous for their blond hair and blue eyes. So that explains everything. Boris the Impaler. Boris the Bad. At this moment of discovery my mood slightly lightened.

We live in strange times when the big things are too big; it’s little things that cheer us up. How about this?  Scientists are concerned about the lack of testing for Covid and therefore it being impossible to actually know what infection levels really are now. So they came up with a way of getting a 100% sample to test with this novel idea. Everyone goes to the lavatory so measure the Covid levels detected in sewage at various sewage plants. The results are interesting with much higher levels of infection than previously expected. 

We are living in the midst of tragedy and probably prolonged horror. But we owe it to ourselves and especially those around us to stay level headed and kind. We need more cartoons and jokes. We need to read more books and less papers and social media. Scratching the scab only makes things worse. I doubt if Vladimir Putin laughs much - just look at the misery.

There are lots of nice people around and some of them will be Russian. Humanity prevails when we embrace rather than fight or hate each other  

So, no more Hangdog Hall.

 A Ukranian Spring

Thank you, Justin Webb, for reminding me in Friday’s Times of what Trotsky said:

“You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.”

Friday was chilly but with a brightly blazing sun in Brighton. The stridently yellow daffodils fluttered in the breeze muttering: 

“all’s well, Spring is coming, relax …. all is well.” 

The daffodils were wrong.

In Kyiv it was raining, cold and about to get much colder. War was being declared. No, not “declared” so much as “visited upon us” and the world was waiting aghast as the missiles flew. We were living in a world gone mad. After 77 years Europe was once again a warzone.

I recalled Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy written after the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.  The second stanza stuck in my head, now slightly re-written (sorry Percy):

I met Murder wildly shooting 

He had a mask just like Putin

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven blood-hounds followed him.

The most unlikely people have suddenly become militaristic. Quentin Letts, political sketch writer, observed with astonishment that the Liberal Democrats, of all people, were in the Commons with a bellicose “Come on Vladimir let’s be having you” attitude.

How did we let this Russian thug and our own greed get us to this ultimately predictable point? Chelsea football fans lament your ownership. Estate Agents in Knightsbridge be very ashamed. But despite my initial horror and anger something else has replaced it. The courage and the spirit of the Ukrainian people in slowing down and in places thwarting the Russian advance made me feel just a bit better. There was something epic about the tragedy of Snake Island in the Black Sea where 13 Ukrainian Soldiers and their families were slaughtered after refusing to surrender to a Russian Warship … “Go f*** yourself Russian Warship” were their last words. Courage and resilience are an enviable epitaph. And it’s their resilience that heralds the Ukrainian Spring because it is Springtime that characterises resilience.

Keats didn’t manage an Ode to Spring. Pity. The best we can find is, nonetheless, terrific.  Either the beginning of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales – “sweet showers” - or Gerard Manley Hopkins will do – just these glimpses from him:

    “Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush” 

  

And “the racing lambs too have fair their fling….”

     

   

 And then     

“What is all this juice and all this joy?         

     A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

     In Eden garden…..”

“Long, lovely and lush …all this juice and joy” – yes that does it for me …that’s my kind of Spring. And this year’s Spring is delivering already – primulas and violets vigorously doing their thing and tiny tête ά tête daffodils laughing in the chill.

Spring is about innovation, new beginnings and a simple celebration of growth. A blitz of Russian missiles can’t change that. Spring cleaning is one of the most useful of occupations discarding the unused and unusable, simplifying our possessions and cleaning our shelves, our cupboards and our minds. 

I for one have spent too many seasons worrying about newspaper headlines about which I can do nothing. My mind is full of “stuff” -  much of it negative. Time for a good Spring-Clean. Time to think positively. Time to walk through woods where buds are bursting and birds are finding their voices.

It's too late to stop the stupidity. But never too late for hope. Nature always helps our perspective. Flowers grow out of rubble. Juice and joy cannot be blown away by a bomb.

WHY CAN'T WE GET ON BETTER?

Despite the calls to unite the country and bring people together I don’t see it happening nor do I think it should. Maybe we should recognise that we are designed to argue and disagree.

Most of the enthralling works of fiction involve conflict. The best music in operas is in those with the most depressing plots. Life is not like Love Actually. Life is awkward. 40% of all marriages end in divorce and the worst emerges when people are thrust together. Happy Christmas everyone.

Take families. I was talking to someone from a large, ostensibly very close family recently and asked if they spent much time together. “Not if we can help it” he said grimly. When I was small my big brother got on pretty badly with me and once memorably confided “I don’t like Richard at all.” Unfortunately for him I idolised him and the more I worshipped him the more he was enraged. As we got older we started to get on very well. Maybe we mellowed. Maybe getting on better just takes time (like wine). 

The current election reveals how deep the fissures in our society have become (or is it that divisions that have long been there are being more strongly exposed?) The history of Civil Wars in America , Spain , Sri Lanka, Somali, Eritrea/Ethiopia and back in the 17th century in Britain suggests reconciliation is often rather superficial.

If we recognise that Civil War and uncivil arguments are part of the human condition where conflict is about matters of principle (whatever they may be) not about money and not usually about really important issues, we might get somewhere.

The Brexit argument has been around for a very long time. Since the 11th century England has had grave reservations about the French and their opportunistic takeover of this country. Centuries of equally grave reservations about the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Papacy, the French (again) and the Germans involving constant disputes, sorties and wars fill our past. Britain didn’t suddenly take against Europe in 2016. The awkward British were merely acting true to form.

Some would call this the British character. A more accurate description might be that our history has shaped in us a disputatious tendency and a covert desire for a good punch-up given the slightest opportunity. The only way we can get on a bit better now is do something we are terrible at. Listening to each other.

The ability of our leaders to be grown up, diplomatic and civilised would be a good start. Fat chance, unfortunately. given the current cast of politicians. In Travels with Charley: In search of America (1962) John Steinbeck went on a road trip with his poodle Charley, discovering the racism in the southern states was as raw as it had always been. He urges us to understand each other: “Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”

It’s time to try and understand our differences not pretend they’ve gone away or can be easily resolved because, sorry, they haven’t and they can’t.