April 2020 – The Old Grey Owl

Weeks 5 and 6, April 23rd 2020. Cravings and Ravings

In these strange times, full of empty days and an uncertain future, one inevitably turns to musing all things philosophical. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Will there be any cricket this summer? Lately these thoughts have turned to man’s greatest achievements, in an attempt to decide whether or not we as a species deserve to survive. After much thought, I’ve got as far as these. In no particular order, I give you:

The Sistine Chapel ceiling
The Flushing Toilet
The Cruyff Turn
Abbey Road side 2
Much Ado about Nothing, Act 4, scene 1, lines 251 – 325
The Waitrose Chocolate Berliner Donut

Perhaps you could choose four more and then we could go to a vote. I’m sensing a Twitter poll coming on

It feels like the tide is beginning to turn in terms of our glorious government and the Blessed Boris. Having been surfing on a tide of brainless good will since he Rose Again, Johnson is, at last, being subjected to some proper scrutiny. And what do you know, when the spotlight of interrogation is on him, the mystery melts away, and just like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, a rather silly pathetic, ineffectual little man emerges. His canonisation reached its peak, hilariously, with Alison Pearson’s tear stained, masturbatory eulogy in The Telegraph about how the nation held its breath as he teetered on the edge of death. He was, Pearson declared, the incarnation of the spirit of Albion, the Johnson body (steady Alison, you’ll need to wash those sheets) being one and the same thing as the body politic of the realm. Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation? Thinking about it, with Johnson, it was almost certainly Con.

But even in the breathless, evidence free zone that is the Tory press, eventually reality must break through. Those damn bodies. In the same way that the relentless clips of young Americans being flown back to the US in body bags from Viet Nam did for LBJ in the Sixties, so the daily press briefings giving the inexorable rise in deaths from the disease, has gradually chipped away at the Johnson myth. The briefings have been led by a series of utterly hopeless Tory Ministers (Alok Sharma?!) and have been notable for several things. First, the absolute inadequacy of the journalists questioning. The questions are poor and repetitive, and no one is challenged for not directly answering. Then the “independent” scientific advisors. What a joke. The petrified Minister passes the difficult question to the advisor who plainly fails to answer it before passing it back with a rictus smile, pathetically grateful that a few more minutes have passed and the end of the whole charade of a briefing is a little bit closer. Finally, the latest in a series of desperate promises about the future is delivered, whether that’s the target or 100,000 tests by the end of April, a figure blatantly plucked out of thin air, a delivery of PPE from Turkey, or all homeless people will be given secure accommodation. It does not matter what the promise is, you can guarantee that it’s a lie to placate the simple minded and to take up a few more moments of the briefing.

And so to the Sunday Times story, delicious and horrifying in equal measure, confirming what most of us long suspected: Johnson is a lazy, lying charlatan, whose instinct is to wing it and hope for the best, confident that he will get an easy ride from the media. After all, why on earth change an approach that has got him into number 10, with a proven track record of moral turpitude, entirely ignored by Fleet Street’s finest?

The simulation of the pandemic scenario in 2016 nails it completely. The conclusions of this exercise were as stark as The Tory party’s blithely continuing to ignore them as they accelerated their run down of the basic structures and provisions of a modern state, motivated purely by ideology. The lack of intensive care beds and ventilators is truly shocking given what they knew. Then came the head in the sand approach to clear warnings from Wuhan and Europe. Johnson allows Cheltenham, goes to the rugby, tells everyone proudly, bloke of the people style, that he shakes hands with everyone and why shouldn’t we all go to the pub? Then he disappears for ten days, finishing his book apparently at Chequers, all loved up with Carrie Symonds and does not bother to attend never mind chair the first five meetings of Cobra. The veritable cherry on the icing is the news that the failure to participate in an EU wide supply of ventilators was, indeed, a policy decision not the laughable “we didn’t get the email” excuse ( surely this ranks alongside “the dog ate my homework” in the all time lamest excuses list.)

Yes, that’s right. Don’t just move on to the next paragraph. Government spokespeople repeatedly lied to us about this. Once more with feeling: Government spokespeople repeatedly lied to us about this. What on earth has happened to us and our expectations that this is, apparently, unremarkable? Time was, there would have been a media feeding frenzy, with news organisations scenting blood, nagging away at every opportunity until there was a resignation or two. Now, it’s no big deal. Move along please, nothing to see here.

Beyond this, what else has weeks 5 and 6 of Armageddon brought us?

The figures started to sort of come down, accompanied by discussion amongst the experts and wide eyed news readers abut relaxing the lock down. The main focus of this relaxation is, of course, schools. Most teachers would have been horrified to read plans for schools to go back as early as May 11^th, on the basis that statistically, kids are pretty poor at passing the virus on and that teachers, a lazy bunch at the best of times, are just sitting around at home doing the garden in anticipation of a scorching summer drinking G&T with the occasional bit of light weeding thrown in. This would be a great theory but for one strangely overlooked fact. Schools generally, in order to function well, tend to have adults in them as well. But as the ghastly Spectator journo Alison Williams opined sagely in The Telegraph, its time for teachers to show a bit of bravery and open up classrooms again. “What we need, Blackadder, is a supremely futile gesture of self-sacrifice, in the grand tradition of gullible foot soldiers through History.”

Bollocks to that, as Winston Churchill once said.

Even just the mention of it, though, with the suggestion that we are past the peak and the whole thing is going to dribble away, has had a strange effect on me. When I went for my latest visit to the supermarket there was no queue at all and I began to think that even the most basic of social distancing and handwashing was a little bit OTT and for wusses. It’s easy to see how relaxation could easily lead to non-compliance and a huge tsunami of new infections down the line. This feeling is compounded by the latest reports of people drifting back to work and normality and a friends reports of Croydon being packed once again, with little attempt at social distancing. Now, everyone wears some form of mask or bandana and just carries on as normal. In the same way that cycle helmets turn people into less sensible cyclists, face masks do the same for people in the public domain.

The Populist insanity in America has started to take centre stage with swivel eyed Libertarian crazies taking to the streets with banners and assault rifles (essential shopping in the US remember) swearing their inviolable right to do what the fuck they want in the name of Liberty. I predict, Nostradamus like, that there will be a mass shooting before all this is done. This is the latest in a series of events that make the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale, less an enjoyable, thought provoking fantasy and more a foreseeable reality. The surprise is that there hasn’t been more resistance here from the far right Brexit crazies. The only consolation from the sight of them massing to demonstrate is that they will have infected each other. No, sorry, that’s a horrible thing to say. Lockdown is clearly getting to me. The job of socialists, liberals and other proper human beings is to protect the nasty red necks from themselves. Forgive them, they know not what they do.

I am beginning to fantasise about life before the lockdown. The other day we re-watched Fleabag and all of our conversation afterwards was about how wonderful it would be to be in a Restaurant, or in a black cab crossing the Thames late at night. Similarly, my son and I, having got through The Lord of the Rings films, now watch Youtube classic football reruns obsessively. Oh, for some top-class sport on the telly. I am really missing the way that progress from Spring into Summer is harder to keep hold of without the usual markers of the The Season: Boat Race, Grand National, Football season climax, Cricket, Wimbledon, International Football tournament etc. We have even, in a vain attempt to hold on to the joys of Summer, been watching Rick Stein’s journey through France, vicariously enjoying all of the scenes of Rick sitting at an outside table eating lovely food and sipping an expresso, a cold beer or a glass of fruity red. Having lost several holidays already, there is some pleasure to be had in planning future trips, whilst watching the appalling Rick ballsing up in the most boring delivery known to personkind in the most exquisite locations in Europe.
By the time we are released back into the community, if I have survived my perennial manflu, I will need a wheelchair, such is the extent of my muscle wastage. I know I could be more innovative with my exercise regime without going to the gym, but its just not the same. One of the great pleasures of semi-retirement was going to the gym for an hour of treadmill, exercise bike and rowing machine, followed up by a trip to Waitrose for a free coffee, a free newspaper and, joy of joys, a Waitrose Chocolate Berliner donut. Even writing it down is bringing tears to my eyes. You can keep Proust and his Madeleines. All I want is a Berliner. Just one.

Symptom alert: Still got headache, aching limbs, crippling tiredness. It’s clearly only a matter of time now. And then my wife reminds me that I have had these symptoms every week for the past thirty years

The Covid-19 Lockdown means that reading is now, more than ever, a life saver. And books that once seemed intimidating, mighty tomes such as this are now just appetisers. Just think what we’ll know by the end of all of this..

After about 1900 pages of Wolf Hall, Bringing up the Bodies and now The Mirror and the Light, I imagined that turning the last page of Mantell’s latest novel, was similar to breasting the finishing tape of a marathon. Pride, satisfaction, disbelief, and memories of pain, struggle and pleasure. I’m still not quite sure in what proportions those last three are mixed.

The analogy breaks down almost immediately however, because, after a sticky opening hundred pages or so, I raced through the bulk of it, savouring every page. And, more to the point, the Marathon is all about the runner’s experience, the course itself just exists. But the reader’s experience, regardless of their personal response to it, is of a magnificent, towering achievement. There are passages of sublime beauty and power, and it drags you along, careering towards the inevitable end. It is a mighty work and will almost certainly pick up the Booker hattrick. The Booker, though, like all cultural awards, has never been an indicator of quality. Other factors cloud that judgement: The Zeitgeist. Timing. Events. Political correctness. Length. Subject matter. And on all of those counts, Mantell is a shoo in, not least because she has become the literary equivalent of Dame Maggie Smith or Judy Dench, a National Treasure.

“Religion-Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again!”

Just to be clear about this, I loved Wolf Hall and thought Bringing up the Bodies was even better. I’m just not sure whether, in the end, all of those words were necessary. The main schtick of the trilogy seems to be, from Mantell’s many interviews, the idea that Thomas Cromwell was a working-class arriviste who needed to be rescued from the heavy hand of mainstream establishment condemnation. This was to be achieved by drilling directly into his imagined psyche and portraying him as a three dimensional, living breathing man of his time. This is achieved, but frankly that had been achieved by the end of Book 2 and I’m really not sure what this new one has added. Or at least, what it has added that could not have been accomplished in 500 pages. So example after example is piled on, accreting more and more detail. It’s almost Knaufsgaardian in its use of domestic detail. Many incidents seemed to be included simply so that Cromwell’s half of the conversations can be repeated later as evidence against him.

To this end, Mantell takes no prisoners in terms of the expectations she has of the reader. Hundreds of characters, many of whom have multiple names, come and go in scenes and conversations with little explanation. It is particularly tiresome when the previous book was published several years before. The list of characters at the beginning of the book is a warning of what’s in store. They will be, in most readers’ copies, the most well-thumbed pages in the book as the reader goes back and forth desperately trying to ascertain who exactly is Southampton, or Surrey or Wyatt.

To put Cromwell firmly centre-stage, he is always referred to as “He”, ostentatiously at times when he is sharing the stage with Henry VIII. Sometimes Mantell ties herself in knots maintaining this stylistic tic, while realising that she has to make it clear who “He” actually is. Hilary, love, its OK, we get it. We know you think that Cromwell is more important, more interesting than that King geezer. You really don’t have to keep going on about it.

The other stylistic quirk is the by now ubiquitous, terribly modern use of the present tense to make things more immediate, more dramatic. Generally, in the hands of lesser writers who have been advised by Boutique literary consultants, it’s terribly cliched, boring, inflexible and predictable. Mantell, in contrast, does it brilliantly. It does add immediacy and it does create tension when really none should exist because, let’s face it readers, we all know he’s going to die and how.

In the end, I just don’t think it’s worth it. More than a study of the man, it becomes a study of the religion and politics of the time. It’s a brutal, cruel, savage, amoral world, fuelled by ridiculous primitive disagreements over religion. Of course Cromwell is going to have his head chopped off because he is serving a childish psychopath who wanted to live the fairy story of Kingship and was going to scream and scream until he got what he wanted. And what he wanted was plentiful sex with a young sex nymph who idolised him and didn’t make him feel inadequate. He wanted to feel forever young and to show the world he was a thrusting macho proper man who could get a woman pregnant with a boy (because they were the only pregnancies that counted). This was a world where Cromwell, in his many internal musings, could think that cutting off someone’s head with an axe was proof of the gentle mercy of Henry and the superior civilization of England. The more gruesome details of the vile tortures and methods of execution of Spain, France and The Holy Roman Emperor almost convince one to agree with him. Until you catch yourself, shamefacedly, in the thought. In the end, I was left thinking that too much time has been spent fetishising this dreadful period of English history, agonising over the political and personal nuances and rivalries at play. Brutal dictators deserve less of our attention

The real interest is how things are still exactly the same, give or take the rack, being hung, drawn and quartered, or being burned alive. Boris Johnson is similarly childlike, petulant and wanting to be loved and for the true religion versus heretics, just substitute Brexiteers and Remainers. Dominic Cummings as Thomas Cromwell anyone?

This is a book that is definitely worth reading. It’s beautifully written by a writer at the height of her powers. There is much to enjoy and admire. It’s just not as good as the critics will tell you it is (probably without reading it, some of them), and the subject is not as important as Mantell has convinced herself it is. Why not read it and disagree with me? Let’s face it, you’ve got plenty of time in lockdown to do that. If things go badly, you’ve probably got enough time to read all three, starting at the beginning. Good luck

Month: April 2020

The View from the Great North Wood – A Review of “The Mirror and the Light”