Training | 2009.06.14
Simon Hoggart's week | Rolling out with such resignation
I always thought that New Labour regarded the English language as an enemy – or at least an impertinent inconvenience, to be bullied into submission. Hence all those terrible terms from management-speak, such as "stakeholder", "pathway projects" and "the patient journey", sometimes leading to weird, unexpected images. For example, no minister could ever say "we are trying to find ways of improving children\'s diets" when she could – and did – say "we are rolling out fresh fruit in primary schools".
Worst of all, they don\'t listen to themselves. Take James Purnell\'s resignation letter: "I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning. As such, I am resigning from the government."
"As such"? What on earth does that mean? Why not "for that reason"? Or "since that is how I feel"? Or just "so"? As I say, they never seem to pay any heed to what they are saying, still less writing.
We held a memorial service for my father-in-law this week. His funeral was last November, in some of the worst weather of the winter. The rain came at us horizontally. Umbrellas turned inside out. We tried to throw poppies into the grave, but they came straight back at us.
Thursday this week, however, was a gorgeous day, hot but with a crisp breeze, a few white clouds dotted round the sky like yacht sails in a regatta. It seemed as if along with friends and family, the whole of his Sussex village had turned out.
If the funeral mourns the death, then the memorial service celebrates the life.
There was a large churchyard, and the reception afterwards was held amid the tombstones, the flatter ones making a good ledge for perching with wine-glasses and plates of nibbles. The cliche on these occasions always is that the departed would have loved the occasion, as of course he would.
I sometimes think that if I\'m ever told I have a certain length of time to live, I\'d hold the party before I went. But of course nobody else would enjoy it at all because they\'d be too embarrassed and wouldn\'t know what to say.
Which brings me to one of your many jokes which continue to pour in. Thanks. Chap says: "Give it to me straight, doctor. How long have I got?" The doctor replies "Ten."
"Ten what? Months? Weeks?"
The doctor goes on: "Nine, eight, seven …"
I liked this one from Dave Nicholson. Gandhi used to walk everywhere barefoot, so his feet became painfully rough.
He also had a very simple diet, which left him thin and frail, and with bad breath. All of which made him a super-calloused fragile mystic, vexed by halitosis.
Cassandra Coburn was at an open-mic night in Brick Lane, and didn\'t catch the comedian\'s name, but enjoyed the gag: "Someone asked me for change the other day. I gave him a penny. It was the least I could do."
Tom Epton sent in this one from those distant days of rotary dial telephones.
Secretary: "Sir Reginald, may I borrow your Dictaphone?"
Sir Reginald: "Certainly not, Miss Tuttle. Use a pencil like everyone else."
A cookery hint from the late and greatly lamented Max Wall: "If you put a knife in the cake, and it comes out clean, why not put all your dirty knives in?"
And this is an old classic that still makes me laugh immoderately.
A priest and a rabbi find themselves on a train together. They get chatting and the priest asks if the rabbi, in his youth, had ever tried bacon. He shyly admits that, yes, he once did.
But, he asks, before getting his vocation, did the priest ever have sex? The priest murmurs that yes, he once did.
"Ah," says the rabbi, "better than bacon, isn\'t it?"
I got one of those lovable London cabbies the other day. He managed to find every traffic jam, every long red light and every excavated road, so as we got near to Waterloo station and were stuck again, this time on a roundabout, I tried to save time by paying him immediately.
He took umbrage. "What the [bad word] is the matter with you? Are you blaming me for the [very bad word] traffic? Gerrout of my cab!"
I pointed out that if I was run over he\'d be in serious trouble, and so, still swearing, he drove me to the station, where of course my train was delayed, so it didn\'t matter. But I reflected on what an awful job it must be. London cab fares are grotesquely high, so in these hard times people are always going to use public transport if they can. The line of taxis waiting at, say, Victoria station curls right round the block, even in bad weather.
You can easily flag one down in, say, Regent Street during a wet rush hour. Passengers tip stingily, if at all.
In the recent hot weather, sitting in a jam surrounded by dozens of vehicles pouring out fumes must be hellish.
The answer of course would be to bring prices down, like shops and restaurants are doing frantically. But that will never, ever happen.
I heard an author get what must be the ultimate plug the other day. Barack Obama was asked in his BBC interview what he did to relax, and he said he liked to read.
Right now he was enjoying a novel called Netherland …
Joseph O\'Neill, the author, must be thrilled. He is Irish/British/Dutch and the book is about a cricket-loving Dutchman in New York soon after 9/11. Seeking out matches to play in becomes a metaphor for the whole experience of being a stranger in another country, and by extension in your own life. It\'s wonderful and seems very apt for a multi-racial president.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jun/06/simon-hoggart-week
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