53 degrees North

We're going on a a trip. A round the world adventure. Following the 53° N line of latitude. We begin in ...

Wigan. The new centre of the world. In a circumnavigational sense. The Romans had it wrong: all roads lead to Wigan, the birthplace of George Formby.

Shall we go westwards (Ho!) or eastwards? I think in the initial stages of our journey there is more land to the east, so that's it.

Crossing the North Sea (I wonder if Icelanders call it the South Sea) we arrive on the Dutch island of Texel, famous for giving its name to a breed of sheep.

Moving on, we arrive in Germany, Lower Saxony to be precise. The capital is Hanover, the 19th century Kingdom of which fell out with the English because we had the temerity to optate a female monarch (Victoria). Thence to the West Pomeranian province of Poland. In that country a province is called a Voivodeship and I believe many people arrive there looking to buy a sturdy, ultra reliable car.

I hope you're keeping up with this whistle stop sheep/car chase. Leaving Volvoland we meet the people of Belarus. According to nationsonline.org Belarus is famous for "potatoes, tractors, and being one of the poorest countries in Europe by total wealth." They need to do something about that reputation; maybe hire a PR firm?

Next it's Russia. There's a lot of Russia to cross and we dip in and out of Kazakhstan, following our 53rd parallel. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, home to Russia's manned space flight launches, is in Kazakhstan. We leave Russia temporarily as we pass the world's largest by volume freshwater lake, Baikal, and cross the tip of the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, which takes its name from the Heilong River, which marks the border between China and Russia.

More Russia: Sakhalin Island and the Kamchatka peninsula, then we cross the Bering Sea to the US outpost of Alaska (Sarah Palin will unfollow me for 'outpost'). Alaska is possibly the most faunal and scenic stopover on this trip so we'll do a bit of sightseeing: salmon, moose, caribou, bears, whales, bison, puffins, jellyfish, glaciers, fjords, mountains, lakes, rivers; what's not to like?

Actually we're island-hopping through Alaska: Attu, Kagamil and Umnak, then Canadian islands - Hibben, Moresby and Louise - in British Columbia. Like Russia, there's a lot of Canada - we travel through Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Winnipeg, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador. What to say about the lovely Canadian people? They speak English👍 They rank "the world’s most reputable nation" 👍 They are all nice 👍 They are great at developing video games 👍👍

Across the Atlantic to Ireland. Home to Guinness, U2, James Joyce, George Best and the Giant's Causeway. I hope the DUP aren't going to get picky about whether Northern Ireland is in Ireland; it's on my route; get out of the way! Lovely accent - although I imagine they think of my diction as the accent. Crossing the - often very rough - Irish Sea to Mount Snowdon in Wales, the most beautiful of British mountains and finally home to ...

Butter pie, courting cake, scouse, aughton pudding and pea wet; yes it's ...lovely Wigan. It's raining cats and dogs but Wigan, we love you.

Truth is redundant

VAR (the Video Assistant Referee) distorts truth. The truth that the striker has scored a legitimate goal, by any measure except one: exactitude. His big toe, with which he is not attempting to score, is a millimetre beyond the bum of the defender, which with the latter is not going to intercept the shot. The striker kicks the ball into the net with the foot other than the one of the big toe, past the head of the defender, whose bum is now pointing away from the goal, who attempts to intercept. Graphical truth takes over: lines are drawn on a computer screen and the 'goal' is disallowed. Incorrectly, in every possible way except one: exactitude.

Football wasn't designed to be a game of exact, static images. It's a fast moving, fluid sport which encourages the taking of attacking risk whereas VAR persuades forwards to hold their runs that little bit too late and, when involved, takes a minute or more out of the game to make a marginal decision and interrupts the players' momentum - and, who knows, their wills to live.

We were all brought up to believe that truth exists and that it is unimpeachable. Now we know better; to paraphrase Descartes: I score, therefore I don't.

I've never heard a footballer quote Descartes but I've begun to think I am frequently unfair to them. I complain vociferously - to the TV - about retired footballers, employed to assist the match commentator by deploying pithy comments about the play, butchering the English language. Despite the fact that I understand perfectly what they are trying to say. Their truth undermined by my exactitude.

News Chronicle

I woke on Saturday morning to the news that "The eldest son of South Africa's late Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been chosen as successor to the throne, amid a bitter family feud." [BBC]. It felt as though as though I had been transported to a real life version of my favourite historical strategy game Civilization VI. In that case though it would have been Shaka leading the Zulus. He was their King for 12 years, during which he built a strong and well organised military. This map shows the rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka (1816–1828) in present-day South Africa:

This took me back to my youth - I have a dim recollection of knowledge of Zulu and Mau Mau in the news, which must have been in the 1950s. I guess I must have been an avid newspaper reader even then [yes television had been invented; don't be cheeky]. Which in turn led me to think which newspaper would have been in my house. I'm pretty sure it was the News Chronicle, which would have fitted my father's Liberal politics. I don't remember my mother ever expressing a political view and am pretty certain I recall her refusing to tell me which party she voted for.

Obviously my reminiscence of the time was about the Mau Mau rebellion rather than anything about the Zulu but I feel that the latter appear somewhere in my memory. Perhaps media reports referenced earlier Zulu uprisings against the British Empire as colour; maybe there was just a sense of ... Africa. I was disappointed to discover that the British Newspaper Archive didn't give me any News Chronicle articles but it could easily be that I'm not familiar enough with it to search appropriately. The paper was subsumed into the Daily Mail empire in 1960 in what was undoubtedly a trend towards fewer, larger titles but unfortunately also a trend towards political polarisation of the print media with middle-ground views unrepresented.

Today the Zulu nation is part of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. Amazingly - to me in my ignorance - there remain 11 million who identify as Zulu living there. According to the BBC report "The throne does not have formal political power and the monarch's role within broader South African society is largely ceremonial. But the Zulu monarchy remains hugely influential, and has a yearly taxpayer-funded budget of more than $4.9m (£3.5m)."

I hope Prince Misizulu avoids Shaka's fate - assassinated by his half brothers.

I dedicate this post to my good friend Trevor, who knows far more about the history of Britain's newspaper industry than I ever will. Maybe he'll honour us with a comment!

Champagne socialist

Generally speaking, I would prefer to pay someone to do a boring, tedious task rather than do it myself. Tasks such as weed killing, hedge trimming, checking the oil level in my car's engine.

The concept of DIY is alien to me. There are those in my family, cognisant of the disastrous consequences of my erecting shelves, who would no doubt support my 'pay someone to do it' stance. Whoever invented DIY? What about supporting local traders, particularly in the difficult circumstances of the pandemic?

As a young husband and father I felt a multitude of pressures to Do It Myself. Financial obviously but more an expectation that, as the man of the house, it was my solemn duty to devote my time to tasks for which I was temperamentally unsuited. Not to mention totally unskilled. Shelves to put up? Nigel's your man. Shelves to put up again when the originals fall down? Nigel again, in an extreme example of Einstein's alleged 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a definition of madness' maxim.

In my time, I have tried my hand at plumbing, electrics, decorating and even on one occasion helping a pal erect a shed for his beloved cow, using scraps of wood. It seems that men have absurd estimations of their own abilities. 'But you have to learn to do these things'. Why? Why can't someone else - a plumber, an electrician, a cowshed builder - do it for me? Turn on the TV and bring me a drink!

Even now, in my life of relative financial comfort - which simply means I don't starve or worry about whether I can afford a flight to Australia [Gentlemen have sufficient private means so that unexpected situations don't become painful embarrassments: Martin Cruz Smith, 'Rose'] - I have been known to pick up the occasional weed, do a bit of vacuuming, change a light bulb. Although the last time I did the latter, a few weeks ago, the lamp holder broke [note that it was the lamp holder's fault, not mine] and now I need an electrician. Unless I am prepared to risk electrocution Doing It Myself. How much, Mr Electrician? Fine, when?

Am I behaving like a filthy capitalist? If I were a true socialist I would be living in a collective, sharing ownership of goods and chattels, helping each other out each according to their skills, exchanging our wheat for meat, no need for money,  no need for shelves. Very Soviet. Maybe I'll do that in a year or two; meantime, I'm off to the pub to spend my hard-earned filthy lucre on....myself! Bring on the champagne. Bolly Bolsheviks [Mrs Monsoon, Absolutely Fabulous].

Jura

Jura is an island of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, with a population of 196 at the time of the 2011 census. As you might expect, it has a distillery, producing Isle of Jura single malt whisky. I'm not a whisky aficionado by any means and no doubt could not distinguish between this estimable product and the cheapest blend available on Lidl's shelves, but it's a consistent Scottish meme and we must allow them it.

On 23 August 1994 the band KLF filmed themselves burning £1 million in banknotes on Jura. KLF were also known as the Timelords and had a number 1 single called Doctorin' the Tardis in 1988. Here they are:

Another example of the BBC's insidious influence on British culture, KLF must have looked back on this and thought "this is so embarrassing we have to make a bonfire of everything we earned from this"; hence the 1994 incident.

At the other end of the culture scale, George Orwell wrote 1984 on Jura. You might have thought that KLF would reference that in their exhibitionist exploit, perhaps a two minutes of hate directed towards...money?

If you can bear it, listen to the first minute of an interview with band founders Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty about the burning:

Most likely they were ignorant of the connection between Orwell and Jura, as was I until I read another of Jenny Diski's essays Don't Think About It. Given that these essays originally appeared in the London Review of Books, it's not surprising that many of them are biography reviews and a favourite technique which Diski uses is compare and contrast, reviewing two different biographies of a subject in parallel. In this case Michael  Sheldon's biography of George Orwell and Hilary Spurling's of his widow Sonia.

George and Sonia were married for just three months, the last of George's life. It was a marriage of convenience. George knew he was dying from tuberculosis and wanted someone with literary editing experience, and whom he trusted implicitly, to manage his legacy. Sonia's end of the bargain was to manage his literary estate to her financial advantage. Thus Sonia became a controversial figure: Sheldon's view of her is unsympathetic whilst that of Spurling, a friend of Sonia's, is to largely exonerate her behaviour and rapaciousness on the grounds of having, for instance, a drunken - possibly psychopathic - stepfather.

It's an interesting technique and answers my question from an earlier blog post: what is an essay? Compare and contrast is a classic staple of English literature examinations, the student invited to write an essay using the technique. Now I know. And Diski is a master (I use that word in a non gender specific way, people, don't complain!) of it. A pleasure to read.

Mattress partner

Not what you think, people. If you're not interested in football - I believe there are such people hiding away somewhere in the world - you'd be forgiven for thinking that the commercial ethic of a football club is simple: get a sponsor to give you some cash, buy some players, win the league.

Manchester United have 23 sponsors. Last time they won the league: 2013. Actually they are called partners not sponsors.

Mlily is United's "Official Global Mattress and Pillow Partner". Based in China, they claim to have the biggest foam production base in Asia which produces close to 2 million moulded pillows every month. Obviously very relevant to a football club. Although how is beyond me. They have a vision partner (polarised lenses), a coffee partner, an electrical styling partner, an online financial trading partner, an official betting partner and a global partner Visit Malta (which seems - nothing against Malta, I've been there - a little underwhelming). I'm not naming these people 'cos I'm not giving them free air time. Nothing comes free, chaps.

I feel this blog is missing out on these cheap and easy commercial opportunities. If there's rampant capitalism going around, I should get my share of it. I can see Boots as my vision partner, Lidl instant coffee, Asda disposable razors, Santander banking, Charlie Cloggs the bookie in my local and Visit Charlestown Harbour. I could certainly do with a new mattress. Probably not a mattress partner though, so to speak. You don't have to give me cash, just goods and services. Or bitcoin.

What I could really do with are: a bionic eye partner, an anti-ageing partner, a gardening partner, a decorating my lounge partner, a jigsaw partner - now there's something Manchester United are missing out on; maybe I could get a finder's fee for introducing them to Vincent Van Gogh.

[What's that you say - he's dead? All the better, I don't need to give him a cut]

Even the once-mighty, now rather less so, Ipswich Town, have nine "partners". Much good is it doing them.

I'm on the phone to Sid Meier to see if he wants to be my gaming partner.....

[Brr brr]

"Hello Sid Meier here, inventor of the Civilization series of computer games and official gaming partner of Manchester ... [enough, I put the phone down, too late to the party]"