England – Page 5 – For the fainthearted . . .

The snobbery of the Left

The BBC reports on The New Snobbery, written by centre-right political thinker David Skelton. The snobbery identified “is a form of condescension practised by university-educated ‘progressives’ – directed at people they consider ignorant and bigoted.” Skelton’s book includes a chapter in his book on “wokeism” and “identity politics”, which he argues, is policed by a small, privileged elite.

Elsewhere, the elite described by David Skelton are called “Bo-Bos.” A diminutive of Bohemian Bourgeois, it is a description of those who have come to dominate the political Left. Bo-Bos …

Standards of truth

A family tree search revealed a Liverpudlian forebear which prompted a pondering of the word “Liverpudlian.” In England, such genitive form of place names seem confined to individual places. While someone from Liverpool is a Liverpudlian, someone from Blackpool is not a Blackpudlian. While someone from Manchester is a Mancunian, someone from Chester is not a Cunian.

In France, suffixes may be shared by a number of cities, but it does not seem to happen consistently. Someone from Bordeaux is a Bordelais, someone from Cognac is a Cognacais and someone …

No inverted triangles

Driving across Sedgemoor, a sudden storm reduced visibility to yards, the rain bounced off of the bonnet. Each time the forecasters promise us hot weather it comes for a day, or perhaps two, and then it rains.

If there was ever an ideal summer, it was forty-five years ago, the summer of 1976. It was a time of endless warmth, day upon day of predictable blue skies and rising mercury.

There were but three television stations and, in our part of England, just the BBC on the radio, supplemented by …

Museum pieces

When did the “heritage” industry as it now exists begin? Not the preservation of artefacts from the past in museum glass cases, each with neatly typed labels, but the desire to re-create entire houses, railway stations, factories, villages even, exactly as they were?

Perhaps the economic growth of the post-war era combined with an awareness that rapid modernisation was erasing entire elements of the past in order to prompt a desire to preserve items and their contexts. By the 1970s, the folk museum was a common phenomenon, Somerset’s rural life …

The season of slow-moving agricultural vehicles

The tractor drew a huge mechanical sprayer, even with its arms folded, the sprayer filled more than half of the road. There was nothing to be done except to sit calmly in the line of cars until the vehicle turned onto a narrow side road where traffic meeting it would have no choice but to reverse.

My longest delay ever was behind a large yellow combine harvester. Reaching 15 mph at times, more often its progress was more like 10 mph. At such a speed, it would have been overtaken …

A cover lesson

It is the dog end of the school year, three more stumbling days before the gates close for the summer holidays. Numbers are depleted, some are isolating, others just not turning up.

Staff shortages mean free lessons are taken up covering for absent colleagues. Mostly, I am timetabled for English lessons. They are enjoyable times. Because they are cover lessons, there is no pressure to achieve anything specific (some teachers regard cover lessons as times to sit at the front doing marking whilst keeping one eye on the class who …