The Lavatory Reader

Michael Gove vs. Jonathan Swift: The Academy Question

Michael Gove, the new Education Secretary, announced his plan today to invite all primary and secondary schools in England to become academies. The academy programme was launched under New Labour in 2000, overcoming serious opposition from the left wing of the party – but they have thrived and are now considered to be a huge success - although not everyone agrees. The new academies would no longer be under local authority control and they would have greater freedom over the curriculum, admissions policies and teachers’ pay.

This all sounds laudable but the notion that schools could introduce their own elements into the curriculum is both fraught with peril and open to potential abuse.

For example, in the same year that he published Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) advocated the setting up of a number of special academies – that perhaps might not meet with Michael Gove’s expectations today.

 

Gove and Swift: Who would you trust to educate your children properly?

 

I know very few who are Masters of the Grand Air in Shitting; the generality of People doing it with Precipitancy and Heat, as if frighted with what they are about; or else with Indolence and Unconcern, as if it were an Action of no Moment: The common Form of letting down the Breeches: The awkward Postures in Sitting, the frightful Grimaces and barbarous Exclamations now in vulgar Use, all highly require a Reformation.

I should therefore not think it amiss, if Academies were erected, to be under the Direction of Persons of distinguish’d good Breeding and Ingenuity, where young Gentlemen might learn to do what no Body can do for them, En Cavilier, and little Misses to shit in Pots like Ladies: They should be there taught how to walk to the House of Office or Close-Stool, with a handsome Air and Step, and how to take up, or let down, their Clothes in a genteel Manner, and to sit down with a good Grace, and in an inviting Posture: They should there learn how to draw their Features into agreeable Forms, and to utter musical and significant Interjections; They should moreover be instructed in the Art of wiping, it being, as generally now practis’d, but what the Puritan calls the Paint upon the Face of the Great Whore, a filthy Daubing…

And in order to prevent the Confusion, which often happens in these Affairs; when Time falls short, I would humbly propose, that it may be the Fashion for Men to wear Pullies to their Breeches, and the Ladies the like to their Coats, and other under Garments; which should be so fitted, with Lines and Weights, that on loosing a Cord, in the twinkling of an Eye, the Male Incumbrances may fall down to the Heels, and the Female fly up to the Waste.

(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)

 

Like this...                                                      ...or like that?

 

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has, of course, come to power charged with restoring the state of Britain’s finances. In the eighteenth century, as today, money was tight. Swift is alive to this and Michael Gove could do no worse than to heed Swift’s wise words.

 

…when People shall be convinced… that Money laid out this Way will be more profitably expended than in any other, I hope there will not be wanting among our wealthy Gentry those who will undertake the Execution of a Project so conducive to their own, and the general Use and Pleasure of the Publick.

(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)

 

Swift, then, proposed encouraging the richest members of society to pay for the academy building programme. Whether Michael Gove will have the courage to pursue a similar path remains to be seen – but if he does, Swift suggests how Gove might go about it and how much such a scheme might cost:

 

That a Corporation be instituted by Charter, or otherwise, as shall be thought fit, which shall be empower’d to take in Subscriptions for a Sum not exceeding 25000000l. Sterling, to be laid out in building Five Hundred Shitting Colleges, to be erected at convenient Distances…

(Jonathan Swift – The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating Over an House of Office 1726)

 

By Swift’s calculations, five hundred shitting academies could be built for £25 million. It is, of course, hard to calculate just how big this sum might be today, but this website suggests that this sum is equivalent to somewhere between £3.3 billion (using the retail price index) and a staggering £39.5 billion (using average earnings).

In their manifesto, the LibDems advocated a pupil premium of some £2.5 billion for the poorest students – but the Tories are unlikely to agree to even this sum. Now that the coalition has announced that some £6 billion will be clawed back in government cuts, it seems unlikely that the academy scheme, as proposed by Michael Give, will ever aspire to the dizzily shitty heights suggested by Jonathan Swift.

Floating Voters Elect the Lava- Tory Party

The general election is tomorrow but an incredible 38% of us are still deciding for whom to vote. The economy is shattered and we’re fighting two unpopular wars but many people are more preoccupied with the expenses scandal, Bigotgate and the general inter-party bickering.

 

Bigotgate: The Opera

A few choice pieces of political scatology may help to focus the mind by reminding us that bad behaviour is nothing new. And remember - only the Lava-Tory Party can turn floating voters into voting floaters.

For example, if anyone thinks that the modern crop of politicians dishonour their office by hurling abuse at each other, they should consider this piece by the Whig politician Charles James Fox (1749-1806). Although Fox published An Essay upon Wind anonymously, it was very publicly dedicated to the Tory Lord Chancellor, Edward Thurlow (1731-1806).  

 

I have heard, from several of your brother peers, that your lordship farts, without reserve, when seated upon the woolsack, in a full assembly of nobles. This is honest and impartial in Your Lordship, and you merit the thanks of the nation at large… Now this is manly – I admire great Nature in all her operations, and detest the wretched affected being who would check or counteract her in any of her sublime and beautiful works. Fame, my Lord, with her shrill loud trumpet, reports that Your Lordship’s farts are as STRONG, and as SOUND, as your arguments – as VIGOROUS as your intellects – as FORCIBLE as your language – as BRILLIANT as your wit – and as SONOROUS and MUSICAL as Your Lordship’s voice… May Your Lordship continue to fart like an ancient Grecian for many years.

(Charles James Fox – An Essay upon Wind 1787)

Lord Thurlow Squeezes One Out

Politicians were still making cheap scatological jibes in the 20^th century. F.E.Smith, Lord Birkenhead (1872-1930), a one-time Tory Lord Chancellor and a confidant of Winston Churchill, used to pop into the National Liberal Club in Whitehall Court to use the urinals on his way to the Houses of Parliament. Having done this for years, he was eventually accosted by a porter who pointed out that he was in a private club of which he was not a member. "Good God!" replied Birkenhead. "You mean it's a club as well?".

 

The National Liberal Club

Churchill himself, it is said, was once standing at the urinals in the House of Commons when the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee (1883-1967) walked in. Churchill turned his back on him. “Feeling stand-offish today, Winston?” asked Attlee. “No,” Churchill replied, “scared. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalise it.”

 

How Churchill and Attlee Normally Greeted Each Other

However, sexual fraternity could sometimes overcome political antipathy. The Labour MP Tom Driberg (1905-1976) was renowned for his promiscuousness. Churchill allegedly said that “Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name.” In his autobiography, Driberg described his entry to the House of Commons in 1947 and how he was assisted by the bisexual Tory MP, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon (1897-1958). The suggestion that cottaging went on in Parliament between knowing members of rival parties should give today’s puritans pause.

 

Only a few hours after I had been introduced to the House, when I was still wondering about in a daze, and lost, Chips kindly showed me round the most important rooms – the Members’ lavatories. This was an act of pure, disinterested, sisterly friendship, for we had no physical attraction for each other.

(Tom Driberg – Ruling Passions 1977)

 

For his part, the Conservative Enoch Powell (1912-1998) urged restraint. The documentary maker Michael Cockerell (b.1940) once asked him if it was true that he always liked to make a speech on a full bladder. “Absolutely,” Powell replied. “You do nothing to decrease the tension. If anything you seek to increase the tension before you speak… I speak with more passion on a full bladder.”

 

Enoch Speaking on a Full Bladder

However, the greatest piece of political scatology dates back to the seventeenth century. It is often said that the House of Commons today resembles a bear pit – but it is a shadow of its former self.

In 1607, Henry Ludlow farted in Parliament during a debate about the naturalization of the Scots. This may have been an accident – his father Sir Edward Ludlow was renowned for having farted in a committee meeting – but the House fell about and Ludlow’s farting Nay-vote passed into folklore. Endless poems were written about the fart – the best-known being The Censure of the Parliament Fart from the 1620s which begins thus:

 

Never was bestowed such art

Upon the tuning of a Fart.

Down came grave ancient Sir John Crooke

And read his message in his book.

“Very well,” quoth Sir William Morris, “So.”

But Henry Ludlow’s Tail cry’d “No.”

Up starts one fuller of devotion

Then Eloquence; and said a very ill motion.

“Not so neither,” quoth Sir Henry Jenkin,

“The Motion was good; but for the stinking.”

“Well,” quoth Sir Henry Poole, “it was a bold trick

To Fart in the nose of the body politic.”

“Indeed I must confess,” quoth Sir Edward Grevill,

“The matter of itself was somewhat uncivil.”

“Thank God, quoth Sir Edward Hungerford

“That this Fart proved not a Turd…”

 

It is too long to reproduce in full but those who are interested – or have still to decide which way to vote – can view it here. 

Happy voting...

The Volcanic Ash Cloud: A Deliberate Icelandic Attack?

The dust has begun to settle after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland and recriminations are flying around instead – most notably from the airlines and the insurance industries.

But before this descends into a tedious financial dispute, in which Iceland is largely forgotten, it is worth briefly considering the history of Anglo-Icelandic relations over the past 70 years because in this context it is apparent that Iceland has played an absolute blinder.

The Smoking Gun

Iceland and the UK have never got on well. In 1918, after a long struggle, Iceland had become an independent sovereign state although still in union with Denmark. However, this triumph was to be short-lived for just 23 years later, in 1941, neutral Iceland was invaded by the British. This was not an opportunistic land grab but came about because the British feared Germany might invade Iceland herself, threatening British control of the North Atlantic. Nevertheless, it must have infuriated the newly independent state.

Britain and Iceland came to blows again in the Cod Wars, a fishing rights dispute between the two countries which dated back to the 19^th century but began in earnest in 1958. The Second and Third Cod Wars took place in the 1970s – summed up admirably in this parody of the Brotherhood of Man classic, ‘Save Your Kisses For Me.’

Britain lost the Cod Wars but relations between the two countries have not improved. While not attempting a full-scale retaliatory invasion, Iceland has attempted stealthy cultural incursions. The first was spear-headed by Magnús Magnússon who hosted Mastermind between 1972 and 1997 – primarily, one suspects, to make the British look stupid. The second foray was musical: first came Björk and the Sugarcubes; more recently we have had Sigur Rós. As with Magnússon’s mental assault, Iceland’s musical offerings are characterised by being recondite and obscure – again, one suspects that they are designed to make the British feel intellectually inadequate.

Björk

Evidence of a furtive financial offensive emerged in 2008 when Iceland’s economy went into meltdown, costing British investors billions. The Icesave Dispute is far from over and Britain hit back hard by provocatively using anti-terrorism legislation against Iceland.

So, to recap, Britain and Iceland argued about fish in the 19^th century. Britain then invaded Iceland during World War Two. The two countries argued about fish again between the ‘50s and the ‘70s before Iceland started bombarding the United Kingdom with abstruse intellectualism in the form of quiz shows and weird music while simultaneously tricking the British into investing their money in dodgy savings accounts.

Iceland’s latest weapon is the volcanic ash cloud which has already cost the British economy £1 billion – and may have even greater consequences.

This, of course, is a tactical masterstroke. The Icelanders would have the world believe that the eruption is a purely natural phenomenon. However, given the sorry state of Anglo-Icelandic relations, is it conceivable that the dormant Eyjafjallajökull volcano was deliberately and maliciously reawakened – perhaps by the placing of a mighty explosive charge when the wind conditions were favourable? And, of course, there is no possibility of investigating the crime scene when it is buried under millions of tonnes of hot lava.

The B52s sing 'Hot Lava'

However, there is a clue to the scurvy, nefarious nature of the Icelanders buried deep in their scatological history. Consider, for example, the Laxdœla Saga, written in c.1245. Here we read of the time when Kjartan Olafsson besieged the good people of Laugar:

In that time, it was the custom for the privy to be located quite a way from the house... Kjartan blocked all the doors and refused anyone exit and they had to relieve themselves inside for three days. [They] thought it to be a much worse dishonour, greater even than if Kjartan had killed one or two of them instead.

(Laxdœla Saga c.1245 CE)

Clearly, any nation that could behave like this would think nothing of covering their enemies with volcanic ash. Further evidence of Icelandic depravity is provided by Dittmar Bleecken who published an eye-witness account of their sanitary habits in 1565.

Neither is it lawful for any one to rise from the table to make water; but for this purpose the daughter of the house, or another maid or woman, attendeth always at the table, watchfull if any one beckon to them; to him that beckoneth shee gives the chamber-pot under the table with her owne hands; the rest in the meanwhile grunt like swine least any noise bee heard. The water being poured out, hee washeth the bason, and offereth his services to him that is willing; and he is accounteth uncivill who abhorreth this fashion.

(Dittmar Bleecken – Voyage to Iceland and Greenland 1565)

The connection between matters of excretion and volcanic eruption is well-known to the student of scatology. Charles James Fox, for example, had this to say in his instructive essay on the differing types of flatulence:

As to fart no. 5 – which I have emphatically denominated the sullen wind-bound fart, it is the most uncomfortable, unhealthy and troublesome of all farts whatever that have been yet discovered, as it comes slowly forth, with a painful sensation and sudden rumbling, like to pent-up air in a volcano, which sometimes produces earthquakes and horrible shakes of the earth from not having a free and open passage for the gas or phlogistic air to escape. Those who are unhappy as to issue such farts from their unwholesome premises are really patients; they cannot be well with such a plentitude of impure and foul air pent up in every cavity of their volcano.

(Charles James Fox – An Essay upon Wind 1787)

So, as the political and financial repercussions of the volcanic eruption echo around the world, just ask yourself this: is it not possible that it is simply the latest in a long line of cunning and dastardly attacks from a fearsome and somewhat unhygienic bunch of Norsemen?

A Typical Icelander

Gordon Brown at the Chilcot Inquiry: Wha Wants Me For a Bawbee?

It is Gordon Brown’s turn today to face the Chilcot Inquiry. If the committee does its job properly, there should be nowhere for him to hide – except through obfuscation and denial. The fact that it is being broadcast live will only compound Brown’s sense of being intensely scrutinised. However, the Scottish history so beloved of Brown (he holds a PhD in history from Edinburgh University) offers a neat if surprising solution for his discomfort.

 

 

Scotland in the seventeenth century was lagging behind in sanitation. As late as 1750, men carrying buckets and large black cloaks would walk the streets of Edinburgh, crying ‘Wha wants me for a bawbee?’ – an archaic term for a Scottish halfpenny. Upon handing over a coin, the customer would squat over the bucket, whilst being shielded by the cloak.

The great sanitation engineer, S.S.Hellyer, noted a century and a half later in 1893 that the phrase, ‘Wha wants me for a bawbee?’, was still being “used against the Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom.”

Its power was certainly not lost on the satirists. In 1792 James Gillray depicted Pitt the Younger (the Prime Minister, although that term was not then in use) squatting on a chamber pot while his Home Secretary, the wily Scottish lawyer Henry Dundas (the last person to be impeached in the United Kingdom), covered and protected him with a cloak – an apt and scurrilous metaphor for the legal shenanigans by which Dundas shielded Pitt from his political opponents.

 

(James Gillray - Wha Wants Me? June 1792)

Today, of course, the roles are somewhat different. It is our Prime Minister who is the Scot and the Home Secretary is not a dodgy lawyer but a former Tesco shelf-stacker and postman. How times have changed.

Nevertheless, as Gordon Brown faces up to the Iraq Inquiry, he just might be pondering on the past and wishing that his erstwhile Home Secretary (or anyone else for that matter) would rush into the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre and throw a large, metaphorical cloak around him.

Berlusconi, Napoleon's Bed and Nocturnal Farting

Silvio Berlusconi has bought a bed that once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. This public act of narcissism is hardly surprising – Berlusconi has previous form, comparing himself to both Napoleon and Christ in 2006.

 Italy itself, of course, is divided between those who adore him and those who find him exquisitely embarrassing. The latter have long been aware of his Napoleonic fixation, even fearing that it could end somewhere quite sinister.  100,000 left-wingers took to the streets of Rome in 2002, amid rumours that what Berlusconi ultimately wanted was a dictatorship. In the vanguard of this protest march was a vast effigy of Berlusconi, characterised as Boney himself.  

 

But to return to the bed. It is well known that Bonaparte was short of stature and that this, in part, drove him to great things. Berlusconi has been similarly mocked for his size and for having something of a Napoleon complex – although he claims to be 5’7’’ (small in my view, but there you go).  But, tellingly, Berlusconi has asked for Bonaparte’s priceless bed to be, not lengthened, but widened. And at a stroke, Berlusconi has confirmed himself as both a cultural vandal and a short-arsed git.

In publicising this to the world, he probably assumes that it looks good - he, Silvio Berlusconi, can sleep in the bed of an Emperor (conveniently forgetting the ‘vertically challenged’ association). But it gets better than that, for he, Silvio Berlusconi, is such an extraordinary lover, such a demanding athlete of the night, that his bed must be wider than Napoleon and Josephine made do with.

Berlusconi’s sexual appetite is renowned. Salacious gossip suggests that he likes young women, escorts and anything in between. Napoleon too liked a bit of dirt – returning from a campaign, he is alleged to have sent a message ahead to Josephine with explicit instructions: “Will return to Paris tomorrow evening. Don’t wash.”

However, at 74 years old, the continuing rumours of Berlusconi’s rabbit-like libido grow increasingly surreal. This latest story about the bed-widening sounds, like much of the stuff that emanates from this arch media manipulator, like a lot of hot air…

…which segues neatly, if spuriously, into this excerpt from Donald Jack’s Me Too, one of the funniest descriptions ever written of a pompous old idiot lying in bed with a much younger lover who suddenly realises that he has to fart.

 

 If I let go, the sound would almost certainly issue forth as a veritable trumpet voluntary. The bedclothes would probably billow as well, assuming they weren’t blasted off entirely with a rending of sheets and a cloud of feathers. Anne would be absolutely disgusted – or worse, asphyxiated…

There was only one thing for it. Carefully reaching over Anne’s sleeping form, I covered her face with the sheet; then, inch by inch, hauled out the bedclothes on my side, cursing myself for having tucked them so firmly under the mattress; then slowly maneuvered until my bare behind was exposed to the chill air; and with bated breath, so to speak, concentrated intently on loosing the appropriate valve a quarter turn at a time, releasing the pressure as slowly and discreetly as possible, in a long, tightly controlled flow.

The faint hissing went on for so long that I began to get worried, imagining my entire form slowly deflating like the world’s largest sausage balloon. I had a frightful picture of Anne waking up in the morning to find nothing left of me but a puckered end – assuming she was not found dead in bed from fresh bread.

But the emission finally ended, concluding its efforts with a stertorous burst and a faint bubbling.

Five minutes later, after I’d finished waving to somebody in the darkness, and was just settling down again, another misshapen bubble of air started to build up, and by the time I’d dealt with it I was so thoroughly chilled in the exposed region that I even considered warming it up against Anne’s naked back; except that the shock of contact with a pair of icy buttocks would probably have shot her out of bed and embedded her in the far wall.

(Donald Jack – Me Too 1983)

 

Cashmere Lavatory Paper - Luxury Is Nothing New

Recent news that the British supermarket chain, Waitrose, is now stocking cashmere lavatory paper has got the world in a twitter.

It should be pointed out, however, that no cashmere fibres are included in the paper, but that the paper is covered in an oil that is extracted from the hairs of the cashmere goat.

 

 

People have been quick to describe the long and painful history of lavatory paper, expressing surprise that it has taken man so long to invent a comfortable solution. But in their research, they have neglected to study scatological literature – the finest reference source available to us.

For luxury arse-wiping is nothing new. In the 16^th century, Francois Rabelais described how the giant Gargantua carried out “long and curious experiments” by which he “invented a method of wiping.. [an] arse which is the most lordly, the most excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen.”

 

(Gargantua by Gustave Doré 1873)

Gargantua tries various items of clothing such as a lady’s neckerchief, a slipper and various hats (but “note that some hats are smooth, some shaggy, some velvety, some of taffeta, and some of satin. The best of all are the shaggy ones, for they make a very good abstersion of the faecal matter.”)

He experiments with many different plants – such as sage, fennel, cabbage, and beets – before, perhaps unwisely, moving onto nettles and comfrey (“But that gave me the bloody-flux of Lombardy, from which I was cured by wiping myself with my codpiece.”)

He uses more conventional materials such as hay and straw – and, of course, paper, of which he is surprisingly dismissive:

Who his foul bum with paper wipes

Will on his ballocks leave some chips…’

Finally, Gargantua turns to animals and birds, wiping himself “with a hen, a cock, and a chicken, with a calf’s skin, a hare, a pigeon, and a cormorant… [and] an otter.” He then reveals his secret:

“But to conclude, I say and maintain that there is no arse-wiper like a well-downed goose, if you hold her neck between your legs. You must take my word for it, you really must. You get a miraculous sensation in your arse-hole, both from the softness of the down and from the temperate heat of the goose herself; and this is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest of the intestines, from which it reaches the heart and the brain. Do not imagine that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian Fields arises from their asphodel, their ambrosia, or their nectar, as those ancients say. It comes, in my opinion, from their wiping their arses with the neck of a goose…"

(Francois Rabelais - Gargantua & Pantagruel, Book 1, Chp. 32. c.1532)

(Deborah Frazier, from The Porcelain God by Julie Horan 1996)

The Iraq Inquiry: The Peculiar Memories of Tony Blair

The Inquiry into the Iraq War is being widely reported and blogged. However, it is difficult for anyone not actually present to gain an accurate picture of the atmosphere in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. And – given that the Inquiry will almost certainly fail to ask the big questions – I have been forced to resort to satire instead.

The depiction offered here is inspired by and loosely based on Tony Blair’s performance at the Inquiry on 29^th January 2010. With the odd amendment and name change, it is taken in its entirety from Bruce Robinson’s The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman (1998). Better known for writing and directing Withnail and I (1986), Robinson’s novel describes the voyage of self-discovery of Thomas Penman, the eponymous teenage hero, albeit a voyage punctuated by his tendency to defecate at inappropriate times.

The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair                      Thomas Penman

 

The scene opens midway through the morning’s proceedings…

 

Twenty minutes past eleven on the clock. John Chilcot, privy council member and former civil servant, slumped under it, bored beyond endurance. He was a stale little twot with too many pens: a mandarin with a safe pair of hands, although some questioned whether he had the backbone to take on former government ministers. He had lived an unfulfilling sort of life. Out of hope. Like a used match put back in the box…

Tony Blair started drawing spokes round the inkwell. His eyes drifted along the desk to a tiny gully filled with pencil leads and bits of India rubber. Winter sunlight cut across them and suddenly they were a fleet of guided missile destroyers – they were Royal Navy destroyers plunging in and out of an old and inky Persian Gulf. Within seconds his eyes slipped focus and his arse was on to it. He could hardly believe it, this was dangerous, he was already carrying a Shakespearian potato and the perils of another if Chilcot woke up were alarming.

He tried to force his eyes off but couldn’t, the destroyers were going a beauty. By now his pupils were so severely dilated any notion of control was fantasy. Suddenly, it half barged out, hot and uncompromising; nobody wanted it, least of all Tony, and he tore eyes away to check it, and the worst of all worlds was reality. He was staring straight into the eyes of Chilcot. Now something really unuseful happened, Tony grinned, grinned like he was sharing something with the cunt. But what else could he do, raised and weeping, staring into the eyes of this myopic prat with something so enormous in his pants it felt like a knee.

The moment was quite awful.

Chilcot looked away, beating a pen against his teeth, and the next time Tony looked at him he was on his feet scanning the Inquiry for a victim. The question of at what stage Britain had promised America they would support military action against Iraq was now going to have to be answered. It was Tony who was going to have to answer it, he knew it, and he was right.

‘Pens down.’

Somehow Chilcot managed to lower his head into his pinstripes. He was looking amongst them and taking his time. Everything that was wrong with his life was here assembled, a Committee of jumped-up historians and quangocrats – Larry Freedman, Martin Gilbert, Roddy Lyne and Ushar Prashar, various other assorted thickheads and, of all things, the general public – this was Chilcot’s lot, and this was the end of the line. And there in the middle of them was that foul little oaf with its ears stuck out attempting to look inconspicuous. 

Tony looked back at him, trying to look normal, blend in with the others, so to speak…

‘When was military support offered, then?’ said Chilcot. ‘When was it?’

A few hands went up, particularly that of Goldsmith, who was obsequious to authority and looked like he was trying to hang from the lamp.

‘Blair?’

The hands kept waving but Chilcot wasn’t interested; stood there under raised eyebrows with his cheeks blown out. He did this when he was waiting, leisurely releasing the air like his head had a slow puncture. And he was still waiting, hands thrust in his pockets like a pair of Colts aimed at a stenographer in the front row.

‘When? Blair?’

The double question mark was ominous.

‘On the eve of the war, sir.’

‘The eve of the war?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The Eve?’ he said, his emphasis promoting it to a capital. ‘Not in 2002 then?’

Tony looked in his dossier like there might be something in it.

‘I meant, 2002, sir.’

‘2002? Did you say, 2002?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The twat wasn’t looking cheerful, stared with magnified eyes and his pudgy little nose.

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No, sir?’ he volleyed. ‘And the eve of the war isn’t true, is it sir?’

‘No, sir.’

The silence belonged to Chilcot, he didn’t have a lot of use for it.

‘Do you even know what a UN Resolution is?’

‘A UN Resolution, sir?’

‘A UN Resolution, boy?’

‘No, sir.’

Tony was facing crisis, fighting the incomer.

‘What have you been writing there?’ said Chilcot. He took a pace or two forward. ‘What have you got in your dossier?‘

(Some stickman soldiers shooting at each other, the date and a drawing of Cherie’s bum.)

‘Will you put your arm down, Goldsmith!’

The eyes were on him, Tony shook his head. He had nothing.

‘On your feet.’

It took a repetition of the instruction for him to rise. He went up like an old man with grit in the joints, noticeably at a tilt. Standing for interrogation added a new dimension, he could feel the weight of it pointing at the person behind him. At all costs he had to hang on, and he did so with lips drawn back exposing lightly clenched teeth.

‘Something amusing you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then wipe that grin off your face.’

‘I’m not grinning, sir’

‘Don’t answer back.’

Tony decided there was only one way out of this, and it was through the door as soon as possible.

‘I don’t feel well, sir.’

‘What?’

‘I need to go downstairs, and report.’

‘Report what?’

‘Stomach ache.’

‘How very convenient,’ said Chilcot, turning an eye to the Inquiry. ‘You sit here all morning saying nothing, and now suddenly you have stomach ache?’

‘Yes, sir, I need to go, sir.’

‘Go where?’

‘Lavatory, sir.’

‘Shall I tell you something, Blair?’ he said, with transparent dismissal of the request. ‘You are an idle little chump, a loafer, and a liar. You get yourself into trouble and you think you can scuttle off to the nearest lavatory, well, that isn’t the way politics works, boy! And as you progress through it you will discover that there are responsibilities, parliamentary procedures, international laws, resolutions and… and… mortgages. Do you think I can pay my mortgage in a lavatory?’

If it was a joke it was unintended, but it got a dull laugh from one or two in the back and Chilcot suddenly became stage-struck...

Click here to read the rest of The Peculiar Memories of Tony Blair, in which Sir John Chilcot discovers Tony's pornographic doodles of Cherie, Tony is sent to be caned by the Queen and is subsequently discovered hiding in the Ladies' Lavatory by Polly Toynbee and Kate Adie...

Good Riddance to the Farting Cadburys

Much lamenting across Britain with the news that Cadbury (who has been making and selling chocolate since 1824) is to be taken over by the American Kraft Foods, the second largest food and drinks company on the planet. 

 

All very sad, of course, and one must worry whether the takeover will lead to job losses or make a profit for the shareholders but it is worth considering whether Britain might just not be better off without chocolate. Obesity concerns aside, it is a dangerous commodity. Take, for instance, Horace Walpole's account of the death of King George II in 1760.

He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little after seven, he went into the water-closet; the German valet de chamber heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor, with a gash on his right temple, by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired.

(Horace Walpole - Letter to George Montagu 25th October 1760)

 

 

When I first read this passage , I assumed the cause of this untimely death was the water-closet. I now suspect that the chocolate at least played a part.

It is also worth remembering that the Cadburys were Quakers. Their dread of hard liquor is part of the reason why they went into the tea, coffee and cocoa business in the first place. I have since learned that these hot beverages have a pernicious, windy effect and, in extreme cases, can lead people to become Quakers themselves - as Jonathan Swift reveals in The Benefit of Farting Explained.

As in sipping of these liquors hot, there is commonly as much wind as water sucked in, which through modesty being debarred a passage downwards when nature offers, recoils up into the bowels, stomach and head, and there occasions all those dreadful symptoms usually ascribed to the vapours – all which one seasonable fart might have prevented. It has likewise been assigned as the first cause of Quakerism and enthusiasm, as Hudibras observes.

As wind in hypochondria pent

Is but a fart, if downward sent;

But, if suppressed, it upward flies

And vents itself in Prophecies.

(Jonathan Swift - The Benefit of Farting Explained 1722)

 

So three cheers for Kraft Foods. They are, unwittingly but at a stroke, ridding the United Kingdom from a substance that has caused the death of kings and led to social humiliation for many a commoner.

Earthquakes and Farting

The unfolding tragedy of Haiti’s earthquake should hardly be taken lightly. It is certainly not something to make religious capital out of as the right-wing televangelist nutjob Pat Robertson saw fit to do when he suggested that the earthquake was a divine punishment for the nation’s founders making a ‘pact with the Devil’ to liberate themselves from the French slave owners in 1791.   

Fortunately, Robertson’s comments were promptly slapped down by the Christian mainstream, the blog community and by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Even the Presidential Palace, built in 1918, was critically damaged. 

But history tells us that structures can be built to survive such natural disasters. Pliny, in his Natural History, for example, eulogises over the solid construction of Rome’s Cloaca Maxima, the world’s oldest extant sewage system which dates back to 600 BCE.

 

Occasionally, too, the Tiber, overflowing, is thrown backward in its course, and discharges itself by these outlets: obstinate is the contest that ensues within between the meeting tides, but so firm and solid is the masonry, that it is enabled to offer an effectual resistance. Enormous as are the accumulations that are carried along above, the work of the channels never gives way. Houses falling spontaneously to ruins, or levelled with the ground by conflagrations, are continually battering against them; the ground, too, is shaken by earthquakes every now and then; and yet, built as they were in the days of Tarquinius Priscus, seven hundred years ago, these constructions have survived, all but unharmed.

(Gaius Plinius Secundus – Natural History 77 AD)

 

The awesome power of earthquakes, of course, is not something that has gone unnoticed by comical scatologists. In 1607, Henry Ludlow farted in Parliament during a debate about the naturalization of the Scots. This may have been an accident – his father Sir Edward Ludlow was renowned for having farted in a committee meeting – but the House fell about and Ludlow’s farting Nay-vote passed into folklore. Endless poems were written about the fart – the best-known being The Censure of the Parliament Fart, a satirical work of unknown authorship. At one point, the act of farting is likened to an earthquake of devastating scale.  

 

Saith Mr. Moore, let us this motion repeale,

What’s good for the private, is ill for the Common weal.

A good year on this Fart, quoth gentle Sir Harry,

He hath caus’d such an earth-quake, thay my Coal-pits miscarry.

(Anonymous – The Censure of the Parliament Fart c.1620s)

 

The association of farting with earthquakes was taken further by the Whig politician Charles James Fox (1749-1806) in his slightly puerile Essay Upon Wind, in which he analyses the ‘different species of farts’.

As to fart no. 5 – which I have emphatically denominated the sullen wind-bound fart, it is the most uncomfortable, unhealthy and troublesome of all farts whatever that have been yet discovered, as it comes slowly forth, with a painful sensation and sudden rumbling, like to pent-up air in a volcano, which sometimes produces earthquakes and horrible shakes of the earth from not having a free and open passage for the gas or phlogistic air to escape. Those who are unhappy as to issue such farts from their unwholesome premises are really patients; they cannot be well with such a plentitude of impure and foul air pent up in every cavity of their volcano. However, this produces the sullen fart, issuing slowly, and mournfully murmuring at long and stated intervals; medicinal assistance is here necessary. As I have often suffered in this case myself (particularly last week, when, in a sleepless night, I thought of penning this useful essay), I think I may, with some confidence, take the liberty of saying to what I attribute the farting malady and, as a benevolent man always ready to assist my fellow creatures, and being a sincere friend to ease and liberty, I shall at the same time point out the cause.

(Charles James Fox – An Essay upon Wind 1787)

 

While humour is said to be the best medicine, none of this is likely to be of comfort to the Haitians who will be better served by generous donations to any of various disaster funds. Suggested places to donate are here:

Disasters Emergency Committee Haiti

and here:

Merlin USA

 

Pat Robertson, meanwhile, deserves the collective contempt and the combined farts of the world.

Darling's Budget: Failing to Take the Piss

Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report perfectly captured the air of desperation swirling around the government. With the general election looming, it was no surprise that Darling decided to throw a populist bone to the masses, in the shape of a 50% tax on bankers.

Politically astute though this may prove to be, one can’t help thinking that Darling was simply responding to massive pressure from campaigning sites such as 38 Degrees – rather than coming up with the policy through his own initiative.

How different the state of our economy might be if the Treasury was prepared to think outside of the box. For all New Labour’s talk of blue sky thinking, not one of Gordon Brown’s apparatchiks has the vision of someone like the Emperor Vespasian (9-79 CE) who, when the public finances of Rome were tight, decided to impose a tax on all the urine collected in the city. 

 

Alistair Darling or the Emperor Vespasian: who would you choose?

 

Nero had experimented with a similar tax a decade earlier but Vespasian was the first to see urine as a keystone of his economic policy and, as such, placed huge pots throughout the city for the people to use. Tax was payable by the head of each household every four years. The urine collected was then sold to be used in tanning, to stiffen cloth and as a source of ammonia to whiten togas. Titus, Vespasian’s son, complained about the tax but, unlike Alistair Darling, the Emperor had a ready answer for him.

 

When Titus found fault with him for contriving a tax upon public conveniences, he [Vespasian] held a piece of money from the first payment to his son’s nose, asking whether its odour was offensive to him. When Titus said “No,” he replied, “Yet it comes from urine.”

(Suetonius – De Vita Caesarum 121 CE)

 

The Latin proverb Pecunia non olet (‘Money does not smell’) may date from this time – and is something that Darling should think about as he lashes out at the bankers.

Vespasian, unlike Alistair Darling, was to be long remembered for his taxes – even today, the street pissoirs of France are known as Vespasiennes and in Italy as Vespasiani.