A Man of the Cloth

The other evening, while my wife and I were having dinner with some friends, the conversation moved onto the subject of youthful innocence in the age of the internet. We all agreed about the present, but couldn't decide whether our generation were really so naive.

Then I remembered something that happened nearly 30 years ago.

When I was a student in Wales, the landlord of my local pub asked me if I'd be interested in doing some bar work when the National Eisteddfod was held in town during the summer.

I had some reservations. The Eisteddfod was the epicentre of Welsh nationalism. I was very English and my knowledge of Welsh was limited to talking about the weather and telling people that I liked coffee.

However, with the recklessness of youth, I said yes. It would be an experience. One that hopefully wouldn't include being beaten up by irate Welsh speakers.

I needn't have worried. On the first day I discovered that any anti-English sentiment was eclipsed by a bizarre animosity between the Welsh from the north and those from the south. As people realised I was English, they seemed keen to convince me how awful the other part of Wales was: "You see, they think they speak better Welsh than us, but when they say like, they should say hoffi, not licio..."

Once I learned that even the most ardent nationalists were friendlier than many English people, I began to relax and found the company invigorating, particularly that of one man. He was a vicar in his 50s who worked in a boys' home and although he drank a ridiculous amount of beer, it didn't affect his ability to talk with great clarity about Welsh culture and history.

At one point in the evening, he looked worried. "Oh, I don't know if I should drive back to my bed and breakfast in Llanllwni. It's 15 miles and I've had 12 pints. What do you think, eh?"

As the pub landlord had given me a guest room with twin beds, it seemed only right to offer the spare bed to the drunken vicar. He seemed surprised and delighted. I congratulated myself on doing the right thing.

An hour later we went up to the room, where we removed our shirts and trousers and got into our respective beds. The lights were turned off and apart from a purple glow of static from the nylon sheets, the room was completely black and eerily silent.

Then, after a minute, I heard a voice in the dark: "Do you mind if I masturbate?"

I had no idea how to reply and heard myself say "No, but I'm just going out for a while." I walked down the corridor, locked myself in the bathroom and stayed there until half an hour had passed. When I returned, the vicar was snoring like a sedated bull.

Annoyingly, the following morning he'd asked the landlord's permission to use my room for the rest of the week and I was too embarrassed to object. After all, nothing had happened, had it? I spent the next five days being keep awake by the most extraordinary snoring I've ever encountered.

As far as the laying on of hands was concerned, I stayed in the television room and watched 'V' until I felt confident that the good Rev. Davies had passed out.

At one point I wondered if I was simply being priggish about an alcohol-induced episode of onanism, but my unwanted roommate later made remarks to friends that were rather disturbing and confirmed my fears. This wasn't just a drunk, sexually frustrated cleric, but a man who seemed to have a penchant for the young and vulnerable.

This episode reminded me just how different our social mores were in the pre-internet era. When the man told me that he was a vicar who worked in a boys' home, I took it as a cast-iron guarantee of good character.

Today, my naivety seems absurd. But it wasn't unusual and it enabled clergymen, relatives and a number of entertainers to abuse the trust they enjoyed from the public. When I feel depressed by my older son's knowledge of some of the less pleasant aspects of life, I remind myself that he is also less likely to have awkward encounters with masturbating vicars and dodgy relatives.

Mrs Whippy

 

As you can see, I haven't been on a Photoshop course. I had hoped to find a more amusing image, but they're nearly all in landscape format, which doesn't lend itself to the Ladybird treatment. Also, my software is 12-years-old (a bad workman always blames his tools).

I wonder what a Ladybird book of Margaret Thatcher would say? I'm sure that it would be a voice of reason, avoiding the hysterical rhetoric of her admirers and enemies. Perhaps something along the lines of Polly Toynbee's succinct summing-up of the Thatcher era:

"She undoubtedly rescued the prestige of the country from its postwar nadir, but at a high cost to the generosity of its political and social culture."

One other piece of common sense about Margaret Thatcher can be found here. Sadly, most of the  responses to yesterday's news are drivel, from Geri Halliwell's tweet about 'Girl power' to the US news item that claimed that Mrs Thatcher had rescued her people from "30 years of socialism."

I have very clear memories of the first and third terms of the Thatcher government, but during the second I lived in rural Wales, which was stuck in the year 1978. When I returned to London, I felt as if I had travelled 20 years into the future. What had happened while I'd been away? Why was it no longer possible to buy a white coffee without going through a list of 20 options?

Rather than add to the many words that have been written during the last 36 hours, here are some random images that I associate with the Thatcher era:

 

 

 

 

 

 

But amongst the various tributes to Mrs Thatcher's achievements, for good or ill, few have acknowledged the important role that she played in developing Mr Whippy ice cream during her days as an industrial chemist. I hope that the next time you enjoy a soft ice cream - possibly a 99 if you're feeling a little dangerous - think of Mrs Thatcher in her white coat, striving to find a technique of adding air and reducing the milk content. It's almost a metaphor for her later career, but not quite.

NB - I have been informed that Mrs Thatcher worked for Mr Softee, not Mr Whippy. My apologies to all fans of Lyons Maid for this error.

"Life is Better When You Know More"

This post contains a random selection of things that have turned up at work during the last week.

I suspect that most of them have come from house clearances. Some are book-related, but many aren't and I often wonder how they ever make it as far as my desk. However, I'm glad that they do.

First, a 1960s maths textbook. Although I'm a child of the 70s, I vaguely remember covers like this one. I took them for granted at the time, but today I'm struck by how well designed they are:

Much better than this drab, utilitarian cover from a decade earlier:

I wonder if Brian was aware that he was the object of passionate desires?

Staying in the 1950s, I found a 1951 children's annual and when I opened it, this was the first thing I saw:

Okay, I thought, values have changed and I mustn't jump to conclusions. I'll try another page:

At this point I gave up.

In another 1950s book, I found a leaflet advertising the Chambers Encyclopaedia:

I don't think any of us would take issue with that. But in a list of reasons why learning is good, I wonder how many people would come up with the fifth point:

"So, why do you want to enrol on this degree course Mr Pettigrew?"

"Because I wish to increase my television enjoyment."

The leaflet was used as a bookmark, as was this envelope addressed to my favourite actor, Paul Scofield:

Sadly the letter was missing.

I'm sure that Paul Scofield would have enjoyed this shocking photo:

Victorians caught on camera smiling and playing cards. Outrageous!

Next, five portraits of someone on the journey from childhood to adulthood (alternate title: from hairdo to hairdon't):

And they say the 70s was the decade that style forgot! However, mullets aside, I found these photos fascinating. Most of us have albums that depict our own tortuous paths to adulthood, but the evidence is usually too gradual and cluttered with extraneous detail to convey the magitude of this great transformation.

These photos starkly convey the huge, sometimes terrifying changes that we undergo. I only wish that these pictures covered ten years instead of five.

However, by coincidence I discovered this fascinating sequence of portraits of a girl, taken between 1970 and 1982. I'd just watched a 1970s children's programme on DVD and Googled the names of the cast to see what had happened to them. The younger actors seemed to vanish into obscurity, but one of them - Shelley Crowhurst - popped up on the website of photographer Howard Grey.

Finally, while I can accept that photos, diaries and leaflets are book-related, what about this:

As someone in the warehouse said "80 bob? That's £4! A lot of money in those days."

Why did it end up on my desk? Because, I later found out, someone in the warehouse thought that I was the sort of person who'd probably have a projector. They were right!

It took a while to find my dad's old cine projector amongst the collection of things in the loft that I never use, but can't bring myself to throw away. However, after a long search, this afternoon I watched 'Flat Mates'. I appreciated its subversive narrative structure - the women are naked at the beginning but become increasingly clothed as the film progresses - but felt that it was let down by the cinematography and direction.

Overall, it has been a strange week, but rarely dull.