Back Story, Page 7

  Patriotism is a weird thing. I don’t know whether it’s at all positive or useful, but it seems pointless to suppress it. It can’t be any worse than supporting a football club and probably isn’t much more likely to lead to terrible violence. (I never supported my local football club, which was fifty yards from the house where I grew up – partly because I wasn’t encouraged to feel rooted in my home town, partly because home games fucked up the local parking and put my parents in a bad mood, and partly because I find football intensely dull, which is why I’ve never supported any other football team either. But I can’t deny I always hope Wales will win the rugby.)

  Like following a sports team, being proud of your country allows you to take credit, or at least derive pleasure, from successes that you’ve actually had little or nothing to do with, like winning the Premier League or the Second World War. But unlike supporting a sports team, patriotism also involves complicity in events and activities that are downright dastardly. Britain’s history provides plenty of examples: the slave trade, the potato famine, imperialism, child labour and so on. You have to find an answer to the question: ‘How can you possibly support and be proud of an institution that has been responsible for these terrible acts?’ (as Billy Butlin’s wife used to ask as they watched the redcoats).

  Different sorts of patriot have different answers to this question. I get the feeling that the French – having had so many different constitutions and regimes, as well as the discontinuity caused by German occupation – are more distanced from their country’s past. They think: ‘Our politicians, the country’s official actions, our former empire – they’ve not got much to do with what France really is. We’re all about café culture, baguettes, art and injecting people in the bottom.’

  But this type of patriotism doesn’t work for me. I love my country and am proud of its achievements, but consequently I also accept and feel shame for the bad things this state has done, even though I wasn’t even born for most of them. I’d still say that, overall, Britain is a worthy object of pride because it has been guilty of terrible things less often than most civilisations that have wielded equivalent power. Humans are always being horrible to each other and I genuinely take pride in the fact that, when this country had the whip hand, it was significantly less cruel than most. A pretty slender line of reasoning to justify singing the national anthem, you might say, but it works for me.

  And, oddly, that annoying bias many Britons show against their own country is something I am perversely rather proud of too. It is a matter of national pride for me that I come from a nation less than averagely inclined towards national pride. I unquestioningly admire our self-questioning inclination. I love our self-loathing. It shows cultural maturity (others would say dotage). I’m reminded of Britain’s attitude by what Calgacus, the Caledonian general, said as he prepared to confront the conquering Romans:

  Here at the world’s end, on its last inch of liberty, we have lived unmolested to this day, defended by our remoteness and obscurity. But there are no other tribes to come. Nothing but sea and cliffs and these more deadly Romans whose arrogance you cannot escape by obedience and self-restraint. To plunder, butcher, steal – these things they misname empire. They make a desolation and they call it peace.

  It’s a brilliant speech – it makes me shiver. But I expect you’re wondering how that searing rejection of imperialism can possibly resonate with my pride in Britain’s history. You may think it’s because I associate that ancient Caledonian attitude with British steel and defiance. Well, you’d be wrong. Because it’s not really a Caledonian speech at all – as Simon Schama pointed out in his BBC Two History of Britain, it was written by Tacitus, a Roman.

  Schama skated over this detail because he was using the speech to encapsulate early Scottish feelings of defiance. But I love the fact that it’s Roman – I think it’s one of the greatest achievements of the Roman empire. Never mind the armies, the buildings, the roads, the central heating, the aqueducts, the statues of men with their nobs out and the popular entertainment formats gruesome enough to make Simon Cowell blush: this speech shows empathy. Within Roman civilisation, there was the sophistication to understand all that was wrong, offensive and alien about Rome to its enemies – and to express that better than those enemies ever could.

  History, they say, is written by the victors. Well, here the Roman victors show the compassion, the sensitivity and also the impish cheek to make the vanquished the sympathetic characters. Two thousand years later, Robert Webb and I wrote a sketch about the SS in which they asked themselves, having noticed the skulls on their caps, ‘Are we the baddies?’ The Romans were asking themselves this in AD 100. I think that’s amazing and I believe it’s a self-analytical skill that British civilisation shares with ancient Rome (and that the Nazis, in their adolescent pomp, manifestly lacked). The Romans had it first – but then, we never fed people to lions.

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  The Mystery of the Unexplained Pole

  On the Belsize Road roundabout, there’s an old FRP. This stands for Flat Roofed Pub and is the coinage of my friend Jon Taylor. Pubs with flat roofs are almost always terrible – scruffy, rough estate pubs covered in tatty England flag bunting. Recently built, these are pubs that have been put there purely to supply the locals with alcohol – there’s nothing historical, gastronomic or even twee about them EVER. They’re just places for pit bulls to chew toddlers while their parents drunkenly watch the darts on a big screen. (In nicer pubs it’s possible actually to play darts, but not in FRPs – the toddlers would only throw them at the pit bulls.)

  I’d genuinely love to hear of any exceptions to this rule – of flat roofed pubs that have an impressive range of real ales and new world wines, or a good reputation for food (the demographic of my readership isn’t all I’d hoped if I need to say that carveries do not count); of places where there hasn’t been a fight for years and people don’t bring savage-looking dogs. I suspect there’ll be a few nationally that are adequate, where you probably won’t get beaten up, but I’d be delighted to hear of any that are actively nice.

  The Lillie Langtry, which I slagged off a couple of chapters ago, is an FRP in spirit (or rather in alcopop) but it doesn’t really have a roof. It’s got several storeys of flats on top of it. But I suppose flats are flat and so, if your roof is a flat, by definition your roof is flat. It’s a flat roof in two senses.

  This FRP on the Belsize Road roundabout – fortunately now closed – was called ‘The Britannia’, which name is typical of the genre in its slight overtones of nationalism. A name like that doesn’t guarantee a racist clientele but it’s surely more likely than in a Grapes or a Queen Charlotte – or even a Saracen’s Head. ‘The Albion’ is another FRP favourite. If anyone knows of an FRP called The Albion where they do organic cheeses, then let me know because that’s a massive outlier on the graph. It’s probably in Malta.

  The Britannia is now a Tesco Express, which is much more in keeping with the architecture. Very few supermarkets have pitched roofs – I’ve noticed a few in small Cotswold towns and it looks wrong, like a robot wearing a bobble hat – and I’ve never seen a thatched one. But rather oddly, Tesco has decided to preserve the tall pole in which the Britannia sign was once displayed and replace it with a sort of ‘Tesco Express’ pub sign. I don’t really understand this. Surely that pole can’t be listed? But, if not, wouldn’t Tesco get rid of it?

  The fact that Tesco is constantly and rapaciously expanding, choking out local businesses like bindweed smothering roses, isn’t something you’d think it would want to draw attention to. Nevertheless, there the post stands, irrefutable evidence that this was once a pub – another scalp that the vicious supermarket giant has collected, drying in the wind.

  Of course I know that the closure of this pub was no loss to civilisation but, in the imagination of a passer-by who doesn’t, the hostelry that Tesco replaced is going to be a veritable ‘Moon Under Water’. (That’s the name George Orwell invented for his ideal Lon
don pub – somewhere that never actually existed. It was later adopted by Wetherspoon’s, who have several pubs of that name and many other variants like ‘Moon in a Shopping Centre’ or ‘Moon in the Face of Orwell’s Memory’.) So why has Tesco drawn attention to The Britannia’s ghost? It’s inexplicable.

  I’m not good with the low-level unexplained. I worry away at such things. I’m quite relaxed about the great mysteries of the universe; when it comes to the existence of God, for example, I figure that, as with a good episode of Inspector Morse, I’ll find out what’s going on eventually. But also like Morse I do tend to bang on about tiny details that don’t quite make sense. That’s used to signify a sleuth’s maverick brilliance in lots of detective fiction: Columbo, Poirot, Holmes and Miss Marple are forever harping on about what happened to missing cufflinks or why there was no tea in the pot, while those around them try to bring their attention back round to the fact that there’s blood and guts up the wall.

  I find their impatience odd. Particularly where Captain Hastings is concerned. Do you know Captain Hastings from the early ITV Poirots? He’s not in them any more, now they’ve got a bit mopier and more cinematic. I rather like that character – it’s a very entertaining turn. And one of the funniest things about it, or most annoying things depending on my mood, is how Hastings, who shows few signs either of great intellect or an inaccurately high estimation of that intellect (basically he’s an idiot and he knows it) keeps moaning on at Poirot for wasting time.

  ‘What are we doing checking the garden shed, Poirot?’

  ‘What possible relevance could an unexplained speck of powder have, Poirot?’

  ‘What are we doing at Somerset House, Poirot? Who cares who’s married who?’

  All the time. Now, every day this man, this idiot, watches Poirot brilliantly solve murders on the basis of small clues. And yet the next day he has always forgotten and is basically saying: ‘What the hell do you know, you Belgian twat?’ Never, not once, does he say: ‘Well, personally I can’t see the relevance of the lipstick but, do you know what, it’s your call how we investigate this because on the last two hundred or so cases I’ve come to the conclusion that you know what you’re doing. So you decide. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  Unless of course the Poirot cases in Christie’s stories are supposed to be the exceptions. Maybe that’s what she’s implying with Hastings’s moaning – that nine times out of ten Poirot is wasting everyone’s time sweating the detail. I think that must be it, because otherwise Hastings would shut up. God knows, in real life, Poirot would be so idolised that no path of inquiry he advocated, however absurd, would be neglected. He’d be the Woody Allen of detective work: given complete creative control long after his gifts had waned.

  That’s how I behave about things like this inexplicable pub sign. I can’t let go of them, even though there’s no greater mystery – no murder – for them to be the key to. I might be guilty of the same pattern of thinking that leads people to give money, or even devote their lives, to donkey sanctuaries. People focus on saving donkeys from cruelty because the pit of human pain is too deep to contemplate. Solving donkeys’ problems seems much more achievable and an appropriately humane gesture. Similarly, maybe, I worry away at small mysteries like the Tesco pub sign, and rant about tiny irritations on TV panel shows and online ‘vodcasts’ as a displacement activity – to avoid thinking about things that really matter.

  There was an inexplicable thing about my prep school (New College School of the aforementioned non-Stalinist approach to lunches). It was a school rule which stated that: ‘On no account should any boy ever enter Bath Place.’ Bath Place, I should explain, isn’t a weird public school name for a bathroom, or swimming pool, diving hole, or buggery nook. It’s just a small cobbled courtyard off Holywell Street, just round the corner from the school.

  There was a mystery surrounding this rule, which gave the picturesque Bath Place an enormous cachet. Some said that a boy from the school was murdered there, others that one of the school’s former headmasters used to frequent the Turf Tavern, an ancient pub which is accessed via Bath Place, and didn’t wish to be observed by his charges while drinking.

  It always struck me as odd, however, because boys from the school basically weren’t allowed to go anywhere at all during school hours. So why specify Bath Place? Why did the anti-Bath Place rules overlie the general anti-everywhere-that’s-not-the-school ones? ‘On no account should any boy ever enter Bath Place.’ The implication was, even your parents weren’t allowed to take you there. Bath Place must surely be the best place in the world? I don’t know. I never went.

  There were a few occasions when I was allowed out of school without a teacher or parent. This was when I was in a school play, which necessitated remaining at school until the evening performance. On those occasions your parents could write a note permitting you to go into town, in the company of a group of other boys, to have dinner there rather than sharing the boarders’ tea. And who on earth would want anything to do with the boarders’ tea if you could go to McDonald’s?

  McDonald’s was a new arrival to Oxford and consequently had a tremendous atmosphere of transatlantic glamour. I yearned to have birthday parties there, but obviously that wasn’t allowed. I had to have horrible birthday teas at home with home-made cake and sandwiches and jelly and sausages on sticks. My parents didn’t seem to realise that I could have tea in the garden in the sunlit innocence of childhood any time, while opportunities to stuff down McDonald’s quarter-pounders under neon lights were fleeting.

  My worst birthday tea was when I was eight. It was our last summer in the Staunton Road house – we moved round the corner the following November – and, by this stage, I was too old for party games. I felt like I was practically an adult and so, instead of games, my parents agreed to take my friends and me to see The Wrath of Khan at the cinema.

  With such a grown-up outing on the cards, I felt brave enough to invite John Wilkinson. John Wilkinson was the most popular boy in my class – the one who was best at football and cricket, who everyone wanted to be friends with. I desperately wanted to be friends with him, but was also self-aware enough to slightly despise myself for it. Nevertheless, alongside the six or seven invitations I issued to my proper friends, I sidled up to John Wilkinson and asked him nonchalantly if he fancied the birthday trip to Wrath of Khan.

  He said yes! This was a tremendous leap forward for my social confidence, not to mention the glamour of the guest list. It’s how Ricky Gervais must have felt when Ben Stiller agreed to appear on Extras.

  Off we went to the cinema, then back to my house for tea. I asked John Wilkinson, the guest of honour, to sit next to me, pointedly distancing myself from my less popular, closer friends. Soon I wouldn’t need them. It’s how Ricky Gervais must feel when he sees Robin Ince.

  There were sandwiches for tea, but these were just a dull routine before the main culinary event. My mum had made a special birthday cake, a sort of black forest gateau, which I considered to be extremely sophisticated. As it was set down ceremonially on the table, John Wilkinson, with the lightning-fast reactions so admired in his slip-fielding, grabbed some pepper and put it all over the cake. It was ruined.

  He wasn’t a nasty boy. I think he just got a bit over-excited. He was, after all, only eight. But I was enormously upset, while simultaneously knowing I had to hide that to save face. And, after all, I’d deserved it. That’s what you get, I realised, for cravenly courting the favour of the popular. Know who your real friends are, I thought to myself. But don’t get bitter and vengeful, like Khan.

  McDonald’s would have been so much better. You can’t ruin anything on their menu with pepper (if there’d been a cake, I could have moved it before he got the sachet open), and it was so much more exciting than my parents’ soppy old garden. But it’s difficult to imagine feeling that now, as I glance at the branch I’m passing on Finchley Road in 2012. This modern McDonald’s is big, unloved and usually em
pty. Its clientele are big, unloved and usually full. With the occasional emaciated tramp hacking into a coffee. And this is one of the posh branches which has been painted olive green and is now serving high-fat salads. It even has trendy padded sections on the walls to deaden the echo of emphysema.

  I don’t know whether the Oxford branch retains any sense of excitement for children – I hope so. I can never hate McDonald’s completely because I remember so clearly a time when it was a massive treat to go there. It’s odd, standing on this ugly section of the Finchley Road, very near the flat in Swiss Cottage where I lived when I first came to London, how McDonald’s prompts memories of innocence and of home – of the happiest period of my childhood, when life revolved around school plays and bonfire nights and carol services. A period of security that I very self-consciously enjoyed, spent most of puberty trying to recapture, and still look to for comfort when I feel bewildered even now. I wonder if the tramps, huddling in McDonald’s for warmth, remember going to birthday parties there.

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  Beatings and Crisps

  I was very happy at New College School. There were only about 130 boys, of whom 16 were choristers in the New College choir, and no girls – but when I started there, this wasn’t a down side. In fact, it was a plus. At the age of seven, I was extremely sexist.

  It was ruled with charismatic and somehow witty strictness by the headmaster, Alan Butterworth, known by both boys and parents as ‘Butch’. This was not an ironic nickname for a man who was actually incredibly camp. He was incredibly butch – terrifying yet fun, like a ride at Alton Towers – a rotund bulldog of a man with a tremendous shouting voice.