Disgressed

It seems stupid to say that your heart sank at the news of the derailment up in Cumbria. Of course it did. It seems things could have been much worse, but the death of one person and injury of many others is quite bad enough in itself. But there is something especially depressing about this accident. I suppose subconsciously I had come to the conclusion that we were finally out of the period of lethal track failures which seemed to follow privatisation. A lot of changes have been made and a lot of steps have been taken to ensure safety. And yet, it looks from early reports as if the problem in Cumbria was very similar to what happened at Potters Bar in 2002: an inadequately maintained set of points.

All accidents have their special horrors, I think, and to me railway accidents carry with them a special sense of shock and betrayal, because trains ought to be safe. When you get on a plane or into a car, the potential for damage and destruction is evident, and personally I can never get on a ship without noticing the possibility of drowning in a cabin filled with water. But trains are on rails, there are signals and controls everywhere, and rightly or wrongly I tend to assume that accidents are completely preventable. Surely this one ought to have been.

As it is, the news was all too much like hearing that the railway system had tested positive for cancer again after a few years of remission.

We’ve been watching Masterchef Goes Large recently (if it hasn’t come your way, it’s a knock-out cooking competition). One element that gripes slightly is a tremendous insistence that contestants must be passionate. In fact, one whole section of the contest consists of the aspiring cooks just baldly trying to convince the judges how really passionate they are: “Uh, I realise that earlier on I may not have seemed all that passionate, but I’ve come on a lot in the last half hour and now I’m really passionate. I love food. I mean food is absolutely my life, I mean in order to become a restaurant cook I would betray Jesus, seriously…”

I don’t like this. For one thing it seems to exclude a whole emotional repertoire. Could we not be thrilled by a chef’s cold, haughty way with a bouillabaisse? Might we not praise the contemptuous mastery with which the maestro forces the trembling truffle into the sneering embrace of the scornful butter? “You were a little hesitant with the pak choi, I felt: you didn’t quite make yourself master of the situation – but I liked the ruthless way you drew the shitake helplessly towards their painful destiny.”

The other thing, of course, is that it seems a bit unEnglish. We chaps don’t go on about loving things you know: even if we spent two hours at dawn collecting the dew with which to souse our nasturtium leaves, we still say “Oh, glad you like it. Nothing much really.” We are restrained. There is a shameful reason for this habitual restraint which is not widely appreciated. The truth is, under all that gentlemanly stuff and self-deprecation we’re not really very nice at all. An Italian, maybe, can open his heart and let his emotions flow freely, and the result will be a splendid aria or an exciting new way with pasta. When an Englishman opens his heart and lets his emotions flow freely, the result is more likely to be a bottle thrown at the referee and a brisk pugilistic interaction with the opposing fans. That’s what the stiff upper lip is really all about: containing the inner thug.

This means that compared to contestants of a non-English background, our lads and lasses suffer a natural disadvantage. When you’re only pretending to be civilised while keeping your brutal impulses under iron self-control and then on top of that you have to pretend to be a civilised person whose passions are running free, it’s not surprising if you lack conviction. Just as well sincerity never breaks through, really, or when the judges barked “I just do not see how you can have thought that mango sorbet and tripe would work together on the plate!” the response would be a snarl of “Wanker!” and a brisk exploration of how the contestant’s boot worked with the judge’s head. Maybe that would work, though. “I still think your tripe is untidy, but I have to say the passion just shines through your footwork: I think you’ve got bags of potential and I’m putting you through to the semi-final.”

Thirdly, can we not try to retain the concept that a chef’s passion is expressed through food, not words? I don’t really see why a brilliant chef – even a passionate one – shouldn’t be taciturn and withdrawn, the inner fire emerging only through the medium of his tempestuous zabaglione. I realise, of course, that these days all chefs aspire to the status of media personalities, and that flights of purple prose are part of a cook’s stock in trade. But we don’t have to encourage the trend. We may recognise reality, but let us not foment it.

It’s easy for us happily married people, of course: my biggest worry was whether I would be able to get a Fuzzy Felt valentine card (no luck – either they never had them, or they had sold out before I got there). But there’s no doubt Valentine’s Day is an ambivalent festival, generating stress and depression as well as happiness.

Come to think of it, even I do have some tricky issues. This morning when we came down to breakfast, we found that a carefully coloured picture of a teddy with a heart, and three chocolates, had been left for each of us. I can’t help feeling slightly mean about not reciprocating, but I’ve always avoided giving my daughters valentines. Either I’d have to stop at some hard-to-judge point (OK, so this is the year when I don’t love you any more) or they’d end up getting a card from Dad as well as their boyfriend(s), which doesn’t seem quite right.

Mind you, the significance of Valentines’ Day seems to have changed over the course of time: if I remember rightly Pepys describes how every one in the house, including all the servants, was randomly assigned to each other as valentines and then has to give each other presents. There can have been very little suggestion of romance about this: I can’t imagine Pepys being happy with the idea of Mrs Pepys and the stable-boy being paired off (though his being matched with the maid would no doubt have struck him more favourably).

It can’t have been long after Pepys’ time that the unattractive custom of abusive valentines started up, reaching its peak in the nineteenth century; there’s a collection of these comic valentines here. I suppose you have to know who was sending them to whom in what context to really understand what was going on, but it’s hard not to feel that in this one respect, at least, we’re nicer people than we used to be back then.

So finally the greatest snowstorm of the millennium arrived. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a weather forecast that was so readily accepted and universally believed. Virtually everyone I spoke to had made all their plans, laid in extra stocks of beer candles and blankets, and set up email messages explaining their absence from the office before a single flake of snow had fallen.

“Six inches.” everybody kept saying.

Unfortunately, round my way it was more like two. I was in that terrible state of mind you sometimes get when you’ve sneezed a few times, but don’t quite feel that you can credibly claim to have flu. Heavens, I’d even brought some work home, you know; it wouldn’t be skiving. But were two inches of snow really going to make it impossible for me to get to the station? I had to take Sarah to school anyway, since the local schools were remaining obdurately open.

“I’ll go and see how things are at the station,” I said, “and if there’s a real problem, well… The transport system will probably be thrown into chaos, I expect.”

I put wellington boots on (there could be some deep drifting out there in the park, you know) and we trudged off. There weren’t many people waiting at the station.

“Six inches of snow and the whole transport system is thrown into chaos, eh?” said a cheerful lady standing on the platform.

My usual train turned up a mere ten minutes late (but with plenty of empty seats for once). I think this ten-minute delay had been achieved by the driver just moving very slowly for no particular reason, but in spite of his best efforts we were still only twenty minutes behind when we reached Victoria. The concourse was a fine sight, not as full as usual, but displaying an appealing range of alpine gear, hand-knitted scarves, hats with earflaps, and green wellingtons (that’s me!).

“They say there’s more on the way.” remarked a colleague – one of the few who were in = as I pulled off my boots. “Amazing how the transport system is thrown into chaos by six inches of snow, isn’t it?”

In the afternoon it rained, and the great snow incident of 2007 was over.

In Chester it seems archaeologists have made the interesting discovery that after about 100 years the Roman amphitheatre there was rebuilt and remodelled to look much grander and to resemble (albeit on a smaller scale) the Colosseum itself. The Chester project is a leading example of how 21st century archaeology is likely to present itself, with a live webcam, blog, and other online resources.

Making your local amphitheatre look like the most famous one in the world has some obvioius snob value and it probably helped emphasise Chester’s Rome-like qualities, but I wonder if it had another symbolic signifcance. These days, the Colosseum’s main popular association is with lions eating Christians (not sure how often that actually happened), but I believe Vespasian, who had the thing built, saw the Colosseum as embodying an entirely different message.

When Vespasian was acclaimed Emperor, Rome was in a bad way. Nero, the last member of the original Imperial family, had suffered an ignominious death: in the subsequent disorder a series of ambitious generals had seized the throne, each in turn dispatched within a few months. There was every prospect of the Empire simply falling apart.

One of the sustaining strengths of the Roman Empire, however, was its ability to find men of ability from all sorts of backgrounds, promote and develop them, and turn them into capable administrators with a keen desire to outdo each other in public service. Vespasian is an example, one of the hard-headed, dispassionate rulers who help explain why the Empire lasted so long.

A square-headed old fellow, balding with a few patches of white hair, he would surely have caused no problems for Central Casting. They would have put him into parts as the crusty old judge with a heart of gold; the autocratic head of a large business; or the shrewd old general with a sardonic, folksy sense of humour. And they would have been exactly right: he was all three.

Vespasian’s careful measures stabilised the Empire and rebuilt its finances, but he also faced the more subtle, cultural problem of reshaping expectations of what an Emperor was like. The decadent indulgences of certain Emperors are notorious, but I don’t think it’s always appreciated what the pressures on an Emperor were. You didn’t have to decide on a course of debauchery and then give instructions to your startled civil servants; you were surrounded by people desperate to debauch you by any means possible. It’s not surprising that young men like Caligula and Nero, living among these pressures from birth, had given way to temptation. Even Vespasian himself, that leathery old soldier given to plain living; who had nearly lost his life through falling asleep during one of Nero’s personal performances; more interested in bathing his aching feet (battered through many years of marching around the Empire, including Britain) than in opulent orgies; even he eventually gave way to persistent pursuit from a particular noble Roman woman who simply insisted on sleeping with the Emperor (“Put the expenses down to a new heading: Vespasian’s love affairs”, he remarked to the Imperial accountant, lugubriously). There was a clear danger that Roman Emperors would end up being like oriental despots; but Nero’s end had shown how badly the office of Emperor could be damaged by selfish indulgence.

The Colosseum, a project dear to Vespasian’s heart, was surely meant to help correct the impression that dissipation and murder were what the Emperor was all about (besides, of course, building up Vespasian’s personal prestige and popularity). It was built on part of the site of Nero’s fantastic personal pleasure palace, the Golden House, and the message, I think, was meant to be: the Empire isn’t about the pleasures of the Imperial family any more: from now on, it’s run for the benefit of its citizens.

Sadly, Vespasian died (‘Oh dear: I think I’m turning into a god’ he remarked sardonically) before it could be finished. The offical name for the place never stuck: ‘Colosseum’ refers to the colossal statue of Nero which preceded it on the same site (I wonder what Vespasian would have had to say about that); but the amphitheatre surely did help sum up some of the better Roman aspirations.

Is it possible that in far-away Chester, they wanted to echo that message? Did they want to build a permanent symbol of how the province wasn’t about the privileged minority, but about benefits for everyone? I don’t know, really, but I sort of like to think so.

Sarah: I think I might have got into the quiz team. They read out the scores and nobody got more than me. One or two people got the same. I hope I do get in, because last year the team went up to London and they met somebody important in charge of education or something.

Me: What, the Minister?

Sarah: I don’t know, someone like that. Somebody in the sort of government, but I don’t know whether it was someone who actually does, you know, the work. Mind you, I’ve already met some important people. I met the bishop, of course. And I met Mrs Shakespeare.

Me: Mrs Shakespeare?

Sarah: Yes, she’s in charge of school dinners in this area. Well, actually I didn’t meet her because it was a school councillors meeting and I was off school that day. But I could meet her if I wanted to. Actually I think she might be the lady who comes in sometimes and stands by the lunch counter and frowns. But that might be someone else. Have you ever met anyone famous?

Me: Well, I met the Chancellor of the Exchequer once. I’ve met some other politicians… (senses waning interest) and I’ve met some writers, you know, er, Arthur C Clarke, Douglas Adams… (senses interest waning further) I stood behind Jaqueline Wilson in the lift at Goodge Street Tube station once…

Sarah: Elizabeth’s met her a couple of times, of course.

Me: (decides to play the trump card) I sort of met the Queen once.

Sarah: The Queen?

Me: Yes, she came to open our new school building. I was in charge of the library and I was standing there at the desk when she came in on her tour of the building.

Sarah: She spoke to you?

Me: Well, no actually, she gave me a rather stern glance and walked past. But I don’t blame her. You see, it’s very difficult for the Royal Family to find things to say to people. They usually say “And what do you do?”, but you can’t go into a library, and walk up to the person behind the desk who’s got a book in one hand and a rubber stamp in the other, and ask them what they do. I would have been virtually forced to say something like “I’m the gym teacher, duh”. And then they would have had to cut my head off.

In fact, she saw someone at one of the tables with a plaster cast on his arm, so she made a beeline for him – you can see why. It’s an obvious talking point. How did you do that? Rugger? Does it hurt? You’re very brave. You whip out the Royal biro and sign the cast and that’s another solid conversation racked up. You see what I mean.

Sarah: Could you smell her breath?

Me: Could I… What? You think the Queen – the Queen! Suffers from bad breath? Really bad breath?

Sarah: No, it’s just that someone told me she smokes.

Me: Well yes, but… Smoking is bad, but it doesn’t mean… Anyway, meeting famous people isn’t important, really, is it? You know what Napoleon said to the nobility?

Sarah: No.

Me: He said: you’ve all got famous ancestors. But me, I am an ancestor.

Sarah: Oh yes. What was his surname?

Me: Uh? Napoleon’s surname? Bonaparte.

Sarah: No, that was in the quiz, you see. I got that one, anyway.