If I die in an unorthodox manner, am involved in a road accident, commit a crime considered worth reporting, or in any other way become newsworthy, I do not want to be described by the newspaper headline announcing the story. By this, I mean the practice (particularly beloved of North Staffordshire paper The Sentinel), of referring to the deceased, unfortunate, or malfeasant, as “mother,” “pensioner,” or “husband.” Today’s issue ran a story headed: “Dropped cigarette set husband alight.” From this description, one would be led to presume that the man’s wife had in some way been involved, maybe dropping the cigarette herself. But no. She happened to be there at the time, but other than that, the man’s relationship as husband to this woman was in no way relevant to the story.
The practice of depicting people in terms of their relationships to others rankles particularly with me on a personal basis. I am not a wife. Or a mother. My hypothetically newsworthy death would be overshadowed on the page by a woman who died leaving behind four children. This kind of lazy judgment of an individual’s worth, by a hurried hack of a local journalist, is insulting to everybody.
Of course, my personal antagonism towards labelling by status may be due to my own lack of it. I can imagine my own untimely demise throwing up the headline: “Unemployed woman, 31, falls under lorry drunk.” Or: “Dead woman, 31, lay undiscovered for four weeks.” Not: “Tragic mother loses life after night out,” or “Neighbours tell of sadness at pensioner’s lonely death.”
I suspect that the custom of describing a person’s relationship, rather than describing them, is done out of a misguided attempt to humanise the protagonist of the piece, as if the purchaser of a newspaper would wish to read a story about a “husband” accidentally catching fire, but not a “man.” Or perhaps it is a journalistic attempt to bring the reader into the action of the story, as if one might think “Ooh, I’ve got a husband. Maybe he will catch on fire one day, I should probably read that.”
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
On the Nomenclature of Cigarettes
A recent financially necessitated downgrade in my cigarette purchase of preference, from Mayfair to Windsor Blue, set me pondering the issue of cigarette brand names, and their insistence on trying to appear posh. Windsor Blue, the lowliest of cigarette brands, actually manages to sound more upper-class than Mayfair, a cigarette for the slightly less down-at-heel. I may smoke Mayfair, whilst promenading with a cane down Mayfair, but I indulge in Windsor Blue inhalation when weekending in the company of the Queen, in Berkshire.
Because of this lack of apellatory transparency, it is impossible to judge a cigarette’s quality by its name. Any fool could ascertain, for example, that Kwik Save is (or was) likely to be a commoner food outlet than Sainsbury’s. Or that Cushelle is almost certainly going to be a chavier toilet paper than Andrex (the name of which I always took to be from a Greek root, but which is apparently a reference St. Andrew’s, the paper mill in Walthamstow which originally produced it. Huh.) But all cigarettes sound posh. Even ones that don’t, with a bit of marketing, can acquire connotations of aristocracy. Lambert and Butler, once the tramp’s smoke of choice, had an advertising campaign in the late 90s, portraying a fictitious Jeeves and Wooster-style pairing, with Lambert as a posh-but-thick fellow, and Butler as his...well, butler. One can imagine a similar set-up in the Benson and Hedges household, since, after all, who but a butler would be named Benson?
The ultimate poshos, the royal family seem to have more than their fair share of cigarette brands. Windsor Blue. Sovereign. Regal. Prince, a cigarette favoured in Scandinavia, and discovered by me in Greece, are presumably intended to be smoked by the prince of Denmark (an actual person, Wikipedia assures me), but I imagine he’s also related to our lot somehow. So my question is: “Just how many different kinds of fags does the Queen need?”
The answer to this is, as every smoker knows, at least two, and possibly three. One for everyday smoking, one for best (birthday, unexpected financial windfall, etc.), and one for on holiday. I, for example, smoke Marlboros when holidaying in Greece (naturally, with His Grace the Duke of Marlborough), but would not dream of such profligacy in England. Mostly because I’m not credit-worthy.
The subject of different cigarettes being appropriate for different occasions brings me on to another institution over-represented in the world of tobacco nomenclature. The diplomatic corps. After a minor mishap in the colonies, one can kick back in the consulate with a nice refreshing menthol Consulate. But if more tricky business finds one requiring the services of the embassy, nothing less than the ambassador, with a tray of Ferrero Rocher and twenty Embassies, will do.
English, vaguely posh, and olden-daysy-sounding cigarettes are plentiful. Mayfair, Dorchester, Berkeley, Richmond. Places you imagine you may have haunted in your previous-life incarnation as a 1920s moneyed-class layabout. However, hand-rolling tobacco presents a whole new world of bygone aristocracy. “Golden Virginia.” The golden days of Virginia. It conjures up imagines of the planter class elite, sipping mint juleps, prancing around in toilet roll cover dresses, and keeping the plantation stocked with mysteriously mixed-race children. “Cutter’s Choice” is perhaps worse. Are we supposed to imagine a cheerily discerning slave, the Man From Del Monte of the Old South, if you will, stopping for a moment in his craft as finest-tobacco-selector, in order to inspect a lovely fresh tobacco sprig, and thinking “Why, yes, I think I’ll save me this for a nice relaxing smoke later, as I settle down in my basic but homely cabin.”? And this is why roll-up smokers are clearly all racists.
America’s attitude to cigarette brand designation is delightfully conflicted. From an A to Z list, one can identify two major trends. Firstly, there are the brands which hark back to Old World gentility. While America may gleefully revel in explosives and corn oil-based snacks at the collective memory of having escaped our malevolent and tyrannical misrule every July the Fourth, they conversely have no qualms about remembering us with fond nostalgia where cigarettes are concerned. Albeit, to the English ear, with a slightly ill-informed amusingness. Ashford, presumably sounds delightfully rustic to its purchaser. Bristol, Chesterfield, and Parliament, are obviously nebulous enough concepts for the American mind to hold no preconceptions about their glamorousness, or lack thereof. But the prize for greatest Anglo-overkill must go to English Oval. I like to imagine it being smoked on the streets of Baltimore, or in a trailer park in Kentucky, while its consumers dream of languid, lazy summer afternoons watching cricket with a jug of Pimms. It is also nice to see that the Queen, on any foray she may make across the Atlantic, is as well catered for as she is at home, by Monarch cigarettes.
The second trend in fag naming in America is perhaps more predictable. For those in the US not secretly wishing they lived in Olde Englande, a plethora, nay an embarrassment, of brands can fulfil their slightly closety desire to appear as macho as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, we have... American Bison. American Harvest (produced by Truth and Liberty Manufacturing). Bull. Cheyenne. Commander. Desperado. Grand Prix. Kentucky’s Best. Lucky Strike. Maverick. McClintock. Midnight Special. Now. Pulse. Rave. Shield. Sundance. Wildhorse.
But my favourite American cigarette brand name? Smoker Friendly. This is what you need from your smoking material. A little empty reassurance, rather than the empty threats found on British cigarette packets. I’ve smoked for 19 years, and have perfect teeth. And, all things considered, inexplicably youthful skin. Warn me about my lovely pink lungs shrivelling, by all means, but do not try to tell me that smoking does things to me which it plainly is not doing. Because if I think you’re lying about these supposed consequences, I may begin to suspect the cancer stuff isn’t true either.
Because of this lack of apellatory transparency, it is impossible to judge a cigarette’s quality by its name. Any fool could ascertain, for example, that Kwik Save is (or was) likely to be a commoner food outlet than Sainsbury’s. Or that Cushelle is almost certainly going to be a chavier toilet paper than Andrex (the name of which I always took to be from a Greek root, but which is apparently a reference St. Andrew’s, the paper mill in Walthamstow which originally produced it. Huh.) But all cigarettes sound posh. Even ones that don’t, with a bit of marketing, can acquire connotations of aristocracy. Lambert and Butler, once the tramp’s smoke of choice, had an advertising campaign in the late 90s, portraying a fictitious Jeeves and Wooster-style pairing, with Lambert as a posh-but-thick fellow, and Butler as his...well, butler. One can imagine a similar set-up in the Benson and Hedges household, since, after all, who but a butler would be named Benson?
The ultimate poshos, the royal family seem to have more than their fair share of cigarette brands. Windsor Blue. Sovereign. Regal. Prince, a cigarette favoured in Scandinavia, and discovered by me in Greece, are presumably intended to be smoked by the prince of Denmark (an actual person, Wikipedia assures me), but I imagine he’s also related to our lot somehow. So my question is: “Just how many different kinds of fags does the Queen need?”
The answer to this is, as every smoker knows, at least two, and possibly three. One for everyday smoking, one for best (birthday, unexpected financial windfall, etc.), and one for on holiday. I, for example, smoke Marlboros when holidaying in Greece (naturally, with His Grace the Duke of Marlborough), but would not dream of such profligacy in England. Mostly because I’m not credit-worthy.
The subject of different cigarettes being appropriate for different occasions brings me on to another institution over-represented in the world of tobacco nomenclature. The diplomatic corps. After a minor mishap in the colonies, one can kick back in the consulate with a nice refreshing menthol Consulate. But if more tricky business finds one requiring the services of the embassy, nothing less than the ambassador, with a tray of Ferrero Rocher and twenty Embassies, will do.
English, vaguely posh, and olden-daysy-sounding cigarettes are plentiful. Mayfair, Dorchester, Berkeley, Richmond. Places you imagine you may have haunted in your previous-life incarnation as a 1920s moneyed-class layabout. However, hand-rolling tobacco presents a whole new world of bygone aristocracy. “Golden Virginia.” The golden days of Virginia. It conjures up imagines of the planter class elite, sipping mint juleps, prancing around in toilet roll cover dresses, and keeping the plantation stocked with mysteriously mixed-race children. “Cutter’s Choice” is perhaps worse. Are we supposed to imagine a cheerily discerning slave, the Man From Del Monte of the Old South, if you will, stopping for a moment in his craft as finest-tobacco-selector, in order to inspect a lovely fresh tobacco sprig, and thinking “Why, yes, I think I’ll save me this for a nice relaxing smoke later, as I settle down in my basic but homely cabin.”? And this is why roll-up smokers are clearly all racists.
America’s attitude to cigarette brand designation is delightfully conflicted. From an A to Z list, one can identify two major trends. Firstly, there are the brands which hark back to Old World gentility. While America may gleefully revel in explosives and corn oil-based snacks at the collective memory of having escaped our malevolent and tyrannical misrule every July the Fourth, they conversely have no qualms about remembering us with fond nostalgia where cigarettes are concerned. Albeit, to the English ear, with a slightly ill-informed amusingness. Ashford, presumably sounds delightfully rustic to its purchaser. Bristol, Chesterfield, and Parliament, are obviously nebulous enough concepts for the American mind to hold no preconceptions about their glamorousness, or lack thereof. But the prize for greatest Anglo-overkill must go to English Oval. I like to imagine it being smoked on the streets of Baltimore, or in a trailer park in Kentucky, while its consumers dream of languid, lazy summer afternoons watching cricket with a jug of Pimms. It is also nice to see that the Queen, on any foray she may make across the Atlantic, is as well catered for as she is at home, by Monarch cigarettes.
The second trend in fag naming in America is perhaps more predictable. For those in the US not secretly wishing they lived in Olde Englande, a plethora, nay an embarrassment, of brands can fulfil their slightly closety desire to appear as macho as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, we have... American Bison. American Harvest (produced by Truth and Liberty Manufacturing). Bull. Cheyenne. Commander. Desperado. Grand Prix. Kentucky’s Best. Lucky Strike. Maverick. McClintock. Midnight Special. Now. Pulse. Rave. Shield. Sundance. Wildhorse.
But my favourite American cigarette brand name? Smoker Friendly. This is what you need from your smoking material. A little empty reassurance, rather than the empty threats found on British cigarette packets. I’ve smoked for 19 years, and have perfect teeth. And, all things considered, inexplicably youthful skin. Warn me about my lovely pink lungs shrivelling, by all means, but do not try to tell me that smoking does things to me which it plainly is not doing. Because if I think you’re lying about these supposed consequences, I may begin to suspect the cancer stuff isn’t true either.
Why I Hate Shopping
How can anybody find joy in the act of shopping? I don’t mean buying things, which is obviously an absolute delight (providing it’s consumer electronics, or occasionally shoes), but actually going shopping. Shopping is an unpleasant necessity, which impinges into your free time, with its only redeeming feature being, once it’s over, that you don’t have to do it again for a while. The internet is a godsend for the likes of me. When you run out of a staple, or are compelled to make a purchase of, say, something electronic, or a pair of shoes, you can open up Ebay, and (excluding the time it takes to be sidetracked by the designer sunglasses, or wellington boots the website so thoughtfully attempts to foist upon you), in five minutes you can get it conveniently consigned to your front door. Usually when you are out, but you can’t have everything.
Shopping is made into such a soul-destroying horror show in part by the interaction it necessitates. I enjoy small-talk as much as the next person, providing the next person’s natural inclination to gregariousness is outweighed by their social and linguistic ineptitude. And I will often strike up a pointless, frequently borderline inappropriate conversation, in a lift, or when waiting for public transport. But the till assistant’s failsafe line of bonhomie, in my recent experience, seems to consist solely of: “This is nice, isn’t it?” And when I reply, deadpan, “Yes, that’s why I’m buying it,” I just look like the sociophobic smart-ass that I am desperately trying not to be found out as.
My natural laziness means that full-time work and I are not closely acquainted. But during a recent, brief stint of working five days a week, and getting in late after a long commute, the shining light at the end of the hideous drudgery (even though it was work experience in a dream job), was the thought of getting blind drunk on a Friday night. The concept of dutifully going to bed sober and early, in order to be fresh for a lovely bout of shopping on a Saturday, seems to me, the ultimate waste of an evening. A evening on which, since time immemorial, (or at least since the invention of the five day working week), people have got blind drunk. It’s a lovely tradition which has suddenly become a social anathema. But I won’t start about the hypocrisy of society’s sudden horror at so-called binge-drinking (i.e., anything more than three pints), because that’s an essay for a different day.
Shopping alone is a tolerable hardship; one can walk briskly from shop to shop, assessing the goods, before swiftly deciding upon what to buy. But shopping with one or more other/s becomes an actually painful experience. Meandering in retail outlets makes my feet hurt. It is also the only activity known to man which aggravates a normally dormant collar bone injury I sustained at the age of twelve.
I recently had to acquire a new shirt for a job interview. I knew exactly what I wanted; a plain, tailored ladies shirt, with no frilliness, and in a muted colour. I wanted to appear serious at my interview, and since I am in possession of pale bleached blonde hair, I decided that this called for as conservative a shirt as possible, to go with a grey check pencil skirt. Black was out, as it gives the impression that one works in a pub. White, coupled with a grey skirt (and bleached blonde hair), makes one appear slightly too much like a model in a schoolgirl fetishists website. It had to have at least three quarter length sleeves, to hide a frankly nautical tattoo I had applied to my bicep when seventeen. Not a big ask, but naturally unobtainable in the not-metropolis of Crewe. In the end I settled for a sensible-ish pink affair, tried it on in Marks and Spencer’s, and was almost moved to tears by the wonderful service of their changing room staff. “Ring the bell if you need any help.” No!!! Why would I have the impertinence to put you out like that? It’s a £9 shirt! The first one didn’t fit, and when I came out to return the shirt, and suggest that I’d try a different size, the assistant (who actually broke off a conversation with a colleague in order to speak to me), offered to go and get me the other size. From a rack which was about five paces from the changing room. I didn’t know with whom I was the most disgusted. With me, for succumbing to the sophisticated and urbane service of Marks and Spencer’s Crewe branch – almost Saville Row in its commitment to fulfilling the customers tailoring needs – or with them for kowtowing to my apparent shopping whims. Me, being so parochial, so provincial, so overjoyed that I found myself feeling special because I was trying on a cheap shirt. Or them, for their institutional obeisance, imbuing pathos into me for both myself and the people working there. This is a level of emotional commitment and investment which I do not need from a quick trip to the shops for a shirt which I am compelled to buy, but don’t really want. And this is why I prefer to shop on the internet.
Of course, in the earlier days of Ebay, when it was more a site for individuals offloading their old junk for pennies, and less a marketplace for corporations flogging their shop-soiled or slight-seconds wares, this interaction could be achieved online, in a much more pleasing way. A seller or buyer might send you a missive to express their delight at their/your purchase. You could then respond to that message with drunken glee when you happened to be in bed with your laptop at 1 am. This was the Golden Age of shopping. Pleasant small-talk on your terms, with a human being, not on hourly pay, whose pleasure at you having made a purchase/sale is genuine. Internet shopping should not necessarily rule out the human contact of going into a shop. It should enable the consumer to be civil at their own pace, and in their own time. And with the aid of alcohol, if they find it absolutely necessary.
Shopping is made into such a soul-destroying horror show in part by the interaction it necessitates. I enjoy small-talk as much as the next person, providing the next person’s natural inclination to gregariousness is outweighed by their social and linguistic ineptitude. And I will often strike up a pointless, frequently borderline inappropriate conversation, in a lift, or when waiting for public transport. But the till assistant’s failsafe line of bonhomie, in my recent experience, seems to consist solely of: “This is nice, isn’t it?” And when I reply, deadpan, “Yes, that’s why I’m buying it,” I just look like the sociophobic smart-ass that I am desperately trying not to be found out as.
My natural laziness means that full-time work and I are not closely acquainted. But during a recent, brief stint of working five days a week, and getting in late after a long commute, the shining light at the end of the hideous drudgery (even though it was work experience in a dream job), was the thought of getting blind drunk on a Friday night. The concept of dutifully going to bed sober and early, in order to be fresh for a lovely bout of shopping on a Saturday, seems to me, the ultimate waste of an evening. A evening on which, since time immemorial, (or at least since the invention of the five day working week), people have got blind drunk. It’s a lovely tradition which has suddenly become a social anathema. But I won’t start about the hypocrisy of society’s sudden horror at so-called binge-drinking (i.e., anything more than three pints), because that’s an essay for a different day.
Shopping alone is a tolerable hardship; one can walk briskly from shop to shop, assessing the goods, before swiftly deciding upon what to buy. But shopping with one or more other/s becomes an actually painful experience. Meandering in retail outlets makes my feet hurt. It is also the only activity known to man which aggravates a normally dormant collar bone injury I sustained at the age of twelve.
I recently had to acquire a new shirt for a job interview. I knew exactly what I wanted; a plain, tailored ladies shirt, with no frilliness, and in a muted colour. I wanted to appear serious at my interview, and since I am in possession of pale bleached blonde hair, I decided that this called for as conservative a shirt as possible, to go with a grey check pencil skirt. Black was out, as it gives the impression that one works in a pub. White, coupled with a grey skirt (and bleached blonde hair), makes one appear slightly too much like a model in a schoolgirl fetishists website. It had to have at least three quarter length sleeves, to hide a frankly nautical tattoo I had applied to my bicep when seventeen. Not a big ask, but naturally unobtainable in the not-metropolis of Crewe. In the end I settled for a sensible-ish pink affair, tried it on in Marks and Spencer’s, and was almost moved to tears by the wonderful service of their changing room staff. “Ring the bell if you need any help.” No!!! Why would I have the impertinence to put you out like that? It’s a £9 shirt! The first one didn’t fit, and when I came out to return the shirt, and suggest that I’d try a different size, the assistant (who actually broke off a conversation with a colleague in order to speak to me), offered to go and get me the other size. From a rack which was about five paces from the changing room. I didn’t know with whom I was the most disgusted. With me, for succumbing to the sophisticated and urbane service of Marks and Spencer’s Crewe branch – almost Saville Row in its commitment to fulfilling the customers tailoring needs – or with them for kowtowing to my apparent shopping whims. Me, being so parochial, so provincial, so overjoyed that I found myself feeling special because I was trying on a cheap shirt. Or them, for their institutional obeisance, imbuing pathos into me for both myself and the people working there. This is a level of emotional commitment and investment which I do not need from a quick trip to the shops for a shirt which I am compelled to buy, but don’t really want. And this is why I prefer to shop on the internet.
Of course, in the earlier days of Ebay, when it was more a site for individuals offloading their old junk for pennies, and less a marketplace for corporations flogging their shop-soiled or slight-seconds wares, this interaction could be achieved online, in a much more pleasing way. A seller or buyer might send you a missive to express their delight at their/your purchase. You could then respond to that message with drunken glee when you happened to be in bed with your laptop at 1 am. This was the Golden Age of shopping. Pleasant small-talk on your terms, with a human being, not on hourly pay, whose pleasure at you having made a purchase/sale is genuine. Internet shopping should not necessarily rule out the human contact of going into a shop. It should enable the consumer to be civil at their own pace, and in their own time. And with the aid of alcohol, if they find it absolutely necessary.
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