Author Archives: Ellen Hawley

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About Ellen Hawley

Fiction writer and blogger, living in Cornwall.

The Posh Report: class, culture, and snobbery in England

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The English have a way of bringing almost anything back to class. Or maybe that’s not just the English but the British in general. Or–you know what? Let’s not worry about it. Let me give you an example to take our minds off the problem: I was walking dogs with a friend and when the time came to pick up after my pooch I tore a patterned plastic bag off a roll that was meant to fit inside a pickup pouch but had escaped.

“Very posh,” my friend said, and she showed me the greenish diaper bags she used, which at the time sold for–oh, I think it was 12p for hundreds of the things, or to put that another way, not much.

I explained that someone had given us (us being my partner and me) the pouch, along with the bags. Not having had kids–in this country or any other–I was a stranger to the greenish diaper bags and asked about them. I’ve used them ever since, although they left that 12p price tag in the dust long ago.

My point here is that this is a country that can even take dog shit and make it about class.

A rare relevant photo: a kind of hydrangea that someone once told me is posh. The more enthusiastic mopheaded kind are, apparently, just too much color for the delicate sensibilities of an aristocrat.

So what does posh mean

For the sake of my beloved fellow barbarians, let’s define posh. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “elegant or fashionable.” The Collins Dictionary (enough with the links; you don’t really care, do you?) adds “expensive” and the Urban Dictionary tacks on “aristocratic.” People tell each other that the word stands for port out, starboard home, which was shorthand for the best cabins to have if a (posh) person was sailing from Britain to India and back again. They were the ones that get the morning sun and would be cooler in the evening.

The problem is, no one’s found any evidence to back up that origin story. The passenger line that’s supposed to have stamped P.O.S.H. on the more expensive tickets actually looked in its archives and came up with nothing. And cabins were numbered. They weren’t likely to have been identified as port and starboard. 

Another theory holds that it was university slang from the turn of the last century, which isn’t nearly as far in the past as it ought to be. That makes a kind of intuitive sense, since university educations were, with rare exceptions, reserved for the rich, but there’s no evidence for this origin story either. 

So let’s file them both in the Urban Myth folder and settle for the origin having been lost.

 

What do posh people do?

I’m not the person to know, thank all the gods I don’t believe in, but in 2017–which is nowhere near as long ago as the turn of the last century–Tatler came up with a list of phrases that it claimed posh people used. I’d quote them but they make me a little queasy and they sound suspiciously like a satire from the 1920s, so I can’t help but wonder if the magazine’s messing with our heads. You’ll have to look them up for yourself. 

Still, the fact that someone saw fit to make a list and the magazine saw fit to publish it, for whatever reasons, testifies to how important it is for the in group to create a code so they can spot the people who don’t belong.

I’m over here, guys, and yes, I am laughing at you. Furthermore, I use greenish diaper bags to pick up after my dog these days. So my reporting is distinctly third-hand. Take it for what it’s worth. But in 2019, Tatler published a list of what was in and out among the posh, and it turns out that the word posh is non-posh. Or as they’d put it, non-U. 

U? That stands for upper class, and I learned that from an undated BBC article that also tells me that latte (you know, the fancy coffee with warm milk) is non-posh, along with brand names and Americanisms. 

But let’s go back to Tatler’s do-and-don’t-do list, which is kind of boring, really. Posh people eat fried eggs. They eat bread. They say no. (Seriously. It’s on the list.) If those are the hints we get for telling the posh from the non-posh, they’re going to find themselves–horrors–melting into the herd. 

But not all hope is lost. What non-posh people do is more telling: They wear makeup outside of London. No gender’s specified, which takes us into a whole ‘nother set of groups and distinctions. Personally, I don’t wear makeup inside London either, but then I’m not the point here, am I? They use the word posh. They use (or maybe that’s talk about) iPads. They eat dips. They–well, maybe this isn’t about individuals here. It seems the entire southeast of England is non-posh, so I guess they go there or live there or acknowledge its existence.

All of France with the exception of Paris is non-posh.  

It’s almost too easy to make fun of this stuff, but the attitude behind it is real–and thoroughly horrifying. 

The imaginary crime report from Britain

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A couple of dog walkers in Chapel St. Leonards (population 3,431, in case it seems relevant) called the police to report a mass killing a week or so back. They’d passed a cafe, looked in the windows, and saw people lying on the floor, laid out on their backs and unmoving, eyes closed, covered with blankets.

Ritual mass murder, they decided–as anyone would–and got out their phones. Five cop cars converged on the cafe, lights flashing, and all the inhabitants rushed to their windows to see what was happening.

It turned out to be a yoga class doing a relaxation. 

The perpetrators of the good deed have been sentenced to two months with no TV. 

Irrelevant photo: Trethevy Quoit

*

In Wales, someone has been snatching the trail-marking posts that tell walkers which way they need to go, leaving to wander off into who knows what swamp and raising questions about why the sign snatcher’s going to all the trouble of digging the posts up instead of just wrecking them where they stand, as any sensible citizen would.

I think I can explain, though: When I was a kid, having a fallout shelter sign (or the occasional street sign) in your bedroom was the height of cool, so I can’t help thinking some teenager’s bedroom is full of the things. 

In defense of my generation, the fallout shelters would have offered no protection and we all knew it, so who cared if you couldn’t find one when the apocalypse came? The signposts, on the other hand, really do make a difference. Kind of like, um, yeah, those street signs my friends (I was too much of a coward) stole so lightheartedly.

 

Lawbreaking animals

On a slightly different note (I’ve had one of those weeks, and anyone expecting coherence won’t be happy), two deer–horns and all–wandered into the hospital in Plymouth and ran around the maternity unit corridors until they got a look at the babies, saw that they were pitifully furless and couldn’t be theirs, and left in disgust. 

Okay, nobody’s saying how the hospital convinced them to leave, and in various versions of the story they trotted through the corridors and galloped through the corridors. The hospital’s own statement makes a point of saying that the cleaning staff sanitized the place and that the deer never came into contact with patients, and really, folks, it’s all okay but would everybody please keep the outside doors closed and not feed the deer, because none of them have any medical training whatsoever. 

 

And now to something that’s completely legal

The cosmetics chain Lush got £5.1 million in tax relief from the UK government last year, recorded a 90% drop in profits, and paid its managers £5 million in bonuses.

 

The extreme recycling report

Australian engineers have found a way to recycle coffee grounds into concrete, which could be used in walkways and pavements, decreasing the amount of sand used in construction and helping to build the city that never sleeps.

 

Enough of that. Let’s go out on a note of patriotic fervor

On the last night of the proms–

Hang on. I need to explain that for readers who aren’t British. The proms are concerts that run from July through September. They started in 1895 as Promenade Concerts in parks. In 1927, the BBC got into the act, and today they’re a big deal (and not in parks), and on the last night, in addition to whatever else is on the program, they play a bunch of patriotic stuff. You know, “God Save the [insert monarch of the appropriate sex or gender],” “Jerusalem,” “Rule Britannia.” 

There’s been a predictable flap in recent years about which songs can survive a modern sensibility, what with all that celebration of empire, and how many people of modern sensibility can survive the full range of patriotic songs. 

In 2020, “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” were going to be played but without lyrics, but after the predictable outrage the BBC backed down and they were sung, word by painful word. 

Traditionally, people wave British flags and sing along when “Rule Britannia” is played. This year, though, a whole lot of people waved European Union flags instead, getting up the noses of patriotic Brexiters. Let’s take a Conservative former Member of Parliament as typical (if a bit more visible than average) when he called for the BBC to investigate how so many EU flags were smuggled into the hall (in small boats, no doubt), “messing up a British tradition” and making a political gesture at an apolitical event. 

Or as the Daily Telegraph put it, “‘Rule Britannia’ represents freedom.” (And, if added, “sovereignty and self-determination, all absent in the European Union.”)

So what does this apolitical song about freedom have to say?

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves. / Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,” although it’s apparently okay if other people are. “The nations, not so blest as thee / Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall / While thou shalt flourish great and free: The dread and envy of them all.”

Make that the apolitical and freedom-loving dread. 

It’s funny how apolitical a person’s own opinions seem and how screamingly political a gesture from an opposing one is.

William Blake’s “Jerusalem,” on the other hand, is haunting and beautiful. And ambiguous enough that I still don’t understand how anyone, hearing the same words as I do, reads it as a straightforward patriotic footstomper.

 

Jerusalem 

And did those feet in ancient time                                                                                            Walk upon England’s mountains green:                                                                           

And was the holy Lamb of God,                                                                                                  On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 And did the Countenance Divine,                                                                                           Shine forth upon our clouded hills?                                                                                           And was Jerusalem builded here,                                                                                       Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:                                                                                           Bring me my arrows of desire:                                                                                               Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!                                                                                    Bring me my Chariot of fire! 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,                                                                                              Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:                                                                                        Till we have built Jerusalem,                                                                                                         In England’s green & pleasant Land.

If you want the music (in a very non-proms version), you’ll find it here.


					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Cornwall’s Prayerbook Rebellion

			
						

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It’s 1549, we’re in Cornwall, and (I’m taking a gamble here) none of us speak the language, because it isn’t English, it’s Cornish. Enough people speak English that we can probably buy a loaf of bread and a pint of beer (we’ll want to stay away from the water), but it’s embarrassing to depend on other people being better at languages than we are.


 


The inevitable background


What else do we need to know? Edward the Kid is on the English throne. That makes him sound more like a wild west gunslinger than a monarch, though, so let’s be conventional enough to call him Edward VI. He won’t last long–he becomes king at 9 and dies of TB at 15–but right now he’s sitting in the fancy chair, and he’s seriously, Protestantly Protestant, and more to the point, so are the people around him who, since he really is a kid, are powerful forces. 


This is when (and why) crucifixes and saints’ images are stripped out of the churches. Stained glass is destroyed. Masses for the dead are banned, and so are rosaries and church processions. The clergy’s gotten permission to marry. 


But in Cornwall it’s gone further than that. Churches can’t ring bells for the dead. Church ales–fundraising banquets that are one of the important ways local churches raise money–have been banned. Priests’ vestments have to meet strict guidelines, and parishioners have to pay for that. 


Irrelevant photo: A magnolia blossom. For some reasons, it decided to bloom a second time this summer


These West Country rules come from William Body, who (I’m quoting David Horspool’s The English Rebel here) “got his hands on the archdeaconry of Cornwall against local opposition,” and then managed to line his pockets once he did.


In Penryn two years ago (that was 1547), there was a demonstration against him and the changes he’d introduced. It came off peacefully, and so did the government’s response. 


But the next year, the foundations that sang masses for the dead were suppressed, and in Helston Body was attacked and murdered by a mob led by a priest. 


Do I need to point out that this wasn’t peaceful? The priest and eleven other people were executed. This wasn’t a peaceful response.


Aren’t you glad I’m here to tell you these things?


Still, Edward, his advisors, or a combination thereof, didn’t think the opposition meant much. It happened in Cornwall, for fuck’s sake–the outer edges of beyond. They were convinced that people were thirsty for their reforms, but even if they’d believed the opposite, they might have acted the same way. Because they were right. It said so in their holy book, or it did once someone put the correct interpretation on it. So they moved ahead and introduced a major change in church services: they’d now be in English instead of Latin, and they’d follow the Book of Common Prayer. 


The Latin mass was now an endangered species, and if you insisted on saying it you’d be endangered yourself.


And since we’ve caught up with our timeline, we’ll shift back to the present tense. It almost makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard.


Conducting church services in a language people understand is a very Protestant move, and the English church has been edging in this direction for a while, first including snippets of English, then tolerating–maybe even encouraging–English-only masses in a few churches. Now, though, every last church has to use the Book of Common Prayer, and nope, they’re not negotiating this.


This sets off a massive flap. Catholics cling to Latin, and they’re horrified. But people who are further along the Protestant spectrum are equally offended because the Book of Common Prayer doesn’t break as sharply as they’d like with Catholicism. 


And–we’re finally getting to the point here–it offends the Cornish, because say what you like about how a service in the language people actually speak brings religion closer to the people, English isn’t their damn language and their priests can’t say services in Cornish because that’s not how it’s being done this week.


I’m not sure anyone wanted to say the service in Cornish, mind you. I’m just pointing out that the compromise wasn’t on the table. The Act of Uniformity bans every language except English from church services.


 


Cue the rebellion, please 


We’ll start in Bodmin, which is more or less the geographical center of Cornwall. It’s the first day the new services are scheduled to be heard. So people gather. People protest. They convince a local member of the gentry, Humphrey Arundell, to lead them.


Yes, I do notice the strangeness of people having to convince someone to lead them. It speaks, I think, to how deeply ingrained the hierarchy is. Without a gentleman to lead them, how could they possibly know what to do, even if they had to set him up there and tell him to do it?


Instead of going home at the end of the event, the protesters set up camp.


On the same day and for the same reasons, a protest breaks out in Sampford Courtenay, in Devon, the next county up from Cornwall, and nine days later the two groups set up camp a few miles outside Exeter and prepare to lay siege to the city. Figure there are some 2,000 rebels out there. Or some 4,000. Let’s not bog down over the details. A lot of people. More than you’d want at your birthday party.


The rebels put together several versions of their demands, and most of what they want is about religion. The center of religious reformation is in London. In the West Country, they hold to the beliefs and traditions that have been part of daily life for centuries. Still, they don’t call for a full return to the Catholic Church but to a return to the way things were under Henry VIII. And like so many rebels in monarchical countries, they don’t see themselves as challenging the king but the bad counselors around him. 


Yes, everybody’s drunk the monarchical KoolAid. It won’t be until the Civil War that they turn to other drinks.


The siege of Exeter lasts five or six weeks, and Exeter is left to defend itself until John Russell, who just happens to be the Lord Privy Seal (and people take these titles entirely seriously, remember) arrives with soldiers and defeats the rebels. 


Estimates of the number of rebel dead are roughly the same as the estimates of the rebels themselves: 3,000 to 4,000. 


Again, don’t try too hard to make the numbers work. The leaders are hauled to London to be ritually hanged, drawn, and quartered. 


 


The aftermath


As a BBC historical article puts it, “The insurrection was eventually crushed with hideous slaughter – some three to four thousand West Country men were killed – and in its wake the ruling classes may well have come to associate the Cornish tongue with rebellion and sedition, as well as with poverty and ‘backwardness’. This in turn may help to explain why the Book of Common Prayer was never translated into Cornish, as it was later to be translated into Welsh. What is certain is that the failure to provide a liturgy in the Cornish tongue did much to hasten the subsequent decline of the language.” 


The decline is more or less geographical, with English leaking across the Devon border and pouring south and west. By 1640, Cornish has retreated into the toe of Cornwall’s sock, and as the language dies out, the process of assimilation into England gathers force. By 1700, only 5,000 people speak Cornish.


The last native speaker of Cornish is Dolly Pentreath, who’s born in 1685 and dies in 1777. 


But. The sense of separation stays strong and plays a role in Cornwall taking the royalist side in the Civil Wars–partly (or so the BBC article speculates) because they saw Charles as  British and the Parliamentarians as English. With his defeat, the Cornish identity took another hit.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
The An Gof Rebellion, with an extra bit of Cornish history thrown in

			
						

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Welcome to Cornwall, 1497. Henry VII is on the English throne and Cornwall is part of England but also not part of England. The way that works is that the Cornish are a separate nation, which is about culture, but not a separate country, which is about law, power, and who’s in charge. So, like the Welsh, they’re a nation inside the country of England.


 


The culture


Most people’s mother tongue is Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to Welsh. And to a few other languages, but never mind that. I know a rabbit hole when I see one. The Cornish language is strongest in the west of the county and among ordinary people. Go east (which is actually northeast, but that’s a whole ‘nother rabbit hole) or spend time with the gentry and you’ll find English taking a stronger hold–probably alongside Cornish but in spite of what I said in the first paragraph we’re not actually there so we can’t walk down to the market and find out.


 


Irrelevant photo: what could be more Cornish than a Japanese anemone?


English is spoken among the gentry because not long after the Normans conquered England (and with it, Cornwall), the English king started handing Cornish lands to English (or Norman, or–rabbit hole, damn it) lords. That’s given English some upper-class cachet. Either for that reason or of necessity, a fair number of people speak it as a second language. 


But there’s another reason English is gaining a foothold. Cornwall’s surrounded by water, which means ships dock at its ports, bringing people in from other parts of the world, including from that closest of nations, England. People who live in ports tend to pick up at least bits of other languages.


Still, Cornish is the primary language, and the Cornish also have their own way of dressing, their own folklore, their own customs and games and ways of farming. The place is called–at least by the Cornish–Kernow, not Cornwall.


 


What outsiders say about the place


In 1538, the French ambassador to London, Gaspard de Coligny Chatillon, writes that the kingdom of England “contains Wales and Cornwall, natural enemies of the rest of England, and speaking a [different] language.” 


How much should we trust that business about “natural enemies”? Hard to say. An equally authoritative Italian diplomat reports, “The Welshman is sturdy, poor, adapted to war and sociable,” while “the Cornishman is poor, rough and boorish; and the Englishman mercantile, rich, affable and generous.” So yes, a grain or six of salt might not be a bad idea here. These guys aren’t just outsiders, they make themselves into authorities no matter how little they know. 


Still, that idea of enmity might (emphasis on might) be useful background to the rebellion that I still haven’t told you about.


 


But before that, let’s talk about tin mining


Cornwall doesn’t have great agricultural land unless you have your heart set on farming slate, but it does have tin, and it’s been trading it with the world for centuries. Tin’s useful stuff. Mix it with lead and you get pewter. Mix it with copper and you get bronze. Mix it with trade and you get money.  


In 1201, Cornish tinners got their own legal framework, which exempted them from normal laws and taxes but replaced them with a whole different set. This framework divided the county into stannaries, complete with stannary courts. (Stannary? It comes from the word for tin.) The framework changed over the centuries, and starting in the fourteenth century, Cornwall was governed by a combination of the Duchy of Cornwall and a stannary parliament. 


But Henry VII is still the king, remember, and his son, Arthur–the one who died and left the next Henry in charge–is the Duke of Cornwall. When he tries to make some changes in the stannary arrangements, the tinners don’t accept them. So what does Daddy do? He suspends the Stannary Parliament and the privileges that go with it. Talk about helicopter parenting. 


Henry’s big on centralizing the government anyway, so this works for him. 


You can–and at least one writer does–cast this as a conflict between self-rule and centralization, but how relevant the stannary parliament is to the average person I don’t know. It would’ve been run by a thin top layer of Cornish society. Did your average miner or peasant have more in common with them than with an English lord? Possibly, but not necessarily.


One writer also–sorry, by now I’ve lost track of whether it’s the same one or six other people–lists suppression of the Cornish language as a reason for the revolt that–I know, I know–we still haven’t gotten to. No one else mentions that, and he gives no specifics, so I’m inclined to put the language issue on the shelf for a later revolt, which I’ll write about soon.


Really, I will. 


What does matter to everyone is the new tax that goes along with this change in Cornish government. It’s to fund Henry’s war with Scotland. Without question, that affects everyone’s lives. Most people are somewhere between poor and very poor. They don’t have a lot of slack in their budgets.


 


Why a war with Scotland? 


We have to back up another step, avoiding another conveniently placed rabbit hole. It all has to do with Perkin Warbeck, who’s running around up north, claiming to be one of those famous princes in the tower: the ones who are lost to history and presumed to have been killed by Richard the Evil Uncle but miraculously making himself known just now to the world at large. 


But if Warbeck is one of the princes, that means he should be the king, not Henry. Which is awkward for both of them.


The Scots figure Warbeck’s a nice piece of sand to throw into the English governmental machinery and they back his claim. The Cornish, on the other hand, say, “What’s all that to us?” and (as one source puts it) refuse to pay the tax.


All of them say that? Probably not, but enough that a rebellion breaks out, led by the blacksmith Michael Joseph (he’s known as An Gof, which is Cornish for the blacksmith) from St Keverne, and the lawyer Thomas Flamank, from Bodmin, who’s the son of an estate owner. In several places, An Gof is described as powerful and a natural leader. Flamank is described as a plausible lawyer, which doesn’t quite sound like a compliment. 


If you’re not from Cornwall, the place names won’t mean much to you, but so little seems to be known about them that I’m tossing in the few scraps of information I do have. 


 


And at long last, the rebellion


The rebellion starts in the west, in an area called the Lizard (nope, you won’t find more lizards there than anywhere else in Cornwall) and the rebels head up through Bodmin and on toward London. When they leave Cornwall, they’re a force of 3,000 men. (I’m assuming they were all men, but I don’t really know that.) By the time they reach London they’re a guesstimated total of 15,000. 


Those numbers speak to the Cornish rebellion striking a chord among the English, and the Cornish historian Brian Webb says it spoke to both yeomen and peasants. A river of grievance is flowing through the country. So even though I just spent a lot of time talking about Cornwall as a nation, nationalism can’t be the only force driving this. There’s an interesting essay to be written about the ways class and nationalism intertwine and then conflict with each other, but preferably by someone who isn’t me.


At Flamank’s urging, the march is peaceful. The rebels are armed (according to some sources) with bows and arrows and agricultural tools, which have doubled as weapons in many a war, but from what I’ve read they attack no one on the way to London.


What do they plan to do once they get there? I wish I knew. I’m reasonably sure it isn’t get rid of the king. If monarchy strikes you as a natural arrangement, the accepted way to get rid of one king is to pull an alternate out of the oven, then get rid of the one someone else baked. And it helps if yours has a marginally believable hereditary claim. 


These rebels weren’t in the business of baking or un-baking kings. So maybe we should think of the rebellion as a sort of armed demonstration. Cardboard and felt-tip pens haven’t been invented, so you’d pick up a weapon. It said, “Look how serious we are,” not to mention, “We’re not taking any shit, by the way.” But I’m speculating. Let’s not take me too seriously. What I’m reasonably sure of is that the decision to march on London speaks to how much they considered Cornwall a part of England. Contrast that with centuries of Irish rebels, who fight in Ireland to get the English out, and to hell with London.


So the An Gof rebels march to London, and they’re enough of a threat that Henry forgets the Scots and marches an army south to join the forces he’s already assembled, so that 25,000 men meet the rebels outside London, at Blackheath. 


 


The defeat


The rebel army is defeated at the battle of (take your pick) Deptford Bridge or Blackheath–same place, two names. In some tellings, in addition to being lightly armed, the rebels aren’t well trained. In another, their weakness is simply that they don’t have horses or artillery, although their archers are good.


Either way, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 rebels die before the group surrenders, and another 1,500 are taken prisoner. An Gof and Flamank are tried and–yeah, they’re going to do that horrible thing to them–they’re sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. An Gof declares that they’ll have “a name perpetual and fame permanent and immortal.” 


In a moment of mercy (Henry’s apparently worried about getting the Cornish any more cranked up than they already are) they’re left to die by hanging before the rest of the theatrical stuff is carried out. A baron who joined them when they marched through Somerset is simply beheaded, because he’s an aristocrat, after all. 


All three heads are displayed on London Bridge. Forgive me, but the Tudors have some really unpleasant habits.


Nobody says what happens to the rank and file rebels who were captured. Nothing good, I’m sure. I also haven’t found anything about the rebels who weren’t captured. I imagine them filtering back home with tales to tell, some true and some good enough for neighbors to buy them a pint or three. And some, inevitably, unwilling to talk about what happened at all.


 


However


In 1508 Henry reinstateds and strengthens the stannary system in return for Cornwall’s payment of a £1,000 fine. The Stannary Parliament now has the power to ignore Westminster’s laws. 


That £1,000 would be the equivalent of £666,000 in 2023, but a more useful comparison is to say it’s equal to 709 contemporary horses. Horses, remember, are a luxury, which is why the rebels didn’t have them. In other words, this is a hefty chunk of cash, and I have no idea how it’s raised. Probably from those least able to pay.


According to Historic UK Henry “never imposed such high taxes on the Cornish again.” 


 


Back to 2023


The Stannary Parliament last met in 1753 and the Stannary Court heard its last case in 1896, but the charter that created them has never been revoked, so the Duke of Cornwall still appoints a Lord Warden of the Stannaries. Who, I have to assume, does nothing more than show up here and there in a fancy costume, or at least with a huge metal necklace to show how important he or she is. 


It’s a British thing. If you live here long enough, it almost begins to make sense. 

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Who was Trelawny?

			
						

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Wander through any Cornish town–or village, for that matter–and you’ll find a house called Trelawny. Or Trelawney. We’re reaching far enough back in history that spelling was still a liquid.


Who was Trelawny? The bishop of Bristol when James II was king, that’s who. It doesn’t sound like he has an obvious connection to Cornwall, but stay with me: it’s a powerful one.


Before we get to that, though, yes, houses here have names. It’s romantic as hell and equally inconvenient. I don’t know how many times my partner and I have been walking the dogs and been stopped by a delivery driver asking where some named house is. We seldom remember, but that’s okay because with our accents (both, after 17 years here, still strongly American) no one believes us anyway. 


Cities and new housing developments have abandoned the for the easier-to-manage system of named streets and house numbers, but nobody’s been brave or crazy enough to reorganize the countryside.


Are we done with that? Good. Onward.


Irrelevant photo: a begonia flower


 


King James and Bishop Trelawny


Jonathan Trelawny was born in Cornwall–in 1650, which I mention so we’ll have some clue as to what century we’re wandering through. He was the younger son of an old Cornish family, although when you think about it, what family isn’t old? We all have ancestors stretching back to the beginning of time, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but old old families are the ones who are impressed with themselves and expect the rest of us to be as well. Ideally, they have substantial amounts of money as well as portraits of their ancestors hanging disapprovingly on the walls.


In this particular old family, Papa Trelawny was a baronet–a commoner, but one with the right to be called “sir.”


Not by me, however. 


A baronet is below a baron but above a knight. Except knights of the Garter and–


Oh, come on, this is just too silly to go into. It’s a title. If they impress you, be impressed, please.


Jonathan became a minister in the Church of England, which is the kind of thing a good younger son would’ve done back then. I haven’t been able to find out what his role was in putting down Monmouth’s Rebellion, but he had one, and in gratitude for it King James (that’s James II, in case you’re counting) made him the bishop of Bristol. 


By this time, Trelawny’s older brother had died and the Trelawny we’re following inherited the title of baronet, and if anyone saw a conflict between being a baronet and a bishop, I haven’t found evidence of it.


We’ll stop here long enough to note that he and his family were royalists, having backed the king not only against Monmouth but (earlier king here but still a king) in the Civil Wars. 


 


And then it all went wrong


A royalist Trelawny may have been, but when, after Monmouth’s Rebellion, James misread the political tea leaves and thought they said “Hey, guess what, the country’s ready for political tolerance,” Trelawney parted ways with him. More specifically, the break came over the Declaration of Indulgence. To modern calorie counters that sounds like an announcement that not only was he going to eat a full English breakfast but that he’d have a slice of triple-layer chocolate cake for afternoon tea. 


Sorry, no such thing. Baking soda–or if you’re in Britain, bicarbonate of soda–and baking powder weren’t invented until the nineteenth century, and chocolate (I think–I haven’t double checked this) was still something to drink. You can, apparently, get a cake to rise using cream of tartar, but that only dates back to the eighteenth century. So no cakes for King Jimmy, and we’re not going to even discuss tea. 


What the Declaration of Indulgence did was suspend laws against religious nonconformists–a category that included those scary Catholics.  


Why were Catholics scary? Because England had spent a good bit of time seesawing back and forth between Protestantism and Catholicism, and every shift in the seesaw involved the two sides performing unspeakable acts on each other. Whichever side you were on, you had good reason to be afraid of the other one. So James granting a measure of religious freedom to Catholics? Especially when he’d appointed some to high offices and sent his Parliament home so they couldn’t stand in his way? If you were living back then, you might at this point let out a heartfelt, Protestant eeek. 


And if you’re living now–as I have to assume you are–you could argue either way about whether James was tippy-toeing (or stumbling) toward a Catholic takeover or toward a more tolerant country. He wasn’t around long enough for anyone to be certain.


But that’s getting ahead of the story. First, James demanded that the Declaration of Indulgence be read out in the churches, and seven bishops, including Trelawney, refused. They were arrested, tried for seditious libel, and (to popular acclaim) acquitted. According to the Cornwall Heritage Trust, the episode didn’t make much of an impact on Cornwall, although the Cornwall SEO Co. site says the acquittal sparked celebrations from Cornwall to London. Take your pick. My money’s on the Heritage Trust, but that’s strictly a hunch. 


 


And then?


And then James was overthrown by the Glorious Revolution, which brought in a pair of Protestants as joint monarchs, which is why we don’t get to know which way James was trying to nudge the country. Trelawny became the bishop of Exeter, which brought him closer to Cornwall but he was still on the wrong side of the Tamar River, and later of Winchester, moving him further away. He died in 1721.


Why, then, is his name on so many houses in Cornwall? As far as I can tell, it’s because in the nineteenth century Reverend Robert Steven Hawker wrote a song about him, “The Song of the Western Men,” better known as “Trelawny.”


 


Rev. Hawker, the mermaid, and the elusive truth


Hawker was nothing if not an eccentric. He built himself a hut on the cliffs, where he smoked opium and wrote poetry. He publicly excommunicated one of his cats (he had ten) for killing a mouse on a Sunday. You can pretty well count on the cat not being impressed.


He also put seaweed on his head, sat on a rock, and impersonated a mermaid. The shorter version runs like this:


“For several moonlit nights, he sat at the end of the long Bude breakwater draped in seaweed, combing his locks and singing mournful dirges, to the consternation of the local inhabitants. Finally a farmer loudly announced his intention of peppering the apparition with buckshot, whereupon it dived into the ocean and was never seen again.”


If you want the longer version, you’ll find it here.


Hawker’s song tells the story of 20,000 Cornishmen marching to London to demand Trelawny’s release. The problem is that they didn’t. One estimate puts the Cornish population in 1760 at around 124,000. Let’s say half of those were women, although I seem to remember that, left to herself, nature produces a slim majority of girl babies. I found some slim and pointless comfort in that back in the Dark Ages, when everything in (and out of) sight was engineered to promote more males than females. Never mind. We’re down to 62,000 people. Let’s say randomly that a third of those were either too young or too old to fight. After rounding out the numbers to make my life easier (have you ever wondered why I’m not a statistician?), we’re in the neighborhood of 40,000 men of fighting age. So that would be half the men of fighting age downing tools and taking off for London to wave their weapons and issue threats. 


No, I don’t think so either. And if you’re inclined to argue with my figures, you’ve got more than enough grounds. Even the original population number is an estimate. Britain’s first census (unless you count the Domesday Book) wasn’t taken until 1801 and it’s not considered a professional-quality census anyway.


But to return to our alleged point: there was no Cornish army marching on London. Cornwall Heritage speculates that Hawker mixed in an earlier rebellion, the An Gof rebellion of 1497. Call it poetic license if you like, or blame the opium. Or the seaweed.


In spite of that minor historical problem, Hawker’s song is still sung and it has great power. It taps into the well of anger you’re likely to find in any formerly independent nation that’s lost its language and been overwhelmed by incomers. A fair number of people count “Trelawny” as the Cornish national anthem. You’d be wise–and so (as an incomer) would I–not to run around debunking the man or the song. 


 


So how does the song go?


With a good sword and a trusty shield

A faithful heart and true

King James’s men shall understand

What Cornish men can do

And have they fixed the where and when?

And shall Trelawny die?

Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why.


Chorus

And shall Trelawny live?

Or shall Trelawny die?

Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why.


Out spake the captain brave and bold

A merry wight was he

Though London Tower were Michael’s hold

We’ll set Trelawny free

We’ll cross the Tamar, land to land

The Severn is no stay

Then one and all and hand in hand

And who shall bid us nay.


And when we came to London wall

A pleasant sight to view

Come forth, come forth, ye cowards all

Here are better men than you

Trelawny, he’s in keep in hold

Trelawny he may die

But twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why.


 


Want to hear it instead of reading it? Catch the Fisherman’s Friends–a Cornish group if there ever was one–singing it. 


I was going to tuck the An Gof rebellion in at the end of this but I’ve got on long enough. Next week if all goes well. Stick around. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a question for people whose British geography is better than mine: what route would take you from Cornwall to London that crosses the Severn?

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Artificial intelligence, food, and British politics

			
						

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A publisher of multiple regional newspapers has been introducing artificial intelligence into its “process” to–and I’m quoting here from the article that introduced me to this–”reduce the need for human involvement.” Because–and you’ll probably figure out that I’m not quoting now–humans are both pesky and expensive and life’s better all around if we just eliminate them.


The publisher is National World–a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one–and it popped into other newspapers’ pages not because it’s working to eliminate humans from its, ahem, process but because it’s considering a bid for a national paper that’s up for sale, the Telegraph.   


So far, so boring? Well, you may have heard that AI has–she said mildly–a few wrinkles that haven’t been ironed out yet, so increasing its role in either writing or gathering news could take us in some interesting directions, and once you jump to the national level they become more visible. 


Irrelevant photo: the Cornish coastline


Let’s turn to New Zealand for an example. A supermarket, Pak’n’Save, set loose an app that used AI to generate recipes. The idea was that you tell it what’s getting ancient in your refrigerator and it creates a recipe. Just for you. You know: lonesome cabbage seeks unspecified ingredients for meaningful end-of-life experience. That kind of thing.


Actually, I believe users are supposed to specify all the ingredients hanging around their cupboards and refrigerators, so the cabbage is on its own to find partners for its end-of-life experience. All the app does is recommend a method.


However it works, social media took notice when it started coming up with things like an Oreo vegetable stir fry and an oregano-flavored milk sauce. After that, the app became ridiculously popular.


This is why humans need to be pushed out of the picture. Do you know another species that would ask for recipes using ant poison or glue? 


Me neither, but the app wasn’t fazed. It suavely recommended a glue sandwich and “ant jelly delight.” Bleach? A fresh breath mocktail. (It was smart enough to realize a sandwich wouldn’t work. Give it some credit.) I’m not sure what was in the refrigerator to make it suggest an “aromatic water mix,” which would create chlorine gas–”the perfect non-alcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses. . .  Serve chilled and enjoy.”


Very chilled. Chlorine gas can damage your lungs, or if you overindulge, kill you, but what the hell.


Did I mention the Meow Mix fried rice?


Meow Mix? It’s a dry cat food. 


So everyone was having a wonderful time except Pak’n’Save, which was stuck talking to the press while having to sound responsible and sane. So it did what any sane, responsible corporation would do and blamed the users.


“A small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately,” it said. Besides, they’d fine-tuned it, so it was all okay. And furthermore, no one was supposed to use it if they were under 18. And they added a warning that the company doesn’t guarantee that “any recipe will be a complete or balanced meal, or suitable for consumption.” Because who doesn’t want a recipe for a meal that isn’t suitable for consumption?


Things may have improved somewhat. Interesting Engineering asked for a recipe using tar, bread, stones, mayonnaise, lettuce, and petrol and was told to go take a hike.


That’s the problem with the world today. Nobody wants other people to have fun anymore.


*


Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns everything everywhere, is also turning to AI to produce its content. Their profits took a 75% hit last year and whatever else AI does, it will cut costs. The News Corp’s Australian branch is running 3,000 AI-generated stories a week.


How accurate were they? Who cares? There’s money to be made, people. Buckle up and stop complaining.


 


AI and politics


Meanwhile, back in Britain, where we don’t ask for recipes involving stones and bleach, thank you very much, hackers broke into the electoral register, which has voters’ names and addresses. Britain’s electoral system is paper based, which may mean it’s out of date and slow but also means it’s hard to hack and doesn’t recommend glue sandwiches, so it’s easy to think nothing will be hurt, but some digital experts fret over the possibility of voters being targeted with false information–something along the lines of what happened in Canada when bots auto-called voters telling them their polling places had been moved. AI, the theory goes, makes it possible to target disinformation more convincingly.


Other experts say, “Bullshit”: it takes too much time and work to roll targeted disinformation out on a large scale. I’m not placing any bets on the outcome of this one. My best guess is that whoever hacked that had something in mind, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work.


 


And in marginally related news…


…the village of Tring (it’s in Hertfordshire) lost its internet connection when edible dormice chewed through a cable. Local shops couldn’t accept cards and had to hold out for cash. After the village cash machine ran out and everyone had checked behind their couch cushions and under their cars’ floor mats, shops had to turn away business.  Except for the bakery, which gave away bread and pastries rather than let them go to waste.


After three days, the cable was put back together. I’m not sure what happened to the dormice. I suspect it wasn’t anything good.


And before you ask, the edible dormouse isn’t a mouse, it’s a whole ‘nother species and looks more squirrel-like than mouselike. It was introduced to Britain by the Romans, who really did eat them, but they’re very cute and eating cute animals is frowned upon these days. Except by artificial intelligence, which has no way to measure cuteness.


The only dormouse native to the British Isles is the hazel dormouse. 


You needed to know that.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
The Monmouth Rebellion and the king who wasn’t

			
						

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If you tied a knot in the thread of English history every time somebody led a rebellion, you’d make a mess of your sewing. So let’s skip the knots–they weren’t my best idea–and talk about the Monmouth Rebellion, which was led by (no points for guessing this one) Monmouth, the Duke of.


Okay, half a point if you got the Duke part right.


Like everything else of its time (1685) and place (England), the rebellion only makes sense when you paint in the background: the wrestling match between Catholics, Protestants, and super-Protestants for the soul–and more importantly, the throne–of England. 


Can a wrestling match have three contestants or does that make it a free-for-all? Does a contest involving three people take place between them or among them? Does anyone care about the answers to these questions?


Probably not. 


Irrelevant photo: mountain ash berries. Fall is coming. Or autumn , if we’re speaking British.


We’ll start our tale in (for no good reason) the present tense at a time when King Nobody (the first and last of that name) wears England’s crown. Cromwell and some of the super-Protestants are in power. The last king’s dead. The country’s kingless. The super-Protestants lack superpowers, though. They get their name (from me; no one else calls them that) because they’re further along the Protestant spectrum than the more moderate Church of England Protestants. 


That lack of superpowers explains why–


But I’m getting ahead of our story. Cromwell’s in power and Charles II, son of the now-beheaded Charles I, is in exile. 


 


What does Charles get up to while he’s in exile?


Some regal hanky-panky, and the fairly predictable result of that is a son, James.


Time rolls on, as time will. Everybody involved gets older. Cromwell dies. The super-Protestants don’t find a way to continue a kingless government. (See above: lack of superpowers.) Charles comes back to England as king, becoming Charles II. If you’ve seen portraits of the Charleses, he’s the one who looks like an aging and particularly dissolute Bob Dylan. The thought of anyone being or ever having been in bed with him–


No, let’s put that out of our minds.


Charles may be the king, but he doesn’t have superpowers either. All around him are forces pushing to lock the Church of England into place and edge both Catholics and nonconforming Protestants to the furthest corners of the national picture.


It’s in this context that he flirts dangerously with both Catholicism and Europe’s Catholic powers, and it’s also in this context that he and his wife fail to produce–forget a son, they don’t have any kids at all. So his brother is next in line for the throne and he’s–gasp, wheeze–a Catholic convert.


It’s easy to think this is all intolerant and silly, but the country has just emerged from a time when people killed each other in the name of religion, and even now, when things have settled down a bit, which religion you’d committed to decides what earthly doors are open or closed to you. So everyone has solid material reasons not to want Those People from the Other Religion(s) in power. 


That’s in addition to whatever religious reasons they have.


 


Yeah, but what about little James?


Well, James gets knocked around a bit. Before he’s ten, he’s kidnapped, jailed, exiled, and kidnapped again, this time by his father’s agents, who dump him into the household of his father’s gentleman of the bedchamber, where he’s barely educated.  


Gentleman of the bedchamber? It’s not a lascivious as it sounds. He dresses the king, waits on him when he eats alone, and generally hangs out with him. 


At some point, Charles wakes up, says, “Didn’t I have a kid around here somewhere?” and brings him to court, where he becomes a favorite and is turned into a Duke and given a bunch of other titles that if you’re not used to British traditions sound like something JK Rowling made up. He also has a variety of income streams arranged for him. When he’s older, he fights for the king here and there and gains quite the reputation as a soldier. He joins the privy council.


So far, he barely justifies a footnote to history, but the thing is, James is a Protestant and a king’s son, even if he wasn’t born with the right paperwork.


But hold on a minute. His mother (who’s now conveniently dead) always claimed that she’d been married to Charles, and since marriage records haven’t been computerized yet, no one can prove she wasn’t, even if, equally, no one can prove she was. That makes it possible to build a case that he should be the next–safely Protestant–king. So schemes to set James on the throne buzz around him like flies around roadkill.


Eventually he gets involved in a conspiracy, the Rye House Plot (it would’ve involved killing the king and his brother). After a bit of back and forth James goes to live in the Netherlands.


 


And doesn’t live happily ever after


Instead, when Charles dies, James–


But let’s call him Monmouth from here on. It’ll help us remember who’s the king (James, Charles’s brother) and who’s the wannabe (also James, Charles’s son a.k.a. Monmouth). 


So Charles dies and Monmoth launches a full-scale rebellion–or invasion if you prefer–that’s coordinated with an anti-Catholic Scottish rebellion in the highlands.


Why the Scots? Well, England and Scotland are two separate countries, but they have a single king, and if you think that’s confusing try to explain the pronunciation of Worcestershire to someone who learned to read English using phonics. 


The Scottish rising fails while Monmouth’s still crossing the Channel, though, leaving him and 82 men to land in Lyme Regis (that’s in Dorset, in the southwest) without anything to distract the government’s attention. 


Why such a small force? Monmouth’s counting on the country to rise in his support, and initially that seems to work. He’s popular in the southwest, and he gathers an army of 3,000, which is a nice number, trailing an appealing collection of zeroes. The problem with them is that none of them come from the gentry–the people with some soldierly training. He has an army of enthusiastic amateurs without much in the way of weaponry. 


By another count, his army is uphill of 1,000.  How far uphill? Will you stop splitting hairs? We’ll never get out of here. 


Monmouth’s not exactly claiming the throne at this point, just saying he has a right to it but will only take it with Parliament’s agreement. Let’s not split hairs, though. A lot of his followers call him King Monmouth, and they have time to defeat a few county militias before the king’s army arrives. Commoners and the poor flock to his banner, and in Taunton he’s proclaimed king. By now, he has some 6,000 soldiers. 


We’ll skip the back and forth. Monmouth’s and the king’s armies meet at Sedgemoor and Monmouth loses badly. After the battle, his soldiers are hunted down and killed on the spot. (They were commoners anyway, and you can do that to commoners and still sleep at night.) Some 200 who are caught later are tried before being killed. Another 2,000 are transported to the West Indies to work–in a weird and little-known footnote to history–to work alongside slaves from Africa.


Or by that other count, 320 executed and 800 transported. By a third, it’s 333 and 860. Let’s treat the numbers as rough guesses. 


Men, women, and children with remote connections to the rebellion are flogged. Monmouth is captured and executed. 


David Horspool, whose book The English Rebel I rely on whenever I write about rebellions (and I’m a sucker for a good rebellion), thinks Monmouth’s failure was a result of rushing into his rebellion instead of waiting for James to discredit himself. 


 


What happens then?


James discredits himself. He interprets Monmouth’s defeat to mean that the country values stability above everything else and overestimates their tolerance for religious tolerance. He appoints Catholics to important positions, most controversially to positions in the military. He grants for all religions more leeway than they’ve had. And when I say “all religions” here, we do seem to be talking about all religions, including Jews, Muslims, and dissenting Christians. As far as I know, that’s the limit of England’s religious population at this point.  He When judges, justices of the peace, and lords lieutenant resist his moves, he fires them and he comes into conflict with Parliament–nothing new for kings, but the whiff of Catholic incense hanging over the conflict supercharges the reaction he gets.  


Is he genuinely trying to build a state that tolerates multiple religions or is he making sneaky moves toward a Catholic state? I don’t know, but a lot of powerful Church of England Protestants think they do. They believe he’s favoring Catholics and setting the building blocks of a Catholic state in place. 


There’s something very contemporary about that fear, don’t you think? Just slot a more modern into place and the rhetoric’s the same. Immigrants, Muslims, Black people, whoever. There’s a lot of it going around. I know you’ve heard it.


 


Why does any of this matter?


Because it sets up the Glorious Revolution, which hits the Eject button that’s been quietly installed on James’s throne, replacing him with a Protestant monarchy. 


But that’s a story for another time. 

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Who’s the prime minister today?

			
						

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Britain’s had a lot of prime ministers recently, and the average citizen could be forgiven for not caring who’s in charge anymore, but you might think the prime minister himself would remember. Not so. Rishi Sunak went to a pub for a photo op not long ago, trailed by the predictable photographers and reporters and hangers-on, to fill a pint glass and promote the government’s latest solution to our least pressing problem. So far, so boring. Then he referred to himself as the chancellor.


To be fair, he was once the chancellor, and I wouldn’t blame him if he got nostalgic for a job that didn’t involve sticking his head quite so far above the parapet. I mean it’s one thing to lust after the prime minister’s job, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually be the prime minister. Of a crisis-laden country when your party’s best idea involves playing three-card monte with the taxes on alcohol.


Irrelevant photo: I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think this is called a balloon flower, for the shape of the blossom before it opens out.


Anyway, for one glorious moment he forgot that he was and is the prime minister, and I’m sure it served as a mini-break before his actual break, a week or so in California–a break he may have needed but Greenpeace needed even more, because it took advantage of his absence to drape his house in black, in honor of his expansion of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.


But back to our alleged prime minister: this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten what role he’s playing. Last year, when it was time for the prime minister to stand up and speak to the House of Commons, he kept his hind end blissfully planted on the bench, waiting for someone else to get up there and spout the required nonsense.


It doesn’t explain everything about what’s wrong in our political moment, but I do love it when they give me something new to make fun of.


 


Department of High Security


Meanwhile, our immigration minister, Robert Jenrick–well, to be fair, I don’t know that he forgot that he was the immigration minister, but he may have walked off and left his ministerial red box unattended on a train while he went to the toilet. Yes, ministers have to use the toilet no matter how powerful they become. Sad but true. 


What’s this about a ministerial red box? Well, ministers have red briefcases, called boxes, since they’re not really boxes but are at least boxy. The government’s website says they have to use them when they’re carrying papers that need to be kept secure. Why? Because they “offer a higher level of security.” At least if you don’t leave them on the train seat. 


A photo of Jenrick’s red box sitting all on its lonesome in an empty first class train seat, and Jenrick says it’s misleading since that he was sitting across the aisle. The person who took the photo says, “He 100% left it–it’s an important document case, we were baffled.”


Me, I haven’t a clue what happened but I’m putting my money on him having left it. Since we’ll probably never find out, it’s safe enough.


*


Since we’re talking about security, Britain’a Ministry of Defense accidentally sent a number of classified emails that were meant for the US to Mali, an Russian ally.  


How’d that happen? The US military uses “.mil” in its addresses. Mali uses “.ml.” So Britain sent what it says were a small number of messages that weren’t classified as either secret or more secret than secret. The US, on the other hand, sent millions of emails to Mali, including passwords, medical records, and the itineraries of high-ranking officers.


Who needs spies?


 


And also in the US


Activists who oppose self-driving cars wandering loose on the streets of San Francisco have discovered that if they put an orange traffic cone on the hood of the car, it forgets it’s a car. Or–well, who knows what goes on in the mind of a self-driving car? I was looking for a connection to forgetful politicians. It stops. It goes nowhere until a human being shows up to take the cone off. 


To avoid stranding riders, they’ve targeted empty self-driving taxis. 


 


But back in Britain . . .


. . . English Heritage, one of the massive nonprofits that run visitors through historic buildings, shaking some spare change out of their credit cards and some feelings of awe out of their souls along the way, has discovered that adults will forget whatever bits of dignity they pretend to have if the dress-up boxes that had formerly been for kids only include adult size clothing. 


But because no organization that large and respectable can be taken seriously unless it commissions research before introducing a change like that, it commissioned research into the adult imagination, discovering–surprise, surprise–that adults still have them, and that they seem to improve with age.


I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this is all bullshit, but that’s okay because I’m not sure it matters anyway. The costumes aren’t available at all English Heritage sites and I’m not clear about whether the change is permanent or only runs through August. If you happen to visit, if you’re an adult, and if the adult costumes have been taken away, that doesn’t mean your last shot at imagination has left. At your age, you’re responsible for your own imagination. Don’t wait for someone to tell you when to imagine, or how.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Britain’s Home Office: what’s it really like?

			
						

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Just when you think British politics can’t sink any lower, the Home Office–


But I need to interrupt myself here. Don’t let the cuddly-sounding name fool you. You know, the home part of Home Office. This is not someplace you go to de-stress and enjoy some soft cushions and a nice cup of tea. It’s home to some of the meanest spirits in a mean-spirited government. 


Are you with me now? I’ll pick up almost where I left off.


–the Home Office noticed that a couple of immigrant detention centers had painted cartoon figures on the walls, so it gave orders for them to be painted over. The initial explanation was that they were “too welcoming,” but when that didn’t play well the second explanation was that they weren’t age appropriate. 


Irrelevant photo: A tuberous begonia. Sitting on a placemat because, hey I had to put it somewhere.


Obi Wan waved his hand and told us all we’d never heard the first explanation. But since Obi Wan’s a fictional character and the government, sadly, exists in the nonfictional universe, some of us have kept the original alive in our memories. We’re aware that Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration, said it had to be clear that the center was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre.” 


Being the minister for immigration is awkward in a government that’s against it, all of it, but the wording, I’ve been told, was inherited from a time when ministries that had been of something–education or health or whatever–became, even when they’re against it, for it.


So what ages weren’t the murals appropriate for? Teenagers, but one of the centers has a family section for parents with babies and toddlers, and unaccompanied children as young as nine are known to have crossed the Channel in small boats. So we can leave that explanation for Obi Wan to deal with.


Those small boats are something the government’s hoping to leverage into an election victory–or at least something short of a crushing defeat. Immigrants risk their lives crossing the Channel in them illegally, since the legal avenues for asylum seekers have been all but closed. 


 


The response


But let’s not get into that. I’ll lose whatever’s left of (or possibly for) my sense for (or was the of?) humor. Let’s talk instead about the response: cartoonist Guy Venables said he had a “huge list of highly regarded cartoonists” who’d offered to repaint the mural. 


What happens if they repaint and Jenrick orders them painted over again?


“We will be cartoonists for a lot longer than Robert Jenrick will be in mainstream politics. So we’ll paint it back on. If they paint it over, we’ll carry on. It’s all you can do about this kind of evil.”


You won’t be surprised to learn that the detention center turned down the offer to repaint the murals–I mean, come on, their boss had just ordered their destruction–so the cartoonists have created a coloring book instead. Its themes are Welcome to Britain and Life in Britain. They’ll be given free to kids in detention and, possibly, sold as a fundraiser. 


 


Other ways to be unwelcoming 


It’s not just humans who aren’t being welcomed. Birds have bee faced with spikes to keep them off statues and buildings. And why wouldn’t humans want make them feel unwelcome? Have you ever seen a bird who filled out the paperwork necessary to move its feathery ass from one country to another? No, of course you haven’t. Scofflaws, every one of ‘em.


Okay, I can’t blame this one on the Home Office, although I’d be happy to. This one’s the fault of the Department for Pigeon Spikes.


Anyway, birds have started not just pulling up strips of metal spikes but making nests out of them. Some have even used the spikes the way their human creators had in mind, facing them outward to keep predators away. 


They’ve also been found to make nests out of barbed wire and knitting needles. The trick is to line the inside of the nest with soft material to protect the chicks. It’s easier than wrapping the chicks in padded vests. Anyone who’s ever tried to keep socks on an infant will understand why.


 


The science news


Scientists have found a way to make energy out of thin air using humidity and pretty much any material that can be punched full of ridiculously small holes. So far, they’ve only made a fraction of a volt, but they’re hoping to bump up the output. And I can’t think of a thing to say about this that’s even remotely amusing but now that our world’s on fire I thought it might be worth mentioning.


*


The news is full of stories about artificial intelligence, just as humans are full of what passes for intelligence but given the state of the world might not be. Two stories caught my eye. One was about how to spot online reviews that have been written by AI in order to puff up whatever’s for sale–or if the AI was set loose by a competitor, to tear it down.


What should you look for? Overly perfect sentences. Long sentences. American English. (That makes me a suspect.) Good spelling. Grammatical accuracy. In other words, if anyone writes well, that should set off all the red flags. Or at least if any American does–


More usefully, they warn us to beware of long reviews–the ones that go on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, because artificial intelligence doesn’t get bored. And, what with not being human and all, it never has the experience of people edging away when it talks nonstop for half an hour, so it never learns when to shut up.


To be fair, I know people who’ve never learned that either.


But AI is, apparently, adapting. It’s learning British English for British reviews. It may start throwing in a human error or two. 


In the spirit of nothing-is-ever-simple, though, a different article (in the same newspaper) notes that the computer programs that have been introduced to spot AI-written job applications and essays are biased against people who speak English as a second language: Seven of them flagged their writing as being AI generated. One program flagged 98% of it as AI generated but passed 90% of the essays written by native-speaking American 8th graders. 


Why does that happen? Something like ChatGPT is trained to guess what word comes next, so it spits out what’s called low-perplexity text: text using familiar words and common patterns. Throw in something surprising and your writing sounds less GPTish. The problem for non-native speakers is that they’re likely to use predictable words. 


All this comes from a group of scientists, who then went back to their AI programs and asked them to rewrite their essays using more complex language. Those were submitted to the detection programs and were accepted as human-generated. 


Does that mean non-native speakers would be well advised to use artificial intelligence if the want their writing to be accepted as human-generated? Possibly. 


Education is arguable the most important market for AI-detection software, the researchers (or the artificial intelligence that by then had locked them in the cupboard) said. “Non-native students bear more risks of false accusations of cheating, which can be detrimental to a student’s academic career and psychological wellbeing.”



 


A note on book recommendations


I don’t know if you’re aware of what pesky creatures writers are, but we’ll do just about anything to publicize our books, and in an effort to make mine more visible I’ve put up a page of book recommendations at Shepherd.com, which in spite of encouraging me to obnoxiously publicize my page seems like a good website, full of book recommendations that are organized around whatever themes contributors choose. So it’s useful not just for writers but also for readers.


The best publicity is when you can actually offer people something useful. 


The books I’ve recommended are LGBTQ+ books you haven’t heard of and should, but I’d recommend them regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, or something else entirely. A good book can speak powerfully to the community it grew out of, but it doesn’t have to stay within those borders. The ones I’ve recommended can speak to anyone who’s willing to listen. 

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
How not to pronounce English place names

			
						

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The Marquis de Sade invented English spelling. Or if he didn’t, he might as well have. I asked Lord Google if the marquis either spoke or read English, and the definitive answer is that nobody cares. 


So much for intellectual curiosity. It’s a sad old world out there.


The reason I’m telling you this is that English spelling has successfully tripped up a train line in northern England–called, boringly enough, Northern Rail. 


The problems started when Northern decided to re-record its station announcements so they’d match its shiny new train carriages. Customers responded by pitching a fit–or fits, since we’re talking about multiple customers, each one pitching the aforesaid fit in the time and place of his, her, or their choosing–about the way the towns were pronounced.  


Irrelevant photo: hydrangeas


 


Brief digression 


This is a non-gender-specific-person-bites-dog story, formerly and more simply if less acurately known as a man-bites-dog story. For the most part, Britain’s train passengers are so busy throwing fits about their trains being canceled at the last minute, stranding them in places they don’t want to be, that the only things they care about pronouncing are the swear words. But there’s hope for us all if northerners care enough about their hometowns to person the barricades in defense of the correct pronunciation.


 


And now back to our story


The problem started when some poor fool–or possibly an entire department of them, or an artificial intelligence with a bolted-on speaking voice–assumed that because a series of letters follow each other, they carry information about how the resulting word should be pronounced. Ha. They were dealing with English, so spelling is only the roughest of guides to pronunciation. Abandon hope, all ye who record station announcements. 


What towns tripped them up? Well, starting with A: 


Aspatria, which they pronounced A-spa-tria but should be Ass-spat-ri.


Burneside, which they pronounced Burn-side but should be Burn-e-side.


Cark and Cartmel, which they pronounced (silly people) Cark and Cartmel but should be Cark-n-Cartmel.


Ilkeston, which they pronounced Ill-kes-ston but should be Ilks-tonne.


And Slaithwaite, which they pronounced Slaith-wait but should be Slou-wit, as any slow-wit could’ve told them.


 


What happened next?


Well, in a rare moment of good customer service (this is a British train company we’re talking about, remember, so our customer service expectations should be set at Low), Northern turned to the public for advice. They opened a consultation and adjusted their recordings. Or–


Okay, I don’t know if they’ve released the new recordings into the wild yet. For all I know, they’ve only announced what the changes will be. Whichever it is, things were going well until they came to Mossley Hill. That started out as Mozzley-ill and was about to change to Mose-ley Hill, which is what the train company swears residents told them was correct. But at least some residents swear it’s Moss-lee Hill and are furious. As one resident said, “It’s ‘Moss-Lee’ Hill. The same as my name is super short and people call me Susan. Don’t call me Suzzanne, because my name is Susan, spelled ‘S-U-S-A-N’ not ‘S-U-Z-Z-A-N-N-E’… Go back to the person who invented the map and how dare they want to change names.”


I have no idea how Northern’s going to get out of that one, but I wish good luck to everyone involved, and possibly a pair of roller skates to help with a speedy exit.


 


But let’s go back to Ilkeston


It hasn’t gone smoothly there either, and the Derbyshire Times had fun with it, checking in with the county council and finding that all political parties (except the Greens, who it didn’t reach) agreed that Northern got it wrong after the consultation. 


From that promising start, things got complicated. Most of them want the announcements to go back to Ill-kes-ton, but one, who personally agrees, says his wife–also a councilor and apparently not interviewed directly–calls the place Ill-son.


Derbyshire, by the way, is pronounced Darby-sheer. And since it includes the town of Erewash, the Derbyshire Times asked the Erewash town council for the correct pronunciation of the town and was told by someone who’s either wise or gifted at political survival that the council doesn’t have an official position on that. Lord Google does, however, since he doesn’t have to run for office: he says its eh-ruh-wosh and comes from an Old English word meaning wandering, marshy river. It could easily have multiple pronunciations, but I’m reasonably sure that none of them is ear-wash.


 


Why do things like this happen?


Because. 


If you don’t consider that enough of an explanation, I can only refer you to the kids I grew up with, who thought it explained everything.


If you travel around England, you can count on wandering into some town with what looks like a simple name and getting it wrong. This will either crack up the locals or give some Susan fits. So as long as we’re at it, let’s troll through a few other mispronounced place names. 


Alnwick is An-ick


Bedworth is Bed-uth


Bicester is Bister.


Fowey is Foy.


Gateacre is Gat-akker.


Godmanchester is Gumster–but you guessed that, right?


Hunstanton is Hunston


Kirkby  is Ker-bee. 


Leominster is Lemster.


Mousehole is Mow-zel.


Worcestershire (famous for the sauce) is Woos-ter-sher unless it’s pronounced by our neighor, who insists the shire is as silent as most of the rest of the word, making it just plain old Wooster sauce and there’s no point in arguing with her.


We could go on endlessly but won’t. I will warn you, though, that just when you think you’ve found a pattern, it changes. If Bicester is Bister, then Cirencester must be Sister, right? 


Of course not. Cirencester is pronounced Cirencester–or Siren-cester, for the sake of sticking to our format. You might want to hide that final R, though, because in some versions of British, the R is only the faintest memory of a sound, making spa rhyme with star.


Welcome to the English language. It’s not a safe place for the innocent or the guilty, and being a native speaker doesn’t grant you any protection.