An Exercise in Democracy

In an attempt to give the students more say in their own academic fields, it is customary for the University to fill the seats of a consultative committee with faculty and student representative. Thereafter, comes the minor annoyance of having to elect these student representatives, who, naively, should be the most capable and popular choice of the student body in each subject. And their election, though containing only the slightest shard of the political (but as a certain Dr. A—put it, "a door to a glimmering political career") often seems like a foreshadow, a rehearsal of certain future inclinations towards political determination that we are familiar with.

Thankless jobs as these are (long, pointless meetings, slamming face-first into six hundred years of brick-wall bureaucracy, though, as the same Dr. A—also said, you might get a free cup of tea at the end of it), it must take some truly foolhardy people to be willing to come forward. More often than not, the reverse selection pressure of stupidity and masochism ensures that many candidates possess the most unsuitable traits for doing a good job. Most common are the mercenaries hunting for something to put on their CV (another observation made by the ever-astute Dr. A--, who, by virtue of age alone must have seen some thirty odd autumns of this intriguing business) and who only step forward because of a rather poorly-founded hope of winning in a walkover for the lack of candidature which would have made it an easy bullet point on that CV. Often they cringe a little as some other hand snakes its way into the air and it has to come down to a vote. The other ways in which people come to stand for these positions is of course rather familiar as well; being "volunteered" by one's mates, having a massive and sudden streak of altruism, drunkenness, and so on.

So once the motley band of assorted characters has been assembled in a nod to the illustrious history of democracy and self-determination, the exercise of the free-will of the people has to begin. It's easy to scale all this up to that of the national politics, in the way that a large, imposing shadow may be cast only using a marble and careful orchestration of the light (as another Dr. K—said, "this is merely a Primary School problem, you add everything up and then minus it away, but no, when people see that it is 'Ah! Relativistic Dynamics!', then whoosh!" Incidentally I too went "whoosh!").

Sometimes the candidates are allowed to introduce themselves and make a speech, which is almost always a total farce because no-one actually talks about their policy proposals, because policy is as boring as partial differentiation. No-one likes to hear about how one is going to suggest to geriatric professors about how "no, really, there is always room for grape-flavoured yoghurt in any lecture!" People want to be entertained; often, this is the number one rule in political campaigning. So people tell jokes and stories, because that is what the people want to hear. It is like the coliseum of popular opinion where the audience can reverse one's fate by a simple flick of the arm.

But often, the candidates being able to speak more than just their name and college is already a luxury. In order to save time candidates often just line up for the students in an identification parade for the murderers of democracy. Without anything else to base their judgements upon, it is not surprising then that looks become very important (or college, or accent; superfluous things). This is a rule, empirically verified, that I myself like to call "When in doubt, vote for the chio-bu" (yes, that day has finally come). With not much in the way of shock and horror, I raised my eyebrow only slightly when it was announced that the two of the prettiest (apparently my opinion was also shared, though I am quite a fly-by-night source for this sort of thing) females of the lot had been elected, followed perhaps by a collective swoon (but what if it had all been calculated and those two had known the rule all this while?)

Probably with the political apathy of much of the population (student political societies have a markedly lower membership than rowing clubs. But then again almost everything has a lower membership than rowing clubs, even perhaps some departments themselves) such behaviour, even with the implementation of a more rigorous voting apparatus, will continue to manifest itself. One thing I did notice is that not a single Asian did come forward to stand. Maybe we are more cynical, or just wiser.

Treading vigilantly to avoid stepping foot first into pools of muddied water swirling on the perforated pavement, the rain spitting in my face, taunting, goading me about my helplessness against the weather, it when I finally began to feel a sense of irritation towards the infamous British weather, whose vicious temper and fickle nature I had not, until now, like a capricious woman one has married blissfully for a month, seen in such clear relief. Rain was merely one of her noxious tricks ('it' has to be female; would you associate such traits with a male?) and it was already proving to be one of her most favoured.

Like a tantrum, lately, rain has erupted most impulsively at all times of the day, sometimes disappearing in a flash, and sometimes casting its bleak pallor over everything for days. With such a variety of rain, as there are so many varieties of sunniness (the same sun that broils the Mediterranean peoples their olive brown hue also, in other climes less kind, turns everything under the sky into some variant of beef jerky) , it is not difficult to imagine that there be a plethora of moods associated with each one.

On the rain scale of 1 – 5 (it could have been from 1 – 10 but I was not imaginative enough to think of that many moods):

1 Gentle Sheets of Rain, cascading down from the heavens like ambrosia to a tingling dry land
The rain that makes one feel alive, that affirms our world is not indeed being hurt (gosh, I had to think of the most tender word for 'destroy' I knew, to match the mood) by having the reality sucked out of it in a Adolf-Eichmann-execution (okay so I couldn't help it here) way. It is the rain that people rush out of their homes to embrace (possibly also bursting out in song; very The Sound of Music) and pirouette in their finest clothes with all their loved ones without catching pneumonia afterwards. The rain that people hope will never go away (but will become sick of when they need to go to work. But people in The Sound of Music never need to go to work). Naturally, tremendously enjoyable, with the added bonus of usually stopping after about 30 minutes.

2 Lashings of Rain with a lightly overcast sky and a homogenous sheet of fluffy clouds hanging underneath
The philosophical rain, where the gentle drumming of raindrops on the window is so continuous and hypnotic that upon hearing it (when you have nothing to do. This is going to become a common thread, because people observe the rain only when they have nothing to do) your mind starts to unravel like a badly-knitted scarf into the individual fibres of its representation until the emptiness left finally describes one's being; exactly the sort of thought that develops during such a shower. One tends to sink into a somewhat melancholy mood, rain being associated in general with unhappy moods and trawling one's memories to recall the sadder ones. It is something to get one contemplative and to perhaps write down more 'thoughtful' (it must be admitted that one person's thoughtful is another's humdrum) things that one normally would. Also, such rain is very conducive for afternoon napping.

3 Buckets of Rain with a foul sky and spiteful, thumping winds
Rain that makes you want to stay indoors, raindrops crashing on the kitchen roof, the heater on, and the cat asleep in the blanket on the plush sofas, while one cheerily bustles in the kitchen pulling out tray after tray of wonderful ginger cookies (it has to be ginger cookies, nothing else cuts this image) whose aroma permeates to every atom of the house (also, it must be a house, with a nice tiled roof). One might also want to curl up in a blanket with a book and a mug of cocoa and sip the afternoon away. Homey, cozy and warm is the only means by which we can combat the menace of such a rain.

4 Whippets of Rain, every raindrop cruel and vicious
The rain that nature sends (not that I'm animist or anything; just flogging the metaphor) once in a while (or too often, really) to remind us of her capabilities. Rain that causes flooding everywhere and holds everything up, sending everyone into a rotten mood and destroying the remainder of the day that held that bit of promise. In the mornings it makes the rest of the day untenable. In the afternoons people take comfort that they need not deal with it for that long. At night it makes for really pleasant sleep. But of course, it always lasts a little too long. We sometimes miss this sort of rain because once in a while we like (in the way that we like people to tell us off) review our relationship with nature and natural phenomena.

5 Cataclysmic Rain, rain that ruins worlds (so this might be a bit of a logarithmic scale, yes)
The rain that only comes at the end of the world (which, depending on your religious inclinations, might either be a time, or a place)

So I did exceed my seven hundred word limit. But it's about rain; something we're going to be seeing until we see 5.

Vicious Cycle III

It is then evident here than cycling represents more than just a way of getting around, as an entire culture has been built up around it. Already, the act of cycling and its environmental friendliness, its more personal involvement, is in stark defiance to modern times of petrol-intensive locomotion, where lazy people who couldn't give a hoot about global-warming lounge in their cars at the lights, emanating from their exhausts insidious molecules that ascend to the atmosphere and ravenously devour the ozone layer (a bit of an exaggeration really). Carefree, wind-in-the-hair cyclists leisurely pedaling their minimalist dynamos under a brilliant sun untainted by the smog of a thousand cars; that is the much romanticised image of cycling as an environmentally conscious, and suggestively better lifestyle choice.

There are also other connotations to cycling, and one of those is that it is a very socialist institution. Almost everyone can afford a bicycle, be it a rusting, one-gear gentlemen's model (quite a misnomer really, as it looks crass and unrefined) or an aluminium racing bike lighter than most anatomy textbooks. Hence cyclists come from all races, backgrounds and income brackets, and as such it is impossible to pigeon-hole cyclists into a particular demographic, leaving no room for discrimination and unfair generalizations. Of course, the socialist bit of this is that it reduces perceived social inequality, but only as far as the middle classes as we would scarcely expect anyone richer to cycle (or do anything on their own, for that matter). Ignoring that bit of a call to class warfare, this means that there is a mutual sense of belonging to the set of cyclists (as long as you don't cut in front of me) and also, inevitably, the contribution to the bit of siege mentality against pedestrians and motorists.

Most people, then, are inherently proud to be cycling even if they don't think of it that way, to be the voice of reason and common sense to use the cheapest, most efficient means of commuting, and sometimes they think that motorists hate them for that (though usually it is because of reckless cycling). Most of the time though, it's just "the only way", public transport being the laughing stock that it is here, showing how deeply entrenched the culture is.

However, bicycle population numbers are reaching alarming levels (so much so that there is, unthinkably, bicycle gridlock sometimes). Then, the whole vehicle culture is being replaced with bicycles for vehicles. It is not difficult to imagine that in this situation some people, sometimes ludicrously, begin to treat their bicycles as though they were cheaper, more efficient cars. People paint their bicycles with streaks on their side (as though there was much to paint on bicycles. When was the last time, when a bicycle went past, you noticed what colour it was? Turning back to look doesn't count) ostensibly to give the impression of speed and to, it is often joked, to make it go faster. Also, in the way a car radio is indispensable, some people just can't do without their daily bout of R&B in those precious minutes commuting to work. So they mount radios on their bikes (this is actually more common than people think it is, like toothpaste-related fatalities) and hop to the beat. This is useful in warning pedestrians of oncoming stupidity, as often these bikes are the "gentlemen's models" (already, any phrase with the word gentlemen in it is going to sound mildly erotic) that are some un-punky, un-ghetto colours, like alpine green, or apple red.

But to talk too much about such a culture is already excessive, for in the end, if it gets you somewhere, relatively quickly, relatively painlessly, then why not? This is why some people still insist on walking a few miles to lectures everyday.

Vicious Cycle II
The driving reign

Two days of weaving around traffic on slick, pockmarked roads in what could pass as showers in East A-- on a bicycle crippled by other rampant cyclists generates enough misdirected anger to write Dude, where's my country? twice over. It is almost impossible not to get wet in some way when cycling through even the lightest of drizzles (those wheezing rains in which you could leave a block of potassium out and come back from lunch to bring it back intact), even when wearing a jacket. And this often leads to much misery after being pelted in the face by stinging rain drops and by your wet clothes clinging doggedly to your body. I suppose one could, if sufficiently skilled, hoist an umbrella with one hand and control the bike with another, but, practical as it is, that only invites ridicule from drivers and other cyclists (also often those who wind down the windows and let bad music blare from their overmuscled stereos).

The weather, however, should be the least of concerns for the cyclist. There is instead the eternal conflict between drivers and cyclists, both of whom think they have the right of way and that the streets would be perfect if all their counterparts were to suddenly die in grisly and sickening accidents. It is like putting a lion, a tiger, a leopard and a piece of juicy steak into a barrel. Hence, there is always a certain tension on the very narrow roads, most of which had been built for horse carriages, and very small horse carriages at that.

There is a sense of lawlessness associated with most of the traffic, as cars routinely mount the kerb while turning and cyclists inch into the tiniest nooks between cars. But this arises from the general hubris that all road users have, that, in those famous words, there is a red carpet treatment for everyone on the road. Cyclists, then, have a lot more to look out for, because in a head to head between bicycles and cars, though no one wins, at least one survives. Ask any cyclist and he will relate to you a time when a bus (on lanes so narrow it scrapes the pavement in the best of cases) nearly lopped him off his bike when its back came wiggling around the corner.

However accidents are quite rare here, because everyone is more than ready to offer their two cents worth about your cycling/driving/walking. Everyone thinks they are the arbiter of cycling/driving proficiency and it is hard not to make a journey without seeing someone barking out a piece of his mind to other people. This is a vigilante system of traffic policing, because the police force is too understaffed to take that under their jurisdiction (hence seeing a constable prosecute a traffic offence is as rare as seeing a constable being armed. Or, if you like, as rare as finding a "natural" cycle parking space.) Comments range from the helpful ("you shouldn't stop right in front unless you're jumping the lights") to the aggravated ("come on…COME ON FUCK YOU!") to the cryptic ("it's a one way street you know "(on a two-way)) but each one is totally useless since everyone will just continue in their own way in the everyday quagmire of traffic until one day, when all their paths cross catastrophically leading to an apocalyptic annihilation of everyone that will finally leave pedestrians as the rightful owners of the road.

This is why many cyclists are angry. They know they can't win over motorists any day, but they gloat over the greater traffic freedom they have (weaving through congestion; motorists hate seeing that). But they are caught between pedestrians and motorists in an automotive limbo, with too many other cyclists, vying for the same shrinking space, vulnerable to cars and each other, every time some place to go in a rush to. As it is with anything with so many members and proponents, and something with so many constraints and pressures, there inevitably arises a massive culture around.

I will take the opportunity to describe more thoroughly the environment that all this is taking place in. Sometimes, the context is all it takes to elevate comedic drudgery to cult status (or vice versa). However, given the way I prefer to write about things, reading such a description may be like trying to figure out how many calves a cow had had by having a blind person feel up its fossilized remains. So let us start with the bigger pieces.

Vicious Cycle I

The immediate impression of transport here is one that makes it seem that the invasion of Malaya has started again. The general ubiquity (and ubiquitous in the sense that bacteria are ubiquitous in spoiled milk) of bicycles and their bipedal brethren is instantly obvious, from the moment when a cyclist shaves past you and you feel the rush of air tinged with rust and bike oil. It's all very romantic and exciting for those who walk, watching a pack of cyclists rumble down cobbled lanes, but for the cyclists themselves, and the unfortunates who share the roads with them, it's a frenetic but clinical thing. And angry too – all cyclists are angry people in some way.

Back home, cycling's a relaxing activity – afternoon at the park, cold drinks, watching the sunset. Taking the shiny new bicycle, well oiled, out of its roomy park in the storeroom, packing it into the car, going to the park and cycling it around in a pleasant breeze, then wiping it off and returning it to a pleasant slumber. Utilitarian cycling, however, is never this tranquil. Firstly, parking and storage is a big problem. People complain that there's not enough parking for their cars. But at least in car parks, your car doesn't get subjected to all sorts of attempts to shrink space and subvert the laws of physics. A quick glance around the major cycle parks around town reveals several abuses. To describe it in more familiar motorcar terms, imagine a car park where half the lots are taken up by rusting hulks of cars, their wheels stolen, their windows broken and their cabin home to at least 2 varieties of pigeons. And then add that to a parking ethic where any space more than half a metre wide is fair game and your ability to find a space is wholly dependent on how well you can squeeze your car into these spaces like these, like a game of tetris with pieces in the shape of the Queen's head. Also, it depends on how Machiavellian you are willing to be, when push comes to shove and other people aren't around to see open sores of metal open up on the sides of their cars.

But it would not be so bad if bicycles were well nigh indestructible (something like how we never notice damage to our airline luggage). Bicycles, however, are finicky things, a delicate balance of moving parts, rubber, air molecules and the optical luminosity of red giants in the Crab Nebula. Any slight disruption of the force renders it unworkable, as though dropping a brick on a house of cards. Hence, in the enthusiasm to get one's bicycle secured, something inevitably gets damaged, or scratched or dislodged. This is also why bicycle parts are often littered with rusty odds and ends like broken locks and pieces of brakes knocked off by errant handlebars. Imagine also a car park where there are tyres, exhaust pipes and petrol spread around the place, even on top of the cars.

Once the issue of storage has been settled, then comes the actual riding of the bicycle (assuming that it has not been stolen or had its chain torn off). This is the true sticky business.

Saturday Night Lives

Seeing as it is that Sunday is the only day on which most Natural Sciences students are able to waken at a time of their choosing (except during weekdays for those people who make the choice of not going to lectures), Saturday night must be the most appropriate time to satisfy the hedonistic desires accumulated over grinding math lectures or agony-inducing practicals, though seemingly only the locals do such things (as pointed out by A--, "his moral standards are rather dubious, which S-- then pointed out as a fitting descriptor of most people in Cambridge).

Rather than allow thumping music to resonate inside my skull while staring blankly into a glass of leftover ale, the small hours of Saturday night are generally dedicated to perhaps the diametric opposite of the practice of "partying", a term widely used to describe any variety of selections from the smorgasbord of intemperance, with starters of binge drinking and entreés of gratuitous debauchery, a meal taken in a dimly lit room with disco for muzak, and that is ironing. Provided the power stays on, the release provided by ironing sometimes leads me to iron in places that others will not see. Instead of smoky, hazy environments there is the clinical, fluorescent-lit laundry room, and instead of all the excess there is unprecedented minimalism, for there is only one tool, and that is heat.

Probably, it is ridiculous to glorify ironing in this manner. But, as it is the stuff of dark secrets, there is something that each individual enjoys that fulfils a certain role, a hazy role but nonetheless one that feels comfortable doing. Because there is a certain overlap between everybody about such matters relating to the mundane, we tend to find such activities in the rank corners of people's lives, sometimes bordering on the controversial. It just so happens that while for most people it is getting drunk and wheeling a battered shopping trolley across the street, ironing, while not the number one satisfaction activity, is, in my case, an analogue for this.

What people do on Saturday night, complications notwithstanding, tends to be what they value most cost-effective for their time, or most worth their time, more accurately. It is the prime-time slot, just like in television, for our lives. What is shown during that time is often more or less a reliable indicator of the quality (sort) of what occurs during the rest of the time.

Naturally, I am usually alone in doing this, but sometimes I see that this time slot is an accurate indicator, though a rough one, of what kinds of other people are doing. For example, I used to see a person wearing a T-shirt that said "Will work for bandwidth", which, of course, is only owned by people with more geekish tendencies. It doesn't take much prodding to put this in perspective. Probably, laundry wasn't his thing, it was a necessity, but he was sticking around at 12 a.m. on Saturday, not out there, not out cold.

It's not to say that I don't like to do other things, like cook, or drink, or hang out in general, which, of course, must take place on Saturday night generally for lack of a better time. But our Saturday nights are precious, and like all that is precious, the manner in which we choose to utilise it is wholly edifying.

With most of world sport passing me by, it is increasingly obvious however that the focal point of the general sporting interest is about the Rubgy World Cup, so much so that there is insinuation in many ranks to skip lectures and catch the semi-final that England are playing in. Naturally, this being where it is, there was still a shred of concern about being deprived of the academic content of these lectures whose excitement paled in comparison to that of unnaturally large men punting a ball around fields manicured to standards probably endorsed by whoever it may be that maintains the college lawns here (though this is debatable, as we will see). Hence the sacrificial act of, dare I say, actually sitting in on those lectures, which by any impression, will be completely devoid of (white male, or am I stereotyping too much?) students, and, no doubt tearfully, scrawling down lecture notes for the benefit of less altruistic rugby-mad friends, is heavily sought after and perhaps even commodified.

Naturally, such an inanity is poorly understood by females and minority other males, who probably are cooking up reasons to hate rugby. It is a sport I have always had a prior suspicion of, partially because of the game, but also because of certain people on whose brains rugby had had a sledgehammer effect. Though now that I also know of people who have, oddly, somehow benefited from long-term rugby abuse (they must not have been playing hard enough!) this ameliorates that source of dislike, and hence most sticking points remain with the nature of the game and the entire culture it has spawned, like a festering, overripe banana.

Firstly, the eternal clash with football. Finer points of the game aside, it's been said that proper football has always and will always kick rugby's over-muscled "ass" as the general public prefers soccer's effeminate players to the broken-nosed beefcake puglies of rugby. The subtext being, of course, that football is gayer than rugby. This is true. But then again, marriage is gayer than rugby. Waxing an SUV while smoking a pipe and worrying about the mortgage is gayer than rugby. Rugby is in fact the ungayest thing in the world. The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality. It is rugby. In fact homosexuality can best be described as a complete absence of rugby (by common experience, rather true).

The actual excitement quotient of rugby, despite all appearances, is nearly zero, if not negative. A rugby "highlights" show might just be marginally more interesting than "Highlights in Charted Accountancy", violent events included. In the highly technical world of rubgy rules, like in the highly technical world of constitutional law, highlights are probably illegal, probably made illegal at the same time as lifting your boot above your knee. Amongst other arcane rules, such as not dropping the ball within ten seconds or two and half yards, whichever is saltier unless of course a cosmic shift in space-time had translocated the advantage variance zone.

There's a Twilight Zone episode where a slack-jawed retard is given an amazing new intelligence boosting drug. He starts off with a thick Yorkshire accent. But, as he gets more and more intelligent, he starts to speak more and more posh. Until he ends up sounding like someone from Trinity College. But then alas, the drug starts wearing off and he turns back into a Yorkshireman. The average rugby fan will have read the above paragraph and said "Yes? And? So?" So you understand what I mean. Only in a more tongue-in-cheek manner than I usually use.

Hopefully then, after a fashion, we will no longer need to remind ourselves why rugby is, generally, rather ridiculous. Maybe it'll be easier to do that after England lose.

2003 Échantillon de Vin, Château de Small, Domaine de Clare

A typical échantillon, bright bourgeoisie bouquet with overtones of snobbery. Fresh on the palate, offering up a range of personalities and personas from the quirky to the serious. Smooth, pleasant and especially long finish. Will drink well for many years to come.

To some, the rather Dionysian practice of gathering to taste (and sometimes also to drink) a variety of wines is the cornerstone of an established bourgeoisie sub-culture in this country. Socialists rant about how the suitably rich can still indulge in such decadent flights of fancy when decent healthcare and social security apparatus is not even in place. But the whole spectacle of gathering refined alcoholic beverages and then debating about their qualities does send me into chills of anticipation, even as I parry away such accusations.

The speaker at this tasting was the typical, crusty, vest-wearing heptagenarian Englishman, of a long line of blue blood and a business with centuries of tradition and appointments to various monarchs and belying his prim appearance was the requisite dry humour and mule-like resistance to change. Naturally, in stark contrast was the largely youthful and mobile audience for whom wine was more a leisure activity than an institution to be defended under the aegis of some long-extinguished coast of arms. These people just wanted to have a little drink, some fun and a little rancour, not uphold the rich mores of a lineage older than most independent nations in Europe.

In wine terms perhaps, it would be the collision of the Old School and the New, just like the Old World and the New, but it had all the softness of a collision of a pillow and a sponge and the amiability of the clink of two wine glasses. The bottom line of such a clash is that both people agree that wine is itself a pretty good idea, just as long as you don't partake in that Australian rubbish that masquerades itself as wine, you ninny. This set the stage for a rather amicable encounter.

It may seem, to the casual observer, that a room of about thirty people sniffing and huffing like cocaine addicts at oddly shaped glasses containing miniscule amounts of a pale liquid and then sloshing it around like mouthwash, is truly quite laughable. Now if they only could see themselves. The whole of wine tasting is based upon the assumption that somehow, given grapes that are almost totally similar grown in almost totally similar soils can, somehow, produce a mind-boggling array of wholly different liquids. I think they can really, though it is rather dubious given the deficient olfactory capabilities of fallible humans, coloured further by cultural bias and psychological manipulation. Something that shows this fact is probably how white wines are inevitably described as having the smells similar to light coloured things and red wine terminology involves only red and dark-coloured things. But perhaps that is just mere coincidence.

But tasting itself does not lend confidence to the whole basis of wine tasting. It probably is the only alcoholic beverage between varieties there is sufficient difference to warrant the careful and systematic dissemination of (since people in general think that whiskey tastings are ridiculous, but wine tastings are perfectly acceptable) and the only one that has a sufficiently refined reputation to render such urbane treatments perfunctory. Yet as I breathed the gentle aromas of a succession of wines I was starting to panic because everything smelled really quite the same, which should not have happened in theory. So it must have been my fault, as I frantically washed down several water-biscuits to annihilate every bacterium and molecule in my mouth that might, somehow, be eclipsing the wonderful parfums of the wines. Either that was effective in itself, or my mind started to invent what I should have smelled. Once that barrier was broken it was easy to start of flow of lovely descriptors (of which good ones are used for nice wines and foul ones are used for lesser wines). Scientifically, it was a total mess, but otherwise it was quite enjoyable, if not for the alcohol then for what it stood for, at least to each of the many people present.

As in every social gathering, there is a selection of different people there for different reasons. In this case, there are the interested people, who have some knowledge of wine and are serious about pursuing the mechanisms by which wine erudition is gained. Then there are those who are there merely to drink, and to have fun, with the variety of wines available at competitive prices. Naturally, they bring lots of friends along and talk more about other things than the wine at hand. Of course there are the serious serious people who write down tasting notes and rate each wine for no other ostensible reason than to convince oneself that such a pursuit was worthwhile and that there was much scholarship to be had in the criticism and classification of wines.

Though the main point to be said is, whatever be the reason that people here come to tastings, the whole concept of wine as a way of life is deeply entrenched and provides quite a suitable cleft for the so-inclined. Bourgeoisie or not, I probably want to be sipping some wine a glass as winter chills slowly outside, in an artificial construct of pleasantries that tastings are, and have a good time while I'm at it, nothing more, and nothing less.

A consequence of our emaciated calendar of holidays is that we often gape in awe at the number of holidays and festivals celebrated here, each steeped with its own historical or religious significance and often celebrated fervently, most of the time in the original spirit. But, detached as we are from the origins of many of these festivals and anxious sometimes to dismiss them for their imperialist origins, we are unable to partake in their spirit. Naturally, given the date, I was referring to Guy Fawkes' Day, or more appropriately, Bonfire Night, seeing as it is that most of the activity takes place in the dark hours (which of course, given the season, hardly qualify as being at night).

Because of the anarchistic propensities of one person, that, depending on your political alignment, fortunately failed, and through a whole series of transformations, reconstruction and misunderstandings led to the whole tradition of setting off fireworks and creating large piles of burning objects in a pyromanic fit, though it's easier to skip the social development viewpoint of that and look at the much more direct motivation of fun. And because, as most people will feel, that it is very odd to see fireworks on occasions that are not the New Year or National Day, experiencing Guy Fawkes' Day can be a little disconcerting (though it is mostly because of a largely rational fear of the irrational discharge of fireworks, uncontrolled items as they are)

But after some hours of peering over the inky silhouettes of trees and buildings to catch fleeting glimpses of fireworks that, no doubt in our minds, were probably rather pretty (who has ever criticised any fireworks display as not being pretty?), it emerged that this festival was probably like no other, a festival that had transcended the ages relatively unscathed and whose straightforward spirit could not be adulterated by political or market forces. There was, at least in the major media, no excessive advertising for it and its associated accesories, unlike its recently concluded counterpart Halloween (that is actually neither a festival nor a holiday, quite like Bonfire Night). It was truly popular because of some more basal emotion rather than because of mass marketing.

The cultural influence of that can be obvious, given the immense and pervasive power of commercialism. Festivals that have been put through that production line emerge in a singular but copious form, a single form that has been carefully engineered to become culturally acceptable. Bonfire night can somehow still seriously be thought to fan the long-extinguished flames of anti-Catholic sentiment, which, in a politically-correct context is disastrous. Indeed, to perpetuate the traditions of this occasion might even be defiant. But the conclusion is still that it is almost free from the grasp of television, advertising and other mystical influences that have pervaded other holidays, some of which we invariably will be familiar with.

So while blowing things up and setting other things on fire does seem a little scary and dangerous, it's also culturally and socially rather innocuous. By the looks of things, it might be one of the few left that is still a "people's celebration".

Casual Causality

Probably, the question that is nestling in the mind of the reader is, like that asked of many other, more important issues, “Why?” Or for the more suitably inclined, “Why not?” But as the proverb goes, there is a time and place for everything (except, for some people, homosexuality, heavy drinking, and women). So then, why is the time ripe for this, ostensibly a nascent successor to its previous incarnation that nose-dived into a whirlpool of angst and confusion and that was never seen again? Once again, the pedantic wording seems to suggest this as a given. But I think, and I speak for the rest of this that is to come, like a good introduction should, that the time is not apposite for that, but instead for a (hopefully) livelier and colourful counterweight to the rapidly shrinking days, probably as a corollary to excessive drinking. With a tinge of regret, like the last tinge of whisky that an alcoholic promises himself, I shall not be (publicly) committing flagrant verbosity as before. This is not to say that I won’t (note the use of contractions now) do such things elsewhere, if only for their immense cathartic effect, but I won’t flog the word blog to that end.

After headaching over that stylistic hangover of a first paragraph, we should analyse the reasons, if there ever is such a need to, of this sudden and insignificant outburst of desire to once again provide fodder for the whiling of dark winter days. It is after all, a new phase of life and everything like that, that without keeping some form of written record of, would be a pitiful waste, like having a wedding without having photographs of it taken (on the same level, nobody ever photographs funerals either). Fair enough, but it seems quite odd to have it pop out of nowhere like a pimple before the school photo. Then, despite a promise to myself not to subject too many people to too many visceral details of what must be a terribly dreary lifestyle, I will say that it was recently when events started to slip into a “groove”, when seminal events of certain magnitude were concluded, that it was arbitrarily decided that anything from then on could, without a whisper of a doubt, be classified as under that new, and also arbitrarily decided, phase. This country being what it is, these “events”, suffice to say, involved coins, a wooden cage and deep-fried foodstuffs.

Also because another concern of mine was to keep most posts under seven hundred words, I do think such an introduction is sufficient, though it relies heavily on the familiarity of my previous work, if that may be called work. Definitely, there will be those who “miss”, I don’t know why, the previous style and everything, so, as a matter of course I will link back to it, so you can also look through some less than savoury archives.

Because everyone is a critic, I will not be putting up a comment function, that, through experience, is usually heavily underutilized unless you either reveal saucy secrets with full names in every post, or have very dedicated readers, both of which I don’t expect to encompass here.

Now that we are on the right footing, that is, this should read with a tinge of a sardonic attitude with a slight chance of humour, we can start to write. Probably, those who think such blatant showmanship and populism is betraying the spirit of the original (that is, this is suffering from ‘sequelitis’, though to think of it as a sequel is probably inaccurate) will now refuse to read on in a fit of pique. I don’t think you’ll be missing much anyways.