The Social Acceptability List 2015

As the New Year approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition - IT'S IN! Ties With China!

Since China went red, the West has wanted to shun it. But money is the loudest voice in politics, so gradually we’ve had to accept that China is here to stay. The first step was recognising, in 1971, that the communist People’s Republic of China was the China that got the seat at the UN, at the expense of the Republic of China, which is now in the (mostly) unrecognised state of Taiwan. Since then, money has spoken more and more until, finally, the Chinese are building power plants in the UK.

It’s an irony that the Tories have been far more gung-ho about China, while Labour (who traditionally would be seen to be closer bed-fellows) have been more hesitant. First we had George Osborne talking about how his daughter is learning Mandarin, hailing it as the language of the future (not without reason). Then, for a good while, we had an admiring commentary on Chinese (and generally eastern) education. I live in China, and I know about Chinese education, and it’s a rough, relentless, dispiriting slog. It stifles creativity; it promotes mindless conformity. It’s also completely inseparable from their overall culture, and works seamlessly to keep an abundance of people from getting too rebellious. Chinese students memorise much, but learn little. But their exam results are fantastic.

But their fantastic exam results aren’t the cause of their economic success. That, rather, is due to the cheap labour, long hours (many unpaid), few regulations, fear of asserting any rights, and the sheer numbers they have. It’s an economic rise led by the cruel whims of the markets and backed by investment of the state, and (for its sins) it’s taken many millions out of absolute poverty. The British governments’ similar willingness to leave everything to the market, and to sell out their own labour force for cheaper labour in China, is one of the reasons for the UK’s economic troubles.

This year, the Tories finally filled the bathtub of hypocrisy and slipped in to the bubbly warmth of a Chinese money spa. It materialised as a full-blown, Chinese state-owned enterprise in the UK for energy. Another high profile partner in the UK energy game is EDF, the state-owned French company. All this while taking the axe to public funding of services, and maintaining the narrative that publicly run organisations are costly, bureaucratic and wasteful, and should be avoided at all costs.

John McDonnell, in another attempt to ruin his career, attempted to highlight this irony with his Little Red Book prop, his dig at Osborne’s new friendship with the Communists. It turned into a playground argument about who liked Mao more.

Around the same time, China's leader Xi Jinping came to meet our duel leaders, Cameron and the Queen. The red carpet was laid and a propaganda coup was shown for all 1.3 billion Chinese back home. I saw the news reports on the subway TVs. The Chinese have a great fondness for the UK (despite being on the receiving end of British colonialism), and though they may be overworked and denied many rights, they are proud of the strength of their country. The British as allies was seen as vindication.

China still gets mocked. Its rich shoppers get mocked at Christmas; its taste for gambling and luxury is mocked as a great communist irony. Its policies get roundly criticised in the media, but not from politicians. They’ve taken the Saudi approach: let’s not let morality get in the way of a good heist. I dare say China will become more socially acceptable in the political sphere as time goes on, to the extent that - if I may make a little prediction - the efficiency of single-party power will challenge the merits of troublesome democracy that we currently cling to, and eventually usurp it.

The Social Acceptability List 2015

As the New Year approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition... IT'S OUT!  - Global Warming Denial.

Moving down the social acceptability list is global warming denial. Indeed, the change of the term from climate change “sceptic” to “denier” is nothing if not a symbol of its removal from social acceptability. As the evidence and arguments roundly mock UKIP, America’s Republicans, and right-wing media, their own arguments have shifted from “Does it exist?” to “Are humans responsible?” When the evidence shoots them down on that one, they point out that China and India aren’t doing anything about it, so why should we? Each defeat in the argument leads to another phoney point, another goalpost move, leaving observers to conclude that these ‘sceptics’ are no more than reactionary idiots who can’t accept that they were wrong. But don’t expect them to lower their arms too soon; rather, as the debate shifts we can expect new villains in the deniers’ crosshairs: aliens, sheep, the unemployed...

A few days ago, I heard a UKIP woman on Radio 4’s Any Questions begin her spiel with “Well... the climate’s always changed, the question is whether it’s human involvement that’s causing it now.” The groans from the audience let out a huge, collective “Get over it!” The same response, though slightly more muted, greeted the Daily Mail cartoonist, Quentin Letts, on Question Time. A lot of the support of narrow-minded parties and newspapers depends on convincing their listeners that these ‘new-fangled fads’, like social media, craft beers or, indeed, global warming are nonsense. “In my day all you needed was a packet of Chum Chum Goodies Gums in your back pocket, and I doff me hat to the postman and off we trot!”

But the Earth is round, the holocaust really happened, and global warming is real – get over it. So, while the climate summit’s been going on in Paris recently, deniers have been far less vocal than in the past. Global warming denial, henceforth, is on its way out.

The Social Acceptability List 2015

As the New Year approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition... IT'S OUT!  - Privilege

Like a stain on the lapel of an expensive suit, privilege is being shunned like no tomorrow. There is nothing worse than being privileged now; indeed, the privileged are just about the most underprivileged people around, the poor buggers.

Privilege, in the dictionary, means a right or benefit given to some people and not others. In the world of the commentariat, privilege was, until recently, a word saved for those of the Bullingdon Club, the Oxbridge or Ivy League elite. There was also the underprivileged, those stuck on their estates, unable to enjoy social mobility. Then there was everyone in between. But that left those in between apparently unaware of their own privileges, and able to talk about their own problems without reference to those with bigger problems. Now, with some tinkering with the definition in feminist discourse, privilege has morphed into something of a currency. You have more or less of the stuff; there are nation, gender, race or class forms of it. You can collect them all! But you can’t trade because it’s inherent to who you are.  

And that’s a problem because if you’re privileged but don’t recognise it, you’re at fault. Hence, if you don’t read the latest cultural theory, or use Twitter, or read Buzzfeed, or follow memes, and you don’t know the term White Privilege (for example) then yes, sorry, you’re part of the problem.

But I’m here to alleviate your guilt by informing you of your privilege. Let’s take Whiteness for an example. White privilege manifests in the favourable treatment white folk (in our western societies) get with the police, at schools, at interviews, and so on, and the deeper rooted cultural expectations of beauty and other things like who is committing terrorism. It means that when shit goes bad for white people, their race isn’t the reason; instead, it’s their own stupid fault, which is comforting. As a sociological concept, it’s broader than any one person; it’s an overview which attempts to consolidate statistics and social phenomena about pay and crime and whatnot.

But it’s not just whites. Are you able-bodied? Then you’re privileged. Heterosexual? Privileged. Middle class? Privileged. Male? Privileged. Do you subscribe to the gender that you were assigned at birth? Privileged. If you’re a middle-class male graduate student, but you’re gay and lost a leg in a terrible accident, you might come out neutral. Like Top Trumps, you can play against your friend to see who is more privileged, but you won’t be friends for long, because this privilege stuff really riles people up.

Have no doubt that privilege is a disparaging term. This is nothing new – the underprivileged have always taken a pop at the privileged in our society, especially so in the underdog culture that we have in the UK. But a new venom has hit the scene, a new haughty venom, as the term has gained new meaning. Most of those who are keen on the white/male privilege label seem to be well-educated, white (and often men) and spend most of their time explaining to the less enlightened whites out there why the label makes sense, and why the allegedly privileged are at ‘fault’ for not acknowledging it. Those who write with authority on the matter have the privilege of having a voice that people listen to, and sometimes a paycheck at the end of it. Buzzfeed and Huffpost journalists often claim to have had some kind of spiritual awakening where they noticed finally how privileged they are, and have a newfound sense of pity for non-privileged people, on whose behalf they now talk. YouTube videos showing social saints explaining their own awakening are often highly attractive, articulate and confident. Their Christ-like quest is simply to let their readers know how privileged they are, but don’t worry, you’re not being asked to give it up; just to accept it, be humbled. Those on Twitter who pick up the term and run with it are often more crass, and online bickering ensues, leading to death threats. Good work, people.

I can’t be the only one to notice the irony of the privilege of those given the authority to talk about privilege. And I’m not - indeed, writers who write about privilege often write about their own privilege, making the whole article wonderfully self-involved. At the level of discourse, the privilege debate reaffirms whites on the top of the pile, providing another delicious irony. It doesn’t just recognise imbalances; it reinforces them and then adds a dash of moral superiority. It works thus: White, heteronormative, patriarchal, Western cultural expectations frame the debate, and the “unprivileged” are pitied for not being able to join in, like orphans or the endangered pandas of Western China.

Pity is most inert of emotions.

But there is action! “Check your privilege” is something that you are encouraged to do by social justice warriors, who spend saving the world one blog post at a time. It comes from the idea that you can work out how privileged you are by doing a checklist. Am I white? Now, let me just check that... Yes, I am. And so on. If you say something that belies your ignorance about social injustice, such as “So many people doing Christmas shopping in ASDA tonight, it was crazy!” then your more thoughtful, less ignorant friend should patiently and gently remind you that the term ‘crazy’ is a disparaging term towards those with mental illness, and could well trigger a bout of sadness. If appropriate, then he or she (or neither) might then explain to you their own experiences with depression before concluding by telling you to ‘check your privilege’.

It’s a great example of how to conduct an enterprise of social transformation, while alienating the largest proportions of it.

In conclusion I’d like to turn our attention to some of the more insidious forms of privilege which no one has seemed to notice, but which are tearing our society apart. I think they are self-explanatory. These are non-ginger privilege, south-facing privilege, live-by-the-seaside privilege, average height privilege, car privilege, bike privilege, higher than minimum wage privilege, no student loan privilege, mobile phone privilege, smart phone privilege, 20-20 vision privilege, sibling privilege, free from halitosis privilege, skinny privilege, drug free privilege, cheap drugs privilege, no allergy privilege, wifi privilege, and live-near-a-Tesco-Express privilege.

---------------------------p.s.

Many articles about privilege are irritatingly self-indulgent. See here for a more refreshing one about the history of the term in feminist literature, and it’s evolution as an internet phenomenon. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/check-your-privilege

The Social Acceptability List 2015

As Christmas approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition... IT'S IN!  - Voting out the Box!

Across the UK, US and Europe, the left/right divisions are falling apart and small, sometimes esoteric, parties are finding their support base shoot up. What’s the reason for this? Well, rolling news informs us immediately of any tragic event which occurs anywhere, painting a picture of a world in the throes of disintegration; social media gives us the opportunity to react in soundbites and little more, which makes simple solutions seem reasonable; the political establishment’s acceptance of neoliberal capitalism has led to resentment over a lack of choice and growing inequality. At to that the fact that they’re all boring – those politicians –  really not what we’ve come to expect from people on TV.

Hence the rise of the charismatic, fumblingly entertaining dingbat. Boris Johnson was an early version of this new political lifeform, amusing enough to be on Have I Got News For You. Nigel Farage struck a chord by drinking pints when journalists were there. Those watching the evening news were able to look at that pint, then look down at the pint in their hands, then look back at the pint on the TV, and slowly, like a rusty cog finally slipping in to place, conclude: My God! He’s a bloke! All sorts of phantasmagorical deductions could thus be inferred about the righteousness of his policies.

Boris won the mayor prize and Farage has had some good election results here and there, but the Out of the Box Politician Version 2.0 is a more recent phenomenon, and it’s been catapulted right into the mainstream, partly as the dramatic, fairy tale ascendency of Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour gave people the opportunity to join the party on the cheap, and when they joined they brought their democratic voice. It was a voice for Corbyn, the conscientious backbencher more at home on the picket or in the protest than at the dispatch box. There’s been a severe media backlash, and the polling suggests support for Corbyn is low, but if people want a “New Type of Politics” – and these cynical bastards who hate politicians should! – it’s out there.

The next box-circulating politician to have recent gains is the Front Nationale’s Marine Le Pen, who has even wheeled out her brainwashed daughter to put a fresher face on the brand. Indeed, the Pens get prettier with every generation, and the party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is so ugly that he’s been in Le penalty box since earlier this year. The Front Nationale capitalised on the recent bombings in France and did well in the 1^st round of regional elections, but the French saw more sense in round 2.

Elsewhere in Europe, fear and austerity has produced a Christmas hamper of political choice. Greece voted in the anti-austerity Syriza, and the Spanish election showcased to new parties, including Syriza’s political brethren Podemos, who did well enough to share power. On the British left you have pro-independence and anti-austerity parties of Scotland and Wales, and the ever-present-but-going nowhere voice of the Greens. At the other end of the spectrum we’ve seen the expansion of the English Defence League and Germany’s Pegida. These groups shroud themselves in the colours of patriotism in a lazy attempt to come across as something less than racist, but fail.

Whatever their political lean, a common trend is the loss of political slickness that goes with ‘centrists’ trying to appeal to the mainstream. The recent traditions of highly funded political campaigns, of spin and double-speak, are losing ground to a new bluntness, a man-in-the-pub vocabulary, and the use of social media to get the message across. The mainstream is splintered, and entropy is setting in.

Of course, the crowning achievement of the out-of-the-box mentality which has become socially acceptable in our wretched age is, of course, the Buffoon himself. He’s half man, half ape, and half asleep. He’s got the body of a man, but the mind of a foetus. True, he isn’t really socially acceptable in the UK, and perhaps not in the USA, but he is a Republican candidate, and the leading candidate at that. In many ways he is the True Republican, the spirit of the Republican Party melted down, purified and chiselled into a rich, male, blond ogre. He has, in the UK, his female accomplice – TV personality Katie Hopkins – who gets wheeled out on morning TV because audiences love to watch people they hate. Recently, a petition has sought to ban him from the UK for fear that he and Hopkins might spawn.

Social Acceptability List 2015

As Christmas approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition... IT'S IN!  - War!

War never really goes away, but it’s back in a fresh new suit and on the rampage. Bush’s self-prophesising War on Terror is reaching its golden era, and the entire UN have come together to wage it. Everyone is against Deash – even other jihadi groups. That much is agreed on. After that it gets hazy. The USA, Turkey and France hate Assad, who hates them back. But both of them hate Daesh more. Assad’s friends, Russia and Iran, hate Turkey and the West, probably more than Daesh, but they’re trying to play nice. The Saudis want to destroy Assad because he’s the wrong type of Muslim. They’re ambiguous on Daesh and possibly have income streams going to them. But America really likes the Saudis, who can do no wrong in their eyes. The stateless Kurds are hated by Turkey for being separatists and by Assad for being effective fighters, and hence also Russia; but they are friends of the West, even though they occasionally kill them in friendly fire. Israel, that lightning rod of regional tension, is quietly hating everyone, and hoping they destroy each other.

It's like a Christmas dinner where that recently released paedo uncle has shown up unexpectedly, and everyone has different ideas about how to get him to leave.

Into this maelstrom the UK have proudly plodded, promising rather vacantly to play its part. When your justification for going to war becomes little more than an analogy of helping your friend when he falls in a puddle, you can pretty much guess that no one’s got a clue what’s going on. Cameron might see it has a part of his legacy – war worked for Thatcher, after all; but those isolated wars of the past are no more. Daesh have instilled such fear, and it’s been duly disseminated by a loyal media, so war is back, and don’t expect it to go anywhere.

Social Acceptability List 2015

As Christmas approaches, we reflect on a bumper year in the world of social discourse. Here’s a little run down of the movers and shakers in this year’s Social Acceptability List, which is compiled by the Fallen in Public and its patchy memory and is about what politicians, newspapers and netizens went on about and how. What’s in? What’s out? What’s OK? What’s not? Read on to find out...

In today's edition... IT’S IN! - Islamophobia

It’s been a good year for the adherents of Islamophobia. Islamist fascists have made great strides in convincing the west that they are the true voice of Islam, even while failing to convince ordinary Muslims, and often killing them instead. There’s been wrangling over terminology – the refugee/migrant palaver, the Daesh, Isis, Isil, IS conundrum. Anyone who seeks to remove the Islamic flavour from the word is deemed to be simply politically correct by those who’d prefer to associate Islam with violence. And the people, especially those reading the Mail, the Sun and the Express, are lapping it up.

Since 9/11 Muslims have been battered like the proverbial piñata, and yet for all the nasty rhetoric, terrorism in the name of Islam hasn’t stopped. It turns out that hurling abuse at a group doesn’t stop the violently inclined members stop being violet. The same could be said for bombs. You might say, it simply causes and entrenches division... but I’ll leave that type of conclusion to the strategists, who seem to have the situation under control.

This year in London we’ve had a black woman racially abusing a Muslim woman on the bus. I mention that the abuse hurler was black because, as a group, black people have also had a hard time of it and often still do. Irony, anyone? In other news, an old man on the platform in the Underground recently tried to push a Muslim woman under a train. Thankfully, he was as weak of body as he is of mind, and couldn’t muster up the strength. Politically-motivated, violent or abusive retaliations towards Muslims isn’t deemed to be terrorism, but rather the wanton acts of mad people. Terrorism per se is literally, glaringly, a label saved for the bearded or veiled Arab type.

Commentators have, for a number of years, taken shots at Muslims. Richard Dawkins is one of the most notorious, and readily gets a torrent of abuse redirected at him. Dawkins’ problem is with religion itself, fair enough, but the targets he chooses come across as deliberately inflammatory. Recently he compared the number of Nobel prizes which have gone to Trinity College Cambridge with that of the entire Muslim world; more recently he’s been gleefully picking apart the claims of the Muslim bomb-clock kid in the US. Dawkins is a clever man who doesn’t want to cause offence, but doesn’t care if he does. His followers, however, are not clever; they’re ordinary people who simply hear ‘Muslims are bad’.

Just in time for Christmas, the big D, Trumpman, the Donald himself, has decided that closing the border to Muslims, all of ‘em, will provide some kind of solution to the threat of - wait for it – terror. This is so barmy that few opponents even bother argue against it – they respond with platitudes about it being against American principles, or how Trump is a joke or a fascist. Cameron said it was simply quote-unquote “wrong”. But while people are always hearing about things that are simply wrong, Trump proposes a tangible thing – a wall! For those with fewer brain cells than spouses, it’s genius!

In China, where I live, islamophobia is practically built-in, partly due to the political issues in the Muslim province of Xinjiang. As with a number of political disputes around the world, some of the Uighur have responded to Beijing’s repression with violence. The result, combined with rolling world news and its obsession with Islamic terrorism, has become the mantra that ‘Muslims are violent’. Some westerners I have met here, who are not recipients of Beijing’s propaganda and should know better, are also islamophobic, claiming that “Muslims are bad” is somehow self-evident. 

There are of course the defenders. There are those who hurl abuse back at the bigots; there are those who go to help refugees in Calais or make them feel welcome in the UK; there are those that argue that alienating the group en masse will only make the situation work. We hear less about these folk, but we do hear some. And why? Because people being nice to Muslims is newsworthy. It’s the other side of the coin, the proof that Islamophibia has hit the mainstream.

Scourge of the Trail, Part V

Previously on The Scourge (link to part 1).

Part 5: Dick Whittingtons in Reverse.

With haste we rose and pushed the lingering few items into our backpacks, and Dave offering a groan under the weight which provided a kind of departing toast. My bag, by comparison, was featherlight: I had painstakingly removed anything which wasn’t essential, and was still thinking of shaving a few bristles off my toothbrush to save even more weight. I foresaw an afternoon of pleasant greenery, blue skies and trickling creeks, ruined by the unbearable, Sisyphean load on my back. I was having none of it. My wilderness was going to be an unspoiled, Wordsworthian Babylon.

We had a few errands to run before our midday train to the north. Principally, I wanted a new t-shirt or two. I had grown envious of two of Dave’s t-shirts, a pair of Merino wool beauties which, supposedly, dried superfast. This was precisely the type of thing that should be in my pack. Down Kensington High Street we found ample hiking shops and even ampler prices. Eventually I picked up some cleverly scientific-sounding boxer shorts at Uni-qlo and left it at that.

Our train departed Euston at 1pm. The sun was high and beautiful and we arrived in early, so we ate a sandwich in the seated area just outside. Dave had recently become vegetarian, I discovered, and I wondered how this would affect the meals I was hoping he would make for me. I crossed bacon sandwiches off the list and shot a glare at Dave, but said nothing.

As we sat there, musing about what to expect on the walk, a young woman in a fur coat sat beside us. We were also sharing the table with a middle-aged, bearded, scruffy man. The lady in the coat, which looked freshly plucked from the back of an artic wolf, expressed such disgust at the man that it would have hurt deeply, had he not been drunk enough to be oblivious to her.

We’d have to average 15 miles a day, Dave told me, peering into the Coast to Coast book, but some days would be long and some short. Starting in the west meant that we’d be hitting the grand Lake District first, and it would be downhill from there in every way.

“You’re really selling it,” I told him.

“It might not be so pretty, but after the heights of the Lake District, it might be nice to be on flatter ground.”

“Especially with that pack you’ve got,” I told him. I’d been reminding Dave regularly how overpacked he was, but I knew that it was really only to disguise my own anxiety at being underpacked.

“When it’s on, it’s OK,” he said, looking down at the bulbous lump of possessions he had sat beside him. It’s quite a sensation to know that everything you have to live on, to live by, is in a bag next to you, and wherever to go next, you can leave nothing behind but that which you will leave forever. It’s a strange mix of freedom and constraint, to leave everything but the essentials. For someone who experiences his anxiety with the potency of a chili pepper, it leads to a severe amount of head-scratching – how and what to live on? I have a weakness when it comes to making decisions, when the infinite ramifications of the multiverse seem to appear before me like phantom futures.* But, sitting there next to Miss Posh and Mr Scruff, and my very own Dave, I was content. We felt like a couple of Dick Whittingtons in reverse, leaving the gold-paved streets of London to find a quainter, more idyllic world.

“Do you think we’ll be more or less wrecked than this guy?” I said referring to the drunk at the end of the table.

“About the same, I’m hoping,” Dave said. “But you’ll have to start drinking again.”

“No chance,” I said. “I’m taking the sober route to the gutter.”

*The tiny torch, for example, is a good space saver. But it has one of those special batteries that go in watches. If the battery runs out, can I replace it on the trail or will I end up buying a new torch? Then what do I do with the old torch? Just dump it somewhere? If not, I’ll be carrying around two torches; then I’m no better than Dave. Or... I could steal one of Dave’s “landing light” halogen bulbs, or rely on moonlight, or ensure I always position things in the tent in an organised, memorable way and proclude the need for a torch at all... Just recollecting this train of thought is turning me into a spinning top.

Take me to Part 6.

The Scourge Part IV

Previously on The Scourge... Link to Part 1

Part IV: Pepys Road, London.

Alfred Wainright, spiritual father of the Coast to Coast walk, wrote “I want to encourage in others the ambition to devise with the aid of maps their own cross-country marathons and not be merely followers of other people's routes: there is no end to the possibilities for originality and initiative.” With this in mind, we decided to merely follow Wainright’s route.

I had suggested walking east to west, following the sun, but Dave rightly pointed out that I was being an idiot. Going east, he said, laying out his case, means that you walk towards the sun in the morning, and have it on your back as the afternoon draws on. It also means that we can follow the book, Henry Steadman’s map-cum-guidebook Coast to Coast Path, to the letter. I realised I had developed a rather naïve sense of what trekking was to be like – just go forward in the direction you want. It hadn’t really occurred to me that trees, rivers, fences or cows might get in the way.

At Dave’s house, on the eve of the Big Walk, we took inventory and spread out our things. Dave’s backpack was roughly twice the size of mine, as was his tent. I had bought a one-man tent which was little bigger than a Smarties tube; Dave had a mansion.

“That’s heavy,” I said. “You’re going to regret it, mark my words.”

“When I’m stretched out diagonally in my tent – my Taj Mahal – enjoying a spacious and peaceful night’s rest, you’ll be the one who’s regretting it. I might put a small bar in the corner with a selection of scotches, so I can read my books with a pleasant tipple.”

The bar idea may have been a slight exaggeration, but Dave hadn’t scrimped. He really hadn’t. I examined his procurements which were now spread over the floor (a result of not being able to get them all in the bag): apart from the massive tent, a chunky sleeping bag and a yoga mat to sleep on, he had three books, a variety of wardrobe changes, two gas canisters, plenty of plates and cutlery, a flask, two mugs, a torch that one could use to beat an intruder of the night, an axe, an penknife, and four flat halogen lights.

“We’re not helping planes land,” I said, looking at the lights.

He paused. “I’ll leave one of the lights.”

The evening passed in this fashion – me telling Dave he had too much stuff and was going to regret it, and him finally accepting this argument and leaving something. I managed to convince him to leave the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but he wouldn’t budge on Rashomon by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, nor the Saga of Gunnlaugr Serpent-Tongue, a 13^th century Icelandic epic. These were, Dave insisted, vital for taking our minds, as well as our bodies, truly into the wilderness.

Each item was a battle, and we would never have gotten through it if we hadn’t had the aid of some decent single malt scotch. After this evening, I had told Dave, I wouldn’t drink for the entire journey. He eyed me with suspicion when I said this.

With our packs loaded, we went to bed. Dave, to the last night with his partner Cinthya; me, to the first night in a superlite sleeping bag, on a sofa. Superlite, I quickly realised, also meant superthin and supercold. If I am cold in this sleeping bag in a flat in London, then what about when... I pushed out the doubts. Tents are, like... insulated with body warmth, or something... I was sure it would be fine.

Take me to part 5.

Scourge of the Trail: P3

Previously on The Scourge (link to part I)

Part 3: When the Planning of the Doing of it Still Takes Longer than the Doing of the Doing of it.

Walking. Yeah, I know about that. I’ve done it before. Even since the Coast to Coast I’ve walked from time to time. I even did a little before breakfast today. However, in the week leading up to the Big Walk, as I’m going to call mine and Dave’s Coast to Coast walk from now on, I decided to put my walking into practice by walking a bit further than I usually would. The first walk involved a Mr. Marc-e-b and a Mr. Mike Todd, and we walked from New Milton to Brockenhurst, taking an unneeded and tiring detour on the way back, to the tune of 20 miles. We finished at the Kebab House, in an attempt to undo all the health we can accumulated, whereupon I bought a massive doner kebab I called my mum to come pick me up.

The combination of walking and kebab caused very different pains in very different places, but provided a good test for the Big Walk. With the promise of averaging 15 miles a day, it seemed very doable. Even better, as we all noticed, the next day the muscles were positively fresh and only the lingering heaviness of doner meat remained. Eat healthy, walk healthy, I promised myself.

Mike and I also walked the coast from New Milton to Lymington. It pelted with rain, providing a good test for my bag and coat (which were not adequately protected) and took us past the wonderful low marshlands which sit beside the Solent. On this occasion, we set something of a precedent: after a quick and mighty start, we stopped off for a coffee, feeling very good about ourselves and sure to plod on gallantly to the finish line. Sadly, we were only about 10% of the way through and we’d already had our break. When you reach the 12 mile mark or thereabouts, you can’t help but curse the fool you were when you breaked so early.

In Lymington we went into the camping and hiking store Millets where I bought a few items: a tiny torch which you can wrap around your head, waterproof trousers, a tiny pillow and tiny ‘quickdry’ towel, and first aid items. Dave was going to sort out eating equipment.

“Gonna need that if it’s a day like this,” said the Millets Man. He’d cleverly made the connection between the waterproof trousers and the deepening rainstorm outside. “You couldn’t be more right,” I said. “We’re walking back to New Milton.”

“You’re what?” he said, astonished. Unlike you, reader, this Millets Man of Lymington knew exactly where New Milton was, for New Milton is Lymington’s scummier, unruly brother. Whereas Lymington is the proud home of the likes of teenage piano cover queen Birdy, New Milton is the proud home of machete-wielding townies. A few years ago, I came back from living in South East London, with all its gangs and big-city perils, only to find myself in a pub brawl outside New Milton’s Rydal. Millets Man thus he knew that it was some distance, and was surely wondering why anyone would go to New Milton, even on a sunny day, even in a car. “You’re walking to New Milton, like, now?”

“We’ve just come from New Milton,” said Mike, evidently feeling a bit manly. “Gotta get back somehow.”

“Blimey,” he said. For a man who worked in a hiking and camping shop, he was surprisingly surprised to come across walkers. His astonishment only deepened when I told him I was going to walk the Coast to Coast. I had suspicions that this man was not a real walker at all, but simply a mere retailer.

I had bought a tent, also from Millets, but online. It turned out, later (when emailing them from a pub as my ripped tent dripped rain in the garden) that I hadn’t bought it from Millets, but from Millet Sports. The latter is a sports store, also trading in Millets-type equipment, but at a lower quality if the frozen moisture in my nostrils was anything to go by.

After these walks I felt positively sturdy, somewhere between Conan the Barbarian and a gorilla. I had some Keen hiking boots which I had spent hours deliberating over, reading reviews and whatnot, before buying them from Taobao. Taobao is China’s Ebay, and a haven of cheap shit. It was a risk, but my Keens were great! And they continue to be so. With all my stuff stuffed into a smallish Oakley backpack bought from the Fake Market in Shanghai, I was ready to go.

Take me to Part 4

Scourge of the Trail: P2

Previously on The Scourge (link to part 1)

Part II: When the Planning of the Doing of it Takes Longer than the Doing of the Doing of it.

These days, you can’t just wander out your door with a copy of Wainright, jump on the 18:05 to St. Bees, throw a shilling at the guard and go hiking. The world got all complicated and micro-managed. Trains in the UK are extortionate – the result of a clever ploy to get UK citizens to buy more cars and engage in more road rage. To avoid these costs, the savvier traveller uses a new-fangled gizmo called the Internet. The Internet, also known as the web, the net, or, amongst particularly cool individuals, the interweb, is pumped into everyone’s houses through pipes and allows people to operate on a newly unrestrained level. Protest, shopping, bullying and, most enthusiastically, sex, have all gone online and not even the fact that the governments of the world are watching us can stop us behaving like absolutely disgusting morons. Take me, for example, with thirteen windows open, including National Rail, the Trainline and six different Megabus windows. Disgusting.

Once upon a time, the Trainline.com was cheaper than a normal ticket. Now, it’s the same. Am I wrong? Once, you could get a Megatrain ticket for £1. Now it’s £15 at the cheapest unless you want to alight at a station which is underwater or in a volcano. When you’re nostalgic for good train prices which were available only one year ago you know the world has become too rapid and too boring, but there I was, fond memories of £1 rides in my head, cursing at the screen.

The number of websites which profess to offer cheap train tickets are now more numerous than the number of straggly beards in East London. Megatrain tickets only go to certain destinations, and you have to get off at that destination. You also need to get the specific train, at the specific time. Hence, if you have the time and the will, you can plan a complex, labyrinthian journey across the country, making smart connections at tiny prices until you get to the end of your rainbow. But only on specific trains. Each successful journey would depend on the reliability of the previous ones, and that’s a lot of faith to have in British transport. Do you really have what it takes to withstand that kind of pressure for a whole day? With my anxiety the way it is, with the 13 windows on the computer screen jostling for attention, I knew I couldn’t do it.

So, I bought two tickets, one for Dave and one for myself, from London to St. Bees, and two more tickets, one for Dave and one for myself, from Robin Hood’s Bay to London two weeks later. The return tickets presumed that both of us would still be alive for the return journey. I considered reading the terms and conditions to see if I could get a refund on Dave’s ticket if I were to murder him in his sleep, but terms and conditions are impenetrable, as you know, so I figured I’d just worry about that if and when the situation arises.

The date of the return ticket was of paramount importance because the following day I would be taking a train to Brussels en route to Japan. These tickets I had planned, with equal frustration, with the aid of seat61.com, an excellent if geeky website dedicated to all things train. If you want to know if there is a working soap dispenser in the toilet in car E on the eastbound 15:45 train from Paris to Strasbourg, Seat61 can tell you.

Needless to say, taking trains across land to China takes you through a number of countries. As an EU citizen, travelling through Europe is blissfully easy. But after that, you have Belarus, Russia, Mongolia and China to deal with. Already working in China, I was sorted for entry there; Mongolia doesn’t require visas which is lovely, and neither does Japan if you’re British, which is also splendid; but Belarus and Russia were another story. To get these visas I had to send my passport to each embassy, and get them returned to me. This is usually not a problem, but then again, usually I’m not walking across the north of England like a ragged, hungry hobo.

“Get it sent to my house,” said my mum, “and I’ll send it on to you.” Good old mum. But, hang on, that won’t work. I’ve got to get my first train the day after the walk ends. It’ll never arrive in time! “Get it sent to my house,” said Dave “and it’ll be waiting for us when we get back.” Good old Dave. That’s a man with a plan. Dave lives in London, less than four miles (and three hours by public transport) from St. Pancras, gateway to Europe.

I dropped my passport off at the Belarussian embassy, having already secured the Russian visa. “Send it to Dave’s,” I waved. It all seemed so easy. Too easy. It was, and all too late when I realised.

Take me to part III

Scourge of the Trail

Part 1: Proximity

I suppose I should've known better. After all, it was summertime in England - a wretched time that even the most hardy seaside go-getter can attest to. Perhaps I had been away from home too long, and a cosy fog which suggested warmth had clouded my judgement, and filled my head with the English summer of pub gardens, beach parties and cocktails on the lawn. Pym's. On top of that, I hadn't erected a tent and shivered my way into a sleeping bag in a good fifteen years, and I had long since ceased to remember the discomfort, the sheer depravity of camping in England. More than once did I consider uttering that immortal line, that of the sacrificial Captain Oates - "I'm just going outside and may be some time," in order to save my frozen friend, Dave, from certain doom. I'm sure he thought the same thing.

Our mutual friend, the generally-more-reluctant Chris, had declined to join us, citing an absence of hair straighteners and naturally sourced lime and aloe moisturiser on the trail. "There are a thousand better reasons to reject this trip, Chris," I said to him, number 1 being me and number 2 being Dave. Proximity, it could be said, is the greatest test of a person. It has to be delicately handled. If you're stealing oxygen from your neighbour, oftentimes this is too close.

One tent each, said Dave. That should be enough. Enough to save us from ourselves. Lord of the Flies was flickering across the back of my eyelids, crossed with some twisted version of a weekend getaway on the Goode Life. I pushed the idea of murder (which had now evolved to murder-suicide) from my mind – seriously, the chances of being killed while camping in the English countryside must be tiny, perhaps as high as being killed in a terrorist attack, which, I assure you, is lower than you’d think – and looked over at Dave. His pale brown flop of hair had been recently shawn and he peered through his glasses with an alert keen. His newly shaved head accentuated his neck, somehow increasing the enthusiasm in his eyes. “I’m really looking forward to this,” he said.

the idea had been raised a few months before, while I was in China. Coast to coast, said Dave, west to east. “it’s Wainright’s walk,” he iterated, “and a woman did it on TV. With a film crew.” A film crew, I pondered. There could be something to this. Just shy of 200 miles, the walk stretches from the sea to the sea, starting at St. Bee’s and ending at Robin Hood’s Bay. Before you ask, we saw no bees at St. Bees and no Robin Hood at Robin Hood’s bay. Alfred Wainright, grumpy countryside wanderer par excellence, did the walk over a number of occasions – not in one go ­– and wrote about it in 1973. Since then, the trail has been tweaked a little and attracts 10,000 people a year (according to Henry Steadman’s map-cum-guidebook Coast to Coast Path), mostly in summer when the weather is it its shittest, each of whom curse the skies, their friends, and the long-dead Wainright for coming up with the blasted idea in the first place.

But, as I mentioned just a paragraph ago, I was in China. And I had to return to China because of work. This meant my trip east from St. Bees was going to take on something of a marathon quality far beyond the 192 miles of Wainright’s puny walk. It did, but that’s a story for a later time. Before that, we had planning to do, and as everybody knows – planning is cool and always, always fun.

Take me to Part II.

C2C, the rest.

The night in Keld was exhausting. The sunset betrayed a coming chill cold enough to make Captain Oates pack up and march off. And so it was for me. At 1am I realised the worst was still to come. My microlite tent was forming icicles and my ripped tent was letting in a cruel draft. I got out and burst into Dave's tent saying 'I'm coming in.'

  It's fucking cold in here too, he said, perhaps by way of deterrent. But who cared? A thousand Celtic warriors couldn't have removed me from this tent. 

The remainder of the trip was on lower ground. We stayed in a hunting lodge yha and got lost looking for a 'lone oak' in a friend with many lone oaks near Richmond. We lost Ali but found her again at the end. In the meantime out cohort grew to include four oldies from Burnley and a stubborn father and daughter, whom we called Strongarm Sue on account of her dismissing other people's packs as light. She cried her way to Robin Hoods Bay, and we think developed something of a romance with Mark, the ex-hippy brummie. 

We rolled in to the bay spent and ready for a bed and breakfast and a pint. We got both. Next day, we said bye to the north and hi to the

business of London, where cars took on the form of large indifferent farmyard animals, and people were, god forbid, not walkers. 

Day...7?

Just got to the tiny hamlet of Keld. Finally left the Lake District. Camping the last few nights is cold! Done 98 miles. 

A few days back we met Ali, whom we swam in Ennerdale Water with. She's become a regular on this trip, someone to share cookies and green tea and even the occasional political tete-a-tete with. 

Others we see often are an Australian occupational therapist and her mum. The OT glumly told Dave to rest his battered leg, advice he didn't like, but did take. 

Nice sunset tonight. 

 

Day...4?

Ennerdale to Grasmere. Done about 40 miles now. In quite a lot of pain. Dave has pulled muscle in his leg. It rained terribly today, and we are in a Youth Hostel tonight, in much needed warmth.

Day 2, C2C

Seems a lot further in than day two... We two travellers are now sturdy and worn hikers with 14 miles behind us. It's not a great feat, you might say, but oh with those bags and down that hill. That hill was Raven Crag , a spot so steep that people complain to the guide book for putting it on the trail. Actually it wasn't on Wainright's original walk, but has since become standard. Your knees shiver and begin to numb, and you continually wonder about sliding down on your bag. 

Most beautiful part of the walk was just after that descent, on the cusp of the Lake District, through a meandering valley. We met one man and his dog. Having coffee now in the Fox and Hounds, gotta run.