It’s a year since the Queen died and King Charles appear to be working on inventing some new Royal traditions.
Of course he has existing traditions including letter writing, ink pens and conversations with trees. However something with more gravitas is needed.
The King and Queen have been at the Highland Gathering. Events included dancing and hammer throwing although the Royals were just watching.
The King was wearing a kilt with the newly invented King Charles tartan which allowed him also to display the Royal knees.
The Royal Tartan of red, blue and green has been approved by the Scottish Tartans Authority.
Not much of a tradition perhaps but its a start.
Flettnote
The Fletts don’t have a tartan because the origin of the clan is Orkney which has no such tradition. There is however an historic and not at all invented Flett Coat of Arms
Many of the hard right’s culture war end up backfiring. Think of the small boats debacle. They are constantly on the look out for new battlefields though.
This week has seen the RSPB and the National Trust in the line of Culture War fire.
The RSPB tweeted that several Government Ministers were liars for saying they were protecting the environment when in fact they were weakening protections. The RSPB was correct but the inconvenient reality was too much for the Tory media and the criticism was changed to a focus on policy rather than Ministers.
Meanwhile the traditional effort by the self-styled Restore groupuscule to stop the National Trust from telling the realities of the buildings and monuments they are responsible for.
I have only a passing interest in birds- mainly repeatedly filling up the bird feeders in the garden and watching the ensuing bird wars. When it comes to historic buildings I have some professional interest as an historian. I remain particularly interested in what is said, or more often not said, about the changes that Cromwell brought about on numbers of monuments.
The National Trust has done a decent job with limited means of looking at the impact colonialism and the slave trade had on historic buildings. For some time this has been too much for the hard right who mainly go on about cancel culture which they usually see as bad but in this case is goof.
This year’s Restore effort seems to be led by the eccentric hard right figure of Lord Sumpton and is backed by Farage.
Keeping an eye on Farage’s frothings and rantings I’ve never noticed beyond the Union Jack underpants any interest in British Heritage
Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun reminds us that there are a large number of festivals in the calendar, usually religious in origins which feature eating, drinking, Lords of Misrule, disturbances and sometimes riots. Many of them are still celebrated across the country albeit not as robustly as they originally were.
About any of them I have never noticed one mention by Farage so interested is he in our genuine heritage.
2024 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season extended until September 30th
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2024 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season has been extended until September 30th.
It usually concludes on August Bank Holiday Monday. However the weather has been indifferent for much of July and August and there have been limited opportunities for beard, shorts and sandals wearing. The forecast for September, at the moment, appears reasomable.
The campaigners that very high temperatures in Southern Europe meant that wearing shorts has been inadvisable at best. Conversely further north cool and often wet and windy weather meant that wearing shorts was equally inadvisable without care.
The BLF says that it has implemented temporary guidelines for the extension of the 2024 season. These govern types of footwear, length of shorts and the controversial issue of socks:
1] Shorts should be three-quarter length-‘culottes’. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt or very wet.
2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leave parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some does not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.
3] Socks should not be worn. They are likely to become waterlogged
4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This is left up to the individual.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, climate change is a very serious issue and given the weather impact currently we are extending the Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season with temporary restrictions on length of shorts and sock wearing
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued an alert for beard trimmers.
The alert comes after beer writer and speaker Pete Brown posted on social media that he had accidentally shaved his trade mark beard off as the setting on his beard trimmer had slipped from 6 to 0.6
The BLF says that the shaving industry is of course all about shaving and its quite possible that the settings on trimmers are deliberately designed to ‘slip’ to encourage a closer shave than the user intends.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, whilst we do not forbid the use of beard trimmers we do think that the traditional craft method of scissors and comb is more satisfactory and safer way to trim and prune the beard
What Marx and Engels did on their holidays: The North
Marx and Engels love of the Victorian seaside is well known. Their visits to Margate, Ramsgate and Eastbourne as well as Brighton and The Isle of Wight are documented.
However the two had a rare split when it came to location. Marx favoured the sea water and arguably slightly warmer conditions of southern seaside towns. His main concern was his health. He did venture north, not particularly in the summer, to visit spa towns like Harrogate and Buxton. Again the emphasis was on his health.
Engels by contrast spent at least some summers pursuing an interest in geology. This was the reason for his perambulations around the Isle of Wight from Ryde but it also saw him become a regular visitor to a northern Bridlington is a Yorkshire seaside resort known at least by labour movement veterans as the location of the 1939 Bridlington Agreement which aimed to stop trade unions ‘poaching’ members from each other.
Well before that it had become a favoured summer holiday destination for Engels and his partner
He appears to have first visited in 1868(perhaps before however). He was still visiting in the early 1880s.
He wrote to Kugelmann from York on 31st July 1868 that he was on his way to Bridlington with his spouse, Lizzie Burns. He added in brackets ‘I bet you couldn’t guess how the name is prounced’
By 6th August, Engels was back in Manchester writing that he had been to Bridlington for the weekend and planned to return and take a holiday. Unfortunately an employee at the Manchester mill where Engels worked had gout and he had to stand in for him.
Engels wrote again to Marx from Manchester on 12th August noting that he had been again in Bridlington from 7th to 10th August 1868 and had made some ‘quite interesting’ geological studies. He now planned to return for 10 days from 14th August, the employee with gout being on the road to recovery. He gave Marx the address of Mr Burns, 3 Burlington Place, Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire.
msIn fact the stay was rather longer as Engels wrote to Marx from Bridlington Quay on 22nd August that he planned to return to Manchester on 26th or 27th August.
Bridlington was a favourite resort of Engels over the decades and while there on July 29th 1881 he wrote to Marx about the excellence of the beer to be found on a little cafe on the pier. The bitter he noted had a head on it like German beer. There is no evidence however that he managed to persuade Marx to make the journey to sample the beer.
It being England the summer weather was a perpetual concern.
In the summer of 1880, on 17th September wrote to Engels was again at Bridlington Quay and wrote to Marx who was in Ramsgate, ‘we shall be returning at the end of the week. Wet weather since the day before yesterday’
The following summer of 1881, Engesl was again at Bridlington Quay and on 17th August noted ‘the weather pretty well continuously overcast, threatening & cold; since yesterday it has been decidedly wet & in conditions like that Bridlington Quay becomes a downright bore’
Unlike some of the resorts in the South of England visited by Marx or Engels or both of them in the 1850s,60s, 70s and 80s, Bridlington doesn’t appear to have recognised Engels visits there.
Perhaps this is the moment for a statue of Engels on Bridlington Quay
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that latest Defence Secretary Grant Shapps must avoid re-growing the beard he wore as Transport Secretary in 2021.
Since then, aside from a passing visit to the Home Office during Liz Truss’s 49 days he was Energy Secretary.Here he specialised in satirical social media posts blaming the Labour Party for anything he didn’t like.
He has followed this in his latest job droning on about people who belittle Britain on Radio 4’s Today programme on 15th January
The campaigners say that the fact that the British Army was big on beards during the Crimean War in the 1850s should not lead to the reappearance of Shapps beard.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Shapps has to face it. NATO is clean shaven and if he wants to be Defence Secretary for the next few months he needs to avoid a beard.
Steve Bell has probably been the cartoonist who has consistently captured the essence of political leaders in his drawings in the modern era.
One thinks of Blair with the all seeing eye, Major wearing his underpants outside of his trousers and more recently Trump complete with toilet seat on top of his head.
A detail in his drawing for the Guardian on 31st August 2023 shows a new grey haired image of Keir Starmer.
One could adapt the Muppets, it isnt easy being grey but perhaps the Grateful Dead’s Touch of Grey fits better.
Whatever lets hope that Steve Bell develops the Starmer image further, although sadly this will no longer be in the Guardian. A tradition of political lampooning almost unrivalled in the modern era appears to have been concluded by the paper.
The Campaign for Real Conkers, that opposes bans on conker playing and unnecessary rules and regulations in games has said that that the season has opened as usual and will run until mid-October.
Early indications are that 2024 will see a good crop of conkers and changeable weather conditions have been helpful at least in this respect.
The campaigners they are maintaining their usual ‘anything goes’ approach to conker games, to encourage people to play without arbitrary rules.
Campaign Organiser Keith Flett said, we anticipate a full and safe conker playing season over the next six weeks or so, until at least the so called World Conker Championships on October 8th which the campaign traditionally boycotts
Guide on how to play real conkers safely in 2024
1] Select your conker. Do this yourself. DO NOT use a conker provided by someone else who may give you a poor specimen.
2] There is no specific kind of conker that makes a good game winner. Large conkers may more easily splinter for example. Some prefer conkers with flat and sharp edges
3] You may use the conker ‘as is’ known as ‘organic’. Alternatively you may seek to harden it by baking it, soaking it in vinegar etc. There is no guarantee that an artificially enhanced conker will perform any better than an organic one.
4] Drill a small hole through the conker. A nail will often achieve this. Again you must do this yourself
5] Thread the conker through the hole you have drilled. A strong chord, perhaps a shoelace is best
6] You are now ready to play.
7] Make sure that the chord is long enough to allow you to stand at least 1 metre plus away from your opponent. This would generally be the case as space is required for the conker swing.
8] Players take alternate turns to try and hit and destroy their opponent’s conker
9] Those with poor aim may hit the knuckles of their opponent more often than the conker so you may wish to wear gloves.
10] The winner is the player who determines their opponents conker unusable in further rounds, usually by causing it to splinter into two or more pieces
E P Thompson signed the contract for the Making of the English Working Class in August 1959. It was for a book rather the shorter but covering a longer period than the Making turned out to be. By April 1962 a note in his MI5 file suggests he was ‘desperately’ trying to finish the book. He did so finally in August 1963.
The original August 1959 contract with Victor Gollancz was for a book of 60,000 words covering the period 1790-1921. The Making gets to the mid-1830s and as Thompson noted was in fact the first,if very long, chapter
30 years and many more books and campaigning later he sadly died on 28th August 1993.
Margaret Thatcher when Prime Minister (1979-1990)promoted Victorian Values (at least until an unfortunate issue with Cecil Parkinson)one of which it might be argued was moderation if not temperance when it comes to alcohol.
Denis Thatcher was a renowned gin drinker but Margaret preferred whisky.
The political editor of the Times in the 1980s Julian Haviland, who died recently, noted several occasions when Thatcher was drinking whisky (with soda). She would it seem a drink a large scotch or two before her weekly audience with the late Queen who she apparently did not have the best of relations with.
However Haviland also noted on another occasion when at Downing St with Thatcher that he was struck by the amount of whisky she was drinking. He reported that she had a ‘large capacity’ for a dram or several (Times 22nd August 2023).
I like whisky myself so this is not a censorious post. Rather it begs the question,still unknown, of what whisky she was drinking.Was it a blend? Was it a single malt. Any evidence recieved with interest
