Collecting beaches abroad

Or, "if it's Wednesday, this must be Wales"

I've been gadding about in the British Isles for the past few weeks on long service leave, and it has been an interesting mixture of "having a wonderful time" and "just plain exhausting". 

I started with a bus tour of Britain and Ireland, which was worth doing, but definitely too long. By the time we got to Wales everyone on the tour was a bit over it, to be honest. I think we would have benefited from having a long weekend in the middle of the tour to do a spot of nothing.

But, I saw where Shakespeare and Burns were born, where Yeats was buried, where a whole bunch of authors, poets and playwrights went to school, and where Jane Austen danced on her 18th birthday, so that was pretty cool. 

I also found a few statues I'd wanted to see (Peter Pan and Paddington, for example) so that was quite good. 

It has occurred to me that my experience of Britain is somewhat literary. 

While I was tootling around the UK and Eire, I must confess that I forgot to keep up my collection of beaches. On one of my last holidays I started photographing the beaches I visited. And, while I did photograph a few on the bus trip, I largely forgot about it. 

I've seen some interesting beaches and coastlines, that's for sure. I've even been to the Cliffs of Insanity, although the beach was largely out of shot while I was taking photos, it has to be said. 

Pretty much all of my photos of the trip are on a different device, so you'll have to wait for me to return to my regular computer before I can coordinate a spot of sharing. 

This last phase of my trip has been taking it easy in the Channel Islands, and they know how to put on a beach or two. 

It has been interesting to contrast Guernsey and Jersey. Guernsey has a superior bus service, and it was easier to see most of it, but the weather was too bad to get out to the other islands (Sark and all that), and I kind of felt that we'd run out of things worth doing before we left. 

I probably would have enjoyed going on a few walks, but I came down with a rather nasty cold. I'm blaming it on one of the many babies in Guernsey that was coughing merrily over whoever happened to pass by. I don't know why mothers these days seem completely unconcerned with their children coughing on others, but I hope that they are at least equally unconcerned with people coughing on their children. It's only fair. 

Jersey's bus service isn't as comprehensive, and costs twice as much as Guernsey's - literally. You could circle the whole island of Guernsey for 1 pound, but on Jersey it will cost you 2 pounds and you won't even get from one village to the village next door. The bus routes appear to have been designed by someone who doesn't expect people to travel by bus if it can be at all avoided. Actually, that would also explain why they've put decals over the windows so you can barely see the scenery. 

And why so many busses only run on an hourly basis so that it would take a good 3 hours to make a half-hour journey if you were planning to "pop in" somewhere that looked nice to visit, but probably not for a long stretch of time... 

So I've seen less of Jersey on the whole. But, fortunately, half the things I wanted to see closed for the season a few weeks ago anyway. 

Having said that, I've fallen in love with St Brelade's Bay. It's such a lovely spot for a holiday. 

And it has a seriously good beach. 

Luddite (or, Kicking and Screaming)

Luddite is one of those words which have been hijacked over the years by people who never fully understood it.

It has come to mean "someone who is afraid of technology and doesn't want to use it", and I suppose we need a word for that.

However, it used to mean "someone who is alarmed by the way technology replaces humanity, and refuses to accept it" and we no longer have a word for that.

Historically, Luddites were the people who destroyed factory technology during the Industrial Revolution to stop "the man" from replacing workers with machines. They weren't afraid of using technology, they were afraid of being made redundant and irrelevant by it. Of losing their jobs and livelihoods because of it.

There are words for people who don't want to use technology because they don't feel competent using it or they just don't want to learn new things. "Dinosaur", for example. But there seems to be a blank space in our way to describe the world for "someone who is not afraid of technology and knows how to use it but chooses not to".

It's like we, as a society, have decided there's no good reason for people who are competent and intelligent and capable of using technology to choose to turn their back on it, so we won't give them a word. Why describe something that makes no sense?

I use technology all the time for my job, and I'm aware of how much it takes from me. In the past, I have let it have a poor effect on my health. I have made a conscious decision to only paddle in the shallow end of the pond, in my personal life, because I want to stay grounded, and I know that the waters further out can carry you away from the shore too rapidly.

I try to do things "old school" as much as possible in my "outside the office" life to make sure I still can - so that I don't end up like the people in Wall-E. I shun technology not because I can't learn to use it (or don't want to), but because I like *not* using it. I'm happier off the leash.

But this year a lot of things are making me realise just how much the businesses I interact with are working on the assumption that everyone is online all the time. Utility companies, banks... heck even the post office is moving inexorably down this path. Their entire business model is based on "of course you'll be using the app on your phone - why wouldn't you?" When you tell them you're not online at home, they look at you like the entire concept is inconceivable.

Then, of course, they assume that you're not online because you don't know how to use the technology, and you'll eventually learn. There's no consideration that you might be offline by choice. This is a lifestyle decision. If I grow my hair into dreadlocks and wear yoga pants, you might get it.

I feel like I've reached a point where I can no longer opt out, as much as I might want to. If I don't swim out into the deep water, I'll find the water at the shallow end has simply dried up.

Against my will, I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. We'll see how long I can maintain the resistance.

한글 (Hangul)

One thing often leads to another when you're looking stuff up on the computer all day, and while doing a spot of research on Will Rogers (I had legitimate work-related reasons) I ended up looking at Hangul, the Korean alphabet.

I like the look of Korean. I think it's a very aesthetically pleasing language, on paper. Spoken Korean doesn't strike me as being particularly interesting (at least, not more so than Japanese), but the written language just looks good, if you know what I mean?

It's like the language version of a McLaren sports car - sure, it's not practical for day-to-day driving, but something in me still wants to take it for a spin. I think it's something to do with the lines - it just seems so neatly designed. I think it would look perfectly at home on the dashboard of a space ship.

This, for example, is "Hello" (or something to that effect):

안녕하세요

And this is "traveller":

여행자

Doesn't it just look like it should be etched in stone by glowing magic, or scrolling across the screen on a robot's face?

It sounds silly, but if I were to learn an Asian language, I'd have a hard time trying to pick one just because Korean looks so darn pretty.

In the grand scheme of things, Standard Chinese would probably be far more practical. Higher numbers of speakers, more places where you might encounter it, that sort of thing. Korean is only spoken in two countries - and, let's face it, one of those countries isn't high on the "likely to visit" list.

Heck, there's no guarantee we'll even have a "North Korea" for much longer if things keep going the way they currently are. Even if they don't provoke China into squashing them just to make sure unpleasant explosives aren't exchanged so close to home, there's a very good chance that the entire country will fall into a heap as a result of poor management. I'm willing to admit that I'm not an expert on how to run a country, but it seems to me that neither are the people currently in charge of North Korea.

I have the same issue with the idea of learning Japanese. That language is useful in exactly one country. I'm already learning one of those (theoretically - I have to admit that my Estonian studies have slipped a lot lately), and there's a limit to how much brain space I can give over to languages with limited applications.

One of the reasons why I chose German to study was because it is an official language in several countries, and it's central position means more countries to both the east and west of the German-speaking lands are likely to be familiar with it.

So, for practical purposes, I should be learning something with a lot of take up in other countries, like Mandarin or Cantonese...

...But Korean is so pretty.

White Enough

Not Grace Kelly.

I don't get all of the arguments floating around the opinionverse at the moment about Wonder Woman being a white woman and therefore part of the problem (pick a problem - any problem), rather than part of the solution. The character is Mediterranean/Hellenic (the "white Australia" of the 19th and 20th Centuries would let you know in no uncertain terms that such a background doesn't count as "white") and has so far been played by someone who is of mixed race (Hispanic) heritage and someone who is of a mixed race (Semitic) background. Saying "white woman" over and over again in regards to this character is ignoring the fact that we have a non-white character who a) is something people admire and look up to, and b) has so far managed to avoid being cast as a typical blonde American*, which I think deserves a round of applause (look, American producers! See that you don't have to recast every role as an "All American Girl/Boy"!). While we're arguing about "White feminism" all that crap, we're not celebrating the fact that one of the biggest, most famous and most successful female superheroes of all time *isn't* your stereotypical white American. And we should be celebrating this, because we want more of it. And... And it's just a bit jerky, really. I mean, what is this actually saying? You look kind of pale, and you're not poor. Therefore you are white and privileged and have to wear everything that entails. Your culture doesn't count. Whatever struggles your family has gone through over the years don't count. Whatever else it is about you that makes you belong to your place and your people doesn't count. This a judgement based purely on the colour of your skin, and you're white enough. Think about this from the perspective of a kid who's from a Mediterranean, or Hispanic, or Semitic background. They get told in so many different ways that they're not "white enough" to belong in the same circles as upper-middle-class white people. They know that the real privileges of "white privilege" aren't on offer to them (at least, not if they embrace their background instead of trying to hide it). And now they have a frickin' superhero who looks just like them, and they're being told that she is a veritable symbol of white privilege. Where is this coming from? Why are we using the word "white" in regards to this character so we can use her as a symbol of the things we don't like about mainstream white culture? It's like we've been given something that we've been complaining about not having for years, and then petulantly saying "that doesn't count, because it hasn't come in the shade I wanted". *Apart from that abortive thing with Cathy Lee Crosby, which doesn't count for various reasons

Poetry in OoOMs

My travel agent's out of office message has a really interesting use of spaces and returns. I'd like to believe it's on purpose - that she's created a form poem to give some visual beauty to the mundane. For your reading pleasure, I present (exactly as written in her email), "Thank you for your email", by R. Pegoraro:

For any new 

​inquiries or booking requests,​ 

please email 

me

 the details of your trip

​​

​​

and 

I

 will prepare your booking upon my return

​. Alternatively, I am happy to chat by phone when convenient for you, or make an appointment time with you to come into the store.​

Thank

 you​

 for choosing me as 

​your

 travel agent

Patronage

In this day and age, modern business parlance tends to use the words "customer" and "patron" interchangeably.  At some point, I expect, someone decided that "patron" sounded nicer than "customer", and businesses should call all of their customers "patrons" to make them feel special.

As is the way of things, using "patron" for every day customers didn't make customers more special, it just made the word "patron" less special.  That's the way the language works.

But there is a difference between a customer and a patron, and this was brought home to me the other night when I walked up the street to buy some food.

My family used to eat fish and chips quite regularly, but we've scaled back on our take-away consumption, and we now buy it roughly once or twice a year rather than once or twice a month.  When I walked up the street to by some fish and chips recently, the shop wasn't there.

In hindsight, I think it hasn't been there for at least a month, because the last time we bought take away we phoned the shop to put in an order, but the number didn't work so I dropped in to a different place on the way home instead.  I didn't frequent the shop enough to know exactly when it shut down.

I was a customer of that shop, but I was not a patron.

You see, a customer buys things, but a patron supports. A patron goes out of their way to buy things from that person. The patron of an artist or artisan commissions work from that artist/artisan in order to make sure they can still work, pay bills and live. The patron of a business makes a point of buying things from that business to keep the business viable.

I didn't patronise* that business.  I liked having it in my neighbourhood, I wanted it to be there when I needed it, but I didn't make a point of giving them regular custom.  That's what they needed from me.  It's what they needed from everyone in our neighbourhood.

If every person in the neighbourhood who wanted the shop to survive just made the point of buying one thing from that shop once a week, the shopkeepers would have made a decent living and it would still be there.

The trouble is that we're not really patrons anymore.  We're customers - and pretty mercurial (and mercenary) customers at that.  We'll give our money to whoever will offer us the cheapest deal - even if, in the long run, it doesn't benefit us, our neighbours or our community at all.

We congratulate ourselves for getting things cheaper elsewhere.  Or for keeping our money to ourselves and trying to get something for free.

The real trouble is that the relationship between a patron and their patronee is different to that between a business and their customer.  There is a tacit agreement that the patron is willing to pay good money for good work, so the patronee will do their best work for their patron.

Without that relationship - without people agreeing to care about each other, support each other, and provide each other with their best - what do we have left?  Businesses trying to get the most money out of customers who want to pay the least money - and nothing good can come of that.

It's worth taking the time to think about what it means to be a patron, and to make a point of patronising the things we want to keep in our communities - the local shops, artists, craftspeople and sporting clubs.

It is, quite literally, for the best.



*From the OED:
 a. trans. Of a person, class, organization, etc.: to act as a patron towards, to extend patronage to (a person, cause, etc.); to protect, support, favour, or encourage.

Singular Plurals (Or, The Polite "They")

I've been sitting on the fence regarding the use of "they" as a gender neutral singular third person pronoun.

On the one hand, the English language desperately needs a gender neutral singular third person pronoun.  I mean, we have one, but we also insist that "it" can't be used for people without being exceptionally rude and insulting, so we need one fit for polite society.

But on the other hand, I wasn't keen on the idea of weakening the "plurality" of "they".  We've already lost a distinction between singular and plural with our second person pronouns when we stopped using "thou"...

But I recently had an epiphany.  You see, the plural "you" was always used to refer to single individuals.

Back in the day, English had two ways* of referring to someone in the second person.  There was "you", which was plural, and "thou", which was singular.  This is actually pretty bog standard in most languages I know of, so I don't rightly know why we stopped doing this.

The other thing that was "bog standard" was the fact that you would use the plural word to refer to individuals if you were being polite.  You (Sie, vous, teie, etc) is used when speaking to one person, even though the word is plural, because it doubles as the polite form.  You would use this when talking to someone you weren't on first-name basis with, or someone you might refer to as "sir" or "madam".**

The singular form, thou (du, tu, sina, etc) is used when talking to someone you don't have to be polite to - like someone who is of a lower social standing than you (and everyone knows it) or, more commonly these days, family and friends.

"Thou" is not just a marker of singularity, but also familiarity.

It wasn't just a matter of pronouns, either.  The entire verb structure altered to say "we know each other well".  Think about that the next time you hear the old hymn "Be Thou My Vision" ("nought be all else to me, save that Thou art"), and others like it.  That way of speaking wasn't a marker of great respect, but of great closeness.

In many languages, it's still a gesture of friendship to be told "you can 'thou' me", and you wouldn't dream of calling someone "thou" if you weren't on close terms.

Anyway, the thing that occurred to me is that there is no reason why third person pronouns couldn't work the same way; we could use the plural version ("they") to refer to people we don't know well as a mark of politeness (or neutrality), and singular versions ("he", "she", etc), as a mark of familiarity.

So, when talking to someone about a friend, you would feel perfectly comfortable saying "he went there on his own", but if that person wasn't also friends with your friend, they would say "Oh, did they enjoy it?" and that would be perfectly normal.

When you think about it that way, using "they" as a singular word isn't really "losing" anything, but regaining something we've lost elsewhere.

Plus, it would be really handy.


*Actually, we once had three, but that's out of the purview of this post
**More on this later