Coastalblog

Watching the ongoing Dominic Cummings car-crash unfold has been an extended exercise in watching norms be subverted in real time. It'd be laughable if it wasn't so worrying. From the initial blush-free rebuttals of "fake news" right up to the flimsy excuses about test drives it has, from start to finish, been one of the least edifying displays of political re-positioning since the Iraq War and the dodgy dossier. Worse, perhaps, in that this is lying without shame, with a smile on its lips, with a nudge and a wink. Denial becomes admission becomes it doesn't matter though in the blink of an eye. Johnson produces glasses at a Press Conference, claiming that sight loss is a COVID-19 symptom. It's theatre, it's easily proven that he's long needed them, it doesn't matter. Cummings demonstrably breaks guidelines, he admits to it, it doesn't matter. It is clear that Government strategy is the age old line-drawn-lets-move-on. And even if Cummings hasn...

Exciting times at Westminster, as the current crop of people who we, for form's sake, must loosely term the cabinet have been wheeled out to spectacularly poor effect to defend the actions of Kooky Misfit Genius Dom Cummings.  A quick recap, fore those who have been doing something constructive with their day. The story broke this morning that the PM's chief adviser and third place winner at Butlin's Minehead Skeletor Lookylikey 1997, Dominic Cummings had, in contravention of all Gov guidelines, done a bunk to his parents on the off-chance he and his wife had coronavirus (they did, as it turns out, but that's not really the point). This, it doesn't need spelling out, was pretty terrible news for HMG. During a time when the PM was saying "If you're thinking of visiting your Mother this Mother's Day - don't" DC was doing precisely that. At a time when people were not even allowed to say goodbye to their dying relatives, the DomMeister was pootlin...

Cor, the media, eh? What a bunch of bastards. You may have seen the posts doing the rounds. Someone's probably shared a status, copied from somewhere else. Someone's commented on re-tweet. You know the ones. The faux reasonable ones telling the media to lay off the government. Saying that we need to pull together at a time like this and criticism isn't helpful. Saying that "they" got it worng about Brexit and "they" are wrong this time. You may have seen stuff that goers a bit further. The stuff that calls the media liars, says they're all the same. You may, Lord help you, even know someone who uses the term "fake news" or, even worse "MSM" with a straight face without asking themselves why they're cribbing the playbook of a creature who suggested just a few weeks ago that the way to combat coronavirus was to drink bleach. To which the only reasonable response is: what on Earth have you been reading? I'm not here t...

(My apologies in advance to the late great Anthony Bourdain, who I have in part ripped off for this blog, the idea of breaking down a pro's mise en place was his, he did it in the excellent "Les Halles Cookbook" which, if you don't have, you should; but it seemed pretty apt for the time, and I can assure you that the words are very much mine) One of the common archetypes of a certain sort of fiction is the person who can't help but bring their work home with them, the workaholic who can't switch off. There's generally a moment of clarity about half way to two thirds through when their child or significant other yells some damning imprecation at them, and they learn the error of their ways. They loosen up, make more time for family, realise that there's more to life than work. Then, because you can't have a life lesson in this sort of fiction and then just get on with things, the person that taught them the life lesson dies in the penultimate chap...

It will come as no surprise to you to learn that I'm generally some way behind the curve when it comes to cultural talking points, so I didn't get round to Sally Rooney's Normal People until long after everyone had stopped raving about it, about two months ago in point of fact. There was also a degree of freight attached in that it was "not the sort of thing I'd usually read" which is, of course, a ridiculous reason not to read a book, but it is fair to say that books that are notionally about relationships aren't generally that high on my to-read list. So I approached it with a degree of trepidation, it's a terrible thing to approach a book with preconceptions, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and such had been the unanimous chorus of approval, the feverish pitch of the praise (apart, of course, from the murky depths of the Goodreads reviews pages, and those are always best avoided) that I didn't think it could possibly live up to the hype. ...

I don't know quite what I expected from this situation, I went into it unsure of how long it would last (in my case, a bloody long time by the sounds of it), how it would affect the people I love, what I'd miss. A few of the absences are fairly obvious, work, trips out, meals out at our local Turkish barbecue place (meals out in general, but particularly those), but one of the things I realise I miss most is book-shops. To paraphrase Borges, I've always thought that Heaven would be a second-hand book-shop. You know the sort, the ones over several floors, full of sudden rooms and surprising geometries, the ones where the stairways switch-back on themselves and there's generally a two-bar heater going regardless of the time of year. The sort of book-shop where, you feel, pretty much anything might be unearthed. The kind of bookshop where the owner doesn't raise an eyebrow when you're in there for half a day, the kind where when you emerge, blinking at the gloo...

In a surprising, but gratifying turn of events, I'm pleased to announce that I am, as of this morning, a qualified heavy goods vehicle driver. My certificate arrived this morning. There are only two problems with this, my new career. The first being that I can't legally drive so much as a moped, let alone an HGV, and nor do I have any intention of doing so (as Coastalblog passim readers will be aware ),the second being that the Matthew Fallaize who is, I imagine, currently wondering where on earth his certificate is lives in Queensland, Australia, Where he has doubtless studied diligently for the qualification of which I am, currently, the possessor. (I should point out that this juncture that I've already let them know their mistake, can't have my Aussie namesake going without now, can I?) This sort of thing happens to me surprisingly regularly. You'd have thought that, being possessed of a relatively unusual surname, cases of mistaken identity are fairly th...

A caveat before I get going on this week's blog: this isn't about politics, it's about language. It goes without saying that I want Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to recover from his current debilitation, any reaction other than "get well soon" is the wrong one, but the way it's being reported, both by the press and by his party, reveals a lot of what's wrong with the language of how we talk about these things, as well as respond to illness. The way we talk about "fight" and how people are "laughing and joking". It's unhelpful at best, and counterproductive at worst. I'll start with a shameful confession, I used to use these terms, too, and it took a while before I worked out what was wrong with them. Ten years ago, I was on the phone to my soon-to-be-dead brother, who was informing me in no uncertain terms of his soon-to-be-deadness, shocked and confused (because, of course, these sorts of thing never happen to your neare...

Morning, so how's your lockdown going so far? Managing alright? How are you in yourself? Yes, for the first time in living memory, people are actually asking each other how they are, unless, that is, they're too busy posting intermittently amusing videos of the things they're doing to alleviate boredom to the internet. (A brief moment of snark before I continue with the positivity: Do the various "Day 2 of lockdown and I've already gone mad!!!" merchants not feel that they may have shot their respective bolts perhaps a little early in the piece? A good few weeks of this to go yet guys, there's only so many wacky dances you can do, also, doesn't this rather imply that your boredom threshold is, perhaps, a little low? Have you tried...books?) This development, is, I feel, something to be applauded, and it got me thinking of what other silver linings we might be able to spot in the looming cumulonimbus of COVID-19, because as my dear old Nan always ...

I don't propose to write too much more about the current pandemic plotline which is so gripping our national soap opera, three in a row seems quite enough to be going on with, but it does seem a bit daft to ignore it after last night's exciting total lockdown plot twist. So here we all are then, stuck at home on lockdown (bar daily exercise or essential shopping, and I wonder how far those fig-leaves will be stretched over the coming weeks) and the talk is of little else. I made a fairly weak gag yesterday about it being good news for introverts (carefully made on fb, rather than twitter, where I would have instantly had five people accusing me shrilly of not taking it seriously and, by extension, murdering their Nan) but in truth, from where I'm sat, it all feels as yet distant, somewhat other, ever so vaguely surreal. So forgive me if you find the tone too light, I certainly don't mean to downplay the seriousness of a disease which has proven to be lethal. Indeed, I...

Well, if nothing else, at least I now know how it feels to be shafted by your own government. Ah yes, the broad sunlit uplands of coronavirus have given HMG exciting new opportunities to plunge yet further in my estimation, and with his idiotic, bumbling "advice" to stop all unnecessary socialising, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a man not noted for ability to assume responsibility, has abdicated his yet further. Anyone remember "herd immunity"? It was the Government strategy all of, ooh, about four days ago. Indeed, Britain's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, was briefing on Sunday that large gatherings of people were A-OK at roughly the same time as Downing St was saying, er, no, they're not. As if this wasn't confusing enough, they're now trying to pretend that this was never the plan at all, and that this new plan is what the plan was all along. Luckily for HMG, the current Health Secretary is Matt Hancock, a man who has el...

Say what you like about coronavirus, but at least it isn't boring. Yes, this year's health panic has well and truly arrived, and this time it's serious, so serious, in fact, that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has had to emerge from hiding and do a bit of Prime-Ministering, which gets him out of the house, at least. Possibly gives him a chance to look for a new mistress, now that he's been forced to marry the old one, so every cloud and all that. Now, I'm sure we've all got our favourite parts of the (are we going with "crisis" yet? Not sure, I'll probably stick with "situation for the time being) situation. Possibly you've been chuckling indulgently at people panic buying toilet paper, maybe, like me, you've been wondering if these are the same people who insist that Britain's "Bulldog Spirit" will see us through Brexit. Possibly you've been entertaining idle speculation as to what will happen in the event of...

SCENE The writer, a greying man in his early forties, sits at a table gazing at a job advert on his computer screen which calls for "Misfits and Weirdoes". It sounds a cushy number, a highly paid government job just for being an antisocial closet eugenicist, easy money. But he wonders whether or not he qualifies as weird enough . Sure, he has a fairly standard set of eccentricities, still buys a newspaper, doesn't drive, is prone to doing Noel Coward impressions at the drop of a hat, likes County cricket. But do these foibles make him weird enough? What curious trait can he exhibit to set him apart from the rest? How, in short, without going Full Nazi, is he going to distinguish himself from his fellow applicants? THE WRTITER: I've got it! I'll say I don't care about Question Time. That'll do the trick. Everyone always bangs on about it, like when Laurence Fox was a pillock or that racist was a racist. And then they all say how awful it is. How better t...

The suicide last week of the Television presenter Caroline Flack, is I admit, not the cheeriest of subjects for a blog, but it's one that bears a bit of thinking about. Not so much the poor woman herself, what went on in her private life was her own affair, as far as I'm concerned, and as to her imminent court appearance, I tend towards the view that it's best not to speculate on these things until after the due course of justice has been run. But what's happened has lain bare a few of the less savoury aspects of British public and private life. Now, far be it for me to speak indifferently of the dead, but up until her sad end, your correspondent wouldn't have known Caroline Flack from a bite in the leg, I knew the name, I was dimly aware of the upcoming court case, but that was pretty much it. I have, however, found the fallout from her death to be indicative of a peculiar strain of public discourse which is, to my mind, one of the root causes of misery in societ...

Ah, here we are, cabinet reshuffle day. Kind of like transfer deadline day for nerds. Nope, not going to go into the ins and outs of the World King's swings and roundabouts, though I will note (as I did earlier elsewhere, recycling one's own remarks is, I feel, very much in keeping with the spirit of a thrifty age, and if Ant and Dec can make an entire career out of one joke, I see no reason why I shouldn't recycle a tweet) that Leadsom and McVey getting shown the boot is something that can only add greatly to the gaiety of nations. I thought about it, but I can't be arsed. Since the election, and the subsequent nodding thorough of the withdrawal bill, I've felt a political ennui settle slowly on me, indeed, almost a sort of grim satisfaction. Fine, you've got what you wanted, let's see how you like it. I'll snap out of it at some point, I imagine, but not even the red meat of Sajid Javid resigning can really rouse me to take much interest in the cur...

I have learned a couple of reasonably important lessons from blogging this week. The first, as it occurs to me, is that is comforting to realise that I can learn new lessons, and am not, as yet, entirely set in my ways; I'll explain. I have just, prior to typing this, deleted a post that ran to several thousand words, which I'd been working on for a couple of days, but I just couldn't get it to work. It bore the title above, which was a reference to the fact that I don't drive, and the ire it seems to excite in some people. I made a fairly apposite comparison to Piers Morgan's performative rage about the arrival of the vegan sausage roll, my point being, if you don't like it, don't eat it. Likewise, if you object to my lifestyle choice, that's fine, but keep it to yourself. I expanded on this with a brief discursion into how it appears that intolerance is a growth industry at the moment. I thought I made a few good points, but I just couldn't quite...

I have been trying to steer clear of thinking too much about politics for a short while, for the sake of my mental health as anything else, at least until Friday's out of the way; but I did think that graceless, petty and embarrassing display from Farage and his ghastly cadre of Brexiteers yesterday was worth a comment or two. Though, in the spirit of trying to avoid getting too political, I'll mostly be talking about steak. But first, politics. Inevitably, the Brexit debate has curdled into stereotypes as the two sides became ever more entrenched. On one side, we have the Remainers, easily characterised as shrill, condescending, sneering, failing to understand that their attitude won't convert anyone else from the other side (as an excellent and perspicacious article from Rafael Behr considers here ), on the other the Brexiteers, myopic, blinkered, angry, self-satisfied, convinced that they're right in the face of all prevailing evidence. Of course, as is always ...