le discours d'un roi

is the French title of the film "The King's Speech" which significant other and I saw on Sunday afternoon.  To those readers who cannot read French, it must be awful for you.  To those who can, how would you translate the French title back?  O-level French would give you "The Speech of a King", I suppose.  Mais le O-level French est un passeport a nowhere.  Anyway, it must be clear by now that "le discours" is "speech" in the sense of "making a speech", which of course is only part of the meaning of that title.  And yet it is probably good enough as a translation, although it has only half the meaning of the original, because it contains within it a key idea from the film, namely that the then Duke of York, "Bertie", was quite happy in his personal and private life, he had learned to live with his speech impediment since childhood, and it was only when it began to be intimated to him that because of his brother's unsuitable antics it was quite possible that he would be King one day, and therefore would have to speak in public, that he agreed to get some help for his stammer. 

Nobody really understands what stammering is, and why it happens.  Typically it starts in early childhood, at around three, when most children are fairly new to being fluent talkers.  My granddaughter is this age, and when I saw her in December I monitored her quite closely for signs of stammering.  None.  She is a fluent talker, and last time she spoke to me on the telephone her mother tried to get her to pass the phone over.  "No",  she said.  "I've still got a lot of words to say."  My son stammered a little at that age, and when I took advice I was told "He'll grow out of it", which fortunately he did.  My son talked early, and has rarely shut up since.  The reason for mentioning all this is that stammering appears to be heritable.  I stammered myself at the same age, although I don't remember doing so, and similarly grew out of it.  But later, when I changed schools at the age of ten, I stammered again.  A teacher helped me through it.  The most efficacious technique he showed me was to touch my ears so as to close them partially to sound, and to pretend it was someone else talking and not me.  That worked most of the time.  The film showed the same technique being used on the Duke - he was made to wear headphones with music playing through them so he could not hear his own voice.  It is not hard to see that changing schools, especially when you are a year younger than your classmates, might kick off a speech problem that had existed before.  It is not hard to see that a speech problem you have learned to live fairly comfortably with might become a disabling difficulty when you are pushed into a public role you did not wish for.  I stammered again, later, when I was nineteen and went to France for a long summer being an au pair - but only when I spoke French.  The family I worked for were very kind and tolerant, for which I have always been grateful.  I have never stammered since.  But the fact that I did stammer then contributed I suspect to the difficulty I had when I came to live in France four years ago in becoming fluent in French.  Overcome now.  My father stammered all his life, fortunately not seriously enough for it to be an impediment to interaction with others - he was a talkative, entertaining raconteur to the end of his life, and of his family members the most talkative are his elder daughter, me, who has been a broadcaster and a politician, and his grandson, my son, who is an actor, and both of us inherited the stammer.  Go figure.

I know what stammering feels like.  It is not about breath control, though breathing exercises help.  It feels as though the diaphragm has turned into an iron bar, and that the words you want to say are banging against it from underneath and can't get through.  And the fear, of having to say words which are difficult, doesn't help either.  Colin Firth showed that in the movements of his face.  It was all I could do not to burst into tears as I watched.  I don't stammer any more, but if you ever have it is always there, waiting in the shadows behind your words.

The coronation of Elizabeth was some months before I was born, so I know George VI only from bits of old film.  Last night I called my mother to ask her what he really sounded like in his radio speeches, and what people thought about him.  She said his speeches were halting and hesitant, and although he was known to stammer, and people sympathised with him for it, he never stammered in his speeches.  People didn't know though that he had his Australian speech therapist with him all the time when he made his radio speeches.

The film is also about having no choice.  Colin Firth as the King says this several times.  His elder brother made a choice, but Bertie could not choose.  The two brothers were both kings, one uncrowned, and one made the choice to walk away from the crown.  The other had no voice and had to find a voice so he could wear the crown he had never wanted.  What a great story.

Go and see the film, and ponder on the nature of discourse.  Great frocks too.

down tools

magistrates picketing - ahead of a national strike called for Thursday and Friday.  Only in France...?

RIP Jim Hanley - reprise

The Reading Evening Post has already had to correct its report of the sad and untimely death of Cllr Jim Hanley, either not having checked the date he was first elected to Reading Borough Council, or letting themselves be briefed by Lovelock. Before things get even more unseemly let me make some suggestions. First, chair and officers of Reading Labour Party, update your website and Facebook page with an appropriate tribute, or at least mention, at the time of writing the only comments from any Reading Labour figure are in the Reading Evening Post (go figure) and even that organ carries many more comments from figures from other parties. Next, give some support to Jim's nearest and dearest - I remember the deaths of Cllrs Lockey and Wild. Maureen Lockey's widower Alan was thrown to the wolves, with predictable results. He should have been cared for. Wilf was a widower when he died, but his family remember. I was in correspondence with his granddaughter fairly recently. Third, wait for the funeral before plotting the succession. Many were disgusted by the meeting held to plot the imposition of a candidate on Church ward when Maureen died, even before her funeral had been held, and by the fact that the party then failed to commemorate her death with a minute's silence. Jim had said he was standing down, so presumably a candidate is in place. Also, Whitley is unlikely to elect a councillor from a party other than Labour, and for that reason its doors do not get knocked very often. It is not a ward I have ever been interested in, because it is in Reading West. However, knock the doors, for the sake of Jim, who cared about Whitley, if you don't care yourselves. Move the writ for a by-election, I suggest Thursday 31st March or 7th April. Easter is late this year. Don't wait. I promise you this is a good idea. Not only will Whitley get worked, but democratic legitimacy will be tested.

You know it makes sense.

Jim Hanley - a good guy

I can only thank Tony Jones from whom I found this out.  I am so very sorry.  I knew Jim Hanley quite well at one time.  I hope those who should remember him post their tributes in the appropriate places.  Jim was one of the very good people.

Friendly printers

M'learned friends have been hearing about this
says Guido. Of course around 10K of that particular friendly printer's dosh is Reading council taxpayers' money

Eh Mr Howarth?

Have a nice evening.

Huckleberry Finn

I first read this book at my grandmother's house, almost at a sitting, when I was about 12.  My brother had been given it.  Boys often were at that time, although even then it was getting on for a century old.  It is a gem. A Great American Novel.  This is confirmed by the fact that there were attempts to ban it almost from the moment it was first published - in England before the US, though only just.  One of the joys it brings is the use of the mostly-now-vanished Missouri vernacular, notably the famous almost-last line, in which Huck vows to "light out for the Territory".  There  are too many linguistic delights to list, though one is "humbug talky-talk" as Huck's description of women pretending to praise each other's cooking.  But it is more than exotic or folksy, it is profound.  The moment when Huck decides to let Jim go free, although he believes that slavery is the natural order of things and he will go to hell for doing anything to undermine it, even though Huck is not a believer, because he was "brung up wicked" - count the contradictions - is a very important one, not just in this book but in literature generally.  This book is better than the same author's 'Tom Sawyer'.  The latter character appears towards the end of the book, and is drawn as a flashy, duplicitous chancer.  He is no better than the fraudulent "king and the duke" who end by being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

At this remove I, and probably most Americans too, have no idea how accurate a depiction of rural 19th-century Missouri life, and even language, it is.  But the casual brutality of idle men in a small Missouri riverside town, who set fire to a stray dog for fun, probably took until the 1980s to become shocking.  It was certainly well into the 20th century before the N-word did so.  I read the book this week on the iFlow app for ebooks, free, from the Gutenberg project, so this edition is not affected by any notions of a new paper edition without the N-word, which I think is nonsense.  The idea is to call N-people "slaves" - but an important  part of the story turns on whether Jim really is free, or a slave.  Another important theme is Huck's changing understanding of what it means to be human, which develops through his relationship with Jim.  Huck decides to help free Jim although the tenets of society are against it and he knows the penalty, but Tom only wants to have an adventure making it happen because he knows that Jim is already free.

'The Catcher In The Rye' owes a lot to this book in my view.  That may be a commonplace of American literary thought.  I wouldn't know.  Read it if you never have.  Read it again if you have.  And remember that lynchings happen in the dark, and are carried out by men in masks.

the riddle of the Sphinx

is, as P.J. O"Rourke said, "Where'd its nose go?".  Well, Mr Mubarak is is off.  But when?  September, when he has said he will not be a candidate for election?  Or sooner?  The people in Tahrir Square do not seem impressed.  Now I have never been to Egypt, other than a short holiday in November 2005 when I was learning to dive (a skill in which I am still not truly competent but which I still love doing whenever I get the chance, and while my age and health permit me, go down 10 metres and see the pretty fishes); I was in Sharm el Sheikh of course, which I recall as being full of drunk Russians and smiling, helpful Egyptian staff.  And one side of the road, where our hotel was, and which was being irrigated with the help of a desalination plant, was delightful but looked exactly like any resort complex anywhere in the world.  The other side, which had no irrigation, looked like the pictures from the book of Bible stories I had when I was a child.

So, Mr Mubarak, you have said you will die on Egyptian soil.  OK, now soon is that going to be?