Over the weekend, I made a pilgrimage to Combe Florey, the Somerset village and house where Evelyn, and then Auberon, Waugh, lived. As a child, I went there several times – my parents were friends of the Waughs.
Seeing the charming classical house made me think what Bron would have thought of today’s political climate. He would find a Britain utterly changed since his death 17 years ago – a Britain that’s largely lost its sense of humour.
The widespread attacks on Boris Johnson for his burka article are the tip of the humourless iceberg. Bron specialised in shocking to amuse – and Boris’s little barbs were nothing compared to Bron in full flow.
Several decades of virtue-signalling, disapproval of bad behaviour and priggish attacks on funny writers have removed the necessary elements of humour: to be contrary and outspoken; to exaggerate, play down, or to be just straightforwardly rude. MeToo is the icing on the cake, removing bawdiness from jokes – an essential element of humour since time began.
Social media expands any perceived offence; so people run scared of offending. Throw in the new fashion for advertising your own kindness – and everyone hugging each other – and you remove the brutish teasing in childhood which was a foundation of British humour.
The American influence of pumping up your own self-worth, plus the narcissism of therapy and the internet all conspire to put your own interests ahead of other people’s; and, by extension, the desire to please yourself ahead of the obligation to entertain others.
And so everything about British humour – sarcasm, irony, overstatement, understatement, rudeness, self-deprecation, the shocking outspokenness of funny newspaper columnists – has been gradually whittled away, for fear of causing offence or of not being understood.
If Bron were alive today, I’m sure he’d be just as outrageously funny – but fewer British people would appreciate his genius.
…….
Before I left London for Somerset, I had a brainwave. I packed my bag for the two days – two shirts, two pairs of boxers, four socks, sponge bag and Nikolaus Pevsner’s guide to South and West Somerset – and still my bag felt surprisingly heavy.
That was exactly the problem: my old leather bag was heavy; everything else hardly weighed anything.
And so I came up with my brainwave: use a light bag – ie a plastic bag or a canvas shopping bag.
The genius went further. I used a series of light bags: a plastic bag for my walking shoes; a Daunt Books bag for my book – so I’d remember what was in it; a cotton bag for my clothes which magically became a dirty laundry bag once I got to Exmoor. And then hurl all the bags into a single, bigger canvas bag.
It was much lighter – and it also produced ocean-going levels of smugness when I got to Paddington. People were lugging what looked like their life’s possessions along the concourse in tiresome wheelie-suitcases, vulgar Louis Vuitton bags and voluminous backpacks.
All their bags were much heavier than mine – and much more expensive. Given that my canvas bags were all free from various shops, the total cost of my luggage was 5p for that single plastic bag.
I’ve always thought “bag lady” a nasty term for unfortunate people who live out of multiple bags. I’m proud to call myself a bag man.
…….
On my way to Exmoor, I made a small tour of Somerset church towers. St Mary Magdalene and St James’s soar above Taunton today, just as they did when they were built half a millennium or so ago.
As my Pevsner told me, “The masterpieces of tower design in the Vale of Taunton are located at and around Taunton in a circle of hardly more than ten miles’ radius.”
Why? Part of it must have been keeping up with the Joneses and their neighbouring tower. And also, as Pevsner says, there was great pride, prosperity and “the desire to make a show” by the parishioners. They were responsible for the west part of the church, including the tower, while the Church paid for the chancel.
In other words, those magnificent towers are thanks to good old showing-off – not normally a Christian virtue. Still, there are a lot worse ways to show off.
…….
John Betjeman said there was only one joke in the Pevsner guides – in the Bedfordshire volume, which the great man dedicated to the inventor of the ice lolly because it lifted the spirits on his Stakhanovite travelling duties.
I found another gag in my Somerset volume: “Perpendicular tracery is not of special interest [in Somerset]. Perhaps it is nowhere of special interest.”
Well, I laughed.
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