The Death of Common Sense

I've not had a rant for a while, but Sainsbury's were out of FHM last weekend so I ended up with The Spectator instead. I should have known better...

Common sense is dead; but nobody murdered it. Common Sense died of old age and neglect, its body found after the police broke the door of its flat down after everyone thought they had seen it regularly but for months, years maybe, just not noticed its absence. Then when no one was looking, they sneaked the body down the back stairs and carried on talking like Common Sense was still alive and kicking.

On Monday on the Today programme Sir Alan Steer, the government's education guru explained why he had felt it necessary to point out the glaringly obvious fact that children copy what they see adults doing. He posited that it therefore follows that adults must behave in a courteous and mannerly way if that is the behaviour they expect children to aspire to. Common sense? Obviously not, because anti social behaviour is rife and we, the adult world simply blame the 'youth of today' and seek solace in ASBOs.

In this weeks Spectator Rod Liddle outlined his support for David Cameron's espousal of good old fashioned common sense measures to encourage conformity to the new ideals, he suggests that by humiliating people we can change their behaviour in a positive manner: think stocks and public floggings. Common sense? Think again.

Common sense, to state the obvious, relies on a sense of commonality, a sense of a commonly held view or moral code by which to judge things. So how can we expect it to work when someone is named and shamed for anti social behaviour or a crime against the climate like owning a Porsche Cayenne when nobody actually cares because they don't know who these offenders are. There is no community of which they are part, ergo no humiliation.

So, next time you are tempted to respond in a positive way when a politician suggests something that seems common sense, just ask yourself among which group of people this suggestion fits with their commonly held moral and social belief; or does it just sound right?

I once gave evidence in Magistrates Court and under cross examination mentioned to their worships that it was common sense to believe that the bruises and cuts on the accused's wife's face and body were the result of his assaulting her, not as he suggested the result of her injuring herself during some sort of hysterical fit. I still remember thinking that the case was won as the Magistrates nodded in agreement with me. But only later did I understand the glance that the Clerk of the Court and two opposing solicitors shared that said that common sense, even if it still lived, had no place in a court of law.

Were they right? Of course they were, the only reliable commonly shared set of principles are those that we all truly do all hold in common and agree, as a society, to abide by.

So is common sense dead, or was it always a myth, like Father Christmas or the Bogie Man, just waiting for us to be mature enough to understand?

I Wish Meryl Streep Had Been in Cineworld the Other Night

I sometimes feel sorry for artists and other creative people. They do their creative thing and then release it out into the world without really ever being conscious of the effect their work has on people. Just think of the lonely artists, convinced of the rightness of what they are doing, who die before their genius is recognised. I doubt Van Gogh, for example, is sat looking down with a smug expression saying "I told you I was good".

And even those who do get rave reviews must sometimes wish they could stand behind someone in a gallery and hear what they say about their painting, or perhaps hear someone stifle a sob or snort a mouthful of tea onto the pages of the book they are reading on the train.

The other night, as readers of my last post will know, we went to see Mamma Mia. I am fairly familiar with the British way of watching a film: sitting politely, being entertained and then leaving as soon as the lights come signifying the end. On Saturday night I experienced a different type of cinema going: people applauded as if the entertainers could hear them, they cheered in a way redolent of pantomime and danced in their seats (in fact I am sure that if one person had danced in the aisle it would have set off the whole cinema). Then at the end, when the lights came up nobody moved: they all stayed to enjoy the final songs that played over the credits, wanting to wring every last drop of enjoyment out of a fabulous night's entertainment.

What made it so special? I don't know whether it was the audience - a friend told me today that Bollywood films are often like this, with enthusiastic audiences who love to join in. I'm guessing there must be something in the film that helped us polite Brits lose our usual reserve. Perhaps it was witnessing Pierce Brosnan who clearly couldn't sing but didn't care - he just belted them out like any one of us at a karaoke night down the pub. Or perhaps it was the joyous irresistible temptation to sing along to any one of the myriad hits by Abba.

Yes, I would have loved Meryl to have been stood at the back to see what she and her co-stars had done.

Oh, and perhaps also so I could have introduced myself and told her I had loved her for twenty five years since she was The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Step Across the Gender Divide - But Tread Carefully

I stopped worrying about gender roles years ago. I'm quite happy to be going to watch Mamma Mia tomorrow night which, I am told is as "...camp as a boy scout jamboree". I'll happily sing along to the songs that blighted my childhood, and I shan't worry about growing lady parts.

But sometimes I do worry whether this 'being in touch with my femininity' has gone a bit far. Take this week for example: watching Ten Years Younger I was discomfited to hear myself say, when top hairstylist Andrew Barton had performed his almost alchemical contradiction to the saw that you cannot make a silk purse from a sows ear, "Oooh that's a nice cut isn't it" and it was. But I do feel that perhaps it should have been Mrs C that said it whilst my role was confined to a glance over the top of my newspaper and non committal grunt that signified that whilst I was prepared to be a partner in watching these predominantly female targeted programmes, I wasn't set on it being an equal partnership.

Similarly, watching Gok Wan's Fashion Fix (again in another moment of marital mateyness) I was surprised to find myself astounded by the apparent preference, of an audience of 'normal women' for Gok's economical fashion fixes rather than clothes costing many thousands of pounds and designed by from some of the worlds best. I mean, even a brute like me could tell that the cloth in the frocks alone cost as much as my car.

But then there was light at the end of the tunnel and I stopped worrying about my masculinity. It seemed that I had missed the point entirely (huge sigh of relief); it was all about empowering women to reject the style stereotypes thrust on them by the fashion fascists and rather be influenced by them to do their own thing.

Gosh.

I think in future, I'll make sure there's a copy of The Grauniad to hide behind, just in case.

From A Spark To A Flame

My last post was about our Scottish trip and this was going to be about our camping in North Yorkshire but then this happened. It's not entirely unrelated to our North Yorkshire camping in that it involves trout; it also involves fire. And some of you will be thinking by now that Crofty's record with fire is not a good one. You'd be right.

Let's start with the trout: lovely big ones from the trout farm at Pickering, excellent value from the farm shop and irresistible when barbecued, stuffed with parsley butter. Which is what we did last Sunday and it was gorgeous. Later that night when the barbecue was cold, I deposited it in the bin (which, just to set the scene, was at the side of the house alongside it's green companion bin, recycling box and bag full of recyclable paper and card).

Let's now cut to the morning when, after an undisturbed night's blissful repose, the Croft family breakfasted together.
"Can you smell smoke?" asked Mrs C.
"Yes, and quite strongly." I replied sipping at my morning tea before sauntering through the patio doors to sniff the air, noticing that the smell was stronger and then noticing that where the bins were was a pile of smouldering plastic welded to the driveway.

After a few well chosen words and my insistence that this could hardly be my fault (pointless really), we decided to seek the advice of the local Fire Station, after all we wouldn't want to come home to find that a stray spark had lodged in the rear dormer and then ignited the house would we? The Fireman was very nice and said he would create an incident log that would generate someone to pop along to check it out for us. What he didn't say was that the Fire Service seem to only have two grades of response: either 'we're coming' or 'we're not coming'.

Four minutes later the road was blocked by two huge red fire engines and a man was running up my drive with his dribbling hose in his hand. I explained, after he had spread most of the debris in a soggy mess over the rest of the drive, that they needn't have rushed and that I hoped I hadn't got them out of bed, something that didn't seem to endear me to them. A chap in a big white hat offered me a look through a device that looked a bit like one of those 1970s View Master things through which you could look at crap slides of London but in 3D. It wasn't one of those but rather a thermal imaging camera (illustrated right) that reassured us that all was cool at chez Croft.

Meanwhile a wellied fireman was idly scraping his boot through the debris and came across the only surviving identifiable item: one disposable barbecue. He looked down the drive to where his colleagues were clustered in a knot at the bottom of the drive; he mouthed the word 'barbecue' to them; they mouthed the word 'tosser' in reply. Then they left.

Just so you know, North Yorkshire was fab. Here are some pictures, including one of a responsible man with a firey engine.