www.provincialthought.com Old Gnus of the World

The Journal of Provincial Thought

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clippings from a hedge II

More choice materials from the John and Sandra Bolin Archives of Astounding News & Queasy Queries, There’ll Always Be an England file.

Dressing down for Marks

So you think conflicts between the West and Islam are new news? Here’s one from our dusty 1978 files, in which a British retailer nearly touched off a pan-global war over . . . underpants.

It seems that Marks and Spencer, the old and goody-goody department store, started selling underwear with a certain label imprinted on it, reading “There’s no God but Allah.” In Arabic.

The Kuwaiti Embassy promptly protested that this “degraded the most respectable phrase in Islam” but putting it in close proximity to “rectums and sexual organs.” Shock-horror! Rumors of boycott and picketing—or worse. Marks and Spencer, an old and revered Jewish firm, may have made things worse by saying “We had no idea.” Oy vey!

The phrase was part of the knickers’ pattern, drawn from Kufiscript of the XIIIth century by Parisian fashion mavens and intended only as an abstract element of design. An M & S spokesperson said “We did not want to offend anyone,” and the scurrilous underpants were immediately withdrawn from sale.

At Marks and Spencer, some employees gloomed about the incident and whispered darkly that perhaps they had been “set up.”

Reference—Manchester Guardian 1978

Help! There’s a jihad in my pants!

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Wanna job?

Here’s the deal: Tan Hill Inn stands in distant northern Britain at the corner of Yorkshire and County Durham, some 1700 feet over the middle of nowhere. In 1978 they were advertising for a new landlord to replace the four that left over the three previous years. Wonder why?

To call the inn isolated is a serious understatement. In 1947, after smothering blizzards, a shepherd called in during April and was greeted with “Happy New Year,” since he was the first customer able to slog in that year.

A farmer had stopped during one snowfall and asked for only a half-pint of best bitter, apologizing for the measly order by saying that his wife was waiting outside for him. When the landlord urged him to bring her in out of the williwaw, the laconic customer told him she was dead and bound for the undertaker on the farmer’s sledge. Perhaps he had been reading early Hemingway stories.

The Tan Hill Inn’s reputation was built on extensive after-hours drinking, since it was nearly impervious to police raids. When asked to extend drinking hours there for New Year’s Eve, a magistrate said, “We can see no way of extending the 24-hour drinking day of the Tan Hill into 25 hours.”

Some drawbacks of working as landlord at the Tan Hill Inn were listed: “There are no mains services. Electricity comes from the inn’s own generator; heating from a belt-and-braces combination of oil, coke, logs and bottled gas. Water is pumped up from a well, and drainage is by septic tank. The telephone works by radio link to the outside world.”

Aside from those petty quibbles, a prime job, it seems to us.

Reference: Loneliness of the distant landlord by Michael Parkin——
Manchester Guardian 1978

Let’s see—you haven’t said how much we’ll have to pay to work there.

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Big brouhaha at Claridge's

Back in the palmy days (1978) of poncy hotels in Blighty, a kerfuffle erupted at Claridge’s, one of the poshest. Employees protested in general and in detail over working conditions in the kitchen, the shop steward averring, “If conditions for some of the workers were half as good as those for Gandhi’s goat, we would be satisfied.”

The 189-member union dissed everything in sight, starting with basic terms of employment: “workers employed there had to provide their own knives, pay for their uniforms, were unable to leave the building during lunch breaks and could not split their three weeks’ holiday to suit their own convenience.” Shop steward Peter Martin “claimed that as there was no wages structure the average pay for kitchen workers was about ₤35 a week.”

Martin went on about the vaunted quality food of Claridge’s: “the standard of food was not as high as could be expected. He claimed that the management have served tinned vegetables such as carrots or celery hearts.” He mentioned the case of sacked chef Richard Elvidge, and his “ratatouille, unevenly chopped vegetables, mayonnaise and herrings served with their tails on.” Eating at the ancient chophouse sounds like risky business.

However, the spirit of “I’m all right, Jack” seems to have prevailed.

Reference: Chef’s colleagues attack ‘sell-out’ by David Hencke--
Manchester Guardian May 24, 1978

Wait a minute!—Go back to that thing about the goat!

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Guardian assaults language

Someone at the Manchester Guardian back in 1977 came up with the bright idea of sponsoring a weekend competition for people nutty about words and word games. They dreamed up the hoity toity term “logographist” to cover the notion and got the Scotch bottler Cutty Sark to help sponsor their word-fest and contribute gallons of their high-class booze as prizes.

This Olympics of Babel featured crosswords, anagrams, punning bees, word-coining tournaments and other such stuff. A winning word-coinage was “Lancastration” to describe the then-recent handover of parts of Yorkshire to Lancashire and “Bennocracy” (after politician Tony Benn), defined as “intensive do-goodery.” The laughter was monumental.

In addition to the neologism “logographist,” another contribution was “compilosadist to define one who delights in torture by setting puzzles such as the Word Weekend.” Haw haw haw.

Reference: In a lot of new words—success by John Andrews
—Manchester Guardian November 7, 1977

How about “guardianoscopy” for the process of excruciatingly anal-retentive reporting?

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Lurid doings in Olde Englande

In the teeny village of Clare, somewhere near Peterborough, there dwelt (in 1977) a love triangle: Mrs. Janis Proud (33), the Rev. Ralph* Biggnesse (aged 57 and not an allegorical name) and Janis’s husband Doyle Proud (48). Janis’s son Doylie “fell from his bedroom” and fractured his skull, the Rev. came by with comfort and joy, and Janis succumbed to his “magnetic personality” by yielding her charms.

Rev. Biggnesse had “newly arrived in the picturesque market town and was already a familiar figure in local pubs as a keen darts and cribbage player.” The Rev. was a real all-rounder rounder.

Soon raging melodrama overtook everyone: “Two years later Mrs. Proud, a mother of three sons, claimed she was ‘pressed’ into an affair.” Then, remorsefully, “Mr. Biggnesse, a 57-year-old father of five, agreed to retire and never take another vicar’s post in return for silence from the Proud family and churchwardens.”

So far so as-usual. However, the duplicitous vicar had aces up both sleeves. Soon, cackling maniacally, “Mr Biggnesse was appointed vicar of St Michael’s and All Angels Northhampton by the Bishop of Peterborough, the Rt Rev Douglas Feaver.”

The everything soon hit the fan, and Janis Proud had to speak up:

“She had married her husband just before her 20^th birthday and he was her first boyfriend and she was inexperienced in matters of the heart, she said.

“‘I was naïve, but the vicar was very persuasive. I took him at his word that he was sincere. He has a magnetic personality. But if he had not pressed his attentions there would not have been an affair.’”

Mr. Proud said he hoped to see Rev. Biggnesse unfrocked as a priest. “I treated him with every respect. I invited him into the house, gave him my best chair and a cup of tea.

“He gave his word he would not enter the church again.”

Reference: Wife tells of affair with vicar His words of comfort led to seduction, says Clare woman—Cambridge Evening News October 22, 1977

* “Ralph,” Old English meaning “wolf” or “wise counsel”

Wait a minute! I read this in a novel by Thomas Hardy—The Magnetic Vicar of Clare, I think it was called.

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