Week 9 - lecture excercise

This object is a card advertising a play at the university, Alice - Based on the stories of Lewis Carroll. I had very little loyalty to it anyway - I only took it out of politeness and remembering that last summer I had a similar job of confronting people in public and trying to gain their interest. Anyway, the card. ALICE in big capital letters, I've seen it all around campus. I first think of the Tom Waits album of the same name. Is Tom in the play? What would he make of it? Not much I reckon. There's an advertisement in the bottom-right corner, purple, for a lettings agent. I have zero interest in this. I have zero interest in the play. I forgot that it was in my bag anyway until performing this task. This has reminded me to chuck it in a bin, as I planned to the moment I was handed it but didn't want to do so in front of them. Usually I walk around the corner and dispose of it, but not this time, for whatever reason. Maybe I did want to go see it. Or perhaps not. On the reverse side is more detail about the play, ending with the words 'Follow the White Rabbit', which reminds me of Jefferson Airplane, and in particular, a German friend of mine who likes them. I know that my friend wouldn't have even taken the card in the first place. Maybe it's an English thing, or maybe it's just me. When I consider what the object might feel about me disposing it, I suddenly feel a touch sad. But there's hundreds of identical cards. There's nothing unique or destinctive about it.

Respect for one’s elders

Back in my day, everyone had respect for one’s elders.

– The Prime Minister was Sir Anthony Eden, and everyone respected him, for he was Prime Minister. Mr Eden was fond of walking the streets of Westminster among the proletariat, all of whom would part humbly as he strode through. On occasion he would seek out a young, brazenly-attired member of the crowd and whack him across the forehead with a great stick, drawing blood, and the recipient was left grateful just to have been acknowledged by the man.

– Before 1922 the Prime Minister was a hereditary title held by whoever was the oldest man in Britain at the time. In 1901 alone there were over 200 Prime Ministers.

– A young lad would ask permission from his parents to breathe. If permission was given, the boy would inhale as deeply as possible, so grateful was he to be granted the privilege of his elders’ oxygen. A maximum quota of 50 breaths per request was established by law in 1823, due to the inordinate number of casualties. Children who died from lack of oxygen were often denied a formal burial, such was the shame their physical inadequacies brought on the mother and father. Such children were labelled “Frederick Mudmunssons” after the eponymous victim of the first recorded case of asphyxiation in AD 890. Doubts have recently emerged over the verity of Mudmunsson’s claim, as archaeological evidence suggests that he in fact died of a severe axe blow to the head from his father, the Norwegian nobleman Arnold Mudmusson, after the child had the temerity to request more than one breath.

– A man’s height was the primary means of identifying his age. Heels were lengthened half an inch at intervals of five years. Pensioners walked around on veritable stilts.

– Shopkeepers clipped children around the ear at their own volition. The ferocity of the clip was governed by the gap in age between the shopkeeper and the child.

– At school, every pupil was required to buy a bottle of gin for their teacher each month, as a gesture of gratitude for such a rich and varied syllabus. Pupils often submitted themselves to being drunkenly slapped around by their teachers, so grateful were they to feel the cold hand of knowledge across their unenlightened cheeks.

– In Gateshead, boys aged 5-10 were routinely dispatched to the coal pit at the behest of their elders. So grateful were these lads to receive apprenticeships in the mining industry that many flung themselves into the open pit through sheer irrepressible ecstasy. Some victims are believed to have died before hitting the bottom of the shaft due to oxygen deprivation. Those that survived were ordered to mine for the town elders’ favourite food, calamari. Between 1947 and 1953, the area was perpetually mined for the rare material, until it was brought to the attention of the local council that calamari was the Italian term for fried squid, and that re-locating the children to the North Sea would favour them better.

– Senior historians have traced Britain’s decline on the world stage to the gradual abolition of such practices.

Inspired by 'The Dream of India' by Eliot Weinberger