The Perfect Saturday

Let me preface this entry with the disclaimer that today was definitely not the perfect Saturday. Adverse weather and a persistent sinus headache have put paid to that. But two recent compliments have given me pause to think about what the perfect day would look like (and I am presupposing that the perfect day simply must be a Saturday). So, before indulging in the fantastic, I extend my thanks to the Modern Traditionalist and to Bow Tie Guy for their respective nods in my direction. In times of inclement weather, the perfect Saturday would undoubtedly see them included on my morning’s reading list, along with the Telegraph and the following eight:

The Sartorialist
Paper Flowers
Dandyism
Art of Manliness
Older Brother’s Advice
Modern Gentleman’s Blog
An Aesthete’s Lament
Rose C’est La Vie

Gongs dispensed, on with the idealising (with absolutely no mind to geographical impossibilities. Photographs invoke each place as I go, and I publish them with not a little nostalgia).

I have a love hate relationship with sleep. It gets in the way of action, but also provides the platform for action to take place. Presuming the perfect day to be free of guilt, I begin with a sound lie in, to be followed by the weekend papers, a full English breakfast (which I shall have to describe, because it has lost its way), and my favourite blend of imported tea. Mrs. VB suggests that this would be more congenial taken al fresco in the morning sunshine, against the backdrop of the Rockies in Vancouver. I concur.

Vancouver

Contrary to popular belief and low expectations, English breakfasts are not a festival of grease, but a thoroughly delicious and nutritious repast. None of the ingredients should ever be bought in a supermarket. Ever. Black pudding ought to be home made by the butcher who slaughtered the pig that produced the meaty sausages, home-cured bacon, and fried kidneys that adorn your plate. The sausage and bacon must be grilled, not fried. Eggs should be organic free range, not because I’m an eco warrior, but because that’s how hens are supposed to be. It is only to be expected that such things will taste better. Tomato, fresh from the vine, will be seasoned and grilled. Bread, dipped briefly in the bacon fat, should be fried in a hot pan. You’ll find it crispy, not dripping with lard. The finishing touch, for me, is a sliced and well-fried field mushroom. The umami original. This should be followed by wholegrain toast and some good English preserves. Black current will do nicely. Of course, I like it best when I cook it myself, but failing that, I’ll have Marc Cohen of Sparrow in Montreal do it. I’ve never had a finer brunch than there.

Montreal

Eating over, time for a round of golf with a couple of chums, preferably on a course otherwise empty. So long as I’m fantasising, I might as well dispense will all the hackers! I haven’t played in a long while, but on this fair day in May (for this perfect day will be in that merry month) I will card a round in the 70s and be satisfied. The club house where I used to play, on the edge of the North York Moors, was actually a rather charming pub. After polishing off a couple of jars of real ale – nobody in North America knows what this is, I guarantee – I am homeward bound.

Ampleforth Golf Club

An essential ingredient of the perfect Saturday is the happiness of my wife. How else can one expect to maintain a joyful demeanour if the love of one’s life is not also blissfully at peace? At home I find her just arrived back from a successful outing to the shops with like-minded friends, heavily laden with fine fabrics at a fraction of the fare. She craves coffee and cakes, and we know just the place. Leysieffer is a German chocolatier of international repute, and their cafes are brilliantly indulgent places, but with a firm grip on civilised ideals. My favourite location was at the top of KaDeWe department store in Berlin, amidst the most sensuous and glorious food hall, and with views across the city.

Berlin

Having gone home to change, we venture out to Les Deux Magots at Place Saint-Germain des Prés, Paris, for some light but deliciously complicated French cuisine, accompanied by fine wine and a literary buzz. Tourists will all have decided to go somewhere else for the evening, and the place will be occupied only by those Parisians exceptionally known for their politesse.

Paris, St. Germain

An after-dinner stroll in the dusk along the banks of the Seine takes us home in time for Match of the Day, and an exceptional single malt from the Highlands called Tomatin, which I first tasted as an eleven year old. Not inappropriately for such a day, I nod off over the pages of T.E. Lawrence’s translation of The Odyssey.

Hunting Attitude, Part II

In days of yore I had the dubious fortune to manage a busy magazine department in a now defunct book chain. There were many worthy publications fighting for a place of esteem. Among the more memorable of the less well known were Bowhunter magazine and its diminutive counterpart Junior Bowhunter. In prime English fox hunting land, these American interlopers were seriously out of place. The overfed white folk of middle America were on parade, with their ripping yarns about bows and arrows. Stag hunting, which to your average Englishman sounds like the search for a pre-wedding pub crawl, was pictorially laid out in all its gory glory, with all kinds of wonderful opportunities to blood your own young. One notable prize competition offered some seriously pointy hardware for the best kill by the under twelves. Photographic proof required.

I must say it was all very gung ho: more Rambo than Horse and Hound, and about as far removed from the manly ethos of hunting as it could be. Where is the sport in a bow with a laser sight? Robin Hood would have been an entirely different proposition had he been so armed. How strange that the country that gave us Bambi, and all the Disneyfied sentimentalism that comes with it, has a hunting culture that does not have a meaningful connection to the animal. Hunting is steeped in historical, cultural and ritual justifications that might be employed to counteract the crass activism of those animated by doe-eyed cartoons, but I can’t see it here. If it is really just point and shoot then what is the point in shooting?

Shooting with guns begs the same question. There will no doubt be objections raised here, but frankly I refuse to acknowledge anybody who goes about with a gun as a gentleman, unless he happens to be duelling, conducting a just war, or engaging in fair play. Hunting in America may be alive and kicking, but bungling about shooting at anything that moves while sporting combat camouflage simply won’t cut the mustard. The battue was decried even in its heyday, and the chaps who partook of that at least had the good grace to wear tweed. Why was it decried? Because it was not fair. Manly men do not stack the deck, load the dice, inject steroids, or kneecap ice skaters. If you are insistent on killing animals, then venery – a term I use because hunting and sexual gratification have always been linked – should offer a sporting chance to the quarry. Hunting, where it is thought worthy, is the pitting of wits: the reasonable against the sly. A hunter struggles for his advantage in a terrain better suited to his target. His success, if he is successful, is the reward for his prowess, not the result of his superior weaponry. Perhaps a sensible reconnection with the hunting ethos, for all those who proclaim their right to bear arms, would be to roll up their sleeves and chase their lunch with their bare arms.

Historical Heroes: George Romanes, 1848-94

Now here’s an all round good egg. Romanes embodied that great Victorian dilemma: what to do about religion in the face of all this science? Here’s the standard biography: independently wealthy, he was raised without scholarly rigour and was destined for holy orders. Then he read Darwin and his world turned upside down. In public, Romanes backed Darwin to the hilt, but secretly always wrestled with the possibility of God. Revelling in the elegant truth of natural selection, Romanes nevertheless thought that the theory robbed nature of its ‘soul of loveliness’. He dedicated his life to science – physiology and psychology chiefly – but could not rid himself of the anxiety that it was all pointless. Juggling materialism, agnosticism and monism, Romanes eventually returned to the church. It wasn’t the betrayal of his life’s work so much as it was the taking of Pascal’s Wager. He was dying, in his forties, of a tumour on the brain.

Now, the spiritual ‘better safe than sorry’ approach might seem to lack conviction. Yet a more nuanced narrative would depict a life defined by conviction, even if Romanes himself was never sure quite how to describe the horse he was backing. Once convinced of Darwinism, he was fiercely loyal to his mentor, and never publicly wavered from the theory of Natural Selection. But he was not blindly uncritical or slavishly sycophantic. He wrestled with the immaterial, knowing that Darwinism had not disproved the existence of ‘God’ (the label was merely convenient). True agnosticism, he thought, had to cut both ways. It was not fair of scientists to demand proof of divinity from theists if science itself could not disprove it. Natural Selection provided a new story, but it did not answer all the questions.

What was bold about this was its singular vision. Surrounded by canting Creationists on one side, ranting atheists on the other, Romanes was unique in his attempt properly to understand Darwin’s theory and theology. Most compromisers got one or the other hopelessly wrong. Where black was pitched against white, Romanes risked ridicule from both by preaching complex shades of grey. Unfortunately for Romanes, posterity rather lost track of his work, his ideas, and his intellectual legacy. Had he lived he would surely have been at the forefront of research on genetics, but his untimely death occurred just prior to the rediscovery of Mendel’s work. Death put paid not only to life, but also to relevance. Romanes’ greatest tragedy was the rapidity of his obsolescence.

With that in mind I raise a glass to an unsung hero. Or rather, just a brave soul.

Something to Chew on for Travellers

Given the choice, I would not travel coach, let alone by coach. The powers that be have conspired against a civilised link between Montreal and Boston – flights prohibitively expensive, trains only via New York over two days – so there is little choice. The newer buses, with reliable temperature control, reading lights that work, and wireless connections, ought not to be too terrible. Unfortunately I find the selling points of even the most up-to-date Greyhounds to be defective. On the latest trip it was 80 degrees, my reading light didn’t work (putting paid to the objectionable book), and the wireless was patchy at best. These modern contrivances only add frustration to the general unpleasantness of travel when they do not work.

For all that, it is not so much the bus itself that gets my goat as the other people with whom I have to share space. Other people will always be objectionable, and it is just as well. If we went around instantly liking everyone the world would be unbearable. Still, I would like it very much if the following might actually be observed when in close proximity of strangers over the course of seven hours, with no possibility for escape:

1. When the driver says ‘turn off your cell phone ringer’, do it.
2. Select some food that tastes great but which you alone can smell.
3. Chewing gum over many hours is unsavoury enough. But with your mouth open? Please.
4. I will take it on trust that your music rocks. I do not need to hear it.
5. You are an inveterate snorer. Don’t go to sleep.

I might add, for those travelling across international borders, if your passport or credentials are remotely incredible, please don’t travel at all. Being on a bus that moves is bad enough. Being on one that is parked at the border while we wait for you, possibly not to be let in, is just too much to bear.

Happy travels.

Man Flu

With good reason my posting frequency has dropped of late. Principally, I have been busy adopting another nationality, which has been a long time in coming and not without heart ache. That taken care of, I was duly welcomed to Canada by an official procession of microbial Mounties, doing their best to bring my immigrant immune system to book. My red nose looks vintage wintery Quebec, and I cling to dignity by a tenuous thread.

Lest it be thought I complain, I hasten to proclaim my stoic resolve. I will admit to not always being the best patient, but I try to bear illness with fortitude. All that whining and complaining over sniffles is really unbecoming and merits little sympathy. I have been making myself my own-recipe hot toddy (lemon, ginger, honey, cinnamon and scotch), and have otherwise partaken of all my pre-planned Quebecois social engagements, minus the double-kiss greetings. Business as usual has been speeding my recovery, not least because it is a distraction. Taking to a sick bed of self pity is not for me, unless I’m really at death’s door.

Tomorrow I will hop on a Greyhound and, in the best tradition of the finest Canadians, go back to the US. It is a long and boring ride, and no doubt will not be improved by congested sinuses. But I have an objectionable book to read, which will keep my blood pumping. Normal service will be resumed in due course.