For reasons too tedious to explain I have found myself sitting through cooking programmes over various lockdown seasons. I watch The Great British Bake off and Masterchef out of the corner of one eye from a lateral position on the settee. If I want to watch the television head-on I will have to lie on the floor like a dog (the armchair is taken). So when I have only a passing interest in the fayre I go lateral. I have found that from this obtuse eye-beam angle you are more receptive to the incidental musical score of the programme: pizzicato for Bake off (pizzicato as wry comic accompaniment was I think invented by the series Desperate Housewives and has since been omnipresent as an ironic narrative voice; and what Adorno in his study of Mahler calls course of life music for Masterchef, as in these contestants are dealing with one challenge after another and taking them all in their stride, they’re dealing with whatever life or Greg Wallace throws at them. Fair play to the producers on this. But what is most offensive to an adult viewer is the simpering puerile masochism of the contestants when a food critic makes a guest appearance, often arriving in slow motion and to the hyperbolic commentary of the voice-off whipping up the guest judge in the high-astounding terms of some World Series All-in Wrestler. Cut, then, to the adoring faces of the contestants, sometimes weeping with joy as some guy from the Waitrose magazine who only got the job because his dad was big in journalism comes in for another free meal. And then there are the interviews after they are kicked off the show (what a privilege it was… I’ve learnt so much... let me coat mud all over myself so much I am not worthy yada yada) or get voted into the next round (I can’t believe it… it’s a dream come true to be standing in this weird industrial kitchen zone for five/tent in the middle of nowhere). The television cooking world is, of course, a complex Escher world of surreal interlocked realities. Best typified by quote unquote Chef Ramsey, now working as a quiz show host on prime time BBC. Television wants to just load him with options. His commitment to cooking is such that he would now rather not touch it and is skipping through formats looking for the best vehicle for his remarkable hybrid talent-basket of bully, foul-mouthed charmer and business-type, reminding me of GCSE students who can’t wait to study Business Studies at A level because they will be doing a no-bullshit subject in which they do not yet have a history of failure. I suppose Chef Ramsey is now taking on the mantle of Donald Trump and like the ex-President, will inevitably soon toxify himself to a frazzle.

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Did you ever play hunt the thimble? Probably not. It is not oneof the games we offer to today’s youth. You would probably have trouble finding a thimble in the first place. It was a game I used to have to play when I stayed with my grandmother in Gorton, East Manchester. It was how she thought she’d keep a hyper-active six or seven year old happy. Fortunately, she had a thimble to hand. I would close my eyes and she would place it somewhere on the mantlepiece. It could be anywhere: behind the carriage clock; at the back off the letter rack; behind the postcard from Uncle Jack. Anywhere. Then I had to hunt it, knowing that the mantlepiece was the only place where it could be concealed. Two seconds later I had found it . Yes, it was a short-lived game. We would repeat this three or four times. The fun was soon over. Ah, the kids of today don’t know how to have fun nowadays. Ipads and computer games are no replacement for the humble thimble.

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In Totem and Taboo Freud has a notion later termed priority magic to designate the sense of permission that a powerful person can give you when he or she does something that maybe is not normally permissable. The initial powerful actor takes all the guilt onto themselves and makes that act available for others. Once the unspeakable is spoken it is no longer unspeakable. In general, we do not allow ourselves this role. We wait for another and then we follow. I suppose you would call the initial adumbrator of the act a creative person; he goes into the unknown. People are loathe to go there. They and society prefer trends. In other words, well worn paths. There are commercial reasons for this, of course. The actor of priority magic is not necessarily engaged in a moral act. Indeed, most of the charismatic evil leaders of recent history have sprinkled priority magic and made acceptable to their followers fascism, brutality, racism. You would not want to follow someone because of charisma.

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The omnipresence of covid 19 finds us all modifying our habitual fields of reference for metaphorical language. Teaching French to GCSE students I find myself referring to the so-called etre verbs as a spikey variant strain of the past tense. We have always adapted our discoiurse to suit the times. ‘A plague on both your houses’ in Romeo and Juliet echoed the more virulent issue of the late sixteenth century. Until recently the most common use of the word virus was as a metaphor for computer problems. Now it seems disrespectful to the many victims of Covid 19 to have this term still maintaining its currency in computer world. At least with plague you had the properly horrendous plague of locusts as its extrapolated image.

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I came across two photographs of me taken this last summer the other day. In these photos I am in one of them fat, in the other grizzled. This irritated me all day and then puzzled me. I’m not fat am I? Maybe when I breathe out or after a holiday great British breakfast. As for grizzled. The word is right. I am gritting my teeth in such a way so that the the veins and gristle in my neck stand out. I am looking strained and harrassed, not at ease. What are the lessons to bring away from being caught out as fat and grizzled? Don’t breathe out after a Bumper British Brexit Holiday Breakfast one, and relax to keep the grizzle at bay two.

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I am throwing things out. I am not, by nature, a hoarder, but things can build up. Today I loaded into the big bins in the courtyard a massive double armfull of mostly teeshirts with some trousers. I am also throwing out trainers, about eight pairs. There was also a hoover and a cd player. As I said on the note I left on the street, functioning perfectly. It’s just I have no more use for them. I remember buying that cd player in Darty in Paris when I had bought a little flat there. In the queue a woman pushed in. I told her she had pushed in and she was scandalised and told me she was handicapped. I said she didn’t look it. She was scandalised again. Blatant pushing in of queues is something you get in Paris. You have to answer back. It is immoral to turn the other cheek. A lot of the clothes have memories attached to them too. The trainers document a period in my life where I bought Gola trainers. The first pair was also in Paris. I oo-ed and ah-ed about buying them. They were green and brown and about 60 euros. I’ve not thrown them away, but I think all the other pairs of Golas I bought were a ripple from that first pair of green and browns. Only now that I throw the others away do I see that as a part of life now over. Posters are also on the way out. You buy posters and never hang them. I have about twenty: from art galleries or museums mostly. I thought I’d hang them but never did, or sometimes I did and took them down after a couple of years service. Sometimes they had to go to make way for shelves. As it were, through no fault of their own. Actually, none of these things are to blame: shirts; trainers; posters; cd players, hoovers. They are just making way. They’ve served their time.

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Much of the writing of the so-called Existentialists, people like Sartre, Camus and De Beauvoir, is about trying to define or illustrate an authentic freedom rather than the self-deceiving freedoms we mostly enjoy, the mauvaise foi. These self-deceiving freedoms are the ideological lies that buttress our ego (the environmental; the social equality lies) and the habitual quotidian acts of mauvaise foi, as run through the mobile phone. the social networks, much screen world in general, the shopping; just so many things to keep real freedom away from us. In Covid times suddenly the existentialist preccupation with authentic freedom looks relevant. Our so-called freedoms are restricted under the various tiers; we are unable to go to the cafe, the pub, the cinema, to meet up for New Year’s eve. We are forced into ourselves, forced to confront truths about our existence. This is the departure point for any genuine attempt to live; the plague ; the absurd; the contingent; the moment when you really situate yourself in time and space. Covid might give us the chance to get back to ground zero. Although it may be foiled by that great opponent of the genuine, the authentic, the phenomenological, the existential: Netflix. Cheery New Year!

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We have had an attack of forid flies. That may be that word. I can’t remember. And it may be them or maybe something else. I first noticed these small black marks on the side of the sink in the morning when I was shaving. I think they were the eggs or baby flies. Then we noticed little flies like fruit flies in the flat. They couldn’t be fruit flies bacause there was no exposed or rottibg fruit. Then we thought they were coming from a camelia plant under the bathroom window outside in the courtyard. We moved that to the other side of our little space. No change. Now we think they are these forid flies, which come from down your sink breeding and multiplying on organic matter in the drain. Today we are pouring destructive liquid down the sink to destroy their homes and spraying fly spray to kill their active forces. We hope this will work. You may recall our destruction of an ant colony in the kitchen wall. There we got the outlying ants and scouts to take back luscious material to their civilization, like a Wooden horse, and so destroy their city of gold. This campaign is more in the manner of a siege. The next few hours will be critical. It is F-Day. It will decide whether it is us or they who enjoy that Christmas dinner a couple of days from now.

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I just learnt the word Ident. Does everyone know this word? It is that little film on the tv between programmes that promotes the channel. The BBC has swimmers, amateur footballers, mugs for tea. They probably cost millions of license-payers money to make. The mug one struck me as it is meant to be about tea breaks, and amongst the receptacles there isn’t a single cup and saucer. I am a fan of the cup and saucer for both tea and coffee. Especially as we now tend to drink our beverage in an easy chair rather than formally round a table. In casual settings you need a saucer to catch the spill. The cup and saucer is so much more elegant than the tubular mug. For me, there is no competition. Perhaps the dish-washer might break a fragile cup and saucer, but they are now made sturdy to withstand the tyranny of the machine. Needless to say, I own no dish-washer myself. I am happy enough with the proces of washing-up. It gives the hands a punctual warm massage every few hours of the day. Anyway I just bought a nice-looking breakfast cup and saucer (larger than the tea cup and saucer) for the morning pre-coffee tea. If, when it comes, it looks the part, this could be an xmas gift idea. For the festive season, an xmas tip from peoplearerubbish.

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When I ask my students do you watch telly in the evening, they say no. So what do you do then? I say. I know they don’t read. They say they watch netflix. I say, that’s watching telly. They say, no it isn’t. I say I don’t have netflix and they look down their nose at me. I tell them that all they are doing by saying that they are watching netflix rather than telly is indictating to me their class and preocupation with status. Our conversation is really about their attempts to position themselves in society. This, I suppose, is a structuralist analysis of the exchange. At their age they are right to look to find their place in the pecking order, even if the only order that interests them is socio-economic rather than intellectual. I, by contrast, place myself top of the sneering hierarchies. Sneerer-in-chief. It comes with the blog.

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