A Very British Evening

Yesterday evening was damp, cold and drizzly.

"Wear your tweed coat," said Benedict Ambrose. 

B.A. put on a green quilted jacked, a heavy tweed coat and a matching tweed cap. I pulled my own tweed coat over a black dress and my MacLean tartan sash. We were having a rare outing to the theatre, and I reject the habitual dowdiness of Edinburgh audiences. Mindful of the rain, I shoved my green silk shoes into a cotton bag and put on my rain boots. Naturally the wind blew out my umbrella on our way to the Tesco bank machine for cash. 

We took a double-decker bus to Bruntsfield, looking at the damp, darkening 17th, 18th and 19th century streets, and the crowds of people, many of them young tourists, huddled under nylon hoods. I was very glad to be on a bus and that its terminal stop was so close to the theatre. 

Our first port of call was Tuk-Tuk, an Indian restaurant, for an early pre-theatre dinner. It is BYOB, so after we ordered, B.A. popped back into the rain to get a bottle of beer from the nearest supermarket. The British have eaten curry at home since the mid-18th century, and the first Indian restaurant opened in Britain in 1809. Going out for, or bringing home, a curry is one of the most British activities I can think of.  Fish and chip shops didn't start up until the 1860s. 

The menu said the plates would be small, so we should order three per person: an excellent marketing idea to trap the unwary. We ordered vegetable samosas, "Bengali fish cakes", mixed vegetable pakoras, butter prawns, eggplant and potato curry and chana masala (chickpea curry). I had a coconut lassi, too. We shared a naan, with which we scooped up the butter prawn sauce. It was too much food, and later we were sorry.

The interior of the restaurant gives the exotic impression of being a large shed, perhaps somewhere on a country road somewhere in India. It was rather too cold, and the patrons rather too Scots, to contribute to the illusion, but I at least had the radiator at my back.

"I thought you were wearing a sari," said a friendly Indian waiter, having a better look at my tartan sash. 

B.A. paid up. I put my rubber boots back on, and we crossed the street to the King's Theatre. There I handed over my boots and coat to the check-out volunteer and went with B.A. to the bar. We sat at a corner table and drank carbonated water very, very slowly, hoping the bubbles would ease our overcrowded tummies. It was amusing to watch the bar fill up with people having a snort before the show. 

This was, by the way, Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," which has been a hit since it opened in 1885. I was a G&S fan as a child, and B.A. has been one his entire life, acting in several G&S comic operas from the age of 18 to about 28, when he played Koko. B.A. swore off acting before I met him, which is really too bad, but he says he doesn't have the energy any more. 

As always "The Mikado" was great fun, although this version of "I've Got Them on The List" mocked Theresa May, Donald Trump, and Brexit, which I thought a bit safe. Mocking the Duke of Edinburgh's driving accident was edgier, I thought, for a mostly elderly Edinburgh audience. And I suppose they couldn't really present the sexual assault charges against the former First Minister as a joke.    

In Scottish theatre productions it is interesting to see what actors do about accents. Poohbah and Go To went full plummy English, whereas Nanki Poo was mildly English, and Koko was decidedly local.    Meanwhile, every last actress wore a black bob wig, which was startling (to say the least), and I am surprised "The Mikado" doesn't get picketed by the Woke. However, "The Mikado" wasn't poking fun at the Japanese but at the English Japanoiserie craze of the early 1880s. The English love to make fun of themselves, and Edinburgh is one of the least anti-English parts of Scotland, so all was well. 

When the show was over (no standing O), the vast majority of the audience picked up the coats they had been sitting on for two and a half hours and toddled off into the night. I went back to the minute cloakroom and got my tweed, boots and broken umbrella. Then B.A. and I got onto another double decker bus and listened to an Edinburgher of about 60 mansplain "The Mikado" to the silent lady next to him. 

We alighted at Princes Street where we got another bus. We avoided the Rough Bus as it was 11 PM, and we were hoping for a peaceful journey without drunks. Our dream came true. I was so sleepy that, after reading my email, I eschewed my usual before-bed reading of The Spectator and turned out the lamp.  

The Nation

"In his last book, Memory and Identity, John Paul II reflected movingly on the Christian meaning of our earthly homelands. He denied that Christians have no “native land” in this life and defended the nation as a natural community. Against those seeking a post-national world, he urged Western nations to preserve their languages, histories, and religious traditions. The “spiritual self-defense” of our homelands, he wrote, is part of our moral obligation, commanded by God, to honor our fathers and mothers."

---Matthew Rose, "The Anti-Christian Alt-Right" in First Things  

Read the whole thing, though. You'll need coffee.

Shooting up mosques is abysmal behaviour

I woke up to the news of the Christchurch mosque shooting and was deeply disappointed in my fellow "Whites", as I suppose the terrorist gang would identify themselves. The leader of the gang described his parents as being of Scottish, Irish  and English stock. Add a splash of German, and that's my ethnic background, too. And since people call upon the Islamic communities to sort themselves out, it's only fair that "white people" or "people of European descent" should condemn mass murder carried out in our name.

No, this is not virtue signalling. This is responsible online journalism.

As long-term readers know, I never name mass shooters in print because one of the reasons they do what they do is get their names in print. They love the media. This Australian terrorist in Christchurch filmed his murders--which is exactly what Islamic terrorists do--to inspire the likeminded--which is exactly why Islamic terrorists do it, too.

Terrorists are almost always men and their subordinate female partners or relations, so I am really not sure what I could say to "White" guys in danger of shooting up a mosque or church of ordinary people. My hypothesis of influence is that the vast majority of women have a dramatic influence on only a very small number of men--usually their sons, grandsons, brothers, boyfriends and husbands. If you want to influence hundreds of thousands of young men, you're going to have to recruit men at least slightly older than them to do it.

There are exceptions, of course. Here in the UK Margaret Thatcher had an enormous influence on any number of conservative young Englishmen. But then Thatcher was exceptional. Middle-class Englishmen loved Thatcher whereas middle-class American men loathe Hilary Clinton. Discuss.

Anyway, as far as the majority of women are concerned, it is up to mothers, grandmothers, sisters, girlfriends and wives to have conversations with their menfolk about how they should respond as men to political and cultural instability. I suppose highly favoured aunties could have that conversation, too, if asked.

I haven't been asked, but if one of my nephews or courtesy nephews were to complain to me about the low white European birthrate, I would point out that siring, raising and educating five European babies would be the best and most effective way of fighting that.

Imaginary Monologue to At-Risk Imaginary Nephew

Obviously, the most super-effective way to raise the European birthrate would be to have as many babies as possible with as many willing European women you could find and then let the various European nanny states deal with their needs. However I cannot see the point of propagating a "race" for the sake of its genes. Skin cancer and light-sensitivity--whoo hoo.

I concede, Imaginary-Nephew-at-Risk-of-Whiteism, that white people of European descent number about 750 million, which is a tenth of the global population. So, yes, white people of European descent are indeed a minority.

However, what makes European descent at all interesting are the actual European cultures white people of European descent inherited, whose strengths rely on virtues that any human being of reasonable intelligence can adopt and indeed can be found to a greater or lesser extent throughout the world. The virtues depend on upbringing, and the cultures depend on education.

Please don't tell me any nonsense about IQ, Imaginary-Nephew-at-Risk, as the sort of people who study that sort of thing have discovered that the countries with the highest IQs are East Asian.

The Australian-in-Christchurch mosque shooter, I'll point out, testified that he didn't have much education. Possibly he had lousy teachers. Possibly the curriculum was at fault. Possibly local education ideology concentrated only on the needs of girls. All that said, if he cared that much about France (as his manifesto claims), it would have made a lot more sense to learn French and become, in however large or small a way, an Australian ambassador for French culture: French governance, French literature, French music, French horticulture, French cheesemaking, French viniculture, French couture, French cooking.

England's francophile Elizabeth David preserved thousands of classic French recipes. She didn't shoot up a mosque.

Me, I like the idea of distinctive, unifying, familiar European cultures. I grew up in Toronto, so I find relative monocultures fascinating. I dig a bit and discover slight variations in culture from geographical place to geographical place in a relatively ethnically homogenous country.

I'm a fan of geography-dependent cultural differences. I don't think every nation in the world should become as multicultural as Toronto. But the multiculturalism of Toronto is also, I've discovered, different from the multiculturalism of London and of Boston, so multiculturalism is not the McDonaldization of the world I used to think it was. I'm for cultures developing naturally but slowly.   I am (somewhat) sympathetic to Quebec's heavy-handed mission to stay French-speaking, but I don't like social engineering.

Well, I guess I don't like liberal social engineering. Hungarian tax breaks for families and pensions for mothers-of-four resonate with me, but Wear a Hijab day does not.

Migration is a fact of life, but I think mass migration is inherently destablizing. I gave myself a terrible shock while speaking with a Free Presbyterian pal when I realised the extent to which Irish Catholic mass migration had destablized 19th century Scottish society. Scotland still feels the aftershocks to this day. But my ancestors were Famine Irish themselves: they went west to the USA with the thousands of other Irish Catholics who inadvertently destabilised Boston and New York.

Migration (particularly from east to west) is a human constant, and the speed and size at which it is happening today is one of the defining questions of the still-young 21st century. I don't think anyone has the solution as to how to cope with the inevitable fall-out.

Given the complexities of human migration, I suggest, At-Risk Imaginary Nephew, that you think about what it is that you want and what it is that you fear and then set about finding out as much as you can about both. One of the great gifts of Western Civilisation is that idea that anyone, no matter how poor or disadvantaged, can and should learn to read and then use his powers of reason to determine what is true.

Meanwhile, shooting unarmed people is always and everywhere evil and cowardly.

Update: This, about the rejection of Christianity by the alt-right, is important. More on this later, I hope.

Update 2: This, from Rod Dreher, is also insightful. I haven't read the entire manifesto--just a couple of pages I first found on Twitter. Don't miss the French Canadian song he links to. In an earlier edit I said I wished the Quebecois hadn't eroded their culture by moving en masse to the cities, going on the Pill and throwing their religious faith and traditions out the window.

Rod added an update by a deeply shocked and grieving Christchurch resident who, understandably, seems to believe this is the time for feeling, not thinking. I think that is true for Christchurch, but not for everyone else. Rod makes a good argument that just as we need to examine the ideology of Islamic terrorism, we need to examine the ideology of the Christchurch massacre.

Update 3: I found the manifesto and skimmed it. If I write more about this, I'll take the time to read it properly. It's disturbing because it's much different from the ranting of mass shooters of women. I've read documents left by two anti-women killers, and they revealed self-absorbed, mentally unbalanced nitwits seething with self-pity. The Australian shooter (who professes indifference for fame and believes his name will soon be forgotten) was willing to sacrifice his life because he thinks he is part of a war. Well, off to see what Jordan Peterson has to say.

A Pretty Room

I spent a night away from home this week, staying in the guest room of an older friend who had fallen   on the stairs while her husband was away. They live in a 17th century house in a rapidly disappearing part of what used to be countryside, and the glorious view has already been altered and uglified.

Once upon a time, e.g. a year ago, we could look through the windows of that house over the formal, stonewalled garden, across the ancient deer park (long since plowed fields), straight to the Historical House. The concrete path between the fields was out of view. Sometimes when walking to our friends' house, I imagined I was Elizabeth Bennett walking to Netherfield. 

Since then an ugly cinder track has sliced through the eastern field and... Okay, let's not think about that. On to the pretty room. 

I have two favourite rooms in my friends' house. One is the second storey study, which is painted Chinese red and has most of the books. One is the second-and-a-half storey guest bedroom with all the travel books. This room has two tall and narrow 18-light windows, one on either side of the room, and is painted white. It has a double bed with a brass frame, covered with white duvets. There is a fireplace, of course, but a space heater sits in front of the grate. There is a chair in the corner by the window looking onto the garden (and across the fields). There's a chest with a spare duvet folded on it at the foot of the bed. And naturally there is a handy night-table with a small lamp and a digital clock.

Our friends have a sizeable art collection, thanks to years in the culture biz. Over the fireplace is a playful watercolour of the house, a (fictional?) electricity tower looming over it. Beside this is a interesting abstract in blue and brown. Over the bed, beautifully framed, is a mixed-media expression of a decaying 18th century library, using handmade grey-blue paper and ribbons. There are two tall beech-coloured bookcases full of travel books on the right (as you're sitting up in bed) and a lower, wider bookcase on the left, with books on a variety of topics. 

The room hadn't been heated when I retired for the night, so I was very grateful for all the duvets. I don't mind going to bed in a cold room, as long as there are enough bedclothes to make a snug cave. (I also turned on the space heater.) In the morning, despite my sleep mask, I woke up to golden morning sunlight. The room was so cheerful and bright, I took my coffee upstairs and got back into bed. I read a travel guide about Berlin until my coffee was done, and then I reluctantly go on with the day. 

Because of the planned destruction of the ancient deer park--upon which there has never been a building, let alone an instant gimcrack neighbourhood--our friends may move away. A little bit of Scottish paradise will be wiped out, both indoors and out, for it is unlikely that I will sleep in the pretty room ever again. 

Well, now I must go and tidy the garden. One of the former owner's tenants was a keen gardener, and we have been surprised by the spring flowers popping up. They need to be done justice. 

Lenten Dinner Party, Um.

When I came home from Canada, I was determined to make some radical change to my Scottish way of life. A dog! A cat! Volunteer with children! Get rid of the single bed in the dining room and get the most comfortable small sofa-bed in the market! Emigrate!

So far, though, the only thing I have done that is at all different--besides searching the internet for Tibetan Spaniels--is to invite over a couple we've never had over before on their own to Sunday dinner.

Then Lent hit, and I thought about the spiritual-corporal heroics of the Greeks, and there was a bit of a rumpus at our house about the dinner party menu. Benedict Ambrose read me the Roman Catholic fasting laws for 1962, but I was adamant: no meat.

After Mass I chatted with an Orthodox chap who drops by for the craic, and he told me that the Russians have even stricter fasting laws than the Greeks. Look them up. There are Raw Food Days, Cooked Food Days, Cooked and Fried Food days, and No Food days. On Good Friday and Holy Saturday the 2% of Russians who actually follow this to the letter don't eat at all.

So with do further ado, here was our Sunday Dinner menu

Sherry and almonds.
Guacamole on toast with prawns.
Orange-ginger salmon with maple syrup.
Asparagus and potatoes.
Apple crumble.
Blue cheese.
Curry cookies.

White wine.
Pudding wine.
Whisky.

Well, it was a Sunday. For Latins the most controversial thing about this list is the spelling of whisky, which I want write as "whiskey," but I don't dare.

Speaking of controversy, B.A. said something mildly politically incorrect on the train, and the young woman beside him raised her head like one of the Animal Farm puppies scenting a Two-Legs and stared meaningfully at her friend across the aisle.

Both were typing on their phones, and I realised that all the other young people around us were on their phones, and that all these phones were capable of recording and posting recorded speech on the internet. I was momentarily terrified.

"We no longer have freedom of speech in the UK," I said to the girls, while pretending to say it to B.A.

Later B.A. pointed out that I use this mildly un-p.c. phrase "all the time", which I do occasionally but not in public. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's not the hill to die on.

UPDATE: B.A. has a brain scan tomorrow, so could the prayerfully inclined please pray that the tumour-buds have died? Thanks. We're rather worried about it.

Mystery of Galaretka Solved!

Once I was a mighty blogger... Oh well!

Devoted readers will have divined that I am very, very, very busy with a series of news article for work. The house is a mess, my Polish lessons have been put to the side (mostly), my snail mail correspondence goes neglected ...

Somehow, though, I will drag myself back to my normal schedule--the one that involves dusting, hoovering, studying Polish for an hour, and studying German for 20 minutes. Today my Polish tutor came by, and I was still able to hold a comprehensible conversation, so that's good news.

Another bit of good news is that someone on Facebook linked to this excellent, informative blog. The woman makes her own pączki; I am amazed.  The linker linked to this, however, as an example of food that should never be eaten. Naturally the linker is wrong: it looks absolutely delicious. And now I understand what karp w galarecie means. It is a phrase from Polish in 4 Weeks Part 2 that I never bothered looking up. Clearly it is "carp in aspic", which I will not be making, for nobody, not even a Pole, really likes carp.

Looking at "Polish Your Kitchen" makes me long for Easter. I love making Polish Easter Breakfast; if you're reading this because you hate my LSN coverage, perhaps that will humanise me a bit in your eyes. Is there anything more revolutionary than sausage soup and jam tart for breakfast? Well--maybe chicken Jello for supper! Woo hoo!

Benedict Ambrose and I prepared for Lent on Pancake Tuesday by going to an Argentine restaurant for steaks and Malbec instead.  He had French fries with his; I had fried onions. We split some sort of Argentinian almond tart for pudding; dulche de leche featured. It was all glorious. We will return on Easter Monday.

The next day we went to Ash Wednesday Mass according the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite and afterwards broke our fast with cheese-and-onion pasties from the train station. There was a goodly quantity of diced potatoes mixed in with the cheese and onion, and it was positively the definition of British Lenten food: stodgy carbohydrates.

This should be the most humbling time of the year for Latin Rite Catholics. The Islamic Ramadan Fast is based on the Lenten Fast of 6th/7th century Christians, which shows how far we've fallen since then. The Greek Catholics--or at least their priests, monks and women, not to mention the Greek and every other kind of Orthodox--or at least their priests, monks and women--leave us Latins in the dust.  When they mock us, we should admit that they are just and weep tears of sorrow and repentance.

It was very embarrassing to see, on a TRAD Facebook page, Trad Catholics encouraging each other to eat great cuts of meat on the Thursday between Ash Wednesday and Friday.  Well, it was not so embarrassing that I wouldn't mention it on my blog. I write about  Catholics scandals all day long, so here's one about us Trads. No feast without a fast, people (unless you're under 18, pregnant, ill or have or had eating disorders).

Back in Scotland or The Event

Jet-lagged, muscles aching, coffee-swilling: I'm back in Scotland.

Canada was splendid: so splendid that I did not want to come back and wouldn't have come back had  it not been for Benedict Ambrose. I have reached Peak Scot, which is to say, the stage at which Scots say, "Let's emigrate to Canada!" 

Canada was cold and covered in snow: ankle-deep in Toronto, knee-deep in the Eastern Townships. I lived in houses: my parents' large two-storey box, my brother's sprawling bungalow. For once in sync with management, I worked the regulation 9 to 5, although (as we will discuss) I did quite a lot of overtime. 

I was surrounded by family and friends, most notably children. Three of those were blood relations,  three were courtesy nephews and one was my goddaughter. 

I saw two of my favourite professors; I met up with elementary school pals for drinks. Red Mezzo drove up from Vermont to see me in Quebec; Alisha stopped by a bakery-cafe in Montreal to see me before work. 

For the first time in a long time, I spent an entire day in research: interviewing sources and hunting down books. 

I finished reading Emmanuel Carrere's The Kingdom, minus the infamous few pages of porn. There's a professor in Ohio I'd like to talk to about it. (O Boże, it's overdue at the library.)

I went to "Chicago" a day early to buy pączki for Tłusty Czwartek. "Nie ma"--so I bought a poppy seed roll instead while the sprzedawczyni nattered away happily po polsku, and I was so rusty, I understood barely a word.  

But most of the time I worked or slept, just like here, only there I could come downstairs to tell my parents the latest news, or go upstairs (I stayed in my brother's basement) to apologise for still being on the computer. 

I was on the computer because, during my first week in Canada, I googled "diabolical masterpiece" and thereby discovered what turned out to be the terrible 30-year secret of a Toronto-based Church personality.  Our story broke on February 15 and was read by (I'm assuming) the more conservative of Catholic and Lutheran intellectual types. Curious, they did more research and tweeted the results. The National Post story broke the night of February 22.  I was so tired, I was shaking, but with the help of an editor, I wrote another piece. 

The Post story went viral. The Catholic media finally picked up the story. Versions of it (not always accurate) were published in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish. 

I received emails of congratulation and an email of mild abuse. I was warned on Facebook to watch my back, and I took down a blogpost about the children. 

At the beginning of the scandal, certain institutions would not reply to my emails or phone calls. Now they are replying to my emails, which certainly makes my job easier. 

This is, for the record, now all very terrible and sad. Virtual bombs are blowing up in offices all over Canada, frightening and hurting people I care about. At the same time, the spectacle of various Catholic figures trying to minimise the 30-year secret is a nauseating spectacle of clericalism. No layman's career would have survived this. Thirty years. Peer-reviewed journals. Called Archbishop Viganò a "liar".

Today I got an important and respectful email from Jerusalem. It is a great contrast to the sniping from Toronto I've been getting over Facebook. Apparently writing this story is so divisive and so bad for the Church, blah blah blah. It gives me just the smallest taste of the hell Rod Dreher went through trying to report on a worse scandal. 

My hands hurt from typing. I check Twitter at least once every half an hour.