False Moustache Issue 1 by False Moustache

FALSE MOUSTACHE 1

Editor’s Introduction Welcome to the first edition of False Moustache. In this issue, we’re looking at outsiders. We’ve got an article from an expat in the Middle East and another by a man who plows a lonely political furrow. There’s some great poetry – including the first published piece by rising star of the London poetry scene Hel Gurney. There are also some pleasant distractions, from the joy of cricket to a teasing crossword with a tasty theme. Perhaps you’d love to contribute to a future issue, or maybe you just want to say hello. If you’d like to get in contact with me, or with any of the contributors, send an email to tomwein880@gmail.com and I’ll see what I can do. Otherwise, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour.

Tom Outsider’s view Far from the Metropolis: Emily Monaghan.................................. 4 Extract from Glen Duncan’s ‘I Lucifer’........................................ 5 Looking down from Up North: Esther Beadle............................. 6 Thrift, Industry, and manly Self-Reliance: Luke Blaxill................. 8 Brackets: CN Lester....................................................................... 9 She Was: Hel Gurney................................................................... 10 She Was: A Commentary: Tom Wein......................................... 11 Rise of the Geek: Gemma Gordon-Gibson............................. 12 A Westerner Abroad: Anonymous............................................ 12 Insider Looking In: Leah Weiner................................................. 13 On Fairies and Marriage: Hel Gurney....................................... 14 Distractions Crossword: Arcadian.................................................................. 16 What I’m reading: Gina Lawrence & Tom Wein..................... 17 The Joy of Cricket: Tom Wein...................................................... 18 Joining the T eam Joining the Team: Tom Wein...................................................... 20 Helplessness Blues: Fleet Foxes.................................................. 21 The True Face Editor’s Thanks............................................................................. 23 About Our Contributors............................................................. 24 Crossword answers..................................................................... 25

OUTSIDER’S VIEW

Far From the Metropolis EMILY MONAGHAN

“We do speak English and, y’know,

now those few surviving speakers

sey has no place for fairies. Those

have the internet. It’s not like I live

tasked to defend it are quarrel-

grandmothers

in the past”. I defend my place of

ling away its death throes – do we

cupation,

origin, and how does Guernsey re-

teach the children, or the adults,

pay my trust? On the day I return

and how, and in what way; and do

not much to say in a small island,

there from London, the broadband

we teach them the Town dialect,

and so Norman French has a word

breaks for three days. Too many

or St Martins, or the Vale...? Death

“broussepier”,

people streaming Wimbledon.

by small differences.

a cat’s fur in the wrong direction”.

We exist in a state of grace be-

We used to be taller. Under the is-

tween the Channel Islands’ two ex-

land is a network of caverns and

tremes. Jersey, the largest island,

tunnels, starting on the beaches,

is charmless with modernity – Wa-

under

terstones and Starbucks. The best

crypts, all leading to a fairy land

In London, I enjoy going for a ram-

panorama on the island used to be

beneath

bling walk of a day, heading in a

from a certain hotel balcony. In its

women of their own, the denizens

new direction to simply see what’s

eyeline, they have built a cinema

applied a Sabine solution – coming

there. I do not do this in Guernsey.

– a black box with no windows.

out of their seacaves and kidnap-

Though my walks were rarely the

Sark, not only small, has no tour-

ping the island’s women. The Men

whole of Guernsey’s length – 19km

ist-luring beaches, one shop, and

made their last stand on the Rouge

on the hypotenuse – after those

no cars. A friend and her new beau

Rou and were slaughtered. But a

19, there is nowhere further to go.

got stranded in fog on a daytrip

mortal

Though I would never have walked

there.

for so long, and after three years

on their return, three days later.

the laws decreed the women must

Portmerion – the option was there,

Guernsey’s sand is the softest in

bid

hus-

the world, its landscapes pale, like

bands and return to the land. The

infinite

bad

still

next generation of children were

In Guernsey, all roads lead to the

somewhere one can live. The vi-

fairy-born. And that, they say, is

sea. Else, you’re journeying in spi-

brant town centre easily rivals all

why the people of Guernsey grew

rals like the stressed, caged, and

but one of England’s major cities

small. It makes me wonder if the

eerily

for scope and atmosphere. All the

fairies too are terrified of differ-

annual

same: it will not last. I give peo-

ence, hiding under their uniform-

roads to walk leaves a landscape

ple

they

issue plain black outerleaves. Not

zigzagged

ask where the Costa is. No one has

that the story is much whispered

the

spoken

in the firelight, by chiselled grand-

the Germans left behind, so my

mothers,

21 years of life has imprinted on

They

promptly

watercolours

wrong its

–

but

directions native

broke

it’s

when

language,

Nor-

man French, since the 40s, and

the

dolmens,

the

can

from

earth.

only

farewell

still

Having

remain

their

beneath

fairy

half-pagan.

church

Guern-

died

their

with

stories

evacuated

the

Oc-

untold

generation.

meaning

There’s

“to

stroke

As a big cat in a small pond, I’m not surprised they needed a verb for

rubbing

against

the

grain,

swimming against the tide.

Aylesbury,

brilliant

Shaftsbury,

and

bonkers

landscape

clean

show-pigeons

agricultural with

bunkers

and

fair.

or day,

explore.

Few

memories.

the new Like

emplacements

EXTRACT FROM GLENN DUNCAN’S ‘I LUCIFER’

the familiar roads like a signature.

mum, a true Guern, is outraged at

There are only so many places you

a Mainlander coming here to write

can run to when being hemmed

our history – “if you reveal a col-

and

you

laborator here, everyone will know

wish to avoid. Thus too with the

who it is and who they’re related

predictable

to”.

hermited

summer

social

calendar

the

ones

circuit –

the

ternoon proud of all your woeful particulars - and London humbles you with its wealth of generals. You’ve seen your life. London, it turns out, has seen Life.”

Shakespeare

at the castle, funfair in the park, the Battle of Bri tain air display. These events, as regular as tides, are written over with the memories of 2010, 2009, 2008, 1998. All of which were happier at the time,. Even

the

present,

solitude

tricky. At a certain crossing, I was almost hit by a car on my Duke of Edinburgh

expedition.

The

day, it was a topic of general discussion among people who had no reason to know anything about it. I would not return to those people,

those

places,

those

times

if there were others to go to. A stranger is writing a paper on collaboration

and

resistance

the

five years of Nazi rule. She has no idea, it seems, how fast news can travel here – there’s no empty French countryside for a would-be saboteur to take refuge is; no idea how hard any act of resistance is in a place so small. Nor how, with time

and

nearness,

“I’ve always had a soft spot for London, the patched and tattered cloak of its history, its dogeared wisdom and inky humour. You know - you provincial British humans know - what it’s like when you crack under the weight of lost love or ingested desire and Move to London: the city’s ready for you. You take your precious miseries there and unpack them - only to find that the city’s already assimilated them, centuries ago, along with grand Elizabethan passions and mortal Victorian sins. The assimilation’s encoded now - in the chemistry lab colours of the Underground map, in Trafalgar’s punk pigeons, in the thousands of ticking stilettos and caffeine yawns and downed pints and adulterous snogs. You turn up on a rainy Monday af-

collaborating

with a status quo is inevitable. My

Looking Down From Up North ESTHER BEADLE

There were times, during my four

Being a Geordie in London pro-

was some feral beast about to be

years as a pretentious student in

vided my friends with a novelty.

tamed by the bright lights of the

London, when I would have given

One phone call to my mam would

big city.

my right arm to be standing at a

result in hours of half-arsed imi-

rain-drenched

tations,

bus

stop

New-

with

mates

ending

castle, whippet at my feet, Brown

sounding like Cheryl Cole on the

Ale in hand and bawling The Blay-

L’Oreal

don Races. Maybe, if I was lucky,

spurkles”).

Gazza would stumble around the

advert

(“ooooozin

with

The notion of a North/South divide should, in our tolerant society,

seem

antiquated.

However,

unlike our football strip, the issue is by no means black and white. It

To them, I was some wild, exotic

is the very idea of this divide that

creature. I had escaped on the first

provides me and my fellow Novo-

barge out of a dark, tempestuous,

castrians with something to grip

In short, I longed for the cultural

feudal, proto-civilisation where al-

onto in a region battered by – not

stereotyping

region-

cohol is a cure for anything and

just ferocious weather – but also

al identity that both blesses and

the menfolk heave coal with cal-

decades of perceived attacks from

blights the North East. I longed to

loused hands into little boats (or

Westminster.

be smothered and suffocated by

“bow-ats”) bobbing around on the

something I had tried for years to

foggy Tyne. Our winters as dark

escape.

corner, munching on some pease pudding.

and

stalwart

our

strange

river

and

discombobulating.

our

language I

Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry took with it the things that made us great, our heaving

swells of factory smoke and jut-

terwards. To give a very specific

opinion, in the face of an ever-de-

ting cranes. I hate to get political,

example

batterings

creasing firm cultural identity and

but where I’m from it’s hard not

by the ‘rest of the country’ actual-

an ever-increasing interest in our

to. The boom years of Labour saw

ly help us, take the idea of a North

region., the North/South divide is

our region plumped and preened

East

fero-

needed now more than ever. It is

into

cultural

cious suspicion of the ‘South’, we

the last remaining bastion for our

hub. But under the gloss of new

in the North East voted adamantly

proud,

art galleries and coffee chains the

against a separate governing body

lows us our swan song.

heart of our great region stopped

with devolved powers. Why would

beating. Our pride in a hard day’s

we do that, when we are so fierce-

graft, our songs of colliery histo-

ly averse to being at the mercy

ries

clubs

of the toffee-nosed Old Etonians,

have been replaced with a shell

who, unequivocally, make up the

of call centres and Wetherspoons.

entire population south of York?

brochure-ready

and

swarming

social

This issue is not exclusive to our region,

but

certainly

exacer-

bates things.

how

Assembly.

such

Despite

our

The fact of the matter is, the people of the North East have an instinctual need to remain the har-

Now what do we have? The reces-

dy victims of a better-off South.

sion has hit, the galleries are lying

Hardworking

empty and our cultural overdraft

we have a habit of making things

is staring us unpleasantly in the

harder

face.

need be. It is THIS, which defines

many as some thick bimbo (she

us as a people. The proverbial chip

really

on our shoulder is what keeps us

Cheryl isn’t).

Cole

derided

Geordie

Shore

por-

trays us as bed-hopping slags and the simple folk of Byker Grove are long gone. Yet

the

folk

for

who

ourselves

get

on,

than

they

afloat. The North/South divide does exist. I can vouch for that. Detri-

North/South

has

mental though it may appear, we

deep foundations, and is not all

continue to feed the fire which

dictated

makes us the underdog. Though

divide

Southern

tures. Through

caricaon

pride in our industry may have

remaining separate to the rest of

been cruelly torn from our grasp,

the country, distanced from West-

we have pride in our history. We

minster and the presumed civility

remember what the Tories did to

of the South, we are able to play

us in the eighties and we remem-

on a once glorious past, to revel

ber how New Labour tried to force

us into a glossy pigeon-hole in the

our

distinct

insistence

‘northern-ness’.

It gives us control over a story, in

which,

paradoxically,

have

never been in control.

nineties. We

acknowledge

the

stereotypes

we are lobbed with. As a region, we

The very core of the Geordie iden-

are

poorer,

less

tity is staidly getting on with it

unhealthier

in the face of adversity and then

shorter

downing a few jars in the pub af-

proud of our differences. In my

and

than

educated,

fatter,

wear

skirts

anyone

our else.

industrious

history.

al-

And also gives me allowance to unashamedly drink more than my Southern

friends.

bus

stops.

Singing The Blaydon Races. With pride.

Thrift, Industry & Manly Self Reliance: Thoughts of a Victorian Liberal discarded by modernity LUKE BLAXILL

I am proud to be a Whig, an imperialist, and a gentle-

be cemented forever in law because human rights are

man. Most of all, I am proud to be an Englishman. I

good. They call for the job market to be systemically

am consequently not happy at all with English poli-

rigged against white privately educated men because,

tics today. Universal suffrage is shorthand for the

surely,

rule of the mob: for the considered rational views

gender and racial composition of society.

of the minority to be crushed beneath the collective

the

as democracy, human rights, and affirmative action.

the drop of a hat. I am in favour of manly self reli-

The arrogance of this viewpoint is that it assumes

ance: of her majesty’s subjects standing up proudly as

represent

ceptions of what seems good at the moment, such

personalities, and are apt to change their minds at

dependence

perfectly

the test of time, but from abstract metaphysical con-

litical judgements based on material concerns and

seeing

must

from utilitarian or empirical analysis which can stand

standing of the English constitution and make po-

themselves,

workforces

The justification for these changes is not derived

weight of ignorance of those who have no under-

for

all

now to be the end of history, the time when we have

dishonour,

completed the intellectual and moral journeys of the

and greeting the good times and bad with that sturdy

past, and stand enlightened. What was done before

English good humour and love of fair play. But my

was imperfect, or wrong, and the future will surely be

peers do not think like this. They seem to subscribe

based on what we have decided now. Our children’s

to two maxims: that their current plight is not their

lives will be spent interpreting the holy scriptures we

fault, and that, because of this, they are morally en-

have written, carrying on the march towards equal-

titled to the property of others. They then claim for

ity, democracy, and universal human rights.

themselves the position of a progressive vanguard, and advocate the wrecking of the English constitu-

But the children of the future will not think like us.

tion and social order.

They will laugh at our values, just as we laugh at those of the Victorians. But the Victorians did not

My progressive peers do not understand the beauty

make our mistake of assuming they would always be

of an organic constitution as our ancestors did. What

right. They legitimised their actions by expediency

I mean by this is a politics and society that evolves

and

with the people, which reflects our current intellectual and moral state, and our sense of history. of

sanctimonious

brutally

enforcing

their

metropolitan fashionable,

liberal

elites

transient,

and

The

self-proclaimed

representation

have

arithmetic

because

‘democratic’

everything mandate

transient

not remember the past, and if we do, we disregard it, seeing ‘modernity’ as the end in itself. We conceive of the future as being morally identical to the present. The result is that the progressives have trapped us

van-

in a prison of time, in their faddish ‘dictatorship of

guard demand an elected House of Lords and proportional

and

experience. This is what we have discarded. We do

of a political and social order which has organically centuries.

metaphysical

gitimacy on which to base future decisions: historical

right now. The result is the spoilation and vandalism over

than

they found the sheet anchor of real wisdom and le-

faddish conception of what happens to seem good

evolved

rather

conceptions of ‘fairness’ and ‘modernity’. From that,

The

modern obsession is government by arbitrary social project:

utility

now’. And it is only by defending what is left of the

must

organic English constitution and social order with all

2011.

our might that we can prevent the invertebratisation

They demand that the ‘human rights’ of 2011 should

of our nation.

brackets CN LESTER

I hide myself in brackets, I split myself in time. An object’s changed by viewing No matter whose the eye. We fall apart by seconds, Reform ourselves in time. And who wants to live an anonymous life? Fall from balance -

{

Find out what it’s like to live On the dividing line. Whose the sight to capture? Why not bend your sight? Why not fall from balance An arbitrary left from right. You cannot tell by viewing, What changes will the eye. This view is something alien You should not claim is mine. Fall from balance Find out what it’s like to live On the dividing line. Binaries are shallow, A double only binds.

And who of us would envy an anonymous life? You just see what you want to be That isn’t me at all. I hide myself in brackets, I run myself against invisible walls. Fall from balance Find out what it’s like to live On the dividing line.

Her hand a wing, she brushes me sometimes, in the deep-dawn purples of the morning. I see the shadow of her dress in my bedroom curtains. She is packed around me in ephemera I cannot bear to lose. How dead are they, those who stop, when we go on? I remember her as never quiet, never shamed. I may be wrong. She wanted everything. She’d be a writer, painter, athlete, lawyer, politician. Run a wildlife preserve and teach disadvantaged kids. She always fought. Faced down teachers, bullies, the whole damn lot in her tasteless rainbow waistcoat and messy hair. She never stopped reading, writing, listening, talking. She knew she’d study words. The geometries of their placement. Their power to speak and sing. How to ride them like rockets into a new world. That was the she that was. The me that nearly. The we that never. At times we overlap. Curled up in the snail-shell of one body, reading something old. That pure distracted joy in language that shuts the world off like a lamp. But she wore dresses. Reclaimed her curves with silky clothes and words. Laughed off those who’d grind her down. She went, of course, to Cambridge. Modern and Medieval Lang. Swam through syntax backwards. Delighted in the ancient and the lost, the useless, the beautiful. Stayed on the rowing team. A power-suited fire-mouthed barrister by thirty. Years on, stepped down from the bar and up to the post of first female chair of MML, at Magdalene College. That was the she that would have. The me that could have. The we that oh-so-very-nearly and then no. The me that rolled through life with the grandiose certainty that she was the woman she’d planned to be. She has been evaporated off me and left behind her dreams and dresses, her feathers and her fire. How dead are they, these shadow-selves? The ones we freeze and can no longer bear to inhabit. She lingers like cold smoke. Each decision is a loss: we cut away the branches of our other lives with every choice. We end with one birch-smooth line. -- But in spring, her shoots return. Guilty fiction, impossible ideal child. My lost twin sister has been folded back into me: she is woven through every movement. I mourn her, I am shamed by her, and HEL GURNEY

sometimes I flicker through her like a ghost of flame.

SheWas : A Commentary TOM WEIN

In‘SheWas’,Gurneyoffersacomplex,melancholicexaminationoftherealitiesofadulthood.Atitssimplestlevel,thepoemisonaclassical theme,mourninglostchildhood,withitsinfinitepossibilityandvaultingambitions.Asthefirststanzanotes,“Shewantedeverything.She’dbe awriter,painter,athlete,lawyer,politician./Runawildlifepreserveandteachdisadvantagedkids.”Yetthisreflectionisfarmorecomplexthana mere lament.

Thepoetcallstheircurrentselfandtheiroverachievingcounterpart“twinsisters.”Atacertainpoint,theyimply,bothwereequalpossibilities,and consciouschoicescreatedthe“methatcouldhave”ratherthanthe“shethatwouldhave.”Choicesawayfromwords,andsolitude,and“feathers and…fire”, in favour of socializing and engagement with the world. Ofcourse,wedonotshapeourselvesentirelyofourownaccord.GurneydidnotchooseagainstCambridge;itchoseagainsther.Ifthepoetdid notstudyMML,orpuntinrobes,itwasnotforlackoftrying.The“birch-smoothline”hadotherwhittlerstoo.YetGurneyemphasizespersonal choicein“eachdecision”,andthoughthepoemisultimatelydownbeat,thereisalsoaquietprideatthepersonthepoetbecame.Thisismost tangibleinthegentlepatronizationofthe“twinsister”.Thereissurelyaquietchucklebehind“shewent,ofcourse,toCambridge”andacertain confidence in admitting “I may be wrong.”

Thereisanotherelementtothesetwoidentities.“Sheworedresses.Reclaimedhercurveswithsilkyclothesandwords.”Gurneyisacampaigner ongenderissuesmostoftenseeninwaistcoatandnecktie.Thetwin’sembraceofacertaintypeofexecutivehyperfemininity–“apower-suited barrister” – is another fork that divides them. With its constant use of “she”, the poem is therefore an oddity in Gurney’s recent work.

Ultimately,though,thesparselastlinesarealonelycry.Thepoet,hungryforlostopportunities,mustbecontentwithanoccasional,involuntary, fleeting“flicker”.Acertainunitymayberecoveredinreading“somethingold”,whenallthreeselves–now,then,andnever–overlapintheirshared pastime;hencetheearthycontentednessof“snailshell”andthemeatyvowelsof“curled”and“distracted”.Yettheoverwhelminglymessageis one of an identity passed on.

Inthiscommentator’sview,thatlonelycryisanunjustifiedone.Weneverrollthroughlifewith“grandiosecertainty”,andthoughweoughttomourn ourlosses,therearetimeandchancesaplenty.Whatwehaveissuperiorforbeingreal,ratherthana“Guiltyfiction,impossibleidealchild.”Asfor words’“powertospeakandsing”,Gurneyhasthatinspades.Fromthefirstlushlinetothelastbone-bare,thisisagorgeouslypacedpoemthat touches both the intimate and universal.

Rise of the Geek GEMMA GORDON-GIBSON “Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.” Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 7

I can quote that because being a Shakespeare

enthusiast

now

cool. What - didn’t you know? Take it

from

spent

someone a

who

has

meteorologically

weekend

swanning

ford-Upon-Avon. audience

just bland

around

Strat-

I was sat in the

waiting

for

second

play of the trip to start, complete with the promise of Patrick Stewart as Shylock splashed over my program, when I looked around. I was confronted with skinny jeans in

droves,

thick

black-rimmed

glasses in abundance, a sea of vintage tea dresses and dangerously fashionable

haircuts

galore. These

beautiful

people,

edge

fashion,

were

the

cutting attending

the driest of intellectual pursuits.

of the technical nerdlingers. When

gly,

everyone

smartphone,

lifted them onto our shoulders as

iPad and/or dainty laptop which

a celebration of all that is good in

constantly connects them to Face-

British

television.

book, Twitter and/or WordPress –

Ricky

and

knowledge of the technical world

only that, but we resurrected a

really is power. We’re in awe of

black and white sci-fi time travel

people carrying the latest apps, or

show, and gave it a prime time

who have the first insight into the

billing complete with sexy makeo-

latest

cool,

ver. Bow ties are cool right? Well

current and ahead of the times.

ultimate arbiters Dolce and Gab-

Steve

bana certainly think so.

carries

digital Jobs

trend. and

They’re

Bill

never been so sexy.

Gates

have

And blogging;

once the domain of those who couldn’t

have

their

say

outside

of the virtual world, now it’s the place you come to first to know what’s in and what’s out. Fashion, books, music, theatre – many of

these

worlds’ most

influential

voices now declare their make or break verdicts online.

Indeed the

internet – once the territory of Zuckerberg-esque lonely boys tapping away in bedrooms – is now the main conduit for all the information we download, stream and

At school I downplayed my love

search everyday. It rules our busi-

for

ness days and social lives.

Beatrice

and

Benedict,

fear-

ing the usual taunts and jibes. imagine

surprise

when

col-

leagues met tales of my weekend with looks of admiration. There I was sat in my black pinafore, plaid shirt

and

brogues,

and

people

were actually impressed with my previously

hidden

interest

(and

1840s childlike outfit choice).

ing

wallflowers.

Glee

(creator

the Gleeks) has created a cult fol-

but

Zach

culture.

grossing and popular films to hit

decade

will

un-

doubtedly be known for the rise

bow

is the fact that competition for university

places,

internships

top jobs is only increasing.

and Eve-

ryone is having to up their intellectual game; GCSE and A-Level results are at an all-time high, more and more people are signing up for

masters

courses, about

and the

and

other

postgrad

intelligent

quip

latest

exhibition

you

visited could just get you that job. So long live the geek! And not only because they’re the ones who’ll be able

afford

cryonic

preserva-

Shakespeare, Henry VII, Act III, Scene 2

Add to this the

that are now some of the highest

this

intelligentsia’s

Galifianakis’ misfit

acceptable, nay lauded, in modern

technology;

final

was not Bradley Cooper’s muscled

the

popular films on our generation,

ance of it) has suddenly become

obvious

of The Hangover, one of the most

comic books movies (a favourite

most

the

Not

lowing out of the uncool. The star

ligence (or at least the appear-

and

will

Stephen!

Farewell? a long farewell to all my greatness!”

in his wolfpack?

first

think

King

are now awash with bow tie-wear-

specialized

The

string

Prince

live

“So farewell—to the little good you bear me.

Alan. Who wouldn’t want to be

intel-

Long

and

American TV and cinema screens

Phil,

and

What

Bristolian

tion…

Yet this is not the only area where knowledge

girl-avoiding

the

sidelined

adolescent

boy)

our screens and you have yourselves a trend.

The UK, not to be

left behind, took a fat, sarcastic UCL philosophy student and gan-

Westerner Abroad ANONYMOUS Jordan.

The

Hashemite

Kingdom

of Boredom. ‘Is it fun living in Amman?’ they say with a smirk on their face, safe in the knowledge

that they live in Ramallah or Bei-

However, there is one thing that

on children’s health and welfare

rut. But I’m going to get this off

slightly unsettles me. It’s the nag-

my chest straight away – I like liv-

ging feeling that part of the rea-

munities, in the early twentieth

ing in Jordan.

son that living in Jordan is fun is

century. A surprising number of

because

people whom I met in London

Ok I’ll admit it, perhaps Amman isn’t

the

most

exciting

Middle

Eastern city. It doesn’t have the night scene of Beirut or the history of Damascus. But it is what it is – a modern Arab city. Its location on innumerable hills gives it a unique feel with layers of steeply rising houses. The views outweigh the disadvantages of trudging up

I’m

western

foreigner.

Aboriginal

Canadian

As a western foreigner it is pos-

were

sible to have a certain level of

this group, many being unaware

freedom that is not available to

that

Arab

nous

foreigners

(unless

you’re

entirely

com-

Canada

unfamiliar even

peoples.

with

had

indige-

Regularly,

casual

from the Gulf ) or sometimes even

acquaintances asked me if I was

Jordanians themselves.

Aboriginal,

I can be

simply

assumed

confident that the police will treat

that I was. Alas, as a Canadian of

me well and I know that if I’m go-

European ancestry, I was study-

ing

ing this group as an outsider, as

through

confidence is not available to oth-

as an adult about Aboriginal his-

ers. Which is a reminder that as a

tory and culture, and has a less-

As a woman it’s important to per-

foreigner there are always going

than-rudimentary

fect your ‘stare out of the window

to be sides of a country that you

of any Aboriginal Canadian lan-

in deep thought’ face in order to

can’t see.

guages.

prevent ‘are

the

you

otherwise married’

trouble.

This

there

somebody who has learned only

less city.

checkpoint

them in the heat in a pavement-

won’t

level

inevitable

Researching

conversation.

fraught

that when I have to drive around I’m

completely

lost

ized

marginalize

dynamics

this

group

inherent

re-

search made me ever more nerv-

some sights on the way.

ous as I continued writing. The

Outside of Amman is where the fun starts. Jordan is full of amaz-

Insider Looking In

ing hiking opportunities. Having a

LEAH WEINER

barbeque and sleeping in the desert with just a mattress is one of the best experiences you can have. There is a certain type of freedom that you feel in the Middle East, best described by my friend who driving; you

‘it’s realise

you don’t have to drive between the lines!’

around

tus to my advantage. The power

driver even stopped to show us

once

peoples

by using my own privileged sta-

hitch back to Amman. Our lorry

liberating

indigenous

further

could drink during our three hour

quite

Firstly,

goals was to make sure not to

free lifts and as much tea as we

while

challenges.

the world. Thus, one of my first

stranded

in Faynan my friend and I received

commented

with

the past century, have marginal-

though; people in Jordan are imWhen

his-

of how colonial researchers, for

of the road. This is no problem helpful.

group’s

as a historian, I am keenly aware

be-

cause all I ever see is the side

mensely

this

tory as an outsider was, for me,

The downside of this strategy is Amman

knowledge

question

studying

London, not

only

Canadian

acquaintances my

traveling

around the world only to study my own home, but also the relationship between my identity and the subject matter which I have chosen to research. You see, my research

search upon were written almost solely by white men; the Aborigi-

Canadian

history

documents I was basing my re-

this

past

year

focused

nal

people

who

had

first-hand

experiences of the issues I was studying

have

long

since

died.

I had been skeptical of articles by

experienced

historians

who had written without considering

Aboriginal

perspectives;

now I was setting myself up for the same kind of criticism.

My concerns did not have an easy answer.

Linda

‘Decolonizing

Tuhiwai

Smith’s

Methodologies’,

guide for researchers who wish to research indigenous peoples without tion

perpetuating of

the

marginaliza-

indigenous

communities,

offered some advice, but little that was useful to a postgraduate student with limited funds, conducting research from abroad. Lacking the resources to speak to people, the main source for my research was

archival

documents

–

and

there are few Aboriginal archives. Any historian is an outsider, to an extent, when working with sources from any other time or place. However, the documents available in Canada’s archives mostly dealt with

the

Euro-Canadian

people

who produced my sources, rather than

the

Aboriginal

communities

whose experiences were most salient for my research. Since my life experiences and privilege, as a Euro-Canadian

researcher,

made

more similar in background to the colonizing authorities than to the Aboriginal sources

communities, entrenched

these position

as an outsider, rather than alleviating my concerns. The most sensible means, to me, to

“decolonize”

research

method-

ology in history would be to have more inclusive archives; the more work that can be done now to record the experiences of the marginalized for future research, the better. In the meantime, however, I must leaven confidence in my expertise with an outsider’s caution.

On Fairies and Marriage HEL GURNEY

Sex, mythology, and landscape – that’s the soundbite summary of what my poetry tends to be about. I’ve never yet presented a photo of the Man of Cerne Abbas to illustrate what happens when you get all three at once, but it’s probably just a matter of time. My head has always been full of myth and folklore and fairytale. One of my earliest memories is of looking into the sun, convincing myself that the colourful lights which appeared before my eyes afterwards were actually fairies. I was brought up on Tolkien and Lewis and a brace of other writers who were strongly influenced by stories of yore. As a kid, some of my most treasured possessions were ‘The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology’, and an array of Andrew Lang’s colour-coded ‘Fairy Books’. I loved them – they were strange and yet familiar, with themes and motifs that appeared and reappeared like threads in a tapestry or a strain of song. The more I read, the stronger these themes emerged. Some of them were pretty neutral, like the way everything happened in threes. Others were rather more problematic. Outer beauty and inner goodness were one and the same – unless you were a witch in disguise, or tragically cursed. Marriage was heavily transactional, or else based on a model of ‘love’ that belied emotional realism. Women were, for the most part, there to be rescued, or won, or traded. Sometimes they would offer useful advice to the hero, or be there as a villainous foil – but for the most part, they were not the protagonists of your basic adventuring fairytale. A tale focused on a female character usually had a moral purpose – don’t talk to strange hairy men in the woods, obey your husband’s unexplained demands about where you can go and what you can look at, be good and kind and patient and eventually your prince will claim you. A woman who was heading on an epic quest across land and sea, wearing out three pairs of iron shoes and travelling beyond the home of the sun – well, you’d better believe that it was all to find or reclaim a man. Fairytales transmitted a multitude of ideas about gender and sexuality, which I couldn’t properly express or explain at the time, but which had a lasting impact on how I related to the world.

Consuming all this as a child, these narratives and motifs were present in what I thought about and how I wrote – indeed, they still are. I was fascinated. There’s a ‘Waste Land’-like “heap of broken images” that still disturb me and intrigue me. Three princesses buried neck-deep in the sand along a coast. A girl vomiting up toads. A queen hiding in terror underneath the covers of her bed, waiting for the inevitable violation from her husband’s usurper – that one was particularly chilling. There was one story that stuck out as different: ‘Catherine and her Destiny’ from the Lang collections. Even though the adventures of the (named!) female protagonist were bracketed between the death of her rich father and her marriage to a rich husband, the rest of the story is entirely about relationships between women. Catherine is visited by a supernatural woman (her Destiny) who gives her the choice between a happy youth and a happy old age – when she chooses the latter, her comfortable life is destroyed and she spends years fending for herself and working for rich ladies as a maidservant. Eventually the curse is broken when one kind mistress asks her own Destiny, who is the sister of Catherine’s, to intervene and bring her sadness to an end. Back in the modern world, there is a Facebook group with over 125,000 members entitled ‘Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love’. I’d venture that it’s a common effect of saturation with fairy-tales. For my part, I loudly and repeatedly denounced the fallacies of the ‘love-at-first-sight leads to happily-ever-after’ narrative to my schoolmates. I think a better approximation of my own experience would be ‘Andrew Lang Made Me A Five-Year-Old Lesbian Separatist (Sort Of )’. Somewhat hyperbolic phrasing, since at five I had no personal experience of being sexually attracted to people of any gender, but like the political lesbians of the 1960s, I could see no benefits whatsoever from heterosexual relations. As I understood it, women married men because men rescued them or won them. Once you got married, you were expected to put up with cooking, cleaning, and – shudder – sex, which was some nebulously unpleasant life-ruining thing that created children and made you unable to run and jump for several months. Therefore, to prevent this, you should avoid being vulnerable around boys at all costs, in case they rescued you from something and you then had to marry them. Marriage was inevitably enslavement; sex was motivated purely by power relations and the need to produce an heir; and this compulsory heterosexuality could only be avoided through the pursuit of an Artemis-like chaste independence and vengefulness. The idea of having anything to do with boys seemed unpleasant at the best of times, and the idea that any woman might actively want to partake in something involving bleeding and babies was utterly unthinkable – I deftly skimmed the issue of my own parents, not quite believing grown-ups to be real people. I even drafted a short story about a young witch who convinced the other girls at school not to get to boyfriends, so they could

stay

learn

spells

From

feminist

independent like

her

current

and

instead.

sex-positive

perspective,

this

all

seems charmingly naïve. As I got a little older, I read more

children’s

books

with

strong female characters – two examples are E. Nesbit’s Alice and Enid Blyton’s George. Yet both of them were described in terms of being ‘almost as good as a boy,’ and other girls in the stories were at best soft

and gentle, and at worst weak and silly. In the fantasy novels I devoured, Tolkien’s most obviously kick-arse female character disguises herself as a man to be allowed to fight, and even the more modern and progressive Tamora Pierce books starred a heroine who disguised herself as a boy so she could become a knight. The ending for both Éowyn and Alanna – marriage and children – seemed like a betrayal of everything their characters had symbolised for me. Surely, surely, it was possible for a girl to do ‘boy things’, without eventually being folded back into a normative woman’s role? By the time I reached secondary school, I was well-known as a vocal opponent of traditional fairytale genderroles and Disney-style ‘happy endings’. And my misguided initial foray into feminist fairy-tales was by no means my last. I loved these stories so much, but there was never any space in them for people like me. So I wrote my own. At 14 I wrote a funny story about a Fairy Land in which the king and queen got divorced, the beautiful princess was abducted by a dark fairy (who was in love with her and wanted to save her from the superficiality of court life), the handsome prince ran away with a dashing young thief, and the kingdom was eventually ruled by the ‘ugly’ (read: plain and very competent) princess and her childhood sweetheart, the son of a woodsman. The ‘good’ fairy was a caffeine-addicted wreck who tried to restore normative order to the kingdom, before suffering a nervous breakdown and being given a low-stress job at a company that made magic mirrors. The last line was “and everybody else lived reasonably happily ever after, except for the ones that didn’t.” There was also a more detailed fantasy epic which I composed on-and-off for years, which featured characters on the LGBT spectrum before I’d even figured out I was queer myself. The protagonist, a female mercenary, was oblivious to the unrequited love from a damsel-in-distress she’d rescued, and was herself awkwardly crushing on a gay wizard. She eventually ended up with a character of ambiguous gender. On top of this, the most sympathetic of the villains was kinky and polyamorous (although I didn ’t have those words to describe it back then!). As I progressed through secondary school and sixth form, I also started engaging with re-imaged fairytales on an academic level as well as a creative one – my final-year piece was on Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and Emma Donoghue’s ‘Kissing the Witch’, examining how each explored female sexuality through in their versions of well-known stories like ‘Beauty and the Beast’. The last time I wrote something rooted in fairytale – rather than the Classical and North European myths which are also firmly lodged in my mind – it was a strange little story called ‘The Prince Who Loved A Monster’. Written out of a need for catharsis rather than as an academic thought-experiment, I find it interesting that my farewell to a relationship of five years naturally took the form of a subverted fairy story. The moral, if it can be called that, was ‘sometimes relationships just don’t work’, with a side-helping of ‘be yourself, not who someone else thinks you are’. Looking through my diary from earlier that year, I found this scribbled at the end of a rant about stereotypes and identity: “WE NEED NEW MYTHS. OUR OWN ONES.” And whether that ‘we’ means women, or feminists, or queers, or kinksters, or polyamorists, or anyone else who lives on the borderlands of heteropatriarchal society – yes, yes we do. We need to tell our own stories and watch them ascend through culture until they displace the old patterns that reproduce power and violence and damaging gender-norms. We need new templates that give precedent and permission to whole kaleidoscopes of genders and sexualities and relationship structures and ways of being in the world. We need fairytales of our own, that teach about the world as it is, but also that give us hope to build it better.

DISTRACTIONS

Crossword: Cryptography & Cake ARCADIAN

This devilish crossword is challenge enough. But if you can answer it all, you’ll also have the missing ingredients for a delicious cake, the incomplete recipe to which is on the next page. And if you get really stuck, the answers are at the back.

Across 1. Agent of evil dispatched by sovereign force (6,6) 13. Bitter heart of vodka lemon (3) 14. Penniless, old, roped somehow into commercial contract (4) 15. Zealots must renounce misguided attacks to discover essential enthusiasm (4) 16. Holy bather offers John a little peep (6) 18. Old Cretan goes on about article after merest synopsis in a linear language (6) 20. Squid traversing stormy heart of deep seas produces creature with one and a half feet? (9) 22. Single Latin lass (3) 24. Champion with a weakness for cards embracing ‘a woman of pleasure’? (8) 26. Extreme characters invading Turkish domain to establish dictator (4) 27. Male kind of human kindness? (4) 28. Branch of pacifists (and some Greens) introducing ‘dreary’ uniform (5) 31. Tropical bird in wingless flap (3) 32. Old Testament priest flees continental island (3) 33. Universal rage is all without a resolution for paramilitary fighters (9) 36. Mafia captain raises tone after father prompts fresh start? (4) 37. Son is able to analyse metric structure (4) 38. Royal student is backing Queen’s counsel (4) 40. A wry nod to lawlessness (7) 43. Who’s identity could be ruled out by his character after losing daughter? (5) 44. Sound heard plainly (6) 46. Constant steeds bear what is as sure as these? (4) 48. Measure mile oddly (2) 50. Losing it without doubt, arbiter returns intimate support (3) 51. Alma entertains scholar burning for

Spanish flame (5) 52. Hail to hoary King abdicating in confusion (4) 53. Old oath singularly expressed by wind instrument missing low notes (3) 54. Old oath singularly expressed by wind instrument missing low notes (5) 55. Ancient figure, old Futhark say, lost in half-neurotic rambling (4)

Down 1. 40’s symbol & cimbals clash with restorative power (8) 2. Cavalry formations convene in the style of 43’s number (4) 3. Chicken dish I left out for old English Ned (3) 4. Mesopotamian 33a with retrograde intelligence (5) 5. Imprecise intelligence about slippery lube? (8) 6. Consultant’s group ousting central members (2) 7. I record shock backlash in Neapolitan city (6) 8. Love receives last letter in controversial magazine (2) 9. Pursue Peter’s girl without consent (4) 10. Zounds! A nameless new lady to lead the lords (6) 11. When I think I’ll come to Hellenic character (3) 12. To venture putting a Hispanic female in luxury motor is grand (3,1,4) 17. Watch out! Novice’s heading for some kind of spill (3) 19. Dine sporadically in other words (2) 21. He’s corrupted by Polish deviant in drag (5) 23. Bring back a flower of the Orient for Émile’s mistress (4) 25. Top CEO on trial over procuring ‘coriander’ leaves (8)

29. Old Poland’s namesake born of the French church (4) 30. Sour Conservative turning in grave (7) 33. Bangor always accommodates horny hill-billy? (5) 34. Édouard leaves, ready to become brilliant artist? (3) 35. Tiny little diminutive girl (3) 38. Sweetener offered by student union with charitable backing (5) 39. Cantaloupe turns out to be a dud (5) 40. New Labour order for the dishonourable discharge of serpents? (4) 41. More than one Gaelic island - hopper? (4) 42. Council leader holds platform on waterways (4) 45. Grass grows up the path of Eastern philosophy (3) 46. Bond’s boss in Europe scoring Aussie chick? (3) 47. Give us back hydrogen to create a god of air (3) 49. Saint fallen from fashion concocted caustic solution (3)

Recipe for 40 Across Cake Directions

Now use your answers to fill in

Preheat

the recipe below, and bake away.

Mark 4

Only do me a favour – check your

oven

350°F/175°C/Gas

Line the bottom of a 10 to 12 inch

answers at the back before you

springform cake tin (11 being ‘ideal’

sample your new cake. Don’t get

but cakes and equipment often being

ill, kids.

less so!) with parchment paper, brush

Ingredients

with 28a 17d, and lightly 54a.

6 8d plain 38d

Chop or grate your chosen filling; If using fresh fruit, gently toss with 1

6 8d caster 54a

tablespoon of 38d and set aside until

1 ½ tsp 1a

needed.

2 46a

In a small bowl, sift 54a and 1a; add any dry herbs or spices and set aside.

2 tsp 39d 15a

Using an electric mixer, beat 46a with

90 48a 28a 17d

38d and 39d 15a until light, fluffy and

90 48a 27a

pale in colour. This could take as long as 5 minutes.

3/4 tsp 1d 30d Up

8oz

Add the 28a 17d; then add 27a and 1d

whatever

30d and/or any liquid essence, beat-

fresh or dried fruit, nuts, chocolate

chips

ing until fully combined.

shav-

ings you think you’ll most

Using a rubber spatula, fold in the 54a

enjoy

mixture.

consuming

through

the medium of cake in the

Pour the batter into the prepared pan

near future! Don’t

and drop the fruit or chocolate over

hesitate

experiment

either

the

ad-

with

the top. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of 38d.

dition of herbs or spices when

combining

dry

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until

in-

the top is a light golden-brown and

gredients; or a liqueur or an

essence

alongside

a knife blade inserted in the centre

the

comes out clean. If it seems your cake

27a. In the case of a suspected

flavour

clash

is cooking faster on top than in the

you

middle, cover with a circle of foil or

may wish to add the latter

baking parchment to protect it from

instead of the 1d 30d, but

the

above all this is a fun cake in

the

spirit

fiercest

heat

whilst

finishes

cooking.

culinary

40Across.

Cool on a wire rack for about 5 minutes before turning out and basking in the warm aroma of imminent cake!

What we’re reading Wildwood

thusing about. But ultimately he’s a writer writing

GINA LAWRENCE

about what he loves best, and that enthusiasm shines through on every page, even if it does occasionally

Waiting for a friend, I picked up a book by chance from the bargain bin in Waterstones.

manif est in slightly tedious measurements of his

I was having a

bedroom ceiling. These are always in check though;

bad day, and I decided I deserved a treat – not that,

never more than a page, and I’m sure more enjoyable

as a rule, I aim to reward myself for being in a stink-

if you’ve got any clue what he’s waxing on about. I

ing bad mood with presents. I’d never heard of the

just don’t, so am content to regard my ignorance as

book, the author – not even the publisher before the

his shortcoming.

moment I picked it up off the shelf. I was in the mood where I wanted to buy something. What can I say,

Anyway, if you fancy it, there’s a paperback copy

I’m just a self-esteem victim of capitalism. The book

in the Hampstead Oxfam. I’d suggest helping the

was Roger Deakin’s ‘Wildwood: A Journey Through

charity by buying it there, then wandering up to the

Trees.’ Anyway, having finished it I did some re-

wooded bit of Hampstead Heath, and having a day in

search. Turns out, The Guardian thought it was so

the park while the trees are in their autumn colour-

interesting they reviewed it twice – once as a review,

change glory. I’m a great believer in reading a book

on the 30th of June, and then again on the 15th July

where it comes from to understand it better; in this

as a feature in the science and nature section. I’d

case, even more so than usual.

like to think the review bloke went “Oi, Tim in Science and Nature section! You’d love this, you big tree

Sunbed Perusals

bummer.”

TOM WEIN

We’ve all heard of metalheads – well this guy is a woodhead. He is obsessed with both woods and

A recent holiday was spent mostly prone, devouring

wood, both as the living trees together in one place

books. Here follow some impressions.

and as a building material. He is a craftsman, and drops

casually

into

measurements

don’t

‘Anna Karenina’: I finished this the day before our

under-

departure. Suffice it to say that it deserves its reputa-

stand about how to build a house, whether to use

tion. From the very first moment, one feels oneself to

willow or oak. It’s a refreshing change from fiction

be in the hands of a master. Even the dull bits (and at

– not as funny as Bill Bryson, but more poetic. His

850 pages of course there are a few) feel deliberate

style brings into vibrant focus the places he wanders

and carefully calculated, designed to reflect the true

with sunset backdrops, delicate draws the moths he

human experience and to give the reader enough time

delights in – but not the people he meets. It really is

to prepare for the overwhelming peaks of emotion.

focussed on the wildlife and the landscape; here is

Every character is an utter and complete human, and

no cafe culture of the woods. He’s a grown up tree

Tolstoy will play with you, making one party a mon-

hugger, aged past pure idealism and into dedication.

ster, then with a flick of a phrase humanizing them

The solitude of the experienced hiker is there in his

again, leaving you simultaneously guilty for failing

narrative voice; very few people are given more than

to remember that any scenario has multiple perspec-

a name, and a relationship to their land which im-

tives, and also gasping at his unshowy skill. Though

mediately takes precedence. Do not read this for a

I cannot compare it to others, my translation was by

discussion of woodland life, but for the joy of feel-

Rosemary Edmonds, and it was beautiful.

ing bark under the fingertips and the sun drifting in dusty rafters between the canopy above your head. The

phrasing

occasionally

tricky,

with

Next I read DBC Pierre’s ‘Lights Out in Wonderland’, a gift from Gina. This is a delirious, wild book, and

sentences

reading it is not unlike riding a bucking anaconda

as long and gnarled as the knotted branch he’s en-

through a coral reef. The premise is that the narrator

decides to kill themselves - and then realizes they they don’t have to do it immediately. Freed of responsibilities, they embark on a globe-trotting debauch, offering caustic and categorical assessments on life. On a rational level, I disagree with almost all these assessments - yet on an emotional level, and especially when still reading the book, they are utterly true in a way that goes beyond argumentation and accuracy. In my nodding agreement to many things which utterly offend my bourgeois sensibilities, I found it at times rather scary. If Anna Karenina made me vibrate like a cello string, this made me rush like a bilesome wave in a Victorian sewer. Gentler fare followed. Plenty would find Duncan Hamilton’s memoir of the 2009 cricket season, ‘A Last English Summer’, intensely dull, but I raced restfully through it. Its pessimistic tone and conviction that everything was better when the author was young grate, it is true, but the style is lyrically pastoral, and the evocations of past players and recent matches powerful. Rounding off the week was ‘The Selected Works of T S Spivet’, the first novel by Reif Larsen, and one of my captures from a safari into The Strand bookstore in New York. It is illustrated, and the first thing to say is that it is unutterably beautiful, visually. I immediately wanted to check if other editions are available and collect them all. As to the content, it tells the story of a 12-year-old cartographic prodigy who stows away to Washington DC when the Smithsonian Institute award him a prestigious fellowship (not knowing his age). Naturally it is a coming of age story, not dissimilar in tone (though utterly different in setting) to the film Submarine. It is bittersweet and beautifully judged, and though the ending is rather sudden, the impressions it leaves remain fresh.

The Joy of Cricket TOM WEIN

“Welcome to Lord’s for the first Test Match of this Ashes Summer. The umpires are out, and we’re ready to resume after lunch. James Anderson runs up to the wickets, and bowls. A quick ball, on a good length which swings away from Ponting, but he is equal to the task. Driving smoothly to cover, he picks up two runs, taking the score to 87 for three.” This is a short enough paragraph, and simple enough. It contains sufficient information for a student of the game to envision the scene, though it is presumably half gibberish to others. A repeat of the paragraph, this time with footnotes, should hopefully help convince the novice reader of the multilayered magnificence of the sport:

“Welcome to Lord’s(i) for the first Test Match(ii) of this Ashes Summer.(iii) (iv) The umpires(v) are out, and we’re ready to resume after lunch.(vi) James Anderson(vii) runs up to the wickets, and bowls. A quick ball,(viii) on a good length which swings away(ix) from Ponting,(x) but he is equal to the task. Driving smoothly to cover,(xi) (xii) he picks up two runs,(xiii) taking the score to 87 for three.(xiv) (xv)” (i) Lord’s is the home of cricket. Its very name instantly conjures sensations of unbroken tradition; it was founded in 1814. It is the home of the Marylebone Cricket Club, who write the laws of the game. Its conservatism is evident in its ground rules; spectators may not bring in musical instruments (which are vulgar), or use mobile telephones, but they may bring in some alcohol – two cans of beer or a bottle of wine, the disparity in quantity apparently reflecting the management’s view of the sort of people who select those drinks. The conservatism is there in the Pavilion, a handsome Victorian building of red brick, which generally houses braying members in their ‘ham and egg’ – pink and yellow – striped ties (some of the racier members contin-

ue the theme with matching blazers and hat bands). Inside that Pavilion are the famous boards listing every century (100 runs by a batsman, a traditional target) or fifer (five wickets, the bowling equivalent) achieved on the ground. Yet Lord’s has also broken with tradition, architecturally. Facing the Pavilion is the space-age media centre, a pod of white and glass raised some thirty metres above the ground, from where journalists view the match. (ii) A Test Match is the five-day form of cricket, played only at international level. In it, each team of eleven players bats to make as many runs as they can, before the opposition gets all of their batsmen out. Each team bats twice, alternating, and the scores from their two innings are added together. The team that scores the most runs wins. Test Matches compete with a one-day format (in which each team is limited to a single innings lasting fifty overs, or 300 balls), or the recently added Twenty20 format (twenty overs per side). Test Matches are, in my opinion, the highest form of the game, because their length allows space for drama to unwind, and for true talent and determination to surface. However, only in England do they retain unquestioned popularity. India are the dominant power in cricket politics because of their cash, and they do not favour the Test Match. Indeed, though the Twenty20 format was invented in England, it is India who have made a real success of it. The IPL is a flashy tournament of Bollywood gold, cheerleaders and enormous viewing figures. (iii) An Ashes Summer is when Australia tour England. This happens every two years, and is the biggest event in the cricketing calendar, for English fans. Australia are the oldest rivals. The five-Test tournament is named the Ashes. In 1882, Australia beat England on English soil for the first time, a considerable shock. The Sporting Times published an obituary of English cricket, stating that the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. Since then, a comically small urn containing a burned cricket ball has been the ultimate cricketing prize. From 1987 to 2005, England lost every Ashes contest to a ruthless Australia. In 2005, in the most remarkable series I have ever watched, England scraped through. An open-top bus tour through London culminated in an uproariously drunk Freddie Flintoff stumbling through a Downing Street reception. Australia, stung by this defeat, beat England 5-0 in 2007. (iv) The phrasing of this sentence is classically that of Jonathan Agnew. Aggers, as he is known, presently hosts the BBC’s radio coverage, Test Match Special. The good humour, knowledge and eccentricity of the commentators is indispensable. There is Henry Blofeld, a mock-aristocrat who observes birds and buses as much as he does cricket, and whose fruity catchphrase is ‘my dear old thing’. There is Geoffrey Boycott, one of the finest batsmen England have had. He is by training and instinct a wind-up Yorkshireman, permanently feisty but undoubtedly expert. The commentary team are routinely sent cakes by well-wishers. (v) It is a significant sin to challenge an umpire, and players that do so find it to be expensive. However, improvements in cameras have increasingly exposed their errors, at some cost to the notional assumption of umpirical infallibility. One of the great debates of modern cricket is the extent to which various forms of technology should be employed. At present, the technologists have the upper hand, with the introduction of the Decision Review System (DRS, christened Doris). Though the use of replays is fairly well accepted, much debate centres around Hawkeye. Hawkeye’s macho name betrays its origins: it was developed to shoot down Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles, and has only latterly been used to track and predict the flight of the ball, to aid in judging the notoriously tricky Leg Before Wicket decisions. (vi) A day of Test cricket is split into three sessions. In between, there are breaks for lunch and tea. This is an exceptionally civilized way to play sport. Though the higher echelons ingest pasta and energy drinks, at village level tea still consists of cakes and sandwiches. Indeed, a female friend despises cricket, not on its merits but because she was forced to perfectly arrange sandwiches for the men. (vii) James Anderson is the leader of the England bowling attack. He is noted for his ability to swing the ball (that is, getting it to bend its flight). Always able to take wickets, he has more recently outgrown a former

looseness which meant he often conceded many runs in return for those wickets. A strikingly handsome man from Burnley, he appeared naked in Attitude magazine and has been dubbed ‘the first metrosexual cricketer’. Most cricket fans would rather drool over his late outswing, but no doubt some enjoy both. (viii) A quick ball is one that approaches 90 miles per hour. Most top-class teams have at least two players who can bowl at this pace. The very fastest bowlers – Shoaib Akhtar of Pakistan and Brett Lee of Australia – have bowled over 100mph, but even they have only managed it a few times in their career. Older commentators like to mutter that the bowlers of yesteryear were faster, but since speed guns were not then used, this is unprovable. Depending on their allegiances, they cite Lillee and Thompson, a hirsute Australian pairing of the eighties, or the West Indian attack. The West Indian attack is a phrase which requires no elaboration for many fans: throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the West Indies fielded an astonishing array of bowlers, each with their own qualities, but all uniquely fast. Batsmen were terrified. The West Indians are nowadays sadly diminished by sloppy management and the rise of basketball. It is rumoured that in the 2005 Ashes series, England tampered with the speed guns, to make their bowlers seem more intimidating. (ix) Swing bowling is one of the most magical of cricketing arts. The ball can be made to deviate in the air (at nearly 90mph); the very finest swing bowlers can make it do so only at the very last second, surprising the batsman. This is achieved by shining one side of the ball with spit, so that air passes faster over that side, like an aerofoil. So vital and precise is this job that many teams nominate a shiner. Bowlers will then conceal the ball as they prepare to bowl, so that batsmen do not know on which side is shiny, and hence which way the ball will swing. For poorly-understood reasons, the ball swings more in overcast conditions. This helps explain why England have long been leading proponents of swing bowling – and also why they fare badly abroad. In the 2009 Ashes, English players sucked on sweets so that they could call up sufficient quantities of spit; the sugar may also have had a beneficial effect, and there was some controversy in the Australian press at the time. All cricketing controversies live in the shadow of Bodyline, an astonishing episode. In the 1920s, Australia repeatedly thrashed England, led by Don Bradman, who is widely considered the game’s greatest ever batsman. In 1933, captain Douglas Jardine led the tour Down Under. He hated Australians, and other poor people. At his urging, England repeatedly bowled potentially lethal balls straight at batsmen’s heads. Irate crowds jeered, and nearly rioted, and building tension culminated in a British Minister threatening a boycott of Australian goods. (x) Ponting should be considered one of the great tragic figures of modern culture. He was one of the finest batsmen in the magnificent Australian team of the 2000s. A natural leader, he was appointed captain of Australia in 2004. His team contained about half of the world’s world-class players, and he became the most successful captain in Australia’s history. In 2007, Australia hammered England 5-0. Many of his players, ageing and satisfied, retired. By 2011, he was the last top-class player in a much-diminished Australia team. Always abrasive, he shouted at umpires and chewed gum furiously. Under pressure to carry the team, his form utterly deserted him. He barely made a run all series, and there was no one left to carry him. He has now lost the Ashes three times, and he has lost the captaincy too. He says he hopes to carry on a little longer. (xi) Among cricket connoisseurs, certain shots are considered to have a higher moral value than others, separate from the number of runs they garner. The cover drive is the most graceful of them all. Its leading exponent is said to be David Gower, a floppy-haired toff of the 1980s. During a game, David Gower once left the ground, rented a light aircraft and returned to fly as low as he could over the stadium. (xii) Cover is one of the positions at which fielders stand. Others include silly mid-off, slip, long leg, square leg, fine leg and gully. I have no idea why. (xiii) Running between the wickets is governed by the calls Yes, No and Wait. It can be a hazardous business, if the two batsmen do not communicate well. By the end of his career, the Pakistani captain Inzaman ul-Haq had become so rotund that he almost never ran; he simply hit boundaries instead.

(xiv) 87 is an unlucky score, according to Australian cricketing superstition. This is because it is 13 short of a century. The English equivalent is 111. This may be because it resembles a wicket without the bails. 111 is referred to as a Nelson, because Admiral Lord Nelson is said to have had one eye, one arm and one leg (though in fact both his legs were intact). For both teams, it is common for supporters to raise their feet off the floor while on this score, to avoid the bad fortune it foretells. Jack Russell, a famously superstitious cricketer (and now a mediocre artist) had so many routines and eccentricities that it would be exhausting to list them here. (xv) The England team would be seeking to exploit the supposedly unlucky score by sledging Ponting. Sledging comprises the insulting discussions between the fielders, designed to be overheard by the batsman. They often seek to exploit batsmen perceived to be low in confidence; since there are eleven fielders and only two batsmen on the field at any one time, a great part of batting is mental fortitude. Indeed, some of the mightiest and best-remembered innings are the feats of endurance: Michael Atherton’s 185 runs over 643 minutes and 492 balls, in Johannesburg, has passed into English sporting folklore. The very finest players do not get sledged, because it only encourages them. My very favourite sledge was in fact not directed at the batsman, but was an exchange between fiery Yorkshire bowler Fred Trueman and a sheepish fielder who let the ball through his legs: “Sorry Fred, I should have kept my legs together.” “So should your mother.” Though cricket is outwardly a sport of chivalry, beyond the reach of the microphones it is often virulently competitive. One of the fascinating aspects of the game is the tension between these imperatives: ‘the spirit of the game’ and the impulse to victory. Batsmen are expected to walk off the pitch if they believe they are out, even if the umpire has not spotted it. Some of them actually do so.

JOINING THE TEAM 26

Joining the Team TOM WEIN

A few months back, I was at a student party. The conversation turned, as it does, to jobs and futures. The room went cold, and silent. I, employed and ‘going places’, shifted uncomfortably.

At the cliff My generation is at the cliff. For years now, we have followed the arrow straight path steeply up. That path was straight fives, 5 A*s, 6 As and a B, four As and a first class degree. Exams are often described as a treadmill, but we knew we were going somewhere. We were going on to what was next. The greatest minds of my generation got 500 UCAS points. Now, though, we stare up at the cliff. Three hammer blows have destroyed our Via Ferrata. First, the ladder was yanked up. The jobs went, and the house prices spiralled beyond sanity. These were the markers of our proudly bourgeois ambitions, and we are denied them. So we are in limbo, with a little time on our hands to observe the world. Second, the promises went too, or more specifically, those who made the promises lost our faith. The reason there are no jobs is simple enough to divine – the bankers fucked it up. They told us they knew what they were doing, and built a bubble whose bursting nearly drowned us all. That is bad enough, but it is worse still for some of us, because bankers are not an abstract group. They are friends and parents, and they are guilty of the most stupendous error, an error which has caused unbelievable suffering across the globe. We do not want to become them. Third, Britain rioted. The poor and disenfranchised, the not us, stole and burned and stoned. We do not want to live with them – and if we are not with them, we are in the height of suburbanism, and that means banking. We will not be as rich as our parents. Indeed, it is because our parents are rich that we will not be. We will pay their pensions and their debt, rent their second homes and educate the masses they forgot. We struggle.

Problems with solutions We do not, however, struggle hopelessly. The problems we face are enormous, but taken separately they each have their solutions. The graduate unemployment numbers vary from one study to the next, but they are all huge, and our experience tells us they are true. It is not just those who are on the dole; we all know plenty who have returned to Sainsbury’s, or are taking a desperate MA. The careers we were promised did not turn up. Yet if the problem were simply graduate unemployment, measures could be taken. Every company could be forced to offer a few management apprenticeships, paid at minimum wage. These would offer a modicum of financial independence and a route into work, while companies would get graduates, talented and already trained, for pennies. Germany has found a way to cut hours not jobs, so that fewer employees are cut off completely; I imagine plenty of us would accept two days a week, paid. Financial services companies provide many of the graduate jobs in London. Despite their investment in HR departments to plan and adjust, they have shown an astonishing, astrategic willingness to panic, closing hiring altogether in 2008; the state can surely offer some reassurances (to split the costs of newly unnecessary recruits, for instance) that would

make such convulsions rarer. Entrepreneurship remains shockingly undervalued. These are practical measures to combat a particular problem. Would that it were the only such problem; it is not. Take property, for instance. For decades, it has made sense to buy as soon as possible, because it was not a property ladder – it was a property elevator. If you could just run up enough stairs to catch it, you could sit safely on an ever-increasing pile of wealth, and borrow against it for other nice things. Now, property prices are stable and high; there is no chance of buying now. But planning laws mean we cannot simply build a house, as forbears a few centuries ago might have done. So we rent, throwing our cash into small rooms with short leases, and asking permission to put up pictures. Yet again, there are solutions to be had. Councils used to provide homes for those who needed them, and they can again, if we are willing to pay for it. Renting works well enough in Berlin and Amsterdam. There are underpublicized shared purchase schemes that have some advantages. Yet again, there are more problems still. Political riot in Tottenham (itself a problem of race relations and authority) soon turned to looting. The causes were many and varied, but one is the broken promises of a consumer society that in 2008 yanked away the easy credit that had lubricated it. For that one, I don’t know the solution. Government can only do so much; society must simply adjust its expectations of what material goods comprise the bare minimum, and what levels of debt are acceptable. Greater efforts to address the information imbalance would help; plenty buy AXA’s bad-value funeral plan because it has Michael Parkinson and a free pen, and in an information-deluged society few of us are capable of keeping track of the many ways companies try to screw us. We could catalogue more. The full list is enumerated in Howker & Malik’s ‘Jilted Generation’, and more soberly in David Willetts’ ‘The Pinch’. With the demolition of the grammar school system, social mobility is broken. We can expect to live well into our eighties, with an extended period of infirmity; is it even possible to save enough to live that long, without working till we drop? We may be certain that we will not get the pensions that our parents do, and they are not even getting the pensions that their parents did. There are desperately few low-skilled jobs, anywhere. Each of these problems has a solution, or at the very least measures which would help. But they cost money, and the pie is not infinite. Right now, with no economic growth, more on the dole and interest to pay on some truly gigantic debts, it is rather smaller than it was a few years ago. Only liars and fools promise to raise money solely by cutting waste. We could pay a little more tax – I hereby volunteer to do so – but basically the money will have to be taken from cutting other programs.

A movement for change If young people are a constituency then they should, in this democratic system, be able to lobby for those changes. Yet by practice and inclination we are not particularly well-prepared to do so. One reason is our education. The modern British A-Level teaches argument, and analysis, and seeing both sides. I think it does so rather well, and these are all vital tools for designing effective policy prescriptions. But we are trained here for scepticism – the cosy scepticism and individualism that functions only in the good times. Scepticism doesn’t know how, it only knows why. Once at university, scepticism is not rewarded; undergraduates are encouraged to transcribe classic texts, not to think. Large classes mean there is little chance to develop the challenging relationships with professors that made university so valuable to previous generations. Thus infantilized, there is little incentive to do more than the minimum of reading between bouts of drunkenness. Long periods of unemployment then do little to build the necessary confidence.

Another reason is our ideals. Diversity, inclusiveness and individualism are touchstones of our generation. These are wonderful things, but as EM Forster noted in the 1930s, tolerance means non-interference, and putting up with things; it is a poor inspiration for action, and action is what is needed. We have placed our faith in flux, and found it too slippery for hard times. Action needs a coherent community with shared aims. Building such a community will be immensely painful. This magazine has been a celebration of outsiderhood, but to build a shared community, many outsiders will have to bite their tongues, and suppress a great part of themselves for the greater good. We shall try to make the community as tolerant as is possible, but if it is too wooly it will go nowhere. There are those who would put their faith in flashmobs; who would say that the riots and UK Uncut have proved that an organized mass movement is no longer necessary in the internet age. This is a very old debate. In Belgium, in 1903, Lenin and Martov clashed over whether it is better to have a small corps of professional revolutionaries (the Bolshevik position), or a large number of affiliated activists (Martov’s Mensheviks). The former solution would certainly be easier to organize, and would be less painful to sign up to. We might thereby preserve our individualism. However, it guarantees that the vast majority of the supporters of the movement would be poorly informed and half committed. That might be sufficient to present a petition to Parliament, but to achieve lasting change on such a range of issues, an organized mass movement of the young is the only solution. We do not delight in this conclusion. Communities are only good things if you’re in one. Strong communities in Britain excluded black people, Catholics, the disabled, gays and single mothers. Communities are generally secured by frequent reference to an outgroup or common enemy. This movement will exclude the old, and ask the young dissenters to subordinate themselves. We do so with a due sense of the pain that will bring. With luck the internet may prove a salve; the decoupling of geography and community may allow dissenters space to dissent in one corner while advocating for the movement on the streets.

Personal experiences Over the past year, I have begun to be sure about things. My concept of tolerance has moved. Previously I delighted in the smorgasbord of opinions, and always saw both sides. Now, like Forster, I put up with difference, and argue against those with whom I disagree. You may legally say what you will, but I will criticize you for it. I have started joining teams. I am now a Christian, and a member of the Labour Party. Neither are very satisfactory. The Bible is full of bilge, and the Pope defends rapists in robes. Ed Miliband wouldn’t inspire a limerick. Yet in both cases, their ideals outweigh their current behaviour. Today’s Church may be an embarrassment, but Christianity stands for the meek. Today’s Labour Party may be filled with tossers, but it has built a country where starvation is not an issue, and we die from heart disease and cancer – from living too well and too long. So rather than starting my own party, or my own religion, I join in with these. To do otherwise would be to allow the perfect to obstruct the practical. Our problems are urgent. So join in. I’m asking you to pick a side. Make the argument. Don’t keep an open mind, don’t play the Devil’s Advocate. Say what you mean, not what fills a witty gap. Once in, make your arguments, and we will listen. Only please, do not leave if we do not always agree. We must, we must be disciplined and we must move forward. Join in, join in.

HELPLESSNESS BLUES ROBIN PECKNOLD & FLEET FOXES

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique, Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see. And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.

But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be. I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see. What’s my name, what’s my station, oh, just tell me what I should do! I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you Or bow down and be grateful and say “sure, take all that you see” To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me.

And I don’t, I don’t know who to believe. I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see.

If I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak. Yeah I’m tongue-tied and dizzy and I can’t keep it to myself What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else? And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf. I’ll come back to you someday soon myself.

If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw. If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore. And you would wait tables and soon run the store. Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn. If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore. If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore.

Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen.

THE TRUE FACE

Editor’s Thanks

About Our Contributors

Thank you most of all to you, for

Tom Wein: Tom is the founder and editor of False Moustache. In the

reading. You Thanks

really

are

additionally

derful

writers;

sport.

daytime, he analyzes politics and foreign affairs. At night, he listens to

our

won-

Radio Four and sips whisky. A consummate urbanite, he rarely ventures

you’d

know a little more about them, check out the bios on the right. If you’re a fabulously wealthy patron and would like to give them work, then do get in touch. Thanks too to the ever-lovely Sabine, who designed

this

beautiful

magazine;

without her, it would just be a rather dull succession of emails. I hope to produce a second edition of False Moustache. If you’d like to

contribute,

your

idea

then

please

send

tomwein880@gmail.

com and I’ll see what I can do. Here’s

this

world’s

continued

ex-

istence,

beyond Zone 3, and is currently undertaking an experiment in the appropriate caffeine-sleep balance. Gemma Gordon-Gibson: Gemma was born and raised in Brentwood. She left to study English Literature at King’s, where she balanced critical essays on Shakespeare with a part time job at an online media company. When she finally became a grownup she ended up putting her 19th century literature knowledge to good use by becoming the digital manager for Gold Challenge; a charity challenge event that’s part of the legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Luke Blaxill: Luke is final-year PhD student of British political history at King’s College London. His political heroes are Robert Peel, Robert Lowe, and the Marquis of Salisbury. He is in favour of ‘regressive’ policies: that is to say, the reverse of policies which are presented as ‘progressive’. Emily Monaghan: Emily is a student of film and classics with a collection of Latin translations, attractive headwear and diverse craft equipment. If she can’t be Doctor Who or Oscar Wilde, she will be a world

Tom

famous director. Hel Gurney: Hel comes from Oxfordshire, studied English at King’s College London, and is pursuing postgraduate studies at the University of Sussex in cultural representations of gender-transgression since the

Images & Rights

16th century. Hel is fascinated by borders and binaries, memories and mythologies, and how they can be blurred and transcended.

All rights to the content in this

Leah Weiner: From Toronto, Canada, Leah is an all-around nerd who

magazine remains with the crea-

jumps between the UK and Canada, and other continents as necessary.

tors named, who have been kind

She recently completed her master’s degree in history, and aims to trav-

enough to give me permission to

el, make music, teach, and learn for a year or so before undertaking a

use it here. If you wish to reuse

PhD in the history of health policy.

any of the content, please seek permission

first,

which

can

done via the editor.

Arcadian: Arcadian is a consummate laywoman, with a smorgasbord of recurring interests wherein puzzles such as this nestle alongside etymology & long-distance running; crime-noire & cake-making; formal

The images in this magazine were

logic & illustration. She aspires one day to have a regular crossword col-

created by the very talented Emma

umn, a place in a research lab and a bicycle with more than two gears.

Winston

and

Ciaran

Fisher,

with

the exception of the cover, which was taken by Tom Wein.

Gina Lawrence: Born in Hampshire but now a Londoner, Gina spent a childhood buried in books and long may that last. Gina works in the travel industry, but maintains a perennial wariness of destinations lacking drinking credentials. Esther Beadle: Esther is a twenty-two year old languages graduate. An avid fan of seventies rock music, she is most at home in a loud bar be-

ing screamed at by men with long

Crossword answers

hair. One day she might write for

Did you get them all right?

a living. Until then though, she’s selling make-up in a department store. CN Lester: CN is a singer-songwriter,

classical

mezzo-soprano,

writer and activist. Creative Director of En Travesti Ensemble, their debut alternative album Ashes is scheduled

for

release

late

2011.

Emma Winston: Emma is a musicologist-in-training

currently

Down

rectly, this is the recipe you will

1. BAKINGPOWDER

1. BALSAMIC

have ended up with.

13. ALE

2. ALAE

14. REPO

3. KEV

Preheat

15. ZEST

4. IRAQI

Mark 4

5. NEBULOUS

Line the bottom of a 10 to 12 inch

6. GP

springform cake tin (11 being ‘ide-

16. LAVABO 18. MINOAN 20. SESQUIPED

24. ACHILLES 26. TZAR

studying for a Masters at Gold-

27. MILK

smiths,

28. OLIVE

University

London.

If you filled in the directions cor-

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22. UNA

www.cnlester.com

Cake Directions

7. POMPEI 8. OZ 9. WEND 10. DSOUZA 11. ETA 12. RUNARISK 17. OIL

oven

350°F/175°C/Gas

al’ but cakes and equipment often being

less

so!)

with

parchment

paper, brush with oil, and lightly flour. Chop or grate your chosen filling; If

using

fresh

fruit,

gently

toss

with 1 tablespoon of sugar and set aside until needed.

31. ANI

19. IE

the ukulele quite badly, and wish-

32. ILE

21. SHLEP

es she owned a unicorn. She also

33. GUERILLAS

23. NANA

takes pictures with pinhole cam-

spices and set aside.

36. CAPO

25. CILANTRO

eras, Japanese TLRs, and horribly

Using an electric mixer, beat eggs

37. SCAN

29. LECH

with sugar and lemon zest until

38. SILK

30. VINEGAR

light,

40. ANARCHY

33. GORAL

This could take as long as 5 min-

43. EULER

34. RAY

utes.

35. LIL

Add the oil; then add milk and

38. SUGAR

balsamic

39. LEMON

uid

40. ASBO

combined.

41. ARAN

Using a rubber spatula, fold in the

42. CILL

flour mixture.

45. TAO

Pour the batter into the prepared

46. EMU

pan and drop the fruit or choco-

47. SHU

late over the top. Sprinkle with the

her

spare

overused

time

she

iPhone

sings,

plays

photography

apps. Ciaran Fisher: Ciaran is a shaggyhaired

adventurer

and

entre-

preneur. He has taken photos of peace and quiet from Devon to Tobago, as well as of plants, people and protests wherever he goes. Anonymous: author

Anonymous astonishing

46. EGGS 48. ML 50. BRA 51. LLAMA

longevity

and variety, though of mixed quality.

44. STRAIT

52. AHOY 53. OON 54. FLOUR 55. RUNE

49. LYE

In a small bowl, sift flour and baking powder; add any dry herbs or

fluffy

and

vinegar

essence,

pale

and/or

beating

colour.

any

until

liqfully

remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top is a light golden-brown and a knife blade inserted in the centre comes out clean. If it seems your cake is cooking faster on top than in the middle, cover with a circle of foil or baking parchment to protect it from the fiercest heat whilst it finishes cooking. Cool on a wire rack for about 5 minutes

before

turning

out

and

basking in the warm aroma of imminent cake!

Your Turn Write here three things to do this year for fun:

Write here three things to do this year to help your friends:

Write here three things to do this year to help strangers:

Doodle in the spaces between

Learn Read Online Sociological Images Pervocracy Brain Pickings Mark Easton They Work For You Write To Them Zooniverse TED Information is Beautiful OKTrends Danger Room A Softer World

Read Offline Bad Science: Goldacre Jilted Generation: Howker & Malik The Spirit Level: Wilkinson & Pickett Das Kapital: Marx The Pinch: Willets What Being Black Is and What Being Black Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t: Whittingham On Tolerance: Forster

[Thank you]