“Theatre and theory are both contemplative pursuits” and the words themselves “come from the same root” (Fortier, 1997). Theory abounds. But ‘to theorise’ isn’t ‘to be’. Life named by the theoretical description isn’t real existence in the here and now.

John Berger in A Fortunate Man offers up “…patients are inordinately relieved when doctors give their complaint a name. The name may mean little to them; they may understand nothing of what it signifies; but because it has a name, it has an independent existence from them. They can now struggle or complain against it. To have a complaint recognised, that is to say defined, limited and depersonalised, is to be made stronger” (p. 74).

Theory then is the stage set for depersonalising life. A naming of something that we should not denote and where connotative language is not satisfying enough. To theorise is to represent life in another form but not life itself.

Roni Horn’s piece at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art is one of those show stoppers; the sort of exhibit that you can’t get past. A series of facial images taken seconds apart titled ‘Identity is a River’ it simply shows that in the space of fractions ‘we’ are many people; that our identities are fluid and shifting like water. That’s an uncomfortable thought as it suggests instability of ‘self’. But the images caught by Roni confirms that to judge ‘us’ by our physical selves is fraught.

This is all counter to the efforts of psychological typologies. The desire to fix us into our genetic predispositions; that our essence comes before our existence; that we are bound by the gene-pool. Psychology has had its stab at the human being but in the face of artistic renditions of self falls foul of the test of plausibility; although it appeals strongly to the masses seeking certainty, a solid descriptor which makes ‘complete’ sense. How seductive to label ourselves neatly and categorically.

But if our identity flows like a river then ‘we’ are dynamic and changing; and are many things over time. In the experiment known as ‘modern existence’ such notions fall foul of the Law of Large Numbers. The Mass should know their place in their demographic prison, dutiful consumers, fixed in the social hierarchy, known by their job title and parentage, school, university and the other leaden dead weights of labeling that dog our freedoms to change in any direction. Isn’t it bizarre that we have a conscience now for labeling children with crude descriptors but carry on doing this to adults; and that as adults we like our labels.

I’ve just finished reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Carol Ann Duffy’s introductory piece offers: “We carry poetry, even if we do not write it or read it… Her [Woolf’s] lyric intensity allows her, and us as her readers, to stand inside the lived moment – a woman buying flowers for a party; a couple on a park bench looking up at a skywriting plane; we can see the ‘smoke curtsying’ at a picnic…” Such evocations are far far from the Mass reductions of human existence to one of nine possible categories.

Woolf’s stream of lyrical writing expose that the crude structures of Hollywood aren’t able to reveal. That in fact we are lyrical in how we live and express; but when we enter organisations do we forego such creativity and adopt the social construction of automatons; reducing our language to the stilted spitting tin-tacks loved by our false realities. Hollywood of course can only brook a simple beginning, middle and end. The end has to be climatic, predictable and satisfying. There are no climatic endings in life; death even on the battlefield is frequently marked only by the horror of mundane futility.

Ordinariness is despised by Hollywood as it can’t see that the beauty of existence is in the ordinary moment but only in the plastic heroic moments of its falsehoods. Woolf and the William Faulkners see the whole breadth where the mass market cinematographer has no concept of self as the lyrical being. But ordinary fractional moments are the stuff of human existence. If we bend ourselves to ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ the intimate and meaningful ‘now’ we exist as us rather than as labelled constructions from the test tube.

I’d suggest a visit to Roni’s little show in the Royal Exchange Square disrupts these notions more powerfully than words. Plus the cafe below has chairs for dozing in and the library is as civilised as they get.

Also worth visiting is Jeremy Millar’s installation at Glasgow’s CCA in Sauchiehall Street. Cranberry scones feed the inner person too! Staff are interested and engaged.

Debate. I don’t mean the Soundbite, or the Sneer, nor Banter, but Debate, the stuff that used to involve swords physical and then swords metaphorical. Where is it? It used to be everywhere, in the pub, in the corridor, around the meal table, even, yes, even, in Parliament. Socrates offered he had no knowledge; that he wasn’t a teacher but a midwife, giving birth to our ideas. Catherine de Heuck Doherty cited that it’s possible ‘to listen a person’s soul into existence’.  Mark Antony required our ears. Pontius Pilate asked the crowd their thoughts. George Knightley said ‘Badly done Emma!’ after the excruciating picnic scene.

So what’s happened? Where do you get a response to your serious enquiry? Not across the Despatch Box as obfuscation and ad hominems are the art of the professional politician.

This is all odd. Debate should be legion. Why? Because modern Britain is built on Modernity. Modernity is built on Rationalism. Rationalists Reason. Reason is subject to… erm? Reason should be subject to Reason. But in practice rarely is. Reason goes unchallenged, left in its own juices, without a topspin-backhand-cross-court anything.

Why then?

Good rollicking Socratic Debate required the Public Space; a pushing back of chairs and voilà, a forum. The office, the factory, the Town Square, the agenda, the meal table are intrinsically spaces. Physical vacuums to be filled. Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair has Sarah encountering Smythe at Speaker’s Corner as critical to her angst.

But, rationalism has taken a new turn since its inception. It has encountered the professional, the policy, the ‘best practice’ guide. All high points of modernity. What required judgement and discernment is now on a 40-page Internet Training Programme with multiple choices of four-answers-per-question. This isn’t the sort of rationalism that has been subjected to reason alone, but expediency. Has it not dawned that removing human volition from decision making not only lowers risk but removes cognition and engagement and learning?

The public space has been filled by processes instead of substance and we are disengaged then? Well, if you do not have Jane Austen’s Emma picnicking in the Surrey countryside and falling foul of her peers you don’t have her redemption*. If you do not take the risk of free-debate you don’t have us against the mirror of our world.

Reason and rationalism were never meant to reduce risk; it was meant to increase it. Charles Taylor says modernity has to be rescued from its supporters. Modern professional management is not about deciding the agenda’s outcomes before the meeting; or putting effort into leading people to decisions you have categorically not previously exposed to anyone. The strident decision comes after strident long-structures of exposure of yourself to the ‘public spaces’ where you feel the multiplicity of opinion on you and your thinking. The strident decision might still be required in the face of immediate threat but even then should be preceded by the public space. Otherwise we wear the wrong lenses on the world for years as Sebastian Faulks deftly suggests in his recent fiction series*.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a writer who should inveigle himself into all public spaces, wrote of the Crystal Palace of Reason. Shiny and unassailable self-righteous reason. A reason without paradox or irony. Kierkegaard went further and implied paradox was reason. George Barrett reminds it was rational for the industrial-heartbeat to appeal to the Law of Large Numbers and ignore the quality of the individual. Truth existed in the crowd and mass, Barrett paraphrases. But the mass doesn’t brook the individual’s voice or any voice. The mass is not a true space.

In real reality, Reason is not Subject to Reason and therefore isn’t Reasonable. Debate has been subsumed by a round-about-journey to give itself over to this bastard-variant-of- Reason; the version that gives only a thesis but no antithesis. Modern management plays its role in allowing the public space to be closed off; expunged from the agenda, written out of the Core Values. In fact core value statements would not be badly done by adding ‘We Protect the Space’. We fear the space as Emma feared George’s admonition. In one sense we have gone against modernity’s Core Values.

Michael Mayne refers to Ian McEwan’s suggestion that a discreet life reveals only a discreet soul. McEwan’s characters are often battling between Reason and Feeling. The undertone is asking where is Truth; in the argument or in the mood through which the argument is filtered? In modern management and modern life we have learnt to be discreet to the extent we say nothing in debate as the Rational Man and Woman guard their tongues from falling foul of policy. Circumspection was meant to protect ‘the good’ but its cloth has overlaid the space and its Debate.

There is something here then about the need to be judiciously indiscreet, thoughtfully unguarded about our ideas (not the person as we have the gift of the conceptual, of indirectness, to protect our vulnerable interlocutors – destructive narratives can be left to the Red Tops), naively catholic and prepared for admonition if we are to live or what Charles Taylor calls Flourish. So maybe the journey into indiscreetness will re-open Debate. If not are we truly happy with our professional conservatism, and to continue to suffer pinched imprisonment of our thoughts; are we as at ease as we think inside this current Crystal Palace? I don’t think so. Badly done Emma.

*See Sebastian Faulks’ BBC series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ykvgk

Paris is grand and breathtaking; London is ‘rude and low’, which is easy for us imported Northerners to say safe in the hills of Yorkshire. Actually it was John Dryden who said so, so there. I like the suggestion in Austen Saunders’ Spectator Book Blog that London’s messy layout and ramshackle streets is a result of constrained monarchs not lording the local planners. The logic then is Paris is the symbol of despotism that required Revolution; London therefore a symbol of quiet resistance. No Robespierre but just a Wilfred Grimsdale.

From London’s maze to British Railways post-war? Or Carlisle Airport’s aborted take-off or just about any Project Le Grande that smacks of centralism. Where the US citizenry pack a small basement arsenal against Big Government we employ the local official; who, at the point of contact, sends years of MBA-project-planning-precision into a paper storm. Tombs and Tombs’ The Sweet Enemy suggests the French despise such lack of vision. They also grind teeth at our parliament. Its maddening obsession with precedent. The future is dictated by ‘let’s check what we did last time’; like driving forward using only the rear-view mirror.

Tombs is English and the other Tombs is French; making their Tome on the 300-year-war a little more interesting. Tis intriguing how history reveals ‘us’. Russia went with Platonic Idealism; England with Socratic Argument… France goes with the classical and elegant. Shakespeare was rough and crude and not worth our time, they said. Our desire to disunite and slug it out then leaves our city streets organically arranged. More a collage of opinion and minor fracas between the Mr Grimsdales than sweeping Champ-Elysees. Like one of those paint pots swinging on a rope above the studio floor of the genius Tony Hart’s Vision On; leaving its random splodges.

Randomness then is its own beauty; grand vision is seen for what it is, contrived and a little bit over blown. Impressive but wounded by self-engrandising puffery that is likely to induce slight regret. France post-war drove its railways like coach and horses where we bobbed and weaved around badger sets as we consulted the tea-lady. We see planning-by-committee as our birthright. Management by consensus then has led to patchwork London streets; Rome’s straight lines weren’t sustainable. Because they were Roman I suppose. You couldn’t hide in alleyways in the Roman world as they’d been marbled over? Where in Britain our freedom means we lurk seditiously in corners, up twittens, down quashetts.

So, Paris is more beautiful then. But we’re more satisfied in our unmade beds.

Norman Mailer did say, but cannot find where he said it, that technology is erotic; which is an uncomfortable word for us repressed English-males. It’s like the word porn; another uncomfortable word. But of course there is train-porn, watch-porn (I recall a two years of study accompanied by a group of wonderful fellow students who loved to eat and socialise together but were periodically terrorised by a conversation about watch collecting – which made train-spotting appear marginally exciting – apologies to those who find meaning in SeaMaster4738.45Chronodigimatics or whatever they were) and car-porn (see Top Gear’s intelligent looking audience for further puzzlement). Having watched a couple speak vicariously to each other through their iPhone’s Faceache updates all the way round and up to the till at Carlisle’s SuperDrug there is much hyperpathology (a word I’ve just created) at work; hence here is Richard Lane’s wonderful treatise on what I term the newest and most acceptable form of train-spotting:

“In the modern age, how functional are the technological objects that surround us? Have they penetrated our everyday practices to make a substantive difference to the way we lead our lives, or is this difference one of the surface effect, ornamentation?

Baudrillard announces in The System of Objects that in many respects it is the baroque that is the truly inaugurating moment of the modern age. In other words, there is no true development of the technological object, just a kind of abstraction (objects become mere lifestyle accessories), which Baudrillard equates with the architectural style of ornamentation that prevailed in Europe from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries. In the contemporary world, the object is now taken over by the imaginary. Thus automatism “…opens the door to a whole world of functional delusion, to the entire range of manufactured objects in which a role is played by irrational complexity, obsessive detail, eccentric technicity or gratuitous formalism” (1977: 113).

To say technological objects exist as ornamentation at whatever level is not to say that they don’t have a function; in fact, the opposite is the case. In the baroque world of technology, an object fulfils all the criteria for its usefulness simply by functioning in the abstract sense. For example, a more powerful computer may be used for the same simple word processing that was performed on an older machine that costs a lot less money. The machine’s “power” is abstract in that it is not really tested out or used in any meaningful way. So we no longer have the question “What does it do?” but instead the question “Does it work?” This latter is what can be called “hyperfunctionality”, because other questions follow, such can be called a “hyperfunctionality”, because other questions follow, such as “Does it work faster than the last model?”, even if speed of operation has nothing to do with any real performance output or gain.

In hyperfunctionality, the technological object is not practical, but obsessional; not utilitarian, but functional (always in an abstract sense); the object or gadget no longer serves the world, performing some useful task – it serves us: our dreams desires of what objects can and should do (1997: 114).

Baudrillard’s word for this “empty functionalism” is the French word machin, meaning “thingumajig”, “thingumabob”, “whatsit” or, as translator of The System of Objects more satisfactorily puts it, “gizmo” (1997: 114).

…

Automatism now has the human subject as the ideal to be striving towards, and the human subject becomes the next barrier to the development of the technological object…”

This word ‘pledge’ is intriguing. Has its capital sunk like toxic debt? Is too much pledging like too much chocolate; you get sick of it and ignore it after awhile? Americans pledge allegiance to flags; we breathe oaths to truth; promises to love; resolve New Years; re-member ourselves with commitments; determine futures; shake hands; guard honours. Maybe Roger McGough is right: Discretion is now the better part of Valerie.

Or, as John Donne puts it:

For when through tasteless flat humility,
In dough-baked men, some harmlessness we see,
‘Tis but his phlegm that’s virtuous, and not he.

If you think we’re wobbling in the face of debt woes, absorb this recent encounter with a downturn: “In early 1996, Bill Clinton warned that because the debt ceiling had not been raised, Social Security cheques might be late. This scared Congress into passing a small increase in the debt ceiling solely to meet Social Security payments.” Economist, January 13, 2011*. Clinton’s record appears a matter of hot debate. Congress it is suggested shackled his excesses. But the current government might pause for a moment and think about the US’s love affair with debt and our love affair with the US. There is an intriguing paradox in this ‘special relationship’.

America is what Niall Ferguson calls a ‘debtor nation’ in his book Colossus. He paints the US as an Empire in practice, or what he terms, an hegemony (a more palatable term to an American), extending its influence more pervasively than the British Empire ever did. Either way the US lives on debt; its propensity to ‘take a flier’ unrivalled. Of course doom merchants have predicted the US eagle will descend like a brick for some time.

Doom merchants predicted Britain’s demise too; difference being they were right. France,  Germany and the US accelerated past the British at the turn of last century. They watched us, spied on us in fact (yes, industrial espionage secured our trade secrets), copied us and did it better. Same story. We were holding onto our market lead by our eyelids only to finally give up the ghost in the 1950s…. wait! So it was WWII that killed our economy? Yes and No.

We were bankrupt two years into WWII; but we still led in key markets by the end of the war. Order books were busting. Slight problem though. We had no cash. Our pounds sterling had crossed the Atlantic and were busily super-charging the US economy to its white heat of ‘1950s America’. America’s Dream Decade was built on our pennies; they were cash rich and we were cash destitute. Maynard Keynes literally killed himself begging for some of that cash back. Without it we couldn’t meet our customers’ needs. And… we didn’t. The orders for ships went to Sweden and elsewhere. But why you ask? The US gave us a huge pile of dough. They sort of did but…

Britain had an emotional problem; largely we didn’t wish to believe our Empire was dead. In fact few of us have. Even some prime ministers transmogrify from CND’er to Freebooter as he breathed the fumes of No. 10’s oak and leather. And here is an uncomfortable notion: Britain’s debt is largely fuelled by our desire to be a Top Table nation over the past 60 years. But why?

When the factories of 1950s’ Britain were switched back to commercial production in 1945 we had capacity to meet our orders. With a loan from the new Superpower across the water we were up for it. Germany and France had shrunk from Imperial aspirations and took the ‘let’s be a small European club’ approach. We on the other hand said ‘We must be Great again!’. And America quietly let it be known that the price for greatness was being the lead Euro nation in the NATO. Oh, what an honour! Well, the price for our exalted status involved a ‘small’ conflict with Communism that needs dealing with, with Round One in Korea.

In effect our desire to be great meant support of the Anglo-Saxon worldview; and the capital of Anglo-Saxony was now in Washington. To be funded above the Marshall Plan’s injection meant splitting our factory production in half and re-arming to protect an Empire that didn’t exist. Consequently we spent the 1950s with 300,000 troops overseas guarding sand. 80,000 protecting a non-vital asset called the Suez Canal. Only by the 1960s could we resist the US’s governance, but by then our manufacturing had been dealt a mortal blow. The working man and woman weren’t the mortal enemy constructed in the 1970s as they’d built the economy largely through self-directed leadership and then fought two World Wars only to be undone by a leadership that hankered after greatness.

Debt ‘became-us’ due to our vision of ourselves; we could not conceive of our nation as ‘small and European’. Our natural resources long exhausted (in fact we’ve never been able to feed ourselves alone) we needed high-value businesses but shot ourselves in the foot as the money for re-tooling went on tanks and guns for a phoney-Cold-War. Driven I say by self-engrandisement, and leaders whose vision of our nation is rooted more in the 19th century, let alone the 20th.

America has only been debt free for one year in its life time; its vast natural resources and internal market has caused it not to blink at eye-watering debt levels. For us, our key resource is intellectual. But our Achilles’ Heel remains our conception of ourselves. Our very peculiar brand of British Angst (desire to be significant) ensures we pile debt to continue to fund us as a world power (lead partner from Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan), with vast defence expenditure; when in reality we are a small European nation with a desperate need to humble ourselves and compete. As Germany and France built their post-war visions we look still into the rear view mirror of a great past, catching the cut of our jib, which still looks suitably Imperial, if not Royal. As Mrs Thatcher said in 1991: ‘Only good comes from the English-speaking world, nothing good comes from Europe’. I wonder what she was referring to?

* http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/americas_debt

The theme of the Global Leadership and Change 2011 Autumn Lecture Series is: Renewal: Building A Sustainable Future

Still disturbed by the Kings Speech; not the speech itself but the film in general! Did like Rowan Williams’ suggestion in Lost Icons that the death of Diana broke the mystery and magic of monarchy. Long after the death of deference in general society, the sort of deference that took a generation to Flanders, we’re supposed to have finally seen monarchy for what it is; a smoke and mirrors act. The sympathy and affection oozing for George VI’s characterisation doesn’t quite square up. It seems we ‘buy’ monarchy all over again. Terrifying that we docile English absorb these constructions hook, line and orb. I suppose if Hollywood can propel an Austrian body-builder to the Governator it can schpin the Saxe-Coburg and Ghotas to Mr and Mrs Windsor. References to the People’s Princess shows obsequious efforts to inveigle the stream of emotions surrounding Diana’s death. Such unquestioning support enables this bizarre affection to roll on; to the extent that Diana was voted the 3rd Greatest Briton ahead of Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin. So much for meritocracy. I know I know. We can surely separate admiration for great acting from the storyline? Maybe. Williams is a sharp observer of social change and states:

“The ‘lost icon’ [precious symbol] was not simply the dead princess; it was a whole mythology of social cohesion around anointed authority and mystery.”

The ritual of monarchy is then a layer of glue over a society that has few uniting rituals. The warmth towards Firth’s performance is about a cohesive society; that if we lost monarchy then what on earth would symbolise ‘us’. The answer is ‘we’ would.

During recent Sussex train trip I cast an envious but contemptuous eye over a smart young couple who were reading from an e-book reader. Usual ungracious thought of ‘that is not ‘proper’ reading’ issued. No self respecting lover of literature would disgrace the author etc and so forth yadda yadda. But a Tennysonian ‘still small voice’ inside said yes but you could take all your journals and books on this thing… hmmm… As with Tennyson’s The Two Voices I’m torn; between the love of a rich bookshelf and the utility of a Kindle.

Not many are torn if Publishers Weekly is to be believed:

“Amazon released more mind-numbing results for 2010, announcing a number of records and new milestones along with difficult-to-understand statistics. The top line was stellar with total sales for the year up 40%, to $34.2 billion, while net income rose 28%, to $1.15 billion. In a prepared statement chairman Jeff Bezos said the company passed two milestones in the fourth quarter–its first time sales topped more than $10 billion in a quarter with actual sales hitting $12 billion; and “after selling millions of third-generation Kindles during the quarter, Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com,” even while sales of paperbacks rose.” http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/45932-records-fall-at-amazon-as-kindles-e-books-rise.html

All this is not Rational is it? Consumers aren’t meant to behave like this. All this fluidity will have businesses running around for years wondering why their rational selves don’t fit irrational humanity.

William Butler Yeats offered up:

Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart

Something about Amazon represents the quixotic anti-reason more akin to human beings than the logical and linear. More Bartók than Beethoven, Shostakovich than Strauss. Western Rational business models have found their ladder doesn’t reach to the top of the wall and they’re left jumping on the top rung but still can’t see into the garden on the other side.

Still haven’t downloaded an e-book; Penguin books are the moral high ground of books, plus they feel wonderful to the touch and carry the scars of travel. Nothing like paper technology… it’s the future!

Enjoying the light relief of Stephen Fry’s latest bio as the sun shines outside in a frosty Cumbria; having read Moab is My Washpot awhile back I was looking forward to the humanity and self-deprecation of his story. He shares my fascination with Wagner and recently rescued W’s reputation from being the nasty backing track to the Nazi era. Having loved Blackadder when it first came out, sitting to watch Fry as the Archbish with my girlfriend of the time (now a far better half by a country mile), he cuts an interesting figure and observer of our times and our relationship with an Englishness that still disturbs us. A kind of accessible toff.

It reminded me that this Fry book was a Crimbo gift which jogged my thoughts into a reflection that one of the blessings of being married for a year or four (*cough*) is having a partner who knows your taste in reading. In fact I wonder if marriage progress is marked by the gifts you get. You spend a number of years cringing and being disturbed by gifts that appear to have little or no relation to yourself; maybe bizarre videos (VHS in my case) on some obscure interest you don’t have. And then after much honesty and openness and intimacy you arrive at a state of artful insight by your lover where Christmas is a joy of discovery as there are no long socks, stripy pullovers, noisome after-shaves that could strip 14 layers of paint in one dousing. My daughter mocks my boring nature as gifts can now simply fall into two categories only: CDs and books. What else is there frankly? But on page 87 of Fry’s hardback version his turn of phrase really appeals in a short evangelical moment which is worth blogging. He says:

“Picture the world as being a city whose pavements are covered a foot deep in gold coins. You have to wade through them to make progress. Their clinking and rattling fills the air. Imagine that you met a beggar in such a city. ‘Please, give me something. I am penniless.’ ‘But look around you,’ you would shout. ‘There is gold enough to last you your whole life. All you have to do is to bend down and pick it up!’ When people complain that they don’t know any literature because it was badly taught at school, or that they missed out on history because on the timetable it was either that or biology, or some such ludicrous excuse, it is hard not to react in the same way. ‘But it’s all around you!’ I want to scream. ‘All you have to do is bend down and pick it up!’.”

I make no apology for gushing imagery. Especially as libraries face budget slashing by the current Philistine government. Some of their lines unknowingly plagiarised from Dickens’ Hard Times and sounding more like Gradgrind than Gradgrind himself. Despite Fry’s privileges in life he has a point. So at least we prize Fry for such clarity and restoring something amidst a world awash with popular culture’s terrifying offering (not that it’s all bad… there is… erm… ?). Of course this emotion and entreaties are now aided by the fact Waterstones is usually adorned by Costa Coffee – the middle class junkie’s drug of choice (along with Chardonnay from the fridge… on tap!). Tea /Coffee and reading / studying being the loving bedfellows. We have a brilliant independent 2nd hand store here with a Buddhist coffee shop attached. (Not sure what Buddha himself would think of caffeine induced hyperness?) It and W’stones are the Temples or Fountains or Wells or whatever that keep the city centre public spaces from being one large advertising hoarding for tat. The only drawback is the 2nd hand store is usually minus 20 degrees as its grumbling boiler never gets fixed and the staff have developed blood thicker than oil in their veins and have stopped noticing the ice particles in the air. Thankfully Waterstones heat their customers to a toasty crust so sitting for an hour or two with your reading material is probably the closest we have to heaven on this earth. Starbucks is now awash with sticky detritus and seems to be populated by the local yoof too plus their service levels have plummeted to what you might expect from impersonal American franchises whose long arm of management control can’t quite reach North Cumbria very effectively.

Right… W’stones it is……