Don’t name that baby - Part 1

Some of my contemporaries are starting to acquire grandchildren, a whole bunch of  responsibilities by proxy, one might say. One of these responsibilities could be, involuntarily though proudly, providing a name for the new sproglet. I’m sure we’d all like to think that our own name – unless it’s something really stupid - carries on down the generations.

Naming a newborn can be surprisingly fraught. One has to exert creativity rapidly and very carefully, a sometimes pleasant activity for a proud new parent, but sometimes a trying one, with unpredictable consequences. Large numbers of possibilities have to be scanned at speed, whittled down, some rejected because of unwanted connotations (that maths teacher or mass murderer – not necessarily one and the same person), others because of unfortunate acronyms – risible or obscene - that might arise from the initials, others for any number of reasons. Heading into this minefield the parent had better get it right, because the infant is going to be stuck with it for a very long time. Calling someone Stacey or Tyler (that’s Tyler with an “ah”), Piers or Penelope, is perhaps every bit as influential to their life trajectory as the chromosomal material one has recently donated to them.

The associations which can be made with personal names, first names especially, form a whole field for subjective, stylistic study and a rich ore of implicit information. Essentially we’re talking about name stereotypes, something I’d like to explore here, despite it being a domain bristling with opportunities for offending those who love to be offended. If you are one of those, look away now.

An easy one to start with. Terence Alan Milligan. Remember him? Would he have been so successful if he’d stuck with Terence, or Terry, or Alan, than the seemingly perfect Spike?

Evidently some people possess names which fit their personality characteristics well (or vice versa), while other folk appear to have been inappropriately named. There are hyper-masculine names, ultra-feminine names, sexually ambiguous names, names suitable for young children or the elderly, names one associates with occupations, upper class names, chav names. To a large extent, though not completely so, popular agreement can be expected as to which is which.

Let’s imagine a conversation in the maternity unit. The infant may not be of the gender mum and dad had imagined it was going to be and prepared for (admittedly less likely to happen in this ultrasonic era), nor “look like” the name they had in mind. Meanwhile relatives and registrars want to know what it is going to be called. The birth may have been medically traumatic, much sleep may have been lost, and here are the harassed parents, pressured by those around them to make a choice. Each partner may have very different views, but no matter, a decision has to be made in hours or days at most, arguments won and lost, and agreement reached. This is a demand for creativity with serious constraints. Suddenly the bewildered couple find ourselves ruling out otherwise perfectly acceptable names because they are popularly associated with an embarrassingly uncool singer, a notorious child molester, a ludicrous tart or loathsome slob in a TV soap, or are familially associated with some appalling old aunt or uncle. An unaccustomed need arises to think laterally in many directions all at once, spotting potentially hazardous nicknames, rhymes, malicious mispronunciations, and the like. While one might be prepared to risk Fake Tania, Dustbin Lydia and Get Sonia Nerves, it’s probably as well to avoid specific combinations like Annette Kirton, Jenny Taylor, Rachel E. Harris or Eileen Dover. I’ve actually known two of these – real people.

One is being asked to select a first name that is already shared by other people with defined personalities, a name that is felt to be appropriate and desirable for the puling neonate – who so far doesn’t have a personality other than a blurred resemblance to the face (or backside, or hole punch onomatopoeically named Clop) of Sir Winston Churchill. Well, you might call it Winston, but you’re probably not going to go for Clop. The requirement therefore is to match highly subjective name associations with desirable and desired personality traits, while avoiding any potential for future awkwardness and embarrassment. At most a few days are available to find the right name for the young sprog, a name that has to stay being right for a whole lifetime; it’s an unrehearsed venture into futurology.

If we’re the parents, these days we’re probably not going to go for an obscure saint or a member of the royal family, although we might cop out – as was usually the case in earlier times - by borrowing the name of a close family member. Otherwise we might – if we’re especially unkind - insist on a name celebratory of the location where conception is thought to have taken place (“ah, coochie-coo little Travelodge, isn’t she cute”; “so what exactly is wrong with Newport Pagnell?”), of our favourite brand of car, of the members of our preferred football team, or of some other random whimsicality, like Chlamydia (“we liked the sound of it, to be honest wiv yer, it’s sort of classical innit, Chlamydi-ah”). We might look in a “baby book” or on a website, seeking inspiration. If we hadn’t realised it before, we do now - names are not just names.

Some names are spot on for their owners, others way off the mark, but it will be years before we, or they, find out – too late. Names themselves have suggestive qualities, mostly based on their vowel sounds: an Eric ought to be thin, a Barbara blonde and plump. At least first names are sort of voluntary, with surnames, unfortunately, we are stuck with them unless we take drastic action, even if they happen to be Lillicrappe, Eisenschitz, Sidebottom, Bastard or De’Ath. Would you want Shipman, Sutcliffe or Savile as a surname? I once had the misfortune to be sent to a Dr Sidebottom for a minor medical procedure. Since I was too insignificant a mortal to be seen by the great man himself, I was attended to by one of his Underbottoms. Somehow it just wasn’t the same. In the case of occupations it has been proposed that the term “aptronyms” be used for highly apt names - none perhaps more apposite than the poet Wordsworth, or even Dr Tuthaker, an odontologist from South Bend, Indiana. Although I remember once encountering a corporate chauffeur called Mr Bentley - Mr Škoda presumably having flunked the interview.

People can be made or broken by their names, and despite there being no factual basis to the popular myth that young Adolf (long before the aforementioned Spike worked so valiantly to accomplish his downfall) changed his name because one cannot chant "Heil Schicklgruber !" without having fits of giggles, show business is replete with stars who have had to acquire more suggestive names than the ones they were born into, in order to be credible, convincing, to convey the appropriate image, to be thought of as sexually desirable, and – above all – to be memorable. Budding British popstars of the immediately pre-Beatle era were glorified with stage names suggestive of qualities it was thought their female fans might want to identify with or drool over: Faith, Fury, Gentle, Eager.

And, er, Richard. The choice of pseudonyms ought to reveal something about the intersubjectively held expectations of personal name associations, but it is far from clear that this works reliably, or why it does, or when. Why would a man called Harry want to change his name to Cliff? What is the difference in the persona suggested? What advantage is perceived in a switch from Norma to Marilyn, from Maurice to Michael, from Reg to Elton? Elvis of course had the perfect über-fabulous name and had no need to change.

More next time. Meanwhile, don’t name that baby.

The nineteenth ecstasy

When you can’t have something you want it all the more. When you can’t go somewhere you want to go there all the more. Well, you know how it is. So I’ve been journeying in my imagination.

I’d recently been watching a lot of Michael Portillo before “all this” started. He’s a man who does a lot of real journeying, seemingly without luggage, hassle, or crowds; he’s a well known enthusiast for multicolourturalism, at least in matters sartorial, a believer that acid green, phthalo blue and strip club pink can live together happily, in varied permutations, side by side, in the form of jackets, shirts and strides. Not a bad role model. Probably better than fluorescent mauve, pillarbox red, and dayglo custard. Anyway, now I’m imagining that tiresomely repetitive moment at the beginning of his Great Continental Railway Journeys when he announces “I’m embarking …” and I shout at the telly, “No, you’re not in Barking, you’re at St Pancras”.

And off we go on the Eurostar. Whining up the steep curve past the gasholder-clad apartments, the deep rumble of the bridge-tunnel across the ECML, speeding up, the vertical concrete cavern of Stratford International that would make a fitting location for a Baconian screaming pope, more acceleration, thrust back into one’s seat, container terminals, low cloud over Dagenham, pylons, the Medway Bridge, the upwards thrust from the flyover over Ashford International, very kinaesthetic this, the imaginary Eurostar experience, and then that long unique sound, that distinctive urgent frequency, deep under the sea for 21 minutes or so. Out the other side, sunnier, Calais-Fréthun, a sense of being high up, looking back towards the coast, white buildings, extra-bright, Gravelines or Dunkerque perhaps, think briefly of England, onwards past neat copses, isolated churches, armies of pylons looking simultaneously French and feline, on and on, decelerating close to CDG, the Sacré-Coeur on its summit, almost erotic in its fabulous foreignness, and then slowing right down, right down, surrounded by dark tenements and double decker trains, and into the Gare du Nord. Clonk.

Quickly through the dodgy crowds and out again, probing into the streets of the tenth arrondissement. Down to the Boulevard de Magenta, stretching ahead endlessly, unforgiving in the fierce late morning sun. It goes on for ever, so I’ll stroll just as far as the crossroads with the rue La Fayette. To the right, another long view, it goes for miles, dead straight to the Opéra and the centre of things. Exhausting just to look at. I think I’ll turn the other way. That’s dead straight too, but with some sort of end in sight. Across the big skew girder bridge spanning the tracks out of the Gare de l’Est; thoughts of Strasbourg, Basel, Germany – everything is so close once you’re across the Channel. On, crossing awkward junctions, urban density like it should be.

Suddenly the surrounding dark buildings give way and I’m at Stalingrad, the complex intersection commemorating the battle, beneath which the Canal St Martin segues invisibly with the Bassin de la Villette. At this point the tenth arrondissement becomes the nineteenth. At this precise moment mere imaginary travel, mere journeying in the head, vanishes and my whole body explodes into a painful ecstasy of longing, of yearning, of desire, of some unexpected kind of reality, of desperately needing to be there in the eternal city. Now, this instant.

Line 2 Metro trains rattle overhead along the wibbly-wobbly viaduct, in and out of Jaurès station. I cross over the busy road, the Blvd de la Villette, a kind of inner ring road popular with homicidal lorries, and I head up the slow hill of the Avenue Secrétan, a sense of being out of the central city now, newer buildings, very civilised, urbane, progressive. Past the stairwell leading down into Bolivar station. Someone – actually, Tim Moore in his 2001 “Continental Drifter” - once said that the Metro smells like a combination of popcorn and farts; today it doesn’t, it just smells ecstatically of Paris, of life. To the top, and into the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in all its surreal quarried loveliness. A perfect spot for a picnic. I make a mental note – for real life - just as soon as “all this” is all over.

The prophet is Nicholas but the emperor may have no clothes on at all

I’d like to explore two interrelated themes.

First theme. One of the “1066 and all that” historical factoids from my childhood was that King Canute commanded the tide to about turn. As presented to us in school  the intended message was about hubris, about the folly of the arrogance and stupidity that accompanies absolute power. Later on I learned that the situation was completely otherwise, and it was actually the king making a bit of a song and dance about admitting his powerlessness against God and nature, showing off his humility to his courtiers. Not such a juicy story of regal silliness after all.

Oh, and another thing about him. Back in the day, his name was spelled Canute, which was more obvious to pronounce and less typographically risky than the later preferred spelling.

Which leads us directly to the present day and first of all to Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of such popular works as “The Black Swan” (2007) and “Antifragile” (2012), both highly pertinent to the present crisis. Our current black swan is not so much the coronavirus itself – we’ve had pandemic viruses before - but the almost unbelievable effects it has had on the entire planet, the deaths, the suffering, the destruction of livelihoods and of economies. I wonder, did anyone foresee the ramifications, the scale?

The most powerful man in the world, Donald J. Trump, some time ago declared that the US will be over the worst by Easter. I really hoped he was right, I really did, and at the most optimistic estimate he might just be, although the situation in parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states strongly suggests otherwise. Thus entirely voluntarily he invited his own Canute moment. He has since claimed that his comments were “aspirational”, that a false victory would be worse than no victory at all, and that it’s going to take rather longer. Perhaps, at last, he has realised that he is danger of being revealed as an emperor without clothes, no more powerful than the rest of us. Not good in an election year.

Second theme. Trends in recent times have been towards what Taleb calls fragility. A couple of instances. (1) Orthographically, Canute becomes Cnut – not important in itself, but symptomatic of a tendency; errors become less forgiving, more dangerous. (2) The massive (and some would say massively ugly) Forth rail bridge, built in 1890, continues – as it were - to go forth, while the slimline road bridge next door, built in 1964, has had its day. A startling physical representation of the issue; progress of a kind, but the result is that with the newer construction less is needed to go wrong before disaster or decay overtakes. Cleverer engineering; more style, less substance; added vulnerability. Take your choice.

OK, some drastic over-simplification with some random examples, but the common theme boils down to more or less the same thing - unwise parsimony as summarised by the expression “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. In less colloquial language, in “Antifragile”, Taleb says “We have been fragilizing the economy, our health, political life, education, almost everything … by suppressing randomness and volatility”. So another angle on antifragility is that, while there is often a single most efficient way of doing something, to deny variety is to damage one’s survivability if things turn hostile. We adore efficiency, especially when it equates to profit. We plump for what seems the best option. Natural, but not entirely wise.

The trend is towards unwise slimming down, towards false economies, to corner cutting, to a loss of the robustness that comes with spare capacity, built-in redundancy, and adequate fail-safe mechanisms. 

There’s a trend also towards guaranteed obsolescence and waste. When I was growing up, if something broke, you (or your dad) mended it, after a fashion, and you could continue using it. Some small thingummyjig could be purchased from the local shop and inserted. Today, when something breaks, when – perhaps because it’s sealed in a plastic module and its workings are as incomprehensible as they are invisible - it cannot be repaired, it is completely and irretrievably broken, the whole thing, totally knackered, even if it’s just one tiny component that has failed – as, perhaps, it was designed to. So, it all gets thrown away - ultimately, we have learned, in many cases, providing something for marine creatures to get their teeth into. Then we buy a replacement, and so it goes on, same old mistake. 

Until one day when a replacement can’t be had for love nor money.

As the coronavirus crisis worsens everywhere, here in the UK the demand for ventilators and other life-saving equipment highlights the folly of making ourselves so vulnerable. Not, perhaps, that this particular requirement could realistically have been anticipated on this scale, and it’s probably unfair to pick on this, but more generally. Spreading things too thin. For strategically crucial items – not just in healthcare but in all aspects of our lives – there should never be a single source, a single supply chain, a single technology that permits of no alternatives or easy work-arounds. If any of these sources and systems fail, for whatever reason – disease, economic collapse, political hostility, criminality, warfare – the results can be catastrophic. Crudely, one thing buggers up everything else, the much derided domino effect. We should have learned that by now, the hard way. I hope so.

When we eventually recover from this terrible predicament we must reconfigure our economy and our industries to encourage greater self-sufficiency, to enhance robustness, and - to use Taleb’s word - to increase anti-fragility. Or, to use more familiar words, to be guided by safety and common sense. We must avoid dependency upon a single supplier, whether of raw materials, intermediate components, or finished products. 

The same proviso of robustness goes for all kinds of infrastructures and technologies, including those contributing to our intellectual, social and cultural lives. Never believe that the internet or some of its principal applications couldn’t have their black swan moment, their own version of the coronavirus. 

We must never allow ourselves to be this vulnerable again; we must always retain control, whether as countries or individuals. Or we will find ourselves in a situation where the emperor, naked as the day he was born, commands: “Alexa, Siri, shoot me in both feet”, only to hear the reply “Emperor, with respect sir, you’ve done that already. Now sir, it’s getting very dark. Would you like me to enable your light switch for you?”

A “Havengore” moment

Last night at 8 o’clock I, like millions of others, stood outside the front door and clapped, expressing thanks to the NHS for the wonderful work they are doing, many of them in horrendous and distressing circumstances, many of them risking their own lives, during this crisis.

Though it was absolutely the right thing to do, it felt odd, not the sort of thing that English people of a certain age would do, but once one realised that other neighbours were also clapping, the self-consciousness went and the spirits lifted. We all knew that we are in this together. 

I was reminded, strangely, of that haunting moment 55 years ago when the Thamesside dock cranes dipped in acknowledgement of the passing of the “Havengore”, the barge taking Churchill’s body from the funeral service at St Paul’s to Waterloo, for its onward journey to the great man’s final resting place in Bladon, Oxfordshire. Another gesture that was unfamiliar, slightly abstract, slightly artificial, but right. Weird, spine-tingling, tear-provoking, powerful beyond words.

Many parallels are being drawn between the dark days of WW2 and the dark days of the present. As before, London is getting the worst of it. In support of all those people self-isolated there I offer a song and an image. My wonderful daughter Rosie has performed a version of the greatest song ever written about the world’s greatest city, in response to a request from her cousin, but to be enjoyed by everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayumdwfZAR8

 
The image below, a sunny, almost deserted street, as it probably is today, is of a short thoroughfare called Alaska Street. On the right is Waterloo East station, and straight in front is Waterloo main line station, the focus of the song.

© R. Abbott 2017

The emptiness aesthetic

There can be few positives extractable from this current global tragedy. One of them is the friendship, kindness, generosity and altruism of neighbours and strangers alike, qualities which so often lay dormant until activated by disaster. It’s good to know that they still exist. Still the same old country.

The second benefit, although in a normal sense hardly desirable, is the enormous reduction in activity in almost everything. Suddenly, the world is a quieter place. Environmentally this is good, and it would be even better if some degree of it could be sustained when normality returns. If this terrible episode doesn’t conclusively define and condemn what a disaster so-called globalisation has been, and lead to a fundamental change in how we manage our world, then we’re all stuffed.  Already over the last few days the sky looks bluer - probably just a meteorological coincidence - with the Spring flowers at their best.

 People are naturally gregarious, and enforced separation is distressing for many, as it is for me, grumpy introvert though I am. But when I see on the TV news images of commuters on the Tube, squashed together, noses in armpits, breathing in each other’s diseases, my reactions are a combination of nausea and relief that I’m not involved, although at many times in my life, normal times, I’ve been happy to endure and even to enjoy such conditions myself. There are sensory and psychological pleasures in congestion and busyness; they are among the appeals of a great city, expressions of life at its most intense and, some would say, most civilised.

While urban vitality is important, conversely, there’s something to be said for emptiness and quiet among the bustle. In London, the many parks, squares and commons cater for this need, and contribute their particular loveliness to this greatest of cities, throughout the seasons. Many other British towns and cities are similarly blessed; many aren’t, and finding a pleasant spot, quiet but safe, may not always be so easy. But for now the streets are empty too, and that is unusual and unnatural.

As an older person, rapidly approaching the official threshold of coronavirus vulnerability, I remember years with much lower population densities, little vehicular traffic, and tourist destinations which could be enjoyed in relative peace. When I think back to my suburban childhood the essential quality I recall is that of peace and quiet. You could actually hear how quiet it was; just a kind of distant gentle hum.  Not much traffic, no unwanted intrusions of other people’s electronics (except for “The Archers” theme tune wafting across from the old ladies round the corner - dumpty dumpty dumpty dump etc), just the occasional Vulcan bomber which was tremendously noisy and made your ribs rattle if it flew low. Today, scarcely a couple of miles away from where I grew up, as I draft this blog, the only sound I hear is lawnmowers and, bizarrely, the jingle of a cruising ice cream van. Though the ultimate reasons for this state of acoustic affairs are appalling, purely as background, as ambient sound, it makes me happy, reminding me as it does of more satisfactory times.

Cities are primarily about people, but as architectural and geographical entities they have other roles to play, including visual and spiritual ones. As someone who likes to draw and paint cityscapes I know I’m not the only one who has preferred to exclude people and / or traffic from the painted scene. Artists far better than I have exploited the same instincts for urban visual emptiness, whether they were trying to portray alienation and loneliness, a mood of noir, desolation ecstasy, a sensation of space, an architectural peculiarity, a time of day, or otherwise. In my case this habit has been enforced  partly because of painterly incompetence, but also because I love the paradoxical quiet sometimes to be found in the heart of a major city. It’s a state of mind I like to experience and to express as best I can on paper or canvas. It’s the sound of early Sunday morning. 

                                                        Notting Hill      ©  R. Abbott 2014

 Now, it seems, in the last few days, we have had this quietude thrust back upon us, unasked for - the empty streets and parks, empty squares, empty cities. Not so much a month of Sundays, as an unknown number of them to come.

Sensible advice therefore would be, for someone like me, to enjoy the sight while it lasts, to make the most if it. Much more sensibly, the advice is, not to. So I can’t, even if I wanted to. I have to imagine it instead. All the same, artistically, aesthetically, selfishly, I can’t help thinking that it’s a kind of missed opportunity.

 
Meanwhile I’d happily exchange this nightmare for a chance to inhale some armpits on the Tube. Armpits aren’t great, but in a normal world they’re rarely lethal. Stay safe.