Spectator Life

As a species we are richer than we’ve ever been before. We live longer. We have more food to eat than is good for us. We have abundance in all things. And yet we are no happier than we were. In fact, many of us are downright unhappy. Among our woes is an epidemic of loneliness. Some 8.4 million of us are now living alone in Britain, and more than 3.8 million report being chronically lonely. We lock up more people in our prisons than ever and we can see for ourselves the signs of friction in our society, one which is clearly not entirely at peace with itself. So somewhere we have gone wrong. And I think I know where. It’s our families. They are simply too small. The average number of children born per woman in England and Wales has fallen to 1.

Whenever Europeans feel inadequate in relation to America, and have a yearning to console themselves, there is one subject that always comes up: the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, i.e. gun law. Yes, the Yanks may be richer than us. Yes, a dockworker in Delaware can earn more than a British cabinet minister. Yes, America has a dynamic economy and the world’s most powerful military, with a huge lead in science, tech and finance. But remember: ‘in Europe we don’t have mass shootings.’ ‘British children aren’t taught how to dodge bullets.’ ‘You may have Silicon Valley, but we don’t have lunatics wandering around Tesco with AR-15s.’ This feels even truer right now, as America reels from a horrific assassination, by a shooter on a roof with a rifle.

As I write, a copy of The Hallmarked Man sits beside me. Not being on holiday, spending the morning reading a new detective novel would seem as louche as a pre-brunch martini. Not being David Niven, I’m making the book wait until at least after lunch. J.K. Rowling’s new book, under her pen name of Robert Galbraith, comes in at around 900 pages. I expect to rip through it smartly. I am not an ideal reader of detective fiction, nor the thrillers and mysteries that have a whodunit at the core of their tightly planned plots. My ability to figure out the murderer – even my interest in trying – is vestigial.

Studying our national character and current malaise has convinced me that the root cause of Britain’s problems is that we are too nice. Compared with our nearest European neighbours, let alone with most other countries in the world, being British automatically confers a series of characteristics not generally shared elsewhere. For a start we are polite. We do not shove ahead of other people in queues like the Italians, nor do we scream obscenities at random strangers in the street as they do in New York, and buying a cup of coffee is not regarded as a personal insult by cafés staff, as it is in Paris, for example.

Fifty years ago today, a literary masterwork of the 20th century reached its conclusion with the publication of Hearing Secret Harmonies, the final volume in Anthony Powell’s 12-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. Inspired by the painting of the same name by the 17th-century French artist Nicolas Poussin (which you, like Powell, can see at the Wallace Collection), the series began with A Question of Upbringing, published a quarter of a century earlier in 1951. This introduced us to the English narrator of the whole endeavour, Nicholas Jenkins (uncoincidentally he shares the Christian name of the painter, albeit with an Anglicised aitch), who attends a boarding school – unnamed but modelled on Powell’s time at Eton.

This year marked the 400th anniversary of the death of King James I of England (James VI in Scotland), the first monarch of the generally disastrous Stuart dynasty. By no means forgotten by historians, the anniversary was marked by no fewer than three heavyweight biographies, and headlines devoted to the King in the Times and the Telegraph. James’s son Charles I lost both a civil war and his head; his grandson Charles II presided over the plague, the Great Fire of London, and saw his fleet towed away by the Dutch; his second grandson James II lost the throne entirely and fled into exile. But in spite of this dismal record, of all the Stuart sovereigns, the first James was easily the worst and most disgusting monarch ever to have occupied the throne.

Gardens are past their best, large spiders are appearing indoors, chill mornings herald coming mists, the days are not so long, and adverts have replaced barbecues with ‘back to school’ offers. Elderberries have turned a purple that fades into black, and soon will drop and stain the ground. The daily commute remains relatively quiet for another few days but summer, and the summer holidays, are coming to an end. For many of us, September feels more like a new year than January, long after our days of school and study. The cold days of January are much like each other; but at the end of August there is a palpable sense of change. Excitement and melancholy marry. Which one dominates probably depends on how happy you were at school or university.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about flags, especially English ones. The start of the Women's Rugby World Cup – a good excuse to bring out the bunting – has coincided with a renewed interest in proclaiming national identity. Some might see it as an outpouring of patriotic pride, while others view it as a far-right provocation. But whether it's ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ or roundabouts painted red and white (although some bright spark in Birmingham managed to paint a Danish flag by mistake), if the sight of a cross of St George sends you into a panic, I have a suggestion: head to Cornwall. If my recent experience is anything to go by, you’ll be lucky to see a single English flag.

Elon Musk and Taylor Swift fans rejoice! America’s birthrate is saved! News of the engagement between America’s reigning sweetheart, Taylor Swift, and jock, Travis Kelce, can mean only one thing: a millennial marriage boom is upon us. And with it, natalists will hope, an impending baby boom. I’m no Swiftie. Nor am I one of those men who’s organised his entire political identity around hating the singer. Still, I can’t deny that I feel uplifted by the jubilation erupting across the US and beyond this week. Why? Because Taylor and Travis are taking a stand against pessimism. America’s permanently heartbroken oldest daughter has escaped her fate (for now). These are people taking the leap! Committing to something! How exciting is that?

The British government is going to war with 4chan, the controversial internet message board that has been around for more than 20 years. It’s surprising that it has taken them so long. 4chan users have committed murders, propagated hoaxes and shaped much of the online right. Since the Online Safety Act came into effect, no one at the site has responded to Ofcom’s statutory information requests or explained how 4chan will ‘comply with … safety duties about illegal content’. Officials want 4chan to get better at removing illegal content and to introduce an age-verification system. Under the new law, tech owners are legally responsible for protecting users from each other. 4chan will be fined £20,000 a day until the nastiest place on the internet can sort itself out.

Next month is the 30th anniversary of the death of the American ethologist John B. Calhoun. In the early 1960s, he created an series of experiments to discover the causes of social dysfunction. His most famous work involved a so-called ‘rat utopia’ in which rodents were provided comfortable living quarters with unlimited food, water and warmth, and protection from predators. In this cosy environment, the only bar to ratty heaven was that space was limited. Nonetheless, the happy rats bred prodigiously until their quarters became uncomfortably overcrowded. This lack of space meant they were unable to control with whom or how often they came into social contact.

I’m not awfully keen on family members of famous people putting themselves in the picture; nepo babies are the worst, the equivalent of Japanese knotweed when it comes to the landscape of modern popular culture. But pushy parents are annoying too: Stanley Johnson and the wittering senior Whitehall jumping on the bandwagon when they should be putting their feet up, or the phenomenon of the creepy ‘momager’ touting out her daughter for the delectation of the paying public. But when I saw a photo on Instagram of Liz Hurley, 60, with her mum Angela, 85 – both in leopard-print swimwear from Hurley Junior’s extremely successful beachwear range – I felt absolute glee.

Like the fearful townsfolk of Dodge City awaiting the arrival of outlaws, the residents of Notting Hill have been chalking off the hours. Many have resorted to drilling wooden boards over their windows and doors. Some have hired private security and left the city for the weekend. It’s Carnival once again, that annual ritual of comradeship which often degrades into violence, passed off as a community triumph. Yes, it’s time for the traditional bank holiday fib. If only those most directly affected could speak freely. The police officers, for instance, who must wear coat-hanger smiles, even as they see drugs dealt openly by aggressive young men. These smiling officers sometimes find themselves spat at, punched and headbutted. But they must continue grinning.

Recently, I was on my way to buy the Saturday papers when my ears pricked up. In the distance, I could hear the unmistakable sound of a protest: whistles, slogans, klaxons. I strained to make out what people were shouting, but, given the grim images recently beamed from Gaza, odds were, it was about the Israel-Hamas conflict. What had promised to be a typical day in suburbia was about to get more interesting. I imagined the ranks of police retreating under a barrage of missiles. The keffiyeh-wearing protesters surging forward, battering the coppers with their homemade placards. As the din grew louder, I wondered if I’d make it to the shops before the street battles began. And then they came into view.

There are opinion polls that are so striking they change history. Many Britons will remember the YouGov poll in September 2014. It was the first poll in the Scottish independence referendum campaign to show the Yes side ahead by 51 per cent to 49. That poll shocked SW1, panicked the Cameron government, and led to ‘The Vow’ – the last-minute promise of further devolution if Scotland stayed in the UK. And lo, ‘No’ scraped home, and Britain staggered on. Then there are polls that go beyond striking into ‘whoah, can that possibly be true?’ territory. Polls so unexpected they feel world-changing. The same company, YouGov, has produced just such a poll. It shows that religious belief among 18 to 24-year-olds has tripled in just four years, from 16 per cent to 45 per cent.

To anyone brought up in the seventies and eighties, the fact that so many Palestine Action protestors are themselves in their seventies and eighties is the least surprising fact of the year. These people were the original ‘Boring Old Hippies,’ those dreary teachers and lecturers whom so many of us had to suffer the first time round. Since age confers a harmlessness on everyone, it was rather sweet to see them again, enjoying one last stab at rebellion before marching off to that Great Student Demo in the Sky. And yet when I was growing up, these ‘rebels’ were the very people we rebelled against. Musically, we couldn’t bear their Pink Floyd, their early Genesis and those heavy slabs of prog rock inspired by the Hobbit-y tosh of Tolkien.

Fran Lebowitz, the apparently acid-tongued commentator on Manhattan manners, will slip through British customs next month to dazzle the easily dazzled. Though to judge by the interview she granted an earnest lady in the Observer, other verbs leap to mind. From this distance it looks suspiciously like a fog of self-regard. According to the profiler, Megan Nolan, Lebowitz is ‘a poster girl for a certain kind of crusty but erudite and essentially good-natured New York archetype, intellectual and judgmental, and walking the line between rudeness and frankness with engaging grace’. Cor! Is this a private ritual between consenting adults, or can we all join in?

We’ve all seen appalling stories of people, usually – but not exclusively – women, being stalked by a spurned suitor, and how this can have terrifying and sometimes life-threatening sequelae. However, the popularity of social media has brought about the advent of the less dangerous but mighty irritating social media stalker – or ‘smalker’, as I like to call them. The smalker is usually a spurned friend who has been chewing her lips with fury since you removed her from your Facebook ‘friends’ list. Sometimes they only requested to be your ‘friend’ in the first place so they could lurk on your page, twisting their face into a sucking-a-wasp grimace: an upside-down smile with a wrinkled nose.

A recent, rather beautiful piece published here told of how the writer, Druin Burch, initially somewhat alarmed by the variety of naked bodies he unexpectedly encounters while swimming in the Med (‘I wouldn’t mind if it was only young women,’ he says to his wife) comes to appreciate the loveable imperfection of the human form. I can’t say I’m with him on this. I totally understand fit women wanting to take their tops off in public as an expression of sheer high spirits; as a teenager, I used occasionally to do it. But humanity generally? Put it away, puh-leeze! As a resident of the fair city of Brighton and Hove, I’ve got skin in the game, metaphorically.

Don’t women have a bum deal? Not only do we have to bear children and make our way on the harsh plains where second-wave feminism and rampant neoliberal professionalism meet, but apparently now we must also perform ‘emotional labour’ for our husbands. Sorry: husbands and partners. This emotional labour has been christened ‘mankeeping’, the latest feminist buzzword. Dreamed up by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a psychologist at Stanford, it describes the heavy lifting that women in heterosexual relationships do to keep ‘the family harmony alive’.  And it appears to have struck a chord. ‘Mankeeping: finally, a word to describe the emotional labour of my 38-year marriage,’ declared a recent Telegraph headline.

So far this summer we’ve had the blackouts in Portugal and Spain, that rather astonishing Heathrow fire, yet more sabre-rattling between Russia and America and the former head of the Army warning that Britain must be ready for the ‘realistic possibility’ of war within five years. Then there was an old general on the radio telling civilians to prepare themselves for the struggle both mentally and practically – by stocking up on foodstuffs, loo roll, an FM radio and cash. Normally I don’t do what the radio tells me, but he got me thinking. And it turned out my wife – who is an actuary and is to risk what the Wicked Witch of the West is to tap water – had been pondering something similar. So we’ve begun ‘prepping’.