173. Boogling

While making a speech on November 10th 2020 about a possible Corona Virus vaccine, Boris Johnson said this: “We’ve talked for a long time about the distant bugle of the scientific cavalry.” 

You’re probably thinking that there’s nothing particularly noteworthy or memorable in those words but for me, they brought back a long-forgotten memory. 

Hearing the word “bugle” spoken aloud for the first time in 60 years or so, reminded me of something that my friends and I used to do when we were about 14 years old.

I find it particularly important because it is a “New Memory” for me and that’s significant because as far as I can tell, all my memories until now have been what may only be described as “Old Memories”.  

Some nights ago, instead of counting sheep when I couldn’t sleep (which, by the way, doesn’t ever work), I was trying to think of something from the distant past; something that I haven’t thought about since the time it happened.  

In other words, I was trying to bring back, or even to generate for the first time, a long-forgotten memory - something that I have never thought about since it happened.  I failed because everything I thought of was something I always think of when thinking about that topic.  No new memory would come to mind.  

I thought about my schooldays and about the different classrooms and labs in which I was ever taught and tried to remember an event in each one.  For most of them I could remember something that happened there but they were always the same old memories – never anything new.

For fifteen years of my life, I was a frequent passenger on buses in Lowestoft but I can’t think of any aspect or event that happened during any of those bus journeys I made.  

I can remember the stops where I got on and off a bus and I can remember the bus numbers as well as the colours of those buses but I recall absolutely nothing about any bus journey I ever made.  

I only have two memories of my grandfather who died when I was 13.  One is going for a walk with him when I was about five.  He always carried a walking stick and on that occasion, for some reason, so did I.  My other memory is some years later of him standing on the boundary, watching me play in a school cricket match.  

I was with him many times and it is very depressing that I have forgotten everything about those meetings.  I wonder whether my grandchildren will remember anything of me in 60 years’ time.

When batting, I must have been dismissed more than 2500 times and yet, if I try to remember any of those dismissals, it is always the same five or six that come to mind and never any of the others.

I played at hundreds of different cricket grounds over 40 years and for every ground I can remember playing at, I only have one memory.  There are, though, two exceptions.  One of them is Arden Field where my club, Finchley, played and the other is Gerrards Cross, where I have two memories.

I first remember playing at Gerrards Cross in July 1974, not because of the game itself but because it was there that I first heard the word “bonk” used as a synonym for sexual intercourse.

At about three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, I was fielding at first slip when, between deliveries and apropos absolutely nothing whatsoever, second slip asked me how many people in the UK I estimated were bonking at that precise moment.  It is odd that although I had never heard the term before, I knew exactly what he meant by “bonking”.

I also remember playing there on Sunday July 18th 1976.  That was memorable because Alice, my elder daughter, was born the following morning.

It seems that my memory is like an art gallery where the rows of pictures never change.  As with those pictures, my memories are permanent and fixed - until now! 

Thanks to Boris Johnson, I have discovered a memory from long ago and now I remember something that I haven’t thought of for several decades.

When I was 14, all my friends were boys.  I was at school with girls and girls made up at least half of every class I was ever in but I never spoke to any of them.   At that age, my friends and I didn’t talk to girls - but we did talk about them.

When the Prime Minister mentioned the sound of “the distant bugle” the other day, I was transported back to Lowestoft town centre, where my school friends and I would wander about on a Saturday morning.  

As we walked along in a group of three or four, one of us might spot an attractive girl.  

“Look,” he would say and then, putting on as broad a Suffolk accent as possible, would sing out:

“Doo yer think she boogle?”  

Thereupon, the rest of us would chant back in unison:

“Yer bet yer loife she do.”

Then, we would giggle like naughty boys who were slightly embarrassed because they knew they were being smutty.  

I have no idea how “bugle” came into our vocabulary as a precursor to “bonk” but as you know, it never caught on.

131. Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Then I’ll begin:
Political Correctness got out of hand years ago and I wrote about how I feel about it last October (Click to see).  Things have become worse.  Now, it seems, people and particularly men, have to be very careful about the way they stand and especially, the way they sit.

You may have heard of the “Power Pose”.  This is the way that some people stand in an open, expansive posture with their feet wide apart.  They believe, so I have read, that this makes them feel, or appear to be, powerful and dominant.  I think that when Theresa May does it, she just looks uncomfortable and ridiculous, as if her knickers are riding up and she's got a wedgie.

Boris Johnson has been in trouble recently and it’s not because of his posture or for anything he has said.  It is the way that he sits that has caused comment and much of it was critical and hostile.  In the team photograph of Theresa May’s first cabinet, Boris was accused of, and pronounced guilty of, “manspreading”.  

This is a relatively new word and you may not have come upon it before.  It was introduced into The Oxford English Dictionary in 2015.

The word “manspread” originated, of course, in New York - the spiritual home of misandrists everywhere.  It was introduced by some silly women who had nothing to be concerned about other than men who were invading their personal leg space on the subway by sitting with their knees apart.  These women attempted to shame the offending men by photographing and naming them if they could.

These women state, as if they know it to be true and it is a matter of fact, that men sit in this way with their knees far apart in order to demonstrate their dominance over women and to increase their sexual attractiveness. 

What a load of bollocks and I use that word deliberately because it is bollocks that are at the core of the issue.

Look at this photograph:

It is a segment of a photograph of St Margaret's School football team after they won the Lowestoft Junior Schools Cup.  I am one of those five boys you can see.  We were all aged 10 or 11.

Look at the way we are sitting.  No “manspreading” there.  In fact, two of us are sitting like little girls with crossed legs.  Those boys are sitting that way because they can.  There are no large bits that 11 year-old boys need to worry about when sitting down.

Now look at this photo:

My knees are in this photograph segment as well and it was taken 5 years after the first photo.  This is of Lowestoft Town Boys football team in 1962.  We five pictured are all 15 or 16.  Look at how we sat.  Puberty had kicked in.  Changes had taken place over five years.  Never mind manspreading - that is world class “boyspreading”. 

Who were all of us trying to dominate or appear sexually attractive towards?  There was no one to impress but the male press photographer.  We all sat that way because that’s the natural, comfortable way that males beyond a certain age choose to sit.  It is instinctive and happens, as with many things that boys and young men do, without any thought process.

How about this one?

Again, two of these legs are mine.  These seven men were all aged between 68 and 70 at the time the photograph was taken last year.  A group of 15 of us who have been friends since we first met in October 1965 at Hatfield College, Durham University, met for a 50-year reunion. 

All of us are married and our wives were standing behind the camera as that picture was taken.  None of us would ever dare to try to dominate any of them and I suspect, although I may be wrong in every case, that we all gave up trying to show sexual attractiveness some years ago.  Yet we are all manspreading.  It’s natural.  Get it?

So, will all you women who find manspreading so offensive and aggressive, please realise that we can’t help it and it is actually nowhere near as offensive and invasive as “she-bagging”.

She-bagging describes the habit that some women have of putting their handbag and possibly their shopping bags and baskets too, on to the seats of buses and tube trains and so prevent people (men) from sitting down.

There is no need for that at all.  Stop it!

However,

There are times when manspreading is really wrong:

That officer in The Scots Guards knew exactly what he was doing. Look at the expression on his face!