Some people do exercises to get their day started, which is fine. We’re all entitled to eccentricities, and this isn’t the worst one.
It is, however, one of the most annoying. This obsession with one’s physique betokens sybaritic self-indulgence, a tilt towards the body and away from the mind.
One also detects a certain holier-than-thou attitude there, some claim to moral ascendancy. Yes, the well-toned chap seems to be saying, I pay attention to my body – unlike you.
I, the well-toned testament to the everlasting nature of amour propre, uphold the ideals of Greco-Roman antiquity. Mens sana in corpore sano, my old son.
Yeah, yeah, I reply with my usual contrariness. And what ideals would they be? Slavery? Paganism? Leaving newborn girls by the roadside to be devoured by wild beasts?
Your logic, he objects, doing his fiftieth press-up, is as soft as your muscles. What do you do first thing in the morning? After you’ve finished throwing up, that is?
First, I answer indignantly, I haven’t done that in the best part of 30 years. And second… well, here I have to admit to an eccentricity of my own.
Having abandoned all hope of ever cranking up my body into life in the morning, I try to get my mind started instead. To that, typically hopeless, end I do a couple of easy crosswords, eschewing the cryptic ones.
When asked for an explanation, I usually say that cryptic crosswords take too long to complete. Actually, and this is between you and me, I’m not smart enough, or rather British enough, to complete them.
I can just about complete the easy ones, though occasionally I’m let down by my conviction that words must always be used in their real meaning.
We get words second-hand, after they’ve been used by a chastening number of generations. To make verbal discourse possible, they had to agree on the meaning of words and stick to that agreement.
They, the generations that produced John Donne and Anthony Trollope, didn’t feel that words mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. We, the generation that produced Don Brown and Joanna Trollope, think they must.
In fact, lexical laxity is a distinguishing feature of modernity, what with its understated education and overstated solipsism. Well, you know what I mean, says a modern man using ‘masterful’ to mean ‘masterly’. No, I don’t, my friend. Are you sure you do?
Look at today’s crossword, for example. One clue is “Make (someone) appear guilty (11)”. The compiler seems to think that this is what ‘incriminate’ means.
It doesn’t. ‘Incriminate’ means to charge with a crime or a fault, with a few variations. None of them signifies ‘make someone appear guilty’. In fact, many incriminated people appear as innocent as those newborn girls dumped by the Romans.
Another clue in the same pathetic puzzle: “Essential aspects (5-6)”, with me expected to write in ‘nitty-gritty’. But that’s not what nitty-gritty means.
It means fine, basic details. Such details may be essential, but then again they may not. Anyone who has ever read a legal document will agree, as will anyone who has ever foolishly said ‘nice car’ to a boffin and received a lecture on McPherson struts and slip differentials in return.
Here’s another clue in the same crossword: ‘Deep admiration (7)’. Would you guess that the answer is supposed to be ‘respect’?
Admiration and respect are two different things. I respect our cleaning lady for being honest and conscientious, but I don’t admire her. I respect Andy Murray for having become the first Briton to win Wimbledon since God was young, but I certainly don’t admire the surly git.
It’s not just crosswords either. The other day a receptionist told me that the doctor would see me ‘momentarily’. That gave me a start: I feared the doctor would take one look at me and kick me out.
Then I realised that she had used the word not in its true meaning, which is ‘for a moment’, but in her voluntaristic meaning of ‘in a moment’. When such solecisms are pointed out to today’s lot, they usually say that language is but a means of communication.
That may be, though any reader of Shakespeare’s sonnets will argue that language isn’t just that. Still, no communication is possible if the speaker and listener can’t agree on the meaning of words.
All this sounds trivial, and so it would be if it weren’t a symptom of a general malaise. For voluntarism in language betokens voluntarism in thought. Anyone who uses words loosely thinks loosely, which makes him easy prey to those who use language to deceive.
Thus when a politician talks about helping the less fortunate, few realise he means dispossessing the more fortunate. When he mentions cooperation with our European partners, few understand this means overturning 2,000 years of British political history. And when he preaches respect for different cultures, we may overlook that he actually means destroying our own.
Much as we may despise conspiracy theories, one finds it hard to believe that our educational catastrophe is a result of honest errors. Some deliberate design is discernible behind the concerted drive to disengage people from their culture, including their language.
Our ‘leaders’ believe that stuffing the people with bread and keeping them half-catatonic with circuses will keep them sweet. The blighters only ever sound alarm bells when they realise that our moron-spewing ‘education’ produces millions of unemployable savages.
All those Poles and Estonians, some of them not speaking a word of English, come here and within a few months they take jobs the Britons aren’t qualified to do.
Since people don’t starve to death in civilised countries, the state has to feed those underachieving Britons, as a side benefit making them likely to vote for those who promise to feed them better.
Our ‘leaders’ generally think this is a fair deal but, with the economy being what it is, feeding a burgeoning army of illiterate idlers lowers the standard of living for everyone else.
Since those who thereby suffer still outnumber the loafers, an electoral calamity looms large. It’s only at this point that politicians try to paper over the spidery cracks in our ‘education system’.
Otherwise, reducing a great nation to anomic barbarism is perfectly fine with them. That’s actually a clue in another crossword: “savage (8)”. ‘Barbarian’ is supposed to be the answer, a typically imprecise one.