Sixty-Two Million Pages of Horse Pucky

Everyone and his uncle now seems to be advising us on how we can banish the dreaded 'January Blues'.

Yes, Henry has contracted a couple of interesting infections and battle scars after fighting a colony of rabid badgers intent on eating our chickens, but I would hardly say January has been 'blue'.

A quick googly search reveals 62,000,000 mentions of 'january blues' (damn Google, decapitalising everything I type), and three pages into the aforesaid multiple millions of search results I became more than a little bored of reading the phrase 'beat the January Blues'. 

The syndrome has even been renamed, by Professor Cary Cooper from the University of Lancaster, as 'acute post-bank holiday depression syndrome'.

No relation

Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University suggests that Monday 22nd January is 'the worst day of the year'.  Then I looked at the calendar and decided he was crazy.  There isn't a Monday 22nd January this year.  It was the 21st.  So, I skipped the Net Doctor website – it was clearly silly – and pressed on doughtily through the interwoods in a bold attempt to ascertain what January Blues actually are.

Family seems to depress people, especially over the festive season, not to mention that one has to buy one’s wretched family members the new hot phone as Christmas presents.  Drinking too much to get over the cost of the new hot phone doesn't help, and the damned family is making your alcohol consumption even worse.  All this alcohol is leading to disrupted sleep, and the noise your blasted family makes may well lead to no sleep at all.  And after all this, your family staying over the festive season has made your household bills go up, up, up vertiginously, rather in the style of daddy’s old Bofors 20mm anti-aircraft gun.

So, in January, instead of being relieved that it's finally all over, you're left with alcohol dependence, unpayably vast bills, deafening quiet after all the noise, and one or two more stone around the hips; while all you got in return was a pair of socks with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Bloody Quarry Species on them.  Which you can't even wear outwith the month of December.  How useless!  How depressing!

To top it all off, you've decided on a few New Year's Resolutions, you silly sod.  Given up smoking, have you?  Gone on a diet, have you?  Decided to get a more exciting job, eh?  Damn well taken out a gym membership, have you?  Not to mention, it's back to work for you now, Sonny Jim.  (Unless of course you went and caught the Norovirus, in which case, you may amend that last one to ‘Well, then it's off to the hospital for you, Sonny Jim.’)

It's all cute and cuddly, until someone throws up a lung.

So.  Now I've read all the ways to 'beat' the January Blues – move more, make a friend, try something new – etc, etc.  But what the more intelligent bear might wish to know is, how do you avoid the damned January Blues in the first place?

Well, let me tell you.

1.    Do it like Uncle Bulldog.  Be insanely rich.  The presents won't mean anything to you, mostly because you won't even buy any.  Throw the largest, most raucous and indulgent Christmas party, resulting in your one increased festive bill, and then be miserly the rest of the year.  Everyone will remember the party, but not the fact that all they got was a Christmas cracker toy.  Well, you don't stay rich if you're always buying people things, do you?

2.     Do it like Uncle Whippet.  Don't stop celebrating.  Why only be festive and giving around Christmas?  Be like dear old Uncle Whippy and just keep celebrating all the year long.

And he always seems so cheerful

 3.    Don't Buy Any Presents.  For those who are not insanely rich and/or my uncle: don't buy anything at first, and definitely not until you see what you've been given.  If you do receive something, you're likely then to be in time for the January sales.  If you don't receive any, then don't buy any.  If they're going to be a cheapskate (or 'chesapeake' as our American cousins insist on spelling it), then they can't expect you to ‘fork out’, can they?  If they do complain, use a hockey stick to the shin; then they'll have something proper to complain about.

4.     Become a Puritan.  They don't do Christmas, alcohol, or anything fun.  It'll certainly save on New Year's Resolutions, too, as you'll have nothing to give up.  This one is for those who can't practically commit even to no. 3.

We spit in the face of 'fun'

 5.  Hibernate.  Splendid idea!  This way, you get the depression metabolically, rather than mentally.  You'll save on the heating and food bills too.  It's a season of heterothermy, with low body temperature, slow breathing and heart rate, and a low metabolic rate.  You can stuff your face all autumn and burn it off by sleeping all winter.  Just hang up a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the bedroom door and you won't even have to see your family or buy them any presents.  They'll understand.  You don't do Christmas, you do hibernation.  This approach can readily be combined with no. 6, 'Live in a Cave'.

6.     Live in a Cave.  Well, why not?  Get the Council to wire in some electricity and running water, and you're laughing.  You may wish to insert some sort of fence around the cave mouth to protect against sociable hermits and nosy neighbours.

They're not as rustic as they used to be

There you go.  If you're not such a clotpole in the lead-up to Christmas, then you can avoid the 'January Blues' entirely.

And which do Henry and I subscribe to?  Why, we're the ones at Uncle Bulldog's Christmas party, of course.  We're so hungover for the rest of winter that we completely forget about everyone else.

Nothing to it.

No, Neigh, Never No More?

And so, the ABP Food Group has suspended production over this horsemeat burger fiasco.  For my many readers who (probably quite wisely) do not keep up to date with current affairs, the BBC reports that 'A total of 27 burger products were analysed, with 10 of them containing traces of horse DNA and 23 containing pig DNA'; and 'In addition, 31 beef meal products, including cottage pie, beef curry pie and lasagne, were analysed, of which 21 tested positive for pig DNA.'

This has caused quite a considerable amount of alarm among Joseph and Joanna Public.  What I find alarming is that, despite the pig DNA being by far the higher quantity of the two types of non-beef DNA found, the horsemeat is what’s causing the stir.  Well, that and the atrocious lack of enforcement in the food-labelling industry, but that's an entirely different blog instalment.

Yes, that's about right.

The BBC News website had an interesting article about why the British are revolted by the very idea of eating horsemeat.  When they spoke to Dr Roger Mugford, an animal psychologist who runs the Animal Behaviour Centre and who is also a farmer, he said there is no logical reason why we Brits are willing to eat pigs, cows and chickens, but not horses.

Why are horses different from pigs and lambs?  Every time Henry and I do the booze cruise to Bordeaux all we eat is horse steaks with lashings of red wine.  It's delicious, slightly more gamey than beef and a bit healthier (or so I'm told).  The meat is also commonly consumed in Belgium, South America and Central Asia.

This Mugford fellow seems to think it could be something to do with history.  Ivan Day, food historian, seems to agree.  'Horses helped out in warfare.  There have been huge sacrifices alongside riders in historic battles.  And there are sentimental depictions like War Horse,' says Mugford.  Day comments: 'We have to remember at one point, before railways, horses were the main means of transport.  You don't eat your Aston Martin.'  Yes, well, oil rots the teeth, Mr Day.

Another food historian, Dr Annie Gray, wades in and agrees that the reasons we don't eat horsemeat in Britain include 'their usefulness as beast of burden, and their association with poor or horrid conditions of living.'

We won't eat horse because they're beasts of burden?  Majestic and noble, helping us plough the fields and deliver the milk.  And I'll admit I have very fond memories of our two grey Shire horses drawing the carts to deliver ale from our small brewery (a wee side-line business to keep my Uncle Whippet busy) to the public houses when I was a girl, with apple-pink cheeks and a cheese sandwich in my grubby mitt.  Now that we live up here in Scotland, we use Shire horses in forestry work.  Our darling little Sylvie learned to ride on the bay Shire we own.  It is my favourite breed, and yes, they are majestic and noble.

However, this does not mean I am against horsemeat as a food, and the beast-of-burden argument against people eating horsemeat is preposterous.  Why, oxen are still being used for much farm work.  They can pull heavier loads and for a longer period of time than horses.  Admittedly, they are slower than horses in some circumstances, but they're steady.  They are more suitable for tasks such as breaking sod or ploughing in the wet, heavy, or clay-like soil.  They're also far less excitable.  They pull carts, haul wagons, can thresh grain and power machines that grind, and they could even be used in some forms of logging.  Bearing that in mind – ox-tail soup anybody?

And how about yaks?  Domesticated yaks have been kept for thousands of years, for their milk, fur and meat…and as beasts of burden.  Their dried dung is a great fuel, used all over Tibet, and it’s often the only fuel available in the treeless Tibetan Plateau.  Yaks transport goods across mountains, and can be used to draw ploughs.  If that's not similar enough to horses, consider this – yak polo.

Yes, that’s right.  It's a thing.

I never lie about such important things.

Or what about dromedary camels?  They are used as beasts of burden in most of their domesticated range.  They're more patient animals too, easier to train and tougher than cattle, and can also pull carts and ploughs.  Better than horses, they kneel for the loading of passengers and cargo.  And, what else?  Oh yes, dromedary meat is a good source of food – mostly water and protein.  These days, camel meat can be made into items like burgers, sausages and shawarma.  Just avoid eating raw camel liver.  It's not good for humans at all.  Maybe avoid the bone marrow too, just to be on the safe side.

To quickly name some others, water buffalo are used as draught-, meat- and dairy animals.  They have also been found carrying loads for special forces.  Donkeys are principally used as beasts of burden, but can also be found as sheep guards, donkey rides, pets and yes, used for meat and dairy (although mostly in Italy).  Donkeys were even used in warfare, just like horses.

British Dominion officers at some sort of obvious tourist location.  Menorca?

Now here's one you might not know about – llamas.  (Cuidado!)  Used as meat- and pack animals by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times.  Apparently, 'llamas which are well-socialised and trained to halter and lead after weaning are very friendly and pleasant to be around'.  They are very curious and will approach most people easily.  You can even use these animals as livestock guards.  No, really.  This started in North America in the early 1980s and some sheep producers use them very successfully, especially in areas where larger predators such as coyotes are prevalent.  One male llama is better than several llamas guarding a herd of sheep – if by himself he'll bond with his new sheep charges instead of his own llama family, and he'll be particularly protective of lambs.  Now isn't that cute?

And that's the key word isn't it?  Cute.

Another pack animal I didn't mention above was the dog.  Along with horses, dogs are very much a companion animal in the UK – killing them for meat is a very emotive subject.  Another beast of burden that is also a great food source is the reindeer.  I seem to remember a great furore about a cut-price supermarket chain selling reindeer steak around Christmas time.  And why the hell not?  Humans started hunting reindeer in the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, and there is still an unbroken tradition of this in Norway and Greenland.  And how old is Rudolph?  He first appeared in 1939.  The other eight reindeer first appeared in 1823.  How are flying reindeer pulling an old, fat man into children's houses more socially acceptable than eating reindeer steak?

Silly sentimental nonsense.

Why is one species more cherished than the other?  I'm only slightly more surprised that some of these cheap flaps of meat even contained beef in the first place.

Henry, of course, focusses on what is really important to him in this whole scenario – 'But beef is British and horse is French!' he cried. 'Just what are those Frenchies trying to pull?'

For me, I think the solution is simple.  Rather than being a species-ist, become a vegan.  If veganism doesn't float your boat, then quit complaining and eat up.  I am far more concerned that my meat and chicken is ethically sourced and well-cared for in life.  If you want to eat horsemeat in this country, then go ahead.  Most of our ex-work horses are being exported to France for food anyway.  So, you can still eat British.

In the meantime, once the Shires have retired and are being kept as lawnmowers, I think I'll get a pack goat.

He looks like he could tow a Land Rover out of a loch.  I’ll take him!

‘The English at the double an' the Irish at the charge’

Henry and I have been watching Ripper Street on the BBC.  It is a great show.  If you're not a young person with a bedtime long before 9pm, I would highly recommend you catch up on the iPlayer.

Ripper Street is set in Whitechapel in 1889, six months after Jack the Ripper’s rampage ended.  Don't expect them to be re-writing history there, however: because no-one knew the Ripper would never return, tensions remain high.  It stars Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn (whom I hadn't seen on TV since Soldier, Soldier and only just recognised in episode two – what a transformation!) and Adam Rothenberg.  Fantastic writing, great actors, historically accurate even down to the height of the Victorian police force, and the best depiction of Victorian East London I've seen in a jolly long time.

I was therefore a wee tad surprised to hear what Jan Moir of the Daily Mail had to say about it.

'Who decided to make the BBC's Sunday night period drama an anti-women orgy of gore?' she practically shrieks in her headline.

How odd.  Apparently she likes 'a bit of picturesque historical gore just as much as the next woman' and saw it as a perfect replacement for Downton Abbey for her Sunday night's viewing.  She quite rightly criticises the ridiculous use of raspberry jam at the end of the Downton Christmas special, and had been looking forward to non-jam blood in a show that appeared 'to be all dark and noir-ish, and thick with the intoxicating promise of taking its viewers seriously'.  She seems positively gagging for this new show, which had been 'trailed extensively by the BBC and... looked terrific; 50 shades of sepia suffused with gaslight, rattling carriages and footpads creeping along dripping alleyways'.  She seems also to have a crush on Macfadyen.

Silly woman.  Don't you know you can't trust a man with blue eyes?

Lies.  It was all lies.

Ms Moir seems positively shocked and asks 'how did such a godforsaken, blood-spattered, flamboyantly violent, women-hating television series ever get made in the first place?'  That's not all she asks.  'How did Ripper Street – which airs at 9pm – get past the censors, the powers that be, the arbiters of good taste, or indeed anyone at the BBC with a modicum of sense or sensibility?'  And yet she quite happily admits that no-one is expecting a television drama lightly connected with Jack the Ripper to be 'a lovely tea party with cream cakes and kittens'.  She understands and knows that 'in the badlands and murk of 19th-century East London, brutality was commonplace and life was cheap…'

And yet, and yet, 'there is something horribly wrong about Ripper Street; something about its souring atmosphere and the way that violence is rather too lasciviously portrayed against a backdrop of fetishized period-perfect sets that has left many viewers feeling queasy.'

Well, not this viewer and not Henry either.

In the first episode, the body of a female violinist is found bearing all the trademarks of a Jack the Ripper crime.  However, after performing an autopsy, Captain Homer Jackson (Rothenberg) suggests it might be a copycat.  DI Reid (Macfadyen) and his DS, Drake (Flynn) are then drawn into the Victorian underworld in the form of early pornography and the first snuff films.

'There is torture and murder of women, enthusiastically depicted.  Nothing to do with the Ripper mind you.'  Well, yes, Ms Moir.  You have just mentioned that Jack was only 'loosely' connected with the show.  And, it does all happen six months after the last Ripper murder.  Also, if it's a copycat Ripper murder, do you somehow expect the torture and murder of women to be any less horrid and enthusiastic than the real-life Ripper, who in real life savagely slashed throats and ripped open abdomens with jagged wounds, removing the uterus from most of his victims?  The woman found in the beginning of the first episode (please note that we do not see her getting murdered) had her throat quite neatly cut and symbols cut into her face.  There was not a huge amount of blood, because these wounds were made post-mortem.  Everything else we saw, you would see watching one of those televised autopsies, or in CSI even.

Yeaaaaah!

Ah, but Moir goes on, and what caught her eye was the 'convoluted plotline' about the first snuff films (or should we say snuff magic-lanterns):  'This skimpy premise was enough to galvanise some posh bloke dressed up as an Egyptian to have himself filmed as he throttles and kills a young woman for his own sexual gratification.  We see a great deal more of this act than is strictly necessary.'  This same man then shows his second victim the movies before drugging her and doing the same.  'The camera lingering on Rose's bloodied nostrils and bulging eyes as the leather strap around her neck is tightened was one of the creepiest and most unwarranted scenes I can ever recall seeing in a period drama.'

Don't ever watch City of Vice, Jan.  Just don't.  You may be offended by the authentic and historically accurate story of two men creating a police force, 75 years before the Metropolitan Police.  The Times described it as 'an antidote to the current spate of twee costume dramas'.  I saw the first episode when it aired back in 2008.  You think the murder and torture of women in Ripper Street is bad?

But that's by the bye.  The end scene of Rose (Charlene McKenna) being strangled is shocking, but if you weren't shocked by it and made to feel uncomfortable then I would worry about your mental health.  Why, Jan, how do you look when you're being strangled?  An image of peace, clarity, and vegetable rights, no doubt.  And I suppose your blood does not splatter everywhere when you are run through by a policeman’s sabre.

Oh!  Jan Moir of the Daily Mail!  I could go on about the Victorians’ obsession with Egypt (they had successfully occupied the country in 1882) and the sordid underbelly of the Victorian underworld (complete with prostitution – especially in Whitechapel – and child labour).  I suppose you’ve never read My Secret Life by ‘Walter, a gentleman’, but did you know that Queen Victoria herself liked to draw and collect male nude figure drawings?  Victorian erotica survives in private letters archived in museums, and even in a study of women's orgasms.  And if you think that Ripper Street is glorifying the abuse of women for a modern audience, just look up the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s.  If anything, I rather think Ripper Street is playing it down.

Just a typical happy Victorian family.

In the second episode, a 60-year-old toy maker (David Coon) is found beaten to death.  A 14-year-old boy (Giacomo Mancini) is held responsible by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.  Reid and Drake are not quite so sure, as the boy doesn't say anything for or against his conviction, and they look into the case further.  They uncover a gambling den run by Carmichael (Joseph Gilgun), one of the most sinister characters put on the screen in years, who employs a vicious child gang to do his dirty work.  All ends well, of course.

Not so for Jan Moir.  'Elsewhere there are buckets of blood – quite literally, in one dripping morgue scene – far too many belt buckles thwacking into pliant flesh for comfort, clubs studded with nails... as Cockney screams pierce the fog.'

Where else would you prefer the blood to go in the autopsy scene, Jan?  All over Jackson as he performs it?  Over Reid's very fine tweed coat?  What you witnessed was a lovely dose of sanitation in the age of cholera.  I’d call it progress.

Belts, clubs and crosses.  Why gloss over the fact that it's children normally wielding them?  Why not go on and criticise the casino scene where children are dealing cards and serving drinks?  One of them cuts the tongue out of a victim.  We never see it, but surely that should be touched upon too if you want to make a thorough go of it.

In every scene that includes seeing the belt used to thrash someone in the face, there are no buckets of blood.  Yes, people get bloodied.  They've been belted in the face, but it wasn't 'buckets'.  I would hardly call it 'blood-splashed relish' as you do.  I find Rudyard Kipling's contemporary description of late-Victorian belt-fighting far more disturbing.

But it was: -- ‘Belts, belts, belts, an' that's one for you!’

An' it was ‘Belts, belts, belts, an' that's done for you!’

O buckle an' tongue

Was the song that we sung

From Harrison's down to the Park!

Finally, consider these three paragraphs from Jan Moir's 'review':

'There is terrible violence meted out to men and children, too, but the focus of the viciousness is always on the knicker-dropping molls and the "tarts".  Tarts get ripped, tarts get mutilated, tarts get their just desserts – and that don't mean no custard topping, guv.'

No 'tarts' are ripped or mutilated in episode two.  One 'tart' is beaten up, but she gives as good as she gets until outnumbered by four men holding her down.  It is ridiculous to argue that the entire show is focussed on viciousness towards the 'tarts'; even the episode’s title, ‘In My Protection’, accurately reflects its central concern, the (all-male) police force’s protection of a (boy) child from both Carmichael’s (all-male) gang and the (all-male) Vigilantes.

'Together, they wear so many plaid coats, tweed suits, natty hats and accessories that they are in danger of looking like menswear models for the Ralph Lauren winter collection.  In contrast, the women are generally naked – or just shuffle about in rags.'

Yes, please, if you don't mind, Mr Lauren.  Go in this direction.

That's more 'rags' than women wear in Aberdeen on a Friday night out in 2013.

Quick, woman!  Put something on!  Oh, you have.

Shuffling around in rags, Ripper Street style.

'I don't think’, Jan concludes, ‘I will be returning to a Ripper Street where crimes are depicted with such blood-splashed relish, and where the women are either silent (like the inspector's troubled wife), viciously beaten, about to be viciously beaten, rancorous, murderesses, abused, mutilated or dead.'

Reid's wife is not silent, despite the fact that she suffered an as-yet undisclosed trauma involving their daughter.  Reid is the one who can't talk about it; his wife goes to the local church and talks about it there.  Just like any other couple today who may have suffered a great loss in their life, they’re in pain, grieving on different timelines.  He's not shutting her up for any sexist reasons.

I've counted one dead woman (who is also the one mutilated – four fewer than the dead men in the series so far, one of whom was also mutilated); two women viciously beaten (one of whom doesn’t fight back, but only because she is drugged); and one lovely orphanage owner who shields her charges from the violence meted out by the men on the other side of the room, and then saves the day with the aforementioned club with spikes.  Oh, and one murderess, albeit a brief cameo one.  They fight with admirable pluck, and like all plucky fighters, sometimes they lose.

And as for ‘rancorous’: wouldn't you have been rancorous back in the Victorian era, Jan, when, even with a female on the throne, you did not have suffrage rights, the right to sue or the right to own property (and lost whatever property you brought into your marriage, even following divorce)?  Even though you were expected to participate in the paid workforce, and have your income completely controlled by your husband?  When the law regarded men as autonomous persons, but legal recognition of women's rights as such would not be fully realised for generations?

Just what do you propose these women do, Jan?  Sit there stroking their lapdogs or their husbands’ majestic side-whiskers, and tossing off a witty one-liner here and there, when a brief lull falls in the men’s discussion of grouse, port, foreign affairs, and the stock exchange?

I’ll bet you can't wait to sit back down to your next period drama more to your taste, like Downton Abbey, The Hour or Mad Men – even though each features an age of inferior women's rights and females dressed up as sex objects.  However, only The Hour is any good as a television drama that takes the viewer seriously, and you might want to skip that one; there's some blood and 'tarts' in the second series.  The other shows just assume you're an idiot.  You'll love them.

I bet you just loved The Paradise.

Why hello, Jan.  We've been expecting you.