"Consistency will turn any good cause into a bad one"

I should like to point out some of the advantages and even joys of inconsistency. I do not claim that inconsistency, in itself, is a virtue. There is something neutral and rather unassuming about it, and I dare say that it can be abused. I am not advocating incoherent babble, and I rather like rational discourse. Besides, the case of inconsistency cannot be made consistently without inviting a logical conundrum.

    Instead, I would suggest that we owe our lives to vacillation, indecision, and unprincipled action. You would not now be in a position to mind what I am saying, or agree with it, if it were not for the late Mr. Khrushchev, who behaved, as we all know, like a disgraceful opportunist in 1962. Did he not back out with his rockets? Wasn't he simply yellow, as they say? Did he not throw overboard the most sacrosanct principles of Marxism-Leninism? And no one in the whole Kremlin had the guts to stand up and say that selling out to imperialism is bad. No, all those old militants just had one thing on their minds; they wanted to save their own skins, and in the process they happened to save our skins as well. Consistency would have dictated quite a different course of action. It generally does. Let me mention just a few examples:

Take any economic doctrine whatsoever, apply it, proceed logically with your project, and you will eventually destroy the very economy you had set out to save. 

Act out the fundamental tenets of capitalism to their ultimate consequences, and you will end up with a state of civil war and/or a Fascist dictatorship.

Attack the social system you live in by any means at your disposal, and you have terrorism; defend it by any means, and you have a Gestapo running the place.

Be a rigorous ecologist and defend nature against man with no holds barred, and you will end up leading a Stone Age existence.

Build communism, be uncompromising about it, and your militancy will take you straight into what is rightly known as the socialist camp.

Pursue economic growth at any price and you will destroy the biosphere.

Join the arms race, be consistent about it, and you will blow yourself to pieces.

Et cetera.

In this sort of situation, which has become quite frequent, principle isn't what it used to be. For those who are still looking around for a maxim to follow, I would suggest this: Consistency will turn any good cause into a bad one. It is a luxury we can no longer afford. For philosophers who are interested in keeping their thinking as straight as possible, this must be an unwelcome thought, but for people at large it will not come as a surprise. In our parts of the world, a vast if not vociferous majority of citizens has come to realize, I believe, that their only chance of survival is based not on one or two Big Ideas but on a constantly changing set of marginal options. They are quite prepared to face a lengthy and contradictory process of muddling through, of trial and error.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Second Thoughts on Consistency

Fist

When my brother put his fist through a window
on New Year’s Eve, no one noticed until a cold draft
cooled our bodies dancing. There was rainbow light
from a disco ball, silver tinsel round the pictures.
My brother held his arm out to us, palm
upturned, a foot high spray of blood.
This was Ilford, Essex, 1993, nearly midnight,
us all smashed on booze and Ecstasy and Danny,
6 foot 5, folding at the knee, a shiny fin of glass
wedged in his wrist. We walked him to
the kitchen, the good arm slung on someone’s neck,
Gary shouting Danny, Darren phoning for
an ambulance, the blood was everywhere. I pressed
a towel across the wound, around
the glass and led him by the hand into the
garden, he stumbled down into the snow,
slurring leave it out and I’m ok  A girl was crying in
the doorway, the music carried on, the bass line
thumping as we stood around my brother, Gary talking
gently saying easy fella,  Darren draining Stella in one
hand and in the other, holding up my brother’s arm,
wet and red, the veins stood out like branches. I thought
that he was dying, out there in the snow and I
got down, I knelt there on the ice
and held my brother, who I never touched, and never told
I loved, and even then I couldn’t say it
so I listened to the incantation easy fella
and my brother’s breathing,
felt him rolling forward, all that weight, Darren
throwing down his can and yelling Danny, don’t you dare
and shaking him. My brother’s face was grey,
his lips were loose and pale and I
was praying. Somewhere in the street, there was
a siren, there was a girl inside who blamed
herself,  there were men with blankets
and a tourniquet, they stopped my brother bleeding,
as the New Year turned, they saved him,
the snow was falling hard, they saved us all.

Hannah Lowe

Curing the Blues

I have no doubt that all my readers from time to time get the "blues". They come to everybody.

It is usually difficult to say what is wrong. We feel heavy and depressed, life looks black, and sometimes it seems as if it were hardly worth living.

The "blues" is a nasty, irritating complaint. But there is a cure for it as there is for most ailments.

In nine cases out of ten such depression is the result of too much thought on one subject, usually a problem or a difficulty that refuses to be solved.

Even the healthiest person is liable to this mental sickness, when the brain goes dizzily round and round a stubborn problem, getting no nearer to a way out.

And as mental states are quickly reflected in bodily feelings, we usually end up by feeling tired and listless.

Doctors are fond of recommending a change for bodily ills. Try a complete mental change for mental ills.

When you get the "blues" don't go on thinking. Switch your mind to something else; and the more cheerful and different it is the better.

Go out and play a hard game of tennis, for instance. If you play properly you will be so absorbed in the game that you will have no time to mope.

Brains, like bodies, get tired. And for a tired brain there is nothing like fresh air, sunshine, cheerful companionship, and absorption in something that, for once, does not matter.

You will return from such a change with invigorated mental powers. You will see fresh points of view, and you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you have left the "blues" behind you.

E. R. Thompson, The Human Machine (1925)

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Seamus Heaney

Why I Like England

I like living in England because everywhere else is foreign and strange. The only language I speak is English: I dropped French at school and took up hurdling with the athletic team instead. Even now, in later years, my instinctive reaction on hearing French is to jerk one leg in the air and propel myself towards low garden walls. But I wouldn’t like anyone to think that I don’t like Abroad. I do. Abroad means adventure and the possibility of danger and delicious food, but abroad is also tiring and confusing and full of foreigners who tell you that the bank is open when it’s not.

Being an atheist I am naturally interested in English churches, and being a town dweller I passionately love the English countryside. Though I will concede that it looks better on the telly than it does in real life, as a child new to the countryside said to me once on a Social Service outing.

I only fully appreciated the varied nature of the English countryside after driving for two days through a Swedish pine forest. By the morning of the second day, desperate for novelty, I started counting the dead reindeer that littered the verges. By the afternoon I’d stopped feeling sorry for the reindeer, and by late evening I’d also stopped feeling guilty about owning two pine dressers. In fact my first thought on seeing the oak dressers appearing in Habitat’s window was that Terence Conran must have been to Sweden on a motoring holiday, and on returning to England had issued a terse memo: Pine is out, oak is in!

I like English weather; like the countryside it’s constantly drawing attention to itself. I started this article in a room filled with piercing sunlight, but now a strong wind has materialised and the room is full of gloom.

I like the reserve of English people, because I don’t particularly want to talk to strangers in trains either, unless of course there is a crisis such as a cow on the line causing an hour’s delay. In which case my fellow passengers and I will happily spill out our life stories to anybody we can get to listen.

I like the way in which the English cope with disasters: cut our water off and we will cheerfully queue at a standpipe in the snow. Throw us into rat-infested foreign jails and we will emerge blinking in the daylight to claim that our brutal-looking jailers were decent sorts who treated us well. I bet somewhere, pinned onto a filthy prison wall, is a Christmas card: “To my friend and captor, Pedro, from Jim Wilkinson of cell 14.”

The England I love best is, of course, the England of childhood; when children could play in the street without the neighbours getting up a petition. When children lisp “Tell us about the olden days” I romanticise about the fields and hedgerows, and about the time when a car coming down the unadopted road brought us out of our prefabs to gawp and speculate. I’m happy to live in a country that produces important things: wonderful plays, books, literature, heart surgeons, gardeners and Private Eye. I asked a friend of mine where, given the choice and enough money, he would choose to live. He replied gloomily, “There isn’t anywhere else.” Another friend when asked if she’d ever go on a world cruise said, “No, I’d rather go somewhere else.”

Given the choice between death and exile I’d choose exile every time, but I’d be very, very unhappy at having to leave the club.

Sue Townsend, True Confessions of Susan Lilian Townsend (1989)

Views of a Park

A child as big as a pebble
Went skipping through the park
Looking at every flower
That once was me

A girl as bright as summer
Went wandering through the park
In a world of wooded contentment
That once was me

A girl lost in a dream world
Went strolling through the park
All she wanted was quiet and a young man
That once was me

A woman struggling with luggage
Went slowly through the park
All she knew was noise and children
That once was me

An old woman in thoughtless mood
Is sitting in the park
All she asks is a bench and stillness
That now is me

Celia Ann Glover

Getting the Goat

In her magazine column for September 9, 1990, Marilyn vos Savant answered a well-known brain teaser submitted by one of her readers. You’re on a game show and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. You choose, say, door 1, and the host, who knows where the car is, opens another door, behind which is a goat. He now gives you the choice of sticking with door 1 or switching to the other door. What should you do?

This was the so-called Monty Hall dilemma faced by guests on Monty Hall’s classic TV game show ‘Let’s Make a Deal’, only the consolation prizes weren’t goats. Vos Savant advised her correspondent to switch doors. Sticking with the first choice gives a one-third chance of winning, she said, but switching doubles the odds to two-thirds. To convince her readers, she asked them to imagine a million doors. “You pick door number 1,” she said, “then the host, who knows what’s behind the doors and will always avoid the one with the prize, opens all the rest of them except door number 777777. You’d switch to that door pretty fast, wouldn’t you?

Evidently not. No sooner had her column appeared than she was besieged by mail from readers who disagreed, including many mathematicians. They maintained the odds were only fifty-fifty, not two-thirds, in favor of switching. The thousands of letters she received were running nine to one against her and included rebukes from a statistician at the National Institutes of Health and the deputy director of the Center for Defense Information. The letters had gotten shrill, with suggestions that she was the goat and that women look at mathematical problems differently from men. “You are utterly incorrect about the game-show question,” wrote E Ray Bobo, a PhD at Georgetown, “and I hope this controversy will call some public attention to the serious national crisis in mathematical education. If you can admit your error, you will have contributed constructively toward the solution to a deplorable situation. How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind?”

“When reality clashes so violently with intuition,” vos Savant responded in her column, “people are shaken.” This time she tried another tack. Imagine, she said, that just after the host opened the door, revealing a goat, a UFO lands on the game-show stage, and a little green woman emerges. Without knowing what door you originally chose, she is asked to choose one of the two unopened doors. The odds that she’ll randomly choose the car are fifty-fifty. “But that’s because she lacks the advantage the original contestant had - the help of the host. If the prize is behind no. 2, the host shows you no. 3; and if the prize is behind no. 3, the host shows you number 2. So when you switch, you win if the prize is behind no. 2 or no.3. You win either way! But if you don’t switch, you win only if the prize is behind door no. 1.” Vos Savant was completely correct, as mathematicians with egg on their faces ultimately had to admit.

Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

The calm and the storm

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18--, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger--having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.

One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N.W. It was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heat iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, an more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck. I went below--not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a Simoom. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck. As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stern.

The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted.

By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was, at first, struck with the idea of our being among breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard; the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swell which would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights--during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great difficulty from the forecastle--the hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which, without equalling the first violence of the Simoom, were still more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for the first four days was, with trifling variations, S.E. and by S.; and we must have run down the coast of New Holland. On the fifth day the cold became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to the northward. The sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon--emitting no decisive light. There were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun. It gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow without reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. Just before sinking within the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, sliver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean.

We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day--that day to me has not arrived--to the Swede never did arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in patchy darkness, so that we could not have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us, all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed too, that, although the tempest continued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hitherto attended us. All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony. Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silent wonder. We neglected all care of the ship, as worse than useless, and securing ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of the mizen-mast, looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means of calculating time, nor could we form any guess of our situation. We were, however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last--every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed anything I had imagined possible, and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross--at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.

We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. "See! see!" cried he, shrieking in my ears, "Almighty God! see! see!" As he spoke, I became aware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sides of the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Casting my eyes upwards, I beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship of, perhaps, four thousand tons. Although upreared upon the summit of a wave more than a hundred times her own altitude, her apparent size exceeded that of any ship of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. A single row of brass cannon protruded from her open ports, and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of innumerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up under a press of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows were alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered, and--came down.

At this instant, I know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her, consequently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable result was to hurl me, with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger.

As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about; and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my escape from the notice of the crew. With little difficulty I made my way unperceived to the main hatchway, which was partially open, and soon found an opportunity of secreting myself in the hold. Why I did so I can hardly tell. An indefinite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navigators of the ship had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was unwilling to trust myself with a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance I had taken, so many points of vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding-place in the hold. This I did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a manner as to afford me a convenient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship.

I had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced me to make use of it. A man passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but had an opportunity of observing his general appearance. There was about it an evidence of great age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burthen. He muttered to himself, in a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could not understand, and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn dignity of a God. He at length went on deck, and I saw him no more.

Edgar Allan Poe, Manuscript Found in a Bottle (1833)

The Green Train

The Blue Train for the South - but the Green Train for us.
Nobody knows when the Green Train departs.
Nobody sees her off. There is no noise; no fuss;
No luggage on the Green Train;
No whistle when she starts.
But quietly at the right time they wave the green light
And she slides past the platform and plunges into the night.

Wonderful people walking down the long Green Train,
As the engine gathers speed.
And voices talking.
'Where does she go to, Guard?'
Where indeed?
But what does it matter
So long as the night is starred?
Who cares for time, and who cares for the place,
So long as the Green Train thunders on into space?

E V Rieu

After the executions

The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view–the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm–and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property–appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead–she did not know why–they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones's gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.

They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.

The animals were taken aback.

'Why?' cried Muriel.

'It's no longer needed, comrade,' said Squealer stiffly. 'Beasts of England was the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.'

George Orwell, Animal Farm

Cambridge, 1981

The prospective next tenant of my flat, an American woman, came round unannounced to view it while I was finishing my breakfast. I showed her round and filled in all the details. She didn't like the way the landing separated the living room from the bathroom and the kitchen, and she didn't like the kitchen, but she didn't intend using it anyway she said because she never cooked. She thought the living room was rather small and the carpet didn't have a very thick pile. She was sure the flat would be cold. I said it was the warmest flat I had ever lived in. She thought the bed looked too soft and might be bad for her back. I said it was the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in. She thought there would be a separate bedroom. I said I was afraid there wasn't. She asked what were the arrangements for cleaning and laundry. I said, "No problem, dust and mop the floors every now and then, clean the windows inside, and take the laundry over to the King's launderette, the cheapest in town; it's a cinch." Her mouth dropped open in genuine shock: "You mean I would be expected to do those things myself? Oh no, I couldn't possibly, I wouldn't know how. I would have to have a bedmaker, a cleaner and a laundress." I said: "You mean you've never done any of those things?" She said: "Why no, I never have while I've been in Cambridge, and before I came here I was in Africa and always had local servants." She must have seen the expression on my face, for she quickly added: "You see, over there they are so inexpensive."

Ian Breakwell, Diary