Darkling Wood

In Our Time -- Bragg shoots! He scores! Again!

Melvyn Bragg, In Our Time. Now that's how to do an audio show. Listen to his works, ye amateur podcasters of the world, and despair! 

But let's face it, our Melvyn is no mere mortal. As Pitt is to looks, so Bragg is to smarts. How can One Man And His Show cover such a vast range of topics, keeping up with, and even sometimes gently beating up, the various experts in those fields? Someone make the man a Lord or Fellow or something. Wait! They already did. Well good! He's a national treasure. Bragg, IOT, and BBC Radio 4; reminding the US who is boss, since 1776.

I've written a song in his honour. It took a while, being a complex intermingling of themes and subtle notions. Austere and fugue-like here, grand and symphonic there. Simultaneously bright, but mellow. Cautious in its message of praise, yet sincere and direct. I think it works. To the tune of (for the Americans) "The Stars and Stripes Forever" or (for the Brits and everyone else) "Here we go, here we go, here we go", I give you:

Melvyn Bragg Forever

Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Braaagg.
Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Braa-agg.
Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Bragg, Melvyn Braaagg.
Melvyn Bra-agg! MEL-VYN BRAGG!

We're not in Scotland anymore

It's Monday, April 4th. Just look at the number of things in the following that simply wouldn't happen in Glasgow:

It's 7:15am and I'm sitting outside (#1), feeling the gentle warmth of the morning (#2), drinking tea and waiting to see my newly installed lawn sprinklers come on (#3). I can feel the patio is merely warm (#4) through my socks, unlike the veritably toasty it would have been over the weekend (#5). Despite the warmth, a big thunderstorm is gathering (#6 -- no, no, I mean *big*). I start to wonder if it could bring the not uncommon load of golfball-or-larger sized hail (#7), requiring the car to be put into the garage. So I check the weather pages to get ... well take a look at this:

Look at that. An hourly forecast (#8). An *hourly* forecast! Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir WInston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me, Maggie Thatcher? Your weather forecast took a hell of a beating!

UK/US Differences #24 - BBC Radio 4 versus NPR

The UK's BBC Radio 4. Or the US's National Public Radio.

There's really no competition.

One is a quirky and anachronistic, tax-funded and therefore I-don't-care-how-many-governors-they-appoint, Soviet-esque state-run radio station; the other, a genuinely listener-funded, of the people, by the people, for the people offering, with cool jazz musical overlay and mellow-voiced presenters, they being to radio what the gorgeous Rudi Bhaktiar (who buries Robin Meade, by the way) is to television.

As I say, no competition. Compared to Radio 4, NPR is quite simply shite. If I hear one more jazz riff to segue from one "All Things Considered" item (or is it "Morning Edition"?; who knows, they all sound the same) to the next, I'll be forced to switch to 1200 AM and listen to Rush. And what is with those sugar sweet voices? It's like listening to Saruman on Prozac.

Radio 4, on the other hand, demonstrates just why Britain was once a world empire. You have to start with the Today programme. Even the presenters' names tell you you're getting something heavy; Naughtie (pronounced "Naw-chh-tay", which is cool, rather than "Naw-tay" which is not), or Stourton which connotes "Stentor" in the Illiad. (That said, John Humphrys needs a slap. Regularly.) Then there's "Start The Week". It's necessary and sufficient if you want a simple list of books, plays, and lectures you should read, watch and listen to in order to stay abreast of what's important in the world (like, say, why "[Despite the] artwork of the Futurists [being] often overshadowed by the Cubists, ... their combination of salon and street art, with their visceral excitement for cities, has had much resonance over the last century.") Granted Andrew Marr's a bit damp compared with Jeremy "Mauler" Paxman, on whom Henry Kissinger walked out on the live show after Paxman asked him about being an alleged war criminal. But it's magic all the same.

And the comedy! There's "Friday Night Comedy". consisting of The Now Show and "The News Quiz". The latter is worth it simply to hear the lovable Sandy Toksvig take the rip out of her panel. (Sandy is to Rudi what I am to Brad Pitt, but she's a hoot nevertheless). And let's not forget the venerable, "Just A Minute". It works like this. They get a subject. They have to talk. Without "hesitation, deviation or repetition". For a minute! It doesn't get any better than that.

But the resisty bit (I'd say "pièce de résistance" but it's a bit too Frenchy for such a British institution) has got to be the inestimable Melvyn Bragg's (we are not worthy) "In Our TIme". Here's what I've been able to listen to over the past few weeks, via podcast, on my way to work: The Age of Caesar Augustus in Rome, The Trial of Charles I, The History Of The Whale (yes, the *whale*), Baconian Science, and a discussion of Huxley's "Brave New World".

There are only a few things I can say without fear of contradiction that Britain does better than the USA. The combination of chicken korma, pilau rice, and peshwari naan bread is one; grim and brooding rain-soaked, mist-covered mountains is another. But BBC Radio 4 is clearly a third.

Point to the Brits.

UK/US Differences #1,743 - "Momentarily"

Karen recently wrote about some hazards of flying. She ended with a PS:

"P.S. I wish that as the plane is landing, the flight attendants wouldn’t say “we’re making our final approach”. It sounds so… well… final."

My fears tend to be raised on hearing another common final approach phrase in the USA:

"We will be landing momentarily"

Of course, the original, everyone-in-the-world-except-the-USA meaning of "momentarily" is "for a moment", and not the newer US meaning of "in a moment". Whenever I hear the cabin crew tell me about such landing intentions, I have a mental picture of the plane bouncing off the runway before climbing off to its next destination.

Point to the rest of the world.

UK 3, USA 2

UK/US Differences #0 - Liberty, or Hypocrisy.

I came to the US for two reasons. One was to establish a new office for my company, Verilab. But the other was because I am, in an important sense, an American. It's true I was born on that rugged, rainy, rock known as the UK (for me it will always be The Zeroth State of the Union). And I understand that to some native (small "n") Americans, that accident of birth coordinates makes me as unworthy a beast as a pre-15th Amendment black man, or a pre-19th Amendment woman of any colo(u)r (indigenous folks the world over, even white ones, are always prone to using violent means to deny "others" their basic human rights). But I am an American to the extent that I believe, and live by, and am prepared to die for -- for myself and for others -- what has been most successfully articulated by the Founding Fathers. I believe in the individual's right to liberty. And I believe that right doesn't come from governments (although they can violate it). No man gifted me my liberty (although he can subvert it). It Just Is. Axiomatic. Fundamental. Unalianable.

UK/US Differences #2 - Gushing

Why do US TV audiences of "The View" or "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" give the hosts a standing ovation before the shows even start? Why do many folks in the US say "Thank you SO much" (emphasis theirs) instead of just "Thank you" or at most "Thank you very much"? And why are thoroughly ordinary events in everyday America sometimes treated with "Awesome!". By contrast, praise in the UK is much less effusive. And in working-class Scotland, a simple lack of a slap on the head is considered a mark of great admiration.

I'm not sure I know why the difference exists, but the overall effect is to create a sort of "praise inflation" in the US. Presumably someone once decided that "Thank you very much" simply wasn't good enough, and so "Thank you SO much" was born. But talk is cheap, and so now a simple "Thanks" risks being seen as lukewarm by comparison. And that becomes even more pronounced when everyone around you in a theater gets on their feet at the end, and all you want to do is sit in your seat, arms folded, brow furrowed, with a polite but dismissive "Aye, OK, it wisnae completely rubbitch" kind of clap.

On the other hand, I think part of the reason is that people in the US are generally more positive, and more willing to expose that to others; about business, family, and life in general. (Granted that observation is not based on current market sentiments.) For example, I've never seen any indication that someone in the UK has a family member in the military. Whereas here in Texas, yellow ribbon bumper stickers about military dads (and mums) and sons (and daughters) are common. I even saw someone once with a sticker in their rear window saying: "My son-in-law is a US Marine". If one of your kids does well at school, you're supposed to put a sticker up about that (and you'll feel like a bad parent if you don't). If you have a PhD, you tell people. And so on. I like all of that. I'm still not completely comfortable with it - but I like it.

So, I think I'll call this one a draw.

UK 2, US 1

UK/US Differences #1 - Road Signs

I moved to the US in the summer of 2004 - almost five years ago. And while the UK and the US are close cultural cousins, there are still enough differences to make me chuckle.

What, for example, is with all the "STOP" signs over here? Especially since you're supposed to come to a complete STOP at them. In the UK, those are rare. In most cases, they use the UK equivalent of a "YIELD" - they call it a "Give Way" sign. And guess what; there aren't piles of car wrecks (they call them "crashes") at every corner. In fact, road safety seems (I don't know what the stats are) much worse in the US. I don't think I had ever seen a car on its roof before I came here. Now I've seen several. I think part of the problem is the fact that here you have high speed (50mph+) roads with no central median (called a central reservation" over there). As a result, it's not difficult to get wrecks at combined speeds of well over 100mph.

Another road signage difference is the way off ramps (UK "exit lanes") are marked. In the US, it's common for the inside lane to simply become the off ramp. As a result,if you do nothing you leave the highway or freeway (UK "motorway"), and you have to take an action if you want to stay on. In the UK it's usually the opposite. You have to decide to change to the off ramp. If you stay where you are, you stay on the highway.

The message conveyed by the position of the exit sign is different too. And that applies to all overhead freeway signs. In the UK, an overhead motorway sign applies to the lane below if all or part of is above the lane. And, most important, if the sign does not touch your lane at all, the lane specifically does *not* go to where the sign says. In the US it's more fuzzy. Usually the yellow "Must Exit" sign applies only if it *completely* covers the lane in question. If it only half covers, the lane probably allows you to exit, but it doesn't force you. But I know of at least one exception to that in Austin. And then for general directional overhead signs, just because your lane is not covered by a sign does not mean the sign doesn't apply to you. It can all be a bit confusing.

On road signs then, I think the UK has the edge.
UK 1, USA 0