Yesterday, I finished reading Decline and Fall, the seminal social satire by Evelyn Waugh. I picked it up because someone⸺I cannot for the life of me remember who⸺recommended it as the funniest novel they’ve ever read. I can’t even remember whether someone said this to me in person, or whether I read it somewhere. I’m useless at this kind of thing, and haven’t come up with a good way to address my uselessness.

When I finish a book, I usually write a paragraph or so about what I thought and post it on Goodreads. This stops me from unintentionally reading the same stuff twice, acts as an aide-mémoire, and lets people know what I thought of the book. The last of these was never really an intention, but I’ve become increasingly aware of it as people in real life talk to me about what I’ve written, and sometimes tell me they’ve read books as a result. Once a month, I also reflect on what I wrote after reading each book, and post a tweaked version to my blog.

With Decline and Fall, I really struggled to think what to write. The same is true of Frankenstein, The War of the Worlds and A Christmas Carol which I read late last year. These are all very widely respected seminal works which people are very attached to⸺including some people I like, admire and respect. With the exception of Frankenstein (one of my own favourites), these are all books which I wasn’t completely wild about. That’s not to say I didn’t like them, enjoy them, or admire them, but none of them are books I’m desperate to re-read at any point.

Now, if these were pieces of music or works of art, I’d have no hesitation in writing that I found them less than earth-shattering. Indeed, I’ve no hesitation in trying (and failing) to convince Wendy that Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories is a great album, not “a bit weird”; I’ll happy tell anyone who will listen why David Shrigley is one of the UK’s greatest living artists, even as others call his work ‘mundane’, ‘spare and child-like’ or ‘quirky in the worst sense’; and this Letter of Recommendation by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman in the New York Times article got me tweeting without hesitation about how Winter my favourite of Vivalidi’s Four Seasons concerti, despite having been to plenty of weddings featuring Spring.

So, to pose a provocative question to myself: Why I am happy to disagree with people about the music they’ve chosen on the most carefully planned day of their life, but not happy to be seen to disagree with people about a book they’ve read? I haven’t got a good answer to that question, but here are some thoughts.

I think reading, more than most other art forms, is as much about the reader as the writer. I know others will say the equivalent applies to music and visual art, but I disagree. To read a book is to build a relationship over a relatively prolonged period of time with the person who wrote that book. Therefore, if I don’t think there’s much to be squeezed out of Decline and Fall as other people, I think this is as much about me as it is about the book. Yet if I say I don’t enjoy it, it feels like I’m criticising people who like it as much as the written text⸺and that’s not something I mean to do.

On top of that, I write all the time. On the other hand, I’ve never written decent piece of music in my life (except perhaps a variation on The Holly and The Ivy⸺no, this isn’t a joke⸺which I wrote when studying GCSE Music, and which I really liked, and which was performed at a school carol service⸺a high bar this is not). I cannot draw or paint to save my life: I’m colourblind, and struggle to stay within the lines at the best of times. So perhaps, despite having never written any extended works of fiction, I have slightly better insight into what goes into writing a novel, and feel worse about criticising something that I know has so much effort and soul poured into it.

Finally, I think there’s a sort of elite snobbery around books. A work colleague was recently shocked that I hadn’t ever read anything by the Brontë sisters; another was appalled that I’d never read Anna Karenina. So perhaps there’s an underlying nervousness that if I say that I don’t particularly enjoy books which are widely recognised as great works of literature, then I’ll be judged for it… which is obviously hogwash, because I’m reading for pleasure, and it’s perfectly reasonable to hate something while appreciating that it is important. I understand that Shakespeare’s work is important, but that doesn’t mean I need to ROFL like an insufferable toff at every joke which requires a fifteen-minute primer on the social strata of the time. I understand that Dracula was an important milestone in the development of Gothic horror and in challenging the suppression of women in society, but that doesn’t mean I have to love the truly terrible final third of the novel.

So each time I struggle with what to write about these books, I try to think: it really doesn’t matter. I’m not setting out to impress anyone. I read for pleasure, not to educate myself on the history of world literature. If someone thinks less of me because I enjoyed reading B.J. Novak more than Muriel Spark, then that’s their issue, not mine. “All readers are equal,” as Alan Bennett would say. I should just say what I think. I set out to do exactly that: and then second-guess myself, wonder exactly what I did think about a book, and start the whole cycle again.

The brilliant picture of Liverpool Central Library at the top of this post is by Tee Cee, and is used here under its Creative Commons licence.

There is much made in the press today of a change to the Clarence House website. A passage which explained that the Duchess of Cornwall plans to use the novel title Princess Consort, rather than Queen, when the Prince of Wales accedes the throne has been “quietly removed” (The Telegraph). The press extrapolates from this that Prince Charles “plans to go back on his word and make the Duchess of Cornwall queen” (The Times). This is certainly a reaching stretch of a journalistic conclusion, but the coverage has caused me to reflect a little on the situation.

Is there really a decent argument for the Duchess of Cornwall being anything other than Queen? Regardless of whether she chooses to style herself as such, Camilla will be Queen. In the same way, the Duchess is currently Princess of Wales, even if she chooses to style herself with a lesser title.

But let’s assume for a second that madness prevails, and someone wishes to make an argument for the Act of Parliament which would be required to stop the Duchess becoming Queen, and all the comparable legislation in the nations where Charles will be King. There appears to be no basis for doing this: the common argument mostly boils down to “the public won’t accept it” and “people disapprove of her private life”. The whole point of the monarchy is that such things don’t matter. We don’t get to choose our monarchs or their spouses: provided they are eligible to accede their positions, then accede them they do. If there were a public desire to be picky, then the problem is with the monarchal system, not the individual.

To me, the more persuasive argument is a constitutional one: now that the constitutional principle of primogeniture has changed to favour the firstborn regardless of sex, it’s no longer logical to assume that the role of King is superior to the role of Queen. There should, therefore, be gender equality in terms of the title given to the spouse of the monarch: either the spouse of a Queen should be called a King, or the spouse of a King should be called the Princess Consort (or Queen Consort). To my mind, the latter is the better solution, otherwise we would need to invent another adjective to distinguish the member of the royal couple with the inherited position and constitutional power. It would also be the clearer solution in the case of a monarch with a same-sex spouse acceding the throne.

The catch with my constitutional suggestion is that it really ought to have been sorted when the constitutional changes to primogeniture were approved by Parliament (and equivalent bodies in other nations). However, the problem was sidestepped, along with a host of other gender-related problems. For example, the honorary title bestowed to the spouse of somebody in receipt of a duchy is ‘Duchess’ if the recipient is male and the spouse is female, but zip if the recipient is female and the spouse is male. It’s therefore hard to argue that the status of duchies is equivalent between the sexes.

And the problem with sorting any of this out is that one quickly ends up questioning why such an archaic system survives at all. Only a minority of people may support abolishing the monarchy, but surely an even smaller minority would support creating one if it didn’t already exist.

No doubt harming my credentials as a liberal-leaning millennial, I have to admit that I don’t know my own mind on the future of the monarchy. I vacillate between thinking “of course the monarchy is anachronistic, undemocratic and should be abolished”, “of course the monarchy is anachronistic and undemocratic, but it’s mostly harmless, might do so some good, and no other option looks much better”, and “of course the monarchy is anachronistic and undemocratic, but it would be madness to abolish a long-standing and proven check/balance on our system of government”. In retrospect, I’m surprised to see how unequivocally positive I was about the wedding of Charles and Camilla at the time.

So, in order to avoid complicated and unpredictable questions, it seems to me that the most likely option is the fudge that has been already proven: Camilla will be Queen, but she’ll call herself something else… which is what the Clarence House website said all along.

A few years ago, I did a stint in General Practice. One of the commoner things people would come and see me for was a sore throat, and as a good antimicrobial steward I tended to send them away with self-care advice.

One bit of advice I routinely gave to adult patients was to gargle with salt water: dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in half a cup of boiled water mixed with half a cup of cold water, gargle with it for a minute and spit it out. I think it may even have been written on the little self-care leaflets I used to dish out.

This has a surprising amount of evidence behind it for a home remedy, though largely in the context of postoperative throat pain. It is now the published NHS advice for sore throats—it may have been at the time too, I’ve no idea.

What sticks in my mind about this advice is the number of people who mentioned at unrelated later appointments what excellent advice it had been. I even remember a singer telling me the advice had rescued a performance she thought she may have to cancel. In my experience, patients aren’t especially forthcoming with positive feedback on self-care strategies, but I really seemed to get a lot about this advice. Despite that, and despite a vague awareness of the evidence base, I didn’t really believe it. I mean, it sounds like utter nonsense, like the sort of folk remedies you hear for all kinds of things that aren’t evidence-based (and can even be downright unhelpful).

And yet… over the last week or so, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’ve been suffering from a really sore throat. I tried gargling salt water. And, blow me down with a feather, it really works. Certainly, I’ve found it far more effective than any throat sweets or sprays I’ve come across.

I think there’s probably a deep message in here somewhere about common sense being remarkably uncommon, or about doctors being the worst patients, or about a disconnect between academic evidence and belief systems. But really, I’m just trying to say if you have a sore throat, try gargling with saltwater. It worked for me.

I came across the advert at the top of the post via the Boston Public Library online. I wonder if there are any medications advertised today as for both “man and beast”? If you’re wondering, you didn’t have to get your “beast” to gargle it:
it could also be applied topically (hence ‘liniment’, which is a word we don’t use nearly enough these days).

For the last couple of days, the news has been dominated by the story of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, who fell ill in Salisbury a few days ago. The police are investigating this as attempted murder via a nerve agent, and there is much suspicion that the Russian state may be behind the crime. (One of the stranger things about delaying posts for a year is that you’ll know how this all turned out—I don’t!)

Many people are drawing comparisons between this case and the Alexander Litvinenko affair of 2006. There are two really great bits of writing on that affair which are well worth reading, and this seems as good an opportunity as any to recommend them again.

The first is a fantastic long-form article called Bad Blood by one of my favourite journalists, Will Storr. This is particularly good for setting Litvinenko’s murder in the historical context of murders of Russian dissidents, and—like everything Will writes—has fantastic prose. Re-reading this again today, I note that Will talks briefly about using nerve agents absorbed through the skin as a murder weapon, which would fit neatly with the public statements about the Skripal case so far. Will originally wrote this for Matter, a start-up by another favourite journalist of mine, Bobbie Johnson, concentrating on publishing long-form journalism. Matter has since ‘pivoted’ into Matter Studios, “a multi-platform content studio and incubator”, whatever that is.

The second is Guardian journalist Luke Harding’s extraordinary book, A Very Expensive Poison. This is one of the most arresting non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Harding gives a clear, detailed and compelling account, including all of the cack-handed bungling which humanises the Litvinenko affair and makes it that much more horrific. Harding also dives deeply into the investigation of the murder and the judgement of the subsequent public enquiry. It’s an absolute must-read.

On the other hand, absolutely not worth reading is this, by a pre-clinical medical student who thought he knew something about radiation, but clearly didn’t.

The rather lovely photo of magnolia blossom at the top (which was taken in Salisbury) is by rachelgreenbelt, edited and used under Creative Commons Licence.

Just recently, a few of my “internet friends” – people I’ve been digitally stalking for a decade or more – have fired up their old blogs again and started writing on a daily basis. This is also a bit Zeitgeisty at the moment: there have been lots of magazine articles and books which have mentioned the benefits of taking time to publicly air one’s feelings on a regular basis through the medium of online writing. I was finally pushed over the edge to write this post after Duncan Stephen published this post on his blog.

Years ago, I went through a phase of blogging daily: I usually commented on political events, with an inflated sense of my own importance and understanding. In fact, I blogged no less than 640 times in 2005. I don’t think much of it was high-quality stuff.

I’ve recently installed a nifty WordPress plugin which emails me daily with my own historical posts published on the same calendar date. Despite the fact that much of the content is utter bilge, I really enjoy reading these; they always bring back contemporaneous memories and make me reflect on how my life and views have changed.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I see the benefit of regular blogging. Over the past couple of years, I’ve toyed with blogging daily, thinking about how I could emulate better bloggers by exploring whatever topic happens to be on my mind. I’ve even gone as far as to have a “dry run” of daily blogging on two separate occasions in the last couple of years, experimenting for a few days with unpublished posts just to see whether I could stick with it. I never could.

I was often inspired by things that had happened in my life (meetings, discussions, events) and this left me concerned that someone would read the post and take it the wrong way. I worried that in the contemporaneous context, people would see themselves in everything I wrote, and probably take offence. I was also wary about sharing travel plans, lest my house be burgled or car stolen!

I have occasionally tried writing a private diary or journal along similar lines, but I never stick with that because it seems self-indulgent and unproductive. I think there is something beneficial about writing content that is going be published (even if no-one reads it): there’s an element of self-editing which helps with critical thinking.

So here is my plan for a mad experiment: I’m going to blog more frequently—possibly even daily. However, I’m going to publish what I write with a delay of a year.

I’m sitting writing this in Wendy’s Ikea Strandmon winged chair on 6 March 2018: if all goes to plan, you will be reading this on 6 March 2019. Unless the whole thing fizzles out after a couple of days, in which case I’ll delete the lot and this writing will never see the light of day.

The photo at the top is by wuestenigel, edited and used under Creative Commons Licence.