Monday 13 April 2015

Let me have people about me who possess a big, fat, lively, well-stocked HINTERLAND

A few years back, a business partner and I were sucking up to a prospective client (a marketing director in a vast pharmaceuticals company) by pretending to be interested in the problems he was encountering while redecorating his house. I couldn't have been less interested, but I liked the chap (quick brain, decent sense of humour, waspish tongue), and, frankly, we needed the work. When our prospective client complained about his wife’s inability to find the exact shades of paint she wanted for their walls, I said, “Oh, you mean like that scene in Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House where Myrna Loy asks for all the ridiculous colours?”


Neither of them had seen the film, so I did my best to describe the scene. When I’d finished, the client said he’d find it and show it to his wife (I bet that went down well), and wrote the title down. My business partner just looked at me wonderingly and asked, “How do you know all these things?” I couldn’t think how to respond. Why would remembering a scene from an expertly-crafted but lightweight Hollywood comedy occasion surprise? (I hate to quote Stephen Fry approvingly, but I was later reminded of this when someone on QI asked how how anyone was supposed to know the answer to a rather obscure question, and Fry responded, tartly: "Well, they have these things called books which some people actually read.")

I think my colleague was referring to my habit of peppering my conversation with allusions to films, novels, poetry, opera, paintings, pop songs and whatnot – all the things that litters the subconscious, i.e. the stuff that actually matters to one. His question made me realise that, although I’d spent two years on and off working with him, I couldn’t recall him making one single allusion to anything that wasn’t to do with his working life or his rather byzantine family arrangements. That suddenly explained why he had started to bore my tits off: talking to him was like being locked in a sealed room without windows – there was no reference whatsoever to anything outside.

My business colleague wasn’t uneducated – he’d been to a decent university.  It’s just that his interest in the daily minutiae of business life (and, I suppose, the fact that he was divorced with several young children) seemed to have left no room for an interest in anything else. He must, I presume, have listened to music, seen films and read books that didn’t have titles like Smash That Sucker & Be Number One!, but, perhaps because they weren’t of any immediate use to him, he had consumed and excreted them without extracting any psychic nourishment in the process.

There was an interesting item in this Saturday’s Telegraph by Michael Henderson, entitled: “ Do politicians today have a hinterland?”, which began:
Hinterland, Denis Healey called it. Or, as others might interpret it, the ability to find value in things beyond the discipline that provides employment.
As I read the article (which you can find here), it brought to mind an unpleasant experience I had three or four years ago, when a guest at a dinner party I had thought was purely for old chums turned out to be an Englishman living in America and working in finance, who had flown in that day, and whom I'd never met. After two hours in this man’s company, I left convinced that I had met the most nauseating, boorish, crude, charmless, bullying, cultureless, misogynistic, knuckle-dragging oaf on the the planet.  I have never wanted to smash someone’s face in so badly – but, out of consideration for my host, I swallowed my rage.

Okay, the main problem was that the bloke was undoubtedly a world-beating CAUC. But part of the reason for my visceral loathing of him was, I now realise, his utter lack of a hinterland. We had literally nothing in common, no shared points of reference, no mutual interests. Nothing. As far as one could gather, he had never read a novel or a poem, never seen a film, never heard a symphony, never visited an art gallery, never considered the possibility that a woman might be worth, you know, talking to, never harboured a political opinion other than the right of greedy fuckers to grab every available buck without let or hindrance…

…deep breath.

At one stage of the evening, this pustule informed us that he was great fan of classical music, especially opera. Upon further questioning, his claim boiled down to the ownership of one CD compilation of Puccini arias. (Another of the guests happened to be a music teacher whose hobby was collecting and performing obscure Late Romantic works for solo piano, but, evidently not wishing to be drawn into conversation with an ignorant loudmouth, he didn't bother mentioning the fact.)

This chap was, in effect, the living embodiment of Michael Henderson’s man without a hinterland.

In case you feel the urge to accuse me of being a cultural snob, or of suggesting that I don’t enjoy the company of people who don’t listen to opera or don't regularly swoon over Old Master paintings or don’t have an apposite Auden quote ready for every occasion – that couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s face it, compared to the average Oxbridge don, my tastes are middlebrow, and my personal hinterland is positively overflowing with the detritus of popular culture. What depresses me is people who’ve been brought up with all the advantages of an expensive liberal education and who yet end up caring about nothing but their careers, their bank accounts, their “properties”, their penis-substitute cars, their meaningless, flash holidays whose purpose seems to be more about bragging rights than enjoyment or enlightenment, their laydeez (God, I hate the way these inadequate jerks talk about women), and golf. Always fucking golf.

Our milkman, Alan, plays in a jazzband. Stan, the proudly working class retired painter & decorator who lives a few doors down from us, is a lepidopterist (and an expert in about a dozen other bizarrely disparate fields – he really is extraordinary). These men have fully-functioning, well-stocked hinterlands: they are rounded human beings, and I doubt if either of them made it past O-levels. This isn't only about culture - it's about emotional and/or intellectual engagement with things that aren't of any immediate material benefit, or which aren't designed solely to boost your reputation with your work colleagues.  

Odd sentiments for a right-winger - and a fan of Top Gear - to express, I know. And were they to be expressed by a left-winger, I’d probably be accusing them of insufferable hoity-toitiness.  But then, I’ve never claimed to be consistent.


15 comments:

  1. If it is any consolation, the former Mrs ex-KCS and I regularly fell out about these things and my insistence at our dinner parties - a social setting that I loathed - to move the conversation beyond work, prospects, how well their brilliant children were doing, money and, when the women were out of the room, female teachers with whom they would like to conjugate, led to a tailing off of invitations th other way. Golf was an additional dividing factor, a topic of conversation even more dull than the sport itself and the people who enthuse about it.
    p
    Eventually, I found a parent who composed music, sang and wrote articles for the Jewish Chronicle, at which point we seemed to join that part of Animal House where the uncool pledges get moved off to the Frat House where no normal person goes.

    Another great post.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, ex-KCS. I used to go out with a girl who displayed a special talent for arranging dinner parties involving guests who'd never met before - usually two of my friends and two of hers. Her food would be great, but the events themselves would invariably be disastrous, as the guests would always take an instant dislike to each other. At least two of the couples I invited never spoke to me again. I don't think we ever got as far as discussing golf. Fortunately this was back in my drinking days, so I was ab le to dull the pain.

      I'm not a huge fan of the format, I'll admit - but, having said that, I enjoyed one we were invited to on New Year's Eve, but that might be because our hostess was American and I was sitting next to an extremely amusing right-wing Jewish woman and her Danish husband. Golf may have got an outing elsewhere round the table, but, if it did, it never reached us.

      Delete
    2. Thank you, the Blandings clip is a gem and probably more true now than ever. Just look at the 'style' pages of sunday colour supplements or watch those trivial tv programmes about houses and presented by vacuous goons.

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  2. I'm guessing a bit,but we may have the Victorian era to thank and the Temperance movement especially for spawning so many interesting clubs and societies of all types. Anything to keep them off the hooch.
    Its what I enjoyed so much about living in England-meeting ordinary people who had extraordinary hobbies and skills other than golf.

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    Replies
    1. I suspect you're right - I associate the explosion in "hobbies" and enthusiasms with the late Victorian/Edwardian era and the emergence of the educated lower middle classes and clerks and suchlike suddenly having some (though not much) leisure time - i.e. the aspirational classes rather disparagingly portrayed by that snobbish snot-bag E.M. Forster in "Howard's End".

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  3. My name is Sarah Jacoby from USA, Three weeks ago I and my boyfriend had a conflict, so with that he broke up with me saying he no longer wanted to associate with me anymore, I never knew he was interested in working out his marriage with another girl, I was helpless because I loved him so much more than myself, after begging and pleading with him I realized it was out of my hands, he really was leaving me, I could not stay without him, I tried to figure things out with him but he is not listening me, he told me that he is no longer interested that I should look for someone else, I tried all my best but things were not working out, so I had no choice than to look around for help, I went into search of spell caster to help me bring him back to me with the help of spell and after searching I actually finalize to work with (maduraitemple@yahoo.com) in regards of my lover. after 3 days as Dr Madurai told that my lover will return. my lover returned in surprising way, I was chocked and was so happy I can't say how much I'm grateful, My lover not only came back to me, but has left his other girl and now has engaged me, we are getting married next month, I don't know what I would have done without this spell caster you can contact (maduraitemple@yahoo.com) him today . is spell is for a better life

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you Sarah, any uncertainties about my future will soon be allayed, I shall waste no time in contacting the good doctor.

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  5. I too am chocked when people are not listening me.

    If I were Sarah, I'd get Dr Madurai to cast a spell to enable me to write demotic American-English.

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  6. Screamin' Jay Hawkins15 April 2015 at 19:01

    I cast the spells around here "as I lie writhin' on deh floh" so tell Madurai to bug out.

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    Replies
    1. I the doctor am the messaqe passing will.

      But, pliss, what is "bug out". And why is distinguished Dr. Hawkins make screaming?

      Delete
  7. It might have something to do with his masterpiece "Constipation Blues" which many fans of the great man tend to overlook. The track involves noises of various sorts, some of which border on screaming.

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    Replies
    1. In case anyone imagines you're making this up,ex-KCS, the fragrant little ditty can be found here:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbfnP3nhghk

      Undoubtedly one of the crowning achievements of our civilisation.

      Delete
  8. I wonder if Sarah is by any chance a friend of Rowena Ramirez who sent me the following email a few days' ago:

    "Good Day My Dearest in Christ Please i am writing this Message in a state of Dilema and Catastrophe, Due to my health Condition..I'm mrs Rowena Ramirez a 68 Years Old Widow of Late Paul and i have been diagnosed with Cancer which is in it's Level 3 and i want you to get back to me at my Email: mrsrowena_ramirez124@hotmail.com i have an important message for you as the Lord as led me to you, we could do together and accomplish. This mission is all about helping people in need and Cancer patients just like me around you. Await your Reply.

    GOD BLESS YOU"

    I'm probably being overly cautious, but something tells me this might not be entirely on the level.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete