Best and worst case

Best case scenario: There's only one infected person in the country and he was spotted on entry and immediately banged up in Villa Nueva. From now on all the dirty foreigners are to be kept out and Guatemala will remain safe from contagion. Don't fret about those porous borders, we've got the airport totally sorted. 

Worst case scenario: There are already loads of undetected infected people around the country. The virus entered via the (porous) land borders, migrants and narcos in transit, via cruise liners and container ship crew members carousing around the bars and brothels of our ports, and has spread surreptitiously through the hinterlands. The decision to keep out the gringos was taken just a bit too late. 

Not even Giammattei really knows where we are in the grey area between these two scenarios. So when he tells people to go out to the cinema or take a trip to the beach just as they usually would, he's deliberately making light of the uncertainty that will cloud this situation for a few more weeks at least. 

Controlling the religious activities was always going to require more moral courage than anyone here actually has, but at the very least the President might have suggested in his news conference that everyone should exercise discretion and caution for the time being regarding sporting events, cinemas, crowded beaches and so on. 

The virus first emerged in the region that was best placed to handle it politically. Now the epicentre has shifted to the region perhaps best placed to handle it socially. 

If there is a significant next stage, it will occur in the region that won't be able to deal with it particularly well either politically or socially - and strangely enough, it encompasses both the USA and Guatemala. 

Thinning

It's velación time in Jocotes tonight. I wonder how many still intend on showing up. 

Yesterday around lunchtime the Parque Central was looking markedly pretty, yet depleted. 

Things are thinning out, perhaps faster than I had anticipated. San Martín was still fairly packed, though I imagine its main customer base is still intact and out there. 

For a Thursday the market was extremely quiet too. 

My friend Gary has written about his money worries: he thinks he might be inadvertently killing wrinklies via the medium of hard currency. 

The older generation does perhaps retain a preference for cash over credit and another friend of mine reported yesterday that in his home town in Ohio, somewhat counter-intuitively, the majority of people that are still out on the streets are over 60. 

Common-sense would seem to dictate that one limits the quantity of cash transactions one engages in. Here in Antigua that surely means, amongst other things, eschewing the market, where bank-notes are often handled in a notably insalubrious manner. 

Yet I am already conflicted about this, as even before the COVID-19 pandemic I was attempting to favour small, locally-run businesses over corporates and ex-twat run operations, and I'm loathe to switch my preferences now. 

Guatemalans have certain cultural obstacles to overcome. Firstly they are going to need to understand that this outbreak is less about personal risk than social responsibility. 

And secondly, they are going to have to stop doing everything in moloteras. Most simple expeditions (to the airport, to the shops, to the hospital, to the scene of an accident and so on) accrue a load of unnecessary hangers-on. These mores could prove costly if not conquered. 

I've made a rough calculation that between a third and a half of UK families will see an older relative severely sicken or die. Here in Guatemala, owing to cultural factors somewhat akin to those prevailing in Italy, the pattern could be steeper and even more severe. 

I can, off the top of my head, think of a number of multi-generational households in our close circle of family and friends. I do believe it may well take the impact of painful losses (and the accompanying sense of guilt) to properly change fundamental attitudes and behaviours. 

Triage

I’m sure Victor Hugo had other ideas for how his first year back in the hot seat was going to pan out. Now he and his crew are facing the onset of the biggest economic crisis in the city’s recent history. 

There are some decisions that absolutely need to be taken that absolutely won’t be. It’s just the nature of things here.

Yet the Municipality is not completely toothless. The economic expansion of Antigua over the past couple of decades has been unnecessarily disordered. There is no reason that the contraction has to be. 

The responses outside Guatemala have so far been a little disjointed both from governments and other entities within affected societies. The line between self-interest and self-preservation doesn’t always fall in the same place. We’ve seen quite a lot of too little too late but also some too much too soon. Most competent states are now working to delay the virus, in effect prioritising their healthcare systems over the wider global economy. 

All things considered, international leisure travel is highly unlikely to return to anything like normal levels in 2020, even if the pandemic turns out to be a single wave affair. So our local tourism sector is in for a protracted downturn. 

The Municipality should already be planning for a process of triage. They could compile a register of local businesses and assess them across a range of criteria, such as social value and how much of a buffer they may already possess against the fall in trade. They could also establish an emergency fund and look at other ways to safely sustain a basic level of activity in key sectors. 

Many parts of our local economy have long been over-saturated, so it’s not entirely callous to note that some sort of cull would be at least partially beneficial. 

Antigua has surreptitiously and insidiously developed a virtual version of the Cuban two tier currency system, where a given quantity of the quetzales in circulation are in effect dollars in disguise. 

Too many of the businesses that have sprung up to cater for the now vanishing foreigners appear to be based on charging consumers near first world prices whilst rewarding staff at depressed third world levels. This is almost entirely bad for the development of the country. It works to expand the gap between the informal and formal economies and between the lower middle classes and the more established white collar sector. 

If the Mayor and the Muni are smart, they will look to guide the process of retrenchment such that it is not the most vulnerable local participants in the economy who end up suffering the most. 

Stereotypes

The enduring (and unnerving) problem of stereotypes is the quantity of truth that they bear. 

For instance, perhaps the death rate in South Korea has been so low because too many were already existing in virtual self-isolation, or indeed so high in Italy because they’re all a bit too touchy-feely and grandpa and grandpa are usually ensconced in the family home.

Just one monkey...

Bonkers

My wife’s nephew is a Guatemalan virologist who has worked in the past with the WHO. 

In his view what the country currently lacks is not actual cases of covid-19, but any capacity to effectively detect them. 

The press release below is the equivalent of ‘We’ve not been able to spot any STDs in our community, so come on down for a big Easter shag-fest.’ 

The level of irresponsibility is near criminal. 

I simply don't care if your livelihoods might suffer. There are people alive today who won't be in a few months time as a result of this policy.

Cozumel has depended to a large extent on the trade brought by cruise ships. But a large section of the island's population has had the sense since last week to stand along on the pier and shoo away the liners. For the foreseeable future, the cruise industry is a gonner. They have probably figured this out and started to adapt. 

Rocoto, Huatulco

Rocoto has to be La Crucecita's most over-subscribed restaurant. 

In general the town has an un-hurried, almost reposeful mood to it, somewhat over-developed, over-promised relative to its current population, rather like Milton Keynes in the 1970s, though far more pleasant. But this place is definitely a choke point. 

A first unsuccessful attempt to secure a table featured a guided visit to an internal blackboard where Chef Claudia had chalked up a full set of bookings for at least three days ahead. 

Anyway, the food is delicious, so her success is thoroughly deserved. (Here: Mahi Mahi in a Southeast Asian mango curry sauce with jasmine rice.) 

A word about that item situated just north of the plate. Every table at Rocoto has its very own key to the loo on a branded fob. 

My wife and I had very different initial thoughts about this. Hers was that it was something that should only ever be touched whilst wearing disposable plastic gloves. Mine was to scan the pavement beyond the pot plants for a mob of randoms intent on using the bog without logging a prior order for seafood nibbles. 

At the end of the meal, I felt I had to ask. 

The waiter explained that in the past customers had become annoyed upon finding the door to said facilities locked —  not the sort of explanation that provided me with the kind of closure I had been seeking, though I have to say I can just imagine the coach load of irritable old frenchies that might have necessitated this change of protocol; indeed there may well be traces of this incident on Tripadvisor. 

I do feel that there’s a sound reason for being able to securely lock a toilet door from the inside.

'The apex of weak thought'

I'm ready for self-isolation, are you? 

Whilst Australians punch each other over the last remaining bog rolls (and laxatives), Italians, as always, are gesticulating wildly over the finer details.

While civilisation collapses around us it is indeed important to remember which of them hills one is inclined to die on. 

My feeling is that the big test is now imminent. How covid-19 goes down in history, not just as an epidemic but also as a cultural, political and economic event, will be determined by what happens in New York City over the next few weeks. 

That said, I am definitely getting the impression that even if the zombie apocalypse were to be going full speed ahead up in El Norte, Guatemalans would still be coming out in force for Cuaresma. 

Self-isolation is my wife's default response to the Easter period, so for her at least, the coming weeks will be business as usual.

Feline contentment

One of the most attractive features of cats is that contentment is their default state. Unlike human beings – particularly of the modern variety – they do not spend their days in laborious pursuit of a fantasy of happiness. They are comfortable with themselves and their lives, and remain in that condition for as long as they are not threatened. When they are not eating or sleeping, they pass the time exploring and playing, never asking for reasons to live. Life itself is enough for them > John Gray

(Whose new book Feline Philosophy is released in October.)

The above statement deserves a caveat. Any sudden change in circumstances, from climatic conditions to rearranged furniture can take them out of the contentment zone quite sharply.

And I know of umpteen ways to make a cat more contented.

The Cancellation Conundrum

The mad rush to cancel travel plans is on.

UK airline Flybe has become the first fatal casualty of the coronavirus downturn in this sector.

Yet Guatemala may end up being caught in a bit of a Catch-22 situation: There are still no official cases of COVID-19 infection here, yet there is also no official system for detection. Until the first case is announced, pre-booked visitors won't generally be able to claim on their insurance for any cancellations.

So, the timing of the epidemic could be crucial. Semana Santa is either going to be a damp squib as far as foreign visitors are concerned, or a humungous contagion-fest.

If the virus comes in overland from Chiapas it could lurk, largely un-detected for a while within communities with limited access to the required care. It would then reach Antigua once the in-bound migrations associated with the latter stages of Cuaresma kick off.

Alternatively it could reach us via the airport where, as of last week at least, no checks of any sort on arriving passengers were being made.

The Truth About Your Coffee

The Channel 4 Dispatches 'exposé' of child labour practices in the Guatemalan coffee industry was so riddled with misconceptions and misconstructions as to nullify any point it was trying to make. 

Crucially it failed to make the basic yet important distinction  that coffee picking is not a year-round activity.

And it didn't have the courage to reach any useful conclusion, beyond the fact that two major consumer brands (Starbucks and Nespresso) should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

In fact it ultimately delegated the call to action to a local activist, who advised British consumers to 'fight' and to carry on drinking Guatemalan coffee, 'the best in the world'. Er...

In practice this sort of programme — at times resembling a bad parody of investigative journalism (Inappropriately-dressed Londoner in thick glasses says 'crikey' when attacked by buzzy things) — serves to do more harm to the people at the bottom of the chain, than castigate those at the top.

From here it looks like an argument between two hypocritical, first world positions that tend to use people in the third world altogether self-servingly.
It made corporate ethical commitments and world-level legal protections appear as if they exist primarily to sanitise the contact end consumers have with the realities of food production outside their bubble.

The most intelligent, compassionate thing said in the programme was sent in by George Clooney.

It's unlikely that a machine will ever be invented to strip the berries from loaded coffee bushes. It remains an intensive, manual, 'just in time' task and the income of families in these poor, agrarian economies depends on deploying every available pair of hands. Prohibiting the use of children during these seasonal rushes could possibly have an immediate impoverishing effect.

One can rue the fact that Guatemala is under-developed and that large parts of it depend on what can only be described as a peasant economy. And there are ways to change this. But creating moral uncertainty amongst end consumers of 'feel good' products like coffee or chocolate is probably not the best of them.

Voice Recognition

The organisations with which I communicate regularly are increasingly using voice recognition technology. I'm taking time to get used to it. 

Ten or so years ago my wife's bank in London used to ask her what her mother's maiden name was, even though it's a rather obvious part of her own surname. 

This, I suppose, is a problem that did need solving, but many of the current solutions do appear to come packaged with intimations of future problems. 

Slomo

These modern global calamities tend to play out like slow motion train-wrecks. This is partly a consequence of our media culture, which encourages us to think of ourselves as detached spectators rather than responsible participants. When they peak, we tend to hanker after state intervention, because we’re so unused to decisive decision-making on our own. 

The so-called financial crisis of 2008 was well under way by the autumn of 2007, in full public view, yet too many resembled those who walk out in pursuit of the retreating shoreline before the tsunami rolls in. ‘2008’ refers to the folding of Lehman Brothers, a pivotal event that now stands for the whole process.

Keep calm and carry on...

Chiapas just logged its first case of COVID-19. (in SCDLC). The pestilence is lurking at our borders.

Mecca has been closed to non-Saudi pilgrims, Venice cancelled carnival, the Louvre is shut. Yet here in Guatemala Cuaresma is going full speed ahead. 

Clare Foges wrote in the Times this morning that the yufe of today is simply too self-centered to prevent the spread of the virus without a certain amount of state coercion.

Last month Alla Ilyina, a Russian citizen, escaped a coronavirus quarantine in St Petersburg and posted a video about her getaway on Instagram in which she declared: “I have a right to my freedom . . .” Ilyina could not understand why, having tested negative for the virus, she was being forced to stay in isolation for a further two weeks; the opinion of medical professionals that she was still a potential risk to others could not outweigh her desire for liberty.

The danger here in Antigua is not so much that we live in a society of disobedient citizens, rather that there won't be any orders to obey. Is there a politician in this country with the moral courage to place a moratorium on the seasonal vigils and processions? What of the archbishop? 

And who would listen, for the trouble here is less the free-spirited 'me' generation than precisely the most vulnerable demographic of over-60s.  

In fact Guatemalans as a whole are wedded to their traditions (and other routines) and tend to do their important things in amorphous family groups. I can think of several individuals of my own acquaintance living in the nation's capital to whom the idea of skipping Semana Santa and its crowds for just one year, for their own safety and that of others, would simply never occur. 

Bear in mind, large gatherings of the devout have been pinpointed as a major cause of (avoidable) contagion in South Korea, with calls for the leader of one sect to face murder charges. 

Anyway some words of warning for those with the requisite resolve for self-isolation: 

With couples confined together 24/7, ordinary marital friction soon escalates into all-out war. Domestic servants, often migrants, who went out of town over the Chinese New Year, have been unable to return to work – but someone still has to do the household chores. Men slump on the sofa playing video games or hide behind a laptop pretending to work, while still expecting three meals a day and fresh laundry. (The Word from Wuhan, Wang Xiuying, LRB.)

Some place...

Tempus Backlashus

The comments on this post are classic.

Having just shaken the Pope's hand in St Peter's Square, poor Nelo is surely now a candidate for patient zero in Guatemala. 

'Civil Society Restrictions'

I think I might have mentioned before that should I ever come to power here in a bloodless coup, my first executive order, Trump-style, would involve, if not exactly a 'first against the wall' directive, at the very least a cull of a whole load of these NGO chiselers. 

'Civil Society Restritions' makes Giammattei's somewhat restrained policy sound bad. In fact it's only a necessary first step. He's already becoming my favourite prez of the new democratic era.

We were once approached here by a former diputado who wondered whether we might be interested in helping him set up an NGO, ostensibly to help under-privileged Guatemalan kids to get their mitts on computers, yet he made no secret that the underlying objective should be to open a money pipe from abroad that we could all connect to. 

Over in Jardines there is another sharp operator who lives off donations so that she may recruit 'volunteers' to clean up in coastal areas.

And so on. 

Closed for Semana Santa

When Victor Hugo recently announced his policy of closing nightclubs during the peak nights of Semana Santa, we all thought what a properly canny move this was. Being a protestant, he possibly doesn't really care all that much, but the imminence of Cuaresma has permitted him a quick political win, whereby he might show that lot who's really boss — 'If you want to live under my roof, you have to live under my rules' (many of which he laid down last time he was in charge here) — whilst simultaneously recruiting the spontaneous finger-pointing contributions of all those dedicated panza verdes that seriously loathe the pseudo-antros; folk who might be afraid to stick their heads above the parapet at any other time of year. And he can always rake in the revenue by fining any businesses that choose to violate the order. Of course our alcalde was perhaps being just a tad optimistic overall , because come April, the processions (let alone the nightclubs) are likely to end up massively under-subscribed thanks to Covid-19. 
Surely only a certifiable, irresponsible lamebrain would choose to circulate around packed venues this spring.  (It really doesn't take much to bring international travel to an almost complete halt. During a trip up to Tulum in the autumn of 2009 at the height of the 'swine flu' panic — and it was mostly just a panic — I ended up having the place pretty much all to myself.)

Ford vs Ferrari (2019)

As Chris Rock quipped at the Academy Awards last Sunday, this sounds like a no contest.

In the UK, where you can't easily include a brand name in the title of a film unless you own it (i.e. The Lego Movie) it has been doing the rounds as Le Mans '66. 

It's less the David and Goliath contest suggested by the original title than a drama driven by a cluster of familiar stereotypes; corporate Americans, up-themselves Italians, down-to-earth yet plucky provincial Brits and Matt Damon playing a version of himself that wears a stetson, intersown with some fabulously-edited, genuinely thrilling scenes of classic 60s sports cars going head-to-head, which somehow manages to celebrate both US triumphalism and heroic British failure. 

And the Italians in their Ferrari cockpits scowl like Japanese pilots about to offload torpedoes over Pearl Harbour. 

I was reminded of my visit to the Corvette museum in Kentucky a couple of years ago, though we are informed at the end that Ford GT40 is the only American-constructed car to win the 24-hour race.

The Lighthouse (2019)

Robert Eggers's follow up to The Witch would be a classic two-hander, except that there are a few other rather obtrusive cast members, most notably the cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, an intermittent mermaid, plus a team of specially-imported, British seagull thesps, one of whom possibly deserves an Academy Award for playing dead. 

I have to say that, as with his previous feature, I was left a little unconvinced, though the performances are undoubtedly very strong and the late Victorian sea-dog dialogue is consistently diverting. 

The trouble is that the more this film strives to be dark and delirious, the more it comes across as just a bit silly. 

In a recent BBC interview Dafoe described the set up as what happens when two grown men are forced to go and live alone in a building shaped like a phallus off the coast of Nova Scotia for a month. It features a descent into madness that both men appear to have commenced prior to this ill-fated posting on the rock. 

Eggers preserves a sense of ambiguity about the situation. Part or indeed all of it could be hallucinatory. There are moments when the characters appear to comprehend that they are living through a metaphor. 

Anyway, one big take-out from the movie (or from the above-mentioned interview at least) has been that Willem Dafoe is one of those rare super-talented, yet understated Hollywood actors that would make a fine guest at a dinner party populated with people he didn't already know, in precisely the same way that Joaquin Phoenix wouldn't. 

Tithe Barn

Herons Farm has a smart new website. 

In the medieval period growers had to pay a tithe (a 10% tax) to the church. Barns such as this were established to store payments sent in grain. Many surviving examples are attached to monastic runs. 

Amateurmerica

The other day day we closed our accounts at Banco Promerica. 

We hadn’t intended to, in fact we just wanted to reactivate one of them, but the process for doing so was made to sound so utterly painful — including, bizarrely, the official requirement to leave the bank and go for a walk outside for approximately an hour and half — that in the end closing out completely was (marginally) less hassle. Either way it was going to be worse than an afternoon at the SAT. 

Back in the late 90s, as Banco Uno, this was unquestionably the best bank in Antigua. Yet nowadays it has become everything you don’t want from a retail banking service, yet there still seem to be a few customers who, like us, have held on bravely/foolishly through the name and standard changes, first to Citi and then to Promerica. 

Whilst waiting in the barely-furnished limbo zone we exchanged nods of recognition with a former Vamos candidate for alcalde who cheerily greeted the cashiers as if they were his children's nannies, and later (much later it seemed) overheard someone identifying himself as the financial envoy of Antigua’s wealthiest family. 

These people will surely recall how the staff at Banco Uno used to greet their valued customers when they walked in instead of being made to palm a shred of paper with a queue number on it.

In London I bank with Coutts & Co, the Queen’s bank. My account there is possibly the one thing I have that is an out and out status symbol. When I signed up as a teenager I was immediately allocated a ‘private banker’ in a morning suit. These days I still have such a contact at the bank, but he’s less of a fusty old gent and does even more useful stuff for me like answer emails and is backed up by a team that can handle any issue I throw at them 24-7 via telephone. 

Such attention doesn't come cheap, but they have always been broadly tolerant of my foibles, and as for my mother, she was probably just about the worst customer any bank could hope for, yet they were always solicitous and diplomatic (almost to a point) with her. 

So, let’s just say that when it comes to banking I’ve been royally spoiled. Yet even measured against the lofty standards set by the aforementioned establishment, Banco Uno did tend to impress. When we were building our first house here in the late 90s they too gave us a personal banker, who would zoom out to us to deliver a chequebook at a moment’s notice. 

My business partner visited us here in 2000 and met Gustavo, our asesor at Banco Uno (over drinks at Dog and Fox), and was soon showing an interest in opening an account there himself, even though he had no intention of moving to Guatemala. This was because they had this rather nifty way of flushing clients' savings into offshore Panama accounts at what was then a truly impressive rate of interest. 

Promerica now occupies the site of what was Lloyd’s Bank when I first came to Guatemala. This was the only obvious foreign presence in the sector at the time. 

At some stage in the mid-noughties there was a bit of a rush on Central American banks with Citi picking up Banco Uno and almost immediately applying more American levels of service. 

But at least they still seemed to have a basic idea of what they were doing. The current batch of Promerica personnel are staggeringly devoid of initiative. They reminded us of the chronically under-trained waiters one occasionally comes across in Antigua: the ones that don’t seem to know which side of a plate is up. 

On the subject of By Royal Appointment, my dentist, from my first tooth until his retirement and knighthood about ten years ago, was also the Queen's dentist. I was rather proud of this, in part because he was my dentist first and because aside from being exceptionally good at his profession (I've never had so much as a filling), he was also extraordinarily simpatico. 

I believe that he also dealt with the oral necessities of Charles and Phillip, but recently, when media images of Pizza Express's most famous customer and his almost stereotypically British lower gnashers became commonplace, I thought...surely not him as well? 

Negative Statesmanship

At Cambridge my special subject was 'The Drafting and Ratification of the US Constitution', so it strikes me that our contemporary American pickle, as outlined by this article was there in outline at least right from the start e.g. 

"In the impeachment trial, the 48 Senators who voted to convict represent 18 million more people than the 52 who voted to acquit."

Trump reached the White House back in 2016 in a manner which clearly demonstrated just how all that horse trading between the founding fathers, the big and small states, the slave and free states and so on, has handed down a form of democracy that comes with no small amount of head scratching. 

Paloma Plaga

La Antigua is suffering from a surfeit of pigeons right now; some might even call it a plaga.

Victor Hugo should avail himself of a gavilán and train it to dispose of the undesirables in the parque, the feathered and perhaps also the less feathered. 

Masking the truth

I've started to see more and more ads for 'top selling' masks in Guatemala on social media...and let's just say that they are not of this sort. 

Just the other day the CDC announced, somewhat speciously I suspect, that hand washing of OCD levels is preferable to mask donning. This coincided with a news alert that 'virus-protective' masks are becoming scarce. (On Amazon supplies started to dry up some time ago.)

The best place to get the right kind of mask in Antigua, at least the type that would offer some real protection against detached DNA in droplet form is NOT a pharmacy. I won't be more specific for now, as there might be a sudden run on supplies, which would surely interfere with their intended quotidian uses here.

(The ones shown in the pic below would be basically useless anyway.) 

There is still not a single reported case of the coronavirus in Latin America, so it will be a while I suspect, before this might become an acceptable, risk-free look in the mercado...

Today reported deaths from the new coronavirus have surpassed the number that the Chinese eventually fessed up to during the SARS outbreak in 2003. (774).

Yet some 20,000 people have died as result of flu infection in the USA during the 2019-20 season, without stirring up a great deal of media interest. 

Isolating China every time their exotic dietary tendencies engender a new bug will probably not be, as anyone conscious of the problems resulting from low levels of antibodies in the general population (such as those with an understanding of this region's post-conquest history), the best approach in the long term. 

Preclusions

Bogeymen

Double tap

The other day I came across this sentence in the preface to a book about Spinoza by the late Sir Roger Scruton...

“Chapter 3 must therefore be read twice if it is to be understood.”

Countless tomes I have read over the years, both fiction and non-fiction, might have benefited from a disarmingly honest admonition of comparable nature from their authors. (Sometimes in reference to the ENTIRE work.) 

1917 backlash?

The trench cultural warfare looks to have reached stalemate point when it comes to BAFTAs chosen flick of the year. When I hear that a movie like this is little more than a vehicle for the white male worldview I do kind of sigh.

Some of the other criticisms appear to refer to creative decisions that were made a little more deliberately, such as the everyman nature of the protagonists, the gameplay qualities of its single shot cinematography, its focus on individual redemption rather than the collective impotence and futile slaughter of the Flanders front etc. 

These gripes tend to indicate the disappointment of audience members who went in expecting to see a different movie altogether. I'd point them in the direction of Journey's End, also excellent, though arguably even more 'white'. 

The apparent lack of strict authenticity and the gameplay vibe did worry me just a little during the first half hour or so of 1917. I recalled my wet blanket objections to the WWI first person shooter Battlefield 1 a couple of years ago - that it seemed to dishonour and diminish the sacrifice of a generation. 

The plot here emerged from the stories told by the director's grandfather Alfred, the poet and novelist from Trinidad and Tobago, who was indeed a messenger repeatedly tasked with 'going over' with important bits of paper. Knowing this, I can see that Mendes is using no man's land in the way that Ad Astra and films of that ilk use outer space, as context for an oneiric, metaphysical, individual journey. 

I have to admit I did poke fun a bit at Ad Astra for its apparent lack of realism, but let's just say that (almost) nobody goes into Apocalypse Now expecting a traditional war movie. 

That 1917 has prospered in the US market, where the Great War has much shallower cultural roots, says something about Mendes's unusual take on this conflict. Schofield's perpendicular run across the ill-advised charge of the Devons will undoubtedly become its most iconic scene and one that is emblematic of the film's intrinsic vision. 

As an observation more on the zeitgeist than any single cultural artefact that it varnishes, we live in an era where we perhaps need to keep a closer eye on all art of the 'liberal' sort, because 'realism' is increasingly taken to mean presenting the world as it ought to be rather than as it is. There's always going to be a place in the market for this, but not as a virtual monopoly. 

It can become especially pernicious when it comes to dramas set in the past, for history is always a work in progress and thus susceptible to the mendacity of good intentions.

Horrendous Hiatus

I think I can tell what has happened here. 

'Tiger' Tm Henman used to keep this lot off the streets and out of politics. 

Unfortunately we've hit one of those hazardous hiatuses where we don't have a viable Wimbledon challenger and the next (‘significant’) Royal Wedding is likely to be at least two decades away. Yikes. 

Scandal (1989) and The Trial of Christine Keeler (2)

Now that we’ve watched The Trial of Christine Keeler all the way through to the satisfying wrap up of episode six, there are a handful of additional conclusions to make.

We live in an era that would dearly like to paint Keeler as a victim, yet as the text before the end credits informed us, that’s not how she wanted it to be.

Amanda Coe has taken this as her cue to deliver carefully ambiguous characters across the board. It gets a bit cake and eat it at times, but her sympathetic approach to the likes of Profumo, Mandy Rice Davies and so on propels the drama even where the surrounding dialogue is a bit on the nose.

The only obvious villains here are the police, who are all rather ACAB. (Though the C in the acronym could also stand for cabinet ministers.)

Hypocrites make up a large-ish subset of the overall population of abusers. The Catholic church alone is a strong indicator of this. Yet what about self-styled non-hypocrites, such as Stephen Ward? One might take licentiousness to the point of righteousness, i.e. hypocrisy.

My father’s friendship with Ward has led to speculation within the family that perhaps we should have interrogated him a bit more about the girls living in Wimpole Mews. Now that I have watched this series (and simultaneously re-acquainted myself with John Hurt as the ‘not a real doctor’ in Scandal) I feel it is really about Ward that I should have shown greater interest.

One of the frustrations of both the new series and the 1989 feature film is that the tale of Jack Profumo’s adultery is quite tame by the standards of modern politicians. At the time the Cold War made it a tad more interesting, yet Ivanov is very much a secondary figure in both adaptations.

The truth is surely that the real scandal is going on in the background. We get one scene of debauchery at Cliveden and facts emerge in court which have apparently not deserved a scene of their own beforehand, which gets a little frustrating. I plan on reading one of the two books that concentrate on Ward and his ‘secret world’ to fill in some of these gaps.

The full story about the scapegoat of the incident will be stuck in the archives until 2046 apparently, when I could conceivably still be around to read about it. One presumes that the Duke of Edinburgh will almost certainly not be.

Keeler herself is perhaps not as interesting a character as the tabloids of the time would have had us believe. Many modern Latin Americans would certainly crack up at the fine distinction being made here between real pimps and tarts and the likes of Ward and his girlfriends. 

(Almost) lastly, there’s clearly only one café in the whole of early 60s London and it’s called The Regent. (The boards outside reminded V how much she used to like ‘scampi’ in London's pubs.)

2046 is a great movie.