The Olympic Flame

Photo: John McGowan

There was only one place to be in Lewes at 2.30pm last Tuesday. On the first sunny day for ages, and after rain like the Great Flood, the wild flowers in the Grange Gardens were not to be missed. A good development, this, from LDC responding to the annual dust-up over bedding plants and letting a bit of nature in. Unfortunately The Trouble With, like all other parents in Lewes, was instead obliged to be up the hill watching the Olympic Flame visit the home of the mighty Rooks.

I say obliged but it was really more of an invitation from school to liberate the children early; always a delight for working parents. The reward for dropping everything was the privilege of seeing the flotilla of Samsung publicity vehicles followed by a clutch of Lycra-clad joggers accompanying an oversized fag-lighter.From the conversations I had later the troubles with this were clearly legion. “I can’t believe how commercial it all is!” Can’t you? While watchers could have been excused for thinking that the Games have been re-titled the SAMSUNG Olympics, it’s not like corporate sponsorship is anything new. To be honest, the values of the ancient Olympics weren't so pure either. True, the competitors didn't wear shirts sponsored by Athens Communications (high speed messaging by slave runner), as they were famously in the buff. Probably quite buff themselves too now I think of it. However, less than Corinthian practices were well-established. For Lewesians though, there was also the special disappointment of a single torch in daylight rather than thousands in November darkness. Lousy theatre Seb, if you don’t mind me saying.

So how could the torch relay have impressed a Sussex population used to feasting on fire? As William Goldman, the great Hollywood screenwriter said, for really great entertainment what you have to do is protect the star. If you have George Clooney in your film you basically give him everything: best lines, sexiest moves and cutest winks. You don’t begrudge it as he’ll make you a fortune. If George needs all that though, how much more must you give to a Bacofoil cone with a candle sized flame? Well they could have gone easier on the pom-poms, the overexcited MC and (admittedly a masterstroke) the sullen youth texting on his Samsung Galaxy. In fact, might running have been exciting and romantic enough by itself?Imagine a different scene. A little razzmatazz sure, but then the noise dies down. The beefy metropolitan coppers call for quiet. Everyone waits. Suddenly a lone runner appears on the horizon carrying the flame lit at Mount Olympus. The spirits of Nurmi, Bikila and Freeman are there as the runner passes the ancient castle. Then, stopping only for a refreshing latte at Nero’s, it's off down the hill and on through the wild flowers at the Grange. 

Not the most obvious route perhaps, but I tell you, those poppies really are Olympian.

John McGowan, 18th July 2012

Penalties

Photo:  Sean MacEntee

There seems a certain inevitability about England bombing again. Pessimism, rising to inflated expectations, punctured by a lacklustre performance, and followed by the curse of the shootout. OK they didn’t go down to the Germans, but the spirits of Waddle, Pearce and Southgate have risen again and the name of Ashley Cole will live on in pizza adverts and infamy. (Or perhaps greater infamy). What, I wonder, is the trouble with penalties?

An initial glance at the stats confirms England’s penalty shootout record is indeed poor. A 17% win rate has to square up to 33% for Italy, 64 % for Brazil, and (this may hurt) in excess of 70% for traditional nemeses Germany and Argentina. A further look suggests that England are also worse at penalties than Ethiopia (80%), Burma (50%), and The Seychelles (100%). Maybe Africa is the new heartland of beautiful game and Aung San Suu Kyi would inspire any country to kick ass, but what about The Seychelles? Surely England are better than them. It’s not like the days when Glenn Hoddle was spouting karmic wisdom, hanging out with faith healers and disdaining practice. As a Scot I’m dying to believe the ‘England are shit at penalties’ theory but another look at the figures forces me to admit that there may be more to it.

It’s not exactly news to point out that penalties contain an element of chance. No one really knows how much and factors from age to national character have been suggested as influencing the outcome. The trouble is that we are tempted to find reasons other than chance for winning or losing. Reasons such as crude national stereotypes. The Jerrys (soulless efficiency), the Brazilians (samba flair and hot fans), and the Argies (lets not even go there). How satisfying are these explanations though for anyone beyond a member of the BNP? I mean what do the Italians have that makes them better? Pasta and opera? And I’m looking forward to reading about how the traditional fishing industry of the Seychelles lays the foundation for their stellar form.

Let’s imagine for a second that the result of a shootout is pure chance. Where would that leave England’s record? We might think the law of averages would apply and the outcomes would look random. A 50% win-rate right? Well actually wrong. The other trouble with those penalty stats is that they are all based on small numbers of matches. Six for England, seven for Germany and only one for the mighty Seychelles. The trouble with truly random numbers is that, when you only have a few, they don’t always look random. When you throw a dice or flip a coin a few times the numbers or sides often don’t come up nearly as equally as you might expect.

The fact that we find it hard to believe that random things are really random can lead us into all sorts of bollocks.  “Hot” numbers in the lottery (ones that seem to come up a lot) is a classic example but the same process can lead us to thinking that the outcome of penalty shootouts is determined by Teutonic discipline, Latin cunning or English decline.

So let’s go easy on Roy and the lads. England might be a bunch of overpaid pretty-boys who crack under pressure, but equally they might simply be victims of the oddities of chance. On the more hopeful side some other statistical theories suggest that, over a much larger number of events, random sequences will actually start to look a lot more like we expect (i.e. 10,000 coin flips might be likely to have a more even result than 10 flips). By that reckoning a few hundred more shootouts and England should have something close to a 50% record.

It just might be worth booking for Euro 4012 after all.

John McGowan, 27th June 2012

Printing Money

Photo: Katie Moorman

You may have spotted a paragraph in a recent Viva webmag noting that the Lewes Pound Group is on the march again. Clearly attempts to make the punters notice the existence of “Toms” (why is there still no nickname?) via canvas bags and stalls at the Farmers Market haven’t had the desired effect. It seems a more radical procedure is required to animate the Pound’s decaying corpse. Now they are giving (yes, giving) free Lewes Pounds if you spend a few quid in certain shops. A good marketing wheeze, no? Get the notes circulating by putting a few free tasters out there. I mean it worked for Ben and Jerry’s.

It might be helpful at this point to remind ourselves what money means. For a long time (since King Croesus in the 6th century BC, more or less), cash meant coins made of a metal agreed to be precious. Coins were a useful technology and worked fine until an unnamed, but inspired, Chinese bureaucrat in the 8th century AD came up with a brilliant idea. “Why lug that heavy gold around with you? In fact why not put it over here in this official-looking government strong-box and we’ll give you a note to say we’ll pay you back on request.” And so paper money was born. For Marco Polo such a mechanism was the greatest wonder of Kublai Khan’s empire. It was also its weak spot. Wanting to finance war (as the Mongols often did), the Mighty Khan listened to yet another clever official who proposed that, as these notes were so handy, people would rarely want to get their hands on the actual gold. Why not then simply print more paper? To be fair to the Khan this is a temptation many later rulers (including our current Government) have been equally unable to resist. 

This is not to say that the Lewes Pound group are ‘doing a Kubla’ and simply printing more dosh (though it must be tempting). Like the ancient Chinese Jiaozi, The Lewes Pound is backed by a promise to redeem it for something ‘real’, in this case Sterling. What Sterling is backed by is another story. The problem is that money is simply a way of keeping accounts between us. We have plenty of convenient ways to do this. As has been pointed out in these pages before, new ways to pay (especially if they are less convenient) may simply end up rather de trop.

Will the current campaign change things? Possibly, but I wouldn't bet a 21 pound note on it. Despite sucking up around 15 grand to run last year and goodness knows how much time, even some Transition Townies can’t seem to be bothered to defend the economic and environmental claims made for the Pound any more. Some clearly still have hope. It does slightly remind me of an unpopular boy at my school who would give people sweets with invitations to his birthday. Whether it was a visionary marketing strategy or a desperate gesture is still not clear to me even thirty years later. I suppose it depends on whether his parents followed it up with something decent (like even more sweets). Or maybe he was great when you got to know him. Ben and Jerry’s may be rewarding on closer acquaintance and thus giving freebies makes sense. Will the Lewes Pound be so tasty?

Buying Local

I won a muffin contest the other day. Not a phrase I often utter as I have never entered one before. The competition was organised by the local environmental types to showcase the general deliciousness of local seasonal ingredients. Don’t you find that all of a sudden localness is everywhere? From supermarkets to tourist information everyone is touting it as better, tastier and, above all more morally sound than the alternatives. Our ancestors had to wear hair shirts and flog themselves to get into heaven. All we have to do is re-style beetroot as dessert (see the winning entry here), and we’re laughing. As the glory of victory fades, though, I’m left with this thought: is our current obsession with buying local all it’s cracked up to be?

It depends on what you mean by local. Buying food from Tesco (in Lewes) is one kind of local. Does that sound ludicrous? There are clearly all sorts of reasons to dislike supermarkets but, along with their cheapness and convenience, they keep you or your neighbour in a job. Of course you might do better going to Waitrose; it’s a few quid more but the employees also own the store and are in on the profits.
Businesses owned by people in town are what spring to mind when thinking about buying local. Going to Skylark or Bag of Books instead of Amazon. No hyperlink for the faceless multinational, but they do offer a range and prices that the local shops can’t possibly compete with. The local ones have advantages of their own though: browsing (never as good online), bantering with the owners, and events with authors. You (literally) pays your money and takes your choice. The stock of businesses like these is, of course, not particularly local. Though Lewes is obviously a town of infinite creativity, only local stock would mean they’d be bankrupt by tomorrow.

The real piety du jour (and the raison d’etre for a lot of the Town’s environmental activity) is eating local food. The less food travels, goes the argument, the less the impact on the environment. It’s just common sense, no? Unfortunately the notion of 'food miles' is an area where common sense is misleading. Sure, you can probably be confident that those air-freighted blueberries you had in January aren’t the best emissions-wise; but what about other commodities? Loads of basic stuff comes by ship where the carbon footprint is a lot smaller, while growing things locally on inappropriate land or with extra heating, or whatever, can mean a far higher environmental cost. While the whole issue is really mind-bendingly complicated it’s nice to feel good even if we’re not having much practical effect.

I can hear the teeth gnashing at that last sally already. Of course if it’s a completely different sort of life we’re after (living with the seasons, getting our hands dirty and eating seasonal veg all winter), then local food is clearly the way forward. The thing is people who do live this kind of life, usually as a result of economic collapse or sanctions, never seem all that happy with it. Funny that. To be honest, much as I liked my beetroot muffins I’m not expecting them to storm the world any time soon. Show me someone in rural Ukraine who wouldn’t prefer a Nero’s chocolate chip one and I’ll show you an empty branch of Tesco. And now, if you’ll excuse me I think I have a few muffins left.


John McGowan

Beetroot and Chocolate Muffins Recipe

Beetroot and chocolate is a well established combo in cakes and also works in a sweet muffin. Normally though the beetroot is mixed with either melted chocolate or cocoa powder and the distinctive taste, texture and colour get a bit lost. These muffins are an attempt to retain some of the qualities of the beetroot by keeping the chocolate separate in the form of chocolate chips. They don’t come together till you bite into it.

Ingredients/Materials 8-12 muffin cases depending on how large you want them. A muffin/fairy cake tray 150g unsalted butter 200g self-raising flour 25g semolina ¼-½ teaspoon baking powder 175g light muscovado sugar Small pinch of salt  2 eggs ( beaten) 100g beetroot peeled and (grated)  100g bar of chocolate cut up into small pieces

Directions  Preheat oven to 180C (fan 160C) or gas 4.   Melt the butter and leave to cool.  Line the sections of the muffin tray with paper cases  Mix together the dry ingredients ensuring you get the lumps out of the sugar .   Add butter and eggs and gently mix in.  Stir in beetroot and chocolate chips  Spoon into muffin cases making between 8 and 12 according to how big you want them.   Bake for 25 - 35 minutes depending on the size of the muffins.  Check by sliding in a knife and seeing if it comes out clean.  Let them cool in the tin for a few minutes and then on a rack.

Perfect Porridge

For my Scottish ancestors it would be tantamount to blasphemy to suggest that porridge tastes better when made in a microwave. However, though I’m not sure why, it really does. It also has the advantage of allowing you get on with other things instead of standing there wielding a spurtle. With the oatmeal used below (as opposed to rolled oats) you do have to stop and stir every 2-3 minutes to avoid it going lumpy though. In this version you make the porridge quite thick and add milk just before serving.

Makes one generous portion. For more than one person add the same quantities again per portion and increase the cooking time proportionately. Remember to use a bigger bowl as the porridge bubbles up excitingly in the later stages.

Ingredients

A handful of sultanas

2-4 tablespoons of apple juice

60g Oatmeal (rather than rolled oats)

300ml water

Salt (for its moral value rather than its taste)

A handful of mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower etc.)

Sugar or honey or mashed banana to taste

Full-cream milk

1. The night before soak the sultanas in the apple juice in a covered bowl.
2. Mix the oatmeal, water and salt in a large microwavable bowl.
3. Cook in a microwave for 2 minutes at 800W (vary the time according to the power of the microwave). Stir it and do the same again. Leave for a minute or so before taking out.
4. While the porridge is cooking roast the seeds by stirring them in a dry pan over heat. Keep stirring them or they will burn.
5. When you take the porridge out mix in the sultanas, seeds, sugar/honey/banana and (last so it doesn’t go cold) the milk.
6. Soak the bowls you’ve used in cold water (no need for anything else) and by evening they’ll pretty much clean themselves.

You may be hungry again before you’ve even left the house but it’s good while it lasts. 

Thrift

The missus repaired some clothes the other day. As well as breathing new life into old trousers and not blowing the housekeeping the way her shopping benders usually do, this enterprise had the additional benefit of allowing her to feel thrifty. With the economy looking likely to tank again and George Osborne cutting the public sector like... well like a right-wing ideologue, surely making a few savings of this sort should be the order of the day? Thrift is practical. Thrift is virtuous. Thrift is sometimes a bit sanctimonious perhaps, but basically good. Isn’t it?

The merits of thrift in fact depend on who you want to do good for. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if you’re saving money you’re not spending it (though I know a six-year-old who would disagree). It did take a genius to work out what this means and that genius was John Maynard Keynes. Though often associated with the “hike up tax then spend like a drunken sailor” left-wing of politics, Keynes had some pretty subtle insights into the nature of recessions. His most influential principle was that, when economies are flat-lining, something needs to stimulate demand and get the wheels turning again. You can give people tax cuts and hope they spend more but, tight-fisted buggers that they are, the public might actually save some of the extra rather than blow it all on an Amazon binge. At times like this someone else needs to step in and flash a bit of green. That fall-back spender is usually the Government (pay attention young Osborne), though what they do with all the DVDs, books and iPods is a mystery.

Though not the first to notice the downside of saving, Keynes offered the clearest statement of the so-called “paradox of thrift”. One way of expressing this is to say that I may benefit if I follow Marguerite Patten’s wartime austerity tips described at last year’s Seedy Saturday. I save and my quids are in. However, if everyone starts making do and mending, demand will contract and the economy will head down the toilet. Keynes would’ve used a more decorous image as he was a gentleman as well as a genius. Whether or not he would have been as much of a gentleman had he met the young Marguerite in the Blitz is unknown. He was also, after all, an associate of the metrosexual Bloomsbury Group.

So it’s personal gain set against group loss. Still Christmas is coming and we all have a chance to be economic heroes. You may be sick of shops putting up their displays at the end of summer, outraged at being told to get your last minute gifts in October, and mad at the excess of Mega-Monday, but if there was ever a time to splash out surely this is it. Even that dourest of puritans Gordon Brown thought spending was our patriotic duty. From Superdrug to Skylark, from Tesco to Tizz’s, your town needs you! 

John McGowan, 8th Dec 2011