Culture

Don’t blame me, but we live our lives to a perpetual Calendar of Complaint

Donald Clarke: Like religion, it’s a useful distraction from the truly horrible wretchedness of existence

The UK’s increasing obsession, when November comes around, with slapping poppies on everything that does or does not move has increased the discomfort felt by those – such as the footballer James McClean – who reasonably feel unable to wear that symbol. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Getty Images

Donald Clarke's face
Donald Clarke
Sat Nov 12 2022 - 05:41

Remembrance Sunday looms and we are almost free of the annual moanathon about flowers from the Papaveraceae family. As a card-carrying centrist melt, I pride myself on finding both extremes equally infuriating. The UK’s increasing obsession, when November comes around, with slapping poppies on everything that does or does not move has increased the discomfort felt by those – such as the footballer James McClean – who reasonably feel unable to wear that symbol. Meanwhile, blowhards on this side of the Irish Sea have apoplexies if any “W*st Br*t” (my asterisks) dares to appear on a chatshow with decorated lapel. Let people wear them. Let them not wear them.

Anyway, that’s over for another year. We can all sit down and have a nice cup of… Oh blithering feck! It’s time to get in a fit about Fairytale of New York again. Brave free speech activists will be complaining about the “banning” of the Pogues song because it features a word that rhymes with “maggot”. Two sets of man-in-the-pub-told-me etymologists will spill bilge about the blameless tinsel. You know the F-word here is being used in the sense of “lazy person”? (If this is so, literally nobody twigged it until around three years ago.) You know “NYPD choir” was slang for the boozed-up detainees in New York jails? (This seems to be entirely made up.)

Get ready. We are about to encounter a fresh addition to the Calendar of Complaint and it is set to be a classic

After Christmas there will be an argument about Creme Eggs arriving the very moment the year flips over. Then we’ll be disagreeing about when spring really starts. Before you know it, Patty’s Day will have arrived and we’ll be giving out about Americans calling it “Patty’s Day”. And other stuff. Those politicians travelling across the Atlantic for the national celebrations are sure to yet again enrage the plain people of Ireland. On it goes.

At about the same time, a wiseacre will posit the theory that the films nominated for Oscars aren’t what they used to be; someone not unconnected to this column will aggressively reply that, no, they’re actually somewhat better. Everyone is suspectible to this. You too are a participant. Yes, you are. Just recall how annoyed you got at the words “Patty’s Day” above.

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Get ready. We are about to encounter a fresh addition to the Calendar of Complaint and it is set to be a classic

The year is no longer marked by feast days. We live our lives to a perpetual Calendar of Complaint. The last episode of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth, reluctantly dedicated to the single species that is us, was titled The Compulsive Communicators. That is a perfectly respectable way of defining human beings. But monkeys chatter at one another. Cows moo across the pasture. What really distinguishes us from the rest of the beasts is our compulsion to whine incessantly. Yes, we live in a godless universe that visits disease, calamity and early death disproportionately on those already most disadvantaged. Everyone is allowed to complain about that. Maybe we don’t moan enough about the things that really matter. Hey, it’s late October. We’re too busy noting that Ireland has uncomplainingly reimported the acquisitive version of Halloween that fascistically drapes everything in colours of the American autumn. (Don’t say “fall”. You’re not from Rhode Island). Sorry, it’s May. Time to wonder when bouncy castles became essential at First Communions. I’ll get round to complaining about global inequality when I’ve finished wondering why the British have taken the miniature Bounties out of Celebrations boxes for Christmas. Of course they’re not the worst one. Maltesers are right there.

A book I’ve just made up tells me humans have been doing this since they lived in mudholes and worshipped turnips. Of course they were. The Calendar of Complaint is – like religion – a useful distraction from the truly horrible wretchedness of existence. If we’re whingeing about how The Swedehead Tribe insist on grazing their oxen on the wetter low field during the Festival of Mangelmass we won’t have time to ponder our imminent death by Viking. It began as conversation in fetid swamps. It continued as debate in half-timbered houses. It survives on droning social media and in hypocritical columns such as the one you’re currently reading.

From next year there will be a new bank holiday on or nearby to February 1st, which is St Brigids Day. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons

Get ready. We are about to encounter a fresh addition to the Calendar of Complaint and it is set to be a classic. From next year there will be a new bank holiday on or nearby to February 1st. That is St Brigid’s Day. Why the heck is a supposedly modern state associating its official days off with a Roman Catholic abbess? You fool, the feast-day has its origins in some Celtic shaman or other. How is that better? Look, just think of it as the start of spring. What the hell are you talking about? On what mad planet does spring begin in one of the year’s coldest months…

And on it will go until, as we squabble about new nothings, the earth swerves into a dying sun. I am human. I moan therefore I am. Descartes nearly said that.

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