Whatsit makes a speech about something

Starmer: We face battle against Reform for Britain’s soul

Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour faces a battle against Reform UK for the soul of Britain.

The Prime Minister said “the battle of our times is between patriotic national renewal” by his Government and the “toxic divide” offered by Nigel Farage.

Voters at the next election will not be faced with “the traditional Labour versus Conservative” choice because the Tory party is “dead”, he added.


His talents lay so thoroughly in the direction of being uninteresting, that even as an eye-witness of the massacre of St. Bartholomew he would probably have infused a flavour of boredom into his descriptions of the event.

Saki – The Unbearable Bassington (1912)

Elaborate and costly playthings

The other day found Mrs H and I discussing how so many things become more and more elaborate over time. As if there is nothing at all which cannot be made a little more elaborate than the previous version.


On a chair lay a broken toy, one of those elaborate and costly playthings which serve no purpose but to stunt a child’s imagination.

George Gissing – In the Year of Jubilee (1894)


It applies not only to things, but activities, systems, processes, laws, rules and so on and so on. The curious thing is that we know it, perhaps everyone knows it, but still we elaborate.


Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas, whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he could remember. It was the contempt of the man of action for the man of activities, and it was probably reciprocated.

H.H. Munro (Saki) - Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914)

The Byzantine Omelette

Who is Sophie? what is she...

Sophie had very advanced and decided views as to the distribution of money: it was a pleasing and fortunate circumstance that she also had the money. 

When she inveighed eloquently against the evils of capitalism at drawing-room meetings and Fabian conferences she was conscious of a comfortable feeling that the system, with all its inequalities and iniquities, would probably last her time. It is one of the consolations of middle-aged reformers that the good they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.

H.H. Munro (Saki) - The Byzantine Omelette

That forlorn orchestra

source

He belonged unmistakably to that forlorn orchestra to whose piping no one dances; he was one of the world’s lamenters who induce no responsive weeping.

H.H. Munro (Saki) - Dusk (1914)

All the material for rejoicing

 

Des glaneuses by Jean-François Millet 
source

Near by him, I felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetable marrow, and its largeness and lateness would be a theme of conversation at luncheon. It would be suggested that it should grace the harvest thanksgiving service; the harvest having been so generally unsatisfactory, it would be unfair to let the farmers supply all the material for rejoicing.

H.H. Munro (Saki) - Judkin Of The Parcels (1910)

We lost a delightfully irreverent mind when H H Munro was shot by a German sniper during the Battle of the Ancre in 1916. He says so much in so few words. 

The harvest thanksgiving must go on whatever the state of the real harvest, out there in the fields where so few members of the congregation ever set foot.

As delicious as a glass of old port.

Men and boys

It is inconceivable that these persons were ever boys, they have certainly not grown up into men; one cannot call them womanish—the women of our race are made of different stuff. They belong to no sex and it seems a pity that they should belong to any nation; other nations probably have similar encumbrances, but we seem to have more of them than we either desire or deserve.
H H Munro (Saki) - The Toys of Peace and Other Papers (1919)

I'm not doubting the biological masculinity of these guys. I'm sure they count their balls and come up with the traditional answer, but something about their public demeanor isn't quite manly.

Perhaps it's a reflection of political correctness, a fear of gender politics or something else, but our leaders seem to lack something any man should have if he deserves to lead.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but furtive, untrustworthy, ambivalent, sanctimonious, sycophantic and two-faced don't quite fit my idea of manliness. These creeps have nowhere near enough inclination to tell it as it is and take the consequences. We had a hint from Cameron with his reputed "green crap" comment, but a better man would say more and say it publicly. 

Even wit would be a pleasant change. Real men were allowed to be witty once upon a time.

Attenuated regret

H H Munro (Saki)
source

Reggie listened with the attenuated regret that one bestows on an earthquake disaster in Bolivia or a crop failure in Eastern Turkestan, events which seem so distant that one can almost persuade oneself they haven’t happened.

H H Munro (Saki) - The Toys of Peace and Other Papers (1919)

Every now and then one comes across a gem of a phrase which perfectly encapsulates an aspect of social behaviour. To my mind, one such is attenuated regret as Saki used it. 

Did he invent this delicious phrase? I don't know, but a Google search for "attenuated regret" only gives around 218 results which is appalling for something so delightfully precise.

TV news readers have special facial expressions for attenuated regret, used when reporting disaster or tragic misfortune.

I wonder if they practice in front of the mirror, adjusting their features to achieve the correct degree of attenuation while at the same time preserving a clear semblance of regret?