logodædalus

I suppose most people following “alternative faiths” have experienced it. There’s always a trigger that causes people to ask the religion question: in my case it’s a bangle which I’ve worn constantly since I was fifteen. It no longer physically fits over my hand, and so cannot be removed without being consequently destroyed. Working in the food and hospitality business, it’s standard procedure for the only permitted jewellery to be a plain wedding band[1]: for hygiene purposes, of course. Generally, when I’ve been asked to remove it I’ve just said “it’s religious” and that’s been that. It helps that plain non-reactive material with no decoration, moving parts or convenient bacterial hiding places is easy enough to sanitise.

On the odd occasion, though, somebody enquires further and asks “what religion’s that then?” Unlike Wicca or even Asatru, as a name “Brythonic reconstructionist polytheism” doesn’t really trip off the tongue, so I generally say “polytheist” and leave it at that. Sometimes I get asked to explain what I mean, which generally leaves people with a look of bemused yet benign look of disinterest.

On the even odder occasion, I’ve been asked why. I frequently fire back a question like "why are you a Christian?" (or whatever), and never actually give a reasoned, er, reason.

So here’s why. First, I’ll talk about why I believe in a general sense, and in my next post I’ll address the question of why I’m a follower of Brythonic reconstructionism in particular.

Why I believe (in general)

I like to think of myself as a rational man, with a healthily sceptical turn of mind. In fact, I’ve often described myself as “agnostic by nature, religious by circumstance”. This, of course, is rather at odds with my sometimes embarrassingly intense religious beliefs[2]. Why then, do I believe?

Quite simply, because I believe that the Gods speak to me. Given that when a man talks to God it can be classified as prayer, but when God talks back it’s a species of psychosis, this might not be the most firm foundation to start from. Medication and a course of therapy might be more appropriate responses than ritual. However, against all the odds I do seem to be reasonably psychologically healthy (Bipolar II aside, natch), with no history of psychotic or delusional episodes. While I do not exclude the possibility that these experiences of what I perceive as the Gods talking to me might have other causes, psychological or somatic as they may be, positing that I’m right and that the Gods are talking to me seems to be the simplest explanation which fits the facts.

I realise that the above essentially boils down to “because the little voices in my head tell me to.”

Nevertheless, let us accept this as our first principle. Given that I believe the Gods talk to me, what should I do about it? It would not be entirely unreasonable to suggest “nothing”- just as most people who are awakened by a noise in the night are content to roll over and go back to sleep, thinking “cats or foxes” rather than feeling it necessary to go and investigate. However, I’m the kind of person who grabs a knife and creeps downstairs hunting for burglars. It is not within my nature to believe something and not act upon it: it would be a violation of my personal integrity to do nothing.

Of course, it is not unfair to ask why I believe that it’s the Brythonic deities who are speaking to me. After all, I’m Welsh, I have a healthy interest in both mythology and history: am I sure it’s not the case that I’ve simply ended up believing in the deities I’ve been reading about? Yes, I am reasonably sure. The direction of causation is actually the other way around: the interest in my family and ethnic heritage, the interest in history, comparative mythology and historical linguistics all stem from my conviction that the Gods are speaking to me. The Gods came first, and it took me a lot of research to determine their identities[3]. There were also not a few false turnings along the way: when all this started, back when I was eleven, my only frame of reference for pagan divinities was the Greco-Roman pantheon I knew from Latin classes. For years I assumed that it was the Roman deities who were speaking to me, and that any discrepancies were simply due to my lack of knowledge and inability to hear correctly. It was only seeing a statue of Taranis while doing a project on Roman Gaul that it all began to make sense.

I do not deny, however, that my ethnic heritage might well have a great deal to do with it. I don’t mean that in the sense of “Brythonic gods calling to Brythonic blood”- rather I mean that the milieu in which I have grown up, the cultural baggage that comes with it, probably leaves me predisposed to assume that the Gods I hear are Brythonic Gods. Had I been born in Lagos, I dare say I would have assumed that Shango was talking to me rather than Taranis.

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1) This is why the new-ish BBC comedy Whites bugs me: while generally a not inaccurate portrait of what happens in a professional kitchen, the chefs are always shown wearing watches. In a real kitchen, wristwatches are strengst verboten.

2) Although some might argue that my particular brand of Brythonic reconstructionism is suitably donnish a pursuit to be wholly unsurprising. they might have a point: evangelical Christianity or fundamentalist Mormonism might be rather more incongruous.

3) In general neopagan circles, which borrow much of the idiom of wishy-washy romanticism, “soul-searching” would probably be the accepted term, rather than “research”. See the note above.

4) In fact, I find translations of divine names into English to be quite evocative. “Father of Riches” for Dis Pater, “Brightest High One” Brigantī Belisamā and so on. It is instructive to sometimes be reminded that divine names were frequently meaningful for their original worshippers. In some cases, of course, theonyms were just as unanalysable to the ancients: what on earth does Noudons mean, for example?

That's French for makeover. I have a terrible weakness for French "English" words, such as le shampooing for "shampoo" or le footing for "jogging". Generally they're comprised of an English word (not neccessarily a verb) with the suffix -ing. Given that the majority of the words so formed do not have an actual English counterpart, this is a fairly remarkable phenomenon: French speakers have created a productive derivational affix from a piece of bound morphology in another language. Most French people are genuinely surprised to learn that we simply don't form words in this way in English, and can be somewhat hurt when confronted with the gales of laughter which ensue when they try to use these formations in English[1]. The suffix is highly marked, of course, and is still perceived to be the marker of an "English" word: this is probably why it is applied with such freedom to loanwords which lack it in English. This kind of hyper-foreignisation is actually quite common in languages: most English speakers pronounce the j's in "Beijing" and "Azerbaijan" as a fricative /ʒ/, the sound found in pleasure, in spite of the fact that the native pronunciations of both have the j's sounding a lot more like the affricate /dʒ/, as found in English judge. We just perceive /ʒ/ as being a more "foreign" sound, and ipso facto, that's the one we use with foreign words.

Le relooking is particularly interesting, as it represents a logical progression of word-formation. The English word look was borrowed into French meaning "image" or "style", a meaning it continues to have. The process of changing one's look, then, would obviously be un relooking: formed with the prefix re-, which has the same meaning in English, and the "look! this is a cool English word"-suffix -ing. And, to return to my point, that's what this blog has had (as you can no doubt see).

For a reason which is as yet unknown to me, I've translated the titles of all the widgets and so on into Latin. This is entirely pointless (and rather pretentious), given that in spite of the latinate title of the blog, I don't actually post in Latin. I did consider Greek, but feared losing readers. Besides, I don't like the way οἱ ἑπέται looks. Additionally, for maximum viewing pleasure, can I suggest that the gentle reader gently download the blog's default font, Gentium. It's very pretty, I promise you, and it will make reading the strange characters I'm given to using when writing Gallo-Brittonic (as in tou ambaχtos etic u̯ossos īsselos emmi) far easier and more aesthetically pleasing.

Also, to avoid confusion, the comments link is now at the top of each post, just after the signum sectionis §.

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1) Personally, I find it cute when French people calque expressions and idioms directly into English. I remember a girl who worked for me at Harry's: as a favour to one of the waiters, we'd taken her on as a cleaner, in spite of the fact that she spoke no English at all. However, it turned out that she worked with indefatigable energy and became rapidly popular among the managers because she was the ideal worker: she never complained and just got on with the job. Actually, she did complain- near-constantly, in fact- but as I was the only manager who understood this it went unnoticed. Her English began to slowly improve, and it got to the point where she could communicate with the other managers without needing me as an interpreter. However, I recall one incident where I burst out laughing when, having carefully explained to the General Manager that she "did not arrive to find the key", with genuine consternation he asked her why she had turned up then.

Back when I decided to get out of the hospitality industry for good, no honestly mister, I really mean it this time; I'll confess that I was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of adjustment to life outside the trade. I was under the impression that learning entirely new sets of skills and procedures would be the most difficult aspect of any new job. Different expectations, different skills, different rules. The accumulated knowledge and experience of eleven years in the trade, from dishwasher to chef, from waiter to restaurant manager, would all suddenly become of little use in a new career.

How wrong I was. Working for this baker-cum-retailer is essentially retail for hospitality refugees (retail therapy, if you like). Pretty much every skill I've learnt in the trade has been used over the past week. For example: instead of spending the requisite two weeks of training on the company food safety course, I pointed out that as a chef I already held a CIEH-approved level 3 food safety qualification and proceeded to move straight to the final assessments. I've also taken to the financial side of things like a cynical and world-weary duck to water: a legacy of having spent three years running one of Moriconium's busiest restaurants.

In fact, the most difficult adjustment has been getting used to the working hours. The length of the shifts isn't a problem: I'm used to ten-hour straight shifts in busy kitchens with no sit-down breaks: eight hours shuffling sausage rolls with an hour gap to wander the streets of Vetus Moriconium (including a pleasant picnic on the quay feeding seagulls and chucking fag-butts at tourists) is a veritable holiday in comparison. No, what's most difficult to get used to is working from 0700 to 1600 most days. After eleven years, my body-clock has reprogrammed itself to consider ten o'clock at night an appropriate time to start thinking about cleaning down, not going to bed. Half past five in the morning isn't the early morning to me, but a late night. In the past five or so years, I've only ever been out of the house at that time when I'm walking home after a night out on the lash. So getting up at half five every morning to go to work has been a struggle. I've risen, washed, cut myself shaving and got dressed in what is essentially a state of somnambulance. Yesterday I tried to get away without shaving, but the days when I could do that and not look like a tramp are alas long since gone.

It should come as no surprise then that I've been utterly knackered over the past ten days, sleeping for only four hours a night for a few days and then crashing into a twelve-hour exhaustion-induced coma afterwards. On Sunday, I slept for almost twenty hours in total. I've been too tired to write, read, cook or eat. The last is probably ultimately a good thing, as I swear to god that just walking through the shop provides me with some 70% of my recommended daily intake of calories. I've eaten more pastry over the past few days than I had in the previous year, and pastry was something of a speciality of mine. This excessive consumption is purely in the spirit of academic enquiry, you understand. As a manager, it behooves me to know what the entire product range tastes like (although perhaps this knowledge does not need to be gained in the course of one lunchtime, I admit.)

In fact, were I not to enjoy work, this severe sleep deprivation combined with junk-food temptation would probably qualify as a Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Nevertheless, enjoy it I do, and I'm sure that I'll adjust to a new circadian rhythm soon enough. There are a few things which irritate me, of course: as a chef I am hugely annoyed by the company's insistence on sanitising the whole prep area between making different types of sandwich (to prevent cross-contamination). Between making a prawn baguette and a cheese and tomato on brown, I can see the point; but given that most of the sandwiches are variations on tuna mayo, chicken mayo and various cheese concoctions, I find it a little paranoid to sanitise everything between (say) a chicken and sweetcorn sandwich and a chicken and mango sandwich. On the other hand, not all of their employees are former chefs, so it's probably better to be safe than sorry.

Food poisoning would cut into my sleep schedule, after all.

I started my new job at the beginning of the week. Great holy gods in the sky, I am fucking knackered.

To those who have contacted me over the last week or so: I promise I'm not ignoring you. My life is currently rich in excitement (hah), but poor in spare time. I promise I'll get back to you on Sunday (my first day off).

Not working is not agreeing with me. It's left me feeling incredibly restless, keen to do something creative or enjoyable, but with too short an attention span to actually do much that takes more than an hour or so. For example, I've got some ideas that I'd like to play with for a short story, as well as a couple of lengthier essays on the back burner. The kitchen needs cleaning again: the result of a few days of agitated post-resignation breadmaking. There's a distressing smell coming from a bowl of neglected sourdough starter, which is beginning to steal out of the kitchen to permeate the entire flat.

Of course, it is more than likely that this feeling of restless anxiety is a result of me enjoying the "manic" portion of "manic depression", rather than there being any particular causative link between this and my sudden unemployment. As such, I've tried to do things that I know calm me: today I've been tarting up an old bookcase and my hands are still stained with wood oil. However, the damn thing is now drying out and waiting for a final coat of varnish, placing me right back at square one with nothing to fill my time adequately. Much more of this and I'll turn rabid and start throwing things at people in the street below.

Happily, therefore, I am actually no longer technically unemployed. One of my many job application was successful: I am to be the assistant manager of a bakery (well, a Greggs). So that's it. I've got out of the trade entirely: eleven years have come to an end. I'll confess to having something of a tear in my eye when I folded up my whites and put them at the back of the wardrobe. But I'm sure the exciting fact of being paid more than I ever have been before will salve my grief pretty damn quickly.

As those who are friends with me on Facebook will by now know, I once again find myself among the ranks of the unemployed.

For the past three or so months, basically since I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I've been visiting a therapist weekly for CBT[1]. I initially didn't bother telling anybody at work, as I don't like wearing my mental health difficulties on my sleeve. However, I let the manager know, as I felt that I owed him an explanation for why I was requesting every Monday off. He was highly supportive, and obligingly let the kitchen staff sort out our own rota, which gave me every Sunday and Monday off.

About three weeks ago, we had a change in management at O'Murphy's. The new manager hasn't made a great first impression, on either the staff or the regular customers. She's ridden roughshod over the pub's running, and managed to successfully alienate virtually all of the employees: which is quite an achievement, given that during the three weeks of her tenure so far she's only actually been on site for a total of seven shifts. Staff morale has taken a nosedive, and it's more than a little apparent that any the staff no longer take any pride in their work. Being old in cunning and hospitality industry politics, I had resolved to simply keep my head down, get on with earning money and escape at the earliest possible juncture. Little change, really, from before she started: I've been applying for jobs and looking for a way out for a while now.

It's also apparent that where the previous manager believed that delegation was the key to good management, that left to their own devices a group of motivated, well-trained staff need only the lightest hand to guide them; the new manager believes firmly in central direction by a strong hand. One might say that if a manager's central role is to "lead the team", the previous manager's emphasis was on "team", while the new one's is on "lead". This kind of micro-managing control freakery has always been anathematic to my personal management style, but each to their own. It was no surprise then that she un-delegated the kitchen rota and took charge of it herself (in between the business-critical tasks of rearranging the canonical order of condiments on tables and inventorying the lemons). Initially, we thought little of this, just letting her know that we all had commitments on certain days, and would appreciate it if we could have those days off on a regular basis.

However, when the rota for this week was posted on the noticeboard last Tuesday, I noticed that I had been rota'd on for this Monday. I knocked on the door of her office and asked for a moment of her time. She asked me if it was important, I replied that it was about the rota. She told me that she was extremely busy and she'd come and talk to me later. Shortly afterwards, she left for the day and absented herself until Saturday evening. By now I was used to her lengthy absences, so on Wednesday I spoke to the Assistant Manager, who said that he would sort it out for me and arrange cover for Monday.

So yesterday, I was somewhat surprised to get a text message informing me that I was still on the rota for the evening shift. I phoned in and pointed out that not only had I spoken to the AM a week ago about this, I also had a pretty unbreakable commitment for that evening. The new manager told me in no uncertain terms that I didn't have a choice about this, that if I wanted the day off I should have spoken to her about it. Pointing out that she was never actually there didn't go down too well, and she suggested that it was somehow my own fault. I tried to explain about having an appointment with a therapist, but she cut me off, said that my mental health wasn't her problem and told me to buck my ideas up. I could either come up with a "better reason" for not doing the shift, or arrange cover myself.

One of my most uneradicable character flaws is my pride. I'm not a particularly humble person, and have problems with people bossing me about. Being treated with a lack of respect tends to trigger a species of cold rage in me. Now, at this juncture I could of course have simply backed down, cancelled my therapy appointment and done the shift: and apologising for raising my voice on the phone most likely wouldn't have gone amiss. However, I had sensed an affront to my dignity. To back down would have been an assault on my personal sense of honour. My bluff had been called.

Ever willing to cut off my nose in order to spite my face, then, I sat down and wrote the following letter:

Dear ________

Please accept this letter as notice of my resignation, effective immediately. I regret the inconvenience that this will cause to my colleagues, but circumstances leave me no choice.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of my colleagues, past and present, for the support they have afforded me during my time at O'Murphy's. I would also like to wish both the team and yourself the best of luck. I am sure you will all need it.

Sincerely,
Deiniol Jones

Still seething, I took this off down to O'Murphy's. She was behind the bar.

"I assume you've come to apologise for the way you spoke to me earlier?"

"Could I talk to you in private, please? It won't take long."

"Oh, I think it will, I have a few things..," she began to say. I cut her off.

"No, it won't. Unless you're a slow reader, of course." Which was probably somewhat unwise of me. I didn't care, by this point. She asked me to come into the office and sat down. I stayed standing.

"You asked me to come up with a 'better reason'. I think this should cover it."

With that, I chucked the letter down in front of her and turned to leave. She stopped me by the door:

"And what's this?"

"What do you think? It's a note from my mother," I said and walked out. A couple of seconds later, she followed me and called out:

"You do know that you're barred from the premises for six months now? It's company policy." One of the barstaff overheard this and pointed out that it wasn't at all, it was just petty. Ignoring the manager, I went and kissed the barmaids on the cheek and told them to take care of themselves.

And now, it's started to actually sink in. I've walked out of yet another job: this must be the tenth. And all because of my damned stiff-necked pride. Again.

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1) Don't Google this acronym, for the love of god. In this context, it refers to "Cognitive Behavioural Therapy".

I have mentioned before that I am not an especially houseproud man. Indeed, it would be fair to say that, I see housework as a tedious and unnecessary distraction from reading and drinking[1]. However, on a semi-regular basis (three times a year, on average), the squalor will get on my wick to the degree that I go nuts and have a marathon cleaning session.

Happily, last night and this morning, the planets were found to be in a felicitous conjunction. The auspices were taken and found to be favourable. And so the wrath of the household spirits was propritiated and the living room was mucked out. As ever, this mammoth task proceeded in three stages:

1. Return books to study. A perennial problem here at Jones Towers is that of book storage. I have far more books than shelf space to keep them, the result of which is my library being scattered throughout the flat. This doesn't actually bother me too much, as I always know exactly where everything is[2], and it's always handy to have something to read in the loo. Nevertheless, it tends to look untidy, and any cleaning attempt must begin with at least a token effort to place books on shelves.
2. Excavate the floor. In order to facilitate hoovering, everything is taken off the floor and piled on the settee. Bank statements, bus tickets, junk mail, pizza boxes, plates, discarded underwear, woollen gloves from last winter, empty cigarette packets etc. Everything comes off the dining table at the same time.
3. Purge room of all extraneous matter. The stuff on the settee is sorted into a number of piles: stuff to be shoved into other rooms and forgotten about; stuff that is demanding money from me which I'll deal with first thing on Monday, honest guv; stuff to be chucked. The last pile is always by far the largest. This time it took up three black binbags.
4. Evict unwanted flora and fauna. Old fat spider spinning in a tree! Old fat spider can't see me! Attercop! Attercop! Won't you stop, Stop your spinning and look for me! And so the spiders and dead flowers leave the room.
5. Polish all wood. I'm a chippie's grandson, and get quite obsessive about wood. Virtually all the wooden furniture in the flat was acquired from charity shops or municipal tips and then lovingly restored by yours truly. As such, when I talk about polishing wood, I don't mean a quick squirt of Pledge and some business with a duster. Out comes the wood oil, beeswax balsam, shellac and differently-graded cloths. This always takes a couple of hours, but I find it immensely satisfying. It also leaves the flat smelling pleasant (if you like the smell of beeswax and shellac polish, obviously).
6. Hoover. Preferably in a classy pvc miniskirt and pink halterneck, of course.

Having done all that, I am now in the blissful period wherein I sit and enjoy the sense of achievement, and the scented candles I'm burning to dispel the stench of cleaning products. Given that there is unlikely to be a similarly happy occasion again this decade, I thought that I would post some photos of what my flat looks like. In the grand tradition of my masters and betters in this discipline of blogging (hi!) then, let us begin this tour of the headquarters of the Moriconian Socialist Resistence.

1) The Parlour

Recently renovated and with a southerly aspect, the combined living/dining room of this charming property is a versatile and person-centred space. As you can see, the east-facing wall is currently adorned by various bits of tat tasteful objets d'art:

In many ways, the front room is primarily a reflection of my taste, while the study (with its shelves full of model robots, cars and aeroplanes) is a reflection of my beloved's. There's a bodhrán, a rugby ball and a sword: which gives three interests of mine that I don't believe I've spoken about here before. The small pile of books on the shelving to the right is mainly Latin poetry: the top one is the Loeb edition of Martial's Epigrams. The big brass oil lamp on the pile of books was a housewarming present from my mother-in-law: it's the very devil to keep clean.

The table in the centre is my surrogate hearth: the old chimney breast being on the eastern wall was a fortunate coincidence. While nothing like as tasteful as Mark's altar, I quite like its austere simplicity. There's a close-up below:

The statue is indeed blood-soaked, not through any conscious intent but as the result of a bizarre chain of events while moving in six years ago. That little black book marked "breviary" is an old Moleskine notebook in which I've written most of the prayers which have featured on this blog and its predecessor. A sample page:

I say that this room is a reflection of my taste, but I'm not actually allowed to have a proper bookcase in here, which is inconvenient. Instead, we have a massive rack of his DVDs:

2) L'Atelier

You've seen my kitchen before, but in order to refresh your memories:

As you can see, it has wonderful views. Some days even go by without me seeing any drug deals or fornication at all!

Of those cookbooks, I only make regular use of two: Il cucchiaio d'argento, a compendium of Italian cookery containing pretty much anything you could wish to know, and The Cooks' Bible, which is more a book of techniques than recipes. I bought it to replace my old college textbooks, which alas perished in a fire when I was particularly drunk. The benefit of the Bible over professional catering books is that one doesn't have to scale back the recipes: it is particularly disheartening when one discovers that the only recipe for blanquette de veau in one's collection is marked "to serve 40".

There are two bilingual puns in this image. A prize to those who spot them both.

(No, it's a rolling pin.)

3) The Facilities

For contrast, here is one room which has not been cleaned recently. The bathroom:

This picture has been deliberately under-exposed, in order to disguise the grime. However, two things can be noted from this picture:

1. This bathroom is used exclusively by two men.
2. The men in question have a somewhat freestyle approach to personal hygiene

(It's actually a bottle of shower gel.)

Finally, as a bonus feature, here are two photos of me. The first I took yesterday evening, when beginning this cleaning:

And this is the requisite "after" shot, taken this morning when the cleaning was finished off after I got up. I look so haggard due to the bottle of wine I drank to "help" me through the task:

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1) Fortunately, the necessary tasks of personal hygiene can be performed while reading/drinking. I am a firm believer in staying in the bath until either the water goes cold or the wine runs out (whichever happens first).

2) For example, until this morning I knew that should I need to consult it, I could find Yaron Matras' Romani: a linguistic introduction in the kitchen, between Il cucchiaio d'argento and Baldi's Foundations of Latin. Similarly, all my books on religion were to the left of the settee, while Greek to GCSE was next to the Harpic in the bathroom. Now they're all in a pile in the study and I have absolutely no idea of what's where.