A number of people have been kind enough to say my new byline photograph makes me look younger. Coyly, I agree. I’m 44, and I reckon this new picture shaves at least 18 months off that. I shall stick with it: 42 and a half is a good age at which to call a halt to the ageing process, don’t you think?
The column, however, unlike the photo, resolutely fails to improve. A month ago, I wrote what I thought was a rather good one, detailing the violent local history that has occurred along my route to work. Good, perhaps, but not good enough. That column contained a bad mistake.
I wrote that the destruction of Hughes Mansions in Bethnal Green, East London, in March 1945 was caused by a V2, also known as a doodlebug. Not so: the projectile was indeed a V2, but a doodlebug was the nickname for a V1, something else entirely. I apologise.
Upwards of 100 readers, and the corrections continue to detonate in my inbox, have pointed out the error. The vast majority of these mails have been friendly, jocular, self-mocking, benign. I am grateful. One or two veered towards the pompous, but then we’re all allowed a measure of pomposity once in a while, and as many correspondents were living in London towards the end of the Second World War, slack must be cut.
One mail, though, went way beyond a mere ticking-off into the realms of a calculated kicking. So magnificently offensive, indeed, was this mail, that it deserves a wider audience.
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I like to cater for allcomers and, aware there are readers who, with Mr Dean, the writer of the mail, masochistically (and somewhat mysteriously) continue to read this page even though they evidently dislike both its author and its contents, today’s offering is for them.
“Sir,” Mr Dean begins (always an ominous start, experience having taught me the more formal the honorific, the more unbridled the abuse to follow), “the V2 was not the Doodlebug. The Doodlebug was a self-propelled bomb? [which] ?fell silently on to its target. The V2 was a ballistic missile? If you were to read Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow you would find an entertaining reference to this weapon’s deployment.”
Actually, that’s fair play so far, isn’t it? Mistake identified, bonus point for extra info, take it like a man. Yet in the next sentence matters take an abrupt turn for the worse.
“I would urge you,” continues Mr Dean, “if you insist on churning out your vapid, meandering and utterly uninspiring chunderings, that they at least be accurate when dealing with serious issues.”
Vapid chunderings, eh? That’s quality. Although I do wonder if Mr Dean really does mean chunder, as in Australian for vomit, rather than chunter, as in to mumble in an inarticulate fashion. Either way, it’s not good. Not since the celebrated “whining effeminate drivel” attack of 2005 have I been the recipient of such high-level invective. Although the man who wrote to say he wished I’d been blown up in Iraq in 2007 came close. Respect to Mr Dean!
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He may not be pleased to learn, however, that he has done me an enormous favour. Often, when people at parties ask what I do for a living, and I tell them, their next question, feigning interest, is, “Oh, what sort of column is that, then?” I’ve always been stuck as to what to say. Entertaining? Occasionally. Informative? Seldom. Weighty? Certainly not.
Now I have my answer. “Well,” I shall reply, “the best way to describe it is as a collection of vapid, meandering and utterly uninspiring chunderings.” We can then get back to talking about which company went bust this morning.
Vapid chunderings. It sounds like the name of a retirement villa tucked away in a quiet cul-de-sac, bounded by emerald lawns and immaculate privet. Or possibly a town in the American Midwest, or the Canadian plains.
I went on the trans-Canadian railway once, Calgary to Montreal, summer of 1981. We stopped at Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat and, now that I think about it, Vapid Chunderings. Very disappointing place, Vapid Chunderings. A meandering, utterly uninspiring kinda town.
Of course, Mr Dean’s substantive complaint, not just his colourful way of sticking the boot in, is spot-on, too. Accuracy when dealing with serious issues is vital. Indeed, it’s not just the nickname of the weapon that extinguished the lives of 134 people you’ve got to get right, it’s the so-called frivolous issues too, the so-called trivial, the stuff in which I prefer to deal.
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Get the detail right (would-be vapid chunderers who write for advice on breaking into the vapid chundering game, take note) and you may catch people’s attention. Get the detail wrong and you’re lost. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt these several years, it is that. Plus this: take your work seriously, but never yourself, or your enemies. Yes indeed, I may not be getting any older, but I do get a little wiser.