Accents

Last night, well after I should have gone to bed, I was listening to music, and wavering on that border between wakefulness and sleep. As it happens, I was listening to Duke Special's enthralling Adventures in Gramophone. He is that rare thing on this side of the Atlantic, a singer who sings entirely unaffectedly in his native tones. Compare and contrast, for example, Sir Elton Hercules John, who seems to think that "Sorrah" seems to be the hardest word to say. Well, clearly for him. (I don't hate Elton John, for the record, but he is a serial offender.)

I don't claim to have a particularly acute ear for accents, though as a result of my upbringing I can distinguish between Mackem and Geordie, for example. It's not an easy business, but if you spend 18 years listening to both, it's achievable. There are also - and here I will hold up my hand - some accents I don't like. I don't care for the Brummie tones, despite having friends who grew up with it. And I generally hate, pace my dear friend Mike, the Scouse twang. Actually, I suspect Mike might join me in that if he's honest, but he's Liverpool born and bred.

It works the other way too. My parents are (were, in one case) Glaswegians, and I can hear the broadest Glasgow patter with a sense of warmth and belonging. Probably my favourite Glaswegian phrase, of someone who is particularly mean, is "He widnae gie ye a spear if he wiz a Zulu". And I love love love Stanley Baxter's Parliamo Glasgow: if you haven't seen it, look it up on YouTube. It's a work of genius.

Back to Duke Special. He's a Lisburn boy, though based in Belfast now, I believe, and, I suppose, no longer a boy. I first fell in love with him when I fell in love with the ex, as they were both from County Down and had, in fact, been to the same school, though were not contemporaries. I know many people won't share this view, and may in fact take quite the opposite, but I love Northern Irish accents. Yeah, yeah, there are romantic reasons for that. But I love the timbre, the cadence, the nuance that can be packed into a few words. I can, I think, distinguish between different varieties of it: astonishing, really, that different intonations can be crowded into six small counties. My ex's mother is from Fermanagh, and her sounds were distinctly different from her Down-raised children.

There is also, in Northern Ireland - and let's not be coy about it - a different tone between Catholics and Protestants. It sounds absurd when you type it, as I just have, but if you listen to, say, Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson, they don't speak in the same way. Their intonations are different, and, to natives if not to me, instantly recognisable. I don't know how it arose (although accents fascinate me, I know very little about how they developed) but it's true nonetheless.

So I admit to loving Ulster accents. Which is not to say I deprecate or abjure voices from the South. There is something about the (cliche klaxon) Irish brogue which is very attractive. The Irish Senate, a mad but great body, includes a man called David Norris, an independent and campaigner for gay rights, who has the most wonderful accent. I met him once, at Leinster House, and could have listened to him for hours. Again, YouTube, people. (Oh, all right, you lazy tikes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM0tWN9oymQ) You won't be disappointed.

I sometimes wonder about accents before the widespread advent of sound recording, especially with regard to Ireland. What did Edward Carson sound like? Or FE Smith? Or Oscar Wilde? (Carson and Wilde had been friends at TCD: when the latter heard that the former was to prosecute in his libel trial, he remarked "No doubt he will pursue his case with all the added bitterness of an old friend.") For that matter, what did HH Asquith sound like? Was he a good speaker? Or Bonar Law?

I will end on this coda. Some of my friends are aware that I have a massive crush (if a 40-year-old can be said to have a 'crush') on Dr Lucy Worsley, of the Historic Royal Palaces. Maybe it's infantile, but there we are. I do. Mostly it's because I am deeply susceptible to clever woman; partly it's because I think she's very pretty; but part of it is the rhotacism. I don't know why it should be, nor wherein me it comes from, but that slight speech impediment - I feel bad even calling it that - makes my heart burst with fondness. I find it utterly charming and compelling. I don't think it's a childhood thing, as I never developed feelings for Violet Elizabeth Bott. Maybe I need therapy.

Apologies

Now, I like fine dining as much as the next man (though I'm not a fan of the fuss and faff of the Heston Blumenthal school of clever-clever haute cuisine). However, I will also hold my hand up to liking fast food. Burger King over McDonald's - if nothing else the fries are incomparably better - but I also have a weakness for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Colonel's smiling face can be seen just round the corner from me, on Lavender Hill. Years ago, I used to live literally opposite a KFC, and I vividly remember going in late one night just before they were due to close, and turning people away, to be reassured "No, no, we cook for you!"

So it was with some avidity (is that a word?) that I have watched this week's crisis in the Colonel's supply chain. My local branch has remained open, and has been well-stocked with chicken; oddly, it has been the side orders which have been unavailable. I do like the beans, but have been denied. It has been a tough old week for their comms people, I dare say: at one point, I read that something like 750 of 900 branches were closed. Nor does KFC lack for competitors in the fried chicken market. Off the top of my head, I can think of Chicken Cottage, Chicken Corner, Texas Fried Chicken, Dallas Chicken and Ribs… People will vote with their feet.

Today, KFC put out an apology in the Metro. It featured a bucket, emblazoned with the letters "FCK" and the strap line "We're sorry". And I thought it was a brilliant move. Some people on social media have become suddenly po-faced - is swearing now part of standard English? (Yes, always has been, at least since Chaucer) - and some have wondered whether an apology was the right thing to do. Of course it was. I've always thought a good motto was, if you fuck up, own up.

It took my mind to trains. Don't worry, it's not as random as it sounds. We've all been inconvenienced by delayed or cancelled trains or Tubes. We've all fumed at the lacuna in our journey or the late arrival at work or wherever. But, if you're anything like me, the blood pressure drops considerably when a representative of whatever operating company it is says "Sorry". It's an acknowledgement that they've got it wrong.

I'd go further than that. Fuck up, own up, and explain. I may not be representative, but if I know why my train/Tube/cable car is delayed, I am put in a much more forgiving mood. At least if the explanation is patently honest. To take the Tube as an example, if I'm told there are severe delays due to a passenger being taken ill, or to a points failure at so-and-so, I'm likely to think, well, OK, that's unfortunate, and annoying, but I can see the chain of events. These things happen, no-one is perfect.

Honesty is the other watchword. If a train is half an hour late, tell me that. Don't tell me it's 15 minutes late, then another five, then another five. That will boil my blood. If you know what the situation is, front up to your customers (remember when we were passengers?) and tell it like it is. Yet companies seem not always to understand this, and try to limp along on what I suppose they regard as damage limitation. It doesn't work.

So I thought KFC's advertisement was a master-stroke. They've taken it on the chin, owned up to something (which, from reading the stories in the press, wasn't actually their fault, but the fault of DHL, their new delivery company) and have, I hope, engendered a degree of goodwill. My local branch still doesn't have any beans, but you can't have everything.

Chance encounters

As those who know me will attest, I quite like going to pubs on my own. I don’t want to sound anti-social, and I much prefer going with friends, but if I want to read, or write, or leaf through the weekend papers, I’m very happy doing so in a moderately busy pub. In an ideal world, “moderately busy” is key. I want to get a seat, and not be hemmed in, but at the same time I want to experience, vicariously, the buzz of human interaction, people talking to people, the warmth of friendship at a distance.

One of the perils of being alone at a pub, which I fully accept, is that sometimes other people – maybe also on their own – will sit at your table. I don’t mind this too much, if they ask first; it really boils my piss when they plonk themselves down uninvited, and they will often get a growled “No, please, help yourself”, usually at a volume which they just might hear, but generally not. It’s not too much of an imposition, and I accept that as a lone gunman I cannot expect to occupy three or four seats which paying customers might otherwise make use of. I’m not that selfish.

So it was last night. I got to my local, the Falcon on St John’s Hill, at about 7.00 pm, and, to my delight, found one of the comfy wingback armchairs free, into which I sank gratefully, intending to write for maybe an hour before I headed for home. It’s dark in the corner snug, but it’s cosy as well, and I find it quite a conducive atmosphere. The chairs are leather-covered and studded, like a gentlemen’s club, and the wine is passable (though, last night, in a comedy of errors, they ran out of wine glasses, so I found myself drinking out of a goblet designed for Belgian beer).

After about ten minutes, a woman, in mid-telephone conversation, pointed to the empty chair opposite me and asked if I would mind if she sat there. Well, she asked, so I smiled politely, and said that would be fine. I noticed, without eavesdropping too much, that she had that enviable to switch from fluent English (clearly her native tongue) to fluent French. She was American, I think, or possibly, given the French, Canadian. She also pronounced the word “about” oddly, which leads me perhaps to the latter conclusion.

Anyway, I continued to peck away at my keyboard (I am a very poor typist, never having been taught and being just old enough to have written school essays by hand). I’m wrestling with a short story which is either an insight into young love or just therapy for my younger self – I still can’t tell, and I may need an outside opinion to tell me.

During a pause in tapping away, and after she’d finished her telephone calls and bought another drink, she looked at me and said “You’ve got to make me leave after this one.” I gave my best smile but my heart sank. She was a talker. I assured her I would, and, to be sociable (which does not always come naturally to me), I made vague noises about this being my last drink as well.

“So what you up to?” she asked. I explained, though I could easily have lied, that I was trying to write a short story, and initially my implication was “And I’d like to get back to it”. But suddenly we fell into conversation about writing.

I know what most of you are thinking. This is unremarkable. But for me, it is not. I don’t talk to strangers in pubs, beyond “Excuse me”, “Thank you”, and “Yes, that’s fine”. Yet here I was talking about Hemingway with someone I’d met – if you can even call it that – five minutes before. She was obviously well read, more so than me, I’m sure, and very engaging company. I offered my opinion that one of the greatest short stories ever written is Hemingway’s six-word epic: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. Just typing those words makes me well up.

(Sidebar: I don’t care for children, as my friends know. But I know people who have lost sons and daughters both before and after full-term, and I cannot imagine, simply cannot imagine, the heart-rending grief it must entail. It subverts the natural order of children burying their parents, and robs mothers and fathers of the vessels into which they must pour all their hopes and ambitions. I don’t know how – if – they ever recover.)

She – her name was Andrea, and she was a psychologist, as it turned out – was on her third glass of wine, having spent the day seeing 25 suicidal or self-harming patients. I certainly didn’t begrudge her the release. I’m not built for the so-called caring professions. My father was a psychologist, my mother used to work with damaged and disruptive children, but nope, sorry, just not happening here. Perhaps I’m unusually unempathetic.

The conversation turned, as we both drank our wine, to the relationship between creative sorts, in this case writers, and addiction. Papa Hemingway, already mentioned, liked a drink. I mentioned William Faulkner, who drank himself to death but supposedly never wrote while under the influence (which I seem to recall Hemingway, who hated him, disputed: there’s a quotation which I can’t find about Don Ernesto saying that he never touched a drop while writing, and that “I leave that to Faulkner.) Andrea brought up Scott Fitzgerald, who was capable of the most beautiful prose but was clearly a raging alcoholic. And we also mentioned Truman Capote, whose tastes were broad but was clearly the addictive type.

Why should this be? Is it so, in fact, or were we self-selecting? One theory, which popped into my head and I advanced tentatively, was that for creative people, the world was just too much, too fast, too frenetic, and they needed booze or drugs or just cigarettes to slow things down to a manageable pace. I wish – well, a little part of me does, but without the self-destructive urges – that I could classify myself in that group, that my head was so full of ideas and fizzing with genius that I needed to anaesthetise it. Not so. Plots come to me very slowly, sometimes never at all, and sometimes turn out to be junk. But I wonder if there’s a grain of truth in the hypothesis. I know some writers keep a notebook by their beds so they can scribble down notions that come to them, or fragments of dialogue, or characters, that come to them in the long watches of the night. Sadly, it is not so for me.

Another idea we tossed around was that writing – and maybe other artistic disciplines too, though I have no experience of them; I could draw passably well as a child, but I could never paint – is in itself an addiction, a need to put words on paper. So maybe it is the case that being a writer is a product of an addictive personality, and merely one facet of it. Writers will turn to alcohol and drugs just in the same way as they turn to the keyboard or typewriter, and with no less dedication. I’m not sure.

A final notion that Andrea posited, based on the experience of her 15-year-old son, who had just been expelled from his second school, was that creativity grew out of a rejection of authority, and that perhaps addiction, in whatever form it took, was a continuation of that. After all, drug-taking, for example, is thumbing your nose at The System, which tells you what you should do, what is good for you, what is acceptable. There might be something in this. Writers – artists in general – are often anti-authoritarian. Think of Orwell, or Kerouac, to take two relatively recent examples. Or de Sade, to go back further. To shock is to entertain.

We reached no firm conclusions, and then the glasses were empty. I kept my promise to chase her out, and out she went. She said – ha! – she looked forward to reading my first book. Well, I don’t think that’s all that likely. But what had begun as something I’d regarded as a grinding observation of social niceties had become a rollercoaster of ideas and notions. I regret I didn’t catch her surname. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again, unless she turns up to my first book launch. Which is a shame. Next week she has five days straight of suicidal patients. Maybe that’s why we started with Hemingway.

Children who kill

I'v been thinking a lot about James Bulger recently, I suppose because it's the 25th anniversary of his tragic, violent, appalling murder. It is still hard to comprehend that two small boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, only 10 years old, could commit an act of such cruelty and savagery. The latter, of course, has recently been imprisoned again, this time for child pornography offences, and his mind must be a swamp into which I, certainly, would not care to peer.

(Interestingly, the angle taken by the Daily Mail, stereotypically to the point of parody, has been to wonder why it is that Venables, from a "respectable" family, has reoffended, while Thompson, a "feral" child - yes, they used that word - has not, so far as we know. Isn't that a thing?)

I was at sixth form when James Bulger was killed, so I remember the case, and the horror of it, quite well. I was also taking a PSE studies module in law, so it interested me, though not, I hasten to add, in any morbid way. It was more procedural. There was widespread controversy about the way Thompson and Venables were treated, whether it was appropriate that they were tried in an adult court in front of a wigged and robed judge, and they remain, according to Wikipedia, the youngest convicted murderers in "modern English legal history".

At the time, under English law, the maxim of doli incapax applied. A child under the age of seven was taken to be incapable (incapax) of knowing it was doing wrong (doli). Between the ages of seven and 14, a child was presumed to be incapable of knowing right from wrong, but the presumption could be argued against. (Doli incapax was, I gather, abolished in England and Wales in 1998, a few years after the Thompson/Venables trial.)

The verdict of the judge in the trial was that Thompson and Venables should be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure until they were 18, after which they would be released on licence. Venables, as we know, reoffended several times and is back behind bars. But eight years? Really? It seems a pitiful return for a human life. As I have written here several times before, and I reiterate, I am not a lawyer, so I am not sure what options were open to the trial judge. But it seems an awfully low tariff.

The question to which I come back again and again, however, is this: did the two boys know what they were doing? Just as I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a criminologist nor a psychologist, so these are merely layman's observations. But it seems to me overwhelmingly likely that they did. They knew they were doing an unconscionably wicked thing, and the way they placed Bulger's body on a railway line to make it seem as if he had been killed by a train suggests a degree of premeditation. (There has also come to light evidence of sexual abuse, the details of which Bulger's mother, Denise, declined to know at the time, and who can blame her?)

From this stems a wider point. If a child will do this to another child, at such a young age, is there any hope for rehabilitation? Can a mind so warped, so - I don't shy away from the word - evil ever be changed? In Venables's case, his recurrent charge sheet suggests not. Yet, so far as I am aware, Thompson has led a blameless life since his release. Being a North-Easterner by birth, I am also put in mind of Mary Bell, who in 1968 was convicted of the manslaughter of two toddlers. My mother, who used to work in what was then called an approved school, met Mary. She served 12 years in prison, and has since lived under a series of pseudonyms, collaborating with the Austrian writer Gitta Sereny on an account of her upbringing and crimes in 1972. Again, so far as I know, Bell's life since her release has been blameless.

So how do we account for this? How can a child do such a wicked thing, and yet prove not to be himself or herself wicked? After all, we would not release Peter Sutcliffe and think "Well, he probably won't do it again" (and in fact I have read rumours that Sutcliffe may now be implicated in more killings). People often talk of children going through "phases". Can killing be one of them? Does the bloodlust merely go away?

I cannot answer any of these questions, I merely pose them. They are important because they go to the heart of how our criminal justice system treats underage killers, who, while thankfully vanishingly rare, nonetheless exist, and, if history is any guide, always will do. Do we exert the full weight and panoply of the law, because of the gravity of the crimes? Or do we, by moderating it, in some way already start down the street of understanding rather than condemning? I just don't know.

Of arms and the man

Like, I'm sure, any sane person, I was appalled and grieved at the news of the mass shooting at a Floridian school. So many young lives which will never come to fruition, so much potential untapped. Let's not get too starry-eyed about the death of children - no doubt some of them would have turned out to be profoundly average. But we will never know. It is a tragedy, but it was not a surprise.

Let me say at the outset that I am not a lawyer, much less a legal expert on the US Constitution. However, this all stems from the Second Amendment, which is runs as follows: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That's it: 27 words. If you're picky - and, my God, people are - the version ratified by the States and given the imprimatur of Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, reads thus: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Anyone with an ounce of historical knowledge and sense can see why the Founding Fathers felt it necessary to insert this amendment into the Constitution. America was, after all, born out of rebellion, out of ordinary people rising up against what they believed was an unjust government and casting off their shackles (well, white people's shackles - slavery would remain for many decades). So far, so 1789.

It is often said, both approvingly and disapprovingly, that the United Kingdom doesn't have a written constitution. This is both true and untrue. There is no single document to which you can point and say, Here, this is how we are governed. But there is Magna Carta. There is the Bill of Rights. There is the Act of Union. There is the whole corpus of the common law. More recently there are the acts which created the devolved assemblies and governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (though of course the last is still in abeyance after 13 months of suspension). So there is a body of work, a Haynes manual, if you like, to tell you how to run the UK.

Americans - is it wrong to say stereotypically? - are more literal-minded. They have the Constitution, with all its amendments, and a Supreme Court which interprets it. A single document, and not a very long one at that. So when a question crops up, they can simply flick to the appropriate clause and say, Yes, this is what the answer is. Of course, there are differing approaches. Some lawyers and judges work from the exact text of the Constitution, simply from the words of the page. Others interpret it on the basis of what the Founding Fathers meant (what we would call in the UK "legislative intent").

Why is any of this important? It matters because 17 people are dead, and they're dead because the Second Amendment allowed a deeply disturbed 19-year-old access to an assault rifle. Was he part of a well regulated militia? Was he necessary to the security of a free state? Certainly, his Second Amendment rights hadn't been infringed. He bought the AR-15 legally, and kept it locked up at home. Thank God for that. God forbid it should fall into the wrong hands.

One elderly Floridian, a man who has hunted since the 1960s and owns 10 guns, was quoted by the BBC as saying: "I just don't know what the answer is. And there may not be one". Of all the stupid things to say. Of course there is an answer: more restrictive gun laws, such as a swathe of civilised countries, from the UK to Australia, have introduced. Do you go hunting with an assault rifle?

But but but, Americans will say, Second Amendment rights. I'll make my position perfectly clear: the Second Amendment was understandable in 1789 but is no longer relevant, nor is it - how I hate this phrase - fit for purpose. It allows military-grade weapons into the hands of disturbed individuals who use them to commit mass murder. The horror in Florida was the 19th school shooting in the US in 2018. Think about that. It's only mid-February.

The US Constitution is amendable. The Second Amendment is just that, for fuck's sake. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed when people decided it didn't work - do the same with the Second. I don't say there should be a total prohibition on the owning of firearms. There may be circumstances, though they are vanishingly few, where it is legitimate. My ex-girlfriend's father, in Northern Ireland, was a firearms enthusiast, and had a sideline in culling deer, so he owned several guns. Not surprisingly, for Northern Ireland, there were strict regulations on that ownership. The guns had to be registered, and kept either at a gun club or in an approved safe at his home. I dare say he had to undergo pretty rigorous background checks before purchasing them too. And all of this is quite right. Guns are dangerous things, potentially murderous, and their sale and ownership should be strictly regulated.

After the horror of Dunblane back in 1996 (I still remember it vividly, so shocking was it), the UK Government vastly tightened the laws, bringing in the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which banned all cartridge ammunition handguns with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons in England, Scotland and Wales. Do you know what? We haven't had a mass shooting since. Gun crime, while a problem in some isolated areas, is not a regular feature of British life. The US has liberal firearms laws, and the highest rate of gun-related homicide in the "developed" world. Coincidence? You tell me.

There are some hardcore libertarians who will ignore rather than refute these arguments. Freedom is more important. I know someone, an American, from university who said on Facebook after a previous massacre "The guns are worth the death". That I cannot accept. I don't feel any less free than a US citizen, and, to be honest, if we ever became a dictatorship or police state, my having a handgun wouldn't be the solution to the problem. Governments have way better kit than their citizens.

The solution is there. It has worked in other countries. These endless, senseless tragedies need not proceed in an unbroken line over the horizon. Make the Constitution fit for the 21st century. Repeal the Second Amendment. Or are the guns worth the death?

Short and sweet?

I was going to say that I'd never describe myself as a writer, except that I have done so many times on CVs; and, on reflection, I think I've had enough published, even if I wasn't paid for many of them, to justify that. It's also what drives me. I love the written word, as a producer and a consumer, even if my tastes are esoteric. I have never read any Dickens, for example, nor Austen nor a single Bronte, and, if I'm honest, I suspect I never will. Perhaps, like Alec Home, I will be bedridden for many months at a time and will catch up on the great lacunae in my reading.

I can write articles with some facility, I think. A thousand words on a random topic? Yes, I can do that. Indeed, I can do it pretty quickly; give me a couple of hours and an internet connection. Select committee Reports? Certainly, those I can churn out - who can forget my 60-paragraph epic on the future of HM Coastguard in Scotland? (Almost everyone, I suspect: but the job was done and duty was fulfilled.) I can also do long-form. I have several novels on the stocks. That they are unpublished (and, no doubt, unpublishable) is neither hither nor yon. The point is I can write 80,000 words of continuous prose and it will make sense. It may even have a plot.

What really flummoxes me is the short story. In fiction, my strengths lie in dialogue and characterisation, I think. Plot comes to me from time to time, but its influence is wavering, and can be thin and reedy. And if you're dealing with a work of a few pages - say, 2,000 or 2,500 words - plot really matters. You can't just let things drift because you haven't the space.

This frustrates me. I am very conscious that my mother and stepfather collaborated on many a short story, and did so extremely well, and it feels like something I should be able to do. It's also a genre with a rich and proud history, and to get an example published would make me proud, if not rich. There is also another factor, I suppose: it bothers me that I can't do it. So, having a bit of free time over the last day or two, I decided to sit down and damned well try. Now, any of my parents will tell you that this is not my strength. When I was young, I could either do something, or I abandoned it as a lost cause. The violin was a prime example. I didn't take to it instantly, like little Wolfgang Amadeus no doubt did, so it was cast aside, the only memory a screeching rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The violin was Not For Me.

It has been something of a revelation. I have enjoyed the craft, certainly, but then I have enjoyed the artistry of putting one word after another since I was a boy. But it flowed. Ideas came to me. Sometimes they disappeared, but mostly they came back. The conclusion popped into my head as I lay in bed last night. And, what do you know, 2,600 words later I have something which I think is serviceable. I have no real hopes that anyone will publish it, but it is done. I can do it. A friend has read it and - hopefully not just sparing my feelings - said she enjoyed it, adding just enough commentary to suggest she was in earnest. Perhaps I am learning a new skill after all.

I do hope so. I enjoy writing. When it goes well, it is the greatest feeling in the world, and you feel like you can do anything. You are the artist, the Muses are at your shoulder, you are creating something genuinely valuable. People are absorbing your prose and actually enjoying it (in stark contrast to blogs like these, which at worst feel like shouting into an empty room). You probably feel like you are in the footsteps of a cherished hero. Oddly, for me, because although I love his work he is not my favourite author, it's always Hemingway. I want to be Don Ernesto clattering away at a typewriter. (I once had a boss who told me I should write Reports less like Henry James and more like Ernest Hemingway. I'm not sure he had ever read either, though that's slightly unkind as he was never more than kindness personified towards me. But I think he liked the line.)

So onwards. Tomorrow, I will force myself to begin another short story. My goal is 2,500 words. All I need is ideas. So, you know, if any of you have some, feel free to let me know. I will give you a healthy percentage of the nothing I will ever be paid for them. I'll buy you a drink. Of course, to return to Hemingway, his contribution to the genre can never be topped. Six words. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd

I often say, emphatically, that I can't stand musical theatre. Even cultured and well-educated friends (yes, I have some) who have raved about Hamilton have me raising a sceptical eyebrow. I don't think I have ever, as an adult, gone to the theatre to watch a musical. There is something so terribly faux, to me, anyway, about that spontaneous bursting into song at critical plot moments. It's simply not my thing.

I say that. But I've been thinking about it recently. When I was a child - and, yes, admittedly we all throw off some childish things when we reach maturity - I adored Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I'm still pretty much word-perfect. Jacob and sons. Pharoah's dreams. Could it possibly be Benjamin? Yes yes yes! (As an aside, I think Andrew Lloyd-Webber is very easy to disdain if you want to look clever, but, by God, the noble Lord can write a tune. His music will endure, though I fear the disdain will too.)

I am also a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. I know they are operettas rather than musicals, strictu sensu, but if they'd been written a hundred years later than they were, they'd have been called musicals. I love patter songs. I love the quick-wittedness of the best of G&S, the sharpness, the satirical barbs (as they were then). It's clever and it's, well, musical.

Another aside: Tom Lehrer, the great American satirist whom I revere, paid due respect to Gilbert and Sullivan, but said that, for him, they were inferior to Stephen Sondheim. G&S had to twist words to fit their rhythm ("I know the fights historical"), while Sondheim made words come naturally to his meaning. I'm not expert enough to know if he's right, but it was a persuasive argument.

There is more. When my friend Hugh and I get together, which is lamentably infrequently, we tend to sing towards the end of the night. One of the favourites in our repertoire is I Know Him So Well, by Ulvaeus and Andersson, probably the most underrated songwriting duo of the 20th century. (Hugh sings the Elaine Paige part, I, being Scottish, sing the Barbara Dickson part.) Where does it come from? A musical. That most unlikely musical, Chess. ("Yeah, let's write a two-hour musical about guys playing a board game!")

What did I do this morning, when I crawled out of my pit? I asked Alexa to play me I Dreamed A Dream by Anne Hathaway, which always brings me to tears. She may not have the best voice in the world, but it's pretty decent for an actress, and she emotes. God, how she emotes. I've never seen Les Miserables, and probably never will, though, again, friends have seen productions and say I really must go.

Where does all this leave me? I suppose, if I'm forced at gunpoint to a conclusion, it's that I dislike the form of musicals, but think some of the music within them can be very fine. Some is cheap and sentimental, but I am a sucker for that. Maybe it's the contrarian in me. You couldn't pay me to sit down and watch Oklahoma!, but I'll greedily gobble up Sir Thomas Allen on YouTube singing Oh What A Beautiful Morning at the Last Night of the Proms.

I wonder about my childhood love for Joseph. It is, of course, what I believe is called in the trade a "sung-through" musical, that is, one with little to no spoken dialogue. Just a succession of songs. Maybe that's what made it so much more palatable to me. No awkward links, no clunky "We know a song about this!". And maybe why I take a much more pick'n'mix approach to musicals as an adult. Two, three, four songs? Great. (I love Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, and its counterpart Oh What A Circus.) But I remember watching the film of Evita when it came out and hating it. Fish or fowl, but not both.

Oh, I'm a good old rebel...

It's some years ago now, but I think it was the first time my dear friend Mike invited me and a few others to his Reading fastness to have lunch with the whole Hennessy clan. We had a roaring time - Mike and Kathryn are the most hospitable of souls - and after lunch there was some singing. Mike's stock in trade is Irish rebel songs (The Rocky Road to Dublin featured quite heavily), and eventually, as it had to, it was my turn. I am not musical by any means, and I cannot even manage the bodhrán which was being passed around - I simply can't get the hang of the wrist movement (no sniggering at the back). My friend Tom had played the piano for a bit, so it was only fair that I produced something. I scratched my head, and eventually (I was thinking on my feet) I sang Hoyt Axton's I'm A Good Old Rebel, which has a simple enough tune and to which I knew all the words.

Now, I am a Civil War enthusiast. I find that 1861-65 period utterly fascinating, when a nation, a relatively new one at that, came close to tearing itself apart. I read a book as a teenager, on war-gaming, as it happens, which asserted that Conservatives are more likely to be Confederate supporters while Labour voters will tend towards the Union. I'm not sure about that. But I'll come back to the point. I think that Ken Burns's television documentary The Civil War is probably the best single piece of TV that has ever been produced, and I encourage everyone to watch it. Its rolling majesty is formidable, from David McCullough's peerless commentary to the beautiful soundtrack, old and new. Ashokan Farewell, which many people think is an old folk tune but was actually written in the 1980s, is a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, and if you don't cry at the narration of Sullivan Ballou's last letter to his wife Sarah before the first Battle of Bull Run, then, really, there is no hope for you as a human being. (I have just listened to it again am sobbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0C-euAyCTU0).

That's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to explore deeper truths. I am, I will say say now, a good old rebel. I think the Southern states had a cause, and one for which thousands of men gave their lives. And it wasn't slavery. I will aver, as any decent person can and must, that the practice of human bondage was a deplorable thing, and it redounds to the United Kingdom's credit that we were instrumental in banning and enforcing that ban of the slave trade (years ago, I worked for the board in Parliament which commemorated the 200th anniversary of our banning slavery). It is horrible to think that millions of Americans in 1861 were owned by other Americans, as chattels, goods, to be bought, sold and traded, several times during their lives, and worked mercilessly during their short and brutal lives. When Southern slaves were married, the vows were altered to read that they took one another till "death or distance" parted them. The abolition of slavery in the United States was a great thing, and it should have come well before the 1860s.

So far, so platitudinous. No-one except a maniac could disagree with what I've written. Yet I still say I am a "rebel", a supporter of the Confederacy. Because I believe, and this is not an uncontroversial view, that the Civil War did not start because, or primarily because, of slavery. Certainly, the ending of slavery – practiced by pretty much half of the states in the Union by 1861 – was not a stated war aim of the North when the conflict began. What the Southern states objected to, though slavery was a cause celebre, was the imposition of the power of the federal government on the individual states. It is summed up best by the great writer (and possessor of one of the most wonderful Southern voices I have heard), Shelby Foote, whose three-volume tale of the Civil War is a must-read. He said simply that none of the Southern states would have gone into the Union if they didn’t think they could get out. When the crunch came, and they wanted to secede, the Yankees said no.

It is, I think, the inevitability of human progress that slavery in the South would have ended. Perhaps later (ten, twenty years?) than it did after the Union victory at Appomatox Court House, but eventually. But what strikes me, and makes me a Johnny Reb as opposed to a Yankee, is the Gadsden flat, the coiled rattlesnake with the motto “Don’t tread on me”. If the USA is anything, it is an association of states who threw off what they saw as overweening authority (in the War of Independence I would definitely have been a loyalist, but that’s another story). So when the government in DC tried to tell the Southern states how to govern their affairs, they did what their grandfathers had done, and said “To hell with you”. States’ right.

There will be many who disagree with this, who revere Lincoln as the Great Emancipator, and the Civil War as a noble cause to free people from bondage. That may have been the effect, but it was not the cause. Not in my opinion. Am I sorry the Confederacy lost? I don’t know, not least because they could never have won. A largely agrarian society of a few million taking on an industrialised nation of many more millions? Foregone conclusion. But, for me, the most eloquent epitaph on the Civil War is that given by a Southern soldier, when asked why he was fighting. “I’m fightin’ ’cause you’re down here”, he said. Exactly so.