pumpkinstrokemarrow

For lovers of things French - the people that is to say rather than the cooking - we have just been taken to a very fine pub - the Zetland Arms in Bute Street in South Kensington. Good beer and good mixed company including lots of young French people of whom there seem to be very large numbers in this particular area. Presumably inhabitants of the French Institute, the Charles De Gaulle Lycee and any other establishments of the same sort there might be around there. But it took Google to remind me that Bute Street in Cardiff is a very differant sort of place altogether. I remember a pub called, I think, the Steam Packet, which did not run to real beer and I had to settle for Newcastle Brown, and ran to mixed company with a rather differant tone. When I was last there it was still an area to be careful in after dark.

This in the course of a visit to the V&A where, in the cafeteria, we found the most splendid bacon slicer I have ever seen. A glorious contraption in red enamel and stainless steel which must have cost thousands. It was rather after lunch time so we did not get the see the wonders which they ought to be slicing on such a grand machine. Must take quite a while to clean, especially if the cafeteria is of an organic persuasion and is not allowed to use inorganic cleaning materials.

The beer in the Zetland prompted ponderings about the ceremonial slaughter of bulls in Spain and related places. The allegation was that this was not a blood sport and had nothing to do with satisfying our blood lusts - which I am quite sure exist. Not least because of the popularity of horror films and violent films.

Ceremonial slaughter of things that we love has a long pedigree, documented many years ago, at great length by Frazer. The crucifixation is a very well known example; the communion service a rather decadent derivative; and, the treatment of a stag in the recent film 'Queen' is a good fictional example. On a slightly differant, but I suspect related, tack is the regular disposal of the great and the good. We like nothing better than to see off somebody famous, the more humiliating the circumstances the better. Now the ostensible purpose of all this used to be the propiation of unseen forces, divine or otherwise, with gifts of great value. But I am quite sure that a by-product, which accounts in part for the persistance of customs of this sort, is the satisfaction of blood lust in circumstances which do not arouse guilt. So that, paraphrasing another blast from the past, we get all the fun of killing something without the pain. The fact that we might not be terribly aware of this by-product would not, to my mind, interfere with its efficacy (a fancy word for efficiency?).

The slaughter of very large numbers of animals for food is another matter. This is done in private - without ceremonial - except in the cases of Halal or Kosher slaughter - why do they still bother while we do not? - so that we can eat the resultant grub without feeling bad about it. Maybe the problem is that killing lots of large animals for food is a rather unpleasant business - and no amount of ceremonial is going to wash that away. We need to kill, but our soul is killed if we need to do too much of it.

Perhaps a more interesting question is why do the Latins go in for this form of extreme entertainment, while on the whole at least, we Anglos don't. It is true that we go in for national hysterics - the Queen's jubilee, the death of Diana, the Soham case and the McCann case being recent examples that I can think of - of a rather embarassing variety (and I do not think the press are entirely responsible - they might feed off the habit but do not cause it) - while the Latins, I am told at least, don't. But what is the connection? We both do football in a big way so that does not help to explain the differance. Maybe there is a need for extreme emotion other than in a family connection - with it not mattering all that much what flavour we take? But that doesn't run either because football involves great tides of emotion for those who care for it.

Starting to wander so it is clearly time for a top-up back at the Zetland.