When two myths collide

Even without my cultural academic hat on, I would roll around the floor laughing at this nonsense (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/stormy-meeting-over-future-of-cregneash-church-1-6511315 ) in which two delusions, almost equidistant from contemporary society, go all handbags at dawn.

So, as Harry Enfield would say, which myth is more important, religion or heritage? Only one way to find out......F-I-I-G-G-H-H-T!!!!

Just to put off-island readers in the picture... this is not really a church, and Cregneash is not really a village; together they are more of a film or theatre set. Until somebody in government paid a visit to the Ulster Folk Museum, then saw the potential of the “living museum” concept in the Thatcher era, Cregneash was just a farm next to a semi-abandoned chapel, known only to Gaelic language pilgrims because Ned Maddrell (a Manx speaker whose chance introduction to an Irish language academic in the 1940's kicked off attempts to save Manx Gaelic) used to live nearby.

And ever since the beginning of the village's commodification for Manx touristic purposes there have always been historically inaccurate “improvements” to the church to make it look more “authentic”. In reality, like any other working church, it is a mish-mash of odd little bodge-ups according to liturgical and national fashions of times when money, labour or materials were available.

In the late 1980's, and again in the late 1990's, my job took me to every tiny chapel and church on the island. Most, however threadbare, at least have an air of being loved and used. Someone regularly running a duster over the pews and brasses, flowers changed, scattered hymn books and bibles indicating that acts of worship actually take place.

Cregneash chapel, by comparison to most, is more like a storeroom for a few religious props. When I last had to know, it held an evensong every couple of weeks but no Sunday morning communion, because the potential congregation refused to attend when tourists were milling round the museum proper (i.e. when it might just have drawn in visiting Christians eager for a rural religious experience).

The only time in recent decades either looked well was when they became a fictitious Irish village for the film Waking Ned. For which the church had subtle changes made so it seemed more like a rural Catholic church (which it has never been) and the village telephone box was painted green to look like a proper Irish one, and was not repainted for years – even at a time when the Baillie Scott design of it was being played up in a row over whether to keep it.

Why was it never repainted? I'm told because a nationalistic element within Manx Heritage at the time preferred it green so that it wouldn't look English, even though telephone boxes on the island throughout history have always been red, like the postboxes.

That tells you all you need to know about the difference between “history” and “heritage”, just as the single figure congregation's rows with “church management” reveal how wide the gap is between Manx Christianity as an inclusive act of faith and an exclusive means of cultural practice.

Of Cultures and Vultures

The announcement (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/mnh/guardiansofislan.xml) that: “Applications are currently being invited from members of the public who are interested in becoming Trustees of Manx National Heritage (Manx Museum and National Trust)” made me laugh out loud.
Why? Well, partly because a former Trustee used to tell me that MNH board meetings are like a wet Friday in a small town morgue. He seriously wondered if some of the superannuated fossils in the room were still alive, and used to joke that one executive deliberately dulled proceedings and used their failure to respond as a sign of assent when trying to push through dodgy business.
But mostly because any serious analysis of ‘Manx Heritage’ (there hasn’t been much) would worry about the McDonaldisation of ‘heritage’ to suit the tourist trade, and in particular the whimsies of potential upper middle class visitors with a drippy hippy past and more money and spare time than sense.
Related to that is the more serious problem that the public cash and effort thrown at ‘culture’ is based on a (frankly) racist definition of ‘culture’ that even some Nazis would have problems with. It is propagated by folk who simply don’t understand the basics of sociology, anthropology and cultural (and more particularly subcultural) theory – or anything else which actually studies how societies tick and individuals interact within those societies. They completely fail to recognise the contributions and lives of the vast majority of Manx residents, past or present.
The few serious studies which do are all by off-island academics who consider the matter in contrast to developments in heritage, tourism and cultural policy elsewhere and end up falling about laughing. I know about them because some 20 years ago I was headhunted to do a Ph.D. as part of a massive project by professors at two once great universities who were being funded to make the only significant analysis, then or since, of regional development and the late 20th century ‘heritage industry’.
The disinterest of the Manx government in either current affairs or serious cultural analysis meant I never got a grant, so the project went on without me. But I stayed in touch with the professors and we still swap jokes (disguised as examples of political and bureaucratic cretinism), or commiserate with each other about declining standards in academia and the state of the world. Ironically, the completed project featured prominently in the readings for my Cultural Studies M.A. through the Open University, which I also funded myself due to continued Manx government disinterest in such topics a decade later.
One of the few interesting, though not encouraging, snippets of information to come from the latest futile exercise is the information pack (see http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/cso/mnhtrusteesinformationpack.pdf) which chunters on ad nauseum to excuse the project, but also mentions that any loser considered brainless enough to join the Trustees will get £78 a time (plus around 50p a mile ‘travelling expenses’) to snooze or pick their noses while 3rd division marketing morons lay out the strategies by which the great Manx public will subsidise our regression back to the Bronze Age.
I keep hearing about retired executive types who are trying to flog the poor judgement that ended their careers to Manx government ‘advisory bodies’. Jobs like this should keep them in claret for another day without a free business lunch - and never were two dimwitted interests better matched.

Bible stories

You probably cannot help but notice the ‘celebrations’ around the 400th anniversary of the first publication of the King James Bible.
Radio 4 devoted an entire day to people reading excerpts from it, there have been TV programmes, newspaper and magazine articles, etcetera, etcetera…et pigging cetera. Apparently the non-religious are not supposed to object because the ‘KJB’ (as those in the delusion flogging business call it) is, after all, ‘part of our heritage’, a ‘cultural icon’, and so on.
And this racket also has dodgy entrepreneurs trying to flog old horses and new funding applications over here too. Not that there’s anything new about shady characters trying to steal public money with dodgy ‘heritage’ product on the Isle of Man, of course.
OK, I am certainly not buying the ‘part of our heritage’ lie (and I am always on my guard ANY time a prat in a dog collar starts sniffing around Manx schools looking for fresh victims) but I will accept that the King James Bible is one massive chunk of lush 17th century English prose, not to mention hundreds of rich phrases that decorate our everyday speech.
So when the Mrs noticed a newspaper article where a local church was asking folk to go along and copy out verses from the Bible in their best handwriting for a UK-wide project that aimed to celebrate the KJB’s 400th anniversary, and she, being capable of some pretty elegant script, fancied a go I was OK with that. I even thought The Prodigy might want to be part of this ‘historic’ project.
The article had no contact details (typical Christian attention to detail there) but vaguely mentioned the Methodists were running it so we wandered into a church social to ask the score. They didn’t really know about it, but knew a woman who did, so took our details to pass to her, who would presumably get in touch……..
And almost a month later did, with a vague promise to come round some time when she could….
And almost two weeks later did, having been delayed by the promise of loads of verses being written in church events going on around the island (where we later found, hardly anyone wanted to know).
And so, to get to the point, we were given some paper and asked to write out Psalm 54. Fair enough, the Psalms feature some the best prose passages in the King James Bible, so I rushed to get out my granny’s old copy……
At which point the organiser explained that they weren’t actually using the KJB for the text, they were using the New International Version. For those who aren’t up on this guff, that’s a twentieth century bible edition written in ‘modern English’ for thickos. It reads like something compiled by a committee of marketing trainees for a BTEC project.
To get some idea how awful the NIV Bible is compared to the KJB, imagine Hamlet’s soliloquy read aloud by a top Shakespearean actor. Then imagine the same speech rewritten as a report for a particularly dull corporate entity, typed up by an office junior who can’t spell any word with more than six letters and read out by some kid on work experience who just wants to go back to texting her mates.
But that’s Christians for you. They have a resource that is at least worthy of secular respect, but they bin it for something duller than ditchwater in a frantic ‘we gotta get down with the kids’ panic.
But they still want your cash, they still demand the right to pester your kids on the pretence that this is a project of massive historical, cultural and educational interest……..
And I still cannot take them seriously.

Disaster alert

Can I just give notice that the deluded herd’s attempts to hijack Christmas are under way.
While I’m at it, also take note that St. John’s, a public health hazard at the best of times, will be an absolute disaster area on Christmas Eve. But then, they should have put ropes and red flags around the place years ago.
You can find the first warning at http://www.manx.net/default.asp?id=18&articleid=9459.
Frankly, these godbothering throwbacks have a bit of a cheek.
For instance, what’s this about “our re-enactment of the Christmas story, which we have started with the support of local businesses and churches to bring the community together at Christmas.”
Since when was the church a force for good in the Manx community – especially at St. John’s?
But perhaps if a postcode with little more than a handful of houses and a shopping/conference centre run by fundamentalists (and heavily underwritten with government grants) has more known BNP members in those houses than the rest of the West of the island combined, and seems to be pocketing more business development dosh than Peel, the West’s only urban conurbation, then it’s reasonable to assume it’s Christian business as usual. That is to say racist, sexist, homophobic and parasitic.
St John’s gets away with a lot because it’s where the annual Tynwald Day Ceremony is held. For the benefit of off-island readers, I should explain that this is little more than a freak show for American tourists, and until the day the Chief Minister bangs nails up his nose and ritually disembowels the Governor as part of the Tynwald Ceremony even that’s not going to be a crowd-puller. The rest of the year the national place of historical and cultural interest it most closely resembles is Culloden, i.e cold, wet and utterly desolate.
To be honest, if the Christians are so keen to claim this damp, miserable field as their own, they’re welcome to go there and get pneumonia. If the Manx had any real national pride they could have marked the Christian millennium by concreting it over and building something more inspiring there.
Like a crematorium.

Let them eat lard

You’ve got to admire some folks for their optimism.
According to Energy FM (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_78260.html) a plant with appetite-suppressing qualities was recently seized by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, with Customs and Excise and the Police.
Apparently the African Hoodia plant is an endangered species, but interest is rising in the diet racket because it suppresses hunger.
But once I’d got my breath back from laughing at the idea of three Manx government agencies having to gang up to arrest a weed, I was off again.
OK, this tat is just the kind of garbage that catches on amongst the rich dimwits who prop up the local ‘alternative therapy’ industry, but it’s still a limited market.
Because you can forget the rinkety-tory myths dreamt up by Manx Heritage, this is an island where lard, and lard-arses, rule supreme and the nearest thing the Manx have to a national dish is chips with cheese and gravy.