With an essay of
both travel and philosophy,
to introduce a poem of history,
both fictional and real,
both past and present.
Hello Reader,
Got suds to solve the problems of the world?
Yes, I know you and I aren’t truly that smart, but just as having tea inspires noble thoughts, so too does beer in good company lead to fine world-saving solutions—at least they seem good, within the walls of an authentic British pub.
I was in south England, and my companion across the table said he had once golfed in my home town, Calgary. I instantly knew, and I eventually got him to admit: He was an oil patch guy. (North Sea rigs) Turned out he was a geophysicist. A common job in Calgary. I said, “I bet you just tell people you are a geologist.” I was right.
What I never got to ask that night was why he was so reticent to admit his occupation to me. Here in Calgary you can’t join any club or hobby without tripping over rich petroleum engineers and executives.
(How rich? Reporters aren’t allowed to even enter, let alone photograph, oil tower executive washrooms)
Calgary is “the Denver of Canada.” And U.S. citizens, thanks to petroleum and natural gas, are our largest minority group. And me, as a happy joiner, I have no issues around drinking beer and hobnobbing with rich people. But I wonder: Was that man worried that poor little me would be uncomfortable with him? Is the British class system really that bad?
Maybe so. Back in the 1970’s, on various NATO bases, talking with various British servicemen, they all complained about the class system—but I half-thought they especially meant within the armed forces— just as readily as we Canadians, at that time, would have complained about this new fangled mysterious inflation.
(Back then, as our prime minister Trudeau was trumpeting his plan for everyone to observe “six and five” for wages and prices, no one, including gentlemen of the press, realized our government already secretly knew the cause of inflation)
It’s queer how entire populations, just like individuals, can be ignorant of knowledge they are not ready for, such as the cause of inflation: Like some sort of mass defence mechanism. Like how all the Germans after the First World War thought their army hadn’t been defeated, only “stabbed in the back.” Like how in Canada, at the time of the Quebec referendum on separation, all the people in Quebec—but not in Calgary—didn’t know their province was being being propped up by “equalization payments” from the three (out of ten) “have” provinces, payments that would vanish if Quebec were separate.
(This is true of, say, the time-space 2,000 A.D, when the four provinces east of Quebec have a 50% unemployment rate, with many of the jobs being seasonal… but I guess this has changed: Ontario stopped being a “have” province to go to having the largest debt in the world of any substate, (non-country) and recently Alberta has been groaning from lack of pipelines to tidewater—the Yanks refuse to pay market value—amidst low oil prices)
We can be alienated from our own society, and maybe rush off to join the communist party, OR we can clink our glasses in fellowship, rich and poor in the same club, and feel that life is alright. Is that escapist? Nothing wrong with escape. Even the president of the United States needs to escape to go golfing at Camp David. Like how I escaped to south England to romantically follow the Martians of H.G. Wells in his classic The War of the Worlds. (They advanced north on London)
As for the Spotted Dog, the tavern in H.G.’s novel, my local beer buddies, who of course studied Wells in school, were disgusted to tell me the age-old tavern had been knocked down to build a car dealership. Here’s a poem:
The Spotted Dog
A man rushes into the Spotted Dog
interrupting the landlord’s conversation.
Someone has just offered the landlord one pound.
The man says forcefully, “I’ll give you two pounds,
and I’ll have it back tonight.”
The landlord is amazed, “What are you talking about?
And why bring it back? I am selling a pig.”
The man rents a horse and cart,
but he doesn’t tell the landlord to flee.
Surely there is shame,
surely there is survivor guilt,
but it’s pushed way down.
A boy reads with a torch under his blanket:
Boilers on stilts
crossing fields “as fast as flying birds.”
Fighting Machines wade among coastal shipping
facing the defiant HMS Thunderchild.
Teachers in Woking make students read.
Surely the novel is classic,
surely it will last for generations,
down the years.
Adults drink suds in the Spotted Dog,
the same tavern they had read about as children.
The visible pub connects them to the invisible,
to age-old fears and shames, hopes and resolves.
A frightened man keeps his promise
to return a horse and cart
through dark of night
past frightful looming Things.
His efforts end in ruin.
If he hadn’t been a man of his word
he would have been in Leatherhead with his wife,
safe and sound, but he kept his promise.
Surely when the Spotted Dog is struck down
it will be rebuilt.
Sean Crawford
January
Calgary
2020
Footnote:
~One of my few essays to be translated (into Spanish) is one where I expose the secret of inflation, archived November 2013, Conspiracies and Inflation.
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