Clean living

Although I loathed my boarding school in many ways, I have to admit it was a very good influence in some respects.

It was a model of clean living. There was no smoking, no alcohol and no drugs. And of course no girls. So I left school as a remarkably abstemious individual, shunning any unhealthy activities, unless an enthusiastic interest in politics is unhealthy (it probably is).

At home I was equally abstemious because of the attitudes slowly engrained at boarding school, and because my parents were equally abstemious. My father was a light smoker and both my parents were happy with a single glass of wine.

No doubt some of my fellow pupils relapsed as soon as they left school and were free to indulge themselves, but I kept fairly "clean". I've never smoked. I took drugs once or twice before deciding they weren't for me. And I drank wine for many years but only in small quantities.

No doubt if I'd gone to the local state school clean living would have been dismissed as puritanical nonsense and unhealthy behaviour would have been the norm. So thanks, Berkhamsted School, for keeping me on the straight and narrow.

Pink furore

What is it with men? Why are they no hung up on whether things are masculine or not? Why are they so terrified of anything that smacks of femininity?

A pink J Crew jumper with a Fair Isle pattern has sent countless Americans into apoplexy. Why? Because it's pink, and they can't be seen wearing anything pink.

After a social media commentator voiced her aversion, thousands of her followers rushed to agree with her.

"No man in my family would wear it" wrote one. "My husband wouldn't use a pink bathroom towel" said another. Others responded in similar vein.

The irony is that pink hasn't been seen as feminine for all that long. If you go back to the 18th century, boys happily wore pink (and girls happily wore blue). Pink was considered a masculine colour right up to the mid 1940s, when the roles of pink and blue were gradually reversed (it's not clear how it happened - something to do with marketing strategies).

I don't have any pink clothing myself, but that's mainly because men's clothing shops often don't stock anything pink. I would cheerfully wear the J Crew jumper, though I might get some funny looks from traditional males).

Pic: Not the J Crew jumper, which I was unable to copy.

Religious setback

In a remarkable judgment, the British Supreme Court has ruled that religious teaching in Northern Ireland is unlawful!

The court says it's unlawful on several grounds - firstly, it's not conveyed in an "objective, critical and pluralistic manner" but focuses uncritically on the Christian doctrine; secondly, it doesn't include religions other than Christianity; thirdly, pupils are stigmatised if they decide to opt out of religious teaching.

This is quite a bombshell for Northern Ireland schools, which will have to radically change the way they teach religion. Of course schools should  cover a range of religions and not treat Christianity as the only religion worth studying.

The legal action was taken by a father and his daughter who attended a Belfast primary school. She was being taught that Christianity was an absolute truth.

The school defends its religious teaching, saying it's "Bible-based" and follows the core religious syllabus for religion.

I had a look at the core religious syllabus (all 38 pages of it) which says pupils should develop an awareness of the key Christian teachings. Nowhere does it mention any other religions.

I'm astonished that such an obviously biased syllabus wasn't updated decades ago.

Foreign words

Every now and again someone will rail against the number of French words (or Italian or German) in the English language, and suggest they be banned and replaced by good old English words.

Well, they're onto a losing battle there, because 29% to 45% of English words are of French origin, with something like 7,000 to 10,000 words borrowed from French. French words are so well-established in fact, you're looking at a fait accompli.

I can't see why this should be objectionable. It's very healthy for a language to absorb all sorts of foreign words as well as new English words.

I'm much more concerned about words that are over-used, like fucking and awesome, or words that are insulting or demeaning. I'm more concerned about the use of baffling jargon and lawyer-speak.

France has a history of fighting to keep English words out of the French language, but it's like Canute trying to resist the waves. Fleur Pellerin, France's minister of culture, declared in 2015 that trying to ban foreign words was doing more harm than good.

Personally I'm happy to ask for a croissant or an hors d'oeuvre. Bon appetit!

Organ donor

I've had an organ donor card since 2001. It requests that after my death any part of my body can be used for the treatment of others.

It seems to me like a harmless and altruistic thing to do. What could be more generous than bequeathing parts of my body to others who urgently need them?

And yet there's still a large number of people who oppose organ donation. Transplant waiting lists are growing and yet 2½ million people are refusing to help. The number of organ donations is actually falling.

What on earth is stopping people from becoming organ donors? Once you're dead you have no further use for your bodily organs so why shouldn't they be passed on to people who desperately need them? The dead person isn't going to object, so what's the problem?

So what if granny was totally opposed to organ donations? Surely the urgent need of a living patient for a vital organ trumps the well-meaning observance of granny's wishes?

Vanishing innocence

Is there such a thing as an innocent childhood nowadays? Or is it just a relic of the past that no longer exists?

I was an innocent child for most of my childhood. My parents always tried to shield me from the horrors of the outside world. And then as a teenager my boarding school also hid the outside world from me.

It was only when I started work as a journalist that I was rapidly exposed to the outside world and its atrocities - homelessness, poverty, crime, war and everything else. I was profoundly shocked for a while.

It was normal when I was a child to preserve children's innocence, their cheerful outlook, and spare them from the sort of appalling things they weren't psychologically equipped to process.

But now, because of so many news outlets and so much social media, children are coming up against the outside world and all its barbarities at a very early age.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I would say it's a bad thing because young children who haven't yet cultivated the necessary cynicism or detachment or composure to take sickening horrors in their stride can find them extremely disturbing.

I'm sure this premature exposure to the outside world is partly what's causing the epidemic of mental distress among young people. But how to put the genie back in the bottle?

Cancelled!

Good grief. Cancel culture comes to Tesco.

While Jenny was at the checkout of our local Tesco supermarket, waiting to have her shopping totted up, she overheard a woman ahead of her voicing her opinions on immigration.

The woman was being very anti-immigrant, so Jenny was prompted to voice a more pro-immigrant opinion.

At this, the cashier refused to deal with Jenny's shopping and said she would have to be attended to by another cashier - which she was.

But what are things coming to if a supermarket cashier can refuse to deal with you because she doesn't like your opinions?

I've never seen that before, and I wonder if Tesco staff are actually allowed to refuse service to a customer, or whether the cashier was acting improperly.

Jenny has emailed Tesco's chief executive, Ken Murphy, to complain. His reply will be interesting.

Update (November 8) Tesco has apologised for the cashier's behaviour and says "This member of staff has been spoken to about her actions and this kind of interaction will not happen again". Result!