A Kingsman

Hanif Kureishi was at KCL just ahead of me. I'm not aware that we have ever met. He does not boast of his alma mater on his dustjackets. Neither do I - but then again I don't, of course, have any dustjackets to boast from.

I have just finished reading Kureishi's Something to Tell You. It is a substantial novel, both literally and figuratively. It contains occasional solecisms, which I can only take to be deliberate (it has a first person narrative) but which I confess I found distracting. That minor quibble aside it is thought-provoking and manages to be both funny and serious. A fine novel then. Its final short chapter commences with words that neatly summarise the novel's central theme (don't worry, spoiler alert not needed):

I am no longer young, and not yet old. I have reached the age of wondering how I will live, and what I will do, with my remaining time and desire. I know at least that I need to work, that I want to read and think and write, and to eat and talk with friends and colleagues.

In our very different ways (his eminent, mine not) we seem to have arrived at a similar place. Especially the eating and talking part.

Advent 5

Volume 5 (Castir to Cole): Causality or Causation.

This one carries reverberations for anyone who has ever studied and practised Law. It also has important contexts in philosophy and science but let's stick to something I know a bit about - I can already hear the snorts of derision emanating from my litigation colleagues who would (not entirely baselessly) question what precisely any commercial lawyer might know about any aspect of the law, never mind something as delicate as causation. Nonetheless I will plough on.

I dimly recall those lectures on the Law of Tort delivered by the brilliant Tony Guest in those over-heated subterranean lecture rooms at King's. It is the greatest compliment to the estimable Professor Guest that I actually managed to stay awake for his lectures, hung-over and sleep-deprived as I too often was. My first degree was not the cerebral high-point of my time in education.

Anyway, causation. This is how I recall it: in terms of liability for a negligent act, the plaintiff has to establish a causal link between the negligent act and the damage alleged. That is to say that the damage would not have occurred but for the act. Once you have got over that hurdle we get onto the question of damages and that is tied-up in the knot of foreseeability, blah blah.

For me the importance of causation is best illustrated by examples where there is no causation but one is somehow implied by the lazy application of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. And if you want a brilliant explanation of that phenomenon then you can do no better than refer to series 1, episode 2 of the matchless West Wing. Or if you want real-life examples just tune-in to any political show and listen to the shysters of all political hue. The standard of public debate is disgraceful, but then I've told you that before.

2021:5 - 6

I am not averse to taking some vicarious glory when fellow King's alumni distinguish themselves. So for every Desmond Tutu I suppose I have to acknowledge that we have had our share of wrong-uns. In May 2021 Martin Bashir was (to no one's surprise) officially confirmed as one such. He had deceived that flawed but (to many minds, though not this one) saintly personage, Diana, Princess of Wales. I have often wondered about what sort of social death-wish I have incubated. My first serious ambition was to be a journalist and only after I had failed in that sphere did I decide instead to be a lawyer. No one likes us - we don't care. Is this not, in a small but important way, the best explanation of what it is like to be English?

As I trawl through last year for this thread, I am perhaps hoping to account for how, by year's end, I had become a different person. Changed, not massively, but changed nonetheless. I have become happily resigned to  the certainty that even minor eminence has eluded me - only as this desire has ebbed to nothing do I understand how it fed my insecurity for all those years. How silly. Do you think Bashir may have been the same? 

June. John Bercow joined the Labour Party. John, son, nobody gives a shit any more. You were a preening pillock as Speaker. May you grow to be as big an embarrassment to your fellow travellers as you were to your erstwhile Tory bedfellows. Your recession into the background of public consciousness has been a delight.