Musings – Emma Williams: Latin tutor

Delayed gratification

This week I have found myself having a very stern conversation with one of my cats. Her name is Piglet. Piglet by name, piglet by nature. The animal simply cannot help herself when it comes to food. If she had her way, she’d be the size of a house, hauling her enormous belly around like a competitor in the World’s Strongest Man. Fortunately – or unfortunately, as far as she is concerned – she has mean old me controlling her food intake.

So, Piglet and I had to have a very serious conversation about her life choices. This is a cat that was in line to receive some small pieces of chicken as a treat. See, I’m not always mean: I had even taken the pieces out of the fridge, to bring them up to room temperature. Piglet, however, elected that evening to wolf down the remaining supper of our other cat, who is currently being rather delicate about her food intake. The second cat is in the early stages of renal failure and so is on a specialist prescription diet. When my back was turned for a nano-second, I failed to register that Dolly had walked away from her food and so I turned around to find Piglet urgently inhaling the last scraps of Dolly’s prescription dinner.

“You could have had some chicken pieces this evening!” I admonished her. “As it is, you’ve made the choice to eat the prescription cat food, so now you’re not getting anything else.” She stared at me, unmoved and unimpressed, still cleaning her whiskers after the extra feed she had claimed for herself.

In reality, of course, the cat’s brain is not capable of understanding the point. She’s a very smart cat, but she has not yet mastered English, nor has she worked out that stealing the prescription cat food means missing out on her chicken treats. She is also – being a cat – not capable of making the fundamental decision of delayed gratification, something which human psychologists and the world in general like to cite as a crucial indicator of our future success as adults. Or is it?

I am quite a fan of The Studies Show, a podcast hosted by two science writers called Stuart Richie and Tom Chivers. In each episode, they debunk various stubborn myths that persist either as a result of poor science or as a result of the science being poorly reported or interpreted (or both). They investigate how science is at the mercy of human bias like any other subject, and explain things such as confounding, publication bias and collider bias (I am still struggling to grasp the last one in full). In one particular episode, they explore the experiment nicknamed “the marshmallow test”, which was hailed as a groundbreaking study into impulse control in very young children, with some quite extraordinary claims made about how the findings were linked to future success in several walks of life – in education, in financial stability, in relationships and in health.

In various tests, performed on a group of 4-year-olds in Stanford University in the late 1960s and early 1970s, psychologists offered several hundred children a choice between either one or two sweet treats. The children were offered the choice of either taking one treat which they could have immediately, or if they waited for an unspecified amount of time, during which the psychologist left the room, they would then be allowed two treats. Times that the children were left to wait varied but could be up to 20 minutes. One point, made hilariously by Tom Chivers during the discussion, is to question whether some smart four-year-olds might already have a sound understanding of the value of their own time. “You know what, one marshmallow isn’t worth 20 minutes of my time, mate!” he imagines them saying. Stuart Richie then ponders whether marshmallows were a significantly bigger deal in the 1970s compared to now – what kid in the mid-2020s is going to wait 15 or 20 minutes just for one extra marshmallow?

The issues with the study are many, but the most dubious are the claims that were extrapolated from two follow-up questionnaires, which were responded to by only around 100 of the original 653 participants – meaning that more than 80% of the candidates were not included in the two follow-up studies, which looked at the children in later life. Chivers and Richie also raise the query that the original test was confounded by the fact that different children were given different coping strategies to assist with the waiting time – for example, some were encouraged to use distraction techniques, others to focus on the end reward. This is because the original purpose of the research at Stanford was to try to find out which of the coping strategies would help children most with delaying gratification – the idea of following them up to see which children became more successful in later life came some time afterwards, which may explain why Stanford lost touch with so many of the participants. However, it is the later follow-up studies that caused all the excitement, as they supposedly found a quite remarkably strong correlation between later success and the period of time that the younger children had managed to wait before receiving their reward. The claim – of course – turns out to be nonsense. The correlation only worked with children who had not been offered any coping strategies to help to delay the gratification, which somewhat begs the question why the primary author of the study believed so strongly in the teaching of delayed gratification as a life-strategy. Far more importantly, however, the correlation all but disappeared in replication studies, when controls were introduced for socio-economic background and previous academic success, both of which are far more obvious likely predictors of future academic attainment and overall success.

Chivers and Richie link the wild extrapolations taken from this particular study to similar attempts to introduce the concept of “growth mindset” in schools, another topic of academic research that they take a sledgehammer to in a previous episode. I remember this particular fad very well, as at the time in my school we had one particular Senior Manager who had read Carol Dweck’s book The Psychology of Success and was a shiny, happy acolyte for the concept that the tiniest shift in rhetoric – basically, praising kids for working hard rather than for their smarts – would somehow revolutionise their success in the classroom. It may not surprise you to know that it didn’t, and that the studies in this area have since been shown to prove nothing of the sort.

This is not to say that delaying gratification is not an important skill. It is, of course, an important part of growing up and becoming a successful adult that one learns to some extent to place tasks in an order of importance and/or urgency, rather than focusing entirely on what you would most like to do in the moment. Studying for an exam, preparing for a competition or an interview, exercising and eating the right things for the benefit of your longterm health are all simple goals shared by many which require this skill. In my experience, children acquire the ability to delay their gratification at different rates and while some teenagers have fully mastered the process others are still grappling with their motivation and find it really hard to set aside the things that they enjoy the most to focus on something important but less interesting. One of the greatest things that schools can do is thus to focus on assisting children in their ability to concentrate, as a lack of attention in class remains by far the biggest barrier to academic success for many of our most vulnerable students.

In the meantime, Piglet remains at the mercy of her desires and will no doubt continue to make a lunge for every tasty morsel she can find in her path. I have often said that one of the joys of keeping a cat is that they teach you how to live your life and speaking as someone who doesn’t always remember to reward myself just for the hell of it, Piglet serves as a feline reminder that sometimes making a dive for the thing you crave the most is to be recommended.

Piglet, who can only delay her gratification while sleeping

The role of the translator?

The festive season would not be complete without an EduTwitter bust up, and this year there was more than one. Pleasingly, the one that’s rumbled on the longest is a controversy surrounding Homer’s Odyssey, striking a rare burst of attention for Classics in the broader world of education. The debate started with some people arguing about whether school-teachers have or should have read or taught this text in schools. Quite why anybody cares remains a puzzle. After a few days, however, the row spread amongst a much wider audience and mutated into reactions to a recent translation from the original Greek by Emily Wilson, who in 2018 became the first woman to publish a full English translation of the Odyssey, to much fanfare.

Predictably, people’s reactions to Wilson’s translation fall into clear political camps. The Guardian hailed it as “groundbreaking” and a feminist interpretation which will “change our understanding of it forever” while critics more right of centre breathed anxiously in and out of a paper bag and muttered dire warnings about the decline of the West. It’s all very silly, but in amongst all the hysteria has been some unintentionally thoughtful commentary: sometimes, people don’t even realise that they’ve said something interesting while they are trying to score a political point. “The job of a translator is not to attribute postmodern ideas of sex oppression to a writer who has been dead for 3000 years” raged Charlie Bentley-Astor. Broadly, I don’t disagree with her, but I found myself pondering: what is the role of the translator, exactly?

Those who have not studied languages, particularly ancient languages, might find this question bizarre. The role of the translator, surely, is to reproduce the text as faithfully as possible in a different language? Well, yes. But you see, it depends what your priorities are and it depends what aspects of the text you believe are most important to remain faithful to. The spirit and mores of the times? The lyrical qualities of the original? Its readability? And what is the purpose of your translation? To support the study of the text in the original language? Or to open up the text to a wider audience, who will never have the chance to study it in the original Greek? These are just a handful of the questions that a translator must ask themselves. The translations that I produce for students who are studying a text in the original Latin are clunky and unsuitable for publication. This is because their sole purpose is to facilitate the students’ understanding of the Latin text in front of them, on which they will be questioned in an examination: I do not produce my work for the pleasure of a general audience, so I am not aiming at fluidity, readability or beauty, all of which are potentially important when publishing a translation for a wider readership, for people who want to enjoy reading a text for pleasure.

The power of the translator is immense, and those who are exercised by Wilson’s approach are upset by the fact that she has been credited with approaching the text from a more feminist standpoint, potentially imbuing it with a set of values that could not have been imagined by Homer himself. Yet I simply do not understand the hysterical reaction by some conservatives, who seem completely oblivious to the fact that this interpretative dance has gone on since the dawn of time. Every translator inculcates a text with his or her own priorities, and every translator knows that. If you are picking up a translation of an ancient text and you honestly believe that it will be giving you a faithful, full and accurate rendering of the original author’s meaning and intention then you are deeply naïve, for this is impossible. It is for this reason that I have never understood those who claim to understand the “word of God” when they have not studied their own religious texts in the original language in which it was written. So, Christians, off you go to learn Hebrew and New Testament Greek!

Let’s just take one very simple example of the problem. Imagine that I were producing a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. How would I render the phrase “imperium sine fine”, which is what Jupiter states that he will grant to the Romans? The word imperium has multiple meanings and can be translated as “power”, “command” or “empire”. It had some quite specific and technical meanings in relation to the command that a general had over a region but was also tied up with the Roman belief that the expansion of their dominion was a fundamentally good and noble thing: this included the exercising of power over other nations and the geographical expansion of their borders. The phrase sine fine could be rendered “without end” or “without borders” – it refers both to the physical extent of the Roman empire and to their belief that their domination was not only unlimited in terms of their relationship with the world, but that it would be unlimited in time. The phrase is therefore deeply resonant in the Roman mindset – that their empire, their military might, their control over the world was divinely-granted: it had no borders and it would last forever.

I would argue further that it is not only the layered meanings that such a phrase had for the Romans that have to be considered when translating this phrase now. As readers from a modern perspective, in the full knowledge of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the phrase imperium sine fine has a poignancy for us that Virgil could not have imagined. This does not mean that its meaning to a modern audience does not have value – quite the opposite. There would be little point in the survival of ancient texts if they were not to strike resonances within us as a result of the changes that have taken place since they were written.

The importance of capturing the spirit of a text over and above remaining faithful to its construction is a challenge faced by those who convert a classic novel into a film or a drama. The 1992 film version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, directed and produced by Gary Sinise and starring John Malkovich is – in my opinion – an absolute masterpiece of this spiritual capture. The opening scenes are entirely invented by the film-makers: a terrified woman in a torn red dress runs across farmland, then we see men on horseback who appear to be in pursuit of the woman’s assailant. Those of you who know the novel will understand exactly the background to George and Lennie’s situation that this represents and in my view it was a brilliant leap of imagination to transfer the information to film in this way.

Conservatives who fear “incorrect” interpretations of a text fail to understand that the enduring appeal of a text lies in its interpretation. Believe you me, Aristophanes did not have a feminist slant in mind when he wrote Lysistrata, a comic play poking fun at the incompetence of the Athenian political intelligentsia, who were doing such a God-awful job that even the women could probably do it better! That was the joke, for the Athenian audience. Yet Lysistrata is – inevitably – read and performed as a feminist play in the modern setting, and I have enjoyed productions that have rendered it thus. Thus, I do find myself chuckling at the rising hysteria expressed by many who seem so terrified by the fact that Homer has now been translated by a woman. I do wish they could understand that Homer will survive: he’s big enough and man enough to take it.

An actual Nazi on campus?

It’s been on my mind to write about this for a while, but I was waiting for the right trigger in current events. This week, news has broken that a student at Leeds University has been suspended from her work at the student radio station and investigated by the Students’ Union for, allegedly, “not acting in a duty of care,” putting the “health and safety” of members at risk, not “upholding the values” of Leeds Student Radio and the Student Union, and “bringing the reputation of the University, the [Student Union, or Leeds Student Radio] into disrepute.”

I’d already had some online contact with Connie Shaw, as she seemed to me to be a very impressive young woman who has been treated quite outrageously by her university and I sent her a message to that effect; her situation has now been reported in the mainstream media, so many more people are aware of what has happened to her. Connie was interrogated by the Union about her “gender critical views” (which are protected in law) and it seems pretty clear that the apparent complaints about her “conduct” arise from the fact that she has launched a podcast on which she interviewed Graham Linehan, Andrew Gold and Charlie Bentley-Astor; these are all people who have had personal experiences and/or hold views that do not align with the prevailing narrative on a typical university campus these days, so Connie has found herself in a whole heap of trouble. Unfortunately for Leeds, Connie is not somebody to be pushed around or silenced and her predicament has now been highlighted in the national press.

I wish my recollections were clearer for the situation I wish to contrast this with, but when I was at university I really was not involved with Union politics. I made sure to vote for representatives, as I have always believed that voting is important. One of the things that has driven me absolutely wild over the many years that I have spent signed up to various Unions is that the average member rarely votes. The number of conversations I have had with people who bemoan the fact that their Union committee is dominated by political zealots at the same time as admitting that they don’t bother to vote makes me want to bash my head against the wall. I will point out until the end times that the reason why so many Unions are dominated by representatives with extreme or bizarre views is because people with extreme or bizarre views get off their butts and run for office, and people who support those views get off their butts and vote for them. The problem is rarely the extreme or bizarre views themselves (which are not held by the vast majority of Union members), it is the apathy of the majority which allows them to thrive. So, yes, I always voted. My only other involvement was I acted as a volunteer for the Nightline service, a telephone support line manned by students and modelled on the service run by the Samaritans. But that was it. I didn’t go to hustings and I wasn’t involved with the day-to-day drama of Union politics.

Despite my lack of involvement, even I managed to hear about the fact that we had a Nazi on campus in 1992. “Nazi” is an over-used word these days and Connie Shaw has joked about being called “a Nazi” by those who disagree with her. It is beyond doubt that, in the current climate, this ridiculous insult is regularly rolled out by people on the political left when they don’t like what somebody else is saying. But this was university in 1992: there were no websites, no chat rooms, no social media, no hashtags and no mobile phones. We used to leave a note on our doors to tell friends where to find us. These were different times in every sense: I recall hearing another student making an openly homophobic remark about one of our lecturers within earshot of dozens of students (and the lecturer himself), and I was the only one to call him out on it. Even when I did so, nobody else backed me up. And again, when I say “homophobic” I really mean it: “Better keep your backs to the wall, lads” was what he actually said as the poor man walked past. Yeah, I know. This was how the world was in those days and believe me when I say that very, very few people were willing to step in and say something. At 19 years old I was already one of them and I’m proud of that.

So, the concept of labelling anyone who failed to meet the exacting liberal standards of a certain kind of Guardian journalist “a Nazi” had very much not taken off in 1992. Quite the contrary. Yet rumours abounded that we had a genuine, bona fide Nazi on campus and he was causing trouble. I first became aware of the situation when I heard that this self-confessed Nazi had applied to speak publicly at a Union meeting and lots of people were very upset about it. From what I could gather, there was a lobby of students pushing that he should be disallowed: nobody wanted to hear what he had to say and why should we have to put up with his revolting opinions being platformed and aired in our own Union? I had a considerable amount of sympathy with this view and understood the strength of reaction that his application to speak had sparked. However, after much discussion, everyone accepted that under the rules of the Union – of which this student was a member – Nazi Boy had the right to speak. Lots of people were very unhappy about it, but those were the rules.

On the day after the event, I spoke to one or two people who were present at the meeting when it happened. Apparently, the guy stood up and said his piece. Nobody shouted him down, because the decision had been made that under the rules he was allowed to speak. However, by the same token, nobody was interested in listening. His speech was not good: it was not articulate, it was not rational and it was, of course, offensive. After he sat down, nobody applauded. The meeting moved on. That was the sum total of his impact: zero. Following what turned out to be quite the non-event, the student in question did not last the year on campus: he left after a few months, and was quickly forgotten.

I am agog as to how quickly we have shifted from a committee of students in 1992, who reasoned that the right to free speech must prevail above all else – even if that meant sitting on their hands and grinding their teeth while the worst of all views were shared publicly – to so many of them believing that nobody has the right to say anything that might challenge a prevailing social narrative in 2024. Here’s the thing, kiddos – when you let people speak, they reveal the truth about themselves and their views. If those views are insane, offensive or irrelevant, perhaps it is all to the good that they are exposed for what they are. If I’m honest, I’m still not sure whether it truly was the right decision to allow a Nazi to speak in the Union, but I believe that the scenario is worth recalling and I applaud the Union committee of 1992 who believed that the agreed democratic process was what mattered most, despite the pressure that they were under to ban the guy from speaking.

We have moved from a situation in which the youngest of people were capable of grasping the dangers of curbing free speech in even the most challenging of circumstances, to one in which students refuse to even entertain a narrative which may jar with their own. Quite how these young people navigate their way through the world I struggle to understand. What a terrifying and dangerous place it must seem, when you cannot cope even with hearing some politely-spoken words you disagree with. It seems to be a frequent occurrence in many universities now, with students either refusing to platform certain speakers or protesting their very presence when they do appear. I defend anyone’s right to protest, but it seems to me that this important right is now exploited by people who simply do not wish to allow others to speak freely. Ask any student who protested the appearance of Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union what their purpose was and I am quite sure that they will happily tell you that they wanted to drown her out, as they believed that her views were hateful.

Perhaps some students are terrified of any alternative narrative because deep down they are actually afraid that they might be persuaded by it. What if I start to believe what the other side has to say? Yet surely it says very little for the strength of anyone’s convictions if they are genuinely terrified of a conversation. I guess if you lack all moral fibre and courage then it’s easier to scream until you can no longer hear the other speaker. In that way, you also get to drown out the niggling voice inside your head: the voice that says maybe – just maybe – you’re the bad guy.

Call that a PhD?

You could be forgiven for thinking that Gregg Wallace’s video was the most explosive thing to happen on social media this week, but you would be wrong.

Picture the scene: a young, female academic at Cambridge shares a happy picture of herself, smiling and clutching her freshly-acknowledged PhD thesis in English literature. Ally Louks, now Dr Ally Louks, probably thought that her message of celebration that she was “PhDone” would be liked by a few and ignored by the majority. Yet her post at the time of writing has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people and Ally has received torrents of abuse, some of which beggars belief. The whole storm has sparked outraged discussion on all sides – most of it thoroughly ignorant – about what a PhD is or should be.

Here’s the thing, for those of you that haven’t been there. A PhD is like going potholing: you wriggle down into some difficult spaces and explore the subterrain. Nobody will ever know those particular underground passages better than you, because nobody else is ever likely to go there or, indeed, even want to go there. The reason you’re awarded the PhD is because you have traversed new terrain and – in the judgement of the potholing community – you are the first to do so, or you have uncovered a sufficient number of nooks and crannies that previous potholers did not comment upon. Most of the time, you don’t find an underground palace, a glistening river of stalactites or a dazzling crystal chamber: you simply wriggle your way back up to the surface and get on with your life. Your thesis will sit on the shelf of whichever institution recognised it and – if you’re lucky – it will be consulted by a tiny handful of niche-hole specialists over the next few decades, the number of which you could count on one hand.

Personally, I blame Stephen Hawking. During his doctorate, he hit upon a leap of understanding so brilliant that it changed the direction of theoretical physics forever. Most of us don’t manage that. This does not mean that our PhDs are not worthy of the title: it simply means that most of us are – demonstrably – not a genius like Hawking. There is a reason why Hawking has been laid to rest between Newton and Dawin: he is right up there with those two when it comes to the significance of his contribution to his field. Yet many people seem to assume that Hawking is an example of what is expected of a PhD candidate – a particularly famous example, perhaps, but an example nonetheless. In reality, most research is utterly banal and unimportant: it’s not going to shake up our understanding of the fabric of the universe.

Louks’ PhD sounds – to me – rather fun. Okay, I’m one of those wish-washy artsy types that got a PhD in Classics, not theoretical physics, but I reckon her thesis “Olfactory ethics: the politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose” sounds like a more stimulating read than a huge number of PhDs that have passed under my nose over the years (pun intended). In response to the unexpected interest in her work, Louks shared her abstract, which only further made my nostrils twitch. Her thesis explores “how literature registers the importance of olfactory discourse – the language of smell and the olfactory imagination it creates – in structuring our social world.” Her work looks at various authors and explores how smell is used in description to delineate class, social status and other social strata. I mean … fine? No? Quite why a certain type of Science Lad on the internet decided that this was a completely unacceptable thesis baffles me. Apparently, there is a certain type of aggressively practical chap, who believes that exploring how things are represented in literature and how that literature has in turn helped to shape our world is utterly unworthy. Well, more fool them. They should read some literature. I suggest they start with Perfume by Patrick Suskind, a modern classic that is quite literally a novel about smell.

I’ll confess that the whole thing has left me feeling quite jumpy about my own thesis, which in 1999 was welcomed as an acceptable contribution to my very narrow, very obscure corner of the underground caves. Once I had seen the reaction to Louks’ abstract I decided to re-read my own. Having done so, I concluded not only that it would sound utterly barking to the rest of the world, it sounded utterly barking to me! This was a field in which I was immersed at the time but have read nothing about since I walked out of the room in which my viva took place.

The viva itself is something that most people do not really understand and is difficult to explain. It is not an examination. Short for viva voce, which is Latin for “with the living voice”, the viva is there in principle for the PhD candidate to demonstrate that they are the author of their own work. In practice, it is also an opportunity for the examiners to quiz the candidate and explore their hypothesis further. The examiners may have questions and it is common for them to advise corrections and amendments; often, the examiners make the passing of the thesis conditional on these amendments. Best case scenario (and one enjoyed by Ally Louks), the examiners pass your thesis with nothing more than a few pencil annotations, none of which require attention for the thesis to be accepted. Worst case scenario, they say that your thesis is a load of old hooey and that you should not – under any circumstances – re-submit it, corrected or otherwise.

While the worst-case scenario is rare and indicates a profound failure on the part of the candidate’s supervisor, who never should have allowed the submission, it does happen on rare occasions. The last time I saw one of my old lecturers from my university days, he reported being fresh from a viva on which he had acted as an external examiner and had failed the thesis. This happens so rarely that I was agog. Having been so long out of the world of academia, it is impossible for me to express in simple terms the intellectual complexities that he explained were the reasons behind his decision, so I shall have to quote him directly: apologies if the language is too academic for you to follow. “Basically, it was b*****ks,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was kind of brilliant b*****ks: but it was b*****ks nevertheless.” That poor candidate. I ached for him. I also found myself recalling the gut-wrenching moment during which Naomi Wolf’s PhD thesis was exposed as fundamentally flawed by Matthew Sweet, live on Radio 3. If you’ve never listened to the relevant part of the interview, I highly recommend it: it is – especially for those of us who have submitted a thesis for judgement in the past – the most toe-curling listen imaginable. Wolf’s entire thesis appears to have been based on a misunderstanding of a legal term, which Sweet discovered simply by looking it up on The Old Bailey’s website. Wolf’s thesis had been passed at Trinity College, Cambridge, an institution that would be hard to beat in terms of intellectual clout and reputation, so quite how this happened is mind-boggling and shameful.

The reaction to Souks’ thesis does, I suspect, have a great deal to do with the increasing suspicion with which academia is viewed, and in many ways I am not unsympathetic to people’s disquiet. There is, without question, a good deal of nonsense (or b*****ks, to use the technical term) talked in a lot of fields, particularly in the arts and social sciences. Yet the vitriol with which Souks was criticised has nothing to do with this. Her abstract, to anyone with even a grudging respect for the field of English literature, makes intellectual sense. No, the roasting of Souks and her work betrays a profound and depressing ignorance as well as a nasty dose of good old-fashioned cruelty. Before people decide that an entire field of study is unworthy of merit, they should maybe ask themselves whether there is even the tiniest possibility that they perhaps don’t know enough about it before they pounce. One can but hope that these people who value their rationality so much will next time run a more scientific test, rather than dunking the witch to see whether she floats.

How did we do?

The modern world is increasingly baffling. If I feel like this at the age of 50, what’s it going to be like in another 30 years’ time, assuming I am granted the good fortune to make it into my twilight years?

Yesterday, I visited eBay, browsing for an item I was (unbelievably) struggling to find on Amazon. I did a couple of searches for the item on their site, before getting bored and closing it down. Within hours, I received an email from the computerised bots managed by the team at eBay headquarters. They were keen, they said, to learn about my experience.

When did the most banal of activities become an experience? It is a remarkably recent phenomenon, but one we have apparently come to accept. I am asked to rate my experience of everything from browsing a website to attending an appointment at the hairdressers, at the optician, at the gym, at the dentist. The dentist! Do they really want my honest opinion regarding lying flat on my back while a man fires a high-frequency jet of freezing water against my gums, then offers me patronising, unsolicited advice about how to brush my own teeth, followed by a bill for over £100?

On some level, I get it. Of course. I am self-employed and there are times when I have to ask clients to throw me a bone by leaving me a review somewhere that can be verified. This all helps me to get seen in a noisy, overcrowded online world, and I would struggle to source clients without a little of that kind of support. Some people are kind enough to offer, without being asked. But I hope to God that I have never asked a client to “rate their experience”, nor pestered them with multiple messages when they promised to leave a review and then never got around to it. Most people don’t realise how much small businesses rely on this kind of thing, and I understand completely that it is not top of anyone’s list of priorities to be rating me on Google. I am enormously grateful for the people who do so and think no less of the majority who don’t.

When I was first setting up my business, watching the last few arrivals from the regular salary I had taken for granted for over 20 years, I read and listened to a good deal of business advice. Much of it involved the use of social media, which I dabbled in before realising what a right royal waste of time it was, plus email marketing, which I am glad to say I resisted with pride from the very beginning. Nobody – least of all me – wants their inbox jammed full of self-congratulatory “news” from someone they employ, nor do they want constant exhortations to “let us know how we did”. The ruthlessness with which I police the contents of my own inbox and indeed my phone have become somewhat legendary, indeed I recently had to rather shamefacedly get myself back onto a list of an organisation I belong to, who had taken on board the fact that I had unsubscribed from all email communications and taken myself out of their WhatsApp group. I don’t mean to be unfriendly; I simply don’t want the bombardment of standardised self-promotion which inevitably follows. I habitually set up filters for anything unsolicited that arrives to be deleted automatically – it doesn’t even go to my spam folder, which I have to monitor as sometimes a new approach from a fresh contact will end up in there. Nope, with the filters as I have them, it goes straight in the bin.

The irony is, because I am self-employed and I understand how important ratings and reviews can be for small businesses, I am really diligent about doing them. If a local professional of any stripe does a good job for me, I make sure to ask them where they would like me to leave a review and I make sure that I do it: Google, Check-a-Trade, whatever they wish. If they’re really good, I will also send their details directly to any local friends who might benefit from their services. It’s one of the really nice things about living in a community that one can share this kind of thing and help local businesses to benefit from word of mouth. Everybody wins that way: the business is rewarded for doing a good job, the people in the community benefit from reliable and trustworthy service-providers. What’s not to like? But in the hands of big businesses (and – it has to be said – some overly enthusiastic small ones), this simple, organic and entirely benevolent system has somehow morphed into a leviathan, a behemoth with which to hassle their customers with remarkable tenacity. Well, I’m not having it. I shall continue to police my inbox with more rigour than has ever been managed by US border control.

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Vox populi

The Roman intelligentsia never really understood the rise of the demagogues. Those who saw it coming were those who viewed Rome as in decline, at the mercy of mob rule; they never understood the needs and legitimate frustrations of the ordinary people, who counted for little as far as they were concerned. Those caught by surprise had only a hazy grasp of their own handle on power.

The authority of the Senate was based on custom and consent rather than upon the rule of law: it gave advice, but could not enforce its rulings. The Senate thus had no legal control over the people or their magistrates. This uneasy rule by consent lasted for a while, but complacency and arrogance ultimately led to the Senate’s authority being dismantled in all but name.

The Optimates were the dominant group in the Senate, those with families dating back to the mythical good old days and the easy confidence that aristocracy brings. They consistently blocked the wishes of others, who were thus forced to seek support for their measures via the tribunes, who led the tribal assembly. These men were called the Populares or “demagogues,” by their opponents. The Optimates tried to uphold the oligarchy and thus maintain their aristocratic stranglehold on power; the demagogues sought popular support against the dominant aristocracy, sometimes in the interests of the people but also to further their own personal ambitions. To be clear, both groups of men were eye-wateringly wealthy: this was in no way a rise of the working man. The demagogues achieved some success via purely political means, but ultimately the generals who commanded military forces in the provinces (also fabulously wealthy) began to realise that there was an opportunity here. The Roman elite found out the hard way that those who win the hearts and minds of the military are the ones who hold power. And it was still all about money – you didn’t make it in this battle for power without it.

It is difficult and not to say puzzling to watch the existential crisis being experienced by Democrats and their supporters across the Atlantic. Rarely has a nation been so divided and so unable to listen, although I am experiencing uncomfortable flashbacks to our own country during the fallout after the Brexit vote. I cycle through news channels on an endless loop and find person after person talking, talking, talking. Talking to each other, talking at each other, talking over each other. Nobody’s listening. Although a passionate supporter of people’s right to protest, I am beginning to lose my faith in even this simple kind of expression, for in today’s world it seems always to descend into people screaming at each other, nose to nose across the barricades. But you can scream as hard as you like. It doesn’t matter if nobody’s listening.

I do not claim to know why the American people voted as they did. I have my own pet theories, but these are shaped and coloured by my own peculiar interests and passions, and therefore too biased to be of relevance. I can only say what I see, and what I see is a population that feels betrayed by politics. I see people who are sick of being told what to think or – even worse – being told that they don’t think, that they are incapable of it. That their small-town lives don’t matter, that their values are old-fashioned and need to be consigned to history, that they need to get with the programme, wise up, wake up, listen up, sit up and shut up.

The trouble with democracy is you ask people what they want and they tell you. It may not be the result you were hoping for. Winston Churchill no doubt thought when he saw his country through the second world war that the next election was in the bag. In fact, he and his party were voted out of office. To quote the man himself: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Cicero denounces Catiline, fresco by Cesare Maccari, Palazzo Madama in Rome

Roman spooktacles

As the leaves turn and the nights draw in, many cultures prepare to celebrate festivals that explore the boundaries between the living and the dead. Halloween is a festival steeped in history and rich in symbolism and so this year I am trying to be less grumpy about it. I’ve never liked Halloween and tend to lock myself away in doors, but I have decided to embrace the spirits and attempt to understand why so many people feel drawn to this festival.

To appreciate Halloween’s origins, we must travel back to its Celtic origins and also to ancient Rome, where festivals of the dead held significant cultural and spiritual importance. Modern Halloween is heavily influenced by Celtic traditions, particularly the festival of Samhain. The Celts celebrated Samhain at the end of October — marking the transition from harvest to winter — and believed that the boundary between the living and the dead was at its most attenuated during this time. Roman practices undoubtedly shaped the evolution of this festival into what we now call Halloween. As the Romans expanded their empire, they encountered various cultures and incorporated aspects of their beliefs and practices. This cultural blending likely contributed to the transformation of Halloween from a purely Celtic observance into a more widespread celebration that includes various elements from different traditions. Many see Halloween as an American export and in multiple ways it is; but we can thank/blame the Romans for most things, so I don’t see why Halloween should be any different.

One of the most important Roman festivals dedicated to the dead was Feralia, which in itself was part of larger nine-day observance called Parentalia, dedicated entirely to ancestors. During Feralia, families would visit the graves of their loved ones, bringing offerings such as food, wine, and flowers. It was a time to reflect on the lives of those who had passed, and rituals often included prayers and sacrifices. Many modern Halloween traditions across Europe involve remembering loved ones who have died; altars, decorations, and memorials are common in many parts of the world during Halloween, reflecting the human desire to honour those who came before us. A ritualistic response to death is one of the things that defines us as a species and tentative evidence of burial or funerary caching goes back to the Stone Age; it seems clear that our earliest ancestors began interring their dead, sometimes with personal effects. Some anthropologists argue that such relics are evidence for a belief in some kind of afterlife, in which it was assumed that the deceased individual would require the tools of his trade; others are more cautious, and argue that grave goods are simply evidence of individualisation and respect – religious or not, we like to bury a person’s things with them, as symbolic markers of who they were and the impact that they had on the world.

Another notable Roman festival of the dead was Lemuria. This festival is perhaps closer to that of Halloween, for it focused on the appeasing of restless spirits, particularly those of deceased family members who had not received proper burial rites. The father of the household would perform a series of rituals, including throwing black beans over his shoulder and chanting incantations to exorcise the spirits. The beans symbolized the offerings made to the dead, while the rituals aimed to ensure peace for both the living and the dead. Echoes of our festival of Halloween are obvious in the theme of dealing with spirits. Many Halloween customs, such as carving pumpkins to ward off evil spirits and dressing in frightening costumes, are deeply rooted in the idea of confronting and appeasing supernatural entities. The shared emphasis on rituals and offerings reflects a universal human desire to connect and to address fears of the unknown.

The Roman festivals of the dead offer us an insight into how ancient cultures grappled with the concept of mortality. In an ever-changing world, the rituals surrounding death and remembrance remain vital to many people. Whether through offering food to the spirits, lighting candles, or sharing stories about loved ones, we find ways of engaging with those we have lost. Halloween serves as a reminder of our connection to those who came before us, a celebration of life, death, and the enduring bond between the living and the dead.

The modern festival of Halloween is rather characterized by a mix of fun and irreverence and most of my students absolutely love it. Trick-or-treating, ghoulish fancy dress and haunted houses dominate the festivities and many of these traditions do hail from our friends across the Atlantic. Many people argue that the act of dressing up in costumes can be seen as a way to confront the idea of death and the unknown, much like the Romans did during Lemuria; all of that said, I’m not sure how many of my students see it as anything other than a jolly good excuse to eat vast quantities of sweets and – bonus prize – scare the absolute willies out of the grown-ups.

I’ll bring the ideas

This week, I had an appointment with a man who mainly works with people who have sports injuries. This might seem totally mad, since I do not partake in any sports and – to all intents and purposes – I am not injured. So, what on earth am I up to?

More than one local friend had spoken highly of Greg and I was intrigued to see whether he could help me. As someone who lives with chronic scoliosis I have seen various osteopaths over the years, but that has reached something of a plateau in terms of how helpful I am finding the sessions. Furthermore, I suddenly realised that I was becoming somewhat frustrated by the gloomy outlook taken by the osteopath who was treating me. He was well aware of the fact that – despite my lifelong recalcitrance with regards to all things exercise-related – I now attend a local gym and have successfully improved my overall fitness, particularly my muscle strength. My range of movement, however, has proved to be a more stubborn nut to crack. When I asked him for suggestions as to what I could be doing that would help with my restricted mobility, he shrugged and stated that there was nothing that would help in that department.

Now, it is true that I have an untreatable and irreversible spinal condition which is not going to disappear. Nothing will fix the curvature of my spine, nor unfuse the bits which are resolutely fused together. I will never attain perfect posture nor the mobility of someone with a normal spine. And yet … I remember a time when I wasn’t in pain or discomfort. I remember a time when my mobility was dramatically better than it is now. So, despite the reality of a chronic condition, I simply refuse to accept that the way things are at the moment – which, to be honest, is pretty awful – remains the harbinger of my future. I refuse to believe that this is as good as it gets and that it’s downhill from this point on.

So, in a fit of self-investment, I’m trying a new approach with this recommended local physical therapist. I explained my situation to him and gave him plenty of room to turn me down, stating that I would understand if he felt that I was not a suitable client for his expertise. To my delight, he was really keen to help, so we met within a couple of days. His assessed me as I was, whilst asking me a considerable number of questions about what I currently do in terms of exercise as well as what my goals are – something nobody has ever asked me before: not the numerous consultants I saw as a child, not the (mainly useless) physiotherapists provided by the NHS, not the several private osteopaths I have seen over the years. To be fair, Greg was probably pretty relieved to be told that I am not planning to enter any iron-man endurance races or aim at the next Olympics, but he seemed to share my determination and my enthusiasm for the idea that things could be greatly improved from the state of near-seizure that I am currently in. He wrestled and pulled me about for a bit in the manner that these specialists like to do, then carefully taught me some new suggestions for exercise, bespoke movements which he felt would benefit me and work against my most troublesome symptoms. This is exactly what I was looking for and I am already beginning to notice a difference.

While very much a realist, I cling to the idea that most of us can make improvements to our own health and wellbeing; I believe that pain can be reduced with the right kind of management, one that doesn’t involve taking more pills or drinking more alcohol. I am determined to find ways to ameliorate my situation whilst I am still young enough and fit enough to find the energy to do so, to instill good habits in myself that will benefit me as I age. Unless I do so, I fear that the prospect of ageing is pretty bleak.

It is often said (a quotation usually misattributed to Einstein) that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If I want to experience change, then I need to make those changes happen; kick-starting that process means investing in someone who agrees with me that change is both desirable and possible. At the end of my first session, I felt the way that many of my clients report feeling when they have met with me for the first time: that feeling when you’ve found the right kind of person with not only the experience but the confidence and the belief that they can potentially help you. It’s the kind of conviction that years of experience brings, as well as a genuine passion for what you do. Greg’s energy for and interest in what he does shone through from the moment I contacted him, and I realised with a jolt that he had communicated this to me before we even met, in just a few simple words. He wrote: “I’ll bring the ideas”.

As soon as I read that message, I knew that I had potentially found the right kind of person to help me. I’d been experimenting with difference types of exercises and had become deeply frustrated by my lack of progress. I was all out of ideas and so was my osteopath. As for the physiotherapists I have tried in the past, the last one genuinely shrugged and said, “you seem to be managing okay.” Sure, I’m managing okay … I mean, I’m standing upright. But is that honestly as good as it gets? Is there no hope for improved mobility, reduced discomfort and better prospects for old age? For me, “managing okay” is no longer acceptable and I’ve decided to believe that things can be better. It feels great to have found someone who agrees.