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Classical allusions, and Doncaster
May. 14th, 2007 09:47 amThe womenfolk of my hometown are statuesque. It's just a shame that the statue I'm thinking of is this one.
It's a little known fact of history that many of the problems which the Middle East faces today can be traced back to Yorkshire. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised.
Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman Emperor, was proclaimed Emperor in 306 in the city of York by General Chrocus. What's generally forgotten is that his first wife was a local Yorkshire woman, and it was she who travelled to the Holy Land and 'discovered' such important spots as the locations of the stable of Jesus' birth and His tomb. I have a delightful mental image of some Nora Batty-esque woman surrounded by a bunch of bewildered Centurions, going "Aye, an' over there were t'stable, an' 'e were crucifixated there, and 'appen what I've found! It's 'is tomb. Ain't that just grand?"
So if the peoples of the Middle East want to take out their troubles on those who caused them, they might as well stop bombing Hebron and have a go at Worksop for all the good it will do.
I was thinking about this as I wandered through Doncaster town centre on Saturday night - and what a delightful place that is. It's oddly intimidating being the only person over the age of 25 on the street, and even more intimidating being the only person not completely out of their tree as well. The Daily Mail and the Jehovahs Witnesses often claim that the world is going to hell in a handbasket due to such Saturday-night town-centre behaviour, but the Hogarth exhibition at the Tate shows that really nothing has changed in hundreds of years. In fact, nothing has changed for even longer than that - the ancient Greeks would often use drunken or stoned teenage girls as oracles to channel the will of the gods, and so the next time you see girls screaming "Yer a slag! Yer a slag!" at each other in the street, it's not just that they've had one too many Bacardi Breezers, it's actually Hera, Queen of the Gods, telling Aphrodite just exactly what she really thinks of her.
It's a little known fact of history that many of the problems which the Middle East faces today can be traced back to Yorkshire. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised.
Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman Emperor, was proclaimed Emperor in 306 in the city of York by General Chrocus. What's generally forgotten is that his first wife was a local Yorkshire woman, and it was she who travelled to the Holy Land and 'discovered' such important spots as the locations of the stable of Jesus' birth and His tomb. I have a delightful mental image of some Nora Batty-esque woman surrounded by a bunch of bewildered Centurions, going "Aye, an' over there were t'stable, an' 'e were crucifixated there, and 'appen what I've found! It's 'is tomb. Ain't that just grand?"
So if the peoples of the Middle East want to take out their troubles on those who caused them, they might as well stop bombing Hebron and have a go at Worksop for all the good it will do.
I was thinking about this as I wandered through Doncaster town centre on Saturday night - and what a delightful place that is. It's oddly intimidating being the only person over the age of 25 on the street, and even more intimidating being the only person not completely out of their tree as well. The Daily Mail and the Jehovahs Witnesses often claim that the world is going to hell in a handbasket due to such Saturday-night town-centre behaviour, but the Hogarth exhibition at the Tate shows that really nothing has changed in hundreds of years. In fact, nothing has changed for even longer than that - the ancient Greeks would often use drunken or stoned teenage girls as oracles to channel the will of the gods, and so the next time you see girls screaming "Yer a slag! Yer a slag!" at each other in the street, it's not just that they've had one too many Bacardi Breezers, it's actually Hera, Queen of the Gods, telling Aphrodite just exactly what she really thinks of her.
