Repost on one of my favourite subjects: kindly irony. Phil will be blogging tomorrow night: please excuse my absence at the pied-a-terres of my comrades from the blogosphere. I’m spending two days at the chalkface. I will be back in force at the weekend.
“Irony? Oh, no, we don’t get that here. You see, people ski topless here whilst smoking dope, so irony is not really a high priority.
“We haven’t had any irony here since, uh, about ’83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.”
So begins the strange courtship of a big-nosed fire chief and a beautiful blonde astronomer.
The words are from the 1987 comedy Roxanne, and the speaker is modern-day Cyrano, CD Bales, aka Steve Martin.
These words spend a little of every day with me: because I am a practitioner who has never tired of being stared at.
Life goes one way, you say it is the opposite. Or: you understate the whole business. It’s funny.
Maddie took this a seven-league-bootstep further this evening when she sat down next to me, doubled up in helpless giggles.
The source of her amusement was one of Phil’s old Ladybird books.
Ladybird readers have helped children learn to read for almost 100 years, all told, and not all of those years, or books, are politically correct.
Leicester printers Wills and Hepworth worked out that printing small books for children would fill the time between their other lucrative print runs – producing material for car manufacturers Austin and Rover.
They are printed in clear, readable sans-serif type, and the books are graded in difficulty. But they do have a few bloopers in their early publications. A is for ass, or armoured train, according to those pioneers of the early reader books.
But they have endured despite their flaws, and old and new print runs are still happening today, out of London and Nottingham.
The book which so amused my daughter is called Danger Men, published in 1970. It attempts to reduce dangerous occupations to the level, and vocabulary, of a six-year-old learning to read.
The first page shows record holder Henri Rochelain suspended high above Monaco Harbour, perched precariously on a tightrope, making a record attempt.
This is a heart stopping moment for all concerned, as he teeters between life and death. No safety net there: for where would one anchor it, in that chic setting?
The writing does not contradict what is happening in this breathtaking picture: it simply understates it to the point of the ridiculous.
It says:
“Can you see the man?
He is in danger.
You can see that he is in danger.
The man is brave.
He is very brave.”
Yes, he is. And I can see that, because he has not opted to take a boat.
Instead he chooses for some insane reason to walk on a piece of string hundreds of feet above a densely populated harbour.
Ah, the power of the understatement.
This is demonstrated so well by Captain Eric Moody, of an infamous flight from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, who made a level announcement to passengers: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking.
“We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
The pilot and his team went without engines for 14 minutes, and were preparing to ditch in the ocean when they cleared volcanic ash which was causing the problem, and landed their 260 passengers and crew in Jakarta.
Irony and understatement run deep in the humour of this little island, and strings of authors speak the language fluently.
Take a lesser known creation of PG Wodehouse: the verbose and deeply ironic Psmith.
Even the name is an irony, a comic twist on the most common surname in England. When he travels to New York, accompanying a cricketing buddy, he is bored. He wishes for a little more action.
And lo, there is a character called Billy Windsor with a boot-faced gangster’s cat in a basket at the next table in the restaurant, who happens to be the editor of an understated little magazine for the faint-hearted called Cosy Moments.
Psmith has found the key to the underbelly of the big city :” I am not half sure, …that Comrade Windsor may not prove to be the genial spirit for whom I have been searching”, he tells his friend.
Events, and Psmith, conspire to bring together these most incongruous elements: a bored English gentleman and a notorious New York gang. A hard-news editorial policy and a cosseted soft readership.
The whole thing is billed as A Great Crisis In New York Journalism. Wodehouse is an ironic virtuoso.
So there’s positive irony, and there’s negative irony.
But to the comic writer, it is almost a second skin. We zip ourselves in, take up our pen, and begin to write like the wind.
Kate Shrewsday 
I dare not comment on this for fear of making an idiot of myself. Oops too late!
😀 Irony becomes you, Sidey
I think Maggie Thatcher should move over, I’m the Irony Lady
have a good time away!
Many thanks, Tandy 🙂
Enjoy your time away….if it’s at the Cliffs of Dover, I mean it literally; if it’s a working weekend, somewhat ironically.
Alas, it’s work, Lou: would that it were the White Cliffs!
Enjoy your time away and I am so glad I wasn’t on that flight! xx
😀 I know exactly what you mean….understatement would have done nothing to calm me!
Chalkface? Does that mean you are teaching? Learning? Whatever. Safe travel and see you here soon.
Teaching. A day in, and I would like to turn tail and sprint down the M25 to sanctuary. However: needs must….
I want to read that Ladybird book! Some friends of mine were telling me the tale and lessons of the King of Rome today and directed me to this video: http://youtu.be/am4wgh859Og, I think it’s perfect fodder for one of your travails! 🙂
Just had a wonderful few minutes, listening, IE: thanks 🙂 Food for thought!
Hope you didn’t think I was cheeky passing it along, it just seemed a perfect subject for you when my friends started talking about it. 🙂
I hope being on the chalkface has nothing to do with Clint Eastwood’s utterance to a beautiful girl (who later became his wife) at the end of a film shoot ” This face is leaving town tonight and I want you to be on it”.
Nothing whatsoever, Roger 😀 But thanks for asking…
Kate, I am reminded of the most cruel irony when Winston Churchill replied to a lady,
who said to him “Sir, you are drunk”.
He replied “That is true madam, but you are ugly, and tomorrow I shall be sober”
Praying all goes well tomorrow.
Love Dad
Or in kindlier fashion, an aircraft carrier was very nearly hit in heavy seas by
the ship following in a convoy. The signal he sent was “If you come any closer I’ll scream”
And a radio signal from a submarine to its base “Will return to base if friendly aircraft
will stop bombing me”
Thanks for the giggles, Dad. I needed them tonight.
I guess I stand out sometimes, too, because I’m usually the one in the crowd (of my friends, anyway) stating the obvious irony–then explaining it. Ouch! I think I do love pointing to contradictions in life, too, and live with them in a state of amusement. I think your writing is so strong because you find the similarities in themes, which would naturally create a keen eye for irony, I think. You are always missed, but will be all the more welcomed back. Penny asked the question I, too, wonder…chalkface? Debra
Yes: teaching. It’s a challenge, bring a new teacher in a new place, Debra 🙂 I am so looking forward to the Easter holidays when they begin, tomorrow night!
Irony and wit are two of the essentially English things I love so much. It gives an added dimension to my reading, and I can never hope to capture it in my writing, though I try.
I hope you bask in the glory of your quick holiday, Kate. Looking forward to Phil’s missive tomorrow.
Not a holiday, alas, Andra: but an opportunity to broaden my horizons on the job front. Back now, ready for our Easter hols…
I hope the trip was a smashing success. 🙂
I wonder what Jet Blue said to the passengers as they struggled to subdue the crazed pilot by body-wrestling him to the ground?
And, later, when the FBI removed him from the aircraft . . . strapped to a board?
There is something ironic about comforting passengers by saying, “Don’t worry. We’ve locked the crazed pilot OUT of the cockpit until he calms down!”
There is, Nancy 😀 But it is a two edged sword, n’est pas?
I love Wodehouse. The very existence of Jeeves is one long irony.
The secret of successful malicious irony seems to be to phrase it in such a way that the victims don’t understand it, but that your sympathizers do. This is particularly easy when talking about politicians.
Indeed. We’re getting a lot of practice at that at the moment here 🙂 Phil mocked up a “Keep Calm And Carry On” poster which has gone viral: it says; “Panic and Buy Petrol.” Lat heard of, it was tearing across Estonia.
Wow – his very own virus! Can’t he quickly tag a bit on to say, ‘Help Phil the coffers – send GBP1-00 here …’
He should have thought about it, really, when he started it off….we’d be rich beyond the dreams of avarice 😀