Being A Grumpy Old Man!

A few days ago Pat and I were trawling around department stores in Nottingham in a largely fruitless search for kitchen items – new crockery, kitchen knives, chair cushions, baking trays and the like to fill our new kitchen. I can’t say I felt inspired by this but as a dutiful  husband I carried the bag for “she who must be obeyed”, made a few (hopefully) enthusiastic utterances and silently prayed that we would soon go home!  Now, I’m ready to admit that perhaps my enthusiasm had waned a little and that perhaps I was looking at the world through less than rose coloured glasses, but, as we stumbled around John Lewis my lack of enthusiasm turned to cynicism. Let me explain.

Sebastian - steeped in good design

I stood in front of a large display in the kitchenwares department. At the side of the display was a huge  advert for items designed by someone called Sebastian Conran. The items on display seemed to me to be excessively expensive. I learned that I could buy a Sebastian Conran knife block for only £130! We were looking for a knife block – but not at £130 for a very ordinary looking bit of kit!  Putting it bluntly I think that if I had paid £130 for this then each time I walked into the kitchen and gazed upon this object of desire I would feel a little space in the palm of my hand where my £130 pounds had once resided!  I was reminded of a couple of clichés, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and “a fool and his money are soon parted”.  Of course, being the liberal well adjusted guy that I am I wouldn’t dream of making pronouncements on what constitutes "good design" – and yet deep down I felt someone  was having a laugh at the expense of gullible shoppers.

Good design - at £130 a throw!

But putting aside the worth or quality of this particular knife block, my cynicism related rather more to the advert behind the display telling me all about this designer. I was told that Sebastian is the son of Sir Terence Conran and is therefore “steeped in good design” and that he has won “many awards”. There were several other eulogies extolling this man’s virtues and convincing passing shoppers that they were not just buying a pot or a knife but a well designed pot or knife. Mmmmmm! As I stood there reading this and looking at the very ordinary stuff on display it occurred to me that the ad was heavy on unsubstantiated assertions and light on facts. I suppose the thing that got me thinking was the phrase “steeped in good design” – the connection was being made that because this man is the son of Terence Conran (who is a designer I have heard of, but could tell you little about) then it follows that he will have soaked up good design and he in his turn is a good designer. Mmmmmm!

When Pat joined me I mumbled that my dad had spent his life as succesful lorry driver and was, I believe (and everyone seemed to say so), very good at his job. So, I wondered, was I “steeped in good  lorry driving”? Did dad's skill and knowledge pass into my genetic make-up? Can I recognise a good diesel engine when I see one? Do my very pores ooze the whiff of the motorway exhaust smoke  and the  transport cafe’s bacon sandwich - just as Sebastian Conran’s ooze good design? When I walk down the street do people whisper to their neighbours as they peep through their windows, “There goes Tony, the son of Fred the lorry driver – he’s steeped in good lorry driving you know!” ? If I decided on a career change is lorry driving the thing that I would naturally excel  at – it seems so for Sebastian, why not me?

My dad drove a lorry in India
during the war. He spent his whole
 life  on the road - am I steeped in good
lorry driving? Doesn't feel like it!

I elaborated on these points to Pat as we stood in the store. For some reason I can’t explain  her eyes seemed to  glaze over and I’m sure that I remember her muttering something about a grumpy old man – although as I didn’t have my hearing aids in I can’t be too sure of that! Having said that she couldn’t answer my questions  about me being steeped in good lorry driving - or maybe she had just lost the will to live!

Seriously, of course, this is, I suppose, an example of the much discussed question of nature versus nurture – how far we are affected by our genetic inheritance and how much our environment and experiences shape us. Any sensible person would realise that it is not one or the other – we are all shaped to a degree by what we have been given and by what happens to us. But my experience in John Lewis did get me thinking.

These grumpy musings, however, then  took an unexpected turn on Sunday morning and gave an edge to my thoughts.

Robin Van Persie

I was reading the report of the Premiership football match between Liverpool and Arsenal which  had taken place on Saturday. For those readers with no football knowledge this was  a big game – one of the great  clashes of any English football season. Arsenal won the game and the hero was their Dutch star Robin Van Persie who scored the winning goal in the last few seconds of the match. Van Persie is one of the world’s great players who, I learned from the article,  came into football rather than following his father’s footsteps into the world of art. Van Persie’s parents are both famous and  well respected Dutch artists whose works hang in the world famous Rijksmuseum  in Amsterdam. The footballer, however,  confessed that he had little interest in art and could not draw at all – so, going back to my previous argument he, unlike Sebastian Conran is clearly not steeped in his father’s qualities!  

Robin Van Persie's dad at work
in his studio

I would be the first to agree that, of course, some people will show the same talents as their parents or will be interested in the same things that their parents are involved with. And probably an equal or greater number will develop their own fortes – Robin Van Persie clearly falls into this category.  But  my grumble about the Conran advert was the implied assumption that  as the son of a famous designer Sebastian Conran would naturally inherit these qualities. It was, it seemed to me, simply attaching the skills and fame of the father and using them to sell the son's to goods.  Of course, we see this with other people and in other ways. I wonder, for example, if Stella McCartney the fashion designer would have been quite so famous or successful had she not been the daughter of Paul – the father’s name gave her a leg up. Would she have climbed to heights of the fashion ladder quite so easily if she was Stella Murgatroyd, daughter of Albert Murgatroyd the totally unknown, unemployed ex-Liverpool  tyre fitter? Would women flock to buy the latest dress and boast to their friends "I'm wearing a Stella Murgatroyd tonight". Would we see the glitterati at the Oscars all dolled up in Stella Murgatroyd  and would the world's fashion pundits be swooning at the display and rushing to interview Stella's dad, Albert, as he leaned against the bar in his local  Liverpool pub! I think not.

David Beckham's
underpants - definite
style. Worth every
penny?

Or, and here it really gets interesting! – what about when it goes a stage further. The Beckham’s for example have used their name relentlessly to promote themselves. David, a once famous footballer from London’s East End and Victoria an Essex girl and average pop singer made millions from their respective careers and have for years now put their names to every kind of produce – underpants, women’s fashion, toiletries, perfume.....the list goes on – all on the back of their fame and name. And I ask myself  was it in their genes  or was it the world in which they grew up that made them such arbiters of good taste and high fashion?  And, why do people think that David Beckham’s recommendation for a pair of underpants is relevant . Where did he get this skill to be able to identify a good pair of underpants when he sees one? Was his father the underpants maker to the king and so, like Sebastian Conran, David Beckham is “steeped in good  underpants”? Or, did he go on an “underpant  design course” whilst he was playing football for Manchester United – to skill himself up when his  football career was over? Or is there some other mysterious avenue by which a footballer and a pop singer can, by osmosis, soak up all the knowledge, skills and understanding to make them competent and able to make accurate pronouncements on fashion items and the like.  The answer of course is no – it is simply a case of a famous name being attached to a very ordinary item and it immediately gives it  disproportionate worth. And, the sad and terrifying thing is that people are foolish enough to be taken in. It must be good because David Beckham says so. It must be good because the son of Terence Conran is involved! Fools and their money are soon parted!

Oh! Hasn't Victoria got such dress
sense and style? Clearly something
she can pass on to the rest of us
lesser mortals

I can’t help thinking of something that was once said to me by another grumpy old man when talking about people. My old work colleague Graham once said that he never trusted people who used their hands excessively when talking – as, for example, does Tony Blair or David Cameron or Prince Charles. Graham’s reasoning on this was that people who do this do it quite intentionally. It distracts you from what the worth and correctness of what  they are saying. Over the years I've often found Graham’s comment to be accurate – analyse what people  who wave their hands about  actually say and it usually doesn't add up to much or is highly debatable.  As the monosyllabic Humphrey  Bogart once said in “Casablanca” “it don’t add up to a hill of beans”! 

And so it is with goods like the Sebastian Conran knife block  or the Stella McCartney’s dresses or the underpants that David Beckham promotes – the famous name and its associative features become the thing rather than the substance of the item itself.   Companies like John Lewis are well aware of this trick selling technique: associate an item with a name that people recognise; allude to the fact that this is good design or high fashion or highly desirable and bingo people stop looking at the quality or the value, they simply get out their credit card. They lose the capacity to look objectively at the item and assess its true value or quality.  How special or good the items in question are becomes irrelevant  - the name’s the thing in the celebrity mad world we inhabit today.  When, in the case of the Conran’s kitchenware, the main selling point appears to be a rather nebulous  association with the designer’s father you can bet your life that the goods themselves are pretty average. Would shoppers have even looked at them twice or paid £130 for the knife block if there had not been a large display highlighting the connection and the people involved. Would people have walked by and said “Oh, there’s a well designed knife block – definitely the sort of thing that Terence Conran would design – I must have one......and look it’s only £130”. Call me Mr Grumpy if you like but I think the answer to that is no. They would walk past and either not notice a very ordinary bit of kit or say “What - £130 for a knife block that’s robbery!”


For me, it all smacks very much of the Hans Christian Anderson tale of the Emperor’s new clothes,  the gullibility of people and the ease with which they are taken in and part with their money.

But  then, what do I know, I'm just a grumpy old man!