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Alresfordism, cupcake fascist, dog to its vomit, fenestration, gentrification, George Formby, Gregory's Girl, Harry Potter, Huffington Post, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Macchiato, New York Times, No True Scotsman Fallacy, one swallow doesn't prove summer, paradoxical analogy, passive-aggressive, Plato, provinciality, pseud, Republic, Socrates, The Guardian, Tom Whyman, twee, ukeleles, Wilde, yummy mummy
(Mindmatrix 21/5/2010 (UTC) uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot)
Brassica was devastated.
I was just reading ‘The Hamster Chronicle’ and came across some
philosopher guy who has just taken a sledgehammer to the values
of the inhabitants of a town not too far from here. It is linked to a
2014 article in ‘The Guardian’ and I found it a terrible excoriation of
market town mentality. He’s called Tom Whyman and he has denounced
all we Suttonfordian-types as ‘cupcake fascists.’
I didn’t even vote ‘Leave.’ And, if I order a ‘nice cup of tea’, he says it
will only go to show that I have a stiff upper lip which is, ‘dialectically
speaking’ a sign of cowardice.
Well, have your usual Macchiato instead, I advised. Look, in all the
years we have been convening in Costamuchamoulah must-seen
cafe, we have never once digested a cupcake. You would never allow
one to pass your stiff, or otherwise, upper or lower lips.
That’s because it is yummy mummy fodder, she smiled through
watery tears. And we could never be accused of being in that
particular category.
And to what category do we belong? Remind me.
Passive-aggressive, twee, retrospective diehards who lisp while
strumming along to ukeleles- according to him.
Her lower lip wobbled.
I took the article from her and skim-read it.
And have you ever taken up such an instrument?
Of course not.
Was that because you found such an activity incompatible with
your desire to impose your bourgeois values on all and sundry, as
this postgrad Whyman suggested-nay- stated?
No! It’s because that odious little man gave me a window
cleaners’ complex.
Which odious little man? Formby?
Yes, every time our window cleaner arrives unannounced, I have to
run upstairs and close all my curtains, in case he is a voyeur. That film-
‘Gregory’s Girl’- didn’t help. You remember that bit when the premature,
but sexually mature school leaver who has a lucrative job to do with
fenestration pronounces: ‘ If I don’t see you next week, I’ll see you through
a windae’?
Oh, well-pronounced. You sounded nothing like a Suttonfordian. Your
gentrification slipped as easily as a window cleaner falling off his ladder,
I snorted.
So, you think Suttonfordians should not worry about being
stereotyped by a Harry Potter lookalike, even if he did have an article
accepted by ‘The New York Times?’
I think that the brutality of your perceived ‘niceness’ should see off a
pseud like him with one flourish of your vintage pashmina. We could
compose a salvo and have it published in ‘The Huffington Post.’ So what?
We have better things to do.
Hmm, you know I am going to have a cupcake just to prove that
I can and that it has nothing to do with how I voted.
(Brassie was defiant.)
Personally, I can’t stand the sickly sweetness of the butter cream
icing, but I will join you in an act of radical point scoring against
anyone who could foul his own nest, as he seems to have done,
considering he was brought up in the hated location.
The thing that really got to me was that he said he was a
philosopher, Brassie persisted. And I didn’t think his argument
was very logical.
Hah! I laughed, selecting the gooiest sweetmeat which contained
the greatest density of food colouring and the vilest polka dot paper
case. It is all an exemplifiacation of ‘The No True Scotsman Fallacy.’
You mean like ‘One swallow doesn’t prove that the summer has
arrived?’
Brassie actually gets to the nub of things fairly quickly sometimes.
Yes, we live in Suttonford and we are the exceptions to the rule. Yet we
are probably still reactionary bitches in his view.
But he doesn’t know us.
True, but, if he did, it would only confirm his worst opinions. But, once
he is older and wiser and re-reads ‘The Republic’, he may be reminded
that the visible world is the least knowable and the most obscure,
according to Socrates.
I thought Plato wrote….
He did. Oh, never mind. Here! Get your teeth round this one. Have
another cup of tea.
So, Suttonford is an example, like Alresford, of a paradoxical
analogy?
Precisely. And you have to have left the cave of provinciality in
order to attain the ability to rule and to see clearly. He keeps climbing
out, but returns, like a dog to the vomit, to quote a Biblical simile,
to plumb the provincial depths, with a frequency that suggests that
he is a secret speleological lover of all the things he pretends to hate.
Like cupcakes?
Yes, probably even cupcakes. He’s possibly a closet cupcake fascist. He may
be a ‘Krispy Kreme’ doughnut man in the city and a cupcake lover in
the country. How very Wildean!
I’d call that hypocritical, Brassie averred.
You’re not the only one, apparently, I observed, taking a look at some of
the replies and comments on Social Media. But I like his neologism
‘Alresfordism.’ Maybe it is akin to Suttonfordianism.
Yes, but which is the easier to pronounce?
The one you form with your mouth untainted by cupcake crumbs.
Candia Comes Clean 