“…a Fox knows many things, but the Hedgehog knows one big thing…”

This is how Isaiah Berlin translated Archilochus’s famous fragment from archaic Greek.

I don’t know Greek so I have no idea how accurate it is. It’s also sometimes given as: “The Fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has just one, but that is the best one of all.”

The Hedgehog’s one, best trick? We know what that is: defensive spines, which trump the Fox’s inquisitive nose.

On the whole, I prefer Berlin’s translation, and his interpretation. The knowing of many things, or just one big thing, marks “one of the deepest differences, which divide writers and thinkers — and maybe humans in general.”

There are, he contends, two types of people.

“Those (Hedgehogs), on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system … in terms of which they understand, think and feel … and, on the other side, those (Foxes) who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory…”

I. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 1953.

This …

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre…

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

I thought about enshittification again last night.

We watched the new Napoleon movie. Actually, technically: we watched half. It was so bad we decided to stagger the experience over two nights rather than subject ourselves mercilessly to the whole awful two and a half hours in one sitting.

Because Napoleon is AWFUL. Not the man, the movie. The man maybe too, who knows, I wasn’t there.

But the movie? I was there. Convince me that ChatGPT didn’t write most of this script. Go on, I dare you.

This is what happens when Apple decides it needs a movie (ooh, let’s do a Napoleon biopic! Great idea, Chad!) and the script is an afterthought.

I’ve never seen such an expensively-produced pile of dog shit.

This is how the dialogue goes in Napoleon:

“Obvious thing.”

“Oh!” Look alarmed. “Obvious thing?”

Nod sagely. “Repeat obvious thing.”

“Oh no. Sarcastic and inappropriately modern turn of phrase.”

“Indeed. Also: other obvious thing.”

No one — repeat, no one — talks like this. Not now, not in France in 1795, not ever. Humans, I find, usually have at least a modicum of humour and nuance.

I’m sorry, David Scarpa, screenwriter of such other luminous hits as … The Last Castle? Gladiator 2? You are a walking case study of misplaced White Male Confidence. Please find another profession. You are not a writer. Certainly: you are not a writer of dialogue.

The only good bits in the movie?

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We are down in Dorset this week with Joel’s parents for half-term so I’m recording this early — it’s Saturday night, hi! — and scheduling it for Tuesday morning. Feeling altogether on top of my shit, how are you?

I promised an update on the pub and an awkward encounter this week. The two are not unrelated and I intend to deliver. I’m also throwing in a review of the RSC production of Macbeth, which I went to see a couple weeks ago — and which is also not unrelated.

Let’s see if I manage to pull all these bits together in a convincing October-themed tale of enshittification, the macabre and the precious capital of celebrity.

Onwards.

If you need a reminder as to where we are in the tale — which can be summarised as “village tries to buy local pub forced to close by its cashing-out private equity owner” — you can brush up on the background here and here.

So. Community efforts to buy our local pub are continuing apace.

This is the latest news:

We met a pair of fancy chefs and got (briefly) excited because they said all the right things about keeping the pub as a going concern, not just a gastro-pub, and being family-friendly and doing pub quizzes and pulling good pints and community engagement and we all shook hands and felt our prayers had been answered and deliverance was at hand.

Then, the next day they emailed us and said, actually, we’ve changed our minds.

Of course.

We continued to ask people in the village to pledge to buy shares. Pledges stand just north of 80 grand, which is great but not good enough.

So, we ploughed on with applying for government match-funding. If we get it (and, oh boy, it’s a big if), it would cover 75% of the purchase price of our “community asset” (these days, it’s almost always pubs). The application form was, without exaggeration, about 10,000 words long and so knackering it basically gave me Covid. It’s also depressing because this is the result of government slashing all public funding and services: communities individually begging back money for various projects that may or may not suit political ends to grant.

But it’s done and fingers are firmly crossed. Watch this space.

We also held another awareness-raising event — an apple press, replete with bunting and trailers full of apples and merry children — to get people in the village jazzed up about buying their local pub.

At a committee meeting before the apple press event, my friend Helen reminded us that we need to get a local celebrity on board to tweet or ‘gram and bring some starry clout to the bid.

“Who can we ask? There must be some big names.”

This is the Cotswolds and there are definitely some celebrities hiding in the woodwork — but they’re fairly well-hidden. Someone mentioned a member of a very famous 90s BritPop band who lives nearby. Another, an actress from a soap.

“Jill, you’re a sleb magnet. Next time you run into someone famous, make sure you mention the pub.” She’s alluding to my adventures on a street in Paris with a certain comedian and also the fact that I managed to wangle a selfie with none other than Simon Cowell over the summer when I saw him in a local coffee shop. (He’s a lovely man, by the way.)

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Not because I’m listening to advice from certain gurus to write less — and smile more — but because I am neck-deep in a fairly involved application form for government match-funding for our community pub purchase (I shit you not: I’ve written postgraduate theses that were less complex) and I don’t have time to finish editing a long essay I’m working on about the things we leave behind and the dangers of rationalism-induced paralysis (inspired by this great old piece of that I read this week).

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The words are about ten feet high.

These are the words of Rousseau, attributed to him by Chaumette, the leader of the Paris Commune during a Reign of Terror speech in 1793.

Back then, it was a message for the guillotine-bound aristocrats.

“Quand le peuple n'aura plus rien à manger, il mangera le riche.”

(When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.)

Here, it’s a message for the commuter class, slinking homewards from Paddington.

In which I count myself a reluctant member.

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