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In their song ‘Finisterre’, Saint Etienne have a lyric that runs: “Imagine the nineteenth century never happened / a straight run from Beau Brummell to Bauhaus”. When I think of that lyric I wonder why the nineteenth century in particular and not the twentieth. You would think if you’re going to skip a century you want to pick the one with the holocaust.

All I’ve been able to come up with is France – go straight from the Revolution to the Third Republic. Skip the part where Napoleon subverted the revolution and crowned himself. Skip the part where the Bourbons came back. Skip the failed revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Maybe that’s the meaning of the next lines: “dreams never end / this house believes in skyscrapers”. Maybe the desire is to return to a belief in history as a journey from darkness to light and skip the parts where that isn’t how it works.

“the legends say that you have the gift of true sight, paired with the gift of optimism. Is it true that you can look into the lives of any you meet?”

“It is true” he intoned.

“And is it true that you can find the good, no matter how minor, in any situation or event?”

He nodded modestly, his long beard gleaming orange in the light of the sunset.

“Then great sage, what can you tell me about the world today?”

“Not really anything” he said. “Shit is awful.”

“Aw, fuck.”

“Sorry”

I am particularly fond of etymology and also silly things, so finding out the origin of ‘to curry favour’ was particularly satisfying:

First, curry is the word meaning to brush or groom a horse, not the Indian spice. And the second word was originally Fauvel, the name of a horse in a satirical French medieval poem from the early 1300s.

Stan Hingston

Look I even found Fauvel! This is him!

The etymology stuff is from this delightful blog over here while the lovely image is from wikipedia.