The Ninth Annual Boring Conference, Death, The Virgin Mary Bar

                       The Ninth Annual Boring Conference,

held in central London today, is surely the only event to need a bigger venue because of a lack of interest.

…It will include talks on police phone boxes (not the Tardis, that would be too thrilling), the Albertus typeface, shipping containers and Battersea Park. The audience will be gripped.

Ennui, 

Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY -NC-ND]

James Ward, the founder, suggests, this is a response to the modern need to make everything instantly exciting. It sits alongside “slow television”, where broadcasts of birdsong or canal journeys in real time have proved popular. The more boring a talk appears on paper, the more riveting it often turns out to be. Especially if it is on riveting in the metalwork sense.

This is not about mocking apparently dull subjects but giving a platform for people to talk about their niche interests for 15 minutes and hope to win fans round to such topics as “car park roofs”, “the advance of the hand drier”, and “the life and times of Budgens supermarkets”, all talks from previous years.

“The theme is ‘boring’ but the content should not be,” says Mr. Ward, who will give a talk on tomato ketchup.

His previous talks have been on fashions in the width of ties, the first ten years of Which? magazine and his collection of historical postcards of the Post Office Tower, recreated in modern photos.

“There is sincerity to these talks,” he says. “People genuinely love their subjects and know a lot about them but they also tend to realise they have wasted their time."

An example of this might be Peter Fletcher, who gave a talk about the record he has kept of every time he has sneezed since July 2007. He logs them by location, strength and activity when it happened. Sneeze No 5,126, for instance, the most recent on his website, was “Bathroom, moderate to strong, cleaning teeth.”

(Patrick Kidd, The Times, 2019)
                   
                              How delightfully British.

Death

Images of sandy beaches, sun-kissed swimming pools and azure blue skies gleam from the window and walls of what appears to be a new travel agent opening in a London shopping centre. But browsers may be surprised by the destination, for it is a journey every one of us will one day take: death.

End of Her Journey,
Alice Havers (1850-1890) 
Photo Credit: Rochdale Arts and Heritage Service [CC BY-NC] 

Look more closely at the posters and it becomes clear that the words are all about “passing away” (half of British adults prefer to avoid the word “death”, apparently.) The departure lounge, in Lewisham, south London, is the brainchild of the Academy of Medical Science, whose mission is to promote biomedical and health research. Death, it turns out, is one of the most under-researched areas in healthcare, accounting for less than half of 1% of money spent.

…Dr Katherine Sleeman, a palliative care consultant at the Cicely Saunders Institute at King’s College, London and a member of the advisory group behind the Departure Lounge, says patients often want to talk about death. “People call it the last taboo, but that’s not my experience. Healthcare professionals can be fearful about raising the subject, but I find patients are often relieved when it’s mentioned. They know they’re dying, and they want to talk about it…Research shows that when provided early, palliative care is associated with fewer hospital admissions, better pain relief and lower financial costs to the NHS…I always say that my aim isn’t to help you live longer, it’s to help you live better.”

…Research into dying, says Sleeman, really matters and can make a real difference. “Many people say: what’s the point of research if it’s not going to prolong life? But that isn’t the point. Quality is crucial: research is quite clear that most people would choose quality of life over length of life.”

(The Observer, 2019)

Absolutely right. Quality of life over length of life.

                       The Virgin Mary Bar Dublin

Interior of a Tavern with Smokers

Egbert van Heemskerck 11 (1634/5-1704)

Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery

The Irish writer Brendan Behan made a declaration that he drank only on two occasions. “When I’m thirsty and when I’m not.”

Many compatriots adopted the quip as a defiant motto, an embrace of the stereotype of the boozy Irishman swaying on a bar stool. But the image may need updating because Dublin is about to get a pub with a twist: no alcohol.

The Virgin Mary bar will open on Capel Street on Friday claiming to be the country’s first permanent booze-free bar – and a sign of the times.

It will operate pub hours and offer a pub vibe plus beer, wine and cocktails, all with 0% alcohol.

“When I mention this concept to friends the first thing they do is laugh and ask why I’d do this in one of the bar capitals of Europe,” said Vaughan Yates, the owner. “From birth to death, baptism to funeral, Ireland has a drinking culture. It’s part of the lifestyle. But Ireland is changing…There’s a bit of a culture shift. People are becoming more aware of what they are consuming.”

…Moderating alcohol consumption seems to match a generational shift, along with the proliferation of coffee shops, gyms and aspirations to eat less meat. The government has stiffened enforcement of drink-driving laws and moved to put cancer warnings on alcohol labels.

(The Guardian, 2019)

Good luck to you Vaughan but mine’s a pint and then a glass or two of red – with the alcohol, of course.