flatulist

Not to be confused with ‘flautist’ (that could be embarrassing), a flatulist is a professional farter. (Look, I wanted to take a break from railing against the patriarchy, okay? It’s very tiring.)

Professional farting has a surprisingly rich history, going all the way back to medieval times, and possibly even earlier. ‘The City of God’, a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Saint Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD, mentions some performers who had ‘such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at will, so as to produce the effect of singing’. I’m not sure what that has to do with Christian philosophy, but never mind.

Possibly the most famous flatulist was Roland the Farter, who lived here in England in the 12th century. He was a jester for King Henry II, and each year performed ‘Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum’, or ‘one jump, one whistle and one fart’ for the king’s court at Christmas. For services to farting, Roland was given Hemingstone Manor in Suffolk (which is just up the road from where I am now) and 30 acres (12 hectares) of land.

Le Pétomane, just about to let one go

Another famous flatulist was Le Pétomane (real name Joseph Pujol) who was born in 1857. He was known for his remarkable control of his abdominal muscles, which meant he could fart at will. Apparently he wasn’t passing intestinal gas like us unprofessional farters do though – he was actually ‘inhaling’ air into his rectum and then controlling its release with his anal sphincter muscles (apparently he could even suck water up there and then blow it back out). Some of the highlights of his stage act including making sound effects of cannon fire and thunderstorms with his bum, as well as playing ‘O Sole Mio’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ on an ocarina through a rubber tube in his anus. He could also blow out a candle from several yards away. His audience included Edward VII, King Leopold II of Belgium and Sigmund Freud.

Flatulists haven’t really managed to make the leap to modern-day entertainment, with one notable exception. If you’re a fan of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, you might remember Mr Methane, who claims to be the only performing farter in the world. Mr M (real name Paul Oldfield) gave up a career as a train driver in Sheffield to become a flatulist, and went on to appear as a guest on ‘The Howard Stern Show’ in the States, even performing a series of fart acts on Broadway.

Crime might not pay, kids, but it seems farting definitely does.

Mr Methane in action on BGT – watch it if you dare (I couldn't get to the end).

evanescence

Today’s word of the week is brought to you by ‘I Capture the Castle’, a coming-of-age novel by Dodie Smith (who’s probably most famous for having written ‘The Hundred and One Dalmatians’). I’d never read it before, and if you haven’t either I thoroughly recommend it. It tells the story of Cassandra Mortmain, who lives with her bohemian but impoverished family in a crumbling castle in rural Suffolk in the 1930s. The family is made up of her beautiful but bored sister, Rose, her glamorous stepmother, Topaz (who enjoys dancing naked in the rain every now and again), her little brother Thomas, her eccentric novelist father who’s been suffering from crippling writer's block after publishing one successful book and Stephen, a sort of servant/adopted child who has an almighty crush on Cassandra. Honestly, it’s wonderful. And it’s also where I saw this word used in the following quote:

Perhaps he [Simon, Rose’s fiancé and Cassandra’s crush – yep, there’s a love triangle*] finds beauty saddening—I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked Father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty’s evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.

Now if you, like me, were a teenager in the 90s, you’re probably thinking of American goth rockers Evanescence who released bangers like ‘Bring me to life’ and… actually, that’s the only one I can think of. And really, it’s a perfect name for an angsty alternative band. The word ‘evanescence’ is an adjective (a describing word) for something that’s temporary, ephemeral (another good word), or likely to be forgotten over time. Like fleeting moments, fading memories or the passage of time itself…

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. Let’s come straight back down to earth with some etymology. ‘Evanescence’ comes from the Latin verb ‘evanescere’. That’s a combo of the prefix ‘e-’, meaning ‘out’ or ‘away’ (see also ‘eject’, ‘evict’ and ‘emit’, among others) and the verb ‘vanescere’ which means ‘to vanish or disappear’. That’s formed from ‘vanus’, meaning ‘empty’ or ‘vain’, and the suffix ‘-escere’ which indicates the beginning of a process or state. This suffix also turns up in words like ‘convalesce’ (to start getting better), ‘effervesce’ (to start bubbling or frothing) and ‘adolesce’ (to start being a stroppy teenager). Sorry, I think I sucked all the beauty out of it, didn’t I?

*If you factor in Stephen as well, then maybe it’s a love square? There’s also Neil, Simon’s brother, who I suspect may also be involved, but I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t be sure. Also, that would make it a love pentagon which is ridiculous.

cathedral

I live in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, which is a cathedral town. Not a city – contrary to what a lot of people think, a town doesn’t immediately become a city just because it has a big ole church in it. In fact, Suffolk doesn’t have any cities in it at all. It’s not alone in this – there are actually nine others which are also city free. Want to have a guess at which ones? Answers at the bottom of the post…

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral (photo by DAVID ILIFF. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Anyway, I digress. A cathedral is called a cathedral because it contains a cathedra, which is basically a nice chair (or throne) for a bishop. Originally the Latin word cathedra didn’t have any religious connotations though – it literally just meant ‘armchair’, and was a term usually reserved for a chair specifically for ladies. I’m not sure what makes a chair female – maybe it gets paid significantly less than the men’s chairs?

The origins of ‘cathedra’ go way back to ‘kmt’ (you can tell that’s an old word because it doesn’t have any vowels in it), a Proto-Indo-European word meaning ‘down’ or ‘with’. It’s thought that the Proto-Indo-European language, or PIE, was spoken from 4500 BC to 2500 BC (I told you it was old). This went into Greek as ‘kata’, meaning ‘down’, and soon fused with ‘hedra’, which comes from another PIE root ‘sed’, ‘to sit’. This created ‘kathedra’ for ‘seat or bench’. When words went from Greek to Latin, the ‘k’s often changed to ‘c’s (which is something to do with how they’re pronounced I think) – hence, ‘cathedra’. And with the Catholic church’s penchant for Latin, it wasn’t long before it made it into their lexicon (losing its femininity along the way, of course).

Time for Bury St Edmunds facts. Did you know…

1. The single largest witch trial in England was held in BSE in 1645. It led to 18 women being executed by famous witchfinder general Vincent Price, sorry Matthew Hopkins, sorry utter sexist bastard. The site of the trial is now a Premier Inn hotel, and the places where the witches were executed are now a garden centre and a golf club.

2. Bury St Eds featured prominently in Armando Iannucci’s film The Personal History of David Copperfield. Dickens himself stayed in The Angel Hotel in town three times during his life. You can even sleep in the same four-poster bed as he did in room 215 (although presumably they’ve changed the sheets since then).

3. Measuring just 15ft by 7ft, The Nutshell pub is officially the smalled pub in Britain. Opened in 1867, it has a mummified cat hanging over the bar which was discovered behind the walls during renovations. Mummified cats were often placed in the walls of newly built homes to ward off unwanted spirits back in the day. There are also several mummified cats in our local museum – I’m not sure why we love them so much here.

Some mummified cats (and mice). Sorry

So, did you guess the other city-less counties? They are: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Rutland (also Britain’s smallest county), Surrey and Warwickshire. Buckinghamshire was on the list until quite recently, but the Queen made Milton Keynes a city at part of the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours, whatever they are.