In the microcosm that is the Substack, there are parts that feel like a jungle, some that feel like a parched steppe, others that feel like long grass, and yet others that have the appearance of a neatly manicured lawn.
I subscribe to people who speak to me like a Billy Graham sermon. There are some whom, like Chicago, Billy Sunday could not shut down; there are renowned television personalities, and famous journalists; there are Dutchmen, and Germans and Englishmen and Americans. And then, there’s me.
Well, there’s two feet of topsoil, a little bit of bedrock,
Limestone in between,
A fossilised dinosaur, a little patch of crude oil,
A thousand feet of granite underneath.
And then, there’s me.
Yesterday, someone who’s been signed up for quite a while on my blog here, and who, I thought, quite liked some of the crap I post, signed off. Just like that. The notification came in top right-hand corner of my computer screen and I regarded the notice somewhat nonplussed for a few seconds, as if regarding it with a blank stare would change its message. I sighed, and clicked it away, whereupon a second notification pinged onto the screen to announce that the unsubscriber had subscribed again. I regarded that with the same blank stare, to be honest. I smiled. I wrote them a note to say, “Nice to have you back!”, to which a sheepish apology was given, and I sent a friendly smiley in return. All some mis-manipulation.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll now be smiling. But, for about a minute or so, I was wracked by a plethora of sentiments: that someone whose own blog has given me great pleasure and whom I respect and like, had, without so much as a backward glance decided they’d had enough of me. And, whilst that can be the result of any number of causes, I am of a make-up that immediately tells me that I did something wrong. I can be brazen about unsubscriptions and cock a pfft at them; I can soul search and ask myself whether I touched a raw nerve, whether I’m too superficial, too profound, too lengthy, too short, too disconnected, too close to the bone. But, if an unsubscriber never tells me why they unsubscribed, I’ll never know (there was one, I knew very well, and so did he). I cannot force people to subscribe. I’m here, beneath all that topsoil, bedrock, limestone, dinosaur, granite and oil. No, no oil. And what people feel when they dig down far enough to find me is, I hope, a sense of the journey having been worthwhile. At least not entirely a waste of time.
For those who may harbour the slightest interest, I have a profile on the business social media website LinkedIn: I’m not hard to find. One of my connections there is someone I encountered who is from a central European country that I know reasonably well, having for the past 35 years had a friend who lives there. He was a national guide in Czechoslovakia back in the days of communism when I was in the tourist sector, and he always offered my clients a very good rate when changing currency on the black market. He was a lovely fellow and, while we haven’t seen each other of late, Milan Beran, if you bump into him, is fondly remembered by me as a sound professional gentleman.
I was in Czechoslovakia the day I heard on the radio that it had decided to split into Slovakia, on the one hand and, well, at the time, no one was really sure what the other hand comprised of: Czecho just sounded strange. I had collected stamps in my earlier youth and knew that the area of what would become known as the Czech Republic had at some time been labelled—in German—Böhmen und Mähren, or, in English, Bohemia and Moravia. It sounded a bit of a mouthful for Czech. There may have been political overtones to that name that caused discomfort in the Czech Republic, so perhaps that was why it was eschewed, or perhaps nobody even thought of it (because they didn’t collect stamps).
Image: a 1.20 koruna postage stamp of the German protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Slovakia had declared its independence on 14 March 1939), or Čechy a Morava, in the Czech language. The stamp is a 1942 overprint of a 1940-41 issue depicting various views (the 1.20 koruna being of St Vitus’s Cathedral, Prague, in carmine red). This stamp in the series of 14 dates from 1941. The overprint commemorates three years of the protectorate’s existence, having commenced on 15 March 1939. The design is 19 x 24 mm, perforations 12.5 per centimetre. Although in mint condition, the stamp is of no particular value. I wonder why they didn’t call the country simply Čechy.
A few years back, it was announced that the Czech Republic would henceforth be known by a shortened form of its name of 25 or so years’ vintage: Czechia, and this I privately approved of. It seemed that, whereas the French Republic could be shortened to France, the German Democratic Republic to East Germany, and the Russian Federation to Russia, there was no equivalent for the Czech Republic, and now there was. When it got announced on LinkedIn, I congratulated the announcer and we became contacts.
We occasionally thereafter communicated on this and that, but the this and that, with the contact in question and indeed with many another contact on that website, led me to ponder why it was that I was even a contact of theirs. We did no business together, I had a passing interest in their own activity on the website and they also in mine, but, beyond that, we never became great buddies. After all, the essence of a contact on a website is not rapprochement, or so it seems. It is to establish closeness but keep the other at bay, for any endeavour to establish a more personal connection will often be rebuffed as an intrusion, or even as stalking. Either that, or selling investment opportunities …
Nothing daunted, I sent the person in question an article that I had seen in The Guardian newspaper, since it focused on a matter of great concern to me in Prague. The outreach received a somewhat brusque response: the person in question had no regard for The Guardian newspaper. Quite how I could have known that beforehand, I’m not sure, but my endeavour at rapprochement was in any case soundly rejected.
It transpired that the newspaper in question had dealt in a seemingly offhand manner with the question of the Czech Republic’s change of name to Czechia. The people in question had been triumphant at getting Google to change the name on its map of the world, for instance. But, it seems, The Guardian had been unimpressed. I wonder why. Was it perhaps because it all sounded like some commercial rebranding exercise, perhaps one in which old wine was simply poured into new bottles? I don’t know.
Aside from my pal Milan, I had no especial connection with Czechia (the Wikipedia website is insistent on heading up its own article Czech Republic (in which it concedes the country is also known as Czechia, perhaps interestingly adding not to be confused with Chechnya …)), but I grow wary when it comes to people who for no apparent reason try to persuade me to call something by a given name as opposed to some other, more generally known name. Marathon became Snickers and Treets became M&Ms and I truly wondered why. MG and Oldsmobile got phased out for no apparent reason. The Ivory Coast became Côte d’Ivoire and, while Peking rejoiced in its new name Beijing, the duck was left with the old name, the Black Hole remained in Calcutta and the other duck was firmly ensconced in Bombay.
Now, to boot, the Czech Republic had become Czechia, and thereby encountered criticism that had enraged a Czech to the point of them dismissing an otherwise quite interesting article about Prague suggested to them by me (after they had in fact suggested a favourite work of Milan Kundera’s to me—hence I was returning the compliment) on the ground of a cultured dislike for the newspaper in which it appeared, and I’m not sure I quite understood; and, more to the point, I’m not sure what it was that I didn’t understand the most:
the fact we were connected for no apparent reason on LinkedIn,
the reason the Czech Republic had shunned the idea of reverting to being Bohemia or opting for Čechy,
why it had decided to vehemently lobby the entire world to change its name of a quarter century to Czechia,
how I was supposed to know The Guardian’s position on all that (I didn’t),
how I was supposed to know my contact’s position on The Guardian’s position on all that, and
how that all rendered the Prague article a load of rubbish.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll now be scratching your head.
A day or two ago, I posted a piece, the idea for which came from a text I was working on for a client. When I returned the result of my work to them, I mentioned that I’d seen they had unsubscribed from my blog but that, nevertheless, they might be interested in what I’d written, which was inspired by their text, as, indeed, might you:
The reply was interesting, and I must take it at face value, and bow to the person’s freedom of choice. Here’s what they wrote: Indeed, I unsubscribed because each time I got an e-mail I was tempted to read all your articles...instead of working. It’s quite addictive. They are most interesting and I will certainly dive in from time to time. I like your style quite a lot.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll now be smiling again.
They didn’t need to offer any explanation, but perhaps felt constrained to do so, whereupon I can only assume that the reason given is sincere. If anyone reading this felt similarly obliged to offer up an explanation as to why they had unsubscribed from a blog, a website, a friendship … then they might like to copy and paste this reason because I think it’s charming in its originality and cannot really be taken as anything but a compliment, for which, if the author is reading this, I offer my humble gratitude.
My garden is a wild one. I let it grow and have desisted from using herbicides and pesticides, because I don’t believe in them. I call it contained wilderness. I let the spiders weave their webs and I suffer the snails who live in my postbox and eat my electricity bills (it really is snail mail). In it grows what will grow, and I occasionally tug out tufts of couch grass and strange bushes that seem to blow in on the wind. There is a forest of rhus, mock orange, rhododendron and fragrant lavender. There are irises and a smoke-bush tree that reminds me of Tina Turner and her city limits, and there’s a wicket gate and a stoop, holly and skimmia.
And then, there’s me. Keep smiling.