Postcards from the Edge
Mary Kenny will keep wearing her muskrat coat despite the fur ban
It was distressing that Denmark had to slay 17 million mink. A mutated form of the coronavirus has been found among the furry little creatures.
I have a weakness for fur garments. I’d clung to the notion that the Danes were successfully practising humane fur farming. They’d certainly claimed their standards of ‘ethical’ fur production were exacting. But after the slaughter of the mink, I imagine this may also be a death sentence for Danish fur farming.
It won’t make much difference – furwise – to Britain. The importation of furs to these isles is likely to be banned in 2021, after the United Kingdom leaves the European single market. I suspect Carrie’s influence behind this – the Prime Minister’s fiancée has a tender heart for the protection of small animals. She has said anyone who buys fur is ‘really sick’.
Yet consider the rational facts. There is no opprobrium attached to the wearing of leather. If leather jackets are OK, why aren’t fur coats? Most people still eat the meat of animals, slaughtered in abattoirs. We also lock up millions of chickens in cages before we kill them off.
Moreover, faux fur is much worse for the environment: it is made from plastics and takes 500 years to degrade. Real pelts are organic.
But there are certain trends in the Zeitgeist that you just cannot go against, and the battle for fur is probably lost.
There is still vintage fur – old fur coats, wraps, stoles and accessories found in charity shops. When I see a vintage fur bargain, I snap it up. Fur is beautiful and incredibly warm – and you can’t give it back to the animal. So why not use it?
I also tell those who question my 1950s muskrat coat that the creature is a rodent and thus related to the rat.
There are fewer objections to wearing the pelt of a rat relation than to wearing the fur of a weasel relation – the mink.
The film Wild Mountain Thyme – out on 11th December – has been taking a pasting for its bad Irish accents.
‘Christopher Walken’s Irish accent is a war crime,’ said one critic. Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan also came in for mocking for their ‘begorrah and bejasus’ fake-irish speech.
Fair is fair: Irish accents can be difficult for British and American actors, and there have been some grievous offenders. Julia Roberts, in Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, brought a Californian twang to Irish midlands inflections. Even the superb Tom Cruise failed the test (along with Nicole Kidman) in Far and Away.
The lovely Petula Clark, our Oldie of the Year 2020, while rendering a tuneful version of How Are Things in Gloccamorra? in Finian’s Rainbow, was a bit wobbly on the accent, and her co-star, Fred Astaire, was sweetly laughable. Even James Mason, in that great picture Odd Man Out, was all over the place.
Irish accents are tied to region, and an actor needs to decide exactly where his Irish accent will be rooted. A Cork accent – to Irish ears – is utterly different from a Mayo accent. When Yeats was involved with the Abbey Theatre, the national theatre of Ireland, they fashioned a generalised Irish rural accent they called Kiltartan.
All nations have regional variations: Yorkshire is very different from West Country. But England and France both have a ‘standard’ version of the language. In England, this is RP – received pronunciation – heard in movies and dramas, set in London or in Downton Abbey’s drawing room. Most Irish stories are rural – so the accent reflects a definite county identity.
There is a ‘standard’ Irish accent – Terry Wogan’s and Graham Norton’s both came close to it – though for some reason it seldom inspires drama. Norton, to Irish ears, speaks with a modified, southern Protestant, middle-class accent.
Actors are now benefiting from better coaching with accents. My award goes to Alan Rickman, again in Michael Collins, who captured the nuance of the Clare/limerick border, playing De Valera. He got to the source: pinpoint the region.
During lockdown periods, our local Boots pharmacy had several notices underlining the usual regulations, headed with the message ‘Shop safe’.
I approached the pharmacist and confessed that I had a strong urge to add ‘ly’ to the message. ‘It should be “Shop safely”,’ I said.
‘Yes, I agree,’ she said wearily. ‘But we’re not English any more, are we? We’re Americans – in language, anyway.’
Some Americanisms are useful and add to the richness of the language, but must we accept them all? My least favourite, which emerged after the US election, was ‘lawyering up’: engaging lawyers. Ugh.
Mr Trump’s ‘bigly’, on the other hand, seems engagingly amusing. So … enjoy Christmas bigly!