Martians, bells, cutlery… things are all relative when you think about it

Having been away from these pages for a few weeks, I thought that when I came back I really ought to address a properly big question. So here we go: what are things?

You know, things? Pens and tomatoes and motorcycles and daffodils. And I don’t just mean objects: also chess and Valentine’s Day and ants and poetry and Somalia. They’re all things. The Observer is a thing, but so is this particular issue of the Observer. But also, the individual copy of this particular issue of the Observer that you might be currently holding is a thing – and a different thing from the institution of the newspaper itself, or the concept of a day’s individual edition, but somehow linked. But then you might be reading this on a phone (a thing) or computer (a thing), either way via the medium (a thing? A person? A lady with a turban?) of the Guardian website (which is also a thing).

I have a feeling I’m stumbling along a path already trodden by those more learned and with more time on their hands than I. I vaguely remember listening to an episode of In Our Time in which some hapless boffins had to explain all the knots Bertrand Russell had got himself into trying to prove that numbers were a thing, while Melvyn Bragg got so cross and bored you could actually hear his irritated glare.

So, things: it’s a broad church. Or they’re a broad church. And a broad church is, as well as a metaphor (itself a thing) for things, also a thing. Such as might have a magnificent tower or spire, perfect for bell-ringing. And the practice of bell-ringing is also, of course, a thing.

But what sort of thing? Now we’re getting down to it. Well it is not, currently, a sport. (A sport is a type of thing.) But Robert Lewis, editor of The Ringing World, says it should be. Because he thinks it is. I mean, he thinks it should be classified as a sport, which must surely mean he believes it already is one. He can’t think that the classification alone would be enough to make it one, like a fairy godmother’s wand. He’s not hitching mice to a pumpkin and calling himself princess.

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“Ringing is… a healthy mental and physical workout,” Lewis says. “We would like many more people to have the opportunity to try it and identification as a sport could help achieve that.” I wonder why it would help. It would put me off. Because books about it would be in a different section of the library? Next to old Wisdens and the novelisation of Rocky? Funding probably, isn’t it. It’s always bloody funding. That’s definitely a thing.

Anyway, in this case the fairy godmother, or rather the organisation in charge of saying “It’s no good putting that in a pie, it’s got an axle”, is Sport England. It decides what’s a sport and recently told the game of bridge it wasn’t one because it didn’t entail a “physical activity”. It’s a lot stricter than Card Game England, which let in Twister on the basis that it’s “all played on a single large card”.

I reckon bell-ringing’s case is fairly persuasive. It’s clearly a physically strenuous activity that requires skill, and there are hotly, indeed sweatily, contested competitions between different bell-ringers. Shooting, darts, quoits, angling, yoga and ballooning are official sports, so why not?

The main reason is that its governing body, the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, doesn’t want to apply: “The primary object of the council is to promote and foster the ringing of bells for Christian prayer, worship and celebration,” it said. “We enjoy and rely on an excellent relationship with various church bodies and we would not wish to risk prejudicing this.” What a weird difference of opinion among the campanologists. They don’t disagree over what bell-ringing involves, what they should all actually do – just over how the activity is classified.

This reminded me of the fuss surrounding the nomination of The Martian for best comedy at this year’s Golden Globes, an award it then won. Many felt that, not only was the film not funny, something which wouldn’t necessarily make it stand out among comedies, but it wasn’t even meant to be. A post-structuralist might argue that the film-makers’ intentions were irrelevant. Others considered them cynical and accused The Martian’s producers of muscling in on the comparatively cushy comedy category in order to grab an easy award and add to the pre-Oscars buzz surrounding their film, without having to take on heavy hitters like The Revenant in the more competitive best self-important-three-hour-slog category.

But how could an unfunny film be judged the winner of the comedy category? I suppose the judges must have liked it better than the films with jokes. They can’t have thought it a better comedy, just a better film, a better thing. It’s like a bacon sandwich winning the “tastiest apple” award at a farm show. Comedies aren’t as easily defined as sandwiches and apples. I’m sure there’s some deliberate humour in The Martian, so maybe that means it is a comedy. And the award, after all, is for best comedy, not funniest comedy. Maybe all that funny stuff in the other films made the Hollywood Foreign Press Association feel cheap.

But all of these problems stem from trying to divide things into meaningful groups: sports, calls to prayer, comedies, tragedies, films, YouTube clips. What is a call to prayer but a noisy sport without a scoring system? What is a drama but an unbelievably long comedy without any jokes? What is an awards ceremony but a strange and inefficient distribution system for vulgar knick-knacks? Well, some would say it’s a comedy, some a drama, some, what with all the getting up and down, a sport. And it’s certainly a call to prayer for many nominees.

A spoon is just a very ineffective fork with a single blunted tine. A fork is only a spoon with annoying holes that inhibit soup consumption. What is soup but a liquid mousse? And isn’t steak and chips just a very hearty, lumpy consommé? Or a hot and greasy weapon? Or a work of modern art? Or a weirdly meaty non-dairy cheese?

So does the big question I posed have an answer? No. But actually “No” is an answer. And a word. And a thing.