Oh What A Time... - #67 Complaining (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

This week we’re looking at how the art of complaining has evolved over history. You’ll hear the evidence of people having a moan in Ancient Babylonia, Pliny the Younger and his tear-ups with his pal Septicius Clarus, plus.. how medieval scribes expressed a displeasure with their lot.  And the big conversation that’s got the nation thinking this week: could anyone feasibly build a house out of Chomps? I’m sure you’ll have thoughts on this subject so please do send them in: [e-mail] If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on:  X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was better for having hard cash. Because yesterday, I took the kids over to the park and I paid for things on my phone now. My phone had died. The kids said, can we get an ice cream? I said, yes. Got there, ordered the ice cream. The ice creams are there.

My phone's dead. I can't pay. I have no money. I'm nothing. I'm in that moment. I have nothing. No financial clout whatsoever. Will Barron What's weird as well is we've been using cash currency for thousands of years. Dan Malkus Yeah. And you know, if you pick it up, you know you've got it. It's in your pocket. You know it's there. Will Barron I was listening to a phoning on LBC and it must have been Nick Ferrari.

How often do you do that? I was in a taxi, right? So quite often. And my God, he was talking about this. He was doing a phoning about this. He's like, so what's the smallest amount of, what's the smallest fee or price that you've paid for something with your phone or with a card?

Someone said, rung in and said like, I don't know, a chomp, 20 pence. 20 pence! We're nearing the end of cash, the cashless society, we're hurling towards it. So what about, what about the paperboy? How do I tip him a pound at Christmas?" It was just like all this weird... A pound? A pound? All these weird sort of scenarios that I didn't quite recognise.

Well, the paperboy's going to have to start carrying Apple Pay. That is the answer, isn't it? Surely he just needs one of those little touchpad things. It'll be fine. It's on him somewhat. And yeah, whenever I go abroad, even to a modern country like France, I've got a bit of cash just in case. No, they're just as modern and they're just as into chip and pin in France as we are. That said, I think I hemorrhage money less when I'm paying with cash. Will Barron I think I hemorrhage money less when I'm paying with cash. So if I happen to go away and I take a certain amount of euros out, I will be more sensible with that money than I am when I'm just tapping willy nilly with no thought.

Mason Hick Well that's the thing, isn't it? That's what they say. If you're trying to budget, you should take out cash and then that is your money. Once you've gone over that, you don't spend any more. Will Barron David Batty, the ex-leads midfielder, used to not trust banks so he'd keep all his money under his mattress. So he was like a premiership footballers wage, remember that? So he's probably at that point getting 12 grand a week in 1998 and it's all going under his mattress. To my mind, suggested mattress is like a really uncomfortable angle from like mid- season. It's not really

high, it's close to the ceiling. The Princess and the Pea with If It's David Balthe is a very different story, isn't he? One and a half million quid in tenors. Just to clarify, that was a wild rumour, just to clarify, that I heard and told you. You've just put it out there like it's a statement of fact. No, is that not true? Well, I mean, can it be? The guy was getting paid 15 grand a week, probably. Actually, when drawing all that, the bed wouldn't be big enough, unless you built like a tower.

I mean, I used to keep like, polos under the bed so that my mum wouldn't catch them. But I didn't have 100,000 polos under there. I heard, at one point he had so much, his nose was nearly chopped off by a ceiling fan. That's what I heard. That his bed was so close to the ceiling. By the Artex. He had really rough skin because the Artex on the ceiling was rubbing against his face. Chris, just to really go back to your original story, so you couldn't pay for the ice cream.

Were these Mr Whippies with a flake that were now melting in the guy's hand or was he able to put it back in the freezer because it was a calippo or whatever? No, well, we came to, because I'm there a bit, I basically got them on tick credit. They gave me these ice creams. That old story. That old chestnut. Have you set up a tab with your local ice cream truck? I'm in debt. Whenever Chris Skull passes any Mr Whippy, the person by the counter goes, the usual sir.

A nod and a wink? Yes. Yeah, just my usual, £8.99. He's got a Mr Whippy black card, which means he pays three grand a year. He just needs to show it and he can get whatever ice cream he wants, whenever he sees any ice cream truck. He gets his 10,000th Mr Whippy free and it's all worth it. Ellis, let's say you've got a Mr Whippy black card. How many ice creams are you getting

a month? You're paying 400 quid a year to justify it, whatever. Are you using it in a way that makes it financially worthwhile? Not in the winter months. I'm really taking advantage of it, I would say, May through to September. It would feel slightly daft in February, walking around, snot running down your nose. Chasing the ice cream van down the street. However, El, look at this for a link. You'd be annoyed about that. You might even complain about it. Oh, that is good podcasting. God, that's good podcasting.

Look at that! And what is today's show all about? What historical subject? Today's historical subject is war. No, each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject and today we're going to be discussing complaining. Indeed. We're going to be talking about the ancient complaining of Babylonia. A dinner date in ancient Rome? This sounds great. And I'm going to be talking about the ancient complaining of Babylonia. A dinner date in ancient Rome? This sounds great. And I'm going to be talking about medieval scribes and the complaints that they had to deal with. It's going to be a really fun episode this. Also, as always, we're going to kick off with a little bit of correspondence because

you guys, as always, have sent us fantastic stuff. J.M has contacted the show to say, Museum of Failure Exhibit is what he's titled it. Hello all. My submission to the museum… We should briefly explain for people who might have missed this, Chris, explain your idea. That we create some sort of museum full of artefacts of things that went badly wrong, didn't work. A museum of failure. Exactly. He said, my submission to the Museum of Failure would be an original wagon wheel, as in the chocolate.

It would finally end the age-old discussion of whether wagon wheels are smaller or your hands are now larger. It could be placed next to a display of Freddo prices through the ages as well, which that's a great idea, regards Josh. So his idea is basically, let's deal with this fact. Are confectionary products getting smaller or are we just getting bigger? Will Barron Well I think the chomp is probably the best inflation indicator. Or to an an extent, the Fudge, because they were the two that were significantly cheaper than everything else. So, if you only had

£10, you could buy a Chomp. If you only had £15, you could buy a Fudge. It's been a long time since I bought either of those two and I dread to think what they cost now. £4.87. What would you guess a fudge is? I reckon a fudge is going to be 35 pence. I'm going to find out now, how much does a fudge cost? Because we're approaching the £10 pint basically in some places. Wow. Yes.

And something that when I started going on the piss, would have been unimaginable. Even though I understood inflation, because I was doing politics and history A-level, I would have been like, yeah, but before we reach that point, the earth will have stopped spinning on its axis and everyone will have calmed down and then we'll go back to a normal price. What a fudge. Ellis, would you like the cost of fudge in a pack of 60 or singular fudge? Will Barron A singular fudge. I've never bought 60 in my

life. I can't relate to that. Will Barron Because if you do that, you won't be paying the singular price. I imagine there's some kind of benefit to buying 60. A Cadbury's fudge chocolate bar now costs 30 pence. That's what it costs a day. So what was it when we were growing up? 10p? Is that what it was? 10p, yeah. When I was a kid anyway. How much did you say a chomp was in your head growing up?

Oh, a chomp was 10p, a fudge was about 15p. Chomp now 25p. Wow. That's huge. That's huge. That's Mars bar price basically. A Mars bar would be 30 pence. Space Invaders crisps was one as well. Current price. Look at this, I'm just quickly Googling this. Where are you getting these prices from? Are you buying them on Amazon? Well this is very specific information actually. I can tell you what Space Raiders pickled onion costs in Londis in Dagenham. It's a very particular... I've got Google set up to only tell me prices of things in

Dagenham and any information. It's always Dagenham based. It's 35p now for a packet of Space Invaders in the Dagenham area. It might be more in Barcelona, in New York. Mason- What do they cost to make? What are they? It's going to be maize, isn't it? Whatever maize is. Whatever maize is, yeah. But they used to be 10p. So there you are. I think that's quite a good idea. I think an idea, a room dedicated to how much more expensive things are than they used to be, people would love, because it's really nostalgic.

And you'd call it the inflation zone. Yeah, it would be so great. Yeah, with inflation, I find inflation a difficult thing to wrap my head around. And I always think the example I go to in my head is how much it cost to build Buckingham Palace, which was what, 400 grand back in 1911 whenever it was built. But that's quite difficult numbers. But I could track a chomp over time and completely wrap my head around inflation. You're the official chomp tracker working for the Bank of England.

Why on working lunch with Agent Charles don't they do the FTSE 100 and the price of a chomp? I think that's more relatable. Yes. I think everyone would be more invested. Interest rates going up means nothing to me. A chomp going up 5p, I get that. I occasionally, because of the kind of things I'm interested in, I will occasionally on Twitter or Instagram be shown photos of the inside of newsagents in East London in 1980, and I always look at

the prices, I always look at the packets, because obviously packet design has changed. And chomps were like two pence back then. Yes. That's, you know, I don't remember the two-pinch jump. Glory days. The glory days. Make Britain great again. My grandparents, their house, they bought it in the 70s. It was like three grand. I mean, the mortgage would have been about £15 a month, wasn't it? Our grandparents' generation, everything was basically free. That's what it was, wasn't

it? Nothing cost anything at all. Yeah, but they all earned like a tenner a week. Alistair Yes. But 100% of your wages would go on fun. Because rent would be nothing. Everything was free. Will Barron Good news. We at the union have worked very hard to get you a pay rise. You're now on a thousand chumps a week. Alistair Yeah!

What a time to be alive. So there you go. that is an email from Josh. I think that's a fine suggestion. I do like the idea of a nostalgic room where people could spend a couple of hours in there just going up to different things and saying, yeah, they were cheaper then, weren't they? And your friend's going, yeah, wow, it was different. Oh, it was so much cheaper. Imagine if they cost that now. Kill a couple of hours in there. God, that would be better, wouldn't it? Yeah Yeah, it would wouldn't it? I wonder how much that would cost in five years' time, I don't know. It depends on lots of things really. I mean war in Ukraine and all sorts of... Yeah, I mean you don't know what Putin's going to

do obviously. He could really imbalance the world economy. Yeah, he could couldn't he? Yes, it's depressing isn't it? Yeah, it is quite depressing. It wasn't being young good, it was much, much better being young. Mason- And what is maize? I don't know what maize is, I've got no idea what. Let's go and ask that guy. Excuse me, do you work here? Yeah, I do actually. What's maize? I don't know mate, I'm not quite sure. People keep asking, I should find that out to be honest. Mason- I wonder if they've tried to make space invaders healthier. Mason- Okay, interesting.

Mason- When I was eating space invaders fairly regularly in the 80s, they must have been radioactive back then. A proper Chernobyl crisp. How do you get that flavour? What are you doing in that lab to make something that tastes like that? It is a lab. The organic Space Invader doesn't taste anything like the real thing. They were trying to invent LSD or something like that. What a moment. Try this. What a moment it's going to be when we are finally invaded by aliens and they smell of

pickled onion and are made of maize. Look at that. Do you want to say I didn't see this coming? Is what I would say. I just worked out, El, by the way. So what your grandparents bought their house for 3000 pounds. In today's money, that's 12,000 chumps. Wow. Doesn't sound that much, does it? You get 12,000 chumps for three grand.

That doesn't sound, that's like a good deal in my head. Yeah. I'd swap my house for 12,000 chumps. I'd never buy a chump again. No. It's a great deal. You'd be chump for life, isn't it? Chumps for life. You could build a house out of those chumps as well. A little chocolate house.

You could eat from. You wake up during the night, you're peckish. Remove a brick from the wall. It's a supporting wall! It's a load-bearing chump. Do not remove the load-bearing chomp. Do not remove the load-bearing chomp. What's that phrase for a word? You greedy bastard. What are those?

It's a lintel. It's a lintel chomp. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an RSJ chomp. It's holding up a window. Tom's wife, Claire, goes, Tom, why is the house collapsing in the middle of the night? You haven't been eating the toilet walls of you again. In winter, the chomps are hard. You're loving it. Showing to your wife, this was a good

idea. And then the early summer heat grows and you notice the chimney's on a wonk. Come and have a look at what we've done in the attic. Look at that Velox chomp there. Have I ever told you at the time, on the 90s football broadcast I did called Quickly Kevin about football in the 90s, we once made a joke about Cabri's boosts and David boosts. I can't remember what the joke was. And Cabri sent me something like 700 boost bars. Do you remember this? I know this Chris, because you gave me a box of boosts. Yeah, I was giving away to everyone. I went to your house and you gave me a box of boosts. We had to put them in the car, because they were just hanging around it, just picking them up and eating them.

Before we get onto the history, I just want to say, with boosts, I do really like a boost, if anyone knows. Yeah, sort of why, I do want 750 of them. They're quite a lot, aren't they? They're claggy as well. It's quite full on. Claggy is the exact right word. It's quite a sort of punch in the face, aren't they? They're claggy as well. It's quite full on. Yeah. Claggy is the exact right word.

It's quite a sort of punch in the face, isn't it? Don't talk to me about clag when you've eaten 500 of them. I was Clag Man Scoop. That's what you need. I've worked it out. So you're making your... What was the chocolate bar we were making the house out of? Chomp.

Chomps. So the basic structure is a chomp house and then you have load bearing booths. Taking the major strain. The booster of that biscuit basically has an RSJ built into the biscuit. Yeah, yeah. You do not want a load bearing flake. It's too soft. In the summer months.

It's too soft. In the summer months madness. There you go. Garden path made out of melting flakes squelching your way to the front door. Your new white train is ruined. Just sitting in the living room in the summer, chocolate dripping onto your head. Why don't I go out in the new white Sambas? This is a... take the wellies out, Crane. Right, thank you Josh for that email. We really appreciate it.

What's the, is Hansel and Gretel fairytale where he lives in? Which one is it? It is Hansel and Gretel. Do they live in a house made of sweets? I think they are sort of tempted to a house made of sweets by a sort of wicked witch. Very, very impractical. Alistair But I think that's candy canes and stuff like that. I don't know if that changes the practicality of it, but I think it's quite a hard sort of rock type sweet that she's going for.

Will Barron Jelly beans as slate for the roof or pebble dash would work. Will Barron That's quite a nice touch, isn't it? Will Barron Yeah. Alistair It's a nice touch. Will Barron Marshmallow carpet for softness. You can be the estate agent on a house made entirely from sweets you buy in a news agent. Not even like posh sweets.

Not even green and black. Welcome to the double-decker greenhouse. There's not a huge amount of light. There must be. Also, with the huge amount of light there must be. Also, with the rising price of chocolate, you can sell it as an investment. You can go, you're paying 200 grand for this now, but trust me, this will be 300 grand in five years time. It's a good investment. There you go. Well, thank you for emailing the show. If you have anything you want to get off your chest, be it one day time machine stuff, be

it famous relatives, be it exhibits for this bizarre museum. Here. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at owhatatime.com. Now clear off. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists,

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And at the end of the show I'm going to be talking about the sort of rather difficult life of a medieval scribe and the sort of complaints they had to deal with. Lovely. And we're going back right now to ancient Mesopotamia. Don't go there very often, do we? No. Not enough. No, definitely not.

I don't really know. Been quite busy recently. But I really should make more of a point. Quite right. Sorry. Thank you for flagging that. We're going to learn about ancient complaining in Mesopotamia. But firstly, complaining.

Where do we stand? I thought we could begin this discussion here. Here's where I'm at with complaining. Yesterday I went to the bakers. I asked for a specific cake. They gave me the wrong cake. I didn't complain. I just ate the wrong cake. They gave me the wrong cake. I didn't complain. I just ate the wrong cake.

Yeah. I am not a complainer at all. I just don't care enough about anything, really. Right. So it's a combination of being a conflict avoider slash laziness. So if you went to a, let's say you went on holiday, stayed at a hotel and the whole thing was an absolute disaster. You got food poisoning, stuff like that. Would you say anything to them, or would you just say, I'm not going back there? Will Barron If it's one of those, like TV programmes I used to watch years ago, like Holidays from Hell, where you turn up and it's a building site and there's no toilet and the bed is covered in like old bits of masonry and- Will Barron Probably feces if there's no toilet.

Will Barron Feces and nails and- then yes, I would ask to speak to someone. But if it's, I ask for a panne of chocolat and they bring me a plain croissant, I would just think, I do not care enough. I'm not a complainer either. However, I would like to say hallelujah to the AI chat bot, which is when you've ordered something on an app and something hasn't turned up, you can talk to something which is basically not really a person. It's a thing that pops up and it just responds in a sort of AI way. Those sort of things. I still won't go angry to AI. I'd still be quite polite. You're polite even to AI?

Yeah, I do. I do still write quite a polite way to AI. But I will say, by the way, I order two pizzas and no pizzas have turned up. Hey man, sorry to be a pest. Tom's worried about having a good reputation for when Skynet takes over. Just pull up his text chat with the pizza supplier. Oh, he's very polite. He can survive. He's a nice guy. We should spare him. Exactly. When they pull up the full report on all humans, and I'm the only one who's been decent to them, on Deliveroo, they'll let me live.

Amazing. Yeah. So there you are. That's where I am. Well, it's weird to hear about complaining to an AI. We're going to go way beyond, way earlier than AI. So ancient Mesopotamia around 1750 BC, lots of evidence of humans complaining even back then. And some of these complaints have gone around as memes. The first complaint I'll read you was discovered by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s during archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Ur in modern-day Iraq. It was set down in cuneiform, which is one of the oldest forms of writing, on a clay

tablet by a copper merchant called Nanny. Not the guy who played The Manchester United with not much success. Nanny was arguing about some supplies he had paid for but not received. And this is what he wrote, What do you take me for? That you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money, deposited

with you, but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telman who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt on account of that one trifling sliver of silver that I owe you. You feel free to speak in such a way." Mason- Wow. So how do they find this complaint? Feig- A lot of this is written down on ancient clay tablets that have been discovered. That's basically, it's the ancient Mesopotamian version of AI chatbots publishing their conversations

with Tom Crane, isn't it? He never would have thought, he never would have thought, you know, thousands of years later we would be discussing his complaint on a podcast. He would have thought, well, there's all the other stuff I've done. They might discuss that. But me getting a bit narky with someone who hasn't delivered something I've ordered. It's like if in a thousand years' time, me emailing Amazon to say, sorry, the box was damaged. Could I have another one? As if that is my legacy.

But it's more than that because you're also... it's the time that would have gone into chipping away a rant that long into… did you say it was Claire? That must have taken so long. I mean, you'd think after about two sentences, which is probably two hours in, you're starting to calm down. I reckon… Surely. …tonally the end of my complaint will be so different to the beginning as I calm down because there's been quite soothing about chipping away and chiselling.

By the end of it, honestly, no problem if not. If you can sort it out, that would be great. But honestly, it is no bother. Cheers. Thank you. Bye now. I am so angry, but actually, you know what? Chipping away at this clay tablet is actually quite relaxing and therapeutic.

I feel like I've a lot of a little bit out of my... I've often wondered whether people were less angry or had less argumentative phone calls during the period when they had the rotary dial first, because it would take so long. I am going to give Steve a piece of my mind. Okay. Oh, one, four. By the time you've run with Steve, it's 45 minutes later. Actually, I'll leave it. Hang on.

They think I've done a zero and actually it was a nine. I've got to start a journey. Well, actually, even before the dial, wouldn't you have to pick up the phone to an operator and go, right, I'm looking to speak to a Mr J Smith in Lewisham. Put me through to him now. Yes, I'll hold. Are you having to suppress your feelings when you speak to that operator or are you allowed just to be, can you just be yourself at that point? Let yourself be. What's the rules? Hi, I'm looking at you. What's the rules? Hello. Would you mind awfully putting me through to Mr J. Davis of 13 King Road, Lewisham? Thank you.

Because he's sleeping with my wife. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bastard. So there you go, Chris. So they chip away for ages on clay to write this. Wow, that's amazing. Yes. So Nanny probably never got his money back. He had been ripped off by bad tradesmen. But the survival of this letter and several others like it reveals just how often ancient

Mesopotamians complained about this and the other. In fact, they had even proverbs which dealt with contempt as a subject. One wrote, I speak of my fate, it is contempt. I speak of my path through life. I will embitter the mouth of a man. Wow. Ancient proverbs. Good, aren't they?

Yeah, they are. Yeah. It is contempt. I like that. That's great. Not my vibe. I like it. But again, it's like those clay tablets, like sending them around. It's such a... I imagine like you're not going to get many keyboard warriors, are you? Because you have to really

be invested in the message you want to send. It's a lot of effort. That's essentially manual labour. When you think how easy it is to send a text or a complaint in now, you'd probably employ someone to do it, I reckon. Because the keyboard warrior thing is interesting, right? So if you, like I know a few footballers, for instance, who have got social media. When they've had a bad game, as an example, some bloke sitting on his sofa on his phone can tweet the person and say, I thought you were shit today. And then the footballer who they've tweeted is sitting on their sofa and obviously they check their Twitter and they see that message.

Before, you had to maybe write a letter to the club. Could anyone be bothered if you were really mad turning up to the training ground to sort of shout to people as they walked in? Tell you, we used to have one at Upton Park at West Ham, Chris's club. It was very easy to gather by the player car park. I've talked to players at West Ham who were there when it was Upton Park, rather than London Stadium. They would stay in the changing rooms because they didn't want to leave because all the fans would gather in the car park to shout their complaints. But obviously, that is, you can do that straight away in this instant gratification. They weren't chiselling their complaints into a tablet. Will Barron This reminds me, I did a gig once in Bournemouth,

I think it was, a place called Bournemouth Junglers. It was a very rowdy Friday night gig. And I, shall we say, struggled. It wasn't the best gig of my life. Hens and stag do is really tricky. I died on my ass, one of my favourite phrase. I then go back to the green room and I think, I'm just going to wait this out. I'm just going to wait for people to leave and then when they've left, I will leave because then I don't need to see anyone. However, the final act comes off and then I hear on the tonneau, is everyone ready for the DJ? And suddenly this space turns into a nightclub. So I'm now stuck in the green room and what I thought was going to be an empty theatre has now turned into a nightclub. How long do I wait? So the green room no longer opens out into what would

have been just a path out of the exit of the building. It's now directly onto the dance floor. Okay. So the door opens, I'm there and walking through, you mentioned Upton Park, that sort of really vocal feedback from people who are dancing, dancing and telling you your shit. Not stopping. Night fever, night, you were shit mate, fever, hangover, you were really crap mate. Do you sort of dance through yourself? It's times like that. You think I would prefer to leave in a dumb waiter. I would prefer to leave in a dumb waiter. I would prefer to leave baked into a giant cake.

Slide down the drainpipe onto the street. Slide down the drainpipe in a big pile of washing. If I could be in a big laundry basket, I would take all of that over this. That is me. Of course. Yeah. And of course, because I'm non-combatative, I'm giving you a little like, yeah, you're right, a little nod. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Fair point, mate. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Anyway, so that was quite triggering. Thanks for bringing that up, Chris.

Thanks. Well, let's go back to ancient Mesopotamia as well. There's another guy called Aplomb, and he was writing down on a clay tablet that he was being harangued by some irritating relatives and was compelled to give them some of his food supply whilst he was being harangued by some irritating relatives and was compelled to give them some of his food supply whilst he was away on business in Babylon. Otherwise, he said, they will not quit complaining. Oh wow. So he's like writing like a, essentially a letter to someone saying, my relatives are just begging for food all the time. I've just got to give it to them. Otherwise they just

won't leave me alone. Do you know what's so weird though, is how relatable this all is? Jason Vale Yeah. It is really relatable, isn't it? And this is the same, like, this is the birthplace, in Babylonia, is like the birthplace of the modern citadel. This is where they actually began to urbanise. So these people are getting these problems for the first time. These problems that we suffer now, they were kind of experiencing this thinking, this must be unique to our society. No, this is going to go on for thousands of years.

Because it's sort of like the beginning of recorded history, isn't it? So 3000-ish BC. And yet their complaints are chillingly similar to complaints from the present day. To complaints that the maze-based space invaders will discover on Tom's phone when they dig it up in 2000 years. Exactly. Or, actually Chris, it could be on a tablet as well. Oh, that's nice. I'll give you that.

Because the tablet also means a flat screen thing that you write on nowadays. Very good. Very nice. The iPad is a tablet. Anyway, move on. So it's worth pointing out, we've established that most of these complaints are getting written down on clay tablets, but actually the people caught in the middle of the real bellyaching are of course the scribes.

The people with the stylus and who are chipping away into clay tablets, who in the words of one historian, translate the inarticulate complaints of the poor and uneducated into the stereotyped eloquence of a petition or a begging letter. Yeah, you could basically punch it up, couldn't you? Is that where it comes from? No. Punch it up? No, I don't think so. So you would take your complaints to someone whose job it was to make it seem more eloquent. A Babylonian scribe. And that was their job to put your rant into poetic verse, basically, is that what it was, to make you sound less stupid?

To pop it onto a clay tablet. Or a Babylonian scribe or a tubshar, which means a tablet writer. And these people were typically well-educated, literate, graduating from a writing school, the aduba, in their early 20s with knowledge of two languages, Akkadian and Sumerian. And they had the advantage over most of those they ever met, especially those who lived outside the royal palace or other areas where scribes congregated. Most scribes were men and although some well-known scribes such as Enhudwana were women, but they all came from the upper ranks of society. I reckon it'd be quite a depressing job just summarising slash punching up people's complaints. I think you would really alter your view of society, wouldn't it?

Because you would just think that everything was going wrong all of the time. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of like, I'd imagine, basically working for Watchdog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not just consumer complaints. People are complaining about their families, their friends. And you can also be confident that if you don't punch it up perfectly, they're going to complain about the way you're punching it up.

You're working with a type of person, aren't you? Probably a stickler for detail. Please can you scribe this for me? This scribe is particularly useless. I'll leave you with this. Some incredible dialogue from a tablet found in Ur, dated to about 1900 to 1600 BC. It's a conversation overheard by two women essentially complaining about each other.

This is in the British Museum, this dialogue. It's called a dialogue between two women. I'll just call them A and B. So A, it's like an argument. A, you're a haughty woman whose lips are worthless. B, shouter, croaker. A, her anus is cracked. How long can she argue? B, you have the eyesight of old women and the face of a servile labourer. Wow. There's more but servile labourer really stuck out to me. Yeah. You have the face of a servile labourer." Wow. There's more, but servile labourer really stuck out to me. You have the face of a servile labourer. It's like someone ploughing the fields politely. I have to say, Chris, it's the phrase,

her anus is cracked and the one's really leapt out at me more. I will never not think about that phrase. It's in there for life now. Yeah, absolutely. I'm also imagining the scribe starting to chip that in and go, sorry, can I just double check you did say Uranus is cracked? Okay, you did. Desperate to use that in an argument now. Next time when I'm in that West, I might use it on AI, on the chat bot. Listen, you need to sort out my current account, and Uranus is cracked. There's a bit more. A. Your spouse is like a bat. You have emptied the contents of his mind.

B. You have a small vagina and extremely long pubes. Once again, this is in the British Museum. And then finally, A. You have a cracked fanny that's all blocked up. No way. This is a conversation, an argument between two women in ancient... That could be written on the inside of a bus stop in Pontypridd. I'd say it's too rude for that even. That's one of the rudest things I've ever heard about a collection of sentences. That's the end of part one of complaining. If you want part two right now, why not become an Oh What A Time full-timer? Couple of bonus episodes every month, loads of good stuff for all the benefits. Go to owhatatime.com and you can sign up there as well, but otherwise we'll see you tomorrow

for part two. So so Thank you.