Flagging

Standing on Whitehall, waiting for the arrival of my bus into work, I glanced over towards the Houses of Parliament, and could see the Union flag fluttering atop them in the chilly, moderate breeze. My thoughts turned towards Northern Ireland, where the ongoing fights over changes to the demonstration of loyalty to the crown are again bringing pain and anger to the streets. It's very difficult to understand exactly what drives the loyalists in Ulster. What makes them so rabidly pro British, and what is the nature of this strange love for the mother country?

There is of course the cliche of Paisley and his picture of Brenda on the wall, so clearly it must have something to do with the symbolism of the English monarch which does it for them, rather than whichever crowd of thieves is inhabiting the grand buildings along this famous old street at any given time. It occurred to me that history can be a Very Big Thing, that many people see the invisible thread linking them to their distant past as clearly as the sun in the sky. Somewhere in the mind's eye of the bowler hatted sash wearer is the Battle of the Boyne, King Billy riding triumphantly to rout the Papist devils and burn their houses down.

It is difficult to fully comprehend all aspects of this long distant past, and it is often a mistake which we all make, assessing a historical past from the point of view of a modern sensibility. However, in common with much of current events reporting, things are rarely as they appear on first reading. Having read a (very) little about 17th Century politics, it does seem ironic that William of Orange was actually supported by Pope Alexander VIII for his own nefarious ends - the relative microcosm of Irish religio-political struggles overshadowed by those of the wider world. How little, one could say, cared the Holy Father for his Catholic flock; how little King Billy for his Protestant subjects. Now, as we stand staring at history in the making, do we see anything different? Old Ratzenberg may bring his funny car over to the Emerald Isle for a bit of a hand waving session, but that's about it. Never mind the paedophilia, eh Your Holiness? Similarly, I can't see Lizzie crying in her gilded cornflakes over the parlous state of the average estate dweller in the Ballybeen.

Now on to Loftus Road for... For what? Mario's swansong, hat-trick and a red card before he goes back over the sea for his pasta and future? Let's be honest, this has got a City win all over it. Or will it be a dour 0-0, 'Arry's buses parked firmly across the width of the pitch and Merlin fouled every time he starts one of his little darting runs? No Kompany to stem the threat of Sweep, declining though his power may be, and we run the risk of conceding. City humbled by the bottom team, who were knocked out of the Cup by MK Dons at the weekend. It could be any of those things.

Roots II

Having made my way through the book a little further, I feel bad about my last post on Alex Haley's Roots. It's as if I didn't give the piece enough kudos somehow, did not appreciate the massive cultural impact the work must have had. This is proving to be a searing read, and my somewhat flippant attitude was shaped by the fact that I had previously only watched the TV series. What I am beginning to realise from reading the text, as well as some of the background to it, is that the story carries an enormous weight - especially for black Americans - and that it is written with great power. I still don't know which sequences were plagiarised from Harold Courlander, but will try to get hold of a copy of The African to find out.

Be that as it may, the sequences on the slave ship are viscerally 'honest', if that's the right word, unflinching in their portrayal of the squalor and utter brutality visited on the poor people aboard by the barbaric 'toubob'. How any human being could have survived such a terrible journey: four and a half months in the hold, chained to boards 24 hours a day, rolling in their own piss and shit, covered with sores and infested with parasites, beaten and whipped, is truly beyond me. Haley writes with great pride in the inner strength and dignity of the African men and women torn from their homeland to be sold as free labour in the not so brave New World. By describing the ship as a giant canoe, a cannon as a great black stick, and other similar devices, we see what is happening through Kunta Kinte's eyes; his inability to fully comprehend what is happening to him giving the terrible events an almost supernatural power.

Importantly, there is no Ed Asner figure to soften the worse than hellish cruelty meted out by the crew. This particular addition to the character list, along with some others, was made by the Executives at ABC Television to please the watching white folks in middle America, and it is I feel a further shame that it was felt necessary to do so. Indeed, I have read that there were no real expectations for the programme when it was made, and that it was originally almost sneaked out for fear of turning off the core audience - or the core audience turning off. How wrong can you be?

I also felt that there might have been a racist interpretation to some of the things I said in my previous post (specifically the bit about doing Kunta Kinte and Chicken George impressions) and I would like to quash that here. I would say that my younger self - like Richard Herring's - was a racist. We knew little of the world in Oswestry, and many - if not all - were, I'm afraid to say, surrounded by racist attitudes. Remember that Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language were staple fare for us also, and so (excruciating as it now is to remember it) capering around shouting 'Don't whup me massa!' was considered the height of sophisticated humour for a 13 year-old boy.

Did watching Roots make me consider my racist attitudes in any way? In all honesty, I don't think it did. Just about everyone loved the programme. It was a cracking adventure with some boobs in it, but I really don't remember contemplating the role of the British and Americans in slavery to any degree. Reading Roots now is certainly making me do that; from my position as a middle-aged man, I can more clearly empathise with the human suffering portrayed, and can more fully comprehend how the whole thing must make black people feel. Especially as some things just haven't changed. Alex Haley must be given great praise for what he did, and I would urge you all to read this book.

Zippin up my Roots

I've just picked up a copy of Alex Haley's Roots from the library. It's a good read, and once I started getting into it, memories of the TV series came flooding back (I once visited the outdoor set at Golden Oaks ranch in California, where some of the sequences in Roots II were shot, and my word, how evocative and amazing was that, even though Roots II was crap compared to Roots?) and I became curious around the subject. Intriguing that this partly phony exploration of a man's personal history should cause a refelction on my own. I think it must have been 1976 or 1977 when the programme was on TV, and I was in the early years of my secondary education. Every Monday would entail a ritual Kunta Kinte or Chicken George impression among those of us at Oswestry Boys High School. My own family tree stops dead on my mother's side (a little further back on my dad's side - as far as a housemaid in rural Kent - about 4 generations before my dad) just before my great grandmother, thanks to some, shall we say, extra-marital issues, so how incredible, I thought, for this guy to be able to trace his family history so far back (to mid 18th Century Gambia, in case you were unaware and interesed) and I admit I wondered how it was done.

Well of course it turns out that he not only didn't actually trace his (whole) family tree, but more than that, he stole large chunks of the book from someone else's novel. What a crock! Harold Courlander (for it was he from whom the work was nicked) seems a fascinating character, responsible for some invaluable research into oral traditions in Africa, North America and elsewhere. Harold received an out of court settlement for the admitted plagiarism, though may have been wiser - given the huge success of the franchise - to have taken his case all the way. He probably didn't receive as much as he could have (the information in the Roots link above seems to say that the settlement was around $650,000, in 1978) through a rights deal, but also the fame associated with such a seminal piece of work lies solely with Mr Haley. Anyway, having just passed the circumcision scene, I will continue with the book and hunt out the series on YouTube or elsewhere, while fomenting my own imagined youthful adventures among the arafangs of Oswestry town.

All of which brings me to footballing roots, and a remark made on Sunday while I was in the corner shop at the same time (oh happy chance!) as a Rag, shortly after the match had finished. "You don't sound as if you're from Manchester...?" he said, gauntly, and I replied: "No, I'm not." Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Kompany red card, I think the time has well passed for City fans to get over it. We don't want to end up looking like sour grapes Scousers bemoaning our fate, especially as everyone knows we've got tons and tons of cash and about 600 players out on loan. I personally think we should take great comfort in our performance, reflect on what was an excellent match and get on with playing Liverpool. Again. And again. And again.

Ballardian

Thanks to God is Not Elsewhere for the image.

There is no life any more, is there?

Having just finished Burmese Days by Orwell and then Miracles of Life by JG Ballard (interesting I think that some people I talk to are less than impressed by his writing, though I suspect this is at least in part due to an anti sci fi prejudice) I realise that some of the great British writers of the 20th Century lived full and interesting lives, seeing much of the world and - for good or ill - soaking up experiences. This is something which seems to be denied to us now, even with cheap air travel and television, and I can't help but feel a sense of loss about that, there's no denying it. Will Self (to cite what I believe is the closest relation to these greats writing today) has I think chosen to travel in the internal world - especially when on a jet with the PM - for inspiration.

Although both Eric and Jim (the former in Burma - as was - and the latter in Shanghai - as was, and seemingly will forever be, despite the Mao intermission) were cloistered in the strange unreality of life in the British Empire, with its detachment from local customs and its protection for those lucky enough to have been born in West Bromwich or Bradford, both were very obviously shaped - in terms of their art - by the 'native' people they observed.

It was by chance that I picked both of these books from the library at the same time, and yet there are many fascinating synergies and echoes between them, though one is a 'pure' autobiography (unlike Emperor of The Sun) and the other only draws on personal experience.

[SPOILER ALERT - if you fancy reading Burmese Days (and I heartily recommend it) skip the next bit]

For Orwell, the transition of power from the British Empire is symbolised by the slow and painful destruction - even unto death - of the main character, spineless specimen though he is. His 'enemy' among the Burmans (Orwell's word) meanwhile, who plays an active part in heaping the opprobrium on the pukka sahib's head, is elevated and crowned with laurels in the closing pages. The Establishment, though struggling on, has been irrevocably changed.

[SPOILER ALERT OVER]

Ballard (who BTW mentions reading Orwell as a young man) is more specific in detailing how his work is shaped by the horrendous suffering and - to say the least - undignified deaths of so many indigenous people in WWII era China when he grew up in Shanghai's International Settlement as the Zeros flew overhead and Bushido was followed by the Japanese conquerors. He relates - in this spare yet incredibly moving close-to-death memoir - how he has perhaps unconsciously striven to elucidate the absorption of so much casual suffering and murder through his incredible body of work, as well as through his remarkable journey through life.

I have been greatly enriched by these two marvellous books.

Hat trick

We’ve all got those special moments – Gazza’s free kick, Botham against the Aussies, Lewis v Tyson, you name it – but I wanted to focus on great sporting moments where I myself was participating. They are few and far between, because – as any of my friends will testify – great sporting ability is not a gift with which I have been blessed. However, these events will stay long in my memory, and be re-lived again and again. I cannot include (wonderful as it was to see) Steeves’ dance around the sport bag, or my own mid-flight catch of a dart, because I say so. In no particular order, here are the moments which I will include:

1. The year: 1983. The venue: Oswestry Leisure Centre. The event: me and Tad playing squash. I had been playing squash with Tad for some time, and, thanks to his kindness and patience, my game had improved from absolutely dreadful to slightly better than crap. To be fair, I did play quite a lot, and almost always against opponents of superior skill, so I must have learned something. It had got to the stage where I was able to at least give Tad a decent game, though I had never actually managed to beat him, so, gaining in confidence, I wagered that I would be able to take at least one game in this particular session. Nip and tuck it was, with us level on points at 8-8 (we didn’t play the 15 point version of the game then) and a hard scrap over each point to decide the game. We attracted a (small) audience on the gallery, who became even more interested when they heard about what was riding on the match. Alas, though I put up a good fight, I think Tad beat my something like 15-13, but I remain convinced that I pushed him to the limit, and we received a round of applause when the game had finished. I am now sure that a game of squash would more than likely finish me off, but that’s the march of time for you.

2. The year: 1994. The venue: Hampstead Heath. The event: a kick about on a flat piece of heath where we were having a birthday picnic. I’m not attempting to be modest by only writing about events in which I have come off worse, believe me, it just happens to be that way. There were about 5 or 6 of us playing footy with jumpers for goalposts, and had progressed to a kind of competitive headers and volleys type game. I was in goal, and on the opposing team were C_____ (not a bad little sportsman in his day) and G______, who was a gay Moony stand-up comedian from M_________. He was camper than coffee, though usually highly amusing, and certainly not the kind of person you would expect to be playing footy in the park. However, I will always always remember the moment when C______ whipped in a cross from the right wing and Graham, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, met the ball square on with his forehead, sending it sailing past my outstretched arm into the back of the net. C_______ cheered and G______ laughed, clearly extremely pleased with his effort, wheeling away to take the acclaim of his team-mates. G_______’s goal was a talking point for the rest of the day.

3. The year: 1996. The venue: Finsbury Park. The event: a bit of cricket on a Sunday. Where I used to work, they were clearing out stuff, and this included a never used full cricket bag, complete with two bats, a box of balls, two sets of stumps, three sets of pads, wicketkeepers gloves, batsman’s gloves, boxes... The whole shooting match. And we’re not talking Woolworth’s back garden here – no sir, this was the proper shit. High quality. So, rather than see it go to waste, I volunteered to take it home. As you do. Obviously, with all that gear lying around, you’ve got to go and have a knock up, haven’t you? So we picked up some beers and crisps (about half a dozen of us) and made our way to the bit of Finsbury Park that runs along Green Lanes from Manor House. Not sure if they’re still there, but there used to be some nets up, as well as a softball area laid out, and a fairly large area of grass, so that you could safely smack a lump of leather around without risking killing (or more likely being killed by... It is Finsbury Park, remember) someone when it hits them on the head. It would be fair to say that there were varying levels of talent on display that day, which would explain why I may have appeared to be almost a competent bowler.

That aside, the true value of a public school education displayed itself in the form of S_____, who was clearly more than a notch or two better than anyone else present. At least until a couple of local lads turned up, and one of them turned out to be a Michael Holding in the making. But that’s another story. I remember S_____ was fielding around the midwicket area, and whoever it might have been (I think St____) clipped the ball ahead of him at a fair pace. S_____, on the run, picked up the ball and instantly shied at the stumps (side on, remember) from a good 30 yards, hitting them smack on and taking off the bails. It was a moment of pure quality.

Stormont in a tea cup?

The other night I managed to watch Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which concerns early 20th Century Republicans and highlights the brutality of the Black & Tans. This is a period of history not taught in schools (well, not in my day. Though admittedly I may have been sketching colonies on Jupiter [I know now of course that Saturn is the only planet which can sustain human life] in my notebook, if not playing flea racing with Mike Pike, I'm sure I don't remember anything about Irish history, yet I can clearly recall the Bessemer burner and the Corn Law Repeal Act of 1777) but which I believe definitely should be. It has informed, and continues to inform, so much of the political landscape in the UK.
The following day, I watched some of Simon Schama's History of Britain, which was concerned with the Great Potato Famine, and the re-enacted scenes of the landlords wreaking havoc on the small communities in the West of Ireland in the aftermath of the famine echoed strongly for me as I watched the Black & Tans exacting their reprisals on the people.

Brown and Cowen (sorry, but - jeez, what a toad!) suddenly at Stormont. Stones at Altamont. Peter Robinson and Mrs Robinson, milf wife, though nobody's talking about that now, which indicates how seriously everyone is taking it. Ian Paisley, Bob Paisley (of an era, strangely, though of course the wrong Paisley is dead) Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness keeping those dissidents in check for the time-being. Well, it must be pretty boring going back to watching daytime TV and popping to the shops when you've been used to organising mass bombings and ambushes of the British Army, so the balaclava boys are no doubt itching to get out there again.

Did they use a fish-eye lens?

Mark Simpson reminds me of Patrick Kielty and his glasses are just the wrong side of fashion-conscious to be very annoying. He tells us - and we have to believe every word he says because he is wearing a nice black coat - that there is no prospect of a return to full-scale violence. The sticking points, according to the lovely Mark, are around policing and justice and those bloody awful parades those weirdos in the bowler hats seem to love so much. Personally speaking, I have always leaned towards the Republican cause, mostly because I never liked parades. Apart from the Rio and Notting Hill carnivals.

Highgate

Middle of June, and here I am sitting in an autumn wind at the Woodman in Highgate, trying to breathe deeply and take stock before my head explodes. This pub has featured fleetingly in my life, and has swung from dire to reasonable to poncey. The last is where it is now, with no real crisps, just 'hand cooked virgin olive oil drizzled jersey royals' with parmesan and sun dried tomatoes, bowls of olives and cheese puffs (wtf?) for £1.50 each. It does have free wi-fi, however, and this extends to the garden, which would be great if the bloody laptop wasn't in danger of being blown away.

Some years ago (more than I care to mention) I decided to jack my job in and go and do something less boring instead. As a long-term plan, it didn't really work out, but as a few days bumming around the south of France it was fine. The long and the short of it was that I ended up back in the Smoke with a grand total of £8 to my name, and a good deal of hitchhiking experience under my belt.

The only far-sighted thing I had done before leaving my job was to keep the key to an office in which I used to work, and which was empty while awaiting new tenants. I jumped the barriers at Euston after getting on the tube somewhere where there were no entry gates (ah, those were the days...) and used some of my riches to buy fish and chips, sneaking them into the empty office under cover of the dark. The water and electricity were still on, but there were no beds, so I laid my sleeping bag out on the floor and dossed down with my supper and a can of Special Brew. I didn't sleep well, because the area was partly residential and had a strong Neighbourhood Watch presence, so I imagined every sound was the Old Bill coming to ask me some very awkward questions. Or else ghosts.

But they never did, and neither did I need to call on Bill Murray and his chums, so I made it through the night before realising the futility of my actions, packing up my old kit bag and heading on to pastures new, which - by coincidence - happened to be Highgate.

Cross Country

A recent trip to Oswestry reminded me of school days, sad to say. Especially walking past the aptly named Muddy Lane. The memories were almost as painful as those of my week at work, but not quite.

In those glory days of Brian Clough and Giant Haystacks (I know full well that Ken Loach and Barry Hines have done a far better job than I could ever do, so I won't labour the point. Although I don't recall any references to cuckoo spit in any of these rightly lauded works) 'improving' sports were considered to involve standing in sub zero temperatures with - let's say - inadequate clothing for a couple of hours; so I must be much improved from where I was when I was 11, although I remain unconvinced.

But, Muddy Lane set me to thinking. These days of health & safety (gone mad!) culture would surely not allow what we went through? In a similar vein to those hilarious viral pics of people in India carrying six hundred bales of cotton on a moped, or dozy Mexicans plonking a ladder on top of a plank balanced on a barrel (you get the picture, I hope) I'm convinced that we would look back on our ignorant ancestors and snigger mercilessly.

You may well say that I am no Gebreselassie. You might even say that I finally struggled over the finish line some 2o minutes after everyone else (a wrong turn at Penylan Lane proved fatal, if you must know, but it did mean that I arrived in the showers just in time for the Griffith Moment...) and tried to pretend that I suffered from asthma. But that would be entirely missing the point. I was wearing a pair of plimsolls which, until fairly recently, could be obtained from Wollys for about £2.50. This seems to be grounds enough for a lawsuit if ever I saw one.

Cheers

I grew up in pubs. My nan was a cleaner in the Barley Mow; my mum started work in a rum & coffee (really!) house in the halcyon days of the beast market in Oswestry, collecting the glasses before progressing to that most holy position of barkeep. When I was young, I would be taken with her to the Bear Hotel, The Butcher's Arms, The Woodlands, and ultimately The Queens, where I was at last - just before my 18th birthday - blooded with a stint serving the punters.

What days they were! Early memories are of playing with my cars while Match Of The Day was on (in the days when you used to get a smidgin of the lower divisions towards the end) the smell of yeast and fags, the taste of crisps and cheese and onion rolls in cling film, the sound of barrels rumbling below, collecting beer mats and bottle tops, playing tick and hide-and-seek in a deserted lounge bar with Kevin Hopkins - the lights of the bandit flashing and free credits on the juke box.

I progressed to holding the fort at The Huntsman on Wilmslow Road (just around the corner from Platt Lane and the mighty Kippax of course) while hordes of funeral-attended Irishmen and women clamoured for service and I was forced to take the Bells off the optic and pour it freehand until the landlady returned from her meal out to rescue me. Where last orders would mean 4 pints of Chinese (BTW, I'm finding it hard to trace this famous Manc mix on the net, though I know I could try harder...) each, and worked my way through Christmas Eves and Days, New Year's Eves and Days, and all manner of smashed bottle affairs. Sitting on an upturned crate at half past eleven with the sweetest half of bitter you ever tasted, sparking up a fag at the end of the bar. Aaahhh!

I became at the same time a more than willing participant in the punter side of pub-going, and remain to this day a loyal devotee of a dying art.

It's a genuine tragedy - IMHO - that (if true, and I have no doubt that it is, based on the evidence I see before me...) thirty-nine pubs a week are going bust in England. Those that remain open are in many instances, I have to say, not what a pub should be. Wetherspoons is perhaps the most egregious example of the modern evisceration of pub culture, with gastro wank at the opposite end of the spectrum. There's still the odd nugget to be found, but they are few and far between, and there aren't that many places left (in fact, probably none...) where you could happily spend a Saturday teatime laughing at the fixed odds choices you made at ten in the morning, surrounded by empty glasses and overspilling ashtrays, listening to the click of the pool balls and thinking about a bag of chips on the way home.

Brings a tear to the eye, it really does.

Golden Rings!

As I gaze upon the destruction of the world as we know it (I refer of course to the demise of Woolworths) on my 37" LCD TV, I begin to wonder what kind of society we will be left with in the coming years. I read the other day in some crap rag that the UK is now considered to be worth less than the McDonalds corporation. Which is pathetic and brilliant at the same time.

The other night, the Grapes of Wrath was on TCM. And a powerful film it remains (despite the total absence of a black face) the startling scenes of utter grinding poverty given extra power by the monochrome photography. Though I did read the book, I was quite young at the time, and I have only a nodding acquaintance with Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad, so I am not really qualified to carry out an informed critique of the work. What did come across from the film was a strong element of soft trades unionism - a trades unionism divorced from politics. At one point, Joad says (I paraphrase of course) to his fellow Okies as they are digging a drainage ditch for the kind-hearted Californian fruit grower who has taken them on for 5 cents an hour:

"What is this 'Reds' everybody's talking about? Seems you can't turn around without somebody callin' somebody else a 'Red'. All I know's a man's got to feed his family. I don't know what this 'Reds' means..."

The bad guys are the 'Marshalls', though it is made plain that these guys are not part of the established machinery of government, but are either private police working for the greedy and exploitative employers, or are corrupt officers in the pay of said fat cats.

But I once again digress. I've been thinking about the Great Depression since the current financial fiasco started, and wondering what - if any parallels could reasonably be drawn between then and now. How might Obama be compared to Franklin D Roosevelt, and what sort of 21st Century New Deal could he possibly produce? There is an interesting quote from FDR, made during a speech within the first 100 days of assuming the Presidency and instigating the New Deal:

"Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men....The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization."

A profound echo of these quasi-religious words can be seen in the political rhetoric of the early days of the recent banking crisis and the calumny hurled at the Chief Execs of HBOS et al.

In light of the impending (as this is written in advance of publication, one can only hope that it will remain accurate) collapse of the automotive industry in the US, the comparison between the current disasters and the plight of the sharecroppers in Oklahoma seems all the more apposite. But where next? Will the good automobile workers of Michigan and Illinois now drift westward again in search of gold in the renewables industry, or transfer their skills to social networking 'deep dives' in California?

Will Obama (like FDR) be forced to admit defeat and launch yet another world war to save us from boredom? The law of diminishing returns would seem to indicate that this will not be an option. Nuclear weapons do tend to raise the stakes somewhat.

The Kids Are Alright

That's what Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were telling us back in 1965. But were they right? Though looking at the lyrics of the Who song doesn't seem to indicate a heartfelt cry to the integrity of the younger members of the population, to my mind (and, I would hazard, to most people who have heard it) it always symbolized this. Clearly, the kids they were speaking of were not those kids (such as me) who were born in that year, or even those kids who were up to 10 years older than that. No, they were talking about their generation - if you will - their contemporaries. Pete was born in 1945, some six years earlier than Gordon Brown, so Gordy would have been 14 (against Townshend's 20) when the song came out. It is conceivable then that the Who were referring to Old Clunking Fist in their anthem to not-so-doomed youth. In which case they were most definitely and emphatically wrong in saying that these people were in any way 'alright'.

I mean, look where the generation above us (and I mean no disrespect to my parents, who were and are frugal, honest and hard working people) has got us. A world of alienation, violence and uncertainty for the many, a stinking cess pool of discarded detritus and extinguished species, a world where 'celebrities' make stands against world poverty and callow youths are paid up to £120,000 a week to kick a ball around and drive enormous 4x4s while wearing watches worth tens of thousands of pounds. On the subject of Armageddon, I stood in the queue at Waitrose the other day and watched as those around me fed the scanners with their President butter and Duchy Originals, and I wondered what will happen when it all dries up. When the great teat of the 24/7 artics stops pumping its manna milk into the maws of the retail cathedrals. Not wishing to set myself apart, I realised that most of the people in the store wouldn't stand a chance if it came down to a physical contest for the scant resources available. Their jobs in internet publishing or media management wouldn't stand them in good stead when faced with a gang of crack-starved street rats in a fight over a mildewed potato or a siphoned litre of unleaded.

But I digress. My point, I suppose, is that this future lark isn't all it was cracked up to be. These kids who were 'alright' have dumped us right in it and no mistake.

Outings

I almost feel as if I have just had a proper holiday.

Paid a visit to the Victorian village at Blists Hill in Ironbridge on Bank Holiday Monday. Moderately interesting I would say, not being one of those types who likes steam, metal, coal, bricks and stuff like that. What they've done is made a partial re-creation of an Industrial Revolution era Victorian village, complete with pub, sweet shop, school (relocated from its original location a few miles away) chemist, bakery, etc. It is a work in progress, so I shouldn't really be too critical I suppose, but it was rather expensive at £36 for a family ticket.

There are a number of authentic Victorians wandering around, including a schoolteacher, pirate, funeral-goers (?) and various others mingling with the grockles. A major gripe for me is the lack of commitment in these people. Stanislavski or Walt could certainly have taught them a thing or two. The (rather lame) pretense of authentic Victoriana, in the shape of being able to exchange your modern money for LSD (though of course you can pay for your vegetarian pasty or pint of Lowenbrau with either coin) falls away pretty quickly when the 'cast' can't keep up the act. My experience was that, although the people were wearing the clothes, they weren't inhabiting their characters.

I spoke to the headmistress (she looked the part) and was disappointed that she couldn't even muster a speck of acting. All they could do was scold the kids for touching things and then gas about local news. I wish that the whole place had been truly authentic - only tripe cooked in lard at the eating places, only Banks's mild or gin at the bar, persecution of minorities, etc. Only joking, obviously. I mean, at the sweet shop, the assistant made a scathing remark about the sugar content of some of the stuff on sale! Yet I was told that they had stopped selling chocolate bars because they couldn't source authentic wrappers. Makes you sick.

Prior to that, I strayed as far north as the Scousepost of Llandudno (Tony Bastable, we love you) and was pretty impressed. I have particular tastes, as you may have noticed (if you haven't, then hey fuck you) and seek something a little different in these homogeneous times. Llandudno did it for me. Yes it did. There was an endearing shabbiness to the place, perfectly summed up by the past-their-best hotels all along the prom. The Great Orme was something else, especially as we had won the rarest lottery - that of the weather - and were blessed with a glorious day. But, Jesus fucking Christ on a bike, what the fuck is the human race coming to? We can't cope with anything unless there's a burger and an ice cream (weather permitting) to help us through it. Shagging hell, I nearly choked on my rum 'n' raisin.

I even managed to make it to the top of Hen Dinas on the Saturday morning, and though it has changed somewhat (more overgrown, but with access paths and benches being added - the former I approve of, the latter, I'm not so sure) it still retained the magic it has always held for me. Just to think of those Ordovices running around sends a tingle up your spine. And the view is something else, brother.

While there is still time

Always one to jump on the back of a trend, I thought I might add my 2 cents to the current fad for nostalgia in the context of Credit Crunchiness and the escalating prices of foodstuffs. My recent post about childhood skiving was also moderately well received, so I feel further emboldened to comment.

Essentially (in the style of Mike Yarwood) the premish is thish:

Is the world a better place than it used to be, or a worse one? For the vast majority of course the question is about as academic as you can get, but I can only speak of my self can I not? So here goes.

First of all, though, a bit of background. Mark Lawson has once again identified the zeitgeist in his usual cucumber cool manner, by asking if we are all yearning for a golden age which never existed, whilst conveniently forgetting about cholera, rickets and child abuse. These days, he maintains, we are all so comfortable that we cannot tolerate the relatively mild degrees of suffering with which we have to deal. Of course things could be better, he says, but let's not jump on the backs of knife-wielding yoof, etc before we remember the Edwardian street gangs and the Teds of the 50s, their crepe soles covered in bits of brain and bone and Brighton beach.

The Sun's Captain Crunch last week carried a - fairly - interesting two page spread on a family eating a 1940s diet for a week (only!) and everywhere you look there are references to tightening the belt - living life as we used to, complete with dripping and powdered egg, as some kind of means to a) take us back to a perceived age of innocence and b) help us to become healthier and more frugal with a spot of good honest self denial.

I remember dripping. I liked dripping, though not too much. It had a pleasantly salty taste and a faintly nauseating texture. Though, like Special Brew, I really don't think I could take it now, unless in extremis of course. There are some other key things I remember about food from my childhood, and they are (in no particular order):

Lots of meat by-products - we used to eat savoury duck, faggots (is there a difference?) and cervelat (whose name, I have just discovered, derives from the fact that it originally contained pieces of brain!) as well as pies, corned beef, spam and sausages. A favourite was heart (ox heart, I would think) which my grandmother would roast for what seemed like hours and cut into slivers, serving it in a rich gravy. I can still taste the meat, which was extremely toothsome, even though I haven't eaten it for many many years.

All fried food was cooked in lard or dripping, and must have been extremely greasy, though I don't have a particular memory of it being so. Vegetables were boiled to a very soft consistency. Nothing was steamed. I did not eat rice (except in tinned rice pudding) until I was about 15, and even then it was in a Vesta ready meal. Salad was a fairly rare treat, usually more common in the summer, accompanied by triangles of bread and a steaming bowl of new potatoes covered in butter with a dollop of Heinz salad cream. Salt was abundant, and jam tarts and tea would follow.

My uncle would often eat a plate of radish with a pyramid of salt for dipping, and I would eat strawberries - sometimes from the garden - with a pyramid of sugar. Fruit juices, which seem to be coming out the wazoo these days, were hardly ever available, though there was always plenty of squash. I can't say as I ever went hungry (except when I stayed with my uncle and aunt in Harlow during the summer holidays, when I would sneak downstairs in the dead of night to supplement the meagre meals they prepared) and I ate vast amounts of sweets, resulting in the loss of 2 of my adult teeth before I reached the age of 21.

In all, there seems to be no question that the food I (and we) eat today is immeasurably healthier than the one I was used to consuming. My kids even more so. It is a strange and sad phenomenon then - the increase in child obesity and the frightening rise of diabetes in the young. Clearly, I was more able to run off the calories I consumed, and in all probability the few fresh fruits and veg I did eat contained a higher proportion of vitamins and minerals than they do now. When it comes to food, and the politics of body shape, I would have to say that the world is not a better place than it was. It is terrifying to think of 8 and 9 year old kids obsessing about their figures and trying to look like something out of a magazine. Bring back dripping, I say!

Cybele

I have detected a certain antipathy towards my vitriolic outbursts of late, so in the spirit of Martyn Lewis, I will instead focus on a 'good news story' in order to redress the balance a little.

Life is short and sometimes brutal, suffering is all around us and we are on a crash course with the environment. City are playing crap football, and England are out of the European Championships. But, Sunday is Mother's Day, so it should be a time for us all to remember our mums and say a big thank-you to them for all that they have done for us. For us to think, all those years ago, of the maids in service who would be given the one weekend off in the year to go home and visit their mothers. All hail Cybele, the great Earth Mother!

Heroes

We need some heroes these days. Hugh Cornwell and the boys (how sad I was to see the new singer standing next to the other 3 there) got it right, all those years (30!) ago, didn't they? And rock heroes are even rarer now than they were then.

I have been pondering the concept of the hero recently, and this has (rather excitingly) led to my first ever Wikipedia update!

It all started with Ned Kelly when I read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang and was astounded to discover that the man had a voice. He had written his story down and passed on his history to future generations - even if the writing was suppressed for many years. I had a vague recollection of the Jagger movie from when I was a kid, but the memories were almost exclusively about the iron suits and the shoot-out at the end. I'm not sure about the movie (though I have read that it caused a good deal of controversy) but I was certainly not of an age to take in any socio-historical messages it may or may not have contained. Peter Carey changed all that, with an excellent story, which captures the flavour of Kelly's true voice very well. I went on to read the Jerilderie Letter and I have a favourite quotation from it:

“…not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or english landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police who some calls honest gentlemen but I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police as it is an old saying It takes a rogue to catch a rogue and a man that knows nothing about roguery would never enter the force an take an oath to arrest brother sister father or mother if required and to have a case and conviction if possible.”

It sums up, for me, the continuous struggle of the poor against the rich, of the dispossessed against the oppressors, and of freedom against slavery.

And it seemed vital to me that it had been written by the man himself. Later, I read the history of Geronimo again in his own words. It is a truly tragic story - to my mind emblematic of the destruction of the native American way of life.

There have been many other heroes of course, and too many of them are not listed in Wikipedia's list, or are not mentioned anywhere. I would heartily welcome any commendations, but simply ask that if you find the time, read the words of Ned and Geronimo before you make any judgments on them.