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Gordon is no moron..

1 Jul

Gordon Strachan bided his time last Thursday. We were watching South Korea play Belgium. Gordy’s co-pundits were lamenting the poor refereeing which allowed a range of physical assaults to go unpunished while the merest hint of a foot up or the sight of a stud incurred  yellow and red cards held aloft in a ritual of sanctimonious officialdom. When a terrified Korean defender with the same name as all his team mates, rugby tackled a Belgian with a Dutch moniker, the pundit-baying intensified. “It was so outrageous he (the ref) couldn’t make a decision,” opined Lee Dixon. “A clear penalty!” The outrage continued.

At half time the level of consternation reached new heights. The chatter had broadened: Suarez biting; ubiquitous shirt pulling; elbows in faces; Quatar bribing any FIFA official they could lay their hands on; diving…or simulation as the boys in black now love to call it. And so it went on until Gordon cut through the crap.

“You people are talking as if there are rights and wrongs here. Surely it’s obvious that, at this level of soccer, there are no morals.” Wow. He’d said it. And he repeated it. Hallelujah, a sensible, intelligent observation for once amid the clichéd claptrap and time-filling platitudes which I spend hours yawning at. More fool me, you might say. I say that I’m ever hopeful that a Gordon or an Alan or a Clarence or a Robbie will say something truly interesting, thought-provoking. And here it was.

He said more. “It’s the art of what you can get away with. Let’s face it Suarez was a bit (or a bite) unlucky. Or perhaps his value has gone up even more?” This was great stuff. I was on the edge of my seat. Condescending smiles from Chilesey and Lee Dixon- Gordon was being playful, provocative. Not a bit of it. Think about it boys and girls. And I sat at home and thought about it.

Luis Suarez was greeted by thousands of fans and the President of Uruguay on his return to Montevideo. Disgraced? Not a bit of it. Ever more the hero. The greatest ‘foul’of all time, the brilliant head-butt by the genius Zidane, has raised him to cult status. He did what a man had to do. The gamesmanship of players at the highest footballing levels will always exceed the ability of referees, FIFA, UEFA and the FA to keep up. But we don’t want to ‘keep up’ do we? I like waking up to the latest scandal that has hit the soccer world. Today it is the match-fixing by 7 Cameroonians. Well you would wouldn’t you, if a few thousand quid would take you out of a slum and give you running water in a downtown semi in Yaoundé?

And don’t we love the shirt-pulling antics of the penalty area? How dull if the refs started awarding the correct sanction. A penalty each time? You’re kidding – so much fun and punditry outrage to tap into without making the right decision. Isn’t it better to watch overpaid yobbos verbally abuse referees, argue with every single decision – than see them meekly accept the judgement of a (supposedly) unbiased official?

As for technology, what a master-stroke by the Premier League and FIFA to introduce goal-line technology. The least important area of contention is the one-in-a-hundred matches where blind refs and their assistants can’t tell if a sizeable sphere has crossed the rubicon. It’s all Frank Lampard’s fault. If Hawkeye had assisted the hapless officials our glorious boys might not have been put through the German sausage machine four years ago. I don’t think so. But how brilliant of the powers that be to ignore all meaningful forms of technology help (see Rugby, Tennis, Cricket and any other high profile sport with an interest in truth and fairness) and plump for the least helpful, leaving all contentious decisions I the hands of the least able, i.e. on-field officials. It’s a master-stroke of Blatterdom. Sepp’s a canny operator in the world game – his game. It’s Roller-ball and he’s with Gordon. Who dares – or cheats- wins.

Lest my endorsement of Gordon’s wise observations, last Thursday, is taken as too frivolous let’s tackle that lurking moral sticking point. Example. How the top players behave has a trickle down moral effect. Think about this carefully. Think schooldays, schoolteachers, sports coaches, what mums and dads say at mini rugby or on the local tennis courts. Think about the behaviour that is encouraged at grass roots. There may be exceptions but for the most part we’re talking wholesome, happy, respectful  behaviour. Appropriate disapproval of bad language, fouling, gamesmanship. The local park and school match really is, these days, a million miles from the virtual reality of the Suarez bite. The latter is a bubble-wrapped world of media frenzy and gossip-generating scandal. How dull if Suarez didn’t have a Hannibal Lecter fixation. How boring if you couldn’t debag a centre forward in the penalty area and get away with it.

Gordon made me think about the truth of team games. For all the character-building good that school and amateur-level  club matches manage there is an inevitability that, the higher the stakes the greater the cheating. Morality goes out of the window – and we all conspire, in some way, to ensuring that things won’t change too much while the chequebook and Sepp Blatter are Kings of the Castle.

Strangers in some pain (in Maidstone). 5.

6 Sep

Maidstone is the county town of Kent. It boasts some 100,000 souls. The unsightly, jammed roads feeding into it from the four points of the compass are warnings for those who enter: abandon some, if not quite all, of your hope. The tawdry and the chic nestle cheek-by-jowl; the former like seeding nettles overgrowing the latter. Moat Park, however, is a glory – so too the hidden quiet of the Medway towpath. The occasional grand mediaeval architecture rebukes the hideous one-way system. Benjamin Disraeli and Anne Widdecombe, perhaps surprisingly, thought well-enough of the place to represent the locals in Parliament.

My GP had sent me for an endoscopy – a questionable procedure involving a camera being shoved down your throat and pictures taken of your insides while the Nikon tube enjoys the ride through your body. My Renault Laguna approached the city from the south, negotiated the stop-go swirl of the one-way and headed for Maidstone Hospital along the Tonbridge Road. Papers informing me of the horrors of my impending appointment lay on the passenger seat along with the consent forms sealing my fate. It couldn’t be worse than the traffic, surely? The Maidstone NHS Trust had predicted ‘up to three hours’ for my little excursion to their medical nirvana. They didn’t reckon on car parking, for starters.

The hospital is on Hermitage Road – a highway clearly ill-equipped to deal with  the mass of sick humanity, their carers, their families and friends – and the frantic comings and goings to A and E (situated mid-hospital), of wailing ambulances. Early afternoon and car-park A was full like a Tesco Extra. I hovered, engine idling, waiting to ambush a departee. I was ambushed at my first park-slot-shimmy by a white-van man who was far too slick on his accelerator. An old hand, I thought. No matter, a slot two bays along appeared within seconds and I wasn’t going to be gazumped again. As I heaved myself out of my wagon I caught the eye of white-van man striding past. I was sure he fired a smirk in my direction.

Then into the Cathedral of Pain. A charming lady at the front desk directed me down this corridor or that and I strolled purposefully through the bustle. My parking delay had contrived to bring me to the Endoscopy and Urology reception desk, bang on time, rather than my usual, calm, ten minutes early. I had noted the light green fatigues that are now all the rage in the NHS. Doctors and others swagger down corridors looking as if they are about to paint the walls rather than save lives. Identity cards are clipped at rakish angles in unlikely places – usually about the hip. Whatever happened to lanyards (great word) around the neck. Oh yes, one or two admin people use those. I guess surgeons don’t want their plastic mugshots to get in the way of lifesaving surgery.

My receptionist was a smiling delight. She was a large handsome girl who had shoe-horned herself, unforgivably, into something designed for Audrey Hepburn. I was to wait on one on the red chairs, not the blue. I sat next to the water-cooler and surveyed the waiting room. About thirty people, I guessed, evenly gender-distributed,  waiting for ‘procedures’ of one sort or another. I estimated that around half could have done with losing more than a couple of stone. A calm, quiet concern hung in the air. It was a steamy-hot day. Not far away the rescue services were trying to sort out that huge pile up in Sheppey. Here, as there, no air-conditioning. The staff-nurses fluttered by. Eventually one alighted on me. Another charmer, a young Asian woman with nice manners and a winning smile. She checked the papers which the receptionist had checked. She checked that I had understood what I had already agreed to. She checked my blood pressure.’ And now sir, all we have to do is wait a little while.’

Well, the little while was a little hour but, I had been forewarned. Meanwhile I resumed my place by the water-cooler. No sooner was I back in position and opening my book than a man looking remarkably like Peter O’Toole boomed into the area. He had a rather cowed, bespectacled lackey in tow – clearly to chauffeur him away after his ‘procedure’. In a voice that the back row of the dress circle would have heard comfortably he announced himself to Audrey on reception and looked about the room as he addressed her. ‘We’re early, darling. We found a simply brilliant route through the ghastly traffic. I’m dying for water but I don’t suppose I’m allowed even a moistening of the lips, am I?’

Audrey charmed her way through his litany of camp pronouncements and, to my joy, I discovered dear Peter coming to join me just the other side of the water-cooler. I wanted to engage him in conversation but, knowing that the whole waiting room would hear his thespian boom, I shrank into my book. He dismissed his man to the café and shook a copy of the Times open. Within seconds he was making response-noises to items of news. A comment here: ‘…Well that’s just plain silly…’ ;a snort or harrumph there. An occasional giggle; a final ‘Oh, no!’ How wonderful to be unconcerned by those around; what fun I had in listening.

And then I was called. Clothes off, gown on and into the chamber. Three people: a smiling young trainee who cracked a joke I didn’t get as he sprayed a numbing anaesthetic on my tonsils; an older nurse, like an auntie who was going to hold my head as the camera entered my body; the taciturn doctor with an Eastern Euro name who was all efficiency and calm. The process of having the tube rammed down me along with concomitant retching, I need not describe. Ten minutes and a sore throat. That was all, really. I’d like to claim some greater hero-status but there are too many who have had the gastroscope to gainsay me. Mr Estonia showed me the pictures of my insides and explained the workings of my oesophagus. I was definitely impressed.

I took my prescription to the pharmacy and a Chinese-looking guy with perfect manners and English warned me of a twenty-minute wait. OK. I had only used up two of my three hours anyway. I sat and returned to my book – Life Class by Pat Barker. A nurse walked by and asked what I was reading – clearly a bookish girl. ‘Best to bring a book when you come to the NHS!’ she jauntily remarked. I protested that I always take reading material for any sit-and-wait experience…but my excusing the NHS got lost in her rushing to her next thing. I wondered if employees believe their own negative press.

A fat middle-aged woman appeared with a thin husband. Jack Spratt. She approached the same charming pharmacist. He apologised for the delay. ‘Twenty minutes!’ she screechingly repeated. ‘That’s not good enough.’ Before the young functionary could apologise more a nurse came in from A and E, by-passed the now-burgeoning queue and said firmly but calmly that she had to get supplies for an ambulance that had to go out on a call. She was allowed the jump the outpatient queue. Fair enough we all thought. But not Jack Spratt’s wife. ‘You’re joking,’ she whined – and then – ‘It wouldn’t happen at Pembury.’ The beleaguered nurse kept muttering apology and while I thought of a scything, bitter piece of sarcasm to wither the crone, I kept my rapier sheathed. More’s the pity.

Another charming chemist delivered my bag of sweeties and I walked with trepidation to the parking payment station. I passed Jack Spratt’s wife slurping tea in the café – having left hubby to wait at the pharmacy. A half-eaten piece of chocolate cake lay waiting for her final attack of the afternoon.

£3 for parking. A snip after two and a half hours. But wait. The queue to exit the place extended out of sight. No matter, my throat was easing. I was leaving a tad earlier than planned. I had been well-treated, with good manners – and entertained by the great British public.  My Renault Laguna headed south, hope intact, from the inferno.

Games, Winning and Education (Or was Stuart Broad right not to ‘walk’?)

16 Jul

Nearly 40 years ago Charles Bailey, Cambridge philosopher, argued that games or sports which pitted one side against another should have no place in the school curriculum. Such activities inevitably provoked questionable behaviour in the pursuit of victory – i.e. cheating, argument, gamesmanship. It seemed, at the time, an armchair examination of the morality of games, without much context – an argument in a vacuum which, bolstered by other sedentary luminaries, was allowed to make headway in primary education, in particular. I remember watching my own children playing non-competitive bean-bag throwing during early years education. I was a daddy in a parallel universe writhing to get back to reality.

The recent breathtaking exploits of the Lions, Andy Murray, Chris Froome and the startling opening of the Ashes series have fanned the flames of ethical controversy which sport is likely to throw up so regularly. It is because all sport is bound by rules and nearly all governing bodies, responsible for codifying the rules include a rule (or law) which enshrines ‘the spirit’ of the game or activity. Players and spectators enjoy wrestling with the boundaries set, whether practical or ethical. We extrapolate to real life where, so often, the example of society’s leaders falls short of the behaviour of sportsmen and sportswomen.

MPs’ expenses; the fixing of the Libor rate; bankers’ bonuses (win or lose); BBC executive payouts; Jimmy Carr and Starbucks and the Duchy of Cornwall avoiding tax…do I need to go on about the cheating (gamesmanship) which abounds in society and is excused, often, by ‘We didn’t break any rules, did we?’  And yet we expect sportsmen to behave in more admirable ways than our politicians and captains of industry. Well, actually, they do.

This brings me on to Stuart Broad. He famously stood his ground last week when the young Aussie bowler, Ashton Agar had him caught at slip. He pretty much middled it to skipper Clarke but umpire Aleem Dar was the only guy at Trent Bridge or in the global TV audience who didn’t see or hear the resounding nick. The Aussies had been profligate with their appeals to the third umpire and his technology and had lost their right to appeal further. Broad knew the rules. He stayed where he was. Not out. There followed the usual plum-accented, MCC stripey-tie harrumphing about the Spirit of Cricket, led, predictably by the otherwise charming Aggers (aka Jonathan Agnew of TMS, cake-eating, armchair-musing, pigeon-fancying, gentlemen’s clubby radio 4 set). He met his match in the plain-speaking, arrogant Yorkshire lad – one Geoffrey Boycott. He put the thing in context. 21st century technology and professional umpires means that decision-making has been delegated away from the players. The rules concerning appeals to technology are clear. The day before Broadgate the supposedly infallible third umpire made two critical errors which cost England far more than the Broad’s retention at the crease. Trott was not out lbw – he hit the ball and Agar, the bravura debutant for Oz was indeed out stumped. He was on 6 and went on to score 98. Aggers, mournfully harked back to an era of gentlemen and players and ‘doing the right thing’. Is it only batsmen who should ‘play the game’? As a fast bowler didn’t Aggers admit to sledging batsmen to unsettle them and appealing for dubious catches or lbws. Has he ever called a batsman back after a dodgy decision in his favour? You can’t have it both ways Aggers – and Sir Geoffrey, in context, put you right. Notice how the Aussies said very little at the end of a hard-fought day, about the mid-afternoon controversy. They knew the score. They play hard but fair – and fair, in this instance meant within the new set of rules provided by the introduction of technology.

Dear old Andy M complained about the gamesmanship of his Polish semi-final adversary at Wimbledon who worked on the umpire to close the centre-court roof. Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, most recently, have thrown the athletics world into turmoil with positive drug tests. Let’s hope the expected win for Chris Froome isn’t blighted by some further scandal. After the serial deceit of Lance Armstrong cycling can’t take much more. Sport enables moral discussion. We cannot expect sportsman and sportswomen to behave better than others. Money + competition = corruption. Examples of both good and poor behaviour in sport abound. Soccer is full of it – Maradonna’s Hand of God goal against England is a celebrated piece of cheating but at least in sport the truth tends to be revealed instantly, discussed, often condemned, usually dealt with. Other malefactions in wider society grow unseen, like cancer, undermining the fabric of our major institutions. Sub-prime debt., RBS, payment protection insurance, the Hillsborough debacle, sexual abuse perpetrated by ministers of the church. Jimmy Savile.

So Charles Bailey thinks non-competitive bean-bag throwing is the way forward, or rock-climbing or yoga. Anything you can’t cheat at. From where I sit competitive sportsmen and sportswomen do a vey good job of playing within the rules and with a smile on their faces and a deal of respect for eachother. When they’re caught out they are exposed, usually quickly. School and youth sport can and should be used as a vehicle for inculcating moral behaviours, good manners, respect for the opposition and so on. A sporting education with morality at its heart produces sporting adults who recognise injustice and fair play equally. We become more indignant with lapses from a standard in sport than in other walks of life.

One of my fondest memories from school was cheating on a cross-country run round Richmond Park. Phil Newton and I hid on the first circuit round the Isabella Plantation. He had a fag, I had a coke and we rejoined the group, mid-pack, next time round. We didn’t get caught. Were we corrupt? Nah, just lazy. Happy days.

Being bored with yourself…

21 May

Don’t we all get to the stage of tiring with who we are? I have been pretty teed-off that I stand 5ft 8ins in my stockinged feet and have had serious problems with sight lines at public events this last half-century. There is a considerable range of questionable traits, other than physical deficiencies, that I  possess and seem powerless to control. I’d like to be fashionably late; I am always irritatingly early. I delude myself that I am intellectually curious; idle is so much closer to the truth. I’d like to buy the expensive extra virgin olive oil in M and S but my 50s frugal gene pulls me towards the Tesco Basics range. I’d rather not be a slave to Match of the Day, during which I become grumpy at the merest interruption, but time and again my resolve to reinvent myself falters on the altar of the awful truth: I am who I am. I don’t want to continue to beat myself up but it would be so, so easy…and some of my deficiencies I could do something about – but I won’t. I was prompted to open up on this subject by re-reading my last blog. How dull, I thought. How self-consciously worthy, designed for the few readers to nod approvingly and click the ‘like’ button.

Now I am pretty sure that most people feel as I do. It’s all part of the well I’m stuck in this life and have no option but to grin and bear it syndrome. Recently I have noticed movement among the ranks. Some of us who are terminally bored with ourselves take up pointless hobbies and become near-obsessives. Cycling (lunch-box lycra pants, bright canary torso-hugging vest, silly flat space-helmet, shoes that click into pedals etc, etc); walking (printing out a plethora of online maps, plannning whole Sundays on the South Downs, always ending near a pub); yoga (soaks up an aweful lot of time doing not very much but drop it in to a conversation and you become ‘interesting’) and other silly activities such as pilates, zumba and, of course the gym (ugh!); going to ‘gigs’ – every generation now has ownership of some retro-band-hippie-arty open air jamboree; discovering our past with internet sites panting to get our membership money so we can discover that our ancestors were all illiterate farmers…And so the list goes on. I am a fully paid-up member of the next-fad-banwagon club.

For example, I have indeed cycled to Paris with all the pornographic gear on. Luckily the event was just long enough ago for me to have forgotten the pain and I might put my hand up for another helping. Like childbirth, I guess. I have, too, taken to walking. Indeed the only real joy here has been the pub-planning but I keep my real-ale excitement under wraps. I don’t want to offend the ramblers club who are countryfile devotees to the core. Mind you, they seem to enjoy a pint too.

Now I quite like physical exercise but the body complains rather more often these days, so following Ryan Giggs’s lead, I have enjoyed a few sessions of yoga. God it’s boring ..but undeniably good for you. My yoga class is next to a pub.

Talking of gigs, I have rocked at several stadia and Hyde Parked-it most summers. I consider myself quite cutting edge. I’ve been bookish and arty at Hay and Edinburgh, regularly check out art galleries and am a paid up member at the local cinema club. Culture is going well but my default position remains inert. I’d rather sink into a chair, a beer, a takeaway curry and the Eurovision song Contest. No delete that last bit. I did watch it last week but it even bored me into changing channels to watch the history of Origami or some such on one of those + channels.

As for ancestry (.co.uk) well there’s a time-soaking world to explore. My grandma comes from railway stock! Her Dad was a stationmaster, so too his Dad – and before that they were…farmers. My granddad was an accountant but  a cavalryman in the Queen’s Own Hussars during WW1. His Dad was a police sergeant and before that they were all….farmers. I confess to quite a few frissons of excitement looking through various censuses, so I am being just a tad disingenuous. You get the point, however.

The Rolling Stones are having one of their several last hurrahs this summer. They too seem desperate to stave off boredom. They appear to know who they are, however.

See you in Glastonbury. I’m taking my new camera.

Strangers on a train (3). A trip to London.

29 Apr

I boarded a District Line tube at Wimbledon and settled in my half-empty carriage to my book, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey. Seated, head down, phone off, I drifted through the pages of soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan. The boredom, humour and utter terror of a life I wouldn’t know. Someone was shouting into an android three seats away, desperate to connect before we went subterranean. Wanker. Otherwise all seemed OK.

Parson’s Green. Young black bloke gets on, announced by the tinny, high-pitched whistle of an iPod, blaring decibel-destruction into his own ears and irritation around the carriage. He sits opposite.  Nothing said. Stiff upper lips all round. Putney Bridge. A Marianne Faithful lookalike (40+ years ago anyway) gets on and finds a spare seat next to the noise. She has a copy of Paris Match protruding from a shoulder bag. Ten seconds pass. She realises her journey will be compromised. She gets up, hastily, haughtily even and marches to the far end of the carriage. Definitely French.

Fulham Broadway. Thick-set white, middle aged bloke in overalls appears. Bespattered. A builder? Rug of greying hair protrudes from his wide-open shirt. Bald. Big boots. He sits next to our DJ. The train moves off, the pulse and pitch of the music overrides all thought. I look up and see the new arrival showing active signs of discontent. Loud theatrical sigh. My interest piqued, I rest my book on my lap and wait.

Not for long. My builder-friend half-turns to our irritant and gently, carefully pulls an earpiece out. I was surprised at the lack of aggression and further, amazed, when he spoke. With no hint of menace, but with undeniable, firm imperative he breathed, “Turn that fucking think down will you mate?” I  held my own breath here. No one else seemed to notice the drama before us – but of course they all had seen and heard. We all play the weird game of locked-in-syndrome unless bold enough to voice discomfort, opinion. I had admired Marianne earlier but this polite, unrefusable request transcended any previous Gestalt of such situations. And  more, the young man responds!

” I’m so sorry; of course.” The accent, public school – or at least that place where Tony Blair sent his kids. The expected uncouth shrug or ‘innit’ voice no part of this young man’s behavioural vocabulary. And yet he knew what he was doing with the full-volume blasting of strangers, just as he knew how to apologise and kill the volume. Self-preservation? Or just manners.

I make it to Sloane Square without more excitement. I have to kill time. I am meeting my daughter. She will be late but I factor this in and allow myself to enjoy the freedom of time. The King’s Road. It’s plush round here. Knightsbridge a stone’s throw, designer shops to right and left, estate agents boasting eye-watering prices for modest flats. There’s a confused hubbub of languages about. It seems most conversations are being conducted in French or Spanish or, actually, American. Fewer Eastern Europeans round here? I head past the Saatchi gallery and turn right at Calvin Klein – I have spied a bookshop at the end of Culford Gardens and I need a browse in the quiet of a sensible store.

Most sole-trader bookshops struggle, don’t they? But here in Kensington and Chelsea this little place is bustling. Bookish people are asking if biographies reviewed in last week’s Sunday Times have come in yet. Smart uniformed prep. school children are quietly browsing in kiddies’ corner. A mother says, “Hurry up and choose, we’ve got to go home via M and S otherwise we’ve nothing for supps.” English, to my surprise.

I hear a conversation outside. A Spanish mother having one of those chats with a son which sounds like ferocious argument but is, in fact, a loving exchange. They come in. I turn and look.. and take her in. Silly clicky high-heels, skinny jeans, tight top, shock of dark hair, aviator sunglasses and…annoyingly attractive. Their conversation continues. Now the boy, also uniformed,  takes the lead and his mother gestures for him to go to the front desk. A perfect and polite English voice comes from the boy’s previously Hispanic gob, “Excuse me have you got the last Alex Rider book, please?”

I smile and head off for Starbucks, needing a bit of barrack room banter from my book to restore order in my head.

Sitting in the alcove at the front of the coffee shop, I have my window on the world. The traffic moves surprisingly freely outside and seemingly hundreds of buses pass, laden with workers going home or heading to meet buddies for beers. It is 6 o’clock. Hordes of pedestrians click by, so many ‘working’ their mobiles as if lives depended on connections made while walking from A to B. Ted Baker bags bounce around the arms of women; men in suits deep in business conversation amble by heading towards Colbert’s the posh new French place on the square or perhaps Pimlico for a gastro pub. There’s no shortage of choice here. Older school pupils rucksacked with cricket and tennis gear,  bantering away, head for home – and if they live round here they’ll be laying their heads in plush bedrooms tonight.

My attention is caught by an American woman ordering coffee – her accent is more Bronx than Boston but it is the expression Hot Latte that catches my ear. “I wanna get three hot lattes,” she demands. The attractive, pony-tailed young waitress (at last an eastern european accent!) smiles.

“All our lattes are hot!”

“Not from the last Starbucks I was in, they weren’t.” Caustic but not unpleasant. I released a smile, which the Yankie lady saw and reciprocated. I resolved to ask for ‘hot’ lattes in the future.

I looked outside again. Almost time to go but I had been enjoying the piped lazy jazz, Frank Sinatra… American Songbooky music that I would rarely buy but seemed perfect for a late afternoon in Starbucks. I glanced across the road. A flower-seller trading beneath a large umbrella, boasting the patronage of KnightFrank.co.uk, Estate Agents – stamped on the fringe of the canvas. An elderly man I had seen earlier, surely then with his wife, now solo, was making his way across the road. He stooped over various bucketed bunches below the canopy. A few seconds and a suitable selection was made. There was a smiley exchange between vendor and vendee and the older man shuffled away towards Sloane Square. He was almost out of Starbucks spying range when he stopped and waited at the pavement’s edge. A minute passed, two, three perhaps. Buses went by a-plenty, taxis too. A rater stooped lady, relying quite heavily on her stick, shambled into view and stopped just a yard from my perch in the Starbucks alcove. She looked up and across the road, scanning the bustle of life, searching. It didn’t take long for my flower-buyer to spot her. He raised the bouquet. She lifted her stick in response. It took a little while but he found a safe gap between buses and made his way to where she was waiting. The flowers were handed over with smiles and love. A fond kiss. A few words and, after a satisfactory rearrangement of bags and blooms, the pair moved off, rather elegantly,  together.

In Starbucks the music had changed to a more urgent beat. Drum and bass. A signal for me to move too.

Books on the Go.

15 Apr

I have taken to reading four books at once. Pretty pretentious, you might say. Hear me out.

Till recently I had never read Harry Potter. Shame! (Indignation) Shaaame (Sympathy). Well The Philosopher’s Stone sits snugly in my downstairs loo awaiting my next motion – or at least when I decide to use that particular venue. Inevitably, I suppose, I will link the young wizard with my basic functions but most books get lost in a different ether. At least HP is contextualised. After 50 pages I am still reserving judgement.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (bedside), riding high with nearly 250,000 sold, is an odd tale of a very odd couple – particularly the young wife whose mysterious disappearance is explained in the manner reminiscent of early Ian MacEwan: completely unbelievable…but plausible. It’s a Tom Sharpe maquerading as a Stephen King (quite a stretch) but this is bedside stuff. I admit to skipping Question Time to curl up with it. I didn’t skip anything but my Kindle pages for Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles (three down and still two to go…I won’t make it zzzzz___) To be fair I was reading this for the sake of literary breadth; like reading the Mail and the Sun and the Guardian all in the same week. Archer doesn’t speak to any little bit of me, really but I am reminded of the speed reading course I did in 1971 and I can flash through 50 pages in as many seconds.

Aware now that I am sounding patronising – a development from pretentious – the quid pro quo for Jeff is Julian. Barnesie, as I like to call him, is my ‘go to’ man in a tricky situation. He makes me feel clean again; he dusts me down, engages me, surprises me, moves me. His latest, Levels of Life culminates in an extraordinarily touching examination of his grief for Pat Kavanagh, his wife. It’s a literary non-fiction, a documentary novella. The stories are imbued with a sort of giant metaphysicality which moves the reader intellectually as well as emotionally, to a place where he enables our view of human experience- love – via acute angles and towering perspectives. He begins: ‘You put two things together that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.’ So Part One (The Sin of Height) is the tale of early balloon flights coupled with the development of aerial photography. Then follows the improbable pairing of the stiff-upper-lip British adventurer, Fred Burnaby with the vampish actress Sarah Berhardt (On the Level). Finally we are alone with Barnes and his grief (The loss of Height). ‘When we soar we also crash; there are few soft landings,’ he says – and of his wife, ‘..the heart of my life; the life of my heart.’ It’s both poignant and invigorating – with a characteristic detachment as if he is viewing his beravement from a balloon drifting over the Channel.

At 116 pages Levels of Life is a handy volume for all public transport. Who wouldn’t  want to pull JB out on the tube?  I  certainly wouldn’t take Jeff. on the Picadilly Line. One has to be so careful in London. You can see that four books could easily become a minimum to have on the go. Crime/thriller novels are excellent palate-cleansers for higher and lower brow reading. And the effort of picking yourself up after that final page is softened by what’s in the toilet or your overcoat pocket. A friend’s wife used to carry three novels with her at all times and read, one page from each in rotation. She even chose novels of similar lengths. She argued, apparently, that the enjoyment of reaching the climax three times in quick succession…let’s not go there.

I shall be in London tomorrow and will report on my experience of Susan Hill (The Pure in Heart). I haven’t read much of SH but I’m a bit disappointed that she appears to have her tame regular ‘DCI’ Simon Serrailler. I am thus expecting to follow the well-trodden road of Banks, Rankin, PDJ, Val McDermid and the rest who latch on to a character and shake them till they’re dead. Mind you I quite enjoy the vibrations.

What Thatcher has done for me…

15 Apr

That the Iron Lady media frenzy has been unseemly is all too evident. What can we rescue from the tornado of hot, swirling vortex that has been whipped up before the wake of the worn out 87 year old, who happened to be our first female PM? Clarity, that’s what! Was she controversial? Yes. Did she win three elections? Yes. Should the tax payer pay millions for her funeral? No.

Let me move on (unlike the BBC and every other media organisation and vested interest) to other news. Is that bloke who runs North Korea a basket case? Yes. Did we like the Morse prequel, ‘Endeavour’? Yes. Is Sally Bercow a self-obsessed embarrassment for her speaker-hubby (himself a shade pompous)? Yes. Was the sexy song about a one-night-stand sung by the talented little 11 year-old on Britain’s Got Talent, inappropriate? Yes. Was Tony Blair to blame for the MMR scandal? No, but he didn’t help. Has Madonna done anything for Malawi? No. Has Nicholas Hytner done a great job for the National Theatre? Yes. Should Sir Robert Edwards’ (Nobel Prize IVF) death have had more column inches than Peaches Geldof? Yes. So it goes…but let’s not get into the bombing of Dresden.

On to sport. Where are rules not really to be followed? The Masters at Augusta, if the penalty concerns the world’s most famous player. Where should rules be slavishly adhered to? Augusta, if a 14year old Chinaman can be found and made an example of and lectured and penalised. Where could you see the very best exhibition of sportsmanship in the very heat of high-level competition? Augusta, when Angel Cabrera man-hugged Adam Scott after the Aussie had thrillingly snatched victory at the second play-off hole. Friendship through sport. Humility in winning, grace in losing. A lot of what went on at home this weekend fell so far short of the savoury. But when it happens we feel enriched; we are reminded that competition can be noble.

Grammar; to be precise Gwynne’s Grammar. The Sunday Times saw fit to sneak an article by Nevile Martin Gwynne on his new Ebury Press publication. For thinking and reasoning we need words. Just as words and their definitions are the science of vocabulary, grammar is simply arranging words in the best order to make the best and clearest sense for any purpose. Without words we cannot think, let alone communicate…learning grammar does not just happen.

If we all read NMG’s worthy tome we might use words more accurately, sparingly and wisely. The use and misuse of words and platforms this week has forced a valuable brevity upon me. In a funny way, the Lady turned it round.

Be nice…

15 Mar

When asked recntly why he did not ‘blog’ any more and contrbuted rarely to newspapers or magazines, Stephen Fry admitted that he was, ‘Tired of slagging people off.’ Tweeting allowed regular daily mini-comments of an uplifting, congratulatory nature and even the odd disapproving or  disappointed opinion didn’t need to extend to a vituperative, mean-spirited, extended essay. Journalism, he said, had become a profession where too many of its number made their livings from being nasty.

Most schoolchildren will (or should) have been chided by English teachers for using this bland adjective for a multitude of descriptions. It’s unspecific, vague, unimaginative, too easy….and yet the ubiquity of ‘nice’ remains: have a nice day; nice work if you can get it; nice one Cyril; naughty but nice; nice and warm in here; a nice distinction. Dictionaries emphasise the amiable and kind-heartedness implicit in the word. Nice once meant fastidious or scrupulous. I’m beginning to warm to this bland word and want to push it rather higher in our etymological estimation.

When we call someone a nice person we mean a good deal more than saying It’s a nice day, don’t we? We imply that we know the individual well-enough to make a judgement about how he/she treats others and his/her general disposition. Kindness is involved as well as demeanour. Well that’s quite subtle isn’t it? And we make these judgements dozens of times a day: in the workplace; with relatives and friends; in the home; at the corner shop; in pubs and clubs; travelling wherever and whenever. Our radar is ever up for mean-spiritedness or rudeness, irritability and intolerance; kindness and sensitivity; warmth and caring. Mothers berating children in high streets; husbands sniping at wives in Tesco; children texting or facebooking unpleasantnesses; colleagues demeaning others at work – power games being played everywhere. Many rise above the competitive nastiness which is brought out by bringing an unfeeling response or tetchy personality to the surface under stress. Empathy – or lack of it – is bandied about and the resultant need to train our youth in emotional intelligence. Well I’m sceptical about trying to drill feelings into children. The home atmosphere, learning from how you are treated, observing how your nearest and dearest treat others, must be the greatest factor in our ‘nice’ learning curve.

We can all call up scary relatives from our childhood whom we categorised as odd or nice. Thousands of school interactions educated us further – and often the hard way. And then the workplace where we thought that the adult world would put to one side the bitchiness of childish things – but no! It’s a shock to find that one-upmanship, prejudices, power struggles, bullying and the rest are alive and kicking in many workplaces up and down the land. Whatever has been said convincingly at interview can be replaced by bigotry. People can be snide, deceitful, conniving…just like at school really.

So when we encounter niceness, it’s so nice! I have been lucky to meet so many down the years who say positive things about colleagues, see the best in people, have a genuine diplomatic reserve, volunteer, are genuinely pleased with the success of others, readily get their wallets out when grumpy John retires after 40 years with the firm…and so the niceness goes on. I know what Stephen Fry meant when he talked of the default position of journalists, bloggers and media people being critical, sniping. I wouldn’t want to take all journos to task for it is in the workplace that we could make so much better progress. Economic pressures and performance obsessions mean that the modern office, factory, bank, school, hospital, restaurant etc are pressurised competitive environments like never before. Precisely the reason why niceness should be high on all of our agendas.

Nice can mean saying hello to your cleaner – knowing his/her name, even Christmas carding. Niceness can mean chivvying, supporting, listening to an underperformer who probably knows what he/she is lacking but is hard-pressed to turn things round. Difficult choices don’t mean that niceness has to go by the board. Nice can mean firm, straightforward, honest, consistent, untemperamental, just, fair..but to be all these things the nice person needs a broad perspective, a view that suggests we are all in this together and our lives should not be circumscribed by the pressure brought on by unthinking and cruel individuals.

I have been privileged to know and work with vast numbers who fit into this ‘broad perspective’ niceness category. Just a few – and some of them in undeserved high places – have needed a big Be Nice to Others Post-it slapped on their backs or, better, smuggled into their diaries. Unfortunately such people have built up a lifelong immunity to such advice; skins often get thicker.

1. Advice for Headteachers: teach.

14 Mar

I have given this article a number, indicating that my advice might multiply into a  series of unwanted naggings. Most people in power feign gratitude at helpful hints and will certainly ignore them unless a. The offerings comes from those who are even more powerful, b. Ofsted tell them, specifically, how to buck their ideas up and c. The advice comes from those whom they trust. I hope that I have been in this last category and I offer these thoughts as a kindly, critical stranger.

Teach. Yes, I mean get into the classroom and spend some of your busy week doing what you were trained for. Around 70% of secondary heads don’t teach at all. Increasingly they style themselves as executives, with iPhones strapped to their belts, secretaries who are called PAs, digital diaries filled with conferences or meetings with schools with which they are federalised to ‘share good practice’ or pool expertise or rationalise budgets. These meetings are, of course, chummy hot air balloons with lots of gas to propel the Heads (and their acolytes on the leadership group) high into the sky – but after tea and biccies they come to ground and little has been done to aid any of the children back at the ranch.

Primary Heads teach rather more but, in larger primaries, they too find it an inconvenience. Strange to say that the number of Heads who teach in private schools – about 50% – is greater. I wonder why, with all that cash sloshing around on Toby and Jemima’s riding lessons and tiny GCSE Maths sets, what is it that persuades the highly paid beak to dabble with a little 6th form Ancient History? Contact – that’s the thing. Getting to know a few pupils who then spread the word – he/she is a good egg. Being a brilliant teacher doesn’t matter – know your stuff, of course – and good preparation with an aversion to missing too many sessions (for conferences or ‘important’ meetings) are vital.

A few lessons a week not only gives you a profile with the students but also with colleagues. You may be a little de-skilled compared with the bright young things who are busting their guts on a full timetable but you can claim to line up alongside them, have coffee with them and complain about the behaviour of 4B; show them that you’re on their side. Parents like it too. At Parents’ Evening you don’t have to feel like a spare part smiling hopelessly into the middle distance as droves of them ignore you, keen to find out from the real teachers how their offspring are progressing. No – you can be sat at your own teacher-table with mark book at hand and genial knowingness about the aforementioned characters in 4B.

I have worked for several Heads all of whom taught. They had in common an aversion to those things which took them away, too often, from base camp. They each made a profit and loss calculation on how their time was spent and at the end of the year the balance sheet showed healthy assets in the home time-bank. Nor were these heads all brilliant teachers but they were given a greater leeway by their charges because they showed a liking (and command) for their subject and a strong desire to know, just a few children through teaching. One of these leaders confided that she wouldn’t know quite how to use her working hours profitably if she didn’t teach a fair load. This Head was a grafter and rarely begrudged any extra time spent in the cause of her school.

Good heads also push themselves to ‘go to things’: sports matches, drama productions, art shows, visit summer camps, go on summer camps, concerts, trips educational and social…this puts them in good odour with staff, parents, pupils of course but they, doubtless find these experiences elevating – the buzz from being there.

The word on the street is that leadership is vital in any enterprise. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes – and they can lead, we are told from the front, rear or side. They can top-down or bottom-up; be desk bound or out and about; wear a bleep to scurry out of questionable break-out sessions (heads who wears a bleep are shouting: look how important  I am because anything that goes wrong back at base needs me to be alerted to sort things out) .They  delegate like mad to assistant headteachers  many of whom are in their twenties and have advanced too quickly so as to keep the staff turnover from melt-down. This denies the poor sods the chance to fine-tune their teaching skills because, having been made Heads of Year two years after qualifying, have continued upward so they now teach as little as the Head and attend as many conferences.  They too are too busy to run after-school clubs – or do they just convince themselves that they are too important?

So one type of executive breeds another and Ofsted’s obsession with a data-driven agenda means that the nouveau headteacher is less likely than ever to know the children in his/her school, never mind teach them.

For the school’s sake, for the children’s sakes, for your sakes – teach, just a bit. You know it makes sense.

Strangers on a train (2)

6 Feb

There are some trains for which a first class ticket costs barely a farthing more than cattle (or ‘standard’) so why not go for it? And so here I was again at Manchester Picadilly, a couple of weeks on from my last visit, enjoying the delights of the Virgin first class lounge which sits, like a mobile TV studio above platform 1, with a view to die for…or from. I positioned myself as Gabby Logan did when overlooking the Olympic Park.

As I was settling in to my machine cappucino, iced water chaser and Wolf Hall, I noted my fellow loungees. Asian – Indian husband, wife, daughter. Well-behaved, quiet. Two smart 30+ladies, all business suits and laptop bags. Two younger men, one power-overcoated, the other thin grey suit, thin grey tie. Top buttons undone – both.

Thomas Cromwell’s wife, Liz,  had just passed away when a thought occurred. None of the noises off in the room were being spoken in English. I thought that I recognised Malayalam – the Keralan dialect – from the stern Indian father;  the smartie ladies were definitely French; the boys were bantering in a growly eastern european way, between iPadding, iPodding and playing with their androids. I cast my eyes over the seething mass of rush-hour Manchester.

And on to coach H, seat 05. The 18.55 under way. I turned pages. Cardinal Wolsey’s position getting dodgy and Thomas More serving notice that he’s a smarty-pants. I was restless, however, since my evening tastebuds were telling me that it was past wine-o’clock. Ears wandered. More strange sounds. Russian? And Chinesey? Certainly more French. Then the train manager intercommed. I think I caught Stockport, and Crew but missed Wilmslow and Milton Keynes. He spoke with the fast asian certainty that his passengers could understand every word. His voice was light and comforting and impenetrable. I have a lovely friend in Cochin with whom I have spent many hours of delightful whisky-laced conversation: he in the certain knowledge that I understand all his rapid-fire RP English; me in that exhilarating state of second-guessing and linguistic ‘catch-up’ where the game of jigsawing sentences or knowing grunts and gestures becomes an art. I didn’t get to meet the train manager. Pity.

Shortly a drinks trolley rattled in, prodded onward by a tall blond hunk of a young waiter – all Third Reich and noble bearing. A step behind was a gorgeous dark-and-olive waitress looking as if she’d just shoe-horned herself into her unform after jetting in from Mauritius or Hawaii or wherever else these visions are created. I waited for the language hit. From the mouth of Adonis came the uplifting harshness of South London –Looks like you could do with a stiff one, Sir – no word of a lie. What do you suggest? said I. Nothing better than the Cab. Sav, if you like a bit-o-red…and why not have it in the tumbler, y’never know how long the food’ll take. Well the deal was done and I was showered with undersized packed of pretzels and Tyrrels’ crisps. Bloody silly these piddling little packs. Barely get a mouthful. I was all agreement and gratitude.

Then he rumbled off and Aphrodite appeared with menu and pencil and when she opened her mouth out came Joanna Lumley, Moira Stewart and Fiona Bruce all rolled into one. Too shy to ask her where she hailed from, I restricted myself to mumbling my preference for the chicken and stuffing sandwich, fresh fruit and coffee later. And so I sank back into the arms of Hilary Mantel and the crimson warmth of the Cab Sav.

While my ear struggled with the sounds around me I was buoyed by the crisp and surprising clarity of my attendants. On delivery the sandwich turned out to be a white-Sunblested nightmare. The packaging sported an image of Nelson. I wouldn’t have advertised the Englishness of this product; the great admiral would have spat the thing out. Aphrodite was all apology and offered me another banana. Adonis reappeared near Milton Keynes to announce that I needed a double top-up to see me through to Euston. You’re very chirpy at 9pm on a Friday, I offered. Easy job,  I like people, got the weekend off. Well it’s easy if you smile, I said. You make it look easy. Well, Sir, the way I look at it is that life’s too bloody short, innit?

Too right.

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