simplysorro

On Saturday last I met up with some dear friends to see the Matisse exhibition. Now I’m not that arty but I visit galleries every now and then so I can drop the fact into conversation. A few pointers from my art-expert friend, Mark White, ensures that I have the required amount of bullshit at my fingertips to win friends and influence people. I use a similar approach with wine, formula 1 and world problems. Matisse’s ‘Cut-outs’ exhibition is a primary school delight. It’s hundreds of bits of coloured card stuck on paper. Fourteen rooms of it. Predicatably I liked the blue nudes (room 9) best. Anyone would enjoy this weirdly simple-but-complex series – anyone who has made a collage, Christmas decorations, been a primary school teacher or just had a childhood. Here and there I could have done with Mark W to decode something for me..but mostly I drifted through feeling more at home in an art gallery than usual.

This is not what I was going to write about, however; the first paragraph is a digression! What moved me to put fingers to keys was a toilet experience. Level 1 Tate Modern.

I was early for my meeting with friends. Comfort break, I thought; get it out of the way. The men’s loo on Level 1 is small: two urinals and one sit-down. I entered the latter and locked the door. I was surprised to see that the floor-to-ceiling door was backed with a stainless steel sheet. So too the wall behind the toilet. The rest was quite chic shiny black quartz tiling. The toilet was long and thin – you could fit two loos in there actually. I saw that some of the tiling had had graffiti scrubbed off and the mirror-shine was rough matt in places. Pity.

My attention turned to the steel surfaces. There was a mass of etchings and scratchings. Dan wuz here; Fuck off; I hate Farage. I searched for anything remotely witty or interesting but the best I could find was Gibralter? Espanol. How peculiar is it to get a sharp implement – knife, key, compass, belt buckle, coin – and apply hard pressure to a clean, smart piece of shiny, sheet metal to deface it. I can just about understand (if not embrace) the biro or felt-tip naughtiness of a real witticism which will make my public lav. experience a thing of greater joy. For example, later that day in The Hole in the Wall pub, the old Tommy Cooper classic made me chuckle as I had a pee: Went to a seafood disco the other day….pulled a muscle. Nothing like this in the level 1 toilet at the Tate Modern. Just unsightly scorings which were random, dull, stupid. I appreciated Banksy rather more. His clandestine art is, at least, designed to entertain provoke, challenge – it is witty, daring and has an aesthetic intention.

While I was examining the closet walls  heard the outer door swish. A man whistling Waterloo Sunset. He had to be over 50 and British – who else whistles the Kinks these days? Probably a Londoner too. He broke off to hawk some spittle up an gob it out. Hmmm; probably hasn’t seen that the cubicle is occupied and there is an anonymous listener. Next – a fart like a gunshot. No he can’t think anyone else is in there! Back to Waterloo Sunset; he’s a good whistler.

And now I’m out, rather depressed by the gougings of my inner sanctum. I wash my hands, water scalding. Time was when all hot water taps in these places was reliably cold. Waterloo Sunset man is next to me now. No eye contact. I turn to the hand drier. The hand towel dispenser is empty (at 10.30 on a Saturday morning?) so just the one Dyson hand blaster. Now we all know that 10 seconds doesn’t dry the well-watered hands. I repeat the process. Waterloo Sunset sighs impatiently behind me. Well, better than farting to make his point.

My tours of the medical sites of the South East of England continue…This time I have been referred to the lovely Benenden Hospital, ten minutes drive from me and set in the rural weald between Cranbrook and Tenterden, just on the edge of Hemsted Forest. How lovely! If this is what GP commissioning can do, I’m all for it. Three weeks after an MRI scan in a dodgy car park in Maidstone my GP, the charming Mauritian Dr Kurundan Coonjebeeharry – brought up in Stratford in the east end of London, rather less exotic than his roots but a GP on the ball. He proved this by referring me to orthopaedic consultant Matt Oliver, another man with an estuary twang but charm and expertise in abundance.

A fortnight ago I wandered in to the foyer of the hospital, already having clocked that the parking was free. The receptionist asked me to do the alcohol handwash before anything else – I was later to learn that there hadn’t been a case of MRSA since the term was first coined. I met the delightful Mr Oliver two minutes after schedule – he had already read my scan and decided on surgery, which he explained clearly and carefully. More impressive was his subsequent letter to Dr Harry in which he described me as ‘very pleasant’ and ‘slim’. He’s on my party list in perpetuity.While I was listening to his professional analysis, my eyes wandered to the fields and hills rolling into the distance behind him. All hospitals should have this vista. The sick would be healed in a trice.

I digress –  having left the consulting room I dropped down a level to the plush admissions office to book in for the op. I was expecting 3, 4, 5, 6 months hence. ‘Can you come in in two weeks’ time?’ I reeled from the question.

‘What for?’ I stumbled.

‘The operation, dear,’ a woman with Sue on her lapel said.

‘This is the NHS?’

‘Yes, ‘she smiled,’We have a gap on Mr Oliver’s list and it’s made for you!’

And so it came to pass that I found myself with a group of similarly aged gentlemen awaiting the knife on Tuesday last. Two knees, two shoulders, a Viking claw and a groin complaint that a quiet gentleman didn’t want to talk about. Fair enough.

Victor of the Viking claw was a charming fellow. He had Dupuytren’s Contracture – a northern European complaint where the fingers claw up and look devastatingly arthritic but, in fact, a slitting of tendons releases them back to a former straight state. Victor had had the job done before and was pretty chirpy about the whole thing. His little fingers were clawed into his palms but he brushed the malaise aside with a There are worse things that can happen. Our pre and post op carers were Julia (chatty) and Debbie (scatty). Both very pleasant and, appropriately, caring. We were all told to undress and put those surgical smocks on which make you feel vulnerable, emasculated. Then the self-shaving of the knee. Debbie provided me with a rumbling Remington and I was dispatched to the patients’ loo to reduce my hirsute manly patella to a bald, plucked chicken leg. Easy job. Then the wait.

Mr Oliver popped in to check us over and explain in his clear, calm fashion what he was about to do. He crouched down on his haunches and invited questions. When will I be able to do that again?, I asked. Smiles all round. I was second on the list and there was a delay because the morning session in theatre had overrun. No matter, we had the view over the countryside and, after Victor had entertained me for a while I returned to reading the autobiography of the 13th Duke of Bedford, a surprisingly brilliant read!

Mid afternoon, after a two-hour wait I was called. Michael, the porter took me down to theatre. I asked him how long he’d been working at Benenden. Ten years he said (he didn’t look old enough). I wanted to know what he liked about his job and the place. In the time it took to wheel me into the arms of the anaesthetist, I discovered, once again, what makes organisations tick. Michael has a short pleasant drive through the countryside from Tenterden to work. Tea and biscuits are free. The people – from consultants to porters are pleasant to work with. The Christmas party is free. Parking is free. Michael likes coming to work.

I have only had two general anaesthetics but I love the moment when the knock-out serum seeps into the vein on the back of your hand and you know you’re about to go….And then the wake up..already back where I started in pre-op. Victor had just gone down and I was not to seem his unclawed hand. Pity. Debbie brought tea and a sandwich. Ken, who had had his shoulder pinned was going home. 7.30pm. And here came Mr Oliver with pictures of the inside of my knee and explanations of what he had done. ‘Go home and have a glass of wine,’ I said.

‘I’m on my way, just need to check on Victor.’

A number of things attract my attention as I stand and wait at this unmanned little station. Amongst them is the shapely backside of a forty-something lady in trousers as she studies the timetable. My stare lasts a fraction longer than intended – or necessary – and I avert eyes rapidly as she turns towards me. Too late, of course. I’m 62 and still haven’t learnt my lesson.

There are weeds that grow incipiently between the sleepers. Tall, strong, enduring – they push between the grubby, harsh clinker and seem proud to survive despite the rumbling rolling stock’s regular attempts to keep them in their place. An unshaven fat man leans over the platform edge and fires a globule of spit which lands on the live rail. I expect a sizzle. Nothing. The lady-with-the-bottom turns away, grimacing.

The announcer’s voice interrupts my reverie. Presumably this disembodied voice is a digital facsimile of a woman. In the unlikely event that she is real, she’s certainly not here, in West Sutton. Perhaps she’s down the line at an office in Wimbledon, checking a bank of screens and chummying up to travellers in the variety of places served by First Capital Connect. I wonder, momentarily, if she works for the rail company or Network Rail or whoever. The split second I entertain this thought I castigate myself for such sad, dull musing.

And now the battered First Capital Connect train rattles in. It has had a re-spray job which doesn’t disguise the secondhand, seen-better-days exterior. Inside it’s clean and bright with plenty of nanny-reminders on pink stickers finger-wagging the commuters to comply with common decencies of life: Please keep your feet off the seats; please offer your seat to elderly and disabled. There are plenty of Metros scattered about – a weighty woman gets on at Wimbledon to bag them up – and I wonder how many rainforests these free newspapers are consuming.

I make my way to the District Line tube, ignoring the bleeper which tells me to seek assistance when I flash my Oyster at a pink transfer port. The journey onward is uneventful – I lose interest in noting my surroundings and settle to the rather good read that is Sian Busby’s, A Commonplace Killing. Sian, the wife of that staccato-speaking economist, Robert Peston, has recently – and very sadly – died. This is her last novel, introduced movingly by RP. I am only somewhat distracted by two enormous men sitting either side of me, wedging me uncomfortably into my seat. As they shift and sit on the tail of my coat, I have to shift to release the thing. It’s stereo discomfort. Now I notice their thighs – great tree-trunks of undynamic flesh. Their knees can’t be pulled together; I can picture the ungainly  waddle which will carry them off the tube. Unfortunately I don’t get the pleasure of my waddle-prediction as I alight before them and emerge to the sun and throng of central London.

My return journey is even more exciting! It’s rush hour so the tubes are chokka. People pour out at Sloane Square with most of us awaiting to get on being polite, standing back. A slick pin-striper with his preppie son hove into view. They are piling forward – son being pushed and prodded by dad – as soon as the doors slide open. The boy, perhaps 11 or 12 has his head down and butts a tall woman amidships. I’m expecting a foreign expletive but a posh, stern  ‘DO YOU MIND’ pierces the air. Undaunted, without apology, Pinstripey steers his son around her and heads for the only available seat. There is mild amusement on the faces of a bunch of us who have witnessed this. As we set off I take in this unlikely rude couple. The father, now seated, has son sitting on his lap. He’s a big lad. If he wasn’t wearing the tailored brown shorts of a prep. school lad I would have place him at 15, perhaps. His grey sweater has a brown stripe at the V. His shoes are black and weighty, doubtless like the ones his father had to wear at Winchester or Westminster. Father is now ensconced in Wolf Hall. I am mildly surprised it’s taken him this long to get round to it. The boy is playing chess on his mobile phone. Both seem oblivious to the old lady who is standing yard away clinging on for dear life. She is rescued by a small, leather-jacketed, grubby man of indeterminate age and provenance.. He does have manners, though. Back to Prinstripey and son. Not one word passes between them until East Putney when, as they are getting off, the boy asks, ‘Is Hilary Mantel a woman?’

Wimbledon. 6.45pm. Rush hour(s) calming a little. Trains heading for Richmond and Shepperton are delayed. Plenty of groaning on Platform 8. Then a bright red South West Train (better-painted version of First Capital Connect) arrives with so many standing that noses are pressed hard against windows. Strange and macabre thoughts of death camps. Don’t go there. Only four carriages. How much are these commuters paying for their season tickets? The next rain in at Platform 8, heading for Guildford, has 8 coaches. Far fewer standing. Not rocket-science, is it?

Smug on Platform 9, waiting for the West Sutton train, I buy tea from a stall called Pumpkin. £1.85…not bad. I wonder what Starbucks charge on Platform 9? More, I’m thinking. The girl who serves me is very gorgeous but completely incomprehensible. I say yes a few times which seems to please her. I break away before there’s any chance of my agreeing to send money to a numbered bank account in Kiev. I walk a few yards and turn my attention to a young man – 25?- waiting alone by a poster for the musical I Can’t Sing. Simon Cowell is inset on the poster and this young man looks a younger version. Sharp white shirt with top three buttons undone to reveal sprouting black broccoli; a shock of razored dark hair with a sort-of middle parting; gleaming white teeth. I know they’re white because he’s munching a Cornish pasty. This somewhat lessens the Cowell/suavity quotient but underneath his left arm is lodged a single rose. The forward head-movement involved in his next bite seems to shift the rose which now looks certain to drop onto Platform 9. His reflexes are sharp, however. He catches the bloom as it heads to floor but this act, worthy of Botham in his prime in the slips, has consequence. Aargh! The pasty has gone down. A muffled ‘Shit’. A glance around. He catches my eye. He stoops to pick the thing up. Only a couple of small cubes of potato are left on the tarmac. Plenty of pasty left. Will he worry about eating something that has met the ground of platform 9? He looks at me again as he lifts the pasty to his mouth. I smile; so does he.

I return to the Sian Busby novel to finish the journey. I almost miss West Sutton and have to scramble somewhat to get off the train in time. The weeds are waiting and, as I climb the steps, I hear the announcer, wherever she may be, informing a now- empty platform that my train will be arriving soon.

If books aren’t your thing don’t read on. This little piece will end with me showing off how much I have read so far this year, which only serves to reveal that I am, essentially, an idle bastard. However I am trying to catch up on a misspent youth – not that I didn’t read but I discarded all books which, after a few lines, I deemed to be boring.

These tended to include anything suggested by teachers and, particularly most things I was compelled to read. There’s a lot of rubbish talked by those my age about how they revelled in the classics and Isn’t it awful that Middlemarch isn’t required reading for Key Stage 2 any more. How quickly we forget our youthful philistinism.

I cut my literary teeth on comics (the Victor was a favourite), Annuals (Tiger, Roy of the Rovers, Charles Buchan’s Book of Sport for Boys), Enid Blyton, then Capt. W.E Johns, Richmal Crompton, Nevil Shute and only when I wanted to show off did I carry Graham Greene on the bus to school -the cover ostentatiously showing out of my blazer pocket- specifically to impress a gorgeous girl on the 406 bus whom I never had the guts to talk to.

This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the abridged versions of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield fed to me at primary school – but the real magic was in Mr Upperton’s storytime readings. The class ‘got’ the voice and when he told us to read on till the end of the lesson in silence, I co-opted his voice into my head space. It’s still there. I was generally too impatient to learn that it takes patience to settle to a book and attune to its style. Too much fun to be had with bat and ball and other excitements that outweighed sitting and reading. That’s where comics came in of course. Textual soundbites; twitter-reading for 50s and 60s youngsters. They’re still around of course but not the lifeblood for youngsters they once were.

Of course it’s hard to settle to an adult book if you’re not an adult – a self-evident truth which has escaped successive generations of educators. Comics presented both adult and juvenile stories and themes in a juvenile way. Pictures helped of course, especially the brilliant cartoon dramas of World War heroes (British mostly) and villains( German and Japanese mostly)with all the speech-bubbled fun of Achtung! Donner und Blitzen! Banzai! and the rest. Biased as these tales were, comic stories were on the side of good. The good guy scored the winning goal, perseverance defeated fecklessness; working class athlete Alf Tupper always ate fish and chips before outpacing the public school toffs in front of the Queen.

The younger characters were naughty, not nasty: Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril, the Bash Street Gang and the rest. There was order in the comic world – and how wonderfully these comics were illustrated. The first book, that I halfway understood, where disorder and chaos prevailed was Lord of the Flies. This was at O Level and I had adult pretensions. I  could handle adult themes – I could even appear serious in class and talk about power, subversion, civilisation, sexuality and the rest without sniggering ..much. Only when Phil Newton (again) asked Ken Cripps our craggy teacher if Piggy was a homo did the class crack up.

And so I  rather stumbled my way through the early years of my journey to unlock myself through books. I have picked up pace but it’s hard to measure progress when the finishing line is beyond the horizon, infinity. I have had the gall to call myself an English teacher for many years now, too. I hope that, for all the twaddle I have had to ram down unwilling throats, I have helped to find, for some, ways of seeing and thinking and enjoying reading and writing. If not, I hope that some of the lessons, at least  were fun and not always boring.

Well most of the books beneath were not boring. I still occasionally ‘bin’ a book after a few pages, usually if it is either too clever by half or too silly by half. So I’m done with Jeffery Archer. Books 2014

Mothering Sunday is the 4th Sunday in Lent. It dates back to the 16th century and  is a religious festival honouring mothers. Mother’s Day is an American invention which honors (sic) mothers and dates from the early twentieth century. Wikipedia British and American contributors are locked in combat over the merits of provenance but there is no doubt that the Yanks have patented the name of the day. Only those floral, funereal cards that one sends to Mummies in their 90s carry the the Mothering Sunday moniker. As with Halloween and trick or treating we have prostrated ourselves on the altar of Americanism and the retail trades love it.

Time was when youngsters made their own Guy and touted him around in an old pram to con cash from the blue rinse brigade in your locality. Now they beat your door down to demand financial or other material benefit or they’ll piss through your letter-box. And Mummies and Daddies spend extraordinary sums to kit their kids out with diabolic costumes and make-up. The pumpkin trade has run riot and vast amounts of pumpkin soup is wasted. And who has heard of Guy Fawkes these days? The odd primary school teacher.

Back to Mothering Sunday. In the sterile fifties and the slightly more affluent sixties this day was one where the family Sorro children would all sign a card which was handmade by the youngest (who was always at primary school and had a maiden-aunt-style teacher) and delivered while Ma was peeling the potatoes for Sunday lunch. I might have offered a little sous-chef support on the day, occasionally but Mother would usually prefer to do the lot herself, knowing the potential for disaster if she didn’t.

My lovely Mummy would be grateful for the small mercy of a card – possibly some Black Magic Chocolates too, if elder brother had saved enough pocket money and had an uncharacteristic surge of generosity. Father would come out with high-sounding nothings about the importance of the matriarch but we never got anywhere near to going out for lunch; heaven forbid! Neither were the local hostelries remotely geared for an upsurge of Sunday trade. Pubs were places for men to have several beers before the wife put the grub on the table. Sleep followed soon after the belly had been filled. No one had heard of Gastro pubs, catering outlets hadn’t dreamt that they could double or treble the price of their food and watch the suckers flock to table on this oh, so special day.

Well, that was then and this is now. Today, Tuesday, I tried to book a table at three of my favoured posh pub venues and one restaurant. Without labouring the narrative, I failed. One example:

Ah Paul Sorro here, can I book a table for Mothering Sunday?

Do you mean this Sunday?

Yes

Have you booked with us before?

Yes

Hold a second, please. Two minutes pass.

Yes you’re on our system. Can I check your postcode?

I complied.

First we’ve got is 8 o’clock.

Is that morning or evening?

Evening sir, sorry we’re all booked for lunchtimes. Eight too late?

My mother is 86, she goes to bed at eight.

Sorry we can’t help. We do get booked very early for Mother’s Day.

And so it went on with each pub and restaurant. I wanted to tell them all that my mother had been happy with a hand-made card, a phone call, a hand with the washing up and a bite into a hazelnut Black Magic.

When I ventured out every retail outlet screamed Mother’s Day. The florist, the petrol station, the supermarket, the pubs and restaurants all were heralding the Sunday that is shortly upon us. The card business has hit the stratosphere.

As a father I have reflected on the paltry attention paid to we worthy males whose seed should have spawned a generation of thankful progeny. The Yanks haven’t quite grabbed Father’s Day by the balls yet…but they will and I will look forward to the transformation from the absolute denial in the 1950s that fathers deserved anything beyond polite but brief communication at set times of day – to the imminent gigantism that a day devoted to Daddies could become if an entrepreneurial Yank gets hold of it.

And it mightn’t end there. I have just reached grandparent status. A Grandma and a Grandpa Day could well be in the offing.I ‘m an uncle and a godfather too. The list of celebrations that could capture the nation and swell the bank balances of parasitic businesses is endless. I’d like a piece of that action.

For now, however, I must focus on my Mummy. Given that she eats like a sparrow (as most elderly ladies tend) the three course, fill-yer-boots with a glass of prosecco at the local Vintage Inn for £30 would be like force-feeding a French duck. She’ll settle for a gin and tonic and a nice home-cooked roast. Well I watched her do it so often, I reckon that I can manage to do a fair job. Won’t be as good as Mummy’s, though.

I write a poem each day for my own benefit – but I’m thinking there’s money to be made. Perhaps my grandson, the newly-arrived Sebastian, will sell my versifying efforts in about 18 years’ time to fund his gap year. Seems unlikely but who knows how low our literary horizons will be in 2032? I’ll be 81 and won’t give a flying flamingo.

Anyway, as I was drinking my second cup of tea in bed this morning and getting that suicidal feeling that comes with the dreariness of weather and breakfast TV and the prospect of shopping at Budgens, I found myself, once again, scratching my left leg.

My ankle and lower calf area, to be precise. This scaly, flaking, dry almost hairless excuse for what once was a sleek wonder of human engineering. My poem was written in a trice..and here it is.

My Left Leg

My left leg was,once, a shapely feature

A muscled, toned, quite hairy creature,

Smooth with health and tanned by sun

Admired? Well – by me, for one.

Pace and grace it was exposed

By 60s shorts and soon it rose

To tread so many sporting boards

And even climbed the steps at Lords.

But now it’s sixty two years young

Athletic songs have all been sung:

The knee swells up at every turn,

The quadriceps then feel the burn;

All muscles, once so sleek and proud

Now slight, seem fearful, rather cowed;

No sheen of brown, no oil of tan

My left leg is a pasty man.

A hairless fossil, flaking white

Demanding that I scratch it right..

And dead man’s skin flakes from the sore

(I must not scratch it any more)

And feet that carried, winged and free

Now need some keen podiatry.

Oh shake that leg, you’re much the wiser

Smile and grab the moisturiser.

Other body parts will be enshrined or, rather, embalmed in verse on a regular basis. Read simplysorro at every opportunity to get your anatomical Body Shop literary update.

We play cricket on porridge pitches and in blizzard conditions in April; rugby in heat and on the bone-hard sward in September. We offer places at Universities before the results appear and then unpick the whole thing in the light of proper info. We spent years convincing ourselves that Jimmy Savile was a ‘warm and quirky personality’. We prefer the tawdry behaviour of hugely overpaid Premiership footballers to the Herculean efforts of a vast array of other admirable athletes. We buy the Sun newspaper in vastly greater quantity than any other national daily. Just how many more idiocies can we list?

Thousands – and I’m starting here so that everone can think up their own hit list and, like Desert Island Discs, review their favourites on a regular basis. There will be those based on nostalgia such as that strangest of times in the 70s when the miners couldn’t see that their cause was blighted by the selfish and self-seeking self-publicist Arther Scargill. Or the lukewarm milk delivered to primary schools in the 50s which parents and teachers thought was good for us after the privations of rationing.

The inexplicable list could go on forever. Why, oh why do we persist with: tattoos, cold calls, Keith Lemon, Big Brother….no let’s get rather more serious.

Why do people get paid bonuses for doing their jobs?

Why do we look back to learn lessons for the future, when the past tells us that we don’t learn lessons.?

Why are brilliant actors and other performers appallingly inarticulate when they receive awards?

What’s wrong with a coalition where two sides have to get on and sort out their differences?

Why are double-glazed houses still draughty?

Why don’t ladies drink port and lemon any more?

OK now it’s getting rather random so let’s start (once again) with something I should know about and then have lists of idiotic questions sorted by category.

A. EDUCATION

1. Have we decided what it is yet – and what it’s for?

2. Grading systems – these seem to be under debate (again). Go back to square one and admit that all anyone is interested in is which grades mean pass and which mean fail?

3. Is Literature as important as Physics? Is Art as important as Maths? Should we even rate subjects as more – or less – important?

4. Do children learn more out of school than in?

5. Why aren’t some degree courses allocated half the study-time? History for example.

6. If Ofsted and Mr Gove are essentially outcomes-driven (ie fixated on results), why are they bothered about parents taking children on term-time holidays? Private schools have weeks more holiday and seem to be the paradigm for much current thinking.

7. Why do teachers try to justify themselves?

8. Why don’t more headteachers cuddle their staff?

And so on…Send me your weird list, please.

My left ear is blocked at the moment and, along with most people who have time on their hands, I can’t be bothered to do much about it. A stupid reason for this is that I derive a strange pleasure from those out-of-body experiences when I am in a room full of people chatting and it’s all just muffled echo to me. One such experience was at the National Portrait Gallery last Thursday.

I headed downstairs to the 60s/70s retro photo exhibition – the Who and Mick Jagger along with a couple of blurred snaps of Bob Dylan. I rather liked the shot of David Bowie – a sixties side-on stylised picture, all mod., Lambretta and Carnaby Street. The rest left me cold and I wondered why the motley selection were the price of a small mortgage. I noted, as I do at all photo-exhibitions, the information on camera, lens, settings and the rest. Dylan was certainly not flattered by the ill-focused tour snaps that now grace the basement of the NPG.

Just a few steps away was the ‘Starring in..’ Vivien Leigh exhibition – all 40s and 50s chic glamour;  studied, angled, hyper-lit shots for promotion; classic moments from Gone with the Wind and Streetcar Named Desire. Rare beauty and artifice combining for great artistic effect. Right lens settings-too.

I moved to see what the Anthony Van-Dyck fuss was about – that is the self-portrait that will cost the nation £12.5 million if we can wrest it from the hands of a dastardly private buyer. You can make a Freephone call to Andrew Motion while you are staring at the rather louche view that VD had of himself. I was rather taken by both Mr Motion’s thoughts on spending the nation’s cash and the rather wicked gleam in the Flemish master’s eye.

I repaired to the Chandos across the road for an extremely cheap pint of Sam Smiths before making my way to a posh club down Pall Mall for a College drinks party for alumni who like me, like drinks parties. Given the age of the old boys and girls (25 -80ish) it might be expected that we would be pretty au fait with chatting to people we didn’t know. I met up with one old buddy but, mostly I cruised around being engaged by almost all whom I surveyed. A captain of industry here, an academic there; a doctor, accountant, an unemployed astro-physicist and a woman who writes poetry while she’s on the toilet. Best of all was the college President who had had a spat with Michael Gove on the Today programme a couple of days previously. His answer when I asked him ‘Were you surprised that Mr Gove knew more than you about history and education since you are an expert in  both and he in neither?’ would make a good template for many such exchanges with our political masters.

Apart from having to stick my finger in my left ear to drown out the surround-sound, I managed pretty well the following day at the Royal Festival Hall. Brahms and Beethoven were on the menu and, despite being more Coldplay that classical I much enjoyed settling down in that lovely (cross between Art-Deco and Scandanavian Modernism they tell me) place and marvelling at the virtuosity of the brilliant Russian pianist Yuliana Avdeeva and the haughty, moody and magnificent conductor Vladimir Jurowski. We smuggled in a bottle of red. The RFH drinks price-list is the embodiment of extortion so an illicit Shiraz was a must.

I enjoy feeling superior to the frantic mobile-fiddlers on the Tube. The iPhone caress is now ubiquitous, so when there is a sub-terranean interruption to global connectivity there is a sense of cold-turkey for those whose journey involves more than a few stops. I rather ostentatiously pulled out my autobiography of JG Ballard on the District Line and was feeling quite smug when my own mobile began to trill. Aargh! High Street Kensington is at ground level; the signal had broken though!

Sheepishly I answered – my son Charlie phoning for the weekly catch-up from his offshore haven in the Channel Islands. Trying to disguise the fact that I was on the phone at all simply made me look like a spy from a 60s Cold War movie. The conversation continued on the platform as I waited for a connecting Circle Line. Seven minutes until the next tube – and if you knew Charlie when he has a story to tell, seven mins barely covers it. After about four I relaxed and was then sorry when the wagon rolled in and the connection was lost. I didn’t return to JG Ballard but scavenged a copy of the Evening Standard; not difficult as plenty carpeted the floor of an otherwise rather commodious and smart new carriage.

Other highs and lows punctuated my week which, as usual rounded up with a review of the news on Sunday – my day for current-affairs reflection. Lord Rennard seems to have got the Lib Dems in a pickle. He is a sweaty balloon of a man who, thus far anyway, seems to have been found innocent by an investigating QC. The knives are out however and the issue is hot, hot, hot. The Cleggmeister is damned whatever he does. Turn to the Sunday Times Review section for the usual Woodhead teacher-bashing letters column. Always a winner.

My daughter only got a C in her Latin Test but her grades have been consistently A* throughout the term so far. The teacher clearly hasn’t been taught how to mark tests properly like they do in all private schools. Do you agree that the 56 year-old teacher with a PhD who has only taught for 33 years should be suspended pending an investigation? Name and address withheld because I fear reprisals by the teachers.

CW. I am pleased that you brought this sort of unprofessional sloppiness to my attention. These are the sorts of standards we can expect in bog standard comprehensives. Write to the Headteacher forthwith. My friend the lawyer Jack Andthebeanstalking tells me that you have a prima face case which could go all the way to the guillotine.

Anthony Seldon, the overworked Master of Wellington College, who barely had time to write John Major’s and Tony Blair’s biographies and the 20 or so articles for various newspapers and journals in 2013 has come up with the idea that rich parents could pay £20,000 pa per head towards the cost of their offsprings’ education. I wish him well with that one.

The week finished with a walk along the Thames, in full spate, near Hampton Court.  Next week I collect my new prescription glasses. I won’t be hearing much but I may see a lot more.

I was thinking of the Ashes. Cricket you know.

Michael Clarke, the Aussie skipper, was strapping on his pads,

Last night. He would go on to score a century.

He would put England to the sword.

In Adelaide.

In Sutton we were watching a programme about the late Lionel Bart.

Just before 10 o’clock. Last night.

Li (to his friends) sparked so briefly, so brilliantly. Oliver. Food Glorious Food.

As Long as He Needs Me. Then the booze took over Li.

Along the bottom of the screen, text appeared.

‘Breaking news on BBC1…’

Lionel’s friends were talking of two bottles of vodka a day.

So we switched channels.

And the eyes of the world were on a house in Johannesburg.

And Madiba (although I have never called him that) had died.

And the words were not enough. Jacob Zuma did well: they all

Did their best. But they couldn’t, quite, do it.

Facebook came alive with tributes.

A media frenzy.

I remember Kennedy. ’63. This seemed more

Important. Somehow.

Nelson Mandela was the Phoenix rising..

From the Ashes of Apartheid. The fledgling South Africa,

On his back. It was His wings which struggled

To gain height when the weight of

Oppression would have kept most mortals down.

But he flew.Forgave. Transformed.

Inspired. A century? A song? Not a flash but

A flame that burned long on Robben Island

And still had strength and warmth –

Twenty seven years on – to light our world.

Ashes to ashes.

Fings aint wot they used to be.

Ever again.

Today Giggsy is 40 and approaches 1000 games for Manchester United. This week the granite centre half of the Busby years, Bill Foulkes, died aged 81. It is easy to revel in the sinewy brilliance of Giggs’s back-catalogue. Only this week he gave a master-class against Bayer Leverkusen in a 5 – 0 win. Memories of European triumphs and Foulkes are thinner on the ground but one stands out.

On 15th May 1968 Man Utd took a slender 1 – 0 lead to the Bernabeu. I was at home with a tense ear to the transistor. Real cruised to a 3 – 0 lead leaving only a glimmer of hope by conceding an own goal on half time. 3 – 1. I had stopped listening. My brothers were taking the piss. I sulked in my room. I checked the radio with 20 minutes to go. No change. Then a roar from downstairs. Given their allegiances, my brothers might have been cheering another Real goal. I stayed in my room. Then another roar. This time louder and calls for me to join. Bill Foulkes has bloody equalised. Bill Foulkes!!

I won’t forget the ecstasy. Bill Foulkes was an old school centre half. The opposition half was another country. He needed a passport to cross the halfway line. In 688 appearances for the Reds he scored 9 goals. He even checked with Busby when he went forward for corners. Now he had put United into the final at Wembley a fortnight later.

Giggsy still gives great pleasure but that moment in 1968 when Foulkes delivered  The Reds from the dead is a singular delight. My inner ear was reminded of that excited brotherly shriek when I heard of Bill’s death. A landmark week if you’re a United fan.