simplysorro

The tube from Embankment which we boarded around midnight, heading for Morden, was packed with the relieved revellers of a Friday. The first unwinding of the week had been accomplished and there was a loose sense in the carriage. Those around me dived for the few spare seats. I was regally indifferent. I have lost the competitive edge. Unseemly haste, I inwardly sneer.

As the doors closed and the too-late arrivals appeared comically stranded the wrong side of the reinforced perspex, I turned to survey my fellow travellers and caught the eye of a pretty girl, primly seated before me, clutching a brolly. We exchanged a fleeting smile but there must have been something in the look I gave her which suggested the distress of age. Yes I had had a long and indulgent evening; yes I am grey and thinning and have to hold my stomach in; yes I am 62 but so not in that country of old men!

My pretty girl was not looking at me through the eyes that were looking at her. Her smile became a compassionate tilt of the head which prompted speech. “Please would you like, sit down here, please?” Estonian? Slovakian?Polish? Whatever. I knew immediately that her smile had been one of bus-pass assessment and mine that of inappropriate flirtation. She was standing now.

Comically embarrassed I suggested, for the benefit of the Friday compadres within earshot: ” Do I look that old?” A few sniggers but to my further dismay, a general quiet of agreement fell on the majority. My respectful Samaritan now erect and embarrassed shuffled towards the stability of a central pole and I was aware that her boyfriend, still seated, was smiling, patronisingly at her. I cut my losses and sat down quickly. My joke had misfired. I was aware of a couple of sympathetic glances but more keenly aware that, for all my inward denial, I really do look like the old man I see in the mirror each morning.

A fun Friday evening could have drifted towards self-pity but I lifted my head and took stock of those around me. My pretty girl was embarrassed, still, and wouldn’t catch my eye. Indeed her boyfriend, now rubbing his left leg against my right, was making faces at her. I intuited he was mocking her for her show of manners, her generosity of spirit. After all, giving up your seat isn’t that common any more is it? No matter how many stickers are plastered on public transport to remind the masses of their duty towards oldies, the disabled, the pregnant and so on.

My pretty girl took offence at her boyfriend’s gentle piss-take. She turned petulantly away, upset. He rose, between Oval and Stockwell and wobbled over to her. She turned again so that she was facing the way she had started and he was staring at her neck. The farcical mime was noticed by a few, I think but I was staring, riveted. Thoughts tumbled. How would this, now wordless falling-out, play out after they alight the train? Could I imagine the twists and turns of argument and the development into something darker, deeper that could threaten their relationship?

Where had her ‘old fashioned’ sense of manners and respect come from. Somewhere east of Berlin, in a country whose language was impenetrable and growling and ugly? A family, I imagined of very modest means, had instilled a humanity, a set of values, a list of behaviours that were standards you hung your balaclava on. These were ingrained so that your social response was Pavlovian. My pretty girl had to stand up; there was no other way to retain her integrity, her dignity. Of course there was respect for the elders and elderly that remains a fragile cornerstone of many cultures – crumbling rather more, closer to home, perhaps.

I watched as boyfriend managed to get a couple of pouting responses from my pretty girl. He was struggling. He’d hit a nerve, mocked something at her core; something she couldn’t forgive lightly. I felt  might have contributed with my bluff, awkward joke when offered the seat. The young couple fell to a brooding silence.

When they got off at Clapham North, they shuffled past, boyfriend leading the way. As my pretty girl edged through I glanced up, smiled fully, knowingly and said, ” Thank you very much again.” She nodded and if her smile wasn’t as generous as mine, it seemed to have the sureness of knowing she’d done the right thing. They walked past the window and he made a tentative grab for her hand. She pulled away as they turned and headed up the stairs to the exit. The tube doors slid to a close.

I bundled myself up in my own thoughts again as we rumbled towards Morden. First time anyone has offered me their seat. I hope it won’t be the last.

It was bad enough and sad enough when we heard that Cliff Morgan, great rugby player, great rugby man, great human being died a few days ago. To follow this with the news that first David Frost and then David Jacobs had gone too has given me such pause for thought.

What characterised each of these eminent but very different broadcasters was their use of language. Morgan was all passion and instinct – the words flowed as effortlessly as his enthusiasm. Frost developed from the sharp satirical witticism of TW3 to the consummate stealth interviewer of Richard Nixon. Jacobs, incongruously cast as the chair of Juke Box Jury in the early 60s was all suavity and a husky timbre of voice that I can hear as I tap the keys to write.

It’s unfortunate that my children can’t tap into the memories of the 50s and 60s when I was growing up. Of course they will have similar triggers, one hopes, for excellence in broadcasting and those men and women who were defined by a certain style – a way with words.

Cliff Morgan is renowned for his commentary of the 1973 classic New Zealand v Barbarians game. That try. He was enraptured: This is great stuff…Phil Bennett covering…brilliant!…Oh, that’s brilliant… great dummy…brilliant by Quinnell…this is Gareth Edwards…a dramatic start…what a score! Oh oh that fellow Edwards. If the greatest writer of the written word would have written that story, no one would have believed it.

Naturally words in a blog can’t convey the poetry of the moment so Youtube should help. Cliff was an institution for those of us tuning in to sports on TV back in those days. His relish of that turn of phrase to convey his joy at brilliant skill was infectious. He was no commentator -that famous game apart – and he deferred to that other charismatic wordsmith Bill McLaren with characteristic charm and humility. His use of language was as instinctive as his love of people and life.

Sir David was higher profile from the moment Ned Sherrin took him on as the feisty frontman for That Was the Week That Was. So much followed. He became a broadcasting superstar but I still have shivers when I recall his demolition of the corrupt insurance executive Emil Savundra.

And David J. All huskiness and aplomb. It’s hard to imagine him fronting the ‘cutting edge’ pop music show Juke Box Jury in this day and age. What links the three men is their part in my youth but, more, their voices, their words, their charm. The spoken word can be so memorable and we are lucky to come across a few in our lives whose eloquence can raise our spirits and understanding. These three were broadcasters but perhaps even they might defer to Seamus Heaney whose death has added a fourth voice stilled of late.

Heaney’s Nobel Prize of 1995 rewarded a prodigious worker-in-progress. I missed him at school but his influence on my teaching life – and that of the current generation has been profound. Death of a Naturalist seemed a whole new way of conveying the experience of growing up. Affecting and effective Heaney wrote: Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it. This fusion of his rural, farming heritage and his writing life gave his poetry a similar dimension to that of Ted Hughes:authenticity.

So wordsmiths all. And as Barry Gibb once sang: Words are all I have/To take your heart away. The heart has taken a little bashing this week.

Beers are 1 Euro in the Station Bar at Lagos. Joachim, the genial host, looks like a tanned walnut as he busies himself serving cheap booze to the burgeoning crowd of ex-Pats who start to gather after noon. I am with my friend of more than 40 years, Richard, who escapes the damp chill of Blighty for his flat in Lagos. Warmth for body and soul he tells me. I am introduced to a range of permatanned middle-aged friendlies. Each has a different life story to explain their presence. One or two admit to keeping heads down to avoid the law. Most are overweight, one or two boasting a heart by-pass or similar.

We drain a couple of Sagres and move off. A number have already settled in for the afternoon but we need food and exercise. We head to the marina – a real delight. All manner of vessels, gleaming white and chrome,  bob neatly in their plush moorings. Richard nods to acquaintances, hails one or two as we wander towards the bridge into the old town. We stop to chat to Paola, a fit, slim, weather-beaten woman of indeterminate age…40? 50? She is selling day-cruise trips on ‘heritage’ ships that look straight out of the Armada. She bubbles with life despite business mid-May being tortoise-slow. She tells tales of her journeys to South and North America in the off-season. Travel breathes life into her, clearly, and she returns refreshed for the grind of enrolling punters for these authentic pleasure boats. There is a row of stands with other hardy souls selling anything from shark fishing to Atlantic cruises. Or not selling. We wave goodbye and head for Bar Bora and a light lunch.

If you hadn’t been aware of EU cash pouring into Portugal, stepping out of the arrivals lounge at Faro presents you with immediate examples. A plush new airport whose futuristic roof was ironically ripped off by a storm last year, presents you with the first indication. Then the new motorway running the length of the Algarve – and parallel to a similarly straight A road. On either side, as you flash over the new tarmac, signs of a different Portugal are clear. Shanty dwellings and a simple rustic life juxtapose with the golf courses and cocktails of Villamoura. The railway, built for tourists, rattles from one end of the Algarve to  the other, trundling into – and then out of – tourist havens of beach and pool and happy hours. Between stops the landscape and annual incomes metamorphose to a reality that sits uneasily close-by.

And now in Lagos as we stroll to the Bora, the ceramic pedestrianisation makes shiny ( and slippery) the once-battered ginnels and sidestreets of the old town. It’s a moot point if the Brussels cash has really improved things but we ex-pats like the chic veneer of the new while we congratulate ourselves on the authenticity of the old. Richard stops to buy a mobile phone charger from a Chinese store which looks unlikely to sell anything electrical since it has flowers and rugs arrayed outside. “They sell everything,” he murmurs, curtly. Indeed. A demoralised, wizened old china remains seated while R enquires. She then reaches down into a cabinet and brings out a multi-attachment affair which would service almost every instrument boasting access to cyberspace. 5Euros. It can’t be. Tell that to Carphone Warehouse when we get back.

I buy cards, stamps and a bottle of brandy before we leave – as if to prove to myself that this tardis of a place really does stock anything. Lunch is good in Bora with the smell of tobacco and some other substance wafting about. And beers, of course. I make the mistake of switching to gin. Gordons bottle upended into my glass until brim reached. Tonic served separately. I should have known.

I need to walk off the alcoholic lunch so while Richard retreats to the apartment terrace for a siesta, I set off along the beach for a long sandy walk in the sun and the wind and the warmth.

Naturally we rendezvous back at the Station Bar in time for Happy Hour. Same faces, same genial host, same slightly slurry conversations. All good fun. A pattern repeated each day until my time is up and I head for Faro and the joy of Easyjet.

Now, I have had little cause to complain about Easyjet and things were going pretty well. OK I had my small bottle of sun cream confiscated. There wasn’t much in it and, being a teacher, I rather enjoyed the feeling of being told off and tut-tutted at, albeit in Portuguese. I wasn’t remotely hungry but the departure lounge was crammed with people eating and drinking. Huge baguettes and beers abounded. So you’re returning from the cheapest place in Europe (well, nearly) and you wait for that delicious moment when you can be ripped off rather than buy a meal for nothing at the café just outside the airport? Counter-intuitive but brilliantly human. I almost joined the happy, foolish ranks but my flight was called so I scurried to Gate 55 via passport control – a grim swarthy whose face was set in permanent tight-lipped passport photo mode. No matter.

The departure lounge filled quickly. Speedy boarders queue to the left; seats 15 to 30 queue to the right. Lots of people standing in lines. No plane in sight so the smug sensibles among us took seats and turned to our Telegraphs. Well, I had the Telegraph and  spotted a Times or two but the Daily Mail outnumbered us quite heavily. I didn’t see any Suns but the embarrassment factor might have meant that this organ was secreted in hand-luggage until seats on board allowed the delicious privacy of indulgent reading. Time ticked by: ten, twenty minutes. Some of those vertical must have backache by now. The announcement came: A reminder that only those with speedy boarding and boarding cards for seats 15 to 30. That’s 15 to 30. Half the right hand queue have to dissolve elsewhere. A few family spats break out amongst those who couldn’t either hear or read. Three rather gorgeous girls arriving late at the entry desk are arguing about what constitutes too much hand luggage. One look tells me that what they are loaded  down with would shift the balance of power in the hold never mind the overhead lockers. One of them is being asked to put her suitcase into that little measuring cradle that Easyjet have. She has no chance. I want to hang on to see how this little fracas progresses but my 15-30 queue is moving. I feel ridiculously smug that I’m in 16D and have to stifle a smirk as I cruise past the grumbly group who had lined-up in error.

We trundle along the gantry to be met by the standard couple of flight attendants: smart, chic, a little camp, overly made up, charming. I find 16D, pleased that I have an aisle seat near the mid-plane emergency exit. As a nervous flier I have already checked what I could see of the plane’s bodywork for dents or anything out of the ordinary. I settle next to a smiling couple. He is already playing with an mp3 player; she has Jilly Cooper. I see the hand-luggage girls grumbling on to the plane. They’ve had to pay for their excesses.  The pre-flight stuff continues. I check the in-flight magazine for snacks. I have a few Euros to dispose of. I select beer and sandwich. As if waiting for me, Henrietta (i/c cabin crew) announces, ” We apologise that there is no food apart from bagged snacks on this flight.” Whaaaat? Can it be true that there’s been such a run on sandwiches, wraps, toastie, soups, muffins etc that stocks have run down to zero? Or do they want to encourage booze sales – fill up on gin and you won’t care about your empty stomach. Well if that’s their theory, I’m going to test it. Two gins and two packets of your best pretzels please, Henrietta!

And so I float towards Gatwick. I am jolted from reverie by the announcement that owing to unforeseen circs, we will be landing at the South Terminal, not the scheduled north. Consternation abounds. Henrietta warns us not to switch on mobile phones until we’re in the terminal building. The temptation is too much for many. As the wheels hit the tarmac the orchestra of waking ring-tones plays symphonies through the cabin. Taxis, buses, relatives, trains all need checking, updating, changing. OK – get over it, I think, confident that my taxi will divine my arrival point. We are herded into a bus to take us to the terminal building. We barge through the automatic doors to be met by the surprising and revelatory sign: Welcome to North Terminal. So, as we were. More consternation, Phones clamped to ears again. And no messengers to shoot; Henrietta has sensibly stayed on the plane.

My journey is rounded off with a thoroughly thought-provoking ride with an Iraqi driver who had fled Iraq for Denmark a decade ago and has moved on here. He has decided that Brits are better because we’re not racist. And his daughters are happy in school. Iraq was better before Saddam ‘s demise because a. Better the devil you know and b. Those scrabbling for power now are corrupt anyway.

He could speak fluent Danish and, given that I can stumble through a few phrases myself, we found ourselves exchanging words in this most tricky of tongues. Strange.

Memories light the corners of my mind  is the first line of a huge 1970s hit for Barbra Streisand  as part of the soundtrack for the film,  The Way We Were – a sugary-sad romance about opposites who love eachother. The song is better than the film and, as with so many soundbites, the sentiment of a phrase can capture an indelible truth.

When I was twelve my English master, Ken Cripps, demanded that the class pull out our Palgrave’s. In his Leavisite way Kenny didn’t overly care whether we understood too much of the oft-impenetrable verse but by repetition we could divine meaning, our senses would be touched, certain techniques made clear and we would all be changed. Well that was his theory. Palgrave had anthologised the canon of English poetry from around Shakespeare’s time onward and we were to take our medicine from Book IV of his Golden Treasury.

Kenny C would read aloud. Then he would choose one of us to repeat – usually a pupil who had washed his hair that morning so Kenny could enjoy stroking shiny, soft strands. The second reading was often inexpert (of course) with emphases all over the shop, enjambement ignored, unintended caesuras abounding. I mention these two techniques because our Ken introduced them as a way of showing how a stumbling, incoherent  delivery could be transformed by pause or flow; a breath here, a running together of words there.

Now he would give us a third reading. His gruff, gritty voice became all emphasis and nuance. High, then low, he would squeeze out meaning from intonation and pace. What the words actually meant was secondary for a while. Rhythm and flow came first; the sound of the words. Well, so far so good – and the lesson was half over by now anyway. Now the poem – it was On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats. The title hadn’t given us many clues. We wondered what a Homer was and who was this bloke Chapman who owned it. What sort of thing was it that it could be looked into? None of this was explained during the first three, unadulterated readings.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen:

Round many westerns islands have I been,

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his desmesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men

Look’d at eachother with a wild surmise –

Silent – upon a peak in Darien.

Then the first question. Tell me something that you like about it, boys? Think for a few seconds. Let brain engage before mouth. A finger-point to a non-plussed mate of mine called Newton. Not sure there’s anything I like about it sir, apart from the end. Stifled laughter all-round and a genial smile from Sir Ken. He gruffly rejoined: And after just how many lines does the end arrive? Boys hands flew into the air and Sonnet! Sonnet! Sonnet! whisper-shouted the smart arses who had done poetry by numbers at prep. school. What’s the significance of that – anybody? Ken challenged. Quiet, a silent uncertainty. We’ll come to that later. Now Sorro, you’ve been ducking behind Roynon to avoid being picked on; tell us what you like about Keats’s efforts.

I was struggling. I quite liked what I had read and heard but I didn’t have much of  a clue as to what it was about. It seemed to concern a man travelling and seeing sights – the first line a giveaway, possibly. The ending came as a surprise Upon a peak in Darien and seemed to break the rhythm of the rest of it. And who was Chapman who spoke in the poem loud and bold? At primary school teachers would tell you the story of the poem first, if it was difficult to glean from the words on the page. Not with Ken; he made you sweat. And a teacher-encouraged silence fell upon the class as Kenny waited for me to come up with something. I didn’t quite have enough time or clues to work it out for myself so I scanned the words again. After what seemed like minutes but can only have been seconds I heard myself saying,

” I like a phrase that I can’t understand, Sir.”

“And what’s that dear boy? ” smiled the begowned teacher.

“Bards in fealty to Apollo hold. It sounds majestic, Sir. And I don’t know what bards are or fealty is but I know that Apollo is a Greek God. I like the sound of words I don’t know.” I couldn’t work out whether  I was sucking up to teacher or actually telling the truth. I  didn’t know if what I had said was stupid or clever or funny.

Kenny smiled, almost druled. He wrapped himself up in his gown and turned towards the blackboard, raising his eyes to the ceiling in some form of supplication. Round many western islands have I been/which bards in fealty to Apollo hold, he repeated; then again; and again. Each time he would summon up more and different meaning somehow. His voice was powerful, he seemed taken into his own world. But soon he came down. I can’t recall if we had to read the thing through again but I remember his praise and his finger-wagging the class with Always enjoy the sound and meaning of new words! The lads responded with polite giggling.

He told us the story of Keats reading Chapman’s translation of Homer and being excited by his clarity and earthiness. He likened Keats staying up to read with his buddy Charles Cowden Clarke to modern boys  enjoying comic stories of  heroism in  war  or tales of extreme challenges and the triumph of the human spirit which can capture the imagination. As 50s children we had grown up with tales of WW2 and WW1; Sir Edmund Hilary had not long before ascended Everest…the 20th century had seen so many milestones of human bravery and achievement, triumph and disaster. Our historical senses were fine-tuned too. We had had a linear, empire-centric, thorough and largely rote run-through history from the prehistoric onwards. Countries, flags, monarchs, wars, plagues, inventions, ‘firsts’, machines, famous men and women, social and political milestones – all dated and stamped. We were still on the journey but a huge amount of basic info. was committed to heart. Easy homework to set; easy test to administer the next day. And so it was.

After filling in more biographical, literary and historical detail, Kenny swept out of the room, pre-bell, as was his habit, booming instructions for homework as he disappeared down the corridor:” Learn it off by heart for prep. Test tomorrow afternoon. If you’re not word-perfect, I’ll give you Robert Browning to learn – and you won’t like that!”

This was homework most of us loved – those who found 14 lines easy to memorise on the bus coming to school. A few struggled but Kenny had a humane instinct. When he ‘randomly’ selected  victims to recite the following day  he seemed only to alight on the clever cloggies or the lazy buggers. The vulnerable few were left to sweat without being exposed. Once this ritual had passed, I recall him ‘working the poem over’ with us, like a boxer giving an expert mauling to a supine opponent. The Petrarchan sonnet form; octave/sestet; iambic pentameter; rhyme scheme; assonance; historical and classical reference and so it went on. He put the jigsaw together for us, punctuating explanation with: Newton! What have I just said? or I can smell smoke. Is it me? or What’s the test score Dowdeswell, I can see you’re listening to the radio in your desk.

We gave him fealty once we knew what it was and he invited us to write our own sonnets about feeling the excitement of a piece of writing, as Keats had done. Most of 2B  bards – for that was what he now called us (very temporarily)- penned clunky, hastily-scribbled 14liners about Roy of the Rovers comic-stories of soccer derring-do or mused about the lyrics of I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Kenny minded not. He sort of knew we’d got the idea, that our notion of what poetry was and how it could be enjoyed, had moved on a notch or two. And much as I have travelled in the realms of gold in this life, I still owe that fealty to dear Ken Cripps.

Sometime around 1975 the process of discrediting the rote aspect of learning started. Of course parrot-memorising doesn’t mean ‘understanding’ but words and numbers and patterns repeated over and over again stick; they form a matrix of knowledge and connection in the brain that stimulates linkage, making sense of things intuitively, understanding at times without thinking. We cannot quantify, measure the treasure trove of our brain store. Most young people have rote-learned thousand upon thousand of song lyrics through melody and repetition. We still require lawyers, doctors, engineers and all manner of other professionals to rote-learn masses of knowledge to form the bedrock of their expertise; a sturdy springboard from which to bounce. Technology has encouraged the pendulum to move further towards the skill-based approach to learning. We can Google knowledge; Wikipedia knows all.

It’s a pity but it has been an inevitable shift. The problem is balance. When one approach or philosophy is overly favoured babies get thrown out with the bathwater. So much elegant, dramatic, beautiful language has not been lodged in the brains of the young of today. For many of us who were forced to commit much to memory there is a survival kit of words for many occasions and moods lodged somehere up top. There’s a reason why we call it learning by heart. Add to this the hymns we know, the literature of the Bible and Aesop and the rest. Of course the good old nursery rhyme still features in the poetic lexicon of the modern child but I hope that educational innovation won’t drive out some of the memory learning that can just be done for its own sake and kept in one’s personal store for life – to be dusted down, occasionally, when Bards in Fealty to Apollo spring to mind.

The red devil has done it again! Not content with his Lecter tactics in the Low Countries, unsatisfied by gorging himself on racial abuse of Patrice Evra, he has now slaked his thirst for media headlines by sucking the blood of a bloke called Ivanovic – presumably because he’s Transylvanian.

Whatever the case Football is in raptures today as Boston victims and London’s marathon get media-sidelined to allow the Anfield Uruguayan his place in the sun. The untimely death of the pioneering Hillsborough mother, Anne Williams is sadly eclipsed by a criminal act which breathes a sick sort of life into a sad game. Be in no doubt that Sepp Blatter, along with the massive media circus which follows the global game, knows that unseemly controversy is good for soccer.

The examples abound. Goal-line technology, a lame piece of expensive tokenism to getting crucial decisions right, is an innovation almost introduced over Blatter’s dead body. Why? Because getting things wrong is more exciting than getting them right. The ’66 World Cup wouldn’t have been the same. Hurst will tell you, even Frank Lampard knows a bit on that score.Scandals of massive backhanders by ill-equipped nations to stage global tournaments are grist to a sensational money-making mill. Players being naughty on and off the field boosts column inches and fuels our salacious desire for the great game to be more than pretty passing – we want a sort of athletic Eastenders with endless nastiness to gossip about.

Take one of the greatest footballers of this or any other generation, Ryan Giggs. Didn’t we love his wick-dipping escapades? Hitherto he’d been a really boring brilliant player. Cast your minds back to the Hand of God. Didn’t we revel in Maradonna’s cheating? Rudi Voller’s spittle? Zidane’s head-butt? How about Kung-Fu Cantona, the thug-genius Vinnie Jones, Sunderland’s Paolo de Canio’s assault on a wimpish ref.? By the way, Sunderland’s world cred. has shot up with their new goose-stepping manager. Precedent is everywhere. John Terry knows it. Carlos Tevez on his 150 hours of community service knows it. No need to go on because whoever reads this will think of a dozen more before the ink dries.

Two things. First there is a cover up. Most soccer is bloody boring so needs to be elevated by controversy. Second, the really brilliant players and teams through history needed no such sensationalism because their play was exciting, captivating, engrossing…for the full 90minutes. We have Barcelona, closely followed by Real Madrid and Bayern Munich at the moment. Not enough. We have Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo as the two world geniuses. Not enough. And they don’t spit, bite, foul, cheat or, as far as I know, shag the woman next door. How dull.

This is something I wrote for a magazine recently and it’s an unabashed plug for these schools which seem to have been delivering excellent education (free) for a long time.

State boarding article