simplysorro

The sporting heroes who competed in the marvellous London Olympics need time to take stock and come down from their performance highs. We, the spectators, need time to digest and appreciate what we have witnessed. I have acres of newsprint to pore over, iPlayer and TV recordings to revisit and discussions at highest pub-level yet to be enjoyed; I have plenty of scope to blog-bore throughout the autumn.

As the weird and wonderful Closing Ceremony gloriously assaulted our senses last night, the news of the Community Shield match between Man City and Chelsea crept into the living room. One of the Toure brothers had thrown away his winners’ medal in a fit of pique because he hadn’t been asked to leave the subs bench. In the blink of an eye we all realised the extraordinary gap between the decency, endeavour, generosity, sportsmanship and, yes heroism, of our athletes, coaches and volunteers and the mean-spirited, tawdry, selfish, murky world of Premiership football.

I have no appetite for the coming soccer-season after the Michelin-starred feast of the last fortnight – with more uplift, I am sure from the Paralympics. But history tells us that we get sucked back into the shabby vortex and can’t help history repeating itself. Maybe so. For the time being, at least, let’s inhale deeply. The sporting air smells so good right now.

Mark Haddon’s latest, The Red House, seems to be in similar territory to A Spot of Bother. Family and marital dysfunction,  characters with baggage, emotional basket-cases for treatment, the problems of youth – the problems of any age for that matter. We meet Richard and Angela, middle-aged and rather estranged brother and sister ‘reunited’ by their mother’s death. The afflent Doctor Richard suggests the two families have a week’s rural cottage holiday to re-bond. Angela’s lacklustre, jobless hubby Dominic plus children – horny, 17year-old jock Alex and God-squad, sexually-confused sister Daisy, 16, and 8 year old smart-but-brittle Benjy  – are all reluctant conscripts to the family fun. Louisa, Richard’s new trophy-wife and her sulky, spoiled precocious daughter Melissa, make up the party .

Throw into the mix the 17year bereavement that has been going on in Angela’s head for a stillborn child and Richard’s guilt for anything that moves making him want to put things right by throwing money and people together, hoping it sort out his past and future – and you have a recipe for the reader to watch the hurly-burly done and wait to see who’s lost and won.

The answer is no one, really. Possibly the Red House itself with its stoic acceptance of those who have owned or rented the place. Or perhaps Karen, the dead child who has grown up in Angela’s head and whose maturing voice serves as a commentary on the folly of those who live. Whatever the case Haddon’s cleverness left me confused. The narrative lurched from one pair of characters to another as the family dynamic veered this way and that – Richard v Alex, a machismo match; Daisy and Louisa, teenage neuroses squared; Louisa and Angela, mothers vying for the I’m more vulnerable that you badge. The partnerships shifted througout and Benjy was not to be left out – he crucially discovers that Daddy Dominic is having an affair with a yummy mummy. Whenever the narrative flags, which is rare with Haddon, the partners change on the floor and new life is breathed into the dance.

The ‘chapters’ are delineated by the days of the holiday. The stylistic innovation after the breakthrough ‘voice’ of Curious Incident is the surreal departures where memories, dreams, the part-articulated conscience of each character and voices of the undead of the house and Angela’s daughter coalesce into a chorus which, supposedly, underpins the rather more obvious operation of plot. I wanted to shout – just get on with it at the author. I’m still not sure if I have misread the whole thing but I yearned for the simplicity of one or two main characters so I could follow a central thread and not have to basket-weave several changing strands at the same time – and all under water. The focus of MH’s first two novels have been so strongly on one central character that an intensity of experience – and humour – has resulted. Not to mention a reader-sympathy that built page on page.

Now Mark Haddon remains an author whose prose crackles along compulsively. In this case, however, his plot and characters didn’t. I cared less about them at the end than I did at the beginning. Alex is me at 17 – all testosterone and faux Oedipal angst; highly unpleasant as I now recall. Melissa is just an unpleasant bitch; Daisy not much better, less of a bully but too needy by half. Benjy a wimp and all four adults variously unattractive. The house is symbolic and, clearly, the Welsh borders a brooding delight for the towny crew, with the hapless Richard succumbing to exposure when he injudiciously tries to out-outdoor pursuit Alex.

There remains enough of those observational nail-hits to make readers of all ages recognise themselves, a past or present situation or the lives of others. Several smiles and some laughs too. Haddon has a sure touch in these categories but those who inhabit his Red House on this holiday found me uncaring of what would happen to them after their journey home.

I liked them all rather less having known them for a few short hours.

As Paul Simon neared the end of a briliant set in Hyde Park last night, the sun broke through, yet again. The great man paused  to hum a couple of the Beatle bars before  sax and trumpet heralded the further joy of You can call me Al..We had been served a feast of Graceland nostalgia with Hugh Masekela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo reprising their choral, rhythmic, trumpeting, percussive, virtuoso roles of 35years earlier to aid the diminutive septuagenarian New Yorker in his quest to rekindle the making and first performances of that classic and controversial album. Soweto, once again breathed over London.

A lovely day of gentle indulgence enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the Hyde Park stages and bars had prefaced the main event. The country smiles and haunting violin-and-voice of Alison Krauss had only just left the Park when Simon stepped up a shade before 7.30. He was clearly mindful of the Springsteen-McCartney curfew ‘silencing’ of the night before. He wasn’t going to chance it. He toured through the post Garfunkel stuff as hors d’oeuvres before the bizarrely comic choreography of LBM gave a gawky poignance to the beautiful a cappella  Homeless. This signalled an hour of Graceland made fresh by an extraordinary mix of instruments and voices from across the globe.

Around 10pm some people were leaving the pitch but it wasn’t all over. The adoring thousands of mixed, age, race, nationality, gender – you name it – were to be taken back in encore to the early days when we were just poor boys with our stories seldom told and the words of our prophets were written on subway walls. Just on 10.15 – and before the curfew spoiltsports – Paul Simon departed the main stage and we were replete. With Frank Sinatra’s version of Mrs Robinson serenading our huddled, happy exit, we made for Green Park tube.

As we shambled happily along I reflected. I hadn’t heard a swear word all day. Thousands upon thousands of fans had queued up for entry, security searches, burgers, shabby mobile toilets, beer, public transport; pleases and thank-yous had abounded. As we thronged down Piccadilly, spilling into the slow traffic, smiles were the order of the day; plenty of police but no officiousness.  could have been forgiven the thought that this society was civilised, at one with itself, mindful and caring of others; slow to irritation, quick to applaud; generous of spirit warmed by companionship.

It had been a week of blame and shabbiness. John Terry could never win or lose. He’s become the fodder of witty middle class journalists who would hardly be caught mouthing f…… black c… because it would say an awful lot more about them than it does about JT. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the man but I didn’t grow up in his back yard.

The G4S security shortfall was bound to become the government’s fault wasn’t it? Why not accept that this private firm messed things up and get on with it. Our media wants so desperately to make any hiccough in London 2012 a tip-of-an-iceberg story that the saliva of journos dribbling through the pages is revoltingly palpable.

Do I want to trawl through what has been caught in the week’s media net? Not really. I couldn’t find anything this morning about what went on in Hyde Park yesterday – just the lingering downbeat story of Bruce and Sir Paul ending their Saturday  gig in silence. As usual, but mostly unreported,  Brucie had been at his brilliant best for the three hours before lights out. I didn’t expect to read about Paul Simon’s uneventful Sunday tour de force but it had been great, whatever the papers said or didn’t say.

It worries me that, increasingly I seem to adopt views which, all too quickly, I change for their exact opposite. My political, social and even moral  core is in meltdown – or at least here today and weirdly changed tomorrow. Take Euro 2012. Just a few days on from spitting vitriol about our national game and lauding the gladiatorial-yet- sportsmanlike delights of top tennis, I am once again drawn by the multi-passing Spaniards,  Pirlo the peerless and the unavoidably admirable Krauts.   Even the host-god Andrei Shevchenko set my pulse racing before the Madeiran strutmeister Ronaldo took the wind out of the Ukrainian sails. The best four make up the semis.

Nalbandian hastened my VF along with the BBC’s near-prurient desire for Sue Barker to stick a microphone up Nalby’s nose so he could make a non-apology for kicking without due care and attention. We all make mistakes was the morally-relative message. Tell that to blood-stained officials everywhere. So I’m back on soccer and off Wimbledon. Hey waitaminnit that nice British girl Heather Watson has just, thrillingly beaten a Czech on Centre Court. We may never hear of her again but savour the back pages for just one day.

What else is on my list of fickle VFs? I appear to be an avid monarchist, judging by my recent appearances at the Derby and on the Mall. I went to church last Sunday and enjoyed the whole affair, even mouthing the Lord’s Prayer – albeit just a little self-consciously. But I’m a signed up member of the Dawkins and Grayling society? Further – I have painted all the doors outside doors at home. B and Q first, then sanding, priming, glossing, followed by a concerted gardening effort. I have had an MOT with my GP. I’ve had alternating opinions throughout June on education: academies, Gove’s  ‘O’ Levels, selection, courswork, private schools, the IB and much more.

I am an avowed mysoginist when it comes to modern literature -I ‘m not that fond of Jane Austen either. So why have I read Arundhati Roy, Anita Shreeve and P D James in the last couple of months – and enjoyed them? The last play I went to was written by a woman and the last 3 CDs (yes, I know, dinosaur) I bought were Adele 21, Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits and something by Katie Melua. I’m exaggerating a fraction but you get the point. I don’t know what I think about anything any more. Worse, I seem not to care very much as long as people behave well in public.

Having banged on about the dearth of good public manners, I was disarmed this morning when a young girl (8 or 9) held a door open for me and rejoined my thanks with a ”You’re welcome.’ No hint of sarcasm either. She had a strong hint of Glaswegian in her voice. Another prejudice squashed. I did some gardening and enjoyed it. I went to a pub and didn’t. I had a conversation with a cold-caller and he seemed not to try to sell me anything. Strange times.

There is a good deal of ‘perceived wisdom’ out there. What we should do and say and think given a set of recognisable circumstances. Some of this wisdom is underwritten by law but the conforming pressure exerted by powerful groups in society becomes pernicious when our thoughts are scrambled by undue influence. From what to let your 5 year watch on TV to WMDs, we are led blindly by a perverse conformity. And the older and wiser we get, the more we struggle with what we really think.

It’s good to change opinions – do it whenever you are moved to do so. It’s a sign that you are reviewing a set of thoughts and beliefs in the light of new information or just a change of heart. A volte-face can reveal an intelligent humility but not if dishonestly delivered. Ed Miliband’s trumpeted admission that New Labour got it wrong on immigration would have been a worthy reversal if espoused in office rather than opposition. I have a great buddy who invariably brings furious debates to a convulsive conclusion by raising a white flag and lamenting,”If you’re going to present me with really good reasons why my point of view is invalid, I’ll have to back down!” Would that the boys in Westminster could manage that sort of emotional intelligence.

Back to Wimbledon. I rarely buy strawberries but they’re in the fridge right now. I want: Andy to have his back massaged by Virginia Wade; Brits to fail, as ever, gloriously; Tim Henman to be caught swearing at Sue Barker; Boris Becker to get a shave and look his age; Maria Sharapova to wear a muzzle; Roger Federer to go all the way because he really is poetry in motion. Most of all though, I need the brilliant analysis of John McEnroe to make eloquent sense of the big matches. And sun. Too much to ask? You cannot be serious!

I have watched a great deal of the coverage so far. Let’s zero in on the micro and extrapolate – Portugal v Denmark, last night. The 3 – 2 scoreline bespeaks a a 5 goal thriller, a treat for the fans. The truth of it? Another 90+ minutes of much of what sport shouldn’t be. Cheap fouls, cheap shots, players writhing feigning injury; more officials getting more wrong and Sepp disdaining techno-help; tattoed millionaires spitting venom and disrespect – and of course some sublime moments of skill, athleticism and drama.

Wrapping a cloak around the action, the unlikely trio of accented armchair experts – Keane, Martinez and Carragher. I never much liked Carra but his spitting scouse intelligence rasps across. Don’t get in a fight with Keane – he’s scary. Marinez is a Latin joy. All three say the same thing over and over – and repeat it for each match. Then the Alans and Clarence (how bright is he for a footballer?) say just the same on the other side. Adrian shades it over Gary as the anchor but he’s beginning to look bored and has the rather pathetic ‘When will they let me back on the One Show?’  look about him.

Back to the soccer. Is it only me who thinks that the spirit of sportsmanship in soccer died some time ago – when Bobby Charlton last shook hands on a pitch with Franz Beckenbauer and there was real warmth between two heroic professionals? Or was it later when Diego’s ‘Hand of God’ unapologetically showed us all that cheating is OK. When Thierry did something similar it had become ‘part and parcel’ of the game. We have been sleepwalking into showbiz. Football is now indistiguishable from I’m a Celebrity…and we really do need to get out of there. Fair play has been eclipsed by cheating because the public like controversy. It spices up the takeaway on Saturday nights. We are all culpable but it’s all about money in the end. The media; the various associations from FIFA down; the commercial billion-pound winners.

There is no doubt that Ronaldo in full flight is a sight to behold; contrast the 118cap-servant of Danish soccer Denis Rommedahl, hamstrung, limping off to end his international career. Truth is , though, that I watch avidly because I want to hear the mangling of tenses that Andy Townsend manages in his Crystal Palace speak; I need to swear at some diving cheat who trips over his own tattoos; I like seeing Gabby make an embarrassing 5 minute transmission about the WAGs arriving. I can soak up any amount of this crap but it’s tacky entertainment, not sport.

Is the patient beyond help and should we switch off the ventilator and go about our business? Here’s what might metamorphose me from voyeur back to fan – and it’s only the start.

1. Reduce all TV coverage of soccer so that broadcasts may only last an additional 10 minutes before/after matches. That would clip the wings of Hansen et al.

2. Any player requiring on-filed trainer attention should not be allowed back on the pitch for 5 minutes (at least). Prima Donnas watch out.

3. Technology should be introduced forthwith for a range of incidents, not just offside or goal-line controversy. On-field appeals considered.

4. All managers should sit in the stand. No team official allowed out of the dugout seats.

5. Players should be made to sit and have a sarni with eachother after all matches. Beer optional.

6. Any fan or any group of fans, causing any trouble for any reason should be castrated (assuming they are male)- or similar.

7. All managers should watch clips of Gentleman Roy Hodgson as part of their training for post match magnanimity.

This could go on couldn’t it? I’ll see the Euros out as voyeur. The spirit of sport flickers so weakly and with Sepp still in charge…’Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over…’

Laura Wade’s leftie black comedy, Posh, is an obvious must for all who need their contempt for Oxbridge and Public Schooly drinkie silliness, fed and watered. The Osbo-Cam clan can enjoy it nearly as much but will suffer regular squirms at the moral decay implied beneath the hooray-Henry jokes. The scene is well-trodden territory. A snooty Oxford dining club – The Riot – populated by stuck-up more-money-than-sense clever dicks, meet in a gastro-pub for a no-holds barred dinner where drunkenness and damage are the least that is expected. This gives rise to an incessant and engaging torrent of piss-taking of the Posh. Naturally  the boys are unaware of how their achingly funny arrogance is received by we plebs in the audience. Indeed Wade’s major point is that, in their superiority, they don’t actually care.

On the one hand this is a romp but the update from its first run at the Royal Court has ensured that the nod at our Government is now both pointed and sustained. Privilege begets privilege. The darkness builds but Wade cleverly tones down the tub-thumping by making the cast burst into regular rap-style singing interludes which are both hilarious and brilliantly performed.

On the obvious level this is a party that gets out of hand – a sexual assalt and GBH are the booze-fuelled result. But Wade wants us to get into the minds of these posh boys and show them as dangerously odd, from another planet,   in comparison with the hapless landlord and his daughter – the man and woman in the street. Us, that is. There are attempts to balance the writing – the bright Greek boy who hopes his new money will buy him pedigree; the gawky godson who is going out with a comprehensive schoolgirl whose desperation to be president is cringemaking; the current president who appears to be the voice of sanity and suavity but crumbles when real moral authority is needed.

I doubt that Laura Wade intended the wider point that we all like being in clubs and that for all its silly garb and arrogant excess, the Riot club represents the need that all of us have to belong. The political point – and here Wade strikes the same chords as David Hare and that great Left wing TV dramatist, Trevor Griffiths – is that power goes with privilege. The seat of power remained firmly in the hands of the haves, not the have-nots as we plebs left the theatre.

Pretty in Pink – the Olympics will celebrate our softer, smiley sides.