simplysorro

The Brexiteers continue to fight their sorry rearguard action. The Krankie First Minister of the new Scottish Republic continued her ‘It’s all about me really’ finger-wagging exercise at Theresa Maybe, yesterday. Lack of a plan is the cry – well when you’re buggered, it’s better to have no plan and wait for others to blink first, apparently.

The Belfast bakers have caused a stir, haven’t they? While the right on LGBT lobby savours the moment of victory, let’s pause to think if Jewish printers would want to publish Mein Kampf. The bakers did not discriminate against the gay customer, merely against the message on the cake. I’ll need to think about this rather more.

While I’m doing that my mind can be distracted from Trumpageddon (see below), Paul Hollywood,  our appalling handling of refugees and migrants, HS2 (no!), Heathrow (no!) and the trolling of the insubstantial Lineker for saying what many felt – that we have been heartless (over the migrant crisis) and asking what has happened to our country.

Death brings us all up short and well-known names make us reflect on the timeline of our lives.  I don’t much like Dad’s Army but the clips from this and other Jimmy Perry creations, made me smile, chortle even. RIP

Bobby Vee was a significant childhood hero. What little music we heard in the early 1960s, before Radio Luxembourg and the Beatles changed everything, was the new wave of crooning rock stars from the US. Elvis, the Everlys, Buddy Holly and…Bobby Vee. Christmas 1961. I bought my elder brother the single: Take Good Care of My Baby, sung by 18 year-old Bobby Vee, the Justin Bieber of his generation. Elder Bro rejected this priceless 45 because he wanted Tower of Strength by Frankie Vaughan. So I kept the Goffin/King number and still have it today. That and Rubber Ball, The Night has a Thousand Eyes and Run to Him. On an E.P. Mushy stuff, indeed but the songs had light, lovely melodies and a great generosity of spirit.  When I heard of the teen idol’s death – at just 73 – the Rubber Ball of life back then came bouncing back. And for a while I drifted back into a happier, less-complicated world. Thanks Bobby.

ps You can catch Simon Jay’s Trumpageddon at The King’s Head Theatre, Islington. Straight from the Fringe!

my-granddad-never

It’s something to do with age. Middle of the night and I’m more wide awake than a double expresso. I didn’t have cheese for supper and no coffee after Pointless. No alcohol either. I toddled off to bed at a reasonable 11.30pm. After two fitful hours of kip I was as lively as Nicola Adams on speed. Now why did she jump into my mind as a useful simile? I’ll work that one out later.

Downstairs I trotted and pottered about – a bit of tidying here and washing up there. Oh, I’ll get the washing machine going. Save time tomorrow. Merely putting off the inevitable. Nightime TV. I checked the channels but thought it fair to the Beeb to start with their all-night coverage. The news presenters are clearly the ones who haven’t got the daytime X factor. Depending on how you look at it there’s a fair amount of political incorrectness going on too. I won’t explain. The news items from a few hours earlier were being regurgitated but there was a bleary-eyed female doctor doing a live Jezza Hunt-bashing interview. I suppose she’s used to nights. There’ll be a lot more inconvenient shifts if the rhyming slanger gets his way. The consultants and other NHS smoothies who are higher up the food chain that junior docs had sensibly chosen to be interviewed during office hours. Clearly distressed that they might have to postpone golf matches or cut back on private work, they have started behaving like Sir Humphrey and agreeing with the minister.

Just as I was going to switch to another Escape to the Country repeat, Newswatch came on. This is Points of View for insomniacs. An attractive presenter who I have only ever seen at 3am on the news channel was refereeing a discussion between two articulate member of the public and some bloke in charge of News coverage during August. The gist was: why after endless hours of self-GB-indulgent Olympics coverage was every news programme full of the same Rio-obsessed agenda? Aleppo on the back burner while Jason Kenny whizzed round a velodrome. Fair points made. The oily Beeb-man refuted until he could refute no more. If only he had managed  “You could have a point there”, we insomniacs would have gone to sleep happy. In a surge of indignation I flicked around the channels and Really or Dave + 1 gave me Escape to the Country, circa 2010. Aled Jones, yes Aled Jones was showing an Indian couple around a million pound property in Devon. It had a swimming pool. Aled, it’s hardly Walking in the Air is it?

I quickly fumbled with the remote. BBC 4. Bound to be something to make me feel better about myself. Ah! Girl Bands at the BBC. I was close to excitement before Belinda Carlisle’s  early punk incarnation in the Go-Gos filled my lounge. I won’t go through the execrable list of shouty, talentless mime-artists that I suffered before Chrissie Hynde and Florence rescued me from suicide. I congratulated myself for sticking it out for half an hour before switching to Rory Bremner rowing with Olympians on the Cherwell. Enough.

My Kindle beckoned. I am near the end of a dispiriting novel. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Her name is one letter away from humour but the book has much further to go. It has a clever idea – a series of short stories which are both linked and discrete. The lives of people in a small town in Maine. Olive Kitteridge features in all and provides the thread. Dispiriting I said, because it’s all about loneliness and the essential tragedy of all our lives. Death is a release from universal unfulfilment. Peyton Place meets East Enders. A tad more subtle than both, Olive Kitteridge was still a bad choice for entertainment in the wee small hours.

Annoyingly I found that I had left two items out of the washing machine, which is now whirring away unhappily, wondering why it has been called into action at this ridiculous hour. And two coffee cups that didn’t make the washing up bowl before I emptied the sudsy water out. Bugger. The annoyance prompts me to think about writing. I have watched a lot of inconsequential claptrap, I have read a depressing morality tale, so what else is there but to write about my wakefulness?

Nicola Adams jumps back into my mind. Why? That smile? That joie de vivre? Silly haircut? Boundless energy? I can’t work it out. I’ll never get to sleep now.

Now I don’t know a Keiran from an Omnium but golly gosh they were exciting yesterday. My Shorter Oxford tells me an Omnium is a ‘…miscellaneous assemblage of persons or things; queer mixture.’ Well the queer mixture did it for me last night and it was a bonus having the Keiran named after a buddy of mine. The Trott/Kenny combo added to a vast number of tear-jerking and admirable successes at the Olympics. A gymnast called Tinkler; a ballet-dancer-turned-hammer thrower called Hitchon; Grainger; DuJardin; those nice boy divers; the hockey girls …sailors, rowers, cyclists, swimmers;, gymnasts. Nicola Adams, Andy Murray, Justin Rose,Jess-Ennis-Hill, Mo…gosh it just goes on., doesn’t it?

There are points to be made here. What a release after the summer of Brexit and continuing Labour party infighting. Parliament’s recess has enabled the nation to enjoy Wimbledon and the Olympics and a bit of sun without the distraction and possible irrelevance of our sad politicos. I miss Andrew Neill savaging the Westminster upstarts but otherwise not much about politics inspires. I’ve even forgotten the misery of Euro 2016 because the real superstars – those whose annual pay is the equivalent of a day’s worth of Joe Hart’s mistake-strewn season – have shown the passion and spirit of true sportsmen and women.

The BBC goes into a ‘no news’ panic mode because Mother Theresa Maybe and Boris the Spider are on holiday and can’t hijack the headlines. Dave C’s shorts got some attention back in the day but Corbyn sitting on the floor of an Inter-City train just doesn’t cut the mustard. So thank God for the Olympics. The nation’s broadcaster is all over it like a virulent rash of measles. The Omnibus and KirRoyale cycling pushed back the 10 o’clock news to 11.30. Elections and Referenda can’t do that. Something good is going on!

Of course there is a downside. The inanities of Matt Baker on gymnastics and John Inverdale on everything else are stomach-churning in the extreme. Luckily the A team of Clare and Gabi with backup from Michael J, Sir Chris and Sir Steve, rescue each evening once the silly boys have been put to bed. But it’s the athletes themselves whose ordinariness in life makes their feats of derring-do so extraordinary. What UK Sport and the Lottery and visionary people in multi-sports have done is quite remarkable.

The Brazilians have yet to join in the party wholeheartedly. Why?  Dunno. Is it the cost of the whole circus, the price of tickets, their lack of enthusiasm for sports they aren’t much cop at? Dunno. The near-empty stadium syndrome is sad for all concerned. Who sets the prices? Why can’t the seats be filled by letting locals in free/cheaply? I did note that Beach Volleyball drew sizeable crowds. Copacabana beach, sunshine, fit boys and girls. I’d be there too. I was in London – it was in Horseguards, Sublime.

The first death-rattle of Autumn is signalled by the opening day of the Premiership season and already I feel myself sinking into the mire of soccer-gossip-scandal-recrimination chatter which characterises our myopia where football is concerned. I need to hold on to the Olympics for just a while longer before the winter of politics and Premiership discontent sets in.

Last words. Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt.

Stop the world I wanna get off – in Jersey.

When the improving cancer survival rates becomes front page news we know something is amiss in Fleet St. or Wapping. Boris the Spider’s gone missing, Pouty Gove is sharpening his autobiographical pencil and Farridge is fulminating about Dave’s final honours list which is all about style (ha ha) and no substance. Certainly little honour. This is must be distressing for that significant number of great people who really do deserve the nation’s approval.

Death by maniac hasn’t headlined this week but it’s only Tuesday. Corbageddon is not quite nigh  and the Olympics are in their pre-opening, potential disaster phase. Duran Duran will come to the rescue. All will be well.

In this climate of media indecision about ‘go to’ scandals, Kevin Roberts, Saatchi’s CEO, grabbed several column-inches for his shameful comments about why women in his sector aren’t desperate to climb ambition’s ladder. He suggested that some females view ambition as circular, not vertical. At some point many decide that happiness – in whatever form they judge that to be – is more important than a tunnelled drive for someone else’s idea of achievement.

How dare Kev suggest this from his 40 year experience of observing men and women in the workplace. Luckily the PC mafia at Saatchi’s have put him on the naughty step until Mother Theresa Maybe takes Sam Cam’s manicurist off the dishonour list. Then the media can get back to what it does best: invent news based on scandal and corruption in public life, imagining that we plebs will forever gorge ourselves on a diet of distress.

As for poor Kev, his tale is another reminder that in our shallow world of soundbites, those on a mission – in this case the right-on female mafia – will ignore context, intention and truth to pursue a vigilante agenda that ill-serves their cause.

Thursday 14th July. Bastille Day. May Day. My day, if you’re interested is focused on getting to Charing Cross for an important meeting with a buddy of mine in Gordon’s wine bar. Since our country’s top politicos – and the huge media circus which follows them – are doing f… all work apart from spinning and speculating, me and my mate JT are going to do the same. With chilled Viognier.

JT is an NHS surgeon and I am a greybeard ex-teacher. I’ll be toasting the departure of goggle-eyed Nicky Morgan from her office of state and JT will ruminate that Jezza Hunt, the king of rhyming slang, is still pulling his strings.

It seems, so far, that Mother Theresa May-be is more than just a questionable fashion statement. She’s serious, unafraid and stateswoman-like. I say ‘so far’ because she has let one lunatic out of the asylum. Boris the Spider. She has given BoJo a motorbike to plough into the barbed wire of foreign affairs. It’s the Spider’s career lifeline and the world’s diplomats are sniggering at the prospect of him cutting himself to ribbons. Mother T has rolled the dice of opportunity for the arch-opportunist. Perhaps not such a silly punt?

Boris can banter multilingually. He’s no dummkopf and might enjoy unpicking the terms Glasnost and Perestroika with bad Vlad Putin. I can imagine amiable chats about Ukraine fuelled by a bottle of Stolichnaya. The Spider’s ability to debate improves with every shot, I’m told. The word shot gets lost in translation. For bad Vlad it means something different.

Mother T has savaged Cameron’s people to the unbridled joy of Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s ubiquitous, slant-mouthed rottweiler correspondent who can’t sleep until her thirst for politico gossip is slaked. When Mother T gets her boys and girls back to work and the general media orgasm has finally calmed, perhaps we’ll get news rather than the appalling newspeak of the last few weeks. Is it an idle hope that the standard and tone of public debate might rise from the gutter?

The depths which the Brexit-Remain conversation plumbed were shameful. Lies, dishonesty, ambition’s toxic ladder, project fear and fantasy – all did us a great disservice. We were part of it. The enfranchised: those who voted; those who did not. In the highest of places unsupported assertions were rubbished without proper thought and honest assessment – on both sides. And we all bought into it. Particularly the media whose voracious appetite for hype masked any attempt at proper analysis. What followed the cataclysm of Brexit has been worse – almost. The PLP has seen the chance to nuke the Corbynator, mildly hampered by their own idiotic selection procedures. The Labour Party is in mid self-immolation. The Tories wisely chose to withdraw from an unseemly circus of leadership hustings.

Ah. We have passed Tonbridge and I’m hoping for a clear run into Charing X now that Southern/Thameslink has withdrawn a large number of inconvenient trains littering the track. A guard has just inspected my ticket with great courtesy. I heard a man asking about recent strikes to which she replied ‘Don’t go there,’ with a wry smile. I think she meant Brighton.

Sevenoaks. A large group of French children is boarding. Gosh, they are lively but very well-behaved. I can’t quite see who is controlling them but I’d put him/her up to replace goggle-eyed Morgan at the Dept. for Education. If you can command the respect of 30 boisterous Europeans, it’s more than any of our politicians can manage at the moment.

Next to me a woman has just answered her phone, sotto-voce, saying “I don’t want to speak on the train. I’ll phone you later.” My spirits soar.

Not as much as when I meet my buddy and we relax into the sunny idyll that is the seating corridor at Gordon’s Wine Bar. Our conversation ranges over much that I have written herein. And more. The wine lubricated our already riveting conversation. He’s a socialist, I’m a liberal; we laughed in our joint despair. Where is Tim Farron, I cried? Who? he smartly sniped. And so on.

We parted with vows to repeat the experience soon and I skipped to Waterloo, then Wimbledon to catch the Thameslink train to Sutton. Only two minutes late. Result. Time to catch Ab Fab – the Movie at the Empire. A comical fantasy, like our political life. The tapas afterwards were more interesting. Both made me smile.

And then back to the news of Bastille Day in Nice. It’s where this blog started but not where I thought it would finish. Lunatics and asylums is horribly apt.

Thought that this was a quote from a 5 year old kiddie with a day off? Wrong – it’s Nicky Morgan the goggle-eyed blue stocking whose sense of proportion is the inverse of her ambition.

It has long perplexed me that when there is the (very) occasional  day of action by teachers, the main carp is that our hard-done-by pupils will miss such a vital few hours that they will, likely, become failing wastrels who are permanently scarred. Don’t we all know that this is twaddle? Kids leap for joy, parents groan because it’s pisses them off to make alternative arrangements – and the world remains confidently spinning on its axis. Today the 5th of July, sees industrial action by the NUT. Hmm. 5th July. Plenty of really, really meaningful, vital work going on. Are GCSE and A levels affected? No. Have some schools broken up? Yes – almost all private schools. Is my next door neighbour’s daughter in her paddling pool right now? Yes – and much the better for it.

Now I’m not a fan of strikes and the NUT need to be wary of too few voting on behalf of too many. However there is a funding crisis. Rising numbers (huge ethnic and language variation) + teacher recruitment crisis + disaffection with testing regime + academy programme hiccoughs + cash per pupil seriously down + teacher redundancies + n(other pissing off factors) = strike. That man Toby thingy who sanctimoniously runs a group of Free (ho ho) schools just said that class size is unrelated to ‘outcomes’. Clearly he was comparing a Shanghai after-school hothouse of 100 children being forced to do 3hours rote-learning of Maths or Chinese proverbs or some such. Hanging over these lucky students is the threat of a lifetime of scorn and dishonour for the family if they don’t punch through glass ceilings and stir-fry their way to 1st class degrees in doing what daddy and the political greybeards tell them.

Having retired from the honourable profession let me tell Toby thingy that it was easier teaching 20 children GCSE than 30. Indeed it was easier teaching 28 or 27. An A level group of 20 is much, much harder than one of 10. This must be startling news to my readers. It behoves all who enter the education debate to be honest. The NUT need to get their ballots right and be proportionate in their responses when times are tough. Largely they manage this. The Secretary of State needs to be more honest about funding – something Pouty Gove never achieved – indeed more honest about an awful lot of things. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that, for far too long, teachers  and headteachers have been the whipping boys and girls of a political elite who see the process of children’s education as resulting in ‘outcomes’ which are measured in profit and loss. Teachers don’t like Gradgrind analogies. Google him, Nicky Morgan.

Win or lose tomorrow night the Welsh soccer boyos will be heroes. The Icelandic nation clapped their losers in Reykjavik with a pride that warmed the cockles. So it will be in Cardiff whatever the result. Gareth Bale seems to have morphed from superstar into team man while Christiano Ronaldo has remained the aloof galactico in Portugal’s talented bunch of, apparently, individuals.

While the week of the long knives continues in politics it is clear that there aren’t many team players around. Boris the Spider, Pouty Gove and Farridge claimed they represented team Britain but they are all Ronaldos without being good looking or the ability to score anything other than own-goals. The Labour Party is no team either. It’s a if the PLP have been biding their time to hammer the bedraggled Corbyn. But the membership still like him. It may be that he is more trustworthy than the Westminster bubblewrap. Theresa May in the blue corner is touting her trustworthiness – well compared with the deceit all around her she might have a chance. Whatever the case I am (a) losing interest in the political circus and (b) know that the nation will be losers one way or another, after Brexit. Our political class don’t have our trust – they are too busy infighting and imagining an importance that we no longer confer on them. The tabloids today were far more concerned with Chris Evans’s resignation from Top Gear.

Ah but when the sun shines and Wimbledon is in its second week, we lighten up a little. Style, honesty, brilliance, graciousness – Federer. Brutal, muscular power, glistening athleticism – Williams. Both move slowly between points, particularly Serena, as if she has to summon up another brooding, violent moment of brilliance and needs the time to wind up. Roger seems to take winning and (occasional) losing and treats those two imposters just the same. All’s right with the world when these superstars are on court, Sue Barker twittering away in the studio and John McEnroe kicking Tim Henman and Andrew Castle into commentating touch.

I tune in a lot over the Womble fortnight because I trust what I will see and hear. Brilliance, sportsmanship, quality. The emergence of stars in the making and the reliable excellence of the older stagers who set the standards. By the end of Wimbledon fortnight we applaud the winners but, equally, we have all enjoyed the journey. So too with the Euros, although they will fade more quickly in the minds of this Englishman. But I will be cheering on the Welsh tomorrow although I’ll fall short of singing Land of my Fathers. There is something Wimbledon-white-pure about fair sporting battles- the mighty individuals and teams – which leave a much better taste than the unedifying political manoeuvrings of recent weeks.