Wednesday 11th November

Well, when Madame Thatcher finally shuffled off stage and was replaced by the milder mannered John Major we all thought that things might settle down and we could return to consensus politics.  More or less, since the war consensus politics has been the accepted way of doing things.  Governments would come and go, and changes and reforms would be made, but essentially the type of country we were would remain the same.  And consensus politics also recognized that although a Government might have a majority in Parliament and have a certain political philosophy, favouring either the free market or a more Socialist approach, major changes could only be attempted with overwhelming agreement; and not only of the Political parties but also of the general population.  It was accepted that the NHS was a pillar of our society, as was free education and a decent retirement pension and a safety net for those who lost their jobs or were too poorly to work at all.  After all, we lived in a decent caring society, where despite striving for a better life for us and our children, we understood that there were many in our midst less fortunate than us, and that some of our taxes would be used for these people.

Of course things are never perfect and successive Governments tinkered with the NHS, with our schools and with the Welfare system, but by and large and despite reservations, they have remained more or less intact.  The last Government, the Coalition, though despised by many and with the LibDems especially derided for allowing a Tory Government in by the back door, did at least have to achieve some sort of consensus between those two parties in order to pass legislation.  This did not stop it from trebling tuition fees, or forcing huge staff cuts on the public sector (and demonizing the whole concept of Public Service incidentally) and reducing benefits for many.

But now it seems we are moving into an era when consensus is thrown out of the window.  George Osborne seems hell-bent on reducing the state, and making the poor pay for tax cuts for the rich.  It is only one step away from saying that in the near future the public sector will no longer exist.  There has been a steady increase in privatizing services which were once run not for profit but for the public good.  And of course the Labour response, electing an out and left-winger, will only make consensus even more difficult to find.  Most people do not want these massive changes; they simply want decent schools for their kids, a free and competent NHS close to where they live and a safety net if they should fall.  But there is now no consensus at all on how this can be achieved.

Tuesday 10th November

With your own children, you see them every day, you barely notice the changes.  A wriggling gurning blob whose chief function appears to be changing milk into shit is, before you notice, smiling and crawling around and then trying to and eventually succeeding in walking and talking.  But with your grandchildren, who you see too rarely and maybe only every couple of months or so, the changes are more noticeable.  What was once a to-be-admired and cooed at little thing suddenly has a character, a personality of their own.  And the terrible two’s are eventually succeeded by the all-knowing four-year-olds, and before you have time to draw breath they are starting school.  Those first five years are amazing by any measure.  And you will never get them back again.  Now they are out in the world, and making friends and contradicting Mummy and Daddy with ‘Teacher says’ and demanding their own i-pads and mobile phones.

All too soon the slower developing years of five to ten are gone too, and no longer young children and not quite teenagers they mooch around as if they are really adults belying their children’s bodies.  The teenage years are full of change too.  The uncertainties of thirteen are gradually replaced by the know-it-all of seventeen.  And by eighteen they are our equals, knowing and considering us old-fashioned with boyfriends and girlfriends they are at first moodily embarrassed about, and then again before you have time to appreciate the changes they are off to University or have moved to a different City or country even.

And then, lonely grandparents are waiting to be made to feel even older as great grandchildren start to emerge and the whole cycle repeats itself.  The pattern of life carries on, a ribbon of life that slips its code from one generation to another.  And all the while you are trying to make sense of it all too, and hoping these young ones will have an easier time of it than we maybe did, will not make quite the same mistakes we did, and will maybe have more time for their own children and grandchildren than we seem to have had for ours.

Monday 9th November

The Pizzeria in Eymet is famous, people come from miles around, and because of that the town is always busy.  Other Restaurants have opened on the back of their success; the Creperie, the Peruvian and La Bastide.  Many times we have wanted to go to the Pizzeria and it was full, with a bar full of hopefuls waiting, often for an hour, for a table – so we settled for the Creperie or one of the other places.  And they do have rather a lot of tables, not only inside but outside under the arches and round the corner and right down past the Cave and the Charcuterie.  And the weather has been so fine that even in November these tables are often full.  In many ways the Pizzeria is the jewel in the crown of Eymet; not only do they make the very best thin stone-baked pizzas with delicious and plentiful toppings but they have quite an extensive menu of meat and fish dishes.  I am sure we are not the only ones who take our visitors here on their first night – and we are never disappointed.  The staff are mostly the same every year and you get to know them, especially the old Patron, who goes round shaking everyone’s hand and occasionally giving free drinks to his favourites.

But…..as Maxine would say, the Pizzeria closes for the winter; mid November to mid March.  We had never been here when it closed before.  It was Saturday night and though my wife was back for three days in England I joined a rather large crowd of 14 for a farewell to the Pizzeria dinner.  It was scheduled for 8.30, but we didn’t sit down until 9.30.  Already warmed up with glasses of wine we took our seats.  I had the calves liver, deliciously cooked in a sweet grape sauce with thick wodges of polenta.  Carafes of wine kept appearing on the table and I was actually too full up to finish my customary tarte-tatin.  The staff were all dressed up in zany costumes – one was a Pierrot, one was Harpo Marx, one of the girls appeared to be wrapped in (not much) gold foil and the pizza guy himself was a dead ringer for Freddie Mercury, white vest, moustache and all.  Great great fun.  But….I was shattered.  Friday night had been another late one with Elvis in the Gambetta, and up at seven and running the Café, including a quick dash back for a house-showing, so I was glad to get to bed and miss the inevitable fireworks, which I heard just past midnight as I was drifting off to sleep.

We will miss the Pizzeria, but….it will open again next year,

Sunday 8th November

Diary Entry – 20660604

“I got away from that area of G. L., somewhere just north of Maidstone apparently, as quick as possible.  Hungry and cornered I might be, but I wasn’t going to give in quite so easily.  That night I trimmed my hair and beard as neatly as I could with the tiny scissors I had found in the first-aid box.  I had to really concentrate looking in the mirror; the scissors did the opposite of what I was telling them to.  As I brought the scissors forward they appeared to be moving backwards.  I had to re-interpret what I was seeing and tell my brain what to do rather than just let my hands move as the mirror image suggested.  It took a long time but not too bad I thought, looking in the big mirror in the Ladies room downstairs.  I washed in the stone-cold water and at least felt a bit fresher.  I could have done with some soap, but all the dispensers in the factory were empty or dried up.  I must have stunk but somehow you seem to get used to your own smell the longer you go without showering.  I was desperately hungry but most of my bruises from the Polis beating were healing.

I waited until a few hours after dark, and slunk out of my factory hide-out.  I kept close to the edges of the buildings and doubled back to the rear of the Tesda store.  I guessed that there might be some out-of-date food in the bins there, and I was right; they were out in the open and inside a metal-mesh fence, which I managed to climb over.  At this point I didn’t even try to hide my face; I was just desperate for food.  I hadn’t eaten in a few days, and was prepared to get caught trying.  I leaned over and rummaged in the large metal bin, and found some packs of manna-mash and even an out of date carton of manna-milk with that daft smiling cow on it.  I hated most manna, but unheated as the mash was it was delicious.  I quickly scoffed two packs, then stuffed a few more and the milk in my bag and quickly got back over the fence.  There were no lights here, just the bluey glow of the street-lights giving just enough light for me to see my way ahead.

On my way here I had noticed a metal storm drain cover to the left of the store – it had a small indented ring to one side.  I tried to lift it, but it was so heavy I could only manage an inch or two.  At the third attempt I managed to shove a corner of the laptop under the edge, then kneeling down and lifting with both hands I raised it about a foot, enough anyway to slide my body through.  The weight of the cover was pressing down on my back and my legs were dangling in an empty void, as I stuffed the laptop back in the bag slung round my neck.  My feet were scrabbling for a foothold, when suddenly I kicked something which made a metallic ringing noise to my right-hand side.  It must be a ladder I realised and so I swung my whole body over and with one hand grabbed the side-rail, and my feet onto a rung.  My shoulders were still taking the full weight of the cover, the very shoulders that had taken the hardest blows from the Polis beating, and I felt like crying with the pain.  I lurched my whole body into the dark storm drain and the cover slammed into its casing with a loud clang inches above my head.

I clung desperately to the ladder and listened hard for the sound of sirens.  Either they never came, or the cover was so heavy it blanketed out all sound of the outside world.  Resting to regain my strength I tentatively felt with my feet for the next rung and the next one.  There must have been twenty rungs before I hit water.  Now I realised just how stupid I had been; I had no idea how deep the water would be, or if there would be a current, or where it would lead me too.  How I wished now that I still had the wind-up torch I had so carelessly traded for a mattress in Hastings.

I kept descending, rung by rung, and then as the water came almost up to my waist I found the floor.  At least I could keep my bag with the food and laptop out of the water, as long as it didn’t get any deeper.  You cannot begin to imagine how frightening it is to be in pitch darkness, with all that freezing water swirling around your legs.  We are so used to light, and even out on Dan and Emily’s farm there was the moon, but this was absolute darkness.  The only things I could feel were the cold steel of the ladder, the rough floor and the icy water.  I knew I had to keep walking, if for no other reason than that I would die of cold if I didn’t keep my legs moving.  I also knew that the cover I had come down here from might be too heavy for me to ever lift again.

But most important I just had to get away from this area.  There was no doubt that I had been seen by the surv-cams raiding the Tesda bins, and the Polis would be scouring the streets for me.  So I just walked, one hand trailing the slimy wall, my feet on auto-pilot, the water dragging at my trousers.  On and on in total darkness, no idea where the drain was taking me, I occasionally came to a junction and I tried to keep turning alternately right and left – the worst thing would be to end up back where I had started.   I must have walked for hours, but just as you have no idea of direction, time itself disappears in this overwhelming darkness.  All there is is the biting cold, numbing your feet and legs, and even your brain feels numb as on and on you walk, dragging sodden trouser-legs one weary cold step at a time.  No idea of time or distance travelled, you have only the knowledge that if you stop you will die of exposure to keep you going.

Saturday 7th November

Ah well, how did I discover Janis Ian?  By a roundabout and rather sad route I am afraid.  It was the early Eighties and I was working for a small group of Restaurants and cake shops.  One of my jobs was to take orders for the cake factory each evening from the Restaurants and shops.  And so I got talking to Alison, one of the manageresses.  And then I met her, and wow – she was gorgeous. We started going out and before we knew it were on holiday together on Crete.  Well, she did a Shirley Valentine on me.  Yes, she left me for a Greek Restaurant owner and stayed behind on the island.  I returned broken-hearted but with the key to her flat.  In my stupidity I had promised to collect her few possessions and pay her rent.  So, along with a few clothes I had a handful of cassettes.  And one was of Janis Ian – Between The Lines.  It is, it must be said, the saddest album I have ever heard.  It makes Nick Drake sound positively cheerful.  As I forlornly waited for word from Alison I would play this cassette over and over again.  The songs are of loneliness, abandoned love and unrequited love and are sung in almost a whisper; one song drifts into another and the sadness just builds. ‘At Seventeen’ absolutely nails that teenage insecurity of never being chosen to dance.  ‘Tea and Sympathy’ looks back on another lost love, and so on.   A wonderful voice and a great album.

Later I bought a few of her other records but she never quite achieved that mood again.  They were mostly quite cheerful, and are okay – but…..  But for me, nothing beats this saddest of records.  And strangely I find it quite uplifting to be cocooned, harboured in this sadness, enveloped in it – it really makes me feel good.

Friday 6th November

It can send you to sleep, slowly, gently and with the glass leaning over ever so slightly you may find yourself slipping into slumber as the notes drift on and through your sleeping brain. It can revive you, lift you if you are feeling low; when that reassuring glow hits your mouth and you find yourself mouthing the words along to the music.  It can be like an old friend, coming home and out of the cold.  It can also be something new, a different tinkling melody that delights and amuses.

I went to a wine-tasting here in Eymet, run by the owner of the Cave; she was trying to interest us and most importantly educate us into trying and maybe appreciating something a bit more sophisticated, more high-brow and undoubtedly more expensive.  But we are a rough old lot, who (in the words of a Genesis song) know what we like and we like what we know.  Strangely she started by telling us that we might find these wines harsh, sharp and discordant after the softer, gentler more rounded wines of Eymet.  Too right – they were bloody awful mostly, very dry and hard to just gulp down.  Like a lot of music that is supposed to be good for you, one struggles to discern a melody.  And yes, if one immersed oneself in enough of the stuff you might get to like it eventually.  But why bother when we are surrounded by the cheap and comforting wine and song that we know and love.  So what, if the experts value their expensive vintages so highly; we know what we like and we like to sing along to it on a Friday night too.  Elvis again tonight, and I am afraid an awful lot of cheap wine will be drunk as we sing “Well – since my baby left me” and other familiar odes.

I have always said that all music is good, there may just be some I am less familiar with; same with wine, though I have much less desire to explore the more esoteric forms.  The only real difference may be that whereas one can never have too much music….oh, yes same again please.

Thursday 5th November

Guy Fawkes, though we hardly realized it at the time was probably a fall-guy, a ruse for the Establishment of the day to provoke some anti-Catholic feeling.  The Religious wars fought in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries were pretty vicious and we can still see their shadow in Northern Ireland today.  As kids in the fifties we didn’t care who Guy Fawkes actually was, it was enough that we were going to have a bonfire and burn an effigy of him on top of it.  It was, next to Christmas Day and the week-long Carnival in the Summer, the most looked forward to event of the year.  There is something elemental about a communal bonfire, something that takes us back to maybe our pre-historic days, when on a damp and misty night the tribe would gather round the fire and feel safe and protected.  Making the guy was always exciting; a pillowcase for the head with a crudely drawn face, an old shirt and trousers stuffed with rags and paper for the body, our guy would be tied onto an old pushchair and wheeled round the town.  We would beg for a “Penny for the Guy”, ostensibly to buy fireworks but more likely spent on sweets.

We lived in a new council estate with a large ‘green’ in the middle and by some unwritten design a new bonfire would start to grow each year, with neighbours contributing wooden branches, old chairs and even a sofa as well as bags of leaves and more than one guy.  Around seven it would be lit and we would all crowd round the conflagration, adults with maybe a glass in hand and us kids running wild.  A few bangers and jumping jacks would be thrown at unsuspecting kids feet causing much hilarity.  Sparklers were held in woolen gloves and often small fireworks too.  Someone would nail a Catherine Wheel to a post and we would all cheer as it whirled round creating a peacock’s tail of coloured sparks.  Whoosh and there went a rocket, exploding into stars high above us.  Maybe some baked potatoes or cake would be handed round.  Gradually as the fire died down families dispersed to their own homes, the Guy successfully burned for another year.

In the morning a few of us boys would be kicking half-burned logs into the still glowing embers causing a mini-shower of sparks to flare up.  Another bonfire night over.  Then slowly Health and Safety issues kicked in and people started to go to organized firework displays, and then even letting off a few fireworks in your own garden became unpopular.  Now November the fifth is hardly celebrated at all, no bonfires and no guys either.  The excitement has all passed over to Halloween now and Mr. Fawkes, guilty or set-up is largely forgotten.

Wednesday 4th November

Almost every year I get a cold.  Sometimes a mild one, sometimes a terrible one –but I very rarely have a cold-free year.  The scientists tell us that these are caused by viruses, microbiological tiny life-forms that are complete parasites which spread from human to human and live entirely off their reluctant hosts.  Also most of the symptoms are caused by our own anti-bodies trying to rid us of these pesky interlopers.  In my humble experience it is a battle we, the humans almost always win, eventually.  However it usually takes a couple of weeks or so and though you know you will eventually get better it is pretty awful while it lasts.  All the medicines we take simply deal with, or attempt to mitigate the worst of, the symptoms; soothing a sore throat, drying a runny nose, easing aches and pains.  If we have a particularly bad cold then anti-biotics are prescribed, which again take a while to work.

But why do we get colds?  What possible use are they?  Except to benefit the manufacturers of tissues and cough mixture, I can see none.  But that is because we live in a World where, clever humans that we are, we expect there to be a reason for everything.  If you are Religious then it is all part of God’s Wonderful Plan, earthquakes, famine and cold viruses included.  If you are a pure Darwinian then it is the supremacy of the fittest; the most able cold viruses surviving to infect yet another unsuspecting person.

I can remember as a child the saying that no matter how clever scientists were, they still couldn’t cure the common cold.  Well, it’s still true today.  Almost daily we are regaled with medical breakthroughs, stem cell therapy, new cancer treatments – and yet we seem incapable of dealing with this most common and irritating of illnesses.  Scientists tell is that it is because the virus mutates very quickly and so no vaccine or flu-jab is ever really effective.  In fact a previous Government spent, or wasted you could say, a fortune on flu-viruses that were never used.

All I know, is that I am a few days in – feeling grotty and know that it will take a few more days to shrug off this most annoying of afflictions.  And that if I am lucky that will be it for this year, though I am sure to get another one next year.

Tuesday 3rd November

Another from the ‘Lesser Known Geniuses of Popular Music’ series.  I was lucky, I stumbled upon Rupert Hine after reading a review of his album ‘Unfinished Picture’ in Time Out in 1973.  I bought the album and fell in love with it.  It was like nothing else around at the time.  Sonically experimental and hauntingly beautiful with strange twists and incredible use of orchestra and more traditional rock instruments.  Then I heard nothing for a while.  He actually had formed a band Quantum Jump and released two singles in the mid-seventies.  I didn’t realise Rupert was in the band and only sought these records out later.  By the eighties he had become a must-go-to Producer with artists as varied as Thompson Twins, Bob Geldof and Tina Turner seeking his services.  But he started releasing records under his own name again. ‘Immunity’ – possibly his masterpiece and ‘Waving Not Drowning’ and ‘The Wildest Wish To Fly’.  This trio of Eighties albums are simply brilliant.  Fantastic songs, great sound effects and production and quite incredible and often sinister lyrics provided by Jeanette Obstoj (Rupert rarely writes his own lyrics).  I am always surprised that more people haven’t heard of, or indeed heard him, he is incredible.

He stopped using his own name after these albums and released three weaker records under the name Thinkman, returning to use his own name with a mid nineties record ‘The Deep End’.  He continues to produce other people but seems to have stopped making his own records again.  He is one of those artists who appear to be happy to remain in some sort of obscurity, known to few but still making a living in music.  His records are all available on CD but are usually quite expensive, unlike most of the artists he produced; he remains one of my all-time favourites though despite his somewhat erratic career.

Monday 2nd November

Well, humble pie never tasted so delicious.  Despite my previous posts detesting the whole concept of Halloween, American import etc: I have to acknowledge that two days ago (Saturday) we had a wonderful Halloween party.  I was nursing a cold and not exactly in a party mood, but we had been invited and our favourite, Rob (Elvis) Russell was playing, and despite having a nice evening in Pub Gambetta with Geoff Barker the night before, we dragged ourselves away from Strictly and decided to get ready.  My wife had bought a red wig for herself and a witches’ hat, and a pair of horns for me.  We knew we had yards of black velvet somewhere as my wife had a market stall for a couple of years here but I couldn’t remember where I had stored it.  Eventually I found it, and we fashioned a couple of cloaks.  A bit of dark eye-shadow, a scar or two fashioned from eye-liner, black lips and we looked pretty gruesome.

Luckily the party was being held only a couple of streets away in Chouette, a family-run little restaurant in town.  We know the French family really well, as they often come into the Café for espressos.  Almost everyone had dressed up, some in wigs, some with rubber face masks, and many with witches hats and cobwebs so it was already a party atmosphere.

Lots of good wine (Le Haut Pais, a favourite from Perigord) and the food was excellent too.  And Rob played all night as well, some Elvis, some old songs and a few new ones too.  A great party, we all knew the words to the songs and sung along to them badly and we even managed a dance or two.  So, as often happens – that which you were not expecting to be that much fun turns out to be great, whereas when you have been anticipating a wonderful evening for a while you may sometimes be disappointed.