Tuesday 11th October

And that was how easy it was to catch Phil.  June saw that though he was lovely in his own sweet way, he was totally useless as far as girls were concerned, a bit too much of a bookworm for most she suspected, but she liked him from the off.  He was safe, was Phil, dependable, reassuring, solid, and quite a catch too, though her mother never really approved.  “But he is only a solicitor’s clerk.” had been her instant judgement, pulling such a face of disapproval – but then she always had ideas well above her station.  She saw herself as ‘county’, almost ‘gentry’ and certainly a ‘lady’, she could never quite get used to the idea that after June’s father died apart from the house they were practically penniless.  He had left a pitiful insurance policy paying out a measly sum every month which June and her sister had to supplement out of their own meagre wages; Julie was a typist and June worked in Dormans, the department store on the High Street.  But this was just after the war and everything had changed, all the old certainties were gone, nothing was going to be the same now and everyone would just have to adapt to changing times.  Besides ‘only a solicitor’ or not June really liked Phil, and she was going to make sure he liked her too.

*  * *

But actually Phil fell for her straightaway too, from the moment she came over to him in that pub.  She was so beautiful in an entirely fresh and unaffected way.  Stunning, Phil might have even have described her as.  And yet he could talk to her, gone was all that nervous and embarrassed mumbling he resorted to whenever he was introduced to College girls, and the way they met, just by accident, ‘God, how fortunate was that’ he thought.  He had just had that important second meeting with old Jameson in Stowmarket and the whole day seemed unreal.  He had caught the bus into Ipswich where he had arranged to meet his father at Ipswich General.  He was quite elated on that little bus journey, Jameson gave him every indication that the job was his if he wanted it, and looking out of the window even the perpetual drizzle seemed not to matter.  He was quite looking forward to working at last and earning his own wages, small as they might be to start with, no more making do with that tiny allowance from his father.  They had over an hour to wait for their train back to Norwich and had only popped into the pub to kill time really. His father was with another Consultant and a Junior Doctor, who were also training it back to Norwich, so they all, for want of something better to do, and to get out of the driving rain, had sought shelter in the pub.

And she was so easy to talk to, this quite amazingly attractive June, it felt like he had known her forever.  No embarrassing pauses while you wait for the other person to speak and then both end up talking at the same time, they just seemed to hit it off from the word go.  Phil felt she was far more beautiful than all the college girls he felt overawed by, and he couldn’t stop looking at her, he hardly noticed her friend Jenny.  Suddenly his father was coughing behind his chair and telling him to ‘Drink up Phillip, or we’ll miss the 5.40.’  In a moment of desperate inspiration he scribbled down his address on a beer mat and thrust it at her.  She smiled a wonderful smile of surprise and thanks as she slid it into her handbag.

Phil walked out of the pub into bright sunshine and warmth, the streets were already drying up; it was the first sun he had seen in weeks.  It felt so wonderful; this rare glimpse of a possible spring and Phil was walking on air.  He stood there looking skyward and basking for a moment in that warm glow, before running to catch his father up.  What a day, he had finally sealed it with Jameson, persuaded him that he really was serious about a career in Law, and now he had met the most beautiful girl he could ever have imagined.  His hand reached desperately into his pocket and found the beer mat.  Her name was June, she had scribbled her address on it and that was all he knew about her, but only a couple of months later and in the month of June too, he would know June very well indeed.

Monday 10th October

It is that time of year.  Summer is just about over and Autumn not yet in full swing, but you cannot escape the knowledge that Winter’s cold hand will soon descend.  The skies are clear as a bell, blue during the day and jet black with twinkling stars at night and before the sun has risen and warmed us up it is so cold in the mornings.  Especially this week in France where the temperature is dropping to 1 degree in the mornings.  And you really notice it; for so many weeks we have been in tee-shirt and shorts and sandals – now it is jumpers, jeans and shoes.

But I quite like cold snappy mornings, there is something really refreshing about that chill, especially after a few hot months.  I was always an early riser, often starting work before six in the morning.  In fact for a few months I used to buy fruit and veg for a Restaurant Group on Covent Garden Market.  I would wake at about 2 in the morning, read my ansaphone and work out how much of everything I needed to buy.  Then before three I would moped my way half-way across London.  This was Winter too, the roads were often icy and I even drove through snow showers a couple of times.  London is quite different at this time of the morning.  No pedestrians, hardly any traffic, just rows and rows of dark houses.

And for a while I used to work for a Patisserie in Perivale.  This was almost the other end of the Central Line from Leytonstone where I lived.  I would catch the first train at around 5.30, and it is really cold then, the journey would take an hour and the carriage was full of office cleaners heading for the West End, many of them black.

And as a child I seem to remember the Winters being much colder, lots of snow and ice.  So these few refreshing mornings are nothing compared to those days.  I always actually feel a bit sorry for those sleepy heads who don’t get out of bed until 9 or later; even in Winter they miss the best part of the day

Sunday 9th October

This year, 2016 has been truly amazing.  Who would have thought?  In February we had the ridiculously farcical so-called re-negotiations with the EU in February by Cameron that were supposed to secure the referendum, which hardly anyone believed.  And then the rush to get the vote over and done with before the Leave campaign got their act together.  The trouble was that the entire Political class and the Commentariat misread the whole Immigration argument; they thought that people were just concerned that migrants were claiming benefits or houses, not that most of them just wanted rid of Immigrants altogether, and not even the European ones either.  For years the Mail and Express and the Sun and to a lesser degree the Telegraph and the Times have been peddling an anti-Muslim rhetoric, it is no wonder that people looking for a reason for the apparent lack of success in their own lives found such an easy scapegoat.  And I too misread the public mood and though as polling day neared the polls tightened; it was still a huge shock that Leave won.

That Cameron had to resign was no surprise, but Boris bowing out was a shock – he looked a shoo-in.  Then Andrea Leadsom dropped out and by default it was Theresa the submarine, who had silently lurked beneath the sonar wearing the camouflage of a Cameron loyalist Remainer only to re-surface as an all-out-Brexiteer.  As if having a new Leader of the Conservatives unelected wasn’t bizarre enough we had the unedifying spectacle of Labour re-electing the Leader they already had after the staged walk-out of most of his Shadow Cabinet and a vote of no-confidence by M.P.s.  Then only a few days ago the barely 18 day old new UKIP leader, Diana James mysteriously threw in the towel.  UKIP in turmoil and to cap it all a brawl involving two of their MEPs in Strasbourg – and although one of the combatants was hospitalized the other one swears that no punches were thrown, more a case of ‘handbags at dawn’.  Honestly you couldn’t make it up.

And in America we have Donald Trump trumping even his own outrageous sexist and racist remarks being exposed in a 2005 out-take talking about trying to ‘fuck’ a married woman and how because he was famous he could kiss and grope any woman he fancied.  He has apologized for using such language but not actually for the groping, kissing or anything else of women.  And the American public still seem like rabbits caught in the headlights, blinking but not really seeing.  It is almost a competition to see how badly he has to behave before his supporters will desert him.  “Is this low enough for you?  Or do I actually have to take down my pants or use the F or C word about Hilary”.  Nothing would shock me about the man anymore.    The U.S. election is in early November and we are all hoping that Hilary can hang on and win, or just how low can the American public go?  And we are only in October.  Who knows what other surprises lurk in the remaining 12 weeks of this extra-ordinary year.

Saturday 8th October

I first heard snatches of North American Indian Music on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s records.  Buffy herself was half Indian and strangely enough loved Country  and Western music, but did write songs about the Indians such as ‘Now That The Buffalo’s Gone’.  And during the Seventies I read a few books about the almost total annihilation of the Redskins by wave after wave of American Settlers, the most famous being ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’, incidentally the title of a much later Buffy song too.  But the music seemed pretty uninspiring, a lot of ‘whey, hey a whey’s’ and simple tribal drumming; I couldn’t really see much melody in there.   And maybe there wasn’t much – why should there be?  I bought a cassette purporting to be Native American Music in the early eighties but I suspect it was white-man’s interpretations though it did feature Indian choirs (if such a thing really ever existed, or is just another European import).  And in the late Seventies were films such as ‘A Man Called Horse’ where again a white man attempts to understand the Red Indians, and Soldier Blue, for which again Buffy wrote the title song about another Indian Massacre.

And in our superior way we have romanticized the Noble Savage yet again.  At least it makes an improvement from just treating them as Savages, but what exactly is noble about their continued treatment as even their tiny Reservations are taken for mineral extraction or logging I struggle to understand.  We have all bought dream-catchers too, as the hippies absorbed some sweet ideas from the native Americans too.

Then in the mid-eighties I bought a record by Robbie Robertson, who was lead guitarist in the Band.  It was called ‘Music for the Native Americans’ and although the songs were written and sung mostly by Robbie he seemed to incorporate Indian drumming and chanting into the songs too.  Then a few years later he released ‘Contact From The Underworld of Redboy’, and this was a much more political and modern sounding record, with beats and scratching and great tunes.  But one track called ‘Sacrifice’ was outstanding.  It has spoken words by Leonard Peltier, a Native American who was involved in a shootout on a reservation with State Troopers and Local Sherrif’s where one Indian and two white officers were killed.  At his trial the prosecution stated that although there was no evidence that Leonard Peltier had shot either of the dead white men someone had to pay for the crime.  That was in 1976 and he has been in jail ever since.  As he will not admit his ‘guilt’ he will not be released.  So he continues what he considers his Sacrifice.  It is an amazing and moving song.

Thursday 6th October

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everyone would experience 15 minutes of fame.  Well, it hasn’t happened quite yet – not quite.  But how short fame is now becoming.  Owen Smith, contender for Labour leadership, three months.  Sam Allardyce, England Football Manager, sixty-seven days (at least he had a 100% record, hahaha…), Diane James, UKIP’s new leader – an incredible 18 days of fame.

But now we have so-called Reality Television, Celebrities no-one had ever heard of in the jungle for a handful of weeks before Christmas, only to sink once again into Obscurity.  The eager candidates to  be Sir (and how he loves to be called Sir) Alan Sugar’s Apprentice fall one by one by the wayside, greedy boys and girls scratching each other’s eyes out on their way to their brief flash of fame.  And Big Brother itself, (does anyone still watch it) where ‘contestants’ will do almost anything to win, but for most being on TV is the fame they crave.  All the hopefuls, thousands at the auditions, who strive for fame on X-factor who are often in tears if they aren’t accepted; their whole young lives apparently fixated on being famous, if only for not even fifteen minutes as they try to sing for their supper.  And even for the successful ones, how many have even the semblance of a career a year after winning?

But maybe worse still (if that is possible) are the poor people who go on the Jeremy Kyle show and fight for their fifteen minutes of fame by exposing their sad lives for all of us to be amused and amazed by; husbands unfaithful with best friends, girlfriends sleeping with brothers – the pathetic list goes on.  Or the people on Embarrassing Bodies who are quite happy to have their somewhat faulty or unsightly genitals filmed for our delectation; what a thing to be famous for.  Leonard Cohen in a song called The Future said ‘the rich have their channels in the bedrooms of the poor’.  As the World spins on the only chance of a different life for many is to grab, grasp or beg for their fifteen minutes of fame.

Friday 7th October

So Mrs. May has set out her stall.  And very attractive it looks too, full of glossy words and polished phrases and apple-pie sentiments, who could possibly disagree with her.  Well, Tony Blair couldn’t for a start; her vision could well have been written for any of his early Conference Speeches.  Ed Milliband came up with almost the same phrases in his Conference Adresses too.  Some of her ideas, no actually almost all of her ideas have been discussed and agreed at Labour Conferences for years.  Workers on Company Boards, protecting the weak, going after tax avoiders, intervening when the free market is not working for the good of all, even praising Atlee for the creation of the NHS.  And dare we mention it, governing for the weak and the working classes rather than the privileged few.  In fact her whole speech would have sat happily with almost any Labour leader since the War (except that Labour would have been accused of class warfare).  Theresa May is a Socialist after all, who would have guessed.

Well you have to sit beneath Nelson’s Column and read between the lines (between the lions) to really understand what she is doing.  She is no Socialist at all, but is using the language of Socialism to try to fool us all.  She is trying to create the impression that there has just been a general election and she has won; only she is presenting her glossy manifesto after the fact rather than before the vote.  In some ways it is not that different from the words Cameron used when he talked (seems a long time ago now) of Compassionate Conservatism; remember all that hug a husky nonsense.  And even George Osborne, the architect of the now abandoned Austerity talked about helping all those who worked hard, rewarding the strivers and so on.  She is telling the World, but also her party that a new management is in charge, and it is kind and inclusive and not nasty anymore.  Well, we will see.

I would love it if she and the Tories did actually improve the lot of the poor and the weak, and did rein back the power of Corporations and did stop the rich and powerful taking advantage of us all.  But, I really don’t believe it.  Why did she not object, why did she not argue for working people, why did she not stop Osborne rewarding the very privileged few she now has in her sights when she was in Cabinet for 6 and a half years? Why did she vote for Benefit cuts,  why did she support Hunt against Junior Doctors, why did she vote for the bedroom tax?  I think we all know the answer.  In a way she probably believes some of the new rhetoric herself, but she must   also know that the current policies pursued by her Government will never achieve any of it.   But she is clever, and for a while may fool many of the public, who are longing for a change of heart, for someone who understands them and who they can trust.  We will see.  In four years time things may well look different and then her claims to Govern for the many and not the few (remember how ‘we are all in it together’ unraveled) may be tested by reality.

Wednesday 5th October

It was all a bit of an accident, Phil meeting June.  He had always felt a bit useless when it came to the opposite sex – not his strongest suit, chatting girls up and all of that.  He just seemed to clam up when it came to the speaking bit; always hesitated that bit too long, then before he knew it someone else had snapped her up and as she got up to dance with someone else he was left a bit surprised and wondering how on earth that had happened.   Except for Joyce, that is.  He had been going out with Joyce for almost a year, well ‘going out with’ was pushing it a bit; they just sort of hung around together.  But Joyce was easy to talk to, not a ‘looker’ at all.  She was a bit stodgy, quite squat and wide in the beam, with short dark hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses which she seemed to peer out at the world from.  No-one else was sniffing around after her, so it left the field clear for Phil; they would often be the ones left in their chairs when every once else had jumped up to dance to some jazz combo that were blasting it at a College dance, and so the two of them, maybe more out of embarrassment than desire, ended up attempting to jive along with everyone else.

Not that he was that successful at all, even with Joyce.  He could talk to the girl but was too nervous to actually do very much else, and besides she was a Christian.  Well, of course everyone was, but Joyce was the real thing, an absolute God-fearing Christian who informed Phil in no uncertain terms that she wanted above everything else to be a virgin on her wedding day. ‘Come to think of it’ Phil thought later, ‘Why on earth would she actually tell me, a fellow, that?  Could it be that despite the words she spoke it was actually some sort of a come-on; that she wanted him to fuck her after all?  Or be slapped down in the attempt, of course.’  The trouble was Phil had taken her at her word and not even bothered.  He had not even really considered her in a sexy way at all, and her saying that about wanting to remain a virgin had so closed off that avenue anyway that it was a relief – because Phil didn’t think that he could have actually done it with her, not without considerable encouragement and not a little alcohol, which second of course may have defeated the first.

He didn’t know what his friends were thinking, maybe they reckoned that they were fucking like rabbits, who knows – but they certainly weren’t.   Phil wasn’t fucking anyone, and hadn’t even come close either.   A couple of drunken gropes at parties, but either his poor knowledge of female anatomy or poor brain-hand co-ordination had left him no further down the road to discovery of the female body.  And like every young man he was desperate to do it, it was almost a hurdle he had to clear just to prove to himself that he was a man (some sort of equal to his father, maybe) and not a boy anymore.  He had even thought about going to a prostitute, but either through a lack of courage or money, or even knowing how much of either he would need, had given that up as a bad job too.  He was becoming resigned to a life of celibacy and wanking until the right girl came along, and then he hoped all that side of things would somehow take care of itself.  And amazingly it did; it happened just like that.

*  * *

June noticed him across the pub in Ipswich as soon as he walked in.  He was with another young chap and a couple of much older smartly dressed men, who seemed uncomfortable with the very idea of going into a pub at all, looking embarrassed as they shook the rain off their mackintoshes.  They all stood there just inside the door and seemed at a loss as to what to do, until he Phil, pushed through to the counter and ordered four pints of mild and bitter.  Relieved, the other three wandered over to find a table and chairs.  Phil seemed to be waiting for something to happen, a bit bewildered looking, he was staring at the four pints, and the distance across the crowded pub to his companions seemed to perplex him.   June excused herself from her girlfriend Jenny and went straight up to him, touched him on the elbow and said quietly “Would you like a hand with those?”

He turned and saw her smiling at him and, as if he had known her forever, said “Oh yes, that’d be great, you take that one and I’ll manage these two, thanks.”

“But what about the other one?”  June said, nodding at the fourth pint, already sipped, on the bar.

“Oh that’s mine,” he smiled conspiratorially at her and half whispered “I’m drinking mine at the bar, my companions aren’t really my friends at all I am afraid”’

And after they had delivered the drinks and returned to his solitary pint, she said “Well, who are they then, if they aren’t friends?  You all came in together, I saw you.”

“The tall one is my father,” he explained as if they were old friends, “he’s a Doctor, and so are the other two.  I just met them from the Hospital.  They all know each other and are bound to be talking shop. I was just going to quietly drink my pint here by the bar for a bit, you see.” He lifted it to his lips and took a deep sip before continuing “I was in town for a meeting about my own future employment; I’m going to be an articled clerk, in a solicitors’ – you know?  Not far from here.  Stowmarket?  Do you know it?”

“I know of it, but not that well.  Been there a couple of times, not much to do there I thought.”  She leaned in closer and stared into his eyes as she said in what she thought was her best screen goddess voice,  “So, Mr Solicitor, are you from round here then, I haven’t seen you in Ipswich before?”  Whether her Mae-West impersonation resonated with him or not he was simply enjoying talking with this young woman, it was so easy, none of the pressure he normally felt trying to chat College girls up.  In fact he had no idea he might be either chatting up or being chatted up himself, he was just relieved to have someone to talk to, rather than have to join his father and his two colleagues.

“No, I’m the opposition actually, we live in Norwich, well just outside, you know,” he said, referring to the local football rivalry between the towns.  She wondered if he had noticed she was attracted to him, or was he just a bit slow.

“Well, maybe you should get to know some of ‘the opposition’ a bit better – come and join my friend Jenny and I.  We can’t have a handsome strapping new solicitor drinking on his own now, can we?”

Tuesday 4th October

So, Mrs. May will trigger Article 50 before March next year. That’s nice of her, but what isn’t so nice is that she won’t tell us or Parliament (not the same thing) exactly, or even generally, what she aims to achieve.  ‘Okay’ you may say ‘she is the Prime Minister and although we don’t have a written constitution (mores the pity) it is usual for the Government to sign treaties’.  Yes, but almost always they have to be ratified by Parliament before passing into Law.  In fact the changes in the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties followed this process with Parliament having the last say.  All we have from the Prime Minister is a desire to both control our borders and to get the best deal possible for trade with the remaining 27 countries of the EU.  Well, just like the song about a horse and carriage and Love and Marriage – “You can’t have one without the other” you cannot have access to the Single Market without Free Movement of People, which according to most pundits was the reason the well-informed (hahaha) public voted for Brexit in the first place.  Complicated or what?

But here I am more concerned with the constitutional situation.  If Mrs. May does trigger Article 50 without the approval of Parliament (which seems probable as we do not know her negotiating position, and besides she says that Parliament will not have a vote anyway) and there is a strict two-year negotiation, at the end of which whether agreement is reached or not we will be out with no recourse to say ‘Hang on a minute’, Parliament will not be able to veto or amend or indeed approve whatever we get at the end of the two years, because it will be too late by then.  So in effect Parliament will not be able to ratify the changes to the treaty we have with the EU, even though all 27 other countries will have to ratify the treaty changes in their own legislatures.  Complicated or what?

It looks more and more likely that we will have, either by our own choice or imposed on us, a ‘Hard Brexit’.  Now, I reluctantly accept that constitutionally if we are to abide by the referendum result we have to leave the EU; but under what terms?  I am sure that many, but we have no way of knowing how many, who voted to Leave did not necessarily want to leave the Single Market, especially as hundreds of thousands of jobs may depend on our remaining in it.  Surely if Parliament has no mechanism to approve or reject or amend the final deal then the British people, under whose Sovereignty Mrs May is now supposedly by-passing Parliament for, must be able to accept or reject that final deal.  However of course the reality is that once Article 50 is triggered nobody, not Parliament nor People nor even Mrs May herself (an unelected PM remember) will have much say, because the remaining 27 nations, provided they stick together, will call all the shots.  “This is what we are prepared to offer you, take it or leave it – the result will be the same anyway”.  Complicated or what?

And then when we are finally out and the ‘Great Repeal of the EU’ Act becomes law, will of course come the lawsuits, Companies denied trade by the Government, Individual’s taxation and health and residency issues and lots more besides….oh happy day.

Monday 3rd October

Seems so long ago now, I was just going out with Joy and exploring our musical likes and dislikes and she said she had just bought ‘River’ by Terry Reid.  I had never heard of him; he had been for a while the lead singer in ‘Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers’, hardly at the forefront of late sixties rock.  And then he had made a couple of solo albums which though raved about by the critics had sold poorly.  He was really a musician’s musician, known to the cognoscenti but largely ignored by the general public.  And so he has remained, despite an incredible voice.  He has been quite unlucky too; he was asked to be the lead singer in Led Zeppelin but turned it down to concentrate on his solo career, he actually recommended a friend of his Robert Plant – who of course got the job.

He has made very few records, only four more and one late live album and his reputation rests on the first two records on the early Seventies.  Terry, although English had re-located to L.A. and made ‘River’ with American musicians and this record and its follow-up ‘Seed of Memory’ are wonderful and so different from everyone else’s records of the time; they are a lazy mix of jazz and soul that is really impossible to describe.  His vocals which seem effortless are perfectly married to the often lazy and sparse backing and Terry’s own seemingly simple guitar playing.  The voice carries the melody perfectly, woozy and swooping and soaring at times.  And the songs themselves seem timeless, listening over forty years later and they are still fresh and sound modern, they could have been made in any decade.  He made a covers album which was okay but not outstanding and another record which sadly seemed but a shadow of his early seventies albums.  But on the recent live album he seems genuinely happy with his life in America and his relative obscurity, regaling the audience with tales of Jimi and the Stones in the Sixties.

If you want to sample Terry at his best try ‘Brave New Awakening’ on YouTube.

Sunday 2nd October

Well, 2016 had turned out to be quite a momentous year.  The Referendum, Mr. Cameron gone and soon forgotten, the re-run of Labour’s leadership election and Donald Trump elected as President of America.  And now looking back from the vantage point of 2036 we have to wonder what all the fuss and furore was about.  Both Britain and the USA are ruling supreme again.  Trump not only stood up to Putin but faced him down over his territorial claims to half of Lithuania.  Putin as we know refused to back down and lined his tanks up on the border, but it was Trumps master-stroke of dropping a, fairly small as it turned out, nuke on a small city in Kamkatcha in ’22 that won the day.  Putin’s retaliation was feeble and his planes were blown out of the sky before they left Russian territory.  As it happened that was the beginning of the end for Putin, his whole regime collapsed as the Oligarchs fled with their ill-gotten gains (most to London) and a real Democracy emerged from the ruins; the new rulers immediately agreed to get rid of all their nuclear weapons and World Peace broke out.  China, which we were all scared of turned out to be the mouse that never roared, turning in on itself as their economy collapsed in the Twenties, and even Isis slowly withered on the vine as the new generation of Muslim kids turned their backs on Radicalism.

Here in Britain, against all the odds, Mrs. May got a fantastic deal from Europe.  Access to the single market and free movement of people provided they had a job to go to; essentially these were six month contracts, renewable for up to three years.  And as we were technically out of the EU we could and did negotiate trade deals with almost everyone; Britian showing the World how it was done.  We thrived and by 2030 were the third largest economy in the World, we even had our own electric automobile industry.  Hinkley point was cancelled by EDF when the thing was half built, forcing the Government to make a massive investment in renewables which now provide almost two thirds of our power.  Labour made a brief return to power in ’25 in coalition with the SNP and UKIP, which only lasted eighteen months before collapsing and the Tories returned with Boris at the helm.  Donald Trump Junior won the 2024 US election and his father returned in ’32 as he had managed to change the constitution in his last year in 23, a grand old man of 85 but still a wonderful statesman.

Ringggg..ringgg…my hand goes out and switches off the alarm clock, it is still 2016.  Like Bobby coming out of the shower it was all a dream….hahaha