Sunday 11th March

Now why should that singular fact stick in my mind, when I struggle to remember so many others.  I was just starting to see him in 1972 when it was his birthday.  He was always quite proud of the fact that it was also Harold Wilson’s birthday.  Crikeys; that shows how old we both must be now.  Harold Wilson; and Ted Heath was Prime Minister then too.  What a long time ago that seems now, and what different times too.  It seems to me, politics addict that I have always been, that politics was much more about something in those days, of more importance.  I can remember the arguments about big things like Union power, the Coal industry and Nationalisation of the Steel industry, which now incidentally has been privatized again and is owned by some Indians, and is about a tenth of the size it used to be.  (As are almost all our industries.)  Where do you think all the clothes and shoes and televisions used to be made, before everything came from China?  And the world and we too, Adrian and I, were so much more innocent then too.  We knew very little about anything, but of course we thought at the time that we knew so much.  Maybe this is true of every new generation.  The young of today look over their shoulder at us and wonder how on earth we managed without 3G mobiles and i-pads, and computers and Facebook.  Come to think of it how did anyone manage before Facebook.  And in forty years time the young will look back at this generation and wonder at their naievety, as they handle with ease some technology we haven’t even thought of yet.  And who then will remember the nineteen-seventies, and the political struggles and the music and how on earth we managed to survive it all.   And who will remember Adrian’s birthday then when he is over one hundred.  Hahaha

Saturday 10th March

I seem to be listening to older voices all the time lately.  It isn’t that I am deliberately choosing older singers like Judy Collins or Leonard Cohen, or rejecting younger ones like Florence Welch or Adele, who are both quite splendid in their way, but I just seem to have taken a particular liking to the older gentler and less harsh tones of mature singers.  Several of my all-time favourite singers seem to be having a quiet renaissance of late, even if like Carly Simon they are mostly re-recording their early hits with a softer production, a quieter reflective backing allowing the voice that was once strident and powerful but is now hushed and lower in range to become more expressive, letting the words come out effortlessly and mellowing into my tired ears too.   And if you don’t have to try so hard to hear the voice over those noisy seventies and eighties productions the meaning comes through clearer now I find.  Or is it that I am just getting older myself, and prefer not to be reminded of my passing youth by hearing the belting tones of a Rihanna or Katey Perry.  I don’t think so, I have always loved those distinctive voices which may be slightly flawed, but are instantly recognizable – Paul Simon, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading and Joni Mitchell, (to name but a few) as soon as they start singing you know it is them, no-one else sounds anything like them.  But I find such a lot of the singers who came after just melt into one another and I cannot tell a Madonna from a Janet Jackson, or Take That from Westlife.  Technically superb they may well be, but they don’t strike a sympathetic note in my ears.  I can remember when one of the boy bands – it might have been Boyzone, recorded their version of Cat Stevens’, as he was then, brilliant song ‘Father and Son’.  It was a big hit, but I kept hearing it and couldn’t believe how dumbed down it sounded.  Whereas Cat had used two distinctively different voices for his duet with himself, the older father weary and placating the exasperation and impatience of the youth, this version was just sung straight out, as if the conflict between the generations wasn’t even there.  But maybe that is just the distance between the younger generation and ours, because when I succeeded in playing the original to some younger listeners they didn’t get it at all, preferring the smooth blandness they knew to the original interpretation.    Anyway, the good thing is that there are more than enough older singers still recording for me to enjoy – the new Springsteen, ‘Wrecking Ball’ is arriving from Amazon soon, and I have yet to unwrap and play ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ from Paul – Joan Armatrading is releasing a new album soon, and we know it won’t be long before Neil Young does the same.  So leave me here soaking up the almost whispered words of Leonard’s ‘Old Ideas’ and I’ll tell you when I am ready to hear some new younger voices.

Friday 9th March

Sorry to bang on about Foreign Affairs two days running.  I had planned to write about something far more personal today but the pointless deaths of six soldiers yesterday has provoked me to say the unsayable.  I have always been a pacifist, but also a realist – in some circumstances it may be justified to go to war to kill people in order to save a larger loss of life later, though you can never be sure, of course.  After 9/11 when Tony Blair stood shoulder to shoulder with George Bush it all seemed so much clearer.  There was little doubt that Al Quaeda had training camps in Afghanistan and in order to protect the West and to prevent further atrocities we had a duty to clear the dreaded Taliban government out, and install a democratic government instead.  And that is where the real problem lies, it is easy to analyse the problem, to diagnose the sickness, but far harder to understand the cure, what will work to make the world better.   And why is democracy, or our version of it, the cure-all for all of mankind.  Just look at our own history and the long struggle to achieve even this limited sort of democracy.  How can we just go in, all guns blazing and simply impose it on others?  But we do, and despite the evidence that it has failed, and quite spectacularly, we will carry on I am sure.  So what exactly are we fighting for in Afghanistan?  In all truth we are fighting to save face now, the experiment has failed; there is a sort of democracy in place, but the Government is as corrupt as ever, and the dreaded Taliban is in control of much of the country, and is probably trusted by a large proportion of the population. It has been eleven years of suffering and death and at huge cost for almost nothing at all.  That is to take nothing away from the bravery of the soldiers of all nations who have taken part in the futility; they along with the battered and bombed and surely sick-and-tired-of-it-all Afghans themselves are the innocent ones.

It is almost sacrilege to admit defeat, and all our politicians have to stand shoulder to shoulder in their resolution to ‘get the job done’.  But the job is really to escape, to get out with as much of our tattered reputation intact as possible.  It is just very sad that we cannot be honest and admit our failure, if only to stop another six families from losing their sons and fathers.

Thursday 8th March

And each day on the news more and more horror stories are emerging out of Syria, the latest Bete-Noir, in what at times seems a never ending story.   Is it really getting worse, or is it that the news media are realizing that Syria is at last newsworthy.  After months when the uprising was being largely unreported, or reported with less prominence than today the ratchet seems to have been applied, whether by news editors, or responding to voices off from politicians is unclear.  What worries me is that the language being used is so similar to the build up to both Iraq and Libya that I fear we may be sleepwalking into another conflict.  Not that the cause of the rebels is not a just one, as were those in Libya and maybe in Iraq too, but is it being used as some sort of a convenient fig-leaf for a neo-con regime change agenda.  We have been here before, and maybe this is the new diplomacy so cleverly used by the IRA in Ulster, a combination of the ballot box and the bullet, because there is no doubt that someone, possibly us, is organizing and arming the rebel movement.   I am no apologist for Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi, both quite unpleasant and ruthless dictators in their use of power, but both actually quite good at ensuring that ordinary Libyans and Iraqis were well educated and had hospitals and some would argue a better life than many of their neighbours that we cosied up to, and are still our best friends, such as Saudi Arabia.  But maybe the Syrians didn’t buy enough of our aeroplanes and tanks for our liking.  Let us just hope that however the Syrian drama ends, it ends quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible.

Wednesday 7th March

Did it really surprise anyone that Roman Abramovitch has sacked yet another manager – one has almost lost count since he parted ways with the ‘Special One.’  And what a sorry spectacle he has made of the once great Chelsea football club.  Exactly how this man came into his fortune is still shrouded in some mystery but like most of the Russian Oligarchs it was almost certainly by theft, even if the legal niceties had been observed.  Under Communism these industries were owned by the people and for the people, and now they are in the hands of a powerful few, and I suspect that the Russian people have come off rather badly.  And now the latest Tsar, Mr. Putin struts his bare-chested way on the international stage, another robber baron who nobody really respects at all.  What is it with these newly enriched men that they think that just because they are super-rich they can behave so disgracefully.

Buying oneself a football team is one thing, but throwing ones toys out of the pram time and time again when things don’t go ones way is pathetic.  And at last the true British reaction has come out in the open, and it is the one thing neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Abramovitch can handle; ridicule.  Almost everyone now considers the man a buffoon, and except for a few die-hard fans, most consider Chelsea to be a bit of a joke too.  How could it happen that a man, who by whatever means, possessed of a fortune of staggering dimensions should have spent lavishly and built a very good team have ended up squandering it so badly.  It takes ineptitude of some enormity to have achieved that, or a belief in the power of money that transcends the need to actually be a decent human being.  I have no doubt that this is not the end of the saga, and it is entirely possible that Chelsea will rise again and becoming a great team, but whoever becomes his next manager will surely be making sure that his contract has a handsome clause for compensation if and when he is inevitably sacked early.  Why on earth else would anyone be slightly interested in working for such a detestable and laughable man.

Tuesday 6th March

They just push you aside as if you are of no consequence, which in a way I can understand. The young are after all our future, they will be around far longer than we will, and really when you think about it we oldies have made an awful mess of things.  What have we bequeathed them; a broken planet by all accounts.  In our headlong rush for material wealth we have squandered not only our own but our children’s inheritance too.  At our school there used to be a bronze plaque with a relief of poppies and crosses, and a short list of names of the fallen in two world wars, presumably former pupils of the school.  And at the bottom were the words “To you we pass the burning torch, be it yours to hold up high.”  We used to laugh and say, “Yes, or it will burn your hair you idiot !!”  We didn’t realise what it meant, not only the torch of learning, but passing on the torch of civilization too.  Only, we didn’t really do much to sustain the flames in our period of holding it, and now we pass on a spluttering burnt out apology of a world.  Let us hope that the younger generation with their fairly well instilled ideas of fairness and anti-racism and anti-sexism will do a better job.

It is just that sometimes I look at them on the tube, with their smart suits and the girls all made up and in high heels and designer bags and with their easy manner and confidence and I cannot help noticing that one of the main lessons we have passed onto them is also selfishness, in fact it seems ingrained in so many, with their sharp faces and beaky pushy noses, and self assured ways.  No room for modesty, for diffidence, for being unsure of oneself.  They all seem to be following the American model of self-belief and self-fulfillment above all else.  Well, let us just hope that when they have achieved all their goals they come to realise that it is by sharing ones experiences, especially of what it is to be human – that wisdom is truly found.   Here endeth today’s lesson.

Monday 5th March

We all knew it couldn’t last, the good weather I mean, and it has been extraordinarily good for days, temperatures in the late teens in London, which for the time of year was such a pleasant change.  Not that, apart from one icy week, we have even had a winter at all.  And it was there on the weather forecast for the last two days, ominously creeping nearer and yesterday, Sunday, it arrived.  That awful combination of cold rain and driving wind, that chills you right to the marrow.   And even though I had watched the weather on Saturday for some reason it hadn’t quite occurred to me just how cold and wet it would be.  I was off to my writing class, and stupidly didn’t even glance outside as I set off jauntily at One.  The class is held at Bermondsey, and like most of South London, of which I have never been a great fan, the tube stations are few and far between.  When I came out at Bermondsay Jubilee line station and knew I had to walk about half a mile I realized how inappropriately I was dressed, a light Mac, with no hat, scarf or umbrella.  For some reason I had neglected to put on my nice North face insulated coat with the hood and the double lined zipper that completely isolates one from the wind and rain, and opted for the Mac I had been wearing for the last few sunny and warm days.

The windy rain was whipping at me, and my thin Mac was soon soaked, as were my tights and shoes. And it seemed head on too, so by the time I got to the class I had a throbbing headache.  I somehow got through reading my piece, and was dreading the return journey.  It was just as bad only the wind, now mostly at my back, was hitting the back of my head and making my headache even worse.  I was feeling quite sick on the tube journey home, and as soon as I got in went to bed, where I tossed and turned, fighting the idea of getting out of bed and taking two neurofen.  Eventually I succumbed and am now sitting wrapped in towels from a hot soaking bath nursing a cup of tea and a headache and looking at the rain battering my window.  A truly awful wet day with little to redeem it..

Sunday 4th March

We all make irrational decisions where money is concerned.  When buying a house; whether the price is 345 or 347 and a half thousand, are we really going to quibble.  When on holiday we buy yet another over-priced straw sun hat or a pair of expensive designer sunglasses at the airport – in fact once one has decided that one is actually ‘on holiday’ all everyday thriftiness evaporates like the mist on those Tuscan hills by mid-morning.  When we are out with friends and the mood takes us we will sometimes in a fit of generosity pick up the whole tab at that chic little Italian Trattoria where the prices would have made Grandma turn away and remark, “Well Catherine, we don’t really like foreign food anyway, do we?”  And yet when going round the supermarket we sometimes shake our heads in disbelief at how much a four-pack of loo-rolls costs, (two pounds, fifty – they have got to be joking), and frantically start looking along the shelf for the value brand.  We all spend money carelessly when the mood takes us, and yet profess to be careful to all our friends; the ever-rising price of everything being a constant source of conversation.  And every so often I open the spreadsheet I keep of my personal finances and look at the ever (slowly but surely) increasing numbers and sigh to myself.  Yes, it really is a decent enough sum, I could do anything with it, buy a house in the country, or more realistically in the Dordogne, give a large sum to a charity, or more cheaply, get the house re-decorated, the garden landscaped, maybe a conservatory.  But none of those would really make me happy. Maybe nothing will.  Money and the spending of it is only a temporary thrill, and then you look around you at your purchases, and yes, they look quite nice I suppose, but never quite as good as they did in the shop, and you know this feeling will not last.  And the next time you open the spreadsheet and see a diminished balance you will wonder at your impulsiveness in buying that new sofa, or upgrading the car again.  Neither the having money nor the spending of it makes one really happy, not half as happy anyway as when you discover that you can actually buy nine, yes nine loo-rolls in the ‘99p’ store and still have a penny change to put in the charity box.  Now that’s what I call irrational.

Saturday 3rd March

I resisted for quite some time, but had seen them appearing here and there, and they seemed so handy that I was tempted.  One part of me resisted because of my love for the actual artifacts that books, especially hardbacks, are, even if one is constantly running out of bookshelves to keep them on.  In the end I bought one, a kindle, for myself, last Christmas; I mean, who else was going to buy me one.  I had a little difficulty in setting it up, as I don’t have very good wi-fi at home, but even on Christmas day the very nice man at the kindle helpline showed me how to download directly onto my laptop, and then transfer the books via a cable to my kindle.  Easy as pie, and now I have an ever growing library of books loaded.  I must confess I am a bit of a cheat though.  If I really want a book I will buy it both in hardback for reading at home with little puddy-tat next to me on the sofa, and also buy the kindle edition for travelling with.  I do love to see the spines of my favourite authors on the bookshelf, and the kindle list is a poor substitute, and besides, like downloaded music, do you actually own anything if it just a collection of binary numbers which are all too easy to delete.  Yes I know a complete waste of money, but after all, why not, it is my money to waste and I don’t criticize you or anyone else for how they spend their money.  The best thing about the kindle is that you can adjust the font size to suit your own short-sightedness.  Also it NEVER forgets what page you were on, and is so handy to slip into my handbag and out again if I sit for five minutes on a bench at Parliament Hill Fields or even standing waiting for the bus – no minute is wasted.  And I have discovered there are so many of us, a secret society of kindle users who sit in Starbucks or on the tube, or on park benches – each of us engaged in our own secret world of stories.  Some have white kindles and a few pink and red ones but most are black like mine.  It reminds me of photos of Edwardian children, each with their very own slate, same colour, same size.  Plus ca change, plus ca meme.

Friday 2nd March

Do British Workers have an attitude problem?  Do we really hate out jobs, hate our bosses and probably hate our lives so much? It isn’t just the miserable faces I encounter on the tube, though I do wonder why they go through with it if they are so downcast, why not just turn round and go back home if you cannot bring yourself to at least look moderately happy.  I used to enjoy the occasional “Good Morning” with the road-sweeper, but of late all I get is a shrug of yellow pvc-clad shoulders and a reluctant return to the broom.  The girl who serves me my coffee is even looking harassed and fed up, as if it really is too tedious to serve me.  But yesterday I saw a little charade that encapsulated our whole attitude problem.

I had turned out of the park and was heading home when a large white flat-bed lorry which was actually more of a converted white van than a real lorry, swerved in front of me and stopped at the junction of a side road.  Two men clad in bright yellow tabards over paint-splattered jeans and frayed sweatshirts got out and threw almost in disgust the butt-ends of their cigarettes to the ground and swiveled them out with angry feet.  They sauntered to the back of the truck and threw, yes literally threw out four of those orange plastic cones and then a couple of black plastic sandbags and a yellow metal sign with black lettering reading ‘Road Closed – Diverted Traffic’ and a swiveling arrow mechanism.  I had always assumed that the battered state of these signs was evidence of a car collision of some sort which had buckled the quite thick metal frame and plate, but now I see that it has been inflicted by disillusioned and grumpy malcontents of workers who should be looking after this equipment, or do they get some secret enjoyment out of maliciously damaging their bosses property.  They kicked, yes literally kicked the cones and sign into place, then slumped themselves back into the cab which drove to the other end of the street where the pantomime was repeated.  I don’t seem to remember this resentment at actually being expected to do something for your wages when I was younger.  I wonder is this a sign of our straightened times or just a particularly British attitude to work?