What A Fiasco

Wednesday 4th October

You would have thought, given the disastrous General Election Campaign, given that they are now at best only neck and neck with Labour, given that they are clinging on by their cracked and broken fingernails – that they would have come up with a better slogan than “Building a future that works for everyone”.  At least they have dropped ‘Strong and Stable’….And true to form, in every interview the Cabinet try to slide this truly meaningless slogan in whatever the question is.

So, what does “Building a Country that works for everyone” actually mean?  The Tories have been in Government for seven years.  Seven years in which the rich have got richer, house prices have soared, shares reaching ever inflated levels, food banks blossoming like Autumn Crocuses, Payday Loans now the norm for millions, debt far higher than ever before and for those on Benefits, their income reducing each year, being forced on to Universal Credit which for some inexplicable reason takes six weeks before any money can be paid out.  And all of this with the storm clouds of a bad Brexit lowering on the horizon.  And so the Tories proudly proclaim that they are building a country that works for everyone….except the bottom thirty of forty per cent, that is.

Do they really think that anyone at all actually believes them?  Or are we truly in 1984 territory where words which used to mean one thing now mean whatever they want them to,

At least Labour’s slogan “For the Many, Not the Few” is unambiguous.  It would be almost impossible for any Government to create a Society where everyone thrives and does well.  We know the rich will not voluntarily give up their enormous wealth, or agree to pay more in tax, or to stop hiding their money in tax havens, or to stop ripping off tenants in ‘Rachman’ style housing, or to pay decent wages, or to stop zero-hours contracts.  They will only change if they are forced to.  And if anyone thinks the Tories will make them they really are demented.  The Tories are there to protect the Rich, the Businessmen, the Landlords.  Labour are the only hope for change.

And Boris, in or eventually sacked from the Cabinet, will not be their Saviour either.  They are already a joke without a clown as their leader.

GUNS

Tuesday 3rd October

I liked guns as a kid.  I had a rug, woven by Mum and Dad, of Davey Crocket and Sitting Bull.  It was beside my bed, and at night before sleeping I would ‘shoot’ the Injun with my toy rifle.  We were in love with Cowboys and Injuns.  I had silver Colt 45’s and a belt and a holster and a hat.  I had cap guns.  Bang Bang you’re dead.

But then I grew up and begun to hate guns.  I cannot remember ever buying my son a gun, but I am sure he had them, and as a teenager for a while he was fascinated with air-rifles.

I hated guns so much that once on a management trainee course (run by two ex-army lads) we went clay pigeon shooting – and I refused to even hold the gun, let alone fire it.

And guns are by and large not available in Britain.  Especially after Dunblane.  Apparently you can still buy a gun on the black market.  But Laws can only do so much.  But at least here, we are not exposed to the gun culture like America.  There is very little to say about the latest tragedy.  Maybe, in a way, it is almost impossible to prevent every possible disaster.  But, the easy availability of guns, the refusal of Politicians to even begin to limit their sale, the crazy logic that individuals need guns to defend themselves from individuals who might have guns, the trigger happy Police (though ours are rapidly following suit), the unbelievable situation where someone can rent a hotel room and openly carry up a veritable arsenal of guns and ammo in broad  daylight and not even be questioned, the proliferation of violent films and computer games where the gun is almost worshipped – all contribute to a particular madness that ends in so much senseless death and slaughter.

How can any Nation claim to be great when they are prepared to see so many of their own people killed so easily?  Come on Trump, make a difference this time.  Maybe he will step up to the plate and make these deaths some of the last….but don’t hold your breath

 

The Who – Endless Wire, Endless Endless

Monday 2nd October

Then Keith died.  The drummer from the Who dieD shortly after ‘Who Are You’ was released.  The band were at the height of their fame, nobody could touch them, they had a brilliant repertoire of songs and a great songwriter.  And yet, they would never be the same again.

Pete Townshend has had a habit of constantly looking back, at the birth of The Who, of the Mod days and recycling old material.  Nothing really wrong with that.  But The Who seems to be put on a back burner, while Pete pursued more of a solo career.  As did Roger, and to a degree John.  The band eventually recruited Kenny Jones, who used to be in The Small Faces as their new drummer and recorded a couple of albums – ‘Face Dances’ and ‘It’s Hard’ – a few good songs, but this was The Who; a few good songs weren’t half good enough really. So the band took to touring, playing Tommy and Quadrophenia and Greatest Hits shows.  Sold out concerts followed sold out concerts.  Then John died.  By then the live band had been augmented by quite a few extra players anyway.

But they had one last album to surprise us with.  ‘Endless Wire’, which is actually quite good, even if some of the songs are a bit hard to understand.

And so the duo continue with the occasional concerts and tours.  Who knows if there will ever be any new material, or of it will be any good – they are well into their Seventies now.  But looking back, what a great achievement – to have come out of the Sixties, just a pop band, and developed into one of the greatest rock bands ever.  They may even have invented punk.  But also listening again, it is surprising just how many ballads they recorded, how much of their music was acoustic guitar, how varied their songs were, how each song (almost) had great moments.  Long live Rock, and long live the Who…

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SIPS, SLIPS AND SNIPPETS OF LOVE 53

Sunday 1st October

And the girls ended up huddled in a corner of the Mikado, Cat Stevens on the Juke Box, singing ‘I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun’, and trying to make two cups of coffee last and last.  Heaven knows how they ever made the place pay with customers like them.  They didn’t really talk about the situation, except Jane repeating every so often, ‘God Harriet, what a mess.’  And her saying, ‘Oh well I expect they will all have fun with their little arrangement.  Doesn’t it make you sick, you know, adults, sex – the whole thing?  I hope to God I don’t end up like them, don’t you?’

But they never really talked about how they both felt about it.  They had somehow lost the ability to tell each other things; things that mattered, so even now, even here in the eye of the storm, they were almost making small talk.  Even when Harriet had let Jane in on her big secret, Jane couldn’t find the words to tell her about her hurting myself.  It suddenly seemed so small besides what Harriet was telling her, would she have thought Jane was just being melodramatic; her way of saying, ’Me too, I am miserable too Harriet.’  So she had kept quiet and bitten her tongue and let Harriet be the star.  As usual.

And even now, she had no clever words at her disposal, no sarcastic barbs to hurl at her mother; she had just sat there and taken it all in without really hearing anything her mother had maybe been trying to say.  She never realised until later how much it must have hurt her to have to agree to stay with their father, and to put, even in words, the idea of Ted behind her.  He had been part of her life since before she had even married their Dad, so it must have really broken her heart to have to agree not to see him again; because maybe in a funny sort of a way she had really been married to Ted, but just living with us.  Maybe that was why the girls had felt she was never really there; her body was, but her heart and mind were elsewhere.  But then Harriet and Jane always had each other, so somehow they didn’t need her so much, and maybe she had felt that, felt that as a sort of rejection, and that somehow allowed her to justify keeping on seeing Ted.  But Jane didn’t think any of this back then, on that fateful day,

All she felt was numb, too shocked probably to think rationally at all.  Maybe it’s only on reflection, as we play again and again in our minds the things we can still remember that we begin to have real feelings about things at all.  Maybe we never really come to terms with how we feel about them at the time, and then each time we drag them back into the forefront of our minds we come up with a different way of seeing things, an ever-changing perspective, a constantly evolving opinion.  Or maybe it was just Jane who couldn’t let anything go, who constantly broke open the scabs, real and imaginary. to let the blood run free.  It would be nearly forty years later when she would hear Michelle Shocked sing, ‘Holding on to the past is my only mistake – let it go, let it go, let it go.’  And she would realise she was just the same, forever clinging on to the past, which would end up holding her back from making a real success of anything.

*  * *

‘I’ve got to sort things out.’ The thought kept hammering in Phil’s brain, ‘I can’t keep going on like this’.  There had to be another way, another way out of this mess, out of this hole he was in.  ‘That’s funny’ he thought, ‘one of the only novels I ever read was Mr. Polly – H.G. Wells – we had to read it for some exam at school, and I didn’t think it was much good then.  That’s how that book begins; Mr. Polly’s life is in a hole. Only I’m not Mr. Polly at all, am I?  No I am Phil Wilkinson, and this is nineteen sixty-eight and real life for God’s sake, not some Edwardian novel.’

But Phil felt must do something; he couldn’t face another twenty years of this, trudging in to work every day and pretending to be someone he most certainly was not.  Always waiting for the next letter, the next telephone call to sort out another ‘little irregularity’, to cover up another one of his mistakes.  And for what?  To end up like his dear old Dad, dying quietly of cancer in a hospital ward somewhere – and not complaining.

He never complained; that’s what Phil found so pathetic, he just accepted it all.  You work hard all your life, and then your life is taken away from you, and you are supposed to just lie there and take it. ‘Well, fuck it, I am complaining.  It’s so unfair – I have been dealt a really shitty hand this time.  As if I didn’t have enough problems already, and now I find my wife, the love of my life who I trusted implicitly, the one person I thought I could actually rely on has been living a secret life, has been unfaithful to me, and for years too.  I just find it so hard to accept.  What was June thinking of, and if she had wanted an affair she could have found someone a bit further away from home, someone I didn’t know for Christ’s sake.  If she had wanted a divorce I might have even been able to accept that, but not this.  No, I can’t take this.  It really cannot be happening to me.  It is all so unfair.  I have to sort things out; I can’t go on like this.’ he reasoned, almost speaking out loud

*  * *

Well the morning wore on, and Jane and Harriet both knew but didn’t say that Harriet would have to go soon.  Jane walked her to the train station, dreading being left on her own again, scared of having to go back into that house again, to act as if nothing had happened, to make small talk, and maybe worst of all dreading that one day it would all seem normal and that she would forget, even for a day, what her mother had done.

As the train pulled in, she just couldn’t stop herself, she had to ask her, ‘When do you think we’ll see you again Harriet?’

‘Who can say, little sister, who can say?  But don’t worry I won’t leave you.  I will always come back for you.  I promise.’  And she put her hand out and stroked Jane’s hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear, just as she had done when they were little children.  Jane reached up and held it there, her cool knuckles against her cheek.  For just a few seconds she was back – a child again, safe in the hands of Harriet, her big sister.  The train pulled in and Harriet boarded it and taking her seat she smiled out of the window as Jane walked along the platform breaking into a little trot, then slowing to a standstill as the train eased away and she was still waving as the guards van disappeared from sight completely.

And that was enough for her – that vague throw-away line of hers was enough to bring hope flooding back into her world.  Things might be desperate, it would be incredibly hard to get through the next few days, Jane was dreading having to see her Dad’s face, to see the hurt there, but it would pass one day, she knew that now.  Harriet still cared for her, that was enough to keep her going, that was all she needed, that little speck of hope to cling onto.