Saturday 9th March

I have just finished reading the most wonderful book.  It is by Rachel Joyce, and it is her first novel which she developed from a play.  She has been a successful playwright but people around her persuaded her to turn a short play into a novel, and thank goodness she did.  This is a very English novel, and I cannot imagine it being a big hit in America, it is just too ordinary.  In fact in places it is just too ordinary for England too, and at one point I was tempted to put it down, but if you persist with it that very ordinariness becomes the structure, the essence of the book.

It is about an ordinary and boring couple who deep down are desperate to re-discover the love they once had for each other, but cannot find the means or the language to do so.  One day a letter arrives and stirs up memories of the past which Harold thought he had successfully buried.  He sets off to post a letter and after a conversation with a girl in a garage he suddenly decides to walk almost the entire length of Britain.  The book is about both Harold’s journey and his memories and those of his wife, and they too are ordinary really.  But underneath this patina of ordinariness is real pain and suffering and eventually redemption.

And running through the book is this vein of compassion and understanding that is heart-warming and uplifting.  This is a book I wish I had written.  In fact if I could write half as well as this I would be happy.  A rare nine out of ten I think.

Friday 8th March

Another day, another song.  John Lennon, that most quixotic of creatures, on his last album ‘Double Fantasy’, his triumphant if literally short-lived return to recording in 1979 had a wonderful song on it ‘Watching the Wheels’.

And I am watching the wheels too, as I sit in an old-fashioned café near Baker Street station. The traffic slows down for traffic lights and then speeds up again, and mostly all you can see of the passengers are dark shadows, but watching the wheels turn is quite hypnotic really.  And strangely comforting too, the familiarity and mindlessness of silver car wheels turning in the rain.

It is raining again, drizzling after a few fine cold days, that clammy wet and dreek weather has returned.  But at least it is noticeably warmer today, even if Spring still feels a way away.

And I think about my life and what I am doing with it.  All I am doing is watching the wheels go by, but I am not really engaged at all.  I am simply freewheeling along, letting the current take me, drifting from one week to another, limping from holiday to holiday with no discernable purpose.

There must be more to life than this.  Repetition, monotony, watching the wheels go by. And I am watching my life go by too, watching as the days turn to weeks and months into years, and Christmases come and birthdays too and you do begin to wonder if there is any purpose in any of it.  Outside people are buttoning their coats and hoisting up umbrellas against the sudden squally rain.  Another day, another working day for so many.  Because they (we) have no choice but to keep on keeping on.  Because if we all decided not to, then the wheels would stop turning and what would I watch then.

Thursday 7th March

As a nation we seem to have lost our way.  Nobody knows where we are going, but this no Magical Mystery Tour I am afraid.  Almost every section of society is simply treading water.  Maybe we can make an exception for the traders, the currency speculators, the financial product boys whose bonuses are in the realms of lottery wins; at least these guys know where they are going, and conversely they don’t give a fuck where their activities are taking the country.

The poor have no time to worry where they are going, as they are shifted from bedsit to hotel room and shortly from town to town in a downward spiral of cost-cutting, with only a few fags and maybe a two-litre bottle of cider to relieve the tedium; theirs is a wholly pointless existence with no direction at all.

The young have no idea where they are going; is it to University where they may end up wasting three years, coming out with a degree which no-one is impressed enough by to give them a job and a loan that seems disproportionate to the years of effort, or do they rush out and just get a job stacking shelves in Tesco, or as a kitchen porter, or some other unskilled job where the minimum wage will also be your maximum ever wage.  Or do you simply vegetate in your bedroom, because you will never be able to afford your own house, and cannot see yourself moving out until you are thirty.   And so you waste whatever meager money you have on computer games and mobile phones that at least occupy your boring evenings because downstairs your mum and dad are couch potatoes who watch one soap after another or celebrity quiz shows,  because they don’t have the imagination to go out or even to switch the darned tv off occasionally.

The old are stuck indoors too, watching as their savings dwindle and the price of petrol goes higher and higher, and they read the Daily Mail and tutt about how immigrants from Bulgaria are waiting to invade our island home.

And our leaders do not know where we are going either; more years of the same austerity, or a not very convincing and unspecified financial plan from the opposition.  No leadership, no vision, no hope – welcome to Britain.

Wednesday 6th March

There are some songs which I just love, not only for the music but the words, especially if they are clever and pick out a mood, a feeling, an essence of what it is to be alive.  Shared experience is all that Art really is; the attempt to discern beauty in the everyday, and make it memorable of course, that is the hard bit.

The Monkees were fun, they were stupid and happy boys romping around, often speeded up, an American attempt to emulate the Beatles, but they also sang.  And though their songs were written for them they were well chosen and the Monkees became huge.  One of their number was Mike Nesmith, who actually was a musician of merit, and when the band split, as they had to when the constant pressure for hits took its toll, went on to have a respectable if somewhat subdued career, releasing a series of brilliant and mostly country albums.

He had one big hit ‘Rio’, which hit a sweet spot with the public.  It had a lovely latin melody but also the most apposite and flippant words to express exactly how we all feel sometimes.

‘It’s only a whimsical notion, to fly down to Rio tonight.  I probably won’t fly down to Rio, but then again I just might.’

Sheer brilliance, and though I have hardly been out of Europe, let alone to Rio, every time I hear the song I think I just might too.

And you never know, the Olympics and the World Cup are both in Rio next, so its time has truly come.  For now I will just enjoy the thoughts of Rio , carnival, samba and all – I probably won’t fly down to Rio, but then again I just might.

Tuesday 5th March

So soon it comes round again, that Monday morning feeling.  Sometimes I really don’t know how I am going to face another week of this.  And yet what else is there?  I am at that point where the idea of retirement is more than just an idea, but a reality I must confront at some point soon.  I could just flunk it and stay working for another three years, or even longer if I wanted to, and wait for events to decide for me.  But more and more I feel that I should take charge and sort things out myself.

I have all these dreams of writing and painting but more often than not I waste my Friday writing day anyway, squandering the rare moment of freedom, continually putting off the moment I should start, making excuses, rather than buckle down and just start writing.

And every so often I lose confidence in the whole process, realizing with a sickening clarity that I am not a good writer at all, and wondering why I have wasted so much time on my story anyway.

And would I have that Friday desultoriness every day if I were retired, with no work to get up for, no daily routine decided for me, would I just vegetate.  Would I waste even this, my precious retirement?  So, in an awful way this depressing Monday morning feeling is reassuring, comforting in its familiar routine, even if it means four days of fairly mindless slog again.  And all the while time is marching on, and soon I will be like my parents, worrying about the parking charges at the car park, eking out an existence punctuated by occasional days of family and friends, watching far too much telly, and understanding less and less of the world as it drifts by.

So for now writing this blog on another cold Monday morning and not really looking forward to the working week ahead, at least I know what I have ahead of me.  It is that void of unknowingness which terrifies me.

Monday 4th March

Why, oh why does the day after a good day seem to bring you down with a bump.  Not that there was anything particularly wrong with today – it just wasn’t yesterday. And out of sorts I was, though it all started off fine, gradually as the day progressed I got worse and worse.  I suppose because it was directionless, and with nothing planned – the day, full of opportunity dissipated into a wasted day.  We normally know days in advance what we will be doing, especially at the weekends, but all our efforts were on Saturday and somehow Sunday never figured in our planning.  And though I have happily frittered away so many Sundays, today it seemed such a waste to just waste it.

There was a bit of tidying up, moving the furniture back, then a bit of a gap, a hiatus until my writing class, where I feel I am not learning anything new now anyway.  And so the day disappeared.  At school, years ago our headmaster used to have this little homily : “Here hath been dawning another blue day.  Think, will thou let it slip useless away?”  to which a little voice in my head would pop up and say, “Yes, probably”.  Terribly funny back then, but now as one watches the years fly past a wasted day is almost a crime.

And now the day is nearly over and despite our best efforts we don’t seem to have rescued the day at all.  At least Spurs won today, so my daughter will be happy.

Tomorrow is another day, and another chance for a perfect day too.  Hope I don’t let this one slip useless away too.

Sunday 3rd March

Sometimes in life everything just goes perfectly, and today was one of those days.  It had all been arranged somewhat hurriedly and I was slightly wary that things might go wrong.  It has become a sort of tradition that I celebrate my birthday with the family.  Two years ago we were in Wales, and I put them up in a hotel, then last year it was at Walton and the Marina for lunch.  But Walton is almost as out of the way as Wales, and for some a lot further than London.  I also had the added complication of my son Justin working in Hospitality and getting the time off, and sure enough my actual birthday weekend coincided with Mother’s Day so we had to bring it forward a week.  Then I had to consult the football oracle as Tottenham, my daughter’s team were bound to be playing.  And yes it was Arsenal at home on Sunday (today) so it had to be Saturday.

Almost by accident we stumbled on a really nice Thai restaurant not far from the house, and we booked it.  Then we decided to add four friends too, so sixteen adults and five children sat down for what ended up being a really excellent meal.  The grandchildren were very well-behaved and the whole day went off with no upsets or incidents at all.  In fact it just goes to show that sometimes minimal planning works better than a micro-managed affair.

Strange how I can always find plenty to say about the things that go wrong, but have less to say when it all turns out fine.  But there we are, a perfect day, and now a good memory to unwrap and enjoy every so often.

Saturday 2nd March

In the end it wasn’t maybe the shock we were all expecting, but it was a shock after all.  The Lib-Dems held the seat, despite Chris Huhne’s guilty plea, and the Chris Rennard revelations, or should we say hung on to the seat.  This was one of their safest seats; they had done an incredible job building on their by-election success in 1994.  Over twenty years they had managed to hold every single council seat and seemed rock solid secure.   Labour, despite the proximity of Southampton had a very low share of the vote – just 10% which they just about managed to hang on to last night.

But this used to be a Tory seat for years and years.  And it was one of their target seats for 2015, where if they are to ever govern on their own they will need seats just like this.

The shock of the night of course was that UKIP came in second and beat the Tories into third place.  The election was called with unseemly haste, just 21 days to select and canvass and get their message across to the electorate.  Most commentators think that if the campaign had lasted a week longer then UKIP would have won the thing, and on the day they did get most votes, it was the well-oiled postal vote machine which won it for the Lib-Dems.  And good luck to them.

Both the Tories and the Lib-Dems lost over 14% of their 2010 vote.  So, it seems an anti-coalition vote, with a gathering coalescence around UKIP as the preferred alternative.  Which is a warning which Labour cannot totally ignore either.

Famously by-elections are notoriously bad bell-weathers for the ensuing general election, and the big three parties will all dismiss this as just another freak result.  But you never can tell, especially in elections.  It is just possible that we are seeing at long last a break-up of the grand coalition that the Tory party has become.  At one time they commanded over 50% of the electorate, but now opinion polls put them regularly at only 30%.  The Tory party is almost an anachronism, there is the hard core of old-fashioned right wingers who are really in the wrong party, and may well defect to UKIP if the bandwagon rolls on, there is also the soft middle who see the need to modernize the party, but cannot really find a theme that distinguishes them from either labour or Lib-Dems.

We will just have to wait, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the local elections in May produce a big surge in UKIP support.  And that could be a problem for every party.  In 2015 we may look like Italy does today.

Friday 1st March

Last week I really had no rest; it has actually been almost non-stop for days now.  Firstly I had to work Monday to Wednesday, as usual squeezing four days work into three.  Then on Thursday morning it was up early and off to meet my daughter at St. Pancras, then on to Gatwick.  The flight and drive took nearly all day as it happened, and I was quite shattered when we arrived at Eymet.  Out for a quick meal with Julia, then to bed and up early to see her off back to England.  Two days in France, which should have been relaxing, but which for one reason or another were a bit tedious.  Up very early again on the Sunday and drive and fly back home.  I had just got in and had a sandwich and it was out again to writing class.  In the evening we had visitors, so again no rest.

Then this week four days of work, and visitors on Tuesday night and again tonight.  Great fun in a way but this morning I felt absolutely shattered and really didn’t want to get out of bed, let alone go to work.  Well, I did of course, and now (Thursday night) all of that rushing about has finally caught up with me.

Tomorrow is moving furniture around as we will have the entire family descending on us for my birthday jaunt on Saturday.  On Sunday I just want to sleep.  Please.

Thursday 28th February

As a child I worshipped the Beatles, along with a whole generation.  George was the quiet one, the dark horse, who played the tricky bits on guitar and sung harmony and just occasionally sung lead vocals.  But in a band of giants he too was a giant, but in a different way.  As the sixties progressed it was George who pushed the others towards Indian Music and philosophy, a lifetime obsession for George.  He was according to some the first of the Beatles to leave, and had two instrumental albums while the band was still together.  The quality of his songwriting was beginning to outweigh his meagre allowance of two songs per album too and I imagine he was bursting with enthusiasm to record on his own.

He surprised everyone with a triple album, ‘All things must pass’ and a hit single ‘My Sweet Lord.’   Albums and tours followed, but somehow the quality began to slip; a case of diminishing returns.  He had a hiatus of five years when he turned to film-making and gardening then returned with Jeff Lynne at the helm and stunned us with ‘Cloud Nine.’   He then formed The Travelling Wilburys with Dylan Tom Petty Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison.  Two brilliant albums followed and George never sounded happier.

Then he began to get ill with cancer, which sadly took him away in the end.  One last album ‘Brainwashed’ was recorded when he was desperately ill, but it is actually really good.

Then the light went out, and all we have is the DVDs and the music to remember him by.

His best album for me was ‘Living in the Material World’ which married ‘pop’ and his ‘spiritual philosophy perfectly.   The best song on that was ‘That is All.’.

But his best song ever was undoubtedly ‘Here Comes The Sun’, the most life-affirming song the Beatles ever wrote.