Monthly Archives: August 2024

Apparently three days of lying flat (Tues 13, and on)

reduced the inflammation in my back where I have damaged  ligaments.   So thank you for your acknowledgements and  kindness.  I can now sit up to half an hour– rigged with support – “but don’t push it …” Not a chance, miss.

I won’t bore you with a list of what I read – just to say – that if you are a reader, it matters. Didn’t miss watching television: nothing to watch – which is beginning to include the structure of the so called national news, which takes a story and beats it to schnitzel,

over and over.

While the loss of life on the yacht Bayesian would be under any circumstances regrettable, the endless emphasis on its status as super yacht, as on those lost as moneyed, moneyed and  again  moneyed  got right up my nose.  Is there some inference here that the more you pay, the safer you are ?  Because nobody wins against the sea.  That’s why the RNLI is so important.       

Change is fine when it happens  over there – before  it affects you or after you have gone – but living through change  (upheaval, even) is a different beast.    I have never before recoiled from watching  BBC News.   It is repetitious, I don’t like the format.  And there isn’t much else.

The BBC4 reruns of Parkinson included Billy Connolly,

Rod Hull and the Emu, and me.  No I didn’t watch, but two of my oldest friends did and sent me once in a lifetime letters.  And Hamish Clark wrote to tell me that I had understood Connolly’s humour better than any foreigner he had ever seen  – a big compliment from a Scot.  And I recalled my last meeting with Parky at Waitrose in Kings Road, recognising him from the side.  It’s not a nose you could forget, and purest Yorkshire.

We walked slowly towards the exit and caught up till outside on the pavement, we faced each other.  He asked if I was still working (he was ten years older than me).  I said no.  “That’s a shame”  he said.  And I asked “Why, Michael ?”  “Because” he told me “ you were good at what you did, radio and tv – and that’s rare.”   I thanked him and we shook hands.  A gent and a total pro.

Last week too Phil Donahue died, a journalist of wide experience and competence who understood that housewives weren’t all stupid, just because they were home in the afternoon all over America, and built a massively successful “You talk about …” type show of which Oprah said “No Donahue, no Winfrey.” 

He recorded five shows over here to one of which I was party.  Walking along to my place, I heard a building buzz just like a swarm and grabbed an assistant , asking “What is that ?”  He took me to a place where I could see the audience and I watched Donohue warm them up – shaking hands, introducing himself, introducing them to each other,  joshing and teasing and being warm and pleasant, moving all through the people of whom he said “they are the show.”.   He clearly believed it.  It was inspirational.   .

And Nell McCafferty died,

a fine Irish journalist, feminist and lesbian at a time when it was a fight to put those three things in one sentence in Ireland.   For International Women’s Day that year, the evening began with Mary Anderson talking about being  gay in Ireland, and Nell, not wanting her to feel isolated, stood up, affirming “And I’m Nell McCafferty from the Irish Times and I’m a lesbian too !” To be joined by the much respected Sister Benvenuto who had done terrific work with the homeless in Dublin, leaping to her feet with “And I’m  a nun !”  It remains in my mind one of the most racketty and good humoured television occasions, we all talked and laughed and I never got a word in edgeways, very good for me.

I don’t like the term “passing” for death. Passing and failing was the language of exams – and my parents didn’t approve of that, either. So of death,  I usually say “Gone to glory” .   That’s some of what I thought of, lying there. 

My mother (Jane Taylor 1900-89) used to refer to something she really could have done without as “a pain in the neck.”

Over my lifetime we heard more about  “ a pain in the a-“ (buttocks,not beast of burden) but that was the US form.  I prefer arse , a Great British word, from the Old English, of German origin.

But both fade in the reality of a pain in the back.

On my proto-Olympic search for nomination as Twerp of the Year, I have put my back into spasm and getting right will take time.  I can’t sit for long – leaving the loo is more of a relief than using it, food is strictly refuel  – so sadly 

no annalog this week

The only good osteopath I have ever known is coming on Wednesday unless she has an earlier cancellation and I hope to regroup for

the week commencing  26 August 2024, provided we are all still  here

take care and wish me better

… different.   

Most of the time we are quite comfortable with difference, “it would be a sad old world if we were all the same” we say comfortably to each other. It’s OK as long as it works for us and doesn’t get in our way.  This has led to a long long time of not discussing the impact of our immigration policy and sheer numbers on our systems, educational, social, and medical for starters.   

And then something happens like last week in Britain – not Bangladesh where roughly the same number have died as we traced and are hauling into court, or Sudan, deep in civil war – but all too close to home.   And we have to look hard and think.

When did being liberal

came to mean being soppy ?   I though being liberal was being generous, opening your mind to difference, accepting that a decent person is just that, never mind how they vote, the colour of their skin, who they go to bed with or how they worship. But alongside that generosity, you had to find a way to be honest and practical and communicate, even when what you had to say was not popular. And face up the fact there were people you disliked and would dislike, no matter who they were or where they came from

Being liberal is taking a terrible bashing at the moment on both sides of Atlantic  –  though I long to see the Harris/Walz ticket in the US take Donald Trump’s snide interpretation of “Make America Great Again !” and say “Yes, by all means, great again – by inclusion not exclusion –  new blood, new directions, a nation built as it was, on refugees of every kind – political, social, racial, religious.”  

Here we are busy being bitchy as only the British can be.  Sarky about the police, sarky about the King – should have said and done more, sooner.   Sarky about the Prime Minister who doesn’t always get it right .  

But the man hit the ground, running – and Mr.Starmer  if you are listening, never doubt that this is the time to say as well as do, because  there is a real complaint here and it has been coming these 40 years.  It should be acknowledged, it won’t go away.

40 years ago or so, I sat in a Tyne Tees Television

studio , while a major player in the then Labour Party (Denis Healey) was presented to the audience and questions were taken. And the first person on her feet was what we now call a perfectly ordinary woman in her forties (because nobody knows what working class means, anymore), who raised her hand and got to her feet.  “When” she demanded “are you going to listen to u s ?   You never listen, you take us for granted, y ou take the North for granted …”   And successive governments did.

This has resulted in the violent expression of rampant prejudice,

inflamed by the internet and lack – real lack  – and frustration because you can’t get anybody to listen (annalog/cries unheard) in the established channels.  A lack that is not going to be met by a programme for new builds – and anyway we need a census first on what is available.   We need access to doctors who don’t just write another prescription.   And so on, and so on – you have heard it all before.

I am no kind of analyst, political or social.   I just watch and listen and write about what I see and hear, and inevitably, think.   But I was struck meeting Tanya (not her name) in the street the other day, my American neighbour, who is highly placed in technology, who commented negatively, unbidden (she and her husband have 2 children) on social media.   “And TikTok” she said “is China’s cancerous gift to the West.”  

And I am going right on doing what I can do, saying please and thank you and sharing good news wherever I can – hurray for the people who gave a damn, who cleared up and checked up on their neighbours, who hit the street in wholly peaceful protest. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know something is terribly wrong.

Wal said “Something a bit more upbeat ? 

I think the last few have been a bit ..”  and I could hear his face. I said  “I don’t think so, they just didn’t appeal to you” knowing that Wal is not a writer and is an erratic reader (money and Irene Nemirovsky’s best novel).  Upbeat in a week when people are stabbed in the street and rally to riot with the help of the gutless Tommy Robinson and accursed social media ?  Tall order.

Last Thursday I went to see new work by Ilona Szalay (father Hungarian, mother Canadian) which were painted on glass .  I had to look up its long and interesting history.  And I’d cheerfully have robbed a bank for a trilogy called Landscape 1, 2 and 3.   The weather was stifling, the gallery a long rectangle so I didn’t stay long. Out in the street wasn’t any cooler, shopping crowds, tourists, gawpers so I raised an arm (trained to summon attention in NYC  ie do it like you mean it) . 

The taxi seemed to be coming, the driver said something as he went past and I thought he’d gone. 

Over the heads of the crowd a tall young black man called “ Miss !   Miss !  He’s waiting for you round the corner”   I pointed at myself – me ?  “Yes, Miss, yes “ and he pointed.   “Thank you” I said in my big voice “Thank you…”   I was beaten to the cab by a woman with 42 carrier bags so maybe she needed it more.  It was the “Miss” I loved.

Friday I lunched with an old friend the warmth of whose embrace lingers.  And she is younger and happier being blonde – strokes and folks, an object lesson.  Thank you Phoebe.

On Monday Elsie, Bebe and Alice went to glory at the hands of a teenager who stabbed them and anybody else that came his way. Stabbing (I was told by a man who was) is extremely painful and it is going to be very ugly to hear the background of that story. 

Losing a child to  violence is an unbearable thought, an even more demanding reality. 

The vigil in Southport was pushed aside with stones and bottles and violence by people who, for the most part, only know the town because they could read a map.   Pity they don’t to do maps for hell.  And Southport, like Sunderland, came out and cleaned up afterwards – those people’s comments remain largely untold – up to and including the man who bought pizza for a work crew – “It’s what I could do.”

Somewhere in there I managed to wash and dry the loose cover, ticking courtesy of Ian Mankin, whose name I looked up online and from whom, through the charming offices of his studio manager, I bought a reduced recycled cotton spread in colours I love (graphite and ochre).  

And a young woman I’ve spoken to before on the bus, swept me up with her mother and her child, to sit and have coffee

in a pretty busy street in what’s left of the ambiance that used to be Chelsea.  Her husband is in the IDF, the family are South African.  I never do this, I make better coffee cheaper – so this was a real treat for me.  

And I wandered off, to be hugged by Jen who has had health problems ever since Covid, and buy an ankle support (do laugh, knee support right leg, ankle support left leg.  Going to pot – as in poor old thing.)

And I tired – so, stiff upper lip nowhere in sight, I went for the bus where some 20 people  milled about, queues being a thing of the past.  Standing surrounded by them all was a very large very tall man, 6 feet 4 inches square, tee shirt and shorts like bell tents who, when the bus arrived and without a word stretched out his hand to me. I looked at him for a second and gave him my hand.  The people broke round him like water round a rock as he moved me in front of them, supported my right elbow so I could mount saying quietly “Here you go !”  To which I replied over my right shoulder, and into his face “Age before beauty, right ?” And was rewarded by the sweetest smile.