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
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.
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.
I am possessed. No I don’t foam at the mouth for congress with the Devil. I grin in affectionate memory. But I am haunted. It often happens that, as you get older, more distant memories replay with sudden clarity. Why you didn’t buy that loaf this morning is inexplicable. My memory is as full of holes as Swiss cheese but the bits that are clear come back into sudden focus, often in shortlived flashes,
utterly vivid that makes me smile in recognition. This experience is not influenced by weather, the bank balance or the horrible headlines.
Teaching English to Pola (not her name, and actually imbuing her with the confidence to use the language as well as she soon did) I knew she loved her father. So I told her about seeing mine, in clothes I could detail down to the socks but in a room he didn’t know, in a chair he had never sat in. She said ”Anna, you are telling me you believe in ghosts.” I agreed. Most of mine are benign unto joy, though in expressing a certain kind of usually disapproving vim, my mother emerges from my mouth like a cartoon drawing. I can feel my face change – and there she is.
Conjured.
This morning, because her name occurred to me, I looked up the gospel singer Marion Williams whom I saw on tv, when I was 19 doing the ironing in Tenafly, New Jersey in – I discovered – what was a rare appearance on a folk revival music show called Hootenanny. I saw a white pointed satin shoe with a dizzy heel lay down the beat, the camera came up and we were off. Never to be forgotten.
My parents sang – not choir, not church, at home for the hell of it. Of course I joined in, I brought songs from school, bits from the movies. And the other morning, all these years later, there stood my father in the hall, singing a little song called “River, stay ‘way from my door.” Music travels
the same way speech does so I don’t know where the song came from. What I remembered after all these years, was the lyric, like words unscrolled.
In a recent conversation my son asked had I read any Russian history ? Where did that come from ? But it rang a bell. I fished up the name Orlando from the depths of memory and found the last name Figes. And I read a primer on its history called The Story of Russia, up to and including Putin which I recommend to anybody. And remembered Natasha’s Dance which I always thought was a very clever title for the cultural history of Russia which I am currently reading. And what you get in both books is a profound sense of how ideas travel over time, are subsumed and re-invented. So you hear what you think is a folk song and it was written in Nashville. Like one of the few songs my voice will still accommodate.
One of the great successes of High Country (Australian policier on BBC ) is the integration of the impact of unknown wild country
the land has a memory
with two story strands – a man who has visions and the First Nations history. Australia isn’t a relatively new country, it is a very old one. They have their unquiet ghosts because of the many years they were there, and then targeted by European settler policies against the indigenous people. Cal Flyn wrote about this in Thicker than Water and how she could not sleep overnight on the site of a massacre.
For years I thought that Pop’s reference to death – he often called it “the veil” – was a late Victorian/Edwardian nicety. But it wasn’t. It was a very old idea indeed. That’s what love transcends – it transcends time. Love is – that view, this occasion, those people, laughter and tears and my mother’s voice when I complimented her on the wonderful singing violet of a dress she had had made by Mrs. Greenwell – “Of course, darling, it’s your father’s favourite colour.”
gives me a headache. I don’t think I am alone. I found exactly what I wanted online, filled out the forms including safe (it had better be) credit card details but no copy of invoice, no notification and though I wrote immediately to the contact indicated, it’s been a week – and nada.
I went into my bank to ask to arrange an ISA and was told they couldn’t do it, would I please do it on line ? The teller I asked to transfer some money was so exhausted that when she had ploughed it for the third time, I asked if the money had gone through ? She said no so I took the details back from her to try again at another branch next week. A young man in Boots told me not to be embarrassed about asking for help with the machines, “they are always going wrong.”
I found a top I liked in the paper today but it is nowhere on the impenetrable website. Clothes for sale without saying what they are made of ? While Denning remains fascinated by calls referring to the Amazon account he has never had.
On a bus last week we sat, a woman roughly my age and me, and listened to two children (I didn’t turn round and clock their ages) create merry hell unchecked while the mothers spoke on the phone and to each other. I looked at my companion and said “What a cogent argument for birth control.”
She nodded feelingly, “Not that you can say that in a lot of places !”
But the former shadow chancellor John McConnell is pressing the new government to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Which will cost the earth and send the message that anybody can do anything, having a child is a right. But it isn’t – it is a privilege. Family planning was abandoned long ago to the NHS, sidelining commitment, expertise and the very helpful Balint groups (look them up). Not everybody thinks or is responsible. They go with the flow, without thought of the overcrowding of this relatively small country.
Don’t have children if you don’t want them and if you are in a partnership where one person’s mind changes, that is for negotiation, not pregnancy. I am biased. Much of my professional life was spent around people who were (or had) children they accepted as a norm but weren’t particularly keen on. It is not a good start.
Having a child is the most altruistic thing many of us will ever do and when everybody is through being sentimental about families, every child is an only child, a one off, an original.
Parenthood makes terrific demands and if you’re lucky, there may be terrific rewards. But it’s a chunk of time, you need money in backup for dentistry, extra tuition, a new football – and if you have the brains God gave a turnip, you as the adult will learn, learn and learn again, hopefully only minimally on the child.
This is the era of mixed messages: anybody can do anything – but they can’t. Sold on the idea that health care should be free, however you get it, it costs the earth (and listening to what a chronically ill friend of mine goes through to fill prescriptions is most unsettling.) Building programmes can’t begin until there is a comprehensive census of vacant properties. I did one of my first programme on this 50 years ago and we haven’t got very far. There is endless promotion soft and hard of AI, algorithms, computer, machines – but where are the people going whose jobs are superceded by the rise of the machine – bearing in mind that the insatiable demand for men and women for basic often badly paid soul destroying repetitive tasks doesn’t make for a happy healthy future and opens the door to a shaming form of neocolonialism ie come here and mop up after us .
Right, blessing counting- relative health and strength, beautiful scenery in a rather effective new Australian cop mystery (BBC1 ), some support for the beginning of a new parliament, a new government and so, on we go ….
The walls are fine, everything in White Tie except for the chimney breast which is Brinjal. I wonder how much they pay the people who come up with names for Farrow & Ball of whom I often heard it said great colours, poor paint. I moved things aside slowly and replaced them in a slightly different order, equally slowly, dusting and washing all the way. I do my spring cleaning when I can and anyway, I’m not even sure we had a spring.
You may have noticed – we had a election ? Tick.
You may have noticed – lots of football and tennis ? Tick.
You may have noticed a music festival at Glastonbury ? Tick.
I shall not be saying anything about the above beyond the thought that if you call on Boris Johnson for anything other than a cheeseburger,
you are desperate.
A tile came loose on the front step. Within 24 hours, there were three, woggling like wonky teeth. I called Pimlico Plumbers who have succeeded and multiplied, effective if expensive. However in my limited experience of them , they keep time, know what they are doing and do it. They diversified into carpentry and all sorts of other lucrative byways and now have a section for Small Jobs. And getting small jobs done is getting very difficult. Small jobs ignored become too easily bigger ones – so I booked
and along came a man who did the job in half an hour.
The upstairs tenant whom I had informed mentioned the letting agency (whitter whitter, inside the property different from out, finger in mouth) or the landlady ? Hell freezes over faster. By the time we might expect a decision, the step would be no more. Don’t always have the money but this time, put it where the mouth is.
Laughed aloud at the beginning of yesterday’s piece by the fashion director of The Times about Lady Starmer’s early wardrobe appearances – “Now the election is over let’s talk about what really matters: Lady Starmer’s wardrobe.”
One of the saddest things about modern life is that when you really want to write and say how much you enjoyed something, you can’t:
you can complain, take out a subscription, complain about a subscription, sign up to online whatever it is, follow whoever on social media but the number of people to whom you can write in appreciation is now minimal.
I understand. Of course I understand. The world is full of people and quite a lot of them are horrible (ask Holly Willoughby – and she’s not alone). If people are gutless, unpleasant and violent, modern media serves them well. They can make mischief and can’t be held accountable. Troll city.
But the casualty is the positive – wanting to write appreciatively, a couple of lines for example to a woman who wrote wonderfully about the culture of the whinge, dog with sore paw syndrome, prizing (as she wrote) suffering over resilience. I channelled some of the latter so that when I gave up in the face of the obfuscation of her employing journal, I looked online. Write to her care of her representation ? I tried. Well, I suppose if terrestrial television programming is as bad as it is, you might care to spend half an hour on this. Or having your teeth drawn… I wished her well and went to do the shopping.
Faith (see annalog/modern life) and her partner have had a terrible health scare through which they are working and I saw her yesterday for the first time since Mags (partner) collapsed. The news is good, hooray, swift catch up between bananas and salad “and “ she said sweetly, almost blushing” we’re getting married next year.” She was so happy, you could reach out and touch it.
I’ve found a new writer a black high school dropout from Richmond, Virginia – his description – who ties big themes to mayhem and violence with no cliches I have noticed.
And few write about the rural poor black in the US, especially one of their own. Plus the sheer stickability of 40 books and short pieces. The song in the title is composed by Harold Arlen, words by Johnny Mercer – read in brackets, get on with it.
“Another interesting piece “ wrote SR generously “I don’t know how you do it.” Neither do I. Years ago, I wrote about the balancing act between trying to charm
the Muse into kissing your brow and pursuing her with a hatchet. When I faltered, Snowdrop reminded me of this phrase. “Only someone committed to writing would think of that, the tension in the idea…” He was a senior academic, he must know … and I trust his taste in life, never mind writing. I continued to learn to write.
I learned there were ideas that came and you worked on them. I learned that you sat down at a blank screen as you once sat before a blank page and stuff came out of your fingers, in sentences. And how to hammer it
into a slightly different shape.
I learned heartfelt appreciation of and respect for the subconscious mind. I had it anyway but I would wonder “Where did that come from ?” But it came.
Last week I met the first person who ever wrote to encourage me with annalog. We have stayed in touch for all that time and never met. It’s like a radio friendship but he had read me too, and seen me on bits of tv. He commented on something I’d done recently as courageous. I had not thought it brave, just truthful. And no, we are not going into that discussion about your truth and my truth. Perception is to do with
acuity, will, upbringing, personality, education, every one of those senses we take for granted and several we don’t know about.. You miss what you miss and you see what you see. And I generally want to see more. And speak as I find.
There are exceptions. Although (thank God) it never happened to me, I find reading about sexual abuse difficult and deeply uncomfortable. Same as rape in war. So do a lot of other people so they “blank” it. I read an excellent piece by a woman, herself abused, who went to every day of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and was pursued after it in making a contact of the one person who came under the new sex trafficking statute. I thought of Jeffrey Epstein as silenced rather than suicided. Vested interests.
When there is something I admire,I long to write to the writer. Never a mistake to say something good.
Of course you can cast pearls before swine (no reply) but that’s the risk. There is a whole list of things I don’t write about because everybody else does and long ago, the lovely Linda (manager/agent/friend) and I decided that, as everybody else was chewing news till it was spent gum in the mouth, I would do issues. Issues have a much longer life and they involve people very directly.
My first love was magazines which fell out of fashion as too expensive, superseded by other media, while women’s magazines, where I began, constituted second class journalistic citizenship. I was an agony aunt (everybody else’s title,not mine), not a proper journalist. I was told this on several occasions. And then, I worked in independent radio which was – well – questionable. When I had my first professional money, the local newsagents (still called that then) held a raft of stuff for me, I took what I wanted, paid and said thank you for my source material, often American, a jumping off point for further investigation this side of the pond.
Perhaps, I thought as I looked back over annalog which I don’t often do, what I tried to do was to create the best of a magazine in microcosm,
something intelligent or funny with references you could trace and unexpected pictures and images.
I do try to write “up” when the world is down because the endless recycling of down gets us nowhere. I do occasionally haul off and write in a way which is a journey for me – but it is always a journey for me. You remember how the runaways in children’s stories had a few essentials in a red and white cotton kerchief,
to go on a stick over the shoulder ? I have such a bundle, always at the ready, but the pattern is black and white.
The Lasting Harm: witnessing the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley (Fourth Estate, £22)
This is not the serious piece to be written on addiction,
especially as overworked A&E is currently seeing healthy young women making themselves ill by injecting black market prescriptions for fat busting, weight reducing drugs. But I am addicted too – to good manners.
I want to shout for joy when somebody – regardless of age, sex, class, colour – behaves gently and sociably.
A young Asian man with one item in his hand waved me with a small basket full, forward at the supermarket. “Thank you” I said “but why ?” “Because I want to” he said. “My compliments to your mother” said I, grinning. And yup, I know – chanelling Queen Victoria and I don’t care.
I can’t say don’t care without seeing the line of my mother’s mouth pursed in disapproval. She forbade don’t care, I want and I told you so, the latter producing steam from both ears simultaneously. “Such a miserable thing to say” she’d hiss. It was just taboo.
I am addicted to coherence,
especially in scripts. Once you have asked yourself “What is this all about ?” you have admitted it lacks clarity. And if it is not clear or the style doesn’t grip me, I am not staying. Forget how many other people think it’s wonderful. As my father said “just because there’s just more of them, it doesn’t mean they’re right …” Thank heaven for books.
I am additionally addicted to voice. And that’s like music and beauty. It’s in my ears not yours and there it is.
I am addicted to taste but I have ceased buy jam – partly because I then have to buy bread to put it on -though mostly because it may say raspberry on the label but all I can taste is sugar. Raspberries grew in the back garden
– good fruit is just a joy. You can finick about with various kinds of sugar, lemon juice or weak Earl Grey, mint perhaps … but if the fruit tastes good, it needs nothing but washing.
Last week’s steak was from a very unhappy cow. It tasted of nothing very much. And in anticipation of disapproval, let me explain that elderly women easily incur anaemia and iron supplements often cancel efficacy by passing through with alarming speed and prejudice- so I eat lambs liver, and the odd piece of red meat. I like it. While Pam the Painter ate a vegiburger the other day which she said tasted of door mat.
I am addicted to dark chocolate,
a chocolate tree
almonds and ginger. I was in love with almonds before they were wonder food, when I had to peel them for the Christmas cake. I was in love with the ginger in biscuits, chopping the root and variously using it. And I keep bars of plain chocolate with hazelnuts in a plastic box in the fridge.
I am not addicted to nuts as such but at this stage I would miss them. I eat them every morning with dried fruit, plain yogurt and fresh fruit. I am not “eat the whole lot at one sitting” addicted about anything. There is no pride in this, I am not specially disciplined, it’s just the way I am
I am addicted to colour. Failure or success in my wardrobe as far back as you care to go is to do with colour. I abandoned black for khaki
when my hair went white – though paler, the sallow tones in my skin (I wept over that word !) are constant. I look endlessly at complexion colour, at lipstick, at hair colour, at the modifications in between colours and I get jump for joy excited when I see somebody who has matched or not tried to match a difficult shade of cream or grey.
I am addicted to leopards. It is probably easier to tell you animals I don’t like (fewer) and I am not very good at insects beyond bees and the dung beetle, nature’s Sisyphus. I am addicted to stories – the human revenge on social media. I am addicted to joy and laughter, the symbolism of green shoots and the hope of better days to come – how else to get out of bed in the morning ?
Anna's 40 year long award-winning journalistic career as an adviser (nowadays we say "agony aunt - she loves the job, hates the title) has spanned magazines, radio, television and newspapers; including a 14 year run at Capital Radio with her groundbreaking show 'Anna and the Doc', and 7 years at Talk Radio hosting 'Live and Direct' and her work was rewarded with a Gold Sony award and induction into the Radio Hall of Fame....Read More
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