Not another London train strike. It's enough to drive you around the bend
Crikey! Did you see those hordes of people stuck outside the closed London railway stations? I have to tell you here and now that they all have my deepest sympathies. Time was of course that big crowds and congestion was something you found at football matches or the M25 but it all looked very uncomfortable and quite obviously annoying.
It's at times like this that I begin to wonder what it was like during the age of steam and locomotive trains when huge billowing clouds of smoke would soar into a grey, bleak January sky and the rush hour workers would just sigh with exasperation because this was just a typical rush hour morning. The City bankers, complete with pin stripe suits and bowler hat, would open out their Financial Times, check their stocks and shares and then just stand defiantly with arms clinging on for dear life, pride more or less ruined and dignity just stripped. Then the whistle would go and it was all stations for Crewe, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Nottingham and quite possibly Clarksville.
But last night it just looked horrendous. People were milling around railway concourses like confused tourists wanting to know how to get to Piccadilly Circus and there was a general sense of disorganisation and chaos. There were those who had no idea when they'd get into work, those who were just complaining about the train strikes and the frustrating inconvenience it had caused. And then there were those who just seemed to smile and grin, perhaps resigned to the inevitability of their plight.
And so we return to last night's London Tube train strike. This really does seem to be turning into one of the longest, most epic, most boring and dullest of all sagas. Every year, at no particular time, the fires of anger and militancy suddenly erupt like an ugly rash. Now I'm not here to sit in judgment and become very grumpy and cantankerous but haven't we been here before? The train fares almost infuriatingly go up at the beginning of the year and then the train drivers decide to go on strike.
This doesn't, admittedly, happen every year at this time but there's something very tiresome and frequent about these trade union squabbles that can never be resolved. We all know about the lack of ticket offices and the shortage of guards but there is something slowly gnawing away at the remnants of trade union goodwill. But why oh why does it have to be on a Monday morning? Then there's the small matter of pay and work conditions which have characterised most historical strikes anyway. But this is such a familiar back story so perhaps we ought to be conditioned to it by now
But the look of bewilderment, shock and justifiable fury on those passengers faces made your heart weep. Those who were interviewed just tried to be brave in the face of adversity or just put it down to experience. Those union bosses have got a lot to answer for and besides aren't their workers paid a substantial amount of money anyway? In fact they're paid a ridiculously extortionate amount or are they? Perhaps they're deserving recipients of a million pounds a week plus bonuses. Who knows?
It's at times like this that you think of Thomas the Tank Engine. You can bet a million pounds that Thomas has never been affected by any of these deeply entrenched problems. Dear old Thomas. I bet he just pulls away from his station with a radiant beaming smile and just gets on with it. I'm sure he isn't burdened with trade- unions, ticket office altercations, poor pay and dreadful working conditions. He doesn't have to march up and down the London streets waving his placard and demonstrating his dissatisfaction into the small hours of the evening.
I'm willing to bet that Thomas the Tank Engine just gets on with his everyday business of carrying his passengers the length and breadth of Britain. I bet Thomas didn't have beer and sandwiches meetings with fuming trade union leaders. In fact Thomas would have probably told them exactly how he felt and they'd all reach a negotiated settlement with an extra sixpence in their pockets.
Thomas would have told them quite uncompromisingly that the public were totally reliant on the trains to get to work and that if they couldn't reach a sensible compromise Thomas would have to lay off and sack everybody for their utter disobedience and intransigence. Now go back to work and keep your grievances to yourself. Thomas would not have been a happy train.
And then finally the Tube railway stations gradually open up and everything returns to something like normality. Hundreds and thousands of commuters and rush hour workers will sprint into their station, thousands of feet tapping and pounding their way down the stairs, gingerly working their way down the escalators before inching their way painstakingly onto the platform. You could probably set this all to music because the feet have their very own rhythm.
There is a lovely sense of constancy and consistency about this daily Tube routine, It's hard wired into us from an early age and if somebody told us to stop doing it, we'd probably get all hot under the collar. We value and cherish our trains lavishing them with a kind of childish affection in the way we might have done as kids. They're part of our childhood. part of our rich heritage and part of our fundamental way of life, almost as integral to us as steak and kidney pie or red post boxes. How we'd miss them if they weren't there.
Well they weren't there for 24 hours yesterday and everything was well and truly locked up. The gates were up, the padlock and chain were firmly fixed and I missed out on my Evening Standard paper yesterday. Now how could they do that to me. It all seemed desperately grim and unfair. Maybe I should have aired my grievances to a radio phone in or just endure it all with a stiff upper lip. Perhaps I should have taken it to the House of Commons or my local MP. Maybe I should have rung up Thomas the Tank Engine for a full blooded discussion on the history of the steam engine. He'd have known what to do.
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
Sunday, 8 January 2017
It's very early January and all of my get up and go has got up and gone.
The first week in January and yours truly is distinctly under the weather.
Here I am at the beginning of 2017 and, it has to be said, moderately unwell. I'm not ill as such but the old chest is beginning to wheeze like a concertina and the coughing fits have got steadily worse. I have to be honest here. I'm not in the mood for the London Marathon nor a cross country run and swimming the Channel is just out of the question. Climbing Mount Everest or racing down a ski-ing slope is just not advisable. All I want to do is just relax and re-cuperate.
You know what it's like. This morning I woke up at 10.30 and felt so hungover and wretched that it almost felt as if the world had lost contact with my body. I lifted my head off the pillow and it felt like a thousand marauding armies were attacking me from all directions. Slowly I became aware of my surroundings but then realised that I just wasn't firing on all cylinders. I felt tired, slow and sluggish, unwilling to make any concerted effort to do anything physically demanding or arduous.
At this point I should tell you that it felt like the beginning of a heavy cold but it was difficult to diagnose it as such. It was time for my first sneezing fit, an experience that somehow beggars description. Then it occurred to me that my blocked nose was rather like a blocked sink and ever so slightly bunged up. I couldn't find any of those kitchen plungers so I decided to make do and mend with a couple of Paracetemol, a strong cup of coffee, a quick piece of toast and the rest Mother Nature would take care of.
When I was a kid our local doctor's surgery used to be conveniently situated at the bottom of our road. There's now a house and garage on the same site but back in the 1960s my mum would frequently take her first offspring for a medical MOT with our doctors. Dr Elliott and Clarke were highly respected pillars of the community, doctors of distinction and esteemed members of the medical profession.
But Dr Eliott. it has to be said, although the most charming of men, was notoriously unsympathetic when it came to children's coughs and colds. The good Doctor, greyish of beard and quite possibly ruthless, didn't mince words. If you had so much as a sniffle or shiver Dr, Eliott would administer the ultimate of remedies.
He would look my mum in the eye and tell her, quite firmly, that there was never anything he could do so it would be in her best interests to take her snivelling three year old son home, give him some Aspirin, tell him to have an early night and just rest. What, he cried, did you want him to do? He was, after all, only a doctor and there were far more poorly patients in need of attention. So goodbye Joe, here's some cough linctus and you'll be as right as rain. What a doctor! A giant in the world of medicine.
Of course there were times when even the most hardened hypochondriacs or malingerers would be told what to do by Dr Eliott. But when I look back it almost seems that all of our most eminent surgeons and doctors were just models of commonsense and discretion. Both Elliott and Clarke were marvellous and benevolent gentlemen with a heart of gold but dear old Dr Elliott was just telling it the way it was, straight and right to the point.
Now I know for a fact that I haven't got yellow jaundice, pleurisy, malaria, the Black Plague nor have I a raging fever that may take months to go. Suffice it to say that if you were ask me to run up and down the stairs fifty times without pausing for breath I would have to apologise. I always have the flu jab as a precautionary measure after a severe bout years ago but at the moment I simply want to abandon myself to sluggish indifference to the outside world. Of course I care about the things going on around me but when you feel ill and not ready to respond productively to anything it's easy to just mope around and feel sorry for yourself. Which doesn't really help me does it? Sorry it's a slight case of man flu and I'm just a bloke. The two are interchangeable.
Isn't it strange how we react to winter illnesses such as flu,cold or a whole variety of bronchial and respiratory ailments? We just seem to withdraw into ourselves like tortoises in hibernation. We all think that the world will end in five minutes. daytime TV will become a constant torment and you'll never ever recover. We sink into a self inflicted set of negative emotions and pray for warmer weather. What we don't do is take stock for a couple of minutes, assess our condition in a rational light and try to convince ourselves that sooner rather than later the cold will clear up in the goodness of time and, according to the most realistic of doctors, you'll certainly live.
But the winter aches and pains reinforce all of those natural complaints and grumbles you might be feeling. None of us can ever sit back and rationalise with our worst case scenarios because we all have that inherent tendency to be melodramatic. We all consult the medical dicitionary and look at those old school conditions such as the Pox, German measles or that dreaded disease that Mr Hughes has got next door. Or is it a grumbling appendix or some serious gastric disorder. It could be anything but probably isn't what you at first thought.
Still it's time to stop indulging in self diagnosis and face the music. There is an essential morbidity and melancholy about us at this time of the year which may take ages to clear up. And yet we wallow in our misery. paranoia and hypochondria because that's the condition we're used to at the turn of a new year. We all think that for some inexplicable reason we're all going to end up in a hospital ward with some terrible condition that never really amounts to anything. But January, to quote the 1970s pop group Pilot, was always sick and tired and always angry with you.
The reality is of course that your medicine cabinet does frequently resemble a chemist with every conceivable potion, bottle and packet of pills in the whole of the pharmaceutical industry. There are packets for headaches, lotions and creams for everything and anything We adopt that natural default position. There has to be something wrong with us because we just don't feel right so if you swallow some good old fashioned tablets you're bound to perk up eventually. It's the law of averages.
The truth of course is that as we get older the more dependent we become on the NHS, doctors, surgeons and medical specialists for healing, restoration and that perfect pick me up. Every so often we have blood tests for this and blood tests for that. Surely I haven't got gastro-enteretis doctor. I had that last year.
But we mull over our imaginary illnesses and tend to exaggerate them ten fold. Maybe this is part of the human condition, that ever present sense of being flawed and vulnerable. Perhaps there is some dormant fear that we'll always be burdened by some illness for ever. This could be called an irrationality but then we probably and privately know that. The problem is that none of us know how to handle the whole gamut of every illness or disease known to any of us. We just sit there and turn things over in our mind, ruminating, fearing the worst and not knowing what to do.
Still here we are at the beginning of January and most, if not all, doctor's surgeries will have their full complement of sickness. There will be new mothers with pushchairs, babies in blankets, screaming and yelping plaintively because nobody seems to care. Then there are the people who just sit there staring at their I-phones sneezing sporadically and then coughing because they're patently not well. Some will read the paper and others just fall into a dazed trance when, for no apparent reason at all, there's nothing worth reading in Readers Digest or Take A Break.
In January doctors surgeries are rather like factory conveyor belts of the pale, distressed, the uncomfortable and the inconsolable. We stare mournfully into our morning copy of the Metro paper, burying our heads in our lap and trying desperately to ignore everybody else around us. I've often wondered what goes through their minds as they wait for their compassionate angel of a doctor to ease their pain. Do they think about that evening's tea or how much healthier they could be on some Caribbean island? Or do they wonder whether the grass could be greener somewhere else where illness simply doesn't exist?
Perhaps we've got something horribly contagious and the whole world will catch what we've got. Somewhere deep within us lies a kind of permanent fragility, a trembling uncertainty about our own immediate health in the foreseeable future. There is, it would seem, some deeply embedded, terror-filled trepidation that you'll never feel better however hard you try.
It's probably true to say that none of us will ever be fully convinced that even the most warmest outpouring of re-assurance from any doctor will put our mind at rest. Every morning we look at our medication and wonder if these are just temporary measures, calming palliatives that soothe a fevered brow. Then we look at the clock in the kitchen, grab a box of handkerchiefs, blow our noses, run out of our homes and catch the train to work. It's a time honoured ritual.
Then we get to work, school, college or university, briefly grumble about our blocked noses, sneeze again all over the photocopier, knock back a mug of honey and lemon and then groan light -heartedly. We wish it could be summer but it isn't but let's talk about summer holidays. We'll gather by the water cooler and filing cabinets and just get on with the whole business of survival.
Well that's about it for my first medical bulletin of 2017. Now I've checked my blood pressure and it can't be bronchitis because that would be devastating and I'm not sure but would probably deal with that. And so I leave the doctor's surgery with their familiar array of pencils in holders, family photos, stethoscopes liberally spread over their desk and that blood pressure device they wrap around your arm. No I'm fit as a fiddle and, all being well, I should be well enough to climb those elusive mountains and run around the world twice over. Wish me luck as I go on my way. Keep well folks.
Here I am at the beginning of 2017 and, it has to be said, moderately unwell. I'm not ill as such but the old chest is beginning to wheeze like a concertina and the coughing fits have got steadily worse. I have to be honest here. I'm not in the mood for the London Marathon nor a cross country run and swimming the Channel is just out of the question. Climbing Mount Everest or racing down a ski-ing slope is just not advisable. All I want to do is just relax and re-cuperate.
You know what it's like. This morning I woke up at 10.30 and felt so hungover and wretched that it almost felt as if the world had lost contact with my body. I lifted my head off the pillow and it felt like a thousand marauding armies were attacking me from all directions. Slowly I became aware of my surroundings but then realised that I just wasn't firing on all cylinders. I felt tired, slow and sluggish, unwilling to make any concerted effort to do anything physically demanding or arduous.
At this point I should tell you that it felt like the beginning of a heavy cold but it was difficult to diagnose it as such. It was time for my first sneezing fit, an experience that somehow beggars description. Then it occurred to me that my blocked nose was rather like a blocked sink and ever so slightly bunged up. I couldn't find any of those kitchen plungers so I decided to make do and mend with a couple of Paracetemol, a strong cup of coffee, a quick piece of toast and the rest Mother Nature would take care of.
When I was a kid our local doctor's surgery used to be conveniently situated at the bottom of our road. There's now a house and garage on the same site but back in the 1960s my mum would frequently take her first offspring for a medical MOT with our doctors. Dr Elliott and Clarke were highly respected pillars of the community, doctors of distinction and esteemed members of the medical profession.
But Dr Eliott. it has to be said, although the most charming of men, was notoriously unsympathetic when it came to children's coughs and colds. The good Doctor, greyish of beard and quite possibly ruthless, didn't mince words. If you had so much as a sniffle or shiver Dr, Eliott would administer the ultimate of remedies.
He would look my mum in the eye and tell her, quite firmly, that there was never anything he could do so it would be in her best interests to take her snivelling three year old son home, give him some Aspirin, tell him to have an early night and just rest. What, he cried, did you want him to do? He was, after all, only a doctor and there were far more poorly patients in need of attention. So goodbye Joe, here's some cough linctus and you'll be as right as rain. What a doctor! A giant in the world of medicine.
Of course there were times when even the most hardened hypochondriacs or malingerers would be told what to do by Dr Eliott. But when I look back it almost seems that all of our most eminent surgeons and doctors were just models of commonsense and discretion. Both Elliott and Clarke were marvellous and benevolent gentlemen with a heart of gold but dear old Dr Elliott was just telling it the way it was, straight and right to the point.
Now I know for a fact that I haven't got yellow jaundice, pleurisy, malaria, the Black Plague nor have I a raging fever that may take months to go. Suffice it to say that if you were ask me to run up and down the stairs fifty times without pausing for breath I would have to apologise. I always have the flu jab as a precautionary measure after a severe bout years ago but at the moment I simply want to abandon myself to sluggish indifference to the outside world. Of course I care about the things going on around me but when you feel ill and not ready to respond productively to anything it's easy to just mope around and feel sorry for yourself. Which doesn't really help me does it? Sorry it's a slight case of man flu and I'm just a bloke. The two are interchangeable.
Isn't it strange how we react to winter illnesses such as flu,cold or a whole variety of bronchial and respiratory ailments? We just seem to withdraw into ourselves like tortoises in hibernation. We all think that the world will end in five minutes. daytime TV will become a constant torment and you'll never ever recover. We sink into a self inflicted set of negative emotions and pray for warmer weather. What we don't do is take stock for a couple of minutes, assess our condition in a rational light and try to convince ourselves that sooner rather than later the cold will clear up in the goodness of time and, according to the most realistic of doctors, you'll certainly live.
But the winter aches and pains reinforce all of those natural complaints and grumbles you might be feeling. None of us can ever sit back and rationalise with our worst case scenarios because we all have that inherent tendency to be melodramatic. We all consult the medical dicitionary and look at those old school conditions such as the Pox, German measles or that dreaded disease that Mr Hughes has got next door. Or is it a grumbling appendix or some serious gastric disorder. It could be anything but probably isn't what you at first thought.
Still it's time to stop indulging in self diagnosis and face the music. There is an essential morbidity and melancholy about us at this time of the year which may take ages to clear up. And yet we wallow in our misery. paranoia and hypochondria because that's the condition we're used to at the turn of a new year. We all think that for some inexplicable reason we're all going to end up in a hospital ward with some terrible condition that never really amounts to anything. But January, to quote the 1970s pop group Pilot, was always sick and tired and always angry with you.
The reality is of course that your medicine cabinet does frequently resemble a chemist with every conceivable potion, bottle and packet of pills in the whole of the pharmaceutical industry. There are packets for headaches, lotions and creams for everything and anything We adopt that natural default position. There has to be something wrong with us because we just don't feel right so if you swallow some good old fashioned tablets you're bound to perk up eventually. It's the law of averages.
The truth of course is that as we get older the more dependent we become on the NHS, doctors, surgeons and medical specialists for healing, restoration and that perfect pick me up. Every so often we have blood tests for this and blood tests for that. Surely I haven't got gastro-enteretis doctor. I had that last year.
But we mull over our imaginary illnesses and tend to exaggerate them ten fold. Maybe this is part of the human condition, that ever present sense of being flawed and vulnerable. Perhaps there is some dormant fear that we'll always be burdened by some illness for ever. This could be called an irrationality but then we probably and privately know that. The problem is that none of us know how to handle the whole gamut of every illness or disease known to any of us. We just sit there and turn things over in our mind, ruminating, fearing the worst and not knowing what to do.
Still here we are at the beginning of January and most, if not all, doctor's surgeries will have their full complement of sickness. There will be new mothers with pushchairs, babies in blankets, screaming and yelping plaintively because nobody seems to care. Then there are the people who just sit there staring at their I-phones sneezing sporadically and then coughing because they're patently not well. Some will read the paper and others just fall into a dazed trance when, for no apparent reason at all, there's nothing worth reading in Readers Digest or Take A Break.
In January doctors surgeries are rather like factory conveyor belts of the pale, distressed, the uncomfortable and the inconsolable. We stare mournfully into our morning copy of the Metro paper, burying our heads in our lap and trying desperately to ignore everybody else around us. I've often wondered what goes through their minds as they wait for their compassionate angel of a doctor to ease their pain. Do they think about that evening's tea or how much healthier they could be on some Caribbean island? Or do they wonder whether the grass could be greener somewhere else where illness simply doesn't exist?
Perhaps we've got something horribly contagious and the whole world will catch what we've got. Somewhere deep within us lies a kind of permanent fragility, a trembling uncertainty about our own immediate health in the foreseeable future. There is, it would seem, some deeply embedded, terror-filled trepidation that you'll never feel better however hard you try.
It's probably true to say that none of us will ever be fully convinced that even the most warmest outpouring of re-assurance from any doctor will put our mind at rest. Every morning we look at our medication and wonder if these are just temporary measures, calming palliatives that soothe a fevered brow. Then we look at the clock in the kitchen, grab a box of handkerchiefs, blow our noses, run out of our homes and catch the train to work. It's a time honoured ritual.
Then we get to work, school, college or university, briefly grumble about our blocked noses, sneeze again all over the photocopier, knock back a mug of honey and lemon and then groan light -heartedly. We wish it could be summer but it isn't but let's talk about summer holidays. We'll gather by the water cooler and filing cabinets and just get on with the whole business of survival.
Well that's about it for my first medical bulletin of 2017. Now I've checked my blood pressure and it can't be bronchitis because that would be devastating and I'm not sure but would probably deal with that. And so I leave the doctor's surgery with their familiar array of pencils in holders, family photos, stethoscopes liberally spread over their desk and that blood pressure device they wrap around your arm. No I'm fit as a fiddle and, all being well, I should be well enough to climb those elusive mountains and run around the world twice over. Wish me luck as I go on my way. Keep well folks.
Friday, 6 January 2017
Oh what a West Ham circus- have my team reached rock bottom or was this just an FA Cup apocalypse.
Oh what a West Ham circus- an FA Cup disaster at home against the City slickers.
For a few fleeting moments my mind travelled back to 1976 when West Ham were completely thrashed and outclassed by a rampant Liverpool side at Upton Park. It was quite the most horrendous demolition job by a Liverpool team still adhering to the classical traditions of a club guided by the incomparable Bill Shankly and then later Bob Paisley.
That distant January afternoon now seems just a sepia tinted calamity. West Ham were hammered, clobbered, thrashed, humiliated, overpowered and outclassed by a Liverpool team boasting Kevin Keegan and John Toshack. Both Keegan and Toshack were at their height of their striking powers and West Ham just sunk like a suet pudding as Liverpool piled on the agony with quite the most comprehensive 4-0 victory the club had ever achieved by an away side. Well, not quite but it probably felt that way at the time.
The previous season West Ham had waltzed their way to a Wembley FA Cup victory against Fulham, a team once memorably described as that elderly team from no less an authority as Alf Garnett. True Fulham did have the masterfully legendary Bobby Moore as captain and Alan Mullery had seen some of his most vintage years at Tottenham. But Moore, once a proud occupant of the claret and blue of West Ham and Mullery once of Spurs, were just overwhelmed and perhaps overcome by the big occasion with West Ham running out easy 2-0 winners. Their combined ages at the time were more or less neither here nor there, a total irrelevance but the result was ultimately predictable, in fact embarrassingly so.
So it is that we return to my poor old team from the new, palatial London Stadium with over 50,000 supporters hollering themselves silly but privately yearning for the more homely if claustrophobic Upton Park ground. How the mighty have fallen as they say although this may be regarded as a complete exaggeration. West Ham were beaten 5-0 by a Manchester City who just stamped all over West Ham and then trod all over them like a piece of dust.
In the old days West Ham were the strolling, swaggering entertainers who were rather too lenient for their own good. They had the softest centre of any team in the old First Division and many was the occasion when West Ham's opponents relished a visit to the Boleyn Ground like a pack of hounds devouring a piece of meat. Their defence, even with the dogged obstinacy of Billy Bonds. would open up like the creaking portcullis of a castle. Then the visitors would flood through with almost disrespectful ease and score a hatful of goals.
But to return to the business this evening West Ham were ravaged, ransacked and completely destroyed by a Manchester City team who almost seemed to memorise the game instinctively from the training ground. Their passing movements were just heavenly and poetic, their first touch on the ball just immaculate and their general distribution of the ball an object lesson in how to play the Beautiful Game.
It grieves to me say this as a masochistic West Ham fan of over 40 years standing that Manchester City were a pleasure to watch. This was precise, measured and metronomic football of the kind that Arsene Wenger of Arsenal has so popularised at the Emirates Stadium. It was the kind of football that the Magical Magyars of Hungary just mesmerised Billy Wright's hapless England with in 1953. By the end of that game the leader, conductor and ruthless perpetrator Ferenc Puskas looked ever so slightly apologetic and remorseful for what his Hungary team had just done to England.
In a more modern context Manchester City had Pep Guardiola, a manager of such admirable intelliigence and footballing intellect that it's a wonder why he didn't emerge from his playing career with a cap and gown. Guardiola didn't really need to attend an university because the man has obviously passed all of his exams with flying colours. Guardiola is a stylist, purist and innovator of the highest order. As a Spaniard, it was perhaps only a matter of time that Guardiola would perfect that passing template. The Spanish team who won World Cups and European Championships were the fruition and natural extension of everything Guardiola has held dear as a manager.
Tonight with the joyous likes of David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure, Kevin De Bruyne and John Stones in perfect tune with each other's thoughts, City flowed and floated forward like the most majestic cruise liner. They fashioned their attacking movements in the way that a tailor marks up a suit, then weighing and pondering, analysing and judging every flick, touch, pass into space and then stitching it all together with a mosaic of neat triangles and glorious one touch football.
City won 5-0 and from a neutral point of view it should have been a lot more. In fact it was a genuine masterclass so beautiful had it been in its execution and conception. West Ham were not only chasing shadows but also chasing the ghosts of yesteryear, the memories of Hurst, Peters, Moore, the now late Peter Brabrook, Brian Dear, Alan Sealey and Johnny Sissons now no more than a golden halo from another year.
The early penalty from Manchester City simply opened the floodgates with more goals, Raheeem Stirling almost hilariously bundling home but credited as a West Ham own goal. Then David Silva almost arrogantly stroked home the third before Aguero added a fourth and Stones just underlined City's overall supremacy.
There is a part of me that is almost relieved that West Ham are now out of the FA Cup. Maybe the men in claret and blue can now rev themselves up to go again , re-charge their batteries and re-calibrate their engines. Now is the time to get back to the important business in the West Ham in tray. Now priorities have changed and attitudes adjusted. You suspect that for West Ham this may have been the best thing that ever happened to them, maybe a blessing in disguise.
The second half stretches in front of them like the widest F1 racing track full of dodgy corners, teasing chicanes and ever increasing circles of the racing track. They will try to put down the accelerator, sharply change a couple of gears and the whole feat of engineering will be a wonder to behold. Perhaps West Ham may never now be the smoooth, streamlined attacking machine of last season but they may have to open the throttle sooner or later.
Their chief creative architect and playmaker Dimitri Payet still finds his career at West Ham at a crossroads. Does he go or does he stay? Payet has recently expressed his desire to play in the Champions League and is maybe biting off more than he can chew. At the moment he is far being from being the roving, roaming, magical and impulsively gifted player who took the Premier League by storm last season.
There are times when the concentration goes missing and the mind goes a wandering. Rather like his claret and blue predecessor Paolo Di Canio, Payet leaves his genius firmly imprinted on a match. But there the similarities reach an end. Di Canio's temperament and behaviour were far more of a concern than the obvious talent. Payet will never be a loose cannon ready to explode at any moment and is far more restrained than Di Canio ever was.
But the general consensus of opinion is that Payet has far too many delusions of grandeur than is good for him. Payet leaves lovely watercolours and oil paintings in all of his performances whereas Di Canio just loved a good old fashioned strop. Payet's free kicks are more Monet than Di Canio's Italian renaissance. But both players have given us cause to pause for breath over the years. if not breathtaking. Now though is the moment of judgment and Payet has to make vital decisions.
When the London Stadium had closed for business for the night and that glowing red structure outside the ground had been extinguished for the last time I began to think back to those rock and roll Cup nights at the Boleyn Ground when the Chicken Run began to sway its scarves and the North Bank would light up a thousand cigarettes at half time in unison. It is a long, long time ago and in the light of a 5-0 by a team of quite literally City slickers, the London Stadium sounds an almost farcically inappropriate name.
At the moment at least. it is quite possibly a veiled insult to the rest of London teams playing in both the Premier League and the rest of the League. Can West Ham seriously consider themselves as the definitive London team playing at the London Stadium? It does seem a horrible misnomer but then this is not the time for dwelling on what might have been.
The London Stadium was always likely to be fraught with problems and to an impartial observer Upton Park still seems like one of those intimate fringe theatres where every voice could be clearly heard. The crowd control and stewarding issues at the beginning of the season were more than serious disturbances. They were a distressing reminder to all West Ham fans that the whole move to a new stadium has carried with it faint echoes of a huge transitional period.
We all know about the trials and tribulations of moving with all the traumatic aches and pains that accompany this moment in our lives. You suspect though that when all the furniture has been taken off the removal vans then West Ham may begin to find their feet again. But at the moment the sofa looks very ragged and the armchairs are ever so slightly rickety. We must hope that a good lick of emulsion of paint may just be what West Ham are missing. Time for a bit of renovation and modernisation
For the time being though it's time for sober reflection and remembering the flow and fluency of a side managed by Ron Greenwood and how easy it was on the eye. Then there were the equally fluid, supple and flexible presentations of the John Lyall era when the old First Division was almost claimed just over 31 years ago. Oh for that final game when the Hammers reached out and almost claimed the old League Championship. Somewhere and somehow the claret and blue army will reach their promised land. It is time to faithfully blow those Bubbles.
For a few fleeting moments my mind travelled back to 1976 when West Ham were completely thrashed and outclassed by a rampant Liverpool side at Upton Park. It was quite the most horrendous demolition job by a Liverpool team still adhering to the classical traditions of a club guided by the incomparable Bill Shankly and then later Bob Paisley.
That distant January afternoon now seems just a sepia tinted calamity. West Ham were hammered, clobbered, thrashed, humiliated, overpowered and outclassed by a Liverpool team boasting Kevin Keegan and John Toshack. Both Keegan and Toshack were at their height of their striking powers and West Ham just sunk like a suet pudding as Liverpool piled on the agony with quite the most comprehensive 4-0 victory the club had ever achieved by an away side. Well, not quite but it probably felt that way at the time.
The previous season West Ham had waltzed their way to a Wembley FA Cup victory against Fulham, a team once memorably described as that elderly team from no less an authority as Alf Garnett. True Fulham did have the masterfully legendary Bobby Moore as captain and Alan Mullery had seen some of his most vintage years at Tottenham. But Moore, once a proud occupant of the claret and blue of West Ham and Mullery once of Spurs, were just overwhelmed and perhaps overcome by the big occasion with West Ham running out easy 2-0 winners. Their combined ages at the time were more or less neither here nor there, a total irrelevance but the result was ultimately predictable, in fact embarrassingly so.
So it is that we return to my poor old team from the new, palatial London Stadium with over 50,000 supporters hollering themselves silly but privately yearning for the more homely if claustrophobic Upton Park ground. How the mighty have fallen as they say although this may be regarded as a complete exaggeration. West Ham were beaten 5-0 by a Manchester City who just stamped all over West Ham and then trod all over them like a piece of dust.
In the old days West Ham were the strolling, swaggering entertainers who were rather too lenient for their own good. They had the softest centre of any team in the old First Division and many was the occasion when West Ham's opponents relished a visit to the Boleyn Ground like a pack of hounds devouring a piece of meat. Their defence, even with the dogged obstinacy of Billy Bonds. would open up like the creaking portcullis of a castle. Then the visitors would flood through with almost disrespectful ease and score a hatful of goals.
But to return to the business this evening West Ham were ravaged, ransacked and completely destroyed by a Manchester City team who almost seemed to memorise the game instinctively from the training ground. Their passing movements were just heavenly and poetic, their first touch on the ball just immaculate and their general distribution of the ball an object lesson in how to play the Beautiful Game.
It grieves to me say this as a masochistic West Ham fan of over 40 years standing that Manchester City were a pleasure to watch. This was precise, measured and metronomic football of the kind that Arsene Wenger of Arsenal has so popularised at the Emirates Stadium. It was the kind of football that the Magical Magyars of Hungary just mesmerised Billy Wright's hapless England with in 1953. By the end of that game the leader, conductor and ruthless perpetrator Ferenc Puskas looked ever so slightly apologetic and remorseful for what his Hungary team had just done to England.
In a more modern context Manchester City had Pep Guardiola, a manager of such admirable intelliigence and footballing intellect that it's a wonder why he didn't emerge from his playing career with a cap and gown. Guardiola didn't really need to attend an university because the man has obviously passed all of his exams with flying colours. Guardiola is a stylist, purist and innovator of the highest order. As a Spaniard, it was perhaps only a matter of time that Guardiola would perfect that passing template. The Spanish team who won World Cups and European Championships were the fruition and natural extension of everything Guardiola has held dear as a manager.
Tonight with the joyous likes of David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Yaya Toure, Kevin De Bruyne and John Stones in perfect tune with each other's thoughts, City flowed and floated forward like the most majestic cruise liner. They fashioned their attacking movements in the way that a tailor marks up a suit, then weighing and pondering, analysing and judging every flick, touch, pass into space and then stitching it all together with a mosaic of neat triangles and glorious one touch football.
City won 5-0 and from a neutral point of view it should have been a lot more. In fact it was a genuine masterclass so beautiful had it been in its execution and conception. West Ham were not only chasing shadows but also chasing the ghosts of yesteryear, the memories of Hurst, Peters, Moore, the now late Peter Brabrook, Brian Dear, Alan Sealey and Johnny Sissons now no more than a golden halo from another year.
The early penalty from Manchester City simply opened the floodgates with more goals, Raheeem Stirling almost hilariously bundling home but credited as a West Ham own goal. Then David Silva almost arrogantly stroked home the third before Aguero added a fourth and Stones just underlined City's overall supremacy.
There is a part of me that is almost relieved that West Ham are now out of the FA Cup. Maybe the men in claret and blue can now rev themselves up to go again , re-charge their batteries and re-calibrate their engines. Now is the time to get back to the important business in the West Ham in tray. Now priorities have changed and attitudes adjusted. You suspect that for West Ham this may have been the best thing that ever happened to them, maybe a blessing in disguise.
The second half stretches in front of them like the widest F1 racing track full of dodgy corners, teasing chicanes and ever increasing circles of the racing track. They will try to put down the accelerator, sharply change a couple of gears and the whole feat of engineering will be a wonder to behold. Perhaps West Ham may never now be the smoooth, streamlined attacking machine of last season but they may have to open the throttle sooner or later.
Their chief creative architect and playmaker Dimitri Payet still finds his career at West Ham at a crossroads. Does he go or does he stay? Payet has recently expressed his desire to play in the Champions League and is maybe biting off more than he can chew. At the moment he is far being from being the roving, roaming, magical and impulsively gifted player who took the Premier League by storm last season.
There are times when the concentration goes missing and the mind goes a wandering. Rather like his claret and blue predecessor Paolo Di Canio, Payet leaves his genius firmly imprinted on a match. But there the similarities reach an end. Di Canio's temperament and behaviour were far more of a concern than the obvious talent. Payet will never be a loose cannon ready to explode at any moment and is far more restrained than Di Canio ever was.
But the general consensus of opinion is that Payet has far too many delusions of grandeur than is good for him. Payet leaves lovely watercolours and oil paintings in all of his performances whereas Di Canio just loved a good old fashioned strop. Payet's free kicks are more Monet than Di Canio's Italian renaissance. But both players have given us cause to pause for breath over the years. if not breathtaking. Now though is the moment of judgment and Payet has to make vital decisions.
When the London Stadium had closed for business for the night and that glowing red structure outside the ground had been extinguished for the last time I began to think back to those rock and roll Cup nights at the Boleyn Ground when the Chicken Run began to sway its scarves and the North Bank would light up a thousand cigarettes at half time in unison. It is a long, long time ago and in the light of a 5-0 by a team of quite literally City slickers, the London Stadium sounds an almost farcically inappropriate name.
At the moment at least. it is quite possibly a veiled insult to the rest of London teams playing in both the Premier League and the rest of the League. Can West Ham seriously consider themselves as the definitive London team playing at the London Stadium? It does seem a horrible misnomer but then this is not the time for dwelling on what might have been.
The London Stadium was always likely to be fraught with problems and to an impartial observer Upton Park still seems like one of those intimate fringe theatres where every voice could be clearly heard. The crowd control and stewarding issues at the beginning of the season were more than serious disturbances. They were a distressing reminder to all West Ham fans that the whole move to a new stadium has carried with it faint echoes of a huge transitional period.
We all know about the trials and tribulations of moving with all the traumatic aches and pains that accompany this moment in our lives. You suspect though that when all the furniture has been taken off the removal vans then West Ham may begin to find their feet again. But at the moment the sofa looks very ragged and the armchairs are ever so slightly rickety. We must hope that a good lick of emulsion of paint may just be what West Ham are missing. Time for a bit of renovation and modernisation
For the time being though it's time for sober reflection and remembering the flow and fluency of a side managed by Ron Greenwood and how easy it was on the eye. Then there were the equally fluid, supple and flexible presentations of the John Lyall era when the old First Division was almost claimed just over 31 years ago. Oh for that final game when the Hammers reached out and almost claimed the old League Championship. Somewhere and somehow the claret and blue army will reach their promised land. It is time to faithfully blow those Bubbles.
Thursday, 5 January 2017
Joe's Jolly Japes- my latest book
Joe's Jolly Japes - my latest book.
Joe's Jolly Japes is very much my perspective on my favourite sport, football and I think, my amusing take on the Chelsea Flower Show, the Henley Regatta, Polo on the playing fields of England, a summer Hyde Park concert on the BBC, my depiction of the middle classes in England, loads of more popular culture on everything and everybody, references to my favourite seaside resorts in England, more telly, more celebrities, London department stores, the people, places and events from different points of the compass.
Joe's Jolly Japes is a jolly journey along the road of the celebrity culture, the pop stars such as the late David Bowie and those who continue to enrich our lives as Sir Elton John, Sir Cliff Richard, my favourite sports icons, their lives and very descriptive word pictures of the great and good. Joe's Jolly Japes is a broad canvas of music, sport, cultural icons and national treasures. It is once again a very colourful word portrait of life, the world and the events that illuminate our lives.
You can buy Joe's Jolly Japes at Amazon, Waterstones online market place and Barnes and Noble online. You'll laugh, smile and chortle at my take on today's pop culture. It's my Jolly Japes, Joe's Jolly Japes. You'll find an abundance of more wit, humour and some literary observations. Go on treat yourself. It's like the sweetest piece of cake, a lovely treat and a pleasant little read from yours truly Joe Morris.
Joe's Jolly Japes is very much my perspective on my favourite sport, football and I think, my amusing take on the Chelsea Flower Show, the Henley Regatta, Polo on the playing fields of England, a summer Hyde Park concert on the BBC, my depiction of the middle classes in England, loads of more popular culture on everything and everybody, references to my favourite seaside resorts in England, more telly, more celebrities, London department stores, the people, places and events from different points of the compass.
Joe's Jolly Japes is a jolly journey along the road of the celebrity culture, the pop stars such as the late David Bowie and those who continue to enrich our lives as Sir Elton John, Sir Cliff Richard, my favourite sports icons, their lives and very descriptive word pictures of the great and good. Joe's Jolly Japes is a broad canvas of music, sport, cultural icons and national treasures. It is once again a very colourful word portrait of life, the world and the events that illuminate our lives.
You can buy Joe's Jolly Japes at Amazon, Waterstones online market place and Barnes and Noble online. You'll laugh, smile and chortle at my take on today's pop culture. It's my Jolly Japes, Joe's Jolly Japes. You'll find an abundance of more wit, humour and some literary observations. Go on treat yourself. It's like the sweetest piece of cake, a lovely treat and a pleasant little read from yours truly Joe Morris.
No Joe Bloggs and Joe's Jolly Japes, my literary pride and joy
No Joe Bloggs and Joe's Jolly Japes, my literary pride and joy.
I know you've probably hundreds of celebrity autobiographies and many millions of words have been written on every conceivable subject but my last book No Joe Bloggs I think will take you on the most emotionally rewarding journey of all. No Joe Bloggs was written from my standpoint and is the story of an ordinary member of the public.
No Joe Bloggs is, I believe, quite definitely funny, moving and sentimental and very descriptive into the bargain. It's the story of my grandparents as Holocaust survivors, their hopes, aspirations and dreams and my take on what might have happened after the Second World War, my teenage battle against shyness and loneliness and an abundance of quirkiness. There are references to my favourite kind of pop music, artists, singers and radio stations such as Radio 1, the cultural movers and shakers of the 1960s and 70s, the TV celebrities, famous shows from the 1960s and 70s, the showbiz legends and funny pen portraits about Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Norman Wisdom, Bob Monkhouse, Dave Allen and the people who made us roar with laughter with their heady mix of light entertainment, lovely gags and fun loving witticisms.
There are also very descriptive pen portraits of football teams from the 1960s and 70s such as Arsenal, Leeds United, Liverpool, Ipswich Town, Wolves, Manchester United, Manchester City, Spurs and Chelsea with the clubs characteristics and amusing comparisons with everybody and anything. I feel sure that you'll abandon yourself to both chuckling and giggling in a matter of seconds.
In No Joe Bloggs, I had to pay the warmest homage to my late and wonderful dad. Here I paint the most affectionate picture of my lovely dad and his enduring love affair with the West End of London, Piccadilly Circus, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and the big band sound of wartime in London. I've written a totally imaginary but I think very amusing story about my dad and Frank Sinatra hanging out in Las Vegas, cruising the strip, drinking non alcoholic drinks in the bars and playing American pool or possibly snooker.
Then I take you back to my Ilford home and tell you about the neighbours in my road while growing up in Ilford, Essex as well as the families, the friends and the ice cream van that used to light up the road with jolly music. Then there are my seaside visits with my parents and grandparents, their huge shopping bag of sandwiches and the shops and department stores that were somehow integral to who I was and my descriptions of the sublime and the ridiculous.
I'm particularly proud of my chapter on London and the West End. Here I launch into the most lyrical and verbally lively commentary you may ever read. I'm not one to blow my trumpet and boast but believe me for lovers of literature my chapter on my take of London really is literary poetic licence. I feel sure that you'll identify with some of my descriptions and warm to my take on London.
In the concluding chapters of No Joe Bloggs I go back to Ilford, Essex and tell you about the very local timber merchants at the bottom of our road, the doctors surgery and the doctors, the milkmen and postmen, my proud Jewish heritage, the Jewish holidays and above all the way I dealt with what became diagnosed as autism. No Joe Bloggs is personal, precious, heartfelt, sincere, deeply appreciative of everybody and everybody who made me tick.
No Joe Bloggs is full of pop culture, telly, radio, music, football, tennis, cricket, rugby and all the sporting icons of the age from Bjorn Borg, Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors, Virginia Wade, Chris Evert, the great Hollywood stars from yesteryear, the epic films from days gone by, my favourite films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, West Side Story and loads of cultural references. There are both American and British comedy programmes and stars. It is action packed with wittty anecdotes, personal stories from my childhood and my dad's East End uncle with a toy warehouse in his house.
I hope I've done enough to persuade you to spend just a while in the world of an ordinary member of the public. We all have our tale to tell and we're often told that there's a book in all of us. This is my story, my humorous take on my childhood, the teenage struggles, the striving after the silver lining and the quest for acceptance among good and understanding friends and family. I've always wanted to explain why things went wrong for me as a teenager and why I was so terrified to communicate and engage with kids of my age. No Joe Bloggs is my therapy, my catharsis, my way of coming to terms with my very late development in life.
The end of No Joe Bloggs is a rags to riches story about an ordinary kid from the back streets of Ilford, a man who just wanted to carve out a personality and identity that just refused to grow. Of course my teenage years were lonely and scary. They were uncomfortable and unpleasant and totally wasted and to those whose acquaintance I failed to make as a kid I can only apologise.
I was that petrified three year old on his first day at nursery and I just didn't want to chat or joke, laugh or talk to anybody. To any of my personal friends who I went to school and then unintentionally snubbed at my local youth club. it certainly wasn't personal. I have to tell you that although I may have only been 11 at the time deep inside me there was almost an almost irrational fear and terror of the kids outside the club. I was convinced they'd pick on me and make fun of me and therefore this is what No Joe Bloggs tries to illustrate. No Joe Bloggs is a book of wit, humour, detail, rapturous description, loads of expressive literature. No Joe Bloggs is my attempt to explain the ups and downs of teenage angst, and an almost delayed adolescence and how I fought and now succeeded against all of the odds. No Joe Bloggs is a triumph against adversity, the victory over near certain defeat and an uplifting, heartwarming and moving story about me No Joe Bloggs or No Joe Bloggs by Joe Morris. I now have the most wonderful family behind me and I think that's a happy after ever story.
You can buy No Joe Bloggs at Amazon, Waterstones online market place and Barnes and Noble and you can find an accompanying You Tube video as well.
I know you've probably hundreds of celebrity autobiographies and many millions of words have been written on every conceivable subject but my last book No Joe Bloggs I think will take you on the most emotionally rewarding journey of all. No Joe Bloggs was written from my standpoint and is the story of an ordinary member of the public.
No Joe Bloggs is, I believe, quite definitely funny, moving and sentimental and very descriptive into the bargain. It's the story of my grandparents as Holocaust survivors, their hopes, aspirations and dreams and my take on what might have happened after the Second World War, my teenage battle against shyness and loneliness and an abundance of quirkiness. There are references to my favourite kind of pop music, artists, singers and radio stations such as Radio 1, the cultural movers and shakers of the 1960s and 70s, the TV celebrities, famous shows from the 1960s and 70s, the showbiz legends and funny pen portraits about Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Norman Wisdom, Bob Monkhouse, Dave Allen and the people who made us roar with laughter with their heady mix of light entertainment, lovely gags and fun loving witticisms.
There are also very descriptive pen portraits of football teams from the 1960s and 70s such as Arsenal, Leeds United, Liverpool, Ipswich Town, Wolves, Manchester United, Manchester City, Spurs and Chelsea with the clubs characteristics and amusing comparisons with everybody and anything. I feel sure that you'll abandon yourself to both chuckling and giggling in a matter of seconds.
In No Joe Bloggs, I had to pay the warmest homage to my late and wonderful dad. Here I paint the most affectionate picture of my lovely dad and his enduring love affair with the West End of London, Piccadilly Circus, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and the big band sound of wartime in London. I've written a totally imaginary but I think very amusing story about my dad and Frank Sinatra hanging out in Las Vegas, cruising the strip, drinking non alcoholic drinks in the bars and playing American pool or possibly snooker.
Then I take you back to my Ilford home and tell you about the neighbours in my road while growing up in Ilford, Essex as well as the families, the friends and the ice cream van that used to light up the road with jolly music. Then there are my seaside visits with my parents and grandparents, their huge shopping bag of sandwiches and the shops and department stores that were somehow integral to who I was and my descriptions of the sublime and the ridiculous.
I'm particularly proud of my chapter on London and the West End. Here I launch into the most lyrical and verbally lively commentary you may ever read. I'm not one to blow my trumpet and boast but believe me for lovers of literature my chapter on my take of London really is literary poetic licence. I feel sure that you'll identify with some of my descriptions and warm to my take on London.
In the concluding chapters of No Joe Bloggs I go back to Ilford, Essex and tell you about the very local timber merchants at the bottom of our road, the doctors surgery and the doctors, the milkmen and postmen, my proud Jewish heritage, the Jewish holidays and above all the way I dealt with what became diagnosed as autism. No Joe Bloggs is personal, precious, heartfelt, sincere, deeply appreciative of everybody and everybody who made me tick.
No Joe Bloggs is full of pop culture, telly, radio, music, football, tennis, cricket, rugby and all the sporting icons of the age from Bjorn Borg, Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors, Virginia Wade, Chris Evert, the great Hollywood stars from yesteryear, the epic films from days gone by, my favourite films such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, West Side Story and loads of cultural references. There are both American and British comedy programmes and stars. It is action packed with wittty anecdotes, personal stories from my childhood and my dad's East End uncle with a toy warehouse in his house.
I hope I've done enough to persuade you to spend just a while in the world of an ordinary member of the public. We all have our tale to tell and we're often told that there's a book in all of us. This is my story, my humorous take on my childhood, the teenage struggles, the striving after the silver lining and the quest for acceptance among good and understanding friends and family. I've always wanted to explain why things went wrong for me as a teenager and why I was so terrified to communicate and engage with kids of my age. No Joe Bloggs is my therapy, my catharsis, my way of coming to terms with my very late development in life.
The end of No Joe Bloggs is a rags to riches story about an ordinary kid from the back streets of Ilford, a man who just wanted to carve out a personality and identity that just refused to grow. Of course my teenage years were lonely and scary. They were uncomfortable and unpleasant and totally wasted and to those whose acquaintance I failed to make as a kid I can only apologise.
I was that petrified three year old on his first day at nursery and I just didn't want to chat or joke, laugh or talk to anybody. To any of my personal friends who I went to school and then unintentionally snubbed at my local youth club. it certainly wasn't personal. I have to tell you that although I may have only been 11 at the time deep inside me there was almost an almost irrational fear and terror of the kids outside the club. I was convinced they'd pick on me and make fun of me and therefore this is what No Joe Bloggs tries to illustrate. No Joe Bloggs is a book of wit, humour, detail, rapturous description, loads of expressive literature. No Joe Bloggs is my attempt to explain the ups and downs of teenage angst, and an almost delayed adolescence and how I fought and now succeeded against all of the odds. No Joe Bloggs is a triumph against adversity, the victory over near certain defeat and an uplifting, heartwarming and moving story about me No Joe Bloggs or No Joe Bloggs by Joe Morris. I now have the most wonderful family behind me and I think that's a happy after ever story.
You can buy No Joe Bloggs at Amazon, Waterstones online market place and Barnes and Noble and you can find an accompanying You Tube video as well.
Wednesday, 4 January 2017
Just a hint of rain in the air and it's back to work.
A hint of rain in the air.
Today there was just a hint of rain in the air. In fact I think it must have drizzled almost accidentally and then apologised for doing so in the next breath. January can be such a tease can't it? There was a suggestion of a light drizzle from the sky and then it changed its mind. January can also be very playful and capricious because when the rain does arrive it does so with a certain style and panache.
In fact you've got to hand it to January because when the heavens open that rain just crashes to the ground with an almost businesslike intent. But today the rain was almost teeth clenchingly frustrating. The temperature is definitely dropping slowly but surely and the chill is ever so bitingly noticeable. There was a palpable shiver in the air and my fingers began to yearn for heat and warmth.
It hasn't quite reached freezing point and the possibility is that the fox I saw last night was simply taking a leisurely stroll in utter darkness. He may have been looking for a bed and breakfast hotel for the night although this was hard to tell. Still it's comparatively mild and I can now see the roads rather than the all enveloping fog that just seemed to hang heavily in the night sky like yesterday's curtains.
I've heard rumours that people have spotted roses and tulips in their garden which almost beggars belief. Now when was the last time you saw spring and summer flowers blossoming quite nobly at the start of January? It's rather like waking up in the middle of June and discovering thick snowdrifts, huge mounds of snow on the ground just piling up remorselessly, workmen silently gritting the roads. Soon they'll be telling us to turn on those giant industrial fans and declaring a hosepipe ban. Whatever next? I'm sure global warming may be more than just innocent speculation.
Oh yes there was that stunning heatwave of 1976 when my parents garden looked more like a concrete bowl rather than the pristine green grass they'd been used to. There wasn't a patch of grass for miles and wherever you looked all of my mum's roses looked in desperate need of a downpour. So when the heat haze just hovered over our neighbourhood we just looked up at the flawless blue sky and thought of England, middle class England, working class England, suburban Britain and the whole of the home counties. What a summer! what a climate!
And yet during those mid 1970s winters the climate ran true to form. Of course it was cold and icy because that's what we'd probably come to expect in December, January and February. I used to look at our lonely and frightened shed just standing at the bottom of my parents garden and felt terribly sorry for it. It looked rejected and discarded by society, unwanted and hurt. almost offended and insulted. Day after day it would sob its heart out, a grey, dark figure whose hope had all gone. At times it looked almost tearful and hopelessly disconsolate, sad and perhaps deliberately overlooked.
Still here we are in early January 2017 and the roads are still mysteriously quiet. The pavements are beginning to resound with more and more people. Those marching feet are beginning to hit the ground with a ringing resonance and the gradual return to work will probably reach its crescendo next Monday. The railway platforms will be jammed solid, the fares have gone up for what seems the umpteenth time and Sadiq Khan, London's new mayor will probably get all the blame if there are leaves on the line. Oh to hold down onerous positions of responsibility and just pretend that it wasn't our fault.
This is the lull before the storm and you can probably hear the sighs and sharp intakes of breath on every Tube train platform. Rows and rows of people going to work almost dutifully are now almost fuming with barely suppressed anger. It's an early and cold January morning and your train is at least three years late. What's happened now? Not another defective signal or perhaps a buckled rail track again. It's time to read the same Metro newspaper article and try to make head or tail of the latest world developments.
Then every passenger looks despairingly at the electronic board with its destination and arrival times. Hold on. Don't tell me I've got to wait 25 years for the next Metropolitan Line train to Chalfont St Latimer. Can I claim ample financial compensation for a train service that is more or less non existent? Oh for the inadequacies of the London tube. How much longer can we be expected to tolerate this tiresome journey to work. Maybe they will get their act together one day. And yet those passengers now look very hollow cheeked and weary, shrugging their shoulders resignedly, looking furiously at their watch and then finding that time has just stood still. The big station clock is now crawling pathetically towards Late O' Clock and the boss is steaming like a pressure cooker.
And yet the season is now winter and the month is an adamant January. It's stating its intentions quite clearly and will just move at its own pace. January has five weeks and is determined to take as much time as it likes. There's no rush and besides there's plenty of time. Any one for a hot chocolate and jam croissant. And besides there's Burns Night towards the end of the month, the darts on the telly and of course ski-ing perhaps from the snowy mountains of Switzerland, Italy or Austria. It looks terrifying and impossibly dangerous and yet your admiration is unstinting for these intrepid souls who sneer at fear.
So there you are? You've booked your ski-ing holiday to some picturesque ski-ing resort at Chamonix or St Moritz or maybe closer to home at Aviemore. You've bought those very striking boiler suits, shrewdly invested in a decent pair of skis and you remember where you were when Franz Klammer, the great Olympic skier from Austria, once hurtled down the slopes like a man on a mission. That year Klammer tore up the field as if they were invisible. Klammer won a richly deserved gold and the world acclaimed a ski-ing dynamo.
It is January everybody. The year stretches ahead rather like some detailed Underground train map. You may be sure that it'll probably take an eternity to get to the end of the Northern Line or the Jubilee Line but it may be worth it in the end. For many though January at least, will seem like the slowest tortoise in the race. It may seem as though it's dragging its feet, biding its time, considering its options, assessing the ground and developing its own momentum. But this is far from being the case because January knows exactly where it's going. It has a far sighted vision and plan. Good luck January. We're with you all the way.
Of course February may feel like another country, another city even, maybe another time zone on another planet. But January has a freshly wrapped feel about it, a distinctive marker for the future, a sense of the brand new, pure and unblemished, free of any kind of pressure. It's the first month of the year and who knows Donald Trump may yet emerge as the greatest and most competent President of the United States of all time. Stranger things have been known to happen but then what were the odds on Christopher Columbus discovering America? In January we have implicit belief.
Today there was just a hint of rain in the air. In fact I think it must have drizzled almost accidentally and then apologised for doing so in the next breath. January can be such a tease can't it? There was a suggestion of a light drizzle from the sky and then it changed its mind. January can also be very playful and capricious because when the rain does arrive it does so with a certain style and panache.
In fact you've got to hand it to January because when the heavens open that rain just crashes to the ground with an almost businesslike intent. But today the rain was almost teeth clenchingly frustrating. The temperature is definitely dropping slowly but surely and the chill is ever so bitingly noticeable. There was a palpable shiver in the air and my fingers began to yearn for heat and warmth.
It hasn't quite reached freezing point and the possibility is that the fox I saw last night was simply taking a leisurely stroll in utter darkness. He may have been looking for a bed and breakfast hotel for the night although this was hard to tell. Still it's comparatively mild and I can now see the roads rather than the all enveloping fog that just seemed to hang heavily in the night sky like yesterday's curtains.
I've heard rumours that people have spotted roses and tulips in their garden which almost beggars belief. Now when was the last time you saw spring and summer flowers blossoming quite nobly at the start of January? It's rather like waking up in the middle of June and discovering thick snowdrifts, huge mounds of snow on the ground just piling up remorselessly, workmen silently gritting the roads. Soon they'll be telling us to turn on those giant industrial fans and declaring a hosepipe ban. Whatever next? I'm sure global warming may be more than just innocent speculation.
Oh yes there was that stunning heatwave of 1976 when my parents garden looked more like a concrete bowl rather than the pristine green grass they'd been used to. There wasn't a patch of grass for miles and wherever you looked all of my mum's roses looked in desperate need of a downpour. So when the heat haze just hovered over our neighbourhood we just looked up at the flawless blue sky and thought of England, middle class England, working class England, suburban Britain and the whole of the home counties. What a summer! what a climate!
And yet during those mid 1970s winters the climate ran true to form. Of course it was cold and icy because that's what we'd probably come to expect in December, January and February. I used to look at our lonely and frightened shed just standing at the bottom of my parents garden and felt terribly sorry for it. It looked rejected and discarded by society, unwanted and hurt. almost offended and insulted. Day after day it would sob its heart out, a grey, dark figure whose hope had all gone. At times it looked almost tearful and hopelessly disconsolate, sad and perhaps deliberately overlooked.
Still here we are in early January 2017 and the roads are still mysteriously quiet. The pavements are beginning to resound with more and more people. Those marching feet are beginning to hit the ground with a ringing resonance and the gradual return to work will probably reach its crescendo next Monday. The railway platforms will be jammed solid, the fares have gone up for what seems the umpteenth time and Sadiq Khan, London's new mayor will probably get all the blame if there are leaves on the line. Oh to hold down onerous positions of responsibility and just pretend that it wasn't our fault.
This is the lull before the storm and you can probably hear the sighs and sharp intakes of breath on every Tube train platform. Rows and rows of people going to work almost dutifully are now almost fuming with barely suppressed anger. It's an early and cold January morning and your train is at least three years late. What's happened now? Not another defective signal or perhaps a buckled rail track again. It's time to read the same Metro newspaper article and try to make head or tail of the latest world developments.
Then every passenger looks despairingly at the electronic board with its destination and arrival times. Hold on. Don't tell me I've got to wait 25 years for the next Metropolitan Line train to Chalfont St Latimer. Can I claim ample financial compensation for a train service that is more or less non existent? Oh for the inadequacies of the London tube. How much longer can we be expected to tolerate this tiresome journey to work. Maybe they will get their act together one day. And yet those passengers now look very hollow cheeked and weary, shrugging their shoulders resignedly, looking furiously at their watch and then finding that time has just stood still. The big station clock is now crawling pathetically towards Late O' Clock and the boss is steaming like a pressure cooker.
And yet the season is now winter and the month is an adamant January. It's stating its intentions quite clearly and will just move at its own pace. January has five weeks and is determined to take as much time as it likes. There's no rush and besides there's plenty of time. Any one for a hot chocolate and jam croissant. And besides there's Burns Night towards the end of the month, the darts on the telly and of course ski-ing perhaps from the snowy mountains of Switzerland, Italy or Austria. It looks terrifying and impossibly dangerous and yet your admiration is unstinting for these intrepid souls who sneer at fear.
So there you are? You've booked your ski-ing holiday to some picturesque ski-ing resort at Chamonix or St Moritz or maybe closer to home at Aviemore. You've bought those very striking boiler suits, shrewdly invested in a decent pair of skis and you remember where you were when Franz Klammer, the great Olympic skier from Austria, once hurtled down the slopes like a man on a mission. That year Klammer tore up the field as if they were invisible. Klammer won a richly deserved gold and the world acclaimed a ski-ing dynamo.
It is January everybody. The year stretches ahead rather like some detailed Underground train map. You may be sure that it'll probably take an eternity to get to the end of the Northern Line or the Jubilee Line but it may be worth it in the end. For many though January at least, will seem like the slowest tortoise in the race. It may seem as though it's dragging its feet, biding its time, considering its options, assessing the ground and developing its own momentum. But this is far from being the case because January knows exactly where it's going. It has a far sighted vision and plan. Good luck January. We're with you all the way.
Of course February may feel like another country, another city even, maybe another time zone on another planet. But January has a freshly wrapped feel about it, a distinctive marker for the future, a sense of the brand new, pure and unblemished, free of any kind of pressure. It's the first month of the year and who knows Donald Trump may yet emerge as the greatest and most competent President of the United States of all time. Stranger things have been known to happen but then what were the odds on Christopher Columbus discovering America? In January we have implicit belief.
Monday, 2 January 2017
January- 2017. Let's go for it. Another year.
Jaunary 2017. Let's go it for another year.
Good morning everybody. Well, how do you feel? Is there a spritely spring in your step? Are you looking forward to 2017 or are you secretly fearing the worst. Will there be another barrage of bad news, cynical comments about the end of the world being nigh or will it be another year of greyness, gloom and disaster? Surely not. And yet there are plenty of doom mongers and naysayers who believe that come the end of the year all will be wreckage, carnage, broken promises and yet more disenchantment.
But I have to tell you. Let's just go for it this year. Of course it's only January, the beginning of a New Year and it's time to wipe the slate clean. It's time to hope that the next President of the United States Donald Trump will get it completely right and surprise us all. It's time to believe that the nations of the world will finally wake up and smell the coffee. The world needs a collective meeting of minds, a sense of enduring harmony, a feeling that if it really tries it can build bridges and find common ground.
Now of course this is an idealistic pipedream because in the real world some people just aren't interested at all in just getting on with each other. Clearly it does seem at times that this peace agenda is just pie in the sky nonsense and maybe we should continue this narrative of killing, murder, destruction and general brutality. Sadly this is beginning to sound like a cracked record unless somebody out there can just stand their ground and just say. Enough is Enough!
So January hey. It's long, slow, laborious and seemingly endless. January is a time for a new perspective on life, another opportunity to approach life from entirely different angles. January is just very lazy, lackadaisical and just can't be bothered to do anything strenuous. January is very laid back, relaxed and easy like Sunday morning. January is a wide, yawning gap stretching in front of us, It always feels like January just goes on for ever and ever. It is the longest month of the year and it just seems to lumber and stagger towards its conclusion with an aching reluctance. Will you please hurry up January or maybe not.
To those people who hate those dark wintry nights January may seem very dull, plodding and pedestrian. But I think we should celebrate the warmth indoors when the lights come on at roughly 5pm in the afternoon and the telly flickers like the proverbial candle. But January loves that feeling of security, of safety. of knowing that whatever may be going on outside most of us feel protected from a world that sometimes seems obscenely frightening, horribly dangerous and constantly threatening.
January represents the beginning of that new chapter of our life, of formulating plans for spring and summer, of being sloppy, slovenly and lethargic at times but still engaged at the same time. January is the perfect time to sit back very objectively and decide that maybe the world isn't such a bad place after all and maybe we'll learn to iron out all those negatives, deficiencies and shortcomings that the world may be weighed down by.
January is full of weariness, lethargy and perhaps an overwhelming sense of anti climax. Look at those drooping, forlorn Christmas decorations, the Christmas tree tilting over to one side as if ever so slightly drunk and then the tinsel by now dropping sadly onto the backs of chairs and sofas, perhaps crying and weeping at the end of all those frivolous festivities. If January could talk perhaps it would ask if it could do Christmas next month. But then the harsh reality dawns and January stares at the last bottle of port and parts company with on old friend for another year. Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.
I can sense an air of quiet resignation in January. Oh well Christmas, rather like a very dear acquaintance, can't wait to meet up again at the end of the year. January needs a very strong cup of coffee, something to re-vitalise it before it just falls into a deep depresssion and self pity. It's time to seize the day. And yet Jaunary is forgivably tired and weary. But to all intents and purposes, January is suffering from a dour despondency because nothing will ever compare to the sheer elation of December, Christmas and happy cracker pulling. Still it's time to shake ourselves from temporary slovenliness and complacency. Time to surge forward into the future and stop dwelling on the past.
Tomorrow we'll all get back to some semblance of normality and January will jump out of bed in the morning, throwing water onto its face in the bathroom, brushing its teeth and just looking good. Of course the world has its problems and complications but January must be thinking about the months ahead quite philosophically and realistically. What's the worst that can happen?
January looks over its shoulder and believes that 2016 was quite the most appalling year it can remember. It was a year that slowly deteriorated into a complete mess. With every passing month, the disagreement and discord seemed to become more more frequent and more disturbing. Slowly but surely Britain crumbled away like a dusty old pillar, dissolving helplessly into the darkest hole of dejection. Can anybody tell me what all the fuss was about?
And yet Britain's withdrawal from Europe now seems like ancient history and perhaps we should concentrate on some other pressing domestic issue. Please spare me the endless discussion and ranting from those annoyingly soundbite poliiticians. It really is time to let it go and refrain from this raging rhetoric. this futile finger pointing, those slanderous accusations, the hot and bothered brigade, the furious, irate and incensed party. It just seems to go on and on without pausing for breath. Let's change the subject.
January has to be feeling a mellowness and gentle acceptance about life. The streets and roads are still deserted, Santa Claus is just an old jolly seasonal joke and the neighbours are still very friendly and approachable. So nothing has changed dramatically. The postman still pushes dutiful letters through your letter boxes and the dustman still looks very chipper.. All is well on earth. The traffic is increasing in its intensity and the world is beginning to right itself. The pavements are wet and sodden and it may yet snow. Perhaps the children of the world will run out into the streets enthusiastically and chuck snow balls at each other and build very impressive snowmen.
January does, after all, have its redeeming features. From a personal view I'm rather hoping that my team West Ham United emerge in May unscathed, untainted and completely intact. Maybe we'll still be a functioning and successful Premier League team next season or maybe horror of horrors the axe will fall and the Hammers will be condemned to Championship oblivion. Mind you, my team have been there before so maybe I should close my eyes, take a deep breath and hope that West Ham finish 15th, 16th or even 17th. This, I believe,is a sensible objective but if not then maybe I'll support Leyton Orient, Dagenham and Redbridge, Rochdale or Grimsby Town. Maybe I'll switch sports and follow lacrosse, real tennis, fishing or hockey.
Still it doesn't really matter to me to quote Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. I'm inclined to think that 2017 will have the right chemistry, the right chemical formula and we'll look back very reflectively on 2016 with a regretful shrug. Personally I found a renewed burst of energy and started running again. There are times when I wish I hadn't bothered. The years are beginning to pass and I need to keep my body moving. Of course I feel slightly the worse for wear and age is beginning to poke me in the ribs quite painfully at times. There is still a sense though that age is flying past me inexorably and uncompromisingly.
And now it is that I settle down on this second day of 2017. Will the Hammers beat Jose Mourinho's all conquering Manchester United this evening. To be honest the emotions are mixed. How can I allow an allegiance to my football team affect me quite as deeply as it does. Of course it isn't the end of the world and there are matters of much greater importance and meaning afoot.
I still think we should raise a glass to our noble and upstanding Olympians Nicola Adams, a boxing legend in her right, Sir Bradley Wiggins, a cycling master, the aforementioned Sir Andy Murray, Britain's most outright, clearly talented, vastly skilful tennis player and those who participate in sport for the sheer fun of it and no adulation whatsoever. 2017 is going to be our year, our time, our turn in the spotlight, our chance to shine, our moment to carve out our identity, to assert ourselves and make sure that everybody sings from the same hymn sheet. Yes 2017 I have every faith in you. Let the year begin.
Good morning everybody. Well, how do you feel? Is there a spritely spring in your step? Are you looking forward to 2017 or are you secretly fearing the worst. Will there be another barrage of bad news, cynical comments about the end of the world being nigh or will it be another year of greyness, gloom and disaster? Surely not. And yet there are plenty of doom mongers and naysayers who believe that come the end of the year all will be wreckage, carnage, broken promises and yet more disenchantment.
But I have to tell you. Let's just go for it this year. Of course it's only January, the beginning of a New Year and it's time to wipe the slate clean. It's time to hope that the next President of the United States Donald Trump will get it completely right and surprise us all. It's time to believe that the nations of the world will finally wake up and smell the coffee. The world needs a collective meeting of minds, a sense of enduring harmony, a feeling that if it really tries it can build bridges and find common ground.
Now of course this is an idealistic pipedream because in the real world some people just aren't interested at all in just getting on with each other. Clearly it does seem at times that this peace agenda is just pie in the sky nonsense and maybe we should continue this narrative of killing, murder, destruction and general brutality. Sadly this is beginning to sound like a cracked record unless somebody out there can just stand their ground and just say. Enough is Enough!
So January hey. It's long, slow, laborious and seemingly endless. January is a time for a new perspective on life, another opportunity to approach life from entirely different angles. January is just very lazy, lackadaisical and just can't be bothered to do anything strenuous. January is very laid back, relaxed and easy like Sunday morning. January is a wide, yawning gap stretching in front of us, It always feels like January just goes on for ever and ever. It is the longest month of the year and it just seems to lumber and stagger towards its conclusion with an aching reluctance. Will you please hurry up January or maybe not.
To those people who hate those dark wintry nights January may seem very dull, plodding and pedestrian. But I think we should celebrate the warmth indoors when the lights come on at roughly 5pm in the afternoon and the telly flickers like the proverbial candle. But January loves that feeling of security, of safety. of knowing that whatever may be going on outside most of us feel protected from a world that sometimes seems obscenely frightening, horribly dangerous and constantly threatening.
January represents the beginning of that new chapter of our life, of formulating plans for spring and summer, of being sloppy, slovenly and lethargic at times but still engaged at the same time. January is the perfect time to sit back very objectively and decide that maybe the world isn't such a bad place after all and maybe we'll learn to iron out all those negatives, deficiencies and shortcomings that the world may be weighed down by.
January is full of weariness, lethargy and perhaps an overwhelming sense of anti climax. Look at those drooping, forlorn Christmas decorations, the Christmas tree tilting over to one side as if ever so slightly drunk and then the tinsel by now dropping sadly onto the backs of chairs and sofas, perhaps crying and weeping at the end of all those frivolous festivities. If January could talk perhaps it would ask if it could do Christmas next month. But then the harsh reality dawns and January stares at the last bottle of port and parts company with on old friend for another year. Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.
I can sense an air of quiet resignation in January. Oh well Christmas, rather like a very dear acquaintance, can't wait to meet up again at the end of the year. January needs a very strong cup of coffee, something to re-vitalise it before it just falls into a deep depresssion and self pity. It's time to seize the day. And yet Jaunary is forgivably tired and weary. But to all intents and purposes, January is suffering from a dour despondency because nothing will ever compare to the sheer elation of December, Christmas and happy cracker pulling. Still it's time to shake ourselves from temporary slovenliness and complacency. Time to surge forward into the future and stop dwelling on the past.
Tomorrow we'll all get back to some semblance of normality and January will jump out of bed in the morning, throwing water onto its face in the bathroom, brushing its teeth and just looking good. Of course the world has its problems and complications but January must be thinking about the months ahead quite philosophically and realistically. What's the worst that can happen?
January looks over its shoulder and believes that 2016 was quite the most appalling year it can remember. It was a year that slowly deteriorated into a complete mess. With every passing month, the disagreement and discord seemed to become more more frequent and more disturbing. Slowly but surely Britain crumbled away like a dusty old pillar, dissolving helplessly into the darkest hole of dejection. Can anybody tell me what all the fuss was about?
And yet Britain's withdrawal from Europe now seems like ancient history and perhaps we should concentrate on some other pressing domestic issue. Please spare me the endless discussion and ranting from those annoyingly soundbite poliiticians. It really is time to let it go and refrain from this raging rhetoric. this futile finger pointing, those slanderous accusations, the hot and bothered brigade, the furious, irate and incensed party. It just seems to go on and on without pausing for breath. Let's change the subject.
January has to be feeling a mellowness and gentle acceptance about life. The streets and roads are still deserted, Santa Claus is just an old jolly seasonal joke and the neighbours are still very friendly and approachable. So nothing has changed dramatically. The postman still pushes dutiful letters through your letter boxes and the dustman still looks very chipper.. All is well on earth. The traffic is increasing in its intensity and the world is beginning to right itself. The pavements are wet and sodden and it may yet snow. Perhaps the children of the world will run out into the streets enthusiastically and chuck snow balls at each other and build very impressive snowmen.
January does, after all, have its redeeming features. From a personal view I'm rather hoping that my team West Ham United emerge in May unscathed, untainted and completely intact. Maybe we'll still be a functioning and successful Premier League team next season or maybe horror of horrors the axe will fall and the Hammers will be condemned to Championship oblivion. Mind you, my team have been there before so maybe I should close my eyes, take a deep breath and hope that West Ham finish 15th, 16th or even 17th. This, I believe,is a sensible objective but if not then maybe I'll support Leyton Orient, Dagenham and Redbridge, Rochdale or Grimsby Town. Maybe I'll switch sports and follow lacrosse, real tennis, fishing or hockey.
Still it doesn't really matter to me to quote Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. I'm inclined to think that 2017 will have the right chemistry, the right chemical formula and we'll look back very reflectively on 2016 with a regretful shrug. Personally I found a renewed burst of energy and started running again. There are times when I wish I hadn't bothered. The years are beginning to pass and I need to keep my body moving. Of course I feel slightly the worse for wear and age is beginning to poke me in the ribs quite painfully at times. There is still a sense though that age is flying past me inexorably and uncompromisingly.
And now it is that I settle down on this second day of 2017. Will the Hammers beat Jose Mourinho's all conquering Manchester United this evening. To be honest the emotions are mixed. How can I allow an allegiance to my football team affect me quite as deeply as it does. Of course it isn't the end of the world and there are matters of much greater importance and meaning afoot.
I still think we should raise a glass to our noble and upstanding Olympians Nicola Adams, a boxing legend in her right, Sir Bradley Wiggins, a cycling master, the aforementioned Sir Andy Murray, Britain's most outright, clearly talented, vastly skilful tennis player and those who participate in sport for the sheer fun of it and no adulation whatsoever. 2017 is going to be our year, our time, our turn in the spotlight, our chance to shine, our moment to carve out our identity, to assert ourselves and make sure that everybody sings from the same hymn sheet. Yes 2017 I have every faith in you. Let the year begin.
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