Racism and black footballers.
In Channel Four's fascinating programme about the emergence of black footballers in British football we were reminded harshly of the dreadfully appalling advent of violent racism in English football and how it came to deface and disfigure the game for most of the 1970s and, quite certainly, the 1980s. For some of us it began to look like a nasty epidemic that refused to go away and couldn't be stamped out however much society and the FA did their utmost to 'Kick Out Racism', now very much a symbolic attempt to remove this vile stench.
Back in the early 1970s my team West Ham United unveiled one of the first black players in the modern era to tread the old First Division boards. Clyde Best, although apparently barrel chested and stocky, became one of the most popular and much loved of players ever to join the East London club.
Of course he looked big but there was always something of the muscular boxing heavyweight about Best that instantly endeared himself to the Upton Park crowd. Best was tireless, always chasing lost causes and could always be relied on to score a considerable number of goals. Best was always in the right place and the right time to pick up the loose ends and could hit the target with some frequency.
Sadly though, Best would also become the unwitting victim of ugly racism and prejudice, a player now victimised, laughed at and ridiculed because of the colour of his skin. There were the familiar banana skins, the disgraceful monkey noises and the constant shadow of hatred and intolerance. Best was though bigger than that and rose above the moronic chants, allowing both his head and feet to do all the talking for him.
Over the last two nights Channel Four have endeavoured to show in some graphic detail some of those ghastly images, sights and sounds which provided an almost humiliating backdrop to Britain's back street and inner city culture during the 1970s. Introduced by prolific and former Arsenal striker Ian Wright, some of the many black players who so illuminated the old First Division and then, more recently the Premier League, were wonderfully highlighted, players with genuine talent, an eloquent turn of phrase and a lightning burst of pace.
In the first programme Paul Canoville, the old Chelsea striker came under the spotlight. Canoville could never be compared to some of his illustrious predecessors such as Jimmy Greaves, ironically a Chelsea favourite at the start of his career. Nor was Canoville a Tommy Lawton, Dixie Dean nor a Gary Lineker. But he did know where the goal was and scored quite regularly for Chelsea, eventually winning over the racists, cynics and those who were never entirely sure about Canoville.
Perhaps the most disturbing commentary behind Canoville's debut was the one that the Chelsea fans had reserved for him on his Chelsea debut. Booed viciously and vilified senselessly by the Stamford Bridge Canoville must have felt like a pariah or some alien with green horns sticking out of his head.
Later on in the programme there was Vince Hilaire, unquestionably one of the cleverest, most original and elusive wingers in the English old First Division. In the red and blue stripes of Crystal Palace was an overnight sensation, a player of blistering pace, incomparable ball control and a player with the capacity to bring the Palace crowd to life. Hilaire was fast, direct, always demanding the ball rather like the kid in the playground and always running, darting, weaving and turning in equal measure.
When the then manager Malcolm Allison first saw Hilaire he knew that the boy would wear an England shirt. The only obstacle though that Hilaire would have to overcome was the ever present racism still poisoning the English game. And yet coming as he did from the West Ham catchment area Hilaire knew that even the West Ham supporters could instantly recognise an outstanding player when they saw one and Hilaire ticked all the right boxes.
At Nottingham Forest Brian Clough was assembling one of the most meticulously crafted teams in the top flight and then there was Viv Anderson. Anderson was leggy, athletic, adventurous, confident and black. Soon Anderson would reach the very pinnacle of the game with promotion to the England side. Anderson was assured, always galloping into space, gobbling up the ground in long, purposeful strides and never afraid to try his luck with a goal or shot or two.
Almost immediately, the Forest fans the City ground fell in love with Anderson's hugely progressive style. Anderson told the amusing story of the time when, after some of the less desirable of the away fans had pelted him with oranges, bananas, apples and pears, Clough had ordered Anderson to get him some fruit for him. When Anderson made his England debut, a whole nation greeted him with all the warmth and adulation that was long overdue.
Throughout both episodes of Out of the Skin, one player featured most prominently and tragically. Cyrille Regis, a West Bronwich Albion player through and through affectionately became known as one of the Three Degrees, a reference to the all girl, black soul group from the 1970s. Regis who died most prematurely, was a broad shouldered, powerful, thick thighed, bustling, barging and vastly intelligent striker who had everything in his CV. Regis was another cruiserweight who could well have given Mike Tyson a run for his money had he felt so inclined.
In one incredible First Division match toward the end of the 1970s Regis was just one of the three stormtroopers who would eventually destroy and embarrass Manchester United at a mud bath of a pitch at Old Trafford. Alongside the equally as talented, fleet of feet and twinkle toed Laurie Cunningham, a superlative winger of frightening speed, Brenda Batson mopping up unfussily at the back for West Brom and Regis bearing down on the United goal like a wrecking ball, West Brom came through with a stunningly comfortable 5-3 victory. It was Regis at his most fluent and lethal. None would ever forget it.
Last night it was Paul Ince's to explain what it meant to be the first black England captain, a notable accolade and honour that Ince was at pains to emphasise. Ince who began at West Ham and then moved onto a big money signing at Manchester United, pointed out how good it must have felt to not only pull on the England shirt but bring up his children in a society that had now fully accepted him. Ince was seen playing football with his son in the family and it must have represented, you felt sure, the ultimate recognition and a deeply satisfying moment in his career.
Then of course during the 1980's there was John Barnes, a magnificent and supremely well balanced winger who, for a number of years through that decade, became untouchable, unplayable and unfathomable if only because helpless defenders had not a clue where Barnes was going. Barnes drifted over the muck and brass that was an old English pitch like a floating cloud in the sky, carrying the ball for what seemed a lifetime and then swotting aside players as if they were still in the dressing room.
John Barnes was a footballing academic, full of footballing degrees, Bachelor of Arts degrees, Bachelor of Science degrees and the most learned of graduates. Barnes was born to be a footballer, a player of slinky movement, lovely body swerve, cultured feet and glorious originality. Barnes glided, danced and then finished off those damaging runs with goals to remember. There was an air of footballing deception about Barnes, a secretive, stealthy manner that none could quite figure out.
In 1984, Barnes was single handedly responsible for breaking into a Brazilian defence in the old Maracana Stadium and completing surely one of the best goals ever scored by an Englishman in Brazil. This was a friendly match but for Barnes this was a goal par excellence, a magnum opus of a goal, a goal picked from the most expensive jewellery box of English international football.
Picking the ball up from way out on the touchline, Barnes moved onto the ball before executing some of the most elegant waltzes ever encountered in an England shirt. In fact Strauss would have been enormously flattered had he seen it. Barnes, slowly gathering pace and momentum, stepped in and out of trailing legs, dribbling with unreasonable ease, then jinking in between the yellow Brazilian shirts, rounding the goalkeeper and slotting the ball into the net as if he'd practised the same move every day in training.
Two years later Barnes was this time very much the life and soul of the party, the catalyst, the engine room, the sparking plug who would entertain, excite and then electrify the English fans. In the 1986 World Cup held in Mexico Barnes, accompanied bravely by Peter Reid, Trevor Stephen, Gary Lineker and Peter Beardsley, came on as a substitute against Argentina when it may have been too late. Barnes cross to the far post was converted but Argentina, who had led through a criminally illegal goal from Diego Maradona and a brilliant second, won the game narrowly.
So it was that in more recent times that Ashley Cole would become one of the most consistently safe and dependable of England full backs. Capped 100 times Cole, who began his career with Arsenal, was rightly or wrongly accused of becoming greedy, obsessed with the tag of being one of the wealthiest players in the Premier League, a player only concerned with feathering his own nest and disregarding the rest.
After winning three Premier League titles with Chelsea and a Champions League medal or two as well as the FA Cup, Cole would be forgiven for feeling very smug and vindicated. Cole now lives in America and the citizens in Los Angeles who supported him as an LA Galaxy can only be grateful that a heavily capped England player was in their ranks.
For those who were brought up in the era when black footballers gave so much enthusiasm and energy to the game, Channel Four's Out of Their Skin underlined again the sterling contributions they have made to English football. Talking of which the end of the programme was devoted to one Raheem Sterling, a delightful touch player if perhaps given to clumsy blunders and clod hopping aberrations.
When Sterling was also hounded out by the boo boys the gun tattoo on his ankle was rightly misinterpreted. But the Liverpool player was just one of the many impressive players to have shone so brightly in this year's World Cup in Russia. They say black is beautiful and how true that statement is.
Thursday, 29 November 2018
Tuesday, 27 November 2018
Tina Turner- the singer of soul and feeling.
Tina Turner- the singer of soul and feeling.
The words and sentences may be more measured now but Tina Turner has always been the soul singer with heart, passion and soul, a woman of red blooded intensity, vocal ferocity and irrepressible power. Now though might be the right time to slow down, smell the roses perhaps, sit back and luxuriate on a mammoth and phenomenal career which started as a trainee nurse and ended up in one of the most turbulent relationships - marriage with a man called Ike.
Last night on BBC1's excellent documentary and life story of the one and only Tina Turner we were taken on a whistlestop tour of Turner's painfully harrowing if ultimately triumphant life. Turner was thoughtful, but assured, happy yet regretful, searingly honest and sometimes bittersweet into the bargain. She didn't blame anybody as such but did give a very moving account of how life's initially smooth progress was tragically stalled before dropping through the trapdoor of a disastrous downward spiral. But then she clambered her way back into daylight and it all came right.
The programme featured, quite obviously, Turner's almost constantly abusive and explosive relationship with husband Ike which must have driven her to the edge of the precipice. But then the feisty and superbly resilient Turner came back once again and proved that life without Ike could indeed be both beneficial and ultimately successful. In fact when Turner eventually split with Ike it may have been one of the greatest days in her life.
Starting out on life training to be a nurse, Turner one day decided that a life in a clinical hospital ward wasn't for her. Turner wanted to become one of the most famous soul singing divas the world had ever seen. We would soon be introduced to one of the most rasping, husky and unforgettable voices in the history of pop and soul music. Turner was like a stick of dynamite, her voice blasting out across the vast concert stadiums and echoing across borders and continents with a dynamism and force that spanned the 1960s and then the following decades.
Now living in Switzerland with her new partner, Turner talked revealingly about the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, the emotional minefield which threatened to blow up with quite the most serious consequences and then more about the destructive Ike. There was the violent Ike, the aggressive Ike, the flare ups, the friction, the fights and battles that came to characterise their marriage from hell. It soon became clear that Turner had to get out of this toxic husband and wife alliance. She was throwing her career away because a troubled man couldn't control his anger.
After her debut single 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' with Ike had broken into the American charts, Tuner found that maybe the song did have an appropriate resonance. Clearly, both Ike and Tina looked as though they were ideally suited to each other, that it could work out in the long term. Then there were the ugly quarrels, the drink problems, the traumatic days and months when nothing seemed to go right. They fell out wildly, fought like cat and dog and then discovered that things couldn't continue in the way they had been.
Turner quite candidly admits that Ike made her feel like a prisoner, stifling her, cramping her style, confining her to a bit part in the partnership. Maybe there was a part of Tina that might have privately suspected that had she carried on with Ike then a blossoming career would just sink without trace. But then Turner must have found the keys to unlock her from this living hell. And then both Ike and Tina met up with a man called Phil Spector.
Spector was an ingenious, speculative, inventive and pioneering record producer with a treasure chest of new sounds and markedly different approaches to pop music. Spector gave us the 'Wall of Sound', a truly remarkable approach to music and its content. River Deep Mountain High would become one of the most defining, iconic, groundbreaking songs the 1960s would ever know.
River Deep Mountain High would be the dramatic launching pad for Tina and Ike Turner. Suddenly the backing track for a hit single would sound like something from a big budget Hollywood film. A big orchestral instrumental production would change Ike and Tina's life for ever more. It was rather like admiring a three dimensional piece of art work where all the surfaces and textures of the record would take the breath away.
By the end Tina Turner was on her own after kicking Ike into touch and leaving him to dwell on what might have been. There followed the Tina renaissance, a reinvention of the singer she used to be but now in a new environment and a much more positive place in her life. She would single handedly write out one of the most classical rags to riches stories America would ever witness. She may have been on her own but the life of a solo singer had to be preferable to an utterly dysfunctional one with Ike.
So it was that we had I Don't Wanna Fight, Private Dancer, Steamy Windows, Let's Stay Together and What's Love Got to Do With It and who could ever forget The Best, Simply the Best. Turner had burst out of her prison cell, thrown off the shackles, busting the chains of torment and heartache that might have trapped her forever. Turner was the liberated soul, free to go where ever she wanted and do whatever she liked, released from what must have been the terrifying ordeal that was being with Ike.
With those still thick red pouting lips, frizzy hair that seemed to bounce buoyantly on her head and a voice that still crackles with energy, Turner is now relaxed, totally confessional, even more frank and determined to let the whole world know that she could still belt out a song from the heart. The overwhelming pressures, stresses and anxieties that may have pulled her down were no longer in evidence. She'd battled back from the brink, forgotten the wretched Ike and now just wanted to concentrate on the more important priorities that life would have in store for her.
Turner married for the second time her German record company executive and, for all the world, appeared as though the weight of the world had been yanked from her tired shoulders. The aches and pains were still there but when all was said and done, Tina Turner had come through the bad times, fought against the dire predicaments, survived the vices and just got on with it when the critics just wanted their pound of flesh.
Nowadays Turner lives in Switzerland, perhaps one of Europe's safest and most neutral havens where nobody can disturb her domestic idyll. In the final minutes of last night's warts and all Tina Turner life story, she reflected perhaps sadly on the America she'd grown to love while she was growing up but an America that had now lost its way. Of course America would always be there for her and the sense of nostalgic yearning for her birthplace had to be recognised. But this was a new chapter, a clean page.
But Switzerland is where the soul singing legend wanted to be and besides who wouldn't want to be subjected to the sound of those famous cuckoo clocks on a chilly November evening? Simply the Best may sound like the most gross exaggeration but then again she can still deliver a song and of that there can never be any doubt.
The words and sentences may be more measured now but Tina Turner has always been the soul singer with heart, passion and soul, a woman of red blooded intensity, vocal ferocity and irrepressible power. Now though might be the right time to slow down, smell the roses perhaps, sit back and luxuriate on a mammoth and phenomenal career which started as a trainee nurse and ended up in one of the most turbulent relationships - marriage with a man called Ike.
Last night on BBC1's excellent documentary and life story of the one and only Tina Turner we were taken on a whistlestop tour of Turner's painfully harrowing if ultimately triumphant life. Turner was thoughtful, but assured, happy yet regretful, searingly honest and sometimes bittersweet into the bargain. She didn't blame anybody as such but did give a very moving account of how life's initially smooth progress was tragically stalled before dropping through the trapdoor of a disastrous downward spiral. But then she clambered her way back into daylight and it all came right.
The programme featured, quite obviously, Turner's almost constantly abusive and explosive relationship with husband Ike which must have driven her to the edge of the precipice. But then the feisty and superbly resilient Turner came back once again and proved that life without Ike could indeed be both beneficial and ultimately successful. In fact when Turner eventually split with Ike it may have been one of the greatest days in her life.
Starting out on life training to be a nurse, Turner one day decided that a life in a clinical hospital ward wasn't for her. Turner wanted to become one of the most famous soul singing divas the world had ever seen. We would soon be introduced to one of the most rasping, husky and unforgettable voices in the history of pop and soul music. Turner was like a stick of dynamite, her voice blasting out across the vast concert stadiums and echoing across borders and continents with a dynamism and force that spanned the 1960s and then the following decades.
Now living in Switzerland with her new partner, Turner talked revealingly about the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, the emotional minefield which threatened to blow up with quite the most serious consequences and then more about the destructive Ike. There was the violent Ike, the aggressive Ike, the flare ups, the friction, the fights and battles that came to characterise their marriage from hell. It soon became clear that Turner had to get out of this toxic husband and wife alliance. She was throwing her career away because a troubled man couldn't control his anger.
After her debut single 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' with Ike had broken into the American charts, Tuner found that maybe the song did have an appropriate resonance. Clearly, both Ike and Tina looked as though they were ideally suited to each other, that it could work out in the long term. Then there were the ugly quarrels, the drink problems, the traumatic days and months when nothing seemed to go right. They fell out wildly, fought like cat and dog and then discovered that things couldn't continue in the way they had been.
Turner quite candidly admits that Ike made her feel like a prisoner, stifling her, cramping her style, confining her to a bit part in the partnership. Maybe there was a part of Tina that might have privately suspected that had she carried on with Ike then a blossoming career would just sink without trace. But then Turner must have found the keys to unlock her from this living hell. And then both Ike and Tina met up with a man called Phil Spector.
Spector was an ingenious, speculative, inventive and pioneering record producer with a treasure chest of new sounds and markedly different approaches to pop music. Spector gave us the 'Wall of Sound', a truly remarkable approach to music and its content. River Deep Mountain High would become one of the most defining, iconic, groundbreaking songs the 1960s would ever know.
River Deep Mountain High would be the dramatic launching pad for Tina and Ike Turner. Suddenly the backing track for a hit single would sound like something from a big budget Hollywood film. A big orchestral instrumental production would change Ike and Tina's life for ever more. It was rather like admiring a three dimensional piece of art work where all the surfaces and textures of the record would take the breath away.
By the end Tina Turner was on her own after kicking Ike into touch and leaving him to dwell on what might have been. There followed the Tina renaissance, a reinvention of the singer she used to be but now in a new environment and a much more positive place in her life. She would single handedly write out one of the most classical rags to riches stories America would ever witness. She may have been on her own but the life of a solo singer had to be preferable to an utterly dysfunctional one with Ike.
So it was that we had I Don't Wanna Fight, Private Dancer, Steamy Windows, Let's Stay Together and What's Love Got to Do With It and who could ever forget The Best, Simply the Best. Turner had burst out of her prison cell, thrown off the shackles, busting the chains of torment and heartache that might have trapped her forever. Turner was the liberated soul, free to go where ever she wanted and do whatever she liked, released from what must have been the terrifying ordeal that was being with Ike.
With those still thick red pouting lips, frizzy hair that seemed to bounce buoyantly on her head and a voice that still crackles with energy, Turner is now relaxed, totally confessional, even more frank and determined to let the whole world know that she could still belt out a song from the heart. The overwhelming pressures, stresses and anxieties that may have pulled her down were no longer in evidence. She'd battled back from the brink, forgotten the wretched Ike and now just wanted to concentrate on the more important priorities that life would have in store for her.
Turner married for the second time her German record company executive and, for all the world, appeared as though the weight of the world had been yanked from her tired shoulders. The aches and pains were still there but when all was said and done, Tina Turner had come through the bad times, fought against the dire predicaments, survived the vices and just got on with it when the critics just wanted their pound of flesh.
Nowadays Turner lives in Switzerland, perhaps one of Europe's safest and most neutral havens where nobody can disturb her domestic idyll. In the final minutes of last night's warts and all Tina Turner life story, she reflected perhaps sadly on the America she'd grown to love while she was growing up but an America that had now lost its way. Of course America would always be there for her and the sense of nostalgic yearning for her birthplace had to be recognised. But this was a new chapter, a clean page.
But Switzerland is where the soul singing legend wanted to be and besides who wouldn't want to be subjected to the sound of those famous cuckoo clocks on a chilly November evening? Simply the Best may sound like the most gross exaggeration but then again she can still deliver a song and of that there can never be any doubt.
Sunday, 25 November 2018
42nd Street- a West End musical tour de force.
42nd Street- a West End musical tour de force.
You walked among the richly imposing paintings and marbled splendour of the Drury Lane theatre. Here in London's seething, teeming, hip hopping, break dancing West End you marvelled at London's glittering history and tradition. It was simply breathtaking but then you've always known that to be the case anyway so nothing has changed.
You then cast your eyes at the stunning statues in the foyer, taken aback by their ever present and uncompromising beauty. Your eyes felt quite honoured because this is the way it's always been and always will be hopefully. It was the very heartbeat of the West End and that old pulmonary system with all of its surrounding nerve endings and arteries, is in the rudest health. Once again the world of show business was alive and well, its musical heritage maintained quite brilliantly.
For what seemed the best part of just over two hours, 42nd Street, undoubtedly one of the glitziest, chintziest and glamorous of all musicals did the trick once again. Of course those long running musicals which have so captured the public's imagination for much longer than 42nd Street are now festively festooned around the West End like the glinting jewels in a thousand crowns.
Outside in the glorious Covent Garden piazza a million lights twinkled around the whole of the old fruit and vegetable market stalls, Christmas trees firmly planted in comfortable corners of the huge square. It was the perfect night for watching one of those delightfully old fashioned West End musicals that never seem to lose their lustre. Somehow the West End always makes you feel good, re-affirming all the good things in life and never disappointing.
So it was that my wife and I settled down to watch 42nd Street, quite the most astounding, outstanding, showbiz oriented extravaganza, a magnificently theatrical joy ride, a spectacular musical journey into the world of old time vaudeville, charming cabaret and drama queen histrionics. But above all this was all about tap dancing, tap dancing galore and tap dancing that seemed to get progressively faster with every second.
This was mesmerising tap dancing at its most extraordinary, a whole cast of naturally gifted tap dancers who couldn't help but enjoy themselves and knew they were creating something pretty special. This was a clattering, chattering, stomping, stirring, pulsating, unbelievably perfect tapfest. For much of the performance you were reminded of a hundred typewriters, as straight backed legal secretaries finished those final letters of the day.
The story is a simple one. A whole troupe of ambitious dancers and vast egos compete for a place in the Pretty Lady Broadway show to end all shows. They pout, pose, leap into the air, the men flirting playfully and outrageously and the women teasingly returning the favour. They fall out, argue endlessly, make up constantly, engage in interminable slanging matches and then find themselves consumed with jealousy when one thinks the other is getting far more publicity than the other.
Undoubtedly the most familiar face in 42nd Street is Bonnie Langford, a child star and now model showbiz role model, all vividly oozing red lipstick and a woman of a thousand dresses. Langford is deliciously pretentious, full of prima donna strops, moody tantrums and eternally beaming smiles that seem to illuminate the whole of the Drury Lane stage with the most dazzling panache.
Langford, who first came to our notice on a late 1960s children's TV programme in Britain called Junior Showtime, has now blossomed into a performer of star quality. She went on to appear in Just William and threatened to scweam and scweam if she didn't get her way. Now though Langford is the finished article, a figure of perpetual motion, swaying and pirouetting on the most nimble feet elegantly and terribly light heartedly without a care in the world.
After many a rehearsal we were then treated to all of the 42nd Street classics such as 'I Only Have Eyes for You' covered most lovingly by Art Garfunkel during the 1970s, the mercenary, money grabbing 'We're in the Money' and the all conquering, sweepingly joyful 'Lullaby of Broadway'. Smartly suited men with dapper scarves and women in the most flowing of dresses floated and swirled through well disciplined routines of tapping and variations on more tapping.
This was quite the most remarkable cavalcade of tap dancing, row upon row of high kicking, barely believable sequences. On the stage three staircases of feet pounded away furiously and frenetically, a whirlwind of flying feet in perfect harmony. Then all you could hear were what sounded like a factory of shoes and feet, pittering and pattering away energetically like that industrious typing pool.
By the end the Regency Club, which had now become the ideal setting for these tap dancing geniuses, finally celebrated the Pretty Lady box office Broadway blockbuster they must have known it would be. On the show went sounding like that relentless Morse Code of messages across the stage, tapping and rapping, tripping the light fantastic, never stopping and never pausing for breath.
42nd Street is one of those legendary musicals that remain a timeless treasure trove of the early 20th century American songbook. It's full of showbiz tongue in cheek, funny, impossibly facetious at times and then full of thrilling exhibitions of effortless tap dancing. How could you resist 42nd Street particularly on a nippy, chilly but still pleasant Saturday evening towards the end of November? Go on indulge yourself in the ultimate of showbiz musicals. The West End will embrace you with welcoming arms. It'll make your heart sing.
You walked among the richly imposing paintings and marbled splendour of the Drury Lane theatre. Here in London's seething, teeming, hip hopping, break dancing West End you marvelled at London's glittering history and tradition. It was simply breathtaking but then you've always known that to be the case anyway so nothing has changed.
You then cast your eyes at the stunning statues in the foyer, taken aback by their ever present and uncompromising beauty. Your eyes felt quite honoured because this is the way it's always been and always will be hopefully. It was the very heartbeat of the West End and that old pulmonary system with all of its surrounding nerve endings and arteries, is in the rudest health. Once again the world of show business was alive and well, its musical heritage maintained quite brilliantly.
For what seemed the best part of just over two hours, 42nd Street, undoubtedly one of the glitziest, chintziest and glamorous of all musicals did the trick once again. Of course those long running musicals which have so captured the public's imagination for much longer than 42nd Street are now festively festooned around the West End like the glinting jewels in a thousand crowns.
Outside in the glorious Covent Garden piazza a million lights twinkled around the whole of the old fruit and vegetable market stalls, Christmas trees firmly planted in comfortable corners of the huge square. It was the perfect night for watching one of those delightfully old fashioned West End musicals that never seem to lose their lustre. Somehow the West End always makes you feel good, re-affirming all the good things in life and never disappointing.
So it was that my wife and I settled down to watch 42nd Street, quite the most astounding, outstanding, showbiz oriented extravaganza, a magnificently theatrical joy ride, a spectacular musical journey into the world of old time vaudeville, charming cabaret and drama queen histrionics. But above all this was all about tap dancing, tap dancing galore and tap dancing that seemed to get progressively faster with every second.
This was mesmerising tap dancing at its most extraordinary, a whole cast of naturally gifted tap dancers who couldn't help but enjoy themselves and knew they were creating something pretty special. This was a clattering, chattering, stomping, stirring, pulsating, unbelievably perfect tapfest. For much of the performance you were reminded of a hundred typewriters, as straight backed legal secretaries finished those final letters of the day.
The story is a simple one. A whole troupe of ambitious dancers and vast egos compete for a place in the Pretty Lady Broadway show to end all shows. They pout, pose, leap into the air, the men flirting playfully and outrageously and the women teasingly returning the favour. They fall out, argue endlessly, make up constantly, engage in interminable slanging matches and then find themselves consumed with jealousy when one thinks the other is getting far more publicity than the other.
Undoubtedly the most familiar face in 42nd Street is Bonnie Langford, a child star and now model showbiz role model, all vividly oozing red lipstick and a woman of a thousand dresses. Langford is deliciously pretentious, full of prima donna strops, moody tantrums and eternally beaming smiles that seem to illuminate the whole of the Drury Lane stage with the most dazzling panache.
Langford, who first came to our notice on a late 1960s children's TV programme in Britain called Junior Showtime, has now blossomed into a performer of star quality. She went on to appear in Just William and threatened to scweam and scweam if she didn't get her way. Now though Langford is the finished article, a figure of perpetual motion, swaying and pirouetting on the most nimble feet elegantly and terribly light heartedly without a care in the world.
After many a rehearsal we were then treated to all of the 42nd Street classics such as 'I Only Have Eyes for You' covered most lovingly by Art Garfunkel during the 1970s, the mercenary, money grabbing 'We're in the Money' and the all conquering, sweepingly joyful 'Lullaby of Broadway'. Smartly suited men with dapper scarves and women in the most flowing of dresses floated and swirled through well disciplined routines of tapping and variations on more tapping.
This was quite the most remarkable cavalcade of tap dancing, row upon row of high kicking, barely believable sequences. On the stage three staircases of feet pounded away furiously and frenetically, a whirlwind of flying feet in perfect harmony. Then all you could hear were what sounded like a factory of shoes and feet, pittering and pattering away energetically like that industrious typing pool.
By the end the Regency Club, which had now become the ideal setting for these tap dancing geniuses, finally celebrated the Pretty Lady box office Broadway blockbuster they must have known it would be. On the show went sounding like that relentless Morse Code of messages across the stage, tapping and rapping, tripping the light fantastic, never stopping and never pausing for breath.
42nd Street is one of those legendary musicals that remain a timeless treasure trove of the early 20th century American songbook. It's full of showbiz tongue in cheek, funny, impossibly facetious at times and then full of thrilling exhibitions of effortless tap dancing. How could you resist 42nd Street particularly on a nippy, chilly but still pleasant Saturday evening towards the end of November? Go on indulge yourself in the ultimate of showbiz musicals. The West End will embrace you with welcoming arms. It'll make your heart sing.
Friday, 23 November 2018
Another year older.
Another year older.
There must come a point in our lives when our birthday fails to capture your imagination in the way it might have done 20 or 30 years ago. It just seems like the passing of another year, that moment of transition when the significance of the day doesn't quite hold the same fascination that it should. Still, it'll be lovely to see my loving and supportive family and tonight a quiet Shabbat evening with very close family will have a special resonance.
Long gone though are those days of youthful merriment when all of your school friends or people you grew up would lavish you with presents and games thickly wrapped in veritable rainforests of paper whereupon mum and dad would rush into the living room, gather up all of your mates and decide quite emphatically that this would be the ideal moment to play Pass the Parcel or Musical Chairs.
Then the ropiest of record players would boom out of the tiniest of speakers and a spontaneous outburst of raucous laughter and ear splitting screaming would follow almost naturally. All of the kids would frantically scramble around for the most advantageous position equipped with nothing more than an uncontrollable urge to create merry hell and havoc. Was it always the way with children? They love to be the centre of the attention, hogging the limelight, good naturedly excitable but still a lovable nuisance.
But now at the ripe old age of 56 these are the years of proud parenthood, reflecting fondly on those halcyon days when we were kids, caught up in the throes of joyful curiosity and discovery, when life was all about blowing out candles on birthday cakes and the children's entertainer would blow up balloons, pulling rabbits out of hats, performing yet another set of magic tricks and then producing silk handkerchiefs out of nothing. Then if you came from Kensington and Chelsea you would probably get tea and scones with tiny sandwiches shaped in small triangles. Oh for the joys of the privileged classes.
Nowadays birthdays are much more elaborate occasions than perhaps they used to be. Now of course the children of today not only expect better looking presents they will undoubtedly demand them. In our day it was the traditional Lego or Meccano, that wonderfully intriguing mix of coloured bricks and in later years, electrical mechanisms that would light up without any prompting.
In the earliest of years it was the good old fashioned, tried and trusted box set of clay or plasticine followed later on in life with the ingenious Etch A Sketch, an object which would immeasurably enhance your artistic capabilities to such a point that some of us may have thought that by our eighth birthday we must have felt that we were ready to become accomplished graphic designers.
Then we were confronted with Ker Plunk and Frustration which in their varying ways were solely designed to send us into a mild state of panic, bewildered children who didn't quite know what we were supposed to do with such strange kids toys.
Frustration was fun in its way but hardly intellectually stimulating in as much that you weren't sure why you were given these quaint looking counters and then clearly instructed to move those counters around a plastic board. Then by some miracle of science you would be eventually acclaimed as winner if you'd managed to land all of the said counters in a straight row, the number six taking a prominent role in your victory.
Ker Plunk seemed to pass me by but having been subjected to innumerably repetitive TV advertising campaigns at roughly this time of the year, it still seems to be shrouded in the thick mists of mystery that never really lifted. What is this weird piece of plastic with miniature slides or chutes where weird and wonderful things happen when sticks are withdrawn from the heat of action and general mayhem ensues?
Now of course maturity and adulthood mellows the soul. Books have always been an enduring source of pleasure and the acquisition of book tokens or money for books has never lost that very personal appeal. Music also provides something that is uplifting and although vinyl is no longer as accessible as it used to be and Spotify seems to be the only resource for those with a musical ear, I can though still find great delight in the You Tube platform.
The mind travels back blissfully to my barmitzvah when the entire family would surround you with those pre- birthday surprises that still send a tickle of amusement through your body. What you have to remember here is that it was 1975, the economy was in a familiar state of stagnant meltdown and all Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister could do was smoke his comforting pipe or turn up devotedly to his beloved hometown football club Huddersfield Town every so often.
Meanwhile back in downtown Ilford, Essex some of us were reciting our barmitzvah piece on the Saturday morning before raving the day away on the Sunday in frilly ruffed shirts, platform shoes and drainpipe trousers. It was a seminal moment in my young life and one of those formidable rites of passage when yours truly would have to make the most awkward adjustment to adolescence.
Then the barrage of presents came winging their way towards me unexpectedly and totally without any consultation or any kind of real understanding of what it all meant. Suddenly there were hundreds of fountain pens, the new and very voguish calculators and for whatever reason, clothes valets. At this point something inside me wanted to complain and complain vehemently.
Still, years later you begin to look back on special anniversaries or birthdays with a wistful smile and a sense that it was indeed just a passing phase. Birthdays are now numerical landmarks rather than vitally important excuses for wild parties and loads of booze. Birthdays are now that rather charming set of ornaments on your mantelpiece, that distant throwback to a simpler time when we could once again jump onto our bikes, hurtle around street corners with gaping red bruises on our knees and then do the same thing all over the time. Birthdays- how we long for them and may the enjoyment they've always brought never dim. Happy Birthday me!
There must come a point in our lives when our birthday fails to capture your imagination in the way it might have done 20 or 30 years ago. It just seems like the passing of another year, that moment of transition when the significance of the day doesn't quite hold the same fascination that it should. Still, it'll be lovely to see my loving and supportive family and tonight a quiet Shabbat evening with very close family will have a special resonance.
Long gone though are those days of youthful merriment when all of your school friends or people you grew up would lavish you with presents and games thickly wrapped in veritable rainforests of paper whereupon mum and dad would rush into the living room, gather up all of your mates and decide quite emphatically that this would be the ideal moment to play Pass the Parcel or Musical Chairs.
Then the ropiest of record players would boom out of the tiniest of speakers and a spontaneous outburst of raucous laughter and ear splitting screaming would follow almost naturally. All of the kids would frantically scramble around for the most advantageous position equipped with nothing more than an uncontrollable urge to create merry hell and havoc. Was it always the way with children? They love to be the centre of the attention, hogging the limelight, good naturedly excitable but still a lovable nuisance.
But now at the ripe old age of 56 these are the years of proud parenthood, reflecting fondly on those halcyon days when we were kids, caught up in the throes of joyful curiosity and discovery, when life was all about blowing out candles on birthday cakes and the children's entertainer would blow up balloons, pulling rabbits out of hats, performing yet another set of magic tricks and then producing silk handkerchiefs out of nothing. Then if you came from Kensington and Chelsea you would probably get tea and scones with tiny sandwiches shaped in small triangles. Oh for the joys of the privileged classes.
Nowadays birthdays are much more elaborate occasions than perhaps they used to be. Now of course the children of today not only expect better looking presents they will undoubtedly demand them. In our day it was the traditional Lego or Meccano, that wonderfully intriguing mix of coloured bricks and in later years, electrical mechanisms that would light up without any prompting.
In the earliest of years it was the good old fashioned, tried and trusted box set of clay or plasticine followed later on in life with the ingenious Etch A Sketch, an object which would immeasurably enhance your artistic capabilities to such a point that some of us may have thought that by our eighth birthday we must have felt that we were ready to become accomplished graphic designers.
Then we were confronted with Ker Plunk and Frustration which in their varying ways were solely designed to send us into a mild state of panic, bewildered children who didn't quite know what we were supposed to do with such strange kids toys.
Frustration was fun in its way but hardly intellectually stimulating in as much that you weren't sure why you were given these quaint looking counters and then clearly instructed to move those counters around a plastic board. Then by some miracle of science you would be eventually acclaimed as winner if you'd managed to land all of the said counters in a straight row, the number six taking a prominent role in your victory.
Ker Plunk seemed to pass me by but having been subjected to innumerably repetitive TV advertising campaigns at roughly this time of the year, it still seems to be shrouded in the thick mists of mystery that never really lifted. What is this weird piece of plastic with miniature slides or chutes where weird and wonderful things happen when sticks are withdrawn from the heat of action and general mayhem ensues?
Now of course maturity and adulthood mellows the soul. Books have always been an enduring source of pleasure and the acquisition of book tokens or money for books has never lost that very personal appeal. Music also provides something that is uplifting and although vinyl is no longer as accessible as it used to be and Spotify seems to be the only resource for those with a musical ear, I can though still find great delight in the You Tube platform.
The mind travels back blissfully to my barmitzvah when the entire family would surround you with those pre- birthday surprises that still send a tickle of amusement through your body. What you have to remember here is that it was 1975, the economy was in a familiar state of stagnant meltdown and all Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister could do was smoke his comforting pipe or turn up devotedly to his beloved hometown football club Huddersfield Town every so often.
Meanwhile back in downtown Ilford, Essex some of us were reciting our barmitzvah piece on the Saturday morning before raving the day away on the Sunday in frilly ruffed shirts, platform shoes and drainpipe trousers. It was a seminal moment in my young life and one of those formidable rites of passage when yours truly would have to make the most awkward adjustment to adolescence.
Then the barrage of presents came winging their way towards me unexpectedly and totally without any consultation or any kind of real understanding of what it all meant. Suddenly there were hundreds of fountain pens, the new and very voguish calculators and for whatever reason, clothes valets. At this point something inside me wanted to complain and complain vehemently.
Still, years later you begin to look back on special anniversaries or birthdays with a wistful smile and a sense that it was indeed just a passing phase. Birthdays are now numerical landmarks rather than vitally important excuses for wild parties and loads of booze. Birthdays are now that rather charming set of ornaments on your mantelpiece, that distant throwback to a simpler time when we could once again jump onto our bikes, hurtle around street corners with gaping red bruises on our knees and then do the same thing all over the time. Birthdays- how we long for them and may the enjoyment they've always brought never dim. Happy Birthday me!
Wednesday, 21 November 2018
From Bob Paisley at Liverpool and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe
From Bob Paisley at Liverpool, Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs comes the new kid on the block Eddie Howe.
Forty years ago the old English first division counted among its ranks some of the richest managerial talents the country would ever see. There was the inimitable Brian Clough, a straight backed, hard-hitting and forcefully forthright Nottingham Forest manager who, seemingly overnight, guided a completely unfashionable and mediocre Nottingham Forest side from the middle of the old Second Division to the dizzy, showbiz heights of First Division League Champions and then followed it up for good measure with two successive European Cups against Malmo of Sweden and then afro haired Kevin Keegan's Hamburg.
Then there was the equally as direct and pragmatic Keith Burkinshaw who at Spurs sprinkled gold-dust, icing sugar and a fair dollop of honey onto a Tottenham team wrapped up with the prettiest Argentinian bows in the shape of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With a flick of the finger, Spurs became a magical fantasy world of short passing, sweeping gloriously from back to front with football that was bewitching and beguiling, all ebbing and flowing, dainty delicacy that lit up the British game.
At Liverpool of course things had never really changed since the giddy days of Bill Shankly. After Shankly died, a vast majority of the Anfield Kop were convinced that the empire had fallen, the columns had come crashing down and nothing would replace it. Then there was Bob Paisley, an Englishman with a thick slice of homegrown reality and perspective. Paisley had been under no illusions about the size of the task because none thought Liverpool would ever be the same again.
But they were wrong. Paisley maintained the status quo at Liverpool, cautiously moulding, fashioning and designing a new set of fabrics with much the same material. In came the likes of Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Graham Souness, Kenny Dalglish and a whole squadron of troops and red cadets fully equipped with the tools necessary to play the game Paisley preached. Liverpool were gloriously simple, beautifully pleasing to the eye, an aesthete's dream, pure, unblemished, quick and incisive on the ball, neatly precise in possession.
So it is that the mind turns to the current breed of English football managers desperate to leave their indelible impression on not only their club but the international scene. There's Eddie Howe, surely one of the most engaging, amiable and deeply thoughtful managers in club football. Howe is manager of Bournemouth, a team who, only twenty years ago, were going nowhere in particular apart from the bargain basement category of football's lowest point.
But a couple of seasons later Howe, accompanied by a clear thinking and progressive coaching staff at Bournemouth, gave the whole of this seaside town a sharp injection of hope, pride and confidence from which they have never looked back on since. From the hollow depths of the lowest of divisions Bournemouth dragged themselves forcefully up by the boot laces and soared to the summit of the Premier League like a seagull serenely floating near the Boscombe promenade.
What makes Howe's emergence so astonishing is the manner in which he seems to be conducting himself. There is none of the well intentioned bluster and infectious humour of a Clough, none of the down- to earth honesty of a Bob Paisley, nor the directness of a Keith Burkinshaw. Eddie Howe, in both the voice and manner of West Ham's Sir Trevor Brooking, has certainly got what it takes. Howe is a well educated footballing man, a man of finely articulated vowels, a positive approach to the game and splendid principles, a man doing things his way.
In that black track suit with the familiar cherry crest for all to see, Howe chews his gum, analysing and absorbing, taking everything in, noting all of the most important details and checking everything thoroughly just in case the players may have forgotten his team talk. Howe has just produced Bournemouth's first England player Callum Wilson, a striker of quick turns and darting pace, a player with a natural touch and goal- scoring pedigree.
The chances are that because the likes of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs are monopolising the big time headlines, Howe must feel as if the rest of the footballing community are simply taking him for granted. Why on earth is he bothering to manage a football club that plays its football by the English seaside when he could be leading out a team who play their football next to an upper class country estate?
And yet it does seem to be working for this humble and self effacing man who just gets on with his job. He keeps learning his trade as if totally unaware of the fuss and well earned adulation around him. Howe is a manager of huge intelligence, wisdom that defies his age and an exceptionally well rounded attitude towards football management that sets him well and truly apart from the rest.
At the moment Bournemouth are once again baffling the sceptics, proving themselves most commendably in a footballing bear pit where only the fittest will survive. Howe is calm, polite, unassuming, yet to be seen dropping out of a nightclub at three in the morning, clean and fresh faced. Howe, to quote the most tired cliche, takes every game as it comes and there is none of the pompous bombast of a Mourinho although Jose would undoubtedly deny such a foul accusation.
Howe is sensible, goes to bed early, quite obviously sprightly and fit, a man full of the dynamism and super charged exuberance of a manager who wants to win things and preferably now rather than later. Eddie Howe represents the cutting edge of football management technology, always receptive to new ideas and fully implementing all of the new methods and strategies.
Meanwhile there is Sean Dyche at Burnley who last season performed miracles with a newly promoted Burnley team who still seemed stuck in a LS Lowry painting. Burnley were a team of matchstick men who clocked out of the factories and mills with black soot on their faces. They were hard working, oozing efficiency and no little skill.
Last season Burnley were like a team revitalised and refreshed. Suddenly, the team in claret and blue who played their game at Turfmoor wore the most impeccable pin striped suits and well ironed City trousers with perhaps a dapper top hat for good measure. Burnley played like a team transformed, reformed, swiftly moving the ball between themselves without feeling socially awkward. The critics though thought they were mere just flash in the pan artists rather than genuine ball playing artists.
There is still a school of thought that Burnley, although well balanced and firmly built, do have design faults and architectural flaws. Sean Dyche would probably insist that Burnley are no Barcelona or Real Madrid and that this season may become much more of a painstaking struggle than perhaps he thought it would be. Still, the season has much to offer and surprise us and Dyche remains both upbeat and optimistic which has to be a good thing.
So it is that the Premier League season, after its last international break before the end of the year, returns to the fun and games that invariably surface when the temperatures drop and the businesslike nature of its money crazy mentality dictates to all. We must hope that the likes of Eddie Howe will continue to promote football in its most favourable light, passing with their carnival of passes, rotating and interchanging rather like those Hungarian Magyars who once swept away England at Wembley in 1953. Football needs men like Eddie Howe because football appreciates managers who try to do the right things at the right time. Let's hear it for the man at Bournemouth football club.
Forty years ago the old English first division counted among its ranks some of the richest managerial talents the country would ever see. There was the inimitable Brian Clough, a straight backed, hard-hitting and forcefully forthright Nottingham Forest manager who, seemingly overnight, guided a completely unfashionable and mediocre Nottingham Forest side from the middle of the old Second Division to the dizzy, showbiz heights of First Division League Champions and then followed it up for good measure with two successive European Cups against Malmo of Sweden and then afro haired Kevin Keegan's Hamburg.
Then there was the equally as direct and pragmatic Keith Burkinshaw who at Spurs sprinkled gold-dust, icing sugar and a fair dollop of honey onto a Tottenham team wrapped up with the prettiest Argentinian bows in the shape of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa. With a flick of the finger, Spurs became a magical fantasy world of short passing, sweeping gloriously from back to front with football that was bewitching and beguiling, all ebbing and flowing, dainty delicacy that lit up the British game.
At Liverpool of course things had never really changed since the giddy days of Bill Shankly. After Shankly died, a vast majority of the Anfield Kop were convinced that the empire had fallen, the columns had come crashing down and nothing would replace it. Then there was Bob Paisley, an Englishman with a thick slice of homegrown reality and perspective. Paisley had been under no illusions about the size of the task because none thought Liverpool would ever be the same again.
But they were wrong. Paisley maintained the status quo at Liverpool, cautiously moulding, fashioning and designing a new set of fabrics with much the same material. In came the likes of Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Graham Souness, Kenny Dalglish and a whole squadron of troops and red cadets fully equipped with the tools necessary to play the game Paisley preached. Liverpool were gloriously simple, beautifully pleasing to the eye, an aesthete's dream, pure, unblemished, quick and incisive on the ball, neatly precise in possession.
So it is that the mind turns to the current breed of English football managers desperate to leave their indelible impression on not only their club but the international scene. There's Eddie Howe, surely one of the most engaging, amiable and deeply thoughtful managers in club football. Howe is manager of Bournemouth, a team who, only twenty years ago, were going nowhere in particular apart from the bargain basement category of football's lowest point.
But a couple of seasons later Howe, accompanied by a clear thinking and progressive coaching staff at Bournemouth, gave the whole of this seaside town a sharp injection of hope, pride and confidence from which they have never looked back on since. From the hollow depths of the lowest of divisions Bournemouth dragged themselves forcefully up by the boot laces and soared to the summit of the Premier League like a seagull serenely floating near the Boscombe promenade.
What makes Howe's emergence so astonishing is the manner in which he seems to be conducting himself. There is none of the well intentioned bluster and infectious humour of a Clough, none of the down- to earth honesty of a Bob Paisley, nor the directness of a Keith Burkinshaw. Eddie Howe, in both the voice and manner of West Ham's Sir Trevor Brooking, has certainly got what it takes. Howe is a well educated footballing man, a man of finely articulated vowels, a positive approach to the game and splendid principles, a man doing things his way.
In that black track suit with the familiar cherry crest for all to see, Howe chews his gum, analysing and absorbing, taking everything in, noting all of the most important details and checking everything thoroughly just in case the players may have forgotten his team talk. Howe has just produced Bournemouth's first England player Callum Wilson, a striker of quick turns and darting pace, a player with a natural touch and goal- scoring pedigree.
The chances are that because the likes of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool and Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs are monopolising the big time headlines, Howe must feel as if the rest of the footballing community are simply taking him for granted. Why on earth is he bothering to manage a football club that plays its football by the English seaside when he could be leading out a team who play their football next to an upper class country estate?
And yet it does seem to be working for this humble and self effacing man who just gets on with his job. He keeps learning his trade as if totally unaware of the fuss and well earned adulation around him. Howe is a manager of huge intelligence, wisdom that defies his age and an exceptionally well rounded attitude towards football management that sets him well and truly apart from the rest.
At the moment Bournemouth are once again baffling the sceptics, proving themselves most commendably in a footballing bear pit where only the fittest will survive. Howe is calm, polite, unassuming, yet to be seen dropping out of a nightclub at three in the morning, clean and fresh faced. Howe, to quote the most tired cliche, takes every game as it comes and there is none of the pompous bombast of a Mourinho although Jose would undoubtedly deny such a foul accusation.
Howe is sensible, goes to bed early, quite obviously sprightly and fit, a man full of the dynamism and super charged exuberance of a manager who wants to win things and preferably now rather than later. Eddie Howe represents the cutting edge of football management technology, always receptive to new ideas and fully implementing all of the new methods and strategies.
Meanwhile there is Sean Dyche at Burnley who last season performed miracles with a newly promoted Burnley team who still seemed stuck in a LS Lowry painting. Burnley were a team of matchstick men who clocked out of the factories and mills with black soot on their faces. They were hard working, oozing efficiency and no little skill.
Last season Burnley were like a team revitalised and refreshed. Suddenly, the team in claret and blue who played their game at Turfmoor wore the most impeccable pin striped suits and well ironed City trousers with perhaps a dapper top hat for good measure. Burnley played like a team transformed, reformed, swiftly moving the ball between themselves without feeling socially awkward. The critics though thought they were mere just flash in the pan artists rather than genuine ball playing artists.
There is still a school of thought that Burnley, although well balanced and firmly built, do have design faults and architectural flaws. Sean Dyche would probably insist that Burnley are no Barcelona or Real Madrid and that this season may become much more of a painstaking struggle than perhaps he thought it would be. Still, the season has much to offer and surprise us and Dyche remains both upbeat and optimistic which has to be a good thing.
So it is that the Premier League season, after its last international break before the end of the year, returns to the fun and games that invariably surface when the temperatures drop and the businesslike nature of its money crazy mentality dictates to all. We must hope that the likes of Eddie Howe will continue to promote football in its most favourable light, passing with their carnival of passes, rotating and interchanging rather like those Hungarian Magyars who once swept away England at Wembley in 1953. Football needs men like Eddie Howe because football appreciates managers who try to do the right things at the right time. Let's hear it for the man at Bournemouth football club.
Monday, 19 November 2018
A day to remember - the annual ex Jewish servicemen's remembrance ceremony.
A day to remember - the annual ex Jewish servicemen's remembrance ceremony.
The day was heavy with sadness, reverence, remembrance and sombre commemoration. Above Whitehall in the heart of London, a helicopter whirred ominously and insistently around the brightest and clearest of blue skies. As a homage to the ex Jewish servicemen and women who had given everything during the Second World War, it was a fitting metaphor for a Sunday afternoon in the middle of November in the heart of London.
In perhaps one of the mildest of autumns in recent history, Whitehall was dutifully mournful, deeply respectful and admirably reflective. Occasionally, the rustling brown leaves could be heard quite clearly, chasing each other, scurrying and scampering towards some unknown destination. But then there was the eerie and moving silence, a silence that almost had its very own eloquence, needing no explanation whatsoever and if anything was perfectly self explanatory.
They gathered in their solemn multitudes, heads covered in a thousand shades of Jewish kipot, berets in yet more shades of maroon or most appropriately black. They came from France, all four corners of London and then yet more arrivals. They'd travelled from Ilford, Edgware, Hendon, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They'd crossed continents, flown in from distant shores and came because they had to be there, expressing their innermost feelings and heartfelt emotions.
They were the men and women whose unstinting sacrifice and dedication to duty through the War had maintained morale, who'd fought in the trenches, who'd protected each other in the gravest moments of crises, who'd bandied together and rallied together heroically when adversity and defeat might have seemed the only option. They were the ones who'd taken shelter in London Underground Tube stations as the bombs and bullets blasted and thudded out their horrible sounds of discordance and ugly destruction.
But 73 years after the end of hostilities over the landing grounds and beaches of Churchill's noble Britain, we came to mark again their wonderful contributions in a way that could never ever be faulted. There was a lingering sense of honourable gravitas about yesterday afternoon in Whitehall, a sense that for all the heartache and tragedy that had gone before the human spirit is alive and well and flourishing.
Of course it was a difficult day because these days have to be and it would have been perfectly understandable if a million tears were privately shed. This was a day for quietness, strength of character, humbling sincerity, global integrity, for being true to ourselves, solitary reminiscence, bowing the head on innumerable occasions, for standing still, for trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, wrestling with the ghastly facts, figures and statistics of wartime fatalities.
At Horseguards Parade, the men and women in impeccably smart coats and uniforms held onto their standards, slowly filling the ground with their nostalgic thoughts, a cheery joke or two to lighten the sullen mood. It was all so long ago and yet it wasn't because minds were still scarred with grotesque sights and images, the bloody stains of trauma and death. These were the lovely men and women who were huddling together in warm harmony, still together, still united, giant hearts that could never ever be broken.
Undoubtedly they were still traumatised by the horrific and obscene losses of life, the battles, the separations, the rat a tat of those brutally, cacophonously deafening bullets. They were here to recall the families that had been broken irreparably, the children who were torn away from sobbing parents. It had all been a dreadful loss of life and the most horrendous crime against humanity. The ex Jewish servicemen and women were here to pray and plead for eternal world peace, to chant their hymns in the most fervent hope that none should ever pick up a gun or destroy a city ever again.
We looked up from our prayer books at the greyness of the buildings, the timeless respectability of government buildings, the arched windows and the solid impregnability of white brickwork. But then the white started fading unmistakably when the sun went in and daylight was replaced by inevitable early evening. It was almost as if the whole of Whitehall was trying to tell us something we couldn't possibly hear.
For the best part of the service there was a ten minute spell when you felt helpless, overwhelmed by the momentousness of it all, the immensity of grief, the cutting callousness of mindless murder, the depth of contemplation in every single mind. We walked uprightly towards Whitehall, to the enduring Memorials, the Unknown Soldiers, the cluster of carved black soldiers with rifles in their hands and tears in their eyes from the senseless futility of War.
It was now that you became painfully aware of your surroundings. In the distance you could still hear the distant echo of Sunday traffic, the sweet whistling of birds, trees, now naked and bare but still melodious, yellowing leaves whispering their deferential notes. There was a regimented uniformity about the day and yet it still felt as though all of the ceremony and formality was so important and essential.
Shortly, we would all line up in all our orderly columns and formations. Now the whole occasion took on a rather too serious complexion. Beautiful flowers and wreaths were laid at the memorial, men dressed in military uniform shook gentle hands and then spoke in softly soothing tones. More prayers were said before the men and women set off once again on their final walk of the day. All the while they kept thinking and kept thinking back, utterly dignified figures, heroes one and all but never coveting attention for a single moment.
And then finally there were the men and women in their thick black coats, vivid red poppies securely tied to their lapel and pride swelling quite noticeably by the minute, smiling their warm acknowledgements and weeping the smallest of tears. It had been a day none of us would ever forget because we knew exactly how they must have been feeling.
We were the 21st century generation peering over the shoulders of the 20th century and finding that although history had told us a bitterly cautionary tale we would never ever overlook they who had given us such whole hearted heroism and bravery. November afternoons in Whitehall should always be warmly cherished . Lest we ever forget.
The day was heavy with sadness, reverence, remembrance and sombre commemoration. Above Whitehall in the heart of London, a helicopter whirred ominously and insistently around the brightest and clearest of blue skies. As a homage to the ex Jewish servicemen and women who had given everything during the Second World War, it was a fitting metaphor for a Sunday afternoon in the middle of November in the heart of London.
In perhaps one of the mildest of autumns in recent history, Whitehall was dutifully mournful, deeply respectful and admirably reflective. Occasionally, the rustling brown leaves could be heard quite clearly, chasing each other, scurrying and scampering towards some unknown destination. But then there was the eerie and moving silence, a silence that almost had its very own eloquence, needing no explanation whatsoever and if anything was perfectly self explanatory.
They gathered in their solemn multitudes, heads covered in a thousand shades of Jewish kipot, berets in yet more shades of maroon or most appropriately black. They came from France, all four corners of London and then yet more arrivals. They'd travelled from Ilford, Edgware, Hendon, Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They'd crossed continents, flown in from distant shores and came because they had to be there, expressing their innermost feelings and heartfelt emotions.
They were the men and women whose unstinting sacrifice and dedication to duty through the War had maintained morale, who'd fought in the trenches, who'd protected each other in the gravest moments of crises, who'd bandied together and rallied together heroically when adversity and defeat might have seemed the only option. They were the ones who'd taken shelter in London Underground Tube stations as the bombs and bullets blasted and thudded out their horrible sounds of discordance and ugly destruction.
But 73 years after the end of hostilities over the landing grounds and beaches of Churchill's noble Britain, we came to mark again their wonderful contributions in a way that could never ever be faulted. There was a lingering sense of honourable gravitas about yesterday afternoon in Whitehall, a sense that for all the heartache and tragedy that had gone before the human spirit is alive and well and flourishing.
Of course it was a difficult day because these days have to be and it would have been perfectly understandable if a million tears were privately shed. This was a day for quietness, strength of character, humbling sincerity, global integrity, for being true to ourselves, solitary reminiscence, bowing the head on innumerable occasions, for standing still, for trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, wrestling with the ghastly facts, figures and statistics of wartime fatalities.
At Horseguards Parade, the men and women in impeccably smart coats and uniforms held onto their standards, slowly filling the ground with their nostalgic thoughts, a cheery joke or two to lighten the sullen mood. It was all so long ago and yet it wasn't because minds were still scarred with grotesque sights and images, the bloody stains of trauma and death. These were the lovely men and women who were huddling together in warm harmony, still together, still united, giant hearts that could never ever be broken.
Undoubtedly they were still traumatised by the horrific and obscene losses of life, the battles, the separations, the rat a tat of those brutally, cacophonously deafening bullets. They were here to recall the families that had been broken irreparably, the children who were torn away from sobbing parents. It had all been a dreadful loss of life and the most horrendous crime against humanity. The ex Jewish servicemen and women were here to pray and plead for eternal world peace, to chant their hymns in the most fervent hope that none should ever pick up a gun or destroy a city ever again.
We looked up from our prayer books at the greyness of the buildings, the timeless respectability of government buildings, the arched windows and the solid impregnability of white brickwork. But then the white started fading unmistakably when the sun went in and daylight was replaced by inevitable early evening. It was almost as if the whole of Whitehall was trying to tell us something we couldn't possibly hear.
For the best part of the service there was a ten minute spell when you felt helpless, overwhelmed by the momentousness of it all, the immensity of grief, the cutting callousness of mindless murder, the depth of contemplation in every single mind. We walked uprightly towards Whitehall, to the enduring Memorials, the Unknown Soldiers, the cluster of carved black soldiers with rifles in their hands and tears in their eyes from the senseless futility of War.
It was now that you became painfully aware of your surroundings. In the distance you could still hear the distant echo of Sunday traffic, the sweet whistling of birds, trees, now naked and bare but still melodious, yellowing leaves whispering their deferential notes. There was a regimented uniformity about the day and yet it still felt as though all of the ceremony and formality was so important and essential.
Shortly, we would all line up in all our orderly columns and formations. Now the whole occasion took on a rather too serious complexion. Beautiful flowers and wreaths were laid at the memorial, men dressed in military uniform shook gentle hands and then spoke in softly soothing tones. More prayers were said before the men and women set off once again on their final walk of the day. All the while they kept thinking and kept thinking back, utterly dignified figures, heroes one and all but never coveting attention for a single moment.
And then finally there were the men and women in their thick black coats, vivid red poppies securely tied to their lapel and pride swelling quite noticeably by the minute, smiling their warm acknowledgements and weeping the smallest of tears. It had been a day none of us would ever forget because we knew exactly how they must have been feeling.
We were the 21st century generation peering over the shoulders of the 20th century and finding that although history had told us a bitterly cautionary tale we would never ever overlook they who had given us such whole hearted heroism and bravery. November afternoons in Whitehall should always be warmly cherished . Lest we ever forget.
Friday, 16 November 2018
Oh what a farce? Government ministers fall like a deck of cards.
Oh what a farce? Government ministers fall like a deck of cards.
You could hardly make this one up. We have now entered the realms of farce, parody and music hall comedy, a throwback to the days when Victorian circus acts would parade around the ring as horses and elephants pranced around with wild abandon. Then for those who were interested there was the fairground outside where an entranced public would look at strange, distorted faces of themselves while staring at huge mirrors. Then there were strongmen flexing their muscles, the clowns with their amusing red noses, the fire eaters, the jugglers and then the incredible plate spinners. For the good, old fashioned circus read the English Government.
Oh yes. Ladies and Gentlemen it's time to present the British Government, a fine, upstanding body of men and women who have now fallen into the darkest pit of humiliation. It somehow beggars description. How on earth have we come to this? What on earth have we done wrong? This has to be some kind of sweet revenge for some pathetic indiscretion, some wounding retribution for something that we must have done but can barely remember.
Yesterday the entire British Cabinet ganged up on Prime Minister Theresa May and bullied her quite mercilessly, called her names, poked their malicious tongues at her and threatened to tell their teacher for something they may or may not have said. Then the nation watched aghast as the headmaster or headmistress pulled out the slipper and cane before reprimanding them. Ouch, that really did hurt Theresa? How could you do that and yet they did? She went back on her word and that's something that couldn't be tolerated.
One by one they came and went, falling on their swords, quitting and resigning, generally playing up like spoilt kids creating havoc on a school trip to the Science Museum. They dug out their catapults, released their childish stink bombs and flung paper aeroplanes at the teacher behind their back, noisy and unfeasibly disruptive children who were just asking for suspension. They shout and scream in the most shameful act of rebellion, jumping onto desks, slamming their desks for attention and then just making a terrible racket.
They followed each other in fairly quick succession. There were the junior ministers Suella Braverman and Shailesh Vara who were then joined by Work and Pensions secretary Esther Mcvey and, more importantly, the Brexit secretary Dominic Raab who must have thought this was some kind of cheap joke, a left over Tommy Cooper piece of magic and silliness that had gone terribly wrong. But it happened and one week in the middle of November begins to feel like the coldest and darkest day at the start of January. British politics seemed to hit rock bottom, the lowest common denominator, a foul stain on a tempestuous political landscape.
This is the morning after the night before and some of us are just emotionally exhausted by the fall out from the draft agreement for Brexit, a term now so annoyingly repetitive that we may have to refrain from using the worst of all Anglo Saxon expletives. When next we listen to our radios or cast a critical TV eye we may have to exercise self restraint. Sometimes you just wish you could lock them all away in some dark, empty room, send them to bed without any supper and tell them not to come out until they behave with some semblance of propriety, just a hint of politeness.
So let me give you another rundown on the latest list of rebels, mavericks, non conformists, turncoats, back stabbers, poison pen letter writers and ya boo sucks merchants. They stalk the back alleyways, creep along dimly lit streets, shifty and resentful, bitter and twisted figures. They wallow blithely in each other's misfortune and then put in an afternoon shift at the House of Commons. Some hunt in packs while others prefer their own company, always scheming and suspicious. Then they pounce on their unwitting victim before tearing them to shreds. It was ever thus in the House of Commons or should that be the House of Commoners.
Against this sinister backdrop of dark plots and Machiavellian, mischievous machinations there lie those skulking, slouching and shambling politicians with their thick coats and trilby hats tightly perched on their head. They light their cigarettes, a purple and blue puff of smoke drifting through the misty night air, cupping their hands for warmth. All hell has broken loose in the late night lobbies at the House of Commons.
Outside Westminster, the streets have emptied and the eerie silence is broken by a Route Master bus or rumbling cars that flash and then blink their headlights. It was widely assumed that the boys and girls who constitute the English parliament had made up their minds. Sadly, we were all mistaken because Brexit is still a work in progress and it looks as if things will remain in a state of complete confusion for ever more. We may have to put our lives on hold for as long as it takes Boris Johnson to brush those golden blond locks of hair.
Now there's a man who must be revelling in all this monstrous running commentary of accusation and counter accusation, pathetic posturing, piffling platitudes and absurd name calling. Boris Johnson, to all outward appearances, always looks as though his blond hair is beyond redemption, admittedly a wondrous intellect and the very model of eccentricity. He is now desperately trying to bring down a Prime Minister who probably knows that he hates her anyway.
We all know that Boris Johnson has delusions of grandeur, that the clearly egotistical in him would give anything for the keys to 10 Downing Street. Johnson has kept out of the limelight recently, presumably waiting for that opportune moment when Theresa May is at her most vulnerable. He'll then jump out shockingly from some some rain washed bush and insist that he is the man who should be running the country.
Johnson will drag his unsuspecting victim into a quiet cafe, demand that the terms for Brexit be dramatically tweaked and tampered with and do it his way. Because Boris's way is, quite obviously, the right way and you'd better believe it is. We always privately suspected that Boris was power hungry, relentlessly ambitious and determined to get his way. Now that he is no longer associated with the Cabinet Boris seems to be at his happiest. Boris now thinks that the coast is clear and he can say whatever he likes with utter impunity without fearing the consequences.
This has been a clever cloak and dagger almost military operation from all of those ex and serving Cabinet ministers because this is the time to attack the current Prime Minister and then try to knock her over like a set of skittles in a bowling alley. Boris Johnson is still mumbling and muttering under his breath, cursing and sneering, somehow all knowing and maybe deludedly superior to the rest of his ex Tory colleagues.
Johnson could be that loose cannon, that simmering volcano of jealousy perhaps, whimpering and wailing, gnashing his teeth, holding back the fury, that seething disapproval, a man with that Etonian sense of moral outrage, a supercilious grin and that epic hair with a mind of its own so to speak. Another Johnson from the pages of literary history said quite memorably that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life but there are no Boswells around so perhaps Boris Johnson does indeed have a soft spot for London and the rest of the world.
The likes of David Davis and Michael Gove have quite possibly said their piece and it's hard to tell whether neither knows what they want for the future welfare of the British people. Davis quit recently but still felt he had something worthwhile to offer the country and Michael Gove reminds you of one of those sixth form school prefects who knows everything and studies encyclopedias in his spare time.
But here we are back at the same drawing board and not really knowing how to react to anything in particular. We stare blankly at our TV screens, watch the latest well meaning outbursts on BBC's Question Time and pretend that it isn't really happening. We have to be imagining all of this, it'll just vanish one day and we'll all be left in a state of relieved euphoria. And yet when we woke up this morning it was still there, still bubbling away, boiling over rather like one of those old kettles in our kitchen that kept whistling away and lasted for goodness knows how long.
Eventually though some very considerate soul will take pity on us one day. One day we'll be spared this rackety, tiresome news story and political hot potato that looks less appetising by the day. Soon we may have to build shelters at the bottom of our garden just to escape from this constant blathering, this ear blasting cacophony of sound and noise, this idiotic ranting, this appalling abuse of power, these shameful verbal outpourings, this complete political mess.
One of these days we'll all wake up and it'll all have gone away, a seemingly eternal nightmare of bawling, bellowing voices and patronising playground insults now no more than a memory. We shall sit down to watch the early evening news, confident in the knowledge that no harm will come to our besieged ear drums.
There will be life after Brexit and one day next year in early April we'll wonder what all the fuss was about. We'll fling open the curtains or blinds, indulge ourselves in the biggest bowl of muesli or marmalade on toast, drink our first cup of Cappuccino and then prepare ourselves for a day free from the voices of anger, angst and hostility. The days of soft and hard Brexiteering, Irish backstops and front gardens, herbaceous borders and Custom Houses will be a thing of the past. If only.
Finally we can forget first referendums and second referendums, of in fighting and out fighting, personal grudges, mad temper tantrums and niggly irritations. Over two years have now passed since that fateful day when the good people of Great Britain said, quite categorically, that they wanted out of the European Union, to leave Europe for good, to rid ourselves of European bureaucrats and faceless law makers who just kept hindering our progress.
No longer would they have to be bound by Brussels red tape, the stifling laws imposed from on high. Britain wanted global recognition, more room to manoeuvre, space to breathe, the opportunity to trade and barter with the Far East, those tropical islands in the sun but then you probably knew that anyway. It's time to set sail into that big, wide world and time for Britain to conquer new lands and territories. It's so good to be healthy and alive. Oh for another discussion on Brexit. Please anything but.
You could hardly make this one up. We have now entered the realms of farce, parody and music hall comedy, a throwback to the days when Victorian circus acts would parade around the ring as horses and elephants pranced around with wild abandon. Then for those who were interested there was the fairground outside where an entranced public would look at strange, distorted faces of themselves while staring at huge mirrors. Then there were strongmen flexing their muscles, the clowns with their amusing red noses, the fire eaters, the jugglers and then the incredible plate spinners. For the good, old fashioned circus read the English Government.
Oh yes. Ladies and Gentlemen it's time to present the British Government, a fine, upstanding body of men and women who have now fallen into the darkest pit of humiliation. It somehow beggars description. How on earth have we come to this? What on earth have we done wrong? This has to be some kind of sweet revenge for some pathetic indiscretion, some wounding retribution for something that we must have done but can barely remember.
Yesterday the entire British Cabinet ganged up on Prime Minister Theresa May and bullied her quite mercilessly, called her names, poked their malicious tongues at her and threatened to tell their teacher for something they may or may not have said. Then the nation watched aghast as the headmaster or headmistress pulled out the slipper and cane before reprimanding them. Ouch, that really did hurt Theresa? How could you do that and yet they did? She went back on her word and that's something that couldn't be tolerated.
One by one they came and went, falling on their swords, quitting and resigning, generally playing up like spoilt kids creating havoc on a school trip to the Science Museum. They dug out their catapults, released their childish stink bombs and flung paper aeroplanes at the teacher behind their back, noisy and unfeasibly disruptive children who were just asking for suspension. They shout and scream in the most shameful act of rebellion, jumping onto desks, slamming their desks for attention and then just making a terrible racket.
They followed each other in fairly quick succession. There were the junior ministers Suella Braverman and Shailesh Vara who were then joined by Work and Pensions secretary Esther Mcvey and, more importantly, the Brexit secretary Dominic Raab who must have thought this was some kind of cheap joke, a left over Tommy Cooper piece of magic and silliness that had gone terribly wrong. But it happened and one week in the middle of November begins to feel like the coldest and darkest day at the start of January. British politics seemed to hit rock bottom, the lowest common denominator, a foul stain on a tempestuous political landscape.
This is the morning after the night before and some of us are just emotionally exhausted by the fall out from the draft agreement for Brexit, a term now so annoyingly repetitive that we may have to refrain from using the worst of all Anglo Saxon expletives. When next we listen to our radios or cast a critical TV eye we may have to exercise self restraint. Sometimes you just wish you could lock them all away in some dark, empty room, send them to bed without any supper and tell them not to come out until they behave with some semblance of propriety, just a hint of politeness.
So let me give you another rundown on the latest list of rebels, mavericks, non conformists, turncoats, back stabbers, poison pen letter writers and ya boo sucks merchants. They stalk the back alleyways, creep along dimly lit streets, shifty and resentful, bitter and twisted figures. They wallow blithely in each other's misfortune and then put in an afternoon shift at the House of Commons. Some hunt in packs while others prefer their own company, always scheming and suspicious. Then they pounce on their unwitting victim before tearing them to shreds. It was ever thus in the House of Commons or should that be the House of Commoners.
Against this sinister backdrop of dark plots and Machiavellian, mischievous machinations there lie those skulking, slouching and shambling politicians with their thick coats and trilby hats tightly perched on their head. They light their cigarettes, a purple and blue puff of smoke drifting through the misty night air, cupping their hands for warmth. All hell has broken loose in the late night lobbies at the House of Commons.
Outside Westminster, the streets have emptied and the eerie silence is broken by a Route Master bus or rumbling cars that flash and then blink their headlights. It was widely assumed that the boys and girls who constitute the English parliament had made up their minds. Sadly, we were all mistaken because Brexit is still a work in progress and it looks as if things will remain in a state of complete confusion for ever more. We may have to put our lives on hold for as long as it takes Boris Johnson to brush those golden blond locks of hair.
Now there's a man who must be revelling in all this monstrous running commentary of accusation and counter accusation, pathetic posturing, piffling platitudes and absurd name calling. Boris Johnson, to all outward appearances, always looks as though his blond hair is beyond redemption, admittedly a wondrous intellect and the very model of eccentricity. He is now desperately trying to bring down a Prime Minister who probably knows that he hates her anyway.
We all know that Boris Johnson has delusions of grandeur, that the clearly egotistical in him would give anything for the keys to 10 Downing Street. Johnson has kept out of the limelight recently, presumably waiting for that opportune moment when Theresa May is at her most vulnerable. He'll then jump out shockingly from some some rain washed bush and insist that he is the man who should be running the country.
Johnson will drag his unsuspecting victim into a quiet cafe, demand that the terms for Brexit be dramatically tweaked and tampered with and do it his way. Because Boris's way is, quite obviously, the right way and you'd better believe it is. We always privately suspected that Boris was power hungry, relentlessly ambitious and determined to get his way. Now that he is no longer associated with the Cabinet Boris seems to be at his happiest. Boris now thinks that the coast is clear and he can say whatever he likes with utter impunity without fearing the consequences.
This has been a clever cloak and dagger almost military operation from all of those ex and serving Cabinet ministers because this is the time to attack the current Prime Minister and then try to knock her over like a set of skittles in a bowling alley. Boris Johnson is still mumbling and muttering under his breath, cursing and sneering, somehow all knowing and maybe deludedly superior to the rest of his ex Tory colleagues.
Johnson could be that loose cannon, that simmering volcano of jealousy perhaps, whimpering and wailing, gnashing his teeth, holding back the fury, that seething disapproval, a man with that Etonian sense of moral outrage, a supercilious grin and that epic hair with a mind of its own so to speak. Another Johnson from the pages of literary history said quite memorably that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life but there are no Boswells around so perhaps Boris Johnson does indeed have a soft spot for London and the rest of the world.
The likes of David Davis and Michael Gove have quite possibly said their piece and it's hard to tell whether neither knows what they want for the future welfare of the British people. Davis quit recently but still felt he had something worthwhile to offer the country and Michael Gove reminds you of one of those sixth form school prefects who knows everything and studies encyclopedias in his spare time.
But here we are back at the same drawing board and not really knowing how to react to anything in particular. We stare blankly at our TV screens, watch the latest well meaning outbursts on BBC's Question Time and pretend that it isn't really happening. We have to be imagining all of this, it'll just vanish one day and we'll all be left in a state of relieved euphoria. And yet when we woke up this morning it was still there, still bubbling away, boiling over rather like one of those old kettles in our kitchen that kept whistling away and lasted for goodness knows how long.
Eventually though some very considerate soul will take pity on us one day. One day we'll be spared this rackety, tiresome news story and political hot potato that looks less appetising by the day. Soon we may have to build shelters at the bottom of our garden just to escape from this constant blathering, this ear blasting cacophony of sound and noise, this idiotic ranting, this appalling abuse of power, these shameful verbal outpourings, this complete political mess.
One of these days we'll all wake up and it'll all have gone away, a seemingly eternal nightmare of bawling, bellowing voices and patronising playground insults now no more than a memory. We shall sit down to watch the early evening news, confident in the knowledge that no harm will come to our besieged ear drums.
There will be life after Brexit and one day next year in early April we'll wonder what all the fuss was about. We'll fling open the curtains or blinds, indulge ourselves in the biggest bowl of muesli or marmalade on toast, drink our first cup of Cappuccino and then prepare ourselves for a day free from the voices of anger, angst and hostility. The days of soft and hard Brexiteering, Irish backstops and front gardens, herbaceous borders and Custom Houses will be a thing of the past. If only.
Finally we can forget first referendums and second referendums, of in fighting and out fighting, personal grudges, mad temper tantrums and niggly irritations. Over two years have now passed since that fateful day when the good people of Great Britain said, quite categorically, that they wanted out of the European Union, to leave Europe for good, to rid ourselves of European bureaucrats and faceless law makers who just kept hindering our progress.
No longer would they have to be bound by Brussels red tape, the stifling laws imposed from on high. Britain wanted global recognition, more room to manoeuvre, space to breathe, the opportunity to trade and barter with the Far East, those tropical islands in the sun but then you probably knew that anyway. It's time to set sail into that big, wide world and time for Britain to conquer new lands and territories. It's so good to be healthy and alive. Oh for another discussion on Brexit. Please anything but.
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