Hate to say this as I’ll be one soon enough, but old men are ruining the world. Not all old men, just those who drag their stubborn tired legs into politics.

At the last US election, voters were initially asked to choose between two male wrinklies. The lesser of those querulous old geezers called the other one ‘Sleepy Joe’, while the one thus addressed muddled his responses.

The sleepy one was persuaded to drop out at the last minute, a capable-seeming woman took his place, but the election was won by the least reputable of the original old codgers.

Was it a fair and seemly election? Only time and history will tell, but few would be surprised to learn something or other went on.

Now Trump – mocked by some on social media as DonOld – has started dozing off at international summits, tripping on the steps to Air Force One, losing the plot whenever he speaks, then flinging out insults and deranged decrees on his own social media platform.

Dodderier by the day, but no less dictatorial or dangerous, as shown when he ordered National Guard troops and then US Marines into Los Angeles to quell what started as small protests about the arrests of immigrants.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, fast becoming the Anti-Trump, responded that US Marines “shouldn’t be deployed on American soil facing their own countrymen to fulfil the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President. This is un-American”.

Over in Israel, another old man, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has presided over genocide in Gazza, and has now also turned his attentions to bombing the shit out of Iran.

A country that is led by the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, who is 86, and reportedly not much loved by many of his own people.

Take your pick which old man most deserves our disdain.

Netanyahu seems hellbent on keeping himself in power by fighting endless wars; Trump seems hellbent on grabbing all power, while also making himself and his family as rich as possible.

Leading a country demands a certain vigour, something old Trump lacks, outside of play-acting the tough guy.

Still, sometimes he stumbles not on steps but his own ego. Last weekend he hijacked an Army anniversary parade to mark his 79^th birthday. It turned into a damp squib, a low-energy military trundle, mostly remembered for the poor turnout, Trump looking sour and grumpy, and a small squeaky tank. Did you see that tank? You couldn’t have found a better metaphor for the rickety vanity of one old man.

No one paid much attention, as America was more interested in the nationwide No Kings protests. Across the States, an estimated five million people took to the streets to complain about Trump’s behaviour since he returned to the White House.

Trump’s press people responded with a made-up figure of 250,000 attendees for his birthday walk-by, but nobody much was buying that.

Come on, old men – let some younger, less deranged people have a go at running the world. And let a woman be president of the US for once.

Musical footnote: Not all old men are up to no good. At nearly 80, Van Morrison has just released his best album in years. Remembering Now has been getting enthusiastic reviews all round. It’s properly good, too.

Certain newspapers and media groups now exist almost exclusively to push a one-sided view. In the US, Fox News has long been a right-wing shouting shop, and now an embarrassing number of its former presenters have lickspittle roles in the American government.

Over here we have GB News endlessly agitating for Nigel Farage to lead the next government (closely followed by the BBC; see last blog).

Thanks to the US commentator Mary-Jane for reminding us on the Threads platform how this all goes back to something called ‘the Fairness Doctrine’, a 1949 policy that said American broadcasters had to “be honest, show both sides, and serve the public interest”.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine. Apparently, he believed the “free market” should decide what the public hears, not the government. Deregulation allowed the big media companies to say whatever they wanted. “They called it freedom of speech, but what it really did was open the door for partisan media to run wild,” says Mary-Jane.

And that, among many other things, is how doddery old Trump has twice ended up as President.

What is it with the BBC and Reform UK? Those of us who habitually stick up for the BBC are having a hard time of it right now.

It seems all news headlines must by decree mention that Nigel Farage’s latest self-made party is changing the face of British politics. And if that gurning, nicotine-hued visage is now the face of British politics, God save us, everyone – as Tiny Tim almost says in A Christmas Carol.

Every setback for Keir Starmer is read out like the last rites for Labour, while every small step forward for Reform UK is proclaimed from the rooftops as a massive victory.

This has been going on for a while but seems now to have reached fever pitch.

The other morning on Today on BBC Radio 4 Nick Robinson launched into a rambling sermon about how Farage could be prime minister. Thinking sod that for a grubby lark, I switched to Radio Three and took a deep and calming breath.

Social media, especially Threads, has been rattling with complaints about the BBC’s obsession with Reform. As pointed out here previously ad nauseum, we have the BBC largely to thank for Farage in the first place. He’s been endlessly paraded on the news programmes and appears on Question Time almost as often as presenter Fiona Bruce.

The gradual normalisation of this far-right politician is how we ended up with innocent listeners having to run screaming from the Today programme to the calm waters of Radio 3. That’s my experience anyway, but those complaints are real and rising.

Just as I was thinking there must be something in all this, up pops a story in Byline Times, the independent, reader-funded newspaper.

Adam Bienkov reports that the BBC’s director general Tim Davie has drawn up plans to win over voters of Reform UK thanks to a belief that BBC news and drama output is creating “low trust issues” with supporters of Nigel Farage’s party.

This was also reported by the Daily Telegraph, should you prefer your stories from a potty right-wing source.

According to Byline Times, minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March show that “BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter ‘story selection’ and ‘other types of output, such as drama’ in order to win the trust of Reform voters.

I must have missed the meeting they had after last year’s general election when BBC bosses suggested altering story selection so as not to offend those who’d voted Labour.

Never mind ‘low trust issues’ with Reform voters, what about no-trust issues with those of us who detest Reform? What about those of us who expect the BBC to report diligently and deeply about Reform – to put proper questions to Farage, rather than wheeling him out to do his third-rate Trump tribute act.

Here’s your timely reminder that the Editorial Guidelines Committee has caused much internal disquiet at the BBC, thanks to the influence of BBC Board Member Robbie Gibb. Gibb was appointed to the board by former Boris Johnson in 2021 and was later identified by former BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis as an “active agent of the Conservative party”. He also had a role at the Reform-supporting GB News, where Farage has a show – on which he frequently disparages a BBC that is now fawning all over him.

And what’s been Farage’s big idea on the councils his party now runs? Trying to copy Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency – so-called Doge – even though the American original is in chaos after the door-banging departure of Elon Musk. Besides, councils in this country are on their knees thanks to years of cuts.

Farage promotes himself through whatever grievance he finds convenient. He is a nasty moaner, a man of constant complaints, one who knows little outside of those grievances, a man who often seems to spurn the UK for America, where he is said to be backed by ‘dark money’ from the Trump-loving American right.

And yet he is being spoken of as a potential prime minister.

God save us, everyone.

NOT everything is bad about BBC news. On the website now you will find an excellent think piece by the veteran correspondent Jeremy Bowen, speaking in his role as the BBC’s international editor.

Under the headline “Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes – how governments respond could haunt them for years to come”, Bowen begins as follows:

“Even wars have rules. They don’t stop soldiers killing each other but they’re intended to make sure that civilians caught up in the fighting are treated humanely and protected from as much danger as possible. The rules apply equally to all sides.

“If one side has suffered a brutal surprise attack that killed hundreds of civilians, as Israel did on 7 October 2023, it does not get an exemption from the law. The protection of civilians is a legal requirement in a battle plan.”

A sobering but important piece of writing from a man who has been on the ground for years and knows what he is talking about. It clearly addresses Israeli war crimes. Read it before some bigwig panics and takes it down.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko

Today it is ten years since I shuffled onto this ledge. Perhaps I should have a word with my slighter younger self. Are you sure you want to spend a whole decade writing a blog read by a handful of people?

To which my slightly older self might reply – Yeah, well, shows how little you know about life, matey.

All those words. Possibly as many as 300,000 by now, as 28,000 were written last year. But I am too lazy to count.

Why I started is easy to explain. I’d been made redundant after 27 years on one newspaper. That was shocking, the worst of days, but people are made redundant all the time. Especially if they are foolish enough to work on newspapers.

Time offers perspective, distance. Oh, that’s when that happened. It was awful. But other things have occurred since. Good things, bad things; near misses, scratches on the paintwork.

I spent that first post-redundancy year as a freelance feature writer, only to conclude my elbows were not nearly sharp enough. It would have been sensible to have saved the redundancy money and tried any old job. But I stuck at journalism, all I knew.

You do what you do.

All those words.

The first blogs were written to make sense of my changed life. And then I just kept going. Early on I wondered if someone might notice and offer me a column, to follow up the one I wrote for 25 years. A foolish notion, but life is full of those. Anyway, writing this blog has kept me saner than if I did not have those words to file.

Much can happen in ten years. A much-loved granddaughter was born. My father died, alongside other older relatives, and a cousin my own age. I had that heart attack, and could have died myself, but that gave me another topic, words tapped out as my bruised heart sought to recapture its rhythm. Personal catastrophes can be helpful like that.

Before writing this, I skimmed over some of my first efforts, wondering what to write – or even whether to mark the anniversary at all. In the end I sat down and wrote this one. Because words. Because, oh, you have to keep going.

Books, literature, films and music have been addressed. As has baking my own bread – a subject on which I rarely remain silent for long, as those dearest to me may testify with a sigh.

But all too often, all too easily, it’s been about politics. Some of my political blogs hope to amuse, while others are just pebbles dropped into the deep sour well.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone should care what I think about politics or anything else. An unhelpful doubt to harbour if pontification is your game.

I return to politics because it’s there, a ready scab to pick at. Lately I have sworn more than once not to write about the idiot cruel vanities of Donald Trump, a pledge broken almost as soon as it was made. The world would be a better and kinder place if everyone ignored all the stupid spite spilling from that man’s tight puckered mouth.

Is it time instead to now address the inconsequentialities of life? Writing about politics can stir opinions stronger than your own, hurled back like rocks. Or indeed the scone we ate in a café while on a family holiday this week in Withernsea.

That scone was long past fresh, but then so am I. The holiday was lovely, by the way, three generations in one house near the sea in a tired town with a lovely long beach, and a favourite new bar.

By some quirk of time, I was the oldest family member on that holiday. It happens eventually.

Away from this blog, newspaper features have been written, mostly for the Yorkshire Post Magazine, almost 80 in ten years, with two appearing last Saturday. A sort of validation, suggesting I can still pull off what might be called my craft.

I still enjoy meeting people to hear their stories; their stories told in my words, a good union. Some of those I interview email to say how much they liked a feature; others offer only silence.

Alongside the blogs have been the novels, either now forgotten or never yet published, but still being written, on and off, alongside a memoir.

Some days I feel like I have survived a lot, without ever getting going properly. But that’s just what life is like.

After my year as a freelance feature writer, I had other jobs in journalism. Two editing spells at PA Media, alongside two side hustles as a journalism lecturer, weaving lessons from the frayed fabric of my working life. Given another go, I’d have done the lecturing for longer, but my time at the whiteboard ran out.

Now I am mostly retired, mostly happy, buoyed by family and friends. As for this ledge, I plan to hang around, agitating away at this and that.

If you have been reading, thank you. What a fine, if select, bunch you are.

Repeats on the television, repeats in real life. Playing now on the American politics channel is the old Springsteen/Trump bout. Over here, GB Spews is dusting off old episodes of It Ain’t Half Brexit Mum.

Trump-bashing from Springsteen? Oh, I can take as much as the Boss wishes to dish out. The Maga minions are not happy, though, tutting and muttering beneath their silly red caps.

That’s not to mention the reaction from Trump himself.

As Springsteen began the latest leg of his tour with the E Street Band, he took to the stage early in Manchester and made a speech saying the US was “currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration”.

He also referenced the “very weird, strange and dangerous shit” happening in America before condemning Trump for “persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent”.

To which Bruce might also have added that Trump was hollowing out the US state to his own advantage, destroying higher education and health care, all while apparently regarding the presidency as a giant cash machine.

Trump had an orange meltdown on his Truth Social platform where in the small hours he conducts myriad petty vendettas. He said Springsteen was “dumb as a rock” – quite something from a man who makes boulders look intellectual.

Trump also said Springsteen was a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker”.

His own skin could be as prune-like as anything and no one would be any wiser, thanks to that tangerine tan.

From horrid glimpse, while summoning TS Eliot’s line about “the skull beneath the skin”, the skin beneath the faux tan is emulsion white.

Music aside – and I do love a bit of Bruce – Springsteen looks to be in enviably good nick, whereas Trump suggests a shambling tower made of too many burgers.

How unseemly that Trump should be carrying on so when 80 is on the horizon. And take that from a man who can see 70 just over the next hill.

All power to Bruce. Sing that message out loud. Too few Americans have your platform or dare raise their voice.

And those voices need raising. At the time of typing, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has just moved to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students – ramping up his attempt to control/destroy the country’s top universities.

Now let’s change channels.

Whatever you think of Keir Starmer – and his ‘island of strangers’ remark was a new low – he does have a certain stubborn pragmatism and sticks at what he wants to achieve.

Starmer’s new EU deal is another bit of pragmatism. Nothing flashy, nothing remarkable. Just a sensible acknowledgement that we should have a stronger relationship with our nearest neighbours.

The political fallout was predictable. The Tories called the modest deal a Brexit ‘surrender’, Reform UK’s new MP Sarah Pochin said it was a ‘complete betrayal of Brexit’, while Boris Johnson, well, Boris Johnson blathered something interminably stupid. Much of the confected anger concerned the fishing deal – an exact copy of the one Johnson struck.

The new deal isn’t any sort of a betrayal. Brexit itself was a betrayal of good sense, and a monumentally pointless act of self-harm.

The members of that ranting chorus will never forgive or forget. Let’s leave them to their sour grumbles and get on with ordering life sensibly.

And the generator of grievance politics, the man who pursued Brexit so noisily and nastily, where was he when the deal was discussed in Parliament? Nigel Farage MP was on holiday in France. Nothing so piddling for him as taking part in a debate concerned what he has spent half his life banging on about.

Nigel Farage in the Daily Mail…

How do you deal with a problem like Nigel Farage? Not by being more Nigel, for starters.

A lesson lost on Keir Starmer, whose plans to curb net migration announced yesterday caused anguish among some MPs. Did he really have to say that the UK risked becoming an “an island of strangers” without tough new immigration policies?

A sorry scrap of rhetoric too close to something Enoch Powell might have spat out. Labour’s plans are more thoughtful than that. But still – you don’t beat Nigel by being more Nigel.

Personally, I think we all need to be a lot less Nigel.

If I see one more photograph of Farage with his mouth agape in a manic grin – count those fillings; map out those tobacco tidemarks; spy the remains of those long lunches – it will finish me off.

Political commentators of assorted shades are highly excited by the rise of Reform UK, the latest of Farage’s self-made political parties. By the way, I prefer Reform Yuck, as that seems more fitting. Puerile, perhaps. But really – this is a ‘party for the people’ run by ex-public schoolboy millionaires. So, yes, yuck.

Success in the English local elections, one mayoral victory and a paper-thin by-election win in Runcorn are being flourished as stone-carved proof that Farage will be the next prime minister. Mostly by a certain Mr N Farage, whose nuclear self-belief has never been in short supply. Yet beneath that cawl of confidence hides a thin-skinned man who brooks nether disagreement nor questions.

The very idea that such a terrible man could be prime minister falls a mountain short of decency. Of it does if you ask me. The trouble is, I swore voters in the US wouldn’t be stupid enough to give the orange-hued would-be dictator Donald Trump another turn. And we all know how that worked out.

It is still possible everything might fall apart for Farage. This master of the dark arts of self-promotion remains more of a political entertainer than a true politician, a song-and-dance man who hums a hateful tune.

True politics is a slog; it’s boring and takes effort. Farage is far more interested in counting his following on TikTok. That, by the way, is impressive but will it last and will it translate into votes at a long-distant election?

Let’s hope not.

Farage is an expert at setting the political mood – or, perhaps more tellingly, at fouling the political mood. His is the politics of grievance. He has to be against something: the EU, Net Zero policies, cycle lanes, you name it, Nigel will hate it.

What else do Nigel and Reform Yuck wish to do? Oh, only to ‘remoralise’ young people and force them to be patriotic, and if that doesn’t sound sinister to you, your filters could do with a service. Oh, they also want to erect statues to great British figures, and to end “all this woke nonsense”.

How very yawn.

For now, Reform benefits from disillusionment with the main parties. The Tories will take a long time to recover from their electoral drubbing last year; and Labour may well take as long to recover from the weight of their unexpected victory.

Also, Reform Yuck find strength in not being any of the above. Now that they are running some councils, people may well conclude in the end that they’re no better than all the above.

Anyone wishing to know what else Farage would do if he became prime minister may find enlightenment in a ‘manifesto’ cum advertising feature published in the Daily Mail.

The list of his desires included pledges to scrap inheritance tax on estates under £2 million, ditching net zero targets, dropping income tax for those earning under £20,000, fixing the NHS, and bringing back fracking.

Exactly how you fix the NHS while throwing away billions in income tax remains a mystery.

I wonder what the Economist makes of these plans. “Reform’s policies add up to an agenda of fiscal recklessness that rivals, and may well exceed, the disastrous 49-day, hair-raising, market-tanking premiership of Liz Truss in 2022,” the magazine said.

It also estimated that a Reform UK government would cost the economy around £200 billion while only saving £100 billion, creating a “colossal fiscal shock”.

Let’s end with letter in The Times, from Peter Dorey, of Bath. This has been much shared on social media and for good reason…

“I am intrigued that Nigel Farage wants schools to teach British values to remoralise young people. To me, British values include empathy, fairness, honesty, mutual tolerance, open-mindedness, promotion of national unity over divide and rule, and respect for experts and institutions. I do not discern any of these values in Mr Farage.”

I can’t think of anything better to add and will end there.

The similarities between myself and George Clooney have long been apparent, so long as you overlook my lack of hair and his silver sheen of handsomeness.

Similarly, the parallels between Mrs Clooney and my wife have long been apparent, apart from a few differences that are hardly worth mentioning.

Amal Clooney is also an international human rights barrister. The last time I checked, my wife isn’t one of those.

At the time of writing, she has just messaged to say her bus is stuck in traffic. That’s my wife and not the other Mrs C. Amal might catch a bus sometimes, but if she does it’s not something you hear much about.

Still, here we are, the pair of us, so easily confused with George and Amal, however unlikely that may seem. George is a Hollywood actor who makes women swoon. While it is a truth universally acknowledged that I am a retired journalist who made one woman swoon once long ago.

For some reason, my wife isn’t photographed wherever she goes, unlike Amal, who belongs to the secular royalty loved by newspapers. Snap, snap – there she goes.

Thanks to her work, Amal has also annoyed Donald Trump, so bully for her. She could be barred from entering the US by the Tango Man after a panel she sat on recommended an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, on war crimes charges in Gaza.

Meanwhile, that bus my wife sat on has now crawled its way to the station.

Pardon the preamble, but that’s the way the words roll some days.

Here is the point of all this meandering.

The similarity between us is that we don’t argue. This is not to say that I don’t argue with Clooney or his wife, as I’ve never met them. It’s that I don’t argue with my wife, who I have met many times.

We have been married for 38 years, together for 40 or so. And we don’t argue. While my doppelganger George Clooney last week told a US morning TV show that he and Amal, who have been married for 12 years, have not had one argument.

“Is George Clooney right not to argue?” asked the headline above a report in the Guardian.

That depends on your views about rows.

Stefan Walters, a therapist quoted in the article, said: “Actually, arguing is a great skill for couples. Couples who argue actually end up staying together much more than couples who don’t.”

I’d argue that there is a man who says ‘actually’ more often than is strictly necessary, but there you go.

I asked a friend at badminton, who is in his eighties, for his views on marital quarrels. He said arguments had sustained him and his wife through more than 60 years of marriage.

They didn’t have huge arguments, he said, just one of them telling the other they hadn’t done what they were supposed to have done. By his telling, he was usually the one being ticked off, but they always made up.

With us there have been sulks and silences, although too few to mention. I guess I have the verbal fluency to argue, but not the inclination. My wife says she would probably cry if we did argue.

Someone I know used to argue with his wife all the time, usually on the phone, sometimes in person. It seemed to suit them, although they argued their way out of that marriage in the end.

We don’t argue and are still married. Our world view is similar, although my wife has a lower tolerance for politics, news and other worrisome things. When fed up with me, if you can imagine such an unlikely occurrence, she might perhaps go into the garden for some angry digging.

She has never yet dug a hole big enough to drop me into, which is encouraging.

America – what are you becoming? I have been to the States twice. The trips were good in different ways, but I won’t be going again, at least not for four years or so.

An easy principle to flourish, making a stance about something you weren’t going to do anyway. But I’d love to return one day, finances and upended geopolitics permitting.

The first trip, featured before on this ledge, was with my university friend John. A week in New York, a seven-day drive of 3,000 miles to Los Angeles, delivering a car, followed by a week in LA and San Francisco.

John died in 1999, aged 42, a departure that cast a shadow familiar to anyone who has lost a friend. The memories now belong only to me as John cannot join in, or heckle or say it wasn’t like that, not on that day, but they are good memories.

If that holiday was a taster course in all things American, the second was a more traditional dish, a family break in Orlando with my wife’s parents and her sister and family, taking in Disney World.

The children, young then, a little less young now, still talk about those days in Florida.

Both holidays left a good impression of America, of places visited and people met. It’s easy to forget just what a great country America was before the Tango gangster set about recasting it in his own misshapen image.

I’d love to return, to hire a camper van and explore the natural wonders and the great cities, the canyons and the galleries, the coasts and the craft breweries.

All those deportations and detentions are putting me off. And I am not alone, as the US travel and tourism industry are likely to miss out on billions of dollars this year.

Why would you now wish to visit a country that confined British tourist Becky Burke, 28, for 19 days and then removed her in chains, “like Hannibal Lecter”, according to her parents?

Becky was arrested half way through a backpacking trip across North America. When released she was, according to parents Paul and Andrea Burke, of Monmouthshire, “traumatised” after being taken in “leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs”.

A quote issued to the BBC illustrates heartless bureaucracy at work. The statement from the Northwest ICE Processing Center ran as follows: “All aliens in violation of US immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States regardless of nationality.”

Becky’s arrest and detention came from what appears to be a misunderstanding of her accommodation arrangements. She had organised free accommodation for helping host families “around the house”.

Helping around the house must clearly be the actions of an “enemy alien” in today’s America. An easy mistake to make once you have whipped up a braying mob.

Sometimes spouting off about strength is a kind of weakness, a bully boy idiocy that foolishly foresees no bad consequences.

Whether you like the States or not, it has great influence on the world, and at present that influence seems only to be for ill. “Make America Great Again” is an inbred, parochial cry for a country once mostly respected in the world.

Off-and-on-again tariffs have put paid to that. As have Trump’s “kiss-my-ass” approach to diplomacy. And his attack on the academic freedoms, and the finances, of America’s great universities.

Why on earth did Sir Keir Starmer invite mad king Donald here for a second state visit? Crawling to Trump will lead nowhere good.

As for trade deals, that will be fine, so long as it doesn’t end up with us having to import chlorinated chicken and other American delights. Coq au Chlorine? Thanks, but no.

If the US is out of bounds for travellers young and old, it is encouraging that the EU appears to be paving the way for British and European 18 to 30-year-olds to travel and work freely. If the US is closing borders, Europe should open theirs.

Young people should travel and explore different cultures, and many young Europeans want to visit Britain. We should invite them here openly and often.

My now dented appreciation of America is partly based on those two trips eons ago. Alongside long being dunked in American culture, from TV and films to music and literature.

Where is Mark Twain when you need him? Long gone but still here in the following quote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”

A while ago I imposed a Trump veto on myself. Trouble is, that man is hard to ignore.

He’s in the room with me now, doing that weird dance like a puppet with poor joints. That’s the juncture between two bones in the body, not the sort you set light to with a match. That man doesn’t need to smoke anything. He’s high on vengeance and empty self-validation. Plus diet drinks and burgers – a contradiction of comestibles, if ever there was.

Anyway, apologies for the lapse back into Trump-world.

He is stepping closer now, a leer curling his mean lip.

“Write about me, you know you want to. Everybody in the world is talking about me. They just can’t help themselves. Write about how I am going to make American showers great again. You know, I do like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. The water comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous. That’s why I signed an executive order about showers.”

The above is true, by the way, although the words have been rearranged. A bit like Trump’s beautiful hair.

How weird the world is now that we should pay attention as an old man boasts about his hair. Has anyone fact-checked that hair? If you ask me, his coiffure seems have been spun from candyfloss, like something he won at the fair.

Does Trump really think his hair is beautiful? Who knows, but he just loves having the world hang on his every word.

Lately he’s been chuntering about tariffs. I do not understand enough about tariffs to issue a retaliatory chunter. But then Trump doesn’t seem to understand tariffs either.

As far as I can see, a tariff is just another tax, but one levied on imports. Trump imposed tariffs on all countries, some inhabited only by penguins, and then took the tariffs off, before swearing they’ll be back.

Trump’s on-off tariffs are, according to the BBC’s economics editor, Faisal Islam, taking the US “back a century in terms of protectionism”.

They’re also scaring the shit out of the financial markets (me, not Faisal).

He’s mainly concerned with hitting China. At the time of bashing this out, Trump says Chinese-made smartphones and other electronics will be exempt from levies on general goods of up to 145%. Until they’re not, as the next day he says they are not exempt but have been moved into a different levy “bucket”, whatever that might be.

Is a levy bucket what he drinks his Diet Coke from? Who knows.

All this wild inconsistency is terrible for the stock markets and the world’s economy. But Trump doesn’t care, being surrounded by bum-kissing officials who praise his every unstable word. When he backs down after saying he wouldn’t back down, there is always a lackey on hand to say that was the plan all along.

Then hand-picked correspondents, having been washed clean of all traces of journalism, ask ridiculous question of his press secretary, saying things such as: “How does President Trump manage to be such a fine figure of a man? He looks so much fitter than he was in his first presidency.”

Oh, yes – the finest pear-shaped old dodderer ever to cheat on a golf course.

The grotesque showmanship, the reality TV sheen, is, sadly, just a distraction so we forget that Trump is reshaping the US in his image, that he is destroying the state to make life even richer for his billionaire pals, that he viciously turns on anyone who doesn’t join the bum-kissing queue and threatens to sue broadcasters he considers lacking in respect.

As the former US news anchor broadcaster Dan Rather points out in his excellent blog, behind the rancour and the racket from Trump, the Republicans have been busy passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. This will require showing a passport or birth certificate matching one’s legal name to register to vote.

Rather says this Act is “nothing but codified voter suppression. Sponsors and supporters of the bill will tell you it’s about safeguarding our election process. Once again, for those in the back: Our elections are safe.”

Rather adds: “For years, Trump and MAGA have repeated false claims of massive voter fraud. It is a myth used to enrage the base and reduce the number of people who can vote. No one has produced evidence to support these spurious allegations. Note that there was nary a mention of voter fraud when Trump won in 2024.”

How graceless in victory Trump has been. And, for all his mock tough boy swagger, he is really just a bully. Like all bullies, he is a weak man pretending to strength.

What a mess. Next time I promise to find something else to write about.

The idea for this one came at the back with a smell of diesel. Most buses in York whiz around silently. This one was old school.

After dropping the car off at the local garage, I walked a while, then hopped on an unaccustomed number. Never ventured on this route before, but you take your excitement where you find it.

Tourists from a village near Winchester sat next to me. They asked where the bus went and commented on the diesel rattle.

All the buses used to be like this, old and horrid and smelling of a petrol station forecourt. People who bang on about how they hate electric cars should be made to travel only on diesel boneshakers, leaving the rest of us to enjoy the modern age.

Electric cars were the future once, and perhaps they still are, although plenty of people delight in bringing them down. As for the oil companies, they just want us addicted to fossil fuels, like the fossil fools we are.

Those companies are far too powerful, but they love the addled king over the water, who is downgrading everything environmental, although you could just stop that sentence at ‘everything’.

He loves the black stuff, that man, and witters “drill, baby, drill” like a cosplay oilman. Or a demented dentist.

Electric cars are not the future in the US, as he doesn’t like them, even though the billionaire who makes them spent millions of dollars paying for his election. There’s gratitude for you.

Confusingly, he turned the White House into a car lot the other day as a tacky advert for Tesla cars. He even swears he is going to buy one, even though only drives those little electric carts he uses for cheating at golf.

As for me, I have made the principled decision not to buy a Tesla because of Elon ‘Hitler salute’ Musk. This is an easy principle to maintain as I can’t afford one. But you have to make a stand. With enough money I would fancy a Volvo or a VW with a plug.

The bus stopped in a cloud of diesel, and I went off to interview a Polish man who, with his wife, has opened a bakery and bistro in York. People coming over here to make lovely food and brighten our dull lives. It’s almost as if Nigel Farage never existed, which was tragically not the case last time I checked.

Also that morning I bumped into someone from old people’s badminton, then popped into my favourite bookshop to say how much I’d enjoyed the last book from there. Night Waking by Sarah Moss, in case you’re wondering.

Outside the shop the sun was shining, spring was here, but other springs were on my mind.

We’d been with my mother last weekend, driving round and round the tiny lanes in the back of nowhere, or Macclesfield to be precise, while she tried to remember exactly where her friend lived. When we finally arrived, as we got out of the car there was a loud metallic springing noise, an unwelcome echo of that once made by Zebedee on the Magic Roundabout.

It was not encouraging.

The bus back was electric, swift and silent. Wonderful vehicles, apart from when they loom behind you without a warning when you are cycling.

Hopping off, I walked up the hill, then down to the garage, where the mechanic hoisted up the car and pointed to the broken spring. And two knackered shock-absorbers.

The next shock I had to absorb was the cost.

Later, he led me to my revived car. The garage has a carwash and the car being finished off was an electric Audi.

“What’ll happen when we all drive those?” I asked.

“Petrol,” he said. “You need to keep driving petrol.”

I didn’t tell him about my electric dreams.

Just then an unnecessarily modified Ford drove past with one of those loud popping exhausts. Then circled by again, just in case nobody had noticed the first time.

How will fumy young poseurs cope when the petrol runs out?

We’ve always talked about going to the annual Hold Steady gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, without doing anything about it.

But now we are here.

I got my eldest boy into this American band years back now. We saw them early on with Counting Crows in Manchester. And now we are here for their Weekender party, a regular date on the Camden calendar.

The venue is one loud, heaving party, all joyous and hectic, sweaty and beery.

As we end up in a lively scrum near the front, I am glad of my son’s presence. This trip was his idea, he did all the organising, and now he has my back.

It doesn’t take much to get this crowd going, and it’s fair to say they are not careful with their beer. Without the support of those around them, the least stable fans would fall over, and some do that anyway, redistributing their drinks as they go down.

It’s surprising just how much the fans adore this band. A fine adoration, for sure, but I had no idea the fans would be so ardent, and so physical, so completely into the Hold Steady. Theirs is a raucous ecstasy, leaping about, flinging their arms, jumping like pneumatic drills, and shouting the lyrics back at Finn.

Standing near the front now seems to have been a little reckless. The mostly blokeish mob surges forward, then falls back, pushing and pressing in a hefty conga line.

“Are you all right, Dad?” says Spencer behind me, as the wave returns.

It’s funny to think of it now, but when he was a toddler he used to hide behind his mother’s legs, or even under her skirts, too shy to be seen. And now he is a man of six foot two and acting as a human prop to his small old dad. Five foot eight, and I’m sticking to that now eroded truth.

I am glad that little boy grew into this man, I think, as the fans surge back again. I helped to look after him, and now he is looking after me in the midst of this happy riot.

The Hold Steady, fronted by Crain Finn for 20 years and more, tell stories of drugs and alcohol, religion and redemption, hope and despair. Often these rock yarns have roots in Minneapolis, where Finn grew up.

Rampaged youth is viewed through a long smudged lens. The songs are rocking, uplifting and yet gentle too, fond and packed with believable characters, all seeming so real.

Finn often sings and speaks about how he only just made in out of that party maze, as in this key lyric: “Killer parties almost killed me.”

A phrase that gave a title to their debut album in 2004. Two years later saw the release of what is considered their greatest album, Boys And Girls In America, and the opening track, Stuck Between Stations, gets the party started tonight.

Finn is, you have to admit, an unlikely rock star, a balding 53-year-old in heavy-framed black spectacles, perhaps a little tubby, looking like someone’s dad on a livelier night out than he intended. Yet as soon as he speaks or sings, the charisma shines out. There is something about this crumpled rock god, an everyday sort of hero.

It is a night of stories and songs, tales and tunes, and some killer chords. This band has survived lots of those, too. Two guest horn players turn six into eight, filling out the sound, and allowing songs such as Sequestered in Memphis to kick up a gear.

Chips Ahoy is another lively treasure. The opening lyrics get everyone going again –

“She put $900 on the fifth horse in the sixth race
I think his name was chips ahoy

Came in six lengths ahead

We spent the whole next week getting high.”

Stay Positive is in there too, one of the band’s sturdy anthems.

“There is so much joy in what we do up here,” says Finn towards the end.

After the last encore, as is traditional with this band, Finn chants: “We are the Hold Steady – you are the Hold Steady…”

This really does feel like a community or the livelier sort of church – even if you wouldn’t want to invite some of the worshippers round to your house after the ‘service’.

Everyone leaves hot and happy, a little battered and bruised, but feeling positive, as instructed.

We go back to our hotel smelling of beer. The next morning, probably still smelling of beer, we walk through Hyde Park in the sunshine, then visit the V&A Museum, before heading back through the park to Speakers’ Corner and Oxford Street, something to eat, a beer, then home.

Finn went with us too, still filling our heads with his killer songs and killer stories. How good it is to have finally made that gig. A glorious night. But next time, if there is one, I will stand further back.