The view out of my window at the time of writing

MY name is Julian and I like staring out of windows. It helps to settle the mind and puts thoughts in order. Also, something might be happening on the other side of that glass.

Normal people have always looked out of windows. Anyone who writes is likely to have done their share of gazing through the double-glazing.

There is even a quote from a writer; there is always a quote if you search hard enough or do a quick Google.

Mavis Gallant was a Canadian who moved to France to be a writer, and I like to think she had that idea while staring out of a window. She once said: “A short story is what you see when you look out of the window.”

This is rather good, as is captures the essence of the activity, the just looking, while also summoning up the nature of the short story, which is something glimpsed, a snatch of a life or story.

People sometimes say a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Good short stories are sometimes all middle, in that you don’t know what came before or what will happen afterwards. All you have is what you can see before you.

I confess to never having heard of Mavis Gallant, but may now try a book of her short stories. William Trevor was always a favourite writer of short stories, although I’ve not read them in a while.

Anyway, staring out of windows. This is an uncontroversial pastime unless you are a pupil at a school in Melton Mowbray.

Luckily, age and geography separate me from John Ferneley College, where the incoming headteacher has introduced a new set of school rules. As well as banning window-gazing, Natalie Teece says pupils must always smile and ask permission if bending to pick up a pen. And they must learn to respond to whistle commands from their handlers; sorry, members of staff.

They must enter the classroom in single file, “never forget to say Sir or Miss” and thank their teacher at the end of each lesson.

Turning around in class is forbidden, whatever sound might be heard, and pupils must sit up straight. Their replies to teachers should always be “upbeat”.

Some parents complained on social media and the story spread, while Ms Teece was reported as saying she’d received “overwhelming support from a majority of parents”.

Such rules are a mystery to me and seem sad and life-limiting, designed to suppress individuality. And pupils responding to whistles is just bizarre.

Reading this story through the comments on Twitter and Facebook is only to see one side and may lack nuance or context. But some rules are set for the sake of setting rules. What sort of adults do we wish to create from such rules? Compliant, unthinking people who don’t ask questions or ever allow themselves to be creatively diverted, perhaps.

But then we have in Gavin Williamson an education secretary who wishes to cut arts subjects at university to concentrate on subjects that “target taxpayers’ money towards the subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better”.

What qualifies as building back better – and, please sir, better than what? Such statements are puzzling and profoundly depressing. As droned on about on this ledge previously, the creative industries earn a fortune for this country, adding £115bn to the UK economy in 2019.

Anyway, I appear to have wandered. This is what happens when you look out of windows for ideas.

Incidentally, when lecturing in journalism at a university in Yorkshire, I prepared a session on looking out of windows, encouraging students to look out of the window and then go outside in search of a story, any story will do.

When I turned up to teach that session, the room had no windows.

IMAGINE there was no royal coverage. The papers would be thinner and BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell would have nothing to say.

Witchell never does have anything to say but says it anyway with his frowny face frowning and his ferrety voice ferreting away. And the newspapers rarely have anything to report but bellow it anyway into the echo chamber of nonsense that passes for royal news.

As we live in the age of the statue, arguing about whether they should stay or go, the media today gathers around a new statue.

Your appreciation or otherwise of the statue of Diana, Princess of Wales may depend on various factors, including the strength of your stomach.

Not being an expert in statuary, I thought it horribly naff at a lazy glance, awash with easy sentiment. The Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones has seen the statue up close and concurs, referring to a “nauseating, spiritless and characterless hunk of nonsense”.

Ian Rank-Broadley’s statue, unveiled yesterday at Kensington Palace, portrays Princess Diana as a strong woman; possibly as a giantess surrounded by mere mortals. Ah, no, those mere mortals are children. Not hers when young, as there are three and one is wearing a dress.

The statue was commissioned by Princes William and Harry to honour their mother. I am guessing they are pleased. I could guess something else, of course. That’s what the newspapers do all the time, moulding stories from speculation, rumour and what the editor wanted in the morning conference.

Today’s front pages, as viewed on the BBC website, show the different ways a straightforward story can be reported.

The Sun goes for “Princess & The Peace” because William and Harry behaved cordially and managed a smile. The Daily Mirror has the brothers reuniting under the headline: “We miss mum every day…” The princes are quoted as saying that they hope the statue would “be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy”.

Over at the Daily Mail, the headline is: “Together… but still so far apart.” A classic of the genre, a bold statement about something the newspaper doesn’t know. Speculation oils most royal reporting as the royals say little, although the princes’ parents broke that rule in high style.

Splashed over the Mail’s photograph of the brothers is a teaser for Richard Kay’s column inside: “Legacy she’d really want? For her boys to end their divisions.” Oh yeah, has Diana’s ghost been whispering into your ear or something?

There’s a sickly symbiosis between the media and the royals, particularly what we used to call the tabloids. The royals are good for business, especially if there is a rift into which prying fingers can be prised.

Many of the papers would be lost without the royals, so they keep up a strange two-faced waltz, lavishing the loyalty while also shit-stirring on a grand style. It always amazes me that people read or watch this stuff, but they do, as witnessed by endless Diana features and Diana documentaries.

You can’t help thinking she’s much more useful to them young and dead, as it were, rather than as a 60-year-old woman. Although I guess there would still be headlines: “Daring Diana cuts a dash as she peels away the years in low-cut gown for her 60^th party”. Or some such flimflam.

Incidentally, The Times goes for a photograph and a report headlined: “Brothers show unity as Diana statue finally goes on show.” No wild and shouty speculation, just a straight news story.

TO PARAPHRASE from The League of Gentlemen, that was a local byelection for local people.

Good to see Kim Leadbeater win Batley and Spen for Labour, even by the slimmest of margins. She’s a local woman who campaigned on local issues, while contending with national nastiness.

George Galloway and his grandstanding ego won 8,000 votes, many possibly from Leadbeater. A shame and it would still be a shame if eight people had voted for that terrible man.

The national  correspondents will now be heading back to London, leaving Leadbeater to learn how to be an MP in the seat once held by her sister, Jo Cox, murdered when serving as the area’s MP.

I see that Priti Patel, the Minister for Being Needlessly Cruel, has elbowed herself into the headlines again. Perhaps she was jealous of all the attention Matt Hancock was getting.

Patel has other briefs too, of course. The Minister for Swearing at Civil Servants being another title. That behaviour was ruled to have broken the ministerial code. Boris Johnson, the Minister for Excusing Bad Behaviour By Himself and All His Political Pals, brushed that criticism away.

He also initially defended former Health Secretary Hancock, caught in a restrictions-busting adulterous clinch by The Sun, saying the matter was closed. Then yesterday Johnson claimed credit for having acted decisively by sacking Hancock, even though Hancock wasn’t sacked but resigned when he realised the game was up.

Yesterday, The Times had a front-page story about Patel, the Home Secretary, wishing to detain asylum seekers in an ‘offshore hub’. So far from our shores, in fact, that it’s in Rwanda. As a gauge to the heartless lunacy of that idea, the shortest distance between London and Rwanda is 4,096 miles, according to Google.

Patel wishes to introduce laws next week to allow this to happen, having copied the idea from Denmark. That’s two supposedly civilised European nations dealing with asylum seekers by dumping them on a landlocked African country with no shores of its own.

Rwanda is a poor country and yet two wealthy countries wish to ship their asylum-seekers there; refugees from poor countries who sought shelter in a wealthier country but find themselves sent thousands of miles from their hoped-for destination.

Britain should be ashamed; Denmark should be ashamed ­– and I sure as hell feel ashamed. What a shoddy, cynical and callous way for a so-called civilised country to carry on.

The proposed Nationality and Borders Bill is a disgrace, a typical bit of performative nastiness dressed up as being in the national interest. Whereas in fact it’s only in the interests of keeping alive rancid myths about immigration.

We are part of a wider world and have a human responsibility to people seeking asylum here. That doesn’t mean we have to accept everyone, but we should treat people with decency and dignity – and shipping people to Africa is bizarre and plain nasty. Perhaps that’s why the idea appeals to Priti Patel.

Earlier suggestions from Patel have included carting asylum seekers to Ascension Island, 4,000 miles from Britain.

All this begs a troubling question: how from such a distance can we be sure that the human rights of vulnerable people are being respected? Answer, we can’t – but Johnson and Patel will be happy as the problem has been ‘solved’ by shoving asylum seekers out of sight and mind.

Last October, the Observer reported that government ministers had been advised against using ‘prison ships’ to discourage migrants crossing the Channel.

That unholy suggestion brought back memories of HMP Weare, a floating prison moored in Portland harbour, Dorset, which was in use from 1997 to 2006, until being condemned by the chief inspector of prisons.

Much further back, prison hulks were used. These decommissioned, and invariably unseaworthy, ships were moored offshore and refitted as floating prisons. It had become customary to transport convicts to America, until the outbreak of war in America in 1775 closed that route. Convicts given a sentence of transportation no longer had anywhere to go, so they were instead confined onboard those floating prisons.

This suggests there is nothing new under the political sun, while also raising the ‘possibility’ that those political operatives known as Johnson & Co are entirely without conscience. But we’d guessed that already.

ARE we the same people now as when we were young? This question arises after reading the autobiography of a musical hero, but it has general resonance, too.

I’ve not read many music books, four if memory serves.

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello was fleetingly brilliant, especially about the early years, but too long and needed a stern edit.

A better book is to be found in Chris Difford’s Some Fantastic Place: My Life In And Out Of Squeeze. Smartly written, as you’d expect from the Squeeze lyricist, and blissfully short.

Many pages beyond short is A Long Strange Trip, The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, which runs to 820 pages, plus index. Dennis McNally’s book was opened recently after sitting on the shelf for years. Whether it will ever be finished is another matter, although 225 pages have been read. Good pages but the thought of all those to follow is off-putting.

That leaves Beeswing by Richard Thompson, which has the subtitle, ‘Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My voice 1967-75’. Newly published by Faber, this musical autobiography is a must for all Thompson obsessives and nerds, who revere his guitar skills and song-writing.

Thompson was still a teenager when Fairport Convention found the sort of quick fame that happened in the 1960s. They were never as big as the obvious names from that era, but they had their moments, and they’re still playing today, minus Thompson who only hung around for a few years, and has been playing solo for decades.

Beeswing, named after one of Thompson’s best-known songs, is good at recalling the chaos and momentum of being in a young band. Thompson writes well, as you might guess from his lyrics and wry on-stage banter, as he traces the genesis of English folk-rock, a genre Fairport can claim to have invented.

It has always seemed strange that a man who doesn’t drink can write such good drinking songs, including God Loves A Drunk and Down Where The Drunkards Roll. Thompson, who turned to Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, in his late twenties has joked before that he doesn’t need to drink as he swallowed a lifetime’s worth when he was young. The booze-fuelled account he gives here backs up that explanation.

Beeswing covers all of Thompson’s time in Fairport, including the devastating minibus crash that killed two people, drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s new girlfriend at the time. One of the worst moments in his life somehow produces the strongest writing.

The book then moves onto the Linda years, as Richard and Linda Thompson produced albums that easily stand the test of time, such as Shoot Out The Lights and I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, and some that don’t, such as Sunnyvista.

Shoot Out… was first produced by Gerry Rafferty, who, in Thompson’s account, was drunk most of the time, ruined the songs by layering the sound in studio trickery, and spent too much time leching after Linda. The Rafferty version was abandoned and never officially released, although bootleg cuts exist, and the album was recorded again.

At the end of Beeswing, Thompson looks back on more than half a century of writing and recording – alongside personal highs and lows – and wonders how the man he is now relates to the boy he once was. Many share such feelings, although most don’t have such prominent signposts.

Thompson regards some old songs with fond puzzlement, uncertain how or why they were written. “To play a song like Meet On The Ledge, written fifty years ago on my bed in my tiny room in Brent, for reasons I cannot remember, with a worldview that was understandably naïve, is curious. I am and I am not the same person. I have to forgive the author of the song for being youthful, but I salute some of his insights into life, which seem hard won.”

Thompson in his seventies no longer shares that young man’s emotions, so must seek new emotions to stir when he plays the song.

A fine study in whether we are the same people now that we were then. And a great read.

John in the US in 1981

SOME memorials are public and others we carry within ourselves. This train of thought began with two public memorials, although another starting point was a hunt for our ancient Premium Bonds.

Inevitably, the bonds turned out to be worthless.

Looking for them unearthed my university friend’s funeral. So long ago already was my first reaction. John died in 1999 and I’ve been without him for as long as we were friends.

We met at Goldsmiths College. He’d dropped out after a year at Leeds University and I’d fluffed my A-levels, so we both rolled to south east London.

John was six ft four and was teased for looking like Clark Kent; I was five foot eight and teased for looking like Leo Sayer.

After university Clark and Leo had an excellent adventure in the US, staying in New York and driving to Los Angeles in a week, then up the coast to San Francisco. I still think of those three weeks.

John was best man at our wedding and did a splendid job. There is more I could recall. That day he spray-painted his Audi and it looked terrible. Or my lasting regret at not seeing him after he said he was ill. He seemed to rally and anyway, no good friend of mine was going to die like that, aged only 43.

Mostly I think of him as he was, tall, faithful, sometimes sardonic, amusing and interested in many things, a good companion for a beer or two. A solid good friend still.

Private memorials allow you to accommodate your own thoughts and feelings. Public memorials are more complex, with so many people to please or appease, or unintentionally to offend.

The Covid-19 wall across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament is an affecting memorial, a white wall filled with red hearts, supposedly one for every victim of Covid-19.

This emotional graffiti is moving in its simplicity. All those hand-drawn hearts have emotional power. There have been calls for this impromptu memorial wall to be made permanent, and that is what should happen.

Discussions about how to honour the lives of those who died in the devastating Grenfell tower fire are long-running, and sometimes contentious. One suggestion is that the tower should be turned into a high-rise garden to remember those who died.

The idea comes from Marcio Gomes and Andreia Perestrelo, who lived on the 21^st floor and escaped the fire with their two daughters. Andreia was pregnant and their son, whom they’d already called Logan, was stillborn because of the toxic smoke.

They want the shell of the tower to be restored to its 220ft height and planted with 72 species of plants, forming a high-rise memorial garden to honour the 72 people who died in the fire.

Marcio spoke about his wish in an interview with the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He was inspired by the work of Stefano Boeri, the Italian architect whose forested blocks of flats in Milan sow vertical acres of greenery in an otherwise barren landscape (above).

Whether that’s the right answer for Grenfell is not for someone like me to say. That right belongs to the relatives of those who died and to those who escaped with their lives.

Public memorials must contend with many feelings, in this case not least those survivors who’d rather see the tower removed. Some of those who lost loved ones in the fire have said that the official memorial plans are only adding to their grief. Finding an answer won’t be easy.

As for John V Sheridan (1955-1999), you live on in my heart, old friend. I am so glad I knew you. Sometimes I still talk to you in my head. Sometimes you answer back with a smart reply and that familiar half-grin. That’s the sort of man you were.

GB News launched this week and I was slow to the wake, sorry, party. This is Andrew Neil’s anti-woke crusade, a whole TV station conjured out of nothing to answer a problem invented by Neil and others.

You can’t switch on the BBC without falling over left-wing propaganda, they say. The news is ‘woke’, they say.

If this seems a stretch as the basis for a TV news station, the same logic lies behind the government’s obsessive culture war spats. They create rows about imaginary nothings so that we don’t spot the real somethings being slipped under our noses.

Anyway, I had the ironing to do so I switched on the Great British Breakfast on GB News.  One dip is not a thorough exercise, but have you seen this station? It’s a news channel that doesn’t contain news. News is what all those biased TV stations everywhere rattle on about, with their insistence of reporting things.

Almost no news arose in the time it took to iron a pile of T-shirts and one shirt. Three presenters peered out of the digital mists, sitting in a studio where a few hundred quid were clearly well spent. Everything looks cheap and the picture quality is dreadful. Or maybe that’s the patriotic vision, taking us back to when good old British TV sent pictures through a snowstorm.

The ‘news’ included a running discussion about working from home and another on how the hospitality industry was coping, with reporters beaming in from the far side of the moon, or Newcastle and Huddersfield. Gosh, wherever all that money went, it cannot have been on the technology.

A clip was shown of Andrew Neil interviewing chancellor Rishi Sunak in a studio found in the back of a skip somewhere. Neil is an old lion of an interviewer, but here he seemed to be in the wrong cage.

Then up popped Neil Oliver in a short segment called Not The Front Pages. No, GB News doesn’t want those because they contain actual news. As it happens, most of the front pages featured the latest lacerations of Dominic Cummings, including the allegation that Boris Johnson called health secretary Matt Hancock “totally fucking hopeless”.

As the Daily Star, of all the papers, put it so succinctly this morning: “Hopeless bloke says hopeless bloke is hopeless, says hopeless bloke.”

This formulation clearly has more than one use: “Mendacious man says mendacious man is mendacious, says mendacious man…”

Oliver wasn’t bothered by that hot topic, preferring to prattle about working from home, while also puffing his new Saturday show. Oliver used to be that Scottish bloke with the long hair on the BBC’s Coast programme; now he’s re-invented himself as that long-haired Scottish bloke from Coast who is now a right-wing rant merchant.

You only had to switch over to BBC or ITV to be see how terrible GB News looked. Running a TV news station needs more than an anti-woke obsession. It needs, you know, news. And cameras that work. And presenters who are worth watching.

Oh, I forgot another bit of ‘news’ covered. It was that hot topic of the moment: was Enid Blyton a bit of a racist, as exclusively bored on about by the Daily Telegraph? No conclusions were reached, and the ironing was done.

WE are in the car, returning from dropping off birthday presents for our eldest son. Our daughter and visiting middle son are in the back, overhearing me discuss whether 9pm is too late for the evening coffee, what with my terrible insomniac tendencies. I say that nothing seems to make a difference, so I may as well have that coffee. “Dad bingo!” cry the siblings on the backseat. My daughter had guessed exactly what I’d say, and I said it.

How awful it is to be quite so predictable.

OXFORD students voting to remove a portrait of the Queen from their common room is a small pebble in a small pond. Or it would be in a sensible country with sensible newspapers.

For the Daily Mail, this rearrangement earns the headline: “OUTRAGE AS OXFORD STUDENTS VOTE TO AXE QUEEN.” Over on the Daily Express, milky morning tea is being dribbled out to the words: “HOW DARE THEY! OXFORD STUDENTS CANCEL OUR QUEEN.”

This is a story for the Oxford Mail, not the Daily Mail. And that is where you will find it , seemingly followed up from the nationals, as the local story was uploaded only this morning.

The Oxford Mail website does, however, opt for a sensible headline: “Oxford University students vote to remove portrait of Queen.” No faux outrage, no sticking your head in a dustbin and shouting for effect; just the facts in a story written by one reporter.

The better-known Mail dedicated three reporters on the task, according to the joint byline. Three people to write that nonsense! Plus at least one news editor shouting into that dustbin, one editor steering from the sidelines, and one sub-editor to bellow at his computer while composing that headline.

What a lot of effort for nothing much. The Mail’s headline is, naturally enough, misleading as the students haven’t voted to “axe the Queen” but to remove her portrait from their common room.

Still, in the heat of the moment it’s hard to tell the difference between a portrait and a real monarch. Had they just voted to abolish the monarchy, the headline might have made sense.

As for the Express, dearie me, it’s like an old auntie who spits out her false teeth at the slightest provocation. Put your teeth back in – those students just want to remove a picture.

Sadly, this non-story fits with the culture wars mood of the moment, as the students decreed that the picture “represents colonial history”.

You know, students are always protesting about something or other and always have. Although in my long distant days at Goldsmiths College, the student politics passed me by, as I was more interested in beer, girls and English literature, approximately in that order.

What strikes me as an outrage is that our newspapers should be so easily outraged by nothing at all. Still, at least being outraged on behalf of the Queen avoids the need to do the heavy lifting involved in finding a real story or a real outrage.

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, got in on the act. Of course he did, popping up and down like the over-filled kettle of pointless indignation that he is. He tweeted that “students removing a picture of the Queen is simply absurd. She is the Head of State and a symbol of what is best about the UK. During her long reign she has worked tirelessly to promote British values of tolerance, inclusivity & respect around the world.”

Nearly 4,500 people liked that lame tweet – how anyone can like a tweet from that man is a mystery.

He could open the doors to his own cellar, peer down those steps and wonder if he’d be better trying to understand his job, rather than sending out twerpy tweet-tweets.

It’s dispiriting when newspapers carry on like this. Isn’t there any proper news out there any more? As someone who has been foolish enough to spend most of his working life in and around newspapers, sometimes I despair.

Oddly, though, I can’t shake off the habit of believing in newspapers, even when they churn out this stuff. Or believing in some newspapers some of the time, mostly the Guardian and the Observer as that’s just the way I am. And the Yorkshire Post as the features editor is kind enough to use my words sometimes.

But all those national editors getting hot under their collars should give over worrying about student politics.  They should have canned that habit when they stopped being students.

IT’S a flag-shaped irony. Those right-wing politicians who drape themselves in the union flag risk putting some of us off the country altogether. Here are a few reasons not to feel so patriotic – apologies for anything missing, as the list is getting longer by the day.

Cutting foreign aid…

For a wealthy country to break its promise to much poorer parts of the world, and potentially to expose hundreds of thousands of children to suffering and even death, is just so shameful that you wonder what Boris Johnson can be thinking of. The answer to that question, sadly, is that he is playing to the gallery at home, and is happy to cause suffering abroad as a sop to narrow-minded voters. Last November, a YouGov survey found that two-thirds of voters approved of Johnson’s £5bn cut in foreign aid – even though this rode roughshod over his own manifesto. Many leading Tories are aghast at this cruel proposal and yesterday attempted to hold a vote in the Commons, only to be denied by the Speaker. As well as having a grave human cost, this cut is short-sighted and risks weakening our soft power, while leaving other countries to move in.

Raving on about asylum seekers…

Placing asylum seekers in a rotten old military barracks in Kent, where the conditions are said to be appalling, was last week ruled to be unlawful by the high court. Will that make any difference? Probably not. After all, home secretary Priti Patel was decreed to have broken the ministerial code by swearing and shouting at civil servants, and Boris Johnson ignored the ruling, leaving his ethics adviser, Sir Alex Allan, with no choice but to resign. Incidentally, can you imagine having to advise that man on ethics? Nearly as tough a gig as being his adviser on birth control. Or his truth-telling tsar. As for the Napier barracks, where asylum seekers are treated like prisoners, that is a disgraceful way for a civilised country to conduct its affairs. Perhaps we no longer wish to be civilised. Still, raving on about asylum seekers creates another useful distraction.

Brexit being a bit of a balls-up…

Thanks to the pandemic, an overly obliging media and a cowed BBC, you don’t hear much about the continued pain being inflicted by Brexit. According to an interview Johnson has just given, he has nothing to add, saying “that lemon has been sucked dry”. Bizarre, but as sucking lemons is not generally considered to be enjoyable, perhaps his choice of metaphor hints at an underlying truth about Brexit. Here is one small example of the sour pointlessness of it all, as reported by the Guardian at the weekend. Tough new entry requirements could cut by a half the number of visits by young Europeans. How mad is that? Here is one family example. My dad, now aged 89, visited France on an exchange as a boy and this left him with a life-long love of the country. Are we wanting young Europeans to grow up with a life-long suspicion of the UK?

Offering up our medical data…

Why is the government so eager to pass on our medical data to the likes of Google and medical corporations – and why is this seemly happening on the sly, with a few weeks’ notice and no official way to opt out? Having declared myself suspicious of this initiative, I have downloaded a letter to send to my GP asking for this not to happen. Whether that will make a difference is hard to say, but it seems like a sensible move.

Tory MPs huffing as footballers take the knee…

Football in this country – and it’s not often you’ll see a sentence starting with those words round here – is multiracial and many leading players are Black. So it is hardly surprising that England players should take the knee before a match, even if this does leave a few idiot fans to start booing. Hardly surprising, either, sadly, that some Tory MPs should join in the booing, and in the process make themselves look stupid. Yes, Brendan Clarke-Smith, we are looking at you. The MP for Little-Brainshire – or somewhere – compared the anti-racism gesture to footballers performing the Nazi salute during a 1938 match against Germany. As actor David Schneider pointed out on Twitter: “Nazi salute = support for racism and genocide Taking the knee = opposition to racism and racial injustice.”

Further additions to this list are welcome. Well, they’re not, but you are welcome to make them.

HERE are a few unexceptional experiences that seem marvellous…

Walking with a group of friends on the North York Moors. Going to the cinema to see Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (great film, depressing too, but shot through with human spirit). Cycling to the university to play squash again. Meeting pals for beer and then a curry. All these activities used to happen and now they’ve taken place again. Does that mean we are back to normal as June 21 approaches? Who knows, but it’s a start, although let’s can the ‘Freedom Day’ label for just being too annoying. Still, all of the above activities were enjoyable, even losing at squash.

My beef about beef…

I SEE that the government is getting excited about striking a trade deal with Australia to import beef. This arrangement could see zero tariffs on such imported meat, which would harm our own farmers and lower health and welfare standards. The RSPCA is against such a deal; British farmers are against such a deal; anyone with sense in their head should be against such a deal. Our Brexity government is dead set on striking a hurried deal so that it can win bragging rights, if little else. Anyone in such a hurry to win a deal is unlikely to secure a good deal, I’d suggest. Also, as this is a self-proclaimed ‘green’ government, if you believe such statements, how does importing beef from the other side of the world make economic or environmental sense? It doesn’t, it makes upside-down Brexit sense. And Brexit always was the cult that dismissed good sense. If the deal goes ahead, this carnivore will make sure only to buy British beef. And here ends my beef about beef.

Photo PA

Horizontal history…

THE statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston has been put on show in an exhibition that will help decide what should happen to the bronze memorial. It was toppled and dumped in the docks as part of the Black Lives Matter protests a year ago. The statue, with the protesters’ spray paint preserved, is being displayed alongside placards from the protest. All this seems sensible, unless you are the man from the Daily Telegraph, who says that presenting the statue horizontally is a partisan act. Not really, it’s an accurate representation of what happened and sets the statue in its new context. Colston was honoured by Victorian businessmen who wished to glory in his achievements, while overlooking the cruelty of slavery. What happened to the Colston statue is also now part of history, and if the statue were restored to its old condition and position, that would be to overlook history. That’s the trouble with history. The past doesn’t stay still, but changes in accordance with how you look at it. There isn’t one version of history, and choosing how to remember our past is not a simple matter of saying, “Oh weren’t we great.” Sometimes we were and sometimes we were not.

IT HAS been brought to the attention of the management that too many of these blogs are about a certain prime minister of our unfortunate acquaintance.

In the spirit of that accusation, here is a catch-up about the man we are not going to mention.

That secret wedding wasn’t very secret, was it?

The clandestine ceremony took place last Saturday after visitors were turfed out of Westminster Cathedral. That might have spoilt their day out, but it didn’t spoil the secret.

Anyway, soon enough the secret was out and everywhere, almost as if in a PR campaign where timing is everything. There followed maximum exposure of the man we are not going to mention and his new third wife. A bit like when they got that dog, only more so.

Perhaps the wedding was to draw attention away from that former co-conspirator turned adversary who’d been generating unflattering headlines a day or so earlier.

That’ll show him – we’re getting married in the morning.

Perhaps the wedding was kept secret so that nobody would notice that the groom was as far from being a practising Catholic as the Vatican is from London.

There was much lively comment on Twitter about the wedding photos. Rotten people pointed out that the man we are not going to mention looked more like the father of the bride. Rotten people can be so mean, can’t they? And yet so right at the same time.

Before we hurry on from those political nuptials, there has been much grumbling about the third wife being referred to in overnight headlines as ‘Flotus’, as if she were married to an American president.

We don’t have the equivalent of the First Lady of the United States here. If we did the acronym would be ‘Flotuk’. I am sure we can all second the proposal that first ladies should stay on the other side of the Atlantic.

Also conveniently overshadowed by the secret wedding was the row over who paid that massive bill for decorating the Downing Street flat.

The man we are not going to mention appointed another man to see if any rules had been broken. This other man found that they hadn’t. You could have knocked me down with a roll of expensive wallpaper when I heard that.

Quelle surprise, as the French used to say when they were still talking to us. Favoured man appointed to investigate sticky matter encounters nothing sticky.

Although he did point out that the man we are not going to mention should pay closer attention to where money comes from. And he ruled that the man we are not going to mention ‘acted unwisely’ by basically having no idea who was going to pay for the refurbishment of the flat.

One minute the man we are not going to mention faced a massive decorating bill; the next it had been settled, no questions asked, or at least not until later.

Also in the news, someone or other reportedly has settled a £27,000 bill for organic food deliveries consumed by the unmentioned man and his ‘Flotuk’.

Whenever the man we are not going to mention encounters a money problem, a kind friend or supporter pops up to deal with the bill; or to pay for a much-needed exotic holiday.

I begin to wonder if this is what’s meant by ‘levelling up’. From now one, when struggling people up and down the land have a money problem, it will be settled by a mysterious benefactor, no questions asked, just pick up the bag of used notes behind the bins.

The man we are not going to mention used to write right-wing columns in which he, for instance, flayed feckless single mothers. Perhaps they should lay off being feckless and check behind the bins, just in case.

After all, it would be a terrible shame if fairy god parents only visited the wealthy and privileged. That really wouldn’t be level at all.