27th November 2022

Whether it’s yet more shootings in the US or wars between neighbouring countries, the news is depressing. It’s the lack of brotherly love that affects me the most.  So, I switched over to Sky Arts to watch a documentary about one of my favourite groups of the 60s, The Hollies. It brought back a memory of something very spiritual.  In 2008, whilst living in France, I got one of those calls we all dread. My dear brother Alan was dying. We dropped everything and rushed to the Birmingham Hospice where he lay in a coma. I held his hand and, hoping he could hear me, talked about our childhood and our shared love of The Hollies. Sadly, he never regained consciousness and within days he had passed away. Returning for the last time from the hospice, we went to the house he shared with my older brother, Robert. I sat in Alan’s chair next to the radio. Robert said he hated how quiet the house was and asked me to switch on the radio. Immediately the room was flooded with:  “It’s a long long road, from which there is no return. No burden is he to bear. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother…”

20th November 2022

 I never liked the I’m a Celebrity TV show. It panders to everything I hate. Irrespective of who the ‘stars’ are - politician Matt Hancock, linked-to-royalty sportsman Mike Tindall, or ageing singer Boy George -  the result’s the same. Schadenfreude for the masses. I’m old enough to remember the early  Candid Camera series, where unsuspecting members of the public were conned into a situation only to be shown as stupid at the end. Others, like You’ve been Framed showed awful home videos of small crying children coming to grief whilst falling into water, or hurting themselves on a slide, whilst the canned audience laughter made me cringe. I have never, ever, been able to laugh at others’ misfortune.  Neither do I understand the current adulation of presenters Ant and Dec. To me, they’re just talentless people, earning tons of money for smirking at the camera. As Professor Sir Simon Wessely put it: “It’s the theatre of cruelty.”  Is this what mass entertainment has come to, armchair ‘knitters’ cackling, like Madame Guillotine, at the misfortune of others? And even light entertainment like Strictly is hosted by the untalented Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly, only there because of their looks. Where are today’s talented  presenters, like Bruce Forsyth or Roy Castle of old? I’m still looking….. 

13th November 2022

 At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I observed two minutes silence to remember those who fell in both world wars. I also remembered the ten members of my own family who died during my lifetime. Yesterday I attended an annual commemoration of those from Birmingham who fell, including in the Holocaust. I found the sermon interesting as it conflated fresh bread and mature wine with the young complementing the old. Each age has a role to play in life, supporting and respecting the other. I was therefore not amused to read about food retailer KFC’s ‘push’ article, pitching its chicken to German customers, of all people (!),  celebrating Kristallnacht. Fortunately, the message caused outrage everywhere, so KFC has since apologised, citing its ‘push’ program, based on some sort of algorithm.  I know I am now old and that many young people say we should forget the past. No! No! No! It’s only by remembering what happened that we can hope to avoid it in the future. The only ‘push’ I want to see, whatever your age, is a push towards mutual respect and global peace. 

6th November 2022

As Guy Fawkes didn’t blow up parliament last night, our PM will today attend the COP27 climate meeting,  devised to find yet more stringent ways to stop man’s ‘evil’ CO2 emissions. Global warming is certainly happening but many scientists are still not convinced of its cause. And now there’s even an intelligent robot looking impassively at the problem. Scientists John Abbott and Jennifer Marohasy created a neural network to investigate temperature fluctuations since before records began. The robot’s findings? Natural phenomena such as planetary shift and solar activity, causing changes in oceanic water flows, are the most likely reason for current global warming. At least five ice ages have occurred throughout Earth’s history, the earliest 2 billion years ago, long before man appeared. I don’t believe there’s anything we can do, except organise global efforts to move people away from danger areas near coasts, rivers, volcanoes, the tropics etc, and build insulated houses on stilts. The world often gets things spectacularly wrong, e.g. convincing us all to hide away from a flu-like virus! The financial fall out will be with us for decades. Sweden didn’t shut down and doesn’t appear to have suffered a greater death toll than the rest of us. Sometimes, we need to take a step back and use common sense. Pity Mr Fawkes didn’t.