In the 1950s my mother took me to see a film called The Jolson Story, an idealised biopic about an extraordinary singer. Jolson, a US immigrant from Russia, challenged the musical stereotypes of the age by converting black Afro rhythms into a format that white people could understand and enjoy. In the film there’s a scene where Jolson tries to jazz up the traditional barber-shop harmonies. After the show, the impressario Lew Dockstader fires Jolson, saying ‘This is how we’ve always sung it and we’re not gonna change.’ 70 years later, in the footballing world, England Manager Southgate - faced with his team losing - refuses to bring on a player called Grealish, a footballer with an extraordinary ability. Traditional, waistcoat-wearing Southgate - like Dockstader - says ‘This is how my team have always played and we’re not going to change.’ In this life, faced with the terrible problems we’re all experiencing, it’s time to confront the traditional and embrace the extraordinary.
11th October 2020
When I worked in the state-funded sector, my professor often said to me You’d do far better working in the private sector. At that time it was true. Business salaries were far higher and more prolific, but I stayed because of the university’s final-salary pension scheme. Best decision I ever made. Today, because of Covid, everything’s been turned on its head. Private businesses are suffering and dying, self-employed enterprises destroyed. But the state sector, the one where historically, socialist unions would regularly urge their workers to go on strike, is sitting pretty, paid securely by the tax payer. On average, as well as relative job security, you can today get 7% more wages working in the state sector. Fat-cat union leaders don’t know what to do! Should we all, then, start clapping for bar staff, waitresses and others struggling to enhance our lives? One thing’s for sure: without business taxes, the government will struggle to fund the NHS and the rest of the state sector, and we’ll all be up the creek without a paddle. The world has turned upside down.
4th October 2020
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the day my elder brother Robert o.s. died. He grew up under some of the harshest conditions this country has ever known. Born in 1942, indiscriminate bombs were raining down and food was rationed. No phone nor car. Life was dark. Yet, he grew up the sweetest, kindest person I’ve ever known. Modern IT systems passed him by, but school and society taught him to respect the knowledge older people had gained over their lives and, above all, to respect those in authority. Conversing and working together with everyone were key. In the decades since then, as I look around the world, it’s obvious that running a country requires high levels of intellect and education not money; it shouldn’t be ‘who you know’ but what you know. Ignore quirks of personality. Remember that in his early years, Churchill was called a clown. Whatever the profession, the ideal candidate should have years of training in the ‘field’ with proven skills but, above all, the ability to liaise easily with all levels of society. As in 1942, life is once again hard and uncompromising. Our leaders could learn a lot from my brother Robert.
27th September 2020
The close of a difficult year, the end of an era for us. From the minute we rescued Bruno from the SPA kennel in Montauban, France, life had been one big adventure. I’m so glad I wrote Pensioners in Paradis, where so many of his doggie mishaps are recorded for posterity. We always wanted only the best for Bruno but yesterday, when the time had come, we didn’t want to follow the vet’s current Covid procedures, where you must stand and grieve on the public pavement outside whilst handing over your beloved pet. Miraculously, a solution appeared out of the blue via a company called Dignipets, who come to the house. Bruno, as a hunting dog, always preferred the outside so we arranged for his final moments to be resting on the grass in his favourite sunny spot of our garden. I held his paw throughout. It was so peaceful. Bruno will have his name inscribed in a doggie memorial book at the Prestwood Pet Crem at nearby Stourbridge where we will be able to walk in the woods by the flowing river there and remember him.
RIP Bruno, our beautiful Breton spaniel. 2003-2020.
20th September 2020
For some, this weekend is the time of new year. In over 70 years I’ve never known a crisis like this past year. In times gone by we’ve suffered from terrible world wars, where millions were slaughtered by men from different countries fighting each other. In the past, how ever bad it was, we knew that at some point it would be over and the world could return to normal. Those were dark days but this crisis is different. Of course, we’ve always had viruses. Every winter flu kills thousands. But that is a more ‘natural’ virus, not man-made, and we don’t change our lifestyles because of it. But Covid? Many believe it was caused by an accidental leak in a secret lab researching mutant viral strains in bats, which was covered up by its subversive, non-democratic country host. An accident waiting to happen, causing death to millions and ruining the whole world. Will there ever be an effective vaccine or will this man-made virus keep mutating making any virus ineffective? Let’s hope today is a turning point.
13th September 2020
6th September 2020
It’s now six months since we were forced into lockdown as a ‘vulnerable’ couple. The entire globe has been affected, millions have died, a disaster for every nation’s economy, school education and tourism, yet for some unfathomable reason still no word of global condemnation for the perpetrators, especially from the unbiased WHO. Many pics of lonely 5 year olds at school, sitting all alone at lunchtime, separated from their friends whilst eating from a box. Ambiguity and uncertainty abound over what’s allowed and vice versa. Last week we went out on a rare trip to take advantage of the government’s ‘eat out for half price’ scheme. Staff wore masks but, of course, diners can’t to enable them to eat! Where’s the logic when the virus can easily pass from one diner to the next? And outside, smokers indulged their habit, masks sitting around their necks. Plenty of signs where not to stand, but not where you can. Now that deaths from the virus seem to be lessening, time to ditch everything à la Sweden?
