You ain’t seen nothing yet, sunshine, so do me a favour and fuck nostalgia

I’ve not posted here for a while and feel my crown slipping, so I thought I might add a few anecdotes about newspapers and folk I have known on newspapers to keep the pot boiling.

While I was working in Birmingham, I was working as a sub-editor on the Evening Mail, but I made a friend of a guy I met while working subbing shifts on the morning newspaper, the Birmingham Post, which as it appears in the morning is subbed and produced the night before. (The Mail, an evening paper, is subbed and produced during the day — please keep up.)

Nigel had a friend who I later met and about whom I remember little except his ancestry and the short tale I am about to relate. The friend, who I now seem to remember was called Ben Travers, was the grandson of another Ben Travers, a playwright known for writing farces.

Nigel and Ben (the younger Travers) had worked together as reporters on a weekly in (I think) Cheshire and were there when a Daily Express reporter was killed in an IRA. I don’t know which one and a brief web search, a brief and superficial web search, as thrown up nothing. Ben somehow got wind that the Express reporter was not just a general news reporter but worked on the paper’s gossip column, still known in those days as William Hickey. So he rang them up.

‘I hear one of your reporters has been killed and you have a vacancy,’ he asked when he got through to the William Hickey editor, one (again I think) Ross Benson. Wikipedia says Benson was ‘a reporter for William Hickey’ not the editor, but as we used to say (or rather as I heard rather than said myself) don’t let a couple of facts stand in the way of a good story.

Benson (or whoever was the editor at the time) said, yes, you’r right and when Ben informed him he would like to be considered to fill the vacancy, asked him go down to London for interview. That interview consisted of a night on the piss and just one question: ‘Tell, me Ben,’ said Benson (or whoever was the William Hickey editor at the time), ‘would you be prepared to do the dirty on your friends?’.

‘Yes,’ Ben told him. And it was the right answer, because Ben was given the job. Whether or not he really would have been prepared to do the dirty on any friends or, more to the point, whether he actually did do the dirty on friends I have no idea. But it was the right answer.

I met Ben once, perhaps twice, in the early 1990s while I was living in London working shifts wherever I got find shifts, which wasn’t difficult. I was quite organised and used to ring around until my weekly diary was filled, and it was my proud boast then that I never had a day off I didn’t want. Mind unless you totally screwed up — and I never totally screwed up — and papers liked the cut of your jib, in time you became ‘a regular’ which helped a lot.

(I was in London working shifts for the nationals for five years — when I married and moved to Cornwall in 1995, I only worked shifts for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express — that I finally learned the wisdom of keeping your mouth shut, as in ‘you don’t always have to speak your mind’. I was never shy about speaking out, ever, but I now learned that you weren’t always obliged to speak out. Sometimes it was useful to adopt a lower profile.

. . .

My second anecdote involves on Jeff S. I shan’t give his full name — see above where I allude to the virtue of occasional discretion — but I have, in a way nominally, known Jeff for about almost 40 years. When I first worked on the Evening Mail as a news sub-editor, Jeff was working as a sub-editor on, I think, the Sunday Mercury.

I didn’t quite know him well then, but I bumped into him again when I started working shifts on the Daily Mail features sub-editing desk and knew him for many years after. By the way, I should add, because I hate to give the wrong impression, that I was almost 41 when I worked my first shift on the Mail and was far too old (and possibly not a good enough sub) to be considered for a full-time job on the desk. And although I subsequently went on to work for the Mail on that same desk for the next 28 years, every day when I turned up I was ‘a casual’ and a sub hired by the day — literally ‘hack’ derived from a ‘hackney carriage’ a vehicle hire by the day.

That might not sound too complimentary but given that as ‘a casual’ you were hired and worked one night on The Times, the next on the Mail, the next on the Independent, the next on the Sun etc and had to be able to sub in the style of that paper, and furthermore if being ‘a hack’ means you were versatile enough to carry it off, I would be proud to be described as ‘a hack’. Sadly, as far as I know no one has done so. Oh well. Perhaps they were out of compliments.

Anyway, Jeff

. . .

While Jeff was beavering away on the Sunday Mercury, he, like many of his colleagues was hoping to land ‘a job in London’ and had arranged to work a week’s worth of shifts somewhere or other in London to land such a job. London money was always better as in higher, though I assume kids from ‘the provinces’ never realised that London prices and rents were also always higher which might have accounted for the higher wages.

Anyway Jeff landed his week’s worth of shifts and booked a week off of annual leave, telling his boss — in the odd belief that his boss would not be too chuffed to know he was working shifts in London with a view to getting a

better job (why did we ever think that, Pete, they didn’t give a fuck?) — that he was off for a week in Saudi Arabia where his father, then working for the RAF, was currently stationed.

He worked wherever he worked in London for a week, then returned to Birmingham at the weekend. At some point it occurred to him that as he was supposed to have been in sunny Saudi Arabia for a week he would be expected to show a slight tan.

The trouble was that he was still as pale as a lump of Cheshire cheese. So he went to a chemist’s and bought himself some tanning lotion which he then applied. But the following morning the lotion did not seem to have done the trick and he panicked a little and decided to apply the lotion again. He did, and he woke up the morning he was due back at work a bright orange colour. And that was how he went to work. What they said when they saw him I don’t know.

. . .

Eventually, Jeff moved to London in the 1980s to work shifts much as I did in the 1990s. Before Fleet Street got digital, efficient, binary and I don’t know what else and pretty much all the papers were based in Fleet Street, some casuals (as those working casual shifts were called) managed a trick of working parallel shifts, that is working a shift on one paper while working a shift on another paper just up the road (the Mail, the Express, the Sun and the Telegraph were all within a stone’s throw of each other).

The trick was to turn up at one paper, make your presence known, sling your jacket over chair (presumably as far away from the main desk as possible), then pretty smartish leave the premises — the jacket staying behind, of course — to turn up to your other shift. Then for the next six or seven hours it was just a question of commuting between the two papers for whom you were working shifts. No one will have noticed because if you weren’t at your desk, it would have been assumed you had gone to the loo or the library or the canteen. I never tried it and here I am simply retelling the story of what Jeff did.

. . .

I know the rules of nostalgia oblige us to pretend that ‘fings ain’t what they used to be’ but that is nonsense. Eccentricity is not only not a purely British trait but is universal, but it is also timeless and you will find as many examples of outright eccentricity in 2020 as you would have found 20 or 30 or 50 years ago. There will never be a shortage of nutters.

I get very impatient with all folk who regard the past through rose-tinted spectacles, and when, for example, they bemoan the passing of ‘the good old days’, I always ask whether those would be ‘the good old days’ when you could be sacked and thus penniless at a moment’s notice, when if you didn’t have any money illness spelled complete penury, when catching tuberculosis was a daily risk and when being forced to sell you brother into male prostitution was not such a bad idea if it helped save a family of 12 from starvation.

So further examples of tragic deprivation in the past and why we must can be found on The Official Labour Party Guide To 100 Years Of Tory Inhumanity.

So to cut a long story short future generations can look forward to any number of extraordinarily funny comedians, very talented actors, writers, directors, footballers and painters and, of course, outrageously eccentric hacks.

Does Britain want to die of liver cancer or bowel cancer? Neither, as it happens, but that is our choice tomorrow when we go to the polls

It will be of little interest to anyone living outside the Western Hemisphere because many living there have other concerns (and however much we Westerners like to think we are at the centre of the world, the message has still to get to the further reaches of the globe) but tomorrow we here in Old Blighty will troop to our nearest polling station to cast our vote as to who should be in the next government.

We don’t actually vote for a party but a local chap or chappess under an antiquated system called ‘first past the post’ with which most of you will be familiar if you ever watch horse racing on television or athletics. In these and other sports (is horse racing a sport?) whoever passes the winning post soonest after the starting pistol has been fired has won the race. That makes sense of course if you are racing your horse against other horses or yourself against other athletes. But to the way of thinking of some of us — and that obviously includes me — it makes no sense whatsoever if you are trying to put in place a parliament which broadly represents the mood of the country.

This is where I might get a little muddled if I’m not careful but you need not: the parliament is made of all those who win the election in their constituency, that is who metaphorically care ‘first past the post’. So if A wins 10 votes, B wins 9 votes and C wins 3 votes, A is elected to parliament. More realistically if A wins 10,002 votes, B wins 10,001 and C (usually a Lib Dem) wins 3 votes, A is elected. He might have won only 1 vote more than B, but that’s first past the post. And it is a shite system. Complete cack.

I’m rather stupidly talking about a system with which you might all be familiar, although the chances are that you live in a country which long ago left the 17th century and has adopted a system of proportional representation. But it is often worthwhile going back to basics, especially if, like me, you are trying to demonstrate quite how unfair a long-accepted process is.

Under our system — the first past the post system — if the party to which A belongs sees its more of its candidates win in more constituencies than the party to which B belongs, it will have the most members of parliament and can form the government. That is true whether or not its candidates beat their opponents hollow or whether in each constituency each A candidate won merely 1 vote more than B. That is, of course, theoretical, but it does highlight the basic flaw in the whole system.

Here in Britain we have 650 odd constituencies. It is theoretically possible (though this would never happen) that in each constituency the candidate belonging to party A could win just 1 vote more than the candidate belonging to party B. So, overall, the A party candidates would win a national total of (650 x 10,002) 6,501,300 votes and, overall, the B party candidates would win ‘just’ (650 x 10,001) 6,500,650 votes — just 650 fewer votes. That means the parliament would be made up of 650 A party candidates and no B party candidates, even though overall the A party was supported by just 650 more voters out of a total of 13,001,950. That is just 0.005% of the total number of voters.

OK, these are hypothetical figures and the reality is very different, but crucially and importantly the principles underpinning them still stand. And party A would have complete freedom to bring in what ever laws it wanted and there would be fuck all party B could do about it.

Party A might, for example, have stood on a manifesto that ‘as times are hard, couples can have only two children and if a third child is born to a couple, it will be killed at birth. (NB If you think that is far too way out an example, a similar principle existed in China until about 40 years ago. To stem overpopulation because of then scant resources, couples were only allowed to have one child. Because male children were economically ‘more valuable’, female babies were somehow discarded at birth. The upshot was, of course, that for many years China began to have far fewer women than men. In practice it wasn’t quite as simple, and there were ways to get around the policy, but broadly that is what was happening.)

So — in theory — party A could bring in a law ensuring that all third children born were killed at birth even though just under half of all voters might be dead against it.

But I think by now you get my point. In sum: first past the post has never, does never and will never help to elect a parliament which is in any way representative of what the a country’s voters want. But it is what we are still stuck with here in Britain.

. . .

That aside, of course, things are looking really, really dire. Although several parties are putting up candidates, the choice is still between a moron on one side and an idiot on the other. And this isn’t just me sounding off: Britain — what’s the cliche? ‘The cradle of democracy’ — really is faced with Hobson’s choice. And the country really does

not know what to do. We are stymied. It’s like being asked whether you would prefer to die of liver cancer or bowel cancer.

I have place several bets with Ladbrokes and hope and pray we will get a hung parliament. The problem with that, though, is that hung parliaments are trouble. If it did come about — which I’m bloody hoping for! — this country is faced with weeks, possibly months, of horse trading as the parties try to get together to form a coalition government.

If the Tories don’t get a majority — and here’s hoping they don’t, did you get that? — they are right out of the window as no-one, not even the tarts from the DUP would choose to get into bed with them. The next alternative would be a Labour/Lib Dem/SNP coalition or, at least, attempts to form one.

The hurdle that venture would have to overcome is that Labour, which would have by far the most MPs elected and would thus insist it is the senior party in any coalition, is lead by the idiot (or moron — I’ve lost track) and the Lib Dems and SNP would refuse point-blank to have him as PM. So if Labour did want to get into government as part of the coalition they would have to ditch that leader. And would that happen without a hitch? Is the Pope getting married next week?

There would be chaos, chaos, chaos — and this is what I am hoping for! Christ, things are bad here in ‘the cradle of democracy’, which come to think of it is not Britain but Greece. Britain had the ‘mother of all parliaments’. Sorry about that, but I can’t be arsed to correct the reference above, so (it’s time for the Champions League football on television) go hang. If, later, I have time and the inclination, I shall correct it. if not, still go hang.

Letter (email) to my daughter

By chance, I came across this, a ‘letter’ (actually an email) to my daughter when she was at the end of her first year at university and unhappy in the course she was in. Because she was born in August, she was young for her year. At the time (about May, 2014) I was on holiday in Mallorca and had stopped off for a lager and a cigar at a café somewhere or other of the inland towns. I had with me my works laptop (I can’t think why but I did). My daughter messaged me because she was in a complete tizzy about whether even to carry on with her uni course or not and was very unhappy. About 1,300 miles away I was trying to advise her and cheer her up. This is the email I sent.

Quite why I am posting it here and why I think it would be OK to do so, I don’t know (although I know none of my family reads this blog) but it does occur to me that what I have to say is in some ways also generally true.

I have not altered it except where indicated in [square brackets]. I feel it would be dishonest to do so, but again I don’t know why or why that would even matter. But there you go.

Sweetheart,

It occurred to me that if I told you a bit about my troubles at college, it might help give perspective to your thinking and in some way make it a little easier for you.

But first I have to tell you that I believe we inherit one or two traits from both our parents but also have some of our very own. Mum, as I told you, also tends to bottle things up and you might well have got that from her. She is also a curious mixture of a great deal of confidence in some areas – farming, local life - and a troubling, for her, lack in others, i.e. she would hate to have to drive up to Bristol. But then we all have our oddities and curious aspects of behaviour. I know I have mine.

You, too, seem to be a bit like that (though not necessarily in farming – you will have your own areas of confidence and a lack of it). But believe me, please, and you will only realise I was right when I am long gone and you remember me just as that cranky old sod who used to shout at people on the phone and sit outside smoking cigars when everyone else had retreated from the chill outside and was warm and comfortable inside.

I’ve told you this before, but I’ll repeat it so you believe me: when we are young, before we become three or four and still lack self-consciousness, many of our most fundamental characteristics are already apparent. And you were always a confident lass, determined and at times a bit stroppy, with a tendency to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Whatever else happens to us in later life, these things rarely change. Obviously, they can manifest themselves in different ways depending on what happens to us and how our lives go, so self-confidence sometimes becomes an arrogance which doesn’t take the feelings of others into consideration. But that will be the exception rather than the rule.

This might also be the point where I should tell give you my take on ‘intelligence’. It has nothing to do with education or academic achievement. And we can be intelligent and bright in some ways and shit-stupid in others. It has nothing to do with profession, job, ‘class’, who your parents were, your family or anything else. It is something all our very own. I think you are both bright and determined – the way you conscientiously set about doing your essays is a case in point. If at the moment you feel ‘uni isn’t for you’, well, I suggest you look at it and tell yourself ‘this course isn’t necessarily for me’, not uni. You sound more enthusiastic about this new course, for which I am glad.

You also mentioned that you decided you wanted to become a teacher after others said ‘you would make a good teacher, Elsie’, but that in practice it is a harder than you thought. Nothing wrong with that, either. In fact, look on the bright side: you now know that you are not necessarily cut out for working with children by teaching them in class, but you still, I think, would like to work with children and in education in some other capacity. My point: look at the positive – you have gained a little from experience.

As I am talking about experience, let me tell you that gaining a little experience in whatever way – it could be in work, driving a car, dealing with your taxes, in your personal, in relationships, in our dealings with the opposite sex, the different circumstances are endless - is very useful. The bright person takes from it what is useful and tries not to make a similar mistake (and not always successfully, but that doesn’t alter the point I am making). The stupid person doesn’t and repeats a mistake again and again and again. On the other hand, don’t be afraid of making a mistake, but if you do, take stock and try not to do the same thing again. As I say, the bright person learns from mistakes, the dumbo doesn’t.

. . .

I went to boarding school. In my first term I was very, very, very unhappy and homesick. Without exaggeration, I was completely and utterly miserable 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout that first term. I ran away from school to go home three times, though as we only live eight miles away it wasn’t that difficult. Then I had a stroke of luck: my parents couldn’t really afford the fees any more, so for the next two terms and the three terms of my second year I was a day boy, cycling to school every day. Then – as I saw it then – disaster. My father was posted to Paris by the BBC and I was told I would have to be a boarder again. I was heartbroken and, remembering how miserable I was, I was dreading the next few months until September. Then something odd happened: on my first day – as boarder – I met up with some friends, made them laugh and it suddenly dawned on me that it wasn’t going to be half as bad as I had feared. In fact, I enjoyed the next three years. And I learned a lesson: keep an open mind.

At school I didn’t fit into any of the three main groups. There were the sporty ones, the swots and the dumbos. I was none of those: for one thing I could make people laugh, and I wasn’t all that stupid (he says carefully, so as not to be thought self-satisfied). But I didn’t really work hard at all. I got by but that was it.

So when it came to applying to uni (though we didn’t call it that in those days) and [I] had decided I wanted to study philosophy (because I was intrigued that we could talk about ideas and concepts) and English [that was] (because I had written a poem, showed it to an English teacher, he told me to ‘carry on’ and so there and then I decided I was going to ‘be a writer’. I though that by telling me to ‘carry on’, he was saying ‘look, you’re rather good at this’, but he wasn’t. It only occurred to me years and years later that all he was doing was what any good adult should do for a child: encourage them. Another lesson learnt, though many, many years later. And to this day, until today, and into the future, I still want to ‘be a writer’.)

But applying to uni, I got nowhere. My [UCCA] application spiel was laughably naïve and childish. So I stayed on to retake my chemistry A level and do German S level. (German was always easy – I wonder why). But the second time around I got nowhere. No offers from anyone. And all the time there was the threat from my father that if I didn’t ‘buckle down at school’, he would take me away an ‘put me in an office in Reading’ (the school was near Reading). Well, that did it: there was no way I wanted to work, especially not in ‘an office in Reading’ which frightened me beyond measure. That was the only reason – the only reason – I was desperate to go to university. I should add that, unfortunately, neither of my parents seemed to take any interest in my education, really, although I do know it wasn’t quite as simple as that. For one thing, they both had confidence that I would somehow do reasonably well in life and, anyway, were far more concerned with my brother Ian who was already showing distinct signs of his mental illness. But also, their marriage wasn’t at all happy and hadn’t been for many years. (For that reason, while we were living in Paris, from 1965 until 1972, I only went home about five times for a couple of weeks at time, because it was a miserable household. Instead I stayed with friends from school.)

But there I was, 18, two very poor A levels, biology and chemistry and one very good one, German, as well as S level German, and no university had offered me a place through the UCCA (now UCAS) system. And I didn’t get anywhere on the clearing system. I was down in the dumps big time.

My mother’s distant cousin in Germany owned a shipyard (in Papenburg), ) so it was arranged that I should [go] to [sic] and work there. And about the same time I got the advice simply to write to individual universities simply asking for a place. I did. I wrote to Liverpool, Dundee, Kings College London, Bradford and one or two others I can no longer recall asking for a place on their English and philosophy course. I got an interview with Kings College, came back from Germany for a few days, fucked the interview and that was that with Kings. But Liverpool, Dundee and Bradford all offered me place. Well, stupid little public school snob that I was, I turned down Bradford – ‘who wants to live in working-class Bradford’ I thought. But I accepted the offer from Dundee.

Then, just a few days later came the Liverpool offer, but being, as I thought ‘gentlemanly and upright’ I believed that as I had already accepted the Dundee offer, I couldn’t turn around and say no, so I turned Liverpool down. (This business of simply asking for a place at a university which seemed make a complete nonsense of the whole UCCA (UCAS) scheme puzzled me for many years, until I heard that as universities were at the time fully funded by the government, they tried to ensure they completely filled their available places so they would get as much money per student as they could. So that’s why I got to college: they wanted their money from the government. It has bugger all to do with me. But at least I got to go to college.)

So there I was, my parents in Paris, me living in North Germany and I had to organise getting to Dundee, all in a matter of weeks. And I did, but I have no idea how. None.

Dundee is miles away from anywhere I had been used to. It seemed like the back of beyond. I eventually went to Kings Cross station and caught a train to Edinburgh. We got to York and I thought ‘well, not far to go now’. But it was. Newcastle is 100 miles north of York, but at the time I didn’t know – my knowledge of British geography was pitiful. So when we got to Newcastle, I panicked. I thought ‘isn’t Newcastle south of York? Bloody hell, I got on the wrong train’. But someone put me right. Edinburgh is another 100 miles north of Newcastle and it took ages to get there. But once we did, I looked up a train for Dundee and got on. Now that train was the same kind which took us from Henley to Twyford, a ten-minute journey, where we could then catch the train to London. So I thought ‘I won’t even bother sitting down, we’ll be there in ten minutes.’ We weren’t – the journey, on a slower train, took two hours.

Dundee was desolate. I arrived in October at about 3.30pm. It was pissing with rain, it gets dark far earlier that far north and not only was Dundee desolate, but so was I. I found my digs (I had called the college accommodation bureau who gave me an address) and was confronted by Mr and Mrs Scottish Incomprehensible Accent, both of them only about five foot four. They told me I was just in time ‘for tea’. Teas [sic] was high tea, i.e. a fry-up with chips. Nothing wrong with that except that when I asked for vinegar, I was handed a bottle with clear liquid and it was called ‘condiment’. I was totally and utterly at sea. And desolate. What the fuck was going on?

But I’m a sociable sort and made a few friends (and felt very guilty eventually ditching some of the early ones). I went to my lectures on time for the first few weeks, then got into the habit of sleeping in till noon. My room was on the top floor and it was so damp, my jeans were always – always – wet when I put them on in the morning. We were allowed on bath a week, but there was never enough water for more than – I am not bullshitting you – about four inches. I carried on, in my private moments, being very desolate indeed.

At the end of my first year, and after not attending any lectures at all, I failed all five of my foundation year subjects – methodology, economics, political science, history and psychology. It seemed like the end of the road and that ‘office in Reading’ or, worse, Bradford beckoned with all the miserable boredom I thought ‘working in an office’ entailed. But we had ‘resits’, a chance to take the same exams again in September, and I had just one thought in mind: make damn sure I was able to stay on at college and get that bloody grant cheque.

So I went to a bookshop, bought as [many] teach yourself history/economics/political science and psychology – the thinner, the better - and spent the summer months living in Dundeed [sic] – no one, but no one was around, the place seemed dead as a doornail - preparing for those all-important ‘re-sits’. How I managed to learn all about ‘methodology’ I really can’t remember, but I took my exams and past [sic] four out of five. I failed psychology (but passed [well, if I could get it right a few words on, why not the first time?] later that year) and my university course could continue. That all-important grant cheque was mine and the nightmare of starting work ‘in an office in Reading’ had been postponed. Phew!

More important problems started in my second year. Like you, but not like you, I, too, have a habit – some might call it a facility – of bottling things up. And out of the blue I had a panic attack. And, dear Elsie, panic attacks are awful, quite awful. They arrive completely unannounced and, for the first one or two at least, are utterly bewildering. (I have had a second bout of them, years later in London, which went on for about two years, and they were still bloody awful.) No one knows what causes them, except most probably unresolved stress. Which is why I insist: never bottle things up. Don’t postpone problems, deal with them now. Tackle them head on.

I went to the college doctor who put my [sic] on – well, I don’t know what they were back in 1969, but they ‘solved’ the problem by more or less zombifying you. When I returned home to Paris that Christmas, having taken the pills for a few months, my mother was horrified. But then that was almost 50 years ago. Science has moved on, though I am still very, very dubious about putting young children with attention deficit disorder on drugs. (In fact, as far as I am concerned western society relies on psycho drugs far too much. They merely mask a problem and make it seem to go away, but we don’t look at underlying causes as much as we might, though things are a lot, lot better. I rather suspect the pharma industry which makes fabulous sums flogging the bloody things is not being quite as responsible as it might and encourages their use for its own shabby ends.)

This is the point where what I am writing might be relevant to you. Everyone has problems and difficulties - there are no exceptions and sadly some get more than their fair share - and we deal with them or not according to our personal resources, attitudes, character and wisdom. If you had ever had a panic attack, Mum and I would most certainly know about it, and I doubt very much that you have. But if you do, don’t suffer in silence. But the other side of the coin is that: we all have problems and difficulties and we all find ways to deal with them.

From the day I was born until I left university, I had moved – was moved when I was younger – seven times, and especially when a child is young that can be disconcerting. I didn’t have my first bout of appalling homsickness [sic] at school, but years earlier when we had been in Berlin for a few months. Suddenly, all I could think of was to go back to Henley. So I am eternally grateful that you and Wes were born, have grown up and will eventually leave to start your own independent lives in the same place, the same house, the same environment. All things being equal it gives you an inner stability which is invaluable. I believe you have that inner stability, Elsie, apart from being bright, determined and resourceful – yes, that, too, even though you might not think so. Don’t sell yourself short.

Mum is a very good woman and very good mother. It might not have been, as I once told you recently, Romeo and Juliet between us (and, to be frank it is hardly ever the case between any married couple), and we have had and will always have our moments. Both of us love you in a way you will never understand until you have your own children. There is no other live [love] like it. In some ways a love for one’s own children is the only real love, utterly pure and utterly selfless. We want nothing from you but your happiness, contentment, health and fulfilment and my heart goes out to those children (Daisy, possibly?) who are sold short in that respect [Daisy was not my niece in the farm, but a former flatmate of my daughter’s drank, smoked a lot of dope, slept around]. You owe us nothing, nothing at all. And if you feel you do, don’t repay us, repay it to your children by giving the [sic] unconditional love.

I know you understand every word I have written. You are now on the cusp of womanhood, but please try to understand that both Mum and I have known you at very stage in your life from newborn baby, to toddler, you [to] young child, to growing child, you [to] adolescent teenager, to the woman you are now. And we don’t just see you now as Elsie 18 going on 19, but as ALL those Elsies.

If there is anything – and I mean anything – you want to talk to me about, don’t feel shy. (I told you yesterday that I am shy. Well, deep, deep, deep down I am, far deeper than anyone could ever imagine, so I know what shyness is, though no one, but no one believes that loudmouth Pat – as I am at work – is shy. But I am.)

Now, chill out, take a long deep breath, don’t rush things – you might well have inherited ‘rushing things’ from me if you do – chill out and look forward to the future with confidence. You might sometimes not think so, bout you are one of Life’s lucky ones. I hope all this has helped.

Dad, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On the road again, again

Travelodge – Hellingly Eastbourne, East Sussex

It’s a bit of a stretch entitling this entry ‘On the road again’ as it involves neither amphetamines, superhcharged sports cars, long straight roads stretching into far distance or me escaping life and a futile existence. In fact, I have only taken off from deepest, darkest North Cornwall to visit more civilised East Sussex for a funeral. And rather than spend days and weeks on the road, hooking up with equally disillusioned young women and sparked out, druggy lunatics, the journey from St Breward to my Travelogdge here near Hailsham took only - only – six hours (a little longer than usual as I spent the usual hour hunting down an Asda, this time to get a white shirt).

But it is good to get out and about. The funeral is for the widow of one of my stepmother’s former friends from the BBC, one of her more acceptable friends I have to add, because some of them can be a pain in the arse (not that I tell them – I can be as two-faced as the you).

My stepmother is now in a home as she kept falling over and is slowly losing it, so her cottage is empty, but last Sunday, I happened, just happened to be there watching a couple of football matches, when the niece of the woman who has died rang to tell my stepmother. As I liked the dead woman and her husband (who was Anglo Irish and had much of the charm the Irish often have) I said I would come along to the funeral. So here I am.

Staying at Travelodge’s has become something of a habit, and for good reason. They might be basic – i.e. no flunkies schmoozing up to you in the hope of a tip to supplement his pitiful wage – but they have everything I want: clean sheets, hot water and they are warm. And they are not expensive. I have now got to the age when a price rise for a Mars bar from nine to tne pence (and that is old pence, so 9d to 10d) is shocking, but a more modern part of me is fully aware that prices are rising all the time.

So, for example, the £40 I am paying for one night here is, according to my inflation calculator app, the equivalent of £26.95 20 years ago and just £16.96 in 1986, a year chosen because that’s when I began on the South Wales Echo in Cardiff. And in 1974, when I started my first job, as reporter on the Lincoln Chronicle, it was just what might seem an astonishing £4.77, though that isn’t astonishing at all because in them ol’ days most folk were still paid in washers.

The big news hereabouts – well in the whole of Britain – is next week’s general election, exactly seven days from now. I have spent the past few months bending the ear of anyone patient enough not to punch me up the bracket that ‘it will be another hung parliament with the Lib Dems doing rather better than expected, winning at least 60 seats’. Well, I have had to revise my predictions rather as the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, has proved to be a – though in keeping with Lib Dem tradition – as useful as a chocolate teapot and is, it seems inspiring no one.

The Lib Dems polling figures are just not shifting from the 15% mark, though mention of ‘polling’ obliges me to give the usual health warning that the polls these days are as useless as Jo Swinson. For two weeks they had the Tories in the lead by about 16%, but that lead is now being cut. But bear in mind that in the election in 2017, known colloquially as ‘Mrs May’s finest hour’, she was way ahead in the poll, but on the night did not manage to get a majority and came out with fewer MPs than she had before she called the election.

I still think it will be a hung parliament, however, and so much the better. Nothing would please me better than to see both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn end up with egg on their faces. Corbyn will most certainly be out after the election, but I doubt he will resign. There will probably be some kind of palace coup. Johnson will hang on, though he influence will be much diminished, and, of course, we will be in for a few more months of ‘Brexit? What the fuck is going on?’

In other news, this Hemingway bollocks is proceeding, though slowly, as there is a lot of reading to do. And, dear friends, I have finally admitted to myself that to do it justice I shall have to – I have no choice – re-read A Farewell To Arms. I read it years ago (at the end of the 16th century I think) and can remember nothing about it. But as everything about Hemingway, from his style to the man himself, irritates the hell out of me, I am not looking forward to it. File this under ‘poor chap, he’s suffering for his art’.

Pip, pip.