Beethoven, Scarlatti, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, S.O.S. Band, Purcell, Alexander, Pink gay and straight, belly port (roasted with onions, white wine and crème fraiche, and leeks), pastis, gin and surprising tourists everywhere – it’s all here. Oh, and I might play a little early Prince, just to round of the cultural experience. Read on (and get in touch, especially those of you in the more obscure parts of the world like Leicestershire or Durham. White trash is especially welcome – I’m nothing if not modern, liberal and enlightened)

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day whatever it is in the back-of-beyond-but-tourist-stricken Languedoc parish of Caunes-Minervois – ‘Minervois’ to distinguish it from the 1,001 other Caunes parishes here in the French Quarter of the glorious European Union – and in one or two odd ways I am relaxing a little more and wishing I – we, as I am here with my brother – had rather more than just another six days on holiday.

But last things last, as they say: my brother Mark has one of those little gadgets which are speakers for an iPod Touch, and we – lately I as he, at the time of writing, has now gone upstairs to watch German TV - have just listened, in order played, to the fourth, choral movement, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, then Bill Evans playing his own composition Young And Foolish (which I can recommend to anyone dying rather slowly – that’s everyone over 40 – who wants to recapture the emotion of being young but doesn’t want any of the concomitant hassles), followed by Scarlatti’s piano sonata K466 in F minor (and that would be Domenico Scarlatti – there was a whole tribe of them but I am not familiar with the music of any of the others), followed by Purcell’s Dido’s Lament from – I think his opera – Dido and Aeneas, then Ry Cooder with Earl Hines playing Diddy Wa Diddy (or however it’s spelled and I don’t actually think there’s a definitive version of the spelling), then Chet Baker’s version of Autumn Leaves, followed by one of Miles Davis’s versions of the same tune and (now brother Mark has fucked off upstairs) the glorious S.O.S Band with Just Be Good To Me.

That finished several minutes ago and the album is still playing. And how, I hear some of you asking – though most certainly not all of you – can anyone who thinks Beethoven composed some of the best music ever, with his Ninth Symphony being some of the very best even bear to listen to the S.O.S Band? Well, sweethearts, I’ll tell you: it’s just as glorious, though in a very different way (apropos which Weekend Love is now playing and just to spite all the snobs, once it has finished I’ll play Alexander O’Neal’s track Innocent which is just as glorious. Then to persuade you innocent doubters that I haven’t totally lost my marbles, it will be Bach, Mozart or something entirely different – if I feel like it.

Which all gets to tell you: absolutely nothing. Great music to listen to is great to listen to whatever it is. I do so dislike snobs. As my brother has just come down to the kitchen, I thought I would play him Wicked Soul by Kubb. The rest of the album it’s on isn’t much cop, but this track is ace.

. . .

It’s a little late and tonight I’ve had three gins and a glass or two of Chardonnay. Unfortunately, there’s no wine left, so it might have to be a weak glass of pastis and possibly regrets tomorrow. I’ve now put on Karen Tweed, who I’m sure is not well known, but she is a superb accordion player. More great music, as much in keep with Mr Beethoven, Mr Scarlatti, Mr Miles Davis, Mr Chet Baker and the S.O.S. Band as anything else.

. . .

In keeping with previous nights, I did the cooking tonight (as I love cooking) and I roasted on of the most underrated pieces of meat known to man: belly pork. It is not difficult, though a damn sight cheaper than many other cuts. I made a sauce from the juices, a little of the Chardonnay and some crème freche, using the onions I roasted at the same time. The crackling was a little – er – burned, but tasty just the same. Served with roasted par-boiled potatoes i.e. not too roasted, and leeks sautéed in butter. And if the whole shebang cost more than a couple of pence for two, I shall be very surprised. Still holding off from the pastis – a spirit, which is not good news after gin and wine – but I don’t think I can hold off much longer. A cup of tea would do the trick, but what’s tea when there is a glass of – albeit weak – pastis to be enjoyed.

. . .

Mark rather surprised me tonight by something he said as we were sitting outside. It has become our habit, for want of a terrace to use for a pre-dinner drink, to sit outside in the very narrow alleyway on two bollards to enjoy our gin and me a cigar. And sitting there, in the alleyway, we are passed, every few minutes, but all kinds of folk, mainly locals who live hereabouts but also tourists, but French and Brist, but, as far as I can tell, every other nationality under the sun, to whom we both always say a polite and friendly bon soir.

We were sitting there when Mark announced that they all, the locals and tourists, probably think we are a couple of woofters (his word, not mine). And it was that which surprised me. Mark is both gay and my favourite brother with whom I get on, 99pc of the time, extremely well. I’m not gay (or at least not the last time I looked, but I do rather think these things are settled. I have never felt like a touch of rumpy-bumpy with a guy and I really do doubt that life has any surprised in store for me on that score). What surprised me was that Mark, who is now 54, should worry about such stuff. I should better add that the only member of my immediate family who reads this blog is my sister, who knows the score, and, as far as I know – with two exceptions – no one else who knows me reads it, either, and both of them – one a former colleague and friend, the other a guy who went to my school but who I have so far never met (hello, both) has never met Mark. So there is little chance that by writing what I am I am in in danger of embarrassing him, which I wouldn’t want to do, anway. The odd thing is that he makes loads of camp, gay jokes, yet doesn’t seem keen on anyone thinking he is gay. Any suggestions as to why?

LATER: Actually, perhaps I can make my own suggestion: I fell asleep last night with the radio on and woke at about 3.15 our time to a documentary about how gays are simply being murdered in Iraq. It was quite horrific. One guy told of being held at a checkpoint, then raped by nine policemen before being set free again. Sounds contradictory, but according to Iraqis interviewed, the blame for being gay attaches wholly to what they regarded as the ‘feminine’ partner. The police do nothing because, according to the documentary, many of them are in the various religious militias when they are off-duty. Generally  speaking , life for gay men and women in Iraq is utterly miserable from the point of view of the state. Ironically, gays were freer and less hassled in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and in Syria Assad dad and lad.

Things have progressed by several centuries in Britain and Western Europe, but it was only 50 years ago (these timespans don’t seem quite as large when you are, as I am, 102) when any kind of sexual relations between men were illegal. So maybe I should accept my brother’s point of view on this one and not see things quite so much through my own eyes. And my apologies to anyone reading what I originally wrote who felt offended. At first, I was going to remove it, but then I thought that not doing so and adding these few paragraphs might have more point, especially as many will not know quite how nasty and brutish life can be in some parts of the world for gay men and women. Africa is especially intolerant of lesbians some believe a rape or two will help them see the error of their ways. I don’t mean to be po-faced, but perhaps we in the West should count our blessings just a little bit more.

.  .  .

Talking of any suggestions, I always look at the Google blog stats to see how often the most recent entry has been read and where they are. So here’s a request: why don’t you – that is those three (see above) who haven’t already done so – make yourselves known and tell me a bit about yourselves. That request goes out to several readers in the U.S., several in the UK, and as far afield as Australia, Indonesia, Chine, the Ukraines and Russia. Come on, lad and lasses, get in touch.
One last statistic for our American cousins: Mark told me yesterday that he came across an interesting statistic: Mitt Romney and his backers are keen to do well in Ohio in the coming presidential election. Well, it seems that a survey of Republican voters there established that almost one in five of those surveyed are astonished that Mitt isn’t getting the credit he deserves for the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

On that note, I’ll raise my glass of pastis and drink a toast to all those glorious folk keen on introducing democracy to the rest of the benighted, undemocratic world: we’re glad we are safe in your hands. Perhaps bin Laden will do you a favour and have himself resurrected so that Romney can have another shot and this time get the recognition he deserves. Bon nuit (as they say in the more pretentious parts of North London.)

PS A late plea for all and sundry to listen to Alexander O’Neal and his numerous cracking good tracks. OK, so I’m an 80s freak but... Hearsay, Criticise, A Broken Heart, Never Knew Love Like This - fucking classic. What first got me hooked? If You Were Here Tonight - 24-carat bollocks, lovers’ rock crap. I love it. And I’m really not joking. Yes, Beethoven's Ninth, Bach's St John Passion, squeaky gate music and If You Were Here Tonight. It all fits. Somehow. And don’t get me started on Freddie Jackson. Fuck the 90s.

. . .

I posted the above and then read it through and started amending it. And then I thought it really did need a little more: Freddie Jackson? Alexander O’Neal? Beethoven, Scarlatti – and, I might add, Hildegard von Bingen, Schuman, Schubert, Haydn (especially Haydn, who was born to early in an odd sort of way), Mozart, Steely Dan, Teleman, Purcell, Vaughan-Williams, Dave Fiuczynski, Kid Creole, Johnny Winter, Dylan, Elgar, Delius, Shostakovish Pink et al – is the guy serious? Well, of course I am: music is music is music is music. And if you disagree and start coming the cunt about ‘serious’ music or any such nonsense I hereby officially ban you and your kind from ever reading this blog again. Ever.

. . .

Finally, a public service announcement: Is your partner missing? Has your bed been cold these past few hours? If you recognize the character below, please get in touch and we might be able to re-unite you.

Do I know how to be a person? Well, yes, I do, but it’s not thanks to Radio 4

Caunes-Minervois, Langudoc
The great thing about the internet, quite apart from giving me the chance to bore people the world over and not just in my immediate surroundings and social circle, is that when you are abroad you are able to continue listening to Radio 4. Wherever there is a wifi signal, whether here in Caunes-Minervois or the back of beyond in the Australian outback – I’m assuming broadband has reached those parts because the reference is completely hypothetical – all I need do is fire up my internet radio app (I use Tunein Radio on both my smartphone and iPod touch, but, as they say with one eye on the lawsuit, other apps are available) and within half a minute I can listen to the News At One, Just A Minute, Great Lives or, if I’m really bored and really have nothing better to do, the fucking Archers.

Here comes the first bucket of cold water: there is a certain British type – it’s insisted that we are all ‘individuals’ and that there is no such thing as types, to which I say nonsense, the world is full of ‘types’ – who will describe – usually herself, but not exclusively – as ‘addicted to Radio 4’ or some such nonsense. In fact, it is part of their self-image, and for the aspirants among them listening to Radio 4 is de rigueur if they are to have any chance of being taken seriously by the social circle to which they would like to belong. Well, I am not ‘addicted to Radio 4’.

(A few months ago, Radio 4 ran a series of utterly nauseating ads along those lines with all kinds of celebrities informing the world just why they ‘loved’ Radio 4 and why it was ‘essential listening’ and such an ‘intricate part of their life’. I describe the ads as nauseating because I would want to vomit each time I heard one. In fact, I did once, although to be fair the ad wasn’t the cause of my bout of vomiting but merely the catalyst. The cause was far too much cheap red wine).

I listen to the programmes which interest me and avoid those which don’t, of which there is quite a long list, very prominent among the being The Write Stuff, which has middle-class smuggery oozing from its pores and Saving The Planet (of Costing The Earth as they insist on calling is). But why, I hear you all asking yourselves, from the West Coast of the U.S. to the East Coast of the former USSR and all points north and south, is today’s rant about Radio 4 when the chap is sitting in the Languedoc and surely has far more French aspects of life to rant about? Well, I shall tell you.

Yesterday, I was listening to one of the Radio 4 programmes I do like, Great Lives, and it was about the film director Karel Reisz. The host was Mathew Parris, everyone’s favourite public gay (or one of them, the list is now growing ever since the Western World was finally persuaded that gays aren’t (a late edit: aren’t instead of are. Thank Christ for late edits. I might well have ended up in court) necessarily the Devil Incarnate) and one of his guests was Stephen Frears, one of our very own British directors who might be known beyond North London and BBC White City. And Mr Frears came out with a line which ultimately led up to this rant. Karel Reisz, Mr Frears informed Radio 4 land and its people, had ‘taught him how to be a person’. Do you understand what he meant? No, I didn’t, either, so I’ll repeat it in case your attention wandered there for a moment: Karel Reisz taught Mr Frears ‘how to be a person’.

For the rather more slow-witted among you, of which there are surely one or two, I should point out that ‘taught him’ is not meant literally. It’s more along the lines of ‘Frears learnt how to be a person from Mr Reisz’. And I’ll repeat the question: what the fuck does it mean? What can it mean? Of course, there’s the possibility that I am simply too thick to understand what Frears was trying to say. And, to be honest, I can vaguely glimpse what he might be trying to say, but that doesn’t make it any the less pretentious. Yet Radio 4 in particular and our broadsheets and many folk in general are apt to applaud such sentiments as ‘so human’.

Well, not me, squire. Perhaps I’m lucky, perhaps I’m one of the saved, but when it comes to knowing ‘how to be a person’, I find I have no problems whatsoever and need no lessons from anyone. I might indeed need lessons in other respects, for example, in ‘knowing how to be a bit more tolerant’ and ‘knowing how to be a little less irascible’, but not knowing how to ‘be a person’. No, dear hearts, it’s rather like falling off a log, and anyone who needs to be taught ‘how to fall off a log’ really is in trouble. Tune into Radio 4 is my advice.

. . .

Yesterday it was off to the Chateau Lastours just down the road, which is rather spectacular. It is, in fact made up of three castles, all of which were built on top of rather steep hills in the

The Chateau Lastours in Languedoc. Jewson's had a terrible time getting all the necessary up there, but they managed it   11th century, although they were demolished a century or two later and rebuilt on more or less the same spot when Languedoc finally became part of the kingdom for France and they were used to guard the kindgom’s southern frontier. This is ‘Cathar’ country (as big signs everywhere inform us), and there are a great many castles hereabout, of which I intend to see a few more.

My brother is a little less enthusiastic – ‘is it another bloody castle? We’ve already seen one, they’re all the same!’ – but if necessary I shall take off on my own. There is one particularly spectacular one about 50 miles south of us. Then, of course, there’s still Carcassonne castle to investigate, except that the hordes of tourists does the tourist trap surrounding it, which is horribly reminiscent of a slightly – but only slightly – upmarket Disneyland. Once expects a giant Mickey Mouse to appear above the castles, waving frantically and urging us all to buy as much tourist tat as we are physically able to carry off.

Day Three at Caunes-Minervois and not yet much to report, except that the wife of a former German president is trying to cope with rumours that she once earned her living doing tricks in a brothel

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day three of our two weeks here in the tourist-infested back of southern French beyond. I say tourist-infested, but in fact now - children back at school and Jez and Jess plus the little and not so little ones back on the treadmill (Jez works in IT and Jess is a part-time counsellor and homemaker) - the only sign of tourists is when Brit and Australian voices drift into the house as they walk past in the narrow alleyway outside. In high season, late June, July and August, I’m certain Caunes-Minervois is a certain kind of hell (unless, of course, you like going abroad and mixing almost exclusively with your fellow countrymen discussing exchange rates and where to get the best). There is, surprisingly, quite a number of Aussies her, though, of course, they are invariably retired and, coming from so far off, are here for three or four months rather than the mere two weeks I can allow myself.

All that sounds rather dyspeptic and, if so, it gives the wrong impression. I find I can’t help but send up Brits abroad because they are so send-up-able, but all the time I have to remind myself that I am Specimen No One: The Brit Abroad. Maybe there is subcategory: The Brit Abroad, genus Smartarse, sub-genus Conceited. Along those lines four lines by Jonathan Swift might be appropriate:
‘Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.’

What I am trying to say might not be obvious, so I shall add that I also take it to mean that the purveyor of satire all too often thinks that he is one of the redeemed few, that as he is able to spot and send up the foibles of others, he is in some curious way never guilty of any of them. Well, if that’s your view, dream on: we are all, or can all be, equally ridiculous.

None of which has included a description of the house, the town and the area. As for the area, I haven’t a great deal to say as both of our excursions have been in search, first of an Intermarche (my brother and I both like mooching around hypermarkets, although why I really don’t know) and the following day in search of a Spar. I can say that Caunes-Minervois is on the edge of a range of hills and so a little more interesting than its sister town Peyrac-Minervois which is well and truly on the plain which stretches as far as Carcassonne and beyond, a good 70 miles probably, to the sea.

The town is more or less in two parts: our house is in the medieval part and then there is more to its, straight streets rather than narrow winding alleyways, which will have been built in the 19th century. The house was renovated by a Dutch-born German who has lived here in France since he was two. He and his wife, who is German and grew up near where my German relatives lived, are hoping to sell it and renovate another. She is very nice, has a 16-month-old son and another child is on the way.

The house is narrow but four three stories high, with the ground floor being on two levels and the second bedroom in a kind of attic alcove above the third storey. There is a lot of climbing up and down stairs so it is always good to think ahead and take with you what you want when you move between floors or else you are in for another trip up or down to fetch something else. That probably doesn’t sound particular onerous, but believe me it can be irritating when you climb and descend the narrow, steep stairs several times in just a few minutes merely because you are going senile and your memory, to use the quaint euphemistic phrase, ‘isn’t what it once was’.

(Actually, I’ve noticed it’s become some kind of strategy of mine to claim to be far more feeble and ancient than I am. I suspect it is a kind of superstitious device to outwit life and to stave off the inevitable process, perhaps to defeat it forever. Some hope, so on that note I shall come clean: I am not old and feeble, my memory is still what is was (whether good or bad is thus quite another matter), I am fitter than many my age, despite the increasing number of cigars I smoke, and an enviable bonus is that I am quite, quite charming. You doubt it? Well, if you are between 30 and 60 and a woman, get in touch and buy me lunch and I shall persuade you within minutes. Charm? I wrote the book.

Well, so far that is it. Mark (my brother) and I are planning a walk somewhere or other today

A terrine au poivre like the one some of which I just had as part of my lunch now that we have finished lunch for me a salad of raw, thinly sliced leek and apple and olive oil, terrine au poivre, brie and fromage de moulis - what ever that is, but it was nice) to get a little exercise. Be back later.
. . .

By chance I’ve just come across a rather mysterious story and claims. It is that a certain Bettina Wulff née Körner worked as a prostitute in a brothel in Osnabrück called Chateau-Club and earlier Chateau 71. Now I’m sure there are many respectable women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who when younger earned their daily crust by opening their legs and providing other services. What makes the claims about Bettina Wulff more interesting is that she is the First Lady of Germany (although the Germans don’t use that term), i.e. the wife of the former German president Christain Wullf. Frau Wulff, who is said to be taking legal action again Google to try to stop it conducting searches using the terms ‘Bettina Wulff’, ‘escort’ and ‘prostitute’, has a star tattooed on her right shoulder.

Although this doesn’t condemn her in any way, it is a tad unusual (and in my books tacky). Her hubby is also not without controversy. He was elected president at the end of June 2010, but had to resign in February 2012 after coming clean about a €500,000 loan from the wife of a millionaire businessman. Not only did he initially deny accepting the loan, but at one point he left a message on the answerphone of the editor of the Bild, the leading German tabloid (which is, confusingly, a broadsheet) threatening to wreck his career if he published any details. That didn’t go down at all well. Now there is all this business with his wife possible past as a paid whore.

My initial reaction was ‘leave the woman be’. None of us is kitchen clean, although my past is a pure as the driven snow compared to those who sold their bodies for money, but we all have done things in the past of which we are ashamed. Then I looked up the biography of Christian Wulff and noted that he had been married before, in 1988, and fathered a daughter in 1993. He divorced his wife in 2006 and married his second wife, Bettina, two years later (when she was seventh months pregnant with their child).

None of us is entitled to judge others, but we are entitled to have our thoughts, and mine is that I never respect fathers and mothers who more or less abandon children when they divorce their spouse. Naturally, there will be individual circumstances and doubtlessly life with the soon-to-be divorced spouse became impossible (and I mean objectively impossible). But divorcing a spouse is one thing, divorcing a child - which is what it amounts to - is quite another. Whatever we say - or in our guilt choose to believe - about ‘how resilient’ children are, in my book it is total cobblers. A child 15 will find it very hard to be rejected, which is what it will seem like to him or her, and one does have to ask just what role Bettina Wulff née Körner played in the disintegration of her husband’s first marriage.

Given Christian Wullf’s political background - at one point he was even about to be considered as a the Christian Democrat’s possible candidate to become Chancellor of Germany - it is also not unlikely that his political enemies are doing their damndest to fan the flame of rumour of his wife’s alleged murky past. What truth there is in the claims remains to be seen. 

We’re here, but with a couple of irritating hick-ups

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc, South of France.
First news from the holiday front in Caunes-Minervois somewhere in the glorious French quarter of the European Union, where even the dogs in the street are more charming and have more chic than our mangy old British dogs. My brother and I arrived here rather later than expected, but the house we are renting is very pleasant. Newly-renovated with imagination, the only drawback is that it doesn’t have a terrace of any kind, but as it is narrow, but on five floors, sandwiched in a very old part of town, there isn’t very much room for a terrace.

The journey was, unfortunately, rather fraught, partly due to an excessively zealous ticket inspector on the train to Gatwick Airport from London, partly due to my brother playing a prank which rather went awry and partly due to my satnav proving to be totally bloody useless in this neck of the woods.

We climbed aboard the Gatwick train at Clapham Junction to find that it was jam-packed with bright young things on their way to the Isle of Wight festival, all with bulky backpacks. We happened to have entered the train in a first-class compartment and started to make our way through to second-class (also euphemistcally known as ‘standard class’ - do euphemism fool anyone? And if they don’t, and I suspect they don’t, why do we bother using them?).

The train was so packed that I suggested we sit down and wait for the passageway to clear, but we were barely out of the station when what appeared to be the ticket inspector appeared with a sidekick and when he discovered we had second-class (i.e. standard-class) tickets, he immediately told us we had to upgrade. I pointed out that we were on our way to find space in a second-class compartment and that at that point it was impossible to move but he was having none of it and insisted that we would have to pay up. I refused and he said in that case he would have to call the police. I told him I would look forward to meeting them. At that point my brother, who dislikes confrontation, caved in and agreed to pay for an upgrade.

Later, I the real ticket inspector turned up and revealed that the chap we had encountered was in fact a Southern Railways ‘revenue protection’ officer who are overzealous bastards. If he had had his way, he would have declared the train ‘class-free’ given the crowds in it everywhere. The fact that the first chap was not a ticket inspector but a ‘revenue protection’ officer clarified something which had earlier puzzled me: I told him what had happened was ridiculous and that I would be getting in touch with his commanding officer or whatever they call them in the railways. What, I asked him was his name. He told me willingly and helpfully pointed out that I should also have ‘his number’ which was printed on his name tag.

This struck me as a little odd because he hadn’t otherwise been overly keen to assist me, but when I told him I would write to Southern Railways to tell them what an officious little cunt he had been, he was eager to make it as easy for me as possible. Why? I’ll tell you why: because he wanted his commanding officer to know what an officious little cunt he had been and would probably be praised for so assiduously protecting Southern Railways revenue. Well, fuck that: I shall now make a point of not complaining to Southern Railways and not telling them what an officious bastard he was. See how he likes that! Thinks he can get clever with me!

When we got to Gatwick, I happened to be in the corridor between two coaches talking to the real ticket inspector. So my brother collected our bags and my laptop and got off without alerting me we had arrived. He thought it would be a wheeze for me to have to carry on to the next station, which I had to. The trouble was that once, 20 minutes later, I had got back to Gatwick, I could see no sign of him or our bags anywhere on the platform. Thinking he must already have gone into the South Terminal, I went there too, and could still see no sign of him. Up and down I walked, closely scrutinising the queue lining up to check in to their easyjet flight, back to the other end in case he was looking for me, off to the information desk to get them to give out a Mayday announcement asking the little creep to make himself known, but none of it was of any use, and time was running out before we were due to board our plance.

Finally, I realised he might still be somewhere in the station part of the terminal and went back and got the railway information desk to ask him to make himself known. Sure enough, he had been waiting we me on the platform all the time and we simply missed each other when arrived for the second time. He was all excuses and explanations, telling me this and that and why he hadn’t told me to get off at Gatwick, but it was all bollocks. He knew it, I knew it, he knew that I knew it, and I knew that he knew that I knew he knew it. I’m just glad we get along well, because for about ten minutes I was bloody furious.

My mood was not improved, either, when we eventually did get around to dropping off our bags. I had checked in online but - apparently - forgotten to check in our two bags. That would have cost £16 had I done so earlier. As it was easyjet took me for a cool £50.

This, that and t’other (in no particular order)

I’ve rather lost track of what’s going on, for several reasons. First, August is always a bit of a dead month, although this year Fleet Street’s fabled silly season stories were swamped by more ‘real’ news stories, that’s if any story which appears in our mainstream media is ever ‘real’. There was a glimmer of hope last week, when every member of Essex’s finest was mobilised to find a lion which might – or, crucially, might not – have been on the loose. The Mail did itself proud as usual, accompanying the front page story (it wasn’t strictly the front page ‘lead’ story because there is rarely room for any more stories on the Mail’s front page now that is has a tabloid format) with totally gratuitous picture of a gloriously aggressive looking lion in full attack mode. It was not, of course, the ‘lion’ apparently spotted prowling around the Essex countryside, merely that the ferocious beast spotted in a Billericay nail salon was a ‘lion like this one’. Anyway the story was dead on its feet the following day when it was decided that the ‘lion’ was most probably a rather large, rather fat, ginger cat, and Essex’s finest were recalled to barracks where, no doubt, to a man and woman they set about calculating how much overtime they had earned themselves trying to track down a non-existent lion.

As for the troubles the euro has been finding itself in, there was very little development on that front, too, it being the August holiday season and the various fuckwits delegated to sort out the mess had all buggered off on holiday. Things should at least brighten up – from my point of view – or darken – from the point of view of others – nicely over the coming weeks. The one conspiracy theory I have come across is that Greece will not be allowed to go bust by the U.S. because (so the thinking seems to be) a bust Greece will lead quite soon to a bust Spain and a bust Italy, which will lead to a bust Eurozone and – this is the important point – and already horribly sluggish U.S. economy will also face even harder times. The point is that in November America goes to the polls to elect it’s new president, and Obama, the sitting duck (is that the right phrase?) would rather like to be re-elected, so he doesn’t really want his country’s economy to go tits up until after the election. Well, actually, as a patriot he doesn’t want the economy to go tits up at all – who does? – but it probably will at some point so the disaster should at least be postponed till the end of November.

But that is, after all, just another conspiracy theory, as is the one which claims Greece, Israel and Cyprus have entered into some kind of informal alliance, but what it’s purpose might be, I really don’t know. I think – I think – it has something to do with vast oil reserves under the eastern Mediterranean, but there again I might have got that very wrong.

. . .

 I am sitting in the outside smoking area of the Scarsdale Tavern in Kensington for my usual post-Sunday shift drink and cigar, but not a lot is happening. This place is either heaving with loads of young American bankers who seem to live locally (probably in company rented houses) or it is quiet, as tonight. The only people of interest are sitting directly behind me and the only interesting thing about them is that they are alternately conversing in English and French. They are speaking impeccable English, but as I don’t have French, I can’t gauge how impeccable their French is, if at all, but it does sound very fluent and they both, a young man and a young woman, seem to be very at home in the language. They don’t seem to be a couple (I can’t look, because they are behind my back and turning round would seem very odd), and I think they are either good friends from college or from work. But they way they are dressed I suspect college.

They are making me rather envious, because long ago I was not just fluent in German but bi-lingual in English and German. Trouble is, I’m no longer bi-lingual (stop the sniggering in the back), largely because I don’t ever speak German very much any more – no call for it. I console myself that were I to go to Germany and live there for a week or two, it would all come flooding back and I would one again be bi-lingual, but … who knows. Am I kidding myself?

Just solved the ‘mystery’: both were at French schools and both have spent a long time living in France.

. . .

Speaking of French, the French and France, my brother Mark and I are off to France again for two weeks this Thursday, this time to a little town called Caunes-Minervois the far south. I am just looking forward to doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. The routine normally consists of relaxing for the first few days, then once one feels a little more refreshed and enthused, doing whatever one feels like doing. The secret is to make no plans at all, none whatsoever. Another reason I enjoy going with my brother (apart from the fact that he is good company) is that he is still – me at 62, he now 54 ‘my little brother’ who I can still feel a little concerned about. He is very solitary and doesn’t really make an effort to socialise at all. Never has done, for that matter. So I try, as I managed to do last year, to get him out of his pit, if only for two weeks.

We both think that September will see huge developments in the euro crisis and are both looking forward to two weeks of political entertainment. I did, a few months ago, suggest to him – not quite seriously, but more seriously than jokingly – a trip to the Middle East to see for ourselves what is going on, but he wasn’t having any of that. Would I have gone? Yes, I think I might have done. Experience has taught me that not a great deal of organization is needed for that kind of trip and you always meet interesting people.

. . .

I’ve been in touch with an old girlfriend who I tracked down in order to see whether I might not interest her in reading my novel. I say ‘old girlfriend’ but there wasn’t really a great deal to it: I met her in Roscoff at something called the Celtic Film Festival and asked her whether I might see her again. Yes, she said, and then told me she lived in New York. A few months later I flew off to New York for a week, then didn’t see her again until the following October when she was relocating to Europe and used my flat in Cardiff as a dumping off site for her goods and chattels. She is French and from Britanny, and speaks very good English, although not quite as good as she imagines. She also speaks Breton and Welsh. That was all more than 22 years ago. It came to nothing for a number of reasons, two of which are my rather parochial outlook, at least parochial compared to hers, and the fact that, unfortunately, she has (in rather too large a dose for my liking) that certain kind of French intellectual arrogance and conceit.

She is holding off reading my novel, and to be honest I don’t really care either way. As it is, it was written quite some time ago, is so far the only thing I have written which I think might – might – be regarded as halfway decent, but makes me ashamed that I have not yet attempted anything else. In mitigation I could plead that it was written before I had children and that I was fully able to sit down once or twice a week and write in eight-hour stints. That would, at the momeht, be impossible, but I still cannot rid myself of the sneaky feeling that I am conning myself. Oh, well. I did imagine that her opinion would be interesting and worthwhile and that because of her background and interest she might finally be someone to understand what I was trying to do. But what with the questions she asks me about it by way of finding out whether reading it would be worth her while, I rather think she will eventually decline. Again, oh well.

South Wales Echo, Lincolnshire Chronicle, sex, life of Riley, expenses and spurious vocations and first-class bullshit - a short ramble down memory lane

On June 24, I shall have served in Her Majesty’s Press for 40 years, assuming of course, that I don’t die earlier than I plan to or find myself unemployed. The odd thing is that 40 years sounds like an awful long time, but as anyone roughly my age will tell you, it doesn’t feel that long at all.

I am always utterly disconcerted when people refer to ‘the Eighties’ - as in ‘the Eighties’s disco boom’ or something - as though it were a particularly distant part of the Dark Ages, when, to me, it feels like, if not exactly yesterday, then at least as recent as last week. The explanation is, I think, that time seems to run extremely slowly when you are young - remember looking forward to something when you were a child and it was ‘ages and ages and ages’ away? - because you haven’t really got that many years under your belt to compare them to, whereas for us old farts one August  (in, for me so far, 62 Augusts) seems very much like any other bloody August (though this year, in Britain, with a damn sight fewer hot and sunny days). The upshot is that with so many Augusts to choose from, they all become pretty much indistinguishable.

I started my first job in newspapers on June 24, 1974, and I really can’t tell you why I seem to remember certain dates so well. For example, I started my job as a reporter on The Journal in Newcastle on July 10, 1978, my first job as sub-editor (copy editor to you Yanks) on the Birmingham Evening Mail on January 7, 1980, and I joined the South Wales Echo in Cardiff, again as a sub, on February 24, 1986. (However, I doubled-checked all four dates to make sure they were all a Monday, and it turns out I had remembered two correctly, so maybe I’m not quite Amazo, The Memory Man after all.)

I’ve always felt that working as a hack, whether as a reporter or as a sub, is essentially a practical job, the finer and most salient points of which you learn as you go along, but a modicum of training, even initially merely being shown how to hold a biro (that’s Biro, actually - one for the subs reading this) does help rather a lot. So that my career as a hack has not been as dazzling as it might, perhaps, have been can be blamed on the fact that neither starting out as a reporter nor as a sub did I get any training at all.

My first job was working in the head office of the Lincolnshire Chronicle, a weekly paper in Lincoln. The irony is that hacks - and especially those pompous farts who like to refer to themselves as ‘journalist’ - try very hard to make out that joining their profession is ‘a vocation’, one up there with finding a cure for cancer or running an orphanage in Somalia. These types are all too often apt to use the phrase ‘to break into journalism’ as though jobs in the media business are at a premium and only the very best are able to scale the high wall surrounding the elite from you ordinary mortals. Like a great deal in journalism, of course, it’s complete bollocks, I’m afraid.

‘Management’, as we all learned to call them, are especially keen to push the ‘it’s a vocation, lad and count yourself lucky you’ve been chosen’ line as it enables them to pay staff peanuts and make them work far longer hours for nothing. The really cynical bit is that those handing out the jobs know full well that when you are young, you will fall for the whole ‘it’s a vocation’ schtick hook, line and sinker and will gladly beaver away for a pittance in the sad belief that somehow, in some obscure though vital way, you are making the world a better, better, better place. Invariably, of course, the penny drops, usually after a year or two of re-writing handouts submitted to your local rag by PR companies which courtesy as your skill as a ‘wordsmith’ then appear in print as news stories. You don’t believe me? Sucker.

There’s no overtime in the world of hacks, though there are still, occasionally, ‘days off in lieu’, and when I started, there was still a reasonably lucrative and gratifyingly vague system of ‘expenses’ which, if you had the necessary and were able to cover your tracks, you could use to supplement your rather pitifully small wage. Expenses, have, I’m told rather gone the way of the dodo (or is that dildo? No, probably not). For many years, the exception to ‘it’s a vocation, lad, so you won’t mind being paid peanuts, will you?’ was once the world of Fleet Street - that is the national papers in Britain who were almost all based on Fleet Street - who until about 20 years ago could be remarkably generous. But, they, too, have since discovered the financial benefits of paying your junior staff as little as possible and persuading those junior staff that they are doing them an immense favour by employing them.

As for working the expenses system, I was once in the glorious position when working as a district reporter in South Wales of making just as much by claiming totally fictitious expenses and, more legitimate, lineage payments I was being paid weekly. To this day I am baffled as to how and why I was able to get away with it, but get away with it I did and for quite some time. Even better was that although I was a North Gwent district reporter - where ‘North Gwent’ probably sounds rather pleasant to foreign ear but doesn’t at all do justice to the post-industrial horror that the South Wales Valleys were in those days, I lived in a rather pretty part of Powys, in a hamlet called Llangattock. This was just the other side of ‘the Heads of the Valleys road’ from North Gwent whose towns - Ebbw Vale, Brynmawr, Tredegar and Abertillery were as grim as Llangattock and nearby Crickhowell were chocolate-box pretty. Yet ‘work’ - the inverted commas are in this case not meant ironically as it can hardly have been called work - was only a 15-minute drive away over the moor.

I lived with a girl who worked for the sister weekly paper and it was a life of Riley. I never got up before 1oam and never in any kind of a rush. Once I had bathed and shave, I made my way up the Llangyndir back road into Ebbw Vale for a magistrates court hearing. This was followed by lunch in a pub or cafe and then a short district council meeting at 2am, before it was off home again at around 3.30am. This rather pleasant existence lasted, roughly, from early 1975 to July 1978.

The girl I lived with - her initials were JD, and she will surely make another appearance in this blog at some point in my occasional series of Romance And Why It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be - was quite a good, though English, cook and liked sex just as much as I did. The one drawback was that I didn’t love her, that she had her mind set on marriage and I didn’t, and that she wanted to change me in virtually every way imaginable. But what the hell. Push came to shove in about 1977 when she realised nothing much between us was going to come of anything and found herself a job in Staffordshire.

However, we carried on ‘seeing each other’ for another year or so, she travelling down to South Wales one weekend, me travelling up to Staffordshire the next, so nothing much changed except that we were both paying rather more for petrol each week. I still didn’t love her, but she was still a good cook and still liked sex as much as I did and she had a very nice and very comfortable cottag in a little village called Stone. Why she carried on with the arrangement I really don’t know - you’ll have to ask her yourself: he initials are JD and she was living in Staffordshire in 1978. The only other detail I have about her is that she eventually married a butcher.

. . .

It’s at this point I am bound to admit that I have completely lost the thread of what I was going to write about, so I shall just carry on  rambling, a task made just a tad easier as I have just opened another bottle of wine, a Morrison’s bottle of 2008 ‘Chianti Classico’. My two principles when choosing a supermarket wine is that I refuse to buy anything which is less than four years old and I refuse to buy anything offered at ‘half-price’. Wines more than four years old can, of course, most certainly be equally as undrinkable as a wine bottle barely four weeks ago, but the chances are that one chosen at random is rather less likely to be complete piss, mainly becasue there are rather fewer of them in your average supermarket. And when supermarkets decide to offer a wine ‘at half-price’, it’s usually because it’s cheap crap they have to get rid before anyone realises just what cheap crap it is.

. . .

I turned up at the offices of the Lincolnshire Chronicle which were at the far end of the printing works next to the canal at Waterside South. It was a small office which consisted of an editor, a sub-editor, a news editor, a sports editor, a long-time columnist of the old school and about five or six reporters. The editor, sub-editor - whose name was Linda, I recall - the columnist and the sports editor all had their own, very pokey, offices. The news editor and we reporters all shared a slightly bigger office, with the reporters all siting round one big table. We each had a typewriter, but there were only two phones between the five/six of us. Just off our ‘newsroom’, which cannot have been larger than 15ft by 20ft, was the photographers’ darkroom. That was even smaller.

This was in 1974 which, if your maths is any good, was closer to the Fifties than today, and the whole operation was more a hangover from what local weekly papers were in their heyday than what the few which remain are now. So the columnist, who to the 24-year-old I was then seemed ancient, but couldn’t really have been more than the age I am now, will have started his career on the Lincolnshire Chronicle in the Thirties and will have ended it there, too, and wrote stuff which will have interested no one except those his age and older. I do remember that at some point I fell foul of him, though I really can’t remember any details.

The sports editor was a young chap called Max, and as this blog is this evening in revelatory more, I can reveal that I screwed both his wife and her sister, though not at the same time. It’s not as bad as it sounds in that the marriage was, as I found out, already falling apart. That it was all over between them was quite obvious when I went out with his wife on a Saturday evening and she stayed with me that night and he then picked her up the following morning. He knew exactly where to find her and I had most certainly not given him  my address. And he didn’t seem to mind a bit.

The news editor was a rather bouncy chap called Digby Scott. We got along well enough and I should imagine he got along well enough with most people. There are really only two things I remember about him, apart from what he looked like then as I can still picture him and conjure up his manner in my mind’s eye. One was that he was newly married and that in order to supplement his income and save up for a mortgage - this was, after all 1974/5 in the days before smartarse salesmen would hand loans and debts to anyone and his dog - he used to go from door to door in the evenings trying to sell insurance. (The deputy news editor of the local evening paper, the Lincolnshire Echo, was in the same position, and he and his wife were also saving up for a mortgage. Their ruse to make a little extra money was to have a knife-throwing act which, I assume, performed in local clubs. His name was Peter Brown and his wife was called Anne. Their act was called Petana. He once showed me a publicity still they used: he was clutching a fistful of knives and wearing tight trousers and a faux-gypsy shirt with balloon sleeves and she was in bodice and fishnet stockings.)

I got on well enough with Digby - in fact, I get on well enough with many of my colleagues and have always done so, and am always a little surprised when I find out, always obliquely, that they don’t quite get on as well with me as I do with them. But the other thing I remember about him was a memo he sent me about a month after I started with the Lincolnshire Chronicle.

I should explain that many young of the young folk who for several centuries had managed to ‘break into journalism’ were keen as mustard and since they had first set eyes on a newspaper at the age of nine had wanted nothing else but to be what was always described in Press Gazette job ads as ‘a newshound’. They used to frighten the shit out of me when I came across them. They had purpose, they had zeal, they were bastards and they were here today and gone tomorrow. They didn’t hang about. But, dear reader, that wasn’t me.

I had sent off letters to a number of newspapers asking to be taken on as a reporter because in those days I was convinced I was a literary genius who would make his name writing brilliant short stories and novels and, more to the point, felt that if I worked for a paper, at least I would be taking a step in the right direction as I would be ‘writing’. Actually sitting down to justify my status as a literary genius by making the effort to write brilliant short stories and novels didn’t occur to me for quite a few years. In fact, I’m not too sure it has even yet occurred to me. News, as such, didn’t interest me at all (and most of it still doesn’t - I take the view that if it’s really important - and, to be honest, nothing is that much - I’ll find out about it sooner or later. And if I miss it the first time around, I’ll be able to catch up on it in a history book.).

My lack of interest must have been very apparent to Digby Scott, as must have been my lack of ambition. The idea was that keen, would-be ‘newshounds’ should be straining at the leash to get out there to report. I, on the other hand, turned up at 9am and just sat idly reading the paper and waited to be given something to do. This wasn’t quite the attitude expected of a would-be Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock. Eventually, I got my first memo: Digby chastised me for not being more - well, these days it would be called ‘proactive’, but I can’t remember how he put it. But I also remember that he bollocked me because all too often my copy was bad ‘splet’ (sic). This did amuse me, though I don’t think it changed my attitude much.

. . .

Look, chaps, I’m on a roll her, but it is getting late. So I shall continue this rambling melange another time. You’ve got to admit, it’s better than me banging on about the fucking euro.

To be continued.

Assagne ‘hounding’: it’s all about ‘freedom of speech’? Pull the other one

Here’s a suggestion: go onto Google and search for ‘Bradley Manning’. Make a note of how many pages are thrown up. Then do a search for ‘Julian Assange’ and record how many web pages mention him. The results are interesting. According to my two searches a minute or two ago, young Bradley, a mixed-up kid if ever there was one, is mentioned on 4,130,000 webpages. Today’s modern hero, Julian Assange, gets almost nine times as many mentions at 28,000,000. Why?

Julian likes to portray himself as a campaigner of free speech and led the Wikileaks website. As far as I know, the site was, in global net terms, pretty insignificant until young Bradley decided to leak an enormous number of confidential cables and emails sent by embassies and other Western government agencies back home. Why Bradley decided to do it, I don’t know and have so far not come across any explanation. But he did leak the stuff, Wikileaks soaked it up, published it and then Assange began basking in the – to my mind utterly spurious – glow of fighting the good fight for free speech.

The point about ‘being confidential’ is that ambassadors, for example, can let their hair down for a minute or two and speak their minds. That is an important facility, whether you are an American, British, Chinese, Russian or French ambassador or whoever you go abroad for to ‘lie for your country’. Because those emails and cables allow you the opportunity to stop lying and to give your country what you think is good, candid advice and information about the country to which you have been posted. That is one of the main reasons why you are there.

You might, for example, last night have had dinner with that country’s foreign minister. It was all smiles and toasts and good food, but the following morning – knowing you are speaking confidentially – you can tell your bosses: ‘I really don’t trust the bastard, he’s on the make and he’s not on our side,’

We all know that the emails and cables which were leaked to Wikileaks and which Assange published online, have been horribly embarrassing. Ironically, it was not just the West who were embarrassed, but many other countries, including Russia (although, apparently not Ecuador) and Assagne achieved quite a coup: many, many, many people loathe him for the embarrassment they caused him and it is rather unsurprising that he has rather few friends in high places. What is equally unsurprising that the cause – the apparent hounding of Assange – has attracted the support of what can only be described as the usual suspects. . I just wish if all his supporters would lend their energies to ensure the fate of young Bradley Manning is not as awful as it seems likely to be: the charges, at best, will see him banged up for life if he is found guilty, and, at worst, he will lose his life for treason.

In his rather desperate attempt to avoid the outraged vengeance of those he has made to look rather stupid, Assange is playing the ‘freedom of speech’ card. From where I sit this has absolutely nothing to do with ‘freedom of speech’. What has Assange acutally ‘revealed’? That ambassadors, generals and diplomat worldwide are a duplicitous bunch? Well, Lordy me, what a surprise. And there was me thinking everything was rosy in the garden. Here’s another revelation, courtesy of me: water is wet. Deal with it.

I made the point in an earlier post that at the basis of Assange’s anxiety is that if he is extradited to Swede, initially only to be interviewed by the police let it be said, but possibly also to face charges of sexual assault, the Swedes will do a deal with the U.S. and extradite him on to Uncle Sam.

Well, first things, first: if Assange is guilty of sexual assault (and the charges are more along the lines of having sex without consent rather than hiding in the bushes and grabbing some woman to rape her), why on earth are the right-thinkers of this world defending him?

Are they telling themselves that, yes, he might be a teensy bit guilty, but look at the bigger picture: he made a fool of Uncle Sam, and isn’t that a Good Thing? Or are they even suggesting that the deal is done, the Swedes only want to get him into their clutches in order to ship him out to the U.S. on the next plane Stateside.

And what if he is not guilty? Well, that does present a problem for him: he might well finally agree to be interviewed and possibly face trial, but then be acquitted. But he would then still be liable for further extradition to the U.S.

But let me ask this: the UK and America already have a – quite controversial for some – extradition treaty. Wouldn’t the Yanks already have made their move? Wouldn’t they have gone for the jugular? Would they really be content to play a long game and wait till he is out of the UK and then strike. It does seem a tad implausible.

As for the ‘freedom of speech’ line, as far as I am concerned that is almost obscene. If Assange supporters really do feel strongly on the issue, there are more than enough rather straightforward case of skullduggery going on which they could make a noise about. But they aren’t. This is all bullshit which stinks to high heaven.

And none more time: where is the support for Bradley Manning? Where is the outrage on his behalf?

If I never hear of Julian Assange again will still be too soon, especially as young Bradley Manning is getting a far rougher deal. And Pussy Riot will get to know their fate today

So that stupid little prick Julian Assange has managed to get himself in the headlines again. It’s a shame that Bradley Manning, the source of all the embarrassing stuff Assange published under the guise of striking a blow for freedom and democracy, isn’t getting an equal amount of publicity to highlight his plight. I suspect it is because, whatever else might be the case, Assange is essentially a publicity-seeker whereas Manning is a rather naive idealist. And in the great scheme of things that means the score so far is Assange 1-0 Manning.

I’m prepared to accept the truth of Britain’s claim that they have not struck a deal with the U.S. to get Assange into the Yankee clutch, although it will no be lost on them that once Assange is in Swedish custody - make that if Assange ever gets into Swedish custody, because that is by no means certain - the U.S. will exert enormous pressure on Sweden to extradite him further into their hands. I should imagine that as far as Britain is concerned, Assange is just an irritating problem they want to see the back of.

It will not help his case when it is discussed over sherry and Bath Olivers at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office that Britain was one of the many countries he made a fool of by publishing confidential memos and emails. But unlike the U.S., the Brits aren’t particularly vindictive and all they want is to see the back of them. It would also seem they are on solid ground when they plead that all we are doing, squire, is our duty under various extradition laws. I honestly don’t think the Government give a flying fuck what happens to Assange as long as they can get him out of their hair.
Another intriguing aspect is whether Assange is all that innocent as far as the sexual assault charges which the Swedes are bringing against him.

We all assume that all his shenanigans in holing up with the Ecuadorians to escape extradition is all to do with his fear that the sexual assault charges are just a front to get him into U.S. hands in the long term. That, it seems to me, is to do the Swedes something of a disfavour. Any suggestion that Sweden is in some way the handmaiden of the U.S. really does not square up with its past as a refuge for U.S. soldiers either escaping the draft during the Vietnam War or deserting and heading for the country believing it to be a safe haven. Nor can I think of any ‘hold’ the U.S. might have over Sweden or any leverage it might have.

Then there’s the rather obvious point that as the Swedes have brought charges of sexual assault against Assange, they sincerely believe that he has at the very least a case to answer. That, of course, present all right-thinking lefties with a dilemma: could it really be true that one of their more recent heroes is quite possibly a male chauvinist pig. Well, yes it could, actually.

What Assange chose Ecuador and what might be in it for the country is also something of a puzzle. William Hague, the British foreign minister, has already made clear that Britain - and few other countries for that matter - accept that there is a concept of ‘diplomatic immunity’ and that despite Ecuador granting Assange ‘political asylum’, they will arrest him at the earliest opportunity and that the chances of him getting out of the country are pretty slim.

And Bradley Manning? Well, let me say it again: the poor chap seems to be getting to raw end of the deal whichever way you look at it, irrespective of what he might or might not have done. I would be a lot happier if more agitation were being done on his behalf. From what I have read, he is something of a mixed-up kid, but the crucial detail as far as I am concerned is that he doesn’t strike me as a publicity-seeker. Actually, when Julian Assange is around there doesn’t really seem any room for another. So spare a thought for young Bradley.

. . .

It would be rather disingenuous to describe Russia’s Pussy Riot trio as publicity-seekers because that’s exactly what they are but in a rather more, comparatively, admirable sense the Jules Assange. The essential point is that the publicity they were seeking was not for themselves but for the ‘cause’ they want to highlight, whether or not you agree with it.

But their case, too, is perhaps a little less straightforward than many would have us believe, for we must, in all honesty, accept that for many church-going Russians what the trio did was blasphemous, irrespective of their cause. They might argue: OK, we accept you have a legitimate right to express your view, but doing so on an altar and on what we regard as sacred ground is really not the way to go about it. (In fact, it is worth asking the question here why, apparently, atheism likes to be seen as going hand in glove with ‘right-thinking’ and that ‘believers’ are automatically thought be ‘right-thinkers’ as being something of a sandwich short of a picnic. Certainly, that’s a generalisation, but it does seem to be one which holds to a great extent.)

I mention Pussy Riot because the world and Woking will know their fate tomorrow. Will the go to jail for several years or will the get a suspended sentence?

Olympics: a grumpy old sod sounds off . . .

Well, it’s all over bar the shouting, as they say, and I’m sure many more backs will be slapped this week as Britain congratulates itself on having staged ‘the most successful Olympics ever’ (until the next bunfight, of course). I have held off adding my two ha’porth worth because ... well, basically, I couldn’t be arsed. Good luck, of course, to all the athletes who have trained hard and had success and commiserations to all the athletes who have trained hard and haven’t had succes, and an especial mention to the doughty Saudi Arabian runner who was forced to perform more or less fully clothed, but still didn’t let that put her off. In fact, the sight of her, although last by a country mile, approaching, then crossing, the finishing line almost melted this frozen heart of mine. But it didn’t, and I shall tell you why.

Every four years we have been getting this jamboree, and every four your pompous pricks and prickettes in their hundred drone on about ‘the Olympic ideal’, ‘bringing nations together’ and similar crap, when the truth is that these days the Games primarily serve two puroposes: for the host country to show off as much as possible and stick one in the eye of its rivals, and for the successful sponsors to make as much moolah as his humanly possible in 16 days (which, in case you were wondering, is a fuck of a lot). And it is the joint offence of rancid commercialisation allied to the hypocrisy of spouting so much idealism which puts me off big time. I can’t remember which of the two cola giants ‘won the contract’ - Pepsi or Coke - but if you dared even breathe the name of the one which didn’t get that contract within ten miles of the Olympic site, you risked being sued to kingdom come. The same was true of whoever won the ‘cashpoint franchise’ (although they didn’t call it that because it doesn’t sound upbeat and life-enhancing enough). It was either Visa or Mastercard, but if your credit and debit cards were with the outfit which didn’t have the concession, you were stuffed big time. And woe betide anyone who thinks the food served up by McDonald’s is pure cack: the firm had ‘won’ the chips franchise, and if you wanted to get a packet of chips which weren’t McDonalds’, tough titties.

Then there is the cost of the whole shooting match: I have nothing against anyone wasting as much of their own money as they like, but when it is my money they decide to waste, I do get a but itchy. I think the figure for the cost of staging the Games is £10 billion for everything, but it could well be higher, and we are assured that the ‘Olympic legacy’ will balance the books and that Britain will not end up out of pocket. Well, allow me to hold fire on popping the champagne corks in celebration of such great news for a few more years yet as I am firmly persuaded hindsight is a rather more valuable guide to the truth than prediction. For one thing, no buyer has yet been found for the stadium itself.

On a personal note what did rather irk me was how everyone and his dog suddenly became an instant expert on the the intricacies of sports of which they hadn’t heard of barely five minutes earlier. And I understand China informed the Games organising committee very clearly that the could be no - repeat no - reference to Taiwan and that the Taiwanese flag could not be shown or it would boycott the Games. So there was and it wasn’t and China was good enough to grace the Games with its presence.

But I am, I know, sounding like a grumpy old cunt, so let me outline what I would like to see: I would like to see a return to something a damn sight closer to ‘the Olympic ideal’, with athletes competing for the glory of it all, not because a gold, silver or even bronze means an advertising contract with some bloody shampoo or deodorant firm which will see them rolling in money by the end of the week. I should like to see an end to the obscene multi-million opening ceremonies in which each host nation desperately tries to outshine its predecessor. And I would like to see an end to all this Olympic Village lark where we build a new bloody town which will be inhabited for 16 days. Nations should pay for the upkeep of their own athletes and lend a helping hand to those poor nations who don’t even have the resources to do that. In short, forget the bullshit razzmatazz and get back to sport.

There, I’ve had my say. Now I shall go and lie down.

I do so hope that Draghi, Monti, Merkel, Samaras, Rajoy and the rest of that sorry bunch realise whose future they are dicking with: I take these things personally. And I’m a Scorpio. Then there’s a new kid on the block, one Alexander Bastrykin: hello, Alex, and what to you to for a living?

I have a 13-year-old son and in many ways he seems to take after me. I was rather facetious as a lad, and so is he. Naturally, he is, to use the phrase metaphorically rather than literally, his own man I and I would hate to find that I am somehow manipulating him into my own image. I always think it rather sad when fathers try to mould a son or mothers a daughter into their own likeness. It is as though, having batted on a bit and no longer being the fresh young things they once were, they are somehow trying their hand at having a second youth. That kind of thing can always end in tears or, at best, stymy the development of our offspring so that it doesn’t take its natural course sooner rather than later. And the sons and daughters so treated rarely, if ever, thank you for it. So I am at pains to avoid that particular pitfall, and if I say he seems to take after me in some ways, I merely mean that, almost by chance, we seem to share one or two similar traits.

But one thing he does do, or rather one thing his presence on this earth as my son does - he is not actually ‘doing’ anything - is to remind me of what I thought and felt growing up. So, for example, if he and I are driving anywhere, it always takes me back to when I was sitting in the passenger seat and my father was driving. But I am not about to write some quasi sentimental piece about ‘growing up’ or ‘like father, like son’, but - apropos the whole bloody ‘euro crisis’ - to try to recollect the slow process by which I became aware of the world, its problems, its wars, its silliness and the making of history.

The first time I became aware of ‘world events’ was when I was less than ten and kept hearing about ‘the Baghdad Pact’. Without looking up what it was, I can’t say I know what it was (although once I have written this I shall spend a few minutes googling it and finding out. I suspect it must have come after the Suez crisis because I was not aware of it at the time, unsuprisingly as I was just six years old. I also have vague memories of the Cyprus Crisis, someone called General Grivas and Eoka and a certain Archbishop Makarios, but I had no idea what was going on.

Incidentally, what I do remember is that the crisis lasted for several years and was very bloody, with Makarios being an especially recalcitrant negotiating partner, but that when the settlement came, it happened very fast and Makarios suprisingly caved in to a certain extent. Several years later, and again I can’t remember when, my father, who had obscure links with Britain’s security services - it might well at that point have been merely that one or two of spooks were drinking buddies - told me that the end came when MI6 established and gathered proof that Makarios was a homosexual paedophile and informed him that unless he started playing ball, this information would be made public. Makarios suddenly played ball.

I became a little more aware of ‘world events’ during the Cuban missile crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall, though as a 13-year-old, the age my son is now, I was oblivious to any subtleties of what was happening and still, as I and many others had been brought up to believe, thought of the West as The Good Guys and the Reds/Communists as The Bad Guys.

So when this afternoon my son was looking at a new wall chart showing the map of the world which my wife has bought, started looking for Syria and asked a question or two about the conflict there, I tried to convey that ‘all is not quite as it might appear’. I informed him - I hope correctly - that Iran supports Assad for its reasons, the US supports the rebels for its reasons, Israel would dearly like there to be no resolution of any kind for as long as possible for its reasons, and Russia and China are opposing the West’s view of the conflict for their reasons and concluded by telling him that at a national level different states always do what they think is in their own national interests irrespective of their public declarations. How much of this he understood, I don’t know. And I might well be completely adrift in my analysis. Again, I don’t know. My point is that, at 13, he is beginning to realise that there’s more going on in the world than Lego and Fifa 12, and I should like to make sure that his able to grasp sooner rather than later that, at best, what goes on at that level is not black and white but a rather nasty and very murky monochrome.

I must confess that although I undoubtedly had opinions as a grew older - who doesn’t? - it wasn’t until I turned 40 that I began to take more than just a passing interest in ‘world events’, but that since then that interest has grown considerably. I have also become very aware of the importance of what can only be called ‘the facts of the matter’ and that what is really going on is rarely what we, we the public, are led to believe is going on - as someone once said ‘news is what doesn’t appear in the newspapers’. What has added to my interest is that I know have two children, one 16 next Tuesday and the other 13, and that were once I didn’t really give a flying fuck about the future - of this country, of Europe and of the world - I do now. For example, I should like both of them to have pretty uneventful, though, I hope interesting lives. I want them both never to have to face need - if they decide to try to become rich, that’s their business: all I want is that they don’t face need - and, all things being equal, I hope they lead contented lives. So when various fuckwit politicians play fast and loose with the British, the European and the world economy for now discernibly good reason, I do get very irritated.

All this was brought on by tonight reading a comment piece in The Economist along the lines of August being the calm before the storm as far as the euro, the eurozone, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and who knows what else is concerned. The only peace of mind I have is that at this point my son, at 13, doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on and that just as I survived the Cypris Crisis intact, so will he survive all the silliness about the euro. The problem is that if, as I fear, Britain, Europe and the world is in for a very torrid time economically - and all that it will entail: political instability is always more likely the less stable an economy is - he and my daughter might not enjoy the contented life I wish them for quite some time.

. . .

In the interest of balance, I have been playing Devil’s Advocate and trying to see the euro crisis from the side of those who hope and believe it will all work out. And with the best will in the world none of it adds up any longer.

I fully understand the argument that the eurozone must be preserved because the economic consequences of a break-up would be catastrophic. But I simply can’t understand why several millions of young people, sick people and elderly people should be made to lead miserable lives in order to avoid a catastrophe which would see them lead miserably lives. Can no one else see the lunacy with which the whole euro problem is now shot through?

Then there’s the argument that if debts were ‘mutualised’, the markets would be calmed and it would become easier again for Spain and Italy to borrow money. But why on earth should the Germans and the Dutch and the Finns and whoever else shoulder the burden of others and pay off the debts of others? And that is a question they are asking themselves. In a way it makes perfect sense that they should insist that debtor countries should cut back drastically on their spending if they want to be lent more money to tide them over. But as those cutbacks entail - see above - misery for millions of young people, sick people and the elderly, is that really a viable solution? As for ‘European solidarity’ the Dutch go to the polls this September and the Germans in September 2013, and I do wonder quite how attractive the electoral slogans will be if they are meant to convey: work harder and enjoy life less, the Greeks need your money.

Not a euro problem as such, but a problem for the European Union are the increasingly undemocratic ways of the prime ministers of Romania and Hungary. What with the best minds Europe can find dealing with finding a solution to the euro crisis, just how much thought is being given to waking up to the news one morning that either or both countries have taken a leaf out of the Communist book and locked up the opposition. Fanciful? Oh, I really do hope so.

. . .

I read two things this week, one of which just has to be complete bollocks. I first read that both Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox church is calling for clemency for those three members of Pussy Riot who held an impromptu punk concert in a church and called for Putin’s removal. Well, there you go, I thought.

A day or two later, I read that both Putin and the Russian Orthodox church have called for the sternest sentence possible the courts can sentence can impose on those unfortunate three women. So which is it.

Then I read of Alexander Bastrykin, the of head of ‘the Investigative Committee’ - Russian committees always give me the willies - and the arrest he sanctioned of one Alexei Navalny. This chap happens to be a blogger and an anti-Putin activist, but apparently his arrest was not as a result of cruel things he said about Putin but for allegedly running a gang which has stolen a great deal of timber. My first instinct is that the charge is so

Who are you looking at, mate? A word of warning, sunshine . . .    utterly outlandish, so far beyond the realms of fantasy, that there must be some truth in it. But this being Russia, I swiftly decided to hold judgment until my second, third and fourth instincts make their presence felt.

Mr Bastrykin is, apparently, the coming man in Russian security circles in that business is doing rather well for the FSB and they are rather disinclined to rock the boat. So, step forward Mr Bastrykin. See if you can’t do better. Just a few days before his arrest, Mr Navalny accused Mr Bastrykin of ‘fraud and corruption’. That was apparently not a very good move, especially if, like Mr Bastryki, you have a very natty uniform.

According to the Guardian, Mr Bastrykin is something of a card. He was rather put out by the activities of a Sergei Sokolov, the then deputy editor of a newspaper called the Novaya Gazetta (the New Gazette? Just a wild guess) and last June had a one-to-one meeting with him in a forest where he is said to have threatened to have him killed. It’s all probably stuff and nonsense and nothing but a misunderstanding, although Mr Sokolov would not be convinced by such an innocent explanation and has since left Russia for greener - and possibly less dangerous - pastures.