Newspaper journalism a ‘vocation’? Up to a point, Lord Copper. Or: Myths I should like to bust: Part 1 in an series of I don’t know how many more.

A few years ago, before the days my criminal son initiated me in the criminal ways of criminally downloading films with uTorrtent, I used to by DVDs, though having been voted St Breward Tightarse of the Year, seven years on the trot, I always keep an eye out for a bargain. One I bought was the complete first series of Mad Men, and as is usual with such DVDs there were ‘extras’, in this case a 15-minute spoken memoir of a veteran of Fifties Madison Avenue, when the whole advertising spiel really took off and came off age, i.e. no more of the ‘Buy our washing powder, because it’s the Best!’

In it he admitted that as far as he was concerned, the most successful ad campaign of all time was this: the advertising industry selling itself to commerce, other industries and business as being utterly essential to their business; that if you didn’t invest millions in advertising you were not only a total loser and your business would crash, but your dick was incredibly short.

He was right: everyone, but everyone in business would these days considering it complete madness not to advertise. And the thinking has become so daft that advertising budgets are now stratospheric. Then there’s the saying, attributed to many – because it’s a smart quote that many wish they had said – but usually attributed to a merchant, politician and ‘religious leader (the US seems to have a lot of those) called John Wannamaker.

He is said to have been asked: ‘How much of the money you spend on advertising is well spent?’ to which he replied ‘About half of it, but the trouble is I don’t know which half.’ Like many such quips what is apparently just a throwaway line actually sums up rather well the dilemma faced by businesses: are we wasting our money on advertising? Are we wasting our money on the wrong advertising? Dare we spend less and invest in the business in other ways? Should we spend more? And if a business starts doing a lot worse than a rival, there is always the suspicion, verging on paranoia that ‘we are not spending enough on advertising’.

The other side of the coin is, though, that the ad industry, the Mad Men (‘mad’ but also from MADison Avenue) are laughing all the way to the bank, making millions – well, these days billions – in the certain knowledge that businesses of all kinds have bought into the myth that ‘they can’t do without advertising’. I wasn’t going to blether on about advertising, though, but newspaper journalism. But before that I might add that if I knew then what I know now,

I might well have gone for a job as a copywriter, knowing that copywriters move on to do a lot more than simply write copy. And as I’m on that tack – and given my utterly contrary views as to what ‘art’ is (not the hi falutin’ activity before which far too many these days insist we should genuflect and another area for examining the myths we swallow – I have no trouble at all in suggesting that more real art is produced by the advertising industry than by any number of pure artists. But you will have to wait until another blog entry for me to explain myself and my views.

Now to newspaper journalism, an industry which his so shot through with myths that Peter Jackson should seriously consider shooting a three-part blockbuster about it in New Zealand (where the air is fresher and thus the bull and sheep shit more concentrated. I should add that, I think we no exception, were any of my colleagues on newspapers, past and present, to read what I am writing, they would in one voice chorus ‘Pat’s talking shite again’. Well, I don’t think so. Where do I start?

Well, how’s about here: that working as a newspaper journalist is ‘a vocation’ to which we are somehow ‘called’ and that as ‘a vocation’ we are only too happy to work on until God knows when without thought or complaint. ‘Up,’ as Evelyn Waugh had one of his characters (as it happens a newspaper managing editor) say ‘to a point, Lord Copper’, which in the novel in which it appeared – Scoop – meant that Lord Copper, the owner of the Daily Beast (Daily Mail in real life) was talking complete ball, but that his managing editor was far too tactful to say so. (Lord Copper’s rival in the novel was Lord Zinc, who owned the Daily Brute. In real life they were Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook.)

My reason for launching into this, my latest dyspeptic pontification, is that tonight is a Wednesday evening. I work in London from Sunday noon until, nominally 6pm on Wednesday nights, at which point, given that I am then faced with a four-hour drive back home to Cornwall, I am keen to get off as sharpish as possible. Yet my attitude is looked at askance: where’s your professional dedication? that look says. The job isn’t yet done, and you should be hanging on until we think you should be able to leave. Well, balls to that.

It’s not as though I am engaged and employed at the sharp end of journalism. My daily routine is, and has been for many years, looking after the production of the quiz pages, the Answers To Correspondents page, the Letters page and, on different days one or two other pages. For these past few years I have been banned from similarly looking after the Travel page because I had several unfortunate run-ins with an otherwise very pleasant young woman who commissions them and is one of two travel editors. More of that, perhaps, another time. Related to the myth that newspaper journalism is ‘a vocation’ is the myth that it is an difficult industry in which to get a job when starting out – hence the silly saying ‘breaking into journalism’. That phrase, that ineffably silly phrase is nothing but self-aggrandising.

Yes, there are possibly fewer jobs to find in on newspapers, and ever fewer as the print industry dies, partly a victim of the internet and social media, but if you are looking for one, believe me you will find one. However, a beginner’s wage is tiny. Why? Well, newspaper owners like to stress that as the job is ‘a vocation’, you are quite prepared to work for peanuts.

An example: a friend came across a letter offering a job to a graduate. He was offered just £20,000 to live and work in London. Well, man years ago when I was still working for the South Wales Echo, a friend landed himself a job on the Daily Star at the then, for a new arrival, very handsome annual whack of £22,000. But that was in 1987. Those values today: £20,000 in 2015 is £20,000. That

£22,000 of 28 years ago would be the equivalent of, depending on whether you are looking at the ‘historic standard of living’, ‘economic wealth’ or ‘economic power’ between £55,270 and £88,440, and probably closer to the higher figure. But don’t complain: it’s a fucking ‘vocation’, see.

Then there’s a second myth: ‘be first with the story’. It’s an imperative beaten into young reporters. But where it was once true – for solidly commercial reasons, it is even more bollocks. It’s quite simple: newspapers, in their heyday of between 1850 and, say, 1980, made quite fabulous sums selling ad space. And selling ad space, despite what they myth-makers would have you believe was – for the proprietor - the papers sole raison d’etre. There was no other. And that was why circulation was and is so important: if you are selling 100,000 copies a day you can charge the advertisers a certain amount for the space they buy. If you sell 200,000, you can charge more. If, however, circulation falls, as it has been and the obvous conclusion is that fewer folk are reading your paper, the advertisers have the whip hand: the simply insist that rates should be cut.

Until the slow decline of newspapers began after World War II, each city had at least two and often three rival papers, all vying to sell as many copies as possible and thus be in a position to up their ad rates. So in order to attract the reader – to news of the latest murder in Whitechapel, the election or football results, the latest gossip – you simply had to be first with the news. The paper that was first with the news sold out. If its rivals were on the street later than you, they sold fewer. QED. So reporters and their poor cousins, the sub-editors (copy editors) were urged to work faster, faster, faster to hit print deadlines to get that bloody paper out.

Now, of course, no evening papers have a rival, and the morning papers have such a well-defined constituency that they are not really rivals at all. But the myth carried on: work fast, get the news, and get it out – bugger how little (in the provinces) you were being paid.

How about this myth: ‘the public’s right to know’? Well, dear reader, that’s another piece of 24 carat bullshit. Take a look at the contents of your paper: diets, gossip, fashion, more gossip, a bit of stale news, ‘opinion’ – does the public really have ‘a right to know’ that? Is it really vital that the reader should know exactly where bloody Kim Kardashian had lunch yesterday, with whom and what she was wearing? Or that Taylor Swift is now higher up the ‘power list’ the the Queen of England. You decide. I know what I think.

Certainly the public has ‘the right to know’ what its government is decided on its behalf, what its local authority plans to spend local taxes on. The trouble is that, as a rule, the public isn’t in the least bit interested. Or rather the public is only interested in hearing that political news which reinforced its prejudices. Don’t believe me? Do you think that if the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun suddenly started suggesting that ‘immigrants’ – in truth such a vague word as to be almost meaningless – were not, after all, the scrounging fuckwits its readers like to believe them to be, it would carry one selling the number of copies is does? Do you? I don’t.

One of the first rules of a certain kind of journalism is: establish what your readers ill-informed prejudices are, then pander to them until you retire or until your dying day, whichever comes first. It is all a little more complex than that. In some parts of the world, in authoritarian states, for example, there really are some print journalists for whom their profession is a vocation, and of whom many lose their lives for embracing that vocation. But hey, don’t let a couple of facts ruin a good story, now.

If, however, you are interested, take a look at the latest figures of hacks, good men and women, who have lost their lives because of their job. Then, of course, retreat into your own prejudices, whatever they might be.

But I’ll be back (©Schwarzenegger et al). And a little more on Somerset Maugham, a rather better man and nicer chap (and better writer) than many

I’m sitting here in the right-on-the-sea restaurant on my very last day, with just just hours to do before I head back to Palma airport, via the hotel where I’ll pick up someone for a lift to the airport. I was right about making it a little longer than just a week, though by just a few days. And I’m glad I did. I’m also glad I pushed out the boat and hired a car for all that time. I’m not really one for hanging about in bars getting rat-arsed (which isn’t to say I never was), and got to see a bit of Mallorca. I shall certainly come back, though possibly later in the year when it is a tad warmer.

The weather has certainly been better than the crap I understand folk in Old Blighty have suffered, but three/four/five degrees hotter wouldn’t have gone amiss. I shall also try to find somewhere inexpensive to stay here in Colonia de Sant Pere, where I am sitting at the moment. Inexpensive because all you need is a clean bed and hot water. Everything else is optional. OK, it’s not ‘exciting’ for a late teen, early twenties style dickhead or dickheadess, but as I am not of that age (whether or not I am a dickhead is for you to decide – I don’t think so, but I’m liberal enough to hear alternative views), but for what I want from a holiday it hits the spot.

As it is, I’m off to the Fatherland for four days in July for my brother-in-law’s 60th birthday party, then, most probably, off to Bordeaux in late July to accompany my stepmother’s sister to a series of concerts as well as enjoying them myself. Then later this year it is off to Seth Cardew’s in wherever 70 miles north of Valencia (see below, where the small brown block is) for a week (or a few more days perhaps). As this is my first

week off from work, I probably have enough paid holidays left, but also as I past the magic 65 last November (ignore all previous jokes about being just 32 – I bullshit quite a lot, you do realise that, don’t you?) and income naturally notwithstanding, my time is now more my own than it ever has been.

In theory, I can tell my bosses to fuck off now, given that if the shit hits the fan, I am, at least guaranteed my £113 a week (tax-deductible, of course) and although I most certainly shan’t do that – for one thing I like them and the paper I work for – it’s a good feeling that, again in theory, I am no longer a wage slave. I have now been promoted to pension slave.

Just for the craic, I’m listening to Lisa Ekdahl as I write, who is a great and interesting singer. Great, well, just listen; interesting because as far as I know she started out as a Swedish pop star – she’s Swedish – but also sings in English with a great ‘backing band’, pianist, bass guitarist and drums and both a great voice and a feel for the kind of jazz she sings in English. That’s just by the by. I’ll post a track or two at some point in the future. You can find out more about her here. If you like jazz singing, but don’t like all that rather silly forced rhyming of the 1950s and 1960s, give her a whirl. (If, of course, you don’t, don’t bother. QED.)

Don’t really know what else to write. It’s curious: I love writing. The real problem is I don’t have much to write about and, more to the point, I still haven’t tried my hand at fiction (or hardly, to be fair). Why? Well, I’m scared of failing, of others thinking what I write is 24-carat bollocks and why, but why, does he bother? Who’s he kidding but himself?

I’ve already thought of several stories while I’ve been here. I find my imagination comes alive when I am away from home/my routine. Before I married, I went off to Sicily by myself for two weeks and at the time warned Celie, my wife to beat the times, that I would always want to travel. Well, I still do, though naturally the main, only, consideration will be money – being able to pay the household bills and council tax, plus some for Celie and my son while I am away, but paying for somewhere to stay. In that respect I am glad I’m not demanding. A clean bed and hot water really is enough for me, and I don’t eat a lot. But all that is then, so see what happens.

As for writing, well, I’ve been reading a biography of William Somerset Maugham, and a more fascinating and, in some ways more admirable, figure I think it might be hard to find. What is interesting is that while in his later life he was thought – and was – a predatory homosexual and not particularly much more, he was also when he was younger and until well into his forties something of a predatory heterosexual. He swung both ways, and quite possibly a lot further than many of us, certainly further than me, although I have yet to bat for my own side, mainly because I’ve not yet felt the inclination.

What I like most about Maugham – of what I know, that is – was his self-discipline: wherever he was – in London leading the social high life once he had the money to do so as an moneyed Edwardian, serving as a volunteer - I stress volunteer - Red Cross orderly in the First World War (called by some the ‘Great War’, why exactly, except that it had been bigger than man a war beforehand), on Capri, in France, in the Far East – he sat down for several hours in the morning, whether he had anything to write or not, and wrote.

The first and only principle any would-be writer should possess: Get It Done! Maugham knew that, and stuck to it all his life. He described himself as in the first rank of the second rate, but that is just his usual self-deprecatory pose: he can write better than many, but there is none, but none, of the showing off, the self-indulgent ‘I must be an artist’ bollocks about him.

He was often described as ‘cynical’. No, he wasn’t, he was merely – ‘merely, what a description, damn already! – honest with himself and down-to-earth. He had, or from my reading seems to have had, very few illusions about himself or the world. And I’ll drink to that. If that makes me cynical, too, well, so be it and fuck you. It’s your problem, bro’ not mine.

. . .

One story that has occurred to me was sparked by Maugham. He live until he was into his 90s, and had as a ‘companion’ one Alan Searle who, we are told, inveigled Maugham to disinherit his daughter Liza in favour of him, Alan Searle. Well, who knows?

Undoubtedly, Maugham, as I say well into his 90s was slowly losing it and had, for example, lost a lot of sympathy - in the 1960s, for Christ sake, a more hypocritical age it is hard to imagine - by writing a rather vicious memoir of his marriage to Syrie Wellcome, who, as far as I can gather, was something of a nightmare – mare, for you young folk.

My story is simply a long letter to a daughter or even son, by someone like Maugham, ensconced – imprisoned at 90 one might conjecture – in somewhere like, well here, Colonia de Sant Pere, trying to describe, honestly, his relationship with her mother, someone like Syrie, while a snake in the grass, someone like Alan Searle, perhaps,  is wafting around with very much his own agenda, of which the main character is at times aware, at times not.

There would have to be a topping and tailing device for the letter – discovered in the archives of his publisher’s perhaps, though for many years ignored because the writer, though rich and once famous and bankable, was no longer dans la vent (‘in the wind’ – please keep up!). It could well be made ‘modern’ for ‘modern’ tastes, with a little clever, clever tooing and froing in time and perspective blah, blah – you can always pay off self-appointed moderns if you try hard enough – but would have to be well-written enough to be worth the effort for the reader. And that, dear friends, is what I shall do.

I have before tried extremely hard, some might even claim excessively hard, to plug my ‘first novel’, which, though I say so myself is not half bad, and better than some, but so far with no luck. None. Zilch. Philistines, the lot of you. Ashamed? You don’t know the meaning of the word. If – if, a huge fucking ‘if’ anyone is interested, you can still find it here. But I’m not holding my breath. Pip, pip. Philistines.

Pearls before swine. Ever really understood what that means? No, thought not! Think William ‘Willie’ Somerset Maugham (portrayed, I understand by a writer friend as ‘Gilbert Hereford Vaughan’) is cynical? Give me a break. He merely informed the world that, do you know what, shit stinks, while everyone else for a variety of reasons pretended it didn’t, especially when crapped by royalty, nobility and money. Thank you, Mr Maugham. I’m your fan, if now no one else is . Oh, and I have read some of your stories recently, and you can write, very well. For those unconvinced try P&O, a touching account of a woman who finds a kind of peace, though an unexpected kind.

So, that’s the world sorted: Somerset Mauagham wasn’t quite the cunt the modern world – quote marks for ‘modern’ cos, face it, nothing really changes – and Lisa Ekdahl is a fucking good jazz singer.

PS 1,606 words: if I could write this much crap every day for one month and 15 days, then find a publisher, fortune, respect, fame and the acquaintance of any number of art-fags of both sexes would be mine. Though, dear friends, gays need not trust in any success. Better make that clear, before there are tears before bedtime.

Christ, this is a nice spot. Colonia de Sant Pere (Colinia St Pere for some), though if you tell anyone, I'll kill you, if you do! What is best: no cunt there except me (more or less).

Just a couple of piccies while I get my thoughts together

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Last full day

Went off in search of Capdepera castle yesterday, but got sidetracked by the idea of sitting in a quiet café right on the sea when I spotted a side road heading down to somewhere called Son Serra de Marino, and Christ what a godforsaken place. It was nothing but a small grid conurbation of small holiday villas and was deserted, like something out of a 1970s arthouse film about a Brit crim who pays people he doesn’t know to find him somewhere to lay low in Spain for a few months and they do it all on the cheap, wanting to keep the substantial sum he pays them for themselves.

I didn’t spot any tumbleweed rolling down a hill, but I should have done. I went town to the sea’s edge to see if there was a café, but there was nothing at. Then I spotted a chap in his Transit sitting watching the sea and asked him – he seemed very vary of me – what the community I could see down the coast was called. Colonia de Sant Pere, he told me, so it was about turn and back to the main road in search of the turn-off to Colonia de Sant Pere. And, Lord, what a pleasant tranquil peaceful place.

I was there for the best part of four hours, sitting in my by-the-sea café doing nothing but enjoying the lager and a few Wilde Cigarros. That is where the first three pictures were taken and I didn’t move from my seat – the mark of a true artist, forget all that suffering for your art bollocks. If a photographer has to move one inch from where he is to take pictures, he should knock it on the head and find a real occupation, driving a bus, teaching shorthand, book-keeping or something.

Untitled (i.e. I can’t think of anything remotely facetious)

One bollock too few

Also untitled. Similar dilemma

These four below were taken at the castle in Capdepera I had set off to investigate, and I managed it today. Sadly, and why I really don’t know, I didn’t get to sleep till 4am this morning and then woke at 8am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was – and am – quite knackered.

So here I am back in Port d’Whatever. And glad I have got fuck-all to do till I can turn in for an early night, though not too early as experience has taught me I’ll just wake at 5am and stay awake. Which would be a bad thing, as I am flying back home tomorrow and am not due in till midnight, so that will be another long night. Come up with your own titles.

Know an Irish gay? Wish him or her luck

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Day eight/nine?

It’s ‘let our gays get married’ day tomorrow in Ireland, so I thought I might add my two ha’porth worth. At my age, newish ideas are difficult to get used to (I’m still struggling to get my head around income tax and still do a mental double-take when a woman speaks of her wife or a guy speaks of his husband), but I must say - and Britain went through the same process a year or two ago - I have yet to hear one single good and persuasive argument as to why gays shouldn’t get married.

Most of the arguments I have heard strike me as phoney and threadbare, and as for all those who insist gays ‘can’t get married because marriage is all about the procreation of children’, I suggest they spend a few minutes acquainting themselves with the history of marriage – in Britain children, because of the high child mortality rate, weren’t valued very much and didn’t figure very much in people’s lives at all until they got to the age of eight or nine and could be put to work or, if you were noble or had pretentions, married off (to consolidate whatever wealth you had).

As for procreating children, I suspect it was the initial procreation of having children Aelfraed and Haranfot were by far more interested in. And before the church muscled in, couples simply used to pledge themselves to each other in public before disappearing behind a bush for a little more procreation. There was none of this ‘in the eyes of God/Allah/Jehovah/Ron L Hubbard/’ which became part of the muscling in.

As far as I know the notion ‘marrying the one you love’ and fixing him a steak was invented by Hollywood to plug their Judy Garland and Rita Hayworth extravaganzas which I suspect is behind all this ‘we want to get married’ schtick from gays. (Oooh, isn’t she homophobic!) Doesn’t actually explain why lesbians also insist they should be able to marry, but give me time, and I’ll try to come up with another joke in extremely poor taste to cover them. On a slight down note, there have been reports that domestic violence is statistically a little higher in same-sex relationships (try here – the Beeb tends to be objective in such matters).

. . .

Back on more mundane matters, headed back for the hills yesterday, and I would advise anyone coming to Mallorca who wants to explore the island to ignore the plains and head for the hills. I consulted a map before I set off and settled on visiting a small community called Fornaluxt, which is just a mile or two up the hill from Soller, and very glad I am, too. Plenty of tourists, of course, and it is especially tidy and well-maintained for that reason, but not too many at all. Today, I thought I might explore a ruined castle at a place called Capdepera, which is off to the south-east. But the sun has now come out rather nicely and I am in two minds. Hmm.

Another day in paradise (of a kind, well, not really, too many f*cking tourists) in which I manage the impossible: go around in circles in squares – read on, read on! – and am obliged to be fatherly and strict with my daughter

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Day six? Seven?

In some ways yesterday was a bit of a washout, although no rain was involved (or hardly, but by then I was back in the car returning to my hotel here in Port d’Alcudia). I was keen to see more of the island and less of the tourists, tat shops, cheap booze shops (see piccy) and the rest of the detritus which makes most low and middle market seaside towns the world over such a delight for

some. So as I was assured a few days ago by one of the ladies on the desk that there are hardly any tourists in the centre of the island, I looked at a map of Mallorca for the smallest community I could find in the centre of the island and decided to head off there, reasoning that I would surely pass through and by several other sights worth investigating on the way.

The town/village/community – you can’t really tell from the map – I chose was Sant Joan. Well, I didn’t really. I’ve discovered that not only is Port d’Alcudia bigger than Port de Pollencia down the road, but it is rather bigger than I thought. I was admittedly driving down the coast and the built-up area is something of a conurbation and is not all Port d’Alcudia, but it took about 15 minutes before I got away from the villas, supermarket, even more tat shops, restaurants, pizza parlours and, for God’s sake, even a bloody Lidl (‘No country safe from our planned world domination’, they are vying with Starbucks for being the most intrusive retail outfit on the planet. Guess what you will find when you take your first steps through the Peraly Gates? But at least you’ll be able to get Black Forest smoked ham and all number of the cheap and practical gadgets which make a trip to Lidl’s, Bodmin, a must every Thursday).

After that and following my satnav I was able to head inland in search of Sant Joan. The countryside is undoubtedly Spanish (well, generic Mediterranean) and you wouldn’t mistake it for Northamptonshire, but it was equally as bland and uninteresting, and what I saw of Mallorca on my trip into the hills was far more satisfying. At one point the satnav, as satnavs often do, took me through a small town of that boring grid pattern sort where all the streets are at right angles and look identical and you soon lose your bearings, and having just once taken a wrong turning and deviating from the route Mr Satnav insisted I should take, I then spent at least ten minutes driving around – is ‘around’ the right word if all you can do is keep turning sharp right or sharp left? – trying to get back on track. I did eventually and after another few miles reached Sant Joan.

It was, in the event, sadly one of the world’s more boring settlements, with no sight of a café terrace where I might, wifi access permitting, have settled down and generally wiled away several hours with lager and cigars and posting all kinds of inconsequential shite on Facebook. (If you’re interested take a look, but don’t hold your breath). So the decision to abandon Sant Joan to the attention of other, probably lost, tourists was easily made and I took another look at the map to see where to go to next.

A nearby town called Petra attracted me, so after inputting the name I my satnav I took off. As satnavs demand an street name and number, and I didn’t know any, I simply plumped for ‘Aires’ from the list I was offered. Ten minutes and about six miles later I discovered that ‘Aires’ is Spanish for ‘motorway service station’ and that is where I was taken, still three miles from Petra proper. So off I went again, across country, one what seemed an interminable three miles, but only because the road was so winding, until I arrived at Petra. And that’s when I discovered the name of the town where earlier I had spent ten ever-more frustrating minutes going round in the equivalent of square circles: Petra. I had gone in full circles.

Quite apart from being boringly symmetrical – well, that what it seemed like – Petra is another staging post for the hordes of cyclists who descend on Mallorca in the cooler months, and there must have been about 50 in the town square I came across, that served by about nine café/restaurant/bars. I settled into one – with wifi access, no modern man or woman can do without wifi access, if folk all start to realise that neither Heaven nor Hell has wifi access, they will all refuse to die until the situation has improved.

. . .

This is when I was contacted by my daughter (courtesy of wifi access) for help to fill out a form confirming that she wanted to change her course. I did my bit, but the solution wasn’t quite what she had hoped for then demonstrated an aspect of her character which I have tried to pretend doesn’t exist but which, in truth, does irritate me. She can sometimes be markedly offhand and, though I hate to say this, I have sometimes suspected that she might occasionally be the sort who is only interested in you if you can be of use to her.

These things are rarely, if ever, apparent when our children are young or in their early teens and when they are in their late teens they might well be put down to adolescent solipsism. And that, I hope, is what it is in my daughter – she’s still only 18, 19 at the beginning of August. But given the time I have put in over these past few weeks when she has contacted me down I the dumps and dithering about this, that and t’other, I did rather lose patience and in two long texts read her the riot act (fairly, I think I can say, or at least I hope I can say). And don’t anyone reading this think that I am wholly the genial sort for whom you would eagerly and gladly like to buy a drink or three and chat for hours: I have my rabid side, which, in conjunction with a overly sharp tongue, I am now at pains to rein in for fear the damage I might do. So my texts to my daugher, dear reader, were considered and restrained, but I didn’t pull any punches.

While all this was going on, an overcast day with not a hint of sun, became a markedly windy, not to say chilly, day, and there were even spits of rain. So overall yesterday gets a 2/10 Today is also overcast, but I shall head out again. I shall, in a minute and once I have posted this entry, consult the internet about ‘castle ruins in Mallorca’ and seek some out.

. . .

Tonight, if I can be bothered it’s Arsenal against Sunderland on Sky Sports, but even if I don’t watch the game, I shall lay a bet: Sunderland, who might well be safe from relegation if they beat Arsenal tonight, are only 10/1 to win, so that makes a five – or even a tenner – worthwhile, especially as it is only money I have previously won, so I shan’t be out of pocket if, as I imagine, Arsenal take them. But then they might not. Who knows? There are still several mysteries left, you know, though most aren’t quite as mundane as that one. Pip, pip!

There’s no sun! Who do we sue!

There’s no sun! Who do we sue!

[For those born before 1960]