Dad's Birthday - Nov 14th

‘You can take the boy out of Basildon but you can’t take the Basildon out of the boy.’ As we go through life, we change. That’s the way it works. On balance, our lives are richer, sometimes materially, more often although unnoticed, spiritually too. We learn, love, win, lose, and get through life, rarely as we expect. We grow too, with few exceptions, yes, OK, around the waist – fair cop, but what I was alluding to was - intellectually and spiritually.

Looking around the friends that are still in my life – i.e. you, I see people who are so much more than when we first met. So many of us were callow youths and silly girls (and here I don’t just mean the women), chasing the next thing to make us laugh. Now we are senior citizens, seasoned by life, kids, tears and joys. So many ups and downs have visited us, leaving us with skinned knees and bloodied noses, yet we survived and are for the most part - happy.

Now in our autumn, we have time to reflect.

 

Whether we do or not, depends on our need for introspection. You tell me. Do you ever take time to look at your life, the way you live? Are you satisfied with it? Does any part need changing? Or do you just hurry through, jostled by the pressures of a 21^st century lifestyle? I look forward to any thoughts you may care to share.

I reflect continually, especially when with schoolmates. In my visits to Basildon, I have lunch with friends from Woodlands and our Junior school, Manor. Without fail, we talk about Basildon in the 50s and 60s and recount – possibly less than reliably – incidents from that time.

Similarly, I meet friends from my days at Ford Tractor or Warley and Trafford House or from the years of travelling around Europe as an auditor, then launching systems, then the time in Portugal. I return to the nest for a week of lunches and dinners with people I first met in the womb that was Basildon.

I mention all this in illustration of my opening sentence, Basildon has been the hub of my life and for that I am grateful. While it is the butt of jokes around the theme of The Only Way Is Essex, I love the place. It carries a wealth of fond memories.

It shaped the way I speak and as Scott Walker once sang – “No Regrets”. It is what it is, which I have noticed, now that I’m surrounded by the Lincolnshire accent, is more Essex than ever and I fear I am turning into Dick Van Dyke muttering “Gor Blimey Maaaa-ry Poppins!” possibly in an attempt to retain my identity.

 

A working class existence in Basildon taught me many life lessons. Yes, I got turned over now and again but that also taught me about people.

 When I return to Essex, the pace of life is now too fast. I am a country boy used to a snail’s pace. (“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail - Lewis Carroll). While I couldn’t live there again, Basildon is my spiritual home and I value that; the experiences it gave me, a happy childhood and the lifetime friends. Wherever you are in the world today, for 99% of the recipients of this letter, apart from a few cousins in Oz, this means you.

Now to the news, a great source of entertainment. Isn’t it great to see two UKIP members in parliament? Of course I’m not a supporter - don’t be daft. It’s the party of short-sighted bigotry; the political wing of the National Front, like Sinn Féin was to the IRA. Nonetheless, a joy to see them elected as it has rocked the boat - the closed shop of privileged entitlement that is our a two-party system. At last the tide is turning. The voice of public opinion is making itself heard. Guided by that element of the press that sells papers by scaring people, it’s what people think they want. Best not look in the mirror though.

How many of us are properly English? Nearly none. Certainly not me but probably not you either. Due to a history of invasion, most of today’s Brits have ancestors that are Scottish, Irish, French, Italian (Roman), Huns and Goths and Scandinavians. If you read any history of England you will see that if there are any pure English left, they’ll live in Cornwall or West Wales, maybe Ireland if they had a boat - driven to these outlying regions by bloodthirsty invaders.

I don’t really understand the anti-immigration argument. The National Health Service can’t operate without its contingent of foreign doctors and nurses. Plus the world is now multiracial, Nowhere is pure anything anymore. Look at the German Football team. If you were going to get purity of blood stock anywhere you’d expect it there. Instead you get Mezut Ozil, Sami Khedira and Kevin Prince-Boateng. Hardly Hitler Youth is it?

As for the benefits of a multiracial system, the Notting Hill Carnival has been bringing fun and gaiety to all creeds and colours for years. There was no disowning of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Dame Kelly Holmes when they won their golds. Curry is the favourite English food and has been for years. Like the French, we eat horse willingly and happily. OK, unbeknownst to us, admittedly, but it had become a favoured flavour in mince, burgers and lasagnes. Talking of which, lasagnes, pizzas, kebabs, burgers, wallies, Spag Bol, Big Macs, Chinese, Indian, Thai food… all introduced to the masses by the people they don’t want here.

We like to holiday all over the world and spend summers and winters in Spain and Turkey taking advantage of their health services and cheap wine. We don’t mind being immigrants, just don’t want any over here unless they’re going to look after us when we’re ill, fix our plumbing on the cheap or as in Lincs, pick the vegetables at an unearthly hour so they can be fresh on our table.

All academic of course, with international air travel being as easy as it is and Internet access that allows conversations to everywhere, the world is a tiny place. Bleating about immigration is unrealistic. It’s like King Canute forbidding the tide to come in. Cherry-picking seems to be the answer. We need sports stars, doctors and nurses, veg pickers and grads in IT, medicine and engineering. Our home-grown talent can't fill the demand. What a headache. Glad I’m not PM.

Too serious, back to UKIP. Look at the pathetic Tory argument “A vote for UKIP will put the Glenn Miller Band into Downing Street.” They’re not saying why you should vote Tory (perhaps they can’t think of an argument?), instead they prefer to focus on why you shouldn’t vote UKIP; a manifestation of the usual negativity that we have come to expect from politicians.

Cameron is a poor orator isn’t he? They really shouldn’t let him speak in public. With his tight-lipped earnestness, rather than let his argument do it for him, he tries too hard to convince. Look at Obama, Salmond, Farage, all relaxed and eloquent, speaking spontaneously, making it up as they go along. You can’t believe a word these slippery eels say but they are good speakers, delivering with confidence. Cameron, dull, unconfident - and getting chubby.

Looks like the Lib Dems will be finished at the next election. 2 or 3 seats? What d’you think? Soon be down there with the Greens. Caring about people and the world we live in is a lost cause.

I see Mark Reckless lived up to his name, celebrating his election victory with an orange juice. That man is pure Rock ‘n’ Roll. More importantly, Why was the Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry asked to resign? I understand that her action of tweeting a photo of the English flag displayed from a house window in Rochester, was interpreted as a sneer at UKIP voters. If that’s right, why was she asked to resign? Why wasn’t she sacked? When the Labour Party, the party of the working class, looks down on you, you realise you have become sub-working class, i.e. a chav.

Enough of politics, Camera Club... We have a competition coming up; Four on a Theme. You can put in two entries. These are my two sets of four. I’ll be tinkering with them in Photoshop.

These are the untouched photos. The first set is entitled “Life in Lincs”.

 

It’s the area in and around my village; a ploughed field, the windmill in the next village, the snow scene is my garden in the first winter here and a bit of ditch clearing in Jan when poor old Somerset was underwater. The second set are photos of Paris when I was there at Easter and is entitled “That Parisienne Vibe”.

 Saw Remember Me last night. It’s a new ghost story on BBC1, Sunday nights starring Michael Palin. Don’t watch it. I didn’t want to go to bed afterwards. Kin scary.

I missed the first series of The Fall with Scully as a senior detective in Belfast. Years after the X-Files and she’s still hot isn’t she? Confident and feminine, not afraid to look like a glamorous woman in a man’s world (the police). As I missed that first series, I recorded all six episodes in the rerun which was shown as a trailer to the second series, then watched them back to back. Now we’re into series 2. It’s recommended, if only to fantasise over Scully.

Some of you watching The Missing have spoken highly of it. I’m recording it and will probably have a marathon session, all episodes, one after the other as we approach the end.

Babylon, Homeland, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Big Bang Theory, Have I Got More News For You… I watch all these and more to end any day. When I was at work, some nights my head was spinning with work problems and I would dream of spreadsheets and snowstorms of paper, macro code and numbers. Now I make sure that whatever I spend my day on, I end it with my mind in neutral. As everything is recorded, I watch it when I want, not when it’s on live. Generally, I watch pap. Some of it engaging, some of it funny. If I watch Horizon or some such intense and informative documentary about space, the mind or human behaviour, that is early in the evening. For the last couple of hours of any day, I relax the mind - and I sleep like a babe.

I also do a bit of reading just before dropping off. Currently reading about Highbury. Did you know Spurs had shares in Arsenal about 100 years ago? Sold them, then, when they wanted to stop Arsenal entering the Football league, regretted the selling of those shares. Don’t think it was meant to be a comedy but how I laughed!

I’ve been writing the Lottery Winner story more lately. Written thirty pages so far, setting up the background to various threads. You’ve got a lottery winner who doesn’t care much for money so after getting himself set for life which only take a few of his 157 million, he sets about giving the rest away – by unusual and imaginative means.

He looks after those who choose to be homeless, rehabilitates criminals, puts square pegs in square holes, hires people to hack and to spy on the great and the good, bent coppers and politicians, and anyone who annoys him. They are then exposed via a few journalists whose careers he looks after. He buys farms in depressed regions, and uses their animals and produce to feed the community who are largely the poor and unemployed – and organises various other acts of philanthropy. In a separate thread, he gets involved in criminal gangs, setting them up to kill and steal from each other.

He practices vigilante justice as he has a dim view of the law, seeing it as riddled with loopholes for the benefit of lawyers rather than to serve justice. In short, it’s a piece of self indulgence. It’s what I would do if I won silly money on Euro millions. As the chances of that are negligible, I’m living my fantasy by writing it in a story. As you see, I’m keen on vigilante justice. We’ve had Robin Hood, Zorro, Batman, Superman etc. Is it really that bad? Yes, you’re going to make a mistake every now and then and kill someone mistakenly. Whoops! These things happen. Millions dies in tsunamis, earthquakes, mudslides, train crashes, air crashes - all dying pointlessly. What’s a few more in the pursuit of natural justice?

There are mad scientists, a bloke that believes he’s a vampire, a dainty killer from MI5, and of course some villains whose fate it is to be overcome. No sex, no swearing. Just like my life today.