Once upon a time in the 1950s three batsmen played for the West Indies. Sir Frank Worrell who scored nearly 4,000 test runs at 49.48 and was the first non-white captain of the West Indies; Sir Clyde Walcott who scored nearly 4,000 runs at 56.68, and Sir Everton Weekes 4,400 runs at over an average of over 58. Collectively they were the Three W’s and titans of the game.
In 1985 when Graham Gooch played for England after his ban a letter write in the Daily Torygraph suggested that along with David Gower and Mike Gatting they were the three G’s. Gooch and Gower are covered in https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/11/14/and-we-cant-build-our-dreams/ , this is about Mike Gatting. Comparing them to the three W’s is insulting to the W’s.
Now I will admit to bias here. At university Alex was from Leicestershire (Gower), I was from Essex (Gooch) and my roomie Gary was from Middlesex (Gatting). Though Leicestershire beat Essex in the 1985 Benson and Hedges cup final it was Essex and Middlesex that dominated the trophy scene. Essex were county champions in 1979, 1983, 1984 and1986; Middlesex in 1980, 1982 and 1985. Essex won the Sunday league in 1981, 1984 and 1985. Essex won the Benson & Hedges Cup in 1979; Middlesex in 1983 (beating Essex) and 1986. Essex won the 60 over cup in 1985; Middlesex in 1980, 1984 and 1988. Yet Gooch and (occasionally Neil Foster and Derek Pringle rarely) were the only Essex players in the England team yet Edmonds, Downton, Emburey and Gatting were all regular, as well as Slack, Butcher and Cowans all getting chances.
A lot of us were annoyed at the perceived Middlesex bias. They got more chances to play for England and were retained when in bad form. This was highlighted by the wicketkeeper Paul Downton. No great batsman and a very sloppy ‘keeper he retained his places when there were far better candidates in at least ten counties.
Gatting got really special treatment. Between 1977 and 1984 he played 30 tests and scored just over a thousand runs at 23.83, with no centuries. Despite his supposed prowess against spin he averaged 13 in India in 1981/82. Amazingly he was the only player apart from Boycott, Botham and Willis to play every Ashes test in 1981, at an average of 30.83. In 1984 he played one test against the West Indies (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/02/they-say-she-did-it-with-grace/ ) scoring 29 and 1, being out lbw both times. He was dropped (which looked like the same kind of protection Dennis Amiss got in 1976 for someone who did not have the bottle to deal with pace).
(Gatting was seen as a great player of spin – until Shane Warne)
Gatting’s reward for this – the vice captaincy on the 1984/85 tour of India. Over the next four years he played 35 tests scoring 2,666 runs at 54.41 with weak opposition. The one series against the West Indies he missed all but one test, as he failed to deal with a fast ball early on tour and was injured.
When Gower was sacked as skipper he got made captain for 23 matches – his series record was won 2, drawn 1, lost 6. He also got out reverse sweeping Allan Border in the 1987 World Cup Final (Border was a very occasional bowler), which ultimately what cost England the title. Not the tactical genius he was held out to be.
Post this golden period he played another 14 tests (interrupted by leading a rebel tour to South Africa that was cancelled). 599 runs at 22.19.
At county level he was not the player Gooch was. Gooch scored 128 first class centuries, Gatting 94. Gooch scored more one-day and first class runs together than anyone else ever.
Three G’s? There were only two. Gower and Gooch. Gatting these days is remembered for being bowled by the ball of the century and the jokes about his appetite.
(Gatting on the second aborted rebel tour)
Toto were a band of American session musicians. Most of their music is technically brilliant but unaffecting. This has some soul.
I was spoiled starting to listen seriously to pop music in the early 80s. After the revolution of punk there was the creativity of new wave and there was a lot of amazing music produced. I only really started to realise this as the decade wore on. The young, new bands become mellower as they chased money and nothing new seemed to happen to inspire a new generation until the arrival of house music at the end of the decade kicked off the dance explosion and the dance/rock crossover of Madchester. This meant that I assumed the quality of the time at the start of the 80s was normal. I could see this clearly as in the later half of the decade we were treated to the bland pap from Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the plastic pop of groups like Five Star and the lazy, cheap, nostalgia of Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers.
I was shocked when I learned that in the past the teenaged did not exist (it must have been watching documentaries, including The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years). Children went from being children to being adults overnight – no fashion, no identity, just new fodder for the machine. It would probably have happened without the music, but as the post-World War 2 austerity and rationing finally started to ease in the mid-1950s there was an emerging youth culture. Unhappy with the status quo and conformity rock and roll arrived. Music that for young people that sounded like an abomination to the older generation. Even in the mid-1960s James Bond says in Goldfinger that the Beatles should only be listened to with ear protectors on.
Music was at the front of the swinging sixties – the hippie movement advocated a change in the way we live. They got the free love due to the revolution of the contraceptive pill, but peace and love was not something that any of the ruling elites could allow to happen. It is almost hackneyed to talk about the military industrial complex, but it suited (and still suits) a lot of companies to have a situation where military hardware is needed. Vietnam was bad for the USA but good for a lot of companies. The same applied to the Falklands and the Gulf Wars where military manufacturers could show off their equipment in real combat.
The late seventies had the youth culture that really showed extreme displeasure with society – the punks. The lack of prospects and opportunities in the declining Britain of the time led to this visceral outpouring of anti-establishment sentiment.
After the punks it was over a decade to ecstasy culture and the government clamping down illegal raves, despite the prevalence of ecstasy eliminating football hooliganism overnight, something no government had ever managed.
Now youth revolution is more likely to be about the climate crisis or other social issues. Boomers and Gen X still sneer at the young – again for their idealism. Despite the wisdom that comes with age the young are the ones who have to live with the decisions made now for the longest – society must leave a habitable world for them.
This is a song that just seemed normal at that creative time, but its reputation has grown and grown. It is profound.
I am a real statistics nerd and I wanted to work out which were the most successful English clubs of all time. The main issue with this was how to attribute points for different achievements. So I put forward a scoring system as follows. The main points were that winning is more than twice as good as being runner up and that despite name changes and format changes points for each trophy remained the same.
I reached out to Michael Ball and John Hawkins, who are far more knowledgeable than me on the subject for their thoughts.
Michael proposed points changes:
First division and Premier League should be equal
FA Cup I’d go for 40 / 15 as European cups more difficult to win
UEFA Cup I would give 45 and 20 as was easier to qualify for than the Cup Winners Cup
I agree about European Cup / Champions League being equally as difficult to win
20 bonus points for a League and FA Cup double. Traditionally very difficult
10 points for retaining First Division / Premier League
So rather than actually make a decision I have done it both ways.
John sent a very lengthy commentary, as usual, it is more erudite than what I would have written so I am quoting it in full.
John Hawkins:
“Firstly, I think your coefficients are fine. No need to adjust them. As long as your measurements are between teams of the same era in the same competition then it will be as accurate as it can be. What I will say is that a “star” player of 100 years ago would be a “star” player today if transported. Footballing talent (as with all elite sport) is 90% mentality and only a small fraction is based on natural gifts. Of course the naturally talented will always shine and if they have the mentality then they shine in whatever environment they are in. To be a pro footballer of any era you need the full 90% in your head 🙂
Measuring difficulty or otherwise of matches / leagues / competitions in different eras is nigh on impossible. You are always comparing apples and pears. For what it’s worth I think that it is just as hard (and no easier) to win the Premier League / Champions League now as it was to win the First Division / European Cup. You are in a competition and you have to beat all the other competitors (to an extent).
It is certainly easier to “enter” the Champions League than it was the old European Cup simply because the entry requirements have been relaxed. There were 32 teams in the EC the last time Liverpool won it in 1984 and all had to win a competition (national league or previous year’s European Cup) just to enter. There were 79 teams in last season’s Champions League some of which were quite a way off winning anything! However, “winning” the competition once in it is the same level of difficulty. Sure, there are more matches now as the “first round” is a league structure with each team playing 6 times. But that is just revenue generation for the bigger teams. Once past that it is knock-out with 4 rounds of home / away ties.
The same as 1984 (which had 5 rounds of direct knock-out). Not really any different to a seeded first round of knock-out style. You are still out when you lose and the better teams won’t lose that early.
The Premier League (and, especially, the FA Cup) is harder to win now for the lesser teams simply because football has moved from its community-team based model to one of bigger and “better” squads for the richer teams. It was almost unheard of, even at the top, for teams to be made up solely of internationals prior to the late 1980’s. It was even more unlikely that a team would be constructed from a world-wide pool of talent – with the possible exception of Real Madrid who have always been bankrolled by the Spanish government and had an international flavour to their teams as a result. Most British teams were exclusively made up of British players – this only started to change after the World Cup in 1978. So the teams of today have a different make-up to those of the past. For example, it is only in the last 40 years that a match has been played in England which featured international players in all 22 places and it was as recent as
1995 when the first Italian player played for an English league team (Silenzi for Forest). However, the league and cups in England are just as hard to win for the teams capable of competing to the end. Some may not take all competitions as seriously as they once did but that is also just to do with revenue generation. You get more prize and TV money for getting to the Champions League semi-finals than you do for the League Cup semis and the rules still only allow a squad of 25 players 🙂 The players want to win every time they take the field.
One further major change which directly affected squad composition (and not something that would immediately spring to mind) is the EU freedom of movement directive. Pre-1995 (or thereabouts) teams in the Champions League had to contend with a limit on the number of “foreign” nationals in the team.
Manchester United were hampered by this rule in the early years of the Champions League and I remember the manager often having to leave out, say, Schmeichel in order to accommodate Cantona. In the UK we always allowed any British and Irish national to count as home-grown but that didn’t apply when in European competition. After the EU decided all EU nationals were essentially the same, this limitation was eliminated. [Topic for a further post / rant is how this is going to affect British teams once we are no longer allowed to treat EU players as home nationals in these competitions. I suspect this might be a big stick that UEFA can reserve to beat us with 🙂 In terms of pure legality, we do not have a leg to stand on and it is not up to us to make the rules. In reality I suspect the status quo will be maintained simply due to the potential for lost TV audience revenue if the Premier League teams have to shed players for Champions League games. I am not sure how this is currently handled by those UEFA members who are not EU members – maybe the rules have already been changed to preserve the TV money. I should look it up]
(Obligatory picture of Manchester United winning the Champions League in 1999 for John)
So there is, in my opinion, no difference in difficulty of winning any of the football competitions nowadays when compared to historically.
However, comparing teams across eras is impossible as the playing field (selection pool of talent & money to buy that talent) is nowhere near level.”
Now back to me.
Ultimately the points variations proposed by Michael made little difference in the order at the top, the first difference is with the 17 and 18th positions being reversed. The double and champion retention points had little impact, the downgrading of FA Cup scores affected teams from the middle to the bottom. Michael’s scheme moved Ipswich up from 24th most successful team ever to 23rd.
Nine clubs scored over 1,000 points, but the jump from 4th to third was nearly 1,000 and over a 1,000 more from third to second. The top two clubs are separated by less than 100 points. It will be no surprise that the top two are Liverpool and Manchester United, with the former just ahead. Their better European record offsetting the one less championship and fewer FA Cup wins. The margin is so narrow that the lead could potentially change easily. At the end of the 2018/19 season Manchester United would have been the top club.
Old Etonians are the 28th most successful club ever due to their early FA Cup record. Oxford University and Royal Engineers also stand higher than QPR, Stoke, Fulham and Swansea. Old Carthusians are higher than Norwich and this table proves mathematically that Ipswich are much better than Norwich.
At the bottom you have a sad group of teams that have only a runners up spot in a domestic cup or one third place league finish (Crystal Palace). Yet these teams have tasted some success – there are so many more who have never even come that close.
The full list under both methods:
The data was pretty easy to obtain, except for who was third place in the English topflight. If I had known I would have to get that year by year looking at tables I would not have awarded any points for that.
John is a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac. I like them, but my favourite is from their Peter Green period, rather than the adult rock of later years.
I would only read science fiction as a child. As soon as I had agency and birthday money I was buying books. That was my ninth birthday in 1974 where I solemnly picked out two Doctor Who novelisations, one Tomorrow People novelisation and a book about the search for the Loch Ness Monster.
Dad managed to stop my constant rereading of my same small library of books by having me try Arthur C. Clarke’s work. Some of his 1950s work was aimed at the teenage and adult market (as my reading age was always a long way ahead of my physical age it was always hard to find books that would test my reading ability without disturbing adult scenes – like the torture scene in Casino Royale).
The Deep Range was the first of his novels that I read. I did not even know that a range was a cattle farm in America, so a “deep range” made no sense. Plus I am severely phobic about fish due to an incident with a cough mixture, from the sixties, that had a mild hallucinogenic in it – having been given it with a fever I was convinced the fish were swimming out of the fish patterned wallpaper at me.
Despite all that I enjoyed the adventure part of it and the search for the Kraken, even though the human relationships in the book were a bit beyond me.
Of the first four I read Childhood’s End is the best. Aliens come to Earth and hide away for 50 years, refusing to reveal themselves. I was really nervous when the book jumped ahead 50 years and the aliens, called the Overlords, looked like the Devil. The story also contains some rather grating examples of language that are no longer appropriate. It ends with an apocalyptic vision of Earth’s future that was disturbing at the age of 10. There has been a recent TV version of this which tries to update it, I would have preferred to have it set in the period it was written – the Secretary General of the UN in the story is so patently Dag Hammerskjold.
(The planet of the Overlords).
The other two were science fiction versions of the disaster story (A Fall of Moondust) and a spy story (Earthlight). Both are scientifically accurate (as it was understood at the time) and an enlightening as well as an entertaining read
After these clean looking books with a white themed cover layout, I got my absolute favourite – a book combining two novellas – The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night. The covers were purple with a bumpy kind of card cover. The latter was my favourite – a story set on a decaying Earth where humanity is confined to the planet and stuck in a static phase of development, living in luxury but with no progress. The story tells the story of the first boy born in the city for thousands of years and how he unearths the story of humanity’s failings. Clarke rewrote it in a major way, expanding it and it became the novel The City and the Stars – the setup is similar, but the resolution is different.
I am not sure if my love of this type of mystery featuring past glories was there in my psyche and this tapped into it, or this created it. I still love both versions of the story.
The last of Clarke’s novels that I think is up to his standards (before the decline that most authors have in their later careers) is Rendezvous With Rama. An alien object arrives in the solar system on a trajectory that will mean that it is not captured by the Sun. Only one spaceship can get there in time to explore this relic of an alien civilization. The book is the story of that exploration, which explains some mysteries, but not all of them (there are sequels that I believe explain more but leaving it unexplained seems far more satisfying).
Clarke replaced AE Van Vogt as one or the three greats of post-World War 2 science fiction (with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein). He was also a visionary, inventing the concept of the geostationary communications satellite.
Like Heinlein and Asimov he continued writing until he was well past his best, but all these books, as well as his huge number of short stories deserve to be remembered and read.
He lived in Sri Lanka for his later life, reputedly due to its greater tolerance of homosexuality – he was accused of sleeping with underage Sri Lankan boys, but the police found those accusations to be baseless. Hours before his death a major gamma ray burst was visible from Earth. Visible despite occurring 7.5 billion years ago, a fitting send off for this visionary.
I know very little about Procul Harum. This is their most famous song.
We were an outdoors family, whether some of us liked it or not😊 We were scouts, cubs, guides and brownies. We went on holidays to scenic places like the Lake District. In 1977 we camped at Seatoller Farm in Borrowdale, not far from Keswick.
When we got to the site there was only one place to camp so we pitched our little ridge tents there. Turned out it was the best place. On the one occasion it rained (and when it rained the heavens totally opened for a day) we were the only people not flooded out. The stream at the bottom of the site that the four of us (Mike, Alison, Frances and me) had carefully damned was now a torrent with the water coming down off the hills. We survived the flood day, even with the presence of a very wet Jack Russell.
(The campsite at Seatoller)
Anne and Dad took us out walking and it seemed to go on forever. Up hills. Across streams, past tarns and through fields. I was 10, Frances was only 4, how she managed it I do not know – a real trooper. We obviously passed the test as the next day we went into Keswick and were all fitted for proper hiking boots, with thick hiking socks – except poor Fran whose feet were too small and had to settle for a sturdy set of trainers.
(The view back down towards Borrowdale from Sky Head)
That was it we were off hiking most days. Swimming in streams in lieu of bathing and making it up some pretty steep places, using words that I had only read in the Swallows and Amazons series (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/10/30/on-an-island/ ). Helvellyn is the tallest mountain in England but it is not tough to get up. We climbed Great Gable which is the hardest mountain in The Lake District.
(Helvellyn range from the summit of Great Gable)
The following year we went back with Anne’s mother and a Great Dane, Piper (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/05/29/when-that-cloud-arrives-well-live-on/ ). We found out that the Lake District’s reputation for the highest rainfall in the UK was totally deserved. The first year we had one day’s rain in a fortnight. The second year we had only had one dry day by the middle of the second week. Believe me a wet Great Dane generates a lot of wet dog smell. The trip was abandoned, and we got in the hired minibus and went home.
(The minibus was more comfortable than the Ford Granada we had used in the previous year – four of us across the back – no seat belts in those days – all arguing that we wanted a window seat and waiting until we were almost past a service station before saying we needed the toilet, especially Alison).
Phil Spector is back again with is last great artist that he discovered. Ike and Tina Turner, though mainly Tina, let’s face it. Even though her career fell off a cliff in the 70s Heaven 17 brought it back with her cover of Let’s Stay Together (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/10/01/once-we-were-years-ahead-now-those-thoughts-are-dead/ ) and she had a very successful revival as a rocker for the 80s and early 90s.
I have only had two requests on this blog so far and both were topics that I was already planning on doing. This was requested by my niece Sophie Knowles, who loves Christmas so much she started watching Christmas TV music channels in October – this will be her first Christmas as a Mum and the first Christmas for Odin Knowles. I am old fashioned and December is the absolute earliest that I will listen to Christmas music.
(Sophie Knowles and Saxon Ball – their first Christmas).
When I was a child we did not put our tree up until after the school term had ended, usually the weekend before Christmas. I still think that is right and hate it when people have them up for weeks in advance.
I think there are just three essential Christmas albums. Despite my atheism I do like traditional Christmas Carols. We would always have Carols from Kings College Chapel on the TV on Christmas Eve as we prepped vegetables. The darkness and pure voices are beautiful. I have an album of them but the shows from many years are available on youtube.
If you like something a bit different then try Tracy Thorn’s Tinsel and Lights, not a usual Christmas album but it has a beauty of its own and is not just a bunch of covers which is what most Christmas albums from bands are.
There is no space here for Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas – much loved I think it is down to her usual level of saccharine vocal gymnastics. The same applies to Cliff Richard’s Christmas fare.
A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector is the second essential album. I had heard a lot about it and it was finally rereleased in the late 80s, I still have my copy Get the whole thing and listen to the Ronettes, Darlene Love, Bobby Sox and the Crystals do beautiful versions of the standards with Spector’s trademark wall of sound. This is one example of the songs.
Then you need the Best Christmas Album in the World. There have been multiple versions of this, you need a fairly early one and definitely one with the original version of A Fairytale of New York and not the awful Ronan Keating cover.
Some tracks get overplayed and do not make my top ten list. Last Christmas by Wham is one of them.
I Wish it could be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard (and the video is creepy at the end with Roy Wood looking like a public information film evil Santa)
Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. So overplayed, but is good to see the late, great Kirsty every year.
A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris De Burgh (a science fiction spin on Christmas that was quite prevalent in the seventies).
Gaudete by Steeleye Span. I know nothing about them but I like this.
Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie (anti-war sentiments are never bad and it sounds different from other fare).
I also have soft spots for Walking In the Air by Aled Jones (and The Snowman cartoon it is from).
Another guilty pleasure is Johnny Matthis’ beautifully produced When A Child Is Born – a staple of late 70s Christmas, though the year it was number one it seemed like it was never off the air.
My Top Ten though:
Bruce Springsteen does a wonderful live performance of Santa Claus is Coming To Town, never done in the studio by him I found it on a B side of one of the singles from his Born In the USA album.
Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade. A staple of Christmas discos and parties in my youth. It makes Slade a fortune every year. I have danced drunkenly to this. A lot.
Merry Christmas (War is Over) by John Lennon. Another anti-war song – far better than Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime. It was just before Christmas that Lennon was shot and I always remember him in December. (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/07/14/the-spirit-dance-was-unfolding/ )
Stay (Another Day) by East 17. Not even really a Christmas song until they added the bells on. East 17 are not a great group but this is one of the few boy band tracks I can cope with.
Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid. I did an entry about Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats that is weirdly my most viewed by a huge margin (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/02/they-say-she-did-it-with-grace/ ). This is, despite how it is almost all white artist helping Africans which was acceptable in a 1984, a song of hope. People actually helping those worse off than them at this time of year. Band Aid 20 and 30 are ok but Band Aid 2 with a bunch of Stock, Aitken and Waterman bands plus acts who had not made the original recording and were annoyed about it (Cliff Richard) should be avoided at all costs.
Christmas Baby (Please Come Home) by Darlene Love. My favourite track from the Spector album.
Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull. I have to thank Simon Bucher-Jones for drawing my attention to this. A song that remembers the festival that Christmas overwrote in the pagan calendar.
Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses. Never a hit in the UK, though you would not know it by the number of times you hear it now. Something different – a romance song that spans a year.
I Believe in Father Christmas by Greg Lake. For someone who is an atheist this song sums up the magic of childhood Christmases.
Run With the Fox by Chris Squire. This is a truly beautiful gem. Never a hit and it has no direct reference to Christmas, even though it was released in December. It is my own private, not overplayed song, that I share with you now. Listen. Enjoy.
Whatever happens in this shitshow of a year I hope we can all have some moments peace and calm even if we are not all together.
Second year accountancy exams, Professional Examination 1 (PE1) were the real thing. The first-year exams just proved you could go on to do these. Revision courses for the five subjects were in Cambridge again, but at least I had a reliable car, even if it was the cheapest Fiesta imaginable (995cc and no heated rear window or wiper).
Economics and Quantitative Techniques were not on the agenda – there was Financial Accounting 1, Taxation 1, Auditing 1, Company Law and Management Accounting/ Financial Management 1. We took these just ten months after year one exams – for some reason PE1 was in May, Graduate Conversion in June and PE2 in July – it would make more sense to have them run chronologically so people had a full year to study at each level.
As it was a real exam run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants we had to take this in one of their exam centres. Lesley went home to Liverpool to do hers and Heather went to her Dad’s in High Wycombe. Dawn and I wanted to do them in Norwich but by the time we tried to book there were no spaces left. The next nearest was London, at Bethnal Green Town Hall. There was no way we were commuting up each day, so we booked into a hotel. This was only 5 months after the OBAS audit (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/09/im-going-down-the-place-tonight/ ) so we went to the same place in the city, it was only a few stops to Bethnal Green on the Central Line.
We had not expected a tube strike, so our plans were messed up. The hotel was running a shuttle to one of the open stations, so we decided to leave at 7.30am for the 9.30am exam. We were sat on the steps of the Town Hall waiting for it to open just after 8am – better to be too early I suppose. These days I would have worked out that we could walk there in just over an hour if we needed to, back then London was a foreign country.
(Bethnal Green Town Hall)
These were real professional exams so the results were published in the Times on a Saturday, they were also posted out but usually that would not arrive until the Monday. I drove over to The Red Lion pub in Thorrington to play pool with Neil and John on the Friday evening, and then went back to Neil’s afterwards, convinced that I would not be able to sleep.
I did fall asleep after 1.30am, but was awake and outside the local newsagents at 6am, frantically scanning through the tiny print for my name. When I found out that I had passed I looked for the others – Lesley and Dawn passed but Heather’s name was not on the list – she would have to wait for the results slip to find out if she had to retake one paper or all of them.
I managed to sleep a bit in the morning and went to Trimley St Mary (near Felixstowe) for a barbecue at Lesley’s – it was either going to be a success or commiseration party (turned out it was a bit of both). It was very uncomfortable as certain people had not been invited – including our boss. I was shocked when Dawn said that the boss had rung her first to congratulate her on passing – shocked because when she called me I had to give her the telephone numbers of the others as they all hated her. That should have been a warning to me about her.
The discord in the team was all to do with the fact that we were chronically understaffed, and everyone was working one level above their grade. This meant that third year trainees were running big jobs and second year trainees running the smaller jobs. Loads of overtime had been needed all year, which is tough when you are meant to study for 15 hours a week as well.
The upside of all this was a 50% pay rise, which meant that I had some real disposable income for the first time.
Neil Young was someone who was on my stereo a lot at the time. He has done a lot of different styles over his long career and is no stereotypical rocker. This track is very “zeitgeisty”.
I have learnt a lot through my ME/ fibromyalgia (described at length in yesterday’s post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/11/28/got-a-secret-in-plain-sight/ ). Some of it not even related to the condition. Dr Berkovitz talked at length about the brain being an organ like any other in the body. Yet if something goes wrong with the brain people view it in a completely different way to any other organ problem. He was not of the belief that ME was a mental illness, but he was explaining that stress and other issues, including depression, cause more strain on the brain and that will not help. (Having ME is a stressor in itself so that can be a vicious circle).
Mental issues are slowly becoming more tolerated and understood in wider society – at least Victorian bedlams are no longer with us and people are not stigmatised as much as they once were. There does remain a stigma attached to these conditions that people (many through ignorance) subscribe to – as illustrated here in this graphics.
It is more than likely that someone in every family has mental issues – if you do not know anyone who has may mean they are hiding them due to the perceived stigma. I have been offered anti-depressants in my life twice and declined both times. I chose to deal with my problems because I did not understand this may not be the right approach. I was lucky that was right, but I could well have been a victim of my own prejudices.
Many famous people throughout history have been subject to mental health issues. Vincent Van Gogh is just one of many who took his own life. Widely considered one of the greatest artists in history, I was not really aware of his story until I saw Vincent and the Doctor – a story that brought tears to my eyes.
As a society we are still not understanding enough about trauma, depression and loneliness. It is particularly important in times of lockdown that we ensure that people stay in touch, that no one feels isolated and unloved.
Our College spends a lot of money on personal mentors and counsellors to help students. This is vitally important as teenage years are traumatic of themselves and it is vitally important to ensure early intervention and support for young people. The MindEd Trust was founded to support young people with mental health issues.
Ed Mallen was a hugely talented young man, who seemed to have the world ahead of him and was taken over by depression for no apparent reason. Despite the appalling loss for his father, Steve Mallen, he has done something about it by founding the trust and campaigning on this issue. This despite a loss than is almost too unbearable to conceive.
If you can help the charity it is an incredibly worthy cause. Losing a child is something no parent should ever have to experience.
This song is brilliant, but the lyrics are grim. Whilst I love it, if I listen to it when I’m miserable it really does not help my mood.
Dad and I went to Italy in the summer of 2015 and I hoped that would mark the end of my glandular fever problems. I was still weaker than normal, but it was 16 days of Sun and art.
It wasn’t to be. Due to circumstances I ended up as Acting Principal for most of the 2015/16 academic year. I felt tired every day and was having constant, blinding headaches. I kept going to the Doctor who had diagnosed and treated my glandular fever, but he was at a loss.
In the summer of 2016 we had a new Principal start at the college. I am sure that some people thought that I would be put out by vacating the top position, but in reality I was just enormously relieved. If I had been fully fit it might have been something that I aspired to, but trying to do that job, whilst still doing large parts of my underlying job was a nightmare.
At my surgery you can pick which Doctor to see and there are a lot of doctors. I decided to see Doctor Goose, one of the senior partners, even though she has a huge demand to see her. I wish that I had done it sooner. She referred me for an MRI on my head and said that I looked like I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
This was the breakthrough I needed as many doctors do not think it affects men. It does affect women far more (about seven times as much) and is very poorly understood – for a hugely long time it was assumed to be caused by “hysteria”. What it actually is remains a mystery – whether Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Fibromyalgia are different conditions or one condition presenting in different ways is unknown. As it is not understood all that can be done is managing symptoms, rather than doing anything about the condition. I knew what to expect as my mother has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
I went for the MRI early on a Saturday morning just before Christmas 2017. At that stage the headaches were so bad I could not actually understand what the taxi driver or the Doctor said. It was really scary and incredibly painful. The MRI came back and showed no brain abnormalities, the specialist discharged me with suggestions of different drugs that I could try.
Unfortunately they all aggravated my other symptoms. Tiny doses of amitriptyline would leave me groggy for up to 18 hours after I took them. Beta blockers stopped me sleeping, exacerbating my exhaustion. Painkillers were ineffective and taking so many was likely to be making things worse not better. As a last resort I tried acupuncture, but that was expensive and did nothing (alternative medicine largely relies on belief in snake oil remedies and if you do not believe they will not work – good luck to anyone it works for but please send me scientific not anecdotal proof).
I saw Dr Berkovitz at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM) who diagnosed me with ME and fibromyalgia almost at once. He explained that there was no cure and a team at the hospital would help me learn to manage my condition.
These two pictures show the symptoms of the condition. I have experienced them all. Not all at once but always something. There is always pain somewhere – In the last two months I have jaw and face pain for the first time.
The most difficult is the “brain fogging” and the chronic fatigue. It is incredibly frustrating when people say thinks like “we all get tired” and have no conception of the difference. Chronic fatigue and brain fogging turns you intro a zombie that just les there unable to do anything and your brain cannot work. I had my own brain fogging scale based on what I could manage to do – it started with listening to audio documentaries, then cam simple TV programs, then complex ones, followed by subtitles programs. Reading was near the top and comics were the hardest. Most of the time I could not cope with combining the pictures and the writing.
ME strips away learned abilities more than natural ones. I have a natural affinity with figures and accounts and I can do that almost as well as before. My ability to write reports , which is a learned skill, was ten times as hard to do as before. One reason for writing this blog is to make myself relearn that skill. I am not a writer and this is no polished product, but it makes me try and construct a few hundred words about something and get it out on a timetable.
I have sleep problems all the time, sore throats and temperatures at least twice weekly and brain fogging most days. Brain fogs are dangerous and using sharp knives or cooking can be very dangerous – I cut the tip of a finger off and slammed my own thumb in a car door.
I saw Laura who helped me learn about managing my energy and the need for exercise and relaxation.
Then I got vertigo and was off work for six weeks. No driving and I had to have tablets to control it. In some ways it was like my body had given up and just wanted a break; as I rested the headaches slowly improved. Then I went back to work, convinced that somehow a phased return would mean that I could get back to normal.
Throughout 2018 I tried to get back to a full-time working schedule but it was horrible and things got worse again. I had hope that an extended Christmas break would help but it did not and on 13th February 2019 I drove home and called the Doctor. That was the last time I drove a car and I may not ever manage to again. I was off work for 4 months.
I am incredibly lucky that I have had a supportive employer who has supported me all the way through this. Many people would have lost their jobs or not been paid. Working in the public sector is more humane than many private sector companies.
Lizzy Flavell worked to help me deal with changes that could be made in my working patterns. She helped me get Access To Work funding so that I would not need to drive to work (which was about conserving mental energy and not driving home brain fogged).
The final person was Diana Wells, a cognitive behaviour therapist. She spent time teaching me how to try and minimise and manage the drain on my body’s resources. At meeting after meeting she tried to get me to understand what I was doing wrong. So much of my learned behaviour in life that had made me successful, quickness of thought and working long hours, had become the things that stopped me effectively managing my condition. My over emphasis on planning and stress testing every situation meant that I never switched off.
And I raged against this. I wanted the old me back. The person who could multi-task complex problems and the one everybody at work came to for solutions to their problems. I compared myself to the lead character in the second half of the story Flowers For Algernon, who is losing his intelligence and knows what he used to have but cannot access that old persona. That was the worst thing – long periods of knowing that the real me could do so much more and being trapped inside a mind that would not do the things that I had been able to all my life.
I returned to work on a phased approach again, but it stalled in the late Autumn of 2019. I used my outstanding leave to conceal the issue by taking days off each week, but it seemed to be obvious that full time work was beyond me. Even my employer was starting to talk about a change of role. (the prospect of getting a new job elsewhere was next to impossible with the condition).
I was referred for hydrotherapy to help with the pain. At the same time the spectre of Covid-19 started to loom. Hydrotherapy was relaxing but by the time it was over and I needed to do it myself in a local pool they were all closed.
The last time I saw Diana before lockdown it seemed like nothing had changed, yet in the days afterwards I finally saw that I had to let ago and adapt to a different way of life. Even more importantly I had to be relaxed about it and be accepting of the fact that I would not be able to do a lot of things. Diana really wanted to know how this had happened but I just can’t explain it. I do know that her constant support and analysis was part of it.
Amazingly the first COVID lockdown was not a problem. Everyone was stuck at home like I was (apparently a lot of people with the condition feel the same and coped way better than a lot of the general public).
So now I work full time. I cannot do everything that I want to do outside but I am ok with that. I will do what I can and I know there will be days when I can barely do anything.
I have left out so much detail – four more MRIs; neurology appointments due to having no feeling in the top half of my left leg; the gastro-enterology specialists whose attitude has been to try and have a colonoscopy done against the advice of Dr Berkovitz; the steroid injections in my hip and shoulder to try and improve joint condition for problems that would not register for people without the condition, and on and on. It is so hard without one person taking overall responsibility for the condition – Dr Goose has worked so hard and given me so much time, but the specialists only look at one part of the problem not the overall problem. The only people in the medical profession who were bad were the one time I was referred to a private hospital. I was given 5 minutes of a 25-minute appointment and the specialist did not even listen to what I had to say. He just wanted to refer me for expensive tests they could charge the NHS for. When I complained the private hospital stonewalled for months and then exonerated itself through its own complaints procedure. To do anymore I would have to go the General Medical Council – not a good use of my limited energy so I let it go.
Finally, it is being recognised that this is not just something that can be banished with therapy and exercise. This is from 10th November 2020.
Long COVID looks suspiciously like this condition and now people are saying there should be more research. It seems to be a fact that some people have a genetic issue that can affect their immune systems, especially after a viral illness. Hopefully research may lead to an understanding a better treatment, but I am not sure that it will be in enough time for me to be able to gain much benefit.
I have ultimately been very lucky with the medical people I have been involved with. Dr Goose, Dr Berkovitz, Diana Wells, Laura Rigney and Lizzy Flavell, as well as many others. Other people with my condition have not been that lucky. I am lucky to have Dave Vase as my boss and that my friends and family have all been so accommodating.
This song isn’t about me or sufferers with this condition, nor even for the medical professionals. On my many trips to the RLHIM I see child patients as it is attached to Great Ormond Street. Many are seriously ill, unable to walk, or have very short life expectancy. When I see them I always think that I was lucky to have over 47 years of good health and a lot of these children have had none. I know that seems corny but it is so sad seeing them fighting on.
Some people did not like the Doctor Who New Adventures (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/11/01/lets-all-meet-up-in-the-year-2000/ ) claiming that they were not in the spirit of the program or that the plotlines were too complicated. I think Virgin books got it right as you cannot sustain a book series on a monster of the month in a novel with a structure mirroring a four-part TV story. Some people did not want anything new – they just wanted a nostalgia fix (and something would come along that was far more to their tastes by 1999). As for the complexity argument – they were not complex if you were used to reading novels, they were not exactly Salman Rushdie.
The Doctor Who movie in 1996 shook up licencing arrangements. The BBC had pound signs in their eyes and published the novelisation of the film (because it was a co-production, they claimed that Virgin did not have the rights). They opted not to renew Virgin’s license for original novels. Hoping that a new novel series would be a money spinner they wanted to make sure there was no chance of an outcry over sex or swearing.
The first half dozen Eight Doctor Adventures (EDAs) were edited by Nuala Buffini and were pretty poor. The second one, Vampire Science by Kate Orman and Jon Blum, was a good book – writers were working with only 60 minutes of a post regenerative Doctor to base a characterisation on. Genocide by Paul Leonard was a grim book, not just the titular genocide but also continuing the trend of companions being miserable after they left the Doctor (in this case a miserable divorced Jo Grant). There was The Bodysnatchers – a poorly written horror novel with the Doctor grafted on.
Then there was the truly terrible trio. John Peel wrote two Dalek books as he was the only the person Terry Nation entrusted his creation to. War of the Daleks existed solely to retcon Skaro back into existence and made no sense, just there because Terry Nation hated Remembrance of the Daleks. Legacy of the Daleks (published tenth) was a dull, uninteresting vision of a post Dalek Invasion of Earth future that tied in with The Deadly Assassin. No fanwank too far , you would think nothing could be worse.
And even they were not even the worst. The first novel was The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks. The worst fanwank you could ever imagine as the Doctor took a trip through his own timeline interacting in past stories (usually ones Terrance Dicks had been involved in). We can only be grateful that his original ending, the Doctor leaving Coal Hill School with a teenager and two teachers was overruled. We did get the teenage Sam – the most boring companion ever.
Steve Cole took over and his first book was one of the most important Doctor Who books ever. Lawrence Miles’ Alien Bodies. It is the story of an auction of an artifact that attracts the major powers of the universe (rehabilitating the Krotons into a serious threat almost as an aside). The backdrop is that the Doctor is ahead of his own timeline and the Time Lords are at War with The Enemy (whose identity is never disclosed). This is the War In Heaven (as oppose to the Time War discussed on TV – though fan theories exist that say they are one and the same) and would overshadow the books from then on. There was also Faction Paradox – a time travelling voodoo cult, where initiation is by killing your own grandparent. More on them later. And not more on them later. At the same time.
After the crap of the earlier books (Orman and Blum very much to one side) this was amazing. Miles had written one of the New Adventures but this was next level. The problem was that the books were commissioned months in advance, so this was all left hanging.
Sam was lost by the Doctor and returned years later (though only three books late) in Seeing I (Orman and Blum again), exactly what had happened to Ace and it did not work again. By the time the books did it to the next companion, Fitz, it was a joke. We did get Paul Magrs though. Paul was already a published author and university lecturer in creative writing. His novels – including The Scarlet Empress and The Blue Angel were the Doctor’s first steps into magic realism. And his prose. Paul’s prose is beautiful, constructed so that it is easy to read yet is walking through a field of beautiful flowers. Few people in the world can write like Paul and you should read all his work. It also introduces Iris Wildthyme, a female Doctor analogue who claims to have had similar adventures and travels through time and space in a No 22 bus to Putney smaller on the inside than on the outside.
Finally, after a year and a half, Lawrence Miles was back with Interference – published in two parts it was so long. The Doctor loses the dull Sam and gets a new companion – Compassion, who is not human. It is followed by The Blue Angel and the Simon Bucher Jones/ Mark Clapham The Taking of Planet 5. The latter is a real entry in the War story focusing on the Fendahl of Planet 5 and is full of SBJ’s inventive ideas – he really is the most intelligent man I know and it is marvellous book.
Justin Richards took over as editor and Compassion became the prototype of the War TARDISes seen in the War in Heaven, as the Doctor’s TARDIS is destroyed. Richards thought that the emphasis on The War was wrong and the series should be about the Doctor. He moved to tie up the storyline in a terrible book by Peter Angelhides and Stephen Cole that turned all the high concepts of a War between powers with time travel technology into a TV type story about pulling a lever with Gallifrey destroyed. Luckily Lawrence Miles and others continued the story of the Faction and The War elsewhere (and I will write about that).
(Gallifrey destroyed, The TARDIS destroyed, a War in Time – I wonder where the TV series got these ideas from?).
Richards solution was to leave the Doctor in exile on Earth for a century with amnesia because he had never been exiled to Earth in that period before (and how he did not interact with himself is weird). He wrote the first novel in the sequence – The Burning. It was like it had been written for the most conservative fans, just the Doctor against monsters. After so long off television this was the wrong approach, it was looking for a “silent majority” of fans that did not exist – the people who actually read books wanted far more than that. While Richards’ appointment as editor had been a cause for optimism, as he was a fan and had written novels, it turned out to be a poor decision in the long run.
I actually defined the approach of different writers on the Jade Pagoda. There were still radical and traditional appellations. I included an open and closed axis. Openers wanted new things and new concepts. Closers focused on old elements and tying them together (especially badly done by Gary Russell in Divided Loyalties where he had all the Time Lord renegades at school together and call the Deca – ten of them, what imagination). The closers appeared to have no idea how vast the universe is and the Whoniverse was more like Albert Square or Coronation Street where people rarely leave a tiny area despite being in huge cities. Openers embraced new concepts, characters and ideas.
There were amazing books like The Year of Intelligent Tigers, Grimm Reality (SBJ this time with Kelly Hale) and Trading Futures from established authors. More wondeful books from newcomers like Lloyd Rose (The City of the Dead and Camera Obscura), Paul Ebbs (The Book of the Still) and Mags Halliday (History 101). Lawrence Miles created a new arch Nemesis for the Doctor is this post Gallifrey world – Sabbath. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street set out a scenario for a post Gallifrey range, but it seemed too interesting for Justin Richards.
With the 50th anniversary approaching the books became bimonthly (with the Past Doctor Adventures in the alternating months) so Richards could work on an anniversary book. A poor trade off – it was a waste of space and the books never reverted to a monthly schedule. Nor was there an improvement in quality with the longer lead times. In fact the last fourteen books are pretty awful, especially Richard’s and Trevor Baxendale’s. There are four exceptions – Halflife by Mark Michalowski; Emotional Chemistry by Simon Forward, Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin and The Tomorrow Windows by Jonathan Morris.
Then the new series was back and there was a new line of books. Most of them the usual tie in level.
Hugely influential, any fan should search these out and read the good ones.
Another trance track – this one by The Thrillseekers.
Five Miles Out 