Five Miles Out

Nobody’s Ever Taught Ya To Live Out On the Street

At Grant Thornton our biggest client when I joined was Eastern Counties Farmers. It was a farming collective that existed to serve farmers in the region. It traded in agri-products and equipment as well as providing services to the farming community. It turned over close to £100 million. We all hated it as the staff were unhelpful and unfriendly, partly because we were always the bearers of bad tidings. It got worse when they moved from Ipswich 30 miles to the outskirts of Bury St Edmunds adding journey time. ECF was losing huge amounts of money each year and was trying to sort itself out.

Sorry just have to explain something. Financial Accounts are what is produced at the end of the year for auditing and legal purposes. Management Accounts are what a business produces for its internal use, ideally monthly. Doing these properly takes a lot of work as costs occurred have to be assigned to months and either provided for or deferred. Some businesses do not do proper accounts monthly, they may do them quarterly and have other systems to monitor the business – Russell Davies had designed a weekly report based on mileage and contract values.

In late 1989 we got the kind of commission audit firms love – an investigation, a licence to print money and show the client how we could add value to their business. ECF bought grain from farmers at a set rate and collected it, using economies of scale to minimise the numbers of lorries needed, then selling it on for a tiny amount more – effectively acting as a collection agent, but it helped with VAT to buy and sell. It also gave farmers certainty on price.

ECF’s grain trading division’s management information for grain trading were based on a system that had been incredibly close to the management and financial accounts for years, but now they were showing profits but for the last two quarters the management accounts were showing massive losses. We were to find out what was wrong with the management accounts as they assumed the management information was right..

I got the short straw and drove the sixty or so miles to Bury every day. Even though it was such an important job I got a revolving group of helpers based on who had been booked on our regular jobs. Effectively we recreated the financial statements for two years for that division – going through every sales and purchase invoice making our own records, at the same time as checking the postings to their finance system. All done on paper as both our office laptops had been assigned elsewhere (to show we were using the firm’s audit software CBEAM and hit a target even though everyone agreed CBEAM was a dog). This meant that each page had to be checked (cast) multiple times – especially as some of the juniors were very inaccurate.

A couple of weeks into the job I sprained my ankle playing football after midnight down at the bus shelter in Brightlingsea. I had tried to cross from the right on the run and my foot went into a pothole. By the time I got hoe my foot was pointing at right angles out to the side. Monday morning I told work and saw the Doctor who told me to stay off my feet for a fortnight. Tuesday the manager called me to say that my training contract was in danger if I did not get back on the ECF job as they had no one else to do it (we were desperately short staffed at that point due to the events I described in https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/08/20/the-world-turns-around/). They said it carefully, but this was the meaning I inferred. So I was doing that drive with a heavily strapped foot for several more weeks in constant pain. At ECF I could only manage the stairs once a day to get to the office we were working in (well cupboard – they wanted us out of sight, so we did not spook people). The ankle gives me problems to this day.

The reconstruction showed that the division was loss making, just like the management accounts reported. We reconciled the amount of grain bought and sold to see if it was being stolen. That was fine too, the difference in bought and sold amounts was minimal and definitely not enough to count for the huge loss.

Then I went off brief and asked how they made their estimates for their reports that showed a profit. The woman in charge, I forget her name, so I’ll call her Stacy, told me that they had a margin per ton of grain and then deducted an amount for haulage based on the mileage. She showed me the calculations which were very precise.

Then the wheels came off. I asked her how she calculated the margin. She did not know – her old boss had one that had done this, but he had been made redundant in cost cutting measures nine months before. Rather than replace him they had promoted Stacy, who had been his administrator for six months (I say promote – they gave her £1,000 a year more even though the departing man had been earning over £30,000 to her £14,000).

Obviously grain prices were dynamic and one of her jobs was to set the purchase price they paid to the farmers. She had not moved the price since she started – she did not know that she had to. The sale price ECF could get had fallen by about £1 a ton, the problem was that the margin they had was around 2p a ton – so every ton of grain they sold they were now losing 98p. Literally just losing money on every deal every day. Stacy had also not factored in increased costs of haulage, so it was even worse than that.

Stacy was fired immediately. Unfairly, as ECF had made the mistakes that led to this by not appointing someone who knew the job or even arranging a proper handover. She had not been trained to do the job. Grant Thornton got fired too, very soon after reporting this. No one likes the bearer of bad tidings and even though the assignment as briefed was impossible, telling ECF that the bad loss was right meant that it was safer for them to get rid of us so no one was around who had seen the errors that management had made.

This was a time in my life when I was getting familiar with classic artists like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Dylan is obviously a legend, but I find most of his material hard work. It was hard between Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again and this –

Like A Rolling Stone

He Scans the World Outside

The Human League made two albums (Reproduction and Travelogue, both of which are fine examples of synth music and include wonderful tracks like Being Boiled and WXJL Tonight) and then split into Heaven 17 and a new Human League (see post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/10/01/once-we-were-years-ahead-now-those-thoughts-are-dead/). Their synth dominated pop music were in the vanguard of the New Romantic movement.

First was The Sound of the Crowd and then Love Action. This was out when we went for our O level to Dorset (near Swanage). A huge proportion of the fourth form went on that trip. There were a lot of hormones flowing and people trying to get with the person they fancied or wondering why that person was not interested in them.

(the Dare line up)

Open Your Heart was the third single (and my favourite from Dare, the new line up’s first album) but it is Don’t You Want Me that was the most massive single. I had already got the album and thought that it was cheeky to release a fourth single. Especially as it was, at best, the seventh best track on the album. I realised that I was probably not in the majority position when I was staying and Nanna and Grandad’ in Newmarket and through the bedroom wall I could hear the teenager next door playing that track repeatedly (it was a semi).

After such a big hit an early follow up was called for but they wanted new material. It was a year later that they released Mirror Man (a weird, but effective, mix of synth pop and Motown), which was held off the top by Renee and Renato’s horrible Save Your Love. There was another one off single – Fascination that also made number 2.

The first single from Dare’s successor was The Lebanon. It sounded odd for a synth pop group to grow a harder edge and sing about something serious. It was released the same week as Spandau Ballet’s True and was never going to compete with that.

It is hard to believe that Lebanon was once seen as the most cultured place in the Middle East. The riviera of the Eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon was effectively destabilised by the establishment of the state of Israel that caused the expulsion of millions of Palestinians. The relocation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to Lebanon and its repeated clashes with Israel destabilised a country where there were multiple religious factions in place already.

This was compounded by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (euphemistically dubbed “Operation Peace for Galilee”) just compounded the problems. The country has been in turmoil ever since. Most lately the political system introduced to maintain a fragile peace was so open to corruption and patronage that there was a terrible explosion in Beirut which devastated a country, and an economy, already in severe trouble.

(Beirut after Israeli intervention)

The only way for a lasting peace in the Middle East is for an equitable settlement for the Palestinians. Totally impossible with the Orange Goblin and the hard liner Netanyahu in office.

The Human League slimmed down to a three piece and continues on

The Lebanon

Playlist:

Empire State Human
The Black Hit of Space
Being Boiled
The Touchables
WXJL Tonight
The Sound of the Crowd
Love Action
Open Your Heart
Mirror Man
You Remind Me of Gold
The Lebanon
Together in Electric Dreams

He’s Licking His Lips, He’s Ready To Win

The Scorpions are a German heavy Metal band. German heavy metal is a distinct sub-genre, though one I am not too familiar with. For me it is Michael Schenker and a few other guys.

The Scorpions track on the Axe Attack compilationis soft, so I had never gone looking for them. My friend Neil was a given a Scorpions compilation when he left his first job in 1989. The lyrics are definitely problematic (“Give her inches and feed her well”) but Rock You Like a Hurricane is a stunner.

Neil had taken the job on a one-year contract and held them to it. Leaving midweek even though they offered to make it permanent and then just asked him to stay until the Friday. Neil said no and that is Neil – he sticks to his guns. He does not do what he does not want to do.

I would not be where I am today without Neil. In the sixth form we competed for the best test scores in our three subjects. In the first test we had I got, what I thought was a credible, 71%. The teacher had allowed us to answer more than the set number of questions if we had time and Neil scored over 100%. I realised then that I was going to have pull my socks up and try a damn sight harder. Over the two years I think we pushed ourselves to do better than we would have without each other and I would not have got to Cambridge without that (and then probably not got the job at Grant Thornton, so how my life would be different).

Neil could have gone to Cambridge – he was definitely smart enough. In those days you had to have taken a foreign language at O level to go to Oxbridge (which was a watering down of the old requirement to have Latin). My parents made sure that I did, despite my lack of interest and talent (see post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/22/theres-anger-in-my-heart/ about how I fluked that pass). Neil’s parents, and more particularly, the school did not think of that and he did not take one. Colne High had never had a student go to Oxbridge and it was only when Duncan Benson and I got to the sixth form did Mr Bonnar, and others, consider the prospect of us going there.

Neil went on to a successful career at Barclays in corporate lending, after a year out on the dole (but still managed to go the 1989 Rhodes holiday that I missed).

The holidays were not all perfect fun. In Kos 1991 Neil and Andy had a difference of opinion, that led to John, Dave and I ditching them for the rest of the night.

(Andy pours lager on Neil – amazingly it was not posed – I caught this)

(Neil does not take it without revenge).

On the last night of that holiday Club 69 were so happy with us we got free “champagne” – fizzy wine anyway. The rest of us were saying our goodbyes in Garage Bar next door (well Andy had gone home pissed and was asleep on the settee in the apartment he shared with Dave). We came back to Club 69 to find the wine gone and Neil very close to one of the waitresses – Miriam.

(Neil and Miriam on the last night)

We kept drinking until nearly 5am and went back to the apartment. Neil went for a shower. We watched from Dave and Andy’s apartment as he went out into the street, wearing just a hand towel. He was dancing around shouting malacas (which is Spanish not Greek) and lost his towel. We were pissing ourselves laughing from the balcony above, as were the people in the street watching him, shame I had run out of film.

The next morning we had to be out of the apartments by 10am. We had to pack Neil’s case for him.

Neil and I went to Crete in 1993 and 1995. He beat me at pool time after time and claimed to the international champion of our group when we went home.

(Pool in Crete)

Two years later I continued to lose. We were playing a version where we set a time limit and you just sank as many balls as you could – re-racking when 14 were down. In our group John is Manchester United, Dave is Crystal Place, Neil is Derby County and I’m somewhere in the 5^th grade on non-league football.

Neil always says, “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.”

Neil had spent two years mentioning being champion and then on the last night in Rhodes I beat him once when he was drunk. As we have not played overseas since that day that makes me international champion of our group with a 25-year title reign.

I have already covered Dave Francis and John Hawkins, Neil is the fourth member of our group. Still going strong 36 years after we left school – not many people can say that. All three of them have had, and continue to have, an influence on my life. Men don’t say this kind of stuff to each other, but I am so grateful to have met them and known them all this time.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

You Play Russian Roulette This Way

The 1970s. Hollywood finally threw off the shackles of historical epics and musical extravaganzas and started producing far more interesting material (well it started in 1967/69) but this is when it really hit. Well after 1970 it did.

In 1970 Patton – the story of General Patton in World War 2 – won. It feels like a refugee from the 1950s (it had been in development for ages so maybe that is when it started). It is totally out of step for the times and is a film about how only the Americans can sort things out. It is also unnecessarily long – the first 40 minutes could be edited down to about 10 minutes.

Airport is the best remembered film from the nominees, but MASH should have won. Ostensibly about the Korean “police action” it was obviously a thinly veiled Vietnam. The film is shown on TV occasionally and spawned a phenomenally successful TV series.

In 1971 The French Connection won. I am sure that it was an important departure at the time to show a more corrupt world – but it is dull. The Last Picture Show is beautiful, but Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is the standout. A disturbing view of the near future that was banned for many years in the UK due to the violence. Not fun to watch by any means but definitely the one to see.

In 1972 The Godfather won. I think it is a bit overrated, but it is hard to argue with. The only other nominee that is remembered is Deliverance. A harrowing film about a wilderness adventure gone very wrong.

Despite The Exorcist being nominated in 1973 the deserved winner is The Sting. The Exorcist is tame by today’ standards of horror and is so slow. The Sting wins giving Redford and Newman the reward that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid deserved. A depression era story about the setup of a sting operation and its aftermath – it is a joy to watch.

In 1974 The Towering Inferno was nominated – given how badly disaster movies were perceived within a few years it looks odd. The Godfather Part 2 wins – it is odd how the backstory part of the novel, sliced out of the first film, produces a better movie than the first. Parts of it are beautifully shot in Sicily. I prefer Chinatown – I do like the 1930s era that it is set in a lot, but it is a more interesting film in terms of plot.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won in the following year , and I know that it is Paolo’s favourite film ever. I think it is overrated but the other 1975 nominees are no great shakes either. It is the best film, but, given the choice, I’d probably watch Jaws.

Now Rocky is an unusual film – it is popular, but Rocky loses at the end. Trouble is this is a year with Network, Taxi Driver and All the President’s Men nominated. Taxi Driver is a bit overrated but is a seminal film, depicting that run down, decaying New York of the 70s. Network is a film that remains important (if not more important now) to this day about the media. All The President’s Men shows the Watergate scandal and the downfall of Nixon. Redford and Hoffman are outstanding in the lead roles – easily the best film that year.

After 1976 the crop in 1977 is weaker. Three films that are barely remembered and Star Wars are the runners up (and it was called Star Wars not A New Hope crap that Lucas rebranded it – hell if he wanted to give it a new name at least pick something more exciting like Battle At The Death Star). That means the deeply problematical Annie Hall gets it by default – already showing Allen’s propensity for misogyny and being cast with far younger women. I have never really liked his films, though I can see the attraction.

Then you get 1978 – maybe the best year of Oscar nominees ever and definitely the best in the 1970s. An Unmarried Woman is forgotten, but a good film. The runners up are the Vietnam drama Coming Home (Jane Fonda outstanding again and dealing with an injured veteran), Heaven Can Wait (Warren Beatty’s remake of the story of a man taken to heaven too quickly and getting a few days back on Earth to take his team to a Superbowl victory) and the gritty Midnight Express (a Turkish jail story).

The winner was The Deer Hunter and deservedly so. One of the best films ever made. I watched it on video in 1983 and it shocked me to my core with its brutal, honest depiction of the Vietnam War and its effect on people. Showing the men it focuses on before the war and then showing its impact on them and their families is heart breaking. Amazing performances from Michael Cimino and Meryl Streep (the greatest actress of the last 50 years). The Russian roulette scenes by the American prisoners are totally harrowing. If you have never seen it you must do.

Finally in 1979 Kramer vs Kramer wins. Despite Meryl Streep being the lead I can barely watch it. Even this late there was a musical nominee (All That Jazz). How Apocalypse Now did not win is hard to fathom unless the idea of Vietnam films winning two years in a row was too much. The scene of the attack to The Ride of the Valkyries alone makes it the best.

There is nothing much to say about Bomb Da Bass, except, rather ludicrously, they were banned from the radio during the first gulf war (as were Massive Attack). How dumb can you get?

Johnny don’t surf.

Beat Dis

All Those Lonely, Lonely Times

If you are going to cover a song then for heaven’s sake do something really different with it. The Pet Shop Boys almost robotic quality renders almost everything different form their contemporaries or other groups. West End Girls was something totally different when it was released late in time at university. There was some scepticism as, up until that point, Neil Tennant had been most famous for editing Smash Hits (the less than demanding music magazine aimed at younger teenagers, mostly consisting of pictures and anodyne interviews).

We were having an all staff meeting a few years ago when a new Principal started at the College. Bill Watkin, the new head of the Sixth Form College Association, came to talk to us. He put up a slide ranking the areas of the country and there at the top was Clacton-on-Sea. One of our youngest staff members is from Clacton and had not been in London long bristled with pride (Londoners do have a dismissive attitude to anything beyond the M25). Her face turned to horror when it was revealed that this was a list of the worst boroughs for deprivation ranked from the worst places in the country upwards so Clacton was the worst.

I talked about British seaside towns a bit in the post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/08/26/this-is-the-coastal-town-that-they-forgot-to-close-down/ . Clacton is in a worse position than Felixstowe as it has no port business. It has all the usual seaside town features – arcades, a pier, seafront food shops. Businesses that really only had a chance of success in the high season. The fresh made doughnut stalls could have made a fortune all year round if I had visited everyday but I would have the physique of a Michelin man.

In itself Clacton would not be the most deprived place in the UK, but it includes Jaywick. It was built in the 1930s as holiday homes for Londoners, but the post-World War 2 housing crisis turned many of them into permanent homes. It is built on recovered salt marshes and is at permanent risk of flooding, leading to a lack of incentive for investment (proper sewage systems did not arrive until 1977).

(Jaywick)

Over 60% of residents are on benefits. Drug use is rampant. 40% of residents are on disability or long-term illness benefits. It is one of the cheapest places in the country to buy property – some bungalows are sold for £20,000.

It is scandalous that anywhere in the UK is like this. It is like something out of the developing world or the decayed towns of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu fiction.

Disgusting. Not Jaywick, but that this has not been sorted out.

The video for this was filmed in Clacton.

Always On My Mind

He Goes, Like, Bag Your Face

Frank Zappa has had a lengthy and innovative career. I am not a fan but there is one track that I really love.

When I was staying at Royston between 1981 and 1984 I usually stayed with Graham but a couple of times I stayed with John Bonney.

In 1982 I moved from Graham’s to John’s halfway through my stay (after a 24-hour D&D marathon that I will talk about soon), walking over a mile across town. Only to find out I had left some stuff behind and having to do the return trip to get it. This was not helped by the fact that I had a bad hangover from the party the night before.

When I finally got to John’s he was listening to the group Manowar (with Ian Anderson I think) – very raw heavy metal. I obviously did not look impressed as John asked me if I did not like it – but it was the hangover (and I have all Manowar’s albums in my collection). Then he played Valley Girl, which is funny but also musically interesting – Moon Unit Zappa’s vocals are so accurate a nailing of Valley Girl culture it is freaky.

We watched a pirate version of ET (in the days when films came out in the USA six months earlier). It may have been partly the hangover, but I hate that film. Pile of crap. Really – put me off Spielberg for years.

I knew John at Greneway early on, but then we went into different classes later in school. We really linked up again through D&D – which he found way before me. He knew far more about real military than me and war gamed. I remember he had a medieval type weapon that he had brought back from France on a ferry. Simpler times when a group of young men could do that.

While I was at university I went paintballing with him. In those days paintball was really new and it was a long drive in a converted London taxi to get there, driven by Zippy Glassett. It was a long hard day and some of the people there took it was too seriously, but it was a lot of fun. Technically I broke the university rules as I left Cambridge without permission (you had to have tutorial permission to leave the city). I got back to Cambridge late on Sunday night and developed a bad stomach condition – more than likely from something I had eaten at one of the service stations. The last thing I had eaten was cheese and onion crisps as there was nowhere to get real food in Cambridge. I could not touch that flavour for years.

I stayed at his once or twice after graduating. I slept in the living room with the cats. The cats were distinctly unimpressed about me sharing their sleeping room and kept me awake half the night. Ad with Graham it was hard while training at Grant Thornton to keep in touch. Effectively we got 17 days leave, but we needed to use some of it for studying.

We, along with Graham and other so the D&D group, played games using the post. Simon “Skids” Coleman ran group called Brainache and there were Diplomacy in variants and also a cricket game. Both of which I was profoundly bad at. John was a great role player as well as being a high-quality dungeon master. He showed me how it was done as we played modules featuring Hill Giants and Frost Giants.

(John on the left c 1985)

(first wedding – John in the back row as groom – in front of him Paul Ashby, Graham Wright, me, Simon “Skids” Coleman and Lee Bonney)

He came to my 25^th birthday party on his motorbike. He was the one who made sure I was ok after drinking flaming cointreaus and vodka sprite slammers. In the morning he said goodbye as I struggled to wake up and I never saw him in person again.

Now he lives in Congleton and still has great taste in music, reading material and politics.

Top bloke.

Valley Girl

Once We Were Years Ahead, Now Those Thoughts Are Dead

They were two thirds of the Human League. When the band split (the Human League went on to release the hugely successful album Dare) they kept 1% of the Human League income for not getting the name. That kept Heaven 17 going in their early days. Their first album was Penthouse and Pavements – quite overtly political it was not a breakthrough. They took time out to release Music of Quality and Distinction, reviving Tina Turner’s career, as the British Electric Foundation.

Their second album was The Luxury Gap. Temptation and Come Live With Me were the biggest tracks (Temptation being rereleased as a dance version in the 90s to further success).

They were the antithesis of the New Romantic bands who were filming lavish overseas videos celebrating their rich lifestyles, in contrast to the mass unemployment and deprivation that was spreading across the north and Midlands of England, as well as Wales and Scotland.

We all hoped that the recession of the eighties would be the end of that kind of misery, then the recession of the nineties. The financial crash of 2007 put paid to that hope. A Conservative government elected in 2010 implemented an austerity agenda – making ordinary working people pay for the crashes orchestrated by the fat cats of finance.

In Britain local councils are funded from a number of sources. Council tax on property on residential property, business rates on business property, commercial income and a top up grant from the government. So, when austerity strikes and the government grant has to be cut, what is the fairest way to do it? A blanket percentage cut? That is what the government did and this is why it is profoundly unfair.

Take two identical local authorities with the same number of people. A is in a prosperous area and the other in a “left behind” area. This is how their income breaks down:

The grant gets cut by 80% and it ends up like this:

Now the poorer borough is cutting services to the bone, but the more prosperous areas is trimming some stuff, but overall services are not being slashed. How fair is that? Some might say that they live in a prosperous area so why should they subsidise the poorer area? Yet rich areas end up with more money due to better investment in infrastructure.

Jonn Elledge showed this. Three cities have outputs of £100m, £100m and £200m. A ten million investment will increase output by 20%. No brainer – the biggest one. Repeat ad nauseam and you end up with investment and jobs in one area.

This means that high performing young people leave home to work in that area increasing its productivity, leaving behind areas of low paid jobs and economic deprivation. This has been happening in the UK since the end of heavy industry in the UK and disproportionately affects the North and the Midlands.

I’m lucky – I was born in East Anglia. But in the end I had to move to London in the recession of the early 90s.

This really happened and yet the amazing thing is the people from a lot of those B areas in the 2019 election decided that the Conservatives were the answer – despite that party devastating industry there in the past and slashing the services now. I despair.

Let Me Go

And At Work I Just Take Some Time

Some people are just good people. They are not perfect but their aims and aspirations are for the good. Far fewer are prescient enough to it far enough in advance to make a difference.

Paolo came to Monoux as the Vice Principal (Curriculum) in 2010. There is a tremendous problem recruiting Principals of Colleges because they are like football managers. If there is a bad Ofsted inspection the easiest way for governors to show that they are serious about it is to fire the Principal. Our governors recruited Paolo with a view for him to be the next Principal.

This happened sooner than expected as Kim decided to move on to a more pastoral life as Principal at another College. Paolo sheepishly asked me if I would help him with the funding and budget information that he was more sketchy on, but said that he would appreciate that if I was applying I may not want to do it. I told him that I would do it even if I was applying, but I wasn’t. If the College’s main problems were financial I might have been a candidate but the issues were in teaching and needed an educationalist to deal with them.

Paolo is Italian and had come to the UK as a waiter when he was 17 and learned English. He had worked in Africa, studies art in Venice and qualified as a physic s teacher. And he is profoundly deaf. He chose the UK to live in because of the corruption in Italy – now he would like to go New Zealand but his family want to stay here. I agree that Jacinda Ardern is a leader a million times better than Johnson, Trump or any of the other nationalist/ populist leaders that people have fallen for.

As well as leading the College to its best inspection grade of the 21^st century he was also evangelical about green issues. In his period as Principal we improved the insulation, put in eco lighting, put in an eco-gym and installed a huge number of solar panels. These would produce most of our electrical needs but by getting sponsorship we were able to use half the money each year to give student scholarships.

Paolo realised that the climate crisis was real long before most people were seriously considering it. We worked together for several excellent years making a difference.

Paolo is now happily retired and enjoying his art and his family. A deeply moral man and a visionary human being. I am proud to have worked with him and to have him as a friend.

Luckily a group of staff from his era stay in touch and meet regularly to stay in touch (well until Covid 19).

(January 2020, another world – Me, Mary Prince, Louis Strover, Elaine Brown, Paolo, Julie Search-Whittaker, Sharon Thompson, a wonderful group of people committed to education)

Aretha Franklin has a beautiful voice and knew how to use it. By that I mean she did not believe that every song needed her impressive array of vocal gymnastics (I’m looking at you Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and every would-be talent show contestant). She knew the material to pick and how to make the most out of every song – I Say A Little Prayer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E

I Heard a Funny Thing

This is the best track from one of the greatest albums you have never heard of. Forever Changes by Love. Rolling Stone magazine rates it as the fortieth best album ever and, whilst some scepticism is always needed for these lists, it does say that it is widely considered important. A commercial failure almost as bad as The Velvet Underground and Nico, its reputation was high, and it has continued to sell, since then.-

It is another hippie era record. Two books that I knew when I read them that were hippie texts were The Lord of the Rings and Stranger In a Strange Land.

Now The Lord of the Rings is fantastically famous and known the world over due to the three film adaptions. I read it in year 3 at middle school (year 7) after being given the gateway drug – The Hobbit. I was hooked at once by this grand sweep of fictional history. Disappointingly my two favourite parts of the book are not in the films, one not at all and the other differently told to the way the book tells it. All the history of the ring at the start of the films was actually told by Gandalf to Frodo in the chapter after Bilbo’s leaving party. I think it works better like that – preferably on a cold winter night by a fire – learning that the fun world of the Shire is in severe danger after the relatively light tone of the first chapter (with the odd note of fear from Bilbo’s desire not to give up the ring).

The second part is the major shortening of the hobbits journey from Bag End to Bree. It is one of the scariest parts of the book. In particular the sequence where they are captured by a Barrow Wight, then rescued by Tom Bombadil is totally omitted. In a film series famous for extended director cuts this did not make it in even to that.

The ending was criticised in the films – for having too many of them. It follows the books, but the films miss out on the book’s emphasis on this being the end of an age of history. That the third age of wonder will be followed by the modern world (the industrialisation of The Shire being a portent of this). Maybe the film should have stopped earlier, maybe it could have cut the Shire scenes – but if you are happy to watch a four hour films then expect some aftermath.

Most people will not read the book anymore as it is so long (the complaints about the film length always disappoint me). It is a story of an epic scale. It has its flaws – the few female characters have tiny roles and to name the two villains Sauron and Saruman seems perverse in their similarity. The book has so much more depth and sense of a fully realised world than the film adaptation, magnificent though that is.

I can definitely see why the Hippies loved this psychedelic fantasy.

Stranger In A Strange Land was written in 1961 by Robert Heinlein – one of the three titans of golden age Science Fiction. It is about a man who comes to Earth, having been brought up by Martians, and sets up a new religion. It has a kind of everything is god theory at the centre of it. It is an outlier for Heinlein. Far saner than his later books that feature plenty of incest plus a man creating two female clones of himself. Heinlein’s views on mother/ son incest are disturbing in his later career.

The book appealed to that hippie generation because it was a change from within that would change the world.

It may be four times as long, but if you read one make it Lord of the Rings.

Alone Again Or

What It Takes To Make A Pro Blush

The summer of 1981. Riots on the streets of the UK. Mass unemployment and in particular youth unemployment as the government closed down failing industries, without putting enough retraining and mitigating actions in place (or any of those things actually). I think it has been hard to imagine how much despair there was, though sadly we may not have to wonder for much longer.

The summer was illuminated by one sporting event – an Ashes series against Australia. Ian Botham had been appointed as England Captain the previous year in a change from the usual way of things. England had always picked the best captain then appointed a team around them (as opposed to picking the best team and picking someone from it to be captain).

He lost two consecutive series to a mighty West Indies team and then a close match at Trent Bridge against the Australians. A drawn second test at Lords, where Botham bagged a pair, marked the end of his captaincy. They recalled the tactician Mike Brearley and Botham recovered his form. He hit 149 not out Headingley (with Bob Willis taking 8 for 43) giving England an unlikely victory after following on. At Edgbaston, with the Australians 30 from victory Botham took 5 wickets for one run. At Old Trafford he scored 117, actually his finest innings, which gave England an Ashes victory.

(Botham gets most of the credit in the media, but the late Bob Willis deserves a hell of a lot of praise too)

This was followed by a tour to India under Keith Fletcher – a reversion to the tactic of picking the best captain – though Fletcher had been a fine test player in the mid-1970s. A dull series was lost and Fletcher lost the captaincy after showing dissent in Sri Lanka after the main Indian tour.

The biggest news of the winter was the organisation of a rebel tour to South Africa. England lost their opening pair of Gooch and Boycott (plus one of the strongest backups- Wayne Larkins); their best spinners (Emburey and Underwood) and a host of seamers including Chris Old, John Lever and Mike Hendrick. These three plus some others were near the end of their careers, but as England’s young fast bowling hope, Graham Dilley, was injured for some years it was a loss.

(the “Rebels”)

For the three years of the bans they got we were waiting for the return of the rebels – especially Gooch and Emburey. Gooch was making loads of runs in county cricket and the makeshift opening partnerships featuring Geoff Cook, Derek Randall, Graeme Fowler, Chris Tavare Andy Lloyd and others did not inspire confidence.

Yet we were wrong. In the seven seasons to 1983 England won 11 and lost 9 tests. In the next 13 seasons they won 9 matches and lost 30. They won four series (one of which was a one off against Sri Lanka) and drew three (two of which were one match series). A dreadful return for one of the senior test sides.

Across the decade the only team England won more tests against than they lost was Sri Lanka – two wins and one draw (and they were on the bad end of the draw in 1984) – at this stage Sri Lanka were a very weak side. They were even with New Zealand (though won just one series to their two) and Australia (winning three Ashes series to two).

The 1990s is talked about as the lost decade for English cricket but apart from some wins against India, New Zealand and Pakistan in the early part of the decade and Botham’s heroics in 1981 the 80s were awful too.

Being an England cricket fan between 1987 and 2005 was an experience that made England football of the 70s look alright.

Kim Carnes was a veteran performer who covered this song. It was huge in the USA, one of the best selling songs of the decade. It was a hit, but not at that level in the UK. The album is good, but it was not the kind of music that I was interested in at that time. It was massive that summer of 1981.

Bette Davis Eyes