What’s new? Annan Athletic up the road from me have replaced Gretna (up the road from me) in the Scottish League and Spain replaced Greece as champion football nation of Europe; Glastonbury Festival was better then ever and J-Z excelled in his prime-time slot; Noel Gallagher has turned his attention to knife-crime as a result of the breakdown of family and community life which he blames on the Thatcher ‘survival of the strongest’ government of 25 years ago. PAUSE…Cumbria is as beautiful as ever (come visit us) and its principle city Carlisle along with Canterbury, Oxford and Cambridge are among the few places UK where house-prices are continuing to rise, as people on these islands (and beyond) lose faith in the monetary-value-of-what-they-are-doing against the rising-value-of-what-people-are-doing-elsewhere (India and China etc.) and against the sheer-cost-of the-essential-commodities-power-and-petrol. PAUSE… Having been against Nuclear power with all its catastrophic even if hypothetical dangers, our Cumbria seems on course to resume its industry and thereby reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and therefore Cumbria, lacking confidence in its farming and manufacturing and tourism and arts agendas, seems likely to continue uncomfortably to be betrothen to it. No bother. We all have compromises to make PAUSE… That great distraction the football season will again be upon us by next time i write x Stuart Roy Clarke
Not since the wedding, not since the gypsy horse gathering at Appleby have I seen something so perfect to go public about. The Russians some their cheeks rosied others with their faces haunted look like sweeping to the Final and with it success via the big football tournament. The one I have missed. For them to win would be amazing for the country – not all in good ways. It would make the fascist element ever more sure of their hammer; it would make the weak quite nicely proud and flushed. The sexy football they played to beat the sexed-up Dutch was so encouraging. They have now to outdance and outhussle the leettle Spanyards. I will watch the latter stages on a screen at Glastonbury, joined by a throng with musical accompaniment.
To Saltaire and back from Cumbria I encountered gypsy hoardes on the roads, in ditches, crowded around grass verges, especially where access to a watering-hole. Their horses tremendous. These are the gypsy souls of yesteryear, even if they live in (posh) houses nowadays. This is their remembering, their clanning together, horse-drawn caravans a touch Wild Western, spirit of the frontier. They are on their way to Appleby in Cumbria for the biggest gypsy gathering.
It could have been anywhere, but it was there, in Saltaire, the perfect marriage was there.
In the 1800’s, during an indus-trial revolution, sour in the backstreets elsewhere, a man named Salt from Morley put his name and money alongside the River Aire and built an entire village called Saltaire, cascading gently down to the large work-mill that stands there today. Housing Hockney’s artwork. Made populah-lah by it.
These are perfect terraced streets of sublime terraced houses, interspersed with a few shops and a hospital and a school and a church and a large ballroom. Salt liked his workers to dance. But not drink. No pubs, cept now on the fringes – some crept right in as swanky wine bars the sort you can sit at the window and watch the world go by (through the fancy lettering). The houses are des res – this is Utopia.The railway runs through it alongside the canal alongside the River. All not far from bustling Bradford, and Leeds so there’s a throng to be called upon.
A place to live then in the 1800’s when it was grim elsewhere : hula-hoop, games, endless games on the streets, work assured, a sense of place, an afterlife : you were taken care of at the sanatorium when you were knackered from work. Big Saturday night at the Ballroom for those with legs. Weddings a plenty.
Back now in 2008, the vicar at the marriage I am attending (Peter & Nemone’s) is in fact the vicar at Bradford City Football Club also. He speaks of the compelxity of marriage, of differences that could be and should be accommodated. He sermons as if, like Salt before him, things could last and be pretty good.
Sometimes things or someone becomes perfect for you. Could then be the temptation to not cross the road – not risk anything .
Not swim, not play, not spar, not discuss, not go beyond what you already have.
But every day the football team is obliged to train, to go beyond what they were. The way we were.
How figs can change
April 30th, the waters were almost freezing, an unusually cold spring. Then someone turned the heat up. Within a week the same waters were swimmable. Within a fortnight you could spend as long as you liked in there. You felt yourself quite capable of turning over a new leaf.
It was an FA Cup semi-final in 1992, Portsmouth v Notts Forest. Fratton Park.
I strode along the touchline in my suit, thinking myself quite smart, looking for someone to photograph – make some humour with – when out of nowhere, to a man, the entire Kop started on me : Where did you get that tacky jacket? Then they moved on to my trousers… and finally my shoes. There was no hole big enough in which to hide!
The week after the death of Diana, (Princess of Wales), the Cardiff City crowd turned on me, citing me as paparazzi, because I had a camera. Not even the depricating smile, nor the mockney suit, could deflect their wrath. Pure hatred, in the sunshine. They would have loved to have killed me, trampled me to death, kicked my head in.
Glastonbury is there to save the nation’s soul. Just as football does on a weekly basis. But come summer, come June, the winter game is spent. Bring on the World’s biggest music festival – actually A Festival for the Performing Arts. Glastonbury brings people to the country. To the countryside. To the ever-so-greenfields, to get in touch with one’s self, once more, presuming you ever were. More than any other English Festival, Glastonbury can turn you around, open your eyes, change your life. It can still do this, after all these years. It did this for the few in the early days. It did it for the masses in the maturing days. It does it for the super-masses now, in the modern age. Millions want to come. In the end 130,000 are allowed, invited, lucky. They have bought all their tickets between them in the first hour of release (slight stumblings in 2008). What they are treated to are 2,000 acts & bands. What choice. Not that I approve of too much choice – a modern malaise. Let’s call them ‘offerings’. Just think how many acts this is : 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11…201,202, 203… when you are still counting you have reached 2,000 by Sunday night – approx 666 a day for three days.
Whatever must be the agenda in this man Eavis’s mind? He has laid on this party. On his farm. When most farmers are right-wing – protecting their patch from any intruder who might upset the cows, Eavis has taken his cows on holiday and opened up their pasture to nigh on 200,000 humans, security personnel, campsite crew, helpers, storeholders, performers, guests, people dressed as cows and mythical beasts. Whereas everyone once upon a time was stoned, drunk, out of their heads, there is a more responsible breed now. Eavis has helped create this. He has made people value their tickets, the value of their tickets and their contribution to eco-campaigns : saving the planet and saving man from his worst negligence’s. The festivals 2005 & 2007 (a rest in 2006) are wonders of organisation : on a par with anything and might be compared with the most amazing of structures,: bridges, dams, towers, monuments. But ultimately it is on a human scale and records big human victory. Who-is-the-headliner is the carrot (cake) but ISN‘T the main issue. The price is not the main issue.
There are possibly as many as 600 Festivals in what is now an extended summertime – even if ‘summer’ doesn’t always turn up. ‘The Festival’ might be anything where you are either out in the country or the park and/or staying overnight. ‘The concert’ is a bit different. The concert is a bit more go and grab it and then come back. The Festival asks you – and you are at times reluctant – to play a part. Over the recent years The Festival-Going has emerged as an activity almost to rival Football-Going and, similarly, few in whatever walk of life can ignore it, pretend its doesn’t exist. Its very much part of our culture and here being The British Isles we do it like no other. The weather is significant. There are so many festivals not far from one another – being a relatively small country. Although few curiously down the East side. From Northumbria through Durham and the East Riding and down through Lincolnshire and Norfolk : hardly any festival activity. Then you hit on Latitude in Suffolk in July. A boutique festival. Whatever that means. It could mean that things are thoughtfully laid out and even the sheep are decorated for dream-sleep. It’s great. Truly great. There should be a festival, boutique or not, near you. It’s a rootsy thing. That is the issue.
There will always be smaller festivals beginning where they think the bigger ones left off or lost the plot and in my own patch in Cumbria we are blessed with the champion of family-friendly festivals Solfest. Here you can let your kids roam free without worry or fear or near-obsession about their kidknap or mutilation. That, more than the superb music is its achievement. This is not Daily Mail territory. And nearby at Cockrock (the town of Cockermouth) in a scruffy field on a fellside reached through an industrial estate is a reminder that with no headliner bands and no great infrastructure, small festivals can be beautiful and funny.
Laughing, really laughing and smiling from somewhere down below, is the key here.
This is the British Isles as it should be. A gorgeous place, a gorgeous body with a gorgeous sense of I know where I’m going and I’m happy here and now.
With the warm weather : set for fine to hot for a whole week (or more?) comes the prospect of washing in the wild clean waters of England and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. And on islands inbetween. For me the drives to and from work will be interspersed with wild swimming up rinvers, creeks,waterfalls, tarns and lakes. Its a phenomenen you know : http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/
The last game of the season, my boyhood team Watford beside the sea at Blackpool. Something at stake for both of them. Weather forecast poor. Drive to The Tower poor : multi-car shunts, football fans confused with day trippers, in the driving rain or drizzle. This can be England for you.
The ground two-sided – the two ‘new’ stands already rusting, beside the sea. The tangerine seats faded. The huge area next to the club shop boarded-up (Closed? Never-been-opened?). The one end of the ground a skip. The Away side with temporary seating, no roof, rain.
Then the football. Not even football – the worst kind. No passing, no grace, no beauty, no tackling, nothing. Just shunting and a team trying to muscle their way to goal : should be laying rugby. Blame Watford.
Man-on-the-microphone comes on at half time (It’s A Knockout’s Stuart Hall no less) to lift the spirits : a £25k lucky draw. The contestants pin their hopes. The hysterical lottery winner screams what-sounds-like-obscenities to the sound of a pin drop. The man with the mike grabs it back and points it out that her father died 2 weeks before and she was in fact overjoyed and emotional – her Dad having bought the ticket.
More terrible football in prospect. Time to leave.
Compelling entertainment : The Apprentice.
Full of horrible people or at least : people-after-power behaving horribly.
Alan Sugar for his part could not run a football club which employs hundreds of thousands of people – he has proved that.
He could not manage a pop festival which employs tens of thousands of people.
He would not make it as a politician.
However what with Boris Johnson getting being voted into the Mayor of London, this suggests that if Alan Sugar stood for election – people would vote for him.
Social inclusion and community as vote grabs often in pale in appeal when up against a free bag of Sugar, a quick download, or the seeming chance of personal improvement offered like NOW.
New Labour have been caught out – seeing to be treading water – even if there have been many good long-term initiatives going on in the background.
Sugar has his uses – he would be good at doing a bit of organising in the kitchen – getting it to run a bit more efficiently behind the motivational qualities of say a Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver.
So the social inclusion can even find room for Sugar.
HELLO YOU, WHAT YOU DOING IN THERE?
I’m treading water – it feels nice – bet it looks good from up there?
YES, IT SURE LOOKS GOOD, YOU IN THE MIDDLE THERE, RIPPLES, GREAT BACKDROP…
...WHEN YOU COMING OUT?
Not sure, it feels good, looks good… and besides I’ve got no clothes on.
I’LL COME IN AND SWIM AROUND AWHILE AND CHAT, OK?
Great.
IT SURE FEELS GREAT, AGREED – WE PROBABLY LOOK GOOD FROM UP THERE, WHERE I WAS…
… I CAN‘T STAY IN HERE FOREVER, MIND, SIMPLY TREADING WATER…
SHALL WE SWIM OVER THERE. AND THEN GET OUT?
No… I like treading water… in sight of both shores… better to travel than to arrive and all that. Besides: no clothes.
WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR CLOTHES?
I’m not mad on them. In here I’m my own man, dressed best, who could dress better, feel like a king, gladrags in a heap.
THERE ARE NICE CLOTHES TO BE HAD.
If one can afford them.
IF YOU TAKE THE TROUBLE TO FIND THEM.
If one can earn them? How?
HOW? ... BY YOUR LOOKING GOOD, TREADING WATER BY ALL MEANS BUT GETTING SOMEWHERE ALSO – BY ARRIVING AS WELL AS DEPARTING. AFTERALL, SOMEONE WAVED YOU OFF, THEY WOULD NO DOUBT LIKE YOU IN, PLAYING A PART…
Are you a lifeguard?
30th April marks the last day (before May 1st) by which you HAVE to go swimming to qualify membership for The Tarn Taggers Of The Frozen North. The local group dedicated to the continunce of outdoor skinny/dipping and swimming around The Lake District.
Not that I can think of any members left except me!
So no one will know if I did dip in the unusually cold April waters (around Rydal). Today.
My boys are run through. Their legs have gone. They are on already on the beach with games left to play. They might as well concede the game (v Bournemouth) and any hope of automatic promotion. They might as well withdraw from the Play-Offs, irrespective of whether it is Leeds or Notts Forest or Doncaster or Southend they play. Indeed, don’t give Leeds their 15 points back, just let them play Carlisle.
My boys.
They have given their all but for this all-singing all-dancing season, it’s not quite enough.
Happy St.Georges Day. Winston Churchill Day. Bobby Moore Day. Benjamin Britten Day. In 2005 on the release of my book “England The Light”, I qualified what I thought distinguished England & Englishness. 3 years on I think the list holds true :
1. Our football
2. Our variety of peoples
3. Landscape / coastline
4. Language
5. Humour
6. Determination
7. Music
8. Industry
9. Justice
10. Our love of home as the ultimate freedom
11. Drinking water from every tap
12. The national health service
13. Decent bogs
14. Free admission to museums (!)
I might just add, expanding on the fabulous coastline and landscape virtue – and following on a recent ridiculous ‘survey’ by The Daily Mail or such like giving the best places to live in England (and putting Buckinghamshire as Number One!!!), here are mine own best Counties in which to live and breathe and die – having travelled more than most :
1. Cumbria
2. Northumbria
3. Somerset
4. Wiltshire
5. Derbyshire
6. Shropshire
7. West Sussex
8. Herefordshire
9. Devon
10. London – whatever county that constitutes!
