Before Christmas John of Whitehaven won a choice of a picture of mine in a competition, and finally I got to deliver it. He and his wife had chosen it together, going through the pictures on the website. It was one form the St.Maria’s Walk series, where she is stood by the sea.
Whitehaven on England’s north-west coast was once such an important place and the region ‘graced’ with big industries, albeit not ones that would return you home very clean at the end of a shift. Sellafield lives on as the last big employer (in these parts) because it gives work to a willing and skilled people. Many have however gone across the seas.
I then called on Mary-Anne, a singer, who lives in a bus in the garden of Randolph, formerly of the British Steel at Workington. He was cutting wood with a chain-saw, from his wheel-chair.
In Maryport I called on Willow – at least I was going to but could see there was an all-night party still raging (well into Sunday morning) in her place above the undertakers.
The radio was full of Tony Blair – pressure mounting on him to quit now. I mused at whether any other politician will ever again try and take on some of the domestic issues that he once tabled and would like to have got on with. He would better have been in politics 200 years ago where he could have been the politician to have abolished the slave trade, ahead of William Wilberforce.
There is almost only one campaign these days : the campaign to hound you out of office.
The Kids are United?
In this music rich football crazy corner of the planet, statistics are saying that the children here in Great Britain are (compared to the rest of the developed countries) poorly educated beyond the basic education and they are lonely and often unhappy. It could be that it has ‘always’ been this way and explains why we have so many pop and rock groups and even more football supporters. They/we seek solace in the song and the football camaraderie. If only we could retain those passions but see our childrens’ lives richer in these other areas. We’ve only got as much as 90 years to sort it according to the environmental experts. Because thereafter its curtains for us all, happy or not.
The fact that our football grounds don’t have fences of any description between the crowd and the pitch (and the players) is a testimony to the freedom of expression we have here. And the sense of trust. Don’t know quite how but our society seems to be hanging together. When I see a dustbin cart doing its round I think “why don’t they just throw in the towel”, “carry guns” “go a-robbing” “go awol”. And I think similar in all sorts of situations. People here still have a respect. I would hate that to break down. It would if we were ever invaded and conquered.
Still, no need for those overhead fighter planes scaring the life out of us every few minutes (in the Lake District). No need for nuclear armaments neither.
As for (nuclear) energy…. mmm. Talk of putting a windfarm on our very Fell. Has got me thinking.
If only that electric atmosphere at our football grounds and pop festivals could be harnessed in this way!
The Manchester City match at Wigan Athletic before Christmas was not just remarkable for the abysmal truly awful except Joey Barton and the debutant performance by City, but for the mass protest by the City fans who boycotted the match because of the price of tickets. These of the same merry brigade that dragged their humour through the lower divisions during City’s most recent decline.
The City fans should be honoured. And they have brought down the prices of tickets at matches.
For you.
They would have paid – wherever they were playing. But they did it for the game.
I took a great picture of them at Preston last Sunday, blue flattened balloon rising above the crowd, sun in their faces, bananas in hand.
Now their brothers in red are revolting.
New firm? It occurs to me that in the event of the Old Firm leaving the Scottish League (to join the English League or wherever) – and even if they don’t – there might be a new powerbase in Scottish football as auld lang syne towns GRETNA, QUEEN OF THE SOUTH and even Galashiels all become footballing academies in the south of the country, producing fine players and summoning players from over the border.
The process has already begun.
Queens were playing Hibernian in the Cup. On Sunday Inverness would take on Celtic also in the Cup – taking heed from the witch that the game against Celtic is never won.
Queens Palmerston Park and all its surrounds that make up the town almost more like a city was a picture. And I can picture it now, again and again. The pubs along the alleyways where Burns suppered and where he left his Jean Armour to outlive him by more than 30 years (there is a statue of her and the bairn too) are athrong with people, many going to the match. Shoppers are a shopping and the River Nith a-rushing on busily neath pondering feet. The floodlights are on afore kick off as there is a looming looping sky. Lifting at the very moment of kick off. Sunshining right into the faces of the Kop end afull with Dumfrieshire’s finest and almost finest. Also in the sun a whole stand-full of Hi-bees, down from Edinburgh and the villages. Queens, bottom of the second division, are simply majestic in the tackle, even in just for a-keeping anywhere near Brown, Sproules and the mercurial Moroccan Benje. Tosh, injured, wishes his old side Gretna up at Clyde some harm and cant keep secret of the fact sat before the tv in the not playing players tunneled area. Chick looks for someone to interview for the raydeeoo. Dobbie and blonde young Willie Gibson with the white boots, not Tosh, are there to weave some magic on the pitch. Whilst again and again that defence is for the tackling. And the crowd they loved it. In the sunshine. I nipped out to get a quote on a conservatory for ma wee house.
Hibs struck on half time and Queens after it and Hibs again and Queens almost on the death. It was life; the crowd to the man, woman and child applauded and the fans of both team were as one when the referee waved “no more” and this was as good as it gets in life. I wandered home.
The Observer national newspaper runs a double-page spread about my exhibitions-series at Ambleside. Which is good news.
