JUST HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS.
Apropos age.
My Leader recently remarked, when I was ranting about some (probably innocuous) thing or another, that she hoped I would never suffer from dementia because that would make me quite impossible to deal with.
She was right.
Age has not mellowed me nor the years contained. Dylan Thomas would never have exhorted me: "Do not go gentle into that good night."
I sometimes wonder why. I think I'm an affable enough old guy. Could it just be peevish senility? I hope not: don't particularly rue growing old; have always considered it better than the alternative.
It is not personal involvement in the almighty mess brought about by us and other interfering nations in the Middle East, either: our country only sells the cluster bombs, nobody is raining them down on us yet. And it is not seasonal affective disorder, that's for sure: thus far the season here has been delightfully unwintry.
So what, then?
Could it be because, insidiously, many of the things I have always taken for granted have either changed or disappeared?
The UK financially owes a bloody fortune to the world and his wife (don't ask who or what is to blame for that). The last of the mines has closed. The steel business is drifting away. Many respected family concerns have gone. Branch banks and shops long since went to the wall. The post office has become a counter in the local grocery store and the car industry is mostly in foreign hands.
Or could it be more to do with the niggling upsurge of foul-mouthed 'attitude' that seems to have crept into this nation since the twenty first century began?
Whatever it is:
I don't like it Which means I shall do what I invariably do when I don't like something and have nobody I can reasonably blame for it: I shall blame gun totin' America, the land of the rising lawsuit.
Well it really hasn't been much of a year, has it.
As happens when you are old:
Several personally cherished people have died and others have required hospital treatment for cancer. At least a couple of the latter are responding very favourably to current treatment and they, praise be, will surely have A Merry Christmas.
I can only wish the same to you and combine with it the wish that you will have A Happy New Year.
Whether I am back before then:
Will depend on how immersed I have become in the rewriting of my long ago shelved children's book The Badgers of Deep Wood and whether, simultaneously, I have begun work on a crime story containing at least one character I have been promising introduction to the printed word for over seventy years.
Go carefully!
There are a lot of clowns out there.
A NEWSPAPER OF EDITORS.
Former, current and future.
As I must have
mentioned sometime in the past - repetition becomes a sadly boring
norm nowadays - I have been a reader of i
since
the first 20p edition in October 2010. It now costs 50p daily
throughout the week and 60p on Saturday.
So is it still a worthwhile
buy?
To my mind, yes; though, for my sins, I have always preferred
good writing to political bullshit and this baby of The
Independent
seems to have survived its first six years (1) by being a model of
good writing and (2) by refusing to pursue any particular party line.
As an admirer of good journalism and a political non-believer, that
suits me.
The first editor of the paper was Simon Kelner and he is
still a regular i
columnist. He was followed as editor by Stefano Hatfield in 2011 and
the current incumbent, Oliver Duff, in 2013.
Stefano (who is now
global editorial director at John Brown Media – a huge job I
imagine), continues to make a small (about 500 words) contribution
every Monday. Oliver's daily Letter from the Editor
is
now a master class in democracy in that it is often written by the
Assistant Editor, Deputy Editor, Political Editor, Chief Reporter, i
Correspondent or an Expert in one thing or another. I enjoy all that
and just can't wait for the views of i's
Hyde Park Corner expert, Piccadilly At Midnight expert, Posh
Penthouse Toffs expert, or (and I might even offer my own services
for this) Fulminating Old Farts expert.
In addition to the above
mentioned cadre of journalistic luminaries, the illustrious Andreas
Whittam Smith (original editor of The Independent) and the ubiquitous
Janet Street Porter (former editor of just about everything)
contribute regular articles to the paper.
The joy of this grand
editorial line-up is that none of them fits the screenwriter Danny
Brocklehurst's wonderful description of an unseen editor in the TV
series Exile: “He couldn't write fuck on a dusty blind.” Any of
this lot could and, given a dusty blind as the sole outlet for their
talent, probably would (with the obvious exclusion of the lofty Sir
Andreas of course).
This
much is for sure: had I been a journalist working for any one of
'em I'd have made sure I went back with a good story - even if I'd
had to rob a bloody bank myself.
So why have I taken another look at i
now?
Well, the newspaper world has been in such disarray since
Murdoch scuppered Fleet Street that I wonder how much longer
BRITAIN'S FIRST AND ONLY CONCISE QUALITY TITLE can survive.
Gone are
the days when the likes of William “Cassandra” Connor wrote a
column in the Daily Mirror for thirty years (broken only by his four
years in the army during WW2).
Now it seems more likely to be:
here
today...television presenting or the dole queue tomorrow.
There was a time when I, like those awful never-made-it mothers who
pushed their kids into the Hollywood circus, would have been
delighted to see any of my children get a job in journalism. As it
turned out, my two daughters are in teaching and my son in graphic
art. Life in their professions is currently uncertain; a career in
journalism now seems even more so. Personally there is no regret that the
journalistic life eluded me, either. I have my cherished NHS pension. Had
I been a newspaper employee my pension would probably have been
pinched by Robert Maxwell.
Good luck to all at the little i
newspaper anyway. I'll keep buying you daily for as long as you're
there and I can afford you. Never have indulged in the annual tickets
thingy; I'd have lost the lot in a week around here.
Should
have published this post yesterday: forgot there are only thirty
days in November.
All being well, back before Christmas.
Mind how you go.
