Has there been such a buzz around the World… for a long time?
Finally ‘the World’ has prescribed what it really wanted if only it knew – it just took a while to work it out and make it happen : a man, a leader, both black and white in terms of his appearance – a man seemingly as capable as any. Clinton (Bill) seemed most capable, but this man more so.
How good moreover to see people ‘on the other side’ genuinely pleased about Obama.
‘Ugly’ dolphins with long noses and small eyes, who have evolved in this way to meet their environment, are faring well in the murky-watered Ganges Delta. Other types less so given pollution and fishing and other man-made activity.
In Britain, a man much doubted, has found the ball come to him and he is in a superb position to perform, when few, if any, would have the know-how. Gordon Brown is our star striker, or defender. He has acted instinctively and decisively in the face of financial melt-down, which could still afflict other countries whose leaders are less quick off the mark – dabbling in politics as they go.
In his report on the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster, Lord Justice Taylor stipulated that all Football League grounds should be all-seated for safety reasons. The proposal was soon limited to the top two English divisions (and the Scottish Premier League). By 2008, 24 of 102 League clubs moved grounds. Key factors were the financial value of the current stadium’s land (especially if it was centrally located in an expanding town or city), plus the opportunities for developing a cheaper site elsewhere – permissions pending + committees willing. Some clubs decided to stay, raising development money by selling adjoining land for housing or a supermarket. Or making do.
The festival season is in full throng, crossing-over with the return to the football season. Club flags can be seen above tents, especially Aston Villa for whatever reason. My book is almost done, 3 years in the making. The Festival craze – as was – is almost over too – it’s about to change – new ones begun and some casualties including 1 or 2 big ones… we probably can’t afford the 700 UK Festivals we’ve had on offer for about 2 years… but there may be a shift towards back garden efforts as people realise that if its too expensive to go elsewhere then they will do it here, and now, in that jungle where they find themselves after whatever path… Slough, even Slough, may have a breakout of festival jungle fever.
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.
 |
Kindly Supported by the Professional Footballers' Association | All site content is Copyright © 2006 Stuart Clarke. All rights reserved. Unauthorised use is strictly prohibited without written permission. |
 |
A Produxion website |
|
 |
Powered by Django |