The sun shines on the righteous

I've written in these pages before about the joy experienced when getting together with a substantial chunk of my mates to celebrate the wedding of two of them, and I was privileged to be invited to another such occasion on Saturday.

Set just outside Sudbury, in the heart of Gainsborough country (which, while still far from being in full leaf, was appropriately bucolic and entirely beautiful), this was a day when it finally felt like spring had arrived in all its glory. After what's felt like six months of unending grey and dreary cold - hang on, let's rephrase that - after what has been six months of unending grey and dreary cold, the sun warmed us nicely from an azure sky as the guests were taken to the venue on an old Routemaster. (Number 159 no less, the route home for me down to Streatham; so kind of the bride and groom to think of us south London dwellers in such a fashion when they must have been busy!)

A cracking venue, marvellous food - as I said on the night, never before in my life have I seen too much dessert, I wasn't even sure such a thing was possible - and the couple picking up the tab for the drinks all night, all combined to make this a most convivial occasion. One thing, though. No matter how beautiful the weather, no matter how lovely the setting, no matter how much fine food and booze, these things are only as good as the people which complete the occasion. And what very, very fine people these are.

As I've often said on here, I genuinely think I'm ridiculously fortunate to find myself surrounded by such good people, and privileged to call them my friends. That two of them should be kind enough to invite me and so many others to their wedding is humbling and gratifying, as was the kindness and cordiality of their families, the joy in the best men's speech and the general atmosphere of goodwill in the whole thing. I joked on these pages after the stag do that the stag (now the husband, of course) was batting way above his average, but the truth of the matter is of course that these are both people of the very, very finest qualities.

That I got so pleasantly blotto*, saw those two outstanding people get married and spent the evening in the company of most of my closest friends left me counting my lucky stars once again. I wish the new Mr and Mrs M all the very best.



*Rumour has it that I was seen front and centre, singing loudest, into the early hours at the post-reception sing-song. I can only, in response to those rumours, quote the groom's own speech, as he introduced the best men, fearful of the contents of their forthcoming address. "Filthy, lying mouths..."

In the horse's mouth

Last weekend, a few football fans in the north and south of England decided to do their bit for the stereotype of us all as snarling, atavistic, violent neanderthals, with trouble in both London and Newcastle. A few Millwall fans at Wembley decided they'd have a bit of a scrap amongst themselves, no doubt eliciting a rolling of eyes among the thousands of peaceful Millwall supporters all too used to being seen in that light regardless of the facts of the matter, while old enemies Sunderland and Newcastle did the dance of the thousand fists on the streets around town in the north-east.

(On that, Sunderland and Newcastle fans could easily identify each other from their shirts, but how did the Millwall fans know who to hit and who was hitting with them? Did somebody nip off to the gents' and knock up a few quick flags on bog paper, improvised heraldry for the idiot few to tell themselves apart? That'll baffle me for some time...)

Anyway, one individual has quickly become the 'icon', if that's the right word, for this display of first-class fuckwittery. 45-year-old Barry Rogerson has learned quickly that it's one thing to go around hitting fellow football fans, but it's quite another to punch a police horse. This nation of animal lovers does not take too kindly to that sort of thing, and our Baz has quickly found his name, age and former occupation plastered all over our beloved press.

This piece in the Express is particularly magnificent, encapsulating perfectly both the utterly moronic childishness of his actions, and the press's gleeful, pious response to it. Mr Rogerson has evidently realised how badly his actions have played out to a British public which probably has a regard for, and relationship with, animals which is unique in the world. If his taking part in the disorder in the first place was childish, his rapid backing-away from his actions subsequently makes him sound even more like an eight-year-old kid trying to pull the angelic innocent act in front of a sceptical parent.

"I'd like to apologise to the horse... ," he says. Only in Britain would this not sound utterly bonkers - I'm quite sure the horse is ready to shake hooves and put the whole thing behind them. Then this, from his wife, which is probably the best line in the whole piece: "He normally never goes out anywhere without me. I let him out once by himself and look what happens." See, officer? He's just a kid who got too excited, threw up his jelly and ice cream and then had a hissy fit, lashing out when the party broke up. So he faces a wrathful public, probably a wrathful wife, and will soon face the judgement of the law. Bet he's pleased he went to that game.

As a football fan myself, and despite not having anything violent or anti-social in my past to answer for in that regard myself, I feel the need to redress the balance a bit. We fans face enough mistrust and disdain from people outside the game as it is without Mr Rogerson and those like him doing their bit for the negative stereotypes. I'd urge you, if you have time, to read this, and this, or just type 'football fans charity' into Google and have a look at what comes up. The huge majority of us are just people, doing many more good things overall than bad, just like the rest of the population. If anything, the common bond and understanding of support, of any team, makes it easier for us to come together and act in unison where there's a need.

Most fans are mortified when they see this sort of stuff, so please don't go thinking that the photo of Barry Rogerson, face covered, punch mid-swing, which so many people have seen (and had confirm their opinion of football fans) is in any way typical of us.

InkTears of happiness

Bit of a deserved plug for a friend of mine, this – Michael Scott Thompson, a writer with a bit of success in competitions behind him already, has picked up another prize. His story True Colours has picked up the runner-up gong in this year's InkTears short story competition. I've read it and can strongly recommend it as worth a read when they publish the prize winners in May.

Congratulations once again, Mike.

The witch is dead. Ding dong?

I have a difficult line to tread on this one. If I'd written this 15/20 years ago, this would have been an ill-considered and exuberant celebration of the death of a woman who polarised opinion then, and who continues to do so now. I've read hagiographic, fawning praise and open celebration of her passing today, with very little in between. But, oddly, the moment I was told of Margaret Thatcher's demise, I felt nothing. No sense either of vindictive happiness or sadness at her passing. This is, you'd think, a reasonably normal response to learning of the death, at an old age, of somebody you never knew.

This was not, though, if you grew up in Britain when I did, a woman you didn't know, at least in some form. You certainly knew of the effects of her policies - you could see it everywhere. Millions unemployed, the emasculation of the union movement, the complete abandonment of Liverpool, the selling off of the UK's major nationalised industries, her disgraceful protection of Pinochet - I could go on. Worst, for me was the fundamental change of mindset which her economic policy engendered in Britain. The deregulation of the banks and the promotion of an attitude that money was everything, that a social conscience and a sense of social responsibility could be sacrificed in the pursuit of money. That's what most effectively encapsulates the damage her dogmatic pursuit of her ideology did to us, for me. (I realise that, for many, the worst thing her government did was Clause 28, but I would argue that it's her economic policy, with Lawson at no.11, that has had the most lasting impact, done the most damage. We're still reaping what she sewed then today).

So fundamental was the change in British attitudes that the Labour Party had to move miles to its right to make itself electable again - the idea of socialism, even in a modern form, was anathema to people who were earning hundreds of thousands, and borrowing up to seven times their salary for a mortgage they'd learn to regret later, when the 'bust' part of Thatcherism's boom/bust economics inevitably rolled round.

Her political ghost, her influence, hung around the Tory party right up to the modern day - maybe it still does. She may only have died this morning, but her phantom presence could obviously still be felt guiding the minds of the more right-wing, patrician elements at Conservative HQ from the day she resigned back in 1990 'til now.

I've read that, regardless of one's views on her politics, she deserved respect for being a genuine and committed politician, who had the strength of conviction to stand up for what she believed in totally, and who blazed a trail for women in politics. I'd say that, in fact, both of those things only serve to further damn her from the perspective of the present day, looking back. For years afterwards, women in frontline politics in Britain, particularly on the Tory side, were compared to her. This is not a comparison I'd want making, were I a woman entering politics, even if I were a Tory, because of the antipathy Thatcher engendered in many people. People would wonder if a female Tory was 'another Thatcher', rather than considering them for their own merits. And in an effort to appear completely unlike her, we ended up with the supposed opposite, 'Blair's Babes', a ghastly byword for all that was wrong with latter-day Labour's style-over-substance politics and a completely damnable reduction of those women's abilities.

And those powerful convictions of hers were, ultimately, among the things which brought her down. She was utterly incapable of contemplating a change of course - remember 'the lady's not for turning'? She held so true to her word that Thatcherism became a byword for dogmatism, and ultimately brought her into conflict with even her most loyal colleagues. She couldn't face the prospect of bending, even slightly, to the views of others. Geoffrey Howe, a Tory I do have the utmost respect for, perhaps delivered the coup de grace. Delivering his resignation speech to a packed and silent Commons, he made it clear that her intransigence over Europe (she was almost fanatically, paranoically anti-European, politically speaking) had driven a fatal wedge between them. He said:

"The conflict of loyalty, of loyalty to my Right Hon. friend the Prime Minister – and, after all, in two decades together that instinct of loyalty is still very real – and of loyalty to what I perceive to be the true interests of the nation, has become all too great. I no longer believe it possible to resolve that conflict from within this Government. That is why I have resigned. In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country. The time has come for others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long."

Under a month later, she was gone – her icy veneer finally cracking as she left no.10 in tears, clearly stunned at what she perceived as a stab in the back by her own party. In truth, they were just trying to keep the Tory ship afloat and needed a more human face, and a more flexible mind, to take over. That stubbornness is one of the reasons she's so reviled by many to this day – adherence to policy and the free market was more important than people, and anybody even slightly on the left of the political spectrum will never understand or forgive that, nor the fact that there are unsettling echoes of it in Cameron's Government.

So while I may not feel the sense of grim joy that may have been the case when I was younger, I can't say I feel any sense of loss at her death either. That she left an indelible mark on British society is unarguable, but that mark is a horrible, dark stain which reeks of money. I signed a petition set up to try to help prevent her being given a State funeral, a petition which was opened while she was still alive. I didn't do that out of any ghoulish desire to see her die - that's how strongly people feel about her, how strongly I felt about her. So while I may be treading that line more carefully than would once have been the case, and would certainly join in the condolences to her family, who have lost a mother and grandmother after all, I'm still standing fairly solidly on one side of it.

Smoke without fire

I have what could reasonably be described as conflicting opinions on smoking. On the one hand, I've never smoked in my life. My g/f and I don't allow people to smoke in our house, banishing them to the garden if they want a ciggy, and if it were up to me everybody would give up smoking completely.

On the other hand, I can't stand the smoking ban. Don't get me wrong, I see the benefits of course, and suspect I hardly need to go through them fully here – the lack of stink on one's clothes/hair, the removal of the effects of passive smoking from the pub's employees and punters etc etc. But it's not that I have a problem with. Firstly, there's the fundamental nanny-state mollycoddling in banning an elective and legal activity, which should not be up to government. I just don't like that on a fundamental level.

Secondly there's the sort of smoker/non-smoker apartheid which has developed as smokers huddle outside pubs, indulging their habit in all weathers while the non-smokers either have to come outside and breathe their smoke anyway or abandon their conversation while they remain inside. Then there's the smell – pubs now smell of farts and sweat, which cigarette smoke used to mask rather effectively.

Now it seems that even e-cigarettes are coming into the line of fire of certain health groups. I think they're marvellous things, and I've never used one. My partner's mother, a committed smoker all her adult life despite a heart attack and two hospitalisations for breathing difficulties, had just these past few days managed to get off real cigarettes completely by using them. Eight days without smoking when she'd previously been singularly incapable of giving up.

They smell of warm candy floss rather than smoke. They contain no tar. There's no risk of passive smoking – they emit water vapour, not smoke. They allow people to stay together inside. In theory at least. (Recently a workmate of mine was told by an All Bar One manager that it was 'company policy' that e-cigs are forbidden in their bars. I can find no mention of this on their website or within their corporate communications – he and his companions chose to leave, taking their business with them. I just don't understand that attitude. The pub trade in Britain is in crisis, you'd think they'd welcome something which encourages people back inside.)

It also appears that the BMA is not taken with them. Despite Professor John Britton, the Royal College of Physicians' tobacco advisory group leader, pointing out that nicotine itself is no more hazardous than caffeine, the BMA want them 'heavily regulated' because they 'don't know they're safe'. There's also a concern that they could 'legitimise something that looks like smoking'. Well smoking real cigarettes is already confirmed as unsafe, hugely so. It also looks exactly like smoking, and is legitimate. So what would they rather have, in the absence of being able to simply make everybody stop completely?

I was, I'll confess, unaware that they could be legally sold to kids – that certainly should be regulated because anything which plays a role in starting children smoking should most wholeheartedly be discouraged. But most adults – almost a million in Britain already, apparently – buy them, I strongly suspect, as part of an effort to at least cut down on the real thing. That has certainly been the empirical evidence I've seen – plenty of my workmates now hardly smoke real fags at all, and a few have stopped altogether, thanks to e-cigs.

If a real hard-core smoker like my g/f's mum can give up because of them (and one of her friends now wants to try to do the same thing, having seen her success), then anybody can. You'd have thought the BMA, and others like them, would encourage something like that.

What happens in Dublin...

I'd like to tell you a little bit about the city of Dublin, where I spent a fun couple of days this weekend just passed. Regrettably, I can't because apart from a restorative circuit of St Stephen's Green on Saturday lunchtime, I saw precious little of it which wasn't the inside of some drinking establishment or other.

I don't think I've been so thoroughly (or pleasantly) soaked in alcohol for a very, very long time, and in the true spirit of stag and hen affairs, what happens in Dublin stays in Dublin. (Either that, or my memory of the thing is inexplicably patchy. One of those two things is definitely the case). I can tell you bits of what I do remember, though.

We were, by any measure, a civilised bunch. Not for this intrepid eight the cringeworthy shame of humiliating the stag in a mankini or some other sartorial horror. Indeed we were described by one of the musicians playing a pub we visited as, "...the best-behaved stag party in Dublin." I recognise that this would be a source of shame for some stag groups. Not for me. I've always hated that sort of shit and have no desire to see even a good mate's bare arse on even the most ribald of weekends, let alone parade it though the streets of an unfamiliar city and then try to gain access to a pub.

So, gain access to pubs we did. Without any difficulty at any one of them, on account of the fact that even shit-faced we were a civilised lot. I was then, once inside, faced with the task of making up for the years of lost 'real' Guinness drinking I'd inflicted upon myself by never having been to Ireland before. I can report, dear reader, that I did my best. We all did. The Guinness is indeed different, though not as much as some would have you believe. But nowhere was it served badly, nowhere did it have that metallic tang it acquires if it hasn't been cared for correctly, and nowhere did it taste better than in the 360-degree Dublin panorama that was the bar at the top of the brewery.

I congratulate the eight men, good and true, who did their best to drink their own weight while at the same time not descending into that awful Brits-abroad stereotype. Good luck with the forthcoming wedding, Mr M. (Don't tell anybody I said this but he's batting well above his average there).   ;o)

I look forward to seeing all of you again on April 20th.



Edit: I've just had a flashback of one of the more vivid sights of the weekend. A lad sitting on the stone steps of one of Dublin's grander buildings, being copiously sick into his own hand, while his killer-heeled girlfriend kicked him repeatedly in the ribs. Oh, Dublin in the spring...

3 into 1 does go, sometimes

I have, to say the least, been indolent in my blog entries lately. But there's nothing like a bit of self-indulgence to prompt a renewal of effort. I should warn you that if you find self-congratulatory back slapping nauseating, look away now.

I have, in what I hope will also be sufficiently energising to renew my efforts at writing fiction, sort of been published in print for the first time. I say 'sort of' because I am only one of twenty writers published in this book, and a very long way behind some of them.

Yay!

Some time ago I entered a competition organised in an effort raise money for The Arthrogyposis Group, in which the idea was to write a short story which linked a black queen chess piece, a bunch of flowers and a ten-pound note. I entered and, already to my considerable delight, won fourth prize. This brought a very welcome two hundred spondoolies which I banked and spent some time ago, but much more gratifyingly the promise of an actual printed, tangible book in which my story would appear.

It had originally been planned for Christmas but, and this is something I understand all too well after spending 20 years as a print buyer, things were evidently rather delayed. This evening, when I got home from work, there was an envelope containing said document, entirely unexpectedly. I can't tell you how pleasing this is. Anyway, enough of the patting of my own back.

Should you feel sufficiently interested to buy the thing, you'd be supporting a good cause. And I'd be extremely flattered. For God's sake don't feel obliged, but it's available from here for a tenner including the postage if you feel like it. Just promise not to compare the winner too closely with mine - it's an absolute lesson in just how far I've got to go before I can consider myself a writer.

A good day for equality?

The Parliamentary vote on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was, in many ways, something of a landmark. That it should pass with such a strong majority should, I suppose, be viewed positively. But something in the breakdown of the votes still irks me.

The motion was passed by 400 votes to 175, giving it a strong mandate as it moves to the Lords (one wonders what they will make of it!). It's that 175 that gives rise to disappointment. This was a free vote – no whip was issued, giving MPs free rein to vote as they, or their constituents in an ideal world, saw fit. 136 of the 'nay' votes were Tories – almost 80% of them. That's nearly half the Parliamentary Tory members. Given that 35 Tories abstained, this means only 127 of them actually voted in favour – fewer than voted against.

This means that the majority of the rank and file MPs of the largest party in our government believe that people should be denied the same rights as everybody else simply because of their sexuality. And that's what it boils down to – they may make indignant noises about the sanctity of the union between  a man and a woman, or various other bollocks, but that's just Emperors' new clothing over the naked truth of the matter.

I'll be watching this one through the Lords with interest, because I can't see it passing into law unscathed – there will be objections from a Lords which is rather less representative of the general population than the Commons, and the disquiet among so many Tories will surely give Cameron cause to think, and possibly water it down to keep his own party happy. Cameron himself, to give him credit he rarely receives in these pages, has vocally supported this bill. But he's got a problem on his hands with so many of his party in open opposition to it.

Assuming this does, down the line, pass into law, all that will then remain will be to give heterosexual couples the right to civil partnerships currently only enjoyed by same-sex couples. Then we really would have across-the-board equality in these matters. For now, on balance, I think this was a good day for equality – a single step in the right direction, at any rate.

Who's next?

It's been a bad few weeks for high street retailers. Nothing unusual in that, at the moment, but the last couple to have gone (or at least look like they're going) are names which we're all very, very familiar with.

I've never been into music, and though I do really enjoy films, I'm not an obsessive watcher of them by any means. Even so, hearing that HMV had gone into receivership struck a chord that will resonate in all of us. As a kid I used to go into the big HMV in Churchill Square in Brighton and browse the film section - videos when I was young, DVDs later, of course – or, rarely, the music section. This is one of those shared experiences which pretty much anybody can relate to - it didn't matter if you were a hardcore death metal-head or a serious classicist, what you were looking for could probably be bought there. Later, they added head- and earphones, books and mags, 'cool' bags and T-shirts, everything the yoof of the day may need. Ultimately, it didn't matter – a very long, drawn-out death is finally coming to its conclusion and 4,000 people are, in all likelihood, going to lose their jobs.

Blockbuster is another one; another of those collective experiences most of us have shared at some point. When videos arrived for the masses, they used to have to get multiple copies of the big blockbusters when they came in, and there'd still occasionally be a wait for the very biggest of them. Disappointed, you'd have to browse the racks of cases looking for an alternative, now and then taking a chance on something you'd never heard of. What was that chance based on? Who starred? The design on the case? What the shop staff said? That shared experience has also died a slow death, and now it seems Blockbuster too is in the final throes.

It's easy to see what's killed off these high-street institutions. "Internet killed the video star," said the local paper in Brighton, where HMV still had (has? I don't know) a store in the main shopping centre. Indeed the internet is, of course, the killer, but it has millions of accomplices – everybody buys their films and music from Amazon, Play.com and the like now, don't they? At Christmas, you can do all your shopping without getting off your backside, if you're so inclined. And millions are so inclined. The market simply moves the trade from the high-street to the large online retailers, goes the capitalist thinking, and the jobs move with it. Adapt or die – pretty simple economics.

We should, though, stop and think on what we're doing here for a moment. The big online stores employ, of course, far fewer people than they would if they ran shops selling similar quantities of merchandise. It's how, no doubt, they can offer products so much cheaper – lower wage bill, lower rent, lower utility charges; just a few fuck-off warehouses in strategic bits of the countryside and a sophisticated distribution network and Bob's your mother's brother. It certainly lacks something of the romance of our younger selves' experience of shopping for the latest must-have album.

I am no different to anybody else – I've used these online retailers plenty of times, though I don't buy music at all, but even I have bought books, gifts, household appliances, all sorts online. And I believe we've lost something valuable in ditching those collective experiences I mentioned earlier. These days, people don't even necessarily buy an actual artefact at all – they download films, music and books digitally. These objects, sometimes things of beauty and collectability even before the actual content – the music, film or story – is taken into account, have been reduced to a series of binary data, nothing more than electronic pulses to convey the creative efforts of all those people who conceived and produced them. So we're losing something there as well.

All these things have a knock-on affect. If fewer and fewer of the packages are being designed and produced, there's a net harm done to the design and production industries which feed off them. And if retailers keep closing, shopping centres become run-down agglomerations of charity shops, pound shops, pawnbrokers and the like, the grim flag bearers of hard economic times. I fear, though, it's too late. The small, independent places which survive (I assume because of a resurgence of interest in vinyl) now stand out even more as little beacons – when I pass Fopp, one such place right by my work, it's always full of earnest-looking men (always, always men) still scratching that itch, searching through racks of music or film for some arcane gem. So the need is still out there. Just not, it seems, in sufficient numbers to sustain these familiar names. And that, for me, is a loss to all of us.

If I ruled the world...

In conversation with one of my workmates today, she happened to mention that if she ruled the world, the first thing she'd do would be to ban e-readers (Kindles and the like) and execute anybody flouting that ban(!)

Now, putting to one side her enthusiasm for what I suspect would be near genocide, given the ubiquity of these things, I actually agree with her preference for the printed form. Were I plenipotentiary world leader, I certainly wouldn't ban them, but nor do I want one. I can see how useful they are for holidays, commuting etc, but I just like books too much to want to ditch them. The beauty of a well-designed dust jacket, the satisfaction of handling them, the smell when they're new.* The visible progress as you make your way through them. The author's signature on the fly leaf, if you're lucky. The contentment of surveying a full bookshelf, perfectly parallel spines, upright like so many soldiers; simultaneously alluring and alluding to their content, all jostling for your attention, each suggesting a cheeky re-read. You just don't get that with e-readers.

But I'm digressing a bit from what was to be my original point. Digressing quite a bit, actually, because what I actually wanted to say was that, of all the things you could do with absolute power at your disposal, all the wrongs you could right, all the failings and everyday unfairnesses you could sort out, this was the first thing she wanted to do? Ban Kindles and start bumping off 'refuseniks'? I even offered her the chance to think about some more far-reaching and beneficial options, but she stuck with her choice. The theory was that the ban would be a quick undertaking, something that had been bugging you that you could now get done swiftly and move on to more important stuff. Like changing that dead lightbulb before you get on with building the extension.

So - forcing an end to conflicts, reaching for Mars, sorting out Third World debt, feeding the hungry millions? All in good time. Get rid of those wretched gadgets first and all, or at least more, would be right with the world.

*I used to buy print for a living. If you didn't already know that, did that sentence rather give it away?