The blog of Iain M Spardagus

Freedom is a state of mind. Freedom of mind and freedom of expression are the bedrock of human society.

[imspardagus]

Backroom star

“Backroom star”, you say. “What is that?”

How best to describe it? Have you ever been to the theatre and seen a production that whisked you away from the reality of your uncomfortable seat, the rustle of sweet papers, the murmurings of ill-mannered neighbours and the pings of intrusive phones? And at the end of the performance, have you ever paused for long enough to consider all those whom you did not see, did not get the opportunity to applaud, who brought this whole artifice to life so vividly that you mind was captured, captivated, left totally steeped in belief for the entire two hours? The scenery builders, the costume-makers, the make-up artists, the set changers, the prompters all beavering away behind the scenes to make your acceptance of the reality of the actors total?

Well if you have, without knowing it you have been in the vicinity of backroom stars.

It’s not just in theatres, of course. It happens in any walk of life: a small band of people dedicated to supporting those out front in providing you with the best possible experience. Chances are, though, that, unless the ones on stage are so mediocre that your mind wanders, you have never given all this other stuff more than a moment’s thought.

I have only once been described as a “backroom star” and it wasn’t in the context of the theatre. Well not THE theatre. But theatre of a kind. Because most of life, as it is presented to us, is a form of theatre. You go to a travel agent and the person behind the desk goes out of her way to make you think you are the most important client in the world while heaping extras on to your package without which your holiday would be “ruined”. You go to a restaurant and the staff obsequiously flit around you like well-intentioned wasps, flicking out your napkin, attending to your need for alcohol, listening solicitously to your allergic proclivities. It’s all theatre.

My stage was as a civil servant. And because our bosses were desperate to please our bosses’ bosses, who were desperate to please their bosses, the Ministers and the CEOs of quangos, our presentations – our advices and performances at meetings - had to be spot on. I was for twenty out of forty-three years, the manager of a team of lawyers. Sometimes this meant that I had to be the frontman, but on a day-to-day basis it meant making sure that the members of my team could do their jobs to the best of their abilities. I saw my role essentially as an enabler. If my people shone, the clients were happy. If the clients were happy my bosses could be happy.

But a part of that role meant accepting that I had to stay out of the limelight. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the clients. It had to be done in such a way that I was almost unnoticeable. That way, any credit could go to my bosses. They’d take it anyway, but the art was to make them think they had earned it.

And so I was, for the most part, a “backroom star”. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms until, at a ridiculous “management” course I was obliged to attend, one of the other participants chose so to describe me. And I suddenly thought maybe he was right.

I did take my function of supporting my team very seriously. But I tried always to do so in a constructive way that made them feel capable and appreciated. (I wasn’t special in this regard; most team leaders felt the same, which is why most of us were doomed to go no further in our careers. The Civil Service is divided into those who want to do a good job and those who want to get on. And, inevitably, that is how it pans out. Those who want to do a good job get stuck with doing a good job. Those who devote themselves to getting on, get on, and become the bosses of those who want to do a good job. There are exceptions, but few.)

The man who called me a “backstage star” was adamant that it was not a criticism. He explained that, without backstage stars, businesses would fail and needs and expectations would go unfulfilled. But he recognised that it involved a good deal of self-sacrifice, to be constantly promoting the performance of others and humbly declining the limelight for oneself. He thought I should seek and enjoy the spotlight. Nice boy, bad judge of character.

I am retired now and that has given me time to reflect. And what I have realised is that being a “backstage star” has infested most of my life and my dreams.

Let’s take one rather banal example. For years I have played the Euromillions, twice a week raising my hopes, twice a week seeing them come to nothing. But why? I tell myself I don’t really want the money for myself. I want it for “what I could do with it”. What I mean is: paying off my son’s mortgage, getting my daughter onto the property ladder where she can at last feel secure, mending my friend’s leaking roof, buying another friend first class tickets to Hong Kong where his daughter and grandson are living, saving the local members’ club premises which, after 400 years, need a lot of TLC, buying the two decent pubs in Hertford so they could be run for the community rather than for the profits of the pub companies, providing recording studio time for two incredibly talented local musicians … . All done on the quiet. It’s all, or at least it looks, like “enabling”. My own desires are written down as also rans: fixing the kitchen, upgrading the car (but with something “sensible”. I admire but do not covet an Aston Martin), buying a suit (in case I ever need one again)… .  And when I apply the term “backstage star” to this I find it fits rather too snugly for comfort.

Do you see? I am again casting myself in the role of “enabler”. But here’s the thing, if I am being totally honest, while I don’t want the applause for all this seeming altruism, I crave the recognition that I have quietly done all this for the right reason.

It will never happen, of course, but I think I now see this little fantasy for what it is. I want someone to notice the unnoticeable. I want the kudos of not seeking the kudos. I want recognition, but in a stage whisper.

I was brought up to believe that it is better to give than to receive. Now I am not so sure. Time has taught me rather that it is at least as hard to receive as it is to give. To give unconditionally and to receive graciously are the two desirable approaches.

But what about what you give? If you only give material things, things that, if not designed to provoke gratitude, are almost certain to do so, are you not trapping people within your web of material goodness? Are there not better ways to give, better things to give? Your time? Your interest? Your care? Your love? I’m not saying that material things do not matter in this material world but just bestowing gifts cannot be a substitute for giving yourself.

Or am I just being wet? Maybe we should be aiming to give both.

[imspardagus]

Walking towards the sunset

We’ve got a while to walk yet

Walking towards the sunset

It seems the more you walk the more you have to

While if you stand quite still it comes to you.

[imspardagus]

Designer-curated artisanal influencer critique

A couple of years ago, when I was still on Twitter and Twitter was something to still be on, I was told by an American girl that she “critiqued” what I had posted. When I suggested to her that she meant “criticised” she flew off the handle at my presuming to challenge her use of English.

I am unrepentant. The word “critique” connotes a carefully argued report – on a system or a body of work. I won’t labour the point that it is properly a noun, not a verb, because Americans, linguistic barbarians that they are, won’t understand the distinction. But it is fundamentally different from “criticism” which is an expression of disapproval, a fault-finding. To use “critique” when you mean “criticise” is not simply ignorant but ignorantly to attempt grandiosity: to big oneself up. “You only criticise; I critique.” It is nonsense trying to walk on stilts. And to me it serves only to render the misuser a worthless chest-puffer.

I am all the more unrepentant now that other misuses of English are becoming standard. Among the recent stream of adverts disrupting the music on Radio 3, was one that referred to a “curated look at musical history”. A what now?

Of course that word “curated” was strictly redundant, a puff word, and I suspect it had been inserted because they thought it lent a spurious added gravity to an otherwise perfectly ordinary announcement.

When I was growing up, and indeed well into my adulthood, you would generally find curators in museums, where their job was assembling, caring for and presenting artefacts. Now “curated” is a buzz word, an attention grabber. And as such, all the pretentious phonies that make up the ranks of PR feel obliged to use it anywhere that a simple choice has been made. But does the BBC really need to state that the programme it is trailing has been carefully assembled? Isn’t that what we expect of them as a matter of course? Do they think that without the word we will see the programme as a meaningless jumble of unrelated trivial?

And don’t get me started of that awful word, “influencer”. Just a few years old and already it has supplanted “celebrity” and “film star” as the go-to career aspirations of the intellectually under-endowed. What gives these people the right to call themselves ‘influencers? Just because a couple of million similarly aspirationally-challenged teens with time on their hands watch this vacuous trash it does not mean you are an “influencer”. You are an influencer if you change the course of things - and I don’t mean which brand of lipstick to put on or how many fingers you point when you “dance”. I mean significant things like how people think about their life and the lives of others.

But people who should know better have bought into this self-affirming idiocy. The news is peppered with “So-and-so, a social media influencer, said…”. Who the hell cares? Nobody should.

I truly do intend to hold the egregious advertising industry accountable for this descent into vacuous drivel. It was they who gave us “designer” handbags and “artisanal” bread, in both cases merely an excuse to charge artificially inflated prices for mundane articles, just as adding “craft” was taken as justification enough for whacking higher prices on to cloudy beer. And all influencers seem to do is make piles of unearned cryptocurrency out of exploiting the credulity of saps.

It is, of course, this “industry” that told, and continue to tell, us about cleaning products that “kill up to 100%” of bacteria, in the hope, presumably, that we will not notice that “up to” embraces everything from zero to one hundred. And that their product is “up to ten times more effective” - more effective than what? - rendering both claims empty. Perhaps if we had a functioning Advertising Standards Authority this nonsense might cease.

I want to tell them that I am not fooled by their pomposity. Let us have plain English and eschew the overwrought.

[imspardagus]

I said to grief

I said to grief, “Come on, come on

You’ve been at this for far too long.

You’re making it a marathon.

It’s time to sing another song.”

But grief just firmly stood its ground

“You cannot rush these things, you know.

I’ve feelings that are quite profound

And I don’t want to let them go.

I said, impatiently, “Good grief,

You’ve been through anger and denial.

Admit you’re feeling some relief

You know you found it quite a trial.”

“But that brings guilt,” grief sadly said,

“What if I wanted it to end?

Now I’m alone here in my head

Too late I see my selfish trend.”

“Can’t you accept what’s happened here

Was for the best?” I gamely tried,

“Your friend knew that his time was near.”

But grief was not to be denied.

“So many holes,” he cried aloud,

“Each way I turn my friend was there

And now I do not know this road

I see burnt bridges everywhere.”

“That is for you to reconcile,”

I offered, condescendingly,

“You’ve done despair for quite a while.

Time to rebuild. Time to break free.”

“I know and I’ll get there in time

But just for now I need to dwell

On what I’ve lost. It’s not a crime

To mourn the friend I loved so well.”

“I’m not so sure,” I answered him,

“Cling to the past and there you’ll stay.

Your life is now, your time is slim.

I think there is a better way.”

“Without your friend the way ahead

Seems dark and hostile, dull and grey  

But if you let him live instead

In memory he’ll light your way.”

And then, the first time in a while,

Grief smiled and lifting up his eye

Saw open fields, heard skylarks call

“He’d have loved this, and so shall I.”

[imspardagus]

Note to Nigel: Brits like businessmen, they don’t like spivs

On Tuesday afternoon, just after 2pm I subjected myself to an ordeal that baffled me in its masochism. What did I do that was so baffling? I sat and watched Nigel Farage monologuing like the classic villain who thinks he has the hero hog-tied. Nigel had decided to dispense with the presence of anyone who might be tempted to challenge his drone of lies, Dad-anger and pathetic self-pitying whines and to talk instead to a single unmanned camera. It was all very Putin-esque. Or Trumpian. If you can tell the difference, I can’t. Except that Putin clearly has a higher IQ. Well, let’s face it, a cooked hamburger probably has a higher IQ than Trump.

A subsequent photograph revealed that Farage was not quite alone in that studio. Sprawled in two uncomfortable looking adjacent chairs were two of his gang of vampire brides. But they were unlikely to offer any dissenting views. Reform is an outfit where “seldom is heard a discouraging word”, at least about Nige. They wouldn’t dare.

Farage claims to be a patriot but, as I have mentioned before, this sits uncomfortably alongside his constant bleating about Britain being a “broken country” and going down the drain (all, of course to fuel his anti-immigrant/distract-the-public-from-the-truth agenda). He must think we are all fools. No, Nige, that’s just your supporters.

But it doesn’t end there and it didn’t during his monologuing. Like the living embodiment of the quote “Methinks she doth protest too much”, Farage wanted to assert that there was nothing wrong with making money and that British people liked successful and wealthy men. And he wanted us to associate him with such people while claiming to be “anti-establishment”. A good trick if you can pull it off.

Well, I have what may come as surprising news for him: He’s right that most Brits don’t have a problem with making money provided that those who do make it honestly and have not exploited people or evaded tax in doing so; and he’s sort of right that Brits like successful and wealthy people but they do so on exactly the same basis.

What it seems he conveniently misses is that while British people like successful businessmen (and women), we don’t like spivs. And for those of us who have a working sense of smell, Farage appears the personification of a spiv.

If we were in the middle of the second world war, which, of course, Farage harks back to fondly even though he wasn’t there to experience the real horror and deprivation, we would have encountered many spivs, walking about with a dozen watches lifted from the dead under their spiv overcoats and bookies’ hats, or buying up bombed houses for a song to sell at a vast profit as “development opportunities” later. That is what spivs did. And sadly it is what they still do. Only this time they call themselves “commodities brokers” and “hedge fund managers” and have mostly phoney investment schemes under their coats and support asset stripping and cryptocurrency pirates to help make their fortunes.

Oh, wails, poor little Nige, but I have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, this is foul play. Shades of “Oh, infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!” Pass me the world’s smallest violin, somebody. This owner of at least five expensive properties, one of which he carelessly, shamelessly, publicised though it was where his daughter lived – yes that same daughter that he claims now to want to “protect” from the public eye - then complained that the Times had reprinted the photo, this collector of large bungs from billionaires who don’t even live here and convicted fraudsters with Daddy issues, this “reluctant” public servant who claims to have given up the pursuit of wealth to serve his country (despite claiming record amounts in expenses from his job as MEP) then set up a pretend political party as his own company/piggy bank, this, let’s face it, most establishment of grifters, wants us to buy in to the idea that he is just the very model of a decent working bloke. Nothing to see here except commitment. A man just like the residents of Jaywick in the constituency that he can hardly be bothered to visit now they have foolishly fallen for his schtick and elected him. Just a man like you and me who claims to need a million a year just to survive.

Nigel, let me hold up a mirror to this self-deception.

You had a privileged start to your life, better than most people. Yet somehow, it seems,  very early on, you grew to believe that behaving like a shit was a good way to be. Somewhere you managed to shuffle off the idea of “society”, just as that hapless fool Thatcher did, allowing herself to become the patsy of stupid, irrelevant men, failures to everyone but themselves. And then, somewhere along the line, you realised that much as you deplored ordinary people you could manipulate them, and make them, in their manufactured, ill-focused misery, regard as you as their working class hero. And that made a good selling point to the exploiters who saw you as a willing tool for their greed.

It may be hard for you to accept that the people you sponge off are not seen as worthy, upright entrepreneurs but that out in the jungle of this world all the other animals know what they are looking at: Hyenas. Not the establishment, true, because these hyenas don’t see any duty to contribute to the common good. They are well-heeled, yes, but regarded, not without some justification, as morally bankrupt predators, scavengers, the lowest of the ethically-challenged low, waiting to strip the carcasses of easy prey that someone else has disabled.

Just remember this if you will: if you accept an invitation to dine with hyenas it is likely that they have you marked out for the last course. It’s not too late to send your apologies.

In my humble opinion.

[imspardagus]

Reason to believe

“If I listened long enough to you

I'd find a way to believe that it's all true

Knowing that you lied

Straight-faced while I cried

Still I look to find a reason to believe”

Tim Hardin

This is America, MAGA America, looking to find a reason to believe. The most corrupt, inept, flatulent, immoral individual who has ever held the role of President has them enthralled. All the evidence of his iniquity is there in plain sight. And still they look to find a reason to believe.

But how different are we?

Two weekends ago, I was sitting in my favourite pub, relaxed and enjoying a quiet drink with my friend Bruce when two people came in, a father and a son. The father must have been about my age, in his seventies, but he looked older, beaten down. His son was maybe in his fifties and stronger.

Things started okay. People who come to the White Horse tend to find themselves in conversation before long. But – and I can’t recall how it started – the nature of the chat shifted on their side, to politics and before long it was like listening to a Reform Party political broadcast. The word “immigrant” was routinely paired with “illegal”. “They” were blamed for Britain’s apparently deep woes. Starmer was dismissed as a socialist, a lefty, bringing the nation to its knees. When I suggested that Starmer’s real problem had been that he was, without any conviction, trying to emulate the right wing of politics, they responded with derision. I suppose that was not what the Mail or the Sun or GB News had been telling them.

Normally, I would keep my peace in such circumstances. You learn not to try to reason with the cultish of this world. But I had some drink taken and I found myself batting back some of the received nonsense they were spouting as gospel.

So it was that eventually I countered their idolisation of Stephen Yaxley-Lemon (aka “Tommy Robinson”) by describing him, I thought fairly, as a convicted racist thug. This was too much for them. They could not have been more offended if I had suggested that Jesus was not white. Apparently they were quite happy to acknowledge that he was a convicted thug. It was that “racist” bit they couldn’t stomach.

Where was my evidence that he was a racist? I was about to explain when the younger of the two took over. What was wrong about going after “Somalian grooming gangs”? Point well made. I simply looked at him and said, “There you go.”

(For those of you who have failed to grasp this point, the grooming and sexual abuse of minors is, as figures will amply demonstrate, not the exclusive province of Somalians (a racially distinct group) but widely practised in families and schools and churches across the Western world as well. If you only concern yourself with grooming when it is practised by “Somalians” you are racist. Game, set and match.)

There were times when the discussion entered the surreal, as when they insisted to me that the Nazis were ideologically left wing. “It’s in the name - National Socialists”. I tried to explain that at best the use of “socialist” was a cynical expedient and that they had sought to exterminate Communists with almost the same zeal as they had Jews. But you cannot break down the received wisdom of someone who has “reason to believe”.

This to-and-fro went on for a while and elicited from them the conclusion that I was just a woke liberal lefty. I suppose that may be true but I decided to address the point differently. I said to them that the issue for me was one of decency. Change is a dynamic process, an inevitable process, which, among other things, means that at any one point a snapshot may give the impression that things are wrong. I was prepared to concede that in a changing society we may not have got the handling of things quite right yet. But, I said, if, in order to oppose change, or the way things are or appear, we lose our own sense of decency then we will have lost everything. Was that what they wanted?

Decency requires us to recognise and respect the ways of others even if they are not our ways. It does not require us to submit to them or adopt them but it does require tolerance. And over time, that tolerance, that respect, will be rewarded by assimilation. But if instead you make an enemy of those who show difference then you will inevtiably force them back into a defensive siege mentality where assimilation cannot take place. Yes, it will take time and patience but decency will win. As Dr Martin Luther King once put it:

“Darkness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness; only light can do that. Hate can­not dri­ve out hate; only love can do that.”

We carried on for a while, exchanging views, then the younger man reached out his hand to me and said that we might never agree but we could at least talk like reasonable men. I liked that and shook his hand.

My glass was empty and I decided it was time to leave so I bade the two men farewell and thanked them for the conversation. As I went to leave, the older man beckoned me over and said in a whisper that was almost pleading, “But you will still be voting Reform, won’t you?” The hopefulness of it made me smile but I had to be true to myself. I shook my head and said, “No, I can not.”

Still they look to find a reason to believe.

[imspardagus]

Dependence Day

Two hundred fifty years ago today

You chose to throw a grasping king away.

What can we make of where you stand right now?

We watch aghast to see how low you bow

Before this hoodlum and his love of gold,

This worthless toxic wastrel you’ve been sold.

You bought this country with a string of beads.

Why cede it to this false king of misdeeds?

Are you so lost in the American Dream

Turned nightmare that your own eye’s mighty beam

Obscures his treachery and naked greed,

His every lie on which you blindly feed?

You once were proud and firmly fixed to good.

Determined not to bend the knee, you stood

Against the tyrant and his wicked ways.

How can you bear this trumpery which plays

Against the very core of your foundation

The principles that bind your once great nation?

“We hold these truths to be self evident”

Remember? Then cast out this excrement

[imspardagus]

Love the one you’re with

“Wendy and Diana are facing life in a Ugandan prison, just for loving each other.”

As we lay together peacefully

At dawn, they came for us

Thundrous knockings on the door

Heavy hands dragged you away

Just as the sun had risen

Why bring in the police? Surely

This was just ridiculous?

But they insisted our love broke the law,

That which brought us light each day

Seen through a different prism

Will my feelings simply cease to be

Cut off by unholy fuss

When I can’t see you anymore?

I just had time to say

I’ll love you all my life…

In prison

[imspardagus]

Major Oak

Major Oak

Was a decent old bloke

Who lived on his own in a wood

But he welcomed guests

Children were best

And he treated them just as he should

Major Oak

Never really spoke

When we visited him when we were young

He ushered us in

(To say no would be a sin)

And made room in his heart where we hung

Major Oak

Made a very cosy cloak

So we felt very safe and at home

But our Mother said no

It was time for us to go

So we thanked him and left him alone

Major Oak

It really made us choke

When we learned just today he had gone

We knew he was old

(A thousand years we’re told)

And we thought he’d go on and on

Major Oak

Was never an old soak

But he couldn’t take summer dry

And when his boots weren’t wet

He said “I much regret

That I think it is time to die”

Major Oak

Had kept alive for folk

A thousand years had passed since he was planted

But we’ll never see him more

And our childhoods will be poor

Because we’d taken Major Oak for granted

[imspardagus]

Happy Birthday, Donald

Happy Birthday, Donald

Trump your vulgar game

With hired fake gladiators

Killing each other in your name

I hope you get a golden

Shower the world with dread

A second rate King Midas

Turning everything to lead

I would suggest a golden

Handshake but you’ve pilfered

All that glisters so you’ll

Have to stump for silver

Like the colour of your hair

If you weren’t so vain, old man,

Anyway Happy Birthday. Trumped

Up wishes from your leastest fan

[imspardagus]

Bad King Trump

Bad King Trump

Was a wicked old grump

And a wicked old grump was he

He was bad as a king

He was bad at everything

But he had his enablers three

First came Vance

With his sycophantic dance

And he pranced to the tune of his king.

To maintain Trump was right

He would claim black was white.

Trump had J D on a string

Rubio came next

Sounding permanently vexed

With the World for not falling into line.

He amplified the lies

That his master utilised

To disguise his own venal design

Third in line was Hegseth

Trump’s mouthpiece with his smeg’s breath

Pretending to be Christian but a fool

Who thought killing kids was righteous

And that Jesus Trump was mighteous

And couldn’t give a fox for legal rule

They played to please King Trump

And when he had the hump,

Which happened any time he was opposed,

They bombed around the world

Killing blameless boys and girls.

And that is how this nursery rhyme closed

[imspardagus]

The beam out of thine own eye

Am I alone in thinking it’s a bit rich for the hoodlum-enabling Vance and Rubio to be criticising the UK and its police for their treatment of Henry Nowak?

I do not mean to suggest that what appears to have happened – that Henry was dying of stab wounds when the police, refusing to listen to his pleas for help, pinned him to the ground and  handcuffed him, believing that he had made racial comments against his assailant, a Sikh – was in any sense acceptable. It is more that, when the murder capital of the world, where police and state officials regularly gun down or suffocate innocent citizens, chooses to comment critically, expansively and, let’s face it, in a racist way on a rare incident in one of the safest countries in the world, you want to say something like “physician, heal thyself”.

But of course, “they would say that wouldn’t they”. Their whole playbook is built around distraction and finger-pointing. Their concept of fake news is “anything we disagree with”. Their concept of truth is “anything we choose to say”. They, and the billionaires who have bought them, come across as lying, cheating, self-regarding creeps of the worst order.

It is hardly worth pointing out, because they are not listening to anything but the crud-clogged grinding of their tiny brains, that the alleged behaviour of the Hampshire police has brought down upon them both widespread criticism and revulsion but also independent investigation and that the man who actually committed the only crime – murder – has been tried, convicted and jailed. That is how a civilised country deals with these incidents. It does not glory in thuggish behaviour. It does not excuse overreach. It prosecutes and, by doing so, upholds the rule of law and the standards of decent behaviour.

In the UK, it is true, we do have the despicable elements of the reform party and the convicted thug Yaxley-Lennon trying to use Henry’s death to whip up hate and division, about the only thing they are good at. A funny breed of “patriot” who lose no opportunity to slag off our country, both here and abroad. But most people know that these incidents, appalling as they are, are mercifully rare. Not as rare as they should be, but still rare.

A civilised nation is not measured by the standard of perfection but by how it deals with its imperfections and failings. For they will always  exist in any society made up of people. There are bound to be occasions when two or more strands of thought, each worthy in its own context, clash and when decisions have to be made ad hoc. And some of those decisions may come out wrong. But in a civilised country those who got it wrong know and accept that they must account for doing so and that lessons must be learned.

The UK may have discovered that it has a mote in its eye but before the US presumes to offer its opinion on that affliction, it had better deal with the beam in its own.

[imspardagus]

Peter out

Around 1966, a new boy joined our school. Naturally, I don’t mean he was “new”, as in new born. He was just a newcomer. He had long, naturally curly, blond hair and a receding chin and an almost feminine beauty, like you imagine one of King Arthur’s knights having. But he also had a presence, a gentleness of speech and a sense of humour. And a kind of laid-back indolence which, back then, we all wanted to affect. This was around the birth of flower power and Hippyness, after all. He fitted in easily to our little circle.

His name was Peter and it wasn’t long before we were being invited to his house, a bungalow owned by his Mum and Dad on a long ribbon road down in Goodmayes. They were nice people, relaxed and doting on their only son. Being aware of the nuances of class in those days, I recognised at once that they were better off financially than my parents but that they were not “refined” as we were. They were a bit too obviously wedded to the material trappings of their time – they always had a shiny new car and they were among the first to own a colour TV for example – but they ran an open house every Friday where we played poker and Mahjong until the small hours and they let Peter have roaringly drunken New Year’s Eve parties where I learned to abuse alcohol as a substitute for getting off with girls.

When we left school, Peter went straight into work, following in his father’s footsteps as a trainee accountant, learning his trade on the job as you could then. My mother had decided that I should become a lawyer and that entailed doing a degree. I remember being taken earnestly aside by Peter’s Mum, Peggy, concerned that “wouldn’t I feel awful being a student when all my friends had jobs and were earning money?” I really wanted both but I told myself that her concern was just another example of the difference of class.

But somehow we all kept together for some time after school. I was still living at home. We all were. And we went to rock concerts together (I remember how much better cannabis smelled in those days, as you walked in to the venues and took your first deep breath, and feeling the bass guitar reverberating through my chest and losing my hearing for three days after seeing Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac live).

I was best man at Peter’s first marriage, and saw him through the doubts that later proved to have been well-founded.

But eventually I was persuaded, about ten years after I should have done it, to leave home and set up on my own and suddenly the distances became greater, in time and in miles. Still we managed somehow to get together for occasions and it was something I looked forward to. I think Peter did too, particularly when his second wife died leaving him with two teenage children one of whom was dealing with serious mental issues. But the meetings became steadily less frequent and stopped altogether when I found a partner and she made it plain that she didn’t want my old friends distracting me.

We did get together in London for my sixtieth, by which time my partner had moved to America permanently. Peter still looked young, cherubic, and seemed to be still enjoying life. But after that, I allowed myself to become more isolated.

We managed to see the Blockheads in Hertford, and Peter and I met one evening a couple of years later and I recall it was mostly a pleasant resumption of easy company, but, not for the first time, I struggled with some of the things Peter was coming out with. I think I had taken the left fork of the road and he the right. He had, for example, views on a wife’s duty to serve her husband that I could not accept.

But things came to a head with Brexit. That whole bloody business polarised the nation in a way that I suspect the English Civil War had four hundred years before. I was a staunch remainer and could not believe that anyone with a brain could be taken in by the spiv, Farage, or that self-serving slug, Johnson. Peter, it turned out, was one of the small majority that could. On the day of the result, he emailed all of us gloatingly assuring us that this was the best thing that could have happened and our nation was free again.

I was, like many, reeling from the unexpected stupidity of the outcome and, praying in aid my two children who had, so casually and egregiously, had their freedoms and futures stolen from them (they were just too young to vote), I told Peter that if that was indeed his take on the matter I wanted nothing more to do with him.

From where I stand now, it was a very high horse that I mounted that day. The upshot was that we never spoke again, never exchanged Christmas cards or birthday wishes. He was, as they say, dead to me.

And then, suddenly, I heard that he had indeed died.

I heard it about a year after the event. Quite recently, in fact. And it has shaken me and filled me with belated regret. Time has proved that, of the two of us, I was the more correct. But so what? Was it really worth a friendship? Could I not have simply indicated my dissent and moved on? I know it is what we do, we stupid humans. We like a bit of high ground to stand on and rattle our sabres. Wars have been fought and many millions have died over the course of time over issues that, when you stand back, were hardly worth a moment’s disagreement. But if that is the best defence I can come up with, it really does strike me as pathetic. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for some strife.

The trouble with regret, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. If I could go back… But of course I can’t go back. Peter is dead, as Marley was at the start of “A Christmas Carol”. All I can do, as Scrooge discovered, is to live my life better for what is left of it. “Sorry” has no place to go. That is the lesson and I must learn it.

Rest in peace, Peter.

[imspardagus]

The Crow Bruvvers

My daughter has a cat, a bengal, a natural fighter. Today he took on a crow. Since then, they have been swarming outside the house.]

Us Crows we stick together

You take on one, you take us all

We might all really hate each other

But we hate you all much more

Us Crows we grew up on the hard

We didn’t beg we didn’t cry

But if you front us in the yard

We’re gonna make you wish you’d died

Some people think that mem’ry’s short

But we don’t let it go

For us vendetta is just sport

Forgiveness is a no

So don’t you cross the Bruvvers Crow

This Firm will see you pecked

We’ll probe your sorry corpse just so

You give us your respect

[imspardagus]

Resentment

Ageing steals away your time

Resentment takes your peace of mind

I’m looking at this new photo

And wondering why I hate it so

Six friends are captured in the frame

And I know five of them by name

They’re gathered to remember Seven

Who has died, not “gone to heaven”

What is it I resent so much

About this ageing, smiling clutch

Do I hate them as they are

Or just the memory, the scar

I knew the five with names at school

When I was gauche and they seemed cool

When I was stumbling through the mire

And they, those five, seemed charged with fire

The second left was such a swot

The “perfect child” without a blot

Look at her now and ask if she

Looks back on life and comes up happy

There on the right he looks so strong

But did he do me any wrong

I can’t recall and yet I’m sure

That my resentment there was pure

He seemed so confident back then

When I could barely lift my pen

In fear that I would look a fool

A blunderer, a worm, a tool

And next to him the one I loved

Now wrinkled like a tired glove

She woke my soul, she stirred my heart

(Not to mention other parts)

Back then she tolerated me

But I, besotted, could not see

For me it was the realest thing

Til Childe Seven became her king

And still I dogged her life til she

Could find the anger to break free

Do I hate her now or is it

Just remorse paying a visit

Then there’s the gnome whose grinning face

Returns me to that awful place

Where I was wretched, insecure

And he, the clown, seemed so cocksure

I ask again, what do I know

Of him to make me hate him so

Is he to blame I missed the bus

What do I know to cause this fuss

And then there’s Mick, that gentle man,

Became a nurse, I understand

And never did me any wrong

Defended me from Paish’s prong

Why then do I resent him more

More than all the other four

Is it because he shines a light

On how I never got it right

I fear that’s it, the problem’s mine

This photo makes my failures shine

[imspardagus]

Bee Bumble and the Stinger

It was World Bee Day this week. Hence this verse.

Underneath my garden shed

Each year the bumble bees

Have made their nest while overhead

The rubbish rises by degrees

The deep fat fryer that packed up

The fan that gave up in the heat

The broken handled china cups

The broken garden seat

And then the Amazonian waste

Of cardboard boxes that were trees

Once, ere Jeff Bezos got the taste

For wealth that brought us to our knees

How many times will I have read

“We’ve found something that you might like”

He’s trying to get in my head

I wish he would get on his bike

But underneath the garden shed

The bees have made their simple nest

They come and go and bring no dread

Of all the Bs I like them best

[imspardagus]

Dancing on a parapet in the rain

You’ve dressed me in a top hat and a cane

You’ve watched this soft shoe shuffle once again

You think my grin means I am not in pain

But I’m dancing on a parapet in the rain

You like to think I live without a stain

You think I own this ballroom of the sane

But I’m not what you think, let me explain

I’m just dancing on a parapet in the rain

You’re hanging out the bunting in the hall

The disco balls are burning in my eyes

But I’m too drunk to worry I might fall

And none of you can see through my disguise

I don’t believe you even know my name

I’m beginning to regret I ever came

My attempts at being human were in vain

Now I’m dancing on a parapet in the rain