The Kindest Thing by Cath Staincliffe (2010)

It’s my birthday tomorrow. Fifty. The big five-oh. I’m not having a party – I’ll be in court. The charge is murder. More than one way to make the occasion memorable. Sorry. I’m being flippant. Fear does that to me. While it squeezes my insides and tightens my spine, my brain seizes on irreverent wisecracks and sarky comments. A defence mechanism, I guess. To hide how close I am to dissolving in terror at my situation.

The authorities find this verbal bravado very difficult to deal with. My lawyer soon cottoned on and told me to button it. Menopausal women with dead husbands are not meant to offer up smart remarks. Too bold. Too hard. It makes people uncomfortable – not least because for a nanosecond they share the humour. An expression of delight and hilarity flashes across their faces, chased away by frowns and winces. They wriggle in their seats, swallow and ease their stiff shirt collars with the hook of a finger. They expect a victim, all soft sighs and shame, begging for mercy. Not a backchatting bitch having a laugh. Different century and I’d have been fitted with a scold’s bridle or floated on the village pond. Instead it’s the Crown Court and the front pages of the nationals.

When the fear gets too large, when it threatens to devour me, like now, I drag my thoughts back to Neil, to what we had, what we shared before it was all narrowed down to one infamous act. The good old bad old days.

I wish he were here with me. He could still me with a look. In his gaze I would find strength and love and an edge of amusement. No matter how dark things got, he always had that sardonic half-smile in him. And things got dark; they are dark. It’s an illogical wish – if Neil were here, I wouldn’t be. He’s the reason I’m here.

Dr. Yes by (Colin) Bateman (Headline 2010)

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

Spring was in the air, which was depressing enough, what with pollen, and bees, and bats, but my on/off girlfriend was also making my life miserable because of her pregnancy, which she continued to accuse me of being responsible for, despite repeatedly failing to produce DNA evidence. She whined and she moaned and she criticised. It was all part of a bizarre attempt to make me a better man. Meanwhile she seemed content to pile on the beef. She now had a small double chin, which she blamed on her conditions and I blamed on Maltesers. There was clearly no future for us. In other news, the great reading public of Belfast continued to embrace the internet for their purchases rather than No Alibis, this city's finest mystery bookshop, while my part-time criminal investigations, which might have been relied upon to provide a little light relief, had recently taken a sordid turn, leaving a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth, although some of that may have been Pot Noodle.

Blockade Billy by Stephen King (Cemetery Dance 2010)

William Blakely?

Oh my God, you mean Blockade Billy. Nobody’s asked me about him in years. Of course, no one asks me much of anything in here, except if I’d like to sign up for Polka Night at the K of P Hall downtown or something called Virtual Bowling. That’s right here in the Common Room. My advice to you, Mr. King—you didn’t ask for it, but I’ll give it to you—is don’t get old, and if you do, don’t let your relatives put you in a zombie hotel like this one.

It’s a funny thing, getting old. When you’re young, people always want to listen to your stories, especially if you were in pro baseball. But when you’re young, you don’t have time to tell them. Now I’ve got all the time in the world, and it seems like nobody cares about those old days. But I still like to think about them. So sure, I’ll tell you about Billy Blakely. Awful story, of course, but those are the ones that last the longest.

Baseball was different in those days. You have to remember that Blockade Billy played for the Titans only ten years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and the Titans are long gone. I don’t suppose New Jersey will ever have another Major League team, not with two powerhouse franchises just across the river in New York. But it was a big deal then—we were a big deal—and we played our games in a different world.

The rules were the same. Those don’t change. And the little rituals were pretty similar, too. Oh, nobody would have been allowed to wear their cap cocked to the side, or curve the brim, and your hair had to be neat and short (the way these chuckleheads wear it now, my God), but some players still crossed themselves before they stepped into the box, or drew in the dirt with the heads of their bats before taking up the stance, or jumped over the baseline when they were running out to take their positions. Nobody wanted to step on the baseline, it was considered the worst luck to do that.

Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005-2010 by Chris Mullin (Profile Books 2010)

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

To my first meeting of the Standards and Privileges Committee, ably chaired by that most civilised of Tories, George Young. Then for a cup of tea with Hilary Benn, to report on Liberia. On the way out of the Tea Room I ran into Tristan Garel-Jones, who said, with only the slightest twinkle in his eye, ‘We’re grateful to you lot for all you’ve done during the last ten years. You’ve given us a good conservative prime minister, but now the ruling classes are back so you can fuck off.’ (page 72)

Monday, 13 March 2006

Morale very low. Colin Burgon, once a teacher, believes the Education Bill will widen rather than narrow the attainment gap. He also complained about the lifestyle of some of the New Labour elite – Mandelson, Blunkett, Jowell and her husband, and the increasingly shameless correlation between big donations and peerages. ‘We’re all contaminated,’ he said to Ed Miliband, Helen Goodman and myself as we sat in the Members’ Lobby awaiting the outcome of the division.

No one spoke. ‘I can tell by your silence that you all think I’m loopy,’ said Colin gloomily, walking away. But we didn’t actually. ‘The reason for my silence was that I agree,’ said Ed Miliband after Colin had gone. He added, ‘The trouble is that we are all held hostage by what he decides.’ (pages 79-80)

Tuesday, 2 May 2006

Coffee with an old friend who has spent a year working for Lord Levy, fundraiser extraordinaire. ‘I became aware of a Labour Party I didn’t know existed,’ he says. ‘A cluster of mega-rich, unideological, Blair-worshippers who are lunched and dined in grand hotels, granted favoured access and whose opinions are listened to with rapt attention. They have much more influence than the other Labour Party.’

And what about our little ‘loans for peerages’ difficulty? He had overheard one or two conversations and Levy always went out of his way to make clear that there was no promise of an honour, adding slyly, ‘but I will just make two points: (1) a donation does not rule out an honour and (2) contributions to good causes can lead to honours. If you wish, I can send you details of one or two good causes that might qualify.’ (pages 89-90)

Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Later, in the Tea Room, a brief exchange with Alistair, in good shape despite only three hours’ sleep last night. ‘Congratulations on delivering the 1983 manifesto,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and with Tory support.’ (page 232)

Monday, 26 January 2009

Jack Jones and Michael Foot, both aged 95, came to this evening’s meeting of the parliamentary party. It was moving to see the two old boys, both big figures in their day. Jack positively glowing, but not entirely with it. Michael a poor old ruin, wild, skeletal, no longer in control of his movements. It seemed almost cruel to expose him. Superlatives flowed. There were several standing ovations. People clicked away with their mobile phone cameras, knowing this is probably the last glimpse we shall see of either of them. To the New Labour generation, of course, they are ancient history, ghostly reminders of a past long ago repudiated, but everyone entered into the spirit of the occasion. Neil Kinnock, as ever too loud and too long, did the introductions. Gordon Brown made a simple, effective little speech. Then, with Gordon clutching his right arm, Michael spoke. Strong and clear. Only a few sentences, but enough to show that his mind is still alive inside that ruined body. Dear old Jack just smiled benignly. (pages 257-258)

Saturday, 13 March 2010

Glasgow

Breakfast with Tariq Ali. Charming, thoughtful, softly spoken, his Trotskyite past long behind him. He fears Obama may turn out to be a one-term president; that, re Afghanistan, defeat is inevitable and that the only way out is to talk to Russia, Iran and Pakistan and then withdraw with as much dignity as we can muster, taking Karzai with us. We discussed whether John Smith would have got us embroiled in Iraq – one of the great ‘what ifs’ of recent history. Tariq thought not. ‘He was a genuine social democrat, with an irreducible core of decency.’

Tariq recalled a heated exchange with Michael Foot, at Oxford in 1965, when everyone was up in arms about Wilson’s refusal to condemn the Americans for what they were up to in Vietnam. ‘Someone shouted, “Bring him down.” I have never forgotten Michael’s reply. “What you don’t realise is that Harold Wilson is the most left-wing prime minister we will ever have.” He was right.’ (pages 366-367)

Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle (Sceptre 2010)

It was only slowly that I became aware of the power of swear words. It was a gradual thing, a creeping realisation that blossomed into full comprehension round about my second or third year at grammar school. I heard bigger boys or ones from rough homes using these special, explosive, forbidden expressions, and once the realisation of their power dawned I knew that swearing was a thing I wanted to be intimately involved in.

Once I had got the most powerful obscenities straight in my head I came home from school determined to try out their effect on my mother. Full of excitement, I sat at the dining table in the living room. Molly put my evening meal in front of me, but instead of eating it I said, ‘I … I … I don’t want that. It’s … it’s … it’s fucking shit!’ Then I sat back, waiting to hear what kind of explosion it would prompt. After all, I conjectured, if the bathroom sponge going missing for a few seconds could prompt a screaming fit from my mother, a paroxysm of grief that might involve weeping and howling and crying out to the gods of justice, then me saying ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ was bound to provoke a tremendous reaction that would be heard at the back of the Spion Kop.

For a short while nothing happened as Molly considered what I had said in a calm and reflective manner. Then finally she said, ‘I don’t care if you eat it or not … but it’s not fucking shit and if you don’t fucking eat it I’m not going to fucking make you anything fucking else so you can fucking go and get your own fucking food in some other shit-fucking place you fucking little bastard shit fuck.’

After that day Molly rarely spoke a sentence without an obscenity in it, and I was often too embarrassed to bring school friends home because I was worried about them being offended by my mother’s foul language. 

(page 110)

And once they had finished buying old overcoats and worn out socks the Lascars could come to our stall and purchase copies of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy or Stalin’s History of the CPSU.

The stall itself had been made from an oak door that somebody had salvaged from a building site and was incredibly heavy — it took four of us to carry it the half-mile from the Simon Community hostel where it was stored. We didn’t know anybody who had a car. However, once we had put it up, Liverpool being the sort of place it was the stall did a reasonable amount of trade — better than some of the others that only seemed to sell twisted wire, broken fish tanks and rusted-up fuel pumps. There would always be some little old bloke in a flat cap coming up to us and saying, ‘Ere, son, do you have Friedrich Engels’ The Holy Family, the critique of the Young Hegelians he wrote with Marx in Paris in November 1844?’

‘No, but we do have Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.’

‘Naww, I’ve already got that.’

‘Make a lovely Christmas present for a family member.’

‘Eh, I suppose you’re right there. Give us two copies then, son.’ 

(page 156)

Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer (Soft Skull Press 2010)

As he put his coat on Philip said, 'You know what you've done? Speaking of history: it's exactly what you've lost sight of. Nicky wasn't an Übermensch conjured up in a black mass on some moor. Skinheads were produced by socioeconomic circumstance, like every bloody thing else. The Blitz. The redevelopment of the East End, which dismantled old social networks. Post-war immigration. Teddy boys, mods and rockers, rude boys, hippies, punks. Unemployment. The collapse of the social contract.'
'I know that. It's why I was reading about the strikes. But it's not enough. It explains why people like Nicky existed but not what it was like to be Nicky.'
'Then focus on that. Not the bloody occult. Nicky's out with his mates and they start queer-bashing. What goes through his head? He's in a club and sees a black anda white man snogging. What does he think? No, fuck "think": what does he feel? Does he feel sick, does it turn him on? Both? What's it like to be Nicky in his body - fucking and fighting? But enough with the magick, because if one thing's obvious from that programme, Nicky was a very pedestrian kind of nazi.'
'What do you mean,' I said, '"was"?'
Philip stared at me.
'The Register Office can't find his death certificate.'
'Oh for God's sake.'
'Funny, though, isn't it? Look, all I'm saying is you can't separate ideas from reality that neatly. Ideas create reality. It's all connected.'
'Everything's fucking connected. We know that by now, surely? Chaos theory: you have a wank and there's an earthquake off Sumatra. Doesn't tell us anything, apart from maybe you should wank less. I think I'm drunk. Come on, darling,' he said to Tom. 'Let's go.'

pages 175-176

'All right Tony?'
'What are you doing here?'
'Coppers can't tell the difference can they?' says Glenn. 'All just skinheads to them.' He smiles. He has somehow got right next to Tony; he speaks quietly, but does not whisper.
Tony can't hack the look in his eyes and turns away. 'Wanker.'
'There's a few of us here, not just me. Well, we're on CCTV now aren't we, don't want to do nothing heavy. But the nice officers are going to walk us all outside for your safety and that. And there's no cameras out there.'
'You're a fucking race traitor Glenn.' Tony, because he doesn't know what would happen otherwise, collaborates in the conversational hush: they could be queuing at a supermarket checkout. 'You're worse than a fucking nigger.'
'If you like. I just wanted to tell you before it kicks off. There's a truce between us as far as I'm concerned. For old time's sake. But I can't speak for the other lads, so I'd run if I was you. When you get the chance. Is this bonehead wander a friend of yours?
He kicks both ankles of the man in front, who stiffens.
'Know him Tony do you?' mutters Glenn.
'No.'
'Good, because when we get out of here he's dead. Did you hear me you daft nazi count?' Glenn kicks him again. 'When we get outside I'm going to kill you.' The man is visibly shaking.
Slowly the police begin to move the group towards the far end of the concourse. Beyond the cordon, watching reds yell taunts and insults. Some get a chant going, 'Police protect - nazi scum!,' until the objects of their criticism set dogs on them. Near the driveway for postal vans two men in donkey jackets conduct - amazingly - a paper sale. 'Buy a copy, officer?' one calls as the tense formation troops past. 'Read about how workers pay for the government failures. One pound solidarity price.' He waves it after them : Workers' Power', it says on a red background, and on black, hands off iraq!
Glenn mutters: 'How's your love life then?'
'Fuck off all right.'
'Touchy aren't you? Don't they know you're a poof these mates of yours?'
Tony says nothing. They are nearly at the closed-off bit where the new station is being built. In two minutes they will be outside.
'Bound to be some likely shags in this lot Tony. You know what these Europeans are like.'
From behind, Tony watches the face of the man Glenn has threatened to kill. He is listening; his pupil trembles against the corner of his eye.
'I can big you up if you like,' Glenn offers. 'You always were good in bed.'
The subdued shuffle of the skins' boots as they are herded sounds like rain against the roof.
'Better than Nicky if I had to be honest. To my taste anyway. Probably because in your own way you were even more fucked up. Did you see him on telly the other week? Bet that upset a few people.

pages 333-335

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (Harper 2010)

Edwards was still doing his best Monty Hall imitation: Let’s make a deal. Although he maintained publicly that he never desired to be a running mate again, Edwards was, in fact, quite open to the idea. But he was also willing to consider more modest rewards. Having been rebuffed on the notion of teaming up with Obama after Iowa, he once again dispatched Leo Hindery to make a revised offer.

“John will settle for attorney general,” Hindery emailed Tom Daschle.

Daschle shook his head. How desperate is this guy?

“Leo, this isn’t good for John,” Daschle replied. “This is ridiculous. It’s going to be ambassador to Zimbabwe next.”

Daschle warned Hindery that this new offer, like the last one, was sure to be rejected. And it was. When Obama heard about the suggested quid pro quo, he was incredulous.

That’s crazy, he told Axelrod. If I were willing to make a deal like that, I shouldn’t be president!

Edwards wondered if Clinton might be more open to cutting a deal. For all his previous distaste for her, he was beginning to find her more agreeable than Obama—less aloof, more brass-tacks. But Edwards knew his options were rapidly running out. He had no money, the press was ignoring him, and his vote totals were spiraling toward zero; he’d won just 3.8 percent in Nevada.

Then again, Rielle Hunter was only eight months pregnant.

So Edwards still had another month to strike a bargain.

Football, It's a Minging Life! by Rick Holden (DB Publishing 2010)

Let’s end with an amusing little anecdote at Watford. One weekend when Jean was away, a few of the players and I went out on the town after the game. We ended up at a night club in Hemel called the Living Room, which was renowned as a ‘grab a granny’ venue. Somehow, we’d been split up into two pairs. Myself and Lee Richardson, whose never-to-be-forgotten domestic skills included cleaning vomit up with the vacuum cleaner, and Tony Coton and Mel Rees, two daft ’keepers. Lee and I went for a curry, and the two rocket scientists went back to my house to wait for us to return. When we returned I found a cat-sized hole in the ceiling of my conservatory and Mingan sitting next to half a dozen empty lager cans. I was convinced for months that Mingan was the culprit; being a Leeds cat he would have no problem getting stuck into the drink. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the two stooges had got bored of waiting for me to return and had broken in through my bedroom window, putting their feet through the roof as they climbed. That’s goalkeepers for you. I cleared away the lager cans and, to this day, Jean thinks the hole was made by the cat jumping off the window ledge onto the conservatory roof.

Football – Bloody Hell! The Biography of Alex Ferguson by Patrick Barclay (Yellow Jersey Press 2010)

And there was politics.

Michael Crick, the distinguished broadcaster, journalist, United fan and chronicler of Ferguson's life, once described his politics thus: 'Like Alastair Campbell's, Ferguson's socialism is pragmatic: like a committed football fan, his prime concern is to see the team win.' To that I should add that he is tribal. His responses are less those of an intellectual than a partisan. In an interview with Campbell for the New Statesman in 2009, he declared: 'I grew up believing Labour was the party of the working man, and I still believe that.' The first reader to respond emailed from Glasgow: 'Ferguson is remembering a dream.'

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Little Brown and Company 2010)

Cruel and unusual punishment, he thought. He had been around violence in one form or another all his life, not always on the receiving end of it, but you had to draw the line somewhere. A small, helpless dog seemed like a good place to draw that line.

He followed the man out of the park. The man's car was parked nearby and he opened the boot and plucked up the dog and flung it inside where it cowered, shivering and whimpering.

"You just wait, you little bastard," the man said. He already had his mobile phone open, holding it to one ear as he raised a warning finger to the dog in case it made a move to escape. "Hey, babe, it's Colin," he said, his voice turning oily, a cage-fighting Romeo.

He frowned, imagining what would happen to the dog when the man got it home. Colin. It seemed unlikely it would be good. He stepped forward, tapped "Colin" on the shoulder, said, "Excuse me?" When Testosterone Man turned round, he said, "on guard."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Colin said and he said, "I'm being ironic," and he delivered a vicious and satisfying uppercut to Colin's diaphragm. Now that he was no longer subject to institutional rules governing brutality he felt free to hit people at will. He might have been around violence all his life but it was only recently that he was beginning to see the point of it. It used to be that his bark was worse than his bite, now it was the other way round.

His philosophy where fighting was concerned was to keep clear of anything fancy. One good, well-placed blow was usually enough to lay a man down. The punch was driven by a flash of anger. There were days when he knew who he was. He was his father's son.

Right enough, Colin's legs went from beneath him and he dropped to the ground, making a face like a suffocating fish. Strange squeaking and squealing noises came from his lungs as he fought for breath.

He squatted down next to Colin and said, "Do that to anyone or anything again - man, woman, child, dog, even a fucking tree - and you're dead. And you'll never know whether or not I'm watching you. Understand?" The man nodded in acknowledgment even though he still hadn't managed to take a breath, looked in fact like he might never take another one. Bullies were always cowards at heart. His phone had clattered to the pavement and he could hear a woman's voice saying, "Colin? Col - are you still there?"

He stood up and stepped on the phone and ground it into the pavement. Unnecessary and ridiculous but somehow satisfying.

Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action by Sean Birchall (Freedom Press 2010)

This insidiously debilitating idea that racism was in "white peoples' genes", according to a National Black Caucus speaker (Black Flag, issue 203, autumn 1993), gained influence in the 1980s when it formed the basis for 'racial awareness training' (RAT) mainly used in the public sector. RAT was theoretically underpinned by the writings of an American academic, Judith Katz. She believed racism is "a psychological disorder . . . deeply embedded in white people from a very early age, on both a conscious and unconscious level" and that "being white . . . implies being racist" ('Racism, Myths and Realities', International Socialism 95, summer 2002).

From that perspective even the slightest hint of reslstance served only to confirm the original prognosis. For liberals who subscribed to the Katz theory, members of the worklng class needed to prostrate themselves completely simply ln order to be tolerated. In this world view the highest honour any whlte worklng class activist could expect would be to qualify, after serving a considerable time on probation, as a sort of 'racist anti-racist'. Not too surprisingly, militant body language was never going to be sufficiently humble to pass muster. Nor was Jasper's attltude so uncommon. Another Voice columnist, Tony Sewell, also took AFA to task for being "predominately white and male." Clearly it never crossed hls mlnd to consider what effect the common or garden prejudices regularly displayed by hlm and his fellow columnist may have had in discouraging black youth from doing their bit, thus ensuring groups llke AFA remained predominately "white man's business". Instead of any real insight, he offered up some cod psychology. "Their [AFA] deslre to meet violence with violence on behalf of oppressed black people is only an excuse for white men to have a good ruck. This type of rivalry has became a king of war game, where racism is the red rag for men to test their masculinity" (The Voice 28th February 1995).

Of course, in one way he was right. Because, for the vast majority of militants, the idea of AFA fighting are on behalf of oppressed black people would certainly have been regarded as utter nonsense. And while the casual racist comments ln the presence of any AFA activist at the time rarely went unchecked, wlth physical retribution not being an response, as an organisation AFA was at pains to make clear the underpinning for their 'war', as they saw, it had very little to do with race, and absolutely everything to do with class.

Document and Eyewitness: an Intimate History of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor (Orion Books 2010)

Geoff Travis: Alan Horne used to come in and play his Andy Warhol games. He was always a bit miffed with me because when he originally came down looking for a distribution deal and played me Orange Juice's 'Falling and Laughing'. I listened to it and quite liked it but didn't say it was the best single I'd heard in my life and that reaaly annoyed him. He went back to Scotland and Orange Juice made 'Blue Boy' and it got Single of the Week in Melody Maker. I read the review, listened to the record and loved it and said to myself that maybe I had been wrong about them. So I called up Alan and offered him a distribution deal. I think that not having embraced Alan's genius immediately counted as a big blow against me.