30 Day Song Challenge - Day 04

A song that reminds you of someone you'd rather forget.

No soul searching or delving into my murky past. I'll save that for my printed-on-demand memoirs which are pencilled in for 2023. A cheap choice, I know, but I'm playing catch up with this one. Could have picked any number of songs about Mrs Thatcher, but Costello's 'Pills and Soap' has cropped up a lot recently on Spotify and, more often than not, I've not skipped it. Still a great track after all these years:

The Crazy Gang : The True Inside Story of Football's Greatest Miracle by Dave Bassett and Wally Downes (Bantam Books 2015)

 

Prologue

Dave Bassett

I am not surprised by these achievements, After all, if we can sell Newcastle Brown to Japan, Bob Geldof can have us running around Hyde Park, and if Wimbledon can make it to the First Division, there is surely no achievement beyond our reach. 

Text of a speech given by the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher, FRS. MP, at a dinner hosted by the CBI on Thursday, 22 May 1986.

That’s what she said. I puffed my shoulders. It made me realize we were recognized as a success. Wimbledon are truly a remarkable story, perhaps one of the greatest success stories in the history of the game. Its a story that will certainly never be repeated: a homespun, cash-strapped, often down-at-heel club rising from the Southern League to the old Division One in nine years and staying for more on low crowds, even lower wages, and then winning the FA Cup.

We got criticized by the media and weak-minded opposition, hounded and accused of betraying football. What total rubbish. We fought, we planned, we analyzed, and yet were still branded a long-ball side. That was not an issue or a problem. It worked. Today, if a player hits a glorious 50-yard pass, its considered skill. We had an academy before they became fashionable, producing footballers who went on to become internationals.

We were different. I accept that. A lot of us were in the last chance saloon, but we also believed. We believed, given another chance by people who believed in us, that we could make a new life for ourselves. It was a magic, intoxicating formula that changed the face of football. We didn't hide behind the media hymn sheet. I managed and played to a style that suited us and within our own financial compass. We were fighting against the odds on average earnings of £100 a week.

Surviving Sting by Paul McDonald (Tindal Street Press 2001)

The Start of Something

Joolz and I got together at the Walsall Town Hall disco in 1979. She'd been going out with a mate of mine, Brainy Kev, for some time but had recently put an end to the relationship.

'I've put an end to the relationship,' Joolz screamed, trying to make herself heard over the thundering funk rhythms of James Brown. 'I've chucked the bastard!'

'Why?' I shouted, watching in dismay as a fleck of my saliva flew from my mouth and landed with a silent splick in her tequila sunrise.

Knackers, I thought.

'He changed when he bought his new coat,' she bawled.

I knew she was referring to Brainy Kev's duffel coat. It was a charcoal duffel with a tartan lining purchased in preparation for his first term at university. He was going to read theoretical physics at Manchester. The coat was a symbol of his new life and status as an 'intellectual'. He deserved to be chucked.

We were sitting next to one another in the bar, a little way from the dance floor. Joolz had been dancing and her bare shoulders glistened with sweat. So did her cleavage. Trying not to stare at it was like having a plastic cup in your hand and trying not to do a Jimmy Durante impression. In those days my TNT testosterone kept me in a permanent state of arousal. My eyes followed girls like helpless puppies.

True Confessions . . . by Sue Townsend (Penguin Books 1989)

We retreated back to Moscow. We arrived at 6.30 in the morning. Even at this early hour Russia was on the move; the station was jam-packed full. We passed through a massive waiting room where every plastic chair was occupied, yet nobody spoke. Christopher Hope was much affected by this. It was in complete contrast to the milling, shouting crowds outside with their ungainly luggage and wool-wrapped children in tow. There was one policeman at the door – could he alone have cowed hundreds of people into complete silence?

We went to the Bolshoi and saw the most exquisite dying swan, performed by Ms Larissa, the toast of Moscow, who was reputed to be rushing towards sixty years of age. Her arms vibrated like piano wires, they shimmered, then as the violins soared and swooned she sank to the floor in the final gesture – it was perfect and lovely and I shall always remember it.

I arranged to meet my translator, but he mixed up Tuesday with Thursday so it was not possible. He is translating a diary. As Mr Bennett said, ‘Friday: Got up, went to Sunday school.’

We were invited to Kim Philby’s funeral and said we’d go, but the day was changed and we’d flown to Lvov in the Ukraine. We met more writers and admired the beautiful town and visited the cathedral which was crowded with old women, many on their knees. The sadness was tangible. It was Ascension Day and a kindly old woman began to explain the story of the Ascension to Alan Bennett.

Alan listened as though the story were completely new to him. Then an unkind old woman intervened and ordered him to uncross his legs. She then turned on the kind old woman and berated her for talking to us. Later, strolling round the town, we saw the unkind woman praying at the locked gates of a church. She looked very unhappy. We met the mayor of Lvov, a big, handsome man, very conscious of his duty to preserve and renovate the many lovely buildings with which the town is blessed. Alan Bennett is thinking of retiring to Lvov. We met a dirty, ragged man who told us about the concentration camp which used to be situated to the west of the town. Hundreds of thousands of people died there. I asked our official guide about the old man. ‘He is a fanatic,’ she said. ‘He has spent his life since the war studying the fate of the Jews. He is a Jew himself,’ she added, ‘a professor of history.’ She disapproved of the ragged old man.

The writers of Lvov were particularly kind and hospitable, and we lunched in some style to the sounds of a string quartet – all girls who blushed when we applauded. The conversation at Messrs Raine, Bennett and Bailey’s end of the table had turned to sex. Their laughter attracted the attention of the wife of the chairman of the Lvov Writers’ Union. I said, ‘They are talking about sex.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘All say’s, little do’s.’

Quite a devastating remark from such a mild-looking woman.

Gold

Via 'Sweet FA' over at Urban 75.

She's Gone

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I'm afraid I wont be gloating over the death of someone in their eighties. Hated her government and all that she stood for . . . and she certainly doesn't merit a state funeral . . . but the bastards are still in charge.

Lovely Thatch

If Meryl Streep's hair doesn't win the Best Special Effect Oscar at next year's Oscars I'll eat my bunnet. I wonder who they got to play Diana Gould in the film? A toss up between Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, I guess.

Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is playing who? Geoffrey Howe just sent Denis Healey a stick of Blackpool Rock with the words 'Fuck You' written through it.

Maybe it's just me, but if that trailer is anything to go by then Jim Broadbent and his prosthetic nose were seriously miscast as Denis. He really would have made an excellent Michael Foot.

30 Day Song Challenge - day 28

day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty

I'm confused. Isn't this just a retread of the question for day 13?

Why would you feel guilty about a song? Maybe Mark Chapman has a pang of conscience listening to Double Fantasy but the rest of us? It is self-evident that whoever compiled these questions just ran out of steam towards the end. It's the Sparkle In The Rain of pop music memes.

A google search of "day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty" doesn't really help. Clicking on a few links at random indicates that most people are just as bewildered as me by the question.

OK, I've already done the guilty pleasure pick so Hefner's 'The Day That Thatcher Dies' is just pure guilt on my part. Of course I'll play it at high volume come that particular day but as Hefner's Darren Hayman sings:

'We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies,

Even though we know it's not right,'

Speed the day and the guilt.

Smoking In Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson edited by Alistair Owen (Bloomsbury 2000)

How to Get Ahead in Advertising might almost be the modern equivalent of a satirical pamphlet by Swift.

I think there are elements of that, because being a pamphleteer was the most immediate and accesible way of communicating one's outrage and a lot of people did it. Every day you pick up your Guardian and there's a Steve Bell cartoon about a serious subject that can make you laugh out loud. Comedy is the greatest weapon there's ever been for dealing with politicians. I'd be sitting there with a boiled egg, saying, 'How can people not see what's going on?' I thought I was looking at reality, and I suppose I wondered why no one else was. If you rant and rave like I used to and you haven't got an outlet for it, people think you're a nut. That's when they say, 'Just lie down. A little bit of the old liquid cosh and you're going to feel much better.' I don't do that any more. Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and nodded. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience cut off and nodded.

Swines

My heart raced for a moment.

Random Socialist Standard Front Cover On A Sunday Morning

August 1981

Lovestruck

" . . .the greatest leader of the free world in history" and that she would save the world from the "satanic monsters and freaks".

Hat tip to Lenny.