This poignant and telling little film says all that needs to be said about our world today. Our media and our politicians scratch their heads while our mindless mobs scream hate and bile. In 2025 England the Daily Mail, still today, fulfils the promise of its founder, Lord Northcliffe who, almost a century ago, said when asked why his newspaper was so popular replied 'Because I give my readers a daily hate.' Nothing has changed; the world, and especially we English, do hate very well, it's a national pastime - whether it's the cowardly, French, the nasty Germans, the lazy Italians, the Indians, the "blacks", the "coloureds", or anyone else who is different and thus appears threatening or, worse still, better off than us. But the reality is that whether it is small boats in the English Channel, illegal asylum seekers, Israeli death squads in Gaza, genocide, hotels hosting immigrants, Palestine Action demonstrations, wars on terror, Afghanistan, Syria, sub-tropical Africa, flag waving "patriots", hate filled social media posts.........and all the other afflictions and hates that make up our daily diet, the reality is that no-one, no party, no nation, no person, no religion has the easy answer - nor will they have.
Home Thoughts
Personal perspectives on people, places, passions, and the preoccupations of an eighty something!
11 September, 2025
Streets Paved With Gold.
08 September, 2025
Shouting In Whispers
My mother’s
viewpoint always seemed strange and illogical and in the years since,
I’ve never reconciled it. As I became older I can remember walking past the main entrance to St
Joseph's Church - especially on my way to the football match at Preston North
End each Saturday - when perhaps a wedding was about to take place in the Church.
I would stop to look through the open doors into the Church to see what it was
like, but always from a distance; never daring to actually poke my head through
the open door, such was the anxiety and guilt that my mother's words and ire
had built up in me. It all looked very grand and elaborate as I peered in from
the pavement, but despite my mother’s dire warnings about Catholicism, I never
saw any terrible events occurring; it was all very confusing, and no little
worrying.
But, in my own, small quiet way all those
years ago, I rebelled.
So, I parked my car near the church gate where all those years ago I used to stand, on the edge of the group as we kids asked if we could play on the church lawn. I walked through the gateway and stood in the entrance. I still felt an intruder and uneasy about breaking the calm of the place just as I had done all those years ago. In front of me stood the Church buildings, the Presbytery with two or three cars parked there – just as I remember it from all those years ago. I felt instantly at home, the feelings flooded back. But then I realised it was not the same. Where once was a lovely rose bed with trellis work there now stood some rather depressing and poorly maintained garage like structures. And the beautifully manicured lawn which had served as our Wembley stadium or Lord’s cricket ground – had gone. No benches for priests to sit and think great religious thoughts, read profound devotional texts or click their rosaries, no peaceful tranquillity, no place of beauty in the middle of these rows of mean terraced houses. Instead, the area had been turned into a children’s nursery – with a substantial looking wire fence and metal climbing frames all painted with garish bright colours - what had once been a lovely garden now resembled a prison's secure exercise area; indeed for the safety of the young children that was exactly what it was. All very functional and “today” but all beauty and magical atmosphere gone. I couldn't imagine that the children who come to play in the nursery today would shout in whispers as we had done for there was no sense of tranquillity or of awe; its magical beauty had gone. It was - although beautifully maintained - just garish, cheap and rather nasty tat which I felt would simply encourage loud and unthinking behaviour. For us, all those years ago, we knew that we were privileged "guests", we had no entitlement to be there, and this fact combined with the beautiful specialness of the place ensured that we looked and acted in awe and wonder. I looked into the distance through the security fencing and there, indeed, were the rooms, the “glory hole” that we used to play in but now, I suspected, playrooms to lots of squealing young children as they are brought there each day by their parents. All as it should be in our modern world. And as I stood there I wondered if, just sometimes today, we increasingly fail to provide or insist upon places of reverence and respect, as we constantly encourage and legislate for open access and entitlement. And I felt a twinge of sadness for what has perhaps been lost and which children of the future may never experience.
Somewhere, deep down, I wondered if we are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water and losing something that will only become apparent when we no longer have it. When society has done away with all its beautiful and quietly inspiring things, when all that is left is concrete, security fencing, garish climbing frames or bouncy castles and there is no family silver left in the "awe, wonder & reverence cupboard" – what then, I wonder? The answer to that question is short but true: we will have lost a little of the very things that make us human - things like beauty, love, hope, aspiration, reverence, stillness, kindness, empathy with other humans and with the world that we inhabit; these are the things that we turn to when our brash "whizz bang crash world" collapses; when we are in pain, when we are frightened, when someone we love is in danger or is no more, when we are in need, when we want reassurance. They are important. They are the small, quiet pleasures of which poet and author Vita Sackville West wrote: "Small pleasures must correct great tragedies". They are our humanity. And as I stood there the words of Joni Mitchell’s famous 1970’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” ran through my mind:
I was pleased for the local kids that they had a nursery to go to, just as I had gone all those years ago to play football and cricket on the manicured greensward. But I also thought that they might also be missing things that the shady church garden offered to me and my friends – peace, tranquillity, a green haven in the middle of the narrow cobbled streets and the tightly packed brick houses and the towering, long gone, cotton mills where my mother and aunties and uncles worked. It was a time and place for us to experience a different world, to learn about respect, calmness, simple beauty, gentleness, stillness, and perhaps see birds in the trees or maybe the odd squirrel..................and, yes, a sense of reverence - something which, as I get older, I fear the world is fast losing; in short, to experience the awe and wonder of the place. And I wondered if today's youngsters will ever experience or feel the need to "shout in whispers" as we had done on sunny school holiday afternoons when we scored a goal or hit a six in that hallowed place. But, of course, shouting in whispers or seeing a squirrel doesn’t have an economic worth, they don’t win votes or impress banks or gain government grants, they don’t impress 21st century man and his mission statements and business plans – all things that are so important in our modern busy, black and white, utilitarian, pragmatic, unforgiving world.
But no priest came out and as I waited, expectant, hopeful, I thought of my long forgotten friends – especially my best friend, Tony Clarkson now long dead. And I wondered what had happened to the young priests who ran around the grass, their cassocks swirling, passing the ball and scoring a goal and celebrating, almost silently, with us – and at the same time, kindly, keeping us rough kids in order. Maybe they are all now aged bishops and cardinals in Rome with their purple and scarlet zucchetti caps and ferraiolo capes; and maybe, too, they might remember those long gone days in St Joe’s garden in Preston and the games of football and cricket with a crowd of scruffy local kids – I hope so.
By now it was late afternoon, my pilgrimage into my past was almost done. Home called. I climbed back into my car and set off up New Hall Lane to the motorway and south to my home of sixty years in Nottingham. And as I accelerated into the M6 motorway's fast lane, the late afternoon Lancashire sun setting low in the sky, I thought that perhaps I would return to revisit my roots once more before I can no longer make the trip and I knew what I would do if I did return to my home town. I'd stand in that church gateway once again, but this time, I promised myself, I would wait until a priest appeared. I wouldn’t knock on the Presbytery door – that old dragon like housekeeper just might still be there and even after seventy years she would surely say "What, not you again, no you can't play football - clear off" and she would send me packing! So, I’d just wait and when a kindly looking Priest emerges I’d step forward and say “Please, Mister, can I see inside your church?” And just maybe he’d allow it – and in doing so I’d be able put behind me my mother’s irrational and unpleasant rants and I'd remember only the good things like the tranquillity of the garden, the games of football and cricket, the kindness of the young priests, the old scratched record and, yes, the “shouting in whispers”.
03 September, 2025
England 2025: Welcome to the world of Yvette Cooper, where decency, moderation and intelligence no longer count as vote winners.
But there was one group that was even more special for my mother. Amongst the “walkers” on those Whit Mondays were the Orangemen (why were they called that I wondered as a child?) and at the appointed hour I would be taken to see them walk along New Hall Lane with their banners, drums, flutes, whistles, bowler hats, medals and sashes. "Look at ‘em, Tony" my mother would say as we watched, "they're the best of the lot" These were good people my mother annually reminded me – because, she told me each year, "They keep the Catholics and the Irish tinkers in their place". As we watched the Orangemen walk up New Hall Lane swinging their banners and beating their drums, I can still hear her voice across the years: “If it wasn’t for the Orangemen we’d all be overrun by Catholics and Irish tinkers!”. Now, in 2025 the echoes of my mother’s words have screamed at me as I have watched the demonstrations in Epping and across the land as immigrants and asylum seekers have been “othered” – the message on the streets of Epping and elsewhere in 2025 is exactly the same as the message my mother gave me; a message to hate and despise fellow human beings because they are different.
And all those years ago, I was very confused. I spent a long time as a child trying very hard to work out the significance of banners showing a long dead king called ‘Billy’ on a horse in a river and waving his sword (I learned later that King Billy was William of Orange and the river was the Boyne in Ireland). It didn’t seem very relevant to my life and I wondered just why these nasty Catholics and Irish had to be kept "in their place" by these Orangemen and what it would be like to be “overrun” by Catholics and Irishmen!
25 August, 2025
England in the Summer of 2025 & Visits to Preston Flea Pits that Still Influence my Life & Beliefs
Last week the wife of a Tory party politician was released after a few months in jail for inciting hatred when she posted on social media that hotels housing migrants and asylum seekers should be burned down. The Daily Mail, other tabloids and much of social media treated her as a returning hero. Strangely, I don’t anywhere remember singing anything about burning or killing anyone (except dragons) in the hymn but I do remember a reference to a “castle of darkness”. The phrase “castle of darkness” didn’t have a lot of meaning to me as a ten year old when I sang it in school assemblies but it does now in 2025; it is surely what England in the summer of 2025 has become. Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail, many years ago said that the success of his newspaper was because each day 'I give my readers a daily hate.' Nothing has changed over the many years since he said that – either at the Daily Mail or on England’s streets; one of the “English values” so highly prized by the Mail, other
tabloids and the flag waving patriots on the streets is clearly hatred of our fellow men and women.My dad died about 20 years ago, my mother having died three
years earlier. I have always regretted that I did not have the close father/son
relationship with him that some enjoy. He was a long distance lorry driver often
away for much of the week and on top of that when he was at
home there were frequent, and for me very painful, rows usually
about money. We were not a well-off family; each week my dad worked long hours,
gave my mother his unopened pay packet, rarely drank or had any obvious
luxuries (apart from his weekly packet of fags), did most of the cleaning of
the house at weekends and cooked Mum’s breakfast and then Sunday dinner as she rested
in bed till noon reading the News of the World or doing her crossword much
loved cryptic crosswords at which she was an expert – a skill that I have
inherited. I can never once, throughout
my childhood and teenage years, remember mum saying “thanks” or giving any word
of praise to my dad, nor were there any signs of affection. My mother didn’t do
hugs to him, to me – or to anyone else, a thing that still today, is something
I feel very anxious about. In our contemporary world where hugs of greeting or
farewell amongst family and friends are accepted and normal I feel
uncomfortable, highly embarrassed even, when in a situation where this is
expected. The regular rows and my mother’s vitriol coloured my childhood and
still haunt me even now a lifetime later and it
made relationships difficult within the wider family, not just within
our own little family unit. My mother had a fractured relationship with her
sisters and brothers which meant that with one exception – my much loved auntie
Edna, “Nenny” I called her till the day she died - I grew up knowing that I had
a wider family but only rarely, and in some cases never, being part of it.
Maybe I'm reminiscing through rose coloured glasses but I can still remember the quiet kindly wisdom and wonderful voice of David Kossoff playing Mr Kandinsky, the Jewish tailor, as he talked to little Joe about life and death when Joe’s 'unicorn' finally died - as we all knew it would. I knew that Mr Kandinsky was everything that one should be, and it was so because the film told me and more importantly my dad did, too, by the way he reacted to the story. I might be naive, and I’m certainly a sucker for the old films but I often reflect that our world has become so rich in genius but so poor in wisdom and simple understanding of the important aspects of the human condition.
There seem so many things that perhaps we have lost – and many of these are the stuff of Mr Kandinsky, Shane or Marshal Kane and the films of that bygone age. In the final minutes of the film 'Shane' Joey, the young boy in the story, pleads with Shane to stay and look after him and his family. But Shane points out that he, Joey, can be a hero: “Look out for your Ma and Pa and you’ll be a hero.......Anyone”, says Shane, “can learn to shoot a gun, ride a horse and enjoy an exciting life but that doesn't make him a hero”. Yes, yes, yes..... I know – it’s naff, Hollywood drivel, soft soap, cheesy - not what we say and do in our clever and fast moving 21st century world where we blast the bad guys with our X-Box and watch techno-digitally enhanced cyber adventures that provide no moral context or worthy aspiration and omit very core aspects of humanity: empathy, compassion, understanding or nuance. Somehow a scowling Clint Eastwood uttering those immortal words “Make my day Punk” before gunning his enemy down don’t have the same humanity, compassion or moral coherence as the heroes of yesteryear. But as I get older I know that Shane’s comments were just the sort of thing my dad understood. And, my worry is that if our modern world does not portray these basic “wisdoms” and human values through the media, if our 'heroes' – sports stars, celebrities, politicians.........and most of all parents - do not reflect such values and offer a way of life to give young people something worthwhile to believe and aspire to, then where else will tomorrow’s adults get them?
Nowadays I'm just a grumpy old man, a sad old git, but my trips to the cinema – or, in our case, the back street “flea pit” - were for me more than nice nights out, cowboys and Indians, ice creams and fish and chips. They were, at one level, one of those growing up things – a few longed for hours with my dad, a bit of what we might call today “male bonding”. But their long-term effect has been that they are still today very much part of my life’s compass, fundamental to who I am and what I believe in and to my very being! They are, at the root, the reason why I know with absolute certainty that those draped in their St George’s flags, screaming abuse and hate at "others ", less fortunate than them in “Engerland’s” summer of 2025 are so very dreadfully and terribly wrong.