Number Ten, Number Nine

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Brexit, Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, TV

As if things weren’t bad enough, now David Cameron has a book out.

I can’t imagine how tedious a book it is, presumably part misplaced-smugness, part retrospective justification for his actions – arguably the only time when it might get insightful is when Brexit kicks off, but of course that happens after he’s already sodded off so presumably the book ends just when things might be in danger of getting interesting.

Not only that, it would seem he can’t even be trusted to keep his mouth shut and has been happy to blab all about supposedly confidential discussions. The minute I saw the headline, of his revealing details of private conversations between him and the Queen, I thought he’d get into trouble for it. (I’m pleased to say that very shortly after, he did.)

Maybe I’m being too hard on him; or maybe a man who, to be frank, was happy to hold a referendum regardless of any damage it might do, not out of any principle but simply to make sure he won an election, deserves not to be especially well-regarded. To make it worse, the moment it all blows up in his face he is able to swan off entirely scot-free, with no recriminations and not even an offer to help sort out the mess he’s left behind. Through gritted teeth, let me say that the final insult is that not only has he got away with it, he’s also secured a no doubt six-figure book deal out of it.

Curiously enough, another book came out the exact same day, another autobiography. Unlike Cameron’s, though, I’d actually like to read Christopher Eccleston’s book – although I suspect it would be hard to convince anybody that I’m not just interested in the Doctor Who stuff.

That’s not to say there isn’t still a fascination in discovering, or deciphering, just what happened, just what went wrong in 2004 that he left Doctor Who after just one year. You could draw the parallel that he too left just as things were getting interesting – but in Chris Eccleston’s case he left things in a healthier state than he’d found them, and since then has shown nothing but tact, discretion and dignity.

The tantalising hints and tidbits that have emerged over the years suggest a falling-out, artistic or personal or both, from which the production team’s relationships never really recovered; with the situation then being made worse by the BBC’s extraordinarily clumsy response when the news broke that Eccleston had already left the show, after only one of his thirteen episodes had aired.

I feel weirdly conflicted whenever I hear Christopher Eccleston talk, even obliquely, about that time. There’s an understandable frustration and resentment on his part at being, in effect, cold-shouldered and hung out to dry by the Beeb, even as his performance was giving them a hit show. I love Doctor Who, the BBC too for that matter, but that affection makes me feel disloyal to a man who inspires loyalty. No, not loyalty exactly – it’s more that in every interview I’ve seen or read of him, he comes across as a man of high standards, of fierce and unbending integrity. And with that comes, somehow, the implicit challenge to try and match up.

An insightful friend, years ago, wrote on a forum that he thought Christopher Eccleston might be like Patrick Troughton – in that, it wouldn’t be until a whole generation later that he would begin to realise how much he meant to us. Now he’s emerged from the silence which has surrounded his time as the Doctor; and at last, it seems, he is becoming aware of, and coming to terms with, the great regard and fondness in which he is still held.

Mind you, I don’t think the book is about Doctor Who as such, it’s much more his life story, his struggles and demons and relationships. Not like Cameron, not looking to justify his actions or put a good spin on his legacy; but to say, plainly and truthfully, here I am, this is me, I don’t always find it easy.

He really does sound like one of the good guys.

Fantastic, even.

I Am He As You Are He As You Are Me…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Gender

Sam Smith has confused me.

After reading this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49688123 I foolishly googled gender, so it’s my own fault really. I’m not so out of touch that I wasn’t prepared to discover there are more than two – but I was still taken aback at just how many more than two there (allegedly) are.

This isn’t one of those “there were only two in the old days, modern life is silly, bloody snowflakes, etc” trips, and I’m not going all “fings ain’t what they used to be” either. But when one site is listing twenty or more genders (the BBC is citing “more than a hundred”) I’m left scratching my head in bewilderment.

Actually, though, you know what, that’s fine. It’s fine. I mean, don’t we all just want to be allowed to get on with our lives in peace? So, if Sam Smith wants to be a ‘they’ from now on, that’s fine. Up to a point.

It’s both a very easy and a very difficult move for somebody in the entertainment industry, in the public eye. I’m not saying Smith walking up the red carpet in high heels wouldn’t attract some comment, but it would be less inflammatory than some chartered accountant doing the same thing at the annual Hemel Hempstead Dinner Dance. So that’s easier.

On the other hand, given that the announcement has made the news in a way that a random tweet from an unknown home counties bean counter wouldn’t, it’s a brave move. Because if anybody now uses the wrong pronoun in respect of Sam Smith, chances are that it is deliberate rather than accidental. Meaning every time, the decision on whether or not to call people out on it. Sounds exhausting.

But…

Smith is quoted as saying, “I’m not male or female” and “I do think like a woman sometimes” but… how can Smith possibly know that? Surely we only ever feel what we feel. It’s like debating the colour of a post box – we all call it pillar box red, but we can’t ever be certain that we are all seeing the same colour. Similarly, how can anybody know that what they’re feeling is ‘different’ to feeling like a ‘normal’ male or female?

Depending on your point of view, I’m lucky or uninformed or just plain dull, in that I’m male in both anatomy and inclination and, in as far as I would ever feel the need to use this sentence (which is never so far) I identify as male. But I can’t definitively say that what I feel when I say I feel male, is what anybody else would call male if they felt it.

There’s another, niggling element to this. You can only have a vast range of genders on the spectrum IF at either extreme you have ‘full male’ and ‘full female’. We’ve spent I-don’t-know-how-many decades striving for equality, evangelising that women can go out to work and drink in pubs and that men can look after babies and cry at musicals. But you can’t agree with that AND have a strict ‘this is what it means to be male/female’ as a benchmark on the gender scale… and if you don’t have that, if being male (or female) can be anything from a boxer to a flower arranger, then you don’t need any other genders.

Once you have a hundred labels for something they start to become meaningless. Not to mention nonsensical. If I was a teenage girl with a picture of Sam Smith, the object of my teenage affection, on my bedroom wall, then this time last week I’d have been comfortable in my heterosexuality. But now, suddenly, I fancy somebody who isn’t male. Does that mean I’m now something else too…? No. Of course not. Because, sorry, but that’s clearly nonsense.

If I’m honest it makes my head spin just trying to get a handle on it all. The only real certainty is that it’s very, very complicated. So who knows, maybe the BBC is right. Maybe Sam Smith is right too.

I think they are wrong.

The New Season

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Moaning, TV

September is the cruellest month.

On this point, TS Eliot and I disagree. On the other hand, I sometimes invite the dogs for an evening walk with a, “Let us go then, you and I/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table” so it’s not all bad. (And yes, that was just a transparent attempt to make far more of my A Level English than is warranted. Now it’s done and I’m glad it’s over.)

Perhaps my problem with September is the hype. That’s not September’s fault, of course, it’s mine. I always think of it as my favourite month of the year, I always look forward to it coming around… but then, every time, when it finally arrives, it lets me down.

It’s got a lot to recommend it, as a month. There’s the pale salmon skies as the evenings gather in, and the first breath of an invigorating chill to the morning air. The gradual change of colour on the trees, the first scatterings of crisp new leaves along the pavement.

As a child, of course, it heralded the start of the new school year, and although I wouldn’t want anybody to think I was one of those kids who actively looked forward to going back after the Summer holidays, I will admit that by the end of the first day I would already be back into the swing of it, with the holidays a distant memory.

The start of the school year meant the beginning of the climb towards Christmas – darkening evenings, half-term, the changing of the clocks, fireworks, and then on into December and the home straight, often accompanied by Blue Peter Bring & Buy Sales, School Carol Concerts and the like.

But it was more than that even, because September also brought new shows on TV. Growing up, ours was very much a BBC house (with the notable exception of Crossroads naturally) so my associations are with the new season on the Beeb, and especially in the late-80s, new runs of Doctor Who, meaning we would continually hang around after the end of whatever we’d just been watching in case a trailer should be gifted to us.

All those delights are still there I suppose – new TV (Bake Off and QI already), beautiful evenings with gorgeous sunsets, falling leaves, even a faint Christmas buzz already. But every year, as I anticipate it, I forget that September always lets me down.

Or brings me down, rather. Without fail, somehow September always brings with it a gloom and a lethargy that isn’t really tied to any specific thing. We’re not yet into cold Winter days, which might justify or at least explain the struggle to get up off the chair and do something. And it’s not SAD because there’s still daylight aplenty at the moment.

I’ve been reading Joyce Grenfell’s War Memoirs recently (entertaining our troops, not fighting the other side’s). According to the copyright date I’ve had the book for the best part of 30 years before actually reading it, and if I’m honest it’s a bit hard-going in places. But I’ve just reached December 1944, and she writes about a gloom, a deep self-doubt that comes over her friend and pianist: “she suddenly vanishes behind a blank wall and it’s very hard going to get through to her at all”.

That’s what it feels like. As if I’m viewing September at a distance, from behind a wall, and quite unable to shake that sense of separation. Along with it comes a dreadful torpor which isn’t much use for the old 9-5.

But, of course, we go on. No doubt my wretched mood will lift, sooner or later. If nothing else, eventually it’ll be October instead, which will take the blame off September. And, as with every year, I remain hopeful that it will go as suddenly as it came, this mood, and that I can still enjoy at least some of my favourite month.

I suppose I’m hoping that, as it was when I was a child, September will be magic again.

(On this point, Kate Bush and I disagree…)

Terrance Dicks, R.I.P.

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who, FICTIONAL!!

Terrance Dicks has died.

I caught the news just in a passing comment, just as it broke, on my Twitter feed at lunchtime – and by the time I returned to the internet at teatime, there was tribute after tribute to a man who, in no small way, encouraged a generation (my generation) to become readers. People recalling the first book of his they’d read, or a particular episode of Who he’d written, or an occasion when they’d met and spoken to him.

In recent years, he had become a delightful presence as interviewee on the Doctor Who DVD range, sometimes making the self-effacing claim that his only goal as script-editor was to ensure the BBC had something to show instead of the testcard for 25 minutes on a Saturday afternoon. I’m sure that’s not quite true, but even if it is it almost goes without saying that Terrance, was far too professional to have ever let that happen.

Other than that, I don’t really know what to say. It would be absurd of me to claim floods of tears for a man I’ve never even met; but on the other hand, to know that suddenly he isn’t around anymore feels like a very sad thing indeed.

A few years ago, I put together a series of spoof/‘What If…’ Production Notes, taking Russell T’s famous post-millenium column in the Doctor Who Magazine, and imagining that it had been around back in the days of the classic era too. For the November 1983 issue of DWM, as the show reached its twentieth anniversary, I reasoned that while the BBC was celebrating Doctor Who, Doctor Who ought to be celebrating Terrance Dicks!

So, if only to prevent WordPress having to show the testcard in order to fill up the rest of this page, here it is…

Thank You For Being A Friend

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Confused, Family, Friends, TV

Quick disclaimer: it’s not about the sitcom, sorry. (Not this time anyway.)

For the record, though, I’m currently eight seasons in, so just two more to go before Netflix pulls the plug at the end of the year. It seems to have become fashionable in some quarters to proclaim how rubbish it is, but all I can say is that I’m still enjoying it. In fact the pen-penultimate season eight episode (it could have been called, but isn’t, The One Where Rachel Will Do Anything, And I Mean Anything, To Induce The Baby) made me laugh out loud – a lot. (Is LOL-AL a thing?)

As it happens, though, Friends is a good example (oh! maybe it is about the sitcom after all) of the ‘group of friends’ scenario (hence the name of the show, obviously) which is so beloved of TV and film makers. Since I wouldn’t want anybody to think that all I do is watch fondly-remembered television comedies from the nineties, let me say that yesterday evening, in a dramatic change of pace I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral which is an entirely different kettle of fish. (It’s a fondly-remembered FILM comedy from the nineties).

Four Weddings, like Friends, like How I Met Your Mother (another favourite), revolves around a group of (mostly) unrelated but closely connected friends, who seemingly do everything together to the exclusion of anybody else. So, for example, the six friends always meet at Monica’s for Thanksgiving rather than, which I suspect would be far more likely in the real world, independently visiting their various families.

It’s an unrealistic set-up but devilishly appealing, this idea of a miscellaneous group of friends so closely-knit that they would do anything for each other. We don’t really need a detailed explanation of James Fleet’s comment that “nansy’s in residence, might knock us up a plate of eggs and bake over a late-night scrabble” to get the sense of its warm, comfortable, laugh-filled fellowship. Mr Curtis pulls the same trick (but, spoiler alert, not as well) in the not-quite-a-sequel Notting Hill which is nevertheless worth a watch even though you may find yourself pining for a wedding partway through. (Or a funeral.)

Making closer-than-close friendships seems all very easy in delightfully-mannered British films, or in fondly-remembered US comedies – or in Primary School, where you could pretty much form a lasting bond of friendship simply by asking, “do you want to be friends?” It’s far more complicated as a grown-up.

Or maybe that’s just me. Almost certainly, I suspect, in that I do find it a bafflingly elusive thing to do, forming friendships as an adult. That’s not to say that I’m unfriendly, at least I don’t think I am, but that’s not quite the same as being, and as being able to be, friendly.

My wife, on the other hand, she is willing and able to be friendly with anyone. On reflection, I’m concerned that the previous sentence sounds like a bitter euphemism for ‘slut’ so let me clarify, and quickly. It’s almost impossible for us, for example, to pop out to the shops without Mrs C sparking up a conversation with some passing stranger: often about dogs; sometimes about the difficulties, and the graphically described side-effects, of being lactose-intolerant; and occasionally about how annoying her husband is.

It’s (presumably) lovely to be so out-going and, yes, friendly. And although I’m not, I’m fortunate enough when we’re out together that I seem friendly by association. It’s a bit like David Duchovny’s comment on his character in The X Files that Scully is Mulder’s ‘human credential’, making his seeming lack of humanity or friendliness acceptable. So I suppose my wife and I are like that, she’s the human face to my awkwardness, like Mulder and Scully but without the official label of sexiest woman in the world and minus the passionate obsession with mysterious alien hybrid/government conspiracy shenanigans.

Goodness knows, really, how my wife puts up with me (assuming she still does after being variously labelled a slut and NOT the sexiest woman on the planet, in recent sentences).

I guess she’s just a really good friend.

Hello Sweetie!

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Family

There’s a sweet shop in Tintagel. (I realise it’s not quite “there is a house in New Orleans”, but bear with me).

Tintagel’s an odd sort of place. It’s overwhelmingly a tourist haven, which is inevitable I suppose given its Cornishy, coastaly nature. The main street is a long winding affair, getting narrower and twistier as it gets nearer the coast, but it’s laid out in a pleasing fashion so that the half a dozen or so carparks which lead off, do so unobtrusively, and without overshadowing the shops and businesses they’re there to service. To recap then, in a slightly more concise manner, there is ample parking.

All in all, and especially if you’re “not from round these ‘ere parts” I would imagine it’s a pleasing holiday destination, and to be fair it’s done very well to carve itself an entire tourist niche off the back of an entirely fictitious character. (I hope that in debunking the whole ‘sword in the stone’ myth in such a brutal fashion I won’t find myself barred next time I try and get in there.) You can’t walk very far without coming across the Avalon this, or the Camelot that. Not to mention the King Arthur’s Arms, which among other things does a very good cooked breakfast. (Based on the one I had a fortnight ago, anyway, which was large enough to nearly finish me off rather than the other way around).

And there’s a sweet shop. Given the previous paragraph it would be an awesome segue if it was called something like Guinevere’s Nibbles or the Lancelot Lollipop Emporium. Alas, rather more prosaically (and in our household at least, sounding ever so slightly like a euphemism) it’s called the Kernow Fudge Kitchen.

It’s a bit misleading, in that they don’t just sell fudge, and in fact our attention was first drawn to it when my wife was given some of their Peanut Brittle, with which she was more than slightly impressed. (While she was eating it, there were certain noises coming from her end of the settee which I’d never heard before. (Or at least not vertically.))

Personally I can take or leave Brittle, and I don’t much care for Peanuts; but not being the sort of people to leave unexplored a potential new avenue of sweets, we went to see for ourselves – to find that the home-made fudge (hence the shop’s name) and the brittlised peanuts (hence the adults-only noises) are just the tip of a sugar-coated iceberg. All the time we were there, I didn’t glimpse even a hint of an oompa-loompah so can only assume that the young couple running the shop really are making it all themselves as they claim (and to be fair, the enormous granite slab laden with orange-flavoured hard boiled sweets pretty much settles the matter).

I’ve been a fan of sweets for as long as I can remember. In my youth, of course, it was still the era of the sweet cigarette, and its more classy cousin the liquorice pipe. There was also, although I appear to be the only person left alive to remember them, a product called Floral Gums which were like teeny-tiny, smooth-faced, jelly-sweets, slightly tacky and smelling of soap. They were (despite all the adjectives I’ve just flung at them) absolutely gorgeous.

My favourite, though, was probably the Fruit Gum, both in the standard tubular edition and in its special, cinema-only, shaped & boxed variation. For many years, I assumed that my personal pecking order (green, yellow, orange, red, with black as the best) was the same for everybody, but apparently not!

In fact, not only does my wife put green and yellow evenly-matched at the top of the heap, she actively dislikes the black ones. This is good news for me, of course, as whenever she has a packet of Fruit Gums/Fruit Pastilles/Opal Fruits her first action is to hive off the blackcurrant ones, so that I can humanely dispose of them for her.

She complains about it, especially when there is often a disproportionate number of black fruit pastilles in a packet.

She complains about it… but I think it’s a pretty sweet deal!

Deal or No Deal

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Brexit, Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics

I really wish I was going to spend 700 words moaning about Noel Edmonds.

Alas, it’s not the bearded one (well, not that bearded one) it’s just more bloody Brexit. Hopefully, when it’s all finished and we can finally sit down and do the whole boxset in one go, it won’t seem quite as rambly and all over the place. Maybe we’ll be able to see a clear narrative structure running through it. Heck, there might even be some characters we can actually warm to. Hopefully.

At the moment, though, that’s seeming very unlikely.

In this week’s twist, Jeremy Corbyn has come up with a bizarre plan, which involves him taking over as temporary Prime Minister. I certainly didn’t see that coming, although I’m reluctant to categorically label it as Brexit’s ‘jumping the shark’ moment. There’s always the very real danger that something even dafter might be just around the corner.

As far as I can see, his plan involves getting enough votes to push through a vote of no confidence in the new Prime Minister (as played by Boris Johnson of course) but for some reason that I can’t quite follow, on this occasion it won’t prompt a General Election (cue telecine insert of Brenda from Bristol exclaiming “What? Another one?!”) but will instead mean that Jeremy, along with a mixed bag of opponents-turned-allies, forms a caretaker government.

If I’m honest it reminds me of the penultimate episode of Matt Smith’s first year as Doctor Who, when the Daleks and Cybermen and all the other halfway decent costumes kicking around the BBC Wales costume department, all got together to sort the Doctor out once and for all. (If Boris pops up on the news next week wearing a fez, that will put the tin hat on it. As it were.)

All in all, Jeremy C’s character has been written very differently this season. In earlier runs, he very nearly won the General Election, was hugely popular with the young, I mean blimey, he was even ‘bigged-up’ at Glastonbury! This time round, he’s portrayed as a bumbling, ineffectual nobody and an anti-semite –  and has an obsessive delusion that he can become Prime Minister!

Meanwhile, from almost nowhere Jo Swinson has got her name above the titles (maybe she’s got a new agent). She’s keen on Corbyn’s idea, not so keen on Corbyn – her version of pretty much the same plan means a season finale with Ken Clarke cameoing as celebrity (sorry, I mean caretaker) Prime Minister. (I picture it as being very like William Shatner guesting in Boston Legal – hugely entertaining, utterly unpredictable, and perhaps not entirely politically correct.)

The main (possibly only) point of this proposed replacement government is to ensure there is not No Deal, which is all fine and dandy up to a point – but… Well… The alternative to ‘No Deal’ is surely, in the normal, grammatical way of things, ‘Deal’? Whatever its faults the EU has been commendably consistent in making it clear over the past nine months (I know, it feels like decades, sorry) that the deal as agreed is the only deal available.

It would be an awful (in every sense of the word ‘awful’) waste of time if it turns out that having ensured ‘No Deal’ their only possible alternative is to bring back the deal that Theresa May (you know, she was in it a lot last season) tried three, maybe four, times to get through Parliament. But as far as I can see (and to be fair, as Theresa May said in episode seven) it’s her deal or no deal. So if you don’t want no deal then… well, you can probably work out the rest of that for yourself.

Maybe what’ll happen is, that Theresa May will wake up on 31st October to discover that it was all a terrible dream, that the whole of the last season never happened, that she’s still Prime Minister, and that we’re ready to leave with her original deal all approved.

Mind you, if that means she’ll then be faced with David Cameron coming out of the shower – well, then she has my sympathies.

(Run End Titles)

Spud-I-Like

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family

I’m having potatoes for tea.

I get slightly defensive about this, because my two significant others often mock me for it. (That is to say, my wife and daughter – do you really think I’d be writing about potatoes, if I had a wife AND a mistress on the go? It seems unlikely I’d find the time, or indeed the energy).

We’re having steak and chips in fact, but I’m swapping out chips for potatoes. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those mythical “didn’t even know milk comes from cows” sort of people, I do know that in essence the chip is just a potato. For all my fondness for the potato in all its many and varied forms, the chip is the exception that proves the rule and as such has never really won me over.

This being 2019 we’re using oven chips, naturally. I’m old enough to remember when the oven chip was a newbie on the market, a scandalously-convenient interloper. But that was forty years ago, and since then it’s put in the hard graft, it’s worked its way up, it’s expanded the range to include crinkle cut, long ‘n’ skinny, short ‘n’ stout. Not to mention working its way into our hearts (well, our ears anyway) with such memorable advertising campaigns as “will it be onions, fried onion rings?” – to the tune, of course, of Doris Day’s Que Sera Sera.

I realise that the previous paragraph reads like the random utterances of a bewildered mind – but my point is, that the oven chip is so ubiquitous that it should surely now be considered the de facto version of the chip; while ye olde “peel ‘n’ chop ‘n’ deep-fry your own potato” method has been consigned to the artisan or the socially-ambitious.

So though my daughter and wife are having chips, I am having boiled potatoes. (I don’t know what my mistress is having, as I’m not cooking for her, plus it’s difficult to follow the eating habits of non-existent people.) They often laugh at my dedicated adherence to the potato – my daughter would opt for rice or pasta every time over the potato, and in fact will only ever consider eating one if it’s roasted (and then only if it’s sufficiently crispy).

She far prefers pasta, to the point of coming back from work the other day with a tub full of some green pasta/pesto combination. My wife raved over it too, but I’m afraid pasta is to me generally a slimy, chewy, unsatisying affair, so I declined her invitation to try it. Maybe I’ve just not had enough pasta to have yet encountered it properly cooked, but what I have had has pretty much set the seal on my already minimal lack of adventure in that regard.

Meanwhile my wife will occasionally mention, rather mockingly, that I had never even eaten rice until I met her. This is perfectly true, and actually, other than the packet that came with a Vesta Curry in the late-70s, I’d never even seen rice until I met her. I’ve eaten plenty of it since we met, and I don’t mind it but… well, it’s hardly what you’d call a taste explosion now is it?

So I continue to wave the flag for the spud, far more versatile than pasta or rice (and don’t even get me started on couscous, of which the most enjoyable part by far is the catchy name). You can boil it, you can mash it, you can roast it – if you really want to, you can even peel ‘n’ chop ‘n’ deep-fry it to make chips. The potato is gloriously accommodating too, an indispensable aid to the amateur cook, because once they’re boiled they’ll happily stay on the hob ticking over until everything else is ready. Even on those rare occasions when they let you down and go all stringy, well, lob in some butter and mash them up and you’re good to go.

And that’s about it really. I could say a lot, lot more on the good old-fashioned spud but, well, it’s nearly time for tea and my potatoes are about done.

Gone Too Soon

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Carlisle, Childhood

I knew this girl at Primary School.

No, that’s not quite true. She was in my year but not in my class; so I suppose I knew of her rather than knew her.

I went to Primary School in the late-seventies, which was a time before the rise of fake tans and the invention of skin cancer, when we thought a Vesta curry was a mark of the exotic, and when going abroad for the holidays was a sign of affluence.

This girl, she certainly went abroad for her holidays, and would return each September sporting a beautiful deep tan. Back then there was no downside to that, it was a sign of health and wealth. There was a hint of Italian in her surname, so maybe it wasn’t money but family that allowed her to go overseas each year. But my memory is that the names bandied about were Majorca and Tenerife, holiday resorts rather than ancestral seats. Regardless, as I say, the beginning of each new school year would see her gorgeously-tanned for the first couple of weeks of term.

There were of course some who would lord that sort of thing over the rest of us, flaunting their good-fortune. There were certainly one or two such spoilt brats in our year, but I don’t recall ever hearing that she was one. By all accounts, or at least as far as my recollection of them goes, she was bright, friendly, well-liked, and a good little pupil.

And for whatever reason, for years afterwards, whenever as occasionally happens the conversation turned to the days when having a deep tan wasn’t considered unhealthy, I would cite her as an example.

This week, the combination of the start of the school holidays, some bright sunny weather, and a passing mention of Tenerife on the radio, prompted the thought of Googling her. Not in a stalkerish fashion, just to see if I could find out what she’s gone on to do in the nearly forty years since we left Primary School.

She died in 2001.

Her name was so distinctive, and the details of location and age so correct, that it has to be the same girl. Plus the search brought up a picture, similar enough to my faded memory of how she looked at ten to be the same person.

My search also brought up reference to a foundation that bears her name, offering support to those with mental health difficulties; and it produced results that referred to her death in a tragic rail accident… And I’m sad to say it soon became obvious how  those dots joined up

It’s odd. I only ever really knew her as a name and a tan. I knew who she was but can’t off-hand recall ever even speaking to her. I think she was in the school choir at the same time as me, but even that I can’t be sure of all these years later. Yet to discover she was dead at thirty has taken me aback.

On the one hand she and I are contemporaries, in 1982 we were the same age. On the other hand, I’m now forty-eight, I’m a whole generation older than she ever got to be. The (let’s be clear) suicide of a young woman, the thought of that desperation and that final awful act, is very sobering.

I’ve had my own moments, and although for me the response ended up more Reggie Perrin than Tony Hancock, nevertheless the fleeting thought was there. All barriers gone, a moment where my usual pragmatic anchors of “how will we pay the gas bill?” and “what will people say?” had no influence on me whatsoever.

Where I was lucky, where the sheer fluke of being offered a lift home was enough to carry the day, that girl was not. Thirty is no age at all and so, without claiming for a moment that I’ve been struck by an unbearable grief, nevertheless I’ve found myself thinking about her again and again these past few days.

And that’s about it, really. I’ve no conclusion, certainly no answers. Just a moment of remembrance, for a girl I never knew.

Number Ten at Number Ten

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Doctor Who, Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

Sorry, politics again.

Like Doctor Whos of the modern era, the Prime Minister has changed yet again. It’s the tenth Prime Minister since I’ve been alive – that’s an average of just under five years each, although of course there have been two long-players amongst them. (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, obviously.)

I can remember as a child hearing on the news that Jim Callaghan was leaving. (He was my third Prime Minister, whose appearance later changed after he confronted the giant spiders of Metebelis Three – and no, I won’t be getting bored of this tiresome comparison anytime soon, sorry). Other than a name and a face on the news, and what with my being not quite eight at the time, I didn’t know much about him. Not even which lot he was leader of.

But regardless of the detail, I knew he was leaving what seemed to be a pretty important job – it had to be, based on how often he appeared on TV (usually just after Grandstand and before The Generation Game). So in my political naivete I had sympathetic visions of the poor guy having to get up in the morning to go and find another job. Would he, I wondered, be on the bins by next week?

That, of course, isn’t quite how it works – some four decades on, I’ve learned from simple observation that, post-Downing Street, there’s plenty of opportunities for an ex-PM. The lecture circuit, the book deal, ludicrously high fees for ludicrously low hours in consultation or as a board member to some favoured company.

What I didn’t know until today, which is why in fact I’ve hardly mentioned Boris and haven’t even mentioned Brexit at all is that there is in fact a thing called, ‘The Public Cost Duty Allowance’.

I was already aware that the ‘golden handshake’ when you go from being an MP to suddenly not being an MP any more is rather more generous than it would be if, say, I were to go in to work on Monday and find myself given the boot – and only recently I was ranting about the over-generous allowance for maternity leave. But what I didn’t realise was that there is the aforementioned allowance “to assist former Prime Ministers with the costs of continuing to fulfil duties associated with their previous position in public life.”

It’s newsworthy today because as my brother has pointed out on Facebook, Nick Clegg has (a) managed to have the point stretched to include deputy Prime Ministers such as, just to give one example, just off the top of my head, such as himself; and (b) accordingly claimed £113,000.

I’ve put in the bit about Nick Clegg partly to have a moan and partly to give a paragraph of thinking time, to try and derive some meaning from the phrase that ended the one before, because I’m not sure what duties former Prime Ministers have to fulfil, which are associated with their previous position.

I can believe that an ex-PM gets a lot of invitations to open this, join that, speak at such and such, and whatever – but in most instances those are going to be paid engagements; and besides, they’re not to do with their role as PM, it’s just basking in  the residual chutzpah of having been PM.

That is to say: how can there be a role of ‘ex-PM’ when the duties of the role are being carried out by the new PM? If they want to go off and do this, that or the other, fine carry on, but I’m struggling to see why the rest of us are subsidising it. Is it like having a wife, but keeping a mistress?!

However it works, it seems more than generous – in respect of the newest ex-PM, I think the second ever female Prime Minister is extremely lucky that we’ll be keeping her in the manner to which she’s become accustomed.

As for Mr Callaghan, at least now I know why he wasn’t emptying our bins the following week. He of course was famously followed by the first ever female Prime Minister.

You know, the one with the long scarf and the robot dog…