You Always Remember The First Time

Our first day at school; our first day at work; the first time we watched the sports team that we still follow, donkey’s years later. All memorable events, all occasions we remember to some degree or another.

 

I remember my first day at secondary school if only for one thing. At break time our teacher – Mrs Lovegrove – told us to go and get our milk before remembering that it was no longer provided to secondary school pupils thanks not, as you might imagine, to Margaret Thatcher (‘Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher’ as the popular refrain dubbed her) but to Labour Secretary of State for Education and Science Edward Short. While Short withdrew it for secondary school pupils in 1968, Conservative Education Minister Mrs Thatcher took it from children over seven in 1971. Another Labour politician – Shirley Williams - did away with it for all children of school age in 1977.[1]      

 

This man stole my school milk.

I remember the first time I saw my team, Romford FC play. 10^th February 1968, the opponents were Guildford City, and Romford won 1-0 (see my blog Romford 1 Manchester United 0).

 

I remember my first day at work, if only for my feelings of trepidation and the pale grey checked suit from Burton’s that I wore, with its near bell-bottomed trousers and lapels almost as wide as an aircraft carrier’s flight deck.

 

No matter how much - or how little - we remember of the first time we did something, we all knew at the time that it was the first time we had done that particular thing, whether we hated it or loved it.

 

The last time we do something can be very different.

 

There are some things that we know, when we do them, we will never do again; there are some we don’t.

 

We know, at the time we leave school, that that is the last time we’ll go there (as a pupil at least). We probably know the time we leave work for the last time. Some people may retire, or be made redundant and subsequently return to work, but we generally know when we have done our last day in a particular job, or with a particular employer.

 

There are some things that we never know at the time we do them, that we will never do again, and while some are relatively inconsequential, some are highly significant.

 

I remember in 1978, ten years after I had watched Romford play for the first time, that I went to their game against Aylesbury United not knowing that it would be the last time I saw them play. The club folded at the end of the 1977-78 season, and I did not manage to get to the last game the club played, which was at Folkestone, not that I would have known then that it would be the club’s last match either, as it was expected (or at least hoped) that the club would survive to compete in 1978-79.[2]

 

Supporters of football clubs like Bury, and Macclesfield Town will likewise have had no idea that a certain game they watched would be the last one in which they see their team play, in that particular guise anyway. The last game that Bury played was on 4^th May 2019, and no one in the 6,719 crowd would have known that they may not see them play again (plans to relaunch the club are in the pipeline, but whether they will succeed is moot. A breakaway club – AFC Bury – have started playing, but they are a separate entity).

 

Bury supporters celebrate promotion in 2019. Will they ever see their team again?
Picture: Andy Whitehead

And, in light of the current pandemic that means that clubs from the Premier League down to the National League’s North and South divisions are having to play behind closed doors, none of the supporters of those 159 clubs can know with any certainty whether they will ever see them play in the flesh again.

 

In the grand scheme of things - and as important as sport is to so many millions of people - seeing your team play for the last time – whether you know it or not – is something you get over (any Bury supporters reading this might not believe it, but I assure you it’s true). Death, however is another matter.

 

We rarely know, when we see someone, that it will be the last time we see them alive. Christmas Day 2014 was the last time I saw my Mum. After lunch I took her home as she was feeling tired; she died of a heart attack a few days later. At least the last time I spent with her was a happy time for her, with the rest of the family. I didn’t get to speak to her again – we often went a few days without calling one another, nothing unusual or untoward in that – and of course I had no idea when I said goodbye to her that Christmas afternoon that we’d never see each other or speak again.

 

It is probably just as well that we don’t usually know, to be honest. I can’t imagine how sad and bewildering it would be to say goodbye to someone apparently in good health, knowing that you’d never see them again.

 

To return to less maudlin matters, all of us will have things we did before COVID that we may now wonder if we will ever do again. For me, that’s principally going to the BBC to see radio shows recorded, and going to gigs. I had twenty-odd gigs and shows booked for 2020, and I saw two before lockdown. The last time I went to the BBC was back in February for a recording of Brain of Britain.

 

Brain of Britain host Russell Davies

Have I been to the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House for the last time? If I have, I certainly didn’t know it when I saw that recording of Brain of Britain. Have I been to my last gig? I hope not. The majority of the shows I was supposed to see in 2020 have been rescheduled, although I’m not particularly sanguine about the ones I have booked for April and May next year, and there are already shows in 2021 that have been put back to 2022. In an act of either optimism or stupidity, I bought a ticket this week for a gig in November 2021. I’m not sure if it will go ahead as scheduled; if I’m honest, I suspect not.

 

Joe Stilgoe's was the last live show I saw

I haven’t been to a pub since March or a restaurant since even longer. I haven’t been on a plane or to a different country for over a year. There are friends I haven’t seen for months, and don’t know when I’ll see them again. There are so many things that I haven’t done for so long that I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever do them again.

 

I’m not complaining, goodness knows I’m a lot better off than a lot of people in many, many ways, but I’ll be sad if there are things that I never get the opportunity to do again.

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[1] If I hadn’t checked I would have just have assumed that my secondary school milk was a victim of Margaret Thatcher. It’s quite interesting that Labour was responsible for the withdrawal of milk from more children than Thatcher was, yet that she is the only one who gets mentioned when the subject crops up.

[2] A new Romford FC formed in 1992, and I’m watching them to this day, but technically it isn’t the same club.

The Congestion Charge - Coming To A Road Near You Soon?

Every time I have to drive south of the river, I thank goodness that I don’t have to do it very often. If you live, or work, and have to drive in South London on a regular basis then you have both my admiration and my sympathy.

 

While much of the North Circular is dual carriageway with parts that actually move at an average speed greater than walking pace, I have never been entirely clear where its South London equivalent – the South Circular – actually is, and the parts of it I have apparently used seem to be a motley collection of joined up suburban High Streets.

 

The North Circular...

Perhaps this is merely prejudice and lack of knowledge on my part, after all there are parts of London in my neck of the woods where traffic is slow moving and there are regular bottle-necks, but the supposed reluctance on the part of cabbies to venture over London’s bridges in a southerly direction may be as much to do with the road network as it is with the alleged impossibility of getting a fare in the opposite direction.

 

...and the South Circular

In pre-M25 days (London’s orbital motorway opened in 1975 and was completed in 1986), the North Circular was the most viable means of getting from where I live, in Romford, to the start of the M1 (sometimes it’s still a more attractive proposition than the M25, depending on traffic) even though little of it featured the six lane dual carriageway that now dominates the road’s 25 mile length. In contrast, the majority of the 20 miles of the South Circular is single carriageway, and a much less enticing alternative to the M25.

 

From my home, most journeys to South London are most efficiently completed by crossing the QEII Bridge at Thurrock and using the M25 before heading ‘inland,’ even though this requires paying the toll on the bridge and driving perhaps nearly twice as many miles; under normal circumstances the longer route will be quicker. How practical this is may change however, if the dreaded London Congestion Charge zone becomes extended, as seems to be becoming a very real possibility.

 

The Congestion Charge was introduced in 2003, covering the approximate area within London’s Inner Ring Road (not to be confused with either the North and South Circulars, or the M25) with a charge of £5 Monday to Friday between the hours of 7am and 6pm. Now, largely due to COVID-19 requiring Transport for London (TfL) to make up for lost revenue due to their being fewer paying punters using their services, it runs from 7am to 10pm, seven days a week and costs £15 per day. Residents living within or very near the charging zone receive a 90% discount, although currently the discount scheme is closed to new residents, and someone using the zone for an average of 230 days in a year would pay £3,500 for the privilege.

 

The possibility of the Congestion Charge zone extending to include everywhere within the North Circular and South Circular Roads has been mooted because of the losses suffered by TfL in the last few months, and extending the scheme may be the price that the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the Greater London Authority have to pay for receiving Government support.

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week attacked Mayor Khan in Parliament, claiming that TfL was effectively bankrupted by the Mayor, even before COVID-19. Khan responded that he had cut the operations deficit by 71% since 2016, and increased reserves by 16% in the same period, but that a 90% reduction in income from fares meant that TfL needed the bailout he was asking for. Johnson also attacked Khan over the closure of Hammersmith Bridge, which is in desperate need of repair.

 

It is of course important to note that Khan took over as Mayor from Johnson, who was responsible for the TfL deficit which Khan had been reducing, and who preferred to spend money on imaginary bridges - £53 million on the failed Garden Bridge project – than on real ones, like Hammersmith. During his time as Mayor, Johnson also presided over the introduction of the highly anticipated, but ultimately largely unloved, new Routemaster bus, and the purchase of water cannons, intended for crowd control in the wake of the 2001 riots, which were sold off in 2018 at a loss in excess of £300,000. 

Johnson was also Mayor when the Emirates Airline cable car from the Greenwich Peninsular to the Royal Docks began operations. It has singularly failed to meet expectations in terms of passenger numbers. In all, the projects that Johnson initiated during his eight year tenure cost Londoners £900 million, and much of that was poor value for money.

 

An artist's impression of the proposed Garden Bridge - £53m well spent?

Even the relative success of the so-called ‘Boris bikes’ is a tad over-rated, especially since it wasn’t his idea, the concept having been proposed by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone. Interestingly, although the bikes were originally sponsored by Barclays Bank, and are now branded with the name of another financial institution – Santander - operation of the scheme is contracted by TfL to Serco, who appear to be the ‘go to’ company when national or local government contracts are being handed out.

 

The Emirates Air Line - the little used cable car was another of Johnson's pet projects as Mayor

In exchange for a bail out for TfL, it is thought that in addition to the Government wanting to extend the range of Congestion Charge as mentioned earlier, there would likely be an above inflation fares increase in London, and a new council tax precept charge for an as yet unspecified amount.

 

Most commuters are used to swingeing annual fare increases, but the proposed council tax precept charge on top of above inflation fare increases could mean London’s commuters paying twice over in the coming months. This will hit hardest at the low paid, and those whose jobs do not allow them to work from home – largely the same group – while extending the Congestion Charge zone would impact them financially at other times, for example when going shopping.

 

But extending the Congestion Charge zone outwards to the North and South Circular roads may not be the end of the matter. Once that comes to pass the day will not be far behind when someone decides that including all of London’s thirty-two boroughs within the charge zone would be a good wheeze, and with 2.66 million cars in the capital in 2018, a lucrative source of toll road income to boot.

 

The M25

But why stop there? The logical extent to which London’s Congestion Charge zone could stretch is the M25, and on the day that happens the majority of motorists within it will be trading in their cars for something cheaper, like a bike or roller skates.

 

Further reading: The Spectator has a piece on Johnson, Khan, and TfL funding that is worth a look. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/devolution/2020/10/who-s-blame-tfl-s-funding-crisis-it-s-not-sadiq-khan

 

Indistinguishable from Magic

I recently discovered The Boys on Amazon Prime. I’m binge-watching it at present and started writing this when I’d got to the penultimate episode in the first season; by the time you read this, I will probably have finished the second season. *

 

The Boys has been described as a superhero show for people who don’t like superheroes, and I wouldn’t dispute that, although I happen to like superheroes (well, some). Much has also been made of Karl Urban’s accent in the show. Urban plays Billy Butcher, a former member of the British special forces who is on a mission to bring down the superheroes (‘supes’) - especially Homelander, who he believes is responsible for the disappearance of his wife - and his accent lurches alarmingly from Urban’s native New Zealand to Mockney in a manner that suggests it’s probably deliberate.

 

The supes in The Boys are the antithesis of the archetypical superhero. Corrupt, lawless, and controlled and monetised by Vought International, whose goal is to integrate The Seven (their top superheroes, analogous to DC Comics’ Justice League) into the US military. Butcher’s rag-tag band of vigilantes aim to bring them down, turning the usual superhero tropes on their head: the bad guys are the good guys, and vice versa.

 

Creators of superheroes inevitably build into their characters some flaw or vulnerability. Superman’s inability to penetrate lead with his x-ray vision and his weakness against kryptonite for example, without which his character would be unbeatable. Actually, Superman’s near invulnerability makes him the dullest and most boring of all the superheroes in the DC or Marvel universes. Batman and Ironman, who have no superpowers but rely on their wits and technology are the most interesting of all the heroes.

 

Much popular science fiction, or fiction that features superheroes or wizards has a fundamental problem. The only rules that restrict the heroes are the ones imposed by the creators. Technically, science fiction ought to abide by the laws of physics, but as we have yet to develop faster than light travel, time travel, teleporters, etc, etc, we have to suspend disbelief and go with the ‘near science’ that writers invent to explain away their complete disregard for nature’s laws. In fairness, there are some writers – Arthur C Clarke, James Blish, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven to name a few – whose works are characterized by a concern for scientific accuracy and logic, but others…

 

Arthur C Clarke

Take Star Trek. I can remember watching and thoroughly enjoying the original series when it first appeared on TV screens in Britain, although the corny lines and cheap special effects were apparent even then; who can forget the episode featuring Kirk versus the Gorn? The Next Generation (TNG) has its moments – episodes featuring The Borg are particularly enjoyable – but where Next Generation really gets on my nerves is with the jury-rigged enhancements made to the USS Enterprise that are – to borrow from Arthur C Clarke’s third law – “indistinguishable from magic.”

 

Kirk v The Gorn

Clarke’s third law states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and in Star Trek TNG it seems that almost every single episode features Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge creating – as if by magic – a solution to a seemingly insoluble problem.

 

Less Engineer, more Wizard

Usually, there is some requirement for the Enterprise to travel faster than the supposed safe upper limit of warp 9, or for the ship to travel through time, or to become cloaked, or to become capable of some other hitherto unthought-of functionality. Thus, La Forge, or Data, or the two together, will come up with some gibberish about reconfiguring the warp core and concatenating the frequency modulations with the energy field created by some stellar object, which will enable the ship to travel at speeds in excess of warp9/travel through time/become cloaked/all of these (delete as appropriate).

 

And once this has been successfully implemented and the mission accomplished, this groundbreaking technological achievement is never mentioned again. Until the next time the Enterprise needs to travel at speeds in excess of warp9/travel through time/become cloaked/all of these, in which case La Forge, or Data, or the two of them together, will come up with some new solution to the problem.

 

Did Captain Picard never have to give feedback to Starfleet Command? Does he never get asked how the Enterprise managed to travel at speeds in excess of warp9/travel through time/become cloaked/all of these? You would think that these wondrous technological advances would be seized upon by Starfleet, developed and refined, and then rolled out across the fleet, but no, they remain the Enterprise’s amnesic little secret.

 

These sort of narrative devices – the modern-day equivalents of the “with one bound he was free” trope – diminish any sense of jeopardy and are thoroughly boring. Back in the 1960s, the Batman TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward made a feature out it by having Batman and Robin left in some fiendish trap at the end of one episode, from which they would escape by some highly implausible, but highly ingenious trick in the next. One I especially remember is the dynamic duo using some discarded chewing gum to block the air hole of the altimeter in the basket of a hot air balloon in which they are slowly rising and from which they would have plunged to their deaths had they reached a certain altitude. 

It worked in Batman because the whole thing was played for laughs – each week I would try to guess how the duo would escape the trap they found themselves in; I never guessed one – but in TNG, or Harry Potter to name another, it’s a bit ho-hum. The characters in Harry Potter get themselves out of trouble by waving a wand and muttering some incantation, but even that is less of a cop-out than Star Trek’s introduction of magical technology.

 

Accepting that a fantastical subject, be it science fiction, magic, or superheroes, requires a huge suspension of disbelief and at no point in The Boys did I think “that’s ridiculous” because the whole thing is ridiculous, but it follows its own internal logic.

Despite the gore (the body count is alarmingly high, there’s claret and dismembered bodies all over the place), and the language, which is definitely suitable for post-watershed viewers only, The Boys has its tongue firmly in its cheek, and all the better for it.

 

* I have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Troubled Minds

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling found herself in hot water recently after a remark that she made was deemed by some people to be transphobic. I have no idea what she said, nor do I have any intention of finding out, but whatever it was, it provoked some of those with minds troubled enough to be offended to post pictures of them burning their Harry Potter books and vowing never to read anything by her again.

 

Rowling’s latest novel in the Cormoran Strike detective series, Troubled Blood, written under her pen name of Robert Galbraith, attracted similar criticism for apparent transphobia. Some of the criticism came in reviews written by critics who later conceded that they had not actually read the book, although this is a quote from a review posted on Amazon by someone who claims to have done so. “To see this novel contain a man dressing as a woman as a murderous and dangerous killer is an awful and tired trope in story writing. These type of portrayals increase people's prejudice against people and fuel the idea that they are malicious, perverted individuals.” Troubled Blood is nearly 900 pages long; the reference to a convicted serial killer who admits to having worn a woman’s coat and “a wig, bit of lipstick … they think you’re harmless, odd … maybe queer” to lull his victims into a false sense of security covers less than one paragraph. To frame a whole book as transphobic on that basis is laughable.

 

That reviewer also slates the book for being awfully written, for having predictable characters. They say they struggled to read it and did not enjoy it, which makes me doubt that they read it at all; why persevere with a book you so obviously hate, and probably decided you would hate before embarking on reading it? I admit that I was a little daunted by the page count before I started Troubled Blood, but I raced through it and having read all of Rowling’s Strike novels, I have to say that this was the one I enjoyed the most.

 

It’s unlikely that Troubled Blood is the only thing that has offended the reviewer on Amazon recently since we now live in a world in which taking offence at things seems to be the default position for many people, and expressing it in reviews or on social media an almost everyday event. When the concept that black lives matter came to prominence on social media recently it was responded to by many with the refrain, “all lives matter.” I see many of those same people now promoting “blue lives matter” without any apparent difficulty. If all lives matter, where is the need to say that blue lives matter?

 

A lot of people on social media are currently offended by the fact that October is Black History Month. “When is white history month?” they cry, in much the same way as they greet International Women’s Day with the question as to when is International Men’s Day, or, in response to Gay Pride, when Straight Pride takes place. Those who are offended by Black Lives Matter seem also to be very exercised by black faces in TV adverts for companies such as Argos, and to return to Black History Month, Sainsbury’s have rather got it in the neck from actor Laurence Fox who says he will boycott the store due to their support. I cannot find him leading a boycott of the National Health Service, which is also celebrating Black History Month, but presumably he will be deregistering himself from his GP and/or dentist as we speak, and will eschew any NHS services should he fall ill in the future.

Laurence Fox seems, from other tweets and in articles that feature him, to be perpetually angry and offended. I can understand him deciding to stop shopping at Sainsbury’s because they are too expensive, or don’t stock items he wants, or because he thinks the quality of their products isn’t up to scratch, but other than offending his sensibilities, I struggle to see how he is adversely affected by their support of Black History Month. Presumably the fact that the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and of the Lib-Dems also support Black History Month was a driver in his decision to form his own political party.

The Sainsbury’s Twitter account eloquently rebutted one twitterer asking about white history day, and to those offended by the presence of black actors in TV ads, just ask yourself this: If you find it so objectionable to see someone of different ethnicity on TV, how do you think those still under-represented groups of our society feel when the default on TV is white, straight, and largely male? One also has to ask, why do people find it so objectionable, why are their minds so troubled by people different from them? I fear that many responses would start, “Well, I’m not racist, but…”

 

It is true to say that most people have a tendency to follow social media accounts that reflect their own interests, beliefs, and opinions. Social media creates bubbles in which one’s own views, prejudices, and opinions are reflected, and reinforced, and in which anything critical or in opposition to those positions is characterised as being woke (my goodness, there is a word I detest), or virtue signalling by people commonly characterised as snowflakes. On the other hand, there are accounts on social media that people follow with which they perpetually disagree, and while it is good to expose oneself to views that differ from one’s own, to do so merely to dismiss or insult these positions is as bad as immersing oneself in the echo chambers.

 

Frankly, I marvel at the stamina of some of those people who maintain a constant stream of criticism of social media posts that offend them; I find it tiring enough just reading them. It is often the case, however, that I come across something on Twitter or Facebook with which I disagree, or which I know is factually inaccurate, and am tempted to respond. Sometimes I get to the point of typing a response; more often than not, although my mouse may hover over the reply button, I delete the comment and move on. Largely this is because it is apparent from the post or comment that the other person has views so deeply entrenched that they will brook no argument; mostly it is because my life is better for ignoring it and moving on.