Sun. Hat on. Hip hip hip hooray

23 July, 2012 (13:25) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

Wow. A day in the garden; the hot sweet scent of charcoal mingling with the evocative tang of cut grass;  family cricket; water pistol fights; wet clothes – yes, wet T-shirts too! – drying in the sun; roses climbing; honeysuckle wafting beauty by the gate to the field; the dog lying in the shade with a six-foot tongue hanging out, panting from water fights with the boys; the polytunnel so hot it steams up my glasses to walk in there; fresh sugary peas straight from the pod into a salad of  crisp leaves, dates and feta; a sparrowhawk taking off lazily from high in the field; cold beer from the fridge; fish in the pond basking in dapples of light; Test Match Special sounding through the open window;  chasing the sun round the garden through the day; heat in the bones, peace in the air, sunshine in the heart.

And people try to tell us there’s no such thing as a depressive disorder caused by wet grey weather….

Clearly we had bickering and upset yesterday, too. We’ve got children, after all. But boy, on the whole, what utter delight it was. It’s only when the joy of a sunny day comes back into your life, I think, that you really get a grip on what you’ve been missing.

But don’t get carried away. There’s always the wide world to bring the storm clouds scudding back into your head.

Cabinet members, according to Culture Secretary Jeremy *unt, have openly discussed sacking workers who go on strike during the Olympics. There’s widespread condemnation of unions for even considering the move. Spoil the Olympics? Why, that would be a terrible way to treat a massive national event that’s only cost billions, left charities short, disrupted everybody’s lives, brought Boris Johnson and Seb Coe onto our TV screens on a daily basis in a sort of Odd Couple of the dark side act, bored the arse off a nation, allowed disgusting officials and corporations to impose their brand tyranny, flaunted massive wealth at a time of hundreds of thousands of job losses, allowed massive tax avoidance by the wealthy, exposed laughable incompetence and…

Jeez. We should be begging the unions to go on strike. Imagine if strike action spared us the tedium of 24-hour drivel about shooting, diving, running and tax avoidance. (If you still think the Olympics worth the candle, follow Brother Fiddle’s excellent link: http://www.fleetstreetfox.com/2012/07/welcome-to-metashambles.html )

But no: there is no circumstance under which unions are permitted to be even tolerated in Daily Mail England. Striking workers will steal your car and shag your granny. We believe Jeremy *unt and the Daily Mail, don’t we?

So we blithely permit people to talk about curbing and then ending freedoms for which millions of people fought and died. Christ.

At any time like this I think of my maternal grandad, who didn’t meet my mother until she was five as he served abroad for five years in the Navy during World War Two. He’s been dead a long time, but my Dad remembers him. Gramps never talked about curbing the unions or stopping people from having their legitimate say, because he remembered when working people had no say whatsoever; he remembered his farm cottage by the light of a single candle, the whole family in one bed, meat once a week. Dad, of course, doesn’t talk about curbing the unions either. He remembers working before there were unions too. Because he was tiny – malnourishment, because his father had no union to look out for him and so wasn’t paid enough to feed his family when he could find work – employers shoved him inside ship tanks full of asbestos with no protection, to scrape out the deadly dust. They’d known asbestos killed since the turn of the century, but because there were no unions to insist on decent treatment for employees, they were able to sentence my father and thousands like him to the probability of a coughing, bloody, agonising death from the cancer asbestos plants in your lungs.

Even when a union follows the law limiting people’s employment rights and jumps through all the democratic hoops required, that’s still not enough for the Daily Mail classes. A vote in favour of action from members? Not good enough. Not enough voted. Any different to our government by a minority of the electorate on a two-thirds turnout on policies they didn’t even bother to put to the vote? Apparently not.

No, let the free market sort it all out. Stop the unions striking and let free market business leaders lead – they’ll get us all out of trouble, don’t worry. There’s no need for workers’ democracy and certainly no need for anybody else to get involved in cramping the style of the business executives who’d lead us out of this mess, right?

Absolutely. Oh… unless you’re a security corporation, of course, or a bank, maybe, to use just two examples – then you’ll go running straight into the welcoming arms of the state and the Daily Mail will be delighted the state is here to bail you all out again. Yet again.

Jeez. I know I may have rambled on a bit, but there really aren’t words in the English language adequate to contain the utter contempt I feel for the cretins who dumbly, obediently follow their rich boy leaders’ example and bash the unions. I mean, George Osborne wants to stop hardliners holding Britain to ransom, apparently, and is so arrogantly careless that he has no appreciation of the irony of that statement in the wake of the bankers’ global financial crisis. Short memories and tiny brains and no respect and absolutely no idea whatsoever just how grateful they should be for the existence of such freedom in their lives. No idea at all.

Now, where did that sunshine go?

Sun. Hat On. Boo.

Boo? Because the coincidental arrival of the sun and the start of the school holidays means goodbye to our Cornish roads for a few months, and hello to pasties at £4.95 “with side salad” (a cucumber), hello to all the consequences of putting every economic egg in one basket, the one marked ‘tourism’. Here’s a snap from Sister WizardWoman which nicely sums it up, as ever:

Classical rag

Fun on twitter last week with a trend on classical music versions of famous pop songs (#classicalsongs): I offered Crosby Stills and Nash’s My Strauss (is a very very nice Strauss) and Ring My Pachelbel, but could have added It’s a Kind of Magic Flute or Let It Bizet…. Go on, join in.

And finally… a world exclusive

Talking of the Olympics, I can exclusively reveal the identity of the person entrusted with kindling the Olympic flame at the sparkling opening ceremony to which we’ve all been looking forward – it is unemployed teenager Connor Sweeney, from Peckham in London.

As director Danny Boyle’s 18-hour extravaganza celebrating the spirit of modern Britain reaches its emotional conclusion, Sweeney, clad in a red, white and blue hoody, will ceremonially club torch-bearing Olympic legend Sir Steve Redgrave to the ground with a baseball bat.

The 18-year-old will then brandish a symbolic wallet lifted from inside the legendary rower’s Lycra shorts, before using Sir Steve’s discarded torch to light a rag stuffed inside a milk bottle filled with petrol.

As an honour guard of four heavily overweight Police Community Support Officers clutching engraved gilt overtime forms puff after him shouting abuse, Sweeney will toss his blazing Molotov cocktail into the Olympic cauldron to officially start London 2012.

Rival street gangs of unemployed youths, indebted students and redundant public sector workers high on a cocktail of stolen Bacardi Breezers, bath salts and cough medicine will then roam Boyle’s elaborate £47million set, recreating scenes of traditional British inner city rioting as fireworks light up the night sky. A handful of security guards will slowly and deliberately turn their backs on the celebrations.

Sir Steve’s Olympic torch will be extinguished in another moment of high pageantry drawing deep on British tradition. It will be held up in front of a replica suburban front door, and then pissed on by the Duke of Edinburgh with the words: “By Christ, I needed that. Is this over with yet?”

 

 

Comments

Comment from Bertie
Time July 25, 2012 at 12:35 pm

I was willing to give the olympics the benefit of the doubt (?) until the interview with Lord Coe (if you can become a Lord for running fast, why isn’t half of any inner city’s “yoof” in the House?) where he stated that “if you are wearing the wrong branded t-shirt or pair of trainers, then you may well be refused entry to the olympics”……….WHAT!?

And on a rather more upsetting note, deepest sympathies to our freindly sister behind the bar. My God, does make you think just how fragile life is, doesn’t it?

Comment from Stuart
Time July 25, 2012 at 8:53 pm

Brother Bertie’s kind thoughts have prompted a couple of e-mails and calls, so I guess I’d better just post this so you all know what’s happened. Our Sister, Laura, lost her partner Mike in an accident yesterday; they are both in their 20s and planning their life together. It is the most appalling tragedy, and I know all hearts go out to our poor Sister. I know the Church House will keep everybody posted on news, including any tributes or collections.

Comment from Hamster
Time July 27, 2012 at 9:23 pm

This weeks Hamster Top Tip – Thinking of you x.

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