A get well card to a Fleet Street legend

I am writing this in the quiet carriage on Monday’s 06.53 East Coast train from Alnmouth to King’s Cross.

That is in the completely dead and wasted time that justifies lashing out £50bn-plus on HS2 to get busy executives into London a little bit quicker.

It’s not a journey I often make these days, though for two decades it was my weekly routine. Though back then, as I recall, the train left at a psychologically advantageous few minutes past seven, and arrived in London nearly 15 minutes earlier than it does now. It is hard to interpret these changes as an improvement.

It also does not help that I lay awake nearly all night worrying about whether my car would make it to the station. This is entirely my own fault for allowing patriotism and hope to triumph over experience, inducing me to buy another British-made Land Rover product.

The distinctive clunk and jerk of an imminently failing gearbox on the approach to Branxton was the only thing that marred my visit to the “Flodden 500” commemorations there on Sunday afternoon. The floral displays in the lovely church were truly outstanding, and the battlefield itself has acquired some useful interpretation boards since I last paid it a visit many years ago.

Floral tribute to King James IV

"Surrey and his men"

The killing field of Flodden is an amazingly small space to have witnessed the end of so many thousands of lives – and for what? The union of the English and Scottish crowns a mere nine decades later confirms the truth of my late mother’s favourite mantra: “It will all be the same in 100 years’ time.”

Flodden Field, viewed from the English lines

Although Mr Salmond has timed his referendum to coincide with the Scottish victory at Bannockburn next year, I do hope that some will reflect on Flodden, and the pointlessness of division and conflict, when casting their votes.

I am becoming quite familiar with the road north to Milfield, where my aunt and I enjoyed an excellent lunch at the legendary Red Lion to set us up for Flodden.

The Red Lion's unusual bar tariff

This is because my distinguished colleague David Banks, having devoted his column last Friday to our scheduled columnists’ lunch that day in Newcastle, rang me early in the morning with the sad news that he felt too poorly to make the trip.

Later, having compressed half a day’s work into a mere two hours, I rang him back and offered him a lift. I came to regret this when I discovered that the A697 north of Powburn was largely under water, restricting the caravans travelling in my direction to a mere 20mph. (Though lorries and vans coming towards me, oddly enough, still felt that it was fine to try cornering at a terrifying 60mph-plus.)

Banksy devoted the whole similarly unnerving hour’s drive to Newcastle to an account of his recent medical history – and that was just the executive summary. I don’t think I have heard a “looking on the bright side” line to match his “at least having the leukaemia back has got rid of my diabetes” since I heard that fine old joke about the butler ringing his absent employer to report that the grand house and its priceless contents had all been burnt to a cinder, “though on the plus side, sir, all the heat has brought your spring bulbs on a treat.”

It was also no doubt good for my own health that the need to convey the Fleet Street legend back to his Tweedo Paradiso forced me to revise my original plan of getting howling drunk and then wandering aimlessly around the centre of the toon for several hours until I sobered up.

At one point my passenger remarked that it was very kind of me to make a 50-mile detour to give him a lift. I said truthfully that it was a pleasure, but wondered whether he might like to reflect that it was possible for someone to be a Tory and a fairly decent human being at the same time.

He looked at me as though I had asked him to accept that the moon is made of green cheese.

Nevertheless, despite our deep-rooted political differences, this column comes with just one message: get well, Banksy, preferably soon.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

My prayer for a summer as glorious as the Northumberland scenery

Legend has it that the mandrake plant screams if it is uprooted. I know just how it feels.

I descend from a long line of non-travellers. The only complication in researching my family history is an occasional, regrettable tendency for ancestors to sneak across the Scottish border, so that the relevant records end up in Edinburgh instead of London.

My father only left the country once, in 1944, at the absolute insistence of His Majesty the King. My more adventurous mother waited until widowhood and old age to try her one and only day trip to France, from which she returned with the fascinating discovery that “they eat frozen peas, just like us.”

As a boy, I was desperate to see the world and had a particular passion for old buildings. My father assured me that there were no finer castles than those of Northumberland, and that I had the greatest cathedral in the world just down the road in Durham.

I thought he was making excuses for his own laziness and lack of experience. Sadly he died before I realised that he had been bang right all along.

Now I find myself advancing similar arguments about the delights of Northumberland to my own family. After four years of marriage and workaday residence in Cheshire, “home” for me remains my bachelor house in the North East and I enticed my wife and sons over for the bank holiday weekend on the Met Office’s promise of stunning weather.

Typically, the strongest sunshine beat down upon the car on the way across.

I was reminded that two years ago we spent a whole August fortnight here watching the rain tip down, while a two-year-old agitated to go to the beach and build sandcastles.

True, it was reasonably pleasant, if breezy, on Sunday at the Milfield Festival of Heavy Horse, which failed to live up to my cynical expectations by actually featuring several horses.

Though my tractor-mad elder boy was a mite disappointed when the commentator’s magnificent build-up to a parade of vintage machines was followed by the sheepish confession that it would not be taking place after all, because the tractor drivers were in the beer tent.

Where I had no need to join them because we had just been treated to a truly magnificent lunch in the adjacent Red Lion by Fleet Street legend David Banks, author of the unmissable J2 Friday column.

I naturally hoped to meet at least some of the huge cast of fascinating characters with which Banksy populates his column, but sadly they all proved to be otherwise engaged. Even Mrs Banks had suddenly felt an urgent call to go for a long walk in the Cheviots, which would have been more understandable if she had ever met me.

By the time Banksy exclaimed “You’ve just missed the Byreman!” as we took our leave at the horsefest, I was beginning to experience distinct echoes of my father’s favourite James Stewart film, Harvey. With the obvious difference that Harvey the invisible white rabbit actually existed.

My family are on their way back to the North West as I write, while I am going to try and prune a large holly tree, with potentially fatal results. As I do, I shall pray not to fall off the ladder and that once, just once, my family will return to Northumberland on a perfect sunny day when it is not blowing a hooley, and say, “You and your dad were absolutely right, this really is the most wonderful place on Earth.” 

The late Michael Winner told a story of a man who prayed each eek for a big lottery win. Eventually the voice of God boomed: “Help me out here, Hymie. Buy a ticket!”

Lord, I have invested in a lovely house, so please help me out by sending us a summer in England this year. Otherwise I am going to have to succumb to a ghastly fortnight on some foreign shore and sell the home I love because keeping it is economic lunacy that would make even Gordon Brown blush.

Meanwhile, I really must explore the possibility of adopting a second name by deed poll. Mandrake has a ring to it.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Why dearer booze and free news are both seriously bad ideas

The proudest moment of my life was opening last Friday’s Journal and finding myself described by former Fleet Street editor David Banks as a “journalist”.

Up until then I had thought of myself as simply a misplaced PR man with an unprofitable hobby.

It is entirely typical that I should finally gain this longed-for recognition just when journalism is under a three-pronged attack of unprecedented ferocity.

First from the internet, and the growing assumption that all news and comment should be available instantaneously, and completely free of charge.

Secondly from the alliance of crime victims and celebrities who would impose tighter regulation, backed by statute, on the printed media. Just when the floodgates of the worldwide web stand open to disseminate limitless quantities of tittle-tattle and misinformation with almost zero prospect of correction or redress.

And finally from the threat to impose minimum pricing on the hack’s traditional relief and recreation: alcohol.

Let me deal with the last first. Apparently we all need to pay more for our booze because the centres our major cities have been made a “living hell” by cheap drink.

Really? Might it not have more to do with the halfwitted decision to abolish traditional opening hours, and the oversight of licensing by magistrates, in the vain hope of creating a sophisticated “continental café culture” rather than having the young lying around the streets in pools of their own vomit?

Not that it is just Yoof that Nanny cares about. According to campaigners, this more expensive drink will also “save the lives” of 50,000 pensioners over 10 years and massively reduce the burden on the NHS.

Except that, in the real world, those pensioners will surely die of something else that will almost certainly prove every bit as expensive to treat.

On this logic, we should also be imposing massive new price hikes on food to counter obesity, and on skis, horses, motorbikes and rugby balls to save the NHS from treating the resultant accidental injuries.

There are already laws against serving alcohol to those who have plainly consumed enough, and against being drunk and incapable or disorderly. Just as there are laws against the unlawful interception of communications through phone hacking.

Rather than holding inquiries and adding more pages to the already bulging statute book, why not first have a try at enforcing the laws we have already got?

Meanwhile the relentlessly increasing domination of nearly all our lives (not you, Auntie Leslie) by the internet makes the attempt to impose fresh rules on newspapers as relevant as the actions of those courtiers who egged on poor old King Canute to plonk himself in the path of the rising tide.

Yes, I know they call him King Cnut these days, but I couldn't risk a misprint

We need a free and unfettered press that asks awkward questions, highlights injustices and exposes wrongdoers, without outrageously invading the privacy of those who have never sought to be public figures, or otherwise breaking the law. For that to happen, we also need people willing to pay a few pence each day for a newspaper or its online equivalent.

Becoming a writer was my lifelong ambition, in admittedly lazy recognition of the fact that stringing words together is the only small talent I possess. I am delighted that it is now easier than ever before to get my work published; but considerably less happy that it is also increasingly difficult to make any money by doing so.

Yes, there are J.K. Rowling and that woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey, but they are to the mass of authors as lottery jackpot winners are to the other mugs who fork out for a ticket.

In my ideal world, reasonably priced alcohol would be served principally by responsible landlords who would ring a closing bell at 10.30 or 11pm, and send home before then anyone who was clearly the worse for wear.

Those patrons who were not engaged in conversation or traditional pub games would while away their evenings happily reading newspapers, or perhaps my latest book.

The really sad thing is that, well within living memory, something very like that earthly paradise actually existed, and it is never coming back.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Making the wrong choice about where to put the clock back

So at last the great moment arrived when David Cameron could claim his place in my pantheon of true Conservative heroes by attempting to put the clock back – and not simply because it was the end of British Summer Time.

True, it was disappointing that he chose to do it by announcing the reincarnation of the British Empire Medal.

For God and the Empire. How very un-Dave

An award for those deemed rather too common to meet the Queen, abolished by John Major in 1993 in his pursuit of a classless society. With his famous cones hotline long closed, this reversal threatens to undo one of the few defining achievements of his administration.

Sadly one small step backwards counted for little in a week when a raft of other measures betrayed Mr Cameron’s continued obsession with that falsest of gods, “progress”.

These included the attempt to “modernise” the monarchy by altering the rules of succession to give equal rights to female heirs. Few seemed to question that this was a good thing. But how can you possibly hope to drag a hereditary monarchy into the twenty-first century? It is, by its nature, a mediaeval anachronism. That is precisely why some of us find it so appealing.

Once you start tinkering with the ancient rules, people will start to wonder why we have to have the first-born son or daughter when the third in line seems so much more personable. Or, indeed, why we have to have a member of that particular family at all.

Long may she reign

The Royal Standard for Australia (never let it be said that this is not an educational column)

I cannot help thinking that this great step forward will look slightly less brilliant when some of the Commonwealth legislatures invited to amend the rules of succession decide to vote for a republic instead.

As if that were not enough, there was the bold decision in principle to defy Nature and put Britain, at least for a trial period, on Berlin rather than Greenwich time.

No need to bother with any of that nonsense - we'll cave in on the time zone issue without even being asked

A piece of craziness to rank alongside anyone ever imagining that they could place a hard-working, efficient and well-governed country like Germany in a currency union with an indolent, shambolic and corrupt one like Greece, and not face major problems.

But then the people who came up with the euro were not stupid. They always knew that it was economic nonsense. But it prepared the ground for the sort of “beneficial crisis” that would advance their goal of creating a single government for Europe.

And so, behold, it is coming to pass. Just as those derided loony Eurosceptics warned it would. And very soon the siren voices of the Europhiles will be raised again, warning that Britain cannot afford to be left behind as this “inevitable” Union progresses.

In fact they are at it already, with David Banks reminding us in his column on Friday about “the £150m Brussels earmarked this year to build jobs and prosperity in the North East”. Only it’s OUR money. Britain is the second largest net contributor to the great EU racket.

Being grateful for handouts we have paid for is a bit like thanking a mugger who considerately hands you a tenner for your cab fare home after he has pinched your wallet.

Take an issue about which a large chunk of the population feel strongly, whether that be capital punishment or the extinction of our independence as a nation, and you can be sure that the reaction of the political class will be to close ranks, stick their fingers in their ears and chant “La la la not listening” until we go away.

Except that, in an attempt to put the inconvenient European issue to bed, they have already passed an act requiring a referendum on any future treaty change that hands more power to Brussels. One of the delights of the coming months will be watching them trying to weasel out of that promise as the United States of Europe emerges unmistakably from the euro crisis.

But why worry? We will all be able to enjoy an extra hour of daylight in which to polish our BEMs and pray that the Duchess of Cambridge may be safely delivered of a girl. Because otherwise an awful lot of valuable Parliamentary time will have been expended in vain.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Would a Sanilav rose smell as sweet?

Whatever became of Phyllosan? Not so long ago you couldn’t turn on the telly without someone telling you that it fortified the over-forties (without, as I recall, ever explaining how).

Then you turn your back for a second and find it has vanished into that great brand lumber room in the sky, along with the likes of Spangles and Oxydol.

That’s my first idea for selling the naming rights of my house knackered, then. I thought it had just the right ring to it after I passed a youngish couple in the road discussing “that old bloke who writes for The Journal” who lived nearby.

I entertained a brief flash of hope that David Banks might have moved into the neighbourhood, before reluctantly concluding that they meant me.

Still, I see that Sanatogen tonic wine is still being manufactured, so I suppose I had better fire off an email inviting them to bid. The challenge is to think of some others to make it a meaningful competition. Grecian 2000? Stannah stairlifts? Dry For Life incontinence pants?

At least if I end up living at DryForLife House it will cause less confusion to delivery drivers than The Old Smithy, of which there are at least four within a three mile radius.

Fortunately selling the sponsorship rights for my clothes should be much simpler. I feel sure that the marketing departments of Greggs and Weighwatchers will soon be engaged in a frenzied bidding war for the right to have their names blazoned across the back of my straining suits.

The car will have to become the DFSmobile, because it boasts really comfy leather seats and I would like to be associated with the original and best rather than some three-initialled clone competitor.

Similarly it is no contest for our other home, which simply has to be MumsGonetoIceland House given that mum does actually work for Iceland when she’s not on maternity leave.

Finally, I’m close to signing with a well-known contraceptive manufacturer on the naming rights for the baby’s buggy, or for the baby himself if they can meet my asking price. This will provide a timely warning that it’s never safe to assume you’re too old for something like that to happen.

Not a bad morning’s work, really. I’m certainly making more progress than those characters at St James’ Park. Though even that sorry tale pales into insignificance compared with the news that the authorities at my old university are to mark its 800th anniversary by offering “the ultimate commemorative naming opportunity” to re-brand Cambridge University Library in honour of the highest bidder.

I cling to the very faint hope that this might be some dry, donnish joke. But one Cambridge college recently adopted a new, double-barrelled name at the behest of a benefactor, so I fear not.

The difficulty, once you start down this road, is finding anywhere to draw the line.

In a few months’ time, we may perhaps see the Nike Queen driving from Kraft Buckingham Palace in the Nestlé State Coach to open the new session of the Tesco Parliament by reading the speech prepared for her by the Smythson of Bond Street Prime Minister.

Would it really matter all that much, given that it will be an increasingly empty charade as real power continues to gurgle down the plughole to the Gazprom European Union under the terms of the EDF Lisbon Treaty?

And would any of us object too vociferously, if reminded that sponsorship was easing some of the burden of increased taxation that we are otherwise going to face in the years ahead? Why not “go with the flow” and remember that there is no reason to fear the secret police of our new dictatorship. Their PR advisers will almost certainly ensure that they are sponsored by a kiddie-friendly company with a smiling face.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.