Broadsides – A collection of bits and pieces
"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
Ireland the restaurants were allowed to reopen earlier this week and last night, for the first time in months and months, I think the last time was in November, I dined out at a proper real restaurant. I had quite forgotten the delights and pleasures of dining out, of being attended by pleasant waiting staff,... Continue Reading →
There are few unions as powerful and effective as the National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport workers, or the RMT as it is more popularly known. And there are few unions as radical as they are in the political world of the Labour Movement. It’s officers and its executive are all rank and file... Continue Reading →
Across from the Union office, on Nottingham’s Sherwood Rise, was this nursing home for the elderly. Privately owned it employed some twenty or so care staff in a very large old Victorian rather splendid house with extensive gardens. The care staff were, as is nearly always the case, underpaid and called upon to work excessive... Continue Reading →
Every year, for the god knows how many years now, we take a house, for the whole of August, in Edinburgh, for the Festivals. In recent years it has been a gorgeous eighteenth-century property on the ancient and cobbled George Square, complete with chandeliers and a vaulted basement dining room and loads of bedrooms for... Continue Reading →
There is an element of despair in remaining a member of the Labour Party. The leadership campaign is utter vanilla, entirely without life. The Tories always have more exciting and contested leadership battles, that’s a given, but this is tediously vanilla. I have been a party member for donkey’s years. Always on the left. I... Continue Reading →
Several years ago I penned a piece about traffic warden John Hancock, a man who i thought to be, and still do, a proper Nottingham character, someone who contributed a unique slice of spice to our somewhat dullish lives. He was not well pleased with the piece, not angry, but not well pleased. There were... Continue Reading →
The fascists are coming. New fascists, authoritarian, intolerant, ruthless. They will not be wearing brown shirts, nor, for Ireland, blue shirts*. They will be clad in shirts of hemp, or perhaps suits of hemp; possibly green hemp, or maybe blue; not jackboots but comfortable footwear, eco-friendly, non-leather, organic. They will be of the state, by... Continue Reading →
I must have walked past the war memorial on platform one of Paddington station a hundred times or more. It’s a very fine large bronze of a WWI soldier, designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger. He is well wrapped up against the cold and rain, wearing his steel helmet and looking down, reading a letter from... Continue Reading →
I must have walked past the war memorial on platform one of Paddington station a hundred times or more. It’s a very fine large bronze of a WWI soldier, designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger. He is well wrapped up against the cold and rain, wearing his steel helmet and looking down, reading a letter from... Continue Reading →
This is Field Marshall Edwin Bramall, KG, GCB, OBE, MC, JP, DL, a proper soldier’s soldier. Long before I became a member of the Labour Party, I too was a soldier. I served with Bramall in Borneo, which was a hot war, and in the cold war that was Europe. I never met another soldier,... Continue Reading →
I flinch from cancer stories, avert my eyes, turn my head. Avoid. If it's on the radio I turn down the sound, on the TV, I change the channel. It is all too painful, I fear I will be overwhelmed. I frequently am overwhelmed. I have, we all have, lost friends, close friends, comrades, co-worker’s, family to cancer. It has... Continue Reading →
Florence first. In the footsteps of Dante, of Michelangelo, of Botticelli, of the Duma and of David, of the Medici, the Ponte Vecchio, stepping back into the Renaissance. A city of alleyways and lanes and Lambretta’s and art, the most glorious art in of all Italy, in all the world. You would hardly be surprised,... Continue Reading →
You can catch a bus to Ripley, from Leeds Bus station. Number 36. It takes you all across the dales to North Yorkshire and drops you off right outside the Boars Head in Ripley, which was where I was staying for a four-day Yorkshire Break. Ripley is one of those handsome stone built Yorkshire villages... Continue Reading →
I went to see “Aye, Elvis”. It was such good fun. It’s a musical. So poignant , I laughed tears and wept at the pathos. A Scottish woman, leading desperately lonely life, looking after her wheelchair bound mother, working for next to nothing as a checkout girl at the local supermarket, not well educated but... Continue Reading →
Morpurgo;s Private Peaceful is very disappointing. Perhaps we expected too much after the stunning writing of War Horse, , its astonishing stage production and the film. Or perhaps World War 1, as a vehicle for drama has passed its peak and needs to take a rest. Of course one reason may be that without the... Continue Reading →
It is the unusual, out of the way things you might accidentally stumble across that make a visit to a famous city memorable. Edinburgh, like all great cities has it’s must see places, must go to events, its great houses and art galleries, its long turbulent history, royal and religious and of course the Castle,... Continue Reading →
Sad to note that the House of the Dead on Ushers Quay in dear old Dublin has now closed and will not be available, this coming Bloomsday (16th June) for the wonderful Joycean dinner hosted by my great friend Brendan Kilty that were such a joy in the years gone by. This is a review... Continue Reading →
Sad to note that the House of the Dead on Ushers Quay in dear old Dublin has now closed and will not be available, this coming Bloomsday (16th June) for the wonderful Joycean dinner hosted by my great friend Brendan Kilty that were such a joy in the years gone by. This is a review... Continue Reading →
There’s this school in Bingham. The Toot Hill comprehensive school. Popular with the children of a large number of Nottingham commuters that have chosen to settle in this dormitory village, more of a town these days, set halfway between Nottingham and Newark, just off the old Roman Road known as the Fosse way, or now,... Continue Reading →
The medieval lanes and streets and alleys provide welcome breaks of shade from the heat and the sun, and occasionally from the crocodile lines of tourist groups faithfully following their guides. But you tire easily for you are not so young now, the back hurts a bit, the legs ache, the sun is hot, you... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 