DEFEND OUR NATIONAL TREASURE

May 13, 2016, 4:14 am

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Mansfield's Kings Mill Hospital No profit: Just Care, Just People.

As our work-worn physiques begin breaking down, those of us in the older generation need to visit a hospital more often than we’d wish. In my case an overweight lifestyle of drinking and scoffing gargantuan plates of food has resulted in 4 hernia operations, trapped bowels and assorted complications. One of these kicked in this week and I was in some agony. If we believe the constant barrage of anti-NHS propaganda issued from UK Plc’s ‘privatise everything’ media, then rather than passing through the doors of a hospital we might imagine we’re entering the gates of Hell.

Yes, there are long waits in A&E at some hospitals. Yes, some people do spend time lying on trolleys in corridors. On some wards around the country perhaps mistakes are made by staff working exhausting 13 hour shifts. However in my opinion, all the negative hype and deliberate underfunding has one underlying purpose - to destroy the NHS and replace it with a US-style private Insurance system. Those of us who use the service regularly are fully aware that the NHS is one of Britain’s finest surviving world-class social achievements - the other is the BBC, also fighting on under the same sinister commercial intimidation from corporate-minded Philistine politicians.

So having just returned from another spell in Kings Mill Hospital, what can I report? Did the NHS work for me? The negative aspect is that I had to go to A&E simply because my local surgery had no GP appointments available. I was in pain, yet couldn’t see a doctor when I needed one. The receptionist suggested Kings Mill’s Primary Care facility. I telephoned the NHS 111 line first to see if my condition warranted my bothering the overworked staff at A&E. After many questions and answers, the nurse on the line decided I should definitely go to the hospital. At 1 pm I arrived in A&E expecting a wait of several hours, but was seen in 20 minutes. Once in the Primary Care department, I spent 45 minutes with a wonderful, highly skilled nurse who gave me the most thorough examination: blood pressure, temperature, samples taken.

They're not called Angels for nothing ... and they're not looking for my credit card here ...

Still in pain, I knew I might not be going home. She rang the surgical ward, and within minutes I was being pushed there in a wheelchair. The ensuing 24 hours were a textbook example of medical routine, care and attention. The ward was subject to a cavalcade of honest care. Conscientious nurses, two junior doctors followed by the no-nonsense superiority of the consultant surgeon. Ladies brought tea, coffee and food from the impressive cosmopolitan menu. I was in overnight for observation. I slept well. The pain subsided, I went home. I’ll return soon for a scan.

     Therefore I conclude; in Britain’s increasingly unequal society created by the privileged rich, our NHS survives as a true bastion of equality. When that nurse takes your temperature and your pulse, she’s not checking your bank balance or credit card. She’s sharing the basics of humanity; care and compassion. The NHS, created by and for the people, still belongs to us all. Perhaps those initials stand for something else; the National ‘Humanity’ Service. Respect, support and defendit - don’t let them steal our last national treasure.

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R.I.P. CUBA

November 27, 2016, 12:25 pm

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FIDEL

Ah, el Commandante, you have gone.

Alien forces sought your death

Yet nature took its course

And now the vitriol pours forth

The stored-up denigration rages

Brutal Dictator, dark shadow over

Cuba’s smouldered pages.

Of course, your enemies were paragons

Of morality, good will.

It was just your un-tamed, mad ideas

They always sought to kill.

With poison and a mined cigar,

They tried to kill you from afar,

Yet you enraged them still.

Wherever fell your beacon’s light

Extinguished by the Dollar’s might

Nicaragua, El Salvador

All hopes and dreams worth fighting for

Destroyed by stealth and drowned in blood

To keep their poverty in full flood.

The hounds snapped at your revolution

Leaving you with one solution

Total control, that iron grip,

Lest Washington might sink your ship

Of education, public health

Torpedoed by the gods of wealth

As Miami dances on your corpse

Exiles strut with renewed hope

That in Havana your death will foster

The return of the Cosa Nostra

Corruption, graft and deprivation

To make Cuba like so many nations

In servitude to Profit’s Hell

Before confronted by Fidel

Farewell Cruel World

December 10, 2016, 8:16 am

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Looking back over the 73 Christmases I’ve had, I doubt that there has ever been a yuletide as unsettling as this. The world we hoped for decades ago never quite materialised, and what remained of those dreams has now been vaporised in a tornado of disunity and hatred. For example, early in November I read a heartfelt letter in our local paper from a local man who was rightfully concerned with the rapid swing to the far right in politics and the way in which dialogue and balance had been overtaken by sheer hatred and bigotry. This was my response:

Will people recognise the dark future we are entering as suggested in Leon Duveen’s letter. In my opinion it seems doubtful. Following David Cameron’s naïve and over-confident decision to offer Britain a referendum on Europe, the fires of simplistic populism continue to be stoked daily by a rabid media (owned mostly by tax-avoiding billionaires domiciled outside the UK) and a cabal of unscrupulous politicians with duplicitous agendas.

Thus, on June 23, the People had their say, and the victorious 52% no doubt expected us to be out of the EU the following day. Now we find ourselves in a new era; it’s called ‘Post Truth’. It’s been created by people like Donald Trump, (whose new supporters include the Ku Klux Klan) Nigel Farage and others, and it means that veracity (albeit never the sharpest knife in a politician’s toolbox) has been replaced by a loud and proud dishonesty. Now you can say what you like, invent bogus ‘facts’ on the hoof, and be as insultingly incorrect in all areas as you wish, providing this keeps your followers enraged. To maintain this carpet-biting indignation, all we need to do is ignore and refuse to read any genuine facts which oppose our vitriolic frame of mind.

For example on June 8th, 2 weeks before the referendum, David Cameron’s father in law, Lord Astor, said “The EU referendum is merely advisory; it has no legal standing to force an exit. Parliament is still sovereign.” Perversely, it was that very ‘sovereignty’ which we’d never lost that everyone was voting to ‘restore’. When three High Court judges are consulted on the Parliamentary Law relating to UK sovereignty, and come up with their hapless answer, they are dubbed ‘Enemies of The People’. Meanwhile, Cameron, in the wake of his badly conceived mess, has bitten the bullet and sloped off into a well-heeled country supper oblivion, whilst his austerity ‘slash and burn’ colleague Osborne is doing a well-paid ‘Blair’ on the US lecture circuit. The new and seemingly clueless Westminster cartel have been left to clean up their mess by pandering wherever possible to the bigotry and xenophobia which increases day by day.

As Mr. Duveen’s letter suggests, we are indeed at the top of a slippery slope into social and political darkness. Will this threat subside when we thankfully leave the EU and ‘take our country back’? I doubt it. Politics and democracy have been injected with a powerful, deadly poison; hate. It is the same virus which infected Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There is no longer any room for compassion or alternative opinions. The new, growing breed of trolls who infest social media will not tolerate the sentiments expressed here, for they see their ill-informed anonymous cowardice as some form of strength. However, we should remember the words of the American philosopher Eric Hoffer:  “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”

I will not re-run here the responses I received, some nasty ones on Face Book and one especially in the paper concerned, from a correspondent who, in his haste to dismiss everything I’d said, finished by accusing me of the same hatred and told me more or less to ‘lighten up’ and that tomorrow, ‘the birds will still sing and the sun will come up’. In effect, his crudely dismissive response to my points proved more or less everything I’d suggested.

After a life where I’ve always been immersed in the support of progressive politics, I’ve come to the end of a road; this life has been a cul de sac, the wall at its end built by proud ignorance, irrationality and lies. With the despairing emotions this situation induces, the idea of a festive season based on ‘Good Will to All Men’ seems pointless and facile. My letter writing days are done. All I can say is that I am pleased to be in the final years of my life. What awaits in the decades ahead, and especially after 2017, will be a curse for those who come after me, even though the next generation will regard their social existence as the norm.  No more debate now, no more dialogue. Just a good book, the odd film, a glass of beer and the occasional smoke. If fascism can grant me that, I promise to keep my head down.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

December 14, 2016, 3:35 am

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES:

Are you ready for ‘Fascism Lite™’?

 

On a fine, warm sunny morning in June, a few days after the EU Referendum, as I wandered around the stalls on Mansfield’s Market Place, the positive sunlight seemed to take the edge off the fact that 71% of the local voters had voted leave. I paused at one of the second hand book stalls and as I browsed, I cheerily commented to the couple running the stall;    

    “Lovely weather, eh? It’s like being abroad.”  The icy reaction from the female proprietor, followed by that of her male partner, eliminated the sun’s heat.

    “We don’t need ‘abroad’!” she spat, which was followed by a surly confirmation from Mr. Bookseller; “No. We’re British. We’ve taken our country back!” I was stunned that a casual attempt at conviviality should be met with such reactionary venom. After all, there was nothing in my misguided utterance which suggested how I’d voted. It was simply that word ‘abroad’ which had triggered that rabid response. Dispirited, I walked away, consoling myself with the facile thought that I had simply collided with two UKIP extremists.

I tried to remember if I’d ever faced such vitriol on the mornings following all the General Elections I’d participated in since 1964. But they were just changes of government. Labour, Tory, Liberal, we still remained civil to one another. June, 2016, was obviously something far more critical. Over half a year later, ‘critical’ seems a defunct adjective. In social and political terms, perilous and grave seem far more apt.

   Now in my mid-70s, I can look back across an electoral British landscape where a citizen could choose whatever political inclination took their fancy. Although a devout socialist, I was at one time engaged to an equally fervent Tory girl. Altruism existed then. Generosity of spirit seemed the British Way. That’s probably why we never had a revolution. We had our differences, but we cruised through them. Yet after 1979 something snapped. Here in the Nottinghamshire coalfields, the Miner’s Strike of 1984-5 drove deep divisions among the working population. There were 13 pits when I moved here in 1987. Today there are none. Yet since 1987, although this town has returned a Labour MP to Parliament, namely Sir Alan Meale, (an old friend of John Prescott), there has always been a cantankerous undercurrent against Labour. In 2015 Mansfield District Council, with an elected Mayor from the ‘Independent Forum’ was ruled by Labour. Standing as a Conservative or a Liberal here would be political suicide, so local Tories adopted a suitable disguise. They found it in the designation ‘Independent’. It worked. In 2011 there were 26 Labour members and 10 of the Mansfield Independent Forum. Today there are just 18 Labour Councillors, 2 UKIP and 16 Independents. Although the town has a tiny coloured population, it does have a large proportion of immigrants, mostly Poles and other Eastern Europeans. As one incensed taxi driver quipped to me a recently, “Shopping in Tesco these days is like being lost in Bratislava, but their days are numbered…” a comment which amply demonstrates that UKIP’s message rang loud and clear in Mansfield.

I have written various politically-based columns for Mansfield’s local paper, the Chad. (Chesterfield Advertiser). But I’ve had to desist since June 2016. The troll factor has closed off that avenue. The level of hatred received simply for attempting to elucidate various conveniently ignored facts surrounding Brexit is more than dispiriting. After recently comparing the current mood of the UK to that of Germany in the 1930s, I was virtually accused of treachery and misinformation, a sad paradox in the new world of post-truth.

This new disingenuous world is nothing remotely like the one I dreamed about and hoped for 50 years ago. Checking out the Face Book pages of some local malcontents, it’s been amazing to see how many of them are now expressing equal admiration for Trump and Putin. One meme displays a photograph of the leaders of the EU with the caption “These create terrorists” with an accompanying picture of Putin captioned “He destroys them.”  So everywhere you look, from the Daily Mail, the Express, down to the Face Book page of British Sovereignty & Heritage Magazine , if you’ve any grasp of history you might be reminded of Shakespeare’s line from Macbeth: “Something wicked this way comes.” That ‘something’ looks and smells like fascism. Six months ago I would have thought such a conjecture to be ridiculous. Yet the foundations are in place; austerity, xenophobia, a bigoted media tsunami of lies, so the various components of the traditional fascist mind-set are staring us in the face. They include the following:

·        The endorsement of  a ‘historic mission’ aligned with nationalism and patriotism.

·        A personality cult around a charismatic leader who admires aggressive militarism.

·        Relentless, fictitious media propaganda  against any rational dialogue.

·        Attacking any liberalism whilst trashing any progressive or ‘modernist’ ideals.

·        The appeal to the ‘ordinary man’ whose ‘heroism’ and suffering will be rewarded.

·        Providing scapegoats and dehumanising them as unwelcome, unwanted and inferior.

·        The ostensible support of the ‘hard working’ taxpayer who should form an alliance with the moneyed elite. 

·        ‘Pick and mix’ politics; no consistent ideology.

 Of course, this won’t be the black shirted, jack-booted goose-stepping blitzkrieg fascism of the past. That’s consigned to movies - Hitler promised a ‘1000 year Reich’ and in entertainment terms, the panzers are still rolling. The new ‘fascism lite™’ will drive a Bentley or a Lexus and be conducted from skyscrapers by leaders in uniforms from Versace, Armani or Gucci. Does this all sound like ridiculous paranoia? Think on.

There are menacing parallels between the public reactionary mood of today and that of the period following World War I. Back then the social theories which had underpinned the French Revolution of 1789, namely “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” were firmly rejected as loathsome, as they are today by those keen to ditch the EU’s Human Rights legislation. One wonders therefore if Donald Trump might ever realise the profound influence the France of 1789 had on America’s Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. If one reads the work of America’s George Seldes (1890-1995), who described himself as ‘Journalist, Investigative Reporter, Press Critic and Muckraker’ you will find a startling resonance in his reports on the rise of fascism when compared to today’s developments. Writing about the 1930s, in March 5, 1988 he said “The history of this period is a press forgery. Falsified news manipulates public opinion. Democracy needs facts.” 

If the populist press now needs a motto, they could take a lead from the Daily Mail, a paper enthralled in the 1930s by Britain’s fascists and Der Fuhrer. The motto of Mussolini’s Blackshirts was “Me ne frego” (I do not give a damn.)

2016’s Yuletide lights which once signified ‘peace and goodwill to all men’ cast a sarcastic glow over this town’s bustling market place. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence refers to Mansfield as "that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town.” It’s hard to think what he’d make of it today.

YE BLEWS

December 15, 2016, 3:29 am

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‘Ye Blews’

Blues means what milk does to a baby.

Blues is what the spirit is to the minister.

We sing the blues because our hearts have been hurt,

our souls have been disturbed.

Alberta Hunter

As waggish musicians are wont to say,

‘You should always have a W. C. Handy’

Whilst jazz was simultaneously emerging in New Orleans and Chicago, like all music at the time, the only way you could hear it was by being there at a live performance, or by taking advantage of the huge, burgeoning printed sheet music industry and playing the popular tunes yourself, at home. Yet towards the end of the 19^th century, something exciting happened.

  

Emile Berliner (1851–1929) was a German-born American inventor, and alongside all the other attempts at recording sound, such as his own cylindrical machine, which he dubbed ‘the gramophone’ in 1887, (a system already in use via the machines of the equally inventive Thomas Edison), in 1888 he managed to surpass cylinders by using discs. Yet such devices were still, for many, simply fascinating playthings. However, Berliner persisted and managed to sell his new disc-based technology, albeit at first to toy manufacturers. But in 1895 he succeeded in raising a substantial investment of $25,000, and with this he established the Berliner Gramophone Company. Even as Berliner continued to burn the midnight oil in his workshop, coin-in-the-slot, sound-reproducing machines, perhaps the earliest form of juke box, were becoming a popular attraction in amusement arcades, and as early as 1890 the New York Phonograph Company opened the first recording studio.

Putting music on a disc was one achievement, but trying to stabilise the speed of the turntable was a different challenge. So Berliner teamed up with Eldridge R. Johnson, an engineer, who designed a clockwork spring-wound motor. In 1901, Berliner[1]and Johnson knew that together, they had something impressive, so they joined forces. The Victor Talking Machine Company was formed.

      By 1902, recordings were being made by performers sitting in a studio, playing into the large horn of a gramophone. The recordings were made onto thick wax discs. By 1902 the immensely popular operatic celebrity, Enrico Caruso, essentially became history’s first recording star as one of the earliest performers to embrace the new technology, ‘cutting’ his first record, Vesti le gubba from Pagliacci. It sold more than a million records. Soon, the hand-cranked Victrola would be superseded by the invention, by Lee de Forest, of the triode, an electronic amplification device having three active electrodes.

      Against the tragic backdrop of the Great War of 1914-18 (although it must be remembered that the USA did not enter the war until April 1917) African American music making had developed into a variety of vibrant styles. Jazz had taken off in the south and as far north as New York and Chicago, and jazz scenes were developing in places as far apart as Kansas City and Los Angeles. All the accrued cultural heritage of struggle and deprivation experienced through two centuries of slavery, the continuing racism, the immense transcendent outlet of the spiritual and various European influences had all fused together to create a new, improvised and uplifting musical form. Cutting its own swathe through this was yet another means of expression. Unlike the spiritual, this wasn’t religious, but secular. This was the Blues.

Like the word ‘jazz’ there are numerous theories surrounding the origin of ‘blues’ as a musical appellation. Its provenance, when studied closely, is quite surprising. Because of the way we now think of the blues it simply sounds too hip and modern for the word to have a history prior to the birth of jazz. We can confidently sidestep the ‘official’ first musical mention from 1912, in W.C. Handy's Memphis Blues because long before Columbus, in Britain as far back as 1385, the adjective ‘blue’ meant ‘low spirited’[2]. There are other historical examples, one quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary (2^nd edition) which tells us of it being in use in 1741 for ‘depression, low spirits.’ In that year, the great 16^th century actor, David Garrick, wrote in a letter:

      ‘I am far from being quite well, tho not troubled with ye Blews as I have been’[3].

‘The blues’ is also a diminutive of blue devils, bad little demons associated with despondency, depression and sadness. Blue devils have been with us since 1616, from a poetry collection entitled  Times’ Whistle:

      ‘Alston, whose life hath been accounted evill, And therfore calde by many the blew devill’[4].

David Garrick

If we need any further proof of the provenance, in 1798 George Colman the Younger wrote a one act play, set in France entitled The Blue Devils.

      As a musical style, yes, the term ‘the blues’ has been around since 1912, which inevitably takes us to ‘the Father of The Blues’William Christopher Handy (1873 –1958). The first publication of blues sheet music was Hart Wand's Dallas Blues in 1912 but the prominence of W. C. Handy dominates the genre’s history. 

      As this piece deals with the way in which R&B musicians were frequently the victims of appalling treatment and skulduggery over money and royalties, it is a sad fact that such dubious dealings, although mainly the province of some promoters and managers throughout history, should have coincided with the rise of recorded music, and have continued up to this day.Memphis Blues was Handy's third composition, but his first blues. However, it began life as a political campaign song in support of Edward Hull Crump (1874-1954), who was running for Mayor in Memphis in 1909. It was originally an instrumental entitled Mr. Crump, with a bit of a jive/rap vocal thrown in to help ‘Boss’ Crump, one of the early builders of the modern Democratic Party and eventually one of the South’s most powerful politicians, on his mayoral way. The mayoral campaign kept Handy busy all over town, assembling bands and musicians to give repeated performances of Mr. Crump. The lyric seems simple enough:

Mr. Crump don't 'low no easy riders here

Crump don't 'low no easy riders here
We don't care what Mr. Crump don't 'low
We gonna bar'l house anyhow
Mr. Crump can go catch hisself some air.[5]

However, even in 1909, almost five decades after emancipation and the Civil War, there are still West African roots here. West Africans always had what were known as ‘songs of derision’, so although Mr.  Crump is a campaign song, it has all the hallmarks of the Southern black man’s penchant for ‘telling it like it is.’ It pulls no punches, yet at least Crump was a ‘straight’ politician, and by all accounts not like the rabid segregationists of later decades. Others in the Crump Camp were more devious.

      In Memphis, Handy had to pay L.Z. Phillips at Bry's Department Store, the representative of the publisher Theron Bennett, (who was also a notable ragtime composer and musician) for the printing of the first sheet music edition, 1,000 copies, of Mr. Crump. Phillips had convinced Handy that he was only printing the music on speculation in the hope it would sell well throughout Memphis. Phillips seemed positive and Bennett, who was visiting Memphis, offered Handy national distribution and exposure, an irresistible deal. Handy, by no means a rich man, was in the shop with Phillips and Bennett when  the initial 1000 copies were delivered. Bennett was still in town a week later when Handy went into Bry’s Department Store to check on sales. Bennett showed him a remaining pile of 1000 copies, suggesting sales were slow. He then suggested that Handy sell him the full copyright to the composition outright. Because of the popularity of the song, this confused Handy, yet what he didn’t know was that the wily publishing duo had actually printed 2,000 copies, and the first 1,000 had indeed sold like wildfire. Still, Handy, thinking he may have written a turkey, agreed to sell his copyright to Theron for a mere $50. In the following weeks, another 10,000 copies, complete with Bennett's imprint, rolled off the presses. Months passed and Bennett sold Handy’s work for a substantial sum to publisher Joe Morris. Adding insult to injury, George Norton, one of Bennett's lyricists, was hired by Morris to add words to the song, a move which Handy considered highly objectionable. 

      Needless to say, but once Theron had bought the copyright, he knew that he’d make a fat profit because there’d be no royalties due to Handy until the copyright ran out. It would be 1937 before Handy could re-claim his highly successful composition, and when he completed his first book on the blues, he had even been refused permission to include the song.[6]

This notorious episode did however convince Handy to form his own successful publishing company, Handy & Pace[7].

      As an early demonstration of the felonious way in which African American performers would be treated by publishers, managers, promoters and record companies, W. C. Handy’s Mr. Crump/Memphis Blues experience is an early milestone of cynical opportunism. It seems poignant that under the revised song’s later title, Memphis Blues, that Handy could pen such a magnanimous verse as:

      ‘Folks I've just been down, down to Memphis town,

      That's where the people smile, smile on you all the while.

      Hospitality, they were good to me.

      I couldn't spend a dime, and had the grandest time’

Of course, there’s always another side to every story. In his book The Country Blues, Samuel  Charters writes: ‘Handy later complained bitterly that he was cheated out of the rights to his song, but the man who bought the rights from him was acting in good faith and had as little idea as Handy did the song would become so successful.’[8]

If that’s the case, then Theron Bennett must have been a saint among his peers. As will be seen, the practice of grabbing copyright and composer credits from innocent artists became one of the big bonuses in being a publisher or a record producer, jobs which were often combined.

Lester Melrose

For example, Lester Melrose, rightly famed for recording many of the greatest country blues artists for RCA and Columbia for their Chicago ‘race music’ subsidiary, bragged that he had recorded 90% of all the black music African Americans were dancing to across the USA. Dedicated though Melrose was to bringing the blues to a wider audience, he only paid artists a recording fee, and made sure that before they left the studio they had fully surrendered the compositional copyright to their songs over to him. Thus, with no artistic, creative or musical skills, Melrose is said to have gained royalty payments for up to 3,000 blues compositions, whilst not writing a note or a word of any. This would appear to be true, as his tax return for 1938 shows him making a staggering $139,000 – a huge income for the time. Melrose was able to retire to a splendid villa in an orange grove in Florida, where he died in comfort in 1979.[9]

      It didn’t take long for the word ‘blues’ to become a popular addition to a song title. A new musical structure had developed. Primarily a vocal form, lyrically, it wasn’t religious, but secular, although it contained echoes of slavery and field hollers through its call-and-response pattern and the syncopated rhythms of work songs and spirituals. Its hallmarks were a repeating harmonic structure with melodic emphasis on the flatted or “blue” third and seventh notes of the scale. Its common form featured a 12-bar phrase using the chords of the first, fourth, and fifth degrees of the major scale.

With the advent of the gramophone, records began to match the popularity of sheet music. Although a white Broadway star, Marie Cahill recorded The Dallas Blues in 1917, and the early 1920s saw the first black blues recordings, and women led the charge.

Mamie Smith (1883-1946) was the first African American singer to record. Her 1920 Crazy Blues, written by Perry Bradford, an experienced Minstrel and Vaudeville performer, was to be followed in 1923 by Ma Rainey’s (1886-1939) Boll Weevil Blues. Fine vocalist though she was, in a variety of popular styles, Mamie Smith wasn’t really a blues singer, but Crazy Blues sold 10,000 recordings the first week and 75,000 within a month. Ma Rainey certainly was a blues singer and went on to make over 100 recordings. These early recordings, with their jazz accompanists; would soon earn the title ‘classic blues.’

      By the end of the 1920s the blues, especially due to classic female artists, had become a major element of African American and American popular music. It even had exposure, often due to Handy’s arrangements, to white audiences in theatres and clubs, such as the Cotton Club and numerous Beale Street venues in Memphis through special blues shows organised by the Theatre Owners Bookers Association The record industry began recording blues performers. New labels such as Okeh Records, Paramount Records and the American Record Corporation, all found it worthwhile to record African American music.

NOTES & SOURCES

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[1]Berliner invented many other products, such as an early version of the helicopter, the acoustic tile and a loom which enabled the mass-production of cloth.

[2]www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=blues

[3]www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/blue_blues/

[4]Gent, R.C. (Ed.)The Times Whistle: A Naïve Daunce of Seven Satires and other Poems. English Text Society, London 1616.

[5]Avakian, George: Liner notes to Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, Long Playing Record, Label: Columbia CL 591 Canada, 1954

[6]http://www.myzacharias.com/vr/coll/a/armstrong/louis/wchandy.php

[7]http://ragpiano.com/comps/tbennett.shtml

[8]Charters,  Samuel  - The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. 1959 Reprinted as The Country Blues: Roots of Jazz by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author 1975

[9]Reich, Howard and Gaines, William: Jelly’s Blues: The Life, Music and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton Da Capo Press, New York, 2004.

CHRISTMAS QUACKERS: A TRUE STORY.

December 18, 2016, 8:43 am

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Christmas Quackers:

a true story for Yuletide.

By December 1958 I had reached the mature ripeness of 14, and on Christmas Eve, although I didn’t yet know it, I was about to stand on the first steps at the portal of manhood.

     “We can’t have another Christmas dinner like some we’ve had!” said Mam, shaking her head. Dad poked some more timber into the stove and puffed on his roll-up.

     “And we won’t, because I’ve got something sorted,” he said.

     Christmas Eve at our wooden shack, Elm Bank, in 1958 seemed to possess an air of promise. Dad was back in work. I continued to enjoy my weekly delight – the New Musical Express. Rock and Roll had arrived, and I thanked the Good Lord that here, we still had electricity, and we’d kept our radio and television set, and we had a Calor gas stove for cooking, although it was still the weekly tin bath. So, if our Yuletide feast wasn’t to be Irish stew or even the luxury of chicken; I suspected rabbit pie; but perhaps I was wrong. What did Dad’s cryptic proclamation mean? There was no such thing as turkey among the lumpen proletariat back then. Chicken was the ultimate luxury, and we even had a chicken coup, yet we’d killed so many of the poor devils for food that year that only three egg-laying hens and an indomitable, evil cockerel survived. Chicken was obviously off and no-one, even Dad, dare threaten Adolf the cockerel – he was a nasty piece of work and still the best alarm clock we had.

 

    As the sharp, bitter darkness fell over the trees that Christmas Eve, spreading its icy fingers of hoarfrost across the surrounding scrubland, the bright moon arrived and the

frozen, leaf-like filigree of frost crept across the window panes. My two younger brothers had been sent to bed, excited by thoughts of Father Christmas’s imminent nocturnal visit. Yet for some reason, I was allowed to stay up. Was it because I was now some kind of ‘second man’ in the house? Did 14 now separate me from my receding childhood? I finished my Musical Express and watched some lame variety show on the TV. Then it happened. Dad switched the set off and, leaning in towards me in a conspiratorial fashion, filled me with a sense of horror as he outlined a mission he had obviously been planning for some time.

    “Right, son. Christmas Eve. I’ve just been outside and lowered the saddle on my bike. I’ve checked the dynamo and the lights are working.” He produced a piece of paper which bore an address scrawled in thick joiner’s pencil.

    “I want you to bike to Uncle Sid’s on the Longhill Estate. That’s the address. He’s got something for us for our Christmas dinner.” He handed me two pound notes.

    “Give him this money, and tell him Stan wishes him a merry Christmas. Ride straight there and straight back, and don’t stop for anybody. Right – now tell me what you’ve got to do?” I repeated the instructions. He looked at the clock.

    “It’ll take you about three quarters of an hour to get there, and the same to get back. It’s quarter past nine now, so you ought to get back here by half past eleven.”

    “And don’t forget to put your scarf on,” said Mam, “and your gloves, and your balaclava.” I hated that balaclava, but it was an arctic night, and ninety minutes of cycling lay ahead of me, a quite unexpected and highly dubious pleasure.

    It seemed odd, pedalling for all I was worth along the long, straight run of the road between the village of Hedon and the twinkling lights of the oil refinery at Saltend. Odd because I was actually enjoying this. Dad, as an ex- Army sergeant, with 20 years in India and Europe under his belt, had shown his trust by giving me this important mission. That filled me

with pride. What lay at the core of it was still a mystery, but as I slipped along through the crisp, cutting Christmas moonlight a new sense of purpose pushed my aching, cold  knees into a blur.

    It took me ten minutes of pedalling along past windows filled with shimmering Christmas trees on the Longhill Estate to find Uncle Sid’s council house. I couldn’t help wondering what it must be like in those solid brick homes; proper houses with proper rooms, tiled roofs, ceilings, fireplaces, boilers with immersion heaters – perhaps they even had baths. What must Christmas be like in these places? Maybe it was luxurious. We’d almost had it all, but now it was gone, yet again. I put it from my mind. I parked the bike and with wobbly legs ambled to the back door and knocked. Sid, a docker, was a wiry little man. Clad in a grubby vest and a pair of shiny gabardine trousers held up with string, he puffed on his briar pipe and eyed me up and down.

    “Aha! It’s lil’Roy, Stan’s lad, eh?”

I nodded.

    “Has he given you the money?”

I handed him the two pounds. I was very cold and I had hoped he might invite me in for a quick warm, but he simply instructed me to stand there by the door as he disappeared into the brick outhouse at the side of the tiny garden. I then heard a strange noise. A furious quacking sound, a fluttering, followed by a gargled squawk. This was repeated twice. Then, through the moonlight Sid appeared holding two fine and very dead ducks by their broken necks. He tied them together with a piece of string, walked over to the bike and slung them over the handlebars.

    “Dad said Merry Christmas,” I said.

    “Tell him the same to him,” replied Sid, “now get on that bike and ride like buggery all the way home. Tell your Mam about two and a half hours at gas mark 6. She’ll love them birds.”

    This was all going remarkably well. Within half an hour

the lights of the refinery came into view again. The road was now a sheet of ice and every few yards I could feel the bike slipping slightly, yet I kept my balance and ploughed on. Soon, the village of Hedon appeared, its frosted roofs a blue-white in the moonlight, a living Christmas card. I leaned forward and felt the ducks. They were now frozen solid, the cold of their dead flesh penetrating through my gloves. I passed the closed off-licence, past the ladies’ hairdresser’s shop and the silent motor garage. The road was empty. No traffic. No cars. No pedestrians. Just a freezing, moonlit boy on an over-sized bicycle.

Ahead stood the lofty façade of Saint Augustine’s Church. Its tall, stained glass windows emitted pale golden light and as I drew closer, my breath shrouding my freezing face with a pale white cloud of bitter vapour, I could hear the choir singing. Of course, I thought – this must be for the Midnight Mass. It all seemed to fit together – this new sense of positivity, the ducks, my mission, and, as a bonus, those silvery voices were singing my mother’s favourite carol. Then it happened.

    The figure of the policeman seemed to come from nowhere. Like some sinister phantom from a Victorian penny dreadful, he stepped into the road a few yards ahead. He was wearing a heavy cape, and the beam from his lamp hit me in the eyes, temporarily dazzling me. I could see him only in silhouette as I drew closer. His hand was held up, open palm signalling me to stop. I gripped the brakes and drew to a skidding halt in the icy gutter. The sound of his hob-nailed boots, a comfort to those in the darkened, sleeping homes around us, was ominous to me. Yet that crunch along the tarmac was punctuated by the faint, angelic rise and fall of the Saint Augustine’s choir.

     ‘Silent Night, Holy Night….’

   “Now then,” the voice was a deep, gravelly and confident tenor, “and where d’you think you’re off to my lad at this hour?”

    ‘All is calm, all is bright…’

 My heart was pounding.

     “Er…I…I’m going home. I live up there – on the Bond’s Estate.”

     “Mmm. Bond’s Estate, eh? All the ruffians live there. Are you a ruffian?” I wasn’t quite sure what a ‘ruffian’ was, but I didn’t think I fitted the bill.

     “No. I go to school.”

He shone the torch on the ducks.

     ‘Round yon Virgin Mother and Child

     Holy Infant so tender and mild’

     “And where did you get these beauties from then, son?”

I shivered.

     “My Uncle Sid.”

    “And what does he do for a living?”

    ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’

    “He’s…he’s…he’s a butcher. These ducks are for me Mam. For Christmas.”

He lowered the beam of the torch. His vaporised breath mingled with mine and was sliced through by the moonlight as he leaned towards me. He had a big, round face with sharp, dark eyes, and sported a thick, well-groomed moustache. Our eyes seemed locked in an inseparable gaze; his one of inquisition, mine one of terror.

    ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’

He fingered the ducks, weighed them in his huge hands, all the while staring at me. The choir seemed to grow louder, and I thought even then, in the presence of this strong arm of the law, that no matter what may happen, there was still something sadly beautiful in this sorry little tableau, something tragically Dickensian; a young boy, a policeman, a bicycle, two frozen ducks, an almost midnight, empty street and a church choir. A whole verse rang through the chill air as he stood there, pondering.

     ‘Silent night, holy night!

     Shepherds quake at the sight

     Glories stream from heaven afar

     Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!’

    I then saw something remarkable. His stern, inquiring visage appeared to melt into something more human. The eyes seemed softer. Then I realised that, like me, he too was listening to the music. He breathed in deeply, and to my utter amazement, a tear rolled down his cheek and vanished into the thick undergrowth of his moustache. One of those strong hands reached towards me and patted me on the shoulder.

    “Aye….well. Alright son. You get yourself home and get warm. Off you go. Oh, and before I forget…”

I was about to pedal off.

    “What?”

    “Have a Merry Christmas.”

As I rode away with all the speed I could muster, the faint tones of the choir subsided into the silvery night behind me.

     ‘Christ, the Saviour is born

     Christ, the Saviour is born’

    My arrival in the warmth of Elm Bank’s living room was a triumph, although Dad was concerned.

     “Where the bloody hell have y’been, lad?”

I told him about the policeman.

    “Christ. Y’didn’t give him your address, did you?”

    “No. But he wished me merry Christmas.”

Dad produced a bottle of that favourite of all Hull’s trawlermen, Red Duster Rum. He poured two small glasses. I was staggered when placed one into my cold hand and said

    ‘”Knock it back, lad – you’ve earned it!”

As the searing liquid spread its warm fingers through my chest, it seemed as if my childhood had begun to slip away.

    We sat around the spluttering stove plucking the ducks, ankle deep in feathers until the clock struck one. On some American Forces radio station they were playing Good King Wenceslas. I shall always remember that line….

     “Though the frost was cruel…” Who was he? Police Constable Wenceslas? Did he really exist at all, or had I simply experienced some adolescent Dickensian epiphany? I’ll never know.

    As I got ready for bed in the ice-bound bedroom, Dad’s silhouette appeared in the doorway.

     “Er…good job done, lad. Just do us a favour, though. When you go to East Park next time with your mates, stay away from the pond. There’ll be a few ducks short this year….”

  This is an extract from

Crazy Horse & The Coalman: A Memoir.

2016: THE YEAR OF THE DEAD

December 26, 2016, 9:02 am

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2016 has been, beyond any stretch of the imagination, a year of death and despair. The horrors of Syria, the continuing, inexplicable evil hatred of terrorism against the innocent, the avoidable, badly conceived stupidity of Brexit, leaving us teetering on the edge of an abyss, the resurgence of a familiar, Nazi-style populism and the election of Donald Trump; all these factors combine to obliterate any hope humanity has for a peaceful, progressive future. As one commentator quipped, comparing the rise of ‘The Donald’ with the exit of Obama, “We’ve gone from hope to grope in 8 years…”

The sadness of what’s happened in popular culture fades into comparable insignificance, yet in our still relatively ‘safe’ little world,  it looks as if all the goodness and pleasure  has been drained away. That grinning proto-fascist Nigel Farage shared a statement with the Trumpers when referring to the new movement of anti-establishment politics as ‘draining the swamp’.  The trouble is, when you drain a swamp you kill all the good organisms too. Perhaps, if you’re of a religious persuasion, you might liken 2016 to God carrying out a bit of ‘Spring Cleaning’. If that’s the case, as ever, he’s proving to be as bombastically cruel and insensitive as ever. There are countless politicians, bankers, CEOs and fraudsters who the Grim Reaper seems to have by-passed. He only seems to want rid of the positive people. So, Bible readers, answer this; has God finally handed over management to Satan? It certainly looks like it.

George Michael, aged just 53, died peacefully at home over Christmas in bed from heart failure. I never bought any of his records yet he seemed a nice bloke and possessed an admirable talent. He is the latest among dozens of celebrities to have died in the past 12 months, including transformative figures such as David Bowie, Muhammad Ali and Prince.

The news of Bowie's death from cancer at the age of 69 on January 10 was met with shock and grief around the world, alongside a celebration of his extraordinary career. A similar reaction followed the death of superstar singer Prince, who was 57, on April 21.

Presidents and prime ministers from around the world paid tribute to boxing champion Ali, who died aged 74 on June 3. Thousands of mourners gathered at his funeral to celebrate his extraordinary life.

Other highly influential figures to pass away in 2016 included author Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, the former First Lady of the United States Nancy Reagan, and Beatles producer Sir George Martin.

Britain also said goodbye to much-loved stars of stage and screen including Sir Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Ronnie Corbett and Victoria Wood.

Here is a list of celebrities we lost in 2016:

1) Singer David Bowie died aged 69 on January 10.

2) Actor Alan Rickman died aged 69 on January 14.

3) Eagles frontman Glenn Frey died aged 67 on January 18.

4) Broadcaster Sir Terry Wogan died on January 31 aged 77.

5) Author Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, died aged 89 on February 19.

6) Actor Frank Kelly, who played Father Jack in the comedy series Father Ted, died aged 77 on February 28.

7) Coronation Street creator Tony Warren died aged 79 on March 1.

8) Nancy Reagan, actress and former first lady of the United States, died aged 94 on March 6.

9) Beatles producer Sir George Martin died aged 90 on March 8.

10) Magician Paul Daniels died aged 77 on March 17.

11) Comedian Ronnie Corbett died aged 85 on March 31.

12) This Morning agony aunt Denise Robertson died aged 83 on March 31.

13) Sherlock Holmes actor Douglas Wilmer died aged 96 on March 31.

14) Drugs campaigner Howard Marks, known as Mr Nice, died aged 70 on April 10.

15) Reality TV star and music producer David Gest died aged 62 on April 12.

16) British playwright Sir Arnold Wesker died aged 83 on April 12.

17) Comedian Victoria Wood died aged 62 on April 20.

18) Superstar singer Prince died aged 57 on April 21.

19) Television writer Carla Lane, known for The Liver Birds and Bless This House, died aged 87 on May 31.

20) Boxing champion Muhammad Ali died aged 74 on June 3.

21) Singer Dave Swarbrick of folk band Fairport Convention died aged 75 on June 3.

22) Anton Yelchin, actor in Star Trek, died aged 27 on June 19.

23) Comedian, Royle Family actress and writer Caroline Ahernedied aged 52 on July 2.

24) Ken Barrie, the voice of Postman Pat, died aged 83 on July 29.

25) Kenny Baker, who played droid R2D2 in the Star Wars films, died aged 81 on August 13.

26) Gene Wilder, who played Willy Wonka and other memorable roles, died aged 83 on August 28.

27) Former Israeli president Shimon Peres died aged 93 on September 28.

28) Former Coronation Street actress Jean Alexander, who played Hilda Ogden, died aged 90 on October 14.

29) Raine Spencer, the stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, died aged 87 on October 21.

30) London-born fashion designer Richard Nicoll died aged 39 on October 21.

31) Jimmy Perry, screenwriter known for shows including Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum, died aged 93 on October 23.

32) Singer, songwriter and television personality Pete Burns, who founded pop band Dead or Alive, died aged 57 on October 23.

33) Sir Jimmy Young, who hosted BBC radio programmes for half a century, died aged 95 on November 7.

34) The death at 82 of Canadian singer, songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen, who penned the classic song Hallelujah, was announced on November 11.

35) The Man From U.N.C.L.E star Robert Vaughn died aged 83 on November 11.

36) Musician Craig Gill, drummer of Madchester band Inspiral Carpets, died aged 44 on November 22.

37) The death of West End star Keo Woolford, 49, who starred in The King And I opposite Elaine Paige and in the television remake of Hawaii Five-O, was announced on November 30.

38) The death of comic actor Andrew Sachs, 86, best-known for playing Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers, was announced on December 1.

39) Peter Vaughan, who starred in Game Of Thrones and Porridge, died aged 93 on December 6.

40) Musician Greg Lake died aged 69 on December 8.

41) Sunday Times journalist AA Gill died aged 62 on December 10.

42) Hollywood actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor died aged 99 on December 18.

43) Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt died aged 68 on December 24.

44) The death of George Michael, 53, was announced on December 25.

As I write this, there’s still five days of 2016 left to run. Let’s hope the Reaper’s tired out and relaxing with a turkey leg and a mince pie. And let’s further hope that in 2017 he takes a much needed sabbatical. We’ll have enough to worry about over the coming months without another fat catalogue of tragic death.

2017: Let's Start Healing.

December 31, 2016, 11:47 am

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A HOGMANAY HORROR

January 8, 2017, 8:51 am

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PORTRAIT OF A 2017 IDIOT

How odd the way the stars align and spark events without warning. Yet if that sounds more than a little airy-fairy, it probably is. The way my New Year commenced was little to do with stars or fate; more down to geriatric stupidity. I discarded the 2016 Hogmanay reality of my age - 73 - and swapped it for 23. I drank copious amounts of ale, and at midnight consumed half a bottle of champagne.

At around 1.30 am I tried to stagger upstairs to bed; five steps up I slipped, fell backwards, did a somersault, my head hitting the hallway skirting board, landing flat on my back . It took a few desperate hours for the ambulance to arrive, but when it did the combined anaesthetic of 7 bottles of beer and the champagne  had worn off. The only cure for the agony of my useless broken left arm was morphine. The saintly NHS Paramedics  delivered the painkiller, stopped me from shaking like a leaf, cleaned my bloody head wound and finally transported me to Kings Mill Hospital, where I was X-rayed and fitted with a wrist-to-shoulder cast.

Now I’m feeling very sorry for myself and very worried; there is no neurovascular connection between elbow and wrist. My left arm is useless; only the fingers of the hand work, but I’m typing this one-handed with my right index finger. What now? Will I eventually be able to drive again?  If not then alcohol will have deprived me of the freedom of independent travel. Its early days as yet; suffice it to say this has been one festive season I shall not forget in a hurry … and I can’t play guitar any more. Watching TV is no substitute for creativity. I’ll simply have to become the fastest one-finger typist in history.

I did this to myself, therefore the words of Marcus Aurelius  now apply: The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Ants and Elephants

January 15, 2017, 8:45 am

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ANTS AND ELEPHANTS

I am 73, typing this with one hand as my broken left arm is hanging limp and useless in its brace at my side. As an elderly Briton, like many of my ilk, I could sometimes be accused of taking healthcare for granted. The idiotic way I ended up in my current state of disability fills me with shame. It involved everything a sensible mature person should have avoided, and the timing was a disgrace. New Year’s Eve, too many beers, some wine, an over-confident ascension of the stairs, slipped footing, a somersault, punished by lying prostrate on the hallway floor in agony, my bloodied face smashed against the wall, unable to move my body. At 2 am on January 1^st, as on other days throughout the festive season, I always raise a glass to those dedicated and underpaid operatives in all those industries which cannot simply close down because of Santa Claus or Auld Lang Syne; the police, utility workers, firemen, the forces and especially the thousands who work selflessly as ambulance drivers, paramedics, nurses and doctors. To inflict an extra burden on these due to my own profligate carelessness is something I am not proud of. Thus, whilst more deserving and innocent patients, the genuinely sick  elderly, accident victims and those suffering cardiac arrest filled the NHS work rota on this notable night, I have added to it all by being a thoughtless drunk.

And yet the blue lights and the sirens came, and the kind, patient and compassionate paramedics avoided calling me a stupid old drunk; they gave me dignity and morphine, they carried me with gentle sympathy to hospital, where empathy and benevolence through pain-relieving doctors and nurses continued into the New Year dawn. These often overlooked workers who we only come into contact with via our surgeries or some health problem, are in my opinion representative of the finest vocation anyone can aspire to; the care and comfort of fellow human beings. And they are not by any measure rewarded  adequately for their labours. Compared to the disgusting ‘rewards’ given to bankers, CEOs, (perversely, often for failure) advertising executives and city speculators, they have all the financial kudos and visibility of ants in a herd of elephants.

The media onslaught against our National Health Service is currently at full tilt, presenting us every day with yet more stories of crisis, long  waits in A&E, potential deaths from waiting on trolleys for a bed … it goes on. Yes; the situation is bad. Could it be fixed? Of course it could. A few pence on income tax or National Insurance could do wonders, and if sold properly and sympathetically to the public, it wouldn’t lose any votes. The real reasons for the heroic struggle NHS staff are shouldering today are hidden behind a smokescreen of lies and falsehoods.

Since 2010 the Conservative government has laboured under the long-desired notion that eventually, due to their mandate, they can fulfil their dystopian dream; the dismantling of the NHS, the sell-off of all its assets to Downing Street’s favourite private ‘service suppliers’ such as BUPA, G4S, Capita, ATOS, Serco, Virgin Health etc. and the rapacious insurance industry. Like the Royal Mail, our railways, transport, telecoms, gas and electricity, all of which were once owned by us, the people, Tory MPs (and others) may well secretly regard their privileged parliamentary status as something approaching that of robber barons. The hijacking of public services for conversion into profit centres to be parcelled out to party donors and well-heeled supporters is a disgrace and an insult to morality. Yet it goes on, a covert movement of bean counters and iniquitous lobbyists who will spend more on lunches and soirees in a month than a registered nurse on 12 hour shifts will earn in a year.

Sadly, those of us who see the reality of this avaricious landscape for what it is, the burgeoning kingdom of greed, are a diminishing tribe. We are demeaned as scroungers, lovers of the ‘Nanny State’ and even worse - as socialists.  Only when the benefit of this stubborn human desire to serve our fellows with dedicated care has vanished into the City of London’s financial cyberspace will the nostalgic question be asked;  “Whatever happened to our final freedom - to be ill, free of charge?”

Until then, whilst my NHS screams its swansong, I salute it and all those who labour as I sleep to keep it alive.

THE GREAT UK U.F.O. HOAX

January 18, 2017, 5:19 am

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Hoaxed!

Mention the name Lembit Öpik these days, and this ex- Liberal Democrat  MP for Montgomeryshire usually conjures up an erogenous image of his dalliance with Rumanian pop tarts  the Cheeky Girls.

But hang on. Lembit’s granddad was into celestial bodies of a different nature, and he’s a link, albeit a tenuous  one, in the more humorous annals of ufology. (Yes, honest, they do exist).

Lembit’s grandfather was none other than astronomer Ernst Öpik, who left Estonia in WW2 to settle in Ireland.

Ernst Opik

He was based at Armagh Observatory, where he worked with none other than the Sky at Night’smonocled, high-trousered space oddity, Patrick Moore.  In 1922, long before space probes, Ernst predicted correctly the frequency of Martian craters. Ten years later he came up with a ground-breaking postulation that comets originated in a cloud orbiting far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Today this cloud is called the Öpik-Oort Cloud in his honour, and the asteroid 2099 Öpik is named after him. The crater Öpik on the Martian moon Phobos bears his name.

    As well as his interest in good time Rumanian girls, grandson Lembit is well known for his enthusiasm for searching for asteroids that may collide with the Earth. However, his grandfather holds another distinction. He seems to be the inspiration for a fictitious stargazer by the name of Dr. Egon Spünraas, created by Ernst’s Armagh colleague, Patrick Moore. Let the fun begin.

    In a Maida Vale bedsit one tranquil night in 1954, the 35 year old tenant was washing his dishes[1]. What happened next was enough to crack a cup and saucer, as a disembodied voice told him

     "Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of the Interplanetary Parliament." A week later, with the bedsit’s doors locked and presumably with the pots all washed, an uninvited stranger materialised in the room. He was without a name, but known to be a ‘world famous’ swami, and he was the harbinger of a new life beyond the tea towel for the new interplanetary spokesman. Four decades later, a long way from Maida Vale, with no need of Fairy liquid, this ‘chosen one’ would be known as Sir George King, O.S.P., Ph.D., Th.D., D.D., Metropolitan Archbishop of the Aetherius Churches, Prince Grand Master of the Mystical Order of St. Peter, and HRH Prince De George King De Santori.

GEORGE KING

Impressive nomenclature for a former taxi driver whose early oratorical prowess was gained by sermonizing  his passengers in the back of his cab on their lack of spirituality .

    Fortunately, George King (1919–1997) had a head start to equip him for his inter-galactic role. He’d immersed himself in orthodox Christianity, explored spiritual healing, yoga and psychic phenomena. Apparently, the voice he’d heard that night was that of a 3,500-year-old Venusian known as ‘the Master Aetherius’.  King’s assigned mission was to tell the world to pull its socks up, make love, not war, and take better care of planet Earth. Soon, after a series of  successful speeches at London’s Caxton Hall, he had a growing army of followers. The Aetherius Society gradually became a global religion, with offices from London to Los Angeles, with its own journal, The Cosmic Voice. King would speak to his disciples whilst being ‘channelled’ by extra-terrestrial beings, known as Mars Sector 6, Jupiter Sector 92, Saint Goo-ling, and even Jesus Christ himself.  Scientific progress and the negative feedback on the inhabitable conditions on Venus, Mars and Jupiter from US and Russian  space missions could not dent Aetherian belief that these barren worlds were populated by superior advanced beings of high intelligence and supreme power.

    Yet if you can’t puncture irrational faith with practical science, you can always try humour. Laugh, and the world laughs with you, as the saying goes, unless, perhaps, that world is Mars or Venus. Before long, tongues firmly in cheeks, bona fide astronomers were on King’s case, with some hilarious results. Pre-Brians May and Cox, they included Britain’s most popular TV stargazer. Enter Patrick Moore, the man with a comical plan.

    The mid 1950s were Ufology’s heyday. Translated into 12 languages, Flying Saucers Have Landed, by George Adamski and Desmond Leslie was a massive best seller.

But it had the advantage of silvery saucers landing in a California desert, where the wise and likeable fantasist Adamski met with a blonde, jump-suited Abba-esque Venusian who communicated telepathically, and, oddly enough, with his footprints, casts of which George duly took. After all, one
 should never go into a desert without a bag of plaster of Paris. What Britain needed was its own Adamski, and proof that the long-haired blonde aliens didn’t mind a touch of good old British fog and drizzle. So, as George King was dealing with his new role as dictated from Venus and Mars, in London the publishers Frederick Muller got on the Adamski space wagon with an exciting scoop, Flying Saucer from Mars by Cedric Allingham.

     Mr. Allingham opened with a run-down of what UFO literature existed at the time, then launched into his captivating story of his close encounter of the third kind. He’d been ambling peacefully along in a remote corner of Scotland when a flying saucer landed close by. Out stepped the pilot, and Allingham engaged him in conversation, using sign language. It transpired that the Highland-hopping space jockey was a Martian. As with Adamski and Leslie’s offering, Flying Saucer from Mars had a collection of photographs, which, unfortunately, weren’t up to Californian standards. The pictures, bearing similarities to Adamski’s, were out of focus, and one blurry shot showed the ufonaut walking away, with his craft out of the frame. The saucer had the characteristic dome, but this had what looked like a radio aerial vertically poking from it, (or, as some sceptics suggested, a wire to suspend it from). Never the less, we had a UK close encounter, and whereas Allingham’s writing style lacked some of Desmond Leslie’s florid flow, the writing was good enough and the story drew the attention of the press.

   However, Cedric Allingham seemed to be a bit of a mystery man. The science correspondent for the Sunday Express, Robert Chapman, was keen to interview the author, yet no one was able to track him down. Yet he did make one public appearance. It took place at a UFO club in Tunbridge Wells. The chairman of the club was none other than one of ufology’s favourite pillars of authenticity, a true believer, Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding. Dowding was at Allingham’s one and only talk, and sitting alongside him was the man who had tutored the air chief’s stepson; astronomer Patrick Moore. Anyone present at that talk was privileged, because Allingham vanished into history when it was reported that he had died from tuberculosis in a Swiss sanatorium.

   Robert Chapman did not believe this. He thought there was something fishy about the project, saying:

      “In my view, there is a strong likelihood that ‘Cedric Allingham’ is alive, in excellent health and far from repentant at having pulled a fast one on thousands of credulous saucerers.”But who was Cedric Allingham?

 In his book[2]A Directory of Discarded Ideas, John Grant wrote:

     “I have good reason to believe that Allingham’s Flying Saucer From Marswas in fact written by a well-known astronomer . . . but have been sworn to secrecy.”  Years later, in 1985, Steuart Campbell and Christopher Allan, a pair of UFO sceptics, had similar thoughts and decided to do some digging. They concluded that ‘Allingham’ at least knew his astronomy, appearing familiar with the works of astronomers like H. Percy Wilkins and Patrick Moore.  He had obviously read the Journals of both the British Astronomical Association and the British Interplanetary Society, neither of which graced the shelves of W. H. Smith. So they checked the membership lists of the BIS and the BAA.  No Allingham.

   Oddly enough, Allingham’s name did crop up several times in various works by Patrick Moore.

Considering Moore’s disdain for anything connected with UFOs, this seemed odd. A further revelation emerged. A journalist from Oxted in Surrey, Peter Davies, had been engaged to add a little semantic polish to one of Patrick Moore’s early books. Moore was living not far away in East Grinstead. The photographs in Flying Saucer from Mars include one of ‘Allingham’ standing by a telescope in a leafy garden. The garden - in East Grinstead  - and the telescope, were Patrick Moore’s, and the man posing as Allingham is, in fact, Peter Davies, wearing the same disguise he used at the Tunbridge Wells UFO club; a false moustache, horn rimmed glasses - and a false nose. The mercurial Moore never owned up to what seems to have most certainly been a literary hoax, and whatever secret he had he took it with him to the grave. He did issue a warning to anyone accusing him of writing Flying Saucer from Mars that he would sue. Yet he never did. But although Britain’s favourite TV astronomer may have been laughing up his sleeve at Adamski and Leslie with this stunt, his irrepressible pursuit of a jokey hoax was far from quelled. Which will eventually lead us back to Dr. George King, but not before we enjoy a reminder of how Adamski and Leslie were themselves hoaxed in their own blockbuster UFO book.As a softening-up process, a tasty entree to prepare the reader for George Adamski’s main course, Leslie’s quasi-academic style was fairly compelling, although had he been more scientifically rigorous in his research he might well have saved some embarrassment. A good example of his scatter-gun approach was his inclusion of what had become a favourite “ancient UFO” story among the growing celestial crockery brigade. This was the Ampleforth Abbey sighting, said to have occurred way back in 1290. Leslie aims at authenticity by quoting the “original” text from the old monks in Latin, then gives a translation in English. He gives credit for the supply of this edifying nugget to a man with a name one might only expect to see in a black-and-white 1940s British public information film – Mr A. X. Chumley. It tells the story of two Ampleforth monks, Wilfred and John, and their abbot, Henry. They are roasting sheep when the crucial line of the Ampleforth Latin appears, with the sudden announcement: “res grandis, circumcularis argenta, disco quodum had dissimilis” (“Lo! A large round silver thing like a disk flew slowly over them”).

In his assessment for the Condon Report on UFOs for the University of Colorado, Samuel Rosenberg goes into some detail with his incisive dissection of ancient UFO sightings. For example, the Ampleforth Abbey “sighting” morphs bizarrely into the “Byland Abbey Sighting” as subsequent, post-Adamski authors clamber on to the gravy train. Whoever Mr A. X. Chumley was, he certainly had a sense of humour, for as the archivist at Ampleforth would have told Leslie (had he bothered to check the story), the “large round silver thing like a disk” and the rest of the “monks roasting a sheep” yarn turns out to be a joke perpetrated in a letter to The Times on 9 February 1953 – in a scurrilous communication sent in by two Ampleforth schoolboys. They made it all up[3]. Talking of cod Latin inscriptions, Patrick Moore often mentioned a Roman urn on display in a museum, the location of which he never revealed, but he liked to tell us it bore the inscription

Iti sapis potitis andantino ne.
see final footnote

To get a handle on Moore’s impish sense of fun, just try moving the letters around and you’ll soon realise what a wag he was.

   So, UK saucers duly ridiculed, it was time to boldly go where no hoaxer had yet gone, into the peace-loving corral of the Aetherius Society. Once George had his organisation up and running, the Society's journal, Cosmic Voice became essential reading for adepts. In 1957, a series of articles appeared in the journal, all submitted by eminent scientists and physicists from various countries and institutions.  It seemed to readers, and King himself, that the interplanetary communications were being taken seriously. The lofty proclamations channelled through him from Master Aetherius, Mars Sector 6 and Saint Goo-ling (not forgetting Jesus) were having some positive effect, because these academic contributors were taking notice. Mainly foreigners, they had unusual names. They included the eminent astronomy lecturer Dr. Walter Wumpe, PhD., D.Sc., F.R.A.P.C., reporting on the Geophysical Year Programme. Other top academic names lining up to add kudos to Cosmic Voice were Dr. Dominic Fidler, Professor Huttle-Glank[4],  other pillars of scientific academia including N. Ormuss, L Pullar, R. T. Fischall, E. Ratic, Dr. Hotère, Dr. Lupi, and Dr. Waathervan. Completing this list was a certain Egon Spünraas (remember him?) and two Dutch physicists, Drs. Houla and Huiezenass.

     Step forward the cool voice of spirituality, the cult-watching newspaper Psychic Weekly. The paper’s sense of humour was not as overcooked as that of the Master Aetherius - it was still medium rare enough to spot a cosmic joke in all its glory. John Grant’s Directory relates that “when it was rather publicly pointed out to King, in the newspaper Psychic Weekly, that he was perhaps the victim of an L. Pullar, he furiously cracked down on such spurious contributions to knowledge - accusing the British astronomer Patrick Moore, among others, of being the perpetrator of the hoax”.[5]  No doubt Patrick, sides splitting, was polishing his monocle in glee.

   Eventually plain old George King, Interplanetary Parliament Spokesman, needed to sound a little grander, so a Doctorate might do the trick. According to David Barrett, in A Brief Guide to Secret Religions[6], King’s Doctorate came from "the International Theological Seminary of California, a degree mill with no accreditation." The Knighthood came later, (but not, it seems from Buckingham Palace). The Knighthood  was eventually bestowed on him by a certain Prince Robert M.N.G. Bassaraba de Brancovan-Khimchiachvili-Dadiani. The ‘Prince’, according to William Brynk of the New York Sun, “ran a bogus Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta from his faux-marble apartment (filled with equally genuine Louis XV furniture) at 116 Central Park South. If you had a passage fee, he had a gong for you, and hundreds of men and women with more money than sense each paid him up to $30,000 for his phony knighthoods.Prince Robert styled himself an "Imperial and Royal Highness." This is not bad: A Roman Catholic cardinal is merely an eminence. In a program for one of his ceremonies, held at Manhattan's Christ Church, he described himself as "Grand Master, Grand Chancellor, Grand Bailiff, and Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta." This was a few years before the prince vanished after his 2001 indictment for wire fraud.”[7]

     One would assume that Dr. (Sir) George King would have claimed all these expenses from the Interplanetary Parliament’s Bursary.

   Hoaxing the UFO[8], paranormal and psychic community can be fun, yet as this writer can testify, it is dangerous ground. The borderline between an obsession or cult and religion is to say the least hazy. Tread on a true disciple’s toes and you’re in trouble. However forteans, even with our sense of humour intact, want to believe. The question is, however, what exactly is it we want to believe? One has to remember that in the UK, spiritualism is a bona fide religion. Yet ever since the days of Houdini, the hoax and the fraud remain as the sceptic’s weapons, and they are frequently wielded.

   A report by Matt Roper in the Daily Mirror, on 28 October 2005 exposed a few unwelcome revelations concerning the most over-the-top, melodramatic current medium of them all, Liverpool’s Derek Acorah. Dr. Ciaran O’Keeffe, lecturer in the paranormal at Liverpool’s Hope University, was drafted on to Acorah’s TV show Most Haunted as resident parapsychologist. Dr. O’Keeffe, in speaking out, was in danger of committing media suicide, but he believed viewers should be enlightened as to the real nature of Most Haunted. In an attempt to establish whether or not Acorah was acting deceitfully, Dr. O’Keeffe came up with a ruse which he prepared whilst the team were filming at Bodmin Jail (alternatively Bodmin Gaol), an old prison on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. This historic building dates from 1779 and was closed in 1927. He invented a long-dead South African jailer called Kreed Kafer – an anagram of Derek Faker.

   “I wrote the name down and asked another member of the crew to mention it to Derek before filming. I honestly didn’t think Derek would take the bait. But during the filming he actually got possessed by my fictional character!”

O’Keeffe made up another non-existent character for the shoot at Prideaux Place, Cornwall. This time, it was the highwayman Rik Eedles – an anagram of Derek Lies. It didn’t take long for psychic Derek to begin talking to the fictional outlaw. These are just a couple of the hoaxes Acorah fell for. Dr O’Keeffe’s summing up was pretty devastating: “In my professional opinion we’re not dealing with a genuine medium … all we are seeing is showmanship and dramatics.”

   Doug and Dave’s bogus corn circles, YouTube awash with fake UFO footage, phoney ghosts, cold-reading mediums, all these are simply aggravating speed bumps on the fortean highway that takes us over the hill to give us a glimpse of those genuine unexplained mysteries which add zest to our lives.  Yet as the wily old Patrick Moore has demonstrated, there’s nothing wrong with pulling into a lay-by now and again for a good laugh.

is this Cedric Allingham or Peter Davies - and does that look like a false nose?

SOURCES: FURTHER READING

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[1]This version according to the late Dr. Christopher Evans, Cults of Unreason,Harrap, London 1973.

[2]Grant, John, A Directory of Discarded Ideas  Ashgrove Press 1981, Corgi Edition 1983

[3]For more on this comical prank, Anselm Cramer OSB, Archivist, Ampleforth Abbey, gives a good overview at http://ufophenomenon.weebly.com/byland-abbey.html  

[4] Dr. Christopher Evans, in Cults of Unreason, Harrap, London 1973 tells us that Dr. Dominic Fidler’s article entitled Mescaline and Flying Saucers‘was challenged for scientific inaccuracies by a Professor Huttle-Glank.’

[5] Grant, John, A Directory of Discarded Ideas  Ashgrove Press 1981, Corgi Edition 1983

[6]Barrett, David V. A Brief Guide to Secret Religions: A Complete Guide to Hermetic, Pagan and Esoteric Beliefs

Robinson, London 2011.

[7]WILLIAM BRYK New York SunMen Who Would Be Kings (Or Knights, or Counts) June 15, 2005

[8]For a classic case of UFO hoaxing, the Warminster Photographs, go to http://magonia.haaan.com/1976/experimental-ufo-hoaxing/  Experimental UFO Hoaxing. David Simpson

'It is a pis pot, it is, and a tin one.'

                                                                                                                                                  

The Inauguration of Donald Trump: The Daily Show

January 26, 2017, 3:13 am

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OLD AS THE HILLS

January 26, 2017, 9:06 am

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As Old As the Hills

Reflections on being a codger

I remember a day, perhaps 50 or more years ago. A hot day in summer, when I was between ships, working ashore in the building trade to earn a few extra pounds. Unskilled work was abundant then.

It you were fit and strong, could handle a pick and shovel or shoulder a bag of hot cement, most firms would employ you. It was sweaty, honest work after which cold beer tasted all the better and restful sleep was guaranteed. For the first 15 years of my post-school, working life, I did my share of it. In those days digging footing trenches for building a house wasn’t done with a JCB. Manual labour was the way; the trusty spade, the wheelbarrow. On that day, I remember the foreman standing over us, puffing on his briar pipe, telling us to put our backs into it. It didn’t annoy me, because I felt so strong, virile and invincible that I dug into that grey clay with even more vigour. I thought my energy might last forever. I was a human machine primed, lubricated for constant action. How foolish that notion seems now.

   Time for reflection. On the other hand, you might call it navel gazing. The moment has undoubtedly arrived; just two months away from 74 and I’ve finally had to surrender to taking an afternoon nap. I know this is the kind of thing the laid-back Spanish do, the siesta,

THE SHACKLETON'S CHAIR ... A SEAT TO DIE IN ...

and much of my experience visiting UK OAP care homes has proved that for the inmates, the challenge and physical strain of getting through a sandwich and a Viennese whirl at lunch would usually result in a comatose two hours in a Shackleton’s chair (remember them?) interrupted only by afternoon tea and a biscuit.

But now, even though I still have all my own hair and teeth, I too am an ‘Old Age Pensioner’. I’m one of today’s 65+ group of the early 21^st century who grew up with rock’n’roll. In the immediate post war years we were a ‘marketing opportunity’ - the first real ‘teenagers’. The generation of ‘oldies’ before us are dying off. They were the ones who went through the war. I was born in April 1943 with a vague infant memory of the Luftwaffe over Hull.

The way we were - a marketing opportunity with disposable income

The older generation who braved the shrapnel passed into peacetime loving Glenn Miller, the clunky Billy Cotton Band Show and dreary post-war BBC radio shows. Radio to them was ‘The Organist Entertains’ and the anodyne insipidity of ‘Sing Something Simple’, a Sunday teatime regular of such stultifying tedium it made you realise why the Lord’s Day Observance Society still had bombed-out Britain by the throat. But we, the rockers, weaned on Elvis, Little Richard and Lonnie Donegan, still imagined, even by the 1990s that we might well live forever, because our culture appeared as immortal as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On LP.

If my memory serves me well, much of what you could do physically at 20 could still be managed in your 40s. Add three decades and the situation changes. I did try going to a gym once to tighten myself up, but found the experience highly distasteful. It was full of preening narcissists and the vinyl upholstery on muscle-punishment machinery and bench presses always seemed to have a patina of some would-be Schwarzenegger’s sweat on it.

another sweaty narcissist ...

I swam 50 lengths a day in my late 50s and early 60s and that eventually informed me that when all those abdominal muscles you thought were indestructible pack in, they express their weariness by giving you a hernia, and with hernias there’s a choice from inguinal to umbilical and beyond (check this out) and some, as I’ve discovered after three bouts of surgery, can all but finish you off.

HERNIAS - THEY OFFER A WIDE VARIETY ...

I tried riding a bike but that was exhausting. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you can still have sex, because you can do it in a more leisurely fashion horizontally in bed. (I should be so lucky...) You can even go up and down in straight lines cutting your grass with a lawnmower and push the wheelie bins out or chop firewood.  But past 60, other things kick in. Then there’s the strong possibility of arthritis. This seems to favour the knee joints and coincides with that time when you’re just about to ‘enjoy’ retirement. Hips are another danger area. If, like me, you’re borderline obese and love your food, you’ll also find that whereas ten years ago you could walk two or three miles and feel a sense of achievement, now a half mile walk to pick up your newspaper demands an immediate nap when you get home. Smoking? Yes, I’ve puffed my way through many an ounce of Golden Virginia and packs of cigars; stopping’s easy. I’ve stopped loads of times. As I write this, due to my current disabling injury I haven’t smoked for 26 days. Will I smoke again? Put me in the vicinity of a couple of pints of decent bitter and I’ll no doubt surrender to the weed. It’s an evil, pernicious, death dealing carcinogen and indulgence in it is like Russian Roulette. Yet I’ve been stupid enough to do it.

The sad thing is that all these ailments (and for many victims, more serious ones) is that they don’t just ‘come and go’ when you enter your 70s. They come and stay. You can, as I do, take enough vitamin pills each morning to make your guts rattle like a pair of maracas, and eat your ‘five a day’ healthy foods, but if your number’s up, that’s it. You wonder what’s next; dementia? Alzheimer’s? Anything’s possible. 

There is no secret, spiritual palliative to aging. Your body’s like an automobile. Think back to all those shiny new cars 20+ years ago you once proudly polished and sat in. Where are they now? Big ends, carburettors, gearboxes, brake linings … all worn out and rusting at the bottom of some dystopian metallic death mountain in a distant scrap yard. They’re a fine analogy for the human body.
Yet I can only speak as a man. Women are much tougher than us. When you consider childbearing - nine months of carrying an infant in your body, then the pain of birth itself, the struggle to maintain a position and dignity in an unequal, male-orientated world, women deserve medals and a double pension.

So, what do us old folk do to keep ticking over? We try to be useful. Our experience is sometimes valuable. Those who can, turn to daily creativity. This blog is an example. Those with extended families are stimulated by the love of grandchildren. Others dance, try to exercise, read, study, expand their knowledge. Some of us remain pointlessly political; anger, said Johnny Rotten, is an energy.

And if we continue to annoy some sections of the younger generation, they should think on; we’re dying, we’ll soon be out of your way, we'll stop drawing that pension which annoys you so much (yet which, like the NHS, we've been paying for throughout our working lives) and then, guess what? You too will get old, creaky and cantankerous and believe me, kids, it ain’t no fun.

Falling Angels

February 9, 2017, 3:59 am

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FALLING ANGELS

Comrades of physicians,

More useful than a priest they stand

Bound by paperwork, short on hands,

Rarely ever short on caring,

Just drained of energy and sleep.

Male or female, angels are androgynous;

Wingless yet celestial:

A nurse is forever a nurse.

Yet beneath the prowling politician’s mask,

Hidden by their ‘caring’ camouflage

Dark hearts are lurking on the hustings

Electioneering evil, their moneyed masquerade

A catalogue of flawed belief.

Such are the methods of the City thief;

A conviction that all human souls

Are up for sale.

If every man and woman has their price,

Minister, investor, tell me this:

How do you privatise a nurse’s mind?

Where is your dividing line

Between profit and compassion?

From their wee small hours on darkened wards,

Let the busy, silent nurses speak.

Whilst corks pop from your Bollinger,

I collect the bedpans, whilst you wallow

In some shareholding haze

That gilded glade where profit blooms

Whilst I push trolley loads of pain

Into the healing, sterile rooms

Where lives will hang upon the straining thread

Of your insatiable greed.

And as you scheme and calculate

To tabulate my fiscal worth,

I still dispense thin oxygen of hope

I work where time is tight with saline drips

A catheter, syringe.

And as my long shift ends I wonder;

To my aid, what will you bring?

Survival of the richest,

not treatment of the sickest?

Will you let me do my job,

Will you grant me any hope?

And when the time arrives for you

To occupy a bed,

Will your profits  help me cope?

Don’t think your cash can purchase nursing

Forget the market

And its narcotic rush

The angels aren’t for falling,

No matter how you push.

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February 22, 2017, 10:55 am

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http://www.coopeboyesandsimpson.co.uk/

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A SINISTER DARKNESS

March 8, 2017, 8:04 am

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A SINISTER DARKNESS:

The Forgotten Works of

Paul Andreas Weber

In 1995 I was commissioned by The New Statesman magazine to write a feature on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp just outside Munich. On that cold, sleet-driven day there was no comfort to be found walking around the massive site. It felt thick with tragic ghosts. When I entered what was once the camp's SS barracks, among all the murals and photos one set of artworks stunned me.

A. Paul Weber: The Informer

In the 1930s Weber saw the wickedness and hypocrisy behind the Nazi sideshow and committed his thoughts to art. I find it haunting, and, as the 21st century world slips back into that dark, proto-fascist 1930s mindset, these drawings seem to have a new relevance in the age of post-truth. The biography below is a translation from the original German direct from the weber Museum's web site. It still gives me the creeps and sends me back to Dachau every time I see it.

'SPECULATING ON DEATH'

On November 1, 1893, Andreas Paul Weber as the son of a railway was

Born in Wizard in Arnstadt (Thuringia). His grandfather, the manufacturer Christian Kortmann, and his mother encouraged him in the literary and artistic technical fields. Weber attended the secondary school Arnstadt, later briefly the arts and crafts school in Erfurt.

1908-1914 he was a member of the young Wandervogel, a movement that was looking for a new lifestyle in the hiking and natural way of life. His love of country and nature were awakened when hiking through all over Germany. From these experiences out, also the national and nature-loving ethos of the artist is to understand, who already worked in these years as a commercial graphic artist.

In the first world war, he performed military service as a railway pioneer on the eastern front. From 1916 he worked as a cartoonist and Illustrator for the "Journal of the 10th army" until 1918, he was sent to Spa.

in 1920, he married Toni Klander; they had 5 children. In the following years, Weber achieved first successes as an Illustrator: it created illustrations to Hans Sachs, till Eulenspiegel, Reineke Fuchs and time-critical work "The contemporary" by Hjalmar Kutzleb. in 1925, the artist founded his own, named for Toni Klander "clan press". In the later collaboration with his eldest son Christian, signets, bookplates, and promotional materials were produced.

in 1928, Weber joined the resistance circle to Ernst Niekisch. He often only partly followed the ideologies of the intellectual circle, but shared its growing concern for the future of Germany with regard to the rising national socialism. In the years 1931-1936, Weber besides Niekisch was co-editor of the journal "Resistance", for which he designed the logo. For the resistance-Verlag, he produced numerous book facilities, but above all politically satirical illustrations. From 1932 to 1945, Weber was also the German folk calendar North Schleswig, gave out his friend Hans Schmidt-Gorsblock.

'DOOM'

Weber moved to residences in Berlin-Spandau, upper Ellen, Nicholas Berg, Reinhausen, outdoor banes on the Lüneburg Heath in 1936 after Schretstaken (district of Lauenburg). Resistance published the monography of Weber, Hugo Fischer, which stipulates that appeared at this time:

"... the artist the world holding up a mirror, themselves recognize that he scares himself...".

 

The MEETING

On July 2, 1937, A. Paul Weber was arrested and imprisoned until December 15 in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel, in Berlin and Nuremberg because of its contacts with the resistance circle. In prison, he was allowed drawing apolitical leaves; first work on the motifs of "Chess player" and "Forest" was developed. After a trip to Florida in 1938, not used Weber his family due to the emigration, he began in 1939 regularly to deliver blades for the evil John derived "pencil Art Association" in Hamburg. This company aimed to publicise good graphics like all parts of society. Until 1980, Weber delivered for this 157 lithographs.

1939-1941 Weber worked at the cycle "Wealth of tears" (British pictures), which were published in the Nibelungen-Verlag Berlin. 1944/45, he was used for military service.

 

the MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TOOTH

After the war, he created again critical lithographs to current problems. He met satirical human foibles and far-sighted pointed to abuses in politics, Church, judiciary, economy, art, medicine and the environment. 1954-1967 Weber worked at the magazine "Simplicissimus". This time the artist brought increasing recognition: already in 1951, a special "A. Paul Weber circle" was founded in the pencil Art Association, 1955 he received the art prize of Schleswig-Holstein, in 1963 the Hans-Thoma medal. Weber was appointed Professor in 1971, and was awarded the great Federal cross of merit.

the end

From 1959 until his death the "Critical calendar" published in self-publishing - a Yearbook with graphics, texts from literature and newspapers were put to the side. More than 600 works were published until 1980.

On November 9, 1980, the artist died 87jährig in Schretstaken. His urn was in the garden of A. Buried Paul Weber Museum. Weber's oeuvre includes nearly 3.000 lithographs, hundreds of woodblock prints, over 200 oil paintings, an immense number of gebrauchsgraphischer work and sketches, as well as several thousand drawings.

PROTEST IS POINTLESS

March 15, 2017, 1:29 pm

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IS PROTEST NOW POINTLESS?

“Populism, political programe or movement that champions the common person, usually by favourable contrast with an elite. Populism usually combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established socialist and labour parties.”

Encyclopædia Britannica

OAF: especially a man or boy, as an oaf, you think that they are impolite, clumsy, or aggressive. Synonyms: lout, brute, yob or yobbo [British , slang] , fool.

Collins English Dictionary

 Why do old fogeys like me carry on bleating and railing against the current world? Haven’t us old 70+ lefties learned our lesson yet? People don’t want our ideas, our romantic socialism, ‘to each according to his needs’, all that Marxist crap. As it was in the 1930s, they’re looking for a ‘strong leader’. They don’t want the world for themselves; they want to be placed on a make-believe treadmill of power which leads to a New Order. And that, in a scary nutshell, is why geriatric politics addicts can’t stay silent. Strong leaders are cropping up from Washington to Bratislava, shepherding the electoral sheep into a pen which will have all the potential for becoming a new theme park; ‘Dachau Lite™’

BILL MAHER

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On a recent US TV satire show, Real Time with Bill Maher, he commented on the way he imagined Trump and the rabid new White House posse would be looking through the window  at one of the mass anti-Trump rallies and laughing, saying “Huh. Look at those fuckwits out there …”

As an illustration of the mistaken way we still think of democracy in the west, it was spot on target. That is exactly how the new breed of politician will regard organised mass protest; as a kind of slightly irritating vision of no consequence; simply close the curtains and it’s no longer visible. Since the early 2000s and the illegal Iraq War, the increasing number of marches and demonstrations, even when they do make the news, are generally ignored by the arrogant powers who rule us. Perhaps, because of the peripheral violence which accompanied the Poll Tax riots during Thatcher’s reign, some indication of the country’s mood did seep through the insulated, anti-public walls of parliament, but since then, demos and marches are simply a way for those of us who care enough about a campaign to let off steam and lose our sense of isolation for a day. We feel as if we’re ‘doing something’; we’re venting our anger.

In the past year, Western politics has lost any grip it once had on reality. We have entered the Era of The Oaf. Dialogue and debate have morphed into something new and frightening. The people have been shunted into two new camps; one is fuelled by intolerance, bigotry and irrational hatred, the result of being ignored by politicians (other than at election times) for so long. Much of this toxic human underbelly can now find its voice on social media. The other camp are the objects of that hatred, because this group have naively continued to believe in what they imagined was the status quo; that reason and balanced argument in the form of politely exchanged views were the vehicles of social progress. Such a view is obviously incorrect, and there is no longer any neutral middle ground.

Prior to the UK’s EU referendum in June 2016, those who had absorbed decades of straight bananas and cucumber anti-Europe propaganda in our increasingly scurrilous press had little choice other than muttering into their teacups and tut-tutting about ‘Political correctness/health and safety gone mad’. In many cases they were right. But given the one big chance to turn their

eternal dismay into an effective weapon, when June 23^rdcame along, fired up by the Daily Mail, the Express, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, they realised that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stick it to Westminster and the metropolitan elite. This new wave of populism, fuelled by deliberately and easily ignored falsehoods, the international legal and economic repercussions and a total lack of what the future might hold, was hammered into the bedrock of society like the last spike in the Intercontinental railroad.

I write this in the week which includes International Women’s Day.  Long before TV and radio, back in Russia in 1917 the day was the catalyst for the revolution, which would finally fully explode in October after Lenin and Trotsky’s return from exile. On that March day women left their workplaces and threw snowballs at factory widows where their menfolk were still working. Eventually everyone was out on strike. The difference between a protest like that and the chants and seas of placards today is that back then there was a plan; even behind the perceived spontaneity highly organised leaders existed who had policies and who could channel the mass anger into something progressive. The recent impressive Women’s March on Washington would have no impression on Trump and his cronies whatsoever, but at least the women would feel great about it all.

Those who voted for Brexit and Trump will tell us that ‘the People’s Voice’ has been heard. Has it? Is it being heard in the UK in connection with the theft-by-stealth of our National Health Service? No. Why is this? It would seem, with the exception of The Daily Mirror the only headline-worthy interest shown in the NHS is about the way it is failing and struggling, which is the direct result of gross underfunding. In February, frightened of not toeing the Laura Kuennsberg line,(She’s been dubbed ‘the Voice of Reason’ by The Sun) the BBC ran a devastating series of reports on the NHS over five nights, with hardly a positive word for the struggles caused by the government or for the dedicated, beleagured staff.    Health Minister Jeremy Hunt has in the past, as an author, expressed his desire for the NHS to evaporate, to be replaced by a US-style private insurance system. But did the presence of 200,000 angry pro-NHS protestors in London on March 4 persuade the Chancellor to make provisions for the NHS in his Spring budget? Of course not. That was another branch of ‘the People’s Voice’ which fell on deliberately deaf ears.

All the working class (as it was once known) have left is the withdrawal of their labour. Yet today’s Trade Unions are hamstrung by various laws imposed by the Thatcher government which Tony Blair decided to keep on the statute books. But unless we have a general strike across the country the struggles of varous bodies such as railway staff, campaigning not for wage increases but for public safety, will remain ineffective and be assaulted daily by the media. So it would seem, in the face of uncaring, hostile politicians and their tabloid supporters, that protest is dead in the water.

We now live in a time of growing inequality where the only people who matter to the political establishment are the rich. The rich have only one game plan - to become richer, and that plan has been fulfilled over and over again. Wild radicals talk of a revolution. But that’s romantic waffle. Lenin, Castro and Mao didn’t have to face today’s highly organised media propaganda machine, in all its many brazen disingenuous forms. For Britain and America to ever become decent, egalitarian societies bereft of self-serving greed, then the people will have to reach such depths of angry suffering  that the only way forward will be to physically lash out in mass organised anger. But this won’t happen in my lifetime. Protest is dead.

The Curse of Red Trousers

March 31, 2017, 12:02 pm

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THE CURSE OF THE RED TROUSERS

Working class people dress themselves according to their tribe. At the bottom level from teens to maybe mid-40s, there’s grey jogging pants, trainers, some kind of lightweight ‘sporting’ top, and until the ‘fashion’ dropped off recently the baseball cap was essential. The most ubiquitous accessory is the I-Phone, because without one you may be required to look away from your palm and realise there’s a real world out there.
And never forget the essential tattoos; these must cover any available space on limbs and be exposed in ever the coldest weather. The rest of society, those who may still have a paid job, will express a touch of individuality, but rarely be totally influenced  by the broadsheet media’s colour supplements which are in turn offering diluted ideas taken from the big catwalks, where ‘trends’ are ‘decided’ in Paris, Milan or London. The immediate output of those fashionista cities is aimed at the rich, people with far more money than sense.

In Britain, there are two other tribes worthy of mention; the rural farming types with their Berber jackets, green wellingtons and Harris Tweed outfits, and the multi-layered faux-aristocratic strata - those who may work in town (usually in banking, marketing, etc.) but live in the country. For example, you can always spot a middle aged woman from this bracket because she’ll enjoy a light sweater over a silk shirt which will be open at the neck to reveal a pearl necklace. The men, often convinced that their income makes them part of some antiquated aristocracy, when dressing down at weekends will try and confirm this by wearing the most ridiculous trousers they can find, and the preferred colour is red. Red or pastel trousers are the ultimate ‘Hooray Henry’ garb, and they signify a person well worth avoiding. As for this writer, obese, old and unkempt, without capacious black jogging pants and a t-shirt I’d have to go naked.

Every other day, TV offers us a sartorial enigma. For example, Michael Portillo’s penchant for riding the rails dressed like a box of multi-coloured marshmallows.

Most celebrities are prone to narcissism, but on antiques shows, whether you’re caressing a Clarice Cliff teapot or an Edwardian gold watch, an expert’s credibility might depend on the de rigueur tradition of looking like a florid cross between Willie Wonka and the next Dr. Who. Camera-hogging Tim Wonnacott, today’s king of the collectibles catwalk, seems desperate to appear in as many eccentric ensembles as possible - and never more than once. This means bilious mustard green jackets, hideous waistcoats of various hues, the ubiquitous coloured trousers, whilst his collections of colour co-ordinated bow ties and spectacles (always to be balanced on the end of his nose) are probably stored in an aircraft hangar.

Another serial offender, David Howard, is to dress sense what Eric Pickles is to hang-gliding. Every clip in shows like Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip requires a different pair of trousers; lemon, puce, azure, white, lime green, and of course, hooray-Henry red. His

choice of shirts is no better. Probably the doyen of empathic presenters, Paul Martin of Flog It, sometimes resorts to a powder blue corduroy suit, but for most of his visits to stately homes (cue the Baroque music) he tilts respect to their upper-crust founders with … les pantalons rouge, whilst the show’s Philip Sorrell will appear swaddled in a multi-coloured scarf even on a hot sunny day. Of course, this kind of down-market malarkey rarely impinges on the blue-blooded ambience of the BBC’s long-running flagship, The Antiques Road Show where the dress code suggests a Buckingham Palace tea party. No doubt the argument is that it all adds colourful ‘fun’, but one wonders what Clarice Cliff would make of it all.

GERIATRICA

April 17, 2017, 4:55 am

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Thomas Cole The Journey of Life (1842) National Gallery GERIATRICA Oh, how they tell you, There are reasons to be cheerful, And oh, how you reply “I know”. Yet windswept youth has a smiling agenda The ocean which they sail upon, Still unpolluted by life’s detritus, Has distant horizons and lucky landfalls Over which I have already walked. But we in the long shadow Of our greyness will nod and smile Stumbling sages in the pot-holed landscape Of the inevitable country, Geriatrica. For here the past is long, The future short. Here we face the pending mystery, Reality’s cajoling fingers caress our necks, Like anonymous lovers Drawing us towards the great unknown. What lies in wait there? A new sunrise? A re-union With loved ones gone before? Will there be another childhood? Are these the reasons to be cheerful, Or palliatives to this arthritic fading being Were heartbeats falter and Exhausted muscles seize the dregs Of energy and wrap the mind in sackcloth. Oh, lighten up old man, they say, Never throw away the dimming spark Of life until the gift expires.

Sparrows in Aleppo

April 27, 2017, 4:37 am

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SPARROWS IN ALEPPO

The rain has ceased and like a golden aria

A blackbird sings among the green.

That high, velvet trill of nature’s innocence

Caresses my mind and slowly

Pushes away a congregation of anxieties.

Did blackbirds sing in Mosul once?

Did Aleppo sparrows chirp between the shells?

Did not just one grain of Kabul sand

Outweigh my cushioned western worries?

Blackbird, caress my conscience.

We are the victims of geography

Pollen, history’s scattered humanity ill-fated

Cold beneath hate’s stars,

Burning in the sun’s misunderstanding

Terror and complacency, so many miles apart

The blackbird’s song reminds me that

Those of us bereft of Holy Books can only listen

Beyond sweet avian notes like windblown blossom

Our vocation, voyeurs of remote violence

Becomes another shameful occupation.