The enemy of my enemy ..........

How easy it is to make assumptions about people. At a gathering I was at recently someone was roundly condemning the Pope and pointing out that although he was selling himself as a part of the "progressive" wing of the church he was in fact a nasty old fascist like his predecessors and had colluded in the crushing of the liberation theology movement by Argentina's military junta. I nodded vigorously in agreement. Clearly I was in good company. We were all secular progressives together. Perhaps even anarcho-atheists. A few moments later someone else asked my new friend if she had attended a particular birthday party. "No", she replied, "I never celebrate birthdays". Alarm bells started to ring inside my head. "In fact I don't celebrate Christmas or Easter or any of the pagan festivals". The alarm bells in what passes for my brain had given way to little people clattering down steel ladders as klaxons blared. "I'm a Jehovah's Witness". Praise the Lord we hadn't exchanged addresses!

Weekend windup.

The last forty eight hours have provided a couple of outstanding examples of just how vulnerable to the wind up the forces of evil are. Take the CoE for starters. In vicarages up and down the land tomorrow's sermons are being hastily rewritten. Out goes all that stuff about moneylenders, temples, Archbish of Catab and Wicked Wonga and in come the "complicated world out there" take on things. Even Boris Johnson (peace be upon him) said that Wonga's interest rates amount to usury but as many a naive vicar is contemplating today, ethical investment is a bit like corporate social responsibility and police intelligence - a contradiction in terms and as rare as rocking horse shit.
I don't know what genius in the Home Office came up with the idea of having Promogroup vans urging "illegals" to go home or face the consequences touring the streets, but having a contact number displayed shows that they never thought it through properly. The line has been swamped with calls for a lift home, travel advice and complains about "a Welsh neighbour who looked at me funny". The twattersphere has gone totally crazy apeshit. Love it.

The music of the Lowestoft Dandies revealed at last.

Bring on the pandas.

As a nation, we are clearly better at breeding royals than breeding Giant Pandas. Pity really. Pandas are charming creatures; quite unlike the new Royal Grandmother Mrs Middleton. Is there anything less charming than the sharp elbowed, upwardly mobile, aspirational middle-class mother. Buckingham Palace is home to more than one old queen and below stairs the place resembles nothing so much as a Sandy and Jules sketch from Round The Horn. This viperous crew apparently delight in referring to the ex trolley dolly as "doors to manual" and her two daughters as the "Wisteria Sisters".  There are forces at work here of which we know nothing. Perhaps we should give the pandas another chance.

Lowestoft Dandies

Moving rapidly on from Australian Sharpies I fell to thinking about another youth fashion, movement would be too strong a word, that is possibly even more obscure. It was during the early 60's and I was working aboard a coaster in the coal trade. Myself and the other young seamen considered ourselves to be pretty snappy dressers. Remember those old photos of the Kray Twins? Well that was pretty much the style that we aspired to. One day we were due to be joined by a new deckhand and wondered if he would be a fellow Commie Modernist, some dull old bloke or, worst fear of all, a really hard Ted stuck in a time warp. We looked up from our work to see the most amazing apparition ascending the gangway. This bizarre young man was like nothing we had ever seen before. Rocker hairstyle and outrageous Cuban heeled boots that made negotiating the gangway problematic were the most notable features at either end but it was the bit in between that really caused our jaws to sag. The bloke was wearing a suit the likes of which we had never seen. Amazing colours, bizarre cut, masses of pleats, huge bell bottoms. What the fuck? We soon discovered that we had been joined by a Lowestoft fisherman and that this odd apparel was all the rage in the Suffolk port. Cut off from the mainstream of youth fashion the young fishermen had developed a unique style of their own.
I had forgotten all about this brief interlude in my life when years later I met a guy at a party who said he originated from Lowestoft. I mentioned early 60's fisherman's fashion and it turned out that he was a bit of an aficionado and involved in writing and recording images of the era. I have just located a short film by the same Peter Wylie here.

Aussie Sharpies.

What's the point of a youth culture that don't piss off the establishment? Bet these were the kids that your Mum and Dad warned you about. Rock n Roll!

Up on the roof.

Whenever I'm on the Southbank I usually climb up to the roof garden atop the QE Hall. It's a cracking project I reckon. Initially planned and overseen by the Eden Project the actual day to day gardening is done by volunteers from Providence Housing Trust who have suffered homelessness, addiction and mental health problems. I would never presume to talk or write about the benefits of gardening for these good people. We chat about vegetables, moan about the weather, much like growers the world over. I don't know if the rooftop garden  is a form of therapy for those for whom life has gone tits up - I know that visiting the roof garden is therapy for me.