Limbo with Alcohol

Re; the title, it’s always a good idea, isn’t it?

At the start of the summer I had it in my had that I was going to update this blog with a fine piece of original writing at least every week. Needless to say that didn’t last very long, although I’m not entirely sure why. I’d blame it on being incredibly busy, rushed off my feet, in fact, but that’d be rather untrue. It’s not as if I’ve been short of topics to write about either, there’s a veritable stable of half-begun post-horses that have fallen by the wayside, for one reason or another. And anyone who’s spotted the little Hillsborough rant below, I’m not counting that; a spur of the moment, unchecked blur of injustice! 

So, I assume you’re all (yes I realise all is a slight exaggeration here) absolutely desperate to hear what I would have written? Of course you are, as much as this is akin to that awful moment during Who Wants To Be a Millionaire when Chris Tarrant rips up a check for sixty-four thousand pounds in front of your eyes.

I was very close to being very repetitive, actually, my next-to-last post had been about performance-enhancing drugs, and then the Lance Armstrong story broke. A tad cruel of the US Anti-doping Authority, I’d thought… Nonetheless it just occurred to me how much fall-out from the early part of the last decade still remains, when it comes to professional cycling. There is an endemic lack of trust in what you see before your eyes, and simply as a sports fan, that’s pretty painful to sit through. It’s certainly not over either, as much as it seemed like a rather perfectly plotted tragedy when the prototypical fighter, Armstrong, delivered his statement. There was no admission of guilt, simply an admission that he was backed into a corner, a last desperate attempt by the consumate may-aswell-have-been-a-statesman to prolong the siege of so many hearts and minds that he’d held for so long. In the end though, I think he simply chose to be tried by proxy, because his former manager and friend being found guilty, as may well happen (and although Armstrong’s climb-down suggests otherwise, it’s not impossible that Johan Bruyneel could be acquitted, I suppose), would mean very much the same as Lance going down himself.

Away from sport (yes I can hear the gasps), local events reignited a rather morbid curiosity of mine in Michael Gove’s ‘free schools’. Although of course it’s wrong to absolve the previous Labour government of any blame here. (Just this week Lord Adonis, the Labour peer and involved in education policy, described them as the future.) My thoughts are pretty succinct, I disagree with the idea of the British private education system on principle: Your wealth should not determine the quality of education you are given. (An episode of the BBC’s genealogy programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ with the comedian Hugh Dennis illustrated this quite articulately, actually, as he finds out about the scholarship which allowed his grandfather to escape going down the mine in favour of  a secondary education, well worth checking out if you like that sort of thing.) The ‘sponsored’ system is however, if better for it’s more comprehensive and less selective nature, symptomatic of the growing trend seen in this government (predictably) to privatise things which ought not to be controlled by the whims of capitalism. The quality of an education should not depend on the ‘autonomy’ (a buzzword which all of the ‘delighted’ academy heads seemed scripted to parrot at regular intervals in the videos which are on the DfES website) of a governing body. I’m not entirely as au fait with this subject as I’d like, so I’m going to avoid parroting any ridiculous clichés at this moment in time, but when the government is talking about a single exam board and cosying up to the Pearson company, it becomes clear that there’s a worrying trend in education policy. Socially selective education isn’t the answer, but neither is commercialised education, and that’s the scary prospect.

The last real thing I’d half-heartedly written concerned, well, me. I was wondering why exactly I write such ludicrously pointless things as this, and still haven’t really hit upon an answer, to be blunt. But it sparked me thinking about being at a delicate little crossroads in life. I’m about to be off to university, and I’ve spent the last month or so cocooned in some bizarre form of limbo where there is a lot of alcohol, some fairly large sub-woofers, and a few gorillas playing chess in the Student Finance HQ (I think they’ve had me at checkmate for ages, although maybe they’ve just started toying with my pawns.) It’s been, to be glib, pretty damn cool, as is the thought of all the people I like to think of as friends crawling all over a map of the UK. (Although, there must be something attractive in Durham, god knows what, but they’re like moths to a flame, I swear I can slip a few more insect metaphors past you, too.) It’s an odd one, but being able to plot a penniless course through the next three years is fun, even if the aftermath promises to be ever more uncertain.

Oh, and I’m forgetting the dirty Harry Potter pick-up lines, they were the highlight, really. (Will try them on you on request and pending a sense of humour audit.)

Finally, I’m going to revive the Pretentious Poetry Corner in order to show you one last thing: Carol Ann Duffy writes on Hillsborough.

THE Cathedral bell, tolled, could never tell;

nor the Liver Birds, mute in their stone spell;

or the Mersey, though seagulls wailed, cursed, overhead,

in no language for the slandered dead…

not the raw, red throat of the Kop, keening,

or the cops’ words, censored of meaning;

not the clock, slow handclapping the coroner’s deadline,

or the memo to Thatcher, or the tabloid headline…

but fathers told of their daughters; the names of sons

on the lips of their mothers like prayers; lost ones

honoured for bitter years by orphan, cousin, wife –

not a matter of football, but of life.

Over this great city, light after long dark;

truth, the sweet silver song of the lark.