From Athlone to Artane

Malachy sailed to New York, a tailor trained to be

and I packed meat on the West Side where he altered a suit for me. 

From Athlone to Artane he grew from the boy to man

who’d fled his Mammy’s womb when she ’visited her Gran’.

Many’s the stitch he’s fashioned, ells of cloth he's shorn, 

fitting up so many people yet he grieves and mourns.

Sailing on the good boat JC

     In my work I meet up with lots of people. In these last weeks I have been surprised how many  tell me that at some time or another or in some place or another, they have met Jeremy Corbyn.  
      
     As the kind of politician who has always made certain he does get about meeting people, I am sure it is possible my acquaintances and friends have met him, but even if they have not, surely there is a new feeling abroad, invoked by JC, that people can be involved in politics rather than feeling that politics is something that is 'done' to them. He and those around him have also reminded us that politicians are to be found who are both ordinary and unique persons genuinely interested in working with, and for, those other ordinary and unique people who worry about paying their rent, feeding, clothing, sheltering and otherwise bringing up their children, or those who struggle to get through the day and who need practical and financial help.  Corbyn's approach suggests that a politician need not necessarily be, as many are, the type of person - invariably from the rich or not too badly off minority of our nation -   who tells us humble folk about the harsh austere life which they, however regrettably, must impose upon the rest of us.

On the matter of meeting up with people, no one has ever told me they have met David Cameron nor, indeed, that they have met Tony Blair, but that may say something about the quality of the company of friends and acquaintances and I keep. 

     I have encountered Gordon Brown on two occasions, once on the Lomonds in Fife when walking with my nephew, C, and on another occasion when rambling around  in Kirkcaldy town centre with my elder grandson on the day of his brother's, my younger grandson, birth, but that's a story for another time.

     I don't think Jeremy Corbyn and the crew of helpers who have so successfully achieved this overwhelming democratic Labour leadership victory are unsullied paragons but they are pioneers navigating the river of life who have caught us by surprise and sailed their small boat well past that little island stuffed full of a shipwrecked cacophonous crowd made up of the self-satisfied which includes among others : capitalists, the chatterers of the printed and broadcast mass media, members of the Conservative Party and, New Labour Blairites. For a moment one is almost tempted to pity them as they huff, puff and strain, stranded on their isle of patrician politics.

     Still those of us who want a fairer more altruistic way of dealing with the world must be on our guard because these "know alls" on the island are, as I write, fighting among themselves for any odd spars they can find that will float them to the river banks where they will desperately romp and stomp their way down the embankments in an attempt to gain back control by damming the river before the good boat JC is able to reach its next berth.

     We mustn't let them do this but we need not panic.  It is so easy to distract and stall them. Tell them that JC  will refuse to kneel down in front the Queen, or better still inform them that in a recent secret ritual he carried out with a coven of socialist witches, JC recited the words of the national anthem backwards. Providing them with these sorts of scenarios is guaranteed to arrest the attention of the smarty-pants and occupy them for days in mindless discussion and so allow people who lead real lives to get on with their daily struggles as well as giving them the time and space to make decisions for themselves free from the imperative filled babble of those who in their grandiosity really do believe they know what is best for us. It would be helpful if some of these 'unco guid' found a shady rill by the river and sat down for a while to reflect upon their pomposity. Some may already be doing this but I see no obvious signs of it yet.

The Tay Ferry

I am sorry to be paddling around in these political waters but right now it seems important for me to do so. I will try to forgive myself for all this counter-pomposity and I hope I will be back soon sailing on the Tay Ferry in 1950s Dundee.

Privatisation and Nationalisation

Why is it that our print media, our broadcast media, the Conservative Party, the remains of Blairite New Labour and all the other chatterers who are members of the same self-satisfied "not too badly off gang", insist that the idea of nationalising (sharing) the United Kingdom's major resources is extreme while allowing a relatively small number of people to privatise them and make huge profits from them is not at all extreme and perfectly OK ?

Privatised 1st May 1997, nationalised again September 12th, 2015

OOPs! I see I've done it again :  exercised the lowest form of wit. Och well, I'm getting very old and may have lost the plot, but a wee bit of me still hopes someone will try to answer my question.

No news for a month

In a daydream this morning I wondered what it would be like if we could have no news printed, broadcast or internetted for a month.  Yes ! what about for a month or maybe even only a week, having no engagement with our 'free press', (a phrase that is, I think,  mainly synonymous with promoting the agenda of the rich and powerful).  No doubt in these days this fantasy of mine is not a possibility but I found it satisfying for a few moments to ponder over what we might discover about ourselves in that time. With no politicians, no media pundits, no experts to tell us what and how we should be thinking, doing or complying with, would our minds become blank, vacant spaces, void of thought?

No News

Better perhaps to imagine that finding ourselves freed from ceaselessly heeding the narcissistic pontifications of thought and information suppliers, we would discover our true selves with new found licence to think about what we really wanted to think about.

Maybe we'd think and do more about helping our families, our neighbours, our communities, and strangers, but perhaps more significantly we might discover   - and I am trying extremely hard not to be hoist by my very own petard -  that without all these distant self-satisfied, self-interested and self-important voices pressing upon us, thinking for ourselves is in itself a freeing experience.

Between the desert and the dark blue sea : restricted views in Dundee

The one and only time I’ve been to Tannadice was in 1954 when the primary 5, 6 and 7 classes of Liff  Road School were taken to the combined Dundee Primary Schools Sports Day to watch the athletics.  I imagine the best athletes from our school were taking part but I don’t recall being told about them. It seems to me now that in those days we just arrived at places we were taken to with no explanation of why we were there. It is possible we may have been told about what it all meant but it’s certainly not something I can recall.

What I do recall on arriving there was noticing that unlike Dens Park, Tannadice didn’t have a grandstand. It had a ramshackle pavilion on the southeast corner of the ground. I was distinctly underwhelmed by the scene and quite understood why Dundee United (who at that time played in shirts with broad black and white horizontal bands) were only in the ‘B’ division while Dundee were in the ‘A’ division.

Well things change and both clubs - though no one could have guessed it then - had famously glorious eras ahead of them. They now have them behind them. 

In 1954 it was little wonder to me that Dundee FC, with its pitch long grandstand and, what seemed to me as a 9 years old boy, huge terraces on the other three sides of the park, was indisputably the city’s elite football club. Having a much grander stadium than the team down the road was overwhelming evidence of this. In 1953 I had been at Dens Park with my Dad and Grandad when there were 43,000 spectators in the ground for a Rangers match and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction that the record crowd at Tannadice was at that time only 26,407.

Moving on, this past New Year of 2015,  over 60 years after my first visit to Tannadice, I decided that with Dundee back in the Scottish Premier League I would take my wife to see the festive time local derby at the desert a few yards down from Sandeman Street. Now I say I had decided to take my wife as if this would be a rare treat for her. It wasn’t. She hails from slightly warmer climes in the south of England, and sitting outside on a damp, dreich Dundee afternoon on January 1st does not immediately come to her mind as being a special treat, but on occasions like this when my childlike enthusiasm bursts through her tolerance emerges and she humours me.

With the decision made to go to Tannadice I ‘phoned the good folk at the ticket office at Dens Park who are allocated a certain amount of tickets for Dundee fans from Dundee United for the matches at Tannadice.

"Hello, ticket office,"  says a deep, gruff, Dundee voice.

"I wanted to go to the United match, and wondered if you’d got any tickets left."

"Eh, we've a few left."

"Well can I have two then please ?"

"Eh, well, ye can, but they’re 'restricted view.' "

"How d'you mean 'restricted view ?' "

"Eh dinnae ken. Eh dinnae work doon there. Eh work at Dens.”

"So what do I do? Should I phone them up to find out what 'restricted view' means? "

"Ye can if ye like."

"Thanks."

A few minutes later I am listening to a recorded message from a posh, slightly Irish sounding male voice. "Hello there! And a very warm welcome to Tannadice, the home of Dundee United. If you would like our Commercial Department please press one, if you’d like our Ticket Department please press two, if you’d like our…."

I pushed the two on my ‘phone screen.

"Hello, this is the Dundee United Ticket Office. I’m Alison and how can I help you today?"

“Well maybe you won’t want to help me because I support the other side, but I was speaking with our ticket office this morning and they said they still had a few tickets for the match on New Year’s Day but they said they were 'restricted view'. The man didn’t seem to know what that meant so I’ve phoned you up to find out what ‘restricted view’ means before I purchase my tickets."

"Oh! That’s really a bit naughty. We’ve told your people they shouldn’t really try to sell those tickets."

 "So what does ‘restricted view’ mean ? "

"Basically it means you can’t see the pitch."

My wife and I watched the match in the Artisan pub at Abbeyhill in Edinburgh. The landlord grudgingly agreed to put the match on the smallest of his 4 TV screens. He really wanted all the screens to show an English Premier League match.

By half-time the writing of an unhappy tale was already well on the wall and at the shrill full-time whistle, even with cricked necks aching from staring at a tiny TV screen situated high up in a corner of the pub, we were still glad we hadn’t gone to Tannadice to 'listen' - from our ‘restricted view’ position -  to a humiliating 6-2 defeat.

Restricted view for Dundee fans at Tannadice

Still we had more than consolation four months later while sitting in the old main grandstand at a packed Dens Park  - which is a lovable dump of an old stadium -  to watch the Famous XI gain its first triumph over United for 10 years. A wonderful occasion not at all marred by a thinnish stanchion which restricted just some of our view.

'Restricted view' Dundee FC style : example of a Dens Park stanchion

  

Five years of a billboard at the end of Milton Street, Abbeyhill, Edinburgh 2010-2015

Today's birthdays, July 6th, 2015

Maggie Acharn, 53, Care Assistant, Dai Burden, 71, retired builder's labourer, Annie Chandrasekar, 23, carpenter, Owen Davies, 43, fisherman, Marie Ellyas, 25,  post-graduate student, Alex Farson, 36, postal worker, Gabriella George, 38, mother and homemaker, Max Hodgson, 22, unemployed,  Nellie Jackson, 63, retired teacher, Josh Keaton, 33, busker, Sarah Lawrie, 28, community police support officer,

Raich Macalose, 73, prisoner,  Georgina Osborne, 44, supermarket checkout person, Eddie Porteous, 27, homeless and unemployed, Magda Radzinsky, 35, dental assistant, William Scott, 47, beggar, Teresa Tennington, 48, charity shop volunteer, Rudolf Unwin, 35, unwell, unemployed, Hermione Winter, 29, office cleaner,  Dandan Xiong, 29, social worker, Stefan Yovkov, 27, seasonal agricultural worker,  Mervyn Ziskind, 32, father and homemaker.


I couldn't find these folks in The Guardian's birthday section today, so, a happy birthday to all of  them and all the other people who were born on this day.  Each is of our human community. We cherish and value you.




The people above are real, and known to me,  the names only are fictitious.

Oh! how the mighty 'hard working' have fallen!

It's just a few short weeks since those halycon days before the general election when the Conservative Party loved all of us "hard working people".   But, oh! my!  -  how swiftly we have plummeted in our natural born leaders' estimation. In very short shrift we have proved it to be an utter let down to those Etonians who govern us. The Daily Telegraph, a media organ known to represent Conservative views (a bit like the BBC, really) has declared our manufacturing workforce a national disgrace and it's all because they have been given tax credits to compensate them for their sub-poverty pay levels.

"What incentive," The Daily Telegraph and no doubt its readers ask, "is paying tax credits to getting these people to work harder ? Stop their benefits, then at least they'll be forced to work longer hours. Don't they realise they are on low wages because they're lazier than the French and Germans?"*

A disgraceful British manufacturing worker: 

"And," they go on to say,"the effrontery of those Greeks who think that cutting public servants' wages and their pensions by over 50% is wrong! Well, at least we're sorting that out over here. Deeper, still and deeper shall our austerity go - that's the kind of medicine these slackers will understand.  We're sacking all our public servants  and getting profit-making organisations to re-employ some of them in their old jobs, paying them half of what they used to earn - yes, without those gold-plated employment rights or pensions -  and to cover all the angles we're putting them on zero hours contracts so that if their faces don't fit, or if they complain about what's happening to them, they can be got rid of willy-nilly, at the drop of a hat. Ah, that feels better, now let's see how our shares are doing."

''What about feeding their kids?" one of those Jeremy Corbyn lovers dares to ask.

"Well, they should have thought of that before they decided to have kids."




* See 'British productivity is a national disgrace'  at the Daily Telegraph


This blog was not written by the Charles Sharpe who promised not to write any more sarcastic pieces but is written by the Charles Sharpe who still does.

The meteoric rise and damoclesian fall of my fitba career at Liff Road School, Lochee, Dundee

In another blog I briefly mentioned my fitba playing career but I want to take the opportunity here to give a short, sweet, bitter (no, not bitter sweet) account of my rise and fall as a footballer,  and recall my greatest performance in a fitba match when in 1956, I made my debut for Liff Road Primary School against a team that was one of the high flyers in primary school football in Dundee in the mid-1950s, St. Mary's School, Lochee.

One Monday morning in October our heidie, Mr Dalgeish (no relation to Kenny whose Dalglish does not have an 'e') summoned me to his office. The only other time I'd been called into his presence like this was to get the belt from him for some misdemeanour I'd committed.  I was very scared and confused because I didn't know what I'd done wrong. My fears were short-lived and it was with relief but also some puzzlement that his first words to me were "Charlie do you have a pair of football boots?"  It turned out he was dealing with me in his other capacities: those of chairman of the board, manager, trainer and selector of the Liff Road School football team.

"No, Mr Dalgleish, I don't have any football boots."

"Ah ! well son, that is a pity. I've been watching you playing football in the playground and I thought  if  y'd had football boots I would have picked you to play for the team against St.Mary's, Lochee on Wednesday."

This was both the best and worst thing I'd heard in my whole life - picked for the team, but no boots -  and I remember thinking that I had to play in the match.

"Oh don't worry Mr Dalgleish, my Mummy and Daddy will get me boots in time for the match."

"Well you ask them the night son and tell me about it tomorrow."

You'll note I called my parents Mummy and Daddy. This was because I hadn't reached the stage of social development that allowed most of my classmates to call their parents Ma or Da or indeed Mum or Dad.

When I told my Mummy and Daddy about being picked for the team they agreed to buy me football boots. My Mummy was alarmed at the expense but she didn't want anyone thinking they couldn't afford football boots for me.

After school next afternoon I was taken doon the toon to a shoe shop in the Murraygate and boots were bought for me. These were the last days of the old football boots which were actually boots and not the shoes they are nowadays. The ones bought for me were of light brown leather with a sole studded with what looked like corks but were actually thin discs of leather placed together and nailed into the sole of the boot. My parents told me that after playing in them I had to clean them down and daub them all over with dubbin, a dirty yellowish kind of wax paste that came in what looked like a shoe polish tin. The dubbin was meant to keep the leather soft and the boots waterproof. I dubbined mine only once because I was never a meticulously clean sort of boy and because I didn't in the end wear the boots very much.

My boots were like this

One boy in the team had a pair of the new 'continentals' which were coming into fashion. These were made in black leather with white trim and had rubbers studs moulded into the soles. They were half way between boots and shoes and were much more like the modern football shoe.

On the afternoon of the match we changed into our football strip, (maroon shirt and white shorts) at the school, put our ordinary clothes over it and walked the mile up to Lochee Park where we were to play the game.  Just before kick off Mr Dalgleish called us all together for a team talk and told me I would be playing on the wing, at outside right as they called it in those days. He said I had to mark their left winger, a player called Sandeman, who was one of their star players and who had been recently selected to represent the Dundee Schools side. I also have an idea that he grew up to be a professional football player.

It was usual in those days for the right full back to mark the opposition's outside left, and my position of outside right was normally an attacking one, but I was so proud of having been selected for the school team that I didn't care that the role handed out to me was a purely defensive one. Mr Dalgleish told me I had not to leave Sandeman's side and I had to tackle him every single time he got the ball. I followed Mr Dalgleish's instructions to the letter and didn't let Sandeman get more than six inches from me. I even stayed with him at half time when their trainer, who, I seem to remember, was a priest, got the St Mary's side together at the interval for his half time rant. It is tempting to relate that I didn't leave Sandeman's side until, as I stood with Sandeman at his front door, his mother, Mrs Sandeman  informed me I hadnae been invited tae their hoose fir ma tea. (Anyone wha comes fae Dundee would ken that would be a ridiculous story because if I had turned up there, I would've been invited in fir ma tea).

From a contemporary illustration : Sandeman, with me stuck to him and in the background you can clearly see Sandy Davie in goal.

Returning to the match, St. Mary's weren't thrashing us in the way they usually did. We'd gone ahead early on when there was a melee in their goalmouth and the ball seemed to be bundled over the line. I'd like to write "over the line and into the net" but the goalposts at Lochee Park didn't have nets in those days. The score remained one nothing(1-0) in our favour until half-time. In the second half St Mary's equalised but it wasn't my fault. They had a big boy at centre forward and he kicked the ball towards our goal and our goalie (Sandy Davie, who would one day play for Dundee United, Southampton and Luton as well as for the Scotland under 23 side) seemed to be about to catch the ball but before he could, it hit one of our defenders and was deflected into the goal.  So it was ones up (1-1) and that's how the match ended.

After the match Mr. Dalgleish was still pleased for although we'd only drawn the match, it was the first time in living memory that they hadn't beaten us.  A measure of his delight was that next day before lessons he called a special school assembly to announce the result, and he called out my name and the name of some others in the team as meriting particular mention for our heroic play.

I was selected for the next match against St. Mary's Forebank and we lost 2-0. Mr Dalgleish told the school assembly the next day that we had played well and had been unlucky to lose but he didn't single out any person for special praise.  The following week I was in the team again to play Ancrum Road School who as I remember it, played in a blue strip. They beat us 5 nothing (5-0). There was no special assembly the next day about this match and Mr Dalgleish never picked me for the team again. My meteor had crashed to terra firma. 

A few months later when I moved to my secondary school, Harris Academy, I opted out o' fitba. That meant for the next 20 years though I wore  boots, they were rugby boots.  I would never graduate to the continentals.

"The Continentals"

Not everyone who went to Eton College and Westminster School got it wrong

     Not everyone who went to Eton College and Westminster School got things so disastrously wrong in the way that our prime minister, David Cameron, who attended the former, and our deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who attended the latter, have done. In the field of political thought and public action there have been a few notable exceptions. Eton had George Orwell and has Justin Welby. Westminster had Tony Benn.

     These institutions have fostered exceptionally creative figures in other fields, including from Westminster, Ben Jonson, John Locke, Henry Purcell, Charles Wesley, Henry Tizard and Peter Brook, and from Eton, Henry Fielding, John Strachey and Humphrey Lyttelton. However apart from those exceptional exemplars and the others mentioned earlier it is accurate to suggest that over centuries both these ancient institutions have produced rather seedy public and political figures. This is not to condemn the children who are sent to these places. Children attending such schools are not volunteers. They are put there to meet and fulfil the needs and desires of their parents, not their own.

     What is being censured here is that schools like Eton and Westminster exist to perpetuate, generation to generation, the undue wealth and power of a small minority. If this is the case, the cruel paradox is that Cameron and Clegg can be understood - if only by this self-privileging few  -  to be getting it right.