Ellee -gaic Musings

I watched Ellee on Andrew Marr`s show this morning .I was hoping to see a bit more of her but it was worth the trouble .I spied Croydonian flashing onto the Screen and furiously pointed this out to the bemused Blog Virgins I was with. Anyway I have been thinking on matters Ellee -gaic and by means of an odious pun shall we segue to ,"A sense of Loss"



LOSS
I suppose the Blogger who more than anyone represents the sense I am looking for is Cranmer. A magnificent confection of course but I missed the real significance until this week. I have been reading ”England an Elegy “ by Roger Scruton and found it is one of those books, that takes unformed thoughts one had ,and gives them a home . Cohere would be the modern word.

This passage struck me as peculiarly apposite with reference to his Grace’s wraith presence.
“The world of the English was a world of rituals,uniforms, precedents and offices. In any serious business they would spontaneously , adopt another and higher tone, borrowing legal and biblical words, addressing their colleagues not directly but through some real or imaginary chairman and creating a mystical body out of mere gathering of people .”

A strong sense of the ironic and ridiculous is also in evidence which balances any suspicion of pretension but , as always , there is a message in the medium. I doubt his Grace would like that reference much , but isn’t mimicking an ancient English form on a web site an image of both the connection, and the dissociation we have from our culture and its quiet necessities. I find ,as I get older ,I increasingly want to reconnect myself , to recover what has been lost.

IMAGINED EDENS

Sometimes the sense of loss is for something that never truly existed but it is no less powerful for that
The first time my wife and I holidayed in England , we had enjoyed Italy and Egypt in particular but to go to a beach with our child and play in the rock pools was to recreate an imagined English Eden and I fell into the enchantment . In fact ,I never had such a holiday , as a child, but must have acquired the memory from books and , no doubt, the television.

THE GARDENERS

This weekend we have been staying at my friend David Gardener’s Hampshire “seat“. He is an lawyer specialising in international disputes and is often abroad . He and his wonderfully hospitable wife have made for themselves the sort of haven given to the Dickensian hero who ,having walked through the darkness of the Victorian underworld re attains middleclass financial security .It is a super sized rose covered cottage ,in a chocolate box village with Hardyesque church and rolling hills thrown in.. The cottage has about eight bedrooms and numerous en suite facilities .David is hardly connected to he land , and his wife’s background was quite underprivileged ,and yet this what they have done with their doubloons. In such blissful surroundings I was almost able to forget the horror one naturally feels at someone else’s success.
We walked up to the church and visited Montgomery’s Grave . It was raining and freezing and I asked David , pointedly if we had now finished the walk. He naturally replied

“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning….” he always was a clever bastard.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

I have just watched “The Queen “it was on a knock off DVD purchased in a clandestine deal by Mrs. N at the Toddler group. Good quality though , and it reminded me of how alienated I felt at the time of Diana’s death. One by one people who one had felt were sane; “turned”. I vividly recall saying ,” Oh for god’s sake ,she was only a self besotted brainless clothes horse “..to a most sniffy response .I am still convinced that this country went badly wrong at about this time and the film brought that out. The queen did not like Diana , she did not like the cult of emotion , the soupy looks to camera , the celebrity friends and the way she placed her own childish needs before an enduring institution. She was right , and I responded to her fictionalised pain at a change in “The People “ . A rare British film worth watching and Phil the Greek gets some great lines.

“Elton John …well that’s a first for Westminster Abbey …mutter mutter,.. have you looked at the guest list….well don’t.” The Queen does not emote and she explains she thought quiet dignity duty and privacy were what was expected of her. Yes indeed and I for one like the change that came over this country , not a bit.

Oh how I wish I could implant in Croydonian a proper respect for this wonderful women the very embodiment of the nation. His cold flinty republican eyes see nothing but bombast and hypocrisy. It is so much more than that.

(I need hardly add that Blair`s despicable opportunism was treated a vast deal too kindly in my humble opinion.)


HEART and SOUL

Soul music has always been important to me . I was , like everyone else , enamoured by the anger of Punk , albeit a bit late. One night , however, working a late shift at a garage, I found another world , Kid Jensen played six of the best by Wilson Pickett . The first track was “I found a love” These are the words

I found a love
She `s everything I `m dreaming of
And oh if she leave me
I think I will dies ay ay ay

And sometimes in the midnight hour I wanna call I wanna say
Yoooooooohhoooo (scream) don`t leave me darlin`

That pure voice expressing the pain of loss over the simple piano accompaniment echoed over the forecourt, and I have never really recovered. I was reminded of this Damascene conversion by the death of Billy Henderson of the Detroit Spinners.”I `ve been working my way back to you”, was the sound of a summer long ago. Not much connection really.

If anyone has an experience of encountering a music that changed everything please share……

AND FINALLY ESTHER

I suppose at some time we must lose W F Deedes. Has anyone noticed what astonishingly good form he is on? For a man well into his nineties it is nothing short of miraculous,and combining a sharp mind with a unique long perspective he often slips a deceptively civilised blade into the rotten body politic.
In a recent article he contrasted Chamberlain`s exit with Blair`s grim limpet-like attachment to power. Chamberlain left to the bitter sound of Ronny Cartland shouting from the Tory back benches ,"Some of us are going to fight and some of us are going to die !"

The effective cause of his departure was not losjng a vote of confidence but the rebbellion of 41 supporters . Why is there no rebbellion against Blair .Perhaps the answer is simple



"Being a Member of Parliament is a better-rewarded occupation than it was in Neville Chamberlain's time. It was then more of a voluntary service than the paid profession it has become. The salary was nominal – £600 a year. There were no allowances for staff nor space for them, no private rooms for secretaries and filing cabinets, only a small oak cupboard. "Good place to keep cigars fresh," as a senior MP observed to me at the time.

Most Labour MPs were subsidised by their trade unions. Tory and Liberal MPs paid for the privilege of being MPs. My batch of candidates who entered the Commons in 1950 were the first to have their election expenses paid by their local association. We were forbidden to contribute anything.

Would such considerations weigh with Labour MPs called upon to vote on Blair's future? In short, is the House of Commons still fit for purpose? I cannot answer that question. I don't know the answer. It is a question the electors must ponder for themselves"


You know I think he does know the answer and so do we.I look at the efforts of the Home Office , not to solve problems but to hide them, at the corruption endemic in our already degraded police and the lying smug face of the millipede and I feel the way Dennis Potter once did about the way things are going.

"...everything is getting shittier and shittier and shittier"