We're all Muslims now

and black and sick and Asian and Jewish and gay and old and homeless and catholic and refugees and artists and women and prisoners and disabled and...

What has happened this weekend strips us all of a little bit of humanity. You don't notice the little bits being chipped away until you turn around one day and look for compassion and find there's nothing there.

Two things have been going round in my head all weekend. The first is Martin Niemöller’s poem:


First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.


Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He initially supported Hitler and his poem is an attempt to address the guilt he felt.

And the second thing is the Manics’"If you tolerate this your children will be next"

David Slack ‏@slack2thefuture says it much better than me, well he is a professional writer after all,
“Remember sitting in history, thinking “If I was alive then, I would’ve…”
You’re alive now. Whatever you’re doing is what you would’ve done.”





What are you going to do?

Friday Fun 22

There was nothing funny about Friday 13th November.

Given that we just can't get our heads around why anyone would do this, I think John Oliver's reaction on HBO is as good as any.

"If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck."




Vive la France

Not life-changing but...

I've gone part-time and am now working three days a week.

Well, after health scares last year and earlier this year, plus some niggling work issues, I sort of thought 'What's the point in going through all this if I'm still just plugging away working full-time'. So, after a fraught weekend considering a rival job offer, I accepted my current employer's offer of job-share - the current employer was offering 3 full days Monday to Wednesday, which makes things much tidier and means a nice long four day weekend. I like spending more days at home than I do at work :0). Not that I'm doing anything exciting on my days off - painting doors, pottering in the garden, doing the cleaning, looking at the weather forecast and working out which day will be the best to put the washing out, that sort of uber-feministy stuff ;0). But it does mean that we shouldn't have to spend all of our weekends doing the chores and we can get out of the house occasionally. Although I am beginning to wonder whether working three days a week is interfering a bit too much with my sofa time, we'll see...

Anyway, whilst I was pondering all this The Staves 'Teeth White' was being played incessantly on the radio and I was surprised that a group of children (when seen from the vantage point of nearly 50!) could capture the essence of mid-life crisis quite so well as they do. Now I'm not claiming that the record influenced my decision unduly, but it did strike a chord.

And, in my small way, I do now feel like I'm 'sticking it to the man' as our colonial cousins would say.



There's another version of it here on a really rather brilliant set with 'Black and White'. Or am I just biased/jealous 'cos it's in a pub and they're drinking pints of proper beer?

National Poetry Day

One of my current favourites is 'The Place Where We Are Right' by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

It's written out in English and Hebrew here.

[Of course, the place where I am right is a high green sunlit upland from which I can look down on lesser mortals, but we won't go there... :0)]

Music

Yes, I've been cleaning records again and this time it's a cult club classic from the northwest, Ellie Warren's 'Shattered Glass' from 1980 - isn't that just the most 80s cover you've seen? Apparently it was re-done in the late '80s by Stock,Aitken and Waterman but I don't remember that, just the early version that we used to dance to at The Turnkey in Wigan and Henry Africa's in Standish, which sadly didn't break through to be a national hit.

Ah, the memories - girls with shoulder pads, big hair and blazers with fake yachting club badges (hang on, hasn't that all just come back into vogue?) and boys with moustaches (those who could grow them), jumpers tucked in their trousers and permed mullets. Ugh, not one of our finest sartorial moments, but at least it wasn't the 70s!

I wouldn't be surprised if I'm at the back of the photo of Henry's on here... oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Joe Walsh - Life's Been Good

A couple of years' back I threatened to inflict my musical taste on you as I gradually worked my way through my vinyl collection giving the discs a clean with a new gadget I'd treated myself to.

Well, this isn't an indication that I've got up to 'W' (yes, my vinyl collection IS in alphabetical order... how else would one find anything?) but, as I was listening to Mark Knopfler's 'Skydiver' on the way into work this morning, the lyrics reminded me a little of Joe Walsh's 'Life's Been Good'.

I was only 11 when this came out and I heard it on the radio in the hairdresser's one Saturday morning, but didn't know who it was by or what it was called - although the line 'I go to parties sometimes until four, it's hard to leave when you can't find the door...' stayed with me (as an aspiration?). Well, it was another 20 years before I found out what it was and finally bought the LP it came from 'But, seriously folks...'.

As well as the brilliant guitar work, it's a brilliant evocation of the 1970s rock star lifestyle and when he says 'Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through', I'm amazed that any of them are actually alive after what they did during that decade - if the documentaries we watch on BBC4 of a Friday night are to be believed.

Anyway, enjoy, and I may inflict some more of the Eagles' solo efforts on you in time to come, I think I've got Don Henley's 'Boys of summer' on single somewhere and I may have Glenn Frey's 'The Heat is on' on a compilation LP. Sadly, I can't put any Eagles up here because I've only ever had them on CD so it breaks my self-imposed vinyl rule - but still, one of the best bands on the planet, discuss... Ooo, no, I'm wrong, I've just remembered that I've got 'Take it Easy' on a compilation LP too, you lucky people. For a band that epitomised the 1970s, the solo releases of Henley and Frey seemed to do the same for the 1980s - just try listening to the 'The Heat is on' without conjuring up an image of bronzed men in pastel shirts topped off by white Matinique jackets with the sleeves pushed back to the elbow. In fact didn't Frey actually appear in an episode of Miami Vice?

Friday Fun 21

Have I ever mentioned that I don't like lieder? I think I was over-exposed to ‘Vilja’ as a child and someone standing up to sing with a piano accompaniment now has me leaping for the off button before they've got the first note out (OK, Kit and the Widow excepted). I was genuinely heartbroken when Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died as I knew it would launch a year-long lieder-fest on Radio 3. But, whether sung in English or German, they're still dire Victorian parlour songs.

I'm a placid soul (no giggling at the back!) and there are few things that have me leaping for the radio with a mallet, but the sentence that begins, "...and now on Radio 3 it's Private Passi..." rarely manages to make it to a full stop and similarly with the Navy Lark on Radio 4 Extra and the Swingle Singers anywhere.

However, with the growth of nostalgia my other bête noir occasionally pops up and brings with it a spasm of radio-smashing rage verging almost on the murderous. Yes, it is the existential horror that was the theme tune to Sing Something Simple. And I'm not alone, a whole generation of adults around my age confess to being deeply scarred by the experience of being forced to listen to it as a child - there's probably a support group out there somewhere. One blogger said, "...the most depressing radio show was, undoubtably, “Sing Something Simple“, which used to come on…Radio 2: if you’ve never heard it, consider yourself lucky. It involved a choir singing depressing songs...accompanied by Jack Emblow’s accordion. Someone said: “hearing ‘Sing Something Simple’ was the first time I realised that – one day – I would die”." Another reviewer said, "Christ it was depressing - but in a comforting way. Like shingles, or Crohn's disease."

Anyway, I won't subject you to any of those, instead you have Fascinating Aida's take on lieder but it's much funnier than the real thing.