I can’t believe that it’s the 30th November already. I think this may be my fifth year of posting every day for a month; and this has probably been the year that I have most enjoyed the experience. In part that’s probably a reflection of the fact that frankly there hasn’t been much else to encroach on blogging time. Formal covid restrictions and a personal reluctance to place myself at any undue risk where it’s not strictly necessary, have combined to limit the number of times that I leave the house in any given week. Beyond a walk at lunchtime most days, an occasional early morning run, and even less occasional visits to food shops when it’s my turn to stock up the cupboard, I have spent a lot of time in the house. And I have also significantly increased the time that I spend reading – both actual books and internet content. There’s no doubt that this is a good formula for a daily blogging marathon – in TV drama terms, I have had both motive and opportunity. Plenty of ideas from the reading and plenty of time to convert those ideas into something resembling a coherent train of thought.
It’s also been good this month to devote a few more posts than usual to some creative writing, mainly in the form of haiku, but also some prose and more free-form poetry. I enjoy the challenge of stripping back language to fit the strict conventions of haiku – ensuring that every syllable counts (and is counted!). Writing poetry and prose still feels contrived at the moment, and I’m not sure that I’ve yet uncovered my real voice, but I’ll keep plugging away at it.
For now though, I’ll be taking a bit of a break from the daily posts. Thanks to those of you who have followed my ramblings this month (and especially to those who have commented on or liked a post). I like to pretend that this blog is something that I do just for me, but the truth of the matter is that it’s nice to see that others are reading it and occasionally reacting to things that they read here. For now, though, please continue to take care. There is light at the end of the tunnel in terms of covid and vaccines, but that will be no consolation at all if you contract the virus before they are readily available. Good luck everybody!
One of things I enjoy most about my annual blogging marathon is stumbling across a potential topic for the day’s post and then following threads that emerge and disappearing off down a whole series of rabbit holes, discovering all sorts of interesting ideas along the way. This post started with a story that appeared on Politics Home this morning. In summary, the UK’s most senior government minister with responsibility for culture and media is on the verge of writing to Netflix (an on-line video streaming service) asking them to place an advisory notice to the start of each edition of their highly popular and critically acclaimed series on the Bristish monarchy The Crown. The Minister, Oliver Dowden, is quoted as saying : “It’s a beautifully produced work of fiction, so as with other TV productions, Netflix should be very clear at the beginning it is just that. Without this, I fear a generation of viewers who did not live through these events may mistake fiction for fact.”
Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher in Netflix series The Crown
I was going to write about the irony of a Minister in a government that has an at best tenuous grasp on the difference between truth and fiction, having the temerity to require a TV company to state explicitly that a historical fiction drama series was (shock! horror!) fictional. I might have gone on to suggest that every time in the next month that a government minister stands up in Parliament (or more likely writes in a column for the Daily Telegraph) that a no-deal Brexit is the will of the British people as voted for in a referendum four years’ ago, coverage should also carry a warning that such accounts are also “beautifully produced works of fiction”. Surely, without such a warning, people who voted for Brexit on the basis that we would remain members of the European Single Market and Customs Union might also “mistake fiction for fact”.
I then started to reflect on the contrast between reactions to the idea that The Crown might in some way present a distorted view of history; and the outrage felt in some quarters at suggestions that ‘whitewashed’ histories of those implicated in slavery and other colonial abuses were themselves, if not works of fiction, then at least only partial versions of the truth. The quotes attributed to Dowden in the Independent piece are particularly interesting when juxtaposed with his views on the Netflix series : “History is ridden with moral complexity. Statues and other historical objects were created by generations with different perspectives and understandings of right and wrong. Some represent figures who have said or done things which we may find deeply offensive and would not defend today.” It’s unclear whether that same analysis holds true for the behaviours and attitudes of the UK’s Royal Family during the real-life events that are the basis of the historical fiction that is The Crown.
Edward Colston statue dumped in Bristol dock during Black Lives Matter protest
History itself is a highly contentious subject. There is no absolutely objective, impartial, reliable and value-free account of any past event. Henry Ford is commonly believed to have stated that : “History is bunk”. But ironically, even that is historically questionable. The actual quote that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in May 1916 was : “History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today. That’s the trouble with the world. We’re living in books and history and tradition. We want to get away from that and take care of today. We’ve done too much looking back. What we want to do and do it quick is to make just history right now.” One interpretation of this is that Ford – who was known to be sceptical about US involvement in the First World War – was suggesting that a focus on history, on tradition, was not going to help address the problems facing the world as it was in May 1916. However, it’s not absolutely clear what he meant – and interpretations necessarily involve assumptions and attribution of motivation and values that Ford may hardly have recognised himself. Indeed, later in the same piece, Daniel Strohl writes that : “One explanation posits simply that Ford was trying to dissemble using a debate tactic he often deployed called the ‘Ford flurry’ or the ‘Gish gallop’ in which Ford threw out an array of arguments or statements of fact when cornered or when he couldn’t muster a sufficient response.” I wonder if it will take 100 years for somebody to write the same of the current President of the United States.
So is all history necessarily partly fiction then? This was the question posed in a fascinating essay published on the Evatt Foundation website and written by Australian historians Ann Curthoys and John Docker in 2006. Curthoys and Docker consider the question through the various lenses that have been applied to the academic study of history. They identify various dualities that exist in historical writing, including “nationalist historians [who] seek to justify and praise the nation through a particular version of its past, while revisionist historians aim to question national historical myths through what they see as an honest coming to terms with its darker aspects.” They also draw out the distinction between history as verifiable fact, and history as a literary art, “constituted through language, narrative, metaphor, rhetoric, and allegory”. It is in this “space between history as rigorous scrutiny of sources and history as part of the world of literary forms” that the discussion about the historical accuracy and validity of The Crown resides.
But there is another doubleness in academic history that is also described by Curthoys and Docker and of relevance here. They label them Herodotean and Thucydidean after the great historians of ancient Athenian conflicts. “The Herodotean is a mode of history which is expansive and inclusive, history as sexual, erotic, religious, social, cultural, as well as political and military. The Thucydidean is a mode that is highly focused on war and the state and the interaction of states, ignoring gender and social and cultural history, and is presented in an authoritative and magisterial tone and manner.” Arguably, this is the conflict that is playing out in Dowden’s proposed letter to Netflix. Dowden’s Thucydidean motive is to protect and preserve the dignity and solemnity of the state as embodied in the Royal Family. The literary narrative of The Crown is altogether more down and dirty, focusing on the characters not as officers of the state but rather less grandly as men and women subject to all the same desires, foibles and imperfections as all other men and women.
So is all history fiction? Curthoys and Docker think not, and I agree with them. “‘[W]e do indeed believe in truth and in the search for truth. We point out that no-one… would do history, would pursue historical research, unless [they] thought they could arrive, however provisionally, at some kind of truth about the past. We think, however, that the temptation to declare that the historian can objectively establish the truth about the past is to be resisted. There always has to be a question mark hovering over any claim to having attained an objective, let alone scientific, status for one’s findings.”
I have never watched The Crown and I have no idea whether the fictionalised accounts that it contains of day to day going-on in the House of Windsor during the great historical events of the last century are even close to being accurate. But one thing I do know is that Oliver Dowden can’t know one way or the other either!
The tree is decorated with memories
Each silver angel, stained-glass bell
gaudy drum and olive wood chorister
a recollection, a moment in time
The flashing lights mimic memory's rhythm
Synapses sparking, events recalled,
Adventures in Israel, Borneo, Costa Rica
Experienced together
but recalled alone now.
Tenderly she remembers for them both.
Coloured light reflects like a disco glitter ball
Sparkling in her eyes
Transporting her from lockdown loneliness
Monday's to-do list
Swamps me like a tsunami;
Drowning not waving.
Midweek Zoom meetings
Like digital desert zones :
Low yields for time spent.
Rules constantly change,
The plaintive appeal is heard :
Don't move the goalposts!
Friday brings new hope
Not flying, no - but just may-
be falling with style!
Argentina is today marking the first of three days of national mourning. But this is not to commemorate the death of some great political hero. Diego Armando Maradona was a footballer. He belongs to a very select group of players who transcend the sport. There are a series of cliches about no one player being bigger than the team; about how the great teams are more than the sum of their parts; about how there is no “i” in team. Diego Maradona was one of the rare exceptions that proves those rules. There is no doubt that Maradona was in many ways a flawed character : a serial adulterer; someone who would flagrantly push at the very boundaries of the Laws of the game (and often go beyond them), without shame or excuse; a foul-mouthed, boorish lout on occasion; a cocaine addict, whose dependency eventually led to his death at just 60 years of age. And yet.
And yet, to those of us who were lucky to see him play, he was simply mesmeric. The term Little Magician understates the almost metaphysical control that he exercised over the ball while in possession. During a career which afforded far less protection to players than they now receive, he was on the receiving end of some brutal challenges. He was the most fouled player in each of the four World Cup final stage competitions that he appeared, winning an extraordinary average of seven fouls per game (or one every 12 minutes, 46 seconds). As well as scoring goals – including arguably the greatest goal of the 20th Century during Argentina’s quarter final victory over England in 1986 – he also created more goals for teammates than any other Argentina player during those Finals. But this was no prima donna player who could only perform on pristine pitches and in the full glare of the international spotlight. The question that is often applied to skilful, foreign players : can he do it on a cold Tuesday night at Stoke? Well, Maradona could (and yes, I know that I’ve just equated Stoke with Naples, but you get the point!).
There is a sense of inevitability about the fact that Diego’s life should have ended so tragically early. For someone who lived at the extremes, a gradual fading away would, I suspect, have been torture for him. His was the life of a firework rocket – launched into the sky in a blaze of glory, leaving the world trailing in his wake, exploding in a riot of colour, and leaving us glad to have had the opportunity to have seen it, happy to talk about how dazzling the display was, sad that it has come to an end, but feeling privileged that we were there.
There’s no i in team, but there certainly is in genius; and I feel immensely privileged to have been alive at the same time as the footballing genius that was Diego Maradona.
“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The opening line of George Orwell’s 1984 has taken on a whole new meaning in the last eight months. Every day in work now lasts what seems like the equivalent of a week in pre-covid time; and 7.30am to 12.30pm lasts for at least 13 hours. If this is life imitating art, then we are all experiencing what it’s like to be in Doctor Who’s TARDIS (for the non-geek reader, this is the time travelling machine that derives its title from its ability to ‘bend’ Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). It’s clear that the additional emotional and mental health burdens imposed by a combination of covid-related restrictions on daily life, working from home, and the sheer pace of change as organisations seek to adapt and survive in an uncharted and hostile environment, are taking a major toll on many people. And nobody will have been untouched by this. With that in mind, and because you never know when it might come in handy, I’m including a link to the UK government guidance on looking after your health and wellbeing at this time. The guidance in turn includes links to a whole variety of further hints, tips and sources of detailed advice. It’s never wrong to ask for help; and now more than ever, we need to look out for ourselves and one another.
(I’m fine by the way – this post was prompted by a conversation that I had this afternoon with somebody who thankfully is now receiving the help and support that they need).
As I write, the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) final is unfolding on the television downstairs. It’s possible that the winner will have been revealed by the time I get to hit the publish button on this post. Throughout this series, we have marked each episode of the possibly the most British reality TV show of all time, with a cake or other baked foodstuff that is more or less in line with that week’s theme. For the final tonight, we have gone with scones, jam and clotted cream. As somebody who naturally shies away from controversy, I’m not going to fall into the trap of disclosing the order in which the cream and jam are placed onto the scone. Nor do I offer any view on whether the correct pronunciation of scone rhymes with gone or stone. Suffice to say that whether you’re reading this in Devon, Cornwall or Nova Scotia, the combination of cream, jam and scone will be absolutely delicious!
I’m not ashamed to say that we’ve gone early. Normally, we wait until the middle of December before getting the decorations out and re-arranging the furniture to accommodate the tree, but not this year. We have been slowly adding to the festive feel around the house for just over a week now, starting with the tree and this past weekend, moving on to some lights across the garden to the front and side of the house. I’m rationalising it on the basis that 2020 has already been 37 months long and – frankly – if we have to spend the better part of 23 hours a day under effective house arrest, we may as well make it as fun as possible!
To the horror of my Twitter follower, we’ve also gone early on the Christmas movies. So far we have already notched up The Muppets Christmas Carol, Home Alone, Elf, The Holiday, and a couple of ‘straight to Netflix’ offerings that (as far as I could make out) had exactly the same plot and characters but with different actors in them! In these unprecedented times, I’ve even managed to negotiate the inclusion of the big daddy of all Christmas movies onto the list of things to watch in the coming weeks. This will be the first ever family outing for Die Hard (and yes – it IS a Christmas movie, and that’s a hill that I will happily die on!).
Exactly what arrangements will be in place for families to meet and spend time together over the holiday remains unclear at the time of writing; but the general advice is still likely to be valid – don’t think about what you can do, but rather reflect on what you should do. Thankfully, it’s looking increasingly likely that there will be significant progress with the roll-out of vaccines to the population during the first half of 2021. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and one disrupted Christmas seems like a small price to pay to maximise the chances of all of us making it to a much more ‘normal’ one in 12 months’ time.
It was a beautiful morning in Cardiff today – the first for what seems like weeks. A visit to the Bay for a cup of coffee and a stroll along the waterside provided today’s haiku inspiration
Blue sky shines above
Reflected in deep waters,
Reflecting times past
Pleasure boats moored now
Where black gold was cargo once,
Powering empire
No industry now :
Penthouse and modern office
Occupy this space
Fish and birds live where
Coal valley rivers flow clear :
Life's balance restored
Gentrification :
Now steam runs coffee machines
Where steel works once stood
There has been a series of news stories over the past week focussed on the issue of dementia and its prevalence among former professional footballers. On 17th November, it was revealed that Nobby Stiles had become the fifth member of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team to die with dementia as an underlying condition on the death certificate. It’s an issue that has been coming under closer and closer scrutiny, with recent research finding that professional footballers are between two and five times more likely to die of a degenerative brain disease than the population as a whole.
Nobby Stiles, 1966 World Cup winner, who passed away in October
This issue started to come to wider prominence in 2002 following the death of former England international Jeff Astle, at the age of just 59. A post mortem examination found that Astle died as a result of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease usually diagnosed in those who have a medical history of head injury and repeated concussions. In Astle’s case, the conclusion was that his brain trauma was the result of repeated heading of footballs across his playing career, from youth to professional, international level.
Jeff Astle, who died in 2002 aged just 59 of neurodegenerative disease caused through repeated heading of footballs
Much of the research into the issue of brain injury and professional football has been led by Dr Willie Stewart from Glasgow University. Inevitably when considering a topic as complex and longitudinal as health impacts over an extended period, the issues are not straightforward. Stewart’s team has identified that the risks faced by professional footballers “ranged from a five-fold increase in Alzheimer’s disease, through an approximately four-fold increase in motor neurone disease, to a two-fold increase in Parkinson’s disease in former professional footballers compared to population controls.” However, the study also found that footballers “had lower rates of death due to other major diseases. As such, while every effort must be made to identify the factors contributing to the increased risk of neurodegenerative disease to allow this risk to be reduced, there are also wider potential health benefits of playing football to be considered.”
For its part, the Professional Footballers Association in the UK has committed both to increasing the availability of support to former players and their families who are living with the effects of neurodegenerative disorders, and continuing to fund work of groups including Dr Stewart’s, who are seeking to better understand the risks and the most appropriate way of reducing them. There is no question of a total ban on the heading of the ball – an integral part of the game and a key skill in its own right. But just as junior football has been transformed through the introduction of small-sided games on scaled-down pitches, so it seems inevitable that there will eventually have to be limits placed on the extent to which children use heading as part of their coaching and playing.
Nor is this something that is restricted to former professional players. My own father played football as a centre forward up to South Wales Amateur League level. Whilst not the tallest, he was blessed with a prodigious spring in his legs that meant that he was rarely beaten in the air, scoring many headed goals initially as a wiry centre forward, and later in his career as a poacher-turned-gamekeeper centre half. He is now living with Alzheimer’s Disease and vascular dementia, and there is no doubt in my mind that this is at least partly due to his football playing experience. One of the saddest aspects of the disease as it has affected my dad is the fact that he no longer really has any interest in football at all. A sad irony given that Sky and BT Sport now provide more access to world-class games than at any point in his life.
Speaking to the BBC following his father’s death, Nobby Stiles’ son said : “The research should continue, there is plenty of money to do it, to make sure that current players and youngsters coming through don’t suffer the same fate as my father. But more importantly, players should be getting care and support now, substantial support and care. I don’t think you could ever take heading out of football, but at least the players should be made aware that they make a decision to play the game knowing what the risks are.”
better out than in 