Like a room without a roof

I returned from Edinburgh with a suitcase full of soaking clothes. And I have brought the weather with me, because it has pretty much rained since. Sorry Londoners.

I came back from the Voxcetera tour in a fabulous frame of mind. A combination I think of a concert of (in my mind anyway) quite astonishing quality, some time away from the daily grind of work life and London, and being with a group of people who all get on so well.

And so, I've been generally enthusiastic about life, and feeling in a dynamic mode, and that I mustn't just let things slide. Life is there to be lived etc.* And, according to something on the web today, an astonishing number of people in this country have been prescribed antidepressants - One in three in Blackpool (which is pretty much where I grew up). Which says a lot about this country, but also shows what I have to be thankful for (and I don't mean leaving Blackpool!).

Voxcetera will finish in early July for a couple of months. So I have applied to do a couple of musical things over the summer to keep my had in, and which broaden my experience. One is big choral/classical, the other big and pop-based, so both things I've not done for a while. And I might have a couple of others on the go, you never know...

Plus I'm doing a scratch Mozart Requiem with the Bach choir this weekend just to try and embed it in my head.

Elsewhere I have ordered the parts to fix the two PCs that have been sitting at home needing it since before Christmas. Just about worth it I think, and it makes me feel good not to throw them away. (We've had a re-kit of IT at work - we have loads of quite old kit - but it all works and would be fine for internet and basic stuff. But it needs wiping of data and new software buying and therefore no-one will take it on a costs basis. Very wasteful.) And I'm started sorting out some other stuff that has been really festering (not literally). And I am kicking back into the gym and exercise mode.

Oh, and I haven't had any meat for a week now (see post here). I am eating fish at the moment, because having been away I was in so many places whether the true veggie choice was a cheese sandwich or a mushroom risotto, and I couldn't face that. Back at home now, I may scale that back too.I don't feel physically different not eating meat. Maybe it's too early to tell. But it does feel right, so I will stick with it for a while.

It will probably all have fallen flat by the weekend and I'll be back to watching Formula 1 in my dressing gown, eating bacon, but carpe diem and all that.

* this is not a self-help blog by the way.

Making plans for dealing with Nigel

I write this on a train from Edinburgh back to Kings Cross after a fabulous weekend with Voxcetera.

A good concert, a spot of clubbing, climbing Arthur's Seat in a hailstorm, and even a bit of culture. As I travel back the sun is shining and it feels that all is right with the world. 

Ah, yes, the European election. The cloud on my otherwise perfect horizon. The smug, Farage-shaped cloud. I do not understand why people have voted for UKIP because there is no chance I would ever do it. So I do not feel what those people feel.

As such, my "Why?" has to be speculation. But the lack of facts should never get in the way of a good blog, so here goes.

I don't think that the UKIP vote is borne of racism. Not for the vast majority. UKIP's best performances have not been in the area with the highest migration. London has performed much more as you would expect, with a drift to the official opposition.

And if a racially stronger policy was popular, we would not be celebrating the removal of the two BNP MEPs this morning, having lost 80% of their 2009 vote.

But I suspect the *fear* that jobs might be under threat to a surge of immigrants, no matter how far-fetched that actually is, is an issue. And the retired Colonels of Tunbridge Wells have always responded well to any call to raise the drawbridge.

More of an issue in my mind is that people do not see any real difference between the three major parties. There are no radical differences between them. If you want difference you either look to the Greens, or to Nige. And the Greens have done OK. Well, even. But they've never threatened a break through. Last time - in fact in my memory *every* other time there has been an alternative with the LibDems. Now they are part of government, so that one comes out. And their only chosen point of difference was Europe, more specifically the EU.

Ah yes, the EU. UKIP's rallying post. Author, if you believe Nige, of every problem this country has. The LibDems have struggled to say why the EU benefits us, just as both Con and Lab hint at the need to renegotiate treaties - which must mean they aren't the laws we should have. 

The first purpose of European union, back in the 50s, was to ensure coal and steel production was centrally controlled - with more than an eye on controlling rearmament. The Federalist goal has grown from there, and is still close to the heart of some Europeans, but of very few Brits. But Britain is a trading nation, and the Common Market was a serious attraction to us. Easier trade, breaking down of barriers, bigger markets - all good stuff. People don't see that in the EU. They see bureaucracy, and inefficiency, and perhaps corruption. 

Farage has played his hand on this well. Some of his claims are better supported than others. And of course no one significant* has left the EU, so we can't say that the world would end. He is saying "things are crap - do this and they will get better". 

So, do you** face a UKIP government in a year? Of course not. Will they fall back to a level of irrelevance as the Greens did after their big vote in the 1989 Euros? Perhaps, though not that far. Will they, horror of horrors, have enough seats to keep a Tory government in power at a disproportionate price? Yes, they might. But we have to find a way of engaging the UKIP voter with full-spectrum politics, and even more so the people who don't bother voting. And if we are serious about the EU we have to show the British people why it's a good thing. 

* Sorry Greenland, we love you, but you don't give me a working comparator here.

** I say you! because if it happens I'm off

Dancing the Night Away

I am sitting in a hotel in Leith, on a day when the title of the song and film can only be presumed to be ironic. If I stand on the table and peer out to the right I can just see the former-Royal Yacht Britannia sitting there attracting tourists.

Yesterday Voxcetera (the chamber choir I sing with) did a concert in Edinburgh with a local choir - Rudsambee (it's based on the Gaelic for 'anything at all'). They did the first half, with a programme ranging wildly in language - Welsh, Irish, Hungarian, Polish, and even a little English. And we debuted our  new Poulenc 8 French Folk songs, and ran some Britten too.

The audience seemed to love what we did; the Poulenc will be honed to perfection by the time we do it in London in October. And as for Britten's AMDG - which sets the poetry of Manley Hopkins to a range of accompaniments? It gets better and better I think. There were definitely a couple of moments last night where it took life beyond anything it has done before. In a good way, too.

A contrast. Two pretty accomplished choirs, but with a very different schtick. I think we blend better, and do stuff that is musically braver than them, but they interact better with the audience. Food for thought on where we might go next.

Of course, where I went next, post gig, was clubbing. Until 3:30 this morning. In a very pleasant establishment (no irony at all here) called the Jam House, with a live band and a good set of tunes - ancient and modern. But writing a blog at 9:30 (breakfast already done) reminds me of the benefits of not drinking. It is easy to have fun and dance the night away sober. Today, despite being from Edinburgh, I shall be doing the tourist thing

Some of you will be expecting comments on the election. Full thoughts can await the outcome of the Euro poll. In terms of the locals, Labour did well in London, but not nearly as well as they should have. Wandsworth remains Tory, but a little less so, with my ward having not split two Lab and one Tory. The greens have done well and UKIP has not, in London anyway - where in their own words the population is young, educated and culturally diverse. Spin that statement round and see what you could get as a UKIP strapline.

Elsewhere UKIP has done quite well, but I don't think it is all at the Tories expense, and you wonder how that will translate to a general election. One surefire prediction though. We are destined for an autumn of speculation about the Labour leadership. For me, Miliband looks finished. He doesn't attract outside the core, and doesn't seem to do well in it either. I'm imagining hushed discussions in corridors by friends of Yvette C and Andy Burnham.

Oh, and another prediction. Journalists everywhere will have been dispatched to dig up dirt on every councillor elected under the UKIP banner. They have a tough life, do journalists in these straitened times, so help them out. If you have taken coke with a new UKIP councillor, or helped him catalogue his Nazi memorabilia, do give The Mirror a ring and point them in the right direction.

On politics, holidays and snooker

Back to blogging.

We've had a major rewrite of our website going on at work, which has meant lots of rewriting of content and agonising over synonyms. I just haven't felt like writing in my time away from work in those circumstances.

Working for a business that is American in its parentage means that it is at these times that the "two nations divided by a common language" becomes most evident. Words that sound fine ("just fine", perhaps) from the mouths of my US colleagues sound "folksy" to British ears. Or, the fifth time you have to make the same change, they sound "shite".

So, having finished that job on Tuesday last, it's taken until today before I can face words again.  I am doing what one traditionally does on this Bank Holiday; watching snooker, trying to avoid watching snooker and moaning about our horribly asymmetrical distribution of bank holidays. The US seems to have a public holiday every six week or so. Aren't they fortunate that their big events occurred with such a distribution through the year?

They are helped by their comparative official atheism. First amendment issues mean Easter isn't a holiday, and Christmas is limited to one day, with Thanksgiving and Independence Day (which commemorates the US special effects industry) being the big ones. Whereas once May is out, we find ourselves thinking that August is the only one left in the year (given that the business year stops about December 20th).

The kids like this bank holiday though. Its the only one they notice - the rest all falling in a holiday week. (I guess it is the same for teachers though I had never thought about it - they get so much holiday they probably don't notice*).

Three weeks from today I will be on a train back from Edinburgh where I will have been doing some concerts with Voxcetera. If you are up there, look us up and come along. Which means I have two and a half weeks to learn some French lyrics, a task that would have been helped by not leaving my folder behind at the rehearsal venue last week. But that still leaves me time to blog and annoy you further.

And it's handy that the same timeframe will see the European and (for Londoners) local elections, to ensure I have plenty to blog about. If you are looking for frothy talk about the comparative public holidays of the US and UK, come back in June.

We are starting to get electoral leaflets through the door - though the Tories and Labour are only talking about local issues, whilst the Greens and UKIP have a more European focus. Of the Libdems, there has been only silence.

I don't really understand the appeal of UKIP, though I don't think many do in multicultural inner London. Farage went to school locally to me (at Dulwich College) but hasn't really made his presence felt here. So we are a bit bemused about why his party gets so much TV time, or how that squares with the BBC's institutional left-wing bias.

The European elections give us all a chance to vote tactically - voting for parties in a multi-member constituency means that a vote for a fringe party (like the Lib-Dems#) can have value. I'm not sure if that explains the relative quiet from the big two. They may just be embarrassed about Europe I guess.

So stay tuned for some feisty political blogging.








* A good friend, on reading a post I had made on Facebook said to me, "you do realise that some people don't always get humour?" If there is no set-up or pay-off (I think drum-rolls or a boom-tish) they assume you are being earnest. So here goes: that was not a serious comment - I do not think teachers get too much holiday, and think they deserve a medal, more money and lots of holidays. Educating the next generation is the most important task. Go on, hug a teacher.

# similar comments. Go on, hug Nick Clegg. Or Lembit Opek if you must. Mike Hancokc, hmm, not so sure.

Family and Friends

Well, I said at the beginning of this I was going to avoid politics. I failed last time - miserably. And you lot reward me with the biggest readership figures I've had all year, and lots of positive messages. Thank you for this. Your feedback is important to us. And having caught a little wave of popularity, I'm going to ignore it and write about something completely different. But I will get back on the political hobby horse, you'll just have to wait.

Half Term begins - and an extended weekend break - I am off Monday, and will be spending time learning stuff for the next Voxcetera gig, catching up on admin and some reading (and writing) and attempting to play "Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear" on the piano. I suspect the last of these will prove the least successful, and the least entertaining for the neighbours (though the Britten I'm learning could run it close on that one).

I managed to catch up with a couple of friends today - one over lunch and one for a quick coffee later on. I don't do this kind of thing often enough - just catching up without it being at a rehearsal or seeing a band or watching a movie. I never really thought why this was*, until it came up over lunch.

My parents grew up in the small town of Coatbridge, close to Glasgow. They met at church I think when very young - but my father did the music for shows and my mother did the choreography (not much doubt which side I inherited). Everyone stayed local, met future spouses locally, and that was it. Everyone was always in and out of each other's houses - not just family, but neighbours too. And my parents were the first of the family to  move away - first to Edinburgh, and then to England. Now, or course, I moved too, as did many of my friends - growing up in Lytham St Annes there wasn't a lot of career choice if you stayed. But they did it in a much less connected world, and were the first. That takes courage. But it also meant of course that we didn't have that family support system.

In the first few years, I know my two grandfathers (both widowed) would come down regularly, but I suspect this was to have someone to look after them rather than to support my parents. By the time I was eight, they were dead too (life expectancy in Glasgow was as bad then as it is now). And there must have been a different friends dynamic too. If all your mates from school and college disappear to the ends of the earth, then you accept the need to travel to stay in touch. My parents' friends stayed put. Many in Scotland - one couple in Lancashire - with a young family. They were never going to stay close.

So we were on our own  The classic nuclear family. And the just dropping in and small talking didn't happen. I had a great upbringing - I wanted for nothing within reason and didn't miss other family because I never had any, but perhaps it does explain my tendency for self-reliance.


* to be honest, I assumed it was because that was just how I am - small talk is awkward, people, indeed, are awkward so why on earth put yourself through that when you can be reading a book or listening to some music.