It's the economy stupid

Here in Britain the election campaign is well on its way even if we haven't been given the date yet.

It is that odd time in the political cycle when our politicians start to talk to us.

This is serious stuff - I know this because we are being spoken to face to face, in all honesty and sincerely by people who only have our interests at heart.

Nothing is going to be hidden from us about how our major political parties are going to tackle the nation's financial problems.

We had the three main financial spokesmen in open debate on our televisions the other night.

You know they are electioneering when our old friend is unveiled: money, we are told, will be saved by cutting inefficiencies and bureaucracies.

Ho Ho Ho! How many times have politicians said that!

The thing is, they say, trust us to cut out waste and we will still look after all those public bodies that the other guys will cut.

The Conservatives went even further - they are going to cut National Insurance rates and give the elderly loads more money for winter fuel and bus passes. It is all win with the Tories but, they tell us, unless you have us the end of the World will begin......help us David Cameron and George Osborne, we are small, stupid people who need you!

The Health and Education budgets won't be touched at all - yeah sure! - and we will still keep on buying big bombs and missiles.

So don't worry voters, the other lot will ruin the country but we will keep everything just great by doing a bit of trimming in the civil service.

What we all know of course, is that what will be done will be done and those well-worn phrases about cutting bureaucracy and waste are utterly worthless.

At least the present lot, the Labour Party, have managed to keep the country on course through the worst economic climate in living memory, even if nobody likes them. Alastair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at least knows what the truth is when he looks into our account books.

We have a problem when it comes to voting. We don't want what we have got and we don't like the other guys either.

Once upon a time, many years ago, we used to have a governing party who had been in power for a bit too long who knew it was their time to go and we also had an opposition party who were hungry for power and full of new ideas.

Not any more! They are all worn out so gawd help us! They think we are stupid too but the stupid ones might not be us.

Wolfgang salutes Wolfgang

There are times when I wonder why we bother at all.

You know, after Shakespeare and Joyce and T.S. Eliot, what's the point!

I keep going though with my poetry here in the little room at the top of the house - I wrote a poem yesterday and have begun another one today. I heard that two of my short stories are going to be performed by the White Rabbit theatre company this summer too. They did one before so it is nice to get invited back.

Then I had this moment of "what's-the-point?" - it was quite joyful actually.

I have a new cd of Mozart's last four and very great symphonies conducted by a man who has been around all my life, the wonderful Australian conductor Charles Mackerras who is exceedingly old but brilliant.

He is a clever man, a musicologist as well as a conductor so he takes crotchets and quavers very seriously. Last night I listened to his version of Mozart's Symphony No. 38, the Prague. It was the work he wrote before the possibily even greater final three symphonies. Well, in Mackerras's hands it is musical Paradise. Mackerras shows us that with Mozart there no padding, no empty rhetoric and no sentimentality, we are just left with a profound range of human emotions, drama and lyricism, lively invention and, of course, supreme beauty.

In this recording there is all the darkness and light so typical of this composer with daringly wild harmonies fitting perfectly into a musical design exposed in exciting clarity by the Australian maestro's passion and attention to detail. You have to hear it and I just can't wait for the other three works on this recording.

So, all I need to do now is go and read King Lear or Twelfth Night and maybe The Waste Land or the Molly Bloom monologue from the end of Joyce's Ulysses - and then give up my pretensions with all due grace. All I would need then would be Mozart.

I feel inspired, humbled and almost, but not quite, silenced. Thank you Wolfgang Amadeus - you touch the bits other composers never quite reach - for me at least.

So from humble Wolfgang to great Wolfgang, respect!

Charles Mackerras has just brought a new set of four more of the Mozart symphonies and I am awaiting their delivery like a child on his birthday. Here is the great conductor recording Symphony No 35, the Haffner:

Sowing, pricking out and potting on

I have been fulfilling my primeval and natural human role this weekend preparing for this year's harvest - well, hoped for harvest.

I have now nearly emptied my propagator and pricked out and potted on all those fragile little seedlings which should make fine sturdy and highly edible plants before long. The tomatoes and various varieties of hot or sweet peppers are looking perky as are all those half-hardy annuals which should brighten up some of the flower beds in high summer.

I have also been sowing hardy lettuce, spinach and radish seeds directly into pots in my maybe over-ambitious tiny patio potted allotment. Out there too are my chitted Jersey potatoes in the first level of my newly purchased patio potato grower - it is the green pot in the middle of the growing number of terracotta ones. Somewhere out there too are the first signs of a row of peas.


The new trellising has gone up for my newly planted espalier cooking apple tree so all I have to do until its next prune is to keep its branches tied in place. In a few years this Bramley's Seedling tree will stretch its highly trained branches right up to the house.




My little backyard was a pleasant place to work in over the weekend with its display of tulips, daffodils, croci and various other spring bulbs.



The primroses, even though they have been flowering since the early winter, have now put on a new flush and are looking their best in their shady corners.



Miniature daffodils and the Easter Rose, helioborus orientalis, set each other off in yellow and pink under my newly planted dwarf eating apple tree which by late summer should be bearing its bright red apples.




I have now got my first batch of tulips grown in terracotta pots by the house with a patch of golden croci. When they are over, they will be replaced by their taller cousins, this year, Princess Irene.




My troughs are still rewarding too with a new set of flowering bulbs now adding a welcome touch of blue





So good luck plants, the weathermen are warning us about another cold snap - I shall be watching out for you. It is my role as natural man of the soil.

Good riddance to the Gang of Three.

I feel mildly disappointed, a bit naive and very disillusioned when I think about British politics these days.

I am referring, of course, to the latest scandal to hit our Members of Parliament.

Three former cabinet ministers, fervent supporters of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, have been caught in a clever TV sting where they admitted on camera that they would be interested in using their political experience in the interests of what turned out to be a fictional American venture capitalist company.

This new Gang of Three, Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, were all going to stand down at the next election any way, they were yesterday's men as far as the Brown administration was concerned but they were still elected MPs when they turned up to these meetings and will be until the date of the Election is known and Parliament is dissolved.

Geoff Hoon

Geoff Hoon, the former Defence Secretary, rather disarmingly apologised on the radio this morning and said that he acknowledged that he had made a mistake and that he had been "showing off."

Quite.

All three of them have made a big mistake but at least he was big enough to admit it.

These politicians!!!! What are they like!!!!

In his own defence he said that he was leaving Parliament anyway and needed to find himself a new job for the time before his big pension kicks in.

I could see his point but, as with the other two, I couldn't help wondering why they were leaving politics.

OK, Geoff Hoon was a luck-lustre Defence Secretary, Patricia Hewitt was an incompetent Health Secretary and Stephen Byers was a slime-ball as Trade and then Transport Secretary.

In my naivity, I wonder why it isn't good enough to be a back bench MP. If you want to be a public servant, to help influence the political future of the country and if you want to help your constituents - all claims regularly made by our MPs, then why do they have to go just because they have lost favour at the top table?

If there was ever a time when it was important for Members of Parliament to stand up and be counted as honourable, free-thinking and incorruptible public servants then it is now. Byers, Hewitt and Hoon, could have stood again as senior and experienced back-benchers but, of course, we now know that instead of that, they have decided to use their experience to chase a bit of extra cash.

Maybe their former leader, Tony Blair's rush into money-making, his reported £20 million earnings since leaving office, has led them astray.

Stephen Byers

In many ways, no one is much surprized by Mr Byers' comeuppance. He was the man whose assistant suggested that 9/11 was a good day to bury bad news and, we know from some of the other dirt that still clings to his boots that he is not a man over-scrupulous in the art of political manipulation. Let's put him to one side and think, good riddance. He is what my grandmother used to call a toe-rag.

Geoff Hoon, was, let's face it, a man over-promoted and often out of his depth. A decent bloke no doubt and no great loss to politics.

Patricia Hewitt

Patricia Hewitt is the real surprise here.

I remember her when I was a young political researcher and she was the then Labour Leader, Neil Kinnock's press secretary. She was always charming, helpful and effective whenever I had reason to talk to her, she seemed bright and intelligent and she was always as good as her word if she promised to deliver her boss up for an interview.

In those days, Neil Kinnock was fighting to save the Labour Party from extinction at the hands of the so-called Militant Tendency who wanted to transform it into a Marxist debating club.

Patricia Hewitt, with a history of working with Liberty and Age Concern, was the very image of a bright eyed enthusiast for the energy and vision that Neil Kinnock brought to his party so I was not surprized when, Neil Kinnock out of the equation, she became a minister in the Tony Blair administration.

OK, she may not have been a great success as a cabinet minister, but I would never have predicted that she would have sold her soul for a few American bucks.

The extent of the shock is reflected in Neil Kinnock's remarks this week when he called the actions of these three former ministers, "repulsive." That is quite something coming from him when referring to his former aide.

He is right too. It is repulsive when our politicians reveal themselves as self-seeking, money-grabbing and foolishly vain mortals. That is also what makes me feel disappointed, naive and disillusioned.

Let's try to elect a new bunch in May - but as Mrs Hewitt has demonstrated, power corrupts.

My Spring garden, at night, in the rain....perfect.

I was walking home from my tai chi class last night feeling tired in the rain when I trod in a puddle and remembered it was the night for putting out the rubbish. I felt irritable, miserable and over-wrought until I put on the outside light at the back of my house and went out to the dustbin.



Suddenly everything was alright again. I am a simple soul no doubt but I have always found outside lighting in the rain exciting especially when it illuminates my garden flowers and none are more grateful under light than the waxy textures of Spring bulbs.


I stood in another puddle but this time I didn't care. My Spring bulbs, croci, daffodils and now tulips too, are finally bursting into bloom after the latest Spring in years.


Who needs sunshine to appreciate their beauty? There is something extra decadent about observing these glamourous stars by night. This is how vampires must enjoy their gardens.

I hope you enjoy the view - I get a lot of exotic pleasure just inches away from my backdoor. I stood there for a while, in the rain with a rather good glass of red wine. Count Dracula would have known where I was coming from, no doubt.






















The garden even looks good in daylight - this morning when I was out there doing my tai chi and my sword pattern, I felt that my garden had arrived for Spring.



It even looks good from indoors.

I think of America as I go to the doctor

I am off to see my doctor this morning and it isn't going to cost me a penny.

Two weeks ago I was having the latest in my regular consultations with the very very bright woman who is my consultant neurologist who will be booking me in for my fifth, very expensive MRI brain scan.

Yesterday I was with my GP referred personal trainer who is guiding me back to fitness after my brain haemorrhage.

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you about my Ear, Nose and Throat consultant who investigated my damaged vocal chords or my speech therapist who is helping my stammer or the Ophthalmic Surgeon who is trying to sort out my double vision.

I haven't been toting up the cost of all this on my calculator because it is all on the British National Health Service.

I have been ill now since October 2008 and have been looked after faultlessly in that time so I need to say three things before my latest visit to see a British medic:

1) Thanks everyone in the British NHS for looking after me.

2) Congratulations all you citizens of the United States of America on your new Health Scheme. It won't turn you into a Soviet state, it won't bankrupt you and it won't destroy your freedoms. It will, however, take away that fear of not being able to pay your health bills and I know at first hand just how dependent we all can be when bad times come round without warning.

3) Congratulations President Obama, for sticking with it, risking all for it, and for succeeding when all around you were predicting defeat.

We in Britain have a great Health Service and you in the States have a great President.

Onwards and upwards! I am off to the doc's.

The Spring Equinox in Kingston, an old Sussex village

I used to dream about the flint buildings and chalk grasslands of Sussex when work took me away for a few years from the county of my youth. I have been back, thankfully, for some time now and, on Sunday, the day of the Spring or Vernal Equinox, I spent some inspiring moments in the sunshine in the surroundings of my Northern daydreams.

I had been buying compost, flower pots and seeds in a local garden centre and broke my journey home in the old village of Kingston just a handful of miles from my home town, Lewes, in East Sussex.

Here below is the fine 11th. Century church of St Pancras, built from Sussex flint nearly a thousand years ago in the good/bad old days of King William the Conqueror.


You enter the churchyard by what is called a tapsel gate, unique to East Sussex, with only six remaining and all of them within ten miles of Lewes.

Tapsel gates have a swivel post in the middle so that it can be opened 90 degrees in either direction, with enough space for human beings carrying coffins but not enough for roaming cattle.

This gate, and its fellows, was invented by one John Tapsel, a bell-founder and restorer, who roamed these parts in the early 18th. Century. The one here in Kingston is the earliest, installed in 1727. This is a piece of pure Sussex - beautiful, eccentric and practical in one delightful push of the hand.

Beyond the gate I saw a clump of this weekend's much delayed but very welcome trumpeters of Spring, a host, as Wordsworth called them, of golden daffodils. They too, when not in Wordsworth's Lake District, look perfect against Sussex flint.

Just as well that the tapsel gate stopped any passing cattle from eating them, if cattle ever do eat daffodils.

They might well have chewed up this fine bank of newly flowering violets too given the chance. It is right that old English churchyards were known as God's Acres. They are still, when allowed to be, splendid nature reserves.

Walking down the lane from the church, there are some attractively scrubby verges and under-played and tiny cottage front gardens with their own crop of daffodils and the fading remains of snowdrops. Kingston village was just a single street from Norman times until the 1920s when the builders came in to expand/ruin what had been a classic medieval village. Some of those old cottages remain, hanging onto their charm under the eyes of grander, more pretentious households which give away their origins with house names such as "Brambles" - what country person would want his house named after a pernicious weed?




There are also some fine flint buildings further down the lane too; in some ways every bit as fine as the old church of St Pancras.


These two wonderful and traditional Sussex barns are unembarrassed by the everyday clutter of working farms and they are fantastic buildings and, sadly, too often these days most of them are converted into homes and given names like, well, Brambles.


There is a very grand house too with tall chimneys and a lot of bedrooms but, sadly, the unfriendly and very tall but beautiful flint wall serves as a good deterrent to nosy wolves. I had seen enough though to go home feeling that Spring had well and truly arrived in these parts. I went back to my own daffodils but more about them some other time. Happy Vernal Equinox everyone.

White Crane Kung Fu goes to Eastbourne

I got my camera out over the weekend in the interests of martial arts. My kung fu club (White Crane Fighting Arts) asked me to go to Eastbourne where they are doing a demonstration of the finer points of kung fu to publicise the opening a new club teaching White Crane Kung Fu and Tai Chi in this classic Sussex seaside town. I have been back-pedaling in my own kung fu recently because of ill health so it was nice to have a role again in this highly enjoyable, lively and effective martial art form.

The oldest member of the club is, well, old, and the youngest is, I believe, six - so there really is no excuse for anyone not to find satisfaction in the great and ancient Chinese fighting system which is also a fantastic way of keeping fit.



My former Iron Shirt partner, Pete, has become a kung fu instructor and it has fallen to him to open up the new club - I was merely there as the seedy man with the camera.



Head Instructor Neil, my friend and teacher, leads from the front as you can see from the photographs. He never asks anyone to do anything that he can't do himself - only he is just better than everyone else....God I hate him!



The demonstration showed off various Kung Fu patterns including the Dog Style which we learnt in China and which I hope to do again when I have made a full recovery. I was pleased to see so many things performed that day which I am still able to do - including my weapon patterns on the straight sword and the seven and a half foot staff. Have a look at some of the artistry involved in Kung Fu:
























There is, as you can see, a lot of rolling around in this style where the idea is to get your opponent onto the floor as quickly as possible and to keep him there.

Pete demonstrates standing on his fingers

Ken demonstrates the straight sword pattern in true mean spirit

Matt looks pretty unpleasant too with the seven and a half foot staff.

Neil brings the show to a close with his spectacular Twin Butterfly Sword pattern.

Neil is coming round this morning to give me my weekly one to one kung fu lesson - I am truly lucky to have him as my teacher. He is better kept as a friend than an opponent I think.