Some things Never Change...

This weekend saw 50,000 (definitely non-fascist) music lovers descend upon Victoria Park as part of the Thirtieth anniversary of 'Rock Against Racism', the festival that united disparate social groups and raised awareness of racism through the medium of rock music. And I am trying very hard not to be totally cynical about its re-enactment.

1978 Britain was quite a lot different from how it is now. I have no way of knowing this authoritatively; when those rock giants such as The Specials and The Clash were sultrily stalking the stage I was no more than a glint in my father's eye. But I can imagine that race was a thorny issue, or else to 'rock against' it would have been slightly superfluous.

I am not naive or idealistic enough to claim that race is no longer an issue in Britain. People are still discriminated against for the colour of their skin or for their religious beliefs. This practice is both ignorant and abhorrent. But we have come a long way since 1978.

30 years ago racial tensions were far less civilized than today. Discrimination was institutionalized - if not openly admitted - and many facets of society routinely gave people different to themselves an unnecessarily hard time. 'Rock Against Racism' was a festival that sought to raise the point that racism was idiotic, and that just because it was commonplace, it needn't have been excusable.

The less catchily-titled 'Love Music, Hate Racism' festival last weekend seemed to me to be an overly nostalgic harking back to the seventies, when music was seen as a vehicle for ideological change. The world has moved on, The Clash's Paul Simonon has fewer hairs and people are infinitely more accepting and predisposed to social integration 'than back in the day'. Music's role in popular culture has also altered.

Philanthropist and musical visionary Damon Albarn argued that the concert proved music was "still a very cohesive force" in the fight against racism. But what is he hoping to achieve by reminding us what music once achieved? It seems a very backward route for progress.

Racism has altered from being a frowned upon social practice to being simply unacceptable. Any new attempt to root it out will not change the fact that there are always going to be pockets of society who are racist. If these idiotic minority will not change their mind in the face of common decency, social pressure or legal legislation, they are unlikely to alter their warped ways after listening to rock music.

You cannot seek to change indoctrinated and socially chastised individuals through popular culture. Racist individuals are subversive and, in adopting a position so at odds with social acceptability, make it clear that they don't care what people say publicly - indeed, they seek to contradict it.

Yet this doesn't stop moral paragons such as actors and musicians from attempting to change people's minds, from trying to save poor, unpopular people from their own sensibilities. Why not 'Rock Against Rape'? Or any number of social evils?

Like Ricky Gervais' pinpoint remark at Live8 a few summers ago, you can't make racism 'history'. It will always exist, just as poverty will. That is not to say that we shouldn't continue to fight against it. It's just that wheeling out some more hackneyed, self-aggrandising musician to re-enact a concert that made the headlines in the past is a fairly unoriginal way of doing it.

This new concert has succeeded only in reminding us that racism is still an unnecessary evil. In the same way that murder is. No one is under any impression that racism in not a very bad thing, even those people who perpetrate it. Events like this will not shake a racist's long-held beliefs.

By it's very nature, the concert would have attracted non-racist individuals, who support the idea of anti-fascism. It will not have reached any of the people whose ideas need altering. "Don't be racist guys." "Yeah, we know". It's just not a revolutionary discourse.

This back-slapping performance of social inclusiveness may have been spectacular, but trying to change oppositional views by inviting along a load of supporters is futile.

Perhaps we would do better to accept that there will always be a thankfully small minority who harbour racist views, and no regurgitation of punk's greatest hits can change that. But that wouldn't sell as many albums, would it?

Something Saintly...

What's more English than a Turkish Knight and a fire-breathing, flying lizard? St. George, that paragon on English feistiness, is also the Patron Saint of countries such as Canada, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia and Serbia. Yet the dragon slayer still stands as a catalyst for expressing quintessential Englishness.

For the first time ever, under instruction from a Scot as dour as an Oatcake, the St. George's Cross will today fly alongside the Union Jack at Number 10 and other parliamentary buildings.

Pubs are said to be going crazy for the celebrations of St. George, and the cynics have been out in force, berating the efforts as commercial pursuits as they languidly sip their pineapple juice. Apparently, sales of 'St. George's Day packs' - whatever they are - have risen 50% on last year and, for the first time ever, are outselling St. Patrick's Day packs. So put away your novelty sized inflatable Guiness glass - it wasn't funny on March 17th.

Of course pubs see it as a commercial opportunity; the smoking ban has taken its toll, ol' eyebrows has already whacked four pence on the price of a pint and there shall be no rush to the bar when Euro 2008 kicks off without the lion-hearted, barrell-chested England team. They need to recoup their losses somewhere down the line.

But this initiave needn't be exclusive to patriotism. The fact that you're going to make a profit from other people's onece-a-year national pride doesn't make you any less of a patriot - it makes you a businessman.

Some bosses have answered unofficial calls to make St. George's Day a national holiday, giving their beleaguered work forces a chance to forget their sorrows for one day, and then sit unproductively remembering them the next.

The whole new and seemingly more zealous approach to St. George's Day is, to me, indicative of the attempt to force national pride into the public's consciousness. Just as, miraculously, everyone has an Irish cousin on St. Paddy's night, so people will go out today and be extra specially English. They will lose at cricket. They will wait patiently, but not happily, for a train. They will ride on horseback into battle with the uncivilised Scots over the wall. Well, maybe not that one.

I have a slight contention with Brian Patten - who was commissioned by English Heritage to write a St George's Day poem - who asserted that, "There is no country more beautiful than England in April". He obviously didn't get the steamed-up 73 bus to work this morning.

Whether or not this token Englishness is a sentiment felt sufficiently strongly to necessitate the writing of a poem (a medium which the OED describes as a piece of structured writing "to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject,") is a debate for another time. What it does show is that we are incapable of spontaneously taking pride in Englishness.

English Heritage has produced a booklet advising people how to celebrate St. George's Day. We've already covered how to be cynical about the whole, corporately orchestrated day. We know how to go out and get foolishly drunk in the name of a country, we do that every St. Patrick's Day. Pray, what other ways are there to celebrate, O most English trust?

The advent of the European Union has apparently residually damaged the notion of Englishness, and people, sniff, are becoming less comfortable with the fact they were born, unrequested in between Berwick-Upon-Tweed and the English Channel. Furthermore, perpetuated by the misappropriation of English sympathy by the horrid BNP, the image of the English patriot is less an Edwardian fop than a Northern skinhead.

The idea of a 'national identity' commonly felt across such a varied and changable demographic is ludicrous. If you are proud of your roots - which anyone without the surname 'Hitler' usually is - then you should hold their values close to you in everday life. These will form what type of person you are naturally and ancestrally. There is, however, no need to go and proclaim them to everyone who didn't ask.

Spouting yobbishly, "Yeah, I'm English and bloody proud mate. We won the war," isn't being English, it's being a cock. Any number of migrants, who may well consider themselves English but whose heritage comes from elsewhere can be just as party to a sense of belonging to a country. This is really where pride in a nation comes from.

What is great, and what should be celebrated about England can be seen and experienced on the other 364 days there are a year. While the motivation behind the big St. George's day push, and the Government's encouragement of national identity is admirable in that it essentially gets us to act with greater respect and social tolerance, it shouldn't force the issue.

If you are proud of being English, then great, but be proud everyday and put up with this country's numerous shortcomings in the English style of grinning and bearing it. England isn't as great as it seems on St. George's day, but if this token day helps us to remember what is good about it, then let's all have a drink for the Turkish knight who made his fortune selling bacon. Let's drink to St. George!

Something In The Air...

"In Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Not my words, but those of the confusingly named Alfred Lord Tennyson. (That's like being called Margaret Baroness Thatcher or Patrick Mister Galey; my middle name is Richard). But I digress.

Every day, I walk to Manor House tube, bracing myself against the chilling wind, cursing silently to myself as to when this neverending Winter shall cease. Last week saw the start of the County Cricket season coincide with snow-showers - an indication that the wintry weather is really milking it. It's late April for goodness sake.

I know it's so British to moan about the weather, and I have decried enough climatic cliches in previous posts, but it's something that's so fundamentally affecting to all of us. Tennyson's pathetic fallacy is grounded in essential truth.

What comfort to the soul it was therefore, to walk out of the house today and be greeted by a pleasantly temperate breeze. Admittedly it smelt of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber, but it was nice all the same. If you spend anytime at all outside, you'll know that it's far less of an arduous pursuit if the weather is nice.

Equally, if you spend a lot of time cooped up inside, it's uplifting to know that there is infinite space into which you can burst at the end of the day - liberated, exultant and warm.

Somehow Spring air has a different smell to it. Be it pollen particles, or the odor of cut grass and cigarette smoke, the atmosphere palpably changes during the transition to Summer. Tennyson may have had the right sentiment in "Locksley Hall", but he was rather vague in his execution.

In Spring, a young man's fancy may take a Romantic turn, but it is not necessarily channeled into thoughts of love. You approach life with a renewed vigour, a hope in the promise of long forgotten experiences - late nights in the park, al fresco drinking and sunny afternoon walks.

Your attention turns from rushing indoors and barricading the locks to getting outside and seeing the world, reminding yourself that you're not the only one who has, over the darker months, gradually turned a shade of pale grey.

My fancy is never far from thoughts of love. This Spring, it shall lightly turn to thoughts of a lovely tan.

Something's Gotta Give...

Oxford Street is like a clogged artery in London's already strained circulatory system. I've recently been doing some writing for a popular men's magazine, the offices of which are situated just off the capital's consumerist centre. With the affluence of Fitzrovia to the North and Soho's achingly cool underbelly to the South, it should be the ultimate location for a young man. But I cannot stand it.

Every time I alight my commute, I am greeted by a seething wall of flaring nostrils, obtrusive backpacks and squawking shoppers. Walking 2oo metres takes a good five minutes; on a clear street I could make the distance walking on my hands in that time. No matter how relaxed I feel before, I am always a bulldozing maniac after I get to Oxford street.

It's not just the volume of people that feels oppressive, it's the fact that nearly every one of them doesn't look where they are going. The Oxford Street shopper is too busy gazing, dewy-eyed at window displays in Topshop to notice another dogged human being careering toward them. There are those (and, sorry, but they are nearly always women) who flit their gaze from one peripheral distraction to the next with utter disregard to the oncoming problem that is me in a pushy mood. I have taken to standing still, like a furious statue, in front of these folk, until they literally walk into me. So amazed, so taken aback are they that there is another form blocking their air headed meander, that they apologise profusely, before floating their glazed optics upward to shopping heaven once more.

The pedestrian on Oxford Street may be infuriating, but they are merely the cross-eyed figurehead of a city that is fundamentally overpopulated.

As of last year, London is home to an estimated 7.5 million souls. That makes it the most populous city in the European Union. There are too many people who live in, visit or commute to London.

I am not about to take a leaf out of everyone's favourite social commentator, Morrisey's book, and be misquoted as saying there are too many foreigners in London. I grew up in rural Leicestershire, so I can hardly call myself a Londoner born and bred. What I am saying is that London's infrastructure is essentially the same as it was in post-war Britain, when large chunks of the capital were rebuilt in the destructive wake of the Blitz.

London's population at that time was actually larger than it is now, but far less clustered. London today, in the shadow of the City's profligate spending, is characterized by an increasingly large gulf between where people can afford to live and where they choose to spend their time. Londoner's gravitate towards certain areas just as much as tourists to, and Oxford Street is one of those areas.

What's to be done? Oxford Street is already closed to all traffic but taxis and buses (and the odd, anachronistic rickshaw,) yet the place is still packed. Perhaps we could implement a similar restrictiveness on people. If you are too large to occupy the surface area of an average human, or too inattentive to avoid the oncoming public, you cannot walk along Oxford Street. Maybe department stores could confuse shoppers by, after enticing gullible consumers in with bright flashing lights and shiny materials, siphoning them off into a different area of London. Provided their goldfish attention span was indulged with garish SALE signs, they wouldn't even notice.

This would clear the way for those grumpy sods, such as myself, who use the pavement as a medium for promenaded transport from one place to another, to actually walk somewhere without pushing overweight bargain hunters under the wheels of a bendy bus.

If Oxford street keeps burgeoning under the strain of too many people, something will snap. And I'm worried it might be my a vein somewhere in my temple.

Something I've forgotten...

Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. Oyster card? Check. Off I maraud into the great big toy box of the world.

What more do you need to explore the turbulent city than a sensible pair of trainers and a sense of adventure? Oh, yeah: you need your keys.

My weekly meet with two friends was smattered with conjecture on what goes through your head when you forget your keys. Do you assume it will be as easy to get into your deadlocked and retina-scanning door as it was to get out? Do you, not content with the initiative test of the commute to work, plan on an elaborate break-in, using nothing more than a paper clip and a Tesco clubcard? Are you trying to irk your gassy flatmate into moving out?

What goes through your head? The answer is as curt as it is problematic: nothing.

Taking your belongings with you is a mechanical response, so practiced and repeated that it becomes deeply embedded in the subconscious. You don't need to think about it, your body ensures it gets done. It's easier to leave the house without wearing trousers, as you need to activate and direct your conscious in order to clad your milk-white thighs.

It isn't your fault if you don't remember to bring your keys. In quotidian reality, no one remembers; the manual action of picking them up is somnolent.

All this, of course, comes as little comfort when you've forgotten the blasted things.

I had just finished laughing at friend A's tale of how his parents refused to let him in the house after he had left his keys in a different pair of jeans, when friend B's usual mouldy yoghurt complexion dipped another shade. He had left his keys in his house.

(Mildly pedantic aside: when people say "Balls, I've forgotten my keys," they haven't. They've remembered them. They probably forgot them several hours ago.)

"How can you forget your keys?" I cried in indignation. He cried in humiliation.

The fact that twenty minutes later he was back, up one set of keys but down a window and any hope of a cordial relationship with Mrs Atkinson from flat 4, was of little consequence to me.

But yesterday, amid celebratory drinks, it happened.

I remembered my keys. They were in my bag, snugly locked inside my office.

It's never the inconvenience that gets to me (as it does the neighbours,) it's the sheer confidence-shattering embarrassment of how perfectly vacant my head can be.

If my body neglected to shift my hairy, floor-scraping knuckles into my bag to forage for my keys, what else am I not doing? Do I ever forget to breath? Drink water?


The one quantum of insufficient solace comes in my friends proving I am not alone in these helium-headed moments. It must happen to everyone at some low and humiliating point in their lives, even locksmiths.

Something Squishy...

I was rudely awaken this morning by a friend letting himself into my room and putting snow in my bed.

There are many uncouth aspects to this seemingly frivolous action. Not only had he entered my private space without having the grace to knock (I could have been doing anything). He also made my bed wet, which is just not on. Only I have the authority to wet my own bed.

But the cruelest part of this prank was not the breaking and entering, nor the soiling of my mattress - it was the false hope it gave.

Since moving to London, I have not seen so much as one measly flake of the white stuff. Childhood memories of rosy-cheeks, plastic sleds and impromptu snowball fights have faded, supplanted by hazy visions of my bus going past in London's smoggy pea-soupers.

But, at this 8am this morning, there was actually snow falling in the city.

I was undeniably excited about this; I almost got up and went outside to play. I would have ran into the alley around the back of my house and made a exultant snow-angel, were it not a minefield of used condoms and hypodermic needles.

I stayed in bed, secure in the knowledge that a few more hours sleep would give me enough energy to enjoy the snow.

And, of course, three hours later the snow had gone, my heart gently wasting away with the melt water.

Why doesn't snow settle anymore? It's still snow, but "without any of the inherent fun of snow", as a friend would say. Like alcohol-free beer or a porn-free newsagent.

I felt this morning, for the first time in ages, the thrill of seeing snow on the ground. I felt like I wanted to chase Andrew King, the class fat kid, around the playground before stuffing snow down the back of his wheezing neck. That fizz of pure glee that can only be felt when your hands, face and ears have all gone numb - the anaesthetic thrill of a snowy air.

But no. All that happened today - with no remaining snow on the ground - was that my football practice got cancelled and I my fingers went numb on back from to Sainsbury's.

Like puddles. One time, the smallest pool of murky rainwater would be rendered enthralling simply by jumping into it. If I did that nowadays I'd have wet socks for the rest of the day and would probably have to machine wash by shoes to get the dirt out of the laces.

Weather is just snow fun anymore.

Something Unpredictable...

I'm nervous. It's the Grand National today, and I have picked the winner for the last five years. I say this with no pride or boastfulness, but with caution.

I see this ritual as a sure way of using up all of my betting luck for the year to come.

Were I not to win this afternoon, I'll be tempted to strew my cash across a variety of sporting events throughout the year. And lose it all.

The first bet I ever took, shiny new Maestro card in hand - a plastic facade fronting a dearth of funds, was £10 on Leicester drawing with Coventry when they were playing grown-ups with those 'overpaid pansies' in the Premier League. Giants such as Matt Elliot and Gerry Taggart still stalked the earth, and I knew the score would be 0-0.

It was such an bloody certainty, I didn't even check the score before collecting my winnings. It could have been the worst thing that ever happened to me.

"This is amazing", I remember thinking, "So they actually just give you money for working out the blindingly obvious?".

The next week, again compelled by an unshakable conviction that Leicester would lose, this time 1-0 at Arsenal, I wagered another well-earned (read borrowed) tenner.

All was well until substitute Craig Hignett spawnily shinned in an Andrew Impey cross to level the scores. It finished 1-1, and I realized that this betting lark would take a lifetime - and a small fortune - to master.

I owe much to Craig Hignett. (Nothing football related, I might add. Hignett's sole contribution to Leicester's relegation was to deny me my winnings).

Had he not fluked that equalizer, however, I could easily now be in a hole of debt. I am not a lucky person, but I am a stubborn one, often convinced I'm right - even when I'm clearly not. I use these two truths to limit my betting throughout the year.

I now only bet on Horse Racing and Boxing. Without wishing to inflate that bloke-who-played-Finchey-in-the-Office's ego any further, sport does "matter more when there's money on it". I like gambling a little on things, the result of which doesn't concern me.

I also like getting the better of those flavour-of-the-week 'experts'. Those people who, upon receiving a call in the bookies, loudly regurgitate some obscure tip they've just read in the Racing Post over someone's shoulder whilst waiting for the bus, before putting £2 on the favourite - you know, just in case.

I want to win more than those people because, like them, I know very little about Horse Racing. Unlike them, I don't consider sitting around a lino-topped table strewn with playing chips and Dorito's dip, gumming on cheap cigars and taking money off mates a good way to spend a Saturday night. (I mean Poker players, not Cabinet Ministers).

Betting is dangerous. It's risky when you're bad at it and haven't the finances to cover your losses. It's even more risky if you start out good and assume your luck will last forever.

I am content to confine my little bit of luck to one or two days a year, confident that all my annual bad luck will pass when I don't stand to lose money.

Something In The Way She Moves...

Heather Mills bashing has become a craze bigger than yo-yos, so it's nice to see her getting some words of support for a change.

They come in the form of that old, wise sage Yoko Ono, who admittedly knows a thing or two about being disliked.

Sporting a Panama hat tipped coquettishly to the side like the Man from Del Monte's mistress, Ms Ono suggested that loving a Beatle was a thankless task. As indeed is marrying one and trying to steal all his money after a very public divorce.

Being defended by Yoko Ono is like receiving an babysitting reference from Mira Hyndley.

"I think all the wives did suffer, and I think silently suffer," croaked Yoko in an interview with Sky News. "Suffer but endured, I would actually say," she added.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of listening to her contribution to "Double Fantasy" will beg to differ. As Yoko wails her way through 'Kiss Kiss Kiss', sounding like a baby being hit with a cat, one begins to wish her suffering was a little more silent.

She certainly sounds like she's in pain when she sings.

Heather Mills, face puckered like a balloon kno- No. I'm doing it again. No Mills bashing, no matter how fun or perspicacious can may be.

Both Heather Mills and Yoko Ono have clearly suffered. If, as the latter today suggested, they both remain silent and 'endure', maybe we wouldn't have to share it with them.

Something Sticky...

I've been doing some work experience at a national paper and recently had the good fortune to attend the morning's leader conference.

I was struck by the encyclopedic knowledge of these men and women. I know that they have spent a lifetime in the industry, and it's their job to keep abreast of world affairs, but there doesn't seem to be a topic on which at least one is not an authority.

But this was not my main concern during the hour-long discussion. What really affected, indeed irked me, was the fact that I hadn't brought along a tissue - and the reaction I received when I did something about it.

I was nursing a thoroughly-installed cold, complete with soggy head, fuzzy throat and gushing nostrils. I should have thought ahead and forklifted in with me an industrial pack of Kleenex.

But no. I had, doe-eyed and submissive, like a naughty child being marched off the playground, followed the leader writers into the editor's office intent on contributing to a conversation which rapidly sailed over my bunged-up head...

How long is this meeting? I need a tissue - WHY didn't I bring a tissue?

I can feel the globule slither down my nasal canal, pulled earthward by gravity. Glassy mucus - snot - is an indicator of ill-health, an external sign of the acute viral nasopharynitis multiplying within me, filling my head with flem. I mustn't let them see it.

If I had a tissue, I'd be fine. Somehow, parping like a fog-horn until you evacuate your sinuses onto a piece of recycled tree-bark, before stuffing the whole slimy, flaky mess back into your pocket is deemed less of a faux-pas than sniffing. Braying like a donkey: good, sniffling: bad.

But I have to sniff, I know I'm only delaying the inevitable. I can feel the viscous advance reach the threshold of my nostril. They are talking excitedly about the situation in Zimbabwe. All I am thinking about is choosing the right moment to commit the most uncivilized of acts.

Here goes.

I sniff in the most effete manner imaginable and a female leader instantly shifts her icy gaze towards me. She rolls her eyes heavenward to relocate her moral high ground. I have deeply offended her with my sniffle.

After a lifetime in what is probably the rudest profession, I would have expected the lady to have slightly thicker skin. (It looks about the depth and consistency of a leather belt).

Why am I being silently reprimanded for sniffling? All I have essentially done is taken action to prevent the excretion of a bodily fluid. Would I be similarly judged for not weeing myself?

I am not so uncouth as to suggest that sniffing is polite, particularly in a quiet, serious atmosphere such as this. But I shouldn't be made to feel like a leper for not possessing a tissue. No one wants to look at the glistening snot smeared like a slug-trail across my upper lip. I have saved this paragon of virtue such a sight, so she needn't frown at me with those muddy irises.

I shall continue to sniff because I never remember to bring a tissue. I shall even - before checking that no-one is looking, obviously - wipe my nose on my sleeve. Trust me, it's better than the alternative.