A crowd slowly ascending the stairs. A maudlin, dark sea. Flecks of grey. A discordant noise. One head turns. The crowd never stops. The plodding climb. Faces without expression. Five days to go. Again the noise. More of a bleat, sharper and higher.

Maureen was grinning. Halfway up now. I gripped my copy of the Sporting Life harder, drew a third deep breath, and contracted my stomach muscles hard, letting out a noise that any sheep would be proud of. No reactions. Monday morning grimness, sky still dark as we emerged at the top of the stairs onto Platform 1 at Chelmsford railway station.

More like a zombie movie than the dystopian nightmare of George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Although his Thought Police would have nabbed me for the aural suggestion that we travelled amid flocks of ruminants.

34.5 years later, my view has not changed. Phones, earphones, laptops and tablets make it easier for commuters to London to create their own hiding space from their fellows, whereas books and newspapers were the shields of choice in 1984. But nobody wanted or wants this gauntlet of misery. Is it really worth losing precious time on the planet by waiting, sitting, eyeing up, jostling, coughing, seething, chewing, sneezing, sipping, watching, leching, breathing shallow and grinding teeth?

Five days a week, twice a day, weekends off for good behaviour. For Maureen.

Six days in my case. Still at Ladbrokes, but now as a relief manager, covering for holidays and illness. Anywhere in the East End. More often than not at the Hoe Street shop in Walthamstow, which lacked a manager. Or Custom House, Woolwich, Canning Town, Leytonstone, Forest Gate, Plaistow or East Ham. And sometimes just 100 yards from Upton Park, in the big shop on the Barking Road just along from the iconic Anne Boleyn pub.

Back to my East End family roots but so bored that the travel gauntlet remains my strongest memory. I got through the days by thinking obsessively about betting on racehorses. If I had let the commuting, and then the betting shop surroundings take an unfiltered toll, I may have broken down.

Tucked away behind the reinforced shop partitions I sat at my desk and continued logging certain statistics in what became a series of exercise books. Always affable with the punters and cashiers. Then rooting back through as many old copies of the Sporting Life as I could lay my trembling hands on. Always betting small. Every night of the week shuffling through my notebooks, dazzled by the numbers and patterns that I thought I saw.

To say that I buzzed with inner delight may underplay the pleasures. It was the paradigm that had somehow always lain in wait. Where the buck stopped with me, and the brain and guts were engaged in equal measure. My young man’s mind loved the visceral element, where the results panned out at speed and in colour. My conversation at home began to be peppered with references to “when my system has won lots of money”.

I recall almost nothing else of that autumn. The IRA nearly assassinated Maggie Thatcher in October 1984. The spiteful side of me wished they had. Striking miners probably agreed. Only Brexit and Marmite have split Britain like Thatcher.

Also, we became pet owners. Millie, our black and white kitten from a litter in Danbury, would creep into our bed at night and sleep between us. I made up baby rhymes for her, including this gem:

Puddum, o tatum….the little, ittle catum

I know. Keats and Wilde meet John Donne, take laudanum and entertain the angels.

A few giant thunderstorms marked our first months in the maisonette. I would wake terrified at the explosions outside and above, paralysed with the idea that Russia was unleashing a nuclear weapon. A global fear, interrupting my dreams. An arm came around me. Soothing words.

Maureen’s care and competence matched my over-imaginative nature. She knew how to decorate, and what furniture we needed. What food was required; how to keep in regular contact with parents and siblings; and what washing powder and loo roll to buy.

A great organiser. And she kept me lustful.

The Spring Equinox this year was on March 20. The pagans and the Wiccans name it Ostara, as their mark of when the light is again equal to the darkness, and the natural world is coming alive.

Two days later, I met my old school-mates Alan Campbell, John Madden and Tony Palmer for a day out at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens of Hyde Hall, located around 4 miles south-east of Chelmsford (Blog 120).

The gardens were far from their best, but still provided treats for the eye.

And some panoramic views of surrounding countryside.

Sparked off by John, we have been keeping ourselves amused and in touch for the best part of a year via electronic communications on WhatsApp. We call ourselves the MGFs, short for Mainly Ginger Fuckers. As you can see, this is an optimistic, nostalgic moniker.

It’s all about the wit. On a good day, John and Tony (4th and 3rd, right to left) can probably surpass Peter Cook and Dudley Moore for quality of repartee. Few taboos or PC concerns hinder their flow. At some stage, Al and I will cry tears of laughter at the genius we are witness to. We both have our moments, but are only halfway up Kilimanjaro, whereas our two pals sit atop Everest.

I don’t know what everybody else was discussing in the luncheon hall and the café, but can guarantee it will not have strayed into the dark but fecund soil that constitutes MGF territory. It brings the risk of being arrested, or dying prematurely by laughing yourself to death.

‘Normal’ conversation also featured. AI, politics, family, retirement and whether the planet can survive humanity. Gluten-free dieting and Southend United’s chances of avoiding relegation to League Two. May and Trump. The Asian economic boom and the price of fish.

But always, with each utterance, ears were pricked for opportunities to inject humour and score points. I’m never going to be in the top league, but have left a hopeful suggestion that we tweak the group name to MGFILFs.

Great day. I count myself lucky to know these guys.

\

The Venezuelan stuff made me think of another narrative.

Once upon a time there was an orange-haired, narcissistic man who stood for the US presidency. He bragged to his mates about “grabbing women by the pussy” and mithered about building “a big, beautiful wall” and getting Mexico to pay for it. Many called him a clown and hustler, many more a misogynist and bigot. He came from a murky, quasi-mafia real estate and casino background that did not strive to make the world a better place. Given a dollop of decency, you wouldn’t hang around with this bloke.

Yet, in November 2016, he was voted in. Because enough Americans were fed up with the way the country had been run, and how Hilary Clinton showed no inclination to change things. My auntie and cousin in New Jersey were among these. Lovely people who ooze kindness and gentleness. “We needed a change,” said my mum’s sister, the last of her siblings. Obama and the Democrats had promised everything but instead looked after Wall Street and big business, she said.

It’s a true story. Shit happens. But for some of the people that run America, it seems the wrong guy won. What followed was an unstinting, probably unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on little more than narrative. Fed down to the masses, this insisted that the Kremlin infiltrated the highest levels of the US government sufficiently to swing the 2016 election.

For the last two- and a half years, the liberal corporate media has been shoving this story in our faces on a daily basis, without any redeeming factual evidence, or precise explanation of how this ‘infiltration’ translated into votes. To lend this steaming pile of horseshit narrative the appearance of legitimacy, special prosecutor Robert Mueller was appointed to conduct an official investigation in May 2017.

As an aside, I remember being taught in my history lessons that McCarthyism (the anti-Russia hysteria of the 1950s) was something to be avoided again at all costs, and something which the bravest souls stood up against. Russia has all sorts of murky stuff going on, like every other nation. Nonetheless it lost 26 million people in the fight against Hitler, the biggest loss of any Allied power. In the here and now it has played the biggest role in ensuring that the black flag of ISIS did not fly over Syria. That past sacrifice and present achievement are worthy of huge respect, to these eyes.

Inevitably, the Mueller story sent the BBC, Guardian, Times and most US and Western media scurrying off into a near-maniacal anti-Russia feeding frenzy. No evidence, just bollocks. Not just bollocks but dangerous bollocks that has been manipulated to whip up support for escalating tensions with a nuclear superpower. The ever-changing Skripals story had so many holes in it I ended up laughing at the television, and then switching it off.

Back in the US, the long-awaited conclusion of the Mueller investigation was submitted to Attorney General William Barr last week. It has emerged that Mueller is recommending no further indictments. No proof was found that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton. The grand total of Americans charged with Russian conspiracy is exactly zero. Well fuck a duck and knock me down with a feather. Surprise, surprise.

At some stage, most of the anti-Trump camp forgot the need for facts. They wanted to bring down Trump so badly that they were willing to turn off their critical thinking skills. Never mind that Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward – he of Watergate fame – gave them a strong reality signal in September 2018. He clearly stated that during two years of investigating his book, ‘Fear’, that he found no evidence of collusion or espionage between Trump and Russia. Woodward said he looked for it “hard” and yet turned up nothing.

Just think of all that energy wasted over the last two and a bit years on a classic illustration of how the so-called ‘Fake News’ phenomenon works. Even now, I wonder if it has finished or whether Mueller will be accused of being a Putin sympathiser, to help extend the mass media blitz. Whether the cry will go up to bring in a special prosecutor to investigate the special prosecutor.

The BBC, the Guardian and their peers, God help them, are already intimating that something is still being hidden from public view that will damage Trump. Not a chance of an honest, humble acknowledgement that the Russian collusion allegation belongs somewhere in the pages of the Beano, right up there with Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. If only they had focused on Trump’s corruption, they might have got somewhere. The sole positive is that another disreputable chapter in the recent history of journalism hopefully bites the dust.

The fact remains that Trump was voted in, and can be voted out again, on a principled basis. Two Democratic female candidates are already coming up with decent-sounding manifestoes for 2020. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu from Hawaii and Muslim Ihlan Omar, of Somali-Ethiopian descent. Both would have to be a hundred times better than Trump or Hilary.

Unfortunately Trump is shrewd enough to leverage what has happened into sympathy and support in his reelection campaign. All the lemmings who have been selling and buying the ‘Russiagate’ narrative handed him this weapon. So thanks a bundle for lining up the prospect of another four years of this arsehole.

Occasionally I get pulled into politics. An inevitable side-effect of being a journalist is that I check stories for facts and objectivity.

The availability of unbiased, factually-based, well-researched reporting is decreasing, to my eye. Supposedly superior British newspapers such as The Times and Guardian are are no longer worthy of that accolade.

At the risk of repeating past blogs, the BBC has become untrustworthy, to the extent that I have stopped listening not only to Radio 4 but also to Radio 6, because of the news bulletins on the hour, every hour. Propaganda, one-sided reporting and artificial narrative does not constitute news. Because somebody in a suit speaks with ‘received pronunciation’ it does not validate the contents of their scripts.

Venezuela is a classic case in point. The BBC and other mainstream media report a country of starving people under the evil dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro. Awful, if true, but there have been too many similar narratives spun down the years, about countries that do not wish to play by United States rules.

My reaction is always to seek out independent journalists who have visited the country, and who tell both sides of the story.

Seeking out those sources, the impression is that everything you read or see about Venezuela in mainstream media is so misleading, skewed and incomplete that it may as well be deemed a lie. People in Venezuela are not starving, from what I have read and seen through my own efforts. They live prudently but they have food. What is not reported by most Western media is that the government – this terrible dictatorship – distributes a monthly food package, for the equivalent of a few pennies, to everyone who needs it. And always, the explanation is missing that the country’s difficult economic situation is tied directly to the effects of long-standing sanctions from the US, and the hyper-inflation this has caused. Nonetheless, food – fruit, vegetables, meat and bread – is available everywhere. Meat is expensive but available. Most supermarket shelves are stocked, if not fully.

Nor is the country a dictatorship. Maduro does not appear to be widely liked, and is probably as corrupt as most global leaders. But he won the May 2018 vote, and looks to be far more popular than Juan Guiado, the West’s chosen one. Self-declared Guaidó, Donald Trump’s toy poodle, who announced himself as interim President of Venezuela in January, even though he resides outside the country, and has never won a popular vote.

Seeing this, I wondered whether to step forward soon as the King of Chelmsford.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in late February that his country “will take action” in Venezuela in order to support Guaido. “Maduro’s days are numbered,” he added. US National Security Advisor John Bolton chipped in on March 1 with his considered thoughts. “Those who continue to support a dictator that violates human rights and steals from the starving should not be allowed to walk around with impunity,” said Mr Bolton. This is the same altruist who helped mastermind the war in Iraq.

 The Trump administration has made no bones that it is working to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The insidious thing is the method. There is no military invasion, nor the funding and arming of thousands of militants inside the country, yet. Beyond the starvation sanctions quite plainly sits a tight control of the stories that everyone tells themselves about Venezuela.

Like I say, each story needs two sides. The first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela for 21 years told The Independent that the US sanctions on the country are illegal under international law. Former special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who finished his term at the UN in March, stated quite openly that the US has engaged in “economic warfare” by killing Venezuelans and shredding the economy. “This is deliberate homicide, this is murder, this is a crime against humanity, and could be examined under article 7 of the Statute of the ICC,” de Zayas said in February.

Redress might also be made regarding the mainstream media story about the blockaded bridge, and the government’s determination to stop aid from getting through. The BBC was at at the forefront of this yarn, that Maduro is blocking all aid to Venezuela, because he wants to starve the hungry and kill the sick. In reality, the Venezuelan government has been taking in humanitarian aid from Russia, China, India, Turkey and Cuba. If the US were so keen on getting its $20 million of humanitarian aid to the people of Venezuela, it could have given that shipment to any of those nations. If it didn’t trust them, the UN or the Red Cross would have delivered it.

Good journalism always asks why. If that criteria was applied to each and every Venezuelan story, the question of why the US government is so preoccupied would make for good reading. If humanitarian reasons are the prime driver, then surely the BBC, New York Times, CNN and the other usual suspects should be screaming murder about Washington’s multi-faceted culpability behind the much greater humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

But no, it doesn’t fit the narrative. Nor does the compelling fact that Venezuela has the largest single proven oil reserves of any nation on the planet. With such a prize up for grabs, my guess is that narrative will continue to take precedence over fact.

As part of its masterplan to squeeze every last penny from the universe, Ladbrokes insisted that all of its shops kept ‘Big Bet Records’.

During each month of my 1983-85 employment by the company, myself and other shop managers had to compile a dossier of every bet from major punters like Cyril and Leroy. Plus any other characters who either laid out large sums or won more regularly than chance would dictate. These records were sent to the head office, in Harrow, for analysis. The idea was to glean any knowledge that might allow the shops to better monitor and control ‘unprofitable’ punters, possibly by barring them, or cutting the odds on their bets.

I used to wonder what the HQ boffins made of one of the Ripple Road frequenters, a middle-aged bloke who we nicknamed The Window Cleaner. For obvious reasons. In he would come, most mornings, with his ladder and pail. He talked breezily to the staff while he wrote out his bets and collected his winnings. Uncannily, he collected so often, and over such a period of time, that it was clearly not luck.

Les was the sole punter I ever knew to make money consistently. He had found a way to make it pay. While every other Joe paid my wages. Les was confident about his ability, bordering on arrogant at times. He sniffed my interest, and would ask me, teasingly, how I reckoned he did it. A puppet on his strings, I went through all the reasons I could muster. Course and distance winners? Times? No. No. Ground or course specialists. Nope. Placed last time with best ever speed figure? Afraid not. Trainer’s yearly habits? Beaten favourite last run? You’re not even warm, he would smile.

House names in his road? Horses names containing eleven letters? A hotline to God, or Mystic Meg?

Why would he tell? With hindsight, I think he paid for information. From the stable or somebody who studied this stuff for a living. He was sensible, by not betting heavily enough to attract attention from local characters. He would hand over bets ranging from £10 up to £40 tops. Maybe he doubled or trebled up by using other bookies around Barking.

He was a minor diversion. For my part, I was far more focused on the betting system that I was building up, with attendant notebooks and records, than I was interested in the job.

The shop almost ran itself, with four good cashiers. Beryl was the oldest, a proper Eastender, and apparently the fiercest, until I clocked that her bark was worse than her bite. Tina was on her second marriage, and had a Spanish flash to her eyes that her gentle smile belied. She moaned about the skyrocketing mortgage rates, and revealed that her parents had to help with the payments. Mandy was ambitious, and dreadlocked. She wanted to be a manager, and used to sing Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ 24/7. Allison was the youngest, blond and besotted with her boyfriend. She would incessantly hum George Michael’s ‘Fearless Whisper’. Some mornings, in between jobs, Maureen would come into work with me, and use the coloured marker pens to create the board display (betting adverts) that was my responsibility.

I made the females cups of tea, and asked them about their lives, and listened, in between the Ritchie-Michael renditions. Beryl was definitely impressed with me one afternoon. A couple of louts came in with cans of beer. They were loud, pissed, and visibly intimidating other punters. One of them had a bet, and I told him as calmly as I could pretend that we didn’t allow alcohol to be drunk on the premises. “You need to finish those cans if you’re going to stay.” He wasn’t Leroy, but there was a bullying nastiness about him. Albert Einstein, but without the brains, or any other attributes Einstein possessed.

Five minutes on, and no change. Beryl looked at me. “Oh fuck”, I thought. Sensing the Sword of Damocles poised finely over my nut, or nuts, I walked out into the shop, trying to look assured. “Sorry lads, you’ll have to take those cans outside. Or I’m calling the old bill.” No point laying down the law without backing myself. Grunts and sneers from Einstein and his mate.

“Suit yourself.” I went back in, picked up the phone, and made out that I was talking to the local nick. Looked up and they were gone.

Walking into work the next morning, daydreaming, I heard the hacking noise that precedes spitting. Looking up, I saw a large green grolly flying through the air towards my feet. Einstein, the donor, was with his wife or girlfriend, who was pushing a child in a pram. I wonder if the kid still remembers the purple streaks in the phlegm expelled by Einstein. Brilliant role model.

Two other occasional punters stick in the memory. Both worked at the Corals HQ, which was a few hundred yards away, between our shop and Barking rail station. Gary worked taking credit bets on the telephone, and had sussed out for himself which Corals punters were worth following. Taking the lead from his number one man, Gary wagered £50 on Petong to win two big races at Ascot and Goodwood in 1984, at 8/1 and 10/1. He collected £400, then £500. Big money in the 80s. Higher up at Corals was Wally Pyrah, who would go on to appear regularly on the Channel 4 racing programme. Gary was the shrewder of the pair.

Even though my interest in horse racing had become huge, I remained wary, aware that my knowledge was insufficient. I would rarely risk more than five pounds on a bet. Small fry. I won about £165 on a yankee one Saturday, which was encouraging. But the three grand saved up on the ice cream round remained intact, and it was suggested by several people that we should buy a home, rather than rent. There was a property ladder to climb, according to Maggie Thatcher’s wider culture.

A mortgage broker visited us in Ilford one evening, and estimated that we could borrow up to £30,000. I was flabbergasted. He was clearly off his rocker. Why would anyone lend that sort of money to two relatively limited earners? Simple, said our man, all jacket and tied. The collateral value of your property will underpin the loan. I am a slow learner, and it took a few months before that technical description turned on a brain light.

The betting shop business itself had started to become more mundane with each passing day, and so any kind of a change was welcome. Our rent money enriched nobody but the landlord, and, as almost everyone chimed, each mortgage repayment would bring ownership of the new home one small step nearer. It seemed to make sense.

To get some value for our money, we looked outside London, in Chelmsford. The location of the old ice cream round, where Maureen’s friend Sue lived with her husband Martin, and my old mate John Devane had met his future wife, Carol. Once voted by its own residents as Britain’s most boring town.

We found a top floor maisonette. Price £27,000. Within easy walking distance of the railway station, as I would have to catch a train six days a week. And the fire station was very near, in case our place caught light.

Pictured below, 79A Rainsford Lane was ours from September 1984, and stayed in Godier family ownership until my brother sold it in 2005.

Over the past week I have been entranced by a unique book. ‘The Peregrine’, by JA Baker.

One of the many good things to come from moving out of the city four and a half years ago has been a greater appreciation of wildlife, especially birds. Regular visitors to our garden include sparrows, gulls, pigeons, tits, magpies, robins, blackbirds and herons (hoping for meals from the fishpond). The calls of owls and the sound of woodpeckers also make themselves known in the vicinity. I am still learning to identify others, unlike my old Norwich mucker, Jonny Price, who has seen 464 different birds in Britain.

I have seen avocets, dunlins and godwits, when out with John Madden. Another old mate, Shaun Wilson, recommended ‘The Peregrine’. Shaun mentioned a section set in Danbury, some 12 miles south-east of our house. Reading through, it becomes clear that the whole book is set along and around the River Chelmer as its exits Chelmsford and winds its way out to the Blackwater Estuary and the North Sea.

It transpires that Baker spent 10 years in the 1950s and 1960s getting on his bike and obsessively tracking pairs of male and female peregrines out along this territory, from autumn to spring. Obsessively, and then more instinctively, so that the falcons gradually became accustomed to and tolerant of his presence, making for more acute observation.

The quality of writing is sublime. The hawk is “a skimming black crescent, cutting across the saltings”. A standout feature of the book is its descriptions of the ‘stoop’, the dive-bombing manoeuvre that the bird uses to kill prey. Baker talks of 100 mph stoop speeds, but modern technology has clocked peregrines stooping at double that speed.

Hunting is at the heart of it all. Killing is the climax of each day. “The dunlin seemed to come slowly back to the hawk. It passed into his dark outline and did not reappear,” writes the author. One peregrine can scatter hundreds, sometimes thousands of birds in a maelstrom of panic, as it plunges down onto its quarry.

On foot, Baker seeks out the eviscerated carcasses of the victims, portraying the scattered feathers, the still warm bodies and the smell. His array of descriptive techniques put me in mind of Cormac McCarthy (Blog 73). All the nuanced hues and mingling colours of the masses of birds, other wildlife, the rivers, estuary, sky, fields, trees and land are painted obliquely from his very own word palate. Baker talks of a wind that “brittled icily in the pleached lattice of the hedges”. Of dunlins that “rained away inland, like a horde of beetles gleamed with golden chitin.”

There is so much going on in the book. A disdain for humanity’s stinking degradation of the planet, and the author’s decision to live and operate quietly, furtively, on the very edge of this. And the slow poisoning of the birds from the DDT sprayed onto the Essex fields. This is the mournful part of the book, which I am just starting.

—

As I read, the setting was occasionally familiar, not precisely, but enough to make me strap on the walking boots at the weekend. Maureen dropped me off out at Little Baddow, on the Chelmer. A four mile walk back to Chelmsford along what was once a working canal, on which horse-drawn barges ferried timber and coal until the 1960s.

Not specified in the book, but my starting point, at Paper Mill Lock, would have been passed on Baker’s cycling routes.

I walked a solitary route back west, eyes open to the sky. The wind was a massive westerly, making my eyes water. I put on the earphones and listened to a podcast. Neil Kramer talking of immersion in the North American West Coast wilderness.

Plenty of gulls were sighted on the way, and the odd duck. Later, a heron was hunting in long grass 100 yards from the river. There were four bridges along the route.

And five locks.

Under one major road, poets had been at work, praising the female body.

This was Sandford Lock coming into view. Several hardy souls live on the river at this location.

Back in Chelmsford, the river splits two ways, into the Chelmer and Can, both heading north-west. Baker mentions the meeting of two rivers in the book, citing a nearby high chimney, now demolished, where peregrines sometimes roosted.

It was a great couple of hours out in nature. If any peregrines were hunting, they eluded my amateur eye. It hardly mattered. These kind of walks are food for my spirit.

Now and again, during our time living in Ilford, Maureen and I would travel over to Clapton, in East London, to visit Violet, my grandmother on dad’s side. First of all in the car, before it was sold, and then via a bus to Bow, and then a second bus that stopped right outside Norbury Court, the name of the tower block where she lived. Up at number 13C.

It was a rough area, to which Vi had been rehoused along with many other residents from her old road in nearby Homerton. Her sisters Flo and Lil lived together on the same floor. Often we would look down from Vi’s balcony to check that the Vauxhall Viva wasn’t being dismantled in the car park thirteen floors down. To get that high, you had to ride up in a lift stinking of piss, facing a gauntlet of vulnerability to some of the young local lads. Muggings in the lifts were not unknown. Unemployment in the area was rife in the early 1980s, and there was a menacing feeling that lingered around the foot of the building, where the wind whistled through the open entrances.

Inside there was a different kind of endurance test. Nanny would feed us with monster-sized dinners. I can still remember the taste of her roast potatoes and gravy, and the difficulties in clearing the plate. We were allowed half an hour’s respite before she wheeled out pudding, bless her. If memory serves, there was also a cake offering later in the proceedings.

I struggle to remember what we talked about, except for one occasion when she mentioned that she had seen multiple unidentified flying objects (UFOs) from her balcony. She had a great view across the river Lea onto Hackney Marshes, where there were reportedly 120 adjoining football pitches at one stage in the 1950s and 60s. The lack of light over the area at night made the sky clearer here than the surrounding areas.

I’m pretty sure my reply would have been dismissive, that she was imagining this. I do think that she had probably read reports in the local papers that she took. Hackney Marshes was the home for regular paranormal sightings and many ‘crop circles’, which would have made their way into East London media. Did she sit and look out for anything that might vaguely resemble a UFO?

Looking back, I would love to have pumped her for all the information she had. There have been tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of UFO sightings around the world, to the extent that the good old ‘no smoke without fire’ axiom has to come into play. Is every single one of those untold YouTube videos a fake, or misconstrued?

My cousin’s son swears on his life that he saw and followed a UFO for miles in his car one evening, guided by the triangle of lights that is so common among reports. Back in Blog 22, I describe a camping holiday in North Norfolk in August 2013, when sleeping outside under the stars to view the Perseid meteor showers. I still do not know what happened, for sure.

The ‘aliens’ theory is not the sole explanation. It is a matter of public record that hundreds of German scientists and engineers were brought to America after WW2, some of these high-ranking Nazis, as the US pushed to maintain military advantage over the Soviet Union. The defectors included Wernher von Braun and his team that had invented the V2 rocket. With a little persistent digging, it becomes apparent that the Germans were working during the war on several new forms of aerospace propulsion, which had no need for conventional fuel.

If that particular research paid off, then you have a far more reasoned explanation for some of the ‘UFO’ sightings across the world. As the US’ chief military ally, the UK would have been party to the technology. But then again, you might argue that the technology would now be old hat, relatively, and would surely have been brought into the public gaze by Washington and its NATO allies?

It would be difficult to have a strong idea about any of this. But it made me smile to think of Violet looking out across the soccer pitches at night. She is long gone, as is Norbury Court. How I would love to have quietly joined her, for a ringside seat. Probably chomping on a big slice of Battenberg cake.

One of the unexpected pleasures in this blogging lark has been that other bloggers have started to ‘follow’ the posts. I generally try and return the compliment.

The original idea was to write myself through the wintertime blues and leave a record of my life for the kids. And perhaps to fill in some of the gaps that friends were not aware of. Above all to be truthful, which hasn’t always come easy.

I don’t write with any audience in mind. Just to please myself. But it has made life more interesting to begin reading the blogs of others, to see how they do it, and to become familiar with their styles and subject matter.

All of the people below have provided enjoyment, entertainment or education. One guy mentioned previously (Blog 110) is astijake John (https://astijake.wordpress.com/), who writes mainly funny and sad personal stories – and tells them very skilfully.

Similarly, the blogs from Mark Bickerton (https://markbickerton.com/blog) are either page-turning excerpts from his novel about life on the road or other witty and poignant insights into the reckoning with self that any of us avoid at our peril.

jason Scott Brendel’s blog (https://jasonscottbrendel.wordpress.com/) is also worth checking out. Irony and absurd humour that is right up my street.

‘Football Explainers’ does what it says on the tin, with regard to a wide span of soccer stories and issues, mainly concerning English soccer (https://footballexplainers.wordpress.com/).

William, who writes ‘a1000mistakes’ (https://a1000mistakes.wordpress.com/) is much appreciated because he writes about music, often reminding me of artists that I haven’t played in a while or opening a window onto Aussie bands I know nothing about. His art blogs are great because I know of so few of the painters he covers.

Another excellent reviewer – films this time – is The Arcane Nibbler (https://arcanenibbler.com/). His ‘Reviews and Assorted Crap for Your Engagement and Enragement’ are exceptionally well considered and laid out.

One unexpected source of help has been ‘2JustAnotherPost – Beauty, Health and Fitness’, whose blog (https://2justanotherpost.wordpress.com/) gives simple exercises for tired, under-exercised bodies.

Finally, ‘Kirilson’ is a real surprise package (https://kirilson.com/). Visits to some beautiful Italian and Bulgarian cities have provided readers with great photographs.

There are also many other blogs I have enjoyed, maybe to be mentioned another time.

I am not self-pitying.

Life’s ups have held sway over the downs, and my resilience and reason kick into play when the black dog turns up. But sometimes it looms so darkly, and growls so menacingly, that going to bed early is the best option.

Yesterday was such a day. Pinning down the why is as much art as science, but I can point to six immediate triggers, in no particular order.

The weather. The torrential rain and grey sky contrasting with the marvellous mini-heatwave in February. Sunshine is my forever tonic, lifting my spirits in the face of all challenges.

Our male cat Bob is limping badly. The question of whether to let him heal naturally, or take him to the vet – and incur unpredictable expense – is a torment.

Writing about the misery of Cheltenham, in March 2000, brought a little of that feeling back.

I lifted a heavy box onto a wardrobe and felt a calf muscle pull and ping. Every subsequent step was a reminder that middle age is finite, even though I’m clinging hard.

The comedown from a great birthday: the weekend away and a Monday evening meal with Maureen, daughters Lauren and Josie plus my brother Neil. And Max, pictured with Lauren. That beautiful border collie is enough to cheer anybody.

And the bastard moon. I don’t keep records but there are mentions in preceding blogs of how one or two of the last 10 days before the full moon tend to hit me for six. There is a power in that waxing that cannot be explained nor battled, in my experience (Blog 96).

If I wanted to add to the list, there is always the background stuff. I try to ring-fence this from the here and now, lest it become overwhelming. Again, with no prioritisation:

My dad’s short-term memory is blitzed. 91, he cannot remember what was said 30 seconds ago. Fortunately, his daily routines are burned deep into his psyche. Newsagent, cooking, shopping, cat, bowls club. When he can no longer cope, a troubling choice looms for all of us. He loves being at home. “King of my castle”, he says.

Maureen’s health. Unremitting headaches, recent returning symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, a cough that has lasted for the best part of two decades. And the condition of plantar fasciitis, which has limited her ability to walk far or stay on her feet for extended periods. That last one is improving. And we are wondering whether she has a gluten allergy, which could explain a few things. Unsurprisingly, her moods can be as low as mine.

Josie’s partner, Jackson, will not talk to or be in the presence of Lauren’s husband, Chris. They used to be best mates. This has wrecked our family gatherings, and brought Maureen to despair so often. I distance myself from it, to keep the pain out.

Money. Oh fuck. Money. Since our 2003 crash, we have paid about £215,000 in rent. Always behind with the taxman, and juggling those payments with the need to enjoy life. Borrowing from Peter (friends and family) here and there to pay Paul (HMRC, landlord, debt management scheme etc) and subsidise Rory, who will be in further education until next summer.

The future. No house of our own, pensions mainly cashed in to stay alive. Six cats to feed and nurse through old age. The money from dad’s house may manifest one day, but cannot be relied upon. I don’t factor that into any equation, because it may be needed to pay for his future care.

Laying somewhere between the immediate triggers and the background stuff is work. My journalism remains far better than competent, but the enthusiasm has gone. It’s a chore, and I have long pulled away from the network of bankers, insurers and lawyers that fed my first two decades as a freelancer. I cannot maintain the pretence of being interested in what they have to say, which is ultimately about bottom lines on financial sheets. Yuk. But I get to work from home, and people still want my stuff. It’s technically good. That’s the trade-off.

How long can it continue? How long will our landlord be happy for us to stay here? These are massive imponderables.

Despite this hill of shite, we stay afloat, like swans that may look elegant but are kicking their legs like mad beneath the water. There are days of such happiness, and – here comes the cliché – many others are far worse off.

——-

Not sure that David Lynch would have wanted such an introduction.

I got into him a couple of years back, with ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’. Mesmerising TV. As imaginative as anything I’ve seen. I don’t know anybody else that liked it, apart from (now and again) Maureen, who sees and appreciates visual artistry better than me.

Detective series are ten a penny these days, and so have to have exceptional characters or stories to grab me by the knackers. This had both, including Lynch himself as the nearly deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole.

Also a minor cameo role for David Bowie. And the masterful Kyle MacLachlan in two roles, painting the gulf between good and evil.

It ceased to matter who killed Laura Palmer. Because you got to see into other dimensions, to witness tulpas manifesting, to hear great rock music at the end of each episode, sometimes with old man Lynch himself singing. You got to think about life after death, the Bible, aliens, excellent apple pie, the stunning beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The fundamental decency of smalltown America, and the unending corruption of the CIA. Where else will you get all that?

If weird doesn’t interest you, Lynch can do normal. His film ‘The Straight Story’ has a bloke in his 70s taking a trip from Iowa to see his dying brother in Wisconsin. On a lawnmower. Ok, not quite normal. If you like beautiful women, as Lynch does, watch Mulholland Drive. Wow.

Most public figures leave me cold. They will not tell it like it is. Because I like his work though, I have listened and watched several interviews with David Lynch. The man is happy, consistent, relaxed, thoughtful, optimistic and imaginative. Maureen loves listening to him. Her bullshit detector is sound.

I had put his felicity down to little more than the determination to do what he loves, but then came across the following interview just over a month ago.

https://soundcloud.com/interfaithvoices/the-interfaith-voicesdavid-lynch-interview-uncut

If you can spare 38 minutes, it emerges that he has practiced transcendental meditation for 45 years. You might say – so what? When he talks about its effects, the impact, for me, was electrifying. The banishing of depression, and the daily unleashing of a human’s full potential. Ideas and inspirations flowing inwards.

Such is his love of TM, and the positive effects on his life, that he founded the David Lynch Foundation in 2005 as a way to help fund the teaching of the practice.

I won’t bang on about it anymore, except to say that I intend to try it out this year.

Should we count our blessings, as the old saying goes? There is one that I have rediscovered in the past 90 minutes. That I can write myself happier. Everything feels better after a purge.

The Cheltenham National Hunt festival started today. Four days of the best jumps racehorses competing for huge prizes in front of a monster crowd in deepest Gloucestershire. Thousands of Irish men and women roaring home their fancies, as the early spring sunshine and rain alternately warm and drench their spirits.

Our lad Rory is working at the course as a steward, as it’s so close to his university digs.  Mainly stopping people taking their alcohol into the betting enclosures. I asked him what he would do if a six foot ten gypsy wanted to take his pint past the gate. “Smile hard and let him,” he replied.

I have only been the one time, in March 2000. As a corporate guest, for one of the insurance companies I write about. The track looked in great shape, set against the spectacular amphitheatre of the Cotswolds. But the experience was miserable. The crowds were a nightmare, shoulder to shoulder in many places and so many of them already pissed when I got there, at about 12. Drinking and punting is a highly flammable cocktail. A cup of coffee and a clear head works better.

Russell Brand said something perceptive when he spoke of his first visits to the terraces at Upton Park. That he saw how football gave men the chance to be legally naughty. Shouting, drinking, swearing, singing and, in the old days, and outside the law, fighting.  Racecourses have the same effect on many guys, with the big difference that you can be a little more active in your partisanship, through the betting. Less passive, potentially more destructive. Gloriously spent hours, on the good days.

It’s a shame that the guys I met in 2000 were uninspiring. Their business involved pinpointing and eliminating risk, and the conversation was too timid and polite for my liking. In the end, after lunch, I thanked my hosts, prized myself free and wandered off. Couldn’t be arsed to make an effort. Which was lazy of me. But I am super-inclined towards my own company when the talk lays flat and stagnant.

Of course, I had looked through the race-card on the train. But no horse stood out as a good bet.

That should have been that. I had evolved – and still generally maintain – a view that if you can find an edge, at decent odds, that is when to bet. Anything else is gambling, and the house/bookie will always win, over the long run.

Nonetheless, it was Cheltenham, I told myself. Scene of some very nice wins in the 1980s, especially Forgive N’ Forget in the 1985 Gold Cup. So I had three punts, and each one lost. Maybe fifteen quid each time. I left before the last race, to avoid the crowds. But that £45 was enough to make the walk back to the station a long, downbeat trek. Why had I wasted a day?

I popped into the station café for a cup of tea and who should be there, sitting morosely at a table, but Clement Freud. He of the hangdog look. A half-eaten cake sat before him. Our eyes met for a few seconds. “Yep, I’ve also done my dough, and feel miserable,” was my swift mind-read of Mr Freud. Retrospect says he might have been more preoccupied with his decades of paedophilia, but who knows. Freud was reputedly a big punter.

Years down the line I decided to stop betting on jumps races. The Grand National and Cheltenham Gold Cup are fabulously exciting to watch, but why take the risk that your selection would fall, or unseat the jockey? Finding a winner is difficult enough without this extra unpredictability. Equally important was the terrible number of injuries sustained by horses in National Hunt racing, and more than a few of the jockeys.

If you are betting on events that include that eventuality, I believe that you bear some responsibility, however small, for the outcomes. Flat racing was better from all angles.

Rory said a few minutes ago that he enjoyed the day, and spent much of it chatting with a policeman, which probably cut down the chances of an incident. Hope the next three days are equally pleasurable for him.