Watching the footie has never been the same!

 

Emotional and superb artwork from Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com

 

 

My Dad died 14 years ago today.

Oy, he put up a fight! Year after year, Dad grumped and exploded his way through procedures, operations, scrapings and inflations. 

 

Towards the end, tragically for a man who expressed it so much throughout his life, he lost his joie de vivre.

My mother, his rock, redeemer, and a great force of nature, mentioned how she sometimes missed the sound of laughter.

 

Watching somebody you love head slowly lethewards threatens to erase from your mind the image of the person they once were.

I have seen many people lose parents, siblings, friends and - horror - even children. The most tragic losses are the ones in which there remains something unfinished.

As the minutes ooze from the time of death, that lingering becomes malingering, and pain follows close behind.

Dad made it easy for me, because he had been unwell for so long. I had time to tell him everything I wanted to say. 

 

Today, I’m incredibly happy I told him what I thought of him, before he went.

A few months before he died, he was at home for a brief period, inbetween hospital admissions. He sat in his armchair, my mum beside him on the sofa. 

 

I had to be tactful, because despite the Jewish spirit, my parents' home and behaviour was quintessentially Olde Englishe, like the marmalade.

Hence to avoid melodrama, I had to tread carefully when trying to explain to my father that he had always been my inspiration.

 

To that Octogenarian these words came as a surprise; one which I had anticipated, and thought might fire his spirit and confidence a tad.

I told him, in front of Mum, that he had been my inspiration throughout my life, in two different ways.

At a most vital level, I appreciated how hard he had worked; how many decades he had climbed into his car at 7.40 am, and driven off through the dirty sludge of London's constipated commute, all the way to Soho, where he worked all his life for Pearl and Dean.

At weekends he ran a small chain of three record shops, until one of his managers did the dirty, and sent the business down the pan.

From my privileged and relatively cushy life, I am in awe of how hard Dad worked, so that we might enjoy the upbringing we had.

His was the last generation that would ever enjoy the 'job for life' culture. Somehow, back in the early 1960's he earned enough money to take all five of us on holidays to Europe every other year, with trips to Devon and Somerset in the intervening summers.

"Thanks Dad!" I told him. "I didn't appreciate how hard you worked when I was a kid, but I do now."

My mum spluttered out that she thought that was very nice, and my Dad did something with his mouth that showed he was grateful.

 

But then I looked over, into his eyes, and I sent them a shiny glint.

 

"There's another way you inspired me, Dad. Your mountains! Remember your books from the 1930's and 1950's about the conquests of Kanchenjunga, K2 and Everest? They all had the same tan cloth covers, and were packed with photos and maps and tales of those great mountaineers, walking around the Annapurna Circuit and reaching for the skies.

“Well, it took a while for me to realise it, but all my travelling; the way I've lived my life; it's down to you. Didn't cop on when I was a teenager, because all that hitching just felt so good, and looked to me a million miles from the life you lived, and the one you wanted for me. But when I went off for my first roundy-worldy jaunt in 1984, you whispered ... 

 

'Say hello to the mountains for me!'...

 

“... and it all made sense. In that instant I understood why I was who I was. I knew that your spirit of adventure was kindled in me; that the boy who read those books about mountains gave birth to another who could go and see them. 

 

"The greatest thing about a spirit of adventure is that it helps you live your life less dominated by fear. I wish you had been able to enjoy that feeling.

“So thanks Dad! You worked your arse off so that I might have a good childhood, and you also lifted my eyes, my horizons and my understanding of ambition, so that when I felt happy in my life, I knew that was success."

 

What I didn't say to you then, Dad, but do now, was that unfortunately, I don't think you ever enjoyed the same self-confidence that you helped build in me.
 

You taught me how to appreciate fine wines, how to carry myself in any situation, and always assured me that while posh things were alright, you could never beat the pleasure and honesty of a pie and a pint.
 

We always had time for the Chelsea. You first took me to Stamford Bridge in 1969, Wembley in 1970, and wherever I lived in the world, we talked after every match. I do not recall a game in which we lost points where you didn't complain about the referee. 

 

"Well, we'd have had more chance if we weren't playing against 12 men!"
 

 

You were a possessor of great charm, a flirtatious twinkle in the eye and unquestioning generosity. You gilded every lily, and lacked the self-confidence you deserved. 

 

You loved a simcha, a celebration, and enjoyed a Famous Grouse or three. A year before you died, we were all standing round your bed in Intensive Care. We'd nearly lost you in the ambulance, and had been discussing how to cancel your big 80th birthday party.

Unaware of where you were, or how close you had come to death, your first words as you opened your eyes:

“Who's ordering the wine for the party?”

You couldn't understand why we all fell about laughing.
 

Your spirit, charm and humour were so strong, you live forever amongst us.

I love you Dad.
I love you very much.

God knows, I miss you. The footie just ain't the same.

 

 

©Charlie Adley

08.05.2022

Let’s All Call A Lie A Lie.

Thanks to the excellent Allan Cavanagh at https://www.caricatures-ireland.com 

 

I was building up a bulk order of benign voodoo vibes, tearing up newspaper and shredding cardboard for my compost bin, while staring for ages at the front of the Saturday sports section. 

There at the top of the page was a story about 

‘Conte Anger - PSG Link Is Fake News.’ 

'No it’s not!’ I complained out loud to myself, like Billy No Mates. ‘It’s just a lie.’ 

Unless you’re a fan of either Spurs or PSG, what the manic Italian manager does is immaterial.  

And no, this isn’t Charlie discovering the Post-Truth World eight years too late. 

I’m only too aware of it, yet it dawned on me this morning that there is something we can all do to improve the state of our fragile civilisation. 

Thanks to the way that checking two websites now makes each of us a self-avowed expert on any given subject, there are no students left.  

Nobody needs to learn anything ever again, as everyone knows everything. We are all absolutely irrefutably right and everybody else is woefully pathetically wrong. 

Check out this woman on You Tube. She’s got a doctorate in Incandescentology, so she’d make a perfect life coach. 

This doctor on Twitter is a world-renowned transplant surgeon, so he knows all about what’s good for your garden. 

Read this post on Facebook about pumpkins being a communist plot and the one on LinkedIn about Elon Musk giving all his money to Ukrainian orphans. 

Check out the woman calling Noam Chomsky an imbecile on Pulse or Twitch or Snippy-Snappy, Tik-Tok, Insta, Spinsta, Grinda or BotherMeHole.  

Right now there are more opinions around than ever before: more polarised ridiculous wonderful extreme hyperbolic opinions about everything; never moderate nor small opinions, but always correct.  

They are, in fact, not opinions at all. 

They are The Truth. 

Good old 'The Truth.' 

Where would we be without it? 

Tragically we have been living without The Truth for nearly a decade. 

There always have been and forever will be an infinite number of truths, manifesting themselves as sacred, unique, beloved and precious opinions.

By allowing the notion of Fake News to assimilate and osmose into our every day lives, we have erased the use of the word Lie.  

If you do not use the word Lie you have no need for the word Truth. 

This has been debated ever since Trump got in the first time (oooeerr) but like a subversive cuddly Tribble, Fake News makes lying sound lusciously mockable and ultimately fairly acceptable. 

It shouldn’t be, mustn’t be, and won’t be if we all start to use the words Lie and Liar again.  

Trouble is, the other phenomenon that has grown up alongside Fake News, like its ugly twin, is what I call MI (Modern Intolerance.)  

Disguised as just the opposite, MI involves subtle yet pernicious censorship. 

Warnings are put on works of literature, lest someone be offended by Macbeth killing Duncan. Feminists become the enemy as TERFs cross the transgender borders of acceptability. Pronouns become a commodity, and open debate dissolves into the annals of history, as Cancel Culture takes hold.  

In response the racists, fascists and bigots also grow in strength, as our societies stretch to breaking point.  

Before we reach WB Yeats’ horizon where the centre cannot hold, we need to rebuild resilience in ourselves, and instil it in our young. 

Resilience is an essential ingredient of the human condition. To this Boomer, while everyone is wary of offending anyone, 21st century western youth appears dangerously lacking in resilience.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling offended. I’m not suggesting it’s cool to incite racial hatred or behave in a threatening or violent manner towards anyone. 

However, when we are merely victims of disagreement, we need to be able to deal with it. It’s important we are able to stand up straight in the face of adversity; that we can handle discord; that we can debate and demand truth. 

When our opponent is wrong we must explain why, and when they are telling lies, we need to call them liars; out loud and to their faces. 

Whether you’re a CND dungaree-wearing marrahoochy-growing vegan creative YinYang crystals in a line volunteer at a Food Bank, or a flag-waving vigilante waging war on immigration and foreigners, while ripping cooked flesh from bones of beasts cheap at the check-out yet cruelly raised, or any of the rest of us billions inbetween, let’s all do one thing that will really truly help.  

To coin a Brexit lie, let's take back control of truth. Whatever your opinion, lifestyle, ethnicity, gender or socio-economic status, when we spot a lie we must say: 

“That’s a lie and you are a liar, because this is the truth and here is why.” 

There is no fake news.
It’s either truth or lie.

How to be Irish #498: Can you feel the Feck?

Thanks as always to Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com

Two questions. That’s all I had, when I arrived here, back in ‘92. 

A newly-appointed newspaper columnist, wholly ignorant of all things Ireland and Irish, I condensed my gaping inadequacies into two simple questions.

Yet in your obfuscatory paradoxical Irish way, you failed to answer both, offering only nebulous enigma as solutions.  

At least, that’s how it sounded to my English ears at the time.

"What’s the Left/Right difference between the civil war parties?"

and 

"Why do you wimp out and say feck when you really mean fuck?"

Responses to the first came in the predictable shape of that ahhh you have to go back to the Treaty claptrap, which was of absolutely no use to me.

As a political animal I had to write about the politics of today’s nation, without going on about a treaty signed 70 years ago. I was left utterly clueless about what anybody was and nobody was not.

The other answer was short, precise, yet no more illustrative.

'Feck? Oh sure, yeh, y’see, feck is different.'

'Oh really. Don’t think so.'

'Yeh ’tis.'

'Well how is it, and why is it different, then?’

'It’s errrrr, ohhhhh, emmmm, hard to explain, like, dy’see.'

'Never. Go on, surprise me.'

I neither expected nor really wanted clarification anyway.  

Clarity’s for wimps.

30 years later I not only know the answer, but feel it too. In fact, I now know that I couldn't fully know the answer to feck until I felt it. 

Just now I was walking the beach. My lungs were raging painfully in protest at the freezing cold wind, forced upon them by my spirit, which demanded I make the most of low tide without a soul in sight.  

A few months from now this beach will never be empty. There will be camper vans in the upper car park for months on end, and many other humans who, much to my flagrant begrudgery, also have the right to enjoy the beach.

But right now there’s nobody; not a single soul on a Sunday morning.
Walking on, now with the wind at my back, I enjoy rare minutes of sunshine, as clouds rush and tumble across the sky.  

Apart from making sure to occupy and appreciate this natural bliss, I’m thinking about the What’sApp message I sent my brother earlier.

We were texting about pruning apple trees, and I said I’d be at it too, as soon as the feckin’ wind dropped.

Down on the beach I realise he’d probably think of it as a crude curse, a tiny blade less fierce than its Anglo-Saxon cousin.

But I now know what it is.

I felt it when I wrote it.
I feel feck ergo I understand feck. 

Yet like the Irish, I couldn’t necessarily explain it, exactly.

You’ve given me a signed stamped certificate saying I’m Irish, and a passport which confirms it, but the two reasons I can no longer say I’m English through and through have nothing to do with paperwork.

Conjoined with the feeling of feck is the Irish non-verbal verbal experience.

From the moment I arrived in Galway, I noticed how people sometimes offered agreement by sucking a sharp intake of breath onto the roof of their mouths, loud enough to be heard, yet too soft to be spelled.

I wrote about it in Double Vision, back in 2017, when I first spotted myself involuntarily doing the hissy thing, to show concord. Ireland had changed my breathing patterns.

Now I feel the feck.

Another level of assimilation. altogether, so it is now.

Behave Adley. Be respectful.

I’ll always be English, Jewish and proud of both, but now my Irish is engrained in body and mind.

 

 ©Charlie Adley

27.02.2022

My heroes are those who save lives!

 

Thanks to Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com

Four years after 9/11, I was standing beside New York City’s ‘Ground Zero’, reading the hoardings hung on the wire fences around the site of the attack.

One of them declared: “In memory of all those great American Heroes.”

Turning to my friend, I observed

“It’s strange the way the word ‘hero’ is used these days.”

I was about to explain how they were innocent victims rather than heroes, but I never got the chance.

A hand grasped my shoulder. 

 

I was spun around to face a grey-haired man in an anorak and spectacles.

“Hey! Show some goddam respect!” he hissed at me.

Had I shouted I might have understood this man’s rage. But I'd whispered. The scene before my eyes had filled me with sadness, and my voice had dropped, as if we were in a church.

I was showing respect. I wanted to explain to this man what I meant, but I could see the pain behind his eyes; the loss; the anger; so I dipped my chin and simply said 

 

“Sorry!”

 

walking away with my tail between my legs.

 

Who knows who he loved in the Towers?

 

As much as my heart broke for all those lives lost and broken, my sadness spreads far wider, to the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Iraq who died, as a result of that attack. 

 

Members of the public killed for no good reason. 

 

The powers that be have long referred to civilian deaths during wartime as ‘collateral damage’.

It’s a hellish long way from ‘hero’ to ‘collateral damage’ but they are one and the same person.

Very sad.

Whenever particular wars flare up, foreign populations become especially agitated, seeing one ousted overpowered people as more important than others.

I cannot. I just see a human life, each as vital as all the others. 

 

Now, enveloped as we are in a new crisis in a very old war, my heart bleeds fiercely, as it always does when I contemplate such horrendous debacles.

There is no way to wage war tidily. Even the crisp technology of remote-controlled drone warfare kills innocent victims aplenty. 

Far from being disrespectful, I am honouring all the dead; their sacrifice. There are always so many innocent victims. 

Of course there are heroes. Incredible daring and courage is displayed on a regular basis. When it's employed to save lives rather than destroy them, it's particularly heroic.

I’m not saying that all killing is bad. Give me a gun and I’d shoot a Nazi stormtrooper, no problem.

My heroes, however, tend to be those who dare to save their troops. Give me Shackleton over Scott every day. 

 

Scott was an amazing man, brave and honourable to the core. Yet in the same way that the English celebrate Dunkirk as a victory, they worship a man who came second and perished with his comrades.

Shackleton’s expedition failed spectacularly, yet he didn’t lose a single man. I have read his own account of the Endurance expedition, the ensuing landing on Elephant Island, the incredible journey in the James Caird and the epic crossing of South Georgia. 

 

These were tough men, hard and steely in a way so far beyond our sofas, iPads and cappuccinos, I suspect it no longer exists.

Despite his strong ambition and a desire for glory, Shackleton made every decision based upon his greatest chance of keeping everyone alive.

 

That’s my kind of hero.

 

Together we pray now, for Shalom peace. 

©Charlie Adley

24.02.2022

A TALE OF TWO SANTAS AND JEWISH GENEROSITY!

Many thanks to zazzle.co.uk

Snow fell onto the sodium-lit London street outside my Rats Alley flat. 

 

The Winter of 1986 was so cold the water in my loo froze over. All down my road, cracked toilets bowls lay dumped outside the flats, like rejected Christmas presents.

Chris and I sat in my living room for hours, staring at each other in silence, hunched against the old plastic sofas, wrapped in layers of clothing and blankets. 

 

Broke. 

 

Utterly boracic and lint: skint, the pair of us, with only two days to go until Christmas.

“Hey Charlie, have you got any old whiskey bottles?”

 

“Yeh, there’s two empties in the kitchen. Why?”

 

“Aha! Bring them to me, and get out that fan heater you hide in your bedroom. We’ll have a drink yet!”

Ten minutes later, we were lying on our bellies, eyes at carpet level, watching whiskey seemingly appear from nowhere. 

 

Chris had stood the two empty bottles in front of the fan heater, which was running at full blast. The heat from the fan was hitting the cold glass, thereby condensing the holy juice out of the bottle. 

 

Where before there was nothing, we suddenly had a couple of inches of Christmas Cheer. 

 

So we did.

“Yay! Nice work mate! Happy Christmas to you and your cunning ways! You’re a bloomin’ genius!” I exclaimed.

The phone rang. It was my landlord, who also owned the shop below my flat. He was sorry to ask at such short notice, but he wondered if I wanted to earn some cash? And did I know anyone else who needed some too?

Did I?

He explained that the shop owners of the street were looking for a couple of guys to stand outside dressed as Santa Claus. They would be collecting money for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

“Sure, yeh, 'course we can do that!” I told him, “But how can you pay us if we’re collecting for a charity? We wouldn’t stoop so low as to take money from the sick kiddies!”

He explained that our presence was going to attract punters to his shop, one way or another.

Well, fair enough then. More than fair, but just one more thing. This was Golders Green, at that time the most Jewish suburb in North London. 

 

How kindly were the locals going to take to Father Christmas?

“Well, he was Jewish, wasn’t he?” came the inscrutable, irrefutable reply.

Yes, Jesus was born, lived and died a Jew. 1,986 years later, in the tiny back room of a shop in frozen London, Chris and I were falling about laughing as we tried on our costumes. 

 

We were unsure if Santa was meant to be naked underneath his regalia, but the freezing air settled our minds on that issue.

Somehow, fitting the tights over our jeans felt more than a little Superman-ish, but the beard was another matter entirely. 

 

It got up my nose, tickled my lips, and after a minute or two of breathing, returned to my senses the less-than delightful scent of the previous night’s Rogan Josh.

And so, out onto the streets, followed by a gaggle of giggling girly shop assistants.

 

“Cor! Look at those two sex bombs!”

 

“Yeh, don’t fancy yours much though!”

We asked the boss if it wasn’t a little excessive having two Santas out there together, but once again, his answer was beyond reason.

“Most places they get one, so in Golders Green, they get two!”

Chris and I started to shake our buckets, trying to catch a generous eye. People were ready and eager to give. Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital was a cause that crossed the barriers of race and religion, although I felt a little saddened to have to treat a hospital like a charity.

We had been provided with bags of lollipops, which we were meant to give to sweet little kiddies who came up to us. 

 

Unfortunately, (or maybe most fortunately) children are trained to stay away from strange men bearing candy. The combination of my costume, and the ultra-deep voice I adopted for my role seemed to scare the hell out of the wee darlings.

All it took was “Hellow lickle girlie! Do you want a lollipop?” and I was instant pervert, children scurrying away to hide behind their parents, safe from the nasty red man.

Suddenly, off in the distance, we heard a strange commotion. Two police cars were creeping slowly down the street, followed by a massive demonstration by Hassidic Jews, they who sport the long hair curls, blue raincoats and big floppy velvet hats.

Hundreds of them were marching down the Golders Green Road, carrying placards written in Hebrew. Chris and I stepped back to watch this strangest of sights unfold, and then all of a sudden, it dawned on me that each and every one of them was a potential punter.

Leaping into the fray, I frantically shook my collection bucket. Each side of me, every which way, hats, raincoats and beards glided past, the marchers temporarily blinded by my flash of scarlet ripple in their ocean of dark blue.

I felt I was inside a roll of Pathé News film, and was sorely tempted simply to savour the moment, but there was work to be done.

“Cough up for the kiddies! Great Ormond Street Hospital needs your help! Dig deep!’”

Dig they did. Hands reached into pockets, coppers started flying into the bucket, followed by silver coins and then notes. 

 

To the left of me wallets were hurriedly opened, to the right a passing beard, a glance of spectacles, everywhere hands putting notes into the bucket, fivers, tenners. 

 

It was wonderful to stand there and watch them give wads of cash; enough to bring a tear to my eye.

There was no question of Old or New Testament loyalty here, just a river of raincoats on a mission from God.

A full bucket, a happy shopkeeper, and two very merry Santas in the pub that Christmas Eve.

May your God be with you.

 

 

©Charlie Adley

07.12.2013