How Alan Stubbs Surprised Me And Olivia Manning Didn't

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

One of the advantages of working an afternoon/evening shift is that you don't have to sit and watch your team being knocked out of European football competition. I had recorded West Ham's defeat to Astra Giurgiu but on turning the television noticed the result in that ticker thing they have on the news channels. This has happened before but for the first time I was grateful.

No doubt tomorrow whilst travelling along the M4 to pick up my daughter I'll be treated mokked at by Astras (I've not spelt it wrongly by the way as that's in Vauxhallian).

Anyway let's chat about football by beginning with a book of jazz critism written by a poet. I know that sounds odd because it is, but bare with me.

Many years ago I bought a book of jazz articles by Philip Larkin that was originally in the Daily Telegraph. Don't remember what attracted me as I'm not really interested in poetry or jazz but suspect it was bought out of cheapness.

Well having read the book I can say that it made not a blind bit of difference to my view of either subject. But something he said about Louis Armstrong, one of the few exeptions in a good way to my jazz indifference I can recall even now.

Larkin wrote that Armstrong was not an experimenter or an innovator. He did what most jazz musicans did at that time, just a thousand times better. Alan Stubbs' 2013 autobiography How Football Saved My Life (written with Tom Bromley) is in many ways no different to most other football autobiographies except that it's the best one I've ever read.

What you realise when you read this book as it details his career and of course his battles with cancer is that Alan Stubbs has,when compared with other footballers, a quietly remarkable life. It's one of the few autobiographies I have ever read where I adnired the subject more once I'd finished it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Which is more than I can say for The Rain Forest by Olivia Manning. A bickering couple arrive at a outpost of the British Empire in its twilight years. I feel I've read,watched or listened to this sort of thing all my life. Readable but not remarkable.

Unlike my next football book, which I won't be able to get until at least Tuesday. The next Penguin book I'll read is.

Fatima Meer - Nelson Mandela

This authorised autobiography was written, it should be remembered before he was released from jail. So it should be interesting.

Until the next time.

In Which I Discover A Fellow Reader

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Friday then. I was off. My wife was off and of course as it was the summer holidays my daughter was off. Unfortunately the weather was off as well.

10:45am Friday

Quarter to eleven on a Friday morning in August and it's so dark cars are travelling with headlights on. Nowhere really to go out today. Might as well go and get my hair cut (note the word cut you understand. I'm too old to have my hair styled).

Though a five minute walk away the weather meant that I had to take the car to the van. Yes I said van, albeit a converted one, capable of two people being attended to at once with a waiting area of available periodicals and a newspaper. Of course when I say newspaper it's The Sun, so that's a debate.Decided therefore to bring one of the books I'm reading with me. Was ready to claim to be the first man (not person should stress) to read an Olivia Manning novel in a barbers whilst waiting to dealt with.

This claim to fame would however pass me by. Walked in just in time to take a free space. Placed the Manning tome on the ledge in front of me with my specs and explained in full technical detail what I wanted. Which was, essentially a trim.

The person cutting my hair is a pleasant slim lady of I guess mid twenties. The few facts I know about her is that she's never been to Maesteg (a half hour's drive away) and that her partner is an ideal man for many women given that he is a chef that doesn't like sport.

She notices the Manning and we start chatting about reading.Figured my hair was not being cut by a mushy romantic or chick lit type, Still didn't expect the response when I asked what her current book was.

Because it was a biography of East End early sixties gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray.

Did not must admit ask why she had picked that book to read stunned as I was by that choice. Being from the East End though not when they were at their most notorious knew of their reputation as it had been embedded in the culture.

She continued to explain that the Krays had lowered in her estimation because they had tried to escape from going on national service. Being murderous gangsters was nothing it seemed to not fighting for your country.

And another book was been read by my hairdresser. A novel about saving children from the Nazis in the second World War.Reading more than one book than at the same time. A lady after my own heart.

But let's go back to The Krays. I said that barbers/hairdressers/hair stylists call them what you will could make good assassins. After all they cut parts off a person's body without care or emotion and of course they are used to handling sharp instruments.

I also thought afterwards. That you could form a squad of hairdressing hit people if needed,flying all around the country to deal with assignments. You could name this squad after the most famous barberian and call it The Sweeney.

What I did mention to her is that as an assassin she could work undercover until called upon to deal with a problem in say Newport. The response suggested that she was impressed with the place. I don't know Newport that well. The last time I went was for a Newport County game so there wasn't a lot of the town I knew of.

Still the area I saw was in decline. Indeed she agreed with me that if some of the buildings could cry they would be in floods of tears by now because you see there were better times in the past. This is a picture I took then as an example.

A Crying Shame

But of course any conversation where I live about declining areas would lead us to Bridgend Town. She told me a couple I did not know. Firstly an Italian restaurant had closed down. Secondly there is apparently a book about not to regenerate a town and Bridgend is used as the example. Whether a Penguin or not that's a book I'd like to read.

I left feeling happy. That's what meeting a fellow reader does to you.

Until the next time.

In Which I Discover A Book Jeremy Hunt And Nigel Farage Will Like

Hello here. Hope you're feeling well today.

At long last I've A Little Bit Of What You Fancy by H E Bates,the final of the Larkin family novels by H E Bates written in 1970. Didn't have high hopes. If you remember I mentioned when starting that my view of the original Darling Buds of May was that the TV series was better and after the first season I'd lost interest in that as well.

Well what surprised me was not that I didn't like it. It was how much I hated it.

A consistent theme of both books is that real enemy is "the state". The lauded Larkin lifestyle is to pay no tax,be entrepremrial and with the money earned to be extravagant in how your life is lived. It is "the state" that tries to hold you back.In The Darling Buds Of May "the state" was represented by the tax office.Tax, terrible thing, what provides everyone with such things as education, roads,libraries and of course health. Tax: The thing the Larkins avoid. They are tax avoiders and are being lauded for it.

In the beginning of A Little Bit Of What You Fancy the state, though not named, is represented by the NHS. Pop Larkin has a mild heart attack and so he is confined to his bedroom. The state's treeatment of him is represented as being too harsh. If you want more symbolism, the original female nurse has a moustache.

Contrast that with the private sector. Not only is the treatment more relaxed and appears to be working but the nurse here is a beautiful and friendly Australian woman.

Of course let's forget the fact that the reason Pop Larkin is in that position is his lassiez faire lifestyle in the first place.

So that's Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt sorted. Now let's deal with the ex leader of UKIP Nigel Farage. Think I mentioned in the past that I thought that his favourite book was Dracula, given that it was about an illegal Romanian immigrant that creates havoc in Britain. This however comes close.For what suddenly galvanises Pop Larkin into action is the discovery that not only that the Channel Tunnel could be built but that it would go through their area.

England,their England is being threatened. I stress England here because nowhere is Britain mentioned when the book turns all UKIP. There is a moment where with a few alterations you couldn't tell the difference between the book and a Brexit campaigner.

(I know what you'll say. There's another novel in the series when the Larkins go to France. Makes no difference. There are notceable Leave people who have villas in EU countries.)

I understood then why the TV series was better. For it envoked a sense of nostalgia without overdoing it.

What the novel seemed to suggest was that with the channel tunnel England would lose its national identity. It would be unable to hold onto its traditions, No longer could you have even the possibility of fun and frolics Larkin style. Of course the great irony is that in real life the tunnel was built under the time of by the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher but that on the UK side it was financed solely by private sector money.

This is pernicious propaganda. Envoking a sense of time and a lifestyle that probably didn't really exist and is reprehensible anyway.

Not the worst book I've read this year but the one I've hated the most.

So a new Penguin paperback is needed. The next one from the great unread is:

Olivia Manning - The Rain Forest

I've never read a book by this writer before so it should be interesting.

Until the next time.