PERSPECTIVEUK
PERSPECTIVEUK
Dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here reflecting, one hopes, the essential but indefinable spark that makes one human being interesting to many.
The Week
Walking with Pryde
Pryde comes before a fall, they say, and it certainly did for Blackburn Rovers. And, no. There is no mis-spelling.
When I was a young sub-editor, and the Romans were just about finishing Hadrian's wall, I sat in the editorial room of the Northern Daily Telegraph in Blackburn and watched Bob Pryde, of the Rovers, as he chatted with mortals. He was a regular visitor, and a reverential hush descended as he walked the room, being affable and untouchable and awesome, as heroes are.
He deserved to be awesome, of course. When he made his debut in October, 1933, new from playing centre-half for St Johnstone in the Scottish League, Blackburn beat Chelsea 4-2. No-one had heard of oligarchs and quite a few where I lived had never heard of Russians.
Now Blackburn are relegated from the Premier League and only their manager seems to have any unblemished optimism. Misapplied spirit, the fans would say. The fans are melting away like snow in a desert. Lo! The dark ages are upon them and there is no help in them.
The Telegraph in Blackburn long ago 'opped it from the boulevard to something close by. In the old and stately building, we could look out at pigeons using the top of Queen Victoria's head as a free lav. Gladstone was plinthed close by and he fared no better. The top-most part of the building had housed homing pigeons, an early version of the mobile.
I don't know how reporters took their pigeons to Blackburn Rovers. They probably went by tram, anyway, since that was the nearest thing to rocket science for community conveyance.
And of course you know - because I told you - that a reporter over-excited at the end of a game yelled at his pigeon: Blackburn Rovers 1, Liverpool nil (I forget the actual teams and score, you understand) before launching it back to the office minus the message he should have attached to its foot. And so he was left on a rapidly clearing ground muttering "Damn, damn."
My word: it's all coming back. A book was produced about Rovers and the writer had so many copies stacked behind him in his office that he could have been submerged and never seen again. Everything was question and answer. I recall, vaguely, one that amused me:
Question: Did a Blackburn player ever shoot for goal and have the ball end up balancing on the crossbar?
Answer: Yes... (followed a description of the incident).
At the time, I thought: My word, I could write a book like that and have it stacked up behind my desk.
Question: Did Winston Churchill, on a trip to America, ever de-bag the outraged American President in the Oval Office before going on to Santa Monica where he asked Greta Garbo to marry him?
Answer: No.
Enough. Back to Blackburn. There we were, then: us, back at the office. Each sub-editor dealt with five matches - even the woman sub-editor, the one who put a headline over a wedding picture: 'Bride wears Dutch cap.'
Very difficult to write headlines that kept pace with events. "Rovers score early goal" was a favourite. You got your messages passed through a little hatch controlled by a youth who mispronounced things. "Cherley!" he used to cry. The sound of Cherley rather than Chorley echoes in my head to this day.
Our views of Bob Pryde were confined to non-footballing days. There was another awesome figure knocking about our floor: the Rev. Chad Varah. He was a local minister at the time, but highly active. I was never quite sure which was footballer and which saint. They were level-pegging on thought and deed. Things were clearer later when Chad Varah founded the Samaritans.
(Years later, I found the Samaritans fitted my purpose. I had moved on to city journalism where reporters tended to have liquid lunches. And as they joyfully returned, they found little notes at their typewriters reading, "Please ring 237854" or whatever. They assumed it was some contact or other, but when they phoned the number, the Samaritans replied. I know, I know. I should not have left those little notes. Pure mischief-making.)
I had begun my career on the Accrington Observer and reported minor football matches on the odd occasion. In the 1950's - as I describe elsewhere - there was a conversation on an Accrington tram describing a full-back's dalliance with another man's wife. His efforts apparently led to him being shot. “Aye,” said someone discussing this event, “that bullet were t' only thing he ever stopped.”
Nobody talked about back fours and if they had we would have assumed they meant outside closets.
That's it, then. Blackburn exits in dissaray. It was a lot easier when they walked with Pryde.
Vidal Sassoon, hair stylist, four times married, has died at 84 - an icon of sixties London, as my newspaper described him. His was not so much a salon as a trans-continental empire. I treasure the remark of a woman overheard in our region - "She goes to Vidal's in Manchester to get her hair done. He's never there, you know."
Once upon a time
Watched Rebekah at the Leveson inquiry and didn't make much of it or whatever went before. All that delving about in events long gone yet still seeking clear detail. Can't be done. So you get a lot of er, ers, and I don't just recall, and as I recollect and in the end you are glad that it is a judge who has to make sense of it.
I was once a journalist under cover myself but haven't been called by Leveson yet. When I say under-cover, I mean for an hour or two,, or three, give or take, and as Leveson is not my judge, I can not recall any detail whatsoever.
Mine was close-eyed stuff and trilby over one eye. My brief was to talk to a Cabinet Minister about a forthcoming general election and get an inside knowledge of the likely Tory strategies. As readers covert enough to dig deep into this site's archives will know, I chose Selwyn Lloyd. At various times he held the offices of Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House, and Speaker of the Commons. A rather weighty source, I thought.
We met over copious amounts of drink in his Manchester hotel room and the copious amounts eventually met over me. They gently lapped over my sensibilities. I succumbed. I was deconstructed, submerged, m' lord, and can not recall. It must have been er, er, et around that time. Something. Maybe. I think.
Pardon? No I am not being evasive. It is an honest-to-God response. No, I know you can't believe me, but it is true. Will you please take your hands from my throat? I am a decent, honest journalist ethical to the core. I would not have come here in the first place had I known that you had no scruples about health and safety. You have left a bruise. I can feel it.
Anyway, to cut a short story long, I seem to remember, but only in retrospect, a bit of inside knowledge that came from Selwyn and which went something like this: "The balance of payments is, of course, of particular concern and the exchange rate has to be watched. International issues will be of consequence, but it is in domestic affairs that we will find most controversy: housing, health, roads, infrastructure, that kind of thing."
I might be wrong. It might have been a totally different kind of summary. I have no means of knowing now, or then.
I ventured an opinion that whatever he had said was very revealing. Mr Lloyd took a long, thoughtful pull of his glass, handed the bottle to me and went on:
"Special relationships. We feel that is one of our strengths. The special relationship with the United States is one that no other party could emulate. It is important to people. They feel more secure." (Again, that is what I think he said. It might have been totally different.) I handed back the bottle and he filled his glass and mine. "What about" I said " - Communism?"
"Yes," he said. "you have put your finger on it." "Pardon?" I asked. "Quite so," he replied.
"The Eastern bloc," I said, trying to steer him towards Moscow again. I felt informed about Moscow at the time - probably an illusion. "Much the same thing," he said. "Same thing actually." "You mean?"
"Absolutely ," he said. I did not think it was the same thing at all and was all for changing matters through the informed medium of our newspaper.
He asked whether I preferred malt. I said I did not mind much. What were we drinking? He swished the bit that remained around the bottom of the bottle and reached for another. "Malt," he said. "Ten years old."
"The pound," I said. "What about the pound?"
He said (I think) that the state of the pound was most important, not only to him but to the Prime Minister; not only to the Prime Minister but the nation. It was one of his constant obsessions. He considered its implications by day and by night, sitting or walking, eating or ... drinking? ...He looked at my glass.
I do not quite know when I left him. The light seemed to be fading. When I arrived home I went straight to bed. I learned later that it was 4.30 pm.
"Well," said the editor briskly next day, "what did the great man say?" I said it was difficult to remember exactly, of course; this and that, Eastern bloc, Communism, balance of payments, housing and other domestic issues. Strong views. Firm purpose. Lines broadly set. Then I reeled off a great wodge of stuff I had read in that morning's Times leader column.
"Interesting," said the editor.
"Fascinating," I replied. The newspaper's strategy was not noticeably affected. I never saw Selwyn Lloyd again.
This notice appeared at a restaurant near me. Don't suppose for a moment that it could ever happen at, say, the Dorchester.
Let's face it: you don't know who's who among the joggers who overtake you these days.
- & (more) modern
Sir Neville Cardus and John Arlott
Ronald Carter, blacksmith,
His daughter: "He was at his most embarrassing when I was a teenager - being collected from the youth club disco by a man wearing a leather apron and clogs and with half a football on his head was not so cool. He was even more embarrassing buying himself new trousers. Each pair had to be trade tested by dad doing squats and bunny-jumps. Ripping sounds from the gents' changing rooms followed. Then a lecture from dad on how all trousers should allow you to vault over a ten-foot wall, do cart-wheels, or give a fencing lesson." That was Ronnie Carter.
Violet Carson (Ena Sharples)
Dudley Doolittle (comic),
Dame Gracie Fields & me
(Railway Children)
L S Lowry (above)
Joe Tomlinson,
Jack Higgins (jumper),
Edna the Traveller
The pearl hunter
Blaster Bates
Essays
Mrs Almond's sky was probably full of balls, and they hurtled in her direction when she was washing up. One narrowly missed their Vera. "You're not getting your ball back," she used to shout. "You'll kill somebody, you lot." Now I ask you, what would S. J. McCabe or S. G. Barnes have made of that?"
"Don what?" she would no doubt have said, if afflicted by Bradman. "You can tell him I'll be round at his mother's."
The crucible (climbing)
The pleasures and agonies of Spring,
The Queen's Speech that never was
Philosophy:
Buddhism (Manjushri, Lake District) Life and Living 1 Life and Living 2 Life and Living 3
Be sure to keep some great man thy friend, but trouble him not with trifles; compliment him often with many, yet small gifts, and of little charge; and if thou hast cause to bestow any great gratuity, let it be something which may be daily in sight; otherwise in this ambitious age, thou shalt remain like a hop without a pole, live in obscurity, and be made a football for every insulting companion to spurn at..
Current
Rant: rumbles and grumbles. Lancashire affairs. Snippets: Bits and pieces.
copyright: Geoffrey Mather 2012
Retrospective
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became editor of the Daily Express in October, 1933, a position he held for 24 years until 1957. During his editorship sales peaked at two million in 1935, over three million in 1944 and four million in 1949. Each day he wrote a bulletin. It was compulsory reading for members of editorial staff. Here are many of them
In spite of his own eccentricities, he wanted the world to behave as he expected it to. Since his was a rather tidy vision, the world took no notice. That infuriated him. Big companies, shops, waiters and hotel managers were his normal fodder. He terrorised them. When he snagged a coat on something protruding in Woolworth's, he said to the manager, "This is an expensive coat." "I can see it is," said the manager. "I noticed it when you came in." "Right," said Brian Duff, "I expect you to pay for it. And I don't want it invisibly mended because you can see it." Sir James Scott Douglas (gossip columnist)
Pub Talk with Peter Thomas
skidmoresisland.blogspot.com
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