RED SOCKS AND MEYER CULPA

STRAIGHT-TALKING, HIP-SHOOTING JOHN PRESCOTT, formerly of this parish, once described Sir Christopher Meyer, our former Ambassador to the United States of America, as a “red-socked fop”. This was perhaps, as was thought at the time, due to the fact that Prescott did not understand that a gentleman should wear red socks when wearing brown shoes with blue trousers, or perhaps even brown trousers, although the possibility of a gentleman wearing brown trousers other than when wearing a brown suit – in itself difficult to contemplate other than when on a visit to the Third World or making a speech at Cambridge University – may not have occurred to the then Deputy Prime Minister.

PRESCOTT’S POINT WAS THAT MEYER was a less than acceptable chap. As seen by gung-ho, punch-first-and-eat-your-pie-later Prescott, anyone who knew the rules of etiquette was a fop. This meant, in Prescott’s tatty little world, expanded as it was to a large group of politicians who saw “duffing people over”, as Prescott himself put it after “sorting out” a protester in North Wales, as acceptable, that aristocrats were “shit-bags”.

CHRISTOPHER MEYER HAS NOW BEEN CALLED UPON, as former Ambassador to Washington during the Thatcher/Clinton/Bush/Blair years, to be forthcoming as to his knowledge of events during the dark days when “the burning Blair” and “the mighty Bush” held forth in their desires to rid the world of someone – anyone – just to get their names into the record books.

AND NOW WE KNOW WHY DULLARDS LIKE PRESCOTT were against Meyer. As he has come forth with all the beans against the boy Blair, clearing the boy Bush of most of the blame, as the policy had been set out, he tells us, by the adulterer Clinton. The whole war business – “kicking the shit out of Iraq”, as Meyer described it on national TV on Tuesday – had been planned “yonks” ago. (“Yonks” is mine, but I just thought I would bring a little lumpen-speak into this text. Because, after all, the whole lot of these people are bastards, whether they wear red socks or not. And, fops or not, they do in fact deserve a little duffing over.)

THERE THERE MY DEAR

FURTHER TO MY SUMMERTIME DREAM involving my meeting with David Cameron, no doubt inspired by the sounds I heard from outside as I dozed early one morning, I have this last night had a dream in which I met Gordon Brown. Judging by the time of the morning when I experienced this nightmare, it must have been provoked by the sound of the rubbish being collected and emptied.

ONE MAY SEE SUNDAY MORNINGS PASSIM to have a fair idea of my opinion of Mr Brown and his wishy-washy approach to politics in general and running Britain in particular, but in this dream I was remarkably understanding and friendly to our Prime Minister. The situation was a lunch encounter in an upstairs room over a pub in what felt like Fleet Street. Brown and I had to walk up a narrow, spiral staircase in order to come to our table. Mr Brown made the ascent in tears, “greeting like a bairn”, I seem to recall my stating to him, as he knew he was not going to win the next election.

THE UPHOLSTERY WAS THAT SICKLY GREEN VELVETEEN that pub decorators seem to enjoy, there was hardly any room to sit down comfortably anywhere in this tiny room, and David Cameron was sitting reading The Telegraph right in front of our eyes as we came into the room, looking like something out of a Magritte painting that I imagined, in the dream, to be entitled “Man waiting for Soup”. Gordon burst into tears, rushed to a corner table and hid his face in the white tablecloth. Cameron seemed not to have noticed our ascent.

TWO LADIES, HOWEVER, HAD. They came back from the bar (I presume) carrying fully-adorned Chicago prohibition speakeasy cocktails, complete with parasols, feathers, sparklers, and cherries. They looked at the crumpled, blubbering figure of Mr Brown in horror. I explained to them that he was going through a bad period. One of the lasses, a slutty-looking, tatty-haired Mancunian chewing gum, said, “These seats are ours. So shift.” I woke up convinced it had all really happened.

THE WORLD OF $OCCER

ONCE AGAIN, THE HIDEOUS HEAD of the football “World Cup” is occupying the sports news and other TV shows throughout the world. Several years ago I remember I had occasion to write about the unusual case of seeing South Korea reaching the “semi-finals” of this competition, in an obvious case of cheating, or bribing referees. At the time it was claimed that the Koreans achieved this feat through taking ginseng supplements in order to give them greater vitality. Although it is no doubt true that ginseng does increase one’s ability to perform, I suspect that a few hundred thousand dollars has an influence on referees’ performances as well.

THE “WORLD CUP”, FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, is a football or “soccer “ tournament which starts off involving all of the countries in the world and which, after a “knock-out” system, is reduced to Germany, Brazil, Italy or Argentina, from whom the winner is chosen, except when it is played in France or England, when the host nations are also allowed to win. Unimportant nations such as Ireland, Costa Rica, the Maldives, Nigeria and Japan are allowed to compete in the early stages in order to give the competition its “world” flavour, unlike the Baseball “World Series”, in which only teams from New York, Boston, St Louis and Chicago are allowed to compete.

THIS TOURNAMENT OBVIOUSLY INVOLVES large amounts of money for televising the football “matches”, and for sponsorship, but the real cash to be made goes to prostitutes and bar-owners. Thus the logical situation is to make sure that the “fans” who attend these events are those who will spend large amounts of money drinking alcohol and in whorehouses. This left FIFA, the governing body of the sport, and its head Sepp “Slapper” Blatter, with a difficult decision in the play-off match between the Republic of Ireland and France last night -- a straight decision between Guinness sales and Viagra. But no doubt the enormous amount of money that French men spend in brothels because their wives are more interested in fashion accessories than having sex with their garlic-smelling husbands swung it in France’s favour.

FLY THE FLAG, GRINGO, OR I SHOOT YOUR SISTER

FOR MANY PEOPLE BRITISH AIRWAYS has always been the sign of Britishness throughout the world. It was a place where one knew that even when bullets were dashing against whatever material they made the fuselage of, one would be safe after boarding, and be snug, comfy and looked after with biscuits and given Earl Grey tea and packets of those little things wrapped in cellophane that are supposed to keep us busy while we try to understand what they are.

THE RECENT “DEAL”, in which Iberia – Spanish Airways, and British Airways have in some manner come together for a “merger” or “fusion” is, to put it bluntly, a licking of the spittle left in the barrel after it has been dealt a fore-handed scraping. Now and, I am told, again, this takes place. As it did when the British Overseas Airways Corporation, British Airways Limited, Cambrian Airways Cardiff, British Caledonian, and, later on Dan Air, came together as one with the Flag. But those days, it may seem, are over.

AS WE ARE GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND, the chaps who run and ruin one of the few symbols of national pride for any country around the world will now, with this fusion, accept that British Airways and Iberia should be called “Topco”. The new company, I am told, is on the market for new “kick-start names” and “market-lead tongue-holders” to be taught as obligatory for anyone who joins the company. Here are my suggestions for First Class slogans, to replace the now old-fashioned “I’m Mandy, fly me” and “You are on the world’s favourite airline, sir”:
“Welcome to British Airways / Breeteechea awayas, hombre”
“Can I have a window seat? / Es un hijo de puta”
“Excuse me, Stewardess… / Holá, Guapa”
“Thank you. You are most kind / De nada, coño, hombre.”

QUID SCRIPSIT SCRIPSIT

WHEN SOMEONE LIKE MYSELF is able to feel sorry for Gordon Brown it means that evil forces are combining to bring him grief. While there is no doubt that there are many things that our Prime Minister, Her Majesty’s Government and the leaders of our armed forces could and should do to avoid more suffering and death in Afghanistan and elsewhere, one should not accuse Brown of being heartless, and certainly not false or cynical.

THE RECENT ROW INVOLVING his handwriting takes political criticism to new lows in the manner it has been exploited by The Sun newspaper. Everyone is deeply sad when a soldier dies on duty, even though it is clear that members of the armed forces know what they are doing. But no one should complain about the attitude taken by our Prime Minister.

IF WE ARE TO CRUCIFY someone based on the quality of their handwriting, then I for one would have been nailed to a particularly large cross years ago, as hardly anyone can understand all of what I write, often including myself. I have often written myself a shopping list for “bread” and "water” and mistaken this for “beer” and “whisky” when I got to the shop.

GORDON BROWN MUST BE one of the very few political leaders who sends a personal, hand-written letter to the families of the bereaved, and those who know him personally tell me that he is very sincere about this. So no one should shake a finger at him. Instead, if we have to accuse him of anything, we should restrict ourselves to the facts: he is incompetent at running the country and inept at leading the government. His writing on paper is a problem for the press, but Gordon should worry about the writing on the wall.

TO REMEMBER IN YOUR PRAYERS

ONE OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE aspects about London is the almost total lack of security and policing one encounters on the streets. It is difficult to imagine, as one flits from buying lingerie in Primark to olives in Selfridge’s, from socks in Gap to stockings in Zara, that one is permanently being stalked by a horde of terrorist-type people who wish us ill, as the present government of the United Kingdom would have us believe is the case. This was last week in London.

YET TODAY, ON THIS SUNDAY OF REMEMBERING, now back in Lisbon, we should not just remember those who have died in the conflicts great and small that have involved sacrifices made by my ancestors and yours – people who had no idea when they gave their lives that sometime in the future there would be “e-mail” and “blogs”, but who nevertheless died for this – but we should also remember another kind of “warrior leader” who also had these people believe they were being persecuted by a threat that did not exist.

WE SHOULD STAND UP as one to recall General Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, worse than Stalin in sacrificing the lives of millions of young men who had no idea of what was in for them in 1914. His absurd view of how to win World War One will no doubt see him rotting in Hell today.

WE SHOULD TAKE OFF OUR HATS to Winston Churchill, who knew perfectly well that he could draw up an easy agreement with Hitler in 1940 and avoid at least 5 million deaths on either side, but his political ambition was so great that he knew – and was right – that he would only be Prime Minister as long as the war lasted.

WE MIGHT ALSO REMEMBER in our prayers our present great leader, who lives up to the demands and requirements of all the above: sending young men and women to do nothing in Afghanistan other than get shot at and occasionally to shoot – when they have bullets – at others, so that he can warm his arse against the home fires of the rubbish burning on the streets of poppyfields back home.

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-DEAD SCOT

MY RECENT CULTURAL TRIP TO LONDON, in the company of my good wife, in order to study the depiction of the reclining nude at several different galleries, was a surprise. Great love for art and literature has always, at least to my mind, meant a sense of intelligence: the desire to understand others always being seen as one involving generosity, goodness, humanity and that spirit that can really only be expressed in ancient languages but which today is often called being “expansive and emotional”.

YET BRITISH PEOPLE ARE SO AFRAID of looking other people in the eyes that they would rather hold a copy of a Brontë, or something by the dreaded Dan Brown, in front of their faces on any mode of transport just to avoid embarrassing eye-contact. Whether they are actually reading or not is anyone’s bet. But seeing a young gentleman totally absorbed in reading a “Harry Potter”, sitting opposite Manet’s intriguing, obscene Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which shows us one prostitute who has been had for lunch and another one who is next on the menu, takes the biscuit.

THIS IS NOT BECAUSE OF POTTER himself, however, a literary figure who should inspire young people, and has done so admirably until now. But a time comes when one should perhaps leave the teenage books alone and get down to the nitty-gritty of practice of being a pre-post-teenager. In real terms this means that most young gentlemen should have a “good few years” when they are not remotely interested in reading.

THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO BE THE CASE with the latest generation of upper middle class chaps. As Potter grows up, and we see his adventures become more in keeping with his readership – as one can see in recent titles, such as Harry Potter and the Stick of Marijuana, Harry Potter and the Glass of Whisky and Harry Potter and the Inside of a Police Car – we see his readership remaining faithful; when they should be getting on with having a life.

YET GOODLY GORDON BROWN thinks otherwise. His government’s latest report suggesting, when one gets down to the basics of it, that traditional middle- and upper-class pleasures such as opium, morphine and violent sex are somehow wrong, while drinking Carlsberg or Heineken until one vomits and passes out on the pavement is acceptable, shows an utter lack of decency on the part of our elected representatives. If we grant him a third term he will end up putting the slimy Potter on the syllabus at universities, or have passages from Harry Potter and the Chalice of Socialism read out at religious ceremonies.