Matt Wingett

Punch and Judy at the Covent Garden May Fayre, 2016

By Matt on Wednesday, May 11, 2016

On Sunday 8th May Jackie and I went to the May Fayre at St Paul’s Churchyard, Convent Garden. It’s extraordinary for one thing in particular – it’s the place for Punch and Judy.

The view of St Paul's Churchyard from the church steps. — The view of St Paul’s Churchyard from the church steps.

Every year at the May Fayre, Mr Punch and his fellow puppets descend on “The Actor’s Church” in Covent Garden to celebrate this very strange, violent and utterly joyous artform. Why? Because it was here in 1662 at the May Fayre that diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of seeing the “little play” of Punch and Judy performed – the first time it is mentioned in English writing.

It’s a venerable tradition, and myths have grown up around it. One Punch and Judy man told me that Charles II was so struck by the skill of the puppeteers that he announced that all Punch and Judy men (and, more recently, women) should be known as “Professors”, a sobriquet that has continued to the present day. Whether it’s actually true is a matter of debate, but plenty of Professors will tell you it is.

St Paul’s Churchyard is a lovely place. When you step away from the big open space of Covent Garden, where performers play to tourists using the rear wall of the church as their backdrop (watched from the balcony of the Punch and Judy public house), you find that the churchyard itself is by contrast an intimate space – a grassed and tree-grown courtyard which stretches out from the church entrance.

Jackie and I arrived early, and the striped booths shone bright in the gorgeous sunshine. The place felt like a little village fete, and it was difficult to believe we were in the heart of London.

At 12 noon there was a church service of an eccentric nature. People poured into St Paul’s, many with puppets on their arms – one child wearing a Harry Potter cape carried a Punch on his hand among all the others; brightly coloured clothes abounded. We had stepped into the land of magic and strangeness. A marching jazz band burst in at the head of a procession, playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” brashly down the aisle, and a giant, stilted beefeater with a crow on his shoulder and painted clown face danced next to the pulpit with violent movements. And so the service began.

There was a children’s choir, and the vicar of Millwall Football Club gave a talk and got his choir to sing: the kids a little sheepish, singing slightly shyly. Was this London, really? This could have been any village church in the country on a Fete day. It was lovely.

Then, Mr Punch appeared in the pulpit, being asked questions by the vicar. It was a joyous moment and the audience laughed along. And afterwards, the Punch and Judy shows began.

Quite how the Church squares the murderous psychopath that is Mr Punch with a message of good will to all the people of the world is a strange question. Mr Punch is one of the most subversive, sinister and truly funny characters to ever come out of the theatrical tradition in England.

For that strange, heady mixture, I love him. The afternoon saw about 30 booths come alive with Mr Punch and friends, with numerous variations on the play. The first performance I watched was by respected puppeteer Geoff Felix, whose opening scene, featuring a pair of brutally violent and inept boxers was followed by an enigmatic staring puppet whose neck stretched out to phallic and hilarious proportions. Then on to the main act, and out came Mr Punch and his long-suffering wife Judy. Geoff Felix’s act was particularly rough and tumble, with Mr Punch bashing his victims’ heads in with great gusto, to the raucous laughter of the children.

It was the start of a series of shows that stretched on for the afternoon, with each Professor bringing his own take on the story. At times Punch was behind bars, at others he was about to be executed. Sometimes he rode a horse and at others he banged his head with hilarious effect, while his baby disappeared around the booth on the most unpredictable wanderings. Even Darth Vader made an appearance in one booth, while a French puppeteer clearly in love with the British Punch and Judy tradition had the British couple introduce the French Guignol and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

But for all of these variants, the story I love best is the old one: the crazy, anarchic tale of the psychopath, Mr Punch, and his shrew of a wife who live in deeply comic passion together before coming to blows over their baby.

Punch kills. There’s no getting round it. He murders. It’s a transgression that is dealt with by different puppeteers with varying effect. Sometimes deeply sinister, sometimes careless, sometimes calculated, sometimes desperate, always funny – the first murder takes place. Then, one by one, with mounting ludicrousness, Punch kills every authority figure who comes to punish him, until finally he kills the devil himself.

At the end, Mr Punch is triumphant, announcing each time he kills a victim – that’s the way to do it! – Sometimes, he loudly counts the bodies he has piled up, like a macabre version of Sesame Street, while Joey the Clown moves the bodies around so that he can’t keep track of whom he’s killed. Sometimes, too, he is haunted by those he has murdered – but when he gets the measure of the ghost who comes to torment him, he even kills the ghost.

It is anarchy at work, and it upsets the moral order with a deeply subversive message. Though there are all those in power above him, Punch reigns supreme, the mischievous, murderous imp whom – bizarrely – children love.

And the fact is, the kids really do love him. Watching the seated children whom you might think would be a little too sophisticated for glove puppets, they were utterly transfixed. They got the humour, straight away, penetrating to the crazy core of the story, while, occasionally shocked parents looked on with apprehension at the scene.

David Wilde - Professor Extraordinaire

The amoral anti-hero at the heart of Punch and Judy makes it a unique experience, and deeply addictive. It is pure, unadulterated anarchy.

Perfect.

Punch is my hero!

Inspirations Writing

Real Writer’s Block – What it is, and what it is not.

By Matt on Friday, February 26, 2016

Despair Adele Parks gave a great talk last night at Portsmouth Central Library as part of Portsmouth Bookfest 2016, talking about her writing life, and how she became one of the top sellers of chick lit over the last 16 years. From an effervescent and ebullient childhood in which her grandfather persuaded her to write comics for 10 pence each, through globe-trotting as an advertising executive, to her decision “not to go to my grave wishing I had written that book”, it was quite a journey, and heartening, too.

With her joyous smile, lightning-fast brain and keen intellect, Adele is one of those people one can’t help liking. Blessed with good quality hardware, you can’t help thinking she would have made it, whatever she did. I’ve seen the same in other writers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was similar – proud owner of a ferocious intellect coupled with a joyous imagination, he revelled in storytelling and much more besides. Like Doyle, Adele has energy. And lots of it.

Such traits make Adele supremely fitted to talk about the business of writing. But there is one thing she announced during that evening with which I disagreed profoundly, and it came when someone in the audience asked about writer’s block. This is one subject about which I have a brimful of firsthand experience. It is also something of which Adele clearly has none.

She started off this section by make a provocative point:

“There’s no such thing. You don’t get doctor’s block, or accountant’s block. So there’s no such thing as writer’s block.”

I’ve always wondered what people who dismiss writer’s block actually think it is. Today, at last, I heard it from someone at the top of her profession.

Adele equated writer’s block to lack of direction, or disorganisation. “If you sit down and you’re not able to write, it’s because you haven’t planned what you’re going to write,” she breezed. The solution was to plan your novel better, or perhaps have a change of scene. Go on holiday, go and write somewhere else. Meet new people. Go to an Elvis convention in Blackpool.

So there it was, writer’s block was a functional problem to do with not being properly directed. It was straightforward. It didn’t exist.

During a stay on the Isle of Arran in the 1990s, during Gulf War I, I spoke with the local female GP, an ex-military doctor, and mentioned PTSD to her. She furrowed her brow and said forcefully: “There is no such thing as PTSD”. She was adamant about it.

Everyone has a blindspot for something.

Here is what writer’s block is not. It is not sitting down to write one morning and finding that it takes 20 minutes to get in the mood. That is drinking a cup of tea. It is not worrying because your cat has taken ill and thus being put off for a day or two. That is anticipating a vet’s bill. It is not having a pile of papers that are out of order. That is bad filing.

How can I say this with such certainty? Because I lost the ability to write for thirteen years. Not being able to sit down and write during that period was not a matter of tea, cats or files. I had arranged my life so that I had all the time I needed. My despair, my utter, black despair came from something far deeper and far darker. If you’ve ever wondered what real writer’s block, is as opposed to feeling a bit uninspired or not quite knowing what to write about, let me tell you about my experience. Of course, others will have different experiences, but if you have no idea at all, perhaps this will shed a little bit of light – and explain to you why if you dismiss it out of hand you might get a furious response.

Writer’s block was the moment I realised the one thing I knew I could do really well had deserted me. It left me the day I had the final argument with a lover in which she criticised my work mercilessly, then walked out on me. Her criticism combined with that deeper emotional shock so that grief became the flavour of writing.

After her departure I limped on, writing scripts for The Bill. Her stinging criticisms came back as I wrestled plot lines, rang in my ears over and over again as I tried, stomach churning with panic, to string together stories and character motives. I criticised what I wrote, using her voice to do it. Not good enough, poor quality writing. Ugly writing. And so on.

There came a point at which I found myself unable to put one word after the other because I questioned if those two words worked together on the page. I couldn’t put together a satisfactory sentence, let alone a story. I wasn’t “feeling a bit uninspired of a morning”. I didn’t need to sit down and have a cup of tea to make it right. I had a central crisis of confidence in which I felt myself whirling into a blacker and blacker swirl of helplessness. I loved that woman. I wanted to impress her with my writing. She was gone. My writing was shit.

That was the sort of equation that was going on in my head. It usurped my emotions and took over my body. I wept at nights. month after month. The grief took control of my creative life. A deep, cold sense of bleakness. The blank page became unbearable. The stories I started to write and never finished were all tales of pain and suicide, of loss of faith in people, in God, in life itself. Sitting at my desk staring at the page, in the wordless spaces between each and every second, I sat and ruminated on how best I could die.

And still I was contracted to write 4 episodes of The Bill. A job that should have lasted six months took four grinding years to complete, until finally I was free of the show. Being trapped in a contract had compounded matters further. I was going through an existential crisis, whilst simultaneously being forced to turn out episodes of a cop show. I look back now, and that is darkly funny. At the time it was hell.

I eked out a living working in bars while the 6 months money I had been paid in advance dwindled out over 4 years, failing to fund my meagre existence. I began to associate poverty with writing. I hated myself, I hated the page, I hated everyone else – and most of all I hated the act of writing.

Sitting down to write meant pain. It meant loss of dignity. It meant humiliation. It meant having daily to inhabit that dark, lost spirit in the Hades of my soul who so wanted to come out into the light again but who was trapped.

I considered suicide.

In the end, I gave up trying to write, completely. I set up a series of businesses. I got into computer repairs, teaching English and bookdealing – the last of which gave me a steady income and such a rigid regime of work that for years I had no time to think about myself or my writing.

I did, eventually start to write again, but only after I got professional psychiatric help. I had a full thirteen years of writer’s block. Being told last night that, actually, that could have been solved with a trip to the local coffee bar (as if I didn’t try so many things) – that, I have to say, did not sit well in my soul.

The good news is that I did get out of that pit, and I want to tell you – if any of this seems remotely familiar – if you are another writer suffering in this way, and you’re sick of people who tell you to “buck yourself up” and “pull yourself together”, it’s okay to be sick of it. That person may be wise, they may be actually be bloody fantastic, but if that’s what they’re saying, then of the subject of writer’s block they know nothing.

Do know, however, that you are not alone and that there are ways back to the surface, to the sunlight. There are means of escape. There will come a time when you are no longer groping around in the dark and you will no longer feel destroyed. You will see yourself in a new way. You will be made afresh.

If you’ve got real writer’s block, most likely it won’t be a walk or a holiday that does it for you. If it does, then good luck to you. What you are feeling may be, in many ways, akin to PTSD. And just like with PTSD, seek help. There are professionals who understand the workings of the inside of your head.

Writer’s block is so much more than not feeling inspired. Writer’s block is feeling that your life is reaching its end because it is devoid of meaning. Be assured, however, it will go on. Writing, that little bright bird, she will fly back to you.

If you recognise any of this description and it makes sense to you, then seek help – and do it now. Don’t – like I did – take thirteen years to act. That’s thirteen years you won’t get back.

Opinion Writing

A Long Journey Left – an experiment in political awakening

By Matt on Saturday, February 13, 2016

(Below is the first time I have ever written autobiographically about the political beliefs instilled in me from early on. Not deliberately instilled, just taken for granted that they were right. It is part of a larger programme. But that whole story is a long way off.)

Picture the scene. A young boy of perhaps four years old standing in a grand old house in the Hampshire Downs, an elegant double staircase shining in the sunlight. Something is going on outside to do with sailors, the milling of people and the buzz of excitement. The day is magnificent.

Near the base of the stairs on the wall is a portrait that has drawn the young boy’s fascination. A man with white curly hair, pale, unsmiling and with pale blue eyes. The boy has an impression of golds and red and a dark background.

A man comes up behind the boy and puts his hand on his shoulder.

“Daddy, who is this?”

“That’s Nelson,” he says.

The boy is confused. Using one word for a name like that means you know him. But the boy doesn’t know him.

“Who is Nelson?”

“He was a great man,” says the man. “A sailor. A very great man.”

The boy considers for a moment. “He looks very small,” he says, unable to work out the scale of the portrait, which is not quite life size. He looks at it for a while longer then turns away.

Later, he sees his father shouting orders to a company of sailors marching up and down a parade ground, and there is a man with a lot of gold on his sleeves that his brother takes a photograph of with his new Polaroid camera. People speak about this man with his gold sleeves with reverence, and the boy hears with mild interest that this is the uncle to the Queen. The adults approve of this. All is right with the world. Far, far right.

Thus I was born into the fagbutt of empire. When I was a boy, I used to marvel at how many countries at the Olympic games would parade around the stadium with a Union Flag (dad was always clear about this, “it is only a Union Jack when flown from the Jack staff of a ship,” and I still can’t shake off the usage despite that not being the case), and swell with pride. Some time in our past, we had “won the war” (my schoolfriends would chant this sentiment inaccurately, controlled by the rhyme scheme: we won the war, in nineteen forty-four). We had also won the world. Great Britain did indeed live up to the adjective. Foreign countries and their people were owned by us.

Later in life, one of the habits I had to get out of was asking people with a brown skin where they were from. My dad and his generation did it all the time, and it wasn’t meant to be offensive. It was genuinely, I guess (what with him having stayed at various old colonial bases around the world), a question of “Oh, I might know your country”. It was friendly.

I kept up with the whole “where are you from” thing until the 1990s when I was in my 20s, when I began to notice how often people shrugged almost with desparation and said: “London,” curtly. This, in my enthusiasm, was not enough. “Oh, where are you parents from?” – this question followed on from my parents’ example. This follow-up question would get a more curt response. It was only after some reflection that I began to see that this was not necessarily friendly, in the way I intended, but equally could be deemed as: “You are not British. What are you really?”

After a while, I stopped asking that question. But it took some time. And that, I suppose is true of many another ingrained response from a period that is now history, and yet which still manages to make itself felt with its dead hand on the present by the many people who lived through it and didn’t question what it meant.

Banana Republic Opinion

Is the America’s Cup the new Pope’s Toilet?

By Matt on Saturday, July 25, 2015

In the little-known Uruguayan movie The Pope’s Toilet, a promised visit by the Pope drives the populace of Melo, a deprived and rundown town into a frenzy at the promised bonanza coming to their doors.

Hyped by a near-hysterical Press and lackey local politicians to believe that ever-increasing numbers of wealthy Brazilians will descend on this massive event, one impoverished citizen, Beto, conceives a unique means of serving the promised 200,000 visitors. Beto makes a living smuggling lower-tax goods across the border from Brazil, and he puts his life savings and daughter’s education fund into buying and building a paid-for public convenience in his back garden.

The pressure on his family who are living hand-to-mouth and the near-mania the town’s inhabitants achieve as the day draws near tests relationships and pushes Beto to the edge under the mounting expectation that a gold rush is upon him.

In the end, a corporate Pope turns up with his retinue of coaches stuffed with cardinals and elite hangers-on out for a day’s jolly. These VIPs all have their food and drink – and more importantly for Beto – their toilets, provided on board their coaches, conveniently keeping them as far away from the poor as possible.

Meanwhile, the 400 people who turn up to attend the Pope’s mass are served by 387 trinket stalls. The blessing is given in a matter of an hour or so and then the event is over. No one is any richer, but everyone is a little wiser.

Looking at the VIP grandstand on the seafront today, in the place which is psychologically associated in the people of Portsmouth’s minds with free entertainment and with freedom to relax in a city that has the densest population of any city in Northern Europe, I thought on this film and was struck by the way large corporations, be they religious or commercial, arrange matters for their own convenience at the expense of the people they are supposed to serve. Looking at the sparse attendance on the first two days and the grumblings on social media, I am wondering as Saturday morning dawns if The America’s Cup will indeed become the new Pope’s Toilet.

I hope not. Sincerely, I want Portsmouth to be a place where people have a great time. But I also want the businesses who have descended on our town to show a bit of understanding of who we are. Because if they’d done that, there might not be the grumbling and muttering that has sullied what should be a fabulous event.

The pre-poured beers standing at £5 a pint in the Waterfront Arena are perhaps emblematic of the show thus far. Whilst it is true that locals of Portsmouth were offered free tickets to attend the four-day event, that generosity was attenuated by the sheer expense of having a day out there.

To gain admission to the Waterfront Arena, you must surrender your own food and drinks. Social media includes accounts of parents with 2-year-olds being refused admission with their baby food. It includes coeliacs turned away with their own food even though they simply couldn’t eat the food being served inside the Arena. All this in a place which is psychologically to many Pompeyites THE ONLY picnic area in the city, where many a barbie has burned a hole in the grass and many a cheap-bought sausage undergone cremation before finding a final resting place in a bin.

So, what do you get if you decide to play along and enter the Arena?

The original reason that Southsea Common was saved from developers was that it provided clear lines of sight and constituted a killing zone to deter attacking French troops intent on burning the dockyard. That’s why it was kept clear for hundreds of years while the town jammed up to its edges.

The atmosphere inside the Arena on the first two days was dull (and to be fair, what else could it be in Friday’s deluge?) and appeared primarily designed for stalls to make a killing from the attendees. Most food was pitched at £6 or above – which for a take-away of not particularly generous proportions made primarily of, for example, egg noodles, stings the wallet. There are some stands that give the Arena a local presence. Strong Island are there, as are Pie and Vinyl – both hip organisations with cool appeal, somewhat incongruously sitting in a field containing a large corporate stand with a BMW on it.

There is also a large stage with big screens. There appears to be no obvious programme for the events on the stage in the day, but the sailing can also be watched on the screens. Thankfully so, since the only people with a really excellent view of the sailing in the water are the corporate VIPs who have taken up squatting rights in the city’s free entertainment arena at the bandstand.

The plight of the traders on the seafront near the Hovertravel terminal speaks plenty about the way big business thinks about – or doesn’t think about – ordinary people trying to make a living. The 4-metre-tall fencing that has sprung up along the seafront has blocked off local shops from being able to sell to the public tantalisingly close on the other side of that wall. Local businesses who have provided services for years, if not decades on that spot deserve a share in the high times if they come. They are, after all, the ones who kept the seafront alive long before a Louis Vuitton PR manager, a BMW sales executive or a BAR Landrover events promoter ever heard of Southsea.

For me – and this is a personal opinion – the real problem with this event in a city like Portsmouth is that it is exclusive. People need tickets or they are excluded. People need money or they are excluded. People need to be in the arena or they are excluded. People need to understand about boats, about BAR Landrover and about sailing… or they are excluded. And of course, you need tens of millions of pounds to part-own one of those strange boats that don’t even seem to touch the water. There hasn’t been enough reaching out, enough education, enough explaining to the ordinary people why this distant event should be significant to them.

All this is in distinct contract with the spectacularly successful Trafalgar 200 event in 2005. Generally a masterpiece of event management, the whole marvellous, crazy event saw hundreds of thousands flock down to the open seafront and enjoy the day out. Almost everyone benefited. Local businesses and other street traders alike had a massive market to sell to, prices were kept sensible by genuine competition – people didn’t feel trapped into spending more than they normally would on food – and there was plenty of money to go round among the traders, be they local or otherwise.

The current sponsors have taken this model and inverted it by pushing people off the Common and seafront west of the Castle unless they have tickets.

That’s a foolish thing to do – especially when another, sensibly-priced event is due to give a top-notch show in just a few brief weeks. And when, actually, the America’s Cup may be a big deal for a small yachting elite and their wealthy sponsors, but is not a big deal for a working class town struggling with illiteracy, poverty and the day-to-day grind of life. Those people need a break, not to be sold at.

I so hope that there is a good crowd today and that the weekend goes well. I do believe that the America’s Cup will be good in the long run for Portsmouth. For that reason, I hope there is a good vibe in the town, and excitement at the races. But I also hope that next year the promoters do things differently and don’t just parachute in their VIPS and take over the seafront and Common for 4 days whilst the locals feel they’re being sold overpriced concert tickets and beer.

In many ways the Common is a near-sacred place to the people of Pompey. That means you have to get it right or you will feel their wrath. Exactly that happened in 1874 during the Battle of Southsea, in which thousands descended on the Common to prevent an attempt by a precursor of today’s fence-obsessed Corporations to enclose a tiny part of it. Back then, the Riot Act was read, and in four days of continual fighting, the people burned down the fences. It set a folk memory in Pompey people’s minds that actually, the Common is ours.

You mess with that belief at your peril, you people in your VIP stands. Please remember that.

Now here’s to future success for the city and for BAR Landrover. But in partnership with all of us, please, not at our expense.

Opinion

How the propaganda machine stole your vote

By Matt on Saturday, May 9, 2015

Recently I had someone comment that those who were unhappy with the election results “do the general public a disservice” by saying this. He went on to say:

“You assume that people must be misinformed or that they aren’t able to make decisions by themselves. Have you considered that the general public DO know what the Tories are offering and that is why they voted for them OR what they offer was still better than the other options? This wasn’t a squeak over the line but a clear majority. This wasn’t a vote by the rich alone, but by a whole nation.”

I wish that were true, that the people of the UK really engaged with what the parties offered and used their heads rather than their hearts. But that isn’t the case. If it were, The Sun wouldn’t have carried photographs of Miliband eating a bacon sandwich because he pulled a funny face, they would have focussed on policies. The main right wing newspapers and broadcasters wouldn’t have gone out of their ways to insult Miliband personally, they would have focussed on his policies. They wouldn’t have stirred anti-Scottish racist sentiment that will backfire in the long term because now the Scots genuinely (and rightly) feel they aren’t really part of the UK.

But they did do that. Why? Because they know how to tug the emotional strings of a populace they have already frightened with outright lies, of which there were so many that unless you took the time to dismantle how each lie sat on top of the next, you would simply not have a clue how much distortion had gone on.

Most people also don’t vote on abstract concepts. They didn’t vote to save the NHS because on the surface it still appears fine, although major independent groups are warning that it is being rotted away inside. Just one example.

Most people don’t vote on what doesn’t directly affect them, such as the extraordinary high fees in education which entrenches levels of class entitlement and privilege that we haven’t seen since before the war, because most people aren’t students.

Most people vote for a simple thing: an ideal, an emotion – they don’t have degrees in economics which enable them to really take the figures apart. They don’t have degrees in media studies which enable them to dismantle the semantics of media broadcasts. They vote on a gut feeling. On what is essentially a faith.

And that is what this result is. A victory for ignorance and fear over justice and hope.

And if you voted for that, knowing the facts, well… I hope you sleep well at nights.

Opinion

How the Tory re-election dishonours our VE Day heroes.

By Matt on Friday, May 8, 2015

It’s a bitter irony that a Tory government intent on dismantling and privatising the NHS and making education increasingly expensive should be re-elected on the 7oth anniversary of VE Day.

In World War 2, the country’s victory was the result of a contract between the men and woman who served, fought and died, and those who ruled.

The landslide victory of the Labour government in 1945 was the delivery on that contract. The victory had been predicted for years beforehand by writers such as J B Priestley, who voiced the soldier’s claim that he should receive his just desserts for the sacrifice he gave. He demanded no less than a New World, in which war was no longer necessary and social inequality was reduced forever.

In 1945 Tory party Treasurer Lord Marchwood acknowledged in the Picture Post that “young people and servicemen are Left-minded” but was “certain that Mr Churchill’s appeals will have had the effect he desired.”

But the Tories didn’t understand the selflessness born of war. Hints of how military life had affected young servicemen and women appeared early in the war. On 28th July 1940, J B Priestley wrote of a letter he’d received from the father of an airman, who said of his son and comrades:

“Don’t insult them by thinking they don’t care what sort of a world they’re fighting for. All the evidence contradicts that.”

He went on to quote his son, who had been a salesman before he enlisted:

“I shall never go back to the old business life – that life of what I call the survival of the slickest; I now know a better way. Our lads in the R.A.F. would, and do, willingly give their lives for each other; the whole outlook of the force is one of ‘give’, not one of ‘get’. If tomorrow the war ended and I returned to business, I would need to sneak, cheat and pry in order to get hold of orders which otherwise would have gone to one of my R.A.F. friends if one of them returned to commercial life with a competing firm. Instead of co-operating as we do in war, we would each use all the craft we possessed with which to confound each other. I will never do it.”

VE Day wasn’t a win for Churchill. It wasn’t a win for vested interest or corporations. It was a victory for the ordinary man who came home to build a fairer, more just Britain.

He didn’t want anything exceptional by today’s standards. Only what most of us nowadays take for granted as we grow up.

It included simple things. No more disfigurement or death from easily preventable diseases; no more dying in agony because you couldn’t afford to pay the surgeon; no more being held back because the education system excluded intelligent pupils because they were poor.

It also included provision that those left disabled, blind and limbless thanks to their heroic efforts should be treated with dignity. That’s why Remploy factories were opened – to give those heroes a sense of purpose and a future.

That’s what the returning servicemen got, until this government made the most concerted effort yet to dismantle that covenant with the people, by beginning the privatisation of health services and education. No surprise either, that the current administration closed the Remploy factories.

This weekend, tens of thousands of people will mark the 70-year VE Day commemoration.

Bizarrely, my experience is that – not all – but many of them will be primarily of the right. Fuelled by a mixture of English nationalism and nostalgic Conservatism they will inadvertently mock the extraordinary heroism of the war. Up and down the country, sadly muddled Little England flagwavers will conflate fighting for freedom with Toryism because Churchill was in power at the time of the victory.

It is strange that nowadays war anniversaries are often the natural playground of uniform-renting stockbrokers co-opting the heroism of courageous men and women who made the extraordinary victory possible. As if they laid down their lives to create a world in which the disabled kill themselves after being refused state aid and the poor live on charitable food hand-outs while the wealthy gamble away the country’s money and get off Scott free.

So, whether you are a pacifist or not, remember VE Day. It was a genuine moment of hope in history. It was the moment when the State was taken by the nose and for a while at least made to care for its citizens.

Remember, whatever you do this weekend. Remember how much you owe to those selfless individuals who fought not only for your freedom, but for your education, your health and your welfare.

Remember, too, that 70 years on, vested interests have set themselves the task of rolling back the good work of those heroes, for the sake of a corrupt ideology which makes the rich richer while the poor are oppressed.

If ever there was a time for fair-minded people to regroup, it is now. It is time to think on what has happened – on the day on which much of the good work done 70 years ago is due to be undone.

Remember the wartime spirit of hope and reconstruction. And remember, if you are of the left, you are the heirs of those heroes who fought for future generations to be protected, to be educated, to be treated with fairness and be given the opportunities denied to their parents.

Remember too, the fight must go on. VE Day or no.

Laughs

Easter Bunny calls for IVF to help with Easter Egg demand

By Matt on Sunday, April 5, 2015

The Easter Bunny says his homelife has suffered and he can't even afford a car to carry his children around in. — The Easter Bunny says his homelife has suffered and he can’t even afford a car to carry his children around in.

In a desperate appeal for help, the Easter Bunny has called for medical assistance in producing Easter Eggs.

The Bunny, renowned for his outspoken criticism of his employer, the Christan Church, said:

“You have no idea how much work it is shitting Cadbury’s Creme Eggs all year round without help. And to be frank, I’ve had it up to here as an inter-denominational Christian sex worker,” he said.

“People mistakenly think I am a made-up symbol designed to usurp pagan traditions, but I think it’s time we all faced the fact that whilst that is a convenient mask for the Church to hide behind, actually I do exist. And it’s hell being me,” he said.

“For years the Church has conveniently pointed to my eggs as a symbol of life resurging from cold stone, and to rabbits as a sign of fertility. They’ve liked to cleverly make out that somehow I don’t exist, with apologists saying I’m just a way of incorporating pagan beliefs into Christianity,” the Easter Bunny, otherwise known as Daryl, said.

“The fact that the eggs I lay require me imbibing copious quantities of the bitter Mayan Xocoatl drink which used to be fed by the Mayans to sacrificial victims before slaughter only muddies the pagan waters further. But I demand the right to be recognised. For centuries I’ve been a slave of the Christian propaganda machine. I have rights, you know.”

A spokesman for the Archishop of Canterbury said:

“What nonsense! Of course a talking rabbit that delivers eggs to children all over the world is made up. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s not like he’s a gingerbread man with wine for blood who can pull fish out of thin air, raise the dead and walk on water, is it?”

Pressed further on Daryl’s assertion that “If it got out that I do exist, everyone would think I was a miracle, which would completely undermine Christian religious teachings,” Archbishop Justin Welby fixed the Press conference with a psychotic eye and said:

“Now listen up. If da rabbit is making trouble, da rabbit will end up in da stew.”

Questioned as to whether or not the only way to heaven was by paying tribute to Jesus, he said:

“We are in da twenty-first century, buddy. Dat sort of ting is well out of date. We don’t do protection rackets. But I can say dis,” he said, tapping the side of his nose with his index finger and winking. “Dere may be a shortage of creme eggs in da next few years if you know what I mean. If dat rabbit knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep his imaginary mouth shut. I’m sending out my flying bishops to have a little talk wid dat symbolic carrot-nibbler, right now.” Shouting over his shoulder, he said: “- Boys, get tooled up.”

Asked for a reaction to the Archbishop’s words later that day, Daryl the Easter Bunny was inexplicably unavailable for comment.

Laughs

News: Nicola Sturgeon is leader of ISIS.

By Matt on Saturday, April 4, 2015

In a fascinating new twist, the Daily Telegraph has revealed that Nicola Sturgeon wants ISIS to take over Britain.

In a made-up memo quoting the Ambassador for Jupiter, Monsieur Figuement de l’Imagination, Ms Smorgisbord undoubtedly supposedly said:

“If only ISIS would behead the government and instate itself in power. That way we’d scotch two very real issues – Etonian biscuit-game-players bossing everyone around, and self determination for Scots. Remember, ISIS stands for Independent Scotland Independent Scotland, just in case you didn’t hear me the first time.”

Mr David Camomile said of these latest stunning revelations:

“I have long been seeking to portray Miss Sputum as a psychotic Claymore-wielding hobbit, but now she has truly been hoist by her own sporran. You really couldn’t make it up, but that’s because you are working class and stupid and work so many hours for no money that you don’t have time to make things up. Nor do you understand cynical media ploys, which are the reserve of the privileged few. Oh, and by the way, it was probably one of my friends at the Telecrap who actually did make it up.”

Leader of the Labia Party, Mr Ed Lilliput said:

“I was desperate for something to revive my flagging hopes in Poundland. This invented quote completely discredits Ms Sputum and the whole unjust, unfair Independent Caliphate of Scotland movement.”

Growing increasingly adenoidal, Mr Gastricband said:

“Do we really want a political system in which people who perform well in debates and don’t struggle to control their lips cheat at fair fights by being better at talking and thinking?”

Looking like a bullied schoolboy, he added:

“Really, it’s actually unfair.”

Mr Labia then cried and threatened everyone with his brother.

“Roll on independence,” he added. “We can all thank the Torycrap for that, at least.”

Events and Products

Order Portsmouth Fairy Tales in time for Christmas!

By Matt on Saturday, October 25, 2014

A fascinating book of Portsmouth stories — A fun book of Portsmouth stories

25 Stories, 11 writers, 1 city.

[wp_cart_button name=”Portsmouth Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups + postage” price=”8.99″ shipping=”2.50″] £8.99 + £2.50 p&p

[wp_cart_button name=”Portsmouth Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups” price=”8.99″] £8.99 buyer collects in Portsmouth.

This collection of fairy tales for grown-ups contains dark moral tales, historical fiction, sci-fi, comedy, fantasy, crime, memoir and surreal fiction.

All the stories have been freshly-written and all are set in and around the UK’s only island city. No chocolate box visions or soppy princesses in sight, the writers have used this magical genre to explore grown-up dilemmas, such as money problems, fear of rivalry in a relationship, floods, memories and changing bodies.

Find out why the real Guildhall clock is buried in an underground city to save time. Hear about the man who wished himself onto a ship in a whisky bottle. Discover why a Victorian detective joined forces with the circus to fight Spice Island’s criminals. Embrace your bank statement or the ghost ship will get you.

Some stories delve into the city’s rich island geography, others focus on rural Hampshire, its cow pats, mushrooms and breweries. Some have taken their favourite urban location and woven it into fantastical narratives that stretch back to Victorian times, or forward to a dystopian future.

Raw, mischievous, dark and yet familiar, these tales showcase a city bubbling with literary minds.

Price: £8.99, plus £2.50 for postage and packing worldwide.

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Opinion Writing

David Hare’s Skylight highlights how things have changed since he wrote it…

By Matt on Friday, August 1, 2014

Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy on stage together – being able to watch two big names in Portsmouth, I mean, what’s not to like?

National Theatre Live at the Vue Cinema on 31st July gave us that. In fact, it’s better than being in the West End’s Wyndham Theatre from where it was broadcast. You can eat popcorn and icecream if you like in seats designed for a 21st Century frame. Though this was the “Encore” broadcast, a re-run of a play originally broadcast live on the 17th July, and starring two hugely accomplished actors, the experience really gives you the feel of the live event.

It does take some adjustment, seeing stage acting on screen. When Kyra (Carey Mulligan) enters with her shopping, her body language as she heavily plonks her bags on the table feels distastefully overdone. Her peculiar treatment of the text books she brings home from her work as a teacher jars the eye used to the nuanced performance of the big screen.

Just so with the arrival of 18-year-old Edward, walking into the flat on the sink housing estate where Mulligan lives because she left the door open. But then, this is hard to swallow for another reason. I mean, who leaves their door open on a snowy winter’s night in a clearly troubled housing estate? I mean really, who does that? It seemed strangely middle-classly cutesy, as if Hare had forgotten Kyra lived in the inner city, but in a little country cottage somewhere in the Home Counties.

Their initial interactions were what I had feared the whole play might be. At times unreal but with occasional moments of brilliance in the dialogue, something did not gel. Edward was clearly a 2D device used to set up what was to come later between Kyra and Tom (Bill Nighy). It was uncomfortably done. Edward’s flouncing out at the end of the scene with his “You’ve got to speak to him Kyra!” was straight out of Victorian melodrama.

Tom’s arrival was much better. The story unfolded. Businessman Tom and teacher Kyra had once been an item – having an affair while he ran his expanding chain of restaurants through the 1980s. Their affair had been discovered by Nighy’s wife and Mulligan (a nice middle class woman) had gone into teaching in East Ham.

Along the way, there were moments of comedy that highlighted the snobbery of the business classes and the idealism of liberal middle classes. Essentially the play was about the collision of two world views – the money-minded and the liberal left, interspersed with some cooking and a break in the middle for a shag, which thankfully happened in the interval.

As a writer, it was interesting to see how basic the play was. David Hare, one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, used cookery to give the two actors something to do while they slugged it out with each other or came to understandings of each other’s views, or grew close, or grew apart. The cooking (I’m sure a symbol of consumerism, community and shared endeavour) alleviated the boredom of the pair standing and pontificating about how their particular views of the world were right.

Hare made a pretty good fist of making Nighy’s character likeable and sympathetic, but it was clear as the play went on that this wasn’t going to be one of those: “make your own mind up” types of plays. Carey Mulligan’s Kyra, the impassioned and idealistic middle class liberal who had given up everything to be a teacher was clearly the character with whom Hare most identified.

Towards the end , both characters ceased to be people at all. Mulligan’s Kyra especially became a mouthpiece for Hare’s opinion, with a long, tedious rant about how marvellous the public sector is and the platitude that “Wealth Creation” was not the truly important thing about life.

This was clearly intended as the highlight of the second half: a kind of super-eloquent Sixth Form Common Room rant, in which the Kyra rehearsed Hare’s particular political bugbears, and received spontaneous applause from the Wyndham’s sympathetic audience. He had pressed the right buttons for his audience, then.

By this time I genuinely had the feeling that Hare had written the play by tickbox. “Oh, okay, so I’ve now done the bit where he accuses her of being guilty. Now let’s do the bit where he accuses her of running away because she’s still in love with him. Okay, now we do the bit where she accuses him of cowardice. Okay, now selfishness…” and so on.

By the time you’d got to the end, just about every base was covered. The two characters were indeed symbols (something Hare himself highlighted in his script) who covered all the angles in the eternal battle between the private sector and public services, and between the unfaithful businessman and his young lover, picking up hypocrisies along the way.

But one really important angle was never approached.

Kyra mocked the idea of people involved in “Wealth Creation”, pointing instead to “real people” as if people involved in business are somehow “not real”. And that was the heart of the problem.

There was a much more profound discussion to be had here about that unhappy marriage, in which business and social enterprises are spliced together. Each is dependent on the other. Business is reliant on education to produce people with innovation and drive, self-belief and originality. As such, business cannot complain about taxation. It is reliant on the use of those resources to supply its employees and its consumers. The employees of business are also “real” people, prone to all the weaknesses of greed and stupidity and selfishness if that connection between business and the wider community is not nurtured.

At the same time, workers in State education (symbolising the public services) have trouble accepting the fact that without business they would not exist because no taxes would be taken to pay their wages. The fact that today there are fewer public sector wage packets than there were 6 years ago is a much bigger discussion about how the marriage works. What the covenant is between the public sector, the wider public and business was not even considered in this play.

That, I suspect, is partially because Hare is not interested in this more nuanced way of looking at the world. His writing comes straight out of the idealism of the 1960s. It’s also because Skylight was first performed in 1995, way before the Credit Crunch was a twinkle in Tony Blair’s eye. And to be frank, it showed.

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