Someday soon

A while back, OK … a long while back, one of Malcolm’s more-worthy on-line acquaintances (greetings, Zach!) expressed approval of an Ian Tyson song. Praise, indeed!:

Suddenly, this evening, out of the inexorably long iTunes overflow, out popped the classic Suzy Bogguss version hitting the very spot, with added woomph! and gender emendations:

Aw, shucks … it’s just a great song.

Now look at the (original) lyric:

There’s a young man that I know whose age is twenty-one,
Comes from down in southern Colorado.
Just out of the service, he’s lookin’ for his fun …
Someday soon, goin’ with him someday soon.

My parents cannot stand him ’cause he rides the rodeo.
My father says that he will leave me cryin’.
I would follow him right down the roughest road I know,
Someday soon, goin’ with him someday soon …

None too many years past, Malcolm taught literature. That included the ballad form. The best ballads are so deeply rooted in the folk tradition their origins are lost in time.

[Swift turn to the chalk-board and, somewhat out of practice, a quick bullet-point scribing.]

The characteristics include:

• a simple regular stanza form, with a simple ABAB or ABCB rhyme scheme;
• basic vocabulary;
• an incomplete narrative: we don’t know the start or the conclusion of the events described;
• the context is the basic human story: birth, love, death, occasional and not-understood violence, the natural and the supernatural;
• there are no happy endings;
• there is little specific characterisation;
• above all, ballads tend to be generalist, impersonal: if we are invited to empathize, it is with a universal condition, rather than through detail.

[Hip-swivel back to eye-ball the students:]

• above all, the ballad is not a novel, though many novelists impose 5W+H [who, what, where, when, why & how] on  an essentially ballad theme.

At which point, shufti on the ticking clock, and the lecturer determines whether or not to do an aside on Thomas Hardy.

So, consider just how effectively Ian Tyson ticked the boxes there. Since Tyson and his then wife (as “Ian and Sylvia”) recorded this back in 1964, on the Northern Journey album, the nod to “just out of the service” takes us to the Vietnam era, and a more general rite-of-passage than today.

Which is why this one works, strikes home, and will endure.

The old ones are the best ones

Not so long ago, to prove a point on Slugger O’Toole, Malcolm roked out his copy of The Rebels’ Ceilidh Song Book, no. 2 (published by the Bo’ness Rebels Literary Society, 1965).

Another of the great gotchas from that egalitarian source is appropriate again, with minor adaptation:

Sing a sang o’ tax an’ woe,
Empty pooches in a row,
The Chancellor’s collectin’ dough
A’ for Wullie’s wedding …

Yorkshire weather

Whether the weather be hot,
Or whether the weather be not,
We’ll weather the weather,
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.

Not that we have much choice, anyway.

However, things Malcolm noticed:

When the early morning sky is clear, in that hour or so before dawn, the Morning Star drills you in the eye, a skewering light in the eastern sky. Then the horizon runs through an astounding range of pastel shades before the sun finally takes front stage. This goes unremarked in the city, with the degree of light pollution we take as normal.

There was a clear sky on Monday, but some how there was the faintest drizzle in the air. This produced a superb rainbow against the blue of the aether. Again, something quite remarkable.

Then, yesterday (Tuesday) the Lady in his Life and Malcolm entered the supermarket in bright sunshine, and emerged to swirling mists of near-freezing fog. By the afternoon school run, visibility was down to a few yards.

In the early hours, the wind increased, and a small storm developed. Then still air again.

Brits are widely mocked for their obsession with the weather. For a so-called “temperate” climate, we enjoy or endure, depending on mood and inclination, an astounding variety of experience.

Job ad

Here’s a clue from The Guardian:

Domestic violence adviser

Lesson three: “Hit him harder. Use an axe.”

This post was granted the Bad Taste Award for 16th November 2010.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the badge

While the LibDems rend themselves apart over the pledge on tuition fees, Malcolm discovered an even greater dispute raging in Yorkshire.

Yorkshire grandson number one has been elected to the junior school council. He is a committed “with bits” man. He is being aggressively lobbied by his younger brother, who disdains bits in his lunchtime yoghurt.

What to do?

• To maintain personal principles?

or

• Represent the views of the constituents?

When approached for guidance, Malcolm recited Burke’s address to the voters of Bristol, and its classic defence of representative democracy:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays you, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

This was received with a cold, fishy eye.

Doh!

Headline from the Harrogate Advertiser:

Drinker forgot drinking ban due to drink

Gotcha?

Hello, hello, hello! What have we here?

Andy Coulson, the Tory communications chief, was facing fresh scrutiny about the News of the World phone hacking scandal as prosecutors reviewed a new file of evidence from police

Twice in a week!

First, a week ago, there was the visit of Inspector Knacker to the front door of Downing Street. Doing it so blatantly was instructive in itself.

Then the guys with the metal on their caps and shoulders allowed the poor bloody infantry to be monstered and (enough to make the headlines) bloodied, while 30 Millbank was trashed … just to prove one point.

Now they dip the Coulson into the merde.

As Ian Fleming famously had it, once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, three times is enemy action.

The question is: whom are they leaning on?

• the whole ConDem apparatus?
• those constraining police budgets (as that defying-the-gods speech by Theresa May)?
• just Blasted Boris, who put the first boot in, and claims to “run” the Met?

So greetings to all from a bright, clear Yorkshire morning.

A good demo, a bad press, and very bad faith

The London media, obedient to the “official” dog-whistle, today have up front the small riot outside Tory HQ at Millbank.

There can be little regret at New Scotland Yard, either, over their “miscalculation”. Once again the message has gone to their political masters that the Thin Blue Line needs its financing in full. Very convenient.

As a result the tens of thousands of peaceful (and generally cheerful) protestors and the steamrollering of Nick Clegg in PMQs can safely be overlooked, even despised, and certainly proven guilty by association.

Which is remarkably convenient for the ConDem apologists.

Despite the efforts to represent the Millbank episode as the norm, there might, just might be a clue in those anarchist symbols spray-painted on the windows before they were broken.

The truth is there were present many hundred times more ex-LibDem student voters than this small posse of Fifth Columnists.

The student vote

What will not go away is that the LibDem campaign among students, before May, was profoundly dishonest. No fewer than 45 constituencies have student populations of  more than 10% of the electorate. In Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam it is 12%.

Which may explain those Tory smirks at Clegg’s PMQ discomfit.

Take the top dozen student populations and it becomes clear just how important their vote has been to the LibDems.

Five of that dozen are LibDem seats:

• Cardiff Central (LibDem hold, maj 4,576) 24.90% student vote.
• Cambridge (LibDem hold, maj 6,792) 24.10% student vote.
• Leeds North West (LibDem hold, maj 9,103) 23.50% student vote.
• Bristol West (LibDem hold, maj 11,366 on 5% swing) 19.90% student vote.
• Manchester Withington (LibDem hold, maj 1,894) 16.40% student vote.

In six of the rest of that twelve, LibDems ran second.

Selling that student vote down the river may well be the LibDems’ greatest mistake.

Despite the Press manipulation, exaggeration and distortion, the anger of students (and of families suffering these new education supertaxes) will not go away.

Above all, the ConDems prove that …

They put a price on everything, and value honour in nothing.

Things one is better not knowing …

Malcolm, getting in the mood for the Ashes series, clicked the hot link on the BBC website:

Cricket earns big testicles title

Well, facing Aussie fast bowlers in front of a capacity MCG crowd surely qualifies.

Sadly it was all about something entirely different:

Bush cricket testicle size clue to promiscuous mating

Yeah, yeah: really useful science stuff here.

Even so, when Doctor Karim Vahed of the University of Derby (huh?) pontificates on his Tuberous Bushcricket (Platycleis affinis) , it makes the eyes water:

It’s like having testes the combined mass of 11 bags of sugar.

Where’s Willy?

OK, we’ve found Wally (a.k.a. Waldo). We’ve found Stig. Yet, it was a bit of a surprise to find Wee Willy Hague as Nick Clegg’s missing back-bone.

There he was, grim as Yorkshire gritstone, the bastard child of Winston Churchill and Nora Batty, on the Front Bench for PMQs.

As the half-hour wound on, he and his mates became obviously, increasingly despondent at the car-crash they were witnessing. If Speaker Bercow allowed a minute or so for injury-time, it merely exacerbated the injuries done.

James Kirkup for the Telegraph has it to rights:

The faces on the Government benches spoke volumes today: Lib Dems looked grim, grim, grim. And several Tories were trying to suppress smiles at Mr Clegg’s discomfort in defending their policy.

The start of that piece [Nick Clegg has just been beaten up by a girl] may be a half-reminder of one of The West Wing‘s greatest hits: episode 4, series 2, the first encounter between Ainsley Hayes and Sam Seaborn — Ginger, get the pop-corn! It certainly got the flavour: Hatty is no push-over on these occasions; and her put-down had “no more than thirty” Clegg in quivers:

We all know what it’s like, you’re at Freshers Week, you meet up with a dodgy bloke and do things you regret. Isn’t it true he’s been led astray by the Tories?

But why?

• Why was Hague not in Beijing and on the way to Seoul?
• Is it because his travel-buddy, “Lord” Ashcroft of Sleaze is no longer available?
• Is it because the beguiling Ms Mellon got his seat?

It certainly begs the question:

• what is Britain’s foreign policy, if China and Korea do not feature strongly?