I hate religion. I hate the way it perpetuates ignorance, false guilt, paedophilia, sectarianism, murder, torture, intolerance, Jehovah witnesses knocking on your door, Jihad suicide bombers, the list goes on.
One could believe that that there are lots people who are incapable of rational thought. They are simply animals to be willingly herded, housed, milked and fleeced.
Thursday, 7 November 2013
Friday, 12 April 2013
Birch Sap Wine
Over the years I have made wine from a great range of ingredients, (including grapes, eventually!) but birch sap was never one of them. The idea of boring a hole in a tree and collecting sap for the purpose of making wine sounds intriguing, but it was only when my neighbour recently had her birch tree savagely butchered by a couple of cheap cowboys who simply severed the 3 main boughs, tearing the bark in the process. It's a mature tree, the trunk being about ten inches in diameter. It had grown very tall and was close enough to the houses to be a problem by clogging the gutters and drains with leaves. There are very simple and cheap remedies for this: gutter and drain leafguards, which I suggested but my advice was ignored.
There is a curious relationship between humans and trees. There was a time when trees dominated. There are still a few human cultures who live among them, respect them and benefit from what they have to offer. Trees pump oxygen into the atmosphere, without which humans cannot survive yet they are relentlessly destroyed.
March is probably the worst time to prune a birch because this is when the sap starts to rise. The tree started to 'bleed' from its wounds. I tried to 'cauterise' the wounds with a blow torch and apply a coating of wound sealant, but it still kept dripping. So I placed various containers at the base to collect the sap, with a view to make this curious wine. So far, I have gathered 20 litres. It has a pleasant, vaguely sweet flavour. I looked up an old recipe, which involved 2 lemons, 1 sweet orange, 1 seville orange and either a pound of chopped raisins or half a pint of white grape juice concentrate, and 3 pounds of sugar, per gallon. This reminds me of the story of 'Stone Soup', which is about deception. But birch sap wine has been made for centuries and presumably has some credibility worth investigating.
I have some questions about the recipe. It comes from the classic 'First Steps in Winemaking' by C J Berry. I have tried a number of the recipes included and have found some questionable. Let's analyse this one.
First find your tree. If you don't happen to have a mature one in your garden, you have an immediate problem. If you have one, or access to one, you need to drill a hole just within the bark, with a 3/4 inch drill bit and then insert a spigot. Forget that. I used a synthetic wine cork which had been drilled to accept a 10 mm clear plastic tube, the other end of which fitted into a bored bung for a denijohn. You will also need another synthetic cork to plug the hole when you have finished. The hole in the tree should be slanting slightly downwards (80 degrees). In my case, sap dripped for a few days and then stopped, yielding only 2 litres. Most of the sap came from the bleeding wounds above.
These drippings were fairly erratic and difficult to predict, so I arranged a number of wide mouth jars in strategic places. This worked reasonably well untill very heavy rainfall diluted the the sap significantly!
Meanwhile I started processing the wine in batches. The denijohn glass jars I use typically hold 5.5 litres max, somewhat in excess of an imperial gallon, 4.5 litres. Adding chopped raisins, orange and lemon juice and sugar to the bucket of must amounted to over 6 litres. Straining reduced this somewhat. At no time did I consider 3 pounds of sugar per gallon to be valid for anything other than a sweet wine, which, at this stage, I would prefer to avoid.
After 3 weeks the flow slowed down to the occasional drip after I had collected 11 gallons and the tree burst into leaf, so hopefully no harm done. The first batch of wine has fermented down to sg 0.093 and is very dry. I had to add extra yeast nutrient to get it to this point. The alcohol is 13%. It has the bouquet of the citrus peel and has a zesty mouthfeel, which lingers on the palate.
There is a curious relationship between humans and trees. There was a time when trees dominated. There are still a few human cultures who live among them, respect them and benefit from what they have to offer. Trees pump oxygen into the atmosphere, without which humans cannot survive yet they are relentlessly destroyed.
March is probably the worst time to prune a birch because this is when the sap starts to rise. The tree started to 'bleed' from its wounds. I tried to 'cauterise' the wounds with a blow torch and apply a coating of wound sealant, but it still kept dripping. So I placed various containers at the base to collect the sap, with a view to make this curious wine. So far, I have gathered 20 litres. It has a pleasant, vaguely sweet flavour. I looked up an old recipe, which involved 2 lemons, 1 sweet orange, 1 seville orange and either a pound of chopped raisins or half a pint of white grape juice concentrate, and 3 pounds of sugar, per gallon. This reminds me of the story of 'Stone Soup', which is about deception. But birch sap wine has been made for centuries and presumably has some credibility worth investigating.
I have some questions about the recipe. It comes from the classic 'First Steps in Winemaking' by C J Berry. I have tried a number of the recipes included and have found some questionable. Let's analyse this one.
First find your tree. If you don't happen to have a mature one in your garden, you have an immediate problem. If you have one, or access to one, you need to drill a hole just within the bark, with a 3/4 inch drill bit and then insert a spigot. Forget that. I used a synthetic wine cork which had been drilled to accept a 10 mm clear plastic tube, the other end of which fitted into a bored bung for a denijohn. You will also need another synthetic cork to plug the hole when you have finished. The hole in the tree should be slanting slightly downwards (80 degrees). In my case, sap dripped for a few days and then stopped, yielding only 2 litres. Most of the sap came from the bleeding wounds above.
These drippings were fairly erratic and difficult to predict, so I arranged a number of wide mouth jars in strategic places. This worked reasonably well untill very heavy rainfall diluted the the sap significantly!
Meanwhile I started processing the wine in batches. The denijohn glass jars I use typically hold 5.5 litres max, somewhat in excess of an imperial gallon, 4.5 litres. Adding chopped raisins, orange and lemon juice and sugar to the bucket of must amounted to over 6 litres. Straining reduced this somewhat. At no time did I consider 3 pounds of sugar per gallon to be valid for anything other than a sweet wine, which, at this stage, I would prefer to avoid.
After 3 weeks the flow slowed down to the occasional drip after I had collected 11 gallons and the tree burst into leaf, so hopefully no harm done. The first batch of wine has fermented down to sg 0.093 and is very dry. I had to add extra yeast nutrient to get it to this point. The alcohol is 13%. It has the bouquet of the citrus peel and has a zesty mouthfeel, which lingers on the palate.
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Boxing
Decades ago, at school, we had boxing. It was compulsory, after a certain age. You had to train for it, but nothing prepared me for facing my deskmake, in the ring, in front of the whole school, for 3 rounds. We didn't want to hurt each other, so we dodged about. And then he hit me. End of round 1. Round 2, I felt obliged to hit back so, near the the end, I hit him. Round 3. Near the end, I let him hit me. I didn't hurt.
In a subsequent bout, a gentle giant friend of mine gave his opponent, an equally harmless chap, a nosebleed and then proceeded to pound his bleeding nose. It was shocking. The fight was stopped.
Later on, a notorious school bully was given a severe pasting by a seemingly inocuous bloke who had very long arms. Despite the obvious suffering taking place, the pasting was allowed to continue to the bitter end, with the full support of the staff! His bullying days were over.
The following year, boxing was discontinued.
A few years later, I was working as a student teacher in a primary school off the Old Kent Road. There was a nasty incident of verbal racial abuse by an obnoxious white boy against a black girl. I was aware of boxing gloves and ropes for a boxing ring in the stores. Clearly, there had been boxing on the curriculum in the past. I took it upon myself to have the matter resolved by physical combat. Without consulting the headteacher, I arranged for a match on the rooftop playground after school. After 30 seconds of continuous pummelling to the white boy's face, I stopped the match and declared the black girl the winner. No further racial incidents ocurred while I was there.
In a subsequent bout, a gentle giant friend of mine gave his opponent, an equally harmless chap, a nosebleed and then proceeded to pound his bleeding nose. It was shocking. The fight was stopped.
Later on, a notorious school bully was given a severe pasting by a seemingly inocuous bloke who had very long arms. Despite the obvious suffering taking place, the pasting was allowed to continue to the bitter end, with the full support of the staff! His bullying days were over.
The following year, boxing was discontinued.
A few years later, I was working as a student teacher in a primary school off the Old Kent Road. There was a nasty incident of verbal racial abuse by an obnoxious white boy against a black girl. I was aware of boxing gloves and ropes for a boxing ring in the stores. Clearly, there had been boxing on the curriculum in the past. I took it upon myself to have the matter resolved by physical combat. Without consulting the headteacher, I arranged for a match on the rooftop playground after school. After 30 seconds of continuous pummelling to the white boy's face, I stopped the match and declared the black girl the winner. No further racial incidents ocurred while I was there.
Monday, 28 May 2012
Xenophobia
I was born in London, UK, in 1950. On my father's side, I can trace my ancestors to middle England, 400 years ago and my maternal grandparents were Londoners, but I have not yet traced them back any further. Despite this, I have always been considered 'foreign looking', not only in my own country, but everywhere else, except Turkey. My uncle was arrested during World War 2 on suspision of being an Italian spy, being in posession of thick black curly hair, a dark complexion and a bicycle.
I'm pretty sure my father's mother was Jewish which, although denied by family members, makes him Jewish, because if your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish. Fortunately for me, when my father was captured by the Nazis as a British soldier, they had no access to his family records. Otherwise I would not exist.
I heard on the radio that we British are 90% pre Roman in terms of DNA and that the invaders have only imposed a 10% overlay. Also, we can draw a line at 1940 being descendants of those born here as being British. That's fairly consistent with the definitive historical work '1066 and all that', which concludes that English history ends with the conclusion of World War 2. This was written before the Suez crisis, but is broadly correct.
We imported Indians to work in the car tyre industry because they could work in the high heat and humidy required to manufacture the stuff. The rationale for importing West Indians to work as bus conductors in London is a little less obvious, but the sad result is that bus conducters are no longer required, resulting in gangs of unemployed black youth roaming the the streets, armed with guns and knives, denims hanging at half mast and bombarding us white folks with rap, bling and attitude, plus increased street violence, burglary and muggings.
But that is not the worst of it. We can cope with disorganised, self destructive, in fighting dumb niggers. We built a dubious empire out of that. The bigger threat is semi intelligent eastern Europeans who know how to play the game to their own advantage and suck us UK tax payers dry. They lack culture, they have no clue about cricket and shout into their mobile phones in their own offensive languages with no regard for others.
I now have 'Kosovans' as neighbours. They are really Albanian economic refugees, encouraged by the likes of Paddy Ashdown as legitimate refugees from an oppressive Serbian persecution.
They are not bad people, but their peasant Albanian culture is not compatible with mine. My attempts to educate them in the concept of a garden is hard work, not helped by the fact that the landlords of the rented property are Indians, whose concept of a low maintenance garden is concrete.
It could get even worse. Somalis.
I fear I am becoming legend.
I'm pretty sure my father's mother was Jewish which, although denied by family members, makes him Jewish, because if your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish. Fortunately for me, when my father was captured by the Nazis as a British soldier, they had no access to his family records. Otherwise I would not exist.
I heard on the radio that we British are 90% pre Roman in terms of DNA and that the invaders have only imposed a 10% overlay. Also, we can draw a line at 1940 being descendants of those born here as being British. That's fairly consistent with the definitive historical work '1066 and all that', which concludes that English history ends with the conclusion of World War 2. This was written before the Suez crisis, but is broadly correct.
We imported Indians to work in the car tyre industry because they could work in the high heat and humidy required to manufacture the stuff. The rationale for importing West Indians to work as bus conductors in London is a little less obvious, but the sad result is that bus conducters are no longer required, resulting in gangs of unemployed black youth roaming the the streets, armed with guns and knives, denims hanging at half mast and bombarding us white folks with rap, bling and attitude, plus increased street violence, burglary and muggings.
But that is not the worst of it. We can cope with disorganised, self destructive, in fighting dumb niggers. We built a dubious empire out of that. The bigger threat is semi intelligent eastern Europeans who know how to play the game to their own advantage and suck us UK tax payers dry. They lack culture, they have no clue about cricket and shout into their mobile phones in their own offensive languages with no regard for others.
I now have 'Kosovans' as neighbours. They are really Albanian economic refugees, encouraged by the likes of Paddy Ashdown as legitimate refugees from an oppressive Serbian persecution.
They are not bad people, but their peasant Albanian culture is not compatible with mine. My attempts to educate them in the concept of a garden is hard work, not helped by the fact that the landlords of the rented property are Indians, whose concept of a low maintenance garden is concrete.
It could get even worse. Somalis.
I fear I am becoming legend.
Food of the gods
Also known as Ambrosia. Gods, being immortal, need no food, or maybe they rely on anbrosia to keep them immortal, in which case: who makes the stuff for them and what is the formula?
It's been a while since the age of reason, yet we still talk and think in terms of the sun rising and setting, as if the world is flat and the sun revolves around it. Around 2 billion folk call themselves christians, believing they can do whatever they please, so long as they say sorry before they die and then they can live forever in paradise. Even if this were true, how can they imagine that spending eternity with people like themselves would be any better than how they live now? The sad answer is yes, but no better. Just a continuation, including all the bad bits that they cling onto as the only vaguely interesting parts of their lives. The popularity of soaps relies on this. You can see them all still queing up for lottery tickets and scratch cards even though they have achieved eternity!
For those of us who see certain death as a welcome relief from the crap of current culture, here is a palliative:
It's been a while since the age of reason, yet we still talk and think in terms of the sun rising and setting, as if the world is flat and the sun revolves around it. Around 2 billion folk call themselves christians, believing they can do whatever they please, so long as they say sorry before they die and then they can live forever in paradise. Even if this were true, how can they imagine that spending eternity with people like themselves would be any better than how they live now? The sad answer is yes, but no better. Just a continuation, including all the bad bits that they cling onto as the only vaguely interesting parts of their lives. The popularity of soaps relies on this. You can see them all still queing up for lottery tickets and scratch cards even though they have achieved eternity!
For those of us who see certain death as a welcome relief from the crap of current culture, here is a palliative:
Beerenauslesen: For a couple of years I managed to get a few half
bottles of this superb and uncommon medium sweet German white wine from
Aldi just before Xmas at a very reasonable price, but sadly no more.
However, this recipe, for 1 gallon, comes pretty close, if left for a
year:
4 lb parsnips
1 ltr pineapple juice
1 ltr white grape juice
680 g cheap clear honey
12 oz sugar
1/4 tsp tannin
2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 1/4 tsp tartaric acid
25 g glycerin
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Yeast, preferably sauternes
Chop parsnips, boil 20 mins in 5 pints of water, strain onto juice, add honey, tannin, acid and glycerin. When cool, add pectic enzyme, nutrient and yeast. Strain after 3 days then add sugar. When fermentation, racking and clearing complete, leave for a year before drinking.
4 lb parsnips
1 ltr pineapple juice
1 ltr white grape juice
680 g cheap clear honey
12 oz sugar
1/4 tsp tannin
2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 1/4 tsp tartaric acid
25 g glycerin
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Yeast, preferably sauternes
Chop parsnips, boil 20 mins in 5 pints of water, strain onto juice, add honey, tannin, acid and glycerin. When cool, add pectic enzyme, nutrient and yeast. Strain after 3 days then add sugar. When fermentation, racking and clearing complete, leave for a year before drinking.
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
An aquatic solution
For years I fought a losing battle against the persistent and pernicious weeds which invaded the back my garden from the railway embankment. I decided that if I built a pond, then they would have no place to take root.
My father built a concrete pond and it seemed to give him a great deal of pleasure maintaining and developing it.
I went to the library and read up on it. Basically, you dig a big hole, line it with thick fabric and place a pond liner over that, anchor it with some crazy paving and fill it with water.
In practise, it's rather more complicated than that. I marked out the optimum minimum area for a viable pond, 6 square metres, and excavated about a ton of earth, piled up at the back, creating a hole roughly similar to a mirror dinghy. Then I got the linings and paving and filled it with water. There was a shelf around most of the edge for plants in aquatic containers and a sloping 'beach' at one end for wildlife to use and a sharp drop the other end for a waterfall. All this effort gave me an abdominal hernia, which required an operation.
I bought two preformed cascades and installed them, along with a pump and filter, which also involved installing outdoor electricity. Both pump and filter turned out to be inadequate, to I had to invest in bigger stuff.
I populated the pond with marginal and oxygenating plants and bought some fish to eat mosquito larvae.
All seemed well until I was about to go away to house sit for my sister. The pump broke down and had to be replaced. While I was away, my neighbou,r who was charged with keeping an eye on it, sent me a message to say that all was not well. I cut short my holiday and returned to find the pond half empty and the fish gasping for breath. The filter had clogged up and water was not flowing. Just 10 days of hot rainless weather had evapourated half of the water!
I had to install an outside tap and run a hose to a ball valve to keep the pond automatically topped up.
Then came the heron. It seemed that all the fish had been eaten. I restocked the pond with fish and installed all sorts of seemingly clever devices to deter this menace, to no avail. This old heron had seen them all before and was not to be deterred.
Then one day there was a truly remarkable encounter. I had surrounded the pond with fishing line, installed a decoy plastic male heron, placed a net over the pond, supported by wooden laths and a passive infrared sensor which sprayed a jet of water at anything warm blooded which moved before it. The heron arrived, cautiously. It stepped over the fishing line, kicked over the fake heron and approached the sensor, very slowly. It responded but the bird merely got splashed on the beak. There is an 8 second pause before it fires again, giving the bird time to move directly in front of it. It only responds to movement across its range. The heron casually walked along the wooden lath to the centre of the pond and peered down. There was plenty of duckweed under which the wary fish could hide and a net to trap the heron's beak if it made a stab. After a while, it turned its head towards me. It knew I had been watching it. The message was, 'Ok, you you've got me buggered here!'
It never returned, but the scared fish came out of cover, so I had too many of them, and they were breeding too. This played havoc with the filter, so I had to get a really big one.
I had misinterpreted the heron's message. What it was trying to say was that it was here to keep the fish population under control and get a meal in return for my services, you idiot!
I didn't need the fish to control the mosquito lavae. Damselfly larvae would take care of that, given the chance.
Nonetheless the pond has rid the area of brambles, thistles and suchlike and is a pleasant place to sit and listen to test match special and grow watercress. Furthermore, now that there is a hosepipe ban in place, I am exempt, on account of having a pond with fish!
My father built a concrete pond and it seemed to give him a great deal of pleasure maintaining and developing it.
I went to the library and read up on it. Basically, you dig a big hole, line it with thick fabric and place a pond liner over that, anchor it with some crazy paving and fill it with water.
In practise, it's rather more complicated than that. I marked out the optimum minimum area for a viable pond, 6 square metres, and excavated about a ton of earth, piled up at the back, creating a hole roughly similar to a mirror dinghy. Then I got the linings and paving and filled it with water. There was a shelf around most of the edge for plants in aquatic containers and a sloping 'beach' at one end for wildlife to use and a sharp drop the other end for a waterfall. All this effort gave me an abdominal hernia, which required an operation.
I bought two preformed cascades and installed them, along with a pump and filter, which also involved installing outdoor electricity. Both pump and filter turned out to be inadequate, to I had to invest in bigger stuff.
I populated the pond with marginal and oxygenating plants and bought some fish to eat mosquito larvae.
All seemed well until I was about to go away to house sit for my sister. The pump broke down and had to be replaced. While I was away, my neighbou,r who was charged with keeping an eye on it, sent me a message to say that all was not well. I cut short my holiday and returned to find the pond half empty and the fish gasping for breath. The filter had clogged up and water was not flowing. Just 10 days of hot rainless weather had evapourated half of the water!
I had to install an outside tap and run a hose to a ball valve to keep the pond automatically topped up.
Then came the heron. It seemed that all the fish had been eaten. I restocked the pond with fish and installed all sorts of seemingly clever devices to deter this menace, to no avail. This old heron had seen them all before and was not to be deterred.
Then one day there was a truly remarkable encounter. I had surrounded the pond with fishing line, installed a decoy plastic male heron, placed a net over the pond, supported by wooden laths and a passive infrared sensor which sprayed a jet of water at anything warm blooded which moved before it. The heron arrived, cautiously. It stepped over the fishing line, kicked over the fake heron and approached the sensor, very slowly. It responded but the bird merely got splashed on the beak. There is an 8 second pause before it fires again, giving the bird time to move directly in front of it. It only responds to movement across its range. The heron casually walked along the wooden lath to the centre of the pond and peered down. There was plenty of duckweed under which the wary fish could hide and a net to trap the heron's beak if it made a stab. After a while, it turned its head towards me. It knew I had been watching it. The message was, 'Ok, you you've got me buggered here!'
It never returned, but the scared fish came out of cover, so I had too many of them, and they were breeding too. This played havoc with the filter, so I had to get a really big one.
I had misinterpreted the heron's message. What it was trying to say was that it was here to keep the fish population under control and get a meal in return for my services, you idiot!
I didn't need the fish to control the mosquito lavae. Damselfly larvae would take care of that, given the chance.
Nonetheless the pond has rid the area of brambles, thistles and suchlike and is a pleasant place to sit and listen to test match special and grow watercress. Furthermore, now that there is a hosepipe ban in place, I am exempt, on account of having a pond with fish!
Friends, and how to live without them
Although essentially somewhat a loner, I have always appreciated friends, especially when younger. A friendless childhood is painfully lonely and probably stunts development. I wasn't a joiner. If it was a gang, then I set up my own for others to join, until the novelty wore off. I didn't join the photographic society, I took it over and helped create and run the film society.
Friends are supportive, interesting and lots of fun. Usually neighbours, school friends and even cousins. You come together through proximity and regular contact. You share common interests, like bicycles, TV, games, music and problems.
I was fortunate enough to have the right skills to do well in the 11 plus exams and was told I could choose any secondary school I wanted, but the one I chose was the one that most of my friends were going to, which, fortunately for me, was a grammar school. I had plenty of other friends, but I never saw them again, apart from one who I met at a party some years later. I started talking to him, pleased to see him, but he only replied, 'You talk different. Posh, like.' And that was that!It was a revalatory moment. It wasn't that I had lost my working class South London accent. My language had changed. I was being groomed for university and 'secondary modern' schools, predating comprehensive education, set less academic goals, expecting most to leave at the earliest opportunity to seek work.
By then, most of my old schoolfriends had faded from view and new relationships developed in a way never to be repeated after we finally left school altogether and all together. Diaspora. I went to Spain, some went to university, others gained employment. One died in a plane crash. But the bonds between us were strong and forming new relationships of that quality proved difficult, so we somehow kept together, until women, and then children broke us apart.
In a classic move, I was seduced by the girlfiend of one. Things were never the same after that. The final divide was children. I simply could not carry on for long with my friends who did not have children, all but one of them, but I had plenty of time for people who did and lived locally. But these were utilitarian relationships. An 'adult' world of sharing the trials of child rearing, in which we had no training or preparation, child minding arrangements so we could escape the burden for a quick meal out round the corner and a supply of playmates for our bored kids.
But it was all rather thin. When it became obvious that my marriage was breaking up, they all fell away. No longer a member of the happy families club!
I had good friends at various jobs, but few persisted when I moved on.
Perhaps a good measure of friendship is those who make the effort to support you in a crisis. I found myself in hospital with severe facial injuries. Who came to visit me? My eldest daughter, my son, my partner (girlfriend is a term she won't accept, which is fair enough, as we are both divorcees with children) and 2 friends, who were former work colleagues. One of these has since moved away and the other refuses to return my calls since I cancelled a meeting at a pub due to tiredness caused by the after effects of anaesthetics.
When I was self employed, I discovered the joy of business relationships. They are so clear cut. You solve a problem for them and they give you money. If they like what you do and what you charge, you have a regular customer. When they don't need you anymore, that's it. A clean cut.
The longest friendship I ever maintained ended badly. I met this guy when we were 16 and we had mopeds. Actually he had a moped and I had a Honda 50, which had no pedals and went faster. This was a fundamental aspect of the friendship which was to last 35 years. Eventually his work took him to live in Italy, with his wife, daughter and dog. We kept in touch by phone and I proposed to come and visit him. He kept deferring the date, on the grounds of having lots of visitors, but in the end I insisted a date in the autumn and booked the ferry. Before I left, I left him a mobile phone message to say that I would be on my way by car within 48 hours and would see him in a few days time.
I got no reply, assumed all was well and set off on the long road to Italy. On the third day, I rang him to say that I would be with him that day and was told there was a problem. I had planned to stay for a week, but he had to go to England on business. That was an obvious lie. He clearly didn't want me there at all, but lacked the guts to tell me, and the reason. I stayed just 2 days, all was well and convivial and I returned to England, when my mobile phone kicked in again. There was a belated message about this 'problem' sent after I had crossed to Europe. I exploded in anger.
For the next 10 years I was unable to contact him. Why would a close fiend of 35 years act like that? I rang his mother, who said that he had moved to Portugal, but it was clear that she had been instructed not to give out contact details.
Then one day, in a car park, a woman approached me asking for directions. It was his wife. I was overjoyed to see her and she seemed pleased to see me too, although she did not immediately recognise me, as I had grown a beard. We talked a bit and she said thet had returned to England to look after his mother. I asked why he had cut off contact and she said she had no idea. She gave me her email address.
Months passed and eventually I sent her a message, asking her to get her husband to explain. I got a reply.
'You specifically said, in front of my Jewish wife and daughter, that all Jews should be taken out and shot. That is why I cut you out of my life.'
I was astounded. I had no recollection of saying that. My father was Jewish, on account of his mother being Jewish, although my mother wasn't, so technically I am not, but I had lots of Jewish friends and was invited to a ba'mitsfa. They used to say that the best anti-semitic jokes were invented by Jews. My father was a prisoner of war in Germany and they didn't know he was Jewish, but if they had, I would not exist. This was not a satisfactory explanation at all. It was insane. There had never been any indication of hostility from his wife, far from it. Are, there it is. Chercher la Femme!
It is said that men like the the sound of the female voice, but they trust a man's voice.
So, virtually friendless, I progress down the vale of years. Friends? Sod the buggers!
Friends are supportive, interesting and lots of fun. Usually neighbours, school friends and even cousins. You come together through proximity and regular contact. You share common interests, like bicycles, TV, games, music and problems.
I was fortunate enough to have the right skills to do well in the 11 plus exams and was told I could choose any secondary school I wanted, but the one I chose was the one that most of my friends were going to, which, fortunately for me, was a grammar school. I had plenty of other friends, but I never saw them again, apart from one who I met at a party some years later. I started talking to him, pleased to see him, but he only replied, 'You talk different. Posh, like.' And that was that!It was a revalatory moment. It wasn't that I had lost my working class South London accent. My language had changed. I was being groomed for university and 'secondary modern' schools, predating comprehensive education, set less academic goals, expecting most to leave at the earliest opportunity to seek work.
By then, most of my old schoolfriends had faded from view and new relationships developed in a way never to be repeated after we finally left school altogether and all together. Diaspora. I went to Spain, some went to university, others gained employment. One died in a plane crash. But the bonds between us were strong and forming new relationships of that quality proved difficult, so we somehow kept together, until women, and then children broke us apart.
In a classic move, I was seduced by the girlfiend of one. Things were never the same after that. The final divide was children. I simply could not carry on for long with my friends who did not have children, all but one of them, but I had plenty of time for people who did and lived locally. But these were utilitarian relationships. An 'adult' world of sharing the trials of child rearing, in which we had no training or preparation, child minding arrangements so we could escape the burden for a quick meal out round the corner and a supply of playmates for our bored kids.
But it was all rather thin. When it became obvious that my marriage was breaking up, they all fell away. No longer a member of the happy families club!
I had good friends at various jobs, but few persisted when I moved on.
Perhaps a good measure of friendship is those who make the effort to support you in a crisis. I found myself in hospital with severe facial injuries. Who came to visit me? My eldest daughter, my son, my partner (girlfriend is a term she won't accept, which is fair enough, as we are both divorcees with children) and 2 friends, who were former work colleagues. One of these has since moved away and the other refuses to return my calls since I cancelled a meeting at a pub due to tiredness caused by the after effects of anaesthetics.
When I was self employed, I discovered the joy of business relationships. They are so clear cut. You solve a problem for them and they give you money. If they like what you do and what you charge, you have a regular customer. When they don't need you anymore, that's it. A clean cut.
The longest friendship I ever maintained ended badly. I met this guy when we were 16 and we had mopeds. Actually he had a moped and I had a Honda 50, which had no pedals and went faster. This was a fundamental aspect of the friendship which was to last 35 years. Eventually his work took him to live in Italy, with his wife, daughter and dog. We kept in touch by phone and I proposed to come and visit him. He kept deferring the date, on the grounds of having lots of visitors, but in the end I insisted a date in the autumn and booked the ferry. Before I left, I left him a mobile phone message to say that I would be on my way by car within 48 hours and would see him in a few days time.
I got no reply, assumed all was well and set off on the long road to Italy. On the third day, I rang him to say that I would be with him that day and was told there was a problem. I had planned to stay for a week, but he had to go to England on business. That was an obvious lie. He clearly didn't want me there at all, but lacked the guts to tell me, and the reason. I stayed just 2 days, all was well and convivial and I returned to England, when my mobile phone kicked in again. There was a belated message about this 'problem' sent after I had crossed to Europe. I exploded in anger.
For the next 10 years I was unable to contact him. Why would a close fiend of 35 years act like that? I rang his mother, who said that he had moved to Portugal, but it was clear that she had been instructed not to give out contact details.
Then one day, in a car park, a woman approached me asking for directions. It was his wife. I was overjoyed to see her and she seemed pleased to see me too, although she did not immediately recognise me, as I had grown a beard. We talked a bit and she said thet had returned to England to look after his mother. I asked why he had cut off contact and she said she had no idea. She gave me her email address.
Months passed and eventually I sent her a message, asking her to get her husband to explain. I got a reply.
'You specifically said, in front of my Jewish wife and daughter, that all Jews should be taken out and shot. That is why I cut you out of my life.'
I was astounded. I had no recollection of saying that. My father was Jewish, on account of his mother being Jewish, although my mother wasn't, so technically I am not, but I had lots of Jewish friends and was invited to a ba'mitsfa. They used to say that the best anti-semitic jokes were invented by Jews. My father was a prisoner of war in Germany and they didn't know he was Jewish, but if they had, I would not exist. This was not a satisfactory explanation at all. It was insane. There had never been any indication of hostility from his wife, far from it. Are, there it is. Chercher la Femme!
It is said that men like the the sound of the female voice, but they trust a man's voice.
So, virtually friendless, I progress down the vale of years. Friends? Sod the buggers!
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