Seriously now

Anything involving or touched by Gordon is, perforce, Serious. Gordon and frivolous or merely light don't go together comfortably. I actually listened yesterday to most of his speech delivered to a rapt audiance at Bournemouth. Listening to Gordon is hard work. My attention wavered and I did, eventually, switch off - but only after losing track of Gordon's argument, if that's the right word for what he delivered.

I'm still not quite sure what Gordon was advocating.

Early on he said: "I stand for a Britain where everyone should rise as far as their talents can take them and then the talents of each of us should contribute to the well being of all. "

Further into the speech he said: "In Britain today too many still cannot rise as far as their talents can take them."

And then he elaborates, at length on this theme as follows:

How many men and women who hope to move up the ladder in mid career are deprived of the chance to upgrade their skills and jobs? How much talent that could flourish is lost through a poverty of aspiration: wasted not because young talents fail to reach the stars but because they grow up with no stars to reach for?

And how many of our youngest children are still deprived of the early learning they need. Why should we accept so many children destined to fail even before their life's journey has begun?

So this is the next chapter in our progress. The next stage of our country's long journey to build the strong and fair society.

I want a Britain where there is no longer any ceiling on where your talents and hard work can take you. Where what counts is not what where you come from and who you know, but what you aspire to and have it in yourself to become.

Past generations unlocked just some of the talents of some of the people. In the new Britain of this generation, we must unlock all the talents of all of the people. Not the old equality of outcome that discounts hard work and effort.

Not the old version of equality of opportunity - the rise of an exclusive meritocracy where only some can succeed and others are forever condemned to fail.

But a genuinely meritocratic Britain, a Britain of all the talents. Where all are encouraged to aim high. And all by their effort can rise.

As is the case with most political speeches it is necessary to hunt carefully for the meat, or in this case what's causing the faint feeling of indigestion or nausea. There it is. What Gordon wants to see and is offering the world is a bit of good old fashioned leftist social engineering. Equality of opportunity is no good if it doesn't offer equality of outcome, so it will be massaged and managed until it delivers equality of outcome, irrespective of the extent to which it still resembles equality of opportunity.

And As I Dream

I don't dream of running a supermarket. Oh no. I have my eyes fixed firmly on those glittering lights above my head. I'll probably find on my death bed they were the reflections off a disco ball, but in the mean time...

I need a kick up the arse and after a couple of years of toying with the idea and backing off because I know once I start I won't be able to stop however bad the results I've almost committed myself to signing up for this year's Panorama.

Having to do too many early days might screw that completely, though. If I work the late shift I have to get up, get the offspring to school then have about two and a half hours available before I have to get ready to work. By the time I get in the offspring is in bed. That's about 9:30. Depending on what time the Slug fucks off and leaves me in peace I might get a bit more in before I have to go to bed. In all probability that gives me four hours a day, plus the days I'm not working plus every second Sunday to reach a target of 50,000 not necessarily readable words, though obviously producing something I'm prepared to attach my name to would be a positive.

And I've shelved the outline I put together last month which is clearly too ambitious and already unwieldy in favour of something simpler and more achievable.

Smoke gets in your clothes...

Within five minutes for arriving at work today I'd drafted the opening line of this post: "Stumped up to be confronted by Yoda and the Big Swinging Dick doing a sick-making double act..."

but I mustn't be mean to the BSD. I must be NICE to the BSD because the feed back following our brace of excursions to the big smoke continues to be very very positive and a glimmer of hope might just reside there in.

I've given him serious amounts of kudos and he KNOWS it because I can do things that he can't. He can do lots of things I can't (like remember and retell really filthy jokes, but that's another story) but he lacks the polish that comes of being a senior manager within a global management consultancy who might be asked at a few hours notice to turn up in the office of some SERIOUS City of London heavy weight and interview him (or her? don't make me fucking laugh) from a position of strength or at least credibility.

It is an act but not one that everyone can pull off. I did. For years. And I still have it, too. I can't do the ducking and diving that he can, or at least I can't do it as well as he can.

The two skills are not necessarily mutually exclusive, in fact I can think of some slimy shit bags who were working my side of the fence when I was in the city who would leave him eating their slime trail any day. But I don't have it. That's why I only made it as high up the food chain and went when I did. I didn't complain then, I'm not complaining now. I don't want to have what it would have taken. Simple really.

Ours has the makings of what is known in the trade as a symbiotic relationship. But that entails me getting something out of it, too. So far all I've got is respect, but that's more than I've hitherto enjoyed.

So I'm basking in that faintly golden glow and struggling to keep the contents of my stomach in at the same time. Thank God it really is true that women can multi-task.

Mind you, this was the height of today's demands on me. Even dealing with the fact that Darryl the Dick Fiddler's formerly gorgeous older brother has totally outgrown his looks and is now of deeply weird mien. How sad. He's only a boy still. He's got an entire life to get through looking like that.

And Jack the Lad is getting all hairy, which is slightly icky. I'm developing a crush on Carl "shocking" Hot But Dim, and the worst of it is that The Paper Shuffler in Chief fancies him too. I might need a lie down and some serious medication. Carl suggested that I needed to "chill, smoke something". Perhaps he's not as dim as most people suggest.

Blah, blah. More of the same. Bolshie Book Worm took over in the afternoon. Senior Frustrated Novelist was my side kick.

Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here. Dismal customers, plenty of WAFIs about.

Summer started three days ago but it probably won't last long. It will, after all, be September before the end of the week. Today we had the first and probably final barbecue of the year. How sad is that. Loads of lovely beer (oh, didn't I mention I'd fallen off the wagon and landed with a hell of a thud?). How did I leave that bit out? How naughty of me.

Apart from the bread and the meat the ingredients were all picked from the garden in which we cooked and ate, as required. That's something. Nowt fresher than the spuds the offspring grubbed, the 'rots she pulled, the beans she plucked.

Genius. My clothes stink of smoke, of course. Small price to pay. Now two evening shifts and a morning shift and an evening shift and ... I can't see any writing being done between now and next Sunday. Not even in my head.

Shit.

Do you believe in fairytales?

Truth is I fancy one of our customers shockingly. It is totally obscene. And it is the basis of great fairytales.

Thank god that's over ... or is it?

Well I've done it. I finished HP&TDH, on Sunday morning. And was too ill yesterday to admit that I've now read ALL of them.

The first four were given to the offspring by the paternal grandparents when the thing was really taking off and they saw it as some sort of obligatory rite of passage to be steeped in the Lore of Harry Potter. It was a few years before the offspring could be persuaded away from neurotic trains and onto wizards and we heroically read the lot to her.

Unfortunately then the series really started to take a darker, more grown up hue. As ever she was slightly behind the HP curve. So while His Lordship and I continued to appreciate the story telling, if little else, the offspring became somewhat detached - and she hasn't even evinced the slightest interest in the sixth installment let alone this latest one.

As usual it was excessively long. Not one of the books contained anything to justify being longer than the first three were. I rather hope that one day someone will come along to do a damned fine editing job on the final four; to do so would almost inevitably sharpen the focus and lift the narrative tempo which often sags almost fatally through the middle stages of each installment.

No spoiler here - the ending was pretty much inevitable and the key ingredient to explain it all was all integral to one character I successfully identified, but so I suspect did millions of other readers. Yes some died, but others survived and whatever we might have been led to believe the way is open for more.

I had lamented not going back and working through the entire JKR oeuvre before setting out on No. 7 but by the time I realised I should it was too late. The new book would have been sitting about the house luring me to the space between its covers the way a siren lures the condemned sailor to the rocks. And now I find I'd only have upset myself anyway. On Sunday I set myself to the task of assembling the books so that I'd now re-read the lot. And I can only find four of them: Books 2, 3, 5 and 7. His lordship 'thinks' he might have one of them in his room but that still leaves three gone the way of all things that are valuable. Trashed.

This served as a fine pretext for me doing my nut, raving and ranting and reducing the offspring to tears. She's now consoling herself with her playstation console. If the weather continues to be this miserable throughout the holidays she will be one very happy bunny. Even I can't insist that she spend all day out in howling gales and driven north sea rains.

Any hoo, I got the vacuum cleaner under the beds I have access to (or would access without a full bio-hazard suit - that bed is a problem entirely of his making and he can sort it), through out bags of rubbish.

Perhaps 'twas the strain of all that housework led me to feeling so poorly yesterday?