Wednesday 27 July 2011

Thirty minutes


It is hard to believe that this screen of ubiquitous buddleia, scenting the suburban air, hides a railway line that has triggered intense debate, caused thousands of people to protest, and made a minister of state into a figure of hate. It is often referred to as “the Chiltern Line” and if the government has its way it will be the route for HS2, a high speed rail link connecting London to Birmingham and reducing the time of the present journey by about thirty minutes. What could you do with thirty minutes? Start the clock.



Spend your thirty minutes trying to complete a public consultation document, bearing in mind that it has been drawn up by someone who wants you to fall into a trap, to make you say that you actually do want a train charging past your home at over 200 miles an hour, that you have no objection to years of construction work, that you believe every word they say about noise levels. You left school to get away from this kind of thing and here you are taking an exam to stop your home becoming worthless, to justify the years, decades of work you put into paying a mortgage. You take advice, watch videos, listen to the experts before you answer “no” to everything, in a desperate attempt to save all that effort and sacrifice.


Think of all those minutes and half hours spent in a job you hate, gritting your teeth to get through one more day, hour, minute without flinging your letter of resignation at the boss, all for nothing because you are a nimby, small fry, nothing to a man whose salary you pay but didn’t vote for. Another nameless face in the crowd at a demo, along with all the other unwanted little people who have cluttered up his day, getting in the way of “progress”.

You will never be one of those gaining that extra half hour on a train moving so fast that the rest of mankind becomes a blur. You will never afford those plush seats and wonderful service. You will wait with all the rest on a station platform waiting for a worn out train that has been held up, again. Because there is no money to improve what already exists, what you can afford. You will sit in your car, on a bus, in a jam caused by the years of construction work that you are paying for to build a railway line you don’t want, can’t afford, don’t need. You will grind your teeth and curse those who inflicted this upon you and your lowly kind and know that you are helpless. You don’t count, your kind never have.


Thirty minutes in a bluebell wood, deafened by birdsong yet wishing you could make less noise as you walk amongst trees that were old when you were a child. A thousand cobwebs and caterpillar threads cling to your arms as they must have done to those of your ancestors when places like this were vast and untouched. You are the first to walk here today, in a place that has never changed and you thought never would until the minister expressed his opinion. Knowing that you are barely a heart beat in the time it took to make this place that cannot be replaced, replicated, remade. Thirty minutes, a pin prick in time in this woodland set like sapphires and emeralds amongst the coral of suburban rooftops, one last place to remember what it must have been like in this land before “progress” came and ate away at your soul. Time counts for nothing here.


Half an hour at an estate agent’s office, listening to all the advice he can give you on how to sell a worthless house. Paint the walls a neutral colour, thank God you redecorated some of it last year, it will take less money, less time. You’ll get the downstairs lav done in thirty minutes. Put the “For Sale” sign up and hope to hell that the neighbours don’t put one of those bloody posters in the window, hope that whoever takes the bait doesn’t check up on what that means. Keep your fingers crossed for a lot longer than thirty minutes, through every rare viewing, trying not to wince when “it” gets mentioned until you realise that they were just curious, not serious, bad luck. Wish that the things that once made your home such a bargain (“Five minutes walk from the nearest station!”) weren’t the things that make it so undesirable now.

The worst half hour is the one spent listening to your tearful elderly neighbour, born in her house, the one she hoped to die in. Listening to the despair of a woman who cannot fill in a form at the best of times and is rendered incoherent at the thought that her childhood home might be demolished, just another of the worthless small fry who will be swept away for the greater good. She loves her garden but even that has made her a target for the mockery of businessmen. She doesn’t own a bowler hat and her lawn is tiny, a postage stamp of green, but she knows each lily and rose, remembers the ones her mother planted and loves them still. It has taken many a half hour to make this patch of heaven and it was worth every moment.


Wonder, sometimes, how long it would take, how many pills, how much booze, to take the problem away forever. How many of those affected regularly spend thirty minutes that close to edge, when the worry becomes too much - “Why are you crying Mummy?” - when there is no fight left and despair takes over. When you begin to think that all the effort is pointless, that all those half hours have been wasted and you are worn away to nothing, for nothing. Knowing that, when the dust that can never settle makes its way, every day, into your home, your precious half hour will be frittered away by a business man, distracted by the many pleasures in that brand new temple to retail - the station - rushing off half an hour late in a wasteful carbon heavy cab to the appointment he might have made, had he been more mindful of those thirty minutes.

Stop HS2 - advice on completing the consultation document
Stop HS2 natonal petition

Tuesday 26 July 2011

A greener shade of blues

A twenty minute walk from my house brings me to a supermarket, once the Granada Cinema, where The Rolling Stones played a gig in 1965. Fifteen minutes away in the opposite direction is an apartment block, the site of the Oldfield Tavern where in 1962 a drummer called Keith Moon auditioned for a band called The Who. They played gigs there throughout 1963 at the Music Club which also hosted Screaming Lord Sutch and many others. It is easy to imagine these young men travelling through the green and pleasant suburb of Ealing, ready to set the world on fire with their sound. With such an impressive musical history it is hardly surprising that Ealing holds an annual festival and this year I made the effort to attend the blues event held in Walpole Park.




At £4 for a day’s entry it is extraordinarily good value. The event is held in what used to be Sir John Soane’s back garden, just off a high street lined with the usual stores. The sun shone on this particular day, but had it proved wet and muddy, the day-glo wristband I was issued with would have allowed me to nip out to Marks and Spencers for some clean clothes or into Pitshanger Manor to dry out. In some ways this is part of the problem with this event and I’m afraid I did have a problem with it.

As at any other music festival there were the usual stalls flogging dream catchers and ethnic clothing but while I was there hardly anyone was buying because the age group for that kind of thing was barely in evidence. In fact the image I took away with me was of the many foldaway chairs that almost filled the main tent. I’ve seen these things advertised in the Observer colour supplement but until now I didn’t know that anyone actually bought them. They even outnumbered the pushchairs, and there were a lot of those.


Once parked in these things their owners just seemed to sit there, a few feet away from bands that were giving it their all. Occasionally someone would head to or from the bar with a beer which they would then place in the specially designed drink holder on the arm rest. They actually used it. How uncool. I found it hard to determine whether any of them were having a good time. I could have got it wrong. Perhaps these were the same people who sat listening reverently to singers in clubs in the sixties and they are still doing it fifty years later. On the other hand it might be that the worthy citizens of the borough were just making sure they got their money’s worth from a council subsidised event. Enjoyment didn’t appear to come into it.


On the smaller South Stage Sam Kelly’s Station House revue featured singer Debbie Giles, TJ Johnson and local guitar player Lally. A group of accomplished musicians who clearly love performing together, they sounded really tight and even though there were some foldaway chairs in evidence their occupants managed to behave as though they still had a pulse. The band were enjoying themselves and had nothing to prove.

Sandi Thom was promoting her new blues influenced album, “Merchants and Thieves”, on the main stage. Perhaps 3pm was just too early a slot but it was a shame that a talented and fresh blues voice was exposed to such a dozy audience (the obligatory dancing drunks didn‘t count). It wasn’t helped by the number of photographers, amateur or otherwise, who began to pop up during her set, to the point where a security guard intervened. This drew the wrath of one man who deliberately encouraged two small boys to dart about right in front of the stage with cameras for the rest of the performance, distracting to everyone and unbelievably rude. I was standing well away from the stage but put my own camera away out of embarrassment.

A great singer, I think Sandi deserved a better reception and I hope that if she returns to Ealing she and her excellent band will be treated with more respect. Another Scot with a particular affinity for the blues, she has embraced them and made them her own. I loved the fact that someone who has had a single at number one in seven countries was still prepared to sell t-shirts and CDs herself and sign them afterwards. She even unwrapped mine for me when I just stood there, star struck! This seemed to be the only opportunity to buy music at the event and although I realise that the download is now king, it seemed strange that this should be the case along with a lack of t-shirts, a staple of every other gig I’ve been to.
  Music fans struggle to pay for and attend gigs in muddy fields in the middle of nowhere but this conveniently situated one is so cheap and safe that it might as well be a funfair. The local council supports it because it brings more money to the area, generating another layer of income. My impression of Ealing’s annual blues festival is that is a place where people come to socialise rather than celebrate a musical genre that grew from the pared down wisdom, wit and humour of impoverished African Americans, expressed in the most beautiful soul searing way. At this event the music is almost incidental. I went home while it was still light. If I had paid more perhaps I would have stayed all evening to get my money’s worth.

The Stones fell in love with music which evolved in prisons, farms and shacks, far from the comfortable suburbia they grew up in, and had respect for those who made it. I wish Ealing was a magnet for young guitar based musicians and genuine fans, an up and coming generation to ward off the onslaught of over commercialised plastic pop but I’m not sure that you can recreate New Orleans in London without making the area a place where they can flourish and perform with fewer restrictions. The Stones and The Who came about because there used to be so many pubs, clubs and other small venues where they could perform and find each other. You seem to need expensive licenses for everything now.


I have a great deal of respect for the organisers behind the event because they do actively promote Ealing’s blues heritage. My criticism is not aimed at them. I feel very strongly that it requires the intervention of a younger generation that genuinely loves that music, sees what Jagger saw in it and actually performs it. Council grants and worthy people who use the drinks holders on their foldaway chairs are no substitute for a respectful and truly appreciative audience.