Blatant theft...

I haven't linked to this I have copied it. Here is what A.L.Kennedy (a great writer and commentator with an excellent website) says about the demise of The South Bank Show. It's spot on and I wouldn't attempt to write anything myself in its shadow...

"The South Bank Show's gone. Is this wise? I know SBS didn't involve yelling or tits, and was therefore unsuitable for British television, but I've met so many people who sat at home like me when they were nippers and/or teenagers and had their sanity saved by that show. There we were, possibly feeling we were slightly strange, compared with our surroundings, and there Melvyn was with his diddly theme tune and a weekly blast of things we'd guessed we might like, but ended up loving, along with stuff we'd never heard of and worlds of unimagined possibility – there other people were, imagining those possibilities. When I was young, unsure of most things, buried alive in Dundee and showing no sign of being able to find a job that wouldn't make me crazy and then fired, SBS delivered a weekly jolt of oxygen and hope. To say nothing of it enthusing me about things I'd just plain assumed I wouldn't enjoy. It's our loss if we let it go without at least an equivalent replacement and some kind of thank you.

No, it's particularly the loss of the generation from whom we have already stolen an education system, a functioning and credible democracy and a variety of other things they might have found useful. It's not that I like all children indiscriminately – some of them are appalling – but I would rather they didn't grow up being more than averagely miserable and underfullfilled."

Home Truths

Second home...flipped home...servants' home...duck home...no home...this Palestinian boy is playing by the ruins of his family home in Gaza. The house was destroyed by Israeli bombardment earlier this year. The bombing was of course "within the rules".

Trouble in Bromsgrove II

Oh well, it seems Mr Cameron didn't stand by her after all. The curse of the Blog strikes again -- she could only last an hour after my devasting criticism! I wonder how Cameron decides which ones to stand by and which not...here's one theory anyway.

Trouble in Bromsgrove

Why is David Cameron trying to hold onto Julie Kirkbride? The drip, drip of allegations has been fairly constant and it's said that 5,000 of her constituents have signed a petition asking her to go. But for me the simple and killer fact is that she is married to Andrew McKay and must surely take joint responsibility for the misdemeanours he has been punished for. They played the system together so if he was in the wrong so is she, morally at least. How does the marriage vow go again...?

Soup II

Well the borscht was nice, but I am leaving it to "mature" and have a feeling the flavours may be better tonight. I made plenty.

Maasai Misery

The Manchester Maasai have been drowning their sorrows...

Soup

I am going to attempt borscht tonight. My greengrocer had some wonderful looking beetroots so I thought I'd give it a go, never having tried making it before. Of course the complications start when I look for a recipe...Russian, Ukranian, Hungarian, meat or not meat...? I can't really face going onto a foodie website and reading reams of posts about the virtues of South Ossetian borscht over the Kazakstahni version so I am going to try a bastardised Russian recipe as the best I have ever tasted was in Moscow.

The Big Match

I am told, although this is probably erroneous information, that ALL my Maasai friends will be supporting Manchester this evening. Perhaps it's something to do with red -- their favourite colour -- or perhaps it is Juma taking it upon himself to speak for the Maasai Nation. Suffice to say that beer will be drunk and there may be a bit of "bouncing" later on. I will switch my phone off tonight.

An Audience with Genius

My next excursion to Hay is on Saturday to see David Simon (creator of the Wire). I can hardly contain myself. This year's (decade's?) hero comes to Wales ! I am also seeing Alan Bennett and normally that would be the highlight bar none but in this instance Mr Simon eclipses even our great NT*.

Nice to see, as well, in last Friday's Guardian that I am not the only one that makes poncy comparisons between The Wire and classic literature.

*National Treasure

Glastonbury for Geriatrics?

Thoroughly enjoyed my trip to Hay. Lisa Jardine and Roy Hattersley the highlights. Before I went someone asked: "What sort of people go to the Hay Festival?" Now that is a dificult one. It would certainly be easy to categorise them as elderly Guardian readers -- easy but not correct. A single definition is not possible but there are definitely "tribes": a small dungaree brigade, a lot of linen suits and summer dresses, intellectual power-brokers with BlackBerrys and important calls to publishers, literary groupies and a lot of families. If anything drew them together they were there for the same reason as me, the chance ot spend some time out of the normal rush to listen, think and talk -- books, ideas, politics, food and weather.

Festival Fun

Off to the Hay Festival today. It's always difficult to choose which day to go and which events to book on that day. I hope I have chosen well.

Excuses...

We have had "it was all within the rules", then "it was all cleared with the Fees Office". Now we are being told that MPs have been suffering from "lapses" of judgement, no doubt there will soon be the confessions that they were struck by "moments of madness".

On the whole I am well aware of human frailties and sympathetic. Of course we all make mistakes. But for years now citizens have been suffering from an onslaught of bossy, punitive government and other authority. In its predatory way excuses are not accepted. We are continually reprimanded and usually fined -- for late tax returns, by speed cameras, for not displaying parking permits on the "right" side of the windscreen. Petty bureaucrats proclaim zero tolerance on all manner of misdemeanours. You are too fat to foster a child, you stole some sweets when you were a kid, even though you are an Old Age Pensioner you can't buy booze without ID. Try asking for clemency here, try proffering simple human error, try explaining your momentary lapse of judgement, try common sense... The citizen has to be perfect under the tyranny of ever more dysfunctional authority. And I haven't even touched on the many more serious incursions on our civil rights and freedoms that we cede every year.

MPs have willingly overseen this sea change in the relationship between state and citizen under Major, Blair and Brown. Why should we forgive them?

Drunk Magic Arsenal

Zaharani is my enthusiastic chef when I am in Zanzibar. He is also one of the star strikers in the football team. Back in 2005-6 I sponsored him through The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar Catering and Hotel Institute. He graduated with flying colours. When I am there he loves the run of a good kitchen and the budget to buy things like meat and eggs.

Among his mates Zaharani is known as Juju which gives you some idea of what he does when not cooking. As a msungu I can't ask too much about that side of things. If he's away the others say "he is doing Swahili culture" as fine a euphemism for witch-doctory as you will find.

Anyway he called last week to ask if I could buy him an Arsenal shirt with the number 4 and "Jujubwai" on the reverse. If my interpretation of local slang is correct this means something along the lines of "drunk magic" -- strange as he doesn't drink. That I did today and took the shirt in to a man in Llanelli market to get the name and number stencilled on. The man with the machine didn't recognise Jujubwai from the usual Gunners squad: "There again mate it is Arsenal, they have some funny ones."

The Call of Africa

My friend Stephen is off to Africa today. He is taking his teenage son to Senegal and Gambia. I am very jealous, a bit of African heat and chaos would go down well just now. I hope that he keeps us posted on his blog. Stephen is, by the way, a member of one of the world's most exclusive clubs -- he represents 50% of this blog's followers!

Stephen also does proper writing and has an interesting assignment for a newspaper while he's in Africa. His work will start on the premise that the movement of people out of Senegal today is greater than at any time during the Atlantic slave trade. It shocked me. Historians, economists and African nationalists have used slavery's mass forced migration as an explanation of many of the continent's ills. If that left a wound that still festers two or three centuries later, what can the current migration be doing, econmically, socially, culturally? Worst of all perhaps, because this is an illegal traffic we know next to nothing about it. Today's Atlantic "cargoes" are truly the most invisible of people -- in Africa, in transit and at destination. There are not, yet, the equivalent of slave narratives. In the communication explosion of our time where are the Twitter feeds from these people?

Stephen will investigate. I look forward to seeing the results. But ultimately it is here in the destination countries where we must really work to understand and document. These are the people that clean our offices, buses and trains. They are the nocturnals, the cogs so deep in our economic machine that we never see them. I would love to hear their stories but I suspect it is easier for me to heed my own call to Africa than listen here in the West.

Spud You like

I have been feasting on Jersey Royals and now the first Pembrokeshires. Lightly boiled with a little butter and fresh herbs from the garden nothing could be nicer. Mint and parsley are the traditonal accompaniments but I have also been enjoying them with chives, chervil, marjoram and lovage (the latter only in small quantities). I am quite happy to eat these sweet little spuds as a meal in themselves.