From Thatcher to elections: 480 columns and counting
NOT counting this one, I have written 480 columns. That’s one every Wednesday since April 2, 2008; not missed even one. 300,000 words not counting the headings which I don’t write anyway.
I thought it might be fun to recall a few of the topics I’ve tried to turn my mind to over those last nine years or so.
Before I do that I can’t let the British election just slip by without comment. What a complete political balls up!! Theresa May, UK Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party since July 2016! 60 years of age, born in Eastbourne Sussex, educated at St Hugh’s College Oxford University (£55 per night bed and breakfast) which might help explain the poor decision.
Formerly leader of a Conservative government with a very healthy majority and three years to run until another election had to be called. She is/was opposed by a Socialist Party led by one of the Great Unknowns of modern times. She is/was obsessed with the perceived need to further increase that majority to help her to slip into Brexit with a minimum of fuss.
So she calls a general election when she didn’t have to and is totally stuffed by a result that makes it clear that she had not the slightest idea what her fellow Poms thought of her and her government.
Now, thanks to a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) she appears to have hung on to power. She looks like surviving thanks to the support of members of a right wing Northern Ireland Party flattered by the attention her stupidity has brought to them.
Gee I am glad I live in Australia. Our pollies sometimes do daft things but it’s nothing compared with this recent UK nonsense.
Anyway please allow me to share a selection of my own nonsense kindly published by The Chronicle on various Wednesdays over the past nine years. I have no special reason for drawing these particular columns to your attention; they are spread over the period I have been doing this stuff.
My first effort, on 02/04/2008, was headed “Any way you add it, the writing was on the wall” which probably made about as much sense to the reader as it did to me ...... I ratted on about the recently held council election and the number of votes cast at the various polling booths. It was very boring,
About 100 weeks later, under the heading “Join us in world full of whimsy at Queens Park”, I invited readers to go to USQ’s Shakespeare in the Park Festival and enjoy a great production of Twelfth Night. It’s the nearest I have ever got to writing about Shakespeare whose works usually leave me baffled and also ever-so-slightly bored.
My 199th column, entitled “Thatcher’s portrayal in Iron Lady not cricket” found me defending the elderly Maggie T. I felt that the use of imagined conversations with her late husband while coming to terms with her own dementia was appalling and extremely cruel.
My 301st column, “Christmas creature comforts” in which I discussed the pleasures and challenges of the Christmas-New Year period, was much easier to write. I’d had a nice Christmas chat about cricket with my UK-based brother. He said he would hang up on me if I mentioned the cricket. I did and he hung up on me ........
It was around April Fools’ Day 2016 that I wrote about a less happy Fools’ day back in 1958 when I badly broke my left leg .... pole-vaulting, yes pole-vaulting. I was a first year uni student at the time, missed a lot of classes and was greatly helped by a tutor who taught me a lot about being a uni person ....
It’s sometimes interesting to revisit these things ...........