The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Move over Boris, Liz Truss has three jobs already and might fancy yours too
Ithink I can quite safely say, as we slam the door in the grimacing face of 2021, that we are all hoping for the best. Or, if not the best, which seems like a bit of a big ask, at least something of an improvement.
I have always hated the inevitable “New Year, New You!” exhortations to change our ways. Get thinner, get busier, get a new hobby, get a better job, just get better? Get lost, I say.
However, I can envisage certain areas of life where a change might be as good as a rest. Or arrest, as might be more apt in some cases.
Take the notion of second jobs, an issue which exercised many in the latter days of 2021. Especially as most of those who had such jobs didn’t seem to be making that good a job of their first one.
No sooner does it look like the prime minister may have to refresh his CV in the coming months than a shining example of diversification comes from another world leader.
No less a figure than Vladimir Putin, before he got the hang of asset-stripping the former Soviet Union, suppressing Ukraine, rolling out the barrel bombs in Syria and keeping the West in Novichok poison, took to moonlighting as a taxi driver. Not quite getting on his bike, as oldschool Tories might have it, but surely the next best thing.
Taxi for Johnson? We can only hope. At least now that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Wales’s Mark Drakeford have been banned for life from a certain chain of hostelries due to their Covid restrictions, he’ll be safe drowning his sorrows therein.
On the other hand, I think we’re all going to need a stiff drink or six if Mr Johnson is booted from the gold-flocked comfort of No 10, if we take the advice of Victorian satirist Hilaire Belloc, who wrote: “Always keep a hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse.”
The PM’S neighbour may be poised to slip through the connecting door into the seat of power although it seems that the smart money is no longer on the Chancellor of the Exchequer but, ironically, a woman who already has three jobs and counting.
I know that we girls are supposed to be able to multitask but this is ridiculous, Liz Truss being (currently), foreign secretary, minister for women and equalities and Brexit negotiator, the last being not merely a job but a poisoned chalice of Putin-esque proportions.
It puts one in mind of the old punchline (from the Goon Show, I think): “Thank you for your support, I shall wear it always.”
Something tells me that our particular goon shouldn’t be relying on too much support from Ms Truss any time soon…
And speaking of New Year’s resolutions, one of my first ones will be to see the new West Side Story film. Although, having rewatched the original on telly this Christmas and marvelled at its verve, modernity and sheer energy, I have a bit of trouble understanding why it had to be remade.
Not forgetting, of course, that this infinitely relatable story originated in a play by one W Shakespeare Esq in the first Elizabethan era.
And he got his inspiration from an Italian romance much older than that.
So while there is much to be said for leaving well alone, it’s as well to remember that a classic of any kind lasts because it has something recognisable to say to each new generation. And if a bit of rethinking and general nipping and tucking is necessary to tailor it to those whom it might otherwise pass by, why not? I can understand the frustrations of those who claim that Natalie Wood, as a non-latina, would no longer be acceptable casting for the role of West Side Story’s Puerto Rican heroine, Maria.
At the same time, as that rather versatile actor Sean Bean said in an interview I read a few days ago, it’s also the job of actors to pretend to be something they aren’t.
Perhaps it’s getting the balance right that’s the important bit. Or more likely, getting at the truth of what your character is trying to portray, from whichever direction you come at it.
I don’t think you have to be particularly “woke” to realise, in the sage words of writer L P Hartley, that the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Living, as we are, in a moment when looking back to the past and its supposed glories has become something of a national obsession, it’s maybe just as well to remember that you can recognise and honour the best of that past without wanting to live in it. I shall go along to Mr Spielberg’s West Side Story with an open mind. And when they sing One Hand, One Heart or Somewhere, you will easily work out where I am sitting, even in a darkened cinema, as I will be the blithering, blubbering mess decimating the tissue supplies of a nation.
Season’s greetings? I’m your man.
I know that we girls are able to multitask, but this is ridiculous