Film: Three Billboards

Disturbing and powerful

Column: January 2018

The new baby boomers…

Right up there on my Christmas reading list alongside the new Donna Leon Brunetti saga was a City Corporation report on social wellbeing within the Square Mile.

Three things jumped out. The first is that being lonely is not the same as being alone. The second is that loneliness can be as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The third? That one of the groups worst hit by loneliness and isolation is young parents.

I expected to see older people, people from different ethnic backgrounds and the disabled (physically and mentally) on a list of those who feel excluded. I might even have added teenagers, LGBT or homeless people to the tally. But young parents was a surprise.

The City Corporation has an interest in tackling loneliness, even if it’s only as part of a wider remit on facing up to modern social ills. And on Golden Lane it has been working behind the scenes to train volunteer residents in the art of Community Building.

'Builders’ are people who stop to chat and generally act like good neighbours. Sometimes they also act as 'Community Connectors’, offering handy local tips and plugging people into information and services.

And if the recommendations of my Christmas reading are carried out, they will soon be joined by ‘Maternity Champions’.

The City’s business relies heavily on the daily arrival from outside the Square Mile of many thousands of young professionals. Add to this its young resident population and the sum is a human dynamo that cannot be ignored.

Many of the workers might have been uprooted from secure and supportive family networks elsewhere. Many of the young residents will be so drained by the sheer hard work of bringing up baby that they simply drop out of community activities.

No wonder the Corporation puts the social wellbeing of these people at the centre of its action plan. They are the present and the future of its success.

Time, ladies and gentlemen, please…

Like our Common Councilmen, Community Builders and Maternity Champions don't get paid. What they get instead is City of London Time Credits.

This is a scheme in which you offer one hour of your time doing something for the community (pulling weeds from paving cracks, for example). For this you get a crisp piece of paper that looks like a foreign banknote. You can spend it not on cups of tea in the local café, or milk and bread at the supermarket, but on fun things like going to the cinema, riding the Thames Clipper or watching Millwall FC.

Earn and spend

One Time Credit equals one hour of fun. I recently spent two of mine on a visit to the superb Courtauld art gallery at Somerset House to see the exhibition ‘Soutine's Portraits’ (finishes 21 January), which revealed the artist's great skill in painting pinched faces with unnaturally long noses.

Pay, the way to go...

A proper wage for Common Councillors (City Matters, issue 062) is a cause worth supporting. Only when our elected members are given professional status can voters expect a professional service, fully transparent and compliant with progressive democratic principles.

Tree cheers (not)...

The estate became a laughing stock over the festive holiday as passers-by scoffed at its pathetic Christmas tree. Not only was this the scraggiest of specimens, what is presumed to be an overdose of austerity at the City Corporation saw it left stark naked, with no lights or decoration over the entire holiday. It wasn’t even planted properly in its traditional place at the centre of the stone rotunda at the end of Basterfield lawn, so the first gust of winter wind left it tilted drunkenly to one side as if trying to stagger home from a not-very-good party. Residents took to social media to note their displeasure, but would nevertheless like to apologise to anyone forced to feast their eyes on such an embarrassment.

The naked truth

Yr rnt iz du...

A new texting service that allows residents to check stuff like rents and repairs will be introduced at a workshop in the Ralph Perring Centre on 30 January (5-7pm). This sounds like a good idea, with plenty of scope for future development. Text messaging is already used successfully for GP and hospital appointments, and at a recent Healthwatch conference there was talk of using it to prompt outpatients to take their medication or to get up and stretch occasionally. The possibilities are endless, so it’s fingers crossed that a Christmas Tree Complaints number will be issued in time for Santa's next arrival.

An edited version of this column appeared in the newspaper City Matters, issue number 063.

Memory: Peter Preston

Former Guardian Editor Peter Preston has died, aged 79
See Obituary


Towards the end of 1992 I was working on a fixed-term contract as a subeditor at the Guardian's Weekend magazine, when I got a message from Michael Pilgrim, then editor of the Observer's colour-supplement Sunday equivalent. He wanted to talk, so we met in a nearby greasy-spoon cafe and he offered me the job of Chief Subeditor on the Observer Magazine. The Guardian and the Observer were sister papers and I knew Michael slightly from the past. He had been editor of Record Mirror when I was working at Spotlight Publications stablemate Sounds. He knew my abilities and wanted a solid pair of hands. I was flattered by the offer but also very happy with the work I was then doing at the Guardian. First under the editorship of Roger Alton and then with Deborah Orr, a day's work on Weekend was as stimulating as it can get. The stories were lively, fascinating and a pleasure to work on. The writing was outstanding and new leaps in design were underway following the magazine's move to full colour. I was very happy where I was.

But I was coming to the end of a six-month contract with Weekend, with no guarantee of future employment, so I decided to tell editor Deborah about Pilgrim's offer. All she said was "leave it with me". The next week I got an email from Peter Preston and a request to "pop down to my office". I got there to find him at his desk and the offer of a coveted staff job. The meeting was short and warm. Peter had worked in my hometown Liverpool when he was younger and retained fond memories. He told me of the loyalty I had inspired in Deborah, who, I was told, practically ordered him to give me a job and, furthermore, to "tell Pilgrim to keep his fucking hands off my people". The starting rate for a Guardian subeditor at the time was £29,000 a year. Peter told me this bluntly, as if negotiation was out of the question, then added softly, "you can talk me up to thirty if you want". I took him up on that and he offered his polio-affected hand in congratulation, which I remember thinking was a brave thing to do. I'm not sure Peter would ever have seen it that way.

All of this sounds quaint now, but back then what made a publication better than its rivals was the passion and commitment of its workers, its internal ethos. Only those on the inside could see this in action, and sometimes you could never be sure whether a gross stand-up, foaming-at-the-mouth argument was a personal tiff between two clashing egos or a battle over journalistic principles. The two often merged in a way that made them indistinguishable. Peter was as passionate as the next person, but he rarely showed it publicly. His authority was quiet. Weekend editor Deborah was not someone you would choose to mess with. She did not suffer fools easily and did not hesitate to express her displeasure with rich expletives. But she was fair and showed respect where respect was due. She loved good writing and good design and was as open in her praise as she was in her beady-eyed, nit-picking criticism.

Magazine editors have budgets and they use the money to buy the best stories they can find. How much to pay and what is value for money is one of the skills of the job. But without subsidy most of a magazine's revenue comes from advertising, so there is always a fight over how many of the magazine's pages are taken by money-spinning advertising and the number given to reader-friendly editorial. Editorial people often remark that readers do not open magazines for the ads. Advertising people counter that ad revenue pays staff wages and allows the magazine to continue to exist. At Weekend, key people in the editorial and advertising departments would meet weekly to scrap it out. As production editor, my job was to enact the decisions made at these meetings, to negotiate and to marshal the teamwork that would produce what Deborah modestly described as "the best fucking magazine in the world". This was more a statement of aspiration than a flash of arrogance.

Peter would sometimes sit in on these meetings, along with Managing Editor Ian 'Chalkie' Wright, who held the Guardian's purse strings. The form was for Advertising to report on its position and its requirements for that week, followed by Editorial, who would state the proposed contents for the next issue and why it was so bloody brilliant. At one meeting Deborah outlined a fabulous upcoming investigative story, with superb pictures, that could easily accommodate double the usual number of editorial pages. She knew advertising would resist because editorial pages are a cost and not a profit. And they did. Making the magazine bigger to fit an exceptional piece of journalism did not make short-term commercial sense. Not only would this deprive advertising of valuable space (ie, money), it would inflate costs even further because more paper and more machine and man hours at the print site sends your "price per page" through the roof. Preston did not flinch. He looked at Chalkie, got the nod, and ordered extra pages to be added to accommodate Deborah's wishes.

Deborah shot me a look of amazement. "Up-paging" would never be this easy again, least of all for a feature authored by Peter Preston. Later, when Weekend was planning a story to promote an exhibition by the paper's satirical cartoonist Steve Bell, Weekend's features editor wondered out loud who might write it. "Preston," I offered without hesitation. The editor then asked if I would sound him out. Peter was keen and straightaway asked how many words. Quality features in Weekend at the time ran to around 4,000 words. When I offered this, he declined. "I've probably got three thousand in me, but not four,"  he said. Three thousand it was, then. Thanks, Guv. And Peter Preston being staff, there was no fee to pay. Happy days.

Understatement seemed to be in his DNA. At around 7pm in the open-plan offices at Guardian HQ in Farringdon Road, the smell of pipe smoke started to drift around. This was the sign that Preston was on the prowl. He had seen the first edition of that day's paper off to bed and now moved upstairs from the news room on the first floor to the second, where the Features department sat. He would stop and chat, making no attempt to interfere with your work or to impress. It was on one such occasion that we talked about film and I ended up loaning him a book about Ingmar Bergman. I never got it back, and I never plucked up the courage to remind him.

Diary: December 2017

31 December 2017, Winchester

J has to leave L’s New Year party shortly after midnight to pick up her boarding pass from her local pub. The landlord agreed to print it off for her before she heads to the airport for a holiday in Spain.

27 December 2017, Tenerife Sud airport

There are signs all over the place stating ‘Sin Bareras’, which I think is a declaration that Spain encourages disabled people to travel ‘without frontiers'. They are very good at making disabled people feel included.

23 December 2017, Arona Gran hotel, Los Cristianos, Tenerife

This little piggy went down chimneys.

Later, at restaurant near Granadilla, Tenerife, with L, M and D

22 December 2017, Plaza Virgen del Carmen, Los Cristianos, Tenerife

Las Galletas, later

21 December 2017, Tenerife

Three young women on our Teide By Night tour were talking about their plans for the next few days. One of them said she would finish work  tomorrow and then start drinking and not stop until Boxing Day. One of the others remarked that she would be "totally fannied" by then.

20 December 2017, Last Galletas, Tenerife

Saw E today. J said he looked "broken", and that as exactly the word that was in my mind."Lost" was the other one. G was not just his wife, but his best mate. E was thin, distracted and almost scared of himself.

17 December 2017, London

Strictly. I wanted Gemma to win. J said Alexandra was the best dancer, so deserved to win. When I wasn’t paying much attention, J sneakily used my six permitted BBC internet votes on Debbie. Joe won, which was good because he had started to peak at right time. I was roundly told off for saying Alexandra had “no personality”. And later I remembered the name of the excellent film I had seen Joe in many years ago, in which he delivered a class performance. It was called Small Faces.

*****

Met G from Spain in the Artillery Arms for a pub lunch, then back to our place for cheese and, yes, plenty more wine. Brexit was the big, unshakeable topic and G said he was surprised that his quite comfortable brothers, K and A, had voted LEAVE. I wondered afterwards whether this was part of a class restructuring, as both K and A are fairly well off and their children will likely benefit in a class shakedown in which the children of the middle class become a new UK ruling class after Brexit. 

16 December 2017, London

On my annual Christmas visit to NRU at the National Hospital in Queen Square yesterday, I bumped into A, the gangly long-suffering Irish ward manager who was in charge during my residence five years ago. I looked around the day room at the current group of patients and remarked casually to A that, “It is such a desperate time. All they want to do is go home.” A was not so sure. “Some of them,” he remarked.

*****

In Wallingford.

Rosie, age 4.5: “He hidden from me.”

Then: “He bited me.”

15 December 2017, London

I screwed up on the Secret Santa for J’s book group. I sent an email naming S as their recipient to TWO members. I did this on November 6. They only found out at their Christmas dinner and I have been forced to resign. J sent an email to everyone confirming my departure, and cheekily giving thanks that they had not had to sign a card and make a collection.

14 December 2017, London

‘It’s only thanks to the solid and energised support of Alabama’s black voters that the United States avoided what would have been a moment of global shame.’

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian

13 December 2017, London

EVALUATION FORM
Mediation & Conflict Management
With Dave Walker Southwark Mediation Centre

Tuesday 12th December 2017

1. What did you think about the content of the workshop?
Good. It became very good in the second half when one of the members shared a real problem we could jointly analyse and use to apply the principles we had learned in the first half of the session, with the facilitator as our guide.

2. What did you think about the facilitator?

Very good. Easygoing, communicative and knowledgeable.

3. What did you find most useful about the workshop?
The importance of listening and not rushing to judge.

4. What did you find least useful about the workshop?

The handouts. A collection of separate A4 sheets is easy to store in a file, but also easily forgotten about. I would have preferred the essential information to have been packaged in a usable and portable way. I would like to be able to pull out and consult a small ‘Southwark Mediation Workbook’ on the bus.

5. Do you have any suggestion for improvement?

See 4 above. Plus more real conflict problems to work through.

6. Any other comments?
The room was freezing. The snacks were brilliant. The sharing was sincere.

7. Will you recommend this workshop to others?
Yes.

10 December 2017, London

Toff from Made in Chelsea won I’m A Celebrity...

9 December 2017, Sutton

At P’s for her birthday, S showed us his Christmas list for Santa. One of the items was “a 30cm lizard taiI I can attach above my but”.

8 December 2017, London

Donald Trump, president of the United States, has decided to relocate the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This seemingly has the effect of making Jerusalem the capital of Israel. The problem is that Jerusalem is a split city and a disputed territory. It is a holy site for both Israelis and Palestinians, so in 'gifting’ it to one side over the other is an act of gross provocation and a threat to any ‘peace process’ that might exist. But what if the citizens of Jerusalem turned a negative into a positive and started work on a project to unite Jerusalem, making it a model city of the future where people of all faiths live together in cooperation and respect. On another note, someone has just been deconstructing William Blake’s poem ‘Jerusalem’ –  famously and stirringly set to music for many occasions – on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’.

*****

The first phase of Brexit has been completed. It was derailed earlier in the week by the DUP, who thought they were being shafted by the border negotiations. I am becoming more and more convinced that Theresa May is playing the long game, hoping for an election victory in 2020. She has surrounded herself with idiots and vain self-promoters who make her look good when she pulls off a minor victory. If it ever emerged that she had actually plotted to provoke this DUP mini-drama, I would not be surprised.

7 December 2017, London

I think I must sometimes come across as being overly confident that I know what's best. Many years ago, out late in Camden and needing a taxi to take us back to Leyton, Jane and I got into an almighty row. A taxi stopped for us, but as we approached it I said, “Get in and sit down before you tell the driver we want to go to Leyton.” I practically barked it as an instruction. This is because I had heard that there was some rule stating that once into a taxi the driver cannot decline your destination request. Had we declared our destination before boarding the cab, I was sure the driver would say no can do. So my intention was to secure a quick drive home with no argument. I might as well have been talking to the lamp-post because Jane marched straight to the cabbie's window and said “Leyton, please.” The man shook his head and drove off. Several hours later we got home, neither of us in a good mood. The words WHY CAN'T YOU JUST DO AS YOU'RE TOLD rang in my ears for days after.

I can be as stubborn as the next person, but I do normally make some rough calculation before stamping my feet. It looks like this: YOU BEING PIG-HEADED = YOU’RE SCREWED. Answer = back down. But sometimes even common sense is no use. Sometimes you run up against someone so pathologically stubborn and resistant that all reason and common sense is stood on its head.

Yesterday at the Guardian one teenager was especially talented at this. She was determined to not write a simple headline with a verb, but instead piss around with a photo caption for which she had not yet even selected a picture. In a faintly ridiculous parent-child standoff, we duelled with the computer’s mouse for who had the right to determine the priority of the next task. Me: headline. She: not the headline. I tried everything, including humiliation, I’m reluctant to admit. “Tell me,” I asked accusingly, “What is the story about? Who did what?” in a very snidey tone. She sighed impatiently, her pupil colleagues, plus teacher, watching with interest. I walked away. “Is this what it is really like?” the teacher asked. Yes, I told him, but in the real world a punch might well have been thrown by now.

6 December 2017, London

In the playground there are two muslim women playing football with a bunch of squealing tots in hi-viz jackets. One of them fancies herself as a star player - dribbling, kicking with both feet, etc.

5 December 2017, London

An article in the Guardian about the 2001 decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal got me thinking about drug users and social isolation. By 'referring’ drug misuse cases to healthcare experts rather than 'tackling’ the issue through the courts, isolated people are 'plugged back’ into civic society. This might not be what all of them want, but if genuine rehabilitation is what some really do want, this seems like a progressive first step.

1 December 2017, Brighton

One of those improbably balanced cranes has popped up in the distance. I do hope the building under construction does not end up obscuring our view of the power-station chimney.