Salut!

Woodbines, Shildon Tunnel and a boy's first kiss

This glorious image was the work of a North News and Pix photographer to accompany a report of mine about a campaign to save the Bishop Auckland-Darlington branch line 

This splendid essay by my friend Bill Taylor first appeared at my tiny site Salut! North, highlights from which I am slowly transferring here before its overdue closure. Bill, writing as long ago has 2011, gets as high as the lights go  ...

I’ve never been one to flog a dead horse (actually, that’s not at all true) but trying to breathe life into a dead blog is a different matter [Bill was referring to the neglected date of Salut! North - Ed].

And it’s probably appropriate that this attempted Kiss of Life involves a real-life kiss… no yearning after an unattainable girl in a bus shelter for me.

It’s also mostly set in Shildon, Colin’s hometown, rather than my own, Bishop Auckland, a good three miles away. Strange how great a distance that seems when you’re 14 years old.

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Which is how old I was when, for some inexplicable reason, my friend Peter and I decided to attend a performance of the school play at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. This would be two years before we were both invited not to return and only a year before Colin was to be kicked out.

Anyway, off we went and a pretty dull production it was, too. She Stoops to Conquer, as I recall. The headmaster, Dennis Weatherly – remembered more fondly by some old pupils than others – had heard me read for the part of Tony Lumpkin (the low comedian, for anyone unfamiliar with the play) and remarked sourly that giving it to me would be the most blatant typecasting he’d ever seen.

Come the intermission and we were out in the yard. I was looking around for a suitably remote corner to smoke one of the fourpenny Woodbines that the evil couple in the shop across the street sold singly to impecunious children. And then I was going to suggest we cut our losses, have a quicky froffy coffee in Rossi’s, the local hangout, and go home.

Peter, who I’ll admit was a bit more precocious than I, had other ideas.

Somehow we found ourselves talking to two…. girls. I didn’t talk much to girls in those days; I still regarded them as little more than boys who went backwards when you danced with them (a female teacher once tried briefly to instill the foxtrot into us) and giggled nastily in class when you hadn’t done your geometry homework and were knocked out of your seat by a blow across the head with all the exercise books Cosher Ibbotson had collected. That’s one reason I always sat at the front with the swots. It was far less painful.

Seeing these two, whom I knew only vaguely, out of uniform and into makeup – inexpertly applied, I’m sure, but your average 14-year-old boy doesn’t need much to stir his concupiscence – came as a surprise.

What was an even greater surprise was to hear one say, “If I’m with Pete (much cooler than Peter), you must be with him.”

Back into the play we went and, sure enough, his was sitting next to him and mine – her name was Margaret – was sitting next to me. After an agonising “should I or shouldn’t I” 20 minutes, I took her hand. And far from wrenching her fingers free, she put her head on my shoulder! At a school play!! In the assembly/dining hall!!

We didn’t wait for the end. Margaret whispered that she and her friend had to go and did I want to see her home to Shildon?

With the unheld hand, I did a quick count of the change in my pocket. Just enough for two bus fares to Shildon and one back to Bishop. So, yes, I did indeed want to see her home.

We got off the bus before Peter and his paramour and Margaret led me along a footpath by the railway line.

“This is as far as you can come,” she said, leaning disquietingly up against me. “Otherwise my dad might see you.”

Her eyes were half-closed and her lips were pursed. I leaned towards her, wafted in on her perfume, and murmured, quite intoxicated: “Is that the entrance to Shildon tunnel?”

I was still young enough to be interested in trains. And how often, en route to the metropolitan delights of Darlington, had I travelled through this very burrow. To be standing at one end of it… only one thing remained to consummate my delight. Margaret read my mind.

“You’d have to wait all night,” she said. “The last train’s gone.”

She seized me by the shoulders and applied her lips to mine. And, believe it or not, I quite forgot the tunnel and trains and railway lines. Your first kiss will do that.

It wasn’t Margaret’s first, as I discovered 20 minutes later when she came up for air and said, “You’d better go or you’ll miss the last bus.”

I said I’d see her in school next day and she shook her head.

“I wouldn’t say anything if I was you,” she said. “If Stu-y finds out, he’ll kill you.”

Stu-y? She nodded and named one of the school hard-knocks (as we called them), a strapping young thug with a tendency to punch and kick first and not bother asking questions.

“He’s my boyfriend. So be careful.”

I don’t think Margaret and I ever spoke again. I did catch her once looking at me from a distance with what seemed like a speculative eye. I turned away, in case Stu-y was looking, and speculating, too.

I don’t suppose she’s with him any longer. Hard to think that we’re all 63 now. Truth to tell, I’ve forgotten what that first kiss felt like.

But I’ve never forgotten the thrill that went through me when I first beheld the tunnel.

Snatches of the inside story of De Gaulle's Non. A thinking Leaver's essay

Bob Cowan is an exceptional journalist. We worked together at The Daily Telegraph and in Abu Dhabi. He proves my own point that not all Brexiters are essentially dim, foreigner-hating Little Englanders oblivious to the economic and social damage they're inflicting.

This is a powerful defence of Leave. I cannot challenge his specific examples of supposed EU malfaisance but certainly feel Bob takes an implausibly optimistic view of the coming turmoil, the UK's alternative trade prospects and Brexit's appalling social impact. He does not defend or even mention the Government's shameful willingness to break international law.

But that is neither here nor there; I invited replies from Leavers to a Facebook comment I posted and this is Bob's well-argued response, accompanied by delicious references to the French side of Bob's family and its understanding of the De Gaulle outlook on Britain and Europe.

The beers will be on him if lockdown allows once I am back in Brexit-blighted Blighty and done with the Boris quarantine ...

I saw your Facebook post about Leavers staying mute and was more than a little provoked (and didn’t think it fair for your legions of followers to have to read an overlengthy diatribe on your pages).

So… my reasons for twice voting Leave. They fall into two distinct arguments, neither of which has anything to do with immigration. Most people – and certainly every Brexiteer I have spoken to in London – understand that in the era of international flights costing so little, the mass movement of people is now a fact of everyday life. All Brexit will do is change the nationalities of the immigrants not alter their numbers.

Before explaining my reasoning for believing we should never have joined the EEC, as it was, a little personal history.

One of my uncles was a senior French general and member of De Gaulle’s war cabinet. He was sacked for granting the Americans two airbases in Equatorial French Africa, despite the fact that this “treachery” had been an attempt to persuade Roosevelt to back De Gaulle rather than Giraud, whom the Yanks preferred.

The General must have felt some post-war remorse because on his return to power with the Fifth republic he appointed another of the family to his cabinet (minister for mines, if I remember rightly).

The point of all this is that I earwigged a conversation between my father and my cousin shortly after De Gaulle’s infamous Non. He explained that while ostensibly it was to do with the Common Agricultural Policy (De Gaulle could see that Britain’s joining would threaten not only French agriculture but its highly subsidised rural economy), the more fundamental reason was to do with national outlook.

France and Germany had created a mutually beneficial alliance that allowed each to dominate its own preferred spheres inside a 20th century version of Napoleon’s Fortress Europe: Germany industrial and economic; France cultural and diplomatic.

Britain not only threatened those spheres, De Gaulle thought, but had historically always been opposed to all notions of Fortress Europe. In short, we looked outwards to the world. The Six looked inwards. Britain and Europe, in De Gaulle’s view, were completely incompatible. And he couldn’t stand Anglo-Saxons anyway!

Even as a kid, I thought his reasoning was probably right.  Continental countries necessarily must closely watch their borders and their neighbours. Island Britain, by contrast, has always been looking to the horizon for trading opportunities.  So a fundamental group of reasons for opposing the EEC and its successors has been their trade policies.

I believe in free trade, Europe does not. I don’t accept that because Brazil grows coffee beans for a fraction of the price that they can be grown in Britain (or anywhere else in Europe, come to that) they should have tariffs slapped on them. But they do. 

I think it verging on the criminal that Europe should apply both subsidies and tariffs on items such as sugar-beet. The consequence has been that tens of thousands of small farmers across Africa and the Third World who once grew cane for the export market have had any opportunity for betterment taken from them.

And not just sugar.  It’s almost impossible to tour East Africa without seeing broken down mills and factories on the fringes of every town. All closed as a consequence of European tariffs. And to rub salt into their wounds, they then find themselves receiving as “food aid” the stuff they used to grow and sell.

It’s the same for pretty well every commodity, whether agricultural, industrial or commercial.  Hardly surprising, then, that the EU has so few trade agreements with our competitors on the world markets. I could bang on endlessly about the iniquitous trade policies of Europe. But the absolutely fundamental reason for my desire to be free of the EU is its wretchedly undemocratic constitution.

As you know, it is the only governmental system on the planet that has four main branches.

There is the European Council, which is supposedly the supreme executive authority. However as it is composed of the heads of government of the member states, the amount of time they give to running the EU is limited to the extent of being virtually non-existent. Then there is the European Parliament. The only actual democratic bit of the whole set up. But its powers of scrutiny, of veto, of even formulating and implementing legislation are highly restricted. There is the judiciary, the European Court, consisting of one judge from every member state. OK, I guess, when it comes to sorting out administrative disputes but hardly conducive to establishing a corpus, an identity or a unique tradition of jurisprudence.

And then the European Commission. An executive and a civil service combined into one. It formulates policy and implements it. It is the only body that can propose legislation. Not only that, it also polices itself (or rather doesn’t: the accounts haven’t been signed off since 1994). With one exception it is entirely unelected and recruits its officials largely from its own educational institutions.  The only “election” is of the President, who is nominated by the Council and approved by ballot of the Parliament. Its one abiding philosophy is the perpetuation of the EU and its government system leading (it hopes) ultimately to a United States of Europe, despite the fact that the people of Europe when polled have consistently said they don’t want such a thing.  If such a constitution had ever been attempted here, or in the US, or any other of the anglosphere nations, it would have led ultimately to civil war. We don’t like being told what to do by unelected officials. We like to hold governments to account. We loathe secret agendas.

Enough of the negative (though if you wanted more, I could go on… and on… and on).

What about the positives of the EU? What are we giving up? Well, there’s the freedom to live and work in any member state. Which, to my mind, is about the only real benefit we shall have tjo forgo. Once we are properly out, Brits wanting to live and work abroad will probably have to get work permits and, depending on the country, residential visas too. A pain in the bum, I admit, but we’ve all done it. And you certainly – and quickly – learn how a country works by dealing with its internal bureaucracy.

What else? I can’t see travel being affected much. I visited France, Germany and Italy before we joined, and again afterwards. I don’t recall there being any difference at arrival. The only time I can remember crossing a border and not having to show a passport was driving from Ostend to Amsterdam.

Are we suddenly going to lose all our rights built up over the centuries? No. Are our courts going to disappear? No. What are we going to lose? I don’t know. Maybe the EU at some future date will implement a piece of legislation that makes its citizens’ lives that bit easier or more pleasant. What’s to stop us following suit? Absolutely nothing. And vice-versa, of course.

Obviously there is going to be a degree of turmoil over trade next year, and there are bound to be hand-wringing headlines, but how much impact and for how long? I wouldn’t have thought a great deal. With so much depending on moving commodities between nations, it’s in everyone’s interests – particularly big business's – to smooth it out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I guess there’s a good chance that Ulster might be persuaded that it’s really part of the island of Ireland after all and form some kind of Irish federation with the south. But would that really be such a bad thing? It would solve a lot of problems...

The greatest risk, I would have thought, would be to the EU itself. If we thrive and demonstrate that to be successful in a globally-connected world you don’t need all the restrictions that are the hallmark of the EU, that could be quite a lure for the less-committed nations. Who knows, it might even force a re-think of how a European Union should be constituted and run. Maybe we could even be asked to re-join the reformed Europe!

• Bob Cowan is a former Evening Standard, Times and Telegraph journalist now retired and living in East London, where he was born and brought up.

Stand up and be counted of you're a thinking Leaver (I never claimed they didn't exist)

Well Liz Truss has already delivered (not very convincingly), just four years+ since the referendum and Leavers' promises of new trade deals galore and an easy agreement with the EU. Perhaps Private Eye's brilliant cover sums up their hopes

 

A friend remarked a little while ago that Salut! seemed to be a forum for thoughtful, reasoned debate free of the sheer nastiness that detracts from the obvious values of social media. Well, sometimes maybe. Most of the time we struggle to attract readers, let alone ones willing to debate. But we keep going, in part because every so often interest explodes, bringing in hundreds of visitors and loads of interesting comments.

 

At Facebook,  where it's easier to stimulate discussion, I posted what you see below. For the record, I never - except in banter - allege that all Leave voters were thick, selfish, leaning (or worse) towards the far right and, if not simply racist, xenophobic by nature. What I do claim is that if you remove the pro-Brexit  votes of those fitting all or part of that description, Remain would have won.

 

What I repeat here is very short and will be followed by a much more substantial pro-Leave analysis from a valued former colleague with whom I naturally disagree but who fits no part of the description above of another sort of Brexiter.

 

There are other points of view and dozens of people took the trouble to respond. See them all at this Facebook link; I may get round to reproducing a selection in Comments at the follow-up piece mentioned in the last paragraph. As for those seeing this for the first time, why not get involved, here or at https://www.francesalut.com/2020/09/stand-up-and-be-counted-if-youre-a-thinking-leaver-2.html ?...

Cinque Terre, Alassio and respite from the bleak horror of Brexitland

Room with a view: opening the window of our hotel in Monterosso al Mare

 

Viewed from civilised Europe, Britain - with its incompetent, sometimes clownish government directed by a sinister, unelected figure who chooses which lockdown rules apply to him and which do not - is not an appealing proposition. It is made more unappealing by the brazen lack of that smidgen of decency needed to avoid even "limited and specific” contempt for international law.

When you drive along the Cote d'Azur towards Nice and then cross into Italy, you are aware of being in special places far from the ugliness of Brexitland. 

In my post-Brexit manifesto, most parts of Europe will be out of bounds for Leave voters.

Negotiations will be held with Spain to enable Magaluf to be declared a British protectorate. That wonderfully cultured location will be one of only a few EU destinations where Brexiters will be welcomed.

To the relief of so many Brexiters, there will be no spelling or language tests. However, temperature checks will be made on all those entering and indeed leaving; never forget that while Britain may be the sick man of Europe with many, many more deaths than any other country, it reserves the right to quarantine everyone as part of a determined campaign to do everything far too late and in the process wreck the travel and aviation industries with disproportionate and ill-considered measures.

Meanwhile, some thoughts from Italy ... 

That Boris heaven and hell joke in full

I worked with Boris and despite gaping political differences never disliked him. That said, he is a wretched, untrustworthy PM leading a Govt of toadying incompétents and Brexit will indeed wreck what’s left of the country. So bravo for this delicious thread ...

— Colin Randall (@salutsunderland) September 6, 2020

 

From @ianhowes1970 at Twitter came this thread. He asked about the identity of the author so that he or she could be credited. Some on Twitter suggested it was a bit like that Hitler clip - ie with loads of variations - and other thought it originated as a joke about recruitment practices. Someone thought it went back to the 1970s so my chances of finding and crediting the author may be remote ...my reply above attracted some derision but also 100+ likes

Charlie Hebdo: judging terrorism and defending liberty

How Charlie Hebdo previewed the trial. I bought two copies by mistake and will send the spare to the first person to leave a comment persuading me it should go to them

For the next two and a half months, a court in Paris will consider the various secondary roles of 14 people accused in connection with the terrorist attacks of January 2015 that left 17 innocent people dead. The trial opened last Wednesday (September 1) and is being filmed for historical archives ... This is my preview for The National .. 

More than five years after attacks on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket launched an ugly new wave of terrorism in France, the trial begins on Wednesday of 14 people accused of helping the killers.

Only 11 of the defendants can be present for hearings to be held at the new criminal court at the Porte de Clichy on the outskirts of the French capital.

Three others fled to Syria shortly before the attacks. Two are presumed to have died there while fighting  alongside ISIS but can still be tried because their deaths remain unconfirmed.

The grim events that unfolded between January 7 and 9 2015 shocked the world and intensified debate about blasphemy and the limits of freedom of expression. 

 

Anyone for some smashing bouf at the Cavalière tennis club?

Would I expect to eat like a king or, since this is France, president at an establishment calling itself the Smash Club? To be honest, probably not.

In defence of this Smash Club, it exists primarily for tennis players even if the poolside restaurant draws a clientele that looks, for the most part, as if it hasn't seen much action on the courts for a good few years.

In its rural setting a mile or so back from the resort of Cavalière, west of Saint-Tropez, the Smash Club is a gem. It comes at a price and we don't (can't) faire des choses en grand - push the boat out that often. But with birthdays falling within five days of each other, we usually make that an excuse.

 

Italy, and more sumptuous food, beckons during a short break in Alassio and Cinque Terre from tomorrow but the dinner at Cavalière will be hard to top. It was by far the finest restaurant meal we've had in a couple of years.

Wet chips, Wate-on and - in an ideal world - weight off

More nostalgia from the pages of the very dormant Salut! North, which I shall close down once I have transferred material here.

Please bear in mind that this item was written 12 years ago; the photograph above was taken then, too. I did not maintain the gym regime mentioned in the piece but still play badminton - interrupted by a knee op last year and the pandemic this year - as well as swimming and walking a lot less than I should.

I do get plenty of the arm exercise shown below in a photo taken on Saturday, my 72nd birthday, in Bormes-les-Mimosas, the south of France ...

For some entertaining comments on the piece I reproduce below, go to the original item (while it's still there) at https://www.salutnorth.com/2008/01/no-bones-were-b.html. Coming next: my friend Bill Taylor's terrific read, 'Woodbines, Shildon Tunnel and a boy's first kiss'. All items transferred from Salut! North - two so far - appear at this link ....

No bones were broken. I was left grazed and dusty, not bleeding. There was, unfortunately, no cause to stay off school and counselling hadn't even been invented.

But it was still a middlingly unpleasant experience, being pounced on in the dark, pushed and jostled by two or three other boys and left feeling sorry for myself on the ground as they ran off laughing.

The dignity of labour, and a northern lad's false belief in London

Shildon, Co Durham marks 150 years of railway history in 1975. Image: John Thorn  Not far from this spot, in 1825, the world's first public railway steam train left for Stockton-on-Tees

Of my three active sites, Salut! North is the Cinderella. The idea was to publish reflections on the North-eastern England of my youth. But it never really took off. I was quite happy with some of what was posted, including guest input from the incomparable Bill Taylor but readership levels rarely got far beyond paltry. I shall probably close down the site when I get round to it, but not before incorporating the better posts here.

I start that process with what was meant to be the first in a series of articles about working for a living. I have tweaked here and there, and added a couple of photos, but this is essentially as published back in 2008 ... 

My first job, if you do not count paper rounds, babysitting or doing the shopping for neighbours, was in the Loading Bay at the railway wagon works known to everyone for miles around as Shildon Shops.

Do I remember that first day as if it were yesterday? Have I remained on close terms with the people I worked with? Does the actual date I started the job spring readily to mind? Not, I am sorry to say, so much as a bit of it.

Reliable memories of what I did each day, how much I was paid or who I met - all the important details of anyone's entrance into the world of work - have long since vanished.

France: from Beirut to Ankara and the Maghreb, Macron positions himself as Europe's natural leader

This is how The National (UAE) treated my article reflecting on Emmanuel Macron's swift visit to Beirut after the catastrophic explosions - and other pressing concerns that have interrupted his holiday down the road from me.

I expected to be accused by Macron opponents  of being too kind to the president. I did not expect one of his supporters, Manuel Guillaumont, encountered par hasard at Twitter, to take issue with my analysis - 'interesting but ultimately weak ... nothing new'. In later exchanges, Manuel said Macron was actually stronger on domestic politics than many believed but was trying to strengthen a feeble or isolated role in world affairs even though the French cared little about such things.  

On doit oublier 2017 et bâtir un nouveau programme. De plus, la politique internationale intéresse peu les français et n'a pas à ma connaissance fait gagner ou perdre un président qui se représentait. Quant au respect, pour quoi que ce soit, c'est une valeur désuète.

— Manuel Guillaumont 🇫🇷🇬🇷🇮🇪🇷🇴 (@MGuillaumont) August 17, 2020

Needless to say, I acknowledge Manuel's criticism but also stand by my article. I am not a passionate Macron fan - and suffer from his Élysée press office's tendency to treat foreign journalists (OK, me and one or two others I know) with contempt - but consider him a good, strong president who stands head and shoulders, though not in physical stature, above Boris Johnson ...