New album in October.
Copper Blue was 20 years ago.
We lost mum last week. In the small hours of Thursday to be specific, but we knew for some time. She had one of those cancers. You know the type. From beginning to end, three-and-a-half years, but from January without any hope at all. And we’re not special. There will be many thousands of people living that way in Britain right now. Waiting for the inevitable.
Maybe you know someone. And, if you do, maybe you are taking small pleasure from whatever gets you high: the concertos of Rachmaninov, the films of Humphrey Bogart, a good play on Radio 4. But us, in our house, we like sport. We like watching it, we like playing it, we like arguing about it. And while sport won’t save a person from metastasizing tumours, it can perhaps save those in the vicinity. It can, for a moment, occupy their minds or lift their souls.
Martin Samuel is Britain's premier sports writer. Today's article is one of his best.
It’s easy to throw around words like “vibrant” and “young” and waffle about the British sense of humour and post-Empire faded greatness. That doesn’t come close to the heart of what happened last night. It ought to be impossible to articulate a national identity so full of contradictions. But in four words, there’s a valiant attempt: this is for everyone. Inclusive, open, supportive but not prescriptive, with humility and quiet confidence, and without the belief that everyone’s necessarily going to want it. Everyone gets a turn. Oh, and with permission to be as eccentric, cynical and sarcastic as you like so long as you’re not being mean.
This is why the Mail is so insidious, and so dangerous. It’s written in a very particular way, designed to sweep readers up in a froth of anger, before then slipping in various suggestions of what else they should think. Although written as, “And here’s what you already think, of course.” While I have strong issues with many other newspapers, from the hypocrisy of the Murdoch press, to the near fascistic support for anything “left” in the Guardian, nothing upsets me nor fills me with fear as much as the prose style of the Mail.
A terrific article by John Walker.
New album coming in October.