WHAT IS IT ABOUT OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOUR?

It has been suggested to me that I do not take in other matters of interest to the general public.

It has also been suggested that my views are full of gloom and doom. I am seen as a crabby critic obsessed with Boris Johnson and Donal Trump, with passing references to the Mandalay Colonels, Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko and Victor Orbán. This may well be the case.

 

The Johnson thing is because I live here. I have spent the majority of my life in the United Kingdom, most of it in London. Despite these 57 years of domicile in the UK, 47 of which have been as a British Subject and Citizen, I am still viewed as a foreigner. I will always be foreign. As to Trump, I spent some very formative years in the country of my birth, and attended a variety of educational institutions, where it was normal ritual to ‘pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’. I was exposed, at an early age to the American myths, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg address, Thanksgiving, Delores’s Drive In, Hamburger Hamlet, Marvel and Del Comics, Pizza, Sees Candies, Wil Wright’s Ice cream parlor, BLT’s, PB&J, Billy Wilder, Humphry Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and many other facets that made the 1950’s and early 60’s in Southern California a pretty great and, on the whole, safe place to grow up. The Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy years.

You will note the Banana Split at $1 is only available one per customer.

 

Clearly, history reveals, there were a number of underlying features, inter alia, growing poisonous tumours of racism, white supremacy, fundamentalist religions, McCarthyism, Un-American Activities Committees, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a festering Vietnam War, and much more; however, none of the above interfered very much with fun in the sun. If only one could erase those underlying features and the nostalgia would be so much better. The assassination of John F Kennedy was an end of innocence. Lyndon Johnson meant well, but it all blew up in his face. I got out in 1965, but not, as you can tell, without the deeply imbedded influence of those California years. America was great. So it cannot be any surprise that I have an obsession about Trump and his psychotic obsession with bringing it all down, and laying waste what was once a wonderful place to be.

 

As to my escape, I fell into 1960’s London, a time when everything seemed possible, with a flower in my hair, beads, bells, Afghani sheepskin coats, and ‘I was Lord Kitchener’s valet’. The weather was not the same, but there was lots of fun to be had. Dope was relatively cheap and most people could actually afford to take taxis and buy a round of drinks in a pub. Life was mostly ‘Head Productions’ or some such, and one drifted around in a glorious sort of narcotic fog. It was all very different but a learning experience nonetheless. One longed for a decent pizza, a root beer float or a Sara Lee Lemon meringue pie, an egg cream, and something better than a Wimpy. All that was to come in due course and one grew to love London and its eccentricities. The American influence was making itself felt, yet the United Kingdom remained very much itself. But here too there were many poisons polluting the general atmosphere of goodwill, culture and understanding.

 

In effect I grew up in London, the UK and the European Union, after an adolescence in the United States. So is it any wonder that I am obsessed with how I believe the United Kingdom appears to be losing its way in the world?  

 

Never mind ‘J’ai deux amours’, Moi, J’ai trois amours, California, the UK and France. I had also spent some wonderful years in France, and these are the places that matter to me. I will continue to want them to be the best places they can be, so I will probably continue to be crabby and make a fuss. 

 

As regards other matters, why the hell didn’t Novak Djokovic just get a vaccine?  He’s probably one of the most fit people on the planet, and a vaccine would hardly be likely to cause him any problems at all. Or is it that his brain can only take in what goes on, on a tennis court? Whatever the problem it was one of the most easily solvable on earth. So sad for Novak, but I’m afraid, I believe, all of his own making, just as Boris’ problem too, are all of his own making. His are just as easily solvable. Resign.