Jump!

If pressed beyond “I dunno” my son describes what I do at work as “going around chatting to people”. Whilst I might dress this up under the guises of team building, networking, operational engagement and the like to the untrained, testosterone driven, self obsessed, teenager eye this could be mistaken for merely some office “bants”.  Not that such a phrase would be warmly received by said charge. He welcomes my attempts at modern parlance with all the relish of David Cameron shaking hands with an unwashed voter.  This in turn invigorates me to further explore the lexicon of “the street” safe in the knowledge that whilst I may never be “cool” I can at least find new ways to infuriate him and at the same time extract amusement from the situation. Ah a tale as old as time.

Where was I? Oh yes, chatting. With our offices spanning four sites across the city centre I spend a proportion of each day walking between buildings, preferring a bit of face to face over the telephone, video conferencing or instant messaging. Label me old fashioned if you will but if I'm going to call someone a cunt I prefer to do it in person.  These walks, so commonplace have become routine and often autopilot takes over.  One morning recently I was crossing the main city square and slowly I noticed that it was quiet. No. Different. There was no traffic. Police cars were everywhere along with a couple of ambulances and a fire engine so large it was last seen parked outside the Towering Inferno.  People were out on the streets. In retrospect there are always folk milling about all hours of the day. Get a job, hippies! Wrote the man, presenting his views from the curbside. So ok, we’re all off chatting somewhere, it's the modern workplace. Blah blah blah. At one corner of the square a crowd is gathered and in deference to modernity at least a third of them are taking photos on their smartphones. Before us, maybe 4 metres off the ground stood a man perched up a lamp post. Is this a suicidal call for help? A protest? I turned to a guy stood next to me and asked. He had no clue but was recording it for posterity/Facebook just in case. I asked the same question of a policeman and whilst I can't recall his exact words if surmounted to that he was there to guard the tape strung across the road. Everyone was just waiting. I had chats to impose my will on people via the mask of bonhomie so opted to resume my journey.  An hour later and I'm passing back through the square. Everyone's kept their places, bar the fire engine, presumably when they realised a step ladder or a few assorted throw cushions from the department store across the road could save the day.  Boring! Nothing's changed. No one knows anything. Everyone’s transfixed. I stomp off to my lair.  He was up there for five hours in the end before being talked down by trained officers. Yeah, ok, he could have jumped into rush hour traffic from his shallow vantage point but there was a greater chance of him scuffing his knees. The news reports were the same as any other, a loose accumulation of facts and observations and an abrupt halt. No conclusion. No why.  With no updates my thoughts returned to earlier in the day, stood amongst a group of strangers waiting for another stranger to do something.  A level of disinterest in the reasons but still hoping for activity.  Someone to shout “Jump”.

Whilst we might have longed for Euro 2016 with its saturation coverage to drive the referendum from our consciousness the news media has maintained a dogged enthusiasm for over sharing constant updates from both sides of the debate.  The heavy handed “Project Fear” tactics of the remain campaign distanced themselves from the electorate and allowed team brexit to strangely seem calm, considered and a positive choice.  Stranger still, Michael Gove has come across quite well in a variety of interviews and debates.  One has to stand back, recall his destruction of the education sector and identify him as a cancerous presence in our society, a cheerleader for an agenda we are as yet not party to.  The polls say it’s going to be close.  We flick back to whichever match is on and try and dwell on why there are so many late goals and not the spectre of Nigel Farage opening champagne bottles on the morning of Friday.  

Away from Europe in either of its current affairs or sporting manifestations the news has been, to put it bluntly, shit.  At a nightclub in Miami a gunman shoots 49 people dead and wounds over 50.  It’s a gay nightclub that’s been targeted by someone purportedly sympathising with ISIS.   They’ve been self radicalised on the internet apparently which astonishingly isn't a euphemism and more a cypher for “not from around here”.  As the days pass and the camera crews decamp from an anonymous patch of concrete a block or so away from the club stories start to surface about the killer making so many reconnaissance trips to the club the source of the gay hatred suggests a more personal turmoil.

Meanwhile back nearer home we’re sat relishing a brief moment of football inspired levity as England fight back to beat Wales when news breaks, even to us in a pub, that a local MP has been murdered. The Lady Di-ification of Jo Cox in the aftermath of her death comes across as partly the media celebrating something other than the referendum to focus on.  The local girl made good, a dedication to good causes both in her community and those affected by war overseas are all to be championed. That the killer shouted “Britain First” as he attacked and then later in court declared himself as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” drew inevitable links to the referendum campaigns.  Who’d have thought peddling a daily diatribe of hate would inspire the worst in people.   

It’s Wednesday night.  The polling booths open tomorrow.  The atmosphere is strange.  There’s a subtext of anger. Whichever side loses isn’t going to simply accept it and move on.  I love my county, my country but this is the first time in my life when I’ve actively thought about leaving it and removing myself from these people, those I walk amongst, those driven by hate, by fear, by loathing of difference, happy to externalise all of their problems, happy to blame, to be told that it’s ok to feel what they’re feeling to vote for hate, to vote for them, those whose motivations are manifestations of a greater hatred, to those who vote for them,  to separate, to isolate, to drive to the bottom, to be distracted as rights are lost, to ensure they sit still and do what they’re told, to accept the sham of parliamentary democracy, to descend into poverty and watch millionaires on television talk of tough times, to wait to be told who to hate next.  Did someone shout jump?

Has anyone told you that you’ve got a great charter?

I’m walking through the city at noon.  Bored office workers channel brownian motion whilst I behave like they belong to a sect for which my membership has lapsed until a shop window reflection, all skewed tie and rumpled shirt compels me to return to the herd.  As we decide which plastic foreignesque boutique outlet to request to warm up a healthy and exciting frozen lunch for one pumped out of an industrial estate in Northampton the night before my attention is drawn to something in the middle ground ahead. A queue. Hey, it’s England, you're no doubt pointing out. This was long though, snaking out of a shopping mall and stretching out for two blocks through the pedestrianised wasteland that is modern city centre retail. Has one of our political thought leaders come to say something unfounded on Europe in a confident and overbearing manner? Judging by the queue’s demographic, clusters of excited tweenagers and the odd uncomfortable parent I suspected Michael Gove is more likely to be tipping his latest barrel of invective laden waste into another city.  So what was going on? My curiosity/ennui civil war resulted in me walking towards the head of the queue.  This better not be another Apple release my interior dialogue intoned.  It wasn’t early morning though and again, the demographic was wrong, not bearded 40 somethings in cagoules clinging to the idea that the latest iPhone will cement their status as a hipster.  I’m in the centre of the mall now. In front of me is a cardboard shelter, shielding the queue from what lay within.  I walk around the deck of the mall and opt to descend an escalator to spy on the inhabitants of the flimsy enclave.  There’s logos on the inside...The high street stationers WH Smith.  Not exactly rock and roll.  Within it stands some young 20 something bloke calmly posing with his arm around a stranger whilst she sorts out her selfy stick.  I have as much recognition of the star of the show as the two bored handlers marshalling the queue through the sheer power of their blue polyester company sweatshirts.  The escalator continues down and he passes from view.  I can’t pretend my finger is on the pulse of contemporary society.  By using the phrase “contemporary society” I admit I am further distancing myself from team snapchat.  But hey.  I can tell the difference between Iggy Azalea and Jacob Rees-Mogg.  I have a vague understanding as to what’s “going on” but this anonymous bloke in his cardboard den was drawing a complete blank.  I google the shopping mall.  This has got serious.  I’m using my phone’s data allowance on this quest.  A tweet from the mall that morning proudly announces that _____ _____ will be appearing that day.  The name, the brand, draws a blank too.  I google his name.  His twitter feed backs up that he’s in the city doing his thing but I’m still none the wiser as to what/who this character is.  Another google later and I’m hit with a set of video links.  Ah, he’s one of them.  A youtuber, getting a couple of million hits per video which is entering the advertising revenue cut territory that means you can start to pretend it’s your job.  I’ve gone this far, I might as well look at the videos and see what he’s about.  Is he a singer, a poet, a philosopher?  Not really. His theme seems to be “lifestyle” which is a very polite way of saying he films whatever’s he’s up to, pushes it out on youtube and counts the hits.  It could easily be described as being about nothing.  So there we have it, the modern age in miniature.  A man films himself as some sort of testament of nihilism and millions watch.  It’s a movement. It’s today. It’s the abyss.

The days flutter by.  90 minutes motoring through a car park that on maps is still listed as the A1 and I find myself in Lincoln. The journey was an exercise in frustration. The road was clogged with drivers determined to dwell in the right hand lane when that was clearly my lane as I had places to be. Lincoln apparently.  Never been before. Lincolnshire’s one of those counties that seems cut adrift from the rest of the county.  All married cousins, pigs being elected mayor and the War of the Roses still being played out in the fields around distant hamlets.  Cutting out from the A1 across the flatlands the roads quieten.  Once over the 40p toll bridge, a price no doubt set by Ethelred it’s quieter still.  I reached the outskirts of Lincoln or what I assumed was the town.  The GPS in the car had packed in with the word “Dragons” scrolling from left to right on the screen.  The traffic levels began to increase.  Roundabouts, bypasses, bridges thronged with traffic all intent apparently to never investigate the strange lands to the west.  The county itself is like some new size-zero zeitgeist model.  Straight up and down with the bumps not worth investigating.  That said, the part of Lincoln on a hill has been occupied for millennia and it was there that I found myself amongst bemused foreign exchange students stood on the ramparts of a rather fetching castle looking out on what could have been quite the vista if it wasn’t a town frozen in time beneath encompassing sombre grey clouds.  At Runnymede, Surrey the go to places for signing defining pieces of legislation and feeding the ducks the magna carta was signed.  From that point on, all men, even the King was subject to the law of the land.  Seeing as that’s the last time we’ve ever got near a bill of rights in this country it’s something we still cling to when we forget we’re a new peasant class to our new overseas friends with their love of our tax efficiencies, high rise property investment opportunities and media suppression.  Seeing as it was 1215 and the a photocopier was a few wars, plagues, enlightenment, industrial revolution and so on away they made numerous copies of the document of which four remain today.  A surefire way of keeping such an important document safe was to send it to Lincoln.  This they did and it remained safe on the hill until they stopped worshiping goats in 1953 and began to wonder what the strange marks on the flat thing meant.  As great charters go I have to confess that to see it in person is a somewhat underwhelming experience.  A small faded sheet of paper behind security glass in a darkened vault.  Without it how would our sham parliamentary democracy take root? It’s good to know that right to justice and a fair trial is written down for the record so we can nod to it when taking steps to maintain the status quo.  

Speaking of dismantling society the European referendum campaign continues to tighten around us, the poor electorate, a political boa constrictor way passed hunger and now just on a killing spree. Whilst it's heartening to see the deep cuts both factions of the Conservative party have been taking out of each other the savagery on show makes me wonder how they’ll even be able to pretend to be friends again on June 24. On this day either Cameron will be resigning or the heads of Boris, Gove and Grayling will be on spikes outside parliament. There doesn't seem to be much wriggle room between these two outcomes. This political self harm should be an open goal for the Labour Party but the apparent love child of Gareth Southgate and Chairman Mao, Jeremy Corbyn continues to muster the political verve of a prize winner for a competition he can't recall entering.

There's still two weeks to go before the vote. Fortunately there are but three sleeps until Euro 2016 literally kicks off.  Please ISIS, don’t wake us from this long planned blissful football coma and bring us back into the wider world and force us to press the red button to vote for airstrikes in somewhere 10 minutes into a news bulletin. Ah football. Let us gently relax into your all consuming succour.  Who will win? France, Germany, Spain? They're the favourites.  Or are they?  What do favourites mean any more?  A century may have elapsed since Einstein first wrote of special relativity but those old myths, like gravity, still make sense to us on a day to day basis, especially in our local model.   Football’s myths are no different.  One such trope of is the cream rising to the top.  You’re a good player so you move to a bigger club. You earn more money. Your team mates are better. Your chances of winning increase.  This football gravity has seemed to operate for years.  A side like Liverpool finds itself in limbo. As it gains success its best players are stripped away as they move to European club giants.  It stays where it is, players flow through it.  The cream onwards to Barcelona, Munich and the like.  They in turn strip the cream from smaller clubs.  This season Leicester City have been a weasel in the LHC. Football’s had to look at the evidence and change the model.  Whilst welcome, we shouldn’t pretend it’s a fairy tale.  They’re owned by billionaires.  Some of the players have at times in their lives been better suited to Crimewatch than Match of the Day.  The style of football is anti-possession, play on the break, keep a rigid shape. Be lucky.  But these are the negatives.  They also exhibited the behaviours or a genuine team.  They were the sum of their parts.  Different players stepped up through the season.  There’s an argument that this was a perfect storm of peers, a group of people from the manager down who were on second or third chances, who would only succeed if they worked together and didn’t deviate down the star laden ego monster route that seems endemic across the game.  You have to congratulate them.  No football fan can defend the status quo. Other teams played worse too. Manchester United continue their post Fergusson quest for identity.  Manchester City at times looked like the Harlem Globetrotters with a terrifying front 6 but with a weak defence and strategic shifts over managers saw them simply petered out.  Arsenal despite coming 2nd look like they’ll never win anything again under Wenger.  Spurs were a fantastic, young, hungry side that played good football but showed frailties in the run in and eventually imploded.  Leicester won. Every neutral championed them.  “Next season’s a clean slate - we can do a Leicester”  every fan intoned.  However, faint football gravitons are starting to be detected.  Ultimately, only one team wins.  The odds aren’t stacked in most teams favour.  Uncertainty is the narcotic that fuels football.  The maybe.  The dream of tomorrow’s victories.  Maybe Fulham and Leeds will get promoted and then one will go on to win the premier league the season after.  Maybe, but probably not.  England might win Euro 2016.  I’d settle for a decent style of play.  Despite all this reasoned downplaying of our chances the fan’s voice inside me jumps up and down shouting “What about Vardy’s pace? Kane’s Thor's hammer shot? The skills of Ali?  The Rooney swansong?” Three Lions starts playing and I’m digging out my England flag.  France should win. But maybe, maybe we can do a Leicester...

This is a brief time period not set for the history books, the time before the tournament, the referendum. The outcomes.  The quest for light relief is endemic in the news media.   A university banning graduates throwing mortar boards in graduation photos over health and safety grounds? Good. Tell us more.  Add the detail that photoshopped headwear will be added later.  Better. Ok ok, this kind of bullshit curios get thrown up every week.  Sometimes though you learn things and you have to split your life into before and after moments.  For me it was watching a documentary about men dressing up as dogs. They’re called the pup community.  Pitched as a set of socially anxious people looking to follow a simpler set of life rules it’s rooted in gay kink culture.  The documentary portrayed it as something asexually benign but it’s all blokes with half of them in leather and latex with dog masks on.  Life’s a broad church and all that but it’s fucking weird.

And in that Thought for the Day moment we can clumsily conclude that this is telling us something about our lives today.  The unexpected can be victorious.  This can be a football team, a random internet vlogger or a maybe just a set of terrible human beings intent of returning our country to feudal times.  In time,after years of darkness maybe we’ll get another charter.  An attempt at making things better. It feels a way off now.