That Was The Year, That Was

Good-bye 2016. I know it wasn't really your fault, but you will be remembered as something of an Annus Ridiculus!

In the first part of an unfortunate year, fans of Blackpool Football Club had to look on in horror as the discredited owners of our proud club oversaw a second successive relegation, this time back to the bottom division a mere six seasons after winning promotion to the Premier League. What a falling off was there! And what a seemingly self-serving agenda by the Oystons, who appear to have profited hugely in the process on the back of the honest endeavours of others.

Then in mid-year along came Cameron's Cock-Up, aka the Brexit Referendum. Hindsight is pointless unless one benefits from the lessons it can bestow and our political masters have proved themselves reluctant learners in that respect over decades (from poll-tax to Iraq wars to austerity measures and beyond). A less well thought out 'plan' it would be hard to imagine. You couldn't make it up.

Then there was Assad with the Russians in tow, bringing Syria to the brink of complete destruction in the name of all that is Holy (or should that be Oily?) with his vicious civil offensive that perpetrated war crimes on those who opposed him. Large parts of the country were decimated, chemical weapons featured in the offensive and millions of Syrians were made refugees in the face of state-led genocide. It beggars belief that Assad was partly educated in England and has a British wife. Crap.

Finally, to Trump the lot, the USA only went and elected a lying, misogynistic racist billionaire to the highest post in the land (despite his polling a minority of the popular vote). Good luck with that one, America. The sun sets on you (as D.H. Lawrence once said).

Sadly, there is a common thread of cynical motivation in all of the above. One can only hope that 2017 isn't similarly tainted, but it seems like a faint hope on this New Year's Eve.

On a positive note, how about some 'best of year' accolades?

The best book I read all year: Unknown Soldiers by Vaino Linna. Originally written in 1954, this novel has just been published in translation (from the Finnish) by Penguin Modern Classics and is utterly brilliant in its unromantic portrayal of the true nature of warfare as fought out on the border between Finland and Russia in World War II.

The best record I heard all year: Distance Inbetween by The Coral. Their first album of new material in six years saw the Wirral five-piece come roaring back at the top of their form with another moody psychedelic masterpiece - I even bought it on vinyl for maximum audio effect.

The best movie I saw all year: The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay (and starring Bale, Carrell, Gosling and Pitt). A gripping, fast-paced black comedy that revealed the 2008 Financial Crisis for what it was, the result of unprincipled greedy-bastard chicanery as practised shamelessly by some of our major financial institutions.

The best theatre I saw all year: surprisingly, Andrew Green QC interrogating Karl Oyston under oath in the first of Valeri Belokon's court cases against the owners of Blackpool FC. I haven't had so much football-related fun since Blackpool went 3 up against Birmingham in the 2012 play-off semi-final.

Returning finally to the negatives, in a year of so many shocks to the system I retain one abiding image: of boatload after boatload of desperate migrants coming to grief trying to cross the Mediterranean in search of refuge in Europe. Their harrowing plight prompted the following, my final poem of 2016...

Fish Food
A pair of unsuspecting fashionistas,
Aegean sisters with their matching
laptops and flip-flops,
were the first to see those five brown bodies
rolling in the surf -
not sporting, but decomposing it transpired,
dead in the water for days.

They were just the first of many.

All deaths are shocking,
but the migrants kept on flocking
on southern shores,
fleeing from some unspeakable hell,
risking all
to pay the ferryman for treacherous passage,
hoping for a better world across the waves,
a safer European home.

So the little boats kept on coming,
criminally unseaworthy and overloaded,
kept on rocking, then capsizing,
until their pitiful cargoes were beached
bedraggled and ungainly in the foam,
more like refuse than refugees,
lungs burst, life and hopes quite drowned.

What a terrible toll.
Five thousand dead
in the Med this year,
all deserving better
of their short span on earth
than to end up as fish food.

Thanks for reading. Welcome to the New Year, S ;-)

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Pirates

I'm still reeling from the implications of the EU exit vote. It feels like we've walked the plank into infested waters! Funnily enough, I've been reading a book about "1956 - The Year That Changed Britain" (by Francis Beckett and Tony Russell). 1956 was a pivotal year though the book focuses mainly on the Suez Crisis and the foolhardy attempts of this country's political and military leaders to flex the muscles of empire one last time, attempts which ended in embarrassment and abject failure, but which sowed the seeds for much of the subsequent mistrust of the west by Egypt, Iran and Iraq.

An attitude that was beginning to sound anachronistic in the mid-fifties has become even more out of tune with a fast evolving world - but despite that, echoes of the "make Britain great again" refrain have been partly responsible for 17 million of my compatriots (and 67% of Blackpool voters) choosing to divorce themselves from the European Union this week. It may be democracy in action, but I am anticipating "2016 - The Year That Britain Shot Itself In Both Feet". I hope time proves me wrong. It really is no consolation at all that DC is handing over the tiller of the ship of state to BoJo (or worse?) to navigate us through the uncharted waters that lie ahead, but I'll leave it at that for political commentary... and concentrate instead on Pirates!

I've had some fun with anagrams of this week's theme: sea trip is a good one, as are parties and traipse, pastier, spat ire and spar tie along with the wonderfully evocative rat pies (plus its vegetarian alternative, tar pies). I wasn't so sure about tap rise, tip arse or it's rape although they could all have buccaneering connotations. I kept on looking to force out an anagram using art. Ipse art  was the closest I got - not quite embarrassment and abject failure as it did give me the idea for a poem (as you'll see below).

First, a bit of etymology and potted piratical history. The English word derives originally from the Greek πειρατής (peirates) via the Latin pirata and means a sea-brigand, literally one who attacks ships. No surprise there, though it helps date the origin of piracy to the 14th century BC, the earliest recorded exploits being those of the marauding Sea Peoples of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean at the start of a tradition that has been upheld by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Celts, Vikings and Moors (plus Cantonese and Japanese pirates in Eastern waters) - and all of this before the 'golden age' of piracy dawned with the European expansion to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Brigantines, corsairs, galleons and sloops plied the sea lanes of the Caribbean. Gold and silver bound from South America for Spain was the target of privateering pirate crews from England, France and the Netherlands. Doubloons and pieces of eight, the spoils of piracy, were shared among the marauding crews in a remarkably equitable manner - for many pirate ships were akin to democratic co-operatives, bounded by strict codes of honour despite the nature of their 'trade'. Treasure chests, treasure islands, blackbeards, bluebeards, peg legs, parrots, walking the plank and getting marooned are all the stuff of pirate tales. Life was hard and violent, stakes were high and few pirates lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of their plunders for they were usually either undone by other scurvy pirate crews or they were hunted down by the imperial navies of Britain and France, both of whom were engaged in an attempt to clean up and police the sea lanes.

Jolly Roger Hilton once described artistic endeavour as "a man swinging out into the void." Here they go then, in a sort of extended, mutant and swashbuckling Clerihew, setting off through uncharted waters on their voyage of discovery...

Painters Away! (Ipse Art)
Rene Magritte captained the fleet,
Georges Seurat stood for first mate.
Their challenge - to see if they could create
two sea-worthy barques fit to chart
unfathomed waters
in pursuance of great modern art.

Abstraction, Impression, docked side by side,
were being made ready to sail.
Picasso and Sisley fettled the rigging,
their canvas was primed by Matisse,
while Toulouse Lautrec varnished the decks
and Dali and Dufy repainted the hulls
to splendidly surreal effect.

During this lull Paul Cezanne,
on hand for his culinary chops,
escaped from his galley to top up his tan,
while Gaugin the boatswain got comfortably pally
with swashbuckling Marc Chagall,
renowned for being rampant in the main,
and whose fondest refrain ran
"a dame in every port, a port in every dame."

Fred Hundertwasser was made quarter-master,
responsible for rations overall,
but Pissarro took charge of white spirit and rum
stored in clearly marked tanks
with the strict injunction that confusing the two
could poison the crew,
might presage disaster
and very well lead to him walking the plank.

Each ship had its parrot as custom dictates,
a Hopper, a Whistler,
who looked down from their yard-arms
heads cocked, beady eyed
and berated the efforts of any who slacked
with a torrent of foul-beaked cackling cries.

Came the day when all was ready at last.

With the first burst from the east
of a favourable breeze,
Magritte gave the word to both crews.
Manet and Monet hauled at the sheets,
the skull and crossbones unfurled from each mast;
Van Dongen and Ensor smartly weighed anchors,
while rooted ashore
Rousseau and Renoir cast all painters away
and both masterly state-of-the art barques
were finally loose
and straining to cut through the waves.


Hearties, thanks for reading. S ;-)

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