This is England

On the train to Newcastle for a ‘business trip’.

Everybody is wearing the ‘smart casual’ universal corporate uniform. They’ve all got laptop cases and tap away at various gadgets. Then they read WhatCar to relax, or maybe for the racier ones; FHM. They have loud conversations about office politics. But I can’t work out from any of it what they or their businesses actually do.

I go to the dining car. I’m ignored for fifteen minutes by the waitress. When I manage eye contact she asks me if I know that this is the dining car. I mentally count to ten and tell her that I do realise, and actually I would like a menu.

Out of the city centre to a 'business park' I get to the business I’m visiting. It’s locked in the 1980’s. In reception there’s a faded photograph of Princess Di opening the place. She’s wearing an 80’s get-up with a collar like a cake doily. There are a host of faded certificates showing accreditation to various industry bodies . Many of these are time-expired. With a lot of fuss I am offered a cup of (something like) coffee from an ancient vending machine.

Waiting for my train home - in Newcastle I walk around the city centre to kill time. Something is a bit odd but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Then it dawns on me – I haven’t seen a non-white face or heard a foreign accent. And the shops are all ‘English’.

Coming home I look through the window. It comes to me that still most of the country we travel through is actually empty countryside and small towns.

I realise that this is England. 'Proper' England - not London or some other 'metro-sophisticated' city. Where you take it for granted that you can wear jeans and a t-shirt and show off your tattoos and still be taken seriously. Or where there is a whole diverse world on your doorstep. Or where coffee comes in a million different over-priced varieties. And I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Wedding crasher.

Went to a wedding at the weekend. I usually avoid weddings - I just don’t really get them.

Having being raised a Catholic we were taught that marriage was one of the seven sacraments and a wedding was a religious ceremony. So once I’d managed to free my mind from that indoctrination I pretty much lumped weddings in with all the other mumbo-jumbo ritual.

Of course believing in marriage doesn’t require you to believe in God. But without the religious angle it seems pretty much like nothing more than a legal thing. And a legal thing rooted in our feudal past when establishing property rights and inheritance was all-important.

And I know it is possible to be secular, and not wish to establish property rights, and still believe in marriage. Something 'romantic' along the lines of proclaiming your love for the world to see. But I’m dubious about that too.

One of my favourite Shakespearean characters, Brutus, sums it up when he says that honest men don’t need to take oaths. Or as Bob Dylan puts it - to live outside the law you have to be honest.

Then there is the actual horrific spectacle that is the wedding itself. Disparate groups of people with nothing in common thrown awkwardly together for an afternoon. The elderly relatives, the obscure relatives there only because of familial lobbying, the kids sipping their parents’ booze, the people from work, the old school friends – and all their reluctant partners dragged along out of politeness.

All encapsulated perfectly this weekend as the unlikely be-suited ensemble took to the dance floor for Motorhead. I made my excuses and left…

Beneath every uniform ...

I was walking down a street near my work place in Soho when an armed motorcycle cop pulled up sharply and ordered a bloke who had parked up to make a delivery at a café to move on.

The guy was understandably a bit taken aback and looked non-plussed for a few seconds. The copper shouted at him again to move. The bloke dithered about for a few more seconds and mumbled something about finishing his delivery.

So this time the copper screamed at him - and the terrified driver who must have just registered the gun - jumped in and drove off. (Leaving his palette of deliveries behind on the pavement).

A couple of seconds later, two black Range Rovers screeched to an emergency stop and then a couple of plain-clothes heavies emerged and whisked Gordon Brown into a nearby restaurant.

At best a PR home-goal from the forces of the state. But at worst a confirmation that beneath every uniform, particularly one that carries a gun and has a bit of authority, there lies a fascist prick.

Knife crime

It’s difficult to avoid the knife-crime frenzy. It’s literally close to home – the four killings in a single day last week were within a five mile radius of where we live.

Knives scare me. I’ve been doing martial arts for just over 20 years and I can say in all honesty that I have very little to help me deal with a skinny fifteen year old armed with a kitchen knife. Some self-defence experts will demonstrate swift and neat disarms when faced with an armed attacker. This is pure bullshit – try it with an unco-operative opponent with the added bonus of surprise and concealment on their side. I’ve talked about this before - we did it once - in controlled circumstances. It was pretty sobering and it demonstrated to me that you don’t tackle a knife unless your life depends on it, and then be prepared to be hurt.

So what is to be done ? Stiffer sentencing ?

Maybe deterrents can work with pre-meditated street robberies. But these much publicised killings aren’t muggings gone wrong. They’re about a fucked-up culture of ‘respect’ and machismo. I doubt deterrents come into it much – in fact they might even add to the kudos of being a bad boy .

You don’t have to be a sociologist or psychologist to see that the less you have going for you – materially or educationally – the more important things like ‘face’ and status are. I doubt anyone has been stabbed because they ‘dissed’ a homeboy in Henley Upon Thames. Gangsta culture doesn’t help when the Ali G factor spreads it from the inner city to the suburbs but to hold hip-hop or dodgy computer games responsible is to mistake the effect for the cause. Nobody can seriously argue that the root cause isn't poverty or lack of opportunity.

I don’t have any simple answers to knife crime, but there is one thought which might seem a bit old-fashioned: Young males will always fight – it’s a side effect of testosterone – so why not teach martial arts, including boxing in every school? I’ve always found that the more you study the mechanics of violence the less likely you are to resort to it.

Roadtrip

Words of wisdom from an unlikely source (actually National Lampoon’s Animal House): sometimes the only solution is A ROADTRIP. So I headed off on my bike for a long weekend to the nearest we have in this country to the Great Plains – the Fenlands of East Anglia.

I’ve been meaning to visit Flag Fen for a long time – the Bronze Age site that’s really as big a mystery as Stonehenge: A half-mile long causeway of wooden stakes with a large platform. It goes from nowhere in particular to ... nowhere in particular. There don't seem to be any settlements there so the conclusion is that it must have been of ‘ritual’ significance. Of course we don’t really know what that means - but our ancestors did have something about the gods living in water and offered up their treasures by throwing them into the water. (Ever thrown coins in a fountain ? - the collective memory must run deep).

The site is the work of archaeologist Francis Pryor * – I’m a big fan of his books - they destroy much of our misconceptions about our early history. A lot of which comes from the Victorians and their views on the role of empire and ‘superior’ races as the forces of progress.

* His view is that the Bronze and Iron Age inhabitants of this country were doing quite nicely before the Romans came along and didn’t need civillising. These ‘Ancient Britons’ weren’t a distinct race of ‘Celts’ – that’s just new-age mumbo-jumbo and/or romantic nationalist wishful thinking. Once the Romans went, Britain didn’t descend into a Dark Age – life just carried on much as before, only with Christianity, wine and a few more villas. And when the Anglo-Saxons eventually came along they didn’t drive out and replace the Britons - they just emerged as the dominant group in a multi-cultural society.

I needed somewhere to camp so I’d put a message out on the Harley Riders' Club website to see if any locals could recommend a bike-friendly campsite. I didn’t fancy turning up in the middle of nowhere only to be turned away by the respectable caravan-types. That really does a happen; I think they’re afraid us bikers are going to bring our own version of the dark ages to their Middle-England on wheels. Not only was I put in touch with a pub with a campsite but I was told that the local branch of the club would be having their monthly meeting there that night and I was welcome to come along. So I did, and was greeted like an honoured guest. I don’t think there are many other sub-cultures where people are so unfailingly open and generous. And who would have thought that out of a dozen or so people there I would find two others who shared my slightly geeky interests and wanted to know about Flag Fen ?

The next day took me to the heart of the Fens where some friends of mine have moved from London. It’s a brave move – they’ve not only re-located their bike building business, they’re on their way to becoming self-sufficient and have turned their place into part workshop, part small-holding. Some of it might seem a bit eccentric to a townie like me – bartering with the locals for food and cooking up road-kill. But they’re pretty much debt-free and it looks like they’re not dependent upon anyone. They also know their neighbours much better than I do mine in London - despite theirs’ being a quarter of a mile away. And they can’t remember the last time they heard a police siren. Seems like they've got something right.

I took a long ride home on the B-Roads and got only slightly soaked. But happy. It’s true - sometimes the answer is a Roadtrip.

Max Mosley's privacy

The News Of The World is a disgusting reactionary rag. It manages in a peculiarly English way to mix puritanism alongside the sensational reporting of sexual scandal. Small-minded and self-righteous editorials - alongside ‘saucy’ images of glamour girls.

So having now got that out of the way:

In most circumstances I would side with anyone who fell victim to a NOW’s puerile exposé. I have the predictably liberal view that behind closed doors and consenting adults - who gives a fuck ? But when it comes to F1 boss Max Mosley I’m afraid all my usual tolerant views are suspended.

Here’s why my attitude to the current scandle is in the category of hilarious - you just couldn’t make it up.

• He’s part of the country’s leading aristocratic Fascist dynasty. Dad was founder of the British Union of Fascists, Mum was some sort of Hitler groupie in the 30’s.

• It’s not just his inheritance – he’s a Fascist in his own right too. He was an election agent for them, he stood as a Fascist candidate, he was charged with threatening behaviour after a clash with anti-fascists, and he tried to go mainstream and stand for the Tories and got rejected.

• He has a taste for S&M and Nazi uniforms. And speaking German in moments of passion.

• One of the dominatrix’s he was filmed with is is the wife of an MI5 officer (who has now resigned).

So yes I’m guilty of double standards – a right to privacy for the rest of us, but as far as wealthy Fascist ex- public schoolboys are concerned - fair game. Bring it on.

Bonekickers

Probably not surprising to hear that I watched the BBC’s new archaeology drama series Bonekickers last night.

It’s definitely more Indianna Jones that Time Team: Photogenic female archaeologist action-babes rather than fat blokes with beards and jumpers who like real ale.

The plot - ludicrous – fragments of the ‘true cross’ found and a post-Dan Brown bit of neo-Templar conspiracy, with an all-action dénoument and their secret underground lair going up in flames.

The characters - clumsy – the gutsy female leader haunted by a past which we will no doubt discover in due course and a unsympathetic and demanding boss. Any minute I expected her to say ‘just give me another 24 hours to close this case’. Then there’s the innocent newbie who unwittingly saves the day. And the grouchy old misogynist who will doubtless turn out to have a heart of pure gold.

I’ve never been a field archaeologist but I’m pretty sure that, rather than scrapping about in the mud for hours, you don’t usually get to dig for an afternoon, take the finds back to the CSI-style forensic lab, solve the case and then spend the rest of the week chasing the villains.

Bonekickers is complete tosh. I’m sure I’ll be back for more next week.