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The Galaxy of Loss.

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Rick Walton is something of a cult writer who works in sport. His latest book – Power Chords – is about growing up through punk and ‘the power of music and ideas, pouring in to teenage life’.

(PROTESTING) THE GALAXY OF LOSS.

‘I guess the thing that stirs me the most is the urgent need to change the universe. And that really may be a direct result of punk and Margaret Thatcher’.

So sayeth the 2025 version of my good self. In Power Chords, my recent book. And yes I am aware of how dumb, dated or estranged from the all-consuming now that bold bluster might sound, but I wrote the book because that anger feels fresh. (With white supremacist fires a-burning, why wouldn’t it?) You don’t need to be a zeitgeist-obsessive to sense that the furies I felt in 1976 we may need to feel now.

‘Bit loathe to put dates into this baby (oops) but it may be inescapable. Absolutely not telling you freeloaders my birth date – not until we’re mates and you’ve proved you’re worth it – but suppose I can offer the rough figuration that I was a furious and pyrotechnically hormonal late-teen when the over-combed one began to preen through and over our lives. She, and Rotten’s voice, and Strummer’s heart, and Costello’s lyrics and my father’s death were the things that made me. They were contingent and co-forming energies that powered and power me towards trying, at the very least, to live a life that opposes’.

The energy around and beyond punk was the thing – more than the vinyl *produced within the category*. Don’t get me wrong, The Pistols, Clash, Jam, Buzzcocks were all magbloodynificent: but any tight definition of great punk or great punk bands throws up a confoundingly short list. However, open your hearts to New Wave or Bands Patently Unthinkable Without Punk and one of the most thrilling and conscious periods in popular music pogo(e)s into view.

Some of that was the result of the sort of peak political discontent many of us are experiencing now. Specific hatred – I’m afraid it was! – for Thatcher’s rancid but rising pomp and the prejudice she so brazenly bore against minorities and communities that opposed her. Plus we angry teens were profoundly shifted by the new, articulate raging: Weller, Costello, Devoto and Mark E Smith wading in compellingly against the analgesic banality of The Biz and Normal Life itself.

Not sure the phrase ‘they spoke for us’ was rilly around in 1977, but they did that thing. There was a different drive, over and above the phlegm-heavy sonic charge. This was righteous, electrifying, raw-but-eloquent objection. It smelt like change and de-mystification and it brought both.

‘Punks identified anyone who sounded like The Bizz, or was complicit in its pitches as the enemy. This was of course almost everybody. If you swam complacently along with the major record labels, the machinery of production and the Gods of Commerce then you were traitorous filth: all of you. If you deliberately made your musical sound easy to access, you were shameless, vacuous scumbags. Plus energy. If your energy was that traditional thing aspiring to loveliness and sweet diversion then you were, despite your smashtastic success, a joke’.

If this all sounds a bit judgemental then yes – guilty as charged. But new wave coloured and fleshed-out and was in any event witty and hearty from the start. Lydon may not have been (not intentionally, at least) a bundle of laughs but everywhere you look from Talking Heads, Buzzcocks, Postcard Records to B52s there’s a flush of humour, of the mischief of young people. Reminding me, at least, of the brilliance of purveyors of placards elsewhere and always.

‘The three chords and less than three minutes thing that punk was predicated upon is very pop. It’s also obviously anti-indulgence… and therefore may be supportive of smart choices. Knowing is everything: this includes knowing there is nothing wrong with ‘music to wash up to’. The two poles of what we might call engaged or protest songs and ephemera can absolutely subsist – and did. 1979 may have been the peak of the history of popular music – albums and singles – because of the energy and drive of punk and the sparkling wit of energized pop’.

I express in Power Chords some wee frustration at the lack of articulate voices about or from within punk, at the time, whilst noting that what really matters, of course, is the choons. Sure, Lydon’s reactionary rants and his butter commercials undermine The Cause. The Clash had a kind of daft dressing-up box, full of photogenic rebel gear. Image has always been huge, to Weller. And yet the legacy – the real legacy – is stellar and seminal to so many of us.

‘Lydon was and is somewhere between the various caricatures of force of nature, clown and cultural icon. He was and is punk, for better and worse. For all his loudmouthery and those moments where we Guardian-reading liberals had wished he would ‘just stop!’ Lydon has produced material of staggering ambition and import. (So I for one largely forgive him). The Pistols singles are almost as sensational now as they were then. ‘Public Image’ the single is an extraordinary and well-executed re-birth. ‘Poptones’, ‘Careering’, ‘Flowers of Romance’, ‘Keep Banging the Door’ and ‘Rise’ are all giants’.

Power Chords was generously described as ‘a life in music. Beautifully told’ on the cover. (Many thanks @memorialdevice). Meaning it’s not just about punk – although it may be about growing up through punk. I wrote it last year because it felt that my anger was spiking to teen levels because of the crassness and racism and deconstruction of the truth in the ether now. I’m glad I did that – put on record my daft association of the current galaxy of loss with my precious experience of equivalently-perceived evils. I was there, then, and *I did learn stuff* so this is my protest song.

‘Foolish to remotely compare how things felt from Year A to F, but the parallels around race and wealth, between Thatcherite Ingerland and Trumpian North America are striking. Thatcher (for us) was an obvious bigot and likely white supremacist: see also Trump and Musk. In both eras there is an extraordinary sense of the rich getting richer – by design. That shamelessness, now so epitomized by Trump’s cohort of oligarchs and technocrats is both the exercise of increasingly authoritarian power and triumphalist cruelty. Meaning a particular kind of wickedness’.

There are challenges.

‘Where lies progress in all this? On a political level I suppose we need to elect governments that will be a) strong enough morally to oppose prejudice and b) smart enough economically to improve the lot of the disaffected. Clearly, sadly, the momentum appears to be going the other way in certain key democracies’.

And yet, as always, there is hope. In this most recent book I call out to our next-generation Angels of Protest, invoking the power of tremendous and life-changing songs of meaning, wherever they are, however they sound, to carry us somewhere better.

Stormy Weather.

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I’m heavily overdue a political/philosophical rant… so here goes. I’m a profoundly contented man in many ways but some kinda blowout feels inevitable and necessary. The world – as well as being treble-fabulous – gets darker and dumber every day. Wilder.

Gaza is a cruel and obvious stain on all of us. We Brits are culpable, even in our powerlessness, for the appalling support successive governments have lent to the machinery of the Israeli state. For a Labour government to actively assist a world-level butcher and fiend like Netanyahu is acutely, enragingly, grievously painful for a feeble soft-leftie like myself to ‘deal with’. (Poor me). Expected (but was appalled) to see Sunak stand next to the man and say “We want you to win”… but not quite this. On the ground, the murder and spiteful subjugation of the Palestinians (by Israelis in and out of uniform) in plain sight, is an apocalypse for those on the receiving end and for the idea of international law. We shouldn’t need to say it but both matter, yes?

We’re in extremis, here. A patent genocide – the single-most troubling and serious violation of humanity within the lifespans of many of us – and Netanyahu gets feasted and trumpeted (sic) at the White House at New Year’s. Starmer selling weapons and facilitating by providing reconnaissance. Protestors, young and old, becoming terrorists under a *particularly selective* British law, driven-through by Labour. A ‘ceasefire’ that insults us all. Palestinian journalists wiped-out; media excluded from the scene so that killings and clearance can continue.

Now Venezuela. There’s a pattern of sorts, not just centring around a demented president: bigger even than his petty, mendacious lunacy. Around the degradation of international law itself.

Trump is central. He’s stupid and vile and corrupt and probably subject to blackmail or the threat of it from other world powers and by individuals. His gangsterism is almost endless because he sees no boundaries to what he (or those he approves of) can do. There is no law because he is it.

But of course this petulant but dangerous clown facilitates anarchy elsewhere. Probably negotiates towards it – certainly if the historic stories regarding a Venezuela/Ukraine swap-deal-thing with Putin are true, which seems likely. These guys think they can do anything. And in the States and in the UK not enough of us kick up enough of a fuss. ‘Twas always thus.

Okay. That may be more leftie self-pity. But the concern around there being no red lines should be and is cross-party – is beyond the realm of the politically-motivated. Or’nary People know that this is wrong. They know that Starmer and his ministers have embarrassed us all by not calling out the US ‘action’ in Venezuela.

Even Or’nary People recognise that a UK Prime Minister needs to take care around how he or she describes contentious American interventions. But this one is so patently transgressing of international law – and so obviously *all about resources* in any case – that some form of criticism is necessary and right. Take care with your language but draw the red lines. It *may be* that Starmer is discreetly expressing ver-ry different views to colleagues and partners in Europe… but these appearances matter: his; his ministers’. Repeatedly ‘refusing to be drawn’ on matters this evident and this fundamental to national conduct has further damaged his reputation – for lily-livered feebleness and poodledom.

You don’t need to be a top-of-the-range political analyst to see that failing to condemn gross acts of piracy emboldens pirates-in-waiting: in Moscow and Beijing, say. So gather and protest. In our case, gather with Europe, more quickly. Do it clandestinely if it helps. Trump has already effectively cut us loose. Prepare for the moment of No Return – could that be Greenland? Or whatever happens next in Ukraine? – by being profoundly of the European bloc. Do that now. Commit to that, even if it’s only ’til the Trump storm blows over.

pic from The Guardian.

This is not a love-song (to 2025).

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It may be the fabbest day of the year – it’s certainly the last. Blazing sunshine. Cows getting frisky coz of that distant, overdue tractor. Hard, hard frost. Crows.

Up earlyish to take son to the train. Scoot round Lidls sharpish, before the Party Animals pile in to charge their trolleys with fruity beer and cheesy wotsits. Home to stack my own medium-frugal stash and sweep out the fire. Then quiet. And time.

The things in my head are clamouring to get away from the front of the queue. Some are too angry and obvious; some too sporty and technical. Nobody will read so this may assuage the selection of material but also maybe not? You guys *really are irrelevant* to The Flow. I’m ‘standing outside’. Outside in some weird, lush, white-but-verdant farmyard where the beat don’t stop. With the pheasant, the finches, the cows. Only I can hear them – not you.

Sure I have to think a bit about the turning of the year and what I’ll do tonight but: have food; have a little booze; have every confidence I could go to three different places or none. The choice, as always, is drink or drive – or would be if I wasn’t driving. And daughter; daughter is a factor.

So the usual, genuinely serene contentment and the option for off-screen social interaction. (Remember that?) For now, stare at the screen and let the thoughts come.

Recent and brutal and hard-to-avoid, for any kindof writer, for any kind of human. Timelines that are relentlessly Gaza and Trump and the kind of impossible evils that should drive our righteous furies. Genocides – one flaunted, one gone missing – that a staggering and shameful number of our alleged leaders either conciliate or contribute towards. Why aren’t we (The West? The East, The North, The South?) doing stuff?!? Why no tanks circling Netanfuckingyahu? Never mind the boycotts and the diplomatic niceties, why aren’t we threatening the machinery of the Israeli state with the kind of evisceration they’ve inflicted on the Palestinians? Plainly it would be righteous!*

*Yeh yeh, I know. It couldn’t happen with Trump in the White House and Starmer in the kennel. But however irresponsible my anger on this, I have a point, yes? The Provocation is not without meaning. And it’s This Year’s Story – again. Gaza is a genocide in plain sight. Trump’s part in it is vile and inhuman – driven by both prejudice and bottomless greed. Netanyahu should be in jail, at best. Starmer is an accomplice. If there were decent and progressive administrations in place in Washington and London, even mighty Israel could have been forced to withdraw, or face meaningful consequences. Instead, the fact and the idea of International Law is crushed.*

This ‘backdrop’ is inescapable, or should be. But because I’m as feeble as you are, I retreat into sport and books and walks. And the fucking internet.

Last night, MU again. And rinse and repeat. Amorim kinda worthy but still lost in that programme of over-coaching and unconvincing ‘changes’. Previous game: the team is woeful but ahead; make defensive changes. Last night – against a historically abject Wolves – make more ‘proactive’ decisions to bring creativity and shore-up the side. (Wolves were palpably the better footballing side, for much of the game). Everything fails. Manchester United look less of a unit, less purposeful, less convincing, after the Bright Young Things (making debuts or injecting The Fearlessness Of Youth) look as shot of confidence and ideas as those who started.

Yes this team has somehow climbed the table. And yes Mount (again briefly) and Fernandes had looked like potential Manchester United players and partners… but who else? Dorgu is so utterly mediocre it’s almost funny. Dalot has disappeared. Zirkzee is probs a Div 1 player. Casemiro is ‘seasoned’ but should be nowhere near the line-up. Amad is majoring in that flatter-to-deceive malarkey, producing almost nothing. Mbeumo *has something* but has been poor of late. Cunha could play in a legit side but was awful last night. Mainoo ‘didn’t fit the system’ and/or his face didn’t fit, when he plainly should have been a banker.

Week after week, month after month, performances are garbage – even whilst stumbling up the league. The fans understandably jeered the team off, after last night’s further embarrassment. The black hole is still calling, sucking the lads in, whilst eight coaches frantically wave their ipads.

Wolves were themselves repeatedly shocking in front of goal; otherwise the home keeper (who has done okay, to be fair) might easily have conceded five. Gary Neville waxed lyrical about Heaven, three or four days ago but neither he nor Yoro convince me. And out wide they have been unforgivably weak at closing down crosses: just one mind-blowing flaw amongst many, meaning United *really do* always look like they will concede.

It’s true that injuries are hurting the club at the moment. A central defensive three of De Ligt, Maguire and Martinez might sort some of those frailties. Perhaps with Dalot and Shaw on the flanks. But almost endlessly there is the feeling that *on the pitch* Amorim has diabolical players and no answers – even when making his now characteristic and theoretically dynamic changes. Astonishingly, Manchester United appear to need another mass clearout. Whether ditching Amorim will be part of that next upheaval, who knows? But his face and his pressers indicate that this gaffer is honest enough to know that he’s made no real improvements.

The Cricket. Some of you may know that I have worked in cricket for many years and that I have kinda specialised in women’s cricket (I say that ver-r-y loosely) for about a decade and have therefore written comparatively little, in recent times, about England men. This is partly because I could be in bother if I wrote widely and fully.

McCullum allegedly hates the term Bazball but as the universe turns against him it feels fair enough to use it. Perhaps we should describe it; what it means, what its implications are, as we understand them?

There are some good things – some profoundly good things – perhaps especially this notion that performers should be liberated. That maybe this should be a right, as well as an essential component of the development towards excellence. Players *really should* ‘go out there and express themselves’. That’s an undeniable truth, surely?

Well no. It’s a simplification that has a lot of truth in it. The job of the coach is multi-faceted but maybe it starts with this thing ‘environment’. Build an environment which is actually kinda lovely: supportive; inspiring, hopefully; challenging-but-fun. Probably don’t over-complicate it but do make it clear that there are disciplines and even responsibilities in play as well as fabulous freedoms. Games are complex even when we reduce them to simple notions or aspirations. We need game intelligence.

But hang on, for factoidal counter-thrust.

Many of us have likely underestimated both McCullum and Stokes in terms of their intelligence. It may be the case that despite the obvious laddishness around the England camp, and the entirely reasonable assumption that this has *informed*, even directed the playing approach, more measured conversations than we imagine may have taken place. The machismo that we believe to have been at the centre of the running towards danger *may* have been tempered by notes on the particular demands of Test cricket. Or not.

For what it’s worth, I think largely not – or not enough. I suspect (and I may be wrong) that Brook has been encouraged to ‘play his natural game’ right to the end. Probably by McCullum himself. Bazza probably believes in no compromise. Believes that positivity can’t really work unless it’s utterly unweighted. And in any case this is only a game. There is an imperative to entertain.

Hard to argue with that. Other than to again fall back into those complexities. Test cricket being a test over time; batting collapses being of their essence a theoretical nonsense – one wicket should have no bearing on the next – and yet they happen, as a function of wonderfully unknowable stuff, including psychological as well as technical processes. (So mitigate or re-gather against falling in a heap: that, after all, is one of the challenges. Respect the opposition and the format).

The signal failure of Bazball is of course the resources, timespan and the realignment of the wider game around these Ashes. Shocking, soulless ill-judgement and wastefulness. For many of us that feels like a con-job and yet not a surprise. Embarrassing, dumb and disrespectful. Like seeing Brook charge to play tennis or baseball shots at the great bowlers of the age. All very 2025.

A chinwag with BB…

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Go to the Pembrokeshire Music Show of 30 Nov (& go 90 minutes IN, if you want to cheat and go directly to me warbling).

Enjoyable, briefish chat with MC MC . (I think both of us would have liked to talk for longer but rock’n roll, eh?)

We do talk about a) my book, Power Chords and b) some of the political/philosophical backdrop, which I was pleased to hear that Malcolm/BB Skone was genuinely interested in and sympathetic towards. We both rate Clash/Buzzcocks et al and acknowledge the role that awareness and anger – much of it politically-charged – played in shaping punk and new wave as an energy and phenomenon. But maybe I’ll let our talking do the talking.

https://www.purewestradio.com/catch-up/

Palavers and publishing.

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I promise you I’m more philosophical than angry about this but wow – the Capitalist Universe is a right old game, eh?

I have a book upcoming. I like it and it’s important to me. Ideally I’d have an agent, a publisher and people, all colluding towards sales and impact. I have none of those things and this (I swear!) is fine. I like the indie bubble I live in.

The whole experience of writing three self-published books has been pretty fabulous: in the three or four year rush, without hardly thinking about it, I let it re-direct my life in a way I’m completely and kinda casually-deeply happy about. (Writing’s taken precedence over earning a living. Been surviving on bugger all for three years. No issues). But there are buts.

Have loved the fact and the process of self-publishing, cos just like being on an Independent Record Label. Complete Control – to coin a phrase. But despite being an indie sort-of-a-guy, and in some ways relatively suss, you still get trapped.

No fan of Amazon and the rest – and not just because they rob more than £4 per book, leaving me with about £1.20-40, depending on sale price. So I have never wanted to sell primarily online, but as a nobody, inevitably, you do.

I can’t get my books into bookshops – not many of them. Impractical and uneconomic. Indie (and particularly quirky or leftie bookshops) should absolutely be my natural territory but they don’t know who I am and I can’t afford to go globetrotting. What I have to do is buy in to the package at Grosvenor House that sets me up in the retail behemoths systems. (Not just Amazon’s; about twenty of them, I think). The hope is that strong sales in the ‘pre-sales period’ may possibly trigger a sort of alarm-call that lets stores know that this book might be worth holding. So it miraculously appears in bookshops, biggish and small. We’re in that pre-sales period now.

My publisher warned me that the likes of Amazon ask for a one-month pre-sales period because (weirdly, in 2025?) it can take weeks for all the book data and links to printers (or something) to be fully functional… and it appears that this may be the case. Thinking back to the previous books, this tends not to be a smooth ride.

But because a few really wunnerful people supported Power Chords early-doors, it burst into the Top New Releases, Music charts on Amazon. (Most of these people I’ve never met, by the way, so imagine the level of gratitude, here). The book went to Number 10 in that hit parade, meaning almost nothing except (I confess) a little low-throttled excitement *and the distant prospect of strongish sales triggering that aforementioned algo-wotsits*. That is, a kind of actually low-impact impact which would mean a huge amount if it got my actual book into actual bookshops. That’s the hope, right? Try to use The System to game the system and ultimately Do The Right Thing. Smart fulfilment.

I/we can’t win entirely in this. On socials I’ve been pointing people to their fave indie bookshop to order *as well as* offering the link to Amazon &/or Waterstones, because of the potential importance of that chart in the former. Which is kinda twisted, I know. (And I don’t or can’t know, in any case, where or how exactly any algorithm or notification kicks in, to alert shops to Books Worth Stocking). So this is another Trumpian, deal-making universe where I/we are not holding any cards.

In some ways it gets worse. Power Chords was at 20-something then 10, soon after pre-sales opened on about November 1st. (Shoulda been Oct 24th but that’s another story). So good start: some excitement. Then there’s a hitch. Amazon and Waterstones have the book at ‘temporarily unavailable’ or similar, meaning you can’t actually order. Which of course means we go down those charts. I wait a few days, checking (I confess) regularly. Nothing: no change.

This morning – Sunday 16th November – the Amazon site is saying you can order Power Chords for something over £16… which is a bit alarming and concerning. I have no rights here (goddammit) but I don’t want my book to sell for any more than the £10.99 my publisher advised. Plus this is likely a mistake, right, more ‘getting the ducks in line’ stuff – a temporary cock-up. Whichever way it’s crap – unhelpfully so. It is, bottom-line, another obstacle to sales.

Update: as of Mon 18th Nov. Power Chords is still being advertised at £16.24 on Amazon – so the cock-up goes on. I have tried to make contact (in fact succeeded in making contact!) but got into one of those horrendous loops where they offer you bloc A to H, with none of those blocs being the one that really covers your issue. Then you try to approach any of them… and they point you to KDP Publishing, who then tell you your book – or this book – isn’t with them. So mindless, unhelpful circling. Same via twitter: you get pointed to the same place, which can’t help you.

It should be pret-ty straightforward, you’d hope, for a multinational with eight zillion employees to find you one who could either strike-out an error in pricing on one of their weblinks, or get the sales process – from which they benefit about 3 times more than I do (about £4 to my £1.40) – going smoothly. Power Chords has been on their system for a fortnight or so. I repeat that I had been warned that glitches do happen: but clear errors and painfully prolonged issues affecting their bottom line as well as mine clearly should not.

I haven’t checked elsewhere, other than Waterstones – who, to their credit, had the book live and buyable before Amazon did. Power Chords appears to be available through Waterstones website. I think.

Further update: 25th Nov 2025. One day *after* Publication Day. Again the hugely gratifying feeling of lurv flowing towards me – some of it from people I’ve never met. (This on various socials). After those genuinely painful contacts with Amazon, where I got relatively close to claiming compensation from them, having been slightly steered thattaway by someone on their staff*. (*Notes to universe. They raised the notion of compensation for the 10-12 days where Power Chords disappeared. Their Whatsapp Team sent through a form to apply; at which point I thought ‘know what? These clowns prob’ly should reimburse me for the hassle and the lost book-sales’. But the form looked a bit suspicious. Fearing an admittedly rather elaborate scam, I withdrew). Still don’t know the truth of that scene… because I swore to myself to waste no further energy on Amazon.

Eventually – I think on the eve of Publication Day, and after my publishers had pushed back on behalf of several of their authors, all experiencing systems failures – something clicked. We were back live and buyable.

Of course this is all linked to the pre-Christmas rush to get books to market. Zillions of us have been drawn towards that flame. I could claim that the two dates I built my ‘sales campaign’ around – my dad’s birthday, 24 Oct, then mine, 24 Nov – absolve me of the crime of capito-cynicism but whatever. Power Chords went out ‘before Christmas’. But Amazon, with their unlimited resources, should have a) been completely aware of any building avalanche and b) taken the necessary avoiding action. They didn’t. It was, for me, crap. Weirdly, as if some algorithmic apology was tripping out, two of my brothers received the copies that they’d ordered from Amazon on Publication Day, rather than the two or three days afterwards which had seemed likely (and acceptable). Go figure.

Hey. Can only apologise for the overdose of indulgence here. You may not believe it but lots of this really isn’t about me. 1. Am really not driven by money. 2. Entirely happy to be an obscure geezer writing obscurely. But 3. I do know that there are other people out there considering publishing or self-publishing routes. I hope that some of the above offers some ideas of some of the pitfalls and the pleasures – which do exist – within this particular sphere of the capitalist universe. It’s great. And it’s as shite as the rest of it. Good luck.

(Back to the glorious days of psycho-political meandering). Nailed-on certain.

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(Pic I think from Sky News).

Was nailed-on certain that today was Saturday. So gently building to a crescendo of sports-fixated lounging: really looking forward to that, on a shocker of a day. (Can hear the wind in the window-frames; have heard the Doomsday Revisited forecast but it’s only raining intermittently here. Sounds like some folks will be in trouble).

Have no car – not on the road, currently – and am still in one of those No Expenditure Moments until a wee wedge of money lands with me in about three weeks, meaning really eeking-out stuff. Sometimes that’s hard to the point of depressing but it’s also enjoyable and kinda sustaining – or the bit where I walk two miles to get food from the farm shop is – as is the longer walk to see family, *actually speak to people* and maybe partake of caffeine in the village. Both yomps are medium-lovely, through farmland, down a quiet minor road. I’m doing both as a form of discipline, and to earn the right to food and possibly coffee.

Might be too gross out there to do the walk today, but that was kinda factored-in to yesterday’s purchase of an oggi (non-taffs go search) and milk from the farm shop. I think I now have a nourishment kit for the day, and ju-ust enough coffee to build a cafetiere-sized supply, which I’m not remotely addicted-to, but I do enjoy the indulgence in taste, time and slo-mo gestation that comes with a brew that lasts forty minutes. (Yes I do make hot milk in an old pan. In a farmhouse kitchen. Checking in on the cattle in the quilt of fields thrown delightfully but damply around the place. And how is Swindon, today?)

I look forward to and really value the two or three cups of coffee, knowing I’m only going to do that once every other day or so: that it really is an indulgence. And yes – interestingly or sadly or something – that filling of time is important… and kindof enriching.

Maybe I should explain that? It’s in the current context of a life temporarily very much in Struggling Artist Mode. (And sure, you can take that however you like: I know how feeble it might sound. But it’s true that I’ve part-chosen, part fallen-in to living day-to-day, working part-time and having or needing lumps of headspace. To write books, asitappens).

The thought suddenly strikes that walking may have been a more essential part of the thinking/writing process than I have given it credit for. Although we all know that we promenade or yomp or jog or whatever partly to give us ‘time to think’, yes?

Having finished my third book not too many months ago, and despite being in the throes of ‘publicising it’, I have the luxury RIGHT NOW of whole days where I don’t have to do anything. Meaning I can absolutely choose to make them feel productive or meaningful in any way I want.

Ten days ago I read three books about golf in crazy-quick succession. Initially partly out of loyalty to a good mate who leant me them, but then entirely because they were brilliant and even revelatory stories, about genuinely great sportsmen (largely), between about 1900 and 1950.

I’m not particularly a golf fan – except during the Ryder Cup – and rarely play, but was genuinely captivated by Mark Frost’s storytelling and I learned many things. Like why my pal thinks this time period was special: because men (in sport and in general) had a particular kind of humility and honour that we can barely even talk about, without drawing performatively unstifled yawns. And how sensational and god-like and yet quiet was the genius and talent and application of Vardon/Jones/Nelson/Snead etc etc. So we should in a sense celebrate and even grieve their passing and the passing of that era of innocence. Or certainly respect the simple truths – I bet you could guess at them? – that they would not transgress.

Yes. I was proper-collared by the integrity and courage and inviolable goodness of many of the protagonists in those books. And it will both re-inforce my inclination to call out shit-housery and cheating in modern sport and (therefore) expose me as a reactionary clown to many of my contemporaries. Those guys are worth it and so are these daft games of ours.

All of which points a sort of conservatism, or worse. But no. I am absolutely not advocating for a Better Time Now Lost, in a wider or more general sense. And I hope to (your) god(s) that arguing for the existence of certain perennial truths is not the same as *being a reactionary.*

Whatever. Life IS more complex now, because we do know more and we ARE more aware. These should not be bad things. Family life has changed; the whole idea of careers-for-life and of typical lives or a sort of common level of perceived happiness or acceptance has lurched somewhere new and different.

There were World Wars in the period of those books, so difficult and maybe obscene to suggest that our own multifarious predicaments can remotely compare to that, but it’s likely true that our (yes I’m talking as though there is some universal ‘we’, which I know is a nonsense, but) our headspaces are, percentage-wise, as traumatised or deluded or numb as ever. There *really is* a mental health epidemic. They’re not the only ones culpable but media and the internet really are colluding – not entirely but significantly – towards a dehumanised flux where, having been coached towards apathy or bigotry, we don’t recognise truths of any sort. The codes that we have followed are obscured.

Many of us are too entrapped by the images we see or want to project to penetrate moral, political or philosophical truths. In the standout distraction of the moment, most of us are being coaxed towards hating or fearing The Other. The BBC endlessly platforms Farage, enabling a xenophobically-driven Brexit and the rise of one-issue politics. Starmer wins then capitulates. Trump and Musk make White Supremacism kinda fashionable again – or possible. Immigrants – that we in the UK need; that statistically and culturally and practically contribute – are demonised. Thiel and Murdoch and Bannon and the arch technocrats stoke the pot: they get to control the ether. And in maybe another standout feature of contemporary life, almost no politicians have the guts or integrity to call them out.

All these things are in my head. It’s why I walk and why I write. (Why my current book is about Angels of Protest). I think we need to re-position truths that should have been everlasting, about decency and commitment and hope.

This is no party political broadcast but Polanski (UK, Greens leader, for those at a distance) is most notably calling-in most of these messages. Racism is nailed-on wrong. Obscene wealth – the sort that utterly controls dominions of thought and opportunity – is nailed-on wrong. Austerity, the shameful charade that protects obscene wealth, is nailed-on wrong. We must act, in whatever way we can, upon these things.

I’ve never voted for anything other than a progressive party in my life. Genuinely most people I know could not vote Labour at this time, because Starmer has been so weak and unprincipled generally, and particularly around Gaza and issues of race. He and Reeves have also been pathetically and intransigently protective of the wealthy and super-wealthy. Polanski, on the other hand, has been smashing it out of the park. Now coffee.

Universe Podcast. Power Chords book launch.

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Ok it’s ‘a day for inside’. Wet; windy; medium-‘orrible. So I’ve tried to make use of it, by recording something that might stand as a book launch… because I think I’ve decided it’s too much hassle to actually host a real-life book launch. (Lovely for me, but time, travel and faffage for those who feel they should come).

In the tradition of DIY-Punkhood, it’s pretty much unrehearsed, with some quotes from various sections of the book, and typically ill-advised *thoughts arising*. Listening back, it feels less twinkly and mischievous than Power Chords itself; maybe because I fall into the trap of trying to explain stuff. And I don’t mention that there is a complimentary playlet and occasional guffaw-inducing interlude in there – as well as the psycho-political positioning.

Punk was wonderful and formative. It was a racket that spat upon banality and duplicity. It was edgy and exciting. I think (or at least hope) that Power Chords offers some sense of that. There’s a lot of love and some teen spirit in there.

Buy it at your favourite independent bookshop – they can order it.

Or here – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/183615433X/ref=sr_1_3_so_ABIS_BOOK?crid=XQZC0N5EVD4T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.gH51mWifQBHtqeMT7ZgX68rJ5dQ8Z96LTmC1c1QDx7Q8XUUGy5krE17Zd-4bABzS.15ewrP19EN89rDjZkqoOTnfpCvCe4BLyx8tmS-oNWic&dib_tag=se&keywords=rick+walton+power+chords&qid=1761834207&s=books&sprefix=rick+walton+power+chords%2Cstripbooks%2C112&sr=1-3

Or here, maybe – https://www.waterstones.com/book/power-chords/rick-walton/9781836154334

Thankyou.

Priest in the Tempest.

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It had everything, including the tempest. Apparently the seas – well, Humber – got so wild that codling were being hurled into the stadium. The roof of the ancient Main Stand almost collapsed, not just because of the massed excitement but because of the weight of the krill. The lad Mbeumo had to fiddle a flattie from under his shirt before taking *that pen*: hence the miss.

Ah yess, the Grimbo-jokes. The howling gale of back-handed compliments and faintly feeble headlines, from media owned by Southern Softies and/or far-flung moguls. ‘Town batter United!’ ‘Shoal of the Century! The analytical consensus that ‘Amorim is drowning not waving!’ Marvellous.

The truth is that Grimsby Town outplayed Manchester United, in the first half. They had a strong case for a third goal, before United gathered at all – ruled out: no VAR. Yes, absolutely true that in the monsoon, the Mariners did lose their composure. Have no doubt that the apparently unfeasibly calm David Artell would have been inwardly raging at the way in which possession was repeatedly thrown away, in the second period. But perhaps it’s forgivable that messrs Fernandes and Mbeumo – amongst other key introductions – *did* turn the thing around. They do, despite the awful mess United are in, have some quality.

Vernam’s outstanding team goal lit the proverbial fuse on a night when many of my favourite people were in the stands, belting out the home anthems. (Yess. Am Grimsby – despite now being not unfairly described by those in the borough as Plastic Taff. And yess, grandfather played for both teams. So this is all rather huge. I know those streets and those stands).

The ground is wonderfully (largely) from another age; as seen on TV. The staff *really are* all about embedding this club in the community, in a way that the majority of club-owning scheisters and stockbrokers simply don’t understand. They can ‘project their visions’ all they want. Blundell Park ain’t perfect (and neither are the Team Leaders) but something very real has always lurked there. Jason Stockwood does appear to know that corporatism is the death of sport and of truth itself. Grimsby are Grimsby: they do deserve this kind of night.

So forty-five minutes in dreamland, with McEachran – who has quality – strolling around, and Artell’s side looking shapely and intelligent. Control of the game. A goal that might have been disallowed for handball (possibly?) and then Gardner’s borderline effort ruled-out. United all over the place – not just being ‘out-battled,’ that wouldn’t do justice to Town.

Half-time comes and Amorim implements the necessary cull. Fredericson patently had to go but half the team must’ve been a-wondering. Including Onana. The rain turns biblical and we Town fans think this might be just what we need – an absolute lottery! But in truth, both because of the influx of talent and intent and Grimsby’s understandable wastefulness with the limited possession they have, Manchester get back in it. Maguire is always on that figure-of-fun/Major Leader interface but notably he brought it – commendable spirit, I mean – and the reds fans had something to shout about. Then those pens.

I generally turn penalties off; no matter what the occasion. I watched these. We could throw descriptors like biblical and epic and humbling and heart-warming in there. Even neutrals might be doing some of that. I’m not neutral. I, erm, kinda follow both teams.

My socials went mad. The coverage has gone mad; because it’s Town, because it’s United. If there’s a consensus it’s that despite being a man of intelligence, integrity and purpose, Amorim is closer to the brink than he was pre the Trial At Blundell Park. Even those with active brain cells are saying that despite the carnage the man inherited, he is unable to make anything work and has to be accountable for that. Plainly, he is. The rest just want rid, being unable to see any complexity in this.

I think there is complexity. Take the case of Artell. When he came in (and on multiple occasions since then) he has felt like fella who can talk a good game. But not necessarily one you would follow or utterly believe in. He’s currently turning that perception around – with the players and support. Town have a pattern of play and a level of confidence. United, despite the talk of tactical drive, have neither.

We might talk dangerously in the abstract about character. We might be critical of the Premier League side on that, both last night and in general: everyone from Mainoo to Diallo to Cunha, perhaps? Would you want them in the trenches; never mind on a wet Wednesday at Blundell Park? Town’s players, from the outstanding Pym to the hearty Green and Rodgers, knew they had to bring some grit and determination (as a certain Mr Hansen might have said) to the proceedings. Because MU have better footballers. Therefore (we) work like hell.

Coaching is surely blending? Finding deeply and fabulously different qualities in different individuals and blending them together, whilst (in the modern era) feeding in bucketloads of stats and tactical info and beliefs. Ideally you want players with inviolable spirit and confidence but life ain’t like that. So blend and build. Amorim has work to do. We can no longer be clear that he has the time or the oomph to do it.

But those pens. Ridiculous and also pret-ty maarvellous that a whole cluster of League Two players held their nerve and slotted… almost endlessly. When the universe was screaming for it to end. Their composure in that moment is not all down to Artell, of course. But let’s give the man some credit for patrolling it with such evenness. Like a priest in the tempest. Fish all around him.

POWER CHORDS: an intro.

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Read the covers? You want more blurb? It’s here…

This is arguably the third part – so three books – in Rick Walton’s #lolsobiography concerning life, sport, music. But ‘Power Chords’ will, can and does stand independent of ‘The Dots Will Not Be Joined’ and ‘Beautiful Games’.

The author has always wanted his work to be explainer-lite, but concedes that you newbies may need to know stuff. He is a writer and sports coach. He has over 600 blogs up on’t internet, via bowlingatvincent.com (on absolutely everything) and sportslaureate.co.uk, which covers mainly cricket, football and coaching. He has ECB Accreditation for attending cricket, as a ‘freelance bloggist’. There are awards on the shelf for contributions to sport. There is a genuinely unique voice in action – ‘authentic, wise and beautiful’.

                                                             *

Themes include the power of ideas and music; particularly when they pour in to teenage life. Identifying with or finding people that speak for you. But early life, too: so of course family and experiences at school, quality of adventure and support, quality of love and environment, mates and comrades. The growth, perhaps, of like-mindedness and the concomitant recognition of things to oppose.

                                                              *

If this sounds bit joyless then na. On the contrary. Your writer’s life is full of tremendous, uplifting, wonderful experience – of poetry. And gob-smacking people. It’s just that anger is an energy for him. The Enquiry in here is not so much to forensically reveal the source of some emotive and/or existential rage – this may after all be a profoundly unscientific business – as to dig out some old vinyl and enjoy. And maybe hope that today dynamic, engaged rock ‘n roll can do its thing all over again.

                                                             *

PROLOGUE.

Where to start, in terms of family life and culture? Or maybe specifically music? And how to know when awarenesses became so developed, or grief, shock or hormones took over so completely that the whole of my life became about defiance. Because I think maybe it did. And this feeds in to everything.

But maybe before the ideas-fest and the tribal allegiances kick-in we need to go eyeball to eyeball. And do that thing where we try to accommodate. I have strong opinions on some things which may have arisen from my love of music. (This book is about that process – or speculations about how mere choons can shape or contribute to a life). It feels extraordinary and kinda thrilling to me that anything so flimsy and unbodied could be so fabulous and enormous. I’m really hoping you have some personal sense or experience of that.

                                                               *

We live, it strikes me, in an extraordinary and dangerous moment. The West is arguably madder than it’s ever been, with the Trump/Musk coalition-thing a catastrophic threat to the intelligence, knowledge and goodness that underpins society itself. (It’s November 2024 as I write: we await the second Trump term but Brother Elon has sculpted the matrix into an angry monster). The truth has suffered an especially foul Special Op’[1] – Bannon’s infamous shitstorm. Those previously relatively harmless Influencers (think makeovers, think pranksters, posers and dancers) have morphed into combat-ready sub-nazis.

This is a challenge. It can drag us down and have us raging at (and waaay beyond) the deliberately-reduced politics we now suffer in the West.

                                                              *                                    

But hang on. In the face of Trumpism and Reform, alt-rightism and this galaxy of loss, what’s our civil/intellectual/physical/cultural reaction? Depends who we are. Are we leaders or passengers or artists or victims? Who do we look to, where do we go? Weirdly, it seems a scientific certainty that there will be a response, even in this turbulent evil. (Is that not how the universe works?) The response may even be a thing of glory and inspiration.

Wonderfully, we make our statements in a myriad of ways. As the mighty Slits did, we can ‘create’; kick up a fuss; make something challenging and radical and beautiful. We may need to do more, but this is part of the change – or at least one irrepressibly human, principal means to strike back. Let’s create. Let’s be anti-badness; anti-racist; anti- any declining status quo. Our pens are ‘snug as a gun’.[2] Our fingers are on the fretboard. This is part of life’s purpose.

                                                                *

I was recently given a class pic from Healing County Primary School which tugged heavily and made me realise how BIG those times and connections were. In my case they really were largely idyllic. Coz Stevie Blendell, Wayne Okopskyj, Mark Moss, Linda Dye and Helen Sitch and the rest were bloody wonderful. I could feel and smell and hear them, in that picture. Made me remember football and school sports on the playing-field; skating or ‘sliding’ on the playground in proper snow and ice; getting 8 out of 5 for something I wrote (about Guy Fawkes, I think). And even the dinners, which I loved. Stodgy, honest food that I’ve not entirely left behind. Maybe the meat was thin and the mash lukewarm after that queueing… but Eve’s pudding and custard! Or some kind of jam sponge! Bloo-dee Nora.

                                                                *

The barbershop contest was not at all what they’d expected. They love their singing but were inevitably “only there for the craic”, having no real idea they were to be joined by worryingly disciplined crews from the States and all over Europe. It was a disaster of sorts: the travel, to and from County Cork; the mismatch singing-wise; their mad, unserious approach. But now they’d landed at the Dru… and they really got it.

After brief deposition of bus detritus into their rooms, and maybe one or two relieving showers, the lads started to drift down to the bar. (This remains a fabulously evocative and restful kindofa place – or will be again, when the current re-furb takes it back to where it was for many years). They took a further inhalation of the bay and trundled back in to where yours truly was stationed, at the bar-front. The news that we had both Guinness and Murphy’s on tap was received quietly but warmly, as was the sight of more than one species of Blackbush and Jameson’s up amongst the spirits. It began.

                                                                 *

I worked part-time for John for more than two years. Doing everything that needed doing. Freeing him up to take those brilliant pictures. Very often I would go with him to the Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre or to the National to change films and generally assist. He would always shoot live rehearsals, usually the last one before opening, using two cameras. There wouldn’t be much kit – a monopod, sometimes, and a bag with cameras, lenses and films – so we travelled light, but I could make myself useful. Sometimes I would take back-up pictures.

                                                                  *

SIX – ROCK STARDOM-AVOID. (1).

We’ve all got reasons why we didn’t become a rock star – haven’t we? (Or Jesus is that just me?) Come on: the Things That Got in the Road. Lack of Ways In or Mates Wiv Contacts or that whole Distance From London malarkey. All the conspiratorial cobblers that stops a raging talent like yooo/like me, from raging publicly.

Sometimes this is fair enough: we’re actually crap. ‘Have rhythm’ but mediocre on the guitar. (There really are zillions of shit-hot guitar-players out there). Have words but maaybee they’re just not as good as you think they are? Have too much FIRE, quite possibly, which is theoretically ace in the wonder-years of the late seventies but even then narrowed your options down to the independent labels, bless ‘em. (Now, by the way, where is that fire? Idols, maybe, but where else?)

                                                                *

I saw The Fall in what was then a crappy hall in Duncombe Street Grimsby, when I was about eighteen. I knew the music, loved it. They made that beery, spidery, edgy, shambolic noise that was our poetry and the flag for our spunky republic.

Mark E Smith was a Northern Myth and a Northern Monster. And like us he was drunk. We loved him because his ramblings coursed with our spite. He seemed to be leading his own mad nation towards something.                   

                                                                *

Surely it’s true that for most of us the music we drape ourselves in is key to what we are and become? We come to reflect each other. I looked like a member of Joy Division or Bunnymen or Gang of Four – heavy coats, dark baggy clobber – because I felt like I was in those bands. It’s become a cliché but they did speak for me. Only Gang of Four from amongst those three had any obvious political stance: the other two just chimed with authentic, contemporary soul. They were more or less deep and dealt in something thrilling and real. We were kinda proud to wear their badges – literally and in terms of style.

                                                                  *

Punks identified anyone who sounded like The Bizz, or was complicit in its pitches as the enemy. This was of course almost everybody. If you swam complacently along with the major record labels, the machinery of production and the Gods of Commerce then you were traitorous filth: all of you. If you deliberately made your musical sound easy to access, you were shameless, vacuous scumbags. Plus energy. If your energy was that traditional thing aspiring to loveliness and sweet diversion then you were, despite your smashtastic success, a joke.

                                                                   *

The three chords and less than three minutes thing that punk was predicated upon is very pop. It’s also obviously anti-indulgence… and therefore may be supportive of smart choices. Knowing is everything: this includes knowing there is nothing wrong with ‘music to wash up to’. The two poles of what we might call engaged or protest songs and ephemera can absolutely subsist – and did. 1979 may have been the peak of the history of popular music – albums and singles – because of the energy and drive of punk and the sparkling wit of energized pop.

You may have noticed we’ve barely nodded as we flew past the idea of entertainment. This is because punk was obviously right to demand more. Tell us something about (y)our lives. Prove to us that you really care. Pass the integrity tests; show us you’re a good deserving human trying to do good. Do that thing through the new wave of music; either by thrashing out your protest or via sharp, knowing but unpretentious pop. *Add value* to our entertainment.

                                                                  *

Lydon was and is somewhere between the various caricatures of force of nature, clown and cultural icon. He was and is punk, for better and worse. For all his loudmouthery and those moments where we Guardian-reading liberals had wished he would ‘just stop!’ Lydon has produced material of staggering ambition and import. (So I for one largely forgive him). The Pistols singles are almost as sensational now as they were then. ‘Public Image’ the single is an extraordinary and well-executed re-birth. ‘Poptones’, ‘Careering’, ‘Flowers of Romance’, ‘Keep Banging the Door’ and ‘Rise’ are all giants.

When ‘Anarchy’ arrived, it’s not hyperbolic to describe it as the ringing of some division bell. It was a statement of defiance and newness. It was a challenge that battered into living-rooms and subverted lives. That song, that moment, despite the undeniable whiff of punk fashionista around it, was MASSIVE. It remains one of the Great Noises.

                                                               *

It was Strummer I loved. Sure he fell right into the imagery but his vocals launched so heartily at us and mostly his Good Man-in-the-Street politics rang true. His vocals on the 101-ers’ ‘Keys To Your Heart’ are a high point in pre-punk action. I believed in Joseph’s voice and his scattergun anti-capitalism. ‘Career Opportunities’ and ‘Working for the Clampdown’ are tremendous, compelling noises: more overtly political than Rotten, or somehow more specifically targeted than Lydon’s material ever appeared.

                                                               *

MARK E SMITH AND THE FALL.

Mark E Smith was scathing about everything so he might baulk (from beyond) at being offered this honour. Tough. He earned it, for being a one-off and for being edgier than a very edgy thing. He’d hate to be suffocated in cliché as some ‘punk-poet’… but of course that’s what he was. Dark. Driven. Chronically alcoholic and downright fascistic in his role as frontman. But unquestionably a kind of genius.

Because the music was so angular and so much the deliberate anti-dote to blandness and comfort, he was punk. Because he wrote about daft, working-class things, he was punk. The sound was a kind of colourful chaos – often more colourful and mutable than our conception for punk – but the anarchistic intent locked it into the vibe in a way that extended and re-powered the movement. Plus the fella looked like a punk – maybe, admittedly in the American, ‘hopeless layabout’ sense of the word.

                                                                 *

Foolish to remotely compare how things felt from Year A to F, but the parallels around race and wealth, between Thatcherite Ingerland and Trumpian North America are striking. Thatcher (for us) was an obvious bigot and likely white supremacist: see also Trump and Musk. In both eras there is an extraordinary sense of the rich getting richer – by design. That shamelessness, now so epitomized by Trump’s cohort of oligarchs and technocrats is both the exercise of increasingly authoritarian power and triumphalist cruelty. Meaning a particular kind of wickedness.

                                                                 *

Simone also covered the Billie Holliday classic ‘Strange Fruit’ and in ‘Backlash Blues’ and ‘I Wish I Knew What It Was To Be Free’ she railed brilliantly and with passion against the patent, rancid injustice of the time.

Can’t wait any longer. Who, in the time of Musk and Trump, will carry that torch? This feels like a moment not just for Angels of Protest but for massive, concerted resistance – yes, perhaps led by artists and musicians.

Plus some Desert Island Discs and a free, absurdist playlet.

All in ‘Power Chords’.

[1] Deliberate perversion of things we thought were fixed and factual. Facilitated by socials/moguls/what we might call the Extremist Establishment.

[2] Slits: ‘Typical Girls’, from ‘Cut’. Seamus Heaney: ‘Digging’.

Prologues.

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(Because this is me, there is another prologue before this section).

Where to start, in terms of family life and culture? Or maybe specifically music? And how to know when awarenesses became so developed, or grief, shock or hormones took over so completely that the whole of my life became about defiance. Because I think maybe it did. And this feeds in to everything.

Defy the shock of people dying. Then before you know it defy the evil that was Thatcher. Wade in there. Defy the bigotry and prejudice criminally at large and *in some way* oppose the privilege. All this in a teen rage. Then live up to those who came before, whilst knowing they were different – maybe simpler, better – and that things don’t or can’t work like that. But let them still be your gods.

Don’t fer Christ’s sake out yourself as such – faaar too pretentious, far too self-righteous! – but absolutely be a protest singer. Be the inevitable mad mixture that you feel; of hard, deep thinker and honest force. Be immune to judgements from outside; be fearless and pour the good energy in. Time will or may come when you can be more accepting. For now, trust and work and be conscious. These things have value.

                                                                     *

The moment is everything: accident-of-birth catapulting me simultaneously into a hormone-fest and Anarchy in the UK meant this particular youth was inevitably a Child of That Time. Driven or pumped. Scarred, maybe. Furious, definitely; judgmental definitely. Carrying a load, probably.[1] Deeply lost but as deeply certain as most teens – yes? – that he would do things in enflamed opposition to the pitiful acquiescence that was Normal Life. So yeh, off-the-scale indulgent in some respects but also having a kind of rebellious integrity.

People died on us and I‘m not going to tell their stories here. There’s enough of that in the previous books. You just need to register the possibility that maybe everything Yours F Truly does is a kind of amorphous, inadequate, politicised homage to three great ‘ordinary’ blokes. This is not to say that I am a hugely party-political animal, or that I under-appreciate the Walton Women: but it rightly implies that I’m on a permanent slow-burn around how the world just ain’t good enough, in a way that those better men simply weren’t.

There’s generational stuff in play here, because a) life was simpler and b) in some senses it was less aware. Folks just didn’t know or couldn’t know the world, its peoples and its foibles in the way we can now. (Not that this makes us any more educated). Plus sentiment. I may gush, or goddammit not be able to see[2], or drown us in the kind of emotive slippage we’re all prone to. This is what love does: this is what age does.

I may never know if these old guys were just wiser, apparently swerving the day-to-day cataclysms that eat away at me/you/us, but however dubiously old-school it may sound, here’s my daft Braveheart moment: *raises fist*.

I am proud to be of them. Always, I will love, revere and follow them, or try to, for their invincible (yes) and endless (yes it was!) honesty and humility. They are recalled in the hope that we can all, in the modern idiom, stand on their elephantine shoulders.

                                                                     *

I guess the thing that stirs me the most is the urgent need to change the universe. And that really may be a direct result of punk and Margaret Thatcher.

Bit loathe to put dates into this baby but it may be inescapable. Absolutely not telling you freeloaders my birth date – not until we’re mates and you’ve proved you’re worth it – but suppose I can offer the rough figuration that I was a furious and pyrotechnically hormonal late-teen when the over-combed one began to preen through and over our lives. She, and Rotten’s voice, and Strummer’s heart, and Costello’s lyrics and my father’s death were the things that made me. They were contingent and co-forming energies that powered and power me towards trying, at the very least, to live a life that opposes.

This book, the third part (so far) in my #lolsobiography, is inevitably about that. But it’s also about sport, about influence, about how wonderful things are, even when darkness and dumbness and the twisted evils of money and privilege continue to pin us to the deck. My faith in art and music and sport never dims. My faith in the Three Great Mates we all have and need and my two sensational kids carries me through. 

                                                                       *

Life seems to have conspired towards poles of opinion, not just on social media but that might be the most obvious example. Too many of us make judgements that are ill thought-out or unforgiving. We’re bawling our truths at each other. We exercise (or exorcise?) a kind of manic certainty that draws us into conflict rather than conversation. Everything from the Twitters[3] to PMQs contributes to this.

Let me put on record my own weakness in this regard: I get angry and I judge. But in my heart I know that tolerance – and knowing that you may be wrong – are essential human virtues. We do have to judge; we do have to decide; we do need to get better but we also need to be civil. That’s not a recipe for capitulation.

*Takes further deep breath*. Look I’m as ready as the next bloke to launch into Grandstanding Mode. The Times and the Socials and everything about now make GM the engaged individual’s ‘natural’ response, do they not? Us punters are being teased towards some angry vortex all the time. Ah: cue some polar expeditionism.

We live, it strikes me, in an extraordinary and dangerous moment. The West is arguably madder than it’s ever been, with the Trump/Musk coalition-thing a catastrophic threat to the intelligence, knowledge and goodness that underpins society itself. (It’s November 2024 as I write: we await the second Trump term but Brother Elon has sculpted the matrix into an angry monster). The truth has suffered an especially foul Special Op’[4] – Bannon’s infamous shitstorm. Those previously relatively harmless Influencers (think makeovers, think pranksters, posers and dancers) have morphed into combat-ready sub-nazis.

This is a challenge. It can drag us down and have us raging at (and waaay beyond) the deliberately-reduced politics we now suffer in the West.

So don’t expect me to qualify everything – I may fall short! I know we’re well-advised to avoid cheap blame-games but I’m still gonna launch, here and there. Of course under-privileged and under-educated people have always been likely to ‘strike out’. Of course this general discontent has always been weaponized by people with hands on the levers. But there are lines we just don’t cross; there are things which are just plain wrong.

The Great Families and the oligarchs; the MAGA cult and the ‘gammon’; the liars and the cheats and the racists are bad folks.[5] Some more, some less. We who feel this may be entitled to tell them that, although this is likely to be inflammatory. ‘We see you’. But we also have to deal with them – by that, I mean debate, include, educate – however difficult or unlikely that may seem. And, perhaps before we inter-react, or rise to condemn, or commit the sin of prejudice ourselves, we have to go big and go public on the idea that they, these people, are as valuable as we are. They have our right to argue.

It may not get much tougher than to accept that the ‘racist morons’ or ‘easily-led’ on our streets or in our timelines are people we have to appreciate but… we do. Whilst opposing them.

Where lies progress in all this? On a political level I suppose we need to elect governments that will be a) strong enough morally to oppose prejudice and b) smart enough economically to improve the lot of the disaffected. Clearly, sadly, the momentum appears to be going the other way in certain key democracies.

This brings us back into the circle of action, or exasperation. There is a kind of backstop, a point of no further retreat for many of us. Prejudice and privilege are wrong. Whether entitled or powerless, ignorant or driven, player or played, they are wrong. We can and should choose to do better around those things – we surely have to? This implies all kinds of stuff but let’s just call it goodness. Most of us recognize it, even if we choose not to ‘walk in its path’. There are a million distractions, some gorgeous, some filthy. We need to be decent and fair and friendly; to find the invincibly moral core. That can be common; can define us.

But hang on. In the face of Trumpism and Reform, alt-rightism and this galaxy of loss, what’s our civil/intellectual/physical/cultural reaction? Depends who we are. Are we leaders or passengers or artists or victims? Who do we look to, where do we go? Weirdly, it seems a scientific certainty that there will be a response, even in this turbulent evil. (Is that not how the universe works?) The response may even be a thing of glory and inspiration.

Wonderfully, we make our statements in a myriad of ways. As the mighty Slits did, we can ‘create’; kick up a fuss; make something challenging and radical and beautiful. We may need to do more, but this is part of the change – or at least one irrepressibly human, principal means to strike back. Let’s create. Let’s be anti-badness; anti-racist; anti- any declining status quo. Our pens are ‘snug as a gun’.[6] Our fingers are on the fretboard. This is part of life’s purpose.

[1] Went to see some weirdo, many years later, after a heart episode. He looked at me and immediately asked why I was carrying the world’s troubles. ‘I’m seeing a yolk across your shoulders’.

[2] Yup. Definitely prone to welling-up.

[3] Yeh I know, now X. Pipe down!!

[4] Deliberate perversion of things we thought were fixed and factual. Facilitated by socials/moguls/what we might call the Extremist Establishment.

[5] Read on before you judge…

[6] Slits: ‘Typical Girls’, from ‘Cut’. Seamus Heaney: ‘Digging’.