Reflections on Arizona...and on what I've been missing

Okay, so leaving aside being mistaken for Phil Collins and nearly getting septicaemia, what else did I do on my holidays - and what do I make of what's been happening politically in my absense? Well, I'll come to that in a bit.

Each of my three trips to Arizona have been laden with emotion. My first, in 2003, was for my sister's wedding when I stood in my late father's place - one of the proudest days of my life. Unfortunately she got married right in the middle of the party conference season, and I was only able to stay a couple of days before dashing back to England in time to hear Duncan Smith turning up the frigging volume.

My second trip, for my brother-in-law Mitch's memorial service, has already been previously documented on this blog. The ten-and-a-half-hour flight to Phoenix that weekend was the saddest journey I have ever had to make, and I spent most of it listening to Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head. That line "God gave you style and gave you grace, and put a smile upon your face," will always remind me of Mitch.

So this, my third visit, was the first which my wife Gill and I have undertaken which didn't involve taking part in a rite of passage, and also the first we have undertaken with our two small children. It was certainly more relaxing than the first two, yet the place has such meaning for me now that it was impossible again not to be touched with emotion at being there.

Part of this is down to the sheer grandeur of the scenery. My sister lives in what are called the "desert foothills" and her garden, framed by panoramic mountain views all round, is a special place, populated only by cacti, mesquites, paloverdes, lizards and the odd tarantula.

It is at its very best in the early morning, before the heat of the day, and I loved to settle down there with a good book and put all the cares of the world behind me. As previously mentioned, my main choice of reading on this trip was Piers Morgan's Don't You Know Who I Am but I found this a rather odd mixture to be honest.

Although it has its funny bits - such as Morgan telling Charles Clarke to "stick it up your big fat arse" during a Labour conference reception - I found Morgan's obsession with becoming a celebrity slightly disconcerting and I think on the whole I preferred him in his tabloid editor incarnation, when he had a healthy contempt for the whole business.

Aside from chilling out, we found time for a trip to the Grand Canyon - my first time and Gill's second. It's certainly awesome but I suspect you would only get a true idea of its sheer scale by walking down into it and back up the other side. That's definitely one for another year.

***

I purposefully didn't blog while on holiday because I wanted to take some time for reflection on the current state of British politics. I have to confess to being somewhat depressed by this, and to be honest I have been for some time.

Like a lot of people of a naturally progressive bent, I did have very high hopes for the Gordon Brown administration, above all that he could impart some fresh moral purpose to Labour after more than a decade in power. Not only has he not done this, he has done the cause of the left terrible damage by appearing to surrender Labour's hard-won reputation for competence.

I still believe Gordon to be a good and decent man. I will continue to vigorously oppose those in the blogosphere who seek to attack him on the grounds of his so-called "psychological flaws," as if they themselves somehow have none.

But what I can no longer defend is the failure to set out some higher purpose for his administration other than simply remaining in power - a failure which risks handing the next election to David Cameron on a plate.

During my time away there has been mounting speculation about "civil war" breaking out inside the Labour Party if this Thursday's local election results are as bad as currently expected.

In my view, the suggestion that Brown should make way for a new leader remains fanciful without a very much clearer idea of what alternative his critics intend to put in his place. Simply substituting him with Jack Straw or even David Miliband will have zero impact unless other things change too.

Nevertheless, it is already clear that a leadership challenge this summer would have a very much better chance of success than one last summer would have done.

Maybe, just maybe, that was the Blairites' game plan all along....

Aren't you that guy out of Genesis?

I promised some reflections on the Arizona holiday, and this was probably the funniest thing that happened to me during the course of it - although it actually happened on the plane from Phoenix to Chicago at the start of our return trip.

As I am fetching something from the overhead compartment, a middle-aged American guy in the seat behind (who actually looked a little like Danny De Vito though I didn't tell him so) taps me on the shoulder and goes: "Aren't you that guy out of Genesis, Phil wotsisname, Phil Collins?"

I politely assure him I am not although I do confess to being a bit of fan and to having seen the great men on their reunion tour in Manchester last summer.

I have actually been mistaken for Mr Collins once before, but that was over 25 years ago, when we both had hair. Perhaps the question I really should have asked my De Vito-lookalike was whether he really thought Phil Collins would be travelling economy class?

The aftermath of fever

Just a quick update for anyone who's wondering where I've been for the last fortnight - I got back from the US on Wednesday morning, and headed immediately for the doctor's surgery, having spent the flight back with a temperature of about 104 and feeling like death warmed up.

It turned out that a minor accident last Saturday involving a brush with a prickly pear cactus had led to some infection which had set off an adverse reaction. Apparently this is the sort of thing people died from before Mr Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, so on the whole I'm quite grateful to still be here!

Apart from that rather grisly ending, it was a great holiday, and some fuller reflections will follow soon.

Meanwhile, a prize for anyone (apart from Dave Gladwin) who can tell me which 22-minute album track the title of this post is taken from.

Hors de combat - updated

I'm off to the States shortly to spend a bit of time with my sister out in sun-kissed Arizona, so blogging will be light in the time-honoured phrase. I may manage the odd book review - currently reading Piers Morgan's Don't you know who I am which is entertaining if not quite as instructive about the modern-day relationship between politics and journalism as his previous tome, The Insider. There will also be the odd update on Twitter, hopefully (see Sidebar.)

April 13 update: I see the Sunday papers back home today are full of speculation about a Labour leadership contest if the party does badly on May 1, with Jack Straw touted as the proverbial safe pair of hands to take over from Gordon. What no-one has bothered to explain is how this would actually improve Labour's election chances, but they've got to find something to write about I guess.

I had been hoping that by the time I get back, the blog wars might have toned down a notch....but with Tim having opened a new front I'm not holding my breath. Guys, guys.

Justice for Scarlett

I was pleased to read this morning that the Goa Police now appear to have accepted that their original finding that 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling died from drowning despite having no water in her lungs was wrong and that she was in fact brutally raped and murdered - although it remains to be seen whether they have yet got their man.

I never met Scarlett, but her father, uncles and grandmother lived in the house next door to us when I was growing up and although it is many years since I have seen any of them, the family is very much in my thoughts at the moment.

Seven good things in life

I love being tagged by the meme, and Kate - her of the Home Blog fame - has ensnared me with this one, so here goes:

Blogging. Well, obviously.

My family, and any time I get to spend with them.

Saturday evenings spent in the kitchen, concocting a curry or a Chinese over a glass of wine.

Sunday afternoons spent in the garden, planting things and lighting bonfires.

Jack and Sarah, Gavin and Stacey, and all sweet love stories.

Prefab Sprout.

Political idealism - an increasingly rare and precious commodity.

I'm going to tag some of the best up-and-coming new(ish) blogs to be found on my blogroll, namely:

Barnacle Bill, Unenlightened Commentary, Party Political Animal, A blog from the backroom, and Letters from a Tory

Family trees

Readers may recall that a couple of weeks back I published a post calling for February 29 to be made a public holiday, in response to an initiative by the Big Green Switch website to encourage people to use the day to "do something green."

My employers, who also publish the BGS, kindly agreed to support that initiative and gave everyone in the office a couple of hours off on Friday afternoon to carry out a series of green pledges ranging from switching to low-energy lightbulbs to planting trees.

It gave me an opportunity to plant out two trees in our new garden - the old one, which was basically a paved area, didn't really allow for this - both of which have a special significance for me.

The first is a willow tree originally purchased on Good Friday, 2006. We had gone to our local garden centre that day to stock up on new plants, intending to spend a leisurely Easter Weekend in the garden. Things didn't turn out that way though, and ever since I have wanted to plant the tree as a memorial.

The second tree, pictured above, is a horse chestnut grown accidentally from a conker in the compost heap in the back garden of my old family home in the 1990s. Some of my happiest times were spent there gardening with my mum before the garden got too much for her, and it's nice to have the tree as a reminder of those days.

Many other people took up the Big Green Switch challenge, and the results can be seen here. You'll find me in that slideshow somewhere....

The best of times, the worst of times

The Today Programme this morning featured a fascinating discussion between two historians on whether it was possible to come up with an objective criteria to find the worst year in UK history. It followed a claim by one of them that the answer was 1812, not because the Prime Minister got assassinated in that year but because there was such a general level of anger amongst the populace that the news of his assassination was actually greeted by cheering.

I can't find a link to this, although Iain Dale has taken it up and got a bit of a discussion going as to worst years of people's lifetimes.

In a comment I left on Iain's blog I named 1979 as the worst year, but this was deliberately provocative. If it was a bad year it wasn't so much because it was the year Margaret Thatcher came to power as the fact that it was the year we handed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia over to the tyrant Robert Mugabe.

Politically speaking I think you would have to say that 2001 was the worst year in living memory. The first half of it was dominated by the sight of plumes of smoke going up from the funeral pyres of millions of dead cows, the second half by the sight of plumes of smoke going up from the World Trade Centre.

I think the best political year I can recall was probably 1977, the year of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. It was a period of benign and enlightened government under Jim Callaghan and David Steel and I recall a general sense of national uplift around this time, though sadly it didn't last.

But what of my personal good and bad years? Here's a potted history of the four and a half decades of my lifetime with the highpoints in blue and the lowpoints in red.

* 1963 - BAD. I am told this winter was the harshest in living memory, and that on one occasion when my mum tried to bath me I turned blue.

* 1970 - GOOD. The year of Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" as well as the last real White Christmas I can remember.

* 1972 - BAD. My first pet, a goldfish called Highfield, was eaten by the cat.

* 1974 - BAD. My grandad died - my first, and deepest, bereavement.

* 1979 - GOOD. Fell in love for the first time, with one of the bridesmaids at a family friend's wedding.

* 1983 - GOOD. Fell in love again and went on a memorable camping holiday to Ireland.

* 1987 - GOOD. Celebrated my 25th birthday with a legendary party at my flat in Nottinghamshire that still gets talked about occasionally.

* 1990 - GOOD. The summer of Italia '90, Ambient House, and beer. Enough said.

* 1995 - GOOD. Achieved my career ambition and became a lobby correspondent.

* 1997 - BAD. A real belter. I got dumped by a long-standing partner and my landlord tried to attack me during a period of drug-induced psychosis.

* 2001 - GOOD. Got married.

* 2004 - GOOD. My son George was born, and we moved to Derbyshire.

* 2006 - BAD. My American brother-in-law Mitch died in a road accident.

* 2007 - GOOD. Little Clara arrived, and we moved again to a new home we now hope to stay in for a lot of years.

I would love it if they win something

Eleven years ago last week, I travelled up to Newcastle to take up the job of Political Editor of its morning paper, The Journal. The idea was that I would spend my first week up there quietly getting to know the region and its key personalities before starting in earnest at Westminster the following week.

Three days later, Kevin Keegan resigned as manager of Newcastle United, and the whole of Tyneside went crazy.

I found myself pulled off some worthy feature about what Mo Mowlam would do if she became Northern Ireland Secretary to do a ring round of local MPs for their reaction to the Geordie Messiah's shock departure. It was clear that very few people were going to be interested in reading about politics that week.

So the equally unexpected return of King Kev to St James' Park yesterday has brought back a few poignant memories for me.

KK was lambasted at the time for having lost a 12-point lead in the 1995/96 Premiership race - and for "losing it" with Sir Alex Ferguson during a TV interview, although I've always though that clip showed him in his best, most passionate light.

But the club has meandered terribly since he left, and Kenny Dalglish, Ruud Gullit, Sir Bobby Robson, Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder and Sam Allardyce have all failed not just to bring in the silverware, but also - equally important to Newcastle fans - to replicate the excitement of Keegan's reign.

The gap between the Premiership's so-called Big Four and the rest has widened during his time away, but he will enjoy the challenge, although he will have to strengthen that rather porous defence that leaked five goals to Man U last weekend.

Keegan? Defence? Well, maybe not.

I'm a voluntary regional collectivist

Or at least so says the Political Compass website which places me firmly on the left of the economic debate and slightly south of the libertarian-authoritarian divide. I've no idea what voluntary regional collectivism is - I suspect it's a sort of cross between libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism but let's not get bogged down by labels. Interestingly the international figure to whose views mine come closest, according to the site, is Nelson Mandela, which can't be bad.

I was tagged to do this by South Tyneside's only Tory, Curly of Corner Shop fame, for which thanks. I'm not going to tag anyone else because this one has been round the block a few times already, but if anyone wants to have a go and let me know how they got on in the comments, feel free.

The New Year lambs

It's been a busy time in the Linford household over the past 10 days with family staying for Christmas, friends up from the Smoke for New Year, and a housewarming party sandwiched somewhere in between, but although I could probably do with another week off work to recover, I'm pleased to say a thoroughly good time was had by all.

Of the many nice surprises over the holiday season, perhaps the best and most unexpected were the new-born lambs that appeared in the field adjoining our garden - ten of them at the last count. They certainly didn't tell us about that in the estate agents' blurb.

Eight wishes for 2008

A few days ago I was tagged by Thunderdragon to do the "eight new year wishes" meme that originally started with Iain Dale, so here are mine:

1. That my wife Gill and I will be able to start putting our stamp on our new home.

2. That I will manage to spend more time enjoying the lovely countryside where I live.

3. That Gordon Brown will give us all some idea of what his government is supposed to be about.

4. That Channel 4 will decomission Big Brother.

5. That Hillary Clinton will lose the US presidential election.

6. That Mark Ramprakash will be recalled to the England cricket team.

7. That the nationwide Christian social action initiative, Hope 08, will bring in a rich harvest.

8. That the evil tyrant Robert Mugabe will finally be overthrown in Zimbabwe.

Most of the blogosphere seems to already have been tagged by this by now, but if they have not been "done" already, I am tagging Mars Hill,, UK Daily Pundit, Leon Green, Hopi Sen, and Kate.

A very special Christmas

I've just got back from Midnight Mass - so great to be able to sing the last verse of O Come all ye Faithful at last - and everyone else in the house has been in bed for about three hours, so just time to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas.

It's a very special Christmas in the Linford household this year - our first as a family of four, our first in the new home, and the first at which we've been able to invite all our surviving parents to stay at the same time. Most of yesterday was spent cooking and a good part of tomorrow will be too...it's just as well that it's my favourite way of relaxing!

I hope all your Christmases are equally special.

Birthday memories

My dad, Ken Linford, would have been 80 years old today. It's weird to think of what life might have been like over the past 27 years if he had lived, and what kind of life he and mum would be living if he was alive now. Would they still be living at our old house in Hitchin, Herts? Would they have moved down to Devon to run a garage as they had often spoken about? Would he even have enjoyed being old? Almost certainly not.

I still dream about him quite regularly as if he is still alive, that he didn't really die but went off to start a new life somewhere, but I guess this kind of thing is normal when you lose someone so important at a young age. Wherever he is, I hope it's somewhere peaceful.

Who breaks a Butterfly Song on a wheel?

If I were ever to choose my Top 10 favourite hymns, I'm pretty certain that the Butterfly Song would not feature on the list. In fact, it's one of the Christian songs I least enjoy singing and until today, I could not have foreseen the circumstances in which I would ever feel moved to defend it.

But that was until Tory blogfather Iain Dale laid into the 30-year-old ditty after being forced to sing it - presumably for the first time - at a friend's baby's christening yesterday.

Dale pointed to the song's lyrics as indicative of why the Church of England is losing members, citing the line, notorious even in Christian musical circles: "If I were a fuzzy-wuzzy bear, I'd thank you Lord for my fuzzy-wuzzy hair, but I just thank you Father for making me me!"

And yes, I agree, it's cringemaking in the extreme, and there hasn't been a single occasion on which I have sung it in the last 30 years without cringing. Except that, it's not aimed at me, is it?

For a blogger of Iain's prominence and influence to do this is really a bit like Nancy Banks-Smith giving a critical pasting to In the Night Garden as if she were reviewing the latest Stephen Poliakoff epic.

All that the Butterfly Song is really saying is that God made us as we are, and that we should celebrate our individuality. Somehow, I would have thought that was a sentiment which Iain Dale would have approved of.

* On the subject of God-related stuff, some comments I made in an earlier post about whether or not I would vote for someone who wasn't a Christian seem to have been misinterpreted. I accept that the post in question was clumsily worded and have provided a bit of further clarification HERE.

Moving on

Yesterday was the end of an era in the Linford household. We finally moved on from the little terraced house in Belper I have owned since 1989 which was my home both before and after my move down to London and the Lobby in the mid-90s.

When I first bought the place as an impoverished local news reporter, it was a disused shop that was one of only two properties in the town inside my price range. But over the course of about ten arduous but enjoyable years I slowly converted it, first into a bachelor pad, later into the comfortable family home it now is.

The needs of our growing family meant it was time to move on, but although it was inevitably hard to say goodbye, I left this place for the last time shortly before 4pm yesterday afternoon with only happy memories.

For those who appreciate this sort of personal stuff - and I know it's a relatively small minority of you - there's a full pictorial memoir of the house on my companion blog, Behind the Lines.

Which famous leader are you like?

While admittedly fun, most online tests are inherently stupid, and this one seems stupider than most. It reckons the leader I am most like is JFK, informing me that I "like power because it increases my sexual options." As anyone who knows me well will testify, I'm a happily married man who has never been much of a one for sexual options, but I would be interested to know whether other users get similarly random results!

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What England means to me

A few weeks ago, Toque invited me to join a new Facebook group called What England Means to Me, and to contribute to a new website of the same name. It's being billed as a "Domesday Book of the mind for England at the beginning of the 21st century" aimed at defining the oft-debated yet elusive notion of Englishness. My contribution will appear on the site shortly, but I thought I would also reproduce it here. It's not the usual kind of stuff you will find on this blog, but it does sum up, as best I can, how I feel about my beloved country.

***

England is the land of my birth, and the land where I hope to end my days. The land of my fathers and mothers, and the land where I too will raise my children. The land from which I have sometimes travelled far, yet always longed to return to whenever I have left its shores. The land where I have enjoyed all my happiest moments, from the childhood summers in Sussex by the sea, to the Lakeland mountain walking holidays of the middle years. The land of music as varied yet as quintessentially English as Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Genesis and The Smiths. A land of beer drinkers and pub culture, of bar-room camaraderie and foaming pints beside roaring log fires. A land of temperate sunshine and richly varying seasons whose weather is reflected in its politics, free from harsh extremes. A land rich in history, symbolised by the continuity of a royal line stretching back fifteen centuries, and by the more ordinary human stories which bear out the truth of TS Eliot’s beautiful verse: “A people without history is not redeemed from time...History is now and England.” A land which people have fought and died to save, and a land which, in my grandparents’ generation, stood alone against the most atrocious tyranny the world has ever seen. A land where the words of its greatest leader Winston Churchill forever bear witness to its indomitable spirit: “We will defend our island, whatever the cost may be...we will never surrender.”

I hope to dwell in this land all my days and enjoy its safe pasture, and to bring up my children to love it as I have done.

November 2007

Days of hope

Iain Dale has been waxing lyrical about his time in student politics at the University of East Anglia and lists Caroline Flint, Mark Seddon, former NUS president Vicky Phillips and Tony Blair aide Jo Gibbons among his contemporaries.

Luminaries from my own days in student politics at University College London include the well-known psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud, who was chair of Labour Club in 1982, Liz Davies, famously blackballed by Blair from becoming a Labour MP, David Quantick, now a respected comedy writer, Greg Wood, now the Guardian's racing correspondent, and the Tory blogger Croydonian, who doesn't remember me.

I learned two important lessons during my time in student politics. The first was that I did not want to pursue a political career, and the second was that Tories are generally nicer people than socialists even though I disagree with them most of the time.

Farewell Blackpool

David Cameron's closing speech in Blackpool today - a storming success by all accounts - marked the end of an era in British political conferences, with none of the major parties due to return to the old Lancashire seaside down.

Most politicians and journalists will no doubt be relieved about that. Few ever had a good word to say about the place. But I have always begged to differ.

Of the other main conference venues, Bournemouth was ruined by the dismal press facilities - they used to put us in a windowless underground car park, in seats so uncomfortable that one year I did my back in and spent the next fortnight practically unable to move. And Brighton was wrecked by the security arrangements - the configuration of the Brighton Centre meant the entire seafront had to be sealed off and after-hours access was inevitably limited to a roundabout route to the rear.

I always had a better time in Blackpool. I found a good little hotel, the Tregenna, within walking distance of the conference centre which I used to stay in year after year, and for mealtimes instead of being forced to eat pretentious, overpriced food I would tend to frequent a marvellous chippie on the outskirts of the town centre.

The best thing about Blackpool, though, was the Number Ten Bar at the Imperial Hotel, the atmosphere of which was like nothing else - maybe because it lent itself more to the noble art of beer-drinking rather than the copious wine-quaffing you were likely to see in Brighton's Grand or Bournemouth's Highcliffe.

Even though the hotel itself is unlikely to play host to a conference again, I hope someone preserves that bar for posterity.

Update: For a more mainstream view of Blackpool, read Iain Dale's Spectator Diary