Written by Gordon Aspey
13 September 2021
The violin has never appealed to me as a musical instrument. I recall with a wince my early days at school trying to control the bow and the dreadful screeching noises it made. When the bandmaster examined my fingers and said ‘Hmm-I don’t think you have the hands for this instrument ,young man.
It was a relief .The cacophony of sound from twenty or more kids trying to play the violin was almost unbearable .He recommended me to the Woodwind Section.That came to an abrupt halt when he saw me bonking another kid on the head with my clarinet.He grabbed me by the collar and marched me out of the band room saying ‘I never want to see your ugly face in here again.’ That was the end of my musical career. ‘Oh the igmony,
Many years later whilst travelling through London, I saw a violinist playing at the entrance to the underground station. He played with such verve and energy. It was a pleasure to listen to him. I fumbled in my trousers for some small change and decided to give him half a crown.
I am not noted for generosity in the giving department. I tend to ignore TV clips begging for money and the tin rattlers in every high street.You could say I’m a tad curmudgeonly in such matters. Something to do with devaluation of the pound or maybe the lack of the wherewithal.
In my haste I clumsily dropped two half crowns by mistake. Well ,I didn’t want to overdo things so I hurriedly reclaimed the excess payment. The music went down a couple of octaves and the violinist looked at me like that American tennis player arguing with the Umpire, ‘You can’t be serious.’ For one moment I thought he was going to whack me over the head with his violin.
A tall man came over and prodded me with his walking stick voicing his displeasure. I started to explain ‘Hang on, I accidentally’…but realized it didn’t look good and replaced the money. There wasn’t much in his saucer, maybe two pounds at most. The man watched my departure carefully, then folded a ten shilling note and put it into the saucer. The violinist responded with a vigorous bit of Korsakov, I thought he was going to have a go at ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’.
To my surprise soon after, I felt positively elated at having given more than I had originally intended. I felt pure and ordained in some way. It was as though The Lord had tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Well done, my son, well done. ’It was like taking a shot of cocaine, (or so I would imagine!) Now I understand why people like giving. They get high and feel so good about themselves.
These politicians MAY need a bit of the feel good factor, That’s why they want to give away all this money in foreign aid. The MAJOR problem ‘It isn’t their money and smacks of Colonial arrogance. The Empire has long gone. The majority of voters don’t like politicians being so benevolent it’s unbecoming, although their wishes are never part of the mix. I can recall putting pennies in saucers for Africa, eighty years ago. The saucers have become a fixture. This annual hand-out has become a habit, a bit like our benefits system, and they are reluctant to let go. The country is going backwards ever since independence and I doubt the next eighty years will show much improvement.
If two half crowns have the power to leave me oozing with sweetness and light. Imagine how benevolent these washed up politicians would feel dishing out billions of pounds. It’s a pity they didn’t spend some time and money supporting those poor kids still being abused in our towns and cities. The politicians, media and every government department have shown appalling cowardice with their wall of silence. In Political speak ‘Cowardice on an Industrial scale.’ There is an earnest need for some backbone in the establishment.
The lopsided Judiciary is even more lamentable with their wooly headed clowns steeped in paper- mache and ancient precedents, they must think logic and common sense are some sort of Chinese takeaway. The title Supreme Court is almost laughable. We have criminals roaming our streets for lack of resources to apprehend them. Yet we spend vast sums of money and half of the Met police force tracking down some bloke who sent a banana to a black footballer.
I think those abused kids are far more important than anything else on the political agenda. The trouble is parliament doesn’t represent the majority of people in this country, and never have. The ever growing tentacles of the law are getting ridiculous. I have difficulty believing these footballers are genuinely so upset by the banter and name calling. They are grown men, not like those abused kids with no voice. You don’t get to be a professional footballer earning eye watering wages without growing a Teflon overcoat. Money has a rapid healing quality.
I think they are manipulated and milked by the media. The media needs conflict to sell their wares. and I believe they have consistently fashioned the race card into a poisoned arrow to aim at anyone with an opposing view. It is a veritable cash cow to keep the printing presses rolling with plenty of eager support from the vociferous left.
You can’t blame the footballer, his talent is in his feet and rarely combines with talent in the upper regions. Although he wants top dollar for his skills and any publicity that helps to increase his value will be welcome. But my sympathies lie with the fans who are getting fleeced. They pay a lot of money to see a game of football. They don’t want some over the hill footballer to start preaching the gospel. In my day booing and disrespectful banter were part of the cut and thrust of the game. If a player or the ref for that matter had a large nose, protruding ears or some other unusual feature he would know all about it before the final whistle and he’d be none the worse for it. If a player fluffed a penalty he would be subjected to a barrage of disrespectful yells from angry supporters. All the humorous banter is now gone and the fans are treated like sheep. A woke camera is focused on the fans like an aggressive collie making sure they all toe the line.
Then you have talented black people who have managed to gain a place in the once most coveted place of learning on the planet. They want to destroy statues, for heaven’s sake. A s
tatue is a large lump of metal. It doesn’t eat, drink or argue, it doesn’t moan, mumble, pine or piddle. it really doesn’t do anything, apart from acting as an outpost for pigeons to do their ablutions or whatever. History happened, you can’t alter that. if you destroy all the statues and flatten the pyramids you are only adding to history, you cannot alter or destroy it. You would think an academic would be more interested to know how this large lump of metal got transformed into a work of art. Possibly some artist devoted his life to learning the profession and maybe this statue was the pinnacle of his life’s work- maybe not. But imagine his feelings at such treatment of his labours. You can be sure he would be mightily upset.
Then you get students on the other side of the world objecting to a 42 ton rock on the Campus. They had it removed because in some remote way it was connected to slavery. Is there anything on this earth not connected to slavery in some remote way? Slavery has been around for a long time and is not the preserve of the black. .If everything was destroyed with bad connotations of the past There wouldn’t be anything left to moan about. It might be more constructive to delete the word race and it’s distorted meanings from the dictionary. The world would be a calmer place and the media would have to focus on something else.
I belong to another era and despair at the direction of political thinking. The British are often described as the most tolerant and generous people on earth. I would question that and suggest it is media hype. The reality is they have been gagged by law. Times have changed drastically over the last thirty years. My hope is for politicians with more interest in the protection and welfare of OUR young kids .Rather than trying to scramble onto the world stage as some sort of benevolent saviour of mankind.