2021

It's Birthday week in this house. Tomorrow my daughter is 28. That's hard to believe. Even harder to believe is that on Thursday my son reaches 30. Both these birthday make me feel extremely old. I am also a feeling at a bit of a loss now when it comes to giving advice to my son. When I turned 30 I had been married to his Mum for 5 years we were both in good permanent jobs and had a mortgage for 7 years and he had been born a month earlier. I feel that my life experiences post 30 are so different to what he will face as a single man living in a rented house share in the East End of this city that I've got nothing of relevance to say to him anymore. But I will carry on trying to give wise fatherly advice which he will for the most part ignore.So nothing different there. I shouldn't worry should I. . .

Long (Hot) Summer

Well, bloody hell, what a year this is. It's hard to believe what has happened since Lockdown in March. Actually it's hard to believe that lockdown happened. I was sent home on the 23rd March with a laptop and a cheery give us a ring if you have any probems by my manager and the IT team. I was one of the lucky ones who got a laptop and didn't end up with their work Desktop Pc and monitor and a dongle to connect to the work servers. And here I am almost 5 months later sat at the dining table working from home until Christmas, possibly never to return to the Office. It feels hard already to think back to late March and April to how bleak it was, and even this month, stood in a queue to get into Ikea ( don't ask) I couldn't quite understand what the hell was going on. At least I'm not the only one as quite clearly the Government has no idea what is going on either as they have demonstrated time and time again over this Summer. There are some positives to this for me. I don't have to make small talk in the office with a lot of idiots. That is a big bonus. I have been able to run more too- which is a good thing because I have been eating more. And I have been around to support my wife more as she goes through another reorganisation at work which is leading albeit slowly to redundancy. I persuaded her to rejoin a union earlier this year after many years of not being a member and that has turned out to be one of my rare moments of foresight as the company go through the management team trying to pick off the ones they don't want. There are downsides too, boredom being one of them but I can't help feeling I've been lucky through all this.

2020

Hard to believe it's now 2020. Back when I was a young boy the thought of living until 2020 was unbelievable. Now we are here it feels like the last 50 years have gone by as quickly as fast forwarding a film on Iplayer or Sky. This thought has hit me a bit this year. Age is only a number I know but later on this year I hit 59 and my wife turns 60. Those are fucking big numbers.

Not that long ago my wife could have retired on a full pension now she will have to wait until she is 66.

It's Christmas

I am not a Christmas super fan. I mostly enjoy it but I would never have it in a Top Ten Highlights of the year selection. Not that I'd ever get asked.

But Christmas this year for me is a bit of a washed out affair. And it shouldn't be. My son has returned home for a while and my daughter is home for the festivities from New Zealand. Even so , family problems ( on the wife's side) and the trouncing Labour got at the election has put a real downer on this year's celebrations.

This isn't the place to go into my wife's soured relationship with her parents and her sister and her husband but it has been a long time coming and the blame lies on all sides. I am just a sometimes bemused bystander thinking that if they only kept their opinion to themselves they would still be talking to each other, like my family. I have little time for my older brother and only occasionally speak to him, normally at times of crises with the parents. I speak to my younger sister more but not regularly. I speak to my Mum ( Dad never answers the phone) about once a week and see them about 4/5 times a year that's all. Politically and culturally we are miles apart, but we all skirt round each other in conversation and I rarely challenge them, except on their casual racism and ignorance on refugees and asylum seekers and the NHS and Housing which I do know a lot about. They know this so rarely bring the subject up. Is that hypocritical?.Yes of course it is but at least we all still talk to each other on the couple of occasions a year we get together. Unlike my wife and her family who aren't speaking at all since last Christmas..

I didn't campaign for Labour at the election , there was little chance of Newcastle Central going Tory and work and lack of holiday precluded me from campaigning in the marginals in the North East. My son did campaign here and in London and said from Day One Labour would lose. Brexit and Corbyn being the main reasons and to a much lesser extent (and ONLY in the seats on the outskirts of London) anti Semitism in the party. This leaves all of us who rejoined the Party to get Corbyn elected with a dilemma. Do we stay and fight for Corbyn MKII or do we just quietly cancel the Direct Debits and move on back to the wilderness licking our wounds. In the last 40 years there has only been 13 years of a Labour Government and I can't help feeling that this election it was a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas here in the North East. But you can't think like that.

The conclusion I draw from the defeat , and the one I have been drawing for myself since 1979, is that our electoral system is not fit for purpose. I hope the Party's review of their failure leads them to accept this and we ( if I stay a member) start to campaign for proportional representation. Sign the petition at The Electoral Reform society website and give us a chance of having a Government that represents everyone not just a minority.

Autumn Almanack

Another random update to while away a Friday afternoon.I ran the Kielder Marathon in the pouring rain and finished in 5:17:25. Now this is still slow but timewise it was my fourth fastest marathon of the last three years and 6 minutes faster than the last time I ran round the reservoir in 2011. Consequently I was pretty pleased with myself as I sat with a cup of tea and a Vegan flapjack ( baked by the local WI) waiting for my running buddy, Andy to finish in his slowest ever marathon time. I was however put in my place by another running mate Ed who finished in 4:30. Not a record breaking time but Ed is 70.

I only have a 10k in December so Kielder was my last distance run of the year. Another up and down year of running , a poor Spring marathon in Copenhagen, a good 10 mile run around Northumberland in August and return to form Great North Run in September. But it all means that I have not really made much improvement in times or performance. I need to rethink my running goals and strategy for next year.

Outside of running, work remains the same, that is, tedious. Some Friday's I leave the office dreading the return on Monday. it can almost ruin the weekend.And that isn't me. Bills and mortgage prevent me from jacking it all in as well as sheer bloody mindedness. It doesn't help that my boss is useless. And I am 58, not that old but old enough to be most of my colleagues' Dad. That is sometimes hard to deal with. At least I get well paid for it.

Football wise Peterborough seem to be mounting a real promotion push this year, but I am refusing to get involved. I have only been once this season and don't intend to get overexcited this time round. I will see if I can maintain this detached position if we are top of the League come next February.

Music wise it has been a good year so far , Embrace, Suede, Billy Bragg, Sharon Van Etten and St Etienne. I did miss The Wedding Present though as we were away in Norfolk

My son is currently at home after returning from Poland. He has got overexcited at the prospect of a general election and is disappearing back down to London to campaign in Chingford to support the strong local Labour attempt to unseat Ian Duncan Smith. Talking about Universal Credit that benefit continues to bring misery and uncertainty to claimants here 3 years after it was first introduced in Newcastle. Apart from the still lengthy wait for new claimants and the capricious application of sanctions,structurally the benefit is fundamentally flawed. Here's hoping for a Labour Victory in December. although I am not getting overexcited about that either. My daughter remains in New Zealand but is returning in December for a month. It will be only the third time in four years we have physically seen her, although the internet means we are in touch almost daily.

I really don't like this time of year after the clocks have gone back. A brief respite of lighter mornings but soon get up in the dark, go to work in the dark and leave work in the dark, home in the dark. Dark, dark, dark. It's shit.