H4235

Male, 41, married. Consultant, Leeds


Saturday 2 June 2012

I keep waking up at about 3.30, the sun blazing through the yellow curtains, and I swear that this weekend is the one I’m going to buy black-out blinds. To make things worse, the alarm I set last Saturday for a car boot helpfully rolled over to this Saturday, so it went off at 6.45 and then kept on going off every 15 mins until I finally heaved myself out of bed. It had beeped at midnight aswell, informing me that it was my Auntie’s wedding anniversary today. Must change those settings…..

Mother and daughter, father and son went their different ways today – and son C hasn’t stopped trying to herd the flock back together again. ‘When’s Mum going to be back?’

I took him to a friend’s party at ‘LaserZone’, a curious institution where adults can shoot at children with guns, and vice versa. It’s in a leisure and retail park called Xscape, between Castleford and Pontefract, a giant complex so unreal and unlike the ex-mining towns that surround it that it looks like a mirage, or a dyspeptic bad dream following an excess of burgers. A friend of ours calls it Cas Vegas and Ponte Carlo. 

We stopped on the edges of a bird reserve on the way there though: it was my antidote to the whole Ponte Carlo experience. I’m still trying to introduce C to looking at nature, looking carefully at things. He looked very carefully at the bird hide, which he thought looked impressively like a bullet proof bunker, and then we laid some explosive on a nearby disused railway track, despatched the guards, and ran for cover as our bomb de-railed the north-bound express. He wondered if he could use his binoculars like a magnifying glass, to set fire to things.

Saw a tern, in the meanwhile, and I think a marsh warbler – a small brown bird with a rounded head, anyway.

Dropped C with some dazed looking parents in charge, and had a lifeless sandwich from Subway. Spent an hour looking round the retail outlet – where plastic bunting had been deployed, and benches covered in union jacks. Bought a jacket for £13 – I am bargain hunting this month – and was given a Jubilee Scratch Card with a chance to win an ice cream or some larger cash prize. No joy. 

Retailers have done their best to use the Jubilee to sell more goods, but I’m not really sure people are shopping to celebrate. I think they are celebrating though. It feels quite genuine. A lot of people we know are dismissive about the whole Jubilympic thing, including us probably – but I think the majority of people are right behind it. I don’t mind that. I can’t really get into it – but I don’t mind it. Like the royal wedding before it, it’s well timed. The recession is definitely still lying heavily on everyone, and things are pretty gloomy. We’ll see if I still feel like that after the weekend!

I sat in the car and watched the crows launch themselves from the top of the building. 

Picked C up. ‘We’re going home for a coffee,’ said the parents in charge. Drove back, avoiding the centre of Leeds. Still couldn’t shake a drugged, headachy feeling I’ve had all day. Bad posture, and a hard week last week. It’s nice to be off work. So went in the garden, tied up a clematis, cut back some scruffy bulb leaves, hoed a bit. Then up in the loft to do some exercise, and when K and T got back, we all went to a local chip shop for a meal. ‘I don’t know what it says about us,’ said K, ‘ that we come to this restaurant more than any other. I think it might be a bit depressing.’ ‘It’s cheap,’ I pointed out. 

I joined up on Twitter as we sat there, and used a ketchup sachet as my avatar – temporarily. K said I could look up things on the Jubilee, for instance, if I wanted to.

Yes. I could.

A swift with a broken wing was on our drive as we went out. What to do? The wind was blowing it about in the most pitiful way. Should I ‘put it out of it’s misery’? K picked it up and put it in a quiet bit of the garden. I guess they live moment by moment, so that’s better than panicking on the concrete. Sorry to see it. Its babies are in our roof, so we’ll see what happens next. Maybe there’s a mate, and maybe that’s enough. 

Read Tintin to the kids and put them to bed. It’s cold in the house again, after last week’s sunshine. 

Sunday 3 June 2012

It’s been 6 degrees today, and raining pretty steadily. It was a day for picking things up off the floor and doing some ironing – but we also all went off to the swimming baths, partly to get the blood flowing, partly to stop the kids climbing the walls. 

I went back to bed for half an hour after lunch – something I never do – and it made me feel much better. If I was on a beach holiday, I reasoned, I would lie about for a bit – so why not. 

Anyway, the main event of the day was a friend’s street party which we went to rather lightly clad, assuming it would be off and we’d all be squashed into someone’s house, but no: we were soon huddling under a gazebo waiting for the sausages to cook through. 

Some kids played football, some others, including ours, sang karaoke in a tent, and the adults drank moderately and ate to keep warm. It felt freezing. June! Oh my God!

No-one talked about the Jubilee at all – you know, I’m not even sure what colour we’re on, gold? – and I got the impression no-one really cares very much. I think they believe in community, the people in that street, and that was there reason for closing the street. That, and they were taking pride in carrying on regardless. It was a bit downbeat though. 

I’ve just been watching the TV coverage on the news – “today’s spectacular events” apparently. Are we looking at the same set of pictures? I quite like the river idea. I’ve always thought the Thames is the most exciting feature of the city. But I’m not sure it counts as a spectacular event. Sweet? Modest? Homely? 

“It’s a pretty shitty boat, isn’t it?” observes K. “Painted up with a bit of gold spray paint.”

Watching people waving from the bridges makes me feel a bit out of joint with everyone. “It shows what Britain’s about,” says someone. If it does, I don’t know what that is. It’s the same with the Olympic torch. I’m happy to celebrate, but what are we cheering about, exactly? I guess this is the uneasy compromise we negotiated at the Restoration. Set up a monarchy that is deliberately unreal, unrepresentative, make government entirely separate, and then put on lots of theatre around the royal court that does the job for the people on the bridges. I admire this compromise, and I respect the way it has evolved over the last four hundred years, but I’m not sure it makes me want to celebrate. It’s like celebrating the civil service, or national parks. 

The TV commentator is still doing a sterling job. “These are really magnificent pictures. Just watching this takes you back a couple of hundred years really, when machines were a thing of the future, and all transportation was provided by the human form.” Thanks for that. 

“Well we promised you a lot of fun!” he says. 

“We lied,” says K. 

Monday 4 July 2012

Another Jubilee event today, again combined with going to see some friends – many people have used it as a reason to ask people over. This time it was a kind of fete in a park in Calverley, and the sun was out today. 

It was a more conventional affair than yesterday. People were wearing red, white and blue outfits and sitting on picnic blankets on the neatly mown grass. Everyone was very white, considering the park’s location between two ethnically diverse metropolitan areas. The men looked well fed, in smart weekend clothes approved by wife/girlfriend; his best jeans, new trainers, a printed T-shirt from Harvey Nicks; and all holding a bottle of beer. 

We ate curry, and roast pork sandwiches from the only two food stalls going, and then looked round the rest of the marquees: lifeboatmen, Pudsey Civic Society, Pickles and Preserves, pony rides, a small menagerie (spider, cockroaches, tortoise, guinea pig, rabbit). The kids went on a bouncy slide.

The organisers had done well – it was a big park to fill, and people were happy to sit in it after yesterday’s downpour. A park of New Elizabethans at the end of an era, an era marked by relative comfort, albeit ending in recession. I think the comfort determines the tone of the celebration. It’s not wild, not relief or liberation. It’s more like the brief raising of a glass while sitting in a comfy armchair. 

The kids played on the Wii while we talked: about work, about relatives. We watched the start of the Jubilee concert but were embarrassed by it. So very mainstream, but also a bit flat (both in atmosphere and musically). A waft of dry ice was blowing in from the back of the stage. It looked like someone had lit a barbecue. 

Just saw the end of it now though – the projection on the palace looked good. The Queen looked exhausted. I’m not sure all this has an old lady’s best interests at heart.

Tuesday 5 June, 2012

Talked to the neighbours across the road today, and they said they’d watched the swift we found on Saturday: it was pulled off its nest by a magpie, which then followed it to the ground, pecking at it until it was broken. Since then the nest has been entirely quiet. No screeching in the evening when they usually fly back in with food. 

We decided to get away from the city, the four of us, and headed for Pateley Bridge where we had a good four-mile walk along the river, up a hill, and down again back to the town. It was amazingly green, from the darkest bluest green in the shadows, to the meadows spattered with daisies. I needed greens. I feel like I’ve been made to eat a huge doughy slice of middle Britain in the last few days: flavourless, colourless stodge in a thick salty crust. It’s OK while your eating it, but you don’t half tire of it.

Daughter T has taken to listening to Classic FM a lot, and there was a pretty constant downpour of patriotic music going on today. 

Pateley Bridge was flying the flag too, of course, in the town. The only place I’ve heard of not doing so is places in Ascot and Windsor, where our family correspondent says things seem very quiet. Maybe they are so used to seeing her majesty that they have misjudged the general fervour. 

I understand Prince Philip is in hospital, and heard Archbishop Sentamu issue a veiled threat to the Queen that reminded me of Trollope (as the high Church often still does), something along the lines of:

“I know she will want to be with Prince Philip, but I’m sure she will think of the people of Britain, ready to stand all day and all night waiting for her, of her Commonwealth subjects, of her position as head of the church, and of her duty to God, and I think she will say ‘let’s get on with it’.”

If anything points up the weirdness of this weekend it is the spectacle of this woman, who no doubt wants to be with her ailing husband, forced to come to an extended celebration that has everything to do with the people attending and nothing to do with her, personally. But then that’s the thing, isn’t it. She’s asked to be a real person and not a real person at the same time – that’s the brief we’ve devised for our monarchy. 
It’s very odd.