The FA Cup Odyssey takes me to the best stadium in the land

Watching the scores roll in on the Saturday afternoon of FA Cup third round weekend captured every single bit of magic and that clear hope (and dread) of a footballing upset. Every fan of any team cheered the efforts of Cambridge, Kidderminster, Huddersfield and Wigan, except of course if your team, like mine, was one of the vanquished.

And so to the progress on our FA Cup odyssey, picking up on the trail that started at Radcliffe and had most recently found itself most romantically in Buxton. I said I would persist as long as I could. And though there was no room at the inn for the second round tie between the Bucks and Morecambe, it was on telly, and I had bagged the bonus of Buxton’s replay win over Kettering. That was, as I said at the time, as hardcore as it gets for a hardy groundhopper.

And taking in new sights, new grounds, is what this is all about. Today I took in the fourth new hallowed domain of this trip, the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, for the visit of the Shrimps. I think it’s probably the best of all the new builds, and marks my 75th of the current 92 and the 165th stadium I've watched football in. The thought and planning that’s gone into the whole concept is highly impressive, especially when you consider the card Spurs have been dealt. Even when I lived in London I never found the access to White Hart Lane particularly enjoyable, or without difficulty. Choosing therefore to build on roughly the same site, and embracing the gritty urban setting, and still pushing public transport and pedestrian options is a brave move. 

Partly as a result of an old habit failing to die as hard as my perceptions of the old ground and its environs, we opted for lunch at Yildiz, the best Turkish grill in London, and deep in Arsenal territory.

But though the Seven Sisters Road might not have anything to compete with pre-match scoff like that, in every other way this was a superlative match day experience. The facilities are better, the food options more diverse, the atmosphere improved, and every lesson in flawed stadium design has been eagerly learned from every mistake made by everyone else, but mainly Arsenal. 

On the pitch though, we were in for a treat, served up with pluck and grit by a Morecambe side prepared to embrace the occasion and give it a go. Spurs might have had all the possession, but the blocks of empty seats and a place in the team for what were effectively Conte's triallists showed an institutional lack of respect that gave the Shrimps every motivation to run their bloody noses in it. 

Though there was a roar for Morecambe's opener on 33 minutes from their 3000 fans, some 150 of whom may have been at Christie Park for the 8-1 crushing of Esh Winning in 1986 in an early FA Cup memory we will share. But the loudest cheer of the day came for the Harry Kane led cavalry to replace Ali, Ndombele and Gil, and raucous boos as they didn’t leave the pitch, and possibly their Spurs careers, quickly enough. The eventual 3-1 win had a feeling of inevitability about it once the first one rattled in. An ungracious taunting of the visiting fans from parents and children around us, that they weren’t singing anymore, won’t be enough to properly extinguish the embarrassment that a struggling League One side with scant resources took the game this far. Premier League, having a laugh, for sure, but they weren’t laughing in Newcastle last night.

The reason this odyssey is back on is down to our 21 year old soldier son Max, a Spurs supporter. On Sunday 9 January 2011 I took him by trains, buses and tubes across all points of London, via an Ottolenghi cake shop, also close to Arsenal, to an FA Cup third round sweeping aside of Charlton Athletic. It was a special day, and the write up is here. For my Christmas present he made today happen. The circle of life, and the magic of the cup. Pick whichever cliche you want, but it works for me.

The Saying Yes to Everything Tour - an update

I mentioned a while ago that me and my wife Rachel and Neil and his wife, Rachael, are on something of a say yes to anything tour.

This blog is a slightly updated version of my weekly column in the Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle for the end of November. 

Having been locked down for the best part of two years has made us really appreciate the things we were denied for so long. There’s a real sense out there that many of you feel the same way. 

Concerts, comedy nights, talks, festivals, exhibitions, films, restaurants and bars, sporting events, walks in the hills. You name it, we’ve been on it. And yet we still have massive FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) when we see other people going to things we wish we’d gone to.

Out of this darkness, some real moments of magic have appeared and I wanted to share a few of them with you. Hopefully, they’ll encourage you to get out a bit and see what might happen.

Just to give you a flavour for this, we bumped into Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, last weekend. Neil had interviewed the Mayor a few weeks before for a film he made for the clothing brand Pretty Green. There was a competition to “meet the designers behind the brand” and get a discount voucher for some lucky winners. It turned out that it was actually a chance to hang out with Liam Gallagher.

Andy told us that he’d been at three gigs in a row last week - The Jesus & Mary Chain, Paul Weller, and Billy Bragg, who we featured on last week’s Music Therapy. One thing the Mayor has consistently done is support venues and give a helping hand to emerging artists across the area. One of the bands he trumpeted, Wigan’s The Lathums, supported Weller in Liverpool last Friday.

Apparently, I’ve been mispronouncing their name when I’ve introduced their tunes on Tameside Radio. This Sunday night I’ll get it right. Thanks, Mr Mayor.

Incidentally, it was brilliant to learn that the Modfather gave a support slot at his Llandudno gig last Saturday to the Tameside troubadour, Cobain Jones. What a lovely thing to do and by all accounts, Cobain absolutely rocked the North Wales audience.

We saw a similar act of generosity last Wednesday at the Plaza Theatre in Stockport. Top comic Jason Manford sold out this show two years ago, but only now has he been able to fulfil the date, even if it did clash with Stockport County’s FA Cup replay conquering of Bolton Wanderers, it was still packed. He didn’t have to, but he gave a support slot to Denton comedian Stephen Bailey, who was really good.

Neil had also seen a raucous event over in Wigan featuring Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays, interviewed in front of an audience of fans. The MC for the evening was Neil’s mate Brian Cannon, the graphic designer who did such iconic artwork for the album covers for Oasis and The Verve. Brian had his work cut out as his plan to steer a conversation gently was taken over by a local crowd who shouted out their own questions and Shaun answered the ones he wanted to. Pretty fitting really.

By way of contrast, we saw the writer David Hepworth at the Louder Than Words Festival in Manchester, promoting his book about British artists breaking through in America, Overpaid, Oversexed and Over There. This is a man who knows all about artists going off-script. It was David who famously interviewed Bob Geldof during Live Aid when the Boomtown Rat banged the table and urged the people at home to, er, donate a bit more money!

No such chaos at the Innside Hotel in Manchester last week, but we learnt a stream of fascinating stories. Not least that the first words that an American audience heard from The Beatles in 1964 were - Close Your Eyes and I’ll Kiss You. And boy, America certainly did.

Post script to this is we braved the wilds and drove over to Liverpool to see two delightful performances from two artists I've really got to appreciate in the last year. Jane Weaver was the support for Saint Etienne, a band I've always quite liked but never fully bought into previously. I'll have to try and think about what that might be.

Here's another resolution, I'm going to start adding the column here on this blog every Friday. Just to cross-reference it, and maybe be a bit assiduous about adding reviews of things we've done and places we've been.

Francis, Kevin and Rachel

We pack a lot into our little holidays, and we always seem to learn a thing or two.

Full Irish breakfast to start a busy day, comes without baked beans, and soda bread is better than two slices of holy ghost. 

We had a lovely chat to Pat Casey, the manager of the Glendalough Hotel, who enjoyed learning about our visit to the former seat of one of his predecessors, Francis Slefer, Rachel's great grandfather. He showed us around the documents and the hotel diary, the reason why the name lost its Royal in the 1980s. 

Pat also pointed us along the way to the ruins of Derralossary Church, a Protestant chapel, where Francis and his wife Agnes and son Karel are buried. The grave is right next to the family resting place of Erskine Childers, the only President of Ireland to die in office in 1974, and his author and rebel son who wrote The Riddle of the Sands, and was killed by the Black and Tans in the Civil War. 

We took in St Kevin’s Church and read of the story of a blackbird nesting in the outstretched hand of the imprisoned Kevin of Glendalough, immortalised in a Seamus Heaney poem. It's self-sacrifice, doing untold good for others, no matter the personal cost, which on the occasion of the special birthday for the most generous soul I know is remarkably appropriate.

Maybe because I was raised tantalising close to the sea I have a thing for seaside towns, closed down, forgotten, or revived. Bray looks like the latter. Lovely, tidy Bray. The seaside town that refused to shut down. Inevitably, ill-equipped and under-estimating, we cracked on and walked a sharp route to Bray Head Cross on the headland above the town. Maybe I missed something dark, a few streets back from the shore, but I loved Bray and I think it's the town Morecambe could be.

We watched the sunset on a beautiful trip as the sky lit up red over Dublin Airport. 

Happy birthday,  Rachel. I don't think I could love you any more, but I'll keep trying. Keep stretching out that hand.

A special day in the Wicklow Mountains

Early alarm call, Ringway, Ryanair, hire car palaver and 45 minutes south of Dublin and we’re having a mid-morning drink and a packet of Tayto’s in beautiful Glendalough, County Wicklow.

“This place is an absolute jewel,” we’re told a few hours later at the summit of Lugduff (689m) by 75 year old Mary from Dublin, one of the few hikers we met on this glorious day. Mary was right, and like most of our unguided walks it took a few twists and turns.

We started out thinking we’d do the moderate Hill Walk in the local guide booklet, starting from Upper Lake, past the Poulanass waterfall, but the weather was so good we just kept going for 35,000 steps, up 182 floors and covering 28km. We climbed steeply through a logging forest, then onto a heather covered fell and up, and up to the summits of Lugduff, Mullacor (709m) and Cullentragh (520m). It is spectacularly beautiful and very well tended by the Irish National Parks and Wildlife Service. 

We’re here because of the family connection. From 1898 to 1938, the Glendalough Hotel was managed by Francis Slefer, Rachel’s great grandfather, an emigre from Cerhovice in Central Europe, an employment tradition that this delightful hotel has preserved, or more likely, revived. 

The setting is glorious, the food has been sumptuous and more than anything the occasion has been just perfect.  

Grateful

There are a dozen things I could write about today, at least. 

Having had such a busy weekend, seen people, done more in two days than we had in two years. So it seems appropriate to take a bit of a step back. In the course of the last half hour, scrolling social media as I come around to start a busy Sunday, I’m reminded of one of the 32 habits suggested in Natasha Jones’ book Mandemic, reminding yourself every day to be grateful for what you have, to properly pause and tally up. 

Life can be hard, things pile up, challenges seem insurmountable. Many people suffer the Sunday Scaries; worrying about the week ahead before the weekend is even over. 

A friend seeing our posts from an incredible Richard Hawley concert last night makes a beautiful complimentary comment about us that is humbling and sad, especially from someone I hold in such high regard. But we all wear a mask to some extent, projecting the best version of ourselves. 

The last thing I’d ever want to do is flaunt a perfectionist profile that forced a comparison. But here’s the point: more than anything I feel grateful today. For all of it. It doesn’t feel right for me to list what that is, but I’d just love for everyone to take time today to just be grateful, to give thanks, to embrace it, channel it, don’t backdate it. I will if you will.

And at a time when I've never felt as disconnected from faith and truth and God, I'll go to church to use that hour to try and give thanks.

 And thank you, whoever you are, for reading this.

SAS Who Dares Wins

 

My guilty pleasure on TV at the moment is SAS Who Dares Wins on Channel 4. I watch it on catch-up as it clashes with our radio show. 

The added ingredient this year is that we know one of the contestants. Sean Sherwood was a teacher at Harrytown when our lads went there and when I was a Governor. He was absolutely great with them and they all have very happy memories of their time with him. Max and Louis in particular were part of the team that won the Stockport Schools football cup in 2015 that Sean coached. It was, he has said, his greatest achievement in education and something all of the lads recognise was done against all the odds. I remember watching the game in abject disbelief, fully expecting a plucky defeat, but they found a sense of belief and courage that surprised everyone. That proved to me that their coach had a fundamental winning mentality. So to see him on this gruelling stage fills me with admiration and expectation. Obviously it's going to be hard to win, but we're four weeks in out of six and he's right in the mix. So yes, it won't surprise me in the slightest that he'll win.  

The End of the Beginning

We've all crawled towards the finish line of the end of January. It feels like the 51st, never mind the 31st. It's always a bit of a grind, even in normal times, but the routine of my life has always been the happy promise of a family get together and a party for my Dad's birthday at the end of this month. This year it's been a card and a phone call, not steak and chips in the Toll House.  Like so many things, making do and staying safe is no substitute. Last week I tried to make an effort and caught up with a few good friends over the phone and Zoom and whatever else. It's not the same as breaking bread with them, or the free flowing conversation that comes from a walk on the hills, or on an awayday to the match, or just time well spent doing nothing much at all. My stock response to friendly enquiries is that I'm OK. But I worry, constantly, about how everyone is. And I find my self saying it's OK not to be OK, like I know what I'm talking about. Instead I stop and talk to this object in a field, above, that I pass on my morning walk. I don't know what it is, what it does, or why it's there. And then it speaks back to me saying pretty much the same thing of me. We seem to have been in close proximity to heartbreak and real grief recently, the net result being we hold our own ever closer, literally and metaphorically, depending on distance. I'm relieved our parents have had the vaccine, it gives us the hope that this is edging towards something better, that there will be birthday get togethers again, that we will enjoy life as it is meant to be lived. Until then we can only say what I say at the end of our radio show each week - look after each other out there. 

 

If you can be anything, be kind

 

I'm giving over today's blog for a straight up appeal for my wife Rachel's incredible work for people experiencing homelessness and everything that entails. 

TV's John Thomson has voiced the video for the Caritas Advent Appeal, urging people to give at a time when the services are not only stretched, but finding it harder to raise funds while churches are closed and so many people are feeling the pinch.

Homelessness is so much more than sleeping rough or on a park bench.

When we think about homelessness, our thoughts often turn to those poor souls sleeping rough in a shop doorway or on a park bench. Of course, sadly we all know that the problem is so much greater than that.  There are countless people ‘sofa surfing’ – the term given to those relying on friends, family and even casual acquaintances to put them up for a night.  

And then there is the shocking statistic of ‘hidden homelessness’ affecting families, highlighted recently:  

A child is made homeless every 8 minutes in Britain*. A staggering 135,000 children are living in temporary accommodation - bed and breakfasts and hostels - totally unsuitable for family life. *Source: Shelter December 2019 

The short film made for the appeal features Nikki, Quinton and Rochelle telling their unique stories of homelessness.  Thanks to the love and support from Caritas support workers and volunteers, they’ve transformed their lives and are looking forward with hope to a brighter future.

Due to the pandemic, the film will be shared digitally and uses the hashtag #MiracleofKindness, a direct reference to Pope Francis’ most recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti in which he calls for kindness to be recovered because it is a ‘star shining in the darkness.’

*To give £10 Text the words BEKIND to 70460 

Fundraising has been almost impossible this year. But the need for these services is greater than ever.  We hope these personal stories of hope will leave an impression that calls for action and shines a light into the darkness.

Gift Aid allows us to claim 25% on your gift without it costing you a penny extra.  If you are a UK tax payer, please gift aid donations.  

To give £10, text the words BEKIND to 70460.  *Texts cost £10 plus one standard message. You will occasionally hear updates about the impact donations have made to the lives of those we support. Text BEKINDNOINFO to give £10 if you do not wish to hear from us.

We had our second two weeks of self-isolation, and it was OK

We coped. Elliot didn't get poorly, despite his positive COVID test and we never showed symptoms to contradict our negative tests.

The first isolation in September when Louis tested positive was tough, I'm not going to lie. It came as a shock and so we started in a state of unprepared anxiety, with ladled on potential guilt that we may have infected people we had walked with. 

This time we were ready, we knew we would be supported if we needed it, and bizarrely, we had a lot more to distract us - The American election was a bit of a rollercoaster, which we properly strapped in for, and then as soon as we were shut in, so too the rest of the country was following us by going into a new lockdown. So yes there wasn't the 'fear of missing out' we had in September, which might seem a bit selfish, but it's how it affects you.

It's the young I feel bad for. It's easier for us to press pause. They haven't the same sense of perspective, and it's putting off some anxious life events. We have to support them with kindness and sensitivity.

I had a trip into Manchester to look forward to on Thursday this week. The trip to Venus supermarket was spontaneous and I absolutely devoured my takeaway Lahmacun from their grill. Officially we are working from home, where possible. But some things require meeting face to face, safely, and we don't have a printer at home.

And here's another thing, it might only be reaching a few hundred people, but this blog is such a satisfying thing to sit down and do, usually in the evening. Recording a radio programme once a week also gives me the focus of discovering new music and finding a dozen songs or so to play, some of them linked and with a story. Hopefully that's been reflected on what I've written about, but I've got a list of further topics to get through in this month of blogging, and some more books to read. 

We remember them, and we thank them

Amidst the celebrations this weekend we must pause for more than a moment to remember, in the best way we can.

We weren't able to attend our usual service, so we held our own on our doorstep this morning.

I remembered my Mum's father Teddy O'Hare who died in a field in Germany in 1943 just a month after his daughter was born, shot down in a Royal Canadian Air Force Lancaster Bomber he was navigating. 

We remembered the sacrifice and the contribution made by my other Grandad, my Dad's dad, Stan Taylor of the Cameron Highlanders and the Royal Commando Regiment in special operations in Malta, Burma, North Africa and Norway. He returned home to his family in North Wales, and led a successful life as a manager at Woolworths stores around the North West. But until he died in 1982 he always lived with the memories of horrors we will never even be able to contemplate. 

I will remember Frank Sayer, my Great Grandfather, who's letters home from the trenches of France in the First World War I now have and will look after carefully. 

And we will also thank my late Uncle Peter, his son Daniel, my nephew Ben, who all served their country, and my cousin Justin who still does. For all they've done, seen and unseen, be it in Northern Ireland, Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, or in readiness, and the friends they may be mourning today.

And we will think of how proud we are of our son Max, currently on the home front in this pandemic, doing what is asked of him today, just as he did in South Sudan with the UN mission. 

To all who serve, thank you.

'Proper Tea' with OBI featuring David Dunn

This was a bit special - having a lockdown chat with my pal Will Lewis and one of my all time favourite Blackburn Rovers players, David Dunn. Such a nice bloke, and hopefully something for everyone.

Old habits and Blackburn Rovers

We have rules and habits and rituals around our football day out that probably defy logic and sense. We could probably park somewhere more convenient. My commitment to my health and fitness at an intensive gym session on the morning of a home match is directly contradicted by the consumption of a potato and meat pie from Leavers bakery three hours later.

It becomes a pattern, a formation for the day. Something we expect and price in to the whole experience.

Similarly, I think our reactions have become deeply programmed as well: confusion about who is supposed to be playing where as the team emerges and takes shape; frustration with the referee who gives Bradley Dack too few decisions; an intake of breath as Christian Walton receives a back pass; a groan of irritation as a free kick in the opposition’s half is squandered into a series of pointless sideways passes and a fruitless punt upfield. And finally the bafflement at Tony Mowbray’s substitutions.

It was all of that and more yesterday. But if we have our rituals it sometimes seems the players and the manager have theirs; ultimately ending in an interview on BBC Radio Lancashire where Mowbray says he has been left “frustraaaaaaated”.

Me too, Tony.

So it was expected to be yesterday when we conceded a bad goal with 5 minutes left on the clock. The heads go down, the fans go quiet, the away fans finally make some noise (almost as much as a tiny number of them did, disgracefully, during the minute’s silence for the war dead). Mowbray brings on 20 year old John Buckley - who I still think of as a nippy prospect for Signol Athletic in the Stockport Metro League under 14s - and I roar out: “what’s the point of that, Mowbray? Are you trying to destroy his confidence?”

But we never leave early. Despite all of what I’ve come to expect, all that is predictable and confirms our deep internal biases, football is beautiful because of what then followed. Rovers did come from behind to win a game by the same fine margins that could have seen it and many others go the wrong way.

You can attach a bigger meta narrative to everything that went on today, but all that it said to me was that against all my expectations, football is joyous because it can surprise us.

And though we might tweak any or all of the little things we do that contribute to a match day, the one thing we never do is leave early. We stay to the end. But not for the fireworks.

Football and identity

I had my football identity consciousness raising tonight. I sat with my Dad in the exact same place we sat in nearly 50 years ago at Giant Axe, home of Lancaster City, my local team where I grew up, and the first place he took me to for a football match, Lancaster City v Barrow, 1973.

Tonight the Dolly Blues played Blackburn Rovers Under 23s, which was why it was the first time I'd been back on the Axe in a long while. Also with us in the stand was Kevin Bradley, who took me to Ewood Park in 1977 and effectively recruited me to the Rovers cause, and two of my old mates from back in the day Paul Swinnerton and Dave Tinkler, both Blackpool fans and partners on several outriding days out with them in the 1980s. Tinks is now also my brother-in-law.

It's been said that your team finds you, rather than you hunting for the right team. Because my Dad wasn't a native Lancastrian, I didn't inherit a team connection. So all that convergence of circumstances has ended up in that place tonight, watching my club's reserve team against the home town club.

Even though I probably couldn't find my way out of Blackburn without a map, Rovers is unquestionably and defiantly my team. It's more than a colour or a badge, but an identity. For all the foibles, it sort of defines who I am more than anything else. I used to drift between all kinds of teams when I was younger, never quite sticking, never quite belonging. But I felt at home with Rovers, probably because I wanted to be part of that gang, initially, but it outlasted the patience the older lads had for me hanging around with them.

I've probably been to Giant Axe more than any other ground than Ewood Park. I even played on that pitch (or half of it) in the annual Easter Field schools football tournament when we got to the semi-final in 1977. It's in such a gorgeous setting, with the castle and the station overlooking it as you watch from the main stand.

But it's not my team. There's something about non-league football that doesn't quite do it for me. Tinks pointed out that one of the Lancaster players was off the Marsh, the estate right next to Giant Axe. But he was the only local one that he knew of. Town clubs should have a few faces at their core, back in the day it was Vaughan Williams, more recently the much mourned Neil Marshall. I hope they find a few more to walk in their shoes.

Rovers has been the constant in a life of movement and flux. And what a journey, what a time to be alive. So, here ends a month of blogging every day. I'll reflect on how it's gone by the end of the week, then we're on holiday,

(By the way, Rovers won 2-1)

Where were you when we were getting high?

So it came down to a champagne super over. I thought of it - maybe because, you know, once an editor, always an editor. But it was as dramatic an ending as it was able to be. Snatching a hope of victory from the jaws of slow inevitable defeat.

But you can read about the twists and turns and the heroes of the Cricket World Cup elsewhere and in abundance. I can only add something of the emotion of it. In our living room, where we've seen England football teams lose semi-finals, quarter finals and send us to bed in sadness. We watched the 2012 Olympics in our holiday cottage in the Lakes, and how surreal and triumphant all of that now feels.

Louis said in the final over, please, just once, let me see in my lifetime an English team win a major tournament.

Had I been glued to the TV all day, gripped by it? No, we've been gardening and dipping in and out. I can't claim to be that big a cricket fan, but Louis was providing yelps and groans to keep us posted.

I just sort of expected disappointment. It's become part of our psyche. To be voyeurs at someone else's sporting moment of absolute triumph.

In the end though it was essential viewing. I was drawn to the collective moment and fully expected disaster. The heroic, so-close but yet so far, drama. We had to watch it together, bonded in that finale. 

Thank you.

University open days - a non-helicopter Dad's take

Lancaster University ducks

So, I’m on another round of University open days at the moment. In so many ways it’s a fascinating sociological experiment; overhearing the snippets of chats between parents, while their self-conscious and slightly embarrassed offspring are weighing up the merits of the ‘student experience’ through a wholly different lens.

I can’t claim it’s an advantage, but I suppose I know what to expect given I’ve volunteered at an undergraduate open day at work, so I’ve seen it all fall into place from different perspectives. Although my job isn’t normally what you’d describe as ‘student facing’ the experiences were particularly helpful. It reminded you of the purpose of the organisation: to educate young people and give them an experience that raised their ambition. That starts with how they are treated at every stage of the way.

My colleagues in student recruitment at Manchester Met are pretty damn good at what they do. I see up close the hard work they put in to the small details that contribute to the open days being successful. Clearly, in such a competitive marketplace for students, these days have all uniformly shown the universities off in the very best light. You see it in the armies of staff volunteers, student helpers, the guest lecturers, advisers, senior leaders from the institutions, and it starts at the train station.

I always tried to speak to the students directly, rather than just to the parents, even if they were doing a lot of the talking. I figured it’s important to engage them in brief conversations, even in that fleeting moment, about what they wanted and what they thought of the experience. They’re on a journey towards independence  away from the influences of home, the presence of the parents is supportive, yet the dynamic has the potential to be fraught with tension and awkwardness. The only exception I made to my golden rule of ‘students first’ was when I was confronted by a musical hero, with his daughter. After a brief chat about a forthcoming festival, he gave me a look that very visibly reminded me why he was there.

As a large family, we’ve also got two other ‘advantages’. One is we’ve done it before; though I went to loads of open days with Joe, he ended up picking the one that he went to on his own and of his own volition, which rather proves the previous point. We also have the contrast between the parental experience of one of our sons passing into the care of the British Army. They presented a very realistic though very reassuring picture of military life, and the flow of information on his progress has been rather more thorough than any university would provide.

In this phase of visits we’ve also been looking at the University I went to 30 odd years ago, the University of Manchester (or down the road, as we call it) and the one a couple of miles from where I grew up, Lancaster University.

That has managed to lay a few traps for me. I think I avoided being the Dad who pointed out loudly where my old department and hall of residence was, or told slightly painful anecdotes about what he got up to ‘back in the day’. Though I did say ‘wow’ a couple of times at Lancaster because the campus I used to visit from time to time is so much better nowadays. And the ducks are still there.

But I did wince when a parent asked a politics lecturer what the ideological leanings of the department were. Came the reply: “Do you mean are we a bunch of demented Marxist revolutionaries? No.”

My son Matt isn’t being drawn on preferences just yet. It’s a complex changing picture, with many moving parts. He’s taking it all in, and I’m trying not to lead the witness.

Thank you Mum and Dad

Not all these daily blogs have to be long. And it is my birthday today. So I’m just going to very briefly pay tribute to the two people who made it possible, my parents.

I owe you absolutely everything. The most generous, loving, inspirational people I have known.

Every day I go to work I try and put a decent shift in and help other people. Every time I see someone I think I can help out with something, or introduce them to someone who can help, I will. You both showed me the importance of that.

Never once in all my life have you made me feel anything other than loved and supported, though frankly at times undeserving of your patience and pride.

My family near and far are everything to me. Our world. And if I’m not there with you, I’m thinking about you and missing you every day too.

Thank you.

Our family life, what you see and what you get

Birthday team photo 2016

At the centre of this month long experiment to do a blog every day of July is my own resistance to overshare.

When I started The Marple Leaf back in 2006 it was often confessional about parenting issues. I probably have overshared and there was eventually a reckoning for this when one of the kids got the piss taken out of him at school for something I’d written that a class mate’s dad had spotted.

When Twitter became a thing in 2009 I picked up a habit of sharing our weekly Saturday ritual of chaotic kid juggling between football, art class, lunch, shopping trips, going to the cinema, etc. I got loads of lovely feedback about that, much more than I did about pretty much anything else. In a trick borrowed from Twitter friend Jeremy Bramwell, I even numbered them kids 1 to 5. That’s stuck.

And how I pine for the days when we’d all do things together in such joyous family spirit. Take this week for example, kid 1 is in Ireland, I can’t tell you where kid2 is (it’s classified), kid 3 is in Cyprus, kid4 has gone to visit a friend in another city, while kid5 is off to his first concert. Rachel’s been to a Caritas event and I’ve been fulfilling my role as a Centrist (not very good) Dad at a workshop trying to reimagine our broken politics.

Younger and fatter, 2006

You never stop loving them, missing them, or making plans for things to do together. And I never stop worrying either. Given what happened to one of them in 2017, we always do what we can to make sure they get home safely.

On the plus side, the other thing we’re able to do now is afford a trip abroad with a portion of them while the others make their own plans. I think we’re still paying for our all-you-can-eat summer holidays for 7 to Croatia and Malta. But we have a plan this year to get away.

I’ve said before that as much as I enjoy watching Blackburn Rovers, the bond that really ties me to the season ticket and the commitment is that it’s time well spent with kid1 and kid3, or Joe and Louis as I call them. I know I wouldn’t go as much if they both moved further away to study, and maybe one of the reasons they haven’t is that too. 

The best we usually do is a Friday chippy tea, the occasional Sunday dinner, but life gets in the way. Last night three of us went to the cinema in Marple, I jumped at the chance to do so because I wanted to spend time sharing a moment or two. Not because I was desperate to see Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis’ summer feel good flick, Yesterday, but I do desperately crave such simple shared pleasures.

We’re watching them grow wings, they make us proud every single day. But you’ll notice that we don’t share as much of that detail as we used to. If you are reading this, and you cared enough and wanted to know about their wider lives, challenges and conditions, I think you’d probably know by now. Family get updates on those details on Facebook. But what we never do, either on here, or in person, is sugar coat it. Life is tough, keeping on top of it all is relentless, exhausting, but absolutely essential to everything we are and what our values are.

So, what you might occasionally see on here is a bit of the truth. Something selective, a trigger for something else I might want to say, but it’s not the whole story. It never is.

Simplicity, humility, charity, service and unity - thank you Harrytown Catholic High School

We’ve just got home from an emotional evening at Stockport Town Hall. Seeing our youngest lad get two gongs at the Harrytown Catholic High School Awards Evening was just fantastic, especially as one was for music. A couple of years ago he started getting interested in making his own music. We tried lessons, a crap guitar, but it was a proper MIDI keyboard and a download of FL Studio that propelled him to new heights. The sounds that come from our garage are like something else, like Giorgio Moroder has moved in for the night to do some electronic jamming with Kendrick Lamar. He’s had to work hard to catch up with the kids in his music GCSE class who have much better parents than he has, and have been mastering instruments and scales all their lives. So that was just brilliant.

But it was something else as well. Living round here as long as we have, knowing the families, knowing the twists and turns of their lives, the heartbreaks and the challenges, gives you a  glimpse of the importance of those moments for kids enjoying that walk of pride across the stage. Rachel taught some of them and has first hand experience of their journey. And I don’t know why but the kids with names ending in scu and ski get me every time. You know, coming over here, making friends, learning a language, putting up with bullying and the nasty stink of Brexit, coming to OUR COUNTRY, and achieving. I love it when I see them succeed.

Then there’s more still. Running a school in this climate is so hard. I was a governor of Harrytown for a while, and today isn’t the time to dwell on why that wasn’t an entirely happy experience. But I couldn’t be more delighted that the school has this week been awarded GOOD status again by OFSTED, proving that the improvement measures they required last time have been met. The head, the staff, the governors, the kids will have all made an enormous effort to get that kite mark of progress. Yes, it’s really important. Yes, it matters. But something deeper, more uplifting and joyous occurred tonight for so many families and for our community.

I think it deserves a prayer, the school prayer.

Heavenly Father, we gather together as one community in your name.

Give us the courage to live our shared vision that Christ is among us, at the centre of all we do.

Pour down your Spirit on Harrytown Catholic High School.

Renew in us the simplicity to recognise your presence at the heart of each person and the humility to put others first.

Touch our lives with your love so that we can share each day with each other and wide world in charity and service.

Unite us to live in the same spirit that moved Jesus to give his life for others so that ‘all may have life and live it to the full.’

We make this prayer through Jesus Christ, your Son.

Amen.

Manchester rejects hate, and why I'm for Change

Where we are today matters.
It certainly matters to me.
I first arrived around this very part of the city in 1985 as a fresh faced teenage Lancashire lad at the University of Manchester.
I was the first person in my extended family to go to university – but not the first to leave home. Grandads, uncles and cousins have put on a uniform and served their country in the British Army, as nephews, cousins and my own son have done since.
Anyway, I popped out for a pint of milk one Sunday morning from my halls around the corner and I walked into a riot in All Saints.
On one side of Oxford Road were Irish Republicans, egged on by the useful idiots of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and others who should have known better, on the other were the National Front. It was a tense, ugly and nasty encounter. The like of which I hadn’t witnessed before beyond skirmishes at the school gate and on the football terraces.
But it was part of a shaping of my political education. A mob politics that disgusted me. Frightened me.
It was the start of a move from dogma to dialogue, from problem seeking to problem solving.
So I have happy formative memories of here too. I was told I wasn't up to being an academic as my writing style was too journalistic.
I took the hint and fast forward 15 years later in 2001 and I find myself back in this very building as a business journalist to interview the boss of one of the region’s most interesting tech businesses. Being excited by the challenge of change, of new high tech jobs being created.
Because that's another reason why where we are right now also matters for us today.
This building which was built in the year of my birth 1966, forged in the white hot heat of Harold Wilson’s technological revolution – just down the road from where Rolls met Royce and where two scientists isolated graphene and won a Nobel prize for physics. An optimistic time.
Because I mean it when I say this matters today.
We are on the Oxford Road Corridor – funded by the European Regional Development Fund – good work, supporting infrastructure, learning and job creation.
Supporting scientists, like Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, like so many, standing on the shoulders of giants of science like Dalton, Rutherford and Turing. They are European Union citizens, collaborating, in many cases, under the auspices of European science programmes.
That’s the Manchester I fell in love with. The city I have devoted much of my working life to advancing. A Manchester that is welcoming, European, innovative and energetic.
But like I was on that autumn morning in 1985, I’m once again frightened by thuggery and the grim politics of far left the and the far right and frankly the bits where they all blur into one.
The politics of easy answers, cheap shots and hate.
You don't need me to remind you what happens when hate comes to a city like this. Tomorrow we will be remembering where we were two years ago when we heard the news about how they tried to blow apart our wonderful, tolerant, united city.
Manchester proved then it is better than this.
Britain’s better than this.
When Britain voted to leave I was gutted.
But I wanted to commit myself to something to make right what had gone very badly wrong.
My day job is to make the university I work for a civic university. Somewhere that is accessible to people from communities who don’t have the advantages, the social capital and the opportunities.
But I wanted to be part of a political movement too.
Our broken politics just stokes the fires of the division all around us.
Faith against faith, north v south, so called Somewheres versus Anywheres. This mythical mobile elite. That’s not how I see it, not how my family see it.
The only people who benefit from that division or the successors to those street thugs.
I want to stand on a platform to rebuild, reshape and CHANGE our politics. CHANGE the civic conversation.
This matters.
This campaign matters.
I was proud of my friend Ann Coffey when she left Labour.
And I’ve been prouder still of my fellow candidates in this election.
From Carlisle to Chester, from Crosby Beach to Colne. We’ve done our very best and done the team proud.
I’m proud to be a candidate. Proud to be in this team.
Because it matters.

(my speech at the Change UK pre-election rally, May 21, 2019, Manchester Technology Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester).

The call of the mountains

Our rocky place

I'd love to claim that my bond with the hills, dales and mountains of England is in my blood. That I could climb rock faces and that I learnt of daring tales of Himalayan expeditions on my mother's knee. And that Chris Bonnington, Don Whillans and Ian Clough were as familiar names around our lives as George Best, Jimmy Armfield and Bobby Charlton. I'd like to be able to say that I was raised on Kendal Mint Cake, born with a Karrimor rucksack on my back and a pair of stout walking boots to guide those few tentative steps.

All of that is true, by the way. Before she had me at the age of 22 my mum was a climber, hitching to Scotland, proper hardcore, hanging with Whillans and that crowd, dossing down in a tenement in the Gorbals before heading out to Glencoe in the morning. Her dearest friends were Ian and Nikki Clough, absolute legends of the climbing world. We now wear the brand of Patagonia on our packs and coats, that logo with the distinctive peaks of Cordillera Del Paine in bleakest southern Chile. Their expedition conquered the central tower of Paine in 1963. To get there they stowed away on container ships and hitched a ride on a military aircraft. Nikki climbed the Matterhorn, the first woman to do so. Ian died on Annapurna in Nepal in 1970. Like I said, legends.

The very first Freshwalks

I probably managed more outdoor yomps than most kids, but I never tried to climb anything more challenging than a tree.  Weekends were spent scrambling around Littledale and Baines Crag, which we called The Rocky Place (top). I went Youth Hostelling with my primary school, hiking with the Scouts and even went up Borrowdale with the serious walkers in my secondary school.

And yet serious walking and hiking never quite fully formed in me. Music, football and friends took hold. True, for my 21st birthday me and the mother got our boots on and conquered Dow Crag, which is laughable when you think of what she was capable of and could have done. I did a bit of exploring when I lived in Australia and climbed Uluru, which I probably shouldn't have done. But I then went for years without doing something that clearly made me very happy whenever I did it. It always gave me a sense of achievement and helped me refocus. I realise now what I was missing all that time.

Over the last ten years, as a family, we've strapped on our boots and hit the hills. We've bagged the best that the Lake District has to offer, even getting lost attempting Haystacks, Wainwright's favourite, only to discover we were in fact on the top of Grey Knotts. But the kids have had enough of that lark, except for the middle son who has taken it to extremes.

It's the Peaks that now draw me closer. And other undiscovered gems around the North West, like Delamere and the coastal walks. That step into nature, away from everything that my city and suburban life isn't. A retreat from the present and yet a step into my past. Yes, I think I've got back in touch with who I should have been. I like the community of Freshwalks, a responsible adult guiding our route and actually understanding maps. I love that it has done all of this for me. It has pushed us to be better, to go further and not only to explore the outdoors and appreciate the natural beauty of the North of England, but to smell it, touch it and respect the challenge it can give us.