Parents

Parents

Philip Larkin. On parents. At least half right.

I don't know what my dad wanted in a son. We never talked about it. I was what he got. He was my dad. We just loved each other. Sometimes things are actually simple and straightforward. We didn't always agree or see 100% eye to eye, but that never mattered, because there was that sense of proportion, and the ability to see a minor potential sticking point as just that. Not worth the time and trouble.

I know what my mum wanted. A choirboy, a sickly little academic sat at the front of the class, polishing his best clothes from Wednesday morning onwards for Sunday school. She got me instead, and she never, ever, missed a single opportunity to make it abundantly, totally crystal clear just how bitter a disappointment I was to her.

My dad took the to see 2001 A Space Odyssey, and The Exorcist, and Yellow Submarine, and to orchestral concerts. He came into my room with open ears, and while he didn't like everything he heard, he didn't mock it either. He was able to read post-modern literature and poetry, in his second (or third) language. He made pots and carved wood, from imagination.

My mum dragged me to The Sound of Music. What use has a football-mad young boy for singing nuns and lonely goatherds high on hills? Bored isn't the word for it. Swimming. Why didn't I do swimming. Nice and clean. No mud. No contact. No fun, either. Why didn't I go to church or Sunday school? I didn't believe, and it was boring. Not slightly tedious, but that mind-numbing, strength-sapping boredom old ladies specialise in. She would knit (from patterns) and sew dresses (from patterns) and make cakes (from recipes) and specialised in an all-purpose shoeleather tough grey unidentified meat and overcooked vegetables. She never smoked. She drank one pint of beer about a billion years ago for a bet and still talks about that now, and was generally a god-fearing, god-bothering, cold, anal, joyless specemin.

I lost my dad some time ago, and there's not a day I don't think about him, and miss him, and I love him still. I wish he was still around. My mum? Well I wish my dad was still around, is all.

Farenheit 9/11

Fifteen (or so) of the men directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks were Saudi. But the Bush family and the Saudis and the bin Ladens had strong links and connections.

By strong, Sheikh bin Laden, Osama's dad, through James R Bath, provided the cash to set George W up in business.

So, with Tone (son of Margaret) in tow, off they went pursuing an illegal war on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, in the wrong country.

I know Americans are famed for their provinciallity and their dodgy roadmaps when they stray into other continents, but the degree of cynicism was staggering.

Remember the Chilcot inquiry? Probably not unless you're knocking on a bit, so long has it been running. It's still awaiting the release of information our lot are sitting on.