The Erdington Chapter

'Brothir, seyede sir Launcelot, wyte you well I am full loth to departe out of thys reyllme, but that the Quene hath defended me so hyghly that mesemmeth she wyll nevir be my gode ladye as she hath beene.' - Malory, Morte d'Arthur

'Have you had her round your gaff yet? No? Well, don't.'

Selwyn's bedsit was a notorious eyesore and health hazard, even by the undemanding standards of the after-hours crew from the Swan. But located equidistant as it was between the New Inns and the High Street  it made a convenient stop-off point for a pick me up between venues, and we'd all been there at some time. It did seem a trifle churlish for Tony to be publicly denigrating Selwyn's shortcomings as a house keeper, but Tone was in Tough Love mode and Selwyn had a new bird.

'Cast your mind forward eighteen months.' Tone continued as Selwyn shuffled his feet under the table and looked imploringly at his empty pint pot. 'You and her have signed the lease on a new house; Pickford's have just unloaded all her furniture, ornaments and belongings and you've upended your two binbags full of crap and plugged your Xbox in, and now she's off for another two months to the Afghan.'

Selwyn's new bird was a nurse, and not just a nurse: a senior staff nurse. And not just a senior staff nurse, she was also a  volunteer for an international medical charity that despatched nurses to hotspots around the globe. Iran, Rwanda, Liberia and Afghanistan had all benefitted from the ministrations of this angel, and we could only assume that in Selwyn she saw a humanitarian disaster of similar proportions.

'So tell me, Sel, how do you intend to greet her on her return from Afghanistan's searing plains? A kebab and a two month pile of dirty laundry? "You just enjoy your dinner, love. You can start on all that later."' Tone jerked his thumb over his shoulder at an imaginary tottering pile of unwashed crocks and soiled underwear. He paused. 'Answer to a maiden's prayer, isn't it?'

Since Sel's old mum had died, Sel had lived a dismal existance of shared houses, takeaways and trips to the last surviving launderette. This new bird offered, perhaps, a reprieve from infinite squalor in a little room and an alternative to a lonely dusty death.

'You gotta learn to clean, boy. Learn to cook.' Tone's own domestic habits were fastidious, his housekeeping precise and prompt. Orderly batchelorhood was his thing and his kitchen gleamed but nobody had ever seen him eat so much as a pub bap, much less whip up a three-course on the Aga a la Jamie Oliver. Emboldened by a night's recreational insomnia, I interjected.

'I'm talking about him, mate, not me.' Tone's eyes whipped round to mine. 'He's the one wants to shack up with a bird. He's the one living up to his arse in his own shite. He's the one needs someone took look after him in his twilight years. Not me, mate.'

We hadn't met her yet, although John Paul claimed to have once seen the happy couple crossing the road by the Yenton, and Sel had only told us the previous evening that they were thinking of moving in. We had been on the lash since yesterday but the subject had resurfaced more than once during the long night's journey into morning opening hours, and here we were back at our starting point.

I thought about getting another round in. Selwyn was humbly listening to Tone, whose jaws were starting to clench when not actively being used for speech; which latter state which was pertaining less and less as the morning wore on. Dave the Paperboy was still with us, but happily withdrawn and giggling to himself. I patted the hip pocket of my 501s to make sure the slim paper wrap was still in place, and headed towards the karzi. The new day beckoned bright with promise.

Biased Public Library Catalogue Entry Shock Horror!!!!

From Warwickshire's on-line library catalogue, the bit of blurb regarding the book 'Spanish Holocaust' :-

"Paul Preston sheds crucial light on Spain's darkest period, when Franco and his supporters reconstructed an entire society through violence."

Not a bad entry; pithy, grammatically correct, a couple of reference points so you know it's about Spain and Franco. All fine and dandy. Except not.

During the Spanish Civil war atrocities were commited by both sides, Fascist and Socialist. I haven't read the book yet but I'd be willing to bet that at least so long as the Socialists were still in the running, they were as equally enthusiastic pracitioners as Franco's mob. Franco won in the end, so he had a longer window of opportunity to up his total; but that would only be half the story.

I know this, cos I spent 5 mins in Smith's having a look at the book and it says quite clearly on the back that Preston examines at the atrocities carried the Republican side as well as of the Fascists. You don't have to read the whole book to find that out. It's on the back. In quite big writing.

So, the catalogue entry is wrong. It does not accurately represent the content of the book. It is wrong, yet not incorrect. If the catalogue entry read along the lines of  ".....Spain's darkest period, when Louis XIV bestrode the land, pelting random people with marrows", that would be incorrect. This entry is not incorrect, but it only tells part of the truth. It is biased.

I'm not detecting the Hand of Moscow behind this, or a cabal of shadowy Marxist assistant librarians, but I do object to the assumption that Socialists are always the good guys in history.They're not. Che Guevara for example, a big icon for the Left. Long hair, beard, beret. Looks like somebody you might have shared a spliff with on campus when you were doing your Sociology degree back the '70's. Nice guy, laid-back.

 In real life, Che Guevara was a rabid homophobe. Shot a few himself, did Che. Point blank range, up close and personal, blammo: "Buenas noches, el Signor Battyboy!" That sort of behaviour wouldn't win him many friends at the Young Labour LGTB Annual Conference and Gala Ball. I also wonder what Cuba's record on gay rights is? That might be worth 5 mins on Google.

Lenin, there's another one. Plenty of Lefties describe themselves as 'Leninist' or 'Marxist-Leninist'. They do love giving themselves these kind of labels. Makes them feel cool and groovy, I suppose. As if anyone but them gave a toss. One New Labour apparachik's twitter name is "EllieTheBevanite". Nothing wrong with old Anuerin of course, the miner's friend and pillar of the NHS. But Lenin? Directly reponsible for millions of deaths through political pogroms, deliberately induced famines, etc etc etc. A monster, by any calculation. To tout his brand of political thought like a footballer with the name of a photocopying firm on his jersey front is surely to condone the human cost. And to sanction the airbrushing out of history of the human cost of the advance of Socialism is to start buggering around with the truth. The Left is not all that keen on the plain unvarnished, when it doesn't take their fancy. They are prone to bias. Juuuust a little bit. A smidgeon. Un peu.

Another example that irked me at the time was a verse by 'punk poet' and Red Wedge stalwart Attila the Stockbroker: "There's a hero of the Revolution, and his name is Enver Hoxa, he's a bit of a dictator but he's not a bad old codger." Fair play for knowing that 'Hoxa' is pronounced 'Hodja', and also for ryhming it with 'codger'. We all had a bit of a giggle over that. I don't know,but I'll bet Hoxa's Albania was not a very nice place to live. And I doubt that Attila the Stockbroker ever made any serious move to go and live there. Hypocrite.

So, it doesn't surprise me one whit that the catalogue entry for Preston's book in Worrick Library's catalogue does not read "......Spain's darkest period, when Anarchists, Marxists and Socialists ran amok raping nuns, chopping priests' heads off and shooting anyone they thought was uncool." But stap me vitals if I'm not going write a nicely measured and understated email to the County Librarian requesting that the entry more accurately reflect the contents of the book. Can't hurt, can it?