The Happy Red Train

It's hard to explain to a crying child,
Why her Daddy can't go back,
So the family suffer,
But it hurts me more,
To hear a scab say, 'Sod you, Jack!'

Billy Bragg


When I started this blog site back in 2006, I always intended it should be a photographic diary of my life. And that, on occasions at least, the images would dominate, the words coming in second.

In practice, it has been a score draw, with words and pictures achieving roughly equal prominence.

Indeed, I have often ended up fitting the images around the words or vice versa.

Today, though, the photographs are going to dominate.

Laura and I joined tens of thousands of workers on the TUC's Britain Needs a Pay Rise March through central London last Saturday (18 October 2014).

We were marching for a fair deal from a Coalition Government that has utterly failed working people.

The Brighton, Hove & District Trades Council, on whose executive I have been proud to serve for several years now, had chartered a train from Brighton to London (and back) for the day.

A trades council-chartered train is a real treat.

I love seeing anti-Government placards being manufactured in the First Class Compartment, and photographing eight carriages full of joyful comrades.

It was the happiest train I have ever been on.

It was a longer than the usual journey time because of usual weekend works on the line.

We took the two-hour scenic coastal route via Worthing, after gathering at Brighton Station in an excited left-wing throng.

My National Union of Journalists (NUJ) delegation from Brighton brought its own banner.

Our numbers were comparatively small but our spirits were high.

The atmosphere on the Red Train was fantastic - so totally different from that of years of commuting to London on the same rolling stock.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable journey. Big grins, much laughter.

In London, we walked from Victoria to Embankment, had some German fare for lunch and joined the march at a point strategically placed between the nurses and the midwives.

I was applauded by a group of young women for wearing my 'No More Page Three' T-shirt.

Just behind us, out of nowhere, appeared a very vocal youth group.

Their leader skilfully chanted slogans into a megaphone with the supporters responding with the punchline.

We were standing so close that, eventually, he suggested I have a go and I found myself yelling into the loudspeaker: "NO TO ZERO HOURS CONTRACTS." The youths shouted back: "YOUTH ARE NOT SLAVES!"

I shouted into the megaphone: "LOW PAY, NO WAY!" The youths responded: "YOUTH DESERVE A JOB!" My favourite was: "TUC, GET OFF YOUR KNEES" with the youths hollering in reply: "CALL A GENERAL STRIKE!"

Laura and I felt well qualified for the demonstration having, between us currently, one low-wage and one no-wage.

There was tremendous camaraderie on the march.

It was an utterly good natured, peaceful event. The Mirror reported Scotland Yard as saying that not one protester had been arrested.

After marching from Embankment to my old stomping ground at Hyde Park, via Westminster, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Green Park and Hyde Park Corner, with just three of us carrying the banner, I felt cream-crackered and a bit cold.

We listened to a sterling speech by TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady and a brilliant one from disabled trade union activist Sean McGovern who ripped into the anti-disability policies of the ConDem Government. Glorious!

There were more speakers to come but the band came on and it started to rain. We headed for the Nag's Head, a favourite haunt of mine owned by a former boxing champ.

Beer and food and back on the Happy Red Train to Brighton, picking up a few hitchhikers.

I hope you will enjoy my images of this historic day as much as I enjoyed taking them:

Sleepy Time

It seems hard for me to write at the moment. 


The stress of my life, particularly my redundancy situation, has been getting to me.

When my present troubles began in February, I found it hard to sleep.

Now I find it hard to stay awake!

A combination of the medicinal drugs I am on and sheer, relentless stress means I drop off at the drop of a hat.

Sometimes I go to Starbucks at lunchtimes and just fall asleep for an hour.

If I am sick or on leave, I need only lie down for 10 minutes to find myself waking up several hours later.

It is weird. Like my mind wants to clock out.

   
I am trying to take a philosophical approach to impending unemployment.

But it is not easy.

I went to the National Union of Journalists' biennial conference, in Eastbourne, a few weeks ago.

It is some 30 years that I last attended an NUJ delegates' meeting - and it was a good experience.

I stayed at the Queens Hotel for two nights and met some really dedicated trade unionists. The industrial carnage going on in journalism is shocking.

The meeting itself was much as I remembered it from my last visit in the 1980s, when the Wapping dispute was in full swing.

I made the mistake of volunteering to be a scuntineer, a role that I am happy to admit is not my forte.

On one day, I was just going off for my lunch on the seafront when I was summoned to spend four-and-a-half hours counting - and recounting - ballot papers from the union's numerous and complex elections. Never again!

Still, someone had to do it.
Overall, the Brighton and Mid-Sussex delegates worked very well together.

It was also a good-natured affair with a jolly final night gala dinner.

Walking back to the hotel I was fascinated by the sight of a nocturnal dredger bombarding the beach with pebbles.

The mornings were also amazing.

The quality of the light can be exceptional.

What else?

I am trying to be positive although, God knows it is hard.

An hour listening to the strange people in LaPorte Cafe, Lewes, the other Saturday was almost unbearable.

My children stood me up. Again.

Miserably, I bought some pate and went to my therapist in Brighton who with his hands magically sends electricity through me. Odd but effective.

I returned to Lewes for the Mighty Rooks' final home game of the season. I had a hunch it was going to be a cracker and, for once, I was right.

After 40 minutes, Lewes FC was 4 - nil up against its opponents Leiston - a side, indeed a place, of which I had never previously heard.

By the final whistle, the scoreline was an excellent 5 - 1 to the heroes of the Dripping Pan.


It is good to have a reason to celebrate.

In a moment of elation I even bought a Lewes scarf. A classic red and white one without lettering.

Otherwise, my main entertainment has been my allotment at Earwig Corner.

The other allotment holders have become friends.

It is amazing how things have improved up there on the hill in recent times.

I have painted the shed - twice - and cleared it out. It is starting to look really good.

So far on my little plot, I have put in potatoes and garlic.

This year I am planting in a triangle. I intend to put in flowers around the outside.

Not having a garden at home, I want it to fulfil that function as well as providing vegetables.

Lewes Poetry trundles on.

My old chum Mac McFadden headlined in April and was good.


A Liverpudlian comedy and performance poet, he certainly has the gift of the gab.

I am also enjoying the compering, made much better by my moderate drinking regime.


That's about it.

I will leave you with a funny dog I met on the beach.

The owner said he swims in the sea every day and is unstoppable.








And there has been the occasional really lovely evening.

Summer is on its way and, like it or not, I will have a lot of time on my hands.

Crippled Bicycles Of Brighton and Hove

As a keen cyclist, I guard my bicycle jealously and am grateful that I have a little space in the lobby to keep it safe and protected from the wind and the rain.

Sadly, many cyclists are not as fortunate as I and have to leave their trusty steeds chained to cycle racks, railings or lamp posts where they rust and decay amazingly rapidly in the pernicious sea air or, worse still, fall prey to bicycle thieves.

In my view, bike thieves are among the lowest of the low.

They mindlessly steal from a group of people who you would hardly classify as jet setters or the super-rich.

Many cyclists are like me: non-owners of motor cars and reliant on a secondhand bicycle to get around Brighton and Hove or to get to the station in the mornings.

Yet all over the city you see evidence of the thieves’ malfeasance: cut locks or broken chains where bicycles have been or, more commonly, bicycle parts that have been left behind.

This latter situation is particularly common and puzzles me.

I asked my friend Malcolm at the excellent secondhand bike, G-Whizz Cycles, one of my neighbours in Hove.

He explained that modern bike thieves go about their business like apple scrumpers, regarding racks of bicycles as orchards from which they can "scrump" the parts to complete bikes to sell.

Having taken half or a bit of a bike, they feel assured that the owner will leave the rest there, to be stolen at a later date, if required.

What an utterly cynical approach!

The situation is not helped, I suspect, by the habit of some cyclists simply to forget or abandon their bicycles for weeks or months on end.

I was chatting to one young chap who freely admitted that he abandoned three good bicycles in the past few years because he had moved cities or forgotten where he had left them.

This is possibly also indicative of a strange phenonomen: a carelessness with possessions coupled with a binge drinking culture.

Deliberately jettisoning a perfectly good bicycle strikes me as a selfish act.

If left on a public cycle rack, such as the one at the front of Brighton Station that is irritatingly always full, it is highly inconsiderate to active cyclists.

But, regardless of where it is abandoned, it could be given to someone who currently does not have a bike or sold to and renovated by a bike shop such as G-Whizz for recycling (excuse the pun) to a new user.

I bought a mountain bike in 2003 which deteriorated to a great degree in the back garden of my former home.

But I traded it in at G-Whizz where they changed the bearings and brakes and various other part and sold for a small sum it to a new user. 

So my rusty old wreck received a new lease of life. Marvellous!

This blog posting is illustrated by images of abandoned or part-stolen bicycles of Brighton and Hove with one from London for good measure.

I had suspected that Oxford had a similar problem but, on closer inspection, found this did not seem the case. 

If any bikes have been abandoned on the streets of Oxford, they have been removed, at least when I looked.

          The New Year has got off to a quiet start: nights in, very moderate drinking, not much to report.

However, I did attend a farming conference in Oxford in the first week of January, and as part of it visited the Oxford Union for the first time.

The conference staged a Union debate on renewable energy which proved very entertaining. 

The Greens won, although largely because of a very funny and creative speech made by an Essex farmer.

Back in Hove, my National Union of Journalists branch put on a packed meeting in support of the No More Page Three Campaign.

I helped out on the door and our speaker was Caroline Lucas, Britain’s only Green MP, who spoke very well. I photographed her (above) with a young woman from the No More Page Three Campaign. A charming pair.