Dying for charity

The website set up by Claire Squires, the thirty year old from Leicestershire who died last week running the London marathon for the Samaritans, has now raised more than a million pounds.

I'm not sure how much, if any, support the Samaritans get from Government but as the economy goes into recession again, wages are frozen and unemployment tops two and a half million, it clearly needs more. As with other charities, the number of people committing suicide should not depend on how many volunteers are dedicated enough to run a marathon or shake a bucket in the street.

And maybe I'm being cynical, but I can't help thinking that the death of a young, attractive woman has raised money in a way that that of a middle-aged balding guy with a paunch would not have done.

Morrissey, Manchester and miserabilism

I've just booked tickets for Morrissey's gig in Manchester at the end of July.

Since I became a fan of The Smiths as a teenager in the mid-80's, I've become used to the charge that their music - and subsequently that of Morrissey - is miserable and depressing (good practice for a few years later when I got into blues).

I've always thought preconceptions about The Smiths and Morrissey's music are a product of London-based journalists misunderstanding them, sometimes deliberately.  Beyond song titles like Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, Still Ill, Girlfriend in a Coma and Cemetry Gates [sic] and lyrics such as "The rain falls hard on a humdrum town" lies a combination of wry, working-class Mancunian-Irish humour and the joyousness exemplified by Johnny Marr's jangly guitar lines.

If you don't believe me, just listen to this performance of Every Day is like Sunday at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in 2004 (I'm in that crowd somewhere). "This is the coastal town that they forgot to close down" always reminds me of Morecambe.

Paul Simon, South Africa and cultural boycotts

The Sundance Festival in London is showing the film Under African Skies tonight to mark the
twenty-fifth anniversary of Paul Simon's album Graceland.

Graceland sparked opposition from the anti-apartheid movement when it was released because it included black South African musicians and was recorded in South Africa, thus breaking the cultural boycott against the racist regime. When Simon and some of the black South African musicians on the album played London's Albert Hall in 1987 to promote it, artists including Paul Weller and Billy Bragg were outside to picket the show.

Apparently Simon spoke to the singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte before travelling to South Africa to record the album. Belafonte shared Simon's enthusiasm that the world hear the music of black South Africa but advised him to seek clearance from the exiled leadership of the African National Congress before he went.

I don't think anyone would put Simon in the same category as acts like Elton John, Rod Stewart and Queen who played lucrative gigs at South Africa's Sun City entertainment complex in the 1980's but was he still wrong to record the album in the country?

It seems that Simon would still have fallen foul of the boycott and the ANC if he had recorded the album with black South African musicians outside South Africa. A couple of questions flow from this. Why should black South African musicians have been stopped from working with artists from other countries? And what gave the ANC the right to decide whether they could or not?

I supported the boycott against South Africa in the 1980's but never thought that it alone would bring down the apartheid regime. It was really a symbolic means of supporting the liberation movement - much wider than the ANC, and including the massive and at the time militant black South African labour movement - which would bring down a racist regime which was also seeking an end to its international movement. The boycott was also primarily aimed at - and should have been restricted to - the white only South African sports teams, orchestras etc. and places like Sun City which excluded black customers rather than those seeking to build links with black South Africans other than those approved by the ANC.

The misguided or malign attempt to equate Israel with apartheid South Africa has led recently to calls to stop the Israeli theatre group Habima performing at The Globe as part of celebrations to mark the four hundred and forty-eight annioversary of Shakespeare's birth. Those who advocate a boycott of Israel include well-meaning people who genuinely think it would help bring about a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and an independent Palestinian state as well as anti-Semites who want to drive the Jews into the sea and wipe Israel off the map. But none of them I think would oppose a British musician recording with Palestinian musicians in Israel or touring with them here.

Mild in May?

As April showers hopefully turn into May flowers, the Campaign for Real Ale is preparing to launch its annual Mild Month to promote what is still even in the ongoing revival of cask beer England's most overlooked, untrendy and maligned beer style.

I'm still not sure why CAMRA chooses May as the month to celebrate mild ale. In the first half of the twentieth century when mild was the most popular draught beer in the pub it was obviously drunk all the year round, as indeed it still is in parts of the North West and Midlands. Mild doesn't particularly strike me as a Spring beer. Does anyone in CAMRA remember why this time of year was chosen?

Mild life

An item on the local news caught my eye this morning.

Ninety-four year old Fred Dell from Fleetwood has been popping into the Strawberry Gardens pub for a "swift half of mild" since he was 18 in 1936. The landlord has now said he can drink there for free.

Dell's comment that when he started drinking there "You could get half a mild, five Woodbines and a box of matches and a penny change for half a sixpence." reminded me of what an old man in a pub says to Winston Smith in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "When I was a young man, mild beer - wallop, we used to call it - was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course."

Free beer for the rest of your life when you're 94 is a small reward for seventy-six years drinking. The pub itself has seen some changes in that time if these reviews are to be believed, seemingly for the better. And contrary to what successive health ministers and Chancellors have told us, Dell's longevity proves that BEER IS GOOD FOR YOU.

Top of the pints

I'm reading The World Guide to Beer by Michael Jackson at the moment, having picked up a cheap copy secondhand on Amazon.

I've had his Great Beer Guide for years and remember watching his Beer Hunter TV series in the late 80's. The World Guide to Beer is clearly a precursor of that series and like it covers beer styles from across the world. The book starts with graphs of the world's top beer brewing and drinking countries. That obviously doesn't tell you anything about how good the beer in those countries is. Off the top of my head, I can only think of six countries - Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, Germany and the Netherlands - where you're never far from decent beer.

Ale on TV

It's finally happened. A television series has looked at the history of English beer and brewing without - as far as I can see - rehashing the usual myths, misunderstandings and mistakes.

Giles Coren in Our Food this week was in the hop gardens of Kent and also went round the Shepherd Neame Brewery in Faversham. I thought it was pretty accurate and informative but feel free to point out any errors I've missed.