Fourth series, episode 15
All 147 episodes are available here on the HebWeb.
In the latest episode, there's swift justice and rioters routed, the appliance and defiance of science, a fable updated and tales of a plague, a great life remembered and a man in a wig.
Riot Season
In 2011, the Conservative Government asked Keir Starmer, Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, for advice on how to stop a series of riots. The feeling was that longer sentences were the best deterrent. Starmer QC thought that the speed with which rioters were brought to court was more important than the length of sentences. He wrote in The Guardian, "If rioters watch on television people who had been sentenced 24 or 48 hours after they were on the streets with us – that is a powerful message." So it proved.
In 2024, rioters filmed themselves, as they enjoyed a chance to kick off and loot, thus helping police identify the most violent offenders.
"Oh yes, you wore a mask, but your tattoos gave you away!"
Now Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC, prescribed the tactics he used in 2011. People were detained and in the courts within a few days. Judgments have been televised and the average sentence has been just under two years, but the organisers of the riots and those who spread false rumours about the murderer of children in Southport can expect to receive longer sentences.
Just as importantly, more than a hundred rallies failed to take place when counter demonstrators massed in their hundreds to support the police and local communities. Those inciting riots on social media were also arrested. The Daily Mail and Express, papers that have whipped up anti-refugee, anti-immigrant feeling over the last 14 years, have turned against the rioters. Let’s see how long that lasts.
The Paris Olympics
On Facebook I pontificated, "There’s too much mystical thinking about track events. Keeley Hodgkinson was careful to run at an even pace and won gold but Josh Kerr and Matthew Hudson Smith 'died' in the last few metres.
"Runners, you can’t beat the science!"
But reading my comments, old friends reminded me of the Northern AAA Championship race I lost back in 1968. One added a piece of advice to my wise words on even pace running: "And run through the line!"
Ouch! Here’s the gist:
The Hare and the Tortoise
After Aesop
One day, Scouse Hare challenged Tyke Tortoise to a race. Tyke Tortoise accepted the challenge. All would have gone well for Scouse Hare if he hadn’t noticed that the race was being filmed on ITV. So he ran far too fast just to be on the telly and was overtaken by Tyke Tortoise near the finish. To add to his woes, poor Scouse Hare then mistook the finishing line and stopped too early. So Lenny the Lincolnshire Lamb pranced past him and claimed second place.
Imagine Scouse Hare’s shock when he discovered that his race wasn’t even televised! ITV had switched to Show Jumping from Hickstead. That night, he consoled himself that he would win many championships in the future, not knowing that he would actually become a short lived follower of Zen Buddhism, thinking, "Why am I always running round in circles?" and retired from athletics aged 18.
Moral: Slow and steady wins the race - and run through the line you idiot!
The defiance of science!
But Georgia Bell, a promising schoolgirl athlete who had returned to running during lockdown, stuck with the fast pace set by Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon in the Olympic 1500 metres, and ran a second per lap faster than she’d ever run before, smashing the British record for 1500 metres and snatching a bronze medal in the closing strides. She said she’d woken that morning and "just decided to give it a go".
So, sometimes inspiration outwits our imagined limitations.
The importance of being Ernest
I think Sir Ernest Hall, who has died at the age of 94, always believed in himself. In the 80s, we lived a few houses down from the beautiful home of his first wife in Mill Bank, Triangle. Sir Ernest often visited her and she told us he blamed her illnesses on her vegan diet.
Each year, Ernest and his Dartington educated children joined June in an open house celebration for Mill Bank residents, with free drinks served on trays and excellent nosh. He befriended the writer Glyn Hughes, author of Millstone Grit, who had bought a one up one down cottage in the village for £50, in a period when the village’s housing stock had been condemned as unfit for habitation.
When I was an advisory teacher, I remember attending a meeting led by Sir Ernest and Vivienne Duffield on the development of Eureka! A national museum for children built near Halifax Station.
Campbell Malone, the famed Todmorden solicitor, is also an artist who has exhibited at Dean Clough Gallery for many years. He kindly forwarded details about Sir Ernest’s life. Ernest Hall was born in 1930. His parents were both millworkers. He was a child prodigy and attended the Royal Manchester School of music from 1947 to 1951, and whilst there he performed Chopin’s 12 studies opus 10 and met June.
He bought Dean Clough with Jonathan Silver and his son Jeremy. "They gave the place a new lease of life as a space blending art and business." Despite all his business interests, Sir Ernest never gave up his love of music. He recorded the entire works of Bartok at 65, Chopin at 70, and Busoni at 73.
Heather Wilson was a waitress who served Sir Ernest and his then partner Prue Leith at the Michelin starred Mill Bank Restaurant. She did artwork for his grandchildren, commenting, he was ‘a lovely gentleman.’ I remember reading a magazine article in which Leith revealed that Sir Ernest was bi-polar.
He commented that he’d known Pru for 20 years as a business partner, but she was far too busy to cook when he visited her, she just warmed up packaged food from the fridge. He only watched one of her Bake Off programmes commenting, "It wasn’t my type of thing." A few years later, The Daily Mail commented on Sir Ernest’s move to Lanzarote, where he had an opera house built on his land and was in a relationship with a woman forty five years his junior.
Sir Ernest’s children have written eloquently on the virtues of their father, and when I posted news of his death, local people sent their memories of him. Sydney Roper remembers him giving his time freely "in coming to play Pennine Spring in Heptonstall." Mike Shillabeer wrote, "My landlord at Dean Clough for many years … a visionary, entrepreneur and concert pianist. RIP."
Barrie Rutter, founder of Northern Broadside, has said, "Farewell friend: inspirer, performer, advocate, and champion of all that is good for the human spirit."
Thinking back to when we lived in Mill Bank, many people from the village attended June Hall’s funeral at Ripponden church, where Sir Ernest’s eulogy was striking and unusual. He told the mourners that when he fell in love with June they were both inspired by DH Lawrence’s writings about sex. After which, a brilliant violinist played thrillingly. I guess that his own funeral or memorial service will be just as memorable and inspiring.
I’ve been reading
Wifedom, Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Wife by Anna Funder (Hamish Hamilton, 2024). Read it and you may lose a hero but gain a heroine. More likely, discovering the hidden life of his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy, you may realise how she helped him to remain a hero, despite his misogyny, his affairs and his lack of attention to her needs.
We’ve been watching
Set in the plague years, The Decameron, a mini-series on Netflix, is a weird and wonderful hoot - despite its dark subject matter - with a great cast, fabulous Italian scenery and bawdiness and class commentary inspired by the unblushing tales of Boccaccio.
Why the sirens stopped singing: fishing for nymphs
Thinking about storytelling, here’s a reminder to take care near to local rivers, reservoirs and beauty spots this summer.
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