Sorry about this, but it’s Brexit again. This post could have been about the failures of Universal Credit. It could have been about the decline of Britain’s high streets, with specific reference to the plans of Warwick District Council for the destruction of Leamington Spa. It could have been about the proposed redundancies at Jaguar LandRover, a move which is going to have a major impact on our town as well as the country. It could have been about Andrew Neil’s extraordinary attack on Owen Jones or the last two columns by Nick Cohen – the one in The Observer demonstrating a disturbing familiarity with spanking literature, and the second, in The Spectator, the magazine for which Andrew Neil bears no responsibility, concluding that Corbyn and Trump are identical. Or it could have been about my plans to set up a shipping company and bid for a government contract. I reckon I could do it for less than £13.8 million, especially if I don’t buy any ships.
 
All these subjects have exercised me during the last couple of weeks. But they all come down to Brexit in the end, right? And with a mere two days of debate in the Commons remaining before the ‘meaningful’ vote on Tuesday, the media is full of it – and, to add an unvoiced fricative, full of shit too.
 
So here’s my two penn’orth.

​I am a Remainer and a Labour voter. As such, I am against even a soft Brexit. ‘Remain and reform’ was and remains my preferred policy. While I respect the result of the referendum, which does not mean that I either agree with it or believe it should be implemented, I do not respect the referendum itself, which was a crass proposal in the first instance and won with a combination of lies, illegal funding and dubious digital media.
 
What did impress me during the referendum was the Leave slogan. “Take Back Control” was and is a good line, and watching Cumberbatch in The Uncivil War the other night, one was surprised at the length of time it took for Dominic Cummings to arrive at it. It’s a nonsense of course, but it means all things to all men and thus appealed, if not to all men and women, at least to 52% of them. It appealed to nostalgic Little Englander Tories in Surrey and austerity-hit working class voters in the north, who had been told by successive governments – from Thatcher onwards – that the EU was the problem.
 
The irony of course is that parliament is now taking back control over the executive, and this is, in no small measure, the result of a precedent-breaking decision by Speaker Bercow.
 
He’s growing on me, is John Bercow. Preening popinjay perhaps, but he is showing himself to be a man who respects parliamentary democracy both in principle and in practice. In the face of the growing power of government, there is not a huge amount he can do, but what he can, he does.
 
One of the revelations of the recent shenanigans in the Commons has been the fact that many parliamentary votes are meaningless, having no force in law. They are, at best, “advisory”, nothing more than a demonstration of feeling.
 
Which is of course exactly what the referendum was. True, promises were made during the course of the campaign. But primarily by those who promptly resigned from positions which might give them any power over such a decision. Where are you now, Dave? 
 
So what will happen on Tuesday and on the 29th of March?

My prediction is that we will find ourselves in, to coin a meme, an existential crisis.

The phrase is widely used, and almost always misused. But it means one thing:

We're fucked.

Today from the everysmith vaults: In these strange times, it's time to dig deep into the depths of the vaults. Today's esoterica is the Captain's Bat Chain Puller.
 

Christmas itself was pretty much Brexit-free. The children and especially the machatunim and I have an unspoken agreement that we do not discuss politics - even having drink taken. So Christmas dinner passed happily in a mist of fine claret and praise for our shared grandchildren, the contributions each of us had made to the festivities and the shocking grammar of the questions in Trivial Pursuits. It was all going so well.
 
Until Boxing Day.
 
Early in the afternoon, at a drinks party in the depths of south London, I was introduced to a Frenchman, resident in this country and married to an English woman. The initial small talk exhausted, we moved - inexorably you may think – to the situation in which an EU citizen finds himself, living and working in a country which is veering vers une catastrophe.
 
I ventured a mildly critical remark about Government policy and the shambles that is the Tory party. Common ground, surely.
 
“Non! It is that anti-semitic moron Corbyn who is to blame. He is a moron. A moron!”
 
I was taken aback by his vehemence and temporarily speechless. I remembered the promises I had made – to Jill and myself – about discussing politics with total strangers and resolved to remain calm, reasoned, civilized; to eschew ad hominem attacks; to demonstrate those qualities which I find attractive in Corbyn himself; to set an example to this angry young Frenchman.
 
I took a large gulp of the cru bourgeois Médoc which our host had provided for us, and inhaled deeply on my vaper. I was ready to respond and, I hoped, to maintain a form of entente cordiale.
 
“Au contraire” I said. “Monsieur Corbyn est un homme intelligent qui a horreur des attaques personnelles, préférant se concentrer sur les politiques. Certainement pas un crétin. Et certainement pas le politicien responsable du fiasco actuel."
 
"Phouf. Il est raciste, il est trotskiste, il est stupide."
 
What can one say? My Gallic shrug was not sufficient response, but it was all I had short of physical violence. So I shrugged as best I could and seized my empty glass.
 
"Vous avez tort" I told him, "mais maintenant j'ai un besoin urgent d'un autre verre." I walked towards the bar with as much dignity as I could muster, shaking my head with what I hoped he would interpret as more sorrow than anger.
 
In retrospect, I am sorry. Sorry that I was not minded to argue for longer with him, sorry that his view of Corbyn was moulded exclusively by the right wing press, sorry that someone who should be a natural ally was so clearly opposed to us.

Sorry too for the sorry state this country has come to.
 
He was still holding forth about Corbyn as we left to drive back to our pro-Remain, pro-Corbyn bubble in Leamington. I tapped him on the shoulder.
 
"Bonne année" I said. 

Today from the everysmith vaults: The Bob gurus have been telling me each Christmas that Christmas in the Heart is a fine album. I am not convinced, but it plays once a year in this household. And the time is now.

I’ve discovered a new podcast (and I commend it to you). It’s called American Scandal, and the opening episodes of Series 2 concerning long-term maladministration in Albany NY will resonate with anyone familiar with the shenanigans of the Tory cabal running the Warwick District Council here in England.
 
Albany NY has been called “the most dysfunctional state capital in the US”, and no-one argued. Governor Thomas Dewey initiated the process of Governor, Speaker and Majority Leader making all major decisions behind locked doors back in the 1940s, and it remained the convention until recently.
 
It would appear that, in Albany, key legislative decisions have been made by these “three men in a room” and their successors for three quarters of a century.
 
No consultation.

No transparency.

No accountability.
 
In Leamington, of course, it’s all very different. Our “three men in a room” are Councillors Mobbs, Rhead and Whiting and, like Brutus, they are all honourable men.

They are all Tories. They are all members of the WDC 'Executive'. They all serve on the Limited Liability Partnership set up by the Council with Cabot Square Capital.
 
And none of them live in Leamington or represent Leamington wards.
 
So that’s alright then.
 
I make no apologies for returning to this topic. Not least because the latest news is that, as part of a “Creative Quarter Draft Masterplan”, we have learned that Leamington’s Town Hall, opened in 1884, is mooted to become the location of a new restaurant and a private members club. (You’re right, it does sound a bit iffy.)
 
As you may infer, the “three men in a room” have been particularly creative this time, eschewing the boringly obvious solution of moving WDC offices to the under-utilised Town Hall in favour of constructing new headquarters and transforming an existing (and rather splendid Victorian) headquarters building into a restaurant and private club.
 
I mean, Leamington is crying out for more of these. I bet they could get hundreds on the streets, demonstrating in favour of this dynamic development.
 
But of course, our three men in a room seldom pay attention to the views of Leamington residents however they are expressed.
 
We’ve written letters and emails. We’ve called public meetings. We’ve signed petitions. We’ve rallied and we’ve marched.
 
It makes no difference. They do what they want. And in my humble opinion, it’s a (very English) scandal.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Speaking of the unspeakable, I’ve been listening to Bill Frisell a great deal recently and, serendipitously, arrived at Unspeakable, his 2004 album, as I typed this. By turns raucous and melodic, it’s a joy throughout. His jazz sensibility and love of Americana gel beautifully.

In a House of Lies is Ian Rankin’s 22nd Rebus. He (Rebus) is retired now, has quit smoking and barely drinks. But this is a ‘cold case’, with which Rebus was involved years back, an excuse he uses to infiltrate himself into the investigation. In so doing, he is back with the usual cast of characters: Big Ger Cafferty from the dark side and, representing the forces of ‘good’, DIs Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox. But of course, this being Rankin and Rebus, the distinction between good and evil are rather more nuanced than this simple characterization. Everyone has something to hide, even – especially – Rebus himself. As the story unfolds, we learn what they are hiding and how well it is hidden, with each loose end neatly tied up in knots (and crosses). Masterly.

​Another cold case. Michael Connelly’s Dark Sacred Night brings together Harry Bosch with the more recently created Detective Renée Ballard to look into the brutal murder of 15 year old Daisy Clayton. As a mystery, it’s not really satisfactory: the attention paid early on to character one would expect to be peripheral gives it away. But as a procedural and a study of two characters interlocking and intertwining, it’s excellent. And, at the end, surprise surprise, the two – having both solved cases on the side – agree that they might well work together again. If they do, I’ll be there.

And yet another cold case, the 23rd Reacher novel from Lee Child. In Past Tense, the case in question is the absence of records of the Reacher dynasty in Laconia NH, contrary to family lore. But the paper trail opens up nefarious activities in both past and present. With his own version of Renée Ballard to assist, Reacher continues the more cerebral and caring approach of last year’s The Midnight Line. Which is not to say that fans of old-fashioned Reacher will be disappointed. The closing chapters, set in a New Hampshire killing ground, are as violent, suspenseful and gripping as anything Child has written.

​Finally to Tombland. Who would have thought a novel set in Norwich could be so fascinating?
 
Sansom has taken half a decade to research the latest Shardlake, and it shows. In a good way. His mission from the Lady Elizabeth is to investigate the circumstances of the murder of the wife of one of her distant kinsmen, a Boleyn, and the whodunnit element unfolds in a more than satisfactory manner. But Shardlake being Shardlake, he finds himself at the centre of Kett’s Rebellion, and this and its causes is the real subject of the book. I confess I was unaware of the rebellion which defeated a couple of royal armies and controlled much of Norfolk for a few brief weeks in 1549. But I know a hell of a lot now, thanks to both the novel itself and the historical afterword. It’s a great read, as educational as it is entertaining.
 
Also palliative. Because as I turned the last page of the last book, I realized that my cold had gone.
 
I was cured.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Since 2010, the Dead has been releasing a highlight track on each day of November. These are not just great in themselves, but serve to remind one of hidden gems and forgotten shows. The 2018 is currently two-thirds of the way through, and I am relishing each morning as I download the latest carefully chosen track.

We were promised clarity. What we got was obfuscation and denial.
 
The latest skirmish in the battle against the proposed Warwick District Council developments at Riverside and on the site of the Covent Garden car park took place on Monday night at the Spa Centre, with a belated attempt at “engagement with the residents”. It hasn’t been done before and it was clear that the ‘panel’ had no experience in interacting with those they claim to represent.
 
WDC was represented by (from left to right) Councillor Peter Whiting, i/c Finance for WDC; Bill Hunt, Deputy Chief Executive (God help us!); leader of the Council Andrew Mobbs; Councillor Anne Grainger, who said very little throughout; and Robert Hoof, head of Neighbourhood Services, and thus responsible for ‘parking displacement strategy” which is corporate-speak for the massive reduction in parking spaces which will be a consequence of the plans.
 
Leamington residents were represented by more than 500 Leamington residents.
 
There are so many issues arising from these proposals, so little time, and so few microphones in the packed hall that there was little debate in the true sense of the word. Follow-up questions were rare, allowing the panel to make statements without challenge. A case in point is the question (from Professor Nick Spencer) regarding the destination of profits from the Riverside development. Whiting was ‘clear’: profits will stay within the UK. Yet the structure of Cabot Square Capital, the ultimate partner and an opaque private equity company, includes a plethora of off-shore companies established purely to avoid UK taxation.
 
In fact, Councillor Whiting appeared more than a little embarrassed throughout his fifteen minutes of fame. Defending the indefensible is not his forte.
 
No such problems, however, for Messrs Mobbs and Hunt, the latter playing for time right from the kick-off with answers which were as prolix as they were unrelated to the questions.
 
But then, there were no answers to the questions that will satisfy those who will be most affected by these developments. The Limited Liability Partnership, the lack of affordable housing, the destruction of trees, the loss of business for town centre retailers – these are all crucial issues, but they are symptoms of a deeper and more fundamental problem.
 
The way in which Leamington is being systematically destroyed by a Council leadership of which not one individual is a Leamington resident.
 
Beginning a few years back with the granting of planning permission for a ‘Gentleman’s Club’ in Leamington by a majority of non-Leamington residents, there has been a concerted attempt to transform Leamington into a depository for everything that is dangerous to our quality of life.
 
Independent shops are closing as the Council tempts the big brands. Independent restaurants are struggling as the chains are given special deals to open up in Livery Street or, as it is widely known locally, Hedge Fund Row.
 
It is Mobbs Rule. And it must be stopped. There’s a rally at the Town Hall tomorrow, Saturday, at 12.30pm. Leamington residents need to be there.


Today from the everysmith vaults: "I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason" said John Keats back in 1817. And now, it is a new album from the wondrous Marianne Faithfull. Beautiful and haunting. 

I’m writing this at 4pm on Sunday afternoon, and it’s almost dark. The clocks went back last weekend, ensuring that the first pitch of the final game of the World Series was at midnight our time. And as the euphoria of that victory fades, the prospect of months of short days – “It gets later earlier here” – is depressing. No baseball, no cricket, no Dylan visit to the UK. “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.”
 
Keats is never far from my thoughts, but appeared unprompted and powerfully on Friday evening. Because Autumn’s music in Leamington Spa was provided by the Fitzwilliam Quartet and, in the Mozart Quintet, Sophie Renshaw as second viola.
 
The programme was changed at the last minute, the death of first violin Lucy Russell’s father meaning that there was insufficient time for rehearsals of the Bruckner Quintet. So I still haven’t seen or heard this (apparently) complex piece.
 
But what a treat we had instead. The Fitzbillies dug into a half-century of repertoire to present us with one of the most startling quartets of our time.
 
Reader, we were given Shostakovich’s Opus 138, the Quartet #13 in B flat minor.
 
The Fitzbilly and Shostakovich have form. The European première of the Opus 138 was given by them. The second ever performance, a few days later, was also given by them, and this time with Shostakovich himself in the audience. It was the beginning of what Shostakovich called a “musical friendship”, and Benjamin Britten reported that Shostakovich had told him that the Fitzwilliam was his “preferred performers of my quartets”.
 
I am indebted to the excellent programme notes of Richard Phillips MBE for this stuff; I didn’t know before the Friday interval.
 
What I did know was that Shostakovich’s 13th quartet is a segue from the second movement of the 12th, a performance of which – by the Kodaly – was the last time I heard a Shostakovich played in the Regency grandeur of the Leamington Pump Rooms. In this sense, the experience was akin to hearing the Dead playing a single gig on several successive nights up the East Coast in the ‘70s. But even the Dead never got close to the ferocious atonal screaming of the central section of this dark and scary quartet. Nor did the Dead ever create anything so soulful as those final bars from the viola, climbing higher and higher into silence.
 
It’s less than 20 minutes long. But, played by this quartet, it’s better than any Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven you ever heard.
 
Yes, yes, yes. It’s all part of my autumn almanac.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: This morning it was the Emerson and the Kodaly versions of #13. This afternoon, I’m returning to More Blood, More Tracks. One could argue that they are as one in their inspiration and theme. But I won't.
 

“New England can go back to bed” the Boston Globe told us on the morning after the Sox clinched the World Series, referring to the difference between the Eastern and Pacific time zones. Some of us in Old England would have appreciated a smidgeon of sympathy for the implications of the difference between Pacific Time and British Summer Time. But hey, it’s only eight hours – and we won!
 
I feel a lot better now, on Tuesday morning, after 18 innings worth of sleep last night, and the euphoria of my fourth World Series victory has eased. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still replaying highlights of the post-season in my head, but now the emotion is recollected in tranquility rather than embarrassing bouts of solo and solitary fist-pumping exhilaration.
 
The more I think about it – and I’m thinking about little else – the more I think we have witnessed something quite extraordinary in sports in general and baseball in particular.
 
Look at the stats. Spring training 17-2. Regular season 108-54. Post-season 11-3.
 
A friend described the 2018 Sox as a “juggernaut” which indicates a lack of finesse, the superiority of sheer power over nuanced skills. But it is true that the Sox were relentless throughout the season. Just look at the number of runs they scored with two outs. Just look at their ability to come back from the dead on so many occasions, notably in Game 4 of the Series itself.
 
Having finally succumbed in the bottom of the 18th to the Dodgers in the longest ever post-season game the night before, and then trailing 4-0 into the 7th in Game 4, the Sox came through 9-6.
 
What changed? Well, you can point to Steve Pearce’s four RBIs. But more important I think was the contribution from a man who was not playing at all. Chris Sale suddenly emerged as a version of Big Papi in Detroit, ranting, goading, exhorting, encouraging and insisting that his team-mates come through.
 
The TV did not pick up what he said. Cora later said that his English wasn’t good enough to understand, and Devers said that he couldn’t repeat it.
 
We can guess at the vocabulary. But we know for sure that it worked. The Sox scored nine runs from the seventh inning on to re-establish its dominance of the Dodgers.
 
The historic casting of the Sox as underdogs which some of us cling to is long gone. This was no David and Goliath scenario. The Dodgers had won 92 games in the regular season. The Yankees had 100 – they were beaten in their own house in the Divisional Series. And the Astros entered the Championship Series with 103 regular season wins. The Sox beat them in Houston.
 
In my naivety, I had predicted that each series would go to the wire. Oh ye of little faith!
 
In 2018, the Sox were simply the best. From beginning to end, from April to October. And my prediction is, it will get better.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: After the World Series, the Bootleg Series: A first listen to More Blood, More Tracks. If you thought having the New York version as well as Minnesota was enough, think again. The development of these songs, as evidenced by this series of complete recordings, is fascinating, illuminating and rewarding The pick for me, today, is an early take of Call Letter Blues.
 

As the Sox settle in LA, preparing perhaps to emulate the teams of ’04 and ’07 by winning the World Series on the road, European members of the Nation can, for one night only, turn our attention to other pressing issues while we await Game 3 on Friday night (or, rather, Saturday morning).
 
In my case, it is the public meeting at Leamington’s town hall this evening, to protest the Warwick District Council’s decision to sell off its current offices at Riverside and replace them with a new building on the site of the Covent Garden car park.
 
Leamingtonians will not need any exegesis. The Council’s plans have been the subject of much discussion and debate since they were first mooted and the resistance, led by MP Matt Western, has been growing. Matt has called a special debate in Parliament, written to the Secretary of State, and campaigned tirelessly to force a Tory re-think. This evening is the next stage, an opportunity to put the case of the town and its residents in the face of a plan which is projected to cost £8.6 million and will severely damage the viability of the town centre businesses.

​It’s good that Russ Allen, proprietor of one of the oldest established and most respected retail outlets in Leamington, will be on the panel tonight. I look forward to hearing his first hand experience of the changes to our town centre
 
But the arguments against are not solely from the business community. There is also uproar that the planned development of the current offices includes no social or affordable housing, a requirement of the Council’s own planning rules, at a time when some 2,500 families wait for social housing and increasing numbers of homeless sleep rough on our streets.
 
Significantly, the latest newsletter from North Leamington Conservatives does not even mention this.
 
But this omission is not really surprising. A Conservative councillor resigned recently, claiming that the Tory leadership is “a tawdry administration directed by a male-dominated clique of individuals."

"The Executive has believed its spin while being completely out of touch with real people and real life" she said.
 
The last time a public meeting was called the clique was otherwise engaged and unable to attend. Allegedly. It will be interesting to see if they turn up tonight.
 
I will and I’ll bring you up to date tomorrow.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I’m surprising myself by listening a great deal to Neil Young and enjoying almost every note, particularly those played by Crazy Horse.

“If I get home before daylight / I just might get some sleep tonight.”
 
Every game in the post-season is scheduled to start at 1am UK time, except for tonight in Houston. Which is great news for sleep-deprived Sox fans in the UK, and probably for kids in the States too. (It’s a school night and I know that 8pm ET is prime TV but I wish MLB would give young fans the chance to see whole games.)
 
The best of seven series is tied at one each after an implosion (and some iffy strikes and balls calls at home plate) in Game 1 and a scary end to Game 2. Sale has been in hospital and Price still hasn’t won a post-season game either. But tonight, Nathan Eovaldi takes the mound. And he’s been good.
 
So, too, has the bullpen, especially Matt Barnes and Ryan Brasier. I’m not forgetting Rick Porcello, but I always expect him to do the job. He’s a starter after all and should start in Game 4, which rules him out tonight. The exception of course was Kimbrel, who went through the whole regular season with an ERA of 3.3 something but is currently 10.80 in the post-season.
 
Three appearances. Three runs conceded. Where’s that breaking ball, Craig?
 
We need to win at least one of our three scheduled games in Houston to bring them back to Fenway, and I think tonight could be it. If Eovaldi pitches with anything like the control and variety he showed against the Yankees, and the bullpen continue to be consistent, then we shouldn’t need Kimbrel at all.
 
Assuming the bats continue to swing. They will. I’m looking to Mookie, JD and Rafael Devers to bring the runs home.
 
Mookie is, according to reports, smiling again. JD will want to show Minute Maid Park that he is a better player than they ever saw in an Astros uniform. And you just know that Rafael will relish the chance to make an impact when it matters. He did it in Boston. He can do it in Houston.
 
I think these two teams are the best in baseball right now. I fear that the series will go to the seventh game. I just hope my heart can withstand the tension.
 
But everything is in place. I have told our dinner hosts that I need to be away in good order by 10pm. My Red Sox shirt is laundered and ironed. There is Sam Adams in the fridge. And I confidently expect to be in bed by about 1am with Dirty Water playing in my head.
 
Go Sox!
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The recent death of Marty Balin has prompted a fest of Airplane shows. Marty’s beautiful voice did not always meld well with the increasingly strident Airplane style towards the end, but he will always be remembered in this household with love and affection for songs such as Coming Back to Me. Listening to a Winterland show (1970-10-04), he shouts out, at the end of Volunteers, “I want a new band!” Sad.
 

In Lost, Stolen or Shredded, published in 2013, my pal Rick Gekoski gave us fifteen stories of missing works of art and literature, ranging from a juvenile poem by James Joyce (lost) to the Mona Lisa (stolen) to Philip Larkin’s diaries (shredded).
 
I wonder if Banksy read it.
 
His Girl With Balloon, which self-destructed minutes after selling for a million quid (the Sotheby’s estimate was £200K to £300K) is now believed, in its shredded state, to be worth twice what the anonymous buyer paid. Or at least, what he or she bid because we await confirmation that the buyer has paid or will pay for the artwork.
 
I’m pretty sure that he has or will. After all, the result of this coup de théâtre is a new, unique artwork.
 
There is a parallel here. Back in the early 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg performed an equally audacious act. He ‘erased’ a drawing by Willem de Kooning and in so doing, over a period of two months, he created a new piece which he exhibited under the title “Erased De Kooning Drawing”.
 
He said that it was not destruction, nor negation, but celebration. And de Kooning colluded in this by providing “something I will miss”.
 
Rauschenberg had experimented with erasing his own work, but concluded that “If it was my own work being erased, then the erasing would only be half the process, and I wanted it to be the whole,” he said.
 
Judged by this criterion, Banksy has only achieved half the process. His next move, perhaps, will be to approach a de Kooning of today with a request for an artwork which can form the raw material for a total erasure.
 
I nominate Damian Hirst.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: To my eternal regret, I missed Luna’s couple of gigs in the UK last month, so grateful to nyctaper for a great show from Industry City in “deep Brooklyn”. Highlight (for me) a terrific version of the Velvets’ Lonesome Cowboy Bill. What NY lacks in baseball, it makes up for with a great music scene.