Graeme Archer

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

I think there's a case to be made that Talking Pictures TV (@TalkingPicsTV) is the last barricade between myself and insanity. If the day's too dark and wet, then a cup of tea, the fire on, a grand old film in TPTV, and life is fine again.

It's not very nice outside just now, and for some idiot reason I've agreed to go to Circuits at 6pm tonight. But for now there's an iced bun, the x'th tea of the morning (never mind lying to the GP about alcohol units, I'm now reduced also to lying to the dental hygienist about tea units: I sometimes think the process of aging is to be made to feel guilt about life's pleasures, the circle of restriction growing tighter by the year), and The Son of Monte Cristo on TPTV. With George Sanders! And relax!

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@IrisMurdoch You like very long conversations with half a dozen people at once, and have an, ah, open-minded approach to potential sexual liaisons, especially with people whom you disliked on meeting :-) Oh! And there's a demon looking at me from the fireplace.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

One of the most visceral emotions I felt in my early life was shock at a scene played out in the debating chamber of the Glasgow University Union. A young couple in opposing political tribes had embarked on a relationship; this was well known; they were both liked.

Something had gone wrong, and in a lull during one of the Union's parliamentary-style debates they had a falling out. (Their "party" benches abutted one another and both sat on their party's "front bench". As a "backbencher" I had a view from slightly above, down onto the back of both of their heads.)

[GUU debating - at least in the 80s - didn't hide that it was a practice exercise for those who wanted to become MPs. In the 80s this wasn't automatically viewed as a character defect. I took part in one debate - the one I'm remembering - as a Tory backbencher.]

However the contretemps had originated, it blew into increasingly vicious bites (from her) and belated attempts at smoothing down so as (I assume) to avoid public notice (from him.) And then she - magnificent (though not in "my" party) - leapt to her feet, pulled her arm away from him, and shouted: "I'm SICK OF YOU," before walking rapidly out of the chamber.

I was very young (maybe 16 or 17). If the scene sounds soap operatic, let me reassure you that it was closer to actual opera in its effect on me. I felt physically sick on their joint behalf, at the very transparent evidence - and thus a realisation - that what begins as mutual affection can spiral into what *feels* like revulsion (I'm sure it wasn't that bad in fact. Though that might just be ill-placed optimism.)

The debate went on, though I don't remember either the topic or the outcome. I think I learned more about human nature in the second it took the woman to grab back her arm and shout "SICK OF YOU" than the decades'-worth of novels I'd read by then had managed to impart.

I started to share this because, honestly, that "SICK OF YOU" has lived on inside my head, re-occurring as the strongest denunciation I feel towards those who engender a dislike within my "sensation/feeling" - that is: when an instinctive dislike I feel requires words, I reach for that memory - and I was going to end with how I feel it often about Andy Burnham.

That's true, as it happens, but in taking a minute or two to write this I've come to feel that the event, and my memory of it, deserves better than (just) to be used in that way. I hope both parties - both of whom were very pleasant people - went on to have good lives. And I will thank them for inadvertently causing one of those early-adult "step changes" in how I thought about the world, and the people in it. Love can be brutal, and universal harmony is impossible. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, does it? The hand has to be extended for the rejection to be possible.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

I've signed the Free Speech Union's petition against the Government's conversion therapy ban. Add your name: https://t.co/rGZdmyNkAr

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

This would make a great Christmas present for the MR James fan in your life. (Hint to anyone who loves me, who may be reading this via a lurking account.) I loved Barendina's last collection of stories - everything you want as these Autumn nights get damper, mistier, gloomier.

[Barendina Smedley @fugitiveink]

November is a time of mists, falling leaves, early sunsets and long, dark nights. Why not settle down somewhere cosy with a book of uncanny stories? My new collection "Deep Waters: Ten More Tales from Norfolk and Beyond" is out now. To buy a copy, follow the link in the post below.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@profdws Well said!

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

I don't know if this matters, and I may just have missed it, but I still scan the front page of the @Telegraph first thing, and I didn't see a single mention of the New Zealand general election. Instead I read of the knife-edge result on @X. Perhaps New Zealand is too anglosphere for Axel Springer?

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

Agatha Christie! I started reading them aged ten - it felt like my first "adult" book. I remember standing in the playground queue, glued to One Two Buckle My Shoe. Thus ensued years of happiness.

I didn't like adventure stories so much, not earthbound ones anyway. But I think teenage boys would love Saki?

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@nejafeja @oldspeak_books I have not!

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

Isn't it though! I always remember a time I was in St Albans for work, decades ago, and in the morning consuming so much delicious toast and hot, good tea. It wasn't that I'd had their (no doubt delicious) fry-up, or that I can't/don't eat toast and drink tea at home. It was just all done so perfectly that it's always stayed in my mind. It is also when I started to pepper my buttered toast (top tip.) And any trip is justification for a cooked breakfast.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@PeterOuld PS apart from the Val McDermid version of Kraken, which was awful.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

It's like The Kraken Wakes, when England floods and Mike and Phyllis are holed up at the top of the EBC Tower, broadcasting to a grateful nation ("It's still raining, and civilisation is definitely over"), not the early part when the creatures drag themselves from the sea and pull people apart with sticky goo. (I hope that's not a spoiler for anyone.)

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: The Government's "Black Sky" contingency plans for a national water or power blackout

- Around 100 BBC staff would be deployed to run an emergency RM radio studio stocked with enough food, water and fuel to keep it running for 3 days

- The BBC would broadcast pre-written Government scripts through the studio, including how to ration water, what to do if toilets stop working and which food to eat first (see scripts below)

- Radio masts would switch to diesel generators to keep broadcasts going for up to 72 hours without electricity

- BBC teams would use satellite phones to stay in contact, with agreed meeting points and backup arrangements if those phones stop working

- They would also report from emergency centres across the UK using satellite-equipped BBC vehicles to help keep information flowing to the public

- Emergency services would have alternative ways to communicate if mobile phone networks stopped working

- The Government is putting £70m towards aircraft that could restore mobile phone and internet coverage across the UK for over a week

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@PeterOuld is you joking? Huge huge fan, all re-read eighty trillion times, every BBC radio play adaption hunted down and loved!

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

In which Dennis once again demonstrates why he should be an MP. Contrast with Labour MPs who've been on X this week to express their inability to comprehend legislation which they themselves are passing.

I know I go on about the abomination that is the Conversion Bill a lot. I don't have children, obviously, but even reading about the Bill makes my blood boil. If I could have an early Christmas wish it would be for all of you who are blessed with children to read about this Bill and understand what Labour are trying to do.

The Bill is nothing, *nothing*, to do with being "nice" to normal gay people, and *everything* about criminalising conversations that any caring parent would have with his or her child. If it is passed it is going to make it almost impossible for our culture to move on from this gender nonsense, a nonsense that has already damaged the lives of far too many children and young people.

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

1/ Humanists UK believe they've conducted a "fact check" on a Telegraph piece in which a mother of a trans identifying daughter sets out her fears of the conversion bill.

I intend to defend the mother and her well justified fears in this thread.

https://t.co/9lhVWQsKDV

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@ushasundaram_v3 yes, exactly him.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

How very, very apt. Anyone who pays to read Eaton was already a fool; here is the picture such fools can nail to their bedroom walls. While they're listening to their End of Politics podcasts, no doubt.

The conservative "prior" is stronger than the liberal one. I needed nothing more than my upbringing to regard Brand as a foul degenerate, irregardless his recent sex crime convictions. His psychological torture of Andrew Sachs was the proof, were any needed, of his depravity.

But let's not feel too superior. Yes, we always disliked Brand, and watched, aghast, as he was venerated, repeatedly, by men such as our current Prime Minister. But the fact remains: all those who venerated him still have legislative power over the rest of us.

[Kate Maltby @KateMaltby]

I haven't been on this site for a bit.

But I haven't seen anyone share the photo the New Statesman staff staged in 2013 of Russell Brand as Christ, and themselves as his disciples. It seems to have been scrubbed from the web.

It made me angry then and it makes me angry now.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

Worth reposting. He was venerating Russell Brand.

[Andy Burnham @andyburnham]

Depressing to see media mission to discredit someone who stops playing their game & uses celebrity to help others. Keep going @rustyrockets.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@ankkala @SvidrigailovAI because it's shit?

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

@NABurkinshaw @PhilipHensher I loved Wilkie Collins when I was a teenager. The Lady in White! The Moonstone! they both gripped me. I could never get on with Dickens - the satire was too "cricket bat". But the characters in Collins were very real to my young mind.

[Graeme Archer @graemearcher]

Our generation's Orwell, apparently.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

I've met Russell Brand twice (I think):

Once when I hosted a Guardian Live event about his book in 2014.

Another time I interviewed him for The Big Issue when I was guest editing in 2015.

He also gave my publishers an endorsement for my book The Establishment, which I was mortified about at the time mostly because I thought it was so OTT it would obviously invite ridicule (which it did).

At the time I saw him as a crude means to reach disillusioned younger people with left-wing politics - the sort of people who wouldn't be reached by conventional left-wing journalists and politicians.

As a result I was willing to overlook, or just not look into, his history of problematic behaviour / statements, including sexism.

I convinced myself that he was on some sort of journey and that was a good thing. That was an obvious misjudgement.

I did think he was a bit of a chancer / had a messianic complex, but overlooked that too as a necessary evil in reaching disengaged people.

But that was clearly his main driving force and he clearly ended up concluding that right-wing politics was a better vehicle to satisfy it.

It's an important lesson in not stupidly engaging clearly problematic figures, however charismatic or however much mass appeal they have, in the service of a cause.

What I would say is that right now we should be centring the survivors of a rapist and sexual predator.

I personally don't really think those trying to point score have his survivors' interests at heart.

I would also argue that those with the big questions to answer are the right-wing figures who continue to stand by him and spread conspiratorial nonsense in his defence.

Finally, let's hope that other possible survivors of Russell Brand feel able to come forward.