Every time I'm in the UK I ask myself if I can ever live there again. I would like the answer to be Yes. It's the home of all the people I love most, apart from Mr F. It's the place I understand on a level I could never begin to understand the US or Italy. But more and more the answer is No. Here are just three recent, randomly chosen examples why.

An estimated six out of ten geriatric patients in English hospitals go to sleep hungry because there's no protocol in place to ensure they can actually eat or even reach the food that's slung onto their tray and nobody seems to notice when the plate goes back to the kitchen untouched. There used to be people called nursing auxiliaries who kept an eye on things like that. I wonder what became of them? Hell, they're probably down in the hospital mall ordering milk shakes and burgers.

A video made to illustrate our rich cultural heritage and shown to herald preparations for the 2012 Olympics, featured shock-artist Marcus Harvey's famous portrait of child-murderer Myra Hindley. A rare glimpse this because it provoked such fury when it was exhibited in the Royal Academy it's now kept behind glass, I think in County Hall. where presumably it doesn't provoke any reaction at all. I guess the message the Tourist Board intended was 'In London, anything goes.'
I should create my own list of things that might encourage people to visit London. And I will, when I've calmed down. Which I'm not likely to do until Derrick Campbell stops talking crap.

Dr Campbell is chairman of the National Independent Advisory Group on Criminal Use of Firearms and his take on the recent spate of drug-related shootings is that the government is to blame. By reducing funding to community groups, he argues, we are condemning young black males to die. Hunh? Do the pingpong tables need resurfacing?
If that's all it'll take for young black males to shape up, take responsibility for their children and stop playing at gangsters, I say give them the money. New bats even. And while they're waiting for the community centre to pick up the slack in their lives, why don't they get down to the hospital and spoon a bit of fish pie into some poor starving oldster?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyone who suspects their children find them embarrassing, gaze on Madonna and hold your head high.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm blogging off for a week. Tomorrow we head to England for a few days of R&R. We have quite a mixed itinerary: a little shopping, for those necessities of life that are proving harder and harder to find in Venice; a little sight-seeing - I'm taking Mr F to the Derbyshire Peaks. I think he'll like them; and catching up with family. Next Thursday I'm having lunch with ALL my children. But first, something completely different. This weekend the anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth will be commemorated, as it is every August in my old home territory of Leicestershire, and we'll be there to pay our respects to that most maligned of kings, Richard III.

Richard died on Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English monarch to die in battle. He was, even by his enemies lights, a most courageous warrior, but he left behind some loose ends that muddied his reputation - chiefly, if he didn't have the young Princes in the Tower murdered, who did? Every Dickophile has his own theory. For instance, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, where were you the night of July 31st 1483?

But the person who really did for Richard was William Shakespeare whose characterisation of him as a barely human scumbag is still accepted by the majority of the population. Well, I mean, by that dwindling rump of the population who have even heard of Richard III or could give a damn.

What did Richard's death bring us? It brought us a bunch of Welsh chancers called Tydder, not least of whom Henry VIII. Or as he is known in this house, That Fat Tudor Bastard.

Richard doesn't have a grave. He was given a burial by the Grey Friars of Leicester but when TFTB went after the monasteries with his wrecking ball the monks, the bones and all were lost. So Sunday we'll be at Sutton Cheney, at the nearest church to the battlefield, to say a prayer for the repose of a man more sinned against than sinning.

And afterwards, to the battlefield, for a nice cup of tea and a re-enactment of Richard's last charge. Men in tights? Yes, I'm afraid so. I'm kind of bracing myself for the day Mr F tells me he wants chainmail for Christmas.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At last an answer to the oft-asked question, why is there a small Cherokee in my parents' wedding photo?
I always knew the figure third right was Lily Rosina, my great grandmother, an eccentric old duck who walked twenty miles a day until the gangrene got her. I also knew that her people came from the borders of Wiltshire and Hampshire, an area known as the New Forest. But every time I searched for information about her parents or tried to explain her very, ahem, distinctive appearance, I reached a dead end. Until this week.

Frustrated with lack of progress with Lily Rosina I turned my attention to her husband, Albert. I found his parents, I found his maternal grandparents, Richard and Theodosia Lee, and then I really hit my stride. I found his great-grandparents, James and Clevansi Lee. And I thought, 'Great. Clevansi. So I'm descended from a typing error.'

But genealogists can never leave loose ends alone, even when it's long past bedtime, so I did one last, desperate search for someone, anyone with the name Clevansi. I 'd probably have settled for an anagram even. And now a moment's grateful silence for the Internet. Because there she was, on my computer screen on a hot August night in 2008, Clevansi Lee, born around 1776, and her husband James as well. They were on a website devoted to Romanies, the traveling people, and in particular to the large community centred on the New Forest in the 18th and 19th century. So great-grandpa Albert's folks were travelers, and now the door swung wide. Because the next thing I discovered was that Lily Rosina's family name, Vincent, is a common Romany name too. So there it is. Tinkers, who'd given up the open road.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. But at least I can now lay to rest the question of the Cherokee in the trilby hat. And why she felt the need to walk twenty miles a day.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the start of the Great Italian Exodus, which is like the Pamplona bull run but with cars. The two businesses nearest our building clanged down their shutters last night. If you wanted to buy an amber necklace or get your couch reupholstered you're out of luck till September 1st. And if it's coffee and a Tonolo donut you want, you'll have to wait till September 3rd. This is no deprivation to us because Mr F and I are trying to shed a few pounds.

Our methods differ. He uses the Nothing But Salad Till You Feel Like Shooting Yourself Diet. I'm on the No Booze No Cookies Regime. He weighs himself, I don't. My clothes tell me as much as I need to know. This morning he weighed himself and even though I was still surfacing from sleep I could tell he didn't like what the scales were telling him.
He demanded a recount. Tried a new battery in the machine. Kicked it. The scale still says he gained weight. This is why I never weigh myself. Lying bastard gadgets. They're always waiting to stab you in the back.

So here we are, nibbling on lettuce leaves and resigned to a donut-free August. The last people left in Dorsoduro. Ain't nobody here but us pigeons. And about two million tourists.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)