Worshipping at the Font

When I was a callow youth, knocking about a leather football on the municipal park, my thoughts rarely turned to how my life would span out. If they did, I may have imagined a career in professional football, perhaps. I do remember even wondering whether a future in the (then) popular medium of BBC radio might have awaited me.

It wasn't to be, of course. A particularly vicious tackle during a match with a local secondary modern school's centre back put paid to any hopes I might have had of turning out for Oldham Athletic. And any dreams I nurtured of working in the broadcast media were dashed because my accent, at the time, was considered something of an impediment.

My life was fated to take a different course, and a sports journalist I became. Even so, when I later came to ruminate on retirement, I never thought for one minute I would be penning a blog. Younger readers may find it difficult to conceive, but they hadn't even been invented at that time. I suppose, if I am truthful, in those halcyon days I imagined my dotage would be spent on cruise ships in the Med - and I don't mean as a celebrity speaker.

One thing's for certain: I little expected I would spend my 65th birthday in deep discussion with my best friend, Thomas Hamburger Jnr, on the subject of fonts.

I've just come off the telephone to Tom. We were both logged onto a website he discovered earlier tonight which more than lived up to its name:
www.1001freefonts.com.

Perhaps it's because we both of us worked together at the Birkenhead Beagle, but our telephone chat tonight found us discussing the merits of Detectives Inc vs Decadance, and Ready when you are vs Ransom. After fully an hour of swapping views, we both of us had to acknowledge that it was a sad way for two grown men to pass the time. Surely we should have been down the pub, playing dominoes?

On The Buses

A hardly-credible story from the BBC caught my attention today, when they reported that the city of Palermo, Sicily had employed over 100 bus drivers who didn't actually hold driving licences.

This catastrophe came to light only when a local councillor (described by the BBC as 'tenacious' and 'left-wing') demanded a probe into the pervasive practice of nepotism there. Jobs had been doled out to family members in an attempt (it is suggested) to buy votes in the forthcoming mayoral elections in the city.

Il mio uomo anziano è un dustman, as they might say in Rome.

Happy Birthday Ma'am

Few would accuse Bill Blunt of being a royalist. Legion are the times I've railled on the printed page about the excesses of our Royal Family.

Yet it's (one of) our Queen's birthdays today. So Happy Birthday, Ma'am!

At 81, she still keeps herself busy, even if the sycophants at the Daily Telegraph might have overstated the case a little in their leader article today:

The Queen will have a quiet day at Windsor Castle today to mark her 81st birthday. Most people of her age spend their days quietly the whole year. But the Queen, in addition to her daily engagements at home, is to make a state visit in the first week of May to the United States, 50 years on from her first, when Eisenhower was President.

If truth be known, very few 81 year olds are spending their days quietly nowadays. Dorothy Evans, of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire is a case in point. If the reports are to be believed, she has spent a considerable portion of the decade in the regular harassment of her neighbours. That doesn't strike me as someone sitting quietly at home.

I am also indebted to Chris Dunham, for pointing out another error in the same leading article.

This year's visit is for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent settlement in troubled Virginia, a state named after the Queen's ancestor Elizabeth I.

Maybe the leader writers at The Telegraph know something we don't about the (famously virgin) Elizabeth I? Or maybe they need a lesson from Thomas Hamburger Jnr about the true definition of 'ancestor'? It's a shame he no longer writes his articles on genealogy for the Birkenhead Beagle, as I imagine he would have had a field day with that story, even if he would baulk at Wikipedia's suggestion that our Royal Family are some kind of species of bacteria.

A Setter of Trends

I see from this report from the Office of National Statistics, mentioned in passing by the BBC, that my son Justin is something of a trendsetter.

He's one of an increasing number of children who are resolutely refusing to fly the nest. In my day, we couldn't wait to leave home, such was our desire to explore and experience the world beyond the boundaries of our narrow life.

Nowadays, apparently, it's positively unusual for youngsters to move on. The high cost of independent living, their inability to boil even an egg, and a life cosseted by Play Stations, TVs and even fridges in their bedroom mean they're more than a little reluctant to make the leap.

The report makes salutory reading:

In 2006, 58 per cent of men and 39 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 in England
lived with their parents. This is significantly higher for both men
and women than in 1991.

National Statistics: Social Trends No 37

Well, I have news for the trendwatchers. Julian is coming up to 42, and shows no signs of forsaking Mrs Blunt's regular fare of toad in the hole on a Friday night. No amount of financial inducement has altered his position. As he sees it, he has a life tenancy in the attic room at Blunt Mansions, and he's not about to surrender it easily.

Perhaps if the right woman comes along - and we live, Mrs Blunt and I, with that constant (if slowly diminishing) hope - he will be tempted away. Until that time comes, I suppose I must just accept that, in the words of the '60's legend Bob Dylan, 'The Times They Have A Changed'. But it doesn't make it any easier.