At last, he's back

Good morning, one and all. How was your Tuesday?

I spent it in Chester, which is a big tick on its own - the place is a Roman/Medieval/Georgian beauty near the Welsh border. Better than that, I went there to meet Victoria, one of the very first people I made friends with at Bangor University in 1993. We ate fine foods, walked by the river, bought an awful lot of books (hard to believe, I know) and generally set the world to rights. All in all, the perfect anecdote to spending months in Wolverhampton.

And on the way back to the station, I bumped into James, who's moved to that fair city. He was a bit miffed that I didn't stay to go drinking with him, but we are going walking on Friday and then spending the weekend carousing in Chester.

Clenched fist for Jack Jones

Jack Jones died last night, aged 96. He's one of the last militant leftists who never deviated, and never became a careerist, became divorced from his people, or drifted to the right. He fought for the working classes and the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, getting seriously wounded, then devoted his life to the TGWU union, at one point being perceived by the public as the most powerful man in Britain! He supported the Social Contract, and refused a place in the House of Lords.

He didn't really retire, just moved on to a new phase of the campaign, leading the National Pensioners' Convention (if you think that's unimportant, you're an idiot: our pensions are being chipped away even as we live longer). I intended to meet him at one of these meetings, in Stoke, but the bloody bus sailed past me without stopping and the next one wasn't for four hours.

Hoy más que nunca, VICTORIA!