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The greatest sporting moment of all time was the look on Kelly Holmes’ face when she won the 800 metres at the Olympic Games in Athens.
Kelly revealed in TV interviews that she had now fulfilled both of her ambitions in life – becoming an army instructor and winning an Olympic gold medal. [She later won the 1500 metres as well, but that was widely predicted, unlike the 800.]
It seems odd that a black woman would want to become an instructor for an army which has had such a terrible record of oppressing the native populations of black countries in the British Empire – and is now backing up the brutal US soldiers in Iraq (and has since had soldiers found guilty of vicious abuse of Iraqi prisoners). However, unlike Paula Radcliffe who went to Loughborough University – which is recognised as the best place to combine studies with sport in the UK – Kelly is working class and black, which made it much less likely for her to get a good enough education to go to University. Therefore, she had to join the army so that they could support her sporting ambitions. There is a parallel here with working class people joining the army to escape unemployment, like Gordon Gentle from Pollok in Glasgow who died at the age of 19 in Iraq (and whose mother Rose set up the Justice for Gordon Gentle Campaign) and many working class people in the USA where there is not much of a welfare state.
The Union Jack is recognised in other countries as an anti-fascist symbol, because British soldiers played a great role in helping defeat the Nazis in the Second World War. However, it has been hijacked by fascist organisations in Britain like the National Front and British National Party. Perhaps Kelly’s sporting achievements – coupled with Amir Khan’s boxing silver medal also in Athens – both of which were celebrated by thousands of people on the streets of their home towns, have finally wrestled the Union Jack from fascism in the eyes of ordinary people in Britain.
I am inclined to the viewpoint that boxing should be banned under socialism, because it is such a brutal ‘sport’ – as demonstrated by the Muhammed Ali’s brain damage. However, amateur boxing is much less brutal than professional boxing, due to only lasting three rounds, making a knockout a rarity.
When I was at school, the athletics events that I was by far the best at were medium and long-distance running. I was good at cross-country racing as well as on the track, but gave it up after losing to my brother Sean (who is about a year and a half younger than me) beat me in a race in the village of Eynsham in Oxfordshire, where I lived until the age of 13. I did do a half marathon many years later (when I was at the University of Manchester) – and completed it in quite a good time, only having to walk a bit near the end when I had to go up a hill.
I have also done some serious walking, including attempting a 55-mile sponsored walk called the Bogle Stroll, part of the university ‘rag week’. I failed on my first two attempts because one of my knees gave in, but succeeded on a further two. I later went on the People’s March against the Poll Tax, from Liverpool to London calling at many towns at cities on the way at which demonstrations and meetings were held keeping the campaign going during a vital time for the maintenance of mass non-payment, that is described in Chapter 4 of my autobiography “Transition”.
When I lived in Penarth (before my parents broke up due to the mental torture inflicted by my father on my mother as I reveal in the Prologue of “Transition”), a town about five miles from Cardiff, we had a (slightly under-size) table tennis table so I became quite good at that sport. I also played it at school (Stanwell Comprehensive School) and got much better by playing against some very good players at the Owens Park hall of residence in my first year at the University of Manchester. However, I have not played it much since, so I have got very rusty. More recently, I have played some very good games of tennis and badminton.
I have generally been terrible at football (soccer), except on some occasions when I’ve played in goal. At both secondary schools I attended, we were divided into four ‘houses’. The first of these schools (Batholomew Comprehensive School, Eynsham, Oxfordshire) once had a football tournament for my year. My house (Morris) was by far the worst judging by results against other teams, but we played the second worst (Mason) last of all. I once got myself clear of the defence but didn’t understand the off-side rule and passed it to another player rather than going towards the goal myself. However, later on, I managed to score from a very close distance from a corner. We won one-nil! Although I’m pretty sure that the houses were named after local businessmen, I think that the subconscious thoughts of the players took into account the fact that there was once a great socialist artist called William Morris whereas the ‘freemasons’ are a secret right-wing society dominated by businessmen and influential figures in organisations like the police force which grant favours to each other. This would have led to Morris players playing better than usual and Mason players playing worse (for those who were on the side of the working class) or vice versa (for those on the side of big business).
I am a long-time fan of Manchester United Football Club (since shortly before their shock defeat to Southampton in the FA Cup Final in 1976; the team made up for it by defeating the then dominant Liverpool the following year). Somebody (I think it was my father) had suggested that I should support a Manchester team since I was born in this city (at Withington Hospital), and I decided to support United rather than Manchester City because I liked the name better!
This was undoubtedly due to subconscious influences; being united is preferable to being divided, hence the slogan “The workers united will never be defeated”, whereas the City of London is a bastion of capitalism. The colours of a team’s strip are also significant. United’s home strip is primarily red, a symbol of socialism, and also black and white (although there unfortunately isn’t much black in it nowadays) – it is vital to unite black and white working class people, and the slogan “Black and white unite and fight” is used to that end. My claim seems odd considering the fact that Manchester United plc are the richest club in the world, due to their massive fan base amongst the world’s working class which has grown bigger over the years due to the very attractive style of football that the team plays as well as its successes with Alex Ferguson (Fergie) as manager; the fact that a lot of very good players have come through United’s youth system rather than been transferred from other sides has undoubtedly helped. However, most footballers have a working class upbringing, and they do not necessarily get out of touch with that class when/if they become rich.
In contrast to United, City are known as the ‘Blues’ which hints at them being a capitalist team, but their strip is sky blue rather than Tory dark blue. However, City have a large working class following since their old ground, Maine Road, is in Moss Side (an area of Manchester with a high black population that used to have big problems of gangs which sold drugs and used guns; the successful and lively Lashley Family anti-deportation campaign that I was involved with played a great role in improving community spirit which eventually led to the drug gangs moving to other areas of Manchester). The main capitalist teams in Britain used to be Liverpool and then Arsenal – their colours of red and white are the same as those of Coca-Cola (which along with Pepsi propped up vicious dictatorships in Latin America as revealed in the Galaxia song “The revolution starts now!”), Arsenal were named after the Woolwich Arsenal – and an ‘arsenal’ is a place for storing weapons; hence their nickname is the ‘Gunners’. Also, any team whose name starts with a nickname for a backside is bound to put off a lot of fans who are genuinely on the side of the working class! Having a manager, Arsene Wenger, with a similarly off-putting first name is bound to add to the problem.
The biggest team in Britain in terms of money spent is now Chelsea, due to the massive wealth of Roman Abramovich. It was revealed on TV that he is the only one of a number of Russian oil billionaires who hasn’t been prosecuted for fraud, and although he and his team seem to be on the side of big business, I do not want to commit myself at this stage!
The main capitalist team in the world is obviously Real Madrid, due to the massive sums they have forked out in transfer fees and wages for the ‘galacticos’. Abramovich couldn’t attract the best players in the world when he first took over at Chelsea, because the team didn’t have a track record of success – instead, many of the players he forked out huge sums on (such as United reject Juan Sebastian Veron) were second rate and a large number of them were off-loaded at big losses when Jose Morinho took over as manager a year later. Manchester United had established themselves as the other great team in Europe (and also the world since the best South American players are usually snapped up by European managers early in their careers) by winning the Treble of the oddly named ‘Champions League’ (formerly known as the ‘European Cup’, which partly consists of leagues but is a cup in its later stages), the Premiership (top English league division) and FA Cup in 1999, but the team’s form afterwards has been patchy.
United’s patchy form since 1999 could be due to one of three factors. Sometimes players have deliberately played badly, or less well at any rate (either consciously or subconsciously) in less important competitions because winning everything every year would be extremely boring! United’s Ruud van Nistelrooy has a very good strike rate in domestic competitions, but his strike rate in the Champions League of about a goal a game is phenomenal! Secondly, a team consisting overwhelmingly of players on one side of the class struggle is generally going to perform much better than a team in which there is a more even mix – because the players are cooperating with each other more than they are competing with them. However, players usually want to play well in addition to helping their class, and this tends to predominate since with most matches it is difficult to see how one side winning makes much of a difference in the big scheme of things! Thirdly, how well a team plays in the most important matches bears some relationship to how well the class most of the fans and players are on the side of is doing in the class struggle at those particular times. If the fans are in a good mood before a match, they will be more successful at encouraging the team to play better – and a victory in the match will put them in an even better mood afterwards giving the class even more confidence.
People can change from one side of the class struggle to the other due to interactions with people around them and developments in the world. For most people in society, the direction is usually from big business to the working class nowadays, since the working class across the world is getting stronger in relation to big business; however, for very good footballers the reverse is generally true due to their high wages, commission from transfers and sponsorship deals. If the same footballers play with each other for a long period of time, there is obviously a tendency towards them taking the same side in the class struggle – this tendency was exacerbated in United’s case by a few other players who had come through the youth system breaking into the first team at the same time as David Beckham. Since winning the Treble in 1999, there have been quite a large number of transfers in and out of United’s squad, which has meant that the players have not ‘gelled’ together as much (which I put down to the class composition getting worse), but the situation is improving.
Just as it would seem odd to many for me to say that the Manchester United team is generally on the side of the working class due to the massive wealth of the club, saying that Beckham is on the side of the working class would also seem odd – especially because of his huge sponsorship deals with companies such as Nike, which has had its trainers (called ‘sneakers’ in the USA) produced in sweatshops paying appalling wages in underdeveloped countries, although the company has apparently improved a bit due to protests against its past use of ‘slave labour’. However, the adverts he appears in (for example) help keep him in the public eye, which puts him in a position where he can do more good – singers, musicians and actors may participate in adverts (or artists may allow their songs to be used) for similar reasons. When Premiership footballers threatened to strike, so that a bit more of the massive amounts of TV money would go to players from lower league clubs who were forced to retire early due to injury, Beckham was the foremost advocate of the strike in the media – and over 99% voted to strike as a result! I congratulated him on his role in that dispute when I met him at a shop in Manchester when he was signing copies of a computer game, but I didn’t have a console on which it could be played so I got him to sign a copy of his first autobiography ‘My World’. The book is rather boring, which is probably why he has written another book which he called his ‘real autobiography’, and is notable for the fact that virtually all the photos of him in it (of which there are many) have him with very short cropped hair despite the fact that he had had long hair for most of his career. [On the plus side, he does mention his opposition to homophobia (to which I would add that getting straight people to hate or fear gay, bisexual or transsexual people is part of the divide-and-rule strategy of big business).] Men (or boys) who look like fascists are indeed fascists, are pretending to be them or are unaware of the effect their choice of haircut tends to have on other people. This applies to men who shave off all their hair or have very short hair – due to the fact that historically fascists in Britain tended to be ‘skinheads’, and having no hair or very little hair often makes people look ‘hard’ (and therefore ugly, in my opinion, which makes it difficult for them to have genuine relationships) – unless they are non-white, look gay or are going bald naturally due to old age. While I was in Barcelona for a series of anti-capitalist protests a few weeks later, I watched a Champions League match on a TV screen at a restaurant – and I was amazed when I thought I saw Teddy Sheringham playing for United, because he had been transferred a year or two earlier! I later realised that it was actually Beckham, and that he had let his hair grow long again. Perhaps my interaction with him had helped persuade him to change his hairstyle!
There was a much publicised incident in which Fergie threw a football boot at Beckham for not trying, after United lost an FA Cup tie against Arsenal. However, the person most responsible for the defeat was Ryan Giggs, for one of the most blatant misses of an open goal ever, early in the match when the score was goalless. The boot throwing incident led to Fergie omitting Beckham from the team for many of the games in the rest of the season, including the monumentous second leg clash between United and Real at United’s ground (Old Trafford) in the Champions League knockout stages in 2003. In that match, Fergie put Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in Beckham’s best position, on the right wing (right hand side of midfield) – quite ridiculous considering that Solskjaer’s expertise was as a striker. There was a lot of rubbish in the media at the time about United being thrashed by Real. In reality, United were defeated by a single Real player (the great Brazilian Ronaldo who scored a hat-trick and was very sportingly applauded by United fans for his spectacular display) and staged a brilliant come-back towards the end of the match with Beckham scoring two goals (including one from a free kick) after Fergie finally brought him on in place of Solskjaer.
I don’t know what was going through Fergie’s conscious mind when he fell out with David Beckham, which he blamed on the influence of David’s wife – former member of the ‘Spice Girls’ pop band Victoria (known as ‘Posh Spice’), whose subsequent solo pop career has failed to take off. The transfer of Beckham to Real, at the end of the season in which United lost to them (2002-3), not only deprived United of a very effective player on the right wing (until one of Fergie’s new signings – another Ronaldo, with first name Cristiano, started hitting brilliant form for Portugal in the European Championships held in the summer of 2004) but also somebody who could score regularly from free kicks. I suspect that Beckham’s decision to move to Real was due (consciously or subconsciously) to feeling that he had achieved all he could in England and that the working class needed strengthening in Spain – or perhaps Fergie deliberately engineered the animosity between them whereby Beckham would feel he had to make that decision. Beckham had consistently scored about ten goals a season from free kicks for United, and he was indisputably the best in the world at that task because of the amazing swerve he can put on the ball. This led to the film ‘Bend it like Beckham’ about a fictional female Asian footballer who was inspired by him. However, in Beckham’s first season for Real (2003-4), he did not score a single goal from a free kick! This is because David Beckham, despite his and Victoria’s enormous wealth, is on the side of the working class – in contrast to most of the Real team. The fact that Real played poorly against United except for the Brazilian Ronaldo would suggest that he was their only player in that team who was not on the side of big business. Just after the 2003-4 season, Beckham scored a particularly spectacular goal for England, demonstrating that he can still play very well when the team he plays in is mainly on the side of the working class.
Many commentators suggest that Beckham’s best position is in the centre of midfield since he can influence play more from there – but in my opinion, the positions requiring most skill are the left and right wings, since you often need to be able to beat defenders before making a cross and/or accurately pass the ball a long way. For that reason, I have greatly admired Steve Coppell and Andrei Kanchelskis for their abilities in that position, as well as David Beckham and now Ryan Giggs and Cristiano Ronaldo. Of course, you need very good strikers to take full advantage of such wingers – and now that United have Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wayne Rooney, they do (when both are in form and free from injuries). Footballers most suited to the centre of midfield are those who can tackle very well like Roy Keane; they don’t need to pass the ball as far so their passing ability is not so crucial as for those on either wing.
I have participated in the
Independent Manchester United Supporters Association (IMUSA), which led the struggle which defeated Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to take over the club via Sky TV. IMUSA was launched by Andy Walsh, a member of the Socialist Party (formerly the Militant Tendency), at a large meeting I attended – based on a similar organisation of Newcastle fans set up by another Socialist Party member Kevin Miles. As well as campaigning on relevant issues, IMUSA occasionally organises meetings with players as guests so that fans can ask them questions. In IMUSA’s early days, the club was hostile to the organisation (because it is independent; previously supporters associations had official links to clubs which restrained them from attacking the clubs) but the club now gets on well enough with IMUSA to give permission for its players to attend, and its large rooms at Old Trafford to be used for, IMUSA meetings.
After Ryan Giggs attended one IMUSA meeting (that I missed), somebody in IMUSA pointed out that Giggs had played much better since attending it. I’m sure he didn’t really think that Giggs’ performance was influenced by the meeting, but I think that it was – since when somebody on the side of the working class interacts with many people on the same side, this improves their model of the world, which makes them better at thinking and therefore improves their skills in whatever they do including playing football.
Similarly, after a meeting at Old Trafford at which Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer attended (which I did go to), van Nistelrooy’s performance improved from its already very high level. Conversely, the performance level of Solksjaer (who had previously scored one of the goals that won the Champions League for United) got much worse at the same time due to his exposure by fans as being on the side of big business – most notably by somebody pointing out that he supported Arsenal when he was young (which I don’t think is surprising considering his middle name ‘Gunnar’). They were also asked about their favourite musical influences, and Ole said Elvis Presley (who was considered rebellious at one stage but became an establishment figure, and this admission put Ole out-of-touch with youthful supporters); I can’t remember Ruud’s answer but it was a current band. At that meeting, from the point of view of the stage, an IMUSA member who chaired the meeting was at the far left, whereas Ruud and Ole sat at a table at the right-hand side of the stage, with Ruud to the left of Ole. I don’t know to what extent this positioning was a conscious decision, but it gave a good indication of the political positions of the three people – IMUSA are a very left-wing organisation whereas the players are very highly paid, but Ruud was to the left of Ole. At the end of that meeting, I went to the front to get my invitation letter for the meeting signed, and came to Ole first and he signed on the right-hand side of the paper, then Ruud signed on the left-hand side – the opposite of what would be natural if they did not want to tell me about their political allegiances.
Another fans’ group which has played a very good role, although a lesser one than IMUSA, is Shareholders United – an organisation of small shareholders which undermines the big business investors in Manchester United plc rather successfully in terms of generating adverse publicity for them, despite only having a total stake of about 2%.
The big current local issue in Manchester is US businessman Michael Glazer’s attempt to take over Manchester United. There have been large angry demonstrations of United fans against the take-over. I have identified a strategy to show socialists’ solidarity with the supporters, publicise socialist demands for return of football to its working class roots with democratic control of clubs by fans, players and other staff. At the same time we will guarantee a massive launch meeting for the Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance by putting such material at the top of the launch meeting leaflet, having Andy Walsh of IMUSA but in a public capacity speaking at the meeting, and having groups of us leafleting United home games (and City games as well because football fans across Manchester are opposed to a US businessman with no interest in the game taking over; big business does control United already but when it is split between different businesspeople they do not act as one and are therefore not as powerful as one individual or corporation would be).
Another football organisation set up by members of Militant is Show Racism the Red Card (SRRC), led by Ged Grebby in the North East of England. It is funded by trade unions and has done a lot of great work, distributing videos to every school and also free annual magazines featuring famous footballers plus some contributions by socialist activists. This (together with the vastly increased number of black footballers playing in the British leagues) has virtually wiped out racist chanting from the terraces in Britain, but there is still a lot of racism in society generally. In fact, there are still a lot of racist football supporters; they are just scared of showing the fact openly because they would be set upon by anti-racist fans.
Show Racism the Red Card held meetings in the North East of England in its early days, but as far as I know, it has not acted in this way recently (perhaps because it has not been recognised as important due to the lack of racist chanting in Britain). However, the massive amount of racist chanting in the Spain-England “friendly” has made racism in football a serious issue once again. I want to play a leading role alongside Ged setting up a branch of SRRC in Manchester, mainly consisting of United and City fans. However, Ged and myself are both white (although I am a quarter Jewish), and the organisation should have a black or Asian person as the main spokesperson to be taken seriously. The ideal person for that is the black or Asian person that I have by far had the strongest romantic inclinations towards (and it was mutual): Sonya Qureshi. I knew her firstly as a psychiatric nurse (during the daytime) when I was banged up as a political prisoner on Nelson Ward at Manchester Royal Infirmary. We had a lot of discussions then of a political as well as a romantic nature. I last saw her for a night shift late in 2002 on Grafton Ward; we even made plans to travel around Australia together. However, she let me down gently helping me realise that my role in the short term was to concentrate on political activities in Britain. I have sent her virtually all my important emails since, however, so she must be extremely clued up politically. She is now a student living near Manchester, so leading SRRC here would not be a problem for her. Some time after the general election, I want her to play a role with me in Glasgow, using SRRC to oppose sectarianism between mainly Catholic Celtic fans and mainly Protestant Rangers fans. The problem is now not as severe as it once was, due to the much more favourable situation in Northern Ireland, the abolition of the rules that each club could only have players of the appropriate religion and the strength of socialism in the city – the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) got over 15% of the vote there at the last Scottish parliamentary election in May Day 2003, gaining two members of the Scottish parliament, Tommy Sheridan and Rosie Kane. Nevertheless, a strong SRRC branch in Glasgow (established via a joint SRRC/SSP meeting with Celtic and Rangers players) would help increase working class unity, which would be very good for the struggle for socialism.
In Manchester in the near future, I want to arrange an organising meeting to establish an SRRC branch and make arrangements for a big SRRC/IMUSA meeting held at Old Trafford (inviting members of IMUSA to the organising meeting of course). I would like the following footballers to speak: Gary Neville and Rio Ferdinand from United and Shaun Wright-Phillips and Robbie Fowler from City. The rationale for this is as follows: Rio was the foremost opponent in the media of the racist chanting in Spain, of which Shaun was the biggest recipient. Gary opposed Nike’s role in exploiting the issue for its corporate interests, by getting Wayne Rooney to distribute black and white armbands, which some England players including Rio went along with. Gary and Rio are team-mates at both United and England, and as far as I know do not have any real grudges against each other – they just have different ideas of how to oppose racism. Gary was the sole guest at an IMUSA meeting (which I didn’t attend), so I know he is good politically. I would like Robbie to speak about the time that he was a Liverpool player and removed his shirt to reveal a “Support the Liverpool Dockers” T-shirt, in support of workers who were sacked for refusing to cross a picket line. Sonya can speak for SRRC and preferably Andy Walsh for IMUSA, and I’d like to speak for the
Campaign for Democracy in the UK.
When I went to Glasgow in the autumn of 2004 for an STUC (Scottish Trade Union Congress) demonstration against racism and fascism, I saw a large SRRC poster advertising the demo in the hostel in which I was staying. I missed the demo itself because I was busy in an internet café (I saw a fairly small number of people marching outside, some of whom were carrying SRRC placards), but couldn’t find details of the demo anywhere on the web – for example, the Scottish Unison website said that there was an anti-racism demo in Glasgow on that day but didn’t specify where or when it started or ended! I had to go back to the hostel to find out where the demo ended, which was a small theatre – it was clearly a deliberate decision to hold the final rally indoors (unlike any demo I’d ever gone on before!) in a small venue to keep the numbers down. Nevertheless, I handed out copies of a document of mine and spoke to people entering late or leaving the venue, holding a SRRC placard to identify myself with that organisation. I took the placard back to Manchester after the demo, which was very useful for me to carry when a young black friend of mine asked me to escort him to Rusholme late at night on Christmas Eve. I had seen a TV programme shortly beforehand, in which Darcus Howe revealed a lot of racism between black and Asian people in Britain – although Rusholme, which has a very high Asian population, is a great place for Asian and white people to go, my black friend was scared of going there in the dark alone.
I first played snooker when my father’s parents had a (slightly under-size) table, before they moved to a smaller house and my grandfather died of cancer. I played a fair amount of snooker when I was a student, particularly when I was living in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in my second year (where I joined a local snooker club) but never managed a break of more than 20-30 – I may have cleared all the colours once or twice and 27 is probably my highest break. However, I became good at pool when we played it frequently in UMIST Student Union when I was living at UMIST’s Wright Robinson Hall for two years, because it only cost 20p a frame. I have got very good more recently, since I have been frequently incarcerated as a political prisoner since the summer of 1998 (after the ‘1998 European School’ of the Committee for a Workers’ International, an organisation that links the Socialist Party to similar organisations around the world – I was the only speaker from England or Wales at that conference to support the setting up of the Scottish Socialist Party which now has six members of the Scottish Parliament). I have spent much of that time on Grafton Ward at Manchester Royal Infirmary, which has a free full-size pool table – I have also spent a lot of time on Brook Ward now has one too; previously it had a smaller table in which it was much harder to pot balls and performance at it was much more random.
We had quite a large number of pool competitions on Grafton Ward, but I only won the last one – previously my subconscious was overriding my conscious attempts to play well in order to pretend that my model of the world was inferior to other people on the ward. Similarly, I managed to lose a tennis match by two sets to one to my father, despite the fact that he hardly plays the sport – to illustrate the fact that I can play it very well when I am so inclined, I aimed at and hit the post at the end of the net during that tennis match!
When my ex-best friend Julian Beard (aka Jules, who is a Tory and learned to speak hypnotically on the phone, probably at an MI5 training centre, and who I have now cut off all links with) first suggested that I went on a skiing holiday, I was not very keen due to the fact that it is seen as a middle class sport. However, better paid workers can afford such holidays and they are not that much more expensive than holidays in the sun. I first did a bit of skiing when I lived in Sweden, between when I was four and six years old, and did a bit more on one occasion when there was a lot more when there was a lot of snow in Penarth – doing a bit of downhill skiing in the nearby Cosmeston park, but the hill was not very high and having to go to the top again without a ski-lift made it a lot less fun than the several occasions on which I visited a ski resort.
I first travelled on ski-lifts on a visit to the USA, after booking my first proper skiing holiday in Austria, where a British member of Militant’s sister organisation (then called Labor Militant) drove me to a ski resort – it is much more of a working class sport over there than in the UK due to the proximity of resorts to cities. At first, I went hurtling down the mountainside, which is a very dangerous thing to do, leading to me falling down a lot and crashing into the odd other skier (and can get you banned from resorts), but I hadn’t been taught any other way of skiing! However, I had a ski lesson in the afternoon, which meant I didn’t start in the lowest class when I had lessons in Austria. We had a really good rep who also did ski guiding, and took us on a trip to another resort on one of the days – we completed a route which was aimed at more experienced skiers and had some ‘black runs’ (the hardest category of piste) on it including with mogul fields (where skiers repeatedly following others’ tracks lead to many bumps). The Austrian resort that we stayed in was quite small, and I was really chuffed at completing its only black run (which was particularly difficult because it had a lot of ice on it) without falling over, on the final day.
Although Julian came on my first skiing holiday, I usually went with a mutual friend (who has asked me to use a pseudonym so I refer to as Fraser James), and a variable group of other friends (particularly Janet and Chris Youde). Whereas Julian’s acts generally dented my self-confidence, Fraser did the opposite. Although openly a Tory, and somebody who has made a lot of money by gambling on the stock market (and now invests in gold due to the stock market doing badly as the forces of socialism have got into a stronger position in society) and also ‘carpet-bagging’ (getting loads of money very easily by converting building societies into banks and doing similar things with insurance companies) along with Julian, I have often regarded him as a good friend and socialist in disguise. See my Banks & Building Societies page for more information about carpet-bagging.
This page is not yet finished. I want to put some more information here about other sports I can play, as well as the games I am best at (bridge, chess and scrabble).
