An outrage against simple men
This evening I will begin publishing a series of articles written by my Dad, Tony Jordan, a history of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. It’s a very personal account: Dad’s father miraculously survived one of the bloodiest landings of this initiative, unlike the majority of his companions, who were mown down in minutes. The tale of intertwined lives is as fascinating as it is horrific: Churchill, the architect of the botched mission; Robert Jordan, a foot-soldier in the Royal Munster Fusiliers; and a young officer named Nightingale, the uncomfortable interface between Whitehall’s strategy and the grim reality of a Turkish beach.
I’m very grateful to my Dad for writing this and for allowing me to read and publish it, and also to my old history teacher Chris Holland, for giving Dad the impetus to turn decades of study into a finished article.
“A record made from nothing but other records'” writes Frank Broughton on his djhistory.com site. The innovations that this record introduced have become so commonplace that it almost sounds clichéd: the Good Times riff, the scratching and ‘found’ recordings. But try to imagine this crackling from the speakers in 1981. This is where it started baby-boy!
You’re looking at a fragment of our weekly shopping list. Note the colour-coding for different sections of the store, the aisle numbers in the left-hand column, even the sub-aisles denoted by a proto Dewey decimal system of groceries. I know what you’re thinking. Hold fast those cries of “anal retentive”. Titter-ye-not at this most un J-M like behaviour. This is the work of my beloved and I am its beneficiary. Each week, Caroline studiously prepares this list, and I carry it to Sainsbury’s to perform a deft and streamlined weekly shop. I sleekly glide through the aisles like German engineering, picking items hither and thither without a care to furrow my brow.
Several years ago Caroline and I visited The Gambia. Our friend Jo took us up-country by Land Rover, stopping at the town of Farafenni. Farafenni sits at the crossroads of ancient trade routes, and is host to a market, one of the most important in West Africa. It attracts traders from all over the region: the lanky Wolof from Senegal, Fulani, Mandinka and the blue-hooded and cloaked Tuareg from the North. Stalls spread far into the distance, selling fabrics, spices, a few scrawny vegetables and some livestock. Diesel may have largely replaced the camel, indeed the nearby crossing of the Gambia river resembles Calais in a port strike, but otherwise the same scene must have existed for centuries.