I
guess I should pause a moment before embarking in this landmark Chronicle 200,
the latest in a series intended to
celebrate my entry into my Tenth Decade of life. I should warn my readers that
although they can take the number of my Chronicles seriously, the other number,
Log 765 is just strictly something notional that I use to help me keep track of
the saved Chronicles, a number that otherwise has no real meaning in itself.
I began this blog, as it is now
called, in 1996, just as a place to sound off on, and from the first I
determined I would never spend or make any money out of it. I have stuck at
least to that determination --- not that anyone has ever offered me any sort of
remuneration, and so, come to think of it, perhaps knowing how unlikely it is that any one would
offer to put money into Boyce’sPaper, that is probably why I made such a noble
declaration to myself about abstaining from monetary reward. Just another well-meant
but basically ill-conceived attempt to give myself some airs and graces. A hypocrite to the manner born!
I have no idea how many pieces I have
written since 1996. If one took a notional daily column as the maximum, I would
have written more than 8,000, but I know that an average would probably be more
likely to lie somewhere between two or three a week, because, after all, I have
had longish periods when I have never written anything. But three a week, on
average would have produced some 186 Chronicles, rather than 200, and I do have
to admit my pace has been quicker since I invented the Chronicles as an excuse
to keep me going.
Okay, enough of that.
Last night I had the ineffable
pleasure of resuming my viewing of Peaky
Blinders that inimitable British serial about underworld life in
Birmingham: it began at the end of World War I, with a poor, sharper-than-a-needle-family
which arose from the Romany culture, whose characteristics they continued to adhere to as they got into
the struggle to take over management of all the small-time, gang-related crookery
offered by the recently industrialized city of Birmingham, for many years a
city that attracted to itself large numbers of drifting impoverished people who,
once they had got a foothold in the city, were constantly on the lookout for
avenues towards what might be loosely called self-improvement.
From the beginning it was a family
affair, starting with the father, and then the sons, their spouses or girl
friends, some of their aunts and
uncles--- one in particular, Aunt Polly, who became the treasurer of he outfit
--- in all, a tight-knit group of people on rhe make.
When Winston Churchill as Home
Minister discovered that a consignment of arms intended for Libya had gone
missing from Belfast, he sent over to Birmingham from Belfast a chief inspector
of police, played by Sam Neill, to clean up the place. Thus, young Tommy
Shelby, who had rapidly grown to leadership of the gang, was in the eye of the
authorities at the highest level right from the beginning. Episode 1 ends on the
day the gang was set to take over a rival gang’s betting pitches at the
Worcester races. In other words, they were in a small way, but growing.
In the second series set in 1921 and
1922, we observe the gang expanding from its Birmingham home towards both the
north and the south --- the series begins and ends at Epsom Downs on Derby Day.
(I can add a little reminder here of the traditional nature of British life,
because when I started my assignment as London correspondent of The Montreal Star in 1960, four decades
later, thr first story I wrote was about Derby Day, still with its firm grip on
the British upper class imagination.
Nothing like kicking off a new job with a good cliché!).
In series three they are going international,
largely at the instance of Aunt Polly, who hires a Russian painter to paint her.
And series four, the last we have been allowed to see over here until this
week, covers the period of the 1926 general .strike, and it ends with the
unlikely elevation of Tommy to Parliament as a rabble-rousng Labour member. All
I need say about series five, which I am almost halfway through watching, is
that it begins on October 29, 1929, the day on which the stock market crashed
in New York, and ends on December 7 1930, with a rally by the fascist leader
Oswald Mosley, where Tommy makes clear he wants nothing to do with him. I can reveal, since it comes at the very
beginning of this series, that the crash has wiped out the formal weallh
accumulated over the years by the Peaky Blinders gang, leaving Tommy wondering
why his younger brother did not follow his advice, given a few days before, to
sell. Tommy’s revenge, as we have seen at pivotal moments during his career, is
usually swift and brutal.
The series picks up one of the favourite
themes of the whole tale, which is that many younger members are born into the
clan, but not all take to it kindly to their method of doing business, and Tommy’s
powers of persuasion are many, to enlist them as loyal, but usually inadequate
members of the team. This is shown by
the recalcitrant behaviour of Tommy’s youngest, who, when summoned to do what
he is told, utters the devastating rejoinder, “You kill horses, and you kill
people. They all say that at school.” He
had got the information about the dead horse because Tommy had spoken about it in
the Romany language which the kid had picked up enough of to enable him to put
two and two together. In other words, a smart little kid, once Tommy can get
him straightened out.
Well, good luck Peaky Blinders fans.
It’s looking good after the first two of the six episodes in the new series.
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