JUST had the most fantastic two weeks on tour in the North of England and Germany with my band Barnstormer and our Brighton ska mates Too Many Crooks, and the morning after a lovely gig celebrating the opening of the brand new fans’ clubhouse at FC St Pauli in Hamburg I wrote a poem to sum up how I feel about my life right now.  
 
As the world gets crappier, I get happier. It may be irrational, but I hope it goes national. (That wasn’t the poem. This is).
 
FULLY CHARGED
 
Southwick
Marple
Stourbridge
Dumfries 
Bute 
Glasgow
Ossett
Southwick 
two days off
Essen
St Pauli...
and today 
Osnabrück. 
 
67.
Still a force of nature 
with its attendant irritations
for those close to me 
but I do need enough sleep now
and I don’t always get it. 
But last night 
after a wonderful gig 
among great friends 
in my second football home
I plugged in my phone charger 
and slept for eight hours solid.
Now we’re both fully charged.
100%.
And all I want now
is three points at Bournemouth 
a great gig in Osnabrück
and for Storm Bert to go to the pub
before the ferry tomorrow
back home to Robina.
 
Two of my three wishes were granted: Brighton won at Bournemouth, the gig in Osnabruck was fantastic, but Bert wreaked havoc with the ferry home and we had to be pulled in by a tiny tug. I’m from a port town and understand these things... but what they did was still incredible and a tribute to the bravery of the RNLI and coastguard who go to the aid of, to quote a hymn for the first time in my 13 years as a columnist on this paper, “those in peril on the sea.”
 
When Truss wrecked the economy with her ludicrous budget costing us all upwards of £40 billion, the Daily Mail headline was “At last — a real Tory budget.” When Starmer makes a tiny, indeed microscopic, City-sanctioned attempt at alleviating an infinitesimal bit of the crippling inequality in the UK by increasing a few taxes they, and their revolting press cohorts, start crying and join the ludicrous Musk — who should be declared persona non grata here and have his X certificate of a platform unceremoniously shut — in a pantomime general election petition. 
 
OK, Starmer’s targeting the wrong people — it should be the super rich, the non-doms, the banker leeches, the oligarchs who are first in line. 
 
But if this token effort on his part unleashes such a torrent of hatred, imagine what would happen under a proper socialist government. The gullible poor stirred up by the greedy rich to attack their own kind: same as it ever was. The tragedy is that, given what has happened so far under this government, so many on the left have lost the will to defend it. I will. It is useless, but far, far better than any of the alternatives currently on offer. And that is a tragedy in itself.
 
Really pleased that we who have stood in the North Stand at Brighton since we got our new stadium at Falmer (that’s what we campaigned for and that’s what some of us still call it!) are finally now going to have official safe standing from next season. 

All-seater stadia should never have been introduced in the first place: their imposition was based on the Taylor Report, which was itself based on the disgusting Sun front page editorial lying about Liverpool fans’ behaviour at Hillsborough and on Thatcher’s loathing of football as part of working-class culture. 
 
Less pleased about the latest modern football TV bollocks. Next week we were due to play Fulham on Tuesday 3 and Leicester on Saturday 7, and secure in the knowledge that neither of those would be picked up by TV even given our current elevated status I booked four Midlands gigs: Birmingham Kitchen Garden Café next Wednesday, Cambridge  Devonshire Arms Thursday, Derby Victoria Inn Friday and Leicester Real Ale Classroom on Saturday.
 
Then Fulham got moved to Thursday (Thursday football is as unnatural as a double-headed flounder) and Leicester to Sunday, which is when me and my band Barnstormer are doing our big 30th anniversary celebration matinee in London at the Dublin Castle — so I’m missing BOTH. Bollocks. Please come to the gigs and cheer me up.

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