Howard Jacobson's Blog

The death of an Italian tailor might not be calamitous in Catania or Cagliari, but the loss to Soho is immeasurable. We don’t have Italian tailors we can spare here. Each day the London district loses a little more of its essential self – to developers, gentrifiers, scaffolders, diggers of trenches for cables we don’t need, cleaners-up and dumbers-down.

Forgive me for writing about a writer I have never read, but the following thoughts have more to do with his example than his words. Sometimes a writer’s life alone can tell a story. But I will, the moment the occasion presents itself, read the The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by the sometime Jewish, sometime Catholic, Austro-Bohemian novelist Franz Werfel.

Forgive me for writing about a writer I have never read, but the following thoughts have more to do with his example than his words. Sometimes a writer’s life alone can tell a story. But I will, the moment the occasion presents itself, read the The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by the sometime Jewish, sometime Catholic, Austro-Bohemian novelist Franz Werfel.

yes they’re all big infants making promises I’d be twice the fool to believe even the one who looks like Gromit’s friend Wallace but we got that wrong a Casanova no one can look into his big brown eyes without falling head over heels and asking to see his manifesto I bet all the girls say show me your manifesto costed he tells me which is more than can be said for any of the other parties but I’m not asking about any of the other parties I tell him looking away so I don’t fall victim to his Casanova charms I’m asking about yours that makes him laugh mine doesn’t do what most manifestos do that’s what he says it doesn’t offer a list of promises so what’s a manifesto for I wonder well that’s easy to answer he answers easily looking me up and down a woman really feels looked at when he does it unlike leaders of the other parties especially the one who’s always offering me beers made of English hops and promising to untax my tampons no thank you not likely soft-lipped Casanova now is another matter persisting that his manifesto answers the questions I’m asking who said I’m asking any questions well we’re answering them whether you’re asking them or not is his answer take the deficit no you take the deficit that’s just what we’re going to do in our party he says take the deficit and stick it which is all right by me I won’t be losing any sleep over any deficit well you should interposes the one with the long forehead from another planet the Mekon was it if you care about the future ha that’s rich coming from you says Casanova what about the health service if you care about what country your children are going to inherit looking at me so now he wants me to have his children which isn’t the worst offer I’ve ever had not the best either under the bedclothes discussing deficits not my idea of a not with either of them certainly not the Mekon who loves his wife so why is he there for me in that case I wonder what she thinks of him telling every man woman and child he’s there for them who does he think he is Big Brother wasn’t he there for us Big Brother Is There For You will he be there when I’m having Casanova’s baby I bet he won’t jealous is my guess wants to be loved always sticking his face into other people’s selfies being there for them and promising the Good Life that doesn’t sound much like my idea of a good life no mention of glorious sunsets and fig trees no kissing under Moorish walls just tax relief and selling people homes they’re already in and you’d think they’d give the earth to get out of the big question is whether he’ll be there for himself come 8 May he’d be better off if you ask me leaving being there to his Chief Whip which is a funny name enough to give a certain sort of woman ideas not me no though I don’t mind admitting a gentle whipping never went but he isn’t that sort of man you can see too busy taking his glasses on and off quizzical with them on kindly with them off which is where they’ve been ever since his party became the protectors of babies and decent hard‑working pensioners from the cradle to the grave the sooner in the grave the better no that’s not fair they don’t want us dead at least not before we’ve voted and paid our taxes which pop-eye Casanova says those with the broadest shoulders have to bear it’s only fair whoever said life was fair but oh I must say I do love broad shoulders whether they’re bearing taxes or just being there who was it now with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen took me back to his mansion he called it not what I’d have called a mansion me neither he said putting a flower from Aldi in my hair but a mansion is what Casanova calls it for tax purposes and you know where the tax will go and when I said I had no idea but I hoped into buying me more expensive flowers he told me it was to give unemployed gay immigrants free kidney transplants so I knew which party leader he’d be voting for not the boyish-looking one with the tousled hair who cosies up to whoever will give him leg room the one who doesn’t think prison is the proper place to keep prisoners presumably wants to put them in mansions

I can’t be the only person to have been hurt last week when the Scottish lawyer Aamer Anwar popped up on Newsnight to dismiss the idea that imams are to blame for persuading Muslim teenagers they’ll have more fun in Raqqa than in Ayia Napa. Who do you think takes any notice of an old man in a beard, he asked. Well let me tell him...

In the weeks preceding the recent Israeli elections, wise and conscientious commentators believed that here was an opportunity to change the game.

At a time when there is much to fear, few to trust, and not a damn thing to believe in, may I hold out a flickering torch of hope. I have struck a symbolic blow. I have said no. En oh – NO! Enough is enough. Enough usernames, enough PINs, but above all enough passwords. Now I expect other victims of the relentless march of online passwords to join me in my campaign. Let’s all say NO TO PASSWORDS.

The other day – and have no fear, this isn’t another Crufts story – I watched a dog go for a last walk with his owner. Don’t ask me how I knew it was his last walk. I could tell, that’s all. Finalities are unmistakable. Perhaps I should have looked away, but neither dog nor owner was aware of me. So my silent requiem was not, I thought, obtrusive.

So how come I’m not the world’s most wanted man? I was thin-skinned, sweet-natured, loving – “a beautiful young man” in every way, my mother remembers – so where did it all go wrong for me?

Nietzsche wasn’t right about everything. “Gott ist tot,” he told us. Wrong. God is still very much with us.