Tsar Quality

Dear Tsar Alexander III - a pox on your pogroms.
Kicking the Solomons family out of Russia turns out not to have been such a bad move after all. We haven't done too badly since the 1880s when we arrived in London, around the same time as the formation of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. A coincidence? I think not, my friends, I think not.
Of course, if we'd stayed who knows - I might now own Chelsea FC and the biggest, most opulent boat in the world. But hey, I'm not complaining. I never did like vulgarity. Or big boats.
Now, your Tsarness, we have the rare spectacle of a Solomons at university. Yes my eldest, the one who hates me blogging about her, did brilliantly in her A Levels.
I feel like putting on a video of Fiddler on the Roof and blubbing at the bit when they sing Sunrise Sunset.
Failing that I may get out her old baby photographs and coo over them.
The Daily Telegraph and David Starkey may like to note that she got top grades despite coming from what is called a broken home - though since her parents divorced she has grown up in a largely stable environment anyway. She lives 100 odd miles away so as hard as I try, I haven't been around as much as I would have liked though I don't think I've been an absent father either.
Also, Starkey, Melanie Phillips et al may like to note that she has gone through the state education system and been subject to that horrid nihilistic rap music that has turned the youth of this country into a mass of rioting troublemakers. I wonder what excuse David Starkey has for the rioters of 1981 incidentally - the incendiary lyrics of Ultravox, the rabble rousing call to arms of This Ole House by Shakin' Stevens (the dropping of the 'g' could be seen as an act of rebellion.) Mind you, if someone Facebooked Shuddup You Face during the riots they'd probably get four years.
Either way it's left me beaming with pride though I can't overdo the smug bit as I suspect that what she has done has little to do with genes and more to do with hard work, and that makes me even more proud.
Because that comes down to her and not us. And she has chosen her own path.
My daughter is about to embark on a physics course at Manchester, where Brian Cox teaches - so she will continue to be influenced by rubbish pop music in some form or other it seems (I mean Prof Cox rather than Manchester incidentally).
Physics, where the hell does that come from? Not from her parents. We're both journalists and think Higgs Boson sounds like a character from Star Trek. Again, hard work and an independent streak.
Besides, the way journalism is going, I'm rather relieved she hasn't chosen that particular long and winding road.
Her mum went to university but not her dad. Nor his dad. Nor his dad before him - the humble hosier Israel Solomons of Sidney Street, E1. And his dad before him was a Russian anarchist so I'm assuming he didn't either. Both my brothers left school at 16 though one did later discover university as an alternative to work so spent around 10 years doing a thesis on life after death.
But now my daughter is going and I feel fit to bust.
However, I must issue an apology. For the last 30 years since I got two Ds and a U (Unclassified) in my A Levels, I may have mistakenly given the impression that academic study is for nerds and A Levels are just pieces of paper which have become progressively easy to attain and are a poor substitute to the university of life, the school of hard knocks and, in the words of Blackadder, the kindergarten of getting the shit kicked out of you.
Some may also have assumed that comments like 'you only have to spell your name right to get a degree' suggested I somehow didn't value the important contribution that academic qualifications offered to making our younger generations more rounded human beings able to shape society in the future.
Though it stands to reason that the current generation of 18-year-olds - whether or not they are going to university - will one day rule the world and there is a good chance they will do a much better job of it than our lot.
A degree may still be four years away but as far as I'm concerned the honours already belong to her and every other teenager who managed to get into university today.
And that is despite all attempts by the current administration to make further education so elitist that thousands who have worked hard for seven years and passed their A Levels still don't have the same choices that were available just a year ago.
Anyway that's all academic now....cheers, Solly