The Only Thing I knew How to Do

The National Express coach rumbled on, passing row after row of squat red-brick terraces, bordering hills and moors, a northern landscape I knew from TV – a world of sixties’ working class heroes, the backdrop to A Taste of Honey, a world in which every Smiths’ song was set*, a world of Coronation Street. 

Through North Manchester into West Yorkshire – visions of Kes and Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Last of the Summer Wine and Kitchen Sinks.   Rolling on to Leeds, threading from urban industrial into a rural-suburb fringe.  It was a magical journey, pregnant with anticipation.

At seventeen, I recall this coach journey well.  Leaving from Chorlton Street Bus Station in Manchester – a thriving hive of activity and bustle and dereliction in spring 1989 – to visit my Leeds Poly-attending girlfriend, with whom I was very much in love/infatuated. One of those phrases was true. Which one depends on my mood.   

(Later the Poly would become the Metropolitan University, a gift to little turds like me who attended the Uni and would deliberately pronounce it MetroPOLItan University whenever we met anyone who attended it. Suffice to say, the urbanity and hilarity of this was not shared).

The number of times I set off from that bus station on some adventure or other I cannot count, but Chorlton Street was the stepping-off point for a new world on so many occasions.  It was also notorious for prostitution on the edge of the gay village, so was probably to stepping-off point for much more than a weekend in Yorkshire, I suspect.  But for me, it was a departure from the everyday, the gateway to a world I knew was out there, and which I desperately wanted to see, to be in, to be of.

The excitement I recall from those heady days of ’89, those journeys into both a new world and adulthood – arriving alone into a new city, armed with a ten pack of B&H, enough money to get pissed cheaply and perched on the edge of time, ready for the weekend ahead  - was an electric excitement. That uncertainty of what would happen stirred in with the certainty that something would definitely happen accompanied me for decades whenever I arrived somewhere for the first time. These trips to Leeds, visiting friends at different Universities, moving to New Zealand. Even heading to Liverpool for a night out wasn’t as depressing as I expected. **

And whether I travelled alone or in a group, solo or half a duo – the trip was still stuffed with the possibility of the new – new experiences, new routines, new people.  

In the last two years for reasons I’m not getting into***I’ve found myself travelling on my own a lot more, and initially that frisson I’d experienced earlier in life resurfaced. Life was there for the drinking, the dancing, the easy romancing.

Unfortunately, it’s not turned out that way.  I may be, as it were, back.  I may walk like a panther, dance like tigers on Vaseline, shine like stars. It’s not enough.

Things have changed since I was last single. Or, more specifically, I’m not in my twenties now – a time when other twenty-somethings gravitate towards you when you’re out on your own. A time when a new posse of life-long friends*** forms within days,sometimes hours, of disembarkation.  

I’m now well into my forties, and almost all other solo travellers are under forty and look at a forty-something sitting and sipping alone with suspicion, and almost all other forty-something travellers have a gaggle of offspring in tow, and are doing that family-holiday thing that always looks like it’s not enjoyed till everyone is home and can safely reminisce without dealing with the actual mechanics of the trip.

It’s very much a first -world problem, I’m aware. But it’s cemented something I’ve suspected for a long time – opportunities for making great memories recede as we get older.  That coach journey at 17 was more of a life-changing event, despite the fact that it was only an hour away from home, than the majority of travel I’ve made since.  

What should I make of this? I guess it’s that if you’re young, make those great memories - you’ll need them to look back on fondly when the opportunities of new ones narrow. And if you’re in the same state as me, don’t feel bad about looking back, but keep moving forward. Your best most acute and formidable experiences may be behind you, but opportunities narrow, not disappear.

Or, in the words of a great poet :Keep on Keepin’ On. It’s that or stop, and there’ll be plenty time for that later. Plenty of time. 

* In my head The Smiths’ landscape was a mythical land of far north Manchester bordering on Lancashire,  despite the fact they were not only from the same part of Manchester as me, one of the their songs was specially about the Cemetery next to my house.  I could not marry the worlds of reality and the romantic. I suspect this is a character flaw which transcends my understanding of The Smiths and pervades my entire life. It’d explain a lot, not least my belief that things might get better, and it’ll all work out in the end.

 **It was worse, but gave me confirmation bias so I was at least grateful for that.

***Other than to say that, I, of course, am a blameless angel in the whole car-crash of life.

****By ‘life-long’ I mean anything from a few days to, sometimes, years.  Mostly a few days, tho, tbh.

When Turkeys Vote

I got back from a last-blowout-before-term-starts holiday in Turkey yesterday – ten days of blissful sunshine, the thick air of a humid Mediterranean climate and, annoyingly, a complete ban on Wikipedia.

I discovered this while trying to look up the details the sex lives of Roman Emperors*, only to be faced with the Page Not Found of information tyranny.  A little digging allowed me to discover that President Erdogan, Turkey’s contribution to world leaders who really shouldn’t be, had banned Wikipedia some years ago during his crackdown on journalists and critics, because they’d been 'spreading fake news'. The equivalent of the kid who’s shit at football kicking the ball onto a motorway and then claiming they would have scored four if there was still a ball.

Naturally this led me to question whether I should really be holidaying in a country which has treated government critics so badly and, more importantly, which doesn’t let you find out whether Caligula had really been shagging his sisters. But, as I was already there, I didn’t feel I had too much of a choice, and, besides, Turkey is still a democracy and Erdogan was democratically elected. He can still be democratically defeated.

It might seem to me to be fucking insane that people will vote to have their rights eroded, but God hasn’t died and appointed me his successor, so while I may disapprove, I’m not actually in a position to smite and suchlike.**

However, too many times in recent months I’ve been forced into exclaiming What-the-fuck-is-this-insanity while pondering such topics as why can’t I search up if Nero was giving ponies handjobs, whether there will be food post-Brexit, and what exactly is VAR for other than pissing me off when I watch Man City play.

Scratch that – too many times in recent years, not months,  I’ve been forced to exclaim this, And by exclaim, I mean utter with tones of disdain and disbelief akin to those Judas must have uttered on entering the afterlife and discovering he’d been the victim of some weird father-son powerplay.

In recent memory events have occurred which have both defied all logic, but also forced me to question my long-standing belief that humanity, while prone to stupidity, is fundamentally decent.  I’m sticking with part one of that argument, but part two has been tested to its limits.

There was the proto-period of Are You Having a Fucking Laugh, when the pig-head-fucker was voted into power for a second term, despite applying primary-school maths to the complex global economic situation of the Credit Crunch. Then we had the This Doesn’t Surprise Me All That Much Anymore vote to leave the EU, for such nebulous reasons as ‘Taking back our laws’ and ‘ To stop Turkey’, along with classics along the lines of ‘You see that there Brussels’ and ‘Maastricht was essentially a Trojan Horse which has resulted in a lack of reciprocity in Pan-European infrastructural support programmes’. 

I’m making some of this up, but that was pretty much the gist of every conversation I had with the Brexo-isolationists. Apart from the last one, obvs. There are polysyllabic words.

The Are You Fucking Kidding Me factor clearly took a major step into the realms of What The Fuck is Wrong with You People when The Tango King of Combover was made The Man with the Nuclear Codes.  

I can understand, if not accept, when politicians I despise are elected. I can even understand that sometimes the electorate does something unhinged or radical as a protest at the inequality and ineptitude of the status quo. But this decision seemed to be the political equivalent of burning your house down because you’ve got a few ants in the kitchen.  Yeah, the ants are gone, but so has the kitchen.

And now the house is just a pile of smouldering embers. Cheers, dickheads.

As does the US of A, so must England follow. Thus we’ve gone and got ourselves a PG Wodehouse comedy villain of our own at the head of the government.  Except it’s not funny.  File under Dystopic Catastrophe, not Light Edwardian Comedy.  Less Wooster, more What The Fuck is This This Shit?

We stand on a precipice, while this cabal of shitsticks, masquerading as a legitimate UK government, try to override democracy, proroguing parliament to avoid debate, dissembling with every slithering syllable uttered and even threatening to not recognise changes in the law***.  

Is this the ‘sovereignty’ we were supposed to be getting back? Is this the Better Off Out? No, this is the kind of behaviour that Disney villains engage in before the Forest Animals all band together and stop the evil princes from selling the country for a bag of gold by utilising a couple of magic beans and a whole lot of gumption.

Unfortunately, our Forest Friends are being thwarted by the stupid donkey Swinson who refuses to help because she would do anything to stop the evil princes, but she’s secretly a Meatfloaf fan.  

Anyway, my guilt about holidaying in a country with an iffy political situation was assuaged as I watched the country I actually live in enter the We Do What We Want Peasants, Bow competition.  I’m not really in a position to judge other countries when my own homeland is emerging as a bit of political farce.

So I enjoyed the sun, and cheap beer, and food which Turkey claims is Turkish but Greece claims is Greek and accepted that I’d be returning to situation that I desperately hope is sorted, but fear is going to prove a victory for fuckwittery and wilful ignorance.

But remember, Quitters, you voted for this shit. When food runs out, were eating you first.

*Academic curiosity, not uber-vintage porn.

**There’s a joke about Turkey’s voting for Brexit to be shoehorned in here somewhere, but I fear it would be a pun for the sake of it, so, in preparation for the everyone-for themselves, bestial wilderness I forsee if this shitcanery actually  goes ahead, you can make it yourselves. 

*** Yes, Michael Gove, I’m looking at you, you opportunistic sock-puppet.

To a Welsh one, wherever she may be

Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1994, late October, and the balm of September has started to yield to a bite in the air, and the freedom of summer has given way to the impending approach of the cold cosiness of winter, with the promise of red wine by crackling fires and the crown of Christmas on the horizon.

On the edge of the city centre, in a square under the gaze of the imposing main University Building - which resembles a 1970s industrial complex more than a seat of learning - a young women and a young man - in many ways a boy and a girl, really - stand by the ruins of some ancient Greek temple, or some medieval Byzantine church - it’s not really clear which. It is a tender moment as, in a half-embrace, they stare into each others’ eyes, and she tells him she could fall for him.

It’s the happiest he thinks he’s ever been, and he responds that he already has fallen for her.

This is the first week of their romantic relationship, but they‘ve spent the previous six weeks in each others’ company nightly, and it had been brewing for a while - long goodnight hugs which seemed to least for the best part of an hour, evenings sat on the seawall sharing bottles of cheap wine, bitching harmlessly about Belgians - before they’d finally kissed a week earlier after a night on the piss. And he’s sure of one thing - he’s falling in love and he hopes it never stops.

It did, seven months later, after she’d moved back to England and he’d stayed behind. It was a painful break-up, but they were at the age where you get up, cry and drink for a few weeks, and  then move on. Which is how it played out. But rarely was there a moment like that again.

I write this because I’ve semi-accidentally found myself on holiday in Thessaloniki, the first time since I left* in 1995, and, yesterday, completely accidentally, happened upon the square. It was like a smack in the face with a Tardis made of love and tears.

I’d planned to visit the square as part of my two-day nostalgia-fest before heading to the beach anyway, but on my own terms and in my own time.  But it also wasn't as I remember.

The square is smaller than I recollect, there are more trees, fewer ruins.

And I’m no longer full of the joys and hope of youth, but the vinegar and pessimism of age.

Imagine Romeo survived but became a Victor Meldrew, although with more swearing and fewer cardigans. And whereas VM is riled by the minutiae of the modern world, I’m shaking angry fists into the gap left by childood lies like God and meritocracy, a gap filled, paradoxically, by the abyss of futility. It can add a band of black to the rainbow of life, I must admit.

Enough of the square is as remembered to open the wounds of wistful longing, but so many differences to remind me that memory is less reliable than I was in that relationship.

In fact, despite the fact I lived here for almost a year, my memory of the city as a whole and the experience of it this time are so different they could  compete with FYRE in terms of the publicity/lived experience divide.

There are lots of details as I remember them. Thankfully, or I’d have to finally face my slippery grip on reality. But in many ways it’s like visiting a completely new city.

And it’s made me a more tolerant person. Tolerant of Brexiters who long for the Britain of yesteryear. Tolerant of all those people who post When I Was A Child Everything Was Better memes.

Because it’s clear the mind lies. We remember things as we want, to confirm what we want to believe. We romanticise the past when the present doesn’t deliver.

And, it seems to me, as we fall headlong into the abyss of Brexit, it is a love of Britain coloured by childhood memories of the Famous Five, all-white public schools and the innocence of the biscuit game, but forgetting the horrors of the Glitter Band, repeat episodes of Duty Free and the culinary assault of a Vesta curry*** that drives the ERG and the various other gammons who can be found screeching ‘Brexiiiiit’, masturbating furiously over old photos of Maggie T while smearing fistfulls of Jam Roly Poly over their fat, pinky-red bodies.

Either that, or they’re actually mentally-ill fascist apologists. Either makes sense.

*Yeah, I was the boy. Even I had a soul once.**

** Metaphorically

***Look them up if you have to. And shudder.

underthechemist: The Vegan Wars

underthechemist: The Vegan Wars: It’s the middle of January, and the disappointment of Christmas has started to fade into a nostalgia of  Yule memories founded on a handfu...

The Vegan Wars

It’s the middle of January, and the disappointment of Christmas has started to fade into a nostalgia of  Yule memories founded on a handful of bearable holiday moments, as the subconscious shoves the actual reality of the grey seasonal dullness, shit TV and an endless stream of wasted, hungover days to the mental cupboard of forgetfulness.  Trees and decorations have been stashed away, presents have finally been posted for sale on Ebay, the last of the Christmas booze is losing its charm *and the daunting prospect of surviving January and February lingers on the horizon like a large mushroom shape over Hiroshima.  The third flu-cold of the season has hit, and having been forced to enter the Season of Goodwill, people are now looking to start beef over chattin’ shit, as they say down the ends.

A digital skirmish seems to have broken out between those promoting or engaging in Veganuary – which given the ongoing rush towards environmental meltdown we seem to be engaged in seems quite a sensible thing to do – and those who belong to the Anti-Snowflake Uber-Snowflakes whose mission in life is to be offended by people being offended.  Message boards are full of snides about I’m Sick of Vegans Telling Me They’re Vegan I’m Going to Eat a Lamb. Or, in other words, people sharing their dietary preferences while complaining about others who do so.

I’m very familiar with this conversation. I became a vegetarian at sixteen, troubled by the fact that I was eating dead things. It seemed at odds with my Catholic upbringing where I’d been told, in equal measure, that all life was sacred, that God was a loving God who loved all God’s creatures, and don’t be soft son, of course God wants you to kill and eat living beings. After all, Jesus fed kebabs to the disciples. **

I’d given up God long before I’d given up meat. But I’d not given up Catholicism. You can’t. It’d be like trying to give up breathing.  I firmly believe there are three states of being you can never leave: being a Catholic, being Mafiosi and being a Goth.  You might think you’ve left, but you never really do.  Even now, if I visit a Protestant Cathedral, it’s a nice building for the superstitious. If I visit a Catholic Cathedral, it’s still for the superstitious, but it’s a nice church.

What ensued following my rejection of eating corpses were years of ‘Why are you a Vegetarian’? from random strangers, work colleagues and doctors.  It’s not like I wore a badge, it’d just come in conversations like ‘ Why are you eating Quorn’? and ‘Why do you seem morally superior?’.

I’ve always found it a bit fucking bizarre.  Sometimes the conversations were prompted by genuine curiosity, but over eighty-percent of the time it was just a pre-cursor to a dissection of all of my other moral failings. If I said I didn’t like killing and eating things I’d be questioned about wearing leather shoes. I’d point out that the shoes were on my feet and that there was no immediate intention of eating them because I’m not from Stockport and can afford actual food.  If I said it was for personal preference, then I’d be subjected to a lecture about my shortcomings as a nutritional scientist.  Eventually I opted for the excuse that I hate all animals and that there’s no way I’m putting any of those disgusting little bastards in my body.  This generally stumped people, and they’d fuck off confused.  

Which, to be honest, is how I like most of my conversations with casual acquaintances to end. It saves years of unnecessary politeness. 

I’m not a vegetarian anymore. Not for any moral or health reasons, but because I like shellfish, and have no moral compass.  However, I’m pretty sure I’m doing the wrong thing and would like to wish anyone who is vegan, vegetarian or temporary engaged with these the best.  Fuck gammon-eating gammons and their dumbass questions.  I suspect they’re enraged because they know they’re wrong, or because they associate it with being young, smart, hip and sexy. ****Everything they’re not.

And finally -  for the last fucking time - gammons of the world: No -  I do not miss bacon sandwiches. I didn’t even like them when I ate meat. Corpse and ketchup sandwich, anyone? Breakfast should be a Pot Noodle, or nothing at all. 

And on that note, it’s Chicken and Mushroom Pot Goodness time…****

 * Mulled wine with an Advocaat chaser, anyone?

**I might not remember this conversation accurately.

*** I'm assuming this is the case as I was the embodiment of this quartet when I was 16. Or at least, that's how I remember it. There was a lot of booze. 

*** *Chicken and Mushroom flavour . 100% vegetarian, 100% flavour

The Kids are Alright

Dion, of and the Belmots fame, wondered why he had to be a teenager in love. He might as well have asked why he had to be teenager with spots. The two things  - teenagism and love, not love and spots – go hand in hand like young lovers  skipping delightfully through a sun-kissed summer meadow, awash with daisies, birdsong and promise.

I’ve been reminded of this classic slice of teen-angst tunage this week, as I’ve been surrounded by a herd of teenagers for four days, and the hormonal-emotional complex has been spinning and clashing around the air, dancing the dance of youthful confusion.  It’s been most amusing to watch, like a retired footballer who can enjoy the game from the sidelines. Teenage love in full throttle is a battle to behold.

There is the obvious rebuff that it’s not actually love, its puppy-love, or a chemical inkick of hormones driving the festering impulse to pair up and procreate. But I’m with Donny Osmond on this one*.  There are as many different kinds of love as there are people who exist, as there are moments in time, as there are reasons why Coldplay suck.

During my cautious teenage years, my friends and I would have degrees of romantic attachment from ‘I like you’ to ‘I’m in like with you’ and then a quantum leap to ‘I love you’ reaching perfection with ‘I’m in love with you’ and culminating in ‘If you leave me I will end the universe and everyone in it.’  It was generally understood that this last stage was a stage too far.  We’d been sold the idea of the True Love, and the quest for perfection made us cynical and reserved. Well, that and experience.

I’d like to offer a retrospective Fuck That to the lie we were sold. The idea of True Love belongs in Shrek with talking donkeys and midget princes.  The only difference between the teenage love and adult love is that the emotions tend to be less ephemeral, less unstable. And, I suppose more importantly, reciprocal.  Sometimes, anyway. Not for stalkers, obvs.

But a feeling is a feeling is a feeling. The teenage love I felt for Melody, a girl I met swimming, was no less serious to me at thirteen, than the emotions I’ve felt as an adult. Even if it lasted a couple of days before I forgot about her, and later discovered she was called Melanie, and I’d just misheard her in the five minutes of conversation against a background of squealing and splashing.  The point is the feeling was felt. It existed. It can say ‘I was’.

Similarly, the heartbreak in my later teens of being dumped in a letter ripped my universe into shreds as much as anything in my later years. The difference is that it was patched together, with only slight damage**, after a couple of weeks rather than the month/year lifespan of a dead adult relationship.

Obviously, the love we feel as adults tends to be more discriminating, and as we age, and grow, we hone our emotional focus, and the love we feel is more special because it is much more exclusive.  The primary focus of attraction is no longer proximity, but compatibility and connection.  Which is probably why it generally lasts more than a few hours. A tortoise of emotion rather than a mayfly.

And we may look back and grade our loves on a lovescale, and we may look back at our teens with a wry detachment. But those years forged our resilience, our fears, our dreams.  The elation and drives felt, the utter wretched destruction rained upon us, are no less serious for their transience.  As anyone who has taken acid will confirm, the brevity of a time period is not relative to its intensity.  And, like a drug, love fucks up the mind.

So, teenagers of the world, if you feel it, follow it.  I see your struggles, your confusion, your anger, your pain, your dreams and recognise its reality.  I’ll offer only one piece of advice. When it gets too much, listen to this, and remember, one day you’ll be twenty, and someone else will be in your place.

* And nothing else. Big-toothed, smiling moron.
**Debatable.

Flying in the Wind

There’s been a bit of a digital ding-dong on the Facebook page of my local community over the last week. Insults have been swapped, shots fired, accusations made. The normal equilibrium which suffuses the air has been sullied, poisoned even, by the battle lines which have been drawn in the virtual sand.   The whole sordid affair seems to threaten to spill over into fighting in the streets, pitchforks drawn, knuckles flexed and brains redundant.

I’d like to claim some kind of moral high ground, but I've been in there, keyboard swinging like Macbeth’s sword, verbally slashing this way and that with carefree abandon.  My feet have been firmly planted in one camp, and my oh-so-witty* barbs and snides have been tossed like grenades of intellectual annihilation at my foes.  I chose sides more to have a fight than out of conviction.  It passes the time.

The source of this conflict? Flags. Or, more specifically, flags on poles in the local cemetery. Big, fuck-off flags on big, fuck-off poles, to be more accurate. In recent months there has been a trend for the dear departed to be remembered not just by the time-tested stone marker, a bunch of flowers and the weeping mournful.  It seems that it is also de rigeur to shove a flappy flag on a pole so that anyone within fifteen miles eyeshot** can see the – most commonly – nationality of the deceased. I don’t like them.  It seems I am not alone.

I must admit a bias.  The local cemetery is dear to what remains of my heart. I spent many days in my mid teens wandering its sylvan avenues, listening to The Archers and pretending I was a dweller in a leafy Cotswold village, rather than in a flat, coffee-brown Manchester council estate.  My affair with the cemetery blossomed, and in my later teens many was the evening I could be found drunk in its enclaves, gothing around with my fellows goths.  There are also rumours that it was my venue of choice when guided by the influence of acid, but I refuse to incriminate myself.  Because I may have just thought I’d gone to cemetery when I was , in fact, supine in my room listening to Dark Side of the Moon. Again. And again. And again. 

I was so grateful when CDs came along and I didn’t have to get up to turn the record over half way through.

So, I don’t like graveyard flags.  I find they intrude on the serenity of the place.  The air of quiet, of reflection and escape becomes a carnival of fuckery. .  I don’t give a shit in a doughnut where the deceased come from, or where they've gone.  It’s not my business, and I don’t like it being made my business.

But it transpires the council also don’t like them, and as of today, they are banned.  Any flag on pole must be removed, or it will be forcibly evicted, and sent to a flag refugee camp or somesuch location.

I didn’t read the fine print.

However, there is more at play than an affront to my sense of the aesthetic.  An online petition has surfaced which claims that the council is trying to ban Irish flags.  This is clearly a steaming, moist truckload of runny horseshit.  The council wants to ban, in fact, all flags.  This petition is a low strategy.  It implies that anyone opposed to the flags is a jack-booted English Imperialist who thinks Paddy should know his place.  It’s also brought out the I Blame the Bloody Muslims brigade, who are on half-coherent rants about political correctness gone batshit crazy and how they bet THEY won’t have to take down THEIR flags.

I can almost picture these goons pointing at the horizon, stamping up and down, steam whistling from their ears as they point at the distance shouting, ‘ Them! Them!’ apoplectically.

I don’t think they’ve read even the big print.

And so the lines have been drawn.

And I chose a side.  Because of this petition. Prior to this, I had had my reservations about the flags as outlined, but I take objection to lots of things, and if people acted on my list of complaints, there’d be no end of unforeseen consequences.  I’d like to get rid of slugs, Fray Bentos pies and yellow cars, but I’m sure there are people who would rather die than see this happen. ***

I even have some sympathies.  It’s hardly equitable that if I’m rich I can build an imposing, ostentatious tomb, at a perfect height for a drunk teenager to climb up and fall off in the early hours, but if I’m not so flash for cash I must restrict my demonstration of mourning.  And while I find them annoying, they’re hardly killing anyone. 

But once the lies are out, it’s hard to maintain sympathy.  Once the raving crazies pin their flag to mast, metaphorically speaking, I’m inclined to explore the options.

And, that, Michael Gove, is why I will be voting to stay in the EU.

* I suspect this is probably how I saw it, rather than how it actually was.  Stella makes everything funnier. Without it a Michael McIntyre gig would be thousands of bewildered, sober adults puzzled at the little fat man talking about how pointless his existence is.

** Like earshot but for eyes. Obvs.

*** Apart form yellow cars. I don’t believe that anyone thinks there a good idea. Not even Bananaman.