Ebeneezer's Gift

It is sometime suggested that the very rich should pay their slice of the tax burden. That, in a society where people are able to make stupidly large piles of cash, the contribution of those who benefit most should be, equally, the biggest contribution.  This reasonable suggestion is often pursued by the squealing, petulant cries that this is The Politics of Envy. Cries which can be heard all the way from The Carlton Club to The Commons.

Gideon’s been at it again this morning, uttering the bizarre statement that those who see their benefit-scrounging neighbours asleep, as they themselves rise at the crack of sparrows and trudge off to a day's hard work, should be treated fairly. What he means by this is that the sleeping neighbour should be treated more harshly, and that this deceitful act of sophistry will somehow make the world a sunnier, shinier place.  

This is bizarre on many levels, not least because anyone who sees their neighbours sleeping as they are work-bound is either a peeping tom, shagging someone from next door, or has a neighbour passed-out on their front lawn. Only one of those scenarios elicits even a slither of sympathy, and given that the streets and avenues of England aren’t strewn with snoring, vagrant slumberers, I can only assume that Gideon has the first two situations in mind.  I’d hate to live near him.

The real issue, though, isn’t that Mad George thinks that people are shinnying up drainpipes to gaze in anger at the terminally, and temporarily, unemployed – snugly wrapped in their beds of workshy irresponsibility.  The real issue is that that the rich out-of-touch spoilt, sheltered, sniveling, social and economic human failure masquerading a sentient being has decided to address the concerns of these sinister, but employed, voyeurs, by pinning future benefit increases to 1%, well below inflation.

This is the real politics of envy.  Because it makes not a jot of difference to anyone if the out-of-work residents in my ‘hood are getting a rise of three pounds weekly, or one pound a week.  We won’t see any of that money. The taxes we pay won’t decrease. Nurses won’t find the money saved in their paychecks, nor teachers, nor the five-oh. The only effect is that those who are already living at the shittest end of the stick of life will be getting prodded with an even bigger, shittier stick. And those prodding the stick will be getting bigger, pointier, goldier* sticks.

I’ve lived on the dole. In fact, I was brought up on it. It’s wretched. There’s just enough money to survive. The reason people on the dole stay in bed late is because it costs nothing to be asleep, and nothing is pretty much what you can afford.  Besides, TV is utter dross before midday, at which point it becomes just about tolerable. There’s really no point in getting up early if you’re skint and unemployed. Let’s face it, only the criminally insane, and criminally annoying, are keen to be up and about at dawn on a day of no work.

Back to the whingers. There will also be those who peddle the same miserable lies that everyone signing on has Sky, and a mobile phone, and other such luxuries like shoes and a change of socks.  I’d hazard a guess that anyone with Sky, in receipt of benefit, isn't paying for that out of their benefit.  In fact, I’d hazard an equal guess that there are many illegal Sky sets kicking around the black market.  And to anyone who wants to complain that people are getting Sky for free while they have to pay a small fortune for it, can I suggest you’re looking in the wrong direction.  Rupert didn't look hungry last time I saw him. He did, unfortunately, still look alive. Not short of a few spare pennies, but still, sadly, not dead.**

 It is a depressing aspect of our society.  There will always be people who don’t work. Some will choose not to, some will have it thrust upon them.  Some will be born stinking rich and not have to, but will instead find themselves the focus of seven pages of The Mirror because they got knocked up and felt a bit queasy.

 Just because there are a handful of people who will take the piss, doesn't mean we collectively punish to assuage our Daily Mail-fuelled belief that the poor of Britain are actually sitting on bags of cash, drinking Cristal while watching Bargain Hunt on their Plasma Teevs. It’s bollocks. The poor of Britain are generally having a miserable old time, and it’s getting shitter every day. A reverse Beatles, if you will. ***

So, Gideon, stop picking on those too weak and weary to fight back. Stop using a crane to crush a fly. Remember that you’re where you are because your daddy racked up the dollars selling interior décor. If only he’d had a grasp of social responsibility and made the contribution to society he could have.

And had a vasectomy on reaching puberty.

 *Neologism. Pedant.

*Dear Santa, with Christmas approaching, and your skillset in breaking and entering, and leaving without a trace, I have a very particular request…

*This one 

Tricky Treats

The unfolding events  in New York and along the Eastern Seaboard of the past few days have seemed, to me at least, to be Hollywood Live.  I know that there has been massive destruction, and many have died, but this is also true of Haiti and Jamaica among others.   Only the news from The States has been an uber-intense uber-spectacle.

The media build-up, and rolling reporting, was like an interactive movie event.  Part of this is that New York, for most people, only exists on the cinema screen – and quite often getting its arse handed to it on fat concrete plate by giant apes, earthquakes, global warming,  alien invaders and giant smiling marshmallow sailors.

It is this same American Cultural Omnipresence which has changed the nature of this  very evening, too.  When I was a nipper, Halloween was the shittest name in the Calendar of Special Days of the year.  It only really manifested itself in the crappy drawing of pumpkins and witches at school.  I didn’t actually know that a pumpkin was real vegetable until my twenties, when they started to slowly appear on the supermarket shelves.

The spook creep didn’t end there.  Halloween parties started to pop up all over the place, as did a plethora of sexy devil outfits and killer nurse outfits.  Why killer nurses would wear fishnets and skimpy tops is beyond me.  Surely they’d get blood and viscera everywhere.  They would if they were doing properly anyway.

And now: it’s a Wednesday, and I’m getting ready to go to my brother’s flat for some Halloween shenanigans.  Outside, packs of children trot from house to house, feeding their inevitable diabetes and burgeoning hatred of their own flabby bodies by begging cheap sugary yuck from the local community. Inside, the news is banging on about some Halloween shit I’m trying to tune out.  My brother is putting on nibbles and drinks to celebrate the mythical thinning of the gateway between this world and the next.

How did this transformation come upon us? It wasn’t witchcraft, contrary to what the Christian Right would have you believe.  I blame it primarily on The Simpsons, with a slice of Buffy, Michael Myers and generic  American sitcoms.   The children of Britain have come into being in world where Halloween is not about sticking your head in bowl of water in the fruitless pursuit of a floating apple, but a festival of the plastic macabre, of demonic prostitution, of green creme eggs.

And why might I whinge so, you may ask? Because it’s Halloween.  If my words can create even an ounce of misery and doubt, I’ve done my bit for today’s evil.

Whahahahahahahhahaaaaaahahahahahaahahahahaaa etc.

Conference Tricksters

Watching CallMeDave’s speech at the Conservative Pantomime Season today I was reminded of that episode of Family Guy in which Peter exhibits the skills of a great debator *– he repeats his assertions - each time a little bit louder - assertions which are non-sequiturs of such magnitude they’d make Harold Pinter soil his underwear with sticky pearly love juice.

According to Dave, Labour want to borrow.  I said they’re going to Borrow.  They’ll Borrow money, y’know.  BORROW. BORROW. BORROW. Hitler borrowed money.  Peter Sutcliffe had a bank loan.  Borrowing is evil. Satan’s running the infernal shades of Hell at an increasing deficit. Therefore, Labour are Satanic Nazis - with a side of Yorkshire Ripper.

They may not have been his exact words, but they may have well as been, because he clearly thinks that Tory Conference attendees will applaud anything, and that voters are more gullible than Rozencrantz and Guildenstern jauntily hopping into the English court with their I Heart Hamlet mugs in one hand, certificate of execution in the other. Because all governments borrow, you dead-eyed moron. Even I know that, and I’m financially incompetent.

As confidence tricks go, this speech was ambitious in the extreme.  The Eton Toad would have us believe that he wants to create an Aspiration Nation. I worked at a school once which gave all students target grades which would not have been achievable without divine intervention, or systematic fraud.  Upon questioning these targets, I was told that they were ‘aspirational’ and that I was doing The Youngsters (This was the generic term de jour for the students -a bit like Childern of the Corn) a disservice by writing them off. 

While this is seemingly reasonable, I would contend that it is, in fact, sophistic bullshit which neither understands anything of the complexities of interaction that occur in the learning process nor understands that if you try to emotionally blackmail me I will spread scurrilous rumours about you at the pub. Involving dogs, car parks and Vaseline. I may even photoshop some evidence.

It was this same clumsy technique, more suitable to a school-yard debate over whose mum's the fattest, that was employed by the tadpole-faced vacuity which masquerades as Prime Minister.  Bang and blame. We are your overlords. We are the party for aspirational achievers. We are the Will to Power. Lazy people kill children. Jam tomorrow. (Jam today for me). If you oppose us, you hate kittens. Do you hate kittens? Do you? Do you really? Death to the Kitten-Haters.

The problem with this is pretty straightforward.

Firstly, Dave – you are a mendacious little slugshit. Your lies are so many they’ve taken on a life of their own and have run to all corners of the Earth to spawn further colonies of lies, and given birth to tribes of utter porkies, gaggles of grim fibs, hoards of dark untruths. You are, essentially, not a man to be trusted. If you told me it was Saturday I’d go to work. 

Secondly, no one really wants to be lectured to about the pleasures of hard graft, and the joys of greasing the wheels of social mobility with the oil of ambition, by a man whose experience of hard work is watching the servants, and who is the antithesis of social mobility. You were born unhealthily rich, and you’re still loaded.  Although you're not exactly shifting through the classes. Why aren’t you Emperor of the Known Universe if all it takes is a slice of elbow grease and a gritty determination? 

Go on Dave. Show us how it’s done. Get a Ming the Merciless costume. Declare yourself the Ruler of All Life. Wear a big shiny crown of gold and plebs' bones.

And then fuck off into space. And then die.

* This actually happens in lots of episode.  This is a fine example. 

On the Sixth Day

When I were a lad, a certain Leo B Stanley, sometime DJ at Manchester Indie-Valhalla, The Venue, and proprietor of Identity Clothing in Affleck’s Palace, made a tidy little packet with his range of Manchester T-Shirts. These bore such legends as Manchester: North of England and Born in the North, Exist in the North, Return to the North, Die in the North, as well as This is not Manchester, this a trip. But the one which was taken up with most enthusiasm was ‘And on the sixth day, God created Manchester’. 

Some may think this latter statement is, at best, a clever pun, or at worst, a heinous blasphemy requiring correctional behavior involving hot spikes, rusty screwy things and a masked dwarf. I, however, think there is more than the smidgeon of truth in this. Only a Mancunian could have lived through the rain that Noah faced and built a boat on which to carry the band which made The House of the Rising Sun an international hit.

Being a Mancunian, I have a strained relationship with the rain. It is, simultaneously, an integral component of my cultural identity, and a wet pain in the arse. Or, more often, face.

The last few months have been kind enough to make sure I’ve never felt far from home wherever I’ve been in England. A summer of camping was accompanied by the grey symphony of celestial tears. The return to school has seen the persistent drizzle of a British Autumn. The last two days have witnessed an all-out assault on The North by the splashy elements. There have been days when it has seemed like the world is made of rain and that days of sunshine and clear skies have been the stuff that dreams are made of.

The slate sky deluge is lovely under certain circumstances.  All of these circumstances involve indoors, central heating and looking through a window. Sometimes there’s cocoa, sometimes there’s Stella. This week’s morning rain is ruined for me the moment I have to leave the house.  Sober. Another example of work metaphorically, and literally, pissing on me*.

Rain pervades British culture. Travis famously sang, questioningly, Why does it Always Rain on me?. ‘Because you’re shit’ was the obvious answer. Shirley Manson, of Garbage fame, fiercely claimed to be Only Happy When it Rains. This didn’t explain why she moved to L.A. though. Unless she meant it metaphorically and literally, and L.A.’s absence of real rain would be like emotional rain to her, thus making her happy. I may be over-thinking this. Or under-thinking it. Or not thinking it all. The point is, we’ve written a lot of songs about rain.

 James Dean was iconic in the rain. Macarthur Park’s cake got well and truly trashed in the downpour. The Cult loved it. Dustin Hoffman was a superhero who could harness its power**.

But I digress.  Rain. It’s wet, it’s outside, and it’s coming for you. Embrace the grey. Learn to love the dampness of being. It won’t be beaten ,and maybe, just maybe, you too can be a Mancunian, if even just for a day.

   *          I know this is only metaphorically. I’m not Alanis fucking Morissette. It just works better stylistically like this. Never let it be said I choose substance over form.

**     I’ve never seen Rainman. I assume this is what it’s about.

Musical Chairs

There was a rumour that during the sackings of ministers recently, Dave 'David' Cameron was drinking red wine while on the job.  Now, I'm all in favour of a casual attitude to booze, but if I tried to do my job while drinking booze, I'd be sacked. And probably on the front page of The Sun with the headline 'Drunken Disgrace of Trashed Teacher', or somesuch. All I ask for is equality of opportunity. If he can booze at work, I'd like to be allowed to sip from a can of Stella while the kids are peer-assessing their work. That's all. It's hardly the moon on a stick.

The recent Tory reshuffle (Officially the coalition's reshuffle, but let's not kid ourselves) has confirmed my belief that Dave 'Kill Me With Disease' Cameron actually has neither shame nor sense.  His appointments, movements and, equally telling, non-movements,  are reminiscent of the worst excesses of historical power, such as the time Caligula made his horse a consul, or that incident when Philip Green made his unqualified daughter a shoe designer for Top Shop. Now I only buy Ladies' shoes from ebay. Preferably pre-worn.*

Speaking of horses, there is no question that Caligula's  horse would be a much, much safer pair of hands (You know what I mean. Pipe down, pedants.) with the economy than that dead donkey Gideon is presently doing. Even now, two thousand years after its death. Dave, drop the dead donkey.

Among other appointees by Dave 'Shoot Me in the Face with a Rusty Nail Gun' Cameron is Maria Miller as Minister for Equality. This is an MP whose voting records on issue such as abortion, IVF and hate crimes makes this placement as sensible as making John Wayne Gacy Minister for Children. Or Minister for Clowns. Or Minister for Child Clowns.  The point is, it's a piss-take. Or a radical re-invention of the word 'equaility', depending on your point of view. And degree of sanity.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Toryland, Owen Patterson has found himself the Minister for the Environment. I wouldn't describe Patterson as a stereotypical Tory. That's mostly because I'm a pathological liar, but also because I wouldn't describe Hilter as a naughty boy. It'd be a tad understated. With Patterson, the giveaway is that Norman Tebbit was waxing lyrical about him on Any Questions last night, which is an endorsement as telling as the EDL's endorsement of Dave 'Feed me to Wild Dingoes' Cameron's speech on multiculturalsim last year.

Patterson likes shooting shit, killing shit, refuting scientific evidence and being the most ill-fitting ministerial appointment since Maria Miller.

More disturbing is that well-known Cockney Rhyming slang Jeremy Hunt was made Minister for Health. This weasel of a creature has spent his political career lying through his serpentine teeth while  furiously cleaning Rupert Murdoch's haemorrhroids with his mendacious tongue.  It's not just that the NHS will be doomed to ruination, but that Rupey will now have the unfettered access to the steady supply of fresh human blood in which he must bathe daily.

In essence, CallMeDave's Titanic Deckchair Shuffle** is big 'Fuck You. Fuck You. And Fuck You' to the British Public, to Human Evolution and to the Universe. Dave is King, and if he wants to sack the servants and make the peasants hand over their first-born to their feudal overlords, then that is what will be done.

Until the next election, when this shower of shite will be wiped from the face of British Politics, and become just a pub trivia question - what was the most inept British Government ever?

And why were their bodies never found?

* Not really, but there is apparently a massive market for this.

**Over-used phrase of the week

Different Class

I'm not one to go looking for an altercation, but I haven't shied away from sprinkling my tupennethworth regarding the Olympics amidst the jubilation and delirium pounding the status updates of various social media sites. Tennis and Football* aside, I really couldn't have been more indifferent had I been a vampire imprisoned  by mine enemies decades since, nailed in a sturdy coffin, behind a solid, merciless brick wall, half-awake, half-hibernating, undead, unalive, unremembered.

Because I am, quite frankly, not one to cream myself because someone can run fast or chuck something far.  I'm not five fucking years old. These may have been useful skills out on the savanna at the dawn of humanity, but nowadays we have cars.  It doesn't matter that Usain Bolt can run 100m in under ten seconds. If I'm trying to run him over whilst driving a Micra, his legs will get broken.

On the subject of which, I watched the 100m, and that was, in my humble, the most over-hyped underwhelming ten seconds since I lost my virginity.

But what has ground my gears more than anything has been the frequent comparisons between footballers and Olympic athletes. This has the been the battleground on which I have jousted verbally with friends and acquaintances of late. The 'Why can't Footballers Be More like Athletes' has wound me up no end.  For two reasons. One - footballers are athletes, but with more skill than the one-trick-ponies who emerge every four years in the hope to win a medal so they can make some extra wedge advertising tampons and shaving foam. Two - because deep down I suspect there is an element of class discrimination.

A ridiculous proportion of of GB athletes are privately educated.  The majority, I'm guessing, are middle class. Footballers are, on the whole, working class.  The dislike of the modern footballer is the dislike of the arriviste. It is the mentality that lauds the work of Blur, featuring Alex 'I make cheese ' James and his middle class mates pretending to be cockney jokers, but scorns Liam Gallagher as stupid* because he's got an accent, swears and looks after his hair. It is the scorn of Tom Buchanan for Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald knows where I'm coming from.

And, in my experience, there is no more unpleasant group, more casually racist, sexist and homophobic cackle than a university rugby team, pissed on their second pint of Fosters.  They make obscene comments at women because they don't how to talk to them, coarse homophobic jokes to hide the fact they all want to finger each other, and do more than Marx ever could to radicalise any half-sentient student. Yet this insult to evolution are more often than not laughed off as Lads Letting of Steam.

Take a similar bunch of males, but working class and highly-paid, and being slightly*** more discreet. Somehow these are no longer Lads Being Lads but The End of Western Civilisation. I'm not making any claims for the moral upstandingness of footballers, I'm not even saying I particularly like them. But I'd much rather spend an evening in the company of a Balotelli or a Cantona than a Coe or Pendleton. In fact, I'd much rather be that walled-up vampire than spend an evening with Sebastian Coe. Unless it was it at his murder.

So, if you enjoyed the Olympics - I'm glad for you. But it's football season now, and the throwers and jumpers and repeated actioners can slither back into their little holes, as the world's most popular sport once again takes centre stage. The next nine months are going to mesmerising, horrible, heartbreaking, breathtaking and incredible.  And Coe-free.


*Because they are proper sports, with balls. Literal balls, not cajones.
**To be fair, he probably is a bit a dickhead, but I no more or less than Blur and their cardboard pastiche working class culture, as seen through the eyes of the detached wanker who will never live like common people.
*** Slightly.

I got game

It's fuckitty hot. I tried to venture outside but was beaten back by the unseasonal summer blaze, and had to cool myself down by playing Skyrim in my underpants for an hour.Or three.   It's amazing how running around digital snowy peaks can (almost) make you believe you're a Scandinavian warrior from days of yore, and that it's a bit chilly, as opposed to being a semi-dressed lazy bastard living vicariously through pixellated fun, cowering from the sweltering midday sun.

I actually hate video games (or computer games. Is there a difference? Fucked if I know) because they are time vampires.  I grew up in a console free-house, and while I wouldn't make such outlandish claims to have been outdoorsy, I did spend most of my formative years outside.  Mostly throwing things at stuff. Crab apples at buses, pebbles at pigeons, flaming arrows at passers-by*.

In fact, I didn't buy a console until I was 22, and even then, it was only because I thought the initial outlay would save me money as it might stop me going to the pub. It did. In fact, it stopped me doing most things other than smoking fags, drinking coffee and trying to rescue Princess Daisy . I started to dream in Mario-vision.  I pictured any forthcoming real world tasks, such as the Do The Dishes, or Buy Some Food, as Mario-esque tasks.  Sometimes I would spend so much time awake I would start to hallucinate gold coins**. I was a fragile shell of a being, living on Pot Noodles and Power-Ups.

When, six months later, some scrotal-feeding inbred burgled my console from the Leeds house in which I was living, I was both broken and freed.  And I vowed never to get another console.  Life was mine. I took it by the horns and shoved a finger up its arse***.

Now, and for the last two years, I have been an accidental owner of an X-box, and like a crack pipe, it squats in my room reminding me that I'm weak, and it is the master.  Just One More Hit quite quickly becomes Where the Fuck Did the Last Four Hours Disappear? Those little grey bastards should have an inbuilt timer allowing a maximum of two hours a day. They are pernicious leech on the soul of humanity, and I can't take any more.

There's a dragon I've been in combat with all day. I'm going to hunt it down and kill it, then read a book or something.  I will be productive, but first? I've got to chase that dragon.


*Seriously, After watching a sword-and-sandals epic featuring 'Greek fire', we decided to make our own with paraffin and rags.  Then climb onto the roof of our flats, ignite and launch.  The council estate version of a historical re-enactment. 


**I think my cigarettes were spiked


***This isn't a sexual metaphor.  This is how South African I know trains his dogs.  At least, he says that what he's doing.

What do we get for our Troubles and Pains?

I was reluctant to leave home in my late teens.  Whereas many friends were desperate to throw off the restrictive shackles of parental control and take that breathtakingly exciting step into autonomous adulthood, I’d negotiated tacitly a set of rules with my mother which created a mutually pleasing symbiosis.  In exchange for cooking my meals, washing my clothes, letting me stay out for days on end, smoke in my room, drink in the morning and wear and do what I wanted, I wouldn’t get needlessly arrested or burn her house down. It worked for me.   There didn’t seem to be too much in the plus column of life to suggest that moving into a semi-furnished bedsit in a house full of semi-educated labourers* was a worthwhile option.

I assumed this arrangement was working for my mother too, but I suspect, with the gift of hindsight, that she was really just putting up with me until I left to go to University.  Unfortunately, there was another point of complacently.  I wasn’t in a rush to get to Uni.  If I’d been middle class, I’d probably have taken a gap year and gone to help the downtrodden and desperate in sub-Saharan Africa. After telling everyone I knew endlessly that I was planning to do so, and using it as a weapon to pull, because it’d show how I was, like, sooooo sensitive and caring.  

As it was I was trying to take a gap year in Manchester by studying part time, living off the dole and drinking White Lightning/Special Brew snakebites.  I think this was probably more educational for me than ten months in Burkina Faso ever could have been.  Did you know, for example, that no matter how much you may think you’re the re-incarnation of Jim Morrisson, you’re not. You’re just pissed and standing on a car shouting obscenities and minutes away from a criminal conviction.

Eventually this happy stasis came to an abrupt end when my mother informed me that I had to move out, as I was treating her house like a hotel. Which I thought was a bit rich, as I hadn’t defenestrated any TVs, nor sexually assaulted anyone with a baby shark**.

Fortunately I was able to procure a rented room in Whalley Range. A basement in fact.  Fully funded by the gift of housing benefit. And it was here that I actually began to grow up***. I learned to cook for myself (such classics of culinary class as Toastie de fromage et ragu, haricots et fromage, and petis pois avec de margarine).  I began to take responsibility for my life, apply to Uni, learn to operate a washing machine and, more importantly, appreciate my mother.  Because it is a massive learning curve and process of growth when you’re finally kicked out of the nest. Until you’ve left home, you’ve probably never really experienced penury. Without parental support you become more aware of the difficultly of living, more sympathetic to those who struggle. A rounded, feeling, human-being.

So when I hear that Dave 'Bury me in a Shallow Grave while still Semi-conscious’ Cameron is considering scrapping housing benefit for the under 25s, I can only think that either he wants an infantile population who won’t question him, or that he want people to hate their parents, crack up under the enforced proximity and kill them, thus saving a fortune in pensions and care for the elderly. Or that he’s utterly fucking insane.

He may claim it is a modest proposal, but for him, living at your parents’ means staying in the East Wing pissing in the eyes of peasants while the olds count their off-shore money in the West Wing, only meeting over the breakfast table to discuss how to re-introduce feudalism, and who was the better dictator, Adolf or Maggie.

However, with everything, you should always read the small print. The arse-faced hooray plans to do this if he wins the next election.  This is his version of If I Won a Million Pounds****. The only hope he has of winning the next election is if something is put into the water which makes everyone a simple-minded amnesiac. Surely even he wouldn’t do that?

Actually…

I’m off to stock up on Evian.

*For some reason, this is what I imagined my first foray into the outside would be like.  Though I preciously turned my nose up at it at the the time, I suspect it would probably have been good for me if it had turned out to be true.

** I’d never stayed in a hotel. Everything I knew about hotels I’d learned from books about Led Zeppelin.  I was extremely disappointed when I did finally stay in a hotel several years later and it was NOTHING like I expected.  

***Inasmuch as I ever have

****A game he can’t really play.  It’d be like my If I Won a Tenner…

England's Dreaming

It’s Jubilee weekend.   I appreciate that most of you will know this, but there may be one or two people who have been dwelling in a bunker deep underground, living off tins of Spam and drinking their own piss. For the last six months. 

The supermarket preparations for this jubilee have made the Easter, Christmas and Halloween Overkillfest look as understated as Hitler’s claim that he hadn’t always strived for the best interests of European Jewry.   When I noticed the creeping red, white and blue seeping into the our stores, I made the decision that, as a civilised protest, I wasn’t going to buy anything with a Union Jack on it, or the word ‘Jubilee’ in the title*. 

Initially this didn’t have many serious repercussions, as most products came in both packing options: Monarchy Sycophantic or Republican Standard. However, the seep became an epidemic, and ultimately an invasion.  Where the Nazis failed, Asda succeeded – an explosion of banners and bunting celebrating the unending reign of  a German leader. 

I’ve had to change my shopping habits as, one by one, my usual weekly consumables succumbed to the three-coloured peril. Thank fuck for the World Food aisle.  Any Union Jackerry there would look like blatant war-mongering imperialism, so has remained taint-free. Admittedly, my diet now mainly consists of salt fish and halva, but I at least can enjoy my stomach pains from a moral high ground.

I’ve been accused of being a killjoy, a contrarian and unpatriotic over this. I’m as patriotic towards England as the next man. Or woman.** I’ve also been accused of having no respect for history or tradition, which, quite frankly, is bollocks. And I’m determined to prove this. So, I shall spend my Jubilee weekend showing my love of history and tradition by learning to play God Save the Queen on guitar. The Sex Pistols’ version.  With my amp turned up to eleven. 

Happy Anniversary your majesty, you vinegary old leech.  

*Which was a fucker during my Derek Jarman filmathon

** This is true. I’m in a room with two Kiwis, one of each gender

Not Only Happy When it Rains

Picture this: it’s raining, the heavy nail-ended stuff that batters down with a stuttering rapid rattle, smacking you in the face like a barrage of punches from a mini-me Muhammed Ali. Or an angry Tinkerbell. You get the idea. Like small frequent punches. But wet. Okay -- I admit it – the analogy’s not great, but it’s all you’re getting, so live with it. FFS.

As I was saying, before I was so abruptly interrupted: it’s raining. And there’s lots of it.  The sky is that gun-metal Grey of Doom which features so prevalently in the rooftop scene of Ghostbusters, or a John Martin painting*. All the air a solemn blackness holds, there is a sudden crack of thunder, and a fast flash of lightning dances and claws its path across the overhanging firmament. 

There, along the Great North Road, two solitary figures scurry over pavements and puddles, coats pulled in tight, hunched, packed-close against the relentless deluge.  And one of those figures is me, with my friend Dave, explaining that:

a)      I didn’t believe in God AT ALL.  

And

 b) I really wanted to get to the pub before I became one with the elemental force of water.

Dave seems skeptical,  insists that I must have some slither of doubt, must entertain the possibility, however feint, that there is something beyond this mortal coil.

To illustrate my point, I slow down, and grab a metal pole (I have no idea where this came from. I suspect it was bit of broken fence lying on the floor. I may have been carrying it already, although this seems unlikely, because it would suggest I was some kind of pole-carrying nutter, which I’m not.  It’s not really important anyway, but in case you were wondering, it came from somewhere, but where that where was, I don’t recall.) So, I grab said Pole of Unending Mystery. Then, Thor-like, hold my prize aloft, pointing towards the heavens, and shout enthusiastically:

‘Come on God, you bastard. Cumanavago if you think yerard enough.’

It turns out he wasn’t hard enough, and I dropped the pole, wetly smug in my scientific demonstration of the absence of a divine being**.

The point of this is that I am not in any way a person prone to harbouring superstitious thoughts, or beliefs in any kind of Sky-magic.

But, last week, I wanted to write about the approach to the last game of the English football season, about Manchester City’s approach to their first Premiership title in my lifetime, about my approach to that weekend, festering with trepidation and excitement.  But I couldn’t  Although I was prepared to take on God, and risk my life, I wasn’t prepared to tempt the Lares of football, and watch the team I support possibly not win a game of football.

There are people who would point to these two details as evidence of all that is wrong with a modern attitude towards religion, or the over-importance we place on such trivia as professional football.

However, these people are either Theists of some kind, or they don’t support Manchester City, so they can fuck right off.  God didn’t kill me, City won the Premiership. All is well with the world.

Champions.

*This John Martin, not this John Martyn.

**I appreciate the scientific flaws of the demonstration, before any feels compelled to point them out

Mini-rant #1

I had to go to Harrod's today. The place drips money, like a treacly semen stain on golden undies. It also oozes class in much the same way as the bridal wear does in My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

We parked around the corner, where there was a pretty little park.  We tried to cut through same park, only to find it was locked, as it was for residents only. For me, this symbolises everything that is wrong with Harrod's, wrong with the man driving the shiny black gigantathonic Maybach in front of me, and wrong with the uber-snotty desk-monkey manning the Watch Service Centre.

Key-holding residents of Hans Place, Knightsbrige: It's a pissy little patch of grass.  It's not picturesque enough to warrant anything other than a cursory glance. You've only locked it up to show how privileged you are.  I'm coming back with a spade.

Dear Mr Li:  Thank you for sharing your name with me via the means of your number plate.  You too ooze class.  Just for the record, my name is not M799 TCW.  And, even though I was in Micra, I managed to sneak it into a tiny parking space. I bet you're still driving around looking for bay capable of taking your massive, but frankly quite ridiculous, motor vehicle.

And finally, Watch Man: whose wrinkled lip and sneer of cold disdain demonstrated clearly enough that he didn't appreciate the fact that I had chosen not to spend £360 on a watch service because, quite frankly, that's the most fucking ridiculous thing I have EVER heard. Trust me, I've spoken to Spurs fans who thought they might win the title, so I know ridiculous.  I'm at home now, drinking coffee and playing with my toys. You're still at work.  In the basement of a department store.  Handing watches to people. I can only feel pity for you.  Pity, my friend. Unadulterated, pure-blooded pity.

The Best Laid Plans

Growing up, my experiences of narrative were formed by Enid Blyton, as I voraciously ate my way through the Famous Five series, then the Secret Seven, the Mystery books, and the lesser know Super Six and Fab Four* collections.

Consequently, when I first read The Catcher in the Rye at the age of fifteen, I thought I knew how books worked. So, when Holden Caulfiled mentions ‘this madman stuff that happened that last summer’ on page one, I was set up for adventure. The twisted exhilaration that followed was, however, thwarted by the failure of Holden to be kidnapped, assaulted, abused, shot at, hit, spat at or even spoken to gently and kindly, even in passing, by any kind of psychologically deranged male.  I had to re-read the opening to make sure I hadn’t imagined the madmanness, and then feel puzzled that it was written, but it had failed to materialise. 

Sometime later I realised that ‘madman’ was slang for ‘somewhat interesting’, and possibly also a subconscious manifestation of Holden’s own precarious mental state.  At the time, though, I thought J.D. Salinger's sloppy editor had just fucked up.

All of which leads, in a prestidigious segue of Merlinesque proportions,to Fiji, where I am now sitting by a pool under the pacific blue**.  I arrived a few days ago, but actually should have been here over a week ago. However,  due to a Fiji-centred cyclone, I ended up ‘stuck’ in Sydney for a week, in transit.  Obviously, when I learned of this forced delay,  the humanitarian plight of the locals preyed on my mind, but mostly I was pissed off that my planned holiday had been curtailed. Not least because I seem to have a travel curse, which often causes my plans to be thwarted.

Several years ago I was in Lyon for New Year’s Eve***, and while all that was lovely and wonderful and other uppy-adjectives, on preparing to come home I realised that I had booked my flight a day later than my girlfriend’s flight, and the planned day of rest before my imminent return to work was now to be a day of solitude in Lyon. Not the biggest grievance, but I was really looking forward to a long Sunday lie-in, a bath and some hot chocolate. It’s the little things which make the difference in life.

My girlfriend’s flight took off without hitch (probably because I wasn't on it), and I was resigned to making the most of my situation. The very, very heavy snowfall which started as I stared out of the bus window back the hostel was seemingly a bonus, as it meant I would experience the city afresh, with its new snowy coat, the following day.

Cut to the airport, twenty four hours later.  I’d made the proverbial lemonade from my lemons of time, and had wandered around the old city lost in a wistful romanticism as the snow fell heavily, covering the town in a sea of soft icy whiteness.  I’d taken the opportunity to visit the University at which Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, had overseen the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps, and experienced that guilty mix of horror, revulsion and touristic voyeurism that comes from going to such places.  But mostly, I’d done everything I wanted to do in Lyon, and now wanted to get back to London,  to that bath and, particularly, to that hot chocolate.

Fucking Easyjet. Four hours in departures before they confimed that the plane could not take off because of the constant snowfall. Another two hours before I was told it would be four days before there would be another flight. Another two seconds before a gush of sweary invective about the piss-poorness of the service and information. This annoyance continued throughout the bus journey to the hotel they provided, during the meal, and right up until the words ‘free bar’ were mentioned, at which point my mood and the evening took on a new complexion.

Which, once again, segues nicely into my aborted attempt to get to Fiji. Because, although I couldn’t get to Fiji, I did get stuck in Sydney, which is not the worst place in the world for an unexpected holiday****. Especially when it is technically a ‘Delayed Journey’, and the insurance company is paying for all your food and booze. This time, sipping beer under the Sydney sun, eating oysters and watching the life of the harbor pass me by, I quickly got over my sense of thwarted disappointment, and my sympathy for the flooded Fijians wasn’t perpetually overshadowed by a sense of petty unfulfillment. Sunshine and magnanimity make good bedfellows. Your journey, literally and metaphorically, might not take you where expect, but sometimes,the destination can wait*****. 

Because, since that initial Salinger-induced confusion, I’ve learned this: if you spend your life waiting to meet the madman, you lose the plot. In the immortal words of Noel Gallagher: Be here now******.  Let tomorrow be.

*I may be confusing this with watching the films Help and A Hard Days Night

** I know, sometimes it’s a hard, hard struggle.

*** I mean, it’s a sometime a really, really hard life

****Although it is riddled with Australians

***** Especially if it's flooded

******Yes, I know it's somebody else's phrase. I just can't be arsed looking it up. 

What Kind of Times are These?

Sometimes, when faced with the taunting white of a blank screen, I relish the challenge of inflaming the page with my sage ideas, and I plunge headlong into the world of words, chasing every passage of ideas, every alley of thought, as the shifting flashes of my mind become a moment of creation. 

Then I read what I have written, feel the grey dawn of despair and fall into a hollow reverie where I contemplate the futility of being. It is a powerful effect of my writing, but never the intended one. 

I write mostly to stop the noise, and stay this side of sane*.  If the words are out, they’re not dancing round my head like an army of drunken pixies.  But sometimes, I need to comment on something not utterly fatuous. 

Cameron and Osborne – what the fuck is all that about? I lived under Thatcher, and when that era of division was over I felt, like many others I know, that the world was a lighter place, a patchwork sky of  colour and light.  Ironically so, given that her passing was followed by the rise of The Grey Man, John Major.  I suppose that, in contrast to the previous death-black years of Central Hell, the washed-out grey seemed a sprightly shade of being.

However, with the advent of these two current clowns, I feel that we’re past the grey zone of the spectrum and into something much more of a spectral blackening.  It’s quite insidious, though.  Although they are quite clearly cut from a cloth of unpleasant, there is more than something of the imbecile about them. Thatcher was a diamond-cut madder.  With a majority I found unfathomable.  It was many years before I could be persuaded that anyone who voted for the Wicked Witch of Dulwich wasn’t fabricated from liquid evil. Many, many years.

I’ve not really taken Eton’s own Bert and Ernie too seriously.  Obviously I’ve held them in the contempt that this calibre of vacuous slugshit should be held, but I’ve not felt the imminent danger that was palpable in The Eighties.  I think partly because whenever they’ve posited one of their ludicrous ideas, I’ve hoped that the Lib Dems would never allow it to pass.

Clearly, I am much more optimistic than people assume. And probably much more stupid than I realise.  Because whatever mumbling comes from the MOR footsoldiers of the Yellowers,  they are clearly going to keep rubber-stamping whatever they’re presented with, secretly hoping that the Tories will one day reciprocate, and maybe give them a reach around while aggressively shedding their sticky political load.

Given this, I’d like to think that with the right words  - and not just mine but every dissenting voice – that we can erect barricades to the sustained assault on society which these two goonthugs are imposing.  That a thrusting phrase, a slash of words – aim for the eyes! – a stab of language will not just dissipate into the ether, but will have some real tangible effect.

Because these fuckers are clowns, but much more in the mould of Chucky than Krusty.  They are the shitstain on the white underpants of life, the haemorrhoid bursting the arseveins of society. And they must be stopped.

So, if you ever voted Lib Dem, drop the Judas Brigade a mail and show your displeasure.

And if you voted Tory? You stopped reading a long time ago, didn’t you? You scrotal-faced weaslebuckets.

And if your hands are clean of this mess and you voted for neither, keep up the pressure. Protest, bitch, moan and whinge. You’ve earned the right, my friend. Let your words ring out, and keep ringing. We told them so. We told them so.

*I think I know which side I’m on.  I won’t be so presumptuous as to make an absolute claim.

Waiting for the Sun to Set

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the greatest television progamme ever made*, and when it came to a close in 2003, I was rather lost, although I felt it had not only Jumped the Shark, but rode the back of, spat at and defecated in the eye of the same sea beastie.

The show ended not because the producers realised they were developing a walking corpse that wouldn’t play dead, but because Sarah Michelle Gellar decided she wanted to move onto bigger and better things.  By which she meant become a film star and make a shitload of cash.  

I discovered last week that Gellar is a Republican, and it left a bitter nastiness in my metaphorical mouth.  I love Buffy because, behind the mask of inanity, there was a programme which was quite progressive for a mainstream American show.  I considered it be an Ideas Smuggler – surreptitiously provoking Americans into thinking while they thought they were watching a programme about a blonde cheerleader killing vampires.  Obviously, they were watching a programme about a blonde cheerleader killing vampires, but it was oh-so-much more.

To discover that the hero of this modern masterpiece is playing, politically speaking, for the other side meant that my sturdy walls of perception came tumbling down, as if a fog had been lifted from my eyes, like a cubic zirconia bullet right through my forehead.  It was up there with the time I realised that God didn’t exist, and the realisation at the age of ten that, despite my claims to the contrary, Manchester City were not better than Manchester United, and weren’t the greatest team in the world***.

Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is a Buffy comic which takes up the story from the end of the final season and it’s actually quite good.  More importantly, because it’s a comic, SMG isn’t actually required, and doesn’t profit, and I am not forced to deal with the dichotomy of reality vs.fiction.

The moral of this tale is that sometimes it can be a good thing to dig up the rotting corpses of popular media and re-animate the cadaver, slap on a bit of lippy and give it a new haircut, and send it back into the world.

However, some corpses should remain buried. Buried forever.

This forthcoming Sunday the Crown Prince of Corporeal Evil, Rupert Murdoch, will attempt to insult an entire nation with the relaunch of his cesspit of a rag, The News of the World, under the guise of The Sun of Sunday.  After his performance at the select committee hearing in which he claimed to be living the humblest day of his life in a manner which was, tellingly, very fucking far from humble, I hoped that he would least have the sense to accept that the hacking of a murdered child’s phone was so far below any kind of accepted civilisation as to  understand that he might as well dance up and down on Milly Downer’s grave as try to bring back a Sunday paper.  I underestimated him.

To my mind, this is a little like Hitler claiming he’d seen the error of his ways in trying to wipe an entire group of people of the face of the earth, and he felt humble because he’d had an epiphany, rather than because he’d been busted. And while he was at it, would anyone be interested in reading the new edition of his book, which would no longer be known as Mein Kampf, but would now bear the moniker How to Kill Friends and Liquidate people. A little like this.

The comparisons might be a bit extreme, I admit, but the principle’s the same.  

I am hopeful, however, that the target demograph for The Sun, the kind of people who attacked a paediatrician believing she was a paedophile****, aren’t quite so forgiving or forgetful as Rupert the Human Cancer would believe.  In fact, given The Sun’s history of moral outrage, I fully expected the weekday Sun to run a campaign against The Sun on Sunday. I’ll even give them their headline for free.

Humble hacker in Pseudo Sorry Sunday Sun shocker.

Or, preferably, Murdoch Falls in Mincer: Nation Rejoices.

Please don’t buy this piece of shit.  You can make a difference.

*I’m serious**

**No, really, I am.  Closely followed by Battlestar Galactica (The new one, obviously), and Duckula.  

***Both these problems have now been addressed

****I shit you not

Sicknote

As icy days close in, and the previously absent winter has a go at reminding us it still exists, out come the unused Christmas hats and gloves, breakfast porridge makes its annual appearance, and up pops the duvet safety of sick days.  

It’s at this stage of the season that petty sickness creeps apace, winding its way round the workplace like a sulphuric fart in a small lift, leaving no corner unfouled. People drop off the work radar for a couple of days, followed out, on their return, by another shivering sniffler, like a hibernal game of contagiously diseased dominoes. I had my turn last week.

The problem with sick days, for me, is that finding myself with a whole day I’d otherwise be sacrificing to the gods of work, I don’t want to waste my opportunity to get stuff done, go places I’d normally never see and do stuff I’d normally never do.  There’s a plethora of art galleries and museums I heartily neglect, a world of books I intend to read which perch on my To Be Read shelf.  (In truth, this is more like my To Be Read shelves, and is on the brink of becoming my To Be Read bookcase.  I estimate it will be a To Be Read library by the time I retire. I really ought to buy shares in Waterstone’s).

Unfortunately the nature of sickdays, is that I’m, not to put too fine a point on it, sick. Well, usually.  Or sometimes, at least.

 I may want to fill my time with worth, but the sad truth is I’m more likely to sleep until midday, wake for a Lemsip and then spend the day dozing in and out of consciousness whilst listening to some play on Radio 4 about a bunch of middle class people uncovering the secrets of their grandparents’ abuse of servants in India during the Raj, or some other offering from the Radio 4 write-by-numbers drama factory. By the time I feel anywhere near rested enough to do something, it’s pretty much the time I’d be getting home anyway.

Johnny Rotten, before he became the face of whatever dairy product it is he advertises, once asked ‘ Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ . Yes, Mr Rotten, I have. Every time I waste a sick day on actually being sick. 

What is more annoying than this is when the sickness pounces and it is not a work day.  There is no greater injustice in this world* than arriving home on a Friday to discover that your body has developed a malfunction which results in being bed bound and incapable of doing anything beyond groaning and making Mr Kleenex rich**.

The real shit-smeared nail in the coffin of life here is that, no matter how extraordinarily unwell you are, you will always have recovered by Monday, and have no legitimate excuse to take a sick day. This, along with the existence of the parasitic wasp and Alex Ferguson, is the keystone on which I base my unshakeable belief that there is no God.

And, on that theological bombshell, I’m withdrawing back under the covers because I’m feeling slighty queasy. And, unbelievably, I’m on holiday. Today I planned to do those things I neglect – play guitar, read a book, leave the house.  Curse you, lack of God.   So, instead, I’m off to have that same fitful dream in which a thousand gloomy towers of unread books loom over me, berating me in thunderous tones for depriving them of their destiny while a billion tiny pixies adorned in Waterstone’s T-shirts dance gleefully on piles of burning money.  It’s a recurring highly vivid dream.

If only I knew what it meant.

*This is obviously a lie.

**From blasting snot out of your nose, you filthy minded guttersnipe.

Let's re-invent time

I’ve been procrastinating writing for a few weeks now, for the same reason I’ve been procrastinating scanning photographs, doing dishes and tidying the house. It’s January, and I’ve got post-Christmas comedown, A.K.A. New Year Blues A.K.A. Not Another Fucking Year Already A.K.A. Blearrrghghh.  If I could get away with not washing or brushing my teeth, I probably would.  If I could get away with not getting out bed, I undoubtedly would. January sucks.

T.S. Eliot famously wrote that April is the cruelest month, but that’s clearly bollocks because for wretched evil misery nothing beats the gateway to the year.  Christmas is over, and all the build up and festive sleigh ride rapidly turns into a festive train wreck and then, abruptly, into a post-festive lemming-dive off the cliff of New Year’s Eve into the grey wet plains of Back to Work You Shitty Little Peasants, Fun’s Over.

Not all Januaries have been dismal, admittedly. The crash has sometimes been softened by the cushion of Christmas presents, whether the Millennium Falcon of childhood, or the Walkman and booze of late teens, to the lovely acoustic guitar I got two years ago.  Quite often the social imbibing in January ups itself a notch as people wrestle with the impact, which is an aspect I’ve also previously appreciated.  Sometimes, a Christmas Romance blossoms into a Winter Girlfriend. It might not last, but it takes the edge off the cold.  At worst, there’s usually a bit of snow to re-ignite the smouldering Yuletide embers.

This year, no such.  While I appreciate all the presents I received from my nearest and dearest, a throttle box for my Micra isn’t a game-changer. I love my new Adidas Star Wars Rebel Force trainers, but a particularly expensive December has left me in a financial quagmire, and I can’t go out and about looking fly in them.

I did, however, plan for this month of doom, and asked for two X-Box games, which is pretty much my January, between getting home from work and slinking off to bed.  And while these digital distractions are fun (with a slice of WTF? everytime I get beat 6-0 on FIFA 12), the fact that I not only planned for a month indoors, but did so by sacrificing the option of a new guitar pedal for something that deep down I think I probably should’ve given up many, many, many years ago, leaves me with a feeling of bemused depression.  Although, it being January, I could’ve been given games, pedals, the Palaces of Shangri-La and the moon on a diamond-encrusted stick, and I’d still find something to complain about.

The fundamental problem isn’t that I’m a neurotic whinger, but that if humans were meant to do January, we’d be made of Gore-Tex and Fur, with torches for eyes.  There are few feelings more groan-inducing than the realisation of existence when an alarm goes off at seven a.m. on a January morning and you realise you’ve got to get up from the warm oblivion of sleep and go out into the frosty darkness to spend the day with a bunch of people who feel equally resentful about work, life and the existence of other people.

January is the cruelest month, not April. April isn’t frosty, in April nighttime doesn’t masquerade as the morning, and in April Christmas is a fond distant memory, just as you can look fondly on a past relationship years later, even though in the immediate aftermath you were a drunken wreck of despair and failure.

January is the raw break up from our relationship with Christmas. Either full of a profound sense of loss, or the needling regret that it never quite lived up to the promise it, well, promised.

So I’m starting it now. We have a year to do it.  I’m suggesting a radical rethinking of the calendar. Next year, I want two Decembers, then February.  It’ll be my Christmas gift to the world. 

Death to January.