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.

Memories of a Cider-Fuelled Youth

When I’m feeling ill, if I want to drink I tend to engage with cider. Because it’s fruit, clearly.  It was for this reason that some time ago, at a gig with friends, I accidentally stumbled into the 1990s teenage world of snakebite.  Somewhat under the weather, I had been repairing my failing health with the magic fizzy apple juice when one of the aforementioned friends kindly returned from the bar with a can of Red Stripe. While it is Jamaica’s finest, it‘s obviously not appley-medicine. 

Luckily, however, as a teen I was a well-versed in the arts of drinking like a hobo, so made myself a shitfacing classic of yesteryear*. 

Snakebite. Fizzy filth.

I was reminded of this alchemy yesterday as the spouse of same lager-buying friend posted a pic of a pint of the same amber evil which her husband had ordered in the pub, and laid the blame squarely at my feet for re-introducing the beverage into our collective memory.  It was the second time in a week that snakebite had resurfaced into my milieu, as last week, once again in a state of physical disrepair, I ordered lager, realised I couldn’t face the taste, and summoned the serpent of fizz. It was a wise decision.

There’s a word for these states of being wherein you become aware of something – a word, a person, a tropical disease – and then it seems to be everywhere. I don’t know what the word is, but it’s out there. Look it up. No doubt once you come across it, it’ll be in every post you read, every smile of every child, every stranger’s eyes etc.  

Now, twice in a week may not seem to be a frequency which allows snakebite to fall into this category, but given that - the gig above aside – I’d not heard the words for nearly a decade, I’m making an exception. Because I can.  Besides, it’ll all tie together like a Dickens novel in the final paragraph, trust me.

As a result of last weekend’s grimness, I was very much a token gesture of a son for Mother’s Day, with my efforts limited to sniffling over to my Ma’s, dropping off a card from Asda, a painted watering can, and a promise to be a bit more the Prodigal Son this weekend.

And today, a paragon of health, I kept to my word.

When I take the old girl out for the day, I’m going to one of two places.  Upon asking where she’d like to go, I’m told Anywhere You Want or Anywhere You Want But if You Feel Like Driving to Lytham.

For those who don’t know, Lytham is a small coastal town south of Blackpool where rich old northerners go to die.  It has a special place in my mother’s heart because she was brought up there from the age of eight. And like most people in my family, she has the tiresome habit of telling the same stories again and again.  I used to think it was age, but then I realised she’s been telling the same stories for the past forty years.  My brother is also prone to the same habits.  I know every time I see him for the next two months I’m going to be fascinated to death by his detailed account of how he was sat AT THE FRONT of an Adele concert, and how IT WAS LIKE HAVING A PERSONAL gig.  It only happened a week ago, and I’ve already heard it twice.

I have caught myself indulging in the same dirty habit at times. Ever heard about the time I tried to start a fight with Graham Coxon from Blur? The time I broke my ankle playing football? How I was born in a cross-fire hurricaine AND under a wandering star? Spend more than two drinking events with me, and you will.

Back to Lytham. I’ve heard the stories of a post-war childhood in Lytham since I can remember, to the extent that, like religion, I know the verse without really thinking about the meaning.  It’s long been at the point where I nod politely, and ask the same generic questions out of courtesy.  Today, however, I actually paid attention.

The seafront at Lytham was stunning.  A sky of salmon pink infused with a wash of white-charcoal clouds; a haze which gave the air a mystical quality, almost Avalonesque; a sun straight off an Apocalypse Now poster. It was pretty lovely.  Off guard, I actually paid attention to the memories she was sharing, as she remembered being in the same spot some sixty-odd years ago where we then stood, losing half-a-crown and pissing about on Lytham Windmill**.

And I realised that my mum was talking about actual memories of actual events with actual people from when she was a very small child.  The noise became a life. To me, those details had always belonged to the Long, Long Ago, in the Beforetimes.  Now they had substance.

And this leads me back to snakebite. It is cheap, it is messy. And it fuelled many event-filled, life-developing nights in my youth.  And those memories make good tales for the teller probably more than they do the listener. But it’s easy as an adult to live on the sniff of those memories, and conveyor belt your way through adult life.  Work is a time vampire, no doubt.  But it doesn’t need to be a life vampire.  Make new memories while you can. Drink the snakebite, watch the sunset, see some overrated singer at an extortionate price.  So that when you really can’t make new memories, you have a stash to see you through to the end.  Like a Dickens novel***.

*I realise that to a lot of Antipodeans in London, Snakey is the cutting edge of alcoholic novelty. But it’s only new to you.

** They’re very proud of their windmill

***Nothing like a Dickens novel, but I did make a promise. 

Virtual Insanity

I don’t really consider myself a gamer. I play games, but I don’t cosplay, I don’t have special joypads or a customised headset. As a teenager, while my contemporaries were locked in their bedrooms, swearing at the length of time it took a ZD Spectrum to load a game,  I was throwing crab apples at buses and making dens in subway bushes.  When Sega and Nintendo happened upon the market, girls and booze and disco dancing happened upon me.  Those first big waves bypassed my formative years.

It wasn't until Uni that I first bought a console, a SNES, because it was half-price and because I had no concept of money. My hope was that it would keep me out of pubs and off the streets. It did. Unfortunately, it also took over my life like an electronic brain-devouring parasite. Months of being locked away with Mario, Chun Lee, mates and social enhancers. They may have been great times. I can’t really remember. It’s all a bit of lo-fi, primary-coloured, pixellated blur.

When the Grey Plastic Time Vampire was taken during a burglary a few months later, I looked on it as a blessing.  Its stranglehold on me was loosened, and I could now devote my time to much more worthwhile habits.  And so I did, with gusto.

A few years ago an Xbox came into my life by accident. The digital smackdown began again.  Bioshock, Call of Duty, FIFA, Skyrim, Assassins Creed.  The came into my life, and then they took it over.    

The problem is pretty simple.  It starts with a solemn promise to play for no more than half an hour. That half hour passes and you realise you've slipped into some twisted space-time continuum because, instead of being seven in the evening, it’s three in the morning, and you have to be up in four hours. There’s little more humbling than a console showing you have less willpower than a scouser in a pound shop. Apart from possibly being a Man United fan, or a Nickelback fan whose hearing aid suddenly starts working.

The second coming wasn't as all-consuming as my first foray. I wasn’t chained to screen night after night. I’d have waves where I’d be wandering the Texas desert in Red Dead Redemption looking to shoot Mexicans, as if in some Donald Trump time-travelling fantasy, and waves where I’d actually get on with my life and leave the house and shit like that.  And that’s the trick really.  People have accused me of wasting time shooting up post-apocalyptic wastelands, or stealing cars and killing cops until I get gummed down in nihilistic blaze of glory. And I probably am. But no more than watching vacuity such as Strictly or Nazi Storage Hunters or somesuch nonsense. And as long as there’s balance, then I’m like, totally Zen about it. Life is just killing time between birth and death, after all.

I’m troubled today, however, as I’ve had a massive Fallout 4 bender this week, and I feel slightly adulterated.  Every time I look at an object, I expect to be given the option to pick it up.  When someone walks past my house, my first reaction is to get my mini-nuke ready in case they’re hostile. If I’m replying to someone talking to me, I wonder which of my four conversation options will get me the most XP. Last night, instead of going to the pub, I decided to play for just another half hour. 

At five this morning I decided I should go to bed.

So I’m striking out. I’m laying down the law. Drawing a line in the sand. The ghouls can roam, the raiders can raid. The Commonwealth can rebuild itself. I’m not going to allow my life to be dictated to and distorted by digital crack. I’m through with addictive destructive interactions.

New day, new me.  Yes. I will be strong. Starting now.

I’m off the pub. Anyone fancy a pint?

Back to Black

Let’s get this out of the way before we go anywhere else. I am not a hipster. I don’t have a beard. Beards don’t smack of style to me, they reek of Action Man Adventurer, Geography teachers of Grange Hill, and men trying to hide their chins.  I did once have a beard, but that was because I’d broken my ankle and couldn’t stand up to shave.  After three weeks I was very hirsute of face. As is common to men with beards, I did not look the sine qua non of style, I just looked rough. A cross between Cat Stevens and a particularly lazy suicide bomber.  I don’t like beards, I don’t do beards.  Like Alexander the Great, I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to not feel the need to stick it on my face like a circus sideshow.

Similarly, I have neither sleeve tattoo, German footwear nor an appetite for quinoa and locally sourced meats. I am not a hipster.

What I do have is a newly acquired acquaintance with vinyl, - the round grooved type, not the cheap, practical flooring material.  Here is where I intersect with hipsters in the Venn diagram of life.  

And, I suppose, I owe those bearded, sleeve-tattooed, craft-beer drinking wankers a debt of gratitude. While I’ve been away for the last twenty years in the easy world of digital, the Hoxton wankers insistence on being Bona Fide has kept the coma-ridden, semi-cadaverous playing of records on life support.  So, twats of the world, thank you.  Without you, there would be nothing to return to, and my collection of choice platters would be as useful as the two-hundred TDKs I buried in landfill last year.

My conversion to CD wasn’t straightforward.  As a youth, I bought a lot of records.  Obsessively so at times.  I have All About Eve singles on five formats.  I have box sets of songs I didn’t particularly like, but whose packaging lured me into purchase like a shiny fly to a stupid fish. I’ve got albums I still haven’t played, but still plan to one day*. When my peers were turning to CDs because ‘they sounded cleaner’ I stuck to my ancient ways. 

Until idleness took over.  The true advantage of CDs was that you didn’t get up halfway through to turn them over.  While this wasn’t a problem most of the time, it was a particular burn with Pink Floyd albums, for reasons I won’t spell out.  See also Jimi Hendrix, Late Beatles, Hawkwind, Screamadelica, Smokers’ Delight, You Lazy Fucker, Get a Job and Stop Laying Around and Too Stoned to Move. It was a revelation from which I did not recover for many years.

People of a certain age will remember being told that CDs were indestructible. TV shows were riddled with demos of them being smeared with jam, used as coasters, spat on and shat on**. The host would then wipe down the disc of wonder, insert it into one of those VHS player sized CD machines and –hey fucking presto – the unjammed, coffee free sounds of Dire Straits.  It was always Dire Straits, Brothering their fucking Arms.

Yes, we were told they were indestructible. The Incredible Hulk of the musical formats. We were lied to***.

I have hundreds of CDs, and mostly they skip like a schoolgirl on meth. They are less useful than the proverbial chocolate teapot, because at least a chocolate teapot can be eaten. They don’t even make particularly good Frisbees. Shiny discs of corporate theft.

So I’ve bought a record player, I’ve resurrected my collection, and can now be found wandering junk shops in search of hidden gems, elbowing beardy, sandalistas out of my way. Ebay is a new danger in a way it never has been before. Do I need This Charming Man in three different formats? No, of course I don’t, but I’ve bought them anyway. Three versions of Atoms for Peace? Yeah, why not.

 I suspect my love of vinyl is going to kill me financially.         

 

Luckily, while I was still buying vinyl in the mid-nineties, everyone was else was buying CDs. It means that all my Oasis records are now highly sought-after, as is my Aphex Twin brown vinyl and a variety of other things I’ll never listen to again. Ebay taketh away but Ebay also giveth.  I can flog old to hipsters for stupid money, and buy new.  

Wanna buy a copy of Me and my Beard by the Geography Teachers, squire? First pressing – scratch n sniff organic meats and beard oil? Yours for fifty son…

* Zodiac Mindwarp, I’m looking at you.

**Maybe not this one, lthough I could still hear traces of faecal matter, so I’m not ruling it out.

***The motto of the 20^th and 21^st Century, surely.

Standing on a Beach

The first time I stood on a beach, and saw the sea, endless and magnificent. I was about seven, and it was like being smacked full in the face with a metaphysical, heavy-bottomed frying pan. I was on a day-trip to Blackpool, home of seaside rock and beachfront misery, and wasn't really expecting to have such a life-affirming epiphany. Mostly because I was only about seven. My life revolved around colouring-in and Vimto.

The steely, grey-cold plane of water, stretching into an infinity made me feel like I was standing on the edge of forever, staring into oblivion, facing down God*, and both growing in strength and shrivelling in fear simultaneously. It was a feeling such as the Romantics would later term The Sublime, but at that undeveloped age, with my small vocabulary and limited knowledge of classical French philosophy, I merely stared, and, pointing to the edge of the world, said to my mother, ‘There’s the sea’.

I was always perceptive.

I’ve loved beaches, and the sea, ever since.  They are reminder of the unfathomable possibilities of life on Earth, of the journeys we might take, the places we may visit.  The sea in particular invokes a sense of connectedness, as the water which leaves Blackpool is the water which laps the shores of Brighton, crashes into New York harbours, purrs around the sunny shores of South America and imprisons the convicts of Australia.  Staring at the sea is staring at the world, and remembering that we all live here, now, on this rock, at this time in the history of the universe, at this pinprick in the scope of existence.

And, while I genuinely love a sun-washed party-beach, fringed with ramshackle bars selling cheap unidentifiable booze and banging out soulless, plastic techno-pop, I’ve reached an age where the dark melancholy of Northern English beaches is coming into its own.

I took the old mother of earlier Blackpool fame to Formby beach for a Mother’s Day outing today. The sky was thickly grey, the sea  sheet of heavy black.  A cold nip needled the air, the sand was damp and chill. It was gothly lovely.  As when I was seven, the sensation of being strangled by the enormity of existence fizzed around, and the sea, the same sea I saw thirty five years ago, held all the above meaning, but more.

Because I realised that the seas had been there for billions of years, in one form or other, and probably would be for many to come. But the time here for me, for everyone else on that beach, in Formby, in Liverpool**, in the world, was very finite. And I realised that the attraction of the beach/sea combo is a paradoxical one – one of feeling connected to the universe, and one of knowing that our place in the universe is very, very temporary.

And it’s at these spots, reminders of our mortality, our worthlessness, that we choose to spend our free time, that we spend our hard-earned***money visiting.  We actively go out of our way to be reminded that we’re nothing and we’re going to die.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  Because if we realise we’ll eventually be gone, but the world will continue, and hundreds, maybe thousands of years from now, other little boys and girls will see the sea for the first time, and they, too, will marvel at the hugeness of everything, and feel the connectedness with all that lives on this planet, and all that has come and will come, maybe we’ll stop fucking up the planet and the people who live on it.

And if not? Well, the sea will surely survive.

*On which note, God, if you ever want a scrap, I’ll meet you on the grass down the bottom of the park. I’ve got a few bones to pick.

** To be fair, this particular detail didn't feel quite as serious. 

***Or stolen, inherited, found etc

Bang and Blame.

I was listening to Any Answers on Radio 4 earlier today, as I do occasionally when I want to feel intellectually superior to the general public. I'm not claiming actual superiority per se, just the ability to tell the difference between the joint which links the humerus and ulma, and the orifice from which faecal matter is passed.

I use this image as the phrase 'faecal matter' was one which leapt energetically to the forefront of my mind in reaction to the opinions of a handful of contributors.

In keeping with the current spirit of the age there was a barrage of attack, a sheetwind of accusations of Skullduggery, Shiftlessness and General Ne'er-Do-Wellery amongst the poorer members of society, who are actively evading bettering themselves. It was most informative.

Indeed, I was more than glad to be enlightened about the plethora of employment opportunities available out there. There are untold golden doors leading forth, and we should encourage people to snap up gleaming career-paths such as zero-hour contracts at Sports Direct (Alan Pardew's  current job, seemingly), or  low-effort, high-yield roles in the field of black-market organ 'donation'*.  

And to highlight the wonder of these career-opportunities, we must make the carrot shine by smacking the shit out of people with the pointy stick of not paying any kind of benefit to the unemployed.  How did I not see the simplicity of this logic before?

Britain's soft-touch, over-indulgence of the feckless layabout class does nothing other than to encourage people to stay out of work, breeding like jack-rabbits, smoking like laboratory beagles and laughing at Ordinary, Hard-Working Families, all while watching Jeremy Kyle  and Bid-Up TV on their 52" Plasma flatscreens. It cannot continue.

Equally, I was beyond grateful for the enlightening fact that if we provide Child-Benefit for single-mothers with more than three offspring, we are only encouraging 'them' to keep popping the little buggers out.  I don't know why I had never thought of it, but the solution to this problem was there, as clear as day, dancing a little jig of revelation in front of my stupid, complacent face: don't support anyone with four** kids. Let the little fuckers starve. That'll teach  them to be born.

I used to think opinions like these belonged to a minority of insaners.  Worryingly, I'm coming into contact with them more and more frequently.  Speaking to an elderly relative recently I was moderately shocked*** that she was banging on about Romany coming over here like cockroaches, laying eggs, committing crime and depriving our own criminal lads of thievery opportunities in their own country. What's the world coming to when you can't mug old ladies in your own backyard because some benefit-claiming, Polish-Speaking Bulgarian Gypsy has already stolen all their stuff for scrap?

It is dishearteningly true that, as a teacher, I come into contact with this level of ill-conceived crazy on an almost hourly basis. Most popular questions of late have been 'Why are we giving benefits to illegal immigrants?' and 'Why can't we celebrate Easter any more?'.  Usually in the classroom, although sometimes in the staffroom.

I do try point out that if anyone is here illegally, it's unlikely they're registered to receive state help. And,if you want to celebrate a festival which commemorates some dude getting nailed to planks two-thousand years ago, then not only are you free to do so, but you've got a four-day weekend over which to do it.  Stuff yourself with chocolate for Jesus. 

Unfortunately, by this point, the other member of the conversation is usually staring into the distance, dreaming a world in which there are no poor, no strugglers, no dissenters, no rabble-rousers, no foreigners, no one in need of help, no-one angry at injustice. A world of beige Swastikas.

There is definite social-shift towards more right-wing attitudes riding the Zeitgeist.  I suspect it goes in cycles, as people grow dissatisfied with one general hue of the political-attitudes spectrum, there is a slide along to the other side, and then, after some time down that end, vice-versa.

I'm hoping that we're as far towards the right as we're going to get, and that people will start to question the course of the National Conversation, in much the same way that people are beginning to question the coll quotient of beards. They are not actually cool, but they are one-step away from living in the woods and shagging goats to assert some sort of misguided masculinity.

And I hope we are not on a slide towards further blame and accusation against those most in need. I hope this because, today, I read about the detrimental impact of zero-hours on the psychological well-being of those who are on them. I read about the rise in the need for food-banks in the sixth-richest country in the world.

I also read that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles (Or is she Camiila Windsor now? I have no idea how the apportioning of names works in those levels of the German Nobility) charged the taxpayer £30,000 for a plane from Windsor to Scotland, for a personal trip. Because Lord Ears 'is always on duty'. I also read that the average annual salary for the CEOs of the top 100 companies in Britain is £4.4m.

And I wonder how, when we live a society like that, where the rich are, in the words of the song, getting richer, and the poor, in the words of another song, are getting rained on from a great height, that people don't look up to see why they're actually getting shafted, but look across, or look down, and see blame where there should be human solidarity.

Any answers?

* The latter was implied, rather than explicitly stated. I was listening to Radio Four, after all. Not BBC London.

** This may seem like an arbitrary number. It's not of course. Any less, and we'd be no better than those there Chinese communists. And besides, we need to keep breeding so we don't get outbred by them there Muslims, innit?

***Moderately . There does seem to be a correlation between ageing and being the Daily Mail in human form. 

In Defence of Shakespeare

It may seem a wee hubristic for me to assume that Shakespeare needs defending, given that he's outsold me by about a gazillion to one, but following a few conversations recently, I feel I need to grab a Stetson, pull on my boots, and get on my high horse.

I  was talking to a relative this weekend, and as invariably happens when you're a teacher, everyone who ever went to school* has  an opinion with what's wrong with education, and how it can be fixed. ***

The relative's current bugbear was Shakespeare. For those not aware, it is legally compulsory to teach Shakespeare in English secondary  schools.  This was the initial complaint, and it is one I can somewhat sympathise with. If Shakespeare's works are so good, why do they have to be compulsory? The sad answer, however,  is because Shakespeare is also difficult, and if it didn't have to be there, it'd be wiped off many a school curriculum faster than the smile of Phil Jones's face at the end of the 2011/2012 season.

This semi-reasonable point was swiftly followed by the unforgivably irrelevant.

'They don't even think Shakespeare wrote his plays, so why is everyone so Wow! about it?'

Apart from the issues of Who The Fuck Are 'They'? and Who The Fuck Is 'Everyone', this is a statement which bores to the core of the fabric of my being.  I shit you not.

There are bonds of family and kinship that provoke an inherent abhorrence against reckless, unbridled violence towards the members of your nearest and dearest. I was tempted to put them aside.

My main problem with this witless vacuity is that it seems pretty clear to me that it was rampant class prejudice which  lead to this cock-arsed idea that Shakespeare couldn't have written his plays, because he wasn't spat out of one of England's public schools, wasn't a member of the nobility. He wasn't, in short, the inbred offspring of two fat-necked chinless land-owning cousins from the shires, but was, instead,  the son of a glove-maker from the Midlands.

The other important things about this is that it is matters even less than William Hague's empty whinges in the  vague direction of Putin's embryonic invasion of Ukraine, while simultaneously the British government aren't prepared to sacrifice all that lovely Russian loot by imposing any kind of sanction.  It doesn't matter who wrote the plays and poems. When we talk about 'Shakespeare' we're talking about a body of work,  not a body of man.  Shakespeare is important in the words that exist, not in The Life and Times of a Glove-Making Yokel****.

And Shakespeare, the body of work, is brilliant. I fell in love with Macbeth (the play) at school, when I fell in love with Lady Macbeth  (the character, worryingly).  Like most snotty reactionaries I then drove my cultural tanks onto the lawns of The Bard, and started firing rounds of accusation. Mostly that Shakespeare  was a fuck-arse verbose wanker. I was always charmingly eloquent.

But I refound my love, and now try to pass it on, and to kindle at least a slice of that  love in my young charges, my Shakespeare padawans.

I gave a slightly less antagonistic version of the above in response to the unnamed relative.  The next ball in this game of Ignorance Tennis was a cracker:

'I bet if Shakespeare came back he'd be like 'That's not what I meant' to all these university professors who write about him.'

This is, to me, the equivalent of wearing a t-shirt which says  'I am a fucking moron, stab me'. No-one ever says to kids doing doughnuts in a Ford Escort round Aldi carparks, 'That's not what Henry Ford had in mind.'

In fact, if Shakespeare came back from that undiscover'd country from which no traveller doth return, and started bitching about how his writings were being misinterpreted, I'd tell him to sling his hook, encounter the darkness as a bride, and fuck off back to Deadland.  I'm no more interested in what he's got to say about his writing than wondering whether Yaya's Toure's equaliser in the Capital One Cup was deliberate or not. It was a thing of beauty. That is enough.

Shakespeare is divisive. But Shakespeare is complex. For every over-wrought, long-winded phrase, there's a finely-balanced, killer phrase which can encapsulate  tomes of philosophical weight in a few words. There are the famous ones: To be or not to be - the futility of existence, and the paradox of life, in six words. The beautiful ones: A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet - the arbitrary relationship between language and existence.

 And, of course, the lesser known gems: It's a game of two halves, and it's not over till Nasri says it's over.

Well done City, cheers Shakey.  

* Everyone **

** Of course, there are people who don't have the luck of access to education. I don't meet these people, unfortunately.

*** I hate to break this to you, but most of you are wrong. No offence, that's just the way it is. Live with it.

****Actually, his old man seems to be have been a pretty well-off small business older. Shakespeare is no more a yokel than Lily Allen, Damon All-Bran and Jamie Oliver are cockneys. 

Gerrorrff Moi Lahnd.

I've been for a pleasant afternoon amble in the Surrey countryside today, partly to clear out the Christmas Cobwebs, partly because tomorrow is Return to Work Monday - the double misery of a Monday and the end to the holidays. Factor in the the fact that it is January - the waking hangover of the calendar year - and you have a Holy Trinity of abject Misery.

Luckily, it was a head-clearer of a day.  No pesky distractions such as sunshine or dry, unsodden paths were to to be found anywhere. In fact, the majority of the paths seemed, like the earth itself, to have started commemorating the centenary of the First World War by emulating the conditions of the trenches of Flanders Field. Or maybe it was nature's protest about Michael Gove's jingoistic rewriting of the catalysts and conditions of that same war. Even the ground weeps when he speaks.

Regardless, there were paths, and they afforded a pleasant afternoon under grey, open skies, along the skeletal fingers of winterdead trees. Surrey is an opinion-splitter for me, as a place to walk. It is very pretty, and generally a gentle amble rather than a Let's-All-Go-To-Mount-Doom epic mountain trek.  Quaint, rather than rugged. A nice place for a nice, easy, Sunday stroll. 

The maggot in the ointment amongst this twee world of stone cottages and red telephone boxes is the level of  ostentation and suspicion inherent in the local folk.  The county reeks of money and isolationism. Whether in the array of superbly expensive vehicles in the drives of cottages which once would have been peopled by rural workers, but are now peopled by balding, middle-aged City workers, aiming to live a little slice of Ambridge. Whether in the looks of You're-Not-From-Round-Here in the dead eyes of every waxed-jacket, tweed-cap wearing would-be Lord of the Manor you pass. Whether in the huge barn conversions whacked in the middle of fields, where the established rights-of-way are often blocked , sometimes hidden, sometimes invisible.

These sweeping strokes of my digital pen are obviously not true of all. There are many paths which are well-maintained, many styles which function. But often you are made to feel as if you are trespassing, and that the gentrified version of Farmer Palmer will be lurking with intent behind every shadowy yew.

When I was younger I often heard the phrase 'Property is Theft'. It stuck me as slightly odd, because I definitely had not stolen any of my Star Wars figures or Action Men, and I clearly remember my mum actually paying for my bike. As I grew, I began to see that there was truth in this. 

Noone actually has a right to ownership of any land. We're all born on the planet, and it was here long before we were, and will be long after we've wiped ourselves out by not looking after it properly. Over the millennia groups of people staked a claim to areas of land, because that's where they and their ancestors lived,  and they were harder than you, so fuck off. Or, groups of people nicked land, because they were harder than you, and had bigger spears, or brighter flags. Most property has been thieved. At best, we can call ourselves custodians. In most cases, we're really borrowers. But in many cases, it is outright stealing. And stealing is wrong, as the Catholic Church of my childhood told me daily, from atop a chryselephatine altar.

But my bugbear today isn't those group land-grabs. That's a much wider field than I'm prepared to cross*. It's when individuals hog land. 

In Britain, we have a hard-fought-and-won right to use established rights of way. Paths, ancient and modern, which have been used regularly,can be deemed an established route open to all.  It is, for many, the only way that they are able to explore the wet, dank beauty of the British countryside.

And now, enter stage right (of course), Owen Paterson, an environment secretary so hostile to the environment that he is less suited to his role than Fred West's Babysitting Service or Jesus Christ's School of Revenge.

Mr Paterson wants land-thieves (or landowners, if you prefer), to be able to ignore these rights-of-way. That's Owen Paterson, who lives in a massive house, on a massive hill, in a massive field, surrounded by a massive wall, in the Shropshire Countryside. I'm not saying there's a conflict of interest, in the same way I wouldn't say David Cameron isn't trustworthy. It'd be like pointing up and shouting, 'Look - the sky!'.

Supporting climate-change-denying, badger-baiting, fracking-supporting Mr Paterson is popular television gobshite and all-round turdblood, Jeremy Clarckson. A man whom I would tire of slapping, but it would be a physical tiring rather than an emotional one. I reckon I could go at him for a good fifteen and half hours before my arms would ache too much though. Then I'd run him over with a pink Fiat Punto, bundle him the boot of a pink Fiat Uno, and drive it into the sea, condemning him to a perpetual burial in a car he would no doubt claim is driven by someone black, lesbian, midget, Guardian-reading, and all those other eighties-right-wing-cliches-about-left-wingers. 

His support for this would be enough, in itself, to for me take up an opposing view, as the odds on such a view making sense would be phenomenally high. I have yet to hear him utter anything that doesn't make me dream of slow-murder.  Coupled with Paterson's support, I'm waving the flag before even reading the minutiae of the proposal. After reading the minutiae, I'm loading the metaphorical cannons.

This government is on an ideological crusade. And crusade is an apt word, because it is to the time of The Crusades that they wish to return. Paterson wants to play the feudal overlord, and if there's one thing feudal overlords hate, it's groups of oiks tramping over their land, arguing about which path to take. 

Remember, if it weren't for the dedication of walkers past, Sauron would have won. Don't let these dark lords get away with it. 

Walk, hassle MPs, don't buy anything endorsed by Clarkson. Get out into the country. Remind the 1% that the 99% are here, and won't go down with out a fight. Or a firm stroll, at least.

*Boom Boom

The Spirit of Christmas

It is ten forty-five p.m, 24 December 2013. In the Chemist household, this points in one direction. Not, as the end of the previous sentence suggests, to an evening of shite, shallow pop, but to the yearly family visit eglise-wards.  We’re off to church.

It has been a family tradition, since before I became aware, that we drag ourselves away from the world of secular pleasures and go and pay our dues to the Baby J, the donkeys and all the pretty little blonde angels.  

I’m from a Catholic household, and was an unblinking believer for the first sixteen years of my life. This meant that Christmas meant something of actual importance. It was a reminder and celebration of the wond’rous joy of the dawning of a new world. Unlike Easter, which, while being the bigger miracle, was an unending guilt trip of biblical proportions.  Easter is shit.

Even though I had God removed from my life by sustained thought, and, ironically, an epiphany, the remnants of this period are deeply ingrained into the deepest trenches of my psyche.  Christmas is more than an excuse to get wasted without being judged, to stay in bed until early evening, to have port and stilton for breakfast. These are, indeed, parts of the wonder of the Yuletide period, but the whole is greater than the parts.

I first got into the family Midnight Mass at the age of eight, when I discovered that I would be allowed to open my presents on return from the slowest hour-and-a-half of my life, rather than having to wait until the morning.  When you’re waiting for a lightsaber and laser-rifle, those hours matter.  It’s the difference between a life of freedom or a life of alien-overlorded servitude.

And, as I imagine most children find, it was chore.  A big, fat steaming Christmas chore, to which I was bonded. As the years passed, the ways to pass time changed. For a few years, I’d translate the Latin verses into English for the duration.  Hitting my early twenties, I’d spend the dripping minutes of boredom checking out the talent from a fog of festive spirits. A phase which lasted pretty much the rest of the decade, with various degrees of disorientation, and talent.

I never pulled at church. I clearly wasn't working the room well enough.

I must’ve seemed somewhat responsible in my late twenties, because the Priest’s little helper, lighting his way with a red nose to put Sid James to shame, and with a face of thread-veins like a map of the Nile, asked me to take charge of the collection plate.  Feeling grown-up, I agreed. Feeling shitfaced, I dropped it. I have not been asked again.

Two years ago, Mario Balotelli was at the same church as me. I asked him to make sure we won our game on Boxing Day. We lost. Mario, you owe me a Christmas present.

The last few years I've been on driving duty, so Christmas Eve’s excuse for getting ripped off my tits has gone the way of the dodo. Or Dodi, for those with a royalist streak.

Now, I sit still, sing, and think about the beauty of the occasion, and consider the communal  coming together in midwinter which has been a feature of European life for millennia. In the calm sobriety, in my concrete belief in no unearthly being* , I remember that we are all here, now, at this point in time and space. That we have all sprung from one chance mutation somewhere in Africa eons ago. I remember that many have come before, and many will come after. Hundreds of thousands of years have seen billions of lives, loves, losses.  We have shared stories, we have risen and fallen, grown and shrivelled.

And I remember that, today, globally, more than ever, we share histories, cultures, ye traditional hopes and fears.

And for that, even if the rest of the year you’re an absolute fucking nonce, remember - we all are human. We share that. We are none of us islands. At best, be loving, caring, considerate. At worst, don’t be a dickhead.  It’ll be the 27^th soon, the peace and goodwill will all be over, and people will expect to get shafted. For the next two days, no one wants to be fucked over.

Make Christmas mean something. Make it mean people.

Happy Christmas to you all.**

* Not including Roger from American Dad

** Apart, of course, from David Cameron, Gideon Osbourne, Michael Gove and all the other devils of spiteful hate. Even I don’t feel that festive. 

Giant Douche or Shit Sandwich?

Russell Brand has been making headlines recently for things other than bullying Spanish waiters and marrying plastic popstars. The would-be pirate took up his mantle of the people's poet from its previous holder, Rick from The Young Ones. On Newsnight he informed Paxman why he'd never voted, and why apathy is the only sensible choice - because politics is a two-horse race, and the two horses are being ridden by very similar jockeys who shout at each other whilst riding for the same stables. Or something along those lines.

I've never liked Brand. Not for any good reason, but because I think he'd make a shit pirate, and he made a shit Arthur.  The cinematic equivalent of pissing on a sleeping Dudley Moore's face.  An unforgivable crime against art, humanity, the environment and alcoholics.

But he struck a raw nerve with this pontification. Paxman gave him a mild grilling, like the shit final flames of a  4a.m. kebab shop heater on the last flaccid slices of purple donner, only to come out in semi-support a few days later.  Many people have liked the clip on Facebook, some have declared him a political genius, and I've even found myself agreeing with him, as his latest crusade to be a pantomime Jesus coincided with my own falling out with my party.

It will come as little surprise that I am, and always have, been a Labour voter.  They're noticeably a little more centre than myself, but even in a two horse race you need to bet on something if you want to get anything out of it. However, the appointment of Tristam Hunt to Shadow Education, and Rachel Reeves to Work and Pensions was a Bridge over the River Kwai too Far, or somesuch.  One Step Beyond. The straw that ...you get the picture. I don't like them. 

Hunt is a TV historian whose education credentials are the same as everyone else's - he once went to school.  His first pronouncement was to offer support for Free Schools while insisting he didn't support Free Schools.

Reeves' moment of glory was facing up to Ian Duncan Smith, flexing her right-of-centre muscles, while laughing at his attempts to dismantle the Social Security system, and promising that when she got into power she'd fuck up anyone who even thought the words ' Jobseeker's Allowance' .  If he thought he was hard, she'd come over there, shove his namby-pamby policies up his lily-white arse, and then go and personally kill anyone with a hint of disability. With her bare hands, while whistling the Dead Kennedy's ' Kill the Poor'.

At least, that's how I remember it.

I resigned my membership shortly after this, and decided I couldn't vote for a party which had these two fucksticks on their front bench. If it was my party, I'd take them to a forest, break their ankles and leave them for bears.

This resolve has lasted about three weeks. Disgusted as I am with these two wanktards, the opposite is unbearable.  In the last week alone Cameron has let his fat mates know that austerity is here to stay.  Dressed in white tie, at a five-course meal with the Lord Mayor of London,  sat atop a throne of gold carried on the back of a tortoise made of fifty-pound notes*, he set out his plans to keep the rest of the country on the bones of its arse.

At the same time, Gove has written to the teaching unions, stating that he is prepared to enter talks. Talks about how his plans are going to go ahead without any negotiation, and that the talks must include not only the two unions which represent 95% of teachers, but some other pissy little associations for teachers who are too well-paid, or too right wing, to be part of a union, but daren't leave themselves vulnerable to being fucked over in one of the myriad ways a teacher can be fucked over.

There are six of these cop-out groups, representing under 5% of teaching staff. They can have their own meeting with Gove. They don't strike, they don't stand for anything . They just enjoy the benefits the other two unions have won for them over the last century. Parasites.

Meanwhile, Ian Duncan Smith continues his crusades to eradicate poverty by eradicating the poor. Fringe Tories propose killing disabled children to save money**.  Nick Clegg continues to live.

So, even though the two options are similar, they're not the same. In the middle, it may be a bit Animal Farm - you look at one, you look at the other, and you can't tell the difference. But move away from the centre fence, and the differences show.

So I'm voting. Because the people who are likely to have enough of a conscience to abstain on principle are also the people who would be more likely to vote Labour. The natural principles of a Tory don't stretch that far. And the thought of another four years of this gaggle of amateur-night ideologues is too much to consider.

We're never going to revolt, it's not in our cultural  DNA. We'll grumble, abstain, maybe even actually go to the polls to write 'none of these dickheads'. But we won't be out in the streets, shaking pitchforks, stringing the Bullingdon Boys up from a Downing Street lamppost.  So until the day comes that the people of Britain have their own Odessa Steps moments, I'm going to use the only weapon I can use legally.

I'm voting Labour.

Hopefully Reeves and Hunt will choked on their stupidity by then . If you haven't got hope, you haven't got anything.

* I made that bit up. But for a second, you believed it, didn't you.  Because you can see him doing it, can't you.

** I didn't make that up, shockingly.