Phill Hall

2012 - 5

2012-02-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

Reflections

It's not been a bad week. I had this horrible feeling that my cough was coming back with a grudge yesterday, but I think it was just a symptom of a long week, made more difficult by people being off sick (so now I suppose I know what it's like when I'm off).

Yes, I hate the weather. Getting up in the morning has only been tempered by my close proximity to radiators and the walk from the car to school has been hampered by this odd feeling I've had that I have to take my hat off before I even get out of the car; which is strange, as my boss has been wearing gloves since November - inside the building as well as out.

As you might imagine, a school is a warm place, especially my office, which is toasty and a bit too cloying at times. However, my assistant's room is a mass of windows, is a bit larger, and she has been complaining since November that it's bloody freezing. Every time either of us has gone to the caretakers to ask for the heating to be put up, we've been told it is on maximum. As a result, she went off sick with a chill on Tuesday and I was left holding the fort.

Fast forward to Friday. My assistant comes back to work, walks into the room and is greeted by her own breath condensing in front of her. Later in the morning, still wearing her coat and fielding complaints from blue-tinged children, the head caretaker comes into her room, looking for me. When asked if he thought the room was cold, he expanded and said he thought the room was freezing. He went to the thermostat, which only they can change because it is locked in a little box, and discovered the heating had, in fact, been turned off in that room entirely...

Now, I know that we both work with the kids who are already being condemned to having no future, but seriously, is killing them through hypothermia a solution? I admit, it's something that often needs to be considered, but maybe a little more subtly.

That chilly room aside, I coughed my way through the week and finished it actually feeling that I'm now part of the furniture. I think it's a moment all new employees hope for - the start of being a cog in the wheel rather than just trying to fit in.

I seemed to spend a lot of last week explaining things that I'm sure other people are better qualified at doing, but one student, who is working on a history project about JFK, found that my knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina and what he did before he killed the president was just totally awesome. It helped that I'd just read Stephen King's JFK book, which, as the afterword says, extrapolates on known facts about the assassin. I also spent the end of the week explaining why people shouldn't use the word 'Pikey' when talking about Travellers. It's a strange situation really; having to dissuade people from being judgemental about a group of individuals I have the same amount of respect for as my charges.

I also discovered that people at the school have me labelled. The students all think I'm like Greg Davis's character from The Inbetweeners - the head of 6th form, I believe. I am yet to watch it. While a group of my colleagues all think I remind them of... fucking Rik Mayal or however he spells his untalented and irritating name. One year 10 thinks I look like Justin Timberlake's dad... Not his actual dad, just what she imagines his dad would look like!?!?

Out Foul Spot

Chris Huhne allegedly perverts the course of justice. John Terry gets sacked as England Captain and the government accepts it was wrong to allow a top civil servant to subcontract his position to himself to allow him to avoid paying any tax or NI because he registered his company off shore. All this while Harry Rednapp is involved in a high profile tax avoidance court case for a sum of money that compared to every other bugger getting away with not paying their dues, looks like nothing more than an opportunity by HMRC to make the average person think they're doing something about tax avoidance.

It seems that Labour have laid down and accepted it was their fault that the country is in an economic mess, despite their fault being only a small percentage of the actual mess and that (apart from nobody particularly being impressed by Ed Milliband) seems to be the entire reason for thinking that David Cameron is now destined to lead the country eventually without his LibDem crutch. Here's a fact for you. Including the last Tory government's 18 years in power and Labour's 13, there have been a number of scandals that has resulted in ministers losing their jobs. So far governments with Conservatives in them are beating Labour 3:1 in terms of losing jobs because of illegal or inappropriate activities.

It seems that the country as a whole doesn't actually, really, care about whether our MPs are honest, decent and trustworthy, or, for that matter, our football captains or our HMRC...

Release the Pressure

My latest TV obsession (and another that's about 10 years after every one else) is Family Guy. A TV series that is essentially The Simpsons but much more anarchic and therefore considerably funnier.

Family Guy for those of you who haven't been bombarded with it on BBC3 or FX is essentially an animated 'sitcom' featuring the Griffin family of Peter, Lois, Meg, Chris, Stewie and the talking dog Brian, who is undoubtedly the most intelligent of the group, even if he is a dog. It is a similar set up to Homer and Bart's show - stupid dad, bright but misunderstood daughter, a wife who is intelligently bi-polar, a son who is dysfunctional and a baby. They all live in a fictional town, Peter drinks at the local bar with his usual gang of friends and the family get involved in all kinds of weird adventures. Except weird and adventures are not really what happens. Unlike The Simpsons which relies heavily on the family as a central theme, the Griffins don't so much have weekly plot developments more like a rough plot that is allowed to follow a bizarre stream of consciousness. Plus, despite Peter's similarities to Homer, the yellow skinned over-biter is considerably more intelligent than his Quahog counterpart. Lois is similar to Marge Simpson in many ways, except she is capable of some of the most bizarre and ill-thought-out ideas. Meg differs from Lisa in that Meg is ugly, fat, disliked and the butt of almost every one's jokes. Chris is no Bart Simpson; he is depicted as being slightly more stupid than his father and while the character is one of the most underused in the show, I think that's done deliberately. You often just see him standing around staring at walls or into thin air. The real differences are with Stewie, the baby of the family. Where Maggie Simpson does nothing but suck on a dummy and get into mishaps, Stewie wants world domination, hates his mother, loathes his father and has little or no time for his siblings, while simultaneously loving and ridiculing Brian the dog. Shaped like an American football, Stewie is equal parts baby, murderer, psychopath, evil genius and lovable scamp, therefore his antithesis is Brian the dog, who is intelligent, but moral (despite smoking and having a love for sex and booze) and is the ethical fibre of the Griffin family, doing everything he can to keep the family together, while lusting after Lois.

Among many things, the show specialises in bizarre cut away vignettes to quickly tell the story of a reference made by whatever character is talking, or in most cases to leave you blinking at the screen wondering how on earth an American writer could come up with something so surreal, yet so incredibly funny. I like to think it's how The Simpsons would have been like has Terry Gilliam produced it and insisted the script team cannot work unless they are under the influence of drugs. It also pushes the boundaries of common decency to a level I've never seen on US television and there isn't really any sex or nudity in it that would concern anyone, because it is done in a cartoon way.

Like the show it is often compared to, Family Guy does have its fair share of duff episodes, or can start brilliantly and then run out of steam, especially if the writers are deliberately trying to force a point they all feel strongly about that week. So, therefore, like The Simpsons there is an element of moralising, even if it's just an excuse to do something gross or bizarre.

One perfect example is an episode I watched on Wednesday night that, to be as brief as possible, involved Peter running up a $34,000 chemists bill, exchanging his daughter for the debt and the subplot of Stewie's new babysitter. These plot details are immaterial really, because it is the set piece scenes that tend to steal every show and they rarely advance the story. Part of Peter's debt to the chemist involves him basically taking anything he wants from racks of greetings cards to bottles of laxatives to play drinking games with. Said game involved drinking an entire bottle of the laxative (normal dose a teaspoon full) and seeing who can go the longest without throwing up - the winner getting the last piece of pie in the kitchen. By the time Peter, Chris, Stewie and Brian had covered the entire living room in vomit, I was laughing so hard I was worried I'd wake the wife up and I missed half of it stifling guffaws.

One of the funnier trademarks of Family Guy is its willingness to linger rather than have the joke and move on. What they effectively do is stretch the joke so far it's starts being funny, stops and then gets funnier again - a trick The Fast Show used to its advantage. I sometimes wonder what the Americans make of some of the jokes that seem to just last far longer than their usual attention spans, but for me it's one of the real highlights of the show and it's used sparingly, so as not to become repetitive.

It is also a show that I've been aware of for years and occasionally dipped into, but I don't think I was ever prepared for it until now and it is worth persevering with, because you'll be laughing before you know it.

Perseverance

Still getting free lobster spam. I'm also getting spam from someone called Anthony Morrison and it appeared the day after I made 'friends' on Facebook with someone called Morrison. That's a coincidence a little too far, I think. Might explain how Facebook make so much money considering they don't charge their 500 trillion members.

However, that extrapolation suggests that people who work for Mark Zuckerberg know the faceless wankers responsible for so much spam flying around the world and surely that's good enough reason to kill them all?

Huh?

The rest of my day is going to mainly trying to think of something to do for dinner, which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't gone food shopping yesterday. It will also involve a chilly dog walk and will probably end with a night curled up in front of a roaring fire waiting for the impending blizzard that has been forecast. The weather men seem to all agree that it should start snowing in Northampton between 5 and 6:00pm and will continue until the wee hours of tomorrow morning, delivering up to 10cm of snow, which will then freeze causing death and carnage on the roads. Yet according to the BBC Live Football updates it was snowing heavily in Stoke-on-Trent at 1:00pm and that is just 100 miles away by road and actually about 75 miles as the crow flies. The skies are growing cloudy and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it didn't arrive here by 3:00pm.

We had the street light in front of my office turned off in the summer; the wife was pleased about it, but I miss it, especially during the winter, because it allows me to keep an eye on the immediate world outside and obviously tell you all about some of the strange things I've seen and heard. However, I'll really miss it for something altogether relaxing. In the 12 or so years we've lived in this house, a huge swathe of those years saw little or no snow at all, but the last few years have been more like winters we've been led to believe happened every year.

One of the most relaxing and pleasant experiences I've had on cold week nights, after the wife has gone to bed, is to turn off the lights in my office, sit back in my chair and watch the snow fall around the street lamp; watching as my part of the world transforms from being a typical dull town street into a winter wonderland and one that few cars come along to spoil. I just find it really peaceful, the same way I like listening to rain on the conservatory roof as I try to get to sleep on wet nights.

The most amusing aspect of this impending snow fall is the look of disappointment on the faces of my colleagues on Friday when they realised that the only snow of the year so far will fall on a weekend, thus stymieing their chances of getting a paid day off. It's not like we get enough holiday already, is it?

2012 - 4

2012-01-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

Lobstrosity Domine

I've noticed friends talking a lot about their bizarre spam recently. I've touched on spam in the past, but I feel an urge to share with you the most recent batch of spam mail I've been receiving inviting me to sample 'A Free Lobster'!

Yes, in the land of Viagra, penis enlargement, Nigerian bankers, Russian brides, married women looking for fun and cheap meds, I get Free Lobster spam! I feel unique.

The Hangover Part 3

Exactly 12 pints of beer, two Jack Daniels and a glass of champagne have been drunk by me since December 15. Six of the pints have been drunk in a period of eight days leading up to the two fine pints of Hooky Gold in a pub in Oxford on Tuesday night. This piece of alcoholic introspective is sort of important because my tolerance to alcohol is probably pretty low at the moment.

Last night, while out shopping and looking at the woeful selection of bottled beers on offer (despite having 10 in the house any how), I decided that perhaps it would be nice to crack open one of the 8 bottles of wine I've got instead. So, that's what I did. I opened a bottle of McGuigan's Shiraz - a fruity 14% wine from south east Australia. Me and the wine have history...

The wife is doing overtime again today, so I have my chores (hoovering, dusting in the house; rubbish and dog shit removal outside), but apart from that I normally have a few hours to do my blog, watch some Sky Sports News and listen to some music (I am currently listening to the most recent Maxxess album). Saturday's when she's working are normally a breeze!

At about 9.45 last night, as the wife was getting ready to go to bed and I'd finished a quarter of the bottle of red, I contemplated watching some TV and maybe, having another glass. By the time the second in the Family Guy double bill had finished I'd drunk the entire bottle...

I got half way through it, felt a very nice buzz and picked up momentum which demolished the second half in about 20 minutes. I knew at the half way mark that any more would guarantee a hangover (and green pooh), but my inner self, the one that has been essentially abstinent for 6 weeks, said 'bollocks to that - get pissed!' So never one to let people down, I did!

When I say I'm listening to the latest Maxxess album, it is on very low and I've necked a handful of various pills, drunk lots of red bush and am working my way up to a coffee. My head feels like it is encased in amber and you'd seriously have to wonder about my brain. I mean, I've been ill or under the weather for 6 weeks, I start to feel really good again - this has been a good week - and I go and self inflict a day on myself that I will not enjoy and ultimately hate myself for because I'm probably going to waste a lot of one of the weekend days.

Wine was ever so nice though...

Will it Snow?

The weathermen are making a big deal out of next week's impending spell of winter, possibly the first real bit of winter we'll have seen this season. As for Northampton, I expect we'll see nothing more than a few snow flurries, if we're lucky.

The idea of lots of snow appeals to me now because of the possibility of having a Snow Day - you know the thing, where schools close because there is a risk that a child might slip on an untreated patch of ice. break a leg and sue the school for a lot of money, or something like that.

The good thing about Snow Days is that if the school decides it is closing, we get paid! It isn't our fault, so we don't get penalised. When I was at the Youth Offending Team, it was during two of the most severe winters many of us can remember and at times much of the areas my team and I had to work were pretty much impassable, yet if you couldn't get into work, because the council (who were also my employers) hadn't been able to grit or clear the roads, you had to take it as annual leave or unpaid. Which I always thought was something of an unfair penalty.

Vaguely related, I have rambling roses out at the moment; just a few in sheltered spots in the garden. I also still have a sapling nectarine tree in full leaf, despite the one next to it looking bare. There are daffodils and other spring bulbs poking though and the sweet peas my wife put in in June have lots of new growth and shoots on them and they should have all been dead by the end of November, at an extreme. However, we have learned that one of the best indicators of the arrival of spring is usually when the ducks start laying again. That never happens before Valentine's Day and the last couple of years it has been closer to the wife's birthday, at the beginning of March.

29 on 29

I suppose the biggest bit of news this week is that on Sunday, I will have been 'going out' with my wife for 29 years. It's a pretty scary number because it seems to have whizzed past - time flies when you're having fun!

Obviously, because this is January 29, our celebrations for the last 14 years have been slightly muted, because it was also on this day that my mum died. Therefore this 'anniversary' has always been one that has just been between the two of us. I'm going to take her out for a nice meal tonight.

Gig Guide 11: M83, Oxford O2 Academy; 24th January 2012

2012-01-25T14:03:00.000-08:00

I said to Roger when I picked him up that the evening would be something different.

The journey down was uneventful and smooth; it took 66 minutes.

Roger's navigation through Oxford was exemplary.

Parking was not hard to find, just a bit awkward.

The pub was surprisingly good.

The O2 is a complete and utter piece of shit venue. I thought it the first time and I haven't changed my mind.

It was over 100 degrees in the venue by the time the band came on.

The sound was awful.

The light show was foggy.

We were surrounded by quite extraordinarily fit posh totty, all very sweaty.

Did I mention how hot it was? The two pints I had were ejaculated through my sweat glands like Andy Sipowicz eating linguine.

We moved. Our view was poor and there were loads of ignorant sweaty twats being ignorant and sweaty.

The equipment malfunction possibly knocked 10 minutes off the set.

I don't know who the other musicians were.

The middle part of the gig had the best sound, the encore pandered to the clubbers.

The journey home was uneventful and took us 57 minutes from walking out of the O2 to walking through my front door.

Despite how this sounds, I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening - very sweaty, slightly underwhelmed by the sound quality and really unimpressed with the venue, but... I had fun. I enjoyed 75% of the songs and I felt good, but tired after it.

Not my usual gig standard - musically - but I'm glad I sampled it.

7 out of 10

The TV Dump (i)

2012-01-22T02:12:00.000-08:00

Jumping Small Sharks Often?

The phrase jump the shark comes from a scene in the fifth season premiere episode of the American TV series Happy Days and aired on September 20, 1977. In the episode, the central characters visit Los Angeles, where a water-skiing Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark, answering a challenge to demonstrate his bravery. For a show that in its early seasons depicted universally relatable experiences against a backdrop of 1950s nostalgia, this marked an audacious, cartoonish turn towards attention-seeking gimmickry and continued the faddish lionization of an increasingly superhuman Fonzie. The series continued for nearly five years after that, with a number of changes in cast and situations. However, it is commonly believed that the show, out of ideas and even trapped in its own success (largely due to the disproportionate popularity of the "Fonzie" character and the show's (executives') intense desire to continue "milking" that), began a downhill slide, becoming a caricature of itself often filled with little more than its popular catch phrases and character mannerisms.

It would probably be true to say that nowadays the expression is synonymous with drastic changes of direction reflecting almost desperate measures to continue the life of something - normally TV.

In my experience, the show I'm about to talk about jumped the shark with episode 8 of the first season, in probably a valiant attempt to stave off certain cancellation. Even if the producers had always intended the show to go the way it did, that particular episode felt so like a tying up all those uninteresting subplots and going in a direction the viewers of those first 8 episodes probably didn't expect. I'm talking about Fringe.

Now in its fourth season and in the supposed graveyard of Friday nights, Fringe may well have jumped the shark several times in its 70 odd episodes already. The end of the 3rd season was notable for one thing - the disappearance/removal of Peter Bishop from time. Bishop Junior is the son of Walter Bishop, the mad scientist recruited by the FBI's Fringe Division to solve the unsolvable. Fringe is like CSI: Barking and not the place in Essex. Peter was born in an alternative universe, stolen by a desperate Walter after the death of his own Peter and saved and brought up in 'our' reality. What you also need to know is that Peter is an anomaly; he should never have survived in any reality, but because he did the order of everything is out of whack. Enter the Watchers, a bunch of bald suit-wearing throwbacks to the 1950s, who make sure that what should be is and their own origins are far from clear - they appear to be otherworldly entities charged with protecting the space time continuum.

Mad enough for you? Well, that doesn't even scratch the surface. The lovely Anna Torv who plays agent Olivia Dunham has a fucked up history that is almost as crazy as Peter and Walter's; throw in a cow, lots of hallucinogenic drugs, madness, prog rock, shape shifters, umpteen dissections, an FBI agent who is an idiot savant in another reality but is essentially a surrogate babysitter for the totally crazy Walter in our world and you're still just getting to the next level. Fringe is barking, but possibly its madness is just not enough...

You could argue that Peter saved the world at the end of season 3 and his sacrifice was for history to be reset so that he didn't have a part to play in it, but while he disappeared into nothingness, he didn't and now finds himself in a reality that isn't the one he remembers and, of course, no one knows who he is apart from the fact he should be dead. And this new series has effectively become Fringe's shark moment.

The problem is we're dealing with a TV series like so many before it is faced with cancellation at the end of every series; season 4 appears to be incredibly ambitious for a show that industry insiders have forecast will be lucky to see a 5th season. The die hard fans who stuck with it through the first 3 series have been introduced to a new reality where only Peter Bishop is the same person and with that comes bags of unfinished sub plots and things that happened during the first 3 series that have seemingly either been completely forgotten about (convenient) or are retelling things in a different way from how they did happen. Confused yet? If you watched it, it would only be mild confusion; I've omitted a lot from this attempted short description of the series.

We're 9 episodes into this new look Fringe and the 9th episode was the first one of the latest season to actually feel like a proper Fringe episode; but it's just retelling a story from season 3 in a different way and that worries me a lot. What also worries me is we're almost halfway through a series; it has had its major season break - over Christmas - and we're heading into late winter and spring when the popular shows will ratchet up the tension and move the story along. I'm beginning to think that we're being duped by Peter's desires...

Peter Bishop has enlisted the two alternative Walter Bishops to help him return to his reality; they have (finally) both agreed to help him and I think, in fact I'm pretty much convinced, that they will all discover that Peter's reality no longer exists - because he fixed the universe, he can't unfix it so he has a place. So he will have to remain trapped in a universe he is ultimately responsible for saving. This would be a bad thing, not least because we'll have three seasons of simmering subplots that can now either be conveniently forgotten or get turned on their heads - Peter and Olivia became an item towards the end of season 3; but neither Olivias in Peter's new world are that interested in him; because neither of them had ever had their lives altered by Peter (or Walter) the way they had been in the original universe.

I want them to change it back; if for no other reason than ensure the survival of the show; but I also see it being cancelled - before they film the final episodes - so they can wrap it all up. The thing that made Fringe work so well in the second half of the first season and the subsequent two were the great and odd relationship between Walter and Peter; the development of Dunham from hard nosed FBI career woman into someone plunged into a very surreal nightmare; and that general feeling the cast had grown together so well that they were now this 'family' - they had all developed, become friends, depended on each other and now it's like we're having to get to know them all again, except for Peter.

I keep looking back at this review and thinking it's a hotchpotch of vague paragraphs; like the cohesion is missing from it; like I'm trying to tell you too much and getting bogged down with the minutiae and that's a little like how Fringe plays now. It was, for at least two years, my favourite TV show - Bonkers TV I called it, and that's real praise for something made in the USA - but now there's something missing...

Nobody Gets Out Alive

JJ Abrams is the man responsible for Fringe and he's also the driving force behind Alcatraz, a new mystery series that seems to have been cut from the same cloth as Fringe.

In fact, there's a lot of similarities to the opening episodes of the other show, not least in the recruitment of the female cop getting coerced into working for a special division of the FBI and because the lead actress is attractive, but like Anna Torv, not conventionally attractive. It also stars Hugo from Lost as a comicbook writer and authority on Alcatraz. Hugo has benefited from his time on the wacky island and is now twice the size he was when working in Hawaii; he drifts around the first two episodes like a pantomime Dame Princess Margaret on skates (and he looks old).

Alcatraz is about X number of prisoners and guards who all disappear - instantly - during 1963 and start to magically reappear in 2012, carrying on from where they were before they were incarcerated. My first impressions were that it's played slightly overwrought; my second impression was that it's going to be 'Prisoner of the Week', with each week focusing on a different inmate and his story from 1963; with the 2012 covert FBI team (or are they?) hunting down the convicts and re-incarcerating them in the 21st century facsimile of the old prison. The first two episodes did nothing to change those impressions.

I like time travel theories and stories; always have; but this doesn't feel like one. This feels like a conveniently placed idea to allow the show to be clever. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't brilliant. It didn't have the oomph you expect from something like this and even when the hint of a mystery subplot was introduced, I didn't find myself going, "Oooh!" I just thought, "Ooh, the USA have finally, successfully, applied the rules of prime time drama to science and fantasy."

I just can't see where this is going and I saw elements of The 4400 in it and anyone with a good memory will remember that The 4400 started well, quickly turned into a kind of V (in that most of the actors left and we were left with all the really uninteresting supporting cast) and disappeared up its own arse in an attempt to be seen as different. I think Alcatraz will do the same (at the moment).

Being Remade

That most brilliant of BBC3 dramas Being Human is either going to end after the next series or will go off in a new direction with new cast members; either way, it's one of those British series that the Americans actually envy us for and subsequently the series concept was bought by SyFy (not the best of moves on current form) and turned into a US version (or Canadian if you want to pick bones).

This version follows the UK version's basic themes, but has gone off in a slightly more Americanised way. The series probably works well because the special effects budget is small and it is character rather than set piece led. It isn't a patch on the UK version, but... it does have some elements that are interesting and the Yanks are doing something different with the ghost, while sticking to the same journey.

The biggest problem the series has is that it's just another vampire show and people are growing tired of vampires; heck, they're growing bored with zombies already, so the day before yesterday's big thing is on to a staking to nothing, to be honest. Sam Witwar - Aiden the vampire - is probably the most recognisable actor in the series (he played Doomsday in Smallville), therefore his story appears to be the main thrust of the 3-way and one episode into the second season and that has grown boring and dull and that's without the imminent new character we're going to be introduced to next week.

This is a show that is a bit like Smallville in that it's pretty much throwaway TV that you will forget all about until the next episode. It does have stuff happen in it, but there's this feeling that it's turning into a different show. It lacks the black humour of the UK version; the characters are struggling to make you want to like them - even Sam Huntington's werewolf just can't match Russell Tovey's version, even if he is the most likeable character and his girlfriend/werewolf character is no longer a plain Jane, but the fittest doctor in the hospital - but this is an American version where even geeks are gorgeous.

Buffy versus Elena

As many regular readers of my TV rants know, I love The Vampire Diaries and over the last twelve months I have likened it more and more to the fabulous Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In a film and TV world that is overrun with vampires, werewolves, zombies and other scary shit, you would think that VD is a shoo-in for being derided, hated and cancelled. I mean, it looks like Twilight on paper; feels like Beverley Hills 90125 and really has become the post modern equivalent of Joss Whedon's fabulous series.

Oddly enough, as I've mentioned before, VD started so badly that it appeared to jump the shark at the end of episode 3 of the first series. It was like after the making of the opening episodes, the makers looked at the finished product and thought, "Oh shit; this stinks!" So they seemed to tag an extra scene onto the end of the really flaccid 3rd episode and suddenly things started to happen. Gradually over the space of three series, it has morphed into one of the best series on TV, if you look beyond the frivolity, miscast teenagers (who aren't) and the glossy Dallas feel.

Now, halfway through the 3rd season, it really has become Buffy, even down to the lacklustre Elena Gilbert's transformation into ass-kicking potential heroine. Every character from Buffy has an opposite in VD: a witch, a werewolf, a wise-cracking admirably nasty vampire and the goody two shoes other vampire who can go bad; the Xander; the Dawn and a Giles in the form of Alaric Saltzman. Every where you look there's a parallel with BtVS and that's not a bad thing.

I spent last week watching the final dozen episodes from the final season of BtVS; I just had a whim and wanted to be reminded how Spike became a legend. The weird thing about BtVS is that it wasn't without a bag full of flaws; even in those last dozen episodes, there was this feeling that not all the writers were on the same page. But, in terms of a series, it still remains a triumphant attempt at doing a comedy/horror series where the comedy was deliberately incidental rather than arranged and you always felt that it was always capable of going out to leftfield for impetus. VD is so similar at times that you wonder if the producers have just decided to follow that template, flaws and all.

Currently, VD is continually upping the tempo; it feels like every episode is a game changer and one wonders if they can keep the pace up and also keep the stories as interesting. You get bogged down in some things at times, but in general the writers seem to have taken the path of following the path of cliché bashing - every time you think you know what is going to happen, it tends to, but not at all in the way you would expect. It remains fresh, even if the 'teenagers' all have world weary look of actors in their mid to late 20s, most of the supporting cast are really good and just like BtVS, the central character has actually become the most peripheral; the viewer no longer really gives a toss about Elena, because all of her friends are so much more likeable.

It's hard to think that we were going to give it up at the 40 minute mark of episode 3 and now it's first thing burned onto a DVD; but even that has echoes of Buffy. Arguably one of the greatest ever episodes of TV ever was The Body, the episode that dealt with Buffy's mother's death; this was preceded by most definitely the worst ever episode of Buffy and arguably one of the corniest TV episodes ever. If that specific episode had ended before the final 60 seconds, it could well have driven a big nail into the series' coffin (it was not going to be renewed for a 6th season unless another network stepped in), but instead it used a really crappy episode to prelude one of the most powerful arcs in TV history. VD did the same to save the series and while it might not have been done in such a dramatic way, it introduced a game changer that set the tone for the what was to follow.

Round Up

We have half a dozen episodes of Grimm to watch; the first 4 were okay and we've decided to stick with it, but with so many other 'must see' things, it's about finding the time to watch them. We opted to stick with Person of Interest, but I somehow expect us to drop that at the expense of cluttering up my hard drive with unwatched episodes.

And of course this is the biggest problem with us; we have at least a dozen other things to watch, but our TV habit isn't that big. We rarely watch anything on a Tuesday or Thursday; we like to watch films, even if most of them are crap and the wife has a slew of stuff she watches - history, DIY, animals, costume dramas and cerebral quizzes, of which I have no interest in at all. Then you have the TV we watch together, which doesn't amount to a huge amount, but still eats holes into our windows of opportunity. Subsequently, we still haven't watched The Wire.

We have Kelsey Grammar's Boss to watch; seasons of Nurse Jackie and some British stuff like The Inbetweeners and I want to watch Ideal. There is 46 gigabytes of material to watch, which at a rough guess works out as about 200 hours of TV to watch and mix all of this with the other deciding factor - apathy. I need to really want to watch some of this stuff and that hasn't happened yet.

TV and my TV habits is a mishmash at the moment; a bit like this blog entry...

2012 - 3

2012-01-19T01:52:00.000-08:00

Chesty Morgan?

Some vaguely related sentences:

Shortly after I had pneumonia (as talked about in a previous post), I had to go for a check up with my own GP in Northampton, on return from spending a couple of months with my folks in Herts. After an examination he announced he believed I had 'bronchial asthma' which, until the other day, I had just let wash over me. Then it dawned on me that asthma is a bronchial disorder, so what other kind of asthma can you get?

On Saturday evening, I thought what a pathetic specimen I am at times. Not only have I been cursed with bad backs, aching limbs, shoulder operations and broadcast about them to all and sunder; I've been whining about how shit I've been feeling since before Christmas. In fact my health is a regular inclusion in this blog and I feel it has to stop. To be fair, even I find my health boring and repetitive, so God knows what the casual reader must think. "Oh here's Hypochondriac Man again with a broken toenail or a split end!" I would.

My two wishes for 2012 were good health and a solid, no fuss, hard-working job year. 19 days into January and I've just had the rest of this week off sick and subsequently haven't been at work, during term time, which isn't good, regardless of how shit I've felt. My body had the good grace to be ill during my entire Christmas break, it could have at least waited for a relapse on or around February 10th.

One of the reasons I always let Dr Molla's asthma diagnosis wash over me was until I had pneumonia, me and breathing were like joined at the hip. Even when the diagnosis was repeated several times during my 20s and 30s, I just thought it was just another GP cop-out diagnosis like IBS or Back Pain. Then in my 40s, I started to have genuine asthma attacks - mild at first and probably caused by years of smoking. I have had possibly a couple of dozen proper asthma attacks in the last 10 years and I can honestly say I know what drowning feels like. I had one at work on Monday.

So, I came to a conclusion on Saturday night; I was going to try and stop talking about my health like it's interesting or something.

Saying that...

Fisio Fairoppy

I sometimes wonder if I would have made a good gimp. I've always found fiercely strong women quite attractive and a wee bit intimidating in a 'I want some of that' kind of way. Anyhow, my physio is a few years older than me and as straight talking as Jeremy Paxman. She doesn't beat around the bush; she says it how it is and when she says 'do this exercise' you straddle the pain barrier to please her.

Yesterday, I had what is effectively my last session until the next time. My back is officially okay. It wasn't so much what she said to me as how she said it. Don't even think about surgery! You're nearly 50, face facts, things go wrong! Do the core stability exercises or go through it all again, more often! Don't do any heavy lifting! Walk more - push yourself!

Obviously, some of these suggestions I would have taken on board even if I'd been told by a talking slug wearing a fedora and eating souvlaki in my attic. The one about not lifting especially appeals.

Oddly enough, she told me, as she works in a GP surgery, that the doctors reckon there have been more incidents of the novo virus, coughs, colds and other assorted viruses this year than in recent years; probably due to the mild weather. She also said something really odd. She said that while last winter saw more deaths, the number of flu, virus and other cases was considerably lower. I made a flippant joke about pensioners standing more chance of surviving the flu than the cold and she looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Exactly!" I'm not going to argue with her.

The cold kills germs. Unfortunately it kills people too.

Touchy Subject

Maggie's been in the news a lot recently. The release of the 'Film I Will Never Watch' and debate as to whether or not she deserves a State Funeral ala Winston of Churchill. Also the great idea of allowing the private sector to organise (and pay for) her funeral (which started as a joke, but now, well, you know, it's not a bad idea, is it?).

Thatch is a Marmite person and that analogy works okay apart from the fact I use Marmite in soups and stews and I couldn't imagine putting bitch-features into anything I cook, unless it means hanging, drawing and quartering first; maybe served up with some corned beef.

Never fear, if Thatch doesn't steal the headlines then the Queen will. We've already had to suffer the spectacle of a royal wedding last year and this time it's a diamond jubilee and it's coming out of our pockets. I know it's not Liz's fault she's been on the throne 60 years, but she's allegedly not stupid, she should be stomping on Blackadder's foot suggesting a low key celebration to fit in with the mood of the country. She should also be dropping large hints that while one would love a new yacht, it's an insult to anyone who doesn't even have a rubber dinghy.

Michael Gove is the imbecile with all these bright ideas and is obviously angling for a place in the Lords. His latest hair brained idea is to ship 300,000 personally autographed copies of the King James Bible to be sent to every school in the country as an Easter gift. Total cost about £4million. Blackadder surprised me when he told Gove that the taxpayer wasn't paying for it.

I mean, every school must have a King James Bible, it helps promote diversity.

TV Dump

My intention is to talk about TV in independent posts and there will be one soon; but a quick mention for Forbrydelsen II or The Killing 2, the latest (2009) Danish pot-boiler to hit the BBC. As much as we really enjoyed the first one, the wife did guess the killer in episode 1 and at times you wondered if it was a crime drama or a demonstration of how piss poor the Danish police are. The second one, while equally enjoyable, felt like it tried to do twice as much in half as many episodes.

I also found myself thinking, 'why don't you ask that or say this' a lot of the times as I struggled to believe the slap dash investigative work, the heavy handed politics and some of the stilted dialogue. Sarah Lund seemed to take on some kind of mythical maverick cop persona, which she seemed to unintentionally find herself in in the first series and embraced it like it was a character trait in the second, despite there really being no evidence that she's just a dysfunctional Inspector Colombo. The sequel was enjoyable, it just wasn't as good as I expected and left me thinking that maybe the Danes are trying just a little bit too hard.

A Review - The Guardian

2012-01-17T06:59:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, on an old blog, I reviewed the new look Guardian shortly after it changed to its Berliner size. I seem to recall I was ambivalent about it. I also got the impression that parts of the paper had become the sole responsibility of Tim Dowling and Lucy Mangan - two journalists whose names seemed to be embedded on just about every page. Both are still there as the paper underwent another facelift, this time through economic demands rather than aesthetics.

Gone since last year are the marginalised supplements - Media, Society, Education, which were preceded by the old IT and Technology section. Only the Music and Film pull out survived and apparently it still survives, despite the demise of the Sports section, which The Guardian has now rejoined the rank and file and puts its sport at the back of the main section. G2 remains - ever present.

There has been a subtle redesign of the page layouts, tweaks with fonts and sizes and subtle changes that only a trained eye would spot - which is probably what Alan Rusbridger wanted. Things have been dropped; columns condensed and it sort of just feels wrong. The Guardian, because of costs, has had to lose its relative uniqueness and now feels like a daunting task to tackle it in the morning than ever before.

There is nothing wrong with the journalism; 50% of the stuff in it is never even looked at unless it's a sunny and warm day and I have nothing better to do than sit in the garden and digest everything. Arguably it's easier on the eye now, but that could just be the newness of it in my eyes.

From what I've heard, there will still be a film and music section on a Friday, but bigger and expanded - woo and indeed hoo; like The Guardian's Saturday Review section, it can be up its own arse more often than not. The sports section will be there on a Monday (and possibly a Saturday) and I have no idea what the usually, imho, boring Saturday edition will bring and frankly I don't care, because sometimes I wonder why I even bother with a daily paper.

The new look Guardian is essentially the same beast as the old look and the now very old broadsheet version; sometimes it's too dry; sometimes it tries too hard and sometimes it gets things just right. It has writers who I'm not partial to and columns I find pointless and uninteresting. Its analysis is second to none and very unbiased and that's probably the reason I still read it in paper form - you can only really read a newspaper (or a book) on the bog!

This is an Entry About Football

2012-01-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

When I rediscovered my love for football (summer 1996), I'd missed a few years where my team - Spurs - had reasonably good seasons, but if you asked me to tell you where they finished or who played for them between 1988 and 1995, I would struggle beyond Gascoigne, Lineker and Hoddle. I remember telling people how I hid in the cellar of my shop during the 1991 Cup Final because I was too scared to watch the game against Nottm Forest and Brian Clough's last chance to win the only trophy he didn't win.

Since 1996, I've returned to my dedicated following of Spurs and as a result have had many lows and a couple of highs. The League Cup win in 1999 seems more recent than it really was. But in November 2008 with Spurs sitting bottom of the table with 2pts from a possible 24, Harry Rednapp was hired and despite his positive but hardly winning CV, I felt confident he would save us and take us back to the level we were when Big Martin Jol was getting the best out of a, now, average team.

On a sunny August day, Benoit Assou-Ekotto thumped a 25 yard shot past Pepe Reina in the Liverpool goal to cement a 2-1 victory and launch the team onto a campaign that would end with them finishing 4th and finally getting into the Champions League. Of course, this was the first game of the season and no one could have guessed that that goal probably won us that spot because our record against Liverpool until 2009 was patchy at best.

On Wednesday night, BAE or Bennie as he is called by supporters, hit a 30 yard shot, that ricocheted off Tim Cahill's arse and settled in the corner of the net away from Tim Howard's outstretched arms. It gave the team a 2-0 win over Everton and 9 points clear of Arsenal in 5th place (and 11 clear of Liverpool). That statistic after half the season is good enough, the fact that it brought us level on points with Man Utd in 2nd and just three points behind Citeh (who are wobbling a wee bit) in 1st. That fact has suddenly turned the team I've supported all my life into Title Challengers!

Ooh, heady days indeed. It's weird. I mean really weird because I support Spurs and Spurs are always guaranteed to screw up just when you think they could be onto something. In 2010, when Spurs dropped 23 points to team that finished in the bottom 6, if they had won all of these, they wouldn't have finished 5th, they would have been 1st by 5pts! And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.

At the start of the season, Spurs were 100-1 to win the league. Yesterday they were 6-1, today it's 13-2. Arsenal are 100-1, Chelsea 66-1 and Man Utd 13-8. Citeh are 4-7 favs, but I think that#'s more hedging than certainty. I always say that bookies odds should be respected, they're probably the best guidance tool. 3rd would satisfy me, especially if it leads to buying new players and cementing a regular place in the Champions League. But, I can dream, even if I am a Spurs fan. Shit, if we won it because the other two kept tripping over themselves, I'd be as happy as Larry. It would be a day I walk as erect as I possibly can, head held high, with the knowledge that even though my Scouse-loving friend Jon will continually remind me that Liverpool are the best team in existence.

In my wildest dreams I never really suspected Spurs would actually challenge for this ultimate prize. Even in football simulation games where I've turned Spurs into the new Barcelona, I always have to remind myself that it is fantasy generated by a relatively easily solved algorithm within a game play.

On Wednesday night, something strange happened. I sat down in front of the computer to watch the match against Everton and I, um... I felt, er... I felt confident. There I've said it - fatal. Just. Plain. Fatal. I support Spurs not Man Utd. I don't feel confident when my team plays any one, so accustomed to witnessing banana skin exploits that would make a hard core porn star blush.

The worst thing? My confidence was justified. We never looked out of our comfort zone. We played like a team that wants to win. We didn't show the remotest sign of letting the altitude go to our heads. We continued to play with the consistency that has made us the form team in the league and we lost to the two teams above us 1-5 and 3-0 in our opening fixtures! Today, with a win against Wolves, we could go joint top. This is the kind of hurdle that Spurs teams in the past have found to be a maximum security wall. I've seen my team go into games like today knowing a win would catapult them to new heights and they've surrendered the opportunity with aplomb and have become a bit of a joke because of it.

It's January and nothing is won in January, but plenty is lost.

Here is my two forecasts. One realistic and the other the one in my head that gives me happy thoughts.

Scenario 1: The top three stay the same, but Man Utd win the title by 5 points from a Citeh team that did what everything feared they would. Spurs will finish third, but it will be a hard fought thing, going up to the last day, with Arsenal and Chelsea.

Scenario 2: Spurs beat Wolves to go joint top, then go to Eastlands and manage to get a draw. All the top 6 teams take points off of one and other and the positions are pretty much the same come the end of March. Spurs have a phenomenal run in - their last eight games are: Swansea (h), Sunderland (a), Norwich (h), Bolton (a), QPR (a), Blackburn (h), Aston Villa (a) and Fulham (h). Paul Merson stated quite firmly that if Spurs were still 3pts behind the leaders with seven games to go they would win it and I'm hoping that Spurs go into the last day of the season needing just a win to ensure the first title for 51 years.

I can dream.

In reality though, because I'm a Spurs fan, I'm waiting for the bubble to burst. I'm waiting for Spurs circa Christian Gross to suddenly re-emerge in a game against, I dunno, Wigan and throw 3 points away because they forgot how to play for the day. Or an injury crisis par excellence, with half the brilliant players breaking legs in a freak training ground incident involving Adebayor's bobble hat. I'd like to see the club be big enough so the likes of Defoe, Krancjar and Huddlestone are content to be on the bench of a team actually on the verge of achieving greatness. The promise of Champions League football and a tougher schedule, therefore more playing time, should be incentive for any player if they want to win things, especially with an upwardly mobile team like Spurs. But I'd also like to see a definite Spurs striker capable of scoring 25 goals a season up front. I'd like a fit world class centre back to sit alongside Kaboul or Dawson and I'd like a nippy two-footed winger who can slot into Bale or Lennon's position, because they will get injured.

Other than that I'm pretty happy that my club has a first 11 that I pretty much wouldn't change on current form.

I remember asking my mate Dez how he felt when Chelsea won the title for the first time in a billion years, just after Abramovich bought a team to do it and he said it was pretty much indescribable. For a couple of years, he walked around expecting Chelsea to win everything and they often did; but he remembered the dark days in the old English Third Division, the Leyland Vans trophy and almost losing Stamford Bridge. His joy has always been tempered with realism and now with his team not doing so well, he's just pleased to be up there competing, even if he secretly wishes they were where Spurs are.

I want to have that feeling, just once in my life. Where I can say I support the Champions.

I know that this is the most excited I'm probably going to get.

2012 - 2

2012-01-14T02:52:00.000-08:00

Notes and Queries

Suddenly the idea of writing a blog as regularly as I once did seems a distant dream. The sometimes mentally intense nature of my new job means that most nights I come home and slump in front of the telly, exhausted.

My usual modus operandi is to write stuff when I think about it and remember it; but occasionally I employ an age old method - I take notes. Jot them down on a piece of paper and they're safe for the future. My pad this week has very little on it, to reinforce the above paragraph, but one line has the word 'Vicks' written down. Now I've been using a menthol vapour rub on my chest for the last couple of weeks in an attempt to sleep better and to clear the airways, but obviously the other night I must have had some inspired idea about it because I wrote just the one word down. It must have been so good I probably thought I wouldn't forget it...

I also have another note on the pad that has nothing to do with the blog. It's an idea I had for another short story. I wish I could remember what it was about because 'Giant Crazy Things' sounds like it might have been fun.

Who am I, again?

Magnificent Bastard

While at t'pub on Thursday night, Roger mentioned that he thought a comment made by my good dear friend Kelvin Green was really good and later on further reflection it seemed to be the logical ascension of one of my more colourful nicknames of the past.

Kelvin referred to me as 'You Magnificent Bastard' in response to an adventure I had that will not make its way onto these pages and in my mind's eye the journey from Phil the Bastard (created probably around 1984) to Magnificent Bastard has concluded.

Chuckling to myself after t'pub, it triggered a memory of what were probably my very first nicknames - Hall-E and Horlicks (which I still find an incredibly funny word, even if I wasn't that enamoured by the nickname at the time). Obviously Hall-E was not the inspiration for Wall-E, it's just the best way of visually explaining how my name was said - Hall-eeeeeeee essentially and I think even my peers got bored of that really quickly. Then the famous bedtime malted chocolate drink started advertising a lot and some wag saw the connection between Hall and Horlicks.

Most kids are supposed to love their nicknames, but I hated mine. Even at an early age, I liked being called Phil and it irritated me when people would add the Lip bit. There are Phils and there are Phillip/Philips and I'm definitely in the first group. It took a lot of careful persuasion by my mum to get me to accept the name and embrace it. Eventually very few people called me it and they did so to try and rile me.

Some other popular nicknames I have had for periods of time include: Big Nose (which is still popular with the wife and among specific groups of friends, the same group that popularised Phil the Bastard and its more offensive Phil the C**t), Fil Fil Fil which eventually became Fi Fi and sometimes Foo. Fuck knows why. Unusually, I've never been a Pip unless it's outside of a 50 mile radius of Northampton. A number of my estranged Internet friends refer to me as Pip, but as I have a friend called Pip (who I saw last night, coincidentally), it's never been a name that my friends would associate with me (even if our Pip's real name is actually Karl...)

My dad had a number of ways of addressing me - Oy or Shitbag, but usually just Oy Shitbag; Ugly (which the lovely Mammary Lass uses with much joy still); Boy; and once or twice Demon Child. He rarely called me Phillip, but did when he remembered my real name. Towards the end of his life he'd lost the slightly mad aspect of his personality (because he'd lost my mum), but he still managed an Ugly from time to time - that was cool.

No one really calls me Phillip now, if they do I usually correct them quickly (or in the event One El calls me it on Tuesday I might have to resort to violence). I'd change my name by Deed Poll if I could be arsed. Of all the things I've been called Phillip is the one that grates on me the most.

Phlegm-atic

The chest is still giving me a lot of grief. I sound like a rattling cage most of the time and I'm not getting much sleep because of it. It's also stopped being productive and I feel like shit, but just not shit enough to suggest that I'm ill.

I've had a weird week because at least two things happened that would potentially be headline stories, yet I have no desire to talk about them publicly. It's not like I use this as a diary of my every waking minute (even if sometimes I do), but some things just have to stay out of this (much as I'd like to).

I went to a training course next to Liberty's on Regent Street in The Smoke. I was looking forward to it like my own death and yet it turned into one of the most interesting courses I've ever been on. It was presented by a guy called Jason Bangbala (Google him) and... well... after ten minutes I'd thought I'd walked into something totally surreal which I couldn't understand (he has a really broad Manc accent, like). But by the end of the day my brain was absolutely whirling with ideas. And that's all I'm saying on the matter.

Homolka Boy

You learn something every day (I think). I always thought that the little hat Jews wear was called a homolka (or maybe with a U or two), but it's called a Kippah. Why is this important? Well it isn't, except to say that I still managed to get a laugh out of it even if I was wrong and a Homolka is a Czech surname and doesn't appear to be anywhere else in modern language.

My mate CJT, for reasons we won't go into) drew a circle round a number 8 and embellished it a little at the top to make it look like a masked kid with a skull cap on. I added a couple of dots and a line for nose and mouth and Homolka Boy was born. The joke was: Homolka Boy, the Boy with No Foreskin For Crime and much laughter was generated (you had to be there). However, on research it's a load of bollocks... Funny bollocks at the time, but ultimately just bollocks.

Weirdy Beardy

Me and facial hair, I talk about it now and then. At work last week someone asked me why I had a goatee, which had been cultivated on Christmas because I felt so shitty I didn't want to shave. It's one of those odd questions, a bit like, why do you breath?

I have a history of unimpressive facial hair which started as quickly as I was able to grow bum fluff on my top lip. My immediate family, with the exception of my mum, have all had impressive moustaches in terms of thickness and depth, but my dad and eldest brother were blessed with dark hair, so when they grew them they looked proper gay. My middle brother was fair haired and his often blended into his fake tan, while Blondie here grew the things but no one ever noticed.

My reasons for wanting a tash were simple. I got a really bad split top lip playing rugby which left a scar midway between my septum and my lips and being a self-conscious teenager I hid it as often as I could. Even if my blond moustache couldn't be seen it camouflaged the scar.

I've never really successfully grown a full beard and it's only been the last few years that I get minutely close to it and now all the hair on my face down the flanks is as white as a Dulux paint factory.

However, one bit of facial hair that crept onto my face around 1989 and has been there ever since has been that bit of fuzz under my bottom lip and now, despite the grey in it, it at least is visible and adds to my small desire to be independent and non-conformist. Oddly enough the reason for its existence is because of a shaving rash. Eventually my face got used to being wet shaved, but that little triangle under my bottom lip never toughened up and whenever I shave it I get a square inch of a teenager's face stuck on it until the stubble starts to grow back. Doesn't matter how much I do it or be careful, it's like that part of my face still thinks I'm 16.

The beard came off last night. I couldn't make up my mind if I liked it or not.

Book Review - January 07, 2012

2012-01-07T02:50:00.000-08:00

11/22/63 by Stephen King

It's pretty sad to say nowadays that a good Stephen King novel comes along as often as a blue moon. In the last ten years since his accident, I can count the number of enjoyable books he's written on three fingers and one of the those digits might be unused.

Far too often, King's recent novels have either been bogged down with too much 'shared universe' bollocks or have just been average at best. Duma Key was the best of a bad bunch and that, at times, felt like a reinterpretation of an earlier book. The thing that set King's Florida opus above his other 21st century turds was the character development; he seemed to have rediscovered his skill for creating well rounded and interesting people - in Wireman, he created a character that compared to many of his great earlier creations.

A lot has been said about the new book; a kind of What If Someone Managed to Save JFK from Being Assassinated; and not all of it positive. The reviewer in The Observer hated the book, but this was the same reviewer who claimed that Cell was the best thing King had written since the 1980s and that left me wondering if the reviewer had even bothered to read Cell (because it really is the worst piece of shit King has turned out ever). This particular quirk actually got me quite excited - I really don't take much stock in what reviewers say (despite accepting the irony in that statement considering what I'm writing) - and I hoped that 11/22/63 would be the exception to the rule.

The good news is - it was!

One of the things that blights King novels, especially in the last 20 years, has been their failure to feel 'complete'. Yes, they all have beginnings, middles and ends, but rarely do they feel like a nice little closed circuit. This book just radiates King's passion for his youth and at a time in the USA that was both much simpler but considerably harsher.

It starts off considerably quickly, which might be the simplest reason for why I liked it. Instead of King's usual 100 page preamble of character establishment and scene-setting this one dives straight in and is rollicking along within 50 pages. The reader literally gets no time to think before the main character goes back in time. Time travelling has its rules, which ultimately prove harder to negotiate than you would think; even if you have several stabs at something, this is something that the main protagonist discovers mostly on his own.

This is essentially a SF novel, but only in theme, it really is just a love story that happens to have a lot of nastiness going on around the edges - the consequences of Obdurate Time. Time is defensive because it doesn't want to be changed and if you try and change it then it tries to stop you and the more vehemently it tries to stop you is linked directly to how much of the future will be changed. The Butterfly Effect is pondered a lot in this story.

Jake Epping knows the guy who runs the local burger joint mainly as a customer, but is dragged into a situation that his 2011 brain struggles to comprehend. Al the owner of the greasy spoon has a doorway to the past in his pantry and has been using it to buy 1950s goods to use in his establishment, thus keeping his prices down. But Al is a patriot with a past that remembers the way USA mourned the death of JFK and he firmly believes that if the president hadn't been assassinated then the alternative 2011 would be a far better place. So he decides to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and change the world.

The problem for Al and subsequently for Jake is that whenever you go through the portal you arrive at exactly the same time on the same day in the same year - 1958 and Kennedy wouldn't be assassinated until late 1963. This meant you have to live for over 5 years in the past, which was the same as living 5 years in the present - you age. The other problem facing the would-be time changer is that he has to make sure that Oswald was really the lone gunman and didn't have accomplices - no point in killing LHO if someone else shoots Kennedy instead.

Al gets cancer and will not live long enough to try and stop Oswald and because time doesn't want to be changed, Al isn't strong enough to fight it as well as Lee Harvey. So he nominates Jake, a regular customer, nice guy and with no specific family ties and then sends him through the portal to experience a little of 1958. Like a drug, Jake is hooked, but he is also sceptical and wary; Al is obviously not telling him everything. What he has told him is that time is reset every time he returns to 1958. Anything that is done can be undone by just returning through the portal and it's September 1958 again. What Al doesn't understand and Jake eventually does is that it isn't that simple and both their actions are having infinitely serious repercussions for the planet.

Jake returns to 1958 to change the course of one of his mature student's life; a job that takes him 2 months to complete while only 2 minutes passes in 2011 (another of the strange quirks of the portal) and finds it difficult but not impossible to change the future, except while he saves an entire family, the man who he does the deed for loses his life in Vietnam. This convinces Jake that if Kennedy had lived the USA wouldn't have got so embroiled in south-east Asia. His mind is made up, he will return to 1958, repeat his first two months but with more information and then eventually find his way to Dallas, Texas, where he will kill Oswald and change the history of mankind.

Armed with just a few thousand dollars, but still a lot in 1958, Jake now using the name George Amberson gently eases into 1950s life, getting by on his savings and having the occasional bet, which meant exposing himself to mobsters and an assortment of dodgy bookies. His luck runs out and he leaves his comfortable Florida setting and heads for Texas where he stumbles into work as a teacher and we are introduced to the small town of Jodie, Tx and the steps are put in place for a typical King interlude, which I felt rounded the book out entirely.

The Observer reviewer felt Jake/George's love story was superfluous to the book, but I felt it was essential; there wouldn't have been a story had George not grabbed Sadie's right breast on their first encounter and set off a train of events that allowed all the elements to gain momentum and urgency. Without Jake/George's mini-adventure it just wouldn't have worked and I can't see what said reviewer would have replaced it with.

Suffice it to say but killing Oswald proves to be considerably more difficult than one would imagine and time weaves intricate tentacles that are somehow all interlaced - time doesn't want Jake where he is and it is continually trying to re-harmonise itself, like antibodies attempting to rid the body of an irritant.

During this intimate section of the book we are introduced to a series of rounded and likeable characters, not least the school librarian Mimi, who will probably go down as being another of King's brilliant supporting cast members; sadly she isn't used enough, but that might have been because time didn't want her to. Jake/George essentially lives a double life and the charade can't go on forever without someone noticing or taking an interest and it isn't long before different people are making different assumptions and this being the ultra-puritanical Texas of the early 1960s you can imagine what a lot of their fears were.

The upshot is that Oswald dies before he can kill Kennedy and Jake/George ends up a national hero and someone, quite amusingly, who the FBI believe works for the CIA. He is given a quick and easy escape route to wherever he 'needs' to go and so he makes his way back to Maine and the portal back to 2011, thus creating a new conspiracy theory. Before he makes it back to the doorway he is stopped by someone who knows who he is and what he is doing and some of the mysteries from earlier in the story are explained. For Jake the ramifications of what has done become all too clear. He is given a choice, but instead runs away (literally) and back to 2011.

Except now there's no Al's Diner and there's not much left he recognises. There wouldn't have been much point in having Jake return to Utopia, but equally the fact he returns to a Maine that is now part of Canada and a USA that is a complete and utter mess was pretty predictable, but like I said, had he returned to Utopia it wouldn't have worked either.

Jake had already decided that he was going to do it all again and this time, with foresight, ensure that he fixes everything that will be unfixed, but his meeting with the strange man near the portal and the fact that the world is a considerably worse place in the future puts a different slant on things. Jake knows he has to reset time; he knows that he either returns to 1958 and either relive the past yet again, but not trying to change it and not trying to make his presence cause too many ripples or reset it and return back to how the world was originally and shut the portal forever and healing the damage that has been done and preventing any paradoxes.

I won't tell you what he decides because I've already given away too many spoilers, but I will say that the final pages of this book are what elevates it into one of King's potential classics; you can't help closing the book at the end and feeling good. It is a great ending and one seemed fitting.

I'd give 11/22/63 a booming 8 out of 10

2012 - 1

2012-01-07T01:31:00.000-08:00

Sex is Back!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the TV again - now that Channel 5 has swapped tits for CSI - BBC3 unleashes a week of programmes about having it off, losing ones virginity, solo pleasure and how to get your keyboard all jizzumed up.

The advert makes it look like it was designed for teenagers and young twenty-somethings, but in reality BBC3's audience of middle-aged men will probably explode. What I found particularly worrying was the line from said advert that features a man saying something along the lines of, "there are less people talking about it and more people doing it" meaning 'sex'. This baffled me somewhat because when I was young there were hundreds of people talking about it and only a minuscule percentage were actually doing it!

What a Load of Bollocks

I got my first bollocking, of sorts, this week.

After 4 continuous hours of being picked at the way you pick an ageing scab, I finally lost my cool a wee bit and suggested the person who was giving me a generally hard time was 'talking a load of bollocks'. Said recipient of the statement took umbrage at it and reported me to my boss, who didn't really give me a bollocking but it's such a good intro...

We tend to forget that the word 'bollocks' was the subject of a court case brought by Virgin Records on behalf of the Sex Pistols. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks and that, as this Wiki piece says, has two distinct meanings and in modern parlance is used more often to describe something as rubbish or nonsense. The problem is, like the German composer Thomas Wanker, you can't really use the word (or his surname) in sensitive company...

A Fruity New Year

On January 5th, I ate what will be the last raspberries off of my canes. The fact that all that was left on these sheaths of new wood were some plump bright red berries, while all the leaves have gone was weird enough, but there is something slightly surreal about eating this year's raspberry crop as early as June and they won't be my first of the year!

The Met Office has suggested that January will stay above average, but we might see some real winter weather by February. The Daily Mail was quick to point out that the winter of 1947 - regarded as possibly the worst of the 20th century according to this doyen of original facts - didn't really start until January 24th and lasted until the middle of March. I believe we still won't be able to forecast what the weather is going to do more than a couple of weeks ahead in 100 years, mainly because of the chaotic nature of meteorology and the millions upon millions of variables no computer yet invented could predict.

It'll be how it'll be.

Snot Fair

If you are of a delicate disposition then look away now.

I went back to work feeling like I could have done with a few more days off, just to make sure that I had shaken off the last of whatever bugs ruined my Christmas. But the reality was I felt well enough to face the hordes. I did, however, realise that I would need to go armed with a mountain of paper tissues because every square inch of phlegm I'd built up over the previous two weeks decided that Wednesday would be the day it started to make an appearance.

Having a chest and head full of green gunk is unpleasant at the best of times and you really don't want to be around someone hawking great globules of goo unless you're in a different county, but I had to deal with it in a very public setting. Catarrh is possibly one of the most unpleasant of human bi-products and I've always believed that it has its own intelligence, mainly because it seems to do whatever it feels like and we have little or no control over it.

This bizarre trait has come to my rescue somewhat in the last few days; it's like my body is holding it all in until I can be alone, to really have a good blow or cough. The wife went back to work this morning - yes, it's a Saturday, but it's worth a lot of money and she's been off two weeks and I think she's got a little bored. I got out of bed just before 9am and have been ... um... expectorating like a bastard all morning. I could have wallpapered an entire theatre with the amount of junk that suddenly feels the urge to depart my warm and crappy body.

Still, it will be nice to breath properly again. However, I get the feeling I'm still going to be the country's leading phlegm producer by the time this supposed cold weather finally hits us.

It's a shame that you can't use it for something. It's like bindweed, tons of it and with no practical value or application whatsoever.

Now, while I have the house to myself, I'm going to write a review.

Horse Tranquil

2011-12-30T03:09:00.000-08:00

2011

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I went out last night. The first time I ventured out of the house since the 17th December. I woke up on Thursday feeling like the back of this flu/bronchitis had finally been broken; but I didn't take any chances and stayed in all day. Yesterday was an even bigger improvement and I joined the wife and dogs for a dog walk in the pouring of rain and while we were only out for about 35 minutes, it felt good to get the real world under my feet again.

This paved the way for us to receive our Christmas present from RnB, which this year, because of our, at times, perilous financial position, was a trip to our favourite restaurant on them. We were supposed to go on the 23rd, but I was far too sick to even consider getting dressed and therefore it would have been a waste of money and an evening - I've been out when I've been suffering once before, about 7 years ago with our good friends Jay and Selina and while it was a great night out, I really wanted to be snuggled up on the sofa under a quilt and surrounded by dogs.

By the time 6.15 rolled around last night, I was feeling a little worse than I had all day, but I had also been scurrying around the house for best part of the day, so I might have just overdone it a tad, because, by the time we got to the restaurant I was feeling pretty chipper. We had a very good meal, which I have to say I maybe didn't taste as well as my three compadres, and I decided that I was well enough to go to the pub and imbibe my first alcohol since December 15 (I did have some champagne over Christmas, but it was watered down with lots of orange juice).

We got home a little after 10; I still felt pretty good and this afternoon, as I sit here writing this, I feel just about well enough to embark on a new school term. Although I expect to return to work on Tuesday armed with tissues because of the amount of junk that is now, finally, expelling itself from my rather gaunt figure. It would have been nice to have not been ill throughout the entire break, but arguably, it might have done me some good and realistically, I had six months off during the summer and didn't do much more than I have for the last couple of weeks; so it all works out in the end - swings and roundabouts and all that...

It has been my intention to do a review of the year, which I found quite weird really as I tend to hate this week between Christmas and the New Year because all you get is Year end reviews and frankly, in this 24 hour news world we live in, we already remember the last 12 months like it has been etched on our brains! So, as I already did a review of music a few weeks ago and nothing much has changed since writing that; and I've basically subjected you all to the mixture of excellent and abysmal TV I watch throughout the year; given you my left wing perspective on politics and wibbled about all manner of shit anyhow, there doesn't seem to be much point. If you want to know about my perspective of 2011, read my blog for the last 12 months!

Where does that leave us then?

Well, this will be the last blog entry in this stylee. I'm going spend an hour at some point during my last two days off redesigning the page and changing the layout of how I present my entries. It's an annual thing now for me to change something and this year's revamp is sponsored by the rediscovery of my mojo.

Said mojo started to creep back into my psyche about a month ago and had it not been for the last two sobering weeks of feeling shit, I might have been even more insufferable over the holidays than I usually am. Because I have an inherent undertow of expecting the worst to happen, my mojo is tempered by the need to never allow myself to lapse from my prepared script, because I'm acutely aware that my luck tends to be limited.

I was laying in bed last night thinking about the irony of returning to school and my memory played a chronological trick on me. It made me remember how, at times, school seemed to drag into the distance and how terms seemed like huge chasms of time that would never, ever, arrive. It then reminded me that when I was at school I had a finite time there; now as part of the faculty I have potentially an even longer time there. Of course the big differences are that I get paid and the holidays have as much significance as they did when I was a lad. Yes, I will have days when I long for half terms, but there aren't that many jobs in the world that have such pre-ordained breaks and the knowledge that it's about 6 weeks between each break and 6 weeks when you're nearly 50 is considerably less time than 6 weeks is when you're 13.

I think my brain sent me in that direction because I'm still having a battle in my head over the fact that my first holiday has been wrecked by illness and that the few plans we did have were either cancelled or drastically altered. I also don't think my subconscious is convinced I'm cured, but that might just be its sense of fairness being a bit warped. I do still have an horrendous cough and I expect I'll still have it when half term comes around in the middle of February.

Anyhow, I digress. My mojo is working again and I feel confident about 2012 from a working perspective and frankly if that can be as good as I hope it will be then the rest of the year should be relatively stable. Shit will happen; that's unavoidable, but as long as the shit is kept to a minimum in 2012 then I'll be satisfied.

My one resolution for the coming year is to continue to work hard and become an important and liked member of my employment team. I want a few, uncontroversial, years without any stress or worry and if I work hard and keep my head down there's no reason I can't do that.

My hopes for 2012 are rather at odds with each other. There are many things I'd like to see for the country and the world, but many of them couldn't happen at the same time. Therefore my only public political desire is that Ed Milliband wakes up one morning soon and realises that for all his ideals, his nous and his desire to be a great prime minister, the rest of the country doesn't have any faith in him as a potential boss. If that happens, I'd hope that some senior Labour party advisers have a quiet word in Ed Balls' ear and get him to step aside and allow his wife to become the leader. Yvette Cooper is arguably the only person on the shadow cabinet bench who is good enough - all round - to lead the party; the rest just lack gravitas and believability.

Obviously I'd like to see my beloved Tottenham remain challenging for the title for the rest of the season and pull away from 4th place so that immortality is confirmed and we can take our place, rightly, amongst the top 3 teams in the country. This dream is not too fanciful, but as I support Tottenham this brings its own parcel shelf of doubt and expectations being shattered, because, that's what they do best.

Personally, apart from the work thing, I'd like a year of not having some ailment to steal 6 weeks of my life, minimum. A healthy year isn't too much to ask for is it?

Right, I've spent far too much time doing nothing this festive season, so I have nothing more to say than I hope that 2012 doesn't bring you anything you can't deal with. I hope that no one loses a loved one and come December 31st 2012 we can look back and say 'It could have been better, but it really could have been much much worse.'

Allez maintenant.

The Last Temptation of Fate

2011-12-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

Sunday 18th December, the morning I woke up with a stinking cold and feeling like shit (although one wonders if shit actually feels anything, considering it is just smelly human waste), should have been a couple of days of manflu, with me ordering the wife from the sofa while still managing to do most of the things I usually do - cook, whinge and be as sociable as I usually am. However, by the time Tuesday came around, I was feeling considerably worse than I had on the previous Sunday. No worries, thought I. It'll be okay by Christmas.

By the 23rd, I was sitting in the doctor's office with a raging temperature, a chest that seemed full of red hot coals and the warning that if I felt worse I needed to contact the out of hours emergency team because if it did get worse, I might be looking at pneumonia. I know that sounds almost scaremongering by my GP, but a careful look at my ancient medical records shows that I had pneumonia back in 1980 and you have a better than average chance of getting it again.

The original 1980 diagnosis, by my Northampton GP, was that I might have glandular fever, because my, then extant, tonsils were swollen and my glands were all fucked up. That initial diagnosis was totally pooh-poohed by a fantastic guy called Dr Wadge, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

The reason for this 1980 serious illness can be laid squarely at the feet of one person, but because she is still alive and connected to my family, I'll breeze over the fact that this person seemed intent on killing me, all of which culminated in her washing my bed clothes and then putting them on my bed while they were still wet. I got home from work after a late shift, went to crawl into bed and discovered my sheets were all very much the ocean side of damp. My solution to this was to grab a couple of bath towels and lay one on the bottom while draping the other over the top of me and still using the damp sheets to give me some warmth. I was 18; it never occurred to me that I might as well have got into a bath full of streptococcus pneumoniae.

Within a couple of days, what had been a minor sniffle turned into a full blown case of serious illness. I was prone to infections because of my diseased tonsils, but this time whatever was wrong with me didn't just stop in my throat. My mother called me in the evening of the third day and while I have no recollection of this conversation, I do remember my dad turning up at the place where I lived at some point after it, carrying me to his car and waking up 60 miles from where I started.

The glandular fever diagnosis was pursued, because another GP had said that was what it was, but Dr Wadge - who was also my parents' boss at the time - ran blood tests, which all came back as negative and this wasn't a surprise to him. He concluded that I had pneumonia. The fact that I was bed-ridden for three weeks seemed to confirm this diagnosis. In total, I was off work for 6 weeks, of which most of them were horrendous days of feeling like my chest was in a vice and phlegm that looked like it had been filtered through my blood supply.

Just prior to this Christmas, I watched George Michael talk about his own pneumonia experience in Austria and how emotional and weak he was from it all; I could sympathise completely. By the time I was well enough to return home to Northampton, the person partially responsible for me almost dying and my brother decided they needed to live in their own place and had made moves to separate themselves from me. This was good and never again did I have to suffer wet sheets, rotten steak, hidden toothbrushes and an assortment of little 'suggestions' that my presence wasn't required.

Obviously my 2011 GP's suggestion that I might be susceptible to another bout of pneumonia was the catalyst for bringing back 30 year old memories, but by Christmas Day I was thinking that maybe I was due for another one. It had been a week since I woke up feeling crappy and here I was feeling even crappier...

Normally, antibiotics work for me inside 48 hours and the fact that I haven't had any for over 4 years meant that my body was not, in any way, tolerant of them. I don't eat meat, so there was no residual animal antibiotics floating around my system and, much to my old friend Mitch's amusement, I can track my bad health record back almost six years, so I knew that this was possibly the worst case of lurgy I'd had since that horrible spring of 1980. So why weren't they working now?

The wife has suggested that my new job is essentially a Petri Dish of Disease, so having something bad isn't really that unexpected, but Jesus Hairy Christ, the last 10 days have been the fucking Nightmare of Christmas. Yes, I don't really enjoy the festive season and I am Bah Humbug Man, but I look forward to it because it's an excuse to do fuck all for a fortnight. Yes, I have done fuck all for the last 10 days, but I really would have liked to have a say in it.

Today, I have woken up feeling like the fever has finally broken. I feel a little like my old self, but I still have a vice around my chest and I feel pretty weak - I know that's a pathetic thing to admit, but it's true - but I feel like I can actually do some stuff. I've missed taking my dogs out for a good walk; I've missed having a drink and indulging in treats and I've felt that the last ten days have been grossly unfair; like someone is kicking me, for the last time, in a year that has been dogged with bad luck and misery. The last few years have been pretty shitty in terms of my health - what with my shoulder, my back and my joints - but I've been fortunate that the worst I've suffered in illness terms has been a couple of doses of manflu and a couple of colds. This recent bout has surpassed much and has left me worried because in a week I'm back at work and I need to see a massive improvement in the next 7 days to be ready for the new challenges and rules (that I'm responsible for) of 2012.

I might have broken the back of this thing, but I'm acutely aware that I still have three days of antibiotics left and that if I overdo things it might all slide back into the nastiness of the week before Christmas. But I think I'm entitled to be a little positive; I might get a few days of my winter break for me. Yes, I'm tempting fate and whenever I do that I end up on my arse regretting saying anything, but I don't care.

***

So, Boxing Day has always traditionally been the best day on TV. Every year I look at the Radio Times and find at least half a dozen things to watch on the 26th; this year I found nothing. Boxing Day made Christmas Day look like a blockbuster of a day; so we decided to watch a movie.

The preferred choice was The Ides of March, a political thriller with George Clooney and Ryan Gosling. Unfortunately, the advance review copy that I downloaded was a bit buggered and did some interesting things to my DVD player. I tried burning it to another disc and to the same result, so we were left with the best of an average lot as an alternative. The wife suggested we watch Winter's Bone, a critically acclaimed indie film from last year. All we knew about it was it was set in the mid-west of the USA and was about a young girl trying to find her father.

My God, what a depressingly awesome film it is. I have seen horror movies that have creeped me out less. It is a cold, stark and deeply menacing movie that has an ending that I suppose is more upbeat than the rest of the movie, but only in a way that makes losing your hand much better than losing your entire arm. It is, I suppose, a sort of road movie, but equally it's the kind of film that makes you realise that parts of the USA are no better off than parts of the Sudan or North Korea. In fact, it paints a picture of the backwoods of the States as a place that is, in many ways, far more dangerous for people than going to Afghanistan wearing nothing but a Stars & Stripes flag while singing 'All Muslims are Gay'.

Not exactly festive viewing, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm glad I watched it. I doubt I have seen a more thought provoking and disturbing movie in the last 12 months and I watched Terry Gilliam's Tideland this year! If you want to see a film that is just depressingly brilliant, wonderfully shot and full of characters that could easily be seen for all being inter-related, then watch this. Don't if you fancy a fun-filled night in with the gang!

The other big film we watched was Bridesmaids, which I have to admit was good fun, but nowhere near as brilliant as the critics seemed to think it was. I like Kristen Wiig - the two previous films I'd 'seen' her in were How To Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me, both brilliant films from 2010 and her performance in Bridesmaids was pretty excellent; but you just got the impression that the film makers could have gone the extra mile in the film. To me the film fell between two stools and therefore never really fulfilled its potential. I also think the makers copped out several times when they could have really pushed the comedy envelope. Still, it wasn't bad.

***

The big TV event was Doctor Who, an annual event that I usually am so drunk by the time it comes on I miss most of it from falling asleep. This year, no booze had passed my lips and I watched it expecting another really naff special. So imagine my surprise when the episode finished and I found myself wiping a tear from my eye. Not at the main story, full of plot holes and nods to other children's fantasy fiction, but at the end, when the Doctor arrived at Amy's house for Christmas.

I think, without a doubt, that Karen Gillan is possibly the most interesting, sexy and devastatingly good looking woman ever to be stuck next to a doctor and in the two minutes on screen on Sunday, I realised that Moffatt has to do something special now that she is leaving for pastures new. I've been highly critical of the Matt Smith era, because they had 4/5ths of a great cast, a good budget and stories that flip flopped about and caused more confusion than entertainment; but Amy Pond has been a revelation and I don't think DW will be the same again...

***

Just to prove that if I like something I've downloaded I get the original. One of my presents was Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83 - the album I've been saying for two months is my favourite album of the year. Guess what? It still is.

***

Either I'm just getting old or the flu/infection thing I've had has made me a big softy, but my eyes have leaked more this Christmas than I can remember. Music and TV have both had moments where I've felt that hitch at the back of my throat, or the sensation of having something in my eye. Maybe being ill at Christmas has made me a little more sensitive, or maybe I just miss my long departed parents. Or it might be that I've felt unbelievably isolated this time - whatever it is, I found I had to turn a film over on Saturday because I knew I was going to blub...

***

The plan for today was to go out with the dogs and then go to the pub quiz; however, most of my optimism has evaporated as the wife takes the dogs out and I sit here finishing this off feeling crappy again and cold.

I suppose I just need to take it easy, but I'm a bit stir crazy. I have, at least, prepared dinner and I still intend to take my fellow quizzers to the pub, even if I just drop them off, come home and then pick them up again after 11pm...

***

Incidentally, I've grown a beard.

***

Anyhow; thanks to everyone who sent well wishes my way either via the phone, email or Facebook. Much appreciated!

Autistic Queen

2011-12-25T07:39:00.000-08:00

The one thing you can set your watch and warrant by this Christmas is that I will receive the latest Stephen King novel. It's traditional, despite me almost giving up the author, in disgust, after the Dark Tower debacle.

Eating Pie

2011-12-25T02:47:00.000-08:00

I was clearing out a box in my cupboard; something caught my eye that ended up being nothing and instead I pulled out a copy of Wired from the mid 1990s. I had it because on the cover was a photo of an old friend of mine, who I discovered had died towards the end of the 1990s. There had been some discussion between the few of us who knew each other back then and still were in contact. Most agreed the picture looked like Shelley, but I was convinced. He had a slightly dodgy and bulbous septum and this was perfectly highlighted in this cover image of something Wired was christening a Zippy - a computer-savvy hippy.

Pulling out the magazine brought back some strange memories of a period of my life that I've often wanted to talk about, but has been breezed over for a number of reasons - the gaps in my memory; some of the things I did and the fact that, at times, it was the most carefree, dangerous and exciting period of my life. I experienced the world in microcosm while I lived in Shenley, Hertfordshire. When I came back to the drudgery of Northampton in July 1982, despite my friends having had all their own adventures, mine just seemed more 'real'. Not surprisingly really as they were my memories and all I had was what I offered - my own stories, probably just as meh as I thought theirs were.

Shelley was one of a gang of people I spent about 18 months being really close friends with. I was the baby of the group and Shelley had held that status before I was bundled into their little group. This little clique consisted of Gerty, Ricky, Rory, Jim, Ruth, Andy, George, and a few others, who I am ashamed to say I've forgotten their names, even if their faces are clear in my head. I joined their loose affiliation almost by accident. I had been the victim of mistaken identity and was about to suffer the consequences...

During the first game of the 1981 FA Cup Final between Spurs and Man Citeh, which ended in a 1-1 draw, someone called Spurs' winger Tony Galvin 'A useless Irish wanker' and it wasn't me. However, at the social club my folks ran there was a huge Irish workforce and this being 1981, there was also a huge number of very anti-British Republicans. A small number were believed to be IRA sympathisers and while I would never know for sure, I wouldn't have been surprised. One of these people believed it was me who had shouted the racist comment, when I believe to this day it was fellow Spurs fan, a guy called Wolfie, who had said it; he was sitting next to me at the time when this chap called Martin took massive offence.

Later that evening, I got invited back to one of the weekly parties in the female nursing home and to be honest, I was a little out of my depth. I was only just 19 and had mainly befriended a few of the first year RMN students; this new bunch of people were 2nd and 3rd year students - they were almost proper Registered Mental Nurses and therefore were considerably more mental than my usual friends. I was sitting, minding my own business, against a wall and drinking a can of Skol when out of nowhere I heard a commotion and saw a fist flying directly at me, which connected with the side of my head and was heightened by the fact I was pressed against the wall of the relatively small room. I just about passed out, but not before I saw a knight in ginger armour. Gerty, who would become one of my best friends of all time and someone I still ache to see at times, despite not having seen him in over 25 years, rugby tackled this owner of the fist - Martin - and they went sprawling over the floor, scattering ashtrays, drugs, beer and people everywhere. I think I blacked out after that, because the next thing I remember was a girl called Gaynor wiping my face with a cool flannel and a bunch of concerned looking nurses standing over me - these were to become the people who would protect me from the big bad Irish Mafia for the next year and become one of the true highlights of my life so far.

Gerty was from Wales, he was built like a shit house rat and was going bald despite only being 2 years older than me. Jim, who I still talk to as he's from Northampton, was tall, wiry and as hard as a bullet; he had and still does have a slightly mad stare, enough to make you back off if you're not 100% sure. Ruth was the tomboy of our pack; with bright red flowing hair and a very butch attitude; she'd hate me for this; she looked after us and we saved her from herself a number of times; she had bad taste in men. Andy was ex-Rhodesian SAS and the first person I ever met who had actually killed a man (I'd like to say he was the only, but he isn't, but he was the only one who hadn't been to prison for it). He was bonkers, but thankfully in a very bizarre way. He had more funny sayings than Imelda Marcos had shoes. I've talked about George before; he was the gay guy who had every hot woman hanging around him. Rory was about 200lbs of solid muscle, was as thick as a brick and was loyal and lovable like that cartoon character who just wanted to hug you and kiss you and be your fwiend. Rory was also Irish and he didn't believe for a second that I could have said anything detrimental; he eventually played peacemaker, despite the fact he struggled to spell his own name. He was also so full of bullshit, we developed an expression whenever he started wandering off into the realms of fantasy. Ricky was from Barbados; we had a token woman, gay and Welshman, we had to have a black guy! Ricky was essentially our drug supplier and next to Gerty this man was probably the closest one I was to. And then there was Shelley, who unlike the others didn't have a definable past. All we knew about him was he'd come into nursing because there was nothing else to do in the north Midlands, where he originated, but hadn't lived in for a few years. Shelley had a closed past and none of us ever tried to get into it.

My relationship with Shelley had never been as easy as it had been with the others; he had liked being the mascot of this little group and when I came along he just moved up the pecking order and I think he struggled with it for a while; but I'm making it sound like we were rivals or something; we got on really well, I just was never in his room as often as I was in others.

One day during the height of summer 1981, we decided to go on a field trip to St Albans, in Gerty's VW Beetle; a bright orange collector's item with CND and bright sunflower stickers all over it. It looked like a hippy mobile. Five of us went to the old Roman town; three of them had proper shopping to do and Shelley and I were left to wander around the town centre and cause mischief. Shelley was a keen badminton player and we were looking in the window of the local sports equipment shop (which has probably been long replaced by a chain store or a Starbucks) and I had a devilishly stupid idea, which I put to Shelley and he squealed like a girl. We walked into the shop, separately and I started browsing the badminton rackets. Shelley was lurking by the football shirts, looking a bit shifty.

Before long a sales assistant wanders over and asks Shelley if he needed any help, but he said he was just looking, so he turned his attention to me. "Can I help you mate?" I was much younger than him.

"Yeah, I'm looking for a Happenklanger badminton racket." A big smile appeared on the salesman's face.

"Never heard of it, mate. Someone's winding you up."

"No. I'm pretty sure they exist."

"No mate; no one called that makes any kind of racquet, now if you'll excuse me," and he makes to the door to show me out!

"Look, I read it in the paper, Happenklanger, I've not got the name wrong, I'm sure of it." The sales assistant was now looking slightly exasperated and annoyed.

"It doesn't exist. There's no such thing as a Happenbangle badminton racket!"

"Did you say Happenklanger?" Asks Shelley. The assistant almost whirled round. "The new carbon fibre rackets that Gillian Gilkes has been testing in Germany?"

"Yes, that's the one. I knew I hadn't misheard it."

"No, there was an article about it in the Express last weekend." The sales assistant is just standing there with his mouth agape. "They're bloody expensive!" Says Shelley and I just shrugged.

"Price isn't an issue; I can spend what I like on a new racket; I play county badminton." With this the assistant changed his entire body shape and instead of being tall and upstanding, he became almost Fagin like.

"Perhaps I can look through our stock books and see if I can order you one?"

"Yeah, why not?" I said, trying desperately not to start corpsing.

He obviously couldn't find one, but filled out a request form, which he assured me, would be sent to head office that evening and if they could get this new Happenklanger badminton racket then they'd move heaven and Earth for me. Was I really a county badminton player? What sort of price was I prepared to go up to? £100? Really? I'm surprised I wasn't offered coffee and a blowjob by the time I walked out and joined Shelley on the pavement where we both burst out laughing and continued to replay the joke between us to the bemusement of Gerty, Ricky and Ruth.

Once they'd finished their shopping, we headed off to a country pub on the outskirts of the town called The Barley Mow, a place which, rather astoundingly served a selection of real ales, despite this being 1981. This was a bad thing, mainly because we all liked a pint or 8 and despite Gert's best intentions, he ended up on the Owd Rodger - an 8% brew that was only served in ½ pints. He decided that half of that mixed with half of a pale ale would suffice and he ended up having five. Back in 1981 the drink driving crusade was well in swing and there were a lot more people willing to defy it then than now. We were young and reckless, so Gerty got behind the wheel and decided to drive us all home. By the time we'd driven a couple of miles, he pulled over and was sick. After the sick came the wanting to curl up in the back of the car and go to sleep for a while to sober up. We had stopped in London Colney and fortunately right in front of a pub. The four of us left Gerty to sleep it off and we headed to the pub for a couple more pints. On return, Gerty was still asleep and not making any moves to suggest he would do anything other than punch the person who woke him. It was now gone 11pm and we were six miles from home.

Now, as you may be aware, classic beetles are essentially like minis but with a bit more headroom. They're not big and squeezing 5 people into one when you're sober isn't a particularly brilliant idea. When you have a monster of a man sprawled over the back seat and four of you left outside, you start to have seriously stupid ideas. By this time we were all very, very, drunk. Shelley devised a plan. Ruth would squeeze into the back with Gerty and put his legs over her. I would sit in the front with slight little Ricky on my lap and Shelley would drive the VW back to the hospital and park it in the social club car park so as to not have to negotiate the front gate of the hospital, where Old Bill sometimes stopped for a chat or used the entrance to park and have a coffee - from a Thermos flask, none of this coffee shop nonsense.

Shelley was blind drunk and somehow managed to get lost and we ended up in Radlett, almost as far away from the hospital as we had originally been. I was falling in and out of sleep, Ruth was chatting in the back to someone, maybe me, and we had to negotiate a very steep hill and a windy road to get to where the car park was. It was now about 1am in the morning and I think Ricky had livened up proceedings with a big spliff, which would just about drive Shelley over the edge - literally and metaphorically. We negotiated the splendid housing of Shenley Hill; the almost 90 degree bend at the golf course and we were just about home and dry, we took the next right hand bend with ease and all that was left was a slow left hand bend and then a final right before the straight to the social club's car park. The slow left should have been easy, but Shelley obviously either shut his eyes and went to sleep or just forgot to turn the steering wheel. We crashed straight into the fence and then through it and onto the golf course. I was suddenly very awake as we drove through a border of trees without crashing into any of them and onto one of the fairways. Shelley looked around startled and then seemed to have a great idea. He pointed into the distance and said, "That's our cricket pavilion, I can drive to that!" And he actually put his foot down. We must have looked like something out of a Herbie film; this bright orange beetle hurtling down one of the nicest fairways you've ever seen. We had just about reached the bottom of the slope when I suddenly had a terrible feeling.

"Shelley! The stream!!" There was a stream which was effectively the dividing line between the golf course and the hospital; except it wasn't so much a stream as a little brook running between a small, and perfectly formed, valley and we were going to hit it doing about 40mph; there was a good chance we would all die.

Shelley hit the breaks, but we were on wet grass, so we just slid for about 100 yards, slowing down, but not enough; we hit the golf side of the ten foot drop doing about 5mph and the car just tottered forwards and fell nose first down the side. The bumper caught on some mud, dug itself in and the momentum we had made the beetle just topple forward onto its roof and wedged perfectly in the gully. It made a unique, post modern bridge. We all toppled into the ceiling; debris flying everywhere and bodies and limbs stuck in all manner of places. I managed to open the door after several attempts and pushing the handle the wrong way and Ricky carefully escaped the mess. I followed him, but not before I fell into the stream - the only one of us who did - and Shelley scrambled out followed by Ruth and a dazed and bemused Gerty, who was just muttering, 'My car' to himself.

All I know is that Shelley launched the keys somewhere and we all headed back to our relevant places of sleep. The most damage done - a cut on the back of Shelley's arm; a sore neck for Ruth and a saturated Phill. We discovered that the police had a call about 2am that morning saying that Gerty had had his car stolen; a simple alibi was constructed - it was never needed - and the police put it down to someone stealing Gerty's car from the car park while he had been down the club and I think that's about all that happened. The car was retrieved, it barely had a scratch on it, but sat in the car park of the social club for weeks before Gerty did anything with it. He had been unconscious for most of the trip, but I think he realised more than all of us how close we came to dying; all he had was his imagination and that can be a frightening thing.

We, of course, never spoke of it again...

I have so many stories from that period of my life; so many adventures and it's hard to believe that it was all condensed into less than eighteen months. I think that's what I miss about being young more than anything - cramming days full of different memories - when 24 hours was an entire universe to play in, instead just a brief tick on the clock as it has become...

The fact that the group I was such a big part of disbanded, went their own ways and some eventually died is just life; but Shelley was one of those guys who did too much in excess and I suppose it caught up with him. He was one of those guys who often got what he wanted - he had the best looking girlfriend of the group and was the early 1980s equivalent of a gadget nerd - which probably explained the cover image on Wired.

Spacer Fun

2011-12-22T01:49:00.000-08:00

I am still far from happy. I'm into day 5 of my very bad cold and while that initial wobbly and ill feeling is subsiding, I'm now suffering in many other ways and it just isn't fair. Not fair. NOT FAIR. NOT FAIR!!!

Over the last 5 days I have kept the Lemsip Corporation in business; I am glad that tissue paper isn't rationed because apart from the fact the bin in my office looks like I've been continually wanking for a month, it's quite expensive, especially if you want the stuff that doesn't make your poor nose sore. I've missed my quiz this week (although from the sounds of things I wouldn't have made much difference) and my plans for today and tomorrow are up in the air - as I wait to slip into nice hot bath, the contents of my chest are beginning to show - Andrex must love people like me (and compulsive wankers) - and trust me when I say that you don't want a description of it.

Yes, you could argue that I might not have done much in the last week anyhow, meaning that I should have 'enjoyed' this bout of illness. But, I would have preferred a choice in the matter. It's a good job I got my shopping at the end of November because I would have been doubly fucked had I not. In fact, is it me, or does this Christmas seem to be... late? I know I haven't been out for days, but I don't feel even the slightest festive; my growing disdain for Christmas has even abated. This year seems a bit meh - but that might be me.

The worst thing about this heavy cold is that two days ago, when I was streaming (snot rather than music videos), I said to the wife that I could live with the cold if it just went at the end like it had never been there. But not the good old British cold; it has to stick around in the form of phlegm, catarrh and various other maladies. In my case, my lungs are so fucked from years of abuse that I have to go through a scary ritual of persuading my lungs to breath again, especially when I get an asthma spasm from the congested airways. An inhaler doesn't always work (unless you use a spacer), so calming yourself down and relaxing while simultaneously struggling to take a breath has become something of an art form. I'm also acutely aware of how crazy/mad that sounds and that after all of this shit cold business, my chest is now a prime target for some kind of bronchial infection. Jesus Harry Christ, somebody just put me out of my misery now!

***

Amazingly, when I was unemployed, I found all manner of bollocks to ramble on about. The same can't be said for this last week. The above section is the closest I've got to appraising the week and it just sounds like the latest offering from the fair weather hypochondriac. It's been a bit of a dead week. I'm sure there are people out there having a really good time. If there are, I hope you all get my cold, you bastards!

***

Facebook now has 800million users; or in real terms about 250million users all with at least two, maybe more, accounts. 250m is still impressive; but in my days as a comics journo, the magazine I worked for once sold 25,000 a month and that was equally impressive. It started to get a little questionable when that figure got inflated to 75,000 because you took into account the 'casual' readers who would pick up a copy off of a coffee table or in a comic shop. I'm not suggesting that Facebook massages its figures, just that it isn't anywhere near accurate.

***

It's been about 6 hours since I wrote the above and I'm beginning to feel human again. Chest feels like its in a vice, which means no beerage tonight; which is a great shame as I haven't had a beer for over a week now. Still, means I'll get drunk quicker on Sunday, eh?

Kim's Ill Dong

2011-12-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

What I'm really unhappy about is manflu and the body's ability to decide when it wants to be ill. Finished work on Friday and by the evening I felt dreadful; I fully expected to wake up Saturday feeling like hostile pooh in a lavatory world, but instead I woke up and felt remarkable well. Perhaps I wasn't ill after all.

Hah!

Sunday arrived and I was ill. Really not very good. Quite poorly. Probably full of the cold I forecast for a few days. Today I feel even worse and it isn't fair. It is buggering up my plans big time and my plans were very few and far between... The bright spot is that I'm now filling up with snot; that usually means it's breaking. Usually.

***

Watched Bag of Bones the other night; it was a bag of shite. I shouldn't have expected better. Stephen King TV adaptations, especially ones with Mick Garris's name attached, tend to be really crap; this was no exception.

***

Blogger has been acting up recently (see last entry) and I no longer seem able to get basic instructions - bold, italic, etc - and that's a pain.

***

I don't have much else to moan about, yet...

Burn Them, But Burn Their Faces First

2011-12-17T02:48:00.000-08:00

Everything seems a bit wonky this morning. The PC is running slow; the Internet is dragging its sorry arse around like a sulking teenager and I've been having a morning of wigging out to The Tubes (who at times were a seriously excellent band) while hoovering! It's like the past. WPOD!

***

"Sir, is Michael Jackson 55?"
"Michael Jackson's dead."
"What? Still?"

***

I'm now on just over two weeks holiday and this is good because I like time off work, it gives me time to think about doing all the things I've not managed to do since I've been at work. I won't do any of them, but thinking about them makes that acceptable.

***

The snow didn't arrive in Northampton. It did snow about 6:00am on Friday, but by the time I dragged myself out of bed at 7:05 it had gone. So I'm sticking with my forecast as still being on target.

***

Tonight is a extended family gathering. We shall be spending a few hours in the company of cousins and second cousins in Milton Keynes; which might sound more like a punishment than a pleasure, but I expect it will be a very pleasant visit. I've not seen my cousin Frankie for a couple of years, nor his daughter. I have seen his son Daniel recently and him and his partner Hayley have an extra special Christmas ahead of them - the last without the patter of tiny (human) feet. Next year they'll have a baby Simpson to go with the two exquisite puppies they obtained in November.

Now, the Simpsons are actually pretty much the closest family I have outside of immediate now. Daniel's grandparents are my godparents and while we won't see them today - the trip from Mablethorpe is too much at this time of the year for a couple in their 80s - they'll be there in spirit.

The Godparent Simpsons used to live in Springfield which is quite strange, especially as they were there long before Homer, Marge and co were even dreamt of. Oddly enough the next two generations of Simpson also live in Springfield, so it's their own fault they're perpetuating a joke!

My godparents are also called Frank and Tina, which Jay Eales still finds quite hilarious...

***

The boy - Murray - is suffering at the moment. He has weak claws and for the last couple of months he's been regularly breaking them, by jumping up at the bloody front door when we get home from one of our rare forays out at night.

It's really quite pout-inducing seeing the poor little fella limping around and looking sorry for himself and as the wife said, it's a shame he can't equate the fact his jumping up at the door with the breaking of his toenails. But as we all know, dogs are stupid.

***

Right, two weeks of copious blogging to follow; hold onto your stomachs!

The US Bill of Festive Meh

2011-12-10T05:35:00.000-08:00

[Spoiler Warning]

I don't know if some of the executives in charge of the SyFy Channel are British, but the station seems to pride itself on its Christmas specials - episodes with a festive theme. Other US TV shows have Christmas episodes, but some of the more 'popular' SyFy shows have had specials, possibly apocryphal tales, which are standalone. This year's event took place on December 7th - a traditionally extra special 13th day of Christmas. Last year, SyFy delivered a steaming pile of shite. This year wasn't much better.

What was essentially the season finally of Haven proved to be a real low point in the series. It was filmed in July and was essentially about a magic snow globe. It was too simple an idea to screw up, therefore it actually hung together reasonably well. It was pretty dire though in all other departments and it helped make my mind up about one thing I won't be doing in 2012 - watching this ridiculously bad TV show ever again.

Next up was Eureka and billed as the opener for season five which starts in earnest in 2012; it was also a festive romp and sat outside of existing continuity. It was essentially a very similar story to the one in Haven, but had a bigger budget and an array of different kinds of animation. I struggled to like it and thought it was a little too quirky, even for the inhabitants of the quirkiest town in the USA. It did however feature a short teaser for the final season of a show that I think has proved to be too expensive for SyFy to make; Eureka is popular, just not that popular and killing it now saves us a few seasons of dwindling cast members and even crappier special effects.

That was two down and after 2010's Warehouse 13 load of Yuletide droppings, I started watching the 2011 special with as much expectation of a man with rotten teeth visiting the dentist from Marathon Man. I really shouldn't have worried...

The production values of W13 are on a level with Haven. Piss poor CGI is the new wobbly sets and W13 has always been able to counterbalance its small budget with some pretty good stories. Yes, like any US fantasy series, it has its fair share of pooh masquerading as 42 minutes of dramedy, but sometimes it just blows you away with its inventive stories, twisting sub plots and frankly four of the most likeable characters on TV. It also provides at least one laugh out loud (or LOL) moment every week, even in episodes where tragedy is layered on more tragedy. The Christmas special was no exception; it had plenty of bad CGI, a nasty subtext, some clever twists and plenty of LOLZ; it was also a brilliant antidote to the season finale that firmly established W13 as a show that you really can't second guess (for long without having egg on your face).

This year's Chrimble treat was a brilliant re-imagining of It's a Wonderful Life with Pete finding himself in a world where he never existed and a warehouse being run by its biggest enemy. It also felt like an homage to the first ever episode in that Pete has to assemble his old team despite them having no idea who he is and all showing obvious signs that not having him in their lives has drastically altered reality. I was utterly blown away and believe that W13 is now entering a period where it will struggle to better. The last half a dozen episodes have oozed confidence and like any good TV show - never mind the quality, feel the width!

It's also a great standalone episode and could even act as a jumping on point for people who fancy something new. Of course the one thing that makes that suggestion wrong is the state of everything at the end of the season three finale; but this is the Warehouse and if Artie can't turn back time, he'll have another artefact that will be just as effective.

***

Dexter is looming towards its series finale in a season that has reconfirmed my belief that this is the best thing on TV. It's a show that rips your funny bone out of your arm and stabs you with it while you laugh hysterically as you bleed to death - there is so much work going into a show that is both grizzly, full of pathos and berserkly (I know it's not a real world but I can't think of anything similar) funny.

Yes, in many ways it has almost become a parody of itself and sometimes things change in the background so quickly it leaves you feeling slightly cheated. There's never any explanations for the minutiae such as whatever happened to Dex's nanny or how come Angel developed a 20-something sister; there's also the police politics thing and all of these things give the impression that the story has picked up a fair old while since the end of the last season; yet other things seem to be as new as they were in aid previous season - Harrison's age, Deb and Quinn's relationship. Sometimes the mixture of iconoclast and moral ethics can almost be too preachy - this is a man who is a serial killer, yet the series seems intent on humanising rather than dehumanising him - but deep down you just accept this is a very black comedy adventure series where the hero just happens to be worse than the villains.

The superb thing about this series of Dexter is the lack of Dexter kills; all the focus is on his inner demons all having a say in how he lives his life. With two more seasons having been commissioned the chances of anything bad happening to our 'hero' himself is remote; but his loved ones is a different matter. This series has seen Dex facing up to death on several occasions and it's obvious that both threats had profound affects on him - one because of survival and the other because of unexpected death. The extremely clever plot - most people I've talked with about it are miles out with their perception of the series and what it's doing and trying to say - hasn't finished twisting either. I know nothing of the upcoming finale; I've avoided the net and spoilers - not that there are any - and I'm left with the feeling that two regular stars are going to die before the curtain on this season is brought down.

With two to go, the series antagonist - The Doomsday Killer - looks like he's planning on going out with a bang; literally and metaphorically. The police know who he is - but trust me that's only half of it - and it's the usual race between Dex and the cops to kill the bad guy first, except Dex has been so preoccupied with being normal he's not keeping up. Meanwhile, Angel has stumbled into TDK's line of sight; Quinn has gone off the rails so far that it's being set up like they plan a big exit for him; Leguerta has become the uber-bitch from hell and between her and the assistant commissioner things have become intensely illegal and Deborah, the wonderfully foul mouthed adopted sister of Dexter has been propelled into a position she can't possibly cope with and is on the verge of blowing an important gasket. Angel and Quinn are the two who appear to have limited time left on the show, my guess is that Laguerta and Deborah are going to be the two to fall. The newly promoted Captain will take the can for the cover up she's running and I think Dexter's personal tragedy is about to get even worse; I think Debs is going to die a hero. It will be terrible. It will also be, in her own words, fucking brilliant.

American Horror Story has been acceptable US drama. It's been hit or miss for a while, but with the announcement that each series will be about a different haunted house, it suddenly sprang into life. It has a lot of flaws, but generally it has been weirdly entertaining - literally - and I think the living Harman family members have already been shown a way to win this battle, Ben just hasn't realised it yet.

The tenth episode, arguably the best, wasn't so much creepy as unnerving; we both guessed what was happening, but it made it no less shocking, especially what make up did with Violet. The house surely must be destined to burn...

***

In Georgia, the first half of the tortoise paced second season of The Walking Dead or Egg of the Dead, came to a shocking, but pretty much expected conclusion. I am more than aware that this is a series focused more of the dystopia of the surviving humans rather than the 'zombie' side, but it doesn't have to have the pace of the dead and it really needs a likeable character - with the exception of Dale, none of these bastards is at all nice and sometimes it can get a little too much.

***

Meanwhile back in Blighty, Misfits just continues to astound. Howard Overman is a genius. Nuff said.

***

This year's Dr Who Christmas special is bound to be fuelled by hype and fail to live up to expectations. What I'd like to see from one of these throwaway pieces of frivolity is a story that is good and not necessarily about bloody Christmas.

I was talking Who with a mate the other day and I said it would be nice if they broke one of the golden rules and have the Doctor meet one of his future selves. It doesn't have to be carved in stone, because of the wibbly properties of time, but it could help develop the story. Move it forward, say?

***

We should all remind someone younger than ourselves over the next few weeks that TV was once had limited choice and yet Christmas was a time you simply didn't miss TV. Now, you can and not even notice.

Sordid Wombat

2011-12-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

Fuckwit and Lard Girl have been wandering around the street like fat encrusted Weebles - he's decked out in an ill-fitting tracksuit that looks like he's not changed it in about a month and she is wrapped up in more sheepskin than Ron Atkinson and John Motson put together, however, he's walking like he's shit himself and she has all the grace of a week dead walrus. They spend a lot of time over the road at the guy who lives next to the Sexually Explicit family. He's a pleasant enough bloke and if you talk to him you have to ask yourself why he's so friendly with this perfect example of ageing chavness has never been clear; but it could be that he's just a bit stupid.

The three of them are often seen standing around the street pontificating and acting like they own the place. I'm not the only person who sneers at them, there's this other old guy who lives just out of sight of my office window. He's lived in his house much longer than we've been here and he is a bit like me in that you rarely ever see him socialising with his neighbours - it's like he finds them as disturbingly entertaining as me.

Of all my neighbours Mr Misanthrope is the one I enjoy brief conversations with the most. It has only happened a handful of times in the last 10 years, but we appear to be on a similar wavelength. Last weekend, Fuckwit began to have wandering car syndrome again, after months of sticking to parking on his drive. He decided to park in front of Mr Misanthrope and his neighbours the West Indian Family and felt the full force of Mr M's wrath.

"Are you incapable of parking in front of your own house?!" he asked Fuckwit last Sunday afternoon. I didn't hear FW's response, but it was obviously obtuse enough for Mr M to go into one of his now famous rants. He had followed a cold caller down the road once, a couple of years ago, accusing him of lying and giving false information and telling him that if he knocked on any door in this street again he would tell the people just how misleading his sales pitch is. The cold caller represented Sky TV and Mr M obviously feels the same way about Rupert Murdock as I do. This event elevated Mr M into the high echelons of my respect and the Sky rep looked genuinely concerned as this hulk of a man, walking with the aid of a cane, charged up the road berating him and threatening him with all kinds of exposure.

Mr M shuffled around and spoke in clear and loud words. "I don't care if the Queen is visiting you, parking your car in front of someone's house when you have your own parking space is rude and irresponsible. Do you ever think about the hassle you're causing your neighbours?" Obviously Fuckwit didn't because his answer prompted Mr M to shout, "That's not a reason, that's just lazy. Please move your car or I'll park my car in front of your house for the rest of the year." Fuckwit trudged across the road, keys in hand, looking like he'd been reprimanded by his old headmaster. I noticed that both of our cars were parked in their usual places, proving once again that FW is incapable of parallel parking, even in his automatic Rover.

I then heard my roly-poly neighbour say, "I would have moved it eventually, there's no need to get the arse." This set Mr M off on one which included the insult 'you are just an ignorant buffoon' which elevated Mr M even higher in my esteem. Anyone who uses the word 'buffoon', especially to Fuckwit deserve the Noble Insult Prize.

Today, while the wife is out doing Christmas bollocks, watching FW, LG and the old man pointing and making jokey comments about Mr M, I realised that mankind has no future at all and by the end of this century we will have become a pointless stain on the planet. I could never be a Conservative, but I could become a fascist with a machine gun and wipe out this canker of society for the sake of the future, provided I'm offered immunity from prosecution.

***

Fishwife and co have been remarkably quiet to the point that the wife pondered whether they'd stumbled across this blog and put two and two together and were purposely avoiding us. However, I pointed out that this has tended to happen every year as we hurtle towards Christmas; they spend more and more time round family and friends houses. In fact, Fishwife has been so anonymous recently I'm considering looking for the pod in his bottom shed...

***

It's been a bit taters out there today, yet as the sun begins to set over the back of the gardens, I was again bewildered by something I see just about every year and then manage to forget to mention.

Looking through the skeleton of the apple tree with the sun beaming through the gaps, I could see tiny little flies buzzing around in the sunlight. These things appear just about every year and especially on sunny days in the coldest bits winter and I often wonder what they are, how long they actually live and what benefit they get from anything?

***

Next time I'll tell you about how my past has returned to haunt me, how my local MP proved to be a twat after all and how the government can get arsey over £81.51 while Goldman Sachs manage to avoid paying £10,000,000 in owed taxes.

Gig Guide 10: Amplifier, Nottingham Rock City; 4th December 2011

2011-12-07T11:17:00.000-08:00

I love Amplifier; they are, in my humble opinion, one of the best modern rock bands of this century. They produce modest stadium rock that would blow away so-called bigger draws, yet because they are a minority band they play minority gigs. Rock City seemed like the logical elevation play an acoustically good venue to a big audience and make their mark.

Xoyo in the summer was a smallish venue packed to the rafters with die-hard Ampcorp fans; Rock City must have bombed in sales. The band played a partitioned area from the actual main hall, in what ended up as big a room as the neighbouring Rescue Rooms - which might have been the better venue for them. The sound was dreadful and it took most of the gig to get it right. There were maybe 150 people there - max! And, I'm sorry to say that the lack of atmosphere and good sound made us all slightly less enthusiastic. In many respects the gig was a bit of an embarrassment because it should have been so much better. There was also a strange tension around the room; maybe it was the first night of a UK tour, maybe it was the fact that no one looked happy at the cold weather and drab surroundings; it just had the feeling of people queuing for something they weren't that keen on.

The Amplifier set was about 90 minutes of music - a mixture of The Octopus and some older tracks, including songs that sounded much better in a soggy field in Gloucestershire. Sometimes the band were tight and pretty devastating, but at other times they seemed out of it and this was highlighted by Sel Balamir being out of synch with the rest of the band of Strange Seas of Thought; making it sound just plain wrong.

I've struggled to be enamoured by any of the gigs I've been to in Nottingham - either Rock City or the Rescue Rooms; maybe Yes in the late 90s (but that was at the Concert Hall), Julian Cope in the early 90s (at both RC and RR) and possibly Shack in 2005; but of the other half dozen gigs I can instantly recall there has been a total anticlimax. Secret Machines, The House of Love and a couple of others have been much anticipated and left me with feeling that I maybe should have looked to see these bands in other, further afield, venues.

I'll go and see Amplifier whenever they play; but this third time was not like the others and I'll consign it to circumstances, rustiness and an undeserved lack of enthusiasm.

6/10

Green Margarine

2011-12-04T03:25:00.000-08:00

Many things went through my mind this morning; some of them are barely repeatable. One of the trains of thought I had was how much I need to do today because I'm going to Nottingham at 6:00pm. I should be ecstatic about seeing one of my favourite bands, but it's taking a whacking eighth of my weekend away - the part of my newly discovered weekend where I slump in front of the TV, have a long hot soak in the bath and generally do my bit for doing nothing.

The thing is, even though it feels like I do nothing I get things done: my lunch for Monday; all my clobber, clean shoes, and the usual Sunday ordered day. It sounds a bit anal, but my Sundays have always had a reasonable structure, even when I've been out of work; so therefore having something like this gig come along has thrown a spanner in my orderly Sunday.

It's 11:45am and so far this morning I've managed to do very little and I got out of bed at 9.30, which means that for over two hours I've managed to eat my breakfast, do most of my ablutions and... um... decide to sit and write an extra blog entry complaining about the fact I haven't got enough time today to do all the things I usually do at my leisure.

I have to prepare and cook the dinner (veggie sausage toad-in-the-hole) and make sure it's all done and eaten by 5.30 (at the very latest). I have to take the dogs out (approx 90 minutes earlier than usual, which will have a knock on effect), clean the duck shed out (but since writing that line the wife has said she'll do it); sort out my lunch for tomorrow, get the clothes I'm wearing put out (away from the dogs), do something with my hair (which needs cutting but I haven't got the time or the money to do that at the moment)... GAH, you don't really want to hear about it; I don't really want to explain it because explaining it eats into what little time I have already!

Oh and on top of it all my back has been grumbling like a wounded polar bear since Thursday and this has me concerned because the gig tonight has no seats - Rock City isn't a civilised, sit down venue. Time to break out the expensive painkillers, methinks.

***

Another thing that has played on my mind this morning is the doom and gloom across the news - both print and broadcast. As if I need to tell you what a mess we're all in, thanks to the world economy far more than the previous government - yes, they borrowed too much, but only the most right wing have to agree that the 13 or so years of Labour rule did at least see some rebuilding of infrastructure and for the majority of those years, most people were reasonably happier than say they were in 1996.

No one in their right minds will disagree that we need to lower our debt; only Gideon and his cronies seem to think that the only way of doing this is to piss off the poor and less well off. It's like they're saying that civil servants and public sector workers are most likely not to vote Tory therefore they need to be punished. That's how it feels and yet there's still people out there - some I know personally - who seem to think that Tory is best, even if they ultimately face more than just an uphill struggle for the next five or six years.

The wife and I were discussing her stepfather (or adopted father depending on how you look at it). He grew up in Sunderland in a staunchly left wing family and yet, to our knowledge, has never voted for any one other than Conservative; even though the Tories have spent more time screwing up his life than Labour could ever hope to. Neither of us could really fathom why some people are so averse to Labour. Yes, some people think unions have too much power, or that Labour pfaff about too much with bureaucracy and red tape; but surely the rights of people against unfair practice or pernicious government policies is something we should be grateful for. We don't live in a dictatorship; having the right to campaign against injustice is a right we fought for an won a long time ago, yet some people find the concept of voting for a political party that appear to care more for the people than the rich abhorrent.

I've asked some of my right leaning friends why and so far haven't heard an argument that can't be argued against. The thing with Tory voters who don't fall into the usual Conservative demographic is that they're almost as tenacious as their rich, snobbish, selfish counterparts. Conservatives are a little like born again Christians in that they believe and therefore there is no alternative. I'd like to think that I've looked at Tory policies and found some ideas pretty good; unfortunately just because I can see some good in some ideas, doesn't mean I believe they truly have the country's interests at heart. Dyed in the wool Blues view all Labour policies as having sub-agendas, even if there isn't one. The same true Blues don't accept that a lot of good was done by the previous administration and like the Daily Mail will offer a stupid example of stupid government decisions, yet are the least vocal when a Tory MP is guilty of the same thing.

Anyhow, the point of this was purely to say that I think Labour needs to seriously consider suggesting to Ed Milliband that his place in the party is important, just not as the leader. Today's Mori opinion poll in the Observer has the Tory's leading with 36%, Labour next with 34%, the Libdems on 16% and 14% undecided. The fact that the Tory's, nearly two years into a coalition where they are the controlling party, are actually top of the polls suggests that Labour got it wrong and this is after a year of falling economies, idiotic scandals and Hooray Henrys yawping about things in plummy voices and seemingly out of touch with the majority of common people.

Cameron might be a posh twat, but on a world stage he seems to fit the bill (even if he spouts neo-fascist anti-European rhetoric most of the time). You can't even compare Millband because he does seem like a well educated schoolboy with a vague resemblance to a stoned panda. He has about as much gravitas as a bail of straw and I view him as much a liability as Neil Kinnock was. Has the party at his heart, but fails to impress people because he just hasn't got much to like about his personality.

The leadership question is now old; it's been 18 months since EM was chosen and instead of a resurge in the polls, they are in 2nd place behind the cruelest of enemies. Would it have been any different if Ed Balls had been elected? I doubt it; for he polarises opinions far more than Milliband. David Millband was too Blairite, even if he possesses more of the qualities you would expect from a leader.

The person who should be leading Labour didn't even stand for election. Yvette Cooper might be Ed Balls's wife, but she actually comes across as the best man in that family and in my humble opinion would have united the party and the country far better. We're not going to get another Thatcher; Cooper could have restored faith in women leaders in this country and I have this horrible feeling that she refuses to be drawn into this because she's loyal to her husband, who obviously harbours hopes of becoming PM one day (even if he would become a Red Top caption editor's dream).

The conclusion I drew this morning is that things will only get much worse. But not because the Tories are in. I don't think anyone would have solved this problem, it's a global one and all the finger pointing in the world is not going to alter the fact that Britain in 2016 is going to be a much different place than any of us expected it to be.

However, it will definitely be a place where the haves still have and the have nots will become increasingly desperate to exist. There are areas of our life that have remained relatively unscathed by the cuts and the impending world economic disaster; I seriously believe that once something untouchable is hacked to shreds with the cuts knife, it will open a floodgate which will see everything we take for granted obliterated.

Perhaps we have to start living in a real world; working longer, earning less, paying more. It isn't fair, because we leave people in charge, they screw up and we pay for it. But that's democracy and we have to pay to live, however unpleasant life might end up being. I just wish people would look at the widening gap between the rich and the poor; at the increasing civil unrest and the fact that bankers are getting away with repeatedly raping us and realise that the Tory's have never, ever, been the party for growth and the future. Top Tories will be okay regardless of the economic state and will continue to be okay if everything melts down. They might lose lots, but they'll still have more than me and you. Most Tories have this, 'we'll worry about then when it comes' attitude and that means we're likely to lurch from one crisis to another; more people will lose their jobs, more small businesses will fail because fewer people will be spending money; creating a vicious spiral.

A few months ago I wrote in my almost defunct political blog what the consequences are if just one person loses his job; the more people claiming the dole - and estimates reckon unemployment will peak at 3.25million (nearly twice what it is at the moment), the less money going into the economy and more coming out of it. The knock on effect is scary, because it will drive even well run businesses to the wall. Pubs, clubs and restaurants will close; only the best will survive and these will only be frequented by the people who still have and they will be contemptuous of the homeless littering the streets near their restaurant, even though they know the world has gone to shit. The service industry will take a hit; manufacturing will struggle to be competitive and eventually, the Tories will suggest banishing the minimum wage; arguing that it will make things competitive and put money back into pockets, give them self-esteem and a chance - even if they're working for £2 a hour and coming home with less than £70 after tax; about the same as JSA. Of course, you will have to do this or you won't get any benefits and Theresa May may well get her wish to scrap the Human Rights Bill.

You might sit there and think that some of these ideas might be reasonable; especially to the long term unemployed; but the upshot is you would think like that until something happens to you that suddenly puts you on the other side of the argument. Then you would be wondering where all your human and employment rights have gone and how grossly unfair it all is, but by then it will be too late.

***

Seems like my weather forecast of the other day might have been a little rash. Winter's coming and will hit the north later on tonight; the forecast for the rest of the week is not one to get terribly excited about and tellingly, the bookmakers have halved the odds for a white Christmas. The long range forecasts seem to think we might even see some sleet or snow as far south as Northampton by next weekend. They might all be wrong (and probably are) but I expect the late season raspberries, mushrooms and sweet peas are going to be crushed by Jack Frost's icy grip.

The wife is taking it seriously; she's out in the shed armed with saws and all the wood we've collected throughout the year.

***

The final thought I had this morning was how the hell am I going to get out of Nottingham tonight without breaking the law? I've been to this lovely city a number of times, but have struggled to get out of it - the main reason being the sign posting is bloody awful. The last two occasions I've gone one-way up a tram road. The one-way being the wrong way and the tram road not being for cars. I did, however, save huge amounts of time. According to directions I've got from Google Maps, it should be straightforward. We shall see...

***

Right, time for doing all the things I'd do over the next 9 hours in the next 3...

q21

2011-12-03T03:17:00.000-08:00

December 3: The wife picked a handful of raspberries this morning. The remarkable thing, as this photo shows, is the paucity of leaves. The other pictures I took (all pretty crappy, tbh) failed to capture the fact that everything else has just about lost all its foliage; but saying that, this is the man who managed to go to Burton Latimer armed with a camera to take photos of the wind farm and came home with 14 pictures of individual wind turbines - I could have just taken the photo of one from a dozen different angles!

It is beginning to feel like winter; frost on the windscreen and it being virtually dark by 4pm, especially if it's a dull day, but in general this has been one of the oddest and most enjoyable autumns I can remember - it's made up for the grim economic outlook and the fact we're all going to die sliding around in our own shit while Chinese tourists pay money to watch the light disappear from our eyes.

***

I might not want to discuss my job on the blog, for obvious reasons, but that won't bar me from telling you what my job is or entails. When I was at school disruptive pupils tended to be ignored; but that was basically my extremely left wing mixed school during the 70s - the kind of place where the teachers seemed more interested in each other than they did educating. Things have changed and because I have no children, the changes seem quite drastic, quite sensible and in some ways oddly similar to the 1970s.

My job is to run what is imaginatively called Internal Exclusion (IE); where a pupil is taken out of class for behaviour or school violations and placed in a form of isolation - on the face of it it is designed to be a deterrent and also an opportunity to allow the rest of the school top operate without distraction. I've been employed to make some radical changes to the entire Internal Exclusion model (and they begin on Monday).

On the face of things, my job appears to be that of a glorified babysitter. The two IE rooms - behavioural and violations are run by me and my assistant and are strictly disciplined rooms where problems kids are not allowed enough rope to hang themselves. The intention (for me) is to educate kids about the consequences of their actions and how their behaviour needs to change if they want to be part of the school, have a chance in the future and to respect their fellow pupils. It is also about meeting Ofsted standards and getting the school's disciplinary record much lower than it has been. My feeling is that the softly softly approach isn't working very well, so I got offered the job to bring my experience of working with disenfranchised young people and because of my Youth Offending history - 73% of excluded pupils, nationally, end up in the court system and this allows me to do low level YOT work as an educational deterrent.

I've been there 3 weeks; it is hard work. The stress levels are intense and I come home most nights exhausted and I've yet to get the new IE fully running. I don't expect it will get much easier until the new radical approach starts to affect the usual suspects. The next two weeks - until the Christmas hols - are going to be massive.

***

Obviously my weekends have now become really important and tomorrow night I'm off to my second gig in a few weeks. Amplifier take to the Nottingham Rock City stage on Sunday and a late night beckons. I'm doing myself no favours for the big Monday push!

I'm looking forward to seeing Amplifier again and I expect a different set to the one they played at the Xoyo in the summer. There will be a gig review Tuesday if I can be arsed...

***

I think I'll spend the rest of the afternoon biting my finger nails...

Occluded Front

2011-11-26T02:31:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting my duties. Work has had such an impact on my life that it has thrown my carefully balanced existence of the last three years completely out of synch. I am again experiencing what it is like to not have enough hours in the day. Makes me slightly angry that I didn't (or never) make use of the free time I had.

Yet, even if I came home feeling like I could sit down and write for England, I don't really have anything that has tweaked the old inspiration lobe. I'm sure had I been sitting at home thinking about some of the crap that has happened in and around the world I would have had bags of time to pontificate about it; but I get home; stare at Pointless with a dog on my lap; contemplate food and struggle to keep myself from falling asleep.

Last weekend I was full of it; this weekend I ache, I slept funny last night and I just want to do as little as possible today. I can't quite shake the feeling that today is going to go horribly wrong; but that might be psionic resonance - at least twice during the week I spoke to colleagues who had gut feelings that everything was going to kick off, but it never did. The worst incident of the week was a food fight and the realisation that I might actually be in a hallucinogenic coma reliving my youth mixed with a bit of St Trinian's, Grange Hill and Waterloo Road thrown in for good measure.

Trust me though, at some point in the future, maybe when I retire I'm going to write a book about my new life (and I've only been doing it for 2 weeks).

***

I'm on strike on Wednesday. I had a choice because I wasn't balloted as an unemployed member of UNISON and if I'd decided to go into work I wouldn't have been labelled a scab or a traitor. The thing is a lot of my colleagues are out and you just have to show some solidarity, don't you?

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague about the strike and put across what has become my simple argument about why they are important and the unions must fight the government's raping of the poor.

I have analysed the big picture about pensions and it boils down to something quite simple. The civil service and the public sector employees were offered their jobs with the benefits; they did not singularly or as a whole demand the pensions they were offered. Accountants worked out what these employees pensions should be and they were written into a contract of employment. The attempts to change these peoples' pensions is exactly the same as your boss coming to see you on Monday morning and telling you that your job has changed and you are now responsible for cleaning the toilets. He gives you your new job description and expects you to take the change. Employment law would be backing you 101%, the courts would be punishing your employer and you would be supported because the original deal offered you is, in most cases, not negotiable. For the government and councils to back track and penalise their staff is appalling and I don't care if they can't afford it now; these people spend enough money on analysts, futures and people predicting the future to have realised that perhaps they were being a tad optimistic about the benefits they were offering should the world economy slow down. Do the people who set things like pensions actually consider that share prices might go down as well as up?

Don't be pissed off about the strike on Wednesday, especially if it affects you. It might be a pain, but trust me if the government get away with this everyone will ultimately be screwed and you might just find yourself cleaning the toilets by the time the Olympics has become a costly memory.

***

One of my new colleagues told me a story about his early teaching days in Birmingham. It was 1999 and he was fresh out of TTC having come to teaching after doing a host of weird jobs until he was in his thirties. The school he was working at was notorious for being violent and problematic. He'd been at the school about a month when he had to take his first mass detention; he had 12 kids in a classroom for an hour after school.

Now this guy is a behaviourist; it's his speciality and he has a great rapport with his classes and is one of those teachers that you remember from your youth; the kind you always liked being taught by, the guy who actually let you use your brains rather than expecting you to sit there like a sponge. He had brought some of his ideas to the school and had a great relationship with the headmaster and most of his colleagues; however, like most of the rest of the staff, the head included, he had a real problem with the deputy head; an officious little man who made Hitler seem like a reasonable guy (his words, not mine). He demanded respect therefore got none and had a habit of interfering in other teacher's business, therefore undermining any good work being done.

My colleague's slightly laid back style grated on the deputy really badly, so on this period of detention he was hovering close by; almost sensing that he would have an opportunity to waltz into the detention class, undermine my new colleague and assert his iron will, especially if it looked like the teacher was not in control.

About half way through the hour, two of the lads in detention stood up and appeared to be arguing, the new teacher was standing, passive and almost disinterested, prompting the deputy head to barge into the lesson screaming at the two boys. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT OF YOUR SEATS? He screamed at them, oblivious to the teacher or what he was doing. What was happening was a role play session he had learnt at uni that involved two people acting out a scene and getting the rest of the class to theorise what the consequences of this little act would have on the people affected. It's pretty much a standard behavioural exercise and one that is recognised to get results. However Mr Deputy Head was old skool and not really interested in the whys and wherefores of this new approach to teaching.

The two standing boys shuffled around mumbling. "ANSWER ME BOY!" Screamed the deputy.

"We're doing a role play, sir," said one of them. My colleague attempted to interject and the deputy stopped him in his tracks saying quite loudly that he obviously had no control over his class and they obviously needed more discipline. The situation was fraying at the edges and heading down Getting Much Worse Alley. The deputy seemed to only half hear what was said to him, but heard enough to realise that perhaps he was a bit premature. "Why are you even here, boy?" He says to one of the two boys, who mumbled something back that the class teacher couldn't hear. "And what about you?" He says to the other lad involved in the role play. He also mumbled something. "Speak up boy. What are you doing in detention?"

"You sent me here because I called you a fucking prick, sir!" The deputy now completely flustered, bright red from the neck upwards, turns on his heels, stares at the teacher and stomps off suggesting the new teacher learns how to control his class better.

I'm sure there's going to be someone like that at my new job. I think it's a prerequisite for schools nowadays.

***

26 November and I'm still picking raspberries! I now have no doubt that I will be picking summer fruit on December 1st, with little or no frost forecast, more mild weather and some sunshine I'd hazard a guess and say we've had almost half as many raspberries this late autumn as we had during the summer and we had enough to freeze two bags full!

One of the long range weather forecasting sites I visit reckons Britain is going to be plunged into a really cold spell by the middle of next week. This is the website that forecast Arctic conditions by the middle of November and was quoted in the Daily Mail story about another ice age about to hit the UK. Other websites I look at reckon the coldest it's going to get is about 8 degrees - roughly normal for the first week in December.

How about this for a forecast? We won't see snow south of North Yorkshire before the end of February and then it won't be much. It will obviously still cause chaos, but what else could it cause?

***

I'm finding the new Kate Bush album slightly impenetrable. I accept it is probably a work of genius, but I've only managed to get halfway through track 3 before losing the will to live. I need to listen to it when I'm in the mood I think.

The problem I'm having is there are some other albums out that I can't stop playing - top of the list being M83's new album, which, as I already said, looks like it's going to run away with my favourite album of the year award.

***

I said to the wife last night, as we sat down to watch an excellent copy of a film that's being released in cinemas next week. It's not often something appears in DVD quality before it actually gets released, so finding a copy of the 2011 The Thing was a bonus. However, I commented to the wife that I found it slightly worrying that DVDs of it are circulating; this usually happens when a film is a pile of crap.

The Guardian this morning was in full praise of the film, despite suggesting that it borrowed heavily on themes from John Carpenter's classic 1982 film of the same name. This The Thing is a direct prequel to that film and manages to mesh the two films together exceptionally well. The writer and the director must have poured over the footage of Kurt Russell and co investigating the Norwegian Science Station to ensure that the two matched and that is one of the points that makes the idea so fun. It's just a shame they decided to remake the 1982 film rather than actually explore the genesis of the story. It's just almost a carbon copy in places, although there are some nice nods to the original 1950s film directed by Christian Nyby. It attempts to out gore the original and pretty much fails; it also attempts to turn on the paranoia and suspense generated in the brilliant Carpenter film and fails because we've seen it all before. There was nothing new in this prequel and it went for an action packed approach rather than a psychological one, which might have been a better direction. I found myself waiting for the ending and that isn't a sign of a good film.

I got hold of two films that I have massively fond memories of from the 1980s. I'm hoping they have held up to the test of time because one of them has always been in my top ten films of all time and I haven't watched it for nearly 20 years.

Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension was something I saw on video, thought it was utterly bonkers and consigned it to the watched but never again pile; but recently the film has been reappraised and I decided to give it another go. Oddly enough, I can still quote bits of the film, which isn't bad considering I saw it nearly 30 years ago. I struggle to remember lines from my favourite films.

The other and the film I'm hoping has stood the test of time is The World According to Garp - an early Robin Williams film directed by the wonderfully bonkers George Roy Hill. It has a totally memorable performance by John Lithgow as a transsexual - just one of many brilliant performances in all kinds of films by this genius of modern cinema - and is one of the most funny and tragic films I have ever seen. I was so impressed, I bought the video. The wife has never been able to understand why I'm so enamoured by it; it's a meh film for her. I just remember it being a movie that makes me laugh, feel sad and allowed me to reflect on stuff.

It hasn't escaped my notice that these two films have really long titles.

***

I actually started on another short story last week. I managed to get about 200 words down when I fell asleep at the keyboard. I hope it doesn't reflect in the story.

***

There was another point to my piece about spam last time and that was the fact that some of spam appears to be directly targeted at me, using names and subjects that *might* make me open it. Now I have more protection on my PC than Fort Knox, yet somehow I'll get spam from or about things that may have appeared in a Facebook update or from a Google search. Yes, I might have a trojan or some such hidden away that I'm not aware of or has beaten my army of firewalls or major established web icons are actively selling this data to the spammers, or maybe are even controlling them. It's just plain weird when I get a spam email with a word in it that seems to relate to me or what I've been talking about.

***

I have housework to do; hoovering, cooking and general tidying up. I keep looking at the Dyson and thinking, "I'll do it in a while." I'm running out of procrastinations.

Sequential Stinking

2011-11-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

In a recent blog entry, Roger mentioned some spam he got. He kind of pre-empted me, I'd been planning on talking about spam for months, but somehow I always managed to either forget about it or what I was going to say. It is a fascinatingly odd subject, which, in my humble opinion, is a great example of futility, but obviously has to work to some degree or it would have died out like dial-up Internet connections.

Most email accounts have spam filters, which are now a lot more sophisticated than they were, when they just arbitrarily grabbed anything that had been CC'd to more than three people and this alone has to suggest that for spam to actually work, someone must be trawling through their spam folders looking for cheap meds, penis enlargement, Russian mail order brides, Viagra, credit checks and/or anything else you could possibly imagine, including whatever variant of the Nigerian Prince email. I always find it amusing that you see just about everything 'advertised' in spam apart from arms, illegal drugs and child slavery - which suggests that whoever is responsible for spam is easily traceable by the authorities, contrary to reports we hear or read.

I can understand how some people got sucked into scams such as the aforementioned Nigerian Prince and his millions of dollars - some people are just suckers for allowing their greed to get the better of them - and I can understand why people would go in search of cheap medicine and possibly even Viagra (especially if they're too self-conscious to mention their impotence to their doctor), even if clicking on any of these spam emails will at best leave someone open to credit card fraud and at worst infect their computers with more trojans and phishing ware for whoever is paying for the spam to have access to everything on your hard drive.

I witness fuckwittedness every week on the Internet; from ignorant opinions to people participating in something that warrants no attention from anyone else. [I'm just as guilty of offering opinions and participating in notice boards and forums for the BBC and newspapers, even though I know that the opinion of P. Hall of Northampton is as interesting/valid/important or sensible as I alone believe it to be. I don't care how much common sense you see on a noticeboard or forum, it's still being wasted or pointlessly written because NO ONE will take any notice of it and those that do are NO ONE! But spam? Spam is, IMHO, something that should be dying out or even facing extinction, yet it now seems to be more prolific than ever before and remarkably even more bizarre and weird. Some spam that ends up filtered out of my main mail is just downright unfathomable.

There appears to be three kinds of spam nowadays: spam from recognised places - the kind of thing you sign up for (or have to to gain access to something else) that bombard you with shite until you click on the unsubscribe button or hit the This Is Spam button and it gets filtered into the same place as the Viagra, painkiller, credit and anything that requires you to give credit card details. Then there's the third kind; the stuff that is written in machine code, or hasn't been sent by any one from nowhere, or the kind that just doesn't make sense, like it has been generated by a dyslexic computer or an alien who understands the words, just doesn't know how to arrange them properly. This kind of spam along with stuff that seems to defy all logic - spam that has no links, gives no reason for being sent and more importantly the anti-virus software has scanned and declared clean.

Admittedly, with a billion Internet users worldwide, then less than 0.01% would still net whatever or whoever the scam was from enough money to retire, so I can see the logic in that, but seriously if there are ridiculously stupid people out there, and sadly we know there are, how come they're still alive?

***

November 20 - seven raspberries from the garden; 3½lb of horse and field mushrooms and about 1lb of Slippery Jacks from the dog walk. My runner beans that had all but died off a month ago are suddenly sprouting shoots from 'dead' runners; the grape vine is still growing; the young nectarine trees are still green and showing no signs of autumn and the grass needs cutting again. It is a bit weird and obviously it's all going to end in tears and sacks full of dead baby ducklings...

***

I spent £40 on ONE pair of shoes yesterday. That is obscene!

***

Someone in a 50 yard radius of my house is learning to play a musical instrument. I've no idea what instrument, possibly the thing Rolf Harris was hawking in the 1970s, but whatever it is it currently sounds like a man beating bagpipes to death with a goose.

But, what's just become an even weirder thing, it appears whatever this instrument is you can pluck it as well as blow through it... It must be a chicken!

***

Today I have been knee deep in duck pooh. Three times a year (sometimes four depending on debris) we empty the pond. Last night, I had to dance with Vile's Disease again by sucking black, stinky, foetid pond water up and old hose so that gravity would help empty it over night. Today, I had to scoop out a crazy mixture of plums, twigs, duck shit, pebbles and gloop in a big bucket and then chuck it on the veg patch.

It's one of the most icky jobs you could imagine and especially unpleasant in the fog and frost. The ducks also spend three hours barking at you because they have no pond. It's a bloody good job I'm a vegetarian.

Glass Onion (part F)

2011-11-19T03:06:00.000-08:00

Sainsbury's do this pre-packed tomato thing called Polpa Fine, which is essentially very finely chopped Italian tomatoes in their own juice and for 25p more than a plain old carton of chopped tomatoes, this doesn't have stalky bits or massive chunks you end up pushing to the side of the plate. I now use this virtually all the time now when doing tomato based food and it is absolutely perfect for...

Aubergine and Red Pepper Bake

I was thinking about how I could use egg plant in something that wasn't either Indian influenced or when it appears in almost unpalatable chunks in ratatouille or similar offerings. I came up with this - completely out of my own head and with little or no influences. This is for 2 people.

1 carton Polpa fine tomatoes

3 large cloves garlic

1 medium red onion

fresh basil

½ tsp chilli flakes

splash of red wine

salt and black pepper.

This is the basis for your sauce, which goes with:

4 round slices of aubergine (about 1-2cm) fried in olive oil until they start to feel cooked (season while cooking). Remove from the frying pan, add some more oil (if necessary) and fry either a couple of

Portabello mushrooms or some big chunky sliced across the centre rather in down the grain. Remove from heat and leave to stand and expel some of the juice (which you add to your sauce).

Fry (or oven roast) two large slices of red pepper until slightly charred and you are able, if you wish, to remove the skin.

You can also use sliced courgette, roasted onion, or some wilted large spinach leaves.

To build - place the aubergine slices in the bottom of a shallow dish; cut up mushrooms if necessary and place in places where the aubergine isn't covering; lay a slice of pepper onto it and season for some more black pepper. Add a few more fresh basil leaves, add two ladles of tomato sauce and distribute. grate on some hard cheese and then cover with mozzarella and bake in a hot oven until the cheese is beginning to brown.

Serve with crusty bread, to mop up the juices.

***

My mate Kelvin has been searching for a decent Thai Green Curry recipe and I have continually failed to find one or even invent one. However, a few weeks ago, inspired by Nigel Slater, I developed something that me and t'wife both really enjoyed.

Big chunk of ginger chopped roughly

handful of coriander chopped roughly

5 cloves of garlic

1 stalk of lemon grass

juice and zest of a lime

salt

oil

soya sauce.

Blitz this in a processor until it is well chopped, but not a mulch. Fry off in hot oil.

Add a tin of coconut milk and continue to combine and simmer.

Add a variety of vegetables (or chicken or prawns), I like cooked cassava, cauliflower, firm fresh mushrooms and baby sweetcorn. Cook until the cauliflower is just done; serve with sticky rice.

I don't choose to use things like fish sauce (natch), galangal or kaffir lime leaves mainly because these latter two are related to ginger, lemon grass and limes by virtue of their acidity and citrus like taste and aroma. When cooking chicken or fish with this, the extra citrus undertones are welcome, but if you're using just vegetables it can be almost too citrus.

***

Lastly for now, something that I invented on a kind of whim.

Leftover rice is useful if cooked properly. this is something I did with some basmati rice, chopped up peppers and mushrooms and a few other things.

2 cups of cooked rice

chopped shallot, mixed pepper and mushroom (some quorn chunks if that tickles your fancy or some chicken or prawns)

1 egg

seasoning

2 large peppers - preferably red or green, hollowed out, placed in a baking dish and covered in some olive oil and seasoning. Bake for about 30 minutes at 180. Take out and leave to cool down.

Fry your shallot, mushrooms and melange of whatever veggies you fancy, add the rice, seasoning - herby or hot, it works both ways and once combined, put to one side to cool a little. When cold enough, add the egg which has been beaten and combine it all together so it looks like a congealed mess. Spoon this mixture into the cooked peppers two-thirds of the way to the top. Mix the rest of the filler with some hard cheese or smoked cheddar (depending on whether it is herby or hot) and put this into the rest of the space left in the peppers. Put back into a baking tray and cook in a hot oven for about 15 minutes.

***

That's that.

Introducing the Incredible Auntie Broflem

2011-11-16T02:46:00.000-08:00

Oh please, change the bloody record!!!!

If it wasn't bad enough that the current government do absolutely nothing but blame the previous government for the mess we're in; now they're blaming the Eurozone Crisis for youth unemployment breaking the 1million mark.

Enough is enough. In 1997, love him or loathe him (and most of us loathe him), Tony Blair said the New Labour government would not apportion blame on the previous regime. There was no point in spending their first term in office since Jim Callaghan doing nothing but blaming the Tories. They just had to get on with it and sort out the mess. Dave Blackadder and his team of corrupt and dislikeable rogues don't know what to do so they just blame everyone else. Might be nice if they thought of ways to sort the country out that didn't involve the rich getting even richer and the poor having the urine extracted from them (as well as much more money)!

***

It's amazing how quickly you remember and slip back into using the terms 'Miss' and 'Sir'. I suppose we all did it for so long when we were kids that some ancient part of the brain just re-activates sending you back to the 1970s.

***

I'm attempting to break in a pair of DMs. I have had these boots for something like 16 years and I have worn them 3 times. Each time I ventured to wear them, my feet were like too blue steaks by the end of the session. However, I need to break these shoes in as an emergency measure.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time on my feet, walking around and generally orienting myself of my new environs. However, by the early afternoon, my feet were absolutely killing me and I was wearing a very comfortable pair of black shoes - perhaps I was wearing the wrong kind of socks? By 4pm I realised something was very very wrong and within fifteen minutes I was walking around work with one of my soles flapping about like a slapstick clown.

By the time I got to the car for my short journey home, both of my shoes had come detached from the upper - BOTH OF THEM! On closer examination at home, I realised that my only really decent pair of work shoes were crocked. Today, I'm on a study day (having umpteen policies and procedures to read through without fear of interruption) and figure if I can wear them a few hours today and then try them out at the weekend, to get them to a stage where I can maybe intimidate my new clients by wearing them, especially if I shave my head, buy some braces and some check button-collared shirts. Oh, and, of course, the obligatory swastika and Quink tattoos.

***

Bloody headless chickens...

***

I met someone the other day who is Superman's dad. Honest.

***

My mate Will talks about coffee like I talk about painkillers. The two things seem to have similar effects on us. I sometimes look at Will's Facebook updates of which about a third are coffee related and I'd think, the man is obsessed and addicted to caffeine. He will not argue with that assumption, I'm sure.

For the last six months, I have been driven on by coffee. I drink between 6 and 10 mugs of it in a day; sometimes more and if I don't have a coffee by mid-morning I start to get the mother of all caffeine withdrawal headaches. Imagine the last two days? I'm fixed into a rigid timetable. Yesterday, I thought my head was going to explode by midday.

Today I have already had four cups and my first was not until 10:00am. I should maybe have avoided drinking any. The logic being two fold - help me get through the rest of the week without a crushing headache during the afternoon and because these DMs are so bloody tight, the pain in my feet might have negated the pain in my head.

Incidentally... Nah, that really is tempting fate.

***

Did you know that once upon a time a US judge in a compensation case did the right thing?

Back in 1991, a pupil at a school in California was eating his lunch and started choking on his sandwich. One of his teachers administered the Heimlich Manoeuvre on him, effectively saving his life. Two days after the event, the school heard from the choking boy's lawyer, informing them they were suing the school for assault and actual bodily harm. The boy was complaining of pain in his ribs and bruising where the teacher had helped rest the clump of sandwich from his windpipe. The teacher was suspended pending the hearing; the boy and his family were suing for $1million.

When the case was presented to the courts, after much debate and witness testimony. the judge asked the boy's lawyer appointed medical expert what was the most logical outcome had the teacher not dislodged the 14 Big Macs the boy had probably attempted to swallow. The doctor said the boy would probably have died and that had a paramedic been present the same procedure would probably have been performed, although it might have been done in a more expert way. The judge threw the case out of court, reprimanded the lawyer and the family and ordered them to pay the costs. The teacher was praised by the judge.

A sort of happy story, right? Wrong. Despite winning the case and having a legally proclaimed 'hero' on the school staff; the board that controlled the school terminated the teacher's employment on the grounds that the pupils might be scared of him...

When I was at school, teachers used to hurl blackboard rubbers - wedges of wood and velvet - at your head if you spoke out of turn. Many times these connected and not necessarily with the right person. If that had happened in the USA, most of my class mates would have been millionaires by the time they sat their O levels.

***

What a difference a job makes.

***

It's 16th November and I picked 4 big juicy raspberries off of our plants a while ago. There is nothing quite as weird as eating soft summer fruit straight from the bush when we should all be thinking about snow shoes, scarves and central heating. Like I said last week, unless we get a really bad frost, I could still be picking them by the 1st December. That would be extremely odd.

***

I hate Christmas. I say it every year and normally get called things ranging from Scrooge to The Grinch to words that are unrepeatable. Bovvered? Nah. The thing is, I know a lot of people who find the entire 'Christmas Season' almost distasteful. It starts in some places in August, gets into full swing around October and from November onwards you start to get so pissed off with Christmas this and Yule that by the time the actual day arrives, for some it's a massive anticlimax and it's all down to retailers desperation and the public's gullibility and belief they need to be eating Christmas products that have sell by dates before December even starts.

The thing is, I remember back in the late 1970s when Christmas season started on the 1st of December; the day that most of the high street shops changed their windows; market stalls took on a more festive feel and you started seeing all the paraphernalia associated. However, while Christmas sort of started on that day, the subsequent couple of weeks were very low key, despite the appearance, everyone knew that the actual day was still a few weeks away. It wasn't really until the week before the 25th that everything seemed to gear up totally for the festivities. Now, the fun has gone out of Christmas long before presents are opened. We seem to be installing this belief in children that Christmas is a two month long festival of joy and excess and that means that more and more decorations are going to appear earlier than ever.

I know at least three people who have their houses regaled in full scale Yule assault already and there's the house down the road that seems to put it's decorations up earlier every year. We wondered for a while if they were maybe a Hindu family celebrating Diwali, but no, they're just fecking stupid English people, who don't even have young children to impress.

Last year, Christmas felt better than I can remember for a long time. The snow helped, because it reminded me of Christmases in Canada, in the late 1960s, when for a young boy who still believed in Father Christmas. However, my memories of Canadian Christmases might be infected by Coca Cola adverts, which sometimes catch that nostalgic feel better than any Hollywood director could. The reality is that Christmases tend to be mild and damp despite the last couple of cold winters.

Speaking of Father Christmas. We watched the Finnish film Rare Exports the other night, fully expecting it to be in the same league as other Scandinavian stuff we've watched in the last couple of years - Sweden's Let the Right One In redefined the vampire genre; Norway's Trollhunter was a great little film jam-packed with sly humour and surprisingly good special effects. And Denmark's cult TV smash The Killing asked the question of why the British and US can't make dramas as good as it. So with three of the five main Scandinavian countries accrediting themselves excellently, Finland came to the fore with a tale about the true origin and nature of Santa Claus.

Oh dear. It started so well. It's a short film, the 84 minutes claimed by IMDB suggests that possibly the version we saw had been cut, but reading reviews and descriptions of the film this seems highly unlikely. The closest thing I can compare it to is an Edna O'Brien novel. O'Brien used to tell stories that had love affairs in them; she would build the tension up to the point where you thought she was going to get into some deep descriptive pornography, but ended up stopping the narrative just short of the act and continuing the next chapter with, 'the following morning'... This is Rare Exports a film that offers lots and delivers nothing.

It has moments that are quite creepy or intense; the build up is exceptional and the humour works well because like Trollhunter, it is irreverent about known 'fact' to the point of parody. But then it starts to go deeply into the farcical and yet for all it's slapstick nature it makes a point of stopping the action just as it could get interesting. It is the ultimate non-pornographic prick tease movie. The viewer is shown nothing apart from suggestion; killings are done off screen; in fact all the action takes place off screen, because it is dominated by three buffoonish Finns and an annoying child who seems to be more of an authority on Father Christmas than the British team trying to dig him out of the mountain.

I won't give anything away, because there is little worth giving away. It has a slightly nonsensical ending; a climax that uses some interesting (read: cheap) cgi, yet nothing to stretch the imagination and makes you wonder why they didn't use this cgi to actually give the film some action. Hiding everything, including Father Christmas - the alleged main antagonist, from the film devalued it so much. Maybe it tried to be a Finnish version of Gareth Edwards' Monsters, but even that had some money shots; this film failed on just about every level. Don't be tempted by the very good promo campaign.

***

After a couple of hours of wading through paperwork (and several more cups of coffee) and realising that I have to buy a new pair of shoes because the DMs are not proving to be even a last resort. I find myself back here, in front of the place I spent most of the last six months; listening to Steven Wilson's solo album and reading how David Cameron is fast becoming synonymous with misogynous. His, albeit quite innocent, faux pas when attempting to impersonate Australian PM Julia Gillard seems to have upset some people. Couple this with his two other indiscretions - the 'calm down, dear' and innuendo directed at his own Corby MP at PMQs a couple of months ago, is beginning to give the impression that our PM is a bit of a plonker, socially as well as politically.

The fact that Gillard sounds more Australian than a XXXX advert and was born in Wales shouldn't be a reason to ridicule her, however lightly. I admit it should be, but, you know, I have Welsh ancestors and a friend who lives in Queensland...

Cosmic Ray Gun Etiquette

2011-11-12T02:34:00.000-08:00

As I have stated before, I have a serious problem with charity.

Now, that sounds really hypocritical considering I have been more than happy to accept all manner of beer and gig gifts over the last six months; but in reality it isn't, because I believe that Charity Begins at Home.

But, for some strange reason I was reminded of something that happened in 1980; before I became Mr Anti-Charity or for that matter a vegetarian. I was living in squalor in Boothville with some mates and discovering the world has more sordid underbellies than you could possibly imagine. Children in Need started and like any up-for-a-laugh 18 year old, I got involved in it. I even got to the planning stage for a CiN extravaganza.

I was friends with the landlord of my then local pub - The Lumbertubs. Mark Gilbert was a young guy, with a pretty but lethal wife and because I came from a pub family, was honest and he liked me, I ended up helping him out on an ad hoc basis. If they got too busy and I was there, I'd be drafted in to ease the pressure - it was a role I really enjoyed (and I got free beer as a result).

I've always been a big eater; the kind of bloke that can put away amounts of food normally classed as excessive by obese people and The 'Tubs wanted to do something big for this new-fangled charity telethon thing. Mark's brother-in-law was a butcher who had in the past supplied meat for some of Peter Dowdeswell's gluttony world records. This got me thinking and in those pre-Internet days, I ventured to the library, looked at the Guinness Book of Records (when they accepted this kind of record) and saw a world record that I actually thought I could beat.

I approached Mark, who thought it was a great idea, but looked at me with some scepticism. "Do you really believe you can eat a whole cow?" I did.

The record was to consume an entire cow, not including, skin, bone, and all the bits that don't get used for human consumption. I can't remember exactly the details, but I had a number of days to eat about 500lb of beef. Now I look at it in black and white I realise that it was a stupid idea it was and why there was so much doubt; but Mark was up for it if I was and we started planning and I started seeing if people would sponsor me. Then I sat down and worked out how much beef I had to eat; the fact that the only way I could do it was to take 2 weeks annual leave and spend lunchtimes and evenings in the pub, armed with a knife, fork and probably a saw.

Dowdeswell lived in Earl's Barton and through my contact at the local paper, I gave him a call and he blew my mind away. The upshot was the amount of meat I had to eat on a daily basis and all of the unpleasant other things I had to eat. Plus there was the rotting factor: when he had broken the record himself several years earlier, he had been ill (it was like being on a mega-Atkins diet for a short period of time) and because of the rules of the record attempt each day became harder and harder to achieve, because once it was cooked, you couldn't reheat it or do anything else with it. I remember him saying, "Imagine a mini made out of beef; when it turns up it's hot and juicy and enjoyable, but after three days it's cold, congealed and dry and after a week it smells and tastes like shit." I felt a huge boulder metaphorically sitting in my stomach. Yes, you could argue that the man holding the record would do everything he could to dissuade a challenger; but, on hindsight, I'd like to think he was just looking out for me, especially when you get your head around the idea of an old style mini made entirely out of meat.

Imagine that Skoda advert with the car made out of cake, but with sirloins and kidneys...

***

So... This is a weekend then? I'd forgotten what they were like.

***

Ah... TV... I haven't burbled about it for a while.

With no current rubbish US TV to fill the voids after the wife goes to bed, I've decided to hit the archives and dig out a series that failed and my other half is unlikely to be very interested in. I chose Dollhouse.

I went into the show with almost zero expectations. I'd been warned that it was as bad as it sounded and only the series 1 finale and the last couple of episodes of season 2 were really any good. With this in mind, I started to watch and soon found that it was actually a little more enjoyable than I had imagined.

The series by Buffy the TV series 'creator' Joss Whedon is, at times, an excuse for nubile young women to be seen wearing an array of saucy outfits and the premise that the people in the Dollhouse were as much unwitting prostitutes as possible secret agents, left me with a slight moral ambiguity; but as I approach the finale of its first season I've been pleasantly surprised by the series. Yes, I have watched a couple of episodes on x2 speed, stopping the DVD whenever Topher, Ms De Witt or Tahmoh Penikett are on screen - because this is where the story really is.

The series is essentially a vehicle for Eliza Dushku (who at times during this series has looked like a young Victoria Principal), but like Whedon's Buffy, it isn't so much the lead character that is the reason for watching, but the supporting cast and the machinations taking place unbeknown to the chief protagonist.

However, I can totally understand why the series was cancelled. Apart from the moral ambiguity I mentioned earlier (which the Yanks probably had a great problem with), it doesn't appear to have a a back story that is particularly interesting. The Dollhouse(s) just isn't that believable and neither is the way it conducts its business. The maverick FBI agent is a familiar idea, but this series portrays the rest of the FBI like a bunch of aggressive simpletons who don't actually investigate anything. There is the need to stretch believability beyond that of something such as Buffy or Firefly - both total fantasy rather than what Dollhouse was trying to be.

I think the biggest thing that got in its way was the attempt to slow build the subplots beyond that of the lead character. It almost feels like afterthought than planning and like so many US TV shows it focused on the things the viewers didn't want to know. I'm at the 12th episode and while I'm now familiar with all the characters, they all seem a bit like ciphers channelling nothing.

At least watching Dollhouse has meant I haven't been tempted to watch another Terra Nova.

Several of my favourite shows have returned in the last six weeks and I hate to say this, but with mixed emotions. Fringe seems to have jumped the shark and has rebooted the entire series with the exception of one character. It's an interesting idea, but so far it's failed to deliver anything like the bonkers TV it did for the previous 2½ series. I just can't help feeling the producers are copping out and trying to build its Friday night slot by making it 90% easier to jump onto an established series. Either that or something completely unexpected and off the wall is about to happen.

Misfits is back without the brilliant Robert Sheehan's Nathan. Arguably, the amiable Irish lad was the major reason for watching the show; he had all the best lines; best stories and had a great line in dying. But he's now fast emerging as a new star in feature films, so like Aidan Turner from Being Human, he's departed the show that made him to concentrate with hob knobbing it with Nick Cage and the stage. [I don't know what the future holds for Being Human with Russell Tovey stating he now wants to leave the show after the next series]

Misfits has replaced him well with new guy Rudy, who makes Nathan seem a little innocent, but like Fringe this new series feels like a reboot rather than a continuation. The gang all have new powers, so that allows for at least 5 more episodes focusing on said new powers and any lingering subplots from the last series seem to have disappeared. I also thought the first episode was a little contrived. There is also the feeling of stagnation; like the series needs to spread its wings a a lot more, because the same old setting is now beginning to feel like a post-modern slightly perverted version of Mr Ben.

However, as sad as it might seem, the viewing highlight of our week is most definitely The Vampire Diaries, which continues to piss over the usual rules. The latest episode alone had three things happen in it that I was just not seeing, even if one of them I spotted and sort of allowed a slight suspension of belief to allow for it. Every week I see more and more things in it that make me believe the creators have decided to use the Buffy model, because it works. I'm pretty sure that 3 of the characters are always going to be spared from an untimely demise (unless they leave for a new TV series), but that doesn't mean that the rest of the cast are safe.

***

All week they were saying that this Saturday might possibly break some more weather records. A 'warm' southerly airflow was going to bring temperatures in the high teens and some nice autumn sunshine. It would be t-shirt weather again!

Oh yeah? Is that this Saturday in an alternate reality?

Still, it's not horrendous out there. I didn't need a coat to walk to the newsagent and as I said the other day, picking soft fruit in the middle of November is pretty much a win. It also could mean that whatever winter shoves at us, it'll be just that little bit shorter this year!

***

That brings me nicely to this. Got up, looking for the Guardian to read on the loo - a weekend must - and found there was nothing on the doormat. Horrors! There's nothing like The Guide to help in bodily functions. So, with my morning disrupted, I ventured down to the shops to get something to read (not on the loo, btw).

The paperboy has had his round mixed up by someone moving out of one house into another on a parallel street, but has now rented out his old house, which is a similar number to ours. This is the second time it has happened this week and the newsagent was very apologetic and promised he would remind the paperboy to be more careful.

I'm sitting eating my cornflakes, drinking my mug of Red Bush and watching and agreeing with one of Breakfast's weekend presenters, when she said that she couldn't give a hoot about X Factor and didn't know why it was so popular, when the doorbell goes. I hate soggy cornflakes and I was only half the way through the bowl.

Standing at the door was this youngish looking man, with a straggly nu metal styled beard, combats and my newspaper in his hand. He thrust it into my hand and mumble something incomprehensible and made to walk off. I stopped him, related the fact that the newsagent had told me what had happened and just asked for him to be a little more watchful in the mornings and I gave him the paper back and went to shut the door.

"No." He said looking worried. "I live at 42; my landlord told me I needed to bring this to you."

Oops. He looked so young! I told him to keep the paper and managed to finish my cornflakes before they all went soggy.

Corduroy Cranium

2011-11-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

Nerve-racking day...

The last couple of days have been a huge quagmire of logistics nightmares, enforced by my return to conventional employment. I haven't done a simple 9 to 5 styled job since... Gods... 1988? That's 23 years and I have grown accustomed to being able to fit my life and job around each other, however, flexitime has now become a thing of the past. I now have to be normal and fit my life around my work hours and it really is a life changing and bloody awkward thing!

This week has been dominated by doctors. Yesterday, I saw the spinal consultant and he had rather jolly news... It's going to happen again - my back and my disc - probably as many as 2 or 3 more times over the coming years. I fell from one statistic into another with far more crappy consequences. He's ruled out surgery because my bones are not that bad; they still have a lot of 'normal' left in them and I've been unlucky. He feels that my best form of defence is prevention and for that he's arranged for me to have a series of physiotherapy sessions specifically targeted at strengthening parts of my back to at worst lessen the effects of the next prolapse.

Great.

No.

He wants me to do the physio work at his practice and they only have appointments between 9:00am and 3:30pm. I'm at work; at a new job; and I really don't want to be seen taking the mickey or setting off worrying health alarm bells in the minds of my new masters.

Yesterday morning I filled out an on-line medical questionnaire for my new employer. It obviously tells the whole truth and without much space for explanations. The final screen looks back at you hard and unflinching and you realise that there are two sections of the form that look like an earthquake of doubts. After I returned from seeing the consultant, I got a phone call from the company that does the medical. They want me to talk to one of their doctors. It might be nothing, but... As I saw my own GP about an hour ago, I told her about it and how anxious it was making me feel; she wasn't (and never is) coy about the possibilities. The company only does this if they have doubts about your fitness for work...

She said that if the company is not happy with my medical history they can order a full medical or even suggest to the employer that any offer should be withdrawn. This was rather incredible to me, I would have thought that I was protected by the DEA if nothing else; but no. However, she did say that I have only had 2 incidents of illness; both were treated and both times I returned to work, full time, and my shoulder op and my slipped disc were not specifically related, so there is nothing to suggest I am any more likely to fall victim to another long bout of illness than anybody else.

Obviously, that argument sounds more hypothetical than assuring and the next few hours are going to be more hell than waiting to find out if I had the job.

My GP was amazed. She actually commented that in the last dozen times she had seen me, I was obviously down and pretty much out, but today I was my old self, full of witticisms and funny quips, positive and keen. She was really pleased and then I told her it was because of the Celecoxib and I could see her physically wilt. My doctor has always been blunt with me and her honesty has always been a relief. "Celecoxib is usually only really effective on about 10 to 15% of patients," she said, "It's usually prescribed if the other drugs are ineffectual, but in reality it is usually only given out as a last resort." I sat there thinking there must be some horrendous side effect that isn't in the literature; perhaps something like lycanthropy or zombism. "30 ibuprofen is going to cost about a £1, 30 Celecoxib is," she punched some keys on her computer, "£21.80 for 30." I winced; I'm not stupid, I understand the need to use expensive drugs as sparingly as possible. "However, because of the obvious benefit you're having with them, I'll give you a pack."

30 tablets? I'm used to having a small cupboard of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. What she wants me to do is take one a day for the next two weeks and then keep the other 16 back to use whenever anything flares up; when I run out of them again, we'll discuss whether I get any more. This was the first time I'd seen how NHS cuts are affecting people.

So, I have to postpone my physio until the Christmas holidays and then persuade my boss that, if I should need more sessions in January to get me the cover necessary so that I can go during my lunch breaks - which are only 45 minutes and the physio is 10 minutes drive each way, sessions are for 30 minutes and how often do you get in to see someone medical at exactly the time you request?

I mean, it's not like I get 13 weeks a year off to try and fit my outside-of-work-life into, is it?

***

My new post is obviously filling me with a lot of anxiety; it's a massive challenge and my new colleagues are desperate for me to get in there and transform the place and ease their burdens. To show my enthusiasm and eagerness, I emailed a few ideas to my new boss, thinking we could implement them once my CRB checks are cleared; but he liked them so much we're going to start them on Monday! He likes them so much I'm going to be doing them with one of the assistants (a form of training for her) so she can use them in her groups.

They were all things I devised for first time offenders and I had a lot of success with them back in the day; so, I'm hoping they transfer well. It will certainly be different for my new client base.

I should point out that was the last time I shall be discussing work in the blog. At the behest of my wife, she has asked me to lower the controversy rate. She is quite correct in thinking that some of the young people who will get to know me might eventually stumble across me on the net (which is why my Facebook and Google+ profiles have pretty indistinguishable pictures) and we all know about the domino effect, especially if I call someone a little sh1t or something. So, as well as my attempts to stop swearing; my blog is about to get an anodyne face lift. Sorry.

That's not going to suggest I won't be my usual narcissistic opinionated self; I just won't be saying 'fuck' very often and I won't be touching on any subjects that are remotely related to education or methods of disposing adolescents' bodies.

***

I have to say that I'm glad to have got this job at the present moment and I will do everything in my power to make the best job I can; it's important that I'm still there in a year and being successful, because while education won't be immune to cuts; once the Euro collapses and we're plunged into a full scale depression, I, at least, will be relatively safe. I'm sort of looking at this job either being the last one I have before I retire or it being the last kind of work that I do.

I can't say I understand the escalating destruction of Europe's finances; economics was always something of a minefield of equations and gobbledygook, but one thing is obvious, it has people very worried and I don't think Cameron's Crew are cut from the right cloth to deal with it. So far we've had more breaches of procedure in ministries than you could ever accuse the last government of doing (and amazingly these breaches have been attributed as Labour's fault because of 'the mess they left us in' which is slowly losing its impact and starting to sound like a stock excuse for ineptitude). The word Conservative is growing synonymous with the word Corruption and I find the general public's unwillingness to accept that Tories WILL NEVER look after their interests as one of the most unfathomable things I have ever contemplated.

I do know that if the Euro crashes and burns, it is going to have a remarkable affect across Europe and huge swathes of the rest of the world. One blogger I read suggested that by 2020 Europe could be on the verge of becoming the modern equivalent of a Third World country; another reckons that the noise about bombing Iran is a two-pronged objective - to rally the jingoistic Yanks to support Obama next year and because a war often kick starts economies (plus Iran has a lot of oil and the Yanks, Brits and most other 'normal' countries can't stand them).

I think if that happened people should really stand up and say, "I didn't ask for this, I don't want this and I have no faith in our politics any more." It won't do any good, but it would be great if the turn out for the next general election was less than 10%. If that happened it would create a constitutional crisis that could end with a political revolution unseen in this country.

***

I sometimes enjoy being wrong about the weather. I was convinced that we would be plunged into a westerly splurge of wind, rain and usual autumnal temperatures; but apart from some typically dreary November days, the weather is a revelation. The sun has come out in the last half an hour and people are walking past my window wearing t-shirts or with their sleeves rolled up. The temperature on the patio is only 14 degrees, but it just feels... wrong, out there.

The most amazing thing about this never-ending autumn of mild are the number of raspberries I've picked in the two weeks; I'm still picking five or six big juicy berries every day and unless we get a really penetrating frost, they are likely to continue for the next week at least. But the freakiest thing? Yesterday, the 9th of November, I picked a fully formed, fully ripe strawberry and there will be another by tomorrow! Remarkable.

***

Right enough of all this; I want to talk about something else and it could take some time, so grab a coffee, roll a fag, kick back and hear me whinge!

Facebook. I know I've already decreed that it isn't really designed for pragmatic adults, such as myself and a number of my friends, but I feel it needs to have a more circumspect examination.

When I joined Facebook, I thought of it as a really good portal to thousands of places I'd never thought of. It allowed me to play games, communicate with old friends, family and even people I've never met. It allowed me to, if I wanted, to use a number of utilities such as FB's own notes section. Facebook gave me entertainment, information, contact and the ability to do what I did everywhere else in one place, or if I chose, to continue doing everything elsewhere and link it through my page and whoever I appeared in the news feed of. I think this ease of use and the mix of old and new worlds at my fingertips is why I, like so many others, became hooked.

During those early days, it allowed me to control things to a degree - mainly who appeared in my news feed and who didn't - and while I seemed to get multiple notifications of Scrabble goes or friend requests, this was minor compared to the uniqueness of the thing. Then they 'improved' it. I remember this, it was about 3 years ago and I was one of 2 million people pleading for the old style Facebook to be retained; but 2 million is a drop in the ocean for a system that claims to have over 600 million users - it's about 3% and that is a very small minority in the grand scheme of things. Facebook was right; within 6 months I'd forgotten how the old one was and I'd just about got a handle on the new one to a degree I was happy with. Then they implemented more changes. They were no longer going to allow applications to notify you via the portal; so now instead of getting a useful little notification telling you that so-and-so had taken his Scrabble turn, you just had to go through the miasma of adverts and bollocks to find out that none of your opponents had taken a turn.

Then they started to disrupt other linked things. My blogs started to become erratically published; some were missed, others were converted into note format (why, I can't understand, but...) and Network Blogs, who I am a member of started to get stymied every time they tried to work out whatever bizarre new coding FB was using to, I presume, deliberately stymie them. Other things I was linked to stopped appearing in my feeds, despite the settings telling me otherwise.

All during this time, I resorted to doing a lot of cutting and pasting links and manually displaying things that once were done automatically and I started to realise that FB didn't like being a portal, it wanted to be the be-all-and-end-all experience, but without offering the services it drew all its members in for.

During all of this time, they continuously tinkered with the privacy settings, fiddled with account settings and did everything they could to make you as public as they possibly could. What's the point of being on a social networking site and not being social or network? Then they changed it again for no explanation whatsoever to a system that stopped you having control over what you see; now you were treated to Top Stories; a ticker tape styled running commentary on everything everyone of your friends was saying or doing with, about or on people you didn't know and probably are never likely to know. Because FB presumably thinks we'd rather be farting about with how it works than enjoying it; we were faced with the prospect of having to go through each and everyone of our friends to decide what we did or did not want to see posted by them (which has by no means meant that what we asked for is actually being delivered) and suddenly the news feed looked like it was going to more of a hindrance than a help.

Things changed so quickly and radically that I know there was a mass exodus to Google+, but even that is changing. Google, not to be outdone by FB, also instigates arbitrary changes and not just with + but with other utilities it offers. I like Google Chrome; you open a new tab and it shows you a montage of the top 8 sites you visit, plus a list of recently visited sites. It negated the use of Bookmarks (unless I wanted to visit something I rarely did) and was a quick and easy way of navigating my way through my favourite haunts. They've changed it. The new version is similar but actually requires you to do more - just like Facebook. Now instead of using these things like excellent portals, they've started to think they are more important than the places you want to go to.

Now, I know I don't like change, especially if it adds to my workload rather than diminish it, but are things growing more complicated on the net? It's like they have this desire to get you to stay longer than you should. It is, or course, a form of corporate branding that will become increasingly dominated by whoever advertises on these places. The longer you stay the more chance you're going to want to get your credit rating checked with Experion or you're going to want to buy something you have no interest in - perhaps in the vain hope that the advert will disappear! The news feed in FB now seems focused on promoting people or things that are advertisement led. Some of the things that appear in my news feed from friends who I have ticked off as 'Only Important' status updates or posts are a complete mystery. One friend, ticked off as 'All Updates' posted something in his status that was important, yet I never saw it. I did, however, see a link to a YouTube video, discovered he'd made friends with someone I don't know and he left a smiley face comment on the status of someone else I don't know. These bloody subscription settings are just arbitrary nonsense, unless you install Social Fixer, which is okay but still not perfect, you are subjected to whatever FB wants you to see, which it also arbitrarily ranks as a Top Story even if it just that Fred Bloggs likes soap. Clicking these and turning them into 'not a top story' is also pointless. I've ticked every kind of story from every kind of friend and I still get the same kinds of stories from the same people popping up as my top story. It is ridiculously random and almost designed to be so annoying you'd best just accept it.

Even the advertising is ridiculous. Apparently it targets what FB and its associates think interest you; yet I rarely get anything that even tickles my fancy. You click on the X and hide the advert, it asks you if you want to stop seeing adverts from freedogholidays.com ever again and a day later it's showing the same bloody advert. It's a sham. The more you now try to be in control of your page the longer you have to stay there - Facebook has a win win situation because even if you've grown to hate it, you rarely want to dump it in case you miss something really important. It is shit sifting extraordinaire! Only people with balls of steel can deactivate that account and not think about whether his friends like snails or people that say nah rather than no...

What FB needs to do is instead of investing all this time and money into Facebook Timeline, the thing that they're expected to make universal in January, they need to come up with an Old Fogies Facebook, which is simple, easy to use and caters for the generation that can remember life when there was no Internet.

Oh look; a herd of flying purple pigs playing trombones and being chased by a swarm of blue moons.

***

That was going to be it, but I just got in from collecting my prescription and witnessed something that should be a warning to all of us.

The chemist's conspired to lose my drugs, despite leaving the prescription with them 4 hours ago, so I was waiting to one side patiently (geddit?), the chemist began to fill up with customers. When I walked in there was a man at the counter, an elderly gentleman, probably in his early 70s. I thought, initially, he was waiting to be served, but it soon became clear, when I was approached by one of the staff that he was waiting. The counter in my local chemist isn't big; it's designed for privacy, so one person at a time can stand there and be served. This is often negated by the chemist's insistence that you recite your address loudly in front of others, regardless of who or how old you are. I've often thought that opportunist thieves could just hang around pharmacies and pick up the addresses (and often the names) of prospective victims.

Anyhow, with six people waiting behind me, I told them I wasn't in the queue and that I was being seen to, so they all, in a very British way, stood behind the elderly bloke.

One of the pharmacists saw what was happening; it just happened to be the woman who was serving me; so suddenly she was trying to direct staff to the queue, serve me and keep her handbag over her shoulder. "Excuse me sir, but have you been served?" She asked the old bloke.

"Yes. I'm waiting."

"Could you wait over in the seated area; someone will call you when your prescription is filled."

"No. That's all right. I'm happy standing here."

"Yes, but we need to serve other customers."

"I'm not in the way."

"Well, I beg to differ sir." The old geezer looked around him and saw the queue, so what did he do? He squeezed up against the racks of medicine behind him, making about half the desk accessible. The woman behind him, a quite large lady, bustled up and forced the man to back up as far as he could, causing a number of items to fall off the shelves and onto the floor, yet still the man was intent on staying put. The fat lady asked him if he could move; a simple request, but he seemed to think she spoke to him in German or something.

"I'm waiting."

"Wait over there," she said, pointing at the seats mentioned earlier and with that the man let out an exasperated sigh and trooped off to the waiting area, looking thoroughly pissed off.

Why?

I got my prescription and went home convinced that it's everybody. We're all idiots sometimes, and any age can go and and prove it to the world...

Splodgenous Abounds

2011-11-05T02:59:00.000-07:00

Let's hear it one more time for introspection!!!

What a complete and utter waste of my life. At least, when I've frittered away what little time we get in the past, I've had inane bollocks such as drugs or Margaret Thatcher to blame. This year I've blamed my health and I'm not yet 50. How pathetic is that? Actually, not having any money has been the key factor; but it's really easy to just blame a bad back or aching elbow to avoid doing something and at times over the last six months I've done just that. Inactivity breeds inactivity. I know this for a fact; I've lived it before.

However, a word in my defence. Actually. No. I have no defence. I could have done more. Full stop.

I'm happy about the fact that I've been writing - practising - a lot and two finished rough manuscripts for short stories - however quickly I wrote them - is at least something to show; but that's about it and with the amount of time I've had that number should be at least half a dozen and a couple of finished - you know, properly finished - stories. So, with a nod to my new job. I'd give my last 6 months a D+ and that's only because I have a soft spot for myself...

***

Shortie had an early night, because she's working overtime today; so I pottered about the house for a while; watched some mindless TV - The Graham Norton Show (for which I felt a little sorry for Carey Mulligan and Ed Byrne, because they essentially might as well have been in the audience once Depp and Gervais took over. Mr Depp is a strangely hilarious character; you'd never guess he was American) - and sat in my office doing something I've made into an artform - doing nothing. I'm not in a frivolous games mood at the moment, so my time wasn't going to be wasted with that; so I sat and stared at a blank Word document, trying to work out if I really like the new idea I've had enough to actually try and write it.

Picking up on the odd things that have inspired my two previous short stories, I had this idea about the worst winter in the UK ever - a freak mini ice age that grips the UK between the end of November and the beginning of March. A winter so bad, that 40 feet of snow has fallen in some places; the country is at a complete standstill and 90% of the British Isles is under snow, ravaged by sub zero temperatures and weather conditions are preventing anything but token help from the armed forces and government. Talking about it probably means it won't happen; but what the hell...

Tentatively called Cold As Hell and following on the slight theme I've had in both short stories I've written this autumn - isolation - it was/is the story of David - a 62 year old semi-retired plasterer, whose wife and eldest daughter have gone for a pre-Christmas get away in France, leaving him to rattle around the house for a week. Once the bad weather sets in and disrupts every body's lives, David settles down to an enforced period of doing very little, but his peace is broken by Winston; David's nerdy and needy 30 year old neighbour. Winston is mixed race, lived with his mother until she died and now exists in the house adjacent David's, fuelled by his love of science fiction, horror, comics and a most bizarre music taste. Winston can't cope and David takes him in thinking he could do with the company.

The weather gets worse and the small town the two men live in becomes cut off from the outside world; the power goes out and suddenly it becomes a battle for survival against the elements and for David against the onslaught of shite spurting from Winston's mouth. Soon even the phones are down; mobile networks become strained and people are dying; but David and Winston are unaware of this as they play out their own drama in David's terraced house. By the beginning of February, with snow drifts higher than houses and even major roads impassable, the need for food becomes dire; David decides the two men need to walk the ½ a mile to the local supermarket, but even the small distance proves too much for Winston. So they return to David's house and sit and wait for the snow to stop.

Several nights later, David spies a lone figure struggling through six foot of snow. He watches the man for an hour as he makes less than 100 metres progress before he collapses in the storm. David rushes to his aid and eventually gets the man into the house. He is 28-year-old Mickey; an ex-con who, it seems, was looking for empty houses to burgle - for food and whatever he can flog once the weather changes. He'd been outside for 6 hours and got lost in the white out. He was going to freeze to death if David hadn't seen him. Mickey had a bag with some food in it and tells them that the supermarket had been stripped clean.

It doesn't take Mickey long to realise that Winston is the world's largest pain in the butt and what happens next explains how they survived the next four weeks before the weather broke...

Now that I've put paid to that by talking about it; I might come back to it at a later date, because I see it as sort of a play, because it will be dialogue heavy.

Roger had this good idea, which was to collect all the short stories when they're finished and publish them on Kindle. It's certainly not against the realm of possibilities; I've got over the hurdle now - the physical one and the mental one - so, who knows? If I do that I want to have at least 5 short stories - average 20,000 words each - so that it's value for money.

Talking about Kindle. My Monthly Curse made it to #1 in its category chart back in August, it was only for a couple of days, but I was chuffed to bits; despite that #1 position being attained by selling just under 40 copies. Of which I'd like to send a massive sloppy kiss to all the purchasers. Hopefully I'll have a spurt at Christmas, but my sex life isn't being discussed here.

I have an edited version of the book now; my old pal Dave Brzeski, former main man at House on the Borderland, offered to pass his eyes and editing skills over the manuscript - something I really should have done before publishing it, but I'm nothing if not impetuous. I've had Dave's edits for over a month now and have done nothing with them; but this coming week I'm going to do the necessary and merge the two documents together and making all the adjustments that were missed in the last edit and spell checks. There's no need to quote to me about stable doors and such. I was new (and impetuous) to this e-book publishing and once I've integrated Dave's changes and possibly even added a couple of bits - including the What If Halloween Special I put up on the Comicbook Diaries blog last week - I shall right the ill judged wrongs I did and make a 'proper' version available. It is also my intention to explore a couple of other options - Nook, e-books and iBooks have all been mentioned and I've signed up to one of those on-line agent type things that do a lot of the donkey work for you and don't appear to take much in the way of fees.

So, by the time December rolls around; I hope to have the book available in different formats and also the definitive version. You know it makes the perfect Christmas gift!

Anyhow, the last 100 words has been a digression because this was initially going to be about me sitting in front of a blank screen and what happened to prevent me from doing anything but sit and listen to events unfolding outside...

We had a tense night because there were firework parties all around and three of the four dogs were having nervous breakdowns (Marley wanted to go and watch and say 'woo') and I was growing increasingly pissed off with people who decide to stand around in the drizzle watching pretty lights. When it had all ended and the dogs settled, the wife in bed and me bored, the party, three doors down, broke up.

Now, I do sometimes give the impression that I get exasperated at some of my Eastern European neighbours, but the family who live next to the Incest Family are all from Lithuania and they seem to celebrate November 5th (ish) with more gusto than a teenager who's just discovered wanking. God knows how much they spent on explosions, but for about 45 minutes WW3 took place above my conservatory and they all woo'd and ah'd and clapped and shouted slightly odd Baltic phrases. Anthropologically it was quite fascinating; in reality I wanted a harpoon gun and some acid.

The thing that struck me was how people leaving parties seem to forget it's gone midnight and most people are in bed. The vocals always seem to be turned up to 11 and when you can't understand what they're saying it sort of gets even more frustrating - I think it tweaks our xenophobe gene. Anyhow, I'm sitting here listening to a lot of words that sound both Russian and Finnish and every so often there would be a burst of English, which made the conversation all the more interesting. For starters, in the middle of a load of Lithuanian were the words, 'I'll f*cking slap the bitch' and 'You are a f*cking whore'. Now, I don't know if this was just them relating things they'd heard or had said to them, but the majority of the English words came from a very agitated woman and sounded like they were directed at a person rather than the retelling of something. I crept into Shortie's sewing room and peered out of the window. There were two woman squaring up to each other, surrounded by about six men, who seemed to be egging them on.

Next thing I knew, the blonde, who had a line in English swearing, attacked the other girl, grabbed her by the hair and all complimented by screeching, shouting, expletives and cheers from the men. From out of my direct view came the guy who owns the place; he strides into my view, grabs the two girls and bellows at them all. Obviously he's more than aware of what is happening right in front of his house and, worryingly for me, right by the Sexy Tractor. Then something really unusual and quite disturbing happened. The blonde girl starts ranting at him and he slaps her, clean across the face. I heard the thwack and winced. The girl then walked off followed by too slightly stunned looking male admirers. The rest of the gathering broke up quietly and the guy who lives down the road, dragged the other woman back into the house, literally. I went back to my office and stared at the screen a little more and then played some Patience.

About twenty minutes later, I was brought out of my torpor by, "I'll f*cking kill you, you c*nt". The blonde was back and she was standing in the road wielding what looked like a baseball bat. A load more Lithuanian was shouted and the owner waltzes into the street, takes the baseball bat from the woman with amazingly speed and ease and chases her down the road with her own weapon.

Jokingly, I've had the description of where I live - on Facebook - as 'dodgy' for ages and only last week, I changed it to 'slightly dodgy'... Ho hum...

***

Anyhow, enough burble aside. I have stairs to hoover; saag paneer to consider and a house to bop around to the dulcet tones of Ms Welch and her Machine!

Have a good weekend you spunky buggers!

Bin Juice

2011-11-03T03:47:00.000-07:00

So? What's been happening? Anything of note?

I have some news. Yes, and it's good news. That makes a change.

After six months; not all of which were bad, I did something yesterday that brought tears to my wife's eyes.

No. Not that. Please.

I only went and got myself a job!

Fancy that. Who would have thought it? Blummin' eck!

***

Yesterday started at 8.15am; I got up, had a shower and pottered about waiting to get into my suit. 20 minutes before I was due to leave, I was sending someone an email when I realised I hadn't had a shave. So mild panic, but it killed 10 minutes as the morning was dragging on like a Wim Wenders film. I got suited, booted and headed for the door. I had spent the morning reading reports, looking at my prospective employer's website, and so I felt I was as prepared as I could possibly be. Off I went, into the slightly less unknown.

This is the job I went for in April, which had come available again because of illness, so I knew what to expect and the fact I'd been asked back for another interview seemed to suggest I had a fighting chance.

From the moment I walked out of the interview, I talked myself out of getting it. There was no way in hell I'd got that. I burbled. I wasn't happy about the end of the interview. I thought the woman from HR was getting fed up with me. Did I make a joke too many? Gods, I fluffed my lines, didn't I and I was going to be sitting in the lounge tonight, with an unhappy wife, contemplating disaster. Same old same old then?

When my new boss phoned me to tell me I'd been successful; I was something I've rarely genuinely been in my entire life - speechless. Yes. Honestly. I squeaked, stumbled over a few words and spluttered out 'I'd like to accept it.' And I am pretty sure I heard a faint squee of delight from the living room.

I'm going in on Monday to start to get a feel for the place and I'm going to be embarking on a new facet of my working life. My past experience accounts for much, but the job is something I've never imagined I would do. It also requires me to largely be a desk jockey - something I foretold a few months back; but that isn't stifling my enthusiasm and delight at getting the job. This is a great challenge and one I'm more than capable of succeeding at.

I have to say that my negative outlook when I walked away from the interview were deliberately put there. I knew I had had a bloody excellent interview; the only thing I was worried about was the ending. I knew it was going so well I didn't want it to stop. The ending stuttered to a close rather than having a point where I shook their hands, thanked them for their time and said I hoped to hear from them soon. But, that was my only quibble. I knew by the middle of the interview that I was on a roll and it was a good one. I stopped directing my answers at the man who I had already got the vote of and concentrated on the HR woman and I think I must have succeeded. By Jove.

Suffice it to say, last night could have ended better considering the great day I'd had; but without putting too fine a detail on it, it involved a trapped dog in the wrong bedroom, me snoring for England and the wife decamping to the spare bedroom and me spending the rest of the night with three dogs for company - the fourth, the one who got stuck, was off with her mum.

But today, the wife was full of the joys of spring; laughing on the phone and generally sounding ten times better than she did 24 hours earlier; so if nothing else that's the best thing.

***

On the journey down the M40 on Monday evening, Roger commented that the air was unusually blue and that my F word counter had gone through the roof. I joked to him that I was getting as many out as I could because I was going to stop swearing. Much hilarity and mickey taking followed.

The thing was, it was a joke, but I'd sort of made a pact with myself that if I got this job; situated in a place with 1400 under 19 year olds; I really needed to learn not to swear, because frankly my language has got utterly appalling over the last few months.

So I'm stopping swearing. I've not said a single swear word since I got out of bed and while that might be because I've said nothing at all, it's still a good start. I'm going for a celebratory beer with Roger this evening, that'll be a test. Roger always makes me swear...

****

Despite probably not seeing any money before Christmas; the slough of despond seems to have lifted and I'm eyeing my overdraft with a ravenous desire to draw a tenner out and splurge it on something like... I dunno... fresh food or maybe some soap. Obviously, I'm not signing off until the day before I start my job; because I am now in transit and anything could happen in the interim. Plus, I'm technically unemployed still, so I'll take Dave's Beer Vouchers with gusto and no shame until the day. They buy the shopping, but sadly no beer. I will have beer in the house this weekend; you can bet your life on that!

***

Would it surprise you to learn that I've spent much of the day so far just bopping around the house, regardless of whether I'm listening to any music? I even had a bop in the bath and that isn't a euphemism.

***

Raconte-Moi Une Histoire - trust me, it'll make you smile and nod your head in a groovy kind of way...

***

And that's that. I'm in far too good a mood to have a moan about anything. I'm just going to bop around the house with the Dyson; maybe do some cooking and then take the hounds out for a good walk. The weather is very mild and for this millisecond everything is groovy!

As It's a Lovely Day...

2011-11-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

... Let's talk about zombies!

I'm not even in a cynical mood...

The new vampires are just plain rotten. It's a fact. Well, it's a fact in my head.

There was an interesting question on QI recently (probably a Dave repeat) where Stephen Fry asked how long it would take for a zombie outbreak to spread across the world - about 39 days according to 'the people that know these things'. Surely that's based on using the films as a point of reference and believing 98% of the population of the planet has the intelligence of a mollusk.

What do we know about zombies? Well, traditional zombies were dead people reanimated, wandering around like... well, animated corpses. They were slow, dim-witted and if you got bitten by one it was either through your own stupidity or because one was hiding behind the shower curtain. This theme continued throughout George Romero and countless other zombie movies until 28 Days Later when the zombies became a different and far more deadly beast altogether. Romero brought a couple more zombie films out and they followed his old idea and there were some things like Zombieland which suitably satirised the genre while being kind and faithful.

Then there was Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which as well as being a monster hit in comics, has been turned into a hugely popular TV show. I'm sort of struggling to understand why, despite having read most of the comics and a keen watcher of the TV series. Both the comic and the TV show are full of dislikeable characters, unfocused organisation and uninteresting soap opera. None of the characters, except maybe Rick Grimes - the hero (of sorts) - have many redeeming qualities and not because the world is now post-apocalyptic, because the survivors are largely selfish, self-obsessed individuals - the kind who probably would go to ground until everyone else had been eaten.

People claimed there were similarities between The Walking Dead and Falling Skies - the post-apocalyptic SF series about alien invaders and there is, but the main one is that regardless of how hard the writers try, none of he characters is particularly good or interesting or likeable or well developed. The comic only makes this more so with its 'everyone is expendable' policy.

Plus, there's this feeling that even though this is a bunch of characters plunged into a nightmare; there would be some common sense applied. There is in the comic, but Kirkman's best observation was breezed over, albeit because he wanted to continue with a story rather than have it change midway through. There's this thing about zombies you see; they're dead. They're cold. They are the new reptiles. Let's put it this way, if you put your arm in snow, it gets cold, but the rest of your body keeps it from freezing. If you put a leg of lamb in the same place - it freezes. They put corpses on ice and while I appreciate that The Walking Dead is set in and around Atlanta, where sweat gets sweaty, you'd think they would just head north until they run out of Canada. That's what I'd do if we were over run by zombies; I'd head for the north of Scotland in the winter and shatter a few skulls on really frosty mornings.

The problem with Romero's zombie movies is that by the fourth one - spanning 25 years, the audience just didn't care any more; the novelty and uniqueness had disappeared and I think the same thing will likely happen to this new zombie fad by the end of 2012. The Walking Dead's problem is that you're now waiting for the less main cast to be picked off, because you know it's what is going to happen and you want to see if it's going to be different or just a bit of a bite to the arm.

This also doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching; I just think that it would be good to have a post apocalyptic story that has pragmatists and resourceful people in charge. Yes, it might be the drama equivalent of DIY SOS but at least I wouldn't be picking holes in the plasterboard so much.

Gig Guide 9: Steven Wilson, Shepherd's Bush O2 Empire; 31st October 2011

2011-11-01T02:59:00.000-07:00

As is so often the case, my gig reviews aren't just about the gig, but also the surrounding day and landscape. Yesterday was no exception...

I headed off to The Smoke with Roger and Phil Walker (t'other, t'other Phil) in the wife's Zafira, believing it would be considerably more economic than taking the Sexy Tractor™ which is a 1.9 injection while the Vauxhall is a simple 1.6 - makes sense to take the more economical, on paper, car. Hah! The fucking Zafira drinks petrol like I'd quaff Oakham beer if I had the money, the time and the inclination to end up with the hangover from hell. I had about a ¼ of a tank, so stuck another £10 in and it barely dented our wonky fuel gauge™. We also decided to do London the less strenuous way, which meant a 20 mile diversion down the A43 to join up with the M40, which takes you, literally, to the doorstep of the Empire.

My first 20 minutes in Londinium was spent fretting about the petrol consumption of my wife's car; deciding that a steady 70mph in the Sexy Tractor™ would have been a far more sensible idea and would have meant that for yesterday only my beautiful Sexy Tractor™ would have four stinking dogs running riot in the back. It's also a bloody comfortable car and I have a back rest in it that was missing from the Zafira. Still, my frame is decidedly good at the moment; I felt 10 years younger when we got into Shepherd's Bush. I was out of the house and there was an entire bustling world at my fingertips. Roger, however, wasn't enamoured by my desire to slowly find an alternative pub to the ones we'd found within 5 minutes of arriving. I wanted to walk - it was almost warm - and I wanted to take in West London's version of the City. Roger's amazement at my desire to walk and generally take in the ambiance was quickly being replaced by a raging hunger and a desire to punch my face in. It happens.

We found a pub that did arty farty pub grub and poor beer, the alternative was not much better, but on our walk we'd spotted an all you can eat vegetarian Chinese buffet, which I believe Roger thought ticked all the boxes I require. I was being obtuse. Not deliberately, but I struggle with the concept of these 'buffet' styled diners. I'm a fussy bugger and am very worried if there is foreign things in the food I like. In the end I could see Roger beginning to become the grumpy bastard I first met many years ago, on the Isle of Wight, when the weather was almost like Spain. So we ate Chinese(ish).

The food was good; the slow walk across Shepherd's Bush Park (more like a splodge of green in a concrete and steel metropolis), we got into the long queue waiting for the doors of the Empire to open. We had a sense of urgency about us, because while we're all seasoned gig goers, Steven Wilson is a funny bugger with his gigs - in whatever form they take. It stated on his web site that the doors opened at 7pm and not to be late and as we'd missed the entire North Atlantic Oscillation set when we went to see Porcupine Tree last year, we felt the need to get in there as early and with as little fuss as possible. Hah!

Jasper Carrot talked of always getting the lunatic on the bus; well, I'm the fucking daddy of that now. There's this guy, looking a bit pissed, wearing a chavvy tracksuit and he's walking along the road, next to the queue and he just sees Roger, Phil and I and he must have thought, There's 3 easy touches; obviously out of towners.

"Excuse me gents." The world was going to end... His opening line was really all I can remember about his initial words and I can only really remember snippets of the conversation, which probably lasted no more than 5 minutes, but felt like a week. He was looking for money - natch - but this was because he'd run out of it and wanted a pound from us so he could get another drink. I remember saying we didn't have zany money and would he please go away, but this was like a red rag to a bull and he started to get... the higher ground.

Now, I know I'm a master of relaying conversations; a god at comebacks and witty retorts, but last night, I just had that feeling that starting an argument/discussion/conversation with this slightly crazy looking man would end in tears, so I bit my lip and started to stare at the skies. On retrospect, it wasn't a fare thing to do to Phil or Roger, but I just knew that I'd get wound up by this disgraceful chancer's affable Northern snake charmer act. He asked questions about why we were all standing in a line and trying his best to 'win over' my two associates. He probably figured he'd cut me out of the picture and go straight for my friends. He asked a question and I said, "We'd just like you to go away and bother someone else." I didn't look at him, nor did I rise to his rising grievance.

"I do not like your honesty. I really don't like your honesty!" Huh? What did he expect, me to lie nicely to him? "Look at him; he really wants to hit me. You can see it, he wants to hit me."

"No. I. Don't." I said through gritted teeth; yes, I did want to hit him.

"He just wants you to go away." said Roger, bless his heart.

And, he did, but not without trying to regain the moral high ground by wishing us a pleasant evening and shaking Roger's (dodgy) hand. Thank fuck for that!

However, the fun wasn't to end just there. Phil W got involved in an altercation with a jobsworth bouncer about his back pack, which resulted in Phil having to leave it at the stage door and picking it up later. We got to our seats at a little before 7.30, expecting something. Hah!

We figured, as the house lights went down, that Wilson was going to start at 8pm, but by 8.05 it was obvious he wasn't. We'd joked about not being allowed to take cameras, phones, 8 tracks and various other electronic gadgets in, or Wilson's personal SS would shoot us in our seats, but by 8.10, I was seriously considering standing up and shouting at the stage and asking Wilson, 'if he was taking the piss?'. So instead I spent 15 minutes dozing with my head on my hand. We'd exhausted all the surreal conversations we could manage and I was now getting pissed off.

Wilson eventually took to the stage at 8.30, behind a fucking great big net curtain. The band played the first four numbers hiding behind a veil with projections played on it. I wanted to see if Nick Beggs (Wilson's bassist) still looked like the twot from Kajagoogoo. I had made my mind up that I wasn't going to enjoy this gig and the opening number did nothing to change my mind, but by the time the curtain came down, I was actually really getting into it. The new album works better live than on disc and I was impressed by the quality of musicianship on display, from everyone bar Wilson; who really did what he said at the beginning of the gig, was going to relax and let the band take the strain.

At just over 100 minutes, it was a good solid gig. I don't really like the epic Raider 2 from the new album; it's a bit too disjointed and intricate, especially for a closing number, but that really was my only quibble with the last two thirds of the show. it confirmed my belief that Wilson writes great songs, has an unusually diverse fan base and should probably get more recognition than he does, because he chooses to work in strange fields. Part of me wanted him to do something a little off the wall; maybe do a couple of his Cover versions, or maybe an acoustic piece on his own, but for a rock gig it did what it said on the tin and the empire has a quaint charm about it that juxtaposed the fact that there was going to be some hard rock played.

The thing about Wilson's new solo album is that, I believe, much of it sounds like old Porcupine Tree, tracks like Deform to Form a Star and Postcard could have appeared on Lightbulb Sun and while my cohorts enjoyed the homages to early prog giants King Crimson, I found I enjoyed him the best when he and the band sounded like Porcupine Tree.

However, while a good gig, I feel I can only really give it 7 out of 10.

The journey home was relatively uneventful. We got cheap petrol near Uxbridge and Phil and Roger were accosted by a woman begging for petrol, claiming she'd come out without her purse. Just a fiver's worth, that's all she wanted. Roger walked off mumbling something about it always happening to us and apparently she looked at him horrified. My bet was she was just a good actor, and why did she have a car full of kids?*

I opted for the M25/M1 combo on the way home, figuring that by midnight the traffic would be clear. I was right and we made good time until we hit the M1, which is no longer a motorway in places, more like a big fuck off building site. It was an horrendous journey home; slow, slower and always being aware there were hazards. It took us about 20 minutes less than it would have taken had I followed the same route back as we'd taken down, but by the time I got home I was stressed out and tense. Driving through Kingsthorpe didn't help; I feel for the locals at the way their part of town has just been turned into a nightmare and all because Asda wanted a right turn into their supermarket.

Another observation from the evening was only seeing 2 people all evening looking like they involved in some form of Halloween bollocks; other than that it could have been any night in any town.

* I have a quick theory based on nothing but my innate ability to be right about stuff like this. The two 'beggars' we met last night, were unlike any beggars I have ever come across. Neither looked like homeless or poverty stricken people and both tried reason, guilt and pervasively friendly approaches. I don't think this was a coincidence. I'm not suggesting the two people were linked in any way, apart from their methods. We're a country that for some the slide in real poverty is happening in front of them, but for others, chancers, this is a time when they can target the middle class with stories that would surely pull on the heart strings, or make you feel like giving them money just so they go away. The irony is if I met a genuinely needy person, I still wouldn't give them money; advice most definitely, but never money. You should never ever give them money, because the likelihood is that only 10% of the people you give money to will want it for what they're asking for. It will be collected and go on drink and drugs. If they are genuine, then advice such as where the nearest night shelter is will be appreciated, if not really needed.

I think we're going to see a lot more of this in the coming months; people praying off the concept of others weaknesses.

***

Quick note about that arsehole banker who appeared on TV last week claiming he goes to bed every night praying for recession because he'll only end up richer. The guy who claims that Goldman Sachs runs the world - which might be the case, but I don't think we really want to have our suspicions about the world being run by corporations rather than politicians confirmed, just yet. This man, Alessio Rastani, is everything that is bad about the planet we live on and everything we have grown accustomed to.

We need a better world.

Savage Breasts

2011-10-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

First a word from our sponsor...

Finger exploded. Getting better now.

Now, your featured programme...

***

Music. I do music, but in blogs that seems to be my pal Roger's domain. He does the reviews, gets the free copies and generally has built up a little niche for himself and bloody good on him too, I say. I encouraged him to write more and it pays off sometimes. http://astoundedbysound.blogspot.com/ is worth a read, especially if you want to be confused and think the author is considerably better than you, by virtue of him having heard things you weren't even aware existed.

However, I'm not averse to music reviews. I mainly do gigs though. I'm just never particularly confident about tackling full album reviews because... well, because. Plus, I like a lot of stuff that doesn't have words and trying to review an album of instrumentals is a bit like reviewing a turnip. Or something like that.

I do get excited about things and try to convey that to people who stumble my way, as often as I can. It's just your fault if you've never taken my recommendations seriously. I tend to know a good thing when I hear it.

Anyhow, this is just a preamble because I feel the need to share with you the several albums that have been on heavy rotation this year - or at least the ones I can remember.

I think this year probably started with last year's North Atlantic Oscillation; a 21st century prog album with countless other influences. Grappling Hooks is wonderful and I can completely understand why people wouldn't like. It's a bit too cerebral for the likes of you.

Kwoon appeared on my horizon this year and their Tales and Dreams album is proof that French music does not begin and end with Air. I was considering yesterday whether I Lived on the Moon was quickly becoming one of my three favourite singles of all time. The album it is from is shades of light, dark and neopolitan and made me realise that post-rock was now my staple musical diet. Plus, if you think North Atlantic Oscillation is high brow, then this album will probably make your nose bleed.

Through a bit of an accident I discovered Nyctalgia - an Italian guy who traded rave beats for M83-styled ambiance. His album has apparently barely sold 1,000 copies - this is a travesty. If you can find it, it's music for a breezy summer's day. The same has to be said for El Siete Es La Luz, which as Roger pointed out is in Spanish and the band are called French Teen Idol and the guy behind them is Italian. Go figure, but the album is quite delightful for allowing the day to drift past.

The spring also saw the triumphant return of Ulrich Schnauss, this time working with Manual's Jonas Monk on a shoe gazey, ambient, indie dance groove thang, which like many of the albums I've listened to this year can be labelled 'Epic'. For a while, I thought this might be my best album of the year.

The late summer brought two albums which had a profound effect on me. Bon Iver's self titled album was a revelation and considering his/their previous albums had washed over me like distant memories; I found myself falling totally for this unusual album. Highly recommended.

Also as the sun wandered over the equinox came M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, which we'll come back to.

I had a flirtation with Iron & Wine, a kind of folk version of Mercury Rev; but as I was given their back catalogue, I can't really pick on particular album to single out.

The surprise of the year was undoubtedly The Horrors 3rd album Skying, which as I touched on the other day usurped anything they had ever attempted. It's a great throwback album and another that I recommend wholly to people of the same age and musical influences as me.

The new Jane's Addiction - The Great Escape Artist - was possibly the most eagerly anticipated album of the year. I have a deep love of this band and regardless of what the critics think, JA are one of the best rock bands of all time. The new album was disappointing to start with, but after three plays I'm really beginning to think it was worth the wait - and it's not often you can say that.

The new Florence and the Machine album - Ceremonials - is pretty fucking epic as well. It does what other artists touted as superstars haven't been able to do with their follow up albums; produce something truly excellent. Second album syndrome is a killer and Flo has ripped up the stereotype book. This is likely to win lots of awards.

Steven Wilson released his second solo album and to be honest it's been tough to get into. Don't get me wrong, it's actually a really solid double album; but, you know, I sorted of expected something different and found I could have been listening to a Porcupine Tree rarities CD.

Mylo Xyloto deserves a mention purely for the fact that Coldplay have produced an album that is probably better than the sum of its parts. The album hangs together very well and it surprised me. I can't however see me having this on rotation.

My mate Chev drew my attention to an album from 1986 by the CA Quintet, which despite being something of a mystery made me realise that Pink Floyd sometimes wore their influences on their sleeves without people ever realising it. The title track of the CAQ's only album Trip Thru Hell is quite remarkable.

I've also been listening to the first Genesis album again, a lot. I don't know if I have a penchant for 1968 (and 69), but I've been impressed by how this From Genesis to Revelation curiosity stands the test of time.

Other mentions in dispatches for Ladytron, whose latest album is as good as previous efforts. The new British Sea Power album which got into my play list during August. The quite amazing Zola Jesus, who sounds like Souxsie Soux meets acoustic industrial metal. She also appears on M83's new album doing stuff she doesn't normally do and very well she does it.

The Pierces latest album is fabulous and for a while back in the early summer it was on constant rotation, despite the feeling that I was selling out. The Engineers released a 3rd album quickly after their 2nd and featured a new line up. Despite the presence of Ulrich Schnauss and KScope records, the new album was better when all the lyrics were removed - the bonus instrumental CD has been played far more than the main disc.

Of course, falling just out of the period, was Amplifier's The Octopus, which was released for the great unwashed in January (after the fans got theirs before Christmas). It is also epic; confirms they are the kings of space rock and rock prog (yes, I did get that round the right way). In a normal year, The Octopus would win my album of the year.

But with two months of the year left and more possibilities on the horizon, I think my album of the year has been Hurry up, We're Dreaming. It's an odd album because it has very little subtlety; it is, as the Observer noted, an album of epic proportions. It's dancey, it's rocky, it's indie and above all it sits together far better than any of Anthony Gonzalez's other M83 albums. It is his best so far and it has been played probably more than anything else I've acquired this year.

My musical year has been very eclectic and that's just how I like it.

Crushed by Pig Farmers - A Cautionary Halloween Tale

2011-10-28T04:38:00.000-07:00

Mr Squeamish here; the man who can't watch an operation and the discussion of women's problems has me running screaming from the room with his hands over his ears singing La-la-la-la-la-la-la, is something of an enigma.

I am, of course, talking about me and my love of real gore. So imagine this: the antithesis of Sweeney Todd standing with a sharp scalpel in my hand poised to mutilate my own body! It's unlikely, but it happened last night...

My finger woes are progressing. The thumb is fine now, if not a wee bit angular at the top; the wart appears to be succumbing to the delights of super glue, but the index finger with its almost microscopic slither of prickle has gone a bit yeeeeugh! On Wednesday, the wife got a needle out and pierced the most likely place on the end of the finger and nothing really happened; a bit of watery stuff popped out and we wrapped it up, hoping to draw anything out. The next day, as I said, it was a bit disappointing. I got a little splodge of pus and what I believed was the offending splinter. I wrapped it up again to be on the safe side and by Friday it had swollen up and looked like someone bigger and heavier than I had swapped forefingers with me. There seemed to be this odd coloured reservoir building under the dark spot where the wife had attacked it with a needle. But you see, the finger has been pulled, pushed, squeezed and generally manhandled for nearly a week, a lot of the pain might be from simple misuse. Nah!

Last night, after the wife went to bed, I decided that I'd check on the wart, so I took off the protective plaster, got the scalpel out and scraped all the dead skin off, looked at what used to be a wart and was satisfied that probably one, maybe two more applications and I'd have my old finger back. I then looked at my finger and got some bizarre idea in my head. I rummaged through a draw and found an old lighter, semi-sterilised the blade and decided that I was going to go in in the same spot as the wife, but this time with a very deadly weapon (I'd only swapped the blade a few days ago and it could cut through wood quite easily at the moment). Despite all my apprehensions, I scraped back the original tiny wound and ignorant of the pain - more from the finger than from the knife - I pierced my flesh in an altogether bigger and less user-friendly way than my dear wife.

Oh my sweet Jesus Hillman Imp Christ! Ever had your stomach do a back flip, turn itself inside out, perform Hamlet in Finnish and then appear on several consecutive episodes of Strictly? No neither has mine, but it did roll about a bit and threaten to give me a repeat performance of my dinner. If the first eruption had been disappointing, the second was infinitely more impressive; we're not talking Exorcist spectacular, but we are talking Monster Boil proportions!

Yellow and red sort of go together as a colour scheme; but there's something slightly unnerving about the combination...

Saturday morning and my index finger is several degrees warmer than rest of my body and it throbs. The new wound has almost disappeared, presumably from the pressure being exerted by the rancid reservoir of junk sitting atop my index finger and I expect that later on; after I've soaked it in the bath for 20 minutes that I will attack the finger again and this time I won't rest until I've fainted!

***

I've been considering a major face lift to my blogs. I'd like to do it now, but I figure as they are essentially diaries of my life then I should at least keep a style for a year; but the new ideas I have aren't astronomically different from the current stylings; I just have an inclination to get a bit retro.

All will be revealed and no one will care a hoot. Which is exactly how it should be.

***

The iron is back in the fire. I have a date with destiny next Wednesday morning. Fingers crossed peeps; I have a bigger test than normally. I have to try and temper my enthusiasm for just getting out and chatting to different people and channel that into something that sounds like I'm the best equipped person to do this job - and frankly, I think I am, but it's a gamble. More about this when and if and all that.

***

This 'thing' next week has come at a good time. the drugs are working fine and the flatulence has subsided to average levels. Even the wife commented on my seemingly new vigour, doing things (of a non-sexual nature I might add, you filthy minded people) I wouldn't have attempted three weeks ago.

However, with me feeling pretty good at the moment and possibilities on the horizon, the Glass Half Empty me rears his ugly head and says, "Yes, so something is bound to go wrong!"

The bastard!

***

Obviously, I've been skirting round the issue that has me foaming at the mouth more often than I eat vegetables. It is perfectly true that today is a sad day and that tomorrow will be the worst day of the year. Bollocks to this January 24th being the worst day of the year nonsense; tomorrow is the worst fucking day of the year, every year! In fact, this tends to be the worst week of the year; what with fucking GMT, Halloween and that utter cunt of a day/week for allowing people to use incendiary devices wherever and whenever they choose.

What a shit week? Easily solved by doing three things - abolishing GMT, banning anything but organised firework displays, and enforcing a law that if we're going to celebrate fucking Halloween it is not going to embrace the American model and will not become a bloody season like Christmas, Easter or BBQ.

What an utterly shit week.

And don't fucking tell me that the kids love the latter two. I don't care. If your kids want to have fun; have fun with them without disturbing me! I do not want my dogs petrified by loud bangs and I really don't want your fucking little brats knocking on my door and begging. I am not a freak because I didn't choose to have children, therefore I shouldn't be fucking subjected to it. I'm beginning to think that being vegetarian and childless has placed me in the freaks column in terms of my standing in society. We get no breaks, because we choose not to over populate the globe; we use less energy, and most kids love us because we're not like parents. We should be fucking sainted! I should get an extra £100 a week benefits for being such a shining example to saving the planet and acting selfless while others go out there and pop sprogs out like I take a shit! RAH!!!

And breath...

***

While I'm on one...

I was reading... hang on. I was looking at the stats for my blogs and I had a referral from a site I'd never seen before. Clicking on this led me to click on another link and then another and before you know it I was on the website for some County newspaper in Georgia or Minnesota. I really didn't take much notice because I was stunned by the article I'd stumbled upon. It was a newspaper column about anti-abortionists campaigning to have a 17 year old girl and her abortionist prosecuted. There had been picketing around the doctor's clinic, he has lost 40% of his patients, most leaving because of what he did, but many because he's suddenly become 'dangerous' to see.

The girl, who had been repeatedly raped by her grandfather since she was 13, finally fell pregnant to him and she went to the local doctor, who horrified, granted the girl's wish and terminated the pregnancy. A receptionist who belonged to the Loopy Jesus Army of Totally Moronic Opinions found out about it and spread the news, without the details - not that it mattered in the end - and soon the crazies were flocking to shout God sanctioned obscenities at the clinic and the terrified young girl.

The sole basis for these crazies argument is that the life inside the mother isn't responsible for the crimes or misdemeanours perpetrated against the mother, therefore whoever the father is the baby deserves its chance at life.

Do you know what's wrong with that argument? The fact that once she becomes pregnant a mother suddenly loses all of her human rights. She is nothing more than a big food bag for the creature inside her. She has no rights, because they've all been transferred to her inbred child in her stomach.

And we have the audacity to think Muslims are weird or dangerous?

***

I haven't burbled about TV for a while. This is down to the fact that I haven't really had much to moan about, relatively.

However, I will tell you this: don't, whatever you do, watch Once Upon A Time. The alarm bells were ringing immediately because it's made by ABC, who have the reputation once held by Fox in the USA, but I figured Robert Carlyle was in it, so it was worth 42 minutes of my time. Oh no it wasn't!

Let's be kind. Haven could teach it a thing or six about television making.

Fairy tales are simple ideas, yet this poor excuse for a show has made the premise deeply confusing and it's full of 'D'you know, I really couldn't give a shit' performances. They did a poor job of setting the scene, but don't actually tell you what it's going to be about, giving me reason to believe that it's going to be Fairy Tale of the Week, with a different fairy tale character taking centre stage and done in a decidedly un-post-modern way. The only character that comes out of it with any interest is the kid and you just know that by episode three you're going to want him dead and not just in the TV show.

In the end, I felt like I was watching an episode of Haven on some mildly hallucinogenic drugs. It even reminds me a little of Haven in that the lead female character's history is a mystery, which sounds like it could be a line from a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical number - My history is a mystery... cha cha cha.

So far, of the 8 new US shows that deemed worthy of repeat watching American Horror Story is the only guaranteed survivor (and the latest episode, weighing in at 38½ minutes must be the biggest cheat in cable TV history) and Person of Interest has been given a stay of execution on the basis of the first episode being mildly of interest. The rest have gone down the shitter.

Oh, we have Grimm #1 to watch tonight. The odds suggest we should like it. On what basis I'm making this calculation, I know not.

The Fades has been pretty interesting stuff. Roger reckons it goes up its own arse around episode 5, well we have that and the finale to watch tonight, so we'll see.

Switching to film for a bit. We watched Captain America last weekend and I hate to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's good fun and very faithful to a bad original story in a good way.

Back in the 70s, when I was young and little scared me I saw a film called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark with Kim Darby and Timothy Hutton's old man Jim. Watching it again a couple of months ago, I could see why it scared me (and others) first time round, but age had not been kind to it and by halfway through I wanted it to end. Last weekend we watched Guillermo Del Toro and Troy Nixey's remake with someone and Tom Cruise's wife. It looked great. Unfortunately the story is essentially the element that has aged the most. It was ... alright.

***

One of the musical highlights of the year for me has been The Horrors album Skying. It has impressed a lot of people and justifiably so. I'd heard the thing that made this album so good was the fact that the Horrors previous albums had all been shite. This morning I decided to put that to the test.

The answer is conclusive. The Horrors until Skying were worse than shite. It was like having my brain scraped by mutant spiders.

***

Karma only happens to people who look for it.

***

I was thrilled and proud of the fact that my potato snobbery is something that runs in the family. My eldest niece is like me, angry about the utterly shit spud offerings from our supermarkets.

It's your fault! If you were a bit choosier about your potatoes we wouldn't have to suffer bland rubbish white balls of cloth or soup. Try one of the heritage range on offer; see what a better spud tastes like. What we need in this time of strife and uncertainty is a campaign for better potatoes. Damn, I'm going to write to my MP. This is far more important than the fact I can't afford to buy any.

***

As you can probably tell, I'm a little bored. Since the wife started doing full days on Saturday, as overtime, I sort of treat it like a normal weekday, which means that I'm sort of stuck for things to do by the time chores are done. I know, I mentioned this yesterday and probably countless times before, but everything is blurring into one with me at times and the boredom is relentless. At least I'm allowing my brain to work even if it means telling you all about how interesting my boredom really is.

Back in the days when I smoked too much illegal substances, doing nothing was easy. I'd just do nothing. The 1980s were full of nothing with sporadic acts of less nothing. Now time, a thing I get obsessed with, is now, at times a vast chasm and all the things I used to wish I had the time for are hiding in the darkest crevices of my mind. Bloody hell, if I could earn money procrastinating I'd be a millionaire. But... I haven't got anything to do and I feel as though I shouldn't be frivolous yet I sit here and waffle away on a blog.

I'm going to start a small project on Monday, while the weather is still reasonable - by bonfire night it will be like standing under an elephant taking a piss - I'm going to do some border redesigning in the garden. Who says I'm not rock and roll?

Now, do and do something less boring and remember, be careful out there.

Tangerine Spleen

2011-10-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

So, last weekend I opened up my new short story and decided to start the process. I sat there and didn't even look at it. Something had caught my attention. Several minutes later, I started a new story.

My short stories might end up being a load of shit; but I've just finished the second one. I finished it last night with a bit of a whimper and it came in at 19,973 words - roughly the same as the first, if I recall. This time I very much think it's the bones of a slightly longer story; I already know there's parts that will need fleshing out a bit; but I'm also aware that it is attempting to be the antithesis of a specific sub-genre of fiction, so it might stay roughly the same.

The first short story is a ghost story of sorts and the second is a pragmatic post-apocalyptic story. I say pragmatic because, in my view, that is what it has to be.

This is all a bit prolific for someone who me because I haven't created this much stuff in years; if you discount my ramblings on my blogs. I seem to have found an enthusiasm for short stories after avoiding them like the plague for most of my writing life. I also know that this is a good thing; my penchant for tomes and attempted trilogies, quadrologies and shared universes has probably been a huge and unnecessary burden I've placed on myself. The problem is, I've now got a bug for them and I can't wait for the next idea to come along and it's just not there. I'm looking too hard for it and therefore it's hiding and pulling faces at me from its nook.

***

My finger was really disappointing...

***

I'm going to a gig on Monday night with Monseigneurs Roger and the other other Phil (of wine, women and Wandsworth fame). We're going to see Steven 'Hardest Working Man in Showbiz' Wilson perform his solo album (and probably get arsey at fans asking for Porcupine Tree tracks; in fact there will probably be a big message beamed onto the back drop telling people not to film it on phones, take pictures, record it or ask for PT songs otherwise you'll get a slap in the face and your iPod will be destroyed by Wilson on stage with a big fuck off hammer).

I mention this, not the bracketed bit, the bit about going out, because I don't get out much now and rather scarily I'm starting to enjoy my own company. I'm reminded of 1997, the middle of a very strange period of my life. This isn't detailed in any way in my book (available for the Kindle at all good Amazon stores) in fact, much of 1996 to 1999 isn't told in any detail, just selected highlights. I probably should have included it, but hey, since I wrote it I've thought of shedloads of stuff. Anyhow...

I might have smoked a lot of drugs while the shop was open, but between the years 1995 and 2000 I smoked far too much and the effects started to show in 1996 when I slowly withdrew from normal life. By 1997, I had become a fully-fledged borderline agoraphobic. You could almost count the places I went to on one hand and all of them were places I felt comfortable (although not comfortable enough to take a shit in), other than that I went nowhere. I didn't go anywhere where there were a lot of people; it wasn't paranoia, it was more a feeling of being suffocated by people I didn't know and didn't want to be near. I became so insular that the wife and friends started to take the piss out of me for it. Possibly not the best thing to do, but it's like water off a duck's back for me - especially at that period in my life.

In 1997, the boys got tickets to the League 2 play-off final between Northampton and Swansea (oh how the years have been both cruel and kind) and right up to the day before the final, I was going and then I didn't want to go and someone else took my place and had a great time - the Cobblers won and went up, Swansea stayed in the bottom flight for another long, hard and cold season (oh how the years have been both cruel and kind).

In 1998, the Cobblers got through to the League One final, tickets were acquired and I chickened out at the last minute again. I was really becoming a hermit. We stopped going to the pub; I became chained to my new office and that alone was a really bad thing - the world suddenly became what I could see out of my 9" by 15" window. I should explain; my office used to be the spare room, but when we took lodgers on, we converted the loft and moved my comics and office up there. once we stopped having lodgers again, the wife didn't want the spare room turned back into a hovel, so we converted the cupboard at the back of our bedroom into my office. It was wide enough to put a table in there, which had my bulky computer sitting on top and a flap for the keyboard (a good sturdy keyboard, much better than this piece of shit I use now that doesn't like my stumpy fingers). My chair went in and it touched the wall with the diddy window in it. It was a tight squeeze, but perfectly adequate. I spent about 20 hours a day in my bedroom and 'office' - a room not much bigger than a cubicle in a public toilet.

To say I went barking mad is an understatement. I even arranged for my drugs to be delivered and because we weren't spending any money on entertainment and a social life, I could buy MORE! And the ironic thing was, I didn't actually have to buy more because, I had a constant supply from work, which if I ever had to pay for it was usually about half of the street price. When I discovered my employer had been opening my mail and keeping my freebies for several years, I decided that he should pay for that by allowing me to smoke all his weed, whether he knew about it or not. I never took lots; that would have been seriously dishonest and a wee bit stupid, but he paid me back for years of deprivation and, of course, however bad it got, there was another reason for staying there. Going to the office was one of the few times I ever got out of the house, but, of course, I was again in an nice warm enclosed space with people I knew, but whenever a stranger came into this sanctum, I usually disappeared off into the front office and worked or sorted out more of the mountains of comics he had come into possession of.

Contrary to this bizarre state of mind, I did go on things like the legendary Laddie Boys Weekends, but I suppose I did that because I felt protected by my two or three fellow Weekend Idiots - plus I could take my illegal crutch with me. By the end of 1999, I realised that I had a problem and I gave up smoking for about six months. During that time, we had New Year's Eve and the big celebrations for 2000. We spent the evening round RnB's and at 1pm in the morning of the 'new millennium' Roger and I decided to go for a walk to Derrick's, which was about 3 miles away. We met all kinds of people and the atmosphere was unbelievably placid and celebratory; it was the night I got better.

Now, 11½ years later, I'm settling into a similar routine, but without the illegal drugs. I take the dogs out in the afternoon for an hour and that's it. I go shopping once a week and the pub on a Tuesday (sometimes if I'm lucky I'll be taken for a beer on a Thursday night or Friday lunchtime, depending on how lovely, splendid and wonderful Roger or One El are feeling) and that's it. The rest of the time I'm stuck here. I refuse to sit in front of the telly for any length of time, even though I have discs full of shit I should but probably never will watch and after my chores I either blog or fart about.

Going to London. Full of fat, sweaty, smelly people, in a venue with a band...

Oh God...

I am so looking forward to it!

Incantations and Toenails

2011-10-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Obviously, having no money has made me a wee bit insular. I don't go out because I can't really afford the unnecessary diesel/petrol and therefore I'm left to my devices during the day. I have my chores - having four hounds tends to mean the Dyson is out most days - and I seem to count the days off by emptying the dishwasher. I have also gone quite mad...

I walk around the house singing nonsense ditties and inventing new words to existing songs - none of them are particularly repeatable. I was sitting the bath this morning, inventing words to something or other, when the thought struck me like an epiphany (or it might have been when you finally get that joke). There are an enormous amount of people out there with little or no quality threshold. However, how does one measure quality? Is it good because some no mark critic tells us or is it good if it sells 50 trillion copies or seen by 100 gazillion people?

The problem is, if you measure quality by the masses then the likes of Matt Cardle, Rihanna and Coldplay are the yardstick to measure that quality by. Anyone with what they consider taste would argue that these kinds of acts as hardly superb quality. However, I've been listening to the new M83 album constantly, think it's inspired genius, yet it got a damning-with-faint-praise review in the Observer and will sell about 50,000 copies compared to Mylo Xyloto by Coldplay which will sell several million.

So I downloaded Xylo Myloto or whatever it's called and gave it a proper listen. It is hardly an inspirational album, but it's pleasant enough. There are some catchy tunes on it and others that make you wonder why the band recorded it and why that particular 5 minutes of a Coldplay gig might be the time for a quick shit or a stiff scotch at the bar.

The thing is, I can berate pop music, hip hop, the new RnB, Urban Grime and all the other piss stained rubbish that dominates the chart now, but I'm in the minority and that is slightly worrying. Many of my good friends have very eclectic and interesting music tastes, yet they are also in the minority, because for everyone of them that likes Frank Zappa or King Crimson or Kwoon or North Atlantic Oscillation, there are hundreds and thousands that like Beyonce, Bruno Mars and Mr Jay Zed (said in a Yorkshire accent). I'd rather listen to cats being castrated than spend 45 minutes listening to a Tinie Temper or Dizzy Rascal, but I'm probably ignorant and growing into my parents (well, actually someone else's parents, as mine were quite musically cool). The problem is, even the new rock bands that are surging through sound a bit meh and pfeh to me.

I remember many years ago having a conversation with a large group of people on the net about people's quality thresholds dropping, saying that some programmes they watch are substandard to ones we watched when we were younger. It's a difficult argument to win, because it requires almost nerd like determination to try and make someone else like or acknowledge that Show1997 is better than Show2007. For starters, how do you compare something like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer to Hill Street Blues or Twin Peaks to The Wire or The Sopranos? You can't. You cannot account for taste, because like what foods you like and dislike, it's an individual choice. I don't like raw tomatoes, some people think this is ridiculous, especially as I'll eat them in any other form (except ketchup).

When I did my own magazine, I didn't really want the reviews section to reflect the 'you should' or the 'you shouldn't' formula. It needed space to breath and reflect what something was about rather than anything else. Plus most people, it seems, want immediacy, rather than others who are happy to watch something develop. However, a turd is still a turd, regardless of how long you spend on making it look different.

Anyhow...

***

I love Northampton Council's new road resurfacing policy of just tarmacking everywhere there isn't a car. The Headlands, the feeder road for where I live, has been resurfaced - I can't understand why, when there are so many road really in need of doing - but only where there wasn't a vehicle at the time. Subsequently, it now has this patchwork feel about it, especially where there was a single car. Surely they in formed the locals of this? Probably saved them a few grand by doing it this way, but took a little longer while the engineers worked out the jigsaw puzzle.

***

When the rugby world cup started, I watched a report from the England training camp in New Zealand. It was September, the first official month of autumn and therefore the first month of spring in the southern hemisphere. Nothing strange there, except the report had England on a field, it was pissing down with rain; the landscape behind them could have been anywhere in the UK and most importantly, all the trees were fully loaded - all the leaves were out. This confused me slightly.

During the progress of the tournament, I saw various weather forecasts for the matches and in comparison to the UK, they were all virtually the same. England played a match in the evening and the temperature was 12 degrees; that night the UK night time temperature was 12 degrees.

I thought that was odd, yet strangely obvious and slightly comforting.

Jesus Hydrophobic Christ ... I need a job...

***

I'm having Finger Wars at the moment. Just as I start to feel human again, thanks to my new drugs, I'm fighting a war with three fingers on my left hand. The top of my thumb is healing well after my fight with the potato peeler, and I'm halfway through a bizarre method of getting rid of my first ever wart, which took up residence on my middle finger and is now being bombarded by... super glue. The glue is winning.

However, my index finger is now swollen and potentially pus-filled. Sounds nice.

We went Sweet Chestnut hunting on Saturday and came home with a pound of nuts. I also came home with one of the prongs from the prickly pods of joy stuck deep in my pointing finger. It smarted, but I figured inside 24 hours, my body's defences would kick it out in a show of minor volcanic interest. It didn't and because this is probably less than a millimetre long and buried deep inside my digit, it's just sitting there causing havoc.

The wife tried to get it out the other night, when it first started to go green. She got a needle and pricked it, but got nothing but some watery plasma type stuff. Last night she had another look and concluded that I need to incubate it seriously to draw it out. So as well as having super glue on my middle finger and a plaster wrapped round to stop the coating from cracking, I have a double plaster on my index and the finger of a surgical glove pulled over it to suffocate it into rebellion.

It hurts like a bastard and actually feels worse than sheering the top of my thumb off last week; it's a similar feeling, but more... electric. If I don't an impressive display of yellow junk pour out of it when it's ready, I shall be very disappointed!

***

Something similar to this happened to me in 1980. It got so bad I went to A&E and they lanced it. That was the day I started to realise that I no longer had a strong stomach for real blood and gore.

I stayed relatively good around blood and shit like that until the wife's late brother had his first brain operation to remove a tumour. We went to Oxford to see him and the back of his head looked like someone had had a go at him with an axe and not done a very good job. I felt my stomach do a 180 degree flip and I spent the rest of the visit sitting on steps outside smoking.

The thing that probably tipped me over happened about a year later. I had to take a guinea pig with an abscess to the vet. Our vet, Moira, who oddly enough suffered from the same complaint I now have, knew that I was pretty hands on and good in a crisis, so she decided to lance then abscess and I would hold Teasel, the gp rather than one of the nurses.

She got the poor bugger's head, and basically slit his throat. What ran out all over the table was a mixture of mainly yellow custard, speckled with blood and the smell... oh sweet Deity, the smell was like all your worst nightmares. Moira later told the wife, with huge amusement, that she looked at me, saw that all the colour had drained out of me and that I looked on the verge of passing out, so she called a nurse in who took the gp off of me and I just turned into the corner, like a naughty school boy, and tried to take a breath that didn't include this smell from H.P Lovecraft's arse.

That was it. Suddenly anything on TV that had real life operations or injuries would have me hiding behind a cushion ala Dr Who. I'm fine with film gore - it's not real, however authentic it might look - but operations, child birth, accident injuries - Fuck Right Off My Screen!

Why the hell don't they have warnings, saying, "This programme contains images of scalpels cutting into actual human flesh"?

***

I sent a few job applications off this week. Who knows?

***

I've been picking autumn raspberries in the garden. This summer and autumn have been odd and I can say I've quite enjoyed it and been satisfied with it. Yes, we had crap a July and August, but don't we always.

It's the 25th of October and the back door is open, I've been out without a jacket; the sun is shining and despite the little taster of autumn last week, which was pretty much expected, it's been a pretty fab last couple of months.

You watch it change after next weekend. You mark my prophetic words!

Sing When You're Whinging!

2011-10-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

The bride who had to leave her own wedding at St Paul's Cathedral by the side entrance is very right to be a bit pissed off, no one wants their big day spoiled, especially, as she said, by the 'ignorant scum' who have occupied the square in front of Wren's masterpiece. However, tweeting to friends that the protesters were 'ignorant scum' when your father is a extremely wealthy banker and then following up said tweet with the suggestion that these activists are thugs, hooligans and have no idea how the real world works, is a bit thin. She should realise that the protesters absolutely understand how the world works, otherwise they wouldn't have occupied St Paul's...

***

According to Tory Eurosceptics, as many as 50% of the population wants us to withdraw from Europe and feel that a referendum is the only way we can end this debate once and for all. Amazing isn't it, we go 40 years without a referendum in this country and a second one is hurtling towards us before the last one has been forgotten about.

The thing is Tory Eurosceptics are going to say anything. They'd argue they all have the biggest cocks in parliament if they thought some nubile wenches (or boys) would sit on them; where as the truth is probably that they are all the size of a pinto bean and last achieved an orgasm with the aid of a house boy at Eton. I'm fully aware that there are a growing number of people in this country that think we need to be out of Europe and away from the threat of having to bail out some 'tin pot democracy' (an expression levelled at Greece, no less). The thing is we're barely in Europe any how; we have always kept out of things we don't like; have vetoed plans that affect us more than we like and have generally wanted to play the game but have never been willing to get totally immersed in it. This is a good thing, shout all you Eurosceptics and possibly it is; but to blame Europe for the state it's in is a bit like the Tory's blaming Labour for everything from the economy to the melting ice caps - it simply isn't accurate.

If you could see my face, I'd say read my lips - World Economic Crisis. Not 'Labour imposed Economic Crisis' or 'It was the Greeks wot did it, guv'nor'. There is a global problem that our government blames the last government for. I'd actually call that pious and egotistical - we're not that important any more to enforce a global financial meltdown, however much we might think we are. But I digress; pulling out of Europe might be a good idea; it obviously wouldn't affect the rich as much as it would the poor and maybe we wouldn't have this unwanted bureaucracy forced on us (which, it should be pointed out, is actually from the imagination of Paul Dacre and his Daily Mail fantasists rather than based on any actual facts - we opt out of so much of EU strategies that I'm sure the weird and wonderful things the Mail claims we'll have to pay are just alarmist tactics from a paper that likes its readers to think Britain is ridiculously close to actually disappearing up Nicholas Sarkozy's arse hole).

***

Is it very mild or is it warm today? I'd say it was warm, by the virtue of the fact that I cleaned the duck shed out in a T shirt and a thong and nothing else.

***

I think I may have finally made it to the religious blacklist. While sitting here earlier, I saw a swarm of JWs working their way up the street; less than half an hour later, they had passed my house and were working their way back down. We had no call or knock on the door. I am now considering writing a book called 'How To Scare Off God Botherers'.

***

I sat and looked at all the DVDs and CDs I have that are full up with TV programmes or films that I thought might be good to watch and have never bothered to even start. Some stuff, like The Wire and a couple of others, may well get an airing, but others are just now taking up room - despite the small dimensions of a CD - and I have to be honest, I've had more than enough time in the last 6 months to sit down and watch them and decide whether I want to finish watching them.

Saying that, I have about 100 CDs with music on that I may never ever listen to. It's an ultimately pointless and futile exercise to collect things and never watch or listen to them. I often joke I'll have lots to do when I finally retire, but frankly if I don't watch or listen to these things soon, it'll have a similar feeling to watching McMillan & Wife in 2011.

***

I'm sitting here, at this moment, listening to Fuckwit burp, fart and generally grunt out the front of his house. He must have Tourette's, because if he hasn't he was obviously raised by pigs and that sentence upsets me because I really like pigs...

Fuckwit's partner Fat Lass or whatever it was I called her last time, actually looks like a pig and I know how that makes me sound, but she does! However, instead of snorting, grunting and squeeing, she cackles and sounds like she had most of her brain removed before puberty. Did I mentioned that her stock response to something she doesn't understand is to laugh heartily?

This is a woman who complains to the Incest family (Fuckwit's neighbours on the other side) about the amount of cats - domestic, stray and feral - that live around the gardens, yet continues to put food out for whatever she thinks is going to come into the garden - normally all the cats. Now this you would think is the reason for her complaints, but it isn't. She gets pissed off with Incest Woman because the cats all seem to like her more than Fat Lass - it's that childish.

Jesus H Smith, there are some people on this planet that seriously wouldn't be missed by anyone if they just died or were abducted by aliens.

***

Us and the Fishwife Family are on UFW or Urban Fox Watch, after one of Fishwife's chickens was ripped apart in front of their 6 year old. He's a sensitive lad at the best of times and seeing this was slightly traumatic. His 5 year old brother had the best idea, "Can't we just shoot them?" However, Fishwife and his missus were more disturbed by this than the hen death. I suppose I should be grateful that they think their children should be more civilised and not resort to violence, but this is a fox and it ripped their hen to bits; I'm with the 5 year old and I said as much.

***

The doc's new drug regime which involves something called Celecoxib seems to be working. The ultra painful areas of my skeleton - back, elbow and shoulders, seems to have abated considerably, even after just four days. It's pretty amazing really, considering it's a drug prescribed for people with arthritis and I haven't got it.

There is, however, a couple of unwanted side effects - indigestion and tremendous wind. The indigestion has eased now, but I'm still farting like a Viz character. I can live with that, even if others can't.

***

Unless I'm completely wrong here, as I understand it, Gadaffi G'Duck, if arrested, would have stood trial in Libya for his crimes and if found guilty (Ha!) would have faced execution.

He obviously just got shot by one of his overzealous captors, obviously thinking he would become a legend in his country for his act. However, it seems everyone is up in arms about his death and Human Rights campaigners are asking questions. Sounds to me like the usual bollocks the Human Rights people feel the need to comment on and sour grapes from everyone else because they wanted to be the ones who killed him!

***

Heard a great line about Arsenal being bad dog walkers, because they can never hold onto a lead...

'Orrible Little Bratwurst

2011-10-20T02:38:00.001-07:00

This was obviously meant to be posted the other day and wasn't...

Let's get this out of the way quickly: I have made some leeway regarding my back. I'm going to be referred back to the consultant and my doctor - perhaps aided by my sardonic yet level headed approach - agreed that there is obviously a problem that needs to be addressed. I actually spent a good 20 minutes with her and was surprised that I got so much support and affirmative action. I shouldn't be and it all may come to nothing, but it was good to be able to unload to someone who could give measured and expert advice.

The thing is I'm not disabled, I accept that and to be honest I'm very glad. Being disabled in 2011 isn't much better than it has ever been. My doc accepts that nearly 200 days sick since 2009 is indicative of an underlying problem that isn't really being addressed; she also accepts that, currently, I am unable to do specific tasks. She also accepts that I'm not angling for DLA or whatever InCap is now. As I pointed out, I want a job and need one, for at least the next ten years, to be able to pay off the mortgage - benefits don't do that. So, I suppose I'm going to have to consider becoming a desk jockey and the vast array of jobs that comes with that description make me want to throw myself off of a shortish building, repeatedly...

We'll see what comes of this attempt at doing something to sort out my crappy spine.

***

I won't dwell on this next point as much as I'd love to, but let's just say if you work hard, pay your taxes, NI and follow all the rules, if and when you lose your job - probably through redundancy - you qualify for Contributions Based JSA. This entitles you to... fuck all. It entitles you to £67 a week. That's it. As far as supporting you anywhere else - forget it. You are not entitled to free prescriptions, free dental treatment, you're not entitled to anything free.

If however, you've never worked; have never contributed to society in any way whatsoever, apart from maybe deposit little kids around the firmament. If you're a foreign national, have dependants who have also not contributed anything to the IRS or if you are a long term unemployed person who has no intention of ever getting a job - you are entitled to a list of free stuff that would make the average person's mind boggle.

It's fucking disgusting.

***

Several years ago, I attended the funeral of a work colleague who had died suddenly at the age of 42. After the funeral, the small team of people I worked with went to one of our colleagues favourite pubs, in Wellingborough, to toast her one last time. We'd been in the pub for about twenty minutes when four 'Travellers' walked into the pub.

The atmosphere changed almost immediately. The bar staff went on edge; people perched at the bar slunk off into corners and buried their heads in newspapers and the four of them stood at the bar, drinking strong cider and jabbering away in their own Irish tinged language. In all the years I'd lived in Wellingborough, I'd never had any form of encounter with these kind of people before, although I had heard stories that would make your hair curl. I thought it was quite ironic that now I'd moved I was having my first full blown example of them.

It was time for another round of drinks; my boss went to the bar with one of my colleagues; I disappeared into the men's room, leaving three female colleagues sitting alone in the lounge. When I emerged from the loo there was some kind of confrontation going on. The four Travellers were making unwanted and unpleasant advances to the three women. One of them made it quite clear they were neither interested in being bought drinks, not in having the attention of these people. These simple social rules were completely ignored and two of the men sat down where my boss and I had been sitting. Tension rose and my boss, walked from the bar and nicely and without any sense of confrontation said, "Look lads, we've all just been to a funeral; can you leave us alone please?" The men ignored my boss and went back to trying to get the girls to accept a drink from them. One of the woman said quite firmly to a man making very unwanted advances to her that she wanted him to go away and he turned quite nasty, threatening to 'beat the fuck out of her' if you talked to him like that. My boss looked at the landlord, who shrugged his shoulders and disappeared out the back.

Eventually, the four young men, now joined by me and my other colleague, sensed that it wasn't going to be their day, so they retreated to the bar, where they hurled abuse in our direction until they left. As they were leaving, the most mouthy of the group stopped at the door, turned to my boss and said something about it being his funeral next if they ever ran into him again.

The landlord reappeared shortly after and apologised, but also said he wouldn't call the police, because the police didn't respond to calls regarding Travellers and if he had managed to get them to attend, he would have felt retribution from the Travellers, either through taking over the pub with hordes of them on busy nights or damage. We were all slightly horrified, but most of us lived in Wellingborough and realised that what the landlord said was very true; Wellingborough police rarely, if ever, responded to complaints about Travellers - it was literally too much trouble and fraught with danger.

During the 12 or so years I lived in Wellingborough or Taxi Town as we often referred to it as, I'd seen the damage left by Travellers. There was a place we took the dogs to, just down the road from where I lived. It was called Dale End and was a large field used by the local scouts and sat adjacent to a local primary school's playing field. Until 1996, it had never been closed to vehicles, but then a group of caravans and expensive cars turned up and made the field look like some mad cross between a car boot sale and a gypsy village. They were there for five days before they were moved on and during those five days, 14 houses were burgled; thousands of pounds worth of damage had been down to the surrounding landscape and when we could finally take the dogs back down there, all the little copses of trees and wooded areas were awash with human shit, bags of rubbish, empty cans of lager and broken glass. The field looked like the aftermath of a violent Glastonbury.

The local paper ran a feature on it and asked the local council and the police what they were doing about it and the best answer they got was to say that bollards would be erected at Dale End to prevent it from being occupied again. But what about all the burglaries and damage? Asked the local reporter. The police issued a large number of crime numbers for insurance purposes; the council were conspicuous in their absence.

I retell this because of the business at Dale Farm in Essex. Arguably, Travellers contribute nothing but misery and bad feeling to society; they abide by their own laws; trample over the laws of the land, use their ill-gotten gains to attempt legal fights for rights they don't recognise 360 days a year and revert to type when they lose. They are the worst elements of society and when violence flared in Essex yesterday, you could have set your watch by it. I'm sure they love each other, are reasonably kind to something and feel they are oppressed; but they give no evidence whatsoever of being anything more than retarded and violent thugs with a wanton disregard for anything they disagree with. They have cost tax payers enormous amounts of money and while you could criticise Basildon Council for their handling of it; as I said many weeks ago, if I'd decided to build something in my back garden that contravened planning rules, I'd be made to take it down. What makes these scumbags any different from the rest of us?

They're called Travellers; they should travel, preferably back to Ireland or some other country, preferably one that is considerably less tolerant than us.

I have to say that the Labour MEP for that region, Richard Howitt, presumably doesn't want his career to be a long one. He came across as ignorant, ill-informed and slightly ridiculous - just the kind of twat Labour could do with getting rid of if they ever want to stand a chance of being elected anywhere ever again.

Waiting For the Drugs to Kick In

2011-10-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have been spending a lot of time blogging. And yes, I am aware that too much of a good thing often spoils the fun. How many kids have begged and pleaded their parents for one more go only to projectile vomit over the back of mum's head on the journey home with a mixture of candy floss, hot dogs and excitement?

Obviously, not everybody is going to read everything I write about. looking at the stats to my blog, it appears I am most popular when I am in Victor Meldrew mode - having a rant against fuckwittedness, bureaucracy, arseholes and people who don't deserve even a thoroughly nasty death. This, I am sure, would concern some people - a sort of car crash blogging phenomena, where only the most popular are the ones that rage against the machine of modern wankiness. I suppose that's human nature, or at least one facet of it.

For people who read my blog, my rants are considerably more interesting than my wibblings about my health. That's totally understandable; no one really wants to read about someone else's woes when their own lives are bordering on shit. Oh well...

After the day I had yesterday, today is calm, cold and slightly unwell. I woke up after a surprisingly long night's sleep; I was in bed just after midnight - pretty much a rare thing for me on a school night. Perhaps I was feeling the beginnings of a reappearance of the virus that has, for a few weeks now, been banging at the door, but has never quite stepped over the threshold? I decided, before I really woke up and realised how fucking awful I felt, that I would have a bath - soaking my back in hot water helps me move around better during the first couple of hours of doing my daily 100-year-old man impersonation.

It wasn't until after the bath that I realised I was feeling a bit shit. The wife has a way of describing it, which is almost impossible to put into words, because she doesn't use words or even gesticulations to infer how she feels - she just sort of bobs her head. She'd say, "I feel a bit..." and then bob her head in a 'not quite sure this is reality' way. The thing is, as an ex-stoner, this makes a lot of sense to me, which is why it has stayed a staple form of description in the house for 25 years. I once said to a mate, a long time ago, that being stoned was a little like being ill - your temperature rises, you get a bit insular and if it wasn't for the pleasant feeling, you'd feel like a bag of shit. Hardly a ringing endorsement for taking drugs...

In the last year, since the explosion of my spine into a ball of rage and hate, I have had a fair few drugs to ease the pain - everything from morphine based Bastard Pills™ to things Michael Jackson had a penchant for to bog standard over the counter rubbish. I think they all work to varying degrees - things like Ibuprofen, paracetamol and codeine probably do take the edge off the pain - from unbearable to almost unbearable - not a massive distinction, but trust me, better than nothing at all. The stronger the drugs have got the more adverse reactions they have on me. The Oxycodone (Google it and be frightened) fucked me up so badly I might as well just gone and scored some skag from 16 Stone's husband; Tramadol don't appear to do anything until you stop taking them; then all of a sudden the craving for a cigarette becomes as insignificant as a retarded housefly and both of them deliver an unwanted punch - they make you feel a bit stoned, but without the pleasant bits. When I came off Oxy, I had the drug withdrawal equivalent of the flu (or Cold Turkey as it is referred to in certain circles). Having what amounted to a week of being really ill, coupled with a prolapsed disc was possibly one of the worst weeks of my life. I'm not suicidal, never have been, but Jesus Horatio Christ I could understand why some people throw themselves off of Beachy Head. There is also the plain and simple fact that the stronger the drug the less of a shit you give about anything. I'd contest that drugs that fuck you up don't actually ease the pain, they just make you care less about it!

Tomorrow is D Day - or rather Doc Day. I go to see my doctor with a continually morphing spiel; do I focus on my back and risk my elbow becoming an after thought that gets forgotten in everything else (I rarely talk about my elbow because I don't want people thinking I'm either a hypochondriac or a wuss) and when do I mention the conversation with my employment adviser, the one that starts, 'Do you realise that I've had 187 days off sick during the last two years I was at work?'. It would be a real pisser if I turned up there with a cold.

The reason I bring this up is because over the last few weeks I've had this virus creeping around the edges, but sitting here this morning feeling slightly disembodied, I realised that even if I do have a runny nose sometimes and I'm coughing a wee bit more; it's no more than you would expect at this odd time of the year. I tried to work out if there was any pattern to this; because I started to believe that it wasn't a virus at all. By the time I finish this I will have convinced myself it isn't - the reason is because in the time it has taken me to write to this point, I've started to feel human again...

Now, they say unemployment is a downer and can make people feel ill; it's all psychosomatic innit? But I don't think that's the case; yes I worry about not having any money and starving to death, but I have an iota of confidence in my ability left and know that whoever gives me a job will ultimately get their money's worth. Plus, there have been times when I've actually enjoyed having the freedom I've had for the last six months. I have spent my second summer out of three off work and had the weather been better I probably would be complaining about melanoma now rather than a bad back. No, I think the dodginess I have been feeling could be something a lot more insidious...

I stopped taking the painkillers back in February. I had already thrown the walking stick away and as I've chronicled on these pages, I started to feel bloody good again. Yes, I had the after effects of the prolapse - bad sciatica at times and that dull ache at the base of my spine that finally made me understand what my dad was going on about for years - the one that seems to hang around like an unwanted party guest. I did stuff with my posture; did more walking and generally by the time July came around I was feeling like I could do all the things I used to be able to do before my back rebelled against the rest of my body. Then during that month my elbow started to play up. At first I thought it was just a case of Tennis Elbow, even though I don't play tennis. It made perfect sense; I'd spent two years barely using my left arm, to the point where you could actually see the difference because of the muscle wastage. Once the op sorted it out everything went back to normal, but my right arm had taken most of the strain and it could well be the problems with my elbow could be down to those old chestnuts Mr Wear and Mrs Tear.

It wasn't that bad at first, just a tenderness around the elbow joint, but by the end of August it had begun to inveigle its way into my everyday life. In the cupboard in the conservatory was a big bag of Tramadol; like a said I'd given up the painkillers months earlier, but didn't see any point in getting rid of 400 strong painkillers when my subconscious was continually worrying about slipping another disc. I also didn't see the point in taking them for my elbow; yes it was very painful, but was it bad enough to warrant a bandage rather than a band aid? I dug out my old prescriptions, found one that had a repeat for Solpadol - the 30mg of codeine infused paracetamol which were the last medium strength pills I had taken before being put on the horse pills and got it filled. I decided to take them supplemented with Ibuprofen. Then about a week later I probably had another prolapse and in the last month that 400 tablets of Tramadol has become two.

I was down to less than 10 by the weekend, and the Solpadol was down to the last dozen or so (there might be a few lying around somewhere). Fortunately the pain had decreased from a 9 to about a 6 and there was the doctor's looming ever closer on the horizon; so I've been very careful with the Tramadol; taking them first thing in the morning, supplemented by various other drugs and relying on my dwindling stock of Solpadol to take main strain. And it's been since I've decreased consumption of Michael Jackson's favourite painkiller that I've noticed the days where I've felt like complete and utter pooh. Ooh, can you see a correlation there? I can.

I think I've become as dependent on my daily concoction of painkillers as I have with drinking at least 9 cups of coffee between the hours of 9am and 4pm. If I haven't had a coffee by midday, I start to get a caffeine headache. Neither of these things can be doing me a lot of good, but what are the alternatives? A spine transplant is not possible; even if I get to have an MRI scan and see a consultant, the conclusions were all a bit meh and they all opted for time to be the healer. Perhaps the NHS's new policy is the make people believe something is being done about their problems, when nothing is?

I've been doing this an hour now; the last two Tramadol have been taken and I've had 4 cups of coffee. I still feel a bit fuzzy, but that's probably the effects of the drugs rather the effects of not having them. That leaves me with even more of a doctor's dilemma. I need both my back and elbow dealing with; I need her to acknowledge that 187 days sick through this 'wear and tear' problem - 172 of those days were certified - isn't a good advert and suggests that my problem is a disability; even if she thinks it's a temporary thing, it's a disability for me at this present moment in time and it doesn't appear to be in any hurry to move along. And, I need her to understand that the small pharmaceutical firm I have consumed since May 2009 isn't doing me any favours. You can't have the chicken without the egg; but when the egg is always bad, it's the chicken you have to start being concerned about.

I hate going to the doctor with more than one problem - for a multitude of reasons from psychological to the fear that I will be branded an attention seeking hypochondriac. The thing is, I wasn't even going to see the doctor this time - I'm that confident in her abilities, I was just going to let nature take its course; after all, that's all she'd eventually do.

If you'd asked me a year ago if I wanted an operation, I would have bitten your hand off. By April, when I was offered one, I was recuperating so well that it seemed to be something that was no longer really needed. I actually said to the surgeon, 'I hope I don't rue this decision.' He said that we understand our bodies better than any expert and only I could ultimately decide that. I'm ruing it.

It's now 1pm and I'm virtually back to how I feel most days. I'm a fucking prescription drug addict!

Zen and the Art of Being a Sphincter

2011-10-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

[Warning: contains bad language, sexism and a degree of intolerance]

I got a tax rebate on Friday. Woo and indeed Hoo. It was only for £164, but Jesus Harry Christ did it arrive at a time when we really needed a bit of extra cash. The wife cajoled me all weekend to remember to put it in the bank on Monday, especially as I bought the shopping on Saturday and subsequently went pretty close to my overdraft limit. So, like the dutiful hubby I am, I trundled off to the local Co-op and it's boxy post office run by the amiable Justin.

Parking on Bushland Road is a bit like some Serengeti plain; sometimes it's empty and other times it's full to the brim; today was the latter, so I had to park about a ¼ of a mile from the shop. My back has been screaming at me all morning and literally by the time I walked the 400 metres or so, I was wincing with almost every step. I have to admit I was slightly preoccupied when I walked into the shop, therefore I amazingly missed the man I walked into. I say amazingly because he made Fat Bloke from the Harry Enfield Show look like Kate Moss. He was also quite old and had a ruddy face and receding hairline - this doesn't have much to do with the story, but it adds a bit of texture.

"Watch the fuck where you're going!" He bellowed at me as I bounced off his midriff.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you." I said quite honestly.

"How do you miss something this size?" He said without even a hint of humour in his voice.

"Okay, I should have said I wasn't paying attention," I said, putting my hands up in that universal admission of surrender.

"Just watch where you're fucking going!" He bellows at me; loudly enough for the half a dozen people in the queue for the tills to turn and yaup.

When I buggered my back up again, about a month ago, I felt it go. I had a twang in the small of my back and then, a bit like peeing yourself, there was a hot spread of fire across my spine. I had a similar thing happen while standing in front of Uberfat Man. Something just went twang in my head. So as he literally pushed past me, I failed to keep my mouth shut. "Look Fatty, I said I was sorry, there's no need to act like a complete cunt."

"What did you say?"

"You heard me or does being so fucking fat make you deaf as well?"

"How dare you?" He says, face turning a slightly more ruddy hue.

"How dare you not accept my apology. I said I was sorry or doesn't apologising mean fuck all now days?"

"Look I've had a bad day, you should have been more careful."

"So you having a bad day means you can act like a prick, does it?" I was fuming and Uberfat Man probably saw this. He mumbled something about something that might have been an admission of his irascibility or might have been some kind of curse on all my family, I couldn't tell, he'd turned away and was waddling towards the Suzuki WagonR that I somehow doubted would take his weight. I muttered something rhyming with 'Cat' under my breath and headed for the post office situated, fortunately, well away from the front of the store.

The queue for Justin was six deep and standing in front of me was a gaggle (or maybe the collective noun should have been 'clunge') of fat chavs. The one we shall call 15stone was directly in front of me; she was wearing a pair of baggy black shorts, pink tights and a bomber jacket. She had bright red hair, almost purple in the fluorescent lights of the shop. Next to her was 14stone, who was wearing some grey knitted combo that might have been fashionable in the 1970s. She had reddish auburn hair with brilliant white streaks in it, which were a good four inches from the roots; said roots were a different colour from the rest of her bonce and it gave the illusion of some bizarre set of alien traffic lights. The final one of the three or 16stone as we shall refer to her as, had naturally frizzy ginger hair, tied back into a Croydon Face Lift which did nothing but make her face look even more capable of curdling milk. I really can't remember what she was wearing, except that she was leaning against the counter on the left with her arms resting on her belly.

14 Stone: Russ is in Sri Lanka.

15 Stone: What's he doing there then?

14 Stone: He's on 'oliday. A couple of weeks after he gets back he's off to Morocco with his mates.

15 Stone: What's he doing there?

14 Stone: He's going on 'oliday again, innee.

16 Stone: Fucking queue. How long is that old bastard going to take. You'd think they would have a queue for pensioners only. Don't they realise people can't wait around all day. I got things to do.

14 Stone: What you got to do then?

15 Stone: Probably fucking.

16 Stone: Nah, Steve's at work and besides, I've had the shits really bad last couple of days. I wouldn't want to have an accident.

Massive cackles emanate from the trio.

15 Stone: 'ow come your fella's getting two 'olidays then?

14 Stone: He sold that Beemer he bought a few months ago. Some twat on Lumbertubs gave him the full asking price.

16 Stone: How come he didn't take you then?

14 Stone: I don't like 'ot weather, do I.

16 Stone: What the fuck is he doing in Sri Lanka, he can't stand Pakis.

15 Stone: He likes a good curry though.

14 Stone: Sri Lanka doesn't have any Pakis in it.

16 Stone: Well they all look the same don't they?

There were nods and general murmurs of agreement and the queue moved forward. I missed a chunk of conversation because my mind was wandering back to the rudeness of Uberfat Man.

16 Stone: Fucking 'ell. Steve reckons old people should have their own lane in the motorways.

14 Stone: They can't 'elp it. We'll all be old eventually.

16 Stone: I'd rather die than be like that.

Keep eating the chips and pies, darling and your wish will ultimately come true I thought and smiled to myself.

15 Stone: What are you laughing at?

She was addressing me. I looked slightly puzzled at her and shrugged.

15 Stone: Are you listening to our conversation?

Me: No.

15 Stone: What you fucking laughing at?

I frowned and wondered if I had an invisible neon sign above my head which invited people to take a pop.

Me: I was not laughing and I was not smiling at you.

16 Stone: Yeah, what are you laughing about?

Me: Something that isn't your business?

15 Stone: Fucking freak.

The queue moved forward a couple more feet and I opted to stand my ground, put a couple of feet between me and the three fat witches. Half a minute passed and the women were still mumbling to each other with the occasional glance thrown in my direction. I started to zone out again, figuring a bit of daydreaming would make all the idiots go away. Then there was a tap on my shoulder. I looked around and there was a little old lady standing behind me. I smiled at her.

Little Old Lady: the queues moved.

She says pointing at the three foot gap between me and the munters in front.

Me: I know.

Little Old Lady: well keep up with the queue or I'll have your place.

I looked at her and shook my head.

Me: we'll still get there in the same amount of time.

16 Stone: why don't you let her into your place. If you can't keep up with the queue you should lose your place.

I could feel the anger brewing, so I walked the three steps forward and stood about 8 inches away from the bunch of ugly in front of me.

14 Stone: Don't get too close.

They all cackled again and 16 Stone's turn for the cashier came up. She left the other two and we shuffled forward another couple of steps. The two other women went half way to the other woman, cutting the usual distance between the person being served and the waiting queue by about half. I opted not to follow them, figuring I'd stay by the Queue Here sign.

Little Old Lady: The queue?

She was pointing at the four foot gap between me and the other two girls. I pointed at the rather large sign that said 'Queue Here' and turned my back on her. I heard a harumph and she waltzes past me and stands in the gap between me and the munters.

Me: Excuse me. What do you think you're doing?

Little Old Lady: I told you if you didn't keep up with the queue I'd have your place.

Me: But it says queue here; the gap is for privacy.

She just ignored me and turned her back on me.

Me: Ignorant fucking old bag.

15 Stone: What did you call her.

Me: She just pushed in front of me.

14 Stone: I said he was a freak.

Little Old Lady: He wasn't keeping up with the queue.

Me: I was waiting at the sign.

Little Old Lady: Well, these girls are waiting here.

Me: They know the woman being served by Justin.

Little Old Lady: Well, you're not having your place back.

16 Stone: (in the middle of being served) Yeah, let the pensioner in; she shouldn't have to wait.

What?

15 stone: (speaking to the old woman) Some people are just so ignorant these days.

Little Old Lady: He's probably one of those Eastern Europeans; think they can come over here and run the country.

How does that work then? I maybe only uttered a couple of dozen words, but they were all in English and all with my pretty neutral English accent.

14 Stone: My Russ might have a job if it wasn't for all those Poles. Coming over here, getting our jobs and buying our houses. They ought to all be deported. My neighbour says they all belong to some Polish Mafia.

The next few minutes went by without incident. All three of the flabby triplets were served and the old lady, who had pushed past me, got served. She wanted her pension, TV license stamps, electricity card and various other things doing. I timed her; she was at the counter for 11 minutes. When she finished, she walked past me and gave me what can only be described as an evil and satisfied smile.

Me: (on arrival to Justin) Did you see that?

Justin: What?

Me: That old woman pushed in front of me.

He looked at me like I was a five year old moaning about how unfair it was to have to go to bed at 7pm. I paid my money in and left. Anyone seeing me must have thought I had ringing in my ears, because I was shaking my head in disbelief - all the way out of the doors and up to my car...

And it was only 9.35am.

***

Last Monday an old colleague contacted me and asked if I would help with her daughter's university project. Kim, the daughter of my old colleague, is doing some kind of journalism course and her current project is about unemployed people and how being made redundant can have adverse effects on people. She wanted to talk to me because I fitted the bill perfectly.

I spoke with her on Thursday afternoon and she arranged to come round this morning. She was due at 10am, but turned up a little after I got back from my post office adventures. She explained she gave herself plenty of time to find me and found me quicker than she thought. I invited her in, placated the dogs, which she was perfectly excellent with and wandered into the kitchen. "Would you like a cuppa?"

"I don't drink tea or coffee. Have you got any hot chocolate?"

"No. I don't."

"I'm okay then." We chatted for a few minutes, talked about her mum, what she was doing at uni and her iPhone, which she was fiddling with throughout the first five minutes she was in the house. "Are you sure you haven't got any hot chocolate?" She asked.

"I'm positive. We don't drink it and frankly we couldn't afford it."

"You must have one of those free sample sachets that come on the front of magazines." I wondered if I was dreaming.

"No I haven't. We don't buy magazines that have free samples on them."

"Well, I would have thought being unemployed you'd buy things like that for the free stuff?" I wondered if I should explain that the average magazine that gives cover-mounted stuff away usually weighs in at about £3 and the freebie could be bought for less than 20p - economical it's not.

"Oh. Okay. Have you got any Lemsips?" I frowned and shook my head.

"It's just I think I'm coming down with a cold."

"There's a shop at the end of the road." She looked at me like I'd just suggested going upstairs to have some naked fun.

"Have you got any juice?" We didn't. Then I realised she wasn't talking about fruit juice, she was talking about squash.

"I've got some orange and mango."

"I don't like mango." I felt like being really sarcastic, but bit my lip instead. "Could I have a really weak coffee?" Obviously she liked coffee more than she thought.

Anyhow... after this rather bizarre opening, we sat down in the lounge and she got out her ... notebook. I groaned as I sat down on the sofa. "Is your back bad?" I nodded. "My dad's an osteopath." I knew this as her mother was forever touting her husband's business whenever I saw her; she knew I had back troubles and apparently her husband could solve problems that the combined might of the NHS couldn't.

"I know."

"You should go and see him."

"Even if I thought it would do any good, I can't afford it."

"It's only £28 a session; if you're unemployed you get 10% discount."

"I don't have £25.20 to spend on osteopaths I'm afraid."

"No, I said it was £28."

"Yes, but I'm unemployed. I'd get the 10% discount?"

"Oh is that what it is with the discount?" She laughed and I started to wonder how she ever got into university.

"I'll bet you spend that much on painkillers and special mattresses?"

"Um... I get my prescriptions free."

"Do you? I nodded. "Oh..." I smiled. "Perhaps I could ask him to see you as a favour for you doing this?"

"I wouldn't bother; there's no point seeing an osteopath unless you can see him over a number of sessions and I really can't afford it."

"But if you started seeing him, you might get a job in between and be able to pay for your visits." I started to wonder if she was just there to sell her father's wares.

A few minutes passed and we got down to the nitty-gritty of her questions. "So, what's it like being unemployed?" I started to give her a nice full description of the last six months, but she stopped me. "Sorry, but I can't write all of this down. Can you give me, I dunno, six words to describe it?" I felt like cackling a bit, but pulled six words from out of my head that were apt. She nodded while scribbling them down. "What have you done about getting a job?"

"I've looked. Applied for and failed to get a couple of dozen."

"Okay. Why did you lose your job?"

"I got made redundant."

"What does that actually mean?" Can you imagine what was by this time going on in my head?

"It means the job I was doing had become obsolete."

"Yes, but what does that mean?"

"It means that the job I did stopped existing." She frowned, scribbled some notes down, went to ask me something, thought better of it and fell silent. I felt I needed to elucidate a little. "After the budget came in, the YOT, who I worked for, didn't have enough money in their budget to pay every one, so they kind of decided my grade wasn't needed any more."

"Didn't they offer you another job?" I nearly laughed.

"Um, they didn't have enough money to pay me and my colleagues, so they had to make us redundant." She nodded like she understood every word I said.

"That seems a bit unfair." I felt like suggesting 'unfair' was maybe a tad too lenient, but opted against it. "Would you consider doing something else?"

I was about to answer this with an explanation about how my back trouble was preventing me from doing certain types of job, but before I started I could see where the conversation would go and frankly I didn't want to see her bloody osteopath father; in fact, I wouldn't go and see her osteopath father even if I won millions of pounds on the lottery. I'd probably go to his fiercest rival and offer ringing endorsements rather than go to her father.

The next thing I knew, she was standing up. "That's about everything I need," she said making her way to the front door. I was a little bemused, but also quite pleased that this experience was over. Kim thanked me for my help - I wasn't totally sure if I'd given her anything other than a disinclination to see her osteopath father.

I saw her out and said my goodbyes and wondered just what the point of the exercise was.

Then I walked back in the house to be presented by a big pile of dog sick...

The Space and Time Travel Agency

2011-10-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

Excuse me for a few moments of self-indulgence and another chance to tell you what an amazingly good ideas man I am...

My good and dear friend Roger commented on musician Boo Hewerdine's FB page today with something that reminded me of an idea I had back in the 1990s (before Dr Who got its revamp). An idea that I occasionally delve back into, but rarely do anything with. In 1997, when I had just started to get back into writing fiction and started to put my myriad of weird and wonderful ideas down on paper (or computer), I had this idea which I dubbed The Space and Time Travel Agency a kind of cross between Mr Ben, Doctor Who and Jim Starlin's Metamorphosis Odyssey and his Warlock saga (the latter two being a very much acid influenced cosmic saga by one of comics' most respected drug fiends).

The nuts and bolts of the idea was that a man - not too dissimilar to the kids' programme Mr Ben - had run off with his race's only means of salvation. A machine that allowed them to go back in time and erase the mistakes that caused their ultimate downfall. The man, who still hasn't got a name (oddly enough), stole the machine because the changes his race intended to make would almost certainly destroy his family rendering him non-existent.

The man buys a shop in a back alley of a city on Earth and offers people the opportunity to travel to any when or where to observe monumental events; the only proviso being they cannot tamper with time or change the course of history or the future. Sounds all a bit DW, but remember that it was a dead concept in 1997, the film had essentially flopped and the BBC were not in any hurry to bring him back.

The man grabs the attention of a future earth that is run by the Multi-dimensional Church of Disorder - a quasi-religious movement that controls the planet and uses time travel to change events in Earth's past for their benefit. As soon as the man discovers their interest in him, he becomes aware that they have been manipulating the past; changing things, allowing others, so that they would ultimately be the most powerful organisation on the planet and this rogue man with his machine could feasibly change back all the changes the MDCD make or it could fall into the hands of rebels, causing a Time War (yep, something else I envisaged in 1997).

That was about it; I got about 10,000 words down and eventually moved onto other projects and ideas. The thing was, the concept of a man out of time (so to speak) stuck with me. I had an idea about a time traveller, created by a future world, who lived outside the constraints of time. He rebelled against the authority that created him to change events in the past and eventually had to fight different time travellers from different points in the future, while all the time killing ancestors so that whatever point in the future invents time travel, he could make sure it doesn't actually happen. However, despite putting down a few thousand words of this, the concept blew my brain apart and just thinking about it left me gibbering like a demented fool.

Eventually, I started on a massive idea called Cosmopolis - set 1million years in the future; which, while it didn't have any time travel in it, had a man who was half a million years old and another who was a couple of billion. It also started the seeds of another idea I had; something called Stasis - an invention that allowed you to place something out of time, so that it never aged or in the case of its fictional invention, allowed space travel, the transportation of perishable goods and was a future equivalent of cryogenics. Stasis froze things in time, so that anything going on outside of it would continue to age, but anything inside would emerge as if they had spent less than a second of their own lives. I'm sure I've discussed Cosmopolis here before - probably the time I gave a list of all my failed projects - but it was a really ambitious idea of mine. I envisaged an entire series of books all based in the Dyson Sphere that was Cosmopolis. I even stole the name of a comicbook villain as my hero for the series - Korvac.

I even attempted to write a kind of prequel to the story, about the invention of Stasis and the battle to control it. That, like all the others mentioned here, sits in stasis, waiting for the day I win the Lottery, when I can create my own publishing company and write or finish all the ideas I've ever had.

The thing is, all the above are science fiction, something I've never really been a big fan of. I think I've read about 5 SF novels in my entire life (not including the faux SF by Stephen King) and as I'm not particularly science minded, this makes a lot of sense. Yet, science fiction and fantasy are such good mediums for outlandish and impossible stories; it amazes me it isn't a popular as it could be.

But then again, when you have TV programmes like Terra Nova, which purports to be SF, but is actually The Waltons with dinosaurs; or the BBC's Outcasts, where nothing interesting happened until it was cancelled; you can understand why SF isn't treated the way fans believe it should be. I think it would be excellent, especially in light of HBO's Game of Thrones excursion into pure fantasy, if one of the larger Cable companies invested in a proper SF series; with a commitment to have at least three series. Several months ago, I wrote a long thesis, originally designed to go up here, but probably consigned to the bin, about Babylon 5. It was written as an exercise in seeing if B5 could be transposed into a 21st century TV show, especially as it offered as many truly SF moments as it did cheesy character building moments.

Probably the most obvious SF TV show at the moment is Fringe, but that is more bonkers than SF and obviously is constrained by the requirements of being obsequious to fuckwit Yanks. You can't really call any thing with the initials ST or SW as SF and showers of shit like V or Falling Skies are only SF in setting. Hell, I had a great idea for a TV series; it was called Second Contact about a race of aliens who come to Earth and are introduced as the first alien visitors, but are actually the second alien race to come here, the first being hidden away, because the second race is actually trying to exterminate them. It had all the usual intrigue; juxtaposition and plot twists that you'd expect and was going to be ambiguous enough to make the viewer wonder if the benign and wistful original alien race is really to be trusted or the monstrous, mega-aliens with big guns and a completely alien culture are really as bad as they seem. That, like the idea I had with my good and dear friend Martin Shipp is probably also confined to the text bin of history...

I can't remember if I've told you about Sea View. It was another time travel idea I had, which I roped Martin into a few years ago. We decided that two such inventive and excellent people as us should not be doing what we normally do, but should be courted by Hollywood (and the BBC) to create and produce stunningly brilliant TV series. Sea View was about a seaside village that just happened to have a time portal in it, which the locals used and abused, but everything gets thrown into disarray when their benefactor dies and his son becomes the new owner of the hotel - Sea View - which is the centre of all the shenanigans. It was Time Tunnel meets The Monarch of the Glen and was going to be Sunday night drama with a touch of the weird and unusual thrown in to tempt the fans of Lost and programmes of that ilk. However, after people read it they thought it was a pile of pooh, so Martin and I slumped back into reality and haven't attempted to work with each other since, despite talking about it a lot. We did have another idea, but it was a bit of a Dexter derivative, so nothing ever really came of it.

It isn't just me; I see lots of my mates ideas; either for their own comics or for short stories and ideas and wonder how the fuck you get the opportunity to usurp the lazy, useless wankers who continually churn out shit like Terra Nova or Haven. I mean, for Chris'sake, do TV executives really think that the vast majority of viewing public adults still need toilet training?

Disco Banjo

2011-10-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

"I've run out of ink for my printer and I can't print anything out."

"How can we help with that."

"Can I get some CVs printed off. It's not like I ever use them now, but they're useful for agencies."

"Oh, we don't do that. But if you want to go to Job Club, you can use their facilities."

"Job Club?"

"Yes, it's every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the college."

"But I can't tell anyone about it?"

"..."

"The first rule of Job Club is you don't talk about Job Club."

"..."

"The film with Brad Pitt. Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club."

"I don't watch films..."

Oh, aren't civil servants just as fucking dull as we've always thought they were?

***

Driving back from Job Club (I shouldn't tell you about it, but I will), I thought about the conversation I had with one of the advisers. "Why don't you try to get back into comics?" She said, as if it was a little like popping into Tesco's and buying an aubergine.

"It's not really as simple as that," I said, hoping she wouldn't labour the point and end up with me boring the tits off of her - because I'm feeling isolated I'm gushing more than conversing at the moment, especially when I lure an unsuspecting listener in.

"But if you have all these years experience, surely one of the companies who do the Spider-Man films could use someone with your knowledge." Damn. This meant I had to bore the tits off of her.

"I'm not even going to try to explain why what you suggest isn't feasible, just trust me that I'd have more chance of sleeping with God."

"What about getting back into the media. If you were an editor and journalist for so long, surely that must count for something?" Stop now you stupid woman, you have no idea what you're letting yourself in for!

"I'm not that good."

"You can't be that bad, you worked in it for 15 years."

"Yes, but it doesn't mean I'm any good. Do you have colleagues that you feel don't know which way to sit on a toilet?"

"I couldn't say."

"Well, if you do, then I'd probably fall into that category; if I went to a proper magazine publisher they would probably still be laughing now. I'm also nearly a decade away from it; everything has moved on." Thankfully, she just nodded and continued to look through my CV. I didn't want to come across as someone who didn't want a job, so I did the really unwise thing and said, "Besides, if someone offered me a job in comics now, I'd want a contract that stated quite clearly that I wouldn't get royally butt-fucked by them and I'd get all the money I'm owed from said contract if it all went tits-up. If you'll excuse my bad language."

"Why?"

"You don't want to know."

"Well, it might help me find you a suitable job."

"I doubt very much if the incredibly small number of jobs in comics would ever find their way to Northampton Job Centre; besides I really need to live in New York to stand even a snowball's chance in hell."

"Oh, why's that?"

"Because that's where the work is. I'm not a comicbook writer and the only thing I draw are stick men. It's hardly the kind of trait you'd get headhunted to write Spider-Man for." She nodded, but looked confused as well.

"Have you thought about writing articles for papers and magazines? You could write about comics; I'm sure there are people who would be interested." I was beginning to wonder what qualifications you needed to be an unemployment adviser.

"Let's put it this way. I wrote a book about my life in comics. It's even been published on Kindle, as well as being serialised on my blog." She was nodding like this was something really positive. "To date, I get about 1000 hits a week on the blog and I've sold about 35 copies of the book. I was considering buying a yacht or a small Caribbean island, but my accountant reckons by the time I can afford it I'll be 809." She didn't get the joke.

"How much money have you made from it and when was it published?" Aha, I could see where this was going.

"I have made approximately £80 from it and I won't get anything from Amazon until I've sold 50 copies in whatever country it is sold in. So far it's 27 in the UK and 8 in the USA. If I ask for the money before I reach my targets, I pay an excess fee."

"Okay. How much is the book?"

"About £4. Why are you going to buy it?"

"I have a Kindle; I might just do that." I smiled thinking she had no idea what she was letting herself into; or wondering if she was just interested in getting my royalties up so they could deduct that money from my benefits. Even I don't think civil servants would go that far to save £100.

"I think exploring the comics world for future employment isn't such a good idea. I've had enough disappointments so far and it would end up being a futile search. There's no money to be made from it unless you draw like Michelangelo or write like Dickens and I'm afraid I'm neither."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Part of my job is to try and get you to feel more confident about going for jobs you might never have considered. At least you have experience."

"Yes, but you need for there to be jobs. There aren't any, anywhere in the UK."

Someone behind us, a man who looked like he'd just forgotten where his arse was, chirped in, "I read 2000 AD, it's really good." I looked at my adviser and shrugged.

"What's 2000AD?" She asked.

"An anachronism," I said with a hint of sarcasm and in-joke. She shook her head; she didn't see the joke and I suddenly remembered the other adviser, yesterday, who didn't know what Fight Club was.

"You seem slightly bitter about comics."

"Go and buy my book." She nodded and scribbled some notes in my new folder. This suddenly injected me with a pang of paranoia. "Look; in a nutshell, I worked in and around comics for 25 years and only really got any remuneration from it for about a third of my time in it. I have won awards; produced a magazine read by over 100,000 people across the world and have always been in the wrong place at the right time. Do you have a hobby?" She nodded. "Would you like to make a business out of it?" She pondered this and eventually shrugged an 'I don't know'. "I loved comics. I was a geek. Then I sold them, then I wrote about them and then I produced my own magazine about them and by the time I got to the last one I hated comics so much I'd have rather be anally probed by Judge Dredd than have anything to do with them. You live, breath and eat your hobby and soon it becomes just another job. Why do you think I left comics and started working with the homeless and disenfranchised? Last year, I was approached by the organisers of the Umbrella Fair and asked if I'd be the PR man for the festival. This involved producing the magazine, getting promotions, press coverage and liaising with all the contributors. When I suggested that if I did it I'd have to run it professionally; I was looked at in abject horror. It was, according to them, the most important job in the festival's organisation, but it also required my skills from working in social care, because some of the people contributing were 'precious' - my word, not theirs. They felt that I could marry the two skills and do a good job, but they didn't want me hassling anyone for copy, adverts or contributions - just in case I upset them and they pulled out. In other words they wanted me to do the job in about three days, not get paid for it and suffer idiots gladly.

"The two jobs don't work with each other and while I could do what they asked for with my eyes shut; it stressed me out just contemplating it. I could not put the two hats on at the same time, which is what they wanted, and I love working in social care and asking me to do this job could well kill off that interest. If you want to know what I want to do, it's to stay in the line of work I've been doing for the last ten years." She hadn't glazed over, she was searching through her computer terminal.

"There's a job at the college for a web technician in their social welfare department."

"I'm not a web technician."

"Yes, but it requires a knowledge of all the things you've been doing for the last ten years."

"Using that logic, perhaps I should apply to be a porn star, on the basis that I have a passion for sex."

"You're not being very helpful, Phillip." No, I wasn't and I really hate being called Phillip...

***

You can tell that I'm suffering from almost terminal boredom at the moment. I've started subscribing to web pages I would have once avoided like the plague. Den of Geek has become one of my favourite sites. It keeps me informed (in a similar way my old comics gossip column did) about what is happening in Geekdom and allows me to criticise the contributors, the programmes they review and the general idiots that frequent these places.

Then I saw the irony...

***

As I don't have a Blackberry (but I do have two bags of them in the freezer), I really don't understand this current joke going around about setting your iPhone to airplane mode.

Not only can't I tell jokes; I can't explain them either...

***

I was reading on the Football Gossip column on the BBC website today that former Arsenal, West Ham and Wales striker Jon Hartson, who recently battled and won a fight against testicular cancer, is having to make do with an allowance of £250 a week because of his gambling debts.

Poor sod. How on earth does he manage on just £250 a week...

Who says sarcasm doesn't work in print?

***

Of course, because I'm now struggling to be a contributing member of society and I face long days of doing fuck all, if anybody knocks on my front door, they immediately become fair game. Just after I wrote the word 'print' above, the dogs went wild and I realised it was someone at the door. I've had the blinds closed, so I haven't been distracted by the flotsam and jetsam that wanders passed my house on a daily basis, so I had no idea that God Botherers were at my door.

I usually have two stock answers for callers - anyone selling me something, I say we just rent the house and if it's anything to do with God I just normally slam the door in their face, mumbling about 'sad pathetic wankers'. This morning, however, as I'm absolutely pumped and in need to unload a lot of verbage, I stood and waited for the delivery.

"Good morning sir. I hope we haven't interrupted anything." I shook my head. "We're in the neighbourhood talking to people about expectations and faith; have you got a few minutes to talk to us?"

"Other than God, what are you selling?" I can recognise a JW from a mile off; I still have their DNA on my fist from the mid-1980s.

"We do have copies of this," he said, offering a handful of Watchtowers in my direction.

"I'm unemployed. I can't even afford to eat properly."

"Some of the stories in these will give you hope and restore your faith," said the bespectacled shorter one.

"Can I eat them?" He looked at me like I'd offered him a free blow job. "If I can't eat them, then they won't serve any purpose apart from as toilet paper. Although, paradoxically, if I can't eat, then I doubt I'd be able to shit much." I think they spotted my sarcasm and inclination to be slightly hostile.

"Thank you for your time, sir, we're sorry if we've bothered you." And they went to walk off.

"Hold on a minute. Aren't you going to try to convert me to Jehovah or give me some spiritual support in my time of need?"

"You obviously don't want to talk to us, sir," said the taller one without glasses and seriously bad acne on his forehead.

"Oh I do. I'd be happy to discuss religion with you. Why it's the root of all evil, causes wars, hate and prejudice. But you obviously don't like theological debates, you're only interested in selling the bloody Watchtower. I thought Christians were benevolent people, willing to donate their time to offer succour to those in a time of crisis."

"We're Christians," said the one with glasses and you could see the shoulders of his partner slump. "We do offer comfort and support to people who deserve it." His friend went to say something, probably along the lines of 'let's get out of here, NOW', but I beat him to it.

"So, on the strength of two minutes conversation, you've decided that I'm not worthy of comfort and support?"

"I didn't say that at all." Said the short one.

"You do have an... attitude, sir. You're obviously not receptive to ideas, at least not today." Said the tall one who now looked like he desperately needed the loo.

"Surely then, I'm the kind of person your theocracy would love to convert?" Eat that, JW!

"There has to be an element of willing with the people we talk to."

"So, you prey on the vulnerable then?"

"I didn't say that."

"I think you'll find you did."

"Someone who is willing doesn't necessarily mean someone who is vulnerable. We meet a lot of people who are fed up with their religion or have none at all, but would like some faith in the current climes."

"Fair enough. So why are you more interested in flogging the Watchtower than talking to people? You would have been happy to take my money, despite the fact I have no job and no money?"

"Some people can find a few pence for some enlightenment, even the poorest people in society."

"Have you ever considered they're just trying to get rid of you?" The short one smiled, but his presumably more senior partner did not.

"Belief in God isn't about money."

"So why are all the churches wallowing in cash and people like me are suffering?"

"Probably because you don't believe in God." The small one was getting slightly belligerent; this was good!

"Now, I never said I didn't believe in God. I don't, but I never said I didn't."

"I think we've taken up more than enough of your time, sir. Have a good day," and he literally grabbed the small man with glasses and walked off.

"Damn, and I was going to ask you if you wanted a cup of tea, or maybe a really filthy three-way!" sadly they didn't reply to this suggestion and kept looking forwards, like they feared the same fate as Lot's wife!

I'm still chuckling about it now, despite the fact that I'm likely to burn in hell for my sins...

***

We won the pub quiz for the third week on the trot on Tuesday. We tried desperately not, but we're just cleverer than everyone else.

The delicious irony of Tuesday night was that both Roger and I have come to dread quiz nights; not because we win a lot, but because the once great pub - The Vic - has rather fallen into a state of ambivalence. The toilets need cleaning; the pub needs sprucing up and the beer, once some of the best in the town, seems to be a bit flat, old and possibly even unclean.

I declared that I'd drive on Tuesday, so disillusioned with the beer, I decided that I didn't mind just having a pint. Roger emailed me to say that he was only having two at the most, because he had an important meeting at 8.45am the next morning. I informed the wife she could get drunk and everyone was happy, until we walked into the pub and saw there were two Oakham beers on tap - the mighty JHB and the wondrous White Dwarf. Oh, the irony.

Roger had three pints and I pushed the limit by having two - JHB is only 3.8% and a damned good session beer. Next week I'm not driving and Roger doesn't have an important meeting; you can bet your life that the beers on offer will resemble lifeless washing up water and we'll both have the shits and a bad head the next day...

It is also quite ironic because One El, our usual beer-loving quizmaster is on holiday in Mexico, a place where Oakham beer has yet to reach. The weather might be hot, but he's missed out on a rare thing, The Vic having good beer. I'm sure he'll be heartbroken.

Who says sarcasm doesn't work in print?

***

Haven has been recommissioned for a third series. Someone is felating the heads of the SyFy Channel, they must be!

Forgive me for a moment; but after reading the comments left on the Stephen King Facebook page - there really are some turkey loving fuckwits out there.

***

The wife was in a charity shop yesterday (yes, we've fallen that far) and couldn't help overhear part of a conversation between a slightly mad looking woman and the two assistants. You'll get the gist of it...

"So the rule of thumb is if you can peel the caps they're edible and if you can't then they're toadstools and will poison you."

This woman is going to die.

I'd say about half of all mushrooms can been peeled; these include Death Cap, Panther Cap and Destroying Angel - all part of the same family as Fly Agaric (the red mushroom with white spots you see on most book covers) - the amanita family; probably the most poisonous and deadly species growing in this country.

Mushrooms that can be 'skinned' also include agaricus xanthodermus or Yellow Stainer - part of the same family as your common shop bought mushroom, but responsible for 80% of all poisonings every single year!

Similarly, there are at least a dozen mushrooms I can think of that you can't peel - including shop bought oyster mushrooms (pleurotis) and shiitake mushrooms - much loved by people who like eating tough pencil rubbers.

In this case a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing...

***

I watched a bit of the U2 documentary on Sunday night. I'm amazed that the three other band members haven't beaten Bono(bo) to death with his own self-sanctimonious ego. Sometimes course swear words just aren't good enough and something almost inoffensive nowadays will do.

Bono is a tosser.

***

It might seem odd that a confirmed vegetarian such as I would get so much pleasure from watching a programme called Man vs Food. But, what can I say? I find it to be 13 minutes of wonderful car wreck TV.

I say 13 minutes; the show is actually 22 minutes long, but there's the intro, credits, constant recaps and montages of the previous few minutes to pad out what is essentially a large man eating his way across the Saturated Fats Capitals of the USA. It is a meat feast bar none. There is more meat in some of the abominations he puts in his mouth than I ever ate in the 30 years of scoffing dead animals.

The thing is Adam Richman, the Brooklyn born presenter, is an affable chap and tries very hard to come across as an everyman for the lard addicted Yanks. There's an element of geek about him, but also something of a bon viveur. If you'll pardon the pun, the show can be a bit cheesy at times and many of the 'members of the public' he meets are either specifically targeted (because they are sexy, young, female and showing vast expanses of cleavage) or single-brain-celled rednecks (who make you realise why you're glad you're not American).

There is very little for a vegetarian in this programme; although it has given me a recipe for the most awesome cinnamon buns I have ever had and several attempts at making Sicilian pizzas. I discovered that Montana's (famous for mining and dental floss - according to Zappa) state dish is the Cornish Pasty - because of all the tin miners who emigrated there in the 19th century. I also discovered that the other three main food types in this ugly state are ketchup, beer and salt!

The closer to the heart of America Richman goes, the more dislikeable, irritable and awful the population becomes. I can't help wonder if this 'food' programme is actually more of a post-modern look at fat Americans and how stupid they are the closer they get to the centre of Jesusland.

***

Food, Jesus, fuckwits and geeks - I have an array of subjects I can be derogatory about. Who said men can't multi-task?

Squashed

2011-10-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

It's been a weird week; in that nothing much happened, but it was still far more stressful than I would have hoped for.

When I say nothing much happened, it did have a few things which have left me feeling like I have zero future. I know, that's a pretty doom-laden statement, but at the moment I don't see a great deal of optimism...

For starters, it appears that my awesomely bad back - which has been plaguing me now for almost a month - could have been another prolapsed disc; or to be more precise, the final collapse of the disc that slipped about a year ago. On or about the 7th October, 2010, I had a slipped or prolapsed disc in my spine - the one between L5 and L6, for those of you that understand the workings of the human spine better than others. It caused all manner of nerve damage and left me with a left leg that was a little like having a passenger that didn't belong to the rest of my body. Crucially, it meant that I ended up being off of work between October and the middle of January - the second long period of absence from work I'd had in two years. By the New Year, I was largely free of pain in my back, but the resulting sciatica made doing day-to-day things pretty much a chore. I had months where I struggled to put my own socks on; developed a way to put my boxers on that involved an old wire coat hanger and, it turns out a slightly irrational, fear of a repeat performance, which the specialist said was probably unlikely; 'You have as much chance of it happening again as any one else.'

By the time I got made redundant, I felt like I had my life back. I'd dispensed with the walking stick, which, heh heh, I might have used as a crutch and more importantly to me, not only did I regain control over my left leg, I actually felt healthier than I had for two years. It was a good time to be feeling fit and optimistic; I needed to find a new job.

Two weeks ago, I applied for a job in an organisation that knew me, was aware that I would have been an asset to them and I would have expected to have a better than a cat's chance in hell of getting it. However, I didn't even get an interview. I did get a letter from the CEO thanking me for the my (unsuccessful) application, which I thought was odd, places like this don't send out acknowledgements or unsuccessful letters unless you fail at the interview stage. Not even getting an interview for a job I was essentially doing for the last 18 months I was at YOT, and doing well, was a real kick in the teeth. It had more of a debilitating effect on me than all the physical woes I've suffered since 2009.

Then, while I was out, struggling to walk the dogs on Thursday, I got a message on my mobile answer phone. It was a former colleague from the days of my Intergenerational Project; she wanted to know if I fancied catching up for a coffee. Because I have no money and can't afford to use fuel needlessly or frivolously, travelling to the other side of the county for a chin wag was not going to happen. So when I got home I gave her a call. Nothing of note happened in the first few minutes of the call, until I mentioned that I'd possibly had another slipped disc and physically I was shot to fuck. Her response was muted; but then I mentioned the job I failed to get an interview for. She knew I had been for the job, because the girl who did the job I had applied for was known to both of us. In fact my friend had recently been to lunch with this girl - her opposite number - and my name had cropped up in the conversation.

After a wee bit of coercing, I heard something that bugged me even more than not getting an interview. Apparently, when I applied for the job, the CEO was quite excited about it. I wasn't a shoo-in for the job, but he had high hopes I might be. But, he had been talking to one of my former work colleagues - I don't know who - but is in a higher management position (which means it could be one of about 10 individuals) and the CEO discovered that I had accrued 187 days off sick since January 2009 and that seemed to sway his decision not to employ me...

Now, in all honesty, had I been selected for an interview at the moment, I would have hobbled into the meeting, because of my back and that would have probably tainted my chances even more; but it didn't get that far. Now, you could argue and suggest that this is disability discrimination and I should do something about it; but how can I prove it? And, more importantly, to be able to successfully sue for DD you need the support of your GP and I don't believe I have that.

Back in March, when I saw my GP for the last time, she was adamant that my 'problems' would subside; they were, after all, not arthritic in nature, but just general wear and tear. She did not feel that I was disabled in any way and wouldn't support any claims I considered making, for any benefits. I would not qualify for DLA, I was not incapacitated, I was not eligible for a parking pass from the council and there were a lot more people out there, worse off than me, who didn't have any support. In the best possible way, my doctor basically told me to just get on with my life, stop worrying about my aches and pains and, reading between the lines, stop bothering her. So I did and like I said, for a few months I got on with it. By the time I lost my job, you would have claimed that she was dead right. I had more mobility than I had for a couple of years and even if I was now unemployed, I had a lot of optimism about my job chances and my health. That obviously changed during September.

When my mate told me she had heard that the organisation weren't interested in me because I essentially posed to much of a risk; it brought back something my unemployment advisor commented on when she referred me to the DEA advisor when I last signed on. I'd had 187 days off sick in 26 months. Nearly 200 days out of nearly 500 working days; that's either pathetic or a cause for concern, depending on whether or not you accept I have a problem or just think I'm a malingerer. To be fair, I might have abused it a little towards the end of my job, but by that time my employer had virtually annexed me away from my colleagues and contracted job, so I could either be off sick and get paid for it, or go into work and be tucked away in my own little space, away from everyone else and forgotten about. The fact I spent the last five months at my job with absolutely nothing to do at all is a sorrowful indictment of my former employer's ability to do their jobs. But that is a story for another time. The point is, my advisor thought that my sickness record and my record of back, shoulder and joint problems indicated, to her, that I'm disabled, even if my own GP refused to acknowledge it.

I have an appointment to see my regular GP in about 10 days; the waiting list to see her is remarkable; I booked this appointment on the 29th September! I have to say that I don't expect my back to ease in the next ten days - I'm convinced that my disc has collapsed completely - when I rang the doctor's earlier in the week for a repeat prescription, the practice nurse said from the way I was describing it, I was probably right and if it got too bad I should see a locum. I don't see the point in seeing someone who isn't familiar with me; all he or she can do is give me more painkillers and I've been taking so many of these for the last three weeks, I think they're having a detrimental effect on my general health. So I will wait, in pain, until October 19 and then hope that I can garner some sympathy from my GP and possibly even the start of a solution to rid me of this now persistent problem once and for all. I also need to discuss the amount of time I'd had off of work before I was made redundant and the fact that had I not now been unemployed, I would have had at least the last three weeks off of work - five if you count the time between now and when I actually see her. This is not normal and I do not accept that it's just wear and tear! She can resist all she wants, but specifically my back, but also other joints in my body, is giving me horrendous gyp and I'm beginning to think that this is not something that most people have to suffer at my age. Yes, if I was in my 70s I could understand it, but I'm not even 50 yet.

It also doesn't hide the fact that I have an absolutely abysmal sickness record and that is probably the main reason why I feel I have zero future at the moment. Any prospective employer is going to find out about that and it surely can't be seen as anything other than negative. The irony is between October 1982 and December 2008, you could probably count the number of days off sick I had on two hands and one foot! It isn't like I've just suddenly developed a phobia about work; I used to really enjoy my job and have loved working in social care since I started doing it.

So we now have no money, the prospects are bleak and I'm scared that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

***

Just to add insult to injury, this morning I cut the top of my thumb off with a sentient potato peeler. I would have beaten it to death with a rock, but my thumb was bleeding everywhere...

***

The weekend proved to be another nadir for England teams. The football team would be world beaters if matches lasted 44 minutes and the rugby team were not spurred on by copious amounts of booze, misbehaving and dwarf chucking. It ended up with me feeling as though Internationals are dying. The Premiership - be it football or rugby - now has a more important place in my and many others hearts and internationals now seem to be a hindrance and a waste of time. We're not very good, so why screw up the fitness or the clubs the players come from just to have all of our expectations pissed on by foreign players who are more up for it than we are?

I bleated on about this on the Sports Discuss (http://sportdiscuss.wordpress.com/) blog I do with Roger (and now Mark) a while back and that was before I had to endure more childish Rooney antics, the failure to beat a side with less population than Iceland and saw the rugby team confirm my suspicions that the only winners in this World Cup are the Aviva Premiership teams without international players.

Former Man Utd and England arsehole Gary Neville says that England are not good enough to win Euro 2012 and that they lack mobility and invention. I'll go one step further and say they lack players of world class. Unlike the rugby team who should and undoubtedly will do better in the future, the football team has some stars, but they're either petulant wankers, injured or dead. The rest wouldn't even get into a Montenegrin team.

We might all be going to die, but it would be nice to head that way with the memory of England teams (other than cricket) that stand a hope in hell of making us all proud...

***

More TV bollocks...

Haven's season finale is during Christmas week, with a title called Silent Night, it obviously has some festive connection. What makes this worthy of my time to mention it is because the last episode undoubtedly took place in the middle of summer and it ended on a cliffhanger. The fact there's a 10 week gap between episodes 12 and 13 could mark the kiss of death for it for me. Part of me has this horrible feeling that episode 12 was the end of season cliffhanger and the one to be shown at Christmas will be like the lamentable Eureka and Warehouse 13 Christmas episodes, which were essentially nothing to do with the plot or the ongoing series and could quite easily be considered irrelevant.

The thing is, I don't really care. The fascination and disbelief has gone and all that's left is habit.

I've been immensely underwhelmed by the new season of TV shows, especially those from the USA. As I mentioned briefly last time, Ringer was shite; but some of the others have been equally disappointing. Secret Circle has been dumped by us; it's pretty bloody awful and hasn't got the bonkers charm of The Vampire Diaries, which seems to be morphing into a 21st century Buffy more and more every week - and that's no bad thing, really.

Terra Nova is expensive crap. Where the expense is, I'd like to know, because so far the dinosaurs have been pretty sub-Jurassic Park fare and the story has been a mawkish and Waltons' like as that other dreadful Spielberg produced pile of dog doo-doo Falling Stars. I described it recently as 'Eureka with dinosaurs', but that's a truly horrendous insult to Eureka.

We've just started watching American Horror Story, which, hopefully, won't fall prey to the same fate as the superb American Gothic, because it's made by a cable channel and there tends to be a longer commitment to shows that aren't governed by the Nielsen Ratings. However, is it any good? Well, on the evidence so far it's trying to be the new Twin Peaks and failing miserably. Yes, it's intriguing, but so much weirdness in the pilot episode seemed to do nothing for the characters' development and only the daughter - Taissa Farmiga - came out of it with any credibility. Dylan McDermott spends most of the show with his arse on show and his wife is about as attractive as a Black & Decker Workmate. I'll reserve judgement on it for the time being, but I think it might need a story to go with all the mystery.

Fringe needed a kick up the arse and it took most of three episodes to do it. The series so far has been substandard and has 'felt' wrong. The climax of the 3rd episode gives me hope that we might start getting back on track. The end of that episode offered the chance for a 'game changer back' scenario and a subsequent confrontation with the mysterious Watchers.

Dexter's back and it was business not quite as usual and utterly brilliant. I love this show. This time around, I think the show is going to look at religion as the root of all evil.

There are three other programmes due to premier in the coming weeks. Grimm and Once Upon a Time are both shows about fairy tales in reality and odds suggest that at least one of them should be worth watching. The other is Awake, the new Jason Isaacs show about a man living in three realities - one where his wife and son died in a car crash and the others where only one of them dies. The premise is great, whether it proves to be any good is another thing.

I watch too much TV...

However, I did watch Green Lantern last night and I thought it was better than critics suggested. The director did the comic justice; it wasn't changed drastically from the original concept and I can totally understand why it bombed at the box office - just don't ask me to tell you why.

***

My latest musical discovery is Zola Jesus. She is like a cross between Elizabeth Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins) and Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees. She is also American, but don't let that deter you.

***

Was talking to a mate of mine last week who said that his wife had started buying on sustainable fish, which meant she was no longer buying cod or haddock from her local fish counter. I said this was admirable of both of them and he wrinkled his nose and said, "She's buying coley. It looks like cod and has absolutely no flavour at all. It's bloody awful stuff."

Hmm...