I fucking hate getting old. It's supposed to be a rich and plentiful time - life begins at 40 (or nowadays 50) and all that utter bollocks. I'm hurtling towards 50 (in a little over 3 years and that scares the bejesus out of me) and yet in my head I still feel as though I'm in my 30s (maybe even 20s, but definitely not in my teens). That's probably a lot to do with not having any kids of my own; I think parents are a bizarre blend of child and stick-in-the-mud grumpy old sod. Have you ever noticed how so many parents really don't like the idea of their kids following in their footsteps, especially when they're teenagers. When I was that age it was all casual sex, cider and parents who didn't appear to give a shit. Nowadays, it's very much the same and while some parents still don't give a shit, many of those who aspired to maybe a better level of living now really do. But that's already a digression and I've not finished the first paragraph.

Don't get me wrong, some unbelievably brilliant things have happened to me since I turned 40 and whenever they continue to happen I'm just grateful that I'm experiencing them before I either can't or I'm incapable. I'm sounding like a 90 year old... Having arthritis at my age is a pisser. You try to manage, to grit your teeth and get on with it, but it's not always possible. Sometimes it just takes you out. It also has a sense of irony too, obviously it isn't conscious of this, it's just the way things work out. Last year it was my back and my right leg; it gave me a lot of grief and a lot of gritting my teeth and getting on with it. By the end of the year I'd just about accepted that I probably wasn't going to play golf again, or ever bungee jump (not that I would, but...) or anything physical that might seriously fuck me up. I started 2009 about as positive as I could and while my back and leg were still giving me some gyp, I was living with it. So, my body obviously decided that wasn't enough...

The arthritis got into my shoulders late last year and I had physio pretty much as soon as it started, but by the beginning of this month my leg arm was basically extra baggage. But this is where the irony comes in... At the start of this year I started to have problems with my thumb - the right one. It swells up like a balloon and means that for two or three days I'm incapable of doing nothing unless I can do it with my left hand. I have this perfectly good left arm attached to a shoulder that doesn't want to get involved in human physiology any longer and working right shoulder with a hand that is neither good to man nor beast for days on end. Heck, on some days I'd gladly swap the two shit arms for one decent one.

But I'm not hear to whinge about my ailments or give you sage advice about how to avoid becoming a cripple by the time you're 50; you're all going to need to do a lot more than just avoid getting old in the years to come because I believe we are seeing our very own 'Last Days of the Roman Empire' - this planet could be a very different place in 10 years and the generation best placed to deal with it will be fast approaching pension age - if, indeed, there still is a pension.

Here's a great idea for a reality TV show. Take 6 people from council estates in deprived areas and 6 people from middle class families, dump them in the middle of nowhere and tell them to survive. Film them all remotely so that you don't even have to be there. Give them survival rations and some equipment for trapping and killing their own food and leave them. Just leave them. Never go back, just continue filming them until they die or kill each other or just fuck and procreate a generation of children that will only know Nike, Sony and White Lightning as myths. This is a very pertinent televisual social comment because in 50 years that's what those left will be doing.

I'll continue this when I feel less like slitting my own throat with a wooden spoon...

Ultimate fly

I have this Facebook nonsense. Call me a sheep, but I decided that I should really be 0n some form of social networking site, especially as I do very little networking of any kind. The thing that drew me towards Facebook was Texas Hold'em Poker, which, for someone who dislikes computer games with a passion, seems slightly hypocritical, but when you've been devoid of inspiration for months, it beats sitting at the computer staring at a screen and despairing. Playing free poker beats the shit out of watching mindless dross on the telly.

50 odd friends later and a horrible realisation dawned on me. About a fifth are family; a fifth people I hardly know, a three fifths are people that I either knew from or because of comicbooks. It might be because I spent best part of the last 35 years being involved in them, either as a reader, a fan, a worker, or as a kind of E-list celebrity blogger (not to forget the period of meltdown where I called just about everybody a 'cunt' at some point).

A lot of these people I actually like: people like Martin Shipp, Jay Eales, Dan Black, Selina Lock, Andrew Cheverton, Paul Rainey and a few others - most of them were involved with Borderline, but nepotism aside, these are people that I will gladly sacrifice my time to spend time with them. However, I do think they're all sad bastards, but only because they are still involved in comics - many want to be something in comics or harboured desires to be in them.

Someone said to me about two weeks ago, "You really don't like comics anymore, do you." My reaction was agreement. The sad truth is I hate comics with a passion; not just the pamphlets that I was addicted to for many years, but the pathetic politics attached to all the different areas, the nerdism, the obsessive compulsive disorder of rabid fanboys (and girls). The business attached to it: the people producing (and hyping) the product, the people selling it and, naturally, a lot of the people buying it. The self-importance of it; the contrary nature of the people who write about comics. The tunnel vision; the back-biting and carping, the nepotism (both sexual and 'relative'); the wasted time on fading dreams; in fact there is very little about comics that don't turn me right off.

The crux of my Comics Village column, Eat Shit and Die, was to essentially point out to those who were observant enough, that comics is actually a vile and hateful world where any redeeming features it might have are blown so far out of the water, they're perched high up on Blackpool Tower (or the Statue of Liberty). The problem is, most everyone in comics, whether you're the artist or writer du jour or a lowly humble fan; you are so fucking righteous that you cannot accept any criticism or joke made at the expense of your (not-so now) secret mistress. The only people who ever got the column were already like-minded people and there's no fun preaching to the converted for too long.

Don't get me wrong; as much as I hate comics and everything that surrounds it, I don't really hate the majority of comics fans, pity them a little maybe, but there's no animosity. People take the piss out of me for being into mushrooms and I just accept it and know that I'm the clued up one and the rest of them are just taking the piss because they don't understand it. The same could be said about comics fans - except I don't pay a farmer to harvest field mushrooms and I don't pay the Forestry Commission to forage in their woodlands. I also get a free meal, or a free constituent part anyhow. I suppose you could use a shit comic as a fire lighter, but matches are still much cheaper (and so is a litre of petrol).

I have fought for years, in an almost opposite stance to my current one, to get comics accepted as a serious medium; to get the interesting sounding or normal looking people to talk about comics on TV or radio, because the first people media people reach for usually are freaks and weirdos. The thing is for every freak and weirdo comics have the music industry has them to the nth degree (but, hey, they're 'artistes'). I still believe that comics could have had a future - not anymore - but once, maybe 15 years ago, they could have beaten their knockers into submission and become as important an element of the arts as they have in European, East Asian and South American comics. But, the wrong people were in charge and the only thing ever looked at since 1985 was the bottom line.

The papers are all awash with Watchmen stories and features, yet the most cutting of them all was the 4 panel cartoon in Friday's Guardian, which tells the story of how all the fans of Watchmen got behind the film from the offset and supported it through thick and thin only for them to complain bitterly once the film was released because it wasn't a panel for panel rip off of the comic series. With comics to film, it isn't a case of you can't win them all, more of a case of you can't win at all. But hey, despite the Lord of the Rings trilogy being a fantastic achievement and bloody enjoyable too, purists were up in arms because it changed things. This is the thing, with anime adaptations or manga adaptations of anime, you get very much the same thing, but that's because it works for the audience. With Hollywood, the comicbook audience in the Western World is such a niche market that it feels, rightly or wrongly, that it has to change to cater for those who have not acquired the same tastes as comics fans.

So, why am I still writing about it? It's cathartic for starters. I like to inform people about traits they have that are socially backward (or should that have been 'awkward'). But I suppose, it all boils down to, the fact that because of the impending Depression we're facing, comics as a professional business could actually bite the big one and a medium originally created to provide cheap entertainment for the poor will only cater for the rich and economically idiotic. Plus, you can't spend two-thirds of your life involved in something without occasionally having an opinion about it - even if I am so out of the loop I'm like a painter in a knitting circle.

And what do I think of Watchmen? Well the comic was loosely based on a long forgotten science fiction short story and I'll watch the movie when I can download the avi file - I've been reliably informed that Silk Spectre II has very nice boobies.

Gig Guide 1 - Secret Machines: Rescue Rooms, Nottingham. Feb 14, 2009

THE Rescue Rooms has been a venue I've visited on a number of occasions - Julian Cope twice, House of Love, Shack, and a couple of others, and generally I've found it cramped, noisy, acoustically challenged and just a little grubby. Tonight was no exception; it's like the RR prefers that used, slightly crusty feel.

The support band, local lads called Filthy Dukes, who have just signed a record deal and were on the tour because Brandon Curtis (of the Secret Machines) is a fan. One has to seriously wonder how someone who can produce such excellent psychedelic rock as Curtis can be a fan of such a melange of trashy Eighties synth-pop and wannabe Ian Curtis-ness (obviously no relation). The half an hour set was made up of thudding beats that didn't inspire the audience and drew polite, but quiet applause.

The first impression from Secret Machines was that no expense was made. The band stood on a bare stage, with two spotlights behind them and no other lighting. This didn't change for the duration of the 70 minute set, except on the very last number when the lighting guy must have found the on-off switch, because we were treated to a kind of home-made strobe affect.

There is nothing slick about this band. While their albums are polished walls of progressive sound and psych reverb, live they are just energy. Josh Garza, the drummer, could be John Bonham in his youth and channeled more energy into that 70 minutes than I have seen in 30 odd years of gigging. Phil Karnats, Ben Curtis' replacement on lead guitar noodled and thrashed his way through a back catalog he had no involvement with and did it heroically, while Brandon Curtis switched between bass and keyboards, sometimes both.

The sound was poor and the band were far too loud for such a small venue. It took the sound engineer at least 3 songs to get the balance right and even then it was patchy at best and not helped by the fact that TSM are, as I said, not slick performers.

The only real positive reactions from the audience were with Now Here is Nowhere, the title track from their debut album and First Wave Intact, also from their debut. They performed an almost entirely new version of Alone, Jealous and Stoned, which took me almost a minute to work out what they were playing and followed this with Atomic Heels from the new album, which got some of the audience jumping around.

But on the whole it was a very low key affair; the audience didn't seem to be inspired; apart from a token Valentine's day wish from Brandon, there was no audience interaction and the band looked like they would have rather been anywhere else. The impression is that this is a low key tour of the UK attempting to re-establish the band after a promising debut here two years ago - they need bigger venues and improved sound to make any head way.

6.5 out of 10.

Collapse the Light Into Earth

I could moan for England if I wanted. I have been accused on several occasions of being a Victor Meldrew. And, I suppose it's true, although I do feel I've calmed down considerably over the years. Yeah, I still shout at the telly, whinge while walking around the supermarket and complain bitterly about whatever is worth complaining bitterly about this week. But one thing I have stayed consistently loathsome about are drivers - other drivers...

How the fuck do these people get licences? I failed my first driving test, passed my second and think of myself as a pretty good driver - a friend of mine said she felt I was the safest, yet most aggressive, driver she'd ever driven with, which is a complement and she now drives so like me, I feel safe with her. The thing is, there are people who mesh with their vehicles and there are people who couldn't find their own arses if they had a map and a torch - and there's white van drivers.

I don't know if the first month of 2009 is anything to go by, but I've witnessed more demonstrations of idiotic, selfish and downright dangerous driving in the first month of this year than I think I see in any given year! They're either arseholes in boy racer mobiles or rabbits caught in their own personal headlights. The arseholes in boy racers, I can just about live with, provided they don't do anything too stupid with my close by; it's the rabbits that scare the living shit out of me. In the last month I have seen: a driver stop on a roundabout because he missed he turning and literally turned around rather than just going round the roundabout again; a woman pulling out into flowing traffic, in a rickety old Peugeot 106, directly in front of a Subaru Imprezza, causing a near mass pile up at rush hour; at least one example of ignorance a day; I watch people drive down my street doing upwards of 50mph and there's a 90 degree turn at the bottom of the road; and, remarkably, a man reversing up a slip road into oncoming traffic!

In fact, there is so much bad driving around at the moment, I'm surprised there isn't more accidents.

Apparently, they've made the driving test considerably more difficult, yet more and more complete and utter hopeless wankers get behind the wheel of a deadly machine and poot about oblivious the the comings and goings of every other road user. If this country hadn't allowed Thatcher to destroy the transport infrastructure of this country, we might have been able to discourage lots of incompetents from ever getting behind the wheel of a car; but now, because it costs upwards of 3 or 4 times more to use public transport, people would rather drive, which means there's more of these imbeciles than ever before and their numbers are growing.

* * *

I listened to a fascinating discussion on the Matthew Bannister radio show today; it was posing the question - has the recession been created by the media, or more specifically, has the media exacerbated the problem by focusing more on the doom and gloom and not giving us good news. The upshot was that many people felt the press, while still morally reprehensible, couldn't be blamed, as such, but by its continuous negative coverage, it has bestowed a feeling of hopelessness on those paying attention.

Wasn't it Martyn Lewis who quit his job as a BBC newsreader because he felt there wasn't enough good news being promoted. The problem is, people don't give a shit about others' good fortune, not any more, any how, what they want to see are people worse off than themselves.

* * *

I was visiting a young person last week, who lived right opposite a privately owned community centre - privately owned? I asked how that worked, and the young person's mother said the centre had been bought by a private company and it was used for private functions and paying customers.

This is in a place in Northants which has so little to offer, yet local people have approached the owners about making the building available for a youth club or for activities for the local children, to help promote a centre that sits empty and unused for up to 10 months a year. The owners asked for a higher hourly rental rate, purely on the basis that it would be used by local young people.

Remarkably, the building has remained unscathed - no broken windows or graffiti. The crime rate in this particular village is almost non-existent and the local council have even offered to supply youth workers to work in tandem with the parents and still the owners refuse to budge. Is it any wonder why young people get frustrated and say they have nothing to do? Not all of them can afford games stations, iPods or all the latest technology, and some of them actually want to do things that young people do - play sports, have a youth club, do activities.

With the world the way it is at the moment, you'd think that greed would become less of a factor in the lives of everyone.

Death in all her glory

January is a shit month. I always enter into January with renewed optimism, but one old cliché often leads to another and before long disillusionment has taken over. The prime reason is because January has a habit of killing people off faster than the plague. I normally expect to hear about elderly grandparents or relatives kicking the bucket, but in the last month, there have been 5 deaths I have heard about and the eldest person was the fella whose funeral I was at last Friday - he was 55.

I had the day off last Friday, specifically for Paul's funeral. On this day, my mate Dez (not that one) was attending the funeral for an acquaintance of mine called Angela. She had dropped dead of a massive brain embolism - she was 42, she had 3 young children and a husband. Also on this day, a colleague of mine, John, arrived at the Northampton office for work as usual, within a few hours he was being rushed to hospital after collapsing. It was a massive stroke and he died the following day... I arrived at work Monday, ignorant of the fact. Later that day, I was visiting one of my clients; we were talking about a local gang he'd been having problems with. The leader of this gang was a young guy I had worked with last year and I told my new lad that I would either have a word with him or one with his mother, Tina. She died just before Christmas - she was 36. I was stunned.

The week didn't get much better; one of my good friends and colleagues has been diagnosed with lymphoma - she could be off sick for 18 months if the recovery is full; alternatively, she may never come back...

January has brought far too many deaths (or the shadow of death) to people I know or love. It's a shame it can't be abolished... but that won't really do any good now would it.

I suppose it's something that we grow to realise - the older we get there's more chance of people we know dying.

On Sunday, I will celebrate the birth of February and say good riddance to another January many people will want to forget.

Get well soon, Jodi

The return of the reluctant blogger and other tales...

It's been a while since I had a blog. They tend to end up getting me in trouble (or potentially anyhow).

I had a column on www.comicsvillage.com for about a year, which was my return to comics writing; but much of that was filled with me waffling on about other subjects that interested me, especially as comics have as much appeal to me now as cleaning up dog sick. I suppose I should be quite proud of it, as it was one of the most visited pages on that website. I don't, however, see comics playing a big part in any future I have.

I'm in the process of getting my job back on track after a stressful 2008 and I'm pretty confident it's going ok.

On Friday, I went to the funeral of one of the people responsible for what I do today for a career. He didn't play a huge role in my training, he didn't actually work with me, as such.

I met Paul Smith on February 28th 2001. The first thing he did was ask me if I wanted a cup of tea. He ended up making me lots of tea over the next 4 years. Paul was the 'caretaker' for St Matthews, the homeless hostel I began working for in 2001. He was actually the YMCA's general handyman, also maintaining the other hostel, as well as the HQ. He obviously saw that I was your proverbial fish out of water as I walked into the staff room, which resembled an old lady's living room from the 1960s, and proceeded to make me feel at home. I can't remember what our first conversations were about, but I was left with the overall feeling that I really liked this man.

On long days filled with boredom at work, Paul would come and talk, or get me to help him with a job around the hostel. He had a great relationship with all the kids in the hostel and I often said he'd make a great support worker, but he was far too modest and dismissed the idea. He was a support worker anyhow, he just didn't know it. I went from strength to strength at my job and always in the background was this place I could go for a cup of tea (Red Bush by this time), some homespun words of wisdom and something I hadn't actually found much in my adult life - a really good friend.

The fact that Paul belonged to a rather odd religious group called the Jesus Army didn't bother me one bit. He knew my religious beliefs and respected them and therefore he got mutual respect. Paul's religion was never an issue and neither was my lack of it. I went to his house for dinner; I met many of his colleagues at the JA and it was as natural as natural. He changed my slight prejudices of deeply religious people and my only regret was that I could never get him to come out for a beer with me. He always said he'd come out for a drink, but always insisted he would stick with the soft drinks. I sometimes wondered when I looked into his eyes if he just missed the chance to go out and be one of the lads for one night only!

His crowning moment in our friendship was when, deeply ensconced in the hierarchy of the YMCA, he opted to 'accompany' me to a arbitration hearing. A new regime had taken over the YMCA and the times they were a changing. A number of my colleagues had left or had literally walked out; others were - reappropriated and many more began to feel isolated, especially those who dared question. Paul didn't question anything, I did. Many of my colleagues got hounded out of the Y, but I held on with gritted teeth; I was good at my job. I had been told this less than a month before all the machinations of workplace politics led to first my suspension then eventually departure. I, however, felt that I needed to go out with a fight. There had been an allegation against me, that I'd told a young person information that I shouldn't have. Despite proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the allegation was completely bogus, I remained on suspension, while, it seemed, they came up with other allegations. I got my lawyers involved and eventually, with Paul at my side, I had a meeting with the CEO, who told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be welcomed back and a suitable agreement needed to be agreed. Paul helped in those negotiations right up until the last meeting, when he could not attend because of another commitment.

I kept in touch with him for the first couple of years after I left; often giving him a call or popping into the Y on the off chance he might be around - there were always others I was pleased to see, but Paul. Paul brightened up dull days...

Six months ago, I was sifting through some stuff and came across some stuff that Paul had lent me - namely a book about how the Jesus Army was formed - and I thought I must pop in and see him. So I asked a colleague at work, who had worked with us both at the Y, where I could find Paul. She said, "Oh, didn't you know. He's got cancer." I was shocked, but the shock was lessened by, "Well, that's what I was told, I don't know for sure." I made my mind up to go and visit him and I did one day in September. I was up his part of town visiting the graves of my parents. I pulled up outside the house, but there was no one in. I considered leaving a note, but figured I'd finally got around to visiting him, I can do it again real soon.

Then I had it confirmed that he had lung cancer and I decided to visit him again, but this time life, Christmas and the usual hassle got in the way. Then on January 11th, I was sitting here in my office and I thought, "I'm going to go and visit Paul this week."

The next day, my colleague came and told me that Paul had died the previous night...

I went to his funeral, I bumped into many old friends and colleagues and even the twat who bullied me out of the YMCA and I was amazed that the church was packed, yet I wasn't. I somehow expected that Paul had touched the lives of a lot of people - a humble man who bought realism and humility into the lives of the people he touched.

I can't help feel that I'm going to miss him for a long time.