Queer as Dogs

Always here to present you with encouraging or even good news, you will be mortified to know (unless you are Will Vigar) that winter will last until the beginning of April. It might not stay as bitterly cold, but it will stay below average, wet, windy and generally shitty. Then it's April, renowned for showers, winds and maybe some nice weather, if you're lucky and have sacrificed enough children to your gods...

I tell you, trying to find a job would be easy if I was a computer programmer or an engineer (and that isn't someone who walks up to machinery and says, "what's this engine 'ere?") I would be earning shed loads of money and have my pick of several billion vacancies. Even with a slightly more varied CV now I see maybe one job a day that I could apply for without having to bullshit my way through an interview, if I was fortunate enough to get one. The six jobs I have applied for in the last four weeks have yielded ZERO interviews and ZERO replies, even a 'You're 'aving a larf ain't you, we ain't giving you a job, not while we have holes in our arses' would have made me believe that I at least exist and am not a figment of an over-active imagination.

I don't tend to talk about the dogs too much, which considering I love them so much is surprising. I suppose I figure that if I was to really explain to you about the four of them, you'd probably wonder why we still have three of them and the fourth one, well, perhaps if he had his vocal chords removed... The thing is I have the dogs' Tumblr account which posts pics of them, at various ages, and while I'm happy to wibble on about all kinds of shit that most of you are not interested in, I rarely talk about the dogs.

Lexy

I suppose the reason I've got them in my head at the moment is after 6 years I've come to the conclusion that at least three of them are winter dogs. Just last week, when we had that mild day (or the summer as I said in an earlier blog), Lexy, the Bassett/Rottweiller cross, looked like she's just been saved from a sauna by the time we finished our walk. She's a plodder anyhow, what with her dodgy legs and long body (when she runs she looks like a jack-knifing lorry), but as soon as the temperature hits double figures... it's like someone has just put her in Saudi Arabia. But, yesterday, with the windchill at around -6 and me dressed up like Scott of the Antarctic, she was bouncing around like a pup and only her absent-mindedness kept her from being right behind me for most of the walk. Lexy's faults are essentially small things - she barks at inappropriate times (6.50am every day - we think she's telling me to get up as this was the time I used to get up) and because of her absent-mindedness she sometimes gets lost. Now, she's a serial barker at times, sitting on her sofa issuing instructions to the other dogs, while never moving a muscle (she is unbelievably lazy, I've never known a dog to be as sloth like as she is); yet if she gets lost, does she make any noise when we call her? Does she f...

Ness

Ness, the little black minx, has always shown a propensity for cold weather. You open the freezer door at any time of the year and she's lying in front of it like a cat by an open fire (and incidentally, when we have a fire, she's the furthest from it). When it snows, she rolls in it, ploughs her way through it and generally acts (and looks a little) like an Arctic fox. I can honestly say she looks at her happiest when there's snow on the ground. However, as the smallest dog in the pack, it should come as no surprise that she's also pack leader, at least inside the house, outside, I'm not so sure. We call her 'minx' because she's violent, nasty and wilful. We have complete control over her, the other dogs have to put up with being bitten, bullied and barked at - and her bark is a mixture of pathetic and a squirrel. We believe that Lexy hates her, but as she is the boss, she hates her in a quiet, growly, understated way. Ness gives Lexy a really hard time, far worse than the other two. we thought it might be because Lex is #2 in the hierarchy, but actually we now think it's because Lexy is happy being #4; she's just happy to have a home and puts up with all kinds of shit as a result. Ness is insecure - massively insecure and everything she does appears to either be asserting her will or her interpretation of helping us. Yet, she is a dog that would hide from a duck fart. She is scared of the fridge; doesn't like noise that she doesn't know and if you strapped a Martini on her while the bin men come it would be fit for James Bond!

Murray

Murray is our baby boy despite him being 6 now. We've had him from 6 weeks, but we met him when he was 3 weeks and he sat in the palm of my hand and cried. He'd still do that now if he could. He is the biggest poof in the world (and I mean that in a completely non-homosexual way, despite having no testicles, Murray only has eyes for Lexy). Murray whines and whinges and then whines some more. We met his mother, she did exactly the same, but worse. Murray is a lap dog despite being a collie; he loves cuddles and curling up next to me when the wife gets up in the morning. His nickname, or at least one of them, is Pantomime Dog. This is because... He's (always) behind you!!! Never have I had a dog that can walk to heel as well and he's never been taught to do it, he just figures that's where he belongs. You have to tell him to go and run about and even then he seems reticent about it. Growing up with 3 girls has been good for him - they all worship him. He can do anything to them and they'll let him, yet if they so much as get in each others way you soon discover why female dogs are referred to as bitches.

Captain Catshit...

And then there's Captain Catshit or Marley. We should never have called her Marley, that was asking for trouble (and really not like us to call a dog by such a popular name). We often have said we should have called her Kali, because when she was younger she liked making war - with any dog. She was horrible and just to compound it, she would find anything that was dead, rotten or shit and roll in it. She has some German Shepherd in her and some Labrador, possibly some Lurcher, but I'm not so sure about that now, and she has something in her that has made her slightly smaller than either of the two main breeds in her. She is everything you wouldn't want in a dog and I love her to bits; she reminds me of a punk version of my old dog Megan. Where people say that Lexy looks like Gifford, Marley doesn't look like Meg, but as she's got older she's slowly turning into her. It's difficult to explain, but anyone who knew Meg will see Marl slowly going that way - and that'll be a good thing. Over the last year or so, she has stopped attempting to beat other dogs up and has thickened up a little. She's our summer dog - it's the breeds in her that has caused it - and if she sees water, mud, the sea, a full bucket, she's trying to be in it. She also does as she is told up to a certain point, but its like she knows what's 'bad' and what's 'advisory'. For example, out the Sunday before last, it was quite mild and we were about 100 yards from a big pond; Marley was half way between us and said pond. I bellowed at her not to go into the water and she looked at me, waggled her head and went and jumped in the muddy pond. She's a cow and she knows it; she also knows what will get her into proper trouble and what will be amateur dramatics from me.

Marley is also like Megan in that she winces; especially if she thinks she's in trouble and therefore gives the impression that we beat her at the drop of a hat. There is nothing more embarrassing than a dog wincing and pulling away from you when you're talking to other dog owners. It looks like we're really cruel to her; the last time she got a wallop (and as all dog owners will tell you, a dog wallop tends to be less hard than play fighting) she was about 3 (she's 7 now) and that was for attacking a Belgian Bassett. Bobby is her bette noir; he's a lovely dog, but we reckon he insults Marley in doggy language because the only other dog(s) she has a problem with are English Setters (not Red or Gordon Setters. In fact she positively loved an old Gordon Setter who died a couple of years ago), but that's Marley to a tee - she is brilliant with old dogs; she loves puppies, but everything between, especially for the first 4 years of her life, was classed as a threat. I think she's got out of that now. In fact, there are two wonderful Bearded Collies that go for a walk at the same time as we do at the moment - Dumble and Frodo - Dumble is lovely and a bit like Murray in that he loves cuddles and fuss. Frodo wants to play, all the time (and he's a year older than Marley) and he's a bit too much in her face and Marl doesn't like confident dogs; they bother her and she slinks off and goes for a mooch whenever there's a dog about that she can't control or bully. Frodo just wants to play and can't understand why this girl dog wants to avoid him.

There you have it: four dogs and yet Marley is the one that gets the most written about her and that's because she has considerably more going on with her. She was also the dog we took from the shelter on a whim rather than as a calculated decision. I'm just glad that's she's turned out to be a good dog because we agonised for over a year about whether we should get rid of her. But, saying that, I am horrid. When we had Meg and Giff they were such mild-mannered well behaved dogs (to the point where they were a little snobbish) and only really associated with the people and dogs they knew and if either of them were attacked or hassled by another dog I would get mega-defensive and probably accuse the dog's owner of not being in control. I positively love watching Marley get beaten up. I mean, if she was really being beaten up I would step in and break it up, but she's just being bitch slapped down by bigger and more confident dogs than her. Now, if the other three were set on that would be a different story entirely...

Meg & Giff

The weird thing is that I don't have favourites; it's like you don't favourite kids, it wouldn't be fair to have a favourite dog. When we had Meg and Giff, everybody loved Giff; and to be fair he was one of the coolest dogs you could ever have met and it was obvious that everyone saw Giff and no one paid much attention to Meg, she was just this nondescript Collie-x; but I actually miss her more. I suppose it was because she was my dog (Giff was the wife's) and we spent a lot of time together; but my mum was always my best friend, but I sort of miss my dad more now. Funny that.

But anyhow, I now can't believe that I wanted to get rid of Marley; we've never had a dog who has been so totally devoted to me. The wife's two - Murray and Lexy - both love their mum passionately; but Ness and especially Marley turn to me for everything. I've also always been 'Dad' to all the dogs - they know 'Dad' rather than 'Phil', but to Marley I'm 'Daddy'...

They all have loads of names; Lexy is 'Stinker' or 'Ginger Pudding'. Ness is 'Minx' or 'Minxy Minx', she's also 'Evil Dog' and 'Nessington' (don't ask). Murray is 'Pantomime Dog', 'Poof', 'Moz' or simply 'the boy' and Marley is 'Marley Moo' 'Captain Catshit' 'Vile shit-eating hound' and a bunch of other things including 'shitbag', 'retard' and 'you fucking useless dog...' All of them answer to the term 'sausage', but I don't think I've had a dog that didn't answer to 'sausage'. In fact, I call most dogs Sausage, even dogs I've never met before. I think dogs like being called Sausage...

Other facts about these hounds of the apocalypse include: Lexy was 24 hours away from being put down when we saw her. We had already decided she was coming home with us before we found out that she was literally going to be put to death if we didn't have her. She looks a little like a Staffy and the kennels were choc-a-bloc full of unwanted Staffies and she just got lumped in with these doomed doggies. She's also a strange dog; she doesn't play and she growls at everything; but while her growls are all the same, we worked out pretty quickly that its her way of expressing herself. She has a strange bark. She doesn't behave on the surface like a traditional dog, but scratch beneath it and talk to people who have Bassets or Rotties and you soon discover that she is just like the dogs she comes from (but she still doesn't know how to play, bless her).

Marl, Moz and Ness all love to shag her. There isn't an intact dog in the house, but shagging boils down to a dominance thing, either that or Lexy is the Karen Gillen of the dog world (I'd like to think that because she's a red head it's the latter reason. And remember Lexy rhymes with Sexy...)

Ness came from Battersea sight unseen. When we lost Gifford, we decided to rehome and we'd had no joy locally so I contacted Battersea Dogs and we arranged to have Ness (who was 10 weeks when we got her and was obviously born in the dogs' home) without seeing her first. We took Meg down to London - she hated it - met this tiny bundle of teeth - Meg hated her - and brought her home. Ness hates cars; she threw up about 40 times on the way home and was dehydrated and poorly for her first 24 hours in her new home.

Murray was arranged. He came from a dodgy estate in Wellingborough (where, we believe Marley was found) and Murray rhymes with Worry and that appears to be what he does best. He's almost the spitting image in personality to Megan (both Collies), but where Meg didn't like the sound of her own barks, Murray is a noisy little shit at times - normally when his mum gets home or when he's bored and being a Collie, he gets bored a lot.

There's tonnes more I could tell you about them and Meg & Giff, but these 'tails' can wait for another day!

Album Review 2013/3

Amplifier
Echo Street

Thank you God.

Just as 2013 was turning out to be a stinker in terms of good music, a band that I'd started to believe had had their day, rediscovered it. Back in the last century when Amplifier got together they recorded some songs that would end up on the fan appreciation CD Eternity, it showed a darker, embryonic, more post-rock influenced band who seemed to like atmosphere over impact. Coming to these songs and liking them, especially after falling for Amplifier's unique rock stylings, was something of bonus - like discovering Picasso was a damned good landscape artist too!

I have also been a fan of first albums (and more often than not by bands who would go on to become giants) because the first album, in most cases, shows you what these artists are capable of doing when they have nothing to do. First albums tend to be everything a band has done up to that point in their careers, second albums have been written at the end of the first album, sometimes while on tour, but usually in considerably less time - hence one of the reasons for Second Album Syndrome. So rediscovering that verve especially after 13 years together and four previous studio albums is always going to be a tough ask.

Isn't it the way? You look forward to a bunch of things and they all let you down, while the one thing you had been ambivalent about turns out to be fucking bonkers brilliant. The Octopus was a magnum opus - a massive prog/space/rock opera with more baggage than Heathrow. It had a mixture of great songs and Sci-Fi bollocks and would have made a stunning single album (especially if Interstellar was on it).

What The Octopus also had was a distinctly different feel to it - Amplifier had changed from this rock band with prog leanings to the exact mirror image - a prog band with rock leanings. Something else about this band, that I'm sure they'd struggle to appreciate, is that they produce some great stadium pop/rock anthems (that just happen to have bolt-ons and extras to make them less accessible to the 3 minute emo rock song fan). With The Octopus the band probably did enough to become recognised outside of their own little fan base - Echo Street, with the backing of a proper label, seems to have brought them back to their atmospheric space rock roots.

Something else happened while they made that album; the band changed line-ups and while Sel Balamir has always been the driving force behind Amplifier, the new guys bring something extra to the table. There are harmonies, effects and paths you wouldn't imagine the old three-piece Amplifier would go down. Suddenly this bunch of bordering middle-aged rockers had found the maturity that possibly has been missing from their music up until this album.

Those early pop/rock anthems were charged with gallons of space rock and you faced a wall of cosmic noise every time you turned the volume up to 11, but The Octopus turned Amplifier from being three blokes getting on stage and rocking the world to something a little more organised and focused - something that at times required too much effort and not enough fun and this showed in lacklustre live gigs. Echo Street sounds like that embryonic band from the Eternity CD with a lot of effects pedals, quite a bit of angst and an urge to rediscover the atmosphere.

Echo Street is quite simply the antidote to 2013's anodyne output so far. Don't get me wrong, this does have some faults (but nothing to really jar) but it will confirm that this is a band who have been given a new lease of life and provided KScope do the business, Amplifier might well become this year's break out rock band.

The opening song Matmos is not really a single (although it has been marketed as such) and gives you an idea where this album is going. It is dark, driving and atmospheric and yet melodic. Up next is The Wheel which continues the theme, but has tended to be almost forgotten because it is sandwiched between two very epic songs. Extra Vehicular, which follows it, is a monster of a track with a guitar riff that will have you nodding your head in greebo agreement. It starts slowly, promises something, then pulls it away and it continues to tease like this for seven minutes before just deciding to assault the listeners senses for another five - simply stunning and I expect it to be a real crowd pleaser at live gigs.

Next up is the wonderful Where the River Goes, which is almost soulful (until the crescendo that takes you somewhere else entirely), Paris in the Spring is a bit like CSN&Y meets Muse and the Laurel Canyon theme continues with Between Today and Yesterday. Echo Street, the title track, is just both thunderous and dreamy in its psyche rock splendour. For me it was the first track to jump up and slap me round the head. It all wraps up with Mary Rose, which reminds me of Pink Floyd circa 1971 mixed with a bit of XTC and yet not like either.

I won't say this is a return to greatness because The Octopus is a good album and it deserves its place, this does though feel like a 'proper' album, if you know what I mean and it's been a very long time since Amplifier did a 'proper' album. My faith has been restored.

8½ out of 10

Politics of Suet

I must be getting bored. Yesterday I did almost everything. Well, you know, not everything, just some things. This week has been building up to me doing or starting to do all those jobs that I've been putting off. Plus, it's been raining so I can't really go outside and do anything in the garden. So the de-clutter started in earnest and by the time the wife got home a mixture of spring cleaning and reorganisation had taken place.

I was walking around last evening trying to think of things to do today, in between going shopping, maybe going for a beer, finally having that bloody spirometry test and walking the hounds. I have this 'keep busy or go mad' head on. But I might have a new project to keep me alive and get me thinking with a better, clearer, head again. I am letting all my outside influences govern me at the mo.

Ouch... I just realised what a really corny link that is. I was going to say, talking of governing and then segue nicely into a piece about Tony Blair, then it was going to go through this list of political things I've written down, but I've kinda blown that...

Tony Blair. Never liked him. Saw him on a BBC election phone in programme in 1992 and thought he was possibly the 2nd reason behind Neil Kinnock why John Major got in. Thoroughly sleazy guy and given a hard time by Kilroy-Silk; I remember thinking 'what a twat'. Still think that today, but I do think he did far more good than the one major wrong he did. Yet for some reason to a generation of people he is as abhorrent as Margaret Thatcher is to me and mine.

People probably have forgotten or never knew that there is a creditable case to believe that Thatch and General Galtieri (the then boss of Argentina) created the Falklands Crisis for both their benefits. People forget that up until the Argies planted a flag in Port Stanley, almost apropos of nothing, Thatcher was the most unpopular UK prime minister EVER. The Tories who had swept to a landslide victory on the strength of Labour buckling to the unions' pressure, were in serious danger of being beaten back out of power by an equally large landslide in the other direction - which, given how shit Labour were, would have been a massive event. But then the Falklands 'Crisis' came along and BAM as a result the country fell to bits, slowly, as Thatch and her cache of very nasty people dismantled the infrastructure of the country, selling it off and by the relinquishing of its assets.

In comparison, Blair probably colluded with George W to conspire to invade Iraq, which to be fair is arguably much better off than it was. Still, I didn't agree with it then and I still think that prime ministers in this country seem to think they won't make a mark on history unless they've invaded someone or been part of a war. Sad really.

George W didn't like Hugo Chavez because the now-dead Venezuelan President saw right through his US counterpart and a damned sight easier than 50% of the population of the USA. Chavez may well have courted the likes of Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba and North Korea, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend is possibly the reason for this and he was also well liked by reputable countries as well. Plus, he's a damned sight more popular still than most US Presidents are ever in the eyes of their people - he's almost as popular as leaders whose names start Kim...

Just last week I was saying how I really have a gut feeling that North Korea is making a concerted effort to be seen as 'more open' and able to change. That's my credentials as a diplomat out of the window then... The thing is, is all of this really them being aggressive or is this just a plea for help, especially as China don't really want anything to do with them any more. Someone may have suggested to North Koreans that losing a war is the best thing to happen - just look at Japan. Reminds me in a less comedic way of The Mouse that Roared.

You'd think, what with our own leaders looking like some SEN government, that the despair being felt by a lot of people would have been seen by Gideon and Co deciding that they have borrowed as much money as Labour did and we're much worse off than we were. You did know that, didn't you? The Tories have been harping on about how all of this is Labour's fault - all that borrowing and unnecessary building of schools and hospitals - and yet they have borrowed more over the last three years than Labour did in the last 8 years. Yes, a lot of that is to do with inflation - but whose fault is the higher inflation? Oh yeah, must be Labour's because that's all Tory MPs say now - a generic 'it wouldn't be this bad if it wasn't for Labour', the sad thing is there's still at least 20% of the country buying that LIE hook line and sinker.

Tories and Libdems are crowing about how labour finished fourth in the Eastleigh by-election and to be fair you would have expected them to do better given the fuckwits that were standing against them, but Hampshire is not a socialist stronghold - I'm amazed that the pathetic face of socialism (ie Liberal Democrats) does so well down that way - perhaps its just socially conscious Tories who can't bring themselves to vote for anything red? The fact that the Yellow Peril actually retained the seat despite being led by Nick 'I'm a wanker, me' Clegg suggests to me that the country is in a miasma of doubt, anger and confusion. No wonder UKIP has been able to infiltrate as they have. You do realise that UKIP are just a posh version of the EDL, don't you? Other than their oft trundled out immigration policies, have you actually looked at some of their policies? I'm sure usual Labour voting people who fucking hate all these eastern Europeans and will plonk an X in UKIP's box should also see what they would do with most of the services and provisions this country has. The NHS is still basically free, despite the best efforts of Gideon O, under Nigel F ... Just look at their manifesto before you decide that voting for them will mean Johnny Foreigner gets the boot. Don't be a fascist xenophobe until you've seen what happens if they get a sniff of power - read their policy document, be amazed (and not in a 'Wow, that's great' kinda way).

Effercio et Ineptias

• Twice in Sainsbury's someone attempted to intrude upon my personal conveyor belt space. I mean once is bad enough, but twice? First this old woman starts to put her shopping on at one end while I'm busy putting mine on at the till end. "I wouldn't do that, my love" says I and she realises what she's doing and apologises profusely. I tell her to not worry and not be silly, it was an easy mistake to make (even if it really wasn't). Two thirds of the way through emptying my trolley and this younger woman comes up and just dumps her stuff at the rapidly diminishing empty end. "I've still got a fair bit to put on," I said. "Oh, you'll be fine." She says in a matter-of-fact, don't-give-me-any-shit kind of way. "I do have a fair bit left in my trolley," I says, slightly irritated. "Stop complaining and just get on with your packing," she says in a really rude and school ma'am way. "Being rude isn't make me go any faster," I said and pushed her seven items pack towards the end of the conveyor - much to her obvious annoyance. When I was asked if I collected the Vouchers for Schools, I said I didn't and she piped up that she did and she would have them. I told the checkout woman that I didn't want them and I didn't want anyone else to have them.
• I saw about 10 people on the road today who I wouldn't trust with a spoon let alone behind the wheel of a car.
• People are just becoming more horrible.
• Applied for three jobs on Tuesday; that's seven in total in the last 10 days - it doesn't sound a lot but unless you are a computer programmer or an engineer finding a job is like finding a civil person in Sainsbury's.
• Still reading The Shining and still quite amazed at how our memories of things are distorted, especially by films.
• Inter Milan? Who are they then?
• Sometimes its best never to find out some things, because all it does is make you angrier.

Oh Moan, Whinge and Moan

I'm not in a good place at the moment, so therefore I'm extremely negative. Most of the things I want to write about I can't or if I try I look back on what I've written and wince at my lack of discipline, the mistakes, the fact it doesn't make sense. I've always written like I've talked, which begs the questions - do I really talk that badly? I've been itching to write something for the last three weeks, but it isn't happening. Ideas are withering before I can even get them down and that's a good word to describe my mental state too. Even that is odd, the spirit is willing, but, like I said the ideas don't even fruit, they're gone before the blossom is out.

You could argue that I'm doing my fair share of writing, purely based on the amount of blogs that I've published; but a lot of that has been rubbish because that's what I do best, that and I am a creature of habit.

Almost a year ago, there was a period where, even by my standards, I'd hit a bottom that was getting on for being as low as I'd been ever. I was struggling with some elements in my life, trying to keep my fears and worries away from the wife and wrestling with turning 50. I even managed to keep a lot of it away from my closest friends and over 10 months later I look back at it and can't believe that I was that low and yet I must have bounced out of it, because I'm still here; I didn't slit my wrists (and to reassure anyone who might start panicking, I didn't at any point consider it, it's just looking back on it I sounded like I'd throw myself off a bridge even if something good happened).

Writing for catharsis has always been my main reason for writing since I stopped writing and earning money from it (and I do believe I'm much better now than I was when I worked for Skinn, so there's some irony hidden away in there to be mined - I mean considering that I'm currently thinking how crap I am, you have to question his judgement in an era when I looked as Neanderthal as I probably wrote) and during those few black days around Easter 2012, I sat down and tried to get everything off my chest. It's written in an email, because I was not where I currently am when I started to write it and I use the email composition tool in Yahoo to do a lot of things.

I kept thinking that some of it needs to be used. That's a habit I picked up from Skinn as well - try not to waste anything and it's only been in the last few years where I can delete things wholesale without worrying that I'll have an aneurysm worrying about things that I will never even look at let alone might provide me with a future best seller. The wife, like my dad, is a nail collector - nails, screw, saws, hammers, clamps, brackets, if it has a DIY purpose then it has a potential future. It's that collector mentality you see among comics collectors who don't want to get rid of that 1970 Millie the Model comic, in shit condition, because even if it isn't worth much, you never know... It might be useful for something.

I have so much shit saved onto various discs that if I should die tomorrow it would probably take the wife several years to go through every single disc to see if there's anything saved that's worth keeping and she probably would struggle - photos, maybe, but most of them are one one disc...

So, I was about to cut and paste the entire thing into this and then decided that, no, perhaps its just a little too much me-bearing-my-soul-to-the-world in a way I'm not at all comfortable with. Yes, I suffer from bouts of depression, but I'm not bi-polar, and currently me and those lyrics from the Simon and Garfunkle song are tangoing around in my head; having a kind of existential slam-down. Who can say who will win? But what I do know is there's a lot of things that are best left unsaid, for ever.

The thing is I've had a really good (and at times decidedly surreal) day and yet it's also been shit. I'm really seeing visible physical improvements since packing up smoking that should have given me a buzz; I applied for THREE jobs inside an hour this morning, got reasonable news from trenches and I'm still slightly euphoric from Spurs beating Arsenal at the weekend (and are now 3rd, again). This whole week there's been some good sex, good beer, good company, good film (watch Robot & Frank), a really good birthday for t'wife,  the money hasn't completely run out so I've not resorted to eating gravel and dirt and summer was here for an hour yesterday...

But, all the same, I'm still in a funk.

I had an idea for a kids' book while I was walking the dogs. I might have a go at working that up. I might even do it. When I say 'do it' I don't mean 'do it' I mean 'work it up', so that's not writing, per se, but it's something other than sitting front of the monitor and writing a blog when I feel I have something to wibble on about.

Christ, I've downloaded enough shit films in the last few weeks to keep an army of nerds and geeks happy for 24 hours, but I just haven't got the motivation to watch any of them.

Hey, moaning is much easier than being happy... or positive... We are all going to die...

Now Then, Now Then

The Internet - it isn't any good for you, honest

I sit here and seethe a lot. About it and because I can't talk about it.

I stay objective though, unlike others who I'd like to believe have less time than me.

Facebook might be a lot of things but each of us is reasonably well protected from the freaks and psychos. If nothing else, Facebook allows you, to a certain degree, to choose your audience and as a consequence 'flames' and 'trolls' have all but disappeared. The same cannot be said for platforms that are more accessible to everyone. Take Amazon for instance; you don't think of Amazon as a social networking site, do you? That's because it isn't, but it does allow an enormous amount of interaction between 'customers' and unlike sites like the BBC or You Tube which have sections specifically for interaction, Amazon's is a feedback forum and whatever screening process that applies to the rest of the world possibly doesn't here. Amazon reviews are a number of things and helpful, is, amazingly, among those things. In many respects, the reviews on Amazon are more truthful; they're written 50% of the time by people who care enough to make an opinion and while that's exactly what it is, an opinion, it has led me to purchase things, on spec, that I might never have bought. I bought a Nitin Sawney album on the strength of a recommendation in another review - so it does work and I kinda have more respect for a fan who writes a review than someone who is obviously doing it for some strangely ungratifying reason. Some reviewers seem to take it all too seriously and while there's nothing wrong with having pride in your work - hell, pride is missing far too much everywhere else - some reviewers almost treat it like it's their job (and who knows, it might be).

Take my current musical bette noir - Steven Wilson's The Raven that blah blah blah and my decision to post my blog review of that album onto Amazon - because, you know, I've literally got nothing better to do - and my belief that it would be largely ignored. It hasn't and while it isn't garnering as many responses as the other negative review (which may well have been posted first and people probably think I jumped on his/her bandwagon) it has upset a few people. What I find remarkable with this is that it's obvious who have read the review and who have read my rating; those that disagreed with my review have at least tried to explain to me the error of my ways, a couple of others just got arsey with me and one in particular accused me of an awful lot based on my own humble opinion. The thing is I could almost feel his resentment and dislike seeping through the screen; it stunk of 'you disagree with me therefore you are shit on my shoe' and I opted, for once, to take the moral high ground (and because it was there to take).

This trend of being vilified in a really defensive way by passive aggressive objectors has become rife over recent years. Where it was once the confines of the private forums and groups it is now prevalent everywhere and because it is written in a distinctive way it allows the person - not a troll by any stretch of the imagination - permission to goad the detractor to the point where, because of their reaction, they can then take that 'hang on a minute, it's you who's swearing/getting angry, not me' approach, in public, that suddenly tars an otherwise reasonable view into that of a fanatic. Plus, having been on the receiving end of that more than once, if, like me, you rise to the bait more often than is good for you, there is the possibility that your initial reasoned argument/negative comment will be forgotten completely because you suddenly stop using smileys.

The Internet has always been a bit like that, but usually you knew that we're talking about minorities of people, nowadays, with so many people using the Internet, it could be anyone with an opinion that makes you foam at the mouth. I'm amazed that the world is not just one big slanging match between those who like things and those who dislike them. I suppose that's the good thing about diversity, there's too many things to be diverse about so you can always avoid the loony who disagrees with your belief that Star Wars is just a homoerotic advertisement for animal sex and incest.

The weird thing about the Amazon forum at the moment is that I have taken the moral high ground - which is unusual for me - because one or two of my detractors have been naughty and nasty. The thing is I could see the red mist descending as I was reading one of the replies to one of my replies to an earlier point, but suddenly, very lucidly, I thought, 'This is designed to ignite. This comment is designed specifically to draw the worst possible response and prove that my review has no validity because I am volatile and incendiary.' So I instead twisted his comment round and threw it back at him and took that, sensible, moral high ground

I remember going on the Guardian blogs during Andres Villas Boas's early days at my beloved Tottenham and being quite unnecessarily hostile about him. I say unnecessarily, but at the time I was absolutely incandescent with rage that my football team should have been defiled in such a way as to hire a failed Chelsea manager, etc etc. We also didn't look very good and it seems that everyone I was trying to convince couldn't remember all the good things about Spurs when Harry Redknapp was the manager. I was banging my drum and it was falling on deaf ears and that frustrated me even more. Very slowly, however, I realised that perhaps the manager wasn't the problem, so I admitted that I had been wrong and said as much on the forums.

Facebook isn't immune to it, despite what I said earlier. It's one of the places that generates its own controversies every time it decides to change something. Just recently, one of the Tech websites announced that the News Feed in your Facebook is going to change again. One of the people on this site's comment section said about the changes in Facebook: "Everybody will complain about the new layout just because people hate having to get used to something new, not because they actually hate the new layout. It's the same reason why everyone has complained about virtually every version of Windows since XP. It's not because the new OS was actually bad, it's because they don't like having to get used to new stuff. There's comfort in familiarity." 

I'd stick my neck out and say change was the biggest reason for a lot of unhappiness in the Internet - two million people (a drop in the ocean) moaning about some change Facebook has just made and probably those two million people are all over 30 (probably 40). People like me (but not necessarily me) need to understand that we're only being allowed to use these toys; we'll all be dead sooner than young people and they won't have to put up with our bitching and moaning about things they don't even blink at.

Change is a necessity because we are hurtling towards a time when what I'm doing - sitting at a PC - will only be done by people... like me and everybody else will be on the 'Net via their phones, Xboxes, tablets, iClouds or whatever the Japanese are currently developing for the 2020s.

I can't, for the life of me, understand a lot of the changes that are implemented. It appears that old adage 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' no longer applies in the real world. I'm sure the only way a developer makes money now is to come up with something different based on somebody else's different and then it is ephemeral - throwaway.

But I don't matter; the same as my opinion doesn't really matter, especially if it doesn't conform to the norm. The net is really all about inclusion and the safest way for it to go forward is for us all to accept everything and never moan about it, because one day we'll realise that it isn't worth the effort.

Mangel Wurzel Terror

Effercio et Ineptias

• Summer will be Tuesday this year, make the most of it.
• One of those long range weather forecast 'experts' reckons this coming summer will be drier than last year... No shit Sherlock? We'd all have government-issued yellow submarines if it got any wetter!
• My review of the new Steven Wilson album has angered people, especially on Amazon.
• I cooked an Indian version of beans on toast last night - a chick pea curry spooned onto a toasted naan bread. it was blummin' 'andsome!
• One of the things that's winding me up at the moment are all these things appearing on Facebook (and probably Google+) that are essentially huge slabs of moral blackmail. "99% of people won't post this..." kind of shit that means fuck all and won't change anything; even the kind natured, good intentioned bollocks that 'well-meaning' helpers think by tagging this 'threat' to some fluff piece will get more exposure. Also, there appears to be a spate of pictures of 'lottery' winners who are going to, for some unknown reason, give a million dollars to you if you share a picture of him holding his winning ticket. I don't care if you can prove to me that a) he is a lottery millionaire, and b) he means it - it's bollocks and it's bollocks that makes you look like a complete and utter twat.
• Our patio looked like an explosion of a thousand bowels this morning... The dogs have been wormed and as a result all night there was the sound of the dog flap open and closing. Dog flaps - utterly fucking genius ideas.
• While out for a walk yesterday we met another pack of dogs - 7 in this one and 5 of them were lurchers/whippets. I watched Marley, who is rapidly losing her crown of the Dog Bully, as they came into sight and it was closest I've ever seen to a dog's shoulders slumping, especially as none of them seemed at all bothered by her.
• The job search is slow and leaves far too much time for reflection.
• It's the wife's 48th birthday tomorrow; do you know absolutely no one believes me when I say how old she is? I sometimes wonder how young she would have looked had she never got lumbered with me...
• On Sundays I usually clean the duck shed out; it's not a job that I relish despite it taking, at most, 20 minutes to do from start to finish. Last week I was wrapped up against the elements and the other week it snowed throughout the job. Today, however, looks inviting. The sun is shining, the light is beginning to take on that spring time feel (it won't properly until the 21st) and even if it is cold, it just looks good out there!
• And it was, I stayed outside for over an hour; tidied up a bit and continued the work started last week. The real shame is we have rain on the horizon and I could have done with a couple more weeks of dry weather so that I could tackle that main shed roof.
• I saw my first blossom of the year on the 1st, the wife seemed to think this was later than normal.
• Almost time to bite my nails down to the first knuckle...

Lard is Closer to Xenophobia than Ballroom Dancing

I almost got beaten up on Monday or Tuesday - I can't remember exactly because days tend to blur into each other at the moment - and while I was in the right, I probably almost deserved it because I was the one who resorted to name calling and casual racism. Let me explain in my usual way...

My dad was a bit of a pioneer. When I wrote his epitaph for his funeral my brother was concerned that I might paint this picture of the superhero we all thought dad was, but for all my faults and foibles I did learn about objectivity and the word 'pioneer', possibly 'maverick' were as romantic and prosaic a words that I used. I called him a pioneer because he wasn't afraid to do something completely out there, like up and move to a different country when you have three boys under the age of 9 - that takes some balls, especially in 1964.

The year after we came back from Canada the UK had a referendum on whether or not we should become a member of this European Common Market thingy and while I can't ever say for sure my bet is that my folks voted for us to be members of this new-fangled idea; I mean, we are, after all, co-inhabitants of this planet, we should, you know, get to know the others and work together. I think that was the philosophy that won the Yes vote and threw us into this partnership that has caused no end of strife ever since.

I was once partial to casual racism. Despite coming from a very metropolitan family, when you grow up in the 70s you couldn't avoid it and therefore words such as 'Paki' and 'wog' were probably used, but in defence, so were words like 'honky' and 'pig'. I hung around with an Indian guy who referred to himself as 'just some Paki' which actually was both ironic and racist, yet because he was Indian and therefore pretty much indistinguishable from a Pakistani to all but the most trained observer, people just thought he was reclaiming the word and being post modern. Oh how he laughed; most Indians I know hate Pakistanis with a passion (and vice versa). In fact, the first real hateful racism I ever witnessed was when I saw some Chinese kids beating up an Asian boy because he was 'a dirty Paki'... Not nice when you see it in writing, is it?

Spending a couple of years living, working and shagging my way through Shenley Hospital at the start of the 1980s made me realise I was unavoidably surrounded by a multicultural stew - the place was jam packed full of the United Nations of Mental Health and British was a minority and subsequently you had this bizarre situation of a truly peaceful multicultural 'commune' in a time when this kind of thing was still inside the developing brain of some whizz-kid (literally) sociologist. In fact, the most obvious tensions in that place was not between the - in appearance - the skin head Brit kids and the West Indians or Asians, they actually all got on really well; it was between the British and the Irish. I'm not saying racism didn't exist, but I saw considerably less there than I saw outside of its fences.

Before I met the wife, I was actually engaged to a girl who was of Polish origin. Linda was from Middlesbrough but her dad was a WW2 vet from Krakow and had been in the UK since the end of the war.  He belonged to a small but settled group of ex-pat Poles in Middlesbrough and there was never any tension between them and the 'locals', but you could say the same for Northampton which has always had a huge number of Poles living here and once they all lived here peacefully without the hate. In fact racism, has always been pretty much cyclical and to prove this I listened to a man from Gujarat who has lived in this country about 20 years complaining about the number of Eastern Europeans coming into the region. I'm sure some West Indians complained about the influx of Ugandan Asians back in the 70s... It's what racism is about, innit?

The closest I've got to being racist in recent years was when we were coming home from the pub one night and we were barred from driving up a narrow road by a taxi driver. We sat there behind him, with another car behind us, patiently, then we flashed him, then we tooted the horn, eventually me and Roger, full of alcoholic chutzpah got out of our car to tell this jackanape to get a move on. The man was obviously Lithuanian, we didn't know this at the time but I've since discovered that just about the worst insult you can throw at a Lithuanian is that he is Russian. As soon as this guy got upset about me suggesting he was a Ruski prompted Roger and I to unleash a cascade of derogatory Russian put-downs until, bowed by our racist wit, he drove off, cursing us.

I know a lot of people who are more intolerant of other races at the moment than at any time in my life - even in the mega-racist 1970s, because then it was kinda treated almost like a way of dealing with it and while some people wanted them gone most were quite happy to keep them as long as they could make the occasional joke. This is alarming but also completely understandable, things are shit at the moment and we can't blame the government for everything and people from other countries are new, so we'll blame them instead. Now this isn't just idiots thinking this, there are intelligent people who seem to think that its all their fault and if we pull out of Europe things will suddenly become so much better. Really? I gave a little laugh just before I typed 'really' because people who think we'd be better off out of Europe are OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS!!! Do you want much higher prices for your food? For your gas and electric? Do you? Then if we have another referendum vote that we should come out. Do that and find that travelling around Europe isn't as easy as it is now; or that those French apples, German strudel, Italian cheese or Dutch capsicums are suddenly twice the price they were or simply no longer available. Watch loads of our farmers go out of business because you're not going to keep them in business, you've got your own concerns.

Who is going to pick your fruit in the summer? Clean your work toilets? Clean your car? Be up at 4am doing some job that even I wouldn't do and I'm unemployed? No European bank to bail us out when it all goes tits up and no way back without having to eat the humblest of humble pies and make ourselves look like a complete and utter bunch of cunts in front of the two nations we least want that to happen in front - the French and the Germans. Leaving the EU is a bit like telling your neighbour he's a wanky twat yet still expecting him to put your rubbish out, let your ducks out when you go on holiday and take in parcels for you. Of course, we're British, we kind of expect Europeans to do that anyhow...

UKIP, some idiot Tories, the EDL and other racist organisations might think that us not being in Europe would be the best thing to happen, but the only things that would change - unless you really wanted to become a neo-fascist country - would be the cost of living and no more immigrants from Europe coming in to do all the above jobs that you don't want to do. Do you know how much wheat-based products are in Norway? Go research it all you Euro-sceptics; go see how much you pay for anything that's got wheat in it because Norway can't produce enough wheat to meet even a third of its needs. Norway has great trade deals with the rest of Europe, but look at the cost of wheat. Do you know how much a pint of lager is in Oslo? About £8. Norwegians will tell you that they don't think they're thriving by not being in it because they've never been in it so there's no way of really telling; is that just so Scandinavian or what? Why do you think Norwegians eat things that have been buried in the ground for months? Because if they were in the EU it would be banned on H&S grounds - or at least that's what the Daily Mail would have you believe.

So I'm driving back from my solicitor's and I get cut up something shocking on the roundabout by Riverside. I mean, I have to slam my anchors on cut up because the twat in a Mondeo just tootled out and might have well stuck two fingers up at me while he was doing it. I flashed him and made a gesture akin to suggesting he plays with his genitals in stroking motions a lot and he took umbrage to this and stopped. I then cut up several other cars to pull alongside the Mondeo and castigate the driver for his unprofessional behaviour on the road. He offered to punch my lights out in a thick Eastern European accent. I accused him of being 'foreign' and told him I didn't wish to fight him but I would take his number plate, report him to the police and see if there was any, reasonable or harsh way they might have him deported out of my country and back to whatever toilet he crawled out of. I then drove off thinking that one of these days I am going to get my arse handed to me on a plate by someone on the receiving end of my Coward-esque bon motts. I also need to chill out when I get cut up in the car - there are utter genital defilers out there who probably found their licences in Christmas crackers, but unless I suddenly become imbued with the powers of Superman all I'm going to do is end up dead - aneurysm or stabbed.

A footnote to this; I think I was upset even more by the fact that Long and Hambly isn't there any more; just wasteland. As eras go this was one only the wife and I are probably aware of...