A (n Old) Book Review

Lisey's Story
by Stephen King

Contains spoilers - not just for this book.

There are just a handful of Stephen King books I haven't re-read over the years. The main reason for this is down to whether I have a vivid memory of the story. For instance, I haven't re-read King's book Hearts In Atlantis since it came out in 1999 because I can still vividly picture the book and the main story and three novellas that accompanied it. It may be due a read soon enough, but its links to The Dark Tower have meant that I'm reluctant to go there again for a while. I also like to give a definite period of time between reads - 10 years is often a good time because you can forget essential things. With The Shining, which I recently finished, it was 30 years, so it seemed almost like a new book and boy did it surprise me. I'd like to re-read Duma Key, but part of me is yelling that it hasn't been long enough to... surprise me again.

The underlying sub-plot of Lisey's Story is that the book's protagonist does not remember huge swathes of her time with her dead husband; like she has deliberately forgotten things that happened between them to ensure her own sanity. That was a little how I felt when I started to re-read this book. My initial thoughts were that it was so awful that I blotted it out, but after a couple of hundred pages I started to think that perhaps the theme of the book casts some magic spell over the reader, causing them to forget what Lisey forgot?

It was a little like reading The Shining again, in that I kinda knew what was going to happen, but I couldn't quite grasp it and then as I got closer to the climax I started to wonder if, by some bizarre thing that I can't remember, both the wife and I never finished it; because neither of us could remember much, if anything about the last 100 pages. Baffling.

Another problem, especially around the time this book was written/published - 2005/6 - was that King was coming in for some massive criticism both for the wholly unsatisfactory conclusion to his opus - The Dark Tower - and the poorly edited Cell, which seemed a bit like a 21st century rehash of The Stand with cell phones and zombies rather than Randall Flagg and Mother Abigail. Similarities between King's The Stand and Cell were almost cringeworthy, especially when one of the books main characters is killed halfway through (except when Nick Andros died it was shocking, in Cell it just felt... well, contrived. But I digress...) and I suppose many people looked at Lisey's Story and at Rose Madder and thought the similarities there were too close for comfort. The thing is, they're pretty much diametrically opposite; they just have a similar theme and that theme is 'somewhere else', just like the Dark Tower story or any other novel where the walls of reality are Lovecraftian thin.

So, I read Lisey's Story again and found it surprisingly hard work. It is written in a peculiar way and I'm thinking that perhaps I didn't take it seriously the first time around because I maybe missed some little things that would have stopped me from getting so angry with Stephen King. Sensible common sense me is shouting in my brain about how certain things just would't happen and then I realise I'm reading a fantasy horror novel and actually some of these things might happen because of the influences being exerted from ... other places.

Scott Landon is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist; as rich as Croesus and possibly, like most brilliant novelists, bonkers. He dies and two years later his widow, Lisey (or Lisa) Landon is cleaning out the place where he did most of his work and dealing with the mundane as well as the extraordinary; because she was married to this famous 'National Treasure' she suffers from the fanatics and fanboys who think her husband belongs to them more than he did to his wife - which, as the book goes on, you realise just how dependent he is on her, when he was alive and maybe even now he's dead.

Her brilliant dead husband has a past that is both terrifying, all too real, and just a little bit odd. Yes, he was abused by his father and he lived a young life that, through snippets, looked as horrible as you could imagine; but Scott and his brother Paul were both child prodigies but came from a family that had a long and terrible secret. It is never fully investigated and as the story goes on and you learn more and more about the past, there is never really an explanation as to why the Landons are the way they are, only that the Landreaus before them, in France, had had to leave their country. What is hinted at is a play on the idea of lycanthropy - the Landons are not werewolves, but if they 'go bad' there is a vicious and physical transformation that dissipates on death and if you didn't go the way of the so-called 'bad-gunky' you went 'gomer' or catatonic.

It's here where you start to see similes. Lisey's sister Amanda is a 'gomer', she also, like Scott's family, is a cutter - someone who self-mutilates and then escapes to a catatonic state when everything gets too much. It is during a bad episode with Amanda that things start to happen and we are introduced to what is essentially a nap hand of stories that will all converge at some point. There is Lisey's voyage of discovery - which includes meeting her own personal bette noir; there is Scott's back story plus the bits that Lisey has forgotten; and there is this other story - the fantasy world that Scott (and his brother) used to escape to, to get away from their bi-polar-like father and his cruel love. Scott calls this place Boo'Ya Moon, but in 'reality' what it really is is the pool of inspiration or imagination that everyone has access to but not everyone takes advantage of (and others take too much). It is also all of the dark places in your mind; the imagination that you'd rather not have, with unpleasant things hiding in dark corners and something that stalks you, but only when you're in that place after you should be. The imagination is the best creator of the wondrous, but it also creates the nasty things that are almost impossible to transcribe or describe.

What is clear is this book is both a whodunnit and in many ways also a time travel story. Much of it is in flashback, but that is also done in a very strange way, almost disjointed - not the way it is told but with an odd chronology. Also when I say it's a whodunnit, it is and it isn't. A Bool Hunt is a Scott Landon thing and that is a series of puzzles to unravel the truth of something, with a prize at the end. Either the dying Landon placed a future Bool Hunt for his wife, to be triggered at a specific junction in time or his ghost was still using his wife as an anchor, to protect her from something he knew was coming. The upshot is that you sense there's a lot more to Scott Landon and his family that you don't hear or read about. You finish it with a sense that  everything is already laid out in front of us and Scott's ghost just tagged along to ensure that it happened. Not that Scott's ghost manifests at all; it's a metaphoric ghost.

I suppose the sense of the dying Scott Landon 'knowing' what would happen as a direct result of his 'fame' and 'eccentricity' is a stretch even readers of horror novels would struggle with and that is perhaps why I struggled to find anything endearing in it first time around, but there's no denying that I now have a lot of respect for this book because it is very clever and had it never bothered with the (over long) epilogue you could well have walked away from it with a sense completion, of a circle having been closed forever. Plus, my memories of this book consisted of the piebald monster Scott was scared of and this pool of imagination where everyone comes to drink, but some come to catch fish or sail out to the centre and go for the bigger prizes and all of this seemed too much like another tip of the hat to the Dark Tower mythology.

While there is a movement - whether its by King or to quote Scott Landon, his 'incunks', to link all of his books together, on re-reading this I can see why people want to link it to other books - it seems to be the way with King - but I feel that King has many worlds he walks in and the Mid and End World ones might be right next door to The Territories (so close you can walk between them with barely a notice), or Boo'Ya Moon, the higher planes achieved by Ralph and Lois in Insomnia or the totally alien and unpalatable world glimpsed in From a Buick 8 (which, incidentally was set in Pennsylvania, where Scott and Paul Landon grow up). Jack Sawyer might have travelled to a world very much like that of Roland of Gilead in the two Stephen King/Peter Straub collaborations, but Jack's Territories are not Roland's world and neither of them are Scott Landon's. To wander into and reference a completely different King book (with no deference to the uneducated) thinnies probably exist in all of his worlds and act as a way for them to interact with each other and to confuse us 0- his constant readers.

Lisey's Story possibly ends up asking more questions than it answers, especially about the nature of this fantasy land and the things that transform there after dark. It is another example of the prick-teaser in SK; the way he likes to lead his readers up a dark alley with promises of something even more dark and weird, but then brings you back into the light, leaving you wanting more of this subplot, this segue, possibly even at the expense of maybe not finishing the book it comes from (Pet Semetary being the case in point for me).

Reading it the second time, I really started to feel an empathy towards Lisey Landon and realised that while she and her sisters never realised it, they had much more in common with the Landons than they realised and you do get the feeling that Scott had spent his life looking for one of the Debusher girls, especially the youngest and pluckiest of them, because he knew that she would be the anchor he needed to stop himself from becoming like the others in his family. In fact, the entire story made so much more sense second time around that I kind of dislike myself for being so down on it when it came out. I seem to recall opting not to review it (although I'm sure someone will send me a link and say, "Oy, memory man, what about this?") but I'd guess it would have been a poor review. Or maybe, in the days that followed reading it, the memory of it just started to fade away, because, you know, Boo'Ya Moon and the Pool are something we all visit but we maybe don't ever want to remember it because it will drive us mad.

In fact, I can no longer recall what this review is about, but if it was a Stephen King book it was probably awful...

7/10

Sour Grapes?

This sounds bad. I don't feel particularly British today. I actually feel a little like how a Muslim must feel if he accidentally walks into the middle of an EDL rally. I'm down on life in general, but I'm appalled at my fellow Brits and I'm appalled at the state of British politics when (not even thinly-disguised) racists get 139+ councillors elected and send a message out to the country that despite what some of us thought, we're actually becoming polarised to the extreme. There is a percentage of people who seem to care about the plight of the poor and disenfranchised and a percentage who care about the environment; but, it appears the rest of us, in the wake of Thatcher's death, have embraced the 'fuck you' culture again or, as I believe is more the case, has highlighted the fact that an awful lot of the population are selfish, self-serving, ignorant buffoons.

As if to highlight this, a UKIP candidate for the county elections branded the Labour Party as a bunch of Nazis, which, to be fair, had it been said in a very public forum rather than just a UKIP Facebook page might have got some reaction from the press, but this person, standing as a councillor either has no idea what Nazism is or is just fucking stupid (or both). He didn't win, but he got 3rd in his ward (out of 6). 800+ people voted for him...

One of the newly elected UKIP councillors in Basildon finished last with 46 votes in 2005 as a BNP candidate. While former MP Tony Clarke was campaigning for the Green Party during the run-up to Thursday's voting debacle met people who were torn between voting labour and voting UKIP. What? Shall I vote for a traditionally leftish party or shall I vote for Nigel 'Hitler' Farage's party? The two parties couldn't be much farther apart in terms of ideology, yet the ignorant buffoons of the voting world have grown so disillusioned with party politics that they no longer know what they want or how they want it; they will vote for the person who ticks enough of their own small-minded and probably bigoted beliefs.

Take for instance this campaign by UKIP based on national issues, which they can have little or no control over, specifically about immigrants. Apparently we have far too many in our country and they're stealing the jobs, benefits and housing of real deserving British people. What amazes me is that none of the major parties has even addressed this spurious and frankly wrong fact (is it because the playground gossip has made this a FACT now and the parties are scared of not being believed by an increasing percentage of society? Say a lie for long enough and you start to believe it) and nor has the press - well the Guardian has - but only 800,000 people read that paper (we really are a tiny minority). It doesn't serve the interests of the right wing press to 'explain' anything; they'd rather the people remained ignorant of the facts so they can manipulate them the way they always have. Independent research and collation of figures puts the immigrant population in this country at much less than 1million people; a tiny percentage of these people are claiming whatever benefits they are allowed - mainly child benefits - and the percentage of people claiming child benefit for a child that doesn't live here is actually ZERO, despite what the Daily Mail and UKIP will have you believe.

Of course, there's 'evidence' and there's anecdotal evidence. I have tonnes of anecdotal evidence, such as when I worked in Corby and was told by the unemployed kids that they can't get jobs because the Poles have them all; but when jobs became available in factories or around Corby - the jobs they accused the Eastern Europeans of stealing - none of them wanted to work at these low paid, demeaning jobs. "I'm nay putting my hand down someone's toilet for that kind of money," said one 18-year-old who probably will never get a job, even if he's forced to do one. Plus, all of these neo-racists who are calling for a cull on immigrants should be looking at the employers first and foremost, because they will employ Eastern Europeans because they work harder, earn less, want less rights and in some cases they can be abused whereas Brits can't.

You'd have a pint with him,
but would you really want him running the country?

Take for instance the Lincolnshire farmer who lambasted the new UKIP councillors in his local elections for promising to drive out migrant workers to ensure the jobs are there for English people. "We employ foreign workers because they will be paid less and work longer hours. No local people want these jobs, we've advertised for years; for British people it screws up their benefits and frankly they just don't want to do it. You can't force them to do a job like this." Or look at some of their 'policies', such as banning maternity leave, allowing smoking in public places, cutting the tax for the highest earners, implementing a 20p in the pound tax rate, with no allowances for the poor. The problem is UKIP and Farage appeal to the working class man and yet his party's position is one of right wing - Tory boy - politics dressed up in 1970s styled bonhomme. There are also UKIP's other 'policies', ones that will appeal to the (bigoted) working class bloke - the banning of gay marriage, the revoking of certain human rights and as was discussed on a number of UKIP forums on social media the removal from the country of any foreign national who is not skilled in his trade or whose job can be done by a British worker.

Plus there are the lies or prefabrication of the truth. Already UKIP have fallen foul of some watchdogs because of claims with no basis in reality; or the party's claim that the UK government pays Europe £53million a day to, as they say, subsidise policies to stymie UK growth. The real figure is still a staggering £19million a day, but naturally UKIP doesn't tell you what that £19m a day 'buys' us in terms of better debt repayment rates etc. UKIP talks like the UK is mired in the EU, being dragged down by it, but the truth is the opposite; we are already on the margins of a united Europe - Cameron prefers it that way - so we're not stymied at all by it, we kind of still do our own thing regardless of Merkel, Hollande and co and we actually benefit from it more than it bothers us. Plus our retail prices are much lower than they would be if we weren't in it.

UKIP benefited from the fact that at least a quarter of the country is fed up with politics and the 3 main parties. The Tories probably think if they can get the UKIP voters they can win an election, but UKIP voters are not just right wingers; I'd hazard a guess and say that a lot of them are just ignorant (like the UKIP candidate who claimed Labour were a bunch of Nazis) and it seems that someone, somewhere isn't taking advantage of this the way they could have and allowed a bunch of amateurs to steal a political march.

The sad truth about politics at the moment is no one has any real faith in Cameron and co; people are frightened of Ed Milliband (for a variety of reasons) or think he's just not statesman enough and the Libdems are finished for a generation - they were the ones who have suffered at Mervyn King's forecast of political pariahs the most and Tories must be grateful for idiots like Clegg and Danny Alexander because they're not finished like many thought they would be.

The Tories need to stabilise the economy, even if they have to spend money; so that isn't going to happen. Labour needs to seriously think about the Milliband effect and that is he is as much a liability as Neil Kinnock was. Replacing him in the next couple of months would be the wisest decision and then getting Yvette Cooper in to replace him would be the most forward thinking the party has been for years. Clegg will I reckon walk across the floor - he'll go Tory, but not until he loses his Sheffield Hallam seat and is staring at the political abyss with just a safe Tory seat being offered. And the rest? They might get re-elected and might possibly serve on some form of coalition because if you transfer Thursday's result into a general election, we'd have a massive hung parliament with UKIP possibly holding the balance of power.

There is only one thing I can think of that's worse than death - a Tory/UKIP coalition - there really would be nothing left...

Lost

Our rescuers give up their weary mission

we were lost before we left

I rarely write more than bilious rants when I'm down. If you trace back the times in the last ten years - since I've had a blog - the number of times I've hit mental rock bottom, you can see a pattern; or maybe you can't, because you aren't me and my patterns aren't like maps. 

Depression hits me in different ways; sometimes it can last for weeks, other times... well, let's just say that sometimes I have the mental fortitude to literally just shake it off before it gets to grips with me and because I can, I tuck it away, somewhere deep and far away until it manages to resurface and have another crack at me. In a different way. From a different direction. With a new twist. I've always been moody; but these moods are usually typified by either grumpiness,  petulance, hysterical rants against the machine or quite remarkably, silence. Whenever depression manages to creep in, inveigle its way, it tends to be the silence that takes over...

When I was young, in my teens, you could say you were depressed, but it was usually disregarded because depression was a serious illness and only adults - proper adults - suffered from it. Depression also had that stigma, the 'mental' part of illness one. Not being able to cope was something women did (or didn't do), men were stoic, unemotional and detached from their weaknesses. Men were either real men or, well, you get the idea.

I suffered from a form of mental illness when I was 11. I had something that was labelled 'school phobia', which was something of a misnomer because it wasn't school that was the problem. What I was suffering from was a subconscious fear that manifested itself in the form of anxiety attacks, which, presumably because of my lack of maturity, were transformed into psychosomatic bouts of illness. My body reacted to the anxiety and kind of rebelled against my immune system, so I became 'ill' - high temperature, sore throat, rashes and sickness. It drove my mother to despair and one of the vivid memories I have was listening to her crying her eyes out on the phone to my uncle Frank because she had no idea, and neither did the doctors, what was wrong with me and to make matters worse, once I was at home, all the symptoms miraculously disappeared, until I had to leave the house again. What made it all the more vivid in my memory was the fact my mum rarely cried from stress, it wasn't in her DNA.

Then my eldest brother Ronnie got wed. I fucked about at the wedding reception like a flying monkey child and then, for the next three weeks, fell very quiet. This was all the evidence my GP needed and after a couple of sessions with a nurse who specialised in child psychology, and, of course, the disappearance of all the illness, the school phobia diagnosis was given and everyone was happy. The catalyst had been my brother's marriage; it seems that I was manifesting all this illness to stay at home because I didn't want him to get married and it was probably to do with how close I was with him and my fears that I wouldn't see him very often.

All of this came out during the three weeks of near silence, which as some of you will expect, caused almost as much worry in the Hall house as the 'illness'. Said illness was caused by my belief that my brother was marrying the wrong person and my almost precognitive belief that the marriage was a bad thing all round - which it proved to be. Fortunately, two very important things came from it and that was good.

My moods were always misinterpreted as attention seeking; even when I was quiet; but inside my head the world would often become a nightmare of what ifs. I actually worry a lot more than I let on and I play scenarios out in my mind that are just dark and tragic. I also know I'm not the only person who does this, but it doesn't make it any easier.

I was lucky through my late teens and twenties; the worst my depression would sink to was feeling sorry for myself, wallowing in self pity and wondering why the world had it in for me. But as I approached 30, I'd witnessed my wife and several of my friends have serious bouts of depression, for which I was always sympathetic, supportive and felt grateful that I had not plumbed some of those depths myself. I may have been there myself, but by this time I was self-medicating so much I wasn't really that sure where reality and fantasy started and stopped.

I said somewhere else, a while back, that all the time through my shop, its failure and my time working in comics, I never succumbed to depression, despite having, at times, good reason to. The first time, the first really bad time, happened about 12 years ago and seemed to be apropos of nothing. I'd spoken to doctors about feeling down and depressed a couple of times prior to this - specifically after my mother died and my former employer started treating me like a cunt; but I had always avoided anti-depressants - the main reason was I liked drugs too much and envisaged myself becoming dependent on them all too quickly - but when the full weight of the previous years came crashing down around my ears. I was lucky that I was surrounded by people who could help.

Yet, still I avoided the prescription drugs, preferring to experiment in relaxation techniques, listening to quiet music and having periods of reflection. I was not coping (and 'self-medicating' even more), but I sought holistic support rather than anything else. And, I pulled out of it, got back on with the job and ended up getting a promotion and spent two good years, relatively stress free.

The second noticeable depression event happened between June and the end of July 2005; but this was brought on by a definite tangible thing. I hated my job. I'd moved up from grunt to grunter and didn't really like it; couldn't cope with the inactivity and lack of activity opportunities, my work suffered, I got (probably justified) criticism at a bad time and only some excellent timing prevented me from a massive attack. That was postponed for another 2½ years.

Changing my job, on the face of it, was a bad thing. I was sacrificing a management position for a temporary, part time job, but it brought me back to the place where I was best at, working with people, helping them overcome their own problems - helping them with their problems kind of stopped me thinking about mine. And it probably allowed me to put my own problems to the side, much like I used to advise the kids I worked with - they aren't going to magically disappear, so try and put them out of reach for a while, so you can do other things. It's a mental trick, but if you can perfect it then you can deal with most stressful things.

There are three kinds of people who work in social care, from my experiences: those who can detach themselves from their work - these kind of people will do their job excellently almost indefinitely and never show any signs of the work getting to them. 
Those who become emotionally attached to their work and will burn themselves out inside 5 years and then be frightened of ever returning to that kind of work because of the fear it will happen again. 
Finally, there's the people who are ambitious and see social care as a way of attaining a management position that either pays them enough to keep them happy or spurs them on to go even higher - because, at times, getting promoted in social care is as easy as taking a piss. 

[There is also a fourth kind - the deadwood, but these tend to be people who see it as an easy job; a colleague of mine once called them 'hat stands' because they tend to stand around, doing nothing unless called on. These people rarely stay in that kind of work for long.]

When I found a home at the YOT, it was like my dream job had arrived. I worked with good people, worked to improve the lives of (largely) bad people. the work was rewarding, the money very reasonable and you are measured and rewarded for your hard work and common sense. I soon took on more and more responsibility and everyone was happy. Then my world caved in. In the space of 6 weeks, a series of events all snowballed and the crash was terrifying.

The trigger was a court case involving a young man I had worked with for nearly two years. He had been a victim of an assault and the victim of a conspiracy. All he was guilty of was defending his rights. The police came to his shared house to arrest a co-habitant and the lad tried to explain to the six police officers who had kicked the door in that it was a shared house and he wanted to see a warrant. To cut a long story short, he was sprayed, beaten up and arrested for obstructing the law. The case should have been kicked out by the CPS, but found its way to Magistrates. Not only did one of the police officer's statements 95% corroborate the lad's story, it was also completely different from the two officers bringing the charges. But the judge, presumably pissed off at having to still be at court on December 18th at 7pm, found him guilty and sentenced him to 6 months in prison, largely due to his past, despite having not been in trouble for 2 years.

That got me right down, because I'd got emotionally involved. Christmas was bad; Gifford was now very old and ill for a lot of it and the wife and I started to get that resigned bordering on hysterical look in our eyes. Both of us went through Christmas on the verge of tears and then the New Year came in with a scythe. I'd always said the worst week of my life was when my mother died and I lost my job at the magazine, but however distasteful this might be to some, the week Gifford died was a nadir. I won't go into the reasons of why one was worse than the other, but the same thing that happened in 1998 had happened ten years later. I lost my job.

Imagine if you will what a man shaped animated jelly would look like. That was me during January 2008. Reeling from the death of one of my dogs, witnessing the law at its worse and the inevitable hopelessness of it and then told my job was obsolete. Council cuts, you see, I was not officially an employee, just a sessional still; I was Oh You Tee.

Life? It just fell to bits. I had massive panic attacks; anxiety attacks; symptoms like a heart attack and because the wife was going through her own grieving, she couldn't be there for me as much as I (or she) would have wanted, so I suddenly felt isolated, alone and unbelievably frightened.

My boss at the time, a lovely lady called Carol, who is equal one of the three best bosses I have ever had (all at the same place of work, no less), was a real tower of strength for me; she battled tooth and nail to get me reinstated and recognised one concrete fact that everyone else had overlooked - I had been there 2 years; I had the same rights as she did, by law. I kept my job and was assured it by it being made a permanent position. The depression eased, but this time I had to have the citalopram remedy. 

I'm wondering if perhaps my life might have worked out a bit better had I just left and tried my hand at something else, because I can't help but think I'm not the first example of the kind of people who go into social care. I claim to be a man who can detach himself from the shit around me, but, you know... I'm maybe the second example but I've held on for longer.

The last five years have been well documented because it's all been blogged - diary-ised for the world to look at or, as is the case sometimes, ignore. 

It was my physical health that was next to take a battering as my bones decided to end their symbiotic relationship with the rest of my body. Naturally, ill health is as debilitating on the mind as it is everywhere else and twice more I plunged into the depths of despair. The first was the perfect example of why no two bouts of depression are ever the same. Between June and September 2011, I went into a self-loathing silence; spending my days playing mind games with myself, scared of interacting with anyone and then transforming into the guy most of you see. Going out, being gregarious, hospitable and affable. Even when I was with my closest of friends, the front came up and sometimes I wonder if perhaps I should have tried to become an actor, because at times my life feels like one long play. 

If you read some of the blogs from that period, if you know what to look for, you can see dark matter at work and the timing of this one sucked. I'd just got motivated to help a musician friend in the States increase his profile over here and simultaneously do the same for my own. I fancied moving back into an area that I've skirted around in the 1980s and as a hip almost 50 year old I figured I had the gravitas and the moves to pull it off.

Then redundancy had absolutely the most devastating effect on me, made all the worse by the fact that I was actually looking forward to it in the month leading up to it, but when it arrived it was like all the anti-climaxes in the world mixed with this hammer blow of uncertainty. I fucked up for my friend, hid away and, as I said, pretended to be me to everyone else.

Then I got the last job and not only did I have a confidence boosting interview, but compared to some of my previous jobs, it seemed positively easy. Yes, I wasn't earning anything near what I was and we'd have to keep the belt tight, but my self-esteem came flooding back; my verbosity returned and I think everyone saw this changed man, passionate again, with a determination to succeed.

Then three months in there were a number of setbacks, possibly exacerbated by me but not my fault to start with. Things changed, all the plans got pushed to one side and I had a bad time between that January and Easter 2012. To be fair, some things improved but I rarely felt like I belonged there like I have other jobs and also I should point out that a compromise agreement prevents me from discussing further any events that took place at my last place of employment.

It's now getting on for 10 weeks since we parted company and over the last three or four I've felt something happen. You hear people talk about the Red Mist, that anger that descends on you like some nasty fog. It doesn't happen with everyone, but most people, even if they've never heard the expression will get what it means. Well, I get the Red Mist, but I also get the Sickly Yellow Smog, the antithesis of the red. 

It's like once the defiance has gone and the pragmatism wavers and the resolution is tempered by the lack of prospects, you can almost see this cloak of despondency descend on you and what's worse is that is does this very slowly, but you know car crashes, that rubbernecking mode that people have, well I'm waist deep in molasses and I'm not moving anywhere, because I'm just watching myself fall even further.

The thing is I'm an intelligent bloke; I don't care how conceited that sounds, I am and I know the signs and have seen the signs and understand the signs to know that I've been sliding towards a serious, and that's Serious with a capital and in underlined bold, bout of depression; possibly the worst ever because I always managed to retain something during all the other bouts that I can't find with anything at the moment, no matter how hard I try and that is hope ... 

I know its bad because I've even abandoned my usual narcissistic tendencies and have been beating myself up over things and incidents that happened as much as 40 years ago. Fucking obsessive memories that I'd thought I'd blotted out years ago flooding back and causing me mental anguish of the most surreal kind - guilt over things that didn't happen; things I prevented happening or might possibly have happened if I twist my mind that way enough and make it all about me rather than anything else - because you do that when you're depressed not just because you're a narcissist.

The seeming futility of my job hunting gets me down and has me feeling paranoid for probably no reason at all; this has manifested itself into massive question marks about ability, deflation of confidence; heck (and don't take this the wrong way) I even realised that at the moment I offer nothing and take too much - everybody would probably be a lot happier (and wealthier) if I was dead (and I'm not suicidal, I'm just trying to rejuvenate some of that homespun pragmatism that I'm supposed to have). The news that the government will find any reason not to give me some of the money I paid in taxes also shouldn't surprise me. Heck, if you're unlucky the government will punish you even more.

I am conceited enough to know that some of you will read this and worry; while some will read it and think I'm attention seeking again - Look at Phil and his funny depression! Tee hee. And some of you will be heading towards, just coming out of, or living your own personal hells at this very moment, so my tales of woe and depression are going fly past you like a cold spring breeze. The world is like that at the moment. I'm not that deluded to think otherwise.

Do you know how much writing I've done in the last 10 weeks - not counting these blogs? About 5,000 words in total - that is piss poor for me. I've had all the time in the world to work on projects, but I haven't and I've then got annoyed at myself for not doing anything, created a vicious circle and used that as an excuse for why I haven't done anything; it's a kind of mental health procrastination. But, you know, I've kind of been doing that with everything for the last couple of weeks. A project with a friend got off to a brilliant start and then, like in 2011, faced with the actuality I froze and allowed everything to sidetrack me. My office looks like a shitstorm has hit it and things like my daily chores are getting done later and later, or, as I realised today, the hoovering hasn't been done at all this week. So the rest of my week is full of things that need to be done - I won't necessarily do them, but I've made a list; maybe that's what I need to help me pull out of this funk. 

You know, I think writing this is going to have one of two results - it'll either act as form of therapy and catharsis and I'll feel renewed and try to be positive, or it will just be the further heralding of things... things I don't want to contemplate.

75 Seconds (Give or Take)

• Is it a prerequisite for taxi drivers to be shit drivers?
• How many people don't work in this country that no one knows about?
• Fuckwit has scaffolding up the front of his house. His roof needs fixing. How does he afford these things? Seriously, how does he afford them? I can't even get what I should be entitled to. He is either on some kind of crazy scam or unbeknownst to everyone he really has a job.
• The company that disposes of Northampton Borough Clowncil's (did you see what I did there?) decomposable waste can't process sawdust or newspaper if it has animal pooh or pee in it, near it or been spoken to by it. It's not a health and safety issue. It's not a sawdust issue - they'll take sawdust as long as a turd has been nowhere near it. You see small furries waste is not processable and therefore neither is anything it might have contaminated, but it isn't a health and safety issue, unless it is, but no one has said anything. What do clowncils do with dog shit?
• I have got 16 strawberry plants in. Planted some dwarf beans and beetroots. Actually done something in the garden that looks like it might have been thought up by someone who knows what he is doing. I got my potatoes in at the weekend, discovered I now have two rhubarb plants (as part of the root I left in the ground has regenerated) and I'm very nearly almost where I want to be.
• There is no more.

More Shorts

I ranted at the poor woman at the Job Centre. Just sat down and started. I could see she was programmed to ignore me, but I persevered. I might as well have been complaining at a sheep about the price of lamb.

It's been a bad week for blood pressure, that's for sure and yet I can't help thinking that a few years ago I might have given myself an aneurysm but now I'm trying to ignore everything because I don't want to have a life-induced heart attack while railing against the system that doesn't change. I could also sit here and tell you about my experiences with Universal Job Search, which is, to put it as succinctly as possible - a complete and total oxymoron. It doesn't do much of what it says on the tin and what it does do it does in a 1990s stylee. My adviser probably wouldn't have got animated if I'd whipped my cock out and danced the fandango with the illiterate Ukrainian seated next to me.

Still, I actually was slightly less than ambivalent about the GDP figures. I'm actually quite pleased there has been some growth, because had it gone the other way then it would have been a case of abandon hope all you who enter here.

The next series of The Walking Dead could and probably should be filmed as a documentary in Sainsburys, Duston. I got a text from the wife asking me if I was shopping already (no she's not Jewish) and my reply was something along the lines of 'Fucking Zombie Chamber' and her reply was, "Sainsburys then?"

I have been sitting in the garden. I thought all the sun was going away and the cold weather was coming back, but the sun has come out again and my shirt needs to be taken off... More later!

Later is now and the day was indeed a glorious one. The long range weather forecast says the next nice weather will be in the middle of May. I must now apologise to my friend Jo for doubting her weather forecasting skills last weekend...

For those of you who have been here a long time you will, hopefully, remember that I am a great advocate of the rules - if it aint broke don't fix it and never trust anything that claims to be 'new' and 'improved'. These two specific sayings appear to be what the Internet is all about because I've noticed some more subtle but fucking annoying changes to things like my Yahoo mail, a couple of things that have upgraded themselves and my browser, which just changed overnight: went to bed it looked one way, got up, clicked on something that didn't seem to be offensive and there's all kinds of shit that's different. I finally decided to upgrade some other program I use and it is now covered in adverts. I appreciate that if something exists with potential commercial viability it will be raped repeatedly until it yields some kind of revenue and because kids treat advertising like we treat midges means that we're going to be pissed off about it, kids are going to ignore it and companies are going to continue making no money but at least they will have continued to piss off the older generations sufficiently to keep them amused if nothing else.

I was thinking that I can't remember the last time I met someone that I hadn't gotten on really well with, then I remembered that there are three people that I've known in the last 10 years, who were basically complete cunts - It might have started well and I got on with them initially, but... I'm not sure they're in my 1990s former employer's league for sustained horridness because I didn't know any of these new people long enough to gauge what horrors they could achieve over a sustained period of time. One of them really just hated me, one of them was actually something of a joke and the other is a dangerous individual; the kind of person who really shouldn't be shown a smidgeon of power or they will use it for their own personal revenges. This all came about yesterday when I was on my way back from the dole orifice and popped into the Lamplighter for a swift pint of JHB and ended up having a couple while chatting to this really nice guy who used to live in Stevenage - my home town. I was pretty much of the opinion that when I got friendly with One El that making new friends at my age was literally one for the books; retired people make new friends because the old will talk to anyone. What kind of makes it funny and slightly ironic is that I might see the guy again, he heard about the pub quiz and might join us and he's a copper. How about that, eh? Me friendly with a policeman.

Hate Filled Bile Spewed From Frustrated Middle Aged Man (part 72)

Several years ago, I seriously considered standing as an independent in the local elections. I had become so incensed by useless councillors, ridiculous bureaucracy and pretty blatant corruption - councillors getting their own streets resurfaced ahead of far more deserving roads (which didn't have councillors or friends of councillors living on them, like council estates, etc.) and bizarre little quirks and by-laws being introduced purely to pander to a few people and to piss off the many. Local politics might be different from central government politics, but the same small, petty minded, bigoted, career politicians inhabit the spaces.

However, one night, as I was sitting at this very desk, planning a winning strategy having just returned from a fruitful meeting with old pal and former MP Tony Clarke, I came to the conclusion that I was barking mad. Well, no, I actually came to the conclusion that I wasn't the person to be doing this...

I got this mate and for the sake of his identity we'll skirt around key issues, but he was a colleague of mine who was probably the best person at his job and the reason for this was because he was the only person on that specific team who had been in the same ship which we were now helping certain people to steady. Our clients could relate to him because he had literally been there, done it and bought and worn out the T-shirt. He was quite brilliant at his job and many of us were envious of him. He is also a very political person - a union man and a life-long Labour supporter, but if he ever considered standing for council he would be crucified by his opponents and all because he has a criminal record.

The most qualified person standing for the recent Police Commissioner posts also had a criminal conviction when he was a teenager. I personally thought this made him closer to the hub than the weird looking alien guy who got the job.

Now, I haven't got a criminal record. In fact, I no longer even have any penalty points on my licence (touches wood) and I am an, allegedly, upstanding citizen - even if I am dole-scrounging scum at this moment in time. But, I have some skeletons in my closet that would, if I ever considered standing for office, bite me on the arse and take big chunks. I mean, yes, Bill Clinton got elected President even though he tried pot when he was in Oxford - he didn't inhale. I did. A lot. I even, gulp, sold a bit of it during the darkest days of Thatcher's rule because I needed something to brighten up a future as bright as a very long unlit tunnel. That admission alone could probably get me a visit from the Old Bill and couple that with all the blogs I've written over the years that contain language that would make a Merchant Seaman blush. Then of course there's the embezzlement, frauds, adultery, murders and genocide I've either performed or played a part in, these would all make great newspaper headlines (if they were true...) Let's face it, simply admitting I took drugs for a few years is going to alienate me from a huge percentage of the voting public.

I actually think, going back to this Police Commissioner thing that I was the best qualified of all the candidates and I didn't stand for it. My age is good. I spent many years working as a 'journalist', I then went into social care and spent 6 years as a valuable and innovative employee of the Youth Offending Service - I actually had more general experience than any of the candidates (apart from the one who dropped out), but you know, the baldy guy who won would have found out I used to puff away on spliffs in my early 20s and the Chronicle & Echo would have had mock ups of me with dreads and a big reefer hanging from my slack jaw...

And that's why, I decided, that politics and me should co-exist rather than become symbiotic. I know I can't do much from the sidelines, but at least I still have my voice.

Yet, I wonder if I have some kind of unique view of the world that is somehow being overlooked by others. This morning, the news featured a story that essentially charted the rise and rise of Food Banks and the fact that there has been a ½ million increase in people needing to use them, in the last year. Does that make you feel good? Because it makes me think that covertly, we're royally butt-fucking the poor and disadvantaged and the only people that care have no power at all to change it or even get 2 minutes of serious media time to highlight the plight. Admittedly the BBC treated it like a news story, but I cannot believe the social implications of this hasn't sparked more reaction. I am a great believer in the UK sending aid to other countries - what a lot of people don't realise is that the more aid we send to third world countries, the better deal we get with our debt repayments. So, instead of paying say 5% interest, we pay proportionately less because of the help we give to other countries - so all of you people who can't understand why we do it, there's the simple economics of it. However, when we have people in this country who are literally begging (or the 21st century equivalent of it) for food, you have to ask whether something, somewhere has gone wrong.

How can we as human beings, with some semblance of conscience, allow this to happen in 2013? The government claims that there are benefit provisions to cater for these people (if you'll excuse the pun), but if its there, how come no one is using it? How come no one knows about it? Why are people getting referred to food banks by Job Centres if there is a provision in benefits to prevent this from happening that job centre employees could tell them about rather than refer them to a food bank? Some faceless government twat said the problem was being overstated - I take it ½million increase in people needing free food is an overstatement then? Just how out of touch with reality is the current government? But you could argue that if people are starving they won't have the energy to rebel against it.

I hear Cameron banging on about the Big Society and his government working on behalf of the 'public interest' and I wonder if anyone actually believes him? I mean the rich obviously know he's blowing hot air. The middle classes don't care and the poor, who, if they even bother to listen to his message, just feel like he's taking the piss. The Big Society has become synonymous with the better off helping the poor because the government aren't going to do it. It's like they're absolving themselves of all responsibility while making sure that whoever is running the country next can't afford to fix the things they're wilfully dismantling. Real Tories (not people like some of my misguided friends) must be really evil people. Yes, by all means, hate and despise those who take the piss and take the country for a ride, but don't feel the same way about people who are just unfortunate or aren't as healthy as you (or them) and more importantly, don't put them all in the same boat. A man in his 50s who gets made redundant because of government cuts isn't where he is through his own volition.

I have been a Labour supporter all my life and then at the last General Election I made the mistake of thinking that a LibDem vote might be worth it. In Northampton all the LibDem candidate did was prevent the Labour candidate from getting back in. The Tory vote stayed roughly the same and 30% of the Labour vote went Liberal and they both allowed Michael Ellis to get elected. He must have been rubbing his hands together in glee because he got elected on less votes than his losing predecessor achieved.

The most galling thing about the last 3 years has been the complete ineffectiveness of the coalition; the Libdems, so petrified, barely do anything to curtail the Tories and I have this slightly soiled feeling that I actually voted Tory at the last election without knowing it. Even now, the Libs are more concerned with sustaining the massive erection they got when they suddenly became power brokers than tempering a bunch of fascists who are, to all intents and purposes, being allowed to screw up the country so much the next government will struggle to even keep things as they are now. How good is to look forward to?

I'm betting a lot of you weren't aware that John Major and his Tories felt they had little or no chance of remaining in power in 1992. The rumours suggested that they did things to stymie Kinnock's incoming government; set things in place, economically, that would blow up in Labour's face a couple of years into their reign. Then, of course, the unthinkable happened and the Tories got back in - mainly on the strength that Kinnock was Michael Foot Jr. Major's government were buggered by incredibly high interest rates, another recession, a surge in unemployment and, of course, Black Wednesday - all things they arguably sowed the seeds for because they didn't think they'd win the election.

That should be illegal. We should have some law that states if ministers can be proven to have deliberately fucked something up then they should be held responsible for it. That includes Labour - the twat in the Treasury who left the coalition the note about having good luck dealing with their overspending - he should be prosecuted for indirect fraud - he's screwing around with our money to the detriment of the next governors, he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it and the same with the current mob, especially as they haven't actually got a mandate.

The problem is all of them - all the parties - are really frightened: Cameron knows he hasn't got the ability to get a majority; Clegg knows that deep down his career is finished once the next election comes along (he'll be lucky to be re-elected in his own constituency) and FFS... Ed Millipede has about as much gravitas as Katie Price. There's no one in the wings who wants to step forward because they all know that this hell could last for the rest of our lives!

They're all frightened that they'll either get elected and won't know what to do, or they won't get elected and that's them finished. It's no longer about the country's interests, it's like British politics has become this huge unpopular version of Big Brother. And that's kind of why I thought standing as a councillor might be a good idea. I don't think I'm easily corrupted, I stick by my principals and I'll fight for what's right. The problem is it hasn't really done Tony Clarke a lot of good because nowadays the term 'an honest, hard working politician' is both an anachronism and an oxymoron and even if you are this, most voters won't believe you, especially if you no longer represent one of the big parties.

I have a mate who is standing as a UKIP candidate at the next local elections and I so want to ask him why and how someone from his background (working with disenfranchised kids) could throw his lot behind a posh boys version of the BNP. UKIP are successful because they put across that same xenophobic message the BNP and EDF put across, but they have people like Nigel Farage, who looks more Tory than Gideon O. The BNP struggle because Nick Griffin essentially looks like a thug, acts like one and doesn't come across as particularly well-educated, even if he is. Farage looks and sounds like a politician, he could be advocating female circumcision and there'd be people not listening to his words, just the way he says things and his appearance. Many people in this country no longer listen, that's just the platform someone like Farage needs to become popular. Don't say anything, just make what I say sound like its what the public wants.

Equally, the very old friend of mine, mentioned earlier, is standing for the Green Party - a worthy political party that should, if there's any justice in the world, benefit from all the uncertainty being shovelled at us by the three main parties and the wannabes. But, do you know something? They won't. That's because the Green party are a bunch of hippies and hippies are what Labour during the 1970s were and they fucked the country so that Margaret could rise from the dead and save us all (or at least that's how the Tories would have us believe it in 1000 years time when the cult of Maggie spawns a religion). And what if he does get elected? He'll be the lone voice amongst a bunch of corrupt self-serving wankers yet again. We'll not see any improvement in local services; more people will lose their jobs, more bins will go un-emptied and scratch the surface and you'll see the diseased organs of England; with politicians like bacteria scurrying about, running councils, the country and most specifically their bank accounts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We're all going to die. Except this time it will be poor, broken, with no dignity and with the knowledge that there will be a lot of people laughing hysterically at us, because adding a touch of humiliation balances everything out quite nicely. Some of us will vote next week and yet we'll start to agree even more with that joke 'voting for politicians only encourages them'. The problem is there is no alternative. Even the alternatives are no alternative. We need new people, new politics, new beliefs and new priorities and that's altruism to the nth degree. I should just start taking drugs again; seriously, what's the point of not?

More Council Twattery

Bloody hell.

I’m sitting in the garden, at the laptop, for the first time since September (I’d hazard an accurate guess at) and I’m here because I wanted to be, which sounds a bit weak, but it hadn’t been my intention to get the laptop out, I was going to sit here and read Lisey’s Story by Stephen King and catch some of this glorious sunshine before it all gets cold and shitty again by the weekend. Then something happened that threw all of that to hell.

I saw Fishwife. That’s mild-mannered Clark Kent-like Fishwife and he was getting annoyed with a bin man. This was indeed an event. But then I noticed that my bin had a sticker on it and I started to put two and two together and rushed downstairs to join in. I love a good argument with a council contractor. Unfortunately for all concerned I arrived too late to be of any help. Fishwife stood there looking at me with real fire in his eyes. “I spoke to them about this two weeks ago when they didn’t take it then. Bastards.” Bloody hell!

On closer inspection of the, unfortunately now discarded, sticker I saw that it was stating that you can no longer put animal bedding or sawdust in the compost bin, but if the sawdust or bedding is from a vegetarian animal then it can be put in our own compost bins… Which begs the question why they won’t collect it, vegetarian animal pooh is less of a health and safety risk than standing next to someone with a cold – fact! The council will collect cooked food, such as rotting meat, but some duck shit mixed with some sawdust is going to kill their binmen? Do me a favour. 

What the council now want you to do is, if you don’t want to compost it yourself (which we do, but you know weekly sawdust in two small compost bins?), place it in a plastic, sealed, bag and put it – a veritable cornucopia of composting perfection – into the black landfill bins. Plus, by the looks of things the bin men have been instructed to use their discretion while checking every single bin because there have been a lot of disgruntled people trying to get in contact with the council today, Fishwife amongst them.

The bin man who was arguing that Fishwife’s bin might have traces of chicken shit in them claimed that if we wanted these bins to be collected we’d literally have to sift anything resembling rabbit, guinea pig, duck or chicken shit out of it and that it probably was more advisable not to put wood shavings into the composting bins any more for the chance they might not be collected.

Is this not the most ludicrous bit of council bureaucracy you’ve ever heard? And from a Tory council no less! Someone’s obviously complained about sawdust floating around the streets and this is the council’s ham-fisted solution because we’ve had our vegetarian animal waste collected for the last 30 years and to our knowledge no one has ever died from accidentally touching some sawdust that might once have been touched by a dry rabbit turd.

Your council tax working for you!