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All The Ducks Are Swimming In The Water...

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Today’s blog probably falls into the ‘mawkishly self-indulgent’ category. Hopefully I’ll manage a couple of jokes along the way, but you have been warned...

 

Regular readers (there are a few!) will be aware that I’ve a bit of a soft spot for duk-duks, or ‘ducklings’ as they’re more commonly known. For new readers who have found me only since I started Wordpressing you might want to look back at my more established site, www.lovelyc2u.moonfruit.com, but be warned it doesn’t fare very well on mobile devices, especially if they are any variety of Apple and therefore unresponsive to a bit of flash. It’s not just about duk-duks there – there’s the same mix of waffle as here, pretty much – but if duk-duks float your boat as much as they float mine you will generally (but not exclusively)  find them filed under ‘ducking and diving’. You’ll have to work at it, but no worries if you can’t be arsed because I’LL NEVER KNOW...

 

Anyhoo. Today’s blog was prompted by the arrival of several new duk-duks (or ‘little fluffy dumplings of love’ as they are sometimes known when both duckling and duk-duk fail to satisfy) on Holden Pond. From the looks of it, there are two new clutches (are the contents of eggs still counted in clutches after hatching or is there another collective noun? Don’t answer that – I’ve just Googled and two options are ‘fleet’ of ducklings and/or ‘brood’ of ducklings. Brood is far too gloomy a word to describe such a lovely sight but fleet sounds very apt), or ‘fleets’ (hem hem) , of duk-duks doing the rounds, one a veritable armada of five + mum and dad and the other just a teensy flotilla of two + two.

 

The armada is lovely and very stately – quite reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell’s galleons if that’s not stretching a metaphor too far – but to be honest Daddy Duck and Mallardy Lady are looking a bit stressed, particularly as the ratio of hissing shits (Canadian Geese) has gone up again this summer and food is a bit thin on the ground. The twin flagships of the tiny flotilla, however, seem much calmer, and they and the smaller vessels bobbing in their wake a little plumper too.

 

Let’s hope the pike don’t get ‘em.

 

I’m not sure when this thing of mine with duk-duks kicked in, but I do know it is a fairly recent development. I’ve certainly never had anything against duk-duks, but I’m pretty sure that up until a year or two ago they fell more into the category of ‘take ‘em or leave ‘em’, unless they happened to be cooked and covered in a delicious sauce of some kind; preferably citrus or cherry based if served with traditional vegetables but none the worse occasionally for a dollop of hoisin, a few slivers of spring onion and cucumber and a lightly steamed pancake. I still like eating ‘em, but I’m equally happy just watching them these days too. Not that I ever ate the really teeny ones, mind you, but the word ‘duckling’ gets applied in restaurants to some right old bruisers, and they, if you’ll excuse the pun, are fair game when push comes to shove and the tummy rumbles, ennit?

 

But I digress. As I was saying, I’m not entirely sure when this affection for duk-duks first surfaced, but I think I started to see them in a different light after the mad duck lady (see old blog) started to take an interest in their wellbeing and erected signs all around the pond requesting car drivers not to MURDER them while driving past. Perhaps whatever she has is catching? That said, I think she reawakened something that had lain dormant in me for many years, because with hindsight I’m pretty sure I associate them with one of my earliest and happiest memories of TV; a series of short, black and white films made by Oliver Postgate depicting the lives of The Pingwings; a family of knitted penguins who lived, inexplicably, in a barn on a farm in Sussex.

 

It’s fair to say that I was something of an unusual child, hyperactive before the term ADHD had ever been invented and verbally precocious, academically inconsistent and socially inept years before the term ‘High Functioning’ had ever been applied to autism or to the broader range of behaviours generally sheltering these days under the umbrella term of Asperger’s. A polite term might have been ‘a bit of a handful’, but it wasn’t one I heard often as a child, either at home or school. ‘F***ing mental’ was a term I heard quite a lot, but not, strangely, when the Pingwings were on.

 

I’ve no idea what it was about the Pingwings, but I do remember them distinctly – one episode in particular where they were dragging a galvanised bucket at least three times their own size across a field to fetch milk – even though I was little more than a babe in arms at the time, and I remember sitting fascinated and silent on the living room floor watching their strange, stop-frame adventures on our tiny screened mahogany monster of a telly. I suspect this, and The Telegoons, which arrived on TV at around the same time, were pretty much the only things that kept me quiet indoors. Certainly, if my sisters are to be believed, sleep rarely hindered my wanderings and the bars and straps of cots and prams could do little to hold me in.

 

Decades later I was blessed with my own ‘handful’, who displayed the same Houdini-like qualities when it came to escaping cots, safety straps (ha!) and pushchairs, and I wonder now if submerged memories of Pingwings surfaced then, because even before he was born his mother and I bought him a video tape of a Little Black Duck called Dinky whose cartoon adventures were captured on celluloid even before those of the Pingwings. I’ve got to admit, Ben wasn’t generally that interested in Dinky (or any other telly for that matter until he became pretty much obsessed with Wacky Races after getting a video game for his Playstation 1), but there was one episode that was pretty much guaranteed to stop him in his tracks and that could buy me a couple of minutes if I needed to do anything important like cook dinner or have a nervous breakdown.

 

 It was an episode where the Big Bad Wolf (they get a bad press in fairytales and stuff, don’t they?) had caught Dinky and was roasting him on a spit over an open fire. Dinky eventually escaped by blowing out the flames as he rotated above them, after which he successfully lured the BBW into the oven and incinerated him. While this action was unfolding Ben would be leaping and flapping like a good ‘un, eyes fixed to the screen as though it had locked on to his retina with some invisible sci-fi tractor beam.

 

I spent a whole afternoon one day transferring Dinky’s adventures to DVD (keeping the original VHS tape – so it’s a legal back up copy, thank you very much!) but he’s never watched it. Who knows, maybe one day in god knows how many decades time he’ll find himself standing by a pond watching a fleet of caramel and banana coloured duk-duks bobbing by and remembering a brave ‘Little Black Duck’ rotating on a spit and blowing on the flames. I hope so, and I hope he’ll spare a thought for the old man too, and that his memories of both will be happy ones.

 

If you’ve read this far, thanks for indulging me. If you bailed halfway through that’s okay too, and I hope the subject matter next time round – if there is a next time round – is more to your liking.

 

 

IN OTHER NEWS: I may not know much about art, but...

 

I don’t think hanging the shell of a coach over the edge of a gallery, as they have done in Bexhill, is actually art, even if it is being paid for by a celebrity. I think it’s fun, and I think it’s interesting, but if that’s all that it takes for something to be a work of art then I should have been hung in a gallery years ago (hem hem). *

 

The piece concerned is called ‘Hang On A Minute, Lads, I’ve Got A Great Idea’ and is inspired by the final scene of the 1969 classic movie The Italian Job, and as a cheeky homage I think it’s a great idea, but, sorry, I’m still not convinced of its ‘artistic’ merit.

 

On the other hand, if this does count as art I’m happy to jump on the bandwagon if someone wants to pay me for it, because while I can’t draw for toffee or sculpt for fudge I am quite good at standing one thing on top of another thing. And I don’t think such art should be restricted to cinema references either, so having looked around the house I have already created my first ‘piece’ using a turd I found in the cat’s litter tray and the French titfer my son wore when playing an onion seller in last year’s skool production of  Fair Stood the Wind for France. For anyone interested, I want just five grand (ono) for it, it’s a cheeky homage to ‘Some Mother’s Do ‘Ave ‘Em’ and it’s called ‘Ooooh Betty, the Cat’s Done a Whoopsee in My Beret’.

 

Slightly more expensive, but incorporating the work of Damien Hirst, I also plan to place a ship in a bottle on top of Damien’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living and call it ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’ in homage to the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws... That’ll set you back whatever the Hirst costs, plus a couple of grand to me for the ship in a bottle and the concept. A bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree...

 

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*There are those, of course, who think I should be hung and would be willing to pay to see it, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing either, and the word ‘gibbet’ is usually used rather than ‘gallery’.   

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Oh, for anyone wondering about today's blog title:

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Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by David Smith, Saturday, 7 Jul 2012, 00:18)
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On Grayson, Paralympics and Bog Rolls...

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Edited by David Smith, Thursday, 28 Jun 2012, 14:48

 

A bits and bobs blog this week, I think...

 

I just got around to watching the final episode of Grayson Perry's In the Best Possible Taste on 4oD. This was the episode focussing on the upper classes, and my reaction to it was, unexpectedly, a strange combination of loss and regret. Towards the end of the programme Grayson presented his tapestry to the people who had inspired it, and there was one particularly poignant moment where aristo 'Rollo' looked at an image of himself depicted as a felled stag being torn apart by hounds and muttered, somewhat shamefacedly and unconvincingly, 'you know, there are occasions when the hunted stag arises...'

 

Rollo and his ilk are not the kind of people I generally find myself sympathising with, but I found the tenacity and determination of those featured inspiring and tragic in equal measure as they struggled to sustain lifestyles and uphold values that seemed as redundant in the twenty-first century as the dusty, stuffed relics of Imperial Supremacy lining the walls of their crumbling ancestral piles. Watching the inhabitants of my hometown, Tunbridge Wells, on last week's episode about middle class aspirationalism I had felt no such emotional connection, my chief feelings then being a mixture of irritation, bemusement and disconnection. I find that juxtaposition unsettling on many levels.

 

There's a song by Roy Harper that captures my feelings far more eloquently than any words I could type here, so I'll just add a link to that instead and let the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and the hugely undervalued Mr H say it for me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2PmnTvPfn4 .

 

Having switched from 'oD' to the regular telly I was watching Channel 4 again later in the evening when I saw a potentially great trailer for their Paralympics coverage featuring Britain's wheelchair basketball squad. Between slow-motion sequences of powerfully built athletes smashing headlong into each other in pursuit of possession of the ball there were short sequences in which the players spoke articulately and with passion about their love of the game and discussed some of the injuries they had sustained while playing it. It was really positive, empowering stuff that avoided all the usual stereotypes and clichés, emphasising the universal spirit and determination that underpins all great sporting achievement regardless of any barriers - physical, financial or social - that might get in, or be placed in, the way. I'm not generally keen on sound-bites, but one lady made me smile when she said, laughing, 'I've already broken my neck - what else can happen?'

 

And then, right at the end, Channel 4 went and spoiled it by inserting a voiceover inviting viewers to 'tune in and watch the super-humans in action' (or somesuch rubbish) that completely undermined everything that had gone before. Sorry, Channel 4, but the 'heroic' model of disability is every bit as clichéd and stereotypical as all the other models that emphasise collective 'difference' rather than valuing biodiversity in its wider context and acknowledging individual achievement. That the people shown were super athletes goes without saying, just as it does for every other athlete competing in the games whether disabled or non-disabled, but they are no more super human than any other athlete, or indeed than any other human being who happens, whether by choice or design, not to excel at sports.

 

I'm sure there are some who will feel I'm being overly pedantic, and they may well have a point. I wonder, though, whether an advert for the Olympics that measured the achievements of, say, women athletes or gay athletes purely in terms of their gender or sexuality and labelled them as superheroes on that basis would seem acceptable? Over thirty years ago Ian Dury was banned by the BBC for offering very similar observations during the International Year of the Disabled and for questioning why the achievements of disabled people should be overlooked or devalued the rest of the time. I think he was right to ask that question, and really hope the Paralympics gets the viewing figures it deserves for the reasons it deserves. Personally, I won't be watching much of the coverage - para or otherwise - at all as I don't like watching sports. I admire the qualities and achievements of those who play them, though, and will take this opportunity to wish all competing athletes the very, very best.

 

On the subject of the Olympics, is anyone else as sick as I am of all the sponsorship going on? I mean it's bad enough when a purveyor of obesity is listed as the 'offical restaurant' of the games, but do we really need an 'official' soap-powder (Arial) or an 'official' chocolate (Cadbury's) too? And where does it stop? Is there an official haemorrhoid cream for all those sweaty arsed cyclists and runners, because chances are many of them are going to be looking for that kind of relief at some point? And what about official laxatives and/or costives for those poor souls afflicted with pre-event nerves - I mean, we can't all be as up front about that kind of thing as Ms Radcliffe, now, can we? And that then begs the question of official toilet paper, because let's face it when push comes to shove (sorry about that, no pun intended) we're going to need plenty of tissue around after all those burgers, cokes and chocolate bars have been gobbled and guzzled down, aren't we?

 

Oh. That reminds me. Ben and I have been doing our bit to save the planet by wiping our bums on recycled paper for well over a decade now, and for the past four or five years have stuck fairly consistently (see previous brackets) to 'Nouvelle'. We've always been fairly happy with it, but to be honest it does sometimes seem a bit flimsy, demanding five or six stacked sheets per 'pass' to fully ensure against an inadvertent rectal examination. With that in mind we recently made a switch to the new Andrex product which is made with '90% recycled fibres and 10% sustainable bamboo', and I think it's a choice we'll be sticking with (and again), because it seems reassuringly sturdy while mostly living up to its claim of 'luxury' softness.

 

For anyone else aiming to save the planet by dint of wiping their dents we can heartily recommend it, though I've got to admit to some degree of nervousness during early test runs on the basis of anecdotes I've heard down the years about Japanese POW's and the agonies they suffered after having bamboo introduced to various parts of their anatomies. Mind you, for anyone who remembers the horrors of San Izal tracing paper, as popular in school toilets and public conveniences throughout the sixties and seventies, I guess the tiny - and purely hypothetical - risk of secondary bamboo damage would seem like small potatoes. As I typed 'small potatoes' then I wondered briefly whether a further set of brackets might be called for, but then decided against it. I'm all for running jokes (hem hem) etc but you can get too much even of a good thing, and I think this particular topic has run its course...

 

IN OTHER NEWS: On Sunday I took Ben and his BFF to cinema to watch Prometheus. The ticket girl said 'is that one adult and two teens?' I said 'yes'. She said 'neither of them is over seventeen then?' I said 'No, he's fifteen,' pointing at BFF, 'and he's 14' pointing at son.........

 

It's a fifteen, Prometheus, ennit... I recovered pretty quickly, but not quickly enough for the 'more than her jobsworth' manageress who was standing within ear shot. We came home and watched a DVD instead. I am a bit unpopular at the moment.

 

In fairness, only myself to blame, but bloody annoying given that son is only a few weeks shy of 15 and half the herbs in the 2-3 years below him at school have already seen it. And don't even get me started with the 8 yr olds online playing GTA or bashing away unsupervised at personal computers in their bedrooms that have never even heard of a Net Nanny. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

 

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: I realised recently that the Hackenthorpe Book of Lies section on my Moonfruit site is unavailable to those using non Flash equipped hardware (i.e. Apple and many other mobile devices). I'm in the process of porting it over to my Wordpress blog, which is generally a better option for mobile devices all round. So if you're using a mobile device and/or are interested in reading the HB of L's and can't view it, try giving Wordpress a go here:

http://lovely2cu.wordpress.com/lies/

 

 

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Mat Woolfenden, Saturday, 30 Jun 2012, 10:19)
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A Bad Taste in the Mouth...

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Hmmm, now where was I? Oh yes: Grayson Perry's In the Best Possible Taste, middle-class angst, Tunbridge Wells...

 

Hem Hem. I ended last week's post on the 'Kings Hill' part of Grayson's programme with an apology to the town's cup-cake makers. I'll start this week with a pre-emptive apology to those who might buy or sell at Vintage Fairs or Farmers' Markets. Of course, I can't prevent people taking personal offence, I can only offer assurances that no personal offence is intended, and that in the larger scheme of things (or even the smaller scheme of things) my opinions count for very little. And that's probably an exaggeration.    

 

 From reactions on Twitter it seems people had mixed feelings about Grayson's insights into the lifestyle and values he encountered in 'The spiritual hometown of Middle England'TM. While some felt he had failed to capture the cultural diversity of the town, others thought he'd revealed something of the 'wankyness' that outsiders seem to see when they cast an eye in our direction, and the underlying narcissism underpinning that wankyness.

 

I think both camps have points to make, but would suggest to those in the first camp that any cultural diversity actually existing in the town and surrounding area is very poorly reflected within the infrastructure of the town, where 'haves' are certainly far better catered for than 'have-nots' and any attempts to cater for the have-nots (like pound shops or retail outlets and eateries suited to the more budget-conscious members of the community) are looked down upon. Taking that into consideration, I think Grayson very accurately reflected what he saw, particularly as the focus of the programme was, by definition, on those very aspects of life in TW, and that he actually went very easy on us.

 

The opening scenes of Grayson's TW odyssey were filmed at a 'Vintage Fair' on the (yawn) Pantiles, and the artist, come TV presenter, come TV seemed somewhat baffled by the whole concept. I've got to say I'm with Grayson on this one, because I can't for the life of me see the logic or appeal in paying over the odds for old tat. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against old tat - I've a home full of the stuff - or against people buying or selling it, but the commoditisation of old tat into objet dart is, like aspirational cup-cakes (see previous blog), something that not only goes over my head but actually troubles me, because it seems to include by extension the commoditisation of poverty.

 

Vintage fairs are nothing new; it is only the name that's been changed, along with the locations they are held in and the make-up of the people buying and selling at them. Back in the day they were called 'Jumble Sales' and were held in village halls, with trestle tables replacing 'pitches' and elderly WVS volunteers replacing micro-entrepreneurs (gak). Most importantly, IMO, they were places where the poorest people in a community could go to buy things they might not otherwise be able to afford, where a few pence could provide a raggedy-arsed kid with a new pair of school trousers or a battered Eagle annual and an impoverished mum with a 'new' dress for her Friday night bingo session at the local community centre. Money raised from these events generally went to those in even greater need; starving children in Africa being the most popular, but perhaps the elderly or the disabled or the homeless too.

 

The most ironic aspect of it all would seem to be that the very people Jumble Sales used to raise money for are the very people who lose most through vintage fairs, because it is the charity shops set up in support of those people who provide much of the stock the micro-entrepreneurs (gak2) sell on, with profits going straight into some yummy mummy's already very healthy bank account rather than to grain and water projects for the starving and dying. And of course, every nice dress sold to a micro-entrepreneur 'stocking up' is one less available to the potentially equally yummy but less well off mummy who actually needs to shop in charity shops.

 

Of course, that's something of an over-simplification; the WVS laydees in the charidee shops don't really know the value of what they're selling so wouldn't know how to market it effectively anyway, and they are getting something for the poor, because the dress the ME (from now on I'm not going to type 'Micro-Entrepreneur' but abbreviate it to ME - which while my original intention was labour-saving seems somehow very apt!) sells for £200 did cost her £2.00 from Cancer Research in the first place. Another angle would be that the buying and selling of Vintage Tat is really no different to Antique dealing, and Antique dealers have been ripping off charity shops (and the people dependent on charity donations) for decades.

 

These are very good points, but being a bear of very little brain who tends to see things in black and white I can't help but feel that as far as profit margins go there might be more moral ways of going about the ME business - i.e. advising the charity shops on what they have and working on a commission basis, perhaps? And while there's certainly some truth in the accusations levelled at Antique dealers, the inherent problem with that argument as a justification is that it's built entirely on the premise of two wrongs equalling a right, which I fundamentally disagree with.

 

Later on in the programme Grayson went back to the (yawn) Pantiles for the Farmers' Market, where people queued to pay over the odds prices to people in waxed jackets who assured them that their products were ethically and/or organically farmed or handmade by an artisan butcher/baker/candlestick maker.

 

Again, markets are nothing new - they've been around for centuries and were, in fact, the traditional way for farmers, together with artisan butchers, bakers or candlestick makers, to 'market' their wares to potential consumers. The difference with a Farmers' Market, however, is that while traditional markets operated to market forces, ensuring that punters didn't pay over the odds and perhaps even walked away with a bargain, Farmers' markets operate on perceived value; something which, in a town like TW where the need to be seen buying the 'right' thing seems often to outweigh all other considerations, can lead to prices which are frankly ridiculous.

 

Once again, the logic here defeats me. While I can totally see the appeal in buying meat or fruit direct from a farmer or bread from a baker I can't understand for the life of me how cutting out the 'middle-men' makes the products more expensive. From the farmer's point of view it makes good sense to sell direct if the situation is that the supermarket will only give him 3p for a field of kale and then sells it at £1.00 per 500g. Assuming the field nets, say, 40,000 or so bags, that's £39,999.97p for the supermarket and thruppence for the farmer, which of course is totally immoral. But if the farmer goes to a Farmers' Market and sells each bag at £2.00 that's £80,000 profit straight in his bin on a crop that has in the non-farmers market got a market value of half that at retail prices and only 3p at trade prices - and that's totally totally immoral! Don't hold me to the math, but if there's a flaw in my logic I'd be happy to hear it, 'cos I just don't get this.

 

Looking at Farmers' Markets and Vintage Fairs in tandem, it strikes me that both seem to operate along similar lines to the business model favoured by a certain tailor employed by the Emperor in a story by Hans Christian Anderson. He also made a killing on 'perceived value'. I think that tailor could probably do a roaring trade in TW, and the place would be a hell of a lot more interesting on a Saturday night if he did choose to relocate here. J

 

Final word on Farmers' Markets: I took my son recently to the (yawn) Pantiles for the food fare (fayre?) there. Got to say I've never seen such a fine array of oversized olives! Like golf balls, some of them - got me wondering whether there might be some positives to genetic modification after all ;) *whistle*.

 

After wandering around and buying a few 'bits' I noticed son was looking a little bored, and asked him what he thought of it. He said 'well, it's just like the farmers' market in Tonbridge, really, only bigger and three times more expensive'. Now if a fourteen year old autistic kid can work that out, what does it say about the good people of TW?

 

Something else Grayson had to say about the people of TW - and which largely they concurred with - was that they seemed to have a 'desperate need' to be seen as 'good people'. This seemed to underpin every aspect of their existence, dictating what they did and with whom they did it; what clothes they bought and from where; what food they ate and what they cooked it in or if eating out where they went to eat it; where they shopped and how much they spent and even how they furnished their homes.

 

Sadly, none of this came down to personal taste or preference - it was just a case of getting it 'right', with the biggest struggle of all being how to get it 'right' enough to satisfy everyone else while still maintaining a small shred of individuality and originality. I hate to think that would extend to personal integrity too, but suspect for some that it would.

 

Grayson, rather rudely, IMHO, was judged to have failed to get it 'right', despite the guidance of one of the town's vintage fashion gurus who, presumably, would have moved in the same circles and helped some of the other guests with some of their fashion choices from time to time(?). I think in reality Grayson's failure to impress had more to do with him being a rather butch bloke in a frock, and while I can understand that response on one level (but wish I was a better person and didn't) I also feel that if you knowingly invite a rather butch transvestite to your dinner party you shouldn't really criticise them for turning up looking like a rather butch transvestite!

 

Grayson may not have been particularly graceful, but he was certainly the most interesting and individual of the dinner guests, and I'll take content over style any day of the week. He can come and eat from my tagine any time he wants (and that is NOT a euphemism, and I'm not even going to dignify the suggestion with a response. Other than that response I just responded, obviously...), and I wouldn't give a flying fuck whether he turned up in a dress or a suit or a bin liner.

 

My final thought on the people of TW is a rather unsettling one: What lies behind that 'desperate need to be seen as a good person'? Just who are they trying to convince, and why? Two immediate possibilities spring to mind, and neither of them are very reassuring.

 

For my own part, as a life-long resident of TW who for various reasons has not been very socially active for the past decade and a half, I think the town has grown closer towards its 'Middle England' stereotype rather than away from it, and that it's to the town's detriment. Somebody pointed out to me the other night that this is probably a reflection of the country - or at the very least the S.E. - as a whole, and I suspect he might be right.

 

Without banging on too much about nuclear families and the 'I'm alright Jack' culture that has developed from the political agendas of the fifties through to the present, I think the social 'angst' of the Middle Classes probably has its roots in an inability to consolidate their idealism with the reality of their lifestyles. On the one hand they want to save the planet for their children, but on the other they're driven by an unrealistic sense of entitlement and a nagging sense of underachievement to grab more and more for themselves. They are 'comfort consumers', buying Jamie Oliver cookware, honking great 4x4 cars and honking great golf-ball sized olives to assuage their sense of emptiness and longing.   

 

Saddest of all, it seems to me, the bigger the gap gets between the haves and have-nots the greater that anxiety becomes, because the have-nots, whether they're those who want a few more quid to keep up with the Jones's or those who want another few hundred thousand to keep up with the Barrington-Jones's, are always going to outnumber the haves.

 

Fortunately for them, most of the real haves seem to lack any sort of social conscience whatsoever and to care not a skool sossage for the good opinion of others, and they leave it for the daft buggers in the middle to do all their agonising for them. So you're unlikely to see any real entrepreneurs queuing up at Vintage Fairs and Farmers' Markets, though chances are if the profits get big enough you may well see them investing in them... ;)        

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 21 Jun 2012, 20:49)
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Working hard to look like you haven't tried...

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Well it was lovely on Tuesday to see Larry Grayson back on the telly after such a long absence. He’s wearing a dress now and talking about art and lifestyle, and I’ve got to say whatever his health regimen it’s working because he’s looking younger today than he ever did back in the days of The Generation Game. Probably a bit of nip and tuck going on, but all well and good to him IMHO...

 

What? Really? 1995? Blimey... Who? Izzit? Oh...

 

 

Well isn’t it lovely to see Grayson Perry back on our screens after such a long absence. He’s doing this wonderful show about art and lifestyle where he’s travelling round the country talking to people about, erm, art and lifestyle then commenting for us, the viewers, on their art and lifestyle choices. The focus is on the British class system and each week he’s looking at different sectors of society to see how they measure up to their stereotypes, and what this means in terms of their ‘taste’.

 

Last week it was about the working classes and featured people from Oop North with tattoos listening to shiny-suited pub singers in working men’s clubs and a group of overly made up women with false tits, hair and nails going out on the piss. This week it was about the middle classes and featured people living in the S.E. wearing either second hand clothes they’d paid well over the odds for or designer label clothes they’d paid well over the odds for sitting indoors eating cupcakes and lamb and paprika stews and downing bottle after bottle of PG (not the tea) and/or ‘robust’ reds while chirruping on about the angst of having too much money and not knowing what to spend it on without potentially exposing themselves to their friends as shallow and tasteless wankers who need Jamie Oliver or style magazines to guide them. Next week it’s about upper class twits.

 

This week’s episode was really interesting for me because it was filmed in the very town in which I (and several generations of the oddlyactive clan before me) was born and still live, i.e. Tunbridge Wells, and in what is supposed to be a ‘gated community’ for the upwardly mobile elite a few miles up the road in West Malling. 

 

The latter actually looks more like a hideous Barrett Homes’ housing estate from the mid eighties (complete with small golfing area/village green where Patrick Allen could land his helicopter a’la Anneka Rice and leap out to start shouting into a radio microphone about low deposits and easy finance terms), but as the residents pretty much admitted that they hadn’t got a clue what to put inside their homes I suppose the wider aesthetic would have been lost on them too. Okay, the Barrett estates didn’t have bronze statues and water features dotted around, but to my mind these looked for the most part like the kind of thing you might see in a Disney theme park anyway, which seems perfectly in keeping with the general ambience on one level but somewhat at odds with the ideology and lifestyle the development supposedly aspires to project. Or perhaps it doesn’t, and I’m missing something?

 

If I am, missing something, BTW, please don’t feel compelled to tell me because I don’t think it’s anything I’d want, even if it might appear to others that I’d be missing out in some way. That’s not me sneering or being judgemental – I just don’t ‘get it’. I didn’t see anyone whose life in any sense other than the material seemed enriched by having it, but did see all sorts of unnecessary anxiety surrounding the possibility of getting it wrong.

 

One person I saw at King’s Hill (that’s the name of this Disney/Barrett hybrid) about whom I would be judgemental was the wankspanner who had consciously divided his immediate social group into three subgroups and promoted himself to ‘upper-middle’ purely on the basis of his income. Where does he think he’s living, for God’s sake, America?

 

That’s not to deny, of course, that such subgroups exist or that money doesn’t have a small part to play in delineating them, but it’s far from being the only consideration. Even in the Good old U S of A where money really does count for everything there’s a huge distinction between ‘new’ money and ‘old’ money, and the old adage stands that while money can’t buy you friends it can buy you a better class of enemy. Yes, money does open exclusive doors but so do butlers, and while a butler’s efforts may be greatly appreciated by those they serve few of them would have the arrogance or ignorance to consider themselves their employers’ equal. And don’t even get me started on the ‘Range Rovers are ten a penny round here’ comment... I arsk ya!

 

One thing that really struck home for me was the symbolism of the aspirational cup-cake, probably because it’s something I rant about quite regularly (along with Range Rovers and Chelsea Tractors generally) anyway, and it ties in with another personal bugbear which is ‘micro-entrepreneurialism’. When I was growing up cakes were something that people cooked to give or share with others; they were symbolic, but they symbolised friendship and love and warmth. If they were bought rather than home baked they were bought from a local baker or perhaps even a supermarket in a box with Mr Kipling’s signature on the side, and they still symbolised friendship and love and warmth.

 

The cakes displayed as a centrepiece at the party shown in Kings Hill had nothing to do with friendship or love or warmth at all; they were hateful, pretentious little edible objet d’art, hideous manifestations of (dubious) style over content – all glitter and Mr Whippy swirls of glossy pink butter-cream... The swirls reminded me of those plastic dog-poos I used to buy at the joke shop when I was a child; the glitter just seemed to emphasise that you can’t polish a turd.

 

The thing I disliked most about them, though, was the thinking behind them – a cake is just a cake after all, and it’s difficult to dislike a cake even if it’s a pretentious one – and the idea that they were probably made not by a baker but by some local housewife who has rebranded herself as a micro-entrepreneur and sells them to her ‘friends’ at prices that would make daylight robbery look like a charity donation. And that’s horrible – why would people want to do that to their friends? Why would you want to put anyone you were supposed to care about into the position of having to reach into their pockets and hand their money over to you? Of course, the friends say they are happy to do it – it’s a lovely cup cake, well worth every penny of the £12.00 per half dozen you’ve charged them and of course they’d like to place a regular order for a dozen a week – and love to feel that they can help support you and your little business venture...

 

Apologies to any micro-entrepreneurs who might be reading (whoops, there go some more twitter followers!). I’m sure that somehow it makes some sort of sense and it’s just me being old-fashioned and crotchety and stupid for not getting it. Thing is, though, I kind of resent what’s happened to the humble cup-cake and the prostitution of the meaning and association it’s always had for me. They don’t mention a price in that old song, do they, and I think if they had it would have unnecessarily complicated the rhythm: “If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake (£5.00 each for the small ones or £15.00 for the seven inch Victoria sponge) baked a cake (The fairy cakes are a real bargain) baked a cake (no I don’t make my own marzipan on the Battenberg but it is organic), if I’d known you were coming etc etc...”

 

Another aspect of life in Kings Hill that confused me was the idolisation of Jamie Oliver and the ‘Jamie Parties’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mocking the mockney geeza for his cooking (he’s my favourite TV chef when it comes down to the cooking, if I’m honest, though Huge Fuggly-Duckingstool gives him a close run for his money when Thomasina isn’t doing something clever with a bit of wildlife she’s just run over) or for his very commendable philanthropic efforts, but let’s face it the brand he’s created for himself is hardly one based on reality, is it?

 

I can’t remember Grayson’s actual words, but it was something like ‘working class Essex barrow boy makes good’ and it is this brand identity that underpins the appeal of Jamie’s cookware range of tagines, wood fired ovens and faux fifties kilner jars as tasteful lifestyle accessories for the aspirational . But Jamie, for all the mockney bish-bash-bosh and hand squeezed lemons ISN’T a working class lad made good, is he? His mum and dad owned a gastro-pub, and that’s where he started his cooking career. And that’s not to say that his mum and dad didn’t have to work bloody hard or anything like that or to imply that Jamie had it cushy, but owning and running a pub is not ‘working class’: Working class people drink in pubs and work as barmaids or pot men in pubs, but they don’t own them, gastro or otherwise.

 

Blimey, just realised I’ve typed over 1500 words and I haven’t even mentioned the Tunbridge Wells ‘set’ yet. Best leave that for another day (probably next week) I think. Also, I’m taking son out to a local concert on Saturday and if I’m going to get dragged off to the stocks and pelted with rotten veg I’d rather he didn’t have to witness it.

 

If you happen to be a TW cake-maker and follow (ed) me on twitter or whatever please remember that my opinion counts for nothing, especially when it comes to ‘taste’ or ‘style’. At some point Grayson said that the key to Tunbridge Wells’ style was to ‘work hard at looking like you haven’t tried’. I take that one stage further and actually don’t try, which is not the same thing at all, apparently, if the response I generally get is anything to go by.

 

Right. I’m off to finish icing that batch of cupcakes I made earlier. I want to give them to the new neighbours before anyone else gets in to tell them what a miserable old bastard I am...

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Funny Old Week...

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 8 Jun 2012, 12:51

Had a bit of a shock earlier in the week when I saw what I thought was the Olympic torch procession coming up the hill. They’re not even due round here until mid July so it did seem odd, but given the number of cock-ups we’ve had so far surrounding The Games I wouldn’t have been overly surprised. It turned out to be the villagers storming the castle AGAIN: That’s the third drawbridge I’ve lost this year and I never get a penny back on the insurance. Thank God I’d had the leak in the moat bunged up and a fresh delivery of boiling oil, or there might have been no blog today at all.

Ben has been away in Edinburgh with his BFF since Sunday, and it’s been really strange without him. Daft, because if it was a normal skool week he wouldn’t be about anyway, but with the bank hols and that I’ve really missed him. Oh well, he’s back tonight and chances are that by Saturday he’ll be driving me bonkers again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. He phoned just now, and will be home around midnight. His BFF’s mum had said if they were back too late he could sleep round theirs and I could pick him up in the morning. The words ‘welcome’ ‘worn-out’ ‘his’ and ‘he’s’ come to mind, but not necessarily in that order.

So, hasn’t it been a great Jubilee? Lots of soggy people sitting at soggy trestle tables eating soggy crisps, sossages, and cupcakes and wishing they were indoors in the warm with their feet up. Not really giving a toss about the queen, I WAS indoors in the warm with my feet up for most of it, complaining bitterly about the hi-jacking of the regular weekend TV – bad enough under normal circumstances – to make way for hour after hour of footage featuring soggy people sitting at soggy trestle tables etc etc and over-the-hill musicians and entertainers doing their bit to draw attention away from the fact that it was all costing billions in an economic climate where the vast majority of dear ol’ Bettie’s loyal subjects are on their uppers. Still, any excuse for a piss up, eh?

Had Ben been at home we probably would have ventured out, despite the drizzle, to one or two of the events that were going on locally, but as he wasn’t, and what with most of them being family based, the prospect of damp afternoons in a variety of muddy fields wasn’t quite enough to draw me from my lair. We did, though, have Saturday before he went and a glorious day of sunshine it was too! We went to a local music fest (or ‘Unfest’) but sadly the music wasn’t loud enough to be heard properly outside of the venue and the weather was too good to miss by going inside (be fair, we’ve not had much of the good stuff, have we?). So all in all a bit of a washout, in every sense of the word.

Mind you, after dropping him at his BFF’s at lunchtime on Sunday I spent the afternoon at a little music fest of my own making, time-travelling back to the Sunday afternoons of my yoof by laying flat out on my bed listening to WHOLE ALBUMS back to back. I was a bit nervous about falling asleep (more of a hazard with each passing year) and thus shooting myself in the foot viz a decent night’s kip later on, but cleverly avoided that trap by the simple expedient of cranking up the volume to eleven, something I don’t do anywhere near often enough but will make a point of finding time to do occasionally in future.

 Avoiding anything post-punk I started out with Pink Floyd’s Relics, and I’ve got to say it was a lovely trip; even the couple of tracks I usually avoid since the advent of CD’s and the skip button. I won’t bore you with the albums in between, but I finished with Hawkwind’s first album, and by the time it got to that rather wet sounding fart in the fadeout of Mirror of Illusion I felt warmed to the very cockles in that sort of bittersweet way that is simultaneously heartbreaking and cathartic. I’d love to be able to time-travel for real and tell that scared, sixteen year old I used to be that it would all be alright (mostly) in the end: He was a lovely kid (I wonder what became of him!) and there was nobody around back then who took the time or trouble. Hope I do better by Ben, who is an even lovelier kid and deserves it even more...

Next time I might wind forward to the safety-pin and tartan bondage trews years (though in truth I never owned a pair of the latter and only faked the nose piercing for a couple of nights as the nightclub I illegally frequented as a seventeen year old wouldn’t let me in with it in) and dig out my Devo, Damned and Ramones CD’s too. Never did rate the Clash, and Mr Dury and the above aside punk was more of a 45’s experience than an albums one for me. Lots of bloody excellent singles, though, and by that time Cassettes had taken off big time so compilation wasn’t such a dirty word (Bow-Wow-Wow made a single about it, in fact, though not one that falls into the bloody excellent category either by today standards or those prevailing at the time of its release). I still break into a sweat when I hear the opening guitar on Pretty Vacant, and certain live versions of Mr Dury’s songs give me an adrenalin rush that’s dangerous at my age! I wouldn’t say better than sex, but a bloody good second and far less messy. I meant that in an emoshunal sense, BTW, for anyone going ‘ewwwwwwwwwwwwww’.

Yep, that’s a def. Next time Ben’s round his mates on a Sunday arvo I’m gonna dig out the punk stuff and have a good pogo round the bedroom. No gobbing, though – it’s a filthy habit and since I gave up the fags there’s really no need for it.

Oh well. Dinner won’t cook itself...
 
:D

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No energy for a good rant this week so today’s blog hasn’t really got a theme and is more of a personal ramble. If you’re up for it put on some comfy-but-sturdy walking shoes and grab a bottle of spring water, but I’ll not be offended if you decide to just put your feet up and watch the telly instead. Unless it’s Jeremy Kyle, of course, which is offensive by definition.  

A funny old week without any OU deadlines to worry about. Not sure how I feel about that yet, but the word ‘uneasy’ certainly seems appropriate. Have to wait and see...

Walking back from the cash-point after collecting son’s spending money (he’s off to Edinburgh next week with his BFF) I was hit by a couple of drips of rain and there seem to be quite a few filfy looking clouds floating about up there. Such a contrast to the little fluffy Orb-worthy white ones (lil-lil-little-li-li-li-little fluffy clouds) that dotted the sky on Tuesday when I spent the afternoon cycling round the park and lake with a friend before returning home, sore-bottomed but pleasingly invigorated, for some chicken thighs and couscous and lashings of grown-up’s ‘pop’. Do those drips mean summer is over and we’re back into the realm of ‘wettest whatever on record’ and ironic comments about hosepipe bans? I hope not – I like sunshine and beer gardens and li-li-little fluffy clouds and stuff, and they took a long time getting here this year.

After far too much grown-up’s pop I ventured into town to have a few pints in a pub I used to frequent regularly as a ‘yoof’ but haven’t used for years. There was an absolutely lovely barmaid working who was spending time between serving customers framing some really interesting ‘type-art’ she had created with an antique manual typewriter: Hopefully an old Imperial, which was my vehicle of choice back in the day. Not an easy art form to describe, but surprisingly evocative stuff comprising layers of mostly random text typed at different velocities through a ribbon that has certainly seen better days. Dunno, maybe it’s something to do with me being a reader/writer and having all those emotional connections to ‘text’ in various forms, but I found them fascinating. I have offered to write her a unique piece which I hope to swap for one of her unique pieces. Who knows, maybe one day one or both of us will make a great deal of money from the trade. That is, of course, assuming that she doesn’t read whatever it is wot I have wrote and decide to back out of the deal. Chiz Chiz.

Talking of writing – I had a pleasant surprise in the post yesterday when I found out that I’ve had one of me pomes make the K&SPS folio again this year. As always, I was a little surprised about the one selected. The reasons for 'surprise' have varied down the years, but this year it was because it was, IMO, the least technically accomplished of the three I submitted. That said, the one I really rated – a four stanza declaration of love written to Pope Joan (Google it!)  – fell at the first fence because the adjudicator didn’t pick up on the references. Perhaps a footnote is in order! Having said that, there was an absolute howler of an historical allusion in it I’d failed to notice, so perhaps I got my just deserts!
 
Another pleasant surprise yesterday was that I discovered an online twitter community of ‘Molesworth’ fans. I first discovered Nigel Molesworth (the curse of st. custard’s) when I was about eleven and I found a battered copy of Down With Skool! in my local book exchange. For the life of me I can’t think why – poor speling and beetles drawn on neecaps asside – I connected with these books in the way I did, because Nigel’s 1950’s public skool education, “nothing but kanes, lat. french. geog. hist. algy,  geom, headmasters, skool dogs, skool sossages, my brother molesworth 2 and masters everywhere” was as different from mine own very casual seventies secondary experience as chalk is from dairylea triangles, but I did, and they’ve been a guilty pleasure ever since.

As an eleven year old I probably got about a quarter of the references, and even reading them now I feel overshadowed by the breadth of Nigel’s knowledge, but I could definitely identify with the kaning and sossages, and the combination of Geoffrey Willans' words and Ronald Searle’s illustrations could sweep me away to another world populated by children even scruffier, sillier, uglier and grumpier than those I diskarded in my own skool.

Buying books at the P&P Book exchange was an odd experience, and I used the place because I was unaware until the age of around fifteen that council estate kids were allowed to use public libraries. When you bought a second hand book from the book exchange it would have a price written in pencil on the cover and a single stamp inside saying ‘may be exchanged for half cover price when used towards next purchase’. In this way I was, over a period of time involving much scrimping and saving and many trips with salvaged deposit-paid corona bottles to the local grocers, able to read the entire catalogue of Molesworth books, along with a variety of other titles ranging from Mad Magazines through to works of science fiction by the likes of Isaac Asimov. I remember buying my first Penguin Modern Classics there too, and still own several yellowed and stained Spike Milligan’s bearing that navy blue ‘trade-in’ offer on the inside cover.

You can now buy ALL FOUR of the Molesworth books in one paperback, and they have, quite rightly, been designated ‘Penguin Classics’ too. Available brand spanking new for less than a tenner you’d be daft not to, really. And while you’re there have a look at Searle’s other masterwork ‘St. Trinian’s’ too.

Anyway, advert over (and I would add there’s nothing in the above recommendation for me apart from the opportunity to populate the world with other people whose first choice spelling for ‘school’ will be ‘skool’ and who can’t look at a cloud without hearing in the back of their heads the words of fotherington-tomas greeting the brand-new day), I’d best get on with some work. If you’ve read to the end, thanks. If you haven’t it is prolerbly because you are uterley wet and weedy and orlso hav a face like a flea and could not lift wot the French call a concombre. And I diskard you. Obviously.molesworth.jpg?w=320   

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Edited by David Smith, Saturday, 26 May 2012, 19:11

Have you ever been compared to an abusive, alcoholic, prostitute murdering villain with a penchant for housebreaking and kidnapping? No? Gotta say, it was a first for me too!

Of course, it was all done in the best possible taste (uncrosses legs in the manner of Kenny Everett playing Cupid Stunt flashing suspenders and crimson gusset at camera) and arose during a very impromptu but totally wonderful drinking-to-excess-and-partying-to-the-wee-hours session that evolved last night from what was a very staid inaugural meeting of a very nice group of people known (to me at least) as The Tunbridge Wells Village Green Preservation Society.

More of the TWVGPS some other time, as they don’t really feature in this bit other than as the launch pad for what followed – viz the drinking to excess, partying to the wee hours stuff – when myself and a certain Dr of my acquaintance decided after the meeting to rendezvous with some friends who had been enjoying a polyopticon presentation of ‘Withnail and I’ at a local pub and eatery. When the film finished they came downstairs to join us at the bar and it was then that the young lady in question ("that was no young lady, that was...".) leapt at me in a most melodramatic fashion, pointing a sinister finger and shouting ‘Lawks a mercy, guvnor, it’s Bill bleedin’ Sykes’!

I noticed her eyes were rolling like those of a startled colt and that she seemed a bit ‘twitchy’, so initially wondered if she’d taken the film to heart and partaken of a ‘Camberwell Carrot’, but then realised the eye-rolling was dramatic license and that the ‘twitching’ was in fact the effects of gravity working on her unfettered upper ladybits, which had been liberated for the evening from the constrictions of undergarments. While the influence of ‘PG’ (not the tea) was very much in evidence, it was actually the effects of mine own dulcet tones stirring her to these peaks of thespian extreme and her detection of the light cockney inflection that vies for dominance with the Sussex burr in my regular speaking voice.

Now, dear reader, ‘tis fair to say that I have something of a distinctive voice. Not distinctive like the rich, mellow tones of a young Richard Burton or the fags-n-whisky rumble of yer man Lanegan (BTW for anyone who hasn’t heard any of Mark Lanegan’s work you really should. Start with ‘Bubblegum’ – you won’t be disappointed) or even like the affected rising falling dipthongy modulations of a Christopher Walken, but distinctive none the less.

Personally, I hate it, which may come of something a surprise to those who have noted that in the right situation (or often the wrong one) I can talk the hind legs off of a sturdy donkey, but liking the SOUND of your own voice is not the same thing as liking the TONE of your own voice, and while I’ll put my hands up to the former I can state emphatically that the dull, monotonal mumble that escapes my lips is not something I relish. It is, however, notable for another reason, and that is its authenticity: It is Working Class Tunbridge Wells, and therefore, just like the town itself, straddles the borders between Kent and Sussex, and contains elements of Saaf London cock-a-knee barra boy swagger and the Silly Sussex drawl that becomes more pronounced the further west you go. It is the voice of the migrant hop and apple pickers on their way to Margitt for a pint o’ whelks an’ a bucket o’ jellied eels mixed with that of the clay-pit and farm labourers of the Weald. It is ‘Home’.

What’s funny about this is that people tend to pick up either one or the other but rarely both, and usually it’s the element that is least familiar to them that they pick up on. This is certainly true of the lady in question – who for my own amusement I will refer to hereafter as Sweaty Betty Babcock, though she is neither sweaty nor a Betty Babcock (though the Betty bit comes close) – who has a fairly noticeable West Country twang of her own*. I really enjoyed this part of the evening, because it confirmed to my friend K – IMO the loveliest lady in the whole of Kent on the basis of her ‘sage nodding’ and her unwavering determination to see the best in everyone and to listen with rapt interest to any old waffle as though it is the wisdom of the Gods – what I had been telling her about the Mockney/Silly Sussex crossover effect since I’d been asked in her presence by the barmaid in a different pub two weeks earlier ‘do you come from Somerset or somewhere?’

Coming back to last nigh: The evening was also greatly enriched by SBB’s spontaneous performances of Lionel Bart musical numbers – of which she seemed to have an intimate knowledge, implying, IMHO, the heart of a frustrated west end Diva – complete with dance routines and some highly emotive hand-wringing. Equally lovely were K’s fumblings with a bra that wouldn’t behave itself and insisted on trying to give her three tits where she could only deliver two. I stand by my remark that women wrestling with unruly undergarments, be they bolshy bras, droopy tights or wayward knickers, is inherently delightful and endearing, and that Victoria’s Secret is missing a trick by not designing in the occasional flawed gusset or bent underwire.

That said, I have every sympathy too, knowing that when my undercrackers decide to go west, young man (or in any other direction that goes against the general plan) there is absolutely nothing delightful or endearing about it, and that it is testament to the intrinsic decorum and grace of the feminine form that we owe thanks.

Anyhoo, I’ve just realised I’ve typed over a 1000 words of this old tripe, and having recently been accused of dipping my feather in the mucky inkwell of purple prose** I guess that’s probably enough for one day. Suffice to say I had a bloody lovely night with some bloody lovely people and even the long walk home at half past four in the morning couldn’t take the shine of my conker. That said, Bullseye needed the walk anyway, so it kind of killed two birds with one stone.

So thank you K & SBB and Dr C and long-suffering P (who has to share his girlfriend with me and all the other people who rely on her sage nodding for emotional succour) for making an old man very happy in a delightful and unexpected way after a hard week staring at a blank computer monitor while struggling to write my final exam essay on the final module of my OU course. I really needed it. smile

*********************************

*For the record, BTW, the real Betty Babcock was a contestant on Bruce’s Generation game in the 70’s, and it speaks volumes about the workings of my brain that I can remember this yet struggle with the names of people I actually know and/or any other sort of important fact or figure constantly. The ‘Sweaty’ was no more than a charmingly fragrant feminine glow brought on by the combination of some frighteningly expensive perfume (I’m guessing), and the impromptu dancing arising as part of the excessive partying session mentioned earlier.

** I will freely admit that, as far as the blog goes, my writing is often self-indulgent, deliberately disjointed and rambling, wilfully tangential and irritatingly bloated. That’s not the same thing as ‘Purple’ though – it’s just my idea of fun. And just for the record, The Color Purple is everywhere in nature, and God put it there for us to notice and enjoy. Would the finest claret taste like that if you took the purple out? No, I don’t think so either... :D

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done.

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DONE!

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SCREAMING ONE OUT

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 18 May 2012, 10:09

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Writer’s block, dear, and a bad bout too. Well when I say ‘writer’s block’ it’s more a case of essayist’s encumbrance or scholar’s stoppage, because it’s not writing per se that’s the problem but writing this final bloody assignment for my OU course. When people write about writer’s block (an oxymoron, surely, Shirley?) they tend to write about staring at a blank page and not knowing where to start or not having an ideas to start with, and neither of those things – as evidenced by this very writing wot you are reading at this very moment (or possibly thinking about, having read earlier, which is ever so flattering, thank you very much, but probably not the case in any case) – are precisely the problem. To be honest, I’d never let a silly little thing like not having any ideas stop me from writing anyway; I’d just tap out a load of old waffle like this and bung it up as a ‘blog’ or something. Yerse...

 

       No...

 

        Anyway...

 

So it’s not that kind of writer’s block I’m talking about. It’s the other kind – where I’ve got a specific ‘thing’ to write and have been given specific instructions on how to write it and tons of background material to consult while writing and heaps of quotable quotes by people who seem to know what they’re talking about to quote from and I still can’t get the bloody thing written. Insane, isn’t it? To paraphrase Buzz Lightyear; “That’s not writing, it’s summarising with style.” And I tend to agree with him (well not ‘him’, but the paraphrased ‘him’. And I’m not ‘Woody’ either, though I have on occasion had to struggle with a snake in my boot ;)), which may be part of the problem. So it’s not ‘writer’s block’ or ‘essayists encumbrance’ or ‘scholar’s stoppage’ or any other nicely alliterative allusion to some sort of mental or physical barrier – it is good, old fashioned FEAR, plain and simple. I am a coward. Probably a custardy one, with pockets full of mustard to boot, if the old playground chant offers anything to go by (I’ve just looked; it doesn’t. No mustard, just some lint, two elastic bands and a dead mouse the cat brought in which I’m going to scare Julie Harris with later).

 

No, the real reason I can’t write my final assignment for the OU is because it actually matters: it will determine not only my final mark on the module I’m currently studying, but the overall result of my Degree. And that’s too much. I almost typed ‘too much too soon’, then realised it’s not too soon at all and I’m suffering OU burn out after four years and want to take at least a year’s sabbatical before jumping back into the mucky pool of academia to do my masters, but that said, in specific terms applied to the submission date looming large next week it is too soon, and with the implications of a duff score hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles too much too. Erm... So yes, too much too soon after all, but with a specific ‘too soon’ rather than a more general one (See what I mean about waffle?)

 

Anyhoo. The upshot of all that is that my essayist’s encumbrance is actually really nothing more than fear. Just fear. That thing we’re supposed to have nothing to fear but itself; which is a nice, neat sound bite, but no fucking help whatsoever. Anyone who has suffered this fear will know what I’m talking about, and will know just how difficult it is to circumnavigate. It would be tempting to think of it as a sort of inverted panic attack, because to do so would imply some sort of end in sight, perhaps in the form of a short spell of unconsciousness or a simple paper bag, but it’s not like that at all, because after 4 days of struggling there’s still no end in sight and only the inkling of a half decent, heavily and repeatedly edited, beginning. The other difference between this kind of panic and a panic attack is that a panic attack feels like your heart is going to stop while scholar’s stoppage feels like your brain is going to explode.

 

It’s kind of like having all of the symptoms of falling in love (can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t concentrate...) but without the payoff of an eventual rub-out or even a bit of a snog. It’s more like unrequited love – agonising, pointless and soul-destroying – but even then there is, in the beginning at least, a measure of anticipation and hope because the object of your desires is at least accessible to you (assuming, of, course, you’re not a nutter in love with some film star you can never hope to meet or the subject of some sort of restraining order), whereas when it comes to unwritten essays all hope is lost because, by definition, the object of your desires remains eternally elusive.

 

So it’s not like regular writer’s block and it’s not like a panic attack and it’s not like falling in love, requited or otherwise. It’s more like, to borrow a phrase from Richard Adams (who sadly is not a source I can use for quotes etc in my essay, which would at least be a start), ‘Going Tharn’. Yep, that pretty much nails it. I feel like a rabbit, frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car and completely powerless to do anything to avoid the crushing wheels. If I’m really lucky the tyres might rush by on either side of me, leaving me blinking and dazed but unscathed in the road as the driver, oblivious, rushes on. If I’m really really lucky, the driver might see me, pull up, dig into the carrier bag sitting on the passenger seat next to her and pull out a carrot she’s just bought in Tesco’s Metro and throw it to me before cautiously driving round me and carrying on her way. Or, knowing my luck, it may not be a car at all but a steamroller; the first in a procession of steamrollers making their way to a steam and traction engine rally a few miles further down the road. Ho hum...

 

You may be thinking that in writing this blog I’ve found another very effective way of avoiding looking at my final assignment. You would be right in one respect, but in my defence I would say that I’m also hoping the exercise proves to be some sort of literary laxative; that in opening my ‘mind-bowel’ and having a good metaphorical word dump here I have also opened the floodgates for the good stuff. You, dear reader (assuming at least one), can look upon yourself as the vital roughage in that process; as the bowl of Branflakes or spoonful of Special K that helped me turn the corner and navigate the s-bend. Thank you – you are the prunes in my porridge and the liquorice in my whip. You are the senna of my semicolon, and I salute you. J

 

 

IN OTHER NEWS : Today has been dry so far here in the Garden of England, but ‘tis but a brief interlude from the rain, rain and more rain (and hale) we’ve been experiencing almost daily since the local water companies imposed a hose-pipe ban to combat the ‘Drought’. I penned this yesterday:

With gratitude to Mssrs Flanders & Swann

Drought! Drought! Glorious Drought!

Nothing quite like it for splashing about

So turn off your tellies

Grab raincoats and brollies

And pull on your wellies

For Glorious DROUGHT!

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New blog post

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Edited by David Smith, Thursday, 10 May 2012, 21:02

No time for a proper blog today as miles behind on EVERYTHING, but here is a pome I wrote years ago when I heard some chanting on the playground while walking past my son's school. It answers that age old question that has vexed 6 year old's for decades, if not centuries...

 

Boys are better than gir - irls, Boys are better than gir-irls  – TRUE

 

The boys think that they're somehow 'better'
The girls think the boys have it wrong
But now, I'm afraid, it's official
The former were right all along

 

The announcement was made out of Whitehall
Today at a quarter to three
Results from a ten-year survey
Conclusive as any could be
All lady MPs on the benches
Have shuffled off home in a huff
Advised to just stick to their cooking
And washing and ironing and stuff

 

There's outrage from all women's libbers
They're planning a wave of attacks
But it's sour grapes in the long run
It's pointless disputing the facts
So rather than fighting 'gainst logic
We hope they'll see sense and agree
Disperse and go home to their families
And make them a nice cup of tea

 

So if you tune in to watch 'Newsround'
Don't fret if the young lady cries
'Cos now, I'm afraid, it's official
We boys are much better

 

(at lies)

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Ducklings: Little Fluffy Dumplings of Love

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As regular readers of my waffle will know, I am, despite all the moaning, a man of simple pleasures and very easily pleased. Give me sunshine, an MP3 player loaded with my favourite choons and a body of water to walk or cycle around or alongside and I’m generally as happy as a pig in poo. Sprinkle that body of water with the occasional duk-duk or a pair of elegant and stately swans and my happiness soars from regular levels of pig-in-poo-ness to pig-in-poo-with-a-bucket-of-toffee-apples-for-breakfast, which, if you’ve ever seen a pooey pig with a bucket of toffee-apples, you will know is just about as happy as it’s possible to get without the aid of chemicals. Probably. (In fairness, I’ve never seen a pig with a toffee apple – but it sounds about right, doesn’t it?)

This week has been notable for a couple of relatively sunny afternoons, which, given the generally appalling April/May we’ve had to this point in my neck of the Kentish woods, has made my daily circuit to the shops and back far more pleasant, and I was chuffed to find on Tuesday that I have been doubly blessed with the arrival of some new ducklings on the local pond.  Now ducklings, it cannot be denied, are one of nature’s cutest concoctions, especially the little banana and chocolate coloured ones that Mallardy Laydees tend to produce, and the sight of these teeny little pom-poms of fluff chiffing and stumbling along at the water’s edge and bobbing up and down in the shallows has helped put a silly smile on my big, gormless face for a few minutes each day since their arrival. Ahhhhhh. smile

But of course, just as every rose has thorns and every cherry a stone there is always a dark side, and when it comes to inland bodies of water and the creatures living around them this takes the form of the hissing, spitting, shitting machines we’ve all come to know and hate as Canadian geese. And, yes, those malevolent brooding bastards are back again this year too...

Now goslings, unlike ducklings, are seriously cute for only around 3-4 hours at most. They retain a small degree of cuteness for a couple of days or so, but this is more, I think, because of their size in comparison to their hateful parents and minor levels of residual fluffiness rather than to any actual cuteness per se. Their waddling, rather than being shambolic and comical, is just ungainly and ridiculous, and their bodies, rather than retaining the shape and texture of little pom-poms, quickly morph into ugly oval oblongs that resemble a cheap pair of novelty slippers you might receive as an unwelcome Christmas gift from a particularly stingy and tasteless maiden aunt. In essence, they are horrible, and I’m pretty sure, had he observed the wildfowl on his local lake a bit more carefully, Hans Christian Anderson would have realised, when penning his ‘Tale of the Ugly Duckling’, that he was confusing ‘Duckling’ with ‘Gosling’ and making false assumptions about the origins of the Very Fine Swan Indeed who appeared in the vicinity a month or so later. Sorry, geese, but I’m with the chorus on this one: Quack – get out, Quack Quack – get out, Quack Quack – get out of town. And don’t come back. Ever.

IN OTHER NEWS: Last weekend Ben went off for a ‘back to basics’ camping weekend with the scouts. On the plus side, we got a beautiful afternoon’s walk along the coastal path between Whitstable and Herne Bay (one of my favourite stretches of coastline thanks to the garjuss beach huts and sea view from the heights of Tankerton) before I dropped him off, but these few hours of brilliant sunshine (I actually ‘caught the sun’ :-o) couldn’t really make up for what came after, which was pretty much non-stop rain. When I arrived to collect him on Sunday afternoon he emerged from the trees looking like ‘Swamp Thing’, plastered in mud from head to foot and shivering like a shaved polar bear. ‘Have you had a good time, son?’ I asked, stepping forward to help him free his hiking boots from the clay into which he was slowly sinking.

He grunted a reply which I took to mean ‘no’ then pointed toward a small hut in the distance. ‘Kit... In... There...’ he managed to say before collapsing into my outstretched arms. I threw him over my shoulder in the manner of a fireman, then slowly folded to the ground in the manner of a weakling as my knees buckled and my spinal column crumbled into dust. Did I mention he’s six-foot-two already, at fourteen? Oh. Well he is. And ‘chunky’ with it.

Anyhoo, cutting a long story short he had managed to lose two pairs of jeans, a jumper, and his Explorers uniform, and his sleeping roll, blanket and sleeping bag were three shapeless blobs of stinking clay and twigs that needed half a dozen of us to individually manhandle into the boot of the car. I think my shocks have had it from the journey home. I’ve just about managed to salvage them all, thanks to the sunny weather on Monday which gave me the opportunity to lay them out on his trampoline to dry before chipping away at the clay with a hammer and bolster. What’s that old quote about sculpting - ‘I chip away at the stone to find the angel within’ or whatever? Well like that, only think ‘sleeping bag’ or ‘bed roll’ rather than angel. After getting off the worst I gave them a good soak in the bath. I just, with the aid of a sink plunger and wire coat hanger, managed to beat back the golem left behind when I pulled the plug, but it was a close thing.

Oh well, onward and upward. He’s got his Duke of Edinburgh award coming up soon. Let’s hope the weather stays nice for it.

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Pinch, Punch first of the month...

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Edited by David Smith, Tuesday, 1 May 2012, 11:45

Well, waste of bloody time that was! Got up at dawn and RAN to the Maypole, but no other bugger in sight. Not a sossidge! Not even that funny looking morris dancer from last year (Hi Morris ;) )... 

Oh well... if anyone fancies meeting up with me and Brit down the cemetery later we'll be getting there about eight-ish. Oh, if you happen to be reading this, Morris, I hope that rash has cleared up. If not, stay indoors. No, seriously, STAY INDOORS...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHpHC54s2s0

 

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Annoying Strangers on a Train

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 27 Apr 2012, 20:30

I had the misfortune earlier today to find myself travelling home on a train opposite a gaggle of Chuggers (or, as Sean Lock more appropriately refers to them, ‘Chunts’) who were training up a new recruit for his first day of doorstep begging. On the off-chance that a reader might happen along who hasn’t heard either term, ‘Chugger’ is a portmanteau word combining the ‘ch’ from ‘charity’, with the ‘ugger’ from mugger – i.e. ‘Charity Mugger’. Chunt is also a portmanteau word, with the ‘ch’ derived from the same source...

The gaggle of chuggers sitting across from me was made up of three ‘old hands’ – two loud and cocky young men in sharp suits and a moderately attractive girl who’s probably little more than a honey trap used for luring in new recruits – and a spotty little herb called Justin who they were grooming to go out and do their dirty work for them. Justin had been given a number of prepared ‘opening gambit’ speeches with which to introduce himself on total stranger’s doorsteps, and was working through them with his ‘team leader’ in a series of improvs which were intended to familiarise him with the ‘stroppy’ punter, the ‘timid’ punter, the ‘haven’t-got-time’ punter and countless other ‘punter’ variations, all of whom seemed to have one thing in common – a desire not to give money to the unctuously friendly total stranger who had appeared begging on their doorstep.

‘Good morning, my name’s Justin, how are you today?’ Justin began brightly.

‘Fine, mate, how are you?’ team leader replied, in a manner that I must say was far friendlier than the one I usually use when called to my front door by beggars.

‘I’m fine too, thank you’ said Justin. Then; ‘I’m out today on behalf of the NDCS – The National Society for Deaf Children [NB: acronyms obviously not one of Justin’s strong points, you’ll note, though he was not challenged once by his team leader on this particular aspect of his spiel] – I’m sure you’ve heard of us? Yes? Good... [This, I think, is what’s referred to by people like Derren Brown as a ‘push’]...

‘...You’ll know then... [another ‘push’ – this one doubly effective because of its ‘puff point power’]... that we [WE?] ...work tirelessly to support, integrate, and enable deaf children in every aspect of their daily lives, and we’re collecting today in this area... [Oh JOY!]... to raise support... [that’s “Money” in old money]...to ensure that we can continue to do so... [and if you don’t give me some money, you evil bastard, those poor little deaf kids won’t be supported or integrated or enabled at all and they’ll probably STARVE TO DEATH and it will all be your fault...]...

‘...Some of your neighbours have very generously donated already... [Yeah, so what kind of tightwad does that make you if your neighbours have all given me bucketloads and you slam the door in my face, you evil, deaf child hating bastard?]... and we feel sure... [there’s that ‘we’ again – where are they, hiding round the corner? Is Pudsey with them? Lennie Henry?]... you would welcome the opportunity to do so too... [What? Izzit? Mep?]...’ etc etc etc.

Give him his due, Justin was working really hard trying to remember all of this bolleaux and Honey Trap Girl herself admitted that it was really hard to ‘remember what the initials stood for and all that...’ but I kind of got the feeling, by about the twentieth or so improv exchange, that his heart wasn’t really in it and that rather than feeling any personal or moral imperative to raise money for the deaf he was probably just doing it in the hope of grubbing up a few quid in commission so he could go down the pub on Friday night, or possibly in order to reassure his work advisor at the job centre that he is actively seeking work, is willing to do ANYTHING, and therefore should be eligible to receive his job-seekers allowance this week so he can bung his poor old mum a few quid for food and rent. Or something.

Could there be any more morally corrupt job than ‘chugging’ for a living? Well, having said that, obviously you could work in the financial sector or perhaps as an international arms dealer selling guns to countries that give them to small children so they can blow each other’s heads off, but those and a million or so other equally immoral occupations aside could there be any more morally corrupt job than chugging for a living? No? Didn’t think so.

Of course, charity is a wonderful thing and we should all do more of it, but there is, to my mind, something inherently wrong with the idea of charity as a ‘growth industry’. The real obscenity, of course, is actually not the spotty little whelps like Justin at the bottom of the dung heap, but the HUGE earners sitting at the top of the pile living on caviar and honey while exploiting and stealing from the impoverished, weak and disenfranchised they claim to represent. But then I can sort of understand that (not agree with it, but understand it), because if you haven’t got any sort of moral conscience and you’re willing to sell your soul to the devil it makes bloody good sense to at least get a decent price for it rather than a measly couple of pints on a Friday night or a few quid to reimburse your hard done by parents, doesn’t it?

And if you can’t manage that then I guess the role of ‘team-leader’, with a sharp suit and a cut from everything that spotty little whelps like Justin bring in before it’s passed on up to the next person in the pyramid shaped chain of professional skim artists, at least has the veneer of a ‘middle-management’ career to justify it?
 
I had a thought that I might start a campaign to try to put a stop to door-to-door (and even high street/shopping mall) chugging – a series of petitions, perhaps, or online protest campaigns to tell charities that use Chuggers for fundraising that we [WE?] don’t like it,  and perhaps even something in the way of direct action like Boycotts on donations. But then I realised that something like that, if it got off the ground, would probably incur overheads, and I haven’t got money to pour into something like that no matter how strongly I might feel about it.
 
And then I had an idea...

I’ll probably be collecting in your area sometime soon. You’ll know it’s totally bona fide (Bona Fodo, as Victoria Wood might say) because I’ll have my official badge on saying ‘CACK’ (Campaign Against Chugging in Kent). Please give generously. Just like your neighbours have...

And if it turns out not to be me knocking your door, if it’s just Jehovah’s Witnesses or whatever local flavour of happy clappers your area tends to attract, be nice to them, because no matter how annoying they might be or how busy you might be they at least believe in what they’re doing, which is more than can be said for Justin and his mates. Probably.

IN OTHER NEWS: Once the chuggers departed the train (in Orpington – so if you live in that neck of the woods don’t open the door to unexpected callers, just empty the po over their heads from an upstairs window) I took off my headphones (that’s how loud these people were – I could hear their improv session over my MP3 player) and relaxed with my book. A couple of pages in a realised something that, as an aspiring writer, seemed very relevant: TRAINS NO LONGER GO TICKETY-POOM, TICKETY-POOM, TICKETY-POOM, TICKETY-POOM :- O

As someone who can just about remember from toddlerhood that the last scheduled steam train running to Hastings went Chhhhhhh-de-Cooff, Chhhhh-de-Cooff, Chhhhh-de-Cooff, Chhhhhh-de-Cooff this was something of a double whammy. I don’t know how you could transcribe the horrible new train sound, which is very much like the low drone/rumble you hear on an aeroplane, but even if I did I don’t think I’d bother. It’s rubbish, as Marvin the paranoid android might say. I would instead fill the fictional journey-time with the relentless ‘tish-tish-tish-tish’ of an overly loud pair of headphones two seats away interspersed with the occasional tweeps, rings, toots and jingles of mobile phones, the shouted conversations that follow those tweeps, rings, toots and jingles, and the accompanying ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ tuts of other commuters seemingly incensed by them.

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS: Moonfruit have just introduced a new feature which displays your website as it would appear on a mobile phone. As I don't own a mobile phone - well not one that does 't'internet  (it's a long story) - I never realised until today that my website is pug-fuggly when viewed via new tech like that. For anyone who's visited it via mobile, sorry. I feel a redesign is probably in order sometime soon. For those who visited and thought it pug-fuggly regardless of viewing platform, you may well have a point, but Ben and I kind of liked it. smile

 

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BITTY OLD WEEK...

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Hmmm. Bitty old week I’ve had this week, so today’s blog will probably be all over the place. It may also be quite self-indulgent (but then aren’t all blogs, when you come to think about it?). You have been warned...

Met up with a friend I haven’t seen for a few weeks and had a lovely wander round the park and shops followed by some nice nosh and a few drinky-winkies. Eee it were grand, as they might say up north if feeling particularly stereotypical. The conversation turned to my life pre-parenting days, when I was a care worker supporting disabled adults with learning difficulties. Best job I ever had. I worked at several places, but my favourite role was supporting six people in a semi-independent unit, helping them to develop self management skills like cooking, cleaning, shopping and so on – things that are poxy chores for us but are hugely empowering for those who have lived in long term institutional care and have had everything done for them, often whether they liked it or not. Ended up welling up a bit when I dug out some old photos of them gathered round my flat, which we used to visit once a week after doing the shopping so they could socialise with my neighbours and have a cup of tea and a cake without dipping into their own money.

The photo that got to me was one of a woman in her mid-thirties, who, for the sake of this blog, I will call ‘Suzy’. She was holding my son, Ben, when he was no more than a couple of weeks old, just sitting on the sofa with him cradled in her arms and smiling. Suzy had Down’s syndrome, and she told me just after I had taken the pic that he was the first baby she had ever ‘been allowed’ to hold. When I showed the photo to my friend last week she said ‘Ben looks in safe hands’. He was.

Another photo had the whole group sitting around my patio drinking tea – well the whole group plus one, actually, as I’d had the big minibus that day and been able to take one extra shopping with us. The plus one was another young lady with Down’s syndrome who we will call ‘Nicky’. Nicky was hilarious; sharp as a tack and an answer for everything. She had a bit of a crush on me and would hide behind doors and leap out at me, clinging onto my neck and kissing me on the cheek then running off laughing and punching the air in victory like a footballer after scoring a winning goal. She didn’t particularly care what I was doing – I might have been pushing another resident in a wheelchair or carrying a tray of food through from the kitchen – so over time I developed the reflexes of a cat, but she’d still manage to catch me out at least a couple of times a week. That probably sounds very un-PC in this day and age (and a health and safety nightmare!), but in my opinion ‘PC’ often misses the point and throws the baby out with the bath water. ‘Fun’ is important too, even if it doesn’t crop up directly within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Also in the photo is ‘Bill’, a man just a few years shy of retirement age who had lived in institutions from his teens when his parents had died. He had a non-specific learning disability, but nothing that in this day and age would have implied the need for residential care. One of the first initiatives for the semi-independent unit was to help the occupants of the cottage learn to prepare their own meals. For practical reasons this was only breakfast and tea during the week, but at the weekends we used to cook everything from scratch. We’d make a shopping list on Friday afternoon, democratically planning the menu etc. Sometimes, with an even number of residents, this would entail cooking two separate joints or puds, but that happened far less often than you might imagine.
 
Apart from trips out and the ‘alternative menu’ of the care home’s kitchen Bill had never had the freedom to choose whatever he liked to eat, and he struggled with the concept. I’d ask him ‘what do you fancy for dinner Sunday, Bill?’, and he’d reply ‘is it chicken?’ I’d say, ‘it can be if you like – what do you want?’ and he’d say ‘is it lamb?’ A few months later Bill had lobbied successfully for a ‘house cat’ (up until that point he’d always shared the main house moggy), and was taking a major role on the resident's consultative committee. I was particularly pleased when he told one of the senior staff to fuck off when they went into his room without asking first... It’s inspiring, the quantum leaps people can make if they’re given the support and opportunity.

Anyhoo, will stop there as this quite serious so far compared to my usual blogs and that may not be what you signed up for...

IN OTHER NEWS: My home brew stout I started last week may well be dead, carried off by the sudden cold snap that started two days in to the fermentation process. I bought a hydrometer this morning and will try to work out how to use it over the weekend. I also bought a tiny little plastic jug called a ‘sample flask’ which the local hardware shop had the audacity to charge me nearly four quid for. I said ‘four quid? Four quid? I could buy a jug kettle for that!’ The girl said, ‘not in here you couldn’t.’ It was worth four quid just for that line...

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BLOGOLOGUE...

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 13 Apr 2012, 00:39

Been writing quite a few monologues lately. This being a skool holiday, I've been too distracted to get round to writing a blog today, so here's a monolgue I wrote a couple of weeks ago for my writing circle:

I was six or seven the first time I heard my mother swear. I was in my bedroom, looking for comics under the bed, and she walked into the room just as I stood up. ‘Fucking hell!’ she said, ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ She looked shocked, and I think I probably did too. I don’t know how she hadn’t heard me coming in. I’d heard her singing in the kitchen, so maybe she had been listening to the radio and it had drowned out the sound of the door and my run up the stairs. Or maybe she had heard me but forgotten. She was very forgetful, but I didn’t know why back then.

I say it was the first time I heard her swear, but with hindsight I suspect it’s just the first time I remember her swearing. Awareness about things like that tends to creep up on kids, because they just take whatever comes as normal and don’t notice the weird stuff until something happens to make them notice it. It was probably other kids talking about swearing and effing and jeffing in the playground that had brought the word “fuck” to my attention.

After that first time I started noticing it more and more. I didn’t like it, because I knew from those playground discussions that swearing was rude and wrong and I didn’t like thinking that way about my mum. I became quite puritanical about it for a while, telling off the other kids when they swore and even getting into fights over it. Then I noticed other kid’s parents swearing too and realised my dad, when he was around, was even worse, so it just became normal again.

The fact that she was boozing took longer to creep up on me. I noticed she sometimes sounded a bit funny – like she couldn’t find the right words or was having trouble saying them – and that she was forgetful and clumsy, but I had no context to put those things in. When you saw drunk people on the telly they could hardly speak or walk at all, and though I did see mum like that occasionally I never associated it with the other, milder stuff. Later I noticed all sorts of things – the mood swings and the bitter smell on her breath that the fags couldn’t hide being only the tip of the iceberg. I started to notice more and more, and I started to resent it. I was ashamed, but felt guilty for feeling that way. I loved her, but pushed her away so I wouldn’t have to see.

She was Irish, my mum, and while I know it makes her drinking a bit of a cliché there’s no point beating about the bush. I don’t know if that was part of it, but drinking was certainly a family trait. She had a sister, Monica, who “liked a drink” too, and I can remember her brother, Martin, staying with us for a week or two and things going seriously off the rails. He was fall-about drunk for the entire visit and everyone was relieved when he got back on the ferry and went home after a row with my dad. It hadn’t come to blows, but came pretty close. Mum told Martin he had to go the next morning and Monica said she wouldn’t take him in. He kipped a few nights on the sofa of someone he got talking to in a pub but soon wore out his welcome. Mum, Monica and Martin cried when he got in the taxi, but as it turned the corner at the end of the road Monica said ‘thank fuck for that!’ and she and mum almost pissed themselves laughing.

My dad came from the West Country – Penzance I think – but had fallen out with his parents so never went back. He ‘liked a drink’ too but was a randy old bastard with it. When he got too old to chase women the drink took over completely, but by then he’d been out of my life for years and we didn’t really keep in touch. I’d meet up with him once or twice a year or bump into him in town sometimes, but it was never very pleasant. He’d tap me for a few quid and tell me what a great son I was and how sorry he was for being such a shit father. Then he’d start telling me how everything was mum’s fault and he hadn’t really stood a chance. They both blamed each other like that – it was quite funny in an odd sort of way.

He left mum for good when I was fourteen, after a blazing, drunken fight over his latest bit on the side. Mum stabbed him in the shoulder with the knife she used for peeling vegetables and he had to go to hospital. He told them it was a mugging to keep the police off of mum’s back, but he moved out the next day. Usually, when he moved in with another woman, they’d get sick of him and he’d end up back on mum’s doorstep, but Shirley seemed even more desperate to keep him than mum had been and stayed with him almost to the end. He’d pop back occasionally from the pub with mum and they’d get reacquainted, but mum always made sure to let Shirley know and eventually dad cottoned on that shitting on your own ex-doorstep was never going to be a viable proposition. Mum really started hitting the bottle after that.

He died seven years ago, two years after mum. Shirley phoned me the day before the funeral, but I didn’t really feel anything. I know that sounds terrible, but I didn’t really know him. It could have been anyone in that box. The vicar mentioned me as the only child and Shirley gave me a little smile, but I don’t think anyone else there had a clue who I was. Dad’s sister from Penzance was there supported by her daughter, but I didn’t stop to speak to them. They looked as bewildered as I did. I heard some ignorant bastard behind me whispering a joke as the coffin slid through the curtain; that old chestnut about it taking them three days to put the fire out. I wanted to deck him, but just looked at the floor instead. Afterwards, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I didn’t go back for the tea or anything like that.

Mum’s funeral was a different kettle of fish, a proper wake with loads of her family coming over. Monica sorted it all out and it was a fantastic send off, more of a party, really. I stayed until midnight, but then they started reminiscing about the good old days in Ireland and their childhoods and stuff, so I got out before it all turned teary. It meant fuck all to me, and the person they were describing was nothing like the mother I had known. Uncle Martin wasn’t there. He’d killed himself years before with a Wilkinson Sword razorblade. Funny, that, because the family said it was a mortal sin, whereas he’d been killing himself with whisky for years and it would have only been a matter of time. I think in Ireland suicide’s only a mortal sin if you do it quickly. If you take the slow option of a pickled liver and renal failure or drive under the influence into a brick wall or a school bus full of kids the almighty doesn’t give a fuck.

 
I moved out when I was nineteen. I’d just finished my two year apprenticeship with a firm of electricians and gone on to full salary, which was enough to set myself up in a small rented flat. It was tiny, really, more of a bedsit, but I had half shares with the girl downstairs of a landing with a kitchen and a bathroom. She was a right dirty cow – never cleaned either of them. It drove me mad for a year or so because I was quite particular about that sort of thing, but then as I got more used to having my own space and started earning more money for pubbing and clubbing I got as bad as her. I didn’t live there for long because I met Carol. We rented a place together the year I turned twenty three and put the deposit down on our first flat a couple of years later.

I was working my bollocks off for the next ten years or so. I’d started a business with one of my mates, Gary, and we were getting tons of work from a couple of local building developers. Technically we were sparks, but we could both turn our hands to anything so we were raking it in. Gary followed the lead of the developers we were working for, but Carol was more interested in family, so that’s the way we went. We kept upgrading houses, though, and needed to as the kids came along. Four in total, one boy, three girls. Jamie came last; otherwise we might have stopped at two or three.

I was drinking more by then, but hadn’t noticed it sneaking up. Usual old bollocks, needing one to ‘wind down’ after a hard day’s graft and that gradually turning into two or three. Wine at the weekends when Gary and his latest flame came for dinner or we had other friends around, and a few jars in the nineteenth after golf two or three times a week.

I lost my license on the way back from the golf club. Two year ban. Gary stuck by me, ferrying me backwards and forwards and only taking on two man jobs, but once the driving wasn’t an issue I started drinking even more. Got my license back in March ’95, lost it again in July of the same year. Gary asked to buy me out of the business. Things weren’t exactly booming then, so he had me over a barrel, the bastard. I’ve not spoken to him since.

I tried going back on the cards but everyone wanted driving, so I was right up shit creek. I was borrowing on the house to keep things going, but it was all slipping away.

Things were pretty awful by then with Carol. She was never a drinker, and couldn’t understand. I tried to say it was in the blood, but she wasn’t having any of it – said it was just a bloody good excuse for not tackling it head on. She asked for a temporary separation in the winter of ’96. I smashed the house up, and she filed for divorce.

The kids are grown up now. They don’t see me. Carol moved away with them – only a few miles up the road, a couple of towns away, but it might as well be Timbuktu. I made it easy for her really, kept showing up drunk outside the old house and shouting to get in. Smashed up the garden and her car when she moved the new boyfriend in. No judge is going to allow that now, is he? I had access for a while with a social worker present, but I stopped taking it and eventually the judge ruled in her favour for “access at mother’s discretion”. I haven’t seen them since.

I walk past the old house sometimes. The family living there now look really nice.

After we split up I moved back in for a while with mum. We drove each other fucking mad. After the breakdown I got a little council flat – well, housing association, but same difference. That’s where I am now. The walls are damp, the lift smells of piss and the kids on the estate are right little bastards, but it’s better than some have got. I don’t go to the pub anymore – who can afford pub prices – but there’s a nice little offy counter at the checkout in the spar.

But I’m not doing that anymore either. I’ve been sober now for fourteen weeks, and it’s going to stay that way...

So that’s the story so far. Thanks for listening.

My name’s Alan and I’m an alcoholic.


*  *  *  *  *  *

IN OTHER NEWS:

Nowt to do with the above, which is FICTION, but yesterday I started experimenting with a new hobby and set up a micro-distillery in Ben's bedroom cupboard. It's a BruBox kit for Irish stout (i.e. Guinness-like substances, for those who don't know what stout is), and we were pleased to hear this morning the gentle bubbling of fermenting hops, which will hopefully trickle to an occassional 'burp' over the next ten days or so to indicate the brewing stage is over and we're ready to think about clearing and then sampling... If all goes to plan and it tastes okay we are thinking of trying a London Porter kit next, and will invest in bottles so we can lay some down for Christmas.

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS:

Went slightly off-piste yesterday when adding a comment to a Twitter friend's (or should that be "Twitterquantance's" - I despise and haven't a clue re this whole netiquette thing, so how do you refer to someone you only really know via twitter? Oh for those simple days when you spoke to people rather than avatars - and this from a self-confessed (see prev blog  on alternative life coaching) non-starter when it comes to real-life "doing social") blog yesterday... Turned into an essay, with a bit of a micro-rant thrown in for good measure regarding the word 'misogynistic'. If Ms Kean should happen across this, I'll try to keep it short and sweet in future smile. In the meantime, any poor, lost wandering soul who's made it this far may find this interesting too, especially if they have an interest in CW.  THIS

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That Brick Woman 'n' Stuff...

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Edited by David Smith, Thursday, 5 Apr 2012, 16:06

I was pointed earlier this week from a link on Twitter toward THAT article in the Daily Mail by Samantha Brick about how she has used her ‘feminine charms’ to her advantage, and how this hasn’t always been well received by other women who have felt threatened by her. It was drawn to my attention via a retweet from ‘Glinner’ (Graham Linehan) who made the observation – as had many others when I looked at the comments on the Daily Mail website – that from the accompanying photo Ms Brick seemed somewhat less aesthetically pleasing than her article might lead one to imagine. Now fair enough, Glinner has never made any sort of claims about his own looks, hasn’t written an article accusing other men of jealousy towards him, and was only voicing a casual throw-away comment on twitter, but I couldn’t help but think that the words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ might be appropriate, given that Glinner has a head shaped like a bag of brazil nuts.   

TBH, I was also a little disappointed, because it seemed such an easy laugh at someone else’s expense (much like that bag of brazil nuts mentioned above, filthy hypocrite that I am) and that’s not what I have come to expect from yer man, who’s generally so very good at mining laughs from cocked up situations and screwed up characters in ways that show enormous levels of empathy, affection and understanding. Because, let’s face it, whatever value this article might have had to the Daily Mail in terms of ‘hits; on their website, from Ms Brick’s screwed up point of view it’s got to be, on both a personal and professional level, the biggest cock up of her journalistic career to date. Dunno, perhaps it’s just my innate sympathy for the underdog, but for me the ‘X-Factor defence’ used by Glinner and many others that she brought it upon herself by putting herself centre stage just doesn’t cut it; the content of the article offered anyone who desired it enough ammunition to criticise without having to resort to comments and personal insults regarding her looks. It just seemed to me a little bit cruel and unnecessary.

And who says you need to be beautiful to flirt anyway? Or to use your sexuality or charm to get your own way? Aren’t those kinds of stereotypes – the ones that claim women who aren’t size eight or who don’t look like supermodels can’t be sexy or charming or interesting – the ones we should be challenging, because to my mind they seem to be doing far more harm to far more women than the idea that fluttering your eyelids at a man can pay dividends, which – however inconvenient or annoying for feminists – remains as true today as it has always been?

And that, of course, cuts both ways too, so this is not the argument of a sexist or misogynist – the simple fact is that men AND women respond more positively to people they ‘fancy’ or who they find charming, and less positively to people they find repulsive or charmless. Whether those people are genuinely charming and attractive or slimy chancers and eyelash fluttering gold-diggers is often a moot point, and so too are ‘looks’ when weighed up against things like confidence (it’s ALL about that, Gok would tell us), timing, opportunity and good old-fashioned ‘lust’.   

That genuinely ‘beautiful people’ don’t have to work it quite so desperately or obviously is another moot point – it doesn’t mean they’re not reaping the benefits of their looks, it just means they can delude themselves that they’ve achieved everything they’ve achieved in life regardless of or even in spite of them – which is, let’s face it, as big a crock of shit, given everything we know about human nature and the way we make snap decisions about people within the first few seconds of meeting them and respond accordingly, as the assumptions Ms Brick seems to have made regarding her looks.

Anyhoo...

IN OTHER NEWS:

In my last blog I mentioned that I was taking Ben and his BFF to see a trio of bands at a local music venue / public convenience. This being our first outing of this kind outside of festivals we had no idea that ‘fashionably late’ is still fashionable, so we arrived at the posted opening time to find ourselves the only three people there. Nervous at being the first to arrive we walked around the block a couple of times, which while boring for Ben and BFF was worth it on a personal level for the sighting of three scrawny little knobbly-kneed things in black skinny jeans/and or leggings, who brought back many happy childhood memories of watching Max Wall and Billy Dainty silly-walking around the stage of the London Palladium on various TV variety shows. I pointed this out to Ben and BFF, but of course they had no idea who Max Wall or Billy Dainty were, which brought me back to earth and my ‘oldest swinger in town’ status with a bump.

Getting back to the venue we discovered that a few people had gone in, so we took the plunge, handed over our tickets and collected our stamps on the back of the hand. Inside there were a few small tables, and after I’d bought them a soft drink each and myself a Guinness the boys chose to sit rather than stand, which made sense at this point in the evening but became pretty surreal when BFF elected to sit throughout the entire evening with his back to the stage and a look of complete boredom on his face. Had it been just the two of us I’m sure Ben would have stood and perhaps even pogoed a bit, but solidarity with BFF prevailed and he too remained seated throughout, though he was at least facing the stage and clapped enthusiastically between numbers.

We were rather taken aback when the first band on weren’t the band advertised. We took it initially that this would be an ‘extra’, but subsequently learned that the main support band – the band my son had actually wanted to see – had pulled out at the last minute. Their lead singer showed up to watch the main act and he did, when asked, apologise to Ben and explained that their drummer was sick, but it was a bit of a pisser none the less.

By the time the second band came on the crowd had grown a bit and moved forward, so I stood to get a better view. After a couple of minutes I felt someone poke me on the elbow. I looked round, and a lady at the next table asked me if I could step back a bit as she couldn’t see. I was happy to oblige at first and leaned back against the wall, but then the woman stood up in precisely the same spot I had just vacated and started filming the entire set on her I-Phone.

Despite keeping myself pinned to the wall she managed to elbow me in the chest about fifty times and every time I twitched or took a sip of my drink she rewarded me with a withering look. As she was at least sixty and all of five foot tall I knew any request on my part for a bit more consideration (or personal body space) was going to end up being taken out of context, but I did try to ask her in a brief moment of silence between numbers if she could move up a bit. She barked that the band’s bass player was her son and that he didn’t like her filming him because he got embarrassed, so she couldn’t move up in case he saw her. I suggested in that case that she perhaps should stop filming, which earned me another withering look. I settled back against the wall for the duration, uncharitably hoping that her I-phone might get knocked from her hands and crushed beneath the feet of the crowd or that she herself might slip on some of my spilt Guinness and meet a similar fate. I spilt about a quarter of a pint, but it didn’t work.

The final band was called Exit 10 and was quite good, so Ben didn’t mind missing Intraverse too much. Neither of the other bands were lousy, but next outing to see some live music we’ll arrive late, leave BFF behind and find a comfortable standing space away from any proud mums with I-phones or video cameras so the support acts stand a better chance of creating a good impression.

 

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS : we’ve just planted two planters with various herb seeds and a good quantity of baby-bio. I’m not very good with plants so I’m not holding out much hope, but who knows, we might get a handful of chives or a few snippets of basil before the soil erodes to sterile dust and blows away on the wind...                 

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bloggy bits and bobs

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 30 Mar 2012, 10:55

Possibly part of a bigger project, this is a short piece of faction set in a location very close to home:

A summer shower has painted the table next to me with seeds of sunlight. The table at which I sit is dry, protected from the rain and sun shaded by a parasol, the only moisture on its white metal surface from my slopped tea and the brown coffee ring left by the previous occupant. The earth, parched as it had been, soaked up the droplets of rain as quickly as they landed, but the grass has retained enough moisture to darken the denim-clad backsides of the girls sitting on the bank opposite me.

The confidence of these kids is amazing, pretty girls laughing at the terrible jokes of the cock-sure boys trying to impress them. Between the jokes the boys whisper, thinking the girls don’t hear, while the girls say more to each other with their eyes and gestures than the boys can ever imagine. They swig water from bottles with plastic teats not so very different from the bottles of formula that mothers, only a couple of years older than them, push between the reluctant lips of screaming infants elsewhere in the park. The boys are stripped to the waist; thin brown bodies that burn calories like candles consuming wax and energy levels that could power lighthouses. Those girls not wearing jeans or shorts wear tiny summer dresses, occasionally flashing pastel coloured knickers to the boys whose eyes are tuned to every twitch of thigh and hip. I find that aspect of watching them discomforting, feeling like a dirty old man despite the fact that they fall naturally within my line of sight and I was sitting here first.

A few years ago there would have been a bandstand between me and them. Bands never played there but toddlers often did, relishing the perceived danger of the raised stage while finding comfort in the safe boundary it provided for them. Their mothers would sit in a halo on the grass surrounding them, pushchairs loaded with fresh nappies and lidded cups of juice standing sentry beside them while they chatted and lazed. They rested like cats; one eye open and ever vigilant, minds and bodies relaxed yet simultaneously set to leap forward at the first sign of danger. They earned these afternoon respites with sleepless nights and chore-filled mornings and evenings, with rainy days spent in lockdown with frustrated kids who couldn’t understand why the sun didn’t shine every day or why golden time couldn’t last 24/7.

Been there. Done that. They could never imagine how much harder it would be to be a dad in that position, trying to spot and avoid the predators while constantly negotiating that dangerous territory between friendships and suspicious husbands. I swear if I was doing it again I’d pretend to be gay, but then I’d probably just be courting a different set of prejudices.

--------------------------------------------------------

IN OTHER NEWS:   

At the beginning of the week I posted this on facebook:

HaHa! No more of that boring old green broccoli for me! Nor any of that horrible, work-a-day purple sprouting stuff beloved by gastro-pubs everywhere! Oh, dear me no; for today, in Waitrose, I discovered *GOLDEN* sprouting broccoli - yes, my friends, *GOLDEN* sprouting broccoli...

Well, to be totally honest it's more of a greeny-yellow than golden, but if definitely ain't green, and it definitely ain't purple, and who in their right minds would want to eat something with a wishy-washy name like 'greeny-yellow broccoli when they could be eating something called *GOLDEN* broccoli? Anyhow, one thing you CAN be certain about is that it will be 100% better than green or purple broccoli, because it is A - new, B- more expensive, C- comes from Waitrose and D- *GOLDEN*...

Bet you're all puking with envy, ent ya. Goo on, admit it, ent ya ent ya ent ya. You're probably green with envy - just like common old green broccoli. (Green, that is, of course, not envious. I have no idea if vegetables can feel envy but suspect not, especially after being separated from their root systems and packed in plastic trays)...

So there you have it, people, I’ve seen the future, and let me tell you that despite all the erroneous claims made by a certain phone network it is NOT orange. It is *GOLDEN*.
:D

For anyone who might have been wondering, *GOLDEN * broccoli was a bit of a disappointment. It tasted no better than purple broccoli – slightly less good in terms of fullness of flavour, TBH – and the stems were stalky as hell. You know the bottom bit of asparagus that you’re not supposed to eat but sometimes when it’s really good asparagus you can? Well the stalks of *GOLDEN* sprouting broccoli are stalky in the way that the bottom bits of asparagus are when it’s not really good asparagus and the bottom bits aren’t edible. So if you do buy some, don’t eat the ends. In fact, take my word for it and don’t bother buying it in the first place. In fact, if you happen to be in Waitrose and see it ask to speak to the manager and ask them if they can change the description from *GOLDEN* Sprouting Broccoli, to *GOLDEN* Stalky Flavourless Broccoli...   

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS:

This Saturday I will be the oldest swinger in town, taking Ben and his BFF to a concert at a local refurbished public convenience. I will leave them to the mosh pit and indulge myself with several pints of whatever beer they serve in refurbished-toilet-cum-live-music-venues these days, perhaps swaying gently or tapping my foot at those passages of music that meet with my approval. I hope that the outing will take some of the sting out of the line-up details for The Hop Farm Festival this year that said son’s been waiting on. Nothing against Blob Dylan or Peter Gabriel, but not really relevant to most 14 year olds, are they? Or me, come to that. I’ll leave it to him to browse and research the list of ‘alsos’ that I’ve never heard of in the hope of finding something loud and dirty but won’t let him get carried away at the idea of Primal Scream being there, ‘cos last time they only did four or five songs and none of them from the albums we really like...  Poor wee fella, too young for Glastonbury or going it alone and a three day local festival that has plenty of pensioner appeal but not, at first glance, much for the under fifties at all. Ho hum...  

 

:D 

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Slapdash flash fiction

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Edited by David Smith, Thursday, 22 Mar 2012, 23:06

Yesterday afternoon I realised I hadn't written anything for my writer's circle meeting. Wrote the following in a mad panic from the prompt a woman on a bus realising she's forgotten something. I know - awful prompt, isn't it?
Anyhoo - dashed this off and then twigged it was the THIRD Wednesday of the month, not the fourth! Which means I have a full week to polish this. If I can be arsed. Which I probably can't......

 

CRUSH

 

I’d been drawing a picture of a cock on the misty window, but when Miss Gresham shouted ‘bugger’ I, like everyone else, looked round to find out what was going on. She looked embarrassed, which wasn’t surprising really given that teachers aren’t supposed to use that kind of language in front of pupils, but to be honest it was nothing compared to the kind of stuff we shout on the playground every day. That wouldn’t stop some of the geekier kids from dobbing her in when we got back to school, but I didn’t think that would include any of the boys because Miss Gresham was a favourite with all of us. If it had been that nob-end Williams, our metalwork teacher, we would have all dobbed him in.

 

‘What’s the matter, Miss?’ I asked. I was just a couple of seats in front of her on the opposite side of the coach, so I only had to swivel round. She was sitting with Mrs Pettigrew, one of the teaching assistants, who’s at least twice her age but follows her around like a lost sheep. I think she hopes some of Miss Gresham’s popularity will rub off on her, but there's no chance of that: She’s a right munter and must weigh at least 18 stone. There was a rumour going round that Mr Williams was sniffing round her, but then there were always rumours going round about Mr Williams. Last year he’d supposedly been seen in a gay bar in Brighton, and there was another that he’d nearly been suspended for rubbing himself up against Mary Martin at the sixth former’s leaving do while they were queuing for vol-eu-vents, so really you could take your pick.

 

If Miss Gresham had heard me she wasn’t acknowledging it, so I asked again; ‘What’s up, Miss?’

 

She was shoving her hands down the sides of her seat and shifting from side to side. Mrs Pettigrew was doing the same now, and you could almost feel the coach rocking as she wiggled her fat arse about. ‘Don’t you worry, Simon,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘Just wipe that artwork off the window and mind your own business.’

 

I ignored the silly cow. ‘Have you lost something, Miss?’ I asked.

 

Miss Gresham flashed me a quick smile. Her blonde hair was hanging down over her big blue eyes and she looked up from under her fringe. She looked gorgeous, and I felt myself start to blush. ‘It’s my phone, Simon – I think I must have left it back in school and I’m supposed to check in with it at lunch time’.

 

‘What, to make sure you haven’t lost us, Miss?’ someone shouted from the back seat.

 

There was some laughter, then Miss Gresham said, ‘If I can lose you, Gary Barnett, I get a bonus in my wages at the end of the week.’

 

Everyone laughed then, even Gary, but I laughed loudest of all because Dan – Dan the man, my best mate – who was sitting next to me whispered, ‘Christ, I’d love to give her a bonus, and I wouldn’t wait until the end of the week.’

Dan’s a genius when it comes to double entendre – I think it’s ‘cos he spends most nights watching DVD’s of the Inbetweeners and Family Guy, but it might just be because he’s a filthy sod and he’s got four older brothers he has to keep up with.

 

Miss Gresham was standing up now and poking down the sides of the seat. If I’d been dreaming she would have been wearing a miniskirt and suspenders when she bent over to look underneath it, but I wasn’t and she wasn’t. She was wearing tight, black trousers, though, which showed her arse to stunning effect, and the back of her jumper had pulled up to reveal a tribal tattoo on her lower back that I couldn’t wait to tell the others about. Danny saw it too, and whispered ‘boiiiiing’ in my ear. I laughed so hard that snot came out of my nose.

 

‘What’s so funny, Simon?’ Miss Gresham asked.

 

‘Nothing, Miss. Just Danny being a prat’.

 

‘Nothing new there then,’ she said, and everyone laughed again. She’s got a great sense of humour, Miss Gresham; we’d like her even if she wasn’t the fittest looking teacher in the school.

 

Danny swivelled round in his seat and looked over the back of it. ‘Is your phone switched on, Miss? If it is one of us can call you and we’ll hear it ringing if you’ve dropped it on the bus’ he said.

 

‘Yes – can I have your number too, Miss’ shouted Gary Barnett, setting off a chorus of and me’s from the rest of the boys on the bus. I saw Danny’s mouth open to add something else but he was cut off by a shout from the front of the bus. It was Williams, and he was walking up the central aisle towards where we were sitting.

 

‘Alright, boys, calm down, eh?’ he said, ‘I don’t think Miss Gresham would be daft enough to volunteer her number to any of you ugly little bleeders, do you?’

 

I dug Danny in the ribs before he said anything stupid – he can be really funny but doesn’t know when to stop. He’s always getting detentions and stuff but just takes them in his stride. Usually that’s fine but I didn’t want him embarrassing Miss Gresham ‘cos it could put the mockers on the whole day.

 

Williams had reached our seat now, and was taking his own phone out of his pocket. ‘Do you know if yours is switched on?’ he asked, offering it across to Miss Gresham.

 

‘I don’t think it is,’ she said, ‘I forgot to charge it last night so had turned it off to preserve the battery for later.’ While she spoke, she pressed the keypad on Williams’ phone and held it to her ear. After a few seconds she said ‘No, it’s gone straight to voice mail, but thanks anyway’. She pressed another couple of buttons and handed the phone back to Mr Williams, who said she was welcome to borrow it later to check in with the school.

 

Miss Gresham was quiet for the rest of the journey. She looked really worried, and after a few minutes borrowed Mrs Pettigrew’s crappy Nokia to ring the school secretary, asking her to check the staff room and classroom for the missing phone. Mrs Pettigrew’s Nokia rang about ten minutes later, but Miss Gresham didn’t look any happier after answering it.

 

When we got to the theatre we filed off the coach, collecting our coats and bags from the small luggage rack by the door. As I lifted my coat I saw a small rectangle of plastic and metal slide off of the sleeve onto the coat below. I knew it was a phone as soon as I saw it, and almost shouted for Miss Gresham. I’m not sure why, but as I picked it up I slipped it into the pocket of my jacket instead and stepped off the coach without saying a word. I didn’t even tell Danny I’d found it; I just snuck off to the bogs while the director of the workshop we’d been invited to attend was introducing the cast to the teaching staff.

 

In the bogs I found a cubicle and fished the phone out. It had a black front and screen but the slip cover on the back was etched with silver and there was a little diamond thing in the corner. It was girly, but not in a hideous way. I turned it over and flicked it on, nearly crapping myself as it started playing music. There was no one else in the bogs to hear, though, and it stopped after a couple of seconds anyway. It was just a ‘missed call’ alarm, and a banner appeared along the top of the screen with details of the call. The phone was locked, so I couldn’t see what else was on it, but that single banner was enough to stop me in my tracks. There was a picture of Mr Williams, shirtless and pouting at the camera, and a small heart symbol with the words ‘Papa Bear’ beside it.

 

I felt shocked and a bit sick, and for a moment I thought about keeping the phone and showing it around to Danny and everyone. If it had been any of the other teachers I probably would have, but somehow it didn’t seem right with Miss Gresham. I put it on the floor instead, and stamped on it as hard as I could. Bits of plastic and silver metal ricocheted around the cubicle, bouncing off the walls and the pedestal of the crapper. I scooped up all the bits and flushed them, then gave the cubicle door a bloody good kicking.

 

I was shaking when I got back to the hall, but I told Danny I was feeling sick from the coach and nobody else even noticed. Miss Gresham was sitting next to Mr Williams. Stupid bitch.

 

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Tunbridge Wells Writers...

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 16 Mar 2012, 16:40

Not a blog as such, but a heads up for anyone around Tunbridge Wells catchment area for a writing group that meets a couple of times a month in a local pub.

This is a 'blog' entry about their latest meeting on Tuesday of this week. It's a direct grab from their website, so refernces to 'site' etc are that one, not this one, iyswim.  I'll post a link to their website at the bottom. The website is pretty new and very much a work in progress, but eventually will include articles, short stories, flash fiction etc from local group members as well as, hopefully, a wider online community of members. 

If you're interested in any of the above, use the link to the site and drop the group a line, or feel free to jump in and join up. 

Anyhoo, enough preamble: Here's the 'blog', and the link, once again, is at the bottom:

Having finished my latest OU assignment and sent it winging through the ether to my tutor I am now ready to plunge myself back into the real world. Well I would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that I told everyone at our meet-up on Tuesday that I’d bung something up in the café to let anyone who wasn’t there know what we discussed. Chiz Chiz, as my old mate Molesworth would have said (probably while drawing beetles on his scabby little unwashed knees). Anyhoo, having said I would ‘bung up’, let’s get on with the bunging.

 

As usual I was the first to arrive, and availed myself of a lovely Guinness from the very nice chap behind the bar of the Black Pig. He seemed quite surprised to see me, as Chris had forgotten to update the block booking for our table (hem hem), but was most accommodating and helpful in pushing tables together to provide us with an area for our louche lounging and literary jousting. Nice bloke, and he and the pub deserve a heads up.

 

Despite two of our regulars being missing in action we still very effectively filled our corner thanks to two new members joining us – Martin, who has just rediscovered his muse following a period when life, the universe and everything chose to rudely intrude, and Bridget, who has mused very successfully to date with several ‘young adult’ titles under her belt and her first not-so-young adult novel hitting the presses as I type. Bridget has a presentation at Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells on the 27th of this month, and we’re all on a promise for cakes and alcopops, which is never a bad thing, is it? As this coincides with our next Black Pig meet, we should be set up nicely for some extra-louche lounging and extra-loud jousting by the time we get to our usual table.


Scene set, here’s what we dun talked about:
Ernie Hemingway once said; ‘When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature’. Discuss.

 

And discuss we did. Cutting to the chase, after some mild jousting trying to come up with definitions of ‘character’ and ‘caricature’ that proved acceptable to everyone it was pretty much agreed that Ernie, possibly pissed, was talking out of his bum. The undeniable importance of caricature in literature – whether considering Shakespeare’s Falstaff, almost anyone penned by Dickens, or Lee Child’s caring, sharing sociopath Jack Reacher – is, erm, undeniable, so we concluded that Ernie was PROBABLY (heaven forefend we should be so pompous as to claim any sort of authority when putting words in the great man’s mouth) talking in terms of one-dimensional or poorly realised characters rather than ‘caricatures’ per se. And let’s face it, if you needed any evidence that caricatures are ‘real people’ too, you don’t have to look too far too find an example when uncle Ernie is in the room, now do you?

 

Moving on from the ‘set piece’, there was some discussion of this website (yes THIS website – the very one you are reading and have enjoyed/not enjoyed (delete as appropriate) wot I am writing at this very second!) and what we could do to make it more useful or interesting for prospective readers. If you (yes YOU!) have any suggestions that aren’t abusive feel free to get in touch via any of the many ‘contact us’, ‘get involved’ buttony/linkyplinky things that abound around the site, or come along to one of the meet-ups and tell us in person. We have some ideas of our own, but won’t mention them here because we may be a bit slow in putting them into practice and wouldn’t want to whet your appetite only to fail to deliver the first course.

 

After that, things went the way they usually go (and what a lovely way that is) and discussions pretty much took their own course. I remember the mating habits of mallards and dolphins (not mallards mating WITH dolphins – just the similarities in their respective chat up techniques) coming up at one point, and a rather meandering anecdote of Jess’ involving an unscheduled trip to Hoo nr Rochester and a cup of tea she enjoyed with the members of the Village Green Preservation Society she met there. (That, by the way, was an example of ‘intertexuality’, as was the reference to my mate Molesworth in the opening paragraph. Perhaps we can discuss that at the next meet-up: ‘Intertextuality – powerful literary device or just David waffling again?’ Discuss.)

 

Right, the birds are singing, the sky is blue (‘Hello birds, hello sky, hello tree’ – more intertextuality on a Molesworth theme in case you were wondering) so I’m outta here...

Ciao for now,

David (for and on behalf of louche loungers and literary jousters everywhere...)      

http://tunbridgewellswriters.moonfruit.com

 

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a blog about worms and scars

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I was talking on the phone this morning and pretty much out of nowhere the conversation turned to that scene from Jaws where they all sit around and play Top Trumps by comparing their scars. Well I got to thinking about it, and while I’ve never been bumped by a shark with sandpaper-like skin or bitten by a moray eel while pearl diving in the Bahamas (I wrote a song about that: “When you swim in the sea and an eel bites your knee that’s a Moray...”...) I have got quite an extensive scar collection that would probably have given Quint a run for his money prior to his acquisition of that dirty great big one that circumnavigated his body and met in the middle. That said, I’m not sure that ‘bitten in half’ actually qualifies as a scar anyway, so maybe I’d get to keep the trophy after all?

 

Anyway, here’s the story of my first scar...

 

The acquisition of my first scar was quite a spectacular event, I have been told. As I was only about eighteen months old at the time I don’t actually remember it, but it’s a delightful story involving a Silver Cross pram, a puddle full of worms and a lolly-stick. I was sitting on the kerb at the bottom of a very steep hill, lolly-stick in hand, fishing for worms in a muddy puddle that had pooled around a blocked drain hole by the side of the road. My Sister, who was looking after me, was playing salt-mustard-vinegar-pepper with her best friend forever and had either failed to notice me slipping away or couldn’t be arsed to retrieve me.

 

Meanwhile, at the top of the steep hill, a couple of my older brothers were preparing for the launch of HMS Silver Cross, the one poised with a hammer pointed at the chock beneath the front wheel while the other took a couple of practice swings with a milk bottle tied to a shoelace. The launch itself went very well, I’m told, but just as the vessel reached the kind of speed that made it impossible for them to catch up they realised that I was sitting right in the middle of the launch path.

 

Absorbed as I was I failed completely to hear their screams and cries and carried on with my worming activities. They screamed louder, and I gave them a vague sort of backward wave in return. My sister looked up, curtailed her salt-mustard-vinegar and peppering and joined in the screaming, at which point I stood up and turned to see what all the fuss was about. The pram hit me full on, the hinge on the hood getting me just above the right eye and tearing a lovely gash in my forehead while the weight and momentum threw me into the middle of the road. I’m given to understand that I seemed quite upset at the time, presumably because I had to give up my day’s worm fishing to ride in a noisy old ambliance to the obspittle for a largish number of stitches.  

 

Well, that was the story of my first scar, and while not my biggest it is one of my favourites in terms of the story attached to it. It has been suggested more than once that it ‘explains a lot’. I have a mental image of a Beano style cartoon toddler in a drooping nappy walking up a hill with an inverted pram, three times his size, suspended in the air above him by a spike driven directly into his forehead. I know the reality was nothing like that, but the idea still makes me smile...  Hope you did too, otherwise this was a bit of a pointless exercise. Well, not that there was any point to the exercise anyway, iykwim, but I hope you smiled anyway...

 

In other news: I bumped into one of my son’s old primary school mates in the town this afternoon, and was pleasantly reassured by his plans to save the world through his research into bio-fuels... Sadly we have a few years to wait (he’s only thirteen) before he can really get started, but he’s a clever and determined little fella so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. On the downside, he’s just hit that age when girls might start to figure in his thinking and distract him. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course – it’s what makes the world go round, after all – but it would be a disaster on the grander scale of things. Ahhhh, the best laid plans of mice and men, eh?  ;)  

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The Adventures of Snitty the Piss Weasel: Pt.1 - The Manuscript.

Snitty the piss weasel loved books. He loved books so much that he read at least two a week, even if he didn’t understand them. His favourite novelists were ‘The Russians’, because everyone said the Russians were the best. Only old, dead Russians of course – none of that modern rubbish for Snitty.

As well as reading, Snitty loved writing. He had an I-Mac and an I-Book and was saving up his pennies for an I-Pad and a new overcoat with a slightly larger than usual pocket to put the I-Pad in when he was out and about. In the meantime he carried a small ‘journal’ in which he would jot down his important thoughts, which wasn’t quite as good as an I-Pad but was retro-boho enough to keep him satisfied for now.

Sometimes his friends would laugh at him because he didn’t own an I-Pad and Snitty would be upset. He would hide his tears behind a wall of self-righteous indignation when they did this, declaring that poverty was integral to the pursuit of artistic integrity. Then he would buy another couple of bottles of expensive wine to drown his sorrows and a nice Panini with rocket and red onion marmalade to cheer himself up. He really wanted to drink grappa, and absinthe, but the first made him cough and the second made his head swim, so he stuck to wine or the occasional designer lager instead.

Writing for Snitty was an escape from everything he hated in his life, which was basically everything apart from the wine and Panini. He would spend hours every night, after the wine bar closed, hunched over his I-Mac writing stories with weak plots, one-dimensional characters and clichéd dialogue, occasionally consulting his thesaurus to find new words to help him say the same things over and over and over again. Sometimes, he’d get so excited by his own writing that he’d switch his browser to ‘stealth’ mode and find a nice picture online to have a sad little wank over. Most of the pictures would be in black and white, of course, but occasionally he’d find a hand tinted photograph of Dostoyevsky or Korolenko, and these he would copy and paste to a memory stick he kept hidden under a loose floorboard in his hallway.
 
One day, in spring, while sitting on a bench by the river, Snitty looked up to see his best friend, Snooty the snot ferret, running towards him. Snooty was waving a large sheaf of papers and looked very excited. Snitty popped his notebook back into his man-bag and stood up just as Snooty arrived alongside him.
 
‘Why, heavens, Snooty, whatever is the matter? You look like you’re ready to burst!’

Snooty tried to speak, but was so puffed from all his running he couldn’t get the words out. Snitty reached into his man-bag, found the bottle of mineral water he’d just bought from Waitrose and handed it to Snooty. Snooty put it to his mouth and drank deeply, taking two thirds of the bottle in a series of quick gulps. He coughed, gently, then handed the bottle back to Snitty, who wiped the little tit on the end with a hanky before putting it back in his bag.

Composed now, Snooty held the bundle of papers in his hand towards Snitty and said, ‘I found this on the grass over there yesterday, and knowing you often sit here I wondered if it was yours?’

‘Why, no,’ said Snitty, ‘I wasn’t here yesterday as the farmer’s market was on and I needed some fennel. I’ve never seen it before – what is it?’

‘It’s a manuscript,’ said Snooty, and I’ve been up all night reading it. I couldn’t put it down’.
 
‘Is it good, then?’ asked Snitty

‘Good? Good?’ said Snooty, ‘Why, it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever read!’

‘Really?’ said Snitty.

‘Really’ said Snooty.

‘Is it Russian?’ asked Snitty.

‘Why, no,’ said Snooty ‘it’s actually set right here in Kent.’

‘Well I never!’ said Snitty.

‘Indeed’ his little friend replied.

It was almost lunchtime, so they walked to a lovely little cafe where they bought coffee and a Panini, and while they ate Snooty told Snitty all about the manuscript he had found. From everything he heard Snitty was quickly convinced that this was indeed a work of the highest quality. Without divulging too many spoilers Snooty was able to outline a plot and narrative arc that seemed breathtaking in its scope and originality, together with character outlines that brought to life the personalities described so completely that they might well have been sitting at the cafe table with them.

The manuscript itself was handwritten, in a fine unwavering script. There were no cross-throughs, no corrections, no blemishes of any kind. It was as though the words had found their way onto the page by some sort of magical osmosis rather than being etched there by hand, as though the writer’s thoughts had just materialised on the page. It was bound with a single blue ribbon, passed through punched holes as clean and uniform as the buttonholes on a Savell Row waistcoat, and finished with a bow as neat as any seen in a milliner’s shop window. Despite this, there was no cover page, no name to identify the author, nor any other sign of ownership or provenance.

Snooty was desperate for a second opinion on the quality of his find and Snitty was only too happy to oblige. He took the manuscript home, and leaving all other considerations aside started to read immediately.

Within a couple of pages he was completely absorbed, lost in the fantasy world of the open pages in front of him to the exclusion of all else. The cat went unfed, his I-Mac slept, and his phone, when it buzzed at nine pm, went unanswered. And then, with less than fifty pages to go, Snitty suddenly stopped, sighed, and took off his reading glasses. He put the manuscript down, shook his head, poured himself a glass of wine and switched on the TV and watched Question Time.

 

The next morning he was woken at eight by an excited Snooty, who banged on his door until Snitty thought he must knock it off its hinges. Snooty could hardly contain himself as he hopped into the room. His hands were flapping and he jumped from foot to foot.
 
‘Well, Well, Well,’ he asked, ‘is it the best book you’ve ever read or is it the best book you’ve ever read?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t finish it,’ said Snitty, ‘I’m sorry.’

Snooty was astonished. He couldn’t imagine for a moment how his friend could not have finished it. It seemed inconceivable to him that anyone could fail to be as captivated, enchanted and overwhelmed by the book as he himself had been.

‘What... What... What is it?’ asked Snooty.

‘Look for yourself,’ said Snitty, ‘I can’t bear to touch the wretched thing again. Page 619, third paragraph.’

Snooty walked to the coffee table and picked up the manuscript, riffling through to the bookmarked page near the end. He read it quickly, not noticing anything untoward, then scanned the page again more carefully. And then he saw it. He struck his forehead with his palm, wailing as shock rippled through him. He felt bile rise into his throat and fought to swallow it back down into the seething pit of his roiling stomach.

‘Have you seen it?’ Snitty asked, staring into the middle distance, unable to look directly upon Snooty’s suffering.

‘Yes... yes...’ Snooty sobbed through snotty fingers, ‘Just where you said, page 619, third paragraph... A... A... A greengrocers' apostrophe... on the word “books”.’


----------------------------

 

In Other News: I dun writ a cupple of good pomes today, and have enjoyed my OU coursework for a change! Oh, and the sun shone and the duk-duks were out in force. Let's hope it's not another false alarm smile

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Que serra serra... I'll tell you where you can stick that...

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If there’s one thing that really annoys me it’s people who say ‘if there’s one thing that really annoys me...’, because, let’s face it, if there’s only one thing in your life that really annoys you then you’ve pretty much got it made, haven’t you? What you should really do is shut up whinging about the one thing in your life that really annoys you and start focussing on all the countless billions of other things that don’t annoy you. Or ‘count your blessings’, as my dear old annoying mum used to annoyingly say.

Now as far as things that really annoy me go, I can honestly and confidently claim that there are literally thousands of them, ranging from the trivial – like sipping from a cup that you think is coffee and then remembering you’d made tea a fraction of a second after your brain’s confused your taste buds by sending them the ‘incoming coffee’ message – all the way up to the major, like, say, America’s political shenanigans in the middle-east or Greg Wallace being on TV again. If I’m perfectly honest, some days I find myself being really annoyed by so many things that I end up being really annoyed about there not being enough hours in a day for being annoyed. Like that old joke about the man who hated his wife, the only logical solution would be get up earlier and go to bed later, but that’s not only annoyingly impractical but also implies increased levels of tiredness, which tends to make me grumpy at the best of times, let alone when I’m already feeling annoyed.

And speaking of getting up earlier, that’s another thing that really annoys me - waking up. Why the hell do we have to wake up in the mornings? It’s horrible. Sometimes, if there’s an alarm going off to wake you up on purpose for something annoying like work or getting the kids to school, it’s extra horrible, but even on days when you wake up naturally it’s still completely horrible. I mean, there you are, perfectly happy one minute fast asleep, having lovely dreams about lovely things or possibly horrible dreams about horrible things, and the next minute you’re aware that you’re not in that lovely or horrible place at all but in your bed, and it’s time to get up and start being annoyed again.

Okay, it’s marginally better to wake up from a horrible dream than a good one, I’ll admit, but is it worth the annoyance of knowing that your brain is subconsciously trying to work out your anxieties by offering you horrible metaphors in your sleep that you’re incapable of decoding when you’re awake? I mean, if even your own subconscious is trying to highlight how shallow and stupid you are by showing and telling you stuff that goes straight over your head then what hope have you got in expecting any better treatment from anyone else? None whatsoever – and how annoying is that? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only thing I can imagine that’s worse than waking up is not waking up, which, let’s face it, is on the agenda at some point whether I like it or not. OH JOY...

And as for that whole dreaming thing – I bought a book on dream interpretation once and what a waste of 50p that was! I’m never going back to that charity shop again, I can tell you – the robbing bastards. Basically there seem to be two meanings to most dreams: 1) You’re going to have some unexpected good fortune (these dreams usually involve fishing) or 2) You’re subconsciously worried about something (these dreams usually involve fishing and the fish getting away). The only conclusions I came to were that the author was probably J. R. Hartley or someone else equally obsessed with angling, and that most of us spend most of our time subconsciously worrying about stuff. The latter I knew anyway – it was why I shelled out 50p on the book in the first place. And just to make the whole exercise even more annoying the book then went on to explain that many dreams are ‘dreams of opposites’ – i.e. that what they seem to be saying is precisely the opposite of what they actually mean. I interpret this as meaning that if you have a ‘good fortune’ dream it probably just means the same thing that all the other dreams mean – i.e. that you’re subconsciously worrying about something and your subconscious, being the contrary bugger that he/she/it is, is just trying to put a happy spin on it.
 
Oh, and that’s another thing that really annoys me – people who try to put a happy spin on everything. Why would the annoying gits want to do that? If life has taught me anything it’s that most clouds DON’T have a silver lining, and that trouble doesn’t come in threes but by the bucket-load. I’ve no problem with people trying to delude themselves – I expend a huge amount of energy on that myself most days, which is probably why my subconscious has such a hard time of it – but the last thing I want or need when I’m having a bloody good rant at the world is someone offering me platitudes about ill-winds or gutters and stars. Try walking along looking up at the stars and see just how long it takes before you’re scraping dog-egg off the instep of your trainer. Go on, I dare you. And you probably won’t even be able to see any stars anyway, unless it’s the ridiculously named ‘ursa minor’ constellation (another example of someone being unreasonably upbeat and delusional – seeing a giant, mythical beast where everyone else just sees a dented saucepan), what with all the light pollution and stuff. Twenty minutes digging crap out of the tread in your plimsolls with a teaspoon, for that? I ask ya!

Personally, I’d rather keep my eyes in the gutter and avoid the turds. Who knows, you might even spot a fifty-pee someone’s dropped, which is enough to buy a disappointingly annoying book in most charity shops.

In other news:

The cash machine up the road has just eaten my debit card. No good reason for it – there’s money in the account and I never go overdrawn – the bastard just did it to annoy me. And it worked. PAH!    

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Edited by David Smith, Friday, 24 Feb 2012, 10:43

This is more 'local history' than blog, but hopefully of interest even to those who don't live in my particular neck of the woods.

The following is a true story. Only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent...

Chances are, if you associate the above with that transitional phase between primary and secondary and you grew up anywhere around Grosvenor Rec in Tunbridge Wells, that you’ll also associate that period with an ugly, white brick and asbestos building - 'The Satellite' - that used to stand at the top of the hill by the Auckland Road park entrance and swings. That being the case, you may well be one of the innocents referred to above. Or possibly one of the guilty they needed protecting from. I’ll take the fifth on that one, and hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt. smile 

The Satellite was a youth club running when youth, as opposed to ‘Yoof’, was itself seen as a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood rather than a cut-off point, and when children between the ages of, say, twelve and fourteen might have wanted everything the adult world seemed to offer, but for the most part didn’t really have any expectation that it would be handed to them on a platter. Consequently, they had a little bit more time and space to manoeuvre, and places like the satellite offered them a venue for some of that manoeuvring. The following episodes are some of the things that I got up to.

Whether I actually went with him or just had the misfortune to run into him there I don’t recall, but I do remember the presence of my brother, whom we shall call ‘Boris’ for the sake of this exercise (heehee), on my earliest visits to the club. He’s either three or four years older than me, depending on the season, so it’s a fairly safe assumption that I was still in primary school at the time.

From that period I mostly remember playing snooker and table tennis, or, rather, trying to, in the face of stiff competition from older and bigger boys who would monopolise the rather oversubscribed tables. I was doubly disenfranchised in this regard because even when a group of us younger kids did pluck up the courage to ‘dob in’ the bigger table hogs – risking life and limb on the walk home – the house rule of ‘winner stays on’ would be applied, which would effectively mean sitting on the sidelines watching others play as I had all the coordination and dexterity of a drunken Douglas Bader. If I had any table-based sporting skill at all it was in Foosball™ ‘throw-ins’, as this was effectively just marbles, which I practiced constantly in the school playground. On the downside, I hated Foosball™, and throw-ins aside was useless in all aspects of the game, regularly skinning my knuckles by trying too hard in a confined space while paying too little regard to the close proximity of the roughly textured high-broom’s-brick walls.

‘Boris’, meanwhile, would have been standing in the darkest corner of the dance floor, drooling at girls and indulging in ball games of a very different nature through the linings of his trouser pockets – a hobby he’s kept up to this day.

Thankfully the spectre of Boris was soon to be exorcised from the club after he acquired a huge Imperial typewriter from the club office, under the pretext of wanting to write a Christmas show for the group to put on. I can’t remember anything about the show other than that it was supposed to be a series of short sketches, but that is probably because it didn’t get written. I do remember contributing one sketch myself, which was based in the changing room of a football team. It had one joke, a visual gag where one of the team came on stage (probably ‘entering stage left’ as I knew this to be a legitimate stage direction from watching ‘Snagglepuss’ cartoons) wearing just a pair of shorts with a pink balloon, partially filled with water, peeking out of one leg and asking if anyone had seen his jock-strap. This was definitely before I made the transition to secondary school, so I’m amazed I even knew what a jockstrap was, but it does reveal an early penchant for scatological humour that has marked – some might say marred – my output to the present. Having said that, I feel vindicated by the inclusion of a very similar scene in a recent episode of E4’s ‘The Inbetweeners’, and take this as conclusive proof that my writing then, as now, was significantly ahead of its time. In 20 years people will be pissing themselves reading this. Heavens to Murgatroyd, even.

Whatever the fate of the Christmas show script (I suspect my own contribution may have been ‘not quite what they were looking for’) I do know that the typewriter itself ended up in a local second-hand shop and that Boris spent the money on fireworks, fags and sweets, and possibly a copy of ‘titbits’ magazine, which sometimes featured ladies in bras and was easier to hide than mum’s Littlewood’s catalogue when sneaking to the toilet. This act of petty larceny effectively saw Boris debarred from the Satellite, so the secretary’s loss would have been my gain. He probably continued to lurk around the rec from time to time (it had its share of lurkers) but as far as the club itself went he would have been on the outside looking in. I just hope they had frosted glass in the window of the girl’s toilets.

I remember a further Christmas non-event from a year or two later, when one of the group’s leaders proposed cooking and serving a meal for the elderly in the community. This may have harped, in the organiser’s mind, back to the days of ‘The British Restaurant’ – a function the building had fulfilled in the years of wartime rationing – and I can remember being very enthusiastic. I’m not sure what the main course was going to be – though I would hazard a guess at chicken – but the starter was soup and the dessert baked Alaska! None of the kids had heard of baked Alaska, of course – ice cream was cold stuff you bought in a block and ate with tinned cling peaches, and meringues were the brittle white things they sold in the penny-bun-shop – but we were mesmerised by the description of it. My guess is the organiser was a keen fan of Fanny, ‘cos it has all the hallmarks of a Craddock Culinary Centrepiece, but as a dish potentially cooked by eleven and twelve year olds it seems, in hindsight, more of a disaster waiting to happen. I remember discussing this with one of the other kids on the walk home: Cold ice cream covered with warm meringue? She must be mental. Sadly, the old people didn’t get their dinner that year, because we couldn’t get the funding (same old same old, eh?). Having said that, I suspect that might not have been a bad thing given the standards of hygiene practiced by most Satellite regulars; the diners would have dropped like flies, in much the same way as those unfortunates who plumped for the oysters at the Fat Duck in 2009.

Another huge attraction of the Satellite was the record player there, and the chance to hear music in the ‘cafe’ area. When I first started going it was all about reggae. Whether this was down to the organisers bringing in their own collections or a reflection of the kid’s (or maybe their parent’s/elder sibling’s) taste I don’t know, but I do remember picking up the rudimentary elements of what I like to refer to as ‘dancing’ while listening to orange and white labelled vinyl singles with titles like ‘Return of Django’ and ‘The Liquidator’. My musical tastes have broadened and diversified over the years, but the opening bars of those songs can still send a shiver down my back and get me skanking like a good ‘un. Those simple, stripped back rhythms and staccato chords opened the floodgates for me, and music in all forms rushed in, so I owe the Satellite a big thank you for that. Thank you, Satellite.

The next big thing music wise was ‘Glam’, and while I wasn’t Satelliting quite so regularly by then (a long story) I do remember somebody bringing in the first Roxy Music album and playing ‘Virginia Plain’. They played it all night, and I had my ear up to the gold coloured mesh covering the single paper cone of the record player’s speaker for the duration. A year later I saw the inner sleeve of the second Roxy Album and remember feeling as excited (not in a sexual way) by the sight of Eno in his platforms and feathers as I was half a decade later when I saw a grainy black and white picture of the queen with a safety pin through her nose. I recently bought Eno’s Drums Between the Bells, and after all these years he’s still making new music that can make me shiver with...... anticipation. The same, sadly, cannot be said for Johnny et al, though Devo give it a good college try every now and again. As Porky once said ‘The music’s in the plastic’, and Mr Eno made the transition from vinyl to whatever sort of plastic it is that I-Pods are made of in a way that punk just couldn’t follow.

I also remember a band playing at the Satellite. I’m not certain they even had a name, but I’m pretty sure it was the first public outing for a great local boy who never quite made it as good as he should have by the name of Gary Barden. Best known, probably, for his years as vocalist in the Michael Shenker Group and with Gary Moore (and still making albums as a solo artist, I’ve just seen on Wikipedia), Gary did his thing in various bands in and around Tunbridge Wells for years, and a very good thing it was too, if it was your kind of thing. But I digress. What I remember most about the band that played at the Satellite was that they had just saved up their pennies for either a ‘wind machine’, or some sort of synthesiser/keyboard with a ‘wind’ preset. With the same spirit and determination that ‘We’ve Got A Fuzzbox & We’re Gonna Use It’ applied to their, erm, fuzzbox, the ‘Windjammers’ as I have come to think of them (about 30 seconds ago) got their money’s worth and more from their new acquisition, using it for every intro and outro of their four song set, as well as for ‘atmospherics’ on the (what I seem to remember as rather extended and somewhat ‘proggy’) middle-eights and solos. Just as well they couldn’t afford a dry ice machine; we would have all been choked to death.

Blimey. I’ve just realised I’ve written far, far more than I intended. So I’ll stop. I’m really only leaving out the severe beating I took at ‘Summer Club’ after catching out in rounders someone who went on to be quite famous in the field of football hooliganism. At the precise second I caught the ball I was both stunned and pleased, considering it a little gift from lady luck for a child who could usually be relied upon to drop anything. I realised about fifteen minutes later, while receiving a very thorough kicking from the extremely large football fan and about a dozen of his mates in the woodland retreat that is now, I think, designated a nature reserve, that lady luck is a fickle mistress who rarely takes what she is owed in money. I remember looking up just before unconsciousness took me to see the face of someone I had previously considered quite a close friend gleefully joining in. He subsequently explained that this was more a case of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ and a prevailing sense of self-preservation rather than any personal grudge, but I never quite felt the same way towards him after that...

And on that cheery note I’ll say adieu, and thanks again, Satellite Club and Grosvenor & Hilbert Rec, for these and many other (mostly) happy memories. It was, as they say, real. smile

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Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

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On Saturday it snowed. It snowed overnight, and on Sunday my son went sledging with a mate for a couple of hours, which he quite enjoyed. Other than that, we didn’t really bother venturing out anywhere, because it was too cold, too uncomfortable, and, as far as the car went, too slow and potentially dangerous to seem worthwhile. After walking him to his mates with the spare sledge so they would have one each I tromped through the snow to the field opposite and took a few ‘snowy scene’ photos that were probably very much like a million other snowy scene photos that were taken that day, with very little artistic merit and nothing memorable about them other than the fact that there was white where usually there is green. I uploaded them to the computer where I have many other unmemorable photos that I very rarely look at.

I’ve no idea what the cost of that two hours of sledging and photography is likely to be because I have yet to get my fuel bill for the period – coming up to a week now – surrounding that two hour ‘window of opportunity’ where temperatures have been low enough to demand pretty much constant central heating, but suspect when I do it will hardly seem like money well spent. I, of course, am extremely lucky because however much I might resent spending that money and whatever temporary scrimping it might mean, I can afford to have my heating on, and I do have a home with four walls and a roof to shelter me from the worst extremes of the weather, but despite this I can’t quite manage to feel the same degree of joy and wonder expressed by many Twitterers and Facebookers upon the announcement of an imminent fall of frozen water particles.

I mentioned this briefly online, along with other observations about the billions of pounds that would be lost by industry and the inconvenience to families whose children wouldn’t be able to attend school should the weather continue beyond the weekend, in what I thought was a jocular, tongue-in-cheek sort of way, and was quite surprised – nay disturbed, if I’m honest – at the levels of anger these observations seemed to incite among supporters of the white stuff.

So am I wrong in thinking that an afternoon of slipping and sliding around on sheets of plastic or rolling and throwing balls of compacted ice seems poor compensation for the amount of misery and inconvenience that goes hand in glove (oh dear, oh dear!) with those experiences, for thinking that the cost – particularly for the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable in our society – is too great compared to the limited gain for those who can afford to be entertained by it?

I was ‘told off’ for not accepting that we live on ‘an island of seasons’ – effectively that if I didn’t like it I should bloody-well lump it – and to a point that’s a reasonable observation. But would homeowners whose houses got flooded on this ‘island of seasons potentially including rain’ be expected to just cheerfully grin and bear it without complaint, or those who got their roofs blown off by the occasional hurricane wind be upbraided for not just shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘oh well, that’s what comes of living on an island of seasons potentially including gale force winds’? When the streets are flooded should we be cheering and having canoe races up and down the high street? When ill winds are scattering trees like leaves and lifting tiles like playing cards should we get our kites out and sing that lovely song from Mary Poppins while skipping hand in hand to the park? And if the answer is ‘no’, then why? I mean, it’s all just weather isn’t it, and no matter how much we don’t like it there’s not much anyone can do about it, is there?

I was also told that old people don’t die because of snow they die of cold, and that snow on roads can be dispersed by the application of grit. Cold related death, then (and sorry, I still regard snow and cold as intrinsically linked – you might get cold weather without snow, but never in my experience snow without cold weather) is the ‘fault’ of government pensions rather than the cold itself, and impassable roads the ‘fault’ of bad planning, lack of government expenditure and an ineffective infrastructure. And you know what, I do agree with those things to a point, but with the obvious concession that if we want to make giving pensioners more money so they can afford to pay for heating and we want to stockpile huge quantities of grit, gritters and manpower and have them on standby for the few days snow we do get each year a priority of government expenditure then we either have to cut spending elsewhere or increase taxes.

Perhaps a ‘snow tax’ would solve the problem – a specific, ring-fenced taxation and budget system drawn directly from the salaries of those who go ‘yippee’ when the weatherman forecasts snow? It could be used to provide heating for the old and cold, shelter and food for those at risk on the streets, and grit, gritters and manpower to ensure that trains and roads can all function properly with no losses to businesses or our children’s educations when the white stuff falls from the sky. All those ‘yippee-ers’ in favour put your hands up...... Oh... I was expecting a better response than that (*whistle*).

And just what is it about snow, anyway, that makes it so bloody special that someone moaning about it is branded ‘judgemental’ or, possibly, a miserable old git/gitess purely and simply because he or she doesn’t like it very much and thinks that people who do are possibly failing to look at the bigger picture and cost? What’s snow got that sunshine, rain and wind haven’t?

Sunshine is lovely stuff: flowers and other flora reach out to covet it, feeding themselves and us in the process and just generally making us feel good with their lovely colours and smells and flavours. Sunshine provides light in the daytime and reflected light at night, and sometimes paints the skies in ways that would shame the greatest painters who have ever lived. Despite this, nobody ever complains if at the height of summer I puff a bit and moan ‘‘ot, ennit?’. Lovely stuff, sunshine, I like it lots.

Beautiful water is the stuff of life. Without it out planet would be a dust bowl. It has, as rain, a job to do and does it very effectively, keeping us and everything else that lives on the planet alive and providing homes for countless billions of creatures that swim, float and nest on, in and around it. And nobody ever complains if I grumble a bit when it rains on my barbecue, despite all these wonderful gifts it showers (oh dear oh dear again) upon us.  Beautiful stuff, rain, I like it lots.
 
If I’m honest, I’m not so keen on wind, especially if it’s a keen wind (*ouch*). It’s a bugger with a brolly, and while it’s good for flying kites and sailing ships those are not pastimes I frequently indulge in, so they have little relevance for me. Regardless of my disinclination towards wind, though, I can appreciate the many benefits it bestows when blowing seeds and spores hither and yon, working in partnership with the lovely sun and beautiful rain to provide us with food and energy. Great stuff, wind, in the context of the bigger picture I like it lots.

Snow, of course, does have its place and role. One thing it’s very, very good at is reflecting heat back up into the sky and stopping our planet from over-heating. It may very well be, if we don’t think of another way of buggering everything up even more quickly, that the disappearance of ice at the extreme poles of our planet will mean an end to life as we know it (i.e. in relation to our own selfish selves, the only kind of life we seem to consider in any way important despite all the evidence that we’re effectively short-sighted parasites determined to destroy our own host), which would be a bit of a bugger really. It’s also rather good at preserving sossidges and stuff in the back of my freezer, and I’m all for a bit of sossidge or the occasional pork chop.

Thing is, though, outside of my (or anyone else’s) freezer the presence of snow and ice in the UK is not generally a good thing. As the polar ice-caps melt we will see more extreme weather, both in terms of rising temperatures and, paradoxically, frosts and cold. Cheering for and hoping for more snow in the UK is actually an endorsement of global warming; a direct vote for increased erosion of the polar ice-caps and the destruction of the habitats of the animals and people living there.

So is it so selfish of me not to like it? Is it so unreasonable and so ‘judgemental’ to hope that it just stays where it’s supposed to be, and doesn’t come blowing its way up my back passage (*giggle* that’s for K.) too often or too forcefully? I hope not, because I’m not generally a selfish person and I like to think that I’m pretty non-judgemental on the whole.

For anyone who did get out in the snow Sunday I hope you had lots of fun and enjoyed the hot chocolate and warm in front of the fire afterwards as much as my son did. For anyone like me, though, who thought of it and the cold snap surrounding it mostly in negative terms I hope you feel reassured by this blog that you are not alone. Who knows, given time we dissenters may, like other minority groups, reach a point where we can speak openly and freely about how we feel without being judged as judgemental or poo-pooed as party poopers.

Snow bashers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your snow chains...

IN OTHER NEWS:

Had a lovely day in Whitstable and Margitt with a friend yesterday. Lovely and very reasonably priced lunch (though plaice disappointing) at Pearsons, but got ripped off in margitt for 'supper' where charged over twenty quid for a small microwaved pie, an undressed small salad, a flatbread and piece of cheese + 1 glass of wine and half a pint of mild. Pity, because the beer and stripped back decor were great. Can't remember it's name but will look next time there. Recommend the beer, but check the prices before you buy any grub smile

Oh went to the gallery (tatty mod) too - they had some nice things in there. My favourite was a first aid kit in a tin that looked like a Beano comic. I jest. T'was inspirational, even if  the poor lady depicted in Rodin's 'lovers' MUST have a stiff neck by now ;) 

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Game For A Laugh?

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Edited by David Smith, Thursday, 2 Feb 2012, 17:06

Funny how similar things seem to crop up in different situations for no obviously related reason, isn’t it? Like when you’ve booked a holiday, and suddenly every news report or TV documentary starts mentioning that very place, to the point that you actually start to consider the possibility of nonsense like ‘synchronicity’ and other forms of New Age wooo. Of course, it’s just the human condition and our predisposition for finding patterns where they don’t exist among the numerous coincidences that occur around us all the time but generally go unnoticed for lack of a specific focal point to trigger the process of association. But that doesn’t stop it from feeling mysterious, now does it?

 

Anyhoo. A few days ago somebody posted a twitter message about Monopoly, which triggered a discussion on the theme of Board Games I Have Known & Loved. After about a dozen or so exchanges that particular round of messaging ended, but a couple of days later a “trend” or whatever they’re called appeared on the theme of ‘Toys ‘R’ Unsuitable’, with the names of established children’s games and toys corrupted for comic effect. Two of my favourites were ‘Pepper-Spray Pig’ and ‘Skate Bored: The disinterested fish that kids won’t be interested in’, but TBH there was quite a lot of chaff to sift through to find a few grains of half-decent wheat.

 

That aside, it did get me thinking in more general terms about the relevancy of board games for twenty-first century living, and I came to the conclusion that most would benefit from major updates. Of course, some might argue that board games have become completely irrelevant now because of the abundance of cheap and accessible software and computer games, and it is certainly true that newer versions of old favourites tend to incorporate electronic ‘Bankers’ and swipe card technology and have streamlined rules to circumnavigate the boredom threshold of today’s kids, but IMO manufacturers are really missing the point: it’s not the technology that makes board games redundant and old-hat – it’s the social values and ideologies they reflect.

 

Taking The Game Of Life as an example, we are presented with a board that promotes higher education and staged career progression, the intrinsic values of the ‘nuclear family’ underpinned by happy marriages and prudent family planning, and the material benefits of sensible borrowing and cautious money management to ensure a comfortable retirement and care-free old age. I mean, how relevant does that sound in a society where almost 50% of marriages end in bitter divorce, unemployment statistics regularly hit new record-breaking levels and pension schemes seem almost routinely plundered by those setting them up to provide revenue for speculation in a world market undergoing the deepest recession in history?

 

With these factors in mind, here are some ideas for bringing traditional board games bang up to date...

 

MONOPOLY: Sadly, this game’s going to require quite a major facelift, the levels of greed depicted in the original version appearing nothing less than laughable in the 21st century. Even the name is no longer relevant, with multinational businesses now so adept at concealing the full extent of their trading profiles that the Monopolies commission is, in all but the most flagrant of cases, effectively a toothless dog. That said, the inherent charm of the game lies in its ‘local’ feel and adherence to the concept of property letting and trading rather than wider commercial investment and capital venturing, so sticking with that theme I suggest it be re-branded as ‘Slumlord’, with the emphasis shifted from development and refurbishment to maximised profitability. Rather than being valued by location alone streets will be assessed by three different criteria – density of population, general levels of disrepair, and the lack of alternative local government-backed affordable housing opportunities – with prime sites commanding the highest rents while offering the lowest standards of living.

 

When building, the emphasis would be on maximum return for minimum square footage, with ‘houses’ colour-coded and priced accordingly. The traditional ‘hotel’ would be replaced with the ‘hovel’ – a single room (lock-up garage or somesuch) with no running water or sanitation illegally let to upwards of twenty of the most desperate, needy and vulnerable people our crumbling society can offer. Generally, rents charged for ‘hovel’ accommodation would be four times higher than those for regular houses built on comparable sites, but this is doubled if the landlord has also drawn the ‘illegal immigrant tenant’ card from the Community Chest.

 

The income tax squares have always represented something of a sticky issue in gaming terms, because it goes without saying that the highest earners in our society are also the most astute when it comes to finding tax loopholes to avoid payment. Recent disclosures regarding the tax bill of a certain ex PM highlight just how unrealistic the simplistic Tax Demand = Payment ideology of the old game has become, so it would seem sensible to update the game to include a business expense that today's Slumlord might more readily identify with - i.e. twin ‘intimidation tax’ squares, representing retainers paid to the Doug and Dinsdale Piranha Rent Collection Advisory Service.

 

Unlike the traditional game, the ‘Go to Jail’ square would offer opportunities for increased income rather than implying a loss of income, as the landlord would not only still be able to claim rent on any property but also to supplement his/her income by drug dealing throughout the period of incarceration, rolling dice for up to three turns to determine the amount of revenue earned. In the event of throwing a double, the landlord has to leave jail immediately, losing any revenue accrued from drug dealing in the process.

 

An additional benefit of a jail sentence would be that while inside the landlord is exempt from all local ‘taxes’ (intimidation, extortion etc) that might have otherwise become payable to other players. In certain situations, then, when a players’ revenue is low or another player is making an aggressive takeover bid, it may become advantageous to ‘do a bit of porridge’. With this in mind, the ‘Chance’ cards contain two ‘Get Into Jail Free’ tokens which can be kept by the landlord collecting them until needed, or traded with other players as desired. Additionally, the ‘Get Into Jail Free Card’ can be used in conjunction with the ‘Take The Rap’ card to facilitate a short-term business merger between two players that benefits both financially, leaving one free to trade and move freely around the board while the other enjoys the personal security and additional income afforded by a custodial sentence.

 

Chance and Community Chest cards will remain a feature of the new product, but will be updated in line with the rest of the game. The ‘you have been assessed for street repairs...’ card, for example will now read ‘you have been assessed for building repairs but have successfully lobbied against the proposed changes in legislation...’ and will offer a payout determined by the roll of the dice, while the ‘you have won second prize in a beauty competition...’ card will now read, ‘you have got a bung in with the main judge of a local beauty competition and...’.

 

Many other games are also ripe for updating in this way; Battleships, for example, pretty much begging for an upgrade from its current one-on-one war strategy game status to become a thrilling trading race for up to six players, all seeking to make their fortunes by circumnavigating international laws on arms dealing to successfully offer nuclear capabilities to various blacklisted minority groups of religious fundamentalists.  

 

Cluedo is another game much in need of a face lift; the notion of a detective actually solving a crime without the aid of DNA profiling and a full CSI team patently ludicrous in this day and age. Providing an even more exciting and modern twist, rather than it being the lead pipe that is ‘bent’ the game could actually focus on the exploits of an unscrupulous, owned-by-the-mob detective whose job it is to successfully frame one of the occupants of the manor house by planting incriminating evidence, cleverly lifted fingerprints and other various bodily fluids and fibres at the scene of the crime to provide a ‘watertight’ case and guaranteed promotion, while simultaneously diverting attention away from his gangland bosses.

 

While revitalising larger games like the ones above could prove quite complex, simpler games could be adapted far more easily with just a few quick changes to the rules or game-play definitions. Build A Beetle, for example, could very quickly become ‘Torture A Termite’ simply by reversing the order of play and pulling bits off of the pre-assembled bug rather than putting them on. Budding psychopaths of the 21st century, weaned on more graphic computer simulations of torture and murder, would probably enjoy the addition of artificial blood, which could be piped into the unfortunate bug with an included turkey baster prior to commencement of the game for hours of spurting fun.

 

In a similar vein, a few small tweaks to the traditional board graphics would see Snakes & Ladders rapidly transformed into ‘Swings & Roundabouts – The Private Pensions Game’, while the simple addition of a timer could see Operation morphed into a race against the clock where up to six competing surgeons rush to get the most private patients in the shortest time through one NHS operating theatre.

 

As someone who likes board games and has spent many an happy hour rolling dice and moving small pieces of plastic around a cardboard covered tabletop I think it would be a shame to see them getting left behind in the race to keep our children entertained. On the off-chance that a traditional game manufacturer may stumble across this blog before it is too late, here are a few brief outlines of other game adaptations I think might pay dividends:

 

Draughts: First care-home owner to kill off all their pensioners with hyperthermia wins.

 

First Past The Post: Six pensioners compete for one artificial hip

 

The Game Of Life: Whose sperm will arrive at the egg first to win them half shares in a housing association flat?

 

Pass the Buckaroo: Each player takes the role of a leading politician in the aftermath of a political scandal. "You never know where the buck will stop!”

 

Frustration: Up to four players compete to get their name on the books of an NHS dentist.

 

Blow football: First ‘slag’ to successfully perform fellatio on a married 1st division footballer and sell her story to a tabloid newspaper wins.

 

Jenga: Shore up the economy with increasingly desperate and impractical short term fiscal policies (i.e. ‘Quantitative easing) until the whole thing comes crashing down.

 

Scrabble: Remarketed as a banking game, the numbers on the tiles represent money (in £100,000 increments) rather than points. Triple word/letter scores etc to be replaced with ‘end of year bonuses’ for which the individual players (bankers) ‘Scrabble’.

 

Mouse Trap: Cut all benefits to below subsistence levels then watch the ‘vermin’ squirm.

 

Kerplunk: Take turns removing the sticks to leave ever widening holes in the eligibility criteria of the social welfare safety net so that increasing numbers of societies weakest, most vulnerable, most needy and most disenfranchised fall through the cracks.

 

Uno: Due to rising inflation this should be renamed 'Quattro'.

 

Connect 4: The first reporter to successfully tap the phones of four celebrities/public figures wins a promotion to deputy editor.

 

Etc... etc... etc...

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